Following the initial unpleasantness concerning Snape's custody over Harry and his ignominious reputation at Rowky Syke, the remainder of Harry's meeting with Ms. Shaw was rather boring.

A few preliminary questions into his former schooling allowed her to place him in the proper year—without having him repeat a year, as he'd feared he might be obliged to do—with the slightly embarrassed acknowledgement that Harry's scores, while not up to snuff for his former primary school, were in excess of what many of his contemporaneous peers were achieving in Rowky Syke's own books. While he wasn't quite top of his class, he'd be in the upper end past the fiftieth percentile.

Of course, maths not being Harry's strong suit, he wasn't in any way able to make sense of that reassurance, although he did try to memorise Ms. Shaw's words so that he could tell Severus about it later over supper.

By nine in the morning, she had informed him of his new teacher's identity, and had brought Mrs. Murray back in to escort him to his classroom.

The woman hadn't been in any way reluctant to voice her dismay over having been excluded from their conversation about 'that l'al gowt' Snape, and she told Harry so in no uncertain terms as she led him through the hallways toward a classroom.

Harry was too preoccupied with watching where they were going to pay her much attention. He had a good deal of practise at ignoring hateful invectives against things and people he loved from his relatives. It was best to nod along, even as his hands clenched into fists in the pockets of his trousers.

"Got away with murder, he did—and I expect he didn't mention a thing about it to you, did he?"

"No, Mrs. Murray—"

"No indeed! Of course he didn't, the scoundrel! My Neil came back all badly, like he'd seen Old Scratch himself! Told me the Snape boy'd had himself a razzie and then Neil couldn't talk any more about it—too scared! And do you know what that little devil said when we asked him about it? Do you?"

"No, Mrs. Murray—"

"The l'al blighter—oh." She sighed and sought to cover over herself with an insincere "excuse me," before continuing, "the... the... that boy said my Neil'd probably seen himself a boggle or some nonsense—imagine it! Of all the things under the heavens!"

Harry made a mental note to ask Snape what, precisely, a 'boggle' was supposed to be. The list of things he felt the need to ask about over their evening meal was growing by the second.

After what felt like forever, Mrs. Murray knocked her creaky old knuckles against the door of one room and waited with an obvious touch of impatience for someone to come answer.

A curly head of greying blond poked out after at least a minute's wait.

"We're right in the middle of our first day assessment, Mrs. Murray, couldn't you come back a bit later?" The man's voice was pitched slightly high, and he sounded as though he was at the very end of a short tether as far as patience went.

"Who's this?" he asked, frowning down at Harry as he opened the door further. "Everyone on my list was accounted for at roll-call."

"This is Harry Potter, Mr. Fowler, he'll be joining in with your class." Mrs. Murray informed him, her voice tart.

The man looked Harry over with a furrowed brow. "And where've you come from?"

Harry hadn't the faintest clue how he was supposed to respond to such a question, and he only managed to shift from foot to foot, scrounging about for an answer before Mr. Fowler ushered him inside the classroom with a barked command that he take a seat.

All the eyes in the room were upon Harry as he made his way to a desk at the far side of the chamber, by a window. He took a seat and focused hard on the faux woodgrain of his desktop, hoping that if he ignored everyone around him that they might return the favour.

He'd evidently entered in the middle of some sort of test or quiz, and Mr. Fowler came around immediately with a piece of paper that Harry was meant to fill out for the remainder of the hour. Before he left Harry with the paper, however, he filled the boy in on all he'd missed in the hour that he'd lingered with Ms. Shaw in her office.

There had been the roll-call, and then a series of introductions for the class—which apparently had been somewhat redundant, as they'd all been in the former years together coming up through school—and that had brought them to a preliminary introduction from Mr. Fowler himself on classroom etiquette and his expectations for their performance over the course of the coming term.

