Title: Genius Does What it Must
Characters: Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Millicent Bulstrode, Dave the Pop-culturally Aware Snake.
Summary: Growing up, Harry Potter became a smartass. Now he's starting Hogwarts, with trusty sidekick Millicent Bulstrode, a question for everything, and a cheerfully sarcastic demeanor that makes everyone want to smack him.

And apparently there's death lurking in the third floor corridor. That's gonna end well.
Warnings: Alternate Universe, with intelligent!Harry, Slytherin!Harry, semi!mentor!Snape, and excessive use of italics and parentheses.
Notes: Numbers are written out because my computer's being wacky about such crazy ideas as Arabic numerals. Guys, I think my laptop is racist. Anyway, the long-awaited Quidditch chapter! Rather different from any other Quidditch chapter, I like to think. Next up, the Christmas chapter, hopefully put up before holidays. As you might've noticed, however, I SUCK AT UPDATING. Also, life.

CHAPTER SEVEN: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush... unless you're a flesh-eating bush.

If one more – just one more – person said the word 'Quidditch' in Harry's immediate vicinity, he was ninety-nine point seven-five-eight percent sure he was legally allowed to poison them. The remaining point-two-four-two wasn't sure because, knowing what he did of the wizarding world so far, he'd probably forget to use the traditional phrase that made it legal and he'd spend the rest of his days shaving ducks. Or whatever they did to criminals in the magical world, Satan only knew.

(Harry had started using 'Satan' instead of 'God' after the discovery of the gates of hell on the third floor. Yes, he was well aware he was mixing Christian and Greco-Roman mythologies. No, he didn't particularly care. Are you shocked and amazed by this?)

Even the surly Slytherins who liked to lurk in corners talking about dark plots to rule the world had given it up for the time being, and were bouncing around squealing like little girls at a New Kids on the Block concert. Harry considered informing them of his ace comparison, but reflected that being cursed to eat his own shoes was not, in fact, something he was eager to experience for the fifth time since the start of the school year. He'd like to give it until at least, say, February.

He wound up hanging out with Hufflepuffs for the most part – neither they nor the Ravenclaws were quite as excited, as their own first match had been largely ignored by the other two houses (and, to be honest, most of their own houses as well), and Harry had an ongoing feud with the Boot boy in Ravenclaw, so he couldn't hang out with them. It just wasn't done. There were only six Hufflepuffs in first year this time around; Justin Longlastname seemed politely confused by the goings-on, Macmillan was self-importantly informing everyone of the history of the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch rivalry (no one cared), the two Welshies had disappeared (Harry suspected they were in league with Nott, trying to win the Creepers of the Year '91 trophy), the redheaded girl professed to enjoying the game but not the lead-up, and the other girl was, apparently, terrified of heights.

All in all, they were extremely boring, and Harry honestly considered painting Dave a terrifying color and setting him loose. Dave, being somewhat more sensible (somewhat), refused to be part of something that would get him killed that stupidly.

Harry had, at one point while sitting with the Hufflepuffs (the first few days, they had been terrified, but they had eventually realized the scariest part of Harry happened to be his mouth, and the more they talked, the less he would be able to), mentioned that he knew jack-all about Quidditch. Macmillan and Wife had decided that this simply wouldn't do, and had been educating him on the topic of really stupid magical sports that were possibly Darwinian theory in action.

"...of course, originally the Golden Snitch was a small, round bird known as the Snidget, but they were essentially hunted to extinction, leading to the introduction of the ball-" Damn, Harry was glad that he tuned back in time to hear that. Because with that, Harry Had An Idea (the capitalization were necessary in order to warn the psychic populace to get the hell out of dodge. Wherever dodge might be). A uni student with a semester's worth of psychology classes would have come up with some pretentious-sounding theory about how Harry's lack of a loving home environment had led to attention-seeking, and Quidditch was taking away all the attention he had earned over the last few months, causing him to act out. Harry always thought that uni students could do with a few more swirlies in childhood (or now, assuming they would hold still long enough).

There was one main problem to Harry's insta-idea: how to keep the birds in the area. He had dug up thousands of animal-handling related spells in the library in his attempt to re-do the wizarding world's idea of cataloging (i.e., there wasn't one), but there wasn't nearly enough time for him to learn them before the game (and, to be honest, he wasn't super-advanced at Charms to begin with). There had barely been enough time for him to learn the color charm he'd be using (under the assumption that spray-painting wildlife was as frowned upon at Hogwarts as it had been in Surrey). That left one thing: tempt the birds to stay in the area, either by outside threat, or by inside treat.

It was the same principle he'd used many times on Dudley.

He stood abruptly from the Hufflepuff table and left without another word. (The Hufflepuffs looked, as one, extremely relieved.) "Birds are scared of owls, right?" he asked Pansy, dropping down at the Slytherin table with no further ado.

"Most-" Pansy started, only to be cut off by Millicent, who slammed a hand down on the table.

"No," was all she said.

