It greeted Harry over his wash-bin.

A red hulk of a thing, bulbous like the wart on a witch's nose, shouting for all the world to "look at me". It bloomed right there on the middle of his forehead: a zit. Right before his big date.

"Shit." He slammed his reflection as if he could knock some sense into it. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, is this a trick or do you need to fall? Again?"

Like a stone's echo against a lake's surface, ripples formed on the mirror, vibrating into the shape of a mouth. "No...no tri..tricks, Master Harry," the mirror stuttered, "It's real, I'm afraid. I'm sorry, Harry-Master Harry, I'm not at fault. Honest..."

Harry splashed some water on his cheeks, his eye-sockets pulling grotesquely with his mouth. He slapped his cheeks against his open mouth again, trying to shock himself awake. He shouldn't have drunken so much Punched Cider last night. Or the night before.

Think Potter. Think! The spell was easy enough. Harry grasped for his wand beside the mouth-wash. "Expecto Fungoto!" He twirled the wand once around his wrist and delicately dabbed the zit on the mirror. He blinked his eyes once.

And the zit blinked back.

Well, it stared: all red and swollen.

Harry clenched his fist. "Mirror, mirror, hanging there, I'm about to beat your derrière. If you're playing tricks on me, so help me-"

"No tricks, sir, ma..master Harry, no tricks. It must be no ordinary zit...er, blemish, sir, uh, Master Harry. That, sir, is an enchanted zit. Yes, sir, an enchanted break-out. As you can see, no...no fault of mine. Nope. Nothing I could have done against-"

"Silence!" Harry's head pounded. They didn't call it Punched cider without reason. He needed to think. But what little weasel could have pulled this on him? What little weasel had the nerve to try this on him, Harry Potter?

That was it. That...little weasel. That bastard! That back-stabber! There was only one thing that made would-be wizards act more reckless than Punched Cider did, only one thing that made an apprentice more insane than a handful of Warlock's 'Shrooms: Love. And it was no secret that Ron Weasley was red-hair over heels in love with Hermione Granger.

So Ron wanted to sabotage their date did he?

Harry flung on his robe and paced around his room. It might have been small, the stone floor cold, no window to lighten the gray severity, but it was his room. There was a privy beside the niche where his mirror and wash-basin stood, the other space taken up by his bed. He looked up at his Quiddich trophies fighting for room on the shelf above his bed. Hermione doesn't want to date a loser, you weasel, she wants a winner.

He was going to make that queasy, little red-head pay. But first...He knelt down, searching the books beneath his bed for a spell, a potion, anything that could get rid of this, this...blemish on his forehead.

"Ma...Master? I hate to be a bother, or cause any trouble-"

On his way back up, Harry bumped his head against the side-board. "What is it?!"

"Uh...somebody approaches. I'm afraid...I'm terribly sorry but, I think you forgot about that certain little matter with-" The liquid mouth vanished with a knock on the door.

"We know you're in there, Potter." The knocks were like thunder, filled with purpose. Boots rustled and keys jangled outside. There must have been at least three of them, whoever they were.

What choice did he have?

The old wizard shouldered into the room before Harry had opened the door an inch, two more of his navy-blue robed cronies following on his heels. At least they tried to follow. The third was a bit middle-heavy, and there simply was no more room left, so he stood only half inside, his belly holding the door open.

"Harry Potter, I am Darryl Drummenfurl, of the Ministrium for Hogwarts Domestic Hygeine." His beard was grey and clung to his chin like moss from a weeping-willow. Folding to the side at its peak, his hat resembled a cone. Under its press, waves of gray hair tumbled to his shoulders. His eyes looked like spoiled milk, and Harry couldn't quite figure out where their gaze was fixed.

"Ok, Darryl." Harry folded his arms. "So what do you want?" What was the old wind-bag thinking, come barging in on him like this? Harry had enough things to worry about. Things were always so ridiculous at Hogwarts. If he ran the school, things would be a lot different, a lot better...

"You've broken your agreement with Mrs. Honeysuckle." It was the man behind Darryl, tilting his head as he addressed Harry. His eyes were much more focused than his superiors'. "Luckily we were close by; the magic was small, only a tingle. But a broken agreements' a broken agreement."

As the two Domestic-Hygeine Ministers drug Harry from his room by the sleeve, Harry turned his head and snarled at the mirror.

#

As eloquent as Mrs. Helena Honeysuckle's name was, she was only a muggle. Her office was on the back-side lawn of Hogwarts, an ugly, white thing that reminded Harry of a tiny mushroom under the soaring, stone, East-side tower. It was so muggle, so huddled to the ground, so functional. There were no arched-windows or terraced arcades, no latticed spires or worked-stone in sight; only white-washed timber capped by a flat roof.

