Harry woke up slowly, blinking in the late morning light, as he fumbled for his glasses. Muffled noises were filtering in to his bedroom from the first floor; the Dursley's were home. He regretted not taking advantage of having the house to himself by watching the telly while he could. Then again, his own life had gotten so much bigger and more exciting yesterday, he doubted anything he could have found to watch would have compared.

He had gone to bed early last night, exhausted from the long day shopping, but he had been too excited to fall asleep until late. He had not even taken the time to unpack anything before he'd collapsed in a heap, to then stare at the blurry ceiling for hours on end. He had not read the letters from his parents and grandparents, yet. He was too afraid. He would gather the courage to get around to it soon.

Eventually.

The newly softened mattress of Harry's bed clung to him, practically begging him to snuggle deeper into its embrace and fall back to sleep. It was so tempting, to indulge in the simple luxury of comfort and warmth, but his new trunk, and all of its content, called to him.

He had promised Professor Snape that he would prove himself by the time school started, and he was going to. He had the resources he needed to learn, he had the safety and isolation he needed to focus, and he had the motivation he needed to push himself toward success. No excuses.

Dragging himself out of bed, Harry contemplated wearing one of his new wizarding robes, but even if he planned on spending the entire day in his room, that seemed like pushing his luck with the Dursleys too far, so he opted for Dudley's old castoffs, as usual.

He had promised Professor Snape not to avoid meals with the Dursleys, but he doubted they wanted to see him today, especially as they were returning from a frantic, miserable trip that had been his fault, to begin with. So, he grabbed a sandwich from the tray that little elf creature had left for him, and ate it with one hand as he opened his re-enlarged trunk and began pulling things out.

The books were easy; he moved them directly to the bookshelf that was only partially filled with kids books that Dudley had never been interested in reading. He would decide how best to order them on the shelves later.

The griffin figurine also went on the shelves. It was tempting to put it on the desk, so he could always see if someone was sneaking up on him while he studied, but decided that it would be too distracting. His wand, and the precious things Professor Snape had given him from the Potter vault, were placed reverently in the little drawer of his nightstand, with the exception of the framed picture of his parents, which he displayed proudly by his bed.

The robes were already neatly folded, so he carefully transferred them into his small chest of drawers, shoving Dudley's cast-offs to the side to make sure the robes could lie flat.

The gold of the pocket-watch Mr. Malfoy had given him glittered in his trunk, and Harry stroked it's cold, finely engraved surface, before putting it into one of the front pockets of his oversized jeans. The weight of it was satisfying, as Harry could feel it close to him, even when both of his hands were full with other things, reminding him that he was a responsible young wizard, now. Mr. Malfoy had said so, himself.

He grabbed a stack of parchment, a bottle of ink, and a couple of quills to set on his desk, but left his other school supplies in the trunk. He was not going to actually use his cauldron or anything before school, anyways, and did not want to risk forgetting something important behind, when he left.

The quill felt odd in Harry's hand as he wrote a quick letter to Professor Snape that the Dursleys were home, and had not given him any trouble so far. He promised that he would start studying potions first, and thanked him again for everything he'd done the day before. The letter was not great; the thickness of his letters varied a lot as he tried to get used to how often to re-dip his quill, and there were a few ink blotches scattered on the page, but he figured Professor Snape wouldn't care, since it wasn't an actual essay where he needed to be marked.

He rolled up the note, and moved warily to his owl's cage. The creature was sleeping fitfully, its feathers ruffled, and Harry spoke softly to it as he tapped on the cage's bars to wake it up.

"Hey there, boy. I have a letter for you," he said, waving the rolled parchment for the owl to see, and tossing the bird a couple of treats. "Now, I stood up for you yesterday, and I said you'd behave, so I need you to do me a favor and not bite me… or Professor Snape when you drop this off, got it? Can you do that for me?"

The owl looked at him blankly and readjusted his wings.

"Be good for me, boy, and I promise I'll have a real good name picked out for you, by the time you come back. Plenty of treats, too, and I'll leave the window open tonight, so you can go hunting whenever you want. Deal?"

The owl hooted, and began nipping at the door to his cage.

"Okay, I'm going to let you out now. Remember, no biting or scratching, right?"

Harry released the owl, and ducked as it flew around the room, hooting its triumphal freedom and threatening to knock over the whole bookshelf, even with so many heavy textbooks weighing it down.

Harry laughed. "Yeah, I don't like being caged up much either, boy. Hold still while I attach this to you, and I'll open the window so you can really stretch your wings, yeah?"

The owl landed on Harry's desk, scattering the stack of parchment, and sidled over to the edge, his talons clacking against the hard wooden surface.

It took a while for Harry to figure out how to attach the letter, and his owl butted its head impatiently against Harry's hands several times in the process, but he didn't bite… hard. Harry stroked its head and avoided its sharp, questing beak, yet again.

