Harry wondered about the strange visitor for most of an hour until he finally decided that the thing which made most sense was that she (or, probably she) was one of the ghosts. Maybe even the Grey Lady, who never said anything and was rumoured to be about a thousand years old.

It was another one of the little puzzles in the back of his mind, and he wondered if maybe the Grey Lady never spoke because she only knew Dragonish. It wasn't something he could really test unless he got lucky, though, so Harry just wrote about the Knight Bus in his essay and called it a night.

Or a knight – which made him giggle when he thought of it.

The following Monday was Valentine's Day, and Harry got to see what Fred and George had wanted those petals for. Eventually.

Unlike Professor Lockhart, Professor Lupin (i.e. Moony) hadn't done anything special for Valentine's day, and nor had any of Harry's other teachers. It sounded from what Hermione said as though the Divination class had featured a few questions about romance, but she said none of it had been very helpful.

Just after dinner, though, Fred (or possibly George) had grabbed Harry and his friends and hurried them up four flights of stairs.

"Come on," he said. "You're going to want to see this."

"Are we?" Ron asked, as they reached the fifth flight, then grumbled something and switched to the shape he'd reluctantly accepted as being Nutkin. Harry scooped his friend up with a tail, giving him a lift, and a moment later Dean blurred into his Animagus form.

"Well, yeah," Fred answered. "Probably. It'll be funny. Now, shush."

They reached one of the landings, and Harry saw that George was waiting.

"Did you say to shush?" George asked, softly.

"I said to shush," Fred agreed.

George (or perhaps that was Fred) had his wand out and resting against his neck. The tip was pointing it at nothing in particular, and Harry was sure he could smell something like flowers.

"What's going on?" Hermione asked.

"I'm sure we were quite clear about you needing to shush," George replied. "Steady… and… now."

One of the classroom doors opened, and George spun around. His wand came off where it was resting on his neck and stayed pointing the same direction as he turned, and once he was done with the turn he flicked it.

The supply of rose petals that Harry had got for them in Fort William appeared directly above the door, hung for just a moment, then fluttered down in a disorganized avalanche on top of a startled Percy Weasley.

"Congratulations!" the twins called out.

"It took us a while to realize it," Fred went on.

"Who knew our perfect older brother could be so sneaky!" George agreed.

"But we know now, so you'd better invite her around to dinner next summer," Fred concluded.

"I – what?" Percy asked, covered in rose petals and baffled.

"You were discussing things with the Head Girl, weren't you?" George asked.

"I wasn't-" Percy began.

"Oh, then you must have been snogging," Fred said wisely. "It's the right time of year for it."

"Really, we're being supportive," George added. "Hello, Penelope! Don't worry, we don't bite."

"If you do I'll get Mum to give you rabies shots," Percy muttered, shaking his head and brushing petals out of his hair. "It's going to take forever to get rid of these..."

It was sort of interesting to know that Penelope and Percy were dating, really, given that Harry had known them both for years now. In one way, it made sense of a few things, but he also did have the feeling that Percy would have preferred for it all to remain secret for a bit longer.

Preferably until some time after the wedding.

Still, at least Fred and George hadn't done it in front of the whole of Gryffindor – or the whole school – so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Four days later, Harry frowned as he looked at his History of Magic work.

"Do you think this makes sense?" he asked. "Wendelin the Weird was trying to protect Muggles who were mistaken for witches, and so she let herself get caught instead of them."

"So why did she say she enjoyed getting burned?" Dean said.

"Because other witches and wizards didn't think it was worth doing, so she came up with an excuse," Harry said. "Already came up with that one."

"It might work," Dean agreed, flipping through a few pages in his history book. "I'm trying to come up with a good other interpretation for Burdock Muldoon."

"This is fun, isn't it?" Hermione asked. "It's really interesting to try and come up with ways that Magical figures of the past could have been different to the way the history book says."

"Kind of fun," Ron said, holding out a hand and wiggling it. "But it's a bit of fun discussion and then thirty minutes of checking and writing, so the fun gets a bit diluted."

"Better than trying to remember how long ago the Wizengamot formed," Neville contributed.

