Title: Genius Does What it Must
Characters: Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Millicent Bulstrode.
Summary: Growing up, Harry Potter became a smartass. Now he's starting Hogwarts, with trusty sidekick Millicent Bulstrode, a question for everything, and a cheerfully sarcastic demeanor that makes everyone want to smack him.
And apparently there's death lurking in the third floor corridor. That's gonna end well.
Warnings: Alternate Universe, with intelligent!Harry, Slytherin!Harry, semi!mentor!Snape, and excessive use of italics and parentheses.
Notes: My intent is to get the next chapter up before 2010. Wish me lucks!
CHAPTER SIX: If you can't beat 'em, throw things at them and laugh loudly.
Halloween. The word alone brought up many memories – mostly along the lines of setting up traps throughout the neighborhood to terrify small children, but what could be a better memory than that?
Plus, when he was eight he caught Dudley and Piers in a pit and sold rotten fruit to neighborhood children to throw at them. Harry would forever treasure that memory.
He decided that, in the spirit of Halloween (that is, make as much chaos as humanly possible with making the universe explode from sheer awesome), he should dress as the most scariest (look, grammar was for Ravenclaws, okay? And Granger, who was basically an activist Ravenclaw) thing he could think of. So he dug through his roommates' hair products (which were far, far too numerous for anyone's good, seriously, he could easily poison a third-world country – which he considered his reserve plan of evil supervillainy) until he found what he was looking for. He then overused it to the point where he would probably be leaving a trail of grease wherever he went (so, about half as much as Draco used. Oh, burn!). This accomplished, Harry then spent a good twenty minutes practicing his scowl. After the first five minutes, whatever made the mirror talk decided to give up and visit other voices, or however magic mirrors worked. Which made him a little sad, because it ruined his daily habit of asking, "Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the me-est of them all?" But anyway!
"Try and ignore this!" he muttered at his reflection triumphantly, having mastered The Scowl.
"What?" yawned a voice from behind. Harry quickly whirled around, shoving his hands behind his back (there was nothing in them, but it was kinda habit).
"Nothing!"
Theodore Nott snorted inelegantly (not that there was, you know, a way to snort elegantly or anything). "If Snape kills you I'm taking your bed," he said matter-of-factly, brushing by Harry on his way to the shower.
"Nott just spoke to me," was the first thing he dazedly said to Millicent (not Millie, never Millie, dear god the horrors that would be visited upon you if you dared to say Millie) when they met up in the common room.
"And yet, the world did not implode," Millicent said dryly, scratching her cat's ears. (Harry still didn't know the cat's name, but had long since decided that 'hellbeast' was appropriate enough. It answered to it, so apparently it was.)
"It should've," was Harry's sulky reply.
"Poor baby, the world doesn't warp itself around your twisted little ideals, whatever will you do," Millicent said in a bored monotone.
"Find a more sympathetic best friend?" Harry suggested.
"And who would put up with you?"
Harry ran through a quick mental list of all their yearmates. The Ravenclaws disliked him thanks to his grudge war with the ever-twitchy Terry Boot who was certain Harry was out to kill him via evil potted-plant hijinks (Ravenclaws were so cute sometimes, he wanted to pinch their little cheeks!); the Hufflepuffs were both scared and disturbingly paranoid (although that was mostly Macmillan's fault, Harry admitted to himself); Gryffindors were just a bad idea all around – one house or the other would crucify them for fraternizing with the enemy. So…
"Zabini," Harry said triumphantly.
"Zabini's too smart to be your friend," Millicent pointed out.
"Sarah Bones?" he tried.
"Her name's Susan," Millicent countered, like that was a good argument (and, okay, it was). He would've tried Daphne Greengrass, except she was becoming exceedingly strange – just the other day she'd sidled up to him and said, "How about you and me go back to the common room and practice our 'swish-and-flick'?" and had capped it off with an eyebrow waggle.
Harry had declined, since he'd already mastered Wingardium Leviosa, and then asked if she could teach him how to wriggle his eyebrows like that. She had huffed and stalked away.
"Alright, fine," Harry muttered. "You're still my best friend." He brightened suddenly. "Until next year, at least!"
