When they went down to the Great Hall for breakfast Sherlock was waiting for them in the shadowy space under the steps, where he was to wish John luck for the quidditch game. At first they didn't see him, until someone grabbed their ankles while they were walking innocently, almost sending John toppling down the stairs.
"Sherlock what the heck? A little hello would suffice." John decided, but never the less he walked down to where Sherlock was standing.
"So what did she ask, are you okay?" Greg asked impatiently.
"I'm fine, really, but she asked about the fight." He said, glaring at John to get the message.
"What did you tell her?" John asked, worried that Umbridge would send him away if she knew what had really happened.
"Well I told her the truth, we were leaving detention, Moriarty started insulting us, I took a swing, one thing led to another and I ended up unconscious in the hospital wing after some curses went haywire, messing up the whole hallway." Sherlock admitted.
"And then what?" Greg demanded.
"Nothing, she obviously didn't believe me, but she offered me tea, I refused, that's probably where the truth serum is, if there is any." Sherlock decided.
"Tea? That's a little bit innocent." John pointed out.
"Well I guess it's just who she is, the girly toad who will cut your throat." Sherlock shrugged.
"So you didn't tell her anything right?" John clarified.
"Not that I know of, no." Sherlock assured.
"Good, then you're clean and we can go on with our regular lives." John said with a smile, leading the way back to the Great Hall. Sherlock had to go to the Ravenclaw table, he didn't want to but he thought that Umbridge might be watching, that was why he only talked outside of the Great Hall, for fear of eavesdropping toads.
"This is good isn't it? I mean, Sherlock's clear, she must be off his trail." Greg guessed.
"Did anything get better for you guys when you were done with your first group meeting in her office?" John pointed out.
"Well, no, but it could be different for him, you never know." Greg pointed out. He was in the midst of trying to get a whole omelet onto his plate without breaking, failing pretty badly as all the fixings fell out over the plate and onto the table. Greg cursed, but they decided to let the owls get it, and he just ate pancakes with a bit of an unsatisfied frown. Thankfully they didn't have Defense against the Dark Arts today, but they had History of Magic, Charms, Herbology, and Care of Magical creatures, only one of those in the presence of a Holmes. They said a temporary goodbye when they left for Binns's, which was, as usual, miserable to the highest degree. They leaned about the House Elf freedom after some dark wizard came into power, and how a whole lot of them were roaming the streets and causing chaos. But Binns made it sound like a lecture on how to churn butter or something the way he told it. When they were finally out of there they headed to Charms, eager to talk to Sherlock more in depth with what happened in the office. They retreated to the back of the classroom, Sherlock stull wasn't there, so they waited and watched. Finally he appeared at the door, frowning but with incredible posture as usual. He sulked to the back of the class and took the back corner seat, the only one next to John.
"I see that you've been waiting for me." He guessed, getting out his wand and setting it neatly at the top of the desk.
"Well yes, we wanted to know what happened." Greg agreed.
"I already told you what happened." Sherlock said simply.
"Anything more?" John asked.
"Well I could describe her office, but it hurt my eyes and would be a bit of a traumatizing recall." Sherlock sighed.
"So that's all she asked you, that's the only thing she wanted to know?" Greg asked.
"Well she asked me if I was in a relationship, I said no, she asked me if I had a crush, I said yes, she asked who it was." Sherlock shrugged.
"You told Umbridge your crush?" Greg asked. John was a bit sidetracked, was he no more than a crush, or was Sherlock just lying for Umbridge? They were in a relationship right?
"Of course not, I told her it was my business and not hers and she just changed the subject." Sherlock defended.
"That's all?" John asked, surprised.
"That's all." Sherlock agreed.
"Well maybe we might get away with everything that we've been doing." Greg decided after they let the story absorb.
"Okay then." John muttered, but class began before they could ask any follow up questions. When lunch came they all went down together, picking up Mycroft down the hall, who was with Anthea. John wanted nothing to do with this fake girlfriend of his, but she made sure to ask him questions about quidditch (self-explanatory questions) all the way down to the Great Hall. After telling her all the rules and all the Gryffindor teammates he finally had an excuse to walk away to his own table, waving goodbye to all the non Gryffindors. Mycroft seemed to be eyeing both John and Sherlock differently, but that was obvious because now he knew about everything, which scared John to say the least. Sherlock didn't know Mycroft knew, and if John told him then who knows what Sherlock would do? He was obviously one for privacy against his older brother, and now Greg was the only one who didn't know. John felt a little bit bad about that, being as he was one of the only ones that constantly pressured John into a relationship with Sherlock, but he did have a big mouth and didn't always control it.
"I'm not in the mood for Herbology." Greg decided. John nodded in agreement, no one was ever really in the mood for Herbology, they were forced into it.
