After everyone had finished their meals – first the main course and then the dessert, which for Harry was a nice sundae – Dumbledore asked them all to please stay seated and hold on tightly.

He swept his wand across, sending them all – and their tables and chairs – soaring across the room to line the walls, and cleared out a big dance space.

"Excellent," he said with a smile. "I trust everybody is able to extricate themselves? If not, please raise your wand and call for assistance."

No flashes of sparks resulted, and the band – one which Harry had sometimes heard on the Wizarding Wireless, before he mostly switched to Radio Three for music to listen to – tested out their instruments before starting to play.

The Champions were first out onto the floor, and it was sort of interesting to see the difference between them. Cedric's date was Cho Chang, who was technically a Quidditch rival, but they seemed to be getting on well enough and they were both actually quite good at dancing.

Harry didn't really know how much Fleur's date meant to her, or the other way around, but it seemed like he was paying a lot of attention to her. That was probably the point, or something; meanwhile about the only thing he could tell about the girl who Krum had come with was that she seemed to be trying not to grin.

Something was very entertaining to her and Harry wasn't sure what.

"I've suddenly realized that I have no idea how to dance," Tanisis admitted, as some of the other pairs began to drift out onto the dance floor – which, now Harry was looking, seemed a bit bigger than the whole Great Hall normally was.

"I'm not surprised," George supplied, as his twin took to the dance floor with Angelina in a take-no-prisoners way that made Harry wonder if they knew the Stick And Bucket Dance.

"Why not?" the sphinx replied, looking up at him and tilting her head a bit.

"Well, you do have two left paws," George said.

"I'd be more angry about that, but I'm probably going to use it for a riddle at some point," Tanisis informed him. "I wonder if I could rhyme 'dance' with 'France'."

Luna drifted serenely past doing one half of a waltz, and Harry did a double-take as he spotted that her partner was Neville (which he'd expected) in panther form (which he hadn't).

I don't know how this happened, Neville mouthed (or something like that, Harry was fairly good at muzzle-reading after so many Unusually Shaped meetings but he wasn't the best) and then they were gliding off into the middle of the dance floor.

"Does that sort of thing happen here all the time?" Alexander asked.

"Honestly, that was a new one," June replied.

"Perhaps we should try it?" he suggested. "It seems to work."

"And it would mean only one left paw on the ground," George added, then quickly got out of range.

Harry only went out for two dances with Tanisis, and over the course of them they both discovered quite comprehensively that it was probably best to try when there weren't many other people on the dance floor. It did mean that you got more attention paid to you, which was a bit embarrassing and led to Harry feeling slightly nervous, but it did also make it less likely that someone would get thumped with a tail or a wing or nearly knocked over by a flank.

It also left Harry fairly sure that he should have asked Conal for advice, as it seemed likely that the centaurs would have some idea how quadrupeds danced. Somehow it had never come up during the Unusually Shaped meetings.

They did seem to be about the only people who were having that sort of trouble, though some of Harry's other friends were discovering new and interesting kinds of trouble dancing to have. Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail were cheerfully demonstrating how few dances allowed for one body to have two dates and one person going stag (though not in the same way as Prongs) while Tiobald demonstrated he could spin his wheelchair around at tremendous speed and cleared half the floor in a matter of moments.

Then there was what Ron and Hermione had somehow ended up doing. It involved a few twirls, a switch by Hermione to her raptor-form (which meant Hermione had to be careful of the length of her tail) and then Hermione throwing Ron up in the air as high as possible. He switched to Nutkin just before she started to throw, which gave him a lot more height and momentum, then once she caught him he changed back so he was standing on the ground again.

Harry saw them try it at least a dozen times, and it only went completely smoothly once – the first time – while every other time something went wrong and either they ended up on the ground in a heap or Ron didn't get caught and landed as a squirrel (though in the latter case he was fine, because squirrels didn't exactly fall very hard).

By contrast to all of that (and to Dean, who seemed to be enjoying himself but scared of making a mistake) it seemed like Draco in particular was dancing like he was actually used to dancing.

Harry immediately decided that one of the things they did in the Slytherin Common Room was to practice dancing.

