Although Professor McGonagall agreed to change their tower password the next day, she did not readily accept the answer that the sixth year Gryffindor boys had given her. All that they had told her was that they were absolutely sure that no Gryffindor had done it, and that it had to have been someone from another house, but with Harry’s insistence, none of them mentioned Slytherin, or Draco.

“Do you have any idea what they wanted with your things?” she had asked Harry.

“No maam,” Harry lied. We just came in and it was like this.”

She eyed the five boys that lived in the dorm closely, trying to catch one of them in a lie, but all held her gaze innocently, and she left them to finish cleaning up the mess that Harry left until morning to clean up.

After lunch, Harry and Ron went back to their room and found that the old desk they had shared had been replaced by a new one, exactly the same as the old, only with hash marks marking off something all along one leg of it. Probably some ancient student counting off the days until the end of school, or perhaps something else. Ron, now proficient at the use of the keep out charm he had placed on Harry’s bag earlier that week, now having placed it on Harry’s trunk and his and Harry’s shared wardrobe as well, placed the spell on their new desk, giving only Harry and Ron access to it.

“Sorry about the assignments you had in there that got shredded,” Harry muttered as Ron finished the spell and tested it out, having Dean who had just appeared through the door also try to open a desk drawer.

Satisfied that the spell was complete and would keep intruders out, Ron stood straight and said, “Nah, don’t worry about it mate. They were old assignments anyway, and should have been burned before Hermione had the chance to see the red marks on them. Did you see that Transfiguration essay that I did while you were lost in the woods? It came back looking murdered!”

Harry laughed, and Ron did too, glad he was able to make his friend smile.

Wearing the same clothes from the day before, Harry made his way to the library that night with Ron, where they found Hermione waiting.

Instead of handing Ron and Harry each a book on Potions however, she pulled out several Defense Against the Dark Arts books, and laid them out on the table.

“What’s this?” Ron asked. “We don’t need tutoring on the DA!”

Hermione raised her eyebrows. “Are you complaining about not doing Potions Ron? Because I could go grab those books again.”

“Oh no,” Ron shook his head and held a hand out for the Defense book. “No complaints here. I just wondered was all.”

Hermione shrugged, and said, “We’re about four weeks ahead in Potions, well, five actually,” she paused, and then continued, “and since somebody is out to get Harry,” Ron coughed at this and it sounded just like, ferret face. Harry laughed, but Hermione ignored both of the boys. “Since Draco is out to get Harry, we might as well brush up on some defense spells.”

“I don’t know Hermione,” Ron said, “Maybe Harry needs a Muggle book on camping or something.”

Harry frowned, remembering feeling pretty useless while he and Snape were in the Shadowland, but here Hermione pulled another book out too, and handed that to Harry.

“What?” Harry asked, a little affronted, “I’m not that useless… I can make fires and stuff… you know.”

“Stick sticks up trolls noses,” Ron added.

“Yeah,” Harry said, nodding, “throw rocks at girls…”

Hermione raised her eyebrows, and pushed the book toward Harry further.

Ron laughed as Harry picked up the book and thumbed threw it, stopping on a page about how to erect a shelter of sticks and enormous fern leaves. “Fred and George always told me that girls were yucky and I should throw rocks at them any chance I got,” Ron said, leaning over to see what was on the page Harry had stopped on.

Hermione scoffed. “Maybe that’s why it took you so long to ask me out. I always thought you hated me, throwing rocks at me in the courtyard.”

“Girls,” Ron said under his breath, going back to the defense book he had been looking at before.

The three of them finished up early that night, and made it back to Gryffindor tower before the other sixth year boys were asleep. Waiting for Harry was a small pile of clothes folded neatly on the foot of his bed. There were four t-shirts, a pair of jeans and a pair of khaki green pants, along with the one belt of Harry’s that hadn’t been destroyed by Draco.

