No Light Without Shadows

by Draeconin

See Chapter One for disclaimer and details.

Chapter Seven

The room was silent as Harry walked back over to the Gryffindor table. Planting his fists on the table, he leant over at Ron. "How much fun is that, Ronald?" he sneered. "You've been best mates with a Slytherin for five years! So either you're a bigger pillock than I ever imagined you were, or Slytherins aren't so bad as you paint them."

"Mister Potter," came the tensely calm tones of the headmaster, "if you are quite through disturbing the proceedings? Please sit with your House, would you? And I would like to speak to you after the Feast."

Harry nodded his acknowledgement to the old man, then turned and made his way to the Slytherin table.

Professor Dumbledore wanted nothing more than to tell Harry to sit back to his proper table, but that was an argument he did not wish to have in front of the whole school. Nor, since the incident happened in front of the entire student body, did he think it an argument he could win. The Sorting Hat had deemed Harry to be a Slytherin, and the hat was the final and only authority on who got sorted where. To override it would be to invite an undermining of the whole system, and he couldn't have that. It was a tradition that was centuries old. He dearly hoped that Harry hadn't created a precedent that would be popularly followed. He could imagine the headaches that would cause, not to mention having to rewrite all the records.

The Slytherins watched Harry approach with various reactions, all tinged with bemusement. No matter their personal feelings at the moment though, they could do nothing with the whole school looking on. And the Sorting Hat had placed him with them. Some of the sixth year Slytherins, on the other hand, weren't taken nearly so much by surprise, having had a chance to see behind the façade on the ride to Hogwarts.

As Harry approached the sixth years' portion of the table, Crabbe shoved over, making everyone else on the bench budge over a space, and leaving a spot open next to Draco. Harry sat next to the blond without a word.

"This makes sense," Draco said in a low voice. "Which leaves us with the question: how did a Slytherin wind up in a house which is practically the antithesis of everything for which we stand?1"

"I didn't want Slytherin then; I didn't fight it this time," Harry replied with a small shrug.

Harry's answer left those within hearing distance gobsmacked. No wonder the bloody Boy Who Lived had been able to give them so much trouble: he had been one of their own all along! The realisation left many with the mixed reaction of resentment for having been rejected, and admiration that he'd fooled so many, hiding his true nature all this time. Not to mention he'd somehow overruled the Sorting Hat. How brilliant was that?

Harry looked across the hall to the Gryffindor table to see the reactions of those seated there. Most of them looked betrayed, or as though they had been told their parents had died. Hermione was crying and hitting Ron anywhere she could reach, punching and slapping him repeatedly. Ron, whose expression was unreadable, was making very little effort to defend himself.

In Ron's mind the shocked mantra that he had driven away his best friend – driven him over to the enemy – was running repeatedly.

Neville sent Harry a small smile of encouragement and support, and Seamus gave him a rather wry smile as well. Ginny was looking quite furious, but her gaze was fixed on her brother. Harry didn't think he'd want to be anywhere near where that little confrontation took place – not that it was likely he would be, now.

Harry smiled a rather sad smile at all of them, then fixed his gaze on the table in front of him. Actually he wasn't quite sure what to feel. There was a certain sense of loss, to be sure, but he also felt as though rather restrictive bonds had been loosed. Now he should have more freedom to be just himself, instead of the bloody 'Boy Who Lived'. Gods, but he'd hated having to try to live up to that title, even a little. Of course this move to Slytherin also meant he should have an easier time exploring his relationship with Draco, but the down side was that he was now also more accessible to the children and sympathisers of Death Eaters.

And if Harry's golden eyes hadn't been noticed, and then his signet rings, although only one of them truly mattered, his worries on that last point would have been far more valid. As it was, though he didn't know it yet, many of the older families in Slytherin had been subordinate to House Dæmentelen. That didn't mean that they would now fall in behind Harry's banner (at least not without word from their present family Heads), those loyalties being centuries past, but it did mean they would give him far more leeway than he would otherwise have had. Those who had no idea – mostly the younger years – would be informed, the elder among them having been well schooled in their family histories.

Harry had eaten, but he wasn't entirely sure what had been on his plate. As time had gone on, he had thought more and more of what he was going to have to deal with. Not only Slytherin and Gryffindor Houses and Dumbledore, but also Professors McGonagall and Snape. Thank the gods he didn't have to worry about a disappointed Gryffindor Quidditch team! Umbridge had seen to that last year . . . unless Dumbledore had managed, somehow, to lift that lifetime ban against him playing Quidditch.

