Harry spent the following morning in the forest with Firenze and Hagrid. It was a blessed relief to be out of the oppression of the castle, and a much-needed distraction from all Harry's worries about Gryffindor, Snape and his father. He was so incredibly tempted to just walk deep in to the forest and never go back. But he didn't. He wasn't quite sure why, but he didn't.
Firenze and Harry had spent a productive morning training vines over a creek deep in the forest. The Centaurs had long been training branches and trees to form living bridges over rivers and streams deep in the forest. It was brilliant and somewhat etherial, and Harry was enjoying immensely all the forestry he was learning.
He'd had asked Hagrid about Unicorns, mainly how wizards got their horns to use in potions without actually harming them. He was relieved to know that they were usually shed every five years and that one could obtain horns without harming the beautiful creature. Hagrid wasn't sure any were due for a shedding, but he was scheduled to check to the unicorns later in the week, so they'd be able to see then.
Back in his cupboard for lunch, Harry set about beginning to solve the egg. He dug his fingernails into the groove that ran all the way around the golden egg and curiously prised it open.
It was hollow, completely empty, and the moment Harry opened it, the most horrible, loud, screechy wailing, filled the room. The nearest thing to it Harry had ever heard was the ghost orchestra at Nearly Headless Nick's deathday party, who had all been playing the musical saw.
Whipping out his wand, he shot a silencing charm on it and the noise stopped but did leave his ears ringing. Despite having silencing wards, he stayed frozen for a long time, listening for footsteps in case someone had heard.
When no-one came, he peered closely at the egg. It felt magical. But it looked like just a hollow bit of brass. He peered at it carefully, and cast a bunch of detection spells on it, cursing himself for not doing that first.
What came back was confusing. It did not have any runes on it, but the arithmancy showed it had sophisticated magic on it. It was so complex he didn't really understand all of it. And if Bill hadn't shown him the more advanced curse-breaking spells, Harry would never have managed to extract the arithmancy on the eggs at all! If he was interpreting all the numbers and equations right, it looked like someone had tried to capture a verbal message in the egg... But that couldn't be right. It didn't even sound like any sort of message, and he couldn't make sense of the equations enough to figure out how to translate it or figure out what sort of noise it was.
If anything it sounded like a banshee... unless it was a language? But what language sounded like screaming? Maybe he had to decode the noises? Or maybe it was music that had been distorted in some way? He set about testing every kind of revealing and detection charm on it he could think of and even tried a Reparo incase it was broken, but it made no difference to the horrible screeching sound.
He'd have to hope it was a language, and did have Flitwick's book on languages, he'd have to read it. He showed it to the twins after they finished their duelling practice, later that evening. For some reason Hermione hadn't shown up, Harry was getting worried. The Gryffindors had taken to hexing her as well, because of how vocal she'd been siding with Harry and disagreeing with them.
"That's horrid," said Fred, his hands over his ears still, "sounded like a Banshee."
"I thought it sounded a bit like Percy singing... maybe you've got to attack him while he's in the shower, Harry" George added
Harry snorted and said, "no, thanks. I thought it may be a code or a language message we might have to decipher?"
"Could be," George said, grabbing a book.
"Looks like we'll have to do some research mate," said Fred.
"Research what?" Hermione said, stepping into the room.
"Hermione!" Harry exclaimed, seeing her face. She had what looked to be the beginnings of a spectacular black eye, and her hair seemed somewhat frazzled.
"What happened to you?" He asked.
"Have you been fighting them again?" asked George, looking closely at her back eye.
"Over the un-horsing," Fred said for Harry's benefit, while wordlessly tossing a jar of salve to his brother.
Hermione winced as George put the salve on her eye and sighed.
"It's not right what they're doing." She said fiercely, "and anyway, I punched Angelina first, so I guess it's only fair."
"Good on you!" Said Fred
"She deserved it, turning on our star seeker like that," muttered George darkly.
"Just wait till she puts on her quidditch gear next," Fred said with a grin at his twin. Harry wondered what they'd done to it, but decided he didn't care, he just hoped she was sorry.
"Hermione you don't need to do that," Harry said pleadingly. He hated seeing her hurt because of him.
