Hermione Granger bit her lip and scowled at the quill in her hand. In the common room, she’d taken to pretending she’d never written with anything else, because even that horrid Weasley boy could write with a quil without getting little speckles of ink on his hands. He’d already taken the mickey about her being too smart and a goody-goody, she wouldn’t let him taunt her about that. No matter she wrote neater than him any day. But she was in her little nook in the library where she’d spent the morning with Harry and that awful Weasley boy never set foot in there, so she figured it wass safe enough to glare a bit at the quill. And glare she did. If it had been alive, it probably would have squeaked and fled at the sort of look that was being leveled at it. But it was a quill, and didn’t have the ability to squeak or flee, so she threw it down in disgust and peeked at her watch.

Then she bit her lip again, but this time she looked worried instead of frustrated. Her watch read four-fifty-nine.

It had been almost five hours since Harry had dashed from the library madly, his bag swinging behind him and panic written all over his face. It was funny, really, that he was a Slytherin. She had only know him for two or so days and already she could read him like a book. Weasley said Slytherin’s were meant to be sneaky, but Harry just looked awful frightened all the time. She supposed that frightened people were often sneaky, but maybe Harry just wasn’t the average Slytherin. Ron certainly hadn’t thought so at dinner the other day.

She had sat on the fringe of the group again, with Parvati and Lavendar gossiping across the table with Wynnie Press and Anna Dawlish and Neville piling mounds of potatoes on his plate and dunking his sleeves in the gravy from his spot next to her. Weasley’s voice, however, did carry, and Evan, who was a cheerful boy with a jolly cheeks who openly admitted he had almost gone to Hufflepuff, was no mouse either.

“D’you hear him? Right to Snape’s face, he said it, like he hadn’t a care in the world! Bloke’s mis-Sorted, you ask me,” Weasley said, cramming a chicken leg in his mouth. Haightley nodded slowly.

“Can’t believe he did that.”

“Did what?” a third year—Hermione thought it might have been a Weasley, but she hadn’t got their names straight yet—asked curiously.

“Did who?” said another third year—yes, they had to be, they were identical obnoxious red heads—as he stole chicken from Ron’s plate.

Ron didn’t even care. “Harry Potter!”

That was when Hermione really started to pay attention. She liked Harry—he was quiet, really, like her, and he was Muggleborn, sort of, like her, and he didn’t like quills either. Plus, he was terribly small and wide eyed and thin, and Hermione had always been one for strays. She loved underdogs, and Harry was the thinnest, most frightened underdog she had ever met.

Weasley related the whole story as he shoved green beans into his mouth and gulped down pumpkin juice like he was scared it would vanish in front of him. Then again, the way the twins kept pinching food from his plate, never mind that they each had their own, made Hermione wonder if that happened often. It just made her sad about Harry, who was sitting over at the Slytherin table staring wide eyed at a plate piled high with chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy dribbled over everything. His eyes met hers, with a silent plea, and she immediately remembered what she’d promised to do.

Taking a leaf from the Weasley’s book, she took a few chicken legs and dinner rolls and wrapped them in her napkin, still listening out of half an ear. She even nabbed a few chocolate biscuits before the rest of the table descended on the platter. Weasley, spraying biscuit crumbs across the table, finished his tale of Potions and settled happily into his seat.

“Brilliant,” he said happily. “Bloody brilliant. Who’d expect less, though, from Potter? Even if he is a Slytherin.”

Haightley looked thoughtful as he nibbled at his biscuit. “Seemed sort of titchy, to me,” he said, taking a swig of pumpkin juice. “You know—nervy. Couldn’t believe he said it.” He reached for another biscuit and caught sight of Hermione. “You sat next to him, didn’t you, Granger? What’d you think?”

Hermione suddenly found the whole end of the table staring at her and she thanked God that she’d already stashed her little food cache in her knapsack. “About what?”

Evan rolled his eyes. “Potter, of course. Wasn’t he a bit nervy?”

Lavendar scowled at Haightley. “I thought he was dashing! Did you get a good look at his scar, Hermione?”

“Probably didn’t know what it was,” Weasley said, but not unkindly. “Ever heard of Harry Potter, Granger?”

