Once Harry realised that the invisibility cloak could grant him unlimited access to the restricted section, the temptation to go there as often as he could manage was irresistible. So it was that, on the last day before the end of winter break, he and Tracey were once again looking through the section's many shelves.

Harry left Tracey to her continuing attempts to understand alchemy while he wandered back over to the books on blood magic, this time with some writing materials in hand.

Harry tried to find the spells that were the least likely to backfire horribly if he made a mistake casting them (which did seem to be a very real concern with blood magic), and started copying them down.

The basic spells seemed like they would only need a pin or needle, while some of the others called for a quantity of blood that required daggers. Harry was not that anxious to spill his own blood, so he avoided those sections. Once he was satisfied with his selection, he moved back towards Tracey, being careful to avoid being seen by any of the older students.

Unlike the blood magic section, which was enormous, the alchemy section was much smaller and more isolated. Harry was quite sure that Tracey appreciated this, as it allowed her to read in her usual manner: haphazardly jumping between a minimum of five different books spread out around her. Harry was unsurprised to find her reading the alchemy books in the exact same way.

"Making any progress?" He asked.

Tracey gave a nocommital sound. "I think so? It's… really complicated, but I think I'm starting to understand the basics, at least…"

"And it only took you several days to get that far. Well, when you're done for today, let me know. I've got some things I'd like to try out."

Tracey slammed the book in her lap shut. "If you're going to start trying things out, then my research can wait! I want to watch."

Less than an hour later, Harry and Tracey were in an unused classroom in the dungeon's "endless corridor" (technically, all of the classrooms in the corridor were unused). This one was a perfectly normal classroom, except all of the desks and chairs were on the ceiling instead of the floor. (Harry and Tracey, in an act of curiosity, tried using levitation charms to see if the desks were affixed to the ceiling. As it turned out, they were not. They simply fell upwards, but only inside the room. The duo just shrugged and gave up on their testing after determining that much.)

Now intent on actually casting a spell, Harry pulled out a needle and pricked the centre of his right thumb. He then gripped his wand, making sure the small drop of blood that formed on the wound had direct contact with the handle.

The basic principles of blood magic were simple. While a drop of blood may be a small thing to give up, it was a large gesture symbolically. As such, the spilling blood and sacrificing of blood, no matter how little, was able to serve as a huge power source or amplifier for spells.

There were three categories of spells when it came to blood magic: mundane spells that gained a power boost from blood magic, spells that could only work with blood magic because of their power cost or symbolic nature, and mundane spells that could not be boosted with blood magic because the additional power would overload the spells and cause some sort of catastrophic explosion.

Harry was trying one from the first category, and swore that he would never try using blood magic to boost a spell without checking for compatibility first, at least outside of life-or-death situations. He didn't fancy the idea of blowing himself to smithereens.

Pushing that thought aside, Harry moved on to actually casting the spell. He focused on the sensation of his magic, and then tried to push the small drop of blood into his wand. It took him a while to get used to the bizarre sensation, but eventually, the wand had absorbed the whole drop. With the first step done, he thrust his wand out and shouted "Lumos!"

The light that came out of his wand was blinding, and tinged slightly red, as if the blood that fueled it was a part of the light itself. When the light dimmed to a reasonable level, Harry opened his eyes and began blinking to try and dispel the spots clouding his vision.

"Wow." Was all he could manage to say.

"Wow indeed." Tracey said, her voice uncharacteristically dazed.

Harry stared at his wand, still not quite believing the power he had just managed to wield.

Once he'd had time for that revelation to sink in, he spoke, mostly to himself.

"I am going to learn so much more of this."

Hermione and Daphne found another solitary compartment on the Hogwarts Express for the trip back to school. It only took a glare from the duo to make other groups of students leave them to their solitude. It seemed that they had started to develop a reputation. Hermione saw no problems with this. Once the Express had started its journey northward, Hermione addressed the absence of the third person who was supposed to be there, but remained absent.

"Daphne," she asked, "Where is Tracey?"

Daphne's head slumped into her book. "Of course she forgot to tell you. Because why wouldn't she?"

Hermione sighed. "What did Tracey do this time?"