"Yes I do," she snapped glaring at him stubbornly.
He sighed, but saw the conviction and burning belief in her eyes and said, "then I'm teaching you to fight. So next time, you'll be able to keep yourself safe from their fists when Magic is not enough. I'll teach all of you."
Hermione beamed at him, and said "now what are we researching?
"The egg. It screams," started Fred,
"We think it's a language or code," said George.
"I looked through this one this afternoon, it's not a Banshee. They scream, but their spoken language is different. I haven't gotten very far, but the book doesn't demonstrate what the languages sound like, which is really annoying," Harry said, wondering if the room had a book that did demonstrate the sounds.
And so, they spent a rather frustrating few hours trying to crack the egg, before Harry started to teach them to fight and protect themselves the muggle way. Harry was a bit rusty, but it was more fun than talking about the un-housing.
*
Harry kept avoiding the great hall that week. Especially after Monday when he had, for an idiotic moment, forgotten and tried to sit at the Gryffindor table, only for them to bunch up leaving no space. He glared at them all, and went down to the kitchens instead to have a quiet word to the Dobby and Winky, who then talked to Tippy for him. If Harry had talked to Tippy she would have had to tell Dumbledore. But if Dobby and Winky did it, she could keep it a secret.
The Gryffindors would be having a lot of Brussel spouts and all of the least popular foods served to them for a while. Their pumpkin juice would be a little too sour for a while, their tea always a little too cool. It wasn't much but it was a small act of rebellion that he knew would be kept from Dumbledore's ears.
That and the hot water in Gryffindor tower would be on the fritz for a while. Never anything reliable, or anything that would be caught, but enough to be really annoying.
Harry's subtle plan of revenge had the twins, and the elves in stitches. And he left the Kitchen feeling a bit vindicated. Which was just as well, as it was the only thing that kept him going though Monday.
The situation with Gryffindor had reached a hexing point by Monday night when he had, after his friends coaxing tried to return to the common room. He was hexed so severely he turned tail and ran as Hermione and Neville were bullied into staying put.
Fuming, he went back to his cupboard to patch himself up. Screw the point loss, he decided. He wasn't eating in the hall, and he wasn't a Gryffindor any more. What should he care about their house points if he didn't turn up to their meals? He spent the week avoiding people and used his newfound understanding of etiquette and manners to keep people at a polite distance. He avoided his classmates and his teachers, being unfailingly respectful, with perfect manners. It worked.
He was the last into class, sitting at the back (now that he could actually see well enough to not need to be in the front) and was the first to leave, practically bolting from the room. He travelled the halls in the invisibility cloak and used as many secret passages, and snake passages as he could.
Harry also avoided Professor Snape like the plague, giving the man no reason to call on him, or notice him at all, even went so far as to use a notice-me-not charm a few times.
McGonagall didn't notice anything had changed and Harry wasn't sure he was relieved, disappointed or unsurprised. So he avoided her too. Along with all of the teachers except Hagrid, and he even avoided Professor Flitwick, whom he had been almost getting on with.
Hermione, Neville and the Twins were all furious but he pleading with them to stay away and stay safe and went out of his way to avoid all of them. Hermione, in particular, was furious at their house, and at Harry for trying to protect her by staying away. Hermione was still arguing with Gryffindor, trying to get them to apologise. She was researching into the unhousing and was in a state of irritation and despair over the library's lack of recourses on the matter. Which did nothing to improve her temper and made her vicious in her return hex's, and she'd even started helping the twins help prank their disloyal house in retaliation.
Harry was careful to make sure no-one saw them with him. They were having a hard enough time in Gryffindor at the moment without him there to make it worse. At their insistence he still studied with Hermione and Neville when doing homework, the duelled with the twins on weekends. But he was extra careful to make sure no-one saw him, not wanting Gryffindor to give them more trouble. He kept running with Hermione in the morning, around the times he was in the forest with Hagrid or Firenze, and Neville had taken to joining them a few mornings a week as well.
