Dinner is good. Harry has a big appetite all of a sudden, and he eats a good deal more than he usually does before standing with the Slytherins to head down to the common room.

"Potter," says a low, quiet voice from behind him despite the loudness of the Great Hall's chatter and talking and yelling, but Snape has no trouble being heard when he wants to be. Harry hasn't actually seen his Potions Master raise his voice yet, and he has to wonder what sort of situation would necessitate. "You're out of the hospital wing, I see."

"Guess you don't need glasses as much as I do, sir," Harry agrees, and Snape's hand moves so fast Harry doesn't even see it: he grasps at the back of his head, letting out a surprised huff of laughter at the clip that caught him upside his hair, and he stares up at the man in amazement. It hadn't even felt like a hit, not really, it had just caught him off guard, and it doesn't even hurt. It's not anything like getting hit at home.

"Dispense with the cheek, Potter," Snape say lowly, face tinging slightly to a colour that could be called pink, if it was watered down with formaldehyde. "Your work, to be completed by Thursday." Snape pushes a set of papers into Harry's hand, his sallow, bony fingers keeping the little bundle together. Harry takes it, looking at the written out potion in interest, and at the ingredients list attached. "I will arrive at precisely 9:30. You will take your potion, you will go to bed, you will sleep. Is that quite clear?"

"Yes, sir," Harry says with a nod of his head. "Thanks." Snape stares down at him, expression set into the parody of neutrality you have to have when your face is incapable of implying anything but a not-so-subtle want to murder everyone around you. Harry opens his mouth, wondering if Snape is expectant, but then he closes it and just slowly steps back, rushing after the other Slytherins towards the common room.

"Did he just hit you?" Blaise asks, eyebrows raised in surprise as they walk through the corridors and down towards through the corridor.

"Not really," Harry says, shaking his head with a grin. "He just sort of slapped past my hair, really. You'd think he'd never actually hit someone." Blaise furrows his dark brows, tilting his head a little at the response. "It didn't even hurt," Harry assures him, and Blaise accepts this an an answer, giving a nod.

"Professor Snape hit you?" Afifa asks when he comes into the common room, apparently having heard it from someone else coming in, and Harry stares up at her, a bit exasperated.

"No. Or at least, if he was trying to hit me, he doesn't have much of an idea. It didn't even hurt." Everyone being concerned with it strikes him as a bit over the top, especially given that this is a boarding school. Isn't corporal punishment a bit more standard here? Afifa looks concerned, though, so Harry tries not to look too annoyed,

"What did you say to him?" Afifa asks. Harry's lip twitches, and he looks at his feet for a second as he tries not to grin.

"Uh, he said he could see I was out of the hospital wing, and I said I supposed he doesn't need glasses as much as I do." Afifa does a very good job of keeping her face straight, but Frank and the girls she'd been sat with all start to laugh, tossing back their heads. "He didn't laugh either," Harry points out.

"You're an idiot, Potter," Afifa says, doing her best not to make it sound like a compliment. "But at least he didn't take any points off you. Go get some work done." Harry moves into the corner of the room, where the other first year lads are settled around a table by the fire, cards spread out on the table, and as he approaches Theo deals Harry into the game. The cards don't talk to you like wizarding chess pieces do, but occasionally they'll wriggle and let out noises of complaint at the way you're sorting your hand.

They only play a few games of Gin Rummy and then a game called Cheat that Draco suggests. That is, until Theo realizes that Blaise is cheating at Cheat.

"You just put down six cards!"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"You said three, and you put down six! Have you been doing this the whole time?" Harry tries to hide his laughter behind his hand, but Draco laughs openly as Blaise lays down his cards and puts up his palms in a gesture of peace. Theo flicks his cards at Blaise, standing dramatically and declaring, "I'm going to bed!" as the others laugh around him. Draco pulls himself up, also heading down the corridor to his and Harry's room. Looking to the stack of papers Snape had given him, Harry lays out the ingredient list and the potion's process in front of him, also grasping at his copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi.

"You're going to do that now?" Blaise asks, muttering to the cards to keep still as he begins to stack them carefully into a card castle.

