"This is unheard of!"

The paintings watched Professor McGonagall storm past them in her nightdress from behind as much cover as their scenery would allow them. They were forewarned by Professor Sprout, who was leading the former from a safe distance.

"The headmistress of Hogwarts, ordered out of her bed in the middle of the night by a drunken lunatic!"

They were the last to arrive at the common room – a bad side effect of the slowly turning staircase that lead to the headmistresses' office and adjoining quarters. The students – along with Marie, who was feeling awkward enough surrounded by her peers, and Ian who had no idea what to say to the older students – were sitting on or around a bed on the far side of the room, eyes wide when they saw McGonagall. The teachers had formed around Madame Pomfrey had formed a semi-circle around Clayton, who was more immediately surrounded by Wilson, Alice and House, the last of whom seemed to be quite dedicatedly poking him in the arm.

"House," Wilson cautioned as the headmistress entered. "House!" House jerked up suddenly and grabbed his temple at the subsequent head rush.

"Mr. House," said McGonagall with a tone that would have sent any of her students into an uncontrollable quivering, and did, if the students on the far side of the room were any indication. "You have five minutes to justify this before I give serious consideration to expelling you like I should have months ago."

"Abso… absolutely your honour," House said as he staggered within breathing range of McGonagall, who recoiled. "Let's," he said, gesturing wildly with his free hand, his nose almost touching hers, "bring everyone up to speed, shall we?"

"For starters," he said, walking over to the desk and knocking the closed container of wart powder to the ground with his walking stick. "You might want to get some lawyers to talk to whoever made this. It's got a hot compress in it that isn't on the label. It fuelled the ashwinders that went into the potions and let the things escape."

McGonagall turned swiftly to Slughorn, whose eyes had narrowed to vengeful slits. "Horrace?"

"Give me ten minutes with the sample and I can prove it."

She nodded. "Excellent. A good start, Mr. House, but not enough to justify waking the whole staff."

House raised a wobbly finger and approached her again. "Not quite everything I have, Miss. There was more in that ath… ack… ass? Wilson, didn't I just say it a few seconds ago?"

"Ashwinder."

"Right! That thing. There was more in it than meets the… well I guess it doesn't really meet the eye because you can't exactly see—"

McGonagall, whose expression had been tightening more and more since she had entered the room, raised her wand and placed its tip on House's forehead. There was a flash of light and he stood up abruptly and straight, shuddered and looked around.

"…as I was saying," he said in a clear, determined tone as he began to pace back and forth. "The kid's not still asleep because of the burns, he's asleep because of something in his potion. Since the only thing," he nodded to Slughorn, who nodded back after a distracted glare at the wart powder, "that was in the potion base was the ashwinder egg, it had to be something that was in the ashwinder. Something that it couldn't or hadn't had a chance to digest yet."

Hagrid spoke up. "But Professor Longbottom told me you said nothing in the fire would work for a sleeping potion!"

House laughed. "Sleeping potion? Who's looking for a sleeping potion?"

Wilson, the students and Neville all looked up in surprise at once. House looked at them like they were all adorable toddlers mis-reading the alphabet.

"It doesn't match the newest symptom, you'll see," he said with a shrug towards the piece of paper hanging haphazardly to the wall. "When we were in the greenhouse, we discounted the wood, the powder and anything that could be on the wood. But that's not the only thing in the fire, is it, Professor Hagrid?"

Hagrid sighed. "Like I told the kids, Mr. House, I might have forgotten something but really, I didn't put anything in."

House rolled his eyes. "There are windows in this castle, you know," he said. "I saw you throwing the leftovers from your meal into the fire the day one of the days I was stuck outside of the common room chatting with that insufferable gargoyle."

Hagrid's face reddened.

"Anyways, this all hinges on what you were eating, or rather, what you weren't eating, the day before the injury. I can work that out pretty easily. Professor Slughorn's been giving out leftovers from his regionally themed parties, and the day before the injury it was—"

"Josh Kiryu's birthday." It was Alice speaking. "Clayton and I both went because I was invited and I didn't want to be left alone with the Slytherins."

House nodded. "And since Mr. Kiryu is from Honshu, that means Slughorn was serving…"

Alice nodded. "Japanese food." She snorted. "At least Josh actually grew up with the stuff." If Slughorn had heard and understood the jibe, he showed no sign.

Wilson's eyes lowered. House couldn't possibly be going where he thought he was going with this… House looked at him and smiled.

