A/N: And here we are at chapter sixteen! GM10, you cracked me up with your assessment of Snape's time allotment regarding his Slytherins, and 'Fan', thank you dearly for your kind words toward my occasionally fragile ego. Snape wouldn't approve of fragile egos, but I suppose we're not all Snape, are we? Thank you as well to the rest of you for your lovely reviews- I enjoy hearing from all of you and it's an occasionally-needed reminder I'm not just writing into the void.


Chapter Sixteen: Books of Various Sorts


Before Harry knew it, December was upon them. The winter holidays were around the corner, but Christmas was the last thing on his mind. The first years' workload had increased over the past month, and between making sure every assignment was up to Snape's ludicrously high standards and scouring the library for information on Nicolas Flamel, the Slytherin first years hadn't had time to play hide and seek throughout the vast dungeons for weeks.

Well, almost. They'd squeezed in a double game with the second years the weekend prior that would be one for the record books.

Even so, Harry was tired. They hadn't had any luck in the library thus far, and any one person couldn't spend too much time there without attracting the attention of Snape. There was being studious, and there was being suspiciously studious, and the Slytherin first years were eager to avoid crossing that line if they could help it. Instead, they rotated who visited the library, and when, and for how long. Harry had just conducted an in-depth search the day before with Vincent, which had been an absolute bust. Vincent, who meant well but wasn't the brightest of bulbs in the box, kept checking lists of Herbology ingredients and Astronomy graphs for more information on Nicolas Flamel. While it was possible the mysterious man would turn up in the middle of a chart of the moon's phases, it was equally possible that Professor Snape would cancel all exams and sing each student a self-written sonnet for Christmas.

"Nothing," Theo muttered as he returned to the common room that evening with Millicent, who flopped herself into an empty armchair with a furious grimace.

"You've all been in the library an awful lot lately," Reggie Derrick commented as he passed. "I get being prepared, but the first year mid-exams aren't that hard."

"Snape's will be," Draco said, not opening his eyes from his spot on the sofa. The older years, still impressed by their nighttime jaunt through the castle, had been allowing them small luxuries such as not booting them off the furniture each night, though Harry wondered how much longer that would last.

"You have a point there," Derrick admitted, then added, "He always changes them each year, but mid-year exams for the firsties usually involve making a solution for boils at some point. Though you didn't hear it from me."

"Good to know," Harry murmured as Derrick headed over to a group of fourth and fifth years near the fire. It was an excellent reminder that on top of figuring out who Nicolas Flamel was, they still had their exams to pass.


Pansy and Daphne scurried down the long Slytherin table to where the rest of the first years were eating lunch, practically skipping in delight. The students had a short break before lunch actually began on Tuesdays, and the two had used that time to scour the library under the excuse of more studying. Both were beaming, their cheeks bright red.

"Are we terribly late?" Daphne asked breathlessly, dropping her bag on the bench beside her. "Do we have time to eat?"

"Of course you have time to eat. Lunch started five minutes ago," Crabbe said, then, when the two girls began loading their plates with food, still borderline giddy, he impatiently asked, "Well? Go on, then!"

"What?" Pansy asked. Understanding hit her only after she'd taken a large gulp of pumpkin juice. "Oh! We didn't find anything in the library."

"Then why are you both grinning like everyone in Gryffindor just got expelled and sent to live in Siberia?" Theo asked, his frown growing only deeper as the two girls giggled.

"Adrian Pucey was in the Great Hall just now and said he liked my bracelet," Daphne said, gesturing at her charm bracelet, which consisted of dangling tiny snakes of different shapes and sizes, before ducking her head and breaking into giggles.

"Oh, come off it, he was only being nice," Draco said with a roll of his eyes. "He just said it because the bloody thing is covered in snakes."

"He said it was pretty," Daphne countered, unfazed by Draco's scorn. She lowered her voice. They were doing their best to be quiet and avoid using Flamel's name if anyone was around to overhear, but one of the benefits of being a first year was that they were rarely paid any mind unless it was to be told to get out of the way. "Just because we didn't find anything on him doesn't mean you need to be all snarly with us. You haven't found anything either, have you?"

"I just think it's ridiculous you think a third year would flirt with you," Draco shot back, taking a too-large bite of his ham and cheese sandwich and grimacing as a glob of mustard fell onto his shirt.

"It's possible," Tracey spoke up. She smiled at Daphne, who grinned back. "I believe you."

"He's thirteen. And you're eleven," Draco shot back, wiping the mustard away. "He doesn't give a damn about you."

