The Beginning of Too Much
Harry discovered very quickly that having a professor to help him learn Transfiguration did not help him much. Though, maybe it was just professor McGonagall who was making it worse for him.
When it was just him, Hedwig, and his books, at least Harry could stay on one thing for as long as he needed to understand it, and when Hedwig refused to let him study it didn’t matter all that much. She still protested when Harry opened his Transfiguration textbook, and Harry could never get her to do anything she didn’t want to do. He was stuck sneaking around her and borrowing Ron’s textbook outside of class.
Ron thought Harry’s predicament was hilarious.
He and Ron had finally managed to find time to talk to each other during their third day of classes. Harry had wondered if Ron would even want to speak with him after he lied, but had apparently worried for nothing. And when Harry had murmured his request for Ron to continue to call him James while they were around large groups of wixen– excluding during class or in the Great Hall– Ron had agreed quickly.
“It’s not like it would be difficult to remember, Harry, but er, why?” Harry clasped his hand in front of his stomach, and bit his lip.
“You don’t have to, I’m sorry,” Harry kept his eyes on the wall over Ron’s shoulder. He didn’t need Ron to keep using his middle name in crowds, it would be fine. The discrete hatful glares and occasional scathing remarks people didn’t think he would notice, and the adoring eyes from the people who followed him throughout the school Harry could live with, but the touches and hand shakes forced on him in the Leaky Cauldron not too long ago had thoroughly freaked him out. It had been too much all at once, and he had been exceedingly lucky not to completely shut down before he experienced Diagon Alley proper for the first time, and only time so far.
Ron huffed, and Harry tensed. “Didn’t say I wouldn’t do it, mate, I will. I just wondered why, you don’t have to tell me.”
“Oh,” Harry responded quietly. “Thank you.” He looked back at Ron’s face in time to see him break out into a smile.
“Besides, I figure if I were super famous like you, I wouldn’t want to be mobbed every time I get to buy new things. Fred and George are enough of a mob on their own, and I already have to deal with them and Mum all the time.” Ron’s smile grew strained, and he scratched his chest.
Harry wanted to ask if he had spoken to his brothers at all since being sorted into Gryffindor’s rival, but thought he shouldn’t after Ron had just done him a favor by not forcing him to reveal his own issues. Harry didn’t want to know why he might not have yet anyway, so he didn’t think twice about accepting when Ron abruptly changed the topic.
Hermione had been a little annoyed with him at first, but Neville had pointed out the many reasons he might have wanted to hide his identity, and she had dropped the subject.
“Mate, again?” Ron’s shoulders shook as he handed Harry his textbook. Harry looked at him saltily as he took it. “You don’t like Transfiguration anyway, I say just let her win.”
Harry glanced around and above him, before opening the book quietly as he could. Hedwig wasn’t supposed to be in the library, and in fact Madam Pince had chased her out several times, but she kept coming back and managed to sneak around her more often than not. It was better safe than sorry, especially since Hermione had already told Harry she wouldn’t lend him her book again after Hedwig had torn out a few pages in her effort to close it.
“Professor McGonagall never spends enough time on the theory, this is the only chance I have to understand it,” Harry scrunched his nose. “It’ll be worse if I can’t get the basics down.” Ron leaned back in his chair.
“Why not just ask her after classes to help you? Or Hermione? She’s top of the class, isn’t she?”
Harry froze. “No.” Ron nodded, leaving it alone.
Harry stared at the page in front of him, blankly for a minute, and then tried in vain to rearrange the words on the page so they would make better sense. Ron rocked back and forth in the chair on the other side of the table, taking advantage of Hermione’s not being there during their free period that day.
Harry was glad to close the book when their free time was up, marked by an irate Hermione asking, right on schedule, “Ronald! Did you do anything today?” Ron flinched, and jerked forward so all four chair legs were back on the floor before she could say anything about it. “Honestly Ron, you’re supposed to be ambitious. How are you in Slytherin?”
Harry slid Ron’s book back to him while Hermione was focused on her mini-lecture, and then out of his chair without pushing it back. He pushed down the guilty feeling in his stomach when Ron waved him goodbye as Harry snuck out of the library behind Hermione’s back.
“Hi, Harry,” Neville greeted him by the doors, as per usual. Sometimes Harry took the time to giggle with him about Hermione’s ability to apparate into the library after class, but he hadn’t been for the last week, and even if he had, Neville wouldn’t expect him to today.
“Will you tell us this week’s potion after class again?” Harry nodded.
