Once Remus had been supplied with clothing, Harry stayed around long enough to tell Sirius just how to cast the spell and then went back through the Floo. Remus had already decided that he was going to have to find out whether the spell worked just for that month or if it was permanent, and all that Harry could do was to say that Wanderings with Werewolves hadn't actually said whether or not the Wagga Wagga Werewolf was permanently cured or not – Lockhart had left town before the next full moon.

Remus said he'd do his best to find the answer, then yawned, and that was when Harry had decided that Sirius had the spell right and gone back to Hogwarts.

It wasn't even midnight yet, which meant that Harry was fairly sure he'd be awake on time tomorrow morning.

Defence was still all about covering what was in Professor Lockhart's books, and Harry did sort of hope that they'd get to the practical side of things sooner or later – it wasn't that long before the Easter Holidays, and if the next term was all about practicals then… well, then it would be a lot like it had been in first year, actually.

Still, it would be nice to actually learn Defence spells in Defence instead of being taught the odd one by Professor Flitwick, like the Disarming Charm which seemed quite elegant to Harry. Dean had this idea that you could probably turn most charms into a Defence spell just by casting it really hard, and casting a spell really hard was certainly something Dean was good at, but Harry would much rather have a few spells to deal with different situations. (Despite what some dragons in books thought, and despite what Seamus Finnegan seemed to be unconsciously doing, not everything could be solved by setting things on fire.)

Harry couldn't even train up with the others, because as the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match got closer the amount of training Oliver Wood was making them do got more and more extensive. He even had to skip book club.

He had the vague sense that that should be against the school rules.

"All right, everyone," Oliver said, in the dressing room. "This is it."

He paused.

"Are you two all right?" he asked.

Both the Beaters shrugged more-or-less in unison.

"He's got a point," Katie admitted. "Usually you two copy what he's about to say."

"But since they're not," Oliver went on, much happier now, "It's the big one. The one we've all been waiting for."

"Aren't all the games equally important?" Harry asked, raising his paw. "It's a league game, not an elimination game. The only kind of Quidditch game that has finals is the world cup."

"Oh, don't you start," Oliver muttered. "It's bad enough with the Terrible Twins offering commentary… anyway. This matters, because last time we took a beating flying against Hufflepuff. I'm not too proud to admit it – we need to make sure that doesn't happen, or our hopes at the Quidditch Cup end here."

Harry nodded.

"Harry, you go straight for the Snitch," Oliver added. "It might mean we're giving up a chance for a better score, but I'd rather that than take the risk that Diggory grabs the Snitch – it's a three hundred point swing."

That sounded simple enough to Harry, since he had a much better broom than before and he wasn't going to be chased by a rogue Bludger this time. (Well, probably, anyway.)

"Fred, George, your job is to keep their Chasers under control," Oliver told them, pointing to one twin and then the other. "Girls, you're to-"

"What, we're 'Girls', but they're Fred and George?" Alicia interrupted. "Why?"

"Because if I say Weasleys they'll assume I'm talking about someone else," Oliver said firmly. "You need to keep the ball in their half of the pitch as much as possible – be aggressive, don't let them line up shots. I think last time we played Hufflepuff we were too defensive."

"And what's your job?" Katie said.

"He stops the ball going in the holes on that side of the field," Fred said.

Oliver sighed. "All right," he told them. "Let's go."

Harry took a quick flight around the pitch before the start of the game, wanting to get a sense for how the air felt. It was a bit damp, but the sun was out, and vapour was steaming off the grass – it felt like the air was dense, heavy with humidity, and that meant he could steer and flap more easily than normal.

To his surprise, Sirius was sitting in the crowd – smiling and waving a Gryffindor banner, looking like he was really enjoying himself. He winked at Harry as Harry went past, then flourished his wand and tapped the poster Dean was holding up.

The dragon on the flag animated, wings flapping, and shot after the Snitch that Dean had also painted on the banner. The little fleck of gold vanished off the side of the flag, chased by the dragon, and then came back in from all sorts of different directions before being chased off that way again.

Touched, Harry flew around in the other half of his familiarization flight before flaring to land with the rest of the team.

"I hope I don't need to tell you I want a good clean game," Madam Hooch said, to nods from both teams, and then released the Bludgers and the Snitch. She balanced the Quaffle on her palm, waiting until the regulation amount of time had passed, then threw it into the air.

