The Hammer rounded out the rest of his break practising with his Christmas gift in the backyard by shooting dirt clods and spending time with his family. Any story Petunia had to tell about Lily, he was interested in hearing them. The picture had reawoken a family connection they had shared, a history that Harry realized he had been ignoring in favor of avoiding confrontation. By the time he had boarded the Hogwarts Express back to school on the last day of his vacation, he was rested and recharged with a few more ideas on how he was going to investigate this mystery. Seeing Neville and Hermione again on the train felt like he had never left - they spent a good bit of the trip filling Neville in on the developments of the break, including locking their cabin door so Harry could show off the invisibility cloak unmolested.

"So what were you going to look for next, Hammer?" Neville asked after settling all the current clues in his head.

"The Chief said something that stuck with me when he was talking about what was going to happen with us and that detention - he mentioned that he wanted me to be able to live my life without having to worry about being the chosen one, the war between good and evil, and a prophecy. You got any idea what he meant by that, Nev?"

"I mean, there's a class we have as an elective after third year. Divination usually has prophecies and future predicting involved." The pure blooded wizard replied matter-of-factly.

"Wait. So you're telling me there's a whole class dedicated to predicting the future?"

"Well… yeah."

"Why did no one tell me about this!? If we can use magic to figure out the future then what the heck are we doing wasting time trying to figure stuff out the old fashioned way when I can just look in a crystal ball, wave my wand, and see what's next?"

"Well, that is to say, divination isn't an exact kind of thing…" Neville answered.

"I think I'd like to take it when we're allowed electives." Hermione said.

"We'll worry about that if we're not expelled by then," she swatted his shoulder, "but we can go talk to the divination teacher now. Or y'know, when we get to school."

They all nodded conspiratorially, agreeing that they'd seek out the divination teacher as soon as they had free time at school. The rest of the ride was without incident - Harry even sprung for a few treats on the passing refreshment trolley, buying a round of hot chocolate for his friends along with a large box of chocolate frogs to share. He studied his friends' cards ravenously, trying to glean if there were any new facts he could learn from the trading cards of famous wizards.

Asking about the location of the Divination class from an older student, he was told that it was taught by one Professor Trelawney in the North Tower of the castle. Following the map that Harry had made led them to the long, spiraling stairwell which led up to the top of the tower. It was a dizzying walk to the peak - one they probably didn't need to make during a lunch break, but by the time they realised it was so arduous they were already committed to the venture.

The staircase ended in a ladder, which made Harry wonder if they had a magical means to make this easier for students with mobility problems. Popping open the trapdoor at the top of the ladder released the heavy smells of incense and patchouli, the decor of the room doing it no favors to dissipate the stereotype of a fortune teller in a travelling sideshow. The room reminded the Hammer of someone crashing a car full of Egyptian revival decor into a Romani thrift store: there were shelves full of classroom use crystal balls and tea sets, and the windows were covered in silken cloths which altered the colour of the light in the room into a stuffy array of reds and purples.

"Hello! I had foreseen your arrival, but…" A completely disheveled woman with the airs of a gangly insect draped in a few layers of faded, multicoloured shawls, peering out from behind soda-bottle glasses blinked uncertainly at them, "it isn't often I see first years come up here. My class is an elective for older students, what is it you three desire of me?" She stepped closer to the group and the Hammer could smell the remains of cheap sherry clinging to her.

"You're… Professor Trelawney?" Hermione asked, hesitating a moment.

"Yes, yes child. You three have journeyed far to seek my wisdom, have you not?" She whipped around from her place next to a hearth that was built in the room, casting an ominous shadow across the whole of it.

"Well, we are skipping lunch and it is quite a long ways up here." Neville replied to her, simultaneously trying to avoid looking at her while also staring like he would have to defend himself from a beast.

"Just to cut through it, we're here because the Chief, Professor Dumbledore, he mentioned something about a prophecy. Since Neville here said that you're the local seer and teach the Divination class I was wondering if you knew anything about it."

The professor closed the distance between them again, eyeing the Hammer inquisitively, "And who are you?"

"The name's Harry. Harry Potter-Mason. You can call me the Hammer."

The professor recoiled in horror when the Hammer introduced himself, "No! It's too soon, the mist has not yet cleared!" She muttered to herself, pacing from one side of the room to the other.

