CHAPTER 13: How To Win Friends & Influence Gryffindors (Aftermath)

Hogsmeade

September 30th, 1995

7:15 p.m.

As the last sunset of September dwindled and October neared closer by the second, fifteen people had already been banned from attending Hogsmeade village for at least the following two weekends. Various students had been late, others had tried to sneak in Hogsmeade candy and Zonko's products, but the three most talked about had been Cormac McLaggen, Marietta Edgecome, and Lisa Turpin.

It had been almost ten in the evening when Professor McGonagall, who had been searching for the students throughout the whole village with the help of the other Head of Houses, finally made her way into the Hog's Head. She'd stepped inside and discretely told the barman about the situation, while ignoring the rest of the unsavoury folk that were there. She searched the entire tavern, but it wasn't until she opened the final private room when the smell of rum and whisky violently flooded her nostrils that her eyes finally landed on the three missing children.

The room was a mess, already as filthy as the rest of the Hog's Head but with liquid stains visible all over the chairs, table, and even floor. McLaggen was still holding a bottle of Schletters Fine Whisky in his hand as he lay, passed out on the floor, Edgecome was draped all over the table with a spilled jug of Hog's Head Brew having soiled her hair, and Turpin was completely still on a chair near the corner, a bottle of empty Elderflower wine at her feet.

The students had all been discretely levitated towards the school, where they would spend the night in the infirmary after Madam Pomfrey confirmed they all had dangerous cases of alcohol poisoning. The Professors showed extreme disappointment towards the student's decisions after the matron had confirmed they would be okay in a couple of days, and Umbridge had been particularly livid, while all the other students laughed at the tales of the three drunken idiots who had probably lost all chances to visit Hogsmeade for the rest of the year.

Harry had smiled and laughed with the rest as they mocked the other students, in the back of his mind enjoying how it had been Longbottom's money that had bought them the booze and the silence from the old barman.

Neville and Ron had been seething with Harry's mere presence in the meeting, but when Hermione, who was still particularly irritated about the whole situation, showed them the unconscious bodies of the three students, they had nearly jumped Harry altogether. After a lecture that had seemed to take over a full hour, and Hermione making sure that Longbottom and Weasley wouldn't attack him and would keep their mouths shut, the boy gave him the money and left, along with his two other friends - although at least Granger had the decency of looking ashamed - leaving him to do the dirty work.

Because of course, a proud Gryffindor like Longbottom couldn't be the bad guy, not even when his life depended on it.

Charms Classroom

October 2nd, 1995

10:00 a.m.

The sound of marching footsteps filled the halls as the fifth year Hufflepuffs and Slytherins followed Professor Flitwick, who led them from the Great Hall to the Defence classroom right before their first period began.

Of all the new Educational Decrees which Umbridge had put into effect over the last week, Harry hated two of them with a passion. The first one was Educational Decree Number Forty-Three, which made it against the rules to remove your wand from your holster while inside the grounds of Hogwarts, unless a teacher authorized it. He hated the fact that his wand was all but taken away from him, it made him feel like a naked man slowly waiting for winter to come by. Thankfully, Umbridge hadn't managed to find a way to make it physically impossible to retrieve your wand from your holster out of your own volition, nor could she take someone's wand since that was one of the few, but extremely important, powers exclusively for the Headmaster.

However, that didn't deter the High Inquisitor as she'd manage to make the penalty for using your wand without authorization outrageously high, forcing to serve at least three months of detention for this infraction. This was one of the most considerable penalties for any rule-breaking, on top with Educational Decree Number Seven which prohibited anyone from saying Voldemort's name or even mention him at all, Educational Decree Number Twenty Five which made speaking out against the ministry a punishable offence, and Educational Decree Number Seventy Nine which made it illegal to own books or other forms of text which involved any type of violence or offensive and defensive spells.

