A/N: Thank you as always for the reviews and for reading! It's dearly appreciated.

To 'Guest'- I found your review really interesting and it brings up an interesting debate. I would have DM'd this directly had you'd been signed in, and I don't imagine you've continued to read this far, but on the off-chance you have, I'd like to address your thoughts. Namely that (at least in my opinion) 'good' is such a subjective word, especially when applied to people. I must admit that I've never been very interested in writing characters that are moral, traditional 'good guys', but instead in writing morally grey ones that are interesting, and trying their best to make the world a better place in their own flawed and frequently very imperfect ways. I wouldn't consider this Snape a knight on a white horse (he's certainly got a boatload of flaws, and he's too impatient for his own good), nor do I think that we should all emulate his methods, but that's what (I hope) makes him and his Slytherins interesting to read about. I'm genuinely sorry (and I say this in an entirely non-passive aggressive way!) if it doesn't entirely work- I'm far from a perfect writer!


Chapter Fifteen: Protection


"Potter, there you are."

Harry paused in his tracks, as did the rest of the Slytherin first year. It was Monday evening an hour before curfew, and they'd just reached the staircase leading from the dungeons to the Great Hall and were about to ascend, only to find a swirling mass of black striding toward them in the form of Professor Snape.

"Hello, Professor Snape," Daphne said brightly. "We were just going to visit Hagrid."

Snape's eyebrows raised; his eyes shifted to Daphne. "And is Hagrid aware of the fact that nine first years are about to descend upon him?"

"I asked if it was all right this morning after breakfast," Harry said quickly. "He was excited, sir. We've already finished our homework." He paused. "Sorry, did you say nine?"

"Indeed. I see you can count, Potter, well done," Snape said dryly. "I'm afraid I must request your presence in my study. I'm certain your friends will tell Hagrid how sorry you are to be late."

Harry swallowed a little too hard, wondering what he'd done to earn an invitation to Snape's office. Such invitations were not a sought-after commodity; just a few days before half the fourth year had managed to charm all the furniture in Professor Sinistra's office to the ceiling. While Professor Snape admired the spellwork, it didn't stop the perpetrators from being invited to his office that evening, and to hear them tell it, they'd been tortured within an inch of their lives. Of course, Harry knew by now that it was all but a requirement to lie about how hard Snape was on you; he and Draco had done it themselves after their first visit to his office, after all.

Snape didn't seem angry now, though, not if he was insulting Harry. It was hard to gauge the man's moods, as he rarely smiled, but if he was being sarcastic it generally meant one wasn't in trouble, or at least not serious trouble. A silent, seething, Snape- that's when you worried.

"Follow me," Snape said, gesturing down the hallway in the direction of his office, and Harry obeyed, mumbling a quick goodbye to his friends, who looked bewildered at the prospect of visiting Hagrid without the buffer of Harry, the one who knew him best. To them, Snape added, "Send Hagrid my regards."

As Harry followed Professor Snape down the corridor, shooting a bewildered glance of his own toward his friends, Pansy whispered, "Now what?"

They gazed at one another for a moment, then Draco hesitantly said, "I suppose we go see Hagrid."


Harry sat on a wooden chair, facing Professor Snape's desk, watching as the housemaster summoned a self-filling teapot, milk and sugar, and two cups. The man lowered himself into the seat opposite Harry's and gestured impatiently but not unkindly for the latter to help himself.

Harry slowly obeyed, wondering what this was all about. Did Snape know about the plan to find out more about the three-headed dog, and what it was guarding? Did he know they were interested in figuring out who the mysterious cloaked man was? No, Harry thought to himself. If he did, it would be the entire Slytherin first year in his office, not just Harry, and it certainly wouldn't be for tea.

Snape studied Harry for a long moment before speaking, and when he did it was slowly and deliberately. "How are you, Potter?"

"Erm." Harry blinked. "I'm all right." They stared at one another for another long moment. Harry shifted uncomfortably. "How are you, sir?"

Snape continued to stare at Harry, his expression unreadable. Finally, he spoke, not answering Harry's question but instead saying, "I hope you understand that you are safe."

Harry blinked again. "I'm sorry, sir?"

"You're safe, you idiot child," Snape said, waving a hand impatiently before helping himself to some tea. "This is a conversation we should have had a week ago, but I'll admit to having been somewhat distracted- mostly due to ensuring your said safety, I'll have you know."

