Chapter 11

Harry endured a long grim staring session with professor Snape, he had been unimpressed with Harry's choices of Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes. Well, he was usually unimpressed with Harry, to be honest, but that was mostly due to his surname he was sure.

Daphne had opted into Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, which hadn't surprised Harry at all. Their first classes of the year were their new electives, Harry and Tracey would have Care of Magical Creatures first, so they left an almost forlorn Daphne alone in the entrance hall.

Tracey looped her arm with his as they walked, she gave him a small smile and blamed the uneven ground. Harry didn't mind, after all, a pretty witch on his arm was nothing to complain about. Harry noticed some not so casual looks he received as they drew closer to the edge of the forest where their class would take place.

They shared this class with Gryffindor judging by Hermione and Neville looking interestedly at himself and Tracey, he gave them a grin and stopped in front of them. Tracey decided not to move her arm, which made Harry grin even broader, it wasn't as if he was dating Hannah or Susan there was no reason not to enjoy himself a little.

The thought still tried to linger in his mind though, as if he was betraying something.

Hermione immediately engulfed them in questions, ranging from the Triwizard tournament to their holidays. Harry was amused to hear Tracey saying she had spent a lot of time at Daphne's house over the summer. Perhaps Astoria wasn't making much up at all.

After all, Tracey would never have been so touchy with him last year, well Harry wouldn't either but he hadn't been as active in his pursuit of girls. They were happy enough to let him know their boundaries, and he was happy enough to enjoy them.

He would have to check his morning juice for felix felicis if Tracey started kissing him, Daphne too.

"Harry… Harry!" Tracey said while squeezing his arm.

"Huh? What? Sorry." he said elegantly.

"Daydreaming eh… keep it up and you'll make me blush Mr. Potter." Tracey said batting her eyelashes at him.

He was tempted to lean in and test her, but he could hear Hagrid's distinct voice. Right, they were there for classes. Tracey laughed and pulled him along.

"So welcome everyone." Hagrid said, he was wringing his hands nervously. "Well today for your first class, I got you a right treat." His sharp whistle drew the attention of all the students, and a large shape at the edge of the forest.

It turned out to be a hippogryph, one of the most majestic creatures Harry had heard of, they were said to be prideful. It was a deep warm chestnut color, with a long and thick neck, its massive wings twitched with a clear strength.

Tracey sighed appreciatively, Harry very almost echoed her sentiment. Most of the class had made similar sounds, Hagrid beamed as he watched their reaction.

"So first thing to know is, hippogriffs are very proud, never insult a hippogriff. Dangerous business that. Second thing to know is that they really are very loyal creatures, once you earn their respect they will stick with you, unless you insult them."

Hagrid talked and talked, he spoke about the best ways to approach a hippogriff and the easiest way to befriend them. Harry could tell this was the man's true passion, and it showed. Even if a few of his housemates acted like fools.

"Who wants to come up and touch him?" Hagrid asked hesitantly.

Tracey shifted slightly, almost like despite her awe she was afraid. Harry couldn't say why he did it, but he volunteered. Hagrid ushered him up towards "buckbeak," the hushed mutters gave him more confidence.

He bowed deeply to the hippogryph, and after a short wait, he felt and heard it return the gesture. He reached up slowly and brushed his hand against its face, he looked into the beast's eyes and was met with a seemingly intelligent stare.

He turned back to some applause, and Hagrid gave him five entire points, Harry walked back to Tracey who was smiling appreciatively, at him.

"Keep looking at me like that and I might blush." He said, enjoying the way her smile grew.

She reached up with her right hand and brushed his cheek, he was a good deal taller than her now, Harry was impressed with how soft her hand was, and warm too. She smacked the top of his head.

"Just making sure it doesn't get too big."

And she took off to go and get her turn with Buckbeak, Harry watched the way she seemed to sway… he was going to be in for a tough year. After a while most of the class had touched the hippogriff, it seemed to like the attention.

Hagrid was in his element, to the point he asked if anyone wanted to ride the hippogryph, but when no one offered he called an end to the class. The only homework he gave was a foot long summary on the correct etiquette when interacting with a hippogryph.

Harry had loved the class, it was a refreshing change from the other classes he had, for the most part his study group's intense nature had driven them past the standard level of understanding. This was a refreshing change, and the fact that it was practical certainly helped.

