After getting up a bit late on Thursday, and going through the morning's one lesson (Transfiguration), Harry pondered over lunch just what Professor Moody was going to be like.

He kept almost confusing Moony and Moody, not because they were similar people (though they might be, he didn't know yet, that was the point) but because they had similar names and the same job. Maybe if he tried to think of Professor Moody by a nickname, like Moony was, but the only nickname he knew for Professor Moody was "Mad Eye" and that didn't sound very pleasant.

Everyone else seemed excited or interested as well, talking about it more or less constantly, and somewhat to Harry's surprise everyone had arrived outside the lesson room at least ten minutes before the bell.

"What does anyone actually know about our new Professor?" Blaise asked, as they waited. "I only know what Mother's said."

"Honestly, that's more than me," Neville said.

"Oh, well, Mother seems to think he'd make a good husband," Blaise answered him. "And a good challenge."

"He doesn't look the best," Lavender pointed out critically. "Are you sure your mother would want to marry him?"

"She said she'd like to," Blaise shrugged. "Briefly."

"I'm not sure this is going to be any good," Draco opined loudly. "A washed-up old has-been? What could he teach?"

"To pay attention!"

Everyone jumped. Harry's wings flared out, nearly knocking Dean and Daphne over, and he quickly apologized to both before looking in the direction the voice had come from – over by one of the suits of armour, out of the way of the main corridor.

Their Professor shrugged off an Invisibility Cloak, fixing them all one at a time with both his mismatched eyes.

"Let that be a lesson to the lot of you," he added grimly, as the bell began to ring. "In you go."

Slightly worried now, Harry joined the others in filing into the Defence classroom and taking a seat. He got out his textbook, as well, and by the time he had done everyone was sitting down in their seats.

Professor Moody walked slowly into the room, the wooden thump of his leg against the stone floor loud in the near silence, and regarded them all with a stern stare.

"This class," he began, "is called Defence Against the Dark Arts. Some of you – maybe even all of you – need to think about what that means."

"We-" Ron began, then subsided with a muffled ow. Harry had the sudden suspicion that Hermione had just given him a kick in the shins.

"I don't mean you can't defend yourself, Mr. Weasley," Professor Moody said. "I'm quite aware of what happened last year."

His blue eye roved all over the place, sometimes appearing to focus on one thing in particular (though that thing wasn't necessarily in the room) before moving on to somewhere else.

"The problem," he said, sternly, "is that there is a pervasive idea that this is a school subject. Something which you learn about for a few hours a week and otherwise forget. But real dark wizards, real dark creatures, real threats, don't come on a schedule. There is no slot in your school calendar that says a troll will attack… and as those of you at the World Cup will have found out, dark wizards can be anywhere. Wouldn't you say so, Mr. Malfoy?"

"I don't know what you're insinuating, Professor," Draco said.

"I didn't know I was insinuating anything, Mr. Malfoy," Professor Moody replied. "Guilty conscience?"

After a moment's pause, he suddenly slammed his hand down on the teacher's desk. Everyone jumped again, and after a bit of thought Harry turned himself forty-five degrees to the table so that if that happened again his wings wouldn't flare into someone.

"You should always be vigilant," he informed them. "Constant vigilance is the only way to avoid being surprised."

He let that hang in the air for a few seconds more, then sat down.

"I've been over your subjects and marks from last year," he said. "Those of your former professors who are not in prison – and still alive – have been kind enough to fill me in, and it's clear to me you're good for Dark Creatures. Your duelling's not too shabby either, but we'll be working on that… but the place where you're most behind is curses. So that's where we'll start… can anyone tell me the difference between a jinx, a hex and a curse?"

Hermione put her hand up, as did about half the class, though Harry didn't because he couldn't quite remember the exact definition. It was one of those things that was sort of fiddly and had a lot of exceptions, and Professor Moody called on two or three people to get their definitions before ultimately shaking his head.

"I'm disappointed at you," he said. "Who here remembers that the Defence Against the Dark Arts job is jinxed? And look what happened to your last few teachers who tried to go for the whole year..."

As Harry had thought, and as their teacher explained, the difference between the three was a bit more complicated than just hexes being worse than jinxes and curses being worse than hexes. Most curses were pretty nasty to be hit with, though, often sounding as much designed for cruelty as anything, and over the course of the first hour of the lesson Harry slowly realized that the Fiendfyre he'd been taught – for all it was extremely dangerous – was probably one of the more pleasant curses out there.

