Harry didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t any spare seats where he could just sit and hide. And he couldn’t exactly just stand in the middle of the room. It would look even stranger if he went and stood in a corner.

McGonagall looked up from a squashy, red armchair and sighed at him, drawing her wand.

“For goodness sake Potter.”

She waved her wand and silently conjured an elegant, comfortable looking wooden chair in the space next to her. Harry sat down automatically, murmuring a quiet ‘Thanks’.

After a few moments, an odd movement filtered through Harry’s consciousness. Professor Sinistra was doing some sort of seated jig by moving her arms and legs about happily. She was singing too…

“Aurora, do try to show a little decorum.” McGonagall admonished her.

Sinistra ignored her and kept singing. Harry made out some of the words. “I don’t have to make the tea anymore. I don’t have to make the tea anymore.”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Sinistra.” Snape had appeared from somewhere. “I doubt Mr Potter is capable of brewing even tea by himself.”

“Come now, Severus.” Slughorn sounded more depressed than anything. Harry was willing to bet he hadn’t taken Harry’s recent defamation well. “The boy is evidently a capable brewer if given adequate instruction.”

Harry by now had got the hint and moved to pick an old, obviously well used kettle, to start making tea. It was an ancient looking thing and really heavy, Harry struggled to lift it with both hands. Luckily, Professor Flitwick was next to the fireplace and he whispered that Harry should use magic to move it. After setting it over the fire to boil, he tipped the equally huge pot half onto its side so he could look inside it. Harry swore there was mould and other, even less savoury things floating around. He wondered how many years it had been since anyone had washed it out.

He knew from experience that using scourgify would leave a taste of soap behind so he resigned himself to only rinsing it out, closing his eyes to avoid seeing what was sucked down the plug hole.

By then, the pot had boiled and Harry prepared the tea. He didn’t think he had ever used so many teabags at one time. When that was finished and left to brew, Harry turned around to ask where he could find some…

Mugs. There were mugs everywhere. Every teacher was holding one steadily out to their side, still engrossed in whichever activity they had been. Harry wasn’t sure if he had to worry about milk or sugar or anything but then he saw a milk jug floating around the room, professors absently siphoning some out into their own cups. Two cubes of white sugar flew out of the bowl next to the pot and headed straight for Flitwick. One dropped into his mug and the small man caught the other, crunching it happily.

As Harry walked around the room with the teapot, he marvelled at how well each mug suited its owner. Of course Professor McGonagall’s was a bone china tea cup. Hagrid’s obviously was about three times as big as everyone else. Slughorn’s was gaudy and large and comforting, the same way he enjoyed his life.  

The last person Harry reached was Snape, who was sitting in the corner of the room furthest from the fireplace. His mug was on the arm of his chair instead of out to the side and he had his hand resting over the top.

“Sir?”

“I drink coffee, Potter.”

Harry rolled his eyes, “Of course you do, sir. Would you like me to make it?”

Snape glared at Harry. “What exactly do you mean by that Pot-“

They were interrupted by McGonagall shouting across from the other end of the room, “Severus, do try to not engage Potter in a duel. We all know who would win and you would have to explain to Albus why his golden boy could now be neatly packed away in a mustard pot.”

Harry winced, Snape noticed. “Not quite so golden now, are we, Mr Potter?”

“Never was, sir. Can I get you your coffee?”

Snape nodded cautiously. “If you think you can manage not poisoning it.”

“Nothing I could do could be worse than this teapot was sir, trust me.”

Harry walked back across the room to the table where the teabags and coffee were kept. He filled a cafetiere and was asked to fill a few more mugs on his way over to Snape. He heard Professors Flitwick and Sprout chatting.

“Pomona, did Mr Potter and Severus just have an almost pleasant conversation?”

“Not by any normal standard, Filius. Maybe by theirs though.”

Snape looked suspiciously at his mug and summoned some sugar. He seemed to accept that Harry hadn’t poisoned it but that was probably less of a trust thing and more of a potion’s master thing. Or a ‘watching Harry every single step of the way thing’.

Harry went back to the teapot and pulled a small piece of chalk out of his pocket- he had picked it up earlier in the Defence classroom and must have forgotten to return it. He transfigured it into his own teacup. He was surprised when it turned out with an identical pattern to the one he always used at the Burrow. It had snitches and bludgers on it spinning around the outside. The mug was slightly bigger though, in this form. The Weasley’s had been a half-sized, child’s mug and would have been a little embarrassing. Harry poured himself a cup.

