Perhaps fortunately, the lessons in their other returning subjects were a bit less about surprisingly insightful looks into the minds of their classmates.

Instead, it tended to be more to do with things like witch hunts in History, or the different types of comet in Astronomy, or modifications of the spells they already knew in Charms. It was interesting to know that you could cast a modified form of the Lumos spell so that it hung around in the air, instead of needing to use your wand like a torch, though it was a bit of a difficult spell to get right.

The fact that people kept accidentally flash-blinding one another when they were practicing didn't help.

A bit more than a week into the autumn term, the sign-up sheets for school clubs and societies went up. The sheet for the Gryffindor Quidditch tryouts went up as well, with a note that they were looking for a Seeker – something which Ginny signed up for immediately, before asking if she could borrow a Nimbus 2001 – and crowds formed as first-years asked their older housemates for advice on what clubs were like.

Neville was in the queue as well, but Dean wasn't – he already had the club he wanted – and Ron was only there for long enough to sign up to the Quidditch tryouts just in case.

"You realize that if you join the team, and Ginny joins the team, and Fred and George stay on the team, it's going to be Team Weasley by simple majority, right?" Dean asked. "That wouldn't happen in football… usually, anyway."

"Yeah," Ron agreed. "But I don't think we've won a game in years without at least one Weasley on the team."

Harry sniggered, buttering a croissant. "Has Gryffindor played a game in years without at least one Weasley on the team?"

"Maybe," Ron replied, vaguely, as Harry breathed gently on the croissant to melt the butter. "Maybe back before Fred and George joined. And if Charlie was off sick."

Draco's voice interrupted them.

"There's a what club?" he asked, sounding amused. "Potter, why on Earth would you start an Unusually Shaped club?"

"It's a society," Harry corrected. "It's because there are some problems which people like Tanisis or Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail don't notice until they run into them themselves, and I thought it would be good if we could all share what problems we're having so they don't come as a surprise."

"If it's a non-humans club, just call it that and stop pretending," Draco advised.

"But Harry is human," Luna Lovegood contributed. "Or, at least, I think he is."

Draco looked around to see who was talking, and sneered. "Go away, Loony."

"No, I think you're thinking of that Defence professor who's a wolf," Luna corrected. "And his name is Moony, or at least that's what Professor Dumbledore said and I don't think he'd lie about something like that."

She smiled pleasantly.

For a moment, Draco looked like he couldn't decide what to say out of several different things, and he rolled his eyes before dismissing Luna.

"Why are you bothered, anyway, Malfoy?" Ron asked. "Just don't go if you don't like the sound of it."

"It's a Slytherin thing," Blaise said, sitting down next to Ron. "The idea is, he thinks your club is bad and you should feel bad. But he can't just say that."

"How come you can just say that, then?" Dean asked.

"It's a distraction," Blaise explained, getting up again. "I'm actually here to steal the marmalade."

"You what?" Ron demanded. "Hey!"

"You're not having marmalade, Ron," Harry pointed out.

"Yeah, but I might," Ron countered.

"Ron, you're having sausages and beans," Dean said.

"It's the principle of the thing," Ron shrugged.

"Isn't that just the headmaster?" Fred asked. "I've heard that principal is American for headmaster."

"I'm pretty sure they speak English in America," Ginny contributed. "But I could be mistaken."

"And I'm pretty sure you're mistaken," George told her. "They use words like sidewalk, and when they say pants they mean trousers."

"It's completely different," Fred agreed, sagely. "They're almost as bad as the French."

Harry looked up, and noticed that Draco had left at some point during the conversation.

"I'm surprised he didn't say anything about the other club I'm going to try to run," he admitted.

"Probably just noticed that first one and came straight over to try and make fun of you," Ron suggested. "Any idea where Hermione is?"

"No, but she was looking kind of tired last night," Harry said. "Maybe she's sleeping in."

"Yeah, probably," Ron decided. "Actually, it is Sunday, are you heading off to Fort William today?"

"Probably," Harry agreed. "The weather looks good, so hopefully it'll be easy to not get my library books wet."

"I'm kind of looking forward to when we can go down to Hogsmeade, myself," Dean told them, as Neville sat down. "I've been to Diagon Alley, but a whole magical village is going to be new… especially a magical sweet shop."

"Well, if you're into magical sweets, we could see what we can do," Fred said, breaking off from the discussion with Ginny and his twin about how silly it was that Americans used the words biscuit and cookie completely differently to the way British people did, which was presumably important somehow. "You don't mind being a taste tester, do you?"

"Oh, is Dean interested in being a guinea pig?" George asked, also breaking off from the other conversation and leaving Ginny having one on her own, until Luna and Tanisis came over to make up the numbers.

"I don't think he's interested in being a guinea pig," Fred replied.

"Shame," George sighed. "We'll have to leave the Guinea Pig Gummy Pigs until we find someone else. What about the Tasty Toffees?"

"What kind of magic do Tasty Toffees have?" Dean asked, interested despite himself.

"They taste nice," Fred told him. "Just that. We're still working on improvements."

"It'd be a lot easier if we could come up with names that didn't involve alliteration," George confided.

After the dust had settled and all the scheduling was worked out, it was the Quidditch tryouts that came first.

