The hallways of Hogwarts felt far more crowded that night than they ever had during the day. Perhaps it was the sensation of darkness pressing in from all angles, or maybe, the absence of any faculty members had simply cemented the belief that at any turn, you could find yourself surrounded.

Harry pushed down on his rising claustrophobia, silently chiding himself for jumping at shadows as he shuffled into the Entrance Hall and up the single flight of the Marble Staircase. Stepping off on the first floor landing, Harry edged his way along the balustrade until he arrived at a position that he felt was suitably out of the way yet would still allow him to observe the hall below. Despite wearing his Father's cloak, Harry refused to leave anything to chance - and so it was with one eye trained on the world below him, and one searching for any sign of movement on the landing behind him, that he waited.

A quick glance at his watch showed that he'd been waiting in place for fifteen minutes. With the larger of the two clock hands inching its way past the half hour mark, he grew slightly concerned; the Gryffindors were cutting it fine if they planned to move a crate from the entrance hall to the Astronomy Tower in under thirty minutes. The longer they left it, the faster they'd need to move, and the greater the chance that they'd draw attention to the fact that there were students out of bed. Harry also had no doubt that the boys wouldn't hesitate to throw Neville under the bus if it meant spreading any punishment around.

Of course, Harry reflected, everything from this point on hinged on the accuracy of Malfoy's information. Although Harry no longer doubted what he'd been told, it was impossible for his mind to not question everything as he stood there, crouched in wait.

Harry heard them coming before he saw them; apparently they too were away of the time and had chosen haste over subtlety. To be fair, not having an invisibility cloak of their own meant that lingering too long in the open was perhaps even more likely to get them caught than a bit of extra noise.

When they finally passed Harry on the staircase it was in a single file, and spread out enough that the person at the front could confirm that the coast was clear before signalling the other two. Weasley was the last of the three to scurry by, his eyes fixed on where they'd come from, almost like a rear guard. Harry would have been impressed if he weren't so angry with them.

The boys quickly made it across the entrance hall and without any hesitation, tapped gently three times on the front doors in what was clearly a pre-arranged code. By this point it was clear to Harry that Neville was not with them and had obviously been dispatched earlier to create the distraction. Not knowing where the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room was, Harry had gambled on all four boys coming to the hall, so that Neville could then draw the attention of any staff to an area that the Gryffindors had already left.

Frustrated that his only lead hadn't panned out, and that he was now the one who was pressed for time, Harry wished - not for the first time - that Ernie was there with him; his cooler head would have been invaluable as Harry racked his brain for his next move. Reluctantly, they had both agreed that having more than two of them under the cloak would only hamper their attempts at a stealthy extraction rather than enhancing it.

Harry considered the layout of the castle for a moment before setting off in the direction of the library, hoping against hope that he'd run into Neville before he managed to set off the fireworks, and attracting the attention of half the castle in the process.

Throwing much of his earlier caution to the wind, Harry rushed through the first floor corridor, pushing aside a tapestry, and making his way along a concealed passageway that would save him five minutes by taking him outside the castle walls to a parapet which he knew led to a battlement directly above the stone bridge. From there it was only a very small drop to lower himself over the wall and onto the bridge propper where he continued his late night charge through the castle, his cloak occasionally dragging on corners and raised surfaces as he ran.

By the time Harry made it to the library he was completely out of breath. He'd lost five minutes waiting outside the Arithmancy classrooms as an unfamiliar professor patrolled the area, evidently looking for something from the way she shone a light from her wand around the room; the beam roving back and forth around the corridor in search of anything out of place. Eventually she extinguished the light with a muttered "Nox", her receding footsteps echoing back to him from the direction of the Transfiguration Courtyard.

Given the attention she had paid to the area, Harry was confident he'd find Neville nearby; clearly his friend had not been as quiet as he had thought. After slowly prying open the door to the Library, Harry had barely stepped across the threshold when a concussive 'boom' rocked him from behind. The sound was immediately accompanied by several other shorter whizzes and cracks before a second boom.

Harry dashed back to the Library door, and - making a split second decision - slammed it shut with as much force as he possibly could. He then opened it again and repeated the process twice more before finally leaving it wide open as he sprinted for all he was worth away from the Library in the direction of the noise.

Not knowing if his own small diversion would work, Harry wasted no time in dashing around the Arithmancy rooms, up one flight of stairs then down two others before throwing open the doors that led outside to the Greenhouses; the place Harry was certain the deafening noises had come from.

His suspicions were confirmed as he turned his eyes to the sky; an undulating finger of smoke hung in the air above him, the still night unable to suitably disperse it and remove the final lingering piece evidence. A flash of movement caught his eye; a small figure, silhouetted against the grounds, was running around the side of the Library Annex.

