Harry's first trip to Hogwarts had been a tricky one, with disruptions like a late Muggle train and the fact that everybody he met on the magical side of the barrier had wanted to say hello and shake his paw.
His second trip to Hogwarts had gone a bit smoother, with the main delay coming from Dobby's misguided attempt to keep him safe – though Harry still wasn't entirely sure what Dobby was trying to keep him safe from, and Dobby didn't know either except that it was meant to involve Riddle's diary and the Chamber of Secrets.
Now it was time for Harry's third trip to Hogwarts, and there were two ways to think about whether things would go wrong. Either it was easily time for there to be a trip where nothing went wrong, and it would all be fine, or by now it was obvious that things would always go wrong, and it wouldn't all be fine.
"You know what I just realized?" Ron asked, looking out the window at the countryside racing past.
"What's that?" Dean replied.
He rolled some dice, counted them up, then rolled two of them again.
"That's a full house," Neville supplied, checking the score sheet. "I think?"
"Yeah, I think it is too," Dean agreed, marking it down. "I wonder how you'd magic-ify this game."
"Maybe the dice would question your life choices," Ron suggested. "Anyway, I just realized that we're going to be as old as Fred and George were when we first arrived at Hogwarts."
"Good point," Harry agreed, thinking about how much more grown-up Fred and George had seemed then.
Of course, Harry had got to know them since.
"Speak for yourself," Ginny huffed. "I'm only going to be as old as you were when I got to Hogwarts."
"And Fred and George are going to be as old as Percy was when we first came to Hogwarts," Neville supplied.
Dean whooped. "A large straight! Look at that!"
"It is kind of odd how important age is," Hermione mused. "Oh, I assume neither of you made Prefect?"
Trouble shook his head, nibbling on an Every Flavour Bean. He blinked, holding it in one paw, then jumped off the table they'd made out of everyone's trunks and blurred into probably-Fred.
"I think this one's egg," he said. "Hey, George, try it!"
He lobbed it to Strife, who jumped to catch it and gave it a nibble as well.
"Note to self, work on being able to talk while transformed," Fred added, then put his hands on the edge of the table. He pulled upwards, contracting back down to a pine marten in an instant, and hauled himself the rest of the way onto the table and walked over to a bag of nuts and berries that Dobby had packed for them.
Harry watched, interested, and then the compartment door slid open.
"Potter," Draco said, looking up at the luggage rack where Harry was lying (and which didn't contain any actual luggage at the moment, making it more of a dragon rack). "I thought you should know that our new House-Elf is much better than Dobby was."
"That's great," Harry replied, pleased. "If you like your new house elf and treat him better, then everybody's come out of this better off – the Weasleys really like Dobby and he likes them, and you like your new elf."
"You shouldn't be happy about it," Draco protested. "You should be upset that your plan didn't work, Potter – do you understand?"
"What plan?" Harry asked. "I suppose I wanted Dobby to be better off, but if he'd been happy with you there wouldn't have been anything to do in the first place."
Draco looked confused and puzzled, then shut the door.
Trouble and Strife both started giggling, which was quite a high-pitched noise. Strife actually fell off the ersatz table, then shook himself and shifted back to being George.
"I am never going to get tired of that!" he announced. "I know you don't plan that, Harry, but it's still amazing to watch!"
That was the most unusual thing that happened on the whole trip, apart from Anna coming into the compartment and asking to borrow the Twins for something.
None of the third-years (or Ginny) knew quite what happened after that, but there seemed to be quite a lot of laughing and noise from further up the train.
"So, what do we think?" Hermione asked, as the train began to slow. "Did we fit?"
"Just about," Neville decided. "But next time I say we just set up Harry's tent. There's much more room in there."
He shrugged. "Or maybe I should get a tent myself. Is there a camping supply shop in Hogsmeade?"
"I know there's a joke shop in Hogsmeade," Ron supplied. "And a sweetshop, as well."
"And the most haunted building in Britain!" Hermione enthused.
"Isn't that Hogwarts, though?" Dean asked. "How many ghosts would there have to be in wherever this place is?"
"It's the Shrieking Shack," Hermione told him. "Unearthly howls and screeches come from it, everyone's too scared to investigate."
"I'm pretty sure that place isn't haunted," Harry countered. "It's just where they send werewolf students to transform. Remus told me about it."
"Oh," Hermione replied, deflating a little. "That's… hold on."