The other was Educational Decree Number One Hundred And Five, which forced the teachers to guide the students from class to class in a single file line. The students with free periods were allowed to visit the library or go back to their common rooms, but they would be punished if they were found wandering the castle or the outside grounds.

Harry could see the cat portraits that had slowly started to appear throughout the school watching them intently as they walked, he could feel Umbridge's omniscient presence in every creak and every corner of the castle, and with Filch as her dutiful helper, constantly on the look-out for any trouble, he could almost see the walls creeping ever more closely by the day.

Professor Flitwick stopped in front of the Charms classroom, a tired grimace wrinkled his face as he let the students inside. The four long tables, made from chocolate wood, weathered by time, covering almost the entire length of the room were now replaced by twenty-five pristine desks, set four feet apart from each other like tiny islands. The wobbly chairs everyone hated were now replaced by cushioned new seats, the type that the Dursleys would've bought if they had lived a hundred years ago. And the dusty blackboard behind the teacher's desk had been replaced by an entirely new one, which didn't have drawings and sentence scribbles etched into them after so many of the same lectures.

It looked like a new room from a newly built house someone would gush about, but to him, it felt more like a nicely furnished jail cell.

Harry took the seat left beside Theo and behind Pansy in the rear end of the left side of the room, seeing as the other Slytherins took their places. Malfoy and Greengrass went to the nearest seats to the teacher's desk, each with their two pets behind them, in the Slytherin section of the room, while Blaise took the seat right in front of Theo. Harry wasn't surprised by any of this, however, he was surprised when Susan Bones abruptly took the place to his right, when there were still a few places left in the Hufflepuff side.

He looked at her with a questioning glance, to which she just smiled and shrugged.

"Alright, guys," Professor Flitwick told them, as he transfigured some old books into a semi-staircase to write in the blackboard. "Give me a few minutes to set the room up before classes begin."

Without even a hint of a response from any of the students, the room quickly descended into a murmuring frenzy.

"Draco and Daphne don't look particularly pleased today," Pansy whispered to him, making sure that Blaise couldn't hear her as she slid her chair towards the other end of his desk.

"Well spotted, detective," Harry deadpanned. "What other incredible assessments will you make today?"

"I've heard rumours, you know," she continued, acting as if she hadn't heard him. "About what went down with the Gryffindors."

"What rumours?" Harry quickly asked.

"Nothing specific about the club, if that's what you're worried about," she waved him off. "They were more about you, you left quite an impression on the others."

"I didn't really do anything."

"I never took you for the modest kind."

Harry laughed. "I'm far from modest, I work too hard to fake humbleness. I just didn't do anything, just pointed out the obvious."

"Still, people took notice of you, that's good." She grinned. "You're gonna need to keep acting like that if you want to beat Greengrass for the top spot."

"I could beat out Daphne with my hands tied to my back and my eyes blindfolded." He rebuked.

"Then why not do it right now?"

"I-" Harry stumbled before shrugging. "I don't want to."

"Oh, please," Pansy rolled her eyes at him.

"All in due time," he told her in a serious voice.

"I'm betting much more than just my place in the house by siding with you." She said intently. "I don't think you realise the magnitude of what you've started, Daphne and Draco are not people who will just allow you to step all over them, they'll fight back - dirty - and the moment you think you have them beat, they'll turn the tables on you before you even know what happened."

"Now who's being the Negative Nancy," he chided her. "I'll handle them, you and Theo just do your parts and don't let me die, will you?"

"Yes, sir," she said with a mock salute.

"Hem, hem."

Harry could feel the entire class stiffen. Even though the voice had been incredibly low, it had managed to catch everyone's attention. Pansy slid back to her desk, as did various other students in the room, and Flitwick stopped making his annotations to address the High Inquisitor.

"Professor Umbridge?"

"Good morning, Filius," she told the Professor as she made her way through the middle of the desks. "Do you like the new furniture?"

"Yes, Professor Umbridge." Flitwick forced out.