Harry gazed at his own cup of tea, not knowing quite what to say. Snape didn't push him, and instead kept speaking. "We've done multiple sweeps of the castle. The protective charms are airtight, and show no signs of having been tampered with. I will be honest with you- Professor Dumbledore and I do not know who attacked you. However, as long as you don't act like a fool and go on any more illicit nighttime jaunts, you are not at risk of being harmed. Do you understand, Potter?"

Harry still didn't know what to say. His mouth was suddenly very dry, and he wet his lips before saying, "Yes. I understand, sir." He took a sip of tea, not adding any milk or sugar as he usually would, and winced both at the taste and the still-piping-hot liquid. He lowered the cup, then added, "Professor Dumbledore knows what happened?"

"As headmaster, he does prefer to know when his students have been attacked by strangers during their nighttime wanderings," Snape said dryly. "Not that such events are particularly common occurrences, but perhaps you're just lucky in that regard, Potter."

Harry just nodded, busying himself with the milk and sugar, cheeks turning red at the thought of the headmaster being notified of the great dueling fiasco. Snape continued to study him for a moment before asking, "Has anything like this ever happened before you came to Hogwarts?"

Harry paused, a teaspoon of sugar hovering over his cup. "Sir?"

"Go on. You understood the question," Snape said, with only his usual perfunctory edge.

"No, sir. Never." Harry shook his head, dropping the sugar into his tea. He let the spoon drop back onto the tray, where it clattered a bit more loudly than he'd intended. "Not unless you count Vold- unless you count You-Know-Who trying to kill me." Harry lifted a shoulder and let it drop sheepishly. "But I suppose you already know about that."

"Indeed," Snape said, the corners of his lips twitching upward for the briefest of seconds. "Potter. I told you your first night here that I wasn't going to treat you differently from anyone else."

Harry nodded. He remembered what he'd said in reply, and he said it again. "I wouldn't want you to, sir."

"You are no different than any Slytherin student, or any Hogwarts student for that matter. You are a perfectly ordinary eleven-year-old." Coming from anyone else, that might have sounded like an insult, but Harry understood what Snape was getting at, and appreciated it. To the rest of the school he was Harry Potter, but in Slytherin he was Harry, a distinction that made all the difference.

"However," Snape went on. "You as a person may be no different from any other student, but it would be foolish to act as though nothing unusual has happened to you in your life."

Harry found himself at a loss for words again. What was he supposed to say? "That's true, sir."

"It's... unfortunate. You have just as much right to an ordinary life as anyone else, and as long as you're at Hogwarts I'll do my best to make that possible, but you're going to encounter things other students don't," Snape said frankly. He paused, considering his words carefully, though Harry suspected he'd already planned them long before their meeting. "It's not going to get easier. But I do want you to know, despite the events of last weekend, you are safe at Hogwarts."

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. He stared at his lap before finally looking up and making direct eye contact with Professor Snape. "Well... thanks, sir."

He'd never expected anyone to have this conversation with him, but it struck him that it was a decent thing to do. After a moment, he shifted in his seat and asked, "Do you think that night, it was Voldemort?"

Snape flinched at the name; a wave of emotion crossed his face that Harry couldn't put his finger on in its entirety, but it wasn't positive.

"Sorry," he said quickly. He didn't understand why everyone hated saying the name so damn much, but he'd play along as best he could. "I meant You-Know-Who, sir."

Snape didn't say anything straight away. He took a sip of tea, his lips thinner than usual. He lowered his cup. "It's possible. Exceedingly unlikely, but possible. That being said, I don't believe it was. I think it was someone who supported him."

Harry mulled this over, wondering who that person could be. Snape didn't offer any clues. "Do you think he's dead?" Harry asked at last, still thinking of the man who'd killed his parents. "Hagrid told me he thinks that there wasn't enough human left in him to die. He said most people think he's out there, but too weak to carry on."

"No one knows the answer to that question," Snape said, and while his voice wasn't quite comforting, there was something in the way he looked at Harry that he'd never seen from the Dursleys on the rare occasion the topic of his parents' death came up.

"But what do you think, sir?" Harry leaned forward. "You have to think something."

"I think a great deal," Snape said, leaning forward as well. "Mostly about a multitude of Slytherins whose sole purpose in life seems to be to drive me up the wall."

