Snape comes into the common room with Blaise a few minutes later, and he tells the prefects to help him move the sofas closest to the new entrance out of the way, forcing the students back a little. "Come away from this part of the common room, if you will," Snape orders briskly, and the Slytherins move back by about two feet, but as soon as Snape turns to glance into the little hall, all of the students step back to where they were before.

He doesn't bother to correct them.

The Slytherin entrance opens once more, and Harry glances at McGonagall and Dumbledore as they enter the common room, the both of them looking rather harried. Despite McGonagall's Gryffindor house, Harry can't help but think that in her deep green robes and similar hat, she matches the Slytherin common room's colour scheme perfectly. He wouldn't be stupid enough to say so, of course, but he's allowed to think it.

"Incendio," Dumbledore casts quietly, lighting the torches on the inside of the little corridor, but Harry can only see two torches in the little hall before it takes a sharp left turn: without actually sticking his head into the hall, he can't see what it leads into.

The Slytherins reluctantly move to sit down around the common room as the three teachers disappear into the new room. Homework lies uncompleted on tables, students pretending to work on it as they listen carefully for whatever sound they can glean from the quiet echoes of McGonagall's voice; more than a few of them curse Snape and Dumbledore's respective tendency to speak in barely more than a whisper.

Harry sits with Afifa and some of the other seventh years, and while they're making an attempt to talk about a new shop opening on an offshoot of Diagon Alley, one with a 17+ ageline on its entranceway. Harry would normally want to find out anything he could about a shop like that, but for the time being he's as distracted as the seventh years are.

When Dumbledore finally comes out of the room, followed by McGonagall and Snape, the Slytherins are all on the edges of their seats, leaning right forwards and watching Dumbledore in the most rapt silence he's likely ever heard from Slytherin house.

"Now then," Dumbledore says pleasantly, putting his hands together, "I believe it is time for us to go to the great hall for dinner, children."

"But, Professor," Afifa says, "What is it?"

"Time for dinner," Dumbledore repeats in a surprisingly kind and grandfatherly tone, given the number of eyes boring into him. The Slytherins mill about in their places, making their reluctance known.

"Go," orders Snape, and they each move towards the door. It would normally be proper etiquette to allow staff to lead the students from the common room, but McGonagall and Snape purposefully hang back, presumably to make sure no one tries to stay in the common room and come to dinner late. Harry moves along with the other Slytherins, and he waves to Hermione as he comes into the hall.

"Are you okay?" she mouths at him, furrowing her brow.

"Yeah. No detention," Harry mouths back, and she looks surprised, but gives him a thumbs up before she turns back to her conversation with Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown. Judging by their expressions, Hermione is enjoying it more than they are - Harry guesses they started out talking about Lockhart, and that Hermione got off track talking about actual defence against the dark arts.

"Excuse me!" says a voice behind him, and Harry turns, glancing down at the younger boy. His robes are a little overlarge for him, partly because he's so skinny, Harry suspects, and the little Gryffindor is wide-eyed and looking up at Harry. "Aren't you Harry Potter?"

"No," Harry lies, "I'm Draco - Harry's over there-"

"No, no, you're Harry Potter, I can see your scar!" he says excitedly, and it's only now that Harry sees the camera around Colin's neck. "Is it true that you're a Parselmouth? Does your scar ever hurt? Could I get your autograph? Do-"

"What's your name?" Harry asks loudly, cutting through the other boy's nonsense, and the kid stares up at him.

"Colin! Colin Creevey!"

"Go sit down, Colin," Harry says.

"But-"

"No. You want to talk to me, you don't do it at dinner," Harry says clearly, and he turns around, sitting beside Blaise and adjusting his collar, feeling more than a little bit uncomfortable. Creevey's only a year younger than him, but the awe he'd been directing at Harry had been... Uncomfortable. He scurries off to the Gryffindor table, sitting with some of his first year friends, and Harry shakes his head.

"I thought you liked attention," Theodore says in a teasing tone, nudging him, and Harry shakes his head, pressing his lips together.

"Attention's fine, but I want friends and allies, Theodore. What sort of idiot wants blind followers?" There's an uncomfortable silence, and Harry realizes the unfortunate nature of his phrasing all at once, a thick, sick feeling sinking down and into his stomach. For once, he's grateful when Dumbledore starts to talk.

"Eat, everyone. The next few days will be interesting for you." With that cryptic message, Dumbledore sits down, and food appears on the table. Harry eats in mostly silence, listening to the other second years theorize as to the new room; there's quiet talk all up and down the Slytherin table, and it's a nice distraction. Whenever Harry glances back towards the other house tables he can see groups of students watching him and whispering about him, whispering about how he's a Parselmouth.