Although grateful that the milder weather of February had melted much of the snow, Harry nonetheless stuck to the paths to avoid leaving footprints in the icy slush that coated entire swathes of grass, his cloak flapping loudly behind him as he sped after his friend.

Harry rounded a corner to find Neville a mere fifty metres away from him tugging furiously on the doors to the Bell Tower Entrance which, despite his best efforts, remained steadfastly closed. As Harry got closer, he could make out the panic on his friend's face, an emotion that had clearly blinded him to everything else around him.

Hearing the sound of heavy doors scraping in the distance, Harry quickly closed the gap to Neville, throwing the cloak over the both of them, he wrapped a hand around his friend's mouth, hissing his demand for silence as he dragged him away from the door. Upon realising who exactly it was that had abducted him, Neville's eyes bulged in shock, and Harry clearly felt him mouth his name into his hand.

When he was certain that the initial shock of being snuck up on had passed, Harry dropped his hand away from his friend's mouth, raising a finger on his hand and bringing it to his own lips to convey his message.

The two boys shuffled back into the garden courtyard and took a deep breath; now that the initial burst of adrenaline was starting to wear off, Harry's mind finally had the opportunity to stop and think about their situation. Not wanting to remain in the open while he planned their next move, Harry pulled Neville along with him to the relative safety of a row of hedges.

This would turn out to be the right decision, as the doors which Neville had been fighting valiantly with only moments earlier suddenly opened to the grounds expelling two figures that Harry recognised immediately; Professor Snape and the Caretaker - Mr Filch.

"They can't be far; we'll find them, no doubt about that - won't we, my pet! Those Weasley boys will rue the day they fell out of their mother; I keep the manacles well oiled for just such occasions as this."

Even from this distance, Harry could make out the sneer on Snape's face in the moonlight.

"Contain yourself, man. Rather than wasting time yelling obscenely into the night air, perhaps you might instead make yourself useful and check the paths from the Greenhouses; there might not be much of winter left, but whichever one of those two feckless miscreants set off the fireworks may have left footprints in what little snow that remains."

"Yeah, and what's it that you'll be doing then Professor" Filch spat the title like it was a curse.

"Clearly the restricted section was their goal; they slammed the Library door in their haste and Irma swears she heard rustling in the foyer. I for one can attest to the difficulty of navigating the labyrinthine walkways of that particular section of the Library - there's every chance one of them is still in there, and I won't waste a moment more of my time out here quibbling with the help."

And with that he turned on his heel and walked back through the open doors.

Grumbling at the abrupt dismissal, Filch mimicked the professor's drawl as he mockingly parroted back the words "I won't waste a moment more of my time."

"Oily git" Filch sneered. "What does he know about catching students; I remember when he still was one. Bah! Sniff around, my sweet, we'll get them yet!"

The sound of departing footsteps reached the boys in their sojourn behind the hedge, and an unsteady waltz of invisible feet moved Harry and Neville into a position to watch as the Caretaker trudged away in the direction of the Greenhouses, much to their shared relief. Unfortunately, their elation at the prospect of a clear coast was short lived; the pair were brought back to reality by a decidedly feline sound.

Mrs Norris, Filch's cat, sat at most twenty metres ahead of them. Neatly blocking the pathway back to the castle, her whiskered nose was angled up, top lip curled back and teeth slightly bared as she scented the air. Just as quickly as the process had begun it ended, her gaze flicked straight to where Harry and Neville stood, yellow eyes narrowed at ostensibly empty space.

"Mrow?"

Quietly at first, she began to trill and chirp - clearly uncertain why her senses were providing her with conflicting answers. Evidently she settled on trusting her olfactory senses, and let out a piercing yowl.

Startled by the sudden noise, Harry and Neville edged away from the feline sentry, slowly at first, but they hadn't made it more than a hundred metres toward the side of the courtyard when Mrs Norris' caterwauling was answered by a very human shout, and the game was once again, afoot. This time the boys fled further and further into the depths of the grounds, the sounds of their pursuers lost in the thunder of their own footsteps.

A sudden pulling sensation was all the warning Harry received before both he and Neville were sprawled flat on the ground, their progress halted in a tangle of limbs and cloth. A luridly purple firework squeezed its way out of Neville's robes, seemingly no worse for the wear after the Gryffindor had fallen on it. The two stared at it a moment in fear, but when it became clear that the wet start pyrotechnic had not been accidentally ignited by the slushy conditions of the patchy snow, Harry grabbed both it and Neville, stashing the firework within his own robes as he hauled the pair of them to their feet.

The unscheduled stop had, however, provided an unexpected upside; as Harry regained his footing and turned his head wildly in search of their pursuers he spotted the shadowy outline of the Care of Magical Creatures classroom. And so it was as a number of thin beams of light appeared, roaming the grounds far behind them, that Harry - with his not insignificant knowledge of secret passageways, dragged Neville along with him as he sped past it further into the grounds, this time in the direction of the Owlery.

