The spring term began, and it was right back into the regular routine of a magical education at Hogwarts. Snow still covered the ground, and the only thing which made the outdoors lessons like Astronomy endurable was the Warming Charms that most of the staff members distributed on request.

(Or, at least, that was what Harry was told. Even being buried in the snow for an hour or more only felt vaguely uncomfortable to him, so he just trusted that his friends knew what they were talking about when they said what humans were able to cope with.)

In Charms they were dealing with the theory of casting a spell that affected only part of an object instead of all of it, and Professor Flitwick demonstrated by using a levitation spell on just one page of a book (which turned it over) and comparing it with levitating the whole book (which was certainly useful for other things but which didn't actually turn the page).

Harry put his paw up, and asked what would happen if you levitated only the cover of the book or only the pages, and the Charms Professor thanked him for a good question before demonstrating. Either option caused the pages of the book to snap shut, though lifting the pages meant that the book rose spine-down with the covers hanging open and levitating the cover made it slowly turn so it was spine-up, and Professor Flitwick took the chance to explain that when a charm affected only part of an object you had to think carefully about how that could affect the rest of it.

It was a really interesting topic, and Harry was coming up with ideas for altered Charms effects for the rest of the day and quite a lot of the next. His friends were as well, and one of the ones Dean came up with was the one they all thought was the best – enchanting the feather end of a quill with a charm to clean away ink, so you could use it like a pencil eraser.

"...actually, why don't they do that?" Ron asked. "It's a real pain to cross stuff out or rewrite a whole essay if I make a mistake and don't catch it in time."

"Maybe it's to teach you to take care the first time?" Hermione suggested.

Ron protested, and Hermione laughed. "No, don't worry, I agree. I think I might need to research one like that for us – but you'll have to cast it yourself if you want it, Ron!"

The promise of actually having access to a charm like that seemed to mollify Ron, and Harry had to admit he'd like something like that as well.

"Today's subject is the constellation of Andromeda," Professor Sinistra told her first-year students. "Locate the W shape of Cassiopeia, like we were looking at last week."

Harry looked up at the sky, glad that there never seemed to be any clouds when he was at the top of the Astronomy tower.

He frowned, suddenly, wondering why that was, then shrugged it off and located the W-shape.

"You all have it?" the Professor asked, and got a number of muttered agreements. "Good. Now, the stars Almach, Alphertaz and Mirach are the three brightest stars in Andromeda, and they are below the W shape. They form a rough line… now, direct your telescope towards the one on the left."

That took several minutes of looking at the sky, then through the telescope, adjusting it to be looking in roughly the right direction and then correcting it with quick glances between the sky and the eyepiece. Harry felt like it was a bit harder for him than it was for most of the rest of the class, because he wasn't quite shaped right and his muzzle kept bumping into the telescope's main body, but at least it wasn't as bad as for the few other first-years who had glasses – he could take his off, after all.

"Who has their telescope in place?" Professor Sinistra asked, and plenty of hands went up. "Good. And who still needs help?"

Neville's hand was one of the few which went up, this time, and the Astronomy Professor aligned his telescope properly before helping Vincent and one of the Hufflepuffs.

"Now, who can tell me what is unusual about this star?" Professor Sinistra went on. "Let's see… Mr. Weasley, you're a new hand."

"It's at least a double star, Professor," Ron answered. "You can tell because it's got more than one colour… I think I can see three?"

"Very good, Mr. Weasley!" Professor Sinistra smiled. "Almach, or Gamma Andromedae, is actually a quadruple star, but to see three of them is very good. A point to Gryffindor, I think. Now, move your telescopes down away from Polaris, and you should find an open cluster..."

Harry was really impressed with Ron by the end of the lesson. He put his hand up for most of the questions, and while he got two or three of them wrong that didn't stop him from trying to answer the next one along either. Professor Sinistra seemed impressed as well, especially by the mention of the Andromeda Galaxy, and his question about whether they could look at the pictures from the Hubble had led to a ten minute interruption while Hermione and Justin from Hufflepuff tried to explain to the Professor what the Hubble was.

After another one of the odd late-to-bed late-starts that followed Astronomy class, and the day's classroom classes, it was time for their Flying lessons.