"You see, this has been a case of three major misassumptions. We've all been assuming Clayton was hit by a sleeping potion. You've all been assuming Wilson and I knew you have super resistances for some reason. And Wilson and I have been assuming that if none of you can work out what happened to the kid, it must be something high and mighty, mystical and magical. Not something so trite and cliché that it's showed up in every hack mystery novel, tv show and video game since their authors decided they'd rather use a deus ex machina than actually plan things out."

"House, have you lost your mind?" Wilson asked, taking to his feet. "The kid's unconscious. Tetradotoxin is a lethal poison! He's not dead."

The Hogwarts staff looked on at the two of them, baffled, but House looked far too smug to be taken down.

"Of course it's a lethal poison. It wasn't mixed with anything to counteract it."

"Excuse me," coughed Slughorn, who was at least able to follow half the conversation. "Just what are you two talking about?"

House replied in a far too cheerful manner. "Fugu poisoning! Perfectly lethal and undetectable, even in small doses, great when you want to figure out why the CSI team can't solve the case after one spin in the spectrometer." Even though the pronouncement didn't have the result on the crowd he was hoping, he still looked at Slughorn and said "You really need to double check what you order for dinner."

Madame Pomfrey approached him. "But James is right, Mr. House. The poor boy isn't dead. This poison can't be the cause of this."

House ignored her, turning back to the bed momentarily before swinging about, carrying what was left of the bottle of firewhisky. "Drink, Professor McGonagall?

The headmistress scoffed. "My goodness no. Unlike some people, I don't drink while I'm on the job."

"But if you were going to drink," House asked with a twinkle in his eye. "How much would it take to get you as drunk as I was a few minutes ago?"

McGonagall gave him a forced polite smile. "Mr. House, as a respected figurehead in the magical community, I would never get as drunk as you were a few minutes ago."

House sighed. "Then as a respected member of the magical community, how much do you drink?"

"I have a personal limit of two glasses when I drink whisky."

House, to her surprise, grinned. "That's funny, I only had three mouthfuls and I practically split my head on your stone walls." He wheeled abruptly. "See, Wilson, I have a theory. Obviously this whisky is way, way too strong. I asked myself why? Why make whisky stronger? Is it to enhance the taste, or is it to get shitfaced?"

Wilson didn't really know what to say to that, so House thankfully interrupted him as he was opening his mouth. "You see, these wizards don't just get extra protection against cuts and scrapes. They don't get drunk as easily as we do, either. So I was standing there, just after I hit you in the leg, in fact—"

"Thanks for that, by the way," Wilson interrupted.

"You're welcome. And I thought to myself, 'My god, these people must have the most remarkable livers…'"

It dawned on Wilson slowly, like a ray of moonlight from the evening sky through the windows. "And the primary function of the liver is to remove poison from the body!"

"Exactly," said House, triumphant. "I bet you people could drink nightshade tea and wouldn't blink, in fact it would explain why it's in so many potions with only a few diluters. But when you drink a small dose of one of the strongest poisons known to Muggle-kind, I'd bet you end up looking," he pointed to Clayton with his stick, "like that."

Madame Pomfrey looked Clayton over from a distance. "That's all very nice, Mr. House, but I don't want to begin treatment for a Muggle poison that you yourself said cannot be detected!"

"You know," House said after an intake of breath through his teeth. "I've never really been a fan of deus ex machina. So here're three signs that I'm right and better than you." Her eyebrows shot up but he was still talking. "Number one: there was nowhere the poison could have come from but the Japanese food. That doesn't prove anything on its own, since a sleeping potion could have come from the other food items, but two and three will handle that.

"Number two: the ashwinder wasn't affected by whatever was in it that knocked out the kid. It wasn't even affected after it hit the potion base. If it had been a sleeping potion ingredient, or maybe if it had just been something that caused a natural coma, it would have been knocked out and even its enhanced fire would have been smothered."

Hagrid, his eyes excited, took to his feet. "But an ashwinder can't die until its fire is completely out! Not even to a lethal poison! It would have just kept going like nothing was wrong!"

House pointed at him with a finger gun and smiled. "Excellent, that's our number two. The number three, of course, should be obvious!" He swung his hand dramatically towards Clayton and waited. And waited. And waited, and sighed. "Fugu," he said past the sigh. "Fugu is the Japanese word for pufferfish."

All at once the other students took to their feet.

"And pufferfish…" started Hailley.

"Are the key ingredient in Swelling Solution!" shouted Ian, his arms still pecked with marks from his failed attempt to create one.

The whole group of them swarmed Clayton's bed, shocking Alice to her feet, and Toby carefully lifted his wrist.

"He hasn't gained weight at all!" he said.

Marie grinned along with the rest of them. "He's just blowing up like a balloon!"

Surrounded by the children's honest grins and House's insufferable, McGonagall hesitated for only a moment before saying "Poppy?"