"But they-" Pansy tried again, affronted by apparently erroneous information.

"Not no, they don't, no, Harry doesn't need to know if they do or not, because there's nothing good he'll do with the information," Millicent pointed out. Pansy still looked disgruntled, but nodded.

Harry, on the other side of the table, pouted. "Thanks Millicent, now I have to go to plan B," he whined.

"What's plan B?"

"I don't know! That's why I'm upset I have to resort to it!"

Plan B turned out to be far worse than Plan A had been, and Harry vindictively decided that it served Millicent right. (Of course, Plan Alpha had been by far the easiest, but it had turned out to be horribly cost-prohibitive, so he'd moved on from the Greek alphabet. Damn Greeks and their baklava.)

Ever since the fun of Halloween night ('fun', in this case, actually meaning 'nearly dying at the hands of an oversized American telly star', a definition not used nearly widely enough), his housemates (in this case, Pansy) had assumed that the Great Troll Expedition Force should, like, totally be BFFs, so it was harder to completely disappear for as long as he needed to. After all, visiting the Hufflepuffs had still been in full view, and seen by his housemates (Pansy) as just another amusing little quirk of his. Disappearing was something else entirely, but sadly necessary for Plan B For Bad-ass.

So Harry did what Harry did best – he set up an explosion, and got the hell out of there while everyone was busying circling like vultures (it was Slytherin, after all, concern was horrendously passé).

Of course, given the sparse collection of ingredients in the first year's potions kit and the number of locks and curses guarding the trunks of the older Slytherins (paranoia, honestly!), the explosion couldn't actually do much – sadly, Harry lacked the pure destructive skills that were apparently handed out after sorting into Gryffindor (see: Neville Longbottom, potions; Seamus Finnegan, charms; Ron Weasley, anything after he got annoyed). But it looked very impressive and pretty, multicolored sparks and ominous billowing smoke.

Harry slipped out the entrance, which for Slytherin was a brick wall, because they were just inviting people to mock them at this point, and started stealthily down the dungeon corridor (not hallway – one of the Prefects had been very clear that above-ground, passages were hallways, and below-ground, they were corridors; Harry had been very clear that the Prefect hadn't been getting enough sunlight and his brain was beginning to rot from lack of vitamin D).

A heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder suddenly, causing him to jump and squeak like a terrified rabbit. "Is whatever you're about to do," a voice asked calmly, "Going to kill someone or send them to the loony bin?"

Harry had relaxed as soon as he heard the voice. "It shouldn't..." he said hesitantly, turning around to face his attacker. "But you know these whackadoo wizards and such."

Millicent gave him a steady, almost bored look. "Yes, I do know you." Not giving him time to squawk at the insult, she continued, "If you get caught – and you will be – I refuse to give you an alibi."

"Some friend you are! Insulting me and then hindering my criminal genius," Harry muttered grumpily, re-considering the list of other first years. The Hufflepuff Welshies, he supposed, were always an option. If he could understand them through their weird Welsh words and their insistence that w-is-a-vowel.

"Yes, I refuse to help you commit felonies. I am a horrible person," Millicent deadpanned. "Try and be back by five, we have Potions homework to study." With that, she went back into the common room, which was still billowing smoke because Slytherins thought putting out fires was a servant's task.

Harry pulled a face at her back that he'd pulled at his aunt's back the few times she had seemed to catch on to what he was doing, and given him extra work. Because, honestly, doing this without an alibi was extra work.

His first stop, having escaped the castle, was to hit up Hagrid's hut (after making sure the giant weirdo was elsewhere). Sure enough, the man had a serious supply of cages of every shape and size, and Harry transported them a few at a time to an isolated alcove near the Forbidden Forest.

"Step one, complete!"

"Isss ssstep two the boogaloo?" hissed a voice near his head. Harry knew who it was, of course (snakes tended to be the only things that hissed and he could understand in English, and there was only one snake he had ever met who made weird-ass pop culture references), but his head whipped around automatically anyway. Stupid heads, with their independent thoughts.

Dave had been sunbathing atop the giant boulder that made up part of the alcove, and had slithered forward to drop his head down and see what Harry was doing.

Harry, at this moment, was sticking out his tongue.

"Nooo, Dave, step two is bait the owls. Wanna help?" Dave gave a pretty good effort into biting him, but Harry just whacked him absent-mindedly on the nose. "You animals can all talk, right?"

Dave tilted his head, a curiously canine motion for a snake to make. "Sssort of," he finally said. "Sssome ssspeciesss more than othersss."

Harry had figured as much. "The owls, the ones in the owlery, think they'd be smart enough to go along with a plan if there's a reward at the end?"

"Asss you jussst implied, me and the owlsss don't get along ssso good," Dave snarked at him. "Alssso, delayed gratification isss not a concept common to the animal kingdom."

"So trickery it is, then!" Harry said, not deterred in the least.