And that's without even knowing what he'd unlocked in the common room.

---

"Oh," Harry whispers as Afifa pushes him forwards and into the room.

It's a broad room with eight neat, symmetrical walls, and the octagon is continued in the ceiling, where eight sheets of black glass are drawn into a centrepiece. The glass shines in the light from the torches that have now been lit, reflecting it down again. It's a modest library, with four of its walls holding floor-to-ceiling shelves, and in the middle of the room is another torch, four shelves spanning out from it in a plus sign.

The shelves are only three feet high, and along their surface is a thick layer of dust, but not a single one of the shelves around them is holding a book. The only piece of furniture is the library's central desk, upon which is a large, leather-bound book not dissimilar to the one in the main library. Harry looks at it, turning one of the pages, but the parchment is utterly blank: it's not like Mrs Pince's book, which has dozens of library books listed on each page.

"It's empty," Harry says, and a seventh year pats his back.

"Cheer up," he says lightly, "It won't be for long."

"What do you mean?" Harry asks, and the boy laughs. Alexi, Harry thinks his name is.

"Do you truly think, Potter, that a library adjoining our common room is going to go unused?" The boy gives him a little grin and Harry smiles a little, heading to the dormitories for bed. He pulls down his copy of Dastardly Defences, beginning to study the Pimple Jinx.

Draco mumbles a "goodnight" to him, crawling under his covers and pressing his face into the pillows. Harry smiles at the green and blond lump in the next bed, shaking his head, and looks back to his book, dimming the candle on his side of the bed and pulling the curtains on the right side of his bed. The curtains of their beds are thick, and they block most of the light.

Not that Draco would actually notice.

Harry is almost entirely certain Draco could sleep through several explosions if he had a thick enough blanket: for someone so incredibly focused on his own dignity in day-to-day life, Draco's sleeping positions are usually the furthest from dignity one could get.

Harry reads for an hour or so, but when he sets the book aside, he isn't actually ready to go to sleep yet: he shifts on the bed, and then he slides slowly forwards, pulling his invisibility cloak out of the bottom of his trunk. Draco is quietly snoring, the sound nearly entirely muffled by the pillows around his head, and one of his legs sticks haphazardly out from under the bedsheet. Harry really needs to buy himself a camera.

He slips the cloak on over his head, creeping down the corridor and out into the common room. The Slytherin prefects are gathered around one of the tables, discussing who would be willing to donate books to the Slytherin library and which books they ought try hardest to get hold of. Harry leans forwards, looking at the plans: Francis Drummond, a prefect as of this year, has made a rough sketch of the library's plan, and has pencilled in new furniture to be added over the holidays.

Harry can't help but smile as he creeps towards the new little hall off the corridor.

The library's torches have been extinguished, so once Harry is safely in the room he whispers, "Lumos," and pulls the cloak off. The desk, carved of mahogany, is a beautiful piece of furniture: each of the legs is carved to resemble tentacles coiling together as they reach down to the ground, and he can't help but think it's a bit incongruous with the usual serpentine image, but that doesn't mean it's not well done.

Harry crouches at the desk, leaning down and carefully pulling open one of its drawers. As expected, it's empty, but when he pulls the second drawer forwards there's a flutter of parchment coming loose, and he frowns, leaning to watch as it drops onto the ground.

Dumbledore must have missed it earlier, and Harry guesses it was caught in the mechanism at the back of one of the drawers, so he sits back, cross-legged, and looks at it. The parchment is old, and on one side the page is filled with notes on a spell Harry doesn't recognize, but the other is full of sketches. These aren't the rough, procedural drawings he'd just seen Francis Drummond scribble to get an approximation for a room's size, though: these are done in careful pencil, showing a snake wrapping itself around a dagger, a skull made into an inkpot with a quill sticking out of it, a snake's face split in two, displaying the skull under the flayed-off scales...

In a curiously morbid way, the drawings are beautiful, and Harry doesn't want to leave them to be thrown away when the desk is next moved around: without a second thought, he folds the parchment neatly and puts it into his pocket, hiding himself under the cloak again to return to bed.

He doesn't know what it means that he's a Parselmouth, and he sees no reason it should put people into such a frenzy, but he decides, as he slips the old sketches into his letter organiser, that he shouldn't resent it. Theodore has one of the quotes from A Serpentine History on a plaque in his and Blaise's room: To reject a path towards a skill is preference; to reject a talent one possesses innately is stupidity.

Harry slides into bed, putting his head on the pillow, and he closes his eyes.

Being a Parselmouth is the easy part, he thinks. It's keeping Lockhart from talking about it that's going to be hard.