Harry was confident that he had learned, these last few years. By the last week of school for the year – before everyone went off for Christmas and New Years and holidays in general – Harry was feeling pleased to see that his plans were staying on track.

But he knew better now than he had before! Yes, he did – he was not going to claim that he had everything under control. He was never going to say that he was totally staying on top of all the little details. And he absolutely wasn't going to believe that he could relax, having made it to the end of the term with everything within his grasp.

Something was going to surprise him any moment.

Even the hairs on the back of his neck felt the looming threat of chaos. He was a bit twitchy at Quidditch practise and in Charms, but obviously couldn't explain to Neville why.

In saying that, nothing had gone wrong yet. Classes continued unabated and the missing stationery and odd attention became…almost…normal. Harry got used to conjuring quills with a silent flick of his wrist every time one disappeared; he gained a routine for signing photographs of himself without looking awkward or stuck up.

Hermione stopped stressing when Harry set up on their study table; Ron stopped sniggering when Hufflepuffs stopped Harry in the hallways. Even Draco, his strange and secret correspondent, stopped teasing Harry about his 'fans' as the days slipped by and these things became the new normal.

Harry was enjoying the few weeks of calm, before whatever storm would arrive next.

Aside from the prickling feeling of upcoming panic, the rest of school seemed very routine.

Students traipsed into classrooms in huddles, shuffling close to each other for body warmth as the wooden benches grew colder in the mornings, and the damp breezes that snuck in the windows became chilly. As snow began gathering on window sills overnight and frost crept up windows in the shade, students kept their scarves tight, their hoods up where they could, and shivered companionably over classwork.

Harry stood a bit apart, using his warming charms through habit now, as voices around him muttered quietly on cold mornings and mumbled spells that shimmered and trembled in the chilly Scottish air.

His Gryffindor scarf tingled a little on his neck, a side effect of too much warmth, Harry presumed. His left hand drifted up to tug the knot open a little more. A small draft of cooler air snuck down his neckline and cooled the irritated skin.

Harry smiled, and moved his attention back to Professor McGonagall's voice.

While Ron and Neville worked on transfiguring small radishes into rabbits, Harry and Hermione moved ahead and tried horseradishes to hares. Later, in Charms, Harry "learned" to cast Petrificus Totalus, before writing what might have been the single most detailed research paper on the history of Hinkypunks ever, in Defence.

The astronomy classes moved indoors as ice sheets formed at the top of the astronomy tower and telescopes filled up with fractal ice crystals within ten minutes outside. The regular winter flu came around, bringing to class students with pepper-up heat still steaming out of their ears.

Teachers began piling on homework for the Christmas break.

Charms were cast in the Muggle Studies room so that students could examine the muggle equipment in good lighting: the lesson on toasters was oddly interesting to Harry, having never taken one apart before. The electric kitchen kettle almost caused a stampede the next class.

Harry took notes, and waved his wand, and completed his homework as early as he could.

Despite the fact that his wanded classes were still coming easy, Harry struggled each day with the mental burden of Arithmancy and Runes. Even with his Occlumency, Harry's mind just couldn't keep up with Hermione. It wasn't even an issue of memory for him, his mind so much more efficient than it had even been.

It was more a case of…habit, Harry decided ruefully. He'd never needed academic rigour before and now years of bad habits were coming back to bite him. Those mental spiderwebs of connection that formed between thoughts and concepts - improved though they may be - kept fading under the unrelenting passing of time. He had been so proud of them, of his Occlumency progress, just a year earlier too.

Harry scowled in focus.

"Reflect, remember, repeat," Harry mumbled to himself at his usual table in the library. The flashcards he'd made with the help of a few convenient spells were looking a little worse for wear, corners dog-eared, three different colours of ink overlapping on the squares.

He shuffled the next card upside down and then stared up at a nearby window while desperately recalling the bullet points he'd just looked at.

"You're doing much better," Hermione encouraged when her head popped out of her latest reference book. "You've come so far, Harry. Pushing through the theory like this."

He twitched, and his gaze drifted back from the window. The new knowledge he had been trying to form popped like a bubble into nothingness as he did so. "Thanks."

