"We can stop by the Greenhouses and get supplies. I've been packing a box full of things for when we found the shaggy inkcap," Neville said as they left Gryffindor tower.

"Breakfast first," Harry said.

The common room was empty when they passed through aside from a group of first years warming up by the fire. Harry would have invited Hermione to come if they had spotted her, but she didn't appear interested in what he and Neville were doing any more than Ron was.

In the Great Hall Harry wrapped up two handfuls of bacon in a napkin and stuffed it and two rolls into his bag for he and Neville, and then they went out to the greenhouses, where Harry stood at the door as the snow gently fell, getting his hair wet. He didn't want Filch to turn up and tell him he was out of bounds again. Instead Neville went inside and threw a few things from his corner workbench into a wooden box and came back out so they could trek down to the Quidditch Pitch.

"It's gonna be freezing in there," Neville said, and Harry agreed. His hands were warm from the fabric gloves Snape had given him, and he was thankful for the Gryffindor scarf and hoodie he had on, but it was still cold out. If it snowed anymore he'd have to remember to bring out his new Gryffindor snow cap and the winter coat Snape had given him.

When they got around the back side of the Pitch behind the Gryffindor changing rooms, Harry lifted the flap and was surprised to find a wooden stool and a cut tree round tall enough to sit on inside that hadn't been there before. He hadn't been back since he and Neville had found this spot a couple of weeks before, and wondered who had brought them here. It must have been another student, and Harry hoped someone else hadn't claimed this spot as their own.

"You bring these in here?" he asked Neville as the boy climbed under the canvas flap and let it fall again. It was cold inside as they'd predicted, but slightly warmer than outside because they were surrounded by thick canvas that kept the cold air and wind out. The dirt under here was cold, but dry, and Harry was glad the snow hadn't come in from the little hole in the ceiling above that was letting light pool in a corner.

"No," Neville said. "Glad to have them though."

He sat down on the stool and set his wooden box of gardening tools down and then reached into his bag for the book on mushrooms he'd been studying for two weeks.

"Let's see the mushrooms," Neville said.

"Hold on," Harry said, and pulled out the bacon and rolls instead, giving Neville half of what he had. The bacon was cold now, like Harry and Neville, but they didn't mind.

When they were done, Harry unzipped the small front pocket of his backpack and was dismayed to see that the shaggy inkcap had started to dissolve into a black, goopy, inky mess inside. "Dang," he said.

"What?"

Harry held the bag open for him to see and Neville scrunched up his nose.

"Lemme see your book," he said. "The one Professor Snape gave you. You said that's what these mushrooms do right? They turn to a black ink-like substance?"

Harry nodded and got into the large pocket of his bag for the book. It was bookmarked at the section about shaggy inkcap. Neville scanned the pages for a minute and said, "Yeah, see, it says here once they're picked you have a couple of hours before they start to rot and dissolve. I think it's ok. The cap dissolves and the spores get caught up in it and leak down the stem. Let's get as much of this out of your bag as we can and we'll see if we can preserve some of the spores to use."

Neville pulled out a flat glass jar. It looked to Harry like some sort of petri dish, and he was interested to see that it had some sort of yellowish clear potion inside of it already.

"What potion is in that?" he asked.

"It's not a potion. It's agar. Professor Sprout keeps it to propagate fungus when she needs to. She gave me a couple dishes of it."

"What's agar? What are we doing with it?"

"It's made from red algae. We're going to put the spores from the mushrooms in it and hope they're still good and that we can make a mono-culture from it that's not contaminated with mold or anything else from your bag."

Harry held the little pocket of his bag open and Neville used a tiny metal spatula to scoop the black goop out of it and into one of the little petri dishes full of gelatinous agar. Neville spread the black goop around the agar and then put the glass lid back on and set it on the ground.

"Try to get the stems out," Neville said. "They're mostly still intact."

Harry put on his dragonhide gloves and reached into the bag, extracting what remained of the five stems. Neville pulled out a little blade from his box and a small cutting board and handed them to Harry. "Cut the stem down the length. Make it a clean cut, and do it to all of them."

Harry nodded and balanced the cutting board across his lap. He was good at cutting up potions ingredients now made quick work of it.

"Great, now take a piece of flesh out of the center of each stem and put two pieces, each from a different stem in these dishes of agar." He unscrewed the lids off of three more agar dishes and held them out so Harry could put bits of the inner stem into them. The lids were screwed back on when they were done, and set next to the other agar dish on the ground. They had six agar dishes when they were done, and Neville looked satisfied.

"What now?" Harry asked.

