Now that he had a plan, Harry spent most of his spare waking hours working on his Patronus.

Of course, the definition of 'spare' was a little more restrictive in reality than it was whenever a phrase like that turned up in books.

The idea that Harry had always got when reading about someone spending most of their spare time working on something was that they spent, well, most of their time working on it. But it turned out that it was a lot easier to skip over several hours' worth of time doing non-spare-hours work in a book than it was as an actual person.

There were lessons, obviously, and nobody could really view those as spare time – unless you were like Ron and had trouble staying awake in History of Magic. (Or, come to think of it, just about anyone. Hermione was about the only human who seemed to have no trouble staying awake through the History of Magic lessons.)

Then there was the time everyone was doing homework. It was nice how they did their homework in groups – it always seemed to make what might have been tedious into nothing of the sort – but it did also mean that Harry was too busy doing homework to practice non-homework magic.

On top of all those things were the clubs, which were fun (and which had other people who enjoyed them as well), and when that was all added up Harry really only spent a little time working on his modified Patronus spell.

It was funny how that all worked out. And Harry didn't really feel in enough of a hurry to ask Hermione for her time travel thing.

Besides, sending messages in the middle of a time travel thing seemed like the fastest way to cause great big problems that would need Ruth to sort out, and Harry's Patronus was only called Ruth.

That made sense to him, and he was sticking with it.

"The way school holidays work is kind of weird," Dean said, apropos of nothing in particular as they were most of the way through doing some Charms work.

Ron looked up. "How's that?"

"Well… there's a couple of weeks around Christmas, and a couple of weeks around Easter," Dean outlined. "And then a great big long couple of months in summer. But why isn't it a month in summer, a month around Christmas and a month around Easter?"

"Maybe because that would make it harder for everyone to remember everything for exams," Hermione suggested.

"But they give us loads of homework over the Easter holidays anyway," Dean countered. "Anyone who goes home like me just spends most of their time doing it, or that's what it feels like – I've already got a week's worth and we've still got half of the last week before the Easter holiday to go."

"It could just be that the teachers need some time off?" Neville suggested. "If you think about it, during the holidays those of us who stay at the castle may as well be looking after ourselves. We don't have much to do with the teachers and they don't have much to do with us, so they could just be spending the time doing… I don't know, broom racing?"

"I'd love to see Hagrid on a broom," Ron said. "Would it have to be made out of a, um… a telephone pole?"

"That's right," Harry told him with a nod, and Ron looked proud. "But I'm not sure if you could make a broom out of a telephone pole."

"Maybe you could before all the metal stuff got drilled into it," Dean mused. "What do you think, Hermione?"

"I know there are special forests that are preferred to produce broom wood," Hermione answered, thinking about it. "But really what matters are the charms, and so long as you can put those on the wood you could use any wood at all."

She put down her quill. "It's the same thing with carpets. The spells could be put on any carpet, so before flying carpets were banned in Britain the best were Axminsters even though that's a Muggle carpet company."

"Wait, it is?" Ron asked. "Wow. I knew they made really good flying carpets, but I didn't know they were Muggles. I always thought it was some wizard company."

"If they're a wizard company, they have terrible secrecy," Hermione told him. "Now, are we going to finish this Charms essay?"

"Hold on, I'm not finished," Dean said. "Because… Hogwarts was founded a thousand years ago, and was there any of the quick ways of getting around then? Like the Floo, or Apparating?"

"The Floo was established in Sixteen Ninety-Two," Hermione answered that one quickly. "And Apparition isn't easy. I think that's why the Summer Holiday is so long, to give people time to get back home without needing to do things like Apparate."

"I wonder if people ever considered riding dragons to get home," Harry said.

"Well, no, mate," Ron countered. "Because most dragons would eat people who tried to ride them. Technically speaking, Nora's weird and you're weirder."

He waved a hand. "You're lucky we like weird."

Harry snorted at that, touched.

"Charms!" Hermione reminded them.

Twenty minutes or so later, the essay was finally behind them.

