There would be only one Elemental meeting between Halloween and Christmas, in which Harry asked the Earth Elementals to erect a statue of the fallen Headmaster and within a few minutes there was a twenty foot tall statue of Albus Dumbledore. In the distance Fawkes could be heard singing his approval somewhere in the distance.
The following day when those who were leaving for Christmas made their way down to the train station for Christmas, which was the vast majority, Harry trailed behind with his two brothers and they walked slowly down to the carriages.
Before they could enter the last carriage Harry heard the chirping of Fawkes and stopped to hold out his arm, which the Phoenix perched upon happily and chirped energetically at him.
"Hello Fawkes, what's wrong?" Harry asked, not knowing how he expected the bird to communicate that. Fawkes just responded by moving up his arm and settling on Harry's shoulder.
Harry assumed the bird would fly away when he became bored with Harry and the journey to London, so he allowed Fawkes to hitch a ride.
The Vipers had understood the brother's desire to spend time together and so they hung out in the adjacent cabin.
When they made it to the train Harry ended up falling asleep with his brothers making no effort to wake him up until they arrived, at which point Fawkes thought it would be funny to fly with Harry to Sirius and Petunia, depositing him in the backseat of the car, and flying him into his bed, before he perched by the window.
When Harry woke up it was two in the morning and he was very confused, a confusion that was deepened by Fawkes' laughing at him.
/_-^_^_-/
"No, Uncle Reg, the ability to be an Elemental isn't limited by bloodlines, any Wizard can do it. Sirius has been attempting to learn it himself."
"What about Squibs?"
"Possibly, I have never tried to teach one."
"Or a Muggle?"
"I politely refer you to my previous answer, I don't know." Harry answered his Uncle honestly, not knowing what else to say.
"See, Petunia and I have made a bet, she doesn't think a Muggle has any chance at becoming an Elemental, which i disagree with."
"Dudley, what do you think?" Harry asked his Brother, who was reading a Muggle magazine article about mental health.
"Muggles have no magical core, though as we don't know how a Wizard controls an Element, we have no way of knowing if a Muggle can."
"So you're on my side?" Regulus asked.
"I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic."
"That's a cop-out answer and you know it." Regulus accused, making Dudley and Harry laugh.
"Face it Uncle Reg, you'll have to learn the movements and techniques so you can teach mom yourself." Harry laughed at his Uncle, who just glared at Harry before going to complain to Petunia in the Kitchen.
/_^_^_/
It had been a difficult task tracking Argus Filch down to question him about his newly found magic, primarily because the man was travelling from Magical Library to Magical Library, from England to Asia and through to Australia, only passing through England on his way to America via Iceland and Greenland.
He had only agreed to come back this way based on Harry sending him a howler, though not shouting as it dictated his words and not destroying itself as a result.
"It is amazing, I was going to my regular GP during the summers every year while I was the caretaker at Hogwarts, three years ago I was told I would be lucky to get ten years of life, when I went after your ritual he told me I had the vitals and blood works of a teenager, as if the clock had gone back five decades. I got a deeper look at my DNA using the money I inherited from the Filch Estate and I discovered something interesting, my Telomeres resemble those of a much younger man."
"What are Telomeres? I have never heard that term." Harry asked, getting an answer from his youngest brother.
"Telomeres are buffer regions present on the ends of Chromosomes that prevent the loss of genetic information during cell division." At the blank looks of everyone around him, Elias elaborated. "They're quite essential, once they are gone, cell division starts to remove DNA and the body begins to die."
"Blimey, it is like a male Hermione." Ron joked, getting a smack on the arm from her.
"Are you noticing any ill effects? Nausea, tiredness, anything of the sort?" Hermione asked the ex-caretaker.
"Quite the contrary, I don't have a limp anymore, which is something that has affected me for forty years."
"Slightly unrelated to the conversation at hand but, are you aware that Peeves is searching tirelessly for you?"
"To torment me, nor doubt." Filch dismissed.
"He misses you, in his words you were the only one who cared enough to chase him." Harry responded.
"I didn't chase him because I like him. He is a certified menace." Filch laughed.
"That he is." Harry agreed and continued the interview which stretched on for several hours, with Filch teaching them a new cleaning spell he had developed which he intended to sell, as well as free access to any future spells he invented.
He taught Hermione a spell that purely existed to make a cat's life easier, not that they needed it.
Gone was the cantankerous despicable old man, in his place was a man who loved life and appreciated the gift that he had been given.
Sirius was shocked beyond words to see the man who had assigned him many cruel and unusual punishments laughing with Harry and his friends.
/_-^_^_/-
The Order of the Phoenix hadn't acted in quite some time, the loss of and subsequent change of leadership would be enough to hamper any movement, especially one that didn't officially exist.
Alastor Moody didn't ask to be in control, he much preferred to receive and complete orders as opposed to giving them. Still he pressed on, trying to restore the assembly to some semblance of normality in the absence of Albus Dumbledore.
He found that Tom Riddle or Professor Gaunt, "whatever he wanted to call himself" was surprisingly helpful when it came to helping assign tasks and gathering usable information on Voldemort's plans. The Dark Lord was surprisingly silent lately, a behaviour not usually attributed to the fiend, and it made everyone paranoid after his very public appearance last year.
Moody did happen to observe the fact that Mundungus Fletcher would always wait for everyone else to leave before he departed, yet he never engaged anyone in conversation.