Chapter 4.1 The first part of summer 1994

As soon as they got to Potter Manor, Sirius excitedly announced, "I've prepared a surprise at the end of August."

"What is it?"

"It's a surprise."

"I don't like surprises."

"Oh, come on, I promise that it will be a nice surprise."

"If you don't tell me all I'm going to do is worry."

"Spoilsport, I got tickets for the Quidditch World Championship Finals."

"Fantastic! I heard they were going to be in England."

"Yes. We're supposed to portkey there two days in advance. A good portion of all the wizards in the world will be there. Should be good, no?"

"Yes, thank you for telling me, I'll be enjoying the anticipation."

Dear Madam Bones,

We found evidence that there's another diary in Hogwarts. Maybe we could meet to discuss details? Also, I'm wondering if it's possible to build detectors for them. Would there be a curse-breaker at the Ministry who could help me to try and build one? I would be happy to pay them.

Thank you,

Harry Potter

Madam Bones invited Harry over for dinner. After dinner she told him that the curse-breakers had agreed that if Harry agreed to do most of the work, then together they would provide him with ideas and feedback. They suggested to try and modify a snitch, and if Harry agreed, the first step would be to build an unmodified snitch. They had even found an instruction manual for him, and a parts supplier. Harry agreed.

"Are you a werewolf?" Harry asked, when Sirius invited Remus for dinner.

"Harry!" Sirius exclaimed in outrage.

Harry ignored him, silently pushing Remus for an answer.

"Yes."

"So, all this valuing my opinion, and wanting to get to know me was all a sham?"

"What do you mean?"

"That most of Hogwarts knew before I did. If you're going to pretend to want to get to know me, you could at least put a minimal amount of effort into it."

Sirius tried to plead Remus' case, from the prejudice against werewolves to Harry not being fair in expecting Remus to approach him when Harry was being so hostile, but Harry could see in Remus' eyes that he agreed that it had been fair of Harry to demand that Remus make an effort to overcome Harry's animosity after he had been absent for 12 years.

It took three weeks to order the snitch parts, set up a workshop, which he did in his trunk because he figured this project was going to take longer than the holidays, and build his first snitch. For his second snitch he omitted the flesh memory, and that snitch only took four hours. It took three tries to get right, but the third snitch flew towards the closest human rather than away from them. The next step was going to be the difficult one: making the snitch fly towards the closest horcrux rather than the closest human. The basic idea was to put a page from the destroyed diary inside the snitch and use that as a template to search for a similar object. Humans could tell when they were near a horcrux, which meant that they leaked magic that in theory should be detectable. However, horcruxes were protected against the usual ways of finding things like summoning and scrying, so the curse-breakers thought the detection would have to be based on resonance rather than identification. Harry spent lots of time looking at such disparate spells as detection of familial relationships, the protean charm and disillusionment, and the arithmancy underlying those spells, as well as the runes for how snitches stayed inside the stadium, password protection and selective wards.

When Harry had arithmantic equations and runic sequences coming out of his ears he did defence training with Sirius and Remus, wrote to his muggleborn friends, flooed to Neville and/or Susan, did his summer assignments, or worked on a new broom. He wrote to Hermione what he was studying, though he only talked in very general terms about the why. It was helpful having to explain his approach, because it forced him to think of details that the curse-breakers, with their greater experience, had taken for granted. He built several prototype snitches, but none of them performed the search pattern that would be a minimum requirement for a working detector.

Neville had allowed him to cut down a holly stem thick enough to make a broom, and when the Wizengamot was in session, so that Professor Dumbledore would be out of his office, he had floo called and asked Fawkes for one of his tail feathers, and had been pleasantly surprised that he gave him one. While he was waiting for the wood to dry, he made a broom out of dry oak he had harvested two years before, and put thestral hair in the broom handle as if it were a giant wand, and finished it with hazel tail twig. The resulting broom was fast, faster even than his Nimbus 2001, but highly unstable. In the air that wasn't too much of a problem, as long as he didn't fly anywhere near trees or the house, but landing without breaking any bones proved to be a challenge. He was glad he had asked Sirius to come out with him, because in the end he managed to stall the broom and jump off, and for Sirius to break his fall with a spell and his broom's fall as well. Harry made another broom out of horse chestnut and a hippogriff feather. The broom wasn't quite as fast, but relative to its speed it was even more unstable. Harry went over the runes, and after several modifications, he got a broom that wasn't quite as dangerous anymore, but it was still too unstable. Having temporarily run out of ideas, Harry let it rest for the time being, thinking he might try again during the Christmas holidays when the holly would be dry. But then it hit him, rather than the handle he could add thestral hairs to the tail twigs. The resulting broom was fast as well, but was very difficult to manoeuvre. He would keep the broom in case he ever needed to fly a long distance, but for a quidditch type broom the solution was obvious. In the end he got a very nice broom with the chestnut handle and about a third of the tail twigs with thestral hairs. It still didn't handle quite as well as his Nimbus, but when he shrunk and unshrunk it, it still worked the same, so he had his emergency escape route.

Before the house-elves had found the memories of his parents, Harry had hit on the idea of viewing Sirius's memories of some of the significant events in his parents' lives. Once more, the house-elves proved their unending enthusiasm for whatever idea Harry came up with by unearthing a pensieve from the Potter vault at Gringotts. They had a good time watching some beautiful moments, like his parents' wedding, their sorting, and Harry's first birthday.

When their Hogwarts letters had stated they needed dress-robes, Sirius had made enquiries. All he was told was that there would be a ball, so Sirius tried to extend Harry's limited experience with dancing, but with only a month of holidays left, and quite a lot planned over that time, and Sirius' inability to take anything that reeked of pureblood customs seriously, it didn't help all that much. Sirius did teach Harry enough about asking girls to be his partner that Harry felt he could at least handle that part, even if Sirius had to intersperse the sound advice with his crude sense of humour.

By then the Litha celebration and his 14th birthday had come and gone, and their get-together with Sally-Anne and other friends was approaching. Because of the Quidditch World Cup, the visit to Potter Manor had been rescheduled to before the visit to the Finch-Fletchleys, though, unfortunately, Kevin and Oliver would still be on holidays then. Harry had talked to the curse-breakers, and they had concluded there was no guarantee that building a detector was going to work. Harry was still learning a lot of useful things, so he wasn't thinking of giving up, but they thought that it was time to rethink their strategy and agreed to start searching the Room of Requirement by hand. The five humans would take shifts and work in pairs to make their way through the Room, helped by the Hogwarts house-elves to move things they had identified as harmless. It was a whole new learning experience for Harry, learning the most common diagnostic curse-breaking charms. There were a lot of unusual things in the Room, so Harry regularly had to ask the curse-breaker he was working with to check something.

When the eleven fourteen-year-olds got together, Sally-Anne said that Professor Flitwick had noted that she didn't have a good grasp of the charms taught in the last two months of last year, and had gotten three additional graduating muggleborns to agree to tutor her. She asked if they could find her three more tutors by the end of the coming schoolyear, then she could have a lesson almost every week for their OWL year. Mrs and Mr Finch-Fletchley were gifted dancers, and in the limited time available did a lot to prepare all of them for a ball.