Note: This chapter is properly entitled "Senile, Gryffindor-Loving; On; '81; Last". Apparently, however, our beloved site software does not recognize semicolons in chapter titles, rendering me unable to display this properly in the menu. (And after all the work I put into making it come in under the character limit, too…) Oh, well, c'est la vie.

"I'm dragged to the 'celebration' by a stiff-upper-lip Minerva and our senile-Gryffindor-loving Headmaster." –fyre, "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?"

"So this is why you brought me along," said Snape, sniffing critically at his glass of punch. "As your new Potions master, you thought I might be able to divine what the secret ingredient is in this stuff. I'd say Utraens's Laxative Philtre."

McGonagall sighed. "Severus, must you spend the whole afternoon carping?" she said. "Coming to this party was never about enjoying oneself; it's about honouring an illustrious colleague. Tithonus Periwinkle was a great man in his day, and the least his successors on the Hogwarts faculty can do is attend his 100th birthday celebration."

Snape grunted, and shot a glance at Dumbledore, who was listening to the disconnected dronings of the old Potions master and Head of Gryffindor House with the same childlike rapture as the company of Bathilda Bagshot was said to bring him. Minerva could say what she liked, but Snape thought all the Headmaster's talk of loyalty was a mere excuse, and the truth was that he just loved him his senile Gryffindors.

Well, he thought, at least he didn't invite Periwinkle's immediate successor in the Potions department. I doubt I could endure Slughorn in this atmosphere, with only nursing-home punch to…

"Ah, Severus, m'boy! And how's my old job treating you?"

"Darling," said Viverra Malfoy to her husband, as she reclined languidly on their hotel bed, "I feel like spilling my innermost secrets to everyone within earshot. Could you be a dear and order me a Veritaserum?"

"But of course, milady," said Draco, and reached out and tapped the intercom. "Hello, room service? One Veritaserum, please. –No, straight up. –All right, thank you."

He didn't expect to have to wait long, the service at the legendary Hotel Sia being what it was; still, he was surprised to hear a knock on their room's door barely thirty seconds later. He went and opened it, to find, indeed, a house-elf bellhop beaming up at him, but one who bore no salver or glass of truth potion; instead, sitting next to him, stark naked and bound with enchanted cords by the wrists and ankles, was the familiar form of Draco's fellow Sia patron, Harry James Potter.

"Here you is, sir!" the elf squeaked, his tone somehow managing to convey pride, servility, and ribald knowingness all at once.

Draco exchanged baffled stares with his old school rival. "'Potter.'

'Malfoy.'

'How are you one Veritaserum?'" [–DaughterofaBeautyQueen, "Nothing I Won't Do"]

The elf blinked, and glanced at the number on the door. Then he reached into his rag and pulled out a slip of note-parchment; after a brief glance at this, he turned bright red and clapped a hand to his mouth. "Oh, Costard is so sorry, sir!" he said. "You is room 62D; this order is for room 62E. Please accept Costard's humblest apologies!"

"I should have thought," said Harry frostily, "that you could tell the difference between my wife and Mr Malfoy without needing to check a card."

"In this day and age, sir, one never knows," said Costard. "It is not a house-elf's place to…"

The rest of his self-justification was drowned out by the pop! of his and Harry's Disapparation. Draco stared at the empty hallway for a long moment, then shook his head and shut the door. "You didn't see too much just then, did you, Viv?" he said.

"Nothing to make me jealous of Ginny Potter, if that's what you mean," said Viverra. "I'd give a good deal to know what that was all about, though."

"Really?" said Draco, arching an eyebrow. "To each his own, then. Myself, I'd say we're better off not knowing."

"'Mrs. Brown, if you don't mind, could you tell me how long Harry's been here at the orphanage?' 'Approximately ten years, I think. A police officer brought him, if I'm not mistaken, on the fifth of November of 81…'" – Little .Miss .Xanda*, "The Rise of a Dark Lord"

"Here's another little ruffian for your swarm, Matron," said the officer of the Cohors Urbana, thrusting the dark-haired boy through the doorway of the orphanage. "Henricus, he calls himself, or some such barbarian name."

"Thank you, Decurion," said Marcia Pulcheria Fusca, stifling a quiet sigh as she gazed on the reed-thin little Anglus. It was a cruel city they lived in, worthy of the late Apostle's epithet of Babylon; it had been so even under Vespasian and Titus, and, with Domitian now on the throne, she feared it would only grow more so – and this child, it was plain, had felt the full brunt of its cruelty.

Well, she would care for him as best she could, as for all the other human strays that the Lord had brought to her door. Perhaps, if he were nursed back to sufficient health, he might live to see the promised day of rectification, when the Son of Man would come in power and majesty to wipe away all the ills and griefs that afflicted the world in this Annus Urbis Conditæ 834 – or (as she privately thought of it, in recognition of the new age that had begun in Judea a generation before) this Annus Domini 81.

"The lasts were two girls. One with brown hair and the other with a long red braid." –Eva aka Pinkfox, "Time Toss"†

Gregory stared blankly at the young women who, a moment before, had been cast-iron forms on which to mold shoes. "What… but this… how?" he managed breathlessly.

"As I said, Mr Stone," said the McGonagall woman briskly, "your employer is a Dark wizard, disguised as a common shoemaker for reasons into which we need not delve. Miss Granger and Miss Weasley, here, are friends and helpers of one of the Light's great champions; when Mr Pott learned that they were in the neighbourhood, he resolved to neutralise them in such a way that he could also keep them as trophies. It was done skilfully enough, but he reckoned without my own employer, the great Albus Dumbledore, whose mastery of magic is such that he determined the girls' precise fate in a matter of hours; he sent me here to release them, and the result you saw. And now, if you'll excuse us, we must be getting back to Hogwarts before Mr Pott returns."

The brunette cleared her throat. "Excuse me, Professor," she said, "but mightn't Mr Stone come with us? When Pott finds out that he let you in, he'll be lucky to escape with his life, and he'll certainly be out of a job – and Hogwarts could use a good shoe-mender on staff, couldn't it?"

McGonagall's lips quirked at the edges. "Why, yes, I suppose it could, at that," she said. "What do you say, Mr Stone? Would you care to accompany us?"

At first, Gregory was still too stunned to do more than murmur a vague, "Oh, um… yeah, sure." But then a thought crossed his mind that put new heart into him, and he laughed aloud. "Yes, rather, ma'am," he said. "Like I've always said, a cobbler ought to stick to his lasts."

*Properly without spaces before the periods, but this site's software won't let me transcribe that.

†Crossover with StarTrek: The Next Generation.