Harry had a chat with Percy for a few minutes, where he was asked how the dragonets were getting on and was able to report that they all seemed nice and social. Harry hadn't exactly seen how wild young dragons acted, but his copy of Fantastic Beasts talked about how dangerous they were even young and Gary, Sally and Ollie were nothing like that.

June happened to be nearby, and she said that if Nora was attending the ball then she'd be quite dangerous if she tried to dance – not deliberately, just because they'd all seen how much disruption wings and tails could cause – and Harry had to agree that that was a good point.

Perhaps dragon social events should be held outside. That way they could fly.

Percy then mentioned that there'd been someone trying to smuggle flying carpets into the country, and Harry had to ask why. Surely nobody could use a flying carpet in public anyway, and in private it wouldn't be much use because you couldn't go very far.

"It's so they can say they can, you see," Percy told him. "There's a certain cachet to having a flying carpet in your house simply because they're banned – it's a way of showing off."

He sniffed. "I think there are much better legal ways of showing off – like what my sister's been doing, for example."

Harry glanced over in the direction Percy was looking, and noticed that either Dean and Ginny were now dancing in Animagus form or Dean had made an ill-advised comment without remembering he no longer had a way of getting away from everybody else.

"Does it count as legal?" he asked. "I don't think she's registered yet."

"One month grace period," Percy said promptly. "As pursuant to the Animagus Registration Act. A known Animagus who has not registered within the one month grace period is in trouble, of course."

"You know all the rules, don't you?" Fred asked, sliding into a seat next to Percy. "Why do you bother?"

"Fred, I know full well that you know all the rules," Percy told him, smiling slightly. "There is no way you could possibly have broken that many school rules if you were just doing whatever was fun."

"...he's got me there," Fred admitted to Angelina.

"No way to weasel out of it?" Angelina enquired.

"This is why I asked you to the ball," Fred declared.

As the evening passed, some of the Yule Ball attendees began to head outside.

There was a nice rose garden set up – one of those things that Harry was fairly sure you could only do with magic, to grow a rose garden in the middle of the Scottish winter on demand – and even though it was quite cold some people still seemed to like the idea of heading out there to talk quietly. (Or, presumably, to do things that didn't involve any talking at all, like kissing. Harry had never done kissing before, but he was fairly sure that it would sort of keep your mouth occupied.)

"I don't even remember seeing some of these statues," June said, looking at a reindeer. "I wonder if it's new?"

"In the Muggle world then making a statue like this would take a while," Harry told her. "But with magic then maybe it can just be transfigured into shape."

"Or they petrified an actual reindeer," Tanisis mused. "I suppose that wouldn't be fair on the reindeer, though."

Alexander gave Harry a bit of an odd look. "How do you know that about Muggles?" he asked. "I did not know that about Muggles. Do you do, I know Hogwarts has a course… Muggle Studies?"

"No, though some of my friends do," Harry replied.

"I do that course, it's interesting," Tanisis said. "But I know the answer to that one. It's because Harry grew up with Muggles."

The Durmstrang boy blinked. "How?"

Harry did his best to explain.

It didn't seem to clarify things much.

Harry decided that there had to be some kind of large warming charm on the rose garden area.

It wasn't something he would have noticed if he wasn't thinking about it, because he was quite tolerant of big temperature differences, but after the fourth time Harry saw someone unperturbed by sitting outside on stone benches dusted with snow despite wearing not-very-thick dress robes he realized that it wasn't as cold as he'd have expected.

The way the snow wasn't melting was particularly impressive.

"I wonder if it's hard to cast," he said, explaining his train of thought, but then someone else said something nearby that caught his attention.

"Doesn't it seem suspicious to you?"

The voice sounded like one of the Slytherin upper-years, Harry thought, and he tilted his head to hear better.

"Suspicious?" replied someone who Harry was fairly sure was also a Slytherin sixth-year. "What are you on about?"

"All those non humans," the first one explained – Pucey, that was his name. Adrian Pucey. "Gryffindor's got a dragon and a three headed dog. Hufflepuff's got a wolf and a centaur. Ravenclaw's got a sphinx and a selkie. Slytherin hasn't got any."