"Better than Defense against the Dark Arts." He pointed out.
"True." Greg shrugged. "But it must be so cold out." He guessed, looking up to the enchanted ceiling to check the weather. There was no snow falling, but it looked cold all the same.
"Oh yay." John sighed.
"What was with that Ravenclaw hat I saw under your bed?" Greg asked.
"Why were you under my bed?" John asked suspiciously.
"Oh, I was looking for that snitch you took, I was bored over break."
"Sherlock gave it to me, as a joke. I made him wear the Gryffindor one during the walk we took in Hogsmeade." John shrugged.
"Well it's really funny, you should wear it." Greg decided.
"If I'm going to wear one of those ridiculous hats it's going to be my own house." John debated.
"It's still funny." Greg decided.
"Thank you Greg." John muttered sarcastically, once again not in the mood to get beat up on.
"So Sherlock has a crush then huh?" Greg asked after a while of silence.
"Perfectly normal thing to do, yes." John agreed.
"Do you know on who?"
"Yes." John said, not a lie considering he was the crush and Sherlock made that quite obvious.
"Guy or girl?"
"Why should I tell you? Ask Sherlock if you really want to know." John decided. Greg looked over to see Sherlock watching them and he waved nervously. Sherlock didn't reply.
"Maybe I'll just ask you, it's a lot less intimidating." Greg decided.
"You'll get nothing from me." John pointed out, making Greg pout a little bit.
"I didn't care much anyway." Greg decided with a little frown. "I dare you to wear the hat." He muttered.
"Absolutely not, that's more of an inside joke between me and Sherlock than a public humiliation tool." John defended.
"Alrighty then. I should get Mycroft one." He laughed.
"Oh he'll love that." John laughed, digging into his potato salad with a smile. Sherlock was still glaring, not bothering to at least cover his face with a book or look away when John or Greg looked. He looked slightly annoyed with them, as if they weren't doing something they should be. Umbridge has changed his apparently. When they went down to Herbology the snow was so thick on the glass roof that they had to spend the first couple of minutes levitating it out. According to Professor Sprout the sunlight needed to get in, and she thought it built character. But she was able to stay in the warm greenhouse, sipping hot chocolate and telling them what to get rid of while they froze their butts off outside. Finally when the greenhouses were clear they all worked with the Venomous Tentacula, but now they had to prune the flowers off of them. The plant didn't like that at all and Greg lost, once again, his newly repaired dragon skinned glove. When they headed down to Care of Magical creatures, thinking they've had enough caring for magical death plants, Hagrid surprised them all with...absolutely nothing. Hagrid was literally just petting thin air with a huge smile on his face.
"Got a real treat for you today." He said happily to the confused students. There were footprints, some type of hooves or something, but there was nothing standing where they left off.
"Hagrid, what exactly is it?" John asked from the back, and a lot of students shook their head in agreement.
"I can see it." Moriarty said proudly, him and his gang shook their heads smugly.
"I'd expect you would..." Hagrid mumbled. "This here is called a Thestral, you can only see it if you've seen death."
"There's a shock." Greg muttered.
"They are terribly misunderstood creatures, thought to be a death omen you see, back in who knows when, raise your hand if you can see them." Hagrid decided. A couple of reluctant students raised their hands, including Moriarty, Moran, and Irene, who had probably all killed someone themselves and they hadn't even graduated.
"That's perfectly normal, nothing to be ashamed of. But Thestrals are actually extremely rare to come by." Hagrid went on. And on. The class might have been interesting if John could see more than just air as Hagrid showed the class the wings, which looked like nothing, the hooves, which looked like nothing, and the head which looked like nothing as well.
"This is pathetic." Greg muttered as Hagrid assigned them an essay on the creatures, due when they see each other next. Finally they were released to trudge back up through the snow, pulling their cloaks tightly around themselves to try to fight the cold wind. The snow wasn't going anywhere, it was the same snow from Hogsmeade about two or three weeks old and it's still the number one nuisance.
"How are we supposed to write a report on Thestrals if we've never seen them?" John complained as he sat down, shaking the snow off of his sneakers under the table, someone else's problem now.
"I don't know, find someone who can see them, look at a picture, haven't the faintest really." Greg shrugged, he didn't seem too worried about the report and more about what was currently on his plate.
"I'm not going to ask Moriarty if he could describe it, I think he'd kill me instead, who else?" John asked, looking around the tables until he spotted the perfect candidate. Sherlock. He's seen death, accidently of course, but the Thestrals shouldn't care about that, he could ask Sherlock. When they finished off their dinner John went over to the Ravenclaw table where Sherlock was sitting silently, reading the spell book John had gotten him for Christmas. Greg went over to who knows where because he saw Mycroft prowling around near the door or something, probably with Anthea. 

