Survivor

The grass was always a comfortable spot for Harry, but he couldn’t help feeling that it was unusually soft today. To be fair, he supposed, even the castle floor would’ve felt like a bed of clouds on a day like this. He leaned back against the trunk of the tree he was sitting against and let out a tired sigh. His eyes slowly blinked closed, and it took him an astounding amount of physical effort to pry them open again. 

Harry was used to working on little sleep. He was practically a master at it due to his childhood living conditions. Even still, it was a tall task for him to continue with his usual daily pace while spending hours every night listening to the rune he had in his room. There was a certain kind of fuzziness that came with staring into nothing night after night, listening to what was mostly white noise or, even worse, complete silence. His days felt like they were melding together, and he was finding himself struggling to remain focussed in classes. 

That didn’t mean he was letting up. Both he and the stranger were certain his rune had something of value in it. His perseverance was the only factor that was yet to be determined, and he refused to let his hard work go to waste by burning out at the very end. 

But, Christ, did Snape live a boring fucking life.

The man was in his office almost all day, except for when he slept and the two hours or so he spent to get food when he absolutely needed it, and every single second of his time in the office was spent doing nothing but writing. The worst part for Harry, though, was whenever Snape decided it was time to sleep. He was horrified when, one night, he zoned out during the hours of slugging through the nothingness in his rune that he lost count of the time he’d spent listening in on Snape's life. Now, he didn’t even know how much he had left on it. Harry just had to sit down and endure until the damn thing stopped giving him something to listen to.

Reluctantly, he glanced down at his transfiguration homework, and, God damn it, if he wasn’t starting to despise the school subject that taught his favorite section of magic. He loved Professor McGonagall, and she was undoubtedly a master, but he was so tired of attending a class that he never used. 

Yes, it was true that most students read ahead of their classes anyway. Technically speaking, he’d never really been to a class yet where he wasn’t at least partially knowledgeable of the lesson beforehand, but at least the teachers in other classes had helpful things to teach them in person that the book couldn’t or didn’t convey. With transfiguration, he basically just spent an hour and some change listening to rubbish before completing the task and pretending like he did it the normal way. Then, when he did actually get homework, he had to go to the textbooks to write down information he didn’t need, didn’t want, and most definitely didn’t use. 

He made an ugly face at the paper before shoving it in the bag he brought down with him. Harry was planning on getting work done, but he just couldn’t be asked at the moment. Instead, he directed his slightly squinted eyes to the students slowly filtering out from the castle and down to the quidditch pitch. All of them were wearing some kind of blue on their clothing, be it the thick, protective robes worn by quidditch players or the casual school uniforms put on by everyone else. The game between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw was quickly approaching, and today was one of the few practices remaining for the ravens. He wasn’t surprised to see them walking out during his time by the tree.

It was, of course, the reason he was here in the first place.

No, he wasn’t allowed to watch; quidditch practices were considered private events. The only information gathering permitted between house teams was whatever they could glean from matches. Even professors weren’t allowed down to the fields during practices. Madam Hooch was the adult responsible for making sure everyone behaved themselves. Still, most teams liked to have someone sitting out during particularly important practices, not for reconnaissance but to make sure that they remained present. He could see Preece from the Hufflepuff team sitting on a bench some ways away from himself, and he wasn’t surprised by that either.

The Slytherin team simply wanted to remind the Ravenclaws that they were there. He understood the desire to keep up their pressure and momentum, but he only really volunteered to be the one out today for his own reasons. The Slytherin team only knew for sure that the Ravenclaw Runic Team was involved in the scheme launched against their chaser. Harry personally suspected that the quidditch team wasn’t in the loop, but that didn’t mean the upcoming game was useless to him. 

Scanning the small groups coming out of the castle, his eyes finally fell upon them, and a smirk grew on his face. It was exactly the group of students he was looking for, and, lucky for him, it seemed as if they came as a unit. With a game for so many points sitting on the horizon, it wasn’t unusual at all for general house members to get invested in their team’s practices. Even before Harry was injured, the stands were full of Slytherin students hoping to find out their chances of victory before game time. It was a little unusual, however, for the entire team of runic brainiacs to come together. They weren’t just sending a token representative or something? The entire team was just going for a little outing?

No… not likely.

He scowled just a little at the sight of them all huddled together, whispering about something or other as they walked down to the field. It wasn’t really a hunch; it was more like a random guess tossed into the dark or a stray hope with nothing truly invested in it, but Harry felt like maybe, just maybe, they might have gotten a little too big for their trousers with the next game right on the horizon. He learned all about patience with the Dursleys; he learned to wait and watch, to wade right beneath the surface of the water until someone decided to come in for a drink. 

