A/N: It's very frustrating to know exactly how Christmas break is going to play out, but also knowing that there's nearly three whole months – October, November and December – that need to be written before I can start playing with Christmas. Well, actually, there's probably going to be a real shopping chapter near the beginning of December, 'cause Harry's practically a trillionaire and he wants to spoil his friends. Silly him. Anyway. Enjoy this chapter.

Chapter Ten

The Week in Which Almost Nothing Goes Wrong

I'm Serious

It Happened

Harry had Quidditch late morning on Sunday. The team was doing really well. Alicia, Angelina and Katie had taken to training together more and more. They were seriously talking about going pro, preferably during Alicia's and Angelina's seventh year and Katie's sixth year. It was doable, too. It wasn't often that a kid went pro while still in school, but they could do it. It was, however, almost unheard of that a sixth year would go pro. It was also almost unheard of that all three chasers of a team would still be in school. Still, if anyone had a chance, it was those three girls. Oliver had talked about the whole team going pro, and they all had the skill for it. The likelihood of them all getting offers from the same team, however, was unlikely. And Harry doubted he'd go pro during his schooling.

But watching Alicia, Angelina and Katie fly was like watching birds. They were absolutely gorgeous. Harry knew he was good. Individually, he was the best flyer on the team, but collectively... those three chasers just worked so well together. Katie had made the team her second year, which was supposedly impossible to do as a chaser. Sure, Harry had made the team that same year (himself a first year) and stolen most of Katie's thunder, but she didn't care. Angelina and Alicia had been reserves their second year and made the team during their third year. The girls were young, brilliant, and dedicated. As much as Oliver wanted to complain about his team, he really, really couldn't. No one thought that any team could even consider challenging the Gryffindor team for another couple of years. They were the Quidditch kings.

The rest of Sunday found Harry in the common room. He was alternating between rereading his first and second year Potions textbooks, and reading the various languages from the huge book Professor Babbling had given him. He'd caught Patricia staring at him from across the common room. Huh. He didn't understand Patricia. At all. Hermione had been satisfied about the huge book when he'd explained it away as some extra reading for Ancient Runes. The poor girls was talking all five electives and somehow using time travel or something to get to her classes and Harry just hadn't found the time to ask her how should could be in two places at once… She was overstressed. He got that. He was not going to tell her there was another OWL she could take.

Although, that might come back to haunt him when she did find out.

Monday brought two periods of Potions, in which Harry had to suffer through a sadistic Snape, a gloating Malfoy, and a silently condemning Ronald. It wasn't all bad, because he was still paired with Tracey Davis, and their potions were consistently turning out good. But Snape had been hinting at a partner change for the past couple of days, and sure enough, at the end of the period, Snape shuffled partners around and Harry ended up with Seamus Finnigan. Well, it could have been worse. Following Potions, Harry had a period of Herbology. He tried to watch Neville, Hannah and Sally-Anne and what they were doing differently from the rest of the class, but he found nothing. Maybe it really was instinctual. However, Professor Sprout announced a four person project and Neville invited him to join himself, Hannah and Sally-Anne. At that group, Sprout had frowned but then said she expected their project to be utterly spectacular.

After Herbology, they had a period of Ancient Runes, which was fun, as always. Following that, Harry grabbed a quick lunch before meeting with Selene Grant in one of the rooms near the Great Hall for about ten minutes. She actually complimented his improvement and told him he was as ready as he'd ever be for the musical part of the auditions on Saturday. They had a double period of Charms after that, and Harry got the variation of the color change charm faster than Hermione did. He didn't beat two of the Ravenclaw geniuses, but that still put him third in that class for the day. That felt great. He, Hermione, Anthony, Kevin, Su, and Morag had been instructed to move onto the next variation. Only Su had gotten it within that class period, but Harry knew he was close. came Care of Magical Creatures, which was pretty boring.

Once classes finished, Harry went to the astronomy tower to have dinner with his favorite professor. They talked about unimportant things, but mostly about the different languages. Sinistra was pretty well read in Latin, and promised to help him should he need it.

After that, Harry joined Neville, Hannah and Sally-Anne in the library to work on their project. They made good headway, and afterwards, they studied together at one of the many tables. Susan and Megan, the other Hufflepuff girls, joined them. Harry helped them all with a Defense essay that was due the following morning. They had good fun and joked about Harry's near ability to name everyone in their year (he kept forgetting Ernie Macmillian and Theodore Nott).

