After class was over Harry and Hermione could once again be found in the library. With Lavendar's birthday blowout now officially over, the two could once again refocus on the unabridged Hogwarts. Harry, however, found himself distracted.

"What's up with you?" Hermione finally snapped, after it took three tries to get Harry to answer a question about how his current book described the powering of perpetual wards.

"Sorry—sorry." Harry said. "It's just the first quidditch match is this weekend and I want it to go well."

Hermione sneered.

Harry, still upset over his interaction with Tonks, his fear over unknown variables, and his situation in general, couldn't help but respond. "Really?" He snapped. "Really? I like quidditch. I find it enjoyable; freeing, even. It brings me, and the people I play it with, a lot of peace and happy-endorphins. What's so problematic about it that your response to hearing me worried about a game—worried in the same way you would be about a test, by the way, regardless of whether it affected your future, so don't even try that line of argument—that your response is to sneer?"

Hermione, though taken aback, rallied quickly. "It's dangerous." She sniffed.

"Life's dangerous!" Harry rejoined.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Not as dangerous as quidditch, on the whole. You'll forgive me if I don't see the benefit of intentionally putting yourself in unsafe situations for fun."

Now it was Harry's turn to roll his eyes. "Come on! We live in a world of magic! Spells to fix broken bones, when properly done, can be accomplished in a matter of seconds! I'd bet if you went by medical issues and the length of time they're experienced Quidditch would be far and above safer than most muggle sports, too!"

"Shush." Madam Pince intoned as she waltzed past their desk.

"All sports are too unsafe." Hermione whispered. "I just don't understand why you, a perfectly intelligent boy, would do something so utterly pointless with such negative possible consequences. Like distracting us from what we're doing now, for example."

"There are always going to be distractions." Harry whispered back. "Like I said earlier, you freak for days every time we're assigned a test, and any time we have many at around the same time you are far worse than I am now. And sports are far from pointless; they teach teamwork, keep you healthy, allow for social interaction—something you must clearly see the need for—helps me focus more in school because I can bleed off energy, teach me skills that I can use in other areas of my life—"

Hermione rolled her eyes again, and Harry decided he'd had enough. "Come talk to me when you're willing to actually think instead of spout your opinion." He said and, grabbing what books he'd spread out across the table, left.

A couple minutes later found him outside, jeering and jockeying around with a bunch of other first- and second-years as a simplified game of football was played out in the lawn beside the Great Lake.

"Surprised you're not in the library." Joshua said, panting as he came up beside Harry.

"Needed a break." Harry said. "You know how it is."

"Well, we're always happy to have you along." He said, before sprinting off again—his team had regained possession of the ball, which meant it was time for him to get into place to score.

Aside from the twenty-odd students actually playing several dozen were also watching from all sides so when Harry began to tire it was easy for him to immediately switch out with Justin and take the role of a spectator instead.

"Potter." Zacharias said as Harry came to stand next to him.

"Smith." Harry said back.

They stood in silence for a while.

Then, "So, you ever played before?"

"I don't believe I've had the pleasure."

"It's pretty simple—or at least, the version we're playing is. All you want to do is score more goals than the other team before the game ends. There are two parts to each team, offensive and defensive, and they each have to stay on their end of the field. There's also a goalie, who's defensive, but he's allowed to use his hands and he's more stuck into place than the other players are."

"...thanks. Is this... a normal sport for muggles to play?"

"It's certainly a favorite." Harry said. "There are dozens, though. I, personally, did Judo before I came here, and many people would consider that a sport."

"...Judo?"

Harry didn't arrive back in the common room until five minutes to curfew, and then all he had time to do was rush through his evening ablutions and jump into bed. Hermione didn't even cross his mind until the next morning.

"Where's Hermione?" He asked at breakfast when it became clear the girl hadn't made her way down with the rest of the first-years.

"Said she was feeling sick." Parvati said. "Didn't want to go to the nurse, though. Still, we figured she wasn't the type to skip class, so we let her rest."

