In the dungeons.
Snape had also heard the news.
He stood before a cauldron, shadows cutting across his hooked nose.
At the words "everyone preparing for exams," a sharp glint flashed in his eyes.
They had only just begun, and he no longer needed to act.
Good.
Snape's lips stretched into a cruel curve.
Since he no longer needed to play an unfortunate man driven out of his mind by immense pressure.
He could quite legitimately return to his actual job-a Potions professor who made every student want to vomit bile.
"Very good," he murmured to the empty air, as though passing sentence on the little trolls who talked about him behind his back.
"Since you enjoy investigating so much, I'll let your brains have a taste of being squeezed dry, too."
He spun around and pulled a tome thick enough to bludgeon someone to death from the top shelf.
"One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi: Advanced Toxicity Analysis."
He would teach these little trolls that true nightmares lay not in elusive conspiracies, but in the final major question on his exam paper.
In Moody's Office, the atmosphere, bristling with tension just moments earlier, had now deflated like a punctured ball.
The members of the Detective Club dispersed one by one, heads hanging and feet dragging.
As they left, their conversation had shifted from "What exactly is Snape plotting?" to "Which Transfiguration chapter is hardest to memorize?" and "Whose History of Magic notes can I borrow to copy?"
Harry was the last to leave.
He returned to his dormitory, his head still buzzing.
He looked at the map of Hogwarts on his desk, which Moody had told him to pay particular attention to, and the crumpled "mole report."
Then he looked at the mountain of textbooks piled on the other