Breakfast, for Harry, was trying out something new that one of the House-Elves had come up with for him over the summer holidays.

As usual, this was indicated by a little dragon flag stuck in one of the dishes that appeared, but Harry was fairly sure that this time he wouldn't really have needed the hint – and nor, for that matter, would anyone else.

It wasn't like anyone else was likely to bite into a solid steel croissant, even without the little detail that it was also faintly glowing from the heat of the molten brass inside.

Very carefully making sure he didn't spill any, Harry nibbled his way through the unusual breakfast while trying to work out how he could tell the eager elves that it was nice but also probably too dangerous for the breakfast table… or, indeed, any table that could conceivably be referred to as 'old', 'valuable' or 'flammable'.

"Divination on Monday afternoon," Dean observed, checking his schedule. "That's going to be fun. I'll probably be told I'm doomed to die by having an airship crash on top of me."

"Airships?" Neville repeated. "Hold on… do you mean the big balloon-y ones, or the ones like Vingilot?"

"I've never heard of Vingilot," Dean confessed. "And yes, I mean the big balloon-y ones."

"Morning's not all that bad," Ron observed. "History of Magic is kind of a pain to start off the year with, but then it's Charms."

"Huh?" Neville replied, frowning down at his sheet, then snapped his fingers. "Oh, right. I forgot it's Friday. It's kind of easy to lose track during the holidays."

"Double Potions is going to be a problem," Dean opined. "Any idea what we're doing?"

Harry thought about it, and said he didn't know because their homework over the summer hadn't been focused on anything in particular.

"Hey, Dean?" Fred asked, drawing all of their attention. "Any ideas on how Fred and I could enter the Triwizard tournament without getting in trouble with the age restriction?"

"Honestly, it sounds pretty much impossible," Dean replied. "It's not like they don't know how old you are, it's going to be easy to check."

"Why did you ask Dean?" Neville asked, curious.

"He thinks in twisty ways," George explained. "Ways Wizards don't normally think of. It's really helpful."

"Thanks, I think," Dean chuckled.

"That's the spirit," Fred nodded. "Anyway, there's got to be some way. Maybe that Polyjuice potion stuff?"

"Careful with that," Harry advised. "I only know one person who got involved with using Polyjuice and he ended up in prison for ten years."

"Technically I did introduce you to Scabbers," Ron pointed out. "So you sort of knew two."

"That's true," Harry admitted, graciously. "But he's probably going to prison for a lot longer than ten years."

Their conversation was interrupted by Hedwig delivering four letters to Harry.

"How does she know where to pick up extra letters?" Hermione asked, a little confused, and Harry shrugged.

Hedwig was a particularly smart owl as far as he was concerned, and that was that.

The first letter was from Remus, saying that he hoped Harry was getting on well now he was back at school and talking a bit about how he'd started trying to teach the other werewolves the things he felt they needed to know. It wasn't easy to do much with just his wand from a hospital bed, but they'd started on basic mathematics, and Sirius had got some maths textbooks to help out with the whole process.

Harry was glad Remus was doing okay, and decided to either write or mirror-call him that evening.

Then there was a shorter letter from Hagrid that said how excited he was about something, but he seemed to sort of assume that Harry already knew what it was and that Harry would be as excited as him.

Harry thought he probably would be excited if he knew what it was, but there wasn't nearly enough clarity there to actually tell for sure.

The third letter was from Sirius and was very short indeed, consisting mostly of a complaint about how Hedwig had dropped parchment and quill next to him and perched on the back of his chair looking baleful. (Harry wasn't really sure how much truth there was in that one.)

And finally Professor Dumbledore asked to see Harry whenever there was a break in his schedule, so long as that break in his schedule took place an hour after dinner today, or tomorrow at eleven in the morning, or Sunday at three in the afternoon. The letter also told Harry that the current password to the Headmaster's Office was 'Whoops' after an unfortunate mistake while changing it, but that by the time the letter arrived Harry should assume the password had become 'Aniseed'.

That sounded agreeable enough, so Harry decided to go there at the first opportunity.

Then they were off to get their things for History of Magic and Charms, because they may as well carry both sets of books rather than have to make an extra trip up and down at least ten flights of stairs. Or that was what Harry originally reasoned, but he was then reminded of the additional advantage that Dean in particular had – which was that when he transformed all his things were just sort of merged into the magic of his alternate form, only to appear again afterwards.

