The Confectionary Chronicles || HP/SPN

Sweets and Studies- CH21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:

Severus could admit that it was largely spite that had him speaking so candidly to the Aurors the Ministry had sent to Hogwarts to interview those involved in the incident regarding Potter's cursed broom. He didn't like Aurors, considered them little better than the Ministry's leashed attack dogs, but Dumbledore's frustration at the investigation having been taken out of his hands and Potter's own look of wide-eyed shock at the revelation that the boy had him to thank for staying on his broom as long as he had made the interview well worth it.

The broomstick had been confiscated with the confirmation that yes, it had been tampered with, and although the entire student body had witnessed Potter's broom trying to toss him while he was hundreds of feet in the air, it had been agreed that the official criminal investigation, which had been labelled as an attempted murder investigation, would be kept quiet. Nobody wanted it to get out that the Boy Who Lived had nearly been murdered just a couple of months into his first year at Hogwarts– on this, both Dumbledore and the Ministry could agree, though that was about all they agreed on, with Dumbledore having wanted to keep the investigation 'in-house' while the Aurors were determined to do everything as by the book as possible, considering just who the target of the attempted murder was.

Hermione Granger pushing for an official investigation was an interesting move from the girl. Oh, Severus didn't believe she had done it to purposefully undermine Dumbledore– she just didn't care if that was the result, in her determination to do right by Potter. The boy was lucky to have someone like her in his corner– and Severus had to admit, if only to himself, that he was surprised by Potter's willingness to befriend a Slytherin. James Potter would have never condescended to befriend a student in silver-and-green. As painful as the thought was, he had to admit it must be the Lily in the boy shining through.

Granger's actions wouldn't be without its consequences though. Before this, Dumbledore had accepted Harry's Slytherin friends without any overt signs of displeasure or wariness– likely because Granger was a muggleborn and Bulstrode an illegitimate "halfbreed". He doubted Dumbledore would have been quite so sanguine about the situation if Potter was going around befriending the Malfoy boy, or young Nott. And he doubted Dumbledore would be quite so accepting of the situation now, though there was little the headmaster could do, considering just how firmly Granger and Bulstrode had ingratiated themselves with the Gryffindor trio.

With how wrapped up he was in his thoughts, Severus almost missed it as he walked past his classroom, heading for his office to get started on the pile of marking due Monday, only to stop short– the door to his classroom was ajar.

He never left the classroom door unlocked.

With a heavy scowl, he pushed the door fully open and stormed into the room, scanning the room around him for evidence of pranks or disarray. He couldn't see anything obviously out of place but as he approached the front of the classroom, wand out, he immediately noticed it– the ward scheme he had set up over the door to the storeroom had been burnt out.

Warding was a delicate, precise branch of magic that could be taken apart in two ways; either through carefully unravelling the strings of magic that held the ward together, like picking apart the threads of a tapestry until the entire weave unravelled, or by overpowering the wards with brute force and burning them out.

Considering how often he had to use the storeroom, and the number of students passing in and out, he'd only had a rather simple ward scheme set up to prevent students from getting into the storeroom if he hadn't opened it first. It had been simple but functional– there had been no shortage of attempted thefts and even successful thefts during class, but there had only been a handful of occasions where a student or students had broken through his ward scheme to get into his storeroom– and in none of those cases had his ward scheme simply been burned out!