Ten minutes after getting up to the dorms, they all headed back down again to go out onto the lawns. It was still hours until dinner, and with comparatively little homework it made a lot of sense to go out and enjoy the late summer air while there was still a chance.

Fred and George came down as well, both with their broomsticks, and Harry had both the ones he'd got in Diagon Alley over the summer so that made a total of four. It wasn't quite enough for everyone to have one, but by taking turns it meant that five of the seven of them could be flying at the same time – and flying wasn't the only thing to do, since everyone was also still enjoying that they could cast spells again. Hermione had picked out at least a dozen spells she wanted to try out from their spellbook, and when it was their turn on the ground Ron and Neville went through most of the things from first year to get back into the swing of things.

Fred went off to the Quidditch sheds and brought back a Quaffle, which they began throwing around, and then George swooped up to fly alongside Harry as he went on a wide banking turn.

"Hey, Harry?" he asked. "Ever thought of playing Quidditch?"

"I've thought of playing Quidditch," Fred added, zooming over and flying on Harry's other side.

"You've thought of playing Quidditch?" George said. "I've thought of playing Quidditch!"

They exchanged a nod.

"We've thought of playing Quidditch," both said at the same time. "A lot!"

"And between you and me, Cormac's not actually very good at this seeker thing," George elaborated.

"It'd be a real help if someone like a second year-"

"-or unscouted third year, but who expects that," George interrupted.

"-thank you – could turn out to be actually very good at this seeker thing."

There was a long and expectant pause.

"No," Harry said eventually. "I've not thought of playing Quidditch."

The Twins sighed, sounding very disappointed.

"What's the problem?" he added. "Why are you so upset? I answered the only question you actually asked."

"He's got us there, George," said the one Harry had thought was Fred. But who he now thought was probably George.

"He has got us there, Fred," Fred agreed, and Harry smirked a little.

It was hard to trick the Weasley Twins, and he was proud of having managed it even in such a little way.

"Let's ask another question," George decided. "Will you be coming to the Quidditch tryouts this Saturday?"

Harry thought about it, flying low over the Black Lake, and the two Weasleys flanked him as he did. Then he rose, wings cupping the air to push him higher and faster, and rose almost as high as the top of the castle before slowing and drifting back down to where the others were.

"All right," he decided, as he landed. "I'll see how good I am."

"Right!" said Fred. "The tryouts are this coming Saturday, they should go up on the noticeboard tomorrow."

"That's Quidditch, right?" Ron checked, and Harry nodded. "After last year… yeah, Harry's going to be really good at this."

"You sure?" Neville asked. "He might be no good at catching the Snitch, even if he can see it."

"He's caught you enough times," Ron responded. "Mind if I check I've got this jinx right?"

"Go ahead," Neville agreed.

"Locomotor Mortis," Ron incanted, and Neville's ankles slammed together. "But come on, Nev, at least let me have this."

"Have what?" Harry asked, fishing his own wand out from his robes and using it to dispel the jinx. "I thought you were saying I'd be the one doing Quidditch."

"Well, it'd be cool if I could too," Ron said with a shrug. "But I'm not really very good – and my best position's Keeper, and I've heard about how fanatical Oliver Wood is."

Neville tried the Leg-Locker this time, and got it on the second try after the first fizzled. Harry reversed that, and tilted his head. "You still didn't say what it was you wanted to have."

"Oh, right," Ron realized. "Well… it'd be nice to have a team I'm supporting actually win."

"I thought you were okay with the Cannons always losing, Ron," Fred asked.

"I thought that was why he supported them," George shrugged.

"You have to admire their consistency," Fred said solemnly.

"Maybe that's why our brother likes them?" George asked. "He's a simple soul, and consistency is comforting."

"Oi!" Ron groaned. "Prats."

"Well, maybe it's just a problem with pattern recognition," Fred suggested.

Harry wondered about how many clubs he'd have time for, but just as important was going down to visit Hagrid for the first time that year.

The kindly man was sitting outside his hut, giving Nora a once-over with an intimidating wire brush to keep her scales free of anything that had built up, and when she saw Harry coming Nora perked up.

