"One of the peculiarities of an alchemist is that often the properties you wish to combine will already exist, and they may indeed already exist in that precise combination," Dumbledore said, as behind him the chalk worked steadily away and drew out a perfect picture of a diamond ring. "But of course, those materials may be very hard to get hold of, while approaching the problem alchemically means that you can create what you need with a small quantity of the material and a large quantity of something else."
Turning around, Dumbledore tapped the diamond in the ring. "Diamonds are famously very hard and very strong, though as a partial consequence they are also brittle and we should bear that in mind. They are also very expensive indeed, and while you could make any number of things out of diamonds it would be a little tasteless and quite noticeable."
Harry stifled a giggle, imagining a car made out of diamond – which would be quite safe itself in a crash, unless diamonds were more brittle than he thought, but which would also be a real hazard for other drivers because of all the light that it would throw out everywhere… and which would be quite dangerous to be in if it did crash, because you couldn't make a crumple zone out of diamond.
Dumbledore went on to give another few examples, all of them also very expensive or hard to get hold of. First there was platinum, which was extraordinarily hard to dissolve and so was very helpful for working with dangerous acids (but which was also extremely valuable), and then there was gold (the most malleable of all metals, which could be beaten enough to become almost transparent and which never became harder), which Dumbledore said was also valuable and that if they hadn't yet realized that then perhaps it would be best for them not to go shopping any time soon.
"I am sure you can think of many others," Dumbledore continued. "Now, alas, I will not be teaching you how to make gold by means of an alchemical process, because that is more the province of the author of your textbook and he has unaccountably failed to include more than a rough overview – however, what we will be doing is examining the possibilities in what I believe the Muggles would call cloning."
A hand went up.
"Miss Brocklehurst," Dumbledore invited.
"Isn't cloning where you have a big tank full of gloopy stuff, and you make people in it?" she asked.
"Perhaps it is," Dumbledore said. "I confess I have not been keeping up with Muggle biological science, perhaps they can do that now… Mr. Potter?"
Harry lowered his own paw. "Cloning is where you make something or someone that's sort of… an exact copy, or a close copy, of something or someone you already have. A clone sheep was born in the summer, but that's the only clone so far."
"I didn't know Muggles could even do that," someone muttered.
"Why would they do a sheep?" Blaise asked. "Was it just because they could say, yes, we absolutely made an identical sheep to this sheep here, and you can tell because they look the same… like sheep."
"I would imagine that Muggles have ways to tell that sort of thing," Dumbledore told them all. "And the definition that Mr. Potter gave for cloning is quite correct – we will be making a copy, though in this case it will be a copy of most or all of the properties in question rather than a copy of the material itself."
He smiled. "Alas, the process is not quite the same for everything we wish to copy, as otherwise that would be entirely too easy – and where would the fun be in that? Instead, there are differences for each process, and we will start with diamond."
Turning back to the board, Dumbledore flicked his wand and the chalk sprang into life again. It drew a long list of types of mineral or crystal, like feldspar or quartz, and then with a tap Dumbledore rearranged them into a Y-shaped diagram.
"Almost all rocks are made out of these minerals, arranged in this way by what makes them up," Dumbledore told them. "This line from the top left down to the middle represents increasing amounts of silicon, for example. And of those, the extreme points on the diagram are the green crystal olivine, the milky white crystal anorthite, and the familiar quartz; the central point of the diagram is a mixture of rocks best characterized by dolerite; almost everything making up every rock on the planet is made up of some kind of mixture or metamorphically altered mixture of those minerals and the ones that can come from them."
Harry sort of got what that meant, remembering some of their textbook. Because those minerals formed a kind of circle around all the other ones, by composition, it meant that combining them together would symbolically be like having all rocks – or almost all rocks, anyway.
Hermione's hand went up, and she asked about coal.
"Very well spotted, Miss Granger," Dumbledore told her. "Yes, coal is made up of plants, and so it is one of the great exceptions to this list. We will also be including coal, but those five materials are all we will be needing for these purposes."
