A few days passed, and Malfoy had said nothing more about the snake rings or his mysterious benefactor. Finally, late one night, Sev said in just the right tone of impatient nervousness "Lucius, don't you think we're moving a little slowly? We're just sitting around. We should be doing something."

Malfoy gave a wide smile. "I'm glad you said that, Severus. Everybody, listen up." The other three scrambled into varying states of attention-paying.

"Sev says we're moving too slowly here, and he's right. We've suffered under this outdated system long enough-" Sev attempted to figure out how you could twist the current situation into 'suffering', and even with his exceptional brain couldn't quite do it - "and it's time for a change. Now, we all know it's coming... but even so, we should do our bit."

He smiled reflectively, and fiddled absently with his wand. "Now, last year... last year was a trial run. This year, we're gonna get a little more... ambitious." They all nodded and smiled; after all, weren't they all Slytherins? "Last year, we cleaned the trash out of our year-group. This year, it's time to purify the rest of house Slytherin."

"Next year the school, when we're fifteen the world?" suggested Snape wryly.

Malfoy smiled darkly at him. "Oh, it's not as outlandish as you might think..." he intimated softly.

"What can we do?" asked Avery, with oily eagerness.

"Well, it's not so much a question of what you can do as... what Severus can do." He smirked at the other boy encouragingly.

The correct response to that would probably be a 'Me? What can I do?' - but that was neither a Slytherin response nor a Snape response. He simply raised a fine eyebrow and waited for Malfoy to elaborate.

Malfoy turned to address the whole group. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we have a genius in our midst." He placed an odd accent on the word 'genius', as if he couldn't quite decide if it should be mocking or not.

Slytherins might be ambitious, but - with the possible exception of Colin Crabbe - none of them were stupid. They had all twigged by now that Sev's brains were really something quite extraordinary. Malfoy knew about the deal he had with Professor Malachite to be allowed to read up on all sorts of dangerous subjects, and they'd all seen him breezing through texts they couldn't understand a word of. Sev tried instinctively to disguise the true extent of his intelligence, but he had to read sometimes. He wasn't prepared to give up his books for any amount of protective illusion.

However, what Malfoy had in mind wasn't his usual quest for ever-more-nasty hexes. After what he'd done to Josh Matthews last year, Sev doubted he needed anything more powerful anyway.

"House Slytherin is, as you know, the home of deviousness." Malfoy managed to make that sound like something to be proud of. Sev noticed that he seemed to have developed a need to make dramatic speeches; probably a manifestation of his newly puffed sense of importance. Lucius Malfoy had always loved the sound of his own voice. "Well, I think we all know that our Severus Snape is more devious than most."

More devious than you know. If he'd been James Potter or Sirius Black, he'd have said that out loud; the hero, making a cryptic comment so the bad guys could remember it at the time of their downfall and curse not having twigged.

Being Severus Snape, he smiled thinly and said nothing. Other people's opinions had never meant enough to him to want to show off.

Malfoy clapped him companionably on the shoulder in a way that Snape detested. "Well, Severus, this year we're finally going to put that brain of yours to good use." Sev suspected Lucius Malfoy's definition of good did not quite run parallel with most people's. "Sev, we need a plan," he said.

Severus quirked an eyebrow. "Anything specific in mind, or just a plan?"

Malfoy laughed, and squeezed his shoulder in a friendly way. What was all this need for physical contact? Sev couldn't see how people got any kind of comfort or validation out of it. It was an invasion of his personal space, and he found it extremely distasteful.

Malfoy's smile faded into seriousness, and he produced a small slip of paper from inside one of his textbooks. There were three names on it; Snape recognised them all. All Slytherins, and all... "Mudbloods?"

Malfoy nodded briskly. "I want them out. I want them out soon, and I want them out without anybody knowing why, how, or who got rid of them. Can you do it?"

There was only one possible response to that.

"Of course."


Malfoy was, as Sev had long known, far from stupid. He had been able to get away with his victimisation of Josh Matthews last year because it was an isolated incident, seemingly reasonless. Ejecting the last three mudbloods in house Slytherin in quick succession was a very different proposition.

Sev was someone who lived by spotting patterns - and however this was done, it would make a pattern. The only way to make it work would be to create a pattern that nobody less sharp than him could trace.