"We wait a week, maybe more. Ten days at most," Neville said. "We should be able to tell in a few days if any of these are going to grow mycelium. We'll leave each dish until it's full to the edges with mycelium, and then we'll put it into some growth medium to innoculate it. Then after that we'll have the chance to grow some mushrooms."

"You two are raving mad coming out here in the cold like this," Ron grouched, lifting the canvas flap just then and coming in, pulling his collar up higher over his neck.

Harry and Neville stared up at him. "I thought you weren't coming," Harry said. "You said you didn't care about mushrooms."

"You care about mushrooms," Ron told him. "And what I said was that I wanted to have a lie in. I did and now I'm here." His eyes roved over the dark space and noting both the stool and tree round were occupied he said, "I'll have to ask Hagrid for another tree round."

"You brought these in here?" Harry said.

"Yeah. It's too cold to sit on the ground. You can't grow anything in here if you're miserable. I came down here with these a couple days after you found this place."

Harry was staring at him and Ron frowned and sat down on one of the thick beams that framed in the structure against the canvas. Neville explained to an uninterested Ron about the agar and about how you couldn't grow mushrooms from a seed, that they were grown from spores which contained all the genetic makeup of a mushroom, so two spores had to find each other in the agar and then from there they'd create a mycelium network from which mushrooms might grow. As Neville spoke Harry thought about what Ron had done. He didn't care about Harry's venture to grow mushrooms for defensive chimeric potions, and he didn't want to come sit in the cold on days off to grow them. Yet he'd brought things down for Harry and Neville to sit on anyway and had come down across the cold grounds to spend time with them.

"Harry, you listening?" Ron asked, and Harry looked back up. He was still in awe sometimes to know that he had friends like Ron, Hermione and Neville. It was something he'd never thought he had before Hogwarts, and was frequently afraid of losing.

"Huh?"

"We can't sit down here like this. We need that spell Hermione uses for fire in a jar. Can't light a fire in here or we'll catch hell for lighting the beams of the Pitch on fire."

"We just need rocks," Neville said. "We can heat them up and they'll radiate heat. That's actually how the greenhouses are kept warm."

"Really?" Ron asked.

"They built them on a bed of rocks. Professor Sprout heats them up every morning and then again at the end of her last class. She just sends the spell down through the floor of each greenhouse and it heats up all the rocks, then the heat rises up through the floor."

Ron stared at the dirt floor for a few moments and then said, "C'mon then. We'd better go collect rocks before it snows too much and we can't find any."

The three of them left their things under the Pitch and went out into the bright light, now reflecting off of all the snowy surfaces. There was an inch of snow now and it was still coming down lightly. They trekked thirty feet to the edge of the Forbidden Forest and began scavenging for rocks that were the size of their fists or a little larger. They had to be big enough to hold heat but small enough they could carry. Arms full of heavy rocks they made several trips back to the spot under the Pitch to deposit their loads.

"You got a trowel or something in there?" Ron asked Neville, looking into his wooden box, and Neville nodded and pulled two pointed trowels out.

"If we dig a little pit, just deep enough to spread the rocks out, that might help hold the heat better," Ron said, thinking of a fire pit.

Ron sat on the ground and pushed the trowel into the hard dirt. Harry used a spell to soften the dirt and after twenty minutes they had a pit about five inches deep and two and a half feet across. He and Ron pushed rocks into it while Neville went back outside to look for more. Ron was already heating them up with a spell even as Neville came back with another armful.

"Not as good as a fire," Ron said, "but better than it was." Harry had to agree. Perhaps if they kept heating the rocks up, the area would warm after a few minutes.

Ron's eyes traveled down the length of the dark underside of the Pitch, looking deep in thought, but he kept quiet.

They talked about the next steps in growing the mushrooms for twenty more minutes, before heading back up to the castle, too cold to stay any longer.

Harry went out to the Pitch by himself Monday after his last class, but the agar dishes looked as they had the day before. Tuesday Neville went with him after dinner while Ron went to Quidditch Practice, and they went to the edge of the forest to collect some moss from under the snow. "We'll use it as part of our growing medium," Neville said. "I've got a jar of grain from the greenhouses, but we'll put some moss in too. The myceilium needs to get nutrients and energy from somewhere since it's not photosynthesizing from light."

Ron returned with them on Friday in their free period when they would have been in Divination, and Harry and Neville were happy to see little white hairs growing in the agar dishes. "That what you were talking about?" Ron asked, stopping to look at the agar plates for a moment. "The myceil stuff?"