Harry went to see them, partly to watch and partly to lend out his Nimbus 2001 to Ginny – who didn't have one of her own – so she would have a good chance. Neville, Dean and Hermione came as well, and Hermione checked her watch as she sat down.

"Four," she announced, mostly to herself. "Good, that's a nice round number."

"Is nice round numbers an Arithmancy thing?" Dean asked.

"I think most numbers have some meaning in Arithmancy," Harry replied. "But four is the only number where it has the same number of letters as the number itself."

Dean counted under his breath for a few seconds, then nodded. "Yeah, so it is. Is that the kind of thing you do in Arithmancy?"

"No, that's from a book I read in primary school," Harry told him. "It was trying really hard to make numbers interesting, and that one just stuck in my head."

"It's not part of Arithmancy," Hermione said. "Arithmancy is about the numbers, not the words we've given the numbers so we can say them out loud. Arithmancy is the same whether you're saying four, quatre, cuatro or whatever. That's French and Spanish, by the way."

"That makes sense, yeah," Neville agreed. "So Arithmancy is the only subject that doesn't involve words?"

"It involves words later on," Hermione hedged. "I read some of a book on advanced Arithmancy, and it says that you can use Arithmantic equations to work out how a word will affect the spell you're casting. When you get really good you can do it sort of backwards, and use it to calculate what word would be best for the spell you need – so we could try and work out how to say what language we need, for the Xenographia spell."

"That would be really useful," Harry said, then movement caught his attention. "Oh – I didn't know Colin Creevey was interested in being on the Quidditch team as well. It looks like there's three people who want to be the Seeker, or four if you count Cormac."

"Kind of a lot," Neville pointed out. "I wouldn't want to be Seeker this year even if I was any good. You've given whoever it is some big boots to fill, Harry."

Harry looked down at his paws. "I don't think most boots fit me."

"You know what I meant," Neville twitted him. "Anyway, how is this different from football tryouts in the Muggle world?"

"It's pretty similar, though not really the same," Dean replied, thinking. "Sometimes people will be obviously better as strikers or wingers or defenders or whatever, but most roles in football are fundamentally about being able to kick the ball. So it's like everyone's a Chaser, in Quidditch terms, except the goalkeeper."

Neville nodded.

"Other games are even more like that, though," Dean went on. "So with cricket, everyone's the same, though I think you can swap out bowlers for good batsmen. Most popular Muggle games don't have such completely different roles like Quidditch has."

As they watched, Oliver Wood threw golf balls in all directions. As there were so many Seekers to try out, everyone had a go at once, and after ten minutes or so the prospective Gryffindor Seekers compared how many balls each one of them had. Ginny definitely had more, and Colin was complaining about something with his hands waving wildly when Oliver shook his head.

"...in hindsight, it's not nearly as interesting when we can't hear what's being said," Harry said.

"Don't you already know?" Neville asked. "I don't remember this happening quite this way last time, but..."

"No, this looks like a new idea Oliver had," Harry answered, as Cormac joined the other three Chasers and all four of them got into a formation facing the nearest goal hoops… the ones where Ron was floating on his own Nimbus broom.

The prospective Seekers were all floating high above the action, but Oliver Wood was even higher. He blew his whistle, sending the Chasers on the attack against Ron, and ten seconds later Ron just about managed to deflect the Quaffle before it went through the middle hoop.

"They're going a bit slower than normal," Harry said quietly. "At least, slower than I remember. Maybe it's to get him warmed up?"

"Probably," Dean agreed. "If you had a really good Chaser team and a really good Keeper team they could practice fairly against one another, but a really good Chaser team training a new Keeper would just be kind of demoralizing."

Some minutes later, Ron was at about half of goal-attempts saved – Dean had started taking notes – when Harry saw a little flicker of movement drop down from where Oliver was circling.

"I think Oliver just dropped a golf ball," he supplied.

"Oh, I get it," Dean realized. "Clever."

Harry tracked the golf ball as it dropped, and it was at about the level of the stands when Colin belatedly realized what was going on and dropped into a dive. Ginny and the other Seeker hopeful dove as well, but none of them reached the golf ball before it hit the ground and they all had to break off.

"So it's about paying attention to more than one thing at a time," Hermione said. "And if I was doing it I'd have said they needed to say what the score was, as well, so they can't just watch Oliver all the time."

"Wonder how long this is going to be, though," Neville said. "What's the time?"

"About half past four," Hermione supplied. "I'd be happy if we stayed until six or so and then went to eat, if I spend an hour eating that lines up nicely."

"Do you need to timetable everything?" Dean asked, chuckling. "Even the stuff that isn't during a lesson?"

"Yes," Hermione replied. "It's because of the thing I can't talk about."

"Does that count as talking about the thing you can't talk about?" Neville mused. "I mean, you're not talking about it, but you're talking about not talking about it."

"I think talking about not talking about something isn't the same as talking about it," Dean frowned. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to say you weren't able to talk about it, so you'd just have to be completely silent, but then other people would talk about how you couldn't talk about the thing you couldn't talk about and that would qualify as…"

He stopped. "Great. Now my eyes have gone crossed."

"Any idea if the Smiths are going to start doing Quidditch?" Neville asked. "A pair of Beater twins have worked well for Gryffindor so far."

"Not sure, really," Harry shrugged. "I could ask them if they decide they qualify for the society, though."