Hermione was about to reply, but then there was a tremendous unearthly shriek from upstairs – accompanied at the same moment by a loud explosion that had Neville springing to his feet and grabbing his wand.

"What was that!?" Colin asked, looking up from a list of third-year electives. "Are we under attack?"

"How?" someone asked.

"Maybe another troll got in?" Katie suggested.

There was a clatter-clatter-crash from the boys' staircase, and Fred, George and Lee all came half-running half-falling down the stairs. There was silver and green glitter cascading off them in clouds, settling to the floor behind them and covering their robes and hair, and when they were nearly to the level of the common room itself one of the twins tripped and fell on top of the other two.

"Ow," the flattened twin wheezed. "Shift!"

The one who'd landed on his brother and his friend duly changed, revealing himself to be Trouble (probably) and Lee rolled off therefore-Strife before groaning something incomprehensible.

The glitter formed a sort of silver-and-green pool around them, which looked oddly beautiful.

"What happened?" Ron said, baffled. "Did one of your experiments go wrong?"

"It looks like they all went wrong," said a Sixth-Year who Harry was fairly sure was called Aloysius.

"I hate the Smiths," the still-human Weasley twin announced. "They got us again."

Trouble shifted back into what Harry decided for the sake of argument was Fred. "I think that Howler back at Christmas was a bad idea."

Harry got up and wandered over, inspecting the glitter more closely.

"This is Muggle glitter, right?" he asked. "It looks like it."

"Is that what that is?" Fred said. "We didn't really have any idea."

"We got a letter," George supplied, brushing glitter off himself in waves. "I think we got a letter. I didn't see it."

"I did," Lee volunteered. "It just said 'To Fred And Or George Weasley.' I thought you'd notice it in a few minutes."

"Why didn't you say?" Fred asked.

Harry licked up some of the glitter, which tasted kind of nice. It had a texture that reminded him of cous cous.

"I thought it'd be funny," Lee told them. "Then it turned out to have loads of glitter and a Howler in it."

"The Howler just had a really loud shriek," George continued. "But when it exploded, it blew the stuff all over the place. You think it's everywhere in here, you should see our room..."

"That sounds like an excellent opportunity for you three to revise cleaning spells," Percy said.

He looked a bit smug.

"All right, Harry, ready to get going?" Remus asked.

He shifted one of the chairs out of the way, making sure that Harry had enough space to move around a bit.

Harry nodded, rolling his neck around a little, then stopped and frowned.

"Well… ready to practice," he clarified. "But I think I'm going to try and work out what I'm doing wrong."

"You might not be doing anything wrong at all, Harry," Remus told him. "This is a difficult spell. It's not something you have to learn until the NEWT level."

That was a good point, and Harry nodded. "Right, but… I suppose I just don't want to keep doing something wrong if it wouldn't take much of a change to do it right instead."

Remus stepped back. "All right, Harry. If you need any advice, just let me know. I'll be here for the whole session."

Harry smiled his thanks, then twirled his wand around and thought about it.

He'd tried lots of happy memories, and none of them had properly worked. He'd often been able to make a shimmering white mist, which Remus had told him was really good, but not always – sometimes it had just produced a tiny little wisp, and sometimes nothing had happened at all.

Just to reassure himself it was the same as usual, Harry thought about the memory of when he'd seen Hogwarts after being stuck in the woods, and once he was properly concentrating on it he cast the spell. He knew he was pronouncing it right, and after so many tries his wand movement was just right, but what came out was a brief jet of white mist that hung in the air until he dispelled it again.

Maybe it was that that was what he was expecting? The spell was Expecto Patronum, after all, and if he wasn't expecting it to work then maybe it wouldn't.

"Can you show me what your Patronus looks like?" he asked.

"Of course, Harry," Remus agreed. "Expecto Patronum."

Harry had seen Remus' Patronus before, but not for a while. It still looked quite astonishing, white mist erupting from his wand in a cascade before coalescing together into the form of a sleek albino wolf.

It wasn't really albino, because it didn't have red eyes, but it was close enough.

The fact that it was a wolf was actually a bit strange, Harry remembered, because when Remus had first shown him he'd been very surprised. They were fairly sure now though that it was because between Wolfsbane and the Homorphus charm Remus had come to terms with his being a werewolf, and so his Patronus had changed to fit.