"Mycelium," Neville said. "Yup, that's it. The spores met and created new life!" He was excited and so was Harry. While they enthused Ron was pulling a yellowing sheet out of his bag where it had been waded up.

"Give me one of those rocks," he said, and Harry pulled one of the fist sized rocks that hadn't been warmed up yet out of the pit and handed it to Ron.

"What are you doing?"

"Keeping the heat in. I got some nails from Hagrid and I'm going to hang this up to keep the heat in this section and out from under the rest of the Pitch." He indicated the dark length of beams that stretched out before them that created a sort of corridor.

Harry helped him hold the sheet up as Ron used the rock to hammer nails in place along the top beam. The sheet didn't stretch the entire distance across the corridor of beams, and Ron said he'd find another one to bring back to finish sealing off the little room they were creating.

They didn't get a chance to come back Saturday because they all ended up in the optional potions lab, which was full that day since their entire class had struggled with the potion Snape had assigned them to master that week. Harry had it down finally by the end of the lab, but Ron was frustrated with the mess he'd made of his potion, and Neville looked unhappy despite that he'd finally brewed it successfully too.

Snape asked Harry to hang back after the lab to brew the potion again (to ensure he could do it successfully when it came time for the potions OWL, and Neville ended up staying with him, despite the irritated look Snape gave to have an extra student when he'd only intended to work with his potions apprentice.

Sunday morning Harry, Ron and Neville traipsed back down through the snow and ice to the Pitch. Ron hung up another sheet and Harry and Neville used five large jars Harry had brought down from the corridor potions supply to mix up grain, moss and a little water. The agar dishes were filled edge to edge with white mycelium now and were nearly solid. They broke up the mycelium into chunks and mixed it into the growing medium in each jar, leaving the lids off so air could get in.

"Now we wait," Neville said. "The mycelium should grow throughout the growing medium, and then we can take that and start growing mushrooms."

"Where are you gonna grow these mushrooms?" Ron asked, sitting down on a second wood round he'd brought up from Hagrid's Saturday after his Quidditch practice. The three of them all had a place to sit now.

"On a log," Harry said.

"I don't know," Neville told him. "According to Professor Snape's book shaggy inkcap doesn't grow on logs." He reached into his wooden crate and came out with several plastic tubs each the size of a shoebox. They were dirty like they'd had dirt in them before.

"We'll put dirt in these and top them off with moss," Neville said. "I brought them from home last year. I grow different things in them out in the greenhouses. We could grow scarlet elf cap on a log if you wanted though. We'd have to go see if there are any left in that spot back behind Hagrid's cabin."

"They were already on a log," Harry said.

"Scarlet elf cap," Ron said. "That's another kind of mushroom?"

Harry nodded and described it. He hadn't intended on growing it since they'd found several patches. If he needed any he could just collect it. They might as well now that they had an area to grow them in though.

Neville stayed behind under the Pitch while Harry and Ron crossed the grounds down to Hagrid's cabin and looked for the scarlet elf cap. The snow hadn't covered them completely yet, and because they were bright red and shaped like a little cup, they were easy to spot sticking up above the white snow.

Harry and Ron used their wands to melt the snow around the fallen log and then judged it small enough to carry back to the Pitch. Carrying it through the snow was more of a challenge than they'd thought though, and Harry was afraid to use a spell to lighten the load in case it affected the mushrooms growing on it in some way. Snape frequently cautioned him not to use spells on the ingredients they gathered. Even a simple drying spell could damage some ingredients beyond repair.

Finally, huffing and puffing, they had brought the elf cap log, covered in moss and with several patches of the red mushroom back up to the Pitch. At least it was warm inside, Harry thought as they set it down in a corner by the hanging sheet. Neville seemed to have been re-heating the rocks with some frequency to keep the space warm.

"We'll have to water that log," Neville said. "The moss and elf cap will need moisture." He lifted up Snape's mushroom book. "I've been reading about it while you were away."

He had taken notes too and had ripped the notes on elf cap and shaggy ink cap out of his notebook and used a spell to tack them to one of the wooden beams.

Before they left for the day Ron used a cutting spell to cut several of the boards that had fallen from higher up and were laying on the ground into nearly equal lengths and laid them across the pit of rocks.

At dinner that evening Hermione watched them as they came in late and asked, "Where have you three been? I couldn't find you anywhere."

"The mushroom den," Neville said. She knew they were trying to grow mushrooms, but had yet to visit their spot under the Pitch. "The mycelium has fully formed in the agar so we inoculated the growing medium today and brought in some elf cap to start growing as well. I'll have to get some more growth medium and agar from the greenhouses tomorrow in class so we can get some more elf cap going," Neville said all in a rush.

