Wednesday was Charms and Transfiguration - ordinarily, Harry Potter liked the second class. McGonagall was a terror with claws, but she generally kept them sheathed unless you did something truly objectionable. An old battleaxe, Harry's Uncle Vernon would have said. Only, he wouldn't necessarily meant it as a compliment. Harry rather enjoyed the old woman (her hair was still mostly ungray, despite being pulled back into the world's fiercest bun. Harry idly wondered if it might like to eat something once in a while, before deciding he was working too much on transfiguration outside of class). It wasn't for the teacher that Harry liked Transfiguration - it was that he actually got to have fun, be creative, and learn things.
His assignments to himself were never what the Professor assigned, of course. He was still doing his best to be a little better than Ron Weasley. Harry figured he could manage to be a C student, maybe occasionally edging into a B, without gathering undue notice from people that it was better for all if they ignored him. Harry Potter thought to himself, If only I could make the hero-worshippers go away so easily.
The Professor's assignment was difficult - turning a needle into a match. If done properly, the struck match would actually burn. Not that anyone was actually going to be allowed to do that - since needles didn't normally burn. Harry Potter's project was turning a needle into a minature sword. Not a cocktail sword of plastic provenance, but a real sword - with sharp edges. Harry rather liked the practical nature of his assignment.
Blissfully ignored in the back of the classroom, Harry Potter looked at all the other students as he transfigured the needle. Neville still seemed to be dumbfounded by even the idea of transfiguration. Ron and Shamus were goofing off with each other, while Dean, brow creased, was busy trying to make even the slightest change. Parvati and Lavender looked like they couldn't care less how well they did at school - busy giggling at each other rather than working. It appeared that only Hermione Granger took the project, or class, at all seriously.
Still, as the Slytherin often said, "Appearances can be deceiving."
On his way down to detention, Harry Potter found a familiar itch on his back... Face dully expressionless (Did the Slytherins really have to affect the pose so grandiously?), Harry continued on as if he didn't know that someone was quietly, nearly invisibly watching him. Oh, sure, Harry wanted to round on them, to spy them out - if only to sate his own native curiousity. Still, that was the quickest, surest way to provoke someone, so he stilled his need to discover, and carried on as if there wasn't a problem. Inwardly, he felt himself relaxing and he found himself wondering why.
As he came to the Potion Master's great door, it came to him - he had been expecting the other shoe to fall. Now that it had, this felt a lot more like home.
"Enter" Potions Master Snape said to Harry, who entered with a quiet, firm, "Yes sir." That was the last word that Snape said to Harry, as a quick nod at the pile of cauldrons at the back of the classroom sent Harry scurrying to get started. He had thought through what he had done, and decided that if he had already shown a curious aptitude for cleaning cauldrons, it was better to keep it up, rather than be accused of cheating or slacking. Harry had noticed the suppressed malevolence in Snape's eyes, and he didn't for a moment doubt Snape would accuse him of both if he proved himself dissolute.
After the detention (Snape let him out early, again, though there were no additional detentions added on, which Harry Potter found remarkably reassuring. Apparently Snape believed that time spent in detention was the thing, not how many cauldrons Harry cleaned. This was a far cry from Snape thinking that Harry was insulting his detention, or otherwise doing enough that Snape was warranted (even if only in his own mind) of assigning a nigh infinite number of detentions), Harry walked smoothly through the dungeons, heading for the nearest stair to find the light of the first floor. Before he reached there, he felt the itchy feeling on the back of his neck again. Reacting by instinct, he slipped between two suits of metal armor, neatly dodging a red ray of a spell (what was that?) thrown at where he had just been standing.
Now, Harry was confident that thanks to Dudley, he could take a beating just as good as most boys. However, that didn't mean he wouldn't avoid them if possible. Choosing blindly, Harry ducked out of the crevice in a squat, bolting past an alcove and dodging into a different corridor. Grabbing up a stone, he threw it so it would bounce and bounce and bounce again, before sliding into an alcove.
True to form, the - was that a fourth year? - boy ran by, and Harry marked him. He had a face at least, if not a name. For now, it was enough.
[a/n: Harry Potter, everyone! Sorry for the weird grammar in the last line - that's Harry's mind tangenting in midthought.
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