"Alright, lady. What's the deal? We do hocus pocus on the regular for class, stop showboating and tell me what the skinny is on this prophecy thing." Harry was having none of it.

"The secrets are not lost, but waiting. Prepare, for they come ever faster." Trelawney said, with a motion of her hands like she was wafting the aether into her ears.

"Is there a professor in this school that'll just tell us the truth the first time around?" The Hammer asked, shaking his head.

"You tread on dangerous, deadly ground, young Harry. We all work here under the auspices of Headmaster Dumbledore and in those tides many before you have seen the rise and fall of much darker things before you."

"So you're saying there's a prophecy about why Voldylocks wanted to try and kill me? Is that why he sought out my parents?"

"I have already said too much! Cease now before the news of his burgeoning return might be hasted to our realities!"

The Hammer was getting a headache trying to talk to this lady.

"You agree with the Chief, then. He didn't die that night and there's something going on."

Trelawney began to wail, hands grasping at nothing above her, falling silent momentarily before speaking in a voice that wasn't anything like the one she had been using,

"Too soon! Too soon! The pieces are in play but a burning flame cuts through the fog! Something is here, but not there, not with us but also against us! The thing which was made lost will be found and the things made hidden will be seen!"

The professor fell into a disorganised heap on the floor, dead silent.

"Y'know what, I think we should leave." The Hammer said, bending down and opening up the trapdoor again.

"Is-is she alright?" Hermione hesitated, reaching a hand toward the unconscious teacher.

"I'm sure it'll sort itself out. She's a professional, right? They wouldn't just leave her up here to teach if this sort of thing wasn't already under consideration." Harry really didn't want to stay.

"Or this kind of thing never happens." Neville commented.

The Hammer groaned, "Dangit Nev, now she's going to bully me about being responsible about it." he said before doing a short pirouette away from the door and stomping over toward Professor Trelawney. As he approached the professor sat up and looked around, coming into eye contact with Harry.

"Oh, hello. What are you doing here? Was I doing something here on the floor? I can't seem to recall." She said to him after glancing around her room for a bit.

"Oh, we had some questions, but I think they worked themselves out." the Hammer said, offering a hand for her to steady herself as she got up off the floor.

"Oh, well, I'm glad I could be of some help. Were you first years trying to see what it would be like to learn the mysteries and depths of peering through the veil?" She adjusted her glasses.

"Would you look at the time? We should be off, professor. Thank you so much for the help." The Hammer urged his friends over to the ladder and mounted it, sliding down to the bottom. His two companions joined him shortly after, climbing down rung by rung.

"Well that was strange." Neville said as he dismounted.

"I don't' know if I want to take Divination anymore." A visibly disturbed Hermione spoke.

"If that was some real Delphi kind of thing, then there's a lot to go through. But if her prophecies are as stale as the sherry's she's been helping herself to, then we're barking up the wrong tree. If and this has to be the mother-of-all ifs, if she's spot on then it confirms what I was talking about with the Chief."

"D'you mean that You-Know-Who is still here?" Neville asked, paler than a moment before.

"Seems like that gunsel's still around. Just living in a way that only sort of meets the definition." Harry replied.

The mood between them had changed as they descended the stairs - their witnessing of the divination teacher's wild transformation wasn't a shift in what they already knew, but it raised more open ended questions about their reality none of them had the means to answer. At least there would still be class to distract them.

After dinner, Harry went up to his room after excusing himself to take an early night. He drew out the cloak of invisibility from his trunk, slipping underneath it and disappearing, finding that he could see through the material of the cloak when he was fully covered by it. He waited near the door until one of his roommates opened it up to come inside, slipping by him like a gentle breeze before the door could close.

"Hermione, have you seen Harry around?" Penelope Clearwater asked her on one of the couches in the common room.

"Oh, he told me that he was going to call it an early night. I suppose he's tired." She replied from behind a book she was reading.

"I hope so. You'd really be better off if you reigned in some of his… antics."

"Believe me, I try. But there is an inexplicable sense and reasonableness to what happens with him."

Penelope looked sceptical, "I don't know how it does with that much danger and a complete disregard for policies and rules. We're just trying to keep you safe, after all. If you all weren't doing so well academically, I think the staff would be coming down much harder."

Someone came into the common room, but Harry didn't make a move for the door.

"Well any danger I'm exposed to is one I volunteered to face." Hermione said, turning a page in the book and continuing to read.

