The following morning, after breakfast, Harry went down to the side of the lake to meet with Ron.

He was sort of impressed with what Ron had put together, now he had a chance to see it. It wasn't a complete rocket – it was notably missing the pointy bit for a start – but the engine was there, and the body, and there was a little plastic bottle as well.

"That's the fuel, right?" Harry asked, pointing at the bottle.

"That's a little bit of the fuel," Ron agreed. "Dad and I had to make some – did you know Muggles use it to make their hair white? That's not a very strong version so we had to make it stronger, and it took ages, but I did learn that spell Mum uses to make more of sauces and stuff – so I can just use a drop of the stronger version and make loads of it, or enough for a test like this anyway."

Ron showed Harry the fuel tank, which looked sort of like a Thermos flask with rounded ends and a stand to hold it opening-up, and put a single drop of the peroxide fuel into it. Then he waved his wand at the fuel tank. "Supplementum."

"How did you get the fuel tank made?" Harry asked.

"Well, Percy helped with a lot of that," Ron admitted. "I worked out what shape it had to be, and Percy Transfigured it – it's made of aluminium, because that book you got me said that it was safe to carry hydrogen peroxide in that. And it's much bigger on the inside – that's not the rune thing, the rune thing is going to be making it so the fuel just keeps coming back, but I want to make sure the test is long enough."

He checked his watch, then pulled his wand up and away. "That should be enough."

Harry had to help with the next bit, which was getting the little fuel tank into place inside the rest of the rocket without spilling any of the peroxide. He didn't really follow the mechanism of how the inside of the rocket worked – it was something to do with a metal mesh that made the peroxide fizz and break up into hot steam and things like that – but it sounded like Ron did, and he explained to Harry how to get the bits screwed together and then tighten the seal.

The only bit left to do was to lock the test rocket down so that it wouldn't go flying off and hit the Owlery or something, and for that Ron had some big chunky bolts that looked like the sort of thing you held a train together with.

"This is probably overdoing it," he explained, as Harry helped tighten the bolts – securing the rocket body to a conveniently large slab of lakeside rock. "But I think that's better than not overdoing it, right?"

"Right," Harry agreed.

Then they were just about done, and they retreated behind a rock. (A different one to the one they'd secured the rocket to, because otherwise it would have been a bad idea.)

"So for this one we're using the controls from a Muggle bike," Ron explained, showing him one of the squeezy brake things. "There's a spring holding the fuel pump closed, and you need to squeeze this to open the fuel line… which means that even if it does break free, it's just going to stop firing the rocket and it won't go shooting off at faster and faster speeds."

He took a deep breath. "Ready?"

Harry nodded.

Ron squeezed the control.

There was an incredibly loud whoosh, which seemed to just keep going on and on, and at first there was a plume of white smoke – or, steam, if Harry was getting this right. Then the plume sort of went away, blown away by the rocket thrust, except that the plume kept getting bigger and bigger so there must have been more of it forming out of the thrust plume the rocket was making.

"Wow!" Ron said, his voice nearly drowned out by the sound. "That looks like it's doing well, right!"

"Yeah!" Harry replied. "The rock it's attached to is kind of rocking a bit!"

"What?" Ron demanded. "I can't hear you!"

Harry tapped Ron's hand and indicated the brake trigger Ron was still squeezing, and Ron let go. The racket from the rocket quickly died away, not quite turning off like a switch but going from loud to quiet in only a few seconds, and then there was just a big white cloud that slowly dispersed in the wind.

And several curious dragons coming over to see what was going on.

And, now Harry looked, there were lots of people peering out of the windows of the castle as well.

"That was louder than I was expecting," Ron admitted, a little bit sheepishly. "Still, it worked!"

"It worked," Harry agreed.

Professor McGonagall gave them a calm but firm talking-to about the amount of noise that had resulted, and Harry thought that – really, that was sort of fair enough. They had made a lot of noise (certainly more than Ron had expected!) and while they couldn't really measure how much force it had produced Harry felt like it would be more than enough to lift a squirrel.

"You might want to have another one of those bigger-on-the-inside bags, though," Harry pointed out, after thinking about it a bit. "You know, like a parachute, only inside it's got a broom."

