Harry and Lily had moved back into Spinner's End by mid-morning the next day. It was beautiful and sunny outside. Once they were unpacked, Harry wasted no time asking to go outdoors.

"Absolutely not," said Snape. He stood in front of the back door, blocking the way, his arms crossed over his chest.

Harry frowned. "Why not?"

"You played outside last night. Don't you remember?" Snape pointed out.

Harry groaned. "I said I was sorry."

"What are we apologising for?" His mum came into the kitchen with a basket of dirty laundry.

"For last night. I want to go outside and he won't let me."

"Oh," she breathed, setting the basket on the table. "Well, Harry, if you've been told no, then I suppose you'd better do what you're told."

Harry glanced out the window. "But..."

Snape held up a hand. "Do not whine. I don't want to hear it. You purposely disobeyed your mother last night and you are going to be punished for it. You are grounded."

"Grounded?" Harry's mouth dropped open.

"You are going to spend the rest of the day upstairs in your room thinking about how your actions have consequences. Later, you can write an essay on it. Perhaps then you'll think before ignoring instructions next time."

"And it will be good for your school work, too. I spoke to Professor McGonagall," his mum added, her expression serious as she met Harry's eyes. "She's also concerned about your exam results and end of term grades."

Harry looked down and began to pick at the hem of his baggy shirt.

Snape's eyes narrowed. "Do you have anything to say about that?"

"I don't really like school much," Harry mumbled, shrugging his shoulders.

"That is no excuse for bad grades, Mr. Potter. Do you not study?"

"Yes!" His head shot up. "Hermione makes us study with her all the time."

His mum nodded. "That's very good. But your grades should reflect all that studying time."

"Don't you believe me?"

"Of course I believe you. But I'm concerned about you, and so is Severus."

"He doesn't care. He just wants to put me in detention."

"That is not true," Snape responded, his voice oddly calm. He cleared his throat. "Despite my treatment of you in school this year, I do care and I know you are quite bright."

Harry stiffened and dropped the hem of his shirt. "I told you, I'm fine. I just don't like school."

"Wrong answer." Snape raised an eyebrow. "Starting this evening, we are going to begin your homework assignments for the summer, and you will rework some of your more poorly done work from the past school year. I expect you to be up to speed by the end of summer. Now, go on. Upstairs."

Harry sighed and started toward the stairs.

His mum gave him a pat on the back as he passed by. "I'll call you when it's time to eat."

Harry stomped up the stairs and slammed the bedroom door shut behind him. The window was open, but now the fresh air only made him angry. He closed the window and flopped down on his bed.

They had only been back for a few hours and already Harry was getting shoved away. At least in their rooms at Hogwarts, Harry hadn't had to share his mother with Snape. He didn't get bossed around so much either.

Who did Snape think he was anyway, sending him to his room? He wasn't his dad. Harry made a face and pulled a pillow over his head. What a ridiculous thought.

His mum's laughter rang through the floorboards and Harry's stomach clenched. It wasn't fair. He should be down there with her. Why was she laughing? Snape wasn't even funny. He was horrible and mean.

Harry rolled over onto his side and hugged the pillow to himself. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Snape was ruining everything.

"Run upstairs and fetch your school bag."

Harry scowled at Snape, who was standing up from where he had crouched down to sweep a small of pile dust from the kitchen floor into a large, grey dustpan. Dinner was over and Harry had already been sent up to get ready for bed. He had been hoping maybe the man had forgotten about his plans to do school work.

"Do we have to do homework tonight?" He did nothing to hide the dismay in his voice.

"No whining, Harry," his mum said, not even turning around from the sink where she was rinsing the last few dishes. "Do as you're told, please."

Grumbling all the way, Harry went up to his room and pulled his school bag from inside his trunk where he had hoped it would stay for quite a few weeks. Taking as long as he could, he very slowly left the room and trudged back downstairs. He found Snape sitting at the table, several blank pieces of parchment and a quill beside him.

"Dawdling, are we?" he asked, as Harry left the last step.

Harry sent him another glare. "No."

"Mm hmm." Snape didn't sound at all like he believed Harry. He held his hand out for the school bag and Harry passed it over. Snape pulled out several of the essays and assignments. "Let's start with Herbology tonight, shall we?"

Harry just shrugged and watched as Snape read over his Herbology papers and the comments that Sprout had scribbled here and there.

"You seemed to do well enough when tested on the plants themselves, but your essays and written work are sorely lacking," said Snape a few minutes later.

"I told you already. The magic part is fun, but I don't like school work." Harry insisted, desperate to get his point across. Why couldn't anybody understand him?

"Very few people actually enjoy doing school work," his mum commented from across the room where she was drying her hands off. "But it's one of those necessary things in life that you just have to do. "

Harry crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, that's no fun."