"Good," she said to herself before looking around. "It seems that your students are talking a lot." Pulling out a small notebook adorned by pink fur, as well as a pink quill and pink ink bottle, which floated beside her, she began writing. "Surely you as a Professor of this institution could've thought of correcting this before I arrived to oversee your class."

"I didn't know-"

"That changes nothing," she interrupted. "Children should be learning inside a school, they have time to talk in their respective common rooms."

"I was just annotating the important things on the board," the professor insisted. "I gave them this as free time to talk before the-"

"Free time?" Umbridge almost squeaked. "No, no, I'm afraid that mustn't be allowed." She scribbled furiously in her notebook before turning to them. "Children, take out your books on Charms for Beginners and-"

"Professor," Susan Bones interrupted. "I'm afraid that's not the book for our year. We already went through that book in our second year."

"That is the government approved book, sweetheart, you should know, your aunt has devoted most of her life to the Ministry."

"I don't-"

"No matter," Umbridge spoke over Susan. "You can all take out your copies of Dark Arts Defence - Basic for Beginners and review chapter three."

"Professor Umbridge," Flitwick interjected firmly. "This is still my class, which means I get to decide how I teach it and with what materials, and until that is not the case, I will continue doing so to the best of my abilities. So please, don't interrupt my class while you make your… annotations."

Umbridge's smile faltered for a flicker of a second, in which a nasty scowl almost overtook it before she regained her composure, giving out a little laugh. "As you wish."

Professor Flitwick began reviewing the Mending Charm in preparation of the OWLs later this year, it was a fairly simple spell, one they had learnt in first-year, and yet, Harry was astounded that there were some people who couldn't do it. Crabbe, Goyle, and Bulstrode were not that surprising to him, but the fact that Finch-Fletchley couldn't do it for over thirty minutes and Megan Jones had to try for almost forty-five before she succeeded. The others had managed to complete the assignment within the first ten minutes, with only himself, Parkinson, Greengrass, and Bones managing to do it in their first try, before they were assigned by Flitwick to read ahead about the Growth Charm.

Umbridge had refrained from making more comments to Flitwick for the remainder of the class as she mostly stayed in the background, analysing the students as they did their work mostly on their own, which was surprising given how much people always talked in the Charms class. However, she would occasionally stare at Flitwick with the largest smile on her face, while her eyes betrayed a desperation that made Harry slightly uncomfortable.

"Everyone, listen up," Flitwick called out to them, ten minutes before the period bell was supposed to sound. "Crabbe, Goyle, Bullstrode, begin reading about the Growing Charm, I expect you to write a thirteen-inch essay on the Mending Charm, how it works, how to cast it, and what you were doing wrong. To everyone else who managed to do it, pair up with a classmate and discuss the basics of the Growing Charm, as well as your interpretation on how it would work with inanimate objects compared to living beings such as fellow wizards."

Umbridge let out a slight huff and began rapidly writing in her notebook as the class descended into a bit of chaos once everyone began standing up and looking for a teammate. Harry's eyes immediately drifted to Theo, but Blaise was already talking to him, and just as he was about to turn towards Pansy he was stopped when someone called out from behind.

"Wanna team up, Potter?"

The blue-eyed girl smiled down at him, her blond hair set in a French braid that fell on the right side of her chest, right in front of the Hufflepuff banner engraved into her cloak. Her clothes were pristine and without a single wrinkle, looking more immaculate than most clothes the mannequins at the priciest shops at Diagon Alley wore.

"Sure," Harry shrugged, not even having to look in Pansy's direction to see her smug grin.

The Hufflepuff pulled the chair from her desk and set it near his own, her eyes looking him over unabashedly, as if trying to read the thoughts straight from his mind. His guard immediately came up as he tried to shut down all of his emotions and stared back at her blankly, which only seemed to amuse Bones more.

"You aren't going to give me the cold shoulder like before, will you?" She asked cheekily.

"I don't think we've even talked for long enough to even warrant a cold shoulder."