Hermione blushed at all the attention and focused on her fork. “Well—I read some. Before school.”

“Did you see the scar? Was it bloody?” Seamus Finnigan asked. Dean Thomas, her fellow Muggleborn, seemed a little confused, but looked content to merely listen and piece it together later.

“Don’t be stupied, Seamus, it wouldn’t still be bloody!” a second year yelled, throwing a biscuit at Seamus’ head. Seamus leveled a glare.

“Could too be! Curse scars’re awful odd, my mam says they never act predictable.”

“Your mam can shove it—“

“Was it, Hermione?” Lavendar asked. “Does it really look like a lightning bolt?”

“I—I suppose,” Hermione said, feeling the blush spread to her ears. “I wasn’t really looking.”

Ron puffed his chest. “If I’d spotted him, me and Evan would have sat with him first, wouldn’t we, Ev?”

“I wonder why the Slytherin’s weren’t sitting with him,” Parvati frowned. “There were three crammed at one table, remember, Lav? Those two fat boys and the little ratty one.”

“Maybe they’re plotting to kill him! Orders from You-Know-Who!” someone yelled.

“Maybe he’s an evil wizard! You know, my mam’s always said that it’d take someone with twice as much power to—“

“Why’d someone like that kill him in the first place, moron?”

“Don’t call me a moron, Parvati, you moron! Anything’s possible, that’s what my mam always says!”

“You and your bloody MAM, Finnegan!”

Hermione had taken that moment to slip away. But she had walked past Evan, who looked thoughtful, and Ron, who was cramming a last biscuit into his mouth before they too rose.

“You know,” she heard from behind her as she hurried towardss the Slytherin table and Harry, “Potter’s all right. That thing with Snape today, and You-Know-Who. He’s an all right chap.”

“Yeah,” Ron said. “For a Slytherin.”

Evan agreed.

She’d slipped Harry the food and made him eat this morning, too, but then he’d dashed off and not showed up at lunch and neither had Snape. She still didn’t believe with all her heart that a teacher could do that sort of thing. She couldn’t. Back at primary, and here too, it seemed, teacher’s were the only ones that liked her. They didn’t do bad things like regular people.

But Harry had looked so scared, in Potions, and so frightened, when he ran off to his detention…and in Hogwarts, A History it said that the maximum a detention could be allotted for first years was four hours, and it had been nearly five…

With one last glare at her quill, she started to pack up her school bag and, with a determined move, she swung it over her shoulder and marched out of the library and made her way down the staircases until she reached her destination.

The Dungeons.

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Teddy Nott lay on his bed and sighed. At home, that noise was dreaded by the various house elves, his baby sister Lyssa, his mother, his father, his cousin Pip, Mariella the cook, Benjy the gardener, the post man, his crup, Alligator, and last but not least, the Department for the Restriction of Underage Magic. Teddy was one of those boys that gets bored easily and needs to be constantly entertained. His mother had learned, early on, that it was far easier to assign the boy a house elf and wash her hands of it, because he was constantly exploring and getting into dangerous places, even as a toddler. Lila Nott loved her son dearly, but he was a handful, and with the amount of trouble a three year old could get up to in the Nott estate, she was wiser to just let the house elves take care of it. So Teddy, from an early age, had enjoyed being followed around the estate by Woobie the house elf, in hopes that the elf would keep him out of mischief.

It took three broken vases, two overturned Potions, a near fatal tumble down a flight of stares, and an ill advised attempt at swimming in the decorative fish fountain that had convinced Lila and Peranius that this was simply wishful thinking. Peranius, who had himself been a rather adventurous boy, had given Woobie a cushy job overseeing the pastry chef and taken the boy into his own care for two months. In that time, the vases and artwork were all reinforced, the stairs were enchanted to turn into slides in the chance of a tumble, Teddy learned to swim, and Peranius allowed Teddy to overturn several nasty (yet legal) potions onto his head to learn not to do it. After that, Teddy wass allowed the run of the house, and it was the unspoken command that, if Teddy was seen near an unprotected piece of artwork or sneaking into the stables or taking an on purpose tumble down the stairs, to simply let him be. The boy would learn, Peranius was sure, and learn Teddy did. Teddy learned that life is full of many terribly exciting and dangerous things and that it was immensely fun to experience all of them. And when Nott estate ceased to be as dangerous and exciting as he wanted…

