The journey back from Diagon Alley to the Castle by Floo was quite easy – or at least Harry landed without landing upside down or something like that. Professor Dumbledore nodded quickly to his phoenix before hurrying down the stairs, and Harry followed – first simply so he wouldn't be trapped in the office, and then because he was sort of curious to see how Fluffy was.

Since the Headmasters' Office was high up in the castle, that meant following the Professor down several floors and through a secret passage to reach the third floor – the same secret passage Harry had taken some months ago when he'd been tracking the Mirror of Erised – only to come to a halt at the third floor corridor.

The door was open, and Professor Snape was just inside with his wand held ready – but not pointed at Fluffy, who was sitting off to one side with all three heads hanging in shame.

"It was the one with the turban," the left head informed Dumbledore.

"I think he's the same one who tried to get past us last year," added the middle head. "The smell was dreadful – and really rather familiar."

"Put us to sleep," the right head growled, and scraped at some shattered wood and metal strings.

"That used to be an enchanted harp," Professor Snape told Dumbledore, then saw Harry. "Mr. Potter, what are you doing here?"

"Mr. Potter was with me, Severus," Dumbledore said mildly. "I hope his presence will not be a problem."

For just a moment, Professor Snape looked mortified, but that was gone so quickly that Harry wondered if he'd imagined it.

"I suppose he won't be a problem, so long as he doesn't get himself underfoot or require us to save him," the Professor drawled instead, so Harry did his best to look alert without looking overeager.

It was quite hard.

"Remember, Harry," Dumbledore added, his voice more serious. "Take the utmost care."

"All right, Sir," Harry agreed. "Professor, was there a password on the door?"

"Indeed, Mr. Potter," Professor Snape agreed. "But, of course, Professor Quirrell knew it, and so it didn't stop him."

As he spoke, Dumbledore waved his wand, and the trapdoor opened.

"Cover your eyes, please," he requested, and Harry did so. There were a few thumps on the floor as Fluffy turned around, probably because he didn't have enough paws to put them over all his eyes, and then the Headmaster spoke again.

"Solaris."

Even through closed eyes with his paws over them, Harry could suddenly see a bright red light. Fluffy yelped from two of his three throats, and it lasted for several seconds before fading away.

"Wonderful," Professor Dumbledore added, and Harry opened his eyes – seeing the tip of Dumbledore's wand still lit up, but not with the dazzling intensity from before. "It seems the Instant Darkness Powder has been burned off. It should now be safe to drop down."

He did so, and Professor Snape followed after a few seconds. More spellcasting came from within, roils of bluish flame lighting up the trapdoor from below, and Fluffy turned around with a whine before peering down.

"Do be careful, Harry," the middle head said. "I imagine Rubeus would be terribly upset if I let you get hurt."

Harry smiled in reply, then went down.

The traps they went through looked quite different to how they had before.

The room with the keys had a floor peppered with smashed and shattered keys, and the walls were pocked with spellbursts. Professor Dumbledore explained in pleased tones that it had been Mr. Thomas' idea here, and that the keys had all been charmed to come charging down on any intruder.

Harry noticed that the door was missing, and wondered uneasily what had come through.

Then there was the chessroom, where the chess pieces were stood silent in their rows but the scars on the walls and floor testified to a quite spectacular battle.

"Professor?" Harry asked. "This doesn't look right."

"Well spotted, Harry," Dumbledore smiled. "Yes, after the suggestions I had I decided the best thing to do would be to change the rules. This is actually a game of shogi, a Japanese game which is quite like chess but not exactly the same. However, it seems that my Defence Professor decided that the best form of Defence was attack."

Harry had never heard of that game, and he wondered if Ron would be interested in a change.

"How do we get through, Sir?" he added. "I don't play that game."

"Well, there is a simple way through this one as well," Dumbledore explained, and cleared his throat. "We are neutral."

Both of the serried ranks of shogi pieces stood to attention, then marched aside to leave the way clear.

"This doesn't seem very secure," Professor Snape said, as they walked through.

"I had to have some way to get through, didn't I?" Dumbledore asked. "I am quite good at chess, but not exceptional; I daresay that Harry's housemate Ron could give me a run for my Galleons. Perhaps I shall have to join the chess club and find out?"

"I thought you said this wasn't chess, sir?" Harry frowned.