Thinking about how it had changed, though, Harry frowned slightly. Remus had expected his Patronus to be the shape it had been before – a human, apparently – and he hadn't got it.

So maybe it wasn't about expectations.

"Thanks," he said, and Remus cancelled the spell with a swish of his wand.

If it wasn't about expectation, then maybe it was about something else?

Thinking about that, Harry suddenly had an idea.

Maybe it was something to do with how he was being so careful to fix the memory in his mind first. That was what you did to go between in the Pern books, but this wasn't about getting the memory right so much as it was about getting the emotion flowing through you.

Suddenly sure he had the right idea, Harry raised his wand again. He paused, then flicked it and thought about the first memory that came to mind as he was casting the spell.

A confused melange of the first times his friends had adopted their new Animagus forms all rushed through his memory in one go, along with a rush of surging, floating joy that Harry felt for his friends.

"Expecto Patronum!"

A cloud of glowing mist erupted out of his wand, then unfurled a pair of wings. Head, legs, body and tail all formed at once, the white mist condensing down to a silvery animal that shone brighter than the candles around the room.

A very familiar animal, one Harry had been imagining for years.

"Oh, well done, Harry!" Remus said, clapping, and the silvery little fire lizard – like a dragon in miniature, about a foot long and with the same wingspan – made a movement that was half flying and half swimming through the air, coming around to land on Harry's outstretched paw.

There was no weight to it at all, but it acted as though it was a real, solid animal – furling its wings and looking up at him, head tilting.

"Ruth," Harry decided, feeling there was really no other name he could give to a white fire lizard or pseudodragon or whatever word you wanted to use.

Ruth opened its mouth in a soundless chirrup, then dissolved into silver sparks and vanished.

"It's about the feeling," Harry explained then, looking up at Remus. "You have to cast the spell at the same time the memory's just coming to mind, because that's when it's the strongest – or, that's what I realized, and tried, and it worked."

"However you got it working for you, that's wonderful," Remus told him. "Are you feeling all right?"

Harry suddenly realized that… he did, actually. Better than he had before, even though he'd cast the finished form of a spell where the unfinished form could tire you out quite easily.

Seeing his realization, Remus smiled. "That's a good sign of the difference between an unfinished spell you have to work to keep going and a finished spell," he explained. "The Patronus is one of the best spells to show that to you."

Harry cast the spell a second time, wanting to make sure he could do it, and it was much easier this time – his fire-lizard Patronus appearing from his wand and flying a circle around him before moving to hover in front of them both.

"Fortunately, we can't test it on any Dementors," Remus added. "But even an incomplete Patronus can help you against those. The only problem you might have is casting it in such a difficult situation."

He chuckled. "Though with you, maybe all you'd need to do is close your eyes."

Ruth dissolved again, and Harry frowned as a question occurred to him.

"How does a fully formed Patronus drive away Dementors?"

"It depends on the Patronus, to some extent," Remus told him. "And how many Dementors there are. Dementors tend to not want to be near a Patronus to begin with, but a Patronus can also charge into Dementors and knock them away – or, for example, my wolf Patronus would be able to use teeth and claws."

He shrugged. "It's obviously a bit hard to do experiments. But I have read about some well-cast Patronuses emitting bursts of light that knock Dementors flying away."

Harry wondered if Ruth would breathe fire.

But that wasn't really what he was learning the spell for in the first place, and Harry decided his next step was going to be asking Professor Dumbledore if he could learn how to make the Patronus Charm carry messages.

And work out when he shouldn't do it, so he didn't annoy Hedwig.

"This is pretty neat," Ron declared, as they watched Ruth swim-fly through the air. "Does it think for itself?"

"I don't think so," Harry frowned. "I think Remus would have told me about that."

"I looked up the Patronus when Harry mentioned he was learning it," Hermione told them. "It's generally considered that the Patronus doesn't think for itself but acts how the caster expects that animal to act."

Harry held out a foreleg, and Ruth came down to land on it.

"Like that," Hermione added. "It's very advanced magic, I'm impressed that Harry got it right so quickly."

