A.N.: To SlytherclawXHuffledor I'm sorry to say that on chapter 51 right now, I still haven't reached the first task! But that's because Harriet and Dumbledore have gone to the lake and returned with the fake locket! And Harriet's had Occlumensy lessons, been picked for the Triwizard Tournament…well, you'll read it!

Oh—ErikArden, I might've said this in a PM, but I wanted to change the prophecy to 'twice defied' so that Cedric doesn't have to die.

On that note, I'd like to ask two things from anyone who's reading and wants to respond: One: to tell me what you'd think of me having Sirius be Cedric's biological father—I've worked it out so that Cedric's birthday is Oct 18th, therefore, being born two weeks late of a perfect nine-month pregnancy, he would have been conceived on January fourth, during the Hogwarts' Christmas holiday. The idea's stuck in my head now, so Sirius is now Cedric's biological father. I've got the story of why planned out already, don't worry!

And second thing—should I keep Regulus Black alive? I promised no character deaths, but I'm not sure how I'd swing it if I kept Regulus alive. It'd be fun to write Sirius beating the crap out of him for being a good person, but I don't know…I'm thinking not…


Nonverbal Spells


"Hey! 'Scuse me! Oi! Ow!"

"For the love of Merlin, Potter," Rhona rolled her eyes, "you are such a little first year!!"

"Hey, hey, hey! I'm not that small!" Harriet balked, glaring up at her best-friend as Rhona navigated the corridor and the dozens of teeming students that swarmed it with perfect ease. Harriet was shoved and jostled every which way, too little to see above most of the crowd of upper students. Finally, she'd had enough.

"EVERYBODY MOVE!!!!" she bellowed, and the crowd parted for her, looking surprised. She and Rhona pranced down the open lane towards their Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, the lesson to which they were now extremely late for because Rhona hadn't been able to resist another helping of apple and blackberry crumble at lunch…and Harriet had spotted Cedric across the hall, and hadn't really been able to think of anything else for a while.

"God, I hope he doesn't do anything," Rhona groaned, pushing on the door of their Defence classroom and opening it.

The class was silent, looking at the front of the room intently: Moody stood at the chalkboard, writing something in large, untidy lettering.

Harriet screamed bloody-murder, Rhona echoing her, as an enormous great black snake erupted from thin air and landed with a bang on the stone floor in front of them, its head rising, hissing, ready to strike: still screaming, they did a weird sort of petrified dance and backed away.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?" Harriet shouted shrilly at Moody, clutching her heart and feeling as if she was having a heart-attack, as the class all broke out in laughter. Harriet hissed at the snake to "buggar off!" which made it slither back, clearly surprised. Rhona had collapsed, weak-kneed and pale, onto the spare chair by the door.

"You see that?" growled Moody, turning to the rest of the class. "Complete surprise. Sit down," he barked at Harriet and Rhona. "We'll discuss your detentions later." He waved his wand and the snake disappeared.

"Detention! For being attacked by a bloody great snake!" Rhona said weakly, still clutching her heart.

"For being late to my lesson. Sit," Moody growled. Still panting, Harriet massaged her aching heart as she went to sit down beside Hermes, who looked thoroughly disapproving at their lateness, but amused because they'd had the lives scared out of them.

"What you just witnessed," Moody growled, as Harriet and Rhona sat down beside each other at the only remaining desk, "was the use of nonverbal spells. Very useful if, like me, you find yourself in a position requiring stealth and the element of surprise." There was a polite knock on the door, and Rhona's elbow slipped surreptitiously from the desk and nudged Harriet. She didn't exactly need the pointer to notice Cedric Diggory standing in the doorway.

"Yes?" Moody growled.

"Sorry—we heard screaming down in Charms. Professor Flitwick sent me up here to see if everything is alright," Cedric said, glancing around the classroom, catching Harriet's eye and grinning.

"Fine, laddie," Moody growled. "Just showing Potter and Weasley the great advantages of non-verbal spells."

"Oh," Cedric grinned, glancing at Harriet again. "Alright, I'll tell Professor Flitwick not to panic."

"You do that," Moody growled, and Cedric grinned at Harriet again before closing the door behind her. Feeling very pleased with herself, Harriet had to suppress most of her smile, though she didn't entirely succeed.

Lavender and Parvati whirled around in their seats as Moody went to the chalkboard, opened their mouths, and—"Brown! Patil! Eyes forward!" Moody barked, and they whipped back around to face the front, blushing and clearly agitated that they didn't get to mentally pummel Harriet for information on why gorgeous Cedric Diggory had had so many smiles for her.