"Hello!" she said brightly, bouncing slightly, and Hagrid put a hand gently on the base of her neck to keep her still while he scrubbed.

"Was that still hissing?" Harry asked his friends.

"What?" Ron asked.

"It was dragon language, Ron," Hermione said. "He wasn't talking to you."

"I was," Harry protested, turning to look at them. "Or I thought I was."

"Well, it was definitely that sort of hissy dragon language," Dean said. "Thing. Whatever. Dragonish?"

"If it's a language it should really have a name for itself," Harry replied, turning back to look at Nora. "Do you know what it is we're speaking?"

The question made Nora tilt her head in deep thought.

"You know we only understood up until you said 'really have', right?" Neville checked. "You went back to Dragonish mid-word."

"Hold on a moment," Hermione asked, and got out a notebook.

"Speaking!" Nora announced, having apparently come to a conclusion.

"I know that's what we're doing," Harry said. "But, um…"

"Okay!" Hermione resumed. "Let's try a few experiments. Harry, say something in Dragonish."

"Something," Harry said, looking at her.

"No, I meant something in Dragonish," Hermione corrected. "You really don't know which language you're speaking?"

She made a note. "That's interesting… okay, now try saying the same thing, but look at Nora and say it in Dragonish."

Harry complied.

"Why Something?" Nora asked, then looked at Hagrid – who was watching the whole thing with a smile. "Done with scratches yet?"

"What did she say?" Hermione asked.

Harry looked at Hermione this time, to make sure he didn't repeat Nora in Dragonish. "She asked why I'd said the word Something, then asked if Hagrid was done with scratching her yet."

"I guess we're going to be sending another letter to Charlie," Ron guessed, as Hermione kept taking notes.

"Right!" Hermione said, some time later.

She checked the four pages of scattered notes she'd made, and Harry leaned over to look.

"Eat?" Nora asked.

"Sorry, no," Harry replied. "Ask Hagrid for something."

"Hagrid!" Nora agreed brightly, and turned towards the big giant. "Food?"

"So we've established that Harry can always understand Dragonish, but he can only speak it if he's looking at a dragon," Hermione said. "That doesn't include himself, though, and it also didn't include the dragon versions of his parents from the Mirror of Erised."

"Right," Dean agreed. "Which seems pretty much like magic to me."

"You can't just say something's like magic," Fred protested. "Magic has rules."

"Consistent ones," George agreed.

"Steady on, let's not go that far," Fred countered. "Mostly consistent."

"Then they're not rules, are they?" George said. "They're guidelines."

"You can't just say something's like magic," Fred resumed. "Magic has guidelines."

"But the guidelines are really odd," Dean pointed out.

"They're not, not really," Ron replied. "That fellytone thing, that's odd. You speak to someone a really long way away down a long wire and you don't have to shout? How does that make any sense?"

"It's because the sound is converted into electrical signals," Hermione explained. "The signals go down the wire to the other end and get converted back into sound, but because they went all that way as electrical signals-"

She stopped. "Hold on. How is it that this is something that's hard for you to understand? Wizards have the Wizarding Wireless."

"Yeah, but that's magic," Ron replied promptly.

"I think we're getting a bit distracted?" Neville asked.

"Oh, right," Hermione realized, going back to her notes. "So, um… right. Harry's never met a dragon before, so maybe they can all speak Dragonish and Harry is just the first one who can also speak English to translate."

"That sounds like something we'd need Ron's brother to help with," Harry said, sitting on his haunches. "It'd be great if all dragons could talk, though. Maybe there really are some hiding in Beauxbatons."

"What?" Fred asked, confused.

"Okay, seriously, George, you need to read that book," Ron told him.

"We've also established," Hermione went on, "that it's possible to learn to speak Dragonish, or that a human can make the noises you need to make. But it's very hard, because they're all hissy."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, remembering Ron's attempts – the hissing noises he'd made had been about half just gibberish, and the other half had resolved into almost random words until he'd finally got 'Hello' down twice in a row and they'd called that a success. "This would be a lot easier with a tape recorder."

