You're a Badger, Harry

37: You're a Skater Boy, Harry

*to the tune of Rain Rain Go Away* Writer's block, leave my head, cause you're making me braindead

I have five chapters in my drafts and none of them are even remotely close to finished... Fun times.

Summary: Everyone's got the zoomies

The first-years trudged into the common room. Several of them slammed their book bags onto the tables, throwing the plants that decorated them into a frenzy.

"Shut up," one girl muttered to a Venus flytrap.

The flytrap hissed and turned away with its fanged mouth facing upward.

Harry, slurping on a milkshake that was, unfortunately, not bringing any girls or boys or non-binary joys to the yard, skipped over and plopped down next to her. "Better be nice, Paisley, or Professor Sprout will deduct points for making her babies cry."

Paisley snorted. "Who cares? Tierney already made us go down three points. Again."

"Hey, don't blame me!" Tierney protested. "The castle is huge! Do you know how many points get lost because students are late to class?"

Harry thought for a moment, taking an extra long slurp on his straw, then shrugged. "Can't say I've thought about it."

"Too many!" Grumbling curses that he most definitely should not know at his age, Tierney slouched off to his dorm.

Harry looked around the common room. Judging by the disgruntled expressions he saw, it wasn't just Tierney, or even the first years in general, that were having trouble getting to class. Not that Harry spent much time fretting over it. Because in all honesty, he had made Gryffindor drop much, much more in a single instance on multiple occasions. You kinda become immune to it after the first two times.

But he was an outlier and should not be counted. Because most students, especially the younger ones, did care.

Which meant something had to be done about it.

"Houston, we have a problem!"

Professor McGonagall sighed, already feeling a headache forming at the sight of the four students standing grimly before her. The other heads of houses had also braced themselves. Dumbledore, of course, simply smiled indulgently.

"I am unsure who this Houston is, Mr. Potter, but I'd be more than happy to help if I can," he said.

Well, that was certainly more than he'd done in Harry's previous life.

"It has been brought to my attention that some students have a hard time getting to class on time, despite all their best efforts. And Hermione here found something very interesting."

Hermione stepped forward. In her hands was a scroll, a really long one that curled around their feet like a papery cat. Next to her, Ron and Draco rolled out a large whiteboard that said in bold words at the top, "Point Loss Percentage." Underneath was a pie chart.

The heads of houses examined it with varying levels of confusion. Some of the labels on the slices made sense, like "Students in corridor after curfew" and "Messing around in classrooms," but there was also a much smaller slice labeled "Other" that, when magnified, included things like "Taking bad advice from Sage and/or Harry" and "Sneaking snakes and frogs into the dorm."

Hermione slapped a hand pointer to one of the slices. "As one can see," Hermione went on, adjusting the glasses that had not been present a moment ago, "there is an unusually high amount of points lost to being late for class."

Sure enough, the pie slice she was pointing to took up 36% of the chart.

"Thirty-six?" Ron said, doing a double take. "That's two less than last year."