It transpired that the book club's first meeting was just about meeting one another – there were about thirty students present – and then discussing what they were going to be reading before the next one in a week. There were plenty of suggestions, with Harry deliberating for a long time before opting to raise Equal Rites as an option and Neville instead suggesting a wizarding novel Harry wasn't familiar with.
Hermione didn't come to a conclusion about what to give as an example, which she was told was all right – she could come up with one later – and a quick spell to pick one randomly landed on the book suggested by a Hufflepuff Fifth-Year called Around Africa By Broom.
It wasn't a fiction book, which was about roughly a coin-toss based on what everyone had suggested, and it was obviously a book about someone magical. That was basically the point, finding new books and reading them, and the result left Harry quite pleased – though admittedly wondering whether the school library really had thirty copies of Around Africa By Broom.
The third week at Hogwarts wasn't quite as eventful as the second. No duels developed involving Harry, no important objects were lost (and Neville was able to make good use of his Remembrall now he knew how to do it) and relatives of Harry's friends failed to show up out of nowhere for purposes of natural history.
In fact, somewhat to Harry's surprise, the routine of class at Hogwarts actually settled down into a routine. Their Charms lessons gradually elaborated on the theory of Charms, their Transfiguration lessons continued slowly expanding their repertoire of Transfigurations, Potions class continued to involve making Potions (to nobody's surprise except for perhaps Neville, who entered every lesson expecting to make some horrible mistake) and homework joined the schedule at one end and was completed at the other.
Harry found a copy of the Around Africa book in the Ravenclaw library and read it on Tuesday evening before Astronomy class, finding the style a bit odd at times but enjoying the mention of Translation Toffee (to cope with all the different languages the witch met along the way) and how the tent she carried in her backpack every day and set up whenever she couldn't find somewhere to stay was 'only two bedrooms'.
"...doubtless you wish to know why it is that some Charms last only a very short time, or only while the witch or wizard is concentrating on it, and why others last a very long time indeed!" Professor Flitwick lectured, a week or so into October.
He waved his wand, and four pieces of chalk rose up to sketch out diagrams. "It is because of the pattern of the magic involved. A charm which is to last only a very short time is provided with a certain amount of magic and then that is all there is, and the spell is not tied off – it's a bit like a balloon with the nozzle left open, because it goes shooting off and it's very fast while it's using it up, but once it's done then there's no air left. An example of this would be the Stunning charm."
Professor Flitwick then drew a slightly different diagram. "The second type of charm is one where you give it a task, and enough magic to complete the task. This is very similar, except that if you do not give enough magic it will not work instead of simply being underpowered. This is like the Summoning charm, and most common spells of this type, if cast correctly, will call upon enough magic to actually complete the task."
Harry wrote busily with one paw, using the other to brace himself against the desk. He did his best to include the diagrams, as well, because they weren't quite the same as the ones in Magical Theory and these seemed to explain the whole thing better.
"Then there is the kind of charm where it lasts until the wizard stops casting it," the Charms teacher said. "Such as the Levitation charm. These spells are constantly using up magic to do what they do, but they are also constantly being resupplied with magic."
Professor Flitwick paused, and winked. "Of course, if you are using one of these spells in a duel, you should watch out! The spell can be ended, like puncturing a balloon, and all the magic will escape – and if you lose concentration this can happen, and it will stop it happening."
That point made, he moved on to the next type. "Then there is what is also known as the enchantment, which is using a Charm on a permanent or mostly permanent basis. This is often much harder than other types of Charms, and it involves pushing a certain amount of magic into the object and tying the spell off. It is then like a balloon which has had a knot tied in it, so it will stay there until enough magic escapes that the spell stops working. But since the knot is tied, this can take a very long time – it depends on how much magic has been put in and how good the knot is."
Harry raised his paw, and Professor Flitwick called on him. "Yes, Mr. Potter?"
"So does that mean that you could change a spell that's one type so it's another type?" he asked. "Such as… making a summoning enchantment?"
"A very good question!" Flitwick said, delighted. "Two points to Gryffindor, I think! Yes, that is very possible, Mr. Potter – you could do it either by changing how you cast the spell, or by making it a different spell, though both are quite difficult to do and the second would most likely require Arithmantic calculations to see how to make it work."