Tuesday, Harry woke to another nightmare and spent the morning talking with Paradise and Sarah about nothing at all. At breakfast, Ron had tried to sit next to him, but the twins had chased him off. Harry ate, then worked up his courage to go sit down among the Gryffindor first year boys. Harry Bellwood was particularly eager to introduce him to Jack Sloper (who'd he already met), Ogden Wester, Charles Loch, and James Northwood. Breakfast turned into a mini-celebration for the more excitable Gryffindors when Harry marched up to Kenneth Towler and named each and every current Gryffindor. Even some of his Hufflepuff friends – well, almost all of the Hufflepuffs in his year – came over and joined the impromptu celebration. It was a lot of good fun.

Classes further increased the mild sense of euphoria building in Harry. He had Defense Against the Dark Arts first, and Professor Lupin was just a spectacular teacher. Following that, Professor Vector returned them their latest math quiz, which Harry had aced. He really liked that Arthimancy class. But then she gave them a group project. It seemed like all the teachers were assigning group projects. For Runes, he was partnering with Tracey for a duo-project. In Arithmancy, he decided to work with Pavarti, Sally-Anne and Wayne. It was a bit of an odd group. After Arithmancy, they had a double period of Transfiguration, in which Harry succeeded, Hermione got frustrated, and Ronald nearly blew up the school. It was an, um, interesting period to say the least. Harry spent lunch at the Hufflepuff table; he met the five fourth years, Zacharias (who he didn't like), Franklin (who was awesome), Logan (who was surprisingly normal), Cornelius (who was rather pompous), and Danielle (who acted just like one of the guys).

After lunch, Harry had History of Magic, followed by a period of Charms and then a lecture period for Astronomy. He did homework for a while, before meeting his team on the Quidditch pitch for a pretty grueling practice. Oliver Wood recognized that he had the glory team, but he still worked them like crazy. After that, the Gryffindors had this strange party where they used these questionnaires that Queenie had written up and they tried to find people who fit each category. Kenneth won. Emma got second. Harry came in third. Ron, Patricia and Cormac were three of the very few people who refused to participate.

Wednesday was a perfectly normal day, thank you very much, in which nothing out of the ordinary happened, no one ended up in the hospital room, and everyone was perfectly content. Oh, Wednesdays.

Thursday was, thankfully enough, a repeat of Wednesday. Just with another great Quidditch practice in the evening.

By Friday, Harry was getting the odd, fidgety feeling that nothing had gone wrong in a whole week. Something was bound to go wrong soon. He fidgeted through his classes and through his meeting with Professor Babbling – which went astonishingly well. Harry had dived straight into his new textbook and hadn't surfaced unless someone dragged him out of it. The professor gave him a few worksheets to fill out in Greek and Egyptian, and some readings to accomplish in Latin, before talking for twenty minutes about the Rosetta stone, which, especially for a test involving both Greek and Egyptian, would be vital. Harry loved languages.

Nothing went wrong. Sure, big Sarah had worked herself into a nervous tizzy and the sheer numbers of Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and even Ravenclaws and Slytherins, who'd signed up to try out for the play. They'd actually have the ability to cut people, Sarah kept saying. It made Harry feel ever so encouraged. Still. He couldn't help feel nervous that a whole week had gone by and nothing bad happened. When he mentioned it to his group of friends, they laughed but sort of grudgingly admitted he was right. It had been odd week for Harry Potter. A good week, to be sure, but still a bit odd.

o.o.o.o.o.o

Another nightmare hit early Saturday morning. Harry crawled out of bed, grabbed the language textbook, and headed down towards the common room. It was empty. He curled into one of the chairs and studied more into the text on Egypt. He loved the book. It had changed size to be more manageable when he'd asked it to display just Latin, Greek, Egyptian, Sanskrit, and the magical languages. He also had Gaelic open, because that looked like just the most fascinating language. He'd looked at all the modern languages that Patricia was doing, and the ancients just interested him a lot more. Still, he'd recognized a connection between a few of the spells he knew and the Gaelic language, so he figured that would make a nice back up language. The same with Chinese. There were two whole alphabets to learn when learning Chinese; it was far more complicated than Egyptian, so he hadn't done a lot with it.

"You're up already?" Paradise said, perching on the arm of his chair. Harry jumped. He hadn't even heard her come down. He should start paying better attentions to his surroundings; it could be dangerous being so buried in a book.

"Yeah. You are too."

"But you're studying already," Paradise complained, leaning into his shoulder. Their whole position on this arm chair had become pretty normal. If they were talking in the morning, Paradise was almost always sitting on the arm of his chair. It was… normal. "Haven't I told you to stop that?"

