The new term began as winter settled in around the castle. Harry had not imagined it possible, but Ron and Hermione seemed even more glued together than they had before break. He had expected some commiseration from Ginny on this, but found that she wasn’t paying much attention to anything but Dean.

At first he felt merely mystified by all of it. That was until he noticed that he had faded into the background along with everything else, then he felt a little annoyed. The weather was definitely conducive to sitting close together, he considered. Often. As the first few days passed, it began to grate on him more, making him feel unsettled and anxious. He started avoiding his friends when it was convenient to do so.

Friday evening, Harry stood in the common room with his book bag over his shoulder, looking for someplace to settle in to talk or even study. The room, to his eye, seemed paired up into fixed sets. He didn’t feel like interrupting anyone, so with a sigh he headed out the portrait hole, thinking of the library. He wandered instead to Snape’s office. His guardian was researching something in stacks of books piled on the desk.

“Do you mind if I study here?” Harry asked.

Snape, his long finger holding his place in the text, looked up at him. “Not at all.” As Harry sat in the visitor’s chair and dropped his bag hard on the floor, Snape asked, “Is something wrong?”

Harry wrinkled his face up as he thought over an answer. “All of my friends are, I don’t know, wrapped up in each other.” He shook his head in light disgust. “Voldemort could Apparate into the common room right now and no one would notice.” Harry cracked his Transfiguration text open and slouched over as he read.

“Hm,” Snape murmured.

“What?” Harry asked, feeling a little annoyed.

“I am surprised you do not understand.”

Harry frowned at him. “They’ve all lost their heads,” he complained. “What’s to understand?”

“You’ve never fallen for someone?” Snape asked.

Harry thought about Cho, how he had thought about her when she wasn’t around, how he had been jealous of others around her. It seemed dumb in retrospect. With a hint of anger Harry said, “Not like that.”

“Well, you will,” Snape stated dryly.

“Yeah, right,” Harry breathed. He tried to read the first paragraph of chapter ten yet again. His mind refused to take it in. Anger had built in him, generated by some source he wasn’t aware of before. He glanced up at Snape to find his guardian considering him in silence. Snape closed the book before him and clasped his hands on the desk.

“What?” Harry asked.

Snape did not react, just continued to consider him. Harry closed his book as well, a little harder and with a huff of frustration. “You are doing one of those Dumbledore things, aren’t you?” Harry asked. “Just waiting to see what I’ll say.”

“I am actually trying to determine what the problem likely is before venturing to ask anything,” Snape said. “You are clearly jealous.”

“I’m not,” Harry returned smartly. “I have too much work to do to spend my time mooning over someone like they all are. Fat chance, anyway, given how hard it was to find a partner for the ball.”

Snape reopened the book he had been reading and looked for his page. “I cannot believe it was that difficult.”

Harry stuffed his book away in his bag, disgusted and angry now. He was shaking a bit as he moved, he was so furious. “You think just anyone would go with some freakishly dangerous person…” With a jerk he stood up and hefted his bag. “…who has spent the last seven years as nothing but a puppet a dark wizard, as—what did McGonagall call it—a Vold-o-meter?”

As he turned to the door a spell flew over his shoulder and highlighted the doorframe for an instant. He tried the handle anyway, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Sit down,” Snape intoned.

Harry remained facing the door, but let his book bag slide to the floor. His fury had peaked and ebbed between the chair and the door, leaving him achy, hurt, and without purpose. Snape did not speak as Harry gathered himself together before turning around. He avoided Snape’s eyes as he abandoned his bag and returned to the chair. The twisty ache in his chest was only intensifying.

They sat in silence with Harry trying to imagine getting to know someone as closely as Ron and Hermione knew each other. It seemed impossible. “I can’t imagine explaining it all,” he breathed out in a pained way. “And who in the world would stick around for the whole story?” He wrapped his arms around himself without realizing it.

“I am not unfamiliar with your dilemma,” Snape said. His chin rested on his bent fingers, thumb picking at the edges of his nails. “But there are thirty-seven girls in your year—”

“Please don’t,” Harry interrupted, willing him to stop. “I’ve been through them all with Hermione already. Sixth Years too. Thank you for trying,” he added, then thought better of his tone. “I don’t think you realize how many students are just plain scared of me. The others are disgustingly adoring or think I’m a freak.”

“I believe you are exaggerating,” Snape said.

“If I pull my wand out at dinner, care to lay a bet on how many people duck under a table?”

“You are mistaking awe for fear. But neither is conducive to getting to know someone,” Snape admitted. “And trying that would not improve the situation.”

