Disclaimer: JK Rowling and assorted publishers own Harry Potter.

This is a work of fanfiction: no money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.


Chapter 6

It had been a rough night - Harry had had a bizarre dream that involved Vellum putting Cho under the Cruciatus curse, all the time saying "See, there is no such thing as Dark Magic, I am the Force of Good." He'd rubbed at his scar purely through reflex before he'd realised that it wasn't hurting at all; not a vision, then, just the disjointed ramblings of a teenage boy's mind.

"Hey Harry, Hedwig's back!" exclaimed Ron, pointing out the snowy owl as she swooped towards the breakfast table and releasing a letter addressed with Hagrid's customary scrawl:

Dear Harry,

Thanks for your letter - it looks like we're nearly finished over here, so I should be back at Hogwarts before Halloween (wouldn't want to miss the feast, would I?). I'm enjoying my stay at Beauxbatons, but I do miss Hogwarts.

Glad you like the eggs - I'll be back before they hatch, which should be good.

Hope you, Ron and Hermione are staying out of trouble - say 'hello' to Fang for me.

See you soon,

Hagrid

"Glad you like the eggs?" scoffed Ron, passing the letter back after having read it. "What did you say to him?"

Harry grinned, "I just mentioned them, that's all, but you know Hagrid, he just assumes we all think like he does," he said, passing the letter to Hermione as a diversion from her Arithmancy revision (it was official, thought Harry, that girl was demented: Arithmancy for breakfast?).

"He says he'll be back in time for Halloween," noted Hermione, "and he doesn't think the eggs will have hatched by then." An expression of concern flashed across her face, "What do you think we'll be doing in Care of Magical Creatures until they hatch?"

If Harry and Ron shared Hermione's concern at the potential lack of lesson material, they didn't show it. Instead Ron suggested that they take Fang for a walk at lunchtime.

And then Seamus' hair exploded.

There was really no other way to describe it; his blonde hair sizzled briefly before exploding into a bright pink cascade of shocked hair, accompanied by a shimmering curtain of silver sparks. All Gryffindor eyes turned to the Weasley twins.

"Exploding hair," explained Lee (the honorary Weasley Triplet), flicking his dreadlocks back, "possibly Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes finest Wheeze yet," he added, appraisingly. Fred and George beamed at Seamus, who scowled back, good-naturedly. If nothing else, he was a good sport.

"What was it in?" asked Dean, with a mixture of interest and apprehension, taking a sip of pumpkin juice.

Fred waited until Dean had swallowed before replying, "We put the powder into the..." Dean's hair interrupted the explanation, sending a second cascade of sparks showering onto the table, "...juice."

Seamus had borrowed a compact mirror from Lavender, and was staring at his lurid hairdo. "Uh guys," he asked, tentatively, "this wears off, right?"

"Well," said George, uncomfortably, "we're still in the research and development stage with this one, but normally your hair's back to it's original state in..."

"Minutes," suggested Fred, eagerly.

"Well, maybe not minutes, but not too long, really," modified George.

"All things considered," added Fred, earnestly.

"You know, this time next week, you'll hardly know it was ever pink," said George, supportively.

Seamus and Dean exchanged pained glances, as shrieks of surprise rose from the one of the other tables.

"We did the Hufflepuff juice, too," explained Lee, with a conspiratorial wink.

"Lee Jordan, Fred Weasley, George Weasley. My office," there was no mistaking Professor McGonagall's detention-serving tone, "now!"

"It's your own fault," chided Hermione, as the trio got to their feet, "if you didn't play these silly pranks, you wouldn't get all these detentions."

"Well, one has to suffer for one's art," opined Fred, with theatrical exaggeration.

"Art?" said Seamus, raising one pink eyebrow (Harry really wished he could do that, albeit perhaps not with a pink eyebrow).

"That's right, we're artistes," confirmed George, in a voice pained by the lack of recognition their endeavours had secured. The trio trooped off, to murmurs of congratulation from the rest of the table.

"You know," said Hermione, "I do love your brothers, Ron, but one of these days a joke is going to backfire."

Ron wasn't listening, however, "Mum is going to kill them for this one," he said, with a most un-brotherly grin spreading across his face.


Herbology with the Hufflepuffs was notable for the emergence of 'Herbology Neville'. The others looked on with a mixture of surprise and Gryffindor pride as Neville not only correctly answered questions on the summer reading, but also helped Professor Sprout with the demonstration of repotting Lumoslens cuttings in Greenhouse 3.

"I know that he was an impostor," explained Neville, as the class set about repotting the brightly glowing cuttings, "but the stuff Mad-Eye..."

"Crouch," corrected Harry, absently, "sorry Neville, go on."

"Crouch said about Herbology being my best subject made me realise that I wasn't hopeless at everything."

"But you're not hopeless at everything, Neville," exclaimed Hermione.