She dug into her bag to find the history book she'd been relying on, and Ron continued. "Anyway, there's also a place which Fred and George always sound really scared of, it's a tea shop."
"I never heard about that," Ginny said, sounding a little annoyed that they were all talking Hogsmeade and she wouldn't get the chance for another year.
Harry hadn't either, but then he'd mostly been flying off to Fort William or Portree instead of stopping off so close to the castle.
"Well, it's supposed to be really frilly and girly and stuff," Ron explained. "The kind of place girls make boys take them on dates."
Ginny muttered something about stereotypes.
"I really want to correct this now," Hermione said, her copy of Hogwarts: A History open in her hand. "But that would mean writing on a book, and that just seems wrong."
"Unless it's a puzzle book," Harry supplied, wanting to contribute.
Getting up to the castle went without a hitch – there was no sign of Nora, which was a little odd, though Harry did hear a loud "HELLO!" from the direction of the lake.
What was a surprise, though, was when they entered the Great Hall. All the teachers except for Professor McGonagall and the always-absent Divination teacher were there, and Harry looked to see who the new Defence teacher was.
To his considerable surprise, there was a wolf sitting there… and wearing a well-tailored shirt, along with a tie in Gryffindor colours.
Something about the wolf seemed very familiar, and Harry puzzled over it until he was halfway to Gryffindor table – then realized all at once what was going on, and stopped so suddenly that Ron trod on his tail by mistake.
"Oops," his friend winced. "Sorry, mate."
Harry assured Ron that it was his fault, and they found a group of seats at Gryffindor table as Harry glanced back up at the high table.
That was still Moony, or Remus, or whatever the right way to think of him was.
Or should be think of him as Professor Lupin now?
Either way, he'd been learning defensive magic from Remus for a while now and it seemed like this was going to be a good year for the subject.
"You hear that, Harry?" Dean asked, interrupting Harry's thoughts. "Apparently there's someone in a wheelchair attending this year. I never really thought about that kind of thing before."
"I'm kind of surprised," Neville added. "Um, normally magical healing can fix that sort of thing… I wonder what's different here?"
"Maybe they're a Muggleborn?" Hermione suggested. "But I would have thought that any of the teachers who meet new Muggleborn families would have said… unless they have to stay in the wheelchair so nobody back home notices?"
Harry was all the more interested, now, and looked up at the ceiling. It was a slightly cloudy evening, with the sun having set an hour or two ago, but the full moon was just coming into view overhead.
He'd forgotten about that, which was a bit embarrassing. But then again, Remus could have had Sirius change him back as soon as the full moon rose and he transformed, so why was he sitting at the high table in werewolf form?
Why hadn't anyone raised a fuss?
A moment later, Harry remembered that June was in Second Year now and everyone in the hall was used to that. Maybe they just thought Moony was one of June's relatives.
Harry thought about that for the next few minutes as the rest of the non-first-years filed into the hall, and then the ghosts joined them. Lord Ridley flourished his sword, declaring that Harry would be slain one day if he had anything to say about it, then Sir Nicholas told him off sharply and guided his fellow ghost down the table to an open place.
Then the First-Years came in, and Harry turned with everyone else to watch.
The wheelchair was easy enough to spot, moving roughly in the middle of the group of students, but the rumours hadn't been nearly as interesting as the truth. While the wheelchair was quite a sight, with wheels made of shining brass and which spun without needing to be pushed, the person in the wheelchair was quite clearly no more human than Tanisis or Harry himself.
"That's a merman, isn't it?" Hermione asked, interested. "Or – a mer-boy, I suppose. Oh, where's my copy of Fantastic Beasts?"
"Never mind that, look who's behind him!" Ron said. "Isn't that a Cerberus?"
"Cerberus is a name, Ron," Hermione told him. "The correct term is three-headed dog. Like how Pegasus is a name and the correct term is winged horse."
Harry wasn't an expert at how three-headed dogs looked, but this particular one seemed to be a girl about as tall at the shoulder as one of the shortest humans in the line. The three neat bows on her heads were a distinct clue to that – one pink, one white and one yellow – and her heads looked around with the same kind of amazement that Harry remembered from his own first time at Hogwarts.
"How are they going to sort someone with three heads?" Neville asked. "Is it just the average? Or the majority?"
Dean snorted.
"I just imagined," he explained. "Okay, so one of you is a Slytherin, one of you is a Gryffindor, one of you is a Ravenclaw, so you're averaging out to Hufflepuff."