As they wound their way up to the far end of the cobbled path, Harry - clutching a stitch in his side - yanked open the Owlery door and the two boys fell inside. Heedless of the cacophonic flapping of disturbed wings and the glare of round, baleful eyes, Harry made his way to the corner of the small room before dropping to his hands and knees; his frozen fingers digging painfully at the edges of a loose stone.

With a narrow hole now uncovered, Neville - at Harry's urging - was the first to descend the short drop, whilst Harry - who upon lowering himself far more carefully - braced his legs in to the sides of the passageway as he dragged the stone back across, using what little strength still remained in his fingertips to set it back in to place before dropping down to meet his friend.

The cramped earthen tunnel, which Harry knew from experience would deposit them underneath the Clock Tower, had a damp mildewy smell to it that Had Harry wrinkling his nose. A muttered "lumos" saw to it that they at least had a source of light as they edged their way forwards on all fours.

After ten minutes of crawling in silence, Neville stopped. Harry, who had no way around him in the tight space, resigned himself to waiting out his friend.

"I don't even know where to start," Neville confessed after a moment. "What were you doing out after curfew?"

"What was I doing?" Harry replied, peeved. "What were you doing?! Don't answer that, I saw Finnegan, Weasley and Thomas - knew to look for them in fact"

"Knew to lo… what do you mean?" Neville asked, twisting his body around to face Harry, confusion written all over his face.

"A Slytherin, Draco Malfoy, told me what they were doing, and that they had volunteered you as professor bait" Harry replied.

"Wait, Malfoy? A Malfoy knows about this? Oh, we are so screwed; they're going to hold this over us forever. Gran really is going to kill me this time" Neville slumped, dejected, before his eyes flicked back up to Harry's face as he seemingly registered the second half of the statement.

"What do you mean, volunteered me as bait?"

Harry thought about his reply for a moment before coming to a conclusion. Sighing, he decided to simply rip the bandaid off.

"Nev" Harry said gently, "they were using you."

"...Yeah. I figured," he replied in a small voice.

A look of incredulity crossed Harry's features.

"Then why in Merlin's name did you go along with it?"

Neville sighed, scrubbing at his eyes with the palms of his hand.

"You wouldn't get it" he said at last, running a dirty hand through his hair. "In Hufflepuff you at least have a couple of friends; I have no one in Gryffindor. At first they would just take my books and tease me; I was a joke to them, one who they could get to do their Herbology homework. Now, I'm not even that anymore. No one talks to me. You and Ernie are my best friends Harry, but I guess… I don't know, I just wanted to feel like I was part of something in Gryffindor - to stop feeling for one single day like the Sorting Hat hadn't made a huge mistake" he finished miserably.

Harry, not knowing what to say, simply patted his friend awkwardly on the arm.

"There, there."

Snorting, Neville gave Harry an exasperated look. "You're about as reassuring as a Niffler in Gringotts" he chuckled thickly as he wiped his nose on his sleeve.

Harry nodded sagely. "I understand all of those words separately."

Laughing, Neville turned back around to begin crawling again.

Eventually the tunnel curved upwards before coming to a sharp downward turn that Harry knew continued on to the statue of a monk. Rather than follow it any further, Harry - with the aid of a hand boost - reached above him to the ceiling, neatly popping out a stone tile before pulling himself up and into the Clock Tower. After giving Neville a hand out and refitting the tile in its correct place, Harry covered them both in his Father's cloak once more, this time allowing Neville to lead them as they made their way slowly back to Gryffindor Tower.

It took them another twenty minutes at a slow pace, but eventually Neville led them up to the seventh floor before stopping in front of the portrait of a fat lady in a pink silk dress.

Turning to Harry, his expression became solemn.

"Well, this is it - the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room. Thank you Harry - seriously, I don't know how you managed to find me, but thank you."

"What are friends for?" Harry said with a grin.

The two boys clasped hands under the cloak and nothing more needed to be said. Finally, with a whispered "Caput Draconis" Neville was gone.

Harry lingered for several moments longer, savouring the sense of accomplishment before the events of that night came rushing back to him. Now that he'd completed his mission, he could appreciate just how badly they'd almost botched it.

Looking around. Harry considered the fact that he was on the seventh floor of the castle. If Justin was to be believed, there was a shortcut on this floor to the Kitchens, which in turn would place him only a few moments at most from the entrance to the Hufflepuff Common Room. The only catch was, Justin had said, that you had to enter it from the Poltergeist Passage - a corridor so named for Peeve's proclivity to spend much of his time there when he wasn't otherwise occupied dropping dungbombs on students between classes or relocating Filch's cleaning supplies.

