Petri returned the next day, the morning of Christmas Eve, looking pleased in a way that could only mean an inflow of galleons had been involved.
"Harry. Good to see you still alive," he said as he descended the coffin stairs and dropped his trunk carelessly in the corner.
Harry immediately scowled, rolling off the bed and onto his feet to better show his displeasure. "You thought Silviu might eat me?"
Petri's eyes crinkled in amusement. "I only jest," he said. "But now, seriously; how was he? No attempts to convince you to give blood? Possessive behavior?"
"No," said Harry. "Not really. It was fine. I think my sleep schedule is ruined, though. We spent all last night—that's right. Er, happy Christmas. We got you a shop."
Petri blinked at him. "Repeat that," he said.
"We got you a shop," Harry repeated obligingly. "I've got all the official paperwork and everything over there." He pointed to their all-purpose table. "It's at thirteen-C right by that cursed rubbish shop, and we named it Crystal Wonders. Er, hope that's okay." They had spent the better part of the previous evening putting up a signboard with the name over the entrance.
"It's Christmas Eve," said Petri, face twisting with unidentifiable emotion. "We have to open it immediately."
He picked up his discarded trunk and the stack of parchments on the table and turned right back around. Harry supposed that meant that Petri was pleased.
"Wait, I'm not dressed," Harry protested. Petri waved his wand, and Harry's robes flew up from where they had fallen to the floor and hit him in the face. He peeled them away, frowning at how rumpled they were, and then traded them for his nightgown.
Petri straightened him out with an ironing charm that thankfully only applied to his clothing and nothing else, before striding up the stairs so quickly that Harry had to run after him.
"Thirteen-C, you said?" Petri asked, leafing through the papers.
"Yeah," Harry confirmed.
"Vlaicu had it built over the weekend?"
"It was wicked," said Harry. "They did it all just yesterday. There were these trolls, and they were huge and lifting up whole tree trunks like nothing. Oh, that reminds me, there was a troll at school once, and remember I wrote you about the fidelius charm, that was that night. Professor Qu—one of my professors recognised me and—"
"Slow down," said Petri. "I do not follow. Are you saying you believe a troll influenced the fidelius charm? They resist magic but I've never heard of them disrupting it."
"No, that's not it," said Harry more slowly, realising that he had probably sounded a bit like an excited Hermione Granger right then, which wasn't great. "The troll's not related. Well, it sort of is, because I was with Professor Quirrell because of it, but that's all."
"And this Quirrell recognised you as Harry Potter? You are sure?" Petri asked.
"Yeah, he looked right at me and said my full name without even trying," said Harry.
"Hmm," Petri muttered. "Perhaps that's possible, that somebody could subconsciously say your name even while not consciously associating..."
"I don't know, he seemed pretty conscious," said Harry doubtfully. It sounded like a stretch, and though he was no expert, Petri hadn't sounded very sure.
Indeed, the man shook his head. "It is rather unlikely. But equally or perhaps more unlikely is that somebody has broken the fidelius charm. There are only two weaknesses to the fidelius charm. One is somebody overhearing the secret during the casting, the second is their hearing or overhearing the secret being told by the secret-keeper. Both seem impossible to me. We cast that spell in a tent in the forest. Even if Lucius Malfoy were scrying for us, which I doubt he had the expertise to do, then at most he would know your secret, and not some unknown professor of yours. You did not know him before Hogwarts, yes?"
"Who, Professor Quirrell? No," said Harry. He was sure he would've remembered seeing that turban.
"I don't believe I've heard of him either. Could he be some enemy of mine? Is he English? How old does he look?" Petri asked.
"Dunno, maybe thirty?" Harry guessed. He wasn't great at estimating the ages of adults. "Definitely English."
"That's not it, then. But nobody could have heard or overheard Rosenkol telling the secret because he has never told it to anybody," Petri said. But the only possibility seemed to be that Rosenkol had told somebody. Nothing else made sense.
Petri seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because when they finally reached the new shop, the first thing he did was summon the house elf.
"Master and wizardling, how may Rosenkol be serving?" said Rosenkol.
"Rosenkol, have you ever told Harry's secret to anybody?" Petri asked. Rosenkol immediately shook his head, his bat-like ears flopping about wildly.
"Rosenkol is never telling, Master," he said firmly, "Never unless Master commands."
Petri sighed and rubbed at his temples. "I don't know," he finally said. "But there's something we're missing. Well, we have time before you return to school. For now, the shop."
He dropped his trunk and kicked it over, before fiddling at the lock with his key. The trunk opened up to the compartment full of glassware, and Petri began to conjure glass shelves and stick them to the walls.
"This will do until we get properly furnished," he muttered.
The glass against the wooden wall reminded Harry a little of the charms club rotunda at Hogwarts. "Can we keep the shelves permanently?" he asked. "I think they look good. It fits with the theme."
"Perhaps. My conjurations aren't very high quality, but I might be able to build real glass shelves later," said Petri, who was already busying himself with placing displays by the window. "Rosenkol, stock the shelves with everything I have here," he ordered. The elf snapped his fingers and emptied the trunk, sending items zooming about through the room. "Harry, make yourself useful and advertise the shop."
"Advertise?" Harry asked. "How?"
"Go out and hand out fliers. Something like this," said Petri, shutting his trunk and turning the key twice more. He opened it into the trap door, and waved his wand. A few moments later, a stack of parchment and a quill flew into his outstretched hand. He pressed his wand against the top sheet, face screwing up in concentration, and then handed it over to Harry.
Opening and Christmas Sale!
Crystal Wonders
Enchanted items for all ages: Toys, Games, Tea Sets, Precision Magical Equipment
Custom Orders Available
13-C Knockturn Alley, just off Horizont
"Use this copy quill and add some colour-changing charms," said Petri, giving him quill and the rest of the parchments.
"They told us we're not allowed to do magic outside of school," said Harry.
