Pansy Parkinson came running into the hall, heading straight for Snape.

“Sir, I was just with Malfoy- Fowley’s been given detention for the whole morning. They tried to hit Malfoy with one of those colour change spells and hit Professor Moody instead! He was quite furious, Professor. We thought that he might hex someone, but he just gave Fowley detention until lunch, then he went back upstairs.”

Snape looked quite concerned, “Was anyone else given detention?”

“That’s the thing, Sir. When they said it wasn’t just Fowley, he gave Malfoy, Nott and Zabini detention too, but he told them to go tomorrow instead. It was really strange.”

“Giving a second year an entire morning of detention is unusual, I will check up on Fowley later. Miss Parkinson, please tell Fowley to come to me after they are released from detention. They may have lunch first, but you must inform me that they are doing so.”

“Yes, Professor. I could go with Bulstrode later to ask questions about our Defence homework, if that would help? I think she was planning on going up anyway.”

Snape nodded, “That is a good idea, try to not be obvious about it though, Parkinson. We all know Miss Bulstrode is not the most ardent student of deceit.”

Parkinson curtsied – really curtsied, who does that these days? - and walked over to speak to Millicent Bulstrode a little further down the table.

“Did she just curtsey at you?” Harry demanded, looking incredulous. “Like an actual curtsey?”

Snape smirked at Harry, “Some children do still learn manners, Potter.”

The Gryffindor gave a small laugh, “Oh, did you want me to curtsey, Sir? I think I’d have to practise, it would be awfully embarrassing if I fell over in front of the Great Hall.”

“You do seem to manage to fall over your own feet a surprising amount already, Potter. I would be surprised if that still humiliated you.” Snape rose to his feet, and Harry hurried to follow. “And they stopped serving dripping at breakfast years ago, so do try to tone down the sarcasm until later in the day.”

Harry grinned despite himself, checked to see that his shoes were still tied properly and rushed after the quickly disappearing, swirling black robes.

“On Saturday mornings, many of the study groups meet to finish their homework. Any group which is having particular difficulties is identified by a prefect and then sent to a classroom we have booked. That is where we will be going this morning.” They stepped onto the Marble Staircase, passing most of the third year Ravenclaws who had each dyed their hair a different colour of the rainbow. Harry thought that a couple of them might have used Muggle means, by the state of their hands.

“Why don’t you just do this thing in the Dungeons?”

“Because my students are welcome to bring along any friends from other houses who might benefit from being in a study group. If they feel they might require more help than can be obtained from a prefect.”

“Oh,” Harry said, frowning. He had never heard of anything like that.

“Potter, I know it is difficult for you, but please do not stop walking when you start thinking. It is making us late.”

Harry rolled his eyes, he was only a step behind the professor. It wasn’t his fault that the man had such ridiculously long legs.

Of the students in the classroom, about three quarters were Slytherins. The rest were mostly Ravenclaws, but there were a few Hufflepuffs and a solitary third year Gryffindor who seemed to be the twin sister of one of the Slytherins. She looked a bit nervous when Harry appeared, so he tried to not stare at her. He knew enough to know that Snape would kill him if he scared somebody away.

They sorted themselves out into little groups around tables, spreading out parchment and books. Snape told them that this week they would have to come up to his desk when they wanted his help, since it would be difficult for him to move around the room with Harry in tow.

Harry was pleasantly surprised, he hadn’t been looking forward to being dragged around the classroom as Snape dealt with each question.

“Potter, stop grinning like a fool, you are to practise that alarm casting spell. Hopefully, some instruction will make the spell work better. If not, you will at least be able to make a career as a Leprechaun Fishmonger.”

“Why Leprechaun?”

Snape gave him a disapproving look. He turned to a fifth year student who was already waiting patiently with a piece of crowded parchment in her hand.

“Miss Phalarope, could you explain for Mr Potter’s sake, why a conjured fish might be related to Leprechaun gold?”

The girl startled when Snape asked her the question, she had obviously not been prepared for him to ask her anything. When she spoke, it was in a halting manner. “Well, I suppose Leprechauns are best known because their gold vanishes shortly after it has been produced. And like anything which is conjured, it comes from non-being, so it has to return there. So, I guess it could be because they will both vanish?”

“Well put, Phalarope. Remembered from your third year transfiguration theory. Hence, Potter, a Leprechaun fishmonger- all of the fish would vanish within a few hours of being conjured.”