He waved his wand again, and The Flying Book Of Flying came rising up to the level of his desk.
"This is an example of quite a simple charm that you'll all be learning in the next few weeks, which is Wingardium Levoisa when cast like that," Professor Flitwick explained. "But when it is cast as an enchantment, it has quite a different incantation and it will last upwards of fifty years – though it is also much more difficult to cast successfully, and a wizard who gets the spell wrong may find themselves levitating five feet in the air until they can break their own spell. And, you see, a simple Finite will not work nearly so well on an enchantment, because the spell is already contained so well!"
Terry Boot raised his hand this time, and asked whether there was a kind of enchantment that didn't run down at all.
"I fear that is not for me to tell, Mr. Boot," Professor Flitwick said. "That would be the provenance of Professor Babbling's Runes class – the making of truly permanent spells is largely a historical technique from before the wide use of the wand, because a witch or wizard with a wand can do almost anything better than a rune crafter. It is easier to re-cast the enchantment once every so often and live with that than to spend the effort it would take to get all the runes just so. But it is a fine question, Mr. Boot – two points to Ravenclaw for spotting that gap!"
One morning Hedwig brought them all five copies of a four-page monograph, described as being by Charles Weasley with assistance from 'H. Granger, N. Longbottom, H. Potter, D. Thomas, R. Weasley'. It summarized a lot of what they'd discussed, though not all of it, and also mentioned how Charlie had followed up their conversation from September by doing some experiments on dragons in the Romanian preserve to see whether some of Harry's unusual properties were truly unusual or just the result of his upbringing.
There was a footnote about the response of a Ukranian Ironbelly fed a pile of leaves slathered in blood, which had resulted in the dragon in question being quite sick, and another about an incident where a young Romanian Longhorn about ten feet in length had merely left dents in a metal plate when induced to bite it. Then there was a spirited attempt to see how spells interacted with dragons of the appropriate size, which did confirm that dragon wing could block magic; the subsection also apologized to one Adrian Sala who had been mildly scorched during this testing.
"This is pretty cool," Dean said, looking at the second page; his sketches of Harry's wings and mouth and tail had all been enchanted, and they moved with wings-flapping and mouth-yawning and tail-twitching as he watched. The drawing of Harry's body as a whole moved as well, loping along before taking flight, and it swept off the page entirely before flying back around and landing again. "I wonder if I can show this to my mum."
"She knows about magic already, right?" Ron asked. "Got to to send you here. I think that's allowed, as long as you're careful about it; we've got a second cousin who's an accountant, but she's not allowed to bring her husband or her kids to any of the family meet-ups so it's kind of awkward."
Dean nodded. "Yeah, my mum and dad know. I don't think my sisters do though…"
"I can't really imagine what that's like," Neville said. "Everyone I've ever met has known about magic, and Long – and my house is big enough that my grandmother and my great-uncle can use magic without worrying about showing off."
"I think that must be the opposite of what happened to me, then," Harry noted. "Maybe it's because I flew from home to school and back, and – well, basically everywhere – but as far as I can remember Hagrid was the very first person who could actually see me as a dragon."
"There's got to be quite a lot of Muggles who know, surely," was Hermione's contribution. "Everyone who's muggle-born, or muggle-raised, their parents or caretakers would know, and a lot more people are half-blood. And that's not even getting into the people who are squibs."
"I'm almost a squib," Neville mumbled.
"Come on, Nev, you're not," Ron told him, clapping him on the shoulder. "Unless I am as well, and Seamus. We have trouble with the class work, that's different."
"Oi!" Seamus grumbled.
"Well, for Seamus it's just that he doesn't bother," Ron amended.
"Oi!" Seamus said again.
"If you don't want them joking about you, do better in class," Parvati advised, waving her hand.
Two days later, Harry was called up to the Headmaster's office in the afternoon. The password, it turned out, was 'Cauldron Cake', which Harry hadn't even considered and he had to admit that that kind of password was certainly effective.
