A lonely girl sits crying quietly in the Library, what was supposed to be a time of fun and learning has turned into the loneliest period of her young life. Her friend from the photography club finds here there and sits with her. With a great mental effort he reaches into his back and pulls out a black journal before sliding it across the table.
"Here, I think you need this more than I do. I hope it keeps you company when you can't be with the rest of us."
"Thank you. I hope that I can become part of the Hogwarts house."
"I'm sure you will, but in the mean-time he'll keep you company same as he did me when I was suffering from homesickness."
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Hogwarts, Harry decided, was a slave driver. Every evening between 8 and 9 they had lessons on how to control their magic while not changing the level that they held it at. The other three seemed to find this much easier than Harry and Hermione did. But she supposed that this was down to the fact that they had so much more magic than they did. Currently they were learning to sew of all things. Only they weren't allowed to use their hands or their wands. She cursed as her needle fired into the wall again, her control momentarily slipping before Hogwarts sharp voice made her bring it back. Being knocked out by Hogwarts was worse than being hit with Filch's whacker. She grabbed another matchstick from the pile, transfigured it into a needle the right size after only 4 tries this time and threaded it after 8 tries. To cap it all her period had started yesterday so she had to watch her change as well. Fuck, she meant fudge. She screams in frustration, throwing her work to the floor.
"Feel better young one?"
"I do thank you." Harry was surprised to find that she actually did.
"Very good, you're all doing very well for total beginners. You especially Harry, as I know that you've got more going on than just the control. You can all take a break as it's nearly time for you to go to bed."
"Thank Merlin." Breathed Daphne with feeling.
"You said it" and variations on that came from the other three.
"Give it few months and you'll have a hard time remembering how hard you found these first weeks young ones. Tomorrow your first lesson is in the armoury. You will also be collecting your new wands, so I need you to leave your current wands in your quarters. You will only be using these wands for all of your lessons going forward. As we are lacking a suitably trained instructor I will teach you what I can here and then correct you as best as I can while you're there.
"Now off to bed with you all."
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The class in the Armoury was as hard as Hogwarts had promised it would be, and apart from Charms and Transfiguration, the rest of their classes seemed easy in comparison. In those two classes they felt like they were back in first year, as they no longer had wands with a core, instead they just had milled lengths of wood that were the shape of a wand. Harry dropped first the Flying, and then the cooking club in order to make time to keep instructing the basic meditation class. He was heartened to see that Hermione had dropped hers too, as had the others. They were sure that they would get used to their new schedules, but at the moment it was more than a little daunting. Fortunately, Hogwarts took over for the intermediate meditation class. However, what used to be the intermediate class was now the Advanced class, and Tracy had joined Susan and Neville in that class.
Funnily enough, there was a test for getting into the intermediate class, and that was to actually get there once you'd been told how. Hannah, Ginny, Luna, and Dudley had done it in short order, leaving Nicole in the basic class along with Minerva, Madam Pince, and the students that were dealing with Occlumency issues. Harry thought that Nicole had been ready to move up for a while, but she seemed to have some sort of mental block that prevented her from moving up. She was also starting to look drawn, as if the stress of not following her friends was piling on top of everything else. Everyone in the Hogwarts house tried to be there for her, but they were all exhausted by the extra work not being able to use their matched wands caused them. Oh, the work wasn't any harder, it's just that they were needing to work out how to get their magic to flow through the wood without forcing it.
Once Hermione worked out that sewing outside the dream was easier, and made sewing in the dream easier too, they all had various bits of sewing and embroidery with them everywhere they went.
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It was the beginning of December that found the Hogwarts house sitting in the freezing cold waiting for the Slytherin and Gryffindor game to kick off. It was set to be a brilliant game as both teams were made of almost entirely new people. They had been told they had to attend as they'd missed the home game with Team B a few weeks ago, and were also not participating in other social activities. Harry had almost snapped at the Headmaster when he'd made the demand at breakfast, but Hermione's hand had stopped him. Fortunately his brilliant Hermione had come up with a solution, and they were all sitting with a jar full of bluebell flames in front of them, needles flashing away as they waited for the game to start.
Madam Hooch came out with the two teams following her, and they greeted each other. She placed the balls on the floor as the teams took their starting places and released the snitch, and then the bludgers. With a golden glow the snitch shot off leaving a sparkling trail behind it clearly indicating it's location. He nudged Hermione and nodded towards the trail, and she nodded back to say that she could see it too. The game was then on, and he found that it quickly became boring when he knew exactly where the snitch was, he couldn't even summon up the fake enthusiasm as while the chasers and beaters were running a good game, just knowing that he could end it in seconds took any fun out of it.
He put more and more attention into his sewing as the spiders web that he was starting to sew grew the outline of a pair of rose leaves to anchor it on, and then there was pain in his shoulder as a bludger careened out of the sky and smashed straight into his wand shoulder. Instinctively lashing out with his magic, the bludger turned into so much dust. The second one that was heading straight after the first didn't even leave dust behind as the rest of the Hogwarts house lashed out and obliterated it too. Before Harry could pull his wits together to get his metamorphic abilities to start putting the bones back together, Lockhart looms over him.
"Everyone stand back, I know how to deal with this. It's a simple charm to mend broken bones."
"No, don't give me an hour and I'll be as good as new."
"Never mind my boy, Lockhart is here. Ossio Dispersimus"
The pain of the broken bones vanished, but so did Harry's ability to move his arm, and his sense of the bones.