"Actually, do Animagus forms count for that?" Hermione said, looking over at Harry. "And that reminds me, I need to work out what the best lunar cycle is for attempting the Animagus process… maybe Professor McGonagall can help."

"Or Professor Sinistra," Harry suggested. "She is the Astronomy professor."

Eventually, Oliver Wood decided that Ginny showed the most promise, though he told both her and Colin to come to training so they could properly practice competing against another Seeker.

Cormac seemed a bit disgruntled by the whole result, especially since Oliver also decided that Ron showed enough promise to be a reserve Keeper, but Harry supposed that Cormac was still the only person they had as reserve Chaser or even reserve Beater. So he still had a back-up role for five out of the seven positions.

The first meeting of the Unusually Shaped Society was that evening, after dinner, so Harry made sure to eat enough before heading to the classroom he'd been told they should use.

He was the first one there, which gave him a bit of time to look around and see what was in it. There were piles of decades-old homework in one corner of the room, mostly endless essays on History of Magic, but the other equipment around the room seemed to be for something else entirely – pens and pencils, set squares and other geometry tools, and some slanted tablets for writing on as well.

Some of the discarded parchments included sketches of a bat's wing, compared to the wing of a bird, and Harry wondered if it was for studying Transfiguration.

"Is this the right place?" Flopsy asked, getting Harry's attention. "I hope we've got the right time…"

"We probably have!" Mopsy agreed. "Look, there's Harry!"

"But there's nobody else here," Flopsy worried. "Maybe we're early?"

"That's fine, don't worry," Harry assured her. "This is still the first time, so we're kind of working out what will work properly."

"Great!" Cottontail said, the triplets' tail wagging happily. "Where should we sit?"

"Anywhere will do," Harry answered. "I'm going to see if one of the teachers like Professor McGonagall can spare some time to sort out some chairs or bean bags or something, but I didn't really think of it before."

Over the course of the next ten to fifteen minutes, the other students Harry had been expecting turned up. June was first, padding into the room and giving first Harry and then the Barloses a quick nod, and then the Smith twins slipped into the room as a pair of foxes.

"I don't remember seeing them at the feast," Cottontail said at that, tilting her head a little. "Are pets allowed?"

"They're allowed," Harry assured her.

He looked closely. "That one's Taira's, and that one's Anna's. You can tell because you always see Taira with the vixen and Anna with the dog fox."

Taira's tongue lolled out in a laugh, and June held in a snigger.

"Is there a joke we're not getting?" Mopsy asked.

"I think I've got it, but I'm not telling," Flopsy giggled.

"Aww, come on, sis," Mopsy whined. "Tell us!"

Flopsy kept giggling, and the Smiths jumped up onto one of the desks before curling up as neatly matched rolls of orange-and-white fur.

Harry wondered if they ever slept that way down in the Slytherin dorm rooms. Sleeping in a bed where the pillow was bigger than you were and the duvet was the size of a house sounded like fun.

Then, finally, the door opened and let in three Ravenclaws at once.

Luna came first, holding open the door for Tiobald, and he wheeled his chair in before spinning it fluidly around and backing it into a parked position. Tanisis came through last, sitting in a convenient spot, and Luna let the door close before sitting between them.

"Okay, I think that's everyone," Harry said. "Is there anyone I'm forgetting?"

"What about my brother?" Anna asked.

The Barloses jumped, all startled at once, and whirled to look at the table.

"Where did you come from?" Cottontail demanded.

"And where did..." Mopsy began, then trailed off as Flopsy started to giggle.

Tyler crouched, then jumped off the desk as a fox and landed in his human shape.

"We can only really do that once with each person, but it can be so worth it," he announced, offering his hand. "Tyler Smith."

"Anne Smith," his sister supplied, then went back to fox-form and offered her paw.

"It was the smell," Flopsy reminded her sisters, as the three of them shook first hand and then paw. "I think you must have smelled it as well, but you didn't work it out."

"Yeah, now I'm looking for it it's obvious," Cottontail admitted. "There's just two scents instead of four. Anyway, I'm Cottontail, and these are my sisters Flopsy and Mopsy."

Tiobald whispered something to Luna.

"This is Tiobald," Luna told them. "He understands English, but speaking it is a bit of a problem for a selkie – he does know sign language, if that helps."

Harry decided that he should probably learn to read sign language, if he could find the time.

Maybe there was one of those translation sweets for it?

"It sounds like we're all here," he said. "This is kind of the first time I've tried organizing something like this, so this isn't really going to be very formal… the first thing we should do is each say hello and a bit about ourselves, I think. Youngest first?"

"When's your birthday?" Mopsy asked Tiobald. "Ours is a few days after new year, our uncle says it's kind of hard to think up two presents for us in a row."

Tiobald replied with a few slow signs, tapping his left thumb and then his left little finger before clenching both hands and knocking them together, and followed that with a two-fingers-up sign twice.

"August twenty-second," Luna told them.

"Oh, okay, you're already twelve," Mopsy realized. "Neat. Uh… you want to start, Flopsy?"

"Sure," Flopsy agreed. "So, obviously, we're a three-headed dog. If you're kind of confused about how to talk about us, I suppose the thing to remember is just that we have different names but we're really close friends."

"Usually," Mopsy contributed.