As they talked, Professor McGongall had all the first-years stop in their proper places, and then the Sorting Hat began to sing.
It was an interesting song, all about how the only thing the Four Founders of Hogwarts had had in common was that they all wanted to help everyone get a magical education. How Slytherin was for those who preferred to read people and Ravenclaw for those who preferred to read books, how Gryffindor was for those who would do what was right and Hufflepuff for those who would do what was hard.
Harry wondered if maybe the Sorting Hat had a thousand songs by now, or maybe just twenty or so that he reused over and over again.
Hagrid came in through the back door while the song was going on, taking his place in one of the free seats at the table – next to Professor Kettleburn, who looked quite delighted by something or other.
Then the sorting itself began, one student at a time. The first person to get sorted was a girl who went straight to Gryffindor, then a boy who the Sorting Hat deliberated over before sending him to Slytherin.
It turned out that the three-headed dog was "Barlos – Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail," which made Hermione stifle a giggle, and that the Sorting Hat went first on their left head and then their middle head.
After finally spending a few seconds on the right head, the Sorting Hat announced that they were conveniently all to go to GRYFFINDOR, and she came bounding over to cheers from the Gryffindor table before sitting right next to Colin Creevey.
"Are you Harry Potter?" her right head asked. "My uncle told me a lot about you."
The other two heads nodded, both looking as interested as the first, and Harry confirmed that that was him.
"Your uncle?" Ron repeated. "You mean… Fluffy?"
"Yes, uncle Fluffy!" her middle head agreed. "Oh, I'm Mopsy, by the way."
"Flopsy," volunteered the left. "And, as you can probably guess, she's Cottontail."
"Are you related to Beatrix Potter?" Cottontail asked. "I really like her books!"
"I actually don't know," Harry had to admit. "Sorry."
"That's okay," Flopsy said brightly. "Cottontail's the biggest fan, but we all like them. We decided we should all have separate names for coming to Hogwarts, so that's why we picked!"
The girls had plenty of other questions, some of which Hermione answered for them and some of which only Harry could really answer.
Nobody in Gryffindor knew how the broom lessons had gone for June and Tanisis last year, though, which made Flopsy look a little worried – though Mopsy just shrugged (which was a little strange on a three-headed dog, looking more like a nod than anything) and said that they'd work it out.
When one of the fourth-years asked, they also added that it was okay to talk about them as one person or as three – it just depended how you found it most convenient.
"By Fred, Fred," Fred said. "I wonder what happens if Flopsy gets in trouble, and then Mopsy can point out that she didn't do anything wrong and so she shouldn't go to Detention."
"Yeah, we tried it," Cottontail reported. "Our dads just said that we should have stopped her."
"What I want to know is whether you got one wand or three," Ron added.
"Oh, that was kind of interesting, actually," Cottontail said, ducking her head under her sisters to look at him. "We got one wand that Mopsy and I can use, and one wand that Flopsy and Mopsy can use. So it averaged out at two."
"We haven't tried anything yet," Flopsy supplied. "Our mums thought it might go badly wrong, and it'd be better to practice at Hogwarts."
Harry could certainly see the logic of that, and then someone else got sorted into GRYFFINDOR and he cheered along with the rest of the table.
Everyone seemed interested to hear what the mer-boy was even called, let alone what house he would end up in – partly because, as Hermione said, he might be a merrow or a selkie depending on what part of Britain he was from, or something else entirely if he was from outside the archipelago.
(Some people got hung up on the term archipelago, but Harry liked it.)
One of the new boys had met him on the train, and said that he hadn't actually said anything for the whole journey but had instead written on a piece of slate before erasing it again.
"MacUalraig, Tiobald!" Professor McGonagall read off, once 'Lark, Yolanda' had been sorted into SLYTHERIN, and Harry watched as the wheelchair went rolling smoothly forwards.
Tiobald stopped it just in front of the stool, reaching out to pick up the Sorting Hat, and flipped it around before putting it on his head.
It took about about twenty seconds before there was a decision, and Tiobald went over to RAVENCLAW. Luna waved to him, encouraging him to sit down next to her, and began talking animatedly in a language Harry didn't recognize.
Tiobald looked distinctly shocked, then replied in the same odd language, but then the next first-year went forwards to be sorted and Harry decided to look at them instead.