He may have called step two 'bait', but step one-point-five was 'raid the greenhouses and labs for said bait'. The seventh years, he knew from his selective enhanced listening (better known as eavesdropping) were using lab rats to test potion variations on, and the greenhouses usually had seeds that would attract non-predator birds.

And hopefully not poison them. Harry probably should've looked that up first.

It was a long, boring day of tricking owls and various flying creatures from the forest into cages. Dave was actually somewhat helpful when it came to smaller birds, flushing them out of hiding with his mad snake skillz, as he claimed.

Still, it took up to dinner to get everything situated, and Harry cursed the fact that all he knew how to do magically, so far, was levitate small objects and change matches into needles and vice-versa. The levitating was a little helpful, but the second one? Stupid basics.

And then he was forced into Potions study after dinner, because Malfoy had this obsession with not letting down their head of house (Harry was of the opinion the only way Malfoy could let Snape down was to paint himself red and gold and proclaim his everlasting love for the Weasley twins, but everyone turned green with nausea at the mental image last time he had brought it up).

But his sleep that night, never had there been a sweeter sleep. It was the deep, peaceful sleep of someone who knew they were going to cause absolute chaos in the morning.

If anything, breakfast the next morning was even more batshit-crazy obsessed with Quidditch – all the tables were chattering on about it, so there wasn't even freedom at the Hufflepuff table. Harry glared moodily across his porridge, promising his everlasting enmity to the house of the badger for not providing a Quidditch-free safe-haven.

"We need to skip the game."

The Slytherin first year section of the world went silent instantly as everyone's mouths and spoons froze in midair.

"Pansy, what are you talking about?" Malfoy asked after a long moment, giving her a shade of the look he usually reserved for Harry.

For it had indeed been Pansy, not Harry, with that shocking statement of disloyalty to the insanity of the magical world. Her hair was less than perfect, indicating her state of increased agitation, and her face showed a mixture of regret and excitement. At Malfoy's question, she slid a book to the center of the table.

"I found information on the three-headed dog," she stated, flipping to a pre-marked page and pointing. Harry was lost for a moment, but then remembered – they were supposed to be investigating Cereberus and Flamel, for reasons he didn't fully understand. Pansy, apparently, had kept up with the quest, although from the looks on everyone else's faces (except Zabini, whose face was as composed as ever), everyone else had forgotten. "They fall asleep when music is played. While everyone is at the game, we can go to the third floor corridor-" Hah, Harry thought, take that, Prefect who makes the hallway/corridor distinction! "-and make it fall asleep, and see what's under the trapdoor."

"I'm going to the game," Harry declared, crossing his arms stubbornly.

Everyone save Millicent turned to stare at him. Millicent sighed. "They would notice if the group of us was missing from this exciting event. Also, Harry has something planned."

The stares turned accusing, and Harry pouted and crossed his arms tighter. "Traitor. I trusted you, and you betrayed me!" he cried dramatically.

Malfoy looked undecided for a moment, and then came to a conclusion. "I want to see what Potter's going to pull. Sorry, Pansy."

Pansy shrugged. "Millicent has a point about our absence being noted. We can always go tonight."

"Yay," Harry said dryly. "Entering the gates of hell. Just what I wanted to do instead of sleep."

Harry left breakfast early, the others letting him go while feigning ignorance – general consensus was that he was going to be caught, and they did not feel like sharing his punishment. It didn't take much to get everything in position, so he spent the rest of the time in his hiding area under the stands (seriously, sooo many hiding places under there, although Harry had found some suspicious stains that made him cry, "Ew! Cooties!" and find a different area) practicing the multifocal version of Wingardium Leviosa he was going to use for half of the final presentation. It was a pain in the ass, but only in the trying to keep everything in mind at once. It wasn't more technically complicated than the normal version they had learned in class.

Finally, the stomping of feet above his head calmed down, and the dull roar of the crowds quieted down before one particular voice boomed out across the stadium.

Showtime, Harry thought with an evil, evil smirk.

He gave it another minute to make sure everyone was in the air and not paying attention to the base of the Ravenclaw stands (he'd chosen Ravenclaw mostly to get back at Boot), and then pulled away the paneling. "Ready, friends?" he asked of the multitude of caged birds.

They mostly just glared at him.

"Okay then," he said, moving to the back of the area of the stands he was in. "Let's go! Wingardium Leviosa!"

The latches on all of the cages lifted open (he'd loosened them beforehand, but made sure the birds hadn't realized), and the cage doors swung open. Having been kept in too-small cages for too long a period of time (not necessarily on purpose; Harry wasn't sure how much area a bird needed, and decided it was the same as a cat in a cat carrier, which is not the correct answer), the birds flew out almost immediately. To egg them on, Harry and Dave made sure to scare the crap out of them.

He'd littered the stands and field with seeds the night before, and mice that morning before anyone had arrived, so the hungry birds paused in the sunlight... and went to town.

The shrieks and screams were music to Harry's ears, even when he heard the howl of "POTTER!" from the stands from the one professor who (rightfully) suspected him of everything.