Snape winds up suspended for a month.  He doesn't actually leave the grounds, but whenever he's out of his office or his quarters he's to be treated as a visitor, accompanied by a member of the faculty to keep an eye on him.  That, according to Whitlock, was what Dumbledore had done on his own recognizance, without going through official channels, when he'd been told everything that had happened.

She'd asked Whitlock if she could still file a formal complaint with the board of governors.  Whitlock had said yes, that was her right.  She'd tried to dissemble about not being sure if she wanted to go through with it or not.  She needed time to - recenter herself, and consider her next move.

In bed, that night, in the dark with the curtains of her four-poster drawn - she is recentered.

How had Snape done that.

Well, what precisely had he done?

I am sure you are quite impressed with your own ability to gather followers about yourself, and cause them to hang on to your every word, and throw their weight around in lieu of your own in petty preadolescent squabbles.  But there are people in the world who have seen all of the games you play and all of the masks you wear before, and are not much moved to be impressed by them.  These were his exact words.

She knows she could lie, once, that she could put on faces like masks and identities like veils, and play her interlocutors like instruments, make them love her even as behind her veils and masks she hated them

She remembers thinking that.  It's a thought she'd come back to over and over, every time she'd felt like she was slotting another piece of her old self back into place.

Aside from Snape's contempt, they are alarmingly parallel thoughts.

And hearing him say it had felt like - like the day she'd got her first wand, in Ollivander's shop, the feeling of being perceived, of someone drawing back the cloaks and curtains and shadows she'd drawn around herself - except a hundred times worse.  Ollivander had just picked up trifling hints, examined them.  Snape's speech made it seem like he already knew her, like he'd known her better and before she'd known herself.

What is she to conclude.  That Snape has been reading her mind?  No, she knows a little bit about Legilimency from her reading - it's an invasive and imprecise process.  You can't come to know someone that well with Legilimency in a single week and without them knowing you're doing anything, she doesn't think.  That Snape has been watching her all her life, Legilimizing her subtly - it's conceivable but it rings false.

No, the obvious, the glaringly obvious conclusion is that Snape knows her because Snape knew Maledict Gaunt.  And it doesn't sound like they'd been allies.

After less than two months, she has her first enemy, her first real enemy, in Magical Britain.

Who actually is on the Hogwarts board of governors?

She looks it up the next day.

...Well.

At lunch she sits down next to Draco.  "Hello!"

"Hello, Clover!" Draco says.  "It's been a few days since we've spoken.  How have you been?"

...are they both doing a deliberately bright earnest young child voice at each other?  Ugh.  Farcical.  Hopefully it's not as easy for Draco to clock her as vice versa.  "Well, I missed the exhibition duel yesterday.  Snape seems to have a grudge against me."  She takes a sip of pumpkin juice.

"Was that you he was yelling at by the lake yesterday?" Draco says.  "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yes.  Pansy was making trouble and Snape blamed it all on me."

Draco makes a face.  "Yes, she's - disappointing."

"That's an interesting choice of word, if you don't mind my saying so."

"Well," Draco says, leaning in and going a bit quiet, "the Parkinsons are supposed to be a good family, you know?  But - "

He raises an eyebrow and tilts his head, briefly, in Pansy's direction.

She produces a conspiratorial titter.  "Yes, I see what you mean."  Maybe she can get Millicent or somebody to tell her who the "good families" are.  "Still, though, Pansy's just another student.  It's Snape I'm really worried about."

Draco leans in a little, and in a low voice says, "You know, I've heard things from Father about Snape."

She matches him.  "What sort of things?"

"That he was in with Maledict Gaunt," Draco says quietly.  "Before your parents defeated her, I mean.  He switched sides around that time, made some kind of deal with Dumbledore.  But Snape wasn't under the Imperius like Father was."

"Really."

She evinces shock.  But that checks out, really.  Snape had once been Maledict's ally, but betrayed her for Dumbledore.  That could explain both Snape's keen understanding of Maledict and his hatred for her.  But what to do with this?  The Malfoys are also Maledict's enemy.

"...I don't know much about Dumbledore."

"That's right," Draco says slowly, "you got stuck in Muggle America after Maledict's fall, didn't you?"  He pushes his empty plate away.  "Why don't you meet me in the common room after lunch.  We can talk properly," he says significantly.  "I'll catch you up on how things really are in Magical Britain."

Hmm.  This could be useful, the Malfoy take on the country.  And she gets the impression Draco thinks she's valuable, or maybe that Lucius has told him to make friends with her.  - Well, if the Malfoys are in her debt, Lucius wouldn't want them working at cross purposes.

"Right," she says.

A quick, conspiratorial half-smile.  Then, genially, at normal volume: "See you around, Clover!"

"See you!"

She finishes her own lunch,

and meets Draco, not long later, in the Slytherin common room, at one of the little tables next to the wide glass windows looking out into beneath-the-surface of the Hogwarts Lake.

"So how are things really in magical Britain?" she asks.

"What do you already know?" Draco asks.

She wants to parlay Lucius into an ally against Snape.  She will want to present to Draco a face that can be swayed to the Malfoys' side, let him think he is collecting her when in fact she is collecting them.

The common enemy of the Malfoy family and the child-identity Clover is wearing is -

"Maledict Gaunt," she begins, "was gathering followers until ten years ago, when she came after my family and was somehow killed.  I don't know exactly how.  She'd been - recruiting and blackmailing and Imperiusing powerful people, both publicly powerful people like your father and some people in the Ministry, and powerful criminals.  She was - collecting people."  She puts distaste into her voice, as she says this.  The false Clover she is wearing loathes Maledict Gaunt, and thinking of herself as collecting people feels pleasantly Maledictlike, so it's probably a framing that the false Clover would find distasteful.  "Most people thought she was a conspiracy theory.  Dumbledore was one of the people who didn't, and was fighting her in secret.  Maledict was recruiting people and gaining allies for the purpose of gathering as much magical power as she could.  Her Ministry contacts passed her things that their Curse-Breakers retrieved, her criminal contacts fed her illegal Dark objects and creatures.  Once she died, her criminal followers got their hands on things she'd stolen and tried to use them to make their own bids for power.  When your father was free he was able to help the Ministry track down a lot of Maledict's former allies, especially spies she'd had within the Ministry.  There was a lot of fighting and danger in the aftermath of Maledict's death, but thanks to your father and Dumbledore, Magical Britain is peaceful again."