The likelihood of getting past the mischievous spirit was incredibly low, even when invisible. If a brick wall suddenly sprang open in his corridor to reveal a staircase, it would only entice him to investigate - loudly - and Harry's past experience had proven that curiosity and boredom were a dangerous combination when it came to Peeves. Fortunately, Harry thought to himself as he absently patted the firework concealed inside his robes, this time he came bearing a gift.

The soft patter of feet on stone followed Harry up the corridor as he leisurely made his way across the seventh floor. It was this nonchalance that nearly led to his undoing as he rounded a corner and nearly collided with two people engaged in a violent confrontation. Freezing in place a mere metre away from the pair, Harry clamped his hands over his own mouth a second too late to smother his surprise. He needn't have worried though as both were far too preoccupied to hear anything.

Julian Fawley, Seventh Year Ravenclaw and the current Head Boy, was pressed hard up against the wall, his face red with from exertion and adorned with a furious scowl as he clawed and scratched at the hand around his throat.

"Now you listen to me you ambitious little shit" came Professor Quirrel's whispered voice. "I won't be threatened by the likes of you. What, you think that because your daddy threw some money around that you suddenly have influence? That your family is suddenly in the inner circle now? Don't make me laugh; your Father is a nobody and so are you. Neither of you know him, the way I know him; I was one of his most trusted! He taught me personally! You're a delivery boy, nothing more. Do not overstep your station."

Suddenly released from the choke hold, Julian slid down the wall, massaging his throat as he stared hatefully up at the Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor.

"If I'm the delivery boy then here's your message: You have until June, and not a day longer. If you're serious about rejoining the flock, then this is your final chance, Quirrel; the Justiciar have decreed it."

Quirrel smirked humorlessly down at him, then drew back a leg and before kicking out; sinking a square toed boat into the boy's stomach and then again when he curled in on himself to protect his body.

"'Decreed it' he says,'" Quirrel snorted, his eyes filled with disdain. In a mocking tone he continued.

"They'll have the stone before June, so don't worry your pretty little Pureblood head about it. You just make sure they know I expect to be welcomed back into the fold on bent knees."

And with one last kick, he walked away.

Harry stared down at the Ravenclaw groaning piteously on the floor. His entire view of Professor Quirrel had been flipped upside down, dragged to the ground and beaten - almost as badly as the boy laying in front of him. He was singularly unprepared to be confronted by such a brutally one sided confrontation, and that was without considering that it was between a student and a faculty member.

What did he do now? His body was screaming at him to act - to help - but his mind was quick to douse that particular flame with a none too subtle reminder that to do so would be to reveal not only that he was out after curfew, but that he had overheard that particular conversation. As much of a victim as Fawley was, his heavy handed attempt at strong arming a professor made it clear he wasn't just an innocent bystander. What's more, he seemed to have the backing of some sort of group; Justiciars - whoever they were.

A pained grunt took the decision out of Harry's hand's; pulling himself into a sitting position, the strained expression on Fawley's face was at least evidence enough that he wasn't so injured as to require immediate assistance.

With a sharp intake of breath, the injured Head Boy gently pushed on his ribs with one hand; a pronounced wince drew Harry's attention, but the following clenching and unclenching of a fist made it clear that that particular pain originated from his hand not his ribs - an appendage that was no doubt sacrificed to mitigate some of the damage from the second kick.

A muttered "episkey" coincided with him delicately tapping his wand against his ring finger; an action that was repeated on his wrist. After rotating it several times for good measure, the same had reached down to push himself onto his feet - a laborious process that gave Harry ample time to scoot further away, greatly reducing his chance of being stumbled into.

With a deep sigh that masked several curses, Julian Fawley sent one last scowl in the direction of Quirrell's disappearance, before gingerly walking in the opposite direction, back towards Gryffindor Tower. As the sound of his footsteps faded into night, Harry found himself alone once again.

Navigating the remainder of the way to Peeves' preferred haunt posed no difficulty, nor - surprisingly - did persuading the poltergeist to occupy his time elsewhere; the unusually helpful directions of disembodied voice accompanied by the sudden appearance of a painfully purple firework were apparently all the invitation Peeves required to leave in search of Professor Quirrel's estimated location.

His good deed done for what was now officially a new day, Harry descended yet another hidden passageway to the Kitchens - a location which at any other time he would be thrilled to explore but which tonight he couldn't even muster the enthusiasm to linger.

Twenty minutes later, Harry found himself staring unseeingly up at the canopy of his bed as he tried valiantly to settle his mind - a coping mechanism that he'd needed to employ on far too many occasions since September. As the hours slipped by with Harry no closer to sleep, he wondered - not for the first time - if Hogwarts was in fact, safe.

Things are starting to fall into place, we are on the home stretch for year one. Let me know your thoughts in the reviews and if you like what you've read than please follow or favourite - it really does help me and the story out.