He hadn't known Luna spoke what was probably Mermish, though it certainly sounded like it would be helpful.
"Oh, what's the food like here?" Mopsy asked. "I know we don't get to eat until the end of the Sorting, but Uncle Fluffy said that there's really good cooks here!"
"That's the House-Elves," Ron told her. "Ever since Fred and George gave them loads of Muggle cookbooks they've been experimenting, though, so who knows what we might get."
"Well, if neither of you like it I'll have it," Cottontail said. "We don't all need to eat."
"I'm sure we'll all find something tasty," Flopsy cautioned her sisters.
It took perhaps another thirty minutes for everyone to be sorted – some people took only a few seconds, others took whole minutes, and one boy down in the U end of the alphabet took so long Dean had started checking his watch.
Once the last First-Year was duly housed, and the Sorting Hat had been taken away, Professor Dumbledore stood.
"Those of you who have been here before will doubtless know that I prefer to say a few words before the beginning of the Feast," he started. "However, on this occasion I have several things to say before we may all fill our bellies."
Waving a hand, he indicated Moony. "The first is to hope you will all extend a welcome welcome to Professor Moony, a new teacher for us in the subject of Defence against the Dark Arts."
Moony waved, and several people waved back a little nervously.
"Aside from that, the other things I wish to say are: Chair, Desk, Table, Lamp," the Headmaster continued. "As all of these are things and have been said, I feel I can let you take your repast."
He sat down, and the feast appeared on the golden plates all at once.
"...he's weird," said one of the First-Year girls. "Is he like that all the time?"
"Oh, not all the time," Fred told her. "Sometimes he's much more peculiar. Ooh, look, there's pasta."
There certainly was pasta, with the nearest one to Harry smelling like cheese and spinach and tomatoes, and a few places down there was something made out of balls of doughy material covered in a creamy bacon sauce.
It didn't look like there was anything that had been made specifically for Harry, but there was more than enough to eat anyway – from roast turkey and duck to a carrot-stick sculpture (which Flopsy enjoyed, though her sisters looked at most tolerant of her interest in it) to a fish-and-chips-and-mushy-peas platter so large that it took about a dozen people to get through.
Harry hadn't exactly been eating poorly at Sirius' house, but the food here at Hogwarts was so good – especially during a feast like this – that he always seemed to find space for just a little more.
He did notice that Moony accidentally ate a chicken bone, though. Hopefully that wouldn't give him problems later.
Then it was the desserts, and all three of the Barlos sisters were disappointed that they couldn't have any chocolate – until George pointed out that one of the dishes that had ended up halfway down the table by accident actually had a label declaring it as canine-safe chocolate.
Ten minutes later Flopsy declared that chocolate was the best thing.
"Is the food this good every time?" Mopsy asked, carefully licking a fork Cottontail was holding.
"It's usually this good, but there's not usually this much of it," Dean told her. "This is a feast, and it deserves the name."
"I'd guess you're used to working together to do things like that?" Neville added. "To use a fork, I mean."
"Yeah, we are," Flopsy agreed. "We need to work hard to stay friendly, because it's not like we can go off and spend time away from each other to cool down."
"Blimey, sounds awful," Ron said.
"I like to think it's made us into nicer people than we'd be otherwise," Mopsy said, giving Cottontail a nudge, and her sister put the fork down with a clink.
"You can say that, but I know what it'd be like if I couldn't get away from Fred, George and Ginny, and I'd have gone mad," Ron told her.
"You realize we're not only all in the same house but all within earshot, right?" Ginny asked.
"Yeah, but now I can just hide behind Harry," Ron replied. "Dragons are fierce protectors, right?"
"It's okay," Fred countered. "We'll just bring tributes."
"Fresh books, that sort of thing," George agreed. "There's no way Harry would set one of us on fire if we had a book he wanted to read."
Several of the First-Years giggled at the byplay, and Ron groaned.
"It's okay, Ron," Dean told him. "Dinner entertainment is a noble career."
Harry was grateful to the twins for helping the new students understand him a little bit better, without even sounding like they were doing it, and as he was wondering how (or if) he should thank them there was a gentle cough from behind him.
Turning, Harry saw that Tanisis was standing there.
"I'm sorry if I'm interrupting," she said. "But I wanted to ask Miss Barlos if she wanted help with managing as a quadruped."
"Are we allowed to take advice from you?" Cottontail asked, tilting her head on one side. "You're a cat, and we're dogs. I think there's a rule about it."