"Of course," Dumbledore agreed readily. "So you can imagine how much worse I am at shogi."

The room after that contained a troll, which grunted at them and rubbed a bump on its head. Professor Dumbledore calmly waved his wand at it, and the troll rose into the air – hovering at least twenty feet above the floor, where it gave them no trouble as they crossed to the next door.

There was a curtain of purple flame across it, and Professor Snape gave them both small vials of the same potion Harry remembered from his last visit.

Then they entered the Potions room, and the Headmaster sighed.

"Oh, dear… what did you do, Quirinus?"

Harry turned from checking that the potions bottles were all the same as before, and saw there was nothing but a pile of robes on the floor.

"Did he take his clothes off?" Harry asked.

"I fear not," Dumbledore replied, waving his wand and casting a charm to examine the pile. "Especially since, as your good friend Mr. Thomas suggested, none of the bottles contained anything but Draught of Living Death. No, something much worse happened here."

He looked at the coloured lights that rose from the pile of robes, then rummaged through them and picked up a wand. Harry recognized it as the one Professor Quirrell had used in class on the few occasions he'd cast a spell, and the Headmaster flourished it with the words 'Priori Incantatem'.

The image of a potions bottle floated out of the end, and Professor Snape watched it.

"A potions identification spell," he judged. "On the smallest bottle."

"How curious," Professor Dumbledore pronounced. "It seems as though my Defence Professor sought to steal the Stone almost as soon as we left, but he was so very frustrated by the changes suggested by Mr. Thomas that he has imploded. That is a pity; I shall have to see who I can get to teach the class for the rest of the year."

"Do you think it was the Dark Lord?" Professor Snape asked.

"Most likely, though we cannot be certain," Professor Dumbledore replied.

"The Dark Lord?" Harry repeated. "Is that the same person as He Who Must Not Be Named?"

"It is indeed, Harry, it is indeed," Professor Dumbledore replied. "Though his true name is Voldemort."

Harry tilted his head.

"Professor Snape?" he asked. "Is that a normal sort of Wizard name? I'm not used to Wizard names very much yet."

"At least you recognize your limitations," Professor Snape replied. "But no, it is not normal. Usually one expects a surname."

"Well, his name at school was Tom Riddle," Dumbledore clarified. "But he changed his name to Voldemort, though most people don't care to know the first and they don't care to say the second."

Both Professor Snape and Professor Dumbledore kept poking their wands and casting spells on the robes for several minutes, before Professor Dumbledore stepped back.

"I believe we are now certain," he said. "Quirinus Quirrell was possessed by Tom Riddle. The two presumably met in Quirinus' sabbatical in Albania; it seems that Quirinus was running out of life, being drained slowly by his possessor, and that their attempt to gain the Stone came about in order to resolve that."

"A Stone, Professor?" Harry asked, who remembered that that had been mentioned before. "What stone? Just any stone?"

He looked back the way they'd come. "There's loads of them everywhere."

"Not any stone, no," Dumbledore said, as Professor Snape muttered something Harry didn't quite catch. "The Philosopher's Stone. It is a creation by my good friend Nicholas Flamel, which can turn base metals into gold and create the Elixir of Life."

That sounded worth getting to Harry, though he had to ask what the Elixir of Life did. Apparently it would allow the drinker to live forever, and it was full enough of life force that it would restore Quirinus to health as well as allowing Tom Riddle to create himself a new body.

"So it's down here with the Mirror of Erised?" Harry asked. "Or is the stone hidden here and the Mirror in your office? I know Dean suggested that as well, but I didn't see it… is it in the back of the wardrobe?"

Professor Snape let out another heartfelt sigh, retrieving more potion vials from his robes, and Dumbledore chuckled. "No, Harry. For, you see, the Mirror was never down here to keep people from looking into it."

Confused, Harry downed the bottle of flame-freezing potion that Professor Snape gave him – this one to let him pass through the black flames – and followed the two teachers into the next room.

The golden-rimmed, claw-footed Mirror of Erised was still there, and Harry looked around in case there was something else in the room – but there was nothing but what had been there last time.

Professor Snape appeared to be mildly distracted by something in the Mirror for a moment, then shook his head, and Harry cleared his throat.

"Sir?" he asked. "Is the Philosopher's Stone hidden here? Or is that what you hid in your office instead?"