By the time Mr. Fowler retreated to his own desk in front of the blackboard, Harry had a scant fifteen minutes to complete his worksheet before they were collected by a designated student—a girl with a head of frizzing rust-coloured hair tied into a pair of plaits that swung around her ears—and assembled into a neat stack on Mr. Fowler's great metal desk.

Harry had absolutely no confidence where his test-taking was concerned. There had been a couple of maths questions to start with, and he was somewhat sure that he had a shot at getting those right, but then there had been a paragraph he'd been meant to read and respond to, and he'd barely had time to finish working his way through the five-sentence reading selection before he'd had to make a hurried selection from the multiple-choice questions related to the content of the paragraph. He was almost positive that there could be no way he'd gotten those right.

The final portion had bidden him to write a small composition about his summer, and he'd only managed: "Severus played me lots of music in the car like AC/DC and KISS and he got me a Tarantoola, and I call him Weet," Before the paper was taken from him.

When he risked a glance at the paper being taken from his neighbor, he saw that the other boy had managed at least several sentences more than he had.

From that point onwards until they broke to take some exercise in the fenced yard outside the school, Harry trained his eyes forward and made his best effort at not attracting any attention from the students around him, even though he could feel many a curious glance resting on his shoulders.

A couple of kids behind and to his side even tried to poke at him when Mr. Fowler's back was turned, asking about who he was and where he'd come from, but with an unfailing ability to know when a disruption was likely occurring, Mr. Fowler would turn to face his class once more and the attempts were forestalled for another few moments.

When the bell finally rang for the break, Harry sprang up from his desk and tried to make it to the door before the rest of the class. He managed to be near the front of the queue, although he still had to depend upon the human current flowing toward the exit to know where he was meant to be going. When he finally made it into the late August sun, he chanced a quick glance around and tried to scope out the yard.

A slightly rusty playset dominated the back, left-hand quadrant, and already there were ten or more children making a beeline for the dome-shaped metal play-gym. To the right were a couple of football nets set on the crumbling asphalt, and teams had formed up without any direction needed, more evidence that these children had known each other well enough to know precisely with whom and how they ought to play.

Nearer to the school, where he'd exited, there was a long, outdoor table with attached benches where a group of girls had gathered. One girl with chin-length blonde hair was sitting patiently as another with long, thick brown tresses sectioned out her locks and began twisting them into inconceivably complex arrangements around her head. Another girl with a brilliant smile and mischievous eyes was folding a square of paper into a strange, claw-like origami shape as she chatted with the others.

Behind the football goals were a few withered-looking trees: one a sessile oak, another a yew, and a winding, twisty black mulberry that seemed wedged between the first two; its long, scoping and corkscrewing branches looking rather like a referee keeping apart two combatants in a boxing match.

It was here that Harry decided to make his base for the remainder of their break. He zigged and zagged a bit, trying to appear as though he had no ultimate aim for his hapless wanderings, before he finally headed straight for the trunk of the mulberry and settled beneath its shady branches.

They were low enough that they provided a modicum of protection against the other children, and from here he could look out at the cliques and gangs and observe the intrinsic play-ground machinations of the other children from a safe distance.

Or so he'd assumed.

He was startled when a branch—one of the many which had fallen to carpet the slight underbrush near the copse of trunks—cracked beneath the tread of someone's shoe.

Harry turned about so quickly that his spine cracked and creeping up upon him from the back he spied a mussed head of short, shaggy, brown hair belonging to a small but sturdy girl with cartoonishly proportioned cheeks—reminiscent of a chipmunk's—and a spray of abundant freckles. She had a tiny lilac and butter-yellow ribbon-bow that someone had taken pains to tie into the front-most section of her hair and when she noticed Harry there, she only stopped for a moment, before she too plonked down on her bottom a few feet from him, resting her back against the trunk of the sessile oak.

Neither child said a word to one another, and after the first few moments of staring one another down, the girl wrinkled her nose a bit at him and dropped her head to her knees, turning her face away to stare out at the girls occupying the benches.

