Ginny slipped out of the common room and the Fat Lady didn’t even open her eyes as she swung open. Some nights, she snuck around the school just to sneak around the school and to have a little time alone in places she wasn’t supposed to be. Hogwarts had always seemed so different at night, with every one but her safely tucked away in their respective dormitories, more magical, more like Hogwarts, as if the school hid something of itself when the walls were full of people. There was a great feeling of quiet to the stone corridors, an emptiness that seemed to compel her own silence, urging her to search and find the school’s secrets, but not to tell them, to lock them away again even in the day.

Over the summer, the feeling had lingered into the sunlight, and she had almost been reluctant to mend the battle scars a long with the professors and the other students who had stayed. Some of the marks should remain.

Her heart sped up and she smiled as she made her way down from the tower, down through the myriad of twisting corridors and into the middle parts of the castle where there were no windows and no moon beams for her to see her way with. There was safety in the deep darkness, for if she couldn’t see anything by the moonlight, neither could anyone see her.

She peaked around a corner into the blackness, hearing soft snuffling sounds and seeing the luminous yellow eyes of Mrs. Norris, searching for students like her. Tiptoeing back down the hall she had come, she circled around to avoid the foul cat. Older students were almost never caught out of bed as the younger years were, because those who continued to sneak around knew how to get way.

She smiled complacently as she made her way lower into the school, but stopped when she heard a sniffling very different from Mrs. Norris. “What’re you doing here, kid?” she asked curiously, standing next to the first year holding up his wand, lit with a weak lumos.

He stopped crying at once, sucking in great ragged breaths as he struggled to stem the flow from his eyes. “What are you doing here?” he returned suspiciously.

“I just needed to get away from my house for a while, be alone, but I asked you first, didn’t I?”

“’m not doing anything,” he muttered, scowl at her, but he was still gulping and trying not to snivel, so she didn’t even give the sour expression a thought.

“Except crying?”

His scowl deepened and a few tears fell, splattering against the floor. “’m not crying.”

“Course you’re not,” she said cheerfully, “that’s just dew falling off your face.”

“I’m not!” he shouted, and she put a finger to her lips.

“Filch is about, and Stalk has patrolling duties on Fridays,” she winced.

“I’m not crying,” he hissed.

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?”

He glared at her again and then sniffed hard. “Some of the fourth years keep taking my stuff and hiding it,” he muttered, “and I keep getting detentions when I don’t find my books in time for class, and then everyone teases me, and the old first year are just rotten to the new first years like me, and I had to go to class this morning because someone hid my shoes…” She glanced down at his feet, but she couldn’t see anything except his face in the pitiful light of his spell.

She patted his back awkwardly as he started crying again in earnest. “Do you know how to do a summoning charm? No, you don’t do you; you don’t learn those until fourth year.” He shook his head. “Well, if you flick your wand like this,” she took his lit wand, “and say ‘accio’ and then whatever they took, it will come flying back to you.”

“What if they hide it outside the dorms?” he asked quietly, but steadily.

“My boyfriend had a summoning charm so powerful that he summoned his broom from his dorm all the way to the grounds. You’d have to practice to get that good, though.”

“Oh,” he smiled, but his eyes were still puffy, and his face covered in blotches. “Thanks.” He flicked his wand the way she had showed him and she saw his house badge in the still lit tip.

“You’re a Slytherin?” she asked, taken aback.

His jaw set and his chin tightened. “Yeah,” he replied defensively. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Hey!” she said brightly, “do you want me to show you how to sneak into the kitchens?”

When, later in the school year, several of his sixth year house mates were griping bout the terrible Ginny Weasley, Matthew Newbury told them that she wasn’t so bad, which only made them complain about him instead.

~*~

Saturday the thirteenth of February was one of those bright sunny winter days where the sunlight never seemed to touch the ground or make the air any warmer. Harry glared at the mirror, running a wet comb through his hair over and over trying to get it, if not flat, at least not quite as prickly. Ron snickered at him. “Primping, are you?”

“Shut it, would you?”

“Look mate, it isn’t like she doesn’t know what you look like.”

“No idea why she likes it though," Seamus called out from inside the dormitory.

