1: Trunk Full of Chaos

The first time Aunt Petunia kills a snake, Harry is seven, and cries. He had named her Sasha and caught her frogs.

After that he doesn’t let her see him trying to talk to animals. Only the snakes ever talk back, anyway. Other animals he can make do what he wants. If he tries very, very hard.

ooOoo

While trying very, very hard, Harry manages to make Piers Polkiss trip into the ravine behind their neighborhood. Dudley had been threatening to hang Harry off the ravine by his wrists. He stops threatening now that Piers is screaming at the bottom of a ten-foot drop.

Harry makes a note of what works, as far as getting Dudley to lay off him.

ooOoo

Ripper has never listened, no matter how hard Harry tries.

Harry waits until Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and Aunt Marge and Dudley have got tired of laughing and gone inside. Once they’ve gone, he jumps out of the tree and lands in front of a very surprised Ripper. Harry bares his own blunt teeth and makes the scariest growling sound he can.

Then he tackles the bulldog.

Boy and dog roll around in a snarling, spitting tangle. Ripper can’t bark because Harry’s got an elbow hooked around his muzzle. Harry can’t yell because if he does Uncle Vernon will probably bring out the belt.

Eventually Ripper gets tired and gives up. Harry’s not sure if it was fighting back or carrying his own weight around that wore the bulldog out. He’s not complaining, either way.

After that, Ripper postures at Harry, but he always refuses to actually bite him. Aunt Marge natters on about how her poor baby’s teeth must hurt too bad to bite. Calcium deficiency. Blah blah blah. Harry grins at Ripper when no one’s looking and enjoys how the dog ducks his head.

ooOoo

Hiding a feral cat and her five scrawny kittens under a rhododendron is a really terrible idea. Harry stubbornly does it anyway. The mother cat (he’s named her Orange) is very skinny and Harry can count all thirteen of her ribs. And she never seems to have much time to hunt, what with nursing her babies all the time.

So Harry goes down to the Tesco at the corner and steals as much corned beef and cat food as he can find. Thinking very, very hard about being boring makes people’s eyes sort of skip over him. The risk makes his heart pound with a really nice sort of thrill. It’s totally worth it to watch Orange’s ribs disappear over the next few weeks. It’s good for her kittens, too, who Harry has named Apple, Peaches, Blueberry, Apricot, and Banana in descending order of fruits he likes.

They grow so quickly.

Eventually Orange starts hunting again and Harry doesn’t need to steal quite so much food. He’s gotten good at it, though, and it made him realize it’s probably not normal for his own ribs to stick out how they do, so he keeps stealing little extras for himself. Not a lot. The risk is fun but he doesn’t like the thought of Uncle Vernon’s punishment if Harry’s ever caught.

Orange and her kittens don’t ever really leave. They go sleep somewhere other than Aunt Petunia’s garden, which is really probably best for everyone involved, but they keep coming back for cuddles and food and warm blankets in the winter when it’s cold out. Just for them, Harry learns to push enough warmth into a blanket for it to last all night. It helps him, too, alone in his cupboard in the unheated downstairs of the house.

ooOoo

It’s Careers Day at school. Harry announces that he’s going to be a veterinarian and wild animal tamer when he grows up. Miss Broadbent tells him that he should be one of those things, but not both. Dudley tells him he’s stupid. Harry stubbornly ignores them both and goes back to drawing dragons in his notebook.

ooOoo

“Dragons aren’t real, retard.”

“You don’t know that. And I’m not a retard.”

“Retard! Freak!”

Harry has to run away. Dudley and Benjy rip up his notebook.

Oh, well. He’s been meaning to steal a sketchbook anyway. There’s a loose board on the back of the house where he can stash one, if he steals the raincoat Dudley outgrew last year to wrap it up and keep it dry.

ooOoo

Dudley pushes Harry to the ground. Harry glares. Glass vanishes, and Dudley goes shrieking into the snake enclosure.

It’s beautiful.

And totally worth it. By now Harry can glare his cupboard door into opening four nights out of five. Being locked in really isn’t that bad. He can play with his small pile of pilfered treasures while he sits in the dark waiting to go nick leftovers.

ooOoo

“Yer a wizard, Harry.”

Well, that explains more than it doesn’t.

ooOoo

Gold! So much gold, and silver, and—and—books? Loads of books. Way, way more than the school library ever had. And these books look way more interesting. One of them even has a dragon on it.

“Dragons are real?” Harry asks the goblin who followed him into the bank.

It gives him a squinty-eyed look. “Yes.”

“Wicked.”

“We keep some here,” the goblin adds. “To eat trespassers.”

“Can I see one?”

The goblin smiles. It’s not a comforting expression. “If you aren’t interested in seeing anything else. Ever.”

“Someday I’m going to see dragons.”

“Not our problem if wizards want to get themselves eaten.”

Harry can’t argue with that.

“Is there a way to carry a lot of this out of here?”

“We offer bags to our customers. For a fee.”

“How much?”

“Twenty galleons.”

Harry gives it twenty galleons and proceeds to stuff all of the books that look even remotely interesting into his new bag (which is like a Mary Poppins bag, it holds everything he puts in it and doesn’t look at all full). Then he adds a lot of gold and silver and bronze coins.

Hagrid is outside in the cart looking green. Harry eyes him and as they get to the surface says, “Hey, Hagrid, d’you want to go get a drink? You’re looking a bit, er, green.”

“Yeh know, I migh’ just do that, Harry. Yer a good lad.” Hagrid pats him on the shoulder nearly hard enough to send Harry to his knees.

“Here, it’s on me, since it was my fault you had to go down there in the first place,” says Harry, which is not really true on account of Hagrid also had to get that weird grubby little package out of another vault for Headmaster Dumbledore, but Hagrid buys it and accepts two galleons with loud proclamations of Harry’s kind soul.

Harry watches his back and smiles like a goblin.

First stop: new clothes. Everyone keeps staring at him. Harry’s never had decent clothes before. The seamstress at Twilfit & Tattings has to spend two minutes persuading him that no, they’re not too small, clothes aren’t supposed to hang off you like elephant hide. Once Harry gets that he orders everything he sees and even vaguely likes. Plus five school robes, three of them heavy wool because the seamstress says Scottish winters are awfully cold. The boots and gloves are made of real dragonhide.

The wandmaker is all kinds of creepy but the wand itself is really, really great.

Slowly Harry checks off the rest of his list. Scales, a cauldron (he buys a whole potioneering kit including four cauldrons of different metals and a load of tools), potions ingredients (bat spleens! Powdered dragon scales! Chimera blood! Snakeskins and cat’s whiskers and horses’ tears and—), a telescope that would make Dudley cry of jealousy. It’s all so incredibly wonderful and—ha—magical.

The trunk store is his favorite. Harry’s new school trunk does different things depending on how you spin a little dial on top. There’s even a setting labeled MUG, for Muggle. The rest of it is basically a multipurpose traveling storage unit for every single possible part of your life. And it gets light at the tap of a wand so he can carry it easily.

Then Harry gets to the bookstore and decides that’s his favorite. Books! About animals and curses and some funny writing called runes and history that reads like a fantasy novel and he wants to know all of it. “Future Ravenclaw, eh?” says the cashier when he rings up almost a hundred galleons of books. Harry has no idea what this means so he just smiles and tips them all into the library section of his trunk.

Some boy tries to make fun of Harry’s clothes. Harry, who decided around the time his wand roared to life in his hand that he is quite done letting people make him feel bad about himself, does not just shut up like he always has with the Dursleys.

Hagrid reappears right as their row threatens to tip over into violence. An eight-foot-tall bearded man in a terrifying fur coat proves to be a great pacifier. The other boy runs off. Hagrid eyes Harry for a second, shrugs, and takes him to Magical Menagerie.

And okay. This is Harry’s favorite shop.

He leaves with six different books on magical creatures plus a snowy owl Hagrid bought for him who’s absolutely beautiful. Then Harry pretends he wants to run back for owl treats, convinces Hagrid to wait for him, and goes back for a pair of snakes who tried talking to him. One’s a baby common adder and the other is an albino corn snake in lovely orange and white mottled colors. Hagrid already made it more than obvious that wizards think snakes are evil, for some reason, so Harry doesn’t intend to let anyone see these.

Aunt Petunia’s face when Harry walks back in and a snake hisses at her from his shoulder is priceless.

ooOoo

“Harry Potter? Really? Have you got the scar?”

Harry recoils as the redhead reaches for his face. “Hey! Don’t go grabbing at people like that.”

“Sor-ree,” the redhead says, rolling his eyes. “C’mon, it’s famous!”

“I don’t like him,” says Dash, the corn snake. “He smells funny.”

Hedwig lets out an ominous hoot from her cage. Next to Harry, Peaches crawls out from under his new leather messenger bag and hisses at the other boy.

“Famous doesn’t mean you get to go touching other people’s faces without permission.”

“You’re rude,” the other boy snaps, and goes storming off.

Harry settles down with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is hands down THE best book he’s ever read.

“I will bite him!” says Gabby the adder from Harry’s pocket.

“You will not,” Harry says firmly. “I’m not getting kicked out of magic school that fast because you bit some idiot.”

“Buzzkill,” Gabby says. She heard the word on one of Dudley’s telly shows and now it’s her favorite.

Peaches meows, and Harry pulls her into his lap. At his feet, Blueberry makes an unhappy noise, but doesn’t otherwise move. The rest of the cats stayed but those two followed along when Harry tried to explain where he was going. He’s not sure how much the cats understood—it’s only snakes he can talk to, and thanks to a few sneaky questions to Hagrid, he knows that’s a special magic thing and also supposedly evil—but Peaches and Blueberry seem to have gotten the gist.

Harry is happily immersed in his book (and then two other books, because there are magical creature preserves and you can use their byproducts in potions and—) when he is interrupted again. This time it’s a very pointy boy with silver-blond hair.

“Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.”

“Harry Potter.”

They shake hands.

“Crabbe and Goyle,” Malfoy says, jerking his thumb at the two much larger boys flanking him. Harry eyes this arrangement. It looks familiar, if Piers and Dudley swapped for leader of their little gang.

“Not interested in meeting the rabble?” Malfoy looks around Harry’s empty compartment.

“No.” Harry looks at him very pointedly.

Malfoy takes the hint and leaves with his goons.

The third interruption is a girl with enormous hair hunting down a toad. Harry promises to help if he finds one. Really, what is with people? Barging in without knocking, making all these demands—should he have been trying out all the spells this whole time? Hagrid said he could get in trouble…

ooOoo

A singing, talking hat? Okay then.

Granger, Hermione goes to Gryffindor. Malfoy, Draco is packed off to Slytherin. So are Nott, Theodore and Parkinson, Pansy. Two girls, last name Patil, wind up in different Houses. Then it’s Harry’s turn.

“Did she say Potter?”

“The Harry Potter?”

Hello, says a small voice when Harry puts on the Hat. My, a fine mind you’ve got, Mr. Potter. Brave, plenty of determination, oh, and a nice thirst to prove yourself, too. Where to put you…

Harry thinks very hard about how he’s going to be the best wizard ever and tame dragons and hunt murderous nundus.

Difficult, very difficult, muses the Hat. A question, then, Mr. Potter: what matters more to you, the determination to pursue your goals at all costs, or doing what is right and just?

Weird question. Harry tilts his head. He guesses his goals involve doing good things, for animals and for people. But he’ll never actually get to be a monster tamer if he doesn’t get there first.