It wasn't really what Harry had wanted, this weird not-quite company that the girl was forcing on him. He cleared his throat with a pointed raising of his eyebrows.

The other child looked at him askance for a moment, before she acted as though she'd not heard him—an impossibility—and looked back out under the cover of the branches.

"Hey," Harry tried again, injecting a little bit of force into his address, the way he'd seen Severus do when the man was talking to other adults who usually fell to doing whatever Snape wanted.

"Hey, yourself," she muttered, frowning even more now.

Harry blinked, nonplussed. Usually barking at someone like that worked, at least it seemed to for Severus... although precisely what he'd been hoping to accomplish he couldn't quite say, for that matter.

"You know, I kind of wanted to sit by myself a bit," Harry ventured again, irritation sinking into his words. "Maybe you could find a different place to watch the other girls from—"

"You're new," she spat, finally looking up at him with her eyes flashing in anger, "so I guess you'll just have to learn: this is my spot you're in. Mine. This is where I sit. So maybe you can find a different place to rest your sorry bum, 'coz this spot is taken."

Bodily recoiling from the girl's unaccountable vitriol, Harry fell back to his elbows, as though she'd somehow knocked him back with a physical blow.

Was it normal for a girl to be quite so angry?

Well… his aunt had always been angry with him. But generally, when he'd interacted with other girls his own age at school, if they wished to be nasty they'd say something that sounded nice up front then giggle behind their hands with their friends in a way that made it clear only after the fact that they'd been disingenuous.

This full-frontal assault was unexpected.

"I don't see you leaving, so if you're gonna squat here you can stuff a sock in it," she continued. "I don't wanna talk to you." She allowed her head to drop back onto her folded arms, sending poufs of her choppy haircut flying in every direction around her round face.

Harry managed the silence for perhaps another five minutes, during which time loud cries had gone up from the contingent of children who were roosting on the metal play gym and culminated with the boys playing football kicking their ball beneath the branches of the yew.

The boisterous approach of an athletic-looking boy with an unbuttoned collar and his shirtsleeves rolled up interrupted their uncomfortable detente.

"Hill! Fetch me that ball," he called, from right outside the dirt ring that seemed to have naturally formed around the peripheral reach of the trees' branches.

Without a hint of graciousness, the girl stood and furiously beat at the bottom and sides of her skirt—which had attracted its share of dirt and twigs—before she scuttled beneath the low branches over to the much-abused ball on all fours, looking a bit like a feral cat as she did so. There she crouched with her bounty, casting a look over at the boy who'd demanded the treasure from her territory.

When she stood, she lobbed it at the boy's face in an overhead motion reminiscent of a foul throw. She managed to bounce it off of the top of his skull.

"Eeee'yow! Crazy bitch—" he cursed, grabbing the ball up under one armpit and beating a hasty retreat.

"Oo-hooo, Nicky," the goalkeeper jeered at him. "Did the little kitty hiss at you?"

"Bugger off!" He yelled back, "You try talking to Hill next time. Last time I bother with that tapper."

The girl, Hill, stuck her thumbs in her ears and pulled a face at Nicky's back.

Tossing the ball away from himself, Nicky turned back to Hill with a snarl and cupped his hands around his mouth to call: "Ugly bint!"

Without warning excepting an animalistic shriek of fury, Hill lowered her shoulder parallel to the ground—her arms spread for a tackle as she bowed her head like a charging bull might—and rushed the boy, knocking him off balance and into the broken asphalt with a sickening crack of the boy's skull against the ground.

Harry was rooted to the spot for half a second before he jumped to his feet and rushed out to get closer to the fracas, not knowing what he ought to do, but knowing that 'nothing' wasn't an option.

He was beat to the pile up by the other four boys who'd been kicking around the ball and the groups from the play gym and benches began to gather 'round in an impermeable wall of jeering spectators, doing their level best to prolong the fight and prevent aid from the teachers who were proving slow to respond.