"That's a good point," Ron agreed, still speaking a bit loudly. "I'm already thinking about how I can control the rocket from a squirrel sized control capsule. I suppose I could do it with charms, but learning silent charms – maybe even wandless ones with how big my wand is at that size – sounds more like a NEWT thing."

"It's never too early to work on NEWT level topics," Hermione said. "Harry's worked on NEWT level Charms and Defence. Right, Harry?"

"Well, there's Ruth," Harry agreed. "And some fire charms… and Aguamenti qualifies as well, I suppose."

"Sorry, can you say that again?" Ron requested, still loudly. "I didn't quite catch that."

The Defence Club that night was one of the ones for NEWT students, but Harry went along anyway. Partly that was to see what it was like this time, partly because Harry quite liked the idea of taking the chance to learn NEWT Defence, and partly because (as Hermione had reminded him earlier that day) he did know some NEWT level Defence spells.

He'd been reading the books Remus had recommended, which gave him a few ideas, and while he wasn't confident enough in most of the spells they hadn't done in class to teach them – and he had the feeling a lot of them were more OWL than NEWT material anyway – he did still have the Patronus Charm.

Cedric was there, and he started off the club by quickly going through what Professor Moody had apparently told the NEWT students last year about how to 'lead' a target so your spell hit them. It was interesting, especially because of how you needed to do it by different amounts for different spells – some spells were good in a fight because the spell moved quickly, even though the actual effect wasn't very nasty – and Harry volunteered himself to be a moving target for people to do a quick bit of revision.

Bouncing spells off his wing and hide for ten minutes or so was quite exhilarating, and then to be fair they swapped it around so about half the students were casting spells (Harry among them) and the other half were dodging.

Then Harry suggested that one of the things they could aim to learn was the Patronus Charm.

Cedric actually already knew it – probably for the Triwizard Tournament, in case one of the challenges involved a Dementor or Lethifold or something – but he was really impressed that Harry knew it, and when he demonstrated everyone else seemed impressed as well. Perhaps it was how that felt, but Ruth seemed particularly lively, flying around in a circle a few times for everyone to watch before coming down to hover attentively next to Harry.

"It's kind of a tricky spell," Harry explained. "I don't think it's a good idea to just focus on it, because it took me ages to get it right and feeling frustrated just makes it harder to cast. But we can get started with the wand movement, and what about doing a bit of practice at it each week?"

That seemed to get general approval, and Harry spent the rest of the Defence Club showing people how to do the right wand movements for the Patronus charm.

It was sort of an odd feeling to be teaching people older than him, but Harry didn't dislike it.

In Friday's Runes lesson, Harry listened with one ear to Ron explaining just why he'd made a very loud rocket engine.

Everyone had heard it, including Professor Babbling, and Ron told her his plans to show it off for OWLs by running it at high enough power for take-off – meaning the rocket would rise just a little way in the air, then hover for at least twenty minutes to prove that the runic fuel reproduction system was working fine.

It sounded like the examiners would be very impressed. And possibly completely deaf.

Harry had his own project to work on, though, and right now that meant he was working on how to make a sword. It wasn't as hard for him as it was in some books – or in real life – because he didn't need the sword to be all that strong, as the runes would take care of a lot of that. It had to have the right sort of weight, but really he could handle that bit by Transfiguration if he needed to (though that would mean getting good at that aspect of Transfiguration) and it had to have enough space for the runic sequence he'd worked out.

After a lot of pieces of scrap parchment, he'd eventually decided on (and checked with Professor Babbling) the sequence of Pertho-Ansuz-Nauthiz-Teiwaz-Hagalaz-Ehwaz-Raido. That was a seven-rune sequence where it went Water-Air-Fire-Air-Ice-Earth-Air, and where the last pair was an Air-Earth pair, but that was actually okay because it was a weapon and the meanings of Ehwaz and Raido were about friendship and safe journeys.

The reversed pair meant that it would reverse the association as well, so that instead of being about safe journeys for friends it was about unsafe journeys for enemies (which was sort of appropriate for a sword), and the rest of the sequence had the runes for chance, luck, destiny, strength and the Halagaz rune which was associated with weapons.