So he waited, and, once the stranger started teaching him legilimency, he noticed where his talents were located. With his magic, he could analyze most anything it came into contact with. He was decent at analyzing other magic, and he was almost complete garbage at analyzing the physical world, but he was gifted when it came to people. That was how he was initially using it in the first place, reaching out from his little cupboard and hoping that nobody was approaching his door or looking into his uncle’s glaring eyes and praying that he’d get something to help him worm his way out of whatever shit he’d gotten into. Once the stranger explained to him what he was actually doing, he was astounded by how he hadn’t noticed when he was much younger. Everything just clicked.

The only way to practice reading people, though, was to actually read someone. With his stray hope and the natural need to practice with his talents, he’d taken to using his magic on the runic team whenever he happened upon them. He could feel the pressure mounting as the game approached. Everyone he analyzed seemed to possess that feeling of standing right on the precipice of something, like they were millimeters from a breakthrough. When the Slytherin team told him he might have a legitimate reason to be in the vicinity of an entire group of the team at the same time, he simply couldn’t help himself. 

As he watched them walk down from the castle and toward the pitch, he collected himself and waited until they were as close as they could’ve possibly been to his tree. It wasn’t very close, but it was certainly workable if he was careful. Closing his eyes, he began to release his magic into the air around him. It was the exact same thing he used to do as a child, but it was truly amazing just how much could be gained with just a smidge of control. Compressing it in front of him, he slowly let his magic crawl across the space between himself and the ravens. His magic crept closer to them, and he tried to keep himself away from the other students until finally…

He caught onto them.

Humans were complicated creatures, and their thoughts and memories weren’t easy to read. That was, at least, what the stranger said because Harry was yet to truly try that kind of thing without the stranger literally right beside him, guiding his hand like he did with Mrs. Weasley and Petunia. To even begin to get a feeling on something so complex and vast, eye contact was uncompromisingly necessary. With emotions, however, things were a little bit different.

Thoughts and memories were private by nature, but emotions were expressive and loud, Especially with wizards and witches who had magic intimately tied to their very souls and fluxing with their mental state. It varied from person to person, mostly based on how strictly they controlled themselves, but, unless they were trained in keeping their magic wrapped around themselves, something was bound to leak from them eventually. That was the first step of occlumency and the reason why the stranger could protect both of their minds together. Sharing a body and access to one another’s magic allowed the stranger to grasp his own magic and wrap it within himself instead of allowing it to remain spread around him. 

When his magic finally began mingling with the runic team, he felt as though he’d been hit by a truck. He found out from the stranger that his untrained attempts at legilimency basically amounted to him pumping out his magic like a blown pipe spewed water until it literally and entirely saturated everything around him. When that was combined with his desperate desire to read anything and everything he could from his relatives, it amounted to him growing very comfortable with picking apart other people and, for better or worse, exceedingly sensitive to the things he felt. His magic was used to taking everything, and that was something he either had to unlearn or deal with. 

When an entire group of people were experiencing similar, extremely intense emotions, it was almost too overwhelming for him to handle it. He could feel the nervous anxiety rising in his chest like a burning knife. Apprehension combined with the distinct hint of excitement in his head, and it was so potent that his vision would’ve been spinning if his eyes weren’t screwed shut in an attempt to keep him in the moment. Harry tried to distance himself from the feelings and view them objectively. The things he felt were not at all unlike the feelings he got when looking at Ron’s prank. The difference was that he had experience with emotions that he didn’t have with magic, and that made it all the more difficult for him to separate himself from what he was feeling and remember that this was something foreign. 

He’d felt it before when he was seconds away from sneaking out of his cupboard to snatch food from the fridge or when he was about to make his break from the Great Hall during the Halloween attack. He had to force himself to realize that he wasn’t in one of those situations, that he was simply sitting in the grass on a totally casual day. He wrenched himself away from the experience and tried to take it for only what it indicated, not how it felt.

Harry would have recognized that feeling anywhere. It was the elation and worry that came before the enactment of a risky but rewarding plan. He felt as though he was moments away from claiming a well-earned reward while balancing on a precariously anchored tightrope. When he pulled his magic back to himself and focussed on pulling it tight against his skin, a dangerous smile was already on his face.

Those sneaky bastards were going to try something again, but he was on the same page this time.

Suddenly, the same feelings he allowed into himself from the ravenclaw team were rising with him, but they were completely natural this time. This was his chance. He'd been waiting for an opportunity since before his quidditch game, and he found it at that very moment during his investigation. His skin was practically vibrating, and his eyes were glowing with anticipation. 

But he needed to know more first.

