"So what?" Harry's voice was low and cold. "Since when did we stoop so low to act like they do? Do you even know who she is or what she's really like or are you just stereotyping, because if you are, then you know nothing!"

With his chest heaving, Harry turned and bounded up the stairs as quickly as he could, only pausing to throw open the dorm room door and slam it shut behind him

.

Harry groaned quietly, attempting to regain control over his temper as he buried his head beneath his pillow. He knew he shouldn't have lost it, but he couldn't help it. There was really no way that he could think of that he could have controlled himself at that particular moment.

Ron had called his sister, his savior a dirty snake. It infuriated him so much that just thinking about it caused his anger to flare and his heart to race. Quickly, Harry shoved the thought out of his head and began to focus on other things. He knew he needed to get his temper under control before he blew something up.

Slowly Harry evened out his breathing and soon he felt his heart stop racing and the whooshing sound of blood that was rushing in his ears slow to a dull roar.

After what seemed like hours, Harry withdrew his head from beneath the pillow. Allowing the cool air to dance across his hot face and soothe the headache that was growing behind his temples. The light that had been streaming through the curtains when he had laid down had completely disappeared from the sky.

By the lack of sound, he figured that everyone had left for dinner, which with his luck was probably almost over. But that didn't really bother him, he wasn't very hungry and he didn't want to face Ron anyway.

*EB*

Elizabeth lay on her father's bed, resting her head on his shoulder. Her long black hair fanned out across the pillows, mixing with his as he ran his long potion stained fingers through it. The pain she had felt in her chest had almost disappeared but that did nothing for her wondering mind.

She had been worried about Harry ever since their father had calmed her back down an hour ago, especially since he shared a dorm with Weasley who could never really leave well enough alone, even if he benefited from it.

"Do you feel like eating?" Severus's voice broke the silence and stillness of the room.

"Not really." Elizabeth replied as she pushed herself up into a sitting position.

"Don't worry yourself about Weasley." Severus said as he pushed himself up against the pillows.

"I don't care what Weasley told me." Elizabeth stated softly" I'm just worried about Harry."

"And why is that? Severus asked in an all too familiar tone, one that told her he already knew the answer.

"Because he'll defend me, and if I know Gryffindor's the way I think I do they will treat him like they treat us." Elizabeth reasoned as she stared at the wardrobe in the corner of the currently dark green room. "And I don't think that it is right for them to treat Harry like that if they do, I mean especially after everything he has done for them, and for us."

"So what do you want to do about it?" Severus asked.

"There is nothing I can do, nothing we can do" Elizabeth stated "Not with everyone trying to stand in our way."

X*X*X*X*X

"There you are." Blaise said, his voice ringing in the practically silent common room.

"Was I supposed to be somewhere?" Elizabeth asked as she looked up from the potion's book she was reading.

"Well you weren't at dinner." Blaise said as he ungracefully plopped down on the couch beside her.

"I didn't feel well." Elizabeth said, which was true, she didn't feel good, and she was sure she would have been worse off if she had seen the bane of her existence.

"We all get that way when the weather starts turning colder, Liz." Blaise smiled, his blue-steel eyes glimmering as if he knew better than to take what she was saying at face value.

'If only he knew Elizabeth thought as she listened to Blaise talk. 'We would really have problems then.'

*HP*

Harry spent the weekend in his dorm, only venturing out when he was certain that no one was in the common room to bother him. He had yet to speak to Ron or Hermione since Ron had opened his mouth and treated Elizabeth like Draco Malfoy treated everyone else.

He had no idea what happened to his best friend, but whatever it was, Harry did not like it. Ron had never been that way, even last year when they had fought about the Triwizard tournament and had stopped speaking.

Hermione wasn't any better. She had forgotten about him too, and she was the 'brightest witch of the age'. She had the ability to remember everything from History of Magic but she had forgotten about him and then sided with Ron when he told them that he had made friends with Elizabeth. But, at the very least, she wasn't as critical of the friendship or rather his relationship with the Slytherin. He was still uncertain about what caused the change in his friends though.

Maybe it was because of Sirius' negative attitude towards Slytherin and just Elizabeth in general, or maybe Moody's general dislike for anyone who mentioned they were associated with the house of Voldemort. But whatever caused it, Harry was not a fan of it.

So as Harry dressed for his Monday classes, he ignored the stares he was receiving from Ron. Through the fringe of his hair, he could see the look on Ron's face. It was the look he gave Hermione when she was mad at him and he wanted to talk to her, but Harry had no real desire to talk to him let alone start another argument. So as soon as Harry had his last shoe tied, he was out the dorm door, down the stairs, and in the common room before Ron had finished buckling his belt.

Hermione was waiting by the port hole, but Harry didn't want to talk to her either, so with quick steps he made his way through the entrance and refused to stop when he heard her call his name.

Maybe he was being unreasonable, or inconsiderate towards them, but he couldn't help it. It was how he protected himself from the hurt of being let down. He had experienced so much of the hurt in grade school when people would try to become friends with him, until Dudley and his friends would beat them up and threaten them and they would turn into everyone else that was there: cruel and inconsiderate. They never really cared if what they said hurt Harry, as long as it prevented them from being hurt by Dudley. And when the teachers witnessed him being bullied, they did nothing but stand and watch.

'Maybe it's just a phase' Harry thought as he sat down at the Gryffindor table. 'Maybe they are just so overwhelmed by everything.'

'Are they truly overwhelmed, thought?' Another voice in his head asked, he wasn't sure, he wasn't sure of anything anymore.

Everything he knew about his life had been turned upside down since school had started. He had a father, even if it was the most hated professor that had ever walked the grounds, hell he even had a sister that loved him for who he was and didn't particularly care that there was an insane wizard that wanted him dead.

Quietly Harry picked up his head and glanced at the Slytherin table and after a quick search he found Elizabeth missing from the normal group she usually sat with. Quickly he tore his eyes away and did a quick search of the Head Table to find the space between Professor McGonagall and the new Defense teacher empty. Snape was missing too.

*SS*

Severus was seated at his kitchen table reading the latest edition of the Potion's Journal he subscribed to while Elizabeth sat across from him eating breakfast. She looked better than she had on Friday standing in the hall with tears running down her face all because Molly Weasley's youngest son had thought it a great idea to take up bullying as a past time.

He would be damned if he was going to let some lanky, idiotic Gryffindor get away with what James Potter and Sirius Black did when they were in school. He was not going to let his daughter become what he had.

"Dad?" Elizabeth asked breaking the silence between them.

"Yes?" Severus answered as he drew he eyes away from the article on the newest uses of Mandrake.

"Has the status on the paperwork been changed yet?" She asked as she drew circles in her cereal.

"No, and Albus had been too preoccupied to sit down and talk to me" Severus replied. "But I will take care of it, even if I have to go over his head to do it."