Author's Notes:
Wow, you really love it! I wasn't even expecting to get any reviews... after all, the summary was pretty crappy. I had a longer one, but for some reason it got chopped, so I had to make it short.
Anyway, I had a bit of problem planning this chapter. I really did want Harry to get in trouble for slacking off, haha, but then he'd be in detention lots and that wouldn't accomplish anything, so I went the other way instead. However, he still did "slack off" though, by not paying much attention to the teachers...... (?)
The rest of my author's notes got deleted somehow......?

NOW EDITED!

Disclaimer:
As usual, I own nothing but the plot... mwa hahaaaa the plot bunny is mine! This is what happens when you don't get enough sleep.


Preparations, and a Near Potions Disaster

Following the first day of classes, Harry threw himself into his studies. His new behavious was commented by all, and at times, even Snape was hard pressed to find faults in Harry's work. The staff and Hermione were delighted, thinking that Harry was finally accepting his responsibilities and was working towards his goals. Ron was horrified and disgusted, believing that Hermione had placed Harry under an Imperius Curse. The only one who knew the real reason for this change was Firenze, and he did all he could to help Harry prepare. Harry, true to his word, paid attention in class only long enough to learn the things he needed, and during any other time furthered his own studies. He frequently lost points for his inattentiveness in class, but paid no heed to it. However, he was careful to study only the subject he was in class for, so every time Snape tried to humiliate him for his lack of attention with a Potions question, Harry could answer it almost each and every time. Snape was begrudgingly impressed.

Any homework that he had, he did to the best of his abilities and more. Any research required found Harry researching down to every side topic available. He was amused to find that at times, his essays exceeded the length of Hermione's, and often even scored much higher than her. This fact he kept to himself, not wishing to depress one of his two best friends. However, when Dumbledore informed him that his Quidditch ban had been lifted, he declined, knowing he would only be there for a few more weeks and wishing to use the time to learn more. Ron had been furious when he found out that Harry chose not to play Quidditch.

"Harry, Harry, did you hear?" Ron was jumping up and down in excitement, "you can play Quidditch again!"

Sighing, Harry closed the book he had been reading, a book on Potions - luckily Ron didn't notice in his excitement or he would've made another nasty comment. Closing his eyes, Harry counted to ten before turning to Ron.

"I know, but I've quit," Harry announced quietly.

Ron, in his excitement, kept rambling on, "with you back as Seeker, and Ginny as a Chaser and me as the Keeper, all we need are a few more players, and we'll have the best team at Hogwarts ever! We'll beat Malfoy without a doubt, after all..."

Harry tuned Ron out. He simply leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes again, waiting for the inevitable that would be Ron exploding in anger. Because they were in the Common Room, everyone with the exception of Ron heard Harry's resignation from Quidditch, and it was a while before Ginny came out of her shock to ask Harry,

"Why?"

"I can't tell you," Harry replied without moving.

By then, Ron had calmed down enough to notice the charged atmosphere in the room.

"What do you mean you quit?" Angelina exploded, "you were our best Seeker ever and you say you quit? What is wrong with you, Harry, we had a hard enough time without you last year, you can't quit now!"

"Harry, mate," Ron said, all traces of his earlier excitement gone, "you're joking, right?" His ears were beginning to turn red.

"No, I mean it, I quit. No more Quidditch for me." Until I leave and go back in time, Harry added in his head.

The room fell silent, the calm before the storm, before exploding into arguments. Almost everyone started screaming. There was so much noise that Harry felt the start of a headache forming. After a while, once they've realized that Harry wasn't going to speak anymore, the anger and screaming turned to each other. Fed up, he grabbed his books, shoved everything into his bag, and slipped out of the room unnoticed. The Fat Lady called out after him, concerned about all the noise inside, but he paid her no heed. Instead, he walked down to Firenze's rooms, hoping to find a place where he could study in peace without everyone speculating about his change in behaviour.

Before he even raised his hand, the door opened, inviting him in. Harry stepped into the forest-like room and closed the door gently, not wanting to disturb the centaur However, when he turned aroud, he found blue eyes studying him intently.

"Problems with your friends?" Firenze asked in his soft voice.

"Er - yeah, you can say that." Harry stood in front of the door, unsure of what to do.