Ron shook his head at Hermione and said, "Don't ask and don't get them started. They've got a whole lab down there... like a Muggle mad scientist."

"How do you know about mad scientists?" Hermione asked. Ron and his family didn't have a telly.

"When I was out with mum once at a Muggle shopping center it was on one of the moving Muggle picture boxes in a window. A Muggle in a white coat was trying to turn a person into a lizard or something."

Hermione giggled and told Harry she'd go down to the ‘mushroom den' with them the next time they went. "Yeah," Ron told her, "well just bring a coat and gloves and mittens and a scarf. It's freezing down there."

Monday after classes Ron had Quidditch practice and couldn't go, and Neville said he had to work on a Transfiguration essay that was going to take him a while since he needed to look up some extra information. As a result Harry and Hermione went to the underside of the Pitch by themselves. She took in the little room the three boys had made while Harry checked each glass jar of growing medium and used a quick Aguamenti to send some water over the mossy rotting log in the corner. Harry heated the rock pit up with his wand, and then sat down on one of the tree rounds. Hermione took the wooden stool.

"I can't believe the three of you set all of this up out here," she said, pulling out her Arithmancy notes.

"Why not?" Harry asked.

"I just don't know how you found the time." The light coming in from the hole in the ceiling and the loose canvas flap wasn't enough to study by so she lit her wand. "I've been studying non-stop. After the potions lab Saturday I spent the rest of the afternoon re-reading the chapter in the textbook and going over my notes trying to figure out where I was going wrong."

"Professor Snape made me stay after the lab and I had to re-brew the potion two more times. Neville stayed and did it too."

"He's giving Neville extra tutoring?" she said, sounding affronted. "He said he wouldn't be doing extra tutoring for OWLs!"

"No, he was helping me and Neville just tried to follow along. He actually ignored Neville altogether," Harry said. "But I'm his apprentice," Harry said. The man had to help him whether he wanted to or not. Harry was potentially the only fifth year this year not stressing out over their upcoming Potions OWL. He was stressed about the Transfiguration OWL, but not enough that he was in a panic to study like Hermione always seemed to be. His plan was to work through the class material and after Easter he was going to beg Hermione or Ron, or maybe an older student to help him figure out everything he was struggling with at that point.

"I see," she said.

"You know I can help you. You just don't want my help."

"That's not true."

Harry raised his brows at her. "You're not mad that I know more about something for once?"

She stared into his eyes and then her look softened a little. "I'm not about to bother you for help when I'm capable of figuring it out on my own and when you have enough extra work on your plate with the apprenticeship. You have so many extra books to study and you're helping Neville already. It seems unfair for me to bother you. Professor Snape is the school Potions Master on the other hand, and it's his job to make sure we all get through our OWLs. He should be the one tutoring anyone who's struggling."

Harry stared at her in awe for a few moments as he had stared at Ron the week before after realizing that Ron had put time into helping him set up the spot under the Pitch. Hermione didn't ask for his help because she didn't want to make extra work for him? All this time he'd thought like Ron had that she was upset that he was ahead of her in class.

"It's not extra work," he said. "Besides, you help me and Ron pass the rest of our classes. Just try to sit near me in Potions class and in the Saturday labs when I'm there, and let me know if you have questions. If I don't know the answer I can ask Professor Snape and then tell you. He has to answer my questions."

"All right then," she said. Her eyes roved around the space again and she asked, "Do you have another jar? Two maybe? I have a nifty spell that can give us more light."

Harry grinned at her and rummaged around in Neville's box of supplies. Harry had been bringing down extra supplies himself and adding them to the box as well.  She added a bit of moss to each jar so there was something to cast the spell on, and then screwed metal lids onto both jars and cast a lighting charm. The charm made the moss inside each jar fluoresce. She set one jar down on one of the wooden beams against the canvas where it cast a warm glow, and Harry found some wire from the box and wrapped it around the other glass jar and then hung it from one of the nails holding the sheet up.

It still wasn't bright, but it made the space feel more comfortable to study in. With the light, and the sheets, the seating, and the warm stones beneath the boards, Harry suddenly felt like he had a safe study space back, like the potions nook. It wasn't completely warm, but it was private and it was away from the castle and from Umbridge and Filch. More importantly, it was theirs. He and his friends had made the mushroom den together, and for the first time since the school year had started, he felt able to fully relax.