"Shut it, Malfoy," Harry said. Even if he agreed Adrian Pucey was almost certainly just being nice to Daphne and wasn't actually interested in her, Draco was back to being a tit more often than not, and the longer the search for Nicolas Flamel went on, the worse he was. He reminded Harry of the arrogant boy of their first few weeks at Hogwarts, the one that had since appeared now and then but in much smaller, manageable doses. Now that Draco was under stress, his less pleasant side was a far more frequent and unwanted presence.

"What, do you have a crush on her?" Draco asked, sneering at him. "Jealous you can't match up to a swoon-worthy third year, Potter?"

"Shut up, Draco," Daphne said, composed but no longer giggling, the red in her cheeks not necessarily from excitement. "No one likes you when you act like a brat."

"I don't act like a brat!" Draco protested angrily, his voice rising slightly and attracting the attention of a group of sixth years to their left, who snickered under their breaths.

"If you have to say it, it's probably not true," Marcus Flint said with a self-amused sneer of his own that put Draco's to shame. Harry hated that he had to agree with Flint, who'd said those awful things to Neville in the Slytherin common room back in October and never said he was sorry. Harry very much doubted he was.

Draco folded his arms and looked away, too intimidated by the hulking sixth year to argue, but not too intimidated to sulk.

"Ignore him," Blaise muttered, grabbing a second sandwich. "We'll send someone again tomorrow."

The first years focused on other, more neutral topics of conversation through the rest of lunch, during which Draco didn't say another word, instead glaring at his remaining food as he pushed it around his plate. As they rose to start off to Herbology, they stayed close, conversation veering back to the trapdoor and what might rest beneath.

"Maybe it's nothing," Daphne said, then frowned. "Well, no, it's obviously something. But maybe it doesn't matter if we find out or not."

"Don't be stupid," Draco said. "We've already started. Why stop now?"

"I'm not stupid," Daphne shot back. "And we were fine before Blaise discovered the dog, weren't we? Maybe it's smarter if we just leave it to the professors."

"We're already in so deep," Greg protested, but the exhaustion on his face betrayed the fact that he might agree with her. "I don't... I mean, we're not having any luck so far. But we've searched so much. Who's to say if we don't try a bit harder we won't figure it out?"

"What, are you going to spend half an hour searching charts of the phases of Jupiter again?" Theo asked.

"That was Vince, not me!" Greg protested.

"Another more likely possibility to consider," Blaise spoke up, "Is that Professor Snape finds out what we're doing and makes what happened after the dueling fiasco look like a picnic. Or he just expels us."

"Don't be ridiculous, he wouldn't expel us," Pansy said in a hushed voice as they headed toward the large double doors of the Great Hall, though her face paled. "Not for something like this. You have to really hurt someone for him to expel you."

Harry agreed with Pansy, but he couldn't help but think of the conversation he'd had in Snape's study recently about not putting himself in danger, and coming to him if it was even a possibility. And if by digging deeper the man in the cloak hurt one of them, or worse- if he were to somehow get back into the castle- would they be considered culpable to some degree? As much as Harry desperately wanted to know more about the grubby package Hagrid retrieved from Gringotts, he couldn't help but also wonder if it wasn't better to just let it be. As much as he tried to ignore it, there was a niggling guilt inside his stomach he couldn't quite brush away, one that existed independently of his fear of being caught.

"Perhaps," Millicent said slowly, pausing before continuing. "Perhaps we keep searching until the winter holidays, and then if we don't find anything..."

"We let it go?" Harry finished for her, hating himself for saying it.

"There's no use in being stubborn and bullheaded," she went on, shrugging slightly as they grew even closer to the doors leading to the Entrance Hall. "We're not Gryffindors, after all. We need to be rational about this. Is chasing down Nicolas Flamel, whoever he is, worth Snape finding out? Is going back to normal and letting things go on the way they were the worst thing in the world?"

They all fell silent for a moment, then Draco spoke up. "No, we have to keep searching."

"Come on, Draco," Vincent muttered. "We're not getting anywhere. Snape's already watching us like a hawk, and he's going to drag it out of us before long, and then what? We all get it because we want to know what was in a stupid Gringotts vault?"

"We have to!" Draco said, stopping in his tracks just as they reached the Entrance Hall, ignoring the surrounding the student body bumping into him on their way to class. "We promised!"

"The only thing we promised was that we not tell our parents," Harry pointed out as they moved to the side, earning himself another sneer.

"And what do you know about that? You don't have parents," Draco shot back. His tone was different from the last time he made a comment about Harry being an orphan. That, which had occurred on their way back from Hagrid's hut just outside the castle doors, had been a bit sarcastic, but obviously meant as a joke, albeit a dark one.

"Shut your face, Malfoy," Harry retaliated, resisting the urge to go for his wand or, better yet, punch him in the face, just as he had the first day of classes.

"They're huddled together again," Ron Weasley muttered, passing with Neville Longbottom and Hermione Granger. "They're always huddled together. Like they're plotting something."