"Hey Sherlock." John said, happily slipping into the seat next to him. 

"Hello John." Sherlock said, hardly looking up from some curse that made the victim's fingernails pop off. Sounding absolutely miserable, John would make a mental note not to mess with Sherlock. 

"I was wondering if you could help me on that Care of Magical Creatures essay, about the Thestrals?" John asked hopefully. 

"Can't you see them?" Sherlock asked. 

"No..." John said, shouldn't that be a bit obvious? 

"Well then I'd be happy to, but I need to go somewhere tonight." 
"Where?" John asked as Sherlock started packing up again. 

"Detention with Sinistra, apparently you're not supposed to hit kids with the telescopes." Sherlock sighed. 

"Wait, really?" John asked, following him out the door. 

"John it's nothing personal, go run along with your other friends." Sherlock sighed, waiting at the first landing for John to leave. 

"Where are you going?" he asked. 

"To have tea with the queen. I'm going to detention, nothing interesting about that you idiot, please get back to the Great Hall before I get another detention for pushing you down the stairs." Sherlock decided, tapping his wand against his leg with annoyance. 

"Ya okay, have fun Sherlock." John sighed; it wasn't worth getting into a fight with him, especially since he had a book full of attacking charms. He walked down the stairs, jumping the last two and slipping into the Great Hall alone. Sherlock never showed up at the common room that night either, which wasn't too odd, it's not like he had to be there, but John was once again cursed to be with the Love Birds. He read the Quidditch book by the fire again, blocking out their talking the best he could and trying to focus, once again, on Viktor Krum's Wronski Feint. He wondered what Sherlock was doing right now, and he was willing to bet it wasn't with Sinistra. Why would Sherlock be sneaking around the castle and avoiding him? Probably three options here, he was almost about to explode, he was in deeper trouble than John thought and he wanted to protect him, or he was sneaking away to start fights. They all seemed pretty probable, but John really wasn't in the mood to go looking. He'll find out in the morning apparently, because the clock clicked on and soon Mycroft vanished as well, saying goodbye to Greg and John and slipping out of the common room. 

"Where was Sherlock tonight?" Greg asked as they changed into their own pajamas and got into their four posters. 

"Said he had detention with Sinistra, but he was sneaking around a lot so I can't be sure." John admitted. 

"Do you think Umbridge wanted to talk to him again?" Greg asked. John hadn't thought of that, the possibility that maybe he was lying about it so they wouldn't worry about him. 

"What would Umbridge want from him this time?" John asked. But the other boys shushed him, flicking their wands at the lights and plunging the room into darkness.