Which was quite a thought.

Eventually, though, Professor Moody told them they were most of the way through the class, and added that they were going to be shown some illegal dark curses. It seemed that Professor Dumbledore thought it was okay to at least show them what the curses looked like, so they knew, though Harry had to admit that even though he agreed with the idea he felt uncomfortable about the whole thing.

Maybe it was because of what he'd read about the curses, and how you needed the right visceral desires – like hatred – to make them work. Even if it was sort of understandable why Professor Moody had those emotions, after so long fighting dark wizards, it still sounded a bit unpleasant.

For most of the curses, Professor Moody cast them silently and without waving his wand at all. He said that made the curses much weaker, but that it could be useful to do that sort of thing in an actual fight – but, more importantly, that he wasn't teaching them how to cast things like the entrail-shrivelling curse. That seemed to disappoint Draco, who loudly said that at Durmstrang they actually taught the Dark Arts instead of this ridiculous Defence stuff, and Moody countered with the interesting rhetorical trick of asking Draco if he'd like to be the target of a Muteness Jinx.

Or possibly hex. Harry wasn't sure which one of those it technically was, even after the explanation.

With about fifteen minutes left in the lesson, Professor Moody asked them if they knew what the three Unforgivable Curses were. Harry was sure Draco had to know, but most of the Slytherins didn't seem interested in volunteering the information.

Hermione was, of course, and she mentioned the Imperius curse. Then it was Neville, who paused for a few seconds after being called on before finally saying that the second one was the Cruciatus curse.

Surprisingly, that got him a smile from their Professor, and then he asked if anyone knew the last one.

Blaise's hand went up. "Surely we should just ask the dragon who survived it, Professor?"

Professor Moody snorted. "Surviving a curse doesn't tell you what it is, boy. If it did I'd know even more curses than I actually do, and I know a lot of curses."

"It's obviously the killing curse," Theo Nott declared loudly. "What else is it going to be?"

Harry put up his paw, suddenly slightly confused.

"Professor?" he asked. "I'm not really sure I understand why it's those three curses that are Unforgivable, and not, um, using a curse to kill someone, for example."

"Good question, lad," he was told. "Lots of dark curses should be punished worse than they are, in my mind. But it comes back to that bit about how you feel."

He banged a fist on the desk. "To even cast the Imperius Curse, you've got to have a fair bit of magic, but more importantly you've got to want that person under your control. It's a dark, nasty spell, and I'm a dark, nasty sort of person because I can cast it. To cast the Cruciatus Curse, you've got to feel some kind of joy at seeing someone in pain, and to cast the Killing Curse you've really got to want them dead. Not because you think it's for the best, but because you'd enjoy it."

Harry swallowed.

"Now," Professor Moody added, a little more softly. "Dumbledore wants you all to see these curses, so you know what to expect, but I won't force you. Anyone who wants can leave the class – go on, off you go, there's not long left and your friends can tell you what the homework is."

Nobody moved, and after giving it a good thirty seconds Professor Moody got out three jars with spiders in them. He demonstrated each of the Unforgivable curses, one on each spider, and they all left Harry's blood feeling a bit chilled.

He sort of felt sorry for the spiders, really.

Then he told them all that next lesson he'd be demonstrating the Imperius Curse on anyone who didn't specifically not want it done to them.

Harry had to admit that Professor Moody had a quite different style to Remus. It was much harsher, not because he was a nasty teacher but because he was so intense and focused on teaching them what he felt they needed to know.

It was at least much better than both Professor Quirrell and Professor Lockhart, and probably… Mr. Podmore, Harry thought it was, from the end of first year.

Going back to what the Unforgivable Curses were, it was kind of funny because in some of the fantasy books he'd read (where there was a lot of magic going around) spells which did what the Unforgivable Curses did would have been classified completely differently from each other.

The Killing Curse was nasty because you had to really viscerally want your target dead, but a spell that just killed someone – straight away – would arguably be nicer than a lot of the actual fighting in some of those books. And the Imperius Curse was mind control, but that was the sort of thing that would be just 'quite bad' - after all, in some of the Anne McCaffrey books there were bits with people being made to do things, and it was sort of 'bad' rather than awful.

The Cruciatus Curse was just horrible, though.

Two days later, Harry left Dumbledore's office late in the afternoon feeling quite pleased with himself.