Flopsy gave her sister an affectionate lick, then resumed. "Anyway, our mums are from Greece, but she moved to join our dads here in Britain, so we've grown up here. That does mean we speak a bit of Greek, but I don't think our accents are very good."

"It's really amazing that we get to come here," Cottontail took up the thread. "I couldn't believe it, and I don't think Flopsy or Mopsy could either. It still doesn't feel real, even though we've been learning magic for more than a week now."

Once Flopsy and Cottontail had finished, Harry checked with Mopsy to see if she had anything she wanted to add.

"No, but thank you for asking," she said, nodding slightly.

"Sometimes people forget we're separate," Cottontail agreed. "There's a lot of, um, agreeing, you could say? Going on, because it's easier if we move in a coordinated way."

Tiobald signed something, much more quickly than before – quickly enough Harry couldn't begin to follow.

"That's interesting," Luna reported. Or said. It was hard to tell.

The girls padded over to sit somewhere that looked convenient, and Tiobald wheeled himself forwards a little. He signed a question to Luna, and she hummed.

"Mermish or sign language, whichever you want," she told him. "Just make sure to leave gaps if it's Mermish, so I can tell them!"

Tiobald bobbed his head, and began speaking.

Mermish was an odd sort of language, kind of screechy, and Harry wondered if it was an echolocation thing.

"I grew up in the lake by the castle," Luna repeated, then glanced at her housemate. "Is that how you'd rather I do it? Or change it to third-person?"

The selkie signed something, then kept going.

"I've heard that humans find the water cold, but we don't really notice it – I've always lived there. I thought it might be hot up here, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be. None of my family had left the lake before, at least none of them who I could still talk to."

Luna frowned, and added that there were mermaids in the Mediterranean as well, so maybe that had something to do with it?

"If anyone in my family is from that part of the world, I don't know about it," Tiobald admitted. "Everyone has the same family name down there, we're Clan MacUalraig, though I've heard that there might be humans with the same name around this part of Scotland as well. I wonder who got the idea first?"

Anna giggled. "Maybe both of them came up with exactly the same name?"

"What's most different about being on dry land?" Harry asked. "I was sort of wondering if it was like flying, because you can move in three dimensions, but then again you can't go as far."

"It is odd being able to go such a long distance in a straight line," Tiobald agreed. "And to look up at something and think, oh, wait, I can't just go straight there, I have to use stairs."

He tapped the wheels of his chair. "And even though this can go up stairs, it's kind of inconvenient."

"Oh!" Harry realized. "That's something we could help you with… or try, anyway. We could ask Professor McGonagall if you could have your own broom, once you've learned to fly, and that would let you get around better."

Tiobald's hands moved so fast that Luna shook her head. "Sorry, Tiobald, I didn't get that?"

Instead of signing again, he said it in Mermish, and Luna smiled. "Thank you, that sounds wonderful. I hope I'm able to fly… maybe I can jump off the broom and go diving?"

There were a few questions after that. Tyler was particularly interested in hearing about the giant squid – apparently it was quite nice, really – while when Anna asked they found out that the main sport played by Clan MacUalraig was something that sounded more like rugby than anything.

Except there were more than a dozen balls, usually made to be only a little heavier than the water, and the team which had more of them in their goal area at the end of the game was the loser.

"Maybe that could be played on a broom?" June asked. "How many spare Quaffles do we have at Hogwarts?"

Harry wrote down a note about that, in case he forgot. It sounded like the sort of thing Dean would be interested in.

Then it was June's turn, and though Harry had heard most of it before he listened anyway.

Cottontail happily announced that her uncle was great when June mentioned the bit about how she'd learned English, and that naturally led to a bit of a pause while Harry explained about how Fluffy had been working at Hogwarts as a guard two years ago. Then June mentioned some of the trouble she'd had with doing the writing in exams, and with casting spells in tricky situations, and the Barlos sisters nodded along with that.

"I don't think it'll be as hard for us," Flopsy supplied. "Because both our wands work for two of us, so any one of us can cast a spell while one of the others holds the wand. But if we're in a fight, I think it'd be Mopsy who has to do spellcasting."

"Do spells work for Tiobald?" Harry asked.

"Oh, that's actually really cool," Luna told them. "See, Mermish is a magical language where everything translates directly to English word-for-word. You can actually write a poem in Mermish and it'll still work and rhyme in English! That means it's magically equivalent, or at least it is in simple tests."

"That is cool," Anna said. "Does that work for other languages?"

Tiobald flicked through a few quick signs.

"Ask someone from a different country's waterways," Luna supplied.

She took out her own wand, screeched something in Mermish, and the wand promptly lit up.

"Nox," she added, and it went out.

"I'd try the same thing with Dragonish, but I can't speak Dragonish unless I'm looking at another dragon," Harry supplied. "The mirror doesn't work."

"Dragonish?" Tiobald asked, via Luna.

"We'll get to me eventually," Harry shrugged. "I did want to ask, though, June – what was it like going back home for the holidays?"

"Probably a lot like when you went back home to yours," June answered. "Everyone found it useful that I could make a light from my wand… well, most of us did. My aunt thought it was cheating, but my young cousins thought chasing the light was a great game."

"You got to cast magic at home?" Tanisis asked. "Huh. Some dogs have all the luck."

"I'm a wolf, not a dog," June pointed out. "Though admittedly wolves and dogs are pretty similar."

