Author's Notes: Chapter 4 in the original version of the story was, in my opinion, pretty good. That doesn't mean there weren't things to improve and fix, just that there weren't many, and that the changes were relatively minor. Thus, easy to make, and further, the ones I found the time to make first. Here are the few new or substantially modified scenes that will be going into chapter 4, along with a summary of the knock-on changes that I'll be implementing throughout the story from then on to accommodate the new stuff, but which isn't big enough to merit showing here in SSaSH. Single lines, throwaway comments, that sort of thing.
New Scene 1: Hello, Hufflepuff!
Takes place immediately after the Sorting scene, slotting in nearly between that and the next.
"Everyone inside now," one of the older Prefects chided as a line of first-year Hufflepuffs each ducked down to clamber inside the barrel-shaped entrance to their common room. "Remember, it's the barrel two up from the bottom, middle of the second row, and if the opening looks too small just ignore that, it will always be big enough to get through if you duck."
Harry was short enough that he didn't have to duck the upper lip of the barrel. He wondered if all of the common rooms were this well-hidden; a single stack of decorate barrels in an otherwise unmarked corridor would be frightfully hard to find without a guide.
Beyond the barrel-length passageway, the Hufflepuff common room was a glowing nest of yellow, brown, and tan colors. Carpets and couches and cushy chairs littered the oval-shaped space with potted plants filling in little gaps between furniture and walls, fires roared in three separate fireplaces, and big windows rose up near the top of one wall, reaching right up to the low ceiling. It was dark outside, and Harry decided that if he ever forgot where his common room was, looking for the windows from outside would be a good place to start.
The older students all claimed the couches and big chairs, while the two prefects who had escorted him and his year-mates through the halls directed them to sit on one of the big, plush carpets. There were ten of them in Harry's year counting Harry himself, five boys and five girls. Some of them had introduced themselves during the feast – Harry smiled at Stephen Cornfoot, a brown-haired boy with coincidentally yellow-blond hair – but he didn't know most of them.
He couldn't shake the certainty that they all thought they knew him. Or, they thought they knew Harry Potter, and that he was Harry Potter. Two of the girls kept looking at him funny, and one of the other boys kept taking really obvious looks at his forehead.
"Hello everyone!" A squat, pleasantly-smiling lady with a big sunhat clambered through the entrance hole and shut the barrel lid behind herself. "I am Professor Sprout, head of Hufflepuff House. Most of you know me already."
The older students all agreed with that.
"Our newest Badgers, however…" She turned to look at Harry and the other first-years on the carpet. "We have a big crop this year! Remember that Hufflepuff house is all about working hard and helping other students, and you'll do well. I'll leave it to the prefects to explain all of the little things later. Tonight, let's go around and introduce ourselves, shall we?" She pointed to one of the girls Harry didn't know. "You, dear, what's your name?"
"I'm Hannah Abbot," the girl replied.
From there, Professor Sprout went around the group and got everyone's names. Harry did his best to memorize them all. The girls were Hannah Abbot, Susan Bones, Megan Jones, Sally Smith, and Matilda Eekins. The boys were Justin Finch-Fletchley, Wayne Hopkins, Ernest Macmillian, Stephen Cornfoot, and Harry Hebert.
"Harry Hebert," he enunciated clearly when it was his turn, last of the group.
"Is that so?" Professor Sprout asked. "No relation to Harry Potter?" She was only asking what it seemed everyone else was thinking, so he didn't hold it against her. Much.
"None at all," Harry told her. He hoped that would be the end of it.
And so it seemed it was, as she nodded and let the subject drop. "Welcome to Hufflepuff, all of you!" Professor Sprout said jovially, clapping her hands. "This will be a good year, I can feel it."
Susan Bones yawned, then flushed red and covered her mouth.
"I'll let the prefects tell you what you need to know, so you can all get to bed," Professor Sprout told them. "Randolph and Elizabeth here are the seventh-year prefects." She gestured to the tall boy and girl who had come up to stand behind her, then stepped out of the way, walking behind one of the couches to speak to a group of older students. A low murmur filled the common room as the older students all started talking.
"Right, we'll be quick about it," Randolph said to Harry and the others. "You're Hufflepuff, the house of the Badger, yellow and black. You'll all have classes together, and we'll be leading you around for the first week so you get a feel for the castle, so don't worry about any of that."