"Yes Mom," Harry smirked at her. Paradise rolled her eyes. "You have a favorite class yet?"

"DADA," Paradise answered, immediately. "Professor Lupin is the best. I like Charms too. I hate History of Magic. We should get a real teacher for that class."

"We should, but we don't."

"Why?"

"I don't know," Harry said, smiling at his young friend. "Because having a ghost increases the whole magical veneer of this school?"

Paradise knitted her eyebrows together. "What's a veneer?"

Oh geez. He really had started reading too much. He knew words that needed to be explained! Oh no! He really was turning into Hermione. Siiiigh. "It's like, um, a coating over something. Usually it's like a coat of polish over cheap wood in furniture."

"Oh." After a pause: "They should get rid of Snape too."

"I'm sure if enough people truly wanted him gone, they could get him removed." Harry wasn't really thinking. "Although, Dumbledore definitely trusts him."

Paradise scowled. "At the primary school I sort of went too, they did this petition to get better school lunches. Would a petition work for getting rid of Snape? You know, if we went to the Board of Directors instead of Dumbledore?"

"If you get it to work, Paradise Aster," Harry said, "you are a genius."

Big Sarah tumbled down the girls' stairs, got to her feet, waved to both Paradise and Harry, and dashed from the common room. At a more sedate pace, Emma MacDonald made her way down the stairs. She was still rubbing sleep from her eyes. "I should write a book," Emma whined, throwing herself down into a chair not far away from Harry's, "about how to handle living with the crazy roommate."

Harry chuckled. "I bet all the seventh years could write books about surviving their various roommates."

Emma nodded. "You two doing okay? It's ridiculously early for you to be up…"

"M'fine," Paradise shrugged. Emma looked skeptical, but didn't push any further. "Are you gonna be in the play, Emma?" Paradise asked.

"I don't think so," Emma said, "what about you?"

"No! Harry is, right?" Paradise poked the older boy.

Harry nodded and let the girls talk while he read some more of the Egyptian book. He'd actually managed to read a short sentence earlier. The alphabet - lack of it, in a way - was rather confusing, and so much of the language seemed to relate to their mythology and various gods. It was interesting, and probably teaching him more about mythology than any regular old mythology book. After immersing himself in that one language, he switched to the Latin section, pulled out a piece of paper and started penning a note to Patricia in Latin. It didn't go so great. Harry crumbled up to the parchment and threw it back into his bag. By the time he was willing to pull himself back out of his book, the common room had just started to fill up again. William and little Sarah joined their little group of five, Oliver and Eliza were both doing homework in different parts of the room, and James Northwood had just tumbled down the boys' stairs and was joining the group by the fireplace. Once the textbook went away, Harry started paying attention to the various conversations again.

William and Emma were discussing something with their eyes. No one bothered trying to figure out what. Sarah and William were talking about some museum in the middle of London. Paradise and Emma were still talking about the play. James jumped into the play conversation, and Sarah and William's side conversation slowly died. Everyone seemed oddly focused on the play that day. "Harry," Sarah said, "what part are you hoping to get?"

"Um—" As far as he knew, there were five leader rolls that would probably go to older students. There were several rolls for people to play the original students at Hogwarts and a pretty hefty need for behind the scenes magic casters. "I don't know."

"You're auditioning without having a role in mind?" Paradise asked.

"I'm auditioning because the fourth year girls are making me," Harry retorted, even if that wasn't really entirely true. William and Emma were smirking, like they knew that he wasn't so confident he wouldn't have auditioned anyways, but Paradise, Sarah and James accepted his excuse at face value. Thankfully. "I guess I'd like to play Siga."

"That's a small role!" Paradise protested. "You're better than that!"

Emma studied Harry. "You'd make a good Yager, what with your parseltongue ability. Although, I suppose that while Slytherin was the actual parseltongue, you'd make a better Snake Lord himself." She was grinning.

Harry shuddered. Yager was one of the students; he was Salazar Slytherin's prodigy. "You'd think people would understand that this is a fictional play."

"Don't worry," William said, softly. "I'm sure if you get cast as Salazar Slytherin, no one will hold it against you. No one, that is, but all the current Slytherins."

"See why I want Siga?" Harry complained. "It's a simple role, with no strings attached!"

"Harry. Harry. Harry," Sarah cooed. She sounded annoyingly majestic. "You're the Boy-Who-Lived. Nothing you ever do will come with 'no strings attached'."

