Yeah, I got the timeline a bit mixed up, but it's my fic and I can do that lol.

A big thanks to my new BETA, evilqueen06. She also went back to the previous chapters, which I will be updating in the near future.

I think this is my longest chapter yet...

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"Looks like you were right Chami," Harry said as he hid in a small alcove in a side hallway in the dungeons. "Does he honestly think that no one will realize that he has a troll affinity? Who would believe that a full grown mountain troll got into Hogwarts by itself?"

"I told you he smelled of death. In my experience the people that do tend to underestimate their opponents. I suppose it's normally because they killed too many and it's gotten in their head that no one can beat them. Though, why he wouldn't realize that people around him aren't THAT stupid is beyond me. " Chami intoned from beside him, her shimmering human form glancing up and down the hallway, "Why are we down here again? I get the rush of rule breaking, but even you can't be stupid enough to try and face a mountain troll alone—even if I am here."

Harry glared at Chami before jogging down the hallway and to another alcove across from a girl's bathroom, Chami following slowly behind.

"I know that, didn't you hear that loud griffin earlier? That bushy raven from the train is holed up crying down here for some unknown reason." Just then the troll in question turned toward them, causing Harry to hide deeper in the shadows of the alcove. They watched as the troll walked into the bathroom and a scream was heard, causing Harry to fly across the hall.

"Just my luck!"

Inside the bathroom the sinks were smashed, causing water to spray everywhere. Chami and Harry just caught the sight of Hermione crawling into the stalls as the troll raised his club to smash them.

"Chami! You have to make sure she doesn't see me!" And with that he ran at the troll and jumped onto its back while Chami caused a bright flash in the general area of the Raven before turning back to the sight of her bond-mate being held up-side down with the troll swinging its club at him repeatedly.

"A little help here?" Harry asked as he again bent at the waist to avoid the club.

"I'm thinking maybe I should leave you like that, it would serve you right for rushing in here without a plan."

"Chami!"

"Fine!" Chami puffed and rolled her eyes before causing the club to levitate into the air straight out of the troll's hand. The dumb beast preceded to look and his hand the all around like he might have dropped the thing. As soon as he looked up Chami stopped the levitation spell, knocking the beast with its own weapon…several times over. To say that the troll was unconscious was an understatement. 'Oh no' Harry thought to himself 'Chami's annoyed…'

"We have to get out of her before fluffy over there sees me….or the teachers…" But it was too late, as foot steps and rushed voices could be heard coming quickly down the hallway. A panicked look crossed Harry's face as he looked for another way out besides the door.

"Come" Was all Chami said, leading him to the furthest corner with a long-suffered sigh. She then pushed him into the corner in a crouching position and proceeded to kneel in front of him and cover his entire body with her own, holding him extremely close. Even as her shimmering aura spread to him, telling him what she was doing, a blush spread across his face which was pressed into her chest.

A moment later, Professor McGonagall had come bursting into the room, closely followed by Snape, with Quirrell bringing up the rear. Quirrell took one look at the troll, let out a faint whimper, and sat quickly down on the floor, clutching his heart. Snape bent over the troll. Professor McGonagall was looking around the room (1) for some source of what had happened, when she spotted the raven clutching her eyes and hiding among some rubble where the stalls used to stand.

"Ms. Granger! What is the meaning of this?" Harry had never seen the strict transfiguration professor so angry before.

"I…*hic*…I *hic*" Was all the girl managed to get out before she glanced from the teacher to the troll and broke out sobbing.

"I think," said Dumbledore, who had just appeared out of seemingly no where, "that the girl may need a calming draft while Poppy looks over her before we will get any answer out of her about what events took place." With that the Headmaster gracefully moved around the troll and scooped Granger up, with surprising strength for someone his age, and left with just a word to the other three to "Please clean up a bit."

"Harry," Chami got his attention away from the other teachers and onto herself "Do you see the bite mark on the dark one's leg? It smells of dog, but look at the size of it? And there is some mal-intent aimed at him from garlic boy over there…"

"What does it mean?" Harry wondered why she was pointing this out to him at this time.

"I'm not sure just yet, but I intend to find out, and you will be helping me."

It seemed like hours before there was a window of opportunity in which Chami managed to sneak them out past the three teachers, but they were able to and were back in the dorms, tucked into Harry's bed before Snape returned for a bed check.

"What will the Granger girl remember?" Harry hoped she hadn't seen himself or Chami in the midst of everything—that would be bad.

"Everything she could hear or sense, but she was blinded at the time. As far as she knows the troll hit one of the wall sconces and some oil hit here eyes, causing her to be unable to open them—she probably just heard the club flying through the air and hitting nothing for a time, followed by it hitting something several times and the troll falling. She might think that the troll was blinded as well, and hopefully the teachers will believe that the troll hurt itself."