But, as a whole, Harry spent most of his time when out of class, either in the forest or alone in his cupboard studying. It was almost less lonely like that. At least when he was by himself, it was by his own choice, not because most of the castle was shunning him and hated him. He was used to his own company. It was the only company he got back at his relatives, expect for Hedwig once he'd gotten her.
His isolation, coupled with his insomnia did give him plenary of time to explore when he needed a break from studying like a mad man. Having the lower dungeons to himself, he'd started there, before working his way through the upper dungeon too. Armed with his cloaks, his map, his wand, and the spells Bill taught him, along with Parseltongue, Harry found all sorts of good hidden things. In fact, he had a sneaking suspicion that the castle liked him. Sometimes he wondered if it was trying to tell him something.
He'd found and met all sorts of unusual ghosts, who not used to have someone to talk, to had all sorts of interesting stories and tidbits to tell him. Some of which led to other castle secrets. There was a whole host of odd and unused rooms for all manner of things. He found a set of abandoned offices, classrooms, bedrooms and bathrooms. Bathrooms with enormous clawfoot tubs that Harry was desperate to try out. He'd never been allowed a bath at the Dursley's, and the Gryffindor tower didn't have any. Only showers.
The bedrooms were dusty and unused but looked comfortable enough, but Harry thought after a lifetime of using a cupboard, he didn't want to sleep in a bedroom. It was too open, too exposed. Better to stick with a cupboard where he belonged.
The other room he found in the lower dungeon was an Oubliette. A terrifying and heavily warded against magic, Oubliette. An Oubliette that set off Harry's claustrophobia strait away. The floor was slippery and slanted narrowing down to a was very narrow, shaft, not enough room to sit down in. By the looks of it, from where he was above it, If he fell in, he'd be trapped It would be impossible to get out of without a rope or help. Just looking at it set off racing breathing and panicked sweating, at the mere thought of being trapped in there. He shut the door of it and layered as many wards on top of it as he could, in an effort to make sure he never accidentally ended up stuck in it. It was truly horrible and for a moment, it made him question ever feeling safe at Hogwart's.
But then there was the Castle, warm and dozy like a cat napping in the sun, nudging him gently, and a snake carved into the wall hissing at him in a friendly sort of manor. For a snake anyway.
And that was another thing he'd noticed. All the snakes he was finding carved into the dungeon walls. Once he'd found one, he started noticing them everywhere. Some looked like they were decorations, most were small and relatively hidden, and somewhere so tiny they looked like mere cracks in the stone. Though, it being a magical building, Hogwarts didn't have any cracked or damaged brickwork. Now he was aware of them he started seeing them all over the castle.
Once he started finding all the little snake's, he wondered what they were there for. A range of revealing and detention spells showed that what he'd first assumed were just decoration, were instead a whole host of entrances to many secret passages as well as doors, rooms, odd closets and cupboards. He found an old forgotten kitchen, old duelling chambers that still had wards, old potion classrooms and cupboards with rusted old caldrons and mouldy forgotten ingredients Harry didn't even want to touch, several old store cupboards with moth-eaten forgotten supplies, and a few broom cupboards.
Most of the passageways were, like the Slytherin common room, just a patch of wall with a small snake on it. Some were behind portraits or tapestries with snakes in them, some were even hidden inside normal secret passageways. Some snakes were even carved onto torch brackets that you had to pull alone with a Parseltongue phrase.
Most of the snakes opened to just the world "open," in Parseltongue. But many of them, even the tiny ones, seemed capable of conversation and pretty much all but the tiniest could move, though they left an impression where they originally were, like a shadow.
And didn't that open up a realm of possibilities?
After much experimentation, Harry discovered a whole network of snake passageways weaving all through the dungeons. But it wasn't just within the dungeons.
He found passages leading out to the grounds or to different parts of the school, including the Room of Requirement and the Chamber of Secrets and all over the school. There did not seem to be a bit of the castle they did not touch, and Harry longed to find a way to put these on the map too. The passages seemed to reach every corner of the school from the lowest and most forgotten corner of the dungeons to the tallest tower, and, to Harry's great pleasure, into the common rooms. It was neat seeing what the other houses common rooms looked like.