"Anyone think we're going to be using that last spell, ever?" Ron asked, putting his quill down. "As grown ups, I mean. Why not just summon or banish something, or levitate?"

"It might have some use for you," Neville pointed out mildly. "If you transformed into Nutkin and then used Carpe Retractum, you'd be being towed along really easily."

"Oh, yeah, good point," Ron admitted. "Maybe I should have put that in the essay..."

As his friends kept talking, Harry closed his eyes – thinking about all sorts of things, but especially about what it had been like for his parents when they were at school.

Was this how it had felt for them with their friends?

Suddenly he had a powerful urge to ask Sirius, and before he'd had a second thought his wand was twirling. "Expecto Patronum."

Ruth emerged from his wand in a coil of light, and flew up to hover in front of his muzzle – ethereal head quirked attentively, wings spread but still.

"I think I've got it," Harry said, and then the Patronus vanished.

"...blimey, mate, bit confident?" Ron asked.

"That wasn't what I was going to say," Harry protested. "It just seemed to be working, and I was suddenly surprised..."

He went to get his mirror out of his pocket, and Sirius appeared on it just before he was going to turn it on.

"Well done, Harry!" his dogfather said. "What made it work?"

"I was suddenly wondering how it felt when you were all friends at school," Harry explained. "And I wanted to ask you, and… well..."

It sounded a bit boring, when he thought about it like that.

"Spells can be like that," Sirius shrugged. "A Marauder who will not be named once spent three days trying to get the summoning charm right, and the first time he cast it successfully underwear came zipping out of my trunk into his hands."

He leaned closer to the mirror. "It wasn't my underwear, and they caught him with it. Bit embarrassing all round, except for me because I was too busy laughing my head off."

With that spell under his belt, or in his wand, or whatever it was that wizards said to mean the same sort of thing, Harry had a few more things to get sorted out before the end of term.

Naturally, the first thing was to go up to see Hedwig.

Atop one of the shorter towers of Hogwarts castle, under a sky which looked like it was seriously considering getting around to the whole rain thing as soon as it could get everything sorted out, Harry demonstrated the silver-dragon he could conjure.

"This means I can send messages to people quickly," he explained, and Hedwig examined his Patronus with calm, avian eyes. "But it's not the best thing for all situations."

He frowned, wondering how to describe it. "If I want to send a long letter, then it's best to send you. If I want it to be something someone can go over more than once, it's definitely best to send you – and you're also good for sending letters to people like Dean, because you're a lot cleverer than Ruth."

His owl preened herself at that, and flapped a wing.

"You are," Harry chuckled. "If I sent Ruth with a message to Dean, and he was having dinner with his Muggle relatives who didn't know about magic, that would wreck it and I'd get in trouble because Ruth would just appear in front of Dean anyway. But if I sent you with a message to Dean, you'd know to put it on his table or post it through the letterbox or wait until he was on his own."

After a pause, Hedwig clacked her beak and looked inquisitively at him.

"I wanted to make sure you knew," Harry explained. "And I don't want you to feel like I'm replacing you or anything."

He reached into his robes, retrieving a letter. "Oh, and I wanted to send this off to Charlie Weasley."

Hedwig barked imperiously, sticking her leg out.

"I shouldn't have been worried," Harry admitted, tying the letter to her leg.

It had been a little bit tricky at first to get used to doing that, instead of just giving it to Hedwig and having her carry it, but Ron and Neville had told him it was better for long journeys and Hedwig seemed to appreciate it.

Once it was securely in place, Hedwig stepped back and held up a wing to feel the wind. A moment's pause and she was facing directly into it, and she spread her wings and was airborne in a moment.

Harry took flight as well to give her a send-off, following her half a mile south towards either Romania or Devon – he wasn't sure where Charlie was at the moment – then turned back to the castle.

The funny thing was, if he had a choice between having Ruth and Hedwig or having just one fire-lizard, he'd probably pick the way he had it now. This way gave him options, and if Dungeons and Dragons had taught him one thing it was that having options was a nice thing to have.

