Blood Crest

by Cauchy

The bonds of blood hid Harry Potter from those who wished to harm him. Unfortunately, foreign dark wizard Joachim Petri had no idea who Harry Potter even was. A wizard "rescues" a clueless Harry Potter from the Dursleys, but not all wizards are good people. Eventually Necromancer!Harry, Master of Death!Harry, no pairings.

25. Anonymous

Friday they only had potions, in the afternoon. Accordingly, Harry spent the morning holed up behind his bed curtains, consulting Nic's book and trying to apply his newly acquired knowledge of Transfiguration to understanding the passages on sympathetic magic. He couldn't help thinking that, short of killing Silviu as Professor Quirrell had unrealistically suggested, the best first step in dealing with the vampire's curse was to get a better understanding of how it worked.

Not that the book on the Philosopher's Stone was much help on that front. Even with Nic's directions and notes, it was unclear how a wizard was actually supposed to understand sympathetic magic. Believing in reality and desiring the truth was all good—too good. Harry didn't see why anybody would willingly believe in falsities, or desire lies. Yet it was clear that he was not currently in the state described in the book, because otherwise he would not be having these troubles with sympathetic magic in the first place.

He was disturbed from his agonizing and contemplation by a disturbance in his curtains. The dark blue material suddenly jumped at him, billowing with a dull sound. Somebody was… knocking.

Harry ripped the hangings to the side, and for his trouble nearly got a fist to his face.

"Oi, watch it."

"You're awake!" Terry exclaimed. Harry scowled.

"Of course I'm awake. It's bloody," he paused, checked the time with his wand, and continued, "eleven o'clock. I was reading."

As surreptitiously as he could, he shoved his book closed and laid his hand over the front to obscure the title.

"Sorry," said Terry. "You didn't come to breakfast so me and Anthony thought you were having a lie-in. Wanted to make sure you didn't miss Potions."

"Thanks," said Harry, charitably not pointing out that they did not have Potions until after lunch, and as such he still had over an hour to spare. He understood the origin of the sentiment.

Upon hearing that their first contact with the man was to be postponed the better part of a week, Robert had wasted no time regaling any firstie he stumbled across with horror stories about Professor Snape, the Potions Master. A good two-thirds of these tales seemed to be second-hand accounts involving Gryffindors, but they were worrying all the same.

Professor Snape was known for calling on students at will during his lecture, whether or not they raised a hand to volunteer, and belittling anybody who failed to deliver a correct and concise response. He also blatantly favoured his own house with points, and seemed to take the Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry more seriously than even the students. Once, a disastrous review session had ended with only a single ruby left in the towering Gryffindor hourglass, all without any potions even being brewed. As it transpired, it was not possible for a house to have negative points. Fortunately, Ravenclaws were not Gryffindors, but the point still stood.

Practicals were supposedly even worse. Professor Snape had the eyes and ears of a hawk; nothing escaped him in his classroom. He also believed in truly practical learning, and rarely intervened in potions accidents unless they appeared imminently life-threatening. Potions lessons were by far at the top of the list of reasons for visiting the hospital wing.

It was with all this in mind that a subdued group of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs waited with bated breath in the chilly dungeon classroom for the arrival of their professor. It was still five minutes to the lesson, but all the students were already present. Harry had somehow managed to be the odd one out again, and had been relegated to a seat adjacent to a Hufflepuff girl who looked like she was about to be sick at any moment.

At precisely twelve thirty, the door to the classroom burst open and Professor Snape stalked in, black robes billowing behind him. He strode with single-minded purpose to his desk, stepped up behind the raised lectern, and pivoted crisply.

"We shall make this quick," he began, unfurling the scroll of names. "A raised hand will suffice to note your presence. Abbott, Hannah."

The girl beside him squeaked at her name being called, as if she hadn't had her whole life to become accustomed to alphabetical order, and raised a shy hand. Professor Snape's eyes flickered briefly upward before he continued.

When he got to "Potter, Harry," some intense emotion flashed across the Professor's face, only to be replaced the next moment by apparent bewilderment, and then a sneer of consternation. He paused a little longer than he had after the other names, before proceeding.

As soon as he finished taking the register, his dark gaze swept over entire class, searching. They made a full circuit around the room and seemed still to be left wanting. Then he spoke: "Potion-making is the most versatile and exact practice that you all will encounter in your lives. There is little fanciful incanting or foolish wand-waving to be found here. As such, many of you will hardly comprehend the magic that lies within the softly simmering cauldron, the subtle and beautiful power that can bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. But you will learn. I shall teach you to capture the most ephemeral forces in a bottle—fame, fortune, even life and death—unless you prove yourselves to be another bunch of lazy, disgraceful dunderheads."

He stopped for a moment, and there was a rustling across the classroom from the flattening of unruly parchment rolls. Harry gripped his quill tightly and readied himself to make notes.

"Potter!" Professor Snape said suddenly, and Harry jumped. The Professor was glaring intently at the register that still rested on his lectern. "Tell me. What would I get if I added armadillo bile and ground scarab beetles to a tincture of ginger?"

Harry, accustomed to being forced to answer barked questions on the spot, wasted no more time with surprise and instead spent a moment to contemplate. The word "tincture" rang a bell. For each common type of potion base, the Potions text, which he had pored over during lunch, had given an example of something that used it. Harry wasn't sure he remembered the particular ingredients, but he couldn't imagine that Professor Snape would expect them to know some random potion, otherwise.

So he said, confidently, "Wit-Sharpening Potion."

Professor Snape's head snapped up and he looked wildly around the classroom. Frustration curled his lip, before his expression blanked. "Correct," he said. "MacMillan! What is the difference between an elixir and a liqueur?"

"Er," said a sandy-haired Hufflepuff boy two desks down from Harry, presumably MacMillan. "One of them has alcohol, sir?"

Harry winced a little on the boy's behalf as Professor Snape sneered darkly. "One of them? Which one?"

"The-the liqueur?" MacMillan attempted most courageously.

Professor Snape smiled, not showing his teeth. It was the same sort of schadenfreude-filled curl of the lip that Petri favoured.

"Yes, how very astute. A liqueur contains alcohol," he said slowly. MacMillan cringed backward, sinking in his seat until his chin was near level with his stone desk. Professor Snape continued. "More precisely, it is an alcohol base featuring extracts of fruits or nuts. An elixir is also an alcohol base, in which a powdered ingredient has been dissolved, commonly cane sugar or quartz."

Harry scribbled down "elixir, sugar or quartz." He vaguely recalled reading something about quartz in the book about duplication that Petri had showed him, but he didn't think it had been mentioned in his school text.

"Let's try again," said Professor Snape. "MacMillan, how many times should snake fangs be folded into a potion for a salutary effect?"

MacMillan didn't know this one either. He also didn't look like he knew what "salutary" even meant—neither did Harry, who wrote it down for later. Mercifully, Professor Snape looked to the rest of the students and said, "Well?"

Hesitantly, Terry raised his hand.

"Boot," said Professor Snape promptly.

"Sir, an odd number of times," said Terry. Professor Snape gave a curt nod.

"Mr Boot is correct. Any odd number of foldings is beneficial, while an even number is deleterious. You'd do best to remember that, as you will be working with snake fangs shortly." He waved his wand, and chalk writing appeared on the blackboard in a slanted scrawl. It appeared to be a recipe. "You will be preparing a cure for boils today. Each of you will be brewing your own potion. The special ingredients are in the storage cabinets to my right."

Professor Snape gestured to the cabinets, before letting his arm fall limply to his side. There was a moment of stillness, and then at once all the students seemed to surge to their feet and make a mad rush for the ingredients. Harry saw the professor rub tiredly at his temples.

"In an orderly fashion, if you would," said Professor Snape stonily. Miraculously, his low voice cut through the din and everyone slowed and shuffled into a haphazard queue.

Harry found himself towards the back, but this gave him the leisure to watch the first students as they began their potions. There was some confusion over the heating element—apparently, a disc of stone at the top corners of each of their desks would make a flame when prodded with a wand, and could be adjusted to three different settings with further wand taps.

There was a plethora of other tools as well. A round jug with a thin spout, shared between each pair of students, could produce arbitrary amounts of pure water, and in the drawers of each desk were a large assortment of stirring rods, scoops, and ladles in varying sizes. The cauldrons, scales, and certain common ingredients, as had been detailed on the list that came with the Hogwarts acceptance letter, were to be supplied by the student.

Harry finally came to the front of the queue and, having seen a dozen others before him, was able to gather his snake fangs, horned slugs, and porcupine quills with alacrity and return to his place.

He ducked under the table to retrieve his cauldron, dumping out the books and parchments he had carried inside. Then he placed it on the heating disc and proceeded to fill halfway with water and set it to boil. There was a charm to boil water almost instantly, he knew, that Petri used all the time for his tea, but he couldn't yet cast it and wasn't sure if it was safe to use while making potions, anyway. Surely there was some magical reason behind the need to heat, measure, and stir manually, rather than with "foolish wand-waving."