"May as well. What time is it? Nine?" Blaise nods his head, and Harry begins to look up each of the ingredients on the page in Magical Herbs and Fungi to see their effects and purposes. Flobberworm mucus, beetle eyes, powdered hawk talon... If he can't do it like this, looking at the sheet of ingredients and the potion's instructions, he'll brew it tomorrow, but there are only a few more clues you get from brewing it, really, like smells and colours. Short of testing it, he supposes, but Harry's not about to test out a potion if he has no idea what it does without knowing if he's even made it correctly.

He's very quiet as he works, drawing connections between each ingredient. This is the sort of exercise they'll have to complete on their final exams - most of the marks at this stage of study are to do with knowing the properties of moonstone, or the importance of using the right cauldron, but as the years go on puzzling out the function of a potion just looking at its process or its ingredients will come more to the forefront. It's a strange skill, Harry thinks, but he's seen Dudley watching Gordon Ramsay on the television, and he occasionally makes his chefs eat food and try and figure out what's in it. Snape and Ramsay would get on, Harry expects, and he smirks to himself at the thought.

What happens next has to be described to Harry in its full form at breakfast the next morning. The common room door slides open with a soft slide of stone on stone, and no one really pays it any attention until their Head of House steps into the room. Throughtout the common room, sprawled on couches or lounging in their chairs, the older Slytherins all sit up straight and watch him carefully: Professor Snape rarely comes into the common room, according to Frank Richelieu, preferring to someone students to his office if anything's necessary, and so when he appears it's a bit of an event.

Harry, working hard on the problem in front of him, doesn't pay the sudden silence behind him any heed, staring down at the ingredients and frowning.

"I could just tell you," Blaise offers, flicking cards between his fingers.

"Cheating at cards makes the game more fun," Harry replies absently, "I don't want to cheat at this. Besides, I've nearly got it." He mutters ingredients under his breath, trying to force his brain to make the connections he needs. At this point, without Harry's having noticed him at all, Snape is directly behind the padded bench he and Blaise are seated on, leaning over slightly and examining Harry's workings over his shoulder, and Harry is expectedly oblivious. "It's a Forgetfulness Potion!" he says triumphantly, grinning as he circles active properties on his ingredients list with a scruffy hand and adding his name to the top of the page. "Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah."

"Yeah, Mr Potter," Snape agrees, stepping to the side of the table. Blaise and Harry stare up at him, the silence of the room hitting them at once. "It is. A point from Slytherin, Mr Zabini."

"Yes, sir," Blaise agrees, making no move to quibble.

"Sorry, sir, I'll just-" Harry chucks his book, ink bottle and quill into his bag, but Snape sets Harry's prescribed potion on the table, taking Harry's notes and folding them into a neat pile before tucking them into his robes. Harry stares at the man's chest for a second, trying to work out how someone could fit a pocket into a garment that's at least 80% pockets, and then he looks at the potion bottle.

It definitely does look like a brand thing - Harry doesn't know everything about the Hogwarts Potions Master, but he's pretty certain Snape would never paint a bottle to look like a Common Welsh Green, beaming brightly around its stopper.

"Why's it called Drowsy Dragon?" Harry asks, pushing forwards his glass of pumpkin juice and watching as Snape puts two drops into it.

"I don't know, Potter. I don't care." Harry takes his glass back, drinking everything he has left in it and setting it down. The potion sets a bitter note to the drink, and it takes effect almost as soon as he's swallowed, making him feel tired where a second ago he'd been wide awake.

"Thank you, Professor," Harry says, and Snape doesn't bother replying, merely inclining his head slightly and leaving the room as Harry and Blaise head in the direction of bed. There's no tossing and turning for Harry that night, focused on what magic can do to a person, or what someone could use it for. He just brushes his teeth, puts on his pyjamas, and lies down. As soon as he's tucked up in bed, he sleeps.

---

"And you didn't notice he was there at all?" Hermione asks, her deep brown eyes wide.

"No! Apparently he was there for a minute or two, watching me work and Blaise mess about with the cards. Do you think his shoes are enchanted or something? There has to be some magic in his robes, the way they billow like that, and if you're going to enchant your robes, why not do your shoes as well?"

"Don't be stupid," Hermione says. "Why would he enchant his shoes?"