The inside of the office was quite amazing. There were portraits all over the walls, as magical as the rest of them in Hogwarts, and little silvery things spinning and whistling on a desk behind where the Headmaster was sat. There was a large bird with brilliant red feathers and a golden tail, as well – what could only be a phoenix, looking at Harry with as much interest as the dragon had for him.
"Ah, Mr. Potter, it's so good to see you!" Professor Dumbledore said, with a cheerful smile. "I am glad you could take time out of your busy schedule to meet me."
Slightly puzzled by that comment, Harry approached the chair that Professor Dumbledore indicated and sat in it. It was big enough, and soft enough, that he could sort of recline back into it if he was careful to furl his wings and arch his back.
"Would you like a sherbet lemon, Mr. Potter?" Professor Dumbledore suggested, proffering a bowl, and Harry took one between his talons. He wasn't at all sure that Professor Dumbledore was what he'd been expecting, even with what he'd said at the Sorting Feast, but there wasn't any reason to refuse a kind offer of a sweet.
Popping it into his mouth, Harry rolled it around on his tongue. It tasted all right, at first, and Dumbledore smiled at him – then the hard case released the sherbet, which fizzed on his tongue, and Harry coughed in surprise before sneezing out a bright yellow fireball which rose ten feet into the air.
Drawing breath to apologize, Harry then sneezed again, and again – each gasped achoo sending a ball of flame into the air, and making the portraits all run for cover outside their frames.
One of the fireballs went towards the bookshelf, and a blur of what looked like glass intercepted it – exploding into a dozen pieces, then reforming quickly into a small glass alembic on Professor Dumbledore's desk.
When the fit had finally subsided, Harry cautiously took a deep breath and then let it hiss out. "I'm… so sorry, Professor-"
"Dear me, no, no harm has been done, my dear boy," Professor Dumbledore assured him. "And, please – Dumbledore will serve quite well. When one has so many titles as I it can be wearying to hear them all the time."
Dumbledore (as Harry was to call him) inspected the bowl of sherbet lemons, waving his wand a little, then put them away in his desk. "It seems we have finally found a substance which defeats your formidable constitution, Mr. Potter – the common-or-garden sherbet lemon."
"Harry's fine," Harry requested, still feeling embarrassed about his overreaction.
"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced. "We are getting on like a house on fire – though, of course, I would prefer my office remain unignited."
He smiled faintly. "Now, I believe that Rubeus has told me that you would like to go off the grounds to visit a Muggle town. Under normal circumstances, of course, students cannot leave the castle or grounds without special permission. Would you be able to explain to me why it is you want to visit a Muggle town?"
"Mostly that I'd like to get some more books," Harry told him.
"Books?" Dumbledore repeated, still smiling faintly. "I have the opposite problem. I have entirely too many books, and entirely too many people think the best thing to get me for my birthday or for Christmas is another book. I've had to resort to letting Madam Pince steal them from me in exchange for a negative library fine."
The idea of having more books than he knew what to do with was a nice one to Harry, who couldn't really see why he'd give them away – unless maybe he had several copies of the same book? Or if it was to friends, perhaps, which was almost like still having them yourself.
"They're books that the library doesn't have," Harry explained. "I looked, and the Ravenclaw library has some wizarding novels, but there aren't any Muggle novels."
"Ah, I see!" Dumbledore exclaimed. "Well, that seems like an entirely admirable reason to me, Harry, but I will have to ask you a few questions. Firstly, you are doubtless aware that it is not possible to Apparate inside Hogwarts, even assuming you have learned to do so, and secondly that first-year students such as yourself are not permitted their own broomsticks?"
Harry felt like he was starting to get a hang of how Dumbledore thought, now, and spread his wings. "I was thinking of flying? Though I'm not sure where the closest town is."
"Yes, I see," Dumbledore said, nodding along. "I'm sure that there will be a map somewhere – not of Hogwarts, for sadly Hogwarts is Unplottable and so no map can show where it is, but of the area in which it is believed that Hogwarts probably is."
He considered for a moment. "Yes, and I believe that if you have managed to avoid being caught as a dragon for several years in the middle of Surrey then I am sure that you will be able to avoid being caught as a dragon for a few visits to a Scottish bookshop. Very well, then, Harry, I see no reason that you should not – so long as you do avoid being caught, that is, and so long as it does not affect your school work."
