"Hey, uh… mate?"

Harry looked up, swallowing down a bout of hysterical laughter he could feel bubbling up. He'd been reading about Arnold Rimmer's exam preparations in a book called Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, and the description of just how Rimmer got himself ready for the exams – which had involved spending five months drawing up a six-month colour-coded revision chart, panicking, spending more time drawing up a shorter colour-coded revision chart, more panicking, dubious maths, heavy doses of what he thought were amphetamines and finally what amounted to a fairly serious psychotic break where he wrote that he was a fish hundreds of times over on the exam paper.

He was thinking of showing this bit to Hermione – or perhaps Percy – but right now Dean was looking worried so he did his best to forget about what he'd been reading.

"What is it?" Harry asked Dean, though before he could reply Ron joined him in looking worried too.

"You might want to see this," he said. "It's down at Hagrid's hut."

"Right," Harry agreed, putting a bookmark in his book. "Let's go."

He paused for a moment at the window, then decided not to jump out – he'd probably have to wait until his friends arrived anyway.

When they got down to the hut, Hermione was already there and trying to remind Hagrid that he lived in a wooden house. June was outside, being walked through the alphabet by Fluffy by the looks of it, but Dean and Ron were so worried that Harry just waved a hello before heading into the hut and shutting the door.

"I swear it's hotter than it was ten minutes ago," Dean groaned.

Harry wondered what was going on, and why Hagrid was stoking the fire so high. So, naturally, he asked Hagrid, and his friend blushed. (Possibly. The heat had already left Hagrid quite ruddy, so it was a little hard to tell.)

"Well, um… see, after Fluffy and me talked about it, I worked out it was a mistake, an' all," the half-giant said. "But, well… I got drunk, a few weeks ago..."

Hagrid told them – or, at least, Harry, since it seemed like the others already knew – a story of how someone had approached him in one of the pubs in Hogsmeade, and offered him the chance of taking care of a dragon egg. Hagrid explained that he'd known that the egg wouldn't hatch into anything like Harry, because he knew Harry had used to be a human, but that having a dragon to raise had been his dream for decades.

He also mentioned how getting hold of the egg had involved a lot of gambling, some drinking, and how he'd accidentally let slip how to get past a Cerberus like Fluffy.

Harry absorbed all of that, thinking about how that meant that there was a dragon egg in the fire and that Hagrid was going to do his best to try and take care of it – in spite of how illegal it was.

However, there was something else he wanted to ask.

"So… this dragon dealer?" he asked, when Hagrid was done. "Did he have a stutter?"

"What?" Hagrid asked, visibly confused. "No, not at all. Why? That something I should expect?"

"Well, that might have been Quirrell," Harry explained. "Possessed by Riddle. But if he didn't have the stutter-"

"Well, come to think of it, he never used ter have the stutter," Hagrid mused. "Had it when 'e came back, though he was always a nervous sort…"

"Can we talk about the dragon?" Hermione asked. "Hagrid, this is such a bad idea on so many levels. You could get hurt, Fang could get hurt, you could lose your house, and it's illegal as well!"

Harry nodded. "I think Hermione's right. This really isn't something you should keep secret."

Hagrid sighed, sounding dejected.

"What about if we let Professor Kettleburn or Professor Dumbledore know?" Harry suggested. "I'm sure that if there's a way to sort this out, they can handle it. Professor Dumbledore helped me just a few weeks ago."

"Reckon you're right," Hagrid agreed, and Hermione looked distinctly relieved that Harry had managed to convince their big friend.

"Maybe if you have to get rid of it then Charlie could help?" Ron suggested. "That way at least you'd know where to go to visit?"

That idea seemed to help, and they left a bit later with Hagrid having already written a letter to Dumbledore; Harry took it to the Owlery for him, and had Hedwig carry it to the Headmaster.

It was a bit of a complicated way to do things, but it did get the message to where it had to go.

The next few days were taken up with homework and classwork, as Mr. Podmore did his best to cram an entire year's Defence education into them in eight weeks despite being (as he himself put it) 'not actually very good at teaching', and much the same thing was going on in the other classes as well.

