Harry was giddy with excitement. He had Flooed to Tracey's house earlier in the day, as had Daphne, Theo, Blaise, and Hermione. The six had decided to spend some time together before heading to Kings' Cross that day. It was still early in the morning, but they were all ready to go. They spent a while talking, until they were called to eat some food before boarding the train. They ate their meal excitedly, happy to be heading back to school, and once they were finished, they practically bounced through the Floo to the platform. As was typical, they had arrived early, and they jumped onto the train, having earlier said their goodbyes to their parents. The six of them found a spacious compartment to themselves, and chatted away as the train pulled out of the station and continued along its journey. The compartment door soon opened again to admit Ginny, who immediately stopped upon seeing the others.

"Everywhere else is full," Ginny said shyly. "Could I sit here?" she asked, gesturing at an open spot. After receiving a few nods, she sat down next to Harry.

"Guys, this is Ginny Weasley," Harry said. "Ginny, that's Hermione, Blaise, Theo, Daphne, and Tracey," he said, pointing to them in turn, deliberately ignoring the last name convention of pureblood society.

"Hello," she said timidly. Hermione then quickly engaged her in conversation, and the old buzz of various conversations going on at once returned to the compartment. It continued like this for a bit, and the others found out much about Ginny, including the reason she did not sit anywhere else. She didn't know anyone aside from the Potters and a few friends of Ron's from his year, and she bitterly told them that her brother often seemed to forget she existed. Even Daphne, who had been somewhat cold to the girl thus far, couldn't keep up her charade, and found herself liking the girl after talking to her a bit after that.

The train arrived at Hogwarts, and after having told Ginny horror stories about the Sorting, the six wished her luck and rode in the carriages to the castle. They were all excited to witness their first Sorting, as the previous year, they had been the subjects of the attention.

"Bet you Ginny's in Ravenclaw," Tracey muttered to the others.

"She's not Gryffindor, that's for sure," Blaise responded.

"I think she'll join us," Theo said. "And I'll take your bet on that, Tracey. Let's say three galleons?"

"You're on," she responded.

"Woah, let me get in on this," Blaise responded. "I'll put three on Hufflepuff."

"Well, I have no doubt Astoria will get Slytherin," Daphne responded, laughing at the others' antics.

"Really, Daph? I had your sister down as a Ravenclaw," Harry said. Their talking ceased as Minerva McGonagall entered the hall with the first years in tow. She walked up to the stool, and picked up the scroll of names. The Sorting began, and the students watched enthusiastically and welcomed their new members with thunderous applause. A particularly excited boy, announced as "Creevey, Colin" tripped on his way to the Hat, but was promptly sorted into Gryffindor. The boy bounced to the table, looking like his feet were never on the ground.

"Greengrass, Astoria!" Professor McGonagall called.

Harry watched as Daphne's sister walked to the stool. He had only met her a few times, as she was often with her friends or studying on her own. He knew her to be a very soft-spoken person, but also a rather intelligent and studious girl. While Daphne claimed her to be the quintessential Slytherin, Harry was convinced she would be a Ravenclaw.

The Sorting Hat seemed to be in indecision all the same, and took a while sorting her. After a minute of deliberation, the hat yelled, "Ravenclaw!"

Harry gave Daphne a pointed look, which quite clearly said "I told you so." Daphne, meanwhile, looked like a fish as she watched her sister wave at her as she walked to the Ravenclaw table.

The Sorting proceeded, but ten minutes later, it was interrupted by Professor Snape billowing into the hall, Jason Potter and Ronald Weasley in tow. The two had their faces turned down, and took their seats in the hall. Snape muttered something to Dumbledore and to McGonagall, and then the Sorting was continued. Finally, Professor McGonagall called out, "Weasley, Ginevra."

Harry laughed quietly as he saw Ginny tense at the use of her full name, and pondered her house. He had heard the bet his friends had made before, but he had no clue where to place his money himself.

For its part, the Sorting Hat took much longer than it had on Astoria. Across the hall, Harry could see Ronald Weasley starting to look visibly nervous as his sister was not immediately made a Gryffindor. It was a long three minutes for the people of the Great Hall, and in fact, it was the longest Sorting in Hogwarts history. Finally, the Sorting Hat opened its brim and yelled, "Slytherin!"