Plus, it spelled out Panther, which was what had really pleased Harry when he'd worked it out. It had a nice right feeling to it, and while he was a little bit worried about whether that would go exactly as he'd wanted it there were two variations he could use.

The first was to put the Ansuz rune on the end, which meant luck – and which was another Air rune, so it wasn't reversed. Panthera was almost as good as Panther, after all, it was just Latin instead of English.

The other thing was that because Thurisaz was a Fire rune it could replace both Teiwaz and Halagaz in the sequence. Thurisaz meant strength to face an enemy, so it was a good meaning as well, and Harry actually liked the idea of including both spellings of Panthera on the sword – whether by having the other runes bigger and stacking Thurisaz on top of Teiwaz and Halagaz, so you could read it either way, or by having the T-H scheme on one side and the TH one on the other side.

It all felt nice and elegant.

"Have you noticed that Professor Umbridge hasn't been pranked yet?" Dean said, that evening. "With the Twins around, I'm surprised – I'd have thought she'd have ended up croaking like a frog or something by now."

"Well, that's an excellent point!" Fred agreed. "Wouldn't you say, George?"

"I would say, Fred!" George agreed.

Harry briefly observed that it felt odd – almost wrong – for Fred and George to be referring to one another by the correct names.

"But what we realized was that she's probably heard about us," George explained. "And possibly about the other set of twins… but that if she got pranked, she'd be able to point to it and say that that right there was proof."

"Probably blame it on Harry," Fred agreed. "Or something."

"So we had a meeting," George said. "We're pranking her by not pranking her."

"That's practically Zen, that is," Ginny observed.

"It's only theoretically Zen, but otherwise you're correct, Perry," Fred nodded. "Our counterparts are fair game, as usual, and you might see the occasional trick being played on other people, but her class is going to go completely undisturbed."

"And possibly unattended," Lee Jordan piped up. "You've got to admit that would be funny."

"So she's going to be wanting to get pranked," George went on. "And she's going to see other pranks happening. We might even prank ourselves to remind her… but not a single trick will befall her."

"That's really evil," Ron said, admiringly. "Don't you think so, Hermione?"

"...officially, no," Hermione told them.

"It seems perfectly admirable to me," Harry shrugged. "Even officially, as a prefect. All they're doing is not breaking the rules."

"I just had a sudden amazing realization," George said. "This must be how Percy feels all the time."

Harry went to the Defence Club after dinner that night, as well, and that was a completely different experience.

While the first one had been students older than him, and he'd been going along as much to learn himself as to help with teaching the club, for this one it was students younger than him andhe already knew all of the spells the first, second and third years would be hoping to learn.

That didn't mean it wasn't sort of fun, though. Harry and the other upper-class-men who would be helping introduced themselves (Ginny was there, for example, as well as Tanisis, though Draco and Hermione were among the ones who were going to be helping with the Saturday session and weren't there tonight) and then Harry quickly went through what he thought were sensible rules about when you could cast defensive spells.

It basically amounted to not casting them except during a club lesson or when there was a proper emergency going on, plus pointing out that just because a jinx or curse wasn't going to hurt someone directly that didn't mean it was safe. Tanisis helped by mentioning how painful it could be if someone had the Leg Locker jinx put on them while they were running, and there was a sort of 'oooh...' from the assembled students.

Then Harry showed them how to cast a shower of red sparks, which was about the most basic spell in the book, and got everyone to try casting it while they were moving around quickly. That got everyone running and laughing, spraying sparks at one another (or not spraying sparks at one another, if they couldn't cast the spell right) and Harry came in for quite a lot of bombardment himself.

"We'll be learning other spells in the rest of the year," Harry told them, then, once everyone had calmed down a bit. "But one of the things I think is a lot of fun about Defence is thinking of good ways to use the spells you already have. Like this one."

He pointed his wand up into the air, and cleared his throat. "Hyacinthum Inflammare."

A jet of bluebell flames came out, falling in a line which made a couple of people step quickly backwards, and then Harry scooped up some of the flames with his paw.