"Hufflepuff is the house of hard work and loyalty, and we're all friends here," Elizabeth continued, absently playing with the hem of her robe as she spoke. "The other houses have their spats and grudges, but nobody hates Hufflepuff, so be nice to everyone, work hard, and don't bad-mouth your fellow 'Puffs. Do that, try not to get pulled into the other houses' rivalries with each other, and you can't go wrong."
"House points aren't a big deal," Randolph took over. "Hufflepuffs work hard and play hard, but it's not about who wins in the end. Unless we're talking about Quidditch–"
"Where it is about who wins, but also about the fun and the game," Elizabeth cut in again. Harry wondered if they had rehearsed this speech beforehand. "Earn points by doing well in class, try not to lose too many with bad behavior or rule-breaking, but don't fret if overall we're losing to the other houses. And don't mind Snape, nobody expects him to be fair to anyone but his own. Slytherin is the house of ambition, for them winning is more important than anything, so he cheats like crazy by taking points from everyone else."
Who was Snape? Harry figured he would find out soon enough, if this person was so obvious he was called out by name.
"We have house activities on some weeknights," Randolph added, pointing to a big corkboard by the entrance barrel. "Keep an eye out there to see what and when. Professor Sprout likes the first-years to come to all of them, on account of you lot not having as many classes. Gobstones tournaments, trivia games, story-telling with snacks provided by the House Elves… All sorts of things."
"And, finally, your rooms are over there." Elizabeth indicated the two circular doors set into the back wall of the common room. "Boys on the left, girls on the right. Boys, be careful, there's magic to stop you from getting into the girls' dorm rooms. If you try to go into the wrong door, you'll get turned around and really confused for a few minutes."
"Why would we want to do that?" Ernest asked.
"You'll understand in a few years," Elizabeth laughed. "Now, off to bed with you."
"You can come to either of us, any of the younger prefects, or Professor Sprout if you have any problems." Randolph concluded.
Susan yawned again, this time not bothering to cover her mouth, and got up. The rest of the year followed along behind her. Harry was tired, but he wished he could stay out and look around the common room some more. Maybe tomorrow.
They split up at the doors, the girls going to one side and the boys to the other. Beyond the doors the corridor was circular too, and lit with real torches. Their rooms were right off the door, to the left, and labeled with names. Harry was sharing a room with Ernest and Wayne, leaving Justin and Stephen to take the other.
Harry's trunk and things were already in the room, which was good because he wanted to belly-flop onto the bed and fall asleep immediately, not spend an hour unpacking. That could wait until tomorrow.
"Hey, Harry."
This, though, probably couldn't wait. "Yeah?" he turned to Ernest and Wayne. Wayne was the one who had spoken.
"If you're not Harry Potter, where'd you get the scar?" Wayne asked. "It just seems… unlikely."
"You know if you're trying to do something secret, you can tell us," Ernest said. "We'll keep it secret."
"I'm not Harry Potter," he said for the hundredth time that day. "Really. I don't know who he is, or where he is, or why he has a scar like mine, or how everyone knows that if they can't even recognize who he is and isn't by sight."
"Huh?" Wayne looked confused.
"Alright, Hebert," Ernest huffed. "Sorry." He didn't sound sorry. "You have to admit it's very unlikely."
Harry could admit that, but he wouldn't. "It happened so it's not unlikely at all."
Ernest shrugged and went to his trunk. Wayne wandered off to the bathroom.
Harry flopped down on his bed. He was too tired to argue about his identity any more. Hopefully he had gotten through the worst of it today. He was here to learn about magic, not be mistaken for a celebrity!
Reason for Addition: We don't see enough of Harry's Hufflepuff compatriots throughout this story. Why make him Hufflepuff at all, I was asked, if it never affects everything? Well, my answer would be 'because if houses aren't really relevant to the story, the one with the fewest associated complications is the best to keep the story moving, thus Hufflepuff'.
But also, why not give them a bit more attention anyway, especially in this chapter where I'm supposed to be setting up Harry's existence at Hogwarts for future reference? Why not flesh them out to start with?
…Oh, because older Hufflepuff house members are basically nonexistent, so to write anything big about them requires a crap-ton of wiki trawling and annoyance with how little is properly defined or defined only by video game spinoffs and thus frustratingly formulaic or counterintuitive. That's why I didn't do it the first time around. Now that I've done the legwork (making up all the sets of prefects, filling out Harry's year with kids, remembering what Hufflepuff common room looks like, establishing a few Hufflepuff house quirks, etc), though, it'll be easier.
