Hermione had listened carefully to McGonagall’s speech at the beginning of the year, admonishing the young wizards about the dangerous creatures living in the forest. That students should not be out of their houses at night. The assembly had chuckled. Most had been in the castle last year as Snape had, oddly enough, been quite effective at keeping the younger years safe through a mixture of high-level legilimency and backstabbing skull duggery that would have made Salazar Slytherin himself proud of the Headmaster that had followed Dumbledore. 