"It's probably more of a guideline, cats and dogs get on sometimes," Mopsy replied.
"I was actually thinking about something like that, as a more general thing," Harry said. "You know, kind of sharing ideas and stuff."
"Even if you don't, I'd certainly love to know," Flopsy added. "We've been sort of making some of it up as we go along."
"It's good to have what you're going to do worked out before exams," Tanisis confided. "But, then, I am an Eagle. You're the Lions."
That gave Harry a bit of a chuckle, especially with how confused that statement had made the Barlos girls, but then the hubbub of conversation began to die down and Tanisis loped quickly back to her seat.
"It's the nicknames for Gryffindors and Ravenclaws," he explained quickly, as Dumbledore stood up.
"Well, now," the Headmaster said, smiling faintly. "I hope everybody has got themselves around as much food as they require. I assure you there will be more tomorrow, so if you do feel hungry at some point during the rest of the school year you will be able to get some."
Still smiling, he continued. "I would like to inform all of our new students, and some returning ones, that the name of the forest on the grounds is the forbidden forest. This is a most convenient name, because as it happens it is out of bounds – a fact that is pleasingly easy to remember."
Mopsy tried to stifle a giggle.
"The list of forbidden items has been expanded by the diligent work of our caretaker, Mr. Filch," Dumbledore went on. "I have had to disappoint him by not including 'students' on the list, but it would be most helpful if everyone could refrain from disappointing him further by ensuring he has no reason to either expand it or confiscate anything currently on it."
Fred muttered something that Harry couldn't quite hear.
"That does include you, Mr. and Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore said, directing his attention to the twins. "As for the rest of the announcements, I will be brief. Mr. Hagrid has told me that everyone has already met our school mascot, a young dragoness by the name of Nora; she is usually to be found wearing a scarf, and she understands such words in English as 'no'. I would however advise not bothering her, because it is not polite."
With a faint smile, he stepped back a pace. "And now, a little music before bedtime."
Harry groaned.
"What's wrong?" Flopsy asked.
"The school song's always-" Harry began, then stopped as he heard a rustling of benches.
About two dozen students got up, hurrying to the front of the hall, and took their places in a triple line – tallest at the back, shortest at the front, with June sitting on one end.
Professor Flitwick walked out to join them, raising his wand as a conductor's baton, and made a few small gestures. Then everyone launched into song at once.
"Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble..."
By the time they were finished, Harry had decided that he much preferred this way of doing things.
"That didn't seem very bad," Cottontail said, confused.
"Ah, music," Dumbledore said, with a smile, and led the applause. He kept talking while the rumble of the clapping drowned him out, and when it faded down again Harry heard "…time for bed, I think. I always find it better to sleep during the night rather than the day."
"All right, everyone," Percy said, standing up. "Follow me, please. It's not hard to find the Gryffindor common room, but if we and the Ravenclaws have to go up the same route we'll get hopelessly mixed up. This way, follow me, please..."
On the way upstairs – through what was a bit more of a winding route than just taking the grand staircase, but which did avoid running into all the similarly sleepy Ravenclaws heading up the same number of floors – some of the First Years asked about the school mascot and whether she was related to Harry.
Harry said he wasn't, though he also said that Nora did see him as a good friend, partly because he could talk to her.
As they reached the floor with the Gryffindor common room, Harry looked across to see if he could see the Ravenclaws. They were still on the grand stairs a floor or two below, and it looked like they were slowed down a little by Tiobald's wheelchair.
It was neat that it could climb stairs by itself, though.
Harry must have been more tired than he'd thought, because he fell straight asleep as soon as he was upstairs and he'd checked that everything had arrived properly from the train.
There weren't any dreams, or at least none that he remembered, and the next morning he woke up and stretched out with a yawn.
It was still quite early in the morning, with all four of the other Third-Year boys asleep, so Harry left them to get a bit more of a lie-in and snagged one of the books he wanted to read. He could have jumped out the window, but it was raining, so he just headed down the stairs to the Gryffindor common room and out the portrait hole.
It felt nice to be back at Hogwarts. After two full years the passages and classrooms felt familiar, even homelike, though the same was true of Sirius' house and he'd only been there a month or so.
Maybe he was just good at getting used to things?
Jumping right down the central shaft of the staircases, Harry noticed in passing that a lot of the students he could see were consulting bits of parchment.