When they entered the school Tracey pulled away from him a little, she was still walking next to him, but she kept a short distance between them. Harry didn't want to make her awkward by mentioning it, but he sure as heck didn't understand why she stopped.

They met up with Daphne near the charms hall, where they had their next class. Harry had been very excited to talk with Flitwick, he had plenty of theories he had developed over the summer he wanted to discuss. However the class was hectic, Flitwick wanted to put them through their paces, he wanted a demonstration of almost every single charm he had taught them so far.

Harry had barely said a word to Daphne since sitting next to her, but she seemed to be in a good mood, her smile was warm and pretty. Flitwick had even given them homework too, and his was a little more intense than Hagrid's. After the class had ended Harry pulled Daphne and Tracey to the side, after his classmates walked off he spoke.

"After potions come with me to the second floor okay?"

"Okay. why, what's up?" Daphne said, Tracey nodded alongside her.

"A little surprise I think you'll enjoy." He tried to give them a charming smile, he had seen his dad pull it off millions of times. To occasional success too.

Daphne just frowned and Tracey giggled. Then they walked off.

Harry groaned, though it wasn't too bad watching them walk away, his friends were almost as good looking from behind as the front.

The day dragged, History of magic had that effect on most days, but followed with potions was a cruel combination. Transfiguration had been the only saving grace, not that it was a surprise really, McGonagall's classes were usually really interesting.

He led the girls towards the second-floor bathroom, well the second-floor girl's bathroom. Tracey followed him in looking suspicious, but Daphne stood in the doorway looking stern.

"It's nothing like you're thinking Daphne, some imagination she's got eh Tracey?" He joked, Daphne glided past him and stood leaning against the nearest stall, wand clearly in hand.

"Well girls, I brought you here for a special purpose." He said, trying to imitate Lockhart's self-important tone. "If you would please close your eyes."

Daphne glared at him, not too coldly, but enough for him not to push it. Tracey seemed to trust him as her eyes were closed.

He walked over to the sink Jasmine had told him about, he felt to be sure the serpent was still there. He spoke, it wasn't easy to force the word to come out in parselmouth, but the shifting of the sinks was proof enough of his success.

Daphne gasped, Tracey also started gaping like a fish. Harry smirked as the sink opened up to show a deep dark hole, Jasmine claimed it was safe. Harry gestured with a wave of his hand. "Welcome ladies, to the Chamber of Secrets."

Their gasps were music to his ears, he looked down into the pit of nothingness hoping to see a sign of something, Jasmine had said it was a large pipe. How she had the bravery to go down there blind to rescue him he couldn't say.

"Quickly now girls, don't want anyone stopping by." He said with a grin. He sat on the lip of the hole and waited.

"It is safe, Right?" Tracey asked. She lowered herself down beside him, and grabbed his arm for security. The view down was hardly reassuring.

"Yeah of course." It wasn't a lie, Jasmine had been fine after all. And the basilisk was dead… right.

Daphne sat down on his other side. "So what, we just fall down there and we are fine."

Harry nodded, he grabbed both of their arms tight. "Close." He could make out the not so subtle hiss of his word, it sounded wrong coming out of his mouth, but that was just because he wasn't used to it.

The sink began to slide back into place, so Harry gave a gentle tug on the girls, and they fell. It was a short fall, only enough for them to grunt at landing on the plumbing. Then they slid.

Tracey and Daphne screeched for all they were worth, Between that and the darkness, Harry was more than a little disoriented. As the pipe wound its way down they were jostled about by the curve of the pipe. At one point someone had accidentally kicked his shoulder, and Harry was sure he had headbutt some too.

They came crashing out of the pipe in a mess of arms and legs, Harry was very much squashed underneath the girls. Harry groaned loudly for them to move, but they were all nursing some small hurts, Daphne was the first to rise and she helped Harry and Tracey up.

"Well, that wasn't how I imagined having you two on top of me." Harry said, he quickly made to walk past the girls, he couldn't be too safe after all. But he stopped quickly when his foot crushed something, his wand was out in a second and bathing the chamber in light.

Bones littered the floor, Harry really couldn't remember them before, but his mind had been racing what with killing a basilisk and meeting teenage Voldemort. Daphne gave a disgusted groan and Tracey gagged at the smell.

"So much for Slytherin's famous Chamber, looks more like a rat sanctuary." Daphne said. Her face was twisted with disgust.

"Lucky that most of our housemates are quiet rat-like." Tracey said, then held her sleeves over her nose.

"Sorry about this, I forgot it was bad." Harry said, and he started to pick his way across the room, it was only a tiny part of the chamber anyway, and the least impressive.

Daphne clapped her hands loudly, Harry turned to see a pair of house elves standing by her, she quickly began ordering them to clean the place up. Within a few seconds, the remains that littered the floor were gone, leaving a cleanish room. The smell was still foul though.

Daphne carefully walked past Harry and grinned at him. Tracey bumped past him and winked. Harry shook his head and followed them, there was still another door he had to open before they could go on, after all.

That door was standing wide open, Harry had assumed it would close itself, but he rushed ahead of the girls before they could go through. He turned to look at them. "So this is the main Chamber of Secrets now, we didn't get much time to explore it, but there is a basilisk corpse here. So yeah, don't scream or anything." He said.

It was hard not to be nervous, in his memories the basilisk was massive, beyond anything he had thought possible. There was a chance that fear and pride had swollen the memory a little… if he found an adder or something instead he would be miserable.

The Chamber was large and wide, very open and bright considering how deep underground they were. Harry was pleased to see the size of the large black mass at the far end of the Chamber. Both Daphne and Tracey gasped and grabbed at his hands.

"You and your sister killed THAT?" Tracey said. Her voice was a mix of fearful and impressed. Harry swelled a little, he wasn't one to boast but it was pretty nice to show off his biggest achievement to date.

"Yeah, it was close though. The damn thing was quick." He couldn't keep the awe out of his voice, how they had survived unscathed was nothing short of a miracle.

Daphne and Tracey gushed over the ornate snakeheads, and the stone bust of Slytherin, and the basilisk. They were a little bit too impressed with the large stone snakeheads that had crushed the basilisk's head, but Harry couldn't exactly draw attention to the giant gaping wound that used to be its tail.

Before long the same pair of house elves reappeared and began cleaning up the main chamber, the large snakeheads were easily moved by the elves, they even managed to place them back to where Jasmine had taken them from. They didn't repair the damage done to them, however, Harry could hardly blame them.

"What do you want to do with the basilisk?"Daphne asked, Harry had given it almost no serious thought. He had imagined shrinking it down and keeping it to scare away idiots, but eventually, the decay would be too much.

"what can I do with it?"

"Sell it for ingredients, donate it to the school or the ministry or something." She replied. "Lots of very valuable things in a basilisk. The eyes alone would fetch you a small fortune with the right buyers."

"I'll have to talk to Jasmine about it, and I guess my parents. Never know where we need it more." He said, Daphne nodded and called over one of the house elves.

"Can you put the basilisk in stasis?" She asked, when the elf nodded Daphne ordered it to do so.

They explored the tunnels a little bit but found nothing of much interest, before long Harry had gotten pretty bored. The Chamber was impressive but not exactly special.

Tracey stopped near the bust of Slytherin, Harry and Daphne turned to see what had gotten her attention. The mouth of Slytherin seemed to be open, and there was a tunnel.

"Want to check that out?" She said pointing.

"I'm pretty sure that's where the basilisk came from. But I guess we can, it should be safe." Harry said as he cast a freezing spell on the water in front of the bust. He carefully picked his way across until he could grab on to the massive stone vanity project.

He cast a 'Lumos' and peered into Slytherin's mouth, the tunnel led down sharply, but there was clearly a door directly ahead, the gap was so small he would have crawl to get through but it was a door none the less.

"There's a door." He said, looking back to see Daphne waiting by the solid ground meanwhile Tracey slowly glided towards him. "I'm going to try and open it, if I can I'm going in too."

He heard Daphne mutter something about stupid Gryffindor, Harry ignored her jibe and jumped up to pull himself into the opening. The door opened downwards and made a bridge between the opening and the tunnel plummeting down.

He tried to pull it open, but it didn't budge, so he went to the first thing he thought of. "open." The door clicked and slammed down hard, Harry was lucky his fingers hadn't been in the way, or else he might have lost them.

