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Potion's was… weird. Hermione and Ron tried to share his table, but Harry had taken to sitting with Neville in Potions and helping him with his work. The nervous boy had only melted one cauldron last term, which was a record. Snape instructed in his usual way, neither picking on Harry, nor ignoring him. He treated Harry as if nothing had happened, as if Harry hadn't yelled at the man and then spent the intervening time avoiding him and everyone else in the castle as much as he could.

He was glad to escape the dungeons without losing any points for Gryffindor and headed for the next lesson with a faint sense of disbelief. Apparently Snape had decided not to take his outburst seriously, which was frustrating to say the least.

That night in the Room, Harry opened the Golden Egg for the first time and nearly went deaf at the wall of sound that promptly overwhelmed him. He tried to shout questions over the noise at the egg, tried to identify the noise from descriptions in books, tried to muffle it under a pillow and see if that helped, but at the end of it all, he came away with a ringing earache and a desire for a headache potion, which the room promptly supplied.

Caecus was in no mood for social interaction as he slunk through the corridor towards the Tower. He avoided Mrs Norris and Professor McGonagall, as well as Crookshanks and Ribbons – the calico cat from Hufflepuff. He slipped into the common room with a sense of relief and slipped into his usual hiding place eagerly.

This was why it was something of a shock to find the space already occupied by a snake. Harry had never seen this snake in the Tower before, and it took a moment for him to identify the species. That trip to the Reptile House when Dudley was eleven had really stuck with him – this was an Australian Red Belly Black snake: extremely poisonous and quick. The sleek black scales and red underbelly were a dead give away, as was the blunt head of the snake. These things could grow up to two metres long; however they rarely delivered a full dose of venom in one bite, preferring to save their venom for multiple bites instead. That made it less likely that a single bite would kill a human, but a cat …

The snake regarded him steadily and Harry realised that it was probably quite torpid – it was cool under the stairs here, which meant that the snake would have slowed down quite a bit. He pressed himself close to the entrance of his hide away and kept one eye on the snake and one on the common room. Once the common room was empty, Harry made as if to crawl out, which finally garnered a reaction from the snake. It stirred itself slowly and moved to follow him, an outcome that made Harry nervous.

The snake joined him on the hearth, curling up with a snaky sigh of pleasure at the warmth. Harry was fairly sure that he'd understand parseltongue even if he was currently in cat-form, but the snake was making no effort to speak with him at all. In fact it winked at him and then apparently went to sleep. Caecus watched carefully for a few minutes before finally deciding that the snake meant no harm to him and relaxing his muscles.

Shaking his head, Harry settled on the other side of the hearth and slipped into a doze of his own. The snake was gone when he woke.

AN – bonus points if you can figure out what is going on here!

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As always when he was confronted with a deadline that he was unprepared for, it seemed that time sped up. Harry was no closer to cracking the eggs message until Cedric Diggory told him the password to the prefect's bathroom. Once he realised that he would have to retrieve something from the bottom of the lake from the mer-people, Harry's mood was not improved at all.

The snake had started to find him all over the castle. Harry had even seen the thing when he was in his usual form, not Caecus. It never tried to talk to him, just came and kept him company. He'd cast a few spells over it – warning it first because he didn't want to be bitten – which had showed that it was not under any external influence. He hadn't been able to work out who owned the snake – unless it was one of Snape's specimens that had somehow escaped.

Once the snake realised – and it was an intelligent specimen, because it had reacted to Harry's comments, or rather to his musing out loud – that he needed to be able to breathe under water for an hour, it turned up in the space under Gryffindor's stairs with a small glass jar labelled 'gilly weed'. A quick conversation with Neville showed that the weed would allow him to breathe under water for about an hour, which made Harry feel a bit better about the upcoming task.

All he had to do now was to work out what the mer-people were going to take from him.

Meanwhile, his 'avoid people' plan was not going as well as he'd have liked. Ron and Hermione continued to stalk him through the castle and Snape continued to treat him neutrally in lessons, which had Malfoy shooting some odd glances his way. The 'Potter Stinks' badges were a little less prevalent among the Ravenclaw's than before, which was nice in a way, and Victor Krum seemed to be stalking Hermione whenever she wasn't in lessons. In fact, if it hadn't been for Hedwig's little stunt, Caecus would be spending time out on the roof as the only place that he could get some true solitude.