Very well, Mr. Potter. Better be “SLYTHERIN!”

Harry stands up, beaming, his secret fear of never being chosen firmly squished.

Then he realizes no one’s clapping. Or cheering. Or saying a word.

Great.

The feast is good, at least, even if the Headmaster seems dotty and his new House mates clearly don’t know what to do with Harry. For his part, Harry remembers how Hagrid said most of Voldemort’s supporters were in Slytherin, and keeps his head down.

After dinner they’re led down to a dormitory in the dungeons. (Literal dungeons. Harry is in love.) The common room itself is beautiful, all plush hangings and thick rugs and squashy chairs. And there’s windows into the lake, where a giant squid lives and who only knows what else. Maybe Harry can make treats for the squid.

Professor Snape gives them all a terrifying speech about not getting caught breaking the rules, not playing pranks, not being stupid, and not letting Slytherin House down. He glares at Harry a lot. Why does everyone seem to either hate Harry, or love him?

ooOoo

Classes are brilliant. Harry gets to make feathers fly and turn things into other things and go look at the stars on late nights. How Professor Binns manages to make fantasy-history boring, Harry doesn’t know, but he promptly hits on a solution of having Peaches sink her claws into his leg when he starts to nod off, and reading his own books during History class.

The first Potions lesson is sort of a disaster, but also brilliant. Harry swats three things away from his cauldron with the practice of someone used to cooking while Dudley tries to make him mess up. At least two of them came from other Slytherins. That’s annoying. But his absolutely perfect boil cure potion is amazing. So is the look on Professor Snape’s face when he sees it.

ooOoo

“—not a real Slytherin, Potter!”

Harry stares at the books on the floor. Then up at Malfoy’s stupid pointy face. And he snaps.

With a wordless hiss, Harry points. Gabby springs from his sleeve and lands on Malfoy’s head, hissing furiously. Malfoy’s screams bring Crabbe and Goyle at a run from the bathroom. Harry gives a good yank with his magic and they both go sprawling.

“Don’t get up,” he tells them, and turns his attention back to Malfoy. The other two boys in their dorm, Nott and Zabini, are watching with quiet eyes. “What were you saying, Malfoy?”

“Eek,” says Malfoy.

Harry sighs theatrically. “C’mon, Gabby, the point’s made.”

“But I wanna bite him.”

“Maybe later. If he’s rude.”

Everyone’s staring at him. Harry does his goblin smile. “I was telling her she can bite you later, if you’re rude. Are you going to be rude?”

Malfoy shakes his head.

“Great! I think we’ll get along fine.”

Harry starts picking up the clothes he came back and found scattered all over his floor. Some have been stomped on or rubbed on the stone, snagging the fabric. He’s never had things before, and now that he does, he finds that he gets very upset when people mess with them.

“Try this.” Nott demonstrates an incantation and a wand movement. Harry copies him, and after two tries, his clothes all fly back into place in his wardrobe, except the scuffed or dirtied ones, which fold themselves in his laundry hamper.

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

Zabini gives a loud sniff of displeasure, which Harry strategically ignores.

ooOoo

Harry hovers. “Er, Professor? I was just wondering about the shrinking solution—”

“That’s not on the curriculum, boy.”

Golly, Harry really doesn’t like being called that. “I know. But I saw it uses touch-me-not, like the forgetfulness potion, but it specifically says it has to be gathered under a waning moon, and I wanted to know how much it matters to get ingredients based on what the sun and moon are doing. And if it matters for creature ingredients.”

For a long minute, Professor Snape stares at Harry as if he’s grown a second head. Then he says, “Read Astronomical Impact Theories by Barnabus Shell and write twenty-four inches on the importance of lunar phases for gathering flora. Fauna is a separate subject. If the initial essay is satisfactory, I shall set you another. If it is unsatisfactory, human skin is a useful ingredient for certain rare potions.”

Yikes.

“Yes, sir!”

ooOoo

At least Hagrid is a lot easier to talk around. He agrees within five minutes to let Harry help him out with his gamekeeping duties. That involves getting up at five in the morning three days a week, but since breakfast isn’t until seven-thirty and Aunt Petunia used to make him get up at five or earlier seven days a week, it’s all right.

Professor Sprout kindly but firmly turns Harry away. Undeterred, he sets his eye on Neville Longbottom, Herbology prodigy, and brokers a trade: herbology tutoring for potions help.

“Why d’you like potions so much?” says Nott, who has taken to following Harry around sometimes.

Harry shrugs. “It’s fun. And I wanna be a magical creature veterinarian someday. I bet I have to know how to make potions that heal them. Also heal me. Plus, if I’m gonna be around creatures and outside all the time, I’ll have lots of… creature parts, and plants, and stuff, for potions.”

“Oh. Okay.” Nott tilts his head. “You should learn runes, too, then. You can make all sorts of protective stuff with runes. Magic that doesn’t need a wand.”

That sounds really fun and sneaky to Harry. He makes a mental note. Then he realizes he should be polite. “What d’you want to do when you’re grown up?”

“Oh… my father wants me to take over the family business. But I think I want to be an inventor. Like Ignatia Wildsmith or Malvern Thorowing.”

“Neat.”

ooOoo

Harry makes notes.

• Neville and Theo do not get along.

• Hermione Granger is really annoying.

• Look up dragons!!

ooOoo

Professor Snape looks somehow more annoyed when he gives Harry’s essay back. It’s drenched in red ink marks but it’s also tucked inside the cover of a book called Creature Byproducts. Harry counts this as a win.

“Another twenty-four inches, Potter, within a week. Determine which classes of creature byproducts listed in that book may have significant interactions with lunar cycles. And do attempt to be marginally less obtuse than your peers.”

“Yes, sir!”

ooOoo

“Whoa,” Harry says. “What is this again?”

“A hippogriff, Harry, in’e beautiful?”

Beautiful maybe isn’t the word Harry would choose. Cool. Terrifying. Elegant. Beautiful is a stretch.

“He’s amazing.”

Buckbeak lets Harry pet his beak. He does not deign to let Harry climb on his back, but Harry gets a little sack full of shavings from where the creatures sharpen their claws on the harsh Scottish rocks, so that’s all right.

“C’mere, Harry, yeh can see how I mix their feed.”

Working with Hagrid involves a lot of manual labor. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would probably be pleased.

ooOoo

“Is that a sketchbook?”

“Yeah.” Harry turns it so Theo can see his latest attempt at drawing a hippogriff. So far, it looks like a really weird bird, with little of the real creature’s predatory grace or sleek lines. Harry has hope.

“Not bad. I have one too.” Theo pulls out something that involves sheets of parchment bound together at the top and all encased in a very fancy leather folder thing. Unlike Harry’s, it’s full of things that are not and never were alive—contraptions of wire and metal and wood, gears and cogs, a page full of angry scribbles that looks like an attempt at some kind of maths.

Neville, sitting with them, squints at Theo before sighing and yanking out a parchment drawing-pad of his own. It’s full of sketches of plants that are way better than anything Harry’s managed. “Teach me,” Harry demands immediately.

“R-really?”

“Yeah, why not? You’re loads better than me.”

“Really, loads,” Theo says drily, giving Harry’s hippogriff a dubious look.

Harry throws a broken quill at him, but somehow the fact that all three of them like drawing gets Neville and Theo to stop being relentlessly frosty to each other, so it works out.

ooOoo

Harry gives his second extracurricular essay to Professor Snape and pretends there isn’t a bit of dried blood on it.

“Potter, why is there what appears to be dried blood on your essay?”

“I, er, cut my hand working with Hagrid.”

Professor Snape looks very tired. “You are not old enough to be taking Care of Magical Creatures.”

“No, sir. I help him out sometimes. I got these!” Harry gleefully shows him the bag of claw shavings and this morning’s treasure, shed bowtruckle bark.

“Mmm.” Professor Snape looks at the essay. “Detention. For a sullied homework assignment.”

That’s just horribly unfair. Harry doesn’t say so. Snape could’ve taken more points off. Probably would’ve, if the blood had messed up any of the writing, but Harry hadn’t had time to redo the whole thing.

“Another twenty-four inches by next Friday on the impact of solar and lunar eclipses on collection of flora and fauna for potioning.”

“Yes, sir!”

ooOoo

“Did you h-h-have a question, Mr. Potter?”

“Er, yes, sir. Do people ever use potions for defense?”

Professor Quirrell looks at him strangely. “H-h-however do you m-mean, Mr. Potter?”

“Like… throwing potions at people, or something. Potions grenades. Potions that give off fumes. Stuff like that.”

A strange gleam comes into Professor Quirrell’s eye. “You might try Uncommon Potions Applications by Elladora Black.”

Harry would like to, but— “I looked for it, sir, but it’s in the Restricted Section.”

“Is it now?” Quirrell scribbles something on a piece of parchment, folds it neatly in thirds, and hands it to Harry. “Try not to die horribly. Some of those books bite.”

“Noted.” Harry gives his professor a Look as he backs away, holding the note.

It’s a little too tempting, though. Biting books aside, he gives the pass to Madam Pince, who squints at it like a Muggle checking if a hundred-pound note is real, and then very grudgingly lets Harry past the divider into the Restricted Section.

Normally, Harry would only get to take out the book he had a pass for. Professor Quirrell doesn’t do things normally. Harry’s pass doesn’t specify what he can get. Which means, as far as Harry’s concerned, he can check out whatever he wants.

Moste Potente Potions makes the cut. So do Secrets of Magical Creature Preserves and Dancing with Dragons. And, of course, Uncommon Potions Applications.

Interestingly, Moste Potente Potions starts to bite him, and then settles down with a faint rustle of its pages when he hisses at it. Uncommon Potions Applications is a little less pleasant. Harry catches its leather binding trying to merge with his skin within the first three minutes of reading. He sighs, pulls his enchanted dragonhide gloves out of his bag, and keeps reading. That solves that problem.

Maybe Professor Quirrell is trying to kill him? Harry can’t think why anyone would do that, though. Probably he just doesn't know what he’s doing. Everyone says the wizard is a bit of an idiot.

ooOoo

Detention with Snape apparently involves lots of scrubbing and a simultaneous vicious verbal pop quiz on planetary correspondences with flora and fauna. Every wrong answer gets another dirty cauldron added to Harry’s pile. By the end of it, his knuckles are sore and his fingers red, but he only got six questions wrong and Snape doesn’t look murderous.

ooOoo

Somehow, Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy end up challenging each other to a duel, of all the silly things. Harry rolls his eyes when Neville tells him about it over sandwiches pilfered from the Great Hall. “It’s not like we even know any spells that would really hurt each other yet.”

“Malfoy might,” Theo says quietly.

“Huh.” Harry considers this. “Well, it’s just Weasley. Would anyone miss him?”

“H-Harry!” But Neville doesn’t actually argue.

ooOoo

“So Malfoy set Weasley up. I’m shocked,” says Theo snidely.

Harry elbows Neville. “You all right?”

“Y-yeah. I n-never want to see that th-th-thing again!” Neville shudders. “Hermione reckons it was g-guarding something.”

“Oh?” Harry fills them in about Hagrid’s mystery package. They throw around some guesses about what it might be, but even Theo can’t think of much valuable treasure that’s as small as the grubby little bundle from Gringotts, so they have to give up.