Professor McGonagall looked mildly approving when he sat back down next to her. He supposed the teacup was slightly better than the ones he had produced in class before. Against his will, he found himself drawn into the conversation.

“Potter, you should be able to give us a different approach to all of this. Can you think of anything to stop the despicable behaviour being shown by your classmates? This ridiculousness has been going on for long enough.”

“What are they doing?” Harry asked, confused. “I haven’t really seen anyone outside of classes, Professor.”

Madame Hooch huffed and answered. “The question you should be asking is, what haven’t they been doing? They are rude, destructive. They start fights in the corridors.”

Flitwick piped up, “I had four fourth years truant from my class this afternoon.”

“No Slytherins, I hope, Filius?”

“No, Severus. Not your precious snakes. A couple of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs. I found them in the kitchens and made the house elves keep them working through their free period. I’m having them catch up on what they have missed by tomorrow and they have double homework.”

“You should have given them a fortnight’s detention. All they’ve missed is an hour of their free time. We can’t go soft now that they are acting up.”

Harry frowned, “Professor McGonagall, does anyone not have a detention? Above the second years, I mean.”

She shook her head angrily. “Every single student is on that list in the great hall and has more than three detentions. Including your friend Miss Granger.”

Harry thought for a second. If everyone had a detention, it meant that they had been giving out blanket detentions. Maybe each head of house had done so. Or some teachers were particularly annoyed and had given them to their whole class.

“Professor, maybe if you didn’t give detentions for every little thing.” He hurried on as she was about to cut in, “Just for the moment. If you do that then they won’t feel like you are just thinking of excuses to put everyone in detention. Maybe if people were able to get some time back from detentions by behaving well, or something. Then they could get some time before the end of term…”

“They have earned their detentions, Mr Potter. The concept should not be a foreign…”

“Yes, sir.” Harry cut Snape off mid-sentence. Trying not to flinch at the glare that was sent his way, hurrying on before he was interrupted himself. “What I’m saying, Sir, is that they may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. That’s the way they see it.”

There were some puzzled looks.

“Oh for Merlin’s sake.” The Muggle Studies teacher burst out. “The boy is saying they feel as if they might as well be burned for an unforgivable as an Aguamenti. For a group of academics, you really do remain quite deliberately dense when it comes to obvious muggle proverbs.”

She was mostly ignored, this seemed to be a common rant from Professor Burbage.

Vector took it up again. “Potter, if they would start behaving themselves then they would stop getting detentions, it is simple. That is how it has always been done.”

“Not if you’re going to give a whole year detentions because of what a couple of people are doing. And why should that couple care if they get an extra detention on the end of a month of solid detentions? Especially when they know that’s going to happen even if they behave!”

There was a silence then as the professors considered this new angle, there was a couple of baffled nods as well.

“Maybe we will have to work something out later,” said McGonagall. “We should really talk about why you are here though. How did you find your first class?”

There was a worrying amount of interest as he described what he had done in the lesson, even from those who had never taught him. They all seemed completely confused by the interactive elements he had introduced, even Professor Burbage.

“So you didn’t ask them any questions?”

“I asked them all the same questions.”

“Didn’t they fall asleep?”

“They couldn’t fall asleep.” Harry sighed, “They had to pay attention to what was happening or they’d drop the ball.”

Two or three teachers laughed.

“Are you really trying to tell us that nobody stopped paying attention? You have a Zabini in that class.”

“Oh, yeah. But he had the best answers anyway so…”

There were some nods and murmurs of agreement. It seemed to be a pretty common problem for them.

When they had finished grilling him, the conversation turned back to what the hundreds of detainees were being assigned tonight. Professor McGonagall took the floor.

“For the first couple of weeks I’m going to need most of you supervising students every night. We should need fewer at the weekends. I am going to ask each head of house to watch a different year, you and the other professors in your house will supervise them for the evenings. I shall take the seventh years and any third years. Severus would you take the sixth years, Pomona the fifth and Fillius the fourth. Rolanda, if you don’t mind I would like for you to take any first and second years.”

“Minerva, as much as I would love to have all of the sixth years together in one room, I have to begin Potter’s ridiculous Latin lessons tonight. I can’t very well teach him with sixty other students lounging about.”

