Blaise and Theo accept with without questioning when Harry tells them that he's going to visit Sirius after dinner, so he's able to slip away easily and head up to the third floor. The staircases are, for once, mercifully cooperative, and while the hallways aren't busy, they aren't full either, with some students lingering over dessert in the Great Hall and others returned to dorms or gone to the library or the study halls; Harry doesn't pass anyone he knows and goes straight to Sirius's office without stopping.

He'd seen Sirius leave dinner a short while before he got up himself, so it's not a surprise that the door to the Defence classroom is cracked open and a light is shining from within. The large classroom is only dimly illuminated by a few scattered candles, but Sirius's office door is open and a much brighter light spells out from there. Harry makes a beeline for the stairs, climbing up, and sticks his head through the doorway.

Sirius is sitting at his desk writing something on a piece of parchment, but he looks up when Harry taps on the doorframe and smiles broadly. "Glad you made it, pup," he says, and gets up to give Harry a hug. He waves over at the side of the room, where a long couch has been placed, and says, "Shall we?"

Harry nods and goes to sit with Sirius on the couch, wondering if it had been acquired just for their chats, or if Sirius had some other intention for it. Maybe naps; Sirius does like naps. Whatever its intended purpose, it's comfortable, and Harry tucks his legs up under him, settling in.

"So, how have your first couple of days been?" Sirius asks, leaning in a little. "Classes are good?"

"Mhm," Harry says, nodding again. "I think it'll be a good year. I'm looking forward to your class most, of course."

Sirius grins. "As I would expect. And what about everything else?"

"Well…" Harry says, and then launches into a recap of everything that's happened in the last two days. He starts with the train and Gemma's offer of alliance, yet predicated on his ability to actually usurp Draco Malfoy, and his terms—that he won't stop being friends with Hermione and the other Gryffindors. And Millicent Bulstrode's offer of cautious support, when it was safe for her to show such things. He suspects, and tells Sirius as much, that she'll also only really come onside when he's shown that he's a better option than Malfoy. Sirius nods at all that, then holds up a hand before Harry can go on.

"So then, what are you planning to do about Malfoy? Because you'll need a plan. It seems to me that if you were really dedicated to not playing politics, as you were last year, you could just… not do any of this. Those who've offered you support might be disappointed but probably not surprised. And I'd support you. But I'll also support any and all efforts to show that brat his place. Hair dye might be a good start," Sirius says, and winks.

Harry snorts. "Yeah, maybe. I can't be… petty, though. I'll only come out looking like a brat myself, or like a bully, if I don't do something that makes him look actually foolish instead of just… pink. Or whatever."

Sirius nods thoughtfully. "You're no prankster, much as I'd like it to be otherwise. I'm happy to offer you my expertise, of course, but I think you're right that you need to take discrediting him seriously."

"I might be able to taunt him into making a fool of himself," Harry says. "He's spoiled, isn't used to not getting his way, and he's a humongous coward and a tattletale. Maybe if… if I get him properly and he makes a public accusation which I can then disprove, he'll look like an idiot."

"So you need a goat."

"Or an ally," Harry says slowly, a thought coming into his head. "I'm going to need the Weasley twins."

Sirius blinks, and then begins to smile. "You think they'd do it? That they could pull it off?"

"I think so. I don't know them very well, but they'd definitely do it, and they seem clever."

"Excellent." Sirius reaches out and ruffles Harry's hair. "We'll make a Marauder of you yet. Now, beyond making him look paranoid, which might take a while, do you have any other plans?"

Harry shrugs. "This maybe won't be against him directly, but I plan to try out for the Seeker position. If he tries out for the team as well and doesn't make it on, that's points for me, especially if he also tries out for Seeker."

"How will you deal with it if he plays dirty?"

"Dirty?" Harry asks, frowning.

"Malfoy has his father's wealth and influence behind him, remember, and I'd bet he's the type willing to use it if it'll get him something he wants, like a spot on the team."

"Like a bribe?"

"Exactly." Sirius makes an expansive gesture. "Obviously I could offer you the same, but I think you're trying to prove you're different from Malfoy, not just a slightly better version of the same."

"Mhm." Harry frowns. "Well, I guess that'll be up to Flint and the rest of the team. If I'm worse than Malfoy on a broom, well, fair enough. But if I'm better than him, then they have to decide what they want more—someone with integrity and skill, or someone with money to throw around."

"Alright," Sirius says. "Whatever you think will work. If you need some support from me, I'll do what I can—just let me know."

"Sure, Sirius." Harry sighs. "There's something else, too."

"Oh?"

"Theo pulled me aside yesterday morning and he warned me that his dad's been acting strange—he thinks the Death Eaters are becoming active again and wanted to tell me, and… ask for protection."