"Shut it, Weasley," Theo called after them, to which Ron didn't reply, though as they retreated Harry heard Neville quietly say to Ron, "Stop it. They're all right," as Hermione shot a curious, not-unfriendly glance over her shoulder.

"If we're this obvious to the bloody Gryffindors, don't you think Professor Snape has noticed?" Pansy said, and as she looked around she froze. Harry followed her gaze only to see Professor Snape himself at the top of the stairs, in conversation with Professor McGonagall, his gaze focused directly on the huddle of Slytherin first years below. He wasn't smiling. Granted, he never was, but this wasn't one of his usual neutral glares, though Harry wasn't able to read it any further beyond knowing he wanted to get moving as soon as possible.

"Let's go," he muttered, and they scurried off toward the greenhouses together, ignoring Draco's murmur of, "We need to keep looking."


Harry leafed through the handbound book normally found in a secret cubbyhole hidden inside the settee furthest from the fire, his back propped against the stone wall behind him. It didn't have a title, nor any named authors beyond 'The Great and Powerful House of Slytherin, Then and Now' scribbled in purple ink inside the front cover. It was referred to simply as the book by the rest of Slytherin. The first years had been introduced to it the night the rest of Slytherin learned of the great dueling fiasco and sworn to absolute secrecy, because apparently Snape didn't know a thing about it ("and you'll bloody well keep it that way," Lucian Bole advised them darkly).

No one knew who started the book, though Pansy swore the handwriting on one of the earlier entries was a perfect match for her cousin Priscilla, who'd graduated the year before. She wrote to ask if it was her, and Priscilla's response claimed she had no idea what Pansy was talking about, and that she'd never heard of a book hidden in the Slytherin common room. She'd also sent Pansy a basket of Chocolate Frogs and a program from one of her most recent plays, which Pansy fawned over the entire evening. The rest of the first years only put up with it because she was sharing the sweets with the rest of them.

"Rookie mistake," Ellen Greybourne said when they told her. "There's an agreement- I don't know who started it- but once you leave Hogwarts, you don't acknowledge the book, at least not with anyone who's currently a student. Everyone's older siblings act dumb when they ask about it, and the book was already there when the even the oldest students were in their first year, so it's from before our time. No one knows who created it, but everyone finds it eventually. It's like tracking down the broom cupboard behind Chiron the Centaur, then figuring out it's the worst place to plot things you don't want Snape knowing."

"You told us about it, though," Tracey pointed out. "The entire common room told us about it."

"Well, we're not former students, are we?" Ellen smiled. "Everyone gets a bit of help sometimes. How else would you know just where to tap the inside of the settee, and the pattern? You earned it by attempting a scheme of your own- even if it was a bollocks one."

The book, meanwhile, was brilliant. It was terse, simple, and to-the-point, filled with short entries for any Slytherin aspiring to pull one over on their housemaster. Not that said schemes were always successful, Ellen warned them. Over the years Snape had cottoned onto some of the entries in the book, though as far as anyone knew he wasn't actually aware of its existence, just the strategies within. Dark red 'x's marked the top of those pages, such as the one revealing a secret passageway near the dorms that led nearly directly to a small room normally accessed through the Great Hall. There were a great many deal of these red 'x's throughout the book, though just as many pages without them- and apparently the book was constantly being updated, the most recent entry coming just two weeks before.

"The ones with secret passageways are risky, but they can come in handy," Ellen said. "Of course Snape knows about them. He was a student himself, wasn't he? Anyway, the best ones focus on his routine, and his general habits. When you know how someone thinks, you can get away with so much more."

"Oi," Millicent said, rounding on Blaise who had been very quiet until now. "That's how you knew about the Bloody Baron's nighttime routine when we were planning to sneak out! You knew about the book all along!"

"I didn't!" Blaise's cheeks flushed red as Millicent snatched the book from Pansy's hand and leafed through it furiously.

"Careful!" Ellen warned her, rising up slightly. "It's handmade."

"There!" Millicent said triumphantly, brandishing the entry for all to see. "You weasel! You didn't say a word!"

"I didn't know about the book," Blaise protested. "Someone else told me."

"Bollocks!" Draco protested, though he was too excited by the possibilities within to object too fiercely. "Why didn't you tell us? We could have used it to-"

To find out more about what was beyond the three-headed dog was the unspoken answer, though Harry very much doubted any information on that hidden aspect of the castle would be inside. Draco shut his mouth before he could say anything revealing and instead just glared. That had been several evenings after they'd gone to Hagrid's and discovered the existence of Nicolas Flamel, and they were still desperately scouring the castle for any clue to point them in the right direction, just as they would continue to do weeks later.

"I really didn't!" Blaise said adamantly. "Someone else told me about that!"