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By the next morning the school was abuzz with the rumors of what had happened—though most were over exaggerated and incorrect. It seemed that the central point of the rumors were that a first-year student was in the bathroom that the troll destroyed, but from there everything went in different directions from the student dying to defeating the troll single-handedly.

Classes passed with all houses losing many points. Harry didn't see Chami from after breakfast until classes ended, which was unusual for her. As he was working on homework in his dorm, she crawled into bed next to him and fell asleep.

The rumors continued for a time, but faded well before the Yule holidays came. It was seemingly a shock that a Slytherin would be staying at school over the holidays, Harry having no interest in returning to the Durselys. The only students staying over the holidays were himself, one raven, a puff, and a rather large group of red-headed griffins.

"So your keepers really can't stand you, can they Potter?" Malfoy sneered as he watched Harry write his name on the holiday list.

"It's more that I can't stand them, really the worst kind they are." Harry wouldn't give much away, let them all think that he just though himself better that the Dursely's, not that he was abused most of his life.

Malfoy crossed his arms and pouted about not getting a rise out of him, though you would think that he would have given up by now.

Nott glanced over at him, before looking back at his plate.

"You know it's almost unheard of for a Slytherin to stay over the Hols, I'd invite you to my place but my father…" Nott trailed off, though he had only been speaking loud enough for Harry and Blaise to hear.

"Why not come to my place Potter? My parents still don't believe that you're my roommate, so it'll give me a chance to show them! You can come too Nott, if you like!" Blaise was good at getting away from the topic of Theo's father, as it was overly obvious that something was going on there similar to Harry's past with the Dursely's.

"Thanks for the offer mate, but I think I'll stick to staying here for this year." He had a feeling that Chami had something planned.

"Alright if you're sure….But you better come next year!"

The rest of the meal passed with discussions of the homework assigned over the holidays, and the unfairness of it.

Soon Harry was waving good bye to his friends as the train moved away from the station.

"So what do you plan on doing now?" Chami spun around once before sitting next to him.

"I'm probably going to try and get all of my homework done, so I won't have to worry about it around Christmas." Chami gave him a blank stare. "What?"

"You have no parents to watch over you, no teacher looking over your shoulder during classes, and you're going to do homework? Have I taught you nothing? You still haven't seen half the places in the school that I've told you about! And that's beside the fact that we both know you could do the work in a coma!"

"Well, the faster I get it done, the more time I have to explore, right?" Chami stared at him blankly before rolling her eyes and walking away, her tail swaying behind her.

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Harry was sitting in the library when Chami appeared in front of him, bouncing and ranting about coming to see what she found.

"Harry you just must see! They are so rare; it's an intriguing sight, come on!"

"Why are you so excited? Will you stop if I come along?" He started packing up his books, preparing to follow Chami wherever it is she wanted to take him.

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"Isn't the third-floor off limits? Is it a good idea to be heading here in the middle of the day?" Chami rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the hand, the shimmer that surrounded her flowing over his body with a slight tingling.

"Don't be such a coward, where's your sense of adventure? I came up here looking for what may have bitten shadow man, and I found something I've only ever heard of before! You must see it, you may never have the chance to again!" They had reached the end of the corridor, and Chami waved her hand causing the lock on the door to click and the door itself to fly open.

Chami dragged him into the room to a sight that caused him to freeze up—a very large three-headed dog lay in front of them, two heads sleeping, the third staring directly at them with the one eye it had cracked open. The third head caused Harry to realize that they were no longer shimmering, and he immediately moved behind Chami.

Harry startled as he got the vague image of Chami walking into the room alone, which then skipped to her leaving and some muffled words about returning soon.

"Aren't they beautiful? Someone here must have them guarding whatever is under that trap door, but as long as we aren't trying to get at that, I think we'll be ok, they seem to like me!" By this point all three heads were awake and standing, with goofy dog-like grins on their faces. Chami walked up to them and started patting the nose of the one on the left, and although she was rather tiny in comparison, it seemed he still enjoyed it.

Harry slowly made his way over to her, freezing as the three heads moved to sniff him, the middle one nudging him with its nose, causing him to fall over. He laughed and proceeded to pet the over-sized Cerberus for several minutes before Chami declared it time to leave.

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"Now how in the world did you find that thing?"

"Simple really, I was trying to discover where that injury on the dark man came from." At some point in time Chami had stopped calling Snape "greasy" and started calling him "Dark", Harry didn't understand why, but he wasn't going to question her on it.

"Anyway, I saw him hovering near that area, he was having an…intriguing conversation with garlic man and so I took a look, as they had mentioned the place in their conversation."

"You have an odd sense of logic. Now come on, its past curfew and I need to get back to my work; I only have one essay left."

