The remainder of the day passed pleasantly. After breakfast, Harry and the Hufflepuff boy accompanied Hagrid, Snuffles the dog, Professors Green, McGonagall, and Dumbledore, and some of the other staff members on a walk through Hogsmeade to admire the Christmas decorations. It was very cold outside, but Hogsmeade was very pretty, and by the time everyone gathered back at the castle for Christmas dinner, they were all in a fine mood. Professor McGonagall had seemed to forget about the morning's duel, and chatted amiably with Harry throughout the meal. Even Malfoy forgot to send hostile glances Harry's way, and occupied himself talking to Crabbe and Goyle instead.

Just when Harry had grown used to the winter vacation--the slow pace of the days, having the Common Room to himself, being able to talk away the day with Hagrid or Sirius--it was over. He missed having so much time and space to himself, but seeing Ron and Hermione again made up for that. Hermione had had a wonderful holiday ("I had a lot of time to study for O.W.L.s!"), but Ron didn't seem to have enjoyed his much at all.

"Dad and Percy got into a big argument about You-Know-Who," Ron informed them over breakfast on their first full day back at school. He took a slice of toast from the platter Hermione was offering him, and set the platter down on the table in front of Harry. "Then Mum and Penelope got mad at THEM for fighting ... it was awful. Plus, now Mum's all worried about Ginny playing Keeper on the Quidditch team. One broken collarbone, and you'd have thought Ginny was crippled for life! I think Mum would have forbidden Ginny to play at all if Dad and I hadn't taken up for her."

Hermione swallowed a bite of toast and smiled sideways at Ron. "You took up for Ginny?"

"Yeah," Ron said, as though Ginny playing Keeper were his idea. "Well, why shouldn't she play? Mum never had a problem with Charlie, Fred, or George playing, and she doesn't mind me being the reserve. Plus, she's always saying how Ginny's too shy and she needs to be involved in more school activities." He shrugged and continued eating, oblivious to the self-satisfied grin on Hermione's face.

A brown barn owl with black-flecked feathers suddenly landed on Harry's right shoulder. It stuck out its left leg and hooted gruffly. Harry carefully unrolled the small piece of parchment, and the owl took flight again.

Harry glanced at the parchment and let out a groan. "Detention," he mumbled. He had half-hoped that in the spirit of the season, Professor McGonagall would have let it slide.

"What for?" asked Ron.

"Harry!" Hermione glared at him indignantly. "What did you do?"

He told them the story of his duel with Malfoy. Ron laughed, and Hermione stifled a giggle.

"Well, as a prefect I'm supposed to disapprove of fighting. But all the same--you say he was flat on his back?" She chuckled and shook her head.

"What's your detention?" asked Ron.

"Professor Green's office, five o'clock tonight," Harry read. He looked up from the note. "Hey, that's not so bad."

Ron snorted. "No kidding. She'll probably have you sharpening machetes or something." He stared at the far wall wistfully for a moment. "Cool. Say, do you think I could come, too?"

"Most certainly not!" boomed the voice of Professor McGonagall, who had been passing behind Ron at that moment. She stopped and stared down at Harry sternly as she spoke to Ron. "Detention is not play time, Mister Weasley. Potter will not be accompanied by friends, nor will he be engaging in any activities that could be remotely considered--" she paused as though unsure how to enunciate the next word "--cool."

They watched Professor McGonagall sweep out of the Great Hall and up the staircase toward her office.

"I wonder what Green's having you do, then?" Hermione mused, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and pushing back from the table.

"I don't know," Harry answered. He couldn't think of anything unpleasant that Professor Green might force him to do, except perhaps extra laps around the lake. And that wouldn't be so bad.

***

"Right on time. Come in." Professor Green opened the door to her office and pointed to the chair in front of her desk. Harry walked in and sat down. Sirius wasn't here; he must be running another errand for Dumbledore. Professor Green took a seat behind her desk and regarded him for a few seconds.

Harry began to shift awkwardly in his seat. Finally, he couldn't take the silence anymore. "Um, Professor Green? Did you have some sort of detention for me?"