"It is indeed hidden here," Professor Dumbledore answered. "And now all I must do is to get it out of the Mirror, where I hid it."

He looked into it, smiling, then his smile turned into a frown.

"What a pity," he said. "I was sure that that would work. It will terribly disappoint Nicholas and Perenelle if I must tell them I have lost their stone."

"How did you hide it, Professor?" Harry said, looking into the mirror himself. It was a little different, this time, showing what Harry was sure was a part of Midkemia rolling by below the wings of the family of dragons, and he looked away quickly.

"I had intended that only someone who wanted to find the Philosopher's Stone but not use it would be able to retrieve it," Dumbledore explained, his wand out. "Once such a person looked into the mirror, it would drop neatly into their pocket. I must admit I am disappointed, I had thought it one of my finer pieces of Charms work."

Harry had a sudden thought.

"I think I know what happened, Professor," he explained. "What would happen if someone who wanted a collection of valuable objects looked into the mirror?"

Professor Snape looked at Harry, then at the mirror, and back to Harry.

"This is another of those dragon things, isn't it, Mr. Potter?" he asked. "Like your remarkable resilience to spellfire, or your tendency to eat everything you can get your claws on? Are you telling me that you managed to get the Stone out of the mirror the moment you came in here?"

"I don't think so," Harry replied. "I, um… I think I got it out about three and a half months ago? It was really tasty, so I've been saving it for when I wanted to celebrate something."

The Potions teacher could only blink.

"Well, it seems it has been in someone's bedroom all this time!" Dumbledore chuckled. "Two points to Gryffindor for admirable self-restraint, I might say. And how do you know how it tastes?"

"I nibbled it a bit," Harry explained.

"Do we need to have that discussion about not consuming Potions ingredients again?" Professor Snape asked, his hand on his forehead. "And yes, Mr. Potter, I am fully aware that you did not know it was a Potions ingredient."

"Perhaps we should repair to Mr. Potter's bedroom," Dumbledore suggested. "There he can put away today's purchases, and we can also retrieve Nicholas' stone to return to him now the immediate danger has passed."

"Professor?" Harry asked. "I still have some questions about what happened. I thought that Tom Riddle died when he tried to kill me and it didn't happen."

"Indeed, in an ideal world that would be the case," Professor Dumbledore agreed. "But it seems that he survived, in some way which I do not yet understand."

He crouched down to give Harry's shoulder a squeeze. "And you can be sure, Harry, that I will be doing my best to ensure that he does not harm any of my students… or former students."

Dumbledore paused. "Or friends, or acquaintances. Or even people I dislike, or have never had the pleasure of meeting."

"So, in short, the country," Professor Snape drawled.

"That sounds like a much simpler way of saying it, Severus," Dumbledore agreed. "Now, I believe the curtain of flames may be dispensed with..."

A few more questions came to Harry's mind as they progressed back through the challenges – the troll still floating in a state of befuddlement – and made their way up through the trapdoor into the main castle.

"Wouldn't it be possible that Mr. Riddle would still be able to get at the Philosopher's Stone?" he asked.

"Perhaps, perhaps," Dumbledore replied. "But I am sure that Nicholas has his own plans for how to conceal the Stone – he has had many months to come up with new ones."

"That's the other thing, though, Sir," Harry went on, as Dumbledore levitated Professor Snape up through the trap door. "Hasn't anyone ever tried to steal the Philosopher's Stone before?"

"Many have," the Professor agreed. "But Nicholas asked me to protect it, so I felt it best to lend my expertise. I am still rather proud of that enchantment to keep it in the mirror, even though as we have both discovered today it is a little less strict than I would like."

The Professor vanished with a sharp crack, and a moment later he waved from the top of the trapdoor. "Up here whenever you please, Harry."

"I remember reading something about how you couldn't do that sort of thing in Hogwarts, Sir," Harry said, as they reached the Fat Lady.

"That's correct, Harry," Dumbledore confirmed. "You cannot Apparate or Disapparate inside Hogwarts because of a pair of jinxes laid over the building and the grounds. Leo Major."

"I doubt I could stop you, Headmaster," the Fat Lady laughed, concealing her mouth with a fan, and swung aside.

"Albus, the boy has a point," Professor Snape said, when it became clear that Dumbledore wasn't going to elaborate.