"What did you say?" Sirius asks, his tone carefully neutral. He's watching Harry, as if to try to gauge his thoughts.

"The truth, mostly. That he was right—something is coming. That Voldemort might come back, if we can't stop him, and that I couldn't promise to protect him if that happened," Harry says, frowning. "I didn't… like that very much, but I didn't want to make a promise that I can't keep."

"No, that's good," Sirius agrees, and then lapses into thought for a few minutes. His gaze goes distant as he mulls over possibilities—Harry has seen this a few times before. Sirius is a deep thinker and sometimes sort of… goes somewhere else when he's trying to puzzle something out or plan a next move. It happens most often when he plays chess with Remus. Finally, he emerges, and he says, "Theodore Nott would be a valuable ally for you to have. His father…"

"Is a Death Eater," Harry says confidently. "He told me."

"Interesting," Sirius murmurs. "And what exactly did he ask for?"

"Basically, that I ask you to shelter him, if there's an opportunity for you to do it and things get bad."

"Alright." Sirius sighs, runs a hand down his face. "I'll think about it. It'll be complicated, politically and magically. But he's just a boy, and if you think he's in earnest—"

"He is," Harry says firmly. "I trust him."

"And you told him about Voldemort?"

"And the Stone," Harry says, making Sirius frown. "He said he'd keep an ear out for his dad talking about the Stone or alchemy or anything, that he'd let me know; I believe him. He'd never have approached me at all if he wasn't serious—it was a big risk for him to take."

"No, you're right," Sirius says. He holds up his hands as if to ward off Harry's fierceness, laughing a little. "You don't need to defend your friend to me, Harry. I believe you that he's trustworthy, we just need to be careful."

"I know. Sorry."

Sirius leans forward and hugs Harry briefly, then draws back, his hands firm on Harry's shoulders. "Never apologize to me for defending the people you care about. I'd rather you do what you feel you need to without hesitation; if we're unable to stop what's coming, hesitation might mean death."

Harry nods. "Okay, Sirius. Is… have there been any updates? Anything you can tell me?"

Sirius looks at him for a moment, studying his face, then says, "Yes. You should probably know. We found out not long ago that it looks like there's been a kidnapping. A pureblood woman from a minor family, fairly reclusive. She was engaged to a muggle man, which is why her brother and father didn't report her missing until now—either they didn't know or didn't care. The case had originally fallen to the muggle cops, but they hadn't found anything; her fiance was found dead in their home, signs of a struggle, and she was gone, but there were really no other suspects so their case went cold. The Aurors only found out about it so much later that there wasn't much for them to find."

"What makes you think it was the Death Eaters?" Harry asks, frowning. "That seems random. It could've even been a muggle criminal."

"Maybe," Sirius says. "It's not much like usual Death Eater tactics, no; they're terrorists, and this was pretty quiet. Or—well. They certainly made people disappear during the last war, that was really how it started, but usually they picked people that everyone would know had vanished. It was still about fear, even the quiet things. Maybe especially those. But it makes sense for them to have gone underground, and this sort of crime against wixen is hard to attribute to anyone other than another wix. We can defend ourselves with magic, after all."

"So not a muggle. But it could have been any other wix." Harry's a little irritated that Sirius won't just tell him what's going on, but knows that he's probably being taught some sort of lesson in being led along the garden path like this.

"Again, maybe. Violent crime like this is rare, however, and a pureblood marrying a muggle is repugnant enough to purists that she's a likely target for their ilk; they loved to go after those sorts in the last war. And Dumbledore is suspicious."

Harry narrows his eyes. "Why?"

Sirius shrugs. "That's the point where I'm lost too. He seems sure, though, that she's a probable target for Voldemort, and won't tell me why."

"Ugh." Harry rubs his forehead. "He never tells anyone anything."

"No, it's not really his preferred modus operandi," Sirius says. "But you are right that without that particular factor, there's not much to twig us to this particular case being the Death Eaters. Just its rarity, really—especially since the war, there's been a lot less of this sort of thing, because the Aurors crack down really hard on it, and it wasn't common before, either. Kidnapping and holding a wix is difficult if they have any measure of talent or training."

"Did this woman you're talking about have training?"

Sirius shrugs again. "Only as much as any other Hogwarts graduate, but she had good grades in Defence, so she's no slouch. If they are keeping her for something, it'll take some effort."

"What would they be keeping her for?" Harry asks, and watches as Sirius's expression goes closed again, remote.

"Nothing good," he says, his tone dark. "There's one particular ritual… we've no evidence of it, but if she was pregnant when they took her, or if—well. You don't need to hear about this, Harry. Just know that I'm looking into it."

