"MEOW! MEOW! MEOW! MEOW!"

The cat's repeated yowls echoed eerily up the grand staircase of Hogwarts castle as Mrs. Norris stood guard over her find.

"MEOW! MEOW!"

Argus Filch shuffled quickly along the corridor, his familiar's voice sounding louder as he approached the entrance hall.

"What is it, my sweet?" the caretaker crooned in his roughened voice. "What have you found?"

"MEOW!" Mrs. Norris' lamplit eyes glowed orange as she poked her head around the plinth of one of the castle's winged boar statues. "MEOW!" Seeing that Filch had spotted her, Mrs. Norris disappeared again, obviously expecting her owner to follow and investigate.

Filch did not disappoint his cat. He pursued his feline companion around the statue and stopped dead, a wonderfully fiendish smile curling his cracked lips up over stained, crooked teeth. "Good girl," he murmured in delight, staring down at the cat, whose tail twitched in triumph as she sat by the downed forms of two sizeable Slytherin miscreants.

After giving his pet a fond pat on the head, Filch stepped out into the entrance hall and nabbed a passing Hufflepuff Fourth Year who was just leaving the Great Hall. The wide-eyed girl listened to his whispered instructions, nodded, and ran off toward the dungeons.

Several minutes later, Severus Snape billowed into view and followed Filch's pointing finger to the situation sprawling on the stone floor.

"MEOW!" Mrs. Norris greeted the Potions Master, then sniffed significantly at the large Second Years lying on the cold stones.

Snape's brows drew together in an angry black line as he surveyed the unconscious students from his own house.

With a wordless nod to Filch, the dark man cast Levitation Charms on the boys and began directing their unconscious forms to float up the staircase. At the three wizards reached the third floor and headed down the corridor toward the Hospital Wing, Snape heard a final echoing "MEOW" filtering up from below. Snorting to himself something that could have been a commentary on fleas and furballs, the man floated the Slytherin students through the double doors to the hospital ward.

"Why, Professor Snape!" exclaimed Poppy Pomfrey, scurrying past with a loaded tray. "What – or whom – do you have there?"

Before Snape could respond, the Medi-witch disappeared behind a concealing curtain, and he could hear a low exchange of feminine voices. Within the minute, Pomfrey reappeared, her tray now empty.

"Oh, just put them over there," the woman said quickly as she spotted the still-floating boys. Her hand waved vaguely toward the opposite side of the ward from that containing the curtained-off bed. She rushed into her office and began pulling out glass vials from a cabinet.

Snape obligingly dropped Vincent Crabbe onto the nearest bed, and Gregory Goyle landed atop the next bed. Neither appeared on the verge of regaining consciousness.

"My, my…" Madam Pomfrey emerged from her office, the tray reloaded. "And what has happened?" Her wand was already out as she approached the newest patients.

"Mr. Filch found them unconscious, lying on the floor, not far from the entrance to the Great Hall."

Pomfrey ran a quick diagnostic on Crabbe, frowned, then repeated it. Balancing the tray expertly, she whirled and repeated her motions over the bed containing Goyle.

"Hmphh…" And then she was off, scurrying back down the ward toward the curtained bed.

Snape followed. Hmphh? That was … unexpected.

But Pomfrey was already returning, trayless.

"About my Slytherins – "

"They're not unconscious, Severus," Pomfrey said. "Not technically, that is, although they're certainly dead to the world."

"I don't understand," Snape stated flatly.

"They're asleep!" Pomfrey told him, now running a more detailed diagnostic scan on Crabbe.

"What!"

"Asleep," Pomfrey repeated, now reassessing Goyle. "And drugged. A very powerful sleeping potion, if I'm not mistaken."

Snape looked at her in disbelief. "How – ?"

Pomfrey illuminated her wand and carefully examined the boys closely, then took a small cloth and wiped Goyle's lips. A dark smear stained the pristine fabric. She collected a second sample from Crabbe, carefully sniffing the fabric. "Smells like chocolate," she announced. "They may have ingested the potion inadvertently."

"You think?" Snape's voice sounded hard.

Pomfrey snorted, although her snort sounded more ladylike than Snape's own. "I seriously doubt they'd drug themselves with sleeping potion outside the Great Hall. Don't you agree, Severus?"

The Potions Master rolled his eyes. "As dense as these two are… Well, perhaps not," he conceded reluctantly. "But, then, who DID drug them?"

"That's for you to find out," Pomfrey replied, sounding irritated. "I have another patient to tend to." She flicked her wand several times, and the Slytherin boys were pajama-ed and tucked under the covers of their respective beds. "Nothing to do but let them sleep it off, I'm afraid. They should make it down to breakfast tomorrow," she assured Snape.

The Medi-witch hurried down the ward to the curtained bed once more.