"It's only a bit warmer than someone's breath," he explained. "So it's not really dangerous at all. But it makes a good distraction, so you can use it without worrying much about where it's going."

Casting the countercharm, Harry smiled. "So who can think of another way to use a spell that's not supposed to be a defensive spell?"

Dennis Creevey was the first to put up his hand, and said that if you got behind a door and shut the far side with a door-locking spell then you'd be able to run away. That was a good idea, one Harry himself hadn't thought of, and Dennis looked very pleased when Harry said that.

A few others made suggestions, like using summoning charms or maybe Transfiguring a stone into a bird to fly at the person, before Isaac put up a wing for attention and showed something he'd drawn on his slate.

If Harry was understanding it correctly, he was suggesting flying up in the air and dropping things on people.

Harry had to admit that that would work, though it might be dangerous for the person doing the dropping as well, and Isaac sort of nodded at that like he understood the downside.

Amazingly, things at Hogwarts started to settle into a proper routine. Most of their lessons were the same as normal, if more focused on things for OWLs, and Harry found that he did still have enough time to go flying over to Fort William every week or two to get new books.

His two-weeks-on-one-week-off patrols were mostly quite similar to one another, and Dragonsinger gradually disappeared into the finished book pile to be replaced by the sequel Dragondrums and Piemur having to re-evaluate his life after his singing voice broke with puberty. (It was a concept that Empress found sort of fascinating, as it seemed snakes didn't have such a thing, though she said it explained a lot of what Heirs of Slytherin had done over the centuries.)

Ron and the rest of the Quidditch Team were training hard, and Harry and his friends often spent Saturday or Sunday watching as they flew formations and passed the Quaffle, hit the Bludger and Ginny got better and better at catching the Snitch.

The fact she was occasionally shifting into being a falcon was probably helping her spot it, at least, and Harry wondered if she'd try catching it during a game by shifting and stooping out of the sky like a thunderbolt.

Even the Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons weren't too bad. Oh, they certainly just ended up reading the textbook in total silence, but Harry could at least use the time to jot down notes about what to do in Defence Club or just think about the passages he'd read in Practical Defensive Magic over the previous lunch.

It wasn't what he'd prefer, but it was stable.

On Monday the Second of October, at breakfast, Harry was halfway through a Quibbler article ('Secrets Of The Runic Arts – How The Sistine Chapel Is A Giant Rune Array', which seemed to hinge on the idea that the runes in question were buried invisibly underneath the paint) when Neville flapped the Daily Prophet.

"Harry, mate, you might want to read this," he suggested.

Harry duly took the Prophet, which was open to the letters page, and found what Neville was pointing him at.

It was a letter from 'Disgusted of Uxbridge', who Harry had last heard of in First Year. They said that it was a dreadful and possibly illegal shame that students at Hogwarts were being taught dangerous magic by unqualified Beasts, and that this sort of the thing was the sort of thing up with which people should not put.

Or, well, Harry was sort of simplifying it, because there was quite a lot of quite unpleasant phrasing.

"Cripes," Dean said, reading the letter as well. "Reminds me of what my mum says she read about black people."

Harry didn't like people like Disgusted of Uxbridge, but in a way he was sort of grateful that what he was doing wasn't something they'd like. It made him think he might be doing the right thing.

After another chilly Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, in which Harry mostly wrote down a few possible spells to discuss in the next Defence Club session, Harry was surprised to see Hedwig flying into the hall during dinner.

She placed a small note neatly by Harry's plate, examined the food available (today the theme was largely based around wraps) and snagged a piece of flavoured chicken before taking wing again.

Dean sniggered. "Hedwig Express, deliveries all hours."

"Pretty much," Harry agreed, unfolding the note to discover who it was from, and found it written in narrow, loopy handwriting.

Since I believe I have your schedule correct, would you be so kind as to grace me with your company tonight? I have a matter which I would like to discuss.

If I have not got your schedule correct and you are sadly unavailable tonight, please feel assured I will not feel offended. Simply send Ruth to me with a message and I will quite understand.

- A.P. .D.

p.s. the password is Spangles.

