Betas: tigerbear1217 and skgnurse

A/N: I started to write this when I was watching clips from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and thinking that Harry really is a brat. (Yes, before some of you turn away, I do know Severus is a jerk [putting it mildly] too. So please don't take offense.) I also realized how house, particularly Gryffindor, seemed to believe that if a teacher was punishing, particularly a teacher with a different house affiliation or view point, a lot of they were considered unfair or dark. I was amazed and annoyed by the mixture of teenage egocentrism, war hardened beliefs, and bias that combined to create this phenomenon. Then it seemed peculiar that any punishment that Harry is given never seems to have an effect on him other than to make him angry or fuel his bias. I wondered if it was because most of the adults let him slide by or indulged him.

So I got to thinking…. What if Harry's class wasn't at Hogwarts, Dumbledore didn't have control over the situation, and what if Snape was there? How differently would school be?

Story background: Harry and the rest of his year are all at a private, college-prep magic school in the United States and Snape is present as a chaperon. I will include why there aren't any other Hogwarts teachers at a later date. Students at this school, like many private schools, must meet a certain grade point average in order to play sports and to be able to stay within school. One is first put on probation (no sports, no work permit. Also they have to do tutoring and extra lessons to catch up. Volunteering and work study are also used to help certain cases learn the value of work) and if the grades continue to be unsatisfactory the person is expelled from school with the possibility of having there wand snapped depending on the agreement they signed at the start of school or the exchange program.

Enough blabbering on my part though. On with the story!

As always:

"Spoken word"

'Thoughts'