She ignored the question. "Minerva told me what happened in the corridor between you and Mister Malfoy."

"Oh." Harry thought he detected the slightest note of admiration in her voice. He wasn't sure whether to expect a lecture or congratulations. "Right."

Professor Green put a finger to her lips thoughtfully. "Would you care to tell me what happened, in your own words? I'd like to hear it from you, if you don't mind."

"Alright." Harry told her exactly what had happened--how Malfoy had been waiting for him in the corridor, how they had dueled, how Malfoy had unarmed and attempted to curse him, and how Harry had knocked him down just in time.

When he had finished the story, Professor Green just stared at him in silence again. He was beginning to become irritated with her reticence when she spoke. "Interesting," was all she said, and that was more to herself than to him. "What made you think to do that, Harry? I mean, we haven't sparred at all in class yet."

He shrugged. "You did show us those things though--how to disarm an opponent, and how to knock them down, I mean. I guess I just remembered them. Is it really that unusual?"

"Yes. Actually, it is. You appear to have exceptionally good instincts." Her tone was flat, as though she were trying not to compliment him, but not quite succeeding.

"It was all over before I knew it. I didn't really think at all." He shrugged again. He didn't know what else to say.

"Well, no. I should think not. That's why you're here, after all," she responded briskly, snapping out of her reverie. She stood up, walked to a spot beside her desk, and knelt down. "Harry, look here."

Harry craned his neck so that he could see around the edge of the desk. Professor Green had grasped the end of a large black trunk and was pulling it toward him. She set it down beside Harry's chair, so that he could see seven differently-shaped locks spaced across the opening. She pulled a large keyring out of her pocket.

"I daresay you've seen a trunk like this before," she said as she placed a key in the first lock. "They're standard-issue for certain Ministry personnel." Harry remembered the end of last term, and the trunk where Dumbledore had found Mad-Eye Moody Stunned and cursed. He shivered.

Professor Green wasn't watching him, however, as she opened the trunk's lid to reveal a pile of parchment rolls--hundreds of them. Still kneeling, she turned around to face him.

"Trial notes, depositions, case files," she explained, "this is all the paperwork I've amassed over the last, oh, I'd say five years or so." She turned back to the trunk, which threatened to overflow with parchment. Harry wondered how many animals had donated their skins to produce the documents he saw before him just now.

Professor Green grabbed a parchment roll at random and stood up. "As you may have guessed, I did not become an Auror to file paperwork." She wrinkled her nose in disdain. "But teachers have the privilege of forcing errant students to do those types of menial tasks for them." She grinned. "Harry, let me show you what I want you to do." She selected another key from the ring and placed it in the seventh lock. This time when she pulled back the lid, it was as though Harry were looking down into a large room. Torches in brackets lit its brown walls, and the floor was made from the same type of warm-hued, smooth stone as the walls were. The color of it made this room a little more cheerful than the pit-like chamber where Moody had been imprisoned--just a little.

Professor Green placed one foot inside the trunk and climbed down a ladder placed against the nearest wall. "Come on," she called from inside.

Harry followed. As he reached the bottom of the ladder, he stepped off and looked around. The room was very plain--besides the torches, its only remarkable feature was a network of cubby holes that covered the lower six feet of each wall.

"What I want you to do is file, Harry." She pulled the first and seventh keys off the keyring, handed them to him, and pocketed the keyring. "All those documents you saw are public records--the Ministry has copies, but they still won't let me throw anything away." She sighed. "Anyway, they're very boring, so don't bother trying to read them. Just match the case number on each piece of parchment with the correct cubby hole. See?"

Professor McGonagall had been right: there was nothing cool about this detention. It would be tedious and boring; on the other hand, it could have been much worse.

For the next ten minutes, Professor Green showed him how to file parchment rolls. Finally, she glanced at her watch. "Oh, it's nearly six. I've got to meet the third-years out by the lake," she said, handing him an armful of parchment rolls that she had been filing and heading for the ladder.

"You're leaving?"