Harry bashed his textbook against his forehead. He didn't have a table. The textbook made a nice substitute. "You're supposed to be my friends. You're not allowed to use me like that." He wasn't really complaining. He sort of—

Emma raised her eyebrow. "Harry, you'd raise the unwritten prestige letter of declaring yourself an ally of any noble house. Of course, you'd become undeniably attached to that particular house. Your name itself means more than you'd think."

This was normally a question he'd ask Neville, but as he was thinking about it… "Hey, Emma, if I gave a company permission to market a Harry Potter endorsed clothing line—" Emma's eyes went wide. "—would they make money?"

"Hell yeah!" Emma shrieked. "No one's been allowed to market anything with your name attached!" James, William, Sarah and Paradise just stared. "People would start buying Harry Potter merchandize like candy!"

Harry blinked. He coughed. "Um. Excuse me. I've got a couple of letters to write." He was sure his financial portfolio showed who managed that clothing company. If they could start producing celebrity endorsed brand-lines that would increase revenues, right? Oh geez, maybe his lessons with Neville, Mary and Eliza were working better than expected. He was actually sort of feeling like a business man. Harry dashed up to his dorm room. Cormac and Neville were still asleep, but Able was awake and staring at the ceiling. The older boy grunted a greeting, but didn't say anything as Harry pulled out his portfolio and flipped through the massive amounts of paper before he found the name of the clothing-line manager. The manager was a man by the name of Julius Regan. There was a Regan in Gryffindor… he'd have to check and see if they were related. Harry rummaged through his school bag until he found some parchment and a useable quill and ink well.

Penning the letter to Mr. Regan took most of the remaining pre-breakfast time. He'd show it to Neville at breakfast to get an opinion and then go up to the owlery to mail it before auditions. At breakfast, Neville was barely awake, but he read and approved of the letter anyways. Mary seemed especially proud when he showed her. "You're thinking for yourself! Keep doing it!" She'd started laughing a lot and boasting about her top student. As Harry left the Great Hall, he could hear the fourth year girls semi-bickering over which of them Harry liked best. Katie seemed to be winning the argument.

The walk to the owlery was nice. Hedwig was even in a good mood. Harry really did love his owl. She was just a spectacular post owl, his first real friend, everything. She winged away with the letter to Mr. Regan with a hooted promise to wait for a reply. Gringotts owls had been arriving for him every so often now, but it seemed as if many owls could manage to find him, even at Hogwarts. He'd have to research and see if there was anything that could be keeping miscellaneous owls from finding him. Hm…

After watching Hedwig fly away for a good ten minutes, Harry decided to run for his audition. He did not want to give big Sarah and the rest of the Gryffindor girls an excuse to flay him alive. He'd gotten signed up for the second audition slot. They were holding auditions in one of the small unused classrooms in the History of Magic wing. A Ravenclaw seventh year was stationed outside the classroom, as like, a something or other. She was one of Sarah's close friends, and from what Harry could gather, pretty heavily involved in the production of the play.

"Hi Potter," the girl said, cheerfully. "You're a bit early."

"Better than late," Harry replied.

"True." The girl stuck out her hand and the two of them shook hands. "Adrianna Sampson, at your service."

Harry stuck out his tongue, more at himself than her. "No one ever seems to need to be introduced to me. It's a bit annoying, actually."

Adrianna laughed. "I'd imagine. So, Potter, who do you want to play?"

"You too?" Harry whined. "Well, I'd like to be Siga, but everyone else seems to think I'd make a good Yager."

"You could probably be Daniel," Selene Grant said, from behind Harry. He jumped, turned around, and stared at his frowning tutor. "You've definitely got the voice for him. I can see Yager in you too though." Daniel was widely recognized as one of the harder roles in the play. In the play, Daniel was the son of Faolan, who was one of the leads.

"You're the third slot?" Adrianna asked. She didn't seem to recognize Selene. Hm. Fourth year Slytherin. Seventh year Ravenclaw. What was the overlap for those groups? Selene nodded.

"Did they sound proof the room?" Harry asked, peering at the closed door. "I don't hear anything."

"Yup," Adrianna said, "cast the spell myself."

The door opened and a small Hufflepuff that Harry didn't recognize dashed out, screaming. From inside the room, Harry vaguely heard Sarah saying "I wasn't that harsh, was I?" He guessed the sound proofing only worked with the door closed.

"You can head on in now," Adrianna said.

