A/N: Merry Christmas everyone! Apologies for the delay - Fred and George weren't playing ball and got rewritten a lot. I also found that I'd accidentally written Hermione into Gryffindor, but my plan has always been that she didn't need to develop her bravery on the train, so got sorted into Ravenclaw. I hope I made all the relevant changes, but feel free to let me know if I missed any. I may also put up some notes on the reasonings behind each of my changes at some point.

The story so far: Because Harry kept his Hogwarts letter, but didn't reply, he was rescued from the Dursleys. At Hogwarts, however, he was sorted into Slytherin, where he was forced into the subordinate group of the house, the Allies, with a shared dormitory. It's often a hostile place, being excluded from the politics in the common room, but he at least has the Hufflepuffs, the Weasley twins and Millicent, who he saved from a troll. Christmas with the Longbottoms provided relief and peace, as well as an odd gift from Dumbledore. While Millicent must join in with Slytherin politics, Harry visits Hagrid, who has a large egg in his fire, and the elves. He promises his friends that he will prove his worth with great magic and help from the elves - Ancient Runes looks like a good area for research, but prompts a challenge from Hermione when spotted in the library. Dumbledore tells Harry he's too young for his own elf, but can use one of his for now, though their conversation was interrupted by some emergency.

PREVIOUSLY, on the way back from Dumbledore's office, "Did you hear?" Tracey asked. "Hagrid's hut burned down. Everyone's been outside to have a look but McGonagall sent us all back inside."


-Chapter Seventeen-

Jugson's Theory

"Mr Potter! When I say for everyone to go back inside, that includes you!" Harry blinked at Professor McGonagall's admonishment.

"Sorry, Professor," he replied. "I didn't know we weren't allowed out here. I was with Professor Dumbledore in his office." Harry knew that was enough for an excuse, but he was on a mission. He sniffed the air dramatically. "What's happened? Is that smoke?"

"Indeed," the professor confirmed, her lips a thin line. "There has been a large fire, but it is all under control."

"It wasn't Hagrid cooking eggs, was it? I was surprised his hut didn't burn down last time I was there with how hot it was. I mean Merlin!" Somehow, Professor McGonagall's lips thinned even further, her eyebrows drew together in a deep scowl and her hands flew to her hips.

"You knew about the dragon egg? In all my years, I've never heard of something so irresponsible. What do you have to say for yourself young man?" A dragon egg? Weird.

"I'm sorry, Professor, but I don't understand what the issue is. It all made sense to me. Hagrid's a big man. He cooks a big egg on a big fire. Probably has a big omelette on a big plate. How is that irresponsible?"

"Big… omelette…" She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Just go back inside, Mr Potter."

"Yes, Professor, but before I go, is Hagrid ok?"

"Yes, yes," Professor McGonagall said, shooing him back into the castle. He hustled back in, heading straight for his friends, who had waited out of sight.

"Well?" Tracey prompted.

"Sorry," Harry said. "The only extra information I could get was that it was a dragon egg." Tracey and Blaise both looked at him with wide eyes, shocked into silence. Blaise was the first to break the quiet, uttering a low chuckle.

"You sly dog, Potter. You had me believing you'd really not got much out of McGonagall. How'd you manage to get that out of her?" Harry thought back to the conversation and could only think that he'd surprised her by mentioning the egg, such that she'd let it slip that it was a dragon egg. He wasn't sure why that was such a big deal, though. Small people ate chicken eggs; big people like Hagrid probably ate dragon eggs. He settled on an appropriate answer.

"Well, I am a Slytherin," he said, clapping his friends on the back and walking confidently past them. The way both laughed and jogged to catch up with him made him think he'd chosen his words well.

"That's probably why Kettleburn, Quirrell and Snape headed off into the forest," Tracey said, grinning widely. "They were probably going off to look for the dragon." Well that explained a lot. Hagrid was trying to hatch the egg, not cook it.