A lot of the pupils who had been doing especially well before Christmas were put through some particularly punishing testing, making sure they could climb and dive and turn and stop suddenly when Madam Hooch fired off a cannon-blast from her wand. While Harry and the others watched, the young flyers in question got asked to hover straight up and straight down, to reverse, to demonstrate that they could cling on when their broom went upside-down and then to do all the same thing while holding a conversation with the flying instructor.

"Congratulations," she announced, at the end of that. "Mr. Finnegan, Mr. Zabini, Miss Parkinson, Miss Patil, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Malfoy, Miss Davis. I am pleased to inform you that you will not be required to attend future flying lessons, as you are qualified to use a broomstick with competence."

Harry applauded, and that spread to most of the rest of the flying class, and as Ron flushed with happiness and Hermione examined her broom suspiciously most of Harry's attention was on the tests he'd just seen.

Doing some of them would be quite tricky for him without a broom, especially reversing. Maybe he'd have to stick to using two brooms whenever he needed to do any serious flying…

Professor Quirrell's Defence lessons seemed to be deteriorating. Harry's headache in them was worse, and so was the Professor's stammer, and he spent the whole of the lesson one Thursday talking about how dangerous the forests were in Albania instead of the expected lesson topic (which was the Dancing Legs jinx).

It was puzzling, but there was still a textbook to read and there was still homework to do, and half the school was starting to get really excited about the next Quidditch game. After Hufflepuff had done horrible, horrible things to the points totals of Ravenclaw in December the first game of the Spring Term was Gryffindor against that very same Hufflepuff team.

"Fred and George are really tense," Ron said, looking across the room at his twin brothers one evening.

"Really?" Neville asked. "How can you tell?"

He looked back down at his essay, where his discussion of the Goblin Rebellion of 1771 had been impaired by his absently writing 'how can you tell' in the middle of a line, and flipped his quill over to stroke away the offending ink.

"Now that's not fair," Ron grumbled good-naturedly. "Hermione's refused to do it for me and I really need to work out how to enchant a quill to do that myself… I'd get it done by now if it wasn't for all those essays."

"It is helpful for the essays, though," Harry supplied.

He was checking the history book for some of the things before and after the 1771 rebellion, trying to work out just why it was that that particular rebellion was viewed so favourably compared to the others. Maybe it would help if he had a Muggle history book as well, but that wasn't the sort of thing there was in the Hogwarts library.

"Fred and George?" Neville prompted, putting his quill down. "I'm really curious now. They're just laughing and joking like normal."

"Not like normal," Ron replied. "It's hard to explain, but if you'd grown up with them you'd know. Their timing's off."

Harry couldn't see a difference, but trusted Ron enough to know.

"So that's going to be… because of the Seeker, right?" Harry guessed.

"Well, Hufflepuff's Seeker is pretty good, but it's more about the Chaser team," Ron explained. "The girls haven't really got it together yet, and if you've got a good enough Seeker you can sort of power through it based on that because you can make the game short enough that the Chasers don't really count. But given what Diggory is like as a Seeker he'll probably be the one getting it."

Harry nodded at that. "Okay, so if we had a really good Seeker then we might be able to win, but we don't."

"Well, we might win anyway," Ron said, and Harry almost laughed as he remembered Ron's unstinting loyalty to a team which was arguably only slightly better than not fielding a side at all. "But it'll mean Fred and George have a lot of work to do keeping the Bludgers interfering with Hufflepuff play."

He frowned back down at his own History homework. "What's the name of that goblin who went on a Chocolate Frog card, again?"

"Urg the Unclean," Harry supplied. "That was 1771. He got publicly dunked in the village pond… and I'm pretty sure that was after the Statute of Secrecy, so it must have been Hogsmeade pond."

He frowned, then dug his History of Magic out. "Unless the Statute was actually broken, that might be why people think it was justified in the first place, hold on..."

Using a wing to keep his place in the book he'd been reading, he flicked through and then nodded. "There we go."

"Great," Ron smiled. "Thanks."

He looked around. "Where's Hermione?"

"I think she said something about wanting to learn another new spell," Harry supplied. "About how she could do the History homework later."

"Blimey," Neville said. "Is she ill?"