"...are you actually thick, or do you just play one at Christmas?" asked the other boy, who Harry remembered was Warrington something (or possibly something Warrington).

"Shove off," Pucey snorted. "It can't be a coincidence."

"First, um, yes it can? Who's doing Arithmancy here, me or you?" Warrington asked. "It's like, um, you're talking about rolling a load of dice and none of them being ones, but if that happens you don't think the dice must not have any ones."

Harry felt sort of awkward by this point, and didn't want to interrupt. It looked like Tanisis was the same, though she was also trying quite hard not to giggle.

"But still," Pucey said. "Where's the whole House Equality thing?"

"Second," Warrington went on. "You know how Salazar was sort of famous for not wanting any of the-"

He paused, then, before continuing in a quieter voice that Harry could still hear. "-the Muggle sort in his House? Would you be surprised if students who weren't even human were a bit reluctant to join his House?"

"But it's nothing to do with that," Pucey protested. "Some of them are dreadful, of course, but I wouldn't mind one of them who can pass for human."

There was a long sigh at that point, and Harry wanted to look to see if Warrington was rubbing his temples with his thumb and finger or something.

It sounded sort of like that was going on.

"At this point I'm not even going to tell you," he said. "I'll just tell Taira and Anna and they can educate you if they want."

"What do they have to do with anything?" Pucey asked, sounding deeply confused.

"I was very impressed," Madam Maxime was saying, as Harry (and Tanisis, who – as she put it – was going to see what else happened tonight around Harry) rounded the corner.

She and Hagrid were sat on what looked like the largest stone bench in the entire rose garden, which still managed to look a bit small. Nora was there as well, curled up in a large pool of drowsing dragon in front of the bench, and Maxime was absently scratching the dragoness's neck.

"She's a smart girl," Hagrid agreed, smiling down at Nora.

"More than merely smart, for a Ridgeback, I believe," Maxime said. "We have seen dragons in our creature courses, of course, but – oh, ah, Mr. Potter?"

"Harry's fine, Headmistress," Harry assured her. "And this is Tanisis."

"Charmed," Maxime told her. "I hope you are enjoying the ball?"

"It's turned out there aren't really many dances for people with four legs," Harry said. "I think the main thing we've learned is to practice first."

"Practice, perhaps," Maxime agreed. "I think practicing afterwards might be pleasant as well."

She directed those last words at Hagrid, who didn't quite seem to get it – if there was an it to be got, that was.

Harry wasn't an expert.

"Harry was part of it," the big man said. "He helped sort out the whole thing with Nora, an' I got to help raise her… an' then months later it turned out she could talk! Harry was the only one who could understand her at first, of course."

"Yes, I saw him helping with the Task," Maxime agreed. "I never would have thought something with dragons could be so… safe."

"Oh, well, I've always liked them," Hagrid said, a bit nervously. "Dangerous creatures, I mean – or, well, those ones others say are dangerous. Always felt like I could relate, you know, what with being half-giant an' all."

Nora yawned, wings flexing a bit, and looked up at Hagrid. "Can she scratch under my left wing? It itches there."

"Let's have a look," Hagrid said, and Nora raised her wing. "Hmm. Yep, scales look fine, so must just be an itch."

He pointed out the area, and Maxime moved her hand to scratch there instead. Nora rumbled approval, tail flicking slightly, and Harry noticed that the Beauxbatons headmistress seemed to be lost in thought.

Or maybe she just thought Nora was cute. It could be that.

Back inside, and with the hands of the clock well past eleven PM, Harry found that the dance floor had emptied out a bit.

Most of the people he recognized were either gone entirely or sitting around the sides of the room, just relaxing and enjoying the music, and it seemed like people were going up when they felt like it rather than trying to wring every last dance out of the time.

Most of his close friends were clustered in a corner, Hermione having changed back from her dinosaur form into something more capable of speech, and Harry made his way over to join them.

"I'm going to see if Christopher managed to sneak in," Tanisis told him. "If that's okay?"