"You just take all the fun out of everything; I thought you would enjoy Fluffy!" Chami morphed into her human form, though Harry was sure it was only so she could cross her arms and huff.

"I'm not saying I didn't enj…wait…that thing is named Fluffy? Who would name a three-headed giant dog Fluffy?"

"Why, Hagrid of course! At least, that's what Fluffy told me!" Chami lost her irritated look and started skipping alongside him.

"I swear, every since you come into my life things just keep getting more and more weird…"

"Harry!" Chami stopped dead with a mock-serious look on her face "You shouldn't swear!" And with that she slipped into the common room ahead of him.

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Soon Christmas was fast approaching, only three days away, which had Harry again wandering the halls with some parchment, jotting down a rough map noting where certain secret passages were and such—he wasn't completely sure why he wanted a map of the school, but figured that it would somehow come in handy…

He was in the area just past the library, marking down some of the unused classrooms and their approximate size (not that size really mattered, most of the school's rooms where magically expanded). Coming to the last classroom in that particular hall, Harry was distracted by a large mirror in the middle of the room. For some reason Harry was drawn to it, but for now he just looked from afar.

Soon, he noticed some carvings along the top of the mirror, and got close enough to read them.

"Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi… What language is that? It's not French or Spanish, definitely not any of the Asian languages, and none of the words seem to be in Latin….So what?" Harry gazed at the mirror trying to figure out what it could possibly say, as he was sure it would prove if the mirror could be trusted of not.

"Chami? Do you know any language that goes Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi?" As Harry waited for a response he circled around to the back of the mirror, looking for more clues, but still keeping his distance.

"It's English" Was all Chami gave as a response.

"What?" Harry furrowed his brown before looking at the words again, and he finally saw it "Oh! I show not your face but your hearts desire, that's…not as interesting as I thought it would be…"

"Don't get to attached to what you see, if you start to waste away in front of that mirror I might just let you."

"I haven't even looked into it yet."

"Just be mindful." Chami's tone was completely serious for once.

Moving around to the front again, Harry stood in front of the mirror, and was shocked to see what the mirror showed, he even did a double take behind himself to make sure it was just what the mirror was showing him. Looking back at the reflection, he stood in the center, with Chami sitting by his feet, which wasn't too weird, but behind him stood several people, most of them with their faces in shadow.

Directly behind him stood a man that had to be his father, and on his other side a woman with flame red hair and his eyes, who must me his mother. Next to Lily was a man, whose face was in shadow, wearing all black with shoulder-length black hair. His arms were crossed in front of him, but he gave off an air that he was kinder than his stance showed. On the other side next to his father were two men, both their faces in shadow, one with neatly kept light brown hair, the other with shoulder length black hair that fell in loose wavy curls. Behind these figures were three completely in shadow, drifting closer and further as if waiting for permission to come forward.

Harry glanced at his watch and was surprised to find that somehow three hours had passed, causing him to turn and ran back to the common room, barely making it in time for curfew. Christmas was in two days, and they had the Christmas feast, but maybe he could sneak away to the mirror tomorrow…

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The next morning, as soon as Harry woke, he traversed the hallways marked on his crude map, returning to the room with the mirror. It was still dark outside by the time he got there, but he didn't much care. Harry sank down to sit on the floor in front of the mirror. There was nothing to stop him from staying here all night with his family, nothing at all.

Except…

"So…back again, Mr. Potter?"

Harry felt as though his insides had turned to ice. He looked behind him. Sitting on one of the desks by the wall was none other than Albus Dumbledore. Harry must have walked straight past him, so desperate to get to the mirror he hadn't noticed him.

"…I didn't see you, sir."

"Strange how nearsighted some things can make you," said Dumbledore, and Harry was relieved to see that he was smiling.

"So," said Dumbledore, slipping off the desk to sit on the floor with Harry, "you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised."

"I didn't know it was called that, Sir."

"But I expect you've realized by now what it does?"

"It…well…it shows me my family…"

"Can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?"

"The inscription…it shows our heart's desire?

"Yes, the happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror that is; he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.

"The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, if I'm not mistaken the elves have baked some delicious pastries for breakfast this morning, why not run off and get some.

Harry stood up.

"Sir - Professor Dumbledore? Can I ask you something?"

"Obviously, you've just done so," Dumbledore smiled. "You may ask me one more thing, however."

"What do you see when you look in the mirror?"

"I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks."

Harry stared.

"One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Last Christmas had come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books."

With that the headmaster gracefully left the room, while Harry shook his head, somehow he didn't believe what the headmaster had told him, but maybe he should send Chami to get one more gift…

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"Harry…" A soft voice floated through the dreamscape, bringing him just a tad closer to wakefulness.

"Harry…" Wait….this was….