Harry proceeded to rummage about in the drawer to produce a stirring rod, a small stone spoon, and a mortar and pestle. Spying Hannah approaching, he charitably withdrew a second set of implements and set them on her side of the table.

"Thanks," she said, smiling at him wanly with her face half-hidden behind a curtain of hair.

"No problem," said Harry. He squinted at the instructions on the board to make sure he had got everything right, his spectacles helpfully magnifying everything he concentrated on, and then set to work.

It really was not particularly complicated, which was reassuring, given that it was their first-ever potion. The base was pure water, boiling, and the first ingredient was crushed snake fangs. Four measures were required, but they were added all at once. Harry supposed adding them separately would count as an even folding, and result in some bad effect.

The mortar and pestle took some getting used to. Harry took his time crushing the fangs to a fine powder. He glanced at Hannah and saw that she was preparing to scoop hers into her cauldron.

"You have to add it all at once," he whispered urgently. Hannah glanced over to him in bewilderment. "The snake fangs," he said. "All four measures at the same time or it would be even, not odd, like the professor said."

Harry measured the powder carefully, using a stirring rod to level it off, and held it in a second bowl. Then he dumped all of it into the cauldron and waited for it to settle, as he noticed no instruction for stirring.

He turned the fire up to the maximum setting and counted ten seconds with his wand, waiting for the water to turn clear and reddish. Then he lowered the heat again and waved his wand at the cauldron, feeling rather foolish as nothing appeared to happen. Somewhat frantically, he picked up his potions text from where it lay beside his feet and flipped it to the index, and then to the instructions for the Boil Cure. The entry was absolutely no help, and had even less detail than what Professor Snape had written on the board.

He bit his lip, considered raising his hand, and then thought better of it and looked around at the other students for inspiration. Most were at a similar stage to him, though some were still crushing their fangs.

His eyes wandered to the left and settled on Stephen, who looked like he knew what he was doing. He had sat back and was staring absently into space, his cauldron already at a low simmer and emitting the proper red fumes. Harry's steam was still clear.

Suddenly inspired by the thought, he extended his arm and waved his wand in the midst of the steam cloud, just above the cauldron's surface. It darkened instantly, and Harry grinned to himself, setting his wand down. The next thing was to wait for at least thirty minutes, which did not seem very exciting.

After about five minutes, Professor Snape finished making a circuit of the classroom and returned to his desk. He cleared his throat.

"Has anybody yet to reach the simmering stage?" he asked. Nobody spoke up, even as his tunnel-like eyes bored through the rising steam and scrutinised each and every cauldron. There were definitely some plumes of clear, or even green smoke mingling with the red.

"Some of you may be wondering how you could have already gone wrong adding a single ingredient to water. Rest assured that I am wondering the same thing," he murmured. "MacMillan!"

The unfortunate MacMillan jumped guiltily amid a cloud of green.

"Tell me. What potion are you brewing?" asked Professor Snape.

"Er, Boil Cure, sir," said MacMillan haplessly. Harry could feel the miasma of the professor's sneer from across the classroom.

"No, Mr MacMillan, try again. What colour is it supposed it be?" Professor Snape indicated the blackboard with a jerk of his head.

"Red, sir," said MacMillan. "Mine is green," he added, before he was inevitably prompted and made a fool of.

"How many times," said Professor Snape, "should snake fangs be folded into this potion?"

To his credit, MacMillan was relatively quick on the uptake here. "Once, sir. An odd number."

With that, Professor Snape ceased to acknowledge him and turned back to the class at large.

"When exposed to high heat, crushed snake fangs will fuse into a syrup that serves as this potion's base. An odd folding of snake fangs will result in a curative potion, while an even number results in the opposite—a boil inducer. Why should the parity of the folding matter?"

Professor Snape waited, but did not address his question to any particular student. After a few moments, Stephen raised his hand.

"Mr Cornfoot."

"Snake fangs have a cancelling effect. When you add them twice you sort of, cancel the cancelling," said Stephen.

"That is correct," said Professor Snape. "A point to Ravenclaw. You will encounter a variety of ingredients that function in a similar way. These ingredients are known as reverse amplifiers. It is vital to understand the difference between an amplifier and a reverse amplifier, as an error could result in poison rather than cure, or any manner of explosive or transformative results."

Professor Snape spent the rest of the thirty minute wait time lecturing about just that topic. Harry started out taking some notes, but quickly gave up in favour of simply paying attention. He wished he had his remembrall, and resolved to bring it to all his lessons in the future.

It was apparently difficult to tell just by looking whether a given ingredient was a regular or reverse amplifier, but in the context of an existing recipe, the preparation method was a good hint. Reverse amplifiers were almost always powdered, juiced, or crushed, and never added whole, in order to prevent a disastrous time delay between some portion of the ingredient and the rest taking effect. Amplifiers, on the other hand, were usually expected to continue acting in the potion for the duration of the brewing process.

Professor Snape made a list of common amplifiers and reverse amplifiers, implied that they would need to have it memorised post haste, and assigned them ten inches on a reverse amplifier of their choice. Then it was time for the second stage of the potion.

"Your potion should now resemble a light-coloured treacle. If it appears too watery, you may add a dash of flobberworm mucus to thicken it," said Professor Snape.

Harry wasn't sure what the likes of MacMillan, who had completely botched the first part, were meant to do, as Snape did not provide any additional instruction, and he was glad that he had managed everything successfully so far.

The concoction in his cauldron had condensed into a translucent, reddish syrup. Harry grasped the cauldron by its handle and tilted it left and right. The potion slid reluctantly along, clinging to the sides, and seemed more or less the correct consistency. He added four horned slugs, whole, grimacing at the slime they left behind on his hands, and prodded gently at the potion with his stirring rod until their jelly-like bodies dissolved into the goop.

"REMOVE CAULDRON FROM FIRE," said the next line, in blocky capital letters, noticeably larger text than the rest of the instructions.

Harry duly removed his cauldron from the fire, and waited a minute for it to cool, for good measure, before he added two porcupine quills. They remained floating at the top, suspended, and did not appear to have any effect. Harry took a stirring rod and prodded them doubtfully, sinking them slightly deeper.

Glancing up at the instructions, he traded out the stirring stick for his wand. The potion turned opaque and lightened to pink, but he could still see part of a porcupine quill sticking out.

He glanced over to Stephen, who was predictably finished and had scooped his potion into a glass jar. Harry copied him, leaving out the whole quills. There was still enough in the cauldron to fill at least another jar, so he did so, figuring that a boil curing paste could come in handy.

Five minutes later, Professor Snape told everyone to bottle what they had and place it on his desk, labelled with their names. Harry set his down in the middle of the collection, and paused to eye the rest. Most were similarly creamy and opaque, but in various shades of pink. There were a couple dark sludges, and some distinctly soupy specimens. Harry decided that he had probably done all right.

"It's officially the weekend!" Terry declared cheerily as they poured out of the Potions classroom.

"Yeah, and Snape wasn't even that bad," said Harry. He had been a bit intimidating, but certainly not to the level of Robert's tall tales. Terry groaned.

"Says you. My potion turned into a rock and he called me a nitwit," he complained.

"How'd that happen?" asked Lisa. Terry just groaned again. "Academic curiosity, come on," Lisa cajoled.

"Too much flobberworm mucus," Terry finally admitted.

"Really?" Academic curiosity or not, Lisa laughed at him and he scowled deeply.

"Whatever. What are you guys planning to do?" he asked.

"Homework," said Stephen. "You know, like the homework Professor Snape's just assigned."

Before Terry could get properly outraged, Harry held up his cauldron full of books, ingredients, and extra boil-cure and said, "I'm going back to the common room to drop off my stuff."

"Good idea," said Lisa, charging ahead to lead the way.

When they arrived at the dormitories, Harry shoved his cauldron underneath his bed and reached behind the hangings to slide the philosopher's stone book after it. The book was just beyond him, at least for now. Maybe there were books in the library that could explain sympathetic magic in a less cryptic way. There would certainly be books on vampires, at least.

"I'm heading to the library," said Stephen to the room at large, true to his word.

"Wait for me," said Harry. He reached into his pockets to make sure that his note parchment and quills were still there before hurrying to the door, which Stephen was propping open with his foot.

"I don't think anybody else is coming," Stephen said. Harry glanced behind him and came to the same conclusion. Terry and Anthony had set up for wizard's chess again, while Oliver was sitting on his bed, already engrossed in a book.

"Right, let's go then," Harry agreed.

They walked in silence for some time, stepping carefully down the cramped tower staircase, before Harry's curiosity got the better him.

"So have you brewed a potion before? I mean, before today. You seemed to, er, know what you were doing," he asked.

