Serpent's Lair

The day after their fight with the troll the three of them met Hermione outside Potions, as if they had planned it.

Hermione hesitated, looking embarrassed. Harry and Blaise looked awkward as well. Theodore appeared to be wishing he could sink through the floor and vanish.

"I-- I'm sorry you got in trouble--" Hermione began.

Harry shrugged. "Thanks for trying to get us out of it, anyway."

"I--" she looked at the ground. "Thank you."

Theodore glowered at her. "You didn't tell anyone, did you?"

"I-- I figured I should see if you wanted me to."

"Good. If you'd told anyone we saved you, I would've killed you."

Hermione flushed a little, looking rather hurt, but she didn't say anything.

"Anyway," Theodore added, "All I really did was slap you-- and I've wanted to do that since our first Potions class."

"Well-- thank you." Hermione turned to go.

"You're welcome," Blaise said quietly. Hermione paused.

"Yeah," Harry put in. "Anyway, you're the one who actually beat it. Thanks-- Hermione."

She smiled at him, and he suddenly realized just how lonely she'd been. Theodore looked from Harry to Blaise in incredulous disgust, but said nothing.

Potions class was, as always, divided by house, with the Slytherins taking one side and the Gryffindors taking the other. This wasn't actually a requirement, but something similar happened in most of their classes. It was no different today, which gave Harry a chance to talk without Hermione overhearing.

"Theodore?"

Theodore's eyes flicked up from the dried beetles he was crushing. "Be a good boy and play nice with the Mudblood?"

Harry didn't know what a Mudblood was, but evidently Blaise did. "Theodore!" she hissed, sounding shocked. Her exclamation carried a bit farther than she'd intended, and Snape swept over from the Gryffindor side of the room to criticize Harry's work. As he left, Harry noticed that he was limping. As soon as Snape was out of earshot, Blaise continued, more quietly, "That's a horrible thing to say, Theodore, and you know it. It's not her fault who her parents are-- do you think she wouldn't rather be pureblood? She was trying to thank us; would it have hurt you to just be nice to her?"

"Would it? Is that what you were going to ask, Harry?"

"Yeah, pretty much. She's not that bad. Not to mention she saved our lives."

"And her own. After we put ourselves at risk to save her."

"You came too," Harry pointed out.

"I had my own reasons," Theodore said. "Keep working on your potion. Snape will be coming to check on our progress." He measured out the powdered beetle, and sprinkled it slowly into his potion, which was a bit darker green than it was supposed to be.

After class, Harry asked Blaise what a Mudblood was; she replied by telling him not to say it so loud. He hadn't been loud, but he followed Blaise's gaze and saw one of the Gryffindors giving him a disgusted look. "I just asked what it meant," he objected.

"Yes, but he mightn't have heard all of it. Anyway, even saying it offends some people, no matter why... you see, some people think that all Muggle-born witches and wizards are... well, I don't know exactly, inferior or disloyal or untrustworthy or something-- they don't like them. It's an insult-- that word means 'dirty blood,' it's one of the worst things you can call somebody."

Theodore rolled his eyes. "It's a word. That's what everyone calls them around my house."

Blaise stared at him. Theodore smirked, but his eyes seemed to have a veil behind them, and what little sentiment might be discerned from them was most certainly not amusement.

Blaise decided to shift the subject. "But what do you think, Theodore?" she asked, sounding quite certain that he would agree with her. They had stopped in a dungeon hallway, and were the only ones there.

Theodore considered. "I think," he said at last, "that Hermione Granger is bloody annoying, and having her as a friend will cause us a lot of trouble. I also think we have a class to get to." With that he left, walking quickly. Harry and Blaise followed, silently; both of them seemed to be thinking.

"Potter?"

Harry turned to see Draco Malfoy, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle. The Slytherins had just finished their final class for the day. Theodore had left quickly, avoiding Harry, but Blaise was still with him, and she turned to Draco with some dislike.

"Malfoy?" Harry replied.

"I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind... alone."

Blaise looked extremely suspicious. "Harry and I have somewhere to go," she said quickly. This wasn't strictly a lie-- they'd been planning to 'probably' visit Hagrid that afternoon-- but they weren't really in a hurry, either.