It made it very easy indeed to carry an awful lot of books, and Harry wondered in an idle sort of way what the limit was – and if it worked the other way, as well.

Maybe Hermione could have a jacket she wore as Clever Girl that went away when she was in human form? It was an interesting idea, and one Harry decided not to mention to the Twins in case they used it for nefarious purposes.

Not that they or their rivals the Other Twins needed any help, because when everyone was going in and out of the common room getting books for their first lesson Harry happened to notice that both Weasley Twins had already somehow become facepainted.

"We'll get them, don't worry," was Fred's only comment when Harry pointed it out.

History of Magic started off with goblin rebellions, which was a bit of a surprise to Harry because he was fairly sure they'd already done those.

Then again, they were getting on to their OWL years, so maybe the point was that now they were going to be doing it again once they had more of a background in it. That might be quite a good idea if it was what they were supposed to be doing, because Harry could remember some of what they'd done for history at Little Whinging JMI and he didn't think it would really work in a GCSE paper to say that the Greeks built 'with columns'.

It did seem like a lot of what Professor Binns was saying was very familiar, though, so Harry filed that under 'maybe'.

Then it was Charms, where Professor Flitwick told them that they were going to be moving towards charms designed for more specific situations. By way of demonstrating, he showed them first their first-year Levitation Charm and how it could slowly lift something and slowly move it about, then promptly moved on to the Summoning Charm which could pull something to him at speed from just about anywhere in the entire room – and the Banishing Charm as well, which could send something in the other direction just as fast and precisely.

What really impressed Harry about the Summoning Charm, however, was that because it was so focused it could also be almost smart. As Professor Flitwick helpfully demonstrated, you could put something in the pocket of a boy at the back of the room (Terry Boot) and Summon it, and it would whizz out of his pocket without damaging either itself or the pocket before curving gracefully into Professor Flitwick's hand.

He did however say that that depended on casting the spell well, and that a poorly cast charm should just not attract the object but that it might well have direr consequences.

(At least it didn't sound like one of those consequences was 'flattened by a buffalo'; as far as Harry could tell the only situation where that could happen with a summoning charm was casting it correctly. On a buffalo.)

Lunch came, and then went, although while it was still in the process of going Harry decided to go over and check with Conal how things were going for him.

"Oh, well… it's all a bit overwhelming," the centaur admitted, looking around the hall. "I've learned things before from my uncle, he likes teaching, but I've never been in a classroom before. And it seems like everyone else knows more than me."

Harry smiled slightly.

"They might," he said. "For about a week. That's how long it took before my wizard-raised friends didn't know any more about what was going on than my Muggle-raised friends and I."

That made Conal blink.

"Does that mean you were raised by Muggles?" he asked. "How?"

"They didn't notice I was a dragon," Harry explained. "I sort of didn't notice, in a way, because nobody made a fuss about it."

Conal looked deeply baffled by that, and Harry decided to let him know about the oddly-shaped society meetings in case June hadn't told him about them. (She had, but it was probably okay to mention them more than once.)

One thing Harry was quite pleased to hear was that Conal actually had very few problems with the stairs – or, at least, no more problems than any of the other students who couldn't fly – in spite of his hooves. Conal also said that Madam Hooch had already asked to have a quick talk with him about brooms, to make sure they could develop what Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, June and Tanisis had done and get a cushioning charm properly rigged up for a centaur.

It all sounded like things were going nice and smoothly, which was lovely to hear and gave Harry a good feeling going into Potions.

"So, how was your summer?" Daphne asked, as Harry held down the Chinese Chomping Cabbage and she set about it with a very sharp knife.

"Well, I went to see the World Cup, but I think most people did," Harry replied. "I did get involved in stopping a riot, so that was interesting."

He'd also defeated an unknown percentage of Voldemort, but that didn't seem like something to boast about.

"Oh, yes, I heard about that," Daphne said, wincing. "We were over on the other side of the grounds, all we saw was a few flashes. And the Dark Mark, of course."

She took aim, and hacked the Chomping Cabbage in half with a two-handed blow. It stopped moving, and she examined the result critically.

"We need to divide it evenly, don't we?" she asked. "Does that look even?"

Harry put both of the big halves in the scales, one to a side, then began adding the shredded leaves to whichever side was higher.