"I hope she feels better soon." Harry said. He'd probably caused that, and it hurt. He hadn't meant to be this life's version of Ron, but Hermione was such a sensitive eleven year-old that he'd apparently managed to get the role anyway. After class, he decided, he'd send Hedwig up to check on her. Until then he may as will give her time to herself.

Dumbledore was still staring at him.

Wednesday classes, like Tuesday, began with History, but thankfully after that they had Charms and Harry got to play with a spell that basically acted as a way to poke things from a distance. His favorite target, considering the class was with the Ravenclaws, were the twins Morag and Isobel, because they could take a joke and give as good as they got. Most others in the class focused on poking the clay provided, but he already had enough memories of doing that.

After lunch—more staring—Transfiguration, and Herbology classes were over. Hermione had not appeared the entire day, though her dormmates had visited and assured everyone else that she was already looking much better.

Harry, at a loss of what to do, headed for the library. At the very least he could create a comprehensive write-up for her about wards, and she'd probably like that a hell of a lot better than most of the other methods of apology he thought of.

Wards were weird.

They were, officially, types of enchantments: magic generally formed through both spells and runes that was meant to last. Unofficially, you weren't ever going to confuse a ward with a magical tent.

Wards were broadly designed to 'turn away'. What that meant everything from muggle-repelling to, in some cases, literally preventing upset people from entering an area. Thousands of them, of various efficacy and purpose, had been created; the earliest the Hogwarts library had record of was from Ancient Minoa, and the latest (a ward intended to act as a sort of air regulator) just two years ago.

Most, as was noted in the margins and footnotes of various books, were at least somewhat redundant. That said, because the Ministry's copyright law was very narrow in its focus and only captured true copy-and-paste theft, a shocking number of wards had almost exactly the same purpose and set-up.

Hogwarts wards were far, far different from the average ones.

For one, they were literally intended to work together. Most wards were apparently built to be sole operators, but Hogwarts wanted to 'turn away' so many things—both from entering and leaving—that it was all but required that multiple wards were used.

This did not make doing so any easier.

The last wards to be added to the amalgamation were by Dumbledore himself, shortly after he took up the position of Headmaster.

They were good wards, intended to have the existing ones work far better than they already had, masking the castle all the more from any muggle sensing devices that may try to divine its presence, and (for reasons that escaped Harry, given their location) two wards for the mitigation of earthquakes.

When the war came Dumbledore just enacted the old ones—they were powerful, built to strengthen as they aged, and every book that discussed them agreed that any attempt to modify the defensive wards was unlikely to end in any way profitably.

It was here, unfortunately, that Harry began to run out of information. The unabridged Hogwarts: A History was no doubt chock full of what he needed, but he had to finish his apology to get to that, and while many books discussed the manner with which wards maintained and recovered power none adequately explained how that process might fail.

Instead Harry turned, once again, to the troll.

What he knew—and Hermione didn't—was that the troll had almost definitely entered the castle because of the exceptions for class 4 beasts, but at the very least he could look into whether it was possible to only accept one troll in particular, or if a single concession had to be stretched to fit an entire species.

Here he had more luck.

The short version? It depended.

The less a ward had to check for when processing the exception, the less additional energy it needed. Allowing 'any animal', for instance, would be far easier than 'any animal with these very specific characteristics'. A ward was not, on its own, able to define many nouns so nearly all of the runic parts of wards were done in adjectives, which meant that instead of allowing for trolls specifically, one had to allow for something with a troll's characteristics that couldn't unintentionally allow any other beast with similar characteristics in.

Making the exception apply to a single troll was therefore possible, but difficult, and straining on lesser wards.

Which meant, Harry decided (because Dumbledore was more than skilled enough to define the wards to his desired exception specifically), that he could report back to Hermione that the wards could have been delayed because an exception had to be made for "something" and that took enough of the ward's power to hold it back, at least somewhat.

He then wrote an essay about it, because he knew she'd like that.

After that was a short troop up to the common room.