"No," Harry said, curious despite himself. "You go ahead, Blaise-- I want to know what he's got to say. I'll catch up with you in a minute."

Blaise looked rather hurt, but she nodded and left, walking a bit quickly. Wizards, Harry found himself thinking. First Theodore freaking out about Hermione, now Blaise was angry that he was willing to talk to Draco... he hoped she wasn't too mad, though, or he'd be getting a bit short on friends.

Once Blaise was out of sight, Draco spoke, keeping his voice low. "Listen, I've been watching you in broom-riding lessons... you're not bad. How'd you like to try some Quidditch moves?"

"I'd like it," Harry answered, a bit guardedly.

"Well, I've managed to filch some of the school brooms... what say we try it out tonight? I even managed to get a snitch."

"Okay," Harry agreed. Actually playing some Quidditch really did sound fun. Draco might not be the nicest guy in the world, but it couldn't hurt anything to just go flying with him. "How do we keep from getting caught?"

"Working on it, Potter... don't worry, I'll pull it off."

It wasn't hard to catch up with Blaise; apparently, she had hidden behind a suit of armor less than thirty feet away from them. "What did he say to you?" she asked.

"He wants me to practice flying with him. We're sneaking out tonight-- he says he's got brooms and a snitch."

Blaise's face darkened. "Harry, are you crazy? It's Malfoy! Who knows why he really wants you out there-- he'll probably try and hex you!"

Harry gave Blaise a genuinely blank look. "Why would he do that?"

"Don't you remember what I told you? His father was on You-Know-Whose side, he probably wants to get back at you for defeating him..."

"I don't care who his father is," Harry said. This wasn't completely true, but he didn't want Blaise telling him who he could and couldn't associate with, and he wanted to go flying. Sensing a futile argument, Blaise quieted down, and they made their way to Hagrid's hut in a slightly awkward silence.

When they finally arrived, Hagrid was out in front of his house, waiting for them. He had a large crate in his arms and a huge grin on his face. "Blaise! Harry! There yeh are! I was wondering if yeh weren' coming!"

"Hagrid?" Blaise looked up at him hopefully. "Did you get permission to--"

Hagrid nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, Dumbledore said I could. You an' Harry both, come on now..."

Blaise clapped her hands, and followed Hagrid back toward the castle, practically skipping with excitement. "Where are we going?" Harry asked.

"Yeh'll see," Hagrid answered. Neither Blaise nor Hagrid would say anything more.

They entered the castle, and mounted several flights of stairs. Then they stopped outside of a door. "Isn't this the third floor corridor?" Harry asked, remembering Dumbledore's speech. Hagrid nodded. So this was the secret Blaise had been wondering about. Hagrid was keeping some sort of magical creature here. Well, the part about a painful death makes sense now, Harry thought. Anything Hagrid liked was likely to be a bit dangerous.

Blaise, apparently thinking along similar lines, hung back a bit. "Hagrid, is it-- is it... quite safe?"

"Course it is," Hagrid answered, setting down the crate and pulling a large, silver key from one of his pockets. "Dumbledore's trustin' yeh in there. Just make sure yeh don' come too close to his teeth, yeh'll be fine..."

Blaise seemed torn between fear and interest. She glanced at Harry, who shrugged. "O-- okay, then," she murmured, backing away from the door a little.

Hagrid turned the key, and the door swung open. He turned and picked up the crate, and Harry and Blaise peered nervously past him as he walked through the door.

Beyond the doorway stretched the forbidden corridor. At the far end of that corridor stood the reason it was forbidden: a monstrous, three-headed dog that filled the whole space between the ceiling and the floor. Instantly, the creature started to growl, but Hagrid spoke to it soothingly-- and then started humming as he approached. Harry and Blaise stood in the doorway, watching with some trepidation, but as soon as Hagrid's humming began, the dog's heads started to sag, and its eyelids began to droop. After a moment he stopped, still humming, and emptied the bloody contents of the crate onto the floor. Then he retreated almost to the doorway, and stopped humming. The enormous dog shifted, growled, and awoke. It sprung forward, and Blaise suppressed a scream, but it attacked the food and ignored them.

"Beauty, isn't he?" Hagrid asked admiringly. "Named him Fluffy. Really rare. He's mine-- bought him off a Greek chappie I met in the pub las' year."