"A group of my friends managed to get the head of the Department of International Magical Co-Operation in trouble," he added.

"I thought it must be them," Daphne said, nodding. "Not many dinosaurs in Britain. Right, that looks even. What's the next ingredient?"

"Scarab beetles, I think," Harry replied, not checking the board just yet. "They represent permanence, so that's supposed to be why the bones are durable. And then… no, it must be the puffer fish next, because you have to start with why the bones are alive, then grow them, then make them durable."

They both checked their notes.

"Puffer fish," Daphne confirmed.

As he started preparing the puffer fish, a tricky process which involved stewing, Harry wondered why exactly it was that they were allowed to brew Skele-Gro in a Potions class when it was owned by a company.

Maybe it was just that only that company could sell it. With how much magic let you just conjure things and make things and transfigure things, any wizard could make anything if they studied enough… but most of them wouldn't bother when buying it was easier.

It wasn't really that different for Muggles, probably.

After potions, Harry washed his paws – as Professor Snape liked to remind him, potions ingredients weren't edible (much like death). Then it was dinner, and Harry ate quickly with an eye on the time.

Actually both eyes were on his food, and he occasionally checked the nearest watch (Ron's), but it was the thought that counted – he didn't want to be late to talk to Professor Dumbledore, because he knew how busy he was.

"Wonder how the House Elves will react when Beauxbatons students come over here," Ron mused, halfway through a pumpkin wellington.

"French food, probably," Dean shrugged. "You know, blancmange and stuff."

"Blancmange is French?" Neville asked. "Huh. Now I say that, it does sound obvious."

Ron sniggered.

"It might be nice if we had ratatouille," Hermione suggested. "French food and French cuisine are sort of different."

"No, what I meant was that they get happy enough to come up with ideas when there's just one dragon around," Ron explained. "Or two, counting Nora, but she mostly just gets meat. So if Beauxbatons bring some of their dragons..."

"Oh, right," Harry realized. "But wouldn't the dragons just sneak around the kitchen and take food that way?"

Hermione started giggling.

"Hogwarts food shortage," Ron suggested. "Filch baffled."

"All the house elves saying to themselves, I'm sure I put a pie over there," Dean supplied, and then everyone was laughing too much to continue.

They probably got some weird looks, but that was okay.

"Harry, lovely to see you," Dumbledore said, as Harry was climbing the stairs.

"You can see me, Professor?" Harry asked, pausing and looking at where he was.

It certainly seemed that he was still some way down from the lip of the office.

"Well, no, but it is lovely to see you every time I do," Dumbledore explained. "Please forgive an old man for anticipating the pleasure of your company."

Harry finished climbing the rest of the way, and Dumbledore smiled brightly at him. "Ah, excellent. Please take a seat, though do give it back when you're finished as I only have three."

Once Harry was seated, Dumbledore shook out both his hands before steepling them together and resting his chin on them. He looked at Harry for a few seconds, and the dragon tilted his head.

"Professor?" he asked. "Is something wrong?"

The bright smile returned to Dumbledore's face. "Ah, wonderful! I must confess, Harry, I was trying out a way to use body language – one language I've been unable to learn how to speak, as it involves no sound – and I thought I'd try it out."

Unsteepling his hands again, Dumbledore tapped his long chin with one of his fingers. "Now… I believe you have heard about the Triwizard Tournament?"

"Yes, Professor," Harry agreed, because it was true and because he had the idea that Dumbledore was going to go somewhere with that.

"There are two things that I will want to talk with you about, one regarding the Tournament," Dumbledore explained. "That one is one I will have to ask you to be secret about, while the second one is one which relates to poor Empress."

That made Harry frown, trying to work out what they could be.

"I trust Empress is well?" Dumbledore added.

"She's… alright," Harry summarized, after thinking about it for a bit. "I've been reading books to her, which I think has helped. I think there are things she still doesn't want to talk about, though."

"Well, perhaps this will help her feel better," Dumbledore mused. "You see, Harry, I wish to offer Empress a job."

Harry blinked.

"Pardon?"

"A job, of course, which she is well qualified for." Dumbledore adjusted his glasses slightly. "As I recall, it was Empress who taught and has been teaching young Nora to speak in Dragonish, or Parsel, or whatever term we may wish to apply to the language you may speak magically and which Nora and Hagrid have learned in their different ways."

