Harry Potter sat across from his best friend, Ron Weasley, losing yet another game of chess. Unfortunately for him, he barely understood the rules of the game, and the loud chess pieces were quite distracting. For all that he loved spending time with his first and best friend, he really wished Ron would challenge him to a game of exploding snap instead. He actually won that game fairly frequently. Eventually, he said "Knight to C4".

Ron grinned happily, and, admittedly, a bit smugly. "Bad move, mate," he said, then promptly destroyed his knight with a pawn. "And check."

Harry sighed. His chess pieces shouted in outrage at the destruction of their ally. He distinctly heard one yell, "If I could, I would hang your incompetent ass upside down and turn your robes vivid pink!" He rolled his eyes. You could tell these pieces normally lived in the same house as the Weasley twins. Thinking of the twins, he looked around, wondering where they could be. They had promised to escort him to dinner, what with the whole Heir of Slytherin mess. They made great Hufflepuff herders, and their attitude somehow made the whole thing more funny than depressing.

"Where are your brothers, Ron? Shouldn't Fred and George be here by now? I'm getting a bit hungry." Harry asked.

Ron looked around distractedly. "Good point, mate. I'm starved. Think we should head to dinner without them? This game should be over in a few moves at this rate."

Harry spotted Percy coming down the stairs from the dorms. "Oi, Percy!" he called. "Do you know where Fred and George are? They said they would meet us for dinner."

Percy quickly made his way over to them. "They did? You should probably just head over, then. They've got detention with Filch until eight. They'll probably eat in the kitchens," he said with a disapproving sniff.

Harry sagged in disappointment. "I guess so…" A random question drifted across his mind. He had never had anyone around that he could give him a proper answer before, and he kept forgetting to ask when Hermione was around. "Say, Percy, what does Filch do, anyway? Ron says House Elves do most of the work at Hogwarts, so it doesn't seem like there's much point in having a Caretaker."

Percy beamed at him, proud to have a younger student ask him for help. "I suppose that would seem a bit odd. A caretaker does most of the cleaning and building maintenance in the muggle world, right?"

Harry nodded.

"Well, there's not much point in having cleaning staff in our world. However, most of the teachers teach all seven years, grade homework, have office hours to help students, give remedial lessons, and need to sleep as well. They are all very busy, so they don't necessarily have time to take all of the detentions, patrol the corridors at night, figure out what items are banned and confiscate them, enforce student discipline, and clean up any messes the house elves can't handle. Hagrid's the gamekeeper, so he can't do it either. He spends most of the day in the forest. Prefects can help a bit, but we are still students, so we don't have enough authority. We need and adult, so Dumbledore hired Filch."

"Huh," Harry said. "That actually makes sense."

Ron's brow was wrinkled with confusion. "If teachers don't patrol at night, then why do we always run into Snape?"

"You shouldn't go out after curfew in the first place, Ron." Percy said disapprovingly. "Though, to answer your question, Professor Snape's a bit of a night owl. I've almost never heard of him going to bed before midnight. Some of the older students think that might by why he's always especially snappish in the morning." Percy mentioned. "If you made noise while he was taking his nightly walk, he would naturally come running to see what was going on."

"He goes for a walk every night?" Ron asked, mind-boggled.

Percy snorted. "Surely you didn't believe that he would waste his time trying to get a second-year student in trouble? You do that well enough yourselves."

"Hey!" yelped Ron. "That's not fair! Snape really, really hates us! Harry especially. And he's a bloody git, too!"

"Ron! How could you say that about a professor!" came a strident, female voice from behind Harry's best friend. Looking at the scandalized fury on his second friend's face, Harry winced.

Percy smiled at them a bit nervously and said. "Well, I've got to head to dinner. See you later, Harry."

Harry sighed and set about defusing yet another row between his two closest friends. He could not blame Percy for running off like that. Getting caught in your younger brother's row would be awkward.