Neville looked at her levelly, "well, obviously," he said, "Potions is a close second to this..." they laughed at Neville's winning self-mockery, although Harry was uneasy. Crouch had set Neville up in his bid to ensure that Harry would know about Gillyweed in time for the second task - as it turned out, that hadn't worked, and Crouch had had to trick Dobby into fetching the supply. But part of Harry wondered whether Neville really had been good at Herbology, or whether his confidence in the subject was just an unexpected byproduct of Crouch's exploitation.

"No, you don't need to press down so hard," explained Neville, interrupting Hermione's furious kneading of the soil, "the roots on Lumoslens are quite fragile, and they respond better if they're allowed to extend into loosely compacted soil," he continued, "like this..."

Harry paused to watch Neville take over Hermione's repotting, and realized that he didn't really care whether Crouch had been telling the truth or not. What was important was that, intentionally or not, he'd given Neville the self-belief that had been sorely lacking beforehand. He remembered Professor Dumbledore telling him that Neville's parents had been Aurors, driven mad through torture under the Cruciatus curse. Neville himself still hadn't said anything about that; Harry thought it seemed a heavy burden to bear alone.


As agreed that morning, they took Fang for a walk across lunch, taking the opportunity to check on their eggs' progress at the same time. They felt much happier doing this with the knowledge that the eggs weren't expected to hatch for at least another six weeks.

"What do you think is inside them, anyway?" asked Ron.

"It's probably something dangerous," replied Hermione, before adding, "that wasn't really a necessary statement, was it?"

"Well," said Harry, "Filch said that we should look up stuff on dragons, crocodiles and..."

"Eels and snakes," finished Ron, "but it's illegal to breed dragons. Everyone knows that."

"Yeah," agreed Harry, "but those damned Skrewts from last year were crosses, weren't they? I'll bet it's dragon crossed with the other stuff, and that's why it's legal."

"Well, not illegal, probably," corrected Hermione, "as opposed to properly legal..."

They exchanged wary glances. Hagrid wasn't necessarily the most objective person in the world when it came to assessing potential threats from creatures, and they all doubted very much that the Ministry was fully aware of what was, literally, being hatched at Hogwarts.

It fell to Ron to change the subject, "So what's going on with you and Cho, then?" he asked.

"What?" exclaimed Harry, trying to affect his best tone of complete surprise, aware that the rapidly rising flush to his face was spoiling the effect somewhat.

"I couldn't believe it when you sat Quidditch practice out to watch from the stands," he continued, "until I saw who it was you were talking to."

"What??! You passed up a chance to fly. To talk to Cho?" asked Hermione, incredulously.

"Nothing's happened. Nothing is happening. Nothing will happen," said Harry, with what he hoped would pass for conviction. "We're just friends."

Hermione and Ron exchanged knowing smiles.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" asked Harry, confronting his two friends' accusatory looks.

"Oh, methinks the boy doth protest too much," said Hermione, airily, "it's OK, Harry, we know you like her, and she is very pretty..."

"She plays Quidditch, too," Ron had a talent for pointing out the obvious, "not that not playing Quidditch is a bad thing," he added quickly, for what Harry strongly suspected was Hermione's benefit. Not that she seemed to have noticed.

Realizing that they weren't going to get any further mileage out of him, Hermione and Ron changed subject to discussing Neville's transformation in Herbology. They returned Fang to Hagrid's hut, and made their way towards the library for Runes, Scripts and Lore.

It was just Harry's luck that they passed Cho, with her usual collection of friends, heading in the other direction: "Hi Harry!" she called cheerfully as they passed.

"Hey Cho," responded Harry, before wheeling around to face Ron and Hermione, who were looking back at him wearing exaggerated expressions of wide eyed innocence.

"We didn't say a word," Hermione assured him, with her a knowing look that was becoming a little too familiar for Harry's liking.


"Welcome," greeted Madam Pince as she addressed the assembled Gryffindor and Slytherin fifth-years. "Now, I know that some of you are familiar with the library," there was a slight pause whilst everyone looked at Hermione, "but the purpose of these lessons is to ensure that you all develop the necessary research skills a practitioner of magic requires.

"Knowledge," the librarian swept her arms to indicate the serried ranks of book stacks, "is power. The Muggle stereotype of the wizard surrounded by arcane books is not unfounded. In your time here at Hogwarts, your teachers will introduce you to a variety of spells, potions, incantations, but you must understand that they are barely scratching the surface of the vast array of powers available to you.

"This is why Professor Dumbledore asked that I run this class, to show you how to locate information, and how to tease crucial information from seemingly innocuous documents."

Harry had to admit that Madam Pince had grabbed his attention with her introduction. Of course, you couldn't spend the best part of four years in Hermione's company without developing some sort of affinity with books, but he'd never stopped to seriously consider why Hogwarts had such a huge library. He glanced at his compatriots - Seamus and Dean were drifting off (not wise, given their extreme visibility, hair-wise). Most of the Slytherins had bored looks on their faces, although Malfoy seemed to be paying attention, as did, surprisingly, Pansy.

"Now, the classic mistake all students fall into is assuming that the answer to everything lies in a book of spells," the Librarian continued, "when in fact a great deal of information can be gleaned from the histories.

"Now I know what you're thinking, history is a lifeless subject..."