Harry took off with a big wingbeat and all the speed in his Nimbus 2001 before anyone had caught the Quaffle. Fred and George were rocketing into the air as well, and there was a whang as Fred hit a Bludger and sent it towards the Hufflepuff Chaser who'd managed to get a hold of the Quaffle.

Wings beating hard, Harry climbed up past the level of the goals as he looked around for the Snitch. He heard whoops and cheers from the crowd as the Quaffle went back and forth as the Hufflepuff Chasers tried to win ground, and as the Gryffindor Chasers kept denying them the chance.

Then he spotted something glittering gold behind the Hufflepuff goal ring, and twisted to rocket straight towards it.

Cedric, the Hufflepuff Seeker, saw what he was doing and turned to follow, but Harry was not much further away and his broom was quite a lot faster. It was close, but he snatched the Snitch out of the air just a second before Cedric reached it.

He might have left a few tooth dents, but he extracted it from his mouth and held it up to show that, no, he hadn't actually swallowed it.

The Chaser battle stopped as everybody realized what had happened, and there was a kind of muttering in the crowd.

"Was that it!?" Blaise Zabini demanded. "I almost want a refund!"

"Sorry!" Harry called back. "The captain said to catch the Snitch!"

For some reason that seemed very funny to everyone.

Sirius told Harry off (in an absolutely non-serious way, though it was a Sirius way) for not at least having the decency to break the world record for catching a Snitch – three seconds – before releasing him to the tender mercies of his housemates.

There was quite a party, including some things that Harry was sure that Fred and George must have snuck into the castle, and it felt like it lasted at least two hundred times as long as the game had.

Though that wasn't exactly hard.

"Okay, I think we need to make an important decision," Ron said, the day before the end of term.

"We do?" Hermione asked. "Like what? How to do our homework?"

"Well… oddly, it's actually sort of related to that," Ron replied.

"How to make launching model rockets into homework?" Dean suggested. "Or maybe just making the Quidditch rules make sense?"

"Hey, Quidditch rules make sense," Ron protested. "Sort of. In a league structure."

He gave Dean a look. "I want to see England win the Quidditch World Cup one day, Dean, don't take that away from me."

"That would work," Neville said, looking at Harry.

"It would?" Harry asked.

"Well, it might," Neville mused. "It depends."

"Or, in a pinch, I get the Cannons to sign Harry for a season," Ron added. "Either or."

He tapped a foot on the floor. "If Harry has a top of the line broom, he's slightly faster and a lot more agile than anyone else is because he can use his wings."

"You're suggesting just using him as a Snitch-seeking missile," Dean mused. "Could work. But speaking of World Cups, I've heard good things about England's chances for the 1994 World Cup so far – we've got two wins and two draws, and one of the wins was six-nil."

"No we haven't," Neville interrupted. "We lost to Transylvania, it was a three hour match yesterday."

"What?" Dean asked.

"He's obviously talking about football, Neville," Hermione said, shaking her head. "Six-nil in Quidditch isn't even possible."

"Oh, good point," Neville admitted. "I keep forgetting there are other team sports."

"How do you know what's going on in Muggle sports?" Ron asked. "Don't radios and tellies not work here?"

"Hogwarts: A History says that RADAR and computers and things like that don't work at Hogwarts," Hermione confirmed. "But I know Dean asked Harry to get him a sports newspaper last time he went into Fort William."

"Hold on a minute," Dean asked. "Did you just say computers and stuff don't work at Hogwarts? How do they know?"

"They must have tested it," Hermione said. "Why?"

"Hermione, you've got a watch," Dean pointed out. "How does that work?"

"It's a clockwork one," Hermione told him, showing it off. "I asked for it because I read that electronics didn't work at Hogwarts."

Harry was quite impressed with the watch – just the bits he could see had all kinds of interesting gears visible – and he wondered if maybe he should get one.

Maybe a pocket watch would be better, though.

"That's funny," Dean said, pulling his own sleeve up to reveal his watch. "Because this one's a cheap quartz one I got for about ten quid, and it works too."

"That's..." Hermione began, then paused. "Um. Odd?"

"Can we get back to the topic?" Ron asked.

