Harry had an odd view on punishment, at least for an 11 year old boy. Of course his relatives treated him unfairly, but they weren't prone to punishment per se. No one would resort to physical violence against someone who could lift a couch at age 5. And you couldn't take away privileges from a boy who didn't have any.
They treated Harry badly, but they never tied their cruelty as an action against something Harry had done. After all, he might have disagreed with them, and while he had never turned his strength against his relatives, that didn't mean he wouldn't if he thought he was being punished unfairly.
They might have been ruder, or hated Harry more if he did something they didn't like, but that was alright with Harry; the negative social connotations were balanced by the lovely negative emotions he fed on.
And because he was strange, and a little frightening to the other children in elementary school, he kept himself to himself, rarely drawing the attention of the authorities on him.
So when Snape deducted points from his house for not having read ahead in his schoolwork, he decided to ask about it after class.
Since McGonagall never bothered to introduce herself in her role as house head (he'd only seen her when the schedules were handed out, in class as a teacher, or seated at the head table) he first approached the only authorities who seemed willing to talk to students; the prefects.
They told him point blank that there was nothing anyone would do about Snape, but if he wanted to, he could visit the head of their house in her rooms. She could theoretically do something about the points, but she never had before.
McGonagall was loathe to interfere with her colleague over ten lousy points. It was hardly a serious matter, and the teachers understood that they would inevitably make mistakes in giving out punishments since they were hardly omniscient. There was a prevailing attitude that a few points here or there wrongly given were inevitable, and the students would have to accept that teachers made mistakes.
Unfortunately it was obvious to Harry that it wasn't a mistake. No reading had been assigned before classes, so Snape couldn't have mistakenly asked a question he should have known. There was no reason to expect Harry to know the information he was deducted points on, and Snape had verified this when he demanded that they take notes on it afterwards; if all of the students should have known it, why demand they record it in their notes?
McGonagall also couldn't answer the question "Why did Professor Snape hate me even before we had ever spoken?"
She denied that a professor would be so petty, and that Harry must have been misinterpreting things. Unfortunately it wasn't a guess based on how he appeared to act, Harry could sense directly the hatred aimed towards him from his professor. Therefore Snape's behavior was intentional, and premeditated.
It became clear that if a teacher deducted points incorrectly, Harry was to bring it up with McGonagall, and she would do nothing.
Harry then asked, "If the point system is unfair, why should I care how many points are awarded or deducted from me?"
McGonagall insisted that the system was as fair as could be, and that Gryffindor stood together, trying to win the house cup. She wouldn't explicitly say it, but she made it clear that his dorm mates would be angry with him if he lost points.
The whole system ran on peer pressure, plus a spirit of competition to prove your dorm was the best. Unfortunately competition is a poor incentive if you know the game is fixed. And peer pressure is a pitiful weapon when you live off of the hatred of others.
When he left her office, she felt he would eventually fall in line with the other boys once the older boys verbally voiced their displeasure. Unfortunately he left the office with the idea that the fastest way to get this points nonsense behind him was to make it obvious he didn't care about points.
Over the next few potion classes he lost over a hundred points, deliberately giving Snape opportunities to punish him unfairly, smiling and thanking Snape when he deducted them. Whenever his dorm mates asked him about it, he explained he refused to play games where everyone else was cheating. Since the Slytherins were cheating, the House Cup game was meaningless. If they won through cheating, everyone knew Gryffindor was better. So why care who won the house cup? Better to give it to the thieving gits at the beginning of the year than to play the game the way the Slytherins wanted it.
Some agreed with him, most didn't. No one else risked loosing points. Some threatening motions were made, but none of the older students wanted to be known for attacking a first year; and his dorm mates, who might have gotten away with it, had yet to buy into the system. They were the ones who agreed most heartily that the game was a silly idea.
And while Harry was throwing points away in potions, he was working harder than ever to gain points in his other classes. But whenever a teacher awarded him points, he'd say "No, thanks. I don't want them." Unfortunately the teacher would award them anyway.