Ginny, seeming satisfied with her fate, walked over to the table and sat herself down next to Tracey.

"Damn it, you just lost me three galleons, Ginny," Tracey said with no real menace as she handed the money over to Theo, Blaise reluctantly doing the same. Ginny just smiled an innocent smile in response.

Across the hall, one Ronald Weasley was looking positively murderous. On top of all that, his sister was smiling at the table. She was smiling and didn't even have the decency to look upset about joining the bloody snakes! Oh, he would make sure his mother heard about this, all right, and Ginny would be returned to where she belonged, in the noble House of Lions with her noble brother. She wouldn't be stuck with Jason Potter's stupid little brother and his gang of slimy serpents.

"What happened to Jason and Ronald?" Harry asked suddenly as dinner was being eaten. "Why are they so scratched up?"

"I've no idea," Ginny said. "I got to the platform and boarded the train first of my siblings, he went last with Jason."

The subject dropped, and soon after, they were all too full to bother worrying about it that day. Dumbledore ended with his usual speech on the Forbidden Forest and pranking, looking at the Weasley twins as he did, and dismissed them all. As usual, the Slytherins followed the fifth-year Prefect to the common room, and the first-years looked around in awe at the surprisingly bright room and the neighboring dueling grounds.

In Slytherin, students could pick the rooms they wanted, and as Tracey and Daphne still had a few beds open in theirs, they offered Ginny one of them, and she happily accepted. The rules had been altered that year to allow changes in arrangements mid-year, so Ginny could always switch rooms after she made friends in her year.

As it turned out, she very quickly did make friends within her year. Unlike the second years, who were divided between Harry and Draco, the first years all got along very well within the first few days, and the house was as welcoming to Ginny as they had been to Harry. Observing this, Harry wondered why the majority of British Dark Lords and their followers had been Slytherin alumni. Even among the general population of Slytherin, there was very little anti-Muggle sentiment. With the exception of people like Draco Malfoy and his goons, who had a holier-than-thou attitude anyway, Slytherins didn't mind Muggles or Muggleborns, and many of them had even attempted to make the more recent Muggle innovations work in the wizarding world, to minimal success. It had been a Slytherin who had found a way to combine magic and the radio, as it turned out.

Harry walked with his friends to his first Defense class of the year. As it turned out, Gilderoy Lockhart himself was to be their professor this year, after Dumbledore had explained of Quirrell's tragic end by heart attack.

As they entered the classroom, Harry looked around and saw Lockhart everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. There were portraits, pictures, newspaper clippings, anything with his name or face on it. As they all sat down, the man himself confidently strode into the classroom. He introduced himself, most of the students rolling their eyes, and Lockhart then proclaimed his quiz. Harry took one look it, looked at Theo, who sat next to him, with an evil grin matching Theo's, and began his work.

Lockhart collected the quizzes and began to look through them, looking disappointed. "Tut tut, hardly any of you remembered that my favorite color is..." he trailed off, gaping at a quiz he had come across.

"Oh my, Mr. Nott, I'm afraid this will be five points from Slytherin and a detention for you," he said. "And you too, Mr. Potter. Er, Harry Potter," he quickly clarified, quelling the rising protest from Jason.

"Why, sir? I haven't done anything wrong," Harry said meekly.

"Look at this quiz!" Lockhart said thunderously. "You call this not doing anything wrong?"

"I read the answers in a book, sir, so I assumed they were correct. I don't know the correct answers."

"Well, your answers were certainly not in Year with a Yeti, I can assure you that," Lockhart said. "But if you really did not know, I suppose I'll have to revoke your detentions." Lockhart then proceeded to regale the students with tales of his adventures, dispersing the information in the quiz as he told the clearly exaggerated stories. However, when Harry looked around, he realized that the non-Slytherin students in the room were taking it all in, seemingly honored to be in the presence of such a "great" man. Only the Slytherins held on to their naturally dubious nature. Lockhart had not done anything of note to prove his greatness, after all, not that they had seen.

"Now," Lockhart concluded, "I have brought today with me the most dangerous of creatures." He threw the cover off of the cage on the desk in the front and announced, "Cornish pixies!"

The Slytherins struggled to contain their laughter at the description of a common wizarding pest as dangerous. Harry saw Hermione roll her eyes, having encountered pixies in the basement of Greengrass Manor over the summer. Hermione must have thought very little of Lockhart, as Harry had never known her to roll her eyes at any sort of authority figure, especially a professor.