"No, it isn't, and it becomes less fun as you get older. Now here, pay attention." Snape slid a heavily marked essay across the table towards him. It was followed by his "One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi" textbook. "I want you to read that and tell me what you did wrong."

Harry took in all the comments and corrections that had been marked. "Everything, it looks like."

Snape rolled his eyes and put a long, potions stained finger on top of the first paragraph. "Start with the first paragraph. Figure it out."

Mimicking the professor's eye roll, Harry leaned forward in his chair so that he could focus on the paragraph in front of him. Trying to read people's handwriting, even his own, was worse than reading ordinary print. He recognized this particular essay. It was on asphodel. Hermione had helped him and he still had a difficult time with it. Instead of reading through the entire first paragraph, his eyes jumped to Sprout's large, curly scrawl.

He scowled. Something pertaining to some ridiculously complicated word that only meant a stupid plant. Harry had written it out in his essay by the looks of it... at least three times. He counted them easily because Sprout had circled each one in red. Figuring he had spelled the plant's name wrong, he pulled the textbook closer to him and scanned the page Snape had pointed him to.

"It's not that difficult." Snape sounded impatient. "I practically pointed it out to you already."

"I'm trying!" Harry groaned.

"Procrastinating will not be beneficial, I assure you."

Harry rubbed at his eyes and tried to focus on the page. Snape was distracting him, stupid git. He clenched his teeth together and did his best to drown out any future comments the man might make. After a few more minutes of concentrated searching, his eyes landed upon the desired word in his textbook.

Asphodel.

He pointed to it.

"And what seems to be the problem in your essay?" Snape sounded more and more like he was in a classroom.

"I spelled it wrong...?" Harry let his voice drift off, not quite sure.

"Are you asking me or telling me, Mr. Potter?"

Harry bit his lip. "Telling, sir."

His mum came to stand beside him and leaned over his shoulder to look at his old homework. She didn't give the textbook a single glance.

"Are we talking about asphodel?" She straightened back up. "Harry, how did you misspell that three times? It's right there in your book."

He shrugged at first, but then decided that a bad reason was better than no reason at all.

"I, er, copied off of Ron," he lied, but upon seeing both adults frown, he quickly added, "But only some! I can see now that it wasn't a good decision."

"No, it most certainly was not." Snape glared and handed him a clean piece of parchment. "While rather jumbled and incoherent in some places, the content of the essay itself is fine. But as Professor Sprout points out in her comments, your spelling and penmanship are severely lacking; something I will agree with. I thought you were only doing abysmally in Potions. I can see now how wrong I was. For your assignment this evening, you are to copy your essay down again, being careful to fix all misspelled words."

"What? The whole thing?" Harry felt horrified.

Snape pushed his chair back and stood up. "It's one short sheet of parchment. This will hardly over-tax you and shouldn't even take you long, if you work diligently. You should be finished in time for bed," he added with a smirk.

"Git," Harry mumbled, yanking his ink and quill out of his school bag.

"Harry!" His mum admonished him.

A little bit of shame flooded over him at his mother's disapproval. He apologized, though it was directed more towards her than it was Snape. The adults seemed satisfied enough and left Harry to his essay revising, letting him know they would be in the next room "should he need any assistance". Harry scoffed to himself and set to work.

After some time, Snape returned to the room. "Nearly finished?"

Harry looked up from his work. "Not really."

"Let's see it then." He went to Harry's side and held the parchment up, reading through it quickly.

Harry waited, eyes downcast and hands in his lap, for the scathing comments that he was sure would come. This second essay was a little better, he thought. Or at least his penmanship had improved. He couldn't say for certain that his spelling was any better, but he had at least tried.

After a few moments of silence, Snape put the essay back down on the table and Harry looked up at him. The man's face was unreadable.

"Continue," he said simply, then turned and left the room.

Harry slumped down in his seat. Any indication of what his professor's opinion was would have been good to hear. Even a dirty look and a "this is rubbish, Potter" would not have been unwelcome at that point. At least then Harry would have known for sure that he was doing terribly. Now, he could only rely on the instinct that came from his past experiences. His instinct, he decided as he dipped his quill in ink, was shouting that this second effort would hardly be better than his first. But there was nothing for it. Feeling a bit sick to his stomach and like a headache was coming on, he rubbed his eyes and continued.

He was just checking over his work when he heard Snape's footsteps come to the door once again.

"It is late."

"I'm done." Harry put his quill down and sat back. "Can I go now?"

"It's 'may I' and no, you may not. You will remain here while I review your essay."

Harry reluctantly held his parchment out to Snape, who sat back down at the table. This time he watched the man's face, fearing it would remain impassive and yet, at the same time, not wanting to know what Snape might be thinking. He didn't have to wait long though because Snape was a very quick reader. Snape put the parchment down, his expression frustrated.

"I'm sorry," Harry blurted out before Snape could even open his mouth. "I know it's still bad, but I really did try."

