SERPENTINE
By Yih

Beta'd by Blackumbrage.

Chapter 3
The Philosopher's Stone

THE FULL EXTENT of the known capabilities of the Philosopher's stone is unknown, but it is known that Flamel's genius creation will extend life into immortality…

That was what his father was looking for and that was what had to have been in the vault and had been taken and now was missing. Harry still didn't know how this would help resurrect his bodiless father, but it would ensure Voldemort's life for the rest of his life when he did get his body back. There was no doubt he would; it was only a question of when.

The question that assaulted Harry now was where to find the blasted stone in Hogwarts. It had to be kept here, but where? And even if he did know where it was, there had to be numerous protection charms placed on the bloody stone to keep it from being stolen. It was going to be almost impossible, but nothing was ever truly impossible when he set his mind to it.

"Harry," Draco's piercing voice broke his thought, "it's time to get up." He rolled over to the other side away from Draco's voice, pretending to still be half asleep even though he had been up most of the night researching as he had been for the past week. "Harry, we've got flying lessons with Madame Hooch today."

"HARRY MALFOY!"

Harry was positive that the shriek had gotten everyone up that wasn't already awake, which meant the entire dorm was now roused from their pleasant slumber. He didn't know of anyone that woke up as early as Draco. Draco considered it necessary as to shower and get his hair all gelled back took much time and preparation. Harry was glad he wore a glamour, he didn't have to worry about his appearance. All he needed in the mornings was a quick shower and he was ready to go.

"I'm up," Harry declared with fake drowsiness, his legs dropping down to the ground. "I'm up, no need to shriek like a girl."

"I do not shriek like a bloody girl!" Draco exclaimed.

It wasn't worth the effort arguing with Draco this early in the morning. However, the French boy, Blaise Zabini was happy to stoke Draco's anger, "Oh yes you do."

"DAMN IT, I DO NOT!"

Harry sighed. It was going to be a long morning.

-

"For the last time," Draco hissed, "I do not shriek like a girl."

It was unfortunate that at the very moment, Ron and Neville were passing by and their ears caught what Draco had said. Ron being the bold type, grinned from ear to ear at hearing that and added his input, "I do believe that I have to agree with Zabini here, you do sound awfully lot like a girl."

Draco's gray eyes were blazing with suppressed anger. "Who asked you, Weasley?"

Ron snorted, but his brown eyes weren't backing down from the challenge. "I was merely," he began innocently, "adding my opinion to your housemate's."

"And I do not appreciate it!" He took a step forward, his hand gripping his wand so tightly that his knuckles were turning white.

"Draco," Harry whispered warningly, not understanding why Draco was allowing anyone to get him riled up, "where are your Malfoy mannerisms?"

The terrible grip that Draco had on his wand relaxed enough that Harry knew Draco was reining in his temper. It was unusual for Draco to have such a short fuse, but it did seem that Ron Weasley rubbed Draco wrong in every possible way. It would be best, Harry decided, if he tried to avoid letting Draco come into any sort of contact with the red head. It was bad enough that their only double classes had to be with Gryffindor.

"Weasel," Draco uttered in a dark and dangerous voice, "do not interrupt a conversation that I am having with my twin, do you understand me?"

Ron wasn't backing down, if anything he took out his wand like the stupid foolish Gryffindor that he was. Before Harry could react, Draco was now pointing his wand at Ron. If something didn't happen soon, it wasn't only tempers that were going to explode, spells were too. Harry tried to pull Draco back, but Draco being slightly bigger than he was shoved him aside and stepped forward menacingly.

Harry was waiting for something dreadful to happen when Neville took the strange initiative by jumping in front of both of them. Harry thought it was foolish and brave of him since who knew what curses would be coming from Ron's or Draco's lips? His level of respect for Neville Longbottom increased and he understood why the shy boy might merit the level of fame that he had.

"Ron," Neville said, his voice neither shaky nor unsure, "put the wand down. You were the one that provoked him, and even if his response did perhaps merit this, it still isn't right. You were the one that insulted him."

Ron didn't look like he was backing down, but Draco allowed Harry to pull him back. However, Ron wasn't glaring daggers at Draco anymore. Instead he was looking at Neville with a torn expression that said that he knew what Neville was saying was right but he still didn't want to have to accept what Draco had called him. Even more than that, he didn't want to admit that he'd been in the wrong.

"Thank you, Neville," Harry said softly, forcing Draco to go with him in the direction of the field where they would be flying today under the guidance of Madame Hooch. He could still feel Draco's anger, but Draco had backed down enough hearing Ron's own friend tell him that he was wrong. But he knew that still wasn't going to appease Malfoy pride and he wanted to get Draco away from Ron and Neville before Draco demanded retribution.

"For what?" Neville called out with confusion.

Harry stopped moving. He didn't turn around, but he did feel like he ought to answer: "For stopping the fight, it was very brave of you."