Propagated Changes: Substantial. More mentions of his yearmates and other named Hufflepuffs in conversation and thoughts, occasional references to Hufflepuff group activities, etc. I'm not throwing a Hufflepuff into the main group, because the idea here is that while they're all friendly, none of them are his close friends, and there is a difference, but they do exist and he's around them all the time, so they merit slightly more attention than I gave them the first time around.
New Scene 2: Snape Proves Harry Right
Comes after Hermione promises to help Harry answer Snape's questions by studying beforehand.
Snape did not back off. Not even when Harry started getting his questions right.
"A shrivelfig and a silver spoon, sir," Harry correctly answered one day.
Harry had yet to earn a single point in Potions class. Instead, Snape just kept posing questions until he found one Harry couldn't answer.
"What is the proper preparation method for dragon's blood?" Snape asked.
"Boil it if you're using it as a base, simmer if it's being added as a reagent, otherwise don't do anything to it," Harry answered. That was a lot more advanced, but dragons were cool, and he remembered reading about using their blood in certain potions. Headmaster Dumbledore was famous for research he did related to their blood, actually.
"Who developed the serrated stirring rod, and why?" Snape persisted, an ugly sneer firmly fixed on his face. He ignored Hermione's raised hand, even though she was sitting right next to Harry.
"Paracelsus?" Harry guessed. He had never heard of serrated stirring rods before, they weren't in the beginning potions' kit every first-year bought and none of the more advanced potions he and Hermione had studied mentioned using one, but when it came to famous brewers, there weren't that many to remember.
Snape's sneer intensified. Harry supposed he had lucked into the correct answer. "What happens when you add copper shavings to an over-boiled Felix Felis, fourth stage?"
Even Hermione's insistently raised hand dropped at that. "The potion fails?" Harry guessed.
"Incorrect. Twenty points from Gryffindor." Snape turned away from him, waved his hand at the board, and instructions were revealed, covering the entire thing in spidery chalk writing. "Everyone, begin. Thanks to Potter, you will have to be fast to finish before the end of class."
"Sir, what does happen when you add copper shavings to the fourth stage of Felix Felis?" Hermione piped up.
"Five points for wasting my time with frivolous questions," Snape said, his back still to her and the rest of the class.
"But you asked it first," Hermione cried out.
"Detention this evening, and another ten points," Snape said.
Harry reached out and grabbed Hermione's arm. "Don't give him more chances to take points for nothing," he hissed. Snape was an ass. She wouldn't get anything from him by giving him more opportunities to punish her.
Hermione's bottom lip quivered, but she nodded and went with him to the supplies cabinet to get what they needed for their potions. They weren't working together – Harry usually worked with Zach and Hermione with one of the other Ravenclaws on some sort of rotating schedule they had set up – but he noticed that she was quiet and unhappy for the rest of the class.
He didn't hear any more about it until the next day, in the library after the day's classes. He was busy looking at potions textbooks, having already finished his transfiguration homework. As it turned out, the reason he hadn't heard of serrated stirrers were that they were invented and then never used because somebody else at the time pointed out that no matter how sharp they were, cutting while stirring mutilated most ingredients, even ones in the sludgiest of potions that the stirrer was supposed to make less laborious. They were worse than normal stirrers in every way.
In other words… It was a useless piece of trivia that would never mean anything to a modern potions' student, or history student for that matter. He wished he was surprised.
Hermione slung her bag under the table as she sat down opposite him. Her hair was especially big and fluffy today, and he thought he saw a little flash above her forehead, though that was probably just a trick of the light. The puffy redness around her eyes was real, though.
"Don't bother," Hermione whispered.
"Huh?"
"He really does hate you," she continued in the same small, shaky voice.
This was not news to Harry, but Hermione had never admitted it before. What had happened in her detention with Snape? He asked as much.
"Nothing," she said. "He made me clean cauldrons while he talked."
That didn't sound like nothing to Harry. "What did he say?" he asked. "Should I go get Professor Sprout to turn him into fertilizer for the greenhouse?" Or his mum, to storm up to the castle and get Snape fired? He might do one of those anyway. Professor Sprout always said she was there for her badgers, and his mum had done as much for less obnoxiously terrible teachers in the past.
