Chapter 51

It seems you were wise to bring this to the attention of the Ministry," said Professor Umbridge after the last student had left. She shook her head ruefully "No one of your classmates got question twenty three correct."

"Which one was that again?" asked Harry.

"The one about how the Great Fire of London started," replied Umbridge "The muggles all thought that it began in a bakery, but some fool of a wizard living in the next house over was keeping a young common Welsh green dragon in his basement illegally. He managed to apparate out of course and the dragon was able to fly away, but it was seen by most of the population of the city. Had the International Statute of Secrecy been in effect then, it would have been one of the biggest breaches of it ever."

"You're going to have to report this, aren't you?" asked Harry.

"I must, yes," replied Umbridge "Be sure to have your report about the incident on the train completed by tomorrow evening. I can send it to the Ministry with mine."

"Of course," replied Harry before asking "Was there anything else?"

"Be sure to keep an eye on that Gryffindor Prefect. The Weasley boy. Something tells me he will be the first to lose his prefects badge."

"I've been thinking the same thing," said Harry, honestly.

A few moments later, Harry left the classroom and began to make his way towards the library. As he walked he cursed his luck. When he had arranged to meet with Padma after dinner, he had quite forgotten about having to write a report about Malfoy and Parkinson's behaviour on the train for submittal to the Ministry. As he did not want to miss out on his date later, Harry resigned himself to skipping his morning break in order to write the report in the library.

It was a simple enough task to complete as it was essentially just filling in a form, much like a prefect had to when reporting a transgression of a student. The problem was that it was just so time consuming.

Once inside the library he found himself an empty table in a secluded corner and dumped his book bag down on top of it before pulling out a seat to sit in.

From his bag he pulled out four of the forms, one for Malfoy, one for Parkinson, one for Crabbe and one for Goyle. In the spaces indicated, he filled out what their names were, which house they were in, which year they were in, what their transgressions were and what punishment he had given them. There was also a small box that he had to tick on Malfoy and Parkinson's forms, indicating that they were prefects.

He finished filling out the last form just as the bell signalling the end of break rang out. Harry pulled out his wand and used a copying charm, as taught to him by Madam Bones, in order to make several copies of each form. One copy was for Professor Umbridge to keep, one was for the school records, one was for the Wizarding Examinations Authority at the Ministry and the last one Harry decided he ought to keep for himself, just in case.

He then slid all of those forms back into his book bag and left the library.

Somehow he didn't think that missing the beginning of potions would go down to well.

/\/\/\/\/\

Harry arrived in the corridor outside the dungeon classroom to find that, while he was certainly not the first to arrive, he also was not the last this time.

Once again it seemed like the people who had organised the class schedule for the year had decided to stick with the old method of lumping the Gryffindors with the Slytherins for this class.

Never a good combination.

So far the only Slytherins present were Blaise Zabini, Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis. Blaise was talking to the two girls, but the conversations appeared to be one sided.

"…so Malfoy was all red in the face, yeah? And he did his usual "wait until my father hears about this" bit…"

Harry fought back the smirk that had threatened to break out onto his face upon hearing that. Although he insisted to everyone who commented on it that he had only been doing his job in punishing Malfoy, Harry had felt a good amount of satisfaction in finally being able to knock Malfoy down a peg in a way that did not involve Quidditch. Honestly, who wouldn't feel that way after having to put up with Malfoy's crap being directed at them for four years?

Blaise broke off when he and the other two noticed Harry's arrival.

Since that he was going to have to make nice with the Slytherins that evening at dinner, Harry figured that he might as well try and make some headway now, so offered up a simple "Hello."

Blaise turned away from him. Daphne kept her eyes on him, but her expression remained completely indifferent. Only Tracey actually acknowledged him, offering a small smile in return.

Any further attempts by Harry to break the ice with the Slytherins were halted by the arrival of Malfoy and his gang, Pansy Parkinson, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, Millicent Bulstrode and Theodore Nott. Apparently Malfoy had been saying something really funny if their collective laughter was anything to go by.

That all quickly stopped, though, once they saw Harry standing there.

Ron and Hermione were the next to arrive, followed shortly after by Neville, Dean and Seamus. Then came Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil. The remaining stragglers arrived mere moments before the dungeon door opened and the hook-nosed Professor Snape ordered them all inside.

Astonishingly, Snape failed to direct even one derogatory remark towards Harry for the entire lesson. For that matter, the normally rather vindictive man seemed to barely even acknowledge Harry's existence.