Wondering whether those were their schedules, he landed with a thump before making his way into the Great Hall for breakfast.
"Here's your schedule," Fred said, handing one to Harry as he sat down. "Don't forget it's Thursday today, so we're starting mid-week."
Harry accepted it, looking it over.
Then paused.
"Fred?" he asked. "Did they make you a Prefect or something?"
"No, I pinched them from McGonagall's place," Fred replied with a shrug. "Got to keep my hand in, right?"
Harry wasn't quite sure how to react to that, so he decided to just read the schedule and see what it said.
It looked like he had Arithmancy first, then Transfiguration, and that was followed after lunch by Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes.
"Blimey," George said, peering over his shoulder. "That's a pretty heavy start to the year, isn't it?"
Harry shrugged. "Maybe."
It was going to be tricky to manage a total of ten subjects, but he was sure he'd be able to give it a good go – and if he did have to, he'd just give up whichever one turned out to be less interesting than the others.
Harry did hope that wouldn't happen, but-
"Oh, actually, I did want to speak to Professor McGonagall," he remembered. "I'll see if she turns up."
Taking some egg from the plates, he started making himself breakfast. A toast and egg sandwich sounded like a nice idea.
Twenty minutes later, Professor McGonagall had indeed turned up. After giving Fred and George a very stern glare which didn't work very well, she'd listened to Harry's question and given him a nice simple answer.
Apparently all you needed to do to get a club on the list for the clubs-and-societies sign up sheets was to talk to your head of house, which meant Harry was already done. It was a nice thing to know, and Harry could have just gone up to get his bag now in preparation for Arithmancy, but as he was thinking about that Ron came yawning into the hall so Harry decided to wait a bit longer.
"Any of you lot heard about a map that lets you see how all the bits of the castle link up?" Ron asked, depositing himself in a seat. "Seems like half the school have them. Would have been really helpful in first year."
Fred and George visibly exchanged glances.
"Oh, I think Moony was working on that," Harry said, suddenly making the connection. "They must have gone on sale without us noticing. If it's the one I'm thinking of, you put a wand to the parchment and say 'I'm lost'."
"Think you can get us one, Harry?" Ron asked. "It'd be dead helpful finding some of these new classrooms…"
"I can see if he's got a few spare," Harry agreed. "Oh, you don't do Arithmancy, right? What have you got first?"
Ron checked his sheet. "Um… Muggle Studies. That's at nine."
Neville arrived next, and checked his own schedule. Harry was interested to see what that one said, because Neville was doing both Muggle Studies and Arithmancy, and it turned out that Arithmancy had won out and Neville's Muggle Studies was another day.
"Kind of a shame, mate," Ron told him. "I was hoping we'd be in the same class."
"I'll manage," Neville decided. "It's not like Malfoy is going to do Muggle Studies, is it?"
"Yeah, good point," Ron agreed. "And Crabbe and Goyle wouldn't be able to work a Vichy Ar."
"I think that's a VCR," Harry corrected. "But I don't think most Muggles can work it either. Uncle Vernon always had a lot of trouble when he tried."
Ron shrugged. "Well, that's what I'm going there to learn, isn't it?"
He snagged himself some toast, buttering two slices, then rolled a sausage into each one. "I might want to ask you and Dean for help if there's something really confusing, though."
Dean's own schedule was similar to Harry's, except with no Runes and with Divination in place of Arithmancy, but as he was making some cereal Neville asked the question they'd all been sort of wondering.
"So… what about Hermione?" he said. "Did she really manage to take all the subjects?"
"Maybe it's like what they did with your Muggle Studies," Harry suggested. "Only for, um…"
He compared his schedule with the others. "For Divination, and Muggle Studies, and – no, for Arithmancy and Muggle Studies, I think?"
Comparing Neville's Arithmancy slots only made things more confusing, though, because Neville's Arithmancy would clash with the Runes slot Harry and Ron both had.
As they were trying to work it out on a piece of scrap parchment, Hermione finally arrived.
"I'm not used to sleeping here again yet," she said, grabbing some toast. "My window at home faces east… do we have the schedules yet?"
She took hers when Fred offered it, checked it over, and nodded. "All right-"
"What does your schedule look like?" Harry asked. "We've been trying to work it out..."
Hermione showed them, quickly eating some toast, and the boys all stared.
"...Hermione, this schedule's impossible," Dean said eventually.