"Harry…" Familiar….

"HARRY!" with the last one Harry woke with a fluffy ball of white jumping on him, the first thing to come into his vision a set of purple eyes.

"What!" He answered out loud, too annoyed to speak in his mind properly. Chami shifted to her human form, hopping off the bed and putting her hands on her hips.

"Don't 'What' me, it's Christmas! You have gifts! Now come…on!" and with that Chami ripped the blanket off his persons, exposing him to the frigid dungeon air.

"Hey!" Harry quickly rapped his arms around himself, going for his dressing gown to get a bit more warmth than what his thick pajamas offered. Chami was skipping to the door, but she turned back to glance at him.

"You know, it's much warmer in the common room, you should come down, the elves even brought coco!" And with that, she disappeared through the door, probably to munch on whatever else the elves had brought was. Heaving a sigh, Harry climbed out of bed, shivering at the cold floor and quickly tossing his socks from last night back on his feet, before heading to the common room to the sight of a over-sized tree (really, who needs a tree THAT big for one person?) with about a dozen presents under it.

"I though the gifts were supposed to appear at the foot of my bed…"

"Yes, well as you are the only little snake here this fine winter season, I convinced the elves that showed up this morning to put the tree to use, rather than your trunk. More festive if you ask me." Harry just rolled his eyes before tossing a silver wrapped package at Chami and grabbing a cup of coco. Chami caught the present with one hand before giving him a huge smile and tearing the wrapping off, only to find some Ferrero Rocher chocolates causing her to squeal happily.

"How'd you get these here, I've been to all the villages within ten miles, they all say they can't get muggle candy!"

"I have my ways…" apparently Chami didn't know about the muggle mailing system within Hogwarts.

"Well, go on! Open yours!" Chami was bouncing on her seat, waiting for Harry to dig into his presents. Harry rolled his eyes.

"Aren't you supposed to be the more mature one of the two of us?" He questioned as he stood and moved closer to the tree. As Harry tore open his first present, some chocolate frogs from Theo, he questioned Chami on the gifts he had asked her to get for several people.

"Did you get those socks for the Headmaster on time?"

"Yes, but I still don't see why you wanted to give him wool socks, it seems a bit strange to me." Chami picked up the book on Quidditch he had just opened from Blaise and started flipping through it.

"He found me by the mirror the other day, and I asked him what he saw—I really doubt him holding a pair of wool socks was what he saw, but I figured I would indulge his eccentricities a bit."

"Yes, well I hope he likes them—I just chose the most colorful and atrocious pairs in the store, so they should fit his taste. I also got the dark one some rare ingredients, so he may think they're from you."

"What? Why?" Harry hadn't asked her to get anything for the other professors…

"Because I can't well say they were from me! He'll think he has some kind of creepy stalker or something. They are a bit expensive, so I just wrote a note in your hand staying you grew them yourself, since I chose the ones that even you couldn't kill."

"Any other teachers I should expect odd looks from?" Harry reached held up a green sweater with a large H on the front, the note saying it was from the Weasley mother…odd…

"I sent them all something to do with their subjects, nothing too extraordinary, some special seeds for Sprout, a rare book for Flitwick, and a transfiguration stone for McGonagall, you know, simple stuff." Harry gave her a glare as he reached for his last present, how was he supposed to explain that stuff?

"Oh!" Chami exclaimed as he opened his last gift, some sort of material that fell to the floor almost like liquid. "Who gave you that? An actual invisibility cloak, I heard of those and always wanted to know if they were better than my charm…"

"I don't know who gave it..." Harry picked it up, spotting a small piece of parchment. "It just says 'Your father left this in my possession some years ago, and asked that I return it to you. Use it well.' Huh…weird…"

"Think of all the mischief you can get away with now!" Chami was bouncing in her seat, causing Harry to roll his eyes.

"You do realize that you do the same thing as the cloak?" He tossed it around his shoulders and examined himself, or the lack there of. "Somehow I think your charm is better because, well I don't know…yours masks sound and magic, not just the ability to see the person?"

"Be that as it may, just a muffling charm and it will be great! And you won't need me to glomp you the entire time your under it!" Harry couldn't help at smile at her, her excite being contagious.

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For those of you who don't know, a "glomp" is a type of running hug, known mostly at anime conventions where fans glomp those dressed as their favorite characters. I've used the term as a description for normal hugs, as have many of my friends. In this case Chami is saying "I'll have to have my arms around you the entire time I use my invisibility charm" and we all know she would be a bit annoying if she had to do that

Harry Potter SoS pg 141

There is a good portion of this story from the actual book, the part with the mirror and Albus, but I didn't put a marker there…I just bolded it…and I was a bit lazy to completely re-write the scene, but since it fit, I felt it was fine, though it does have several changes.