Well, the Fluffy incident was a couple of days away, and Severus needed a replacement for his bandage. He hated limping, it made him feel like a cripple. Plus people stared. He felt like shouting had they ever seen a wounded soldier before. But he didn't.

As he was walking across the grounds of the weird school he didn't know the name of, Severus spotted Potter-the-daring-yet-stupid. He was standing in a little circle by a stone wall with the Weasley and Bush-Hair. Severus guessed they were a genuine club now. He seriously wondered if they had a name for their club.

The way those three were standing looked like they were trying to hide something. Probably they were. He looked for whatever they were hiding, but they were pretty good at hiding it, because he couldn't see it. He wondered if they were doing drugs or plotting the ends of this world. Or possibly they were gossiping about him. Severus thought he must be paranoid, but still…

Then he noticed that Potter-who-must-be-doing-something-illegal was holding something that looked like a book. Ah-ha! Severus thought dumbly. He didn't know why he thought that about a book, but oh well. Severus limped over to them, trying not to think about peg legs, which still made him laugh. They saw him coming, and rushed to hide whatever it was they had in the middle of their circle. The Bush-Hair looked especially guilty.

"What's that you've got there, Potter?" Severus asked, indicating the book. Potter-the-suspicious showed it to him. It was a book about Quidditch. Severus was a bit torked at the moment. He knew there was something else, but they just weren't showing it to him. So Severus said that library books were not allowed outside of school, and took the book, along with five points from Gryffindor, which made his leg feel better he believed. He wondered if that was really a rule, but he didn't want to ask Madam Pince, who he was secretly afraid of. Which was why Severus didn't use his library card so much anymore.

As Severus limped away, he saw Potter-the-very-secretive do one of his specialty glares at him. Then he heard him mutter something in a mad voice, and ask rather loudly just what was wrong with his leg? The Weasley then did some ill-wishing and said that he hoped it was hurting him.

When Severus got inside the school, he went into his office and lit the fire, without thinking about the consequences of this. A few minutes passed while Severus warmed up in comfort, and then a loud pop sounded, and Lucius Malfoy's head was looking at him from the flames.

"Not you," Severus groaned quietly. He thought of 'accidentally' putting the fire out.

"What did you say?" Lucius asked.

"Nothing. Can we talk later?"

"Wellll, I wanted to talk to you now about news on our master and how Draco is doing at school and…"

So it was that some three hours later, Severus stumbled out of his office with a headache that he feared might kill him. He went up from the dungeons and saw Filch prowling in a hall. Severus thought he had never seen that guy caretaking before and wondered if he slacked off and just prowled all day, looking mean. He went down the Filch hall and tapped on Filch, who spun around looking angry.

"It's just me, 'Gus," he said, "Do keep your pants on."

"Argus," Filch muttered, licking his chops in a slobbery way. Severus wished he hadn't seen that. He wondered if Filch was related to Fang. Fang was Hagrid's drool dog. Except Filch smelled like fried fish and Fang smelled like drool probably.

"What do you want, Professor?" asked Filch.

Severus told him he needed new bandages for his leg. Filch took Severus to the staff room, opened a cupboard, and got some bandages. Severus wished he could see the box they had come in, so he could know if they had a durability guarantee and would stop the bleeding for certain. But Filch didn't show him the box. He just told him to hitch up those robes.

Severus hitched up those robes. Filch did a gasp and a whistle and asked how Severus got that war wound.

"Well, 'Gus," he said, ("Argus," Filch muttered) I was doing some extra strenuous guard duty up where they keep that dog of Hagrid's, and it…well, you can see what it did."

Filch shook his head. Severus thought he heard a small knock on the door, and hoped it wasn't Trelawney. Filch didn't seem to have noticed the knock, so Severus ignored it too.

"But I'm fine," he said stiffly, so that Filch wouldn't think he was a sissy. "Blasted thing," he muttered on second thought, "how are you supposed to keep your eyes on all three heads at once?"

Filch looked stupidly bemused, and seemed about to spit out his theory, when Severus happened to look toward the door, and saw it…dun dun dun…open! And staring right at him from the doorway was none other than Potter-who-is-dead-meat-now.

"POTTER!" Severus screamed in anger, dropping his robes quickly. He felt very embarrassed that Potter-the-so-very-nosy had very possibly been seeing all of this.

Unbelievably, Potter-the-numb did not seem to take the hint. Instead he stayed there in the doorway and yammered that he wanted his book back, so could he have it now?

Severus stared at him a moment before yelling very loudly for him to get out of there. Finally, Potter-the-disrupter-of-awkward-scenes seemed to understand, and he bolted. Severus stared after him a while, and then looked back at Filch, who was still holding a bandage out to him. It was the very same bandage he had been holding out to him about three minutes ago. Severus imagined his arm was getting tired, so he took it with a grumble about going to bed after this.

That was when Severus realized he had a class to teach that afternoon. "You are doing blablbalblablbalblabbla today," he stormed. He then sat slumped in his desk for the rest of the class and didn't go around checking potions like he usually did. He wondered if Dumbledore ever gave teachers breaks when they were hurting units. At the end of the class, Severus jumped up and told everyone they had two hundred miles of parchment for homework due tomorrow. Then he realized that that was impossible and shortened it to two feet. Then sat down again and put his head on his desk.