"I'm sure it will affect my school work, Sir," Harry replied. "I enjoy reading books, and so I'll feel better."
"An excellent point, Harry," Dumbledore smiled. "Oh, and before you go, one more matter."
Harry tilted his head.
"Forgive an old man for his lack of memory, but did you say precisely how it was that you came to be a dragon?" Dumbledore asked.
"I don't really remember," Harry answered. "It was a long time ago."
"Of course, of course," Dumbledore agreed readily. "I fully understand. And do you feel happy as a dragon?"
"It's how I've been for years, Sir," Harry told him. "It's hard to imagine how I'd get on without wings, or a tail, or any of the other dragoney bits. I think that even if I could be turned into a human I probably wouldn't want to."
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "Thank you, Harry. If you wish to talk in future, my office door is always open."
He paused. "Actually, my office door is usually shut, but I am sure that Professors McGonagall or Flitwick will be happy to provide you with the password. If not, then please do send me an owl."
Armed with Dumbledore's permission, Harry sourced a map from the library – which took twenty minutes of looking before finally turning up an old Ordnance Survey map from about 1953 – and deduced that his best bet was probably Fort William, a town located near what looked like a quite distinctive area of coastline.
With that out of the way, Harry could plan his journey. Taking his backpack was obvious, as was leaving his school robes behind to blend in, and with how Dean had asked him to be present at the Sunday morning Art club as a model that meant the only date that would really work was the Saturday – a day with no classes and no other commitments.
That still left the biggest concern, which was that Harry actually had no Muggle money left aside from a few ten-pence pieces that had been excess from his railway sandwich. The bag of gold in his trunk was quite well-stocked, but it was all Wizarding money and he doubted that a bookshop owner in Fort William would take Sickles. (Or, for that matter, a sweet store.)
After thinking about the puzzle overnight, and through the morning Potions lesson, Harry decided the best thing to do would be to ask Percy Weasley. The Gryffindor prefect had taken his mistake seriously and been spending quite a lot of time in the Gryffindor common room, usually working on some essay or other and adjusting a carefully-written timetable to suit – but still there to be asked. In fact, he was spending so much time there or in the library that Harry was sure he was either skipping classes or not sleeping, but Percy didn't seem especially tired or flustered so he assumed the older boy had it handled.
When Harry asked the question, after lunch on Friday, Percy put down his quill (he'd been working on columns of equations which looked like they were probably Arithmancy) and thought about it for several seconds.
"So you have plenty of galleons, but you need pounds," he said. "Well, you can't really go to Gringotts, so – I know."
He looked up at the clock to check the time. "I can't remember Professor Burbage's class hours, but if you check her office every hour or so you should catch her. She's the Muggle Studies professor – if anyone in the castle has pounds, it'll be her. Look on the south side of the fourth floor, her office is opposite the statue of Winston Churchill."
Harry blinked. "I didn't know Winston Churchill was a wizard."
"Oh, he wasn't," Percy said. "But she is the Muggle Studies professor."
"Are you sure this is a good idea, mate?" Ron asked, as Harry waited in the common room for another chance to see if Professor Burbage was in. "You might be seen!"
"I haven't been seen before," Harry replied. "And that was flying over London."
"Oh, yeah, that odd thing where Muggles can't see you," Ron remembered. "But still… are you sure you'll be able to get back to Hogwarts? It's kind of hard to find, that's the point."
"Yeah, that is a good point," Harry admitted. "Well… I'm pretty good at finding my way around, or I think I am, but maybe if there's magic..."
He thought about it, then smiled suddenly. "Wait here," he asked Ron, and loped upstairs – dodging around a sixth-year on his way – before sliding to a halt next to his bed. He dug into his trunk to locate a quill, two pieces of parchment and two envelopes, then hurried back downstairs.
Rejoining Ron, he wrote out a quick letter about picking up some sweets to try, then folded it up in an envelope and addressed it to Albus Dumbledore.
"Here's the idea," he explained, giving Ron the other envelope. "If I'm not back by, um… three in the afternoon? You send me a letter asking if I'm okay. Hedwig can find me, then I can send this letter to Dumbledore and follow her home."