As it happened, it had also taught him quite a lot of practical Arithmancy and how to draw a map.

When the Easter Holidays arrived, Harry got started on the bits of the plan he'd worked out.

The first bit was to go down to Hagrid's hut and ask if he could borrow the mirror for a week or so.

"Oh, sure, Harry," Hagrid said straight away. "Don't mind telling you, though, it's a nice gift you got me there."

"We talk!" Nora contributed. "After I go to bed!"

She reached up a claw to scratch the side of her neck. "Not every night, though. Some nights I'm too sleepy."

"I sometimes use a mirror I've got to talk to Sirius," Harry told her – and by extension Hagrid, who he was fairly sure would get most of it. "He's a bit like… for me what Hagrid is for you."

"Oh," Nora said, nodding. "Dad!"

Hagrid gave Nora a spontaneous hug, which surprised Nora so much she nearly sneezed out a gout of flame, and Harry waved his paw a bit before clarifying. "It's more like… he's not my dad, but he does some of the things a dad does. Less of the things than Hagrid does for you."

"Okay." Nora replied, with an expression of ferocious concentration on her muzzle.

Harry could easily tell when she just decided to stop thinking too hard about it and instead just hug Hagrid back, and he stepped back a little while thinking about what the Fantastic Beasts book had said about how dangerous Norwegian Ridgebacks were.

It wasn't that he didn't think Nora could be dangerous. It was just that, looking at this, it was clear that Nora was mostly dangerous to the sort of people who she thought might be dangerous to her friends – like Hagrid, or Harry himself.

After a minute, Harry decided that he should probably just leave them to hug, and did his best to pick up the mirror and take off as silently as possible.

It seemed quite quiet to him, though he did wonder if perhaps he should take lessons from the owls.

Though, then again, it did seem as though 'being quiet' was the sort of thing there should be a spell for. Harry couldn't remember running into any in the books he'd read, at least none that was obviously an actual real wizarding spell instead of either something from one of those books written by Muggles (where it might be something magic could do, but it could just be a coincidence) or one of those books written by Wizards or Witches where they had magic spells that could do whatever made it convenient for the author.

There was that invisibility cloak he had (and never really used, despite Sirius coming up with ideas for it and Trouble and Strife occasionally begging him to let them borrow it) but that was about being invisible not inaudible. Having something that was the other way around sounded considerably less useful, overall.

Then Harry had a sudden moment of inspiration.

That evening, Harry was sitting in the common room reading.

The book wasn't really very important. It was the latest of the books by Anne McCaffrey, called Lyon's Pride and continuing the story of the Talents of Earth, but he'd already read it and he was just reading it again for something to do.

The important thing was his bookmark, which showed all sorts of dots moving all over the place, and in particular two dots labelled Fred Weasley and George Weasley moving towards the portrait hole.

Harry watched closely as they stopped in front of the Fat Lady, giving the password, and then the twins clambered through one after another.

"Hello!" he said, putting his bookmark in the book and carrying it over. "How are you two?"

"Why, very well, thank you," said Fred.

"Quite as well as usual," George agreed. "In fact, I'd say we're quite ready for Easter."

"Don't say that," Fred protested. "You'll give the game away."

"I'd have to be very careless to give the game away," George replied. "Especially since the game doesn't have anything to do with Easter."

"Or is that just something you're saying to deceive Harry – correctly, I might add – about whether or not our latest plan is Easter-related?" Fred asked.

Harry shrugged his wings. "I'm not really sure I follow that, to be honest."

He sighed. "I mean, it took me two and a half years to work out that you're Fred and you are George."

"Beginner's luck, that's what I call it," George opined.

"I agree, Fred," Fred said.

"And nobody said beginner's luck had to be good, George," George agreed.

Harry just smiled.

It really had taken him an embarrassingly long time to work out that he could smell the difference between the twins, though it had only technically been about a year that they'd smelled of anything different at all. By itself that only would have let him know which twin was Trouble and which twin was Strife, but then he'd remembered that the Marauder's Map could tell the difference.