Petri scoffed. "That law only applies to mudbloods," he said with full certainty. "We're in Knockturn Alley. I assure you it's allowed."
Now Harry felt a little silly not to have believed Silviu, and for spending the first few days of his holiday as lame as a muggle. He put the first flier at the bottom of the stack of parchment and set the tip of the copy quill on top. The quill stood on its own and quickly began to trace the master copy. When it finished a sheet, it would flip over to sweep it to the side before starting on the next.
"What spell did you use to write all that at once?" Harry asked. Was this the spell Draco Malfoy had mentioned, for "wizard writing?" Harry had tried to look up something like it in the Complete Compendium, but had met with no success.
"Colour-changing charm," said Petri. "Faster than handwriting, though somewhat trickier."
"Oh."
Once the copy quill had made several copies, Harry took one and started to prod it with his wand, filling in the block letters of the shop name with bright blue. He couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to him that if he could change the colour of part of something, then he could indeed just make words appear like a contrasting pattern.
By the time Harry felt satisfied with the look of the first flier, the copy quill had just about made it through the entire parchment stack. He waited for it to finish up and then, glancing at the original for the right mental image, cast the colour-changing charm on the whole stack. To his delight, it worked perfectly. He had been afraid that he would need to manually colour each one.
"Go hand those out in Horizont," Petri recommended. It looked like he and Rosenkol had already finished laying everything out in the meantime. "It's closest."
The intersection with Horizont Alley was indeed just beyond the locksmith at number fourteen. Though it was right around the corner, the atmosphere there differed profoundly from the dingy, hemmed-in feel of Knockturn. Horizont Alley was more of a wide boulevard, with low buildings and a generous strip in the centre dedicated to delicate fruit trees and flowering shrubs. They must have been some magical variety, because they were in full bloom, utterly undaunted by the winter frost. Further down the street was the sparkling Fountain of Fair Fortune, which Harry understood had been named after a fountain in a fairy tale of the same name.
View of the fountain was presently blocked by an enormous queue of people who had wound completely around it and then dissolved into a confused horde of people milling about on the other side of the alley. Harry craned his neck to try to find the source, but he was too short to see anything so he had to venture closer to the crowd.
People were definitely waiting for something. He saw more than one wizard staring blankly off into space, tapping his foot on the cobblestones in agitation. There were harried mothers with little children trying to stop them from wandering off, as well as a gaggle of unsupervised children who looked to be successful escapees.
"Excuse me," Harry said to a kind-looking witch with a daughter about his age at her elbow. He didn't recognise the girl from Hogwarts, so she was probably younger.
"Yes?" said the woman, smiling gently at him.
"Do you know what's going on here?" he asked.
"Oh, we're all in a queue for Pilliwinkle's," she said, sighing. "Looks like it'll be another hour yet before we even get in the door."
"The toy shop?" Harry asked. "Christmas shopping?"
"That's right, dear." The woman looked around and then asked, "Are you here with your parents?"
Harry shook his head. "I live around here," he said. "What sorts of toys are you looking for? My uncle's just opened a shop, and he might have something you'd like."
He held out a flier, smiling up at the woman hopefully. She took it from him, smiling back, but then her face fell. Harry guessed that it was the Knockturn Alley part that was responsible.
"It's not far," he said, pretending that he hadn't noticed. "I just came from there. It's perfectly safe."
The woman did not appear to believe him at all, but instead looked even more concerned. Harry decided to capitalise on it.
"I'm supposed to advertise it," he said. "It's new, so nobody knows it. I thought people here might be interested, but maybe I'll just go back to Knockturn. What do you think, ma'am?"
"We'll come take a look, dear," said the witch. "We're not getting anywhere standing here, and I wouldn't want you to have to go back empty handed."
Success, Harry thought.
The girl grinned at him from behind her mother's back.
"Are you really from Knockturn Alley?" she asked him in a whisper. Harry nodded, and her eyes widened. "Wicked! My brothers will be so jealous I got to go there."
"You've got brothers? Older or younger?" Harry asked.
"Six brothers," said the girl, wrinkling her nose. "All older. My name's Ginny by the way."
"Harry," said Harry, eyes bugging out a little at Ginny's sibling count.
"Like Harry Potter," said Ginny, and for a moment Harry was afraid the fidelius charm had completely broken and everybody now knew him, but the faraway look in her eyes reassured him that she was just making the comparison without any recognition.
"Yeah, like him," he said a little belatedly.
"He's in Ron—my youngest older brother's year," she told him. That could be none other than the Gryffindor Ron Weasley, Harry thought, "I'm going to Hogwarts next year. Do you think I'll meet him?"
"I'm sure you will," said Harry, a little amused.
"Are you going to Hogwarts already?" she asked.
"I am," said Harry.
Ginny looked like she had loads more to say, but then they turned onto Knockturn Alley and she was immediately distracted by the tall, ramshackle architecture and eerie ambiance. Knockturn was nearly totally deserted, as was usual during the morning, and the silence was almost oppressive when juxtaposed with the bustle of Horizont.
Fortunately, the lack of people also meant lack of hags peddling human body parts. Harry rather thought that would have been a turn off for the kindly Mrs Weasley.
"Here we are," Harry said cheerfully, pointing up at the sign he and Silviu had stayed up until midnight (well, Harry had considered it staying up, anyway) to painstakingly paint by hand. The signboard had a black background, with glimmering white and blue lettering that evoked shards of glass.
"Mum, look!" said Ginny, pointing to the window display, which Harry had to admit was pretty eye-catching. A pair of beautifully dressed porcelain dolls were dancing a slow waltz in the courtyard of a magnificent three-dimensional castle composed of thousands of shards of colourful stained glass. Petri always used the castle in his displays. While it was very artistic, Harry couldn't imagine what use anybody would have for it, which explained why no one had ever purchased it.
The lady doll saw them watching, waved, and then covered her mouth with a hand, as if giggling.
Harry pushed open the shop door and held it for his companions.