Harry groaned.

Draco, who had watched Harry's distracted state and guessed why, inquired, "What now, Potter?" a bit impatiently.

"Quidditch," Harry replied.

"That's right; you were banned last year," Draco said with a pleased smirk. Then he frowned. That had been a good thing whilst Harry was playing for Gryffindor, but if he was in Slytherin now... "Dumbledore will have had that decision reversed, won't he?" Draco mused aloud. He certainly hoped so. It would certainly be in the old man's style, where Potter was concerned.

"I'm a bit afraid he might have done," Harry confessed.

"What?" Draco exclaimed in affronted surprise.

"There are going to be hard enough feelings with the Gryffindors now that I've changed houses; I'd hate to imagine what they'd be like if I were playing against them, too," Harry explained.

"Who bloody well cares?" Draco exclaimed. "We most certainly cannot have a talent like yours just gathering dust!"

"But all I know is the Seeker position, and that's yours!" Harry argued.

"I'll...!" Draco paused, torn. He truly loved flying and competing, but he knew that the year's House Cup would be in the bag if Harry was playing Seeker. Maybe he could try out for Chaser? It was a poor second to the excitement and freedom he felt while chasing the snitch, but he'd still be playing if he made the cut. Then again, he still didn't know if Harry was eligible to play, so he could be stressing over nothing.

"I have to go," Harry said, having seen Dumbledore leaving the Head Table. "Dumbledore's about to read me the riot act."

"Bugger 'im," Crabbe remarked.

"No thanks," Harry replied with a faint smirk as he arose from the bench, "he's not my type."

"Just blonds, eh?" was the faint rejoinder.

Surprised, Harry laughed. Even as embarrassed as he was by the remark, he felt much better as he walked away, and smirked as he heard Draco start to verbally lay into his henchman.

When Harry entered the Headmaster's office, he didn't wait for an invitation to be seated. It was rude, but he knew that if he let Dumbledore take control of the situation that he'd have a harder time of it. From being there several times before, he knew which chair was the most comfortable and sat in it, draping his hands over the ends of the chair arms: a move that, while not so subtle, didn't quite shove his signet rings in the old man's face. That done, however, he sat back and waited for the headmaster to address him.

The old man sat there regarding Harry for quite some time: a move designed to make Harry nervous – put him on the defensive. All it did was make Harry angry, since he recognised the ploy. But he hid his ire and continued to wait. Finally, Dumbledore spoke.

"We do not resort pupils here, Harry," Albus said in sad, disappointed tones. "What made you think you had the right to do what you did tonight?"

"A bit of a moot point now, sir, isn't it?" Harry replied, avoiding the question.

"I do seem to rather be up against a wall," the old man commented sternly. "Was it your intention to so publicly renounce everything you stand for?"

Harry frowned at the old man. He very much resented the implication that he was nothing more than an icon. "What I did, I did because I got totally pissed off—"

"Language, Mister Potter," Dumbledore interjected.

"—with Ron's ranting," Harry continued without pause.

"He and Hermione didn't write this summer – your doing, I believe?" Harry put in with a resentful glare, "– and I called them out about it. Ron started on at me about being like a Slytherin. Well, why the... Why not? You know I was supposed to be in Slytherin," Harry said almost accusingly.

Dumbledore just regarded Harry patiently.

"Ron's always painted them all like the blackest of blackguards; as though they were all already Marked Death Eaters: I just got tired of his bigotry, and accusing me of wanting to be a Slytherin – almost accusing me of being as bad as he thinks they are – and I snapped."

"I must say," Harry added with cautious suspicion, "that your own actions in the past seem rather . . . apathetic towards Slytherins and their House."

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. "Indeed?" he inquired.

Harry nodded. "My first year... All those points you awarded at the Leaving Feast?" he said questioningly.

"What of them, my dear boy?"

"Rather a lot of them, weren't there?" Harry asked.

"Do you think them unearned?" Dumbledore inquired.

"I think, sir, that you didn't balance them off with everything else," Harry observed cautiously. "Curfew broken, as well as several other rules?"

"Just what I argued, Mister Potter," Snape's disagreeable voice said off to Harry's left side.

Harry whipped his head around. Professors Snape and McGonagall were just inside the doorway, the Deputy Headmistress holding the Sorting Hat.

