With every teacher trying their best to drown the fifth-years in work, it was no surprise that the heirs were struggling to find a time to meet up. Susan caught him in the corridor on his way to Divination the next morning, raising a quick privacy ward. "We need to have a study group," she told him, and he grimaced.
"I'd love to, but I've got detention with Umbridge every night this week." Susan swore, her gaze sympathetic. "Go ahead and meet without me, though. Nev can catch me up. I'll give him my notes for you, too."
"That'll work. I'd imagine you already know what I'm going to say about Umbridge, anyway."
Harry smiled wryly. "I think I've got the gist of it. We just need to make sure she doesn't catch wind of what we're up to; the last thing we need is Fudge having enough forewarning to try and worm his way out of consequences." Sometimes it was utterly galling how long it was going to take for all of them to turn seventeen and be in a position to implement their plans — how long Fudge and his cronies, along with Dumbledore and his ilk, could keep ruining peoples' lives for their own gain.
"It's going to be a tough year," Susan agreed, looking grim.
"I'll do what I can. I make a rather excellent scapegoat," Harry said with a wink, making her giggle. "Always happy to bang on about Voldemort a bit more if it'll get her off your case."
"Good to know." She seemed amused. "Aunt Amelia believes you, by the way. She's trying to do what she can to prepare the Ministry, but they're all sticking their heads in the sand."
"I figured as much. If it would help, I caught the names of some of the Death Eaters who were there that night — she might not be able to arrest them, but she can at least keep an eye out."
Susan nodded eagerly, and Harry made a mental note to write the names down for her later and slip them in with the law notes. "Listen, Susan, I know things are all kinds of chaotic with OWLs and Umbridge and everything, but we need to make sure the wider study group continues. You heard the Sorting Hat — now more than ever, we have to break down those house boundaries." The last thing he wanted was fear causing people to retreat back into old habits.
"Don't worry, we've got it covered," she assured. "We'll especially need it for Defence, Merlin," she added with a shudder. "You just get through your detentions, alright? Leave the unity to me." She shot him a confident grin, then glanced down the corridor. "I've got to get to Arithmancy, I'll see you later."
She dropped the privacy ward, hurrying away just as a crowd of students spilled into the corridor. Harry set off towards Divination at a half-jog, his brain feeling full to bursting with all the information and secrets he was trying to keep straight. After his detention, if he managed to get his homework done in a reasonable time, he decided he would sit up with his password-protected notebook and try and straighten out his thoughts. With Umbridge looming over his shoulder and Voldemort biding his time, Harry needed to have a plan.
.-.-.
He had Herbology first thing after lunch — which, of course, meant Neville went down to the greenhouses as soon as he'd eaten, to spend some time talking with Professor Sprout before class started. Harry wasn't too keen on joining him, so he finished his lunch alone and then sat in a quiet corridor working on his Potions essay, knowing it was the most difficult piece of homework on his list.
When he finally started heading towards Herbology, a pale hand reached out from behind a tapestry and yanked him into a hidden alcove, and Harry almost went boneless from sheer relief. He immediately pulled Draco close, leaning back against the wall and tugging the blond into a long, slow kiss. Draco pressed him against the stone, fingers cupping Harry's jaw. When they parted, Harry took what felt like the first proper breath he'd had in weeks. "Hi," he greeted, smiling softly.
"I've got a bone to pick with you," Draco murmured, though there was no heat to his voice. "What do you think you're doing getting a week's worth of detention?"
"You were there," Harry pointed out, absently playing with the knot of Draco's Slytherin tie. "I couldn't help myself."
"I saw that." Draco was smirking, and Harry's chest filled with an odd sort of pride. "You were certainly entertaining, knocking her down a few pegs like that. But I do question your intelligence in making enemies so early in the year."
"She had it out for me before I even stepped in her classroom," Harry pointed out, stroking up Draco's pale neck, fingers trailing up into the soft, short hair behind his ear. "We both know why she's here. Bet she'd give me detention for breathing at this rate. I might as well earn it."