Blaise, obviously impressed, kept taking a few hesitant steps forward and then leaping back again. Harry, meanwhile, was thinking about the incident with the troll.

"Hagrid?"

"Yeah?"

"Why's... Fluffy... being kept here? I mean, isn't he kind of... dangerous?"

"Eh. Well. That's a matter between Dumbledore an'-- I mean..."

"And--?" Harry prompted.

"Never mind that," Hagrid said hastily. "He eats dead rodents," he added, speaking to both of them. "Or anythin' else, really-- don't get too close there, Blaise-- but he doesn' need teh eat often, just being here all the time-- bring 'im a crate once a week, an' he's happy. I come up here more'n that, though-- don' want him bein' lonely, an' I have teh clean up after him, too--"

Blaise had turn around, and was looking at Hagrid with interest. "You haven't fed him in a week?"

"No-- 'sall he needs."

"When did you last clean the corridor?"

"Coupla days ago. Why?"

"Is he hurt?"

"Don' think so." Hagrid looked worried. "Wasn't last time I checked." Humming once again, he started forward. Fluffy, who was still eating, growled a bit, but settled down long before Hagrid reached him. "No," Hagrid confirmed after a few minutes. "He's fine. Was he moving funny?"

"No, not really. I-- I just thought he was, for a minute."

Harry looked at Blaise rather oddly. She was hiding something now, he was sure of it-- but Hagrid took the answer at face value. "I see. Better safe than sorry-- always check that kind of thing. Fluffy here goes teh sleep if yeh sing to him," he added, as the dog returned to its voracious feeding. "Gentle as a lamb-- they're all like that, if yeh just know how teh deal with 'em."

"Has Fluffy ever-- bitten you at all?" Blaise asked Hagrid, as they left the corridor. Hagrid shook his head. "And-- no one else has been in there, right?"

"Righ'-- it's a secret, cept for you two knowin'. An'-- yeh can't tell anybody, alright?"

"Okay," Blaise answered easily. "We won't."

They left Hagrid at the main doors-- it was almost time for dinner, and they needed to be getting to the Great Hall. Once Hagrid was out of sight, Harry asked: "Blaise? What was that all about?"

"My questions?" Blaise glanced up and down the hall, checking that they were alone. "I-- there was-- it was probably nothing, but I thought I saw some blood on the floor-- and what looked like maybe ripped cloth-- if Hagrid's really cleaned in there since the last time he fed Fluffy, it just seemed a bit odd."

"I think Fluffy might be guarding something," Harry told her, repeating what Hagrid had said to him. "And if he cleaned in there 'just a couple of days ago...'"

"Then...?"

"What if Snape was the one who was in there? Maybe the dog bit him." They stopped speaking as they reaching the crowds thronging toward the great hall, but Blaise gave him a wide-eyed glance that told him she thought his idea worth considering.

Theodore did not acknowledge their presence when they approached the Slytherin table, but when Harry sat down beside him he thought he saw a flicker in Theo's eyes, and the shabby boy at least showed no signs of wanting to move away. After dinner, Draco drew Harry aside. Harry had almost forgotten the plans they had made earlier that afternoon, but Draco clearly hadn't, and he quickly outlined a fairly decent plan for sneaking out of the castle. "Meet me around the left corner from our house entrance at 1:15," Draco ordered. He barely waited for a reply before slipping back into the crowd, flanked, as always, by Vincent and Gregory.

"What did he say?" Blaise asked, as they descended the stairs to the dungeons.

"We're meeting at quarter past one," Harry answered softly. "We're going to go flying. I don't think we'll get caught-- he's got a pretty good plan worked out."

"Okay," Blaise said. "Look-- I'm sorry about what I said earlier, okay? I know you can look after yourself."

That night, at about fourteen past one, Harry slipped out of his dorm and up the stairs to the common room. He'd been hoping to find the common room deserted, and was unpleasantly surprised when, halfway to the entrance, he saw it start to open.