He also stumbled upon some very small passageways and small rooms that he thought may belong to the house elves. They were all small enough he couldn't stand up in them and had to crawl instead so not to hit his head. The small rooms were equally short and were no bigger than his cupboard back at the Dursley's. He learnt to avoid those ones after almost being caught by Tippy a few times.
These new discoveries were a great help to Harry, however, and it consequently made him almost impossible to catch when not in class as he now very rarely used the typical secret passageways, shortcuts or corridors. Why would he when he had his own set of passages, that no-one else could access, where he was totally safe from being hexed or seen?
*
He'd also managed to make, with the help of some arithmancy, a rune circle to brew on that acted as a passive shield for his potions. Malfoy was still trying to blow up his cauldron, and while he was getting better at potions now he was working alone, it was harder to watch everything at once. He'd had a number of near misses where his potion had almost blown up, and it was only his quick use of Bicarb soda that saved him from being at the centre of an exploded cauldron.
The ward was powered by blood and was drawn on the underside of a piece of leather. He placed his cauldron and flame on top of it and was pleased to see it not only shielded it from anyone other than him adding ingredients but also contained any explosions. It was brilliant, and as it was not active magic, which Snape had banned in his classroom, he could still use it.
It was a pity that wanded magic could sometimes interfere with potions, or more so that Snape didn't trust any go them to not screw it up. But then with Malfoy, Crab, Goyle and Neville, in the class, one malicious and the others just terrible at potions, Harry didn't blame him.
So he used his wards to protect his cauldron. The brilliant bit was that any ingredients Malfoy did try to throw into his potion just bounced right back. And wasn't that satisfying to watch. The first time it had worked, it ended up right back in Malfoy cauldron instead, blowing it up in the blonde's face. Luckily for Malfoy, it was harmless as he was a few steps behind Harry. If it had landed in Harry's cauldron, it would have scalded him rather severely. Harry was pleased to see that it resulted in Malfoy getting a detention for a change.
While Hermione didn't quite approve of Harry skirting the 'no magic in the potions classroom,' rule, she didn't say much. It was following the letter of the law, not the intent so Hermione, just asked how he'd done it instead of telling him off.
"That's really advanced magic Harry! How did you do it?" She'd asked in an excited whisper.
"Nah it's not, my runes and arithmancy are self studied. I'm loads behind you guys," he'd replied doubting his skills.
She'd shaken her head but didn't argue with her self-deprecating friend who had no sense of self-worth what so ever.
Harry also managed to come up with a timer. He'd been researching time turners and time magic and had came up with a rune scheme that he could draw on his hand to time his potions with. It was again, as runes, passive magic, so it didn't interfere with the potions, but let him get his stirring and other precisely timed things done correctly to the second.
Harry used a brew he'd found in his mum's book for invisible ink, that only the brewer could see. Again, Hermione thought that using a book with notes in it, that edited the original instructions was cheating. But at least she knew his mother was trustworthy. She frowned at him when he'd shown her and explained how it was cheating. But again, she did not press it when he disagreed, knowing how much it must mean to her friend.
He had taken to using the invisible ink on all his potions related rune work on his brewing mat, and hands so that Professor Snape wouldn't notice.
*
Snape did notice but wasn't sure what Potter had done. He just saw that it wasn't active magic like he had forbidden, so he dismissed it as one less exploding caldron to watch out for. He was reluctantly impressed.
*
The other plus side to the isolation and insomnia was that it gave him extra time to work on his runic projects, to his great delight, including the fireproof shirt. He was still having trouble powering it without blood magic.
The shirt was a conundrum. When he took away the blood powering it, the rune scheme worked to protect from fire, but after the initial charge up, it needed to be able to use the fire to recharge itself and be self-sustaining. Otherwise, the user would be continuously exhausted from powering up such a heavy runic array.
Harry had the rune's and sigils working already. He just needed to add or adapt it to be self-sustaining. The fire rune was the charge, balanced with the ice rune to keep it from burning the wearer. He wanted to use the fire rune as the charge, but if he wasn't careful, the shirt would heat up too much. What he needed was some sort of rune circle for climate control. Or maybe he could use the heat that shirt still absorbed as power?