Harry confirmed that with a nod.

"Well, then," Dumbledore smiled. "Thanks to the cooperation of the Department of International Magical Co-Operation, and our very own Hogwarts alumnus Charles Weasley, Hogwarts will be taking part in a project to see what it is precisely which results in dragons with whom one can hold a conversation. A number of dragon eggs shall be arriving in the due course of time, and I would like for Empress to provide the same education services for the hatchlings as she has done for young Nora."

"I'll ask her," Harry promised. "I don't know what she's going to say, but I'll ask her."

"Excellent," Dumbledore said pleasantly. "And since I see we have reached the second topic first, I believe we should cover the first topic second. You see, as the host school it largely falls to Hogwarts to arrange the three tasks of the Triwizard Tournament, and the original idea was to have a number of extremely large dragons involved in one of the tasks."

He smiled. "However, it occurred to me that we may have a rather simpler answer, in the form of Nora herself. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe she could be asked to do something quite complicated?"

"You'd have to make sure she understood it," Harry answered, thinking about that. "Is the idea to have her be the dragon for the task?"

"That is correct, Harry," Dumbledore concurred. "The broad idea is that the Champions should have to try to retrieve something from her, without of course injuring her as far as possible, and that she should in turn attempt to stop them without causing them too much distress. You have spoken to her more than I; do you think that is within her faculties?"

Harry had to think about that carefully, and about not only Nora but himself.

"It might depend on what her instincts say," he said, eventually. "She might forget about the bit about not hurting people, if she gets too excited. But I'm just saying that because it might happen, not because I've seen it happen to her. It's actually more like what happens with me sometimes."

"A fair point, Harry, a fair point," Dumbledore agreed. "But I think we can certainly agree that Nora would be somewhat less dangerous than the dragons we were originally intending to use."

He stroked his beard. "I will not pressure you for a full answer to either question straight away. Go and think about them – and convey my offer to Empress, of course – and spend as much time as you like, though be careful you do not spend so much time thinking about them that you forget to do your homework."

Getting back into the routine of doing homework was always a little tricky, just because of the long period of time when there hadn't really been a schedule over the summer.

Harry did his best, and so did the rest of his friends, but it was a bit hard not to discuss other topics.

"It seems like kind of a pity none of us will get a chance to be the Champion," Ron said, as they were all part way through a History of Magic essay about which Goblin Rebellion they considered the most important. "Even Ginny won't."

"Oh, because of how it's every five years?" Hermione checked. "It is a little odd… but there must have been that problem in the past as well."

She frowned. "But Ron, you must know it's going to be very dangerous."

Harry tried to not only not say anything but not make an expression, because he was now technically one of the people organizing a challenge.

"Well, yeah, but you're really good at stuff," Ron explained. "So it'd be great if you got a chance – and Nev has that whole sword fighting thing, which I bet would look cool. And Dean thinks about things in cool ways and overpowers lots of spells – and Harry's a dragon."

He spread his hands. "So… you know?"

"Hey, you'd do pretty well too," Dean said. "You missed yourself."

"Yeah, but it doesn't sound as impressive if I'm talking myself up," Ron explained.

Neville chuckled. "Good thing we all have each other for that."

"Is that a Gryffindor thing?" Harry asked. "Sorting out who's going to do that?"

"Don't know," Dean mused. "What house was Lockhart in?"

"Goblin rebellions," Hermione reminded them.

Much later that night, after almost everyone had gone to bed and the common room was almost deserted – only a couple of particularly late-working seventh years in the other corners – Harry got out his mirror and his dragon picture.

"Empress," he said. "Good evening."

"Good evening," the ancient basilisk replied, straight away. "Was something wrong yesterday?"

"Sorry," Harry said, wincing. "I forgot to let you know that it was the first day back at school and that I might not have a chance to talk."

There was a long hiss, which didn't get translated into words. "That's all right," Empress said eventually.

"I should have said," Harry told her, wanting to make that clear. "And… oh, there's something that Professor Dumbledore wanted me to tell you."

"There is?" the basilisk asked, and Harry felt the knot of tension inside him unwind a bit.

After disappointing her – even by mistake – it was good to know that she was interested in what he had to say.