One thing that actually counted to his advantage was the general lack of prejudice against mudbloods. People other than Malfoy's little cadre simply didn't care, and probably wouldn't even know who came from a Muggle family and who didn't. So the trick would be to get them all out of the school for entirely unconnected reasons.

Sev felt no moral qualms about conspiring to remove three completely innocent students from the only magical academy they could reasonably attend. If they stayed at Hogwarts, things would only go very badly for them. At least if he was planning this operation, he could control how badly burned they got from it.

It took no time at all to select his first victim; the oldest, a sixth year called Darren Kaye. If anyone began to suspect a pattern, they would automatically look to the sixth and seventh years; no one would expect students their age to be victimising someone so much older.

Sev dredged his memory for anything pertaining to Darren Kaye, and then spent a few weeks surreptitiously observing him. He was, despite his Muggle ancestry, a typical Slytherin. Sly in a dully unpleasant way, he would cheat or lie whenever he could get away with it, and he had the kind of friends who would happily cackle with him over others' misfortune, and just as happily ditch him once he had some of his own.

Sev's plan grew and solidified in his mind very quickly. Had he still had his invisibility cloak, he could have set it in motion himself... but for this, he had not just his own resources but people under command. He found himself in the unusual position of needing a favour from Colin Crabbe.

"Colin, I need you to do something for me. I need you to steal some things."

Colin grinned proudly. For a boy of his bulk, he was surprisingly light-fingered. All sorts of minor valuables had a tendency to wander into his possession, although he had learned quickly not to mess with anything belonging to his dorm-mates.

"Sure, Severus. D'you want me to get you some stuff from the staff offices? I know a way to get in."

Sev shook his head impatiently. "No, nothing like that. I just want you to go up to the sixth-year dorms every so often, and lift a few things. Spare quills, sweets, magical gadgets, any spare knuts and sickles that have been left lying around."

A frown made its way ponderously across Colin's flattened features. "But that's just small stuff. I take stuff like that all the time."

Sev permitted himself a tight-lipped smile. "Exactly." As Colin shrugged and dutifully turned to go, he called him back. "Oh, and one more thing. There's a bed in the second dorm with a poster of a dragon above it. Take things from all the other places, but not from that one."

Somewhat to his surprise, Crabbe performed his assigned tasks without any difficulty. Sev allowed him to keep the sweets and the money he picked up, but anything fairly expensive or easily recognisable he hoarded under his bed, in the compartment where he had once hidden the invisibility cloak.

Crabbe's well-honed thieving instincts let him know how much to take and how frequently he could get away with it. At Sev's urging, he would pick pockets and bags of the sixth-years in the library or between classes - but only when a certain oblivious sixteen-year-old was in the area.

The sixth-years gradually became aware that there was a petty thief in their midst, but nothing was ever major enough to call in the staff. Many of the things Crabbe took should definitely not have been secreted about their dorms in the first place.

Perhaps people noticed Darren Kaye never had anything taken - perhaps they did not. But Sev knew that wouldn't matter. Whatever they saw or didn't see now, he knew they would have an entirely different recollection as soon as somebody was in the frame for it.

The frame he drew together very neatly. From the third year and upwards, Hogwarts students were allowed on set weekends to visit Hogsmeade, the nearby wizarding village. They had to have parental permission first, but that hadn't been a problem - he'd dropped the slip on top of a pile of his uncle's papers one day, and he had quite absently signed it.

Unlike his fellow students, Sev wasn't in the slightest bit interested in Zonko's joke shop, or the incredible variety of sweets in Honeydukes. More to the point, everyone else would expect that, too. He allowed himself to be seen briefly browsing Dervish and Banges, and then made his way over to the bookshop. Not only was he genuinely keen to expand his personal library, but the bookshop was directly opposite Honeydukes - the one place students were virtually guaranteed to end up within.

Crabbe and Avery stuck with him - this year, rules had been imposed about sticking in pairs or threes - looking bored. Neither of them being great readers, it didn't take much acting. Avery lounged by the window, watching the street outside. Finally, he sat up with a lazy stretch and said "God, this is boring. I'm going across to Honeydukes. Coming?"