Dragons are more interesting anyway.

ooOoo

Getting on a broom is great. Falling back off of it is not great, but naturally Malfoy couldn’t just leave it alone, no, he had to throw Neville’s Remembrall and then air tackle Harry.

They both get detention and Neville’s Remembrall gets broken.

“It was a mean gift anyway,” Harry tells him firmly, after the disaster of a lesson is over and everyone’s gone back up to the castle. “Telling you you’ve forgotten without telling you what you’ve forgotten? All that does is taunt you so you feel bad about yourself all the time.”

“He’s right. It’s a stupid gift. Just keep lists,” Theo says, not even looking up from a spool of wire and set of pliers.

“Oh.” Neville looks down at his feet.

Harry pats him on the back. “Come on, let’s go see if we can find somewhere to grow potted plants.”

ooOoo

It’s Halloween and everything is awful. Harry never knew before that this is the night his parents died. Now he knows, and it sucks.

“Come do a Samhain rite with me,” Theo says in a low voice. “For remembering lost ones.”

“Who are you remembering?” Harry says.

Theo’s quiet for a minute. “My mum.”

“All right. After dinner?”

“Yeah.”

Then a troll breaks in and the Slytherins collectively disobey the order for them to go back to their dorm in the dungeons, where the troll is.

“I didn’t even get to see the troll,” he mutters, and Daphne Greengrass, overhearing, gives him a very odd look and scoots away from him on the bench.

Eventually the professors come back and tell them it’s safe. Theo pulls Harry aside when they get to the dorms; a group of Slytherins are slipping off into the deep dungeons, many of them carrying a candle. Theo gets a spare one from the sixth year prefect, Jacklyn Fyreoht, and passes it to Harry.

The Samhain rite turns out to involve sitting around a fire while some of the students mutter spells or chants. “Family rites,” Theo whispers to Harry, and then he has his own to recite, in some northern European language full of harsh gutturals. Then people sit down and close their eyes. Theo tells Harry to meditate, that the magic of Samhain is about looking back, that the “veils between worlds” are thinnest on Samhain and Beltane so one’s beloved dead are close tonight.

Being close to his parents appeals. Harry does his best to meditate. It’s hard to make his mind be quiet or peaceful, which he thinks is what you’re supposed to do when you meditate, based on what Aunt Petunia said about her women’s yoga classes, but after a certain amount of quiet sitting with only the fire’s sounds for company, his mind seems to flatten out on its own. Thoughts still come and go but they seem less important. Like birds flying over a lake but not disturbing its surface.

A sort of warm, loving feeling wraps around Harry. He thinks he smells something floral, hears laughter just under the snap-crackle-pop of the fire. Something in his chest seizes unhappily.

Gradually, it fades, and he blinks his eyes open. Theo’s cheeks are wet with tears; he’s not the only one. But no one seems ashamed. “Blessed be,” Theo whispers, holding his candle to the fire to light it. Harry copies him. Others do the same.

They carry the candles back to their dorm. Theo sets his on his bedside table, and Harry does the same. “Why?”

“Protection. Lighting a candle against the dark,” Theo explains. “Winter is part of the wheel of the year, it’s important, but it’s dangerous. You bring the candle back so some of the protection of the Samhain fire follows you back home in the new year.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Corrupting him already?” Zabini sneers.

What’s corrupting got to do with it?

“I didn’t know my religion is corrupt,” Theo says. “Oh, wait, not mine, the ancient religion of British wixen.”

“Bugger off,” Harry adds.

He’ll ask Theo about that later.

ooOoo

Turns out Samhain is part of an old set of holidays celebrated by traditionalist witches and wizards. It is not, Theo says with an eye-roll, Dark magic. Muggleborns just don’t like it because it seems evil, or something. Especially the traditional animal sacrifice.

Harry, who grew up going to church on Sundays, understands where Muggleborns might be coming from on that one, and says so.

Theo calls him a Muggle. Harry calls him a git. Then they both pointedly get themselves under control and Theo tells Harry he should go check out a book on the subject since he has unrestricted access to the Restricted Section.

Harry does so.

ooOoo

“Potter. Stay after class.”

“Yes, sir.”

Neville gives Harry an anguished, sympathetic look as he leaves Potions with everyone else.

Professor Snape barely glances at Harry. “These Himalayan snow slugs need to be sorted into packets of ten and set aside. Get to it.”

“Okay.” Harry rolls up his sleeves and gets to it. Luckily, counting snow slugs into groups of ten is very easy, and he can do it while also watching Professor Snape brewing some potion in the back. The grace and surety of his movements make Harry burn with envy.

The Professor eventually sets it aside to simmer and returns to his desk.

“Is potions like chemistry?” Harry says before he thinks better of it.

Professor Snape glares at him. “What would you know of chemistry?”

“I wanted to be a veterinarian. Before I knew about magic. My primary school teacher said good vets know chemistry so I should do better in science class.”

“You attended Muggle primary?”

“Yes, sir.” Oh, great, is Professor Snape one of that anti-Muggle lot? Harry himself isn’t that fond of Muggles, honestly, but some of Malfoy’s opinions are just… really unbelievably dumb.

“Mmm. Fascinating though your drivel may be—” Professor Snape does not sound fascinated— “you would be better served by attending to the slugs.”

“I’m attending to them, sir. See? Almost done.”

“Cheeky brat.” Professor Snape scowls at Harry. “I am sure I do not need to elaborate as to the consequences that will befall you should any of those packets contain more or less than ten slugs.”

Harry glances at the shelves full of pickled this or that. He wouldn’t bet that none of those jars hold human parts. “No, I think I can imagine.”

“So you do have a modicum of sense. Astounding.”

ooOoo

“Here, like this,” Harry says to Neville, guiding his wand motions.

“Petrificus digitalis,” Neville whispers, which is good on account of they’re in the library, and then his face lights up as Harry’s hands go stiff. “Hey! I d-did it!”

“Yep,” Harry lies, pretending he can’t still move his fingers. To be fair, it’s definitely harder than it should be.

Granger whips around from her seat at the next table over. “You’re not supposed to do magic out of class!”

“Petrificus digitalis,” Theo says with great aplomb, watching as Granger’s fingers lock up and fuse together.

She launches into a tirade about ethical use of jinxes taught in class and gets herself kicked out of the library.

“That made my week,” Theo says dreamily.

“Th-thanks,” says Neville.

“Of course.” Harry pats him on the shoulder.

ooOoo

Gryffindor is beating Slytherin in the year’s first quidditch game. It looks fun. “Maybe I’ll try out next year,” Harry says, eyeing the Gryffindor seeker, an older redhead who clearly looks like he doesn’t want to be there. Slytherin’s seeker is about to graduate. Convenient.

“Don’t bother, Potty,” Malfoy says from the row in front of Harry. “I’m going to be Slytherin’s seeker.”

“Are you a seer now? Maybe you should go lock yourself in a tower and drink sherry,” Theo snipes.

Blotches of red burn on Malfoy’s pale cheeks. “I don’t have to be a seer to know talent will win out! You know, last year, I was out flying and—”

Gryffindor scores again, resulting in a storm of cheering and booing that interrupts what was undoubtedly about to be yet another story about Malfoy escaping from Muggles in helicopters.

Harry watches the seekers doing some complicated spiral dive maneuver wherein they both try to trick the other into crashing into the Slytherin goalposts. “Definitely trying out.”

ooOoo

Harry’s cauldron explodes.

Swearing, Harry ducks under a table. Gobs of brackish goop cling to the ceiling and drop slowly to the floor. The air stinks of violets and swamp water.

Julienning the violet petals instead of grinding them was a bad idea, then. He snatches his notebook before a clump of potion residue can fall on it and scribbles a note.

ooOoo

“Mollieris!”

Harry grins as his rock goes soft to the touch. Charms is his worst subject. It’s quite nice to get something right within the first class period of trying, for once.

Professor Flitwick beams at him and awards Slytherin two points.

ooOoo

“Flying creature byproducts would be more powerful if you get them while Mercury’s strong, right?”

“Potter, where did you get that idea?”

Harry doesn’t look up from sorting spoiled bay leaves from good. “Mercury. Hermes. The messenger-god, the one who flies. We do loads of maths in astronomy but symbology matters too, doesn’t it? Only I borrowed this book on sympathetic magic, and if the moon can affect things—”

“What book.”

“Oh, er.” Harry winces, then hides it, because good Slytherins don’t show their emotions, as Theo keeps telling him. “Like Calls to Like.”

Professor Snape gives him a gimlet-eyed stare. “That is in the Restricted Section.”

“...Yes, sir.”

“Logically, either some idiotic professor gave a first-year a pass to the Restricted Section, or you are so stupid that you admitted to breaking in and stealing books. I am not sure which is worse.”

By now, Harry’s noticed that Professor Snape always sounds very bland when he’s approaching a murderous rage. Right now his tone is as colorless as fresh milk. “The… first one, sir. Professor Quirrell said—I asked a question, and he told me a book to look up, but he didn’t… specify. So I’ve been reading.”

“Have you.” Oh dear. “And were you aware that some of those books are Restricted for a reason?”

“He said some of them bite? I wear my dragonhide gloves. They’re looking a little funny in the fingers, I reckon I’ll need to order more. One of the books tried to run off, so I tied it up in a belt and told it I’d let it out when it learned manners. They don’t even scream when I open them anymore.”

Professor Snape stares at Harry for so long that Harry just goes back to his bay leaves.

“Give me one good reason why I should not go to the Headmaster and report this gross negligence on the part of my colleague,” Professor Snape breathes.

I hate my life. “I’m learning loads? You, uh, you’d be standing in the way of… learning. And curiosity. Those are good things for students to have. And I’m a student. So you shouldn’t tell him, because he’d stop me.”

“And nowhere in that lump of clay you call a brain does it occur to you that perhaps he would have good reason to stop you?”

Harry shrugs. “Well, like I said, I’m careful. I think the books like me now. They don’t like when no one reads them. Madam Pince said there’s fewer people every year let into the Restricted Section at all. And I’m not an idiot, I know not to read the ones that are obviously too complicated. I’m not gonna go looking up… curses, or anything.” Yet.

“Mmm. Perhaps I will permit this… curiosity of yours to continue, on one condition. You will provide me a list of every book you study from the Restricted Section, and if I determine any of them is truly dangerous, you will cease reading it.”

“Okay.” Harry meets Snape’s eyes so his teacher knows Harry means it. Better than telling Dumbledore, who seems sort of batty and according to Hagrid is the one who put Harry with the Dursleys.

It’s only looking straight at Snape that lets Harry catch his flinch.

Weird.

“Keep sorting leaves, Potter, unless you’re concerned it’ll disturb your manicure.”

“...I think you have me mixed up with Malfoy. Sir.”

Snape’s face goes very blank in a way that even a baby Slytherin like Harry knows means he’s hiding something. Either anger, or laughter. Ha.

Very pleased with himself, Harry goes back to sorting bay leaves.

ooOoo

A very angry acromantula was not on Harry’s list for today. He wrathfully thinks, as he runs away, that if Hagrid is going to have monsters like this in the woods, he should at least give a warning.

“HAGRID!”

“Harry? What’re yeh—Oi! Elbig!”

The spider comes to a screeching halt. Harry bends over next to Hagrid’s hut, gasping for air.

“Food,” the acromantula says in a horrible, whispery, chittery voice.

“What? Nah, ‘e’s not food, tha’s Harry! My… uh, assistan’.”