"Liar!"

"Actually..." Ellen had gone very red around the ears, and she hesitated before saying, "Don't be too hard on him. He didn't know because I told him about the Baron. Made him promise not to say it was me."

"What? Why?" Draco asked indignantly.

Ellen flushed deeper, glancing nervously at Blaise, who kept his lips tightly shut.

"Go on," Alice Robertson, one of Ellen's fellow fifth years called over from a nearby armchair, where she sat with a small smirk crossing her lips. "It must be good if you told a first year the best way to sneak out at night, little miss Prissypants Prefect."

"I am not a Prissypants Prefect!" Ellen protested, to which half the students within earshot called out various misdemeanors she'd scolded them for within the past few days. Cheeks reddening further, she finally admitted, "He caught me creeping back from the kitchens in the middle of the night. And wanted to know how I'd done it without bumping into the Bloody Baron."

"Creeping back from the kitchens my arse!" Alice said. "You've been sneaking out to snog your secret boyfriend again!"

"I don't have a secret boyfriend!" Ellen protested, her voice rising slightly on the last word. "I just swiped some sweets from the kitchen, that's all! And this little turd found me on his way back from the toilet and threatened to tell Snape if I didn't tell him how I managed it."

"Blackmailed by a first year," Lucian said, snickering mightily. "That has to be a new low, Ell."

"Go jump in the lake," Ellen grumbled, loosening her tie and sinking deeper into her own armchair.

"So, who is he?" Terence Higgs called from a nearby sofa, hiding his own snickers. "He must be handsome for you to risk being caught by Snape after hours. Is he a Slytherin? Or maybe a Ravenclaw- you seem like you'd go for the brainy type."

"I don't have a secret boyfriend, and if you don't shut up I'm going to hex you into next week," Ellen shot back, to which Terence just threw his head back and laughed before saying, "All right, we've teased her enough. Let's move on."

"Why are there pages torn out?" Blaise asked, grateful for the change of subject. He grabbed the book back from Millicent and flipped to the beginning, gesturing at the ragged remnants of parchment at the inner spine.

Ellen glanced again at Terence Higgs, still sprawled across the sofa, his feet propped upon on the coffee table. It was something he'd chide other Slytherins for, but it seemed being head prefect had its perks. He just raised his eyebrows at them.

"He knows," Ellen said. "The entire sixth and seventh year knows. They're the ones who tore them out. They won't tell anyone what they said."

"Well, it wasn't just our year that did it," Terence argued. "We voted. The entire house. It was 116 to 31 to do it. Something like that. I don't remember the exact number."

"But why?" Greg asked, his expression blank. Pansy nodded and chimed in, "Why remove pages? Even if Snape knew the secrets on them, you could just mark them with a red 'x' like the others."

Terence didn't say anything straight away. He glanced around, eyes settling on Marcus Flint, who was clear across the common room and nowhere within earshot, before saying, "The first entries were dark. Very dark. Advice on how to-" He fell silent. "It wasn't fun mischief. And that's all I'll say about it."

Harry glanced at Marcus Flint, who was struggling his way through his homework, a fierce scowl on his face, and wondered what someone who'd been a first year at the time would have had to do with it.

"No one knows when the book was created," Alice spoke up. "We think it was sometime after Snape started teaching, since there's stuff in there he doesn't seem to know anything about. It was probably either right before he started cracking down or right after, back when things were different in Slytherin. But no one knows for sure."

"Snape knows everything," Tracey muttered. She'd been regarding the book suspiciously since it had been revealed, still remembering the abject horror she felt when the housemaster strode into the girls' dorm, aware nearly the entire house was out of bed.

Terence smirked, taking the book from Blaise and studying the worn, cracked leather cover fondly. "Almost everything. But not quite. He's nearly impossible to fool, especially if you're a first year. But he's a human being, just like everyone else."

"He can't follow every student constantly," Alice agreed. "He's bloody excellent at figuring things out, but we do get away with our schemes sometimes, you know."

"Like what?" Draco asked, but immediately fell silent as the stone wall slid open and Professor Snape himself strode in for his evening 'quality' time with his students.

Ellen quickly moved to fix her top button (Snape occasionally looked the other way regarding uniform violations if it was after dinner, but she wasn't about to risk it) as Terence swiftly shoved the book under the sofa cushion. Snape's gaze wasn't pointed in their direction; instead he was frowning at a huddle of second year playing Gobstones dangerously close to a tall candelabra furnished with lit candles. The students hastily moved away, rising to their feet along with the rest of the house. Terence, focused on hiding the book before Snape saw it, only had the chance to begin to scramble to his feet as Snape turned his line of sight in his direction. His legs, still crossed on top of one another on top of the coffee table, jerked into the air. Terence let out a surprised yelp as he was propelled off of the sofa into the air, his legs circling in windmill-like fashion before landing on the ground, nearly sending him careening onto the ground had he not been able to steady himself by grabbing the arm of the sofa in time.