"Don't push it," Draco warned, even as he arched into the touch. "It's going to be difficult enough to find time with you with her around, let alone with you in detention every bloody evening. I swear, if this level of homework keeps up all year, my brain will have melted out of my ears before I even get to my exams."
"It's the worst, isn't it?" Harry agreed. "We'll find some time to sneak away this weekend, promise. Then we can compare schedules and make plans." They probably wouldn't get to see each other in private as much as they had the year before, but Harry would take any scraps of Draco's time he could manage.
"Sounds good," Draco agreed. He took Harry's hand in his — and Harry wasn't quick enough to hide his flinch. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
"You're a shit liar, Potter," came Draco's immediate retort. "To me, anyway. What's wrong with your hand?" He lit the tip of his wand, holding Harry's hand up to his face. "Why's it all red?"
Reluctantly, Harry told him about the Blood Quill. By the end of the explanation, Draco was flushed with anger. "No wonder my father likes her so much," he muttered. Carefully, he turned Harry's hand over in his, bringing it up to his lips and pressing the most gentle, tender kiss to the inflamed flesh. Harry's heart skipped a beat at the gesture, ears going pink.
"It's fine, really," he insisted. Draco gave his hand another butterfly-soft kiss.
"Go to Uncle Severus, after your detention," he urged.
"If I heal it up, Umbridge will just make me do more lines." She wanted her message to leave a permanent mark. Draco fixed him with a level stare.
"That's what glamours are for, idiot," he pointed out lightly. "Go to Severus, see what he can do. Blood Quills are dark magic, you don't want to mess with over-exposure to one."
The worry in his voice niggled at Harry's heart, until he sighed, leaning into Draco's embrace. "Fine," he relented. "I'll go tonight." He was hoping to avoid the Potions professor ever finding out — Snape knowing meant Remus knowing, which meant Sirius knowing, which meant explosions.
"Good boy." Draco kissed him in satisfaction. "I have to go to class, and so do you."
Harry let out a quiet whine at the thought of leaving the darkened alcove, but after one more long kiss and the promise of meeting up properly once Harry was done with detention, they parted ways, one at a time to make sure nobody saw them. The rendezvous, however brief, was exactly what Harry needed to help him get through the day, right up until his second detention.
If Umbridge was expecting some kind of reaction or pain response this time, she was sorely disappointed — the words bloomed on Harry's flesh just as easily as they had the night before, though the pain was already worse. Once again, he didn't even twitch; his mind was on his Divination homework this time, thinking up a dream he could put in his diary that was in no way related to the graveyard or that mysterious corridor.
There was thinly-veiled fury in Umbridge's eyes when, at the end of the detention, Harry was perfectly content to let her study his hand, pressing down on the still-healing cut.
She had nothing on Vernon Dursley.
Harry bid her goodnight, gathered up his bloodied parchment, and left the office. As soon as he was out of sight, he slung the invisibility cloak over his shoulders and set off towards Snape's personal chambers.
He answered the door so quickly, Harry wondered if Draco had mentioned something. "What are you doing out this late?" the man asked, once they were safely inside with the door shut. Harry dropped the cloak, offering an apologetic smile.
"Only just finished detention." One of Snape's eyebrows ticked up in disapproval.
"So long past curfew? Tut, tut, Dolores."
"Yeah, so, uh, don't expect my Moonstone essay to be amazing. I wrote it over lunch break today."
A brief smirk crossed Snape's lips. "I'm sure I will delight in finding the flaws," he drawled, before eyeing Harry over once more. "You didn't come here just to apologise for the state of your homework."
Harry dropped his gaze, suddenly reluctant. But he'd made a promise. "I… I told Draco I'd come show you." Snape looked at him, expectant. "Umbridge is making me write lines with a Blood Quill." He thrust out his hand, where the faintest outline of 'I must not tell lies' was still valiantly attempting to heal over.
A low curse escaped the Slytherin's lips. "Your detentions start at what time?"
