Meeting Sirius helped Harry sort of put the odd experiences of the last week or so behind him a little, and he rather thankfully settled back into a Hogwarts routine – or as routine as anything could ever be at Hogwarts, anyway.

The November Quibbler finally arrived the following Wednesday, with a really quite good drawing on the front cover of Sirius Black on top of the page and Peter Pettigrew on the bottom. If you touched one of the pictures then the wizard turned into their Animagus form, and if you changed them both then Wormtail silently squeaked and began running away from Padfoot all over the cover.

The usual mix of articles was absent, as well, with almost everything focused on Sirius or Peter. The headline article was How To Tell If Your Pet Is An Animagus, which suggested the staggering total of thirty-five different ways someone could work that out – from asking 'are you an Animagus' in a clear voice, to trying to include them in conversation, to putting them in a room with the Wizarding Wireless tuned to a particularly obnoxious Italian band and seeing if they liked it or not.

Harry thought it would make much more sense to just use magic somehow, like however it was that Professor Snape had confirmed that Scabbers really was Peter Pettigrew.

Then there were articles about how Sirius Black had remained mostly sane in prison, articles suggesting that he'd spent most of his time sentenced to Azkaban not actually in Azkaban but moonlighting as a singer called Stubby Boardman; it further said that, since he was Stubby Boardman, it was clear that he wasn't at all involved in the initial incident in the first place (as a witness, let alone as a participant) since he'd been having a romantic dinner at the time.

Harry was a little confused by the photograph, which had a picture of Sirius Black printed twice side by side – only that one of them was labelled as Stubby Boardman and the other was labelled Sirius Black.

One article claimed that Sirius Black had known that Barty Crouch was trying to corner the Invisibility Cloak market and that that was why he'd been thrown in prison; another claimed that Sirius had been romantically involved with Minister Bagnold and that she'd been having an affair with Barty Crouch. That seemed unlikely to Harry for all sorts of reasons, in fact for so many reasons it was a little hard to quite be sure which reason to think was the most important.

Aside from that, and from the usual Quibbler pieces about cryptid sightings (one article claimed to have seen a Dodo, as in not a Diricawl), there was also a long piece about how Lily Potter had been an unregistered heron animagus.

Harry wasn't sure where they'd got that idea from.

The week after that, and shortly after the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw Quidditch match, Harry was climbing the stairs to the Astronomy tower along with the rest of the year.

"I kind of wish we didn't have to do this so late," Megan Jones grumbled, a few places behind him.

"Well, it's astronomy, isn't it?" Sally-Anne Perks replied. "I'd like to see you do astronomy during the day."

"Muggles can do that," Ron contributed. "With their really big telescopes, anyway, and depending on what they're looking at. It's whether the sky is brighter than the stars."

"How does that work?" Sally-Anne said, baffled. "Oops – sorry, Harry!"

"Don't worry, my fault," Harry replied, rolling his tail up so it wouldn't get trodden on again.

"It's because the stars and planets and stuff are still there," Ron explained. "It's just harder to see them. Like… like how the Black Lake is still there even if it's really misty in the morning."

They reached the top of the Astronomy Tower, and Harry stepped out into the mostly-clear night with the stars shining overhead.

It was a bit odd, because he was sure it had been overcast when they'd set off.

"Why is it so clear, Professor?" he asked, looking around for Professor Sinistra. "It always seems to be really good weather when we have Astronomy."

"That's why it's the Astronomy tower," Professor Sinistra replied. "It's bewitched, though the enchantment isn't perfect – that's why it's sometimes cloudy here, though usually that's when it's raining or snowing everywhere else. When that's happening, you can sometimes see snow or rain falling if you look far enough away."

Once everyone had arrived, she coughed gently to get their attention. "Now, today we're going to be starting on the asteroids. Who has a good description of asteroids?"

Hermione's hand was the first up.

"They're smaller than planets and they orbit the Sun," she said. "They're usually found in the Asteroid Belt."

"Good," Professor Sinistra said. "Mr. Goldstein?"

"They weren't discovered yet in ancient times," the boy answered.

"Also a good point, they're much fainter than planets," the Professor agreed. "Mr. Weasley?"

"One of them wiped out the Dinosaurs," Ron said.

There was a short pause, and then Theodore Nott said, "Pardon?"

"Can you explain, Mr. Weasley?" Professor Sinistra asked. "I hadn't heard about this."

Ron nodded, and started to somewhat-hesitantly explain about the giant crater Muggle scientists had found and how it was at the same time as dinosaurs had suddenly vanished.