Harry nodded, wondering what it was that Dumbledore wanted him for.

Just in case, he decided he should bring along the mirror that connected to Empress and one of the pictures that would let him switch to speaking Dragonish.

You probably could be too prepared, but Harry didn't think it applied in this case.

Around seven in the evening, after doing his History and Potions homework, Harry left the Gryffindor Common Room to make his way to Dumbledore's office.

The password was a kind of sweet Harry had never heard of – not for the first time – but it worked, letting Harry through onto the spiral stairs which led up to the headmaster's suite.

The thought of a suite password also being a sweet password gave Harry a little smile, and then he was close enough to the top that he spoke up. "Good evening, Professor!"

"Ah, good evening, Harry," Dumbledore replied, standing up as Harry entered the office. "I trust the journey was no trouble?"

"No trouble at all, Professor," Harry assured him.

"All fine with your school work?" Dumbledore added. "I know the OWL year can be quite busy."

"I've been keeping up with my homework so far, Sir," Harry answered. "The Defence homework is the one that takes up the most time, because it's just copying out chapters of the textbook."

Dumbledore looked very interested. "Indeed? Well, I suppose it improves your penmanship, so there is some silver lining."

That was one of the things Harry liked about talking to Dumbledore. It seemed as though he was always very interested in whatever it was you had to say, no matter whether it was a simple idea he had to have heard before or something nuanced and relevant… but it never seemed like he was forcing himself to be.

It was very pleasant to interact with.

"I am afraid we must get down to business, however," Dumbledore added. "In the Wizengamot I have tried having entire meetings go past without getting to the business section, but people do tend to complain."

He waved his wand, which made the lock on a nearby cabinet go click, and the doors swung open by themselves. A shallow stone basin emerged, floating slowly out under the effect of a Levitation or Hover Charm, and came to rest one one side of Dumbledore's desk.

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

Harry had a look at the basin, trying to remember if anything he'd read about was similar.

It was a bit like he'd imagined the Mirror of Galadriel to be, though it currently didn't have any water in it. But that was The Lord Of The Rings, and there was something else…

"There's something that got mentioned in one of the detective books I've read, Professor," he answered. "It's for looking at memories, but I can't remember what it's called at the moment."

"Very good, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "This is called a Pensieve, and you are correct – it allows one to explore memories."

He took a small, silvery bottle from a shelf inside the cabinet, and held it up so Harry could see. "This, Harry, is what a memory looks like when it is outside a person. Despite what you may fear from the unfortunate matter of Mr. Lockhart it is quite harmless to extract a memory – it does not rob the donor of them."

His eyes twinkled a little. "Or at least, I don't remember losing any memories by doing this."

Harry snorted appreciatively, and Dumbledore smiled.

"What's that memory, then, Professor?" Harry asked, after a few seconds' pause.

"This, Harry, is a memory of Tom Riddle from someone I do not think you have met," Dumbledore explained. "That man is called Horace Slughorn, and he was the Potions Professor here and Head of Slytherin House before Severus took up the posts."

He spread his hands. "It seems that Potions and Slytherin Heads of House go together, though I do not think it is my hiring practices. Perhaps it is simply something about the Dungeons."

"So this Mr. Slughorn was Riddle's Head of House, then?" Harry asked. "And if you got a memory from him, he must still be around… sorry, Professor, it sometimes still surprises me how long wizards can live."

"The trick is to get a great deal of exercise," Dumbledore told him. "I think perhaps this is why Hogwarts has so very many floors. And you are quite correct – this particular memory concerns the one time I can discern that Tom asked about Horcruxes."

Dumbledore's expression became solemn. "Horace has always been a knowledgeable man, even about things which most would rather not know about, and while his curiosity was academic he was not ignorant of such things. I believe he thought Tom must have had the same curiosity, but – well, perhaps it would be simpler to make good use of the Pensieve I got out for us and show you directly."

He uncorked the little glass bottle, and poured it into the dish. Harry watched, fascinated, as the resultant liquid rippled slightly – then Dumbledore began to stir it with his wand, swirling it faster and faster, and there was a faint sort of image visible within.