He tapped his nose. "The coal serves another purpose, as well, which is that coal fires burn extremely hot and we will need to amplify the heat of our burners to melt down all the rock samples we will be using here. Once that is done, however, and with the addition of some talc to crumble the previously existing properties, we will have a mass of molten rock without properties – to which we can add a single small diamond, and transfer many of the properties of the diamond to the whole mixture."
Hermione's hand went up again, and she asked how they were going to turn the molten diamond-like material into the shape they wanted it.
"Another excellent question," Dumbledore told her. "It is that sort of inquiry which separates an alchemist from someone with a puddle of diamond-hard magma on the floor of their work room which they will not be able to remove short of digging up the foundations, so I will award Gryffindor with four points. We will be adding beeswax and incense to the mixture, to add a malleability which can be burned off with a candle flame once the new substance is correctly shaped…"
Harry wondered whether making everything out of diamonds would actually be tasteless, in the how-nice-it-was-to-eat sense. He'd never actually had any diamond before, because they were both rare and expensive, though if he remembered correctly there was a way to make synthetic diamond because it occasionally showed up in New Scientist.
And there was a story in a book full of Arthur C Clarke stories where someone had gone to the moon and discovered an enormous lode of diamonds there… at almost exactly the same time as their laboratory back on Earth had discovered how to make extremely cheap diamonds on a huge scale.
He was a bit fuzzy on the details of what happened at the end of the story, but it was something about the man's wife divorcing him.
As it happened, though, the diamond-like material they'd made through alchemy was… weird. It was sort of the same colour as mint-cake, or slightly off-white icing, and it glittered a bit but with nothing like the way that the tiny proper diamonds that had been part of the process had looked.
It had a similar texture to icing or wax, as well, and Dumbledore had them all shape what they'd made into mugs at the end of the lesson. Harry didn't quite get his right, then realized he could probably use one of the Transfiguration spells that didn't change the material but just its shape, and after he'd done that (and everyone else had followed much the same method) they used a candle to burn away most of that malleability.
The end result of all that was that Harry had a mug with a sort of subdued glitter to it, which was so hard that if he scraped it against just about any rock in the world it would be the rock which would crumble away.
"I would not advise dropping it, however," Dumbledore added. "It is unlikely to break, but very likely to spill whatever it is you have in it. Thank you all for your attention, and for your homework this week I would like you to outline how you would impart the properties of that wondrous wood lignum vitae into other, more pedestrian but more available, woods."
Harry was thinking about that homework in a vague sort of way at dinner, and wondering whether the method they'd used for the diamond could be more-or-less copied across to the wood.
"Would that work?" he asked Hermione. "You've got bamboo, which is a really fast growing wood, and then… well, bristlecone pine is the slowest growing wood, but that's even harder to get hold of. But oak's still an old and durable one."
"It's symbolically old and durable," Hermione agreed. "I think that's a good start, but maybe you'd need pine as well? Because it's evergreen."
She reached for her bag, then stopped. "We might need to ask Neville about what trees are at the extremes… or, hold on. We can't just melt it all down, can we, because it's wood."
"That's a good point," Harry admitted. "Maybe it needs to be cut into shape first, and then have this applied to it? Or apply it to the wood block before it's sawn into shape?"
Hermione did get something out of her bag this time, making a note to check on that.
"What are you going to be making next in Alchemy?" Ron asked. "Lighter than air bicycle?"
"I saw a film with one of those in," Hermione told him, frowning. "No, hold on, the bike was being made to float by… I suppose you could just call it magic."
There was a sudden mutter around them, and Harry looked around to see what had prompted it.
An owl had just flown into the Great Hall, and while this was a normal sort of thing – all the post that arrived overnight usually waited until the next morning, but some letters or deliveries arrived in the middle of the day – this one was carrying about a dozen separate bags and having a great deal of trouble staying in the air.