* * *

Harry would have been out at the mushroom den during all of his free time if it weren't for the fact that he wasn't allowed out after dark unless he had special permission from a professor, or had Quidditch practice. He stayed out as late as he could each evening and then went inside to study in the common room or the potions nook in the library. Umbridge and Filch seemed to know when he was in the potions nook and always made it a point to stop by and look through his bag, question him about what he was doing, or to do another search of the nook. Hermione told him that when she was there alone, or was there with Ron or Ginny, Filch and Umbridge left them alone. It infuriated Hermione, who preferred to be left alone while she was studying, and she ranted several times a week that they were sabotaging Harry's chance of passing his OWLs.

Harry found it to be an irritation, though these frequent checks by Umbridge had become a part of his daily routine and he expected them now. She always caught him outside of the Great Hall once a day on his way in to meals, and if not there she had Filch waiting for him outside of Gryffindor tower before curfew. Harry had given up now on sitting in the front of the Defense class, though he was still doing his best to do the essays she wanted and not to bring up anything about Voldemort or practical defense.

Ron said one day that Umbridge must be paying Filch extra to keep such a close eye on Harry and the defense section of the library, but Hermione thought it was something else. "She shows him appreciation," Hermione said. "If you worked somewhere for a lot of years and the students all hated you and you worked a thankless job like caretaker, you might jump at the chance to help someone who was praising you and saying please and thank you too."

"How do you know that's what's happening?" Ron asked her.

"I overheard them in her office as I passed."

"She keeps her door closed," Ron said. "You mean you were eavesdropping?"

Hermione cleared her throat. "As I said, I overheard them talking. She didn't demand he do anything, she asked him politely, and she told him how much she appreciated his help in keeping an eye on things."

"Good for him," Harry said with a huff. "Bad for me." He couldn't say he blamed Filch if it was really as Hermione had said. He also knew what that was like, to work hard and never be thanked or praised or to feel wanted. That was one of the reasons he loved returning to Hogwarts each year. Here he had a chance to stand on his own merit and earn house points or have teachers praise him if he did particularly well at something. It didn't happen a lot, but he loved when it did.

* * *

After two weeks of hard work in the mushroom den under the Pitch, ghostly white shaggy inkcap mushrooms began to grow. They'd taken the six jars of growing medium, now inoculated with mycelium, and spread them out into a dozen plastic containers Neville had brought down, mixed with dirt and covered in moss. The shaggy inkcap were now poking their heads up above the moss, and Harry couldn't have been more excited.

"Really mate, good job, but eh, it's just mushrooms," Ron said when Harry had dragged he and Hermione down to the mushroom den to show him the sprouting fungus.

"Yeah but, I haven't got Quidditch now have I?" Harry said. "This is the only thing I have to get excited about. If I didn't have this I'd be stuck up in the castle all the time."

"Yeah, all right," Ron said, accepting his answer.

Neville was also excited when he was able to next make it out to the mushroom den. Their Wednesday morning class had been canceled due to Professor Umbridge coming down with a flu, and so Harry and Neville hurried out to the mushroom den to clip the now harvest size shaggy inkcap.

"We'll get a second flush from this batch," Neville told him. "They'll grow up again before we have to start over. That'll be four or five days. If we take spores from some of these mushrooms and put them in agar, we'll start a cycle and can have another harvest soon."

They put most of the shaggy inkcap harvest into jars to let it decay into a black inky substance, which is what they needed for chimeric potions, and used seven of the mushrooms to start a new batch.

"Looks like we can harvest some more of the scarlet elf cap too," Harry said, looking over the decaying log as he tried to get his hand unstuck. He'd put his hand into the jar trying to arrange the shaggy inkcap just so but was now having trouble getting it back out.

The scarlet elfcap had to be harvested and stored in a different way than the shaggy ink cap. They had laid sticks down on the ground and then had laid more sticks in the opposite direction across them to lay the cut scarlet elf cap on to dry. Once they were dry they could be stored or powdered. Harry and Neville had already started several agar dishes with scarlet elf cap spores and then inoculated two jars of growth medium, and the moss on the log itself. It was an experiment to inoculate the log, and they were still waiting to see if any mushrooms would pop up from the moss there. If nothing grew, they'd still have the inoculated growth medium, and Harry had talked about finding another dead log to bring in if they were successful in growing scarlet elf cap.

* * *

October ended and they were well into November when Umbridge made an unexpected move.