He made his way forwards, he idly thought that he was actually entering Slytherin's head. He quickly pulled his wand and bathed the way ahead in light, he saw a large and mostly empty room. When he got into the main part of the room he could stand up and look around.

The room was surprisingly vast, much bigger than it had looked from the tunnel. The walls were littered with bookcases, and some books were scattered around the shelves. A small sitting area was in the center of the room, with only a few chairs.

But that was it really, he assumed there would be more secrets littered around, Slytherin liked his secrets after all. But there was little doubt that there were some fantastic books on these shelves, he helped Tracey shuffle through the entrance.

He watched as she did what he had done, her face was alight with awe and her dazzling smile could have blinded him. Daphne had much the same reaction when she got through, Harry was pleased to see her at a loss for words.

It didn't last for very long. "Don't touch anything." Daphne commanded. "Slytherin was a paranoid man who guarded his secrets fiercely unless that basilisk just wandered in."

Harry knew she had a point, but there had to be some simply peerless books in this room. Daphne cast a simple summoning charm, but not a single book moved. Harry didn't want to leave the room empty-handed, but it wasn't worth an unknown ancient curse.

Tracey walked around the room looking carefully at everything until she called out to them. "Hey, none of these books are in English. I would guess French but it's way too… squiggly."

"Well, none of the founders lived when English was a thing," Daphne replied with a hint of smugness.

Harry peered at one of the books closest to him, the writing on the cover was certainly not anything like English, it wasn't even the English alphabet. It was parseltongue… he could read it somehow.

He was reading some ancient magical language, and there was almost no issue, other than the imperfections in the book.

"They are in parseltongue…" He barely even noticed he had spoken, but his voice carried. Daphne made an excited sound and Tracey rushed over to him.

He pulled his wand out and cast a summoning spell of his own. The book flew towards him, he caught it out of instinct and he didn't die.

"What was that?" Tracey said sounding scared. Harry turned to see Daphne watching him with a little bit of hesitance.

"What was what?" He asked.

"I think you just used parseltongue when using that summoning spell. It was all hissy." Tracey said. Daphne nodded emphatically.

Harry felt cold, he had been focused on the book, and thinking that he might be able to summon it because he was a parselmouth. He had never heard of using parseltongue spells… well considering the reputation that the talent had he wasn't at all surprised.

He looked down at the book, he could make out the title fully. 'My Collection of Egyptian Charm's.' The book was bound in leather and seemed to be written on parchment not too dissimilar to what he used in class.

It took almost no time to read that the book was written by Slytherin himself, this book was clearly meant to be read by himself and some trusted friends. Harry found very few instructions and even fewer incantations, most of the 'spells' were describing the mindset and goal of the spells.

Despite that he was bouncing with excitement, he met the girl's eyes' and grinned like a fool.

"It's his Egyptian charms book." He said.

It didn't take long before they had found a few other interesting books to smuggle out of the Chamber, Harry was sure they would be back soon. This was a discovery that might just be a goldmine.

When they climbed up the stairway that changed out of the pipe Harry remembered that they had skipped dinner for this excursion. His stomach growled loudly, Daphne and Tracey laughed at him.

He tried not to look suspicious carrying the half dozen ancient tomes, Daphne had told him off for looking like a not so young Dumbledore. He almost sprinted into his bedroom, with only a polite parting comment for the girls.

He stayed up into the very early hours reading those books, the subjects while pretty commonplace was full of possibilities. He had made very sure to hide them before falling asleep, he was very aware that he would want to make that a habit.

He was woken by Tracey poking his face, while Daphne cast a tickling charm at him. He quickly got up to check on his books, he found them where he had hidden them. His sigh did nothing to help how exhausted he was.

Both girls were staring at him.

Harry frowned, then he looked down.

"So you sleep naked then Harry?" Tracey said, casually playing with her wand. her face was red but she didn't shift her gaze at all. Daphne meanwhile dropped her wand, and looked mortified, although she still made sure to look.

Harry tried to cover himself as he reached the bed and climbed back in and tucked himself under the blanket. He had never been so embarrassed, he had no words.

