Adrian Paucey played for the Slytherin cricket team, Harry heard. He also heard that Adrian Paucey was to be his mathematics tutor until the ‘foreseeable future’.

Leaving right after Madam Hooch’s class, Harry trotted up the steps back to school, went down to the Slytherin dorms to change and grab his books, before going back to the common room to wait for Paucey. A short while later, Adrian Paucey walked into the room with a heavy bag pressed against his dark green sweater.

“Been waiting long?” he asked without waiting for an answer, and led them to the cornermost table in the common room, where some light managed to get through the crack of a window, “Right, let’s hear it then.”

Harry blinked, pulling his chair forward, “Er, hear what?”

Paucey pulled his chair forward, opened one of the books open between them, nodding knowingly at it, “Mathematics.”

Harry nodded awkwardly and echoed uncertainly, “Mathematics.”

He received a look from Paucey, one that wanted to both laugh and strangle him, “Professor Snape said you needed help.”

“I do.”

“Well,” he pulled the book closer between them, and hooked a hand behind Harry’s chair, pulling him closer as well. Harry’s ears burned, as he wondered if he was easily pulled because Paucey played cricket, or because, true to Malfoy’s words, Harry really was as light as a child.

“R-right! Uh, let me just — ” he swept through the pages of the book, then took out his own notebook, adjusting the angle so Paucey didn’t get a look at his messy handwriting, “ — uh…”

“You can be honest, you know,” Paucey tried to nudge the book out of Harry’s hands, but Harry pulled it away under the table. Paucey blinked, Harry blinked back and hung his head, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand, “Sorry, I just — ”

“Can I be honest with you Patel?”

The chair slid across the floor. Harry lifted his head slightly for a better angle, hair still concealing some of his face, falling across his eyes. Harry bit his lip. Then, he nodded stiffly, turning his chair as well, facing Paucey.

Paucey held both hands together, took a deep breath, and pointed them both at Harry, “I don’t need to be here. I’d rather be studying for university. I’ve worked hard to achieve that, but Professor Snape asked me to help if I thought I was capable. And I agreed. Rather late to disappoint him now, isn’t it?”

The paper crinkled under his fingers. A rush of foregin emotion grasped him. Hollow and strange, akin to fear. Something nervous, something dreadful. Harry’s eyes widened just a bit.

He didn’t want to disappoint Snape. Not now, when he out of all people thought him capable. Harry had wondered, still did sometimes, why he hadn’t been placed in a year below. Not that he would have enjoyed studying with students a year younger than him, but the thought lingered nonetheless - curiously so.

“I think I can agree,” he said dryly, dropping the book back on the table, “Alright, so you’ll help me until the end of the year?”

“Until you no longer need me,” Paucey shrugged, and lifted his own book, “You need help with the basics first, yeah? I won’t ask why — ” he eyed the notebook still wedged between Harry’s hands dimly “— but I will ask you to do your hardest if we’re going to be working together. Understood?”

Harry nodded mutely, and Paucey dropped his book between them to the open pages, “Now, addition?”

“I just need to get faster.”

“Homework, then,” Paucity made a note, then listed all the basics Harry had been working on since summer, issuing homework for each with emphasis on division and multiplication.

“Well, now, that’s not too bad, is it? The first and second years do little else other than arithmatic,” Paucey said, more to himself than Harry, stretching his arms above his head and opening to a new section of his notebook, “Now tell me how your current mathematics class is going, will you?”

And wasn’t that a conversation Harry had been looking forward to.

At the end, Paucey both relieved Harry by saying he’d be able to catch up soon with habitual studying of at least 1 hour a dayand sent spikes of adrenaline through his heart when he warned, eyes dark and finger raised, to do his best if he did not want to recompense him for putting Paucey’s efforts to waste.

“There are only the ambitious and those who don’t want to search within themselves to find it,” Paucey ended their session, sounding like one of the characters in Lupin’s books as he stacked his own, placing them into his bag, “Don’t let yourself become the latter.”

“It sounds like a Slytherin saying,” Harry collected his own materials, hand lingering on the pages.

“Not going to stop being ambitious when you leave, are you?” Paucey said snidely, and Harry caught a hint of humour in his voice; quirking up his own lips in response, “It’s very, uh, what’s the word…”

Paucey raised a brow, “... Complex?”, his expression seeming to say that he was just as bad as Harry when it came to vocabulary.