And it wasn't just Harry either. While not his worst ever mishap in potions, Neville's soothing solution producing copious amounts of purple smoke would normally have resulting in the potions Professor directing a verbal diatribe at the boy before vanishing his work, giving him a zero score and deducting twenty points from Gryffindor. Today, Snape merely vanished the smoke, bit out an angry "Cut the soy beans, Longbottom, don't crush them" and then swept away in a billow of black robes to correct Goyle's attempt.

From the table behind him, Harry heard Seamus whisper to Dean "What's with him?"

"Dunno," replied Dean "Maybe he's learned his lesson after Harry told him off at breakfast."

"Or maybe Dumbledore had words with him," offered the voice of Parvati "told him to keep his head down."

Harry thought on both of those possibilities as he diced up the kidney of a willow warbler. Is this was Snape's natural response to his and Harry's confrontation in the Great Hall earlier, then Harry had greatly underestimated them man's capabilities of self-restraint.

If, however, this new attitude was on Dumbledore's orders, Harry was certain that it was taking every ounce of will-power the man had to keep it going, and it was unlikely that it would be long before the cracks in the façade became obvious.

Sure enough, Snape let himself down at the end of the lesson.

"By now your soothing solutions should all now be a pale blue in colour. Please place a sample in a glass phial, label it with your name and bring it to the front to be marked."

All things considered, Harry thought that his soothing solution had turned out pretty well. The colour was slightly off, but he felt that it at least deserved a passing grade. It seemed to him that he was actually quite good at potions when Snape wasn't breathing down his neck and making his usual snide comments.

He momentarily forgot, however, that such a grade was only likely to be given to him by a fair teacher. And a fair teacher was something that Severus Snape was most certainly was not.

Harry gently poured some of the potion into one of his phials, stoppered the top and wrote his name on the label. Then he took it up to the front and placed it onto Snape's desk alongside several others. When he turned to head back to his table, he heard a smash and turned back to Snape's desk.

The man was wearing a superior sneer on his face, and the phial that Harry had placed on his desk was lying in smashed pieces on the floor of the classroom.

"Oh dear," said Snape "I do believe that will have to be a zero for today's lesson, Potter."

This wasn't the first time that Snape had pulled this stunt on him, only this time Harry wasn't going to put up with it. He pulled out his wand and cast a repairing charm on the smashed remains of the phial, which rose into the air and joined back together like some kind of 3D jigsaw puzzle. Harry took the mended phial back to his desk, poured some more of the potion into it, stoppered it and returned it to Snape's desk.

Every other student in that classroom was standing completely still, most hardly daring to breathe as Harry and Snape stared each other down. Several of them wondered if the long anticipated day in which one of the two finally snapped and killed the other was now upon them.

A minute of silence passed before Harry finally turned once again back towards the table where he had been working.

And once again there was a smash and his phial mysteriously fell from Snape's desk and crashed to the stone floor of the dungeon classroom.

All eyes were not on Harry, who bit down hard on his bottom lip to prevent himself from saying anything. He took out his wand and repaired the smashed phial once again before returning to his cauldron and filling the phial with the contents of the cauldron once more. He stoppered it and placed it down onto his desk. Then he took another three glass phials from his set of potions instruments and filled all three before stoppering each one and labelling them.

Next he vanished the remaining potion from the cauldron before, with a few flicks of his wand, he packed all his remaining equipment away. Then he picked up all four stoppered phials and, rather than place them all down on Snape's desk like they were all expecting him to, he walked towards the door of the classroom.

"Potter!" Snape shouted after him "Potions brewed by students are not allowed to be taken beyond the walls of this classroom!"

Harry ignored him. Cradling all four phials in one arm, he wrenched the door open with the other and marched out of the classroom and into the corridor beyond.

As he made his way up one of the staircases the bell rang to signal the end of the lesson and the start of their lunch hour. He quickly found himself in the corridor that led to the History of Magic classroom and he pushed his way by a group of third year students in order to get to the classroom.

Professor Umbridge was just coming out of her classroom when she spotted him.

"Potter, what in Merlin's name is the matter?" she asked.

Harry told her what had happened down in the dungeon classroom, and she wasn't happy at what she heard.

"How dare he try and sabotage the Ministry like this?" she demanded rhetorically.

"Uh, the Ministry?" asked Harry in confusion.

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