Professor Snape randomly asked questions in Potions, sometimes while they were in the middle of brewing another potion entirely, and took a point if the person in question didn't answer correctly and promptly or if they hesitated in their brewing; Professor McGonagall stressed how to tie up a Transfiguration spell so the result had no features of the original animal; Professor Flitwick started having them perform simple tasks like writing the heading for their notes with Charms instead of using their hands.

Professor Binns just kept going steadily through the curriculum, but then that was Professor Binns for you.

Harry also graduated to using one broom, and after so long working with the two brooms he'd had before, the switch to the single one was actually quite easy – much easier than he'd found it the first time around. Madam Hooch even told him that he'd probably be able to pass the broom proficiency test within the fortnight.

Then Hagrid asked them all down to his hut, and when they got there it was to find Professor Kettleburn already inside.

"Well done, all of you," were his first words. "You did the right thing to get Rubeus to report the egg, and you'll be pleased to know that Mr. Diggory from the Magical Creatures Department and Madam Bones from the Magical Law Enforcement department have officially assigned the egg to be seized as the proceeds of an illegal sale."

That made Harry frown, then look over at Hagrid – who certainly didn't look as sad as Harry thought he'd be if he'd lost the egg.

"...Sir?" he asked.

Kettleburn chuckled. "Well, of course they couldn't get rid of it! Dragons aren't common, you know, and fortunately I happen to be one of the few people in the country qualified to actually hatch a dragon and see it through the first few months."

"An' I'm helpin' him!" Hagrid burst out, unable to contain his happiness any longer.

"There are going to be a few precautions, though," Professor Kettleburn added, looking over at the egg still resting in the fire. "For one, I'll be applying a flame-freezing charm weekly – adult dragons can't be affected by it, but my hope is that this will allow us to teach the hatchling about what you can or cannot breathe fire on."

As he went on, detailing the ways in which he was going to be taking great care over the hatched dragon, Harry sat back and started wondering just how intelligent other dragons were.

He was obviously very much a different type of dragon, both with how he'd started out as human and how he was eleven years old and still not very big at all, but all other dragons grew up in the wild. Was it sort of like how fire lizards were instinctual, but if they bonded with a human and grew up with them they were brighter and more alert – like Zair? (Or Jhereg, which were more-or-less the same way.)

The idea of all dragons being as smart as people was sort of scary, with how much wizards used their body parts for things, but maybe some dragons were – well – as smart as a dog? Or as smart as Hedwig? They wouldn't be the ones which showed up doing stupid things, so they'd be more likely to survive…

"But where are you going to keep it?" Hermione was asking. "Dragons can fly, can't they?"

"We did think of that, Miss Granger," Professor Kettleburn chuckled. "You may be aware of a set of chambers deep inside the castle which are no longer needed for their original purpose. We thought it would work out quite nicely to keep the little Norwegian Ridgeback in there for a bit, until we're sure it will come back when we want."

Harry frowned, then raised a paw. "Professor? Would it help if I got some Muggle dog training books?"

The May Quibbler had its characteristically odd take on the changes at Hogwarts. Five different articles described Professor Quirrell as: undercover trying to investigate the Rotfang conspiracy; secretly an Albanian agent who Professor Babbling had defeated in a blistering duel over Liverpool; trying to blow up the Castle; having experimented with an anti-stutter treatment that had turned him into a Nargle; actually Mr. Podmore in a wig.

The fact they all had the same byline was a little confusing.

Apart from that, the Quibbler demanded that the Ministry tell everybody what the accredited institutions of O.W.L education were, whether the Minister was being bribed by a newt, and so on and so forth.

Harry had to wonder whether some of what was in the Quibbler was actually true, but he also had to wonder how anyone could possibly tell except those who knew about it anyway. Presumably Mr. Crouch knew why he was buying so many Invisibility Cloaks, and Mr. Weasley knew why he owned a battered old car despite the existence of the Floo, but none of their guesses about Professor Quirrell was remotely correct. (Admittedly Neville had shown him that the Daily Prophet described Professor Quirrell's departure as 'suddenly and unexpectedly called away to deal with a minor physical problem', which wasn't much better even if it was sort of technically accurate. If you squinted.)