Stephen nodded up ahead. "Yes, loads of times. My mother does potions research and she lets me help sometimes, you know. There's this book she has, about ingredients. Not like our Herbology text—it's organised by type, like amplifiers and disrupters, and balancers and whatnot. That's what I'm going to the library for. I mean I'm sure they have it. I'll show you."

"Sounds brilliant," said Harry. "I don't really know much about potions. Just what we've done so far. Professor Snape seems to know his stuff."

"Professor Snape's a genius. He's the youngest MESP member ever, you know. That's the official potioneers' guild. We're really lucky to get to learn from him. Did you know he doesn't take apprentices, and a lot of people are annoyed at that, but I mean he teaches all us Hogwarts students so that's even better, I think."

Harry hadn't known all of that, but he just nodded, and then remembered that Stephen couldn't see him and hurried to catch up as they finally emerged into the common room proper.

"I suppose," said Harry. "I wish he'd explained a bit more before we started the potion. There's still some things I'm not sure about. Everyone's potions, I mean, everyone who got all the instructions right, were still different shades of pink. Does that matter?"

"Yes," said Stephen. "The lighter the colour, the stronger the boil cure is, but it also doesn't last as long. I mean it goes bad faster, so you have to balance it. The trick is with the porcupine quills. It's best to break them up and sort of distribute them a bit, before accelerating the potion. Not exactly sure why, but I think it's got to do with how long their effect lasts."

"Accelerating?" Harry asked. "Like when you wave your wand at the end?"

"Yes, that's to make the non-magical ingredients combine. I mean in theory if you waited, like, forever, I suppose things would combine on their own, but I bet all the magic in the potion would be gone by then anyway. So you need to add more magic to speed it up," Stephen explained.

"Really? Does it say that in the textbook? I don't remember reading that anywhere," said Harry.

"It's true," said Stephen, a little defensively.

"Yeah, but why doesn't the book just say so?" was what Harry wanted to know.

"My sister says the texts for the first few years just talk about what you need to do, and not really how it works. Otherwise they'd be like, huge tomes. I mean, not everybody's a Ravenclaw and wants to spend all eternity reading, you know?" said Stephen. "That's what the library is for."

"I suppose," said Harry. "Wait, I thought the library was upstairs?" They had been moving steadily downward for far longer than seemed right, and Harry had been too focused on the conversation to pay much attention to where Stephen had been leading them.

"It's better to go in the entrance down there," Stephen said, pointing down to the left, past a gap in their landing that was waiting for a moving stair to come by. Harry thought he recognised the Transfiguration corridor just below that, so they must have been on the second floor. "That way Madam Pince doesn't stare you down as soon as you walk in."

Madam Pince, Harry supposed, was the unpleasant-looking librarian.

"I might need to talk to her," Harry admitted. "I'm looking for some books and I have no idea where they'd be."

"She's totally unhelpful," said Stephen. "She'll probably just yell at you. What books are you looking for?"

"Er, something on sympathetic magic," said Harry.

"Like magic with emotions?" asked Stephen. "Love potions?"

"Er, no, not like that," said Harry hurriedly. "It's just called sympathetic magic. I don't really know what it is; I just heard it somewhere. So that's why I'm looking for a book on it."

Stephen shrugged. "Never heard of it. Maybe you can just look around the shelves. I still wouldn't try your luck with Pince."

"She can't be that bad," said Harry, but Stephen only gave him a measured look, so he said, "Is there some kind of card catalogue?"

"Card what?" asked Stephen.

"Like something that says where each book is," Harry said.

"Oh, a book of books," said Stephen. "I don't know. If there is, Madam Pince probably has it."

Harry sighed.

The correct moving staircase finally deigned to grind to a shuddering stop before their position, and they hurried down it, over a trick stair that Stephen helpfully pointed out ("My sister's got this list of all the trick stairs in Hogwarts. She wrote a poem to help remember. I'll show you."), and turned the corner to find themselves in front of a small stone archway with a portcullis-like metal grille raised above it.

There was no sign, but it was pretty obvious by the view beyond that they had indeed reached the library.

Stephen made a beeline for the Potions section, and Harry hesitantly ascended the right staircase to the second level, where Madam Pince's desk was located.

"Excuse me," he said, approaching the counter. Madam Pince adjusted her ridiculous hat, which looked like a half-plucked bird carcass, and peered at him suspiciously from beneath its dark green brim.

"Yes, what are you looking for, boy?" she asked.

"Er, a book," Harry said, most redundantly, "something on, er, sympathetic magic."

"And you have a note from a teacher?" she pressed.

Harry, who had no such thing, said, "Oh, er, I didn't know you needed a note."

"Students aren't to get anything out of the Restricted Section without a note," said Madam Pince accusingly, her eyes narrowing to slits.

"Restricted Section?" Harry repeated. "I didn't..." he wisely stopped before he could talk himself into further trouble. Hadn't Professor Quirrell mentioned that the book from Nic was on dark magic? He should have known.

"That's right you didn't. Well, what are you still doing here?" Madam Pince demanded after a few seconds of silence.

"I, er, do you have books on vampires?" Harry tried instead, hoping that this wasn't something else restricted, though he couldn't imagine why it would be.

"Defence Against the Dark Arts and Magical Creatures sections," said Madam Pince.

Harry could have guessed this for himself. "Where exactly..."

"There and there." Madam Pince indicated the direction with a sharp jab of her wand, and Harry flinched back on reflex.

"Thanks," he said, declining to ask for further detail. He saw exactly now what Stephen had meant by, "unhelpful."

Madam Pince had pointed in the general direction of the opposite side of the library on the same floor, and at the first floor. Harry elected to return downstairs and perhaps find Stephen again. His housemate was nowhere in sight when he reached the bottom, but the shelves on magical creatures were indeed directly across the room.

Unfortunately, the section spanned at least a dozen shelves, and Harry couldn't begin to guess which author he might be looking for.

As it turned out, however, the books were clearly not organised by author, but continued to be grouped by subject, so Harry supposed he could browse along the spines until he saw the word "vampire" somewhere.

He went through four rows of shelves and was considering doubling back in case he had missed something, when he finally found what he was looking for—titles like Notable Vampires of the Sixteenth Century, Visiting with Vampires, and Vampire Vision were suddenly popping up everywhere he could see. He tugged the sizable volume that was Vampire Vision, from its place, and skimmed the contents. It looked like it explained everything there was to know about vampiric, vision-based magic, which was far more detail than he had time for.

Reluctantly, he put it back and searched for a thinner book. A bright red volume caught his eye. Along the spine in narrow, stamped letters read, Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the Vampires. It seemed more along the lines of what he was looking for anyway—a broad treatise on how vampires thought and behaved rather than simply their physical properties.

He took the book and flipped to the preface.

"I choose the title of this book very deliberately. It is about my life amongst the vampires, and make no mistake. I was perfectly alive and well while I stayed with them, and remain so after my return. Common perception of vampires as lawless or monstrous are severely misguided, and I found myself compelled to pen this account in response to these attitudes. I hope it will serve as a counterexample, and correct many prevalent misconceptions about these marvelous beings."

Harry scanned the text, finding it a little dubious. "Marvelous" really wasn't an adjective that he would readily connect to the likes of Silviu. Still, he tucked the book under his arm and left the shelves to look for somewhere to sit.

He emerged in the centre of the library, directly beneath the column of chandeliers, and spotted Stephen sitting at a round wooden table that looked like a thin slice straight out of a gigantic tree.

"There you are," the other boy whispered as he came near. "Did you find what you were looking for?" Stephen had staked clear claim of the table, having spread several rolls of parchment, his inkwell and blotter, and a pile of books all around. Harry took a seat across from him, rolling the end of some parchment away to free some space. Despite its grainy appearance, the surface of the table was perfectly smooth under his hand.

"Sort of," he whispered back. "You were right. Madam Pince wasn't much help."

"Told you. Here, have a look at this," said Stephen, pushing the bottom book of his stack towards Harry, heedless of the books that cascaded down his arm with a dull thud. Harry spun the offered book around with his fingers. Ingrid's Ingredient Index, it was called. Stephen reached over and opened the book for him, navigating it with much familiarity despite that it was upside-down.

"Brilliant," said Harry, when he stopped at the heading, "Reverse Amplifiers (Self-Cancellers, Multiplicative Reducers)," beneath which was simply a list of ingredients and page numbers.

"Right? And then you can go to the entry when you find the one you want, and it even references other books about it, and the potions that it's used in," Stephen explained.

"Which one are you writing about?" Harry asked.

"Sopophorous bean," said Stephen. "Its juice affects memory and consciousness and the like so it's in all sorts of potions."

"Nice," said Harry, as he glanced down the list. The "Poisons/Antidotes" section caught his eye, and he picked graphorn horn on a whim and made a note to look it up. He wasn't Stephen, however, and wasn't about to complete his homework a whole week before it was due.

