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."
.....
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