Chapter Text
Professor Severus Tobias Snape, the youngest potions master ever in Great Britain, and spy in the war with the Dark Lord Voldemort, was taking out his frustration on every single gryffindor student whose name passed his desk.
He had spoken to Minerva about Harry being on the house team. It had yet to affect his work but you would have to be an idiot to not notice Harry's exhaustion.
Wood had worked the team harder than ever, literally daily since they didn't need to hold try outs. The other three teams were still working out replacements for the graduates of the year before and Oliver Wood was using that time to get ahead.
While normally Snape would applaud (quietly and where no one would be able to see) such a slytherin tactic made by a gryffindor, he would not stand for Harry to be just shy of passing out in his classes.
Minerva on the other hand argued that once the other teams were sorted, the friendly matches would start. Meaning practices would not need be daily, and Harry would have plenty of time to get his work done. The team captains were required to post their final team selections by the afternoon of this up coming Friday so by next week an actual schedule for team practices would be posted.
"Besides, all games are scheduled for Friday or Saturday every few weeks. Practice rotations require only two teams on the field at any given time. So only two practices per week and a possible game that weekend. Wood is only trying to give him a fair advantage against the older more experienced players on the other teams. The youngest seeker against Harry is on the Ravenclaw team, and she is a 5th year student.
Now as nice as it is to see you so concerned, I have my own papers to grade." With that Minerva had closed the argument and left. Looked like he would need to get Madam Pomfrey involved if he wanted things done. If anyone was more stubborn than Minerva, it was Pomona and there was no way the biased git of a headmaster would take his side, Harrys health be damned.
It was at this time that his door resounded a knock. Harry and Draco had created a pattern when knocking so Severus knew when one of them were there versus another student or teacher. He never stopped the practice since it did no harm and he didn't need to put up occlumensy shields either.
"Come in." He called and while he loved his godson, he was a bit sad to see Harry was not with him. It only made him vow to get Harry either off the regular team or at least get Wood to stop these insane practice times. Even the older students were starting to get burnt out.
"Uncle Sev, please tell me Harry is with you and not at practice again?" Draco asked sounding a bit depressed.
"He is not with me, though I would assume he is doing his classwork as I did not see him on the pitch on my way down." Sev answered, seeing both sadness and relief cross his god sons face.
"I don't know what to do. He's too shy to tell Wood he's over doing it, but no one has seen him in over a week. He's already shut up in the Gryffindor common room as soon as dinner is over most days." Draco explained. Looks like it was worse than Severus had thought.
"I have been trying to get through to both Wood and Minerva to get them to cut down on practice. Neither will hear it from me. I was going to be speaking to Madam Pomfrey tonight about it. This is entirely too unhealthy for an eleven year old boy, and I will have that drilled into their heads one way or another. There's more than inexperience keeping first years from being on the primary team for a reason." Sev informed his godson.
"Oh, and I think he's researching something or other. He and Granger have gotten fairly close. I overheard them talking about a stone or something. If he's trying to exhaust himself, a research project on top of everything else will do it." Draco mentioned it off hand but seemed to have noticed how Sev had stiffened slightly.
"I don't know anything about another project, but I will be doing something about this." Sev promised.
Draco nodded before he said his goodbyes and left.
Sev sat there thinking for a moment. Harry didn't know anything about the stone did he? Surely not there was no way he could. . . . Well, Harry was always finding himself in interesting situations. Never truely dangerous, but this could be different. . . . He would be making his challenge a good bit more complicated now and Dumbledore could go kiss a troll for all he cared. He was not going to make it easy for anyone to make it into the mirror room.
That decided, he marked the last essay, the beginning of the year essays were always the easiest, and made his way over to the office and quarter of one Pomona Pomfrey. They needed to have a talk about a certain sport and childrens health.