“I have some sweets that will turn my eyes red. I could do that tomorrow. Imagine how many nightmares I could cause with that,” he said provocatively.

“Harry,” Snape chastised him.

“No one will ever understand,” Harry said quietly, sounding bleak.

“May I offer some advice garnered from observation during many years here watching dunderheaded young people make the same mistake over and over?” Snape asked. At Harry’s dismissive shrug, Snape said, “You need to adjust your goals. If you set yourself exclusively to immediately finding someone to be everything to you, you will almost certainly fail, after much injurious frustration, I might add.”

Snape stood and came around to the front of the desk. “You need to reduce your intentions to finding a friend of the opposite sex. It is much easier to get to know someone casually. If more is possible it will flow on its own from there.”

Ignoring Snape’s gaze, Harry stared out the window as his guardian spoke. “Okay, so where is this person?” he huffed.

“Perhaps not here at Hogwarts,” Snape admitted.

“Maybe not even a witch,” Harry mumbled.

Snape raised a brow. “If you are willing to open the field that wide the possibilities do increase considerably.” With his knuckle he tweaked Harry’s chin to bring his eyes back over. “Do not destroy yourself worrying about it in the interim. That is the worst you can do. Although at your age it is not an uncommon thing to do.”

Harry frowned deeply and tapped his foot against the chair leg impatiently as he returned to staring out the window. Snape made sense, but it didn’t improve his mood any to hear it.

Snape went on with yet another huff. “I know it is not easy. Especially since your friends are most likely intimate at this point.”

Harry turned to him in surprise. He thought a moment before rolling his eyes. “Yeah, probably,” he mumbled. That thought really didn’t help.

Snape frowned. “You may very well have to settle for never being fully understood.”

“Did you tell Candy your whole past?” Harry asked bluntly.

With a shake of the head, Snape huffed and replied, “No.”

“That’s setting a good example. You’re saying I should live a lie?” When Snape did not reply, even though he looked for a moment like he was going to, Harry said in frustration, “I can’t imagine going over it all again. But, what’s the point in being close to someone if they…don’t understand?” His eyes were burning, making him blink.

Snape frowned and rubbed his forehead as he stepped back around to his desk chair. “I do not know what to say to you, Harry, except perhaps that I don’t expect that anyone is fully understood by anyone else.”

Harry rubbed his left eye under his glasses. “I really can’t imagine explaining it all,” he murmured, repeating himself. “It takes something out of me every time I have to.”

“I have no answers for you,” Snape repeated. “I will, however, point out that everyone is different. Do not make assumptions about someone until you know them well. You clearly dislike others doing it to you.”

Harry gazed sadly at the floor, thinking idly about that. He thought about the girls in the school, most of whom seemed giggly or fashion obsessed and really not worth getting to know. It was daunting to think of trying to get to know any of them better, especially since if he sat down beside them they would either giggle gratingly or gape in surprise.

Snape’s voice pulled him from his circling thoughts. “There was something I wanted to discuss with you, since you are here.” When Harry looked up, he went on, “I saw your first term marks—”

“I haven’t even seen them,” Harry complained.

Ignoring the interruption, Snape said, “You received an ‘A’ in Potions.”

“What?” Harry blurted. “Greer hates me,” he commented.

“Also in Transfiguration.”

Harry did frown at that. “What about the rest? Did I get an ‘O’ in anything?”

“Hm,” Snape replied. Harry kicked the chair leg with his heel in frustration. “You need to do better,” Snape insisted.

This felt like the final blow. He put his head in his hand and sat hunched over. “I can’t try any harder than I have been,” he said. “I do almost nothing but revise. And I’m doing better than that in Potions,” he insisted. “She’s not marking me fairly.”

“What is the basis for Frenkels Salve?”

“Isisin and Chamomile.”

“What four potions use Uyrs Iodyn?”

“Uh, Draught of Isis, Venidyn, Smith’s Semper, and…” He tugged his hair back as he thought. “Just a second, something else uses Venidyn as an ingredient. Uh, Hope’s Harm Reducer.” Harry waited as Snape considered him a long moment. Harry said defensively, “You said I did well on that big essay. Don’t you think that was at least an ‘E’?”

“Yes. I expect that is how I’d have marked it—if not higher.”

“She only gave me an ‘A’ on it, you know.”

“Perhaps your Potions grade is in error, then. But the Transfiguration one is not.” When Harry groaned in frustration, Snape said, “I am certain Minerva would give you extra tutoring if you asked.”

Harry pulled his book out again and flipped back to chapter ten, tired of talking about it when he could try to do something about it. “I’ll think about it.”