#

Harry and his Slytherin friends quickly settled into their situation after that day. Tracey, Blaise and Millicent, in particular, were much more comfortable in spending time with him outside the common room. Other Slytherin students were much more rarely seen outside their common room than students of other houses. Fifth- and seventh-year students would be most common, visiting the library to grab the occasional obscure book which nobody could otherwise get their hands on, but the vast majority tended to remain lurking in the dungeons, if not confining themselves to the common room.

He was joined by one or other of those friends on the odd day, never so regularly as to become a recognisable pattern, but often enough to be clearly 'whenever possible'. They shared various nuggets of information they'd come across during their days, mostly from their varying conversations within the house. As they moved in somewhat different circles, Harry found himself as a hub of information.

Millicent had slotted in as a member of Draco's group, hiding her distaste behind her resting scowl. Blaise was working on using his charm and charisma to get in with some of the slightly older groups of students - mostly the more gullible ones and he knew he wasn't yet skilled enough to get into groups older than third year. Tracey tended to hang around those who liked to gossip. Although she was starting as a hanger-on, she worked out that she was often able to hang around somewhat unnoticed, watch people and overhear things. This in turn helped a lot with the gossips.

To the average outsider, and especially to the professors, all their attempts at subtlety, politics and guile would seem unbelievably amateurish. However, as eleven- and twelve-year-olds, they all thought they were terribly clever. Their first attempts at any of this were pitiful failures, but failure is a better teacher than success, and never let it be said that Hogwarts was not a place for learning.

Though their grades might belie their intelligence and thus suggest otherwise, Fred and George used Hogwarts as the great learning opportunity it was. Harry had no idea how they had learned of it, but it was barely a day after talking with Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall that they had learned of Harry's inside knowledge and he found his first bite of breakfast the next morning to have an oddly papery texture. The reason for this became clear when he fished a folded piece of parchment from his mouth and brushed the chewed gobbets of sausagemeat from its surface.

Reflect before the Temple of Gemini

Harry loved a good riddle. Coupled with the garish orange colour of the writing, Gemini was clearly a reference to the Weasley twins, and, just as arranging the edges and corners of a jigsaw puzzle provides the basis of the final solution, so was that the key to the clue. The first word reminded him of the mirror on the fourth floor, behind which was hidden… Ah yes, the hideout to which he was escorted after that flying lesson. That could be the temple, before which there was a reflection. Harry deduced that they wanted to meet. It was a Sunday, so it was likely that they wanted to meet now, as opposed to after classes on a weekday.

"Ah, Harry, my boy!"

"My fine snakey friend!"

"We hear you know things."

"You know we hear things."

"Keeping secrets?"

"Perhaps of people secretly keeping things."

Harry admired the twins' tactics every time he experienced them. The first couple of times, their habit of bouncing the conversation from one to the other completely threw him off, more often startling answers out of him and preventing coherent consideration of his responses. It was an effective way of unveiling the truth, catching people off guard, though not necessarily the intended truth. However, nobody could suspect them of anything untoward, given their nature.

"I know some things, yes," Harry replied calmly once there was a lull in their chatter. "As do you." Fred looked at George. George looked at Fred. If they hadn't done the same, Harry knew he wouldn't have been able to say which had looked and which hadn't. However, he had noticed that one always looked at the other slightly more quickly than the other looked at the first.

"Is that a fact?"

"Something you know?" Harry crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. The twins grinned, unapologetic. "Wouldn't it be nice if we all knew more things?" one of the twins said, finally getting to the point.

"Indeed, my good sirs, but how in Merlin's name could that ever be possible?" Harry replied, eyes twinkling with mirth. "What on earth are we poor souls to do?" Never make the first proposal, Blaise had taught him. The side which wanted something the most desperately would put something forward first and, in doing so, would limit themselves to their starting point. Both Fred and George chuckled at Harry's overly snooty language and accent.

"Have you ever heard of the concept of sharing, dear Harrikins? You tell us things you hear and we tell you things we hear. A simple arrangement which benefits us both." Harry made a good show of thinking over the proposal.

"Look, guys, it's an interesting idea, but what would I do with this information? I really don't have any use for random information. I'm just here to learn things - you know I spend most of my time in the library."