The dragon egg hatched a day or two later, and Hagid named it 'Norbert' for about thirty seconds until Professor Kettleburn checked and informed him delicately that the dragon was in fact female. Her reaction to the inspection nearly got Kettleburn slashed in the arm, but he bopped her on the nose with his prosthetic left hand and firmly told her to 'stop'.

"You have to be firm, you see," he explained to Hagrid. "It's all about habits. You tell them off when they do something you don't want, and it's praise and rewards when they do. Sort of like awarding points, but because you're dealing with a dragon you need to be a bit more direct."

Hagrid nodded, absorbing that, then helped with feeding the little dragon.

"Now, don't forget," Professor Kettleburn added. "Her fire's going to come in in a month or two, so we'll want to move her to the corridor before then-"

"Norberta!" Hagrid said.

Harry wasn't the only one who gave Hagrid a look.

"What?" he asked, defensively, though he was blushing a little. (Or Harry thought he was blushing a little. It was hard to tell under the beard.) "I thought of a name and everything, but I was so eager that Harry might be getting a wee little brother I didn't stop to think if it might be a sister instead."

He scratched the dragon under her chin, which turned out to be something she liked quite a lot – an initial growl turning into a rumbling sound that was maybe a bit like a purr instead, and Hagrid kept up the scratches as Professor Kettleburn gently articulated her wings to check on them.

"They all seem healthy," he pronounced. "Remember, Rubeus, don't let her get away with misbehaving. We want to make sure she has the right behaviour."

"Right, right," Hagrid agreed readily. "'course."

Harry's main contribution to the hatching itself, apart from being there and possibly contributing to reassuring the hatchling a little, was to suggest 'Norberth' as a name. Hagrid didn't seem like he'd quite decided between the two just yet, though.

None of Harry's friends particularly wanted to help with the raising of Norberta or Norberth, but that didn't really surprise Harry when he thought about it. All four of them were much less able to shake off being bitten by a teething dragon, or scorched if her fire came in unexpectedly early (she was already shooting sparks when she sneezed) but it was interesting enough to Harry that he was quite willing to help out – it reminded him a bit of how it was to raise a newly-hatched dragon or fire-lizard on Pern, albeit with quite a lot less cooperation, and it wasn't a chance he was likely to have again for a while.

Professor Kettleburn said that there'd be some of his Care of Magical Creatures students helping out as well if Hagrid got overworked, which was nice.

With dragon-raising, revising and his book club, Harry found his free time reduced quite a lot as the days slipped by towards the exams – but that was okay, so he didn't really mind. It was the sort of thing he expected, and there'd be more free time after the exams (a few weeks at Hogwarts, then two months of holiday) so mostly he just got on with it.

There was an odd moment when Draco told him smugly that he knew about the dragon, before having to clarify that he meant the other dragon, and Harry agreed that, yes, the newly hatched dragon was quite a sight and did Draco want to meet her?

Then Draco had said that if Professor Dumbledore found out about the dragon there'd be trouble, and Harry had to respectfully disagree. For some reason Draco took the news that the hatchling dragon was entirely authorized quite badly, and he stormed off.

Harry blinked after the disappearing Slytherin, then shrugged. "What a strange person."

"I think he was trying to threaten you," Blaise helpfully supplied. "By the way, do you want an invite to my mum's wedding in August?"

"I don't really think I'll be able to make it," Harry replied. "My aunt and uncle probably wouldn't like it. Who's your mum marrying?"

"Oh, I don't know yet, but she just married someone so there'll probably be another one by then," Blaise shrugged. "Possibly two."

"Your stepfathers really have dreadful luck," Harry commiserated, and Blaise snorted. "Maybe this one's going to be more lucky?"

"Maybe," Blaise agreed. "But… no."