"Go ahead," Harry agreed, remembering that Christopher was a Slytherin third-year she knew. "I'm not going to stop you."

Neville slid out a chair as Harry got closer, and the dragon gratefully used it to clamber up so his neck and shoulders were above the level of the table.

"Had fun so far?" Ron asked.

"It's been interesting," Harry said, nodding. "I don't think I'd normally have spent this much time in a row talking to people. Well… new people."

"Grandmother told me once that that was half the point of this sort of thing," Neville supplied. "The other half of the point is just that it's a nice way to enjoy yourself."

"It's a way to enjoy yourself," Hermione said. "I can think of other ways to enjoy myself, but I suppose so."

"It's also a chance to show off," Fred pointed out.

"I think that counts as enjoying yourself, as far as Gran's concerned," Neville chuckled.

"By the way, you know this band?" Dean asked. "What are they like compared to other bands?"

"Other bands?" Ron asked. "What, you mean like that Variety Magical lot from Spain? They're all right, but I'm not sure about their guitar stuff."

"No, other British bands," Dean began, then shook his head. "Right, forgot. There just aren't many wizards."

"There's a few," Neville told him. "There's a parlour music group called The Secret Of Chamber Music, we had them over for my birthday once, and I think there used to be some dwarves who were pretty good but they broke up over creative differences."

"It's still weird for there to be only a few music acts in a country," Dean said, then shrugged. "Whatever."

"To me the weirdest thing is that that means most people in the country like the same music," Harry said. "Even on Pern they don't all like the same music, really, there's lots of styles at the Harper Hall. And Menolly's parents don't think her music's worth anything."

"They do when they don't know it's hers, right?" Ginny asked. "I can't remember exactly how that goes."

"Yeah, I think you're right," Harry admitted. "But they don't have much time for music in general anyway."

He had to admit that if all music at Hogwarts was like his first experience of it, he wouldn't have much time for music by this point.

"Hey, Harry, can we get your help with something?" George asked, ten or twenty minutes later.

Harry wasn't doing anything in particular – just listening to the music and watching in an idle sort of way as dancers took another turn around the dance floor – so he dropped down from his chair and moved over to join Fred and George.

"See, we're trying to work out if Percy snuck Penelope Clearwater back onto the Hogwarts grounds," Fred explained, spreading out the corners of a very familiar map. "But they could, frankly, be anywhere."

"And they could be anywhere even if they're not frankly," George contributed.

"Exactly," Fred nodded.

"Why would Percy need to sneak her back onto the grounds?" Harry asked. "She's not a student any more, sure, but she's an adult now. They could meet up… pretty much whenever."

"That might be true," George agreed. "But we don't have a magic map of pretty much whenever."

"Pretty much wherever," Fred corrected.

"Pretty much wherever," George agreed. "Which is where we don't have a map of. We do have a zoomed out map of Hogwarts, though, and you've got good eyesight – can you see her anywhere?"

Harry was about to start scanning over the Marauders' Map, but then he remembered something and gave both twins a suspicious look. "Wait… wasn't that in my hoard?"

"The map your father helped to make?" Fred asked.

"The map which we passed down to you?" George checked.

"It's still there," Fred said quickly. "This is a new one, we got it for Christmas."

Harry noticed he was smouldering faintly, and did his best to stop. It wasn't polite, even if he'd thought that they'd taken something from his hoard without asking.

"Padfoot gave it to us," George explained. "He said it would level the playing field."

"We're not sure what he meant," Fred added. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that he also unlevelled the playing field."

After about two years of knowing his Dogfather, Harry had to admit that that was exactly the sort of thing he'd do.

The Smiths had probably been pretty happy this morning.

"You don't think that means that the Smiths are doing a prank now that they know where you are?" he asked.

"Well, we suspect they know where we are," George corrected. "But more importantly, they might hypothetically know where we are if they're hypothetically looking at a hypothetical map but more importantly we know where they really are by really looking at this real map."

"And Anna's been with Viktor Krum all evening," Fred told him. "Not sure how she pulled that off."

"That's what makes them worthy rivals, of course," George said.

"I think that's if they don't know how you do some of your pranks and you don't know how they do some of their pranks," Harry mused.

