Chapter 14:

Detention

It was awful. Utterly awful. A hundred and fifty points lost from Gryffindor and detention on top of it.

Harry wasn't sure how the news had leaked out, but by the next day everyone seemed to know who had lost the hundred and fifty points. All the points won at Quidditch. All lost in one night.

The other students stopped speaking to Harry. Even Ron, Hermione and poor Neville Longbottom found themselves avoided. Neville who had only been trying to warn them. To add to it, Harry had left his invisibility cloak up on the tower and exams were just around the corner.

The only two positives Harry could find were that the dragon was gone and Draco Malfoy had also gotten in trouble. But that was all.

Harry buried himself in homework. There was nothing else for it. It was as though all the magic had gone out of his life.

Even Quidditch wasn't the same. Harry felt the humiliation of what his friends were enduring, being exiled by the others. And Harry knew it was all his fault.

The only teacher who treated him any differently was Professor Snape. Maybe it was because Snape was one of the few people who still addressed Harry by name instead of nothing at all or merely the "Seeker" as the Quidditch team had resorted to. Harry would have preferred if Snape didn't speak to him at all. Harry was worried enough as it was about failing, never mind having Snape acting unnaturally.

When Harry added too much powdered snake fangs to his potion during class, he braced himself for an explosion from Snape.

Instead, Snape peered into Harry's cauldron and calmly said, "Measure your ingredients a little more carefully, Potter."

Harry looked up at him in confusion. Snape said nothing more. Harry and Ron exchanged glances. Harry wanted to whisper, but Hermione shook her head as Draco was watching.

Snape being nice? That was impossible. He hated Harry. It could only mean one thing. Snape had worn down Professor Quirrell at last. He had learned how to get past Fluffy and the Philosopher's Stone was no longer safe.

Harry kept a close eye on Snape. The man swept about in his usual gruff manner, keeping the students in his class under control with little effort.

But his harshness was less. And when Harry saw Quirrell next, he was certain Snape had succeeded.

Ron said they had to do something. "Before it's too late!" he said urgently as they sat in the Gryffindor common room. "If we don't, Snape will nab the Stone!"

"He still has to get by the dog, Fluffy," Hermione pointed out. "It bit him once before, remember, and he doesn't know how to tame it."

"No," Harry shook his head. "Snape got through Quirrell. He knows."

"Then we have to DO something!" Ron cried.

Harry wanted to, but he couldn't risk it. "We've lost too many points already."

Snape and the Stone would have to wait. They had detention first.

† † † †

As the chilly weather wore on after the Easter holidays, the atmosphere in the castle grew decidedly cold. Rain pelted the windows and wind whistled around the doors.

However, the grumbling wasn't because of the dreary weather. It was because Gryffindor had lost a hundred and fifty points without any explanation. Normally, Snape would have been pleased, as it put Slytherin in the lead for the House Cup. But he felt no pleasure.

Somehow, everyone seemed to know who had lost the points. The why was not of importance. In a day, the entire student body had turned on Harry Potter. Snape saw enough during meals and his classes to know. Everyone avoided Harry from the first years all the way up to the seventh years. From Gryffindor to Hufflepuff. The only ones speaking to him were Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley and even they were being shunned by their peers.

Snape firmly believed in punishing wrongs, but this was different. Harry Potter was being treated as if he were diseased.

Snape's temper cooled slightly from boiling to simmering. He extended his concern by not shouting at Harry or even reprimanding him when he mixed up his ingredients incorrectly.

Still, Harry had broken the rules. Snape told no one about what he knew. The secret of Hagrid's dragon would remain so with him. As would the invisibility cloak, until Snape gave it to Dumbledore.

But Harry and the others would serve detention. In view of how they had been wandering where they shouldn't have been, and at an hour when they should have been asleep, Snape and Minerva McGonagall decided it was fitting the children should accompany Hagrid into the forbidden forest.

Snape watched their faces the morning when the notes were delivered by owl. Hermione Granger almost looked relieved. Neville Longbottom and Potter had the same misery about them. Weasley seemed sympathetic.

Draco Malfoy's reaction was more suppressed, but his face turned a shade of white.

At eleven o'clock that night, Snape was around to make sure the Slytherin met up with the three Gryffindors and Filch in the entrance hall.

The children were silent and drawn.

Filch was the only one enjoying himself. He was grinning as he lit a large lantern, almost humming in his delight.

There was nothing Filch liked more than a good punishment. If Filch had his way, the children would had been in the deepest dungeons, hanging from the ceiling by their thumbs for hours on end. There was no sound quite like agonized screams to show a delinquent was learning the errors of their ways, Filch would say.

Filch hated children even more than Snape did. However, even when he was at his worst, Snape had never threatened to chain students to a wall or whip them until they bled. Even Snape had his limit.

Filch held the lantern high, so shadows fell across his face eerily.

"All set?" he growled at the four children.

Snape saw them all swallow and nod.

"Right. Follow me."

Filch opened the great doors. A rush of cold air came in, whipping everyone's cloaks back.

"Just wait until my father hears about this," Malfoy said in a loud voice as though he was trying to be brave.

"He'd tell you to stay in line," Filch snarled.

Snape smiled to himself. If he knew Lucius Malfoy, and he knew him well, he knew he wasn't going to be pleased with his son.

The thought gave Snape a distinct thrill of pleasure.

† † † †