Although Hill had gotten the drop on Nicky, he'd handily turned them over so he straddled her and he was striking at her face and torso with unmeasured, unpractised blows. Hill, however, had ahold of his face and was pulling with clawed fingers at his cheeks and neck, leaving angry red gouges where her fingers ripped back.

It was impossible to tell who was doing more damage. Where Nicky was clearly taller, Hill was a slightly pudgy girl whose weight was proving to be an advantage as she managed to roll them once more, even as Nicky prevented her from pinning him for a second time.

Hill pulled her leg back, her intended target clear as she gritted her teeth.

Before she could loose her kick at Nicky's groin, Harry launched himself on her ankle and held fast, her sock preventing him from getting a tight enough grip to truly impede her movement.

"Hey! Stop!" He cried, using his leverage from her ankle to work his way up until he had her with his arms around her waist, using his legs to attempt to pull her back from her target.

"Gerroff!" She hollered, twisting in his grip. Hill's other leg kicked out and made contact with Harry's shins, landing with enough force that Harry knew he'd likely find bruises in the coming days.

Nicky had taken Harry's assistance and turned it to his advantage, climbing up to his knees, newly unencumbered, and using his clenched fists to swipe at Hill's face and cheeks. He'd caught his breath and had begun to cackle, likely from sheer adrenaline, as he enacted his revenge.

"And one of these! Have one of these, pal! How'd'ya like that!?"

Hill's wrathful cries changed rather abruptly into howls of anguish as the heel of Nicky's palm made contact with her nose and opened up a fountainhead of blood. Harry felt it spraying against his face and flung out an arm to fend off more blows from the boy who now knelt above the two of them.

He was perhaps too far gone to stop, and his swinging became more violent and less controlled as he let loose a volley of knocks at Hill while she lay trapped beneath Harry.

With the mounting—and horrifying—realisation that he was enabling the other boy to take open potshots at the prone girl beneath him when his intention had only been to get between them and bring the fighting to a stop, Harry bodily pushed himself forward with his legs until he could bring his shoulders above Hill's face. He bracketed her head with his elbows and forearms and ducked his own skull down to cover her from the hits and kicks that were still raining down upon her, so close that her blood and tears were smearing his glasses where he had his cheek pressed to her forehead.

He absorbed maybe ten hits, feeling his ears ringing and as though his brain was being shaken in its moorings inside his skull, before a shadow fell over them all and he heard a strangled yell coming from the boy attacking him. When he risked a glance up it was to see Mr. Fowler wrestling with Nicky whose face was streaked with tears, snot, and blood.

"She bloody started it! She did it, sir!" He was yelling at the top of his register, so shrill and impassioned that his juvenile voice cracked.

Only a moment later Harry felt a hand pulling roughly at the back of his collar until he was hauled off of Hill's curled up form.

The adult who came for Hill was Mrs. Murray, who stood above the girl, directing her to fix her skirt where it had ridden up before she pulled her up and fussed over her puffy, swelling face.

He had a hard time getting a look at the teacher who had him by the shoulders, as he was propelling Harry along in front of himself, although the hands that had his clavicle in a claw-like grip appeared to be inarguably those belonging to a man.

The circle of students opened to each side, parting before them like the Red Sea before Moses, and the mass of wide-eyed stares and ill-concealed whispers followed the procession of ne'er-do-wells as they made for the squat building's back entrance.

Harry attempted a brief study of the faces he saw jaw-jawing all around him as he was prodded forward. The group of girls he'd seen Hill watching with barely disguised hatred and enmity were ducking behind cupped hands as they whispered back and forth, eyes alight with a malice clearly borne of schadenfreude. The others seemed merely curious, besides the boys who'd been playing footy with Nicky. They were calling out words of reassurance to their captive comrade as he marched on to meet his fate.

"He didn't do it, sir!"

