Chapter 11:

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Severus Snape took a deep breath and walked in. "Excuse me, people!" he growled, startling Harry with his stern and cold manner. "I'd like to welcome the new Slytherin students," he nodded to all the first years, taking notice of Harry sitting with Vanella. "They are: Crabbe, Goyle, Incendie, Malfoy, Parkinson, Potter, and Zabini. I want you all to be nice; no hazing this year.

"You will all get your class schedules tomorrow at breakfast, which is served in the Great Hall. I will tell you, first-years, that you have double potions with the Gryffindors first thing tomorrow morning, and you better make my house look good." He glanced at Harry quickly. "Potter, I need to speak with you." To keep up appearances, he growled, "Now!"

The current residents of the Common Room "ooohh-ed," as if Harry was in trouble already.

Harry stood and followed him as quickly as possible. "Yes, Professor?" he asked, once alone in the hall with Severus Snape.

"Your bags are not in my room."

Harry frowned. "Well, they sure aren't in mine."

"You're sure?"

"Of course."

McGonagall rounded a corner and strode into their lines of vision. "Ah, Severus. I was just looking for you. Mr. Potter, I believe these are yours."

She was levitating his bags.

His jaw dropped. "How did you get them?"

"It would appear that someone made the mistake of thinking you would be a Gryffindor. Mr. Ron Weasley found them in the first-year boys' dorm."

Severus glared at her. "And who is the one in charge of bags?"

She ignored his question. "I do wonder, though, why he found snake food when searching for a clue of identity."

Harry was surprised, but recovered quickly with a lie. "It's an experiment, Professor. I don't want to get into it," he said, eyes downcast as if shamed, "but it failed if someone messed with my bags."

The Transfiguration Professor looked at him with pity, then sharply at Severus.

"Oh no you don't, Minerva. I'm not making them do experiments; you cannot pin this on me."

"Well, Harry," she said with a familiar tight smile. "You should take care of your bags. I'm sure Severus can help you get them to your dorm."

He pulled out his wand. After reading a few books on charms, he knew some easier spells than merely levitating to transport bags. For instance, he knew of one that took no effort out of the spell-caster... "Sustuli veho!" he said, pointing at the bags.

McGonagall's jaw dropped, while Severus hid his smile. "We don't even teach that here until 5th year," she said, once the boy had gone.

"He's done his reading," Severus said, a smile threatening to pull up the corners of his mouth, a slightly proud look in his eyes that his first-year was already pulling off charms. "He's definitely a Slytherin. Cunning and witty, it would appear."

McGonagall 'humph-ed' and walked away, muttering unintelligibly.

Despite himself, Severus let the ominous smile show.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry walked into the Common Room with his charmed items following behind him. People gave him strange stares as he walked by, but he continued on to his dormitory without pausing.

Once inside, he pointed his want again and said, "Deposui." The bags floated gently to the ground at his command.

Draco Malfoy, who was laying silently on a nearby bed, gaped.

Harry looked up at him before opening his bags on his bed. "What's the matter, Malfoy? Never seen a charm before?"

"Not that one," Draco said coldly. "What was it, anyway?"

"Simple. A counter-levitation charm. I read about some charms a few days ago. Nothing fancy, but it works."

Draco leaned back to stare at the ceiling from his bed. "The famous Harry Potter, a Slytherin," he said finally, after Harry had stashed his robes in the provided wardrobe.

Withdrawn, Harry replied, "Yes," and continued to put things away. He stashed quite a few books on charms, hexes, and spells that he was borrowing from Professor Snape in an unused compartment of the wardrobe, charming it so no one but he would be permitted entrance.

"And that?"

"Locking spell. I suggest you don't try to break in."

"What did you put in there that's so important? Those books?" Draco snorted.

Harry gave him a cold glance before storing his snake food and random essentials under his bed. "Those books are borrowed. I can't risk anything happening to them." Lastly, he whispered, "Paulum," causing his books and class necessities to shrink enough in size to allow them to be placed in the pockets of robes. He set them in a little green velvet pouch he had bought and slid them into a drawer with his robes.

"What was that?"

"A spell, idiot."

"No, I mean, what spell?"

"I shrunk my books, to make them easier to carry."

"How?"

Harry smirked. "If I tell you, you won't be able to enlarge them again." He jumped at a knock on the door.

Draco smirked this time.

Harry answered the door to Vanella. She was holding a silver cloak, and, if Harry wasn't imagining it, the cloak was moving slightly.

"Your cloak, Harry."

He took it from her, realizing that he was indeed correct about the cloak moving. "Thank you, Vanella."

She smiled. "I see you in double potions tomorrow." And she was gone.

Harry yawned, setting the Invisibility cloak in with his borrowed books and letting Vitesse slither silently under his bed. He grabbed a book on defensive spells and settled in to read for a little while, under the curious and watchful gaze of Draco Malfoy.

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Vanella lay peacefully in her bed, pretending to sleep, but thinking about Harry. Was what Vitesse told her true? If so, why had Harry been living with the Potions Professor? And for how long? More questions shot through her head as she slowly drifted off to sleep. Those questions she would ask when she earned the trust to have him tell her.

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Harry woke up to Vitesse hissing harshly at him. "Get out of bed! You have Double Potions in a half-hour and still have to get your schedule from the Great Hall! Hurry!"