His hand immediately fumbled for his wand, and he thought about what to do. Those Ravenclaws were smart to have their little powwow during quidditch practice. Harry Potter, the newest Slytherin chaser, sneaking into the stands of a Ravenclaw practice was not going to be a good look for him. He was about to ask the stranger for a dose of disillusionment, but he stopped when he remembered the weaknesses of the spell. It was perfect for dark corridors in a stone hallway. Walking around in broad daylight with such vibrant, contrasting colors everywhere was bound to give him away.

His mind shot through his options. There was the rune he made for Snape if he could get it on one of them, but he had no time to draw it out. He needed some way to listen in on their talk, but he had no legitimate options if his rune didn't work.

Unless…

He didn't really need the rune to listen in on people. The only reason he made it in the first place was to create a tool capable of continuous use for an extended period of time. All he needed right now was about an hour or so of power, and he could do that with a listening charm. As for what he could put it on, well, he did have one friend who was used to sneaking around. 

"Hey," Harry asked the stranger. "Do you think the disillusionment charm will work well enough on a snake to let him go unnoticed in the daylight."

Harry's smile was bright enough to be used as a rather effective flashbang when Jason slithered out from his robes, almost completely invisible, even to Harry's astute eyes. All traces of drowsiness and boredom had long since vanished from his trace. Everything just seemed so much more interesting all of the sudden. 

Jason, almost completely invisible to the naked eye, wound through the field as he followed the gaggle of Ravenclaws. He followed them at a safe distance and kept an eye on the students closest to him, making sure they didn’t notice the grass that bent slightly to accommodate his form. It'd been a long time, indeed, since he'd taken a role like this. Back at Harry's prison, his place was almost explicitly that of a scout. He would leave the cupboard, find out what he needed, grab what Harry needed, and he'd return.

Since Harry escaped, he found himself taking the role of a physical protector. He was there to fight when Harry needed, and he acted as silent backup when situations got sketchy. The problem was that Jason wasn't made for the role he was now so often playing. His venom wasn't made to end fights with large creatures, and his form was hardly designed for combat either. Doing this, however, was what his body was made for. It felt right, natural.

When the group entered the stadium, Jason sat back and peered at them, waiting to see where they went before he wound his way up the criss-crossing wood stadium's outermost construction. His very long, extremely slender form allowed him to be almost as comfortable on the stadium's support structure as he would've been on a tree branch. When he got to the top, he wrapped himself around the railing that lined the outside of the stands, and he peered across the seats before him from above. It wasn't hard to find them again, not when only a portion of a single house occupied a stadium meant for the entire school's population and most of their parents. 

Stretching away from the railing, he bridged the gap to the top bleacher and began slinking his way toward the Ravenclaws. It didn’t take long for him to get in range of their voices. He couldn’t hear their voices, but Harry most certainly could. Patiently and quietly, he snaked over to the bleacher directly behind the group and settled down to wait out their conversation. Invisible, he sat coiled, his eyes dialed into the back of the closest student. Every single one of them was completely unaware of his presence, and Jason fought the almost unbearable desire to bite the boy nearest to him. It would’ve been so easy.

But no…

The boy wouldn’t die from his bite before the matron could get to him. Whatever Harry had in mind would have to do. Thankfully, his companion was never one to come up short when it came time to collect the debts he was owed. Trusting in that, he got comfortable and allowed Harry to gain what he needed.

Once practice ended and the group got up, Jason wound his way back down the outside of the stadium and trekked back to Harry's location. When he came upon the tree, Jason saw the widest, most devilish grin on his companion's face. It was a smile he'd seen often, especially as of late, and it was one he enjoyed seeing almost more than any other expression he'd ever seen the boy wear. Whatever it was he'd heard, Harry liked it very much.

"What was it that you discovered?" Jason asked.

"It looks like little Longbottom has a bit of a dragon problem," Harry told his friend with a mirthful chuckle. "And the Ravenclaws know all about it."

Jason let out a pleased, contemplative hum that came out, unsurprisingly, as a small hiss while he coiled his way up Harry's leg. Harry was just as intrigued by the information he gained as well. There was, however, one tiny problem that he really didn’t want to deal with. He considered the options he had as his hand idly fiddled with the snake bracelet Iris got for him.

He didn’t think he could do this alone.

Newly invigorated, Harry spent the entirety of his day pondering exactly how he wanted to handle the information Jason gathered. It felt so good to have something to do that didn’t require him to waste away in his bedroom to the sound of nothingness, and the thought of finally getting his much deserved payback was extremely vindicating. At the same time, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to do anything. The Ravenclaws had a plan, and, if Harry was being honest, it was a pretty fucking good one. If Longbottom was truly unaware of their scheme, then there was little chance of him escaping unscathed, and getting caught with a dragon on hand with the intent to smuggle said dragon was a one-way ticket to expulsion or worse. 