"Oh, right, Quidditch," Neville nodded. "So you were wanting to-"

"No, the original topic," Ron corrected him. "An important decision."

Harry couldn't even remember how long that had been the topic for, and said so.

"Well, it's about which of the extra subjects we can take next year we should take," Ron explained. "I think we should work out which one everyone's taking, so we know we're not going to be alone in any class."

"I've already made my choice," Hermione said. "I'm doing all of them."

"Like Percy did," Harry realized. "He did seem kind of stressed out by it, though."

Hermione frowned. "Well… he did get top marks in everything, and I didn't think he was stressed. So I think it's still a good idea."

Harry wasn't quite sure there would be enough hours in the day for that, but it was Hermione's choice. And Percy had managed it.

"What about you, Nev?" Ron asked.

"Oh, um… I was sort of thinking about Arithmancy," Neville replied. "That's all about predicting things with maths, and one of the things that means is… what was it, Hermione?"

"Reversing the process," Hermione answered promptly. "So you define what you want the magic to do, and then you solve the predictions to calculate what you need to do to create that magical effect."

"That," Neville agreed. "And… well, I like the idea of a magic sword, I guess. I don't even know if you can do it, but it seems like an Arithmancy thing."

"That's what I was thinking, too," Harry agreed. "Though I was thinking of doing Arithmancy and Runes, I'm not sure which of them it would be."

Neville frowned. "I… wasn't sure about Runes," he mused. "That might be my third choice. Muggle Studies is my second, because there's all kinds of cool stuff."

"Absolutely," Ron nodded, enthusiastically. "Dad likes Muggle stuff, and some of it sounds really cool. If there's more stuff like those rockets Harry got me, I'm all for it."

"It's a minimum of two, right?" Dean asked, and got nods. "I'm not really sure about any of them, Muggle Studies sounds almost too easy, and all the others might be kind of hard… Care of Magical Creatures could be cool, and I could get behind doing Divination as well."

"Care of Magical Creatures is my third choice," Harry agreed, nodding. "It's sort of… me studies, a bit, anyway."

"So that's Harry with three," Hermione said, writing all that down. "Arithmancy, Runes and Creatures?"

"That's right," Harry confirmed.

He was sort of interested in Divination as well, because he was the subject of a prophecy, but he wasn't sure on that one. It might just leave him without enough free time…

"Maybe four," he said, so they knew he was thinking about it.

"Blimey, when did everyone turn into a workaholic?" Ron asked.

He paused, spotting how Hermione was looking at him (it sort of reminded Harry of how June looked when there was a particularly tasty steak in the offing), and amended himself. "I mean, when did everyone start being into doing a lot of work?"

"We met Hermione on the train," Dean opined. "We were already doomed."

"Fair point," Ron agreed.

"Two for Dean," Hermione added. "Creatures and Divination?"

"Probably," Dean said. "This isn't final, though, right?"

"You can change any time up until they send out the letters with what you need for next year, I think," Hermione told him. "Ask Fred and George, apparently they kept swapping things around. Neville, you were interested in two?"

"Two or three," Neville told her. "Arithmancy, Muggle Studies and maybe Runes."

"And Ron, you're going for Runes and Muggle Studies," Hermione finished. "Well, if nobody takes their Maybe subjects, that means there's going to be three of us in Creatures, three in Runes, three in Arithmancy, three in Muggle Studies and two in Divination."

"That's kind of neat, actually," Ron said. "Almost. Who was only doing two, could they do Divination as well?"

"I'm not doing Divination and Divination, mate," Dean snorted. "I don't think that's possible."

"I didn't mean you, I meant Neville," Ron said. "Though, no, your third preference is Runes… nah, I'm not doing Divination just to make it all symmetrical and stuff."

After thinking about it a lot, and talking about it over the mirror with Sirius, Harry had decided that he wanted to stay in Hogwarts over the Easter Holiday. He knew he had somewhere he could go where he'd be welcome, which was a really nice feeling, but at the same time he had some magic practice to do and that wasn't something he could do at Grimmauld Place.

Most of the Weasleys were going to be staying at Hogwarts as well, except – for some reason Harry didn't know – Fred and George, and of Harry's close friends only Dean was off back home.

