Harry picked himself up off the floor for the second time in about fifteen minutes. To his annoyance, Snape was quite animated when disagreeing with the other Professors, and he wasn’t above standing up while proving his point. Unfortunately, this drew him slightly out of the spell’s range and had the effect of pulling Harry out of his seat.

This time Snape looked less irritated at Harry, and came over to help him up. The man even cleaned up the pot of ink which had spilled over the table.

The rest of the staff seemed content to continue their conversation as if nothing had happened and Snape was quick to pull Harry back inside the Sound Bubble.

“Alive, Potter? Not broken any bones this time?” His voice was mocking, although he did seem quite concerned about Harry’s posture.

Harry rolled his eyes, fairly sure Snape wouldn’t make a fuss about it. “No, Sir. Not quite.”

Snape nodded quickly. “And are you getting on with your work?”

Harry, settled back into his sofa by now, picked up the parchment with all his work on it.

“Almost done, just got a couple more to do.”

Snape looked mildly surprised. Harry had only been working for about half an hour after all and Professor McGonagall had seemed to think it would take much longer.

“Good,” he said. “When you have finished, you may continue with the work you should have been doing in my class. You will have no more time this evening to do so.”

Harry ran a hand through his hair, tired. Seeing this, Snape’s jaw set and he gave a curt nod before spinning away- back to whatever the adults were talking about.

Of course Harry still had a detention to do. Snape wasn’t just going to forget how angry he was with Harry because he had managed to do a little bit of Transfiguration work. Looking at the last two questions, Harry cheered up a little- they were exactly the same as those he had done the day before.

These questions were the ones which had had Harry most stumped. It took him ages to work out what they were trying to ask, and which numbers had to go into the equation. It took so much effort, in fact, that Harry could almost remember the whole thing number for number.

Snape’s work was a lot harder when Harry brought it out of his book bag. Annoyingly, it would probably have been simple had Harry seen the lecture that afternoon. He was annoyed at himself for ignoring the Professor’s warnings and not even trying to concentrate.

His face flushed as he counted how many chances Snape had given him that afternoon. Five? Yes, five chances to concentrate before Harry had totally insulted the man and practically forced him to do something about it.

Harry grimaced, he was not going to have a fun detention tonight.

“Are you finished already, Potter?”

Harry jumped as his thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sudden appearance of Professor McGonagall.

“Yes, Professor, a while ago.”

She gave him a tight smile, picking up the page which had been abandoned on the floor to dry.

“Yes, I can see that. I was wondering if you needed another quill, you do seem to have had rather a lot of use out of that one.”

Harry looked down at the quill in his hand, it did look a bit of a mess. He had been chewing on the end of it, a habit he had never broken out of since he stopped using pencils at primary school.

“Uh-“

McGonagall sat on the sofa next to Harry and pulled a quill and a small bottle of red ink out of her pocket. She began to work her way down the sheet, making Harry feel more than a little nervous.

Sound suddenly flooded back into Harry’s bubble and he turned to see Professor Flitwick tucking his wand back into a holster. The small wizard smiled at Harry and left the room a moment later, in deep conversation with Professor Sprout.

“Are they all correct?” Harry jumped as the incredulous voice of Professor Snape spoke from right behind him.

McGonagall nodded absently, making a few comments at the bottle of the page. “My apologies, Mr Potter. Either you have completed this before, or you are far more comfortable with the topic than I believed.”

Harry bit his lip, annoyed. They never believed he was telling the truth.

“I did it yesterday.” He said, sullenly.

“And Professor McGonagall has just apologised for the misunderstanding.” Snape stepped into view with his arms folded over his chest, “I see it is not only me to whom you regularly show such disrespect.”

“How can you talk about disrespect?” Harry blurted, “It’s not like you do anything about the Slytherins when they do anything wrong. And you spend all of your time insulting Gryffindors.”

“Enough, Potter. What do you know about how I treat my Slytherins? I keep discipline within my house and you are sorely mistaken if you believe I will not be taking Miss Lyss to account over this incident. Certain members of your house show me very little respect, so you will forgive me for returning the sentiment.”