"Welcome!" said Petri from behind the counter, somehow managing to look like a jovial old man rather than a menacing dark wizard. "What can I help you with?"
At this point, Mrs Weasley seemed finally to realise that she had arrived at a real, honest-to-goodness shop where things might be purchased, and not some shady hole, or whatever she had been concerned about on Harry's behalf.
"Well, my daughter is looking for a present for her friend," she said, and pushed the suddenly shy Ginny forward somewhat. "Ginny dear, tell him what you're looking for."
"I've got five sickles," she said very matter-of-factly. "I want something wicked."
Petri shot Harry a wry look, as if to say, "All that work for five sickles?" Harry scowled at him.
"All our toys are on this side," said Petri, gesturing to his right, and Ginny went off to search, her mother following close behind.
Predictably, Ginny reached for the animated dragon figurines, but those were several galleons out of her price range.
"I hardly think Luna would care for that sort of thing," said Mrs Weasley.
"I s'pose not," said Ginny. She browsed around for something cheaper. "What's this?" she asked, picking up what appeared to be a small magnifying glass.
"That's an odd-eye glass," said Petri. "Try looking through it."
Ginny held it up to her face and did a survey of the room. She promptly giggled. "Mum, you're tiny! And Harry's huge." She looked outside and laughed again. "How much is this?"
"Seven sickles," said Petri, and Harry was about to feel bad when he added, "but for you let's make it five, how about it?"
"Yes!" Ginny whooped. "Mum, Luna'd love this, wouldn't she?"
"Definitely," said Mrs Weasley. She smiled indulgently as Ginny ran up to the counter and paid for her purchase on her own.
"Bye Harry!" Ginny called as they left.
"That was nice," Harry said, turning a suspicious eye on Petri. "It wasn't even worth five sickles, was it?"
"Of course not," said Petri. Harry went over to the shelf and picked up another odd-eye glass. He peered through it and found that the world did, indeed, look very odd. The sizes of objects were all messed up. He choked back a laugh as he trained the thing on Petri and saw his head bulging like an insect's.
Come to think of it, Vince might like this thing. He was always game for a quick chuckle.
"How do you make these?" Harry asked.
Petri got a funny glint in his eye at this question. "Oh, it's very simple," he said, "I will show you tonight. For now, watch the shop. I'm going to go advertise."
He held out his hand and Harry gave him the stack of fliers.
It was Christmas Eve, Harry realised properly as he went to stand behind the counter, and he hadn't got presents for all his friends yet. Hannah, who hated surprises, was taken care of—he'd told her he would get her heaps of chocolate, which she seemed more than amenable to. While he had owl ordered that, he had gone ahead and got an assortment of other sweets as well, which he figured he could send his housemates.
Vince and Neville would probably appreciate sweets well enough, but he could perhaps throw in an odd-eye glass if he managed to learn to make them by the end of the day. Or maybe something else for Neville, but he couldn't think of what. What else could he enchant that wasn't boring?
Then a customer arrived, flier in hand, jolting Harry out of his reverie. Surprisingly, he recognised this customer; it was Professor Snape.
"Good morning sir, how can I help you?" Harry said. To his pleasant surprise, Professor Snape now seemed capable of looking right at him without getting immediately frustrated.
"Good morning. You—are you a student at Hogwarts?" Professor Snape asked after a moment.
"Er, yes sir," said Harry, wondering if there was going to be some interrogation about his age.
"Ravenclaw?" asked the professor.
"Yes," Harry confirmed. Unluckily, the strange consternation that always seemed to plague Professor Snape around him was returning. No doubt the man was butting right up against the fidelius charm, and it didn't look as if he were about to win anytime soon.
Why was it different for Professor Quirrell, then?
"Why are you working at a shop, here, instead of off gallivanting with your friends?" Professor Snape asked at length, sneering.
"This is my uncle's shop," said Harry. "I'm watching it while he's out."
"Ah yes, your uncle," said Professor Snape, glancing down at his flier. He seemed finally ready to return to business. "I saw that you sell magical instruments. Do you carry normalisers?"
Harry thanked his lucky stars that the man had asked after the one instrument that he had some idea about, namely due to the code-phrase that Petri had always used with his "Other" clients.
"We do, here," said Harry, bending down to retrieve one from the storage space behind the counter. Petri always kept the delicate, expensive items down there, and he was glad that that practice hadn't changed.
The normaliser was inside a padded wooden chest, and was a palm-sized, hexagonal ring of glass tubing that had a small opening at each vertex. It also came with a porcelain nub that served as a stand. He set the stand down and positioned the ring above it, where it began to hover and spin slowly in place.
Profesor Snape drew his wand slowly from somewhere in his sleeve. "Do you mind if I do a water test?" he asked.
"Go ahead, sir," said Harry. Professor Snape cast the water-making charm and the stream arced neatly out of his wand and right into the centre of the ring, where it swirled around in a whirlpool before being sucked inside the tubing. The normaliser spun more quickly now, glowing faintly white, before it slowed back down, evidently empty. Professor Snape reached out and picked up the ring with his thumb and forefinger, holding it up to eye level presumably to inspect it for water droplets. At length, he nodded.
"Seems to be in order," he said. "How much?"
This part was a problem. Nobody had ever tried to buy one of these anytime Harry had watched the shop, and Petri had not put the cheat sheet behind the counter yet. The most expensive thing he remembered seeing on there had been twenty-five galleons. He knew that the normaliser was up there.
"Twenty galleons," he said, hoping his guess had been close. Would Professor Snape try to haggle?
The professor handed over the galleons wordlessly, and Harry figured he had probably miscalculated and quoted too-low a price. He didn't look forward to explaining to Petri that he might have lost potential money. Then again, it was the man's own fault that he had left him without the price sheet. At least the cash box was there. He deposited the galleons inside and put the normaliser back in its wooden chest, pushing it across the counter.