Harry considered that, thinking about Hermione's behaviour and how she'd looked at dinner, then shook his head. "I don't think so, I think it's just that you can't work in the library after curfew but you're allowed to work in the common room."

"Oh," Neville realized. "Um… that does make sense..."

"Actually, that does make me think," Ron said, finishing a paragraph and putting his own quill down. "Why exactly is it that only Ravenclaw has a library?"

He waved. "We could do with a library for doing homework after curfew. I don't know if Hufflepuff has anything special, but I bet Slytherin has… a torture chamber or something."

"A what?" Dean asked, looking up from his West Ham football annual – a present from his dad, Harry remembered. "Why would Slytherin have a torture chamber?"

"For torturing people," Ron answered, shrugging. "Obviously."

"Who would they be torturing, then?" Harry asked. "Other Slytherins?"

"Nah," Ron shrugged. "Think about it. Hufflepuffs."

Neville began mumbling under his breath, and Harry shook his head.

"Do you really think that they'd be, what, sneaking out after dark and taking Hufflepuffs to torture?" the dragon asked. "Doesn't that sound a bit unbelievable?"

"If it's Slytherin, you can't trust them," Ron said firmly. "Look at Malfoy."

"Draco's not untrustworthy because he's a Slytherin," Dean replied. "He's untrustworthy because he's a git."

"Did you say Hufflepuffs just because they're the only group you don't know many people from?" Neville asked. "Is that because you're always paired with Hermione or Dean in Herbology? I think everyone's really nice there."

"Yeah, but they're so nice they don't want to complain about being tortured in the Slytherin torture dungeon," Ron insisted. "They're just too brave to make a fuss."

"That doesn't even begin to make sense," Dean began, then stopped. "You're having us on, aren't you?"

Ron nodded, trying not to laugh.

"Prat," Dean grumbled.

Harry smiled, twitching his tail as he enjoyed the company. Then he read back over his essay so far, checking it against the little four-point plan he'd sketched out.

Just one bit to go, this one about how the rebellion had worked out. That was a bit he remembered, and he dipped his quill in the ink before beginning – only to look up only three words in as Hermione joined them.

"Harry, good news!" she announced. "I'm certain I've got the book-duplication charm working!"

That sounded like very good news to Harry, but he had to ask the obvious question. "Is that a charm that duplicates books?"

"What – yes, of course it is," Hermione answered. "It doesn't work on magical books because of how they're made, but – Dean, can I borrow your book?"

"It won't hurt it, will it?" Dean asked.

"...probably not," Hermione replied.

"Do it on your own book, then," Dean answered.

"All right!" Hermione said, putting a book down on the table. "Watch this!"

Neville looked at the clock. "It's been twenty minutes… how long did it take you to find the book to use?"

"Twenty minutes, obviously," Hermione replied. "It was quite a hard choice, I wanted one which would show off the capabilities of the spell without… well, without being too big a loss if I got it wrong."

"Now I'm really glad I didn't lend you my annual," Dean said. "Okay, let's see this."

Harry leaned over to watch as well, and Hermione raised her wand over the book she'd selected – a copy of The Winter's Tale.

"So you flick your wand back and forth between the book you want to copy and where you want the copy to go," Hermione explained. "And the incantation is Xerographia."

The book flashed, and suddenly there were two copies of it.

"That is pretty neat," Dean admitted, picking up the duplicate. "Er… are you sure you did this right?"

"I'm fairly sure," Hermione replied. "Why?"

"It looks like it's all misspelled," Dean replied.

As Hermione took it from Dean, the boy went on. "And your name's in it, look."

Hermione giggled. "No, that's right. That's where my parents got my name from. And the rest of it's because it was written in the seventeenth century."

She smiled. "So! My idea is, Harry, you just take books out from the public library, duplicate them, and then you return them. That way you have them to read more than once."

"Are you sure that isn't stealing or something?" Ron asked. "I'm sure that's why magic books can't be duplicated."

"Well, it probably is in the magical world," Hermione replied. "But in the Muggle world I'm pretty sure they don't have laws about this sort of thing for books – and in the Muggle world they have photocopiers which can copy books a page at a time. This is just doing things faster – and, besides, if you lose a book from the library you have to buy a replacement. This is just like that."

