Snape batted the cloak out of his way and the three of them stared at each other. At the other side of the room, Professor Moody had suddenly appeared. Once you could see him, it was almost impossible to believe that the man had ever been invisible. His visage was so shocking that the idea that he had not been there a moment before was incomprehensible.

Harry fumbled for his wand seconds too late, and realised that Professors Snape and Moody already had theirs drawn and were in duelling stances.

“What are you doing here, Moody?” Snape hissed, wand pointed unwavering at the other man’s chest. “Was skulking about the school at all hours not sufficient for you? Did it get boring? Not satisfy your paranoia enough? You have such a flair for the dramatic, surely the common invisibility cloak is beneath you.”

“What is it to you Snape? Dumbledore gave me permission to search the school before our guests arrive. And your office is part of the school buildings.”

“Did he indeed? We will see about that…”

Harry was worried that the two men were going to start duelling right there in that tiny office. He hoped not, there wasn’t much room. And lots of the potions ingredients on the walls looked quite volatile-

“I’m amazed Dumbledore’s letting you look after Potter. Especially with your past. Always said he was far too trusting.” Moody shifted his fake leg, Harry noticed it was totally silent for once.

“Even Dumbledore doesn’t have much say in the matter I am afraid. And the boy has come to no harm.” Snape spat back

Moody gave a barking laugh, and gestured to where Harry was standing behind Snape, with his vivid hair. “It has only been two days and so far the boy has broken a bone and been maliciously attacked. I’m glad you aren’t in charge of looking after me!”

“Not yet.” Snape said darkly. At the reminder from Moody, he had seemed to realise that Harry was actually in the room with them, what he had been trying to avoid. He looked like he came to a decision and signed to Harry.

“Come on then, Potter, we are late for lunch. Professor, do try to not make too much of a mess, or I might ask the Headmaster if I can do some searching of my own.”

“Sir, are you really just going to leave him there by himself?” Harry asked, as soon as he thought they were out of earshot.

“Would you rather I had duelled him?” Snape scoffed. “I have to tell you that the headmaster generally takes a dim view of teachers attacking one other- especially in front of our students. Do not worry Potter, I do not keep anything incriminating in my office.”

How very Slytherin, Harry thought. It was strange, but the professor seemed to go out of his way to teach his students some stealth. Professor McGonagall was more about openness – well honesty anyway. Gryffindors weren’t all touchy-feely like the Hufflepuffs. (Although maybe that was unfair, you couldn’t accuse students like Zacharias Smith or Diggory of being like that. And Ron couldn’t keep his feelings hidden from anyone.) He supposed the Slytherin way wasn’t too bad, after all, he left himself out in the open far too often.

Harry realised that he was still carrying the open map and glanced down at it.

“I still don’t understand why it says he’s there,” He said, earning a glance from Snape. “The map just doesn’t make mistakes.”

“What are you basing that on? I thought you did not make the map.”

“I didn’t, but it has always been right before. It shows up animagi and everything.”

“Which animagi?”

“Uh,” The first to spring to mind was Sirius, but Harry was pretty sure that Dumbledore and his godfather expected that to be kept a secret. “Professor McGonagall?”

“Professor McGonagall hardly ever uses her animagus form, as far as I know, she uses it once a year to impress the first years.”

“Well, she does show up then.” Harry tried.

“As if you would know that, you would be in class when that happens.”

They arrived at the Great Hall, and Harry decided that Snape probably wasn’t interested enough for him to argue his case. The man probably had enough to think about at the moment, what with another teacher rifling through his office and Fowley, speaking of whom-.

“Professor, we found Fowley.” Hocking, the prefect, walked up nonchalant, dragging the second year along with her. “They were in the room you told us about with some third year Weasley girl- who knew Weasleys could have a girl? Anyway, Fowley seems fine, but we’ve put them on watch for a couple of days.”

Snape nodded, and followed his students back to where they had been sitting at the table. He pulled a plate towards himself and fixed Harry with a meaningful look to make sure he did the same, before he started talking to them.

“So, what was the purpose of this clandestine meeting with Miss Weasley?” Snape asked formally, picking up his cutlery with oddly dainty movements.