The other houses, who didn't know about Harry's reasons, regarded him as mildly insane. Slytherin was ecstatic, and Ravenclaw was ahead in points.
The teachers couldn't ignore this, and held a meeting. Snape insisted Harry was a spoiled brat, McGonagall complained that he undermined their whole discipline system. No one suggested that they fix the system.
Had Harry come from a loving family they might have asked the parents to intervene, seeing as the prefect's interventions yielded nothing. They decided that all they could do was to stop deducting points from Harry, since Harry didn't care about them, and assign him detentions whenever he misbehaved.
While Snape gleefully accepted the right to use detentions on Harry even for minor infractions, he wasn't about to stop deducting points. After all, he wanted that house cup. Oddly enough, it was this action which would eventually cause McGonagall her first misgivings about having handled things incorrectly. If Snape was deducting points after being told to stop, and they were of no use in discipline, then they were being done solely to get the cup; and if Snape was cheating in the game that the teachers were playing to get the cup, why should she play along? But that insight would take her quite a while.
When Snape privately mentioned he was categorically unable to read anything from Harry when Snape "tentatively" tried to probe him with Legilimency, Dumbledore suggested that this was most likely a side effect of the protections on Harry which had saved him as an infant.
Even if someone had taught him Occlumency, a prepubescent boy couldn't have mastered any more than the basics, and the child couldn't maintain it at this age as his mind was in the process of changing from a young adult into a teenager. With all of the changes a human mind went through while growing up, the youngest someone could be taught Occlumency would be 13 to 16 depending on the individual.
Meanwhile, of his peers, Hermione was livid. Harry was throwing away the points she won. Much worse yet, he was dismissing the importance of the points system by which she measured her worth. He was defying the teachers, whom Hermione had some attachment since she had no real friends among her peers, and the teachers at least told her how smart they thought her. Even worse, when she tried to convince him of the importance of the points system, she couldn't refute his logical arguments. Hermione despised Harry.
The Weasley twins were ecstatic. It might not be their cup of tea, but Harry was sort of pranking the whole school; and judging by how the others were discomfited, and by the aplomb Harry maintained, he was doing it successfully and over a long period of time even though everyone knew he was the one responsible.
Ron regarded all of this as another way in which Harry was weird, but in an interesting way; Harry impressed the twins, pissed off Percy, and left Ron feeling like he was in on the joke, even if Ron wasn't really participating. And since it wasn't the type of prank the twins liked to pull, it didn't twig Ron's sense of competition with his siblings. In Ron's eyes it wasn't a prank, it was a skirmish between Harry and the teachers, with Harry pointing out a flank they had always been undefended on, but never realized before.
Neville was in favor of it because most of Harry's actions riled Snape, who both terrified Neville and was beginning to inspire in Neville a deep and abiding hatred. And while Neville was too intelligent/cowardly to attack Snape directly, he could appreciate vicariously the victories Harry won in his stead.
Draco was conflicted. On the one hand, everyone talked about Harry, much more than about him. On the other hand, almost everything he heard, almost always from non Gryffindors of course, described Harry as odd, or deranged. So Draco felt himself way ahead on the popularity and importance polls; Draco was content.
The next potions class, Snape assigned Harry a detention over a minor infraction. Harry said nothing, and waited until the class was over to go see McGonagall. She made it clear that since Harry didn't care about the points system, he would get detentions instead, and even though it was not Harry's fault, and a minor matter, Harry had to now accept a detention with Snape.
This was meant to crush Harry's perceived rebelliousness. Harry decided to just wait to see what the punishment consisted of.
Being in the presence of Snape wasn't a hardship, since his hatred reminded Harry of being at home with his relatives; an admirable cure for homesickness, and a nourishing meal of emotions. Doing chores wouldn't be a hardship; he had done them all his life. Never before Hogwarts had he had so little to do every day.