"Was there anything else I could help you with, sir?" Harry asked when Professor Snape had taken the box but remained standing there. Amusingly enough, he appeared to still be attempting to divine Harry's identity.
Finally he said, "No thank you. I'll be on my way," and turned on his heel sharply to leave.
"Have a nice day!" Harry called after him. He amused himself by trying to stow his wand in his sleeve like Professor Snape, but it made an awkward bump in his arm. He wondered if he could get Petri to cast the undetectable extension charm on his sleeves so that he could use them as storage.
After a pause, a steady stream of customers began arriving, perhaps redirected from the ghastly queue at Pilliwinkle's Playthings. Petri's shop was definitely not as cheerful or vibrant, but it did sell a surprising variety of toys and games. These items had been the most popular sellers in Germany as well, so Harry was fortunately well-acquainted with their pricing. They actually had run out of premium Gobstones sets by the time Petri returned, which in Harry's opinion was good riddance.
"Help me restock," Petri said to Harry, after he'd finished gleefully counting the day's sales. "It's about time you learned the timing charm."
"Can I make an odd-eye glass for my friend?"
"We can make a dozen of those," Petri told him. "But first, try the timing charm, exspectato. The wand movement is like this." He slashed his wand downward very quickly and precisely, and then brought it back up in a similar fashion. Then he conjured a glass orb and set it on the table. "You can blend a flick into the movement. For example, wingardium leviosa exspectato, ad infinitum, deleo."
Swish, a down and up slash, then a spiral that tightened into a twirl. The glass orb began to oscillate, floating up before dropping down and floating up again.
"You must keep in mind exactly how much time you want the spell to wait. Tell me what you think it's doing," said Petri.
"It's levitating, then waiting, then levitating again over and over?" Harry guessed.
"It is waiting, and then levitating," Petri corrected. "And so on. You apply the spells in reverse order. Try it with just the single levitation charm and timing charm." He cancelled the charm on the orb.
"Er," Harry muttered, taking out his wand. "Wingardium leviosa exspectato deleo," he incanted.
Nothing happened for a moment, and then the orb shot up like he had just levitated it. Harry blinked in disbelief at his successful first try.
"Your wandwork has improved significantly," Petri told him with an approving nod.
"How do I make it go up and down? Is that the ad infinitum part?" Harry asked.
"Correct," said Petri. "Try it if you'd like."
While Harry was busy trying to get the orb to bounce up and down properly instead of rising, dropping to the ground, and rolling away before jerking up again, Petri retrieved his trunk and opened it up to a fourth compartment that Harry hadn't seen before. He stopped to look. It was full of large jars of white powder.
"This is fine quartz," Petri told him, extracting one of the jars. He unscrewed the lid and set it down on the counter. "We use it to make glass through transmutation. Have you learned about the difference between transformation and transmutation at school?"
"Not yet," said Harry. He didn't think transmutation had ever been touched upon. Professor McGonagall always focused them on transforming things with different aspects of similarity.
"Transformation is a completely magical process, and is instantaneous. The result can be anything, in theory. Transmutation changes one thing to another by accelerating a natural change. It is difficult, but guarantees quality. I only use it to fuse glass," Petri explained. He poured some quartz sand on the counter and pointed his wand at it. The crystals began to redden with what had to be incredible heat, but somehow the wooden counter underneath it remained completely unmarred.
After about a minute, there was a uniformly white-hot lump sitting on the counter, and Petri began to move his wand. The lump flowed sluggishly with his movements, thinning out and spinning in place until it had formed a small disc. Petri severed it neatly from the remainder of the glass, leaving a tail for the handle, and then, oddly enough, cast a steady hot-air charm on it.
"What's the hot-air charm for?" Harry asked.
"To protect the glass as it cools," Petri said. "If cooled too quickly, it could crack or warp."
He then proceeded to make a dozen more glass discs as Harry hung to the side, reluctantly impressed. This must have been what Petri used to do all day in the back of the shop in Germany while Harry watched it. He supposed all that glass had to come from somewhere.
"The odd-eye glass has a simple timed softening charm on it, looping repeatedly," Petri explained once the lenses had cooled. "When the glass softens, there will be irregular warping, and so things will look very strange."
They had covered the softening charm before the levitation charm at Hogwarts, and Harry was pleasantly surprised to find that he managed to enchant the glass without much trouble.
"Why was that so much easier than the animation enchantment?" he asked.
"Was it?" asked Petri. "Did you have trouble with the animation enchantment?"
"Well, it took me some time," Harry admitted.
"Perhaps you weren't focused enough on the effect you wanted," Petri suggested. He picked up the odd-eye glass Harry had enchanted and peered through it. "This seems to be working. It's only a toy, anyway. Why don't you practise on the rest?"
Naturally, Petri wanted him for free labour. There was nothing for it. Harry charmed the lenses while Petri fused more glass. When he had finished, Harry sifted through the pile to find the one that produced the most hilarious effects, and selected it as Vince's gift. He would have to send it out tonight.
"I don't know what to get for my other friend," Harry said. He didn't think Neville would appreciate a joke item like Vince would.
"And what is this friend of yours like?" asked Petri, putting a batch of marbles out to cool.
"He's sort of shy," said Harry, "and forgetful. He likes plants."
"Give him a portable planter," Petri said after a few moments.
"A what?"
Petri pointed at the top shelf to their right, where several egg-shaped glass containers in various sizes were on display.
"They're permeable and unbreakable, but still, not a very popular product," Petri said. "Ten sickles."
Of course Petri wasn't just going to give him one. "Can't I make one?"
"Unlikely," said Petri. "But perhaps you can practise your siphoning charm. Here. Fill these marbles with Gobwater."
Petri rummaged around in his trunk and produced a large canister of familiar-looking green liquid. Harry grimaced and took it from him.
"Don't open the bottle," Petri told him, "the smell is disgusting. Siphoning charm only. Put the finished ones in this bag."