"There's got to be some way wizards can record sound," Hermione said. "Right? Maybe that would help..."

She checked her notes again. "So the questions that we have left are, um… can Harry speak Dragonish if he's looking at a drawing of a dragon, or a photo of a dragon? Does the photo have to be moving? And – I know it sounds silly – can we confirm that other dragons actually speak Dragonish?"

Hagrid came over with a plate of rock cakes, and handed one to Harry (who crunched it down with pleasure). "And if you do end up teachin' folk how to speak dragon, I wouldn't say no to it. Bein' able to talk to Nora – properly talk, and understand her too – would be wunnerful."

Sometimes Harry wondered if the actual curriculum at Hogwarts was only half of what you were meant to be learning. The club sign-up sheets were going up, and Book Club sounded as interesting as ever – but he also put his name down for Quidditch tryouts, as Fred and George had asked, and some of the other clubs looked sort of tempting.

Maybe it was time management you were meant to learn?

Harry wondered what tips Percy could give for time management, because Percy had managed to get a staggering number of OWLs at once and somehow still keep up his Prefect duties.

But, then again, Harry couldn't think of any clubs that Percy took part in, so maybe that was part of how he'd managed to find the time. Shrugging, Harry headed upstairs to do his latest homework – and maybe finish reading Heir to the Empire.

Aside from Herbology, where they'd moved on to more dangerous plants, and to Defence Against the Dark Arts – which had started with quite an unusual lesson – it seemed as though the rest of the classes were much the same as they had been in first year. Professor Snape's Potions lessons still involved carefully following the instructions on the board, Astronomy was about plotting the movements of the planets, History of Magic had moved on a little to a different subject, and Charms meant a whole collection of new spells to learn.

It was a little odd learning how to conjure fire, or at least normal fire – the sort of fire that wizards conjured that was otherwise just like a normal fire and would set things on proper fire. Harry could do the same thing by breathing out, but he could see why most wizards needed to use a wand.

"Now, remember!" Professor Flitwick said. "The incantation is incendio, notice the stress on the second syllable! But more than that you must be careful, because the same spell can produce a jet of flames or simply cause a flame to spring into being!"

He indicated the stone basins by their desks, each filled with flammable material, and then the set of candles. "And the flame can be really quite large or very small, depending on how you cast it – so I want you all to first simply try to cast the spell, as a jet or as an ignition does not matter but make sure that you are casting it into the basin!"

Harry looked down, and moved his wand through the motion they'd been taught – a kind of wavy upstroke-and-downstroke which sort of traced the shape of a flame in the air.

"Incendio," he said, and the tinder burst merrily into flame.

"Oh, very good work, Mr. Potter!" Professor Flitwick announced. "Three points to Gryffindor!"

He chuckled. "Well, I suppose in a way you've been casting that spell a lot! It's actually quite similar to bluebell flames, Arithmantically speaking."

"It is?" Dean asked. "Um… Incendio!"

There was a whoosh of flame, and bits of smoking tinder rained down all over the classroom.

"Ah," Professor Flitwick said, still cheerful as ever. "I think perhaps a little less flame next time, Mr. Thomas!"

He extinguished the few embers that were smouldering, and lifted some of the spare tinder into Dean's basin with a quick levitation charm.

As he moved on to help one of the Ravenclaws, Harry looked at the scorched basin and then at Dean.

"Hey, at least I cast it," Dean shrugged. "Besides, you're fireproof. What are you worried about?"

"Most of my things aren't fireproof," Harry replied, inspecting his robes for embers. "And we don't learn flame-freezing charms until… what is it, third year? I think Percy said it was around that time."

Dean sniggered. "Yeah, because teaching everyone to set things on fire before teaching them to put it out again or the spell that means it doesn't hurt is a really good idea."

"Hey, I'm trying to concentrate," Mandy Brocklehurst asked, and Harry winced and apologized.

Saturday seemed to come unexpectedly quickly, which was a little odd given how it was a day of the week and those were very regular indeed, and Harry picked up his broomstick before making his way down to the Quidditch pitch for the Gryffindor tryouts.