Without warning, Lockhart opened the cage, letting the pixies loose.

"No worries," he yelled over the commotion. "I have just the spell. Peskipiksi Pesternomi!" The spell, unsurprisingly, did not have any effect, and Lockhart ran to his office, telling the students to take care of it. Daphne gave a loud, theatrical sigh, and started to freeze the pixies. Harry, Blaise, Theo, Tracey, and Hermione all joined in as their fellow classmates watched, their pixie catching soon turning into a friendly competition. After a few minutes, the last stray pixie was caught, and the cries of "Immobilus" had vanished from the air.

Blaise held it in his hand triumphantly and declared, "I win!" The last pixie had broken a tie between Blaise and Hermione, who until then had caught ten pixies apiece. Hermione surprised them all by sticking her tongue out at Blaise, who just laughed harder and made a face back at her.

"Well, that was fun, I vote we leave," Harry said.

"Class isn't over yet, we still have another fifteen minutes," Hermione pointed out.

"Who cares? It's not like that bastard can teach us anything," Harry said in response, promptly picking up his bag and walking out. The Slytherins, unsurprisingly, agreed, and slowly followed him out the door. To the immense surprise of the Gryffindors, Hermione also just seemed to consider Harry's statement, shrugged, and then left without a word to them. Lockhart came back five minutes later and arrived to find half of the class missing.

"So," Harry said as they walked away from the Defense classroom. "We're going to need to study Defense on our own this year."

"We can just use the classroom we used last year," Hermione said happily, having enjoyed their study time last year.

"Agreed," Theo responded. "I wonder what would happen if we skipped his class."

"Maybe Monday?" Harry asked seriously. "But we probably can't do it that often, or we'll get expelled or something."

The six of them took their time walking back so that when they arrived in the Great Hall, dinner had officially begun. Ginny joined the Slytherins at their table, and they ate their dinner quickly, talking and laughing throughout the meal. The whole time, they never noticed a glare from the Gryffindor table observing them the whole time. Ronald Weasley looked as though he wished to burn holes into Harry's head, which he did, in fact, wish to do, though he'd rather not kill anyone. That aside, it was all Harry's fault that Ginny was a Slytherin, wearing green and silver instead of the red and gold she should be wearing. He had written to his mother about it already and was gleefully awaiting the angry letter his mother would undoubtedly send Ginny. Perhaps Harry would get one too, Ron thought, and then he would be humiliated in front of his precious snakes.

After dinner, the six friends headed to their abandoned dueling classroom, with Ginny tagging along with them. Harry had already taught some of the first-year curriculum to her, but the six decided to teach her first-year Defense throughout the year, as Lockhart surely wouldn't be doing it.

While they were studying, Harry remembered something he had wanted to try, and he quickly called everyone.

"Hey, guys," Harry said. "Just a random thought, but what do you know about wandless magic?"

"It looks really cool," Theo said, "but apparently it's a pain to learn." The others nodded their assent, but Ginny seemed confused at the latter half of Theo's statement.

"It's not that bad," Ginny said. "Who told you that?"

"I mean, it's not covered until the end of seventh year," Hermione said matter-of-factly. "And even then, not everyone manages it. Quite the opposite, I've heard often there are years where no one can do it."

Harry sighed and said, "But Ginny's right. There's something fishy about the whole thing."

"Well, go on, if wandless magic is so easy, why don't you try it?" Hermione asked him tauntingly.

He shrugged, but before he could do anything, Ginny smirked and waved her hand for effect. Hermione's chair lifted itself off the ground, and she let out a shriek. The chair slowly lowered itself to the ground, Hermione glaring at Ginny.

"No way that was by hand, you've just started first year!" Theo said.

Harry and Ginny alternately showed them the various wandless spells they could perform.

"Magic's about intent," Harry said. "So as long as you clearly know the effects, you shouldn't need a wand, really, the magic is in you. And you know the effects of each spell, so just concentrate on that. It's that simple. And when you've got your mind around that one, the logic works the same for incantations. Why use them at all? The only limitation is that you have to really want it for it to work, and that's where wands come in. From what I've read, they help to reduce that effect so that you can use magic more easily, free from emotion."