"All water under the bridge now," Dumbledore said soothingly.

Harry turned back around. "Perhaps, sir, but the manner in which you did it was rather underhanded, and you certainly put the cat amongst the canaries with that manoeuvre. Almost made certain I wouldn't be welcome amongst them."

There was a momentary, uncomfortable silence as Harry's unspoken accusation hung between them.

"If you two are quite through with your idiotic idioms?" Snape said impatiently.

"Yes. What are we to do about this situation?" Minerva inquired of the headmaster. "We can't just have pupils being resorted as they will, can we? How in the world could this happen?" she demanded. "The Sorting Hat—"

"Knew what it was doing the first time," the Hat put in, interrupting. "Stubborn fellow wouldn't go, though, would he?"

"Whatever do you mean by that?" she demanded fiercely of the hat.

"It really doesn't matter," the headmaster said. "Harry was—"

"What it means is that I refused to be put in Slytherin, my first year," Harry revealed, rather sheepishly.

The headmaster sighed. 'So much for trying to keep things on the quiet,' he thought.

"You what? You... You what?" Professor McGonagall sputtered incoherently, which Harry found a bit amusing, although he wasn't anxious to see what her reaction would be once she recovered herself.

Snape was looking at Harry with undisguised disgust, along with a certain amount of disbelief.

'Nothing new there,' Harry resignedly thought to himself.

"Well, I'd been told all these horrid things about Slytherin, and how Voldemort came from there..." Harry said lamely to his former (?) Head of House.

"You were better off in Gryffindor," Albus said sagely.

"Oh, do put a sock in it, sir," Harry said, rolling his eyes.

"Mister Potter!" Minerva exclaimed reprimandingly at Harry's rudeness.

Harry sat back sullenly, but said, "I never fit in, there."

"Were you unhappy in my House?" Minerva asked frostily.

His fond respect for the elderly woman caused Harry to approach his response to her question in a different manner than he might otherwise have done. The full truth was that most of the time he'd felt like a stranger in a strange land, there, despite the friends he'd made.

"Not always," he replied. "Had some great fun from time to time really, but—"

"I can imagine," Snape muttered nastily.

"But," Harry deliberately repeated, "I always felt a bit of a fake. I always had to be somebody for them, rather than being allowed to be myself."

"Examples?" Minerva demanded.

"I'm a Parselmouth," Harry stated baldly. "Until they forgot that, they looked at me as though I was the Dark Lord himself. And anytime anything went wrong, I was the first they became suspicious of, even if I'd nothing to do with it."

"You know it's true, Professor," Harry said earnestly, looking directly into her eyes.

McGonagall sadly nodded. She was aware of what went on in her House, even if she didn't always like to acknowledge it.

"And you think you could do better in my House, Potter?" Snape sneered.

"I would have, sir . . . I think," Harry replied, trying to keep his automatic response to the man under control. "Now? I'm not so sure."

"They'd eat you alive, Potter. You're too weak to be a Slytherin," was the greasy man's response.

Harry's face tinted in anger, and his eyes changed colour. "With you biting at my heels all the time, sir, I'm sure it would be quite difficult," Harry retorted.

Snape's face suffused with rage at the insult. "You insolent . . . brat!" he spat out. "Twenty points from . . . Albus! Tell me this . . . Potter . . . is not going to be in my House!"

Dumbledore had reluctantly chuckled at Harry's words. Now, eyes twinkling, he said, "You must admit that was quite the Slytherin rejoinder."

Snape, powerless to deny it, span on his heels to again confront Harry. "Take that charm off your eyes, Potter. We're not first years to be impressed with colour changing charms!"

Dumbledore again intervened. "I think you'll find that it's not a colour changing charm, Severus."

Snape grabbed his wand, and then Harry's arm, intending to cast a 'Finite' to prove his claim, and quickly released the arm again, as though he'd been stung.

"What the bloody hell!" he exclaimed.

"Severus, please!" Albus said, objecting to the man's language. "But if you'll look at the signet ring on young Potter's left hand?" he suggested.

"He shocked me!" Severus accused angrily, with a puzzled glare. There were spells that could shock people, but not from just touching a person, that he knew of. He couldn't accuse the boy of attacking him without knowing what caused it, however. If he was wrong, he'd come out looking the fool.

"Look at the ring, Severus," Dumbledore said again. "I think that will answer both your questions."