It descended in a wobbly sort of way on the Hufflepuff table, which acquired a clear space roughly where it was about to land, and managed to gratefully if not gracefully flop down in a way which was just a bit less than a crash.
Harry had stood up while the owl was still on the way down, and he headed over to see what had happened.
"Oh, neat, it arrived!" said Zacharias Smith, taking one of the bags.
"What did?" Hannah Abbott asked. "Are all of these yours?"
"No, just this one," Zacharias explained. "I did a bulk order thing to save a bit of money."
June gave the nearest bag a sniff, then started sniggering.
"Hey, Harry," she said, glancing at him. "Did you know the Weasleys do mail-order now?"
Harry hadn't known, though it made a lot of sense. For most of the year most of the teenagers in Wizarding Britain weren't in Diagon Alley, after all.
"So, what did you get?" Ernie asked.
Zacharias sort of belatedly realized he was surrounded by about six Prefects. "Oh, um…"
"I don't think that Marauders' Miscellany actually sells anything that's banned at Hogwarts by itself," Harry supplied, thinking about it. "Not yet, anyway."
Realizing he wasn't going to be able to actually conceal the contents, Zacharias turned out the bag on the table. There were a couple of their special fireworks (which weren't actually banned, though firing them at times when it might disturb someone unnecessarily was banned), some of those sweets which made you suddenly ill, several other sweets with more harmless but still amusing effects, and then various little things like one of those silly 'pipe-bombs' (which gave everyone in the blast area an old-fashioned smoking pipe) and a small telescope.
"What's that one?" June asked. "Seems funny for them to be selling astronomy equipment."
"It's a trick telescope," Zacharias explained.
"Oh, I think I saw them testing this one," Ron said, snapping his fingers. "Is there any bruise remover in the bag?"
It turned out there was, and Ron took the telescope to demonstrate. He winced slightly, then held it up to his face, and yelped as it punched him squarely in the eye.
"Ow! Merlin, that hit harder than I thought…"
Hermione sighed, and grabbed the bruise remover. "Hold still, Ron… honestly…"
While that was going on, Harry saw that Dominic had taken it upon himself to give the exhausted owl some water.
"We've got some at home," he explained. "It's actually what mum does for a bit of money… they use a lot of more exotic birds and stuff further south, and the Scillies are where long distance packages swap to owl post for the last bit of the journey."
"Sounds like you'll be doing Care of Magical Creatures in third year, then," Harry guessed.
"It'd be nice," Dominic mused.
During one of the Unusually Shaped meetings in the middle of November – one of those days when the air was cool and crisp, and it felt like maybe contemplating snowing a bit except that that would ruin the classic Hogwarts First Snow that involved more feet at once than a warg – the topic sort of meandered onto how their various species or races or similar categories were viewed by the Wizarding world.
"With us, it's kind of stereotyping," Anna shrugged. "There's not many kitsune in the country – the next youngest than us is only about six now and the next oldest is about twenty-five – and we're not all sneaky buggers, but that's what people know."
"I think it's the whole fox thing getting tied up in it," Harry guessed. "But I heard that foxes in some other cultures are seen as brave, so more Gryffindorish or Hufflepuffian than Slytheriny or Ravenclaw...tastic."
That way of putting it won Harry a few giggles.
"I think almost all of us aren't really very well known by the wizarding world," Flopsy bobbed her head. "Remember when Uncle Fluffy was acting as a guard? I know you do, Harry."
"I was in First Year," Harry said, half-agreeing and half-correcting. "So nobody else here was at Hogwarts then."
"Right," Flopsy agreed.
"Nobody knew three-headed dogs were Beings," Mopsy snickered. "I know being a Beast doesn't stop you from being able to talk and stuff, but you'd think it'd be a clue!"
"Even without you around, I don't think it'd work today," Luna said. "People are much more used to thinking about that sort of thing now."
"You're right, yeah," Flopsy concurred.
"It's nice," Cottontail added her two knuts.