He'd not yet managed to perfect the sort of self-sustaining rune scheme he'd need in the shield bracelets, but he had a base for it. So it took him several goes in an unused classroom to find a few that would work and not blow up in his face. He ended up with 4 potential possibilities that he thought would work. But he still had to combine all the elements, and make sure they also didn't blow up.
In the end, he ended up with several runic circles he had to combine together. There was the original fireproof scheme, along with its power scheme. There was then the rune circle that controlled the temperature of the shirt, and then there was the circle that, hopefully, would draw power from the heat of the fire it was shielding against and funnel it into the runes to keep the shirt charged. In the end, he linked the three rune circles around the original power circle.
He ended up with four prototypes that he managed to test out with normal magical fire. It worked well enough. One blew up in his face after it overcharged. So he set to work again, trying to work out what to do with the excess power. If the runes became too overcharged, what would happen to the excess? Could he make them glow? And use that to bleed off the excess power. But maybe on the inside of the shirt? So not to attract attention?
Despite his exhaustion and general misery, he was rather pleased.
*
Harry started his lessons with the Slytherins on Wednesday night and was relieved when, unlike Hermione, they did not question his polite and cool manor. They seemed pleased by it, and the hours after dinner before curfew passed painlessly in a sea of manners, deportment and practice and explanations of how to be a lord. It seemed that the girls were happy to have a pet project and were very pleased to have someone to mould into the perfect Slytherin gentleman.
The boys it seemed were interested in seeing how it panned out and how they could use that to their advantage. This was something Harry was aware of and didn't mind, The Slytherin boys were happy to chip in as it got them Harry's tutoring in Defence.
There were a lot of rules. The Slytherin's explanations were to the point and easy to follow, but also reasoned out why things were the way they were and how it all worked. Hierarchy was subtle and convoluted, but important and affected most interactions within certain circles, as did the people involved, the occasion and sometimes even the location.
There were several different ways to bow and curtsey, along with full bows, half bows, head dips and a series of nods, and complicated hand gestures. Some of which accompanied certain bows to say different things.
The use of each bow and gesture and the message it conveyed was equally complex and convoluted. It was complicated as hierarchy affected it, as well as, who you were with and how many people you were around, if you were in public, or in private. There were many ways to deliberately snub people in varying degrees, and just as many ways to do it accidentally such as bowing too deeply to one person and not to another, or not using their full and complete titles as the situations and occasions dictated.
This also meant he had to learn all the important people in the Wizarding world, at least in Britain, in Hogwarts and in the Ministry, so he knew how to properly bow and greet them and what their titles were.
It was complex. They answered all his questions and didn't seem to judge him on his ignorance, they clearly thought it a crime.
As promised, in return, he started showing them the Patronus charm. They were diligent students and it was not an unpleasant way to spend a few hours. He was mildly surprised by how much he actually liked them, and how much they didn't pry. It was rather painless, all in all.
And that wasn't the only friendly experience Harry had with the Slytherins that week. He was studying in the upper dungeons one afternoon. He'd wanted more floor space to spread out his notes and things, but if he were honest, he was just using it as an excuse to be near people. He was feeling a little lonely, and wanted to hear other people about. He'd set up camp in one of the dusty old potions classrooms and had all his WEA study notes spread out on one of the large brewing tables. There was a one-way silencing charm on the door, to stop any noise he made getting out, but still allowed him to hear the occasional noise coming in.
He'd spent all afternoon flitting between different subjects on the WEA curriculum. He was working on ancient studies and alchemy at the moment. It was rather intriguing. He was surprised by the correlation between alchemy and potions and also the correlation he could see between his etiquette class and his ancient studies and the Darke. It was captivating, so much so that he didn't notice the door open until he was startled by a sudden, "oh, sorry!"
There were three first-year Slytherins standing awkwardly in the door way.
"Well met," Harry said mildly.
"Well met," one of them replied, "you're not a Slytherin second year." She said almost accusingly
"Course he's not Astoria!" Another said, elbowing her friend.
"We were looking for one of the second or third years," the boy added, "we need help with our homework."