Flipping past the preface of his vampire book, Harry discovered that it was a sort of memoir, rather than a monograph, and not the sort of book that could be read out of order. On the other hand it was not very long, a mere hundred fifty pages, and written in vivacious prose, so it seemed, so Harry set himself to it.

Eldred Worple, the author of the book, had apparently first made his way into an Italian vampire company as dinner. Despite this less than illustrious beginning, his quick wit and his transfiguration skill allowed him to talk his way into their good graces, after vanishing all the vampires' teeth (he restored them later). Harry thought this was a pretty creative defence, except that it was unfortunately easily countered by any vampire with a wand.

Curiously, Worple mentioned being bitten multiple times, and explained that with blood-replenishing potion on hand, it was perfectly safe. It was a misconception that the vampire bite could cause a transformation on a living person. At most, repeated exposure and the imbibing of the vampire's blood could create a sort of mental link, and induce irritability in the face of garlic and sunlight.

Harry frowned. That couldn't be right. The school healer and Professor Quirrell had implied that there were stages of the curse, and that it could become more severe. On the other hand, this was a published book.

"Hey Stephen," Harry whispered. Stephen ignored him for a few moments in favour of rolling his blotting paper all over his essay. Then he finally looked up.

"What?"

"Do you know anything about vampires?" That was perhaps too general. "Like how people become vampires?"

"If they get bitten," said Stephen. "I think it's kind of like with werewolves too."

Harry didn't know much about werewolves, except that being bitten by one was very bad, so that was hardly any help.

"Why?" Stephen wanted to know.

"Er, this book is saying that being bitten by a vampire won't transform you and that it's totally safe," Harry said. Stephen shook his head.

"Really?" he said. "That doesn't sound right to me. Everyone knows vampire bites are infectious. Why are you reading that anyway? Blood Brothers? Is it fiction?"

"I'm pretty sure it's not fiction," said Harry.

"Then why are you reading it? It's not like Professor Quirrell is going to give you extra points for it."

In a way, Harry thought, this sort of was extra reading for Professor Quirrell. But he only said, "It's just for fun."

In the end, Harry decided not to check the book out, and followed Stephen down to dinner, empty-handed. Afterwards they were roped into several rounds of exploding snap, which led to a singed Oliver extolling the virtues of muggle games that did not explode, and introducing all the first years to a board game called "Monopoly." Terry spent most of the rest of the evening alternating between marvelling that the pieces did not move on their own and exclaiming over the flimsy paper money.

Harry forgot all about the workings of the vampire curse until the next morning, when an owl swooped low overhead and dropped a paper-wrapped parcel into his porridge, which splattered all over his robes. He looked all around in vain for a serviette or something to wipe himself with, finally remembered that he was a wizard, and tried to cast the scouring charm on himself—tried being the operative word, as he only barely managed to remove the worst of the grains and still left a dark stain, along with a copious amount of magical soap residue.

It was a textbook case of when the siphoning charm was more appropriate for cleaning than the scouring charm, but unfortunately Harry was even less passable at the former than the latter.

Giving up, he turned to the offending package instead, and fished it gingerly out of the bowl. It was a little sodden, but as he extracted it it magically dried and straightened itself out. By this, Harry knew immediately that it was from Petri. This was the sort of packaging he would use to send owl orders for his shop.

He tugged at the end of the white bow and watched the parcel unwrap itself. The thick brown paper danced to the side, rolled itself up, and fell onto the ribbon, which twisted into a neat knot around the scroll before going limp. The wooden box within clattered to a stop on the table and a parchment note slid off it. Harry picked the letter up first:

Dear Harry,

Enclosed is an amulet which has been enchanted to 'do nothing,' as you put it. Certainly, you already should know the theory behind this enchantment, if you only think a little. What spell is required for every enchantment? What else should you add, if you want nothing, null? In practice it is harder to cast, because you need also null intent. We may discuss it later when you return.

The Evil Eye is not a very common charm in modern day. I am very surprised that it is still taught. For charm analysis, the Structure Sight spell (Comp. p. 2658) is much simpler, and less disruptive. For charm replacement, the Holdfast variant of the cancellation charm (Comp. p. 542) is almost always the preferred method. The only cases where Evil Eye may be better is for a moving object, e.g., replacement of an active flight charm, or unwilling living creature.

There is no enchantment that protects against vampires, specifically. If there were, many problems could be solved. Your professor must be using a more ordinary defence; perhaps garlic or rose, although I do not recall headaches as a possible result of exposure to either of these. Your symptoms should not be progressing, as you are now far from our friend. If anything, I expect them to improve and disappear by the end of this year.

Harry paused and reread the previous line. His symptoms were supposed to be going away? Petri was no expert on vampires, so perhaps he was mistaken. If he were here, he could do his own examination. But what about the suggestion that the Evil Eye wasn't a great spell, with references included? Harry did not doubt that Petri knew what he was about on the charms front.

Perhaps it was Professor Quirrell who had made a mistake. Harry had to admit that the man did not seem overly competent in lessons. Hadn't he used to be the Muggle Studies professor? Harry remembered Penelope mentioning something like that.

Or maybe, Harry thought with sudden coldness, Professor Quirrell had placed some other kind of curse on him, under the flimsy guise of examining him. That was what the Evil Eye was really for, wasn't it, according to the Compendium? Petri, who apparently was under the misconception that first years were being taught advanced, obscure charms in class, had even listed unwilling creatures as a use case. No doubt that was the legally acceptable euphemism for cursing people.

Hastily, Harry set down the letter and slid the wooden cover off his box. Inside was a flat, dark blue glass pendant in the abstract shape of a soaring bird. Harry snatched it up and tugged the chain over his head. He paused, concentrating, but he felt no different. Of course he felt nothing—the amulet was only supposed to stop the Evil Eye from working in the first place. It didn't end curses.

"Ooh, who's that from?" Lisa asked, and Harry finally recalled his surroundings. All his nearby housemates were looking at him, some more surreptitiously than others, but they were still clearly curious about his mail.

"Er, my uncle," said Harry.

"Sorting present, eh?" said Anthony. "Nice."

Harry supposed it could be construed as a Ravenclaw eagle, if one squinted. He wondered if Petri had done it on purpose, or if it was a coincidence.

"It's kind of girly," said Terry.

"It is not!" Lisa said loudly, rounding on him. Terry shrank back slightly. "It's actually a rather masculine piece. Don't you know anything about jewellery? Look at the chain..."

Harry suspected Terry, like him, did not in fact know anything about jewellery. Privately, he also thought it seemed a little girly to wear a necklace, but it was that or remain vulnerable to the Evil Eye. After all, maybe he had been cursed with something that needed to be applied repeatedly. Weren't there a lot of curses that were like that?

While Lisa tried to educate everybody about fashion, predictably getting into an argument with Sue and Mandy two seconds later, Harry tucked the pendant under his shirt and returned to his letter:

I hope you have been keeping up with your exercises. As you are attending school, I have less time to teach you in person, but that means you must practise all the more diligently. I expect you to be ready to proceed to the next step of study by summer next year, so you will first need to master your animation charms. Of course, do not neglect your school subjects either. Take care.

Yours,

JP

Harry wasn't sure what to think. By "next step," did Petri mean spirit conjuration? Thoughts of dementors and disembodiment flashed unbidden through his mind. Or was it going to be some other kind of necromantic enchantment? And where was he supposed to get convenient dead animals to animate?

He must have looked consternated, because Anthony leaned over and said, "What? What's it say?" Harry tugged the letter back and folded it up for good measure.

"He's just telling me to study a lot," he said, which was true.

"That's criminal," said Terry.

"How are you even in Ravenclaw?" Anthony muttered, though he hardly sounded surprised.

"I like learning," said Terry. "Doesn't mean I like studying. Come on. Nobody likes studying."

Fortunately for Terry, Lisa was still embroiled in debate with Sue, and could do no more than glare at him from across the table. He seemed to recognise that he had only narrowly escaped danger, and stood up the next moment.

"I'm off exploring," he said, glancing up at the cloudless ceiling of the Great Hall. "It's a nice day. Want to come?"

Anthony joined him, but Harry declined, not yet through with his breakfast. The porridge was possibly ruined, so he grabbed a bit of toast and marmalade instead.

After breakfast, he returned to the common room with some of the other first years, unsure what he was going to do with the rest of his day. An off day, spent by himself rather than supervised, was something of a novelty to him. On the other hand, he still had unfinished homework, namely Professor Snape's essay and some reading for Defence Against the Dark Arts.

As they gained entry to the common room after some bickering with the knocker about what constituted the property of "roundness," Sue stopped by the bulletin board and waved everyone over to join her.

"Look, all the clubs are recruiting," she said. "Ooh, there's a Gobstones club!"

Harry wrinkled his nose.

"What's that?" Oliver asked.

"It's like marbles, but they squirt disgusting stuff in your face," Harry explained.