Harry frowns, but nods. Maybe Hermione will be willing to go digging in the restricted section—though if it's something Sirius had found in one of his family's books, it's likely that Hogwarts won't have anything about it in its library. He'd seen some of the books Sirius was looking at from the Black library this summer, and they'd all been musty or cursed or bloodstained or bound in disturbing things. Sirius's family had been awful.

"But enough about that," Sirius says. "Have you got anything else to tell me about, or is that the last of it?"

"Just one more thing," Harry says. "Snape tried Legilimency on me on the first night."

Sirius reels back slightly, then his face begins to flush red with anger. "He did what?" he demands.

"I don't think he was really digging for anything," Harry says. "More like… testing my shields. And then after Potions he said he wanted to see me tonight. I don't know what he wants."

Sirius growls, a noise very reminiscent of Padfoot. "I don't want you to be alone with him if he's trying to break into your mind, pup."

"I don't want to go either," Harry says, and sighs. "But I think I have to. Better to know, right? If it makes you feel better, I'll come straight back here after if he does anything to me."

"If you can."

"He can't actually hurt me; he's a professor," Harry points out. Gryffindors, honestly. First his friends last year, thinking Snape was after the Stone (though in their defence, it had turned out to be a professor, they'd just suspected the wrong one because of their bias), and now Sirius, thinking Snape was going to, what? Curse him? Rip open his mind for all the secrets he doesn't have? Harry's on edge too, but he's not stupid.

"That won't stop him if he's determined," Sirius says darkly. "I'm coming with you."

"Wh—no!"

"Why not?"

"He'll think you're babying me," Harry says. "I'm not a baby."

"No, but you are my… my pup, Harry," Sirius says. "It's my job to protect you."

"Not from my teachers," Harry says.

"From them if I have to. From the whole damn world if I have to. If it makes you feel better, I'll be Padfoot and I'll stay out in the hall."

Harry just shakes his head. "I'll call you with the mirror when I get back to the dorm after, unless something happens. If he tries anything, I'll come back here."

"That's not—fine. Fine," Sirius says, waving a hand. "I guess I can't stop you."

You could, Harry thinks, narrowing his eyes, but you aren't. Suspicious. Still, he doesn't actually want to fight with Sirius, so he lets it go, and leans forward for a hug. "I'll be just fine," Harry says. "I should probably go now, actually."

Sirius nods. "Alright. Off you go, then. Oh—how do you feel about Saturday evenings for our little talks, hm? Unless Quidditch practice interferes."

"I think Flint prefers to practice in the mornings," Harry says. "So that'll be okay. After dinner next Saturday, then?"

"Sounds good," Sirius says, and ruffles Harry's hair. "As a little assignment for then, why don't you try to decide which spell you want to learn wandless this year? Talk to Neville about it."

"Okay." Harry smiles at Sirius and then gets up off the couch. "I'll talk to you in a bit, over the mirror, because Snape's not going to do anything to me."

Sirius rolls his eyes. "Of course. Later, pup."

"Later!"

Harry gathers his satchel up off the ground and darts off, heading back out of the Defence classroom and toward the staircases that will take him all the way down into the dungeons, to Snape's office. The dungeons are quiet as always, very few students out and about; the stone always echoes a little. It's enough for Harry to hear once, very quiet, the click of nails on stone. He pauses, sighs, and then decides that if Sirius can't stop him from going then he can't really stop Sirius from following him, no matter how annoying it is. He doesn't like Snape, sure, but he really doesn't understand the insistence of all the Gryffindors he knows on thinking that he's some sort of villain. He can't even really put it down to storybook stereotypes, because Filch is at least as nasty and also actively threatens to hang students by their thumbs, but no one thinks he's actually going to do it, whereas they're willing to believe just about anything of Snape.

Maybe it's because Snape is… scarier than Filch, more menacing. More genuinely menacing, the way that happens when you can see the hatred in someone's eyes but not on their face. Or maybe because he seems to care less. Harry'd long ago gotten over being scared of people who turned red and blustered and made grand threats when they got mad; he's a lot more scared of people who look at a person in misery, a person's who's anxious and upset, and decides that it's not his problem. It had happened to him in primary school a few times. Sometimes teachers had been nice to him, tried to support him at school when they could tell he was struggling at him. Others, though, had looked at him the way Snape looked at Neville and other students who struggled in his class: with a look that said, you're irrelevant to me, and your suffering is an inconvenience.

Easier, after all, to teach a student without any other difficulties in their life. Easier to resent those who do have barriers than to make the effort to help them. Snape reserves his concern for the Slytherins—and even then, only for those who, one way or another, make themselves relevant to him. Easier if most simply toe the line; he can ignore those who do. Harry doesn't, and never will, and it seems that Snape is finally figuring that out.