Madame Pomfrey nodded. "I can deflate him in a few minutes and get to work on any poison they throw at me. Mr. Wilson?"

"Yes?" Wilson asked, confused.

"Ready a deflating solution, have Miss Gauge do the necessary charms. Quickly, everyone!"

Everyone shuffled out of the room, leaving Wilson, Madame Pomfrey and Hailley to their work, except for McGonagall, who tried to help however she could, and Slughorn and Hagrid, who were apologizing profusely even as she tried to remind them that it was neither of their faults. No one left faster than House, who was at the tower, past the gargoyle and in bed before anyone could follow him. He went to sleep immediately, soundly, and with that insufferable grin still plastered across his face.

Wilson looked up and down the Hogwarts Express with a huge sigh. One year behind him, he thought. It was a good start.

He had said his goodbyes to Ian, David and Marie, who had run off to grab a seat together, the girl eagerly in the lead. He had also able to tip a nod to Toby and Hailley during the closing feast (Ravenclaw had scraped together a win in the House Cup for the first time in almost a hundred years, thanks to the three Ravenclaw's help in helping Clayton Tanner back to his feet).

As for Tanner himself, Wilson caught him chatting amicably with a fellow Gryffindor about their grades, between the tired looks they cast Alice and her boyfriend of two months, who were locked at the lips and hadn't let go.

"Ah, high school love," said House, bumbling over with two more bags than he had arrived with, no doubt full of things that were only questionably his. "Is there any purer kind?" He butted Wilson with his shoulder. "C'mon, I hear they have jellybeans that taste like dog shit. I want to grab some while they're still there. Should be great at parties."

Wilson shook his head and took a step into the train, turning around and taking out his wand. "Here, let me help you with that."

One spell. One year, one spell. He'd have to pick up the pace. But for now it was good enough to levitate in House's bags, and to hear his friend say "Show off."

They settled into a car and waited until the train started moving. House was playing with something in his pocket, and Wilson assumed that it was his container of vicodin until he caught a glimpse of it as they were turning around a bend.

"House… is that…"

"Love potion," he said, grinning. "Also great at parties."

So I remembered to upload this all week until about lunch this morning. So I'm two hours late! I'm sure no one cares.

So it's been a year since I wrote the first chapter for House Potter (though I put it on much later). I will make no excuses for this. I hope you enjoy it all the same!

For this chapter I had to create a problem only House and Wilson could solve, and the Pufferfish/Swelling Solution thing was what led me to it. I had to make up a few things about Ashwinders stolen from other mythical creatures, but I think it holds up.

Here's a few notes for anyone that cares about my thought process:

I realised as the story went on that Hogwarts House students could be placed in a house at the end of a year, so they can earn house points that would be slapped on to their new home, but decided it was too late to make the change. I don't know if it would be fair or not, but it would have definitely been what I had gone with if I had another chance.

There were a few changes to the chapter along the way. For example: Marie's parents were, in one draft, killed during the war (in another, she was Neville's daughter but the timeline just doesn't hold up at all for that. If you're wondering, she's Hanna's brother's kid). I figured, given the student's ages, that it would only make sense to explore how the last of the children who lost relatives in the war are getting on, and then compare them to kids in the later years' students (in later chapters) who weren't affected by the war at all. And then I remembered "Oh, right, I'm supposed to be writing a House crossover here," and went back to torquing Hogwarts' rules into such a contortion that they let a cantankerous old muggle bully wander the halls as he pleased.

"Soffoquoi", you ask? Babelfish tells me "sofoque" is Italian for "smother", which is the best I could come up with (he's trying to smother the fire! Not Clayton!). It would just sound artificial if I used non-english term for "extinguish" as the word sounds pretty much the same in all the Latinized languages. At least, that's all I cared to find before I got lazy.

There are a few in-jokes here, as well as Harry Potter-wide jokes, like the Draught of Living Death. No one really knows what it does, and only the not-really-canon POA video game offers an explanation. Naturally, that's what House is getting at when he shoots the idea down during the first Ducklings scene. Ironically, its effects from POA would be perfect for the situation, but I chose to ignore that.

A lot of names from things I was reading or playing wormed their way into this (normally I wouldn't let that happen, but it's a comedy fanfic and I decided to have some fun). Some examples include "Hallia" and "Kleiner" (a hint for where "Kleiner" came from: I had to bite my tongue to keep from calling Lurich's formulas "Vance's" formulas instead). The "git" Josh Kiryu is named after the git Josh Kiryu in The World Ends With You. Which you should all play, by the way.

And lastly, in the first note back there? I totally spelled "house" with a capital H. Yeeeah…