Harry was looking from one man to the other, feeling a bit beleaguered. Professor McGonagall was looking quite lost. Harry, feeling angry and resentful, but hoping it might help, held up his left hand so the potions master could see the ring.

Snape looked at the ring, then an expression of surprise crossed his face. "Dæmentelen?" he asked Dumbledore, seeking confirmation. Upon receiving it in the form of the old man's very slight nod, he began to very closely examine the signet. He sat heavily in the nearest chair when he could find no sign of forgery.

"Will there be any more trouble about Mister Potter's placement?" Dumbledore asked softly. He was unhappy about it himself, but since there was nothing for it, he was dealing with the reality.

Snape shook his head. He was scowling in deep thought, but he also looked a bit stunned.

Addressing Harry, the headmaster said, "We shall have to move you into the Slytherin dungeons, but until we can guarantee your safety, I don't believe we should move you into the dorms proper."

"Don't you agree, Severus?" he asked the man.

"Why ask me?" the Slytherin Head asked with a faint bitterness. "You'll only have your own way, anyway."

"There's no need to be like that, my boy," the headmaster said chidingly, before he returned to the subject at hand.

"I think a separate room, but abutting the Slytherin dorms should do the trick," the old man continued, as though nothing had been said. "Perhaps right next the male prefect's room. There's an abandoned storage room we can convert there, if I recall aright."

Harry looked at the headmaster. A storage room. Wonderful. Shades of cupboards under the stairs, anyone?

"You needn't look at me like that, my boy," Dumbledore told Harry reprovingly. "It will be renovated. We could even have the castle add a toilet and a bath, while we're about it."

"It can do that?" Harry asked in shocked surprise.

"Oh, yes. Hogwarts can do quite a lot that would surprise people," the headmaster replied, his eyes shining with glee to have surprised the boy.

"How long will it take?" Harry asked. He wasn't about to feed the headmaster's penchant for secrets and mysteries by asking for explanations. All he'd likely get in return would be mysterious looks and vague words.

Dumbledore waved the question off. "Oh, a day or two at most, I'm sure," he said reassuringly.

"And where am I to sleep until then?"

The headmaster looked thoughtfully at his Slytherin Head of House. "Professor Snape?" he suggested.

The potions master was outraged. "No! Absolutely not! I will teach your sniveling brats, but I will not have them sleeping in the same rooms as I inhabit!"

'Well, at least I'm not being singled out this time,' Harry thought, still feeling a bit offended – not that he'd have accepted such an arrangement. The man would likely have dissolved him with one of his potions whilst he slept.

"Then I suppose I shall have to impose upon one of our Slytherin prefects. The male one, of course," Albus said almost absently, his eyes twinkling merrily.

"And who might that be?" Harry asked with a sense of foreboding.

"Draco Malfoy," Albus replied, the twinkle strong in his eyes, now. While he might not like the idea of Harry being resorted into Slytherin, he did find it rather amusing that the two bitter rivals had patched things up so far as to be holding hands when they entered the Great Hall. Harry's sexual orientation had never been a subject of his thoughts, but Albus liked that he could be surprised once in a while.

Harry heaved a sigh of relief, but wondered why Draco hadn't rubbed the fact of his being a prefect this year in his face.

Snape frowned. "You don't seem disturbed by that," he observed.

"Draco and I . . . came to an understanding a few days ago," Harry said uneasily.

Minerva moved a bit shakily to a chair and sat down. That had been the last straw. Having her favourite pupil sort himself into another house – and Slytherin at that! – had been a hard blow, but she'd weathered it all right. Her faith in the headmaster had been tested, and while there were questions she needed to explore the answers to, she had come out the other side with it still intact. The implications of Harry being the heir of House Dæmentelen were staggering, but she'd remained strong. This latest revelation was a relatively insignificant thing, but it was one thing too many.

"What sort of 'understanding'?" Snape's tone had taken on a decidedly dangerous tone as he noted Harry's use of the young Malfoy's first name.

"We decided to put our past behind us," Harry replied somewhat truthfully.

"Why?" If the question had been a hammer, there would have been a dent in Harry's head.

Harry assumed a surprised look. "Surely, sir, you don't expect us to keep up such a childish vendetta?" he asked, avoiding the question.

"It's worked for you so far!" Harry's new Head of House shot back.

Harry looked at him in genuine surprise this time. If he didn't know that the man wouldn't stoop so low, he'd say Snape was sulking. Fortunately he didn't have to find an answer to that.