Was that a Wizard saying? Harry didn't really know if 'added her two pence' was a British saying or not, because he'd only run into the American version about 'two cents' in books.
"People are kind of familiar with goblins, though," Skara said. "History class is weird."
"Oh, right, because of all the goblin rebellion stuff," Harry realized. "You must know some of that from the other side."
"A bit, yeah," the first-year shrugged. "We're still on the really simple stuff at the moment, and the textbook's not that bad."
"We spent a lot more time on goblin rebellions in second year," Conal informed her.
Tiobald signed something, and Luna translated. "And third year," she said. "And, actually, fourth year too. It comes up a lot."
"Maybe because it's the most exciting thing on there," Tanisis guessed. "I know I only really have the wizard side, but it doesn't sound like they're making the wizards sound like they're in the right all the time."
Harry saw Skara touch her pocket, where her wand was, and remembered that a lot of the Goblin Rebellions had in some way involved the right to use wands.
He could really sympathize with those ones.
"Do manticores show up much?" Dominic said, interested.
Harry tilted his head a little, thinking, then shrugged a wing. "Mostly in Care of Magical Creatures, but I don't think we've actually met one."
"If you had it'd be my mum, probably," Dominic guessed. "She goes up every couple of years, but that must be for NEWT students or something… I think she said she bit someone once, but that was to teach him a lesson."
"There is something I'm kind of wondering about, actually," Tanisis said. "It's a goblin related thing, I'm afraid."
Skara nodded, to show she was listening.
"I got to reading about the Sword of Gryffindor," the sphinx went on.
Folding her arms, Skara snorted. "I should have guessed."
"Oh, is that bad?" Tanisis asked, concerned.
"Not bad, really, just… it's one of those things that caused a rebellion before," Skara explained. "Bunch of idiots for getting that angry about something that old."
"It's not been seen since sixteen thirty-seven," Harry contributed. "Dumbledore mentioned it once."
"Right," Skara agreed. "Old. It's just that… it's one of those things goblins talk about, that's a great example of how wizards just don't understand goblin law, and it's not like you're a human who asked me, uh, 'what's your opinion on wand use' but…"
Harry sort of got what Skara was getting at.
It was like if you were a dragon (like he was) and someone was bothering you about wanting to slay you, or maybe more like hoarding things. You could understand where they were coming from (especially with the hoarding thing) but it felt like it was cliché even so and even if it was the first time you'd been asked that.
"What I mean, though," Tanisis resumed, "is that I'm not sure I understand the way the events worked. So the book I have says that Ragnuk the first made the sword, and that the reason goblins want it back is that goblins think things belong to the person who made them rather than the person who buys them – so buying something from a goblin is more like renting it, and it doesn't last."
Skara nodded. "Yeah, that's right. I know humans work differently though, you have this idea that the person who made something doesn't have any say over what happens to it?"
She paused. "Well… you know. Non goblins, because there's only one human in this room."
"Where?" Luna asked.
Harry raised his paw. "I think technically I'm human, and so are June and Matthew. Melody might be as well but I don't know her ancestry."
Skara blinked a few times, then shook her head. "Crazy, all of you."
"What I was wondering," Tanisis said, trying with some determination to wrench them back on topic, "is that it also says that Ragnuk accused Godric of stealing the sword. But if he was the one who commissioned it, wouldn't it have not been stealing for him to have it, even by Goblin law?"
"I… actually don't know," Skara admitted. "I know I heard that the sword was stolen, but…"
She frowned. "Now I think about it, doesn't it have his name on it or something?" Tanisis nodded in confirmation, and she continued. "You can't etch something like that unless you are a goblin using secret goblin methods, so it must have been made for him in the first place."
"You know what I think from that?" Harry asked.
Skara looked at him, and Harry explained. "I think that Ragnuk the first changed his mind, and wished he'd made the sword for himself, and tried to take it when he shouldn't have. And I think Godric Gryffindor either never realized that even if he'd paid for the sword then the goblins would want it back when he died, or he knew and didn't care. So nobody here is really right, which is like a lot of tricky history stuff."