"He's been trying to learn how to cast it since last year," Ron protested.

"Yeah, that's quick," Neville volunteered. "Gran's still proud of how Dad got it right at sixteen."

"Blimey," Ron muttered.

His griffin statue flew over, circling once and then pouncing down on Ruth, and they all tried not to laugh as the griffin flew straight through. It landed with a thump on the table, nearly rolled over, and shook its head in confusion before furling its wings with a huff.

"Is it me, or is that getting a lot more alive?" Dean asked.

"That happens with magic stuff sometimes," Ron replied, considering it and giving it another tap with his wand to recharge it. "Enchantments, anyway. I think I remember Dad saying his car scooted back into the garage when it was raining once."

He chuckled. "Yeah… Mum didn't like hearing that."

"So when are you going to be learning that other thing from Dumbledore?" Neville asked, as Ruth dissolved. "The message thing."

"Well, I sent Hedwig to ask," Harry explained. "And I got a very nice letter back where he said that he was sorry but he was busy today, and tomorrow, and the day afterwards… and after that he said it would be quicker if he said when he was next available."

He opened his wings slightly in a shrug. "So I'm going to be learning starting in two weeks."

"He is busy, isn't he?" Dean said, shaking his head. "Blimey. You'd think he'd have one of those things Hermione has."

"Maybe he does," Ron shrugged. "Maybe he's got two."

"Having two doesn't help," Hermione told them.

"Can't hurt, though, right?" Ron asked.

"That's not even close to the point."

The wait was a bit annoying, but Harry did have plenty to do so it wasn't all that bad.

Ron had asked if that spell jammer stuff was going to turn up in the Dungeons and Dragons game, and Harry had told him it wasn't going to be just yet but it might appear later. That was apparently enough to get Ron interested in joining, and after some careful thought and discussion Harry scheduled things so that the group met Radagast the Brown.

Ron voiced Radagast as a sort of Hagrid type person, one with a big fell-winged beast with a sprained wing he was taking care of, then told them that he was far too busy to come along on their journey but that one of his friends wanted to see some new experiences. The friend was Ron's actual new character, a magic using apprentice who just happened to also be a squirrel.

(Harry wasn't sure if he'd made Ron's squirrel properly fitting in with how powerful everyone else was, but the best way to be sure was probably just to let it happen and see how it went.)

After that, they began moving west towards the Grey Havens, which was how Harry was going to get them adventuring in a way that ended with finding one of the boats of Earendil the Mariner.

It made sense to him, anyway.

Harry did check the Marauder's Map late at night a few times, but only saw 'Empress' appear on the map one other time. He also got asked to check through it for the name Anansi (Lee Jordan's tarantula) which had gone missing, but there was no sign of the spider at all.

It was a bit peculiar, really.

Even asking Sirius didn't help, because he said that the Map should show everything in the castle but that there might be some places they'd never found and that anything with a name and an identity should show up.

That led to a late-night discussion about Horcruxes, where Harry checked Dumbledore's office on the map and they decided that Horcruxes weren't enough of a person to show up in the first place. They also couldn't find Ron's griffin statue, but the ghosts and the pets did appear.

"The problem is really that some of that spell work was Prongs'," Sirius said, after they'd concluded that the few students who were born in another country had the name that they'd started with, but that the one teacher on the staff who'd changed her name on marriage had her married name shown on the map. "I could help you with the bits I did, and Remus could help you with the bits he did, but some of it was done by your father and that's sort of… not really something we can check to be sure."

He shrugged, and looked between the mirror on his end and a book. "How do the ghosts show up? I know Nearly Headless Nick's real name is Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington, or something like that."

Harry checked. "It gives his real name. But I found the Bloody Baron, once, and he only showed up as the Bloody Baron."

"Well, I very much doubt that was his real name," Sirius mused. "Unless they had a really strange fashion in baby names back whenever he was born."

Harry sniggered. "Maybe there's a star that was called that?"

"Watch it," Sirius warned, waggling his eyebrows. "Well, I'm stumped. Maybe it is a ghost's name… or you could ask Dumbledore when you see him. He'll know."

Harry nodded.