“Of course,” Harry confirmed. If he could give Neville a heads up about what potion to look at before his own class, and save him from studying the wrong one or accidentally confusing the steps of multiple potions while he brewed while Professor Snape scowled over his shoulder, he would. “Bye, Neville.”
Harry focused on his breathing as he walked through the halls. A couple of his house mates joined him as they found each other on the way into the dungeons, though Harry paid them little mind, and they didn’t try to add him into their conversation.
He waited for Hedwig to appear, but by the time he was waiting in front of the potions door for Professor Snape to usher everyone in, he still hadn’t seen a single white feather from his friend. Harry’s throat felt tight at his friend’s no-show, wishing he had gotten even a couple seconds to pet her before he had to enter the classroom.
The door opened, and Harry steeled himself to face the potions master’s heavy glare while pulling off his falconry glove he hadn’t needed this time and shoving it into his bag. “In.” Professor Snape commanded the group gathered before him. Somewhere in the back of his head, Harry wondered if he would ever allow them to just walk into the classroom before his say so.
“Can anyone tell me what you will be brewing today?” Professor Snape drawled. Harry looked down resolutely at his desk, avoiding any chance of making eye contact with the man. “Potter!” Harry expected that, nonetheless.
He squinted at the board from his seat in the middle of the room. Ernie Macmillan, sitting next to him, had jumped, even though this happened nearly every class.
Harry’s stomach squirmed as he looked at the ingredients, listed in alphabetical order, on the board at the front of the room. Professor Snape glared silently at Harry while he compared them to what was used in the potions he remembered reading from his textbook.
“The–” Harry’s voice cracked, and he closed his mouth to swallow before going on. “The hair-raising potion, sir?” Harry tried not to wince as he couldn’t help but turn his statement into a question, as his voice had lilted up into a higher pitch at the end without his meaning to. He didn’t think Professor Snape would let that be.
“Are you so incompetent to not be sure, Potter?” He spat, proving Harry correct in his assumption. “Or was that a complete guess? I would think you would tell me you didn’t know, then, and not waste my time with your impudence.” Harry focused his gaze back on his desk and nodded carefully. “Ten points from Hufflepuff, Potter. You will speak to me when I ask you something.”
Harry shut his eyes. It seemed Professor Snape might have had his schedule disrupted too, otherwise he would have continued with his lesson before Harry got the chance to answer him, probably happy not to have to hear his voice anymore after his attempt to find something Harry didn’t know and belittle him for it.
“Sorry, sir,” Professor Snape still didn’t go back to talking, so Harry hurriedly added. “I won’t waste your time.”
Harry’s hands were trembling as they were dismissed to their potions stations, and Professor Snape waved his wand so the other board, placed in front of the taller tables, revealed the instructions that were previously hidden as they walked to retrieve their cauldrons and gather the remaining needed supplies.
Harry spread his textbook out on the table after lighting a fire under his cauldron, and looked over the steps a final time to refresh his memory while the heat rose to the temperature the potion needed. He’d read over the hair-raising potion several times before he had even been on the train to Hogwarts, fascinated by anything that was supposed to affect a person’s hair.
He was happy to turn off his thoughts while dicing and counting everything that he added, only coming back to himself when his skin prickled under Professor Snape’s glare or close proximity as he stalked around the room, ready to berate anyone for their mistakes.
Harry’s potion was indeed a shade of green by the time he was finished, as it should be, but was too dark compared to the color shown in his textbook. It wouldn’t last for very long, and whoever drank it would probably only experience mild floating hair instead of having it stick completely up. His shoulders were scrunched halfway up to his ears as he went to deposit it on Professor Snape’s desk. He looked at Harry with glee.
Harry had lost Hufflepuff another twenty points by the time class officially ended, and he left with stinging eyes and a wobbly bottom lip.
Susan Bones and Megan Jones came up to him in the hallway, a decent distance from the potions room door, where Harry had needed to pause for a bit with his eyes shut tight and his hands over his ears to reassure him that, “Professor Snape was being completely unfair again! That’s not normal, he’s never been that way with any of us, and my potion turned out yellow today!”
Harry nodded at them until they went away. He would have to run to make it to their last class of the day, but he needed to wash his face first, alone.
He didn’t make it to the lavatory.
Harry tripped over a stone he usually knew better to avoid on his way there, and fell onto his front and decided to just stay there. No one else was in this hallway anyway; the only people who might’ve been were the others who had already gone ahead of him to class, so Harry was able to curl up onto his side and let his nose clog up as he cried silently.
He probably wouldn’t make it to charms today, either.