"Unless you're Ruth," Harry added. "He could do three things at the same time, but he had to time travel to do that."
"Don't be silly, it wouldn't be scheduled if it was impossible," Hermione replied, taking her schedule back. "I asked Professor McGonagall, and she's very sure about it."
Harry blinked, supposing that that was him told.
Arithmancy was one of the classes that wasn't that hard to find. Harry felt sorry for Dean, who had to borrow one of Remus's maps (whatever he'd ended up calling them, which was something Harry had missed) to find where the Divination class was, but Arithmancy was a fairly simple matter of going up to his room for his things, picking up his Transfiguration books as well as his Arithmancy ones, and then dropping down to the fourth floor and going along a corridor.
Several of the other students in his year were there already, mostly Ravenclaws, though Theodore Nott was there as well.
"Potter," he said. "Surprised to see you doing this class."
"It sounded interesting," Harry replied, tail waving slightly. "I'm surprised you're the only Slytherin doing it."
"I'm not," Theodore replied.
"Yes, we knew that," Terry Boot quipped quickly.
Theo shot the Ravenclaw a black glance, then subsided. "Subject clash," he explained shortly. "Had to move this one or Creatures."
Sally-Anne Perks arrived then, followed by Neville, and Hermione arrived just a minute or so before the bell.
"Oh, come on..." Sally groaned. "Are all the other Gryffindor girls doing Divination?"
"Some of them might be doing Muggle Studies," Neville pointed out. "Or maybe they ended up on the other side of a subject clash and they are doing Arithmancy. I'm not really sure how they work it out."
The bell went, and they all filed into the classroom – Harry ending up next to Lily Moon – and up at the front Professor Vector waited until everyone was sitting down before smiling.
"Welcome, all of you, to Arithmancy – which, if I do say so myself, is the most rigorous subject this school offers, outside of perhaps Astronomy."
She tapped the board with her wand, and rows and columns of numbers appeared. "Arithmancy is a science, not an art – understand that now. It is about predicting the future, it is about verifying that your predictions are correct, and it is about what you can do with the ability to calculate what will happen. There will be some wand-waving in this class, yes, but more than anything else there will be a lot of maths. I hope everyone understands that going in."
Harry tilted his head a little, wondering what all that meant, and noticed that Hermione seemed distinctly eager to get on with it.
"As you are no doubt aware, Arithmancy is one of those classes in which the creation of new spells can happen," the Professor said then. "It is not unique in this, but it is unique in that an Arithmancer who has correctly done their calculations will know exactly what their new spell will do before they first cast it. Unfortunately, that is not something we will be working on this year, as the mathematics required to do so is quite complex. This year we will be working on simpler predictions."
Harry nodded along, interested, and the teacher seemed to consider that enough of an introduction to the subject.
"Now, if you will turn to page four of your Numerology and Grammatica, we will begin with a very simple example of how mathematical predictions can be made. This example involves no magic, but it does involve decks of playing cards."
Theodore put up his hand.
"Mr. Nott," Professor Vector invited him to speak.
"Why playing cards?" he asked. "Isn't that something that's more like Divination?"
"You will see, Mr. Nott," Professor Vector told him. "You will see."
Harry found the maths in Arithmancy really interesting.
He was sure they were going to get into the importance of things like the number seven later in the course, it was in their textbook, but the first thing they'd done had just been to calculate out how likely various combinations of cards were based on what they already knew.
Thinking about how much information you did and didn't have was already interesting, and then you got into how to do the calculation – it was about counting up all the possible outcomes, and comparing them to the outcomes you were interested in, but it was all handled with fractions and multiplications and numbers with exclamation marks after them, like the number was really serious about being a number.
Harry got the sense that the cards were just there as a convenient set of things with crossed-over labels, which was why it was more the maths of things that mattered instead of trying to work out why you got the Seven of Clubs this time.
At the end of the hour or so of maths, Professor Vector told them to do the problems on pages five and six of the book, and then let them go.
Harry wanted to talk to Hermione and Neville about how they'd found it, but he lost track of Hermione as they left the classroom. Neville was willing to talk, though, and admitted he'd had a bit of trouble with the whole thing.
Harry told him that they could do the homework together, and that seemed to make Neville much more comfortable. He wondered if maybe it would help to get some Muggle maths books as well, just in case Neville hadn't learned all of Key Stage 2 maths, and when he mentioned that Neville asked what sort of things they did in Key Stage 2 maths.