Harry had grown complacent in his new routine. Classes on weekdays followed by going to the mushroom den to check on his project and study with either Neville or Hermione, and then dinner and studying in the library or the common room, being harassed by Umbridge throughout when he was anywhere near the castle. On weekends they attended the potions lab, though Harry sometimes skipped out with the understanding that Snape would likely track him down later if he did to make him brew on Saturday night. Most of Harry's Saturdays and Sundays were spent down in the mushroom den. They had discovered how to keep it at a temperature that was warm enough that they didn't feel the need to bundle in several layers of clothing. As long as he had a hoodie and gloves, he was fine. Hermione had added pockets of rocks in each corner of the mushroom den and looked up a stronger heating spell that would make the rocks warmer and keep them warm for longer.

It was this comfortable routine that got Harry in trouble. He fully expected Umbridge to demand to check his bag or ask where he was going while in the castle. He never expected her to trek all the way out to the Quidditch Pitch to spy on him or to follow him around to the back side to the mushroom den until it happened one Sunday afternoon.

Harry and Neville had been in the mushroom den all morning and had skipped lunch in favor of starting another new batch of shaggy inkcap spores. Things were set up in stages around the mushroom den now. There was a spot for inoculated agar dishes, a spot for the jars of growth medium, a row of plastic tubs with shaggy inkcap, and the log with the scarlet elfcap. Neville had also recently found brown wrinkly wood ear mushroom and had brought it into the mushroom den as well, and used some sort of sticky substance Professor Sprout gave him to adhere the wood ear to one of the beams framing in the pitch.

They were in the middle of stirring a hardened agar disc into a jar of growth medium when they heard Umbridge clear her throat in the high girlish way she always did to announce to Harry that she was behind him and ready to inspect his bag or the potions nook. Harry and Neville turned, dragonhide gloves on. Neville had a stirring stick in one hand, and Harry was holding a large glass jar of growth medium.

"What have we here?" Umbridge asked.

Harry and Neville gave each other a nervous glance. "This looks a lot like an illegal student club to me Mr. Potter. You see, when it came to my attention that you were not to be found during certain hours of certain days, Argus offered to find out where you were going. He followed you out here this morning and while it took him a while to figure out that you were under the Pitch, he came to get me, and then whent to retrieve Professor Snape as well. I'm afraid you're in quite a lot of trouble Mr. Potter. Mr. Longbottom, you should have known better than to participate in this sort of illegal student gathering."

"It's not a club maam," Harry said. "We're growing mushrooms."

"You are here with Mr. Longbottom in an area that is out of bounds to you. I know for a fact that Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger have also been coming out here with you as they are also not to be found when you have disappeared. I'm afraid since this is your second major infraction this year I'm going to have to insist on much more than a week's worth of detentions."

"But I haven't done anything wrong," Harry said.

"Because you have chosen to meet in an out of bounds area, I can only assume you're growing something dangerous, and that you've come out here because you don't want to be caught. With your knowledge of potions Mr. Potter, it's clear to me that you've decided to dabble in something you oughtn't."

They heard voices and footsteps outside in the snow and she smiled, holding the canvas tent flap up higher. Filch had arrived with Professor Snape.

"Argus," she greeted cheerily. "Professor Snape. Thank goodness you're here. We've just discovered an illegal student club and I'm afraid your potions apprentice is the ringleader."

"Is that so?" Snape asked in an icy voice. Harry felt chilled because the canvas flap was being held up and letting cold air in, but also at Snape's voice. Harry didn't know what kind of consequences Umbridge had in mind, but he hoped Snape wouldn't go along with it. He gave one last look around the wonderful mushroom den and his heart sank. Snape and Umbridge would both probably demand that Filch clean all of this out and destroy all of their hard work. This sanctuary, like all of the other ones Harry had found, would be destroyed.

"Yes, see for yourself. Mr. Potter is growing dangerous mushrooms. It appears he has many dangerous ingredients and potions inside. As soon as you confirm it we can determine just how severe his punishment will be."

She stepped aside and Snape lifted the flap of Gryffindor canvas fabric up and stepped inside. Umbridge came in behind him, and Filch waited outside, still holding the canvas up to let light in, peering in with his toothy grin. With the two added adults standing up in there, the space suddenly felt cramped. Harry and Neville had turned on the two tree rounds where they were sitting to look up at them. Umbridge had her arms crossed and was looking both smug and gleeful. Snape's face was impassive, though there was a flicker of something else in his eyes as they swept the space, first from the wood ear on the beam, then down to the scarlet elf cap, and then to the tubs of shaggy inkcap and all of their growing stations.

He met Harry's eyes and seemed to be giving him a stern talking to just in that one look, but it ended after only a moment and he turned to Umbridge and said, "You called me down here for this?"

"Excuse me?" Umbridge asked, surprised but attempting to sound polite.

"You have interrupted me in the brewing of an important potion and dragged me across the grounds to interrupt my potions apprentice and student with a project I assigned over a month ago?"