"Oh, we're pretty sure they haven't figured out who to blame for some of those pranks," Fred nodded. "Because they haven't got revenge for one yet. It was great, we made it look like it was too simple for us to have bothered with – just some dungbombs. We blamed it on Rawlings."

Harry spotted something on the map, sniffed, and smirked slightly. "I think they have figured it out."

"What?" George asked, sliding the map around to face him and making it focus in on Gryffindor Tower. "Are they in the common room?"

There was a sort of chuff sound down by his foot, and then a very self-satisfied fox darted off into the forest of table legs around the side of the Great Hall.

"Well… bugger," Fred decided.

"We'd better start preparing our retaliation for their retaliation," George mused, as Fred blanked the Marauders' Map. "Nice talking with you, Harry, but I think we're going to want to be behind the Fat Lady for the next day or so."

It was about ten minutes after midnight when the Ball finally ended, though all that really meant was that the music had stopped. Professor Dumbledore thanked them all for coming along and enjoying themselves and said he was quite glad to be hosting such a well-attended event, and then people started to head upstairs (or downstairs, or outside) to go to bed.

As far as Harry could tell from checking his copy of the Marauder's Map, though – which he did as soon as he got upstairs, just to be sure it was still there – at least thirty people hadn't actually gone to bed yet and were still scattered around the school.

Maybe the curfew rules were sort of relaxed… or it just wasn't possible to enforce them tonight?

Either way, Harry said good night to everyone, then went back into his tent to get changed and check in on Empress. She was glad to hear from him, if a bit busy, so Harry just said hello before lying down and dropping off to sleep.

It had been an interesting day.

On Boxing Day, Harry and Sirius had Remus over to visit at Grimmauld Place.

As a result of the recent changes in Remus' situation, 'having Remus over to visit' became a sort of all-day thing where two floors of Sirius' townhouse seemed to be almost entirely full of werewolf.

Harry was sort of reminded of the Yule Ball, in a way, because there was a chance to talk to various people who'd had very different lives and see how their experiences were different from his experiences. Hearing how different Remus' impromptu pack was from Fenrir Greyback's one was kind of shocking, and about halfway through the afternoon Harry realized in a sort of guilty way that he felt glad that Fenrir had attacked Remus.

It wasn't because Remus had been hurt, of course – Remus still had some scars, and apparently they'd never go away, and Harry would have really preferred it if Remus hadn't been hurt at all – but it was because not only would Fenrir never be able to do that to anyone else but Remus had managed to sort of rescue everyone he'd already done it to.

Harry got a chance to ask Remus about that a bit later, while there was a board game going on involving a sort of octagonal board and lots of coloured pieces you had to connect up together, and after thinking about it a bit Remus nodded slightly.

"I know what you mean, Harry," he said, as the sallow-cheeked werewolf woman (who Harry had finally been introduced to as Emily) considered for a bit before rotating one of the yellow pieces already on the board. "I've not really talked about it to anyone, but I felt the same sort of thing after – after James died."

Harry wasn't really sure what to say, so he just nodded.

He could understand what Remus meant, it was just… a bit of a tough topic to think about.

"Ha!" crowed another of the werewolves, Martin (who was the youngest person there apart from Harry). "Got you!"

He put down a red piece, and traced an unbroken path across the board with his finger. Emily swore, and shook her head for a bit before sighing. "Another game?"

"Sure," Martin agreed, turning the board upside down and tipping all the pieces off. "Same colours?"

Harry had a meeting with Dumbledore over Christmas, as well, in which Dumbledore said that he had sadly gained no more news on the Horcruxes.

"They do say that no news is good news," Dumbledore smiled. "But in this case, I fear that no news is simply no news, and it will remain so at least until we can locate the Cup of Helga Hufflepuff."

"And the Sword of Gryffindor and the Diadem of Ravenclaw?" Harry asked, to show he was keeping track.

"Perhaps, though we do not know if Tom had access to either," Dumbledore agreed. "I also wonder whether perhaps Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff had something else each, as we do know that Slytherin and Gryffindor had two things."

