After the Dawn: The Philosopher's Stone

Chapter Fourteen: Happy Holidays

 "The holidays are about to begin!" Neville told Harry delightedly, standing over the other boy and gently shaking him to try and make Harry wake up.

 "Whatever Nev," Harry mumbled.

 "Come on! Get up! Hermione's waiting in the Common Room to go down to breakfast," Neville told him.

 Harry groaned and sat up. Sirius was lying beside the bed and seemed to be laughing at Harry. "You shut up," he growled at the dog, but Sirius only wagged his tail and panted.

 "You treat Ardeo like a human being," Neville remarked as they walked down to the common room. "It's a good thing, but why? You talk to him, almost hold one side conversations at times, and he often looks like he's talking back with his facial expressions."

 "We've been together for a long time," Harry replied. "Ardeo was the first real friend I have, and all the other friends have left me for one reason or another … Well, it's more that I've left them, I suppose but yeah …"

 "I suppose if me and Trevor had been together for longer, I might talk to him," Neville said doubtfully. He'd been teased a fair bit about his toad since arriving at school – but no one had dared since he'd made friends with the elusive Nemo Protectium … If he could befriend Nemo, many said, there must be a lot more to Neville, and they should probably watch out for him.

 "Maybe. But a toad doesn't have the same sort of intelligence as a dog. They do have some, but dogs have more adapted to humans, and have such expressive faces," Harry said, as the pair of them stepped off the stairs and walked over to meet Hermione, who was waiting, a little impatiently, by the portrait hole.

 "There you are! Come on, before we're late!" she called, already opening the portrait and scrambling through. With a shrug, Neville and Harry followed her out of the Gryffindor dormitory and down to the Great Hall for breakfast.

 The last little bit of school passed in a blur for three young friends, who were spending every bit of their spare time searching for a reference to Nicholas Flamel. Harry had asked Sirius, but the other man had only shrugged and said that the name had sounded familiar, though he could not quite remember where he'd heard it before.

 "Well, we can search through the library at home," Harry remarked to his godfather, "there might be something there."

 "Your mother would be the ideal person to ask," Sirius told him, "You know her, loved her books and information. We always used to tease her about it, but it always came in very useful, when we needed to know something. We would have never become Animagi if it wasn't for her."

 "Sirius, can I become an Animagus?" Harry asked.

 "One day little matey, of course you can! You'll have to, keep with your ol' daddy and me! But not yet."

 "Why not?"

 "Because you need to have a certain degree of control over magic to become an Animagus, and a certain level of knowledge of magic. The absolute earliest you'd be able to manage it would be in your forth year, but definitely by your fifth!"

 Harry nodded quietly. Though what Sirius had made sense, he wished that he could become an Animagus before then. It would be so fun to be able to change your form whenever you wished to.

 Walking through the hallways, with the all the suits of armour singing, was quite an experience, but one that you could quickly grow tired of. Few of the suits actually knew all the words perfectly of the songs that they were singing, and those who do generally didn't manage to sing in tune.

 "Enchantments wearing off," Harry heard Professor McGonagall mutter one day as she walked passed one of them, "I really must remind Albus to renew them, soon!"

 Harry smiled quietly. Maybe he could help?

 He really did need to practice his Wandless magic, and Wandless magic didn't have the same rules as normal magic, so maybe it would be easy enough to just give the failing enchantments a boost.

 He decided he'd wait to try that until the classes stopped – he didn't want to completely wear himself out, but he really needed to train his Wandless magic again, he'd been focusing too hard on mastering the use of his wand, which was quite different.

 This could provide a good opportunity for him to practice, since that singing was really bad, and he wished that it would stop.

 On the last night of school before the holidays were due to begin, the Great Hall looked a treat. Harry, Neville and Hermione had watched Hagrid carting trees up to grace the hall, but hadn't gone to close by, because they didn't want him to question what they were doing … Since they were still looking for Nicholas Flamel, they didn't want to make Hagrid feel bad about letting the name slip.

 Festoons of holly and mistletoe hung all around the walls, and several third year students were trying to push couples beneath the mistletoe so that they would have to kiss.

 There were no fewer than twelve towering Christmas trees, which were hung with all manner of beautiful ornaments. Some glittered with icicles, others with hundreds of sparkling candles.

 The dinner itself was a feast almost beyond compare, though Harry was doing a fairly good job of convincing himself that he'd had better with just Sirius and him at Potter mansion, and had spent nicer holidays with Dan.

 After dinner, Harry slipped away with Sirius before Neville and Hermione, and headed into the more unused hallways, deciding that now was as good a time as any to get some practice.

 With Sirius looking at the Marauders Map so that he could warn Harry with a whine or bark if someone was coming, Harry sat down beside off-key and somewhat amnesiac suit of armour and found the power that was his Wandless magic.

 Concentrating very hard on what he wanted to do, Harry raised a hand to point at the armour, and released the magic. The moment that the magic struck, Harry felt it working, and a moment later the armour was singing perfectly in-tune and had all the words to the song it was singing right.

 Harry smiled with relief, and waved to Sirius to follow him. He was a little tired, but he knew that he could easily fix another suit before he had to rest … if not two.

 Harry managed to refresh the enchantments on three more suits of armour, before a budding headache made him decide to quit while he was ahead.

 "Where were you?" Hermione asked him, as he scrambled through the portrait hole, "It's nearly lights-out already!"

 "I had to go to the toilet," Harry lied calmly, straight-faced, "and then I thought of a book I'd heard of that might have had Nicholas Flamel in it … it took me ages to find it, and then I went through it, but nothing."

 Hermione nodded. The only thing she justified being out late for was studying or searching for clues about Nicholas Flamel. "Oh, OK," she said. "What a pity, now we'll have to wait until we get back from holidays!"