Fowley blushed and fidgeted with the crusts on their sandwich. “I was just asking for some advice on some stuff…”

Snape quirked an eyebrow and waited.

“I liked how her brothers did their hair, okay? I was just asking for some tips, and she’s always been nice to me before. She has a mean bat bogey hex too!”

Blackfort laughed from the other side of the table, “I can vouch for the hex, Sir. It’s a horrible little thing. I gave her 10 housepoints for it.”

Snape looked disapproving.

“And a warning, of course.” Blackfort amended quickly.

“What does ‘on watch’ mean, Professor?” Harry asked, stuck a few minutes further behind in the conversation than everyone else.

“The student has to make a designated prefect aware of where they are going to be at all times outside of classes. It is a bit of a pain for everybody involved, but it may be used as a punishment or a precaution.” Blackfort answered instead of his Head of House, since the man was taking great care in cutting up a piece of roast beef.

“Or both.” The man had paused in this endeavour and looked over at Fowley, who guiltily put down the spoon that they were using to pound a potato crisp into a fine powder.

Fowley instead glared up at Harry in a way which was becoming familiar. “It’s weird to see you eating food, Potter. I thought that you just ate quills. You seem to get through them fast enough.”

“And you seem to spend a lot of time being supervised for someone who claims to behave!” Harry shot back.

Snape daintily choked over his coffee at the hypocrisy of Harry’s accusation.

Harry ignored him.

Harry was escorted to the Slytherin common room by Snape, before the professor stormed off to talk to Dumbledore. Harry was a little apprehensive, but the room was nowhere near as oppressive as it had been the other day.

“Currently, the common opinion is that the Slytherins were trendsetters for a new craze.” Hocking told Harry, “Which is very lucky for you, do not imagine that you would get away so easily the next time you try something like this.”

Hocking and Blackfort disappeared off to some corner of the common room with revision for a test they had in the coming week, so Harry curled himself up on a sofa near the fireplace, lost in his thoughts. After some time, to his not so great surprise, Malfoy approached with some friends.

He was slightly shocked when this didn’t seem to be a hostile visit.

“Don’t look quite so amazed, Potter. You’re in our spot.” Malfoy said, taking a comfortable armchair. Crabbe, Goyle and a couple of others dragged other seats over so that they could sit nearer to the fireplace too. Theodore Nott looked meaningfully at the space next to Harry, until he relented and moved up so the other boy could fit too.

There was some meaningless chat for a few minutes. They talked about the hairstyles that had cropped up around the school, and how they might have been managed. Crabbe swore that Dumbledore had been walking around in the morning with ‘orange’ hair. Harry guessed that the man might have reverted to his original auburn, which he had seen once in a picture in one of Hermione’s history books. Nott and Zabini on Harry’s other side were gossiping about some quiddich player from the Falmouth Falcons and who they were rumoured to be going out with.

Malfoy sighed loudly, swinging his legs over the arm of his chair. “I’m bored, anyone up for a broom race?”

“You always moan when you lose Draco, what’s the point?”

“I do not moan! It’s just not fair when the other person cheats- Nott.”

Nott snorted from beside Harry, “It’s ‘fair’ when you cheat, Malfoy.”

“Potter will race me. Unless he’s too cowardly.”

Harry rolled his eyes at the ridiculous attempt to goad him, “I can’t leave the dungeons, Malfoy. And that was an awful attempt at provoking me since I’m not a toddler.”

“Would have worked in first year.” Zabini muttered.

“Anyway,” Harry glared briefly at Zabini, “I’m stuck down here, so unless you want to race around the common room…”

There was a moment where the only sound was Malfoy rhythmically kicking his heels against the side of his chair.

“Yeah, let’s do that. Crabbe, fetch a couple of brooms, would you?”

Harry sat up, looking at Malfoy like he was mad.

“Are you mad?”

“Nah, we’ve done it before.”

Harry didn’t feel convinced. Probably because Malfoy didn’t look very convincing. It would be quite fun flying inside though, and he had never really been in a broom race before. That was usually his favourite part of being a seeker.