"Well, yes. You can handle this, can't you? I'll be back in couple of hours to see how you're doing."

Harry didn't fancy spending two hours alone in the spooky torchlit room, but he tried to look nonchalant. "Sure."

Professor Green climbed up the ladder. "Oh, and Harry," she called down to him, "remember, only the first and last locks. Other than that--"

"I know, I know," Harry mumbled, "don't touch anything."

She winked and disappeared from view.

Two hours later, Harry was stiff, tired, sweaty, and hungry. His muscles were sore from climbing up and down the ladder carrying the awkward bundles of parchment. To make matters worse, he had barely made a dent in the heap of parchment rolls in the first compartment of the trunk.

He glanced at his watch: it was a quarter to eight. In fifteen minutes Professor Green would come back and, hopefully, take him to the Great Hall for a late dinner with the third-years. He took the last parchment roll of the bundle he'd been filing and placed it in a cubby hole near the floor. Slowly, he sat down on the brown stone. He stretched his arms and yawned. As he did so, a stray piece of parchment laying on the floor near the ladder caught his eye. Figuring he must have dropped it during one of his trips down the ladder, Harry got up and moved toward the corner where the parchment sat. He knelt and grabbed it, but when he tried to pick it up, it wouldn't budge--one corner was lodged in a crack in the stone where the wall met the floor. But that spot was obscured by shadow, so Harry had to feel the edges of the parchment and try to work it out. Having made no progress after a minute of this, he nearly gave up. Suddenly, he looked up and saw a torch sitting in a bracket on the wall nearby.

Cursing his stupidity, he stood up and pulled the torch away. The bracket came with it.

"Great," he muttered to himself. The bracket had broken away from the wall completely. He supposed he would have to fix this somehow--a charm might do it. He was preparing to blow the torch out and set it down on the floor when he unexpectedly caught sight of something inside the crack in the wall where the torch bracket had been. He lifted the torch to illuminate the crack.

Inside sat a small, very old-looking scroll. It wasn't off-white, or even slightly yellowed, like the rolls of parchment he'd been filing all night. Instead, it was a deep golden-brown; it looked as though it might turn to dust if Harry touched it.

But his curiosity got the better of him. Carefully, Harry reached in and pulled out the scroll. It was tougher than it looked, he noted with relief. He held it up to the torchlight.

The visible portion of the scroll was covered in very tiny writing in a language that Harry didn't recognize; it might have been runes, or possibly a foreign alphabet. He remembered that Hermione was taking Ancient Runes and wondered if she could read it. After puzzling over the scroll for a moment, he placed it gingerly in his pocket. When Professor Green got back, he would ask her what it was and how it had gotten there. In the meantime, he would use a simple Fastening Charm to fix the torch bracket--that, at least, was one charm he'd been able to master last term.

She returned later than either of them had expected, apologizing for her tardiness.

"The fighting between the Houses, you know. It's getting really bad. A Ravenclaw boy tried to trip a Slytherin." She made her way down the ladder, panting. Her face was flushed from being out in the cold. "I had to take the Ravenclaw up to Professor Flitwick. Well," she remarked pleasantly as she looked around at the newly-filled holes in the walls, "I must say, you've made a great deal more progress than I expected! You must be hungry. Come down and have a bite."

Harry thought for a moment. Earlier he'd been hungry, but now he was just sleepy and sore. "Actually, Professor, I think I'd rather go to bed."

"Suit yourself," she answered, and motioned to him to climb the ladder. When they got back up to her office, she found the two keys she had given Harry on the floor near the trunk. "Thanks, Harry. With any luck, I can get that Ravenclaw to finish what you've started later in the week. Goodnight."

Yawning, he mumbled a faint goodnight and left Professor Green's office for Gryffindor Tower.

It wasn't until he changed for bed that he realized the old scroll was still in his pocket.

***

Author's Note: Yes, believe it or not, this is all going somewhere. It's just taking forever to get there. :) Thanks to everyone for your kind and helpful reviews, especially to R. J. Anderson and L.T. Clunas for advising, encouraging, cajoling, and threatening me to finish this story.