In the recesses of his mind, Harry had the urge to just let it happen. It would’ve been a glorious day for Harry to hear that Neville Longbottom was officially sent packing from the castle. All he had to do was sit back and not act on the things he now knew, and he’d be free of the spoiled twit. 

But no…

As much as he hated it, and as much as he loathed Longbottom, the boy hadn’t actually done anything to him. The Boy-Who-Lived was an annoyance, but he wasn’t truly an enemy, not in the same sense as the bastards that tossed him down a staircase to win a quidditch match. Even the thought of letting them remain unscathed for the sake of getting at Longbottom physically revolted him. 

If only helping Longbottom didn’t leave such a sour taste in his mouth.

In reality, the decision was made the second he knew what was going on. His patience had officially thinned to nothing, and it came time for him to take action. Whatever help he gave to the bastard who happened to have been the catalyst for his current opportunity was irrelevant. Everyone who hurt him would pay, and that was the beginning and end of the discussion. His promise to himself and Jason would not go unfulfilled. 

Never again.

Never again…

That was why he reluctantly decided to pull Daphne from her studying in the library and lead her to a vacant room despite her protests. He placed her in a chair and then sat backward in the one directly in front of her.

“What’s so important, Potter, that you’re making me miss my charms homework?” she asked testily. 

Harry smiled at her words, not letting an ounce of his nervousness leak through in his expression. “There’s something that I’m going to tell you, but you have to promise to listen to everything I have to say before you start going off and doing things.”

He saw the way her eyes squinted, and he could tell that she was contemplating how likely it was that she could get around such a promise. Unfortunately for her, Harry had deceived far too many people himself to fall for the same trick. That was why, when she nodded, he pulled out his wand and flicked it at the door.

“Colloportus,” he whispered, and a sheen of light traveled across the door before seemingly sinking into it.

“Really, Potter?” she asked. “You’re going to try and lock me in here?”

“Well, that depends on whether or not you’re going to stay until I’ve said my piece.”

“You do realize,” she said with a challenging quirk of her eyebrow. “That you can perform exactly zero combat spells, right? You can lock that door all you want, but you can’t keep me here.”

He gave her a flat, faux-disappointed stare for a second before he let out a low, reverberating hiss that was followed by Jason curiously sticking his head out of Harry’s robes. He smirked at the indignant look on her face. It was as if she was actually offended that he didn’t simply roll over and tell her what he had with no strings attached. 

“What?” he asked with an exasperated laugh. “You threatened me. It’s not my fault you forgot my familiar is a venomous snake.”

“Fine,” she huffed. “What do you need to tell me?”

Harry allowed the silence to sit for a moment, both hoping to keep control of the conversation and rather nervous about how she was going to react. “Okay… So, do you remember when I stepped on that rune by the dungeon staircase?”

The glare he received from her was legendary. “Yes, Harry, I remember the rune that severely injured you. What about it?”

"Well, I may have, kind of, been keeping it a secret that we found out who did it…”

He waited with a barely concealed cringe as she took in his words, rolled them over in her mind, and began to cultivate the rage within herself. “And when did ‘we’ figure this out?”

Almost wishing he had just decided to let the bastards get away with it and take down Longbottom for smuggling a class 5 magical creature, he forced himself to not flinch at her tone. “A few days after it happened?”

“A few days!?” she shouted under her breath so as to not be heard in the hallway while expressing her fury. “What the hell happened to not keeping all of these secrets, Potter!?”

“No, no, no,” Harry said in an attempt to divert her explosion. “This is totally different. That other stuff I kept from you was something you deserved to know, and it put you at risk because I didn’t tell you. I knew how mad you were about the rune, and, when my team found out who did it, we came up with a bit of a scheme ourselves. I just didn’t want you going off and doing something when we had it under control, especially when it might’ve messed with what we had going on.”

“Well, I’m glad you have such an astounding amount of faith in me,” she complained, seeming honestly hurt. “So who was it then?”

“A portion of the Ravenclaw Runic Team, Malcolm Preece, and Anthony Rickett.”

…

He saw the explosion go off in her eyes a second before it actually happened.

“Malcolm Preece and Anthony Rickett!?” she actually shouted that time, and she leapt from her seat, even as Harry shot from his own to back up across the room. “That was why you played in the game against them!? They tried to cripple you, so you went into a game while injured out of spite!?”

“Well, that wasn’t exactly how it we-”

Hearing none of it, she cut him off with the sheer strength of the fire burning in her eyes. “You! Are! An! Idiot! Harry! Potter!” she ground out, punctuating each word with a slap to his shoulder that admittedly held very little force behind it. 