That did sound like the best idea, really. And even if Dumbledore didn't know, he'd at least be warned about it.

"Any idea where the House Elves live?" he asked, suddenly struck by a realization.

"...bloody hell, none of us ever thought about that," Sirius admitted. "It wouldn't be on the map. Well done, Harry, this is what makes you smarter than us thicko Purebloods."

"It'd be a bit of an odd name for a House Elf, though," Harry said, thinking about it and flicking his tail.

"It's all Greek to me," Sirius advised him gravely.

Today's password on Dumbledore's door happened to be "Chewits".

Harry was quite pleased by that one, as he was fairly sure he'd introduced Dumbledore to the Muggle sweet back in second year. The gargoyle didn't seem to have any opinion on it, but then again Harry wasn't sure where it was on the scale which included animated griffin statues, ghosts, pets, portraits and pupils.

"Hold on a moment," Dumbledore requested, as Harry approached the top of the stairs. "I've been making a few mistakes recently, so I would like to see if I can work out who it is coming up the stairs."

Harry wanted to say okay, but realized that that would give the game away.

Dumbledore hummed for a moment, obviously thinking, then spoke up. "Ah! It must be Harry. Do come in."

Harry noticed the small silvered mirror that Dumbledore had floated into place over the pause, but smiled and didn't say anything.

"I take it you spotted my little trick?" the Headmaster asked, eyes twinkling. "I'm afraid that it was the best I could do."

He waved Harry to one of the armchairs. "Now, Harry, I believe we have a little time for pleasantries. How is your schooling going?"

"I think it's going well," Harry replied, after thinking about it a bit. "My marks seem to be going okay, and I feel kind of like I shouldn't do much more or I'd be overworked. But I'm keeping up with everything."

"Excellent," Dumbledore told him. "Take it from me, Harry, being overworked is a dreadful shame and you should avoid it if possible. Sadly, I've found myself trapped into entirely too many jobs and people seem to think I do a good job at all of them, so what am I to do."

Harry nodded, absorbing that.

"There was one thing that was a bit weird, Sir," he said. "Should we talk about it now or later?"

"I will entirely trust your judgement on the matter, Harry," Dumbledore decided.

"I think maybe we should talk about it now, then," the dragon said, after a bit of thought, and retrieved the blank old parchment from under his wing along with the scraps he'd scribbled on.

Laying the parchment out on the desk, he tapped it with his wand. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good."

Dumbledore watched in silence as the map drew itself out in lines of ink from his wand, eyebrows raising over his half-moon spectacles.

"So this is the famous Marauder's Map," he said, interested.

"Is it famous, Professor?" Harry asked. "I know Fred and George had it."

"I believe it's passed through many hands in the last two decades, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "Though quite often the hands are those of our dear caretaker Argus. I've never actually had a chance to see it myself before, though – if I may?"

Harry slid it across the desk, and Dumbledore inspected it for a few minutes.

"This is a remarkable piece of spellwork," he said, eventually. "Based on a Protean Charm, I believe, but with so many additional layers that I believe I would have to see about awarding Sirius an extra NEWT in Charms simply for being involved with it, had I seen it before now."

Using his own wand to move it around as if he'd been taught, Dumbledore examined a section of the map for several long seconds.

"While impressive, Harry, I am not so foolish as to believe you would simply show me this to satisfy curiosity you did not know I had," he said, smiling, and slid the map back across the desk. "And I do believe it is yours, so so long as you use it well I believe I will not have to officially notice it. Unofficially, therefore, might I ask why you brought it up?"

"It's something I saw a few weeks ago," Harry explained. "You saw how the Map shows names?" Dumbledore nodded, and Harry continued. "I saw an odd name on the map late at night, down near where Nora's room is, and it vanished a bit later."

He showed Dumbledore the two parchments. "It appeared like this, in what I think are Greek letters, but I translated it."

Dumbledore adjusted his glasses, looking very closely at the Greek letters, and then turned his gaze up to Harry.

"Do you know what this means, Harry?" he asked.

"Empress?" Harry guessed.

"That is the translation, yes," Dumbledore agreed, sounding grave. "The female form of the Greek for 'Emperor' - or, in the original Greek, 'Basilissa'."