Harry pretended he didn't hear the absent note of condescension in her voice. If he hadn't gone back in time, a compliment about study from Hermione would have been a very flattering thing.

The frown returned to his forehead though as he then eyed the offending flashcard with frustration. Back on the broomstick. Don't stop now.

Beyond the mind boggling and mental aerobics that Harry found himself struggling with, all his new school subjects were still fascinating.

Muggle Studies was teaching Harry more about everyday wizarding culture than he had ever realised was possible. No wonder Hogwarts never taught a Culture class to muggleborns! They were supposed to take Muggle Studies as a lifestyle comparison. He enjoyed it. Every now and then, an absolutely fascinating fact about witches and wizards snuck in, and Harry found himself anticipating the next 'ah-hah' moment with eagerness. So many little confusions were gradually being resolved! Still, it was more new information for Harry to absorb and it kept his mind busy.

Even more, Harry found himself loving arithmancy – seeing the breakdown of logic and symbolism, the pure honesty of calculations.

The terribly attractive Professor Vector kept up a rapid flow of fascinating facts that kept Harry eager to keep listening: beyond the mysticism of "three", the class kept moving through the numeric system.

Still at his table in the library, Harry gave up on Runes - for now - with a huff.

Putting his Runes cue-cards to one side with the whisper of parchment on wood, Harry instead pulled out his study notes on Arithmancy. There was a huge stack of parchment now, as Harry dove into the off-handed comments the very intelligent teacher had made. He set them up on his left with great care, and then shook the table with a positively hefty reference tome that landed, with a thud, directly in front of his seat.

"Harry! I was writing here!"

"Oops."

But there was no time wasted on apologies as the rapid scratching out his quill began immediately. Harry added some fascinating data to his notes, the small grey feather positively dancing over his parchment. Beyond "three", Harry noted carefully, the Celtic numeral four represented balance and harmony. It was often used in rituals and long-lasting spell-types for its longevity and stability. Like the Fidelius, Harry observed, and scribbled the thought down in the margins as it occurred.

The three layers of four sigils – or was it four columns of three layers? – made for a sturdy, enduring enchantment. He dipped his quill nib in a different coloured ink bottle: did it matter if it was four groups of three or three groups of four? Perhaps the Professor could help him out next time?

His green eyes went back to raking down the paragraphs in the musty library book. In China, Harry learned, the number four was apparently often linked to death and bad luck. There, most four-beat spells were for creating danger and cursing damage because of that association. A very different implication.

Harry nibbled his lower lip.

He wondered briefly if the Fidelius would work as well in Asia as it did in Britain. Would the British Fidelius still have the four-beat of stability? Or would it pick up the Chinese curse association? What would happen if a Chinese wizard cast it? In China? In Scotland?

Harry made another note in the margins before moving on.

How absolutely fascinating. Was mathemagic geographical? Did that tie in with geomancy then? In which case…no wonder curse-breakers studied so many languages.

Green eyes narrowed in thought, Harry shot a look Hermione's way before deciding against disturbing her. Perhaps Su Li or Cho might know instead. Maybe it was worth owling away to that Hufflepuff who'd been friendly him last year – she was studying healing now, wasn't she? It might have come up in her course.

Harry wiped an ink smudge off his left hand and turn the page carefully.

How interesting. How fascinating. How new.

With the depth and breadth of Arithmancy research keeping him busy, it was hardly Harry's fault that Runes was...well.

Already, Professor Babbling's homework included translating basic passages. "My enemies' swords grow blunt and harmless" had taken Harry forty minutes of flipping through dictionaries and grammatic references before he had wiped the sweat off his forehead in optimistic satisfaction. He leaned back in his chair, letting the impatience slowly start to drain away. It was a slow process. Harry's pulse still thumped a little fast and furious in his temples as he finally pushed the books aside and pondered going back to Arithmancy.

Harry wrinkled his nose. The temptation was strong. The clenching feeling in his chest, and the pale tendons standing out on his right fist, suggested his blood pressure hadn't dropped quite far enough to consider enduring another round of foreign languages. A hand absently ruffled his hair and resettled his glasses.

He pursed his lips.

Palming his wand, Harry cast another warming charm absently while contemplating the conundrum.