"There you go, boy. Go take this to Professor Snape for me. Show me how fast you can be!"

The owl hooted loudly and bobbed its head in excitement as Harry opened the magical window Professor Snape had made. It took off with gusto and Harry had to grab his ink bottle in midair before it shattered on the floor. No amount of protective spells would stop Aunt Petunia from killing him if he left such a big, black stain on her floor.

With that out of the way, Harry had nothing further to distract himself from studying. He took a deep, steadying breath as he looked at his shelves, now full of books, and at his scattered stack of blank pages. It was a daunting task.

At least he knew which subject he wanted to start with. He pulled his potions textbook off of the shelf, and opened it to the first recipe.

He had had an idea, a while ago, about a way to better understand either chemistry or cooking better, about why different ingredients should or should not go together, and how to know whether heat should be used, and all that stuff, but he had never seen the point in actually trying it. Aunt Petunia never praised him if he put extra effort into his cooking, only punished him if he messed up, or changed something in a way she didn't like, and Harry's teachers at school were hardly any better. He had a lot of ideas about how to do things, but he rarely bothered with any of them.

He had never cared about impressing anyone before, like he wanted to impress Professor Snape.

He'd give his study method a try for the first recipe, and if it didn't work, then he'd just read the instructions, take notes, and try to memorize the words that seemed important, like what he figured was normal, but he hoped it would work. He wanted to not just know what to do in Professor Snape's class, but why to do it, and how to replicate it.

He read the recipe through several times, to figure out how he wanted to categorize things, to start. Once he'd settled on a plan, he took his first piece of blank parchment, and wrote the header 'Ingredients' at the top of the page. He also made pages for 'Equipment', 'Ingredient Preparation Techniques', 'Stirring Techniques', 'Temperatures', 'Quantities and Ratios', and 'Times'.

After reading the ingredients list more closely, he added different sub-headers to the ingredients page, 'Plant-based', 'Animal-based' and 'Inorganic'.

Once that was finished, he wrote down every ingredient included in the recipe in the correct category, as well as every other page with the description of each technique, equipment piece, or other factor listed in the recipe. After a moment's consideration, he added another page headed 'Effects', and added each color change, viscosity change, and bubbling state mentioned as an indicator to move on to the next step.

Getting fidgety, he stretched his back and cracked his knuckles, then stacked all the pages, except for the ingredients page, neatly together and set them aside. He took the ingredients page, and pinned it to the corkboard above his desk. Using the page as reference, he wrote down each different ingredient on the top of a new separate page, then flipped to the glossary of the textbook, and began taking notes for each ingredient. It took a long time, and Harry was struggling to concentrate, but he pushed himself to keep going, forcing himself to focus on every little detail that he found interesting, in order to keep himself engaged.

Once he'd finished with the glossary, he flipped through the other potions books Professor Snape had recommended, as well as the herbology ones Mrs. Malfoy had pointed out, and added every single relevant detail he could find on each. It was exhausting, and by the time he was finished, he was at the verge of giving up on this crazy plan entirely, and just reading the books through once or twice before September.

He breathed a heavy sigh of relief when a large eagle owl alighted outside of his magical window, and Harry eagerly let the bird inside, anticipating the welcome distraction it brought with it.

He gave it a treat before unfastening the letter and small package that it carried, and pet it idly as he read the outside of the letter. It was addressed to him, from the Malfoys.

Harry took a closer look at the large owl, sitting regally on the window sill, and accepting his affectionate caresses with aplomb. Mr. Malfoy had a point about an owl being able to leave a good first impression. He hoped again that his own owl would behave when dropping off his note to Professor Snape. He wondered how long it would take.

He dismissed the owl, with another treat, and it hooted gravely before taking flight.

Draco had promised that he'd write every day, but Harry had honestly not expected anything from the family of blondes so soon!

The letter, it turned out, was an official birthday card, signed by the whole family, with a special letter from Draco tucked inside.

Hi Harry!

Happy late Birthday! I hope you like the books I got you- they really are my favorite- but I talked to mother and father, and they agreed that you deserve a little more than that for your Hogwarts Year Birthday! I hope you like them! Don't forget to write me back and tell me if you don't like anything. And tell me how your summer is going! Me and my parents want to help, so if you need anything in one of your books explained, or if you have any questions about our world, or if your muggles are unbearable to be around, let us know!

Draco

Harry grabbed the small package with a big, cheesy grin on his face, and yelped when it expanded as he opened it. It was nearly as big as he was!

Peering inside, he found that there were several individually wrapped presents within. Harry had never gotten to unwrap a fancy present before, and the shiny, colorful paper wrapping had him mesmerized.

He pulled the first present from the large box, and warred within himself over whether to tear the paper open with reckless abandon, or to pull it apart carefully, to preserve the wrapping, in case he needed to wrap presents of his own, in the future.