Millicent patted him on the head rather condescendingly. But at least this time she didn't throw her cat on him.
Harry chalked it up to a win.
Somehow, Harry made it through most of the day without comments on his outfit – though he saw McGonagall trying not to break into hysterics, which was good enough for him. Of course, all good things must come to an end, Harry thought cheerfully as he caught sight of Snape billowing along the corridor ahead.
"Potter!" Snape could only possibly look angrier if there was cartoon smoke billowing out of his ears. (It was best not to ask how Harry, who had been kept away from television his entire life, knew what angry cartoon people looked like. It was best not to ask because he would then babble on for a few hours about half-remembered things he had read in books about the 'collective subconscious', when the answer was in fact that he was really damn sneaky and had arranged mirrors and a hole in his cupboard door to be able to watch telly from a reclined position. He hadn't been able to hear it, but his imagined storylines were way more awesome anyway.)
"Professor!" he responded, snapping his heels together and saluting.
For a second, Harry was pretty sure Snape's head would explode from rage. Man, if he managed to do to Snape in two months what he hadn't managed to do to his uncle in ten years… Harry would have to rethink his strategy with the Dursleys. He could easily get Vernon out of the way within a week if he acted like himself. Or push his uncle over the line to manslaughter. Okay, he'd have to think about this a bit harder.
"Detention," Snape managed to growl, separating the word by syllables into three separate words. De-ten-tion. It was a truly impressive pronunciation, one that would be studied in universities for years to come.
"For what, sir?" Harry asked, giving his best innocent and hurt look. Unfortunately, that face hadn't had a lot of practice.
"Disrespecting a professor and being a general nuisance to humanity." Snape had managed to gain control of his temper, and switch to a disdainful sneer, which saddened Harry a bit because it ruined his brain's attempt to create a Scale of Rage that he could measure things upon. Aw.
He was then hit with a blast of water for his pouting (he assumed), leaving melty hair gel dripping down his face. Ewww. That was just gross. "Follow," Snape snapped (heheheh, alliteration was fun!), turning sharply on his heel and stalking off.
Harry did indeed follow, mostly so he could take notes on how to do the sharp billowyness the correct way, although the toxic chemicals most likely soaking into his skin would probably kill him before he ever got to attempt to recreate it.
For once, Snape seemed to be completely done with supervising Harry's detention, and just tossed him into the Trophy Room with a strict command to clean the entire place, top to bottom.
Harry entered the room, inwardly thinking that they had already been over how this kind of punishment didn't work on him. The door slammed shut, and a quick test of the doorknob informed him that no, there would be no escape. Abandon all hope, ye who et cetera et cetera.
"Well, well, well, who's this ickle firstie?" A grinning freckled face topped with red hair popped out of freakin' nowhere, holding a duster.
An identical face popped up next to it. "Aw, it's Harry Potter, the Slytherin firstie!"
Harry stared at the demented faces blankly for a second, before it clicked why they were familiar. His mortal enemies! (Er, other than magical Hitler, of course.) How he'd managed to forget about them, when he was reminded by catching sight of their twenty-three siblings running around the school, he did not know. Other than the fact that two months is in fact four lifetimes for an eleven year old, and how was he supposed to remember stuff from previous lifetimes? Exactly!
"I refuse to talk to you," he said, putting his nose firmly in the air the way he'd seen Draco do on many previous occasions, and heading over to start cleaning. After all, he had a banquet to celebrate his parents' deaths to get to!
...that was possibly a bit morbid, even for him.
"We're hurt!" "Look at us, just crying over here!"
Harry wondered if it was considered gauche to try and crush your enemies with a giant gaudy trophy. Probably.
Some people would say that Harry's hatred of the Weasley twins was, say, unfounded, or a tad bit premature. Those people could shut their goddamn mouths now, because he had just spent two hours trapped with Moe and Larry (so named because, damn it, those were the only two Stooges he could remember the names of, okay?) and was ready to go on whatever the wizarding version of a school shooting spree was.
Instead, Harry practiced the breathing exercises that the therapist-he-had-never-seen would have probably taught him. And took off running the second the doorhandle actually turned when he went test it out (approximately every thirty seconds).