Harry blinked, “Well, how was I supposed to know that bit about Leprechaun gold?” He conveniently ignored his experience with it over the summer, “Where was I supposed to hear about that? It’s hardly common knowledge where I come from, Sir.”

“Do not be a brat, Potter. You ‘come from’ Godric’s Hollow, a wizarding town. Miss Phalarope here is a muggle born, so being raised by muggles is not an excuse. No, your problem is that you do not apply the knowledge and sense which you already have. You have to make an effort to learn about our world if you are going to live in it.”

Harry ground his teeth together at the rebuke, trying to not snap back at the professor. At the moment, the only person who was aware of the debate was Phalarope and she was tactfully focussing her attention on her parchment. He didn’t really want to make this a public debate.

“Keep reading that book I gave you on household spells. Set that spell so that it will go off every half hour. Cast it in a minute, then read that book until the first alarm goes off. I will come across and supervise your second casting if the first does not go to plan.”

“Is there anything I actually have to read?” Harry glared up at Snape, who returned the challenge with a raised eyebrow, waiting. “In particular, Sir?”

Snape nodded, “There are a couple of sections in there about conjuring and vanishing which might be of some help to you. I would suggest the vanishing spells. Do try not to banish anything too valuable.”

Harry dropped into the desk nearest the front of the room, not bothered enough to pretend he wasn’t sulking. As he cast the alarm spell, he realised that his wand motion was far too angular and jerky because of his mood. It didn’t cheer him up to think that something was going to happen in half an hour – probably- and that now he could do nothing about it. He dragged the large book out of his bag and flicked through until he found the Vanishing spells. He wouldn’t put it past Snape to set some sort of homework on it.

Twenty eight and a half minutes later, Harry was struggling to even keep his eyes open, let alone focussed on the textbook. Snape had already tried to get him back on task a couple of times, but mostly he was too busy dealing with the other students.

Harry was so close to sleep, in fact, that he missed seeing Snape check his watch, stand up and come over to stand behind his chair, drawing the eyes of every student in the room as he did so. Snape lightly picked up a leather bound textbook from his own desk, weighing it in his hand. The students’ twenty pairs of eyes widened, as one. Snape held the book out, above and slightly behind Harry’s drooping head.

Snape mouthed the words “Three, two, one.” And made the slightest of movements, forward.

BANG!

‘Stup!’

“Ouch!”

Snape almost smiled, tossing his book back into its place. Twenty mouths had no such inhibition, and laughed heartily at the scene in front of them.

The loud noise of the alarm spell had woken Harry right from his almost sleep. He had jerked upright reflexively, straight into the path of the heavy tome being held by Snape. Shouting out had been a reflex too, as nothing had been hurt other than Harry’s pride. What had really caused the laughter though, was the shower of small fish which had appeared from nowhere and continued to rain down on Harry for a good few seconds.

Harry was left sitting in his chair, rubbing the back of his head, surrounded and covered in about a hundred tiny fish. Each one still flapping away as if it had been dragged from a happy little pond to be here.

Snape seemed to take pity on Harry after a few seconds, or perhaps just grew irritated with Harry sitting there open mouthed, still uncomprehending of what had happened. He cast a few spells, making the fish disappear.

“If they are going to vanish anyway-“Harry said in a small voice, “Then why do you banish them?”

“They could take up to an hour to disappear, I thought they might be a little bit of a distraction,” Snape said.

Snape set the rest of the students back to their work and sat down to help Harry with a few of the charms he had been struggling with, with fairly good grace considering Harry had just fallen asleep.

“I do hope that Charms is not your best subject?”

Harry grimaced, “I’m not usually this bad, Sir. I tend to do a bit better when I’ve actually seen the spell cast before I have to do it.”

Snape was an unexpectedly good charms teacher – mainly because he didn’t give up even when Harry messed up the first ten times. That didn’t mean that Harry would be advising the man to change profession, more that he could see the benefits that came from one to one teaching. Harry was able to get the hang of a couple of banishing charms, and he was waiting to discover the result of his fourth attempt at the alarm spell when the door opened and some Slytherin students rushed into the room.

“Professor Snape!” Pansy Parkinson arrived in front of Snape breathless and had to take a moment to recover, before she could continue.

“We can’t find Fowley anywhere- they’ve vanished!”

Snape was on his feet in a second, ready to rush off. “’They?’ Including Professor Moody?”