"What project?" Umbridge demanded, dropping her false politeness for a moment, before standing straight again, patting down the front of her shirt and tilting her head as she put on a little smile again. "Could you please explain it to me?" she asked. Her false politeness wasn't fooling anyone. She was seething underneath the facade.

"Mr. Potter was assigned to find and grow several species of mushrooms and then harvest and preserve them for use in brewing. He was told to find a controlled environment to grow them in. I assume he chose here as it is sheltered from the elements and because he was banned from after hours use of the greenhouses by you."

"These are dangerous potions and mushrooms!" she insisted, motioning around the room.

Snape turned and let his eyes sweep the mushroom den again. "Shaggy inkcap?" he asked. "It's not poisonous, even when ingested, and is not used in any potions that could be considered remotely poisonous. Scarlet elf cap," he continued, eyes falling on the rotting log again. "Another edible mushroom. Used in potions that produce or require extra heat, again, non-toxic. As for the wood ear," he paused so he could turn back around to face her. "It's commonly used in Chinese cuisine and found in Chinese markets. It has a few minor uses in potions, none of them poisonous or remotely dangerous."

"The potions!" she said angrily, pointing at the little clear glass containers of agar lined up in rows and labeled with which type of spore was growing mycelium inside.

He turned abruptly to Harry and snapped, "Agar Potter?"

"Yes sir."

"A common ingredient the upper year students use in Herbology class."

"Argus," she said urgently, and he stepped inside, letting the canvas flap fall closed. "Search the wooden crate and behind the sheet."

Snape waved his hand as if giving his permission for them to search the area, and Harry bit his lip, hoping Filch wouldn't destroy the place. Snape seemed to be thinking along the same lines and snapped, "Carefully," when Filch began rifling through the crate.

"Knives," Filch said, holding them up, and Snape held out his hand for them.

"Again, a tool every student has access to both in potions and Herbology. It's necessary both for harvesting mushrooms and for cutting open stems to get DNA to grow new mushrooms." He held the two small knives out to Neville, and he took them.

Filch looked behind the sheets and Umbridge shined her wand down the length of the cold dark corridor under the Pitch. There was nothing back there. None of them had been back there since Ron had hung the sheets up.

"A poor place to duel," Snape commented lazily. He was right. Even if they wanted to duel it couldn't be done under the Pitch. It was too narrow and there were too many beams to trip over or be thrown into, not to mention they could catch the beams on fire if any fire hexes were used. If Harry was going to duel he could think of a dozen places out on the grounds that would be better and well hidden enough to get away with it.

"The fact remains that this is out of bounds for students," Umbridge said, finally conceding that there was nothing else to punish Harry for, especially if Snape was going to stand on the story of assigning Harry to grow mushrooms in the first place. Harry was still too tense from Umbridge and Filch searching the place to process how shocked he was that Snape was lying for him. Maybe it would just be more of a headache for Snape to actually deal with him than to keep him out of trouble in the first place.

"Not for my potions apprentice, who I gave permission to be here."

"And Mr. Longbottom?"

"Was also given permission by Minerva. As his head of house she has the right to allow her students special privileges."

"I don't see any reason why Mr. Longbottom should be here engaging in a potions project as he is not an apprentice."

Snape didn't seem to have an answer for this so he and Umbridge both turned to Neville. All eyes on him now, Neville turned red and looked down at the knives he was still holding. "Professor Sprout lets me do extracurricular Herbology assignments after hours. This is what I chose to do this year. Harry didn't know how to grow mushrooms so we studied it together. I've been helping him find and catalog mushrooms across the grounds, and then we've been growing them. I write down what we try that works and doesn't work, and he's going to take what we're growing to use in his potions project."

It was as close to the truth as he could have gotten without denying that he'd been given any sort of permission from McGonagall or professor Sprout.

"We'll see what the Headmaster has to say about this," she said. "And Minerva too. There's no reason for these two or any other student to have the right or privilege to be under the Quidditch Pitch or without teacher supervision for any amount of time." She motioned for Filch to follow her, and they left, crunching away through the snow and around the side of the Pitch.

When they were certain they'd gone, Snape turned back to the boys and let his eyes wander around the mushroom den again. Then he looked at Harry for a moment and said, "Carry on," and took his leave as well. They could hear his boots crunching through the snow, and waited to speak until they couldn't hear him anymore.

"Did we just- get away with this?" Neville asked, turning back to Harry and finally putting the knives back in the wooden crate.