Harry wasn't sure what that could mean, at first. It was like there was a solution there but it wasn't quite in reach.

"Do you remember what you told me Dobby said last year, Harry?" Dumbledore asked. "About the Chamber of Secrets?"

That did it. The reminder made everything drop into place at once – Dobby's warning about the Chamber of Secrets being opened, the idea of Salazar Slytherin's monster, the name Basilissa…

"A basilisk?" he asked.

"Yes," Dumbledore confirmed, heavily.

"But if Empress is a basilisk, and she's Slytherin's Monster..." Harry began, frowning. "I definitely saw her moving around the castle. Why hasn't anyone died?"

Dumbledore blinked, taken slightly aback, then chuckled. "Goodness. Well done, Harry, you are quite right. There is still something we are missing here, and I fear I am being entirely too gloomy."

"Well, there is still a basilisk in the school," Harry said. "But she's been here for a thousand years so far. Has anyone died?"

"I do not believe so," Dumbledore mused, then shook his head. "No. I do believe so, and I think that is the solution to an old mystery."

He stood up and walked over to one of the cabinets in the wall. Fawkes watched him move, then spread his wings and began to sing.

It was beautiful, resonant music that hung in the air like shimmering gold, filling Harry up with wonder so he thought he would burst, and he almost forgot Dumbledore was even in the room until the headmaster placed a book on the desk – Tom Riddle's diary, old and worn even though Harry knew it was empty. (Well, empty of words, though full of more than the usual amount of Tom Riddle.)

"Fifty-one years ago, a girl named Myrtle Warren died at this school," Dumbledore told Harry. "There was not a single mark on her body, and nobody knew quite how she could have died… unless, as I now believe, she was killed by the gaze of a basilisk. She may well have been the first person murdered by Tom Riddle, and used to create his first Horcrux."

Some small part of Harry's mind pointed out that this was not how he had been expecting his Patronus lesson to go.

"Is there a reason you didn't think it was a basilisk at the time, Professor?" he asked, and realized he was raising his voice slightly to be heard over the beautiful phoenix song.

"Strange as it may seem, Harry, basilisks are not well known," Dumbledore told him. "I am well aware of course that you enjoy many Muggle books, but most wizards who know much about magical beasts know about them from Mr. Scamander's marvellous work – a work to which the basilisk was only added in the seventh edition, from… nineteen forty-nine, I believe."

A book floated over from Dumbledore's extensive bookshelf, and Dumbledore opened the front cover to check. "Ah, nineteen forty-eight. I was rather close."

"I wonder if we could speak to her," Harry said. "Safely, I mean."

"It may not be possible, Harry," Dumbledore told him sorrowfully. "As a snake, she doubtless speaks the language of snakes – Parseltongue – and as his descendant it is quite possible Tom had that power… but if she ever knew another language it would have to be Old English, for Salazar Slytherin was from the Fens which we know as the area around Cambridge."

That was a problem, and Harry frowned.

"There is still a lot we do not know," Dumbledore added. "One thing that puzzles me in particular is how it was that Tom Riddle created his first Horcrux."

He tapped the diary with a finger, then regarded Harry closely. "I must confess, Harry, that I know how it is that a Horcrux may be created – though I have often wished I never discovered it. It is a foul magic, and it involves tearing one's soul with an act of murder and then performing dark rituals to complete the split and place the torn-off part of the soul in its new receptacle."

Harry saw what he thought Dumbledore meant straight away. "Doesn't that mean that – if he used Myrtle's death to create his first Horcrux, and he had Empress actually kill her, then… does that make sense? It would mean she'd be a weapon, not a thinking, um, creature."

"That is another matter we do not have enough information about," Dumbledore admitted. "Would that we could ask her, indeed."

He sighed. "This is a dark topic, Harry, and I apologize for burdening you with it at such a young age. It seems Hogwarts has many mysteries even for an old man such as myself."

Harry thought that if nobody had been hurt for the last thousand years except for Myrtle, and she'd only been hurt when Tom Riddle had actually been ordering Empress around, then maybe she wasn't as dangerous as a thousand-year-old basilisk might suggest.

