Chapter 6 - Preparations

"While your skills and abilities would have all four founders drooling and fighting over who would be allowed to add you to their house, considering your ambitions, dreams, goals and reason for being here, the house where you truly belong is HUFFLEPUFF!"

The hat's last word sounded throughout the entire Great Hall.

...

Wait, WHAT?

Harry sat stunned on the stool, Sorting Had still on his head. Then he felt McGonagall take the Sorting Hat off him, which got him into action. In a daze, he walked through the Hufflepuff table.

It wasn't supposed to be like this! He was supposed to go to Gryffindor. How could he watch Iris' back if he was in Hufflepuff?

He felt relief when he noticed Susan open up a space for him, and headed for it. He sought Iris with his eyes, and gave her a helpless shrug.

Sitting down, he paid attention to the sorting, even just for the duration of Rose's sorting. She went straight to GRYFFINDOR!, barely three seconds in.

"Why are you so pensive?" Susan broke into his thoughts.

Harry answered absentmindedly. "Just thought I'd go to Gryffindor."

"What, something wrong with Hufflepuff?"

Harry could detect a slight hint of cold steel in her voice. He shook his head. "No. I just… all my family was sorted there, I kind of never thought that I wouldn't be there myself. And well..." He looked at her, with a somewhat forced grin. "I was wanting to be making up for lost time with my family a bit here." He looked down a bit, ignoring the sorting (SLYTHERIN!) completely now.

She reached over, and rubbed his upper back a bit. "It'll be fine. You'll still have classes together. But don't forget that Hufflepuff is also about making new friends." She smiled softly, but Harry remained a bit pensive for the remainder of the feast, even despite having missed the castle terribly. He did remember where the Hufflepuff common room was. It was hard to miss such a concentration of names on the Map.

Susan offered to lead him, and Harry accepted. Also along was Hannah Abbot, a good friend of hers who'd apparently already begged the password off a prefect. Harry slowed his new housemates down just a moment to be able to tell his sisters bye, and ended up having to give Rose a hug before she let him go. She'd tried to reassure him, which he found totally adorable. Susan agreed after he told her when Rose was safely out of earshot.

With the use of a shortcut (Harry spotted another one, but decided that pointing it out might have led to a few to many questions), they arrived even earlier than the firsties.

The Hufflepuff Common Room was much more… down to earth than the Gryffindor one. In Gryffindor, everything was either red or gold. Here in Hufflepuff, while there was plenty yellow and black, the main qualification seemed to be earthen colors. One wall was mostly obscured by study desks with low cubicle-like walls, while most of the room was covered with wide groupings of sofas and seats, with perhaps a few more extra pillows than were strictly necessary. All of those adjacent to the walls had a fireplace, where log fires were happily burning away, bathing the room into a warm, welcoming light. Where the Gryffindor common room spoke of pride and courage, the Hufflepuff common room spoke of warmth and home.

Harry instantly loved it.

On Susan's instruction, he waited for the firsties along with the others. Only a minute later, Professor Sprout led them inside - with two prefects closing the column, probably to make sure none would wander off. That made Harry think back to the Gryffindor handling, which was a single call to join the prefect, who'd walk in front and you'd better keep up all the seven staircases, some of which moved. It was enough to scare him in retrospect. Then again, he'd never actually seen it going wrong.

Sprout continued to give the Firsties and Harry a small introduction to the House (Stick together, work hard, be honest and fair, and the world is yours) and explained where the dorms were (In the back wall, spread over 3 floors, the middle of which was on the level of the common room. Which Harry thought was a lot better than the Gryff tower, were some unlucky years had to climb 7 stairs just to reach their dorms). Sprout continued to inform them that the prefect's main job was to help them with any issues they'd have, and that even if the prefect couldn't handle it themselves, they could direct you to someone who could.

Which was a hell lot of a more useful talk than he'd had at Gryffindor.

Harry shared his dormitory with Justin Finch-Fletchley, Ernst Macmillan, Wayne Hopkins, Kevin Entwhistle and Zacharias Smith. A sixth bed had appeared in their room. It turned out to be slightly spacier than the Gryffindor dorms, either that or it'd been enlarged a bit more for the new occupant. It also featured three windows, looking out at the black lake. Looking through the sides at them showed the cliff side - they were still under what would be "ground" level at the entrance. However, the castle was on such a steep cliff that it looked to be quite a long way down. The view was almost as good as that from Gryffindor. He exchanged a few words with his new dormmates, and he told them the short version while letting them makes their assumptions, then allowing them to share it around so he could stop telling it. Since everyone was tired, they didn't talk long before going to sleep.

By ancient Hogwarts tradition, Professor Sprout handed out their timetables at breakfast, which threw another wrench in Harry's now half-formed plans - aside from electives, nearly all the Hufflepuff lessons were with Ravenclaw, because by another ancient Hogwarts tradition Gryffindor and Slytherin shared most of their lessons.

On the bright side of news, Harry would have Defense before the Gryffindor/Slytherin class, so he'd be able to check if this Moody was a Moody or a Crouch. The man hadn't made the dramatic entry during the sorting feast, so it was worth checking.

The Defense lesson started much as Harry remembered his first time around - a short lecture on the Unforgivables. Despite his own history with it, Harry didn't really consider the Killing Curse as bad as the others. Sure, it was unblockable, but all it did was kill you. You could kill with a Levitation Charm, and it'd probably hurt more. The fact that the Killing Curse was unblockable didn't change the killing intent. Therefore, having this method of murder being considered so much worse was silly.

Harry dutifully answered the question about the Killing Curse, and Moody took the spiders, giving his little demonstration.

After the lesson, Harry lingered behind.

"Professor, may I ask you a question?"

"Sure lad. What is it?"

"What was the first spell my dad ever clipped you with during his Auror training?"

He noticed the blue eye looking down, spotting his so far unraised wand in his hand.

"Good job boy. Constant Vigilance."

"And the answer?" Harry slowly raised his wand.

"Some prank spell - antler growing hex if I recall correctly. I do know I punished him severely for not using anything that would actually help him further in the fight. Now, why do you know that?"

Harry grinned. "Well, after the issues of the World Cup, I asked my dad about you. Since Defense is the only new position, that would be the easiest place to infiltrate Hogwarts. So I asked him for a Polyjuice question about you."

"5 points to Hufflepuff for being prepared. But lad, if I had chosen to fight, what do you think would have happened?"

"I'd have neutralized you, of course. Want to see?"

Moody's eyebrows rose in clear surprise, but his eyes remained completely focused. If anything, even more alert. Then he drew his wand, and shot a spell at Harry. Harry shot his own, and batted Moody's away. Moody shielded, but Harry's spell completely ignored the shield and hit, dropping Moody under the effects of a petrificus totalus. Harry followed it up with a disarming spell, and a detection spell for magical traps on Moody's person, and then kneeled down beside the man.

"Like this." He lifted his charm.

"Good job, boy. At least you're capable of confronting someone you get the drop on."

"I appreciate it if you keep my secret weapon."

Moody grinned as he stood up. "If you tell me how to defend about it, I will keep that knowledge to myself."

"You can't, except for dodging. However, only me and Dumbledore could pull it off, and in the future, perhaps my sister."

"And how are you so sure?"

"It requires a certain magical artifact. And that's all I'm going to say about that."

"Any chance of reproduction?"

"That's impossible."

"Fine, then. Fifteen points to Hufflepuff for actually being prepared enough to deal with a potential impersonator. Now get going before you're late for your next lesson.

Later that week, Harry had taken Iris aside for some private training. Of course, in a perfect world Harry'd be able to handle Voldemort for her, but Iris had long ago learned that a perfect world didn't exist.

"Today, and the next few months, I'll be teaching you to be a proper pyromaniac, sis."

They stood next to a pile of wood twice Iris' height. Harry aimed his wand at it and froze it solid with a Glacius.

"Go ahead and cast the best Incendio you can on that."

Iris lifted her eyebrow. "That's not really gonna work like that."

"Then your Incendio is weak. Give it a try. Don't hold back."

She aimed her wand. She made the movement, and incanted her spell. She melted most of the ice off two branches, and made a small flame on one of them. It went out after a few seconds.

"How do you rate your own performance?"

"With the circumstances, not bad. It's hard enough to ignite wet wood. Frozen is worse."

Harry pointed his wand at the pile of frozen wood.

Incendio

Iris jumped back as a huge blaze exploded out of the pile. Once the steam cleared, well over half of the wooden pile had disappeared, half of the rest was charred at the surface and the other half had the ice melted.