Harry sat in the library studying. Normally, he would have found his friends here, but he was starting to suspect that Hermione was catering to Ron’s dislike of doing assignments in a place he was forced to be quiet. Harry joined Neville at a long table and took out his books. Snow fell in thick currents outside the window that billowed and swirled mesmerizingly. Harry had to repeatedly force his gaze to return to his parchments.

Neville fidgeted often as he studied. Harry finally took a break from rereading his notes to ask him what he was working on. “Transfiguration,” Neville replied. “My worst.”

“Mine too.” It felt good to share studying complaints with someone. Neville seemed like a safe person to revise with. There were fewer interruptions from others. “I have to get a good N.E.W.T. score,” Harry breathed. “It’s not looking good right now.”

“You’ll do all right, Harry,” Neville said without looking up. “You always do.”

“Doesn’t feel like it this time.”

Luna came by a few minutes later. “Want to go for a walk outside?” she asked.

Harry blinked at her in surprise until he realized she was asking Neville, who surprised him further by answering brightly, “Yeah!”

When they had gone, Harry frowned. It looked awfully cold outside to him. He really didn’t get it, he thought.

An hour later, Suze wandered by. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

She glanced around them as though to check if anyone were listening. “You have this club, the D.A., right?” At Harry’s nod, she went on. “Can I join?”

“Of course,” Harry said.

“Well, you don’t have any Slytherins in it. I thought maybe they weren’t allowed.”

Harry’s brow furrowed as he thought about that. “We don’t keep them out. It’s just that no one has ever asked.” He reached into his pocket and took out his fake Galleon. Next Thursday at seven-thirty had been scheduled. He showed her how to read the serial number.

She accepted it and asked, “Why the coin?” as she tossed it off her palm.

“Because we were illegal under Umbridge and we needed to vary the time to avoid her.” And the Slytherins she had hunting us down, he almost added. “It’d be great if you could come.”

She pocketed the coin and gave him a smile before walking away.

Harry was exceedingly grateful for his new cloak during astronomy class. The stars blazed in the night sky as the students huddled before their telescopes on the astronomy tower roof. The wind was low but the clear sky left the air bone-chillingly cold. Ron and Hermione were bundled under her cloak together, which was awkward, as they were not allowed to share telescopes. Sinistra eyed them a few times but did not comment. Harry kind of wished she would.

Harry sighed and moved two degrees right ascension with the dial. He pulled his hands inside his cloak as he stared at Arcturus. Inside his cloak he pulled out his pocket watch and used a charm to light the face of it. He preferred his own watch to the one Sinistra provided. He checked the telescope and his watch, back and forth. As the star passed the crosshairs he noted the time. He glanced around. Only Hermione also seemed to be noting the extra credit meridian passage of Arcturus on the assignment sheet.

Harry rarely worked out the extra credit questions, especially since he could be packing up his lenses instead of shivering. The second part of the question: How does nutation affect the reliability of your answer? He thought hard and jotted down that it could be off by nine minutes of angular distance but that the component of that in the right ascension was small. He did not know by how much or how to compute it, so he stopped there. Hastily rolling up his parchment with bitter fingers, Harry frowned as he noticed Hermione had her telescope put away already because Ron was helping.

In Defense they were doing curse breaking. Each of them came up and picked out a box from a widely varying collection on the front table. For the assignment one needed to retrieve what was inside. This explained why Snape had not wanted visitors the last two days. Harry waited and took the last one remaining, a burnished brass box with outsized hinges. Once closed magically, it did not look likely that there was another way into it even using Muggle power tools.

Harry had grown into the habit of sitting in the far back of the room. His friends seemed confused by this, but they changed as well and sat nearby. Harry returned to the last desk in the middle row and stared at his assigned box.

Malfoy let out a cry of surprise as his sleeve caught fire when he simply tried the latch on his inlaid wood box. Parkinson used a water charm on him, leaving him damp all over. Harry looked over his notes as he suppressed a laugh.

Harry rubbed his eyes as he read. He was tired from Astronomy last night, which had gone until one in the morning. Snape swished by, pausing behind him. After a moment, fingers rested on Harry’s shoulder. He glanced up and gave him a weak smile and then, a little nervously, looked around at his friends. At the desk beside his, Neville was chewing his lip, staring with concentration at his glass box. Hermione and Ron were bent over a parchment so close that their hair touched.

Harry took out his wand and used the curse detection charm Snape had used the night Malfoy and company had attacked. The blue lines zipped around the lid and turned red at the hinges. An obvious place to curse this particular box, really. He glanced again over his shoulder at Snape, who gave him a somewhat soft look, for him anyway.