"Brilliant!" Ron decided. "Owls can definitely get to Hogwarts – that's brilliant, mate!"
"I'll do my best not to need it, though," Harry added.
This time, his meeting with Professor Burbage actually happened, and after explaining the situation she was happy to help. In exchange for ten galleons, she gave him fifty pounds of Muggle money from her collection – which Harry remembered was about what the conversion was – and asked him to write her a quick report on how the expedition went for her to read.
Navigation, destination, money and permission all sorted out, Harry spent the last few hours of Friday evening making sure all his homework was properly done and then got an early night – planning to set off just after an early breakfast, to give himself as much time as possible.
Then it rained all day.
Unwilling to risk a flight to go and buy books in the sweeping, crackling thunderstorm which lashed the grounds of Hogwarts, Harry instead spent the day finishing the latest book club assignment – a Wizarding novel from about seventy years ago, about a family with a witch mother and a muggle father living in France during the First World War and trying to cope with the need for secrecy against their hopes that the father of the family would come back alive.
It was a bit depressing in places, but it was a good story, and with the storm lashing the windows of Gryffindor Tower – and Ron and Dean arguing over the difference between Impedimenta and Flipendo in their Defence homework, and Hermione practising a spell she'd looked up, and Neville quietly reading the same book in an armchair – Harry found that he didn't really mind that his plan had been spoiled by the weather.
He could always go shopping next weekend, after all.
Days began to go past faster, lessons and homework and free time slipping away to the flow of the week. Sunday saw Harry posing for art club (though the Prefect who was present managed to convince the club not to pressure Harry into posing with a miniature suit of armour) and then the discussion in book club – along with the next book being assigned, which was a non-fiction book called Centaurs of Caledonia about the long history of the centaurs of Scotland.
Monday's lessons had Professor McGonagall telling them all about the principle of similarity with a spell transfiguration, and how a poorly cast transfiguration spell would leave the result having some of the properties of the original object – while a spell cast well with good visualization could customize the result quite far from how it had started. The example used was turning a teacup into a rat, where a not-very-successful casting would leave the rat patterned exactly the same as the teacup while an excellent casting could result in a rat patterned however one chose.
The week's Herbology classes saw them learning about the ways to tell apart soils – some magical plants preferring sandier soils and others more inclined to the loamy, or to stranger combinations – and which went better with what kinds of mulch. It was a mucky lesson, but needed, and as Harry washed his claws after one he smiled at how much Neville was enjoying the course.
History of Magic was focused on the Statute of Secrecy at the moment, about the period when witches and wizards went into hiding, and it made Harry wonder what would happen if someone tried to burn him at the stake. (Based on how easily it was that he could touch things in a hot frying pan, he thought it was probably 'not much'.)
Then there was Astronomy, where they were talking about how it was that the Moon could orbit the Earth but the Earth orbit the Sun and the two of them look so similar, while all the other things that orbited the Sun looked so much smaller.
Defence Against the Dark Arts was still the weakest course as far as Harry was concerned, which was a pity because the subject matter was interesting, and talking with Second-Years and Third-Years gave him some idea about what the classes had been like under the last two teachers. It seemed as though Quirrell was actually an improvement in terms of teaching quality, though the other two had been easier to understand.
The Flying Lessons were moving on to some of the more advanced bits, about how to make a broom dive quickly or dive slowly, and Harry's own project of stabilizing himself mid-flight when using both a broom and his own wings was – slowly – advancing. Madam Hooch had taken him aside after the last class and told him that she had an idea to try out in future, which was a good sign, and even Neville was now confident enough to fly in a somewhat wobbly circle. He'd never be a Quidditch player, or he wouldn't be unless he improved in a really big way and got into actually enjoying flying, but he was doing well enough to get by.
As for Potions, they were going about as well as they had been. Professor Snape was quite ready to tell people off for even the most minor of mistakes, but Daphne and Harry were forming quite a good team. Ron and Dean had occasional trouble with some of the instructions, and Harry had winced at the tongue-lashing his friends had got when they'd mixed up the ingredients of an antidote to Manticore venom.