Harry did like the sound of that. If he wanted to share a book with his friends – or a Muggle book at least, like Equal Rites or Dragonsong – he could copy it, so they could have one and he could have one as well! It sounded like an excellent idea, and he was already thinking about which book to duplicate first.

"Can you duplicate books that have already been duplicated?" he asked.

"Yes, of course," Hermione replied, seeming surprised that he'd have to ask a question like that. "That's why magic books have to be spelled against duplication, as they're all made by duplicating anyway."

That seemed all right to Harry, so he watched very closely as Hermione cast the spell a second time – giving them a third copy of The Winter's Tale. Then he tried the same spell, and the third copy caught fire.

"It's Xerographia, not Xerographica," Hermione corrected him, as he used his wing to smother the flames. "And I think your wand movement wasn't right. It's movement six, not movement eight."

Harry's next attempt did produce a book, but it was all in Greek. Hermione opened it to the first page of the script and compared it to the original, looking back and forth.

"I think this is actually properly translated," she said slowly. "I can't read much Greek, but I think that the names have been transliterated – Greek letters are all kind of odd – and the rest of it has some proper Greek words in it."

She looked up at Harry. "What did you cast?"

Harry frowned, thinking about it, then clicked his talons together to make a sound like a fingersnap. "I think I said Xenographia."

"...did you just invent a translation spell, mate?" Ron asked. "That's pretty cool."

"I've got no idea if I can do it again," Harry admitted. "Let's try and get the book copying spell down."

Five attempts later, they had a copy of The Winter's Tale with all the words backwards, one which was in white letters on black pages, two with blank pages, and one that looked just like the original.

"I'll keep working on it," Harry decided. "I really want to make sure I've got it right before I start trying it on library books."

"That's probably a good idea," Hermione agreed, as Harry ate the smouldering remnants of one of the duplicates. "Now, what was it I was forgetting..."

"The history homework?" Dean suggested.

"Oh, that's right!" Hermione realized. "Well, I'll do it now."

She went upstairs to get her parchment and quills, and Ron looked at his wand and then at the books on the table.

"Xerographia," he tried, and Harry stared as a bright orange copy of The Winter's Tale appeared.

"Did you mean to do that?" he asked, remembering that Ron's favourite team used that as their colours, and Ron nodded proudly.

The next day was the Quidditch match against Hufflepuff, which took place in light rain with ominous clouds hovering in the background.

Harry spread both his wings out, letting his friends take cover under them, and they watched as Hufflepuff's well-coordinated team got to work – their Beater captain giving terse instructions one way and then another as the Badgers' Chaser team pressed up the field. Katie, Angelina and Alicia were doing their best to keep things under control, but the Hufflepuff players seemed to be really good at passing the Quaffle back when their in-possession player was in danger.

There was one move which made everyone gasp, when one of the Weasley Twins bounced a Bludger off the Quaffle to send it back upfield for Katie to catch, but that just earned them a single goal for ten points – the Gryffindor Keeper, Oliver, was doing his best but Hufflepuff was racking up the goals, one after another, with the relentless precision of a highly drilled team and outscoring Gryffindor perhaps two to one.

The game dragged on, and when Neville began to shiver slightly Harry drew his wings in a bit to bring all his friends closer to his body heat. Then Dean deluged them all with bluebell flames, which sort of made that problem moot, though being rained on was still a bit uncomfortable even if they were now all toasty-warm.

Finally, after over three hours and something like a four hundred point deficit for the embattled Gryffindor side, Cedric Diggory held up his hand in victory with the Snitch firmly clasped within.

"That was awful," Fred groaned, that evening.

"Yeah," Other Fred agreed. "We found Oliver Wood trying to drown himself in the shower."

Harry wondered how that would work.

"We haven't won since Charlie left," First Fred agreed.

Ron blinked. "What?"

He pointed at his twin brothers. "What are you talking about? Charlie left last year. He's only seven years older than me and only five years older than you. You won last year! You're the reigning champions!"

"...so we are," Second Fred realized. "I'd completely forgotten that. Why do you think that is, Fred?"