Harry grunted, throwing down the comb, giving up in disgust. “You can shut it too,” Ron shouted back in his defense. Neville and Dean threw their pillows at Seamus, who tossed them back and aimed his own at Ron’s head.

Harry straightened his shirt collar compulsively as they poured out into the common room. Hermione tried very hard not to giggle when she saw his waterlogged hair, so what came out instead was a sort of snorting twitter. “It never lies flat,” he complained by way of explanation.

“Yes, well,” Hermione patted her own hair affectionately, “Neither does mine.”

Harry thought it was rotten of them all to keep teasing him about his grooming after they had left the tower. They stopped though, when Ginny told them she’d leave Dungbombs in their beds. Ron still had to eat gingerly because of the set of tiny holes the acid pop pieces had burned in his tongue.

“I can’t wait to get into Honeydukes,” Ron said brightly, trying to shift the conversation. “I’m all out of chocolate.”

“You’re all out of chocolate the day after you buy any, Ron,” Hermione shot back exasperated.

“Yeah, well, I like chocolate.”

“Most people do, but they don’t eat themselves sick as soon as they get their hands on some.”

“I need to go to Zonkos, I’m all out of Stink Pellets.”

“You’re all out of Stink Pellets the day after you by them, Ginny,” Harry teased, and Hermione grinned.

“Show some loyalty to your family,” Ron said, open mouthed, his hand on his chest.

“George doesn’t make Stink Pellets, does he?” Ginny retorted, a spark of something more than irritation coloring her words. Her brother’s mouth was too full of scrambled eggs to answer.

~*~

A pretty witch in sparkling purple robes waved to Severus, and her friend sitting with her winked. He pressed his teeth together for a moment and sat down across the room, a stack of essays in his arms. Minerva didn’t understand why he would spend student Hogsmeade weekends at a table in the Three Broomsticks marking papers. Diligence was all very well she said, but he had to get out of his office and talk to people sometime. When he had been a seventh year student, he had worked on his own essays at a table in the Three Broomsticks, and the pattern was set. It worked for him.

Severus did not like to change things that he knew worked, and he didn’t like to admit when they had stopped working. He had never been a civil man, or a sociable one, and he had never seen the need to be either. Yet, as Potter had been so kind as to point out to him the week before, he couldn’t act like Severus Snape if he didn’t want people to realize he was Severus Snape.

He clenched his hand and the quill he had been holding in it snapped. Muttering darkly under his breath, he picked up the sharpened piece and did his best to write with it, shortened as it was. The letters he formed with it were clumsy, but they evened out, and his intent was perfectly clear, in some cases the blots of ink making it more so.

It had never occurred to him when Potter had stripped him of the glamour that he would spend the foreseeable future actually having to be pleasant to people. He could just hear Minerva telling him that he had a second chance with people and that he should take advantage of it. It was a wonderful gift. He sipped on his butterbear resentfully.

The witch in the purple robe wove through the crowded room and pulled out a chair at his table. She smiled at him. “May I sit here?”

He bit back his retort that she had a perfectly suitable seat across the room from him already and so she shouldn’t be bothering him and nodded, grimacing.

“Thank you, you looked lonely over here by yourself; I thought I’d buy you a drink.”

Severus looked up from the essays, alarmed. “What?”

“A drink,” she smiled again, showing off her white, even teeth, “seeing as it is the day before Valentines Day, after all.”

“No thank you,” he managed, successfully not snapping at her, and then, because he felt awkward, “I’m only having the one, you see.”

She smoothed her hair, which was blond and curly, and her robe, which was tight. Severus fought to keep his face impassive when she giggled, “you don’t mind if I order something for myself then?”

“No, of course not,” he said even as she waved for another drink and he realized his input wasn’t necessary.

“I see you’re a teacher up at the school,” she cocked her head and sipped her redcurrant rum. “What do you teach?”

“Defense against the Dark Arts,” he said guardedly, barely forcing down the urge to tell her it was none of her business and could she please go away so that he could go back to marking the pitiful offerings of his third years.

“I haven’t seen you around before, are you new this year? I saw in the Prophet that the headmistress had to hire four new teachers in one year, can you imagine?” She was quite nice looking, he thought, if overly talkative and too inclined to giggle.