"Five," Harry reported, wincing at the thunderous look on the man's face. "The pain doesn't bother me, but she's going to keep going with it until the message sinks in, she says. And, well, I don't really want to walk around dripping blood all the time, if I can help it."
"Even I never forced you through a bloody seven hour detention, let alone forcing you to mutilate yourself! The nerve of that woman. This is not a legal use of Blood Quills."
"What can we do, report her to the Ministry?" Harry's tone was wry, and Snape's thin lips twisted. Between Fudge and Dumbledore, there was no safe authority to alert, and attempting would bring far more attention to the castle than Harry was willing to deal with right now.
"It's fine, really," he insisted. "I've had loads worse, and it's funny watching how angry she gets that I'm not visibly in pain. I'm only telling you because Draco made me."
"As he should," Snape agreed firmly. "Stay there." He disappeared into his private lab, returning a minute later with a bottle of something yellow and a pad of white gauze. "This is essence of dittany. It'll speed up the healing." He reached for Harry's hand, but Harry pulled back.
"Shouldn't I wait, until all the detentions are over?" The worse it looked at the end of the week, the more likely Umbridge was to let him go. Snape scowled at him.
"I thought you didn't want to bleed everywhere?"
"Yeah, I was hoping you might have a charm that would, y'know, heal it just enough to scab over. At the end of the week I'll put that dittany stuff over it and put a glamour on so Umbridge thinks it scarred." It wasn't a big deal. Still, Snape's lips pursed.
"Remus would kill me if I let you walk out of here with a wound like that," he said flatly, though he made no move to grab Harry's hand. There was a brief staring competition, before Snape pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Salazar save me from stubborn, idiot Gryffindors. Give me your hand."
"No dittany?" Harry checked warily, holding his hand out only after Snape nodded. He waved his wand over Harry's skin, murmuring two spells in quick succession.
"The first should stop the bleeding," Snape explained, watching as the cut quickly scabbed over, but didn't heal any further. "The second spell is one you'll need to learn — it removes the build-up of magic from the connection to the quill." Harry's nose wrinkled in confusion. "Blood Quills are for binding contracts — prolonged use can, in some cases, have the same effect as a magical vow."
The blood drained from Harry's face. "You mean it could make it impossible for me to lie?"
"Not impossible, but… uncomfortable. Misdirection and avoiding the truth will be fine — which, luckily, is more your usual method anyway — but outright lies will trigger the magic. Between those two spells, and the dittany when you're out of her clutches, there should be no lasting damage."
Harry watched as Snape succinctly demonstrated the second spell, then repeated it a couple times himself. "Good. Now, I will hold on to this," Snape said, brandishing the dittany, "and you will come here immediately after your final detention on Friday. Are we clear?"
"Yes, sir." Harry really didn't see what the big deal was about leaving the wound until Friday. He wouldn't let it get infected or anything.
"Good, now go to bed. I won't have you falling asleep in your cauldron tomorrow."
The poorly-hidden concern made something warm in Harry's chest, and he bid the man goodnight. "Oh, and I have this for you," he added before he could forget, digging the two-way mirror out of his pocket. "Could you get that back to Sirius, please?"
"He'll have it by the weekend," Snape assured. Harry grinned, then scurried from the professor's quarters, hurrying back up to Gryffindor Tower. He had a dream diary and six inches on the proper handling of bowtruckles to write before he could go to bed.
.-.-.
In Thursday's detention, the words stopped healing entirely after around three hours, blood dripping slowly down the back of Harry's hand. The sight of it made Umbridge grin sharply. Harry was just glad it meant he was free before nine, instead of at midnight.
As exhausted as he was, he still had homework to do when he returned to the common room, a glamour covering his hand so Neville wouldn't ask about the obvious cut. They seemed surprised to see him back so early.
"Maybe she's starting to get sick of you," Neville joked, and Harry managed a weak smile. He should be so lucky.