"I-" Harry paused. "Are we sure that was Professor Snape? Not the Headmaster or Ron after drinking polyjuice?"

Neville giggled a little and then pulled his dragonhide gloves off and put a hand up to his mouth to stop himself. "Professor Snape didn't even yell at me! He didn't even glare once!" He laughed out loud. It was the friendliest encounter the boy had ever had with the oft angry man.

Harry turned so he was facing their jar of growth medium again and said, "Carry on was a compliment. He didn't have anything negative to say at least. I mean, he might later." Harry was nervous about getting called to his office to talk to him later despite that the man didn't seem angry now. He would probably tell Harry to pack all of this up and move it to the greenhouses or a room inside the castle. At the very least he'd shout at him for being the cause of Umbridge dragging him out of the castle and down through the snow. It was a sunny day, but still bitterly cold outside.

They finished what they were doing and then trudged back up to the castle, Neville talking all the way about the encounter with Umbridge, Filch, and Snape under the Pitch.

* * *

Potter had surprised him. It had been clear from the start that the boy didn't like potions and didn't appreciate having to learn potions from Severus, yet he had made an effort since the start of the apprenticeship to study the apprenticeship books and any other material Severus had told him to get through. The boy's skill in potions was growing and he had moved up to the top of his class in potions with speed. These things were to be expected of anyone in a potions apprenticeship. What he hadn't expected was for Potter to take it upon himself to learn more than what he was assigned and to start an extra-curricular project without having to be told.

When Argus had come to fetch him in his office and told him there was a student in trouble and he was needed out on the grounds, he'd had an inkling given the man's toothy grin that Potter was involved somehow. He'd been ready to throw the book at the insolent child for doing everything within his power to make Umbridge take notice of him and then giving her yet another reason to punish him. What he saw when he entered the secret hideaway under the Quidditch Pitch had given him pause though. His eyes had traveled around the neat stations set up for propagating mushrooms, the notes tacked to the wall, and then to the worry on the faces of the two Gryffindor boys. He was impressed with the success they seemed to be having with the shaggy inkcap as first time mushroom growers, and curious about the effort Potter had put into this project. He had also been infuriated at the same time that the toad in pink had once again been ready to punish students for learning and putting in extra effort.

Severus didn't give points to students as readily as Minerva or Filius did. Any of them would have given Potter and Longbottom ten points apiece for the effort they'd put into this project however, Severus included. Yet there was Umbridge, demanding that both boys be punished. Severus didn't give either of the boys points but he did lie for them both, adamant like Minerva that none of the students that year be punished further for being studious or wishing to educate themselves.

He didn't know what Albus would do and had made it a point not to firecall him or go up to his office after getting back into the castle. He didn't want to go up there and meet Umbridge if she was still there yelling at hims. He supposed he would find out soon enough what would come of the incident, if anything.

Severus set his quill down from where he'd been trying to work out a grading ruberik for a second year class, unable to concentrate on it. Potter was a mystery. If he didn't want to study potions, why had he gone to all of this effort? It wasn't possible that he wanted to be a potions master, was it? That was something to ponder on. Severus was teaching the boy because he was his apprentice, and to keep him out of trouble, but not because he had really wanted to take the boy on. If the child was seriously considering a career in potions however, that changed things. It didn't change the fact that Severus disliked the child, or that the boy was foolish and often in trouble. It also didn't change the fact that he was going to teach the boy what he needed to know to pass his first apprenticeship exams. What it did change was how Severus felt about teaching him potions. He'd done his best to teach him while keeping him at arms length. If it had been another student apprentice Severus would have taken that child out on weekends to forage in the Forbidden Forest, or off of grounds to attend more gatherings with other apprentices and potions masters. If it had been another student he would have had more discussions already about the potions community and the opportunities for apprentices and potions masters, and started his apprentice on thinking about how to distinguish themselves in the eyes of the community. He hadn't done those things with Potter knowing the child would opt out of a second apprenticeship after he was done with this one.

Severus picked up his grading rubric and stared at it for long moments. He had a lot to think about in regards to the Gryffindor fifth year in his charge. But before he did any of that he needed to speak to the boy and ask him about his side project under the Quidditch Pitch. He must have had plans for the mushrooms he was growing and Severus wanted to know. There was no reason he couldn't brew whatever potion he was planning in Severus' lab as part of the apprenticeship, even if it was one beyond his current skill level. So long as the child wasn't planning on brewing something illegal (heaven help him after how he'd lied to Umbridge if that were the case), then the project could be incorporated into what Severus was already trying to teach him.

A/N: For anyone who wants to know what shaggy inkcap looks like, here's a pic: