AN: Last chapter felt a little fillery, so I wanted to post this one earlier as a bonus, but didn't quite manage. To make matters worse, this one isn't exactly plot thick either. So I'll try to post again on Wednesday, as a sort of early Christmas/winter holiday present.

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The Burkes were visiting Travers Manor once again, and this time, Alduin was approached by Alexandra's mother almost as soon as they arrived. "Thank you," she said, "and my apologies for being impatient."

"I am sorry I cannot do more," he replied.

"Yes, it would appear you actually are." She smiled at him. "Well, politics is a constraint for us all. I would have been in a difficult situation myself, had my grandchildren been older. Do you think you could possibly drop by at the Mansion with Harry when Narcissa is visiting with Draco, or would that be too much?"

Alduin considered the request. "Perhaps in a month or so," he said. "It is too early still."

"Very well," she replied, her face unreadable.

"If everything goes according to plan," he added, resenting the impulse to make amends, "it will be better once Harry is at Hogwarts."

"Well, yes – but then he will be at Hogwarts."

That was, of course, the crux of the matter.

Alduin noticed that while Alexandra was chatting with Perpetua, Harry was facing off the two men, and he moved in their direction with some alacrity. "What subject at Hogwarts interests you the most?" He heard Theodore asking, and slowly exhaled.

"Well, I would say History," Harry replied, "but Miss Burke and my cousin warned me that it's not worth much. I'm excited about the subjects that'll teach me to cast spells, of course, but it's harder to have any idea what I'll be dealing with there. Defense sounds impressive, though."

"Oh yes, it is one of the most fascinating things to study," Alexandra's father said, and Alduin groaned silently, prolonging the groan as the sentence continued with: "but of course to do it effectively you need to know a lot about the Dart Arts themselves."

"I suppose that makes sense," Harry replied. "I remember Mrs. Theodore telling me Defence was her field. Did she have to study the Dark Arts a lot, too?"

Theodore smiled a little at this. "She mostly uses my expertise for that."

"Oh, is that your field?"

"Yes. My father and I both devote our time to theoretical study of these matters."

"Of course," Mr. Tacitus continued where his son let off, "it is crucial to have enough data for this. I have been considering..."

Alduin, who had expected this to come ever since the moment he noticed Harry standing with Alexandra's father, tried to think of a very polite way to intervene. This time, he was saved by the gentleman's wife herself. Even though she had been talking to the other women, she apparently never stopped listening, and now she motioned for them to approach the rest of the guests, saying: "Are you discussing Defense without Perpetua, dear? How very rude of you. You are here, having all the fun, while she was forced to listen to Alexandra and me talk about medieval charms. This will simply not do."

Alexandra's father looked chastised, and said: "Forgive me, Clarissa, love. Of course we should have included her." Then his eyes glinted. "Perpetua should of course join us and explain to Mr. Potter herself why knowing something about the Dark Arts is so important for doing Defense properly...while you and Alexandra can go back to discussing your own interests."

His wife gave him a poisonous look, but she could hardly oppose this, so she retreated some distance away with Alexandra once again. Alduin was frustrated, and taking a look at him, Theodore took pity and said: "Actually, I think Mr. Potter would be more interested in continuing the discussion I believe he had with Perpetua the last time we were here. You were talking about Aurors and Auror training, were you not? Did you meet Giacomo Proudfoot at our garden party? He's an Auror, so I thought you'd be interested."

"Oh no, I didn't meet him, though I remember Mr. Kingsley Shacklebolt mentioning him. I'm sorry I didn't realize he was there."

"Oh well, he should be at the Shafiqs' the day after tomorrow as well, so you can talk to him then. "

The conversation continued to develop in this direction, and Alduin slowly relaxed. He didn't get a chance to talk to Alexandra privately until the moment she was standing in front of the Floo fireplace, preparing to leave, and then, she apologized to him in a low voice. "You know Dad doesn't mean anything by it," she said. "He's just curious. It is his field, after all."

Alduin did know. He even understood a little. But it was still insupportable, and he was not willing to let Harry deal with being an experimental subject before he was even eleven.

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In spite of his grumbling about having to study the seventh grade materials, Harry was enjoying his studies more than ever before. Even the things he hated, like math and science, have got better because he was no longer so bad at them, and history and English were downright enjoyable by now. His cousin decided they should go over Shakespeare in detail, and at the moment, Harry was reading Macbeth and completely loving it. He had been intimidated by the ancient-sounding language at first, but really, it wasn't so hard to understand as he had feared.