George put his hand to his chin. "I daresay that it's because Wood's completely round the bend and complains about it constantly."

"So he is, Fred," Fred agreed. "That makes perfect sense. I don't know why I didn't think of it."

"That's because your mind is too highly trained, George," George said. "Our simple brother thinks of the simple solutions."

They exchanged glances.

"Which of us should go and get Wood out of the shower?" Fred asked.

"You left him there?" Dean said, surprised.

"He was very insistent," George shrugged.

"Totally inconsolable."

"Also totally insoluble," George added. "With how long he's been under the shower he'd have to be."

"I wonder how he'd react to being told he's still technically the reigning champion Keeper?" Fred asked.

"Probably try to commit ritual suicide with a bar of soap."

Despite the best efforts of Oliver Wood, the calendar continued to march on. January became February, and Harry noticed on his way back from the library that Neville was running up the stairs and huffing alarmingly.

"Are you all right?" he asked, concerned. "Are you late for something? I thought our schedules were the same."

"Oh, hah… no," Neville replied, stopping and leaning on his knees. "I decided… to try… and exercise."

Harry frowned, thinking about that a bit.

At first he wondered why Neville might want to exercise, because he certainly hadn't enjoyed it much. Then he remembered that flying was sort of just a different form of exercise, and so was going up and down the stairs all the time, both things he did a lot more than Neville.

And there was that Neville didn't fly by waving things around very fast, as well. So even if Neville flew a lot it wouldn't necessarily help.

"That sounds like a good idea," he said instead. "Are you planning anything to exercise your arms?"

"You have to exercise different bits?" Neville asked, now with more of his breath back.

"I think so," Harry replied, thinking about it. "I'm almost sure of it, yes, that's why you can have someone who's good at running but can't carry a really heavy weight."

He flicked his tail. "But maybe what you should do is just start by getting your legs fit, and you can do your arms after that?"

"It's hard enough to do this," Neville admitted.

"Maybe you should ask Dean?" Harry suggested. "I know Muggle schools have a lot of sports, and I think he did more than me."

Neville looked thoughtful, then turned to look up the stairs. A few deep breaths, and he was on his way up again.

The next morning, Harry was off to Fort William. While there he asked for a library card, but was nonplussed when he was told that he'd need to bring in a photograph and also his address.

Somehow he thought that giving an address in Surrey wouldn't work very well for a librarian in Fort William, and then there was that if he did make a mistake and they sent a bill for late fees to Number Four Privet Drive he didn't know what Uncle Vernon would do. (Apart from turning a funny colour, which Uncle Vernon did a lot. It was like Pernese dragon eyes, except mostly colours like 'puce' and 'magenta'.)

Oddly enough, on the way back he spotted what looked a lot like a football game going on on one of the Hogwarts lawns. But it didn't seem like it was a big deal, so he shrugged and flew on.

Book Club was coming up, and he wanted to be ready for it – and to put his latest purchase in his collection, a book called Expecting Someone Taller which sounded sort of like Terry Pratchett's books to him.

Landing in the Owlery, Harry said hello to Hedwig (who gave him an affectionate nibble on one of his talons) then made his way down through the stairs to cut across to Gryffindor Tower. Then it was right back up the stairs, seven flights this time, and he put his book with the rest of his collection.

Seeing it, however, made him frown.

It was quite a big collection by now, with several new books on top of what he'd brought from home at the start of the school year, and it really was too big to all go back in his trunk without squashing everything.

Sitting down on his bed, tearing a hole in one of the sheets with an accidental talon but barely even noticing any more, Harry thought about his problem.

It was a nice sort of problem, the sort of problem that gave him a happy feeling to think about – last year the idea of having too many things of his own would have been quite alien – but it was still a problem, and it wasn't until he thought about the book club book that he realized the solution.

Around Africa By Broom had made it quite clear that Wizarding tents were bigger on the inside than they were on the outside (and Hermione had said it was like a 'Tahdis' but he didn't really understand what she meant by that) and also that they were fully furnished, and stayed that way if you packed up the tent. So Harry could buy a magical tent, carry it about easily, and keep his whole collection of things inside it nicely laid out the way he liked it.

He could even set it up back home in the Dursleys' loft. It really did sound like an excellent idea, if Harry said so himself.

