A/n: Chapter 2 of 5. Thanks for all the wonderful reviews! Cookies to those of you who figure out Harry's plan…

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

"Harry, are you okay?"

"Hmm?"

"Well, you just seem a bit preoccupied…"

"Do I?"

"And you haven't touched your lunch."

Hermione gestured to my uneaten sandwich nestled in a bed of crisps that I had only shuffled around my plate to give the illusion of having eaten some.

"I'm just not hungry. I'm fine, really, Mione."

I managed a smile that she didn't seem satisfied with.

She reached across the table and took my hand in hers, stroking it in that motherly way she has that is sometimes infuriating, but more often than not comforts me in a way she'll never know.

"Is there anything you need to talk about?"

"Yes…"

Hermione looked at me expectantly and I shut my mouth. I have her an embarrassed laugh and gently pulled my hand away.

"I mean… It's stupid. Now's not really the time…"

I shook my head and stood from the table, banging my knees on the edge as I did so. I winced.

"Well, when you're ready…"

She looked a bit putout as she watched me leave the Great Hall.

I think she worries too much.

XXX

Harry was halfway down the corridor by the time he heard the portrait to the Gryffindor common room swing shut behind him, such was his hurry to get outside. If he was lucky, he'd have just a little over 45 minutes- the rest of lunch- all to himself. He hoisted his broom over his shoulder as he quickened his pace.

Flying always helped him think. Everything seemed clearer the farther away he was from it. And there was nothing better to cheer him up like a game of catch the Snitch. Maybe some of the other guys would be using their lunch period to practice too... Harry's spirits grew considerably, as did the bulge in his pants, but he quickly reprimanded himself and the traitorous organ by thinking of McGonagall in a unitard. :shudder:

He sighed. Maybe he shouldn't have run away from Hermione's line of questioning after all. He definitely needed to talk to someone and she was by far the best option… Maybe he should just turn around and-

Harry's thoughts were interrupted by a feminine squeal and a rather large object as it crashed against his chest, sending Harry and the person he had collided with to the floor in a heap, his broom trapped between them.

"Do you even look where you're going? Or do you just walk, hoping that everyone will move out of your way?" spat an angry Pansy Parkinson as she desperately tried to get as far away from Harry as she possibly could, but, to her dismay, found that her hair was hopelessly tangled in the bristles of his broom. "Clumsy git…" she whined as she gingerly tugged on her hair.

"I'm not clumsy," Harry retorted as he wrenched his broom away from her, earning him a howl of pain and a glare from the Slytherin as she rubbed her scalp where the hair had been pulled. "I'm just uniquely coordinated. Besides, you ran into me."

"Don't start with me, Potter," Pansy warned him as she jumped up and dusted off her skirt haughtily before hitching it back up to its original height a good five or so inches above the knee. "Not even you can make this day bad for me." She smiled her smug little smile that reminded Harry so much of a dog Dudley had once had but then accidentally killed by overfeeding.

Harry stood and, ignoring her comment, said; "I think you've crushed my broom under your immense weight…" He inspected the wooden handle with concern and didn't even notice the indignant gasp and foot stomp that Pansy gave him before she stalked past him on to some unknown destination.

He chuckled to himself and then righted his broom. That's when he noticed the three short brown hairs twisted around a group of bristles. They waved in some unseen wind as Harry stared at them.

His lips turned down at the corners as he reached out to pluck them from his broom and throw them to the floor, but as he pinched the threadlike filaments between his fingers, he got an… (well, maybe not amazing, but certainly an interesting) idea…

XXX

After keeping watch of the corridors outside Snape's dungeon classroom for a good twenty minutes, Harry was relieved to see the greasy Professor exit his room in a flourish of inky black cloak and even more relieved to see that he left the door open as he glided down the corridor away from Harry.

As soon as Snape was out of sight and the echoes of his footsteps had died behind him, Harry squeezed out from his hiding place in an alcove behind a rusty suit of armor that had thus far proven useful in blocking anyone standing in the farthest corner from sight.

Checking the corridors once again for possible witnesses, Harry made his way over to the slightly ajar potions class door and slipped through, leaving no trace he was ever there at all.

Once inside, he set to work quickly and methodically, as he had no way of guessing when Snape would return and had always lacked the foresight of having his invisibility cloak when he really needed it.