Empress had thought it over and decided to accept, and so Harry had been called upon to help schedule a meeting where he was both the translator and the one who controlled how Professor Dumbledore and Empress could even talk to one another. It sort of made him wonder if that classified him as a Protocol Droid, which was a funny thought – as a dragon he'd be more likely to have a pile of gold than be made of gold, and as it happened he did have a pile of gold so that was that – and a surprising amount of the conversation had been about how much money was worth to Empress and what she could use it to do.

Eventually the agreement they'd reached was that Dumbledore would talk with the House-Elves to see about getting her some more varied food – it seemed that there had been a thousand-year-old standing order to provide her with a meal a few times a year, though probably none of the Elves actually remembered why or what – and most of her salary would be going to a Gringotts Vault until such time as she discovered something she'd actually like to spend it on.

The other thing was that Professor Dumbledore promised to turn as much of his time as he could spare to working out a way that Empress could actually safely come out of the Chamber of Secrets and connected passages and instead see what the world outside was like. That meant firstly coming up with a very definite way to make sure she was safe when a rooster crowed (and short-term it meant moving the roosters away from Hogwarts entirely, to be better safe than sorry) and secondly coming up with an equally definite way to ensure that her gaze was one hundred percent safe.

Apparently Professor Dumbledore actually had come up with a way to prevent someone from being petrified, if they weren't looking at her directly, and it involved the use of Mandrake potion. A single brew diluted in water could last for weeks as a regular drink to ensure someone was instantly unpetrified, but that method didn't really scale properly and it would no doubt be very dangerous to pets.

Still, it felt like things were moving forwards for Empress, and that was probably the best news she'd had all century.

"Hmm..." Conal said, frowning down at one of his hooves. "I think there's a bit of a difference."

"It's because of the hard stone, I think," Harry said. "And, well… if there's damage, you sort of need someone who's specially trained to deal with it? I think?"

"Uncle Firenze is one of the clan who knows how to take care of an injured hoof, so I've always gone to him," Conal replied. "But yes, if something happens here I might not be able to reach him."

Anna sniggered.

"Nothing, nothing," she said, when Harry and the first-year looked at her in confusion. "It's not about the idea of you being hurt."

"I'm glad to hear it," Conal smiled, then returned his gaze to the hoof in question. "But there was something else?"

"Yeah, um..." Harry wondered just how to put this. "I think… well, I think your hooves need to be protected from wearing away, because otherwise that's what will happen as they get worn faster than they grow."

Conal winced, shivering a little. "That sounds very unpleasant."

"I agree," June agreed. "Claws aren't even something that really feels pain, but thinking about not having them is really… ergch."

"I think I should write that word down," Luna announced. "It might make a good crossword clue."

"What, ergch?" June asked, trying her best to recreate the sound.

"Yes, that's it exactly," Luna smiled. "How do you spell it?"

"Well… um, hold on," June said, and started mumbling to herself. "Maybe with an E…?"

"How could I stop that happening?" Conal asked. "Is there a way to do it?"

Taira looked like he was about to explode, then shifted into his fox-form and put both paws over his muzzle.

"Well, there is," Harry said, wincing. "But it would probably need to be a bit different for you, because the closest thing we have is, um… horse shoes."

Conal frowned, thinking about that.

"I can see why," he said. "I can't imagine what Bane would say."

"Aww," Anne sighed, as her brother shifted back to human-shaped. "We were really hoping it'd be funnier when you actually had to say the words."

"Yeah, watching you trying not to say it was funnier than you saying it," Tyler contributed.

Conal gave them both a bemused look. "...right," he said.

"What about something more like human shoes?" Tanisis suggested. "So they're laced on, or secured with a sticking charm maybe, and they've got material that takes the impact instead of a hoof."

That sounded like a good idea to Harry, and he said so.

"I wonder where we could get them from," Luna added. "That's not me saying that, that's actually what Tiobald says. But I'm saying it as well, now that I come to think of it, because I agree with it."

"Are you allowed to do that?" June asked, her tongue lolling out a bit in a canine laugh.

"I don't see why not," Luna replied.

"Maybe Hagrid could help," Harry said. "Or Professor Kettleburn, of course. They're both experts on magical creatures, and Hagrid's quite good at making things as well."

He started to say something else, but then stopped when he remembered that thestrals had claws instead of hooves and therefore wouldn't be good experience with hoofed animals. But maybe unicorns would be?

It was a little hard to imagine a unicorn with hoof problems, though… unless it was the one from Lords and Ladies, which Jason Ogg had put silver horseshoes on.