Indeed, it proved to be that simple. By the end of their study sessions, all of them could cast wandless and wordless levitation charms, as well as a few other basic ones. Each of them resolved to practice it, and they decided it was best to keep it quiet for the time being. Harry's reasoning for this had been that as the solution was in fact so simple, brilliant minds like Dumbledore must have come upon it. Hence, there was a reason it was portrayed as difficult, though it was apparently nothing negative, as the only disclaimer when it was taught was that it would be hard and might not work. The others agreed, and they headed back to their common rooms before curfew.

Back in his bed, Harry took out his most recent book and began reading. The Transfiguration required was advanced for his standards, and he knew it would take some effort to learn it, but he was sure he could. Harry hadn't expected becoming an Animagus to be easy, after all.

The next morning was a weekend, and the school took their time in waking up. Harry, always up early, read his book in his bed, waiting for his dormmates to wake up. An hour and a half later, they were all ready and headed down for breakfast, where they met the girls, who had also just entered the Hall. They ate in the tired silence that was typical of mornings until everyone shook the last vestiges of sleep away. As usual, a flapping of wings was heard as the owls delivered the post for the morning, many students receiving the Daily Prophet.

Ronald Weasley looked over at the Slytherin table as the owls approach and gleefully watched an owl deposit a bright red letter in front of his sister. He smiled as he watched the small conversations at the table stop, everyone warily eyeing the letter.

Ginny picked up the letter in her hands and sighed. She had known this was coming, and was frankly surprised it hadn't happened sooner. All around her, her classmates gave her looks of sympathy, telling her to listen to it and laugh it off. Ginny tapped her foot, waiting for it to explode into the furious voice of her mother.

"GINEVRA WEASLEY!" the letter yelled. "How DARE you consort with these horrible SNAKES? You should know better than to let yourself be put there! You must demand a re-Sorting right now, young lady, do you hear me? Right! Now!"

The letter then rounded on Harry, almost as if it knew he would be there, and shouted, "And YOU! How DARE you DEFILE my daughter with your dark magic! You did something to her, I know it! My Ginny would never be a Slytherin, ever! I want you on trial for corrupting my daughter with evil magic! I want you to STAY AWAY from my daughter!"

The letter promptly exploded in a display of fireworks to a stunned and silent Great Hall. Slowly, a clapping emerged from the silence.

"Bravo!" Harry clapped. "Good show! I only wish I'd gotten one for myself!"

The Slytherin table laughed and began clapping and whooping wildly, clapping Harry on the back. Many of the older girls went to Ginny to make sure she was okay as well, which caught Ginny unawares. A Slytherin she might be, but she still had thought that most of the Slytherins in other years were distant and cold. Ginny broke out into a smile, and happily started chatting with some of the girls as though the incident had never happened.

From the Gryffindor table, Ronald Weasley looked onto the scene, a flabbergasted expression on his face.

"They can't just…they…" he trailed off.

"I know, it's so disrespectful," Jason Potter completed.

"They can't just ignore it!" Ron muttered angrily.

"We'll tell Dumbledore, he'll make sure the investigation happens!" Jason said. And so it was that after breakfast, they approached Dumbledore and asked to speak with him. Dumbledore smiled and beckoned them to his office.

"Now, what is it you boys would like to talk to me about?" he asked kindly.

"You're going to investigate Harry Potter, right?" Ronald blurted out.

"Why should I do that, my boy?" Dumbledore asked.

"Ginny can't have been a Slytherin without him doing something," Jason said strongly.

"My boy, if Ginny's mind had been tampered with, the Sorting Hat would have found it and reported it to me immediately. The Sorting Hat is an ancient object and cannot be hoodwinked so easily."

"Oh," Jason said, dumbfounded.

"Can you resort Ginny then?" Ronald asked.

"One can only be resorted in certain extreme cases, my boy, and none of them apply here. Your sister is happy in Slytherin."

"Oh," Ronald replied dejectedly.

The two boys left the office angrily plotting revenge on a certain raven-haired, green-eyed boy.

A/N: Thanks for the reviews, everyone! Things are picking up speed now, and the years are going to start flying! This is pretty much all of year 2 in a nutshell, and I plan on finishing it in the next chapter. As you no doubt noticed, all of the action was resolved before with the discovery of the diary. I personally find it inconceivable that Lucius Malfoy managed to sneak an extra book there without anyone realizing it.