An Unexpected Detention by MagnificentAndStrange

The morning post was especially busy the first week back at Hogwarts. Harry glanced up but without much interest. Hedwig rarely delivered mail to him when he was at Hogwarts as the only people he had ever exchanged letters with were his friends sitting across from him. Just as he returned to staring at the plate of toast Hermione had resolutely sat in front of him, a tawny owl swooped down, dropped a letter onto his plate, and took off. The envelope was blank and a dark gray, Harry took it slowly not sure if it was safe to do so. What if this was a more sinister version of a howler or maybe a nasty note from the Dursleys saying that they weren’t going to let him back in the house next year? The letter wasn’t from the Dursleys and it didn’t start screaming at him, however the frown on Harry’s face deepened as he read the few lines written on the inside of the intricately folded envelope.

“What is it?” Ron asked, glancing up from where he was steadily consuming his plate of fried potatoes.

“Snape,” Harry answered gloomily, tossing the letter unto the table and trying not to grimace at the slanted spiky writing demanding he be present in the dungeons ‘as soon as conceivably possible’, “looks like a detention.”

“It’s the first week back, you can’t have been in any real trouble,” Hermione reminded him reassuringly but she didn’t look very confident as she studied the short note.

Harry sighed, staring moodily down at his breakfast. He hadn’t had much of an appetite since school started, or really since he’d been dropped off at the Dursleys doorstep twelve years ago. His aunt and uncle had made sure to deprive him of food at every opportunity and Harry had grown used to scavenging out of rubbish bins or neighbor’s gardens on Privet Drive. Hogwarts had an abundance of food at every meal but all of it was savory and wonderfully prepared and much better than he deserved. He sipped at the tea before him, pleased with its safeness. He’d deliberately watered it down so that only a hint of its flavor remained and then let it grow cold. Hermione had given him a speculative look at his actions but Harry ignored her concern. He cared deeply about his friends and Hermione was the smartest person he knew, but she wouldn’t understand.

“Detention with Snape already?” Fred Weasley remarked behind him, swinging himself unto the bench beside Harry and pilfering a piece of toast from his plate, “Well done, Harry.”

“Almost beats our record,” George chimed in, sitting down on the other side of Harry, “of course, we earned a detention with him first year, the moment we got off the train,”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Fred grinned reminiscently, “didn’t even get a chance to see Hogwarts from the lake, just straight to detention, out to be sorted, and then right back in.”

“What on earth did you do?” Hermione demanded, aghast, her brown eyes wide.

“Nothing much,” George said offhandedly,

“A tiny bit of mischief,” Fred supplied,

“Miniscule, really,” George stated, “although it might have left a few Slytherins with some hard feelings against us, though how they knew we were the ones to jinx their train compartments with a never-stop rainstorm charm, I don’t know.” Harry and Ron exchanged grins at that while Hermione looked torn between amusement and disapproval.

“Anyway,” Fred said heartily, pulling a platter of bacon toward him, “best to get it over with Harry, duel the dragon or ‘bite the bullet’ as the muggles say.”

“Yeah.” Harry replied glumly, checking the time but knowing that he couldn’t use classes as an excuse to get out of detention with Snape, not on a Saturday.

“We’ll be in the library if you finish detention before lunch,” Hermione offered, her tone sympathetic as she quickly gathered up the pieces of toast and handed Harry the whole stack.

“What!” Ron protested, eyebrows raised in horror, “Hermione, it’s the weekend.”

“Which means homework, Ron,” Hermione snapped impatiently, “specifically Professor Sinistra’s essay on meteor showers and Professor Binn’s assignment on troll campaigns in western Europe during the thirteenth century.” Harry left them to their arguing, though with Fred and George soon joining in with wildly invented ‘facts’ about trolls it seemed a shame to leave.

The camaraderie he had with Ron and Hermione always helped to make the first few weeks back at Hogwarts more bearable until he got used to the pointing and the staring again. At times, the Dursleys were easier to endure. Harry knew where he stood with his relatives, somewhere between cat sick and a cockroach if it was to judge by the looks of disgust they gave him whenever they looked at him. At Hogwarts though, he was famous because of his parents being murdered and him surviving. The whole thing turned his stomach.

At least, Snape hates me, Harry considered dully, wandering out of the Great Hall and toward the dungeons. He realized he was still holding the pile of toast Hermione had given him. It was cold and soggy now and Harry thought about eating it but he remembered the butter Hermione had scraped on it when it had still been warm, the smell of it that had hurt his insides with its goodness. No, he didn’t deserve something prepared out of kindness, something that would still taste far too wonderful. Harry threw the toast into a wastebasket in an empty classroom before he lost his resolve and ate it anyway.

It seemed seconds later that Harry was standing outside Snape’s office. He’d been here once before last year and it hadn’t been particularly comforting what with the jars of floating pickled creatures and ominous potions ingredients. He wiped his sweaty palms on his baggy jeans and tried to flatten his unruly black hair, making a valiant effort to stop his hands from shaking. It didn’t work and finally Harry knocked on the door, determined if nothing else, to get the worst over with. There was silence and then Snape’s sharp, “Enter.”

Hesitantly, Harry edged the door open. Snape was sitting behind his office desk, grading piles of essays with scarlet ink. He paused in writing what was no doubt a scathing comment on one of the pieces of parchment, glancing up quickly as Harry stepped slowly into the man’s office. Tall, thin, and pale, Snape looked more like a vampire than ever. Lank, long black hair hung into his thin face as his dark eyes fastened on Harry, his expression equally impassive and intense.

“Shut the door, Potter.” He snapped and Harry did so quickly, not wanting to anger Snape any more than usual. Snape was bad enough as it was on a good day.

Snape stared at him for a long time and Harry swallowed, wishing he were wearing school robes instead of Dudley’s hand-me-downs which looked particularly huge and ragged on his small skinny frame. He stood there, fiddling with the overlarge sleeves of the ripped shirt he wore, waiting for Snape to make a comment about how ridiculous he looked. Dudley had smashed Harry’s glasses twice over the summer and although Harry had repaired the lens on the train, the frames were harder to fix magically. He had been stuck with taping them back together with Ron’s spellotape and listening to Hermione muse over why muggle-made products were harder to repair than wizard-made products. Black eyes pierced his green ones and Harry flinched and looked away as Snape stood abruptly, coming around his desk and stopping a few feet away to stare down his prominent hooked nose at him.

“You haven’t been eating.” Snape said into the silence and the unexpected statement took Harry so by surprise that he didn’t at first register that Snape’s tone was far less antagonistic than usual.

“Sir?” he said uncertainly,

“You are clearly drowning in those muggle…clothes…” Snape stated, distaste flickering over his features as he stared at Harry’s clothing, “yet you’ve been avoiding meals or throwing away food that is given to you. I want answers for this behavior, Potter.”

His voice was firm but again not as cruel as Harry would have thought, given the fact that Snape made no secret about disliking him. Yet, those eyes looking at him now were not narrowed with hate and while Snape’s expressions were impossible to interpret, there was something steadfast in the way he stood there, studying Harry closely.

Harry stared at him, wondering suddenly what Snape would do if he knew how things were at the Dursleys. Would he agree that Harry deserved what happened? Fear crowded Harry’s throat and he swallowed but the words were there, he couldn’t seem to keep them back. No one had ever asked before about the clothes or the lack of food. Snape was watching him, waiting for him to say something. Harry shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and began to speak.