Ginny, being a fourth year with hardly a fraction of the homework the boys had, returned to the common room barely within curfew. She was smiling, and if Harry wasn't mistaken there was a love bite on her neck. His stomach gave an uneasy twist when he looked at Neville.
"Better not let your brothers see that," Harry warned her quietly, tapping his own neck pointedly. She flushed as scarlet as her hair.
"Shit. I told him— shit." Her brown eyes flicked guiltily to Neville. "I'm gonna go." She disappeared up to her dorm before either of them could say anything. Eventually, Neville sighed.
"It's fine," he said, though his voice was hollow. "She'd tell me if— if things have changed."
Harry's heart clenched in sympathy, and he squeezed Neville's knee. "She'll come around." He hoped.
"Whatever." Neville's face shuttered, and he raised a privacy ward around them. "We had a study group meeting while you were in detention, by the way. I passed on your notes. You should see the stack Susan has — it's almost as tall as she is!"
Harry listened intently as Neville relayed the events of the heirs meeting. "We're going to lay low for now. There's not much we can do yet, anyway. Even Cassius — his uncle won't let him take the seat, even though he's seventeen." Harry grimaced; he'd only ever heard awful things about Lord Warrington.
"Is he, y'know…" Harry tapped his left forearm pointedly, and Neville shook his head.
"Not yet. After graduation, apparently. If he can't get out of it by then."
"I'll think of a way." Harry refused to see any of his friends forced to let that monster brand them. He knew from Snape how awful it was to have, and how much he regretted the decision. "How are the Slytherins?" The house as a whole had locked up tight, hardly even looking at anyone not wearing green and silver.
"Blaise is keeping an ear out for anyone looking to get out of the Dark," Neville relayed. "The others, too, but I guess Blaise is the figurehead for it. I don't know — there was a lot of Slytherin double-talk that I didn't really understand, but Malfoy said they had the in-house stuff covered. We just know not to expect any of them at larger study groups."
That was a shame, but it was inevitable. "Hopefully we can change things, for the younger years if not our own."
This made Neville grin. "Parkinson said they've been telling the firsties that it's a mark of Slytherin cunning to manipulate Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs into helping you with your homework," he told Harry. "Might not be the greatest way to start friendships, but, well."
"Slytherins," Harry said with a nod, as if that explained everything. "Brilliant." That young, homework help would soon turn into casual conversation; they'd be genuine friends before they knew what hit them.
Neville gave an enormous yawn, blushing. "Sorry. I just— it's been a long week."
"Tell me about it," Harry agreed vehemently. "You should go to bed. I'm gonna be up another hour or two finishing this, but at least one of us should get some sleep." He was determined to catch up on all his homework, not just the stuff that was due the next day — if he could get up to date now, he wouldn't have an even bigger load over the weekend. He could catch up on sleep then — and, hopefully, see his boyfriend.
With a little more convincing, Neville agreed to leave Harry to it, and stumbled drowsily off to the dormitory stairs. Harry turned back to his homework, drawing on all his focus. He wouldn't let Umbridge and her foul detentions mess up the start of his fifth year.
.-.-.
Harry was no stranger to exhaustion, and hardly let it affect him as Friday dragged on, as grey and rainy as the rest of the week had been. The end was in sight, and he focused on that.
Luckily for the Gryffindors, the rain had passed by five o'clock. Harry could sort-of see the quidditch pitch from his seat at the desk in Umbridge's office — not well enough to make out individuals, but he could see each hopeful keeper fly. He kept an absent eye on the proceedings when he was sure Umbridge wasn't looking his way. By this point he hardly even noticed the pain in his hand, settling into the same headspace that had served him so well at the Dursleys when he'd been given an endless chore list right after a painful beating.
At last, it was over, and Umbridge surveyed her work, taking great satisfaction in eyeing the deep-cut words on his hand.
As she looked it over, Harry's scar burned — he couldn't help but flinch at the abrupt pain, but it was enough for Umbridge's smile to widen. "Yes, I think I've made my point. You may go, Mr Potter."