Hermione shook her head. "A lot of things about you that aren't true. And some things about me."
"That are equally untrue," Harry asserted. He was definitely going to write his mum about this.
"How do you know?" Hermione sniffled. "He said I'm a boorish know-it-all who has no friends because even the other Ravenclaws have more social skills than me, and that that will never change."
"He's only saying that because he has no friends and no social skills," Harry snapped.
Hermione's eyes widened.
"You never see him talking to the other Professors, do you?" Harry pressed on. "He's always silent and broody in the Great Hall. I think he's just jealous you're not as miserable and slimy as he is, and that you don't have to sit around staring into a cauldron and getting a crooked back all day, breathing in fumes. It's probably rotted his brain by now, and that's why he's such an arse."
"Harry!" Hermione choked.
"He keeps asking me questions that he didn't teach us the answers to," Harry continued, heedless of Hermione's mounting horror. It took a lot to get him mad, and while it was just him he was more inclined to ignore Snape's pettiness entirely, but now he was speaking his mind and would not be stopped before he was done. "That makes him a poor teacher, too. You know who looks up stupid random facts and mocks people who don't know them? Someone with no social skills and no friends. A textbook with an automatic copying charm could do what he does every Potions class, and without the bad batman impression or the insults or getting my name wrong on purpose."
Hermione coughed, her face going red.
"I think he's petty and stupid and not a good teacher, and I don't think you should listen to anything he says," Harry concluded.
"Harry…" Hermione gasped.
"Yes?" he asked, anticipating another hopefully shorter-winded lecture on authority figures.
Hermione hesitated.
He waited.
"It's envious," she said softly, though he got the impression that wasn't what she had meant to say originally. "Not jealous. Jealous means you're worried someone will take what you have. Envious means you want something they have that you don't."
"Oh." He was sure he had heard that before, but it was easy to get them mixed up.
"Was… is he wrong?" she asked. "About me?"
"Yes, obviously," he said.
Hermione smiled tearfully at her. "Okay, then. What are you going to do about him?"
"Talk to Professor Sprout, write my mum, ignore him, keep studying potions outside of class to learn," Harry said. "Not try to answer all his questions. It's pointless."
"Yeah." Hermione reached down for her bag and pulled out a stack of parchment. "There are so many more interesting things to learn, anyway! One of the older Ravenclaws gave me this list of things Muggleborn should know. Do you want to go through it with me?"
Harry realized that he might have accidentally made his first friend at Hogwarts.
"Yeah, that'd be great."
Reason for Addition: I didn't get any direct complaints about this rather small part of chapter four that I recall, but Hermione being a Mary-Sue did come up occasionally. That was never my intention, the idea was that she would, if anything, go too far in the other direction of not caring about authority figures so that it comes back around to being a flaw, but it's a fair complaint. I figured it would be good to give this major deviation point for her more attention than it got originally, to help emphasize how early she begins to change. Also, Harry shows off the occasionally ranty temper he demonstrates later with Lupin, which is nice.
Propagated Changes: You'll not see these here, because they're all single-line insinuations buried in mountains of old content spread across many chapters, but throughout the rest of the story I'm going to reference Hermione going out of her way to make things difficult for Snape in small ways, a more personal grudge she'll continue to hold. This will also be implied to take Snape's attention off of Harry, so as to justify him not being a bigger antagonist throughout the story. Also, minor changes are made to Harry's 'sending a letter' scene immediately after this one, to account for the larger narrative focus this event gets.
Replacement Scene 1: Competence in Magical Medicine
Replaces the post-Possession infirmary visit in second year.
"You petrified her?" Hermione demanded later, as she sat on the side of the bed he was stuck in until the school nurse gave him the all clear. "For crying?!"
"If it was the wraith, crying would have been a perfect way to pretend to be her!" Harry defended himself. "And that gave me time to explore the chamber and find the exit. When it wore off I let her talk." After hitting her with a few more anti-possession spells as he recovered from the strain of casting so many at once. He was pretty sure she was just a scared first-year now.
"You are such a boy," Hermione huffed, but she was smiling so Harry assumed she approved. "How did you get out?"
"I took her to the exit, but it was a big vertical pipe, so I asked how to get out." He shrugged his shoulders. "Turns out, she just had to say the word stairs and stairs came out of the walls."
