'Here they come, then.' Oscar noticed the two first-years making their way across the castle grounds towards the other Slytherins' chosen haunt, squatting beside the lowest of the greenhouses.

'Hey, over here!' Theo stood up, beckoning his friends towards the towels that lay across a yellow-green corner of the grassed lawn, and spinning his rugby ball towards Greg. 'Catch!'

Greg lifted his hands up, claiming the ball in front of his eyes. 'Easy,' he grinned, before untidily lobbing it back to his friend.

'How was detention?' Matthew failed to suppress a smile as he lifted his head from the shirt that was serving as a makeshift pillow. 'I didn't think first-years could get them in their first week.'

Greg shook his head, before turning back to Theo and holding his hands up in front of his chest, gesturing for a pass. The other blond boy understood in an instant, popping the ball back up and allowing Greg to slam it, end-first, down onto Matthew's stomach.

'Hey!' The fourth-year protested, pushing himself up to his feet and running a tentative hand over the reddening mark the rugby ball had left on his tanned skin.

'You did ask for that, Matt,' Oscar grinned.

'Whose side are you on?' Matthew kicked his friend gently on the shin.

Oscar rolled away. 'Not yours, if you're gonna do that!' He laughed, pushing himself up. 'Greg, pass the ball?'

'Wait!' Theo interrupted. 'There's enough of us for a game of touch.'

'Of what?' More than one of the other boys echoed back, the two fourth-years still eyeing one another suspiciously.

'Touch rugby,' Theo continued. 'Three against three. One end of the pitch can down there, between those trees, and the other can be down here.' He pulled his t-shirt over his head, marking one corner of the playing area. 'Matt, pass us your top?' He jogged over to the other corner. 'We can play shirts against skins – me, you and, uh, Zac take.'

'What are the rules?' Isaac asked.

'Easy,' Theo laughed, picking up the rugby ball and spinning it to himself. 'You can only pass it backwards, if someone tags you – two hands on your waist – you have to stop and pass.'

'How do we get the ball off the other team, then?' Matthew asked. 'If you can't tackle them like in real rugby?'

'When they drop it,' Theo answered, 'or if you intercept their passes.' He spun the ball up to himself again. 'So, are we going to play or not?'

'Sure,' Matthew shrugged, looking back to Oscar and then to Greg. 'Why not?'

'Cool,' Theo grinned. 'Come on then, Matt, Zac, we'll start down this end. Zac, you need to take your shirt off.' He beckoned the other boys. 'We'll start with the ball...'

The three muggle-born boys had each played a little rugby as they grew up, but it quickly became apparent that Theo was a much better player than any of them. Not only did he rarely, if ever, fumble the ball, but he could seemingly deceive his opponents at will, shaping to go one way but then darting the other. Even as the score mounted, and the boys switched teams around, Theo still managed to find ways of beating the older boys.

'Rule change!' Greg announced as his friend jinked towards him once again. 'Proper rugby! Get him!' He threw himself towards the other boy, and the other Slytherins – whether or not they were Theo's team mates – joined in the scramble.

'Hey!' Theo yelled, dropping the ball and curling up as he defended himself. 'That's not fair!'

'So?' Oscar grinned. 'Neither's watching you score every thirty seconds!' He relented, giving the first-year room to breathe before the other children followed suit, leaving the blond boy gasping for air.

'Are you alright?' Greg crouched down beside Theo, watching his friend cough.

'Should be...' he spluttered. 'Asthma...'

Greg nodded. 'Come on, let's go to lunch,' he suggested, reaching out to grab Theo's t-shirt from the grass beside him, and suddenly remembering the stories his friend had told him about his old school. 'Sorry...'

'Don't,' Theo coughed. 'It's not your fault. You didn't know,' he wiped the back of his arm across his eyes, 'but thanks.' He smiled, weakly.

'That's okay,' Greg nodded. 'Slytherins stick together.' The two blond boys followed their housemates back through the grounds, towards the Great Hall and their Sunday lunch. 'Matt? Ossie?' The first-year asked as he slid in beside his friends on the House table. 'What's Professor Tregeagle like?'

Oscar paused, halfway through a mouthful of Yorkshire pudding. 'Haven't you had him yet?' He mumbled through the food.