"I'm sure we can come up with something. Besides, we need more of an excuse to hang around with our dear friend and it wouldn't do to ruin our reputation by hanging around with our favourite Slytherin, despite the fact that he's a great friend, unless we were known to be planning something sneaky. Image is important, you know." Harry agreed with this twin's summation and, though he was somewhat suspicious that they'd be trying to wheedle information out of him anyway, allowed them to join him whenever they wished. After all, another of Blaise's adages was that it wasn't what you knew, but who you knew. He usually grimaced at the saying, given his choice to distance himself from the house in pursuit of the secrets of magic, but he held out hope that it would eventually lead to more connections.

#

Wonderful though his friends were, both those in green and those in red, Harry hadn't intended to become some hub of information. He knew it was a useful foundation, even if those facts were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Still, when someone sat next to him in the library, absorbed as he was in a good book, he couldn't help but let out a sigh.

"And I'm taking lectures on conversational etiquette from you?" the person asked. Harry looked up to see that he had been joined by Hermione.

"Sorry," Harry apologised. "I'm actually glad to see that it's you. I think you're the first person to come and visit me in the library who respects its purpose and rules." Hermione immediately rolled her eyes in agreement.

"Tell me about it," she nearly gushed, "there are so few who treat this place properly. Well, I guess I could forgive you if you were up to that challenge?" Harry raised his eyebrows, glancing at the parchment on the table in front of him. Uric the Oddball and Emeric the Evil could wait for a bit.

"Sure," he replied. "How are we going to do this?" At Harry's acceptance, Hermione visibly shrunk and smiled, though she looked somewhat conflicted after a glance at the History of Magic homework in progress.

"Well I've managed to… I mean, Penelope here has agreed to provide the Runes and be the final judge." Behind Hermione, Harry finally noticed an older girl hovering, a look upon her face that was very much put upon.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Penelope," Harry said kindly. "Thank you for your assistance here. I hope we haven't put you to too much trouble." He knew he was putting some of the blame onto himself when he wasn't at all responsible, and Hermione's sudden flushing clearly indicated that she wasn't happy being thought of as causing trouble, however that paled in comparison to the need to placate the poor girl Hermione had obviously badgered into this.

"Let's get this started quickly, then," Penelope said. "Each of you will sit on opposite sides of this table, upon which there will be nothing but your quill, ink, the test paper and parchment for your answers. I will be working at the end of the table, so you are not to disturb me or each other. If you finish before the allotted time, you should be wise enough to spend the remaining time going back through the questions - it is foolish to ever leave an exam early.

"This test is from the second year of Ancient Runes class, so don't be concerned if you are unable to translate any of the runes. Indeed, I'm not expecting high marks as you are three years away from taking these tests. It is formed from a number of monthly individual rune translation tests, so you may find some runes appearing more than once. You now have a couple of minutes to prepare the test area and think of any questions before you begin as I'm going to set myself up just there."

With that, Penelope took a breath to restore the air she'd lost through that explanation. Hermione helped Harry to clear the table of his work, piling the books to the side of the table while he stowed his parchment in his bag. They both retrieved fresh sheets of parchment and arranged their quills and inkpots. Finally, when Penelope had arranged a set of advanced Potions books around her, she looked up to see the two first years sitting quietly in readiness.

"Any questions?" she asked? Both Harry and Hermione shook their heads. "Right, all you need to do is write the meaning or effect of each rune individually. You have fifteen minutes, starting now." With a flick of her wand, two folded lengths of parchment floated next to the arranged answer sheets and she lowered her eyes to Advanced Potion Making by Libatius Borage.

Harry dipped the end of his quill into his inkpot and unfolded the test paper with his left hand. He made sure to rest his quill on the rim of the pot while he scanned the column of runes to translate. It hadn't taken him more than a day to determine the best way of ensuring there were no drops of ink which had fallen on his parchment while he was in thought. Quills were messy and hard to write with, especially at speed, but he, and clearly Hermione, had caught on quickly. He smiled to himself as he scratched his quill over his parchment, immersing himself in the superficial first layer of runes - he knew from his reading that there was layer upon layer of complexity introduced when runes were used together, compared to the simplicity of their meanings in isolation.