He spread his hands expansively.

Behind him, Fawkes burst into flame, but Harry had been sort of expecting that because the phoenix had looked in quite poor shape.

"Wouldn't they have a lot more than two things?" Harry said. "I know I've got a lot more than two things."

"True indeed," Dumbledore agreed. "But there is the conundrum, you see. The Cup of Helga Hufflepuff was famous, and to some extent so was the Locket of Salazar Slytherin, but – to use an example I pluck from thin air – the Biro of Rowena Ravenclaw would simply be quite ordinary and not famous at all."

"I thought biros were invented a lot more recently than that, Professor," Harry said, tilting his head.

"Ah!" Dumbledore smiled. "A good point. Perhaps the Biro of Rowena Ravenclaw would be remarkable indeed."

Harry tried not to snigger, but it was quite hard.

"Now," Dumbledore went on. "I was wondering if you would be interested in helping with another of the Tasks of the Triwizard Tournament, if you are able."

"I don't know what the second Task is, Professor," Harry pointed out, quite reasonably he thought. "So I don't know if I'm able."

"A fine observation," Dumbledore told him. "You are making quite a habit of them today, Harry. Alas, I do not wish to give away the whole of the surprise, but I can tell you that it would be quite helpful if you were tremendously good at swimming."

"I've done some swimming at primary school," Harry said, thinking about it. "It didn't go very well. I thought I just wasn't good at swimming, but maybe it's because they were teaching how to swim for humans and dragons need to do things a bit differently."

"I would not be surprised if that were the case," the headmaster told him. "Well, let us see if your swimming improves over the course of the next couple of months. You are, of course, under no obligation to help."

Harry wasn't sure about if he'd be trying to get better at swimming so he could help, or not, but getting better at swimming so he was better at swimming sounded like a good idea.

It certainly seemed to work out for Path and the others in The Dolphins of Pern.

"Hmm..." Ron mumbled under his breath. "If I'm going to try and make a rocket which has unlimited fuel, it's probably good to make it a not very dangerous fuel, right?"

"That sounds like a good idea to me," Neville agreed. "Unlimited amounts of something dangerous sounds… dangerous."

"Yes, that's how transitive properties work," Hermione said.

"What?" Neville asked, rummaging for his Remembrall. "Is that one of the laws of Transfiguration I forgot about?"

"No, it's a maths thing," Hermione replied. "Forget it."

Neville had his Remembrall out by now, and he gave it a look. "They should make a version of this called a Forgetful," he said. "It'd tell you if what you were trying to remember was actually important."

"Anyway, dangerous stuff," Ron resumed. "And honestly it kind of looks like hydrogen peroxide might be good, because it basically turns into water and oxygen. Those aren't dangerous – well, unless it's boiling water, you're drowning in it, or for the oxygen if you're on fire."

"I think all three of those things are a problem with any rocket fuel, aren't they?" Harry asked. "Well, except solid rocket fuel. I don't think you can drown in that."

"Hold on," Dean requested. "I need to make a note of those for Divination."

"Are you making stuff up again?" Hermione asked, sounding only mildly disapproving.

"I tried doing honest stuff, she just said I was clearly fated for something more spectacular," Dean countered. "You know what she's like – well, when she's not making a proper prediction, anyway."

Hermione frowned. "Well… I suppose you are at least learning the right methods."

"Pretty much," Dean agreed.

"Excellent news!" Fred announced, sliding into a seat next to Harry. "I just came up with an excellent Animagus name!"

"I thought you already had one," Ron said. "Wait, are you Trouble or Strife?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Fred replied, tapping him on the nose with a finger. "But it's not for me!"

"I was thinking about what would be an ideal name," George said, sitting down on the other side of Harry. "And you know what are the ideal elements for an Animagus name?"

"Sort of vaguely related, bit obscure, takes the mickey out of the person, animal or both," Dean said, counting off on his fingers. "And I think they're Marauder names because Harry and Remus aren't Animagi."

"The technical term, as I'm sure you're aware, is Animaguses," Fred countered. "Anyway, I was thinking and I had this idea-"

"Are you doing that thing where you pretend you're the same person?" Ginny asked, catching up to them.

