Harry cautiously walked the streets of Little Whingington, looking down every few feet to make sure his cloak was covering him entirely. The last think he needed was for a Muggle to spot a floating ankle. He also knew that what he was doing was dangerous in a more serious manner. Although it seemed easy to forget at times, the reality was that Voldemort and his followers were still after him. They had been lying low ever since the night in the graveyard during his fourth year, but that was apparently no longer the case what with all the disasters that had been occurring lately. Of course, The Daily Prophet was still denying that Voldemort had returned and printing stories calling him a liar every other issue. He wondered how many more deaths and disappearances would have to take place before Fudge would stop living in denial that the darkest wizard of all time had returned after thirteen years of silence. While it may not happen anytime soon, Harry knew that a war was coming and that his life was in danger more than ever before. He wasn't going to take any chances if he could help it.

The walk to Andy's house seemed to take longer than usual, and he couldn't help the genuine smile that spread across his face as the familiar little white house came into view. Figuring everybody would still be sleeping, Harry dug the house key he had yet to have the chance to use out of the front pocket of his jeans and turned it in the lock. He pushed the door open and stood still for a long moment, taking in his surroundings. Not much had changed since he had last seen the place; the kitchen counter was lined with empty liquor bottles and half full red plastic cups, rap music was faintly playing from a speaker somewhere in the house, and in the living room, he could see where people were laying passed out on the furniture. He was home.

It appeared that nobody was awake yet, but he hadn't expected any less what with it being the morning after Halloween and all. 'They were probably out at the club last night' Harry realized with jealousy. He silently shut the door behind him and tip-toed through the house. He'd already noticed Matt and some girl he didn't know sleeping on each of the couches when he'd came in, but now as he walked past the living room he saw Faith and Heather asleep next to each other on a mattress lying on the floor. Chad's door was closed, but he glanced in Megan's bedroom as he passed by. She was fast asleep and he laughed to himself at the sounds of her loud snores.

When he pushed Andy's bedroom door open, he was surprised to see him awake and sitting up in bed. The older boy froze upon seeing him before letting out yelp. "Harry!"

Before he even had time to react, Andy jumped over the bed and flung his arms around him. He hugged him back happily, despite the fact that his ribs were currently being crushed. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming?" He asked, finally releasing him.

"I didn't even know I was coming," Said Harry, turning away and flopping down on the end of the bed. Andy sat down across from him in silence. "It's just...I needed somebody to talk to."

"What's wrong? What's been going on?"

On the walk over, Harry had pondered over just how much he should tell Andy. He had never told a soul about himself and Severus for the fear of what would happen if he did. In the Muggle world, it was generally looked down upon for a thirty six year old teacher to be messing around with a sixteen year old student, so he assumed the feelings about the situation were quite the same in the Wizarding World. The entire situation in itself was just a bad one, come to think of it.

"Alright. I'm going to tell you this story, but bear with me because it's going to take forever."

Andy leaned over and pulled the box he kept his weed stuff in, pulling out what he needed to roll a blunt. "Well, go on then." He said, making a sweeping motion with his hand.

"Okay. Well, after I left at the end of the summer I ended up spending a few weeks at my godfather's house. A teacher from my school was staying there with us and well we kind of have a history of hating each others guts, but that's a story for another time. Anyway, we ended up smoking together a few times and we started to get along rather well for a little bit. I had to go stay with him at his house for the last two weeks of the summer and one night we were on his roof smoking and well, we ended up kissing." Harry stopped talking as the memory of that night replayed itself over in his head. He wondered how much trouble could have been avoided if he hadn't lay beside Severus on that sofa, if he would have pushed him away before their lips could touch.

"Wait, so you hooked up with your teacher? Isn't that like, totally illegal?" Andy asked, beginning to run the flame of his lighter along the blunt he had just finished rolling.

Harry was surprised at how cool he was about the situation. "Yeah, probably. " He said

"Wow, so what happened after that?"

"Well, he ended up pulling away and going back into the house. I stayed on the roof until the next morning and then shut myself in my room for the next few days," He paused to hit the blunt Andy had just passed to him. "So yeah, he basically pretended like nothing ever happened for the rest of the time I stayed there, but then we ended up smoking together the night before school started. We kissed again and I ended up pulling away. We went back to school the next day and ended up having a talk before agreeing to be friends. We were doing just fine with just being friends for a wile, but one night when I went down to his chambers- Oh, I don't think I've ever mentioned this in my letters or anything, but Hogwarts is actually a huge castle- Anyways, to cut it short we fell asleep together on his couch that night." He grew silent at this point, shaking his head and digging around in his pockets for his cigarettes. That had been the morning that he had finally realized that they were never going to be together and he should stop getting his hopes up because they were just going to get crushed again. Since that day, he had done everything in his power to stay away from Severus.