Without thinking, Harry ducked behind one of the tall-backed chairs, hiding himself from view as whoever it was came in. He heard whispering, and strained to catch what was being said, but he couldn't quite hear the words. He held his breath as two pairs of footsteps drew closer, then passed on towards the boys dorms. He could see two figures in the dim light, but fortunately, they didn't turn around. They looked like older students. One was tall and slim. The other was shorter, and rather stocky, and Harry could see his hair, slightly matted and very badly cut, silhouetted against a darkened, blue-flamed candle. As the pair passed the candle, Harry saw its light reflect off long, auburn hair. Phineas and Darrin, it had to be. Harry felt a stirring of curiosity, but he decided to ignore it in favor of flying. Besides, it looked as though Phineas and Darrin were done with whatever they'd been doing.

As soon as they were gone, Harry made a quick, silent dash for the entrance, and was soon outside in the darkened corridors. "Potter, there you are-- come on." Draco caught his arm and dragged him down the dim corridors, taking several unexpected turns along the way, and even backtracking once or twice. Finally, they reached a huge stone double-door. With a slight movement of his head, Draco put his hands against one of the doors. Understanding, Harry braced against the other, and at another slight signal, they pushed against the doors, which swung open slowly and silently. Harry and Draco picked up their brooms, and together they stole out into the night.

At first they were walking through high bushes, then through tall trees, whose leaves caught the moonlight, and seemed to be black under their silver gleam.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Draco whispered. "What if we're caught?" He was glancing around a great deal, as if any of the omnipresent shadows might turn out to be something deadly. "Father could probably get us out of trouble if we were, though," Draco added quickly.

Harry didn't answer, and a couple minutes later they emerged from the trees. The entire field before them was bathed in pale silver. Draco handed Harry a broom, and Harry took it, grinning.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," Draco answered. He pushed off, and Harry followed, quickly overtaking him. Harry coasted through the air, diving one instant and launching high into the air the next. He tried a roll, then dove while flying upside-down, then did a series of loop-the-loops. It was exhilarating, wonderful-- and there was no Madam Hooch to tell him to be careful. He forced the broom to its limit, with the night wind rushing in his face, then dove again, and shot back up, meeting Draco on the way, and narrowly avoiding a collision. He slowed. Draco was grinning, too, with barely a trace of his usual smirk. Up in the air, he seemed to have forgotten his fear of shadows. "Potter, I'm going to let the snitch out-- we'll see if we can find it in the dark."

In the moonlight, the Golden Snitch looked almost silver as Draco held it up. Then he released it and it darted away, quickly vanishing from sight.

"Ready?" Draco asked.

"Ready," Harry affirmed.

"Then go!"

Harry was the one who caught it the first time, which Draco seemed rather put out about, and when Harry caught it the second time, he looked rather angry-- but he caught it the next time, and the time after that, and started recovering a bit.

"Do you know what time it is?" Harry asked, quite a while later.

Draco shrugged. "No, I don't, but we'd better be getting in pretty soon. It's been a while. One more game? Tie-breaker?"

Harry agreed, but the last game proved difficult to call, since Draco almost knocked him off his broom in order to stop him from getting the snitch first.

"I won," Draco announced smugly as the two of them landed.

"You cheated," Harry accused.

Draco raised an eyebrow. "I didn't cheat. That was a foul. It's different. Cheating gets you disqualified. A foul just means the opposing team gets a penalty shot. And since the snitch gives you a hundred and fifty points, you still win, even if they make their shot."

"Oh, well if you would've won in a real game, then I guess it doesn't matter that you almost killed me," Harry muttered.

"You didn't fall off."

"No thanks to you."

"Look, I'm sorry, all right? It's not as if you actually got hurt." Draco turned and started walking back toward the castle. Harry followed, not particularly mollified by Draco's half-apology. There was a tense silence on the way to the double doors, but once they arrived there, Draco stopped and turned to Harry.

"So, are we going to do this again?"

It was a challenge, and Harry knew it. He hesitated. He thought of what Blaise had said earlier, and wondered if Draco really had meant to knock Harry off his broom. He shouldn't rise to it.

"We can do some more practice first, if you want to," Draco continued. "You'll get better at staying on. And we can outlaw fouls more than a certain distance up, if you want to. At least until you're used to flying."

It was perfectly obvious what Draco was doing. Harry stared up at the night sky, and thought of the exhilarating rush of flight. It was worth the risk. He'd be on his guard.

"Fine. Next week?"

Draco smiled, with only a trace of self-satisfied smirking. "Yeah. Next week, then."