“What about Hermione? She’s nothing but respectful and practically every lesson you call her a know-it-all or something. Or Neville, he tries his best!”

Snape’s scowl deepened, “Miss Granger does not respect my authority in the classroom. She consistently ignores my instructions and spends more time concerned with other people’s potions to the neglect of her own. Mr Longbottom seems to be totally incapable of any improvement in my subject and has continually ignored suggestions he attend either Potions Club or Remedial lessons.”

“How can you say that?” Harry sputtered, fuming.

“It is true, Mr Potter.”

Harry blinked up at Professor McGonagall, whom he had honestly forgotten was sitting with them. She was watching both Harry and Professor Snape with a disapproving look.

“Mr Longbottom has not responded to any offers of help with his potions work, and Miss Granger receives her worst grades in practical potions when she is seated next to Gryffindor pupils.”

Harry digested this new information silently for a moment, frowning deeply. Finally, Snape huffed in annoyance.

“Why are we bothering explaining this to you? It is not like you pay any attention. Potter, you have a long detention to begin in the dungeons. Professor McGonagall has better things to do than listen to you whine all night.”

Harry recognised that they would be leaving in a second and hurried to pack all of his things away. The two teachers kept talking over the top of his head.

“Minerva, the spell will be wearing off after curfew on Sunday evening, so Potter will return to classes on Monday. He should rejoin his house then too.”

“That is good. It will give us plenty of time before the other schools arrive for the tournament.”

“Yes, at least this arrangement is not going to continue into next week.”

By then, Harry had finished tidying his things away and Snape wasted no time in leading the way downstairs again. They went down past the Great Hall and straight through the green door, down to Snape’s office. Harry expected to be given a task to do straight away, but instead he was told to sit. 

Once again, two plates of food appeared on the table between them. As before, Harry waited for Snape to tell him that the food was for him before starting to eat. Snape frowned.

“Potter, you are ridiculously thin and yet you never seem to be hungry- should I be warning Professor Pomfrey?”

“I am hungry, Sir.” Harry said, “I just wasn’t sure that the food was for me, that’s all.”

Snape scoffed, “Did you expect me to eat two plates of food by myself, Potter? Or did you think I was going to starve you and torment you by placing the food in front of your nose?”

Harry just blinked at the man. That had, after all been exactly what he had been thinking. The professor continued to watch Harry eating for a full minute, before turning his attention back to his own plate.

After dinner, Harry was provided with a very small brush, a bucket of water and his own pair of dragonhide gloves, and had been pointed to the back of the Potions’ classroom. Snape had followed him with a small vial of something from which he poured two careful drops into the huge bucket of water.

“Is that actually enough to do anything?” Harry asked, frowning.

“This solution is of my own invention, I assure you it will do more than enough.” Snape replied shortly. “You do not necessarily require those gloves for your protection, but it would be sensible to use them since they are available to you. It should serve to deal with any adverse reactions which you might set off. You are cleaning the floor to remove any potions residue. Start in this corner.”

Harry realised that this was where Neville usually sat in lessons and grimaced, fidgeting with his gloves.

“I need to speak to a few of my students. If anything goes wrong, come and knock at the door. If you cannot do that, then shout.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Snape nodded and strode over to the classroom door. As he reached it, he spun around to shoot one last look at Harry.

“And stay away from my store cupboard.”

Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes, or salute sarcastically, and simply nodded back, trying to look as innocent as possible so that Snape would leave. Which he did, looking somewhat suspicious.

Detention was boring, as always. And, as was usual for Snape’s detentions, it was also messy and unpleasant. It took Harry a long while to make it out of that corner of the room.

How a student could possibly get their potions to spill quite so far under the desks was beyond Harry. And sure, he had had some disasters over the years, but he had never produced anything which could melt a hole in the stone benches.

After about an hour, Harry had made it to the desk which was fourth from the back, which appeared to be clear of the splash zone of the back corner. His progress was a lot better from there, and he made it to the halfway mark by the time Snape returned to the room ten minutes later.