Then he had an idea. It was a not-well-formed idea, an idea which might not work, but it was an idea that might work and he thought he should probably try it if he got a chance.

"Can we do that Patronus lesson?" he asked.

"Goodness me," Dumbledore said, jumping slightly in his chair. "I quite forgot why we were here in the first place. If you will excuse me, Harry, I must put this back."

Harry watched as Dumbledore took the diary back over to where he'd retrieved it, then returned to join Harry – in the other armchair, this time, rather than behind the desk. As he did, Fawkes finally stopped singing, but his voice seemed to hang in the air.

"The Patronus Charm is a remarkable piece of charms work," Dumbledore told him then. "Each one is unique, as I believe I told you before – may I see yours?"

Harry didn't have a problem with that. It took him a few tries to summon his Patronus – the conversation they'd had earlier was still distracting him – and when he got it right it was by thinking about the change that had come over Kreacher and Sirius' relationship since the whole story with the locket had come out.

Ruth's wings flashed silver in the light of the office, and Dumbledore applauded as the draconic shape flew around to 'land' on the arm of the chair.

"A wonderful Patronus, Harry, I must say. Forming a corporeal Patronus is a vital part of this spell, and it seems you have already got that part working quite well."

His own wand came up, and he cast his Patronus – a great silver phoenix which Harry had seen before, and which hovered in front of the headmaster with wings spread but still.

"The most important new part of this spell is that you must want to send the message," he said, enunciating clearly.

The phoenix beat its wings, once, and vanished in a flash of silver light. At the exact same moment, another flash of silver light appeared right in front of Harry and resolved into a silvery phoenix Patronus.

"The most important new part of this spell is that you must want to send the message," the phoenix Patronus said in Dumbledore's voice, then dissolved in a cloud of sparks.

"You mean when you cast the spell?" Harry checked, tail flicking idly. "So you need to concentrate on the happy memory and on what you want to happen?"

Dumbledore beamed. "Very well done, Harry. That is most – if not all – of why this spell is so difficult. Once you have managed to hold both desires in your mind at once when you cast your Patronus, you must simply tell them what message you want to send."

Put that way, it seemed quite simple, though simple wasn't anything like easy, and Harry nodded a bit dubiously.

"Is there a way to tell if you've cast it properly?" he asked. "Except for seeing if the Patronus takes the message away, that is."

"Alas, not at first," Dumbledore admitted. "Of course, you will doubtless be aware if you have failed to keep the happy memory in mind, because the spell will not produce a Patronus at all. But if the happy memory is the only one that you focus on, it will simply produce a Patronus which looks at you in bafflement."

He reached into one of his pockets and drew out a bag of marbles, which he handed to Harry to snack on. "But then, I find that a little bafflement is a wonderful thing to share. I myself am perpetually baffled by even the smallest things, and it is a delight to see everyone around me feeling the same."

Dumbledore had made an hour and a half in his schedule for Harry, and they used all of it. None of the rest of what they talked about was as heavy as the riddle of Empress (or the Empress of Riddle) right at the start, but in between attempts at the modified Patronus Harry was asked how he was doing at each of his subjects and how his fire spells were getting on.

The headmaster also shared a few stories of the Marauders, or the first Marauders, or to be exact Harry's dad. Those were really quite interesting to listen to, and Harry was particularly touched by just how it was that a prankster like James Potter had been able to actually become Head Boy.

Apparently it had partly been driven by romance, but mostly by how Dumbledore himself had gently encouraged Harry's dad towards less rule-breaking pursuits.

From what Dumbledore said of the Singing Blancmange incident (an act officially unsolved at Hogwarts to this day, but which Sirius had mentioned as one of their best) Harry had the distinct feeling that what Dumbledore had managed was mostly moving James Potter away from obvious rule breaking.

It was a really very pleasant evening, even if Harry did end up leaving the office without having mastered the modified Patronus. (Though then again, that was a spell it was relatively easy to practice without having someone helping.)

Over the next few days, Harry thought about his plan to see whether he was right about Empress.

It was a sort of complicated plan, with a lot of interlocking steps, but that sounded about right to him. If you couldn't come up with a way to skip needing a plan at all, there wasn't anything wrong with having a sort of complicated plan if it meant you covered all the things you had to think about.