He was certain that Neville was dumbstruck and Ron probably had his jaw dropped. Draco had stiffened by his side, quite a feat of bodily expression from a Malfoy when Malfoys were taught never to show any spontaneous emotion. All emotional displays were supposed to be done by wily calculation. That was the Malfoy way, and manipulation was the top game.

It was not in them to be kind either. Both of them had broken the rules.

-

THE FLYING LESSON was a complete waste of time in Draco's opinion. Madame Hooch was going over the basic fundamentals of using a broomstick, such stuff that he had been taught rom the time he could walk. The class was utterly boring the mind out of him, and he really didn't understand how his twin wasn't falling over in a complete boredom induced coma.

The only thing that provided salvation in this lesson was that since it was only a beginner's class, all the first years were gathered onto the field and Draco was able to see firsthand the advantages he had been accorded as a Malfoy. It seemed he was one of the few first years that knew how to handle a broomstick. Even the red-headed Weasel seemed to have difficulty getting the broom to rise for him with the up command.

That was surprising and was a source of endless amusement to Draco because it was a well known fact that Weasleys tended to be natural flyers. Wasn't his older brother Charlie one of the best Hogwarts seekers ever? And his older twin brothers were currently the beaters for the Gryffindor team. It seemed that the Weasel was taking after his older prefect brother, Percy, an utter incompetent on the broom.

It also pleased Draco to see that Miss Know-it-All Granger was having problems even getting her broom to go up. At least Weasel had managed to get his broom up after the third or was it the fourth time of saying up? Whatever the case, the mudblood witch still hadn't been able to get her broom to go up, which meant she was definitely not going to be a good flyer. It satisfied Draco immensely to know that she wasn't good at everything.

That was not the case of his twin, though. Draco watched as the broom effortlessly rose when Harry whispered, "Up." It had always irritated Draco, how much better Harry was than he at everything he did. But there was one thing Draco prided himself in that he was at least on Harry's level when it came to flying. He actually nursed the small chance that he was better than Harry, considering that Harry spent most of his time in the library studying the piles of books that their father left for him. With all the extra practice that he'd gotten while Harry had been walled up in the library, he had to be better than his brother.

A shrill whistle from Madame Hooch managed to get Draco to refocus his attention on the flying instructor. "Now," she commanded, "I want you to mount your brooms and use your legs to kick off into the air."

He had barely mounted his broom when he saw out of the corner of his eyes the Boy Who Lived's form zig-zagging out of control on the broom. Mentally he had to admire how fast the old and far out of date Cleansweep was going, but he also had to cringe at the lack of flying finesse he was seeing out of Longbottom. Really, could the boy do nothing right?

"Longbottom!" Madame Hooch cried out. "Get down here this instant!"

Easier said than done, Draco thought with wry amusement. He doubted that Longbottom had any control whatsoever over his broom. As he glanced over at the Gryffindor group to see how they were reacting, he saw there was deep concern for their fellow housemate. His gaze drifted over to Ravenclaw, and he saw the clever book inclined students were discussing what had caused the broom to act in such an unpredictable fashion. The Hufflepuffs like the Gryffindors were worried and anxious, and looked frightened. Draco was glad to see the Slytherins only looked mildly concerned.

It was only as his eyes were shifting back to Neville's haphazard form in the air that Draco's keen eyes caught sight of the Weasel kicking his broom awkwardly into the air. How foolishly brave of him, Draco thought sarcastically. From the way his broom was toiling in the air at the speed of a beached whale, he wondered how in hell the Weasel thought he was going to catch up to his wildly out of control housemate.

"IF YOU SHIFT YOUR WEIGHT FORWARD WEASLEY, YOUR BROOM WILL GO FASTER!" Draco was shocked to recognize the voice that was shouting the suggestion at the red-headed menace was in fact his own twin brother. Why in Merlin's name would Harry ever want to help the Gryffindor brat save another Gryffindor pest?

The Weasel didn't seem to know who had made the suggestions because Draco doubted that he would have followed it as quick as he had if he had known it had been made from a Slytherin. Draco did have to admit in a more mature part of him that the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin was a tad immature and out of hand at times, but it wasn't like the Slytherins started everything. If anything, the golden Gryffindors were just as bad!

The Weasel's broom was going faster and unlike Longbottom, he had decent though a clumsy sort of control over his broom. He kept veering slightly more one way or another than he really wanted to go, but for a beginner, Draco had to admit grudgingly, he wasn't doing so badly. Given a bit of practice, he might actually end up decent. And his persistence was paying off because as the Weasel doggedly kept following Longbottom, Longbottom's broom veered into a statue with a sword sticking out that caught the Boy Who Lived by the robe.

There were horrified gasps all around as Longbottom teetered on the verge of falling to his death when Weasel reached him and grabbed his housemate's hand before the inevitable happened. Draco sneered to whoever would listen to him that the Weasel and the Golden Boy had unbelievable luck despite their inanities and clumsiness to get out of that scrape without injury. Inwardly, he thought practically what his brother voiced.

