Black and Potter | H. Potter

36 ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆ who he'd miss most.

"I mean he's always been dodgy," Ron shrugged, uncertain, "but—"

"Ara, that's a really big and serious accusation!" Hermione shook her head. "I don't think Dumbledore would have hired a Death Eater as a teacher."

"That's exactly what he said—" Ara pointed at Harry. "—But didn't we just say that Moody said something about a second chance? Maybe that's it." Harry, Hermione and Ron stayed silent, clearly not really agreeing with her. "Fine, don't believe me."

"I don't care what Moody says," Hermione went on. "Dumbledore's not stupid. He was right to trust Hagrid and Professor Lupin, even though loads of people wouldn't have given them jobs, so why shouldn't he be right about Snape, even if Snape is a bit —"

"— evil," said Ron promptly. "Come on, Hermione, why are all these Dark wizard catchers searching his office, then?"

"Why has Mr. Crouch been pretending to be ill?" said Hermione, ignoring Ron. "It's a bit funny, isn't it, that he can't manage to come to the Yule Ball, but he can get up here in the middle of the night when he wants to?"

"You just don't like Crouch because of that elf, Winky," said Ron, sending a cushion soaring into the window.

"You just want to think Snape's up to something," said Hermione, sending her cushion zooming neatly into the box.

"I just want to know what Snape did with his first chance if he's on his second one," said Harry grimly, and his cushion, to his very great surprise, flew straight across the room and landed neatly on top of Hermione's.

"Death Eater," mumbled Ara stubbornly to herself as she made her cushion land on top of Harry's.

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:✧*⋆.*:･ﾟ✧.: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆ ☾

TAKING NOTE OF SIRIUS' WISH OF HEARING ABOUT anything odd at Hogwarts, Ara and Harry wrote a letter together and sent it along by brown owl that night, explaining all about Mr. Crouch breaking into Snape's office, and Moody and Snape's conversation.

Ara's hand had been itching to write a separate letter explaining to him all about Atlas Auclair, the magic and her head issues but she'd stopped herself.

Soon enough, she repeated in her mind, not now. . .

She had other things to worry about, like how she, Harry, Hermione and Ron would find something to help Harry survive underwater for an hour on the twenty-fourth of February.

Ara had suggested searching for a potion but the only one she'd found would take them months to brew. She'd briefly passed across Scuba-Spells, but they were so complex that she was sure they wouldn't be able to get Harry to master it in such little time. She'd already flickered through a dozen books and neither had provided good or doable options.

Ron quite liked the idea of using the Summoning Charm again, he couldn't see why Harry shouldn't Summon Aqua-Lungs, which Harry had explained were Muggle artefacts which could give you air underwater, from the nearest Muggle town. Hermione squashed this plan by pointing out that he was sure to be disqualified for breaking the International Code of Wizarding Secrecy — it was too much to hope that no Muggles would spot an Aqua-Lung zooming across the countryside to Hogwarts.

"Of course, the ideal solution would be for you to Transfigure yourself into a submarine or something," Hermione said. "If only we'd done human Transfiguration already! But I don't think we start that until sixth year, and it can go badly wrong if you don't know what you're doing. . . ."

"Yeah, I don't fancy walking around with a periscope sticking out of my head," said Harry. "I s'pose I could always attack someone in front of Moody; he might do it for me. . . ."