"It seems quite hard to look into, Professor," he said.

"Ah, to truly use a Pensieve you must go all the way in," Dumbledore explained. "Once you make contact you are drawn in, though it is possible that in your case the tip of your snout will not suffice – in that case I would advise that you perhaps open your mouth slightly. If you would follow me?"

Dumbledore leaned in closer, until his nose touched the basin – then, all of a sudden, he was gone.

Harry was surprised by what had happened, but after thinking for a moment he wasn't sure why. Dumbledore had certainly warned him that after he made contact he would be drawn in, and vanishing suddenly was at least as good a way of being drawn in as just standing there staring.

"Well?" one of the portraits along the walls asked. "He's waiting, you know."

"Sorry," Harry replied, politely, and leaned in himself.

The tip of his muzzle touched the silvery memories, and there was a faint sort of cool feeling. He didn't seem to be getting pulled in, though, so Harry opened his muzzle slightly.

That did it, and there was a kind of lurch. It felt a bit like travelling by Floo, only cold instead of warm, and the silvery surface of the memory seemed to fill all of Harry's peripheral vision until he found himself landing in front of a plump man with straw-coloured hair.

The man was sitting in an armchair, one hand grasping a small glass of wine and the other rummaging in a box, and then he froze.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said, from behind him. "I trust there were no problems using the Pensieve? I believe this is your first time."

"I don't remember using one before, Sir," Harry answered, which got him a chuckle from Dumbledore.

He looked around, seeing that they had arrived in an office – the layout didn't look familiar at all, and it had clearly been furnished by someone with an appreciation for what Harry had seen described as 'the finer things in life'.

Harry didn't really agree with the idea that there was one category for 'the finer things in life', because as far as he was concerned the finest things in life were books. And it seemed like 'the finer things in life' usually meant the more expensive things in life.

"This is Professor Slughorn, of course," Dumbledore explained, waving Harry towards the rotund man as if they were meeting him in person. "And these are some of the members of what he liked to call his Slug Club, young witches and wizards who he felt were going up in the world."

Harry hadn't noticed the schoolboys – frozen in time, like Professor Slughorn – but now he had he looked at them. They were all about the same age as Harry and his friends, or a bit older – Fifth- or Sixth-years, Harry thought – and then Harry recognized something.

An ornate gold-and-black ring.

"Sir," he said, flicking his tail to point at the boy sporting it on his finger. "That's Tom Riddle, isn't it?"

"It is indeed, Harry," Dumbledore confirmed. "As you have doubtless discerned, when one uses a Pensieve they can step into a memory and replay it. I have halted this particular one so that I may give you an introduction to how they work, but soon I will be letting it continue in its own time."

He smiled. "Do you have any questions?"

"You said witches and wizards, Professor," Harry said. "And these are all wizards. Is that right?"

"Well caught, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "That is correct. As it happens, your mother was one of those witches Slughorn saw as likely to go up in the world, and there were others; there were rather more wizards than witches, though, and rather more Slytherins than those of the other three Houses."

He looked between the schoolboys and Slughorn. "Sometimes it is noticing something like that which can reveal things about ourselves that we had not even considered. But I believe we should see what happens, now."

Dumbledore flicked his wand slightly, and the scene played out.

Harry could see straight away how it was that Riddle had been so respected as a student, and how so many people – including Empress – hadn't realized what sort of person he was. He talked easily with Professor Slughorn and the other boys laughed; then everything went foggy for a moment and Professor Slughorn announced dolefully, "You'll go wrong, boy, mark my words."

The fog cleared, which left Harry wondering what it had meant in the first place, and then the other boys left – leaving only Riddle in the room.

Riddle asked Slughorn about Horcruxes, and then the fog came again and Slughorn told Riddle in the same loud way that he knew nothing about Horcruxes and wouldn't tell if he did.

"Well, that was quite informative," Dumbledore said, into the fog. "Wouldn't you say so?"

Harry thought it was as clear as mud (or fog), but what Dumbledore said made him think about the whole thing again.

"He was asking about Horcruxes," he said, sort of thinking out loud. "And when he asked, it went sort of dark and foggy – for the second time."