And it began to occur to Harry that he was working through a list of types of punishments. It would be interesting to see what they did when they had ruled out all of the methods they had at their disposal. So long as he did nothing worthy of expulsion, he should be safe, and he had a list of unfair punishments, including dates and severity to present if he ever got that far along.
After all, losing points and getting detentions wasn't grounds for expulsion. And if it were, Harry had a list which showed that they were undeserved anyway. It was his visible contempt of the punishment system that was upsetting the teachers, and that wasn't punishable by itself. The teachers had to at least maintain the fiction that Harry had the right to his own opinion, so he couldn't be expelled for that. If it weren't for his opinion, he'd be lumped in a category with the Weasley twins, as someone who received alot of punishments, before the matter was dropped.
His first punishment was scrubbing the potions classroom's floor after a nasty accident that was left to sit until it should be nearly impossible to scrub. His apparently cheerful demeanor annoyed Snape to no end; he should be depressed to be here, or frightened or timid in Snape's presence as a mark of respect. Harry politely asked Snape to cast an impervious charm on his brush, since Snape forbade him from using magic to clean. Snape of course refused.
Harry cheerfully got down on his hands and knees, and broke the brush against the floor. Then he asked Snape for a replacement. Snape repaired it with a wave of his wand, and watched Harry more closely for any signs of shenanigans.
Harry cheerfully started again, and the brush came apart in his hands.
This time, Snape grudgingly put the impervious charm on the brush after repairing it.
With Harry putting his monstrous strength into scrubbing, something had to give. And if the brush couldn't break, Harry proceeded to grind the caked potions remains, or the stone beneath it, whichever was weaker. What Snape planned to be hours of backbreaking labor took a few minutes to finish.
The next detention, the room was heavily warded to prevent Harry from using tricks to clean. The cauldrons he was to scrub should never have been allowed by Snape to get that filthy.
Harry asked that Snape imperious the brushes and the cauldrons, but Snape only protected the brush. Harry started, and accidentally deformed the first cauldron. "Whoops."
Once the cauldron and the brushes were impervious, the gunk pulverized in short order. Harry didn't even exhibit the burns he should have received from working on the caustic substance without gloves.
Snape's third attempt, with the cauldron and mess imperviused together left Harry obviously not putting in any effort. After all, he was working as hard on a solution to cleaning as he was permitted. Snape ranted, but complaining to a higher authority would reveal the task was impossible. Instead he demanded Harry clean under some tables.
Harry would have had to crawl under the tables in an awkward way. But of course the tables weren't affixed in place; it was relatively easy to move them out of his way while he worked.
Impressed despite himself with Harry's strength, Snape subtly cast a spell affixing one of the tables he hadn't gotten to with the floor.
With a grunt, Harry said, "It's stuck." before trying to lift it. He stopped when one of the legs cracked. Had it survived, the steel and marble countertop would have had a piece snap off where he was gripping it.
Snape dismissed him.
It might not have been such a headache for the teachers, if Harry didn't enjoy his detentions with Snape. They were a kind of game, where he pretended to be oblivious, and Snape pretended he wasn't persecuting Harry unfairly.
But when Snape correctly blamed the Twins for a prank they pulled without having a shred of proof, even though Harry couldn't have been involved as he was in teacher's presence while the prank was set up, Harry voluntarily took the blame.
This set the teacher's game to a whole new level. Harry wasn't quietly enduring detentions, he was seeking them out.
Filch was actively scared of him, ever since Harry lifted the trophy cabinet to clean underneath. Filch never ranted about tortures to Harry. After all, his authority would stem from his superiority while the student was forbidden to do magic. He wouldn't dare torture someone who might be capable of breaking restraints without magic.
When someone complained to Dumbledore that Harry couldn't be human, he just told them about a blood-ward, lost in time, that Harry's mother had cast on him, which had allowed him to survive Voldemort's spell. All strangeness could be blamed on that.
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(Posted Wed, 23 Aug 2006 07:24)
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