“I guess…”

Crabbe came lumbering into the room with three Nimbus 2001s in his arms. Malfoy was on his feet in a moment, examining the twigs and selecting the best from the set. Harry stood more cautiously and looked for the better of the remaining two. The one he decided on had a few scratches in the varnish and looked like it might have a bent footrest, but apart from that seemed to be in pretty good condition for a two year old student broom.

Harry noticed that a few students had started to take notice of what was happening, and were putting down their work. A couple of less subtle people, including Fowley, were coming closer and finding spots with a good view.

“Oh, Merlin’s waxy, lopsided, right ear, what on earth are you planning on doing with those?”

Guiltily, Harry shoved the broom back towards Crabbe and took a step away from Malfoy.

Blackfort seemed to have been walking through the middle of the room with two mugs of hot chocolate when he had noticed what was happening.

“Can’t either of you keep out of trouble for an hour? I’m trying to study down here. Malfoy, unless you and your friends are going upstairs very soon with those, then you had better be planning on cleaning them. And don’t tell me that you have training, because I know there’s no quiddich this year.”

“I wasn’t going to. It’s no skin off your nose what we do, Blackfort. Why don’t you get back to that dragon you call your girlfriend?”

“Detention.”

Harry jumped, along with the entirety of Slytherin house. He could have sworn that he had heard the voice of his Potions Master, but the man was nowhere to be seen. After a panicked casting about the room for the man, Harry found some sense and followed the gaze of the other students.

They all seemed to be staring at a large snake sculpture next to the wall. It reminded Harry of those which filled the Chamber of Secrets. It towered over the nearest students, standing at about ten feet tall, with much more of it coiled on the floor, the neck flared out in the style of a cobra, and the forked tongue projected out of the fanged mouth.  He started as the thing’s tongue moved.

“Put the brooms away.” Severus Snape’s voice was definitely coming from the mouth of the stone snake. Malfoy was wavering, but didn’t look like he was going to and after another moment, the figurehead spoke again. “Mr Malfoy, if you do not want to spend the rest of your natural life in detention, you will put those brooms back exactly where they belong. That means the broom shed and not your dormitory.”

Malfoy groaned and snatched the three brooms from his friend, before storming out of the common room door. Zabini jumped up from his seat, and nabbed the much more comfortable one which was now free.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry watched as Blackfort changed direction, from where he had been heading, to where the seventh year prefect was casually leaning against a portrait. The Gryffindor watched as the older student casually tapped the ornate frame with his wand, then shared a few words with Blackfort. They both laughed then each went on their own way. Blackfort juggled the mugs into one hand so that he could cast a warming spell on the drinks inside.

There was a tap on Harry’s shoulder and he spun in his seat to see a tall girl with a Head badge on. He hadn’t known that the Head Girl was a Slytherin this year.

“Your friends are at the door. I don’t know how they found us, but you had better not tell anyone else where our common room is. You can go out and talk to them, but don’t let them in and don’t go far enough from the door that you can’t be seen.”

Harry nodded, jumping up immediately. He hoped it was Ron and Hermione, he missed seeing them around all the time. Ron knew where the room was at any rate since they had both been here in second year.

“Harry!”

Harry was engulfed in a very bushy hug as soon as he made it through the wall. He awkwardly patted Hermione on the back, before escaping from her grip and felt Ron thump him on the shoulder.

“Ouch, hi guys!”

“Hey mate,” Ron grinned. “You wouldn’t believe that detention we had! Pince is such a cow, she had us putting all those books back and she wouldn’t even show us the spells she uses to sort them. And I got a nasty bite off one of the spare Monster books, some idiot hid it under a Charms almanac.” He showed Harry where a chunk had been taken out of the side of one of his fingers.

Harry shook his head, “Hagrid is mental for assigning that again.”

“Harry, how have you been?” Hermione burst, “Ron’s been telling me about this spell, and I’ve read about it of course. Who would have thought that the four houses actually act like real houses? And when I go back to look at Hogwarts: A History, they make it so obvious. I guess it’s funny how the meaning changes depending on what you know But what about Professor Snape? How are you managing?”

Harry blinked and tried to sort out everything she had just said. “I’m okay, I guess. Snape’s ben alright, for him. And the Slytherins haven’t been as bad as you would think. I mean, they’re still as sarcastic as hell, but they’ve been okay about it.”