'No,' Greg answered, 'he wasn't here last Monday – we had to read the textbook instead, and write an essay about the importance of knowing about the Dark Arts today... or something like that.' He tailed off as he noticed the other first-years grin at one another. 'What?'

'Trust you to remember the whole title of the essay,' Isaac laughed. 'I bet you get an E.'

'Hey!' Greg snapped. 'I worked really hard at that! I won't get an E!'

Matthew coughed loudly, almost choking on his half-swallowed carrots. 'It's alright, mate,' he managed, stifling his own laughter. 'There's nothing wrong with an E.'

'It means Exceeds Expectations,' Lucas explained, 'it's the second-best grade. It goes Outstanding – Exceeds Expectations – Acceptable – Poor – Dreadful – Troll.'

'Matt got a T on a History essay last term,' Oscar added. 'What did Binns put? Something about sounding like a muggle fairytale, not real history?'

'He was right,' Matthew shrugged. 'The question was about King Arthur, and I just wrote about The Sword in the Stone...'

This time it was the turn of the two muggle-born first-years to snort with amusement, but Greg wasn't so easily distracted from his original question. 'You still haven't said what Tregeagle's like yet,' he pestered.

'He's alright, I guess,' Matthew answered, disinterestedly. 'He knows his stuff. Not much fun, but you'll learn from him... not like that useless ghost.'

'He is Head of Gryffindor, though,' Oscar added. 'I guess it might be different if you have Defence with them... we've always had it with the Ravenclaws. I suppose he just teaches it like it's just Ravenclaw, and we're not even there.'

'I bet it would be different if you had it with the Hufflepuffs, too,' Matthew continued. 'Now,' he held up his wand, 'can anyone tell me what this is?'

'That's not fair,' Isaac protested. 'You sound like Dawlish.' He glared at the fourth-year. 'Glyn's not stupid. You can't judge someone by their House, you know that.'

'Dawlish...?' Matthew looked back at the younger boy, blankly. 'Glyn?'

'Dawlish is the jerk in Gryffindor who thinks he can out-fly us,' Isaac spat, 'and Glyn...' He looked across the dining table to the other first-years. 'I guess we should tell you the full story of how we ended up in detention.'

'Slughorn's right,' Oscar summarised as the first-years finished their retelling. 'You couldn't be much further from Slytherin traditions.' He laughed. 'Good work.'

The Defence against the Dark Arts classroom was a long, narrow room at the base of Gryffindor tower. The desks sat in rows of four across the centre, with enough room for a person to edge past either end, whilst at the front a single desk sat beneath half of a glass crucible. A semi-circular arc of cupboards enclosed the professor's table, stacked high with jars and artefacts. Racks of heavy books filled the far end of the room, and on the walls between there sat an army of stuffed heads, ranging from the common Crup and Kneazle through to a series of exotic beasts that even Lucas had never imagined.

Professor Tregeagle marched through the classroom door at half past eleven prompt on a damp Monday morning that felt all the colder for the previous afternoon's heat. 'Sit,' the teacher commanded, before continuing as the class filed into the room, the Slytherin boys sitting together on a row in its middle. Professor Tregeagle was of medium height, with knotted grey hair on a gnarled face that had browned to a similar colour as Glyn's friend Jai, although the teacher had no trace of Indian blood. He wore simple but neat black robes with golden trim and his boots knocked purposefully against the wooden classroom floor.

'I have marked these essays, and it has to be said they are of variable quality. Some are perfectly sound,' he announced, handing back two sheets of parchment, one to the freckle-faced Gryffindor who hung around with Holly Davies and Spencer Dawlish, and another to Greg, a tidy "E-" marking the top corner.

'Told you,' Isaac mouthed as the teacher continued with his review.

'Others range from adequate to, quite frankly, appalling.' He dropped a sheet on Theo's table, the "D" grade clearly visible. 'I suggest quillmanship lessons may be in order, although given the parts I could decipher, I'm not sure I wanted to read the rest.' Theo's head slumped to the table, hidden behind his crossed arms, but Tregeagle continued, unconcerned whether the Slytherin was listening or not. 'Yours wasn't the worst, however,' he rounded on Ciaran Abercrombie. 'Verse?'