"Those who can fight without shouting incantations have an immense advantage over their opponents—an advantage that could determine the death of one wizard or the prevention of dozens more murders at the hands of a Dark Wizard," Moody growled, throwing the chalk down on his desk and glaring around at them all with his absurd eyes.

"I realise you're all very behind on curses, even verbal ones, so we'll just dive right into the deep end, see what you make of it," he growled. "Things are bound to be easier if you manage to refine your concentration and strengthen your brain-power to the point of successfully using magic non-verbally.

"Now—you will divide into pairs; one partner try to hex or jinx the other, the second, try and repel them using a Shield Charm." There was silence, no movement. Hermes raised his hand.

"Granger?"

"Sir, most of us don't know how to perform a Shield Charm," he said politely. Harriet and Rhona exchanged a glance and rolled their eyes; Hermes would, of course, know how to perform a Shield Charm already.

"Disarm then, you all know how to do that?" Moody growled, and, more confident in the possibility of actually completing the task, they all paired up.

The typical amount of cheating ensued; people were merely whispering the jinx or hex out of frustration, and Moody was frequently barking, "Finite Incantatem!" to stop them wobbling around the classroom on Jelly-Legs or under the influence of Tarantallegra, and allow Norah, who kept getting hit with Hermes' Tickling Charm nonverbally after the first ten minutes, time to catch her breath.

"Come on, Potter," Moody growled. "Come on, you can do this. You threw off the Imperius Curse. You can do this." It was kind of hard to concentrate on not talking when she just wanted to tell Moody to shut up and let me concentrate!

Harriet was glowering so hard that she must have performed some kind of nonverbal magic, because Rhona's sleeve caught fire.

"Blimey! You hear of looks that can kill!" Rhona said, shaking her arm vigorously; Hermes sighed, pointed at her arm, and the flames doused. Harriet glanced at Mad-Eye, who stood reprimanding Parvati and Lavender for gossiping.

"Why's he always picking on me?" she whispered irritatedly.

"You're the Chosen One, aren't you," Rhona grinned. "Come on, let's have another go."


Ten minutes until the end of the lesson, Harriet managed to successfully Disarm Rhona nonverbally. Moody was so pleased he only held Rhona back at the end of the lesson to discuss her detention.

"Blinking—" she called Moody every name under the sun, "he's making me scrub the floor of the Gobstones Club room. Without magic. How come you got out of it?"

"I'm the Chosen One, like you said," Harriet smirked tartly, and Rhona tripped her on their way down the Charms corridor. Harriet let out a shriek and landed face-first on the carpeted floor. Harriet arched her eyebrow, still on the floor, picked her wand up and thought 'Rictusempra!' with conviction.

"Oi—he-he—you—ha-ha-ha," Rhona doubled-up, wheezing with laughter, sinking to the floor nearing hysterics. Harriet leapt to her feet, grinning from ear to ear.

"Nailed it!" she cackled, as Rhona's face shone with tears of mirth.

"Er…Hi," said a familiar voice, and Harriet glanced up, grinning, at Cedric.

"Hiya!" she beamed, while Rhona's hysterical giggles filled the corridor. A group of Cedric's female admirers stood tittering behind him. "Good lesson?"

"Er…Yeah. What's wrong with Rhona?"

"Tickling Charm," Harriet grinned evilly. "I thought I'd practice my nonverbal spells."

"And to great effect," someone growled, and Professor Moody hobbled down the corridor. Harriet cringed guiltily. "Don't look like that, Potter! Finite. You keep practicing, you'll be well on your way to becoming a powerful dueller." Rhona, who had staggered to her feet, gaped at Harriet incredulously. Moody stumped off, leaving Rhona in shock, utterly indignant and gaping. The sixth-year girls giggled at her expression and Harriet grinned at her.

"I'm gonna kill you!"

"AAAAAAAAARGH!!!!" Harriet screamed, as Rhona pelted after her, flinging Bat-Bogey Hexes after her, dodging into a trusty shortcut hidden by a tapestry.

Rhona ended up with another detention from Professor McGonagall for hexing in the corridors. That, coupled with her detention from Moody, made Rhona a very vindictive dinner companion. Harriet sat with Hermes between them.


Sirius did not return to the common room until the third Friday of term, the night before the first Hogsmeade visit of the year. Such was the level of excitement in the common-room on Friday night that not even Hermes could get any work done, distracted by Colin Creevey's boisterous, boyish enthusiasm over Harriet's photographs.