As Snape moved on, Harry thought about what curse he might use to foul big hinges like these. There were a lot of possibilities. He started through them one at a time, beginning with a Counter for a Sticking Charm.

His seventh attempt—an Oil Charm to counter a possible Ancient Aging Charm—caused a flare of gold fire to blast out the sides. That was not what he had expected to happen and he worried what it meant.

Hermione looked over. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.” Harry ran the curse detection spell again and it remained blue all over now, but he was still very hesitant to try the lid.

“What spell was that you just used?”

“One we are going to do in D.A.,” Harry answered distractedly, hoping she did not ask to see it now, because he was busy thinking. It had taken him a week to work it out. It detected bad intention in the form of a curse. Harry carefully considered what else he should try, since he did not want his robes ignited or his hair to turn green, as had happened with Padma. He avoided looking up at Snape. This was between him and the box only, as far as he was concerned.

As he sat thinking, the hinges flared gold again. On a hunch he repeated the curse detection and found the hinges back to red again. “Huh,” he muttered and tried to think of what that might imply. Moments later, Ron leapt up, crying out in surprise and shaking his hand, which was surrounded by a flickering halo.

Snape stepped over and forced him back into his chair with a sharp admonishment that it was only an illusion. A flick of the teacher’s wand canceled the Octarine Fire.

“I followed the suggestions from the lecture exactly,” Ron complained as he looked his hand over in concern.

“You need to think a little more creatively than that,” Snape sneered as he stalked away. In the front row he paused and observed Malfoy using a cutting spell to simply remove the lid of his box. A smoky haze floated around his desk.

“Got it!” The Slytherin said proudly as he produced the metal ball from inside the box.

“I did mention, did I not, that you would be marked down for damage to the box?” Snape asked.

Malfoy shrugged and tossed the ball into the air and caught it. The cuff of his sleeve was brown and shriveled. “I get extra credit for being first though, right?” he asked.

Harry returned to contemplating his box. Some kind of timing charm or curse was on it, perhaps. He tried a few more simpler curse-detection spells and they were clear. It must be a charm then. Beside him, Hermione was pulling the ball from her box with a broad grin. Figures, Harry thought with a sigh. Ron’s box was soon to follow, he considered, now that he would get full-time help.

As Harry lifted his wand to try one of the timer canceling charms he had seen Mrs. Weasley use for cakes, Hermione’s box let out an ear splitting wail. She stared at it in shock for painful seconds before slamming the lid shut. It promptly popped open again and returned to full volume. Ron stood up and jumped on the lid, and for a moment there was silence. The lid however had other ideas and, despite appearing to be made of dilapidated, pink cloth-covered wood, it tossed him onto the floor when it popped open again.

The students pressed their hands back on their ears. Hermione canceled the noise on the second try and the room fell blessedly silent. Many students sighed in relief. “Drat,” Hermione muttered. “Thought I’d managed full marks, too.”

Harry savored that comment for a while as he tried the timing spells he knew. None of them worked. This wasn’t an assignment where they could do more research so it must be something simpler or more common. He went through in his mind the spells that reinitiated themselves. The only common one he could think of was the filing charm for letters that returned them to their proper envelope. It had a white flare but maybe that was only on parchment or paper.

He did the cancel spell for the filing charm. Nothing appeared to happen. He did the Oil Charm again and this time the lid popped open. Hermione looked over sharply. Harry gave her a victorious look as he Accioed the ball out, just in case the lid had designs on eating his hand.

“Five points for Gryffindor, Mr. Potter,” Snape said from the front of the room.

“That’s not fair!” Malfoy complained.

With narrow eyes and a dark challenging tone, Snape asked the Slytherin, “What, precisely, is not fair about it?”

Frowning, Malfoy declined to respond.

A week later, Harry sat studying before D.A. on one of the fifth floor window seats, far from the usual active areas of the castle. He liked this spot. In the evening the sun shined in through the colored glass. The owlery was nearby and the birds flitted past regularly, keeping him company.

He read through his Transfiguration essay for the third time and sighed. It did not read like one he would have written for Potions or Defense where he really understood what he was writing about. Transfiguration had only grown harder. The assignments seemed to have less and less to do with the book and lecture, leaving him frustrated, especially since Hermione did not ever have this problem. When Harry would ask her a question now to help clarify something, the answer would only generate more questions, since he had fallen too far behind to understand the immediate answer. Rereading the textbook from last year had helped some. Maybe he should order some alternative textbooks, he considered. That had helped with Potions, a lot. Hermione had some catalogues, he would have to remember to ask her for them. At the last possible moment Harry headed down to D.A.