Somehow – personally he blamed Mother Nature and Father Time, those canoodling harlots – there was still an hour and a half before dinner. Harry, ignoring the tiny bits of his genetic code urging him towards responsibility and actually completing his homework at some point sooner than 'half an hour before it is due', headed off with much purpose to rendezvous with Dave, who had said he'd be spending the afternoon on the west lawn harassing the wildlife. After a quick run to the dorm bathroom to re-do his Snape costume, of course.
Little over an hour later, and Harry had gotten tired of chasing mice with his snake buddy, so it was probably a good thing that dinner time had hit. "Hey Dave, wanna go to the Halloween banquet? They probably got batsss and ssstuff, sssince wizards are weird like that."
Dave looked highly interested in the idea of flying mice. "It'sss on like Donkey Kong!" he cheered, slithering up Harry's leg and torso to settle around his neck. "Forward, minion!"
Harry gave a sarcastic salute and headed off.
Indeed, the Great Hall was decked out in the most god-awful gaudy celebration of Satan he had ever seen in his (rather short) lifetime. Harry entertained the very satisfying idea of dropping the entire Dursley family head-first into the place and locking the doors. Aah, the screams of the damned, better than Top of the Pops really.
Well, he assumed. He'd never listened to Top of the Pops. Which... back to the Dursleys' screams and whimpers. Aaah.
"...your cackling isss very disssturbing," Dave commented after a moment, snapping Harry out of his beautiful, beautiful dream.
"Ssso'sss your face," he responded absently before weaving his way over to the Slytherin table. His house was seemingly conflicted about how to react – half were cheerfully going crazy over the mounds of delicious Halloween-themed food; the other half were looking distinctly sulky, probably for the same reasons that the portion of the Ravenclaw table that he'd passed whining about the over-commercialization of wizarding holidays was upset.
Huh. Some things were universal.
Harry took his customary place between Millicent and Nott, across from Malfoy who was flanked by his lackeys. Except today Parkinson took Nott's usual spot, which was both annoying and a bit of a relief, since Harry was still unsure of what to do about Nott's, like, actual speaking. God it had been creepy. Harry almost wished he had a teddy bear to hug in remembrance.
...his observational skills were going into rapid decline, he decided, since it took him a good five minutes to figure out that the entire first year cohort of Slytherins was staring at him. Part of this was because they were doing a very well-bred staring – corner of the eyes, occasional glances, but their focus was definitely on him.
Parkinson decided to speak up, finally. "Ah, Harry? Why are you... impersonating Professor Snape?"
"For Halloween," he said, the 'duh' highly implied. But not quite highly enough, so he added: "Duh."
"...what does it have to do with Halloween?" Zabini asked after the others shared confused looks for a few long moments.
Oh fer- were they serious?! "Little wizards and witches don't do trick-or-treating?" They looked blank. "Guising?" he tried, even though he didn't think any of them were Irish or Scottish. Still blank. Harry sighed. "You wizards and your outright worship of Satan without giving children candy sicken me."
They stared for another moment, and then shifted their attention to Millicent, Harry's unofficial translator. She sighed, looking highly put-upon (and also a bit like a bull right before a red cape was waved in front of it; Harry was vaguely concerned). "Muggle children dress up in costume on Halloween and go door-to-door asking for treats – these days generally candy." The others made 'ooooh' faces.
Harry, meanwhile, sulked. At least until a bat got fairly close and Dave decided to strike – he missed, but seemed to get into the spirit of things and started racing up and down the table in search of other low-flying winged rats, causing much screeching and cursing among the girls and boys of Slytherin. Harry watched, and possibly cheered him on around a mouthful of caramel apple.
Dave had sulkily returned after having a few large and heavy objects thrown at him, and the table (and by extension, the rest of the hall) had finally settled down when the doors suddenly banged open.
Professor McStutter (Harry forgot what his real name was) yelped, "TROLL! IN THE DUNGEON!" and promptly fell over. Hopefully dead, but the rest of the school was screaming and freaking out too loudly for him to go check. They never let him have his corpses – uh, that is, fun. Yes. They never let him have fun. Move along, nothing to see here.
Parkinson had that look again. "I wonder what breed of troll it is. Most of the British trolls don't come this far south, they prefer the very north. The Hebrides are littered with them, Father says."