"Hagrid is really good at stuff like that," Flopsy volunteered. "Come on, we'll take you down to see him as soon as the meeting's over."

"I think he knows the way, Flopsy," Mopsy chided gently.

"Doesn't mean he won't want company," Flopsy replied, sticking her tongue out.

Cottontail shook her head slightly.

The week rolled on, Harry and his friends getting used to their new schedule – and the occasional surprise, such as when Professor Kettleburn introduced them all to the three familiar faces of Fluffy on Wednesday afternoon – but the main thing that Harry's mind kept going back to was the coming Defence lesson.

Facing the Imperius Curse sounded daunting, and the idea that someone might actually want to put it on him seriously was worrying as well. It was sort of an odd situation, because the fact that Professor Moody was going to be demonstrating it on them was like the proof that someone might want to put it on them seriously one day. (Because if that wasn't likely to happen then he wouldn't need to show them.)

It meant that Harry gave serious thought to the idea of saying that, no, he didn't want to take part in that bit of the lesson. But it sounded worse to run into the Imperius Curse without at least knowing what it was going to be like, and it didn't sound like a very Gryffindor thing to say no.

"Does it sound like any House to say no?" Dean asked, when Harry voiced that thought over lunch. "I mean, Hufflepuff are loyal, so if one of them says no then it's not being loyal."

"Unless they all say no at once," Ron pointed out. "But it's not very Slytherin, is it?"

"Depends how Slytherin you're thinking," Dean shrugged. "If you don't want to look suspicious, you'd want to do it – right?"

"Maybe," Harry frowned. "Or maybe you think people would know that you'd be doing it because you didn't want to look suspicious, so you don't do it?"

"Watch it, guys, I don't want to go into this lesson with a headache," Neville snorted. "What about Ravenclaw?"

"Seems pretty simple to me," Hermione said, looking up from her latest book. "Stereotypical Ravenclaws just want to find out what it's like."

She looked back down, and Ron glanced at what she was reading – then did a double-take. "Hermione?"

"Yes, Ron?" Hermione replied, putting a bookmark in her book and closing it.

"Why are you reading The Lord of The Rings?" he asked. "I thought you'd be revising."

"I am," Hermione said simply. "The bit about the One Ring's influence. I want some tips."

"Is that realistic?" Dean asked. "I know magic is real, but the other stuff."

Harry carefully didn't say anything about Horcruxes.

"Right," Professor Moody said, once everyone had arrived at the lesson. "Any of you who don't want to take part in this demonstration, over that side of the room. You can still learn something by watching."

About half the Slytherins stood up, Draco among them, and Moody chuckled.

"Is something funny, Professor?" Draco asked.

"Just thinking," Moody replied, leering slightly. "Suppose you'd know all about this spell already, with your father."

"My father was a tragic victim of the Imperius Curse in the last war," Draco protested. "I don't want the same thing to happen to me."

"Then you should be learning how to resist it, shouldn't you?" Moody said.

Draco scoffed slightly, but didn't actually reply.

Harry wasn't really sure who he was sympathetic to there. He had to admit that if his father had been caught by the Imperius Curse, he wouldn't be very interested in it happening to him… but he wasn't at all sure that Mr. Malfoy actually had been controlled by the Imperius Curse during the last war. (Part of that was because Sirius said he hadn't been, but Harry was going to just say he was unsure.)

"Nobody else want to?" Moody asked, then stumped over to the side of the room away from where Draco and the other Slytherins were. "Then the rest of you come over here. Let's try… you first, Sally Perks."

"Sally-Anne Perks, Professor," Sally-Anne replied, quietly but firmly. "They're both part of my first name."

"Hm," the Professor said, non-committally. "See if I try to use a first name again. Right then… Imperio."

Sally-Anne's eyes unfocused, and then she started doing a pirouette.

"I didn't know she could do that," he said, mostly to himself.

"She can't," Parvati informed him. "I saw her try once, and she never said she was learning."

Professor Moody broke the spell, then, and Sally-Anne swayed a bit before leaning on a chair.

"Feels odd, doesn't it?" Moody asked.

"It felt like I was floating," Sally-Anne reported. "Then you said to do something, and it was just… so easy to do it."

"That's how it works," Moody confirmed. "Who next… Longbottom."

Neville swallowed, but took Sally-Anne's place.

"This should be interesting," Draco drawled.