Colin got up, but Sev said "I'll stay here," not looking up from his books.

To anybody watching, it was probably a fairly familiar scenario. And after all, there were only five people at Hogwarts who knew it had been carefully planned that way.

Sev was careful to not watch them walk across, and doubly careful to pay zero attention to Darren Kaye and his friends where Avery had spotted them out of the window. He very much doubted anybody would ever try to link this to him in any way - but it was in his nature to be ridiculously over-cautious.

A more emotional person might have jiggled on the spot nervously, or been unable to avoid the occasional nervous flicker of a glance. Sev stood as still as ever, calmly flicking through a copy of Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charms. He stayed that way until the commotion of the magical alarms was loud enough to disturb even the most devoted bookworm.

Honeydukes being a simple sweetshop, there were no crack teams of Aurors Apparating into position. However, half of the Hogwarts teaching staff came tumbling out of the Hog's Head, semi-drunk and more than semi-irritated.

Darren Kaye was unconscious on the pavement outside the shop. The magical theft detectors, in addition to shrieking as badly as any Howler, had dropped him with an automatic stun spell.

He was restored with a tap of Professor Vitae's wand, and then the shouting began. Darren was - justifiably - furious, complaining that the packs of Ice Mice and Acid Pops had not got into his pockets by any will of his own. The Professors were all too annoyed at being interrupted on their day off to listen.

Professor Malachite confiscated Darren's wand, and snapped sternly "Go back up the school and wait outside my office. Stay there until I get back."

Darren scowled, but the Professor was the head of house Slytherin, and there was no arguing. His gathered friends all made sympathetic faces as he stomped off. And then, once he was gone, they started crowding round Professor Malachite to tell him of all the little things that had been going missing.

Sev, for one, knew that they weren't missing any longer. In fact, as of five minutes after all of them but Simon Lestrange had headed down to Hogsmeade, they had been neatly stored in a compartment under Darren's bed.


Sev had no invisibility cloak to be a fly on the wall in Malachite's office, but he didn't need one. It was doubtful anybody in the entire building had missed Malachite's towering fury as it echoed off the walls. Stand in a nearby corridor, and you could hear phrases like "-disgrace to the school!" and "never in all my years as a teacher-" flying through the air as he raised his voice in anger.

Professor Malachite, Sev happened to know, was extremely defensive of the Slytherin reputation. Knowing the way they were always cast as the 'evil' side in any given confrontation, he was fighting a losing battle to re-establish them in the eyes of the other houses. As soon as Darren had been caught, nobody had thought 'a Hogwarts student just got caught stealing'. Everyone had thought 'a Slytherin just got caught stealing'.

Malachite was, naturally, more than furious. He took Darren 'crimes' extremely personally, as Sev had expected him to. He was not prepared to listen to the sixth-year's increasingly angry protestations of innocence. And it certainly didn't help Darren's case when the other boys in his dorm took the opportunity to do an unofficial 'raid' and found the missing items stashed under his bed.

Getting expelled from Hogwarts was near to unheard of, and Sev didn't think petty theft of sweets and small change would do it. However, he also knew it didn't have to.

Mr. and Mrs. Kaye arrived the following morning (neither of them had been prepared to travel by Floo powder). They obviously knew little about magic, but they didn't need to have 'petty theft' spelt out to them. They were both as furious as Malachite, protesting their son's innocence.

Sev soon discovered that apparently being a Muggle was no guarantee of avoiding Slytherin arrogance. They refused to admit even the slightest possibility that their son had done anything wrong (admittedly he hadn't, but Sev was fairly sure it wasn't beyond him to have). After several hours of indiscriminate shouting, they stormed out with a sulky Darren in tow.

"I'll have nothing more to do with your damned magic!" Mr. Kaye shouted over his shoulder on the way out. "I said it before, I'll say it again - it's damned unnatural. I won't have you pinning this on my boy, just because you're all so corrupt it wouldn't occur to you that my son could be innocent. Come on, Darren!"

And that was the ignoble end to Darren Kaye's time at Hogwarts.

In the buzzing Slytherin common room that same night, Malfoy met Sev's eyes across the room and gave him a surreptitious thumbs up.

"One down," he mouthed.