“What’s this?” Harry asked the other three guys, who were sitting on the floor playing some kind of Muggle board game Dean had brought to school after summer holiday.

They looked up at him and Ron, and Neville said, “Well, we figured that you needed more than one outfit for the rest of the year, so we pulled out the clothes we had that looked like they might fit you.

“Oh yeah!” Ron said, as if he had forgotten, “Duh!” He hurried to the trunk at the end of his bed, and began tossing things about. Finally he pulled out two more shirts that didn’t look half bad, and handed them to Harry. “These one’s fit me last year, but now they’re too small. I was going to try a spell to make them larger, but I forgot about them until now.”

One off them was a red shirt with a white stripe across the chest, and the other a violent orange Chudley Cannons shirt with flying figures that moved on it in the same fashion that all wizard photos did.

Harry grinned and looked around at his friends. “Are you guys sure it’s ok for me to wear this stuff… I mean, you guys still have clothes to wear, right?”

They all nodded, and Seamus said, “The pants came from Dean, because he’s about your height, and the shirts came from me and Neville, aside from the one’s Ron’s lending you.”

Harry paused, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the good friends that he had made, and their gesture towards him. “Thanks you guys,” he told them. The same sickly feeling that had come to him the night before, when he had looked into Professor Snape’s eyes came to him again, and he worked furiously to push it away from himself so that his friends wouldn’t see. They turned away however, seeing that he was struggling with the task.

“Don’t mention it Harry,” Dean told him.

Seamus looked up and said, “Just one thing though mate.”

Harry looked over at him. “Yeah?”

Seamus looked at Dean and Neville, and said, “You have to find your own underwear.” All of the boys laughed, and the new happy feeling replaced the old one that had worked so hard to try to take hold of him only moments before.

Harry nodded, and set his bag down by the side of his repaired bed. They had managed to mend the sheets and blankets, as they weren’t as shredded as the rest of his clothes had been.

Quickly Harry changed into some of the new borrowed clothes, which were all thankfully clean. He put on the khaki colored pants, which fit pretty well if he used a belt, and Ron’s old red shirt with a white stripe. It also fit well, seeing as how Harry and Ron had both grown over the summer, and Harry was as big this year, as Ron was last year.

After he had changed, Harry sat at the new desk to grade the third and fourth year papers, as tomorrow was Friday, and he needed to hand them in to Professor Snape. It took him two and a half hours, as these essays were a little more detailed than the first and second year ones, and also since Harry didn’t feel rushed, and didn’t want to rush through the grading as he had wanted to earlier in the week. Something made him want to stop and take his time now, though he wasn’t sure what. By the time he was done, the others had finished their game and crawled into bed, and the only one still awake was Neville, who was reading some kind of book about Herbs, sitting on the floor with his back against his four-poster.

Harry used a charm to straighten out the papers he had graded, seeing as how they got a bit crumpled when he had stuffed them into his bag in Snape’s office the day before, and carefully placed them in a hard Muggle folder Hermione had loaned him, and then put them back in his bag so that they would be protected by the keep out charm while he slept. Then he turned to look at Neville, and asked quietly, “What are you reading Neville?”

Neville looked up. “Herbs and their uses in obscure potions,” he told him.

Harry frowned a little bit. “Interesting reading?” he asked him.

Neville shrugged. He hesitated, and then said quietly still, “I’m… just trying to keep up with you and Ron and Hermione… I… you guys do a lot of studying about potions in the library.”

Harry didn’t understand. “You’re trying to keep up with us? You actually want to study potions?”

Neville nodded. “I don’t like it when Snape makes fun of me because I don’t know the answers in class.”

Harry frowned again, finally understanding. Where he and Ron were only studying to appease Hermione, Neville actually wanted the help. Although, that wasn’t quite right, Harry thought after another moment. He was starting to enjoy sitting with Ron and Hermione and just studying for the fun of it after their other schoolwork was done. And he was also enjoying getting exemplary grades in potions. The only other subject he had ever done that well in was Defense Against the Dark Arts, and once in primary school before Hogwarts, he had brought home a test with an A+ in math. He frowned as he remembered that his aunt and uncle didn’t even care about the A. They only cared that their wonderful Dudley had gotten a C in reading, and bought him a new video game for the good grades.