"Don't listen to him," said Sue. "It's a high-stakes game of skill and strategy. You'd love it."

"Hey look, chess club," said Stephen. "I expect Terry and Anthony will want to join that."

"What about you?" Harry asked. Stephen shrugged.

"Chess is all right, but I don't want to do tournaments or anything," he said.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. His own experience with chess amounted to vaguely knowing what the pieces were called and how they moved. His eyes wandered sceptically over the other eye-wateringly colourful, animated club fliers that papered the board. There was choir, broom racing, astronomy, runes, magizoology, and to his surprise, charms:

CHARMS CLUB

Ever wondered at a practical use for a dancing pineapple? Wished you could make your books read themselves out loud, or have your poetry come alive?

Join us in CHARMS CLUB on Saturdays at 7PM, North Rotunda (near the Astronomy Tower). We discuss a new charm each week. All experience levels welcome.

Below the text was a graphic of a tap-dancing pineapple wearing sunglasses. As he watched, the pineapple developed stubby stick arms and began executing some rather risque moves.

Harry figured he knew now what he would be doing this evening. It would be remiss not to visit this club at least once.

For the moment, he decided to take Petri's reminder to heart and dig out the exercise book from his trunk. The first thing on there, he was reminded, was permanent animation, of the dancing pineapple sort. After that was the sequel to both this exercise and levitation, which was something that moved while levitating, and so simulated flight. Harry sighed and made a mental note to save an apple or pear at lunch, and use it to start practising animation afterwards. To make sure he didn't forget, he rummaged around in his trunk until he produced his remembrall. The swirling smoke inside promptly turned an unpleasant maroon that indicated he should get his priorities straight.

He gave it an impatient shake to clear it. He knew that he was putting off thinking about Professor Quirrell's possible curse—there wasn't anything he could realistically do about it for the moment. The best person to consult would have been the Defence professor, after all, but alas that happened to be Quirrell himself.

The smoke swirled and then settled into a reddish-orange cloud. Harry scowled. He was about to forget things if he didn't review them, but he'd learned so many things under the influence of this remembrall that the reminder feature was basically useless. He didn't have the time or the energy to run through all the properties of blood from every species of creature. Pixie blood crystallized and turned to dust when exposed to silver. Dragon was especially finicky and there were a dozen uses…

He shoved the remembrall into his pocket, and his thoughts calmed somewhat. Did he really still need to know how to prepare every sort of inferius? Though they lived in a graveyard, Petri had not touched a human corpse (that Harry knew of) since they moved to England. It almost seemed like he was trying to be sort of law-abiding. Considering they weren't allowed to live in a graveyard in the first place he was still doing a piss-poor job of it, but it was a relative improvement.

Regretting that he had checked out neither the vampire book nor something relevant to his Potions essay, Harry reached under his bed and extracted the only non-textbook he owned—namely Secrets of the Hieroglyphical Figures.

Idly, he took a quill and traced over the inscription in the flyleaf. As he had suspected, this caused the book to transform back into its original letter form.

"Neat," he murmured to himself, and put the letter back under the bed, into his cauldron. Then he returned downstairs to see if anybody was doing anything fun. He needed a hobby.

The common room was mostly empty, with only some upper years occupying this or that corner. Harry couldn't spot any of his year-mates anywhere. Perhaps Terry and Anthony had had the right idea to go exploring, after all.

Once outside, Harry arbitrarily decided to go upstairs. As soon as he stepped onto the staircase, however, it trembled and then gave a great grinding lurch, throwing him to the side as it swiveled about. Harry clung to the handrail for dear life.

The stair had done a sort of steepening move, and now connected two floors up from where Harry had started. As he made it to the landing, he saw with some wonder that the rafters were actually visible, so he must be on the top floor. He tried to find some kind of window to look out, wondering how high up he was, but there was none.

The landing was thickly carpeted in burgundy and lit by wall-mounted torches. Between each pair hung a portrait or tapestry. They seemed primarily to feature landscapes, and Harry couldn't spot any sign of movement.

There were two open archways on either side of the room, both leading into darkness. Harry cautiously peered into one, jumping back as torches suddenly flared to life down its length. They only illuminated more carpeted stone, so Harry ventured forwards.

As he turned the corner he nearly collided with the hulking form of Vince Crabbe. Draco Malfoy and Goyle were close behind.

"Oh, sorry, hey," Harry mumbled as he stepped back.

"Alright Harry," said Vince with a lopsided smile.

"Hello, er, Harry," said Draco. "What are you doing up here?"

"Just exploring," Harry said, and was about to return the question when Draco started talking again.

"They say the Gryffindor common room is somewhere around here," he murmured conspiratorially. "It's supposed to be guarded by a portrait."

Harry cast his gaze down the long hall, which was completely lined with a variety of paintings—landscapes as before, but also, indeed, portraits.

"That's helpful," he said dubiously. "What does the portrait do? Dare you to do something stupid?"

The other boys chuckled, though Harry had meant it seriously.

"Probably needs a password," Draco said.

"How are you going to find that out?" Harry asked. A password? That seemed much more secure than the Ravenclaw knocker. Then again, the knocker was very particular about the sort of answers it would accept, and he doubted a non-Ravenclaw, unfamiliar with its workings, would be able to get past it easily. Even older students often had trouble.

Draco shrugged elegantly. "Subterfuge skills," he said.

"If we find the portrait," said Vince, "we'll just wait for some Gryffindor to walk up and say it."

This idea was not half bad, except for one glaring problem.

"And hide where?" Harry pointed out. The corridor was bereft of furniture, statues, or even the clunky suits of armour that seemed to populate most of the castle. "And why are you trying to get into the Gryffindor common room anyway?"

"We're not," said Draco. "You just assumed."

"Oh, sorry," said Harry, as he tried to think back on the conversation. He found himself drawing a blank. The remembrall trembled in his pocket, tickling his leg, and he patted it with more force than perhaps was necessary.

"What?" Draco asked, following his hand. Harry sighed and extracted the remembrall, which had thankfully cleared to white.

"It's a remembrall," he explained. "It helps you remember things, sort of. Really it tells you when you've forgotten something. Though it doesn't actually tell you what you forgot."

"I've heard of them, but I've never seen one before," said Draco. "I thought only old people used them."

Harry frowned. "No, it's pretty useful for revising," he said, though he wasn't sure reciting necromancy procedures to oneself really counted as revising, exactly.

Draco looked sceptical.

"Where can you get one?" Vince asked.

"A shop?" Harry said rather unhelpfully. "I dunno. My uncle makes these."

Unbidden, the image of Uncle Vernon crafting remembralls with his meaty muggle hands popped up in his mind, and he had to suppress a snort. Moments later, a scowling Petri appeared with the killing curse on his lips and Uncle Vernon keeled over like a sack of potatoes. Harry blinked rapidly to clear the strange fantasy from his mind—he still wasn't fully used to thinking of Petri as "Uncle Jochen."

"Are you a pureblood then?" Draco asked, in a totally irrelevant way. Harry blinked again. "By the way, what's your surname again?"

"Half-blood," Harry said, after a beat, wondering if the Malfoys were the sort of purebloods who looked down on everybody else of lesser blood. Probably. He was half-tempted to tell Draco that he didn't have a surname at all. See what the rather pompous boy made of that. Instead, he simply said, "My name's Potter," and watched with some schadenfreude as Draco failed to understand him, and had to suffer in ignorance on account of etiquette.

"Oh," said Draco. "Well, I suppose that's alright then. Say, do you want to come with us, then?"

"To look for the Gryffindor common room?" Harry asked. But Draco shook his head.

"No, actually," and here, Draco paused to look around, as if afraid there would be somebody lurking in the shadows to overhear, "my father told me about this room where there are all sorts of things left over from previous students. Mostly rubbish, I expect, but there could be something interesting. It's supposed to be on this floor, near a tapestry with some trolls in it, but the entrance is hidden."

"Is there a password to this one too?" Harry asked.

"No, you just really have to want to door to appear," Draco said.

Harry was a little sceptical of this, but saw no reason not to help search for this room. It wasn't as if he were doing anything more than wandering aimlessly before.

"Okay," he agreed. "Let's look around. Or should we split up?"

"You and I can look together," said Vince.

"Split up to where? We've just come straight from the grand stair and there haven't been forks," Draco pointed out. That said, he forged ahead, going the way Harry had come.

When they returned to the landing at the end of the next corridor, Harry blinked in surprise.

"There was a stair there," he said, pointing to a dark archway. "I came up this way."

"You and Vince go there, then," said Draco.

"Okay," said Harry.

As they passed beneath the arch, torches again lit up along the entire corridor, revealing much of the same décor as they had seen already. It would be all too easy to get lost in this place, especially with all the moving about the castle seemed to favour.

"What do trolls even look like?" Vince wondered aloud.

