Harry sat down to supper that day - earlier than most of the first years, as Millicent liked to eat before Vincent and Greg made royal pigs out of themselves. Harry privately suspected that Millicent also wanted to avoid Pansy's taunts, as the girl was still a right bitch.
He definitely wasn't expecting Drue Rosier to sit across from him. She put two large slabs of prime rib on her plate, added some spinach and potatoes - and then proceeded to switch with Potter's plate!
Never, in Potter's life, had someone been that stupid. His food was sacrosanct - in no small part because he couldn't eat that much meat.
"Eat it," Drue informed him quietly.
Harry studied her - what form of fresh hell was this? It was a torture that Harry couldn't even buck, because she was doing it in the Great Hall. And she was a prefect. He was supposed to obey.
Harry ate slowly, swilling pumpkin juice like he was some sort of pig.
It didn't help, he felt queasy at the best of times, and this much grease was going to make him barf.
At some point, the first years had joined him, and Drue had let herself be pushed off - a bit - by Blaise and Theo. Her eyes didn't leave Harry's plate, though, so he couldn't toss some under the table - or at Greg and Vincent, who'd be glad to finish his.
Harry didn't finish the second slab of meat. Instead, he stood, suddenly, and darted out of the Great Hall. Past experience with tummy ailments ensured he knew how to move quickly without being yelled at for running, exactly. Nobody wanted to be lecturing the kid with explosive poo. It was even more embarrassing if you were that kid.
Harry knew where the closest bathroom was - out the great hall, take a quick, hard right, slide down the bannister. one corridor down, take a left, and it's the first room on the left. It sounded more convoluted than it actually was, though Harry'd been more than grateful that few people seemed to use it.
Harry had knelt to pray to the porcelain throne when he heard the door open. Someone came in and shut the door to a different stall. Harry felt his gorge rise, and in the position he was in, he couldn't really stop it.
There was a lot of meat, and Harry was going to vomit up everything he shouldn't have eaten. And the potatoes and spinach, which on their own were harmless.
"Are... are you okay?" the kid with large feet (probably normal-sized, just older, Harry mentally corrected).
"Stomach doesn't feel good," Harry said firmly, "I'll be fine."
Harry returned to the Great Hall, but did not re-enter, instead waiting around for the first Slytherin (currently labeled as 'victim') to be available. He 'needed directions' to the library, and who could possibly be so impolite as to say no to a first year?
Prof. Snape was not thrilled to hear that one of his first years was vomiting in a public restroom. His own eyes had told him that his prefect was overfeeding the boy, but in the Great Hall was not the time to reprimand his prefect; he had to give the impression of trust, which she ordinarily exceeded greatly.
Prof. Snape was exceedingly less thrilled to hear that one of the Hufflepuffs had grown brave enough to tell him of Potter's plight. Oh, boo hoo, Poor Potter, Snape thought dourly, and with more than a trace of venom.
Still, one did not just lop off a branch because it was inconvenient. One bent the branch, one persuaded the tree into symmetry.
Snape lurked at the entranceway to the Slytherin Common Room, waiting for either Potter or Rosier. Potter was the more likely to surface first, Snape thought - Slytherin children tended to prefer their rooms, as anyplace else they were saddled with older students.
[a/n: Reviews, as always, mean more story. Drue hasn't had to deal with episodes of starvation before, not in any of her goslings. She thought Potter was being markedly willful, and responded accordingly. As the title says, being Slytherin generally means better at reading other people. What it does not mean is that everyone's superman. Snape will set her right.]