Daphne placed a bookmark in her page and began her explanation. "Well, it seems that dear Tracey had to stay back at Hogwarts because her mother had unexpected business to take care of. She wanted to surprise Harry by staying behind, but failed to tell us of her new plans. She then tried to rectify this by sending me an owl sometime after I'd already arrived home, but, based on your ignorance of her antics, she apparently neglected to send one to you as well."

That was… incredibly stupid. It took Hermione only a second to realise that the stupidity was what made it so distinctly Tracey.

"Well, at least we know we're free of her this time, unlike the last trip." Hermione commented."

"Instead, we only have to worry about what she did at Hogwarts without our supervision."

"At least she had Harry watching over her."

Daphne gave Hermione an incredulous look. "I like Harry, but he can be a bit of a pushover at times. She's probably been dragging him off to try and research some unspecified 'forbidden magic' just for fun."

Hermione shifted on her seat. "I'm sure Harry's responsible enough not to try to perform dangerous magic without supervision."

"Two sickles says you're wrong."

Hermione huffed. "Betting is wrong. Especially when it's on our friends."

Daphne held her hand out. "Two sickles, Granger. That's nothing."

Hermione stared at Daphne's outstretched hand. "Fine. Two sickles. You're a terrible influence."

Daphne shrugged. "I'm pretty sure you can blame Tracey for that."

The pair fell into silence before for a while. Daphne began reading her book for a while before Hermione decided to change the topic to something more casual.

"So," she asked, "how was your break?"

Daphne sighed as she re-marked her book. "It was fine. My father is concerned about my safety being around you and Harry. Thankfully, he realises that there's nothing he can do about it, since the friendship was initiated by Tracey, and there's no way he could get me away from Tracey without drawing a lot of ire."

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

Daphne shook her head in affirmation. "My mum and Tracey's mum are close friends. I think they met shortly after mum graduated. Anyways, my father thinks that Mrs. Davis is dangerous, but he's too scared to try and push mum away from her."

That reminded Hermione about the unusual Christmas present she got, courtesy of Tracey's mother.

"What does Mrs. Davis do for a living, anyways?" Hermione asked, her curiosity about the origin of her Christmas present returning to the forefront of her mind.

Daphne merely shrugged in response. "I don't know, but let me know if you find out, would you? Every time I ask my father, he just starts looking really clammy and eyeing the firewhiskey."

Hermione suspected that merely raised more questions than it answered.

As the students who left Hogwarts for the winter holidays came back, the school gradually shifted back to the same bustling atmosphere that it held most of the year. Friend groups reconvened and caught up, teachers and prefects resumed harsher disciplining, and the school gradually shed the carefree feeling it had held for the two weeks of winter break.

In some cases, though, "gradually" was a subjective term.

At that moment, Parvati Patil was not feeling patient enough for the usual definition of "gradually".

She was far too angry for that.

Her parents grounded her for the whole winter break. Grounded! All because they got a little squeamish when Padma told them Parvati was blackmailing people! Parvati tried to explain that her business model wasn't blackmail, at least not from a legal perspective, but her parents wouldn't hear a word of it! Since Parvati didn't deny blackmailing people, her parents took that as confirmation of her guilt.

Well fine! If she was going to be punished for blackmailing people, she may as well actually do it! Parvati switched into her business attire and stormed towards her domain. She had goals in mind for today's meeting.

Everyone in the room jumped when she slammed the doors open. Good. She was not in the mood to deal with idiocy today. As she strode over to her throne, she called out for her unofficial second-in-command.

"Carmichael!" She shouted.

Hushed whispers spread through the room at her use of a Gatherer's name, though a sweeping glare across the room as she sat down in her throne silenced them. Unfortunately, Carmichael was cowed with the rest of them, and she needed his assistance.

"Carmichael Stephens! Front and centre!" She shouted again, aggravation leaking into her tone. Carmichael winced at the use of his full name, but he moved up to her nonetheless.

Parvati began to explain her conundrum. "I'm afraid that my… parents don't see eye to eye with me on my ideals. I need leverage over them. How far does our network extend outside of Hogwarts?"

Carmichael lost himself in thought before he answered. "Not very far, Mistress. While a few of the upper years know students who have graduated or have older siblings, few of us have any real connections to call on."

That wasn't what Parvati wanted to hear, but it was what she expected to hear. "See what we can do to change that. I need something on the Patil family by summer's start."

Murmurs spread through the room at her deliberate verbal move to distance herself from her parents, though she once again silenced them with a glare.

