The Christmas holidays passed pretty uneventfully after Ally had joined Harry on his latest midnight escapade, and she spent most the time curled up in the Common Room by the fire reading. She had already finished the book Hermione had gotten her on Archaeology and she was currently working on a favorite of hers, "Pride and Prejudice" by a Muggle author named Jane Austen, and she felt a bit closer to her Mum knowing that she too had once read the same pages, and devoured the same words. The small package she had stowed away in her pocket on Christmas Day lay hidden underneath her pillow and Ally could feel it practically burning her at night, as if to say, "Open me! Open me!"

On the last night before the other students came back from the holidays, and Ally was sure Harry and Ron were downstairs playing an intense match of wizard's chess, she decided to finally take it out. The silver wrapping paper gleamed at her and Ally traced the indentations of the elegant note card attached to it.

From Mum

Ally gently removed the note with shaking hands and placed it next to the ornate snow globe Father had sent her, knowing of his daughter's fondness for them, and she watched for a second as magical snow fell delicately inside of the glass, miniature couples skating elegantly around a frozen lake surrounded by lovely trees and lights. She fingered the edge of the tape and began to slowly rip it open, revealing a lovely velvet box inside that had her name written in a golden cursive on the top. Tossing the crumpled up wrapping paper to the side, Ally opened the box and gasped at what was inside; a beautiful and expensive looking gold necklace with a pendant in the shape of a heart, a single tiny ruby glittering at her from the center.

Still gazing at the necklace, Ally noticed a folded note tucked into the edge of the box and quickly opened it, her eyes scanning the curvy scrawl hungrily.

My Dearest Ally,

It is with a great sadness and pride I write to you today; sadness at the knowledge that I must leave you so soon and pride in knowing the intelligent and wonderful woman you are growing up to be. I wish I could have been there for more of it. Know that you are ardently and unconditionally loved Ally, and that life can be a wonderful and magical thing, if only you choose to be brave enough to love it. I leave you this necklace as a reminder that even in the bad times, I will always be here with you, in your heart, where it matters. I will always love you.

Merry Christmas my darling girl,

Mum xoxo

PS: don't worry about your Dad, he may be a bit of a grouch but he really does love you. Make sure to remind him to do the laundry.

Questions swirled around Ally's head and she felt a headache threatening to pound in her skull as she went over everything that the letter implied. How did the package get to Hogwarts? Who sent it? Were there more letters out there? Did Father know about the necklace? The rapid whirlwind of thoughts in her mind, pressing against her brain and heart gave her vertigo, and she had to stop herself before she fell into the abyss.

Rubbing her fingers against her temples, Ally scrunched up her face in concentration trying to come up with a plausible answer to all of her questions and let out a huff in frustration when she came up with nothing. She resolved to tuck the letter back inside the box and hide said box at the bottom of her trunk under a pile of fluffy jumpers and mismatched socks, and wrapping her hand around the necklace she exited the girls dormitory, going down the staircase two steps at a time. She found Harry and Ron still deep in the chess match, and she rolled her eyes at the two as she came bounding over, deciding to push back her speculations about the letter to the back of her mind.

"'Ello Harry, Ron." She said, quirking her mouth at them when they looked up at her, leaning her body against the side of Harry's armrest. "Who's winning?"

Ron smugly told her that he had Harry a few moves away from a 'bloody brilliant' checkmate, and Harry rolled with eyes comically, emitting a giggle from Ally.

"Brill," she said breezily, and holding out the necklace she asked, "Harry do you mind?" Ally turned around and swept her ginger hair away from her neck, gathering it all over her shoulder except for a few stubborn strands that tickled her exposed neck. Harry stared at the smooth ivory of her skin and he gulped softly when he brushed it accidentally, securing the gold clasp with fumbling fingers, and soon found himself looking into the grinning face of his best friend. Ally tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled widely at Harry, giving him a full view of her freckles and sparkly olive eyes.

"Thanks Harry! I guess I'll go back to reading, I don't want to distract you from your game," she teased. "See you lot later!"

Harry sank back down into the armchair, fully intent on maneuvering himself from the sticky situation he was in, only to find himself two moves from a checkmate and the inevitable rematch that followed.

"Blimey mate," said Ron, "Ally should watch more of our games, it'll certainly make 'em go by faster."