Harry looked back up at Neville, the frown gone. “You don’t have to mirror our studying Neville, you can sit in with us when we study Potions.”

“Really?” he asked, a little excited, “Hermione and Ron won’t mind?” Harry shook his head.

“No. Hermione likes teaching I think, and mostly me and Ron just joke around anyway when we’re not reading.”

Neville smiled again. “Thanks Harry, that means a lot to me.”

Harry nodded as he stood from the desk chair and pulled back the covers on his bed. “No problem. We meet in the library about six each night. Sometimes Hermione is in there sooner though. I’d just watch for when she leaves the dinner table.”

Hermione gave Harry and Ron permission to skip out on studying that night in the library so that she could try to catch Neville up to where they were.

“With any luck,” Ron told Harry on their way to Transfiguration Friday afternoon, “she’ll take the next week or so to catch him up, and then we can have a week off!”

Harry shrugged. “We could definitely use the extra time for Quidditch practice.”

“Aww,” Ron said in a joking groan, “but I like being lazy.”

Harry shook his head. “I haven’t had time to be lazy since right before summer holiday last year, and that wasn’t a very good time to be lazy anyway.”

Ron nodded solemnly and gave a sideways glance over to Harry. Harry hadn’t really talked about Sirius’ death at all since it had happened. Ron was so silent as they walked through the corridor, that Harry had to look over and make sure he was still there.

“What?” Harry asked him a little defensively.

Ron looked ahead of him suddenly, and said, “Nothing. Nothing at all mate.”

Harry looked away from Ron and toward where they were walking again. The known familiar sickly feeling was coming upon him, and he didn’t want to sit through the rest of his classes that day confused and hurt. He hadn’t thought about Sirius for quite a while now. He had avoided it altogether in fact. He had come to avoid thinking about Snape just the same way that he had been avoiding thinking about Sirius death now, and this confused him too. Harry wanted to hit himself or stomp on his foot or something, because he didn’t understand, and now he was thinking about both Sirius and Snape. Just a little piece of him felt as if he was going to go crazy.

From next to him, Ron was giving Harry another sideways glance… a very worried one as they entered the Transfiguration classroom, and took their usual seats in the middle of the class. Ron’s look wasn’t for the fear of Harry losing his sanity, only for the fear that his friend wasn’t going to be able to hold it together for much longer. Harry would never know, but Hermione and Ron had spent long hours speaking over the summer about how defeated Harry had seemed since Sirius had died. Sirius was the closest thing Harry had ever had to a dad.

“Stop looking at me Ron,” Harry said quietly, and without any anger in his voice, staring up at the blackboard as Professor McGonagall walked in.

Ron looked away, and said quietly, “Sorry.”

After dinner that night, with free time to spend as he pleased since he didn’t have to study, and had all of his work done for his other classes, Harry headed down to the dungeons to deliver the rest of the graded papers. On his way down he thought about just going to bed early when he got back to Gryffindor tower, but discarded the notion as boring. Instead he decided that he might challenge Ron to a game of Wizards Chess, or maybe even sneak out late at night for a duel. It had been some time since he and Ron had snuck out late at night to explore the castle or find something to do.

Professor Snape’s office door was closed when Harry finally made it there, so he knocked, and the Professor’s voice came from inside, “Come.”

Harry pushed the heavy door open, and set his bag down on the visitors chair to pull out the graded papers. “Hello sir,” Harry said, almost feeling in a good mood at the prospect of having free time to get into mischief. Severus looked up at this, a little surprised. Harry had said Hello and sir to him, in an almost amiable way, and both words together. He had never done this before. In fact, Snape knew that whenever Harry called him sir, it was usually a forced formality, and he never extended him the courtesy of saying hello.

