Another Prisoner, Another Professor

"And Black thinks they killed him?" Hermione whispered.

They were in Harry and Ron's room, Harry sitting on his bed and Ron sitting on his own with Hermione. Neville was in the common room and hadn't looked up from his Potions book for hours, and judging by the intensity with which Seamus and Dean, at the table next to him, were debating the respective merits of the Appleby Arrows and Pride of Portree, it didn't look as though any of Harry and Ron's roommates were going to want to go up to bed anytime soon.

"He thinks at least one of them did, yeah," said Harry. "But he wants me to stay out of it - not mention it to Malfoy or anything. He thinks things might get really bad between him and the Malfoys."

"If they manage to get out of this one," said Ron, hugging his knees to his chest, "I think I'm going to be sick. They join You-Know-Who and get away with it, they almost get Ginny killed - "

"They might have framed Lupin for killing thirteen people," said Hermione, then quickly added, "even though he definitely betrayed Harry's parents. But they might not have killed Black's brother. I mean, there's no evidence he's even dead, is there?"

"Just wait," said Ron ominously. "The Aurors will find a dead body in the woods and the Malfoys will give a million Galleons to charity and that'll be the end of the whole thing." Suddenly he paused and grinned. "But if they actually do have to go to court, wouldn't it be great if it cost them so much gold that they had to sell Draco's Nimbus Two Thousand and One?"

The Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw match was approaching swiftly, and Oliver Wood was keeping the Firebolts between practices to make sure they were safe. Although Harry hadn't asked Wood whether it was true, the rumor was that they was in an enormous iron box, protected by five spells, eight sets of locks and keys, and two padlocks.

"If the Aurors do find a dead body in the woods," said Hermione, "I can't imagine that Black would let the whole thing drop. They won't have been careless enough to leave the body in the woods, though, at least not as a body. They might have transfigured it. If I had to hide someone's body, I'd transfigure it into something really ordinary and then keep it in my house - a paper clip or a vase on the mantelpiece."

"Remind me never to borrow a paper clip from you, then," said Ron, giving Hermione a wary glance.

"Well, just think about it. No one's going to think to investigate whether a book on a bookshelf or an old ink bottle in a desk is really someone's body. Actually - if I had to hide someone's body, I'd transfigure it first and then I'd sell it to someone else. That way it would be harder to prove that I was involved in the person's death."

"If they did that, Regulus's body could be anywhere," said Harry, impressed by Hermione's theory. "They could have sold it to Burgin and Borkes so some other dark wizard could buy it. Or they could have sold it to a regular second-hand shop. Hey - you know what? If they did, I bet Dobby knows about it."

"Yeah!" said Ron, brightening. "I bet the Malfoys would be in Azkaban in a minute flat if Dobby ever told everything he knew about them. A second flat."

"I'm sure the Aurors will question Dobby if they need to," said Hermione.

"Oh yeah," Ron replied, the smile fading from his face. "The Aurors."

Harry had figured from the start that it would be difficult for him not to gloat about Malfoy's family's impending scandal, but he hadn't reckoned on how hard it was for him not to rush off and try to solve everything. Did the Aurors even know about Dobby? If they did, could they find him? It was frustrating knowing that he, Harry, perhaps the person Dobby liked most in the world, could probably get Dobby to tell him everything about the Malfoys if he were allowed to get involved.

Ron appeared to be having similar frustrations. "Can't the Aurors just go into the Malfoys' house and search everything? On suspicion of, I don't know, general dodginess?"

"If the Aurors could search a person's house just because they suspected him, and they didn't have any evidence - "

"Yeah, yeah," Ron muttered. "They'd go in everyone's house and everyone would get shirty. But couldn't there be an exception for people who were really, really obviously evil?"

The next morning there was an article in the Daily Prophet about how Regulus's button had been found; it was on the second page (an article about a possible Gringotts strike had taken the first) and didn't mention the Malfoys at all. It was hard to know how many people at Hogwarts had read it. Most of the students didn't have the Prophet delivered, and those who did tended to go past the first few pages to read the sport articles and advice columns.

"'Dear Priscilla,'" Ron read aloud at breakfast. "'I am a girl at Hogwarts and I'm about to lose a bet to my friend.'"

"Give me that," said Hermione.

"'In three days I'll have to keep my deranged cat locked in my room until Easter. My question is, how do I tell my friend that the theory we bet on was brilliant and made sense from the start? Signed, Herm I. O. Knee.'"