"Feet on the table, Mr. Higgs?" Snape asked, a look of mock disapproval on his face as he replaced his wand back into his robes. "A fine example to set for the rest of your house. And I thought you were angling to be Head Boy."

The surrounding Slytherins broke into laughter at the normally proper and disgustingly rule-abiding head prefect being taken down a peg, having been on the receiving end of more nitpicks and chiding asides from him than they could count. For the first time Harry wondered why the head prefect was a sixth year and not a seventh year, which he later learned from Lucian Bole was because Snape felt students in their sixth year were more reliable to dispense justice than a seventh year. Seventh years, according to Snape, knew they'd be leaving school soon, and the very idea made them act with far too much sympathy and leniency toward the younger years. The sixth years, meanwhile, had potentially being chosen as Head Boy or Girl to aim for, not that there'd been a Slytherin Head Boy or Girl since before the end of the war.

"Sorry, sir," Terence said, glaring at the smirking faces around him.

Snape's lips just twitched in his version of a smile of his own, and as he lowered himself into a chair he motioned for everyone to come closer. "Gather 'round. Who wants to hear the tale of the time Peeves spent three weeks with the merpeople and wound up flooding the castle?"

The students scurried forward to crowd around Snape's chair, including Harry, who didn't think of the book again until it was time for the first years to go to bed. Snape was still in the common room, but Terence just winked at Harry with an unspoken promise he'd do it. Now, weeks later, Harry sat in the common room before Professor Snape joined them, the book open in his lap. He'd been through it a dozen times already, if not more, and although he knew he wasn't going to find anything on Nicolas Flamel or a method to discern his identity, he kept looking, turning from a page on how to get to the Ravenclaw common room to one on how to make an educated guess as to whether or not Snape was inside his quarters at night.

It seemed, Harry had learned, now and then the housemaster vanished for the night, not that anyone would know from the closed and locked door of his quarters. There were telltale signs, however, including whether or not the fire behind that shut door was lit (which it always was if Snape was present; the dungeons ran cold even in the warmer months). Of course, to ascertain that detail, one had to drop right onto their stomach next to the miniscule strip between the bottom of the floor and the door. Harry, surprised that Snape allowed any space at all that could let anyone peer into his quarters, had been assured it was so tiny that it was virtually impossible to actually see anything, and that the game was to see if one could hear whether the fire was roaring or not.

"Of course, it's risky," Reggie Derrick pointed out when telling Harry this. "He has a way of just knowing you're there if he's already inside, and let me tell you from experience, things don't end well when the door flies open and there you are on the floor with your ear pressed against the door crack."

Harry thought of the dread he'd felt when he'd been discovered with his ear against Snape's study door, before Tracey came up with her brilliant lie, and how much worse it would have been if he'd been listening in on Snape's own private quarters. Not that he had any desire to eavesdrop on the housemaster, but he did wonder where he went the rare nights he wasn't in bed, during which Slytherin apparently declared open season on staying in the common room practically until dawn (with some of the braver students venturing further into the dungeons- to do what, Harry had no idea). There hadn't been any such nights thus far this year; while everyone was fairly certain Snape had been away at least once or twice, the signs hadn't been solid enough for anyone to risk being caught outside his door.

A shame, Harry thought, because that would give them time to creep out of the common room and peruse the library as long as they wanted without eliciting comments from an increasingly suspicious Snape that they were spending a great deal of time studying. Not that they'd have the nerve to actually do so if given the chance. Snape had shown up in the library one day, returning a stack of Potions books for Madam Pince to replace in the restricted section, and lifted the very book Harry was currently leafing through.

"Famous Witches and Warlocks of the Twentieth Century," Snape read aloud. "You've been very studious as of late, Mr. Potter."

Harry had tried to stay as calm as possible, saying, "It's just interesting, sir. I've just been... you know. Catching up." Wondering how much Snape knew about the Dursleys, he added as vaguely as possible, "I'm learning a lot everyone else seems to know already."

"An admirable task," Snape said silkily, though his expression didn't change. "It's equally interesting that the rest of your year has been spending just as much time in the library."

"Erm," Harry said, keeping himself from shrugging. Snape hated it when you shrugged at him. "They're just nervous for exams, I think, sir."

"Indeed," Snape said dryly, before reaching onto a nearby bookshelf and tossing an enormous tome titled Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry onto the table in front of him, where it landed with a loud thud. Madam Pince's head shot out from behind a bookshelf in the restricted section (oh, what Harry would do to get a good look in there), but her fierce gaze softened when she saw it was Professor Snape and not a student- slightly.