The lesson got a bit derailed after that.

"...so that's Tennis," Dean said. "What do you think?"

"It sounds kind of boring, compared to Wizard sports," Neville replied. "Shouldn't the tennis balls fly around by themselves or something?"

"No, because Muggles don't have magic," Dean explained. "On account of being Muggles."

"That does sound like a good point," Neville admitted.

Harry chuckled, then looked back down at his latest History of Magic essay on The Medieval Assembly of European Wizards.

It was almost at the length it was supposed to be, but not quite, and he thought for a long moment before rummaging through the books in his bag and picking out one that he thought might help. It was a novel set during the late Middle Ages, which seemed a lot like he'd heard The Three Musketeers was like, but more to the point it talked a lot about how the Germanic wizarding community had been hidden all over the rest of Europe during the Thirty Years' War to keep them safe from the chaos.

It wouldn't be a good idea to trust any of the specific bits in the book, but it sounded a lot like the sort of thing he could look for in a history book to confirm it happened.

"...the problem with doing cricket here is that there isn't a big enough pitch for it," Dean was saying. "Except for the Quidditch Pitch, and for some reason everybody thinks that has to be kept perfectly safe."

"Well, it does!" Ron said, looking up from his own homework – he'd said something about how one of the Defenestrations of Prague had involved Wizards somehow, though Harry hadn't looked that bit up. "It's sacred turf!"

"Ron, the only times that Quidditch players even touch the ground are when they're about to take off at the beginning of the match and when things go badly wrong," Dean countered. "You could replace the entire pitch with two ten foot circles of polished wood over a swimming pool and it would barely affect the game. Six wooden stumps and a crease aren't going to wreck it."

"...actually, I'd want to see that," Hermione voiced. "Maybe if the Snitch was underwater? Bubble-Head charms are a thing, and you have to admit it would be pretty amazing to watch Seekers diving into the water like gannets."

A few days later, the Daily Prophet was full of news about the Pettigrew trial.

Apparently there were some quite elaborate security measures, just to make sure Pettigrew didn't get away or any other members of Tom Riddle's old organization didn't try to either silence him or break him out of the trial. Since he was an Animagus, and one for a small animal, that was difficult to say the least.

The papers said he'd tried coming up with all sorts of excuses, many of which had been promptly shot down by the lawyer for the prosecution – he'd said he was in hiding, but he hadn't had an explanation for why he'd gone to a Wizarding family or why he hadn't just fled the country. (That made Harry wonder why his parents hadn't left the country, actually, but he supposed if everyone who didn't like Voldemort had fled the country he'd just have ended up sort of winning by default, and you couldn't do that everywhere.)

The way he'd killed twelve Muggles to get away had also come in for some sharp criticism, which was fair enough, but Harry didn't like reading too much about that because it was quite an unpleasant topic. It seemed like it would take a while before the trial was over, just because of the complicated legal process, and Harry was halfway reading about the possible ways to keep an Animagus prisoner when Ron opened a letter and swore.

"Ron!" Hermione said sharply. "What was that about?"

"I'm going to have to go to the trial," Ron explained. "Because he was my pet. Percy's going to have to go too, I think, because he was Percy's pet first."

"Ouch," Dean said. "That's going to be rough, man. Any idea when?"

"It says… Thursday morning?" Ron blinked. "That can't be right, that's during class."

"I'll make sure to take good notes," Harry promised. "And we can do the practical stuff together."

"Don't you have Quidditch?" Neville asked.

"Yeah, but Oliver's let us off slightly because there's not another game until Spring," Harry replied. "That's a really relative thing, though… I still haven't finished some books I got back in August."

"At least that's better than finishing everything you have available to read," Hermione said. "Though there is a library for that."

"Two," Harry agreed. "Three if I can manage to find the time to go to Fort William."

At dinner the next day, Harry got one of the unusual preparations the House-Elves seemed to like making for him.

He was about to start eating it when Blaise wandered over.

"Oh, hey!" Harry said brightly. "Is something up?"

"Oh, I just smelled something familiar," Blaise replied. "Is that yours?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It appeared in front of me and it's got a little Harry Only label, so it might not be safe for you."

Blaise gave it a sniff, and nodded. "Yeah, that's… probably got about four ounces of hemlock in it."

"How do you even know what Hemlock smells like?" Dean asked, blinking. "Wait, isn't that a poison?"

"We use it in Potions," Harry pointed out. "It was one of the ones we did in October, I think."