"It must be hard," Firenze turned away, "to know that you have limited time with your friends, yet not have the chance to spend every last minute with them. You are more than welcome to study alone in here, I've already set the wards to open for you automatically. I trust that you won't complete destroy my room?"

Blushing, Harry replied, "No, sir."

He worked late into the night, reading, taking notes, and reading some more. Without meaning to, or perhaps it was the atmosphere of the forest, Harry ended up falling asleep, surrounded by his book and a small smile on his face. For the first time in his life, he finally knew what it felt like to have a reasonable goal in mind and work his hardest to achieve it. It was a great feeling, because he knew it was something worth doing, this studying of his, and that it would amount to something at the end. While he loved Quidditch, he was a natural at it, and so didn't need to put as much effort into playing, while this forced him to work hard, allowing him to feel important for his efforts.

Next morning, he woke up under a blanket of leaves. There in front of him was a note from Firenze, saying that he excused Harry by saying that Harry had helped him with a project last night which lasted until the early hours of the morning. Glancing at his watch, Harry saw that he had enough time to go back to his dorms to freshen up before heading down to breakfast and later, classes. With the smile on his face, left over from the night before, he quickly packed up, scribbled a note of thanks to Firenze, and left the room.

Breakfast at the Great Hall was rather subdued. It wasn't until Nearly Headless Nick showed up and recounted last night's activites did Harry finally knew what happened. It turned out that shortly after he left the Common Room, his absence was noticed and the argument escalated even more. People began hexing each other, even though they were all from the same house, and without a regard for age, or even friend or foe. It got so out of hand when Madam McGonagall came in to calm everyone down, she got hit by no less than 13 curses, hexes, and jinxes in a matter of seconds, and a whole 250 points was deducted from the whole house, setting them in last place with little hope for catching up.

When Harry heard that bit of new, guilt twanged in his heart. After all, he hadn't been helping things for all the times he lost points for not paying attention in class, and when he looked up at the gigantic hour glass, he nearly fainted. There, in last place, was Gryffindor at 8 points. Everyone else was up in the mid-200s, with Hufflepuff in the lead with 285. No wonder all the Gryffindors were so down this morning, while rumors were running wild as to how Gryffindor could've lost so many points in one night. Of course, there was always the Slytherins and Malfoy.

"Look at that," Malfoy said loudly, "I guess Gryffindors aren't so golden anymore!"

The whole Slytherin burst out laughing, and even the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs cracked a smile. However, none of the Gryffindors had the heart to retaliate. Harry was madly trying to think of a way to make up for this whole fiasco - after all, he was the main cause behind it, between his inattentiveness in class and his decision not to join the Quidditch team. He was amazed that the rest of the school hadn't picked up on it yet. But of course, he just had to think of it just then.

"So I hear that Potter isn't on the Quidditch team anymore! Perhaps he realized how much of a loser he is, watching all the games last year, or maybe he just can't stand his stinking Weasel anymore!" More laughter from the Slytherins following this second comment from Malfoy.

Harry fumed. But luckily, breakfast ended right then and it was time for classes. As he walked to Hagrid's hut for Care of Magical Creature, doubled with Ravenclaws, he racked his brain for ideas on how to gain back 250 points in as short a time as possible. This time, he paid attention in all his classes, and by lunch time, was relieved to find that the House Points for Gryffindors had rose up to 31. It seemed that the teachers were shocked about the event as well and was trying to help the Gryffindors regain their lost points. Of course, Snape was sneering at the sudden increase of 23 point in just one short morning, and Harry dreaded to go to double Potions following lunch.

As the requirements for Advanced Potions was at such a high level, there was only a handful of students from all houses were registered, thus allowing only one class for all of the sixth years. From Gryffindor, there were only Hermione and Harry, and even Ravenclaw, for their fame in intelligence, only had 4 students. As they all sat down, Harry noticed with some apprehension, a glass ball similar to a Remembrall, except with a black sort of mist swirling inside, sitting on Malfoy's desk. Harry knew, without a doubt, that Malfoy was up to no good in this class. He did not have to wait long to find out exactly what that little glass ball was.