Two people chose that moment to emerge from the curtain Pomphrey had erected around Ginevra's bed. "Mister Potter–"
"Hebert," both he and Hermione interjected, Hermione much more energetically than him.
"Hebert," Pomphrey corrected herself, "you did exactly the right thing. Ginevra is most definitely not possessed as of now, but from what I can gather it took more than one casting of that particular spell to drive out all of the wraith's will. She may well have still been partially possessed when you petrified her. The wraith, if it still exists as an entity, is now confined to its object, which the Headmaster has assured me he will dispose of as soon as possible."
Harry let out a sigh of relief. Taking the book with him and giving it to the Headmaster as soon as possible had been the right thing to do, after all. He hadn't been sure.
"That aside, miss Ginevra would–"
A second figure burst out from the curtained area, and Harry was grabbed around the shoulders by a red-haired missile. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," Ginevra said ceaselessly as she hugged him.
"You are both totally healthy, so you may leave when you feel ready." Pomphrey made to walk away.
"Hey, wait!" Hermione called out. "That's it? Ginevra was possessed for most of the school year!"
"The effects of possession should not linger once the spirit is evicted," Pomphrey said. "Your point?"
"You can't just leave her after all of that and say 'well, she's fine now!'" Hermione was in full swing, wielding her now fully solidified mistrust of authority like a blade. Harry was so proud. "Shouldn't she get therapy? Occasional checkups to make sure she's okay? Some sort of dreamless sleep potion for tonight, at least? What if being possessed makes her afraid of ghosts, or makes her more vulnerable to other spirits in the future? Do you even know? And we still don't know what kind of spirit this one was, it might be a kind that has side effects. I know some classes of Yokai can leave spiritual imprints that require prompt treatment or they can become life-threatening!"
Ginevra clung even more tightly to Harry, burying her face in his robe.
Madam Pomphrey, for her part, looked as if she was genuinely disturbed, and more than a little annoyed. "Spirits and possession are not my area of expertise, and the problems you mention are a concern," she said. "Which is why I had intended to set up a consultation with Saint Mungo's, though I was going to inform Miss Weasley of that once it had been scheduled." She raised an eyebrow. "In private, to allow her some control over who knows. Yokai, you say?"
"Harry and I were reading about Japanese history earlier this year," Hermione explained, somewhat contritely. "I can give you my books on their spirits, but there's probably a medical book somewhere that will tell you more."
"Do you have reason to believe it was a Japanese spirit?" Pomphrey asked, before shaking her head. "No, that is the wrong question. We have not ruled it out, so you are entirely correct. Ginevra?"
"Yes?" Ginevra looked up.
"On second thought, you will be staying here until I can get you to Saint Mungo's. If you feel you would like a Dreamless Sleep potion, I will provide you with one."
"Thank you." She continued to hug Harry tightly.
He hugged her back.
He would never again doubt his mum's advice about not being a bystander. It had saved at least one life. If he hadn't stepped in… He was wrong about Ginevra, but entirely right at the same time, and if he hadn't made a nuisance of himself the wraith wouldn't have kidnapped him to kill first after killing Ginevra, and he wouldn't have been in the position to save her.
If only he could tell his mum about this.
Magic or not, surely she would be proud of him.
Reason for Modification: Two things. First, Dumbledore being implied to have a hand in Ginny not getting treatment for possession needed to be removed, as it never played out as more than another reason not to trust Dumbledore, and a problematic one at that since it's not directly linked to the big reveal and comes across as more typical Dumbledore-bashing than the rest of his actions. There's some level of improvisation when I write, and I think I had a plan to tie this in to Dumbledore's big reveal somehow, but when the time came it didn't fit so I didn't use it. Thus, it needs to be trimmed out here now that I've got the chance.
Second, while I didn't change Hermione's rant at all, I did have Pomphrey go from 'oh, I'm wrong, Dumbledore said' to 'You're right, and actually I might need to take the short-term care a bit more seriously, but I was already going to send her to the medical experts as soon as I hear back from them.' This has the side-effect of making Pomphrey appear more competent, but mostly it was to blunt and partially rebuff Hermione's righteous indignation, making it easier for readers to swallow if they're not already disposed to liking her personality development.
Propagated Changes: Ginny's not going to complain about Dumbledore not wanting her to go to the hospital, though I gave her a slightly more general reason to not like him instead, as the real reason she dislikes him has to do with Tom's leftover influence, which hasn't changed. Other than that, not much.