"Oh, that's simple," the headmaster replied. "I'm the Headmaster. I'm the one who controls the jinxes, and I can exempt them wherever and whenever I feel like."

They were interrupted for a few moments as the Gryffindors who'd stayed at the school over the Easter Holidays noticed them, and Fred and George made a break for their room.

"Concealing contraband, no doubt," Professor Snape said laconically, as the sound of their footsteps faded. "They should count themselves lucky that is not what we're here for."

Percy got up as the closest Prefect. "Headmaster? Is something wrong? Shouldn't it be Professor McGonagall here, rather than Professor Snape?"

"No, not at all," Dumbledore assured him. "Professor McGonagall is far too busy with marking. Professor Snape and I are just getting something that Mr. Potter was so kind as to keep out of the way."

He snapped his fingers. "That reminds me, I should write Mr. Thomas a letter for all his help. Do you think I should send it by owl?"

"Maybe," Harry answered, as they reached the stairs. "I think it would be better to send him a letter by Muggle post, though… or you could tell him when he gets back to Hogwarts."

It was the work of only a few minutes to retrieve the somewhat nibbled Magnum Opus of Nicholas Flamel, and Dumbledore thanked Harry for all his help with such sincerity that he felt his cheeks heating up a little.

He'd been thinking a bit while he excavated the Philosopher's Stone from under his invisibility cloak, his pile of sweet wrappers (not quite as tasty as the sweets, but nobody else wanted them so he liked to collect them up) and his books, and as Professor Dumbledore pronounced the stone 'only slightly foxed and a little dragoned' Harry held up his paw.

"Professor?" he said, a little uncertainty. "Or, er, Professors? I've got some questions…"

"By all means, do ask them, Harry," Dumbledore advised him. "You should have no fear of asking a stupid question, unless you are already certain of both what the answer is and what my answer will be."

Professor Snape looked like he was about to object, then stopped himself.

"Well… firstly, why didn't you hide the stone under the Fidelius Charm?" he asked. "You mentioned that earlier, a spell which keeps something secret, and I know you said you have to trust someone but if Mr. Flamel could trust you then you could be the one who knows the secret."

Dumbledore stopped, and slowly raised his long index finger to his chin.

"What an excellent idea," he pronounced.

"Albus," Professor Snape began flatly. "I don't believe you could possibly have forgotten about the Fidelius Charm."

"My most sincere apologies, Severus," Dumbledore replied. "It seems my memory may be going in my old age. Why, some weeks I barely remember the names of all my students, such as Mr. Porter here."

He said it so matter-of-factly that Harry snorted with laughter, and Professor Snape let out a long sigh.

"I shall recommend it to Nicholas forthwith," the Headmaster promised. "And what was your other question, Harry?"

"It's about that spell from Diagon Alley," Harry explained.

"That, Harry, is the Patronus Charm," Dumbledore told him. "It is a very advanced piece of magic, and it is the finest example of a spell for Defence Against the Dark Arts that cannot be a Dark Spell. Unfortunately, it is also one which in the normal course of your education you would not learn until after your Ordinary Wizarding Levels at least."

He winked. "I'm sure you'll have it done by Fourth Year. And before you ask, the Patronus is unique to the caster, and why it is that way is a personal matter. I'm afraid that Professor Snape would be quite within his rights to be offended if you asked why his Patronus was what it was."

"All right, Professor," Harry agreed. "Thank you – and thank you for your help today, as well."

"I think you will find, Mr. Potter, that it is you who have done me a great favour today," Professor Dumbledore replied. "Now, I fear I must find someone to take over the Defence job for the next term. It is such a shame when someone quits without giving me any notice of the job opening… perhaps that should be in the contract."

After they had left, Harry carefully put his new tent in the bottom of his trunk.

For now, all that it really meant was that he didn't have to worry about buying too many books.

Then, because it still wasn't all that late, he went to the Ravenclaw Library for an hour or so of light reading, before heading back to the Gryffindor Common Room to do some homework.

It may have been quite a big day, but homework was still homework.

"Blimey," Ron said, when Harry told him about what had happened. "That's… odd."

"I know," Harry agreed. "To think that, um… Tom Riddle got into Hogwarts."

"Who?" Ron blinked.