Not opening the bottle still did not prevent Harry from getting the horrid liquid all over himself by the end of the evening, having filled what felt like hundreds of marbles. Harry never wanted to see a Gobstone ever again. After the first few spills Petri had packed up and told him to ask Rosenkol to side-along apparate him back home when he was finished.
Harry had tried to get revenge by not cleaning up before returning, but Rosenkol had taken one whiff of him before snapping his fingers and hitting him with such an abrasive scouring charm that Harry wished he'd just done it himself. He itched all over.
"Where do you keep the wrapping? For owl orders?" Harry asked when he finally made it home, dropping the heavy bag of marbles unceremoniously on the table in front of where Petri was sitting.
"The supply compartment in my trunk. It's unlocked," Petri told him without looking up. Harry huffed to himself and went to the trunk. It was mostly filled with quartz jars, and there was another bottle of that horrible Gobwater. He found the rolls of wrapping paper squished in a bottom corner, underneath a rack of vials with colourful sand.
Some colour-changing charms later, Harry had somewhat more festive red and green paper to wrap all his gifts.
It cost almost two sickles in owl fees to send them all off, and he wondered if he might be better off in the long run getting his own owl. He wouldn't even need to feed it, because they could hunt for themselves, couldn't they?
"Why don't we have an owl?" Harry asked Petri.
"I've never seen the need," said Petri. "They're easily intercepted. Rosenkol is much better for delivering sensitive messages. Anyway, I've been thinking. About the fidelius charm; I need to know more about this professor of yours. First, what is his name? Tell me everything you know about him."
"Er, he's Professor Quirrell. I'm not sure what his first name is; I think it starts with a Q. He teaches Defence Against the Dark Arts but he's pretty rubbish at it, at least in lessons. He showed me some other curses, er, he told me the vampire curse on me was getting worse, but I think he was lying."
"He showed you curses?" Petri repeated, eyes narrowing. "Privately?"
"Yeah," Harry said, wondering if it would've have been better to have omitted that part.
"What sorts of curses?" Petri asked, very slowly, as if he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.
"Like, er, the conjunctivitis curse," Harry said.
"And can you explain to me how the conjunctivitis curse works?" asked Petri.
"It makes your eyes swell up so you can't see," said Harry. Petri snorted without humour.
"I said how it works, not what it does," he said.
Harry thought about it for a long moment before he gracefully admitted that he had no idea. Petri sighed deeply.
"You'll be well on your way to prison if you don't be more careful," he said. "Don't cast spells you don't understand. The dark arts can easily get out of hand and cause unintended side-effects."
"So how does it work, then?" Harry asked.
"I don't know," said Petri. "I have never needed it. It is for incapacitating large, magically resistant beasts, not casual use. On a human it might cause permanent blindness or even death."
Harry winced.
"Your professor was being utterly irresponsible, teaching spells without a solid theoretical grounding. There's no doubt he follows the old way of magic. I'm astonished that Dumbledore would allow a teacher like that to remain," said Petri.
"He doesn't teach anything like that in lessons," Harry said. "He's always stuttering and very hard to follow."
"He stutters?" Petri asked, sounding very incredulous. Harry blinked.
"Yes," he confirmed.
"Does he stutter incantations too?" Petri demanded.
"Well, no," said Harry. Come to think of it, that could lead to very bad results.
"None of this makes any sense," Petri said finally. "I need to see it for myself. When you return to school, can you get something of his and send it to me? A hair perhaps?"
"He's bald," said Harry.
"Of course he is," said Petri, not even sounding surprised. "If I could get his blood… but that's unlikely. If you see any opportunity to take something of his, even if it's a scrap of his clothing, then send that."
"Okay," Harry agreed. He didn't expect any such opportunity, and it sounded like Petri thought it was rather hopeless as well.
"I'm going to bed," Petri declared.
Harry downed a nutritive potion to quell his protesting stomach and decided that bed was not a bad idea.
Christmas morning dawned with a loud thump from above. Harry blinked blearily awake, recalled what day it was, and sprang out of bed to check the door.
It was just as he suspected—there were presents everywhere! A fine sheen of frost had formed over some of the packages, suggesting that owls had dropped them off some time in the night, but there were also some fresher looking ones that must have just arrived.
Shivering as the icy air finally caught up to him and overwhelmed his excitement, he bent down to collect as many presents as he could fit into his arms. There were small bundles from all his dorm mates and a large package from Hannah that must contain his promised Ravenclaw scarf. He shuttled these downstairs before running up to gather more.
"Happy Christmas to my Dear Neighbours! - Eldred," said the label on a box of lollipops. Harry glanced down their row to see that every coffin house had been visited with one of these. Shrugging, he brought it down along with the last three larger packages.
At this point, Petri had been roused by the commotion, and was slowly getting out of bed.
"There's one for you," Harry said with some surprise, tossing a small package onto Petri's lap.
The man immediately pushed it off and grabbed his wand to cast a spell-revealing charm at it. When it evidently came up clean, he opened it gingerly with a very precise severing charm. Harry looked on, curious as to what was inside.
A note fell out, along with a bright yellow packet that looked like it had come out of a muggle shop. Perhaps it had. Harry edged closer and saw that it was literally a pack of sherbet lemons from Tesco, much like the ones Dudley would go through on a daily basis.
"Charming," said Petri darkly, staring at the note in his hand, before crumpling it up.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Nothing you need concern yourself with," said Petri. "You can have those." He nodded to the sherbet lemons on his bed.
"They're not poisoned, are they?" Harry asked sceptically. Petri snorted. "We got other sweets too, from one of our neighbours. These ones." He showed Petri the lollipops.
"Those are blood pops," said Petri. "For vampires."
"Are they really blood flavoured?" Harry asked. He couldn't resist tearing the wrapper off one and trying it. There was definitely a metallic tang to it, but it also mostly tasted like sugar. "Not bad," he concluded.