"Yeah, that's not what it was like for most of us," Harry said. "I got to cast a bit of magic when I was doing practice with Remus, but that might have been because he was already the Defence professor by then. Tiobald might be able to cast magic over the holidays, though, since he's even more at Hogwarts than June is."

"And it would be quite hard for an owl with his first warning to reach him at the bottom of a lake," Luna said serenely. "Unless the Ministry used one of their special post cormorants."

Tanisis covered her mouth with her paw. "The Ministry has post cormorants?"

"That's what an article in the latest Quibbler says," Luna informed her. "So it must be true."

"It does?" Harry asked, thinking about his own most recent Quibbler. "I haven't seen it."

"Of course not, I haven't sent it to Daddy to publish yet," Luna explained. "Journalism is a calling."

Just as soon as it was certain that Tiobald was done, both Tyler and Anne bounded forwards.

"Okay, so we're fey!" Tyler announced. "Or kitsune. Either one works."

"Kitsune sounds better, though," Anne added. "There's been fox shifters in Britain for a while, which is where Dad comes from."

"Our mum's nisei," Tyler supplied. "That means her parents were Japanese, though they moved here ages ago. There's a lot more kitsune over in Japan and Korea and stuff."

Tiobald signed a quick question, which Luna informed them was about what the meaning of 'fey' was.

"Fey is kind of a catch-all term," Tyler said. "Some Beasts qualify, like Red Caps and stuff, but it also includes some types of near-humans like us."

"I mean, look at me!" Anna said, doing a twirl. "You'd hardly know I wasn't human!"

"What about me?" Tyler protested.

"Eh, it's obvious for you," Anne said, sticking her tongue out.

Harry got the same feeling he sometimes did with Fred and George, and to a lesser extent with Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail – these siblings, twins or triplets, knew one another so well they could just naturally fit a conversation together on the fly like they'd planned it out in advance.

It made him feel surprisingly sad, wondering what it would have been like if his parents had lived long enough that he'd had a brother or sister. And whether they'd have turned into a dragon as well.

Although everyone in the room had already seen the change, first one twin and then the other demonstrated it – flowing smoothly from human-shape to fox-shape and back again, while explaining how each form felt just as natural as the other. They could even do something that an Animagus couldn't do, which was transform only a little bit, but it apparently was much less fun being a human with a tail than either a human without a tail or a fully-furry fox.

Flopsy asked what their house was like, and Harry was interested to hear that it sounded a lot like a Hobbit-hole – dug into the ground a bit – and that they had some small and cozy rooms for fox-form kitsune to curl up in if they felt like it, as well as the more normal collection of human-sized rooms and things.

Apparently they also had a few Japanese customs carried over from their maternal grandparents, like eating sushi, but Tyler said that he was the only one who liked proper Inarisushi. (Apparently in Japan it was something kitsune were supposed to stereotypically like, but Anna didn't like tofu and much preferred a version made with an omlette.)

"And, yeah, we don't have as many problems with our not-human-ness as most of you," Anna said, coming to what was probably a conclusion.

"Basically because we can pretend we're not," Tyler nodded along. "And we only use our fox-forms or the little bits of other fey magic we know for the most serious purposes."

"Like if it would let us set up a really good prank," Anna agreed. "Or catch criminals, I did that last year."

"Or to hide," Tyler pointed out.

"Or to hide," Anna reiterated. "Oh, or because shaking yourself dry is quicker than using a towel."

"Or when Anna's feeling cold at night," her brother said. "Or when I'm feeling cold at night."

"Don't forget doing it when one of us wants to pretend they've got a pet," the vixen mused.

"Or when we feel like it," Tyler concluded.

It was hard not to smile.

Harry had heard quite a lot of what Tanisis had to say from Ron and Ginny, so that wasn't quite as interesting for him, but he listened in anyway while wondering what he was going to say about himself.

Oddly enough, he'd had one of the most normal childhoods of anyone there… or he thought he had, at least. It had certainly felt normal when he was going through it.

Maybe that was the point, though, to talk about that sort of thing so they all knew where they were different? And if none of them had had anything normal, they wouldn't know what to say.

Harry thought about that again, then thought about the fact that the only completely human person in the club was Luna Lovegood, and wondered if maybe he should have asked someone else to come along.

It probably didn't matter, though.

And there were some new things that Tanisis mentioned, like how she'd made sure by careful practice that she'd trained herself out of the normal sphinx response to a wrongly answered riddle. It reminded Harry of his own occasionally-insistent hoarding instincts, and it sounded like Tanisis had been very sensible about it.

The last introduction was the one where Harry talked about himself, which felt a bit awkward. It was sort of a Lockhart-y thing to do, or it felt a bit like just boasting, to just stand in front of people and explain how things had gone for him. Even if they all found it both interesting and odd that he hadn't realized being a dragon was unusual until his eleventh birthday.

It helped a bit that everyone there said he'd been really helpful because he'd been involved in letting them have wands (though that was another thing to be uncomfortable about), and since only Tyler, Anna and Luna could have gone out in the Muggle world (and Luna hadn't done that much) there was a lot to talk about there as well.

