The Hogwarts Poets' Society

"Well, continue on, Peeves," Dumbledore finally said after everyone had finished laughing at Draco's ridiculous middle name.

Peeves straightened up and continued:

"His cat is Mrs. Norris,

But there is no Mister,

And although cats reproduce in bulk,

She does not have a Sister,

Once Filch thought they were alone,

And that is when he kissed 'er.

He swears I'll be expelled,

But I have nowhere else to go,

And Dumbledore is a softy,

And that is how I know,

That I am here to stay,

So let's get on with the show!

My plans for the future are many,

I'm rather ambitious, you see,

I want to make that man cry,

I won't even charge a fee.

I'm going to get to his cat,

It will fill the students with glee.

First I will hide her in a classroom,

There seems to be an awful lot,

That aren't used for learning,

It will put him in a tight spot,

When his day is about to get hectic,

And he realizes his cat has been caught.

First I'll hide the smelly kitty,

I'll leave her with some food,

So that she'll keep entertained,

And she won't be in a bad mood.

Then I'm going to cause havoc,

'Cause I'm a cool kind of dude."

"Is this poem ever going to go anywhere?" McGonagall asked, looking at her watch.

"It feels as though you're covering the same topics over and over again," complained Draco Darling Malfoy. "I mean, we already know he has a cat, and we get the point that you're going to do something awful to him. Move on!"

"It's harder to do this rhyming than you think it is!" cried Peeves, mortally offended. "I mean, I have to find stuff that rhymes and makes some sense."

"Yes, well, be that as it may, you are getting a bit redundant," McGonagall said stiffly. She was still rather irritated that she had to attend a stupid meeting in the first place, especially considering that she had never expressed any poetic ability in her life.

"Constructive criticism only, please," Dumbledore said, rather pleased at the dialogue about poetry. His ears wiggled in delight.

Draco thought very hard. It looked as though it was causing him a lot of strain. The problem was not that he was thinking, because, believe it or not, Draco Darling Malfoy actually thought a lot of the time. He thought about food. He thought about how to make other people miserable. He thought about how to prevent other people making him miserable, and so on and so forth. However, this thought process was an entirely new one. He was thinking about how to be nice.

His face was turning rather red and a small line of sweat had formed at his hairline. Finally, he opened his mouth.

"Your poem would be better if you had more of a logical, flowing plotline that didn't revolve around random facts. Although progress is being made in the poem, it feels redundant and repetitive. This draws away from your natural creativity."

Every head turned to Draco Darling Malfoy in surprise. Snape was so shocked that he actually fell out of his chair. He quickly straightened up and sat back down, and, thankfully, the clumsiness went unnoticed.

"Bravo, Draco!" cried Dumbledore. "You managed to come off as not evil there!"

Peeves was feeling rather confused. He thought that he had been told that his poem needed some work and lacked some structure, but that he had creativity. Finally, the strain of trying to process this complicated thought started to hurt.

"Er, may I continue?" he asked apprehensively.

"Um, no, sorry, Peeves," said Dumbledore, looking at his watch. "The rest of your wonderful poem about our caretaker will have to wait. I need to get going, I have some rather important things to do. This meeting is adjourned until tomorrow night."

Everyone, with the exception of Peeves, was rather relieved. Snape knew that this was his moment to spring into action and begin unfoiling the Plot of Imminent Doom!

"DOOM!" he yelled, twitching strangely.

Nobody even paid attention to him.

"Draco, down to my office, please," Snape said quickly, before Dumbledore had the chance to force him back into the closet.

Draco, seeing that this was his opportunity to escape, quickly followed Snape out of the room to the dungeons. Snape, of course, was wearing his swooshy black robes, creating a rather intense, dramatic affect as he stormed through the hallways. Several ghosts and teachers flattened themselves up against the wall to get out of the way. Snape was dangerous. Snape was determined. Snape was on a mission.

In all honesty, Draco didn't really care what Snape was up to, because as far as he was concerned, anything had to be better than the cupboard! They entered the dungeons with a dramatic slamming of a door, which echoed against the moist stone walls. It took the Draco a minute to adjust to the dim light, but when he did, he yelped loudly.

"What are they doing here?" he yelled angrily. He was supposed to be rescued from the presence of the idiotic Gryffindors, not be forced to spend any more time with any one of them!

Hermione was lying on her stomach on Severus's desk, chewing on her lip as she pursued a rather thick, moldy book. Ron was sitting in a chair in a corner of the room, playing with a bit of lint and some string. He looked thoroughly amused and intellectually stimulated.

"They are here to help," said Snape, feeling rather embarrassed. The meeting had obviously taken longer than he had expected for the Granger girl to get so comfortable in his office. Even though it was only seven, he had been gone for three and a half hours, not all of which was spent in the meeting. "Granger, get off of my desk."

She didn't move. Ron looked up, a look of terror on his face.

"Hermione, Snape said get off of his desk! I told you not to get up there! But would you listen to me? No...we never listen to Ron, he never knows what he's doing! He doesn't even have the common sense to realize that he's stuck in a dungeon with two evil people. And it gets worse, Hermione! One of them has swooshy black robes! Do you remember what I told you about the swooshy black robes? It means DOOM, Hermione!"

"Ronald Weasley, shut up before I hex you," Hermione said calmly without looking up. "Severus and Malfoy are here to help us."

"Severus?" said Draco, looking rather ill. "How long have you on first-name terms with the Mudblood?"

"Don't call her a Mudblood!" Ron said angrily.

"Enough, children," said Snape, pleased to have avoided the question. "Now, we are here to stop the Plan of Imminent Doom."

"Why are you speaking in capital letters?" Draco asked politely. He was now genuinely worried about the Potion Master's mental health. He was allowing the Granger girl to invade his personal space, he was being overdramatic with his swooshy black robes, and now he was speaking in capital letters.

"Oh, shut up and listen, boy!" Snape said, before he began to fill in everyone on what had happened in the meeting.

Draco's concern for his godfather only grew.