“No, uh, I forgot. But don’t worry —” he heaved his bag up, nodding with a stiff expression, “I… don’t want to give up. If not for me, then for... “

For?

Harry bit the inside of his cheek, “For others' sake.”

Shrugging, Paucey walked around him - tall and strong, making Harry feel especially small, patting him on the shoulder twice as he did.

Harry hoped he was able to contain his flinch.

More and more people started to fill the common room, and Harry stretched his arms above his head, preparing to visit his dorm to get his other books for homework, and maybe visit Hermione in the library and study with her. Adjusting the strap of his bag, he made for the stairs.

Just as he was passing by the desk Malfoy and his friends were sitting down on, though, suddenly and without warning the word he was trying to remember came to mind, and he let everyone in earshot know - embarrassingly - by shouting the word with a resonating clap following where he facepalmed.

“Tempting, ugh!”

He was rather tempted to kick the nearest, unfortunate thing into the lake; but if there was anything more tempting than that, it was running back to the dormitory after feeling the heads of more than half the room’s occupants turn to look at him. Some smirking, some chuckling or giggling behind their hands, and some not paying any mind. Perhaps the worst, though, were the ones who shot him with annoyed glares at the interruption, churning into anxiety in Harry’s gut.

“My looks, or my charm?” Malfoy said, smooth and sudden, with a grin Harry was tempted to kick instead.

“Letting a dictionary sink in the lake, actually.”

“Ah, well, might do the Giant Squid some good. Educational.”

Harry blinked, “The what now?”

“No, no,” muttered Blaise, waving a dismissive hand and not lifting his eyes from the book, “You’d need to feed it the whole library, to get it to manage basic communication,” then he finally lifted his eyes, and smirked, “Rather like Crabbe and Goyle.”

“There isn’t a Giant Squid in the lake,” Harry said to Malfoy, more to make a point to himself than to the rest, “And I don’t think it would be able to read, anyway.”

“Unlike you, hmm?” chimed Zabini, turning the page of his book, still not lifting his eyes from the book, “And I didn’t know you dived into the lake to make sure, Patel.”

“Have you?”

“No, but I’m not the one trying to prove it doesn’t exist,” Blaise responded without so much as an effort to hide his grin, “Look it up, I’m sure Madam Pince will offer you many sources on the subject.”

Harry considered. Truly did, embarrassingly. But he also considered the embarrassment of asking Madam Pince for books on a subject that was clearly fiction (that was a new word, fiction, and quite useful too), cheeks heating as the always composed, unsmiling librarian broke into ugly laughter.

Would he be kicked out of the library for stupid questions? Harry winced, agreeing that having a spot to study with Hermione wasn’t worth sacrificing for silly squids, and planned on asking Malfoy or Professor Patel later.

“Hmm, well, have fun studying you two,” he dismissed Zabini’s words, tempted to climb up to his room and not open another book until he had to attend an hour long session with Professor Lupin, “I’ll just -”

“You’re done already?” Malfoy jabbed after him, rocking on the back legs of the chair, just shy of toppling over, “Will it be enough?”

Harry turned around, “Will what be enough?”

“Studying.”

“I’ve been at it for more than an hour and a half. I even got my homework done-” and he opened his bag in emphasis, but paused just as his fingers brushed the paper of his maths notebook, pulling up his hand back out, “- I’ll leave the rest for tomorrow.”

Malfoy shrugged in a way that made Harry feel guilty. Zabini kept his eyes, stern and careful, on Harry’s bag, lifting them to stare into Harry’s eyes when Harry’s hand fell over his bag on instinct, “Did Professor Snape tell you to join the study groups?”

“He mentioned it, yes.”

“We like getting it done early in the morning,” Zabini turned to his book, “And fast.”

Harry didn’t miss the implication.

“I can keep up.”

“Oh, can you?”

Malfoy stopped rocking on his chair, ears strained in the conversation. His eyes flicked to Harry’s hand when he pressed his fingers into a fist, and shook his head in warning. A small one. Barely noticeable, so unlike the frustration swelling in his chest.

“Well,” he licked his lips, pulling out the empty chair and sitting down after all, bag balanced on his lap, hands out of sight, “What do you want me to do Zabini? I don’t want to tell you the reason. I’m embarrassed to -” and that was an almost lie. He was embarrassed. Just not for the reasons he allowed everyone else to know, “ - but if you’re still curious, Professor Patel’s door is always open, as I’ve been told.”