“Hungry.”

Still unable to talk, Harry flaps a hand at the lean-to outside Hagrid’s hut, where a freshly butchered boar carcass is waiting to be smoked.

“Good idea, Harry!” Hagrid goes into the lean-to, which protests the entrance of a wizard his size, and emerges with a boar haunch. “Here yeh go.”

Elbig falls on the haunch right there in the garden. Harry is going to vomit.

With a heroic effort, Harry does not vomit, and stands up. “Hagrid?”

“Yeah, Harry?” Hagrid’s watching Elbig eat with a fond smile.

“I’m littler than you. I’m softer. I don’t know any good spells. You have to tell me if there’s monsters in the Forest. Okay?”

“Yeh’re fine, Harry, they’re harmless—”

“Not harmless,” lisps Elbig, looking up. The blood dripping off his spider-face rather makes Harry’s point. “Hungry. Boy-child good meat.”

Harry waves his arms. “See?”

“All righ’.” Hagrid visibly wilts. “I guess I forge’ not everyone’s as big as me.”

No one is as big as Hagrid, but that’s beside the point. “Thank you. So. Anything else I should know about?”

“No… er… well, sometimes the bicorn herd can be a little aggressive, like…”

“Wait, a bicorn herd? I want to see!”

“All righ’, this way.”

ooOoo

Professor Snape is very pleased with the gift of three shed bicorn horns. Harry is pleased that his teacher is pleased, but not surprised—he looked it up and he knows how expensive they are. Turns out it’s actually really hard to keep bicorns without getting yourself gored. He personally keeps the other two he found.

It’s not like Hagrid uses any of them.

ooOoo

Hagrid’s cerberus is named Fluffy, because of course it is.

That is one creature Harry’s less than eager to meet. He is, however, eager to get his hands on cerberus drool and possibly fur, so he braves the third-floor corridor with Theo’s enchanted harp and Neville’s stuttering directions. The dog goes to sleep in minutes and Harry walks out the pleased owner of several large vials of drool plus a very large chunk of fur cut from its belly.

“You’re insane,” Theo says flatly. “Or suicidal.”

“Neither, I just like creatures. Can I borrow the harp again? I want to see if I can play just a little music and make it friendly without it going to sleep.”

“Insane and suicidal,” Theo says.

Neville nods, very firmly. His hands are trembling. “You’re a good Gryffindor,” Harry tells him, because that seems like the sort of thing Neville needs to hear.

It seems to work, even though Theo makes a sound expressing his opinion of Gryffindors, because Neville stands a little straighter and his shakes die down.

ooOoo

Both of Harry’s new friends are going home for the holidays. Theo pointedly calls it “Yule break” every time the subject comes up, which prompts Harry to dig through the Restricted Section for books on the Wheel of the Year. Yule is like Samhain—an old holiday not very often celebrated nowadays. Theo is evasive when Harry asks why not and even the Restricted Section doesn’t have many books on the subject.

A mystery for another year.

Neville gives him a book of some Longbottom ancestor’s experiments with growing plants under different astral conjunctions. From Theo, Harry gets a heavy pair of elbow-length gloves made out of troll skin, with an accompanying note saying very dryly that they are even tougher than dragonhide and good for handling things that might try to hurt you. Harry doesn’t know whether Theo means evil books or dubiously friendly creatures, but either way it’s a thoughtful and useful gift and Harry is very glad he took the time to track down good gifts for them in return. Neville gets a bunch of plant cuttings Harry found in the Forest and Theo gets a couple Muggle books on engineering, which required Harry to negotiate with a Muggleborn Hufflepuff named Justin something.

Because Harry is not stupid, the Muggle books have been wrapped in book jackets saying they’re about different magical inventors.

Harry also gets a cloak that turns you invisible. The note with it isn’t signed. Unhelpful. The cloak itself is very helpful, though.

He finds a holly branch in the woods himself (like his wand!) and burns it alone in the Slytherin common room. He doesn’t have family rites to say, but he thinks about warm robes in the snow and Neville’s shy smile and Theo’s cutting sarcasm. It’s hands down the best holiday of Harry’s life.

ooOoo

The Christmas feast follows Yule by a few days. Harry goes, mostly to enjoy the food, and pulls wizard crackers with the Weasley twins. The crackers make really wonderful loud bangs and are full of weird stuff. Harry leaves with a Grow-Your-Own-Warts Kit, a pack of non-exploding, glow-in-the-dark balloons, a flowery bonnet, and a new magical chess set.

He doesn’t want to think about what happened to the white mice that appeared from the pudding. Peaches and Blueberry both came to dinner, but now the cats are nowhere in sight, and neither are the mice. At least Gabby and Dash have spent almost all their time since, like, mid-October sleeping in Harry’s bed.

ooOoo

ƎЯIƧƎႧ Ƨ'TЯAƎH ЯUOY TUઘ ƎƆAᆿ ЯUOY TOИ WOHƧ I

Harry frowns at the weird writing for a minute before it clicks. Dudley had watched a telly program about spies once, and it talked about codes—writing stuff backwards so it only made sense in a mirror was one of the earliest codes anyone used. Deciphering this writing takes some mental gymnastics but he has it eventually.

I show not your face but your heart’s desire.

Huh.

It’s so tempting. To know what he wants more than anything else…

Harry steps forward.

In the mirror, he sees himself, but older. In his twenties or thirties, maybe. Older-Harry looks healthy and powerful—not painfully skinny or short, with longish hair pulled back the way some of the older boys do, and long dark green dragonhide robes. A hippogriff butts against his shoulder and a bowtruckle clings to his hair. Older-Harry has snakes draped around his neck—at least one of them looks like Dash—and two cats at his feet and—is that a dragon leaning against his ankle?

More people fade into view. Theo, his smile clever and secretive, holding some complicated device made of bronze metal. Neville, turning away from a garden to come and rest a hand on Harry’s shoulder—in this vision he’s not shy, but older, filled out and confident.

Older-Harry pulls a hand out of his pocket; a key dangles from his pockets. Somehow Harry knows it’s the key to a house his older self owns.

It’s hard to breathe, with how much Harry wants this.

Someday, he promises himself, drinking in as many details as he can. Someday.

ooOoo

It’s hard not to go back, the next night, or the night after. But Harry has spent lots of time listening to Uncle Vernon gripe about how Uncle Vernon should be rich and successful by now—enough to know that just dreaming of the future isn’t enough to make it happen. You’ve got to work for it.

Staring at a mirror isn’t going to get Harry any closer to being a famous potion master, creature tamer, and monster hunter.

ooOoo

Ron Weasley is fast becoming an annoyance.

Harry dodges around a corner for the fifth time today and takes the time it buys him to yank on his invisibility cloak. Ever since the break started, Weasley’s been following him around all day, as if Harry is a six year old in need of babysitting. It was annoying having him shadow Harry’s heels all day, and being able to hide under the cloak is only a little better.

Weasley pelts around the corner, huffing, and stops dead. He looks around. Yanks open a few doors to check. “Bollocks!” he says, and trots off in the direction he thinks Harry went.

Harry retreats back the way they came. The library’s out; Weasley knows to look for him there. The redheaded weirdo hasn’t even talked to him. Just… follows.

Well, he’s not far from the Defense classroom. Maybe Quirrell’s not there and Harry can take a peek at his books. He’ll bet the Defense professor has some things that aren’t in the library.

This is not Harry’s lucky day. Quirrell is there, and he spots Harry lurking before Harry can leave again. “Mr. Potter! Do come in, I was j-j-just preparing a sp-spot of tea. W-would you like some?”

“Oh. Er. Sure.” Harry stuffs his cloak in his bag before coming all the way in and nudging the door mostly shut. Not all the way—he likes having an escape.

Professor Quirrell waves a wand and the door closes with a quiet snick. So much for that idea.

“Milk? S-sugar?”

“Uh, no, plain’s fine.” Harry accepts the cup and sniffs at it.

“Earl Grey.”

It smells like Earl Grey. Harry pretends the tea is too hot, blows on it, and just holds it. What if he was actually trying to get Harry killed with the Restricted Section pass? Harry’s careful, and he’s been okay so far, but Snape sure seemed to think it was a big deal. What if the tea’s drugged? Or poisoned?

“What did you think of Uncommon Potions Applications?”

Startled, Harry nearly drops his teacup. Right! The book. “I thought it was good. Really interesting. Some of it was, um… kind of… bloody.” He makes a face. Adults always overlook him if he acts childish on purpose. And really, everyone knows a blank-faced Slytherin might be hiding something; isn’t it better to hide behind a real expression?

Quirrell chuckles. “Yes, that particular text goes into rather a lot of detail, as I recall. Nevertheless, many of its ideas are intriguing.”

“Muggles do a lot of that stuff,” says Harry, who has listened to a lot of Dudley’s war movies and Uncle Vernon’s war-related news programs on the telly from his cupboard. “Some kind of explosive in a container that shatters when it goes off, so the pieces go flying and hurt people. Pressure in small spaces. Stuff that goes boom when you throw it. Only they can’t pack a potion in a bomb that makes everyone who breathes its fumes turn into a frog.”

“No, only die torn into little pieces,” says Professor Quirrell with a smile that sits weirdly on his face.

Harry nods slowly. “Uh-huh… yeah. Um. I also thought the spray potions were cool. And the ones you take a bath in. Those seem kind of hard to use, though. Like they take loads of ingredients.”

“It can be impractical,” Professor Quirrell agrees. “Do you think potions are a viable component of a competent defense?”

“Yeah… if you did it in advance. And if you had, I dunno, a bunch of potions in a sort of… holster across your chest?” Harry demonstrates with his hands. “Or in your pockets. If you could do a spell that makes a potion come to your hand when you say its name, or something.”

Professor Quirrell nods. It’s a bit weird, having an adult take him this seriously. Harry pretends to take a sip of his maybe-poisoned tea. “I imagine such an enchantment would be possible. Mmm. You are a clever child.”

“...thanks?”

“You are welcome. Drink your tea.”

Harry smiles and fakes another sip. Then, when Professor Quirrell bends down to look at his bottom bookshelf, Harry quickly dumps the tea into a potted plant sitting on the floor to his left.

Serves Professor Quirrell right if he poisoned the tea and it kills his plant.

“Here you go, Mr. Potter. I have another copy, you may keep this one.”

Harry takes the book, wishing very strongly that he was wearing his new troll-hide gloves. It doesn’t bite or make his fingers prickle or try to eat his nails or any of the other weird things the library books have tried, though. The title is, quite simply, Offensive Magics.

“Thanks…?”

“You show a creative mind and a surprising aptitude for magic. It is my duty as a professor to foster this aptitude.” Quirrell smiles again, and it reminds Harry of his own goblin smile. Um. “Do let me know what you think of the book.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry leaves the teacup and takes the book. He looks back, and spots Quirrell peering curiously into the bottom of Harry’s empty cup before the door closes.

Quirrell is weird.

ooOoo

Harry and Theo are waiting for Neville at their usual spot, just outside the Great Hall and to the left. All of them have a really nasty essay for Snape to wrap up by tomorrow and Harry’s got an even nastier extra essay also due tomorrow. So: library time.

“Where is he?” Theo says, checking his small wristwatch. “Lunch has been over for twenty minutes. I mean, I know Gryffindors are late all the time, but even—”

“Wait.” Harry’s heard a weird hop-scrape, hop-scrape sound. He pulls out his wand and thinks back on a few of the spells from Offensive Magics that he learned this week. Most of what’s in the book is way above his level but some of the basic hexes he can cast.