"Wow," Skara said, thinking about that. "People in history are jerks."
While Harry pondered that question a bit – and wondered what would be the fair way to sort things out if the Sword of Gryffindor ever was recovered, because he knew where it was but not how to get at it – lessons continued, and sometimes that meant Harry was around when his friends were doing their lessons that didn't interact with his.
It wasn't really something that Harry thought was a good idea for Potions or for Arithmancy, but Herbology was in a greenhouse and Harry might wave as he went past. Divination sometimes got taught outdoors – when it was Firenze taking it, anyway – and sometimes Harry saw that or listened in a bit.
Centaurs valued divination that talked about long-term events, rather than specific predictions, it seemed.
Astronomy was one of the ones Harry largely didn't get in the way of because of the time it happened, around midnight, and because even if he did fly past around midnight he wouldn't get in the way of a given star for very long.
And then there was Care of Magical Creatures, which had once again become about forty percent Care of Miniature Dragons (especially for the upper years) and which was usually outside, so Harry went past quite a lot.
Sometimes he came down to help translate, because Hagrid was fairly fluent in Dragonish now but there was only one of him and there were four dragons. And Professor Kettleburn was still quite halting, though he knew the important words (like 'yes', 'don't' or 'extinguish')
"Morning, Harry," Dean nodded, one Tuesday, as Professor Kettleburn caught the tail of Horst the Hungarian Horntail in his mechanical hand.
"Naughty," the Care of Magical Creatures professor said sternly.
Horst couldn't actually have done any damage, because the spines on his tail were all covered in tennis balls. But, like with fire, it was important to get boundaries across while the dragon was small enough to not cause massive damage.
Or normal damage, really.
"Harry?" Ollie asked.
"That's me," Harry agreed, turning to look at the Antipodean Opaleye who'd spoken.
At a little over two years now, Ollie was almost as old as Nora had been when he'd hatched. He was definitely getting close to full-size dragon, though for dragons what full-size meant was a little bit vague anyway.
"I saw one of the humans riding a hippogriff earlier," Ollie told him. "Do humans ride dragons?"
Harry blinked.
"I've only heard about it being done a couple of times, but that's with dragons who aren't clever like you," he said. "So the dragons don't know not to hurt them, or they get angry."
Ollie nodded, considering.
"It looked interesting," he said, then turned his attention to Dean. "Is he small enough I could carry him?"
"What's that?" Dean asked. "I thought it didn't involve me, but…?"
"Ollie's sort of interested to see if dragon riding is possible," Harry explained.
Dean blinked. "...wait, really? I'm definitely saying yes to that!"
It wasn't quite as easy as just saying it, because Professor Kettleburn had to know, and Harry checked with Ollie about why Dean specifically.
It seemed that the Opaleye quite liked Dean, though not for any particular reason except that he thought Dean was nice, and by the time that discussion was over the rest of the Care of Magical Creatures class was mostly through working out whether or not to be jealous of Dean.
Mostly they thought he was a bit crazy, overall.
Then there was another delay when Nora, Gary and Sally had to help Hagrid corral the six dragonets, who all seemed to be more interested with what was going on than would really be healthy for Dean (Harry saw his friend cast a Flame-Freezing charm on himself just in case, even though it was ages until they'd have fire), but finally Dean actually got up on Ollie's back (picking somewhere just next to the wings, because that was where most of the "lift" came from when Ollie took off) and shifted a little.
"Is that good?" he asked.
Harry relayed the question, and Ollie moved his neck around a bit.
"It seems okay," the Opaleye decided, and spread his wings.
Then he took off.
He actually sprang into the air a bit faster than normal, overcompensating with his first downbeat for Dean's weight, and Dean held on tightly as Ollie rose into the air.