"That's only if you neutralize it," Blaise informed him. "That's going to be extravagantly dangerous. Make sure you've got a Bezoar on hand in case you're not immune to it."

"Sure," Harry agreed. "I think Hermione made me carry one..."

"That still doesn't answer how you know what it smells like," Dean said.

"Mother is quite an inventive cook," Blaise informed him, as Harry dug out the Bezoar from his robes.

Now considering himself ready for the meal, Harry trimmed off a tiny piece of meat and gave it a careful taste.

"Oh, huh," he realized. "That's the sauce they used last week as well."

"I'm starting to think I should invite you around one of these days," Blaise informed Harry. "You'd probably like Mother's cooking. You wouldn't even need anything from the pepper grinder with it."

Harry frowned, wondering what pepper would have to do with it.

"Bezoar in the pepper grinder?" Dean asked.

"Bezoar in the pepper grinder," Blaise confirmed. "This is why I like you. You're surprisingly sneaky for a Lion."

"I'm going to choose not to be offended by that," Dean decided, after a bit of consideration.

The day of Ron's part of the trial came and went, and when Ron arrived back at the castle that afternoon he shook his head.

"That was so weird," he said. "I had to answer questions about what Peter had done, and I had to say he'd mostly been asleep. Then I had to say what spells I'd done on him."

"Was it hard?" Harry asked.

"Not really," Ron told him. "Not as bad as I was expecting, anyway… they showed me a load of pictures and I had to pick out which ones were him, to prove it was actually him. I'm not sure why, though."

"They're probably being really thorough," Harry guessed. "Like… really thorough."

He shrugged. "Maybe it's because of how Sirius didn't get a trial last time? They're making sure Peter obviously has so much of a trial that nobody can possibly say he didn't have one."

Ron thought about that, and decided it made sense.

"Okay, so what happened in the lessons I missed?" he asked.

"We did the Softening Charm," Harry replied. "But because that was in Transfiguration we did a lot more about the theory and stuff."

"Right, properties and stuff," Ron realized. "Bleah..."

"I'm sure there's a use for it," Harry shrugged. "Maybe there's something you could use it for where you could make something softer, or softer and something else?"

Ron frowned, thinking about that.

"Anyway, we've got Potions later," Harry added. "So there's that."

"What's this one?" Ron asked. "Hope it's not a hard one."

Harry told him it was Swelling Solution, which was one of those ones where the name was a bit strange. It wasn't really a solution, except that things were dissolved, maybe, but if that was why you'd call it a solution then almost any potion could be called a solution. You'd have a Boil-Removing Solution and a Forgetfulness Solution and so on.

Then Ron told Harry to stop going off on a tangent.

An odd rumour was going around the castle the next morning, about how during the Defence Against the Dark Arts classes for the Sixth-Years there'd been an incident where Percy Weasley had blasted the teacher out the window.

Percy seemed very embarrassed by the idea and didn't say whether it was true or not, but that didn't stop Fred and George from both deciding it had to be true and calling him Percy the Defenestrator.

Harry wondered if maybe it was because of the trial, or maybe because Percy didn't like the idea of his NEWT homework being writing a poem.

In their own Defence lesson the same day, Harry had to play the role of one of the werewolves that Professor Lockhart had defeated – this time in Kathmandu. It didn't work very well, because Harry got a bit too into the role and Professor Lockhart may have been able to wrestle a werewolf successfully but Harry was a bit too much for him.

Afterwards, Harry stayed behind to apologize, then asked again about the Patronus. Professor Lockhart said that the Patronus was a very difficult charm and that he wasn't comfortable teaching it to a second year, and Harry tried to explain that he was okay with the idea that it would take a lot of practice but Professor Lockhart simply didn't seem to be interested in that – in fact, he instead took the time to tell Harry how to respond to fan mail.

That made Harry realize he hadn't got any fan mail, and while at first he just felt quite happy about that he did wonder whether maybe it wasn't getting to him.

"I've got news!" Hermione announced one Sunday afternoon, putting a hefty book on the table her friends were sitting around.

"Really?" Ron asked. "I thought the Daily Prophet came in the morning. And was smaller."

"No, not that kind of news," Hermione replied. "I've looked through all the legal precedents and stuff – it's part of NEWT History of Magic to do a project on that sort of thing."

"Blimey, you're doing your course work early," Neville said, more than a little intimidated by the prospect.

Harry had to agree. Maybe he was thinking about asking Sirius for help with his friends learning how to become Animagi, and maybe he was trying to learn the Patronus charm, but both of those were sort of hobby-interest things.