Harry had the most annoying feeling that he was proceeding into a den of great danger.

o.o.o.o.o.o

It was a weird Saturday. People kept disappearing from their ordinary routines for auditions. After his, Harry retired to the library to work on his Runes project with Tracey. When she had to leave for an audition, he moved over to sit with a bunch of Hufflepuff second years. Harry Vanette was there, so at least he knew someone at their table. They were all sort of collectively struggling through a Potions assignment. It was odd. Harry was knowledgeable enough to help them. In Potions. He nearly had a freak out. Still, it felt satisfying to meet even more people. Harry mentally added Gregory Adams, Nat Shacklebolt (who didn't use her full first name), Brianna Whitby, and Xavier Jones to the list of people that he knew.

After about an hour, the Hufflepuffs decided to leave, so Harry bounced towards what looked like a group of fourth year Ravenclaws. They were a little stand-offish, but let him stick around at their table as long as he was working on something. He hadn't really brought anything to work on, so he grabbed a random book from the Defense Against the Dark Arts section and just started reading it. Nora and Eddie Carmichael were the most welcoming of the group. They introduced Harry to Leanne Hooch, Marcus Belby, and Lance Stevens. Harry vaguely recognized Leann as being a good friend of a few of the Gryffindor first year girls. Nora and Leann left a few minutes after Harry joined them, however, heading up the History of Magic wing for auditions. The whole school really was getting involved. Lance said he had his auditions later, but then went back to the assignment he was working on.

It was close to lunch when Harry spotted Kenneth sitting with a bunch of students from all four Houses. They were probably all in the same grade; maybe studying the same subject. Harry threw caution to the wind, snuck up on Kenneth and stole his textbook. The older boy nearly went sparse. Still, he took it in good humor when he caught Harry and invited him to join them. "Not," Kenneth growled, "that I'm trying to help in your ridiculous campaign." Still, Kenneth made his friends make room for Harry and named each person. "Callus Warrington and Adrian Pucey, Slytherin. Rodger Davies and Sally Wood, Ravenclaw. And Kaitlin Towler, Hufflepuff."

Harry blinked. "You have a twin and I wasn't told? Kaitlin, I need embarrassing stories, quick!" Kaitlin laughed. Kenneth paled and looked as though he wanted to rewind time and never, ever introduce Harry to his sister.

"Would you quiet down, Potter?" Sally said, "You'll get us thrown out!"

"Sorry," Harry said, mentally noting that this was the third Wood he'd met. And she wasn't in the same house as either her older brother or younger sister. That was actually pretty cool. "Anyway, hi, bye. Annoy Kenneth for me." He left them to their studying and decided to head down for an early lunch.

He should have been exhausted by now. Instead, he seemed oddly… energized. The Great Hall was not empty, but pretty bare. Patricia Stimpson was reading a book at the front end of the Gryffindor table. Harry started towards her, but she looked up and glared at him, as if daring him to not come any closer. Harry retreated towards the Hufflepuff table and sat down across from a lonely looking Sally-Anne Perks. The girl was staring at a letter, her face twisted into a very heart-wrenching expression.

"What's… wrong?" Harry asked, when she didn't look up.

Sally-Anne jumped a little before focusing on him. She hiccupped. "My… my mom's in the hospital. She's… got this terminal cancer… The doctor's think she doesn't have long."

Harry ducked under the table and wormed his way so he could sit directly next to Sally-Anne. He wrapped an arm over her shoulder, and she buried her face into his neck, just beginning to shake with sobs. The two of them got some odd looks from the older Hufflepuffs, but as none of them moved to help, Harry wasn't about to let his friend suffer uncomforted. Or something like that. "Do you need to go see her?" Harry asked. "Do you want to?"

"Can I?" Sally-Anne whispered, her voice breaking.

Harry scanned the staff table. Sure enough, Professor Sprout was one of the teachers already in the Great Hall. "I don't know. Let's go ask Professor Sprout." The sniffling girl managed to stand with Harry's support and he led her up towards the staff table. Sprout seemingly realized something was wrong and met them halfway, in the no-man's-land between staff table and the student tables.

"Miss Perks?" Professor Sprout said, "whatever is the matter?"

"My mom's hurt," Sally-Anne mumbled towards the floor. "I want to go see her."

Sprout smiled sadly. "Of course. Come with me, Miss Perks. Mr. Potter, thank you for your support."

"Of course," Harry said. His professor led the young Hufflepuff out a side door of the Great Hall, which left Harry standing in the middle of no-man's-land with all three of the present professors staring at him. Typical. The stares were just oh, so typical. Harry loafed back to the Gryffindor table and sat down across from Patricia. She glared, but when Harry didn't speak, the girl went back to her book.

And life went on.

Normally.

Which was very much an odd feeling.