"Ron, if you really sent that in I'm going to kill you - "

"He didn't," said Harry, looking over Ron's shoulder. "He's just making it up." Ron grinned.

"You can go ahead and laugh," Hermione said, "but it's not over until it's over."

Tuesday morning was particularly tense. Black wasn't at the head table during breakfast, and Ron was looking cheerful. "The bet wasn't about breakfast," Hermione reminded him. "It was about whether Black shows up in class."

"Why wouldn't he show up in class?" asked Lavender, who had apparently overheard them.

"Never mind," Hermione replied shortly.

"Because of his brother," said Parvati. "He disappeared years ago and they've just found a button from his coat in the woods."

"Really?"

"Really. It was in the Daily Prophet on Saturday. They found it out in the woods in Wiltshire."

"Is he dead?"

"They don't know yet. They've got Aurors investigating."

"I hope he's not dead," said Colin, an uncharacteristically serious look on his face. "He's not dead, is he, Harry?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Harry asked, trying and failing to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

On his way to Potions class, Harry found that Pansy Parkinson was stopping people just outside the door. "Sign this," she said imperiously, shoving a piece of parchment at him.

Harry scanned the top. Petition to End Assigned Seating, it said.

"'We the undersigned are sick and tired of having assigned seats in Potions class,'" read Neville, who had come up just behind Harry. "'We move that they be abolished immediately because they just make everyone miserable.'"

Harry was surprised. He had never known Snape's house to turn against him before.

"What's the catch?" Ron asked Pansy. "Do we turn into flobberworms if we sign it or something?"

"There isn't a catch," said Pansy. "I'm just sick of looking at you. I want to sit with Daphne."

"Does Malfoy know about this?" Hermione asked. That was what Harry had been wondering as well. He couldn't imagine Malfoy wanting to get rid of a chance to mock him every day.

Pansy exchanged nervous glances with Millicent Bulstrode. "Not yet," she said finally.

"Give me that," said Ron, and signed it with a flourish. "If it makes Malfoy miserable, I'm in."

By the time class started, everyone but Malfoy, who had yet to show up, had signed the petition and it was on Pansy's desk. The tension in the room was palpable. What was Snape going to do when he found out that the entire class, Slytherins and Gryffindors, were rebelling against his seating arrangements?

Before Snape could begin, Pansy raised her hand. "Yes, Miss Parkinson?" he asked. Neville gulped.

"Sir, we all signed a petition - "

If Snape was surprised at the news, he failed to show it. "A petition, Miss Parkinson? What, may I ask, does this petition concern?"

"We're sick of sitting with people we don't want to sit with," Pansy said. Though her voice had its usual haughty tone, Harry could see her hand trembling under the table. "We want things to go back to the way they were."

"I see." Snape took a long look at the rest of the class. "And all of you signed this petition?" No one spoke. "Miss Parkinson, it is immaterial to me how many people signed a petition. This class is not a democracy."

"But Professor - "

"That is enough!" Snape snapped.

Malfoy didn't come to class until the very end; he was followed by a short man with a pointy brown beard, who whispered to Snape as the students filed out the door. Harry couldn't tell what the man was saying, but Snape kept nodding.

"Parkinson's my hero," said Ron when they were on their way to Defense Against the Dark Arts. "She still looks like - oh, what are those ugly dogs - "

"Pugs," said Harry, who had often thought in the past that Pansy had the face of a pug dog.

" - but she's not a hundred percent rotten, anyway." They stopped just before the door. "This is it, Hermione."

"Well, go ahead and open the door, then," Hermione said, pushing a few strands of hair behind her ear. Ron took a deep breath and turned the handle.

Black was there. He had dark circles under his eyes, his hair was untidy, and he had one hand on his forehead as though he had a headache, but he was in class and he was definitely not a wolf. Ron's mouth fell open in astonishment.

"Do I look that bad?" Black asked, smiling wanly.

"No - no," Ron said at once. "It was just - nothing."

"It's only until Easter," Hermione whispered as they sat down, but Ron refused to look at her.

"I'm not exactly well at the moment," Black said when class had started. "Nothing contagious."

Harry glanced at Ron, who looked as though he had just found out that the Chudley Cannons were disbanded. Harry had wanted Ron's theory to be right too. He had said that if Black was a werewolf, he, Harry, would tell him everything he knew, but Black wasn't a werewolf and now he had no idea what to do.