"Why would he style his hair the way he does?" Hermione shakes her head disapprovingly, trying not to laugh, and Harry says, "I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm just saying he probably has."

"You want enchanted shoes, don't you?" Hermione asks. "That's what you dreamt about when that Drowsy Dragon put you to sleep. Magic shoes." Harry grins, pulling a book from the pile beside them and scanning the page. Their search for British dragon sanctuaries isn't going well. Every sanctuary in the UK seems to have closed down in the past two decades, owing mostly to the owners treasuring their limbs and lives over the prickly affection of their dragons. And even then, none of them took Norwegian Ridgebacks - they were considered too vicious.

It's not exactly comfrorting news. "There's one in France, near Calais..." Harry glances up. That's actually quite close- "Oh, wait, no. It only takes sea dragons. I think we're going to have to ask one of the centres in Eastern Europe, Harry. There just aren't any nearby that take them."

"You'd think a Norwegian dragon place would want one, wouldn't you? A Norwegian Ridgeback."

"Yeah, for some reason, Harry, they don't want more vicious, spiny, venomous dragons the size of lorries wandering through the frozen tundra."

"You're not any good at sarcasm," Harry says affectionately. "Do you know that?"

"Shut up," Hermione says, and then, "Oh, look, there's the twins. I've never seen them in the library before."

"They're probably here to nick something," Harry says. "Percy was saying that Charlie and them once-" Harry stops talking, staring at the twins as they stop to talk quietly to one another, looking very seriously at each other's faces and then up at the second floor of the library.

"Charlie and them once what?"

"Oi! Fred, George!"

"Shush!" hisses Madam Pince, hoving out from between the shelves like a snake, and Harry whispers an apology at her as he silently, wildly, waves for the twins to come over. They stride over as one, looking expectantly down at Harry.

"And what does our favourite little snake want now, eh?"

"Deeds to the family home?"

"Mum's wedding ring?"

"Dad's wedding ring?"

"Your brother."

"You can have him," Fred says immediately. "He's free."

"Not Ron."

"Damn," George says. "Well-"

"Not Percy, either," George sighs loudly, rolling his eyes, as Fred hides his face in his hands. "I need you guys to write Charlie for me."

"What don't we do for you, Potter?" Fred asks, leaning his elbows on his brother's shoulders as George sits down at the table. "We'll be doing your homework for you next."

"I doubt it," Hermione says snarkily. "I expect he wants to pass his classes." Fred and George glance at Hermione, seeming amused. Harry can't decide whether they like her or not - she's not normally the sort of person they expect to see on their side, but Harry feels like the twins have an appreciation for the fact that her best friend is a Slytherin, even if they don't actually like Slytherins themselves, as a rule.

"We'll deal with you later," George promises, or threatens, maybe. Harry isn't actually sure. "Why do you want us to write Charlie?" This, Harry thinks, is the best thing about the Weasley twins. They're very willing to involve themselves in chaos and schemes and the like, even while they complete their own ones in the background, but they're also really curious. They honestly want to know what's going on, and that's what Harry is counting on.

"Hypothetically," Harry says, and Hermione hides her face in her book, apparently disapproving of Harry's plan before he's even tried to set it in motion. "If you had a dragon, and you wanted to get rid of it, what would you do?"

"Let it eat Marcus Flint, Ministry comes to take it away, job done," Fred answers cleanly, looking too satisfied with his answer. "Easy."

"If you wanted to get rid of it alive, and you needed to keep it completely secret until it was gone." Fred's eyebrows are furrowed as he peers down at Harry, and George puts his hand on his own chin, shifting his position slightly so that Fred can lean on him better.

"Where did you get a dragon?" he asks.

"It's not my dragon," Harry says quickly. "But if you wrote Charlie, it could be his dragon."

"What's in it for us? You already owe us two favours."

"One favour."

"Two," George insists. What is in it for them? Harry starts to think quickly, but Hermione gets there first.

"I'll put the horror of your choice in Percy's bed while you two are in classes and you have deniability." Harry stares at her, taken aback at the offer.