She had managed, over the past week, to develop all of her photograph negatives in the potion Colin had instructed her to make out of Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger, one of the potions Snape had never bothered to teach them in lesson because it was made more out of extracurricular needs. Harriet and Colin, and Dennis, who was not as avid a photographer as his brother, had spent the week after lessons and between homework assignments printing Harriet's favourite photographs. She had wanted them printed in colour; the process being a little more difficult, she had selected only a few photographs to print to begin with, but, as Colin had said gleefully, "You're a natural."

He had praised her artistic eye (Rhona had sniggered at this, saying that Harriet was "almost as blind as a bat!") and Harriet now had several folders of neat photographs she had done completely by herself. There was a photography laboratory cloistered in one of the upper corridors of the dungeons which had been set up by the Photography Club, which Colin had urged Harriet to sign up to, and which Harriet was now anticipating the first meeting of.

Harriet sat examining the latest few she had printed—the Weasleys and Cedric at the Burrow after the Quidditch World Cup. One of Cedric made her heart and stomach clench with an excruciating kind of pleasure. It was just him, the day his ten Outstanding O.W.L. results came, and he grinned bashfully up at her, lowering his lashes and running a hand nervously through his hair, a hint of colour creeping into his cheeks. The sun blistered down, picking out coppery and burnished gold highlights in his dark hair, which was teased by a gentle breeze; his eyes burned beautifully, the curl of his eyelashes illuminated by their luxurious shadows.

"You know, I think I should buy a photograph album from Flourish and Blotts tomorrow," Harriet said thoughtfully, going through the photographs (she had now printed copies of all of the negatives, and had an enormous pile four inches thick stacked on her stomach).

"I wish I could go," sighed Norah, who looked very glum whilst everyone in third year and above swapped excited plans for the next day.

"Has McGonagall still not lifted your ban?" Rhona asked, glancing over at Norah, who was consoling herself with cuttings of her Mimbulus Mimbletonia, which were already beginning to flourish, an inch tall in their tiny terracotta pots. Norah shook her head, looking dejected.

"And Gran wouldn't take me during the holidays," she said sadly. "She said I'd damaged the family honour, and deserved the punishment I got." Harriet glanced at Sirius, whose muzzle was pointed intently towards Norah, his ears perked.

"But Sirius Black's gone," Rhona said, catching Harriet's eye and winking as she stroked Padfoot behind his ears, making his tail wag as he barked happily. "He hasn't tried to do anyone in."

"Yes, but he almost stabbed you," Norah whispered, looking terrified at the memory. She returned to her Mimbulus Mimbletonia, making notes on a little graph she'd made to chart the cuttings' progress. Eventually, overcome by misery, Norah made her way slowly upstairs, and Harriet thought she saw Norah crooning softly to the plants in her hands as she passed.

"Shame she can't come to Hogsmeade with us," Harriet said softly, gazing after Norah's retreating form. She had gotten used to Norah hanging around with them. Content to be alone, Norah was always ecstatic to be invited into a group, and while their friendship wasn't quite level with the friendship between Harriet, Rhona and Hermes, they had all become accustomed to her cheerful smiles and kind remarks whenever they were feeling down.

"We'll buy her some fudge from Honeydukes," Rhona said unconcernedly, biting her tongue thoughtfully as she scribbled on a spare bit of parchment. "What rhymes with 'misogynists'?"

"You still working on the anthem?" Harriet grinned, chuckling amusedly. Rhona smirked as Hermes' focus on his Transfiguration essay redoubled.

"I'm thinking about having a little Celestina recorded for it," Rhona said confidentially. "And I thought I could go to the Scorned Witches Association. They'd love to—"

"Alright, I've had it! I know you're this just doing this to piss me off!" Hermes shouted, rounding on Rhona, whose eyebrows flew up as she tried not to smirk too broadly.

"Does the Archbishop of Canterbury know you talk like that?" Harriet asked, dropping a photograph of her and Rhona (who resembled Pippi Longstocking with her hair in plaits, wearing a patched yellow dress and odd socks at the Burrow) sitting either side of Cedric with their little picnic spread, raising Butterbeer bottles and grinning, onto the pile.

"I don't go to church, Harriet," Hermes said dryly.

"Well, you're just riddled in sin, aren't you?!" Harriet gasped in mock horror.

"How do we ever get any work done?" Rhona asked inquisitively, looking from them thoughtfully.

"You didn't, before I came along, if I remember correctly," Hermes said tartly.

"Oh, that's right—since women couldn't possibly do anything without a man telling them to do it fir—"

"Rhona!"


A.N.: He-he. I loved writing that bit about nonverbal spells! I can just imagine their high-pitched screams ringing down the stone corridors and leaping about, absolutely petrified out of their wits! PLEASE REVIEW!!!