"How did you draw that much magic?"

"Our strength is exactly equal, sis. I did nothing you are fundamentally incapable of. There's a few differences between how you cast that spell and how I did. You know that intent is essential to conduct magic. But there's another core principle that you need to be aware of. How much do you think it mattered that the wood was frozen?"

Iris frowed. "Twice as hard? Three times?"

"To ignite it, you need to heat wood about 2000 degrees. To melt ice and evaporate the water, about 500. So the correct answer is about a quarter."

"But then I should have burned a lot more wood."

"Which brings me to the important part of magic - belief. If you believe that the effect of your spells has a certain limit, then you'll never be able to exceed those limits. You cannot do anything you believe impossible."

Luna Lovegood skipped through the halls of Hogwarts. She really liked having Harry for a friend. She'd long though Iris would be a great friend, but had never dared initiate contact. She frowned. Why would she equate them? Well, not really worth thinking about. Some things, you could not discover the reason to, while for others you did. In her opinion, knowing the difference was what it meant to be a Ravenclaw. Accept for truth what is truth, and consider the unknown to learn. Regardless, she felt a lot safer now that the Nargles would keep their distance.

In the corridor, she noticed her usual tormentors approaching. She noticed their smirks as they drew their wands at her. She decided it was only polite to give them a little warning.

"Do be careful. I got friends now."

"Now now Loony, we all know that imaginary creatures aren't friends. I think we'll need to give you a little reminder."

She gestured, and shot a spell Luna knew perfectly well - it would clear parchment sheets of ink, and they generally aimed it at her homework she had to turn in soon. The moment before it could strike her, however, it was absorbed by a transparent shield, causing a small ripple of green to flow over the slight dome. Harry's voice sounded, to Luna's utter lack of surprise. Not that she'd noticed him, but he'd promised that he'd be there for her, and she knew he kept his promises. She allowed a vaguely amused smile to play on her face instead of the look she usually got when thinking about something else.

"Nice to meet you, ladies. As you probably know, I am Harry Potter. However, as far as you are concerned, you might as well call me Harry Lovegood - I consider Luna a little sister. Don't bother introducing yourselves, your names are as irrelevant to me as you are."

They tried to cast a spell at Harry who suddenly faded into view close to them, but he gave a dismissive wave of his wand. They tried to speak, but they were silenced. The girls' spells were deflected into the walls and ceiling, while their wands flew out of their hands, getting caught by Harry. The last wand was slightly off course, but it corrected it's path half-way towards his hand.

"We're going to fix this little bullying thing you have been doing for the past two years. See, you think you're all so smart and amazing for bullying a younger girl with less magical education than you. Well, I disagree."

He made some elaborate wand movements, while muttering under his breath. One of the girls tried to run for it, but stiffened in an obvious body-bind before gently floating back. Harry's wand hadn't even twitched. After finishing his spellwork on the girls, he did a shorter one on their wands.

"Let me give a short explanation. You-" He pointed to the one on his left "will get nightmares every night, preventing you from resting properly. You, when you're trying to write something, you will have random spasms in your arms after two to fifteen minutes. You will have erotic dreams about whatever gender you happen to not be attracted to. You will, in the presence of three or more boys, get itches on rather embarrassing places. The more boys around and the longer you wait to scratch, the more you'll need to scratch. Since you might use a scratching charm, you'll also purr loudly while getting scratched. For all of you, this will continue for two years. Because you've been bullying Luna for two years."

"But I have OWLs this year! Having spasms will ruin me!"

"Ah, I expected that one. I remember Luna telling you something similar when her homework was lost or her studying for exams was prevented. I believe your response was..." He tapped his wand to his lips as if thinking. "Ah, I remember." His eyes glistered dangerously as he looked at her. "Not. My. Problem."

Harry continued. "And before you try and take revenge on this by, for example, hurting Luna or anyone else I care about, I set a few traps. Anytime you use offensive magic, under my rather expansive definition of that concept, I will know, and for a month, you'll share the punishments of any of the other three." Harry tossed back their wands. "Now scram. You've dirtied my presence for long enough."

After the four ran away like a dragon was on their heels, Harry turned to Luna.

"You OK?"

Luna smiled at him. "Of course I am. I know you always take care of your friends.." She moved closer, and gave him a hug.