But when he mentioned it to Ron on the redhead's next visit, the boy just said: "Merlin, that sounds like a dead bore! I am glad I wasn't raised by a Ravenclaw," and Neville looked kind of confused and said that his grandmother concentrated on practical thing more in his classes.

"But, I mean," Harry said, puzzled, "you have to have some English and such, don't you?"

"Well, yes, but really only one lesson per week or so. And mostly, it's about writing." He shrugged. "We spend a lot of time on different plants and animals, both magical and non-magical, and I really like that. I also have a lot of history lessons, especially on modern history, and some background theory on Defence. And there's German, of course. I have a lot of that. But I think I have less classes than you do, in general – only between breakfast and elevenses, most days. Gran says that's plenty of time to teach me everything I needed."

On reflection, Harry probably shouldn't be surprised to hear he had to study more than his friends who were being raised by Gryffindors, but he still was. Of course, if what Alduin had said was true and one on one lessons were more efficient than normal ones, Mrs. Longbottom was likely right and Neville would manage to learn all he needed in two or three hours per day.

"How about you?" He asked Ron. "How many classes do your parents make you take?"

"It really depends," Ron answered. "Some days four, some days none. Mum also teaches me together with Ginny, so that complicates it. And like Neville said, it's mostly practical stuff." Then he groaned. "Why are we talking about school?"

"Well, I wanted to tell you about Macbeth."

"Can't we go flying instead?"

Harry looked out of the window. The rain had ceased, so it was not an impossibility, and he had been promising Neville to let him try his Nimbus for a long time now. "Okay," he decided, "let's go."

"I don't know," Neville muttered. "I'm really not sure about this."

"Don't chicken out," Ron said as they ran down the stairs. "Flying on a really good broom is bound to be great."

Harry remembered his solemn promise to Alduin to let him know when his plan to put Neville on his broom was finally put into motion, so in spite of Ron's protests that they'd be fine, he went in search of him.

He was, unsurprisingly enough, in his study, and accompanied Harry outside willingly enough. Once there, even Ron had to admit it had been a good idea, since Neville almost lost control of the broom at the first try. But after some couching, he was not completely hopeless, and they spent a very pleasant afternoon outside, Macbeth quite forgotten.

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Harry asked about the differing lesson times at dinner, and saw Alduin and Miss Burke exchange telling looks. He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know, they're stupid Gryffindors and all that, but I just want to know if they really will manage to learn everything you need to learn in sixth year before going to Hogwarts."

Alduin sighed. "There are actually no exact requirements for what the pre-Hogwarts children need to know, except reading, writing and basic maths. And even that is not really tested. If a child turns up at Hogwarts without these skills, the parents will be reported to the Ministry and prosecuted for neglect, and the child will be assigned a tutor, but no one checks beforehand. And any knowledge beyond this is strictly optional, unfortunately."

"The official line of argument for this," Miss Burke added, "is that families should have the freedom to decide what to focus on with their children. Which would be fair enough if there was some kind of check to make sure they were focusing on something, beyond basic literacy."

"It is not usually a problem with the Noble Families," Alduin explained, "because it's a matter of prestige for the children to be well educated, even though, as you could see, different families differ in what are the prestigious spheres in which to educate children. Half-Blooded children are fine too, because the Muggle or Muggle-Born parent ensures they have proper education. But with the newer pureblood families...some cases are truly lamentable."

Harry thought about it for a moment. "But if wizards are not required to follow the Muggle curriculum..why are we working with Muggle textbooks, then?"

Alduin shrugged. "Because that's what you are used to, and there is a conception to these books. Given that you were already immersed in this system of education, I judged it best to continue."

Harry nodded, turning his attention back to his stew while Alduin and Miss Burke discussed the last meeting of her bookish friends. The talk about medieval history reminded him of a question he had wanted to ask weeks ago, but forgot about. He waited for a pause in the adults' conversation, then said: "Abdulaziz told me a lot about their family history – well, the history they share with the Shacklebolts. I wanted to ask, how come we never learned about these people in Muggle school? I mean, they must have had a big impact..."