 "Can't you ask your parents?" Harry asked.

 "Both of mine are Muggle dentists," Hermione pointed out sadly. "They wouldn't have the slightest clue about anything magical, let alone some scarcely known sorcerer!"

 "And I won't be going home for Christmas," Neville added. "I'll try and look around the Library, but I've got a whole heap of catch-up work to do, and I want to try and get ahead a bit, since I'm always falling behind."

 "I think that's a great idea," Hermione said firmly, "it's really very silly, putting this Nicholas Flamel research above our own class work. I know it's important, Nemo, but Hagrid did say that Professor Dumbledore is looking after whatever it is. The research is a good idea, because it might come in handy some time later in History of Magic, but even if we don't manage to find out who Flamel is, it's not life-threatening."

 "Who knows whether it's life threatening or not?" Harry asked, shrugging. "We have no way of seeing into the future to see what we will require and what we won't. For all we know, finding out who Nicholas Flamel is could save the Wizarding world."

 Hermione gave a stern look as if saying, I know what I'm talking about, don't contradict me. She had become a lot more comfortable with him since they had become friends. "At least we know that knowing our schoolwork will be very important," she said after a moments thought. "Finding out who Nicholas Flamel is could be important, but schoolwork is definitely important."

 Harry nodded, "I suppose that's true," he decided. "But I'm still going to work hard at finding out who Nicholas Flamel is!"

 "I wasn't suggesting we stop," Hermione sniffed, "I was merely saying that we mustn't let it get in the way of our schoolwork."

 Harry nodded. "We'd best get to bed," he said. "We've got to finish packing in the morning."

 Hermione nodded in agreement, and Neville yawned widely, not needing to say anything. The three young friends headed their separate ways to bed.

 Next morning, Harry was packed and ready before anyone else was up, since Sirius had decided it would be funny to wake him at the unholy hour of five AM.

 Harry had gotten revenge by dumping cold water on his godfather, within the soundproofed confines of his bed. Dripping with water, Sirius had shaken it all over Harry, then transformed back to human to use a quick drying spell on both of them.

 "Well, at least it woke me up," Harry remarked, grinning at Sirius, who grinned back. "Help me pack?"

 "Sure," Sirius replied, and they had set to it, before wandering downstairs to the common room to sit curled up on the lounge in front of the dim fireplace.

 Harry extended his Wandless magic to the fire, and suddenly it was roaring with flames, spreading warmth through the December chill that had been seeping through the walls.

 For most of the morning they sat there together, before Harry decided that it was early enough that he wouldn't get into trouble with Filch if he was caught, and went out into the corridors to search out some more suits of armour.

 Before breakfast, Harry corrected the spells on a further three suits of armour, and thought to himself, there are about one thousand suits of armour in this school! This is going to take me forever.

 Harry headed in to breakfast, arriving before most of the students had dragged themselves out of bed. After all, it was the first day of the holidays, so why would they get up early for breakfast?

 Most likely only those who were going home for Christmas would turn up for the morning meal at all, but that would probably be most of the students, this holidays at least. Christmas was, after all, a family time.

 Neville and Hermione joined him shortly. "You have waited for us," Hermione scolded quietly.

 "I got up really early and went to the library," the lie fell from Harry's lips easily, though he didn't like it. But he did not yet wish to reveal his powers to his new friends, so a few lies would be necessary to keep them from guessing his secret.

 "Find anything?" Hermione asked, not very hopefully.

 "Nope," Harry replied. "I'll look while I'm at home though."

 Hermione nodded, "Have you finished packing?" she asked him.

 "Yup," Harry replied. "I'm ready to go, what about you?"

 "I finished off last night," Hermione replied.

 "And I'm staying here, so I don't have to," Neville put in. Harry tried to keep the other boy included in the conversation, but sometimes Hermione just wasn't very diplomatic in the subjects that she chose to talk about, and Neville could be left out. Harry knew that he sometimes chose less than fantastic subjects, but he also knew that he didn't do so nearly as often as his female friend did.

 "Well, I'll be coming back soon enough to keep you company," Harry pointed out. "The Weasley boys are all staying, because their parents are going to Romania to visit with another one of their sons."

 "How do you know that?" Hermione asked, interested.

 "Asked Fred and George," Harry replied. He still didn't like Ron much, who was loud-mouthed, often insulting and easily prejudiced. He hated all Slytherins, simply because of their House, and had a habit of complaining about being poor, without actually saying so out loud.

 Harry didn't believe in any of the House prejudice stuff, because he knew that plenty of the Slytherins were nice people – it wasn't their fault if they were naturally cunning or sly. That would make them good commanders in a war, if one broke out.

 If he hadn't been trying to avoid friendships with everyone, there were several Slytherins who seemed nice enough, who he would have been happy to befriend. Maybe he still would, but he didn't know for sure as yet.

 Definitely not Malfoy though. The blonde boy was a Slytherin of the worst sort, obnoxious, pure-blooded, prejudiced, and nasty. Someone Harry had no trouble picturing as a Death Eater, should Lord Voldemort ever return to power.

 Sirius had often said that he didn't think that Voldemort was gone for good … at least, not yet. Harry didn't know what this meant, and wasn't sure that he should ask. If it involved him, Sirius would surely tell him when the time was right.

 "Nemo?" Neville waved a hand in front of Harry's face, "snap out of it mate, you're off in la-la land there."
 Harry shook his head slightly and smiled at his friends, "Sorry, just thinking about home," he told them calmly.

 Home.

***

OK, next chapter we have the holidays, possibly discovering Nicholas Flamel, and definitely the Mirror of Erised.

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