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Henry was not particularly surprised that the Bloody Baron had addressed him as Your Highness.
The Baron's history was worth knowing. Despite the wizarding world's constant pronouncements about pure-blood supremacy, its members were, in practice, surprisingly enthusiastic about Muggle titles, and the Bloody Baron had been nobly born.
The silver bloodstains on his chest and the cold solemnity of his bearing were only part of what made Slytherin students regard him with that particular mixture of pride and unease.
His title was one he had always worn with a certain satisfaction.
The Baron's expression remained as sombre as ever as he repeated himself, clearly and without embellishment, for the benefit of the room. "His Highness Henry. When the chaos began in the Great Hall, he went against the flow of the crowd to report Miss Granger's situation to Headmaster Dumbledore directly."
He turned toward Henry as he said it and offered something that, on his face, qualified as a rare smile.
The Fat Friar's expression moved through disbelief, then comprehension, then settled into something more complicated and difficult to read.
Tense, almost.
There was, in fact, a reason for that. The Fat Friar had been executed because certain high-ranking members of the clergy had grown deeply uneasy about his habit of curing leprosy by touching farmers with a stick and his tendency to conjure rabbits from consecrated chalices.
His relationship with the institutional Church had been, to say the least, fraught.
What did this have to do with Henry?
Only this: in 1533, King Henry VIII forbade the Church of England from paying its annual tribute to Rome. The following year, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, establishing the King as the supreme head of the Church of England.
In one stroke, the institution that had made the Fat Friar's life so difficult had been expelled from England by royal decree.
There was a certain irony, then, in a future English king sitting quietly by a Slytherin fireplace while the Fat Friar contemplated what to make of him.
A murmur was already moving through the room.
"He reported it?"
"To Dumbledore? In the middle of all that?"
"For a Gryffindor?"
"Merlin..."
"What is this, some kind of betrayal?"
"Will you be quiet? Listen to what the Bloody Baron just called him."
"Still, though—"
Draco's face had coloured slightly. He did not question Henry, but his expression said quite plainly that he was working through something.
Pansy had her hand over her mouth, her gaze moving between Henry, the Baron, and the whispering students around her. For once, she appeared to have nothing to say.
Daphne sat with her chin lifted and her back straight, for all the world like a small swan that had decided something and would not be persuaded otherwise.
Millicent and several of the other girls exchanged glances, some frowning, some thoughtful, one or two with something that looked distinctly like approval.
On the upperclassmen's side of the room, several seventh-years watched from a distance with their arms folded. Valentine, the sixth-year, raised an eyebrow and spoke quietly to the boy beside him. "Interesting. To report a real danger directly to the Headmaster, cutting through House prejudice in the middle of a panic, takes a certain nerve. More to the point, he chose exactly the right moment and exactly the right person."
His companion gave a short, dismissive sound. "Slytherin doesn't need that sort of heroism."
"Heroism?" Valentine said, with a slight smile. "Look at it more carefully. He sees himself as a student of Hogwarts before he sees himself as a Slytherin. That kind of perspective—" he tilted his head "—is perhaps why even the Bloody Baron uses the title."
Gemma Farley rose and crossed to where Henry was sitting, settling into a nearby chair with her usual composure.
"Mr. Welsh," she said, quietly enough that it did not carry beyond their immediate circle. "What were you thinking at the time? What made you decide to act for a Gryffindor student?"
Henry looked at her. The question was not an accusation. She was, he understood, giving him the space to speak clearly, allowing the room to hear the reasoning rather than simply the outcome.
He set down his cup and answered without hurrying.
"My thinking was straightforward on several points. Student safety is Hogwarts' governing principle, regardless of House. In a sudden crisis, any student who possesses relevant information has a responsibility to bring it to the right authority as quickly as possible. And I have always believed that Slytherin's intelligence should express itself in the ability to read the whole situation and choose the most advantageous course of action within it." He paused, letting the room stay with that. "At that moment, the most advantageous course was to ensure that a student, whatever House she belongs to, did not come to harm through isolation and helplessness. That served the interest of Hogwarts as a whole, and it is in Slytherin's interest to be seen acting on behalf of that larger interest rather than against it."
He paused again, his gaze settling briefly on Farley before moving across the room.
"As for the House's position, I have always understood Slytherin to stand for tradition, ambition, and a clear-eyed understanding of power. None of those values requires us to ignore an obvious danger when we have the ability to address it at virtually no cost or risk to ourselves. True power includes the capacity to demonstrate a wider perspective at precisely the right moment. That is not sentimentality. It is strategy."
The framing was exact: he had upheld everything Slytherin valued, and had placed his own actions within that framework rather than outside it, presenting what he had done not as kindness or misplaced loyalty, but as a higher form of the very shrewdness the House prized.
Several of the older students, Valentine among them, let quiet agreement settle into their expressions.
Draco lifted his head and wore an expression that managed, simultaneously, to be proud on Henry's behalf and personally vindicated.
Pansy leaned toward Daphne and whispered, "He always manages to make things completely irrefutable."
Daphne nodded, and the look in her eyes was simple and unguarded.
The Bloody Baron remained where he floated for a moment longer. Then he bowed very slightly toward Henry, a gesture that was not elaborate but was entirely deliberate, and his form faded gradually into the wall until he was gone.
The Fat Friar gave two cheerful chuckles. "Perfectly resolved, all of it! The Gryffindor children are safe, the troll has been dealt with, and the thoughtful young snake even did his part—a satisfactory evening by anyone's measure! Now, I must find out whether there are any pumpkin pasties left over from last week's kitchen—"
He passed through the wall with the pleased air of a man with somewhere he very much wanted to be.
Farley let a brief silence settle, then addressed the room.
"The situation is clear. Mr. Welsh and Miss Greengrass remained composed throughout the incident and fulfilled their responsibilities as students of this school. Their actions may not fit certain people's narrow assumptions about what a Slytherin should do, but they demonstrated precisely the quality of judgement and decisiveness this House expects of its members. The crisis has passed. Everyone should sleep—there are classes in the morning."
That was that. The crowd dispersed gradually, and the common room settled into its ordinary late-evening quiet, though the looks directed at Henry as people drifted off were varied: some openly admiring, some warmer than before, and some still carrying a trace of unresolved doubt.
In his dormitory, Henry sat at his desk for a while with the events of the evening arranged in front of him in his thoughts.
Dumbledore's reaction when Henry had delivered the news had not been one of genuine surprise.
Either he had already possessed some awareness of Hermione's situation, or he was simply exceptionally skilled at not showing what he did not wish to show. Both were plausible.
Henry considered it for a moment, then drew out a fresh sheet of parchment and began to write down everything that had occurred and his own assessment of it, so that Sir Arnold's think tank could examine it from the outside.