"That's not why I'm doing it," Hermione explained. "But it might help if I do History of Magic at NEWT level. Anyway, I looked up the laws on what you're allowed to do to a House-Elf."

She produced a sheaf of notes, putting them on top of the book. "The law is very clear on it. You're allowed to tell a House-Elf off, but you're not allowed to verbally abuse them and you're not allowed to either harm them physically or force them to do it to themselves."

"Yeah, everyone knows you're not allowed to do it," Ron said.

"Then why does Dobby keep hitting himself?" Hermione asked. "His owners aren't allowed to treat him like that!"

"I bet it's because Dobby thinks he has to," Dean suggested. "And his owners probably broke the law in the past, but now they might not even need to any more."

Hermione deflated a bit. "I think you're right..."

"Then… if Dobby is being treated badly, couldn't we get him away from his family?" Harry asked.

"There's two ways that can happen," Hermione replied, putting a smaller book called The Benefits Of Brownies, Or, The House Elf on top of the pile. "There's a kind of magical connection that a house elf has with their owners, and if that's broken then they're automatically free."

"Oh, yeah, the clothes thing," Neville realized. "Gran told me about that, she said I should never give Tandy any clothes unless she asks for them and we talk about it."

He shrugged. "I forgot a few times, but I don't count as Tandy's owner, so it's not really a problem."

Hermione nodded. "Yes, so it would have to be whoever Dobby's proper owner is."

She shuffled the notes around. "The other way is the House Elf Relocation Bureau, but they're apparently not very good. The legal arguments take months, and usually you don't find out who the owner is anyway."

"It sounds like it's going to be really hard to help Dobby out," Harry summarized. "That's a pity. He did really seem like he was trying to help."

"I know," Hermione agreed. "Even if the way he was trying to help was a bit odd."

She looked around. "Any idea what he meant by Hogwarts being dangerous?"

"Maybe he was talking about Peter," Ron suggested, looking uncomfortable. "But if he was, then Hogwarts hasn't been safe for years."

"I think it's actually safer this year than last year," Neville volunteered. "Last year one of the teachers was You-Know-Who, this year the most dangerous thing in the castle is probably… well, it's probably whatever the Seventh Years are doing for Defence. Or a malfunctioning potion."

"What about a rogue Bludger?" Ron asked.

"That wasn't in the castle," Neville replied, with impeccable logic as far as Harry was concerned.

"And I don't think the Seventh Years are doing anything dangerous in defence," Dean added. "After that Percy thing I asked the NEWT students, they said they're just doing readings out of Professor Lockhart's books as well."

"What?" Hermione asked, then looked back down at the legal research she'd done, then back up at Dean. "But… why?"

She shook her head. "That just doesn't make sense to me – he should be teaching them the Homomorphus Charm, the Patronus, shield spells and point casting and all the things he's done in the books."

"Yeah, I'm kind of wondering about that," Ron said. "We've never actually seen him do anything impressive, have we?"

"Well… teachers don't have to do impressive things," Hermione countered. "But – well, I suppose Professor Flitwick does, and so does Professor McGonagall, and Professor Snape."

"Even Professor Binns does do one thing that's impressive," Dean contributed. "He's old enough he probably lived through some of that history."

"Actually, how old is Professor Binns?" Harry asked. "I know wizards can get really old, and he died of old age."

"Well… hold on a minute," Hermione asked, and hurried off. She pushed open the portrait hole door, and left.

The four boys looked after her, then at the big book on the table.

"...any idea how long she's going to be?" Ron asked.

Some minutes later, Hermione came back with a book marked with an eagle on the cover.

"I thought I saw this last time I was in the Ravenclaw library," Hermione explained. "It's a biography of the Hogwarts headmaster before Professor Dumbledore, Armando Dippet."

She flipped it open, finding the number she was after. "According to this, he was born in 1637… and he was still alive when the book was published in 1987, for his three hundred and fiftieth year."

"So… Professor Binns is really old, then," Harry summarized.

His tail twisted a bit. "Actually, I think that's really good. I was sort of vaguely worried about whether dragons lived longer than people. The dragons in the Pern books really hate it when their partners die..."

"I don't think Gandalf enjoyed living longer than his friends, either," Neville agreed. "And isn't that why Arwen has to pick what kind of life she's going to live?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "I wonder how Dumbledore feels about that kind of thing, actually..."

Now he thought about it, Dumbledore must be terribly sad about all the people he knew who had died in the war with Tom Riddle. He'd never realized that before.