After a moment’s thought, Snape said, “Hello Mr. Potter.”

Harry paused halfway through pulling out the graded papers, and looked up. That’s new, he thought to himself. He hadn’t even noticed that he had said hello, it had just slipped out, but he did notice when Snape said it. He hadn’t said it in cruel way either, as if to sting, as most of his comments were meant to do. Harry handed Snape the papers when he remembered that that’s what he had come to do, and he accepted them. “Thank you Mr. Potter,” he said, genuinely grateful that he had help with grading the essays. Potions and Transfiguration weren’t like most of the other classes there. Most classes had an essay due every few weeks, but Potions and Transfiguration were the exceptions to the rule, and usually had one a week due, though often times shorter than essays for other classes.

Harry latched his bag closed again, and stood straight to leave, but Snape stopped him with a question. Harry wondered at that moment, if he would ever be able to just pick up the papers and leave without being stopped by a question or comment from the Professor.

“You managed to procure new clothes?” Snape asked him.

Harry frowned, confused. How did he know what had happened? He nodded. “My friends loaned me their old clothes that fit… a couple shirts and pairs of pants…” he trailed away, and then added as an afterthought he meant to keep to himself, but slipped out anyway, “this stuff’s better than the hand-me-downs I had before.”

“From your relatives?” Snape was quick with another question. Harry looked up at him again, suddenly feeling the need to escape before the feeling that was starting to scare him gripped him again.

But the feeling hadn’t come yet, and so he nodded, and said, “My cousin is huge and I always got his old stuff.”

Snape had noticed that the boy had always worn rather old looking and worn clothes, that were usually too big for him. At first Snape had only thought that he was trying to mirror the Muggle fashion that young Muggle males usually chose to take part in, but now he realized that he had been mistaken.

Harry was giving his shoes a close looking over as he waited for Snape to say something else, and noticing this, the Professor said, “Professor McGonagall informed the headmaster, myself, and the other two heads of house that someone, whom her sixth year boys swore was not from their own house, had gotten a hold of their house password, and used it to come in and ransack the sixth year boys dormitory. She also informed us that our dear little resident hero’s things had been torn to shreds, and his furniture broken to bits.”

Harry looked up. “She said that?” Harry couldn’t keep the hurt out of his voice at being called their resident little hero.

Snape eyed him cautiously, a little startled that he had rattled Harry so easily, as it had not been his intention.

The long silence as Snape thought becoming uncomfortable for Harry, Harry moved for the door. Snape realized he was going though, and said, “Wait a moment.” Frustrated with always being held back from leaving, Harry stopped again and tried to hold his tongue as the Professor opened a desk drawer and pulled out a small money pouch with the Hogwarts symbol on it similar to the plain leather one that Harry carried his money in.

“There is still the matter of your pay. The headmaster has allowed me to pay what I think you have earned from the Hogwarts account.” Snape handed the money pouch over to Harry, who accepted and stuffed it into his pocket, feeling a more desperate urge to leave now.

“Thank you sir,” he said quietly. He moved for the door, and Snape didn’t stop him this time.

Back in the common room, Harry dropped his bag and pulled the money pouch from his pocket. It felt heavy. Curious as to how much he had earned, the wages never having been discussed previously, Harry opened the pouch, and dumped one gold Galleon and seventeen silver Sickles onto his bed. “Wow,” Harry said, honestly surprised. He hadn’t expected that much. Maybe twenty sickles at most, but a Galleon and seventeen Sickles?

Harry thought ahead to the next Hogsmead trip, which was in three weeks. If he made this much every week, he was going to have enough money to buy some new clothes for himself, and some gifts for his friends, seeing as how they had loaned him their clothes, and seeing as how Hermione was helping him earn an O in Potions. Gifts first, he thought to himself though… they deserve gifts before I get new clothes.