Harry felt sort of bad about his friend being so fatalistic about the whole thing.

"Any idea what potion we're going to be getting?" Neville said, leafing back and forth through his slightly untidy Potions notes – Ron was off at Chess club, but he'd told them to go ahead and revise Potions anyway because that was what was on Hermione's chart.

"Why ever would we know?" Daphne said, raising an eyebrow. "We're in the same situation as you."

"But Snape likes Slytherins," Dean countered. "Isn't that right?"

"He's as impartial as anyone in this school," Daphne said haughtily. "We can't be blamed if we overhear something that gives us a clue, and we certainly can't trust the clue."

"So there's not much point passing it on to you," Tracey concluded. "Anyway, Blaise, what are the ingredients of a forgetfulness potion again? I've forgotten."

Harry wasn't sure yet quite how Slytherin that discussion had been, but he was sure it was fairly high up there.

As the weeks wore on, it seemed as though Harry's presence was sort of confusing to Norberth. He was a black dragon, like she was, but she was growing visibly from day to day – which meant that from her perspective he was shrinking, like everything else.

Of course, some Norwegian Ridgebacks did stay the same size, but that size was much larger than Harry was, and this meant that whenever she looked at him it was for long, confused periods of observation as to why a dragon that was supposed to be bigger than her was now getting towards being smaller than her… or that was what Harry thought was going on, at least.

Then, about a week before the exams – and despite the demands of revision – Harry happened to be there when an important milestone was crossed. Norberth went momentarily cross-eyed, then exhaled a thin blast of flame that rolled over the bucket of rats she was busily eating her way through.

Thanks to Professor Kettleburn's flame-freezing charm, the jet didn't set fire to the contents of the bucket (or the floor) and Hagrid was terribly pleased by the result.

"Just look at that!" he said. "She's got her fire, yes she has!"

Norberth crooned a little as he scratched her under the chin, then blasted Hagrid in the face with the second jet of flames.

"Hey, now!" Hagrid rebuked her, giving her a light swat on the nose – enough that she noticed, at least. "None of that."

The dragon reared back a bit, then breathed flame on her lunch again. When that didn't earn a swat, she tried doing it to the rest of the floor (swat), then the table (swat), then Harry (which got two swats, even though Harry himself wasn't vulnerable to fire – another student would be, after all).

Then Norberth did her best to set the entirety of Hagrid's hut on fire, which didn't work but which did fill the room with smoke.

Hagrid clearly had some work to do with teaching her what could and what could not be breathed on, which was why Norberth (or Norberta, since nobody had quite decided which name to use for her) would be spending much of the next few months indoors.

The exams came all at once, during the first real rush of summer heat. Everyone moaned about it a bit, though Harry was once more grateful for his unusual biology and didn't have much trouble with it.

All seven of the core subjects had at least one theory paper, an hour of answering questions or filling out charts to demonstrate how much they knew. Astronomy was mostly about identifying pretend starfields, as it was so bright in the evenings now that it wasn't really possible to get a proper night time, while Transfiguration involved things like Gamp's Laws and the Principles of Similarity. There were questions where Harry had to write down the right option from three or four, questions where it said most of a sentence and he had to fill in the important words, questions where they had to sort and join up a transfiguration chain with spells you knew (complete with the incantations) and questions where the paper asked why someone in a duel would cast a stunning spell or a tooth-growing hex.

A lot more of it was about simply remembering things, from the inventor of a spell and when they invented it (the Lumos charm had come surprisingly late) to people who had said or done other important things – or what they'd done – and Harry found himself having to try hard not to get confused with all of his fantasy reading. It wouldn't do at all to say that one of the registered animagi was Belgarion, or that the one thing you couldn't do with magic was make something vanish, or even anything to do with wards.

By comparison, the practicals were sort of easy for the most part – or Harry thought so, at least. The potion was one he remembered (and it turned out that the Slytherins hadn't been trying to fake them out, though Harry had revised everything anyway) while the transfiguration spell was one that he got right and only Neville had any real trouble with out of their group.