"Well I'm not a second or third year, but I was nearly a Slytherin," Harry said conversationally, not wanting to spook them, and no longer feeling ashamed of it. Now that it was out. After the disaster in the common room, he was no longer a Gryffindor, and the whole world knew he was nearly Slytherin. He and Luna had needed up putting together an article about the history of the houses, and the animosity between Slytherin and Gryffindor and how Harry was almost a Slytherin. Hopefully it would help diffuse things when it came out in the Yule edition of the Quibbler.
"Really?" Astoria asked, only to be elbowed by her friend again.
"Yes," Harry said calmly, "I can help you with your homework if you don't mind it being me, though."
Astoria's eye's narrowed, and her friend asked, "what's in it for you?"
Harry looked at the boy a moment and asked, "are you related to Nott? In fourth year?"
"He's my older brother," the boy said, "I'm Thaddeus."
"Well met Mr Nott, Ms Greengrass if I'm not mistaken and..." He looked at the last girl.
"Goyle," she said, "Alice Goyle, Greg's my brother."
"Well met Ms Goyle, I'm Hadrian Evens."
"Wait," cut in Astoria, "aren't you Harry Potter?"
"Yes, but Harry is actually short for Hadrian, which I prefer, and my family name is Evans-Potter," Harry explained.
"Why introduce yourself by a mudblood name, when you have a Pureblood one?" Thaddeus asked, not in a malicious way, but more with the innocent confusion of one who repeated what their parents said without really understanding it.
Harry bit back a sigh and said mildly, "I'd prefer it if you did not use that word in my presence, Mr Nott, have a seat," he gestured to the chairs on the other side of his table.
They looked at each other than sat down.
"Why?" Alice asked.
"Think about it," he said simply, "how would you feel if someone called you that?"
"But I'm not!" She said
"That," he replied, "is not the point."
She frowned and Astoria said, "I guess I wouldn't like it very much, I'd be angry, but probably just because it hurt."
"Exactly, very perceptive of you. It's not nice to call others names, especially to say someone has dirty blood." He explained, "My mum was a Muggleborn, my grandparents are muggles. They did not have magic, but they were good people. Mum was a good person and died to save my life. My father, however, was a Pureblood and was a nasty bully in school. With is why I don't like using his name."
They thought about it for a minute, "but don't muggles have different blood? Isn't it dirty?" Alice asked.
"What colour do you bleed?" Harry asked, "when you trip and skin your knee or if you slip when preparing potion ingredients, what colour do you bleed?"
"Red," said Nott as if it were obvious.
"If muggles had dirty blood, you'd be able to see it, right? It would be a different colour? Brown, for example, like mud?" Harry questioned and they nodded, wondering where he was going.
"Well my cousin Dudley, is a muggle," Harry explained, "like my mum's parents. I have 2 muggle grandparents and a Muggleborn mother, yet I bleed red," he said, taking a knife and making a small nick on his thumb and watched a bead of blood well and dribble down the pad of his thumb.
"If muggles have dirty blood, you should be able to see it." He held up his thumb to show them, "Which means my blood, with has muggle blood in it, would look different too, right?" Harry reasoned. They frowned but nodded in agreement with that logic.
"But my blood looks the same as yours, doesn't it?" He said, "and my muggle cousin, he bleeds red too, same as us."
They frowned, but Astoria said eventually, "that makes sense I guess. But people say muggles are dumb and that we're better. So what does it matter if we call them names?"
Harry considered a moment, "For one, it's hurtfull. They're people with feelings just like us. They're just different. They live differently to us. They don't have the gift of magic that we do, so they need to do things differently to make up for that. Some of us may not understand all of what non-magical do. It's easier to assume they're stupid to cover our own ignorance. They're not stupid. Well, my cousin is, but not all of them."
Alice giggled, and he went on, "We're all not so different, them and us."
"I'm not like a muggle!" Astoria shrieked.
Harry just said, "we live. We breathe. We hurt. We laugh. We feel. We are all made of energy, which holds the universe together..." He paused, wondering what to say.
"What do you mean?" Thaddeus said his eyes narrowing, rather like his older brothers had.