“For this topic specifically?” Malfoy said, still rocking in his chair, seemingly unaware of the atmosphere brewing thickly between him and Zabini, “What say you, Zabini?”

“I say I’d get the same reply I got from Patel over here,” Zabini shrugged, placed his book down, taking in Malfoy’s rocking form with a glint of anticipation in his eyes. As if he was dying for him to fall, “But that is not what I’m concerned about.”

Malfoy raised a brow. Harry leaned back in his chair, shoulders tense.

The common room was too quiet for his liking. Too…off-putting.. Harry was still a stranger here. Something of a guest, not invited and handed the key to the dormitories solely because he was, well, told to. What else did the students think about him, those in Slytherin? The ones he had to spend the new two weeks waking up with, studying with and eating with. Did they think Harry had the same mindset as them? That he was temporary, here just long enough until they knew he was meant for someplace else?

Harry would have liked to think that, had the other places been more inviting.

“I won’t drag you with me, if that’s what’s worrying you,” Harry said, slipping a finger under his sleeve, arm shuddering under the finger scratching down his skin - God it had been a while, “In Ravenclaw… I lost points. I know I did, but I found a way to… not do that? So you don’t have to be worried about me,” he grinned, a grin he so often wanted to punch out of Malfoy’s face, and took a page from Malfoy’s book as well, finishing the conversation by saying, “Though I’m flattered you are.”

The few seconds of pure satisfaction he got from the split-second fluster on Zabini’s face lasted until he reached the dormitories, showing itself in the form of a wide, toothy grin that left Goyle, who was inside the room, confused. Harry shrugged his gaze off, almost skipped to his bed, and sat down with a long, content sigh.

He wouldn’t let himself get beaten down this time. Not now.

Not ever if he could help it.

*

Professor Snape called him to his office after dinner. As expected, of course. Instructions to not be late muttered low enough for Harry to hear while sweeping past, just as Harry made to stand up.

“He called?” Malfoy asked when Harry lagged behind the group walking to the dorms, nodding mutely and placing a hand on the door.

“I won’t be long,” said Harry, and Malfoy disappeared down the hall, the knocking echoing down the stone walls, answered by the low hum of Snape’s voice muffled behind the door.

Closing the door behind him, Harry shuffled forward. Snape was characteristically sitting in his chair nursing a cup of tea, untouched yet still steaming. Harry took the chair in front of his desk, far less nervous than he had been last time, or even any time he had been here before.

“So,” Harry spoke first, leaning his bag on the chair, looking up with a polite smile.

“So,” echoed Snape, far more tired than he had seen him since coming to school. Or, well, since the first week of coming to school, where Snape was in a constant state of looking threatened. Ready to flinch. Expecting something.

Harry wondered if it had anything to do with him.

And just why knowing Snape was alert for his sake made him feel calm.

“How was the lesson with Paucey?” Snape asked, now nursing the cup in his hands. A cup kept between his fingers for the sake of holding something, rather than to drink it, Harry guessed.

“I understood everything, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not the meaning I was aiming for,” Snape said, lifting his cup for a sip at last. Harry found the gesture oddly common with Snape, although it came in many other forms during their unavoidable conversations. A cup here, a pen or report there; all used by Snape to press the silence further while he was deep in thought.

And Harry had no name to give to the thought of knowing something about Snape he could pretend others did not. Something along the name of pride. Accomplishment. Feeling special.

Something he wouldn’t tell Snape.

The cup was placed back on the table, ending the silence, “Did you find yourself improving?”

“I can’t improve with just one lesson, sir.”

“Then have you gained insight on whether you should continue?”

“Yes,” said Harry, without pause and without breaking eye contact.

Snape lifted his cup again. Harry caught the hint of a smile on his lips.

In the silence that continued, Harry toed the strap of his bag dangling on the floor, “... Should… should I leave?”

“Have I bored you again?”