"No, we haven't," she confirmed, sitting down right in front of him. "To be honest, I had forgotten you even existed during all of third and fourth year."

"I'm devastated," Harry said dryly. "However did you manage to make it in a world without me?"

"It was a breeze actually, I didn't have to interact with snarky people who think too much of themselves."

"Did you somehow also forget about the other Slytherins?"

"You're funny." Susan laughed, though Harry could tell it was more for show. "It suits you more than sulking in the corner."

"Good to know that my efforts at re-branding are working."

"They definitely are, but some people - a lot of people - have grown curious about your sudden change. Tell me, how does the mediocre Slytherin, no offence, that managed to blend himself into the background for the past four years suddenly change into one of the best students of the school that has been making people notice him more and more by the day."

"Eh," he shrugged. "I got bored."

Susan snorted and rolled her eyes. "Well, you certainly gained my attention on Saturday. If it hadn't been for your speech," she leaned in and whispered. "I don't think I would've joined… you know - and I know a lot of people feel that way too."

"Ummm… thanks?"

"I like you," she told him abruptly. "You seem far better than any of the other Slytherins."

"That isn't that hard, three of them couldn't do a first-year spell only fifteen minutes ago."

"You know that's not what I mean. Daphne has always been an arse, and a pure-blood bigot, Pansy is even ruder than Daphne, don't even get me started about Malfoy, and Theo was a jerk to everyone for the first three years - though now he seems to have changed a bit, especially since he started hanging out with you. You… you're different."

"I'm not," Harry laughed. "I'm really not."

"Maybe you are, maybe you aren't." She shrugged. "But the way I see it, at least right now, you're the best of them. I have several Slytherin uncles, and even a few cousins, Harry, I know how stuff works in that house, specially who's in charge." Susan added quotation marks with her fingers. "The whole school can see that you and Daphne are fighting for leadership of the Slytherins, you guys aren't as subtle as you think."

"Are you offering help?" He raised an eyebrow at her.

"God, no." She said immediately. "No one is stupid enough to mess with whatever house shit you Slytherins have. All I'm saying is that I'd much rather deal with you than with Daphne or Malfoy - so don't lose, will you?"

"Do I look like someone who loses frequently?" Harry asked rhetorically.

"Slytherins," Susan said exasperatedly. "If your ego was any bigger, you'd have a God complex."

"Who says I don't?" Harry asked, faking offence at her words.

Potions Classroom

October 2nd, 1995

10:00 a.m.

After their breakfast in the Great Hall the following morning, Snape escorted the fifth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins to the classroom in the dungeons with a scowl plain on his face. Snape was one of the few professors who rarely came by for meals during the day, only really attending feasts and the occasional random meal a week - but with Umbridge's new rules, he had no longer been able to hole himself up inside the dungeons like he always did.

Today in particular, he had seemed extremely irritated, and Harry could have sworn that Snape had been glaring at him much more than the usual amount. When they finally arrived at the classroom, Harry could see that it had the exact same design as the other classes, with single desks lined up in files, separated from all the rest.

"Place your cauldrons on your desks and open your books on page forty-nine," Snape told them crossly as he made his way towards his new desk, his cloak almost flying behind him as he did so. Harry had always wondered whether that was a charm used to give him an air of impressiveness, but had never managed to find convincing evidence, and he wasn't stupid enough to try a finite on him - for all he knew it would cause a bunch of glamour charms to change and reveal an even uglier fiend.

Everyone took their places as quickly as possible without a single word uttered. The air inside the dungeons seemed to almost be choking every single student inside, preventing anyone from doing anything other than what the professor had ordered.

"Given how we have been reviewing potions from your first two years at Hogwarts for over a month now, it seems fitting for us to finally learn a new potion for the term, and see if any of you dunderheads have managed to learn anything at all in these past four years or if you still have the mental capabilities of an eleven-year-old. Today you'll be brewing a Draught of Peace, let's see if you can read and follow simple instructions from a book."