Defence involved throwing different kinds of sparks, both forwards to dazzle an opponent and up into the air to ask for help, and Harry thought about showing off that he could cast that spell by breathing out sharply but decided not to (in case he accidentally set the examiner on fire).

The whole thing was very different from the SATs that Harry had done in primary school, and from the eleven-plus as well. There was a bit of Maths in Astronomy, and obviously everything had to be written down so that was sort of like English, but there wasn't any separate Level 6 papers for harder questions.

It was even less like the eleven-plus, which was lots of short questions from easy to difficult where you were scored by how many you got right… and Harry suddenly wondered about something.

Hogwarts had been around for a thousand years. So what did exam papers look like back when it was first built?

That thought kept him stifling giggles through the otherwise quite dry history exam, as he imagined a paper with questions like 'History: There's Not Much Of It Yet' and 'Who Founded Hogwarts?' being set by Godric Gryffindor and the other Founders.

Then, finally – at long last – the exams were over.

Harry had a backlog of books most of two months long, Ron wanted them all to borrow school brooms and go flying, Neville was fretting about how well he'd done in Potions, and Dean was disappointed that they weren't able to have some kind of actual fight in the Defence practical.

Hermione's initial plans to ask about how everyone had done and to look up all the answers had been roundly rebuffed by all four of them, but Harry thought for a bit before deciding to try something else – finding Percy once he'd finished with his O.W.L exams and asking if he wanted to talk with Hermione about them.

The Prefect was quite tired, after twelve subjects and perhaps twenty exams in the space of little more than a week, but he was more than happy to talk to Hermione about it, and Harry left the two of them with a sense of a job well done.

Really, his first year of secondary school had been very pleasant all around – and with the exams over, it wasn't exactly going to get worse.

Though, admittedly, more than half of the Defence questions would have been very hard indeed if they'd been relying on just what Professor Quirrell had taught. It was a pity Mr. Podmore had already left, even if most of what he'd done was just do intensive practical lessons and get them to read the entire textbook front to back in two months.

Except for two things, it would have felt like the whole castle was breathing a relaxed sigh for the whole of the next two weeks.

The first of the two things was Norberta, who was still growing – though more slowly now, in that she wasn't doubling in length, she was still gaining weight and bulking out as well as developing her wings. Her flame breath was becoming something she could keep up for longer and shoot further, as well, and that meant keeping up her gradual exposure training to humans (teaching her that she wasn't allowed to bite them or set them on fire) as well as things like the Wargs and Centaurs of the Forbidden Forest (teaching her that she wasn't allowed to bite them or set them on fire) and Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes (teaching her that she physically could not set him on fire).

Fortunately the need for lessons on what could be incinerated didn't extend to lessons on what Norberta needed to do to fly, which turned out to be largely instinctual. Harry himself got involved with those, following Norberta on her first flight and then on the following twice-daily flights as they grew in length and distance, and it seemed like the young dragoness was getting the idea that she was meant to not stray too far from Hogwarts.

It turned out that the dog training books helped out quite a lot for things like that.

Harry had honesty expected that once it became blatantly obvious that there was a dragon being raised at Hogwarts there would have been more of a reaction, but there really wasn't – so perhaps it was just that having a dragon in class and in book club and all the other things Harry had been doing just made it a bit less exciting when there was also a dragon flying past half a mile or so away.

That was Harry's guess, anyway, but he wasn't a humanologist and the closest thing to that that Hogwarts offered was a third-year class in Muggle Studies.

The second thing was House competition, and six days after the end of the exams was the final Quidditch game of the year – this time Gryffindor playing Ravenclaw.