"What?" George said. "No."

"This is two entirely distinct but related conversations sharing some of the words to save time," Fred nodded sagely.

"So I had this idea," George resumed. "And I think that Dean should be called Upstart."

"...you what?" Dean asked. "How does that work?"

George waved a book around. Harry recognized it, because he was the one who'd got it out of the library for the Twins last week – it was a sort of collection of quotes.

"We were looking for inspiration," his twin explained. "And George spotted that someone once called Shakespeare an upstart crow."

"Hold on, that's a bit of an upgrade," Dean said, blinking. "Straight from nonsense to Shakespeare?"

"To be or not to be," George told him.

Hermione tried to say something about how that was actually a bit where Hamlet was contemplating taking his own life, and how it was kind of ridiculous that that was one of the only things people remembered about the play, but Dean shrugged. "I think it's pretty good."

"Well, that's just a bonus," Fred said. "You don't get to pick your own names as Animaguses. Anyway, the one I came up with was for Ginny."

"So that's why you asked me to come over," Ginny said, shaking her head a bit. "All right, what is it?"

"Perry," Fred told her.

"That's really simplistic," Ron said.

"I think you'll find it describes her perfectly," George replied, pointing at their sister. "Perry, Gin, Falcon."

Everyone considered that in silence for several seconds.

"I think I'm going to start cursing you in a moment," Ginny informed them, pleasantly. "I'm not sure when I'll stop."

Fred and George laughed, then blurred into Trouble and Strife and darted in opposite directions.

The next day – the last day of nineteen ninety-four – it snowed again, blanketing the ground with a fresh coat of white.

Naturally, this meant that all three of the dragon hatchlings wanted to play in the snow again, and Harry was only too glad to go and help Hagrid out.

"Sometimes I think we should'a started with two," Hagrid said, as Harry helped Ollie burrow his way back out of a snowbank. "Three at once is a handful, an' no mistake. But then I try to think which one I'd do without, an' I can't decide."

"Was I like this?" Nora asked, catching a high-speed Gary.

"You were more good," Hagrid told her, this time in Dragonese or Parsel or whichever term you wanted to use for it. "Less naughty."

Nora nodded, then gave Gary a bop squarely on the nose as he tried to claw at her. "No! Claws are not for other people!"

Gary snorted, wings flittering a bit.

"There you go," Harry said, finished with excavating the Antipodean Opaleye, and Ollie bumped his side with a head before promptly diving into another big snowdrift.

"They might only claw you because they know it doesn't hurt you," he added, turning his attention to Nora. "Maybe?"

"Still naughty," Nora said stubbornly, and Harry nodded.

"You're right," he told her, and that made her brighten visibly.

"No!" Gary said.

It took a moment for Harry to realize who had just spoken.

"Did I hear that right?" Hagrid asked. "Was that 'is first word?"

He brushed the snow aside as he took two huge steps, reaching to where Nora was, and gave Gary a scratch under the chin. "Aren't you a clever little dragon?"

"No!" Gary repeated, apparently pleased at the reaction he'd got for saying the word the first time.

"Silly," Nora tried to tell him. "You say yes!"

"No," Gary said again, since he was on a roll so far and wasn't going to stop now. Harry had to stifle a giggle.

Then Sally dropped snowballs on Hagrid, Nora and Gary.

The Welsh Green squirmed his way out of Nora's grip, took off in a crackle of wings, and pounced at Sally to get revenge. They landed on a snowdrift, which turned out to contain Ollie, and a kind of ball of wings, tails and snarls chased itself halfway across the lawn.

"I'll have to tell Charlie," Hagrid decided.

Normally, as far as Harry understood it, it was considered a bad idea to try to learn to swim in very cold water because very cold water was dangerous.

Harry, on the other hand, was covered in dragon scales and as such felt it was quite reasonable to learn to swim in very cold water. It did mean he had to hover over the Lake and melt a hole, but Tiobald had asked for one anyway to go and visit his family and Harry was only too happy to oblige.

