A/N: Considering Harry's Christmases at Hogwarts are pretty well documented in the books, this story is a sort of hypertime tale. It doesn't really fit anywhere. Also I apologize for the lateness of this fic, but you know how Christmas is. Part Two will be up on January 6th, the traditional Day of the Magi.

Epiphany

If Harry wanted to peg the moment when the whole affair began it was thirteen days before Christmas. Hermione might have cited an Arithmancy textbook to explain to him why that should have been a sign to avoid getting involved, but Harry wouldn't have really listened. Hermione didn't get it. If anything remained constant in Harry's life it was that he did not trust Draco Malfoy. Not only did he not trust Malfoy—Harry was psychologically incapable of trusting Malfoy. Malfoy's father was a racist git, ex-Death Eater, practitioner of the Dark Arts—servant of Voldemort. And he had instilled all that rubbish into his son. In his second year, Harry had witnessed first hand Draco gleefully wishing for the deaths of Muggleborn students. That colored every thought and action that Harry witnessed Draco take.

The proper start of the whole ordeal was a conversation Harry overheard between Draco and Goyle during his Potions class. Harry was trying to tune out Snape, who had interrupted his lecture on the uses of Salamander tails to hurl a string of insults at Neville, and had leaned back in his seat far enough to overhear them talking.

"Where's this place now?" Goyle said.

"On the side street," Malfoy answered. "Behind that ratty book shop."

Goyle snorted. "Like I'd notice a book shop. Haven't opened a book all semester."

Malfoy laughed, but the laugh didn't conceal his annoyance. Harry wondered what it was like having a pair of morons as your closest companions. If not for the fact that Malfoy's relative intelligence made his hatred of Muggleborns all the more infuriating, Harry might have had a twinge of sympathy for him.

Thanks to the hectic nature of the last few days of class before the holiday, Harry mostly forgot about the conversation. That was, until he entered the Great Hall on the first day of the break and immediately heard the arrogant drawl of Malfoy chatting it up at the Slytherin table. He arched his eyebrows, swallowed some metaphorical bile, and took a seat between Ron and Ginny.

"What the blazes is Malfoy doing here?" he asked. "Staying to make my life miserable?"

"Looks like it, sometimes," Ron said, stuffing a strip of bacon in his mouth.

Ginny tilted her head and gave Ron a look of annoyance. "He's been running his mouth since he got here. He said that his parents suddenly decided a holiday in Paris would do them wonders and made Malfoy stay here."

"You don't sound like you buy that story," Harry observed.

Ginny tilted her head forward, her eyes sparkling. "Yes, well, since when could Malfoy tell a convincing lie?"

Harry nodded and smiled at her. "Think we should investigate."

"That's bollocks, Harry," Ron said, crumbs of bread falling out of his mouth. "Even Malfoy's not enough of a git to be up to something around Christmas."

"He was enough of a git to hope Hermione got killed by the basilisk," Ginny said with a shudder. "I think you should do it, Harry."

Ron stopped eating long enough to nod. "Yeah, maybe you're right." The look on Ron's face told Harry that he was relieved Hermione had gone home to spend the Christmas Holiday with her family. Harry, on the other hand, wanted her advice, and immediately after breakfast he headed back up to his room to jot down a letter for Hermione. Two days later Hedwig returned with her reply:

Don't do anything stupid, Harry.

Well, Harry thought, that was a lot of help.

He stuffed the note into his blue jeans pocket and headed down towards the Gryffindor common room. Ron had organized a tournament using rules from Wizards Chess and a fantasy role-playing game in which wizards pretended to be Muggles and had to deal with the perils of life in a bustling metropolis. Harry didn't think the details were quite right, since it seemed like you couldn't take two steps in that game without getting attacked by a mugger or nearly run over by a car. Someone at the Wizarding world branch of Hasbro clearly hadn't payed close enough attention in Muggle Studies.

Harry passed Ron's game and headed out of the common room and down to the great hall, where enchanted suits of armor were intoning carols and McGonagall was chasing Peeves around with her wand drawn and aimed at him.

Wondering too a table where some small sweets and cakes had been left out for students congregating in the hall, Harry took a couple homemade chocolate frogs and sat down at the Gryffindor table. He heard Malfoy's drawl on the other side of the room, but it was noisy enough that he couldn't quite make out what was being said. He waited for a bit, wishing Hermione had given some useful advice, until he heard his nemesis get up and begin to leave along with an entourage of Slytherins. Harry got up, acting on impulse, and followed him out of the great hall into the corridor outside. More suits of armor lined those halls, and the Slytherins walked alongside them chatting animatedly.

An idea occurred to Harry, and he took off at a sprint, running a longer route through the castle that put him between Malfoy and the stairwell that led down to the Slytherin dungeon. Hoping his switching practice had been enough, Harry took out his wand and aimed it at one of the caroling suits of armor.