It’s just Neville, though, as they see when they round the corner towards the staircase. Neville: whose legs are locked together and who is moving by sort of flailing with his torso and then grabbing the wall to drag his immobile legs along.

“Finite incantatem!” Harry says. Neville’s legs spring apart and he nearly falls over.

“What happened?” Theo asks.

Neville turns even redder. “Malfoy. I was in the library before lunch… he saw me coming out and said he’d been looking for someone to practice that on.”

“Prat,” Harry snarls.

At his feet, Peaches makes a spitting sound.

Neville gives the lanky grey-and-orange cat a tremulous smile. “Thanks, Peaches.”

“Did anyone else see?” Theo asks, his dark eyes clever and quiet.

“Weasley.” Neville looks down. “He laughed…”

“Okay! Essays are for later. Revenge time!” Harry says with aggressive cheer.

Neville pales, and Theo sighs, but neither of them argues as Harry drags them to the library.

ooOoo

At dinner, Weasley breaks out in terrified full-throated screams when every single pea on his plate transforms into a large and very active spider. “Arania attractere,” Theo whispers, and the second part of their plan goes into place as every single spider runs right at Weasley and climbs him like a tree.

Everything is pandemonium. Half of Gryffindor is laughing uproariously; the other half is trying to curse the spiders that didn’t go for Weasley, and Harry’s sure he sees four jinxes hit Weasley himself, at least two of which were not by accident. The professors are yelling too, trying to restore order without a lot of success.

Finally, a very loud bang from Dumbledore’s wand cuts through the noise. Weasley can’t stop screaming. Dumbledore waves his wand again, and the spiders vanish, leaving a trembling, tearstained, boil-spotted, bald Ron Weasley in their wake.

He looks around, hiccups, and flees.

Professor McGonagall goes after him, lips thin.

“This was a cruel prank, and a grossly irresponsible use of magic.” Professor Dumbledore rakes his gaze over the crowd and it feels like he shoots lasers from his eyes. Bollocks, the old man isn’t just dotty and weird, is he? “Whoever has done this, I ask that you come forward and take responsibility. Mistakes can be made. However, if we determine the identity of the culprit and he or she has not come forward, I cannot promise leniency. Putting your lessons to such use is a violation of everything we stand for at Hogwarts. I am thoroughly disappointed by this display.”

He sits back down, and, subdued, the students continue with their meal.

“Who knew Weasley was so scared of spiders?” Parkinson wonders.

“No kidding,” Harry says, his expression carefully surprised. “Wonder how they did it.”

“Attraction curse, probably,” says Greengrass.

“And transfiguration—that was second-year work at least, making the spiders,” Theo says, eyes hooded.

Bulstrode looks from him to Harry.

“Treacle tart?” Harry says, offering the tray around.

ooOoo

“You don’t look so good, Malfoy.”

“Bugger off,” hisses Malfoy, blushing fiery red and storming away. Harry chokes back laughter as his hair flops aside, revealing a bald spot on the back of his head. As he watches Malfoy reaches up and tries to pat it back into place so you can’t tell.

“He really shouldn’t leave all those hair products in the bathroom,” Theo says conversationally.

“Or piss off a potions obsessive, is that right?”

Both of them whip around and see Bulstrode, leaning on the wall and smirking.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Harry says firmly. “Seems to me he just mixed one too many hair gel brands.”

“Wonder if they’ve all forgotten you’re the only one Granger can’t always beat in Transfiguration,” Bulstrode says as if he never spoke, eyeing Theo.

Theo shrugs. “Guess I’m not that interesting.”

“Their mistake.” Bulstrode walks away, whistling.

“She didn’t even try to blackmail us,” Harry says.

“Unless she was just implying it.”

“Is she that subtle, though?”

Theo cocks his head. “Nah, not really.”

“Maybe she wants in..?”

“On what? It’s not like we’re gonna make a habit of this.”

“Oh really?” Harry elbows Theo as they head off for breakfast. “So the next time Granger accuses you of cheating, you’re going to do what, smile and politely tell her otherwise?”

Theo scowls.

“Maybe she just wants friends who’ll curse someone for cursing her,” Harry says after a minute.

“...oh.”

“Yeah. Anyways, wanna skive off History today? I have to finish that extra paper for Snape and he might actually kill me if it’s bad. Or just… I dunno, steal my fingernails for potions ingredients.”

Theo sighs heavily. “Have I ever told you you’re really weird, Harry?”

“Like you haven’t been itching to go ask that Arithmancy witch about enchanting.”

“...I hate you.”

ooOoo

“Read this.”

“Um.” Harry looks from Theo to the pamphlet to Theo. “What is it?”

“Something I thought you’d like.”

Harry regularly reads books that exude a mild aura of evil, so he takes the innocent-looking pamphlet with a shrug. It does not immediately try to swallow his hands. The title: Founding Principles of… “What’s the Knights of Walpurgis?”

“It was a political group back in the fifties and sixties.” Theo’s eyes are very dark, and impossible to read. “Eventually they sort of… turned into something else. But this was the original idea.”

“Huh. Okay.” Harry flips the pamphlet open.

“I wouldn’t read it outside of this room,” Theo adds, gesturing around their dorm.

Harry squints at him. “...okay.”

Theo smiles, which tells Harry nothing at all.

ooOoo

...long history of arts, culture, religious life, and political development. For too long all potential progress in these areas has been stifled by the need to remain in chains of subjugation to the Muggles. Without magic, their culture grows more different from ours by the year, and if we are incautious, the attitudes of Muggleborns will wipe out all that is unique and precious about wixen culture.

Those children born first with magic in their families are given a precious gift, an opportunity to step into a world they would otherwise never encounter. Instead of belittling them, or catering to their foolish Muggle ideas, we should be welcoming them sooner, so all they know from a young age is the world of magic.

We, the Knights of Walpurgis, advocate for the following…

ooOoo

Hagrid lets something slip about Nicolas Flamel. Harry is quite sure he’s heard the name before. But he doesn’t even get a chance to look, because Theo explodes as soon as Harry tells him and Neville about it.

“Nicolas Flamel? But he’s the most famous alchemist in European history! He made the Philosopher’s Stone, and he found the Lost Scrolls of Archimedes and deciphered his code—”

“The Philosopher’s Stone? Isn’t that the one that makes you live forever?” Neville says.

“Yeah! Oh. Wait.”

“Maybe that’s what’s hidden here,” Harry says. “If it’s small, it could be the package Hagrid got—”

“Who’s out for it, though? I mean, besides anyone—like most people would probably keep it if they found it in the street, but I can’t imagine a lot of people are actively trying to steal the thing,” says Theo.

Harry feels very grim. “I can think of someone.”

“Oh,” says Theo.

Neville looks at them. “Who?”

“Voldemort,” Harry says.

Theo flinches. Neville falls out of his chair.

“Honestly.”

ooOoo

Harry has advanced from sorting rotten potions ingredients after class to slicing dead flobberworms. He thinks this counts as progress since it involves using a tool, which Professor Snape had previously not let him touch.

“Potter! Even slices, you dunderhead! Precision in all things.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry slices more evenly.

After three weeks of this, Professor Snape peers at his tray full of very even flobberworm slices. “Passable. Pickle them.”

“Yes, sir.”

ooOoo

“I got Professor Vector to talk to me!”

“Who? Oh, the Arithmancy professor.”

“Yeah!” Theo’s practically dancing. “She said I have the right mindset and gave me some summer reading. And she said if I go to her next fall she might give me tutoring so I could skip the first year of the class!”

“That’s r-really great,” Neville says cautiously.

“Thanks,” Theo says, even more cautiously. “...hey, maybe Sprout would let you help out sometimes, outside of class.”

Neville flushes. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to bother her…”

“Oh shut up, it wouldn’t be a bother, you’re the best in our year at Herbology and she loves you,” says Harry briskly. “I’ll ask for you if you won’t.”

“No! Don’t—fine, okay, I’ll ask!”

“There you go.” Harry beams at him, then at Theo. “I’m sure Vector will love you.”

“Yeah. And maybe eventually Professor Snape will advance from hating your guts to tolerating you,” Theo says, but he’s smiling too.

ooOoo

Neville goes home for the Easter break, but Theo stays. “Father doesn’t really celebrate Ostara. Mostly Litha, Samhain, and Yule. He doesn’t care if I’m here.”

“D’you celebrate Ostara?”

“Yeah, I’ll show you.”

On March twentieth, they go out and pick flowers. Harry spots a few other students who stayed for the holidays doing the same. After, Theo sits down by the edge of the Black Lake and tells Harry to meditate on whatever he wants to “bring to fruition” this year. Harry holds his flowers and thinks about doing well on his exams and figuring out how to make a bruise paste with a shelf-life of more than two weeks. Behind him, Peaches and Blueberry gambol in the weeds. Dash and Gabby are off somewhere hunting now that the weather’s somewhat warmer.

That evening there’s a party in the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where the canopy is thin and the moon visible. Harry bundles up in warm robes—it’s still March in the Scottish highlands, after all—and laughs in delight as fairies dart through the trees in a complicated game of tag. One of them even comes and lands on his finger, chittering in some high-pitched language, before it pokes his nose and zooms away.

“You’ve been fey-blessed,” Theo says in awe.

“What’s that?” Harry’s eyes cross as he tries to look at his nose.

Theo makes an angry sort of noise. “Merlin, you’re such a Muggle. It means you have a blessing for the new year. It’s good luck.”

“Oh. Neat.”

“Neat,” Theo repeats waspishly, and stomps off towards the table full of magically refilling drink pitchers, which Harry thinks is not the attitude you’re supposed to have on Ostara.

ooOoo

“Hey, Theo.”

“Yeah?”

Harry looks around: no one else is in the common room. “By any chance did the Knights of Walpurgis turn into the Death Eaters?”

Theo smiles slowly. “Why do you say that, Harry?”

“Don’t play dumb. You’ve been giving me books and stuff about the Knights for weeks now. I’m not an idiot, okay? All this stuff—teaching Muggleborns sooner, and magical traditions, and reforming the government—it sounds like the Death Eaters minus the violence and, uh, general craziness.”

“I thought it’d take you at least until Beltane to work it out. Huh.”

Harry stops himself from chucking his book at Theo’s head, only because the book is over a hundred years old and he’d feel bad.

“Say something?” Theo says after a long minute in which Harry stares blindly at the windows into the lake.

“Say something. Yeah, you’ve been giving me stuff about the terrorist group that murdered my parents and stranded me with Muggles for nine years, what d’you think I’m gonna say? Oh, thanks, Theodore, you’re a great friend, this is super interesting and maybe they had a point?”

Theo has the grace to look guilty. “Did they have a point?”

“That’s not what I meant!”

They stare at each other for a minute.

“I’m going to go work on my bruise paste,” Harry says, and definitely does not stomp out of the common room. Malfoy stomps. Dudley stomps. Harry’s not that immature.

ooOoo

Theo corners him on the last day of break. “Can we talk about it?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Harry says with stiff good manners. His bruise paste needs to simmer for eleven and a half more minutes before he stirs it and adds turmeric and water filtered through mashed-up witch hazel petals.

“You’re avoiding me.”

“Why would I do that.”