“Of course not,” Harry said lightly, grinning, then dropping it when Snape gave him a pointed look that seemed to warn him to not get too comfortable. Harry averted his eyes to the bottles on the walls, caught between dust and the dying light of the day, “Uh, the lily is doing well, if you’re wondering…”

A hum, “That’s good to know. Be sure to keep tending to it,” Snape steepled his fingers on the table, words quiet and not disturbing his thin lips, “I’ve put forward a letter, for the materials you’ve requested-” Harry’s ears perked up, “- Though it should be a few weeks before anything arrives,” Snape then lifted his own gaze to look into Harry’s eyes, black boring into his own. Certain and steady, an eyebrow furrowing at the growing smile on Harry’s face, “Don’t let me catch you acting inappropriately until then, or until the end of your school career.”

“That’s an awful stretch of time, but - but ,” Harry said, voice raising, a bright grin soft like the last sunlight compared to the stiff frown on Snape’s lips, “I promise.”

“It’s not a comfort, witnessing you throw away the weight of a promise so carelessly.”

“You don’t need to be concerned, sir.”

A soulless smirk, “Oh, Patel, if only you knew.”

It was Harry’s turn to be confused. He tilted his head forward, “Uh, what does that mean sir?”

Snape leaned back just as much as Harry had leaned forward, now balancing the tea cup in one hand, drinking the rest of the liquid, “It means many things I cannot find it in me to say.”

“If you can’t say it, sir, I don’t think anyone else can.”

“Explain.”

Harry blinked, not due to the orange light fluttering down his face, “You’re the one that uses the most confusing words I know.”

Snape blinked. Then blinked again. Then, very uncharacteristically, he leaned forward, “Do you not understand me when I talk to you?”

“Well sometimes I understand, through the sentence-”
“But?”

Harry bit his lip, “Sometimes, uh, you use some, uh…”

Hearing Snape sigh instead of expressing any negative emotion was a welcome surprise, the following conversation even more unexpected.

“When will we drill into your head to be honest, Potter?” he said very, very quietly, some bite to his words.

“I am honest. I would have answered if you asked. See?” he motioned between them, then the room, “I did now. Be honest.”

Again, Snape let the words hang between them. Harry was starting to get the impression that the intent behind calling Harry to his office took a rapid change from Paucey’s teaching methods to revolving back around Harry and his current position.

It bothered Harry.

It bothered him for reasons he had yet to understand. Reasons he had yet to ask Snape, when he remembered.

The return of the topic of honesty brought back the first time they had handled the conversation.

“No, I’m standing in front of my father, aren’t I?”

Harry flinched. That wasn’t a memory he wanted to remember in Snape’s office. Not when he was in Slytherin.

He spoke at the same time that Snape did.

“I don’t want you to use easy language with me.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be making sure you understand every sentence that holds words beyond your current vocabulary expansion.”

A lock of eyes, a grin Harry couldn’t suppress, and another sigh from Snape, “I shall proceed as I currently am, then.”

Then another silence, and Harry was truly starting to get uncomfortable.

“Um, so should I leave…?”

Snape tapped the brim of the cup repeatedly, his frown appearing more and more apparent and brows knitted close.

Guess not.

“How has Slytthrin been?” Snape said very, very slowly; jaw tense and each pronounced word rigid.

Harry wanted to ask him if he had developed a sensitivity for tea like Professor Patel.

Harry also wanted to keep an amicable relationship with Professor Snape.

“I’m not dead. Yet..”

Snape narrowed his eyes, “Is that an attempt at humor?”

“It’s me being honest,” Harry nudged his bag, shoe digging into the fabric, “It’s better than Ravenclaw. I can’t say I don’t miss Hufflepuff, though.”

“And how is the relationship with Mr Malfoy?”

It was Harry’s turn to look like he was drunk on bitter tea, “He’s odd.”

“Ah. In what way?”

Wind curled through the seal between the window and the pane, a violent hum that caught Harry’s attention, stalling his thoughts, “Is there a way more than one?”

Snape’s frown eased into a light grimace, “It would be a foolish thought, the assumption that no inhabitant of Hogwarts is, in some way, peculiar.”

Harry blinked. Snape inhaled, “Odd. Out of the ordinary.”

Harry’s eyes widened in understanding.

“You have your quirks too, Mr Patel. Never be in doubt,” Snape nodded towards him, and Harry let his lips lift up into a smile.

“Even me me, sir?”

The raise of Snape’s brow hinted at amusement. Lips a touch laughing. And the honeyed display of his words were further proof of his delight, “Especially you you. A special student, in no manner that I favor.”

“I’m wounded, sir.”

“Spare me the feign. How does the rest of Slytherin fare?”

