"Trevor! You bloody little… get back here!"

"Oiy, Dean, crack the window if you're going to do that, mate! Christ, no more kidney pie for you!"

"So wasn't me, you daft prat. Ron did it."

"I did not!"

"Someone open the window!"

"Don't even think about it! It's the worse out there, remember? Ugh!"

"Harry! Come on, get going, it's nearly eight already!"

Harry pulled his pillow over his head, and pressed it to little avail over his nose, and tried to block out the sounds of his roommates. The morning of their first day of classes dawned like so many others over the years at Hogwarts. The brink of chaos, disarray, and a dash of rough and tumble lest anyone forget the room was shared by five young, boisterous boys.

Only a day, and already Harry longed a bit for the quiet, calm mornings at the Grangers'.

Last night, when students finally began to leak out of the common room and up to their beds in the wee hours of the morning, Harry and Hermione had been the last to go. They had stayed together on the couch, sitting side by side, until the crowd had thinned down to just them. The peace had been more than welcome, and Harry had finally felt able to relax, beyond the sight and judgment of everyone save Hermione. He'd lingered downstairs with her as long as he could, but finally her conscious got the better of her and she shoved him toward the boys' dorm and left for her own. After all, school began the next morning and she was the eternal student.

When Harry reached the room he'd shared with Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnegan, Neville Longbottom, and Ron for four years, he found the other boys having a small-scale version of the hubbub downstairs. A bag of Bertie Bottz's Every Flavor Beans was involved, and his companions were tasting and hooting and gagging and laughing like teenage boys. Like untroubled, safe teenage boys. They'd offered Harry what looked suspiciously like a rotten-egg-flavored bean, but Harry had begged off, claiming exhaustion, and as the little dorm room reunion raged on he changed into pajamas and crawled into his familiar bed.

And he listened. He lay on his side facing the window so they wouldn't see him awake, but Harry listened to his friends, his roommates of so long, being so normal in spite of everything. He wanted so desperately to join them, to cast off the weights that sobered him, but he couldn't. He couldn't pretend Voldemort hadn't returned or that Cedric wasn't dead. Maybe if he hadn't seen it himself it would be easier to pretend, to be like his friends and shove it out of his thoughts.

Then again, Hermione had never forgotten and she hadn't been witness to that horror. But when Harry thought about it, Hermione had rarely ever been a child, emotionally or psychologically, when it came down to the bare bones of an issue. There was a place inside her where she was and had always been at least thirty years old. And it had served her, and by association him, well.

Now, as last night, his roommates were ever the same as last year, making it sound so easy to go on business as usual. Harry felt a little heartsick with it all and hugged the pillow tighter over his head to block out the sound. He wanted to go home. To his wearied pang of surprise and longing, that place was his room in Hermione's house. His favorite patch of grass at Avalon. A bench under a tree in a muggle park.

"Harry, you better get a move on or you'll be late," Ron called from across the room. Footsteps marked Dean, Seamus, and Neville's departure from the dorm and journey down the stairs.

Harry pointedly ignored his friend's urging and relaxed in relief at the absence of the others. Their laughs and jeers had been a lance, every little joke and tease another part of a youth he could no longer claim. How they flaunted it without knowing their callous end.

Harry wouldn't have minded skipping breakfast entirely just to spare himself his roommates' behavior on a much larger scale, on a school-wide scale, but Ron's voice, this time much closer, refused him that luxury. "Harry? You all right?"

Harry grumbled and rolled on to his stomach, burrowing his head further under his pillow. Maybe if he came across stubborn and surly enough Ron would go away. He usually did. Ron didn't have that pugnacious stick to it that Hermione did. If he was rebuffed once, strongly enough, he usually withdrew.

"I know he doesn't expect to have a lie in."

Harry could have groaned. Hermione. There went all hope of being left to hide in the covers of his bed.

Ron seemed uncharacteristically flustered. "Wha? Oh, um… dunno, he won't get up. You imagine he's all right?"

A short silence then Harry's bed dipped with added weight. Hermione's voice was right above him. "He's fine." She didn't sound as stern or as put out as she might have taking from her manner at the door. Harry shivered just a little when a hand came to rest on the small of his back. He breathed out. Suddenly, the day before him didn't seem quite so bad. He still clung to his pillow fiercely, but now more for the play of it. "Five more minutes," he pleaded, his voice muffled by his pillow.

Hermione snorted and Harry smiled into his mattress.

"Get your lazy arse out of bed and get down to breakfast." She patted him on the back, closer to his shoulders, and got off the bed. Harry was already primed to go along right after her, as though she'd transferred some form of kinetic energy into him with her tap, a reaction following an action.