Admittedly, since the cauldron had trembled and sent a plume of acrid greenish smoke rising up to billow off the ceiling, it had been fairly obvious something had gone wrong. Apparently they'd been mixed up because the instructions on the board had told them to add the essence of giant hogweed before the puffskein fur, while the book instructions had had it afterwards, and the result had been adding it twice and a small explosion.
Then it was another Saturday, this time with the air crisp and clear, and Harry finally set off for Fort William.
After about an hour of flying, most of it higher than the nearby mountains (or were they hills? Harry knew that above a certain height a hill turned into a mountain, but he didn't have an altitude measurer) Harry landed on a peak overlooking a broad inlet and dug the map out of his bag.
It looked like the inlet was the right shape, though the town nearby was quite a bit bigger than he expected Fort William to look based on the map. That was probably because of how old the map was, though, and Harry double-checked that there were no other similar-looking inlets nearby before putting the map away again.
Spreading his wings and walking forwards, past the crest of the hill(?) and towards the steep drop-off, Harry waited until the strong breeze blowing up the side of the slope was making his wings ripple and crackle before flexing them and taking flight.
Rather than immediately descend down into Fort William, he instead used the rising air to gain height while he still had an idea of the direction Hogwarts was in. It wasn't as easy as he'd hoped, and he had to flap quite hard once the rising air had gone, but ultimately Harry spotted Hogwarts castle against the horizon before giving it up and gliding back down towards the town he'd flown so far to visit.
His wings ached a bit, but no more than they did after he'd flown from Little Whingeing to London, and he was expecting a few hours' rest before he had to fly back.
A dragon landed on the high street, and nobody noticed.
Furling his wings, Harry looked around – confirming that nobody was staring at him – then hopped to the side of the pedestrian street and started looking up and down to see what there was. He could see a lot of outdoors-equipment shops, and food shops, and more than a few places which were all about being Scottish, but his first real focus was to see if there was a bookshop… or, failing that, a library.
Then… a sweetshop sounded nice, to get something for Professor Dumbledore as a thank-you.
"Afternoon," someone nodded, stopping to talk to Harry and adjusting a massive backpack. "You planning on heading up Ben Nevis?"
"Not really," Harry replied. "I don't do all that much walking. I'm just visiting."
"Well, to each his own," the hiker replied amiably.
As the tourist walked off, Harry took a bite out of his sandwich.
His shopping was more-or-less done. He'd only spent about half the money in his bag, largely because he didn't want to use it all up on the first trip, but he had picked up a few new books along with copies of books he'd read before but hadn't had the money left to get before coming to Hogwarts.
The biggest prize had been the totally unexpected discovery of a brand new Pern book, All the Weyrs of Pern, which was carefully wrapped up in his backpack along with his other purchases and inside a pair of plastic bags in case there was any rain. That alone had made the trip worth it, and Harry occasionally had to stop his tail twitching in pleasure when it bumped into chairs or bushes and made them move.
After those, and also picking up a Muggle astronomy book in case it helped with Astronomy class, the other thing Harry had done was to go to a sweet shop. A lot of the shops on the high street that sold sweets sold specifically Highland sweets, things like fudge, that Harry guessed were mostly meant for tourists… but a bit of searching had revealed a much more conventional sweet shop, and Harry had picked up a dozen different things that sounded interesting.
The rest of the sandwich vanished, along with the rubbish (Harry had never really seen the point in unwrapping a sandwich, because to him it just had two layers instead of one) and Harry nodded his head a little as he went through the list of things he wanted to do.
He'd been to the book shop, and to the sweet shop as well… he'd had something for lunch, and looked in on a couple of other ships but hadn't got anything there.
That meant he could go to the library with a clear conscience.
Wings twitching slightly in eagerness, Harry hopped down from the wall he'd been sitting on, snagged his backpack, and loped down the high street to reach the town library.
The weather had become cloudy by the time Harry got back to Hogwarts, and as he circled over the castle before coming down to land he noticed that there was Quidditch practice going on.
It sounded like there was a lot of shouting going on, and he wondered if that meant the Gryffindor Quidditch Team was having trouble. If he remembered properly Charlie Weasley had been the Seeker and he'd left, and one of the Chasers had left as well…
Shrugging it off, he decided to just land through the Owlery. It would mean he didn't have to fly up the grand staircase, which was all good.