“The twins think you’re some sort of hero,” Ron said, “They haven’t shut up about this hair thing we started since it happened. I thought they were jealous, but they’ve been making a bomb from selling all this stuff to the younger students.”

Hermione nodded, “That’s been very interesting too. I found a wonderful potion for my hair, Harry, because of all of this. Apparently it was invented by your grandfather.”

She noticed Harry’s sudden interest. “Yes, I thought you’d want to know. It didn’t say much, but I made a note of which book it was and I’ll withdraw it for you when Madame Pince lets me back in the library.”

“You’re banned?” Harry laughed, “How did that happen?”

“She got rather sharp with me during that detention,” Hermione pouted, “She seemed to think I was spending too much time looking through the books and not enough sorting them. How was I supposed to know where to put them without checking them? It’s ridiculous!”

Harry and Ron shared a look, but wisely made no comment.

“Hey, I didn’t tell you what happened!” Harry said, “It was the weirdest thing, we were looking for Fowley – you know, that kid- who had gone missing. And we saw that someone was in Snape’s office, so we went down to look and guess who it was?”

They both shook their heads, stunned.

“It was Moody, and he was hiding under this invisibility cloak- not mine. Yeah, it turns out he was searching the office. Said Dumbledore had told him to. I thought Snape was gonna murder him, but he just dragged me up to lunch. How weird is that?”

His two friends just gaped at him.

“Blimey,” Ron said, “That’s crazy, do you think Dumbledore thinks Snape’s up to something?”

“Nah, Moody said Dumbledore had told him to check out the whole school. I think it’s Moody that doesn’t trust Snape. Which makes sense, because Snape doesn’t trust Moody either.”

Hermione frowned, “So Professor Snape didn’t do anything? He just left Professor Moody looking through his stuff?”

“Yeah, weird right? I thought they were going to have a duel or something.”

“What do you think Moody was looking for anyway?” Ron asked, “What’s Snape going to keep in his office, it’s even less secure than his classroom is.”

“What do you mean?”

“The other day he made me run in there to get something to fix Dean’s hand, you remember he got that sap on it? Yeah, well the door wasn’t even locked. Something to do with emergency precautions, I think. I had to go the long way round because the ingredient store’s locked during classes.”

Harry’s forehead creased in a frown, “Yeah that is weird.”

“We’ll have a think about it, Harry. I want to see if Madam Pince will let me into the library. I still have Herbology homework and Ronald has work to do too. I’ll try to find something to fix your hair too, if you want. But it is pretty fashionable at the moment, so you might want to keep it.”

“I’ve done all my homework, you know.” Harry smiled, “I haven’t had much choice. I’ve either been doing that or detentions. Homework is slightly better. Oh, and the hair, I think I’d rather get it back to the right colour. If you see anything that might help, I mean. It’s a bit… bright.”

“Much brighter than you, Potter.” The three of them jumped as Draco Malfoy made his way back into his common room, still slightly pink in the face from returning the racing brooms. The wall slid shut behind him and they shook their heads and turned back to look at each other.

“Prat. Have you told him about the time we broke in yet?” Ron asked.

“Nah, I didn’t fancy letting Tweedledum and Tweedledee know that we knocked them out, but you’re still welcome to.” Harry offered. “As long as you let me know so I can be far away when you tell them.”

Hermione huffed, glancing cautiously at the wall the house was hidden behind. “We really do have to get on, Harry, sorry. We can’t wait to have you back in Gryffindor, it’s been quiet without you. And Fred and George are being a nightmare.”

She gave Harry half a hug and started walking back up the corridor.

“Don’t tell Hermione,” Ron whispered quickly, “But I think the twins are literally making some sort of bomb at the moment. I’m sure they blew up that old broomshed behind the quiddich pitch. Fred says it’s the same fireworks they’ve always made, but I’ve never seen them a crater that size before.”

Harry stared after Ron as he disappeared around the corner. He could never get used to the Weasley twins’ inventions. Harry thought that the twins were a large part of why the Burrow always looked so precarious- they always seemed to be blowing something up.