Harry decided to test how good he was getting at flying fast by pacing the train as it pulled out of Hogsmeade station, which went well. His wings hurt a bit with how fast he had to fly, but he managed to keep up with the train until it was about to reach a tunnel, and then Harry pulled up instead of making a Harry-shaped hole in the hillside.

If he'd had a speed-ometer, he might even have been able to tell how fast he was going.

"The thing I don't get is how Dumbledore is okay with all of… this," Daphne said, waving her hand vaguely at the work she was doing for Defence. "How exactly is this good Defence work?"

She picked up a copy of Witch Weekly with two fingers, as if it might smell. "Tell me what the assignment was, again, Tracy, I don't think I believe my own memories."

"We have to put together a collage of things that would make people confident in Gilderoy Lockhart," Tracy Davis replied absently. "Yeah, I know."

"Well, he does know his stuff," Harry said. "He taught me a spell which worked."

"I think that might be the first time he's taught anyone a spell that worked," Daphne mused. "Ever asked any of the upper years about it? He's kind of evasive."

Harry slid his claw along one of the pages in his photocopied extracts of Magical Me – which he'd duplicated more than a dozen times, to give as many people in his class as possible the chance to use book extracts. "I do hope we do practical work next term."

Tracy scoffed, in a genteel sort of way.

"My housemates are just unconvinced of how good Lockhart really is," Blaise said, looking up from where he was carefully arranging half-a-dozen pictures of Lockhart on the page. "Myself, I think he's marvellous at what he does."

"How can you possibly think that?" Daphne demanded. "He hasn't taught us anything except theory, and most of that is about how to make people like you instead of how to actually defend ourselves."

"Exactly," Blaise replied. "Think about it. What's he doing? He's keeping a job teaching Defence, but he's not actually teaching Defence."

"...I don't get it," Daphne admitted.

"He's clearly aware of the curse on the position," Blaise elaborated. "He's trying to find out if you can spend a whole year here if you don't actually teach Defence, just PR."

There was a silence as Harry and the two Slytherin girls considered that.

"I think I'm just going to assume he's an awful teacher," Daphne announced.

Harry's opinion on the matter was that at least he was better than Professor Quirrell, who was after all essentially a sort of Nazgul, but then a big black dog came bounding over the nearest hill.

"...Padfoot?" he asked, confused, and the dog loped over to him. "Are you serious?"

There was a blur, and Sirius was standing there instead. "How much time do you spend up thinking up versions of that pun?"

"Not all that long, actually," Harry replied, shrugging his wings. "It just sort of happens."

"So, you're Sirius Black," Blaise said, looking him up and down. "My mother would hate it if I didn't ask this question, so – are you single?"

"Currently," Sirius told him.

"Isn't your mother engaged?" Tracy asked.

"She believes in planning ahead," Blaise shrugged. "You have to when you enjoy Iocaine powder in your wine."

"Well, now I'm definitely not interested in that particular relationship," Sirius mused. "Anyway, Harry, I wanted to tell you that I got a house in Hogsmeade. So I'll be able to visit more easily during school holidays."

He looked down at the piles of cut paper and stuff. "You look busy."

"Yeah, this is Defence homework," Harry explained.

"I'm… um… okay, sure," Sirius said. "Anyway. Do you trust these Slytherins?"

"...I'm tempted to say yes, but I know that that's something they'd find insulting," Harry replied.

"Well done, you're starting to understand Slytherins," Blaise told him.

"In that case, to avoid offending your Slytherins I'll wait to talk about this until later," Sirius decided.

"Excuse me?" Tracy said. "We are not his Slytherins!"

"If anything he's our dragon," Daphne agreed, nodding. "He's Gryffindor, but we think that can be cured in time."

"How do you cure someone of being a Gryffindor?" Sirius asked, sounding interested.

"It should mostly wear off in a bit more than five years," Daphne told him.

Harry snorted.

Apart from homework, and magic practice with Sirius, and more catching up on books, Harry also spent a lot of time on the language and knitting lessons with Hagrid. He'd had to move on to using actual needles, but at the same time Hagrid had decided that he'd got good enough to start making a thing instead of just randomly knitting bits of wool together.

Harry had the idea that maybe he should try and fix how some wizards thought about him, like Miss Umbridge or Mr. Malfoy, and it was with that in mind that he got hold of some green and silver wool and began knitting a pair of gloves.