"So everything is quite all right, then!" the headmaster declared cheerfully.

Harry looked at the headmaster consideringly. "No, sir," he contradicted, "everything is not 'quite all right'. Sirius was killed because I wasn't given information I needed, you cut me off from the mates who might have comforted me, and you have made too many other mistakes for everything to be 'all right': quite a few having to do with me. But—"

"That is quite enough, Mister Potter," Minerva said, coming alive again after her shock. "I will not have you casting aspersions upon the headmaster!"

"Let him speak, Minerva," the old man said calmly, but wondering if he had erred. He'd had his reasons, of course, but could he have...?

The Transfigurations professor-cum-deputy headmistress shot him a disapproving frown for his lenience, but subsided.

"I was going to say, 'but I realise that we're all human'. But there were mistakes made," Harry said, eyeing the stern woman, "the first of which was, perhaps, leaving me with the Dursleys."

"I've told you before, my boy, that it was for your own protection," Dumbledore said condescendingly, defending his action.

"Yes, you have, sir," Harry said, looking at him. "The question is, sir, from what? Voldemort was gone – and as far as anyone knew for sure, dead – and his followers were without leadership." Harry held up a hand as Dumbledore made to speak. Surprisingly, the old man withheld his words, and Harry continued without interruption. "Even if there was a danger from Death Eaters, there would have been no concerted effort for fear of Ministry reprisals; only small groups or individual attempts, if that."

"You see, sir, I've had some time to think this out," Harry added as an aside.

He, with the assurance of youth, was sure he'd got it right this time, not considering that perhaps he still hadn't all the facts. But that state of affairs had been created by others, so perhaps Harry couldn't be blamed.

Professor McGonagall was fixing the headmaster with a piercing look. She had been against leaving baby Harry with those horrid Muggles to begin with. But Albus' reasoning – to protect young Harry from the hero worship he'd have been exposed to – had seemed so reasonable at the time. In the intervening years, though, she'd wondered. Human nature being what it was, surely the furore would have died down after a year or two, before Harry could be too badly affected by it? And was the neglect and emotional abuse he'd suffered in the interim any better?

"Neville told me about his parents, about a year after my parents died," Harry continued, "and I'm sure that there were other rogues committing similar atrocities, but surely that kind of danger would not require the extreme measures you took. It seems to me a simple Fidelius Charm would have done the job quite nicely; after all, it's what you depended upon to keep my parents safe, wasn't it, sir? And that was with a powerful, fully healthy and alive Voldemort stalking about," Harry added. "So what can have been the real reason to leave me with magic-hating Muggles?" he asked.

"I take it you have a theory, Potter?" Snape asked. The man's tone wasn't friendly, but it was far less adversarial than usual.

Harry nodded. "Yes, sir. And it has to do with my parents natures. However, before I explain, I must sincerely apologise for invading your privacy, sir: but without that, I don't think I would have figured it out."

"Get on with it, Potter," Snape said impatiently, ignoring the apology. Insofar as he was concerned, the boy's apology for his invasion of his personal pensieve, and the memories contained within, came far too late – never mind that it provided the perfect excuse to stop wasting his time 'teaching' the brat Occlumency.

Harry, who had really not expected anything different from the potions master, turned his gaze back to Dumbledore, who was looking interested, but confident.

"My father was the type of person Professor Snape has always accused me of being. He was arrogant, cocky, and rather heedless of others' feelings. My mother, from all accounts, had a habit of thinking for herself, was quite stubborn, and had something of a temper. I rather think I take after her more in that regard," Harry said for Snape's benefit, although he carefully didn't look at the man. "I think that our dear headmaster was afraid that I'd be quite uncontrollable were I to grow up in a wizarding household, or with any decent family that treated me as a human being. So he put me with a family that was quite likely to smother my spirit – or at least severely diminish it."

"Mister Potter!" Minerva exclaimed, aghast at the accusation. Her loyalty to Albus Dumbledore was strong, but even so, Harry's words had an insidious logic to them.

"Do you truly believe that, Harry?" Dumbledore asked sadly. In his own mind, although there was a tiny twinge in his conscience, he was innocent of that intention. The twinge was because there had been motives other than Harry's safety or well-being involved – just not so much the ones of which he was being accused: not consciously, at any rate.

"It's a theory that fits all the facts," Harry said, refusing to back down, "but there's more."