"Magic is in everything, and it is the universal energy that is in, and connects every living thing. That's magic. Sure, muggles cannot feel it, see it or use it and they have no magical core, but they are still made of energy. They cannot harness it like we can. They use it in different ways, electricity, with machines, but we're all made of the same universal energy. That's what magic is made of. So are we really that different?"
There was a weighty silence then Astoria glared at him accusingly, "you didn't answer our question!" She said.
"Yeah," accused Thaddeus drawing his wand.
Harry placed his hands upon the desk, in a sign of peace, "I don't really want anything from you. I am not offering to help you to get something, but if it makes you feel better, I'll help you in exchange for your silence on my presence in your dungeon."
The three of them exchanged looks, before nodding and pulling their book out of their bags. They spent a peaceful few hours, Harry working on his own projects between helping the first years with their charms and transfigurations homework when they needed it.
He liked helping them, he found. He liked teaching them and they seemed to not mind that it was him. They were the first people in the castle (other than their older counterparts) to openly talk to him in what felt like ages. It felt refreshing. They even agree to do a study group there a few times a week to get his help. From then it would slowly grow to include most of the green clad first years.
*
Harry had had a little luck finding all the ingredients for the potions, except the unicorn horn. On Friday morning, the same day he needed to start brewing the potion if he was to finish it in time, he was beginning to panic.
Harry had had no luck in finding a unicorn horn at all that week. He had even sent Dobby to ask for a quote from an apothecary (too expensive) and Winky to look in the Room of Requirement (no luck).
By Friday morning when he'd still had no luck, he had accepted the fact that he would not be able to free himself in time for the new year. He'd just have to put up with it a bit longer and hope he could stretch his supplies next year to afford a unicorn horn then. There was little hope, but it was all he had. Still, he hated it and spent a long while blowing things up in the Room of Requirement before first class.
Harry had nearly slipped out of charms, later that morning, and under the cloak when Professor Flitwick's voice seemed to follow him around the corridor. Pushing everything to the back of his mind, Harry went back into the room, somewhat reluctantly. He waited for the professor to speak, holding his gaze, but thinking hard on the feel of his shoes in case Professor Flitwick was a Legilimens.
"I've been trying to catch you, Mr Potter," the professor said cheerily.
"Sorry sir," Harry said, glancing at the door.
"Is everything alright, Mr Potter?" The professor said, and Harry had to hide a flinch at the name, images of his father coming to mind, and Snape being upended and hexed over and over and over again.
"Fine sir. What can I do for you, sir?" Harry asked in a cool but flawlessly polite voice.
The Professor looked at him for a moment, and if Harry didn't know adults better, he'd say the man looked worried, "I found you mother's trunk at last," the half-goblin said with a broad smile.
Harry staired.
"It was shrunk on the end of her bed up in her old apprenticeship rooms. The castle had closed them, I hadn't thought to check there until now," Flitwick explained, as he pulled something out from his pocket and re-sized it.
Harry knew he should feel something, anything, at all, but he felt nothing. He'd felt nothing much all week actually. He blinked and forced a smile and what he hoped was a grateful look onto his face.
"Thank you, Professor. It means a lot to me," he said, but it seemed to fall a little flat. He touched the lid softly but didn't really register much other than a tingle.
"Are you sure you're okay Mr Potter? You've been quiet this week?" The professor said again, shrinking the trunk and handing it to Harry.
"Yes, sir, I'm fine." Harry said emptily putting the tiny trunk in his bag, "can I go to lunch please, sir?" He asked, "I don't want to get into trouble."
Flitwick frowned but nodded. Harry left, donning the cloak as soon as he was out of sight and heading back to the comfort and solitude of the dungeons to finish some homework as he ate before Potions.
Harry avoided Professor Snape again that afternoon in double Potions. He was the last to enter, sitting alone at the back, and was the first to leave, focusing on nothing but his potion. He did not notice the man watching him, or open his mouth to call Harry's name as he dashed out of the class at the end of the lesson. And he certainly did not notice Professor Snape's thoughtful frown follow him out.
NOTES
So we've taken some artistic licence with unicorn's and how they work.I have bent some of the cannon lore about unicorns. They shed their horn every few years (like deer shed their antlers every season, because how else would you harvest the horns for potions without killing them?)