While Dumbledore was lost in thought about how to deal with Fudge, Snape leaned over to McGonagall. "How did that idiot get away? I thought you had her under control?" McGonagall shrugged. "She was a slippery little thing." Snape gave her a sharp look. The deputy headmistress was alarmingly blasé about having let Umbridge slip through her fingers. He would have expected her to be livid at the Pink Toad's escape from justice. Abruptly Minerva let out a loud belch. "Oh my, excuse me!" she exclaimed, patting her chest. Then she locked eyes with Severus who was just lifting his teacup to his lips. "It must have been something I ate," she said, very deliberately. Snape promptly spit his mouthful of tea all over Fawkes, who screeched in protest and huffily vanished in a burst of flame. Snape stared at Minerva, who gazed placidly back. Surely she hadn't meant…! His mind worked busily, considering Minerva's absolute devotion to her students, her well-hidden Slytherin tendencies, and her uncharacteristic lack of concern over Umbridge's potential for future harm. Snape gulped as he realized that one seriously enraged Transfiguration expert who is also a cat animagus plus one minimally powerful toadlike witch who has done the enraging equaled… one partially digested threat to Hogwarts' children. "I – er – have a potion for indigestion," he offered, trying not to sound as terrified as he felt. Suddenly Albus was no longer the scariest person in the room. "That would be very kind," she said, giving him an approving smile. Snape decided then and there that enlisting Minerva's support might well have been one of his smartest moves. That and never mortally offending the carnivorous animagus.

Harry forced down his warm fuzzy feelings and composed his features into a penitent expression. Professor Snape was telling him off, and he didn't want the poor man to realize he was pants at it. Especially not here at the Burrow, with Mr Weasley so close by. Harry needed to help Professor Snape look good, and grinning like a maniac during a stern dressing-down was not the way to do that.

"What ho, Headmaster! You've found our sledding party!" Nick floated around the corner and up to the Headmaster. "These three rode that troll down the stairs as if he were a sled down a mountainside! Sheer brilliance, my children! True Gryffindors, the lot of you!" Harry noticed that the ghost's praise didn't make Professor Snape seem any happier, even if it did distract the Headmaster and their Head of House. "What do you mean?" Albus asked blankly.