"So this is a pear drop," Ron said, inspecting it closely.
He poked it with his wand, and it fizzed slightly. "Ah, so that's what they do!"
"What?" Dean asked. "No, mate, they just taste sweet and pear-y. That's because you poked it with your wand."
"But I wasn't trying to cast a spell?" Ron asked, puzzled. Then the pear drop rose into the air and exploded into a cloud of sweet-smelling mist, which drew a long-suffering sigh from Hermione and a few cheers from the rest of the common room.
"Muggle sweets are mostly a bit less exciting than Wizard ones," Harry explained. "But there's some which are different – I don't know if there are any magic sweets which are like sherbet."
"Wait, you got some sherbet?" Dean asked.
"That doesn't sound like a good idea," Neville said softly. "Not after what you said happened in Professor Dumbledore's office."
"I thought maybe he'd like them," Harry explained. "And maybe if I get used to it I won't blow something up if it happens again."
He put the astronomy book on the table. "I got this, too."
"...now I come to think of it, we don't actually have an astronomy textbook, do we?" Hermione asked, as Ron cracked the book open to see what was in it. "Good work, Harry, that's going to help a lot."
"I think you got the wrong book, Harry," Ron said. "This says that Muggles have sent somebody called Galileo to visit Jupiter, but even I know that Galileo lived in Italy hundreds of years ago."
Hermione hid a smile. "That's a space probe named after him, Ron. It was launched two years ago."
Ron slowly lowered the book, staring at his friend, then flipped through it.
"Muggles have been to the moon?"
"Nineteen sixty-nine," Hermione supplied. "My mum and dad both watched it on the TV."
Flipflipflip.
"A giant crater in Mexico?"
"Oh, that must be a very new book!" Hermione said, pleased. "Well done, Harry, that's only been in the science magazines in the last year or so – I read about it in Dad's copy of Nature."
"We are so different," Dean chuckled.
"I just asked for a good astronomy book," Harry admitted. "I don't really know enough to tell."
"What in Merlin's name is this!?"
Hermione leaned over to look at the illustration. "Oh, that's just a picture of a spaceship. Not a real one, it's just used to make the picture more interesting – it's the one from Star Trek."
She turned a few pages back. "That's real, though. It's been having all sorts of problems."
Ron looked up at Hermione, then back at the Hubble Space Telescope.
"...is this what Muggles can do because they don't have sweets that run away?"
"I think a lot of it is because there's a lot more Muggles," Harry said. "They come up with a lot more ideas, because there's more of them, and then they do their best to make them come true. So there were stories about going to space, and then that's what they did."
He rummaged in his backpack and unwrapped All the Weyrs. "Maybe I should think about doing this?"
They all looked at the cover, which showed a white dragon and a much smaller golden one inside a room, with the golden one pressing buttons. Out of the window of the room an entire planet was visible, green and blue and whorled with cloud.
"I always thought those books were fantasy books, like the other ones you like," Hermione said. "But suddenly there's a spaceship?"
"Well, dragons are real," Harry said, shrugging. "And even if she doesn't know that, they're dragons on another planet – they aren't actually fantasy books, it's a bit complicated."
Ron was still staring at a photograph of the Space Shuttle.
Professor Burbage was delighted to hear how the trip had gone, especially when Harry handed in his write-up of what had happened. It wasn't anything especially sophisticated, but he had listed off all the shops he'd gone into, as well as how many people were in town to walk because Fort William had a train station.
"The really fascinating thing about it is that it's a town with so many people in it!" the Professor smiled. "It's big enough that it really shows how many Muggles there are, but it's small enough that you can visit all of it – most Wizards tend to live in quite small villages or out in the countryside, and those that don't can spend all their life in London without ever leaving it."
Harry had the feeling that if he did Muggle Studies he'd probably learn more about Wizards than about Muggles, but it was a good point.
"Malfoy's got to be planning something," Ron said, a few days later, as they worked on Transfiguration homework – giving examples of the spells in their standard spellbook which were the most similar to various things they were told to do. Turning a tortoise into a rat looked like it was best to go tortoise-to-teapot, and then base the next step off teacup-to-rat, for example, and it meant lots of checking back and forth. "That duel made him look silly, and I don't trust him."