Home made gifts were supposed to show you cared enough to put in the effort, after all, though the first glove Harry made (while listening to Hagrid and Nora having a halting conversation in Dragonish about what kinds of food she liked) was more of what Hagrid called a snood than anything.

Snood was a good word, though. So that was sort of something to be proud of.

"Okay, get ready!" Harry heard Sirius instruct. "Your job is to try as hard as possible to hit Harry with your spells when he comes over the hill!"

"And what if we miss?" Hermione asked.

"Well, if you miss then Harry's done a good job dodging," Sirius shrugged. "Or you need to get better at aiming."

"And what if we hit?" Hermione continued. "How exactly will we know if Harry has been hit? He'll be moving too fast for anyone to tell."

"I assume Harry would notice," Sirius replied, then frowned. "Or… actually, that is a good point."

"So we won't know if we're hitting or not, and Harry won't know if he's dodging or not, and even if we did know that we wouldn't know if we were both doing well or both doing badly," Hermione summed up. "This is terribly unscientific."

"Um, well… yeah?" Sirius asked. "Science is a Muggle thing. This is Magic."

"That has nothing to do with it," Hermione sighed. "You tell him, Ron."

Harry adjusted his position a little so he was more comfortable.

"Honestly, I just do what the packet says," Ron replied. "I get how they found out all this stuff, but I don't get any of the details more complicated than 'they tried it, and it worked'."

"That's okay, that's sort of the point anyway," Hermione told him. "Science is about results. Testable, and repeatable, results. The fact that a wizard pointing their wand at someone and incanting 'Expelliarmus' will tend to result in a jet of red light that causes their target to lose whatever weapons they're currently carrying? That is a reliable, scientific result."

"...so magic is science?" Sirius said, sounding lost now.

"Science is a way of understanding things," Hermione told him. "It's about things being reliable."

"So your magic is science, and mine isn't?" Neville asked.

"Your magic is no different from mine," Hermione assured him. "There's something involved that's making it harder for you to do magic, and whatever that is is consistent."

"Are we going to do the bit where Harry flies overhead and we try to hit him with spells?" Ron asked. "I thought that was why we're out here."

"Oh, very well," Hermione allowed. "If we must."

"Ready, Harry?" Sirius called.

"Ready!" Harry replied.

He spread his wings, tensed, and then took off.

Ron, Hermione and Neville all began throwing Disarming spells at him, and he climbed a bit higher to dodge. That turned out to be the wrong idea, as a red jet of light definitely seemed to hit him on the chest, and then another one splashed into his wing before he landed.

"Well done, um..." Sirius began, then stopped. "Harry, did you see who cast that?"

"I told you," Hermione grumbled.

Harry had to shake his head, but he was also thinking about how he'd been hit in the first place. It probably had to do with speed? Or how well his friends could predict where he was going to be, anyway…

Maybe the way Sirius had taught them all how to cast Stunning Spells was a bit of a problem. At least if everyone was using a different spell colour it would work a bit better.

He was about to take off to try again, but then he caught sight of something.

"Sirius?" he asked. "Is that Remus?"

"Remus?" Sirius repeated. "It might be – why would he be here?"

He spread his hands. "Sorry, kids, looks like I've got this to deal with."

"That's okay, Mr. Lord Black your highness," Neville replied politely. "We're glad you gave us help to begin with."

"...highness?" Sirius asked, sounding confused.

"I wasn't sure which of those things you were," Neville said. "So I guessed. Gran always says I shouldn't disrespect anyone who doesn't deserve it."

Harry and Sirius caught up with Remus at the castle door, accompanied by a man who looked like he was from one of the countries Uncle Vernon lumped together under "Foreign Parts". He had tired eyes, and yawned every so often, and as they headed to the stairs Remus introduced him as Michael.

"I met him in Wagga Wagga," he added, as they began to climb to the next floor of Hogwarts. "Harry, which of the offices is your Defence teacher using?"

"I… don't actually know," Harry admitted – he'd never had a detention, and he'd had to see other teachers outside school hours but never Professor Lockhart.

"All right, hold on a moment," Remus asked, and pulled a piece of fresh-looking parchment out of his robes.

He touched his wand to it. "I'm lost."