"Wingardium Leviosa," he said, swishing and flicking. He had to concentrate to move the entire suit of armor a few feet to the left, not dropping any of it.

"Why, excuse me!" the armor said, sounding offended. It tilted its head to look at Harry. "Was I in your way?"

"No, I just need to borrow you for a minute." Harry felt embarrassed, but willed his flesh not to turn red. Harry stood where the armor had been, then aimed his and at it. "Alterus segmentatum!"

There was a flicker as reality protested the use of magic, and then Harry's clothing appeared where where the armor had been; at the same moment, the armor suddenly surrounded Harry's body. It was an ill fit, and Harry felt completely off balance, so he leaned back to brace himself against the wall.

"I'm not sure I like the idea of having students inside me," the armor said. "Old Sanchez on the second floor had a first year stuck in him for three days once. Nasty business, that."

"Shush," Harry hissed. "I'm trying to spy on someone."

A moment later, Malfoy and his cronies came striding up the hall, congratulating themselves on how rich they were and how much they disliked Muggleborns. Draco was saying something about Pansy Parkinson, and then about his father, and finally Crabbe asked a question that Harry couldn't quite make out. Everyone went dead silent and suddenly the soft caroling was the only thing Harry could hear, aside from his own breathing.

Then Draco spoke. "Nobody is supposed to know about that but you and Goyle. Thanks for blurting it out in front of everyone."

"What's the big deal?" Crabbe asked. "Nobody here is gonna rat you out."

One of the Slytherins—Zabini, Harry thought—spoke up. "D... doesn't that require blood Draco?"

"It does," Malfoy said evenly, though Harry could detect apprehension in his voice. "And... wait."

Through the slits in the helmet, Harry could see Malfoy walking over towards the suit of armor he was hiding in, a look of curiosity on his face. "This one isn't singing those infernal carols," Malfoy said. "Damn thing must be broken."

Draco's face got close—too close for comfort, and Harry stopped breathing, started sweating more profusely. Malfoy reached up to remove the mask, and dread welled up in Harry's chest. Malfoy's fingers touched the cold metal. Then Zabini spoke again.

"Looks like someone left their clothes lying here," he said, laughing. "Muggleborn or Muggle-lover by the looks. Feh. Running around naked like some ignorant sod."

Malfoy nodded and removed his wand, pointing it at the statue. "Maybe not naked," he hissed. His eyes narrowed and Harry clenched his own wand more tightly. If it was going to come to a duel, the armor would be a disadvantage, but there was no way to get out of it without blowing his cover. Harry's lungs burned for air, and he exhaled as quietly as possible, then tried to inhale again but found his lungs refused to obey.

"MALFOY!" shouted another voice. "What the devil are you doing?" It was Professor McGonagall, storming up the hall in a foul mood after dealing with Peeves.

Draco hesitated for a moment, and then lowered his wand. "Nothing, Professor," he said. "I, uh, just noticed this suit had stopped caroling and I was going to fix it."

"Well, thank you for your thoughtfulness," McGonagall said, "But we have students in charge of maintaining the holiday atmosphere and you're not one of them. Michelle Coplin is in charge of the armored carolers, so run along or I'll have to take points from Slytherin."

Harry heard her step right next to the armor, and stoop down, then she stepped into his line of sight and handed Draco the wadded up clothing he'd left when. "And take these to your dorm, don't leave them lying in the middle of the floor."

A moment later, Draco was gone, and McGonagall watched them turn the corner, then whirled around and stormed off in the other direction.

Harry, meanwhile, slowly began taking the armor off piece by piece, and then took the least populated route back towards the Gryffindor tower. Much to his humiliation, he passed by Cho on the way, who stared at him and asked where his clothes were.

"The Slytherin dorm," Harry said, his face turning red. "Long story."

The rest of the Gryffindor boys were so engrossed in Ron's game when he got back to the common room that none of them noticed he was in nothing but his underwear. He ran up to his room and threw on some clothing, then crashed into a chair in the common room and sat, thinking until supper.

Between Ron and Ginny, he whispered a brief recounting of what he'd overheard.

"A blood ritual?" Ginny said, her eyes like saucers. "That's heavy stuff. What are you going to do?"

"We've got to know more," Ron said. "What if he's trying to do... you know, that Jamaican style magic where you've got a doll you can torture and then it happens to the real person?"

"Voodoo," Harry supplied.

"And it's from Haiti," Ginny corrected.

"Aw'right, aw'right," Ron said. "So if he's gonna do some dark magic, we need to find out what, right? Why don't you sneak into Slytherin's dungeon and listen to them? You've got an invisibility cloak."