A couple of Gryffindors caught their sniggers as the professor's icy eyes bored into the pale, sandy-haired boy.

'Rhyming Verse?' Tregeagle repeated. 'The Dark Arts are serious business, boy.' He dropped the parchment on Ciaran's desk, letting the first-year's eyes settle on the "T" grade before muttering, 'Incendio,' and watching the work burn in front of him. 'To be repeated this week, alongside the rest of your assignments.' He turned his back on Ciaran, sitting alone at the end of the row of desks behind the Slytherins, and strode back to the front of the class. 'Now,' he intoned, 'I am sorry for my absence last week, but these things are unavoidable when one is an authority on Dark Magic as I am. Now, we will begin with the most fundamental part of Defence: knowing your enemy.' He paused, dramatically. 'Who are your enemies?'

'Death Eaters,' Spencer Dawlish smirked, turning around to stare at the Slytherin boys as he spoke, but none of the four reacted with anything more than a roll of their eyes, and the professor's cough was enough to snap Dawlish's head back to the front of the room.

'A decade ago, Mr Dawlish, perhaps,' Tregeagle dismissed his suggestion, 'but the last of the Death Eaters are in Azkaban, and there is not going to be another breakout.'

Isaac glanced left and right, wondering whether Lucas, by way of his family's history, or Greg – through his hard work on the previous week's essay – would raise their hand, but there was not even a flicker of understanding on either boy's face.

In the end, the quiet was disturbed by the Gryffindor boy who, like Greg, had received an "E" for his first piece of homework. 'Anyone could be your enemy.'

'Correct indeed,' the professor nodded, before adding in an undertone, 'not that I would expect anything less from you. Dark Magic comes from everywhere. Yes, some schools and some Houses have a reputation for turning out more than their fair share of Dark wizards,' he eyed the Slytherin boys, 'but no man will ever be born who is free of the impulses that drive us towards the dark. I cannot stand here today and say which of you will dabble in the Dark Arts, but within the year I will know enough about you to foresee how you are inclined. I will know which spells you favour, what magic you underestimate, where your weaknesses lie, and, because of this, how to defeat you in a duel.' He snapped his wand from a thin leather holster around his waist, like a gunman from a Western movie, and stared coldly across the silenced classroom. 'Knowledge, children, is power, and the best way to attain it will never change. This is one lesson I learned early on in my life: CONSTANT VIGILANCE.'

'He doesn't mess about, does he?' Isaac helped himself to a serving of steak and kidney pie as the four Slytherin first-years clustered around one end of their House table that lunchtime.

'Matt was right,' Lucas added, 'he knows his stuff.' The red-haired boy nodded. 'What he said about Dark being everywhere, Dark artefacts that are more powerful than you could ever imagine, things you can't even tell are Dark.'

'I don't like him,' Theo muttered, quietly.

'That's only cause he gave you a "D", isn't it?' Isaac nudged his friend.

'No,' Theo glowered, 'but he didn't have to say it in front of the whole class, or tell everyone I couldn't write properly.'

'Fine,' Isaac argued, 'but at least he says what he thinks, and isn't biased. You heard what he said to Ciaran Abercrombie, didn't you?

Theo nodded. 'Doesn't make it alright, though, does it?'

'Could be a lot worse,' Isaac shrugged, but Theo shook his head, turning back to stare at his lunch.

'That still doesn't make it fair,' he sighed, prodding a fluffy ball of mashed potato with his fork.

'I guess you'll just have to do your homework properly, Theo,' Greg offered.

'Easy for you to say,' the other blond boy groaned, 'and anyway, he'll still have a go at me about my handwriting.'

'Well,' Greg was undeterred, 'remember what you said about rugby? You can't get good at anything without practising it.'

Theo winced. 'I hope I'm good at the spells,' he shuddered. 'I don't want to spend all night on this every Monday.'

'We've got a study lesson this afternoon: you can get started with it then,' Greg reasoned. 'at least he's not making you do it again, like Abercrombie's got to.' He glanced up and across the hall to the Gryffindor table. 'He's not having a good start, is he?'

'I wonder how he'll do in flying tomorrow?' Lucas thought out loud.