"Everything all right, Mr. Thomas?" Professor Kettleburn called up, his non-prosthetic hand cupped next to his mouth.
"Yes, Professor!" Dean called down, and Harry took off as well – deciding to head up in case there were translation problems in the sky. "Wow!"
Now they were high enough, Ollie shifted the direction of his wingbeats a bit. Instead of forcing air straight down, now they were pushing down and back, and the pearlescent dragon gained speed before gliding down towards the Black Lake.
It had been a while since Harry had seen a hippogriff flight, but while they didn't usually take off straight up they did fly over the lake if he remembered correctly. It seemed like Ollie was going to do his best to make it as much like one of those flights as possible, because having a passenger was as new for him as riding a dragon was for Dean, and as Harry followed he could hear Dean laughing and whooping.
Then Ollie pulled up as they reached the other end of the lake, and Dean quite unceremoniously fell off.
Harry could see when Ollie realized there was suddenly less weight on his back, and he backwinged before looking behind him to see where Dean had gone. At the angle they were going Dean would probably have gone into the water, but he might have hit the ground instead, and it was fortunate for everyone concerned that what Dean instead did was just turn into a crow and avoid the whole 'falling' problem.
"Where did he go?" Ollie asked. "I made a big mistake!"
"It's okay," Harry replied, in Dragonish. "Dean can turn into a crow, so when he fell off that's what he did."
Ollie heaved a big dragonish sigh of relief, then blinked. "Can most humans do that?"
"No," Harry replied. "I think it's great that you gave Dean a ride, but-"
"I don't want to drop anyone," Ollie interrupted. "I don't not like anyone that much."
"I think maybe we should go back to Professor Kettleburn and Hagrid," Harry suggested, as Dean landed neatly on his forehead – a few inches behind the lightning-bolt. "And if you still want to give people rides, we can sort out some kind of harness so people don't fall off. Even if they can turn into crows."
Perhaps inevitably, after that, the rest of the Care of Magical Creatures lesson turned into a session of discussion and working-out where everyone tried to think about what a fair harness would look like.
It had to be the sort of thing a human could use to hold on, and to be safe even if they lost their grip, while also being the sort of thing where a dragon didn't feel like the human was treating them like a beast of burden. (Or a motorcycle.) That meant that Dean got involved a lot, through sketching as much as anything else, and Harry wondered if this was one of those things he'd heard being called 'jam sessions'.
One thing that was sort of clear was that they'd have to be individually fitted, because something that was just the right size for Ollie had a real chance of being too big for Sally and too small for Gary and Nora even before you considered how dragons changed size a lot as they grew up.
Just looking at the dragonets – who were already a handful or pawful each, even though none of them were remotely big enough to breathe fire – was a good clue to that. Ivor the Ironbelly was a little bigger than his playmates, perhaps, and Vicky the Vipertooth looked a bit sleeker, but Christie the Chinese Fireball would end up about the same size as Gary already was and that "about" contained a flex of about a ton in adult weight.
Possibly two, since Harry didn't think Gary had been on any sets of scales recently… so long as you meant the bathroom sort of scale, at least.
"It's so weird," Dean said, on the way up to the castle for lunch. "Has that ever happened to you?"
Harry tilted his head. "Falling off a dragon? Not really."
"I mean having the thing from the Mirror of Erised just come true out of nowhere, or almost," Dean replied.
"I don't think you ever told us what yours was," Harry admitted. "And I'm pretty sure mine is impossible."
It was a sad thought, but there you were.
"Right, um… it is kind of embarrassing, but it was ages ago, so…" Dean shrugged. "Basically, the idea of riding a dragon was really cool, and at the time the only dragon I knew was you."
Harry nodded.
"I can see how that would be embarrassing, but I don't mind," he said. "It's your thing to tell, anyway."
"And it makes me something like the first wizard in ages to ride a dragon without the dragon trying to eat me, I think," Dean mused.
Towards the end of November, the inevitable happened, and it snowed for the first time that winter.