A map of Hogwarts erupted out from the point of his wand, and Sirius gave him a look.

"I'm lost?" he asked. "I'm lost? Is that the activation phrase?"

"It's easier to remember than the old one," Remus replied absently, while Michael blinked owlishly and looked at the map.

"That's a pretty sweet piece of magic," he said, in an obvious Australian accent – Harry recognized it from Neighbours. "They didn't have anything like that at Wallamullah."

"It's kind of new for here," Remus told him, studying it. "The really difficult bit was making it work out where the offices were… ah, here it is. It's on the fifth floor."

He set off again, and Harry dropped back slightly to climb the stairs alongside Michael.

"Where's Wallamullah?" he asked. "Is that the Australian school of magic?"

"Australia and New Zealand both, right enough," Michael agreed. "It's hundreds of years old, they said in History class that it dated all the way back to the time the land was first sung. But it's changed a lot in the last few hundred years, so they say."

Harry was interested to hear more, and Michael began explaining. His mother had been from one of the old magical families of Australia, it seemed, and they'd been going to Wallamullah for at least twenty generations, but it was only after the arrival of Europeans a few hundred years ago that writing had come to the continent – before then it had all been oral tradition, handed down at Wallamullah by the best Witches and Wizards of the continent.

Wands were new, as well, comparatively speaking – before then all magic in Australia had been wandless – and that meant that Wallamullah had done a ten-year course, which they still did these days (and it took six to get an OWL).

It was all very strange to hear, sort of like a distorted mirror image of his own education at Hogwarts, and it kept Harry occupied at least until they reached Professor Lockhart's office.

Professor Lockhart didn't open the door for a couple of minutes, but when he did it was with a winning smile and his clothes and hair arranged just so. "Good morning! I see our castle has some visitors!"

He put a finger to his cheek, thinking. "So I recognize you, of course, Harry – and is that Sirius Black? You were all over the papers last year, lovely story, exactly the sort of thing people like to hear. But you need to work with it, not just let it fade away."

"I'm quite happy not having reminders of when my mistake led to the death of the man who was like a brother to me," Sirius growled.

It was actually very impressive. Harry had thought the most you could do with a growl was to go "grr", but Sirius had managed to growl an entire quite long sentence.

"That's what I'm saying!" Lockhart protested. "You need to shape the story, make it about how you've endured terrible hardship, you're so glad that justice has finally been done… people will love it."

Sirius seemed very annoyed by that, though Lockhart just kept smiling. "And I don't believe I've met either of these other gentlemen?"

"Remus Lupin," Remus said.

"Michael Freeman," the Australian added. "I've not met you before either, mate."

Somehow, the word 'mate' didn't seem to mean the same thing the way he said it to the way Ron said it.

"Well, if you're interested in autographs, I can certainly provide," Lockhart said, reaching for an enormous peacock quill. "Or if you want signed copies of the books?"

"That's not the problem, mate," Michael said, his accent suddenly sounding a lot stronger. "The problem is that I've read your scummy book, an' it says you saved the village of Wagga Wagga from the terror of me attacks."

He advanced to poke Lockhart in the chest, despite the other man suddenly scrambling backwards. "Wagga Wagga ain't a village, and it wasn't no poncy blonde pom who stopped me doin' so much damage, neither."

"Well – I must say-" Lockhart said. "Books are always edited for better effect-"

"You wrote them!" Harry burst out, wings flaring for a moment before he pulled them back in again. "You said you were the one who did all those things! They'd be great fiction books, but you said they weren't!"

"My dear boy, you must understand," Lockhart went on, and Harry sort of noticed that Remus and Sirius had both got their wands out. "Nobody would want to read a book about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save villages from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover."

"Then put a werewolf on the front cover?" Harry suggested. "Wolfsbane got invented years ago now, you could take a photo of a werewolf posing."

"I mean, come on, Harry," Lockhart said, glancing nervously at the wands pointed at him. "There was a lot of research involved. I had to track these people down, and I had to do it before too many other people heard – then I had to get all the details, and, well – there's a lot of work involved! Especially in Memory Charming them so they wouldn't be inconvenient, and then in doing book signings, it's a long hard slog-"

Michael punched him, laying him out flat on the floor.

"You're a right bastard," he said.