"Well, I could keep calling him You-Know-Who, but until today I didn't Know Who," Harry pointed out. "The Dark Lord sounds kind of like I'm saying he is one, and I don't think he's a Lord – I did find a list of Lords once but Riddle and Voldemort both weren't on there-"

Ron yelped. "Bloody hell, Harry, warn me before you say that!"

"-and that's why I don't want to use that name," Harry continued. "Sorry."

His friend waved his hand. "It's okay. It was just kind of a shock."

Harry nodded. "And He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is really kind of clumsy. But Tom Riddle's his real name. I'm not sure if I should call him Tom or Riddle or both, though."

He frowned, lashing his tail. "Actually… now I said Dark Lord, and now I know he somehow didn't actually die, it reminds me a bit of Sauron. He could survive being killed – um, hold on, that doesn't sound like it makes sense. He could still be around after exploding because he has a ring he made, which he used to make him more powerful, but it meant that they had to destroy the ring to kill him."

"You've lost me, mate," Ron admitted. "Who's Sauron?"

Harry contemplated throwing one of his copies of The Lord Of The Rings at Ron.

It was a few days later when a letter arrived from Mr. Lupin, telling Harry how very impressed he was with how Harry had done on Monday.

Apparently the way that Harry had stood in front of the Wizengamot and answered all their questions honestly and to the best of his ability, or possibly the way in which he'd been visibly offended by the idea of someone making a law that mentioned him specifically, had been 'very Marauder'. Harry wasn't sure what a Marauder was, and Ron didn't know either, but he assumed it had to be good.

Apart from that, Mr. Lupin asked some questions about how Harry was getting on with schoolwork (answer, quite well though he didn't think he'd be in the top few people in the class, because of Ravenclaws and Hermione) and what he thought he'd do for his O. (though Harry hadn't really come to a decision yet, because they didn't have to make their choice for at least a full year).

It was a nice letter to have, even without the knowledge that Mr. Lupin was sort of like an unofficial uncle with how he'd known Harry's parents, and Harry wondered whether he could visit Mr. Lupin some time during the holidays.

Most of the rest of the holiday was just taken up with Harry's by-now-normal schedule, featuring homework, book reading, and the occasional flight to Fort William or Portree to see if any new books had come in.

Harry had finally managed to sort out a library card, which gave his address at the same place the Pride of Portree's lead Beater used as his Muggle address – as a wizard married to a Muggle woman, it was something he needed – and so he could have built up his collection very quickly by just taking out the maximum number of books every weekend and copying the lot. But that didn't really seem right, to Harry, and so he restrained himself a bit and only duplicated the ones he thought it was almost certain he'd want to read more than once.

That still gave him a steadily expanding pile of books, and it was supplemented by buying newer books from the bookshops. One of them was a bit of a guess about whether he'd like it, and the first chapters weren't really to his taste, but once he reached the bit about the planet populated by wolf-like beings who were only able to think like Beings did in small groups – that hooked him, and he didn't stop until he'd read the whole of A Fire Upon The Deep.

He didn't really follow the chapters where everything was all sci-fi-ish – it was much harder to follow than anything Anne McCaffrey had written – but it had been quite a delight to read about Tines' World, and he wondered if maybe there could be a book that was entirely set there.

Though perhaps not, if only because Ron had been worried about him – he'd spent the entire day lying on his bed, missing at least two meals.

"Hey, um… Harry?" Ron said, as the holiday drew to a close. "You know our Defence Against the Dark Arts homework? Who are we going to hand that in to?"

Harry put his quill in the inkwell, not wanting to continue his Charms essay during the conversation, and frowned.

"I don't know," he admitted. "We can't hand them in to Professor Quirrell, because he's sort of not there any more. But Professor Dumbledore did say he'd be trying to get a teacher for Defence, so maybe we should hand them in to them?"

"I just hope the new DADA teacher doesn't say Quirrell was all wrong," Ron grumbled. "I'm having enough trouble learning this."

Harry snorted.

"No, it's not that," he said in apology, in case Ron was offended. "I know what you mean. It's just – I like 'Dada teacher'. It sounds like someone who teaches dancing."

"Oh, yeah, I get what you mean," Ron realized. "I'm going to be teaching you – Da da!"