Caution won out. He took his time, delicately peeling back the tape that held the wrapping closed, and set it on his bed. Beneath the wrapping was a box of expensive looking specialty chocolates, with a short note from Draco attached to the top, explaining which flavors were his favorites. Harry popped one in his mouth, and let it melt on his tongue, before setting the chocolates aside, and grabbing the next present.

This one was a snake figurine. It was green and silver, and was notably larger than the griffin one Professor Snape had gotten him the day before. The note from Draco on this one simply said, "Slytherin Rules". Harry wasn't going to argue with that!

After that, he got several sets of casual, but finely tailored, wizarding clothes, including robes and undershirts, and trousers, and even a pair of dragonhide boots! This one came with a note from Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy, explaining that, while Madam Malkin's was the best clothier in Diagon for school robes, Twilfoot and Tattings made the superior clothing, in most cases, and Harry would blend in better in Slytherin if he mixed a few pieces from them into his garb.

Next, was a small, extravagantly decorated, silver music box with a dancing unicorn on the top, that played a personalized Happy Birthday song to Harry by default, but also contained several popular classical wizarding pieces, as well as a handful of Draco's favorite wizarding pop songs.

He also got a deck of wizarding playing cards, that came with a booklet outlining the rules of several different games that could be played in groups, or alone, a full set of Wizarding Encyclopedias, 'for the intrepid young scholar,' the attached note from Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy read, and a large, moving poster for Draco's favorite quidditch team.

With only two presents left in the box, Harry pulled out the one that was more plainly decorated, and grinned widely as he pulled off the lid to unveil a fully decorated birthday cake, with his name written neatly in green and silver icing, and eleven lit candles flickering on top. Harry reset his music box to play Happy Birthday to him one more time, and then blew out the candles, laughing when they exploded into confetti around him, before puffing out of existence before they hit the floor.

The last box was big, and a little awkward to hold onto as he pulled it from the box. He unwrapped it slowly, savoring the anticipation one final time, and gasped when he saw what it was. It was a toy quidditch set, complete with a toy broom that actually flew, a miniature bat and soft bludger, a quaffle with a single set of three goals, that could be affixed to any flat surface, and a practice snitch, which self-regulated its movement to always be a doable challenge for the person chasing it to catch, and would never leave the room it was released in, on its own.

Harry barely fit on the toy broom, but something about the sensation of floating and freedom that he felt, suspended in midair, felt right. He whooped loudly in delight, and then slammed his hands quickly over his mouth and listened anxiously for his aunt of uncle to come tell him off for being too loud. There was a lull in the talking down below, and Harry held his breath, but it slowly picked back up again, and Harry let out a sigh of relief.

Tentatively, Harry leaned forward on the broom, and it inched forward with him. He leaned back, and it reversed. He lifted himself up and leaned forward, and it dipped toward the floor, then he sank his hips low and pulled back on the broom handle, and the broom climbed higher. Brilliant.

There was a final note from Draco on the quidditch set box, challenging Harry to a seeker's dual when they got to school. He assured Harry that they were toy brooms, not real ones, so they weren't breaking school rules by bringing them, and then spent nearly a page ranting about how unfair the school rules were to begin with, and how they should be able to use their own brooms, once they passed a basic flying test. He said that his father was on the board of governors for the school, and he had tried to get him to change the rules, but his father had declined. Draco seemed to think this was a grave injustice, but was determined to find ways to practice flying every day anyways, so he would be ready to tryout for the Slytherin team in second year.

Harry looked over his new pile of presents and smiled incredulously at his luck in finding such a generous family to take him under their wing. He did not deserve them.

Eyeing the cake, Harry silently begged for Professor Snape's forgiveness, as he used his potions knife to cut himself a slice, and practiced flying slowly around on his broom with no hands, as he ate it. It was delicious, but the fact that it was his made it even better.

He decided that he should write a reply to Draco right away, so it would be ready for when his owl returned. He thanked Draco and his parents for the presents, and assured them that while they were not necessary, he liked each and every one of them very much, but the toy broom was his favorite. He was vague when he assured them that his muggles were leaving him alone for now, and explained to Draco his idea for how to get a solid working grasp of how potions worked before school started. He asked them all if there was anything else he could buy or learn that would help him fit in at school better, and reminded Mr. Malfoy that he had promised to tell them how to get to the Hogwarts kitchens.

Once the letter was finished, signed, and sealed, Harry looked at his stack of research papers warily. Distraction time was over. It was time to get back to work.

Harry stayed on the toy broom as his filled in every detail he could find for each piece of equipment, preparation method, and brewing method that he could find. It was surprisingly easier to concentrate on his work, when he was dedicating a small corner of his mind to balancing on the broom. Ironically, it kept him grounded; kept his mind from wondering until he was daydreaming about something else, entirely. The fact that each of these items had much less to note down than the ingredients themselves had, helped too.