"Obliviate!" Lockhart retaliated, and the Australian man flinched back so fast he slipped and fell over – it looked like he did it quickly enough to not be hit by the spell, but Harry wasn't quite sure.

Lockhart sprang back to his feet, whirling around to face the others, and Sirius cast a stunning spell. The Defence Professor dodged it with surprising speed, which reminded Harry that Lockhart had once talked about being a Seeker, then pointed his wand at Sirius.

Harry raised his wing to protect his godfather, and the Memory Charm hit his wing membrane with a flash. Remus fired a Disarming Charm, sending Lockhart's wand into the air, and the teacher ducked back behind his desk before shoving a tall stack of books over it.

"Hey, that's my wand!" Michael yelped, and there was a thrashing noise which led to Lockhart going oof. Then Remus Transfigured the desk into a pig, which sent everything on it clattering to the floor and the pig running off into the office with another crashing noise.

Magical battles seemed a lot more complicated when they actually happened than even duels were.

"Expelliarmus!" Remus called again, and caught Michael's wand as it flew out of Lockhart's hand. "Harry, can you go and get Professor Dumbledore, please?"

"I'm not sure if he's in," Harry admitted. "I'm pretty sure Professor McGonagall is, though."

"That sounds fine," Remus said.

"Damn – look out!" Sirius called urgently.

Harry flared up both wings this time, in case Lockhart had managed to get hold of a third wand, but instead he had pulled a broom from the debris on the floor. Harry hadn't ever seen a broom that looked anything quite like it, and Lockhart didn't bother getting astride it before starting the broom moving towards the window.

The panes of glass smashed as Lockhart's broom went through them, and Michael started saying something that didn't sound like English, but Harry was mostly focused on trying to catch the man who'd tried to hurt Sirius and Remus.

Already up, Harry's wings slammed down in a takeoff downbeat, and he closed his eyes for a moment as he went through the window after Lockhart.

Lockhart had managed to swing himself onto the broom properly by the time Harry was out of the window, and he was already accelerating away really fast – Harry had to work overtime to try and keep up, and he was wishing that he had his Nimbus 2001 to help make up the difference.

Fumbling for his wand, Harry cast the Stunning charm – then realized that it might knock Lockhart off his broom instead of just making him sink back to the ground.

It didn't hit, anyway – but it got close, and Lockhart only just dodged at the last second.

After thinking about it for a moment, Harry decided that he was close enough – and they were high enough up – that he could probably catch Lockhart if he fell off his broom, and cast another stunning spell. That missed as well, and then something bright blue went blurring past Harry from the direction of the castle and exploded.

A powerful wind sprang up from nowhere, blowing them both towards the ground, and Harry adjusted first. He managed to ride the wind to get closer to Lockhart, not close enough to grab him but close, and breathed out a jet of brilliant blue flames at the man he hoped wasn't going to be the Defence professor any more.

Lockhart dropped even lower to avoid being hit, though he did get splattered by some of the bluebell flames, and he was too busy trying to bat them off him to keep track of where he was going.

Harry heard the thud as he hit the ground, and by the time Lockhart had got to his feet again Harry had landed on top of the broom.

"What's going on?" Hermione demanded, and Harry realized they'd ended up landing pretty close to where they'd been practicing earlier.

"Lockhart tried to memory charm Sirius," Harry summarized. "And he's a fake, he didn't do any of the things in those books!"

"Come now, Harry, there's no need to make anything up," Lockhart said, sounding like he was trying to sound reasonable, and Neville pointed his wand at Lockhart.

"Don't say anything else," Neville insisted, his voice cracking slightly. "Or I'll try and stun you."

"Why haven't you stunned him already?" Ron asked. "Why haven't I stunned him already?"

"If you try to stun him, you'll stun him," Neville said. "If I try to stun him I don't know what will happen."

Lockhart turned faintly green, which didn't go very well with his robes.

AN:

Wagga Wagga is a pretty big place, more than 50,000 people in 1996. Not a village.

Also, different choices for electives.

As for the Australian school, I did my best to make it fitting. It's kind of a tradeoff between how fractured the pre-contact population was and how small it was, but I decided it would be interesting to have a pre-contact magical education site that developed into a modern school without losing the identity.

Michael Freeman is at least partly First Nations, though Harry doesn't really notice as such.