After about ten minutes, Harry had promised to bring copies of several of the books he liked most to the next club, and they'd decided that they probably didn't need to do the club every week. Luna suggested they try it every other week, which sounded like a good idea, and Harry asked Tanisis and June particularly what they thought was the most important thing to talk about for the rest of this one – what thing they thought was the most important thing to know, if they'd had that advice at the start of last year.

"Well… beds is one thing," June volunteered. "It took months to get the beds sorted properly for me."

"I have a pool," Tiobald explained, via Luna. "It helps me rest my lungs and use my gills, but Professor Flitwick told me to let him know if anything should be changed."

"Oh, writing!" Tanisis said firmly. "Writing is the hardest thing."

"I have to agree," June decided. "I had a lot of trouble finishing my exam questions, I never seemed to have the time..."

Harry's other new club had taken a bit longer to sort out, so there was a gap of a few days after the first Unusually Shaped meeting when Harry's main concerns were keeping up with his homework, lessons in general, and the other things involved with going to school.

He also made time to mention the game that Tiobald had talked about. Sadly it seemed that the castle only had four Quaffles at the moment, but Madam Hooch was interested enough in the idea that she suggested they order another dozen or so from a Quidditch supplies shop.

"I have always found it a shame that so few people can play Quidditch in a year," she said. "After teaching everyone to fly it can be such a pity that most people don't use it, and then when they do need to fly they've quite lost the knack."

Harry supposed part of that was that flying was quite easily noticed by Muggles, at least for people who weren't dragons.

"I think it's kind of like cycling," Dean volunteered. "Muggles learn that in primary school, but once they know it's usually either a long way to cycle to get anywhere useful, if they live in the country, or if they live somewhere like London it's basically a complicated way of getting hit by a car."

Harry snorted.

"I don't think there are any sports games on bicycles, though, are there?" he asked. "I think Bicycle Rugby would be kind of painful and expensive."

"They probably do it at Eton," Dean shrugged. "Ask Justin, maybe?"

Harry was thinking about doing just that when he spotted something flying down towards him from the castle.

It was definitely a bird, and as it got closer Harry realized it was Percy. He couldn't really see the flash of red on Percy's crest from below, but it was easy enough to work out that a heron around Hogwarts had to mean Percy.

Flaring his wings and landing quite daintily, Percy nodded to Madam Hooch before growing back to being Head Boy (instead of Head Heron). "Excellent. Glad I found you, Harry. Professor Dumbledore's sorry about the short notice, but he's hoping you might be available to talk today?"

Harry checked the time, and saw it was about half an hour until dinner started – though dinner usually lasted a couple of hours so people could go down whenever they wanted. "Yeah, the only homework I've got at the moment is a Charms essay, and I can do that after dinner. Does he mean now?"

"What he said to me was 'as soon as possible'," Percy told him. "So probably, yes."

"Go ahead," Dean added, as Harry glanced at him.

Touched by Dean's quick agreement, Harry spread his wings. He tested them slightly, reminding himself that they were bigger than last year, then took off with a whoosh of air.

Thirty seconds later he realized something he'd forgotten, banked around, and landed right back next to Percy again.

"What's the password?" he asked, feeling himself flushing slightly.

"Oh, of course," Percy said. "It's – ah, yes, Emandem."

The Head Boy pronounced it a bit strangely, but Harry realized that that was probably 'M&Ms', and thanked him before taking off to head to the Owlery.

As Harry climbed up the stairs to Dumbledore's office, the Headmaster greeted him.

"Ah, good evening, Aberforth!"

"Actually, it's Harry, sir," Harry said, poking his head over the lip of the stairway.

"Oh, bother," Dumbledore sighed. "It does such wonders when one gets it right. Please do keep this little error between us, Harry."

Harry agreed readily that that would be fine.

"How has your third year been going so far?" Dumbledore added, as Harry took a seat in one of the armchairs. Fawkes came flying over, managing to do so without anything so undignified as flapping his wings, and perched neatly on Harry's offered tail.

"All the new subjects are interesting," Harry answered. "I don't think any of them was quite like what I expected, but I'm learning a lot."

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced.

"I do want to ask about June, Tanisis, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail," Harry added. "Do you think it'd be possible for them to have some way to write faster? June said that she had trouble writing quickly enough in her exams, and I'm worried that that might be a problem for the others as well."

"It's always a pleasure to see someone who is so considerate of their schoolmates, no matter their house," the Headmaster told him. "And yes, it seems that writing faster or extra time may be the only options, though perhaps not… do you think this is a problem that Muggles have had to deal with? I do often find that, since there are so many of them, they come up with good ideas before we wizards manage to do so."

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "But probably, because Muggles can't heal broken bones quickly. If someone broke an arm before they took their GCSEs then it wouldn't be fair to fail them because they couldn't write fast enough."

"I shall consult with Professor Burbage on the matter," Dumbledore said. "Now, as to the reason why I asked you here. Harry, I have been researching as best I can into Tom's life, and while the progress is slow I believe I should keep you informed as much as possible."

Harry nodded, understanding how serious the subject was, and Fawkes began to softly sing into the air of the study.

"A part of the key is the locket, you see," Dumbledore went on. "With the diary, it might be possible that it was simply something that Tom had to hand, but the locket… the locket appears to me to be Salazar Slytherin's locket."

"Slytherin?" Harry repeated – the locket had had a snake on it, certainly, but he hadn't imagined that. "The founder of Hogwarts? Where did he get that?"