"Mr. Fowler! It was Hill, then the new boy joined in! Nicky was jes' gettin' our ball back!"

"Chin up, Henderson! D'un worry, we'll tell yer mam who did it!"

Mr. Fowler pivoted where he stood and stopped their progress, growling at the boys calling to their friend. "Enough from the lot of you or I'll make additional calls to all of your mothers! I suspect none of you wish to join Mr. Henderson, Miss Hill, and Mr. Potter in the Head's office! No? Then button it, the lot of you!"

Harry winced. It'd be his second trip to the Head's office on the very first day. These kinds of trips—those for disciplinary infractions—he was far more used to, however, having been in trouble many times while attending school in Little Whinging with Dudley.

It made him a bit heart sick. He'd quite liked Ms. Shaw, and he didn't care for the thought that now the headmistress would be seeing him in this light, particularly after he'd done his level best to defend Severus to her. She'd be under the impression that he, too, was some kind of miscreant. And now it seemed all but inevitable that Harry would be lumped into that same mould from which he'd so desperately wanted to escape.

Upon reaching Ms. Shaw's office, the three were pushed into chairs on either side of the hallway. Hill was on one side, where Mrs. Murray stood close beside her, having fetched an ice pack for her face. The small girl was putting up a fight against the woman fussing over her and was doing her level best to avoid having the cold pack pressed up against her cheek.

Harry and Nicky sat across from her. Nicky had been handed his own ice pack and was using it to daub at his cheeks and against the sore spot on his cranium that Hill had managed to hit with the ball at the beginning of the dust up.

The door to Ms. Shaw's office must have been freshly oiled at its hinges, as they were only alerted to her presence by the pointed clearing of the woman's throat. With a sense of dread only rivaled by Harry's terror at what might happen when Snape himself heard of today's events, he followed the other two students in and stood before the desk, hanging his head in what he assumed to be the appropriate demonstration of humble contrition.

"Well," Ms. Shaw began, appearing once more to be unspeakably weary, "it seems that you three have earned the dubious honour of being the first into my office for such an offense this term. What have you to say for yourselves?"

Nicky and Hill began at once, hurrying to speak over one another before Ms. Shaw butted in and decreed who should take the first turn.

"Snowdrop? How did you find yourself tangling with Mr. Henderson and Mr. Potter?" Although the question was asked in a kind way, Harry could detect the hint of steel under Ms. Shaw's words, and he felt a bit of hope. Perhaps Hill's side wouldn't be presumed to be true simply because she was smaller and a girl...

But what on earth sort of name was Snowdrop?

"Henderson called me an 'ugly bint,' and said I was crazy—" She whinged, stomping one foot as she glared with baleful intensity at Nicky's head of tousled, straw-coloured hair.

"She threw the football at my head!" Nicky interjected. "On purpose! We just wanted our ball back, and I asked nice—"

Ms. Shaw drew in a deep breath through her pointy nose. "Who struck first?"

"Hill did."

"He called me—"

"Mr. Potter?" Ms. Shaw turned to him. "You don't know either of these two from Adam, do you?"

Harry shook his head. "No, ma'am."

"What did you see happen?"

Harry swallowed and looked up from underneath his messy fringe. Both of the other two children were staring daggers at him, and it looked as though Hill was mouthing something at him with angry intensity, seemingly threatening him should he implicate her in the crime.

"Erm... the kids playing footy kicked the ball under the trees where she and I were sitting, and then he," he pointed at Nicky, "came over and asked her for their ball back, but she threw it at his head and bounced it off of it, so then he called her a... a..."

Ms. Shaw nodded her encouragement with calm, expectant eyes.

"... a crazy b-bitch..." Harry shifted with supreme discomfort at having to say such words where a teacher could hear, and worse yet, to the teacher in question, "and so she made a face at him, and then," Harry nodded in Nicky's direction, "he called her an ugly bint..."

