(Minor adjustments to punctuation and formatting, 23rd December, 2015; further slight adjustments to punctuation and formatting, with minor rewording and slight expansions of text in places, 26th January, 2016.)

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following short sketch takes place in an alternate universe towards the end of the 1991-1992 school year, and is from the perspective of first year Algol Weasley (a somewhat brainy daughter of Arthur and Bellatrix Weasley - I did mention that this is an alternate universe). Whomever The-Boy-Who-Lived is (identity undetermined at the time of writing of this piece) he is a first year at Hogwarts, sorted into Hufflepuff, and is assumed to have 'defeated' Voldemort on Hallowe'en, 1981, by means of maternal sacrifice/bouncing killing-curse as in canon with Harry. His close cronies mentioned in this piece (again, identities undetermined at the time of writing) are fellow first-year Hufflepuffs.

Further Note: This piece is rated K+.

It was perfectly obvious to Algol Weasley most of what was going on in the school – or at least most-of-what-was-going-on-in-the-school to do with the bit of third floor corridor with the three-headed dog stationed in it.

Then again she was a genius, even at the age of now twelve, so of course it was obvious – that was the sort of thing that the Sorting Hat had put her into Ravenclaw, with scarcely a moment's hesitation, for, back in September. She was unbelievably clever.

No: what she didn't understand was why The-Boy-Who-Lived and his two closest cronies were worried about it, or why they were bothering her about it, now?

Apparently they were desperate enough about it to have faced the door-knocker to Ravenclaw Tower to gain access and, having gained entry, to have demanded an 'immediate conversation somewhere private' of her – that 'somewhere' turning out to be an unused classroom a corridor and two flights of stairs away from Ravenclaw Tower.

As they chattered away, half-explaining what they thought, Algol restrained herself from commenting on the fact that it was apparently only now that her fellow first years had worked out that it was purportedly The Philosopher's Stone hidden away below a particular stretch of third floor corridor, or that a member of the Hogwarts staff was trying to steal it (although it amused Algol that these fellow first-years seemed to believe that it was Professor Snape after it, and not Professor Quirrell, whose stutter Algol had pegged as phony at the start of her very first defence lesson).

"It's a trap." Algol explained to them, once they had finished. Honestly, Hufflepuffs were well-meaning but incredibly dense. "The headmaster wants someone to try to steal the stone. He's probably set up a series of ridiculously easy 'tests' to get a thief to be really overconfident, then set up something really nasty to protect the stone, itself."

She was sure that their head of house would have told these Hufflepuffs not to worry, and would have put their minds at rest, had Professor Sprout been around, but the head of Hufflepuff was currently still in St. Mungo's after that nasty Exploding Borage incident and apparently right now the headmaster was out of the school. Of course the Boy-Who-Lived had already told Algol about how he'd tried to tell the deputy headmistress, but apparently he had received a response he found unsatisfactory – with the consequence that he now seemed to believe that the only reasonable option was to form up a group of fellow first-years and to retrieve the Philosopher's Stone himself.

The whole thing had about it the air of a distinctly Hufflepuff exercise – mind-bogglingly loyal in motivation and in a need to 'do' something, but not exactly an enterprise founded on the soundest of logical grounds.

"But what if the headmaster hasn't realised that Professor Snape is working for Lord Voldemort?" the Boy-Who-Lived protested, whilst his cronies both nodded their support. "The headmaster is a bit crazy, anyway, and his trap might not be clever enough."

"And anyway, Snape's clever enough that he's managed to trick the headmaster into leaving the school, so that he can't stop him from stealing the stone." the Boy-Who-Lived's crony number one interjected.

The headmaster, Algol Weasley thought, had almost certainly left the school so that Professor Quirrell would walk into his trap.

"No." said Algol Weasley. "I think the headmaster's much cleverer than you think. I'm not helping you."

"You owe us." crony number two objected. "You have to help us."

And there it was. Algol did unfortunately owe these idiots.

She glanced at the Boy-Who-Lived:

"Is this true? Are you calling in your favour?"

The Boy-Who-Lived hesitated a moment, sensing the enormity of the situation, then nodded, an obstinate look on his face.

"I am." he confirmed.

"I think you're all being silly about this, but if you want to call in your favour now that's your business." Algol said. "Don't try and complain to me about wanting it back or partly-back, later. Now: do any of you have any kind of musical talent?"

They gave her blank looks. It was positively painful to Algol how little they'd apparently thought this through.

"The three-headed dog." Algol prompted. "Unless someone else has permanently dealt with it – in which case your chance of stopping someone else from getting to the stone ahead of you has already taken a hit – we're going to have to deal with it. And music makes it drowsy."

"See: I said it would be worth getting past that eagle door-knocker to get in to see her." crony number two said, triumphantly. "This is why we need her along."

Of course: how the Boy-Who-Lived actually proposed to keep the stone from Professor Quirrell (or 'Professor Snape', as he believed) if he did actually get to it first, was something that he had yet to reveal. Algol hoped that he'd thought that far ahead, but then again, these were Hufflepuffs, so you never knew. But with luck the whole thing was an elaborate charade, anyway, with the headmaster having a really clever decoy in the school, which it wouldn't matter much if anyone actually stole…

Author Notes:

A short, slightly frivolous sketch, originally published at the start of December, 2015, for those who've had me on alert and been waiting for several months to see notification of anything pop up. Sorry about that to them - a combination of writer's block, highly distracting illness, and work on something on another site (Harry Potter and the Greengrass Connection, to be polished up and cross-posted here, at least as far as it's got, within the next few weeks, hopefully).

When Algol assumes that the Hufflepuffs have 'only now' worked out about the stone and someone trying to steal it, that's because they've only bothered her with it now. This is a faulty premise on Algol's part. The Hufflepuffs in question actually worked that out some time ago, but they're only bothering Algol about it now, because they thought the stone was safe up until now.

'Exploding Borage' is assumed to be a magical plant. I needed a reason why the Hufflepuff first years wouldn't have tried to enlist their head of house's help with trying to stop the stone from being stolen, so invented an 'accident' which has taken place in the school greenhouses recently, removing her from the scene.

The precise nature of the favour that Algol 'owes' The-Boy-Who-Lived and his cronies is undetermined at the time of original writing and posting of this piece but may have involved the troll at Hallowe'en, or the loan of an invisibility cloak (in the latter case, most likely for library research purposes).

The Weasleys are probably a fairly 'neutral' family (at least as far as Arthur and Bellatrix went in the Wizarding War) in this universe.

This story is posted as a one-shot.