"I don't know," Harry shrugged. "When Draco ran into me in the hallway, yesterday, he asked how I felt about Halloween. I said that I was looking forward to getting sweets, because Dudley was the only one who got them."
"But-" Ron began, then subsided when Hermione waved her hand at him to make him quiet down. "But you can't let him get away with it, Harry."
"Get away with what?" Harry asked.
"He's – uh – I bet he was trying to make a point about, you know, what happened when… when You-Know-Who died," Ron elaborated. "About what happened to your parents."
Harry frowned. "Oh, maybe. I didn't think of that… is there a transfiguration spell which turns a feather duster into a paintbrush? That would help here."
"Oh, hold on, I think I saw one of those," Dean volunteered, flipping through his own copy. "Uh… there."
Harry wrote down the words of that spell, looked at his spell-chain, then frowned. "I think I must have copied one of these down wrong."
"Let me see?" Hermione asked, comparing the spell chain to her own – all finished already, of course. "There's a difference there… hold on… oh, I see. No, that spell won't fit there, I think you copied the wrong one down."
Sighing, Harry took the paper back and crossed out the offending spell. Finding the page again, he saw that he'd put down the wrong one on the page – instead of turning a duck into a pillow, he'd put in one which turned a weasel into a wastebasket.
"That's better," he said, substituting the correct one in. "Thanks, Hermione."
"You're welcome," Hermione told him, sounding pleased.
Professor Sinistra was quietly impressed with the astronomy book, and Harry also got a thank-you note from Professor Dumbledore a few days after that which told him that the Headmaster very much enjoyed the black-jacks and the flying saucers Harry had sent him.
Harry didn't really agree on the flying saucers – the one time he'd tried one he'd discovered that the sherbet fizzed enough to make him cough, just like the lemon sherbets – but he was glad that Dumbleore liked them, not least because it made him feel like the journey had been worth it for more than one reason.
Then it was more than halfway through his first term, and Halloween rolled around. Charms class saw them learning to make objects float into the air – it was harder with bigger objects, but not much harder, but they still started with feathers.
Professor Flitwick explained to them all how it was much easier to make something float if you thought it should float, and a feather was naturally very light and floaty, so it was easy for a new spellcaster to make it float – it wasn't that you didn't have to cast the spell with the right words, because you did, but that the more you thought the spell could work the more forgiving it was of little mistakes.
A wizard could cast a spell with the words and the wand movement without even knowing what it was meant to do at all, or they could cast it with just an effort of will without saying the words or moving their wand, but all three together worked best… and, as soon as someone got it (Hermione, naturally) and proved that it could be done, most of the rest of the class followed over the next half hour.
Harry mostly wondered what would happen if he cast the spell while flying. Would it mean he'd levitate something a little bit and then pull it along with him as he flew at high speed?
Then, after their other lessons (and homework), and after their things were stowed away in their rooms, came the feast.
For some reason, this involved a lot of live bats, and his friends laughed at how obviously Harry was visibly restraining himself from leaping into the air to catch the black flying things. There was plenty of food, as well, though with how much Wizards liked pumpkins normally it was a bit hard to tell the difference from a typical meal… until the desserts, which were all kinds of bizarre but very tasty combinations. Like the fudge torte, or a pie which contained within it twenty-four chocolate frogs, or even a strange kind of trifle with blood oranges in it that was both fruity and sweet at the same time.
Compared to his time at the Dursleys, when his aunt and uncle had absolutely refused any suggestion of trick-or-treating by Dudley, let alone Harry – probably because of the magical associations – and simply stuffed their son with chocolate while more-or-less ignoring Harry, Halloween 1991 was the best one Harry could remember and stood out from several quite boring ones. (When he thought about it after Malfoy's point from a couple of weeks ago, Harry knew that the Halloween ten years ago was probably the most memorable one of them all for older wizards, but he'd been too young to remember it so it didn't count.)
AN:
Oh, look, nothing important happens at Halloween.
Now you know we're operating far from canon.
Also, this fic now has a TVTropes page! It's shiny and new and doesn't have much in it yet.