"I'm not sure," Harry admitted. "Big, I suppose, and sort of like people." All he knew about trolls was that they were large, stupid, and comparable to hags in magical resistance.

Portraits and landscapes were all instantly ruled out, but there were several tapestries featuring rather ugly or heavily stylised subjects that required some consideration before being rejected.

"What about this one?" Vince asked. Harry scrutinised the large, garishly golden work. It depicted some humanoid figures with square faces and bulbous noses fighting some kind of winged, multi-headed beast. The figures moved in organised ranks and sported long spears and tall, rectangular shields. As they watched, one of the creature's heads spat out a flaming green glob and the flank of the formation went down in a sickly cloud of smoke. Pandemonium reigned.

A nearby plaque read, unhelpfully, "Golden Hydra."

"I think those are humans," Harry determined at length. "Just weird-looking." Fortunately, they had yet to encounter any woven art that paid them any attention or talked, so Harry felt no compunctions in making rude comments.

In the end, they ran into Draco and Goyle again as they emerged from the other end of the corridor. The two had stopped in front of a very odd tapestry featuring a wizard unsuccessfully herding a horde of giant, hairy people in pink tutus.

"I think this is the one," said Draco as they approached. Harry spotted a plaque beside the work. "Barnabas the Barmy," it read. Harry wondered whether that was the name of the artist or subject.

"Probably," Harry agreed. It was a distinctly ridiculous piece, and eye-catching.

They stood in front of the tapestry and thought very hard about wanting to find some old rubbish. It didn't work.

"Is it lunchtime yet?" Vince asked, after a minute.

"Quiet, I'm focusing," said Draco, his pointed face all scrunched up in concentration. Harry wondered if maybe Draco's father had just been having him on. But no, it didn't seem like the sort of thing an uptight Lucius Malfoy would do.

Harry idly flicked his wand to check the time. It was, in fact, lunchtime. Vince saw him and copied him.

"Draco, I'm hungry. Let's come back later," Vince whinged.

"You go then," said Draco, waving his hand dismissively. Vince looked a little torn. Goyle, on the other hand, had already turned to leave.

"Okay, bye," he mumbled, and started down the hall. Since Draco was still staring intently at the trolls, who had produced clubs and begun beating up the wizard, Harry nodded to Vince and hurried after Goyle.

"Aren't the stairs over there?" he asked, after a beat, glancing back the way they'd come. Goyle shrugged and kept walking.

They made a circuit around nearly the entire floor before reaching the grand stair. Harry sighed and decided not to comment.

"Vince," he said instead, "are you going to join any clubs?"

"Clubs?" Vince asked, looking perplexed. Harry remembered belatedly that Vince was illiterate. He wondered what the boy was doing about his essays.

"You know, where people get together to do things. Like chess, or charms. I'm thinking of going to the charms club," Harry said.

"They do magic there?" Vince asked.

"I think so," said Harry. "Do you want to come? The first meeting is supposed to be later today, after dinner."

"Okay," said Vince.

"We can go together," said Harry. "What about you, Goyle?"

Goyle shrugged. "Maybe," he said. They lapsed into silence.

Wizards, Harry thought, could really benefit from more widespread use of lifts. Seven flights and some cramped legs later, they finally arrived at the Great Hall, which was already merry with the roar of conversation and clinking of silverware. A heavy, savoury smell wafted out the open double doors. Vince livened up instantly and he and Goyle hurried inside, where they split off towards the Slytherin table.

Harry spotted a bowl of pears and filched a couple for later, dropping them into his expanded robe pockets, where they disappeared without the slightest bulge. Then he set into an excellent chicken pie. He was nearly done by the time any other first years appeared in the hall. Stephen went to sit somewhere on the other side of the table, perhaps with his sister, while Oliver, Michael, and Lisa joined Harry at the end.

"Did you see?" Oliver said as he scooted onto the bench. "First flying lessons next Wednesday."

Harry nodded, vaguely remembering something like that from his timetable.

"Flying!" Oliver repeated. "Isn't that wicked? On brooms, even."

"I don't see why we need lessons," said Lisa. "It's easy. You sit on the broom and point it where you want to go."

Michael frowned like he disagreed vehemently, but he did not say anything. Perhaps he was chary of getting into an argument with Lisa.

"I've never even seen a real-life flying broom before," Oliver pointed out.

"Well, yes," said Lisa, a little chagrined. "I meant, maybe the lessons should be optional."

"By that logic," Harry could not resist saying, "all the lessons should be optional in case we already know what they're teaching." Heavens knew he could stand to skip Charms, at least for the moment, and he was sure they could just cut History of Magic out of the curriculum entirely if it weren't mandatory.

For once, Lisa had nothing to the contrary to say.

Harry left soon after that to find some empty room to practise his animation enchantment. Like the levitation enchantment, it was simply a combination of the animation and nullity charms. Unlike the levitation enchantment, the intent was much more finicky. Harry cast the regular animation charm a few times to decide on the sort of movement he wanted his pear to execute before focusing on only that movement.

Some hours into his practice, during which he had made what felt like no progress whatsoever, Vince's bulky form appeared in the doorway. Given that Harry had come to the same room they'd used to practice the match to needle transfiguration, he supposed it wasn't too surprising that Vince had had the same idea.

"Oh," said Vince upon seeing him already inside, and turned as if to leave.

"Come in," said Harry. "Were you going to practise something?" He looked Vince up and down and spotted, to his surprise, a thin paperback clasped in his hands.

"Er, no, nothing," said Vince.

"Come on," said Harry more forcefully this time, waving his hand. "I'm just working on some charms."

With some hesitation, Vince finally entered, ducking under the waterfall of burgundy lace that half-obscured the entrance. Shooting Harry another uncertain look, he sat down gingerly on a chair and set his book on his lap. Harry glanced at it from the corner of his eye. From this distance it looked to be a periodical of some sort, and there was a subtly shifting illustration of a man in a droopy beret on the front.

Harry tried "Locomotor deleo" again, and the pear started dancing before immediately falling still as soon as Harry lowered his wand. He sighed.

Vince had opened his magazine and appeared to be reading it. Perhaps he was literate after all? Harry felt silly for assuming otherwise—it was probably a misunderstanding.

Several more failed enchantment attempts later, Harry's curiosity had overcome any pretence of focus, and he finally said, "What are you reading?"

Vince glanced up and held the magazine to his chest, as if embarrassed. Harry stared at him, and he finally mumbled, "Martin Miggs."

"What's that?" said Harry.

Instead of explaining, Vince handed the magazine to him, and Harry glanced over it curiously. "The Adventures of Martin Miggs: Mad Muggle," it said on the cover in bold red letters. The image of what was presumably Martin Miggs on the front could have been mistaken for a muggle drawing, if it weren't for the fact that he blinked every once in awhile, and his clothing rustled with the rise and fall of his chest. He flipped through the pages and saw more of the same sort of thing. It was a comic magazine, Harry supposed. Dudley had once gone through a phase of obsessing over the things.

"Neat," said Harry, handing it back.

"You really don't know about it?" Vince asked. Harry shook his head. "It's about this muggle, Miggs. He does all sorts of jobs for people. And thing is, he doesn't even have magic!"

"Well, yes, muggles tend not to," Harry said, a little confused.

"But they don't realise it, see," said Vince. "They think he's a normal guy. Like in this one, he gets switched out with the Quidditch referee at the World Cup and has to make all the right calls without blowing his cover and getting obliviated."

"So he's like a spy?" Harry asked. Vince nodded.

"An agent of the Muggle Ministry! I can't believe you haven't heard of him," Vince said. "Even Draco-"

He suddenly broke off, his face falling rapidly into uncertainty, and then near panic.

"What?" Harry prompted.

"Nothing," said Vince very unconvincingly. Harry stared at him, and after a few long, awkward moments, the other boy folded. "It's just, you don't mind that I'm reading it, right? Some people-" He stopped again.

"Er, no," said Harry, thrown by Vince's strange concerns. "Of course I don't mind." Why would he? Was Vince afraid of getting teased? Perhaps the comic was considered childish or something. He supposed there must be a reason why Vince had come to such an out of the way place, by himself, just to read it.

Vince seemed to take his word for it, and gave a hesitant smile. "A lot of people love Miggs," he said, almost to himself, and then sat down to continue reading. Harry blinked in confusion and made an effort to return to his practice.

A few minutes later, Vince pitched forward in his seat with an excited, "Ha!"

"What?" Harry had to ask.

"Belgium cheated!" Vince jeered. "Look, they all thought Miggs was barmy but the Belgians are bloody cheaters. Knew it."

Harry had no idea what Vince was talking about, but found the comic magazine forcibly thrust under his nose. He obligingly looked.

There were several panels featuring people zooming about on broomsticks and throwing a large red ball through a hoop. Martin Miggs, who looked very confused, was shouting "Foul!" The audience was booing. These were the only text bubbles on the page. Harry flipped to the previous page in search of more context, but found little of use.

