Chapter 47

As he resumed his walk towards the Great Hall, he thought about older students whom he had seen dating each other. He didn't make a habit of studying them, but sometimes they were hard to ignore.

For the most part, "dates" at Hogwarts seemed to consist of finding a secluded spot in an alcove or in the shade of a tree in order to snog for a bit until a teacher or prefect (or Peeves) found you. As fun as snogging Padma sounded, Harry doubted that that was all she would want out of a first date.

For that matter, he didn't even know if Padma would be up for snogging him at all on their first date. Somehow she didn't seem to be that type of girl.

Some days in the warmer months couples could be seen sitting on the grassy lawns watching the world go by together. Did that constitute a proper date?

Harry wondered if he ought to work on an attempt to increase the number of Hogsmeade trips per year. Seriously, so long as they all did their homework, what was wrong with the students being allowed to wander down to the village on any Saturday of the year? They all needed to regularly top up their school supplies after all, as well as buy treats for pets amongst other things. It seemed strange that they could only do that on three set days in the year, and the rest of the time they had to settle for ordering their supplies through owl post, which was rather inefficient as it took so long.

He must have entered the Great Hall without realising, for he was suddenly pulled unpleasantly from his train of thought by a shout.

"Potter!"

Harry blinked and the world came back into focus. He was literally standing just in the dead centre of the frame of the double doors to the Great Hall. The eyes of all the students at the four house tables, as well as all of those belonging to the people seated at the staff table were on him as Severus Snape stormed along the aisle between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, heading straight towards Harry. His black robes billowed about in that style that only he seemed to have perfected, and yet, as always, his long and greasy hair barely moved an inch.

Obviously it had been Snape who had shouted his name at him. It seemed that the man wanted as many witnesses for this event as possible.

'Fine by me!' thought Harry before asking "How may I help you, Professor Snape?"

"Don't play dumb with me you insolent little whelp!" sneered the school's resident potions master "Malfoy has informed me that you stole his wand as well as those of his friends. Now hand them over."

"I stole nothing," replied Harry calmly "Those wands were confiscated from the students in question as their behaviour on the Hogwarts Express warranted it. I held onto the wands for the night in order to teach those four a lesson in humility; however I had every intention of giving them back to their owners this morning so as to not interfere with their lessons."

"A likely story!" scoffed Snape "Admit it. You were hoping that they would be unable to perform magic in class and so loose plenty of house points, weren't you?"

"I am afraid that you could not be more wrong, Professor," said Harry.

"Is that so?" the man asked with a dangerous edge to his voice "Well then, let's see how you like this. Two hundred points from Gryffindor for wand theft."

He smirked at Harry and said "Well, that should mean that the Gryffindors will be in the minus figures until after the Christmas holidays at the very least."

"Again you are incorrect, Professor," said Harry "As I said during my speech last night, my new role requires me to be entirely neutral. Therefore I am no longer of any of the school houses, Gryffindor or otherwise."

"And yet you still wear the colours of Gryffindor House," replied Snape with a sneer.

Harry looked down and saw that he was right "Oh, so I am. My mistake."

And with that, he took out his wand and tapped the badge on the front of his robes, causing the image of the Gryffindor lion to shrink back into just one quarter of the available space. The remaining three quarters of the space was filled by the eagle of Ravenclaw, the badger of Hufflepuff and the serpent of Slytherin. Then a big 'H' appeared, meaning that his robes now bore the emblem of Hogwarts School itself, rather than one of its individual houses.

This was followed by a tap of the wand to his tie, which caused the red and gold stripes on it to narrow and for some to change colour so that there were eight different colours, red and gold for Gryffindor, blue and bronze for Ravenclaw, yellow and black for Hufflepuff and green and silver for Slytherin.

Then finally one tap to the collar of his robes saw the silk lining that for Gryffindors was a dark red turn into the black colour that the lining originally was went first purchased.

"There," said Harry as he pocketed his wand "I trust that you find this change satisfactory, Professor."

There was a vein throbbing in Snape's forehead now. Harry had seen that phenomenon in the man on several occasions over the past few years, but the only time it had ever been this severe looking had been at the end of his third year when Sirius Black evaded the Dementor's kiss and Snape was convinced that Harry was somehow involved (which he was, but Snape had no way to prove that.)

Of course, Harry realised that it was taking Snape every ounce of self-control he had to stop himself from exploding right there in the Great Hall. This meant that there were only a few seconds more to go before Snape either hexed him or had a stroke, therefore Harry decided to end their conversation there and then by stepping around the man and striding towards the front of the hall.