Then, as the rapid sound of scratching caught his attention, Harry leaned forward subtly to shoot a quick glance across the library table. How far had Hermione got, anyway?

Hermione had moved ahead to translate something about "wisdom" and "silence", and Harry sagged back in his own seat at the thought. He still had more phrases to go. There was no point trying to keep up with Hermione's pace in Runes, it seemed. And, he almost shrugged at the thought, since that was the case...

Harry shook out his wrist and grabbed the nearest Arithmancy library book to fold it open at chapter nine. He squelched the tingle of guilt - he'd take a break from Runes for now, but he'd definitely come back. He'd...Harry promised himself that he'd look at it again tonight. After dinner maybe, when he was feeling more cheerful again.

With a small throbbing headache and barely any chest pain, Harry pushed his parchments around on the table. Harry was happy to concentrate on Professor Vector's subject for a bit; his narrow-eyed focus was obviously because he enjoyed the subject. He wasn't distracting himself from anything at all.

His hair was bushing out again – a little less Evans, a little more Potter – but Harry didn't notice as his furrowed brows actually relaxed into curious interest and he conjured a new quill to jot some notes down.

Arithmancy and Runes aside, his other option classes also kept Harry oddly run off his feet. Hagrid's Creatures class was brand new to Harry – not a flobberworm in sight. Fortunately, it was all practical during class time, with barely any homework. A little reference reading was never amiss, of course, so Harry had four books in brown sitting on his left just waiting for a flip through, but that was his own work ethic showing. It kept him busy, Harry supposed.

Divination was still…

Hand on chin, Harry paused in his annotations of the number five as he pondered the complexities of the Divination elective.

Divination was a mixed bag. The classes, of course, were mostly a waste of time. Trelawney really liked the sound of her own voice, Harry had realised, and somehow he'd never really noticed before.

Of course, last timeline he'd taken the class as the easy option, so less work had always seemed like a good thing.

His new attitude and a few key facts about tea drinking and tessomancy had renewed Harry's interest in the subject. Note to self: owl Draco about tea reading habits in the everyday life of witches and wizards. A couple of phrases let lip by Trelawny, and oddly enough Professor Flitwick during Charms once, had renewed Harry's interest in the subject just before it had flagged. He figured that in his spare time he should go back to the Room of Requirement and research what good references might be available to support some self-study.

'Good' being the operative word. How exactly was he going to evaluate that, anyway? Harry stopped nibbling on his quill tip again and bent to continue his notes on Quintapeds and the significance of five.

Then he stifled a yawn.

He was exhausted, of course; the tiredness was chronic. Harry had grown used to the heavy weight in his shoulders, the way his spine slouched when he wasn't paying attention, and the chronic headaches that plagued him in the evenings. And in the mornings when he'd just woken up. And in difficult classes.

He was used to the headaches. Honestly, they weren't too bad.

The funny spots in his vision were barely worth a mention now, he'd had them for so long. When he tired his magic out, Harry figured, was when the spots were the worst. He quite liked them, actually. When he saw the colourful spots, Harry knew that he was a few minutes away from tunnel vision and that encroaching blackness in the corners of his eyes.

When he saw dancing spots, Harry knew, was about the time he backed off from advanced transfiguration or the other N.E.W.T. level spells to work on his theory for a while. They were useful.

This particular week, the last week of school for the year, Harry was all caught up with his homework and his study. (Except Runes. That was a special case, and he carefully avoided thinking about it.) Class tests were over, and his correspondence was up to date.

The odd fact – he was still carefully avoiding thoughts like "being up-do-date" and "being able to take it easy" – meant that Harry could squeeze into his schedule another project that had fallen to one side.

The Marauders Map, mark II.

Harry found himself joining Luna in the Art Club one Thursday afternoon, for what seemed like the first time in a long time.

"Luna," he muttered, squeezing into a seat near hers at a high table. "It's been too long! How have you been?"

"Harry Potter." Perched on the edge of her stool, Luna glanced briefly up from her…it wasn't a canvas or parchment, Harry noticed to his surprise. Was she…etching?