“We had a plan, Daphne!” Harry defended himself, now backing up toward the door because he’d already reached the chalkboard. “The first play was the only time we were even really playing against them. After that, they knew we were on to them, and they played like shite the whole rest of the game.”

“They almost broke your arm with a bludger!” was her immediate response. 

“That’s a common quidditch injury, Daph,” he said, trying to reason with her. Unfortunately, that nickname only seemed to make her attitude grow more fierce. “It was one almost broken bone. Did you even see the list of things I damaged on that staircase?”

Those words stopped her in her tracks. She looked so absolutely livid that he was honestly shocked the stone floor wasn’t melting beneath her feet. That anger turned cold and determined after hearing what he just said, and her jaw was set as she finally managed to back him up completely against the magically locked door.

“Unlock that door, Harry,” she demanded.

“Why?” he asked her.

“Because I’m going to kill them for hurting you, and then I’m going to come back here and kill you for being such a stupid boy.”

“I can’t let you leave just yet!” he said almost pleadingly, standing strong when she pulled her wand in preparation to move him from her path with force if her words weren't going to work. “You promised to hear me out.”

“I don’t care what else you have to say!” she exclaimed. “They aren’t getting away with this.”

Placing his hands on Daphne’s shoulders, he forced her to calm her movements and looked her in the eyes. “They aren’t going to. That’s why I need your help. Jason overheard something big from the Ravenclaw Runic Team, and it’d be of no risk to ourselves.”

“... You’re only telling me…” she whispered, her eyes widening in sudden realization. “Because you need my help…”

Harry restricted a cringe with every ounce of emotional control he had. The hurt on her face threatened to tear him in two, and, for a second, he thought she was going to leave. A sharp stab of pain shot through his chest, and his breaths shortened just a little. 

It was so much worse when her face slackened to dull neutrality.

“Tell me what you need, Potter…” she said softly and without much inflection. “We both already know you’re going to get what you want.”

His face minutely twitched at her words, and he knew she saw it. He didn’t allow his eyes to burn as he stared into Daphne’s, and he started talking because, at this point, there wasn’t much else he could do. 

When she agreed to help him in the end, like he knew she would, it didn’t feel anywhere near as gratifying as he thought it was going to.

Neville Longbottom got up from his desk once Defence Against the Dark Arts ended, feeling, once again, like he’d learned so much more than any one man could’ve possibly taught him at this level. He’d gone to lessons with Albus Dumbledore and participated in daily dueling practice with Flitwick, but this one man still had the ability to awe him in a first-year defence class. It was both amazing and anxiety-inducing at the exact same time. Just how the hell did this man not become famous by now with so much knowledge and power?

By his side, as usual, was Ronald Weasley, ever loyal and devoted. Grouped around them was the rest of the Gryffindor first years, and they all left the classroom together. The boys gravitated to him like planets caught in their sun’s orbit. They gave him so much for no reason. They followed him around like a dog following its master, and, behind their eager, smiling faces, he wondered just what was lurking. 

Was it blind, innocent admiration?

Was it the pride they got from being so close to him?

Was it the power, the pull his presence gave them?

… Was it the novelty?

A smile was easily plastered on his face as he laughed at some random, unfunny joke told by Seamus Finnigan as his eyes unconsciously slid around the halls. He noticed the way his laughter, in particular, heightened the volume of those around him, like they were waiting to see what he thought before truly committing. It sickened him even as a dull sense of satisfaction grumbled within him.

This, at least, was better than what happened if he didn’t have control. 

Loyal dogs turned into wolves when they realized he was ripe for the taking. Vultures and rats came from every angle, trying to get a taste of the Boy-Who-Lived. He was intimately acquainted with just how fast humans turned into vampires when the sweet scent of his leaking blood stroked so tantalizingly against the back of their noses. 

From the corner of his eye, a pair of bright green eyes stared into his very soul, but his light, confident smile never left his face as he slowly brought his laugh at Finnigan’s joke to a low chuckle. Harry Potter was trying to get his attention, like so many others, but that boy was no vulture. 

In a way, that only made him more uncomfortable…

The usual sycophants and bloodthirsty flies, he could deal with. He knew how to handle them, and he was even better at dealing with the prideful, arrogant idiots who delighted in trying to prove themselves of some kind of worth by pushing him beneath their feet. Harry Potter, however, was different. Different, in his experience, was not a good thing.

“Hey, guys!” he said with a kind, loud voice. “Ron and I were told to go see McGonagall about that detention she gave us a few days ago!”

“Come on, Neville!” Dean shouted over the sound of the hallways. “You can always go see her later! She’s never too mad at you!”

That was true, but it was also inconvenient for his story.

“I know,” Neville said with a touch of good natured arrogance in his tone. “But I dread the day that woman’s patience finally thins too much. I know you two are close to being top of the class with this defence spell. You guys go ahead and practice for an hour or so, and we’ll join up with you later.”