"Thank you for protecting me."

She could feel his smile in her hair. "That's what friends are for, Luna."

No, Luna never felt this safe before.

Dumbledore entered the Hospital Wing. Gathered there were Flitwick, Pomphrey, Moody, and four young ladies from Ravenclaw who all looked completely exhausted, two of them in tears. He announced his presence.

"So, what is going on?"

Flitwick was the one to reply.

"These four have been having some rather odd symptoms. It seems to be related to a curse on each of them, but it's nothing I've ever seen before. Pomphrey thought they were Dark Curses, but…" The half-goblin gestured to Moody.

"It lacks some of the more general characteristics of the Dark Arts. It seems to be more of an enchantment. From our scans, attempts to dispel it seems to be… unwise. It seems to have some defense against most dispelling methods I can think off. However, whoever wove these made some of these more visible than others, which leaves me to think there's also counterdispels I haven't spotted yet. Every single of these means that any dispelling attempt will make the problems worse."

Dumbledore drew his Elder Wand, and cast his own diagnostic charms, on each of the girls in turn. It seemed to be the same spell but activated differently on each of them. He considered attempting to try and overpower them, but decided that there might be some nasty surprises in there. This was more elaborate enchantment than he'd ever seen in his very long life. There was also a rather remarkable property - normally, any curse or enchantment on a person looked like a collection of semi-random lines. A skilled magician could divine what the enchantment did from those. However, whoever cast these spells took the effort to make them write out something.

Bully.

"Ladies, can you tell my why this spell was cast on you?"

The girls looked at each other, then one spoke for the group..

"I don't know why."

"Really? Whoever made this seems to have been under the impression the four of you have been bullying someone."

Another girl responded.

"It was Harry Potter. For some reason he thought we had been bullying Lovegood, but I swear we never did anything."

A surface legilimency scan proved that she didn't think she had done anything worth this. However, even Dumbledore couldn't think of a way to lift the spells. She also really thought Harry Potter had cast this charm, even though Dumbledore would have suspected any caster of this enchantment to have an age in the triple digits at least.

Harry knocked on the door to the Headmaster's office.

"Please enter, mister Potter."

Harry entered, and Dumbledore gestured him towards a chair, which he took.

"Do you know why you are here, mister Potter?"

"I can't say that I do, Professor."

"There are four girls from Ravenclaw who have some rather elaborate spells on them. Did you cast those?"

Harry furrowed his brow. "I don't know for sure which girls those would be, Professor. I do remember helping Luna Lovegood against a few bullies about a week ago, but those bullies didn't even give me their names. They were quite impolite. Since I thought that they'd learned their lesson, I didn't go to a Professor about it."

"And how exactly did you help miss Lovegood?"

Harry looked up to the top-left corner of the room in thought. "First a shield charm. Then they cast some spells at me, but I didn't get hit because I'm quite good at duelling. I dodged, shielded and deflected. I used a few charms, but nothing inherently harmful or dark." Harry gave Dumbledore a concerned gaze. "Aret they still hurt? If so, I'm really sorry about that. I didn't intend any long-time harm towards any of them."

"Not physically, no, but they have been experiencing some extremely uncomfortable issues. I looked into it along with Madam Pomphrey as well as Professors Moody, Snape and Flitwick, but none of us can dispel them. If you confess and dispel the charms, we can overlook it just this once."

"I'm flattered by your faith in my abilities Professor, but isn't it preposterous to assume a mere fourth year student could cast a curse to complex to unravel for some of the smartest and most experienced opponents of the dark arts?"

He noticed Dumbledore sigh.

"Any hints?"

"About what, Professor?"

"How to dispel the charms?"

"Finite Incantatem? My experience with the wizarding world is that people often tend to forget the simple solutions."

Harry was quite sure he hadn't, though. A Finite Incantatem would have it's magical power redirected into petrification of a random limb. If Dumbledore attempted to overpower his charm with one, it'd probably be sufficient for it to last about two days. If the man'd bothered to cast a decent series of diagnostic charms, he'd know it to. Sure, Finite Incantatem would work, but you'd have to use the long ritual version and use at least 7 magicals to power it sufficiently to avoid side effects like his traps.

Dumbledore sighed again. He apparently wasn't getting what he wanted. Big surprise there.