"There's going to be a project to see if other dragons can learn to talk like Nora," he told her. "I think as far as most people are concerned it's going to be whether there's something special about Hogwarts, but what Dumbledore wants to do is offer you a teaching job."

The silence that resulted was so long that Harry looked at the mirror again – wanting to see if it had turned off, though he had no way to tell.

"Pardon?" Basilissa asked.

"A teaching job," Harry reiterated, just to make sure he hadn't said it wrong the first time. "He'd like you to try and teach the other dragons Parsel, or Dragonish, or whatever you want to call it."

"That's… quite an idea," she said, eventually.

"I'm not sure what you'd be paid," Harry added. "I said I'd ask, though, and see what you thought."

"I'm going to need to think about that," Empress told him. "It's just… such an odd idea."

There was a slight slithering sound. "Would that mean I had to set homework? My – the others sometimes complained to me about their teachers setting them useless homework."

"I don't think so," Harry said.

"Sorry, I missed that."

Harry realized he'd stopped looking at his dragon picture, and started doing that again so he would be speaking the right language when he repeated himself.

"Do you mind if we do a bit more of that story, while I think?" she asked, after a moment more. "I want to know what happens to the Weyr and if that R'Gul will stop being foolish."

"Of course," Harry assured her, and opened Dragonflight. "There's a bit of a poem to start this section. 'Honour those the dragons heed, in thought and favour, word and deed. Worlds are lost, and worlds are saved, from the dangers dragon-braved.'"

There was another little slithering sound, this one much quieter. Harry imagined Basilissa adjusting herself to be more comfortable, and then started reading the story itself.

The weekend was that odd sort of weekend that happened when you were back at school, but you were back at school for such a short time before the weekend that it sort of felt like you'd had a day of school right before the end of the holidays.

For Harry, it meant being able to really spend some time on flying around Hogwarts (and going to visit Fort William, to see if the library had anything new) and watching the Quidditch team practice, because Oliver Wood was gone but everyone knew that if they skipped an entire year then they'd be rusty for the 1995-6 season.

Cormac tried to assert that he was now the captain, but Angelina told him that that wasn't going to happen because – while a valuable reserve – he wasn't a member of the active team. Also he was younger than her, and also he could be the coach.

(Harry was quite impressed with how she'd made those arguments, because she'd managed to convince Cormac without letting him get a word in edgeways.)

Cormac immediately suggested that they should see if there was anyone who was a good Chaser or Beater in the second and third years who hadn't been noticed yet, or a Keeper if they found one – they were, apparently, 'good for Seekers' - and try and make a total of two teams, one front line and one reserve, as that would give them enough players to actually play a few games. It sounded like a good idea as far as Harry was concerned, though he did wonder if enough people would be willing to take part.

Maybe without Oliver Wood the practice schedule would be a bit more sensible.

On Monday it was the first Herbology lesson of the year, and Professor Sprout proudly unveiled their first plant.

It revelled in the slightly uninspiring name of 'bubotuber', and their task was to squeeze them to produce pus – pus that, it seemed, would be useful in the treatment of acne.

Harry hadn't ever had acne – it seemed like a mammal thing – but he had to wonder whether if (if he did have acne) he'd just have not bothered. Though apparently Eloise Midgen had somehow removed her nose attempting to curse away her acne, so maybe it was much more itchy than Harry had heard.

Then Harry and his friends split, with Harry, Hermione and Dean going to Care of Magical Creatures while Ron, Hermione and Neville went to Muggle Studies. That meant staying outside for Harry, and it also meant his first encounter with a Fire Crab.

It was quite a sight. On first sight it looked like some sort of giant crab, hence the second part of the name, but the shell was more like that of a tortoise – except that it was covered with jewels and looked really rather attractive. It put Harry in mind of Smaug's jewelled waistcoat, though obviously in a different sort of way.

Their textbook said it looked like a tortoise, but Harry thought it was more of a crab overall.

"This is a little more dangerous than the creatures you've met so far!" Professor Kettleburn said brightly.

"You what?" Dean asked. "We started this class by meeting a Norwegian Ridgeback."

"And she was very well behaved!" Professor Kettleburn said. "But this one isn't – you'll want to watch out for the tail, it shoots flames that could scorch your skin off. But feel free to get closer – one of the ways to identify a Fire Crab is the specifics of the jewels on the shell. What type do you think this one is?"