To Harry's mind, truer words had never been spoken, but then again, being fair, the subject was taught by a ghost. Not that he suspected Binns would've proved more animated when he'd been animate, as it were.

"...but the crucial thing," continued Madam Pince, "the absolutely crucial thing about history is that it gives you context. History explains the why in a manner that no list of potions ingredients can do.

"All well and good. But our studies will extend back even further than the histories, and into the realms of legend. You need to be able to sift the grains of truth from the tales of legend, because," and here Madam Pince paused to ensure she had their attention, "legends did not become legends because they were nice stories.

"Legends became legends because at the time of their inception, the only history was oral history. What you have to understand is that legends were our oldest ancestors' only way of passing crucial information down to us. Obviously, over time, the art of storytelling has obscured many of the messages, but it hasn't destroyed them.

"And what becomes more evident with each passing age is that our ancestors appear to have been blessed with exceptional foreknowledge as to which nuggets of information we would find particularly helpful, even crucial, as we pass through this life."

As Harry absorbed this, he began to wonder if there might be any clues as to how Voldemort might be defeated in the histories and legends held in Hogwarts' library. Dark wizards had been defeated before, Grindelwald, for example. It was a recurring cycle, he realized - Darkness rose, to then be conquered by Light. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Dark and Light, Light and Dark: the two were always in conflict, but neither was ever completely vanquished. In times of greatest evil, there was always good somewhere, carrying the fight. Similarly, in the most benign of times, the cancer of Darkness lurked, biding its time, waiting to strike.


As they sat down to the evening meal in the Great Hall, Harry and Ron fresh from Quidditch training, Professor Vellum stood up, and caught the students' attention by tapping her glass: "Excuse me, everyone, but if I might have a moment of your time."

Several hundred pairs of eyes turned to the tall, thin witch with interest. "The headmaster has kindly agreed that I may run a fencing class for the older students," a buzz of excitement greeted this statement, which she cut short, "now I know that one of my predecessors had an ill-fated attempt to start a duelling club, but this is different."

"Should hope so too!" whispered Ron; they all remembered the dismal duelling club Gilderoy Lockhart had established in their second year.

"As most of you will have realized," Vellum continued, "I pursue Muggle fencing as a hobby. Professor Dumbledore has kindly allowed me to start a Muggle fencing club for fifth-year students and above. Anyone interested should add their name to the sign up sheet outside the door - the club will meet on Tuesday evenings, at 8 o'clock. Thank you for your attention."

The hall was abuzz with frenzied whispers; Harry had immediately decided he would sign up - he remembered facing Slytherin's basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets armed with Godric Gryffindor's sword, and wanted to be much better prepared should he ever find himself in that situation again. "I'm in for that," he announced, eagerly.

"Me too," confirmed Ron, "what about you, Hermione?"

"Oh, I can't," said Hermione, "it clashes with our weekly Prefects' meeting. And besides, I'm not keen on swords."

"That's a truly pathetic excuse," Fred cut in.

"Yeah, miserable," agreed George, "I mean, we can't go 'cos it clashes with our detentions," he added, importantly.

"Only you two, sorry Lee, you three, would find it necessary to have detentions, in the plural, already mapped out," said Hermione, shaking her head.

Leaving the Great Hall, Harry and Ron waited to add their names to the sign up sheet, which had already run on to a second parchment. Even so, Harry was somewhat surprised that he was adding his name immediately below Parvati's. Somehow she'd never struck him as the fencing type.


Back in the Gryffindor Common Room, Angelina had brought down Wizard's Triv, a wizarding version of the Muggle game Trivial Pursuit. Most of the Gryffindors had joined in the game, even though the twins seemed solely intent on trying to transfigure their cheeses into mice, dislodging everyone else's counters on the board. Crookshanks glared at them.

"OK, Seamus," said Lavender, "easy one for you: who's the current Minister for Magic?"

Seamus was rolling the dice before he'd even answered: "Cornelius Fudge."

"That's stupid," commented Dean, "'cos as soon as he's out of his job, the card's out of date."

"Not these cards," explained Ginny, who was playing in a team consisting of herself, Ron and Harry, with Hermione on tap for the hard questions, "they're charmed to automatically update. There are some really evil questions in there, like Who is Potions Master at Beauxbatons Academy?"

"And how do you know that, Miss Weasley," asked Angelina, eyeing her suspiciously, "I do hope you haven't been sneaking a look at the cards..."

"Um no, of course not," said Ginny, not looking at the seventh-year Chaser. "Harry, your turn to ask; Arts and Entertainment, isn't it, Seamus?" Despite the quick change of subject, Ginny discovered that Angelina was still surveying her with a cool, fixed stare.

Although he was hopeless at the game, Harry found it an enjoyable way to spend the evening, as the trivia gave him a glimpse of the wizarding world he'd never known existed during the first eleven years of his life. He found it strangely comforting that there were magical counterparts to the Muggles' Janet and John series of reading books.

They played long into the night - the rules weren't very clear on exactly how the game ended, and no-one seemed particularly interested in winning, anyway.