He did sort of wonder if his father and the other Marauders had had to deal with twins themselves, though. And not the easily-un-confused sorts of twins, like Taira and Anna.

"You all right, Harry?" Ron asked, one evening.

"I think so," Harry replied, looking down at himself and then around where he was sitting – just in case he'd accidentally set fire to something.

It hadn't happened yet, but you never knew.

"It seems like you're staying up later, is all," Ron explained. "And getting up later, too."

"How do you know, Ron?" Neville chuckled. "Don't you usually get up at ten in the morning during holidays?"

"Absolutely," Ron agreed. "And Harry's doing the same thing. And he hardly needs any sleep compared to us, so how late is he staying up?"

"I do still get at least six hours," Harry protested. "I just keep losing track of time – I'm catching up on my reading, and then I look up and realize it's gone past midnight."

"A long way past midnight," Ron agreed, then shrugged. "Whatever. I'm not your mum. Just wanted to check."

Harry smiled his thanks, though he did feel a bit bad. He did tend to lose track of time, that was true, but he wasn't just catching up on his reading.

"Is it something with Care of Magical Creatures?" Neville asked. "I know Hermione and Dean are both home for the holiday – did you get any hard homework for that?"

"No, not really," Harry assured him. "It's just doing two feet on the differences between how Muggles think about creatures and what's true."

His friends gave him knowing looks.

"You're doing dragons, aren't you?" Neville asked.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It's kind of hard to work out how much to say while keeping it down to two feet, though. Muggles have a lot of ideas about dragons."

He rummaged around with the books down by his ankles, and pulled out one by Robert Swindells. "This one is about a dragon costume for four people that sort of… comes to life and tries to kill people? It's weird."

"It sounds it," Ron agreed. "Does it actually kill anyone?"

"No, it gets stopped," Harry assured him. "But it's a weird sort of dragon, it's not got any wings and it's more of a great big worm than anything."

"Blimey," Ron snorted. "Attack of the killer flobberworm."

"I'm not sure those words go together," Neville protested.

"What, killer flobberworm?" Harry asked.

"Or flobberworm and attack," Neville shrugged. "Really the only words that go together there are attack and killer."

"And of the," Ron pointed out. "Of the go with anything."

Late that same night, Harry put a scrap of parchment in the book he was reading and looked at the front cover.

It still said 'dragon tears', and it still had a picture of a gemstone with a dragon in it on the cover. But he had this funny feeling that there wasn't going to be an actual dragon in this book, even though there were certainly magical things happening one way or another.

It was sort of funny to think about, how there were so many kinds of dragon Muggles thought of, and then there were so many more ways where Muggles – and wizards – liked to use the name dragon for things that only slightly involved a dragon. Even Mr. Malfoy had used the name Draco for his son, and Draco wasn't even the most dragony person in the school year.

Harry wasn't complaining, exactly. It was nice to be a dragon when everyone thought dragons were cool, after all. It just made it a bit harder to tell if he was reading the sort of book where there was a dragon at the end, or the sort of book where there wasn't.

Then he noticed the map on the table, and stopped worrying about that sort of thing.

Nora was in her room in the castle, the same as always. But there was another name on the map as well, a dot neatly labelled as βασίλισσα, and she was almost motionless just outside Nora's room.

Harry took a steadying breath, and got out the other end of the mirror.

"Nora," he whispered, holding it facing down and away from him, and pricked his ears up to listen.

The mirror itself made no sound when it activated, and Harry was as quiet as he could be. But sound came through anyway, soft whispers from a voice Harry had never heard before.

"Sentences can be put together to make a longer sentence. The simplest way is to join them with words that are meant for that."

A pause, and perhaps a slight rustling.

"I feel cold. I would like a nap. Those can become, I feel cold and I would like a nap."

Harry touched the mirror and told it to go blank, still in a whisper, then sat back with a hiss of breath. The common room was empty and still, and when Harry had exhaled he was quite aware of how he was the only person awake.