'What's it to us?' Isaac asked. 'I wonder what Dawlish will say about the worst flier in the class being a Gryffindor?'

'As much as I will, I reckon,' Greg answered, firmly. 'Nothing. I'm not going to start behaving like that git. He'll find plenty of things to have a go at us about without us giving him anything else.'

'I wasn't going to say that to his face,' Isaac protested.

'Yeah, but still...' Lucas remembered the last lesson, 'he doesn't need reminding of it. Merlin knows, I didn't.'

Isaac blushed, remembering the careless insult he had tossed Lucas' way during their first Quidditch practice. 'Yeah,' he agreed, 'you're right.'

With the first-years having met all of their new professors, they began to settle in to the routine of the new school year. The following morning's flying lessons saw the boys' predictions fulfilled – both their pessimistic forecasts about Ciaran's flying and their expectations of Dawlish's reactions.

Lucas was particularly pleased to see Spencer's mute reaction as the spiky-haired Gryffindor watched all four Slytherin boys take off and hover together, leaving Ciaran as the only pupil on the ground as Professor Wood's lesson began to concentrate on braking techniques.

'Do you want some help?' Lucas brought himself to halt a handful of inches from Ciaran's stationary broom.

'No,' the Gryffindor boy shook his head, his eyes narrow. 'I'm fine. I don't need Slytherin help.'

'Fine,' Lucas snapped, 'and you'll never get it now.' He pushed off, angrily, back towards the other Slytherins. 'You'll never believe what he said,' the redhead repeated Ciaran's rejection. 'That's the last time I feel sorry for him. I hope Tregeagle sets his next essay on fire, too.'

'Hey, calm down, Luc,' Greg tried to temper his friend's frustration. 'Would you have said yes if you were him? What would Dawlish have said to him later?'

'Greg, for Merlin's sake,' Isaac rolled his eyes. 'Why do you have to be so bloody reasonable all of the time? I bet if Voldemort showed up again, you would just say he only hated everyone because he was an orphan, and we should give him a second chance.'

'Shut up, Zac,' Greg groaned, listening to his friends laugh and trying to force a smile onto own his lips that wasn't reflected in eyes. 'Why don't you make yourself useful and tell us if your uncle ever told you any other ways of braking?'

Isaac had begun to shake his head when the flicker of a memory looped back across his mind. 'Well,' he hesitated, 'there was one move he showed us once... it was like a spinning stop. You know how Wood talked about taking your momentum up, and out of the broom? Well it's a bit like what we've been doing, taking the momentum away from the direction we're going, but instead of sitting up gently you do it all of a sudden, and then throw yourself back onto the broom, twisting in the opposite direction.' He demonstrated the movements whilst sitting, almost stationary, on his own broom.

'A bit like a handbrake turn?' Theo suggested.

'What's a handbrake turn?' Isaac sat up.

'On a car,' the muggle-born boy explained. 'When you lock up the wheels and make it skid round on itself real quickly.'

'Oh,' Isaac shrugged, 'I don't know. This does get you facing the other way pretty fast, though... and it can be really messy if you get it wrong.'

'Like a handbrake turn, then,' Theo laughed. 'So are you going to show us it for real?'

'Well...' Isaac played for time. 'I haven't tried it for ages. I don't know if I can remember how to do it properly.' He paused, before breathing a sigh of relief as Professor Wood's whistle signalled the end of the lesson. 'Maybe tonight at practice.'

'You'd better,' Theo grinned, before turning his broom to follow Isaac back towards the teacher, with Lucas behind him and Greg trailing at the back of the group.

Greg was still lagging behind the other Slytherins later that morning as they made their way to the Transfiguration classroom. In fact, by the time that he and Theo reached the front door of the airy room, they realised the four-person table the Slytherins had filled the week before was already taken.

'Zac and Lucas could have saved us something...' Theo began to complain, before looking across the room to realise that the other two first-years were cramped onto a small table in one corner.

'It doesn't matter,' Greg shrugged. 'I don't need to hear Zac telling me I'd make excuses for Voldemort again. We can sit with Glyn and Jai.' He ambled through the room, dumping his satchel on a round table opposite the two Hufflepuff boys and studiously ignoring the surprised glances from the other children. 'Alright, Glyn?' He asked, forcibly casually. 'Hi, Jai.'