Harry ground out through gritted teeth, "You blithering idiot, my bones have gone. Professor McGonagall permission to leave before I lose my temper."
Minerva rounds on the headmaster "I'll take him to Pomfrey, you deal with Lockhart. He's now on his last chance, if he screws up one more time, I'm getting in a substitute and if they deem that his books are unsuitable for the defence class, you and anyone else that voted to allow him to be a teacher will be refunding all of the students 14G for the books. That's 3,000G that you're going to have to find from somewhere."
Minerva stalks off after trying to soften her tone, but still snapping at Harry, "Come on then Mr Potter."
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Madam Pomfrey was absolutely livid at Lockhart's impulsive desire to prove himself, so Harry had to sit patiently while she ran Diagnostic after Diagnostic on his shoulder.
"I have some good news and some bad news Mr Potter. The good news is that you don't need to go to St Mungo's, a dose of skelegrow and position charms overnight will be enough to regrow your missing bones. He's just lucky he missed your ribcage. As it stands you're going to have your Clavicle, Scapula, and Humerus regrown overnight. If it was just one of those, you'd be fine in the morning. As it stands you're going to need to have the joint immobilised for two weeks, and I'll need to manipulate it in the evenings. You also need to minimise how much you use your other hand as well. If I hadn't seen you sewing, I'd be keeping you from classes for that time. As it stands you are not to use a wand, or lift anything heavier than a goblet of water for that time."
Harry felt like he could feel Hogwarts amusement, even though she couldn't talk to anyone on this level.
"One last thing Mr Potter, you must stay as a boy for this entire time."
Instinctively he started to shift only to stop as a searing pain shot through his shoulder, stopping the shift using the skills she'd learnt on her period, she started to cry as her body suddenly felt wrong, and alien; and she felt trapped. It was then that it hit home just how much she now thought of herself as a girl that was occasionally a boy and resolved to put more effort into becoming comfortable in both forms in the future, beyond the urgings of her mind-healer.
"It will be ok, it's only two weeks, and you've had lots of practice at doing stuff without your hands. Before we start the skelegrow, I need you to take a couple of nutrient potions to provide your body with enough nutrients for the potion to work without compromising your other bones. Take this one now, and I'll give you the other one at dinner."
A couple of hours later Harry was trying to take his mind off of the taste of the potion that still lingered in the back of her mouth. And of the fact that he was stuck in this stupid body, with a voice that wouldn't stay the same for more than 15 minutes. She couldn't even cry properly. He screamed a wordless cry of frustration again, and went back to trying to do his homework with just his magic, as using his left hand was not only painful, but also illegible. Which was proving far more challenging than the sewing was. The doors to the Infirmary slammed open and the headmaster stalked in, an unreadable expression on his face, followed by Professor Babbling and Minerva. Between them a lifelike statue of Colin from first year came, posed as if he was just taking a photo. When they levitated it onto a bed, Harry realised that just maybe it wasn't a statue.
The headmaster prised the camera from Colin's hands and opened the back of it. Dust fell out instead of the film. A grim expression with something more came over the headmasters face.
"What does this mean?"
"It means Minerva, that the chamber of secrets has indeed been opened once more."
"Once more?"
"Yes, I was only a transfiguration teacher at the time, and Headmaster Dippet was just happy that the attacks stopped after Miss Warrington died. This was before I faced Gellert you understand, so my word carried no more weight than any other."
"We try to find the chamber, and see what we can do to get some Mandrake solution. If nothing else, I know that Pomona is growing some this year, as the northern year for them. I dread to think what we'd have had to do if this happened last year or next year."
"What would we have had to do?"
"Probably sent Pomona and her newt students out into the forest to see if they could find any mature mandrakes from the previous year with Hagrid for security."
"Fine, we'll send a message to St Mungo's and see what we can find. Should we call in the Ministry?"
"No! First of all, what do you think would happen? Last time it took someone dying to bring in anyone, and that was the DMLE, when what we need is the DMCC, and they're full of traditionalists that love hunting, but hate risks. So what do we tell them? A student has been petrified? When they ask who and they find out it's 'only a muggle-born', suddenly they won't have any resources available." He laughs humourlessly, the stress of his history clear on his face. Harry stays as still and quiet as a mouse so that they don't stop because they noticed young ears.
"That's what I tried last time. That's why I hate all of them, and I wish they'd just killed each other off during the war." He says vehemently and then appears to realise what he just said.
"Sorry about that, I let my emotions run away with me. I fear that we're on our own here, unless you fancy the likes of MacNair running around with his axe and 'I was imperioused' sob story." With that he turns and leaves.
Pomfrey, Minerva and Babbling all look at his retreating back as if they don't recognise the person that's just walked out through the door.
"You know, I never realised that all of that had affected him so much." Pomfrey ventured.
"I don't think any of us did, he's such a private individual.
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Albus wasn't sure what came over him in there. Yes he was sleeping better, but his Occlumency was going to pot. He'd never had an outburst like this since he and Gellert had started practicing when they found a book in the library in second year. At least he had a chance to deal with the problem once and for all.
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Lockhart opened the package that arrived for him at breakfast in the privacy of his own room. Unwrapping a bronze bowl, he removed a small gong and striker, a book, and the singing stick for the bowl. Running the stick around the inside of the bowl, it takes him a few minutes to produce the constant tone that it was designed for. He then says one long drawn out word.
"Ommmmm…"