"Hermione!" he says. "That's- that's- that's against a rule." Then again, Harry reconsiders when she glares at him, smuggling an illegal dragon illegally out of the castle and illegally out of the country is a bit against the rules too. Her expression is entirely determined, and Harry feels a distinct and overwhelming admiration for her.

"Agreed," Fred and George say together before Hermione has a chance to reconsider. "You two are getting to be terrific little criminals, you know," George says approvingly. "Maybe you'll be the first people to ever break out of Azkaban."

"Azkaban?" Hermione says, horrified. "The wizard prison?"

"Don't worry," Harry hisses to her, gesturing for her to keep her voice down. "You're not going to get arrested for putting a dung bomb under Percy's pillow."

"Well-" Fred starts. "You could. Theoretically." That's the bad thing about the Weasley twins, though. They like to provoke chaos out of anyone.

---

Fred and George send Hedwig with their letter, and Harry instructs her to make her way there and back as soon as she can, preferably without getting eaten by any dragons on the way. She gives him an affectionate nip on the ear before she makes her way off, soon becoming a speckled white dot in the distance. "I thought you'd already written Charlie?" George asks suddenly as they make their way down the slightly slippery, narrow steps down to the bottom of the owlery.

"Did you just remember that?" Harry asks, walking a little bit faster.

"Merlin's trousers," Fred complains. "I'd forgotten about that. You lying little sneak."

"We wouldn't be friends if I wasn't a lying little sneak," Harry points out in what he feels is a reasonable tone, and Fred and George consider this for a moment before accepting the point. They don't actually mind being lied to, Harry surmises, if it's in the name of law-breaking or general tomfoolery. "I'm gonna go and meet Hermione at Hagrid's hut, okay?"

"Righto, Potter. We'll see you at the performance later." Harry glances back, raising his eyebrows. Performance? But the twins are already running off in the direction of the castle.

---

"Well," Harry says as he and Harry walk up the path from Hagrid's hut. "I think that went alright."

"He didn't cry as much as I thought he would," Hermione says, though she looks severely uncomfortable - on the last bellowing blow of Hagrid's nose into his towel-sized handkerchief, she'd been standing a bit close for her liking. She'd taken the lead in breaking the news to Hagrid and in laying out their plan, but Hagrid hadn't argued too strongly. This was partly, Harry suspects, due to the swollen bite on the side of his neck.

"No," Harry agrees. "And I think some of the crying was because Norbert bit his knee."

"Come on," Hermione says, gesturing for Harry to come up the stairs towards the Gryffindor Common Room. Harry hangs back slightly as they slip inside, but there's no worry of his tie being noticed: they've come in just as the show is starting. Percy runs down the stairs in just a pair of boxers, painted from head to toe in forget-me-not spots, and for a second Harry thinks he's going to up and grab one of his brothers by the throat.

"Oh, Perce," Fred says, dodging out of the taller boy's way as George snatches his wand, "Come on! Don't look so blue!" Harry hides his mouth behind his hand, but Hermione doesn't bother, her lips twitching as she doesn't quite smile.

"I can't believe it," George says, "It's been months since I've seen him without his Prefect badge - I assumed he pinned it to his underwear when he didn't have his robes on!"

"Twenty points from Gryffindor!" Percy snaps as the Gryffindors in the Common Room cheer, and Hermione and Harry carefully step out of the portrait hole again.

"You oughtn't come in here so often," says the Fat Lady disapprovingly.

"You should take it as a compliment," Harry retorts. "Most Slytherins wouldn't bother."

"How dare you-"

---

"Thank you, Professor," Harry says, putting forth his glass of pumpkin juice the same way he has for the past week. He glances up at Snape, who administers the two necessary drops with the same perfunctory distaste, "Sorry you had to come down here every night."

"Were you left to give yourself your own draught, Potter, you would have undoubtedly killed yourself. Dosages of these potions for creatures as young and undernourished as yourself are delicately balanced." Well, Harry thinks. That's not disconcerting at all.

"Thanks," Harry says, mildly nervously, and he holds the glass to his mouth, drinking up his juice. Snape watches him, black gaze as concentrated as usual, and then he gives a nod, walking out of the common room. Harry waits for a moment, letting the teacher leave, and then he sets the glass down on a table, carefully removing the plastic insert for his sleeping potion that he'd made out of one of Hermione's old retainers. Pulling out his Invisibility Cloak from where he'd stashed it behind an old photograph on one of the mantelpieces, he slides it over his head and makes his way out.