"Yes, sir." The classroom answered monotone.

"Sir," Hermione spoke out.

"Drop your hand, Miss Granger, and ask whatever you were meaning to ask." Snape drawled before silencing the few Slytherins that had been dumb enough to laugh with a sharp glare.

"Sir, you haven't taken out the ingredients-"

"Potter!" Snape barked suddenly.

"Sir?"

"Yes, sir." Snape intoned pointedly. "Help me gather the ingredients from the Potions Storeroom so that you and your peers can make your failed attempts at a mediocre brew."

Harry understood the unsaid Come outside, I want to shout at you in private. It hadn't been the first time this had happened, it hadn't even been the fifteenth time, but still, it made him curious why not just do it inside the room, in front of everyone, like he did it every week. He nodded, not as grudgingly as he would've thought, and stood up.

The two had barely exited the classroom and shut the door behind them before Snape yanked him from the collar of his shirt and dragged him to the nearest abandoned dungeon in the floor. The door thundered behind them before Snape hurled him against the wall, pinning him with a single arm.

"What do you think you are doing?" The professor asked in a deadly voice as he stared intently into his eyes, the coldness and quiet of it incredibly, more terrifying than any shout he'd ever given.

"I don't kn-"

"Don't play coy with me." Snape warned. "I know where you went last Saturday, and I know what you were doing."

"Sir?" He asked calmly.

"The DA, Potter!" Harry squirmed away as spit was launched at his face. "What are you doing messing with Longbottom and his friends?"

"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about." He forced himself not to shrink under the professor's glare.

"You think I don't know what is happening in your silly little mind? You don't think I know about your little spat with Greengrass. Just when I was thinking you were a competent Slytherin, someone who knew not to get into messes like that, someone who kept to the shadows and knew which fights to pick, you go and do the stupidest thing you could have done! Do you really think you're the first idiot who tried to take his shot for the throne? Who thought he could make something of himself and upstage all the other Slytherins? Every other Slytherin who has developed delusions of grandness and tried to pull something like this has either ended up dead, in a Ministry school, or outside the country altogether. If you were trying to get yourself killed, you might as well have pointed your wand at yourself and done it quicker."

Harry freed himself from Snape's hold and glared back, but Snape continued, still focused on his eyes.

"I know this fight - the fight for power, for respect, for glory - I've seen it before, I've lived it before. This is not something that is easy, that you can leave when you get tired or regret it. This will get as bad as it can get, it will kick you to the ground and keep you on your knees before you even have a shot at success - and for someone like you that has proved himself to be nothing more than a mediocre wizard at best, you will end up in the floor bleeding before we even start to decorate for Christmas."

"What's it to you?" Harry spat violently, for the first time in his life addressing Snape in this way. There was a sense of power behind his words, a feeling of euphoria that came from finally being able to let himself lose his composure with his teacher. "You have told me time and time again that you don't give a shit if I die or get expelled, so why the sudden interest in my wellbeing."

Snape scowled, ripping his eyes away from his as he began staring at anywhere but them. "You're just like your father, so arrogant, so full of yourself, and you'll die the same way he did if you don't realise you are messing with people much more dangerous than you can even fathom. Not only have you done this, but you've also involved the Gryffindors into it. I do not give a damn if you want to get yourself killed, be my guest, but Longbottom, Granger, and Weasley are off-limits. If you even as much as look in their general direction, I'll make sure your life is a living hell for the next eight months and make you wish you were instead serving detentions with Umbridge."

Harry glowered at Snape, who still refused to meet his eyes, absently realizing he was actually taller than the man in front of him. This time, he wasn't the scared eleven-year-old that had been asked to stay behind on his first Potions class, he wasn't the same kid who had let everyone walk over him as he cried himself to sleep. He finally had power, he finally had something that made him dangerous - he was finally someone people were noticing, and he wasn't planning on going back.

"I'd like to see you try, Sir."