The professor watched for a moment then went to inspect Harry’s work. He didn’t say anything particularly insulting, so Harry assumed he must be up to the exacting standard.

“You may stand for a minute, if you wish. You should try to take in some clear air after all those fumes.”

Harry levered himself to his feet, contentedly letting his knees and elbows crack as he was finally able to stretch them out. Ignoring Snape wincing at the sound. He was also aware of the smell of ozone faded away, and he could take deep breaths of the cold, dungeon air.

Harry stretched his arms out, over his head. He looked over to where Snape was at the desk, stacking essays and getting a quill and ink ready.

“You will be happy to know,” Snape said, already scanning the top essay, “That Miss Lyss is currently serving detention with Mr Filch, and she will be again tomorrow. Apparently she was enraged because you caused her to miss a date with her beau.”

Harry shrugged, “That’s good, I guess.”

“You guess? Two hours ago, you were furious at the injustice of it all. Now that I have done something about it, you could not care less!”

“Well, she was probably pretty mad at me. I mean, who wouldn’t be? And all I really had to do was revision, and you would have made me do work during that meeting anyway, so it was easier, I guess. Oh, and Professor McGonagall would be more mad at me if I had made you cross earlier and I hadn’t done the work, than she would have been if I had just made you cross. If you see what I mean, Sir?”

“Not really, Potter.” Harry tried to explain, but Snape just held up a hand for silence. “You can get back to work now. I will try to keep the air a little cleaner for both our sakes.”

Harry grudgingly got back down onto the floor and picked up his brush from where he had dropped it. He heard Snape shuffle his papers around and would have sworn that the man had said ‘teenagers’ almost disguising it with a cough.

When the work was finally done, Snape suggested that Harry look at the book of household spells he had been given. He even allowed the boy to practice casting a couple and corrected his pronunciation on the shoelace spell. Harry’s version (according to Snape) would have caused his shoes to start growing fur uncontrollably.

It wasn’t until the stack of essays had been resorted into a new, marked pile that Snape decided to call it a night. He walked Harry down the empty corridor to the isolation room.

“I will be here to collect you in the morning, I have no high expectations after seeing your dismal practice with that alarm spell, so I will awaken you tomorrow. I will not do so on Sunday.”

Harry yawned widely. “Thanks, Professor, goodnight.”

Snape raised an eyebrow and Harry realised that he had pretty much dismissed the Head of Slytherin.

“Um…”

“Goodnight, Potter.”

Snape spun on his heel and stalked back down the way they had come. Harry stared after him for a moment, then shrugged and made his way to bed.

“Potter!”

Harry jerked upright, eyes blurry, arms scrambling wildly out to both sides, searching for his glasses.

“Wha- Whut’d I do?”

The first thing Harry focussed on was Professor Snape, standing ominous in the doorway. Harry blinked slowly several times, then dragged up his arm to look at his watch.

“It’s half 6!” He said, incredulous. “’S a Saturday.”

“Congratulations,” Snape drawled, “You can tell the time. Yes, it is a Saturday and I have a lot to do, so get up. Be outside my office by quarter past seven and bring your bag with you.”

Harry crept along the corridor as silently as possible. He was doing his best to avoid any Slytherins who might be skulking about at this time of day. So far he had been successful but it wasn’t likely to last. When he finally reached the Potion Master’s office, he knocked quickly. The door was thrown open from inside.

“You are early Potter, and I told you to wait out-“Snape cut off suddenly and his eyes narrowed, scanning the boy in front of him. “What have you done to yourself?”

“Uh, I reckoned it was time for a change in look?”

“In the last half hour?”

“Um…” Harry trailed off, avoiding Snape’s gaze.

Harry supposed that he was a bit of a sight. After showering, he had been amazed to see that his usually dark hair had turned itself a red so bright that it was almost pink. His eyebrows and nails matched them, as did an annoying smudge around each eye. The effect was really startling and nothing Harry did seemed to have any effect on his appearance.

“Did you at least get rid of whatever it was that caused this?”