His friends came with him, to offer moral support (or watch) and Hermione took out a small handkerchief before expanding it out into a big groundsheet to sit on.

"That's pretty impressive," Fred noted. "You don't learn that until later in the year."

Hermione blushed a little, then Harry saw her look over to the ground-floor entrance to the Quidditch pitch. "Ginny? Is that you?"

Ginny nodded from the door, looking a bit apprehensive, and Hermione patted the ground to invite her to sit down.

"Right!" Oliver Wood said – he was a big, burly boy in sixth year, and his eyes were bright with enthusiasm. "So it looks like we've only got one new possible player this year."

"Yeah, not that we need one," Cormac shrugged. He was the current Seeker, Harry remembered, and at his words Oliver shook his head.

"Harry couldn't try out last year, Cormac," he pointed out. "Unless Harry turns out to be completely rubbish you'll still both be on the team, because you're the reserve – and it really is good that you're competent in all the positions."

That didn't seem to mollify Cormac much, but Oliver lifted up a crate.

"You know the rules, of course?" he asked Harry.

"Mostly," Harry replied. "I know about the four balls, and about what each of the positions is meant to do."

"Good," Oliver said with a nod. "It's best to check. Fred and George will be giving you a bit of Bludger experience later, but for now the first thing to do is to let me see how you fly. Ready?"

Harry put his Cleansweep down, stepped over it, and commanded it to rise up – using a paw to hold it against his belly.

"All right, go," Oliver added, and Harry raised his wings before bringing them hammering down. He started the broom moving in the same moment, and took off with fairly impressive speed.

Control was a little trickier, at first, and it took him a few somewhat wobbly minutes before he was back into the groove of using his wings as giant fins to steer with most of his actual speed coming from the broom. Once he was back to it, though, he was able to flap again – little movements which kept his wings in place to steer, but which made him a little faster – and to turn around just as quickly as he could when he was flying with nothing but his wings.

It felt really good, even better than normal flying, and Harry lost track of time a bit.

When he slowed to a halt again, perhaps ten or twenty minutes later, Oliver waved at him to come down and land next to the crate.

Cormac looked a bit sour, but Fred, George and the three Gryffindor Chasers all looked pleased.

"Right!" Oliver said. "Next thing is checking you can catch – doesn't matter if you're Keeper, Chaser or Seeker, catching a ball is an important part of Quidditch."

He opened the crate, which had four Quidditch balls strapped into place – two of them fighting to get out – and reached past them to get out some smaller balls which Harry recognized as golf balls.

"Wait, wait, hold on," Dean asked, getting up. "Can I see those?"

He came closer, and Oliver passed him one.

"Yeah, that's what I thought it was," the Londoner said. "These are – do you play golf at Hogwarts?"

"What's golf?" Oliver asked. "These are intermediate Seeker practice balls."

"Mate, they're golf balls," Dean told him. "What else is in there?"

He helped Oliver balance the inner partition of the crate as he lifted it, revealing more balls inside – a half-dozen leather footballs, eight cricket balls, some tennis balls (half of them bright green-yellow and the other half all sorts of colours), and twenty or so marbles.

"Look at this!" Dean said. "Hermione, you're the other Muggleborn – come over and look at this!"

"I was Muggle raised," Harry volunteered. "And yeah, those are all for Muggle sports."

"Sure?" Oliver asked. "Those are high difficulty practice Quaffles, those are for Bludger practice, those are Snitch practice and the little ones are high difficulty Snitch practice."

"...did Hogwarts used to have a normal set of sports?" Dean asked. "And the Quidditch teams just took everything?"

"Whatever, that's not important right now," Oliver said, shaking his head. "Okay, Harry, we'll do a few drills with the intermediate practice Snitches."

"Golf balls!" Dean insisted.

Apparently deciding to focus on testing Harry, Oliver rose into the air with a bag full of golf balls. Harry followed, enjoying how the broom let him just hover there, and once he was in place Oliver held up a golf ball – then threw it to the side.