It was much better than the Hufflepuff game, for more than one reason. One was that it lasted about half an hour, which was a much better length than the three-hour slog that the previous Gryffindor game had been. It was also one where the Gryffindor Chaser team did considerably better than they had before, which was a sign of good training and that the team was finally starting to shake out. Ravenclaw had managed to rack up an early lead, and a large one, but the Gryffindor team hung on at about a seventy point deficit before slowly turning it around into a points credit. Ten points up, twenty points up… then just ten, then back to twenty…

It was much more enjoyable than any of the other games that year, and when it ended it was because the Ravenclaw captain made a decision to just have their Seeker catch the Snitch and take the win (by about fifty points) rather than aim to get points off Gryffindor to let them win the Quidditch Cup. That felt like a nice result, and though Oliver Wood was depressed that they hadn't turned it into a win everyone else was just glad that Gryffindor had made Ravenclaw work for their points.

That also meant that Hufflepuff won the Quidditch Cup, and had a narrow lead in the House Cup as well, with not much else that anyone could really do to catch up with them.

The last few days of the term were busy, for Harry – he made three trips to Fort William, filling out his collection with copied library books while he could still cast spells, and set up his tent to pile them into his library (along with most of his possessions, leaving only a set of robes and a few other things he'd need for the next day or so).

He finally managed to cast a spell besides the spark spells with his mouth, meaning that Bluebell Flames joined his repertoire of ways he could sort-of-breathe-fire without actually breathing fire, and that led to a kind of water-gun fight except that everyone was using bluebell flames. It was enormous fun, like a snowball fight in the summer, and it left a big patch of the Hogwarts grounds looking like a forest fire until Hermione helpfully dispelled the lot.

In between those things, and taking part in the decision of what the book was going to be for the book club over the summer, Harry wrote most of a letter to Mr. Lupin.

The letter mentioned how Fred and George Weasley had tried to prank Norberth, and how the dragon had sort of snorted at them before just going back to sleep – which was an important milestone, Professor Kettleburn said, because it showed that the dragoness had learned who not to attack. (It also showed that Fred and George were terminally stupid, of course, but Professor Kettleburn said that that wasn't new at all.)

Harry also took care to make some book recommendations, labelling each one with what was good about them – like how Dragonflight was the start of reading about a different and wonderful world, or how Pawn of Prophecy was (as the name suggested) about a prophecy, but how the prophecy itself was a character who was a surprising amount of fun to be around.

He asked a few questions about his parents, things that hadn't occurred to him before now, and mentioned how he was thinking of trying out for Quidditch in second year. Apart from that, it was mostly just keeping in touch with the only person he knew who was about the right age to be friends with his parents (and Harry wondered if maybe they could meet up over the summer, but that was something he could work out in July or August).

The only thing that Harry didn't fill out was the bit about how many marks he'd got in his exams, because they didn't give those out until after the leaving feast.

When it came, the Leaving Feast deserved the capital letters. The food was excellent, everyone was enjoying one of their last meals at Hogwarts, and it was held with yellow and black on the walls and badger banners flying high – Hufflepuff happily celebrating their hard work and good luck in managing to eke out a win over Slytherin, thanks in no small part to their excellent Quidditch team.

Some of the Gryffindors were grumbling about bias, but Harry didn't think it was very serious. He was sure they'd all be celebrating if they'd won, after all, and Professor Sprout looked very happy indeed as she accepted the House Cup so he was happy for her and for her Badgers.

Harry made sure to eat until he was full, not because he expected to eat badly back home at Privet Weyr (or Privet Drive, as humans called it) but because it was just so tasty and he was going to be doing a lot of flying over the summer, and also took pains to get the addresses of all of his friends who lived remotely close to London. Dean and Hermione both lived actually in London, albeit in the outskirts, so Harry thought he could actually fly there without too much trouble… but Ron was all the way over in Devon and Neville lived up in the Yorkshire Dales, both of them much too far to reach easily.

Professor Dumbledore also gave a speech, choosing to stand up to speak about halfway through pudding.

"Before you are all too busily occupied in digestion," he began, "I wished to announce to you all that Hogwarts now has a school mascot. We have not had one for a while, and I wished to correct this terrible oversight promptly as soon as I noticed it."