Harry nodded, “I think it was the shampoo in the shower. I tipped it all out, and it smelled pretty strongly of lemons, but I thought the elves had just changed it for something else.”

“You thought lemon grass to preserve the Colour Potion? You probably missed the separated layers from the potion not mixing properly with the gel.”

“I might have done,” Harry conceded.

“Well do not expect me to fix it for you. I expect it will not last until Monday at any rate, especially if you bring in Miss Granger’s help.” Snape disappeared to his desk for a second, tucking a sheaf of parchment into his pocket as he returned. “Breakfast time, I think.”

Harry groaned quietly, of course there was no way that Snape would let him escape this.

Altogether, it wasn’t as embarrassing as Harry had been expecting. For some reason, the trick with the Slytherins on Thursday had seemed to have had an effect on the rest of the school. Harry wasn’t sure whether it was all pranks, or if some of it was personal choice, but there was a lot of students in the Great Hall who were sporting new hairstyles.

The Weasley twins were sporting particularly interesting twin devil horns, sculpted out of their own hair. Ron was glaring across the table angrily, with his hair slicked back in the same style as Malfoy usually wore. One Sixth year Ravenclaw was proudly showing off a grey rhino horn to his friends, waggling his eyebrows suggestively at a seventh year sitting at the next table.

Cedric Diggory at Hufflepuff had a small stack of books which he was going through with his friends, they seemed to be working on animating a badger to move over the surface of their hair.

Some idiot had taught some second years a colour changing charm and they were causing havoc at the tables, thoroughly annoying those older students who had dragged themselves to breakfast so early in the morning. Luckily the spell only lasted for about half a minute, so there was no real damage. It was however, difficult to eat your breakfast when spells kept whizzing towards your head.

Fowley was one of those who had discovered this spell, and they were taking a particular delight in casting the spells since, for the first time, they could actually tell the difference between all of the different shades.

Fowley had judged that by sitting near to Professor Snape, any retaliation from the older Slytherins was likely to be severely toned down. Usually this would have been a dangerous move, but Snape had yet to finish his first morning coffee. Fowley judged that they had at least until the man was halfway through his second cup before the House Master started handing out punishments.

Harry watched all of this with an amused air. Somehow, instead of having the whole hall laughing at him, he was actually in fashion.

Gradually people started drifting away, Fowley left with a surprising turn of speed when it became apparent Snape was getting to the endo of his second cup, and had begun to take more of an interest in the happenings at the table. Snape tapped on the table to get Malfoy’s attention a few seats down and sent a meaningful look towards Fowley’s back.

Malfoy sighed and stood up to follow, some of his friends following. Harry laughed as he saw Crabbe and Goyle both grab chocolate muffins from the table to take with them.

“So what’s happening today, Sir?” Harry asked, trying to sound respectful. The detention last night had been really unpleasant, and he really didn’t want today scrubbing floors on his hands and knees again.

“You, I believe, have enough classwork to keep you occupied until at least lunchtime. I have to supervise a study group this morning, so you can work in there too as long as you stay quiet. Or you could always go back to the Slytherin common room.”

Harry held up his hands in surrender, “I can work quietly-“

BANG

They both jumped and looked to the source of the noise. Out of nowhere, a fish had appeared. It flapped loudly against the table, disturbing a bowl of cereal and several glasses of pumpkin juice. This managed to attract the attention of a few other students as well.

Hocking, the prefect, looked up from her pile of toast and raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t realise that trout was on the menu this morning.”

Her boyfriend laughed and choked on his cup of tea.

Snape and Harry kept staring at the fish, dumbfounded. After a long moment, Snape pulled a pocket watch out by its long, silver chain, flicking it open.

“Potter, did you make an attempt to set an alarm for this morning?”

“Yeah, for 8 o’clock, but you woke me up early anyway.”

“I think you ought to apply yourself more to your charms,” Snape said, straight faced. “I know you are not a light sleeper, but surely just the noise would suffice?” He drew his wand and silently banished the fish, leaving more than a few people staring vacantly at the empty space on the table.