"And then whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!" Seamus gestured with his nearly-complete blasting rod, pantomiming for the enchanting club. "That spider was on fire! And that one! And another one! They'll n'er mess wi' a Finnegan, again!"

"Ron was also a huge help," Neville explained, once Seamus got it out of his system, "for all that he was terrified. He was just sniping any that got too close to one of us." Left unsaid was that he was probably hiding under the invisibility cloak, which at least a few people in the room might not have actually found out about yet. The way the kids couldn't keep a secret, it was only a matter of time.

"You're underselling yourself, as always, Neville," Hermione chided. "Without you using freezing charms to slow them down and bunch them up, the ones in the back could have easily overwhelmed us. For my own part, I found that my issues with accuracy were largely mitigated by having such a target-rich environment."

"Like fish in a barrel!" Seamus chortled.

Percy, who had been going increasingly pale as the kids detailed their adventure into the forest while I'd been fighting the basilisk, turned to me and asked, "Harry, is my hair going gray?"

I made a show of inspecting it, then shook my head. "Not that it wouldn't have a good reason." It had taken over a month—until the last enchanting club of the year—for us to finally get the kids to cough up why they hadn't been around even though they'd been on campus when everything was going down during my fight with the basilisk. Turned out they'd been running to get Hagrid to help fight off the invaders, noticed the Ministry arresting him, and for some reason listened to him when he told them to, "Follow the spiders." They'd found the semi-friendly and all-grown-up talking spider that Hagrid had raised all those years before, Aragog. They'd also found that the van-sized invertebrate had been breeding for 50 years. The few acromantulas that I'd run into were just a tiny fraction of the seething horde of the things, and the younger spiders weren't exactly willing to pass up a free meal of four children.

I felt like a bad friend. I hadn't even realized Hagrid had been arrested over suspicion that he was behind the attacks. Since he'd been blamed for the last time, he was the number one suspect this time as far as the Ministry was concerned (it didn't surprise me at all to hear that Dawlish had been primary auror at the arrest). At least the indisputable presence of the basilisk corpse saw Hagrid fully exonerated; McGonagall had seen to that.

"I am going to say this very carefully," Percy began, his skin going from pale to flushed. "And understand that I say this to you as your prefect. The words I will have with Ron later as his brother will be much stronger. Hagrid is a very nice man. He is a fixture of Hogwarts who never means for anyone to get hurt. But he is a terrible judge of danger. Why would you go scrambling off into the Forbidden Forest by yourselves? What foolishness could have compelled you? You were fighting a horde of class quintuple-X creatures! You easily could have died! A whole squad of hit wizards could have died!"

That finally punctured the invincible pride the kids were feeling and Neville admitted, "Yeah. If the unicorns hadn't shown up to give us a ride out, I don't think we would have made it."

At least that probably meant the school's student-protecting fortune wards worked all the way into the forest. I was thinking what to add, when Draco piped up, "I'll speak to my father about getting funding to clear them out of the forest. Hagrid," I could tell the boy had wanted to call him that oaf, "should have warned someone about this decades ago. A whole army of acromantula right next to the school. Honestly!"

"Where did the second one come from?" Luna asked, in her usual non-sequitur. We all looked at her and she explained, "You-Know-Who told Harry that he used Hagrid as a scapegoat. So he knew about the acromantula. He probably brought in a female for this Aragog to mate with so he could be sure there would be an army of dark creatures in the forest. He might have already had a female, since he had the venom he used to kill Myrtle."

As conspiracy theories went that was… rather coherent. I suggested, "You should write that up for the Quibbler, Luna. Maybe it would help Mr. Malfoy convince the right people in the Ministry that it's a problem." Everyone nodded, and I saw Draco make a connection about the utility of being friends with a reporter, even if it was a 12-year-old who wrote for a tabloid.

"I could get pictures!" Colin grinned.

"No Colin!" everyone told him, all at once.

After the club finally started to wander off back to various common rooms, I noticed Draco hanging back. "What's up?" I asked.

"I have a friend who'd like to talk to you," the boy explained. "He should be waiting for us across the way."

Only slightly worried about another trap, I nodded to Draco but caught Percy's eye on the way out. My roommate gave me a thumbs-up that he would hang around just in case. Or maybe he gave me a thumbs-up that I was politicking with the Malfoys; sometimes it's hard to tell with that guy. Either way, he knew who'd seen me last if I didn't make it back to the tower.