Now Harry's lips twitched. Unable to help himself, he said, "Sometimes we think about other things."

Professor Snape just slowly raised an eyebrow, and Harry's smile widened before fading as he thought about the topic at hand.

"I think he's alive," Professor Snape said at last. "Given his body was never found. But beyond that, I haven't the faintest idea what happened to the Dark Lord."

Harry wondered if Snape was telling the truth, but didn't push the subject. What he'd already shared with him was far more than Harry had expected, and far more than any adult had bothered to share with him before, except maybe Hagrid.

"Who do you think was under the cloak?" Harry finally asked. "If it wasn't Vold- You-Know-Who, sir, then who was it? Which one of his supporters?"

"That's what we're trying to find out." Snape fixed Harry with an intense look. "And as cunning as you and your classmates may think you are, you will stay out of it."

Harry froze, not sure if Snape knew exactly what they were up to or if it was a general warning, given the events that had led to the incident on the stairs.

"All right," he said at last, feeling a tiny pang of guilt as he thought of the rest of the gang trying to get information from Hagrid at that very moment. "We will, sir."

They sat in silence for a few moments after that. Harry's tea had cooled enough to drink, and he sipped at it, studying the brightly hued potions lining the walls. Snape followed his gaze as well.

"Why did you try to hide what happened on the stairs?" Snape asked abruptly.

Harry looked back to him, confused. "Sorry, sir?"

"It all but had to be dragged out of you that night," Snape said impatiently. "If your classmates hadn't spoken up, you wouldn't have said a word."

Harry shrugged, not sure how to answer.

"More than a shrug, Potter." Snape crossed his arms and fixed Harry with a stern look. "Go on. I'm expecting an answer."

"I dunno," he muttered, then added, "Sir."

"You don't know why you failed to mention you'd been attacked moments before?" Snape asked, sarcasm creeping into his tone.

Harry started to shrug again but caught himself halfway through. "It doesn't matter, does it? The others told you. And it wasn't really that big a deal, was it, sir? I mean... all he did was sort of push me over with magic."

"At the top of a flight of stairs!" Snape let out a frustrated sigh and massaged his temples. "Don't be willfully dense, Potter. That's no excuse, and you damn well know it."

Harry shifted in his seat. He didn't know what Snape wanted him to say. He hadn't said anything because... well, he didn't know why.

"Well," he said after thinking it over for a moment. "You weren't exactly in the best of moods at that particular moment." In response to what Harry knew was a dangerous look, he quickly added, "Sir."

"Indeed," Snape shot back. "Chasing down miscreant students is not how I prefer to spend the wee hours of my Sunday mornings." He paused. "So, that's it, then? You were simply too afraid to further incite my wrath by revealing you'd been attacked by a stranger?"

Harry shrugged once again, unable to stop himself. "Well- I suppose I-"

"And one can assume once you'd been punished and sent to bed and allowed to think over your poor choices, you'd have sought me out the following morning to tell me the truth?"

Harry wanted to say yes, but it was more complicated than that, and he wasn't sure if he would have told Snape the truth the next day. He also knew that Snape would immediately call him out if he attempted to lie.

"Go on, Potter. I'm waiting," Snape said, unable to hide the irritation in his voice.

"I don't know!" Harry burst out, a bit more intensely than he'd intended. "I don't know why I didn't tell you- I just didn't! The others did, so it shouldn't matter, should it?"

"Of course it matters!" Snape shot back, slamming a hand against the desk. "You foolish boy, you shouldn't have hidden it to begin with!"

Harry shrank back, and for a long moment they sat staring at each other. Harry ran a hand through his hair, frustrated beyond belief, but silently aware that Snape was right. Perhaps that was why he was so frustrated. Really, why hadn't he wanted to tell him? Why had he been so angry with the rest of his house for telling the truth?

"If something like this had happened before you came to Hogwarts," Snape asked, managing to calm himself somewhat, "What would you have done?"

"It didn't, sir," Harry said, forcing his tone into something more respectful than it had been moments before. "Nothing like this ever happened before."

"You're old enough to understand the concept of hypotheticals, Potter," Snape shot back. "Don't try to deflect the question."

Harry didn't answer straight away. He tried to imagine what he would have done had something like this had happened when he was living with the Dursleys, if someone had attacked him on the street and he'd somehow managed to get away. His aunt and uncle probably wouldn't have believed him. That, or they would have blamed him for it happening in the first place.