"Harry?" Andy pulled him out of his thoughts and he took a moment to mentally shake himself. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

Harry nodded in response, motioning at his friend to pass him the blunt. He only got a few hits before it was so small that he could no longer hold it, so they put it in Andy's bowl. He took deep hits, wanting to make sure he got super baked. Surely enough, he soon found the madness of the past twelve hours slowly melting away as a full body high crept upon him, leaving him feeling pleasantly calm and content. "Alright, so where was I?" He finally asked, leaning back against the pillows and lighting a cigarette.

"Uh, the last thing I remember is you saying that you and that teacher guy fell asleep on his couch."

"Oh. Right," Said Harry "Well the next morning I woke up and I don't know I just realized..." He took a drag off of his cigarette to buy him a moment to try to piece his feelings into words "Well, I guess I realized that nothing was ever going to turn out like I wanted it to. I know it sounds crazy because we'd just hated each other like a couple of months ago, but I really developed feelings for him in that short time. By the way he was acting that morning, I could tell that nothing was going to change despite the events of the night before. I left his rooms that day and we quit talking for good. I started going to all these crazy party's in this hidden room in the castle and we went back to hating one another." He finished.

"Wow. I can't believe you actually messed around with your teacher! That's something that only happens in the movies!" Andy said with a little too much excitement at this realization. "Soo...tell me about this guy. What's he teach? Oooh, is he married and in the closet?"

"No!" Harry laughed "He's in his thirties. He isn't married, never has been. I'm not exactly sure if he's in the closet or not, but obviously nobody could know about us. He's a Potion's teacher, which is a subject sort of similar to Chemistry. He has a reputation for being this completely cold hearted git and he almost always has his guard up, but every once in a wile you get to see a side of Severus that makes you realize that there is much more depth than the surface lets on. He has this way of making you want to slap the shit out of him, then immediately pin him down and snog him senseless..." He trailed off as he realized that he should probably stop talking about Severus now. "Uh, well, anyways, I sort of have a boyfriend now.

"Oh my god," Andy exclaimed, giving him a swift slap on the shoulder" How in the hell could you wait until now to bring something like this up? Especially with it being your first boyfriend and everything!"

"Well, err, that's sort of why I'm here," He said "I...sort of...cheated on him...last night."

Andy looked even more surprised at hearing this newest development than he had upon finding out that he was seeing someone."With who?" He asked, but then appeared to quickly but the pieces together "Oh god, with that teacher?"

Harry nodded "Yeah. There was a Halloween dance at my school last night and then most of the upperclassmen went to this party. Afterward, Terry and I got delayed sneaking back to my dorm because Severus was drunkenly pacing the hallway right by where we were hiding. I stepped out to distract him while Terry ran, and well it's a long story, but..." He pulled down the front of his hooded sweatshirt to reveal several purple, swollen hickeys on his neck and collarbone. When he got back to school, the first thing he was going to do was look for a way to get them removed before Terry saw and shit hit the fan.

"So...what are you going to do about it?"

"I have no fucking clue," He honestly admitted "I feel like total shite for cheating on Terry, but...as crazy as it sounds, things just feel so...right with Severus. I ended up pulling away from the kiss and laying outside by the lake for hours. I-I realized sometime early this morning that I'm in love with him. Oh and also that I'm completely and utterly screwed, but yeah mostly that. It's just...I don't want to hurt Terry. He's been an amazing boyfriend and I truly do have feelings for him. I guess I don't know what I want at this point."

There was a momentary lapse of silence between the two. "Well, I'm going to give you my honest opinion. I'm sorry if I say anything to offend you, but if I didn't care about you I wouldn't give you the truth."

Harry nodded. He knew that Andy truly did have his best interests at heart.

"I think that you and this Severus guy seem to have something between you two. I mean, I know I've never seen you two together or anything, but you just, you get this look in your eyes when you're talking about him. I've never seen you feel this way about someone before and it's actually kind of nice. I'm not telling you what to do, because in the end you're going to do what you want to do, but I think if you chose to stay with Terry that you owe it to him to be honest. Look, I just want to see you happy and right now you don't seem very happy. I hope you figure things out."

Harry knew that he was right. He did owe it to Terry to tell him the truth about what had happened last night, but he was scared. What if he went straight to Dumbledore or somebody of authority and Severus got into trouble? He just couldn't risk that happening. No matter what, he knew that he had a decision to make. Or did he? Who knows if Severus even felt the same for him or if he had just been drunk and fucking with his emotions like usual.