Harry quickly showered and clothed himself, placing the pouch full of books in one of the folds of his robes with his wand, and letting Vitesse curl around his waist. The rest of the boys in his dorm were already gone, and when he got into the common room, so was Vanella. He hissed some curses in Parseltongue, then half-ran to the Great Hall.

He slid into the bustle and hustle of the Hall without much notice, though some gossips still turned to look when he got in, and began frantically talking. He slid into a seat with the rest of the first-year Slytherins, gave a quick greeting to them, practically inhaled a piece of toast while retrieving his class schedule, then headed off to the Potions classroom. He needed to talk with Severus Snape, but wouldn't have time if he didn't hurry.

He quickly slid into the room before he was considered late, but he was not early enough to hold private audience with his Professor. He sat next to a smiling Vanella, in front of a scowling Draco, in the first row of tables. He appeared to be the only one with out a bag to hold all the necessary items for class.

Snape noticed, too. "Potter! Where are all of your supplies?"

Harry carefully pulled out the pouch, about the size of an apple. "Here, sir."

"All of your things are in that little pouch, Potter?"

"Yes sir. See for yourself." Harry handed the pouch over.

The Professor took the little pouch from Harry and undid the drawstrings. "Soft, Potter. You like smooth fabrics?" Some of the students chuckled. He dumped the contents of the pouch into his hand and looked at them closely. He placed them on Harry's desk. "Now enlarge them, Potter. Can you do that?"

Harry took out his wand, whispered, "Magnus iterum," and with a flick of his wrist, there was books, a cauldron, quills, ink, and parchment piled on his desk.

Snape looked on, none too shocked by this.  He read my books, he thought, proud.  I hadn't expected him to... absolve this much of them.  "10 points to Slytherin for Harry's brilliance," he said, earning a groan from the Gryffindors and a cheer from the Slytherins.

Harry saw Ron Weasley slam his fist on the desk that he was sharing with Hermione Granger, making her jump. Harry quickly shrunk the items he didn't need for Potions and put them back in the pouch. Vanella looked on with interest as he sorted everything out, ready for class.

"Now, you are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion- making," he began. The class was completely silent, catching every word. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses.... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death – if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

"Potter!" said Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered rood of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

Harry thought for a minute, trying to remember his Potions book. "Um... sir, the Draught of Living Death? A sleeping potion?"

Snape's lips curled into a sick smile. He turned. "Weasley! Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

Hermione Granger lifted her hand, an effort to tell him the answer, but he ignored her. "Well, Weasley?"

"Uh... I don't know sir."

Snape sneered and turned back to Harry. "Do you know, Potter?"

Harry's eyes glazed in thought once again. "It... it's a stone found in a goats stomach... ah, sir?"

Snape sneered again. "He is correct.

"Malfoy! What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

Malfoy shrugged indifferently. "I don't know sir. Why don't you ask Potter? Or Granger, over there? They seem to be the ones lost in books."

Harry shot him a cold look before turning back towards his Professor.

Snape sighed. "Granger, what is the difference?"

She grinned at this chance. "There is none. They and aconite are the same plants."

"Good." He looked over the class. "Why aren't you all writing this down?"

There was a shuffle for quills and parchment as the entire class, with the exception of Harry, hurried to copy down everything Snape said.

"Why aren't you writing this down, Potter?"

"Because sir, I knew all the answers."

"Are you better than the rest of the class, Potter, that you believe you don't need to do everything they do?"

"No, sir. But if you wanted, I could recite the page for you. I have what a Muggle dictionary calls a photographic memory."

Snape stared.

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Author's Note: I've given up on answering reviews. It's getting too difficult for me to sort them out. Well, maybe not, but I'm too lazy to do that at the end of each chapter, when I'm so happy I'm finished I just want to upload it. I may answer a few select ones once in I while, though, like flames, questions, or particularly interesting comments. Now I'm going to translate the Latin spells, too. (The spells are in Latin because I'm guessing if there was a magic language, the basis of most of the others would be it, especially because it is a Dead Language. And because, if I'm not mistaken, which I probably am, the spells in the books are half in Latin as well, or resemble it slightly.)

Here are my Spell translations:

"Sustuli veho": 'Hold up, carry.'

"Deposui": 'Put down.'

"Paulum": 'Little.'

"Magnus iterum": 'Big/Large again.'

A few reviews I wish to respond to:

starangel2106: Thank you! I'm glad. I also enjoy the Slytherin-Harry fics, as well as believe that that is where he belonged. No matter, anyway, J.K.R.'s books are still good.

Hippy Flower=Voldie's Kid: Thanks! Yea, don't worry, I haven't listened to her yet and don't plan on it. Well, I'm glad there's someone who doesn't think Vanella is a Mary Sue. I know some people on FF.Net are arseholes, but I also know that there are some people under the illusion that Vanella was a Mary Sue who aren't arseholes. That's alright though. There's one in every bunch!

BlackSparrow: Of course I continued! Yep, Harry's in Slytherin. Wonder how that will work out.... Draco's a bit confused at the moment—he's nice one minute and an ass the next. Oh, well! I guess we'll have to wait and see...

Alright... I'm working on Chapter 12 now, so look for it later or tomorrow!