He thought of how the Dursleys always blamed him for his accidental magic outbursts and refused to believe his protests he didn't know what was happening. He thought of how the teachers always believed the Dursleys when they said he wore Dudley's old clothes because he went out of his way to destroy whatever they bought him. That he was nothing but trouble. That he was a pathological liar.

He'd told a teacher about Dudley's second bedroom once, leaving out the part where he slept in a cupboard, and was told to stop inventing stories.

"You probably wouldn't have believed me," he said finally, lifting up his cup of tea but not drinking from it, instead tilting it from side-to-side and watching the liquid slosh around. "You would have thought I was trying to distract you from the fact that we were out after curfew."

"I would have believed you because I saw the cloaked figure before you did," Snape said flatly, and Harry looked up sharply. He hadn't known that. "And even if I hadn't, I would have believed you, had you told me."

Harry nodded. Of course Snape would say that, but would he have? Once, when he was seven, Dudley and his friends had pushed Harry down the stairs at school. It had been just a few steps from the bottom, but it was enough to bloody Harry's nose and break his glasses for the first time. Upon being whisked to the school nurse by a passing teacher, Harry told the truth about what had happened. Dudley and his gang were sent to the headmistress, where they cried so piteously about being falsely accused, and that Harry had tripped over his own feet, that the headmistress ended up comforting them and giving Harry a lecture about blaming others for his own clumsiness.

"I don't know what you experienced before coming to Hogwarts," Snape said, and Harry jumped, wondering if Snape could read his mind. "But you need to get it through your thick head that if you come to me, I will believe you. Especially when it comes to your health and your safety. You are not allowed to hide that, am I clear?"

"I won't, sir," Harry murmured, suitably chastened.

"No, you won't," Snape agreed. He pointed a long finger at Harry from across the desk, his eyes narrowed but not unkind. "You will confide in me if you think your safety is at risk."

"I will," Harry murmured, ducking his head.

"Repeat it," Snape said. "And look at me when I'm talking to you."

Harry looked up and gathered up whatever bravery he had. "I'll confide in you if I think my safety is at risk, sir. I promise."

"You aren't alone." Snape drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk, his eyes boring into Harry's. "You don't need to fight your battles as though you are."

Harry nodded. Despite Snape's severe tone, he felt oddly comforted. Which he supposed was the point, even if Snape was scolding him as well.

"Thanks," he finally said. "Thank you, sir."

Snape relaxed slightly, and nodded as well. "Drink your tea, Potter."


Fang was in a mild frenzy, overexcited by the presence of so many new friends in Hagrid's hut. He'd met most of the Slytherin first year boys by this point, but none of the girls, and they'd never been all together at once. Hagrid bustled around as well, unable to disguise his delight at so many visitors.

"Would yeh like another biscuit, Pansy?" he asked, piling more of the rock hard treats he'd hurried to bake after dinner onto the now-empty plate.

"I'm Daphne," Daphne corrected him gently. "And no thank you, I'm full."

She had no idea how Crabbe and Goyle had already managed to scarf down five biscuits each- she'd nearly broken her teeth on the nigh-inedible concoctions. She could see Hagrid had worked hard on them, though, so she forced one down as politely as possible. It was easier after Theo whispered to her to dip it in her tea first.

"Oh- sorry- Daphne, that's right." Hagrid slapped an enormous hand against his forehead. He pointed at Pansy with his other hand. "Yer Pansy."

"That's right," Pansy said, unable to hide her smile. Malfoy had made it out that Hagrid was a borderline unintelligible oaf, but the man scrambling around his hut to make them feel welcome was far from what she'd expected. Even Malfoy, who'd shot an extremely judgmental look around the one-room hut upon entering, had relaxed over the course of the past twenty minutes, though he still hadn't said much.

Vincent was on his knees and knees, making silly faces as he played with Fang. The dog reminded him of the boarhounds his father raised back home, great beasts he missed fiercely. It occurred to him with an uncomfortable pang that he missed the dogs more than he missed his own father, a thought that he quickly pushed back into the recesses of his mind as he reached for a sixth biscuit.

"How long have you been gamekeeper, Mr. Hagrid?" Tracey asked, reaching out from the enormous armchair she was sharing with Theo to pet Fang's lower back as he passed.