McGonagall sighed, “Severus, you will have to work something out. Some of the students will have an education in Latin, why not set them some work to do while you teach Potter? Have the others write lines or an essay or some such nonsense. Let them practice their dreadful essay technique, some of them have barely improved since the OWLs.”

Snape nodded, “In that case Potter, we will have our lesson in the larger hall off the third floor corridor instead, I believe you have been there?”

“Fluffy’s old room?” Harry checked. Snape nodded his head as the rest of the professors laughed. “Of course, Professor. 7 o’clock, there?”

“Do not be late. Minerva, you told the students they would be collected from the great hall tonight?” McGonagall nodded to him and Snape left, robes billowing. Professor Sinistra stood up to pour herself more tea and sent her cloak flying in mockery of the action, to wide amusement.

“Ok people, it really is time for us to move. Charity, would you take some of the fifth years for detention for me? I can’t have them all in the greenhouses at once.”

The staff stood up en masse to head to the great hall. Harry was amazed when he made it into the corridor and everyone seemed to take a different route to the great hall. He even spotted Professor Babbling- of ancient runes- scrawling a symbol on the wall to open a passageway which wasn’t even on the Marauder’s Map.

Harry turned to McGonagall in awe, “Do you know where that one comes out?”

She gave him a disapproving look and walked away down the marble staircase, rolling her eyes. That was a dull route to take- maybe it was her prerogative as depute headmistress. Within seconds, Harry was at the wall, trying to see if the rune was still visible or if there were any other marks on the wall. No luck. Harry resolved to watch much more closely the next time anyone used it.

The room on the third floor was enormous. Mind you, it had to be to have contained the huge dog. The ceilings were high and vaulted and the trapdoor firmly shut and padlocked. Harry wondered if they had dismantled the obstacles downstairs or if everything was still set up.

 He wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that Fred and George had broken in and brought back the nettle wine from Snape’s logic puzzle one day a couple of years ago, after remembering that part of the story. They were both intelligent and reckless enough to try it and to get away free, too. It was just bad luck that they had run into a particularly angry suit of armour while slightly the worse for wear and had to be patched up by a disapproving Madame Pomfrey.

Now the room was piled high with desks and old benches. That explained how Snape was going to get everyone to write at the same time, anyway. From the look of the place: Harry suspected they were going to use the room for some exams at the end of term. Logically, it made more sense than trying to fit every year into the hall when they didn’t have their NEWT or OWL exams.

The door opened with a bang and students scurried in in the way they only did when preceding Severus Snape into a room. Soon enough the whole of sixth year- minus the two invalids, Ron and Malfoy- were all sitting at desks watching Snape pace along the front.

“How many of you have had tutoring in Latin outside of school?” He demanded with no other introduction. Most of the Slytherins, a handful of Ravenclaws, Hermione and Justin Finch-Fletchley raised their hands. Snape moved them all down to sit in the same area and set them some declension work, whatever that was. One of the Slytherins looked at the instructions with wide eyes and reconsidered the extent of their knowledge of Latin, slinking off to join the rest of the year.

Snape set the rest of them various essays. Then he summoned Harry and the Slytherin who had been trying to escape the declensions down to two desks at the very front of the room.

“Mr Potter and Miss Greengrass, shall we begin with the simplest things and work our way up from there? You do know that most of the names and incantations we use for magic come from a Latin route?”

Harry did his best to focus. That wasn’t as hard as you might think. Having a two on one lecture from Snape did a lot to help you concentrate. There was no talking from the room behind them. It was eerily quiet, worse than the OWL exams last year because there wasn’t even examiners wandering about the room and whispering to each other. The voices of the three of them echoed oddly around the high ceiling. Harry saw some of the Slytherins trying to not smile at some of the mistakes he made. Even Hermione couldn’t contain a giggle when apparently he mispronounced something in such a way that Greengrass went bright red and turned wide eyes on her housemaster. Snape- of course- took points from Hermione.

They sat there for the whole three hours, just working their way through vocabulary and word definitions. Snape told Harry to look up a chapter in the Library before the next lesson as well. A bell rang through the school exactly at 10 o’clock, it must have been set especially for the detentions. Snape allowed everyone to tidy up and head back to their common rooms. The man swept along the rows, collecting all of the essays into a large pile which he eyed distastefully. He left the desks as they were instead of moving them back where they had been. It looked like this might become a staple detention.