The first thing Harry did was a few experiments, to see what he could do while he was underwater. Seeing wasn't a problem, or at least it wasn't a problem if he had light – it was sort of dark, but he didn't need goggles – and he could hold his breath for at least a minute, though that was still a lot less time than Pernese dragons who could manage for almost half an hour.

He couldn't breathe fire underwater, at least not in the normal way, but casting a spell as he exhaled did sometimes work. Incendio made a sort of blast of hot water, and the bluebell flames spell made a shimmering wave of underwater fire which slowly burned out by itself.

Harry didn't try Fiendfyre, because it would be a bit too dangerous.

After that was done, though – and, importantly, after he was sure he'd be able to melt himself a way back out from under the ice in the lake if he got lost – Harry tried actually learning to swim. It was a bit tricky, and it took up most of his afternoon, but actually knowing that human swimming techniques might not work for him helped him out a lot.

Back in Little Whinging Swimming Pool, he'd always been told to do the breast stroke or the crawl, but his arms weren't quite built right for it and there wasn't anything for his wings to do. Flapping them underwater was no good, it was way too dense, but eventually (and after a lot of splashing) Harry worked out that he had to sort of do a doggy-paddle but with all four legs at once. Then he held his wings like he was diving really fast, tucked almost out of the way, and wiggled his tail as an extra paddle.

It was a lot of bits to do at once, but it seemed to be pretty fast.

Pleased with his afternoon's work, Harry shook himself off and went in to change out of his swimming shorts.

Harry and his friends – most of the Unusually Shaped club, all of the new Animagi, and Sirius who wasn't a new Animagus but still counted – spent the last few hours of the year a little way into the Forbidden Forest, which in this case was a lot less Forbidden because they were visiting June's family's new years celebrations.

About a third of the centaurs were there as well, Firenze and Ronan and some of the others Harry didn't recognize, plus Conal who gave all the other students present a cheerful wave.

It was a strange but interesting experience. If the Yule Ball had been all about talking to people from other countries while celebrating something that you were all involved in, then this was about seeing a different set of celebrations entirely.

The wargs built two fires connected by a pine log, using their paws and teeth and refusing any offers of help, and once it was finished they lit them with flint and steel and June's father gave a short speech in a dialect Harry didn't quite understand. Then every single member of the pack who was old enough jumped over the flaming log between the two fires, one at a time, which seemed to have some sort of important meaning.

Maybe it was something to do with how they weren't 'just' wolves, but that was just a guess on Harry's part.

Then everyone relaxed a bit and started enjoying themselves. Harry saw June being pestered by her younger siblings and cousins to cast spells, like bluebell flames or the wand-lighting charm or just using Leviosa to pick things up, and after a few minutes Sirius transformed and joined in.

Fred and George handed out some Translation Toffees they'd cooked up and tuned to the warg dialect, which helped make sure that everyone could understand everyone else, and Harry in particular found it very useful because June's mother could actually teach him (and the other quadrupeds) how to dance.

There was a lot of what Tanisis called 'pronking' involved.

It started to snow about an hour before midnight, a light dusting that sparkled in the firelight, and not long after that a small group of Acromantula arrived as well. Ron made sure to stay a long way away from them, but all four of the big spiders were quite careful not to cause any offence and one of them apologized to everyone present for how stupid his cousins had been.

Overall, the whole thing was a lot more impromptu than the Yule Ball but every bit as fun. Sirius even revealed that he'd brought along a case of Dr. Filibuster's Fireworks, and the Weasley Twins spent half an hour modifying them before launching the lot off at midnight.

Animals made of fire and sparks and light flew around for half an hour, bouncing off the trees in showers of colour and chasing one another through the air, and Harry wondered if it was any sort of coincidence that he kept seeing the fox-fireworks hitting the ground a bit more often than they really should have done.

It was probably just a coincidence. Unlike, for example, how Taira kept informing everyone that his hovercraft was full of eels and then looking puzzled when people laughed, or how Anna seemed terribly offended when someone said "hello" to her.

That sounded like Weasley work.

AN:

Hogwarts is going to be a different place when there's only one set of carnivoran prankster twins there.

Probably a bit calmer, though.