This being Hogwarts, where the weather had a sense of the dramatic, it dropped about two feet of snow on the ground all at once over Saturday night – meaning that when the castle woke up on Sunday morning it was to discover that the whole of the outside was a soft cloak of white.
"I heard that Scotland had cold weather, but yikes," Dominic said, reaching out a paw and gingerly poking at the snow nearest the door. There were already dozens of students out there, turning snow into snowmen or flinging snowballs, but after a moment Harry remembered that Dominic lived about as far south as you could get while still in the British Isles.
"You get used to it," June told him, not unkindly. "Some people are going to be really jealous of your fur."
"I'm jealous of your fur right now, there's more of it," Dominic countered, twitching his wings a bit. "I've seen snow, but… only an inch or so at most? Maybe a bit more once?"
"Would a Warming Charm help?" Harry offered. "Or if you'd prefer, there's a way to use Bluebell Flames instead, which are flames that are just warm and don't actually burn anything."
"Oh, right, yeah, that would work," the manticore admitted, chuckling. "I still sometimes forget magic is an option now."
By way of reply, Harry took a breath, then tossed his head slightly. "Caloris," he incanted, using his breath to make it halfway between a wanded and wandless casting, and Dominic's mane fluffed out.
"Wow," he said. "That's… comfortable, but kind of a weird feeling as well. Do you find it weird?"
"I've never really needed one," June said. "And I think Harry's actually immune to the concept of temperature."
Harry shook his head, demurring. "I can feel a bit cold, sometimes," he corrected her. "In extremis. But if I tried casting a warming charm on myself I'm not sure it'd work."
Then a snowball came flying through the air, ducked underneath Dominic, and arced up to hit Harry in the chin.
"That would be the Twins, then," June sighed.
After Harry demonstrated the benefits of breath-casting Banishing Charms on snowdrifts while flying overhead, and the Smiths demonstrated the benefits of surface to air homing snowballs, and Harry in turn demonstrated that you could use a Summoning Charm to pull lots of snow up to you and then drop it, he spotted something going on at the side of the castle and flew over.
Horst was already running around in the snow like a mad thing, popping up and down as if he were a dolphin, but Lucy (the Longhorn) appeared to be more interested in biting it and wondering why it was vanishing while she was still chewing on it.
"Should we show them what a snowball fight is like?" Sally asked. "Snowball fights are fun."
"Maybe not yet," Nora decided.
Vicky sneezed, which made Billy (the Hebridean Black, who seemed to be the touchiest of the youngsters) turn around with a snarl, and Nora neatly picked him up as he was about to pounce.
"No!" she said firmly, bopping him smartly on the muzzle. "No fighting."
She waited, to see if he was going to be angry at her for that, then put him down again and kept a careful eye on him.
"That's why," she told Sally. "Fights look like fights. Billy needs to learn not to fight, then that a snowball fight doesn't count."
"Good thinking, Nora," Hagrid said, nodding, and Nora tried not to preen too visibly.
Horst jumped out of the snow again, this time aiming directly at Gary, and the Welsh Green collapsed in dramatic fashion.
(Harry wondered a bit about how maybe, if he'd had a different name, the Horntail hatchling would have been called Harry. It would have kept the naming theme going a bit better.)
As November rolled on into December, and the term came towards an end, Harry felt like he was having just about the right amount of schoolwork.
It wasn't too much, where Harry felt like he was being run a little ragged trying to keep up with everything or had to give up one of his school clubs (which he did like). But at the same time, it wasn't too little – an idea which Harry would have been surprised by at one point, but which now made a good deal of sense to him.
All the subjects he was doing were interesting, after all, even if it was sometimes a bit tricky trying to remember whether a rune was Sumerian or Linear or one of half-a-dozen different systems.
There was even time to read books, which was always a plus – the latest Discworld book, quite recently out, was a nice Christmassy one called Hogfather which had people like Susan and Death in it. And the Wizards, who were as usual great fun.