That gave them both a good laugh, and Harry went back to the Charms essay. It was his last one for the holiday, and he was quite proud of how he'd spaced them out between his revision to make them easier.

That afternoon, Harry flew down to visit Hagrid. It felt sort of odd doing that by himself, but Ron was still only about halfway through his Defence notes to write out an essay, and Harry was uncomfortably aware he hadn't visited his big friend for at least a week.

To his surprise, Fluffy was sitting outside the hut with Hagrid, alongside a sleek grey wolf with brown socks and a white tailtip. They all looked up as Harry flew overhead, and Harry heard one of Fluffy's heads saying something about 'don't worry' before he was out of earshot.

Banking around to shed speed, Harry flared his wings and landed on all four paws not far from the hut.

"Harry, good to see yeh," Hagrid welcomed him with a broad smile.

"Yeah, sorry about how long it's been," Harry replied. "I'm surprised to see you out of the castle, Fluffy."

"Ah, of course, you wouldn't have known," Fluffy mused, two heads nodding while the third affected aloof disinterest.

"The Headmaster said we didn't need to protect the Stone an'y more," Hagrid jumped in. "But 'e said that Fluffy could stay on the grounds. We're usin' a blanket for now, Fluffy's happy enough outside, but for winter we'd better sort summat else out."

"Really, Rubeus, there's no need at all to go to the trouble," Fluffy's left head said with a carefully fang-hidden smile, and he prodded the big man with a paw hard enough to knock most people over. "I will be quite happy to camp out under the stars, I daresay the company makes it an improvement on the Forbidden Forest!"

The wolf whined, and Fluffy's middle head laughed.

"I'm sure my brother meant nothing by it," he said. "You and yours are, of course, delightful company – but you cannot deny your English is some of the best of the whole pack."

"Oh, you're one of those," Harry realized. "I'm sorry, but I don't know the name of your species."

"A species is your type of wolf, instead of the other type of wolf," Fluffy's middle head clarified. "Or close enough to be going on with."

"I am not sure," the wolf said then, and the voice was probably-female – Harry hadn't met any other wolves who could speak, but it sounded higher in pitch than Fluffy even after allowing for the difference in their sizes. There was a strange accent, as well, but it was easier to follow than someone like Professor Quirrell. "There is our name for us, but that is not a name that human people can, um… say?"

"Pronounce, I think," Fluffy's left head told her. "That's the word you're after."

"Pronounce, yes," the wolf agreed.

Harry smiled. "Oh, are you having English lessons? That's great!"

The wolfess dipped her head slightly. "Thank you."

Harry sat down, thinking about that.

"Do you have a name?" he asked, trying not to use words that were too complicated in case she hadn't learned them yet. "And I can try saying a few things that might work for a human way of saying your type of people."

"Have a name," she agreed. "Name is-"

She yipped.

Harry tilted his head, trying to work out how to spell that, and the wolf's tongue lolled out in a laugh.

"But can call me June Forrester," she added. "Is easier name to say for people who speak English."

June was quite pleasant to talk to, and said that she wanted to learn to read and write as well – something which Fluffy said would take a little more time, writing especially, but he was sure they'd work something out.

Harry did notice that there was a fire going in Hagrid's house as well, despite the fact they were all outside, but it didn't seem all that important – maybe it was for the benefit of Fang, the big Irish Wolfhound who was nowhere to be seen.

After a bit of thought, and some explanation of where the names came from, June rejected 'Tine' and 'Direwolf', but quite liked the sound of 'Warg' even after it was explained that their appearances in the Lord of the Rings books were not complimentary.

"I can see what my family thinks of it," she decided.

"Actually, um… I did want to ask something," Harry added. "I've read some books which mention wolves – normal ones, though sometimes they're smart like your family is – and they say that wolves have alphas who are in charge. Is that right?"

June tilted her head.

"Yes," she said. "If by that you mean we have parents. But if not, no."

"Most people tend to at least start off with parents, or so I've heard," Fluffy's middle head contributed. "Meaning you no disrespect, of course, Harry."

"It's fine," Harry assured him, then looked back up at the castle. "I'd probably better go back and check on Ron's essay. He said he'd be done with it this afternoon, and that means we should have tomorrow free."

"Well, tell 'im from me that I hope you do well in your exams and suchlike," Hagrid told Harry.