He saw the way they ate the complement out of his hands like starving beasts. They left with bright, excited goodbyes, leaving him alone with Ron.

It was too easy.

“I didn’t think McGonagall gave us detention this week, mate,” Ron told him.

“She didn’t,” Neville responded. “I think Potter has something to tell us though. I don’t want them coming along.”

Ron’s eyes darkened at the mention of the great Harry Potter. Whereas Neville merely held dislike and distrust for the boy, Ronald's initial dislike evolved into actively despising him, mostly because the boy’s name was all he heard nowadays. His parents adored their daughter’s new best friend, and, of course, his little sister adored him too. That last prank backfiring against him only added fuel to the flame, and Neville knew just how short Ronald’s temper was.

“And we’re going to listen to him?” Ron asked, his anger already showing.

“Yes, Ron, we are,” Neville said in a tone that suggested how unwise an argument was going to be here. “Anything Potter has to say this badly is something we should know about."

With that said, Neville followed Harry down the corridor and into a more secluded part of the castle. He wasn't surprised by this, but it did make him feel slightly more anxious. Everything he'd been taught over the years could’ve probably found its natural beginning with the advice to not follow untrustworthy individuals into secluded hallways with no witnesses.

Seeing Potter make a turn down a different hallway, he brought Ron around the corner as well.

Potter was nowhere in sight. 

He was just about to pull his wand when a hand shot from a nearby doorway, latched around his arm, and yanked him into an offshooting room. Fighting back was the first thing on his mind, but, when he was pinned to the wall and saw the expression on Potter's face, he slackened just a bit. Ron, he saw moments before, was yanked into the classroom across the hall by what could’ve only been Potter’s usual accomplice. 

Ron wasn’t being anywhere near as cooperative as himself.

He could hear the struggling in the room across the hall, and he heard Harry curse under his breath. “You just had to bring the loose-fucking-cannon, didn’t you?”

“I felt like I needed backup,” was his only response, to which Potter gave a derisive snort.

“Listen,” he said, turning his louder voice into something of a whisper when the clacks of a pair of shoes began to echo from down the hall. “That is the sound of a tail, Longbottom… if we don’t do something now, things are going to go badly for us very quickly.”

Skepticism was, of course, his initial reaction. The approaching sound of footsteps and the possible impending consequences of being found, however, eventually quieted his mind, and he decided that, for now, playing along was the best course of action.

“... Is it a problem if they know I lost them?”

“Yes,” was Potter’s answer. “They need to think it was their fault, or they’re going to change plans.”

Neville nodded a single time, drawing his wand even as Potter moved to put his back against the wall next to him. As the steps approached, they veered off to head toward the obvious noise in the room across the hall from them. Slowly pushing on the door, which was under the influence of a hastily cast silencing charm, they were able to see the Ravenclaw boy through the open doorway as he stood outside of the closed room that housed Ron and Greengrass. Ever so quietly, Neville crept from his spot. The boy had his head against the door, trying to listen in on whatever the commotion was on the other side. That meant the eavesdropper’s back was toward him, and it gave Neville the time and space he needed to move right behind him and level his wand at the boy’s head.

“Confundus,” he whispered.

The boy’s back straightened at the incantation, but it immediately went slack once Neville’s magic worked its way into his mind. He could feel the way it took effect, gently pulling away his victim’s control and inhibiting his brain’s operations. Once he was sure that it was as good as he could get it, Neville put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and turned him around, supporting him as if they were the best of friends. 

“Hey, man,” he said in a comforting, charismatic manner. “You look a little sick. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” the boy mumbled, as if extremely drunk. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“I don’t know,” Neville soothingly cajoled him with a bit of gentle concern. “You’re looking dizzy. I think the Weasley twins might’ve gotten something in your drink.”

He caught the way Potter smirked at his coaxing words and wondered just why the boy thought this was so amusing. The Ravenclaw slowly nodded, apparently accepting what he said easily enough.

“Come on, then,” Neville said. “How about you get yourself to your common room and sleep this off. You’ll probably feel better after a little nap. I’ll meet you there in a second.”

“Alrigh’,” the confused, overwhelmed boy slurred. “I’ll… see you later.”

With that, the Ravenclaw stumbled off down the corridor. Once he was gone, Potter looked over at him with a questioning tilt of his head. Immediately, he knew what the question was.

“He’ll remember almost nothing except for what I told him. It’ll probably sound, in his head, like he was the one who came up with it. He’ll just think the Weasleys made him fall ill.”

“Good,” was Potter’s answer.