"Imperio," Professor Moody incanted.

Neville's eyes unfocused a little as well, then suddenly he was a panther.

"Merlin-!" Moody yelped, jumping backwards and holding his wand ready, and after a frozen moment most of the class started laughing.

"Did you not know he was an Animagus, Professor?" Seamus asked. "Seems to me it'd be an easy thing to find out."

"There's a lot of information out there about what wizards can and can't do, Finnegan," Moody growled. (Harry thought it was quite a good growl, better than his.) "Much of it nonsense – as if you hadn't learned that from that fraud Lockhart."

Neville had shifted back from Lapcat while their teacher was talking, and shrugged. "You said to act like a cat, Professor…"

"Good point," Moody said, cheering up about as much as seemed possible for him. "If you can't ignore the instructions, make them mean something else to you. Now… Zabini."

Blaise ended up doing a handstand, which sent two Bezoars and a bottle of antivenom clattering across the classroom floor. Then Parvati sang something which Harry vaguely recognized as being by the Weird Sisters, and Seamus followed that up by jumping up onto the nearest desk.

During all this Harry had been mulling something over, and he raised his paw.

"Potter," Professor Moody called. "You have a question?"

"Can the Imperius Curse make you do something you couldn't otherwise do?" he asked.

"Good question, Potter," Moody told him. "If you don't think you can do it, but you're told to by an Imperius curse, you might be able to anyway. But it doesn't make you stronger, or faster, or taller, and you can hurt yourself trying to follow the instructions because you do it anyway even if it hurts."

That sounded like another of the reasons why the Imperius Curse would be a curse, and Harry shifted a little as he watched Dean get called up to the front.

Then Dean turned into a crow and flew straight at the ceiling.

"You as well?" Moody grumbled, and a few sniggers broke out all around the room. "Fine, fine… you know what it's like, anyway."

Dean shifted back again, and then it was Daphne's turn.

"What did he tell you to do?" Harry asked quietly.

"Jump as high as I could," Dean muttered back. "Birds taking off counts as jumping, right?"

Harry tried not to chuckle too loudly.

When Ron's turn came around, and he promptly turned into a squirrel, Professor Moody just put a hand over his eyes in a way that Harry recognized – it meant 'why does this keep happening' - and there were more and louder giggles from the students watching.

"Right, that's enough of that," their teacher said. "Are there any other Animagi in this classroom?"

Hermione put up her hand.

"You next, then, Granger," he instructed. "Right… Imperio."

Less than a second later, Hermione was a dinosaur, and Moody's jaw dropped.

"I didn't think any witches had even heard of those," he muttered.

As everyone realized that it had happened again, Harry couldn't contain his laughter – but his own amusement was drowned out a moment later as Draco literally fell over laughing.

Draco's sudden bout of hysterics almost drew more attention than Hermione's original transformation, and it certainly looked like the Slytherin boy was trying to stop, but every time he got close he just creased up and started laughing again.

It was infectious, enough that Harry himself started laughing as well, and the demonstration was postponed by several minutes until the giggles had finally died away.

As it happened, Harry was the very last person who was willing to experience the Imperius Curse, and as he made his way to the front he tried to prepare himself for it.

Was this one of those things where you had to concentrate to resist it? Or was it something else where you had to not concentrate – like with quicksand?

"I'd ask if you were ready, Potter, but a dark wizard wouldn't," the Professor said. "Imperio."

It was as if Harry was floating. There was a kind of blissful sensation – and then, almost too soon for him to have noticed it, it went away again.

"Does it only feel like that for a moment?" he asked.

"Imperio," Professor Moody said again, and there was that lovely floating feeling again. But then it stopped, after no more than a couple of seconds, and the Defence Professor shook his head. "Well, Potter, you'll be fine if you just keep blinking. And I wouldn't want to be the dark wizard who actually expected that to work on you."

"That's just unfair," Draco said quietly.

They sat down and resumed the lesson after that, and Professor Moody spent a while talking about the complete lists of downsides from the Imperius Curse – as well as the ways it could be resisted.

It seemed that the most important thing was simply to be able to recognize the instructions as coming from somewhere else, and then to focus on how you didn't actually want to do them. The problem with doing that, of course, was that the spell made it so it was terribly hard to actually think about what the instructions were.

"That's what makes it such a nasty spell," Moody elaborated. "If you can't fight it, you could be ordered to do just about anything. And part of you would know. Yes, part of you would know."

Vincent put his hand up.