Theo hisses like an angry teakettle. “Look, I know you’re mad, I get it, okay? But would you have even really listened if I told you what it was from the start?”

“Maybe.” Harry stares mulishly at his potion. Ground up yew bark or rosemary oil might improve the shelf life. Rosemary’s a preservative and yew has to do with long life. Or maybe hopping lobster carapace? Lobster brain?

“I think no,” Theo says. “But there is a point there, and you see it, and you wouldn’t have if you knew. And it’s not like any of this comes up in any of our classes!”

“Okay. Fine. It’s just. He murdered my parents!”

“Right. Your parents, who were actively fighting a war with a baby at home, and didn’t, I dunno, leave or anything?”

Harry counts to ten and does not upend a bowl of ginger extract on Theo’s head. “What about your parents, then? Go into hiding or was your daddy out there in a white mask?”

Theo’s face gets very cold and blank. “My father was acquitted of all crimes. And my mother did go into hiding. Then people from the good side found us and they killed her. For no other reason than she was from a supposedly ‘dark’ pureblood family.”

Oh. Oops.

“I’m… sorry, Theo.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s just.” Theo looks away, lips pressed thin. “It wasn’t as if the Dark Lord’s people did all the bad stuff. And people act like it was.”

“That… makes sense.” Harry’s had enough Muggle school to know wars are terrible for everyone involved and even the ‘good guys’ do bad things in them. “Just… what went wrong? If Vol—sorry, the Dark Lord had some good ideas at first, why did he get so…”

“Crazed?” Theo says. “Irrational? Off his rocker?”

“All of those.”

Theo looks uncomfortable. “Well… Father says—he was acquitted with the Imperius defense, by the way—” and yeah, Harry’s heard plenty about that by now— “he says when he was younger the Dark Lord was different. Calmer, more rational. He… did something, or some curse got to him, or something, and over time he got… worse. Unstable, he liked causing pain for fun, cursed his own followers all the time… started recruiting a different sort of person, really criminally insane types, and the beliefs changed too—favoring Muggle-hunting and hating on Muggleborns, stuff like that.”

“And you don’t… hate Muggleborns?” Harry says slowly, because he’s very sure he’s seen Theo give Granger a real stink-eye but that could just be due to Granger’s general personality.

“I hate how they come swanning into our world demanding we change things,” Theo says, “but no, I don’t hate them like, specifically. I just wish they’d change their attitude and stop trying to make us be like Muggles. We’re not Muggles, we have magic, so why should we have to live like we don’t?”

The Knights of Walpurgis leaflets and stuff said much the same, plus more about how the Statute of Secrecy and Ministry of Magic Charter of 1707 had unfairly subjugated wizardkind to Muggles. Harry’s hesitant to think they’re right but… he can see a point.

Reluctantly.

“Fine,” he grumbles. “Here, pass me that turmeric. The yellowish stuff.”

“I know what turmeric is.”

ooOoo

“Passable,” Snape allows, looking over Harry’s latest extracurricular essay. “This idea about gathering witch hazel under the waning moon. You speak as if from experience.”

“Uh… maybe, sir.”

Snape’s eyes glitter. “That would necessitate violating curfew.”

Why can’t Harry keep his mouth shut? “...I guess, sir.”

“You. Guess.”

Harry keeps his mouth shut.

“Detention, Potter. Friday night. With me.”

“...yes, sir.”

ooOoo

Snape makes him disembowel rats for two whole hours before he has Harry stop and explain why he was gathering witch hazel. Harry explains about his bruise paste idea.

“Bruise paste. An… intriguing… choice for illicit potions experimentation. I see you have not managed to blind yourself on fumes yet.” Snape looks like he can’t decide if he’s happy about this or not. “Why bruise balm, pray tell?”

“I thought it might be useful.”

“Useful.”

Harry thinks about what Aunt Petunia would say. “Growing boys, sir. We get, uh, bruised a lot.”

“Mmm.” Yeah, it didn’t sound great to Harry either. “You will present your experiments, in the format acceptable by a potions journal, to me by next weekend. I suggest you find Potioners Weekly in the library for style guidance.”

Great. Just… great. “Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

It’s better than detention or suspension for experimenting out of class, so Harry scarpers.

ooOoo

“Hagrid, that’s a dragon egg.”

“Yep! Innit beautiful?”

“It’s so illegal, Hagrid.”

“But I’ve always wanted one…”

“Oh. My god.”

ooOoo

Harry helps incubate the dragon egg. It’s super illegal, but he figures if they get caught, Dumbledore will save Hagrid and Harry can get away with saying he’s just an ignorant Muggle-raised student who thought it was cool and didn’t know the laws. Theo would back him up. Call him a stupid Muggle or something. He does that every other week anyway.

Lost in the shock of an actual literal dragon and also exhaustion from trying to help Hagrid, keep up with his classwork, and also give Professor Snape a journal-quality article on Harry’s bruise balm experiments (why), it takes Harry a week to ask where Hagrid even got a dragon egg.

“Oh, it were jes’ some bloke at the Hog’s Head. Yeh know, the pub over in Hogsmeade?”

The tale that follows sets off so many warning bells in Harry’s head. He doesn’t even try to explain those to Hagrid, and instead goes straight to Theo and Neville.

“So you’re telling us that some shady character showed up, gambled away a dragon’s egg over cards in a pub with a stranger, while sneakily asking questions that mean he now knows exactly how to get past the murderous cerberus on the third floor?” Theo pauses. “Not that anyone who knows how to open a book would need help, actually. It’s in Creatures of Myth.”

“Maybe he thought Hagrid might’ve trained his cerberus special,” Harry suggests.

Theo shrugs. “Yeah, sure. But obviously, he did not do that. This trap is just… stupid. Really bloody stupid.”

“So You-Know-Who is going to get the Stone?” Neville is white and a little trembly.

“Well… maybe not. Professor Snape would’ve helped with the defenses, right? Hagrid said a lot of the Professors were involved. I can’t see Quirrell getting past anything Snape set up easily. Or McGonagall. Even if he does have the Dark Lord telling him what to do.”

Neville looks at Harry funny. “Why d’you call him the Dark Lord?”

“Oh. Er. I dunno.” Harry does not look at Theo. “That’s what he was, isn’t it? A Dark Lord. And everyone gets so… unhappy when I say his name.”

“Well, I should bloody think so,” Theo grumbles.

Harry swats him on the shoulder.

ooOoo

Hagrid’s dragon egg is hatching.

Entranced, Harry leans closer, watching as it rocks… cracks…

With a series of angry high-pitched squeaking noises, the baby dragon tumbles out. It’s black as an oil slick and looks just as deadly. It sneezed. Sparks flew.

“Isn’ he beautiful?” Hagrid says dreamily.

“Er, that’s a she,” says Harry.

Hagrid looks nonplussed.

“See? Spine ridges. The females have more, because they have to fight off trolls when they’re defending their nests. The males do the hunting and the females stick around to protect their clutches. They’re usually bigger and scarier than their mates, who are small and agile to catch things.”

“Oh! I see—they’re too small fer me,” Hagrid says, laughing. The dragon squeaks its irritation and bites his finger when Hagrid tries to pet it. “None o’ tha’, now,” he says, and for all his size, his hands are perfectly gentle as he disengages the dragon’s teeth from his finger. “Here, have some o’ this.”

The dragonet falls on a bucket of chicken blood and brandy with gusto.

“Brandy?” Theo says skeptically. It’s the first word he’s spoken in a while. His hands are very tight on the edge of the table.

Harry peers at him. “Theo, you’re not afraid of it… are you?”

“I don’t like things that might eat me,” Theo hisses.

“But she’s so small. It’s not like she could.” Harry considers. “At least, not without you noticing, and doing something. Dragons don’t have paralytic venom… well, baby Chinese Fireballs do, but this is a Norwegian Ridgeback, so there’s no problem.”

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not helping.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

A noise at the window has both Harry and Theo whipping around. “Someone was there!” Theo says.

Harry gets to the door first; he rips it open and looks up towards the castle. In the distance, someone with very distinctive pale hair is sprinting very fast. “Malfoy.”

Theo lets his head fall to the table with a thunk. “We’re doomed.”

ooOoo

“Oi, Bulstrode.”

“Yes, Potter?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who can… move things, would you?”

“What kinds of things?”

“Er… living things. That you aren’t supposed to… move. Or have. Hypothetically.”

“I might know someone. Depends on the kind of living thing.”

“...Dragon.”

“Sorry, what? I could’ve sworn you said dragon.”

“Yep. Dragon. Hypothetical dragon.”

“So this… hypothetical dragon needs to be moved. Hypothetically.”

“Yep.”

“One of the older Weasleys went off to do dragon taming in Russia or somewhere. It was a whole big thing. He skipped his NEWTs to do it. Ask him.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know, I’m not a gossip. That’s Pansy.”

“Yeah, no thanks.”

ooOoo

Norberta the dragon is a week and a half old by the time Hedwig comes back from visiting Charlie Weasley the dragon tamer (and Harry’s new personal hero). Wiggling his name out of Percy Weasley, the oldest one still in Hogwarts, was easy—all Harry had to do was natter on about how he thought creatures were cool and he heard Percy’s brother worked with dragons and could Percy introduce them? Actually getting a letter there and back (Romania, not Bulgaria) took a whole week, though. Which sucks.

At least Hedwig got some exercise. By the way she nibbles Harry’s ear and steals his bacon, she’s happy about it.

The letter itself is singed around the edges. “He’ll be here at midnight on Saturday to take the dragon,” Harry says to Theo in a quiet voice. “Meeting us on… the astronomy tower. On brooms.” There is a brief, meditative silence. “They do know this is a fire-breathing creature, right? And brooms are made of wood?”

“Maybe they have fireproofing charms on their brooms. It makes sense. They work with dragons.”

“I’m going to hope you’re right,” Harry decides.

Theo grimaces. “Either way it’s not our problem once it’s off the grounds. Honestly, you’re bloody lucky I like you.”

“You don’t actually have to come,” says Harry.

“I really do.”

ooOoo

Carrying the dragon up from Hagrid’s hut isn’t actually that bad. Harry managed to get a few minutes alone with her while Theo helped Hagrid make a carry-crate, and he sang nonsense in Parseltongue, which left her very docile even if dragon-speak doesn’t seem to translate. Or maybe she’s just too young to talk.

For some reason, none of the creature books have mentioned whether dragons understand Parseltongue.

Hiding under the cloak, Harry and Theo make their way up to the astronomy tower with ten minutes to spare. They settle in to wait, keeping one eye on Theo’s watch and the other on the skies.

Harry spots them first. “Look!”

“Be quiet,” Theo says, but not angrily.

Six people, on brooms, dart in towards the castle from the east, only visible where their bodies block out the starlight above. Pity it’s such a clear night. Cloud cover would probably help them.

“Charlie couldn’t come,” says the first one, alighting on the ramparts, “but he briefed us. A Norwegian Ridgeback, eh?”

“Female,” Harry says, helping Theo pick up the crate. Two more of the dragon smugglers (Harry’s brain goes: !!!!!!!) come forward with a complicated sling made out of metal to secure the crate between their brooms.

“Really.” The first one, and evidently the leader, looks intrigued. “Where’d you lot get your hands on one of them, then?”

“Long story.”

“You should get going,” Theo says, anxiously eyeing the one and only entrance to the tower that doesn’t involve brooms.

“Right. Eyes up, lads!”