And so, Harry told him. Well, as far as cherry-picked honesty went. Snape didn’t need to know about how he had gotten stuck in a tree, or how he had yet to find his jacket, or how he didn’t have enough time in his race to catch up to the rest of his peers to think; to think about himself, about his arm - he missed it. By all honesty, he missed running his nails down his skin. The burn beneath his nails -, about the delicate fractures and thoughts that seemed to be rising under the lid of his suppressed emotions.

Harry was fine.

By all honesty that was not true.

Snape didn’t need to know that.

Harry pulled on a smile. He didn’t need to know that either. He’d believed enough, when he was younger and the soot was as bitter as Professor Patel’s tea, and words were even more so. He believed when the ground he slept on was as cold as Professor Snape, and living seemed colder. He believed when the chimneys were cruel, yet soft snow on a Christmas morning was cruler.

(Harry didn’t like Christmas. He didn’t want a reason to, either.)

So Harry spoke, and it was all honesty layered above the things he wouldn’t say.

“That took less than I assumed it would,” said Snape. Harry tilted his head in question, and Snape, in response, cleared his throat, hair curling around his face when he momentarily averted his gaze, “I assumed you would… complain.”

“... About?”

“Well, that is the question, isn’t it.”

Harry grimaced, “I can’t help but feel you’re trying to tell me something, Professor.”

Darkness crept inside the room. No, rather, Harry hadn’t noticed it until now. The silent approach of nightfall, a silk of black draped across the sky, sealing away the light of the world, and of the room.

With night came cold.

Perhaps that was why Snape chose to bring it up.

“I haven’t seen you wearing your coat.”

With cold would always come fear. Harry shuddered, perhaps not from the cold; but it served as a visible flinch, with it snatching away the excuse from Harry’s lips before he could use it.

I’m not cold.

“I didn’t see a reason to,” he looked up, hands clutched tight on each side of the chair, “Sir.”

“Was my request not enough reason, Potter?” Snape looked down, really looked. Eyes dark, darker than the sky.
Dark, and yet, for a second… If Harry chose to indulge in his delusion, drown in his assumption just for a second… darkness didn’t need to hold any cold. The bite of Snape’s words didn’t have to be bitter.

If he could dream, just for a second, maybe he would be brave enough to tell himself, his past self, that Harry didn’t have to be bitter either.

“No, I’m sitting in front of my father, aren’t I?”

He hadn’t been angry, then. Just as Snape wasn’t angry now, at least, he didn’t think so. At least not by much. Harry wasn’t stupid enough not to see some frustration in Snape’s voice. But this time… it felt rather nice, seeing him worried beneath the layers of visible anger.

Ah, Harry frowned, remembering a word he read, a shift.

“- and to say that it wasn’t necessary-”

“It’s lost,” Harry said, and when Snape stopped to raise a brow, Harry raised his voice, lifted his head and willed his words to not crack, “I-It’s gone, sir.”

Snape’s brows fell as quıickly as they had raised, but just as he opened his mouth, Harry continued, “I checked, believe me I did, but the minute I opened my trunk, it was gone. Gone before I even wore it.”

When the weight of Harry’s words had settled, like dust upon the jars dwelling on the shelves, Snape breathed. A sharp intake circling back to the rise of frustration. Frustration Harry prayed wasn’t directed towards him.

Wistful thinking.

“Gone before you even… wore it.”

“You don’t have to sound disgusted, sir.”

“Do I sound disgusted, Mr Patel,” he said, raising his voice, “Do I look disgusted.”

Harry swallowed, because no. Snape didn’t look disgusted. If anything-

“Why are you… concerned, sir?”

“Was there an instance where something… might have happened to the trunk?”

Harry shrugged. Snape sighed again, loud and impatient, and leaned forward, voice as meek as a mouse, “Think, Potter, think. What might have happened to your coat?”

Snape’s gaze wouldn’t budge this time. In response, Harry shut his eyes tight, grip equally strong on the edges of his seat. The silence stretched. Yet another sigh, and Harry opened his eyes.

“Though your silence is assuming, it’s no time to be lost for -”

When Harry shot up, the shock sent the chair rattling, the table shaking, and a panic stricken Snape holding the tea cup in a death grip inches above the ground, bent over the side of his chair in a position not at all comfortable.