"Very good, Harry, though I would slightly correct you and say that it went foggy when Slughorn replied," Dumbledore said, and Harry nodded his understanding.

"But he was asking when he already had, um, two Horcruxes, I think," Harry added, trying to pull together what he'd been told about when Empress had been ordered to kill someone – and when Riddle's father and grandparents had been killed, as he'd discussed with Dumbledore before. "The first one was the diary, because that was when he was in fifth year – nineteen forty three – but the ring wasn't until nineteen forty four, and he made it into a Horcrux as soon as he got it."

"Well spotted, Harry!" Dumbledore congratulated him. "I must confess that that had eluded me. Well done indeed. Now, we should perhaps go back to my office, so we can discuss what to do next."

Getting out of the Pensieve turned out to be as easy as concentrating on it, and in a second or so they were both back in Dumbledore's office.

"As you may have guessed, the fog was not part of what originally happened in that meeting," Dumbledore told Harry. "I expect that if it had then someone would have mentioned it. No, what that means is that the memory has been tampered with."

He gave Harry a sad smile. "Alas, Slughorn is a man who likes to look good, including to himself, and it seems he has chosen to cast his memory of whatever discussion they once had in a better light. It may be that he has the true memory stored somewhere, but it would be quite difficult to persuade him to part with it."

"Would it help, Professor?" Harry asked. "We already know Tom Riddle had Horcruxes – I've destroyed four of them, and we know what a fifth one is."

"But the problem is to discover how many of them he made," Dumbledore explained. "It would not do at all to miss one, and consider ourselves done… though, of course, it seems he spent several years between making one and making another, so perhaps it would not help after all."

He chuckled. "Remember that skill you just displayed, Harry. One of the best ways to get someone to agree with you is to persuade them to convince themselves, and it will serve you in good stead in your future years if you can do so. I also find it tends to produce fewer arguments."

Harry duly nodded his understanding, though he was also wondering.

Maybe if they looked at the places Riddle might have hidden his Horcruxes that would help? One of them had gone to his wizarding family home, another to a place of some significance from his childhood…

"He didn't leave one at the orphanage where he grew up, did he?" Harry asked.

"I checked over the summer," Dumbledore replied promptly. "Though I do not believe it was this summer just past… yes, it was the summer after your second year, I think. It is now an office building in which a company called Havelock Sanitation operates, though in hindsight I think Riddle would not have wanted to go back there even to hide a piece of his soul. Our wizarding world offered him grandeur, you see."

"What about the Ministry of Magic?" Harry checked. "Or Diagon Alley? Those and Hogwarts are the places I think of when I think of how wonderful magic is."

"What an excellent thought," Dumbledore announced. "As someone who grew up with magic, alas, such places are rather like going to the post office. I will have to have some thoughts of my own on the matter, and see whether they fit together."

The next day, Harry spent a lot of it reflecting on the schedule.

Tuesdays had already felt a bit odd because – like Fridays – he had four different lessons over the course of the day, but after the institution of the Defence Club it had got odder as there were now effectively five different lessons.

On the other hand, Harry was still able to largely keep on top of the homework, so that was okay. It did sort of hurt that he'd had to give up on Dungeons and Dragons club, but everyone in the group had been understanding about it and Harry hoped that they'd be able to run a few sessions over the holidays or after exams.

Or even after leaving Hogwarts. There was no reason you had to stop doing that sort of thing just because you'd graduated… and you were more likely to have evenings and weekends off, probably.

"Any idea what sort of questions they ask for the Muggle Studies OWL?" Neville asked, glancing through his notes. "I hope it's not all technical questions about how to wire a plug and stuff like that."

"That one's not too bad, it's all colour coded," Dean shrugged. "But dunno."

"On past papers it's usually some questions about technical aspects of Muggle life – meaning stuff like how Muggles get around, or, yes, wiring plugs," Hermione supplied. "Then there's some about social stuff, like the rules of football or cricket."

"Now I wonder if there's an extra credit question about the offside rule," Dean snorted.

"I wonder whether they ask about television," Harry mused. "Or maybe that's hard to write questions for because it changes every year."