Instead he grumbled but moved to obey. When he looked about the room after pulling out from under the cover of his pillow he saw Hermione leaving and Ron standing there looking at him with a decidedly queer look on his face.

"You heard her, to breakfast with us," Harry rolled out of bed and hurried to get dressed. Ron stared, puzzled, a few more moments then left to catch up with Hermione while Harry changed into his robes.

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The Great Hall was packed by the time Harry arrived, still straightening his tie and combing his fingers through his hair. He spotted Hermione and Ron sitting together and made quickly for them. Ron had taken the spot next to Hermione, which left Harry to plop down on Ron's other side. If there had been a reaction to his arrival from all the rest in the Great Hall, Harry took great effort not to notice it.

Once Harry was seated, Hermione leaned forward to speak across Ron, "I won't have to train Crookshanks to wake you, will I?" The hint of a smile played across her lips, a twinkle in her soft brown eyes.

"And have that foul-tempered pest in our room every morning? No way," Ron retorted. Hermione gave Ron a scowl as Harry bit into a piece of toast and jam. Ron frowned at Hermione's sharp glare and cleared his throat. "Well, he's a mean one, he is. Don't fancy a bite and a scratch to start the day, do you, Harry?"

"Crookshanks likes me just fine, just you would need worry about getting bitten."

Ron grunted grumpily and tucked into his breakfast.

"Hi, Harry."

All three looked up to see Ginny sit down across from them. She had her long red hair twisted and pinned along the nape of her neck like the dragon-keepers again. Her blue eyes were fixed on Harry, as was her beaming smile, and Harry gave an uncertain, half-hearted semi-smile at the overt greeting from Ron's once-shy and tongue-tied sister. "Uh, hi, Ginny."

Ron frowned and grumbled, "Shouldn't you be sitting with your friends?"

Ginny took a piece of sausage off his plate, to his strangled protest. "Aren't you three my friends, too? Well, two of you in any case." She looked again at Harry… then slid a rather purposeful look in Hermione's direction. The two girls met gazes then backed off at a draw. "I wonder who the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher will be this year. I didn't see anyone new at the feast last night, did you?"

"No," Harry recalled, "I didn't."

"Maybe they're still trying to fill the position. It's always been a difficult one to staff," Hermione offered.

"Maybe they finally gave it to Snape," Ginny mused as she chewed.

Ron snorted. "And maybe Dumbledore decided to retire from being headmaster of Hogwarts and join the Chudley Cannons."

Harry smirked at the mental image.

The four of them resumed their breakfast only to be interrupted by Professor McGonagall moving down the Gryffindor table handing out class schedules. When she reached their place at the table, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny put down their food to study their schedules. Ginny jumped up to scurry off and compare with her friends in her year. Harry, Hermione, and Ron perused their own.

"They've really cut down on Care of Magical Creatures," Hermione noted, "only twice a week. Poor Hagrid."

"Forget Care of Magical Creatures," Ron blurted, "you see this? Defense Against the Dark Arts every day and then twice on Tuesday and Friday?! That's Defense Against the Dark Arts seven times a week! What the bloody hell is up with that?"

Harry was studying the same double-course on his schedule in pensive silence. Hermione ended up voicing his own thoughts. "Maybe with You Know Who come back Dumbledore wants us to be better prepared for… anything."

Ron swallowed heavily and went tensely silent.

From a few places over at the Gryffindor table they heard Neville moan piteously. "Oh no! Extra Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions every day of the week! And no Herbology! Oh, I'm going to fail!" He sounded truly distraught and the three exchanged sympathetic looks.

Hermione tucked her schedule into her pocket. "Come on, we best go get our books for class."

Harry and Ron, still boggling over their schedules for the year, followed Hermione out of the Great Hall.

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Harry was sandwiched on a stool between his two best friends in the potion master's dungeon classroom waiting for the teacher to arrive. Harry was none to happy with the timing of this particular class, but Ron to his left was (predictably) far more vocal on the matter.

"This term's cursed already. Potions first thing right off." He slumped miserably over his dauntingly large Potions' text book, which smelled suspiciously of sweat of harpy and toad's breath. They all had the bitter smell, such that the boys in Harry's dorm tower had all decided to leave their Potions books outside on a conjured window ledge. When Ron sagged in dejection and it brought his nose nearer his book his face screwed and he shoved the malodorous tome aside, nearly off the table completely.

Harry rather agreed with Ron, but Hermione on his right leaned in and for a second he couldn't rightly remember why Potions was so wretched.