"Um…" someone began, looking at the blue glitter. "Sapphire?"

"I did say you should get closer," Professor Kettleburn cautioned. "Perhaps might be a good idea to apply a flame-freezing charm first, though… you do know that one, I hope?"

Fortunately the answer was yes, and it transpired that this particular Fire Crab was a lapis lazuli. They had to inspect the shell for any broken or rounded-off jewels, since that would indicate possible health problems, and then Professor Kettleburn demonstrated how you could approach a Fire Crab without provoking it enough to make it blast flames at you.

That might, as he put it, be 'on the test'.

The afternoon brought Divination, or Arithmancy if you weren't Dean, or neither if you were Ron (or both if you were Hermione, who Harry reminded to get extra rest as well in case she'd forgotten). Professor Vector told them that this year they'd start working on the maths involved with spell structure, and that by next year they'd be expected to be able to perform the calculations involved with some basic spells and be able to show what would happen if the spells were modified in certain ways.

Harry didn't have the slightest clue how that was going to be tested, but he was interested in learning, and fortunately it didn't seem like they were going to change to a whole new way of doing maths just after learning the first one. Instead it was what were called surds, multiplying and dividing square roots, and it was sort of neat that you could just turn two into the square root of two times the square root of two, treat those as different numbers, and move them around. So the square root of six times the square root of ten became the square root of sixty, which was twice the square root of fifteen, and it was only at the end of all that that they looked up what the square roots were in big books full of numbers.

It was a bit easier to just use Harry's calculator, to check he'd got it right, but it wouldn't be allowed in the exams so he had to learn how to do it with the books anyway.

"Well, apparently I'm going to die," Dean reported at dinner. "But that's nothing unusual for me."

"What was it this time?" Ron asked.

"She said that a crow is a sign of bad luck," Dean replied. "Which, you know, means death. Like how a big black dog is a sign of death."

He shrugged. "I sort of wonder if there are any omens of bad luck that aren't black."

"I think hanging a horseshoe with the ends pointing down is a sign of bad luck," Harry said, trying to remember. "Because the luck falls out. Or is it hanging it with the ends up is a sign of bad luck, because the devil stays in it?"

"According to the book Signs Of The World, in one Native American culture it's bad luck for an owl to fly over your house," Hermione told them, cutting up some variety of croute into slices.

"Well, blimey, that's our mistake!" Neville said. "We've got owls, um, owl over the place?"

"That was bad," Ron sniggered.

Hermione started going through a few other bad luck omens from around the world, like the unlucky numbers (interestingly nine was lucky in some places and unlucky in others) but Harry was suddenly distracted by an odd thought.

Horses in the wild didn't need horse shoes, but horses which humans were riding around did. It was something to do with how hard ground like roads did more damage to horse hooves than softer ground did, though Harry didn't remember all the details because most of the books he'd read didn't focus that much on horses – and the ones which did, like the Warhorse of Esdragon, were mostly about how the warhorse in question didn't care about following any of the normal rules for horses.

That meant that walking around on the hard stone of Hogwarts floors might be a problem for Conal, but Harry wasn't sure how to raise it as an issue.

Maybe it would have to wait until the society meeting.

Tuesday saw Harry's first Runes class of the new year, where Professor Babbling told them that a part of their OWL grade would be based on actually designing a runic object.

She stressed that that didn't mean they were going to be making one, necessarily, because the techniques required to get the carving exactly correct were so fiddly to use and required so much time. But what they were going to be doing was designing one – laying out all the runes that would need to be added to the designated object, and writing up all the ways that those runes could interact and what those interactions would mean. The more depth the better, though it would also of course help if the object was designed to do something useful and didn't have any noticeable side effects.

It sounded like quite a daunting thing to do, to Harry, though they did have a full two years to think about it and work on it so perhaps it wasn't as bad as it sounded at first.

Then for the rest of the lesson they were revising the meanings of the Furthark runes, and Harry wondered about what he'd like to make.

A magic sword, like Neville was interested in, sounded like a fun idea. But maybe a magic shield would be better?

But then again, Neville had ended up not doing Runes in the first place, so it might be nice to try and make him something.

That led Harry to wonder about how magical a magical sword he was thinking of. Because you had some really not-very-impressive magical swords in some books, where the only thing you could really notice was that they glowed sometimes, and then other times you had flaming swords or swords that could be thrown two thousand miles and hit their target or that sort of thing.

