Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.  Warner Brothers bought me out.

By Sunday, Harry was beginning to grow tired of the looks of pity the Gryffindors were giving him, which had somehow grown worse after the quidditch match.  Granted, he had been attacked by a death-eater, but he had been hurt worse playing Quidditch through the years.  The only good that had come from the affair was that Ginny didn't glare at him anymore.

Finally, during a chess match with Ron, the Creevey brothers settled the issue by quietly remarking to each other how 'bravely he's carrying on.', annoying Harry enough to leave the commons.  Suddenly, Harry remembered the dueling club out on the Quidditch pitch, and decided it'd be the perfect way to get out his frustration at the recent events.

"Ron, Hermione, you up for some fun?" Harry asked, perched halfway through the fat lady's portrait.  Ron looked up from across the chess board; Hermione looked up from above her charms book.  Both were a tad anxious.

"Don't look so worried," Harry said, smiling.

Harry led the trio out to the quidditch pitch, where there were several rings of people.  Sure enough, Malfoy was at the center of the largest ring, now dueling Morag MacDougal.  Draco looked about ready to win when he caught glimpse of Hermione and involuntarily grimaced.  Morag finished him off with an expelliarmus, to the surprise of the crowd.

"Who brought the mudblood?" Draco yelled, angry about losing concentration, or possibly angry about the quidditch match the day before.

Harry placed a restraining hand on Ron's shoulder.  "I brought Hermione, Malfoy," Harry said firmly.  "We're considering joining."

"A mudblood wouldn't make it," Draco said, slightly jeering.

Harry tightened his grip on Ron and said, "How about a deal.  Duel her.  If she beats you, she can join."

Draco thought a moment.  "What happens when I beat her?"

"If," Harry said with a smile.  "Malfoy, if you beat her, I'll tell the Gryffindors that you beat me at the duel.  They don't believe you, you know."

Ron whispered to him, "You mean, the Slytherins were telling the truth?"

Draco looked at Harry, not doing well at masking the though of the whole school knowing that he got the better of the legendary Boy-Who-Lived.

Draco nodded.  "Fair enough."

Harry whispered to Hermione, "You ready to give this 'pure-blood' what he deserves?"  Hermione grinned and made her way to the center.

"Harry," Ron hissed nervously.  "Are you sure about this?  Nothing against Hermione, but if Malfoy beat you, Hermione doesn't have much of a chance."

"Of course," Harry whispered back.  "But Hermione has one advantage I don't.  Malfoy underestimates her."

"Well," Draco drawled, "I don't know if you remember how this works – it's been three years since your great duel with Millicent Bulstrode."

Hermione played along, never speeding up Draco's humiliatingly slow instructions on how to start a proper duel.  Finally, the formalities over, Draco smirked and sent a weak stunning spell at her.

Harry shook his head.  How could Malfoy be so obtuse?

Hermione quickly dodged the spell and yelled, "Cassus vesica!" back at the Slytherin.  Draco went blank – he had never heard of this spell, let alone a counter-curse for it.  The spell hit Malfoy straight in the chest and he promptly released the contents of both his bladder and large intestines violently on the ground.

Draco involuntarily looked down at his soiled robes, the result of Hermione's defecation charm.  Hermione put him out of his misery with the most powerful stunning charm Harry had ever seen, besides the one by Dumbledore the year before.

Hilda, the Slytherin 'nurse', woke Draco up, while the crowd looked at Hermione in amazement.  Harry realized the situation was going to require some finesse, judging by the fury on Malfoy's face at having been defeated by a 'mere mudblood.'

"So, are we in your dueling club?" Harry asked, purposely throwing 'your' in so Draco would still see it was run by him.

At this, Ron turned sharply to Harry, obviously realizing the club was actually run by the hated Slytherin.  Ron's face openly struggled between choosing to join a dueling clue run by Malfoy, versus choosing to not join a dueling club (even if it was run by the Slytherin.)

Ron must have made his choice, because he quipped, "Imagine how many people would join if Harry Potter was a member."

Malfoy looked at the trio, weighing his options.  "Fine," he spat, "you can join – on the lowest rung."  He pointed at the furthest circle, where two first years were dueling, watched only by a few of their friends.  With a smirk, Draco turned back to the main circle.

Ron was about the protest when Hermione whispered to them both, "Don't worry, Ron.  Think about it – the more advanced students are going to want to duel us.  Malfoy can't keep us down in the lowest rank."

Hermione's point was clear as the trio made their way over to the fighting first years.  Many of the members of the center circle watched the trio walk over and even more peered at them when Ron easily beat the winner of the first year battle with his first expelliarmus.  A minute later, several of the more enterprising 6th and 7th years from Malfoy's group walked over.