Harry flapped his wings hard, for extra speed, and darted after it. It dropped quickly, and he snatched it out of the air with a paw before holding it up.

"That's good," Oliver said, approvingly. "Fred, George, grab some of the beginner practice balls – you know what to do. Ready for another one, Harry?"

Harry nodded, and this time Oliver threw the golf ball upwards.

Ten minutes later, Harry had managed to catch all the golf balls – though he'd had to dive quite fast for a couple, and in one case he'd nearly swallowed one. Oliver hadn't minded the tooth marks, though he did say he probably wasn't going to use that one in future.

"Okay, time for your next test," the Sixth-Year added. "Fred and George have used hover charms on some differently coloured practice Snitches all over the stadium."

"You mean tennis balls?" Harry checked.

"No, I mean practice Snitches," Oliver replied.

Harry privately decided that that meant yes.

"I'm going to call out a colour, and you have to race to it and bring it back here," Oliver explained. "Your job is partly to find the hovering ball, because that's something a Seeker has to do."

"Hey, Captain?" Cormac called. "When are we getting to the competitive bit?"

"After this, Cormac," Oliver answered. "We'll do a few practice runs with the proper Snitch, then we'll give Harry some experience of facing Bludgers. Even if he's not the first-team Seeker he'll probably be reserve…"

Cormac seemed a little mollified by that, and Oliver raised his arm. "Ready, Harry?"

Harry nodded, tail twitching a little until he wrapped it around his Cleansweep just above the bristle bundle.

"All right… red!"

Harry darted upwards, looking around for a splash of red against the green grass of the pitch floor. There was a yellow one, a blue one, an orange one… a purple one – there!

It was back 'behind' him with how he was flying, not to mention only six feet above the floor, and Harry pulled up and around in a quick half-flip. That left him flying upside down, and he rolled into his dive before pumping his wings to go faster than the broom could carry him by itself.

Twenty feet off the ground he spread his wings as brakes instead, pulling the broom up to slow it down, and shed speed so quickly there was a very noticeable jolt. He grabbed the red tennis ball, slid to a halt, and turned around to fly back up to Oliver to hand the ball off.

"Good," Oliver said. "Now the blue-"

He didn't finish asking before Harry set off in the direction he remembered seeing the blue one.

As Harry tossed the last of the tennis balls to Oliver, he noticed that Cormac was looking a bit offended.

Wondering whether Cormac had become unmollified again (and deciding he liked the word mollify), Harry floated down slightly with his wings out to provide a larger sail area. That meant he rocked up and down slightly as the currents pulled him around, but it felt nice so he kept it up.

"Okay, so you're good at finding the Snitch," Oliver said. "How did you do that, by the way? It took you several seconds to spot the first one, but after that you barely waited long enough to hear which one I wanted."

"I saw them before," Harry shrugged; it seemed pretty obvious. The shrug made him bob up and down because he'd used his wings to do it, and Oliver looked very considering about that.

"Well, let's see how you do with the actual Snitch," he said, tilting his broom forwards a little, and Harry followed as they drifted down to the crate.

"This is a Snitch that got used in the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw game last year," Oliver explained, taking a hold of it and then unbuckling it. "They have flesh memories which means they remember how they were first caught – in case it's needed to settle a rules enquiry – but nobody here was even in that game, let alone the Seeker."

"How do you know that?" Fred asked. "I could have been the Ravenclaw Seeker."

"You?" Oliver asked, snorting. "You know Ravenclaw has a new Seeker this year?"

"I don't see the problem," Fred told his team captain.

"Their old Seeker left, because she graduated," Oliver added. "...you know what, never mind. Okay, Harry, so a Snitch is a bit different to what you've been catching so far."

Little spindly ball-jointed wings unfurled from the Snitch and began flapping, so far without any effect as Oliver held onto it, and he continued. "It's gold, obviously, which makes it a little easier to see at a distance. But because it flies by itself – and quickly, too – it can dodge, and if you take your eyes off it for a moment it'll vanish."

Harry nodded, watching the Snitch closely as Oliver held it up.