"My apologies, Irma," Snape called to her, before turning back to Harry. "I'd suggest this. A bit dry at times, but simply written, more or less."

Harry had checked the book out from the library and spent nearly a week struggling through the damn thing. Snape's had understated the 'more or less' part of his assessment. Harry didn't read the seven hundred pages as closely as he might have, instead skimming them at speed for any mention of Flamel's name, ultimately finding he'd wasted his time for an entire week. Though, if he were fully honest, it hadn't been a total bust. Even skimming as quickly as he possibly could, he'd learned a bit more about the world he now resided in, though he would have much rather preferred learning more about Nicolas Flamel.

Snape had to know, Harry thought as he sat in the common room with the handbound secret book open in his lap, having returned Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry to the library and finding himself at a loss at what to do. He had to know. Harry knew his housemaster couldn't know everything his Slytherins got up to, and he saw the rest of the house successfully pull off a scheme now and then, but something this big? Especially considering they were first years? Snape had already noticed how much time they were spending in the library. It was only a matter of time that he figured it out, if he didn't know already.

But if he did know, then why hadn't he stepped in? Harry was fairly certain digging into the mystery of the forbidden third floor corridor wasn't something Snape would turn a blind eye to, not the same man who'd gone absolutely mental over the dueling fiasco. There was no way he'd let them keep digging, not when he'd lectured Harry on the importance of staying out of danger and coming to an adult when he needed one.

But if he didn't know... Harry didn't know how he felt about that. Good, he supposed. Proud of himself and his classmates for succeeding. But he felt equally strange about the entire thing, as though something wasn't quite right, as though he was missing something vital. Most days Harry felt like he was standing on a particularly precarious stack of crates that could give way at any time and send him tumbling to the ground, and the rest of his year seemed to feel the same way.

"I'm starting to think we should just drop it," Pansy muttered once he'd returned the book to its spot in the settee and joined the rest of the year in front of the fire. Things were starting to go back to normal with the older years, and they'd been booted off the couches to make way for the fifth years. To be fair, the floor in front of the fire was still a relatively prime piece of real estate, just not as prime as the couches.

Harry hated to admit it, but he agreed. Part of him felt an unreasonable desire to keep hunting and searching, but when Blaise spoke next he had a point.

"Maybe we're just being stupid. That dog's there for a reason, and obviously Professor Dumbledore knows about it. It's not like it just wandered in on its own. It's not as though none of the professors know something's hidden. Whatever it is, we're safe."

"Safe?" Draco protested. "That thing nearly killed you. And what's the matter with you? All of you. Are you going soft? We agreed we were going to solve the mystery, so we're going to solve the mystery."

"That thing nearly killed me because we were out on our own after-hours, and I forced the door open with magic," Blaise pointed out. "It's always locked, and during the day Filch is never more than half a corridor away. And when he isn't, Mrs. Norris is outside. We're safe."

"Are we safe, though?" Millicent asked, glancing at Harry, and they fell silent, thinking of the man in the cloak.

"Snape knows about him," Harry said at last, and although he knew he was safe in the dungeons, his stomach twisted slightly at the thought of some unnamed figure who might somehow still be in the castle who wanted to hurt him. "And he told me he told Professor Dumbledore. They're making sure nothing happens to me."

"You need to be extra careful," Pansy warned him. "They're watching you even closer than they are the rest of us. One wrong step and we'll be caught."

"One wrong step and Harry might be killed," Tracey spoke up, nervousness creeping across her face.

"Isn't that all the more reason to just leave things to Professor Snape?" Blaise said, shooting Harry an apologetic look. "It's not that we don't care about you. It's that we do care. And we might be putting you in even more danger when Snape already has things under control."

Harry didn't respond. He agreed with Blaise. No one had tried to attack him again, and though it was difficult to see the extent of Snape's surveillance he knew it was there. And, given that they were all plotting something far bigger than their night out dueling (even if they didn't know exactly what that 'far bigger' thing actually was beyond finding out the truth, whatever that was), it was remarkably risky to combine their scheming with an already-increased level of scrutiny on one of their own.

"Maybe you should step back, Harry," Vincent said after a long moment had passed. "Let us take over."

"I'm not stepping back while you take on all the risks," he protested. "Not when half the reason we're doing this is because of me. It's all of us or none."

"We're not Gryffindors," Millicent murmured for the second time in recent memory. Her shoulders sagged slightly, a rarity; Harry knew Millicent hated showing signs of weakness. "We're not ruddy Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom charging at a troll on Halloween because we were too thick to tell a teacher what was going on. Snape's always on us about not being stupid."

"And using our judgment," Harry admitted, despite himself.

Damn it. He wanted to find out the mystery of the dog and whatever was hidden beneath. His entire body screamed to keep searching, but...