“No, Sir. We saw Professor Moody walking down the stairs when we were on our way to asking that question Millicent had. But Fowley’s disappeared. We saw Mr Filch in the Entrance Hall, and the Defence classroom is empty. We looked everywhere we could think of, but there’s no sign.”

“I will help you, find as many fourth years and up and we will do our best to take a systemic approach to this. Meet me at the grand staircase, and do try to be discrete.” Snape looked concerned, but as in control as ever. “Tell the others to bring textbooks or parchment, say you have a project to hand in and agree on subjects.”

Pansy and the others nodded and left again. Snape was about to press the students already in the room into service when Harry managed to get his attention.

“Sir, I can find out where Fowley is really easily.”

Snape looked suspicious. “Do you know? Why on earth have you not said anything?”

“I don’t know right now, I can find out though.” Harry raised placating hands.

“That is what we are going to do, Potter. Stop wasting my time!”

“No, listen to me! I just need a minute in a room by myself, and then I can tell you straight away.” Harry felt a little embarrassed standing there with everyone watching him.

Professor Snape, in particular, did not look impressed. He fixed Harry in place for a long moment, trying to judge if the boy was actually trying to help or if he was using this as an excuse to distract Snape.

“And what exactly is it that you are going to be doing in this room all by yourself?”

A couple of students sniggered, not any of the Slytherins though, they all looked blank, or anxious because of the holdup. The students from the other houses didn’t seem to understand what the problem was. But Harry was starting to grasp how the Slytherins felt.

“I, uh, can’t tell you Sir, sorry.”

Snape folded his arms over his chest and took a deep breath. He exhaled slowly, not once breaking eye contact with Harry.

“Come, Potter. Everybody else, tidy this room up.”

Harry followed cautiously. He was determined to not tell Snape about the Marauder’s Map, but at the same time, he realised how important it would be to find Fowley if they were in any sort of trouble like the previous day.

They both ignored the bang and a tiny minnow which popped into existence when they were half way down the corridor. Harry would have vanished it if he had had a moment, but since Snape didn’t even pause, he left it to disappear by itself.

They reached the door to an unused classroom, and Snape pushed it open with a bang, scaring away a long-eared house elf who had been polishing the desks.

Snape whirled around to face Harry and with a wave of his wand which made the boy duck to the side, he closed the door behind them both.

“Potter, I have to insist that you tell me what you are going to do. Do you have some method of contacting Fowley? Are you going to attempt scrying? I have never heard that you have either the inclination or the aptitude for the technique, and I am obliged to warn you that it is dangerous and may result in the detachment of your eyeballs,” Snape showed no signs of a smile.

“What?” Harry shook his head, trying to dislodge the scene that Snape had put in his mind. “No, of course not, I just have a way of finding out where Fowley is. But I don’t want to show anyone.”

“Unfortunately, that is not one of your options. You will either attempt this in my presence, or you accompany me as I search the school. If you have a faster way, then it will save time and effort for many people, including yourself. Surely that is incentive enough?”

Harry thought for a minute, unconsciously assuming a pout as he leaned against one of the classroom desks. Maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible if Snape saw the map. He had seen it before, technically, last year, when it had insulted Snape and Lupin had confiscated it. He didn’t think he could bear it if the professor destroyed it, which he might well do.

But he had to consider Fowley too. The kid could have been really hurt yesterday when those third years had attacked. Harry knew that Flitwick had promised to deal with them, but what if they had slipped away? Or what if Professor Moody had done something? The man was becoming notorious throughout the school because of his unorthodox teaching methods. And it was obvious that Snape and McGonagall were a little wary of him.

He came to a decision.

“Professor Snape,” he started as respectfully as possible. “I have an… object… which will show me how to find Fowley. If I use it in front of you, do you promise to not destroy it?”

“No.” Snape said, flatly. Harry’s heart dropped. “I cannot promise such a thing, this ‘object’ may be dangerous, or contain dark magic. I may be obliged to destroy or confiscate it.” He seemed to relent a little, “If it is harmless, however, I see no reason why that might be necessary.”

“You’re filling me with hope, you know, Sir.” Harry muttered. It was as polite a mutter as possible, though. He dug into his bag and pulled out the map, ignoring the ‘snap’ of Snape’s jaw as the man recognised it.

“I know, sorry.” Harry said, mostly to himself.