'Hi,' Glyn nodded, tentatively.

'You okay?' Greg asked.

'Yeah,' the Welsh boy answered, mechanically, as Jai twisted his head away, straining to hear a whispered conversation behind his left shoulder. 'Fine.'

'What do you think we'll be doing today?' The Slytherin tried to make conversation.

'Don't know,' Glyn didn't return the blond boy's gaze, staring down determinedly towards his feet.

'What's wrong with you?' Greg growled. 'Why aren't you even looking at me?' He hauled his parchment out of the satchel onto the table top.

'Um, Greg...' Theo tugged his friend's robe, but the other boy knocked his hand away, standing over Glyn as he grabbed hold of his quill and inkwell.

'Mr Bennett,' a cold voice silenced the classroom, and Greg turned to see its owner, Minerva McGonagall, standing in the classroom doorway. 'I would ask you what exactly you were planning to do to Mr Jones with those, but I fear I do not wish to find out the answer. Ten points from Slytherin. Now please return to your seat.'

Greg slumped back onto his chair, letting the inkwell fall to the table with a clatter as he hid his head under his arms and shivering as he realised what the Headmistress had just seen. She must have thought he was about to attack Glyn, he reasoned as the sharp blast of tears hit the back of his eyes. 'You tosser,' he whispered to himself as he felt the moisture flood his eyelids, ignoring Theo's worried nudges on his left arm. Whatever good work he had done in the last week must have been undone in a single stroke. He drew his arms ever more tightly around his head, hiding himself from the inevitable stares of those around him and blocking out any of their words.

'Well done,' Theo hissed sarcastically, fixing his glare on Glyn once the volume of the classroom crept upwards as the children began a section of practical work. 'Some friend you are.'

Glyn shook his head. 'I don't know what you mean...'

'Oh, shut up,' Theo snarled under his breath. 'You know exactly what I mean. Greg thought you were his friend, and you won't even look at him.'

'I didn't mean to...' Glyn sighed.

Theo snorted. 'Oh, yeah, right. I heard what you were whispering about,' he nodded his head towards a table of Hufflepuffs behind Jai, turning his gaze to the half-Indian boy. 'I bet you won't let him stay friends with you if he talks to us.' He recalled his time at his last school, feeling a burning dislike building towards the second Hufflepuff.

'No,' Jai began to protest, his soft accent quelling part of Theo's anger. 'That's not true...'

Theo took a deep breath, willing himself to concentrate as he chose his next words, knowing that one slip could turn his criticism into racism and land himself in even deeper trouble than his housemate. 'What if I said all Indians were like that – that they never treated anyone who was different like an equal? Would that be alright?'

'No!' Jai protested, 'that's racist!'

'I thought so,' Theo steadied himself. 'I was just wondering what the difference was between doing that and saying no-one can talk to Slytherins?'

Jai swallowed. 'I need to go to the toilet.' He stood up, leaving Glyn and Theo to stare at one another across the table.

'Well?' Theo knew there was no compassion in his voice; no easy way out for the Hufflepuff boy to take. 'What's the difference?'

'I...' Glyn stuttered, 'I don't think there is one.'

'Fine,' Theo continued. 'I'm glad we agree.' He shook his head coldly, turning back to the open textbook on his desk and the page on basic vanishing spells.

'Greg,' he nudged his friend on the arm for what must have been the dozenth time. 'Come on, it doesn't matter what that tosser says. You've got to have a go at the lesson,' he lowered his voice. 'I can't do it on my own.'

Greg roused himself, slowly, blinking the moisture away from his still-raw eyes and casting a withering glare across the table towards Glyn before turning, wordlessly, away from the Hufflepuff. 'Okay,' he nodded. 'Thanks for sticking up for me.'

'You'd have done the same,' Theo shrugged, awkwardly changing the subject. 'It's page 28. We're supposed to be vanishing these old knuts,' he explained. 'If we get good at it, do you think we could vanish those Hufflepuffs?'

Glyn winced as he heard Greg laughing at Theo's joke. Jai had shown no sign of returning swiftly from the toilets, leaving the Welsh boy sitting on his own opposite the two Slytherins, staring morosely at his own ancient knut and listening to the other boys' laughter.