"They did, but it was not about ending English slavery with a big bang. It took a lot of slow and painstaking work, convincing people. The Shacklebolts worked tightly with the Irish church in this. Some of their names will be mentioned in Muggle historical sources, but not all."

"And what did the Shacklebolts do after slavery ended in Britain? I mean, there weren't any Aurors yet, were they."

Alduin blinked. "Harry, did you think the only thing the Shacklebolts ever did was fight against slavery, or be Aurors?"

Harry blushed. "Well, you said..."

"That it was a family tradition. And so it is. That merely means that there is a younger son in the family more often than is usual nowadays, and that they very often work as Aurors. The Shacklebolts are, first and foremost, a Noble and Most Ancient family, with all of the duties it entails, Wizengamot and other things. The heads of the family are primarily that, even though as I have said, they often have interests beyond it, interests that often tie to some form of fighting for freedom. But there has been any number of Shacklebolts who were explorers, or scientists, or Quidditch players, or any other thing you can come up with. In the Middle Ages, in the period you asked about, what they did was contribute crucially to the building of a wizarding society."

"I'm sorry," Harry muttered, feeling exceedingly stupid for asking such a question now.

"Harry, I've told you a thousand times: never be ashamed of asking a question – in private, that is. I must have gone badly about explaining it if you came away with such an idea. It's good of you to ask, do you understand?"

Harry nodded, still looking at the table, and then muttered: "I did have a couple more questions."

"Go on, then."

"Well, you've already explained why the Shacklebolts don't count as one of the most important families, or the ones with the biggest political influence...but why don't the Shafiqs? They must be one of the oldest families as well, if they came as the same time the Shacklebolts did..."

Miss Burke chuckled. "Who did Alduin tell you were the most important families?"

"Well, he divided it by houses," Harry replied, "but from Ravenclaw, he said yours and his."

Miss Burke's chuckle changed into a full-blown laugh. "I suppose a bit of self-promotion never hurts," she said, "but the Shafiqs would definitely be contenders for that title, as would the Ollivanders."

"Well, I was trying to cut it down to two for each House," Alduin said in his defence, sounding a little irritated.

Miss Burke continued to smile. "Ravenclaw is probably the hardest house to establish this with," she said. "We are probably the ones who have the most political influence at the moment, but at the same time...people would still give precedence to all the other three named, when it came to it. But the Traverses as well as the Shafiqs were handicapped by the war, and the Ollivanders are handicapped by their lack of enthusiasm for political games, at least compared to the other Houses. That's something they have in common with the Shacklebolts. Before the war, the question you asked would have a simple answer: the Shafiqs and the Traverses. Nowadays, it's more blurred. Alduin, I suspect, was trying to diminish the influence of their ancient rivals."

She said it with a smile, but Alduin still frowned. "You'll give him twisted ideas," he muttered, and to Harry, added: "The Shafiqs are more our ancient allies, even though I won't deny there's been some friendly competition about the position of the leading Ravenclaw house."

Miss Burke smirked. "You mean like when your ancestor in the seventeenth century poisoned the head of the House of Shafiq?"

Alduin groaned. "You said you have other questions?" He told Harry pointedly.

Harry, a little thrown by this casual mention of murder, took a while to rally. "Yes," he said at length. "I mean, the Shafiqs come from North Africa and you can see they do, but Mrs. Abdullah is clearly of English origin, and yet Gamila and Abdulaziz don't look any less...well, North African. How is that possible?"

Alduin smiled, appearing relived at this question. "All Ancient families," he said, "have a charm placed on their family line, a charm that safeguards some of their trademark appearance. So the Weasleys have red hair, the Potters have the messy black thing you do, and the Shafiqs look Middle-Eastern – and the Shacklebolts sub-saharan. It's traditional."

Harry chewed on this new piece of information. "So the children never look like their mothers? Don't the women mind?"

"But they do look like their mothers. The charm never takes care of all aspects of your looks. It differs family from family, but bone structure, height, stature, eye colour, the shape of your nose...all of these things are allowed to take their natural course. And in some families, too, this charm only applies to sons, so daughters can take after their mothers as much as they want. Many mothers make sure they do – there are spells and potions for that as well, you know."

Harry looked at Miss Burke and opened his mouth, but then he closed it again and blushed. She laughed. "We will see, Harry," she said, "we will see."