"Er, how do you know all that?" Harry asked. "It doesn't say it anywhere." Vince looked at him oddly, and put a beefy finger on one of the panels.

"Look, here are the chasers, and they're flying next to each other. Laurent is telling Piette he's pocked the quaffle to bounce. Now he's passing it. Piette scores. The crowd is screaming 'Piette, Piette!' but look, Miggs totally misses it because he's been trying to use his tacky-tone—kind of like a muggle version of floo call—but it won't work. It never works. Then he's calling foul and nobody believes him yet but he's right."

Harry wasn't sure he understood all the words coming out of Vince's mouth. More importantly, there was no transcript of what the two people on brooms, apparently Laurent and Piette, were saying to each other at all.

"But how do you know what they're saying?" Harry asked, pointing to the first panel again.

"Can't you tell?" Vince asked, looking honestly perplexed.

"Er, no," said Harry. "But I don't know that much about Quidditch. I mean I don't even know what poking the, er, coffle-"

"Pocking the quaffle," Vince corrected. "It's where you mess with it so it's heavier or lighter, or the like. But you don't need to know that. The point is they're cheating."

"Okay," said a nonplussed Harry, pushing the comic magazine back. But Vince did not take it.

"I'm done," he said. "You can look at the rest. They usually just talk about what happened at the end, like we didn't already see it. It's boring."

Harry wasn't all that interested, but he was curious to see if Vince had been making things up or not, so he paged through the remainder of the story. The Belgians had been cheating, sure enough, and Miggs had accidentally made the right call. There was no mention of "pocking the quaffle" anywhere.

"You haven't read this before?" Harry asked, looking up suddenly. "The end?"

Vince shook his head. But then how had he known?

"And you just know what happens?" Harry pressed. Vince nodded.

"Well, of course. It already happened," Vince said. Harry was sure that that was not how it worked. Was there some kind of spell on the comic magazine that he had failed to activate?

"Hey, I think it's dinnertime," said Vince, interrupting his bewilderment. Harry tried to give Vince the comic back but he refused again. "Just keep it," he said.

"Are you sure?" Harry asked, and Vince nodded firmly, so he rolled it up and shoved it in his pocket.

As promised, they headed to charms club together after dinner. To Harry's great surprise, none of the other Ravenclaw first years came along. Nobody seemed much interested. As Lisa put it, Charms was "curricular," not "extracurricular."

Vince and Harry made their way towards the astronomy tower, where they had had lessons on constellations at midnight the previous Wednesday. The tower was almost a straight shot from the Ravenclaw common room and so easy enough to find for Harry. Just short of the steep spiral staircase up to the parapets, a fiery message spelled itself out repeatedly in the air: "Charms Club" it said, and an artistic tail below trailed off into an arrow to the left. Harry wondered if this was some sort of animation enchantment, and whether that meant someone might be able to give him a few pointers.

Taking a left brought them to a smaller spiral staircase, this one carpeted in white rather than bare stone. They soon emerged into the rotunda, an octagonal room whose wood-paneled walls were beset with what appeared to be hundreds of sparkling crystals. The floor was silvered and gleamed with mirror-like intensity, and all the furniture in the room appeared to be made of glass.

An older girl in Gryffindor red and gold who had been reclining on a translucent bench stood to greet them, grinning at their gaping faces.

"Neat spot, innit?" she said, sticking out a hand. "Hope you're here for charms club. I'm Elaine Frobisher, president."

"Harry," said Harry, shaking Elaine's hand, and Vince followed suit.

"You firsties?" she asked. Harry nodded, and her grin widened. "Capital! Fresh meat. Just kidding. A little. Not really. Hey, Vicky! Come make friends."

Vicky, a girl closer to Harry's age who had the same lank, chestnut-brown hair and flat lips as Elaine, introduced herself with rather little pleasure as, "Vicky Frobisher, pleased to meet'cha."

The other occupants of the room were both older Hufflepuffs, but with nothing else in common: one a tall and well-built boy in prim, pressed school robes and the other a rail-thin girl wearing her tie around her neck, a T-shirt featuring a cello and some illegible words emblazoned on the front in flashing letters, and faded muggle jeans and combat boots. Her hair was also bright pink.

"Wotcher," she greeted with a friendly wave. "I'm Tonks and this is Gabe. Say hi, Gabe."

"Yes, hello. I'm Gabriel. Nice to meet you all," said Gabe (or perhaps he preferred Gabriel) rather stiffly.

"Nice to meet you. So that fire outside," Harry said, "did one of you do that?"

"That'd be me," said Elaine. "Flame-drawing charm. Learned that one, hm, a couple years ago, now. Incantation flagrate, and you've got to trace the whole word with your wand. Want to try?"

"Er," said Harry, feeling a little put upon the spot. He drew his wand. "Flagrate," he said, supposing the end of his wand should light up, and wrote "HELLO" in the air.

As he finished the last letter, the first had already begun to dissolve away, but he counted it as decent for a first try.

Elaine was clapping her hands. "Brilliant," she said, "You'll have that one down in no time. What about you, want to give it a go?" she asked Vince.

A great gout of fire shot out of the end of Vince's wand when he attempted the spell, not unlike the result of a strong incendio. Everybody jumped back.

"Whoa there," said Elaine, chuckling a little nervously. "Maybe a little less enthusiasm."

Vince ducked his head and muttered, "Sorry."

At this point, they were interrupted by several new arrivals to the rotunda. First was an imposing Slytherin boy who had a good foot on Vince and looked like he could effortlessly tie Harry into a knot, with arms as thick as his head and hands the size of dinner plates. After him were more familiar faces—Cho and Marietta, from Ravenclaw, the Hufflepuff girl who had sat beside him in Potions, Hannah, and finally, Neville from the train.

"Cassius, Cho, Marietta, hey," Elaine greeted. Vicky perked up and immediately dragged Cho and Marietta to a far corner. The large boy, Cassius, nodded and sat down on the nearest glass bench while Elaine acquainted herself with Hannah and Neville.

"Okay, it's seven ten so I reckon it's about time we get started," said Elaine, clapping her hands and moving to stand in the centre of the rotunda, behind a half-moon glass table. Her voice boomed across the room, obviously amplified by the sonorus charm.

Given the small size of the gathering, it seemed rather unnecessary, but Harry supposed it was for effect. Indeed, she removed it a moment later.

"Alright. You've all met me now I think, but anyway I'm Elaine, and I'm president of this club, which is charms club. We're not the biggest club, I know, but we do good stuff. Namely, charms. Charms are pretty much anything that's not transfiguration, really, so basically, everything useful. You may be thinking, well, stuff we learn in class is totally useless. You're probably right. So that's why we have this club. For the good stuff."

"I dunno, cheering charm's pretty good stuff," said Cassius.

Elaine shrugged. "Yeah. Cheering charm's good. So we learned it as firsties, didn't we? We'll teach all you youngsters that one, too, but don't let us catch you abusing it. Or Professor Flitwick. Anyway, today's charm, by popular vote—sorry firsties, you'll get to vote next time—is the knitting charm! Also sorry Tonks."

Tonks made a show of groaning loudly and sinking her face into her hands, which seemed to have lengthened impossibly to cover it. Marietta giggled.

"The knitting charm's not just for your mum, anyway," said Elaine. "It's not even really specifically a knitting charm, especially if you don't know how to knit. It's a variant of locomotor-"

"Everything's a variant of locomotor," said Tonks, who had recovered from her faux hysterics. "Even locomotor's a variant of locomotor."

"'Cause locomotor's bloody useful innit?" said Elaine. "So like I was saying, and stop interrupting me Tonks, it's a spell that animates needles and threads. So actually you can use it for sewing too, or stabbing and strangling people, which I'm sure is more up your alley." She leered at Tonks. "We'll start with the needle part so it's less complicated. The incantation is just acu texis, and it's supposed to help if you do the wand movement like you want the needle to move. I've tried it out a couple times myself though it's still a bit iffy. Look."

She pulled a pair of needles out of a small leather bag that hung at her hip, and set them on the table in front of her. Then she said the incantation and did a complicated push and pull motion, and the needles rose into the air and began clicking rather erratically together.

"If I try to add the yarn it fails catastrophically," she commented. Then she reached into her bag again, her arm disappearing implausibly up to the shoulder, and extracted a whole handful of needles, which she scattered all over the table. "Now you lot try it. I brought needles for everyone."

Tonks, despite her groaning, was very good at the charm, at least when it came to directing the needle exactly where she wanted it to go. Harry watched it stab itself repeatedly into the glass until it had scratched out an obscene graphic.

When the older students had got set up with their needles, Elaine herded Harry, Vince, and Hannah around one of the glass benches off to the side. "So I know it's your first week at Hogwarts and you've probably only cast lumos and periculum, well, I suppose you've done flagrate now, Harry, but anyway I just want to let you know that there's a lot you can do even with charms that you haven't mastered, and let me and Tonks know if you ever need any pointers. I mean you can ask anybody, but we're in NEWT Charms, so."