There was an innate logic in the shapes he saw when looking at the runes. The one that looked like a flame meant fire. The one that resembled a shield symbolised protection. There was a whole family of runes representing people with different abilities and relationships and these were mostly found in one section of the test paper where there had clearly been one week's test purely on that rune set. Each rune for a person started as a slim triangle, either pointing up for male or down for female. It was a thick line with no point at either end if gender wasn't specified. In the centre was a roughly circular area indicating the magical ability of the person, if that was of importance. A full circle represented a witch or wizard and an empty patch meant a Muggle. Then there were various lines on either side which represented various generations of relationships, both forward and backward. Oh, it was fascinating.

#

Harry and Hermione were careful to wait patiently and in silence while their answers were marked. Harry had retrieved the top book in his stack to read, while Hermione was watching Penelope intently. Quickly, the scratching of quill on parchment came to an end and Harry closed his book, turning to Penelope's end of the table where she had an eyebrow raised, still looking at one of the answer sheets.

"Well, it was quite close," Penelope said in conclusion. "You both scored very well on the meanings of the sets of runes you would learn in the first year of the course and made good attempts at those in the second year. I was impressed with both of you, but hope that this hasn't put you behind in your studies for the courses you should be focusing on for this year." Here, Hermione's cheeks flushed slightly and she cast her eyes downwards. "Either way, you are free to look over the corrections I have made on each." Penelope slid the answer sheets back down the table to the pair and returned to her work.

"So what did you get?" Hermione asked as soon as she had shuffled through to the score on her test.

"I'll let you know once I've gone through the feedback," Harry replied. "Is that not the Ravenclaw way?" Hermione flushed again and cast her eyes back down to the parchment.

Harry did the same, looking for the corrections among the vast sea of ticks. He was pleased to see that they were few and far between, and each of them made logical sense. The rune where he'd put lightning as his answer meant power; an easy mistake to make with the logic he saw in the symbols. Empty was very similar to the rune for space or area. It was strange, however, to see that one of his answers simply has a cross beside it, with no correction.

"Excuse me, Penelope," he said, causing both girls to look up at him. "Could you explain something for me?" Hermione quirked her head at him, and it crossed his mind that it was a little strange that he had been the first to ask for clarification. When Penelope came over to him, he pointed to the rune in question.

"Ah, yes, the rune with no meaning," Penelope said. "This is one of the runes which hasn't yet been translated. It's the classic one which Professor Burbage shows to everyone in their very first lesson as part of her explanation about the origin of Ancient Runes. In the exams, you'd get a mark for leaving it blank or explaining that it doesn't yet have a translation. I did mention that you might not be able to translate all the runes."

"But if it doesn't yet have a translation, how can you be sure this is wrong?" Harry asked. It was a sensible question, both from a logical perspective and because he was pretty certain he'd given the correct answer anyway.

"Normally, I'd agree with you - in principle only; I'm not giving you any extra marks - but you've managed to choose the one translation where I can't accept that logic."

"What, Squib? I might not have got the word right as I'm new to the term - I meant someone who has no magic, but has magical parents."

"Yes, I know," Penelope said, holding up her hand to cut him off. "You've got the right word. The problem is that there's no rune for Squib. It's another one of these well-known exceptions that you'll learn during proper lessons, and it forms the basis of Jugson's Theory of Magical Provenance. Interestingly, it was originally the Theory of Magical Providence, but the implication of divine intervention wasn't widely accepted by the community." Harry furrowed his brow. "If you're not happy about it, you can go and talk to Professor Babbling." With that, Penelope returned to her work.

"We can look at our scores after I've talked to the professor," Harry said, looking back to Hermione. She rolled her eyes, but looked confident that it wouldn't make a difference. He pulled a fresh sheet of parchment towards him and began to pen a letter requesting a meeting.