"In a game there's a ten second wait," Oliver went on. "But here we'll start easy. When I say go, go after the Snitch."

Crouching, Harry got ready for a quick takeoff. His wings rose slowly to their highest extension, his tail twitched back and forth slightly, and he kept his eyes on the golden Snitch.

"Don't eat it!" Ron reminded him.

Oliver let the Snitch go, then chopped his hand down. "Go!"

Harry took off with a combined jump and flap, powering off the ground, then steered straight for the moving spark of gold. His paw closed around it with smooth efficiency, and he flared his wings to come to a halt again.

Oliver blinked. "Okay… maybe a longer delay this time?"

"Try having him cover his eyes while it flies off!" Dean called.

About ten minutes later, Cormac was looking exceedingly disgruntled.

Harry had to admit that when he was going after the actual Golden Snitch it was just like everything clicked together. There was a shiny thing moving, he had to chase the shiny thing… he didn't even need to think about how he held his wings or controlled his broom, it all just fitted neatly together.

"All right, that's enough!" Oliver decided. "Unless something serious comes up, I think that means Harry's our starting Seeker this year-"

"Hey, what about that versus match you mentioned?" Cormac asked.

"He's got a point," Harry agreed, and wondered why Cormac gave him an odd look at that. "You did say."

"Well… Bludger practice first," Oliver said. "The Bludger's a ten inch ball of iron."

"Sorry, what?" Hermione demanded.

She got up from the enlarged handkerchief and came over. "What? This is a ten inch ball of iron?"

"Well, yeah," Oliver agreed. "Why?"

Hermione pointed at George. "And those two knock it about with a wooden club?"

"An enchanted wooden club," George said. "And there's only one of me over here, the other one of me is over there."

Fred waved.

"Oh, you're almost interchangeable anyway," Hermione said a little crossly. "And – I must have read it in Quidditch Through the Ages but I didn't realize – a ten inch ball of iron has to be – hold on."

She pulled a notebook and quill out of her pocket, and Harry noticed that all the actual Quidditch players were exchanging confused looks.

"I can't remember exactly how dense iron is, but it's at least seven times water – and that's twelve and a half centimetres in radius, call it twelve… so that's a thousand, seven hundred and twenty eight, times about four so call it seven thousand..."

Oliver tapped Harry on the wing shoulder. "Do you have any idea what she's doing?"

"Maths," Harry replied. "I think."

Hermione seemed to be satisfied with her numbers, and looked up from the page of scribbles she'd been using.

"You know those balls weigh about fifty kilos each, right? That's more than a hundred pounds!"

"I'm completely lost," Fred admitted. "What's that in Galleons?"

"I don't think it's that kind of pounds," George told him, in what was theoretically a quiet voice.

"Oh, right."

"How strong are you two?" Hermione demanded.

"We're Beaters," Fred answered, as if that explained everything.

"Hermione!" Dean called. "Remember. It's magic."

That answer seemed to annoy Hermione, but she shook her head and took a deep breath before going back to sit down.

"So what kind of practice am I going to do with the Bludger?" Harry asked.

"Mostly making sure you know how to avoid it," Oliver replied. "Okay, here goes!"

Harry was not very good at avoiding the Bludger, it turned out, but on the plus side he took a direct hit to the side and it didn't do more than knock him sideways a little.

He discovered that, as far as the Twins were concerned, this made him "kind of tough".

Cormac insisted on the Seeker head-to-head, just to be sure, and then for some reason he was upset when Harry just pounced on the Snitch again.

Oliver seemed to be extremely happy, saying that Harry would break the losing streak Gryffindor had been on, and Harry watched as Fred and George exchanged glances before quietly taking their captain aside to remind him that Gryffindor had won the Quidditch Cup in the 1990-1 school year and that a streak normally meant more than one year.

After that slightly odd aside, Oliver told Harry what the practice schedule was. It was a bit dismaying to see it taking up three evenings a week – and his Saturday and Sunday mornings, as well – but Harry supposed it was because of the need to make sure that everyone could work well together as a team. (He wasn't sure exactly how you did Quidditch practice with only one team and one extra person, though.)