"No need ter be formal, jus' call me Hagrid," he said with a wave of the same hand he'd used to slap his forehead moments before. "And- well, it's been a good long while. 1943, they started trainin' me, if yeh can believe it. Was the old gamekeeper's assistant until he retired fifteen years ago. Ogg- a good man, he was."

"1943? I didn't know you were that old," Draco said. He winced when Millicent elbowed him hard enough to nearly send him flying off his chair. "Ow!"

"Don't be rude," she snarled in his ear, then lowered her voice even further. "We need his help."

"Er- sorry." Draco looked back at Hagrid, forcing himself to put on a somewhat contrite expression. "I mean- not that there's anything wrong with that."

Hagrid laughed, a great booming laugh that Draco could feel in his bones, and threw out both arms in a self-conscious yet affectionate shrug. "I've been younger, yeh could say that. But I'm just grateful ter have all these years at Hogwarts."

Draco wanted very much to ask Hagrid if it was true he'd been expelled. That's what his father had told him, though he hadn't said why. Probably for sitting on someone. He couldn't ask, though, not if they were trying to butter up the great oaf. Though- Draco didn't know how to word it, and yet he did- deep down he knew Hagrid wasn't as bad as he wanted him to be.

"When did yeh say Harry was comin'?" Hagrid asked, and before anyone could answer there was a loud pounding at the door. Fang leapt up, barking furiously and nearly knocking Vincent over.

"Ah, shuddup, you big baby," Hagrid said, pushing Fang out of the way so he could open the door.

"Sorry," Harry panted, stumbling in. It was clear he'd run nearly the entire way from the castle. "What time is it?"

"We still have almost forty minutes until curfew," Blaise said, gesturing at his watch. "What did Professor Snape want? Are you in trouble?"

"It was nothing," Harry said, with a shrug that didn't answer anything. "Hagrid, how are you?"

"Jus' fine, Harry, Jus' fine." Hagrid ruffled Harry's already permanently-tousled hair and slapped him on his back. "Would yeh like a biscuit? Or some tea?"

Harry attempted to smooth his hair back in place as he stumbled to a chair with the dazed look of someone who has just stepped off an exceptionally intense roller coaster. "No thanks. Just had some."

"Professor Snape gave you biscuits?" Greg's voice went up on the last word in his surprise.

"Nah, just tea. He just wanted to talk about... my Charms homework," Harry fibbed, something everyone but Hagrid immediately understood and let go for later. "Everything's fine now." He paused, then glanced from his classmates to Hagrid, trying to gauge how much they'd told him. "So... what have you been talking about?"

"Oh, lots of things," Hagrid said cheerfully. "I've been hearin' all about yer life in Slytherin, Harry."

"Yeah?" Harry asked, wondering if this included their discovery of the three-headed dog.

Millicent, correctly guessing what Harry was getting at, spoke up. "We told him about how the fifth years taught us to sick up bubbles. And how the third years taught us the spell to make things dance, and how the sixth years put frogs in our pillows but then brought us sweets from the kitchens two nights later."

"It sounds like yeh stick together in Slytherin," Hagrid said, unable to hide the small bit of surprise in his voice. "Like yeh look out for one another."

"Of course we do," Theo said, sounding slightly surprised himself. "Why wouldn't we?"

Hagrid didn't respond to this, instead saying, "It seems like yeh found a good bunch, Harry."

Unable to help himself, Draco spoke up. "You didn't seem very happy when he was sorted into Slytherin. I heard you, that first day at breakfast. Ow!"

He shot a filthy look at Millicent, who had elbowed him again, harder this time. Hagrid chuckled embarrassedly, looking at his own cup of tea (which was the size of a small bucket), before saying, "Well, even old goats like me can be wrong, eh?" He glanced at Harry, then at his friends. "I suppose I didn' know many Slytherins yet. Yer all right." To Harry, he repeated, "Yeh found a good bunch."

Harry smiled, relieved. He hadn't thought about it, but Hagrid's prior assessment of bad witches and wizards only coming from Slytherin had bothered him, not because he thought it was true, but because he'd quickly learned it wasn't. "They're all right."

"You're tolerable yourself, Potter," Draco shot back. "Usually." He cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows, motioning for Harry to get on with it.

Harry shifted in his seat. He supposed it was best coming from him; he knew Hagrid better than anyone there. "There's something we wanted to ask you, actually. Something confidential."