Harry didn't need telling twice. As promised, he headed down to Snape's, his mind still on the ache in his scar. What was Voldemort up to? His emotions didn't usually creep through to Harry like that, not while Harry maintained his Occlumency shields.
He pushed it from his mind; whatever it was, there was little he could do.
Snape was waiting for him, and he directed Harry into a chair while he gathered the dittany and the gauze, carefully tending to the cursed wound. "I would quite like to kill that woman," the Slytherin said evenly, making Harry look up in surprise.
"That makes two of us," he agreed after a beat. "But also I would quite like to see her face when Susan and her aunt make Fudge regret even thinking about entering the world of politics. And when she's given undeniable proof that Voldemort's back."
From the look on Snape's face, he would still find murder more satisfying.
"I suppose with all these detentions you haven't had time to work on your studies from the summer?"
Harry scoffed. "I've barely had time to do my bloody homework. This first week back really has been ridiculous." Snape's lips twitched in amusement. Bastard. "I'm going to spend some time on my animagus form on Sunday, if I can. Wandless magic is getting a bit harder to practice in my dorm, now I'm up to the bigger spells. And, well, I can hardly work on my duelling by myself." Or the darker spells Snape had taught him for battle purposes.
"The Dark Lord is being remarkably… restrained, for now," Snape said. "With luck, this will allow you to take a little more time with your training. Get your classwork under control. Should things… escalate, we will adjust as needed."
Harry nodded, though part of him itched at having yet another part of his life he could do nothing but wait through. With the Triwizard Tournament the year before, it had felt like everything was moving so quickly. On the contrary, he could already tell fifth year was going to drag.
Snape didn't keep him long, healing up his hand and then watching as Harry cast a suitable glamour to mimic a scar. Afterwards, Harry made his way up to Gryffindor Tower, keen to see the results of the quidditch tryouts. The team was gathered by the fire, and Angelina approached him with with a dark-haired third year girl Harry vaguely recognised. "Harry, meet our new keeper," she introduced proudly. "This is Vicky Frobisher."
"Nice to meet you," Harry said, shaking her hand. "Welcome to the team." He wondered which of the hopefuls she'd been, whether he'd seen her fly from Umbridge's office.
Her return smile was a little shy. "Thanks, I'm really excited to play with all of you!" She glanced at Angelina, then hurried off to a small cluster of other third years, who had goblets of butterbeer from Merlin only knew where.
It was then that Harry saw the storm cloud in the form of Ron Weasley, scowling at them from across the room. When he looked back at Angelina, her gaze was knowing. "He tried out," she said quietly. "He wasn't bad — I almost thought about giving him the position. Vicky's in a million different clubs and societies, I wasn't sure if she'd have enough time for the team too. But his attitude really isn't what this team needs, and Vicky flew better as well. I figured if I can deal with you in detention half the time, I can deal with her occasionally missing practice for Charms club," she added wryly.
"I appreciate the assumption that I'll get more detentions," Harry said, making her laugh.
"Prove me wrong, then," she challenged, sticking her tongue out. "I am sorry if it makes Ron even more pissed at you, though. He seems to think you and the twins poisoned me against him or some shit. As if I'd listen to any of your opinions," she joked.
The news wasn't surprising, but it still made Harry sigh. "He's pissed at me anyway, can't make it much worse." He was getting pretty good at avoiding Ron Weasley. "And I really am sorry about missing tryouts."
"It's fine," Angelina waved him off. "We've got practice at two tomorrow, so you can make it up to me then."
"Deal." Harry grinned at her, then turned his gaze longingly towards the dormitory staircase. If he could go to bed now, it would be the first time all week he'd slept before midnight.
"Go on. You look knackered," Angelina said, giving him a gentle shove towards the stairs. "I want you on top form tomorrow!"
"Aye, captain!"
Dean and Seamus were the only ones in the room, and Seamus eyed Harry suspiciously. Harry ignored him, grabbing his pyjamas and heading to the bathroom, determined to take a nice long shower and then pass out.