It was a fine morning. Harry awoke from his comfortable Hogwarts bed and pulled his covers off. His belly hurt a lot from the feast the day before. He arrived for his sixth year yesterday and it was time for his first day of classes.

Harry wanted to talk to Ron. Ron hadn't sent him anything over the summer, because the Weasley family was very busy with the new arrivals. Three fraternal triplets. Arthur Weasely's virility combined with Molly's seemingly inhuman ability to push 'em out made for a chaotic family dynamic at best.

Ron had slept the whole trip on the Hogwarts express. Apparently he had been enlisted by his mother to help raise the two girls, Alice and Lily,and the Boy, Percy 2. He had thus been missing a lot of sleep. It was during the feast that Ron had told Harry about it, but he didn't want to answer a lot of questions because his life had been filled with babies all summer.

Either way, Ron didn't look like he was going to wake up any time soon, so Harry decided he was tired enough to miss breakfast and Harry got dressed himself and headed down to the Great Hall. There he saw Hermione, who was looking slightly less frizzy as usual. Harry suspected she had straightened her hair this morning. He wondered if it was by magic or muggle means.

"Hmm. Not bad..." Harry thought to himself, looking at her appraisingly. Cho had been going out with some other Ravenclaw seventh year for almost eight months now, so Harry had since given up and allowed himself to look at other girls. Last year he went out with Parvati for about three days, but nothing really happened. She ended up dumping him for Dean Thomas, and true to the saying, hasn't "gone back."

As soon as he sat down, Harry was greeted by almost everyone at the Gryffindor table. He was quite popular nowadays - he was captain of the quidditch team, not to mention having saved everyone's ass at least five times. Six, if you count the anal sex incident. Since January, however, Harry had put that behind himself (so to speak).

"Hey harry! How's your morning?" Hermione said through a mouthful of waffle.

"Not too bad. How's yours?" He responded, staring out the window at the slowly approaching cloud of feathers and parchment.

"Better than yesterday!"

"Why's that?"

"First day of classes!"

Harry sighed. "Of course. What could be better?"

The owls started swooping in through the open window. Harry looked for Hedwig as he continued his conversation with Hermione half-heartedly.

"Oh, come on now," She said. "Don't you want to find out who our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is?" They both thought back to their last Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Greer, who severely overdosed on wizard cocaine and turned into a very high-strung hamster. Nobody really knew what happened to him after that, but Hermione wasn't very surprised when Crookshanks skipped breakfast the next morning.

Hedwig plopped down next to Harry with a letter for him. Harry opened the letter and read exitedly as Hedwig started picking out of Harry's breakfast.

The letter was from Sirius.

"Dear Harry,

That sure was one zany fifth year, eh? I was amazed at how it was incredibly eventful, dramatic, and novel-like, yet will have no lasting effect on the rest of your life. In regards to January, I apologize. NO one saw THAT coming.

Love (but not THAT kind of love), Sirius"

Harry closed the letter quickly, and incinerated it with a wave of his wand. No one else needed to know about THAT.

"Oy, morning everyone." Ron stumbled into the Great Hall, looking terrible. His hair was mussed, His eyes were half-closed, and his robes were badly wrinkled. Just then, the bell rang, and everyone quickly ran past the entrance, pushing and nearly trampling the poor Weasley.

"Come on, Ron!" Harry pushed him along with himself. Harry, Ron, and Hermione still shared most of their classes, although Hermione still took Arithmancy and Harry and Ron took Divination. "Come on! Our first class is..." He took a look at his schedule. "Ooh! We've got double Defense Against the Dark Arts with the Hufflepuffs!"

Hermione piped in. "This year we'll be studying evil curses!"

Ron turned his head, a quizzical expression on his face "Didn't we study those two years ago? We got them earlier than usual..."

They walked into the classroom and a look of horror spread from one face to the next.

"Take your seats," snapped Professor Snape.