The next morning, there was a rumour buzzing around the breakfast tables.

Harry sort of half-listened at first, too busy reading through Dark Force Rising and enjoying how sneaky Grand Admiral Thrawn was, but when he overheard that it involved the Smith twins he bookmarked his place to listen in.

It sounded like Fred and George had worked out who had been pranking them and had decided to prank back. If the rumours were correct, all the quills the twins owned had been subtly charmed – it didn't look like anything was wrong when you were looking, but they had a tendency to dance over and doodle Weasels Are Best in the margins of whatever work they were doing.

Harry wondered just how good Fred and George were at that kind of magic, and how they'd learned it – Hogwarts classes taught you a lot, but how much time did Fred and George spend experimenting that they could work out all this stuff?

Especially since they both did Quidditch as well. Maybe they just didn't sleep very much?

The idea of coming up with all kinds of new spells was interesting, and Harry had sort of already done it by accident with the Xenographia spell. Maybe that was the plus side of pranking, though Harry thought that maybe it would have to wait until his NEWT years because at least then there was the possibility of having less homework.

That or maybe he'd stop doing Quidditch, though he really wanted to keep it going for at least a year. Or could you just not go to practices?

Oliver probably wouldn't like that, though.

As November changed into December, Harry thought about the fact that he now had some adult friends – or, adult pseudo-relatives? He really wasn't sure – to think about getting presents for. That was on top of Ron, Dean, Neville and Hermione, who he had some ideas for as well.

Nothing was really going to be able to do better than the wand from last year, for Ron, so Harry wasn't going to try and was thinking about maybe making Ron something instead. The others were a bit easier, but trying to think what to get Sirius was really tricky.

Harry's letters to Sirius, and Sirius's letters back, had made it pretty clear that his 'sort of uncle' was fantastically well off, making Harry's hoard look small, and that meant that Harry was having real trouble just coming up with what Sirius would like but that he wouldn't have already got. It didn't help that he'd only really talked to Sirius once, and sent a few letters back and forth, so he wasn't even sure what kind of thing Sirius liked.

It was all a big puzzle, and since Harry liked the idea of getting his friends presents it was one he was thinking very hard about as he read over his Transfiguration homework.

Noticing a spelling mistake where he'd written house instead of mouse, Harry took out his quill and refreshed the erasing charm. He rubbed out the offending word and re-wrote it, then kept going.

Then the portrait hole opened and Fred and George tumbled in, pursued by donuts.

A wave of shock, then laughter, ran around the common room as both Weasley Twins picked themselves up before running for the stairs to their dorms. The donuts followed them, shooting right past the table Harry and his friends were at, and Harry stuck out a wing to block one of them with a plap sound before juggling it with his other wing and biting it out of the air.

It turned out to be full of melted fudge, which was quite surprising, though he supposed it wasn't as surprising as if it was full of something like… soup.

It was only a guess, but he thought the Smiths weren't going to take the prospect of losing a prank war lying down.

Harry was lying on his bed one afternoon, reading the bit in Lords and Ladies where it was talking about how nobody had said elves were nice, when there was a sharp little pop next to him.

Curious, he put a bookmark in and looked over, and was quite surprised to see that Dobby was standing there wringing his hands.

"Hello again, Dobby," he said. "Is everything all right?"

The question seemed to make Dobby rock back on his heels a bit, and he burst into tears.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Harry asked, concerned.

"Oh, Harry Potter, sir..." Dobby sniffled. "Dobby only wanted Harry Potter to be safe! But no matter what Dobby did, Harry Potter came back to Hogwarts and stayed at Hogwarts!"

"Well, I want to learn how to do magic," Harry explained. "And it's where most of my friends are. And it hasn't really been all that dangerous, either."

"If only Harry Potter knew," Dobby groaned, pulling on his long ears. "Hogwarts will be very dangerous for him! He must make sure he is safe!"

"I think I am safe," Harry replied. "Or… mostly safe, anyway. I don't think Professor Lockhart is actually You Know Who in disguise, though."

Dobby's lip trembled, and he seemed to be about to say something, but then Harry realized something.

"What do you mean about no matter what you did?" he asked.

"Dobby tried everything Dobby could think of!" the house-elf announced. "Dobby tried to find when Harry Potter could be blamed for magic, so he would have to not go to school, but Harry Potter never left the wizard house! Then Dobby tried sealing the gateway so Harry Potter could not get on the train, and Harry Potter just waited until the gate was open! Dobby had to iron his hands for that-"

"Oh, that was you?" Harry asked. "They were really confused about it – wait, you had to iron your hands?"