'Evanesco,' he muttered, stabbing his wand arm towards the bronze coin on top of the desk. 'Evanesco, Evanesco, Evanesco!' A burst of white light jumped out of his wand, only to evaporate as it came into contact with the money. 'Oh, come on!' He exclaimed, reaching out with his left hand and lifting the knut towards his eyes so that he could examine it more closely. 'One Nut,' he read the remaining inscription to himself. 'I vanished one letter...' He dropped the coin again, twisting around to peer towards the doorway of the classroom, and wondering whether to follow his housemate towards the restrooms, only for his attention to be pulled back to the other side of the table.

'Bloody hell, you did it!' Theo exclaimed, blinking as he stared at the space on the table where Greg's coin had sat moments ago. He reached forward, searching with his fingertips for any sign of any remains. 'You really did it!'

'How?' Glyn couldn't stop himself from blurting out a simple question.

'Like I'd tell you,' Greg's eyes narrowed, acknowledging the Welsh boy's presence for the first time since the teacher had entered. 'Read the book, find out for yourself.' He lowered his voice, whispering his explanation to Theo and leaving Glyn to stare at page 28, until a clatter to his right told him that Jai had returned.

'Are you alright?' Glyn whispered.

'Not really,' Jai shook his head. 'I just threw up.'

Glyn's eyes bulged wide. 'Do you need to go to the hospital wing?

'No,' Jai answered firmly, shaking his head again. 'I'm not ill,' he lowered his voice. 'It was cause of what he said,' the Hufflepuff took a deep breath. 'I think he's right.'

Glyn sighed, letting his own voice drop to a hushed whisper. 'I know he is.' The Welsh boy looked back across the table to the two Slytherins. 'Greg,' he called, quietly. 'Greg?'

'Get lost,' The blond boy didn't look up from his Transfiguration textbook.

'Greg,' the Hufflepuff tried again, 'please...'

'No. Go away.'

'But...'

'No!'

'Greg...'

'What part of "no" don't you understand?' The Slytherin looked up for the first time, hissing his answer. 'Seriously! Piss off!'

Glyn sunk back down in his seat as he heard the other boy's bad language. 'He won't listen to me,' he protested, quietly, to his friend.

'Maybe if you wrote it down?' Jai suggested, tearing a loose sheet of parchment in two and pushing the scraps towards the brown-haired boy.

'Alright,' Glyn hid one of the halves of paper beneath a page of Transfiguration notes, furtively scrawling a short message and sliding it across the desk towards the Slytherins.

'Incendio,' Greg muttered, remembering the Defence Professor's demonstration the previous morning, and watching the parchment spark alight before quickly crumpling to ash as a snatch of smoke escaped into the high classroom.

Theo craned his neck around, searching for Professor McGonagall and hoping the teacher would dismiss the burst as nothing more than a vanishing spell gone wrong, which she seemed to do as she strode away towards Lucas and Isaac's table. 'Careful...' he whispered. 'You've already lost ten points.'

'That's not all I've lost,' the other Slytherin snapped, his gaze never leaving his parchment. Theo sighed, looking back across the table to the two Hufflepuff boys – one with his head hidden in his hands, and the other nervously nudging his friend's elbow. It was, he realised suddenly, exactly the same position that he and Greg had been in a few minutes before. Tearing off a sheet of his own parchment, he scribbled an untidy message before passing the sheet across to Jai, who nodded quickly, still trying to stir his friend.

'Glyn,' he whispered, 'come on. The other boy says he'll read it.'

The Welsh Hufflepuff looked up, slowly, staring back across the table at Theo, who did his best to smile encouragingly. 'Okay,' he sighed, reaching for the second scrap of parchment and lethargically scribing his message again, handing it on to Jai who passed it over to Theo.

'Greg,' Theo pushed the fringe of his white-blond hair away from his eyes.

'What?'

'I think you should listen to this.'

'Do I have to?'

'Please...'

'Fine,' Greg sniffed.

'Thank you,' Theo cleared his throat. 'Dear Greg,' he began. 'I'm sorry for acting like that and ignoring you. You were right. Other people had told me not to talk to you – but you wanted to be my friend because of who I am, not who my Mum is. I should never have listened to them. Sorry for being a tosser.'