"Really, Ron, you oughtn't to complain so much, Potions is a really important subject to learn." Harry glanced at Hermione's insanely close face. With her leaning into his shoulder to talk across to Ron, he caught a whiff of her hair and there was the threatening of that stomach lurch he'd become quite prone to… although it seemed with the rather pungent smells in the Potions room the stomach lurch couldn't be brought to full strength by such a small hint of reprieve.

Ron scowled across at Hermione a split-second, then his face turned an odd color, his shifted up in his seat, and his voice was remarkably brought to heel when he answered, "I'm just saying it's a bad sign for the term, is all."

Harry left puzzling over Ron's odd behavioral shift to quip, "Nope, best save that for Trelawney."

Ron smirked.

Hermione leaned back away with a huff. "I cannot believe you two signed up for Divination again this term. You both know it is absolute rubbish."

Ron had something to say about that, too. "It's an easy course. You make up some dreams, fake some shapes in sludge at the bottom of a tea cup, come up with a few ways for Harry to die…" Ron stopped short and a sharp tension seemed to knife its way into the conversation.

Hermione gasped softly, and Harry could see she had momentarily stopped breathing. Harry felt it only as a coldness in his chest, a heavy, icy weight. And it had been so normal up until that moment.

"Sorry, mate," Ron said awkwardly.

Harry gave a lop-sided, half-ass smile. "No worries. I imagine this year that's all we'll need to do to get top marks in that class. No doubt Trelawney's been working at it all summer holiday."

Ron gave a chuckle, but it was short and poorly faked. Hermione opened her Potions book and flipped through it for something else to focus on. With every page she turned a little breath of sweet, flowery smells wafted past Harry. He'd have to ask her what she did to her book to get rid of the awful odor.

The door to the classroom at their backs banged open and conversation in the room came to an absolute halt. Professor Snape, disagreeable and surly as ever, swept into the room, but rather than head straight for his desk at the front of the classroom, he stopped at the back row of tables and held out his hand. "Your Potions books."

The students on the back table, baffled, passed their smelly books over to the teacher. Snape took it, held it before him as though inspecting the cover, then gave it back with a sneer and glower. When he finished the last row he moved up one and did the same. Again, queer looks and uncertain obedience from the students.

When he reached the table where Harry, Hermione, and Ron sat they, too, gave Snape their books. When Snape held up Hermione's he snorted. "Well done, Miss Granger." Only Snape could manage to make a compliment sound so insincere and condescending. "I might have expected you would figure it out." With nary a further glance he returned the flowery book to Hermione. When Harry reclaimed his own book he set it down and sat back from it as far as possible.

By the time Snape reached the front of the room he looked thoroughly disgusted. He turned to the class with a sour scan of the confused faces of his students.

"It would seem that among the lot of you Miss Granger was the only one who saw fit to actually do something effective about the horrible smells your books are emitting. They were made that way to test you, and I am not surprised to say all but one of you has failed the first assignment."

A murmur of disgruntled protest rose and fell just as quickly. Snape scowled at them and crossed his arms. "I will credit some of you with what appeared to be pathetic attempts at masking charms, smell inhibitors, and even dung bombs to try and overcome the stench. If you had only bothered to research in the books that were right in front of your affronted noses, you would have discovered the chapter detailing the daffodilis potion was entered into the book with the last ingredient missing. Miss Granger, since you were the only one who bothered to open your book and figure it out, would you tell your mentally challenged classmates what you did?"

Hermione glanced sideways at Harry with a guilty shrug. "I… the daffolidis potion in chapter twelve was missing the last ingredient, foxglove. I found the ingredient list for the daffodilis in the index, and it was complete there, but in the chapter where it was detailed how to combine the ingredients to complete the potion, foxglove was missing. I simply wrote in foxglove where it belonged and the book stopping smelling horrible and started smelling like flowers."

"Exactly." Snape looked particularly disappointed with his house students holding their noses to his left. "Five points to Gryffindor." Snape turned and marched to his blackboard.

Ron whispered under his breath, "I bet he pulled something doing that."

Harry smiled bitterly.

Hermione leaned in again to Harry and whispered, "I'm sorry, Harry, I would have told you had I known Professor Snape was going to…"

"Miss Granger," Snape interrupted smugly, "my rules have not changed from last term, no talking during class. Five points from Gryffindor."

Hermione snapped her mouth shut and sat up straight.

Ron said even lower, "Well, it was nice while it lasted."

Hermione shot a look in Ron's direction but didn't dare speak again.

Harry sighed, and while Snape began to outline the objectives for their present term he flipped to chapter twelve and took up his quill, anxious to write in 'foxglove'.