He turned to the rest of his presents eagerly. He used to hate Christmastime, what with Dudley always being extra obnoxious despite being showered with gifts, and Harry having double the chores and then being locked in his cupboard. This was utterly different. Never had he got his own presents before, and now there were so many.
His housemates had sent him a variety of sweets for the most part, though Terry had sent the Christmas issue of Martin Miggs. Harry supposed that was what he got for making the mistake of showing an iota of interest in the series in front of the other boy. Stephen had got him a copy of Ingrid's Ingredient Index, which he was sure would come in dead useful for Potions.
Hannah's package did indeed contain a scarf, but it was much nicer than he had expected. It looked more like a wearable tapestry, with a soaring bronze eagle against a blue background on one side, and "RAVENCLAW" emblazoned in bold letters on the other.
"You've made quite a few friends," Petri commented. "Is that hand-made?"
"We learned the knitting charm earlier," Harry explained.
"That's quite impressive," said Petri.
Harry blinked, surprised at the generous praise. He considered the scarf again. "Yeah, it's nice," he finally said, wrapping it around his neck. It was very warm, but he thought it would be foolish to take it right back off so he left it.
Neville's present was wrapped in a very bright golden paper with white snowflakes dancing all across it. It was very rectangular, suggesting that it was some sort of book. Harry made a small cut in the paper with the severing charm and peeled it back carefully.
It was indeed a book, Household Horticulture. A note had been spellotaped to the cover:
Dear Harry,
Happy Christmas! I got you this book full of spells for growing crops. You can learn them and then we can ask Professor Sprout if we can help with the food greenhouse. Did you know Hogwarts grows all its own food and even sells some of it? Isn't that amazing?
- Neville
Hogwarts grew all its own food? Harry was definitely intrigued. Could they grow their own food too? Speaking of food, "It's Christmas," he said aloud. "Can we eat real food?"
"And where will we get this food?" Petri asked. That was a fair point. Everything was probably closed, and anyway, Harry did not even know where there might be a grocer. He'd never seen one in Knockturn Alley.
"Does everyone just drink nutritive potions?" he demanded. "No way. My friends have never even heard of them. If not today, then maybe tomorrow we can go to the grocery store."
Petri sighed. "Fine. Tomorrow, I will send Rosenkol. I needn't remind you, do I, that he is utterly incapable of cooking?"
"I can do it," said Harry. "Anything is better than those potions."
He put Neville's book to the side and grabbed Vince's present next. It was large and very inelegantly wrapped, perhaps owing to its odd, lumpy shape. Harry opened it up and then recoiled as what appeared to be a desiccated, discoloured human head rolled out.
"Bloody hell!" he yelled. Behind him, there was an audible slap as Petri covered his mouth to muffle a laugh.
Harry took a closer look at the head. There was no mistake. It was an actual shrunken head. He'd seen them before, in the shop across the street, but that didn't mean he understood the point of their existence.
"Why would anybody want one of these?" he demanded. "What am I supposed to do with it?"
"Howdy!" said the head in a strange accent, right through its sewn-up lips. Harry choked.
"It talks," he muttered with faint nausea.
"It's not real," said Petri. "Real ones are outlawed. Ones like yours are used as rather macabre alarm clocks."
"Ugh," said Harry. "I definitely don't need to wake up to that."
All Vince's note said was, "Happy Christmas!"
Harry tossed it aside and reached for the last present, giving the shrunken head wide berth. He wondered who this one was from. Probably the same person who had given Petri the sherbet lemons, judging by the brown paper and the loopy "Harry" on the front.
The package was soft and light, and when he tore it open, something silky flowed out like quicksilver and pooled in his lap. Harry took it and held it up. It was a translucent, shimmering cloak.
"An invisibility cloak," Petri said immediately.
"How does it work?" Harry asked when he attempted to put it on, and did not appear to be invisible. It pooled generously around his feet, obviously made to be floor-length on somebody much taller. A note fluttered out of the folds and he reached down to snatch it between two fingers. "Your father left this in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you. Use it well," he read aloud. "There's no name."
"Dumbledore," said Petri with certainty. Harry glanced over to the sherbet lemons.
"Dumbledore also sent you the sweets?" he asked, trying to compare the handwriting on the two packages in his head. Petri nodded jerkily.
"Weird. So how does this work?" he asked again.
"Put your arms underneath it," Petri recommended. Harry drew back his hands and let the edges of the cloak overlap. The effect was instantaneous—his whole body disappeared from view.
"Wicked!" He reached back and pulled the hood over his head. Unlike on a regular cloak, it was extremely long and covered his whole face and then some. He could see reasonably well through it, though everything had a slight shimmer. "Am I totally invisible?"
"Quite," said Petri. "Though hardly undetectable." He tapped his spectacles. "The piercing-eye enchantment can see under it if I know your position, though it's a rather rare spell so you'll hardly need to worry about it."
"But there's also the human revealing charm, right?" said Harry, promptly managing to inhale some of the cloak. He spat it out and ducked his head to prevent a repeat.
"That's right," said Petri.
"Is there any way to counter it?" Harry asked.
"Not that I know of," Petri said. "You could, of course, confound or memory charm the caster. Or outrun the range of the charm, if you move quickly."
"Hmm," said Harry. "Can I learn the silencing charm?"
"For what purpose?"
"Er, to silence my footsteps."
Petri shook his head. "Likely not. The charm is very difficult, and applies either to sounds emanating from a target or passing a fixed point. Footsteps come from both your shoes and the ground, while you're moving. Better perhaps to cushion or soften the soles of your shoes to dampen the sound."
"Oh, that's a good idea," said Harry.
"And just what are you planning to use all this for?" asked Petri, raising an eyebrow.
"Er, dunno," said Harry. "Maybe I can spy on Professor Quirrell."
"That… may be informative. I had been planning to scry on him, but if you can see him while he believes he is alone, and share your memory, that would be just as good. Actually, can you share some memories with me now?"
"Share memories?" Harry repeated. "How?"