The young Black-Backed Bookwyrm spread his wings and powered into the air, making the fur on the two canines ruffle, and circled once before heading for the Owlery.

It was nice to meet someone local.

When Hermione, Dean and Neville got back after the break, the first thing Dean did was to show them all the letter he'd got – one which thanked him officially for helping Mr. Nicholas Flamel with a matter of keeping hold of one of his prized possessions.

Apparently he'd been paid a few thousand pounds, too, though Harry wasn't really sure how Mr. Flamel had managed to pay lots of money to a Muggle family without it being suspicious – but, then again, Mr. Flamel was over six hundred years old, so he was probably really good with money or he wouldn't have any left.

That made perfect sense as far as Harry was concerned.

Once he'd given his version of events, though, and everyone had finished talking about Fast Food (which had taken up about half an hour, Harry and Dean and Hermione trying to explain to the two Wizard-raised boys about how useful it was to be able to buy food that had been cooked and neither Neville nor Ron – who had a House-Elf and a mother who was an excellent cook respectively – really getting it) then the topic turned to homework.

Ron was able to show off that he'd done all his essays in good time, Dean asked for a bit of help on his Potions essay – which turned out to be something Neville could help him with – and then they all did some practice with the spells they'd learned so far that year. Some of them needed something particular to work on, but for the ones which didn't it was good enough and Neville was relieved to get help on that.

"Oh!" Hermione realized, after they were done talking about that. "Hold on a moment, I've got something I brought back with me."

She vanished upstairs, and came back down a few minutes later with a newspaper article.

"So this looks like it might be real," she explained, putting it down. "It's from a few months ago. Ron, you remember what a pulsar is?"

"Um… hold on," Ron asked, frowning. "That's… that's one of those stars which kind of flashes very fast, right? But it's only with radio, or something."

"That's close enough," Hermione agreed. "Well, scientists seem to have found that one of them that's about, um… five hundred parsecs, I think that's about fifteen hundred light years away… has two planets around it."

Harry felt his own jaw drop, and pushed it shut again with a paw – and he wasn't the only one.

"That sounds really, really amazing," Dean said. "That's, like – that's got to be science fiction stuff, right? Sounds like Star Wars, or Star Trek or whatever."

"Oh, we've got to show Ron one of those," Hermione agreed with her friend. "It's a shame we don't have a television here."

Classes started again the next day, and it was right back to the normal schedule – going to lessons, which now included a lot of revising, along with doing homework and everything else they were involved with. There was so much that Harry sort of wondered how it was that the teachers could manage to mark it all, and for that matter how it was that Percy Weasley wasn't going slightly mad with twelve O.W.L exams to study for and only twenty-four hours in a day.

Their Defence lessons had a surprise, though, which Harry supposed would have been even more of a surprise to anyone who hadn't heard about the sudden disappearance of Professor Quirrell – their class was run by someone called Sturgis Podmore, a tough-looking straw-haired wizard in his mid-thirties, who introduced himself as an Auror and who said that because Professor Quirrell had 'unexpectedly quit' (his words) he had been asked by his good friend the Headmaster to do their lessons for the next couple of months.

Ron barely held in a groan when Mr. Podmore – who insisted he wasn't a Professor – announced that he wouldn't be marking their essays from over the holidays, as he hadn't set them and wouldn't know what they'd been taught. But when he went on from that to start outlining exactly how half-a-dozen minor jinxes could be used to protect yourself during a fight (even if your plan was to run away) everyone was soon a fan, and while it was fairly clear that Mr. Podmore wasn't really very good at teaching it was certainly obvious that he was much better than Professor Quirrell had ever been… if only because he didn't stutter.

It looked like his plan was to go through the whole curriculum at breakneck speed, doing a year's worth of subject matter in two months, and Harry left the Defence classroom both headache-free and having thoroughly enjoyed himself for the first time since coming to Hogwarts.

Even if it did mean that they had yet more essays, with their first one being 'write down all the spells Professor Quirrell taught you and how he taught you to use them' – something which Harry thought would probably interfere with his plans to read a new book by the person behind the Valdemar series.

It said that it had fast cars and elves in it, which was odd enough that he was quite eager to see where those bits all came from – but not eager enough to skimp on school work, since he knew he could always read it over the summer instead if he was busy until then.

AN:

Well, so much for that plot.