"You're all soft," Draco declared with disgust, and a hint of something more in his voice, something Harry couldn't quite name. "We said we were going to do it. We have to do it."

"We'll give it one more week," Theo said after a moment, and before anyone could comment, he held up a hand. "We'll vote on it. We'll keep searching for another week, and if we don't discover anything then, we'll let it go. For now, at least. All in support?"

Each hand slowly went up, though the owners of said hands looked thoroughly disgusted with themselves. Each hand went up, that was, except for Draco's.

"It's only logical," Blaise murmured to him. "It's not cowardice. It's intellect. Slytherins know when a battle is lost."

"We can ask the other students," Draco said, his voice going very slightly frantic before being forced back under control. "The older ones. They'll help us."

"We're barely hiding it from Snape as it is," Harry said, though the thought had occurred to him. "Do you want it to spread around the house like wildfire? Someone will tell. Or be thick and accidentally let the truth out."

"You're the one being thick," Draco muttered under his breath, then looked directly at him. "Coward."

"I'm not a coward," Harry said, rolling his eyes. "You're being stubborn."

"Yeah, you are a coward. A big one," Draco said, wrinkling his nose at him. "I don't know how you defeated the Dark Lord as a baby if you're this much of a pansy now."

"Hey," Pansy protested, reacting first to Draco's choice of words before focusing on their intent. "Stop it. You're being a arse, Malfoy."

"You're all cowards," Draco went on, sneering at them furiously. "This 'we're just being smart' business is rubbish. Potter, no wonder your parents died fighting him. They must've been just as big a coward as you are."

Harry felt himself moving, but Vince and Greg each gripped one shoulder before he could get to his feet and forced him back down. It was Tracey, to Harry's surprise, who lunged forward, still seated, and yanked Draco forward by his lapels. For a moment she gaped at him, surprised as anyone at what she'd just done, before her expression grew darker and she said, "You're being a tit, Draco. No one likes you when you're like this."

"Let me go," Draco snapped, yanking himself loose and scurrying back the slightest amount. "Are you insane?"

"No one likes you when you're like this," Tracey said again, slowly and deliberately, the intensity of her glare fading into something softer but equally angry. "You're fine most of the time, but when you're like this, you're- you're horrid. No one's ever going to like you if you spend your entire life being nasty to your friends when they won't do exactly what you want."

Draco stared at her, his face having gone very empty, almost eerily so, when Tracey said the words 'no one's ever going to like you'. Not that the Slytherin first years didn't like Draco- well, they did when he was being decent, at least. For a long moment no one said anything. The Slytherin first years stared at one another, the din of the common room around them fading away into a static hum.

"Fine," Draco said in an unnaturally steady voice a moment later. He rose to his feet and turned to Harry. "I shouldn't have said it, Potter. But we have to keep searching. We have to."

It wasn't quite an apology, even if it was something of an attempt. When Harry didn't reply, Draco turned away and walked toward the dorms, though it was barely half past eight. No one made any motion to follow him.

"Why," Daphne said at last, her brow furrowed, "is he so stubborn we solve the mystery?"

No one answered, and when they trooped off to bed later, Harry's head was pounding. As he removed his glasses and placed them on his bedside table, Draco murmured from one bed over, inaudible to the four other boys who were determinedly ignoring him, "Sorry. What I said about your parents."

Harry climbed into bed, weighing ignoring him and just going to sleep. Finally he said, "Don't say it again."

"I won't." The hardness was gone from Draco's voice. More than anything the boy just sounded tired and sad. "I'm trying not to be... you know."

Harry didn't know what to say to this- he wasn't truly angry at Draco, not the way he was earlier. Not now that everyone had calmed down, and the wanker actually seemed sorry, though he'd been too much of an arse these past few weeks for Harry to let go straight away.

"Forget it," he finally said after the candles lining the walls had been put out, whispering as quietly as he could.

"It works with my parents," Draco said, so softly that Harry nearly didn't hear him. "When I'm like that. It works with my mum more than my dad. But I'm used to... I don't know."

"It doesn't work with me," Harry whispered back, wondering what it was like to have parents who spoiled you rotten. "Or anyone else at Hogwarts."

Draco didn't reply, instead rolling onto his back and staring at the ceiling. The next morning was a quiet affair, and after breakfast Draco mumbled an awkward, brief apology to the rest of the first years, who mumbled back equally awkward acceptances, particularly Tracey, who didn't seem able to make eye contact with Draco after her spurt of bravery the night before.

Later that evening, long after lights out, Harry found himself woken up by an intense need to relieve his bladder. Grimacing, he climbed out of bed, tossed on his bathrobe and slippers, and padded down the corridor toward the toilets. He knew now where they were like the back of his hand, unlike his first evening at Hogwarts when he'd wandered around for what felt like ages and had to be guided back to his room by the Bloody Baron like a six-year-old.

