Disclaimer – Everything you recognise belongs to JKR. All the rest is simply me playing in her sandbox.

-oOoOo-

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

Chapter 3

"Get out of the way, Scarhead!"

The taunt snapped Hermione's head up from where she was rummaging in her book bag for her timetable. There was only one person that she'd met so far at Hogwarts who could drawl like that. Draco Malfoy. And sure enough, she quickly spotted the blonde headed boy striding straight at the group of Gryffindors.

Ahead of her, Harry appeared to momentarily freeze in place before quickly stepping to the side. Unfortunately he wasn't quite fast enough to avoid the shoulder that Gregory Goyle, one of Malfoy's ever present stooges, planted in his chest, sending him staggering into the rough stone wall.

"Perhaps next time you'll learn to stay out of the way of your betters," Malfoy sneered at the black haired boy adjusting his glasses back onto his nose.

"Freak!" Vincent Goyle shot as a parting remark as the three Slytherins continued down the corridor.

Harry, though, Hermione could see, had frozen in place. Everything about him screamed out for others to leave him alone. His head was down, staring at the floor and somehow he'd made himself seem even smaller than he was already was.

"Are you alright?" Hermione asked, bustling up to him. "He didn't hurt you did he?"

Without looking up, Harry simply shook his head.

"Come on, mate, don't worry about it. They're not worth it," Ron told him with a punch on the arm.

Hermione's eyes narrowed at the red-headed Gryffindor. Surely he could see that a punch on the arm after just being bullied like that was the last thing that Harry needed.

"Yeah, they're just a bunch of snake-heads," Seamus Finnegan agreed. "Just ignore 'em."

"Maybe one day someone'll actually stand up to them and they'll stop trying to push their weight around," said Neville.

For some reason, Hermione seriously doubted that.

"Come on, we're going to be late for Herbology," she pointed out.

-oOoOo-

Harry trailed along behind his classmates, his mind flicking from image to image of his first couple of days at Hogwarts.

When he'd first met Hagrid, he'd been told that he was famous. The people that he'd met at the Leaky Cauldron had drummed that lesson home. Everyone there had wanted to shake his hand and pat him on the back and 'welcome him back' to the wizarding world.

All for something that he couldn't remember doing. And more than that, for something that he wished had never happened.

He'd lived. His parents had died and Voldemort, the most evil wizard of the age had been defeated and disappeared. He'd stopped a war simply by failing to be killed. But without his parents, he wondered if it was worth it. Even when he'd simply thought that they'd died in a car crash like his Aunt and Uncle had told him, he'd wished that he'd died with them. There was nothing in his life at the Dursley's that made him want to live.

More times that he could count he'd dreamed what life would have been like if his parents had survived. He'd dreamed of birthdays and presents; hugs, kisses and being told that he was loved; kicking the football around the backyard with his dad and jumping on his parents bed in the morning.

All things that he'd never experienced.

Instead, his life had been filled with chores, bruises, broken bones, too little food and a cupboard that steadily grew smaller as he got older. And then there were the names. Freak. Boy. Weirdo. Scum. Scarhead. Useless. Waste of space. The list was endless.

Hogwarts was supposed to be somewhere new, somewhere where he had a chance of escaping that life.

Until Malfoy brought it all screaming back.

Scarhead.

Freak.

The hundreds of students from all houses and all year levels that stared at him, whispered about him, pointed at him and simply wouldn't leave him alone. Half the time all they seemed to want to do was to get an eyeful of his scar. The rest of the time everyone just wanted to meet him, to shake his hand and to become the best friend of 'the-boy-who-lived'.

But he could tell.

Very few of those people who wanted to be his 'friend' actually meant it. They just wanted to be 'in' with the 'celebrity'. Hermione was different. So was Neville. And Fred and George Weasley had spent the last two days busy making fun of the whole idea. Ron, though, was one that he wasn't sure of. He could go either way and Harry was reserving judgement.

All he prayed for was that people would get tired of it soon and leave him alone so that he could make some sense of this strange new world.

-oOoOo-

"Ah, yes," Professor Snape said in his quiet, silky voice. "Harry Potter, our new … celebrity."

Hermione frowned and risked a glance at the boy beside her. Harry was slumped down in his chair obviously trying to make himself as small as possible.