Harry and Hermione sniggered as people from the surrounding groups stopped dueling to watch Ron and a 6th year Harry didn't recognize, although both the Gryffindors admitted that it was a very exciting duel, far more breath-taking then the Roger Davies-Morag MacDougal duel in the center ring.

Harry was yet again amazed at Hermione's ability to jump straight to the conclusion, and he too realized that Malfoy really didn't have a choice besides moving them up – otherwise Malfoy would have to deal with people leaving 'his' circle.

Harry looked back at the duel, and watched as Ron's stunning spell barely missed to the left and the red-haired Gryffindor was disarmed with a well timed expelliarmus.  While Ron was a little upset at losing, he was still smiling from the event.

"A lot better than with Lockhart," Ron said, walking back over to Harry and Hermione.

Harry laughed.  "Most anything would be."

Ron laughed too; Hermione still looked a little upset at unkind references to Gilderoy.

"Oh, come on, Hermione," Ron said, watching Crabbe and Goyle duel.  "The man didn't know a thing."

"Still, he was a professor," Hermione pointed out.

Harry didn't pay any attention to the pair.  Now that he looked back on it, Christmas had at least one positive trait: he didn't have to listen to the two of them argue.  Harry instead watched the match, and laughed as Crabbe kept trying to stun Goyle, but mispronounced 'Stupefy.'

Still, the three came out to the pitch rather late, and even before Goyle could manage to stun Crabbe, the sun had set over the Giant Lake.  "We better get inside," Hermione said.  "We've got class early on Mondays."

Ron, surprisingly, agreed.  "You're right.  I want to see who Snape's replacement is.  Maybe we'll actually learn something in Potions now."

"Ron," Hermione scolded.  "You could have learned from Snape, if you had only paid attention."

"But Hermione," Harry pointed out, "he's a death eater!"

"Was a death eater," Hermione hissed.

Harry and Ron looked at each other.  While Hermione hadn't been there at the inquiry, they both assumed that she at least knew what happened.

"No," Harry said quietly.  "He is a death eater.  Before he left the inquiry, he all but came out and said he was going back to Voldemort."

Hermione's mouth hung.  "But… but… he knows almost everything that's gone on at Hogwarts.  The jewels that Voldemort was looking for, all the actions Dumbledore's taken, and even Harry's sphe…"

"I know," Harry said, cutting Hermione off before she could say anything about his golem in front of Ron.  "I'm sure Dumbledore knows as well."

Harry looked worriedly at Hermione, who was biting her lip.  She was clearly aching to run through all the implications, but was in the awkward position of having to keep information from Ron.

"Jewels?" Ron asked.  "Plural?  I thought he only took that one from the ministry."

Harry silently thanked Ron for sidetracking Hermione.  "No, Ron," Hermione answered.  "Remember, before he stole the amethyst from the ministry, he took a topaz from the muggle jewelry store."

"Oh yeah," Ron said.  "Well, how many do you think he's after?"

Hermione opened and shut her mouth.  Harry blinked.  Neither had thought of how many gems Voldemort was after, not even having a clue of what the gems that he currently had even did in the first place.

"I don't know," Harry replied.  "But Dumbledore said he already took steps to stop Voldemort."

"So Dumbledore knew what was going on before we did," Hermione thought out loud.

"He probably hid a gem," Ron said.

"What good would that do?" Harry asked.

"Well," Hermione answered slowly, "the gems probably aren't useful by themselves.  After all, one was in a muggle store, and another was an archived item that the ministry said wasn't important.  And Voldemort hasn't done anything out of the ordinary – he hasn't shown any sort of advantage from the two gems he already has.  So it makes sense that he needs all the gems together, for them to be of any use."

"So how many are there?" Ron asked.

"Probably three," Harry stated authoritatively.

"Really," Hermione asked curiously.  "Why do you say that?"

"Because," Harry explained, "If Voldemort has two, and Dumbledore hid one like Ron guessed, then there could only be three.  Because if there were more, then Voldemort would simply search for the ones Dumbledore hadn't hid first – why go after the hard one right away?  But you said Voldemort stopped searching for jewels."

"That should narrow it down a little, there being only three gems.  And we knew what two of them are," Hermione said, eliciting groans from Ron and Harry.

"No," Ron said.  "No need to say it.   We know where you're going."

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Mt Dew: Thanks!  I'm glad I hooked another!  :)

Katani: Yeah, I really didn't mean to withhold the point of that so long.  And I almost forgot about it completely…

Chaser: Thanks!

Castus: Glad you like it!

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