Harry finished what he'd come to do, and as he washed his hands he heard someone walk in. He froze, for a moment expecting to see the the cloaked figure from the stairs in the mirror behind him, but it was just Draco, who hovered awkwardly at the door, not coming in further.

"Hey," Harry said. He paused. "Are you going to come in, or just stand there?"

Draco shot him a dirty look, but it seemed more jittery than actually scornful. Harry watched as he walked over to a urinal, paused, then walked to the sink next to Harry's and turned on the tap instead.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked, giving him an odd look.

Draco nodded in the direction of the closed door to the corridor. "The Baron's right outside. Keeping watch over you."

The back of Harry's neck turned red. It wasn't a surprise, but he didn't have to like it. He'd suspected the Baron was watching over him whenever he had to leave his dorm at night, even for innocent reasons.

"What does that have to do with this?" Harry asked nodding at the turned-on tap. "Did you just come here to wash your hands?" He started to turn off his own tap, but Draco's hand shot out to stop him.

"I don't want him to hear us," Draco whispered, keeping his voice as low as it had been the night before in their dorm. "I need to tell you something."

"What?" Harry asked, taking a step back, then, despite his better judgment, moving closer to hear Draco's next words. "What's going on?"

"I need to tell you something, and you can't get angry," Draco said, his voice hushed and frantic. "You can't tell anyone."

"What is it?" Harry asked, growing serious. "What did you do? Did you find something out about Nicolas Flamel?"

Draco shook his head, looking positively furious with himself. "Just- we can't stop trying to find out the mystery behind the Gringotts robbery. Or who Nicolas Flamel is."

"Why?" Harry asked, exasperated by Draco's stubbornness at sticking to a lost cause. "Malfoy, it's stupid. We've been risking our necks for no reason and it's a miracle Snape hasn't found out yet. It's time to cut our losses and accept we're not going to figure it out. Snape's not useless. He knows and he's involved." When Draco's expression didn't change, Harry added with a hesitant shrug, "If he didn't know, well, I'd probably want to keep looking too. But it's Snape. He knows everything, almost."

"He doesn't know what we're doing," Draco said darkly.

"I don't know about that," Harry said quietly, though he couldn't imagine why he wouldn't have already put a stop to things if he did know. This wasn't the sort of thing Snape would let them get away with just for the camaraderie, not something this serious. And yet-

"Potter, I'm going to tell you something," Draco said, dropping his voice even lower. "And you can't be angry with me."

"What is it?"

"Promise me you won't be angry."

"I can't promise until you tell me!"

"Promise!"

"Fine!" Harry burst out angrily, then hastened to lower his voice. "We'll take the Unbreakable Oath if you're so insistent."

"I can't do an Unbreakable Oath and you know it," Draco shot back, grimacing, and Harry knew if he was willing to admit that lie it must be serious.

"Malfoy," he said, then paused. "Draco. Tell me."

Draco stared at the porcelain sink in front of him, his head bowed. "I told my father."

Harry didn't respond straight away. When he did, his found his lips had gone very dry. "About Flamel?"

"About everything. I wrote to him. Asked if he knew who Nicolas Flamel was. He wrote back wanting to know more, and-" Draco looked up, a combination of mortified and almost indignant, but not quite. "He's my father. I trust him. He knows what he's doing."

"You told him?" Harry asked, staring at Draco in horror. "Everything? Are you out of your mind?"

"He's trustworthy!" Draco argued, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. "He knows everything! About everything! Almost everything! He won't tell Professor Snape, he promised he wouldn't! He said he would help us!"

Harry leaned against the sink, wanting very much to shove Draco's head down a toilet the way Dudley used to do to him. "You're an idiot. An idiot, Malfoy."

"He's going to help us," Draco insisted. "I promise, Potter."

"He supported You-Know-Who!"

Draco stared at Harry, his next words dying on his lips.

"It's true," Harry said. "You've said it yourself."

"Listen," Draco said at last. "You might be the reason he vanished, but you're a Slytherin. That means something to him. Slytherins stick together."

Only because he thinks I'm the next Dark Lord, Harry thought, but he didn't respond, instead turning off his tap and jerking his head at the door. "We've been here too long. The Baron's going to get suspicious."

"There's one other thing," Draco said, his hand hovering over his own tap. "One more thing he said in his last letter."

"What?" Harry asked, not sure he could take any more bad news.

"He said you sound like a good friend, and that he wants to meet you," Draco said, his words tumbling out one after the other. "That any friend of mine is a friend of the Malfoys. He invited you to Malfoy Manor for Christmas. You'll say yes, won't you?"