"In the pensieve," Petri said impatiently, getting to his feet and going to his trunk.
Despite having used the pensieve for necromantic purposes several times already, Harry had never done anything with his own memories.
"So how does this work?" he asked, when they arrived at the workshop and Petri retrieved the heavy bowl from its locked cabinet.
"There's a charm that converts your thoughts into liquid form," Petri said. Harry thought that that sounded somewhat familiar. "You only need to focus on the memory you want to share. Try thinking on where you were and what you were doing at the start of the memory, and then think about the end."
"Wait. Will I still remember it after?" Harry demanded.
"I will only be making a copy," Petri assured him.
"So you want to see one of my meetings with him?" Harry asked.
"That would be fine," said Petri. Harry thought back to the lesson on the conjunctivitis curse, which Petri had already told him off about. He might as well show that one.
Petri touched his wand tip to Harry's temple and then pulled. Harry closed his eyes to avoid getting distracted, and thought about the Professor Quirrell and the attacking snake. His head felt oddly cool and prickly, like he was taking a cold shower.
He opened his eyes as the strange feeling ended, and saw that Petri had a long, shuddering strand of silver liquid suspended from the wand. He moved it over the pensieve and it fell and pooled inside.
Harry, curious as to what his memory looked would look like from the outside, asked, "Can I see too?"
Petri beckoned for him to go on the other side of the pensieve. They both lowered their faces into the bowl.
Harry found himself falling in a familiar way through darkness, then mist, and then he was just outside Professor Quirrell's office, looking right at himself. He yelped and stepped back, but his past self did not react, and only flicked his wand to check the time. It was five minutes past seven thirty.
The first thing Harry noticed as he looked around was that the surroundings in this memory were much crisper and clearer than in any of the ones he had reconstructed through necromancy. He could see each stone in the wall just as clearly as if he were there.
"He's coming around the corner soon," Harry said as Petri appeared without any warning beside him. Fortunately, they seemed to be able to hear each other just fine, as Petri nodded sharply.
Indeed, Professor Quirrell appeared at the end of the hall, and Harry saw himself frown. Once more, he noted that the man had approached from the right.
"There's a forbidden part of the corridor on that side," Harry told Petri. He hadn't thought too much of it at the time, but perhaps Professor Quirrell wasn't permitted there either. "Forbidden to students. I don't know if he was supposed to be there or not."
Harry and Petri followed Professor Quirrell and past-Harry into the office, passing partly through them. It didn't feel any different from walking through air, but Harry shuddered nonetheless. He watched as Professor Quirrell asked him about the Enemy's Curse, and his past self showed him the foe glass he had found in the room of rubbish.
"I wish we could see what Professor Quirrell sees in there," said Harry, observing how all the blood seemed to drain from the professor's face as he peered into the glass. "Wait, this is my memory, right? Can somebody else see my enemies like this?"
"No," said Petri. "The pensieve is enchanted to construct an accurate representation of reality from the memory. That means a third party cannot see the results of any magic they would not normally be privy to."
Professor Quirrell began to tell Harry about the conjunctivitis curse, and how it might be used on Silviu, and Petri snorted.
"That's as likely to work as casting an engorgement charm at his face. Your professor is an imbecile, or purposely trying to mislead you. Likely the latter."
"Wait, why? The engorgement charm is reversible by finite, though," Harry protested.
"It won't work at all! Have you learned nothing?" Petri said derisively. "Overpowering a sentient creature's will, to hurt them, is prohibitively difficult! Curses are specially designed work through methods other than direct intent, and to be difficult to reverse. If you try to cast them through brute force you are losing all the features that make them curses in the first place."
"Professor Quirrell told me that the difference between curses and other charms was that curses need intent," said Harry.
"That's—that's completely off," said an agitated Petri. "If anything, curses need more technique and less intent. What purpose could he have to—" Petri stopped mid-sentence to stare slackly at Professor Quirrell's desk. Harry glanced over to see what had surprised him, but all that was happening was the professor was demonstrating the spell on a snake.
Petri then turned his incredulous expression on Harry.
"What?" said Harry.
"You speak Parseltongue," he said flatly.
"What?" Harry repeated.
"You can speak to snakes," Petri said.
"It's a talking snake," Harry protested. Petri's nostrils flared in frustration.
"No you fool, it's a regular snake!" he cried. "You can speak to snakes, and so can this professor of yours."
"Er, okay, so?" Harry had heard the snake speaking English, clear as day, but he could see no reason why Petri would lie about something like this, and so had to attribute it to some kind of magical phenomenon similar to the visibility of thestrals.
"So, the last known living parselmouth was the Dark Lord. It's a bloodline ability," said Petri.
"Are you saying I'm related to the Dark Lord?" Harry demanded incredulously.
"No, of course not," said Petri, dragging his fingers through his hair. "That's unlikely. Your mother was a mudblood."
"What about Professor Quirrell?" Harry asked.
"The Dark Lord is still alive," Petri said, taking a few steps forward and then pivoting on his heel to pace between the memory desk and door.
They were suddenly engulfed in mist and ejected from the pensieve, and Harry had to brace himself against the edge of the table to avoid falling. Petri surfaced, and as if mid-stride, pitched forward and nearly sent himself back into the memory again.
"The Dark Lord is still alive," he said again, righting himself. "So your professor may well be the Dark Lord himself."
"Didn't he have relatives?" Harry asked weakly, though he felt that the possibility that Professor Quirrell was actually the Dark Lord fit all too nicely into the space made by all his unanswered questions.
"I don't know," Petri admitted. "I certainly have never heard of any heirs, but it's possible."
"How do we find out?" Harry asked, trying to focus on what they could do, rather than what they couldn't.
Petri did not answer for a while, obviously deep in thought.
"This may be a foolish idea," he said at length. "Ask him, or better yet, have him offer to show you the killing curse. More than once, if possible."
"What?" Harry demanded. "How's that going to help?"