"Yeah?" Hagrid tilted his head, his curious expression only partially obscured by his mass of wild hair. "What's that, then?"

And so, Harry carefully dove into an abridged version of their adventure dueling in the middle of the night. Hagrid was on the edge of his seat, encouraging them to share more, and roaring with laughter at the funnier parts.

"The thing is," Harry said, pausing for a moment before pushing forward. "We saw something we probably shouldn't have."

"What d'yeh mean?"

Harry glanced at Blaise, who continued for him. "We split up at one point, because... well, we split up. And I accidentally ended up on the third floor corridor, on the right-hand side."

Hagrid nearly dropped his cup; tea sloshed out onto the floor, which he didn't bother to clean as Fang immediately began lapping it up.

"Oh," he muttered, half to himself. "Well... that's a problem, then, isn' it?"

"You know about the dog?" Harry asked, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. He couldn't help but feel a bit guilty, having just promised Professor Snape he'd stay out of trouble, but this wasn't really trouble, was it? It was just information. Besides, he couldn't ask Snape, as Snape didn't know they were aware of the three-headed dog, and that would involve admitting that on top of everything they'd done that night, they'd also gone into the forbidden corridor. Well, Blaise had, but Harry wasn't about to rat on a fellow Slytherin.

"Know about him? He's mine. Name's Fluffy."

"Fluffy?" Tracey asked, unable to stifle her giggles. "Blaise, you're afraid of a dog named Fluffy?"

"You haven't seen him!" Blaise protested. "He was enormous! He could've ripped me to pieces!"

"Yeah, he could've, if he'd wanted ter. He's a big boy, but a sweet one, if yeh know how ter handle him," Hagrid said fondly. "Yeh should see him when I rub his belly. His three heads go back and forth, along with his tail-"

"Where'd you even get a three-headed dog?" Draco interrupted. "Do our parents know? I don't think my father would be happy if he heard-"

"Shut it, Draco," Pansy cut in, as Millicent elbowed him a third time. "You're not telling your father about this."

"The parents don't know," Hagrid admitted, and he lowered his voice, though there wasn't anyone nearby who could possibly overhear. "An' yeh aren't supposed ter either. Bought him off a Greek chappie I met down at the pub las' year, an' Professor Dumbledore borrowed him this year."

"What's he guarding, Hagrid?" Harry asked.

"Don't be silly," Hagrid said gruffly, though he didn't make eye contact with Harry, instead busying himself with fetching more biscuits, which only Vincent and Crabbe accepted. "Fluffy's not guardin' a thing."

"We're not stupid," Theo said loudly. "Even if Blaise hadn't noticed a trapdoor-" (Hagrid winced) "-there's still no reason for the corridor to be guarded, or even forbidden at all, unless it's protecting something. Why aren't we allowed there? Why is the dog there?"

"That's none of yer business, now," Hagrid said firmly. "And don't ask me anymore. That's top secret, that is."

"There was someone there that night," Harry said, just as firmly. "Someone in a cloak. He might've been trying to get what was under that trapdoor."

Hagrid froze slightly at this, but just shook his head again. "It's not my business to tell, so yeh should jus' drop it. It doesn't concern yeh."

"It's what was in vault seven hundred-thirteen at Gringotts, isn't it?" Harry asked, and the horrified look on Hagrid's face said all he needed to know.

"Now listen," Hagrid said quickly. "You let it drop, yeh hear me? Yer meddlin' in things that don' concern yeh. It's dangerous."

"But-"

"You forget that dog. That's between Professor Dumbledore an' Nicolas Flamel, yeh hear?"

"Nicolas Flamel?" Daphne spoke up. "Who's Nicolas Flamel?"

Hagrid let out a noise that sounded as though a car horn had suddenly become very ill, and looked as though he wanted the earth to swallow him whole.


The group of Slytherins made their way toward the castle, conversation hushed. No one knew who Nicolas Flamel was, nor did they know where to begin searching for information on him.

"I suppose there's the library," Vincent said glumly, making a face at the thought of having to spend time there. "But there's about a million books. Where would we even start?"

"Books of famous wizards, I suppose," Theo said, looking straight ahead. "Modern ones, not history books. Do you think we should ask...?"

