Becoming Alpha

Chapter Seven

Harry walked into the Great Hall the morning after the Quidditch match to a purple spell hitting him from the direction of the Weasley twins. He took one look at the Slytherin table and sighed quietly while groaning internally. The twins had managed to hit the whole team.

"Let me guess," Harry said to his staring Slytherin friends, "gold and crimson hair."

"How did you know?" Theo asked while the others looked just as surprised.

"They got the whole team," Harry said as he pointed at the Slytherin table where the rest of the team sat with varying amounts of Gryffindor colors covering their top half.

"How are you going to get it off?" Tracey asked curiously. Harry thought for a moment before he figured out the twins' logic behind it.

"Daphne, use Finite on me when we get to the table without making it obvious," Harry requested as the Slytherins walked to their table and ignored the looks, comments, and laughs of the Hall completely.

Daphne just nodded without questioning his request before she pulled her wand out of her robes while sitting down next to him with their backs to the Gryffindors. She muttered the spell under her breath, and Harry felt a tingling on his head and saw Tracey's confirming glance from across the table.

"The twins didn't expect a Slytherin to actually ask for help, so it only spreads when a person with the spell on them tries to counter it, not when someone else does," Harry explained.

"And they call us arrogant..." Theo muttered to the general agreement of the group.

"Potter." Harry turned to see Flint and the rest of the team looking at him. "How'd you get rid of the Gryffindor look?"

"Have someone without the spell counter it," Harry replied. If the answer surprised any of the team, they hid it well.

Soon enough the whole team was clean of all red and gold, and Professor Snape had come into the Hall, so the twins didn't dare try again. The rest of breakfast was peaceful, though the twins could be heard complaining about the ruined prank from across the Hall.

...

That afternoon, Harry was on his way down to Professor Snape's office from the library, where he and his Slytherin friends had gone to research something for potions, to ask him for a possible favor when he heard hushed voices in an empty classroom.

"-can't believe Hagrid owns that three-headed dog!" the familiar voice of Ron Weasley was saying.

"Or that he named it Fluffy!" Dean Thomas added.

"Or that," Ron agreed. "I guess to find out what it's guarding, we'll have to find Nicholas Flamel."

Both of the other boys agreed, but before Harry could hear anymore, footsteps in the room headed towards the door sent him down the hall and towards the dungeons.

Harry's mind was spinning as he tried to piece together all the information he had. On Halloween, he had seen Professor Quirrell try to get past the three-headed dog – Fluffy – in the forbidden corridor only to be stopped by Professor Snape, who got hurt in the process. Now Harry knew Ron Weasley and his friends had run into Fluffy, found out it was guarding something, and that it had to do with a Nicholas Flamel.

Before Harry knew it, he was outside Professor Snape's office. Taking a calming breath, Harry knocked on the door and entered when told to do so, closing the door before facing his Head of House. Harry barely took in the sight of the odd specimens in jars around him as he stood waiting for his professor to look up from his papers and acknowledge him. Harry had guessed he would be forced to wait, so he wasn't surprised.