Harry thought that the version of Death in the Discworld books was much nicer than the version of Death in the Tale of the Three Brothers. That Death was one who had to be tricked or cheated, or he'd kill you, while the Death in Discworld would just quietly turn up when it was your time.
And if someone tried to interfere, he'd interfere right back.
That wasn't the only thing on Harry's mind as he read, though. There was also the computer, Hex, which used ants instead of electricity but which was recognizably a computer (and, also recognizably, sort of fumbling its way towards being not just as intelligent as anyone else but as much a 'one' as anyone else). It reminded Harry a bit of Nora, and a bit more of how really Hogwarts could have computers these days if they could get their electricity supply from somewhere.
It wasn't like you could put a lightning rod on top of the Astronomy tower, though, quite apart from how it was a different sort of electricity. And batteries would be hard.
Harry checked the Marauders' Map, then, and sighed before slipping one end of the dust cover into Hogfather to mark his place.
Jacob Bagnall from Ravenclaw had a bit of a habit of sneaking around after curfew, and it looked like he was trying again. It was a shame, but it was also why Harry had a nice shiny badge so he'd better go and handle it.
Possibly by issuing a detention, this time.
The night that the Autumn Term ended, shortly before Christmas, also saw Harry reading.
He had homework pending in all of his subjects, but there were weeks to do it in and it happened that the Prefects' Bathroom wasn't in use by anyone else that night – so Harry had seized the chance, and taken a couple of books in with him to read while floating in the hot bubbles.
One book was the latest of the Honor Harrington books, because it wasn't the first time Harry had read them but he wanted to give some of the bits in it another read. In particular he was thinking about how a lot of the things in the book, and in the series as a whole, were a lot like the events of the big wars between Britain (and friends) and France (and friends) at the start of the nineteenth century, which had to be deliberate or there'd be no reason to have someone called 'Rob S. Pierre' in charge of 'Nouveau Paris'.
That meant that there was probably someone who was the equivalent of Napoleon, and it would be when they took over that things would get really interesting in Harry's view. He wasn't sure who it would be yet, though he had a guess about one of the 'French' admirals, and it was sort of fun to try and guess how that would end up working out – though not quite as much fun as reading about fun things happening with Honor's treecat.
Harry's paw slipped and he nearly dropped the book in the water, catching it with a yelp, and felt quite glad that he'd bothered to cast an Impervious charm on the book so it wouldn't actually get ruined if it fell in the bath. He had lost his place, though, and though he could find it again he decided with a grumble that instead he'd switch to his other book.
Since he was thinking about the Honor books, though, Harry thought it was sort of funny that the three planets were Manticore, Gryphon and Sphinx and he could now genuinely recommend the books to a manticore, a griffin and a sphinx. And a basilisk, too, though she couldn't read it with the others yet. (Harry wasn't sure if she could read, though once it was safe he wanted to either teach her or make sure she learned some other way.)
Carefully putting the book about four feet away from his waiting towel, Harry made sure both his paws were dry before casting the water-repelling charm on his other book and opening it to the bookmark.
He'd read Excession quite recently, and while some of it hadn't entirely made sense on first reading there was a bit which was very fun indeed and just the sort of thing for a dragon to re-read for fun.
As he floated there in the water with his wings spread out for stability, reading through the reactions of an increasingly flabbergasted intelligent spaceship as another spaceship turned on more and more engines until it was breaking new speed records, Harry reflected that really his time at Hogwarts had been going pretty well so far.
Next term he'd be able to learn how to Apparate, as well, unless he was misunderstanding and you were only allowed to learn once you'd actually turned seventeen, and Apparating was something Harry had been looking forward to for a terribly long time.
AN:
Harry is using the Map for purposes for which it was not intended… catching rulebreakers.
As for the Sword of Gryffindor stuff, we are explicitly told that Ragnuk I tried to take it back from Godric himself, which even under the Goblin interpretation means he's in the wrong.