"Well?" She addressed them. "You have your assignments. Make good on them." As her gatherers filtered out of the room, she turned back to Carmichael. "Has any further progress been made with the Weasley twins? Hijacking the portrait command ward soon would be a great boon. It will be easier to expand our web of influence if less effort is needed for maintaining our network in Hogwarts."

Carmichael winced, though he was obviously trying to hold it back. "We have been… less successful on that front than we would have preferred."

Parvati sighed. "Fine. Schedule a meeting and I'll get the information from them myself. I am growing increasingly frustrated with their attempts to waste our time. Oh, and make sure one of our bookkeepers is available to come with me and has documentation assembled. I highly doubt that whatever price the twins are going to ask for will be cheap."

Carmichael nodded. "Of course, Mistress."

Parvati nodded to herself as Carmichael left. It felt good to have power.

Severus herded every arriving Slytherin he could find into the common room. Given how independent all of his students were, the task was obnoxiously similar to herding kneazles. Severus hated having house meetings at any occasion besides the start of the year (Many would not find the fact that Severus hated something to be surprising, though contrary to popular belief, Severus did not hate everything. Just most things), but he was getting desperate. No matter what he did, the Slytherin students still refused to stop treating the common room as a battleground for a conflict that constantly threatened to spill into the halls. Thus, he was using his last resort tactic and actually speaking to (and possibly mildly threatening) his house. If this didn't work, then he would give up all preconceptions of dignity and ask Minerva for help. He would normally go to Albus for help, but there were two reasons he opted not to. First of all, Albus was absolutely no help when it came to anything Slytherin. The first, last, and only time he asked Albus for help, the daft old fool suggested that he help two students acting on a blood feud to talk out their differences. Severus decided not to consult the man on anything Slytherin related after that. The other reason, though, was that Albus should be focusing on protecting the Philosopher's Stone (emphasis on "should", because no matter how hard Severus tried to convince Albus otherwise, he never took Severus's complaints that Quirrell was snooping around the third floor corridor with anything other than casual amusement).

Severus blinked. What was he doing again? …Ah yes, that's right. He was busy hating the world and everyone in it. Even himself. Especially himself.

Severus looked around the common room. Potter's crew was mysteriously absent, as was Patil. Then again, those five were rarely in the common room outside of curfew. Even after curfew, they were out more often than not. Potter's group was usually in the library, and Patil was off doing… whatever it was that gossip obsessed young girls did. Severus didn't know, and frankly, he didn't care.

(Severus really hated his life. He hated it so, so much.)

Well, there was no sense in putting it off any longer. Everyone who was going to be here was now here. Severus loudly cleared his throat and began to address the room.

"I am aware that there have been certain… disagreements among the members of our house." He said, drawing out his words for dramatic effect. Severus would deny it until the day he died, but he loved being melodramatic in his own, subtle way. He wouldn't say it brought meaning to his life, per se, but he had to take his joy where he could get it.

Well aware that his brief moment of being lost in thought would pass as another dramatic pause, he continued addressing his house.

"I am glad that you have managed to keep all disputes… in house, and while I am not… foolish enough to believe that you will resolve your differences at my behest, I will at least demand that the common room no longer be treated as a… battleground. You all know not to go against my orders at all other times. I expect the same level of sensibility from you on this front. That is all." Severus strode out of the room, surreptitiously casting a listening spell as he left. He quickly ducked into an alcove in the dungeon corridor and listened to the aftermath of his little speech.

Adrian Pucey couldn't keep the grin off his face as Snape left the room. There was no way he wasn't about to try and use Snape's ultimatum to his advantage. He sidled up to Flint and began verbally jabbing the older boy (because no matter how old Flint was, Adrian would never label someone of Flint's maturity as a "man").

"So, Flint," he began, "are you disappointed that you won't be able to take potshots at us whenever you desire?"

Flint sneered at Adrian, showing off his crooked teeth. "Watch yourself, blood traitor."

Adrian had recently realised that to all of the hardcore blood purists, everyone who wasn't in total agreement with them was a blood traitor. Adrian didn't care much for mudbloods, but he sure didn't hate them enough to want to kill them the way Flint and his kind did. But in Flint's mind, an unwillingness to kill mudbloods made him a blood traitor. If Adrian had any doubts that Flint wasn't a smart fellow, this would have dispelled them from his mind.