"Hey, Lavender?" Harry asked.

"Hm?" She said, looking up from the homework she was not doing.

"You mind giving this to Hermione for me? I think it'll make her feel better."

"Sure."

Thursday began, as always, with breakfast followed by defense, and Harry was relieved to see Hermione there for both. Unfortunately the true eleven year-old made no attempt to talk to him, and the other first years were beginning to notice, but she also looked introspective instead of sad, so Harry again decided to give her time.

DADA was horrible as usual. The whole raise-his-hand "I have a headache" thing was still working (though he continued to get odd looks from classmates) but the stutter and the smell remained awful and there was also probably something negative to say about the psychological effects of being in the same room as your parents' killer and your own would-be murderer.

Harry tried not to dwell on it too much.

After DADA came potions, because the world had a sick sense of humor, and Snape was clearly still riling about the near-break in.

Actually, he was far angrier this time than he had been last.

Harry wondered if it was the dragon, the sickness, the petition, something else, or some kind of a mix that was worrying him.

Regardless, the effect of the man's mood was Harry getting summarily switched with Dean ("another explosion, Finnegan, and see if you're allowed in class at all!") and Crabbe and Goyle were also divided between Malfoy and Greengrass as well, neither of whom looked happy at the change.

It wasn't so much that Harry was against the changes—they made a certain amount of sense, he'd willingly admit—it was just that each switched was joined by a nearly five-minute long rant about the student who had forced said change.

Seamus looked feint and wouldn't even look Harry in the eye when they were finally allowed to go to work, and Crabbe nearly stormed out in anger, held back only by Malfoy's hand and sharp look. Nevile, though his partner of Joshua ensured he hadn't done poorly enough to be mentioned more than once, actually had rushed out himself, but Harry had a feeling that had more to do with fear than rage.

Lunch was awaited eagerly by the entire class, and only two groups managed to finish their potions in time.

Harry' and Seamus's was not one of them.

Harry spent the afternoon after class researching any rules the school had on bullying. Hermione was in the library too, but as she carefully avoided him he saw no reason to force interaction.

He traded frog cards and played exploding snap that evening, and tried not to think too much about how all his plans were going up in smoke.

Friday brought only charms before lunch. The flying lessons had finished the week before, so first years were given their first free period ever, and most used it to laze about and relax.

Harry was in the Quidditch pitch.

The Weasley twins whizzed around the stands, chucking both bludgers back and forth with such power and speed that every crack of their bats rang through the air.

Angelina, Alicia, and Katie raced between them, dodging the furious balls and passing their own between them as they went.

Oliver (the only one who technically had class during the hour) had invited anyone who wanted to the opportunity to try to get a Quaffle through his goals, so a long line of upperclassmen looking to relieve stress popped in and out, borrowing the provided brooms to get into the air and chuck Quaffle after Quaffle at their quidditch captain.

Harry, on the other hand, was tracking down the fifteen released Snitches that were darting around.

He got thirteen before the hour was over.

His first time around Oliver had released ten and he'd caught 7.

After Quidditch practice, Harry sped through lunch (they'd spent the full hour in the air, so the time spent packing up and showering was technically during the meal period), spent an hour transfiguring different types of metal into each other, and pushing through as much of next week's homework as he could manage.

Halfway through his Potions write-up Hermoine sat next to them. Neither spoke, but Harry felt himself relax. Hermione, he still thought, was entirely too sensitive, but he'd known that before he said what he said and he'd still done it. Knowing he hadn't ruined their reputation meant a lot to him, and just as they began to pack up to make curfew Hermione finally spoke up.

"Good luck tomorrow." She said. "I don't... I don't think I can watch, but I hope you win."

"Thanks." Harry said, smiling. "How about we meet up afterwards? We still have to get through the book, after all."

"Sounds good to me." Hermione said.

Both smiled, then flinched when the warning bell rang out.

"Right, let's go. Wouldn't want you to get your first detention." Harry said, and both laughed as they raced through the hall.