He said the password as quietly as possible, having little hope that Snape’s bat ears might miss it. The map came to life, coming up with its usual greeting. Harry spread the map out onto the larger teacher’s desk. Snape was at his side in an instant, pushing to get a better view at it.

Harry started by scanning quickly over the common areas of the school, like the library and Great Hall, before covering classrooms and larger corridors. He kicked himself when he started looking at Gryffindor tower, and tried searching the Slytherin Dorms instead.

“There.” Snape said, his hand coming down to rest on the parchment, Harry glanced across to see Fowley’s name next to somebody else, in a storage room directly above the library. He focussed on it long enough to notice that the ink read ‘Ginevra Weasley’ but his attention had already been grabbed elsewhere.

“Professor, did you know that there’s somebody in your office?”

Snape responded instantly to that, pushing Harry’s fingers out of the way so that he could see better. The little footprints showing the person’s progression were slowly making their way around the edges of the room.

“There has to be a mistake.” Snape said, but there was a note of some emotion in his voice. “There is no way that they could get into the school without the knowledge of the headmaster, and no reason that they might be in my office. You and your little friends must have made a mess of the enchantments.”

“We didn’t make it, and the map doesn’t make mistakes.”

“It must do,” Snape dismissed with a wave of his hand. “Either way, I will be looking into this. But our first concern is with Fowley. We need to make sure they are safe.”

“It’s just them and Ginny.” Harry said, shrugging. “She likes the kid. I’ve seen them talking before. You could always send your prefects to check up on them or something, I reckon you don’t need to take your whole house along.”

“Yes, thank you, Potter.” Snape looked pensive, “You may keep this map for the moment, but if I ever even suspect you of using this to sneak around the castle at all times of day, then I will be confiscating it. If I had known what this was last year, I would have destroyed it. It was unbelievably irresponsible of you to have this when Black was searching for you.”

Harry clenched his jaw, reminding himself that Snape did not yet realise that his godfather was innocent. “Professor Lupin said the same thing and confiscated it when he found out what it was too, Sir.”

Snape just snorted, Harry remembered that the man wasn’t particularly fond of Lupin either. Maybe he hated everybody who was nice to Harry on principle.

“Let us stand the Slytherins down then. My sixth year prefects are competent enough to deal with this. At least they are when they can be distracted from each other for any length of time.”

After Snape had given instructions to most of his students, they headed down to the dungeons as fast as possible. The whole thing was very smoothly controlled and there was less than five minutes from when they had left the disused classroom to passing through the green door.

To get to any other part of the dungeons, you had to first pass Snape’s office. The man seemed to realise just this now and turned to Harry.

“Potter, you are to stay here. Do not come any closer to my office. If anybody is in my office, which I highly doubt, then I will escort them out. If I do not, then you have my full permission to use any spell you know to defend yourself, then run to the Slytherin common room and contact Professor Dumbledore through the Floo. Do you understand?”

Harry nodded, reluctantly. “Yes, Sir.” He said when Snape prompted him.

Snape strode down the corridor, drawing his wand and bursting into the room. Maybe that was the only way he knew to open doors, Harry thought.

Harry listened as carefully as possible. He could not hear any conversation, but he thought that he could hear the soft murmur of spells being cast.

After a couple of minutes, Snape emerged alone.

“There is nobody in there, Potter. Your charms are broken.”

Harry shook his head, pulling the map back out and opening it. Looking down at where they were, he shook his head. He walked down to the office, hearing Snape curse behind him, and follow. He saw the footprints walking from near the cupboard door, before they stopped suddenly. Harry moved slowly towards where the other person was shown to be. He glanced at the floor and walls, wondering if the man might be an animagus, but there was no signs of life-

But there was.

Harry abruptly stopped halfway through breathing in and heard it. The sound of somebody who had been matching their breathing to his. It was slightly strained, as if the person was struggling to breathe. Harry ducked his head, trying to look like he had given up and backed away slowly, keeping his eyes firmly glued to the name on the map.

He brought his hand up to rub at his forehead, hiding his mouth behind his wrist as he did so. “There’s somebody invisible. Right there.” He said, as quietly as possible.

Snape twirled his wand between his long fingers, seemingly bored. “Potter, if you are done wasti-“

He stopped abruptly, turning from Harry to point directly at the patch of wall that harry had been examining. He gave a sharp tug on the wand, flicking it towards himself. An invisibility cloak flew towards them, appearing as it lost its shape, no longer hiding what it had been before.

Before their eyes, a man appeared.