Potter opened up the door for them to see Ronald Weasley and Daphne Greengrass holding each other at wand-point. Desks were strewn around the room, and it looked like Greengrass was much more exhausted than Ron. That was to be expected. He would've been a little disappointed if all of their training resulted in him outright losing this fight. 

“Would you calm down Weasley!?” she whispered in that demanding tone of hers. “I’m trying to help you.”

Seeing that things were going nowhere, Neville took charge. “Ron! Would you chill for a second?”

The boy almost immediately relaxed and lowered his wand. She did the same a few moments later, looking rather annoyed with everything. Dusting off her robes, she walked up to Potter.

“Next time, you get the one who fights back,”

Raising his hands in mock surrender, the boy turned to Neville and summoned his bag with a flick of his wand and a whispered incantation before he could ask what was going on. 

“Hey!” was Neville's indignant response as he marched forward to get it back, but he was stopped when Greengrass stuck her wand in his face. It looked like her patience had already been stretched as far as it was going to go. This was more along the lines of what he expected when Potter caught his attention earlier. “Do you really want to do this?” he asked in a low, serious voice.

She gave him nothing but a kind, obviously sardonic smile. Her wand didn’t move in the slightest, and Ron looked about ready to start things over again. Not feeling truly threatened by the girl, he raised his hand.

“Stop, Ron, it’s fine.”

“She has her wand on you!” was his response. 

“Please, Weasley,” Potter said as he began to carefully remove everything from his bag one after the other. “If we wanted you hurt, we would've done it before alerting you of our presence.

The redhead grumbled but listened anyway, understandably annoyed at having gotten surprised. After about two minutes of his privacy getting violated by Potter, he was about to stop him from continuing when the boy looked over at Neville, squinted his eyes suspiciously, and walked over to him. Once he was there, Potter reached out with his hands and began checking through his cloak.

“Just what are you doing, Potter?” he asked irritably, just barely allowing himself to be manhandled as he was without physically lashing out at a person he disliked so much.

“Would you shut up and let me find this thing!?” he loudly complained, fumbling around toward the seam of his right arm before his hands closed around something. “AHA!”

Yanking it out, he held what seemed to be nothing. The expression on his face was so cockily triumphant, however, that Neville didn’t doubt for a second that something was in his hand. Apparently reading his questioning expression for what it was, Potter pointed his wand at his other hand.

“Finite,” he incanted, and a piece of parchment slowly glimmered into view in his hand. 

Apparently satisfied with what he saw, Potter then turned the paper around to show him an odd drawing. It seemed to be some kind of map. A dotted line ran across it, and a large X was painted at the end of the line in red.

"This…" Potter said with a pleased glint in his eyes. "Would be the tracking rune they put on your cloak. I imagine you only have one or two, and you probably haven’t changed this one out in a while. I'd be angry with them if their work wasn't so clean."

That was true… He had lots of underclothes, but cloaks were heavier and worn only on the outside, so he had less of them and didn’t exchange them often. Neville wasn't much good with runes, but he did know one when he saw it. The map, he supposed, must've represented their intent to follow it to their goal, hence the way it tracked his location for them. He reached out to rip it in two, but Potter pulled his hand away in a flash, stepping back and holding it behind him protectively.

"Not so fast, Longbottom. If we destroy this, then they know we're onto them."

Ever the Gryffindor, he was about to reach for it again. "Why should I care about that? I just want it gone."

"Because, Longbottom, they used this little rune to follow you down to Hagrid's on a night cold enough for you to need your cloak, and they heard the most interesting things.”

Neville stopped his attempt to steal the paper immediately.

Fuck…

Ron verbally expressed his mental curse not moments after he thought it. This was some deep shit they’d gotten themselves in, all because fucking Hagrid had to go commit an indictable offence and then drag them into it by showing them the dragon when it hatched. To make matters worse, Dumbledore, as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, was magically required to report crimes that had the potential to "unreasonably endanger the personal safety of his students". If he’d told Dumbledore about this, his hands would’ve been tied from the moment he realized a dragon was in close quarters with children. 

“So what is this, then?” Neville asked, suddenly not in the mood to play along anymore. “What are you even doing here? Why are you helping me? Why is Hagrid still here if students already know about his new pet?”

Smirking and sitting on the desk nearest to him, Potter met his eyes, and Neville knew just how much he was enjoying this. “It’s simple, Longbottom: they don’t care about Hagrid. They want to get you. If they were to report him now, the most that would happen is Hagrid taking a little trip to azkaban. You and Weasley would get off mostly scot-free. Even if Hagrid gave you up, the worst you’d get is a slap on the wrist for not reporting a crime.

“If, however, they catch you attempting to cover up for him by, let’s say, smuggling the damn thing out of the castle, the Boy-Who-Lived is now suddenly part of a conspiracy to illegally move a class-five magical creature across country lines. How very scandalous…”

Shit, this was so bad.