Harry was just leaving with his bag when Snape called him back.

“Mr. Potter, I take it you are planning on using a similar lesson plan with your other class tomorrow? Do not forget that you have another class in the afternoon and then a double on Mondays. It would not be quite so impressive if you turned up without any kind of plan.” Snape sneered in his characteristic way.

 “Your experiment may have worked this afternoon but this form of new-age teaching will not catch on. Try to not totally ruin that class. If they begin to misbehave in their other lessons, we will all know who is to blame.”

Harry thought it wouldn’t be wise to point out that ‘new age teaching’ had already caught on in the muggle world- about twenty years ago. He didn’t quite understand why the wizarding world was so Victorian about some things but surely one of the professors had attended a muggle primary school at least. They seemed to be going with however Dumbledore would have been taught if he was a muggle child. Snape pushed past Harry to leave the room first and head down the corridor.

“Professor,” Harry shouted, remembering something, jogging after him to catch up. “Sir, can you give me a note to explain why I’m out after curfew.”

Snape almost smiled, “You want a pass?”

“Yes, sir.” Harry hoped the man would give him one and not just make a fuss.

Then the man did smile. Yes, it did look strange. “Potter, the staff have been waiting over five years for you to ask someone that question. I’ll write your note for you if you sign something saying I was the one you asked.”

“Why?”

“It’s a running joke in the staff room, Mr Potter, that you have never had a note after curfew. The first person you ask wins the pool. We all thought we had lost when Lupin came along, but you never asked him either.”

Harry blinked, bemused. “What?”

“It is not that difficult to understand, you nitwit. There has hardly been a week in all your years here where you haven’t been caught out of your common room after curfew. Never try to make a career out of spying on anyone by the way. How you can be quite so careless when you own an invisibility cloak is beyond me.”

The professor was scribbling down the two notes as he spoke. One for him and one for Harry. He held out the quill for Harry to sign one then signed the out of hours slip with a flourish.

“Now go to bed, you look ridiculously tired. Your fan club might start to worry.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Harry hurried out of the classroom and rushed down the corridor to his room. He didn’t see Snape standing in the doorway, watching him go. Even if he had, Harry would have thought the man expected him of being up to no good.

“You are late again.” The snake portrait said, “The headmaster was most displeased yesterday.”

“I have a note today.” Harry said, holding it up so that the portrait could see it clearly. “Look, I got permission from Professor Snape.”

The snake frowned and Harry panicked for a moment that it wasn’t going to be enough. As Snape had said, he didn’t ever ask for a note. What if this wasn’t what he was supposed to have?

“What’s the password then?”

Harry smiled, relieved, “The staff teapot hasn’t been cleaned out properly in the last decade.”

The snake nodded and the picture swung forwards. The snake retreated to a tree far away in the background of the oils and curled up around a branch. Harry accepted that as is invitation to go in and sleep.

As he began to climb through though, he heard the snake calling to him.

“You won’t be pleased but don’t take it out on me. I had nothing to do with anything.”

That didn’t bode well…

The room actually seemed a lot nicer than the way he had left it earlier. To start with, it looked a bit bigger- closer to the size of Dudley’s second bedroom. The bed looked like it was a full single bed and Harry looked forward to being able to fit. There was even a desk chair!

As Harry sat down in the chair to admire it, he noticed a scrap of paper there which he hadn’t left.

Mr Potter,

Further to our discussion yesterday. I have become aware that you have disregarded two of the conditions of your continued presence at Hogwarts. First; your non-adherence to the curfew imposed upon you and secondly; your use of magic when it is not permitted, I became aware of your transfiguration outwith allotted times.

As a consequence of this, you have forced me to impose a new sanction - I have temporarily taken custody of your father’s invisibility cloak. You may retain your wand on this occasion only, any new infarctions will trigger further action.

Albus Dumbledore

Headmaster

Harry blinked before throwing himself to his knees beside his trunk. He searched everywhere. It was true, Dumbledore had taken it away.

He felt the tears in his eyes and tried desperately to not let them fall. The cloak and the map were the only things he had which belonged to his father. He resolved to keep the map within hands’ reach at all times from now on.

