She blinks slowly. "May I ask what's prompting this question?"

"Um," he says nervously, "Professor Snape was acting sort of strange in our first lesson and I wanted to know if that was all right."

The corners of her mouth twitch. "Strange? Could you elaborate, Mr. Evans?"

"He, er, clearly likes Potions a lot but I don't think he likes children very much," he says. "And he, um, he asked me some questions that weren't in the textbook and then when I didn't know the answers he said I obviously hadn't opened any books before coming to class. And when one of the Slytherin students told him to stop doing that sort of thing because it wasn't very educationally helpful, he took five points from Slytherin for backchat. And when he criticizes students and they get nervous and make mistakes he criticizes them more for the mistakes."

"Well, that conduct is very unbecoming of a Potions Master, and especially of a Head of House," she says with utmost seriousness, but her eyes twinkle with pride. "I recommend you file a formal complaint, so this can be taken up to Professor Dumbledore and we can properly discuss it."

Professor McGonagall is good.

"How do I do that?"

"Oh, I have the form here—" She opens a drawer inside a drawer inside a little cabinet inside her top drawer and gets a form. She taps it with her wand, duplicating it, then hands it to him. It's very short and to the point, merely requiring his name, year, House, a description of the incident, and his signature.

He sits down and carefully writes everything out.

She takes it when he's done. "I'll make sure to look into this and, if need be, we will take appropriate actions to prevent such incidents from happening again." And here's another genuine McGonagall smile.

"Thank you, Professor."

"You're quite welcome. Was there anything else?"

"No, Professor."

"Then I will return to grading some essays and paperwork."

The door behind Victor opens by itself.

He goes away and returns to the library.

That evening at dinner Dayo's "politics" looks a lot more like him just befriending people than him trying to impart precious wisdom on them. Or, well, there is, at any rate, notably much less looking at people at other tables with curiosity happening.

Victor notices that.

Dayo doesn't go talk to them that evening, and it's soon time to return to bed.

The library is really fascinating. He is looking forward to reading more of it.

The next morning she's there in the library again, undisguised. Actually reading.

He glances at her on his way to his favourite library table.

After he settles down there she makes her way to his table. "Okay if I sit here?"

"Okay."

She sits. "So I sorta dropped the line of argument that it was politically stupid to disregard three-quarters of the population. ...well, at least dropped it as my main line of argument."

"I don't think I knew that that was your main line of argument before."

"It was. They were like 'why are you talking to Gryffindors' and I was like 'what sort of short-sighted ambition do you have that will work if you restrict your social circle to twenty-five percent of the population of the United Kingdom?' and that was going somewhere but it did not explain Potions class very well."