"Thank you for your time mister Potter."

He nodded to Dumbledore politely, then exited.

Iris was frustrated. Not the type of frustrated she'd felt when looking for information about Flamel. Not even the total exasperation of trying to learn the Patronus. No, this was full on burning frustration about attempting the same thing over and over again, knowing that it should work, but it still not being enough.

First that total jerk had worked her to the bone working on teaching her to believe what she cast. That was aggravating enough. But when she'd made progress, he'd taken her wand, and told her to burn a pile of frozen wood taller than Hagrid. She was half of a mind to try and burn Harry instead, but he'd probably pretend to completely ignore it and then give her one of these damned punchable smirks of his, even if it worked.

She glared some more at the pile of wood. A tiny flame appeared for a moment, but then went out again. A few moments later, the same thing happened.

Yes, she'd mastered wandless creation of a flame which might be able to light a candle. Perhaps. If there wasn't to much of a breeze. In good weather. Maybe.

And while Harry had praised her for that for about two seconds, they'd then just continued as if it was just another small step of a long journey. She'd thought it would have been worth some more recognition.

Her candle flame appeared again.

She felt Harry's hand rest lightly on her shoulder, his mouth next to her ear as he hissed.

$You're too tense. Relax. Just let it flow. It's not a spell, it's just magic.$

He'd also taken to almost always using parseltongue talking to her. It was sort of cute, actually. And it also made her feel more comfortable with it slowly, which she suspected was his ulterior motive.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity but had to have been a few hours at most, she managed to get a flame burning continuously.

Even that wasn't enough to the complete asshole taskmaster she had for a brother, as he wanted her to move the flame in a set pattern.

$It's dinner time, sis. Until our next session, I expect you to attempt this for a few hours every evening before you go to sleep.$

$You're warm-blooded.$ She'd wanted to say "lunatic", but snakes didn't have a swearword that specific. This one covered everything from sanity problems, to being excessively emotional, to being wasteful.

$I love you too, nest-mate.$

He deserved that elbow that she gave him in his ribs, no matter how much he pretended to die from it. It might have been more convincing if he'd picked either the pain or the heartbreak of sis not loving him and stuck to it instead of switching between them.

Nevertheless, she accepted a quick hug when they split for dinner. She felt far to alike to him to stay angry for long, not that she'd ever admit it. It almost felt like being angry at herself.

Tryouts were held both for the duelling and quidditch competitions that the schools would be participating in. Harry skipped out on the duelling ones, since he didn't think he'd be able to accurately fake a consistent level of proficiency. His public reason was that he didn't think he'd have time beside the quidditch competition, and the normal lessons. Iris signed up for the duelling and quidditch both. While the quidditch competition would mix all years, the duelling ones would have a few contenders for each year, with every year's finalists also competing with the next year. Then over seven different duelling days throughout the tournament, each weeks apart, a final champion would emerge. Rose also entered the duelling competition, and both of the Potter girls made it in.

The quidditch try-outs were well-attended. Nearly every house-team had fully shown up, along with a few other hopefuls like Harry himself. Since madam Hooch would be the school teams' coach, she ran the tryouts.

She started with some flying drills, which weeded out most of the non-team hopefuls, but even some house team members failed them. Then she released twenty practice snitches for the duration of the tryouts, telling the remaining 6 potential seekers to catch as many as they could. These were Harry Potter (Hufflepuff hopeful), Cho Chang (Ravenclaw seeker), Cedric Diggory (Hufflepuff seeker), Cormac McLaggen(Gryffindor Seeker), Draco Malfoy (Slytherin Seeker) and Ginny Weasley (Gryffindor hopeful).

Then she started drills with all the remaining Chasers and Beaters, having them pass quaffles and dodge bludgers while the Seekers had to weave through the very busy field to find their prey.

Harry quickly found 2 snitches, but then it took a while. He had no clue how much the others had, so he kept looking. Iris was still in the running for Chaser, so that was going well. Spotting a few of the other seekers, he decided to go shake everything up a bit, and dove as fast as he could on his newly bought Firebolt. Several of the other seekers followed him down.