Then he checked the Marauder's Map again.

Empress was still where she'd been before, and after a moment Harry checked on Professor Dumbledore's office. The Headmaster was there, in what Harry thought was the bedroom bit, and he was walking around a bit rather than lying there asleep.

Clearing his throat and doing his best to concentrate, Harry took his wand and twirled it. "Expecto Patronum."

Ruth coiled lazily out of his wand, wings coming out like coils of smoke, then flew up to hover in front of Harry's face.

"Professor," Harry began. "Empress is down near Nora's room and teaching her how to speak. And I think I speak Parseltongue."

Ruth turned as if to leave, and vanished in a little flash of white light.

One of the things Harry remembered about what happened next was how obvious it was that Professor Dumbledore had just got the message. He stood completely still on the map for about four seconds, then started moving more quickly.

Fifteen seconds later, Dumbledore vanished from the Map's version of his office, and appeared with a tiny little crack in the Gryffindor common room just in front of Harry.

"Ah, Harry," he said, with a pleasant smile. "Commendable sense in working all this out from the comfort of an armchair. Would you be willing to come with me while we discuss just how you did it?"

"Of course, Professor," Harry agreed, picking up the mirror and folding up the Map to take with them.

He sort of had the feeling he might need them both.

It was quite a long way down from the Gryffindor Common Room to the dungeons, and Harry explained all his reasoning on the way down there – how he'd remembered what Nora had said about hearing things in her dreams, and how he'd noticed Empress around there. The way that nobody had worked out why Nora had started speaking Dragonish, or rather why no other dragon Harry had ever run into had understood dragonish in the first place.

"So I thought, either dragons don't need to learn the language or they do," Harry said, as they reached the third floor and kept going. "And if they don't need to learn it, then all those other dragons I've been to go and meet should have known it… but if they do, then Nora needed to learn it from someone."

"Most intelligent of you, Harry," Dumbledore told him, with a smile.

He was about to go on, but someone was coming up the stairs.

"Who's that there?" asked a voice Harry was sort of familiar with.

In reply, Dumbledore waved his wand to conjure a brighter light than Harry's wand.

"Ah, Headmaster," the boy said, and Harry recognized him now as the Fifth-Year Hufflepuff Prefect – and Hufflepuff Seeker – Cedric Diggory.

Harry was sort of impressed with Cedric because he was able to be a Prefect and get good marks on his subjects and do well as a Quidditch player. Even with a Time Turner that probably wasn't very easy.

"Is everything all right?" Cedric asked. "Oh, good evening, Harry. Something wrong?"

"Perhaps, Mr. Diggory, perhaps," Dumbledore answered. "I must say that I do not think I could ever say everything was all right, because everything is so very big. I can however tell you that I am quite aware that Mr. Potter is out of his dorms after curfew, and I suspect that if he ever gets in trouble for it I will simply have to inform the Headmaster of the very good reason why."

"All right, Headmaster," Cedric chuckled. "I'm going to check the fourth floor, and then come back down floor by floor and go to bed."

"A fine plan," Dumbledore pronounced. "Don't let us delay your somewhat long journey to bed."

Harry watched as Cedric left, then turned his attention to the Marauder's Map again.

Empress was still where she'd been before, but Harry didn't know how long that was going to last.

"Do you know how we're going to do this, Sir?" he asked. "She's just been teaching Nora how to speak, and I don't think that's very dangerous of her. But Basilisks sort of can't help being very dangerous indeed."

"Well, Harry, your way of finding out when she is travelling around the castle is a good place to start," Dumbledore told him. "And it occurs to me that a Patronus cannot be killed, so that would be one way to approach Empress without getting into danger. But then you could not hear her reply."

"I could have the mirror on, but it might wake up Nora," Harry added, thinking about that. "And it'd be a really awkward way of talking, anyway."

Dumbledore stroked his beard.

"Indeed," he said, softly. "Indeed."