Dobby showed Harry his long fingers, which still had a few red marks on them, and Harry swallowed.

"That's… really… you don't have to do that kind of thing, Dobby," he said.

"Dobby must!" Dobby replied, shocked. "Dobby must punish himself if he does something wrong!"

"No, I mean you actually don't have to," Harry countered. "My friend Hermione looked it up. Nobody is allowed to make a house-elf punish themselves."

The idea made Dobby stand stock-still for at least a minute, waving slightly back and forth, and Harry wondered if the little elf had broken.

"But when Dobby found out that Harry Potter had got to Hogwarts anyway, Dobby was so surprised!" Dobby burst out. "Dobby burned master's dinner, and he got such a flogging!"

That made Harry actually angry, much more than Dobby thinking he had to punish himself had done. He must have snarled slightly, because Dobby took a step back and looked very worried.

"I don't – I'm not angry at you, Dobby," Harry explained. "It's whoever your master is. They shouldn't do that to you – they're not allowed to do it to you."

"But Dobby is a house-elf," Dobby said. "Master can do whatever Master wants to Dobby."

"No, he can't," Harry replied, quiet but insistent. "We looked it up. The law says that House-Elves can be told off, or you can threaten to give them clothes-" Dobby squeaked at the very thought, "-but they can't hit you and they can't make you hurt yourself."

Dobby pulled on his ears again, looking deeply troubled. "But… but Dobby did other things as well… Dobby wanted to keep Harry Potter safe, so Dobby tried to make it so he could not get to Hogwarts, and then Dobby tried to make it so Harry Potter would have to go home, ill!"

"You did?" Harry replied, tilting his head. "When?"

"Dobby tried to make food that would make Harry Potter ill," Dobby said. "Dobby tried making a Bludger go after Harry Potter. But Dobby has run out of ideas! Dobby does not know what to do!"

"Wait, that was you?" Harry asked. "That was tasty."

Dobby blinked his big tennis-ball eyes. "Harry Potter ate the Bludger?"

"No, I mean the one with all the hemlock in," Harry clarified. "Though maybe I could have eaten the Bludger. It probably wouldn't be very tasty, though, it's just iron."

He tilted his head. "Actually, you said you want to keep me safe from something your master wants to do… what does he want to do to me, and why?"

"Dobby cannot say!" Dobby wailed. "Dobby is not allowed to say who his master is! Dobby would be a bad Dobby and have to put his ears in the mangle!"

Harry was a bit distracted by the idea that Wizards still used mangles, but shook his head. "Uh… then why does this wizard want to hurt me?"

"He hates having wizards who are not humans at Hogwarts," Dobby said, carefully now, almost as if he was trying to find out what he was allowed to say. "Dobby thinks wizards who are not humans is a good thing, but Master thinks they are bad, and he wants to hurt Harry Potter!"

"Then… hold on," Harry said, holding up a claw. "If I left Hogwarts, wouldn't that mean that I'd done what he wanted anyway?"

Dobby looked crestfallen, then yelped. "But – but Harry Potter could be hurt more if he stays! The Chamber of Secrets will be opened once more-"

Dobby stopped, shocked, and Harry realized something.

"When was it first opened?" he asked, but Dobby grabbed a heavy book from Harry's trunk. He was about to start using it to beat himself over the head, but Harry stopped him by taking the book back. "Did anyone get hurt last time?"

The house-elf nodded, clearly scared, and Harry thought for a bit before asking the next question. "Was it something that Tom Riddle did when he was in school?"

Dobby fell over.

"How does Harry Potter know that name?" he asked.

"Professor Dumbledore told me in first year," Harry replied. "I actually found one of his diaries in my stuff, I'm not sure where from, but I handed it in to Dumbledore."

Dobby gaped, then flung himself at Harry and hugged him around the waist.

"Harry Potter is a great wizard!" he announced.

"Blimey," Ron said. "I didn't know a diary was that important."

Dobby froze, and Harry looked at the door. Ron was there, and so were Dean, Neville and Hermione, and it looked like either Fred or George had his head around the door as well.

"How long have you been there?" Harry asked.

"Pretty much for all of it," Dean answered.

Dobby let out a kind of meep noise and vanished with a crack.

AN:

And that's where that's ended up going.

Yes, canonically Dobby does get beaten by Lucius. This is what Harry gets angry about, not the multiple pseudo-assassination attempts...