"Come on Daphne, we should let little Harry get dressed." Tracey said as she got up to pull Daphne out. "You should hurry, you'll be late for Ancient Runes." Harry barely caught her grin, but he still managed to fly into some clean robes and caught them before they left the common room.

They giggled.

It took a good few days before Harry could be alone with either of the girls without blushing, something Hannah and Susan had noticed, and Harry's hasty explanation was clearly not satisfactory. He had tried to skirt around the subject, but that had just drawn more attention.

Luckily the girls had kept the little issue a secret, Tracey had implied that she may have gotten closer to Harry, which made the Hufflepuff's frantically whisper to each other.

"Why is it so long?" Daphne asked. Harry felt his cheeks blaze, and groaned. "Oh Morgana, Harry grow up." She smacked his arm.

"Sorry."

"Flitwick only wanted a single foot, why have you written six feet?" She asked.

"Oh, erm, well… I was talking with my mum and Jasmine during the holidays and charm work in duels came up, so I wanted to run some more complex things past Flitwick." He said.

Daphne leaned over him and began to read his essay a bit, Harry didn't mind, it was stuff he would happily share with her. He was suddenly aware of a soft sweet smell coming from Daphne, not to mention how close she was to him. Yes he had been closer to other girls before, but Daphne had always held this certain aloofness, or unattainability.

Harry gulped, she had discarded her robe and he could see the faint dark outline of a bra under her shirt. She really was close to him, her hair rested gently around her neck, her porcelain skin was brushing his hand.

"This is interesting, let me know what Flitwick says okay Harry?" She pulled back and smiled at him. Harry blinked, and nodded. Daphne smirked slightly as she turned away, Harry blinked. His essay was still far from finished however, so he went back to writing it up.

Their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class was on the last day of their first week, so they had all heard the rumors about Moody's teaching. He was said to be intense and very demanding, but also most of the upper years couldn't shut up about what he was teaching.

Harry couldn't believe that he was showing the unforgivable curses, and on Dumbledore's orders too, but Jasmine had confirmed the rumors to him the morning of his first class with Moody.

Harry; Daphne and Tracey bustled into the classroom, trying to get seats up front, but the Ravenclaw students were already occupying the front few rows. Daphne cursed under her breath and they settled for sitting in the middle.

Moody stomped into the classroom from his personal office in the back, he gave the class a slow searching gaze. Harry watched his magical eye flicker around from face to face at a startling pace, he felt dizzy watching it let alone seeing through it.

"So you're teenagers now, you think that means you're ready to know what's actually out there, do you?" Moody nodded to himself slowly, as if gauging each student's reaction.

"Now Dumbledore wanted me to show the older students some of the real nasty stuff out there, he said you're too young for all that." Moody had an evil grin on his face. "I say that's bollocks. You have your wands, you need to learn to protect yourselves."

Harry sat forward, his notebook and quill were forgotten on his table. He could tell the entire class was paying Moody their utmost attention as no one was talking.

"There are wizards and witches out there who would give you all nightmares if you knew half of what I know. Luckily I'm here to teach you so you don't have to learn the hard way." His wooden leg rang on the floor with each of his prowling steps.

"Who can tell me what the most dangerous curses are?" Moody asked in his growling bark. Almost all of the Ravenclaw students raised their hands, as did Daphne and Nott. Moody pointed at Terry Boot, who preened under his attention.

"The unforgivables, sir."

"Wrong." Moody growled, Harry watched as Terry deflated visibly. Harry almost felt sorry for him, he prided himself on his knowledge. Moody pointed a gnarled hand at Nott.

"Almost any curse can kill if you want it to." Nott said. All casually as if he were talking about playing exploding snap, but then again his father was a Death Eater, maybe killing was commonplace for him too.

"Correct, Nott is it?" Moody said, he continued once Nott nodded. "Remember that class, your spells are dangerous, and so are your enemies. Unforgivables are only as bad as they are because they need the desire to kill; torture or control, there are plenty of other spells to do all those things."

His wand flashed into his hand and he lifted a small spider into the air, he charmed it to make it bigger. Harry watched with rising dread and excitement.

"What do you think would happen if I sent a cutting curse at this spider?" Moody asked, his voice was almost casual.

"If you hit it somewhere important it would die, painfully." Padma Patil said.