There were a few scattered chuckles, and the Headmaster continued. "Doubtless you have not yet seen our new mascot, but it is my pleasure to inform you that the Norwegian Ridgeback that you may catch the odd glimpse of is in fact our mascot, and that her name is either Norberta, Nora or Norberth depending on who it is who is informing me of that detail."

He smiled. "Fortunately, unlike the custom in some Muggle schools, I will not be asking one of you to take care of her over the summer. Thank you for your time."

With that, he sat down, and Harry shrugged before continuing to eat his pudding.

He had four forks and six spoons, this time, and he took care to eat every last one of them. He still wasn't sure if the kind of dragon he was needed to have some things like metal or glass as nutrients, but it probably wouldn't be polite to eat Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's cutlery.

Their marks arrived the following morning, during the last full day, and Harry wrote them into his letter to Mr. Lupin – quite proud of his overall high marks, though he hadn't done as well as Hermione and said so – before folding it into an envelope and flying up to hand it over to Hedwig.

"See if you can wait at his house for a day or so," Harry advised her, as he tied the letter to her leg. "I'll put the tent up once I'm home and set your cage up, and hopefully Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon will be all right with that."

They probably would, if only because Harry wasn't going to tell them anything about what he was doing except that he'd stay up in the loft, but that was probably the better option for everyone if you thought about it.

The next day, on the train, Dean looked at his wand.

"It's going to be so bizarre not being able to use this for two whole months," he said.

"Yeah," Ron agreed. "And I live in a magical household – Dad and Mum both use their wands all the time, and I don't know what Fred and George do but they spend all their time in their room even normally."

He waved his hand. "Percy, well, Percy's going to follow the rules, and I'll do my best to do the same."

"Maybe you should put your wand somewhere you won't be tempted?" Harry suggested. "Under your bed or something?"

"Nah, then my sister would nick it," Ron replied.

"I'm kind of tempted to let my sister nick mine," Dean admitted. "At least at home. To see if all of us are magical or it's just me – it might help me work out who my father was, if it's just me."

"At least there's books, right?" Neville asked. "I started reading that Diamond Throne one that Harry lent me, but it's kind of hard going – it'll be good to have ages to finish it."

"Yeah, magic in that one's kind of interesting," Harry agreed. "It sort of reminds me of our magic, with how if you pronounce it slightly wrong it can go really wrong, but it's also sort of not? They don't need wands, anyway, but there's also this thing called the Bhelliom which has a completely different sort of magic, and… anyway, it'll be good when the next one comes out."

That was something else to look forward to, the books that would be released or that Harry could get hold of. It was still a pity he couldn't do magic over the summer, because otherwise he'd be able to magically grow his book collection to enormous size by copying books from all over London, but at least he had enough money to buy some more.

All in all, it was a highly optimistic Harry Potter who left Kings Cross after the train pulled in. He said goodbye to his friends, from his closest friends like Ron and Dean to his acquaintances like Blaise and Tracey all the way to people like Justin Finch-Fletchley who he'd only really talked to during lessons, then checked his packed-up tent was in his robes and took off to fly out of the trains' exit of Platform Nine And Three Quarters.

Throwing himself through a wingover, Harry was mildly surprised to discover that he'd actually flown out of the train exit of Euston Station, then shrugged and flew home – which, after a fifteen mile flight, turned out to contain only Aunt Petunia and Cousin Dudley.

It seemed that Uncle Vernon had gone to Kings Cross to pick him up, which was really very nice of him and more than Harry had expected. He apologized sincerely to Aunt Petunia for the mix-up, then made his way up to the loft and set up his tent.

That evening, surrounded by books and with Hedwig flying in through the open loft window, Harry settled down for a good night's sleep.

Maybe he should make Uncle Vernon something nice to say thank-you and sorry about the confusion? Obviously he couldn't make anything magical, and Uncle Vernon wouldn't appreciate it anyway, but there were plenty of normal things Harry could do instead.

Or perhaps he should just buy something. Harry was slightly embarrassed to admit that he didn't actually know what Uncle Vernon liked, so he'd have to ask...

AN:

And that closes out First Year.

Dragon not yet properly named.