It was nearing the end of class, and everyone was heating up the fire to cause the potion to boil, the last step in the procedure before cooling and bottling. While everyone was waiting, their attentions taken up by their potions for it cannot overboil nor underboil, Malfoy picked up the glass ball. Harry, with his Seeker trained abilities, caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look. Malfoy was just about to roll the ball to the fire under Hermione's cauldron when Blaise Zabini, a fellow Slythering, turned to grab something from his desk and bumped Malfoy's outstretched hand. Both Malfoy and Harry watched in horror as the glass ball bounced off the stone floor - but didn't break, luckily or unluckily - up a few steps and rolled into the fire underneath Snape's cauldron.

A series of events followed. First was a loud crack signalling the glass breaking from the heat. Next, everyone, including Snape, looked towards the professor's cauldron at the front of the room, where the sound came from. Then was a loud rumbling, followed by Snape's cauldron shaking madly, sloshing the potion inside everywhere. The shaking got worse and worse, and everyone stared in fear, as the cauldron was trembling so bad that it turned into a vibration accompanied by a loud, high-pitched whine. The vibration was so forceful that the cauldron itself began levitating in the air on its own accord. A split second of silence and the cauldron stopped vibrating, only to drop back on the fire, where a murky, black mist could be see ebbing out. Harry pulled out his wand and muttered a Banishing Spell just a fraction of a second after the whole fire, mist, cauldron, and potion exploded. A loud crack of thunder-like noise sounded and everyone was thrown back before everything disappeared into the void that Harry had created.

Silence, as nobody dared to move. Professor Snape quickly took advantage of the fear and scanned the room. Malfoy, who had frozen in fear after being bumped by Zabini, had the incriminating evidence of his hand still held out as if to drop or roll a small item. Harry, on the other hand, had his wand pointed at where Snape's cauldron had been. Snape knew a Banishing Spell when he saw one, and immediately, he knew what had happened.

"What," Snape snarled, causing everyone to jump in fright and turn their gazes towards him, "was the meaning of this, Malfoy?"

Everyone was shocked, Snape had never called on Malfoy for any wrong-doings before.

"What possessed you to bring in Detonball into Potions class?"

Snape stalked towards the blond. Malfoy visibly paled and cowered down. No one, not even Harry when he had looked into Snape's pensieve, had seen the professor this mad. But then again, a look into memories wasn't as dangerous as the potential of the whole castle exploding from the dungeons. A Detonball was dangerous enough with a small fire, and could cause reasonable damage at the temperature the fire was set at for the last boil, but Snape wasn't working on the same potion as the class. Rather, it was a highly complicated potion requiring lots of expensive ingredients as well as time, and the fire that he had under the cauldron was several time higher than that of the students.

As Malfoy could offer no reasonable excuse, Snape continued, "For your pure stupidity, Malfoy, you are suspended from this class for a month, during which time you will report to Filch during every Potions class, plus a detention with me every night of the month starting at 8! Is that understood?!"

Malfoy nodded, looking like the ferret that he was turned into by Mad-Eye Moody in fourth year.

"Well? What are you waiting for? Get out of my sight!!!"

Malfoy scrambled out of the classroom, not bothering with his books and bag.

"And you, Potter!"

Harry stiffened, gripping his wand even tighter.

Snape had a most peculiar expression on his face, it looked like a cross between a twisted smile, a grimace, and a look of abject horror.

Sighing, Snape ran a hand through his hair and muttered under his breath, "150 points for your fast reaction and spectacular Banishing Spell."

No one dared to speak - Snape had just awarded points to Gryffindor, and to Potter no less!

"Clean up, pack up, and get out. All of your potions are ruined by now." With that said, Snape turned abruptly and disappeared into the storage room.

Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief and proceeded to clean and pack up. Most of them couldn't wait to get out of the dungeons and tell their friends what had happened. Snape of all people awarded points to Harry! And 150 points at that!

End Notes:
Well that turned out better than I first imagined! Heh, I generally start off with a vague idea, then let the writing itself flow out. I wasn't expecting to take 250 points of Gryffindor, but it worked out nicely in that I "forced" Snape to be fair for once and give points to Harry. Haha, after all, if your worst enemy saved a whole school (castle) from blowing up, well, I'd think that you'd be really nice to them, even if it was only for a minute or so. Hope you liked this chapter - and I better go finish my homework, heh. Got struck by the sudden inspiration, and if you don't write immediately, it'll leave, so I thought I might as well lose some more sleep...
Please read & review!!!