"I think if they did ask questions about television it would have to be television programs that were around back when the textbooks were written," Hermione guessed.

"Oh, yeah, like Blue Peter," Ron said.

"No, that one's still going," Dean informed him. "Unless it's ended in the last couple of months. My sisters love it."

"What, really?" Ron asked.

He got the Muggle Studies textbook out. "What about, um… The Sky At Night?"

"Still going," Harry supplied.

"Doctor Who?" Ron checked. "No, wait, I think someone mentioned that one before?"

"I wish that one were still going," Hermione sighed. "I watched some of the last episodes they showed on television."

"Muggle television shows go on for a long time, don't they?" Neville mused.

"I think it's that either they last a really short time or they keep going for a really long time," Harry said.

Talking about Muggle Studies had reminded him about the other subject he didn't do, though, and he waited a moment to see if the conversation would keep going before asking about it. "How's Divination?"

"Professor keeps warning me I'm going to die," Dean summarized. "I mean, she's not wrong, everyone does eventually. She just seems to really focus on me."

"If she really can tell the future, she's not very good at it," Hermione sniffed.

"Still, the Divination teacher being able to do telling the future isn't really required, right?" Ron asked. "I know that our Charms teacher is really good at Charms, and our Potions teacher is really good at Potions, but our History teacher just has to know a lot about History. He doesn't have to actually be able to go back in time."

"He does have to be from the past," Harry pointed out.

"Yeah, but everyone's from the past," Ron countered.

"Behold!" Neville announced suddenly. "I've travelled here from the year nineteen-eighty!"

He paused. "You know. The slow way."

"In that case, I've come here from the year nineteen seventy-nine," Hermione announced.

"What's it like there?" Harry asked.

"I don't remember many of the details, it was a while ago," she told him.

Ron started sniggering, and that set them all off.

In the Oddly Shaped Support Meeting Or Whatever It Was Called Now (as Harry privately referred to it, largely for amusement value) this year, a lot of the discussion since the beginning of the term had been about Professor Umbridge.

Nobody really thought very much of her, and Harry could sort of tell that the only thing keeping Tyler and Anne from really going to town on her with pranks and jokes was how much it had to be irritating her that she couldn't complain about any disruption in her lessons. A letter had appeared in the Daily Prophet a few days after the first appearance of Disgusted, which had apparently been penned by Fake Name Of Unrelated Place Name, and which said that the defence teaching at Hogwarts was actually quite satisfactory despite the lack of qualifications possessed by the Professor (for which they cited Disgusted).

Harry thought there was a fairly good chance that the Twins (either set) had written it, but he wasn't going to mention it (because, after all, Prefects were meant to make sure people didn't break school rules and writing a letter didn't break them.)

The problem with it, as Harry realized about halfway through that week's Meeting Or Whatever, was that it meant that other problems could get ignored.

"Melody?" he asked. "Sorry to interrupt."

The vampire looked slightly worried. "Is something wrong?"

"I hope not," Harry replied. "I was just wanting to make sure you were getting on okay in your flying lessons."

Now Melody just looked blank. "Is there a reason I wouldn't be? Is that because I don't have wings?"

She waved at Matthew. "Because he doesn't have wings either, and-"

"It's not that," Harry interrupted.

He waved vaguely upwards. "It's because it's one of the lessons that has to be outdoors, in the sun."

"Right," Melody said, sounding relieved to know what was going on.

Counting off on her fingers, the Gryffindor first-year went through a list with a sort of sing-song tone – like she'd said it all before enough times to have it memorized. "I wear long robes. I've got gloves. I wear a big floppy hat. I make sure I don't fly upwards at too steep an angle when the sun isn't behind clouds. And I've got some emergency darkness powder from Peru just in case."

"That's great!" Harry told her. "I wanted to make sure you were getting on with it all right, that's all."

Melody shrugged. "I knew what I was getting into when I came here."

Put like that, Harry could definitely see why she'd ended up in Gryffindor.

He was a bit less clear on why Isaac had ended up in Slytherin, but it would be rude to ask.

AN:

A lot of the inevitable exploding happened in Mr. Weasley's shed.