On the morning of the second task, Ron and Hermione were no where to be seen. Harry wasn't sure if he was relieved by this, or disappointed that they wouldn't be there when he went into the water. It wasn't that he wanted to show off; it was more that he wanted to know there were at least two people on the shore that would be on his side if he needed them. Despite their argument and the current state of their friendship, Harry knew that his two friends would help him out if they could – or at least he hoped so.

He felt very small wading into the Lake after the three other champions. All three cast their charms and spells in quick order and vanished below the surface, but Harry had to chew and swallow the gilly weed, which tasted disgusting. The pain of the transformation was an unexpected shock, but once he got used to the idea of the gills and webbing he made pretty good time.

Then he discovered what the mer-people had taken. Bad enough that he wasn't talking to Ron, the idea that someone knew that Ron was the person he felt he couldn't do without was sort of mortifying. Snape knew about this, Harry was sure, but he couldn't spare the time to really care as Krum and then Cedric rescued Hermione and Cho respectively. When he realised that Fleur's little sister was not going to be rescued, he had to make the attempt himself, which led to some very stressful minutes until they were all above the surface. Cold air woke Ron and the little girl up – Harry couldn't remember her name and didn't really care in his heart of hearts – and all three of them swam for the shore.

Then it was towels and pepper-up and Hermione grabbing him into a hug, along with Ron who was muttering a thousand and one things in his ear, all variations of thank you and sorry and you git we've missed you. Harry let them clutch at him, holding on just as strongly as they were and wanting everyone else to just sod off and let him get warm and dry.

He didn't really care about where he was in the standings, but managed to put on a credible front when he was announced as tying for first with Cedric, shaking the other boys hand and letting him go first towards the mass of students headed their way.

"Come on, I want out of these clothes," Ron muttered, latching onto Harry's arm, "So do you and so does Hermione. We'll deal with the Tower later."

Harry nodded and led the way as they ducked through the edge of the Forbidden Forrest, running for the school quickly and leading the way across the foyer to the entrance to his Nest. They were in and the door shut before anyone could catch up with them and the boys sent Hermione off to shower first. Dizzy appeared with a change of clothes for each, tutting at Harry over the state of his shoes and popping off with the promise of food and hot drinks.

It was an hour before they were all reassembled, Ron and Harry on the couch-come-bed, and Hermione curled in his armchair. Dizzy had brought hot chocolate and biscuits, which they were nibbling at and Harry felt oddly shy of his friends.

"I'm sorry," Ron went brick red, but he wasn't in Gryffindor for nothing, "I should have listened to you and Hermione better."

"It didn't help that you decided to avoid us, Harry," Hermione added, "We've been trying to talk to you for ages."

"I wasn't in a mood for a lecture, Hermione," Harry replied in a difficult voice, "I'm still not. I'm sorry, Ron. I should have tried harder to make you understand."

"I can't believe that I'm still the one you'd miss the most," Ron shook his head, "I thought for sure that you hated me the way you were trying to avoid me."

"No, it wasn't that," Harry sighed, "I needed to … it's hard to explain. I can't believe you went to Snape, though."

He was so relieved that they still wanted to be his friend that he couldn't quite believe his luck, but at the same time that betrayal still stung. He needed to know that they wouldn't run behind his back to his Guardian at every little hiccup, just as he wouldn't run to Mrs Weasley every time Ron put his foot out of line.

"We didn't," Hermione shook her head, "He caught us when we snuck out to look for you… wait: did Snape tell you that?"

"No," Harry grinned at her indignant tone, "I saw you together."

"So Harry, what do you think of Malfoy the Bouncing Ferret?" Ron had all the subtlety of a brick, but Harry didn't mind that too much. He leant back onto his nest and started catching up on the gossip that he'd missed with his friends.

The fact that it stopped Hermione from trying to discover exactly where he'd been while they were looking for him was a sort of added bonus.

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