"And so?" Ms. Shaw prompted him once more, appearing a trifle impatient.

"Then... erm... she rushed him and tackled him..." Harry finished, looking to the small girl a bit apologetically. She had murder in her eyes, and was promising it to Harry himself, that was clear enough. "His head smacked the ground pretty good too, I could hear it crack."

"Mr. Henderson, how's your head?"

Nicky rubbed at a spot on the back of his skull. "Smarts a bit."

The retelling of events was put on hold as Ms. Shaw called in Mrs. Murray to go and fetch the school nurse. While they waited for her to arrive, Harry was asked to resume his story.

"It wasn't just him that got hurt," Snowdrop nagged. "He bloodied my nose!"

"Ah, my apologies, Miss Hill. It appears that Mrs. Murray did an admirable job of cleaning your face. All three of you will be receiving a once over, in any case." Ms. Shaw sighed deeply and rubbed at her eyes before she turned her attention back to Harry.

"And how was it that you found yourself embroiled in this abominable display, Mr. Potter?" She needled him with her gaze, intent on continuing the interrogation.

"Er... well, I wanted to stop them, see? And then it looked like she might have been trying to... to..."

"To what, Mr. Potter?"

"To... erm... kick him in his... his bits." Harry ducked his head as he felt heat flood his face. He took a deep breath before he could keep on. "So, I grabbed her leg to stop her, but then he got up and kept going at her face and head, even though she was still on the ground and not fighting back, so I tried to... I dunno," he finished, lamely.

The headmistress pressed forward, "You don't know?"

"Well, I didn't want him hitting her while she was down, did I?" He asked rhetorically, feeling defensive. "I wasn't fighting—I didn't wanna be involved, Ms. Shaw! Promise I didn't! I just... he shouldn't of kept going when he was up and she was just lying there! All I did was cover her head. I wasn't a part of it! I wasn't!"

The nurse entered then and pulled Nicky away to check him out. Where before he'd appeared a mild mess, as soon as the woman was through the door, he affected a piteous expression and probed at the back of his head. A strange parody of what he perhaps imagined it would look like had he actually sustained a concussion.

The nurse seemed to know this.

"Come along, Mr. Henderson," she tutted. "I'll examine Hill next, Headmistress, and then that one." She pointed at Harry.

"I'm alright," he protested, "can't I go back to class?" All he wanted was to turn back time and not have gotten involved... stupid of him. So stupid! No one else had stuck their noses into the melee, and they were all probably back at their desks by now, or headed to lunch...

"Mr. Potter you're already developing a bruise by your right eye, and I don't think you realise that you've sustained a cut at your temple. You'll be going nowhere for the rest of the day besides home—I've already called to inform Mr. Snape of the circumstances."

Where Harry had been feeling almost fine before—likely a consequence of the glut of adrenaline which had surged through his system—he now felt the weight of the fight crashing down upon him, and a sickening tide of nausea to boot. He lifted his hand to probe at his face with a wince, almost having forgotten that Nicky had been aiming his blows at Harry's head when he couldn't reach Hill's.

And God Almighty... what must Severus think?

He barely suppressed a moan of anxiety.

Nicky returned after a few minutes, having been cleared by the nurse for a concussion, and Hill was called back to go with the woman as Ms. Shaw lectured Harry and Nicky on the impropriety of their actions.

Harry had mostly accepted it as his due by now and merely ducked his head, more concerned about what Severus would say, but Nicky was still fighting the good fight, maintaining his innocence.

"I didn't wanna tumble with, Hill, Ms. Shaw! She came at me first, what was I supposed to do?"

"Be that as it may, Mr. Henderson, this was hardly your first fight at this institution. You have a history of tangling with your peers—though this is the first I've seen of you going at it with a girl."

"She's heavier than me by two stone!"

"Which didn't help her at all when she was lying under Mr. Potter and you continued your assault on her face. I don't think I need to tell you that not only was that not sporting, it was downright immoral."