Neville asked the obvious next question. “How much do they know?” 

Harry shrugged nonchalantly, still extremely gleeful about the entire thing. “Just about everything, Longbottom. They’ve been trailing you everywhere so long as you’ve had that cloak on. They know the date you’re planning on moving it, and they know where you’re planning to do the exchange. If you wear that cloak out, I’m sure they’re going to try personally catching you with it, ideally during the tradeoff.”

See, this was what he meant about vampires circling him the moment he started to bleed. He should’ve seen this coming from a mile away. Why didn’t he check his damn cloak!? 

“They want to apprehend me themselves?” he asked in order to clarify the situation.

“Yes,” was Potter’s simple answer. “They’ve already set everything up. Unless little old me caught them talking about it and decided to say something, things would’ve gone off without a hitch. About the only good news I can give you is that they don’t want to get the authorities involved, not until after they get all the credit. I’m sure they’ll each get their own personal awards from the school itself, at least if the last time a student apprehended another for possessing a class-five creature sets some kind of precedent, and the traction they’ll get for so cleverly using their runes to catch you in the act… They’ll practically be set for ministry positions the second they graduate.”

It was a pretty damn good plan. It took confidence in spades, but calling in the authorities wouldn’t give them any recognition. They’d just be the snitches that allowed the heroic ministry to capture the Boy-Who-Lived. Doing it themselves, however, turned them into the student prodigies who were capable of outplaying Neville Longbottom and a team of smuggling Dragon Handlers at the same time. They’d go down in Hogwarts: A History for sure.

“That just brings up the question,” Neville said eventually. “Of why you’re saying anything in the first place. Why are you helping me?”

Potter’s smile was practically demonic. “Call it… balancing my books.”

Balancing his books?

What, did Potter feel like he owed him or something? That was impossible. No, it sounded more like they owed him, but why would he care about doing this if he had something to gai… 

The stars aligned before his very eyes, and it was as if the Gods themselves had revealed to him the secrets of the universe. He started to laugh, finding a great deal of amusement in the entire thing. Now, he knew why Potter was having such a good time. The plot was so sweet he could physically taste it. 

“You aren’t doing this to help me,” Neville drawled with a sharp grin. “You’re doing this because it hurts them! They were the ones who used the rune on the stairs, weren’t they! You knew all along, and you didn’t tell anyone because, now, you get to pay them back yourself.”

He was practically giddy despite the shitty situation he was in. Potter was helping him because this was possibly the one and only chance he’d get to truly hit his attackers where it hurt. This wasn’t generosity shining through. Potter was being forced to help him unless he wanted the people who hospitalized him to gain the reputation that’d come with taking down the Boy-Who-Lived. 

Oh, life was so good to him sometimes…

“Yes,” Harry admitted, his amusement lessened by Longbottom’s realization. “They did, and I didn’t get the aurors involved with it. That changes nothing for you. You need my help, or you’re going to get caught.”

“No,” Neville said with an air of faux-arrogance, milking this for all it was worth. “I don’t think I do. I admittedly needed your help, yes, but now that I know, I can just change the date I do it. It would be fine, actually, if I just change the drop-off location and leave the date as it is. Hell, I could probably just keep it all the same and pay Fred and George to make sure every single one of those fucks are stuck with their arses on a toilet all night.

“It isn’t me in need of something. You need my help because the only way you get back at them is if you use me as the bait.”

“And maybe,” Harry said, standing up from his desk and forcing his eyes to not turn a poisonous yellow. “I’ll have to find out just how much reputation you can gain from catching the Boy-Who-Lived for myself.”

The tension in the room only increased as the two stared each other down, each of them weighing exactly how much trouble breaking their tentative partnership would be. Working together posed a pretty damn good chance of everyone getting away happily, but actually bearing the presence of the other was an unhappy thought for both of them. Each knew the benefits of sticking this one out as a team though, and, despite the herculean effort it was to begrudgingly accept that being friendly was the best way to go, a hand was stuck out by both of them respectively at almost the exact same time.

Grasping it, they gave a single shake before breaking.

“If…” Neville said as he stared into Potter’s soul. “And I do mean if you have a plan that's as good or better than my own, then I will follow yours through as thanks for not letting me get caught, even if I do know you only did it for yourself.”

With their deal struck, the four students took a seat around each other. With their tail sent away for the moment, they probably had a bit of free time before the Ravenclaws caught onto the fact that there wasn’t anyone listening in on Neville. That meant they had some time to plan, and Harry was sure he had one that was air tight. 

“So,” Harry Potter said to the unlikely group of allies around him. “This is what I’ve got in mind.”