It was only because of Hermione.

He never gave the architecture a second thought until Hermione started prattling on about what her latest books taught her.

"What do you like about her?" Mrs. Honeysuckle-er, Helena, (she was always telling Harry to please, just call her Helena)-Helena slid her elbows across the desk, dropped her chin in her palms, and smiled.

Well, there was a couple things he liked about her, but Harry couldn't just come out and say that. Life had its seasons, and it was the blossoming Spring of Hermione's; people had started to notice things besides her wit. They couldn't help but notice. Everyone was noticing.

"I don't know." Harry slunked inside his shoulders, keeping his eyes fixed on the desk. He wasn't stupid: he knew what she was trying. She wanted to butter him up, work on him like a piece of meat till he was soft. Like all those other dough-boys in the pictures that took up every square inch of the wall behind her: they were almost always hugging someone, an adult usually, or they were huddled in a group like they were talking Quidditch strategy. As if those lards could play Quidditch.

"Come on Harry, there must be something."

Harry looked back up. His first mistake.

Mrs. Honeysuc-Helena-was the kind of lady he could imagine himself with when he was older: sweet, sort of funny, and pretty. For a muggle, she sure was enchanting. Gold ringlets of hair fell to her shoulders, blue-eyes sparkling behind the high-curves of her cheekbones. And she always smelled like a field of summer flowers. She smiled at him.

"She's cool, I guess." Harry shrugged his shoulders. "And smart."

He couldn't quite figure out what he was doing here. Those Domestic Hygiene-hacks had been making his life their business and an overall headache for the past semester. Though they acted like his magical pranks were something akin to black magic (when they caught him), puffing up their chests and wriggling their beards as if Harry were Voldemort re-born, their only punishment was Mrs. Honeysuckle.

Helena smiled again. When she lifted her gaze to Harry's forehead, the smile wilted. "So why did you break our agreement, bud? No magic for a week, we said. Well, it's only been a couple days. Remember what we agreed about consequences, Harry?"

It was always "we" with this chick. Harry might have had his wand and some Latin-sounding vocabulary, but Helena had her smiles. It wasn't as if she was considering not smiling for a week.

"I guess I forgot."

Then the game began. Only this time, since Harry had slipped on his last move, he had to concede more than he would have liked. The strategy was simple: keep your head down, eyes fastened to the desk, mumble a few things she wanted to hear, and don't say a word more than necessary. Above all, don't say more than necessary. In the end, it was determined that "we" thought an entire month without a magic spell was appropriate. But "we" couldn't accept her suggestion for a consequence if that was broken.

"That's bullshit. No way I'm going to come talk here every day. What if I forget...like, like today? What if something just pisses me off?"

Helena smiled. "You know why I don't just have my office in the East wing of Hogwart's Harry? They offered it. I don't want my office in Hogwart's because I think it's important for growing young men like yourself to have some time away from enchantment. Sometimes, with all this magic and enchantment around, some kids have a real hard time finding who it is that they really are underneath all that...pageantry. You know what I mean, Harry? Who are you, I mean, who are you really?"

I'm Harry bloody Potter. I've killed more trolls than you've seen Quidditch matches. He kept to his strategy and kept his arms folded. He shouldn't have slipped, fallen into her trap, shouldn't have burst in anger.

"It doesn't have to be a power struggle, Harry. It's not supposed to be."

Harry glanced up at the clock. These games usually ran on for an hour, an hour that might as well have been enchanted, as long as it ran. There were only a few minutes left. A few minutes and he'd be free, ready to nail that son-of-a-muggle Ron. But first, he needed to find something for this eyesore on his forehead.

Mrs. Honey-Helena-stared at his forehead as if reading his thoughts. "Look, I'm just gonna come out and say it. You know what a genetic propensity is?"

It pissed him off. Hermione did the same thing, always asking him if he knew what such and such was, like he was stupid or something. So what if he often didn't know what it was?

But when he found out-it meant that because your parents had a certain condition, that you were more likely to have the same condition than others (why didn't they just say that?)-it only made him angrier.

"It's just that your Father was well known for his love of the Punched Cider, among other substances. Most of Hogwarts was willing to overlook his...extravagances...because of his wizardry. But I'm worried about you, Harry. I think you might have a problem-"

Harry almost blacked out in anger. It was bloody magical that he didn't up and slug her in the face.

She thought he was an alcoholic?