"An intangibility cloak would be helpful," Harry said grimly. "And something to make myself inaudible. I don't think I'll be able to hold my breath all night."

That afternoon, in Gryffindor tower, Harry was relaxing and trying to read Beetle the Bard when Fred and George ambushed him, leaning over opposite sides of his armchair with a big grin on their faces. "A little birdy told us that you need some quality stealth gear!" said Fred.

"So we thought we'd lend you a hand," George said, removing his hands from behind his back and pulling out a pair of fuzzy black earmuffs. There was an F on one side and a G on the other.

"Presenting the Weasley Brothers Patented (not really) Sound Canceling Headset!"

"Guys, even assuming you heard right," Harry began, not wanting to give his game away altogether. "Those are ear muffs. I need to be silent, not deaf."

"Ah, my friend," Fred said, grinning broadly. "These are enchanted ear muffs. Put them on your ears and they cancel out all the sound YOU make while leaving everyone else in the vicinity perfectly audible."

Harry's eyes widened with delight. If those things worked...

He took them from George's hand and put them on his ears; at first it seem like nothing happened. He looked up at them and told them so... or rather, he tried to. He felt his vocal cords vibrating in his throat, but no sound came out of his mouth. His eyes lit up again, this time in alarm.

"Ah, another satisfied customer," Fred said.

Harry reached up and took the ear muffs off. "What do you want for them?"

George nodded magnanimously. "Oh, normally they'd go for around three galleons, but in the spirit of Christmas, consider this pair a gift."

"A gift!?" Fred blurted. "I spent four hours working on the enchantments for these. How can you just give them away."

"Word of mouth, Fred. Harry's satisfaction and subsequent viral advertising will bring the customers clambering to our doors."

"But Harry's independently wealthy! If anyone should throwing a bone, it should be him to us!"

"Nonsense," George said. "We, as the older and wiser sages to Harry's youthful innocence, should be..."

Harry heard no more of the argument, darting up the stairs to his dorm and rummaging through his trunk until he found his invisibility cloak. He wrapped it around him inverted so that it looked like an ordinary traveling cloak and ran through the winding corridors of Hogwarts. He flipped the cloak around and put on the headphones, and then started towards the dungeon where the Slytherins lived; the fact that he couldn't hear his own footsteps even at a dead sprint was slightly unnerving, but when he stood outside beside the portrait huffing and puffing from his jog while Slytherins came and went, oblivious to his presence, he couldn't help but smile.

Eventually he waited for a rather thin seventh year to open the portrait hole and slipped in beside him, forgetting the password before the portrait had finished closing. He crept into a corner by the fireplace and sat down against the wall.

It was some time later when a loud laugh from Malfoy startled him awake, and only then did he realized he had dozed off. He looked up through the cloak to see Malfoy smirking and holding up a young blonde girl's wand above her head while she struggled to get it back from him.

"Mudbloods like you aren't supposed to have wands," he spat. "Why don't you crawl home to your worthless Muggle parents and leave magic to the real witches and wizards."

"Give it back, Malfoy!" the girl protested.

Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out his wand, smiling about the fact that he couldn't be heard. "Jellify!" he shouted, though no sound came. The tip of his wand flashed and Malfoy suddenly tipped over with his wobbly legs, dropping the stolen wand. The girl picked it up and stormed towards the dorms. Harry winced in sympathy for any Muggleborn who got stuck in Slytherin.

"Who the blazes put the Jelly Legs Jinx on me?" Draco demanded, trying to stand up. He struggled over to a couch and hoisted himself up on it, then removed his wand. "Unjellify."

Crabbe and Goyle were laughing as they sat across from him.

"It's not funny," Malfoy whined. "I bet it was that American kid. He's always sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. And he's a blood traitor just like the Weasleys."

Harry listened to the trio babble on for another ten minutes, throwing around their distatste for exams, their dislike of every professor besides Snape, and how 'Dumble-Bore' was an idiot to let Muggleborns into the school. Eventually, Draco looked up after a moment of silence. "I spoke with Snape, by the way."

"And?" Goyle said.

"He's going to give us special permission for a trip to Hogsmeade on the 24th. Dumbledore apparently approved of it too, the idiot. I hate to have to do the ritual in one night, but supposedly Christmas Eve is the best time to do magic that involves... well, you know."

Harry didn't know, but his imagination could fill in the blanks fairly well.

"So you're really going through with it?"

"Of course I am, I've already scheduled." Draco shook his head, then got up and headed towards the dorms. "I'm going to bed. You two do whatever it is you do."

After Malfoy was gone, Crabbe and Goyle looked at each other. "You think he knows?" Goyle said, his eyes wide.

Crabbe leaned closer to Goyle. "Naw, couldn't. We've been too careful. Nobody could ever know."

What Harry saw next would scar his mind for years to come.

To be concluded..