It was sort of like those checklists they used on aircraft and spaceships, where you did all the steps in order because taking more time was much better than missing something. It also meant Harry could turn the idea over and over in his head, to make sure it wasn't very likely it would go wrong.

Fortunately, the first step was something that would probably be a good idea to do anyway.

"Morning, Harry," Hagrid said, giving Harry a nod. "What brings you down here?"

"Harry!" Nora added brightly.

She held up a large wooden chicken. "Hagrid made this for me!"

"Oh, is that for Easter?" Harry asked.

He wasn't sure if he'd asked in English or Dragonish, but Hagrid nodded. "Thought I'd see about gettin' her some eggs, too. Mite tricky to get hold of an ostrich egg though."

Harry supposed it probably would be.

"I think the House Elves could do something with chocolate," he suggested. "I wanted to ask you about something, though."

"Right, right," Hagrid said. "Come on into the hut. I've got a few rock cakes in the tin."

"That sounds great!" Harry smiled. Everyone else thought Hagrid's rock cakes were a bit too much rock and not enough cake, but Harry tended to think that any mix of rock and cake could work for him depending on how he felt.

Hagrid's were a perfectly nice mix.

He crunched his way through one as Hagrid made tea, then took out the pair of mirrors he'd got in Janus Gallowglass ages ago – the ones he hadn't needed since Sirius had shared the pair that had originally belonged to his father.

"I was wondering if it'd be a good idea to show Nora how to use one of these," Harry explained. "That way we'd be able to talk and stuff."

"Hmm," Hagrid said, thinking about it. "Can't say I've used one of those before meself. How do they work?"

"If you need to call the person with the mirror on the other end, you hold onto it and say the person's name," Harry explained. "That makes it activate, unless it's one of the ones where it only gets hot as a warning."

He demonstrated, giving one of them to Hagrid and saying 'Rubeus Hagrid' into the other, and after a moment his big friend chuckled and waved.

"I can see how that would be useful, right enough. Does it work in Dragonish?"

"I'll check," Harry said, telling the mirror to go blank. Then he looked up at Nora, who was watching with bright-eyed curiosity, and said 'Rubeus Hagrid' again.

Sure enough, the mirror activated. Harry wondered if that meant that – like Mermish – Dragonish was a language that was magically equivalent to English (or whatever other language you were trying to speak).

That made him wonder if maybe you could just teach everyone Dragonish, and they'd all understand it as if it was in their own language. It sounded like that probably wouldn't work for logical reasons, but Wizards had never exactly seemed entirely on board with logic to Harry and he supposed it was entirely possible that the same would apply to their languages.

Just to be sure, Harry took his wand out of his robes and pointed it away from anything important. "Lumos," he said, looking at Nora again, and the wand duly lit up.

Explaining what he was doing to Hagrid, Harry tried something else – he knew that the word Nox was Latin for 'Night', and so he tried using Dragonish to cast that spell as well. Saying 'Night' in Dragonish didn't work, but saying 'Nox' did even though Hagrid agreed that the words sounded exactly the same.

It was all very confusing.

Once that distraction was over, though, Harry showed Nora the mirror and how someone could look into one mirror and see what was coming out of the other.

"But that's just me," Nora said, tilting her head. "I saw a mirror before. It was me."

"I know," Harry told her. "That's how mirrors normally work. This one's been enchanted, though, so you can make it show someone else."

The big dragoness looked sort of skeptical, until Harry showed her by propping one mirror up so she could see it and then carrying the other mirror into Hagrid's hut. Then she was fascinated, giving the mirror an occasional delicate poke with her claw as if to confirm either that it wasn't a reflection or that she couldn't just go straight through the mirror and out the other side.

Harry sort of thought she might need a bigger mirror, but she was very happy to be given the little one, and because he wasn't in any sort of hurry to get this sorted out Harry left the other end of the mirror with Hagrid for now.

AN:

Writing Dumbledore can be pretty fun.

And puzzles lead to puzzlement; Harry is feeling a little bit like Matthias right now. It's kind of interesting to assemble available tools from the series.

Next chapter tomorrow.