Deciding he would worry about it later, he thanked Andy for the advice and for letting him vent to him. They hung around in his room for a couple hours until the others finally started to wake up. Megan stumbled past the room on her way to the kitchen around noon, doing a double take at the sight of him sitting on the end of the bed.

"Oh my god, what are you doing here!" She exclaimed in excitement, coming over to give him a hug.

"I'm visiting home for the weekend, but I have to leave tonight to catch the train back to school. Thought I'd stop by since I haven't seen you guys in forever." He lied

"Damn, what's with all the noise in here," A voice said from the doorway. He looked around to see that Chad had finally woken up. "Harry? What are you doing here?" He said in confusion.

Harry gave him the same line he had just given Megan and the four of them spent the next few hours catching up. Hearing stories of all the fun he had been missing lately made him never want to go back to Hogwarts. What if he didn't come back? Just hid out here for the time being? But no, he knew that shit would really hit the fan if he pulled a stunt like that. He just wished he would have asked Ron to at least cover for him until tomorrow morning so he could relive his summer for a night.

Everybody in the house finally dragged themselves out of bed around four that afternoon. He met Matt's new girlfriend, Ashley, and was attacked by Faith and Heather the moment they spotted him. The group had decided to have a chill day in the wake of them all being out so late the night before, so they all sat around listening to music and having a major smoke session. Harry allowed himself to lose track of time in the wake of being reunited with all of his friends. He glanced out the window as it was beginning to grow dark. Realizing that Ron was probably freaking out by now, he leaned over and whispered to Andy that he should probably be leaving soon. The older boy immediately offered to drive him to wherever he needed to go.

He found an aching developing in his chest as he stood to give out his goodbyes to everybody, wishing that he didn't have to leave so soon. He promised that he would try his hardest to return for the holidays and Hannah made him pinky promise that he would at least be here for New Years.

Andy and himself walked to his car and Harry got into the passengers seat. As they pulled out of the driveway, he turned around in his seat, getting in one last look at the place he considered his home.

"Where am I taking you?" Andy asked, coming to the intersection.

"You can just drop me off at the end of Privet Drive." He answered

"Do I even want to know how it is your going to get back to Scotland?"

"Probably not." Harry grinned, picturing the look on Andy's face at seeing him jump into the floo and being whisked thousands of miles away in mere seconds. They drove the short drive in silence, and Harry knew that they were both trying to put off saying goodbye for as long as possible.

When they reached Private Drive, instead of just letting him jump out like usual, Andy pulled the car alongside the curb and shut the ignition off. "I wish you didn't have to leave so soon." He said

"Yeah. I know. It sucks." Harry said, unable to think of any other words to describe how he felt about having to leave so soon. "I'll be back for Christmas though." He added

"You better be. I've seriously been going insane over here without having you to talk to. I mean, the others are great, but...well they aren't you. Let's just leave it at that"

"I know what you mean." Said Harry "I have plenty of friends back at school, but there are just certain things I can't talk to them about because I feel like they'll judge me. You're probably the one person I can tell anything to."

Andy pulled him into a long hug and Harry returned it. "Promise you'll start writing more?" Andy said

"I promise." Harry glanced out the window at the setting sun. "Well, guess I better get going." He leaned over and gave Andy another quick hug before opening up the car door and beginning to walk down the street. He heard the little red car start and pull away from the curb, but he kept going, knowing if he turned around he would be tempted to delay his return to Hogwarts even more.

As he passed the Dursley's house, he looked up, surprised to see that all of the lights were on even though there was no car in the driveway. He hadn't spoken to his aunt or his uncle since he had returned to school, but that was no surprise. Harry had gotten up the slightest bit of hope that Dudley would write to him, what with their new found friendship and all, but first term was nearly over and he had yet to receive a letter. Oh well, it's not like he was going to let it bother him. He had spent way too many years wishing for his family to give a damn about him and the older he got, the more he realized that the family you chose isn't always the family that you were born into.

Harry finally reached the end of Privet Drive, cursing underneath his breath as he realized that Ms. Figg's car was back in her driveway, and it hadn't been when he had came through her floo earlier. He pulled his invisibility cloak out of his pocket and slipped it over himself before coming to look through her sitting room window. She was fast asleep in her ancient armchair with three of her cats spread across her lap. Deciding that he was just going to have to chance it, he slowly turned the handle of the door. He held his breath as he tiptoed through the sitting room and into the kitchen where her fireplace was located. He scooped up a handful of powder and tossed it into the fireplace. Green flames shot up and he stepped into them, shouting"Hogwarts, Room of Requirement!"