Harry glanced around at the nearby sixth- and seventh-years as he slung a leg over the bench and sat down. "Hi."
He got no response but glares, though Nott had the grace to look ever so slightly uncomfortable about his House's behaviour.
Determined to act as normally as possible, Harry served himself a generous helping of roast mutton and runner beans, then set to eating as though nothing in the world was the matter. The silence around him was oppressive, though; even the other Houses had fallen largely silent as they waited to see what Slytherin would do about Harry's having gone to sit with them.
When Harry chanced a glance at the head table, he saw Snape talking with McGonagall even as his gaze steadily swept over Harry and his companions, back and forth, back and forth, the surveillance so methodical that Harry shivered. He'd seen Snape on Samhain, and before that, he'd seen him at that horrid meeting in the pensieve, but never before had he gotten such a clear sense of what a formidable spy his father must have been.
Harry didn't know if it was his shiver that had done it, but after a moment of apparent indecision, Nott cleared his throat and said in a bright voice, "So, Potter. I don't imagine you've been to many matches this year, but it's looking more or less like Ravenclaw for the Quidditch Cup."
"Draco and I caught one of the Gryffindor-Slytherin matches, actually," said Harry, noticing Bella stiffening at the name. Ignoring Harry, however, she turned to one of her friends and began talking quickly.
"How's Draco?" said another voice, and Harry glanced to his other side, where Goyle sat.
"Well, I don't guess it's any great fun to be expelled for something you didn't do, but he's all right."
Goyle ate three entire rolls before he replied. "He used to help me a lot with my classes."
That was surprising. Harry wouldn't have thought that Draco had it in him to help anyone with anything. Well, not back then, anyway. But then again, there must have been a reason why Crabbe and Goyle liked him so well.
Draco had called them sycophants... perhaps because he knew that their loyalty had been purchased. All in all, Harry thought it was very sad.
"So how are you doing now in your classes?" he asked Goyle.
"Not so good." Goyle shrugged and went back to eating. Harry didn't really know what to say to that. At least, not until it dawned on him that this was a perfect chance to talk down his own magic and slide the topic of the Slytherin plague into the conversation.
Picking up his fork, he toyed with a bean, pushing around and around in circles on his plate. "Yeah, I sure can sympathise. "Classes are really hard for me, too, now." Then, as if he'd just realised he'd said too much, he added, "After being away for so long, I mean. Say, are you still catching up from being sick last week? What was that like, anyway? Did anybody ever figure out what had caused it?"
Goyle answered while he was still chewing his last bite, reminding Harry a bit of Ron, actually. "Don't think they know what caused it. Those blisters-or-whatever really hurt. Bad enough that you were glad when you passed out... for me when I woke up things were much better. But Nott woke up screaming; he had it a lot worse."
"Oh yeah?" Harry turned to his other side.
For the briefest of seconds, Theodore Nott looked really irritated. Then his expression cleared and he casually said, "Yeah. Tell you about it a bit later, though."
With his friends, Harry might have pressed the matter, but the Slytherin half of his mind was telling him to drop it. Or... not drop it, but hold it in reserve and see if Nott ever did bring it up again.
The rest of the meal passed in more-or-less companionable silence, punctuated occasionally by a comment carefully worded to be neutral. Nobody questioned Harry's right to eat there, or said he wasn't welcome, but Harry didn't count that for much. These were Slytherins, and their Head of House was watching, so they were putting up with Harry.
For now.
------------------------------------------------------
"Like the other one," hissed Harry, holding his useless wand as a cover while he gestures his fingers towards a blank sheet of parchment, his other hand pointing at his class notes from that day's Defence class.
When the door to his dormitory creaked open, Harry whirled around, ready to defend himself.
But it was only Ron, who tilted his head to the side. "You all right, mate?"
Harry grinned a little bit sheepishly as he pocketed his wand. "Yeah... Just concentrating and you startled me. Duplicaro, you know, for Draco. It's sort of hard for me to manage." He didn't need to say more; Ron had been there on Tuesday night when Harry had worked out how to make the spell succeed in Parseltongue. Harry needed both his hands to make it copy documents properly, which meant the even though he held his wand in one, a clever observer might deduce that a bit of wandless magic was going on. Harry had resolved to use the spell only in secret... which was turning out to be pretty inconvenient when you shared a dormitory with several other boys.
But he wasn't going to disappoint his father. Resigning himself to the lack of privacy, he decided he'd just have to ask Hermione to help him, tonight. Snape had been right; she was the only other Gryffindor who did a really good job with the spell. Better than Harry, in fact. "Is Hermione down in the common room?"
"She's still with her study-buddies in Ravenclaw," Ron sneered. "Getting ready for an Arithmancy quiz tomorrow. We're apparently none of us smart enough for her."
Harry tried to cheer Ron up with a smile. "Oh, come on. We aren't even taking Arithmancy! And anyway, you know her; she's got a little more quizzex than it's good to have--"
Seamus had just finished wriggling into his pyjama top. "A little more what?"
"Quizzex, you know. Test anxiety."
By then, the three other boys were staring bemused at Harry. "It's wizarding slang." A sudden suspicion blossomed in his mind. "Isn't it?"
"Never heard it before," said Neville. Ron was also shaking his head.
Harry couldn't help but laugh. "He cheated, the sneak." And at his friends' puzzled expressions, Harry continued, "Draco. We were playing Wizard's Scrabble and we said slang was allowed and he cheated! He even said quizzex had two Z's so he could land one of them on a triple-letter tile!"
Seamus guffawed. "What a shock. Draco Malfoy, cheating. Have you owled the Quibbler yet?"
"Draco Snape."
"Shite Harry, we all know he's your brother!" Ron suddenly erupted. "You don't have to rub it in every time somebody mentions his old name! You think it's easy for us knowing you're brothers with that and liking things that way?"
"You think it's easy for me deal with him having Lucius Malfoy's genes? Excuse me for not wanting to hear him called by that awful name!"
"Are you nutters? Lucius Malfoy doesn't wear jeans! And anyway I thought your brother's clothes all vanished--"
Ron hadn't intended to lighten the mood, Harry felt sure, but that was what ended up happening. "Genes, not jeans," he exclaimed, laughter overtaking him. "It's got to do with how you inherit traits from your parents. Oh, never mind. You know, sometimes I think this school really has a weird curriculum--"
"Does not."
"Does too--"
Neville interrupted before another argument could get started. "How could Mal... I mean, Draco, make a word with two Z's, anyway? Doesn't Wizard's Scrabble only have the one?"
"He used a blank tile--"
For some reason, that struck Ron as incredibly funny. "He used a blank tile, and he just happened to need it for a Z, for a word you'd never heard in your life, that just happened to land that Z on a triple-letter tile, and it never occurred to you that the git was lying his Slytherin face off?" His face reddening, Ron plopped down onto his bed and gave in to his laughter.