During this session they finished up curse detection from the previous meeting, then the four of them stood off to the side talking about what to do next. Neville whispered, “I really want to do Animagia.” He gave Harry a wince as he did so. Harry figured he worried that because of Sirius, this would be a sore topic. Neville’s glanced nervously at the others. “We’ve been discussing it and…well…”

Hermione also gave Harry a pained smile. “I’d like to try it as well,” she finished for Neville. “What do you think, Harry?”

Harry rubbed his cheek in thought. “It’s worth trying. I’m pretty sure it’s against school rules so we can’t have everyone working on it. Why don’t we split the group as we have been talking about doing, into advanced and intermediate. Only people you trust to not mention it to a teacher get into the advanced group.”

Hermione said slowly, “And you’ll stick with the intermediate?”

“For now,” Harry said, “I’ll do both.” He didn’t have much hope for figuring out a transfiguration that advanced, but he couldn’t bear failing by not trying.

Harry watched Neville collect Luna with a shy smile and take her aside to talk to her. Harry watched them with an ache of jealousy before collecting up the newer members and leading them to the far side of the room.

“Good evening, Severus,” McGonagall said as he stepped into the headmistress’s office. It was late and she had on a long black dressing gown for warmth, apparently not willing to stoke the fire up so close to not needing it.

“You sent for me…” Snape prompted.

She paced across the back wall, along the glass-fronted cabinets. “Yes,” she breathed, clearly considering how to proceed. “I don’t wish to interfere with Harry…” she began and looked over at him. He did not react, and she went on: “but I have noticed he has withdrawn himself from his friends. Three times this week I have seen him studying alone in a disused corridor on the fifth floor. I only note it because he seems unhappy, frankly, which is in great contrast to how he was at the end of summer.”

Snape crossed his arms and stepped slowly over to the celestial model on the corner of the desk. The breeze from his movement made the etched glass globe rock on its spindle. He touched it to make it turn slowly.

McGonagall prompted in the tense stillness, “Have you spoken with him?”

Snape nodded. “Yes.”

“And?” she prompted.

Reluctantly, but with a tone of being unburdened, he said, “I believe the immediate problem is that he is the only one of his friends without a love interest. Secondarily, he sees no hope for one in the immediate future. Thirdly, at no point does he feel he can expect to be understood by anyone.”

“Ah.”

Snape touched the glass sphere to halt its turning. “I had scant advice to offer him,” he stated in frustration. “Not that I ever expected to be asked for such advice…”

She came up to the other side of the desk and leaned on it. “It is a difficult age in most cases, and getting to know members of the opposite sex would be even harder for him.”

“I do not see that,” Snape said doubtfully.

She studied him closely. “Everyone he meets is certainly utterly mistaken about him. I assume he cannot approach anyone without it being too significant for whomever he approaches.” She sighed. “I assume the ball brought this on.”

“That, his friends’ close relationships, and other things,” Snape replied, failing to mention Candide.

She fell silent with her brow furrowed. “So many lovely young ladies in this—”

“Do not mention that fact to him,” Snape said. “His friends have already walked through the list with him and he is adamant about the uselessness of it.”

She shook her head with a sad smile. “All right. You clearly speak with him regularly, and intimately, so I am going to assume you are keeping an eye on him.” She tossed her robes back as she sat down. “There is something else I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”

Snape straightened his shoulders, clasped his hands behind his back, and gave her an attentive tilt of the head.

“I’ve been trying to convince Pomona to be my deputy headmistress…without luck, I must add. She insists she cannot lose the time from her research projects.” She smiled wryly. “Not to drive home the point that you were not my first choice, because you usually handle things precisely the way I would, but would you consider being my deputy headmaster?”

Snape, not having ever considered this, did so now. When he had thought it over in silence for half a minute, McGonagall added, “You are already doing many of the duties, as you probably realize. But there would more official paperwork for those duties.”

“You do not expect the board to complain?” Snape finally asked.

She tapped her finger on the desk. “I honestly don’t know how much cachet I have with the board. This would be one way of finding out.” She clasped her hands together. “Does this mean you are saying yes?”

Snape’s eyes roved around the office as he stalled. “Would I be in charge of performance evaluations?”

“Why?”

“I wish to discuss marking criteria with Ms. Greer,” he replied, his tone lower.

“Hmm. If it is marking involving Mr. Potter, you will have to leave it to me it in any event.” She sighed lightly. “I wondered about that Potions mark.”

“He is doing better work than that, I am quite certain.”

“I’ll speak with her then.” She fell thoughtful a moment. “And with regard to Mr. Potter’s other difficulties, perhaps there is something we can do…”

At Snape’s curious look, she waved him off with a mischievous smile.