The thought seemed a tad surprising to Harry for some reason. Ah! He associated her with that magnificent mural at her house; didn't she paint?

But then again, for all Luna's loyalty to Harry last timeline, how well exactly had he known her? Harry squelched a twinge of guilt and resolved to do better.

Dragging his attention away for the – was that a copper plate she was fiddling with? – Harry's eyes flicked over her slender form. As always, the school robes made her skin pale and creamy-looking, and Harry frowned a little as he wondered: was she losing weight? Was she still being bullied?

Luna's Ravenclaw necktie was ever-so-slightly twisted, and behind her left ear her wand was tucked, as always. Behind her right ear, in contrast, sat a little pink puffskein. It was making a tiny little humming noise, and looked so much like it belonged on Luna's temple that Harry had missed it when he first looked at her.

"Oh." The slight surprise drew Harry out of his introspection. He promptly set about withdrawing his own tools from his bag: a handful of blank parchment, a charmed ink bottle, a new quill and some scrappy sketches he'd made previously. Then with a thump, a small stack of books were thrown down on the table, on his right.

Harry pursed his lips: okay then.

Then he looked up. "Er," Harry managed, having noticed Luna's lack of response to his earlier questions. "Are you good, Luna? What's new with you?"

His little blonde friend looked up again, and Harry watched in amusement as her blank, focussed expression slowly morphed into one of recognition.

"Harry!" She put down her…the pointy thing she had been using to scratch up the copper plate, and sat up, stretching her back out a little bit like a cat. The puffskein's hum seemed to rise a couple of tones in response her movement. "We haven't had a proper conversation for a long time, Harry. I'm good, I've been keeping busy. Daddy says hi. How about you?"

"Well." Harry didn't even want to go into the fans and the busyness. Instead, he rolled his eyes, and Luna's eyes smiled, little half-moons expressing her affection and understanding, a slight quirk of her lips revealing the humour she found in Harry's situation, even as she empathised with him.

After a blink of her eyes – revelling in his current misfortune, Harry assumed – Luna went silently back to her own art, leaving him to settle down into focus himself.

The room was filled with industrial bustling, twelves students including Harry and Luna keeping themselves busy with projects of their own.

Harry sat at his table and took the moment of peace to breathe in the peace.

The Art Club, apparently run under the absent supervision of one of Professor Flitwick's Masters students, was located in a lower level of the Astronomy Tower. Due to some quirk of magic, the windows in the stone room appeared to be charmed huge and bright, and swarths of soft sunlight illuminated the circular room, leaving no dark corners or heavy shade.

An unusually high ceiling was dotted with old art projects, hanging suspended like laundry on a line, and Harry decided that perhaps these were the works that were under construction. Perhaps when students worked on more that one project at a time? Maybe belonging to students who weren't here today?

He wondered absently what kind of enchantments would be necessary to create his own 'hanging storage space'. But nevermind.

Harry surveyed the brightly-lit space: a number of sixth and seventth years had taken over the north side of the room. Some were working on easels with paints, others on tables with…stacks of wood? A vaguely familiar face – perhaps a friend of Percy's girlfriend, Harry pondered – was working seriously on a great rocky sculpture in the shape of a tree-stump.

It dominated that corner of the room. At least three feet wide, Harry could make out the huge stone 'roots' that seemed to disappear into the paint-specked floor, and the huge fibres of wood that suggested some old tree had toppled over, tearing itself off from the stump grain by grain.

Harry blinked and looked again: the Ravenclaw girl, wearing something that surely looked like leather overalls, was stalking seriously around the five-foot tall stone tree-stump. She was barely as tall as it was, and was prowling around the huge thing with a furious scowl on her face.

Every now and then, as Harry watched, she pounced forward to tap out some offending stone. Small shards of grey trickled and bounced down to the ground under Harry's fascinating gaze, revealing some more detail of bark, or twiggy growth, or mossy clumps.

Harry blinked and looked again, raising himself of his own stool with subconscious fascination…were those stone mushrooms she was creating off that protrusion?

Under Harry's baffled observation, the girl kept pacing around her sculpture. Then she paused, bent down to peer closely at something obstructed from Harry's vision by her left hand. All Harry could see was her mouth moving to swear some kind of curseword under her breath as she tucked the little hammer and chisel into a pocket.