He moves as quietly as he can out of the common room and through the dungeon corridors towards the entrance hall, holding the transparent piece of plastic carefully between his fingers. Careful dosages, Snape had said, so he'll only give Norbert half of it.

"This is a terrible idea," Hermione hisses as they run down to Hagrid's, the both of them pressed tightly together under the cloak to avoid being seen.

"Well, yeah," Harry says. "I don't think any of us thinks it's any good!" Harry drops a little of the excess potion into Norbert's mix of brandy and chicken blood as soon as he and Hermione get into Hagrid's hut, but he gives the task of feeding the little monster to Hagrid. Not that little applies all that much anymore. It's been only a week, and Norbert's already almost the size of Fang.

"Wha'd you give him?" Hagrid asks as Norbert snuffles and goes almost willingly into the padded crate, curling into a tiny, leathery ball.

"Nothing, nothing," Harry lies. "He's just a bit drowsy, that all. You think we can lift him, Hermione?"

"We'll have to," Hermione says, gritting her teeth as she clasps one underside of Norbert's crate, and they bow their heads, letting Hagrid drop the cloak over their backs. Movement up to the castle and to the bottom of the Astronomy Tower is a little bit slow, because baby dragons are surprisingly hefty, but Harry is just glad they'd knocked it out. He's seen Norbert bouncing off the walls of Hagrid's hut, and he shudders to think what it would be like in just a little wooden crate.

"Hey!" Harry whispers to the Weasley twins, both of whom turn wildly towards them.

"I told you he was on the map," George mutters, shoving a bit of old parchment into his back pocket, and Fred elbows him. "You there, Potter?" He and Hermione put the crate on the ground and Harry pulls the cloak off, glancing back towards the corridor. He can hear scuffling and distant footsteps, but because of the way the castle carries sound it's always difficult to figure out which way someone's coming from.

"Bloody Hell," Fred whispers. "That's not an invisibility cloak, is it?" Harry opens his mouth to retort that it's none of Fred's business, but then there's a set of much, much closer footsteps, and Fred says, "Shit."

"Yes, it is!" Harry hisses, pulling Fred and George to crouch over the crate and throwing the cloak over their heads. "And I want it back, do you hear me? It was my dad's, so if you lose it, or nick it, dragon smuggling's gonna be the least of your worries."

"Ooh, feisty-" George starts, but Harry kicks him hard in the shin to shut him up, and he and Hermione run towards the entrance of the tower's stairwell so as not to be found too close to the invisible trio.

"Who's there?" demands a voice in the corridors, and Hermione looks like she's about to melt into the stonework. McGonagall. Of course it had to be McGonagall, just their luck. But then there's a loud scuffle, a smacking sound, and then, "Mr Weasley! Mr Malfoy! What in goodness' name are you two doing out of bed?" Exchanging uncertain glances, Hermione and Harry lean out of the doorway to the tower's stairwell. Behind them, Harry hears Fred and George muttering to each other as they make their way up the stairs.

"Uh, nothing, Professor McGonagall," Weasley says. "Just, er-"

"Exploring the Hogwarts hallways? At nearly midnight?"

"Er-"

"And you, Mr Malfoy. I don't suppose you have a better excuse?"

"I was just looking for- that is to say, I," Malfoy's silver tongue doesn't seem to be serving him very well tonight. "I got lost," he finishes, unconvincingly. Harry shakes his head at the poor performance, as much as at the entire situation.

"He must have realized I'd left," Harry whispers to Harry as he watches McGonagall drag to the two of them up the hallway and to an empty classroom. "And went to look for me."

"Ron probably saw the twins leave," Hermione says, nodding her head, and her and Harry begin to creep up the corridor. Harry feels almost naked, traversing the corridors like this without the cloak, but so long as the two of them can just make it to the staircases, they can split apart and probably make it to their common rooms without being noticed, just so long as-

"Oh, naughty naughty ickle firsties!" says a high, reedy, mocking voice, ringing with delight.

Just as long as, for example, Peeves doesn't see them.