HARRY POTTER STORY: Lions in snake den

Part 42

The first two days of term had the particular quality of held breath.

Hogwarts in the opening days of a new year always felt slightly unreal — too loud, too warm, too full of people relearning how to exist in each other's space after months apart. Timetables were consulted and complained about. New textbooks were bought and carried with the resentful enthusiasm of people who know they are going to have to read them eventually. The staircases shifted with what felt like particular enthusiasm, as though the castle itself was enjoying the novelty of being occupied again.

Harry navigated it all with the calm of someone who has bigger things on his mind than whether the fourth floor corridor would decide to redirect him to the seventh.

His timetable for fifth year was, objectively, brutal. OWLs sat at the end of it like a patient creditor, and every lesson felt weighted with that awareness. Potions with Snape, which was always either useful or uncomfortable and frequently both. Transfiguration with McGonagall, who had welcomed them back to her class with the expression of someone who had spent the summer girding herself for exactly this year. Ancient Runes, which Harry had added to his schedule over the summer with Hermione's enthusiastic support and which he found, to his mild surprise, that he was genuinely good at. Care of Magical Creatures with Hagrid, who had been so visibly delighted to see Harry and Hermione that he had nearly knocked them both over.

And Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Which was scheduled for Thursday morning, and which Harry had been thinking about with the careful, contained attention of someone who knows they are walking into something and intends to be ready for it.

Thursday arrived with grey skies and the kind of damp chill that reminded everyone that Scotland existed and had opinions about it. Harry had been up early — earlier than he needed to be, because sleep had been lighter than usual, his mind doing the thing it sometimes did before significant things where it simply declined to stay switched off. He had dressed, sat at the desk in the fifth-year dormitory while Draco and Theo and Blaise slept, and gone through what he knew about Dolores Umbridge with the systematic attention he had been applying to everything that had the potential to become a threat.

What he knew: she was Senior Undersecretary to the Minister. She had been appointed to this post not by the school but by the Ministry, which meant her authority derived from a source outside Dumbledore's and was not subject to the usual structures of Hogwarts governance. She had spoken at the feast with the confidence of someone who had already decided what the outcome of this year would look like and was simply waiting for events to arrange themselves accordingly. She was not, by any measure he could find, a particularly distinguished witch in terms of raw magical ability — her reputation rested on bureaucratic maneuvering rather than spellwork.

But Snape had said it, and Harry had taken it seriously: do not underestimate her because she is ridiculous.

The ridiculous ones were frequently the most dangerous. They had less to lose and more to prove, and they tended to mistake other people's reluctance to take them seriously as an opening.

He closed his notebook, tucked it away, and went down to breakfast.

He was halfway through his eggs when the bench shifted dramatically beside him and Fred Weasley appeared, throwing an arm around his shoulders with the energy of someone who has been awake since dawn and has used the intervening hours productively.

"Hadrian Potter," Fred announced, to no one in particular. "Fifth year. Lord of things. Defeater of dragons, rescuer of godfathers, general ongoing catastrophe—"

"Good morning, Fred," Harry said.

"—and, according to at least fourteen separate Gryffindors I have spoken to this morning," Fred continued, undeterred, "officially the most talked-about student at Hogwarts for the third year running."