Instead, of more tools, she drew out of another pocket her wand, and Harry's eyebrows rose as she made a few tiny, upward-swishing gestures with the thing instead.

To his astonishment, the little cluster of mushrooms – tiny little flat things which were revealed when she moved her left arm again – seemed to inhale and grow under his gaze.

A few stalks seemed to elongate under his eyes, a mushroom on the left grew stretched its cap wider, like a little fairy-seat. There was almost a sound of rustling as the little collection shuffled themselves two inches taller and rearranged themselves under the guidance of the girl's wand into something more aesthetic.

"Did you see that?" Harry spoke accidently, baffled again that the girl's silent casting could be so particular, so precise without any spoken words. Just will and wand.

"Mmmm," Luna replied without looking up. Harry stopped disturbing her.

He scanned his eyes over the room once more, taking in the stacks of canvases leaning against the East wall, the collection of old easels cluttering up a small cupboard to his right, and a wall of shelves holding paint supplies, charcoal sticks, quills, ink, pottles of…other things scattered across the dark wood.

Then Harry blinked.

Sitting under the shelves, his back towards the nearest window, sat Dean Thomas. The dark-haired boy hadn't noticed Harry. He sat, head bowed over an angled wooden block. Whatever he was working on was tilted away from Harry so he couldn't see even a corner, but scattered on Dean's table were coloured sticks in every colour of the rainbow. Crayons, maybe? Pastels? Harry couldn't tell.

Blinking again, Harry took a final glance around the room to realise that all the students in the room were industriously focused. None of them were noseying around anyone else's work. Perhaps it was some kind of rule? To stop copying, or something?

No wonder Luna chose to come here, when all the other clubs bullied her.

Harry flushed, and returned to his own clutter.

By the time Harry was pleased enough with his own progress to pause, stretch and sigh, he had lost track of time.

In front of him was a list of steps: First, prepare the parchment. Second, sketch the castle. Third, charm the two together, before settling the magic into the map and casting all the other functional things. The Homonculous Charm, along with all the other final enchantments, had to be added on after the castle itself was enchanted to be the base of the map.

With great care, particular reference to his earlier notes and sketches, and a developing mastery of a couple of art charms he'd learned from library books, Harry had completed a floor map of the castle. Just the skeleton of it, to be fair.

To the best of his ability.

"Magic herself will help you fill in the blanks, you know."

Luna's sudden voice close to his ear made Harry jump, and he turned to her with a rush of adrenaline.

"Oh. Uh…you think?"

Pursing her lips and tilting her head, Luna perused the map carefully. "Your lines are very straight, Harry. You've really improved."

Harry laughed a little and dismissed the compliment. "I, uh, I'm not sure it's quite what I had in mind. I mean, in comparison to… you know. I guess, I'm a little disappointed?"

"You're going to enchant it, of course," Luna told him, and Harry was familiar enough with her strange way of knowing things that he only twitched a little bit. "The enchantments will fill out man of the things you've missed."

He scoffed. "You don't have to be so nice about it, Luna. I mean, maybe I should start again?"

"Do you think you get your doodling skills from your mother's side of the family?" Luna asked abruptly.

"Huh?"

She shrugged. "Harry Potter. You're comparing yourself to something and coming up short. The magic will fill things in for you, especially if you use the old magicks. Water or wine, do you think?"

Harry was lost. "What?"

Luna sat up straighter, and he belatedly realised that the light he'd been drawing by was coming from her wand tip. The room itself was empty except for the two of them, and the sun had gone down some time ago.

"I'll teach you all about it on Saturday, if…if you're interested," Luna offered. "Daddy knows a lot about this stuff. He's taught me most of it."

Harry watched his own hands reach out to gather his resources up with no conscious control from his mind. "I…I'm not sure what you mean. I…I just wanted to make, like, a map because there don't seem to be any at the moment – y'know, good ones. I…I don't know what you mean about my parents. It's…" He sighed. "Can you keep this a secret from Ron, Nev and Hermione, please?"

"Everybody has secrets, Harry Potter," Luna smiled. "Even Hogwarts herself."