"From a woman called Hepzibah Smith," Dumbledore said. "The full tale is sad, and I believe that he murdered her for them."

The Headmaster's usual smile was absent. "I am still piecing the puzzle together, Harry, and parts of it rely on memories I have not examined for decades. But if Tom's behaviour is consistent, I believe that another of his Horcruxes is the cup of Helga Hufflepuff."

Harry winced.

"Indeed, indeed," Dumbledore said. "We may have no choice but to destroy the cup, as well, which is a great shame – though it must be admitted that first it would be necessary to find it."

Harry felt quite disquieted for the rest of the day, and it was hard for him to focus on his Charms essay.

Thinking about Tom Riddle, or Voldemort, as being evil enough to split his soul like that had been bad enough. But when he now knew that he'd put some of his soul into a priceless historical artefact, and that he'd probably done it more than once to more than one historical artefact… in an odd way, it felt worse than 'just' making an evil ring to hold you to the world.

The worse thing, though, was that there might be no way to find where the cup actually was. Dumbledore had assured him that he was sure there was some way to sort the whole thing out, which did make Harry feel a bit better, but it still seemed like quite a big problem for a still-little dragon to be contemplating. And that was before even thinking about how many horcruxes there were – there could be dozens, even, though that didn't seem very likely because of how you apparently had to murder someone to make a Horcrux. And it seemed like Voldemort had relied on his thugs to do a lot of his killing.

Towards the end of the day, though, and with his essay finally finished – and after he'd rewritten the bit Hermione had said wasn't really up to snuff – Harry decided to go through his book collection looking for inspiration.

There were a lot of things he could read, but after thinking about it Harry decided to curl up with Redwall again. It was a fun book to read, and it was all about someone who didn't think he could deal with the dangers he was facing… going ahead and doing it anyway.

(Though only after getting hold of a magic sword and armour and stuff, because that was always helpful. Being a brave person from a humble background going to save the world was one thing, but going in unprepared was just silly.)

In the next day's Care of Magical Creatures class, they were told about and shown examples of the humble Flobberworm.

Harry got out his Fantastic Beasts book, to check something, then put up his paw.

"Ah, Mr. Potter!" Professor Kettleburn said. "Yes, go ahead!"

"I was wondering why this is considered a magical creature, Professor," Harry explained. "In Fantastic Beasts it says that the beasts that got concealed were the ones which were obviously magical, but a Flobberworm doesn't look obviously anything. If a Muggle found one now they'd be confused, but if they hadn't been hidden away then I'm not sure they'd think they had to be magical."

"A fine question indeed, Mr. Potter, a fine question!" Professor Kettleburn announced. "A point to Gryffindor for incisive thinking! And the answer, why, the answer is that the Flobberworm is taxonomically illogical."

This didn't seem to explain anything to Harry, or indeed to anyone else. Even Hermione seemed a little confused, which was outside Harry's experience.

"Ah, I see I'll have to go into more detail!" the teacher smiled. "Well, back in the seventeen hundreds, a Muggle by the name of Linnaeus started to describe how animals fit together into categories – so for example a wolf and a dog are similar, and then a fox fits into a larger group, and so on! And all of those categories make sense for all Muggle animals – so feathers are only found on birds, and fur is only found on mammals, that sort of thing."

Dean put his hand up. "So does that mean that winged horses don't fit?"

"Exactly!" Professor Kettleburn said, mightily pleased. "Winged horses don't fit! It's one way we can tell they were created magically long ago, you see. So all magical beasts that are hidden away from Muggles are in at least one of two categories – either they don't fit into taxonomy properly, and the griffin is a good example of that, or they have a magical ability of their own that meant they had to be hidden or else they'd give the whole game away like a shot!"

He nodded over to where Nora was sunning herself by the lakeside. "And dragons like our dear Nora there, and Mr. Potter himself of course, are both. In Mr. Potter's case, for example, he has external ears. No non-magical animal that isn't a mammal has those."

The Professor reached into the crate and pulled out a flobberworm, which flobbered a little. "The reason the Flobberworm is taxonomically illogical is a bit more complicated, but fortunately taking care of them isn't nearly so difficult – there's a reason they're one-X species. If you could all take hold of some lettuce?"

Humming to himself as the clock got close to seven, Harry checked that he had all three of his rulebooks stacked up on the table and plenty of paper and pencils.

They'd be using way too much for parchment to make sense, which had meant a trip to Fort William for paper, and the pile of special multi-sided dice had come from a shop in London over the summer.

Just when he was satisfied that everything was in place, there was a knock on the door.

"It's open," Harry called.

One of the Ravenclaw fourth-years peered around the door. "Hi, is this where the dungeons and dragons club is – oh, huh."

"That's right," Harry agreed.

"You're the one running the D&D club?" the boy asked, sniggering. "And it's on the first basement floor… or, to put it another way, in the dungeons?"

Harry nodded again.

"Kind of a pity Nora isn't in here, or this really would be dungeons and dragons, plural," the Ravenclaw boy said. "Any idea how many people are coming?"

"There were half a dozen names on the sign up sheet," Harry answered. "Have you played this before?"

"Once, a couple of years ago," the boy said. "James Lively, by the way. And I know you're Harry Potter."

"Nice to meet you," Harry smiled.