Without waiting to be censured or prompted, he continued. "I'll concede that Umbridge was forced upon you last year, but of the four years previous, none of our DADA professors were what they seemed. My first year we had Quirrel: a vehicle for Voldemort. In my second year we had Lockhart: a fake, a coward, and he had ruined several lives to write his books. In third year we had Professor Lupin: a werewolf, but he was a good teacher. However, he was pressured into resigning before the year was quite over, wasn't he?" Harry avoided looking at Professor Snape, but he could feel the man's glare. It had only been a little early, but Snape had been responsible for Remus feeling he had to leave. "And in my fourth year we had Barty Crouch Junior, a Voldemort supporter, masquerading as Alastor Moody – although, ironically, he was a surprisingly good teacher."

"And your point would be?" Albus asked mildly. Listening to the young man's listing, he had to admit it sounded damning.

"Defense Against the Dark Arts, sir. You would have me believe that I'm the one who has to defeat Voldemort, and yet all but two of the professors we've had that should have taught me what I needed to know to undertake that endeavor have been all but useless – one of the useless ones actually being Voldemort. So you've not exactly been a great judge of character, have you, sir?" Harry asked, making his voice sound almost kindly. "Not quite as all-knowing as you'd like us all to believe?" Even as much as Harry disliked the man right now, he hoped it wasn't anything more nefarious than that.

"Then there's Binns, a ghost who puts his classes to sleep and never covers anything other than the goblin rebellions. And might I point out 'Professor' Trelawney," Harry continued, "a woman you kept on staff because she had one genuine prophecy? I'd venture that you kept her around to keep an eye on her, since almost everyone thought she was a laughing stock as an instructor. I can hardly believe that there weren't better prospects out there."

At that he got two snorts of agreement, although Minerva immediately looked apologetic about it, and which interrupted Albus' attempt to defend his decisions before it even began. The fact that the old man had 'found' Firenze within a few short hours of needing to replace the eccentric woman was proof enough of better prospects being available.

"If you were aware of that, Potter, why did you keep taking her class?" Snape asked coldly.

Harry gave a short shrug. "Ron's idea," he said simply. "I hardly enjoyed her continually 'predicting' my death, but Ron wanted an easy class that we wouldn't have much work in." He smirked. "I sometimes actually enjoyed inventing other gruesome 'predictions' of my death for her," he confessed.

"Yes, she showed me a few of those," Dumbledore interjected with a smile.

If the headmaster thought he was going to ingratiate himself with that comment, he was mistaken. It only reminded Harry of his presence.

"The point, sir, is that in light of these facts, and that you continually kept information from me that might have helped me make wiser decisions, you have, sadly, not proven to be someone to whom I wish to entrust my life and future. I will still take your advice into account, of course, but I would prefer to seek my guidance elsewhere." Harry would have liked to have called the man both a manipulative bastard and a foolish old man who was living on the dreams of glories past, but he wasn't stupid. That would only have inflamed the old man against him. This way Dumbledore might still resent him, but hopefully he wouldn't have reason to inflict a vendetta against him.

In point of fact, Dumbledore was rather reliving his glory days in this battle against Voldemort. His views of Harry were quite mercurial, however. The boy was tool, ersatz grandson, weapon, and favoured light of his life all rolled up into one, making for a rather muddled viewpoint at times, and which had led to some mistakes in judgment. There were times when he felt that he should retire, but there was nobody he felt he could turn the Order over to whom he felt was as capable. And until there was, he rather needed his base at Hogwarts where he could more readily be reached and direct operations. Usually he felt up to the task, but there were occasions, like this one, when he felt every year of his age on his shoulders.

Professor Snape had briskly walked Harry to Draco's room, telling him that the house elves should already have transferred his belongings there. Once delivered, though, he left Harry to his own devices. Harry knocked on the painting Snape said was the guardian for the portal to Draco's room, and waited.

Harry still wasn't sure how to handle Professor Snape. He wasn't ready to forgive and forget the man's part in Sirius' death, but he might have to forego any sort of retribution in view of the fact that he was now his Head of House. In that position of authority, Snape had far too much power and influence over Harry's life, should he choose to exercise it. He mulled over the problem whilst waiting for Draco to get off his arse to discover who was without.

Finally Draco opened the portal – and groaned upon seeing Harry standing there.

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1: Line suggested by Ishe-Leigh

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Betas: Ishe Leighe, Sheree Spataro. Brit-Picker: Andy Smith