It is with that in mind that Harry knocks on Snape's office door, then steps inside at the silky "Enter," that issues from within. He closes the door firmly behind him, and wonders if Snape has silencing wards set into his walls. If so, Padfoot is going to be disappointed.

Snape's office is gloomy as ever, but for once, Snape himself isn't absorbed in something else when Harry approaches his desk—he's watching him, attentive and careful. Those dark eyes are fathomless and impossible to read, so Harry chooses not to speak first, just coming to a stop in front of Snape's desk and looking back as silently.

After a long moment, Snape gestures toward the chair set across his desk from his own, and Harry sits down. Once he has, Snape lets out a long, slow breath.

"You are going to be a problem," he says, and laces his fingers together in front of him on the desk. It's clear he can see the way that Harry's hackles rise at the comment, so he continues immediately, "I do not mean that as an indictment. Only that you are a complicated person to have in my House, Mr. Potter, which I have only now begun to truly grasp—and I suspect you will only become more complicated with time."

"I'll try not to be your problem, sir, if that makes you feel any better," Harry says.

"You won't be able to help it." Snape stares him down, and Harry meets his eyes, almost daring him to try again to probe his mind. He doesn't, though; instead he says, "You understand, Potter, that I am in a delicate situation."

Harry shrugs. "Depends what you mean, sir."

"I mean what I have said," Snape says. "Whatever you know about me is surely enough to understand it, and I'm sure your guardian has had plenty of stories to tell."

That's true enough. Harry doesn't nod though; he doesn't want to give anything away about Sirius that Snape doesn't already know. He knows they don't get along.

Snape raises an eyebrow. "He is lobbying for Dumbledore to allow him to teach certain students some extra skills."

"He's my guardian," Harry says. "I don't think Dumbledore can stop him from teaching me."

"Not only you," Snape says. "The Longbottom boy, also."

Harry nods. "That makes sense."

"Does it?"

Harry smiles. "We're friends, after all."

Snape gives him another of those measuring looks. "Indeed. I can also tell that your guardian has begun certain tutelage with you already."

"You mean Occlumency." No point in hiding that, anyway. "Why did you try to break into my mind, sir?"

"I'd wondered if you could feel that at this stage," Snape says. "Good. You have promise."

"That's not an answer, professor."

"No." Snape sits back and places his hands very deliberately on the arms of his chair. "If you find yourself hitting any barriers in your Occlumency training, you have permission to come to me. I am not flattering myself to say that I am a master, and in different ways than Black or even Dumbledore."

Harry considers that, then nods again. He's not sure if he's going to take that offer up, but it's interesting that it's been laid out.

"What is your plan for this year, Potter?" Snape asks, after a pause. "I'm sure you appreciate your own delicate situation."

"Respectfully, sir," Harry says, "I don't think I should tell you."

"So you do intend to make a move."

"Of some kind." Harry shrugs. "What was it you said about making something of myself? I don't plan to let anyone else decide who I am for me, not anymore; I had about enough of that last year."

"And who do you think the rest of your House has decided you are?" Snape asks. His tone is so even, so calm, but calm waters run deep, or so Harry has heard.

"The ignorant son of a mudblood and a blood traitor," Harry says, striving to speak with that same calm. He doesn't want Snape to know how much saying those words bothers him. "Who doesn't know his nose from his navel; who has no ambition, only a Gryffindorish sense of stubborn rebellion; and who can be used."

"And you are not those things?" Snape says, leaning forward. "You know the school sees you as an aberration, Potter, the snake who lies with lions. You have no subtlety."

"We all play the game differently, is what I've learned this summer," Harry says, shrugging. "You do things in one way and I do them in another, but I'm not content to do nothing."

"Good," Snape says, to Harry's surprise. "It is very possible that our interests will come into conflict, Mr. Potter, at least outwardly; I will not pretend I approve of what you are doing. But at least you are not a complete fool."

"Are you going to stop ignoring me, then?"

Snape tilts his head. "We shall see. I intend to remain a political neutral as is possible this year, which means you should not expect advice or support of any sort from me—nor opposition. There are other issues I must manage that are significantly more important."

Like the Death Eaters, Harry thinks. And Dumbledore and Voldemort, and that whole mess. He knows—he knows all of the adults are going to be more involved with that than anything this year. He's grateful that Sirius is giving him even as much attention as he is; he wouldn't have been surprised to be left to his own devices entirely, given everything else that's going on. So, to Snape's words, Harry just nods.

"Depending on the outcome of whatever gambit you will be trying, we may speak again," Snape says. "… Good luck, Mr. Potter."

Harry blinks. "Thank you, professor."

"Now get out of my office."

"Yes, sir," Harry says, rolls his eyes, and then leaves before Snape's expression turns thunderous.