One blustery morning in the middle of February, Harry took his usual place in Transfiguration class.

Professor McGonagall gave him a small smile, which she extended to the other students as well, and Harry got ready to take some notes.

"Good morning," the Professor announced, once everyone had arrived. "Today we will be dealing with one of the more subtle and complex arts of Transfiguration. While it is expected for your O. that you get reasonably good at Free Transfiguration, it is only at the N.E.W.T level that we approach this topic in a way that does not involve prescribed spells."

She pointed her wand at a piece of wood on her desk, and it changed shape into a kind of wooden hummingbird shape – a hummingbird which took off, picking up the chalk in its beak before slowly writing a word on the board.

The word was ANIMATION.

"Animation is when an object is Transfigured such that it can move, if it would normally not be able to do so," Professor McGonagall explained. "It is difficult because it is a blend of Transfiguration and Enchantment, so you will also be seeing it in Charms, and because there is no spell which exists which has sufficient details in the casting to completely control what the targeted object will do – you must specify these details yourself. It is dangerous because if you make a mistake in Transfiguring an object you will generally just not get the right object, which is bad enough; if you make a mistake in Animating an object you may well end up with an object doing something you would not like it to do, with great enthusiasm!"

After that dire warning, the Transfiguration Professor explained how they would be starting – with a spell to make an object, specifically a light wooden ball, move back and forth. The balls were enchanted with Cushioning Charms to ensure that they wouldn't do any damage if they went flying across the room, and all they were to do was to make the ball turn in some kind of circle on the desk.

It was much harder than Harry expected to keep it moving the way he was supposed to, and at least three other people somehow bounced their balls off his forehead, left wing or tail during the class.

It was also vaguely tempting to set one on fire after it barely missed his glasses, but that wasn't a nice thought so he ignored it.

After that lesson, Harry – and the rest of the remaining flying students – found that they were doing better in flying lessons. For some of them it was only a little better, and Vincent Crabbe nearly ran Neville down in what Harry guessed was a genuine accident, but Harry found that the same sort of mental focus involved with setting up what an animated object was going to do was helpful in controlling how fast a broomstick was supposed to go.

"Very good, Mr. Potter," Madam Hooch said, as he landed properly – having managed to use his wings for control and his two brooms for power. "Now we will make it a step harder, I'm afraid."

She commanded both brooms to 'unstick', and Harry watched with interest as she picked them up – moving them closer in to the centreline of Harry's body, putting them against his belly on the inside of his legs. The bristles almost touched, and it felt like it would make his neck a bit uncomfortable if he bent down by mistake.

"This is so that you get used to dealing with two brooms close together," Madam Hooch explained. "Once you're fine with this, we'll try a single broom again. Now, up you go."

Thanks to all the practice, Harry was better at flying with the two-brooms-close-together than he'd been when he started with the two-brooms-separated. It really felt like he was starting to get towards where he'd be able to fly with just one broom, if he wanted to.

Harry wasn't quite sure if he would do that, but it'd be nice to have the option. And it was what the lesson was, besides, so there was no real point in not putting in effort.

After the flying lesson, however, Harry found himself at a bit of a loose end. He considered going back and reading a book in his room, or in the common room, but almost as soon as he took off he spotted a group of first- and second-year Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors making their way down to one of the lawns.

Curious, he banked around to see what was going on, and alighted next to some familiar faces – Daphne, Tracy and Blaise, who had set up a large and multicoloured carpet on a small hill overlooking the lawn.

"Harry, good to see you," Blaise greeted. "Read any good books lately?"

Harry nodded. "Hermione finished the book I got her for Christmas, so I've been reading it. There's a lot of really complicated court politics going on in it."

"That sounds like your house, Blaise," Tracey said.

"I don't see at all what you mean," Blaise replied. "On an unrelated note, want some hors d'oeuvres? Mother sent them."

Harry took one, which seemed to be made of cheese inside pastry. "Why did she send you these? I thought chocolate was more normal?"

"Probably, but she had them lying around," Blaise told him. "Leftover finger food from the wedding, I think."

"You mean this is three months old?" Harry asked, biting into it. "It doesn't feel stale."