"Alohomora," Harry whispered, tapping his wand sharply against the brass doorknob of the potions closet. The door sprung open silently and Harry stepped through after looking furtively over his shoulder.

No matter how many times Snape forced him to catalogue and clean the potions supply room during Harry's almost weekly detentions, Harry could never quite get his bearings on the room. For one thing, the closet was actually much larger than the outside suggested, easily fitting two or three of the potions classrooms inside it. And the amount of… things inside was enough to give anyone's head a turn.

There were floor to ceiling shelves for white powders, blue powders, itching powders, wart powders, powders made from other powders, herbs, flowers, roots, mushrooms, mosses, dirt, dust, sparkly dust, syrups, jellies, creams, salves, rocks, stones, horns, fangs, venoms, poisons, cures, antidotes, anti-fungals…

Everything but the one thing Harry needed, of course.

A shuffling startled Harry as he roamed the tiny aisles between the shelves, straining his eyes in the dim light to read Snape's immaculately minuscule scrawl. The Gryffindor spun around to face the door, wand at the ready.

"It's too bloody dark. No wonder Snape's eyes are so beady. I'll bet anything he spends half his time scurrying around here in the dark."

There was another shuffle as two people carefully navigated their way around the initial clutter of the door.

Harry ducked down behind a shelf labeled "Ageing Potions," trying to hide his entire body behind a few tall, but unevenly spaced, cardboard boxes and watched with bated breath.

One of the intruders sighed loudly and dramatically. "You complain far too much. Just get what you came here for so I can leave."

Harry recognized the lightly accented voice as that of Blaise Zabini, meaning his partner in crime must be none other than-

"Draco!" Blaise said sharply, startling both Harry and the blonde-haired Slytherin, who dropped the glass Mason jar filled with what appeared to be kidneys pickled in formaldehyde he had been studying with a scheming smile.

"Fuck, Zabini!" Draco cursed, jumping back from the jar's spilled contents and knocking over a few more items from the shelf behind him (a shriveled hand and a rack filled with test tubes marked with blood types and one with the ominous word "cerebral") with his flailing arms. "Ugh! It smells!" he whined, throwing an arm up to cover the lower half of his face.

"Don't worry, I've got it." The tone of Blaise's voice suggested that he was used to cleaning up Malfoy's detritus and did so with an unwilling loyalty. He waved his wand and the mess was gone, the jar of organs and other various body parts and fluids back in their proper places on the shelf marked "Human." Blaise strolled purposefully past his companion down the aisle.

Harry was forced to reposition himself as Blaise passed closely by him, hunkering down to nearly ground level to avoid being seen by the two Slytherins' roving eyes. His glasses threatened to slip off his nose, which was now beaded with perspiration from the effort of maintaining the contortionist-like positioning of his body, and he pushed them back up his face with a forefinger.

Malfoy snickered as he came up behind Blaise. His gray eyes scanned the shelves lazily as he straightened his collar. "There's no need to rush the job." He picked up a beaker of purple syrup, swirled it, and then replaced it after finding it not interesting enough to hold his oh-so-valuable attention. "I exploded a toilet in the third floor prefects' bathroom. Snape should have his hands full for a while."

Malfoy laughed to himself, while Harry breathed a silent sigh of relief knowing that Snape was nowhere close to returning anytime soon. Blaise just rolled his eyes and continued searching the shelves, muttering under his breath, "Some prefect you are…

"Here it is!" Blaise said suddenly, interrupting his thoughts. He plucked a corked vial of clear liquid from a rack of identical potions. Gray smoke collected in the empty space between the meniscus and the cork as he shook it. "Contraception Potion."

Malfoy snatched it from his hand greedily. "Great. The last thing I need is that bitch getting pregnant," he muttered crossly, giving the vial a grateful nod as he tucked it carefully into his pocket.

Amused, the other Slytherin chuckled once in the back of his throat. "But I thought it was your goal in life to breed perfect, little, pureblood babies!" Blaise said sarcastically, batting his thick lashes and clasping his hands together before him.

Malfoy sneered, but ignored his comment. "For one so concerned with leaving, you sure are taking an awfully long time just standing around being a pain."

With that, the pair turned and left, satisfied and finished with their daily dose of sneaking.

Harry counted to twenty, then, when he was absolutely positive they were gone, stood, his knees creaking painfully. And of course, as soon as he stood, he was eye-to-eye with what he had gone in there to find in the first place: Polyjuice Potion.