It struck him abruptly that without the glamour he might be attractive, possibly even hansome. Much as he had disliked the man, James Potter had been so, and his son was, even if he was a bit scruffy. The butterbeer and his breakfast began to churn in his stomach.

“Yes,” he stared at her, “I’m new.”

“Well at least you have plenty of company.”

“Excuse, me,” he mumbled. “But I really should finish these,” he gestured to the pile of essays.

“Oh of course,” she smiled politely and wrote something down on a spare piece of parchment she had in her purse. “There’s my address if you want to floo me later.” She smiled at him one last time and walked away, wobbling a bit in her high heels. Severus balled up the parchment and threw it into a trash bin near his table as soon as she wasn’t looking at him.

~*~

Harry and Ginny’s breath floated before them in clouds and harry tucked his hands into his arms to keep them warm. She slipped her arm into his and drew close to him and sighed contentedly. “You’re warm.”

“Oh.”

“That’s the only reason I’m cuddling you.”

“Really.”

“Really!” she insisted, eyes wide with pretend sincerity.

“Well alright then.” She snickered.

She pulled him into Zonkos, and Harry started shivering in the sudden warmth. “Do you think I can smuggle a Fanged Frisbee back with me?” she asked, fingering one. It snapped at her and she patted it. It shuddered and started panting happily.

“It might bite you if you tried to smuggle it in under your robe.”

It wriggled as she kept petting it. “True. Do you think if I fed Mrs. Norris hiccough sweets she’d be easier to hear coming?”

“I thought you liked cats.”

“I do like cats, but nobody likes Mrs. Norris,” she picked up a bag of the sweets, “except Filch, and he doesn’t count.” Grabbing a giant bag of Stink Pellets, Ginny grinned. “I have plans for these.”

“How many plans do you have?”

“As many as I have Stink Pellets.”

“So if you bought more you’d have more plans?”

“Yeah, that’s how it usually works.”

“Well that’s good then.” Ginny snorted.

On a table in the middle of the store were heaps of yo-yos and a sign saying “screaming yo-yos, half off.” She picked one up and weighed it in one hand. “This I could smuggle in.” The tossed it back and forth between her hands and threaded her way though the mass of students to pay.

She dropped the Stink Pellets, the yo-yo and the hiccough sweets on the counter. A bored freckly wizard with a receding chin glanced down at the items and drawled, “Seven Sickles.”

Ginny opened her coin pouch and poured out the contents. Five Sickles and a stream of Knuts spilled out onto the counter. She counted out the Knuts as quickly as she could, sorting them into piles. “Twenty seven, twenty eight, six Sickles,” she proclaimed, pushing the twenty nine Knuts to one side and counting the rest. At twenty six, she ran out of coins. She swore under her breath and Harry dug three more knuts out of his pocket and pushed them over with Ginny’s money. “No,” Ginny insisted, pushing them back to him. “I don’t want your help paying for anything.”

“It’s just three Knuts,” Harry told her, “It’s not like it’s much money.”

“No!” she yelled, “I’ll pay for things, on my own!” Her ears turned the same cherry red as Ron’s did and her freckles stood out dully against her flushed face. He nodded reassuringly and took the coins. “Would you take this back for me?” she asked, handing him the bag of hiccough sweets.

He left the sweets on the table and waited outside by the door, thankful to be out of the packed store. When she came out with her bags, she smiled at him. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s alright,” Harry said relieved, shifting his feet.

Ginny grinned and pulled her arms under her robes, bag in hand. “I always wear this shirt to Hogsmeade,” she told him when she tugged the robes back onto her arms. She held her arms out for him to see, bunched the sleeves of her jumper up to her upper arms, and pulled the fabric of her robe and shirt taut around her forearms. Against one wrist he could see the bulge of the yo-yo and her other arm looked bigger with bags of stink pellets running from her elbow to her wrist. “It buttons at the wrist so things don’t fall out.”

Her arm snaked around his again and she rested her head against his shoulder. He let her guide him up the path to the Shrieking Shack. “I don’t like the first Hogsmeade weekend of the year much,” she mused, “with all of the new third years running around for the first time. We didn’t have Hogsmeade weekends last year.”