As Theo stopped reading, Greg looked from his friend back to the Hufflepuff boy, who bit his lip as he gazed back, red-eyed. 'You're not a tosser,' Greg stuttered. 'It's not your fault if other people said that to you.'

'It's still my fault that I ignored you,' Glyn whispered, 'and that you lost those points.'

'It doesn't matter,' Greg managed a thin smile. 'As long I haven't lost one of my friends.'

Glyn managed to return the Slytherin boy's smile. 'I'm going to tell McGonagall why you were angry with me,' he explained.

'You don't have to,' Greg shook his head, 'it's alright. The points don't matter that much. We're not going to win the House Cup.'

'So what?' Glyn wouldn't be dissuaded. 'It's not fair otherwise. I bet she wouldn't have taken points off me if it was the other way round.'

'What if you're wrong, though?' Theo asked. 'What if she decides to take points off Hufflepuff as well as us?'

'Well,' Glyn swallowed, 'then I'll be even less popular than I'm going to be anyway.'

Theo nodded slowly, stunned by the other boy's answer. 'What about you?' He turned, brusquely, to the darker-skinned Hufflepuff.

'My name's Jai,' the boy answered, 'and... and I think Glyn's right. Hufflepuffs are supposed to be fair and loyal and that is what he's being.'

'Cool,' Theo nodded again. 'I'm sorry if I offended you before,' he stumbled over his words, 'with what I said about Indians. I don't really think that. I'm not racist.'

'It's okay,' Jai shrugged. 'I never thought you did mean it. You were right about everything else, though.'

'Greg?' Glyn interrupted, with a nervous grin. 'Could you help us with the Transfiguration now?'

'You may leave,' Professor McGonagall concluded the lesson with a final demonstration of a more complex spell, Vanishing the blackboard in front of the children as they finished copying down their homework. As the majority of the boys and girls made for the exits, Glyn led three other pupils towards the teacher's desk.

'P... Professor?' He stuttered.

'Yes, Mr Jones?' McGonagall peered over the rims of her spectacles towards the Welsh boy, whose face grew redder as he began to trip over his next sentence.

'You see, I just wanted to say, that at the beginning of the lesson... you know, when you took ten points off of Greg... that wasn't his fault. I know he was angry but that was my fault.' He took a deep breath as the stream of words came more quickly. 'I was ignoring him because the others in my House said I shouldn't talk to him because he's a Slytherin but he's my friend and I shouldn't just have ignored him because of what House he's in...' He looked at the floor, acutely aware of his burning cheeks.

Professor McGonagall smiled. 'I had heard rumour that Mr Bennett was not a typical Slytherin,' she turned to the blond-haired boy, 'and so I was particularly disappointed to see his behaviour at the beginning of this lesson.'

'He never hit me, Professor,' Glyn started to protest again. 'He would never have... and he helped me, helped us all, with the Vanishing spell. He is my friend, really.'

'Calm down, Mr Jones, do please calm down.' The professor sat down, bringing her eyes level with the Hufflepuff's own and placing her hand on his shoulder. 'I believe you. I did see that you all Vanished your knuts by the end of the lesson, although you could have come and asked for some sickles and galleons had you wished.' Her eyes twinkled.

'Will you give him the points back?' Glyn asked, suddenly aware that he wasn't far away from crying in front of the Headmistress, and wiped his eyes with the back of his arm.

'I can,' Professor McGonagall nodded, 'and I can do better still. Ten more, apiece, to Slytherin and Hufflepuff for the loyalty and co-operation you boys have shown. Inter-House relations have not always been this school's strength. I wonder,' she continued as the children gasped, 'whether the Hat made a mistake with you, Mr Bennett?'

'No, it didn't,' he shook his head, decisively. 'I'm proud to be in Slytherin – but I think that Slytherin has forgotten that to look after yourself, sometimes you need other people's help, too.'

The professor nodded, curtly. 'Wiser words I have rarely heard. I shall look forward to seeing you again next week... perhaps working together for the whole lesson?'

'Yes, Professor,' Greg nodded, and his friends echoed him before they turned to walk out of the classroom. 'See you next week.'