Inspiration strikes again. Fun fact: I wrote most of this chapter while sipping fresh brewed Earl Grey tea. Thank you, oh roommate of mine.

Disclaimer: See Chapter 2, which will put you on hold for 20 minutes before putting you through to Chapter 1.

"So, Wright."

Snape and Harry were currently returning from escorting Little Harry to Dumbledore's office. Once he had gotten over the initial shock of Harry's explanation of dimension travel, he had become a veritable fountain of questions. He was, in fact, a Ravenclaw. To the extreme. Harry had noticed several interesting things about him, though. First off, he had managed to tame his hair into laying flat, a talent Harry was extremely jealous of. Second, he didn't have a scar on his forehead. Not even the "ran into a wall as a toddler" kind of scar. Harry found this very suspicious, but hadn't thought of a good excuse to bring it up yet.

"You fought for the Order."

"Worked for the Order." Harry interrupted absently.

"Same thing," Snape plowed on, "so I bet you're a real macho warrior, always prepared for battle. At the drop of a pin, even."

Harry stopped in mid step and gave Snape a look of pure, unadulterated horror. "Macho? Is that really the best adjective you can come up with to describe me?"

Snape shrugged. "Well, sure. I mean, what else can you call it? Ready for battle at a moment's notice—that seems like a description fitting the word macho."

"I'm not ready for battle at a moment's notice, though, therebywherefore I am not macho." Harry gave Snape a particularly not-nice glare to accentuate his point.

Harry could have sworn an annoyed look crossed Snape's face for an instant.

They continued on in silence for a few moments. Snape looked suspiciously preoccupied with something, but Harry couldn't figure what it could be. Finally, he spoke up again.

"You'd probably love to prove me wrong, wouldn't you?"

Harry glanced warily at him. "Prove you wrong about what?"

"Oh, anything." Snape replied easily. "You would, wouldn't you?"

"Generally, yes…" Harry said hesitantly.

"Great!" Snape said happily.

Harry froze. Warning yodels were going off in his head—Snape was never happy—

The last thing Harry saw before he felt the familiar tug on the navel that a portkey produces was Severus Snape's smirking face.

SEVEN EXTREMELY TENSE SECONDS LATER

Harry landed, as usual, flat on his bottom. Boy, did he ever have a grudge against all things portkey-ish. He let himself flop onto his back and observed his surroundings for a moment.

His first thought was that he was going to absolutely murder Severus Snape.

He was lying in the middle of an active battlefield.

A person who looked suspiciously like a uniformed Death Eater loomed over Harry suddenly. Harry exercised a proactive stance on life and stupefied him.

He noticed a man limping towards him from another direction. Actually, it was a very familiar person—Charlie Weasley, he believed. Harry serenely poked his wand in the direction of Charlie's shattered kneecap, effectively healing it.

Then he watched in unhidden amusement as Charlie spun in a bewildered circle, trying to figure out who had fixed his knee.

Giving a great sigh, Harry resigned himself to his fate and heaved himself to his feet. So much for retiring from all things fighty.

Stupefying another Death Eater, Harry began stalking his way towards what appeared to be the main huddle of Order members.

By the end of the whole ordeal, Harry's head had been grazed by unfriendly spells twice, he was limping from various attacks aimed at his legs, and had been mistaken as an enemy by members of the Order too many times to count.

He finally found the person he had been looking for—Alastor Moody—and limped over. "Hey," he snapped, attempting (and failing) to kick Moody's peg leg out from under him. "gimme a portkey."

"And who the heck are you?" demanded Moody, turning his wand on Harry. "I'll—"

"You'll give me a dadblamed portkey is what you'll do. Snape may have conned me into coming down here and fighting with you idiots, but I refuse to stick around for the cleanup. Gimme a portkey!"

"Fine, fine." grumped Moody, who apparently now realized he was talking to someone Dumbledore had commissioned. "You can portkey out with that group of injured people over there." He pointed to a group of people that Harry didn't recognize.

"Thanks a lot." muttered Harry, then went and touched the portkey right before it was activated.

They landed in the Hogwarts Infirmary, and Harry once again cursed his clichéd life. Madame Pomfrey and Snape were both waiting for them. Harry stalked towards Snape—and for a second he could see fear flicker across his face—and walked past him to a bed without saying a word.

He laid completely silent while Madame Pomfrey treated him, refusing to even look at Snape. He was, in fact, exercising a good deal of control and repressing the urge to strangle Snape where he stood.

He was in the middle of his "101 things I can do to make Snape's life take a long drive off a short cliff" list when Madame Pomfrey told him he was free to go. He stood up, gathered his dignity, and calmly walked out of the Infirmary and down the hall.

Then he stepped into a classroom and sat on a desk. This was, of course, because of the fact that he had been here for a total of one night and half of a day, and the night had been spent unconscious in the Infirmary.

He supposed the odds of Dumbledore letting him leave the castle were slim…The old man had given him some odd looks for the brief amount of time he and Snape had spent in his office delivering Little Harry to his mother. Harry had gotten a real kick out of seeing his pseudo-mum. He supposed he might have been a little shaken up if he hadn't had the chance to talk to her back during the end of that whole Voldemort mess. As it was, he had watched with amusement as she scolded Little Harry for asking too many questions and had graciously accepted her apology for her behavior.

Deciding he'd better figure out exactly where he would be staying, he left the classroom and headed for Dumbledore's office. He hadn't made it far, though, before Snape appeared beside him.

"So, Wright."

"I'm going to have to take drastic measures to get you to stop saying words, aren't I?" Harry glared.

Snape, to his embarrassment, found himself impressed by how Harry could convey a complete, grammatically correct sentence through only his eyes.

"I heard you fought very well, and saved the lives of several Order members."

"That was a low thing you did, Snape." Harry snarled, then quickened his pace.

"I only did it because Dumbledore told me to!" protested Snape, hurrying to catch up to Harry. "It's not like I had a choice."

"Enjoyed it, though, didn't you?" muttered Harry, still in a bad mood.

"Well—maybe a little bit—"

"I knew it! Haha, funny, let's send some poor innocent healer who hasn't so much as seen a Death Eater in 20 years into the middle of a poorly orchestrated life-or-death struggle and see how he does. 20 Galleons says he loses a limb, 50 says he DIES!"

Now worrying that he was going to lose one of the only two people who had been friendly to him in the past 18 years, Snape began frantically apologizing. "Really, Wright, I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think you could take care of yourself. I mean—"

Snape suddenly realized that the face Harry was making looked suspiciously familiar…

"You—you—you've been playing me!" cried Snape indignantly.

"No, actually, I'm very irritated with you. You're awfully easy, though."

"I just hope you know," grumbled Snape, "That I'm going to call you Myrtle from now on. Every time I see you. 'Well, wotcher, Myrtle, how's it hanging? Groovy? Great. Glad to hear it.' That's what I'll say."

"You know, Snape, maybe if you actually left the dungeons from time to time you'd realize we're not in the 70s anymore. Honestly, 'how's it hanging? Groovy?' That's just sad."

And at that moment, in an unfrequented girl's bathroom somewhere in Hogwarts, a female ghost suddenly found herself feeling extremely offended for no apparent reason.