There were a total of five people who showed up for the first session – Neville was one of them – and once everyone had Harry decided to explain the basic idea.

Two of the other students who'd decided to attend (Su Li and Colin) had never played before but had at least heard of the game, while Tanisis admitted that she didn't even know that and had mostly come along to see what it was going to be like.

"Well, the idea is that each of you plays as an adventurer," Harry said, doing his best to put it in a quick description. "So a swordsman, an archer, and a wizard, for example."

"So we're not all wizards and witches?" Su checked.

"You could be," Harry told her. "But you might have a bit of trouble, because this is a Muggle idea of what wizards are, so wizards are better at some things and swordsmen are better at other things."

"And what then, is there a game board?" Colin said.

"There can be," James answered him. "I don't think Harry has one, but when I played it once the person who was running it had little miniatures for the players. I'm not all that bad at Transfiguration, so maybe I could Transfigure us some."

"That would be great, actually," Harry smiled. "I don't think we've done that kind of thing yet. Anyway, you all play as adventurers, and you have sheets which tell you how good they are at doing things – so how accurate they are with a bow, that kind of thing. And I play as… kind of as the rest of the world that you travel through? Telling you what you see, and what there is to fight – or not fight."

"So what are the dice for?" Su asked. "I'm guessing we roll them to see how well we do?"

"Yeah, and we add the numbers on our sheets," Neville told her. "Or subtract them, sometimes. And Harry tells us how well we do."

"So, how do we start?" Tanisis asked.

"Oh, well, the first thing is that I tell you about where this is all happening," Harry explained, and expanded the map he'd drawn before putting it on the table. "There's about half a dozen different countries – that's Rohan, people from there are really good at horse riding, and that's where the elves live, for example."

"I don't think I want to be one of those," Su said. "They're nice enough, but..."

"Actually, I don't know about that," James pointed out. "Elves can Apparate, right?"

Neville was trying not to laugh.

"These elves are… kind of different," Harry tried. "Anyway, this is Nan Curunir, which is where the wizards Saruman and Gandalf train people in using magic – there's not many of them, and they use staffs instead of wands."

"That sounds cool," Colin declared. "I think I want to be one of them!"

"I'd rather be a Ranger," Neville said. "Or, wait, do those exist? Is that Numenor?"

"Rangers still exist," Harry told him. "But yes, that's Numenor. It's the home of the mightiest kingdom of Men."

"And women?" Su asked.

"And women," Harry confirmed. "They're all middle-ages-y, so they're usually ruled by kings, though. If you want a woman going on an adventure, you could do someone from any part of the world, but your best bets are Rohan and the Elves..."

Even with Neville helping, it took a while for Harry to go through what all the places were and what people from them were like – especially when Neville didn't quite know everything either, because Harry's ideas for things going differently had changed the map. Like there still being a proper Elven kingdom in the West, around the Grey Havens, and how dragons lived in the north past the Lonely Mountain and in the south around the Sea of Nuln in Mordor.

Eventually, though, it seemed like everyone had at least enough of an idea to be going on with, and they got onto making their adventurers.

"So there's six ability scores," Harry started. "The first one is how strong you are, the second one is how quick your reactions are..."

"Can I have a look at the book?" James asked.

Harry said he could in a moment, and then did what he really should have done before anyone turned up – duplicated the book several times, so they had enough for everybody.

"The first bit is that you roll to see what your abilities are going to be," Harry resumed. "Some types of adventurer need to be tougher than others, so you'd want to be tough if your job was being at the front protecting everyone, and you'd want to be smart if you were standing at the back being a wizard."

"No, you'd want to be standing at the back being a wizard if you were smart," Tanisis said, which gave everyone the giggles.

"If you've got an idea of what you want to be, what you do then is you roll dice," Harry explained. "There's loads of ways to do it in the book, but some of them take ages and others just don't seem fair. So I had this idea..."

Rummaging through the dice, he picked out twenty-four six sided ones and put them in a box.

"You roll all of these at once, then you pick three for each ability score and add them together," he explained. "That way, you can have a couple of really good numbers."

Colin went first, rolling the dice with such gusto that some of them dropped off the table entirely.

"I'll get them," Neville volunteered, ducking down under the desk. "Hey, Colin, there's a six down here – no, two!"

"Really?" Colin asked, sounding tremendously excited.

If there was one thing that the first meeting of the D&D club proved, to Harry, it was that it took a lot longer to get things like this done in a group where everybody wanted to see everything that happened.

It had taken the whole evening to get it worked out what everyone wanted to play. Su had decided that being a warrior woman from Rohan sounded good, Tanisis had gone for an Elven archer – though Harry had regretfully explained that the elves in the rulebook weren't as good as the elves in the Lord of the Rings books.

Neville had decided on a Ranger of the North again, or the closest equivalent, and Colin had proudly announced that he was going to be playing a wizard who blew things up all the time.

The person who Harry knew least well, James, said that he'd be a Cleric – which Harry thought was probably good because they needed someone able to do healing things. They didn't have anyone sneaky, either, but that probably wasn't too much of a problem.

By the time all that was worked out, though, it was really time to head to bed because curfew was in ten minutes. Still, everyone had had a good time, and it sounded like everyone was looking forward to continuing next week.

Harry thought it was going very well.

AN:

Hogwarts continues to be a school, with clubs and stuff.