"Look at Potter's face," Draco said gleefully as they settled into their seats in the Great Hall after class. "It was priceless. He never expected Professor Snape to take a point from him."
"Too bad it was only one point," Pansy chimed in, stabbing a pea with her fork. "Given that Longbottom nearly melted through his cauldron, five would have been entirely fair. I could smell that pungent potion stench from my seat against the wall."
Daphne nodded slightly, sipping her pumpkin juice without adding anything, though a trace of Slytherin satisfaction lingered in her expression.
After all, she and Henry had just earned ten points for the House, while the Boy Who Lived and his neighbours had been thoroughly humiliated by the professor.
Henry sat beside them, absorbed in Hogwarts: A History.
He paid no attention to the chatter around him, his gaze moving steadily across the yellowed pages of a chapter about the early disputes among the four founders, his quill occasionally noting a keyword or two on the parchment beside him.
Draco noticed Henry's silence and felt that the carefully cultivated sense of shared camaraderie required a little maintenance.
He raised his voice slightly. "If you ask me, Professor Snape should have given that chubby boy a proper scolding. Don't you think, Henry?"
Henry looked up from his book. His gaze swept over Draco's expectant face, and he did not answer immediately. He closed the book with unhurried movements and set his quill beside the inkwell.
"I think Professor Snape was remarkably gentle," he said quietly.
A beat of silence followed. Everyone around him looked up with identically incredulous expressions.
Draco's smirk froze. Pansy's fork stopped mid-air. Even the usually composed Daphne widened her eyes very slightly.
Not even the most hardened Slytherin could claim to see any connection between Professor Snape and the word gentle. The idea was so thoroughly improbable that it took a moment to properly register.
Draco recovered first, blinking in genuine astonishment. This was, he thought, a masterclass in something he could not quite name, a complete and deliberate inversion of the obvious, delivered with such utter calm that it demanded to be taken seriously. As expected of His Highness.
Henry leaned back slightly, his fingertips resting on the closed cover of his book.
"Think about it," he said, his voice still low. "Longbottom made a foolish and dangerous mistake that nearly harmed himself and ruined the work of everyone around him. By any reasonable classroom standard, ten points deducted or a detention would not have been unreasonable."
Pansy nodded almost unconsciously, that was exactly what she had been thinking.
"But Professor Snape deducted nothing," Henry continued, his gaze moving between Draco and Pansy. "He didn't even take the opportunity to deliver one of his longer, more pointed remarks, the way he did with Potter. Deducting points is not the goal in itself; the goal is to address the mistake and ensure the person responsible understands it. Longbottom had already paid the price for his error. After an experience like that, he will not forget the lesson. I think that is precisely why Professor Snape saw no need to add to it."
He let the observation settle.
Around him, not only were the Slytherins nodding, but several of the Gryffindors seated nearby, still quietly smarting over their lost point, found themselves doing the same.
It was a genuinely unexpected line of reasoning.
"Then why did Professor Snape deduct another point from Potter?" Daphne asked.
"You couldn't very well expect him to come away with nothing," Henry said, with a slight smile. "Snape needed somewhere to put the irritation, and Potter handed him a perfectly good reason. He only has himself to blame for not preparing before class—the professor simply took the opening."
In truth, Henry knew exactly what had been happening. Snape had been doing it deliberately. Harry looked so strikingly like his father, James Potter, that Snape had apparently been unable to leave the resemblance unacknowledged.
Given the history between the two of them, today's Potions class was, in all probability, only the beginning.
"Oh!" Pansy reached across the table and snatched up the newspaper lying nearby. "Look at this. Gringotts has released a new statement about the incident on the thirty-first of July."
Henry glanced over. The headline read:
Latest Report on the Gringotts Illegal Entry Incident.
The investigation into the unlawful entry at Gringotts Bank on the thirty-first of July remains ongoing, and it is widely understood to be the work of an unidentified dark wizard. Gringotts representatives reiterated today that nothing was stolen.
The underground vault searched by the intruder had, in fact, been emptied earlier that same day. A Gringotts goblin spokesperson stated this afternoon: "We are not at liberty to disclose what was stored in the vault. It is best not to interfere."
Draco reached for his own copy and scanned it quickly, his brow furrowing. "The thirty-first of July? Isn't that just after we received our Hogwarts letters? Who could possibly break into Gringotts? Isn't it supposed to be the most secure place in Britain outside of Hogwarts itself?"
Pansy leaned in, pointing at the relevant lines. "Look here. 'Nothing was stolen.' 'The vault was emptied earlier that day.' I find the timing rather too convenient."
Daphne set down her pumpkin juice, her voice thoughtful. "The vault that was broken into just happened to have been cleared on the very same day. Is that a coincidence, or did the intruder already know it was about to be emptied and try to reach it first? Or could there be some connection between whoever emptied the vault and whoever broke in?"
She let the question sit.
At the Slytherin table, several older students nearby had been drawn into listening, leaning in with the quiet attentiveness of people who know better than to appear too interested.
For children raised in wizarding households, accustomed from an early age to hearing whispers of secrets and rumours of hidden dealings, the irregularities at Gringotts were considerably more absorbing than any classroom squabble.
"Maybe there was never any gold in it to begin with," Pansy said, her eyes brightening with the pleasure of speculation. "Maybe it was some dangerous dark artefact. Or a family heirloom, or a secret pact of some kind. That would explain the urgency to move it."
The discussion gathered momentum, everyone arriving at different conclusions. Draco leaned toward a failed robbery, with the intruders being either incompetent or simply unlucky; Pansy favoured some variety of hidden family vendetta or dark magic transaction; Daphne quietly turned over the coincidence of the timing and the careful contradictions in the official statement, not committing herself to anything.
When the first wave of excitement had settled somewhat, Draco glanced over and noticed that Henry had returned to his history of magic book entirely.
"Henry," he said, "what do you think? What actually happened? Are the goblins telling the truth about nothing being stolen?"
Henry turned a page.
"The first law of politics," he said, without looking up. "Only what has been officially denied is worth believing."
+++++++
Sorry for my absence, I had a situation in real. Thankfully it was resolved, and the dialy updates will continue after compensating you guys for the 200PS.
Thank you @Cameron Doyle, @Noah Beyer, @Pato Senalima, @Victor Gonzalez, @Dylan, @Dragonslayer29, @Koxinov, @justin kuhn, @DrSpex, @Αγγελος Μωρος, @Jordan Gray, @Edrick Vidal for join my p*treon. The support is much appreciated.
450PS=2 extra chapters
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