They reached the ground floor, and turned to pass through the Great Hall – still lit by hundreds of floating candles, even at near midnight.

"Perhaps using a mirror would be the best way to do things, though," he added, slowing to a halt by the high table – not far from the door to the dungeons. "I don't suppose you have another pair on you, by any chance?"

"I've got two mirrors," Harry answered, rummaging in his robes to fetch them out – one new and immaculate, the other slightly scratched. "There's one where the other end is in Nora's room, and one where the other end is with Sirius."

"Ah, I believe I have the beginnings of a plan," Dumbledore said. "Do you mind terribly if I take that mirror of yours where the other end goes to Sirius?"

Harry had to think about that a bit.

The mirror had belonged to his father. But he had other things that had belonged to his father, like his invisibility cloak or the Marauder's Map. And the mirror was his, which was one of those things that tingled a dragon-y instinct…

"What's the plan?" he asked, instead of saying yes.

"Simply that it occurs to me that a Basilisk on the other end of a mirror is unlikely to be able to either bite someone or crush them," Dumbledore explained. "And I believe that if I send a message to Sirius by Patronus, we could have him paint over the other end of that pair of mirrors with some nice black paint – and that way you would also be safe from Empress' eyes."

He gave Harry a nod. "Then we would simply give you the blacked-out end of the mirror, have Fawkes give Empress the other one, send a message with your Patronus to explain the situation, and we would be able to have a nice chat."

Harry was really quite impressed. That sounded like it would be quite a safe way to start talking to one of the most dangerous types of magical creatures, and thinking about it it seemed that at no point would anyone who could actually die be close enough to Empress to be in danger.

And, oddly enough – now he'd heard what Dumbledore intended – it seemed like it would be all right as far as his dragonish thoughts were concerned. He would still have one of the mirrors, after all, it would simply be a different one of the pair. And he was sure that Sirius would be able to get a new set of two-way mirrors, even if they weren't quite as full of history as the one he had shared with Harry's father.

"All right, Professor," he said, and slid the slightly scratched mirror across the high table.

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced, and raised his wand. "Expecto Patronum."

There were several little details that had to be sorted out, like making sure that Harry could send a message by Patronus in Dragonish (or Parseltongue, or whatever the right word for it was). Normally just looking at a dragon changed his language automatically, but Ruth was different – probably because otherwise he couldn't send a message in English using his Patronus – and Dumbledore eventually solved the problem by transfiguring a goblet from the high table into a marvellous golden dragon statue, one which curled up and went to sleep.

Then they had to work out what to say.

Finally, though, everything was ready. Fawkes was stood on one end of the High Table with one end of the mirror in his beak, Sirius had arrived with the other end of the mirror painted over with jet-black paint, and the Marauder's Map showed that Empress was still not far from Nora's room.

"Is everybody quite ready?" Dumbledore asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Sirius said, yawning. "I still can't believe we're about to talk to a Basilisk."

Harry nodded his readiness as well, and Dumbledore smiled.

"Goodness me," he pronounced. "I must confess I am not ready for what is about to happen; I am glad you are all so confident."

Harry giggled, then held up his wand and looked at the golden dragon statuette.

"Expecto Patronum," he said, wondering how that sounded to everyone else.

Ruth formed, circled, and waited expectantly for the message.

"Empress," Harry began, feeling a little flutter in his stomach. "Hello. My name is Harry Potter. A phoenix is about to drop an enchanted mirror behind you that we can use to talk to you safely."

He paused, but didn't send the spell off just yet. "You've been teaching Nora to speak, so… I'd like to talk."

That was it, and he sent Ruth on his way a moment later.

"How was that?" he asked.

"You're asking the wrong people," Sirius pointed out, as Fawkes took off. His red-and-gold feathers lit up like a bonfire, and he was briefly invisible behind a curtain of flame before the flame dissipated and nothing was left. "We couldn't understand what you said."

"Though I must confess I would dearly love to add Parsel to my repertoire," Dumbledore admitted. "Perhaps I shall have to ask Hagrid some time."