“The trunk was missing for a day!” declared Harry, slamming both hands on the table with more force than necessary, leaning forward like Snape had earlier, though with excitement written on his face, “We found the trunk the next day! Professor Patel had it with her, and we all assumed that someone dropped it off with her because of the surname-”

“For my own ease of mind -” Snape let the cup down, uncharacteristically gentle, as if to make a point. No. To make a point, “- let me ask you again…Your trunk was unaccounted for one whole day?”

Harry shifted from one foot to the next, refusing to answer. Only, Snape twisted his face into a familiar expression in response. Harry knew where the conversation was headed now. So he spoke. Stuttering, voice light enough to suppress Snape, “W-well! If you mean it was lost, sir-”

Suppress him for now.

“And you didn’t feel the need to report a missing belonging-”

“I didn’t think it was-”

“It’s a missing article of clothing, in the aftermath of a missing school trunk, which so happens to be yours-”

“To be fair, it is Ali Patel’s-”

The cup rattled when Snape made a grab for it, shaking under Snape’s pale fingers. He stood up, slow and steady, and leaned forward again. Slow. Steady.

A little unhinged.

“Not. The point. Potter.”

Potter, in return, scowled and kicked the chair behind him lightly, watching Snape from the corner of his eye. He circled the room. Harry’s eyes accompanied him, and kept pinned on his back even when Snape started to glare out of the window, as if he could find the reason for Harry’s missing trunk solely by will-power.

The thought made Harry blink.

He wouldn’t put it past Snape to be capable of such a thing.

“Honesty!” Snape, well, snapped when it seemed like he had enough of window-gazing, moving onto the certainly more productive task of glaring at Harry instead, “How many times do I need to drill into that thick skull of yours that honesty-”

“I was honest!” the words left his mouth before he could stop them. And then, it was summer again. He was in the apothecary again. Anger consumed him, yet again. Again, “I just told you! I didn’t think it was that important-”

“-After an attack no less! Amidst the current climate of a missing convict. You have no regard for your safety, or your surroundings, and furthermore-”

“If you’re trying to tell me you care-” the words were spat slowly, deliberately slow; and they halted Snape’s expression right in the middle of an approaching stream of words. Harry relished in it. His open mouth. His lowered hand. An unfocused gaze. If Harry needed a calling to stop speaking, it wouldn’t be this. “You’re not making a good job out of it, Professor Snape.”

He took even more joy at the stiff hunch of Snape’s shoulder, a ghostly, almost faint wince, “This is behaviour faculty members need to be aware of.”

This is behaviour I need to be aware of.

If Harry could pretend.

And Harry would always pretend.

“I’m…” Harry said, swallowing his words. He cleared his throat, “I know that now.”

“And for Professor Patel to not take notice of such a thing...”

“She didn’t know my coat was missing.”

“Didn’t she tell you to put it on? Not once?”

Harry’s ears burned at the genuine surprise, perhaps even concern, if Harry listened closely, in Snape’s voice, “You’re the only one that did so, sir… ”

A sigh. A dragging silence. Then, “It’s getting late.”

“Sir?” Harry looked up when Snape walked over, picked up his bag for him, and placed it in his hands, “You still have an after-school lesson to attend. I will accompany you to the dormitories in the meantime.”

“I can walk myself,” Harry pulled on his bag, hanging it by one shoulder, “Do you not trust me enough for a few steps down the hallway, sir?” he said, only slightly joking.

“Do I trust you to walk by yourself? Of course not. Do I trust trouble to not find you, though the journey be small? ” he paused by the door, one hand on the handle and one hand on Harry’s shoulder, “I’d rather trust the Giant Squid.”

Harry was about to argue that, no, the Giant Squid wasn’t real, and he didn’t believe it, but Snape pulled him out through the door, closing it behind them with a heavy thud.

“Hurry it up, Patel. You’ll keep the spiders impatient.”

And then, they walked almost to the dormitories, the torchlight only dimly illuminating the corridor.

“We will need to get you a new coat, undoubtedly.”

“Sir-”

“Don’t argue with me further, Mr Patel. For both our sakes,” came the final verdict, and Harry did not open his mouth. Not once. He kept his lips pressed into a thin line until they were right outside the doors, ready to part ways.

Harry faced Snape, dropping his gaze, one hand on the door, “Good night, Professor.”

“No late night wanderings, Mr Patel.”

No late wanderings.

Harry didn’t need to walk around for his mind to do some very, very late night wanderings.