"Well, no, there are spells for that," Daphne shrugged. "But I think you're thinking of a different wedding."

"Yes, my previous stepfather decided that Mother wasn't the woman for him," Blaise agreed. "Something about not liking her cooking, but Mother's always been very good with bitter almonds."

He waved his hand. "Anyway, that's not important. What is important is that we're going to watch the Lions and the Badgers run around until we're bored. Or until it starts raining."

Daphne put a Wizarding Wireless down on the carpet next to them. "And we're going to listen to this, as well. And we're going to keep listening to it, even if we do have to go indoors, aren't we?"

"I don't see why you're so interested in how that ends," Blaise said with a shrug. "It's obviously based off-"

"Shut up, Blaise," Tracey interrupted him. "We know you know how it ends, but the rest of us actually want the surprise."

She turned a dial, and the last minute or so of a musical performance by a Spanish band called Variety Mágical played as Dean and Justin reiterated the rules of football for their… it looked like eight a side… football game.

Dean had got hold of a spare Quaffle from somewhere, and the game that resulted did look a lot more dramatic. Harry lay down on his front in the wet grass, watching, and listening as the thing Daphne and Tracey wanted to listen to came on the Wireless.

It was a radio drama about two magical families who'd both moved to Australia in the late 1800s, and how they were getting on with living in a new environment where it was too far from their new homes out in the Outback to Apparate to just about anywhere important. Harry wasn't sure quite what was going on, plot-wise, and there seemed to be a lot of impassioned arguments involved, but it was a nice audio background to the floaty football game going on down the hill.

It was the morning of Valentine's Day – a Friday, which meant Potions, and which also meant plenty of speculation about whether Professor Snape would have them making love potions – when Draco came over to the Gryffindor table with Vincent and Gregory flanking him.

"I knew you'd get in trouble sooner or later, Potter," he said, holding up a copy of the Daily Prophet.

"Good morning," Harry replied, determined to be polite even if Draco wasn't. "Is there something in the news? I'm afraid I don't get the paper, though maybe I should."

"You're not even supposed to be here, Potter," Draco insisted. "You're not human, and it's only humans who are allowed wands."

Harry heard a ruffling sound behind him, and then Hermione tapped him on the shoulder.

"I think it's this," she said, handing him a borrowed copy of the Prophet folded open to one of the inside pages. Harry took it, and saw that there was a half-page letter by someone called 'Disgusted of Uxbridge'.

It described Professor Dumbledore as 'bowing to the demands of inclusivity', mentioned Hagrid as a 'tragic example of the results of a short-sighted process' and noted that the law was clear that 'Harry Potter is clearly not a human, and the Wand Ban restricts the ownership of wands to humans, so it is clear that Harry Potter should not have a wand or be attending Hogwarts".

Draco was looking delighted by the time Harry finished the letter, and Harry raised a talon.

"Draco," he began. "How does the law define a human?"

The Slytherin blinked, looking confused. "Pardon?"

"I definitely had human parents," Harry went on. "So if that's what makes you human or not, I'm human."

"But you're clearly not!" Draco insisted. "Humans don't have wings! Or scales! Or – or – paws!"

"Mr. Malfoy," Percy said. "Please allow Mr. Potter to finish his breakfast in peace."

Draco's fists clenched, then he stepped back a pace. "This isn't over, Potter," he added, turning to leave.

After he was gone, Harry wondered if Draco could prove that Draco was human.

How exactly did you test that sort of thing in the magical world? Couldn't you just transfigure a cat into a human, and end up with a human who remembered being a cat? Their Transfiguration textbook warned that permanent human transfiguration was dangerous because the resulting animal would be only as smart as what they'd been turned into should be, but in that case, if you turned a Sphinx into a human and a human into a Sphinx, which one of them was allowed a wand?

Of course, when he asked Ron that question, Ron decided that the Malfoy family had come about because of a Transfiguration on a particularly sleek-looking long-haired dog a few generations ago.

AN:

If you look at the books, Gryffindor show no signs of having a good Chaser team until third-year. Of the four games they play in the first two books, their Chaser team is badly disadvantaged twice, one game lasts less than five minutes and the game Harry skips they get "flattened".