Naturally, Adrian took the opportunity to make a jab at Flint's intelligence. "Bet you had to think real hard to come up with that one, huh Flint?"

Flint, always far too quick to anger, drew his wand on Adrian and cast a jinx. Adrian, who had been waiting for this to happen, simply ducked to the side, letting the jinx impact someone in the crowd behind him. Adrian didn't particularly care who it hit, only that Marcus was the one to cast the spell and Adrian wasn't the one to be hit. Adrian moved to the side as the person behind him cast a jinx back at Marcus, which went wide and hit someone else.

It took less than a minute for the room to be back in full chaos, and Adrian barely had to do a thing to do it. With any luck, Flint would take the blame for this and get in trouble with Snape, while Pucey would get away scot-free. A perfect victory.

Outside the room, Severus sighed and dispelled the listening charm. Things were clearly worse than he thought, and he didn't think well of them to begin with.

Severus now had to decide if reigning in his house was truly worth swallowing his pride and asking Minvera for suggestions. And that assumed Minerva would even have a solution. Otherwise, he would just be admitting his lack of control and have nothing to gain for it.

He sighed and went back to his quarters. He wasn't sober enough to deal with this right now.

Harry didn't know what the social convention was for greeting friends that one hadn't seen in a week. He still hadn't come up with a decent course of action by the time he and Tracey met up with Daphne and Hermione, so he settled on waving shyly at them. Tracey, on the other hand, pulled each of them into tight hugs that made Hermione look confused and made Daphne stiffen.

"So," Harry greeted, "Did you guys have fun over the break?"

Hermione smiled. "Yes! My parents took me on a short skiing trip in the French Alps. It was an absolutely beautiful area!"

Daphne merely shrugged in response to the question. "I mostly just interacted with my family and read. By the way, thank you for those books, Hermione. They're very interesting."

Hermione nodded in appreciation before the group began moving back towards the dungeons.

"So, how did you two fare without us?" Daphne asked. "Tracey didn't burn down the common room did she?"

Tracey pouted. "No, I did not burn down the common room, Daph! Have some faith in your friend!"

Harry coughed, drawing everyone's attention. Seeing their eyes on him, he spoke up. "I mean, she didn't burn down the common room, though she came close at one point…"

"Hey! We agreed not to talk about that!"

"You agreed not to talk about that, Trace. I made no such agreements."

Tracey crossed her arms and slumped. "You just have to ruin everything, don't you?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "The only thing I ruined were your chances of being expelled. You're welcome for that, by the way."

Hermione and Daphne shared a look before Hermione spoke up. "So, besides Harry stopping Tracey from being an arsonist-"

"Too late to stop that train…" Daphne muttered.

"-Did you two get up to anything interesting?" Hermione finished.

Harry and Tracey exchanged a glance. "I, uh, did get an interesting present that we've been putting to use."

"Oh! Who was the present from?"

"Dumbledore." Harry and Tracey replied in unison. "…Probably…" Harry added.

Hermione stopped walking and stared at them. "You don't even know who gave it to you!?" She asked, incredulous.

"It's an invisibility cloak, Hermione! Don't look a gift thestral in the mouth!" Tracey protested.

"Hold on," Daphne butted in, "You have an invisibility cloak?"

Harry shrugged. "I do now. We've been using it to sneak around a lot. Mostly to get into the restricted section."

Hermione looked torn between outrage from using a gift from an unknown sender and euphoria at the concept of access to the restricted section. By contrast, Daphne pursed her lips in a way that made it look like she was holding in a smile.

"Oh?" Daphne asked. "And what did you do with your access to the restricted section?"

Harry was confused at the sudden change in Daphne's tone, but answered her nonetheless. "Well, Tracey was looking into Alchemy, and I was, uh…" Harry trailed off as he remembered Tracey's remarks about the illegality of blood magic. He pulled out his wand and tried to cast the spell he saw Snape do on the third floor the other day. Harry waved his wand around as best he could remember and spoke the incantation. "Homenum Revelio." Judging by the weakness of the spell he produced, he definitely botched the wand movement somewhere, but he still managed a faint pulse of red. As the wave passed over his friends, he was treated to the bizarre sensation of being magically aware of their presence near him. The pulse continued down the hallway for a short ways before dissipating, revealing no one else in range.