"The Dark Lord is well-known for his ability to cast the killing curse repeatedly, and to successfully kill anything with it, no matter how large or magical," Petri explained. "With of course, you as the only exception. It is an incredibly intensive curse. I'm uncertain if I could even reliably kill a human with it. I have heard that his followers attempted to emulate him by also using it whenever they could, but to my knowledge nobody has come close to matching his prowess."
"Oh," said Harry. "Er, wow. So how did I survive?"
"Nobody knows," said Petri. "But perhaps your Parseltongue talent has something to do with your survival? I don't have the faintest idea as to whether this is possible, but perhaps somehow the killing curse made you magically related to him. The killing curse is supposed to interrupt the connection between the body and the magical flow by creating a false connection, so you were in effect connected to him for a moment. Maybe some of that connection still remains."
"My headache!" Harry said suddenly. "I always get a headache when I'm around Professor Quirrell. Here, around my scar." He tapped his forehead. "You don't think..."
Petri's face was grim. "We can't know for certain yet," he said, "but it does seem more and more likely that this man really is the Dark Lord. If he and you are connected, it might also explain why the fidelius charm is malfunctioning."
"What if he tries to kill me again?" Harry said, his heart suddenly racing. He felt cold and cramped, like he was in a stone box, already dead and buried.
"He hasn't tried yet," Petri pointed out more calmly. "He clearly has some sort of interest in you."
"The Dark Lord is interested in me," Harry muttered faintly. "What if he's trying to figure out how I survived the killing curse, and when he figures it out he's going to kill me?"
"That's… a possibility, unfortunately," said Petri.
"Can't we do something?" Harry asked. "Call the aurors?"
Petri snorted. "It's almost trivial to escape aurors, and I doubt the combined auror force could defeat the Dark Lord if he were to fight. There is really very little that can stop a talented wizard."
"What about Headmaster Dumbledore?" Harry asked. "Isn't he a great wizard too?"
"That's right. Dumbledore," said Petri, frowning. "Hogwarts is practically Dumbledore's stronghold. So he knows."
"What?"
"I can't imagine that Dumbledore does not know that the Dark Lord is there. He must have some sort of plan," Petri said.
"He knows the Dark Lord is in the school and he's just, doing nothing?" Harry cried, a little indignant. "What if the man goes on a rampage and kills all the students?"
"What would he gain from doing such a thing?" Petri asked, eyebrows raised. "The Dark Lord hoped for a united magical world, completely separate from muggles. He's hardly going to destroy the future of the wizarding world for no reason."
Harry frowned. "But then why is he even there?" he asked. "He's just pretending to be a teacher. Not even a good teacher."
"I have no guesses," said Petri. "He must want something from Hogwarts, but it could be anything."
"What if it's me?" Harry asked. "What if he wants to kidnap me and, and do experiments on me?"
Perhaps he'd been kidnapped a few too many times in his life, Harry thought grimly, so that the possibility seemed all-too salient.
"How did you meet?" Petri asked, frowning. "Outside of lessons. Did he approach you?"
Harry tried to think back. "Er, I'm not sure, I don't—oh. Er, no. We met sort of by accident. So maybe that's not it."
He recalled now the matter of Nic's book. It had been complete happenstance that Harry had been in that corridor looking for Professor Babbling, and that Professor Quirrell had caught him trying to open the door to the forbidden corridor instead, and also helped him retrieve the book.
Harry had loaned that book to him and not yet got it back. More precisely, the Dark Lord, possibly, had asked to borrow it. He'd claimed it was to better teach Harry that obscure protection of blood curse, but even at the time, Harry had thought it was an odd choice. Now he doubted that it had been more than an excuse to get the book. But why?
He hadn't planned to have the book, Harry was sure, because it was only a coincidence that he knew Harry had it. But he must have thought the book would be useful to him. Was he trying to do some other piece of sympathetic magic?
But no. The book discussed sympathetic magic, but that wasn't what it was really about. It was really about creating a philosopher's stone, and getting eternal life.
"Wait," Harry muttered, glancing up at Petri, who had remained silent for a while now. "Do you, er, have you heard of something called a philosopher's stone? I think, er, Professor Quirrell brought it up once."
"The philosopher's stone?" Petri repeated, eyebrows rising into his hairline. "It's said to be the pinnacle of alchemical creation, a perfect union of preservation and acceleration. Those are the two branches of alchemy. It can create elixirs that will delay physical death, theoretically forever."
"Does it exist?" Harry asked.
"It exists," said Petri. "Dumbledore's alchemy master, Nicolas Flamel, is the only known person to have successfully created one. He was over six hundred years old, though word is that he died recently, just a few months ago."
"What?" said Harry, because there were too many thoughts chasing each other around his head and he couldn't articulate any of them. Nicolas Flamel, creator of the philosopher's stone had to be Nic, who had sent him a book about creating the philosopher's stone. He had been six hundred? And now, suddenly, he was dead?
"I don't know if it's true," said Petri. "Rumours like that sometimes circulate for awhile before we find out that they're false."
"But what about the stone?" Harry asked. "If he's dead, doesn't that mean something happened to the stone?"
"Oh," Petri murmured thoughtfully. "We can find out. Object scrying is trivial with such a well-known unique object."
"Scrying, like seeing what it's doing right now?" Harry asked.
"Seeing where it is," Petri said. "And perhaps even where it will be."
He walked over to one of the locked cabinets and twisted his wand in a complicated motion. It swung open and revealed an array of crystal balls in different sizes. He selected a medium one and brought it back to set beside the pensieve.
Then he just looked at it. When Harry tried to ask what he was doing, he only raised a hand to shush him and continued staring into the foggy depths of the ball.
About a minute later, he did a double take and leaned in close, blinking rapidly.
"What?" Harry asked, leaning in, as if he would be able to see what it showed, but there was only swirling smoke.
"It's at Hogwarts," Petri whispered in disbelief. "The philosopher's stone is at Hogwarts."