He kept an eye out in his textbook's glossary for any name that stood out to him that might work for an ornery black owl, and jotted down a few, that he thought would work well. He decided he would wait until he could look the bird over in person one more time, before he would decide for sure.

Gathering each of his pages of notes together, Harry began cross referencing, looking at each step of the recipe at a time, and comparing what each ingredient, stir, or temperature change might be adding or changing to the potion, and writing down his guesses for why each was important.

This part was a lot more fun than the pure research. It was like solving a puzzle, and Harry made sure to make a note for everything he could not figure out, to come back to it later, after he'd repeated this process on more of the recipes, to see if there were patterns that he could detect, which would give him the missing clues he needed. It was exhilarating, every time he made a breakthrough, and by the time he was finished, he could piece together about three quarters of the thought process behind the steps.

He pushed back from his desk, and did a celebratory backflip on his broom. It was later than he thought it would be; the time had gotten away from him as he'd worked, and his stomach growled. Apparently as single chocolate and a piece of cake had not been enough to keep him full, after his morning sandwich had worn off.

He flew over to the sandwich tray- he might never walk again if he could help it- and grabbed another sandwich, munching on it slowly, as he reflected on his day. He had accomplished a lot, much more hard thinking than his brain usually allowed him to do. Normally he got too fidgety or bored to concentrate, and his lack of motivation made it too difficult to force himself to stay focused.

A tapping at his window grabbed his attention, and Harry smiled when he saw his owl waiting impatiently for him. He grabbed a handful of treats, ready to bribe the bird into not pecking him to death, and opened the window. The owl hopped in, excitedly, and looked at Harry with expectant silver eyes.

Harry reached for the book-shaped bundle the owl was carrying, and yelped when the owl nipped at his fingers, having finished its treats in record time. Harry pushed the owl's head away gently, with the flat of his hand, and chastised him softly. "You promised you'd be good, boy. I did my part, and looked up some good names for you. Hold still so I can get a good look at you, and pick out the best one, for a handsome bird like you."

He owl preened, and clicked its beak.

"How do you like the name Mercurius, boy?" Harry asked softly, gently scratching the crown of the bird's head.

Mercurius bobbed its head and hooted loudly.

"That's a good boy, Mercurius. I have another letter for you to send. Do you need a rest before you deliver it?"

Mercurius stared balefully at Harry, and flexed his talons.

Harry chuckled. "I guess not."

He gave Mercurius his letter for Draco, and sent him on his way, humming happily to himself as he watched the bird fly off. He really was a beautiful creature. A little vindictive, possibly too cunning for his own good, and definitely full of himself, but he was a good owl. Harry liked him.

When Mercurius had vanished from sight, Harry turned his attention to the package Professor Snape had sent. He opened the plain, brown paper wrapping, and found a note resting on top of an old, worn-out text book.

Dear Harry-

Thank-you for letting me know you are safe. Remember the rules for your new room. I don't want you turning into a spoiled brat before you arrive at Hogwarts. The enclosed text book belonged to me when I was a first year. Your mother and I wrote a lot of notes in the margins together, and I thought you might like to have it. You will not be able to pass off those notes as your own insights, so don't even try it. Have a good day, Mr. Potter, and write to me again soon.

Prof. Snape

Harry opened the old potions textbook to the first page, and gasped. There, stuck to the inside of the front cover, was a picture of an eleven-year-old Lily Evans and Severus Snape, linking arms and grinning at the camera in their blank Hogwarts robes. The picture must have been taken before they were sorted into their houses. An inscription above the picture read, "This book is the property of the Potioneers Extraordinaire. Proceed with caution."

The book was a slightly different edition to the one Harry had, but it was still very close, and Harry flipped through the pages, reading the potions insights the two had made, the idle notes to each other, probably made in class as they were meant to be quietly working, and even the odd spell to try out, or joke one of them had overheard.

Tears filled Harry's eyes, as he began to piece together his mother's personality. She was often worried that Snape was not getting enough sleep, and was antagonizing the Gryffindor boys by not backing down from a fight, even when he was outnumbered. She was especially knowledgeable when it came to organic potions ingredients, and she had a dry, cutting sense of humour, but she always followed up her jokes with a little smiley face, to show that she wasn't trying to be mean. And the puns. Harry could not stop himself from chuckling as he read her notes. 'Professor Slughorn looks slug-worn-out today.' 'Eye of newt thought of that, Sev.' 'You stir the pot, Sev. I'll make sure it doesn't boil over. Story of our lives.'

"I love you, Mum," Harry whispered, and doubled his vow to excel at potions.

Harry loved his broom, but Professor Snape had given him treasure, and even with all of the bad things that had happened in Harry's life thus far, he did not deserve to be this lucky.