Fawkes returned in another flash of fire, and Harry picked up the blacked-out mirror on the table.

"Empress?" he said, then decided to try it in Greek. "Basilissa?"

"How did you learn that name?" a soft, dry voice asked. "Even Salazar's heir didn't know that name."

"It was from a magical object my father made," Harry replied.

"…I don't speak that language," Empress protested. "If it's English, it changes so quickly."

"Sorry," Harry said, looking up at the statuette again and wondering if maybe they should put a dragon picture on the mirror. "Is this better?"

"Yes," Empress said, and this time Harry thought he heard relief. "I… there are so many things I don't know about what's going on."

"It was a bit of a surprise for us, as well," Harry told her. "We saw you on a magical map a week or so ago, but it took a while to work out a way to talk to you."

"You already knew…?" Empress asked. "Salazar said-"

The sentence ended very suddenly.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked.

"This is weird," Sirius muttered, then yawned.

"It's nothing," Empress declared. "Why do you want to talk?"

"I partly want to say thank you," Harry told her. "You taught Nora to speak, didn't you?"

There was a pause of several seconds.

"Yes," Empress said eventually. "I've been teaching her how to speak. I'm still not finished."

"Then thank you for that," Harry began. "And… why?"

"I… don't feel comfortable saying why," the basilisk replied. "Not yet. But it's not to harm her."

"Would you mind terribly letting us know what you've been talking about, Harry?" Dumbledore asked. "I'm sure it's going well, but I might be able to give you some advice."

Harry let Empress know what he was doing, then translated the whole conversation as he remembered it.

"I'm glad there isn't a Wizengamot meeting tomorrow," Sirius observed. "And I'm not sure if I'm saying that because I might feel tired, or just generally overwhelmed… it's too late at night for this kind of thing."

"If you could reassure miss Empress that I personally bear no ill will towards her?" Dumbledore asked. "It seems only polite."

Harry relayed that, and there was a long hiss from the mirror. It wasn't any formed words, just a serpentine sigh.

"That sounds like good news," Empress said eventually.

"I wanted to ask," Harry added, remembering what he'd wondered about before. "Why did you kill Myrtle?"

That sounded bad when he said it, so he tried to explain. "We realized how Riddle did it, but there's some funny magic stuff as well-"

"I had to!" Empress interrupted him. "I had to… he ordered me to do it. And – I'd been doing my best to just scare people. I was told to attack, and I attacked. But that time I was told to kill."

Another long, serpentine hiss.

"When I was young, my role was to defend Hogwarts from those who would destroy it. That was what Salazar said. But after hundreds of years, Hogwarts is still here… and I have come to see that he and his heirs wanted to destroy Muggle-borns for being different."

Harry didn't say anything, and after a moment Empress spoke again. "Maybe Salazar wasn't like that. I don't know any more, it was so long ago. But I just want to be free."

"You had to?" Harry asked. "You didn't have a choice?"

"And now you know," Empress said, sounding exhausted. Harry could hear scales slithering over stone, and looking over at the Map he could see she was moving – slowly – towards where she'd disappeared before. "I kept that secret well..."

"But if you didn't have a choice," Harry began, then paused. "It was his fault – not yours."

The slithering sound stopped.

"I think I have a lot to think about," Empress said, eventually. "Should I take the mirror with me?"

"If you want," Harry told her, then realized something. "Is that why you were teaching Nora how to speak?"

"It is one of the reasons," Empress answered. "Not the only one."

Harry didn't think of anything else to say, apart from translating the second half of the conversation for Dumbledore and Sirius. Empress vanished off the Marauder's Map again, but the slithering sounds kept coming from the mirror for another few minutes until they receded – as if Empress was moving into the distance.

"I wonder whether Empress has been on the staff list for the last thousand years," Dumbledore said. "If she has, I'm slightly worried about the amount of back pay I may owe her."

AN:

And there we go.

This was something I sort of treated as a puzzle from Harry's point of view, putting together the abilities available to create a solution.