Harry blinked and the world came back into focus. He was literally standing just in the dead centre of the frame of the double doors to the Great Hall. The eyes of all the students at the four house tables, as well as all of those belonging to the people seated at the staff table were on him as Severus Snape stormed along the aisle between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, heading straight towards Harry. His black robes billowed about in that style that only he seemed to have perfected, and yet, as always, his long and greasy hair barely moved an inch.
Obviously it had been Snape who had shouted his name at him. It seemed that the man wanted as many witnesses for this event as possible.
'Fine by me!' thought Harry before asking "How may I help you, Professor Snape?"
"Don't play dumb with me you insolent little whelp!" sneered the school's resident potions master "Malfoy has informed me that you stole his wand as well as those of his friends. Now hand them over."
"I stole nothing," replied Harry calmly "Those wands were confiscated from the students in question as their behaviour on the Hogwarts Express warranted it. I held onto the wands for the night in order to teach those four a lesson in humility; however I had every intention of giving them back to their owners this morning so as to not interfere with their lessons."
"A likely story!" scoffed Snape "Admit it. You were hoping that they would be unable to perform magic in class and so loose plenty of house points, weren't you?"
"I am afraid that you could not be more wrong, Professor," said Harry.
"Is that so?" the man asked with a dangerous edge to his voice "Well then, let's see how you like this. Two hundred points from Gryffindor for wand theft."
He smirked at Harry and said "Well, that should mean that the Gryffindors will be in the minus figures until after the Christmas holidays at the very least."
"Again you are incorrect, Professor," said Harry "As I said during my speech last night, my new role requires me to be entirely neutral. Therefore I am no longer of any of the school houses, Gryffindor or otherwise."
"And yet you still wear the colours of Gryffindor House," replied Snape with a sneer.
Harry looked down and saw that he was right "Oh, so I am. My mistake."
And with that, he took out his wand and tapped the badge on the front of his robes, causing the image of the Gryffindor lion to shrink back into just one quarter of the available space. The remaining three quarters of the space was filled by the eagle of Ravenclaw, the badger of Hufflepuff and the serpent of Slytherin. Then a big 'H' appeared, meaning that his robes now bore the emblem of Hogwarts School itself, rather than one of its individual houses.
This was followed by a tap of the wand to his tie, which caused the red and gold stripes on it to narrow and for some to change colour so that there were eight different colours, red and gold for Gryffindor, blue and bronze for Ravenclaw, yellow and black for Hufflepuff and green and silver for Slytherin.
Then finally one tap to the collar of his robes saw the silk lining that for Gryffindors was a dark red turn into the black colour that the lining originally was went first purchased.
"There," said Harry as he pocketed his wand "I trust that you find this change satisfactory, Professor."
There was a vein throbbing in Snape's forehead now. Harry had seen that phenomenon in the man on several occasions over the past few years, but the only time it had ever been this severe looking had been at the end of his third year when Sirius Black evaded the Dementor's kiss and Snape was convinced that Harry was somehow involved (which he was, but Snape had no way to prove that.)
Of course, Harry realised that it was taking Snape every ounce of self-control he had to stop himself from exploding right there in the Great Hall. This meant that there were only a few seconds more to go before Snape either hexed him or had a stroke, therefore Harry decided to end their conversation there and then by stepping around the man and striding towards the front of the hall.
He stood before the staff table and turned to face the students before asking "Could Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle of Slytherin House please come up here?"
Two of the four students in question exchanges looks with each other and several of their house mates before getting to their feet. The other two simply waited to see what the first two would tell them to do. All four of them then walked to the front of the hall.
"The behaviour exhibited by the four of you on the train yesterday was appalling," said Harry "can I trust that you will not behave like that again?"
Showing that they had at least some brain cells rattling around in their self-important heads, both Draco and Pansy nodded in reply. Crabbe and Goyle mirrored them, even if they did not entirely understand the question asked.
"Very well…" said Harry before swinging his backpack off of his shoulder and opening it up to retrieve the four wands. He held them out to the four Slytherins, each of whom took their own before slinking back to their house table.
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