Daphne raised an eyebrow. "Well, now that you've apparently checked to see if we're alone, care to tell us what you were looking at that warranted such security?" Her face remained neutral, but there was a glint in her eyes that Harry couldn't quite place.

"Uh… Blood magic?" Harry said hesitantly.

Daphne's eyes widened slightly. "Oh, wow. I didn't think you'd go straight for the illegal stuff."

Harry shrugged. "I didn't know it was illegal until I was already interested in the subject."

"But… but it's illegal, Harry!" Hermione protested. "You can't just break the law!"

Harry shrunk under her rebuke, though Daphne coughed in response. Once everyone's eyes were on her, she spoke up.

"It's… sort of a grey area, actually."

"What!?" Tracey objected. "No it's not!"

Daphne shook her head. "Oh, no, blood magic is unquestionably illegal in Magical Britain. But, due to a mixture of old treaties and laws that haven't been updated in ages, Hogwarts isn't technically a part of Magical Britain. Much like Gringotts, it's a sovereign territory. Hogwarts only chooses to enforce the laws of Magical Britain as a matter of courtesy. Technically, you could do all sorts of blood magic here, and you wouldn't be breaking any laws, though I wouldn't exactly advertise your practice of it ."

"…You're kidding me." Harry said incredulously.

"I am not kidding you. Believe me, the laws of Magical Britain are a mess."

"How do you know this, anyways? Seems like odd knowledge for a first year to have." Harry asked.

Daphne shrugged. "My father used to keep me entertained by giving me a list of laws and telling me to find a loophole that would let me accomplish a specific task. I didn't realise that they weren't just fun puzzles until I was nine years old."

Tracey started laughing. "So that's why you were always buried in law books!? You thought they were puzzles!?" She let out several more loud laughs before she was calm enough to speak again. "Only you, Daph. Only you."

"But…! You can't just…!" Hermione protested before crossing her arms and huffing. Harry knew that just because she admitted defeat didn't mean she had to be happy about it.

"So, have you tried any out yet?" Daphne asked.

Harry nodded. "Yeah, I tried some out yesterday. It was really interesting."

A small smile showed itself on Daphne's lips as she held her hand out to Hermione. Hermione merely scowled back as she reached into her pocket and dropped two sickles into Daphne's waiting hand.

Harry raised an eyebrow in confusion. "What was that about…?"

Daphne smiled back. "Just a small wager between us. Nothing for you to worry about."

Harry felt there was more to it, but decided against questioning Daphne. He really didn't care enough to make a fuss over it.

Draco was still slightly annoyed at his father when he arrived back at Hogwarts. Father shouldn't be doubting his ability to play politics. He was a Malfoy! It's what they were made for! The Malfoys had been in politics for as long as they had been in Britain! (Draco wasn't actually sure how long his family had been in Britain, but since they were pureblood, he was sure that it was a really long time)

Draco just had to show Longbottom and Macmillan that the blood purists were right! Really, how hard could that possibly be?

All he had to do was find subtle ways to casually drop it into conversation when the topic came up. Sure, no opportunities had come up so far, but one was bound to present itself eventually!

Draco entered the Gryffindor common room, trying to ignore the stench of Weasley that permeated the entire room. At least the one in his year was a Hufflepuff. He'd hate to be forced to share all of his classes with a Weasley in addition to his common room.

Pushing thoughts of the detestable family to the side, Draco moved to the sofa where he often congregated with his friends. He didn't have to wait long before Macmillan plopped down beside him.

"So, Draco," Macmillan asked. "Did you catch Sunday's Quidditch match on the wireless?"

And thus, Draco and Ernie began a discussion about Quidditch, all thoughts about politics forgotten.

After another demonstration of blood magic in an endless corridor classroom (This one being thankfully normal), Harry finally started making his way back to the common room with his friends. Once they were leaving the corridor, Tracey excitedly jumped up and began speaking to them.

"Oh! With all the other excitement, we almost forgot to tell you the other thing! We think that they're keeping the Philosopher's Stone at the end of the third floor corridor!"

"You're kidding me." Daphne deadpanned at the time that Hermione mouthed "The what?"

"Yes! Remember how Dumbledore said that the third floor corridor was out of bounds at the starting feast?"

Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance that confirmed that they did not remember Dumbledore saying that.

"I think that Hermione and I had other things on our mind." He said in response.