"There are still things that you're too young to be volunteering for. The rules are there for a reason - this school and staff are responsible for you. You get that, right?"

"I feel like we're talking about two different things, Penelope. With what the staff is keeping on that forbidden floor I think we're playing for stakes a bit bigger than just our secondary school experience."

"You should be leaving that stuff well enough alone, much less evaluating the stakes behind it, Hermione. Please, before you all manage to lose more points or get hurt."

Harry moved toward the door and slipped out after another person came in. He had gotten tired of listening to the conversation - at least he knew where Hermione's concerns laid. Out in the halls he picked a direction and began to wander, taking in the sounds and feelings of the castle at night, the subtleties that were hidden under the din and busyness of daytime becoming clear to him as he paced the floors heel to toe in near silent footsteps.

A set of marks on the floor - like a thing had been dragged - drew the Hammer's curiosity and demanded his attention. The trail led him to a disused classroom, one which looked like it hadn't seen visitors in a generation by how much dust there was on most everything in it. Beyond the upturned waste-paper bin and the desks and chairs stacked against the wall there was a gold framed mirror almost as tall as the ceiling, the carefully crafted filigree of the border broken only by an inscription on the top edge, "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi" Harry scratched his head, "I show… not...your face, but your heart's desire?" he said softly out loud as he deciphered the inscription backwards. It wasn't a hard puzzle, but since it was probably magic he didn't know what to expect.

The Hammer paced the standing frame, examining it for any other inscriptions that could be read as instructions. He took care not to look directly into the shiny glass side of the mirror as he did so. Finding nothing else, he shed his cloak so he could have a clearer look at the mysterious object, sliding himself slowly into full view of the reflective surface once he figured it was safe.

"My heart's desire, huh?" He murmured to himself as he looked into the glass. The swirling fog in the mirror slowly became clearer- the vision settling into a black and white shot of a ceiling fan spinning slowly against the background. The eyeline of the shot panned downward to a newspaper framed on the wall for its headline, "Boy who lived cracks own murder case!" Before drawing back to reveal himself dressed in his coat and hat in a Private Eye office that was unmistakably one he returned to in his head to think. Was this what he truly desired? He could tell there was a knock on the frosted glass door in spite of the silence from the image. His mirror-self waved a hand, mouth opened to speak and the door opened, Hermione and Neville coming in with the materials for a case in hand. The text on the door was in three lines, "HARRY P.-MASON / THE HAMMER / PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR." It was certainly a tempting vision, but it didn't help him toward solving the case at hand.

Almost in response to his train of thought, the mirror-Hammer reached over to the top drawer of his desk and produced a red stone from it - the colour a jarring contrast to the black and white of the rest of the scene before him. His reflective self gave the stone a twirl in his hand and put it into his coat pocket, pointing directly at Harry before raising a single finger to his lips in a shushing motion and winking.

The Hammer felt a weight suddenly tug downward into his coat pocket, dragging his attention away from the illusion in the mirror and to what had just happened in real life. Putting a hand into his pocket, he pulled out the reddish fist-sized stone. This was it. Somehow he had gotten the Philosopher's stone.

Harry looked around, dumbfounded. He expected people to be waiting in the periphery with party poppers and a big sign congratulating him on being Hogwarts' biggest schmuck. He kept looking at the stone. Nothing happened. No one popped out of the darkness to wrest it from him. Taking another look around the room, he slipped the rock back into his pocket and put the cloak of invisibility back over himself. The bus station was where Bogart had kept the Falcon in the meanwhile - but so long as no one knew he had gotten his hands on it, the Hammer figured they'd never think to check a child's luggage.

Slipping back out into the hall under the cover of his cloak, the Hammer's heart was pounding, the blood rushing between his ears as a mixture of emotions struggled to assert themselves. He was elated. He was terrified. He was confused. Nothing made sense about it, but this wasn't the time to look a gift horse in the mouth. Harry made his way back to Ravenclaw tower and revealed just enough of himself to get the eagle to pose a question. He answered it in a whisper and slipped inside.

He rolled the stone up inside a pair of socks and put it into the deepest part of his trunk he could find followed by his invisibility cloak. Afterward, he took a moment to sit down on his bed and do a check of his mental state. He had the Maltese Falcon and had absolutely no idea what to do with it.