Well. The staff soon learned that, upon hearing that sigh, it was far better to entertain Teddy than to explain to Mister Nott later why the Young Mistress was found bobbing in the fish pond, or why the chicken smelled ever so slightly of mango sauce. Master Teddy was to be entertained, or the whole house would be set fire to in a manner of minutes, the cook used to be fond of saying. She stopped saying that after Teddy’s ninth birthday, when he had experimentally held a bit of Self-Wrapping Ribbons over the candles and set fire to the green drawing room.

Teddy was to be entertained, or disasters would happen. This was simply a fact of life. It was with no small sigh of her own the Lila sent Teddy off to Hogwarts, hoping that he’d work out his steam by blowing up Potions and relieved that she wasn’t in charge of him anymore. However, Peranius had warned the boy before he went that Severus Snape was not the sort of man to tolerate his form of entertainment. Nor, Peranius had said firmly, would he be the sort to entertain him. Teddy was on his own, in that respect, and Peranius suggested that the boy take up more reading (which Teddy had always liked, provided there were adventure ideas to be had in the books) and lay low.

Teddy was bored. He was tired of laying low. He hadn’t been entertained ALL WEEK. Zabini, the swot, was writing home to his mama, and Teddy sure didn’t want to try to entertain him. Draco was never very entertaining, not unless you set one of his things on fire or tossed it in the lake or something, and his father had warned him about Hogwarts’ strict codes of conduct concerning fire. Crabbe and Goyle were stupid. So were the girls.

Well. The choice was obvious. Teddy yawned, sighed, cracked his knuckles, and set off to find his new mate and form of entertainment. And he knew exactly where to look. So, in a slightly more cheerful manner, he set off to where he was sure Harry was: the library.

He’d gotten rather good at navigating the dungeons, considering. He liked it there, below ground, and the quiet and cool of it calmed him a bit. He wasn’t nearly as bored as he had been when laying on the bed, and he was sure that, once he had Harry, he’d be able to entertain himself somehow. He cheerfully turned a corner and ran smack into the mudblood from Gryffindor.

He almost snarled at her, but that was such a Malfoy thing to do, and he had promised Harry the night before. So instead he leveled a glare—if she thought she was going to take Harry and his entertainment she had another thing coming! “What’re you doing down here?”

The girl looked a bit upset, actually. Teddy was not a cruel boy. He had a low tolerance for boredom and was a bit spoiled and terribly pure-blooded, but he often took bread crumbs to the decorative fish fountain at the estate and had often been known to smile or force the cook in the kitchens to make small cakes for people who were upset. So it is not terribly surprising that he lost his gruff tone when he saw how worried the girl seemed.

“What’s wrong? Are you lost?” Teddy asked, speaking down as though she were his baby sister, Lyssa. “Do you need a professor?” You had to talk slow to Muggles, his mother always said, otherwise they wouldn’t understand. (Really, Lila had said that Teddy needed to talk slower or the shopkeeps wouldn’t understand what he wanted. But they had been in a Muggle toy shop and Teddy had assumed this meant all Muggles. Since he had never been to another Muggle place and the wizarding stores were warned ahead of time by Peranius, he had assumed it was merely Muggles and spoke to Hermione as such.)

Hermione glared at him a bit, and Teddy surpressed the urge to squeal and flee. Nott’s did not squeal and flee. Teddy was fond of saying that they did NOTT do whatever they did NOTT wish to do. “No I’m not lost. And I’m not stupid, either, so you don’t have to talk to me like that. I was first in my class when I left my primary, you know.”

Teddy rolled his eyes. “Whatever. If you’re not lost—“ he still spoke a little slowly and Hermione looked irritated. “—why’re you here?”

She looked worried again and stopped glaring at Nott and started to scan the hallways again. “I’m looking for Harry.”

Teddy leveled a glare of his own. She was trying to take away his entertainment! “You can’t hang out with him, I’m bored.” Then what she said sunk in. “Why didn’t you check the library? He went up there first thing this morning and I haven’t seen him since.”