One of the other dragon tamers swears at the first one in Romanian or Russian or something. Harry thinks he’s in love.

They take off in what appears to be a practiced formation, two shepherding the slung crate and the other four rotating around defensively.

“I want to be a dragon smuggler when I grow up,” Harry says dreamily. He’s so lost in dreams of dragon smuggling, in fact, that he nearly forgets the invisibility cloak, and only Theo’s very irritated last-minute dash back onto the tower roof brings him back to reality. “Right. Thanks, Theo.”

“Told you I needed to come,” Theo says.

Harry’s even more grateful when they nearly run bang into Filch, lurking at the bottom of the tower. Both boys freeze.

The caretaker doesn’t seem to have heard them, bulging eyes fixed on the stairs with disturbing intensity.

Right then. Harry gropes behind him until he grabs Theo’s hand, and very, very carefully, takes a step to the left. Theo copies him. Years of sneaking around Number Four have taught Harry to be lightfooted, and stones don’t make traitorous underfoot creaks. This should be easy.

Mrs. Norris lets out a yowl and comes flying out of nowhere at Harry’s face. He ducks on instinct, which yanks Theo down too, which results in Mrs. Norris going straight over their heads and crashing into a suit of armor.

All sneakiness forgotten, Harry tugs Theo into a dead sprint. The cloak’s for sure flapping up around their ankles, but it’s dark and who cares. Left, right, right, down a staircase, then Harry stops very quickly and hauls Theo sideways behind a tapestry, hoping—

Sure enough, there’s a secret passageway there, one Harry found on accident when he tripped and fell against a tapestry that had no solid wall behind it. The resulting original fall had left him with skinned knees and a torn robe that left him spending an hour in the library hunting for a repair charm. This time he doesn’t fall. Theo nearly does, but Harry catches him.

“Shh!” he hisses, hearing Filch’s feet.

The caretaker stops further up the corridor. Shuffling feet sounds ensue. The suspense is awful and Harry is going to die.

“Where are they, Mrs. Norris? Find them, my lovely…”

Theo whispers something very, very quietly.

The cat lets out an angry yowl. She sounds very close.

Then she yowls again, farther away, and still angry.

“Lost them? Don’t fret, my lovely, they’re here somewhere…”

The search moves on.

Hardly daring to breathe, Harry leads Theo down the staircase behind the tapestry. It lets them out on the second floor near the Defense classroom, which is, for some reason, open. Quirrell’s books are a horrible temptation but Harry is very, very tired, and for once he wants his bed more than he does new spells that silly adults think first-years shouldn’t learn, so on they go.

At last they reach their common room. “Mica,” Harry whispers at the wall, and it slides open to let them in. No one else is around and both boys collapse in front of the fire.

“Merlin,” Theo says, with feeling.

Harry nods.

A minute or two tick by without a sound aside from the faint crackle of banked embers.

“Hey, Theo? What was that spell you cast?”

“It masks scent and sound. It’s meant to hide you from animals and stuff.”

“Oh.” Harry thinks it over. “That’s… very specific. Why do you know it?”

“Father keeps weird pets.”

Harry looks at Theo, eyes shining.

“No.”

“Pleeeeease?”

“Maybe when we’re older. You realize you’re bad enough with the two cats, two snakes, and owl you already have, right? And they’re all normal.”

Harry does have to admit that Peaches and Blueberry are sort of terrors. He’s lost count of the times Malfoy started shrieking because he found something dead in his wardrobe or on his pillow. Just why the cats think Malfoy needs feeding is a mystery whose answer escapes Harry. And Gabby’s new hobby, post-hibernation, seems to be scaring Zabini, who has a deathly and un-Slytherin terror of snakes. Then there’s Hedwig: everyone knows by now that if Hedwig goes for your breakfast, you do not interfere, on pain of bitten fingers. Really, the only normal one of Harry’s pets is Dash, who seems perfectly content hiding in Harry’s left robe pocket during the day and sleeping tangled in his hair with Gabby at night.

Giving up on meeting Theo’s dad’s weird magic pets, Harry decides they’d better talk about potions instead.

That only results in Theo bludgeoning him with a pillow and telling him they need to go to sleep.

ooOoo

In the morning, Slytherin is short fifty points. Bulstrode and Parkinson gleefully inform Harry and Theo that Malfoy got caught telling tales about students with a dragon, and for the lies and the breaking curfew, he got fifty points off and detention with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest.

“The really interesting bit is which students he said had a dragon,” Bulstrode says, smirking.

Harry smiles sunnily. “Oh? What students would those be? Pass the honey, Zabini.”

Zabini, who woke up that morning with Gabby staring at him from six inches away, responds with a wordless sort of spitting sound.

“Here you go,” says Parkinson, grabbing the honey pot.

“Thanks.”

“You and dearest Theodore,” Bulstrode says.

“How weird. Did we have a dragon last night, Theo?”

“I think I’d have noticed. You might not have. I’m pretty sure a whole flock of dragons could come through here doing a waltz and you wouldn’t notice if your head was in your potions books.”

“Thunder. A group of dragons is called a thunder.”

Theo sighs. “Of course you know that.”

Parkinson’s lost interest by now, but Bulstrode keeps watching them. Her face splits into a grin. “A thunder of dragons? Yeah, fits.”

Harry stares at her. Holds out the pot. “Honey?”

ooOoo

“That wasn’t nearly as hard as I expected,” Harry hears Granger say on the way out of their last exam, History of Magic.

Theo scowls at the back of her bushy head. “That witch…”

“Shush and enjoy it,” Harry says firmly. “Exams are over. Time to go relax before we have to go home.”

“Yes, to your horrible Muggles?”

Harry looks away. He’s still not sure if he regrets telling Theo, halting and spare with the details, about the Dursleys. “Let’s just say I’m looking forward to the fall.”

“Maybe Dumbledore will let you stay on over the summer,” Theo says doubtfully. “I’m sure the house elves could take care of one extra. Half the professors stay here, anyway.”

“House elves?”

“Go look it up. I’m too tired from explaining Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball to tell you about something as basic as house elves.”

“You,” says Harry loftily, “are cranky, and need food.”

Theo attempts to stab him with a quill.

ooOoo

A week before exams, Harry faces Lord Voldemort.

It goes like this:

First, Neville overhears a conversation between Snape and Quirrell. Harry and Theo firmly maintain that their Head of House is not working for the Dark Lord, while Neville’s dead convinced he very much is, but it doesn’t matter—someone’s going after the Stone and they’re going now.

Second, he goes for the nearest professor, who happens to be Professor McGonagall. She gets white-faced with anger at their “tales” and sends them to study or play outside. None of the boys is particularly surprised at this failure on the part of an authority figure—after all, they all grew up with parents or guardians who were in some way or other unreliable.

Third, Neville starts nattering about finding a way to contact Dumbledore, and Harry notices that Theo looks… pensive. Neville is dispatched to the Owlery while Harry and Theo ostensibly loiter in the entrance hall to keep an eye out for Snape.

Really Harry just wanted to corner Theo. “What’s up?”

“Neville assumes I would help him stop the Dark Lord from getting the Stone,” Theo says very quietly. His eyes on Harry are hard and afraid.

“Oh.” Yeah, okay, Harry should’ve thought of that. Although when it comes right down to it—

“Where do you stand, Harry?”

“Um. Er.”

Voldemort had ideas Harry thinks make sense. Voldemort was a madman who killed his parents.

“The Elixir of Life restores you to perfect health—not just life. Whatever was wrong with the Dark Lord’s mind… if he has the Stone, it should be healed.”

“Should be. You don’t know for sure.”

“Well, no, but… we spent hours researching the Stone, remember? D’you really think I’m wrong?”

Harry does not, in fact, think Theo is wrong. It’s a perfectly sensible theory and it makes Harry want to tear his hair out.

“We have to help Neville, anyway, or he’ll get… upset.”

Theo sighs. “Yeah, okay. I never did understand why you befriended him.”

“Don’t you like him?”

“I guess. The same way I’d learn to like a puppy if you adopted one.”

Fourth, Harry receives an enchanted paper airplane telling him he had better get himself to the corridor where “it is hidden,” and in case he needs motivation, there’s also a picture of Neville, tied up with ropes and sitting in a corner.

So off Harry goes, with Theo in tow.

The devil’s snare retreats from a wandless, wordless lumos, one of the first bits of intentional magic Harry ever did, on a night Aunt Petunia took away his lightbulb. With both of them on brooms, cornering the key is easy; Dash comes out of Harry’s pocket and helps him spot the one they need. Playing across the giant chess match sounds like it would take too long so Harry just doubles back for another broom and flies them over it. The troll is trickier, mostly because Harry tries to talk to it and Theo has to haul him out of the way of a descending club. Puzzling out the logic challenge takes both of them (and of course the scariest part of this fun little obstacle course was Snape’s contribution).

“I’m coming with you, Harry.”

“No. You have to double back and get someone’s help. I dunno. Snape, maybe, if you can find him. Or McGonagall. Make her listen. If she won’t then…”

“I’ll floo someone.”

“What’s floo?”

“You are such a bloody Muggle. Go. And don’t die. If you die I’m going to kill you. I’ll tell you what the floo is later.”

“Okay.” Pause. “Hey, Theo? You’re a good friend.”

“Drink your stupid potion.”

Harry drinks his potion. Harry walks through the fire.

“You?”

It’s Quirrell. Of course it’s Quirrell. Harry, too, would choose the nervous and least threatening person available if he was a Dark Lord who wanted sneaky access to a school.

How in the hell has no one noticed that Quirrell’s spying for Voldemort?

“Welcome, Mr. Potter,” Quirrell says with a horrible smile. Off to the side, propped up against a column, Neville trembles against his bindings. “This is all thoroughly entertaining. Mr. Longbottom here thought it would be Severus doing the Dark Lord’s work.”

“So the stutter was faked,” says Harry, who has heard people with a real stutter and knows it’s a far more guttural, visceral thing than the way Quirrell trips over his consonants.

Quirrell inclines his head. “Exactly so. It was quite useful, having Severus swooping around like an overgrown bat. Next to him, who could possibly suspect p-poor, t-t-traumatized Professor Quirrell?”

Okay. Keep him talking. “I, uh. Why have you been…”

“Nice to you? Encouraging? I admit my master hoped you would get yourself eaten by some Restricted tome, but you showed more resourcefulness than expected. Unsurprising, I suppose, given your House. I myself was in Ravenclaw. I confess we are not much known for improvisation. At any rate—your evident success with the… less pleasant books in the library intrigued my master.” Quirrell winces, as if in pain. “It really would be a deplorable waste to have to kill you.”

“Er, wait, so you’re not…”

“That depends.” Quirrell snaps his fingers and ropes appear out of nowhere, trussing Harry up tighter than a Christmas turkey. He wobbles. “On whether you’re a help or a hindrance to my master. I’ve known about the cerberus for some time… admittedly, my first attempt to get past it was a failure—” he winces again— “as a result of dear Severus’ interference.”

“The troll,” Harry says, remembering Snape limping around in a foul mood for a week afterwards. “You set up a distraction?”

“Very good.” Quirrell paces a slow circle around the Mirror of Erised, eyeing it calculatingly. “Indeed… You have a valiant defender in Severus, Mr. Potter, he has been haunting you with protective charms ever since he became aware of my… layered motives.”

“But he hates me.”

“Well, sure, but he doesn’t want you dead. He went to school with your father, you see. They loathed each other.”