Harry wrapped his arm around her shoulders and rubbed one of them gently. It was the first time he had heard her talk about the school under Voldemort’s reign. Most people wanted to forget it had ever happened. “I’m sorry,” he said lamely.

“It’s the third time though, so most of the third years know the Shrieking Shack is boring.”

“Don’t most people know what it was really for now?”

“Not really, the people who do know aren’t telling, are we?” They sat down on a small knoll and leaned back against the fence posts.

The day grew warmer slowly as they talked. “The Shack isn’t that boring,” Harry murmured, “I pretended to be a ghost and threw mud at Malfoy third year.”

“I know. I wanted an invisibility cloak so much after that.”

“You’d be real trouble with one, wouldn’t you?”

“I already am real trouble.”

“Intolerable then.” She laughed and lay back on the grass. Harry smiled a little reluctantly and dwelled happily for a moment on how very different Valentines Day in Hogsmeade with Ginny was from with Cho. She grabbed his arm and pulled him down into the grass with her and kissed his lips. He let her before he fell down to lie beside her. With a touch of guilt, he knew that he would have to tell her eventually about Eileen, even if he didn’t tell her about Snape, because Ginny was supposed to be his girlfriend.

Though he wasn’t going to tell her right then, not yet.

~*~

The apples bobbed behind Professor Prince’s head as he lectured, and every so often one of them would tap him on the shoulder and he would spin around to see what was behind him, but each time, they shot high above his head, out of sight. Ginny’s wand flicked surreptitiously behind her book, directing them in their flight. The class watched as one of the apples touched him again and he twitched so viciously that he knocked it again as he turned. Ginny guided it carefully under his legs and up in front of him, sending it up to rest near the ceiling. She could hear his teeth grind together from where she sat in the front row and she saw his hands spasm open and closed before she turned her attention back to the apples.

Periodically, someone in the class would break into a short fit of strangled giggles as the apples looped and whirled in the air and Ginny would try not to grin. She sent one of the apples swooshing though Professor Prince’s pony tail, which swung back and forth like a pendulum. He twisted around as Ginny sent the apples skyward, but that time, when he couldn’t see anything, he looked up.

He pointed his wand at the apples floating against the ceiling and sent them zooming towards Ginny. She stared at them wide eyed, preparing top duck under her book when they stopped abruptly over her desk and fell onto it with twin splats as they were transfigured into apple sauce. “Ten points from Gryffindor, Miss Weasley,” he spat, “and detention.” Ginny grimaced and vanished the applesauce.

As the class ended, Ginny put away her books and brushed something rubbery in her bag with the back of her hand. She smiled, reassured that it was still there. While Prince’s back was to her, she cracked open the window a tiny bit and left. The open window tugged at her thoughts, demanding she use it all though her next few classes. There were no nagging feelings of guilt as she pulled out the fleshy string like object and examined it to make sure it was still intact. Hermione had asked her to keep her ears open, but she planned to do more than that. She planned to extend her reach a bit.

~*~

Two days later on Saturday afternoon, Ginny leaned against the wall in the class room directly above the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and dropped her treasure down though the window, an extendable ear. She lowered it down until it rested between the window to Prince’s office and the classroom and put the other end to her ear.

Hermione had asked for her help, she reminded herself, before Harry told her whatever it was he hadn’t told Ginny, before she had told her she didn’t need her help anymore. Actually, Hermione had told her it was nothing, but Ginny’s curiosity had already been peaked. There was a part of her that wished she could have found out the secret first, for once in her life know something that Ron and his friends didn’t know. She should have something like that.

She had spent months of on and off listening in on Prince’s office, only to have nothing to show for it, no suspicious conversations, no discussions with co-conspirators, nothing at all, not even a hint at what she should be looking for, and the more she listened, the more frustrated she became, and the less she heard the surer she became that Prince was up to something.

A flash of something that might have been guilt passed though her as she heard Harry’s voice, but she ignored it. Harry deserved it really, if he treated her as less than he treated Hermione, and if he didn’t know that she would realize he was leaving her out.

Whatever secret Prince had, and whatever Harry and Hermione shared about it, she would find it. It was her right.