Maybe the best person to ask about that would be Neville.

That day also saw George and Fred telling them about how great Professor Moody was as a teacher. Harry didn't have him until Thursday, making it the very last first class of the year – after even Astronomy – but it sounded like it would be an interesting one, as Professor Moody was a real veteran and could apparently get everyone interested. Even Tom Riddle hadn't managed that last bit.

"He knows," Fred emphasized.

"I should hope he does, some of our teachers have been terribly underqualified," Hermione said primly, drawing out lines on a week chart.

It looked to Harry like she was trying to work out her sleep schedule, which was much more complicated than it would be for anyone else.

"I mean he gets it," Fred clarified. "And you really get that in his class."

"Like what?" Ron asked.

"You have to see for yourself," George told him. "I can't explain it."

Ron snorted, shaking his head. "That's helpful..."

"You can't be told about this," Lee Jordan supplied. "That's why we didn't tell you, until we decided you had to know."

"You realize that makes no sense, right?" Dean checked.

"Yeah, but why let that get in the way of spreading the word?" Lee asked.

Neville raised a hand.

"Longbottom, Gryffindor," Fred invited.

"Just asking," he explained. "So you realize it's making you sound kind of like he's a leader of one of those Muggle things?"

"...no, not really," George shrugged. "On account of how I for one have no idea what kind of Muggle thing you could possibly be talking about."

"Cults?" Harry asked.

"Cults, that's it," Neville agreed. "Like he's brainwashing you or something."

"No, that's next lesson," Fred said.

Ron blinked. "I… can't tell if that was serious or not."

"Silly Ron, Sirius is Padfoot," Fred corrected him.

"No, I mean – prats," Ron groaned. "Does he teach that to everyone?"

"Seems like," Lee said. "I think he might start handing out pamphlets soon."

"So where does he go compared to the other teachers we've had?" Harry asked.

"Definitely better than Lockhart and Quirrell," George said, after a moment's thought. "You don't know the ones before that, so… I reckon he's better than Moony, a bit, though he did say Moony was good. And Miss Nym was really focused on duelling, he's more about defence."

Fred shrugged. "And that Podmore bloke was sort of just filling time, so I'd say Moody's better than him."

It took a long moment for Harry to remember which one Podmore had been, largely by a process of elimination.

"Pity we've only got him until April, really," Lee added. "Mind you, if we had him until June he'd probably catch fire or turn out to be evil or secretly two hundred hamsters in a suit or something."

"Or two hundred evil hamsters in a suit that catches fire," George said.

"Is that an or?" Neville checked. "It sounds like an and."

"Neville," Hermione chided.

"What?" Neville asked.

"You know I've always said, wizards aren't very good at logic," she answered smugly.

Nobody laughed, which left her sighing and saying something about how it was actually a funny joke if you knew what she was going for.

"Look at this," Ron said, then got his wand out. "Lumos. See, there's these photographs the Muggles took of one of them hitting Jupiter."

Professor Sinistra leaned closer, smoothing out the magazine pages, and for a long moment she just stared.

"Goodness, that's an enormous explosion," she said. "You can see it growing, and – yes, these pictures are quite small but that flash must have been very big for it to appear at all."

"I think one article said the biggest one made a dark spot seven and a half thousand miles across," Ron said.

"You what?" Gregory demanded. "That's… that's huge!"

"How big's the Earth?" Justin checked.

"About, um, six thousand miles across?" Hermione said. "Something like that."

The whole Astronomy class was silent for a long time, thinking about that.

"So… if it hit us, there wouldn't be an Earth left?" Blaise asked. "How long have Muggles known about this?"

"A few years, sort of," Ron told him. "Well, some Muggles."

"Then why haven't they fixed the problem yet?" Theo Nott demanded. "They should be doing something!"

"They are trying, it's just that space is really big," Harry said.

"You might think it's a long way down to Hogsmeade, but that's just peanuts to space," Hermione added, then started trying to stifle a giggle.

"Well… I think that's given us all quite a lot to think about," Professor Sinistra said. "Thank you, Mr. Weasley. Now, I believe we should do some revision… perhaps covering distances inside the solar system? That sounds like a productive lesson."

AN:

Hermione's not quite correct on the Earth's diameter, but she's going from memory.