Harry’s heart gives a painful squeeze. Maybe he can ask—

Well. He has to survive first.

“Of course, the gamekeeper was easy to fool, and the rest of the traps were laughable.” Harry honestly agrees. “Except for this. I believe it was meant to lull my master into false confidence, trap his spirit in its depths… unfortunately for the Headmaster, the Dark Lord is far cleverer than that…”

Harry subtly tests the ropes. Yeah, he’s going nowhere fast. Then something clicks. “Wait. Is he—here?”

“My master is with me wherever I go,” Quirrell says softly. “I met him traveling in the forests of Albania… A young man I was then, full of ridiculous notions about good and evil. My master taught me that there is no good or evil, only power—how you claim it, and how you wield it once claimed.” He peers closer at the gold backing of the mirror, then comes around to the front again. “I see myself with the Stone… I see myself presenting it to my master… but where is it? Master, help me—how does the mirror work?”

A whispery, sibilant voice comes from nowhere. “Ussse the boy…”

“What,” says Harry.

Quirrell turns on him. The ropes disappear with a flick of his wand, which then aims right at Harry’s head. “Come here, Potter—look in the mirror—”

Harry really can’t see how looking at his creature tamer future self is going to do anything at all. He steps forward, looks at his reflection. Mirror-Harry is just the same as before.

But then, he smirks.

Mirror-Peaches jumps onto Mirror-Harry’s thigh and sticks her head in his pocket. With Mirror-Gabby’s help, the two animals wrestle a bright red stone, like a fist-sized ruby, out of his pocket, and into Mirror-Harry’s hand. Mirror-Harry smirks and drops the stone back into his pocket.

As he does, Harry feels a weight fall into his own robe pocket.

So only someone who doesn’t want to use it can get it out of the mirror? And no one thought bloody Voldemort might take bloody hostages?!

“What do you see?” Quirrell demands.

“Oh. Uh. I’m older,” Harry says, lying with the truth. “And surrounded by creatures. A dragon, my cats, some, uh, snakes, a hippogriff…”

“Snakes?” Quirrell stares at him, then shakes his head. “No matter—useless child… step aside.”

Harry steps smartly in Neville’s direction, trying not to think too hard about his bound friend. Or anything at all. Especially not his pocket.

Quirrell approaches the mirror again. Harry fingers his wand.

“It’s gone…” Quirrell murmurs, looking back in the Mirror. “But—”

“The boy!”

“Stop calling me boy,” Harry spits out, stepping back again and jerking his wand into place. Against the Philosopher’s Stone, and held up in full view of Quirrell.

His Defense professor freezes. “Potter, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m stalling you.” Quirrell’s wand twitches, and Harry shakes his head. “I wouldn’t do that—you really wanna bet I can’t shatter this thing before you curse me? You try living with Malfoy for a year and not learning some fun hexes.”

“Let me ssspeak to him…”

“But Master, you are not strong enough…”

“I am strong enough… for this…”

Harry looks on in fascination and horror as Quirrell, with a grimace of pain, starts unwinding his purple turban. Then he turns on the spot and Harry almost yells.

“We meet at last, Harry Potter,” says the horrible face sticking out of the back of Quirrell’s bald head. Red eyes, a lumpy hint of a nose, a lipless, toothless cavity that imitates a mouth. “See what I have become? Mere form and vapor… I have shape only when I share the body of another… but once I again have the Stone, I shall make a new body and regain my former power… best to give it to me now, child, and save yourself.” It—he—pauses, as if tired, and goes on. “You have shown… cleverness, resourcefulness, ambition, cunning… the traits my ancestor Salazar most treasured… I can offer you a position at my side, all the power you’ve ever dreamed…”

“One thing,” Harry says, pretending to consider it. Neville makes a very loud noise behind his gag and flails around. “Why did you try to kill me all those years ago? Because it wasn’t my parents you were after, or you wouldn’t have tried to kill me too.”

Voldemort pauses. “Why… do you wish to know…?”

“I’m not even gonna think about joining you unless you can convince me you don’t want me specifically to die,” Harry says flatly. “Or if there’s a reason you specifically wanted me to die, what that reason was, and whether we can get around it. Otherwise no thank you, I am not an idiot.”

Neville makes another, louder sound.

“I believe,” says Voldemort, “that a compromise could be reached.”

Harry desperately wants to not be having this conversation. Join Voldemort? Six months ago, he’d have said no thank you now please go die. Now, after everything Theo’s said, his answer is not an instinctive “no.” But it’s still Voldemort.

This is not, Harry thinks, a decision anyone should be making at eleven.

“What… uh. What compromise?”

“Reciprocal oaths,” Voldemort says thoughtfully, “designed to prevent us from attacking one another… the wording would be… complicated, but it should be possible… however, certain things must be… determined, first. Which requires me to have… a body. Now, child, give me the Stone.”

“That’s not reassuring at all,” Harry retorts. “What’s to stop you killing me as soon as you’ve got it, huh?”

The lipless mouth smiles. “A Slytherin indeed…”

“I don’t have to be a Slytherin to notice that.”

Is that a sound in the riddle room? Harry holds very still and tries not to look around.

“I will swear… a temporary oath to do you no harm for… a year and a day, as is… traditional. Contingent upon you handing me the Stone, whole and intact, by… midnight, else the oath shall… be void.”

Harry thinks very quickly and can’t see any obvious loopholes. Is he being dumb? After all, he’s only eleven, and Voldemort’s got to be—well, older. Who knows how old, exactly.

But. But. Joining Voldemort.

Well, no—not joining. Just—being neutral. Just agreeing to not kill Voldemort, in exchange for Voldemort not killing him. It doesn’t even sound like that bad of a deal, considering Harry’s been convinced since he set foot in the wizarding world that some maniac was eventually going to come try to kill him a second time.

He looks at Neville, almost unconsciously. And flinches. Neville’s brown eyes are locked on Harry and his whole face is twisted up with loathing.

“I—”

Boom.

Harry’s feet leave the ground. For a long weightless second, things like up and down lose all meaning. Dim instincts from Harry Hunting drive him to exhale as hard as he can before he hits the ground. It hurts, bad, but with empty lungs he doesn’t lose his wind.

It takes a second for his brain to kick in, though, and he realizes he has lost the Philosopher’s Stone.

Smoke fills the air, stinging his eyes and choking his lungs. Harry coughs and scrambles to his feet. His wand’s gone, too. He steps forward, once, twice, and nearly slams into the Mirror.

He’s been thrown almost exactly to where Quirrell was standing.

Where’s Quirrell? And the Stone?

“You will fail again, Tom!” That’s Dumbledore’s voice, booming through the room. A gust of wind follows and the smoke shreds into ribbons. Not gone, Harry still can’t see more than a few feet—

Oh. There’s Quirrell. And the Stone, which Quirrell is slipping into his pocket.

Great.

“Are you going to kill me?” Harry says through numb lips.

Quirrell smiles, and it’s almost, horribly, gentle. He steps forward.

Then the professor’s dull brown eyes burn briefly red, and his smile twists into something cruel. Harry doesn’t have time to do more than step back before Quirrell grabs him. And then all he knows is pain. Burning pain where Quirrell’s hands touch his face, where Harry’s hands have latched onto Quirrell’s forearms in defense. And—oh, God, he can see Quirrell’s flesh turning to ash and flaking away—

Harry lets go in the same second Quirrell, no, this is Voldemort, the second Voldemort lets go. His hands and face are on fire. Quirrell’s hands and arms are scorched and crumbly. “Can’t have the Headmaster thinking you didn’t put up a fight,” Voldemort says in an undertone.

And then he’s gone. Just—vanished into the smoke.

The pain takes over. Harry feels his knees go weak. Next thing he knows he’s on his back, staring up through ribbons of smoke at the distant, smoky ceiling.

A face framed by white hair appears over him. Harry opens his mouth, to say what he doesn’t know, but then blackness swims over his vision.

ooOoo

White ceiling. White walls. White—ah. Hospital wing.

“You idiot,” a familiar voice hisses. “I told you not to die!”

“Well,” Harry says, his voice coming out a croak, “I didn’t. Technically.”

Theo’s scowl is ferocious.

“Mr. Nott, if you are going to disturb this patient, I must insist you leave.”

“I’m sorry,” Theo says, instantly contrite. “I won’t do it again.”

The mediwitch steps up next to Harry’s bed. “See that you don’t. Now, Mr. Potter, I must do some diagnostics. Please hold still.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Harry grits his teeth. The magic tickles.

When she’s done, she lowers her wand with a huff. “Well, you’re recovering from acute magical exhaustion.”

“Will I be okay to go to the feast tonight?”

“I suppose. But don’t overdo it!” She points at Harry meaningfully. “Absolutely no magic stronger than a lumos, understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says meekly.

“Hmph.” She gives him one last narrow-eyed look and bustles off.

Theo sighs. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Thanks,” Harry says, trying a smile. All his muscles feel like Jell-O. “Uh… Neville?”

Immediately, Theo’s face turns grim. “He’s… upset. Doesn’t want to talk to me. He’s in a bed over there.” Theo nods towards the windows.

“Thanks.”

Harry’s about to say more, but they’re interrupted by the Headmaster, who appears from the mediwitch’s office and coolly asks Theo to leave. Harry eyes the old man warily as he takes Theo’s recently vacated seat and whips a bag of candy out of his robes. “Care for some Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans?”

“I’m okay, sir, thanks.”

“A wise choice. I often suffer from terrible luck with these.” Dumbledore examines a yellowish bean, pops it in his mouth, and makes a face. “Alas! Earwax.”

Harry doesn’t like the old man but he still laughs. “Gross, sir.”

“Quite.” Dumbledore twinkles at him. “I’m sure you have questions for me, Mr. Potter.”

Well, yes. As it happens, Harry very much does have questions. Dumbledore refuses to answer them on account of Harry’s “too young.” Harry personally thinks if he is old enough to face Voldemort, he’s old enough to know why that happened in the first place.

Eventually Dumbledore goes away. Harry lies back and daydreams about dragons.

ooOoo

Neville looks at him.

"Oh come on, you know I didn't mean it."

"You s-sounded like you meant it."

"Well of course I did. I had to make it convincing, didn't I? Otherwise he'd have skipped to the bit with the curses, and probably gotten the Stone!"

Theo leans back in his chair by Harry's bedside. "I can't decide if he'd have killed you before or after taking it."

"Oh, after. So he could see our faces when we lost. It's lucky you got that owl off to Dumbledore," Harry adds to Neville, who is visibly alarmed by that exchange.

"Uh… right. Oh, the leaving feast is tonight. Reckon Pomfrey will let you come?"

"I hope."

Neville leaves after a bit more small talk. As soon as he's gone, Theo turns on Harry with a smirk. "You do realize you basically just admitted to lying so well you fooled the Dark Lord?"

Harry laughs. "Oops."

"He probably thinks we have classes in lying now."

"I mean, isn't that what it is when one of the prefects collects the younger kids for an impromptu body language lecture?"

Theo pauses. "Damn, we do have lying classes."

"And every day in the common room is an extended practical exam in deceit."

"Malfoy would get a P," Theo says, keeping a straight face for two seconds before dissolving into laughter.

ooOoo

At the last minute, Dumbledore gives out points to Gryffindors for random things. The House Cup banners turn from green to red.

“Kill me,” Theo says into his veal.

Next