"Newt charms?" Harry asked.

"NEWTs, you know? Those nasty Ministry exams you have to pass in seventh year. Before you all get started though I wanted to give you these," said Elaine, pulling out a stack of parchment from her bag.

They were membership sheets for the charms club, and Elaine explained that she had enchanted them with the protean charm, which meant that anything she wrote on the master copy would appear on their copies. She could see as well if one of them wrote something back, and that was how she collected their suggestions and votes every week for which charm to discuss at the meeting.

Then she gave them some more detailed instructions about the knitting charm. Since it was a variant of the animation charm, she suggested they practise that first, and showed them the wand movement and incantation.

"So is the knitting charm an animation enchantment?" Harry wanted to know.

"Well no, not technically," said Elaine. "You actually have to tell the needles exactly what you want them to do. And if you move them it'll disrupt the spell."

Harry nodded. An enchantment was different from an ordinary charm in that was no longer dependent on the caster after casting, and the effect was more or less permanent. The permanence aspect, of course, was the hardest part.

The knitting charm turned out not to be all that difficult. In fact, it felt basically like the animation charm to Harry, just with an alternate incantation, and he charmed his needle to lift into the air and twirl around on his first try. If anything, it was even easier than the animation charm. The only issue was that he did not actually know the first thing about how to knit.

"Wow!" Hannah said upon seeing his needle. Neville stopped waving his wand to listen. "How did you do that? Nothing's happening with mine."

Harry tried to think back on how he had originally learned the animation charm. "You really have to focus on exactly what you want to happen. It's like if you used your hand to move it."

Hannah was able to get her needle moving, if inelegantly, soon enough, and began trying the knitting charm proper, but Neville and Vince had both yet to produce any effect. Harry observed them, a little perplexed. As far as he could tell, both were managing the correct pronunciation and wand movement. They looked focused enough too, and the intent behind the animation charm was not exactly complicated.

Harry wondered if it was another case like lumos had been. Perhaps the goal of the charm was too abstract or distant.

"Hey, let's try to charm the needles to sword fight," Harry said.

"I want to try with the second needle though," Hannah said, but Vince seemed interested enough.

Harry animated his needle to prod at Vince's prone one. "En garde!" he called, and his needle tapped threateningly over the other one. Vince was staring at it. "Hey," Harry said, waving his free hand, "aren't you going to fight back?"

Vince fumbled with his wand and then started frantically swishing and twirling it. Harry's needle abandoned its still opponent and advanced towards Vince's other arm, which lay exposed on the table, before giving it a solid prod.

"Ow!"

Harry pulled back and got ready to stab a second time. But this time there was a little "ping!" as Vince's needle shot up to parry.

"I did it!" Vince yelled, and promptly dropped his wand and the needle with it. Harry laughed.

"I dunno what I'm doing wrong," Neville said morosely. Harry had to agree – his form was impeccable, but the spell was not working at all.

Beside him, Hannah had managed to get two needles clicking together in jerky motions, and was busy trying to feed them a bit of yarn.

At the sound of a collective shout, Harry glanced across the room to find that Tonks was levitating what looked like all of Elaine's spare needles at once. With a grand motion of her arm, she sent them careening into the wall in a shower of metallic death. A good portion of them stuck in the wood.

"Mental!" Cassius cried, inspecting one of the bent needles that had clattered to the floor.

"Totally wicked, you mean," said Tonks, smirking.

"Mate, you're gonna be paying the damages," said Elaine. Tonks scoffed and did a sweeping reparo. Impressively, the needles extracted themselves, gathered in the air, and rolled lifelessly onto the table, while the pockmarked wall paneling sealed up and glistened as if newly varnished.

"It's a good thing she's a Hufflepuff," Vince whispered.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Hannah demanded. He raised his hands in a placating gesture.

"Nice, you know, friendly," he said hurriedly. "Wouldn't stab people for no reason." Hannah shrugged.

"I suppose," she said, and started fiddling with her needles and yarn again.

After a minute or so she threw her wand aside in frustration and simply grabbed a needle and the yarn in her hands. She tied a loop and, with some mesmerising, rapid twisting of her fingers, populated the length of the needle with more yarn loops. Then she took her wand, did the charm again, and slowly but surely, the needles began to knit.

"Wow," said Harry. "How does that work?" Even examining Hannah's knitting from all angles, he couldn't quite seem to figure out what the needles were doing so that the loops of yarn formed into a fabric rather than simply slipping away.

"How's what work? Knitting?" Hannah asked. Harry nodded. "Well it's kind of complicated to cast on. That's what it's called when you're starting. I couldn't get the charm to do it, but it's easy enough by hand. Once you've cast on you just stick your needle in the stitch here and loop the yarn over the back. That's called a knit by the way. To purl, you have to stick it in the back and put the yarn over the front."

She helpfully slowed her charm even more as she explained, and Harry thought he might have finally understood what was going on.

"I knit way faster by hand, but I can see how the charm could be useful," Hannah said. "I mean it knits even when I'm not paying attention. That's pretty brilliant."

Neville sighed forlornly at his unmoved needle. "I'm no good at charms," he muttered.

"You're doing it all the right way, you know," Harry said. "Wand movement, incantation, everything. Maybe just focus on making it move forward."

"Really?" Neville said, sounding doubtful. Harry nodded in what he hoped was an encouraging way.

While the others practiced the charm, Harry worked on learning how to knit, for lack of anything better to do. It was harder than it looked, and even though he could get the needles and yarn doing exactly what he wanted, what he wanted was continuously in question. Hannah giggled at him when he managed to tie several knots at the end of the row of stitches that she had helpfully "cast on" for him.

At length, somehow, Neville finally got his needle to leap into the air and off the edge of the bench.

"Nice job!" said Hannah. After this breakthrough, as was usually the case with charms, he began making significantly more progress, and soon he and Vince were engaged in a mock-fencing match. Or rather, Vince had charmed his needle to stab insistently at Neville, who had been forced to fight back, as there was nowhere to run.

"Where can I get yarn? And needles?" Harry asked Hannah.

"You're actually going to learn to knit?"

"Why not?" said Harry, shrugging. He could use some winter clothing, like a scarf or a hat. Merlin knew Petri was never going to buy him "unnecessary" new clothes, though he supposed that since he had his own money, he could owl order something. Some strange, irrational reluctance churned deep inside him at the thought. He felt suddenly uneasy—had Petri's stinginess rubbed off on him irreparably?

"There's a shop called Wilma's Wools in Carkitt Market," Hannah told him. "I get their catalogue. I can show you. Maybe next week? Are you going to be here again?"

Harry assured her that he would indeed be back for charms club the following week.

At the end of the hour, Elaine told them that they could, with the exception of Tonks who was expressly prohibited, keep their needles and practice yarn for a sickle a set—she wasn't made of gold, thank you very much. Harry did not make a habit of carrying money around, so he asked Elaine if she would accept an IOU.

"Sure, but I'll hex you if you try to cheat me," she said cheerfully.

Harry palmed his remembrall and gave a jerky nod, murmuring, "Bring a sickle, bring a sickle," to himself.

He returned to his dormitory in high spirits but also a bit enervated, now that he found himself suddenly alone. He rolled onto his bed and enjoyed the softness of the blanket for a moment before getting back to his feet so he could properly undress.

As he emptied out his pockets, he found the rolled-up Martin Miggs comic that Vince had gifted him. He pulled out his wand and pointed it at the magazine.

"Specialis revelio," he said, but nothing happened except that Martin Miggs on the cover shuffled away slightly from the tip of the wand. There probably wasn't any enchantment on the comic, then, or it should have been evident to the revealing spell, unless the author was trying to do something illegal and so hid it very well. Harry dropped it abruptly on his bed at that thought, and cast a few cancellation charms at it instead.

He'd ask Vince about it again, later, perhaps at next week's charms club. The other boy seemed to have enjoyed it well enough. Harry extracted his remembrall, which turned a cloudy maroon once more, as he set it gingerly on his side table.

Right. Quirrell.

Suddenly struck with an idea, Harry reached back to the pile of things that had come out of his pocket and snatched up Petri's letter from that morning, scanning it quickly. Then he grabbed a quill and the charms club membership parchment.

In the "suggestions for charms" box, he scribbled, "Structure Sight." If Petri mistook it as the sort of thing he was learning at Hogwarts, then what was to say that he couldn't learn it? He would read up on it in the Compendium tomorrow, and then if he was unable to get it on his own, he could ask Elaine or Tonks at the club.

Then he would get a definitive answer on just what Professor Quirrell had done to him.

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A/N: Happy Yuletide everyone. I should've updated ages ago, but I'm so lazy at editing. Thanks to Botulinum for beta reading.