"He said something to the effect of the third floor corridor being out of bounds for 'those who do not wish to suffer a most painful death'. I'm kind of amazed you missed it." Daphne said.

"I'm rather amazed that I did, too, if I'm being honest." Hermione said, sounding a little dazed by the realisation. "I mean, this is a school. Why would an artefact like the, um… What did you say it was again, Tracey?"

"The Philosopher's Stone. It's an alchemical catalyst used to assist transmutation and transubstantiation processes." At Hermione's questioning expression, Tracey continued. "What? Just because I'm not looking into the same stuff that Harry is doesn't mean that I plan on wasting an opportunity to learn stuff in the restricted section. There's all sorts of juicy knowledge locked up in there!"

Hermione continued to look torn between frustration at Tracey's lackadaisical approach to the rules and hunger at the prospect of getting more reading material, forbiddenness be damned. By contrast, Daphne looked skeptical.

"You don't honestly believe they would actually be keeping the Philosopher's stone in a school, do you?" Daphne asked. "I mean, yes, Hogwarts is technically a fortress, but keeping something so valuable and sought after in a place where there are countless children who would be placed in danger? I know Dumbledore's gone a bit… odd in his old age, but I can't see him doing something that reckless. Tell us exactly what you heard that makes you suspect this."

Tracey ran through the overheard conversation between Snape and Quirrell. Harry picked up when she got to the room with the mirror, as her recollection of the event was somewhat fuzzy.

"Sounds like a dark artefact." Daphne said when Harry described the mirror. "Though I don't know of any particular artefacts called 'The Mirror of Erised'."

"It's a pretty silly name." Hermione added. "I mean, it's just 'desire' spelled backwards."

Everyone else quieted at that. After a second, Daphne spoke up.

"I can't believe that I didn't realise that."

Hermione shrugged. "You don't know everything, Daphne."

"Much to my displeasure."

The group quieted for a moment as they thought through the information.

"Well, we don't know that they're storing the Philosopher's Stone, but we do know that they are storing a valuable stone at the end of the third floor corridor. And we know that either Snape suspects Quirrell of wanting to steal it, or Snape wants to steal it for himself and deflect suspicion onto Quirrell by accusing him." Daphne said.

"Or someone else wants to steal it and they've deflected blame onto Quirrell, and Snape suspects Quirrell because of that." Harry added.

Daphne thought about it for a moment before nodding in agreement. "Yes, I suppose that's also possible. I'm somewhat skeptical that Snape would be easily deceived, but it is possible."

Hermione jumped in after that. "We also know that Dumbledore was working with a dark artefact in an empty classroom near the third floor corridor. Do you think it could be for some kind of trap?"

"If it is a trap, then the stone is probably bait." Harry said. "I think the first thing we should do is try to figure out what stone is being kept on the third floor, then we can figure out where to go from there."

"Well, this should be a fun diversion." Hermione said. "Studying with a purpose is always more fun than studying aimlessly."

Tracey turned to face the group. "Time to solve a mystery, people!"

Harry sighed. He supposed this was just his life now.

A/N: To those of you who complained about the number of PoV switches in the story: good news! There will be less of them from here on out. By this point, the friend groups are solidified, the divergent personalities are established, and the many plot points that comprise this absolute train wreck of a story are in motion. Don't worry too much, though. Just because there will be less PoVs doesn't mean that Parvati's going to be ignored. Parvati's a very major character at this point.

Also, to those of you worried about a canon rehash for the climax, rest assured, I pride myself on being more original than that. Much like how the troll was handled very differently from canon, so too will the climax to year one.

Putting Daphne and Hermione in the same friend group actually poses an interesting challenge. In canon, Hermione tends to be the one to hand out explanations, but Daphne is also intelligent and well-read. It's a tricky balancing act to make them both wellsprings of knowledge without creating competition between them or making them too similar.

And honestly, did any of you expect Draco to succeed at his "Slytherin cunning"? He is neither of those things. Also, he's eleven. Eleven year olds are rarely cunning or politically intelligent.

E/N (Xgenje): To add onto Ten's remark about Draco, you can tell he is an absolute genius from canon. Y'all expect him to be much smarter in here?

On another note, the comedy in this fic always gets me. I have trouble proofreading this in one sitting without dying from laughter or walking away from it for a minute.