"Crabbe," Moody invited.

"Professor, how come you didn't know that those Gryffindors were Animaguses?" Vincent asked, putting his hand down again. "It was in the news and everything."

"I don't trust the news," Professor Moody replied promptly. "Best way to know what's going on is to get the Daily Prophet and the Quibbler, then believe the opposite of anything political in the Prophet, anything about magical creatures in the Quibbler, and anything about celebrities in either of 'em."

He snorted. "But that's got nothing to do with the Imperius Curse. That's just because I'm a paranoid bastard."

A little hush ran around the room, and he started cackling. "You think I don't know that? Of course I'm paranoid! I'm also alive."

Harry had to admit that Professor Moody certainly had a point there.

After the lesson itself, Harry was asked to stay behind.

Professor Moody then pointed out something that Harry actually hadn't realized – that he could have been ordered by the Imperius Curse to simply not blink, which would have meant the spell wouldn't break – and that he'd like to give Harry another go or two in future to see if he could resist the spell anyway.

Harry thought that was probably a good idea, but said that he'd rather do it when at least one of his friends was around. He was expecting Professor Moody to be offended, but instead (and much to his surprise) he got two points for Gryffindor for 'not trusting his Defence teacher'.

Then he was told he was a good lad, and sent down to dinner.

Harry had often been grateful for his friends, but never had he been more grateful for Hermione in particular than when the true workload of Fourth Year descended on them.

As the second full week of school became the third, Hermione simply organized for herself a complete timetable of when homework and revision should be done and then shared it with all four of them. There was space in it for things like going to Hogsmeade or reading or doing a club, of course, plus for Hermione specifically there were periods for her to get extra sleep or double up on classes (and even in some cases an extra mealtime) but as far as Harry was concerned it was just nice to know he'd be able to do just about all his homework with his friends.

It made it easier to do the work early, while the lesson was still fresher, and to be reminded of anything you personally had forgotten by one of your friends. In turn it meant Harry could remind someone else when they'd missed something, and it seemed as though those were the things that he remembered best of all.

For his part, meanwhile, Dean had started a proper football club by the simple method of going to Professor McGonagall and saying "I'm starting a proper football club", though at his last report he was having a little trouble explaining the offside rule.

He did think there was potential in changing the 'goalkeepers can handball in the penalty area' rule into 'goalkeepers can use magic on the ball in the penalty area, so long as they don't make it into something other than a ball'. Ron thought there was potential for someone to get carried away and send the ball rocketing into the sky fast enough to concuss a dragon.

(Harry wasn't sure if dragons could be concussed, but he didn't especially want to find out.)

What everyone was really thinking about, though, was the arrival of the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. It kept coming up in conversations in odd moments, such as when Hagrid worried whether his work on Conal's shoes would pass muster for people from France.

Harry actually thought they looked really good. They were made of leather, which made them a lot more like shoes than anything else, and they tied on with laces (which again made them a lot like shoes, or perhaps boots). Conal could take them off himself, quite easily actually, and though Harry had to help explain how you tied up shoelaces because Conal had never done it before – and then recruit help from Anna because Harry didn't put on shoes much either – once the Hufflepuff boy had got the hang of it he was able to just put them on or take them off when needed and everything seemed to be working out fine.

Then there was the conversation with Empress in early October, when Harry had just finished reading the very first time Lessa and Ramoth accidentally jumped backwards in time.

"I did not expect that to happen," the ancient basilisk said, shifting slightly on her end of the blacked-out mirror. "And it sounds like she did not expect it either."

She hissed slightly. "Is that something that wizards can do? I know they can Apparate, but..."

"Apparating is just place to place, I think," Harry replied. "If someone was able to go from time to time I think they'd have noticed already. But there are things called Time Turners, which mean you can go back in time a bit."

Empress made a peculiar noise that didn't translate, and Harry frowned. "Are you all right?"

"I was wondering what Salazar would have done with something like that," she said. "I think that on thinking about it I am glad he did not have one."

There was a little pause, and Harry wondered if she was going to say something else.

"Do you think that the other Triwizard schools will bring any to try and cheat? I would not like to see Hogwarts beaten by someone who was cheating… or at all."

More than a little startled, Harry asked when she'd heard about the Triwizard tournament, and Empress told him with a sibilant chuckle that he'd mentioned it four times already that month.

AN:

I'm not wholly sure that education system is in keeping with the Key Stage 4 guidelines.