Hermione gave him an odd look. “I just came from there, he’s not there. Besides, he had detention today. With Professor Snape.”

Teddy suddenly remembered that. And he remembered all he’d heard from his father about Snape before he started school, and all he had observed and calculated. And he suddenly let slip a rather violent swear word and wheeled about, running and fast as he could towards Snape’s office, Hermione at his heels.

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When they got there, they were both out of breath. Hermione seldom ran, unless it was to chase a boy who had stolen one of her books during lunch, and Teddy had merely run the whole thing in one breath. Teddy was about to bang on the door when it opened of it’s own accord. It flew open, and Teddy was knocked to the floor as Harry Potter ran out of the room. He barely stopped when Teddy fell, merely looked back with eyes that screamed apologies and kept running, fleeing down the hallway and into the labyrinthe tunnels that were the dungeons of Hogwarts.

Snape appeared in the doorway as soon as Teddy was able to pick himself up, and he knocked Teddy down again as he ran to the end of the hallway. He looked both ways, but was unable to figure out which way Harry went.

“POTTER!” he bellowed, and Hermione flinched and grabbed Teddy’s arm, tugging him to his feet. Snape had wheeled around and remembered the two first years that now were frozen in front of his door.

“Granger. Nott.” He swooped down on them, and Teddy could feel Hermione’s hand shaking where it gripped his arm. Or was that his arm shaking? He had met the Potions master a few times before Hogwarts, at the Malfoy’s Winter Solstice parties and at the Bulstrode’s Michaelmas feast, and though the man had always been dour, he had never been so…terrifying. “Where did he go?”

Teddy opened his mouth and closed it. He honestly had not see where Harry had went, he was too busy picking himself up off the ground. He looked at Granger, who was shaking her head.

“We—we don’t know, sir. Potter, he knocked me down, Granger was helping me up—“

“Don’t lie to me.” Snape caught on to both their arms, making a bizarre sort of circle of connection between the three. “Where. Did. He. Go?”

“I don’t know.” Teddy said again, this time in his calculating mode. You did NOTT talk to a Nott like that. There were consequences. He’d seen his father get people into deep trouble at the Ministry for that sort of thing. Nothing you could trace, really, but he’d done it all right. He tried to pull his arm away, and Snape’s grip tightened.

“I won’t have you protecting that little wretch, Theodore.”

“I don’t protect anyone except myself,” Teddy said.

“P-P-P-P-Please, sir,” Hermione stammered out. “I w-w-w-w-was helping him up.” Teddy gave her a look. He knew she wasn’t telling the truth—it was written all over her face.

Snape gave them both a look of pure ice and released them. “I’ll see you in my office now, Nott,” he said. He leveled a glare at the girl. “That means you can go, Granger.”

Hermione squeaked and ran. Teddy watched Snape follow the direction she’d gone with his eyes, and he swallowed slightly and told himself that Nott’s were NOTT scared and did NOTT let anyone intimidate them.

Still, it was a little hard to remember that when the door closed and he was alone in Snape’s office.

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Harry kept running, as fast as he could, he ran past statues and coats of arms and tapestries and torch brackets. He ran and kepy running like Dudley was chasing after him, like Uncle Vernon was trying to run him down in the car, like the snake from the zoo didn’t like him and was trying to nip him with big, poison fangs. He ran and ran and ran, until he could run no more. By that time he was out the front door of the castle, and he took deep puffs of air as he tried to keep running.

He heard someone behind him, calling his name, but he didn’t listen and he just kept trying to run, running and running past the lake and under the trees, and suddenly the sun was gone and it was shady and dark and there were eyes behind him, yellow eyes with dark red pupils and a growl—

Harry was so scared, of the eyes and the castle and everyone in it, that he kicked out and slammed his hands over his eyes and wished, desperately, all he had wished for a week—that he was back at the Dursley’s, that nothing had ever happened, that he was being beat up by Dudley and that Uncle Vernon was yelling about the disgraceful state of his hair and Aunt Petunia was making his whole head balf with her kitchen shears. He wished it was all back to normal.

And, with a loud bang, it seemed to be.