After a moment's hesitation, Snape followed more slowly, his trailing ebony robes whispering across the worn stones. He stopped before reaching the curtained-off bed, respecting the privacy of the unseen female patient. But he needed a further word with Poppy Pomfrey – a word, and two blood samples. And those chocolate-stained cloths. One way or another, he intended to get to the bottom of this.

A chuckle from behind the curtain caught Snape's attention. A MALE chuckle. But earlier, he'd distinctly heard a female voice coming from that private cubicle…

"Wait right there," Pomfrey's voice ordered.

"Well, she's hardly going to go around the castle like this, Ma'am."

A MALE VOICE. A very FAMILIAR male voice!

Pomfrey popped through the curtain and Snape caught a glimpse of red hair hovering over the bed. Without any warning, Snape abruptly thrust his black-buttoned sleeve through the aperture between the curtains and tugged on the elbow belonging to the red hair…

"Weasley!"

Ron Weasley yelped as Snape yanked him past the curtains.

"Professor! Really!" admonished Pomfrey, before she scurried away to her office again.

A familiar black mop appeared from beyond the far side of the cubicle.

"Potter!"

Both Gryffindors' eyes bulged with trepidation, it seemed to Snape. And their expressions appeared unaccountably guilty. But then – they were Gryffindors, after all. And Gryffindors were always Up To Something which necessitated experiencing a guilty conscience!

"Uh … hi, Professor," Harry Potter said rather weakly. Of all the rotten luck…

Potter. Weasley. Snape's black eyes flicked to the closed curtains. An unseen female. His lips tightened. Granger, obviously. Then he frowned. TWO trays of Potion vials? What the hell was WRONG with Granger?

He made to step forward, but Weasley flung his slight body in front of him to block the tall man's way.

"You can't go in there!" shouted Ron, his voice sounding desperate. If Snape found out … everything…

The Potions Master raised an eyebrow.

"You can't go in there!" Ron repeated. "It's a – it's a – "

"It's a FEMALE thing!" blurted Harry. He'd heard Aunt Petunia put off Uncle Vernon's inquisitiveness on more than one occasion by voicing that very phrase. "A female thing," he reiterated firmly.

"A female thing?" Snape said silkily. "But the two of you were in with her, were you not?" Determined to see exactly what Potter and Weasley seemed equally determined to prevent him from seeing, Snape shoved Weasley aside and pulled open the curtain.

And Snape LAUGHED!

And LAUGHED!

And LAUGHED, LAUGHED, LAUGHED, LAUGHED!

Hermione Granger glared fiercely at him from a black-furred cat's face and Snape LAUGHED!

Hermione's pointed black ears flattened down in fury and Snape LAUGHED!

Doubled over with the unexpected assailing mirth, Severus Snape staggered sideways, groping for the nearest hard-backed visitor's chair. When he found it, he collapsed awkwardly upon it, his long legs sprawling forward while his head dangled backwards over the chair's top bar. The echoes of his helpless laughter hurtled from wall to wall, rebounding upon themselves time and again.

Snape finally had to wipe tears – TEARS! – from the corners of his eyes, and still he laughed!

Madam Pomfrey returned, tsk-tsking as she passed Snape, and even that struck him as unaccountably hilarious, so he laughed some more, gasping a bit now as he struggled to undo some of the buttons down the front of his coat.

When he had finally caught his breath, Snape snorted loudly. "A FEMALE thing?" he sneered. "Looks more like a FELINE thing, if you ask me."

"Nobody asked you, Severus," Pomfrey stated coldly. "Now please leave my patient in peace. She's already suffered a severe trauma without your interference." When the man seemed disinclined to move from the chair, the Medi-witch gave his shoulder a firm shake. "Go. Away. NOW. You may check on your Slytherins tomorrow, if they don't make it to breakfast."

Slowly, Snape got to his feet, his coat hanging open over his black waistcoat.

"A female feline thing," he said, glancing from Potter to Weasley and back. "I know the two of you had something to do with this," he said, pointing at Granger, his voice finally returning to the threatening baritone they knew so well. "And there will be a reckoning," he promised.

With that black pall hanging satisfactorily over the Golden Trio, Snape took his leave, his robes chuckling in his wake. He spared the barest of glances at Crabbe and Goyle as he passed their beds and exited the Hospital Wing.

He'd made it halfway to the staircase before the memory caught up to him. Growling audibly, Snape whirled and stalked back to the infirmary. His robes whipped at his heels as he stormed through the doors.

Over Madam Pomfrey's bent shoulder, Hermione saw him coming and let out a squeak. Harry and Ron spun around just in time for the Potions Master to grasp their forearms in his relentless grip.

"Professor – ?" Harry gasped out.

"Explain to me … please…" Snape hissed, "why the two of you are attired in SLYTHERIN uniforms!"

The Gryffindor boys gulped fearfully, and the bedridden cat whimpered.

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