"Shut up Ron."


When Hermione finally came back from the holidays the day before classes were to start, she was disappointed, to say the least, about their lack of progress on Nicholas Flamel. The four didn't much time to dwell on this, because soon enough classes were starting again, and certain professors -namely McGonagall- had decided to assign more work in order to get them 'back into the swing of things.' Obviously Ally was outraged at this, as a student who generally left her assignments till the last minute, only to stay up all night finishing them and ending up writing far more than was needed when she got very passionate. The friends had much less time to do much research on Flamel, only sneaking in a few minutes of reading whenever possible.

Ally had taken to doing many of her assignments on the bleachers of the Quidditch Pitch while Harry was practicing, in order to avoid the small group of Ravenclaws that had taken to obsessively bothering her whenever she had a book they needed. Or at least that's what she told an amused Hermione, as she stole hidden glances at the Gryffindor Keeper in between the thoughtful strokes of her quill, and blushed whenever she thought he might be looking over.

Harry was, needless to say, very pleased whenever he saw Ally's distinctive ginger locks being whipped by the wind into her pink face as she did her work during their practices. Especially since she had taken to charming a bunch of warm towels for the team whenever it rained, which was often, and she always brought two mugs of steaming hot chocolate for the two of them. He also couldn't help but notice the subtle glances she'd steal at his captain, and the grins he'd send her that made her cheeks and the bridge of her nose colour brightly. At moments like these, Harry would shake off the slight twinge in his stomach he told himself was exhaustion, and instead swing a slightly damp arm around Ally's shoulder as they chatted amicably and came up with ridiculous theories about the identity of Flamel, some involving Snape and a pair hot pink fishnet tights.

One particularly wet and muddy practice (Oliver was becoming more fanatic every day as the upcoming Gryffindor-Hufflepuff game approached), the Weasley twins were fooling around and pretending to dive towards the ground before lifting back off before they could fall off their brooms, and Ally was furiously moving her quill across her parchment. Splitting her work between visits to the library and Harry's Quidditch practices had become such a habit for her, that she he become a regular presence for the rest of the team; sometimes even hanging out with Angelina and Katie in the girls locker room, the three gossiping about Cedric Diggory, the handsome seeker for the Hufflepuff team, what Oliver thought of Ally, and when Fred would finally pluck up the courage to ask Angelina out.

It was this on this dreary day, that when Ally began to pack up her things and make her way to a pale looking Harry on the Pitch with her usual mugs of hot chocolate, Harry told her the awful news that Snape was going to referee the upcoming match. Ally's mouth dropped, everyone knew of Snape's obvious distaste for Gryffindors and his seemingly personal vendetta against the green-eyed boy.

"Oh Harry," she cried, her bottom lip trembling in worry for her best friend, and she clutched his Quidditch-robe clad arm tightly. "You have to play! Just to prove that greasy, bitter man wrong," her mouth creased in a fierce expression, "you are so much more than the Boy-Who-Lived. You're brilliant!"

Harry looked at Ally, her eyes shining at him, and he felt the pixies in his stomach settle a bit at her blatant confidence in him. He grinned as she set off on a rant about how she was 'absolutely positive' that he would catch the Snitch before Snape could say 'foul' and probably even beat some kind of record, and they would finish the match in time to have dinner and play Exploding Snaps before bed. Ally hated for Harry to be under any extra stress for the match, and she quickly made a note in her head to make posters with Hermione for the match to show their support.

The pair made their way to Gryffindor Tower after Harry had changed and showered ("Ew! You smell, go take a shower," Ally had teased him when Harry slung his arm around her neck in their usual comfortable manner.) where they found a struggling Hermione and a smug Ron concentrated in a game of chess. They quickly pulled them away from the match, much to Ron's chagrin ("I was about to win!") and told them about Snape's evil plan to referee the Hufflepuff-Gryffindor Quidditch match. Hermione, who was already red in the face from the match with Ron (chess was about the only thing she wasn't very good in, and this irked her endlessly), became possibly three shades past Ron's hair .

"They can't make you play, Harry!" Hermione had never looked more infuriated and she quickly suggested Harry call in sick or pretend to break his leg. Ron, jumping on Hermione's train of thought, proposed he really break his leg. To no avail, Harry grimly told them that he had no choice, they needed to beat Hufflepuff for a good shot at the Cup and Oliver was certainly not about to let his star seeker sit this one out.