"It was a well done rescue, Draco," Harry remarked calmly, without the least bit of acid in his tone. "I don't think you could have done better."

Draco gritted his teeth. He hated when Harry was right.

-

HE HAD TO figure out where the philosopher's stone was. While only a month had gone by, time was of the essence. When he did find where the stone was, and he knew that he would--- he also had to figure out how to break the warding spells that would be guarding it. That would take a piece of work to accomplish. He dreaded to think of how much time that would take.

"Are you paying attention to me?" Draco's shrill voice broke through his conscious thought.

Harry nodded numbly, knowing better than to ignore Draco when Draco didn't want to be ignored. "You were talking about the Slytherin Quidditch team."

Draco smiled faintly, happy that he seemed to have been listening. Harry had learned to perfect the skill of pretending to listen to his foster brother blather his mouth away about a variety of topics, remembering to tune in a few times to discern the topic and some relevant details. "Our seeker is horrible, though the rest of our team is bloody good." Nodding his head in agreement was a good way to get Draco to keep talking without noticing he wasn't really focused on what he was saying. "Thank Merlin, he's a 7th year and will be graduating this year. Maybe next year we'll finally have a decent seeker."

His deliberate emphasis on a certain word caught Harry's attention as he knew that Draco thought of himself as a very good seeker. Harry had to admit that Draco was a superb flyer, though the fact that Draco always had the best broom available on the market probably had something to do with it. He wondered how good Draco would be if he had to put up with the older Cleansweep models that some of the current Quidditch players were sporting.

"Bloody staircase shifted again," Draco cursed. "Now we're going to be late to Defense with that stuttering fool Quirrell."

Grabbing the railing to regain his balance, Harry noted that the entrance they were currently at wasn't one of the ones they'd ever been at before. It was strange that they had never seen it before, he decided, because he had thought that they would have seen most of the castle by now with the way that Draco had dragged him around at night with the Invisibility Cloak he'd gotten from his mother. He had started to walk up the rest of the steps to the mysterious entrance when he felt Draco grab his wrist.

"This is the forbidden third floor corridor," Draco told him, a bit of fear of being found in his voice. "We shouldn't be here."

Now he was even more intrigued, but he knew better to show it. If Draco was fearful in being discovered, then he'd better follow along in suit. Nothing ticked Draco off more than knowing that Harry wasn't scared of something that he was. Harry had remembered as a child seeing a dragon on a trip to Romania and not being scared and Draco had been… Draco had thrown the mother of all tantrums afterward that wasn't appeased until Harry had confessed that he had been quite frightened. He could come back here later, even if he had to force the stairway to let him up here again.

"I didn't know." And nothing pleased Draco like knowing something that Harry didn't, Harry realized early on. Draco liked being superior to him, probably because Lucius was always praising him on his magical efforts and Draco would for once like to show him up.

"That's because you never pay attention to what's being said," Draco sneered. "Dumbledore told us that during the Welcoming Feast."

Harry had been too busy thinking about other pressing matters to even think about what Dumbledore had been saying. He actually should have been paying closer attention to what the old coot had said. It was just like that sly though seemingly silly doddering wizard to give such a significant hint of where the philosopher's stone must be; in plain sight. He had to give his father's old nemesis credit; the zany wizard was brilliant in his guise of being mad and harebrained.

And he truly hoped that the crazy old wizard thought that giving the location of where he was hiding the stone as a dreaded warning would sound like something so dully school-related that no one would think that the stone could possibly be there. It did make sense to him, after all he hadn't even been paying attention and hadn't even heard it. What if he had? Would he have dismissed it at that time because he hadn't known about the existence of the stone? Probably.

But not now. Now he knew and he was determined to find the stone, though what his father intended to do with it, he had no clue. It wasn't like the stone could restore Voldemort into the body that he had lost when a spell he had cast had gone terribly wrong. Or did his father know something about the stone that he didn't know? He would need to borrow Draco's invisibility cloak to sneak into the Restricted Section and see if he might find any more books that might help divulge that vein of thought. But that could wait. Tonight he would use the cloak to discover the secrets behind the third floor corridor that was forbidden.

-

Author's Note: Sorry that this took two weeks to get out. I'm working on Chapter 4 as I'm typing this. I don't know when it'll be out. Probably next week if things turn out well, if not the week after that. I'm trying my best to get this out ASAP but I'm sort of not quite sure where I'm going. Anyway, any feedback is highly appreciative. Any thoughts on what might happen that might spark my muse would be invaluable. Thanks.

-

Thanks to all the reviewers, I do appreciate it. I don't have time to answer questions this time because I'm busy trying to write the next chapters of Serpentine, Paradox of Being, and To the Point of Exhaustion. I best get back to it!