He trailed off. Harry shook his head. "No. He just had me in his office to make sure I... you know, talk to him if someone tries to off me again. Do you have any idea how much trouble we'll be in if he finds out we've been digging this much on our own? And that we know this much to begin with?"

"Maybe he'll let us off because we were honest," Tracey suggested. "Maybe he'll be appreciative that we came to him."

"Before or after he lights our arses on fire?" Draco asked with a snort. "We can't ask him. Maybe..."

"Maybe what?" Harry asked.

"My father might know," Draco suggested, to loud protests.

"You're not telling your father!" Millicent snapped. "Are you insane? If we involve adults, they'll take over everything and then we won't know anything!"

"We're involving Hagrid," Draco protested.

"He's different and you know that!"

"My father won't tell Professor Snape, if that's what you're wondering," Draco said as they reached the castle stairs. "He'd help us. He knows a lot of things."

"No parents," Theo said firmly. "None."

"Fine," Draco said sulkily. "It was just an idea."

Pansy glanced at Draco suspiciously, then to the rest of the group, pausing outside the open front doors of the castle. "We all have to promise. No going to our parents for help. They'll want to know why we're asking, and then we'll have to tell them about the dog- and everything else. And they'll go to Professor Dumbledore to complain, and everything will fall apart."

"My father won't tell," Draco mumbled, but he said, "Fine, I promise."

The rest of the Slytherins made their promise as well, except for Harry, who asked, "Do I have to promise? I don't have parents."

"You don't? We had no idea," Draco said sarcastically, which was ignored by everyone.

"You have to promise you won't tell your aunt and uncle, then," Pansy said, to which Harry snorted.

"I think I can manage that. My aunt doesn't even like regular dogs. And it's not like we write."

The gang returned to the dungeons together, and found nearly the entire common room staring at them as they entered. Harry checked Blaise's watch; they still had fifteen minutes until the first year curfew.

"Oi," Lucian Bole called from a game of Scrabble with Graham Montague and Adrian Pucey. "Is it true you lot went out dueling in the middle of the night last weekend?"

Harry glanced at Draco, who glanced at Vincent, who glanced back at Bole. "Er. Yeah."

The common room erupted into laughter; it quickly came out that the portraits gossiped, and a very abridged version of the first years' evening out had made its way back to Adrian Pucey, who overheard a portrait named Sir Cadogan sharing the tale with a painting of a fat woman in a pink dress on the seventh floor. The first years found themselves the middle of attention for once, the rest of the house wanting to know exactly how they'd managed it.

"Brilliant," Miles Bletchley said. "That plan took nerve."

"And madness," Ellen Greybourne added, but she too was grinning. "Absolute sodding madness. Is that what you were planning in the broom cupboard?"

All thoughts of Nicolas Flamel fell to the wayside as the rest of Slytherin listened with equal measures of sympathy and laughter at their escapades, especially with the evening's inevitable end in Snape's study.

"He must've murdered you," Pucey said. "I once crept out to play a prank on the Ravenclaws- invisible, infinite-use whoopie cushions on their seats in the Great Hall- and Snape caught me on my way back. It was brutal. I can't imagine how he'd react if it had been the entire first year."

"It wasn't fun," Harry admitted- understatement of the year- but he added, "Everything else was, though."

Aside from the part where someone had tried to kill him, of course, but they weren't mentioning that. Harry wondered for the briefest of moments if it might be safe to ask the older Slytherins for help, and as he looked at Pansy he could see she was thinking the same thing. They both gave one another a look that said 'we'll discuss it later' and turned back to their housemates.

"I knew. I was in Snape's office while you were planning it," Terence Higgs admitted, smirking at the indignant looks he received from the first years. "What, did you expect me to warn you? I'm head prefect, aren't I? And that's how you learn to get better at hiding your tracks. Next time you'll be more careful, and maybe you won't get caught."

"Maybe," Harry said, unable to hold it against him, especially since Higgs was still letting him fly his broom once a week.

"Have I ever told you about the time back in my first year when we decided we were going to toss firecrackers into the seventh years' dorms, and actually succeeded before Snape showed up?" Higgs asked. "And listen, when we're done- do you think it might be time to tell this lot about the book?"

His fellow sixth years all began to speak at once to tell the story, one that seemed to end just as theirs had, minus the attempted murder- though considering Snape's reaction, the phrase 'attempted murder' might have been debatable. Harry grinned and settled in for an enjoyable rest of the evening.