He stood before the staff table and turned to face the students before asking "Could Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle of Slytherin House please come up here?"

Two of the four students in question exchanges looks with each other and several of their house mates before getting to their feet. The other two simply waited to see what the first two would tell them to do. All four of them then walked to the front of the hall.

"The behaviour exhibited by the four of you on the train yesterday was appalling," said Harry "can I trust that you will not behave like that again?"

Showing that they had at least some brain cells rattling around in their self-important heads, both Draco and Pansy nodded in reply. Crabbe and Goyle mirrored them, even if they did not entirely understand the question asked.

"Very well…" said Harry before swinging his backpack off of his shoulder and opening it up to retrieve the four wands. He held them out to the four Slytherins, each of whom took their own before slinking back to their house table.

Harry stepped away from the staff table and headed towards the Hufflepuffs. On the way he noticed that Snape was still standing between the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor house tables.

He called out "Was there something else you wanted, Professor?"

In response Snape gave Harry his trademark sneer before turning and sweeping out of the hall, robes billowing around him once again.

Harry shook his head and continued to the Hufflepuff table. Every eye followed him.

Hannah shoved Megan Jones to get the girl to budge over before patting the now vacated spot next to her.

"Thanks Hannah" said Harry before sitting down "Good morning, Hufflepuffs."

"Good morning Harry," chirped Hannah brightly "So, care to tell me what the show at lunch will be?"

"Show?" questioned Harry "What show?"

"Well, last night there was the big "I'm here to help you" monologue, and this morning you and Snape gave us double-act performance following by some award-winning performances by the Slytherins, seriously, Pansy ought to win a BAFTA for how well she acted the part of "sad-looking witch." And after all that, I want to know what kind of act we can be seeing at lunch."

"Hate to tell you this, but none of that this morning was planned," replied Harry "And how to do know about the BAFTA's, anyway?"

"Oh, so that was all improv, nice," said Hannah "And just because I'm from a Noble and Ancient House does not mean I am a pleb. Muggleborn mother, remember?"

"Right, gotcha." said Harry before looking across the table "Morning Susan, how are you?"

Susan glared right back at him, though the effect was dampened by the fact that she was obviously sulking about something.

"Oh, don't be like that Sue, Harry doesn't know yet." said Hannah.

"What don't I know?" asked Harry.

Hannah leaned in and said in a staged whisper so that everyone within twenty feet heard her "Eddie Carmichael went and got himself a girlfriend during the summer."

Harry turned to look over his shoulder to look at the Ravenclaw table. He had to raise himself out of his seat a little in order to look over the heads of the Gryffindors seated at their table.

Sure enough, Eddie Carmichael was sitting there, trying to remove some girl's appendix via her mouth with his tongue. Cho Chang and her friend Marietta Edgecombe seemed to be trying to give the amorous pair as much room as possible.

"Oh yeah," he mumbled, feeling more than a little bit grossed out by the overly public display of affection.

"Stupid trollop," growled Susan.

"Oh, come on Susan," said Hannah "In all the years you've fancied him, how many times have you actually talked to him?"

"I was gonna let him know that I liked him eventually," grumbled Susan "Stupid prat could've waited until I was ready."

"Yeah, well you'll just have to find someone else to pine after," said Hannah "How about Harry?"

Susan flushed scarlet, but Harry didn't notice as he was paying attention to the results of the spells he was using to test the food around him. He did, however, register Hannah's comment and replied with an absent minded "She can't. I'm taken too."

Around him several conversations stopped, causing him to look up and glance around. Then he leaned towards Hannah and asked "I said that too loud, didn't I?"

"Yup," she replied with a grin "Now spill it, Potter."

Harry was saved from further embarrassment by the arrival of Professor McGonagall, who asked "Mr Potter, why are you not seated with the Gryffindors?"

"Seriously?" Harry asked "After that performance with Snape just now I have to explain it again?"

McGonagall's lips thinned and her nostrils flared, two major signs that she was angry. However she refrained from commenting and instead said "No, Mr Potter, you have made yourself quite clear. I just came over to deliver your weekly timetable. As we were unaware of your change in plans you are still down for taking all of your classes with Gryffindor students. I have, however, taken the liberty of removing Divination from your timetable. I expect you to use those vacant periods wisely."

"Thank you, Professor," Harry replied, taking the timetable from her "And don't worry. I plan on using those free periods to do as much of my homework as possible, therefore allowing me more time after classes and on weekends to do my duties as Student Advisor."

.

.

.

Here I am publishing a daily chapter if you want the complete novel subscribe to my Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/Fernandodavid/shop