Harry had always been a smart cookie, and knew where this was heading. "We're not checking it out. We're not," he said, in a rare show of intelligence.
The others gave him wary looks, fairly certain this was a trick of his, but for once Harry wanted to do the sensible thing: not go out and get his damn self killed.
And, of course, he was overruled. Malfoy refused to go (meaning Crabbe and Goyle were out as well), and Greengrass made a weird comment to Harry ("You know Platform 9 and 3/4? Well I know something else with the same exact measurements."), gave another eyebrow waggle, and also refused. Zabini looked morbidly interested and agreed to come along "if only to cart away the corpses", and Nott gave his usual blank-eyed stare that Parkinson (with the practice of having known him since infanthood) interpreted as agreement, and Millicent agreed to come along to try and keep them all alive, because god knew the group didn't otherwise have the common sense god gave a grapefruit.
Harry apparently had been volunteered without his agreement. Oh, whatever.
So they managed to find it surprisingly easily. And nowhere near the dungeons. McStutter was pretty much a moron, Harry decided – but then again, he'd figured that out about five minutes into the first class.
"HOLY CRAP, WHO LET ROSEANNE OUT?!"
Three guesses as to who yelled that when they found the troll shoving itself into the girl's bathroom. And none of the three guesses count.
The troll grunted and attempted to remove itself from the doorway. With a loud creaking and cracking, it got out, and whirled around to face the Slytherins. Well, 'whirled' was a misleading term for something that moved approximately five feet per hour, but it did the troll version of whirling very well.
"Quick!" Harry decided, "Cook up as many turkeys as possible before she goes for the nearest flesh!"
For some reason, this suggestion made some sort of sense to them – or, more likely, they were all in a state of shock and panic too great to turn on their automatic Harry filters – and Parkinson quickly snapped her fingers and shrieked, "RIZZO!"
A disgustingly malformed little creature popped up. "Yes Mistress Pansy?" it attempted to squeak, but halfway through Pansy cut it off.
"Five turkeys, now!"
It nodded, and popped out for a second before reappearing with five live turkeys, which Parkinson promptly ordered him to throw at the troll. (Well, Harry suggested it, and Parkinson repeated it slightly woodenly.)
The troll looked confused, and then suddenly hungry. Harry was reminded unpleasantly of Dudley, and sure enough, the giant gross creature fell upon the gobbling feathered creatures much as Dudley fell upon chocolate cake. And he meant 'fell upon' in the 'ate ferociously' way, not 'fell upon' as in that time he tripped Dudley who had landed face-first in the chocolate cake.
Little known fact: trolls have an extreme weakness to tryptophan.
More well known fact: turkeys have a lot of tryptophan.
The group of eleven year olds stood over the snoring troll, distinctly nonplussed. "Oh, it's a Manx coral troll," Parkinson said after a minute of inspection. She offered no explanation for why on earth it would be called that, but that was okay, Harry was becoming used to the wizarding world not making sense.
"YOU SAVED ME!" a voice shrieked out of the bathroom, and a cloud of hair flew out to hug Harry. Tightly. Around the neck. Ack.
His "friends" (oh the horror) seemed more amused than worried for him as he flailed helplessly (although he also thought he caught a muttered, "Ew, Muggle germs," from Zabini as he stepped back). She finally let go, and Harry backpedaled to hide behind Millicent in slight terror. "Parkinson! She saved you! Not me!" he managed to insist.
Parkinson rolled her eyes. "For Merlin's sake, Harry, we've shared ninety percent of our waking hours for the past two months. You have permission to use my first name at this point." Granger, for her part, looked distinctly unsure about thanking Parkinson – oh, fine, Pansy – the way she had Harry. Wise move on her part, because Harry was pretty sure Pansy was a biter.
The teachers – day late and a pound short, as per usual – rounded the corner at a run. "We heard screaming!" puffed McStutter, who for some reason was on the fearsome strike force.
"It was her," Harry immediately said, pointing an accusing finger at Granger. She just kind of stared at him.
For that matter, so did the professors, although they quickly changed direction of staring to the snoring troll. And then back up to Harry.
He shrugged. "It's probably best not to ask."