It did mean he probably wouldn't have time to try more of that AD&D game, though, which was a pity. Maybe he could do some over Christmas?

"Are you sure you're going to have time to do your homework?" Hermione asked, as they went back up to the castle. "That's a lot of free time doing Quidditch."

"Yeah, I know..." Harry agreed, sighing. "I might have to not head out to Fort William for new books. I'll see how I get on with the collection I picked up over the summer."

"That sounds like a pretty big sacrifice, Harry," Ron said. "I know how much you like reading."

Harry shrugged. "I'll see how it works out."

"Other sports don't take up that much time," Dean contributed, frowning. "Actually, I did that pick-up football game last year… maybe what we need is some clubs for other games too. We've certainly got most of the equipment for it, even if it is all labelled as Quidditch gear."

"Doesn't tennis need some bats?" Neville said. "I remember hearing that."

"Cricket and softball need bats," Dean corrected him. "Tennis needs rackets."

"Well… if they're Muggle sports, none of it needs magic, right?" Ginny asked. "If you got one to show Percy he could probably make you more with Transfiguration. I don't think Gamp's Law has an exception that says you can't transfigure sports equipment."

They thought about that as they approached the front door.

"Now I want to see how the Quidditch Beaters do playing cricket," Dean said.

"Actually, I want to see that but with all the fielders on brooms," Hermione replied. "It could be very tactical."

"Just so long as you don't bring back Creaothceann," Ron asked. "I don't want to see most of Gryffindor wiped out."

That was an odd enough thing to say that everyone stopped and looked at him.

"What?" Ron asked. "It's a sport where you fly around with a cauldron strapped to your head and try to catch giant falling rocks. I know which House would play it."

There were a few shuffled-around time slots for clubs, partly because of the Astronomy classes for the people involved meaning that they had to change it around a bit, and when the dust settled the book club was on Sunday evening.

Hermione, Harry and Neville all went there with their suggestions for the first book to read, and when they got there most of the familiar faces were still there. The sixth-year who'd facilitated the club last year was gone, and one of his housemates explained that it was because of NEWTs – but there were enough newcomers to make up for it, including both Tanisis (the sphinx) and her friend Luna.

Everyone wanted to talk to Tanisis, and Tanisis had Luna right next to her, so Harry only got a chance to quickly say hello to the two of them during the 'let's get to know each other' bit of the club. Apparently Luna knew Ginny – they'd grown up in the same village – and wondered whether Ginny would be willing to come along to the next book club, while Tanisis was doing her best to smile at everyone and not feel too overwhelmed.

She kept taking out her wand and looking at it, and Harry wondered how easy it was for her to use it with her paw. Were lion tails like hers prehensile enough to hold wands and point them the way he thought his was?

That and other questions kept him occupied until it was time to choose which book they should read first, and Harry suggested The Hobbit. To his surprise, it was the one that got picked first, which meant he didn't really have any more reading to do (though any excuse to re-read The Hobbit was a good one).

After that, and somewhat to Harry's relief, his second year began to settle out into a routine.

Ginny did start coming to the book club to spend time with her friend Luna, there were several hours of Quidditch practice every week, and homework came rolling in from all their classes and rolling out again as Harry got through it.

The theoretical bits felt as hard as they had last year, but when Harry went back to check he found that they were actually quite a lot harder than last year – so he thought about that a bit, then decided that it meant he was getting better (and that was a good thing).

The only really odd thing was the Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. The homework was sensible enough, but Harry would have expected that the classroom lessons were practicals – and instead they turned out to be acting out bits from Professor Lockhart's books, usually bringing someone up from the class to perform the part of the dark creature or magical civilian (or Muggle civilian) that Mr. Lockhart was interacting with in that part of the book. It was interesting, because you got an idea of how Mr. Lockhart dealt with the situation, but they didn't seem to be learning much if anything in the way of actual magic.

Maybe that was next term?

AN:

It turns out that Quidditch actually takes up quite a lot of time in the schedule.

Also, Bludgers are actually really big and made of iron. Fred and George are really strong.