"Exactly, not exactly nice for the spider, or my reputation." And he lowered the spider onto his desk, then fired a cutting curse at it. The spell missed but it was a close miss. "Look at that, didn't even hurt the little bugger."

"You missed though." Malfoy said in a drawl as if he had been to better classes.

"Oh did I? This spider had the sense to get out of the way, more than I can say about plenty of grown wizards and witches." Moody said dangerously. "No curses are dangerous when they don't hit you. Remember that, if I teach you anything let it be that."

"Charms and transfigurations are different of course, but if you see a curse coming at you don't try and block it, don't try and perform the counter curse. GET OUT OF THE WAY. Dying over your fool pride is no way to go." Moody said.

Harry wasn't the only one not taking any notes. Almost the entire class was waiting on his every word.

"Potter. What the best way to deal with the killing curse?" He barked out.

Harry blinked and fell back into his chair. "Dodging it?"

"Good… Good." Moody said. "Your father thinks he can transfigure something to block it, you're lucky he's as fast as he is. Foolish plan." Moody shook his head disgustedly.

Harry felt his blood run cold for a second, had his dad nearly died trying to do something like that. He knew his dad was a little bit cocky, if not massively confident but that was a terrifying thought.

"Your fool of a sister said she wouldn't do anything. She lost ten points for that comment. Good job Potter, nice to see your mum taught one of you brats well." Harry laughed, Daphne and Tracey grinned at him.

"So what do we do when we can't dodge a curse, anyone?" Moody asked, Daphne raised her hand. "Yes, Greengrass isn't it?" She nodded.

"My father says it always best to go on the offensive when you're against bad odds." Daphne said carefully. "Better to attack rather than wait to be beaten."

Moody grinned and gave a rough laugh. "Vicious little shit your father. It's worked out for him before." Moody said. Harry frowned, Moody didn't sound like he was talking about a hated dark wizard but Harry knew little about Daphne's father.

"You're not wrong Greengrass, but it's not something I would recommend, here's what I would do. Who wants to cast a curse at me?" Moody asked the class, no one volunteered, but eventually, Malfoy raised his wand.

"Petrificus totalus." Malfoy said half-heartedly.

"Stupify." Moody growled, and their spells hit in mid-air, over a pair of Ravenclaws. An explosion of sparks rained down on them harmlessly.

"No shield can block all curses, but almost any spell can ruin another spell if they collide." Moody said. "You need good aim to pull that off, but that is one of the main things I'm going to teach you all."

Moody went on to demonstrate the unforgivables for them, as well as giving them an exhaustive rundown on why dark wizards used the spells. Harry felt like his hand was writing faster than it ever had before, and was scribbling down notes on as much as he could.

Harry and the others gushed as they left the classroom, Daphne and Tracey were as impressed as he was. Judging by their shared grins and the way they wouldn't stop talking at least.

The Gryffindor's and Hufflepuff's had their class at the end of the day so Harry was glad to have the 'Slytherin Elite' meeting, in case they let something slip, something Moody warned them would result in more homework. The buzz around his classes was entirely warranted and it seemed he was doing his best to maintain it.

Harry and Daphne rushed to the first meeting of the "Slytherin Elite", despite the meeting place being in the dungeons and coming from Moody's classroom they made it in time. Yaxley had been eager to get things rolling this year. He seemed to have big plans.

When they arrived they caught the end of a duel between the new second-year students and the fourth years, it was as one-sided as it could be. Gladwell and Sivvers' had been deliberately drawing it out, mocking the inexperienced second years.

They ended it before Harry could get involved, he had dearly wanted to, he helped the two second-year students into some chairs. They were hurt but it was mostly their pride Harry thought, they were bitterly angry and didn't want his help.

Harry left them when he knew they weren't hurt, he joined Daphne who was standing with Pucey. Before long Yaxley came over cutting off any discussion.

"In a few years the two of you will be in charge of this group, the others are far too average." Yaxley said and he ushered Harry over to a corner of the room. Harry didn't like being pulled away from Daphne, after all, she was on his side, the same couldn't be said of anyone else in this group.

"This is my last year, so I'm going to push you hard, you need to learn to control these fools. I need to see you giving this your all Potter, you understand?." Yaxley asked. Harry could tell there was a threat behind his voice.