"He told you what she was gonna do!" He said, jerking his thumb at Harry. "She was gonna lamp me cleppets—"

"Mr. Henderson!"

"She was!" Nicky whinged. "She was askin' for a proper pagga!"

"I know Miss Hill well, Mr. Henderson. Well enough to know that that's likely true—but I also know you well enough to know that you're just as eager to throw fisticuffs if the opportunity presents itself. I'll be speaking to Hill momentarily about her actions and you'll both be facing punishment."

"What about him?" Came a snooty voice from the doorway. Hill had evidently rejoined them and was staring at Harry with poison in her gaze. "He held me down—!"

"As near enough as I can tell, Miss Hill, Mr. Potter was attempting to save Mr. Henderson from the assault you were planning to level against him below the belt, and thereafter was attempting to keep you from being clouted overmuch in the face. I'm not sure that warrants punishment the likes of which I'll be assigning you and your sparring partner here."

Harry heard Hill begin to argue before the nurse who'd accompanied her back into the room beckoned him to follow her back to her office. He left with some reluctance, staring out over his shoulder at the other two who were now apparently ready to be sentenced for their crimes against one another.

"I'm okay," Harry protested, "I don't need anything."

"Is that so?" The nurse, who was preceding him down the hall, asked over her shoulder. Her eye, from what Harry could see of it, was bright with a bit of private amusement. "And I suppose that you don't want a plaster for that cut down your face? Or perhaps a wet rag to clean up a bit before your mother comes to collect you?"

Harry scowled back at her even as he dogged her footsteps obediently. "I don't have a mother."

"Father then—"

"Or a father."

This brought the older woman to a halt as she pivoted to stare down at him, a bit of befuddlement—or perhaps it was raw concern—creasing her brow. "Surely whoever it is that is coming for you will prefer to see you with your best face forward?"

Harry shrugged one shoulder, unconsciously mimicking Snape's unique body language as he did so. "I don't think Severus would want blood getting on the collar," he conceded, tugging the starched, white material away from his neck and hoping that he'd not already stained it.

They couldn't afford a new shirt, he knew that much.

With a brisk nod from the nurse, he was led into her small office—which probably more appropriately could have been termed a closet—and was made to sit down on a wobbly stool as she dabbed at his face with a wet cloth.

"Hold that there, there's a lad." She nodded her approval as he wiped at his own face with the terrycloth and turned to fish in a plastic container, coming away with a wad of cotton wool and a bottle of TCP.

The wool was wet with the noxious stuff and Harry tried his best to not breathe through his nose as it was daubed onto his face, although breathing through his mouth only succeeded in making it seem as though he could taste it.

"Nurse Mayhew?" A voice from the doorway called. Harry opened his eyes to see that the same man from earlier—the one who'd grabbed him up after the fight, and whose name he didn't know—was wedged between the frame and the door, his round, bald head shining a bit with the bright fluorescent lights. "Mr. Potter's guardian is here to collect him."

The announcement was enough to see Harry heaving a deep breath in through his nose which served to launch him into a bit of a spasmodic coughing fit from the odour.

This was likely to be it... Severus would decide that Harry was too much trouble. It was only his first day of school, and already the man had had to come out to collect him before the lunch hour had even come and gone...

Had he even settled in at home, or had he needed to turn straight back around after reaching Spinner's End; the phone ringing with news of Harry's misdeeds before he even had time to sink back into his tinkering?

Severus needed all the time he could get away from Harry if he was going to come up with something to save the two of them. That meant that Harry had to make his schooling work. He had to be a model pupil. Had to try and make the man proud.

And if not proud... at least he had to ensure that Snape didn't have real cause to regret his decision to take Harry in.

His spiraling train of thought was interrupted by a clearing of someone's throat. He looked up to see that the object of his ruminations was hovering over the bald teacher's shoulder, a frown affixed firmly in place.