Susan had come to watch the try-outs for the team. It was a massive event with more quidditch players on brooms competing than anybody had ever seen, and she was, lightly speaking, a fan. She could clearly see which Chasers were more confident and made more passes, and more often than not Hooch agreed with her, singling out the worst ones and sending them off. The beaters had been assigned groups of Chasers they had to attack or defend, while the Keepers sometimes had to join the Chasers, and sometimes had to block Chasers attempting to score. It was the most fun chaos she'd ever seen. She'd also seen Harry grab a snitch from right under Draco's nose, which made her feel a faint feeling of satisfaction, though she didn't know why. Harry grabbed his second snitch after overtaking Cho in a chase that led him through 2 scoring hoops and a hair's breadth from a bludger. He'd answered her scowl with a grin.

Suddenly she spotted him diving again. She remembered his comments on the Wronski Feint at the world cup, and checked ahead, not finding a snitch. But that wasn't weird given the chasers kept breaking her line of sight in their own drills. Three other Seekers followed Harry - Malfoy, McLaggen and Weasley. Harry pulled up about an inch from the ground as far as she could tell. Weasley broke off in time to avoid the pitch, but both Malfoy and McLaggen were throw off their brooms because they plowed into the grass. She didn't see her newest yearmate put away a snitch, so it would have to have been a feint. Pomphrey's apprentice, a girl who'd finished Hogwarts last year but managed to score an apprenticeship and who was now responsible for this try-out, went to check on Malfoy, while McLaggen seemed to be able to get up by himself.

Harry grinned as he was pocketing his fourth snitch. This was going really well. McLaggen, Malfoy and Cho looked desperate. Ginny looked somewhat frantic, and only Cedric had some confidence left. Ah well, desperation made for a wonderful tool… well, that and he just liked hurting Malfoy. He dove down for another Wronski feint, drawing Malfoy, Cedric and Cho in. Cedric managed to stabilize himself in time, but the other two plowed themselves into the field.

This was fun. He went after his fifth Snitch, Cedric and Ginny being close enough to contest. Well, not that Ginny would be able to contest him with that Cleansweep 5 against his Firebolt. Cedric at least had a Nimbus 2200, which had come out this summer. It could contest the Firebolt in speed if not maneuverability.

Harry did catch this snitch, though. Looking around after the catch, he noticed Susan in the stands, and when she gave him a wave, he responded with a grin and a thumb-up.

Half an hour later, the try-out had concluded. Hooch had selected her Chasers, Beaters, Keeper, and a full set of substitutes. The core Chasers were Roger Davies, Angelina Johnson, and Iris. Her beaters were the Weasley twins - they were as good as their best competitors individually, but their teamwork was flawless. The Keeper was the Slytherin, Miles Bletchley. Then the seekers lined up, and showed how many snitches they'd caught:

Harry Potter: 5
Cedric Diggory: 4
Ginny Weasley: 4
Cho Chang: 3
Draco Malfoy: 2
Cormac McLaggan: 2

This resulted in Harry being selected as primary Seeker. Cedric said that he'd also be trying to become the Hogwarts Champion, and as such he ceded the Seeker substitute space to Ginny, since they'd been equal despite her having a worse broom. As a true fair Hufflepuff, he also offered her to borrow his broom if she had to play..

Draco was uncharacteristically silent about his failure. However, not having a father anymore meant that he was sorely lacking in recourse. McLaggen, however, made up for that by loudly disparaging Ginny and Harry until the latter got fed up with it and silenced him with so much power that it was four hours before a Professor had been able to lift it. McGongall had told him that there was no way to prove it'd been Harry, which Harry knew for a fact was bullshit. Apparently, she hadn't considered a silencing to be excessive in response to his rants.

Ginny was ecstatic. Of course, she'd have preferred to be the starting Seeker, but being second in the entire school was already quite the recognition. All the more since Ron had been deselected as Keeper quite early - there was some sibling rivalry there. While Harry hadn't talked that much to her before, she did congratulate him first, which he returned with a big grin. He'd known that she would be good. What he really liked, however, was that Susan had taken the effort to come down to the pitch for a congratulatory hug as well - she'd grown into a good friend over the past time in classes.

A/N: Thanks to gradek for pointing out that I'd kicked Snape from Hogwarts. This is because Dumbledore couldn't guilttrip him when Lily Potter survived, and lets be honest, the man made it clear he hates teaching. It also encourages me to know that people care enough to remember statements I made 4 chapters back, so thanks for that as well.