The loss was a deep one and for the rest of the evening, Harry felt like he couldn’t focus on anything. He managed to get a little of his homework done, and he checked he had a rough outline for the morning’s lesson. After that he still felt like a part of him was missing- like he had lost a finger or toe.

Harry fell asleep clutching his photo album to his chest. He couldn’t comprehend why Dumbledore thought this was the best reaction to the situation. Harry had never known him to be cruel before.

Before breakfast, Harry headed to the defence classroom. There he found some books on ghouls and ghosts. Thankfully Gadding with Ghouls, the Lockhart text, wasn’t the only one available. Harry avoided that one.

He used the time to look up some of the information the second years had come up with the day before, to check that it was all true. Or at the very least, not likely to make anything worse. A few of the points were useful so he made notes to include them in today’s lesson. He was quite happy since he even had a plan for the afternoon lesson.

Breakfast was another quiet affair. The tension in the hall was still high and there was still no sign of the headmaster. Harry was glad about that, he didn’t think he could talk to the man at the moment. Harry could practically see Professor McGonagall getting more and more irritated with her house. Most of the students were muttering between themselves or staring sullenly up at the head table.

Two exceptions to that were Ron and Hermione. Hermione was lecturing Ron in that constant way she had, which bordered more on nagging. Ron just looked confused. Harry could only hope that Hermione was giving him a good representation down there. It would be bad if Ron was mad at him too. At the moment, he just seemed to not understand why Harry was sitting up there while he was stuck with a solid month of detentions.

Malfoy still wasn’t back at the Slytherin table yet and Harry was struggling between feeling incredibly guilty and relieved at the same time.

 “Mr Potter.” The sound of Snape’s voice this early in the morning made Harry give up on mangling his breakfast, to turn and talk to the man who was sitting three empty seats away. Snape looked quite agreeable- for him, that is, the same look on anybody else’s face would have made Harry disentangle himself from the conversation as quickly as possible.

“I was looking for some assistance in organising my detentions for Saturday. I was wondering if I might have your assistance as a part of your…obvious repentance.” The man’s voice dripped sarcasm and Harry’s insides twisted painfully. It probably wasn’t an open invitation.

He gulped, “I suppose so, Sir. What was your plan?” Normally Snape would refuse to tell him, and just give him a time and place for detention. But apparently not this time.

“I have recently been reminded of a source of some uncommon potions’ ingredients. I am going to lead a small expedition, Professor Slughorn will be involved in the preservation and storage after we have taken a team to collect ingredients.”

Harry was confused, “Why do you want me to come?” A pause “Sir.”

Snape looked at him as if he should already understand what he was talking about. Harry just stared back blankly. After a few moments, it was obvious Harry didn’t have a clue.

“Mr Potter, thanks to you, there is a giant basilisk corpse in the bowels of the school. As you should be aware, even with your limited capabilities in Potions, Basilisk ingredients are incredibly rare and much sought after. The scales, venom and blood among other things can be used in some very potent brews. For obvious reasons, you would need to be present on such an expedition.”

Harry’s eyes opened wide as he understood. “You mean you want to go down to the Chamber of Secrets?”

Snape took a steadying breath, trying to regain some of his patience.

“Yes Po- Mr Potter. That is what we were planning to do. Does that sound possible?”

Harry nodded slowly. “It should be sir. We’d need a way back up of course, Fawkes probably couldn’t carry everyone. We’d need a way to get through where the roof had collapsed as well, but I think a few controlled reductos would take care of that. Oh, and I’d need to open all the doors as well of course.”

Snape just nodded, pushing away his empty plate, “I will be using about fifteen students from above fifth year. We will take precautions to make sure nobody is in any danger.”

“Yes Sir. Sir?”

“What, Mr Potter?”

“Ginny Weasley, Professor.” Harry hesitated, “Could you make sure she isn’t on your list please? She still has nightmares about him. I don’t want her to have to be down there again.” Harry thought privately that he didn’t really want to go back down there either. He would have asked that Ron be left in the school as well, but it was really unlikely that Snape would have considered to bring him anyway.

Snape was giving him a strange look, as if he was trying to decipher him like an essay which made no sense, one of Crabbe’s perhaps.

“I am sure that can be arranged.” Snape got out of his seat and spun away without any attempt to end the conversation. Harry jumped out of his skin when the bell rang a moment later for the first class. Harry had to take two shortcuts and run to the Defence classroom to make it there on time.