"What do you want?"

"Malfoy still thinks he can best you, teach him otherwise. And soon." Yaxley said, Harry frowned he didn't like the idea of bullying Malfoy. "Then you will show the fifth and sixth years you aren't to be toyed with. Learn and learn fast Potter

"I'm not a bully." Harry glared up at the seventh year student.

"Then don't bully them, control them. Ask Greengrass for help if you cant think of anything." Yaxley said, he turned and walked away. Harry frowned after him, how could he control them without beating them, he didn't even want to control them

Daphne joined back up with him once she was done talking to Pucey, she frowned at him, wanting him to share

"He wants me to control the entire house because he's leaving this year." Harry muttered.

"Is that all, Harry that's easy." Daphne scoffed. "You're handsome, come from a good family, you're talented and you're a parselmouth.

"I'm handsome am I?" Harry asked with a

"Shut up, the school thinks of Slytherin as a place for evil students. You've already gone a long way to disprove that, not to mention you helped slay Slytherin's monster." Daphne said, her face was going red slightly. "You can earn the respect of the entire school easily if you tried."

"What did Pucey say to you?" Harry asked

"Apparently she thinks I would be better suited at keeping Slytherin students in line, better than you anyway." There was a dark look on Daphne's face as if she were angry about that or something.

Yaxley proceeded to discuss his plans for the year, more talk of strengthening the unity of the house. Harry didn't really understand why unity was so important to him, the house seemed like it had always been set apart and together.

Eventually, they were dismissed, so Harry and Daphne made their way to the great hall to meet up with Tracey, she was sat alone playing with her fork. Well, she was stabbing some potatoes, Harry grinned at her bored expression.

Harry noticed at dinner that Hannah and Susan were talking excitedly with their friends and making wild gestures, they were all so absorbed in their talk that their food went cold for a few minutes.

Harry stretched his feet out under the table, it was a nice first week, which was shocking considering how it had started. Rumors had the Minister for Magic himself marching into Azkaban for answers, but Daphne had reminded him of Fudge's famous cowardice.

When it came to such a big topic there were obviously wild rumors spreading. The only thing Harry knew was once they had escaped not a single one of them had been seen at all.

Harry had tried not to dwell on it, but those really were all of Voldemort's most loyal supporters, all escaping together. No one had ever escaped Azkaban before, Harry knew that much about how difficult it had to be.

After the struggle with the Chamber of Secrets, he knew all too well how defeated Voldemort really was. And watching Dumbledore and the other teachers he could see it in their faces too. Something was coming.

Harry could tell Jasmine would be involved in some way, she had managed to hide what Dumbledore had been trying to get her to learn, but that he was told Harry enough. And her scar had been hurting, he had watched her rubbing it and grimace in pain.

She denied it, of course, it was hardly something he wanted to think about, let alone what she must feel. But he wasn't imagining it.

The Great Hall was full of excited voices, students joking and laughing, teachers trying to relax while watching the students. Daphne and Tracey were making each other laugh with impressions of Moody. Harry saw Jasmine and Rosie sitting next to each other and chatting.

His eyes drifted, Susan was giggling too, her pretty red hair bounced on her shoulders as she laughed. His eyes met Malfoy's, the pale boy grinned at him, Harry had hardly had any interaction with him. But the stare Malfoy gave was very challenging.

Harry glared back at the blond ponce, he wasn't in the mood for the wannabe Death Eater trying to get one over on him. Harry went back to eating his dinner.

AN: This year will be a lot more in-depth than last year, the pacing isn't exactly the most thrilling, but I want to set up certain relationships and struggles, and I can't do that justice without giving it the time it needs.

Having said that things will pick up speed a bit as the next chapter will be introducing the champions, and the fall out of that. Which should be fun. I'm keeping things light hearted for the moment as I feel that's the natural way of it so far, but it will change soon.

I've been struggling to work on this story as much because I've got a Honks story floating around in my head, stealing all my focus. So I'm going to work on that for a few days and see how it goes. I would love to work with a Beta Reader for that, if anyone is interested I'd love to hear from you.

And as always Thank you for reading, I'm delighted to give you lot any sort of relief in these trying times. Take care.