"Apparently you need to try harder then, Potter. This second attempt is hardly better than your first, although this one is at least more legible."

"I went slower. Less sloppy that way."

"Indeed. But it is still filled with numerous misspellings, oddities, and," he paused to give the essay a strange glance, "just general nonsense. Did you even read the comments and corrections that were left for you?"

"Yeah," Harry mumbled, rubbing at a loose thread on the cuff of his pyjama sleeve.

Snape's patience was wearing thin. "I am not certain you did. This was not a difficult task."

"Well, it wasn't easy either!"

"A primary school student could have accomplished what I asked of you. You can read and you can write, so it would logically follow that you are capable of copying down an essay over again and making the noted corrections."

Harry sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. He refused to say anything to Snape when the man was so unfair. He felt very relieved at the sight of his mum entering the room, coming to rescue him.

"Severus, I can hear you from the sitting room."

"Quite a feat, that is," Snape sneered. "And the sitting room is so faraway, at that."

Harry felt anger rise up inside his stomach at the man's attitude toward his mother. He opened his mouth to say something in retort, but when she came up behind him and laid a hand on Harry's shoulder, he shut his mouth before a sound escaped.

"You're too impatient, Severus. What's the problem?" she asked.

"The boy can't seem to follow simple instructions. I asked him to copy his essay over and make the proper corrections." Snape held both of the essays out to her. "He could have at least made the spelling corrections."

His mum took the essays and dropped into the other chair beside Harry. After a few minutes she looked up.

"Harry, didn't you understand the instructions?"

"Yeah."

"Then why is everything still misspelled? Professor Sprout has the correct spellings written out for you."

Harry shrugged.

An odd look came over Snape's face, and he held out his hand. "Let me see your glasses."

Feeling apprehensive, Harry slipped the round frames off his face. The kitchen slipped into a blurry state and he held out his glasses to the blurry Snape figure. Giving up his glasses to another person made him feel vulnerable and he was already itching to get them back. Snape muttered something under his breath and gave the frames back to Harry. Relieved, Harry pushed them back onto his face and the kitchen instantly came into focus.

"What was that for?" he asked.

"I wished to see if your lenses were up to date. They are."

"Madam Pomfrey checked them for me when I got to Hogwarts last year. I can see fine out of my glasses now."

"Then you are not trying." Snape frowned.

"I am!"

"Severus, please." His mum turned to Harry, her voice patient. "What's going on then? We want to understand if there's a problem, so we can help you."

"Your grades are important." Snape sounded more under control. "It may not seem this way when one is merely a first year-"

"Almost second," Harry interrupted.

"Yes, almost second," continued Snape. "Nevertheless, at such a young age, your grades may seem of little importance. But that is not the case. They will affect you for a long time to come."

"I'm just not good at spelling," Harry tried to explain. "The letters get all confused in my head."

"That may be a passable excuse for your first attempt, but not so much for the second. Can you not simply copy the correct words onto your new draft?" asked Snape.

"I'm trying!" Harry tried not to sound like he was whining, but it was very difficult. "Look, Professor, I –"

"No, Mr. Potter, you look." Snape sounded exasperated. He slapped a clean sheet of parchment down on the table in front of Harry. With a quick wave of his wand, he had a list of Harry's misspelled words running neatly, and correctly, down the page. Next to the top word, he scrawled the word out in his own cramped handwriting. He looked at Harry. "You see? That is all I want you to do."

"You want me to copy the words? But that's for little primary school kids!" Harry felt very insulted by the suggestion. He was nearly twelve years old, after all, and had moved beyond such mundane school work. He gave his mum a pleading stare, but she shook her head.

"Do it correctly, Harry, and you won't have to do it again."

Seeing no other choice and feeling both adults' eyes on him, he picked up his quill again and began working. He was two words in when Snape interrupted him again. "No, stop. Are you even reading the words? How do you manage to make so many mistakes when the answer is right in front of you?"

"I don't know, okay?" Harry threw his quill down on the table and tried very hard not to shout. "I can't explain it. I just always get everything wrong. I'm stupid."

"Hey, listen to me." His mum nudged his chin. "You are not stupid and I don't ever want to hear you calling yourself that, do you understand?"

She released him, and he nodded. He ducked his head down to watch his lap for a few moments and when he looked up he found Snape watching him intently.

"You think I'm stupid,"said Harry.

Snape shook his head. "I most certainly do not. But I am becoming increasingly certain that there is something going on with your schooling that you haven't told us yet."

"I'm not lying," Harry insisted.

"No, I don't think that you are." Snape frowned and stood up. He walked behind Harry and after a moment's hesitation, he rested a hand on top of the boy's messy hair. "That is enough for tonight, I believe. Leave your work here, Harry, and go to bed."

Without another word, the man strode from the room.