Saturday and Sunday, Harry worked their Quidditch team hard again, seeing as how they didn’t practice any of the other days that week, and this was still only their third week of school, and he wanted to give plenty of chance for their new players to practice. Harry still remembered the Bludger that their new six foot tall Beater Dane had accidentally sent his way the week before, which had given him a nasty bruise on his back that lasted all week. To Harry though, it only seemed that his team was getting worse. Ginny, who was normally a fantastic Chaser, kept sending the Quaffle towards other player’s heads, and when the Quaffle did make it’s way towards a goal post, Ron would stop it from making its way through the hoop, but send it towards Harry instead, no matter where Harry was on the field. Dane and their other Beater Sam also kept sending both Bludgers towards Harry, so instead of getting a chance to direct his team, or look for the Snitch, Harry found himself dodging flying objects ever minute or so.

Finally an hour into it on Saturday, Harry called a time out, and ordered all players and Quidditch balls onto the ground.

Ron and one of their chasers Angelina wrestled the Bludgers into a beat up old box they kept them in, and then stood, panting and out of breath as Harry stood with his hands on is hips.

“What, do you guys really hate me or something?” he asked them, a little miffed, throwing his hands into the air, not so much for dramatic effect, but more because of frustration.

Most of the players looked at the ground. Ron shrugged, and said, “Hey, at least you’re getting good at dodging.

“Well you guys can kill yourselves up there if you want to. I’d prefer not seeing as how I’ve kind of gotten to like you all, but I’m taking a break and going into the locker room to get something to drink and make sure I’ve still got all of my limbs.”

Harry tossed the whistle to Ron, and said, “Take them up and work on aim. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Try not to die while you’re in charge.”

On his way to the Gryffindor locker room, Harry heard Ron telling the other players off loudly for having such bad aim that their Captain didn’t think it safe to be on the field with them. A moment later, he heard the whistle blow, and knew that his players had gone airborne again. Harry shook his head. If he had been a spectator, and not the one that every single ball was aimed at, he probably would have thought it funny.

Once in the locker room, Harry wiped the sweat off his face with a clean towel with the Gryffindor lion on it, and sat down on one of the benches. He let his head fall back against the wall, and wondered what he was doing wrong with his team. They hadn’t been doing that badly the week before. As he thought about it, he looked around the room, and his bag caught his eye. One edge of it was blackened, as if it had fallen into a fireplace.

Curious, he got up and walked over to it, kneeling beside it when he got there. It was a burn mark for sure, he decided. It looked as if it had been hit with some kind of curse or something. And just as when Ron had tried to stab the bag with a knife before, and it had left a small scratch on the outside, Harry noticed that the other side of the bag now contained several small scratches.

“What the heck?” he asked himself quietly. But the answer came to him almost immediately. Draco. First he tried to stab the bag open, and then he had probably tried to blast it open with a blasting curse. Harry shook his head. Why did Malfoy want him to lose his job so badly? It was only a job, wasn’t it? Harry frowned at himself a moment though, and decided that it had become more than that to him even. He supposed that he had spent so much time guarding the papers he was grading all week, and then had lost so much of his clothes and other things because of it, that the job somehow meant more to him. Heck, he was even getting tutoring that he didn’t need from Hermione just so his friend wouldn’t feel put out because of it.

Harry shook his head again. It was only grading papers, he told himself. What was the big deal to Draco?

He tossed his bag aside, and walked back out of the locker room and onto the pitch with his broom. Up in the air, his team was performing perfectly. Both the Bludgers and the Quaffle were going exactly where they were supposed to be going. Harry realized then, that Draco must have had somebody, or multiple somebody’s trying to distract him while he snuck into the locker room and looked for the bag. He imagined that at least, Draco probably got a good laugh out of Harry’s plight up in the air, trying to avoid being seriously injured.

Harry jumped back onto his broom, and went up to take the whistle from Ron, and explain what had happened, as well as apologize.