That got them to the Transfiguration classroom, and Hermione showed up again accompanied by Dean.
"Hey," Dean nodded to them. "How was Arithmancy?"
"Full of maths," Harry answered, and Neville nodded confirmation.
"What about divination?" the other boy added. "Did that go well?"
"Pff, I wish," Dean said. "The teacher said I was going to die."
Neville blinked.
"You… don't seem very worried," he admitted.
"Well, yeah, I know I'm going to die eventually," Dean pointed out. "Besides, I've seen films. The black guy usually dies first."
That made Hermione snigger, breaking her out of a bad mood she seemed to be in.
"I really don't think much of this Divination teacher," she added. "And remember Star Wars? Lando Calrissian survived all the movies."
"Good point," Dean nodded. "Though apparently a big black dog is a bad omen? I said I'd seen one last Christmas and she really freaked out."
"Maybe she doesn't like Sirius," Harry suggested.
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Maybe she just doesn't like Black people."
"That's a new one," Neville said. "Mr. Black loves puns, you should tell him that one."
"I'll lend you my mirror tonight?" Harry suggested.
They were joined by Ron, who arrived before doing a double-take. "Hermione? How did you get here before me?"
"What are you talking about?" Dean asked. "She was in Divination, she followed me straight here from there."
Harry was fairly sure Hermione had done Arithmancy, and said so.
Hermione looked between her friends, then sighed. "Look… I can't talk about it, okay? Professor McGonagall told me not to talk about it, so can you please not talk about it either?"
Put like that, it was hard for any of them to refuse.
"Just make sure you don't make any of the mistakes they make in the Pern books, okay?" Harry asked. "If that's what's going on."
There was time for Ron to talk a bit about Muggle Studies, and how Professor Burbage had started with some simple questions intended to test how much everybody already knew about simple Muggle things like cars and electricity and television.
(Well, not simple at all, but things that most Muggle children at least understood some things about.)
Professor Burbage had then told them all about how a lightbulb worked, and why Muggles used them instead of candles, and Ron was clearly fascinated by the idea of passing a kind of energy through a coil of wire and making it so hot it glowed – and how that meant it was less of a fire risk than a candle was.
Then Transfiguration started, and Professor McGonagall told them about Animagi – starting with a demonstration.
It was interesting to hear what she had to say about it, but Harry couldn't help but find it a bit less new than Arithmancy had been – or Ron's Muggle Studies, for that matter – because of how long he'd spent with Sirius.
When it was almost a coin toss whether you'd see Sirius or Padfoot at any given time, you sort of got used to the idea.
There was a lot to write down, though, about the fine details of how the transformation worked, and especially how it was different to Human Transfiguration (and how it was much less dangerous once set up, though Professor McGonagall warned them all sternly against experimenting.)
"I'm not sure it really counts as experimenting if you have the instructions, an expert you can talk to, and three brothers who already did it," Ron rationalized, as they headed up to the common room. "What do you think, Hermione?"
"Well… like you said, if Percy has done it, it probably is okay," Hermione agreed.
"Should we get some of our homework done?" Harry suggested. "We've got some time before lunch."
"Yes!" Hermione agreed, sounding much more enthusiastic about that. "I've got so much already, but I should be able to get the Muggle Studies homework done quickly, and then there's the Transfiguration… aaargh!"
"That's right, dear," the Fat Lady said, opening up with a click.
"Weird password this week," Neville commented, then scooped up Trevor as the toad tried to make a break for it. "Huh… hey, Ron, think I can borrow your old rat cage? It might help make sure Trevor doesn't escape."
"Sure, I don't want it," Ron agreed with a wave of his hand. "I'd have given it to Ginny, but Pigwidgeon would probably bounce off the walls like a Bludger."
Neville went upstairs to sort that out, and the rest of them grabbed their usual table in the common room. There were quite a few Gryffindors here already, those who didn't have lessons before lunch on Thursdays, and even as they sat down someone yelped in surprise and Trouble went running off up the spiral stairs.
It really was nice to be back.
AN:
Yes, the first of September 1993 was a full moon...
Does this mean there are two new non-human students this year, or four?
I'd say average it out at three.
The choir, meanwhile, is based partly on the one from the Prisoner of Azkaban movie.
And as for the lessons... well, it's interesting to come up with ways that Arithmancy could work, including as a magic subject, while still being about "predicting".