But the classroom Draco led us into was empty save for Theodore Nott, Draco's year-mate who had been acting like he wanted to talk to me all year. I made a guess as I saw him, "Going to have a better summer without a Voldemort homunculus hiding out in your house this year?"

His eyes widened. "How did…" Acting like you were all-knowing was like cocaine for wizards. No better high. It honestly explained a lot about Dumbledore. "...well, frankly, yes. I wanted to apologize for not warning you earlier, and thank you for the assistance." The boy's voice was high, starting to crack with puberty, and he was likely to be a beanpole like Ron and Neville soon. His polished way of speaking was at odds with his affected slouch. Trying to not be too much of a pureblood, maybe.

"No worries, man," I told him. "I know what it's like to have a dark wizard for a mentor." Technically, I knew what it was like to have two, between Justin and my godmother. "You don't really know what they'd do to you if you stepped out of line."

He sighed with relief that I got it. "I want you to know that you don't have to worry about me. If my father orders me to do something to you, I'll just tell him it's too risky." He shrugged. "It really is. You killed all three of them and the basilisk?"

"Well, not all at once," I tried to give a nonchalant shrug. It probably wouldn't hurt to let Slytherin house continue to think I was an unstoppable badass. "It's cool that we're not enemies. Let me know if you need any direct help getting out, if it gets bad again."

Surprised at the extra offer of help, the boy simply nodded his thanks, then waved goodbye as he slipped out of the room. As soon as he was out of earshot, Draco said, "Speaking of…" I nodded for him to continue. "...if you wind up going on any extended field trips this summer, I'd like to come along."

I didn't really have any firm plans. My friends had talked about maybe taking a trip before senior year. Remus hadn't been able to keep secret from me for long that he'd gone ahead and gotten The Prince's Potions distributed to wizarding bookstores, and I saw a pretty staggering bit of profit for a teenager (a lot of which I'd shared with Percy and Penny). So, despite being habitually broke, we might actually be able to pull something off. I hadn't considered taking any younger kids, but the way the Weasley family worked, it was probably inevitable.

"You're okay going on a trip that might be mostly Gryffindors? Your father is okay with it?" I asked.

"He suggested it," Draco drawled, "at least after I had… reservations… about spending all summer in a house with my aunts."

I sucked in a breath. I hadn't even thought about that. Having Bellatrix Lestrange secretly camping in your house was already probably stressful as hell. Having her and Maeve would be like renting a room in Arkham Asylum. "Are your parents going to be okay?"

He nodded. "Mother is protected by her sister's good will. Father is able to handle them. It's honestly not dangerous, really. I'd just rather be almost anywhere else when they're around." He remembered something, "Of course, I can contribute sufficient funds to pay my way and more, which might elevate the kind of holiday you can manage."

I decided not to be offended. The kid had expensive tastes. "Got it. You'll pay to bump us up so you're not stuck in whatever flophouse we decided to stay in to save money."

I thought about it for a second. It could be a Malfoy plot, but I didn't think Lucius would put his son in any danger and Draco was worse at espionage than his friend Nott, so I didn't think he was knowingly trying to trick me. And I had been working to get him some better role models.

How bad was it at Malfoy Manor that Lucius was giving me a literal blank check to babysit his son for the summer? Or was he just playing a long game to get me more fully used to taking Malfoy money? I was more comfortable keeping an eye out for a knife in my back than puppet strings being tied to my wrists. But I probably just had to make sure I didn't get too comfortable becoming part of Draco's entourage, right?

"I'll talk to the rest of the crew," I told him. "But I think it will probably be okay. I'll let you know."

He smiled, genuinely, and headed out after Theodore. I found Percy waiting for me up the hall, having had my back after all. "What was that about?" he asked.

"Nott wanted to say he didn't support his dad trying to kill me and apologize for not warning me sooner. Draco… ummm… how do you feel about taking him along if we take a trip this summer? He'd apparently rather hang out with us than his new aunt."

"Interesting," Percy mused as we walked. "Actually, I had been meaning to mention: my parents have been trying to arrange the funds to visit my eldest brother this summer, and it might be quite the educational field trip for all of us to visit Egypt…"