"Well," Ally concluded, "I guess you'll just have to win this one, eh Harry?"


A few days before the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff game, Neville came into the Great Hall hopping comically as he stumbled toward the four friends, Hermione chastising Ron for his horrific eating manners, while Harry and Ally stifled their snickers. Ally instantly rose from her seat once she caught sight of Neville, and helped him sit down on the bench as Hermione quickly removed the Leg-Locker curse that had been placed on him. The older students around them looked at Neville with a combination of thinly veiled pity and amusement.

"Oh, Neville," Ally pushed a goblet of pumpkin juice to Neville's blotchy face, "who would do this to you?"

He barely stumbled out an answer when Ron sneeringly answered for him, "Bloody Malfoy, who else? Listen Neville, next time you've gotta stand up for yourself, punch him in the bleeding nose if ya' have to." He waved his fork angrily and muttered some more to himself as he stuffed more eggs into his mouth.

"Ron's right Neville," Harry said, "about the standing up for yourself part I mean," he quickly corrected at Hermione's piercing glance. He continued with a nod of encouragement on Ally's part, "Look Neville, you're worth twelve of Malfoy, okay? No matter what he or anyone else says." Sticking his hand in his robe pocket, he pulled out a slightly melted chocolate frog and Neville takes it with a smile.

"Thanks you guys," he unwrapped the frog, "Next time, I'll stand up to Malfoy!" He pulled out the card that showed a courageous-looking Godric Gryffindor, and he gave it to Ally, "Thanks for always helping me out Ally."

Ally excitedly took the card, and after thanking Neville profusely, she waved it in front of a jealous Ron's face ("but they're so rare!") causing Harry to remember something.

"Guys, I think I remember where I've heard Flamel's name before," they all quieted down as Harry voice became hushed, "I think I read it in a chocolate frog card!"

"Oh!"

The trio looked at Hermione in surprise at her sudden outburst, and before Ally could blink, she had swept all of the plates of food to the side ("Hey!" exclaimed Ron) and brought out a huge book from the depths of her school bag. It was a tome of a book, with a must-looking leather cover and a cracked spine that had a title that Ally couldn't quite decipher spelled out in gold lettering. Hermione dropped onto the table in a puff of dust and expertly flipped through the thick pages until she came to whatever had triggered her apparent epiphany. At the trio's curious looks she quickly elaborated, "I picked it up at the library for a bit of light reading-" "Light?" Ally repeated incredulously to Harry, "and when Harry said that he had read something about Flamel in a chocolate frog card I finally figured out where I had read his name before. Look, it says that Nicholas Flamel is an a famous alchemist approximately 600 years old credited for creating something called the Sorcerer's Stone. Apparently it gives the user eternal wealth and-"

"Immortality," Harry finished, with a look of confusion on his face that Ally was sure she mirrored. She couldn't even imagine why Dumbledore would be keeping something as precious as the Sorcerer's Stone at Hogwarts, much less under a creature as fearsome as Fluffy, unless...

"Someone must be after it," she concluded out loud, "someone dangerous," she added. "I mean, why else would they be keeping it at Hogwarts, which is the safest place in all of Britain, after Gringotts."

"Ally's right," Hermione agreed, "which means that if they managed to break into Gringotts, who's to say they won't try and break into Hogwarts?" The four friends contemplated this ominous conclusion and the implications that it trailed until Ron finally broke the silence.

"Bloody 'ell, Hermione, you got that all from a chocolate frog." Hermione pursed her lips slightly and then they all burst in loud and silly peals of laughter, Flamel and the Sorcerer's Stone lingering only in the back of their minds, until they calmed down and Ally snorted, setting them all off once again.


A/N: Well there you have it! Coming up next: The Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Game, Ron gets in a fight, Ally and Oliver share a moment, and Snape is up to something.

Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, I know it's not as long as my usual ones are, but I really wanted to get it out :)I'm already working on Chapter 13, so you have that to look forward to. Just think of it this way, slightly shorter chapters=more frequent updates. Make sure to follow/favorite and REVIEW this story, it gives me inspiration!

Stay Golden xx

Vera W