Her attention was snapped back to the potions master as he began extolling the virtues of potions. His love of the subject was clear and his knowledge was reputed to be second to none. The rumours around Gryffindor Tower stated that Professor Snape favoured the Slytherins above all others, but Hermione didn't put any stock in that. He was a teacher. Teachers didn't show favouritism.

" … I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even put a stopper in death – if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach," Professor Snape continued.

Hermione leant forward. She knew that she was atrocious when it came to cooking and both she and Harry had agreed that potions should be very much like cooking, something that Harry was adamant that he was particularly good at (gathering ingredients and mixing the right amounts together correctly to make some new). She was determined to learn the art of potion making as well as she learnt everything else. That is to say, perfectly.

"Potter!" Professor Snape suddenly whirled on her partner, "What would I get if I added powered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

Instantly a page from their potion book appeared before Hermione's mind's eye and her hand shot up. Professor Snape, though, completely ignored her, his eyes focused solely on Harry. For his part, Harry's eyes darted this way and that before he shook his head.

"I don't know, Sir," he said quietly.

"Tut, tut – clearly fame isn't everything," Professor Snape sneered.

He turned as if to walk away before spinning back around.

"Let's try another. Where would I look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

Almost before the question had finished being asked, Hermione's hand was once more in the air. Surreptitiously glancing around, Hermione could see her fellow Griffindors looking shocked and pityingly towards their poor classmate. The Slytherins, meanwhile, were in near hysterics at the inquisition that Harry was being put under.

"I don't know, Sir," Harry near whispered.

"Thought that you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh, Potter? Tell me, what's the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?" Professor Snape continued.

Once again, Harry looked around and Hermione saw him first lock his eyes on her and then Neville before looking back at the potions master.

"I don't know, Sir, but I think Hermione does. You could ask her," Harry replied, making Hermione's eyes nearly pop out of her head in disbelief at not only the rudeness of his answer but the casual way that he'd just brought her to Professor Snape's attention.

"Ten points for your cheek, Potter," Professor Snape replied, his voice a bare whisper that still managed to carry to the entire room. "Neither fame, nor celebrity, nor even know-it-alls will be tolerated in this classroom. And for your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful that it's known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat that can save you from most poisons and as for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, also known as aconite. Well? Why aren't you all writing this down?"

Instantly Hermione's quill was in her hand and she was scribbling down the information onto her parchment. Sneaking a look beside her, she could see that Harry's eyes were glistening. But she was sure that she was the only one to notice – his head was too far down with his messy black hair providing the perfect cover from any other prying eyes.

The lesson went quickly downhill from there.

As hard as she was trying, only the Slytherins, and particularly Malfoy, were able to get anything nice said to them the entire time that they were there. All the Gryffindors were ridiculed and sneered at continuously the entire time that they were mixing a simple potion to cure boils.

Harry, she noticed, caught the brunt of it. For some reason, Professor Snape simply seemed to hate him. Everything that happened, from Seamus' cauldron melting to Neville ending up drenched in the potion was deemed to be Harry's fault. By the end of the lesson, Professor Snape had taken a total of forty points from the boy beside her.

Hermione couldn't understand how the professor could act like that. She'd never ever imagined that a teacher could show so much malice towards a student. She'd just watched it happen and she still couldn't believe it.

And when Harry was the first to run from the classroom, his eyes once more looking like he was about to burst into tears, Hermione couldn't fault him in the slightest.

-oOoOo-

Harry pounded through the hallways as fast as his legs would take him. Black clad bodies appeared in front of him but he simply swerved, ducked and dodged the all.

He could feel the tears threatening to fall but he was determined to hold it in, to not give Snape the satisfaction of him crying. At least not until he was safely in his four-poster bed with the curtains firmly closed around him.

It took ten long minutes to run up from the dungeons where potions was held and across the castle before he managed to reach the foot of the stairs that led to Gryffindor Tower.

Barely pausing, Harry put his foot on the first step and looked up. A wall of black was heading straight at him. There was no way that he'd be able to slip through them all without a gaggle of them stopping him and wanting to stare at his scar. Breathing heavily, he flung his head backwards and forwards trying to find somewhere that he could hide until they'd all passed.

And then he saw it.

Just off to one side of the bottom of the staircase, a suit of armour stood in a small alcove. Within seconds Harry had squeezed to one side of it and slid along the wall to reach the lee of the staircase itself. As he started to slip down the wall to sit on the ground, he froze.

Right beside him, underneath the very stairs themselves, was a tiny door.