October rolled on, mostly dragging, sometimes racing by.

Classes went past in a baffling curtain of darkness. On the cold wooden benches and in shadowed classes, Harry pushed his ears and mind to their limits. He worked whole-heartedly trying to remember what the teachers said despite his hands resting uselessly at his sides. It made him feel only a bit better to pet Crookshanks or Crow when what he really wanted to be doing was taking notes, learning, stretching himself.

Instead, with blank eyes and the soft blindfold wrapped around his head, Harry found himself trying to imagine what his teachers meant when they asked students to reread a section of their textbooks, read out exercises on the board; when they described how the seasonal skies were changing to show the autumn stars, or explained the arithmancy behind the Summoning Charm.

At those times, Harry clenched his jaw, stroked the fur or feathers of his seeing-eye companion, and waited uselessly for Hermione to turn to him and summarise, or Neville to lean over and whisper in his ear. But it wasn't the same.

Of course, Harry did his best with what he had. As the days passed, he got good at setting up the dictaquill so that it wrote square on his parchment every time without scribbling on the tables, and he improved significantly in visualising what his magic should be doing, or what the blackboard might look like from what people were saying.

A week after he returned to classes, everything improved even more as Ron, Seamus and Dean caught Harry in the boys' dorm room one evening.

"Sorry we're so late," Ron's voice was dark with embarrassment and…nerves? "But the idea seemed easy and then it took a whole bunch more work than we thought it would."

Harry sat up from where he was leaning against his pillow to cock his head curiously. Next to his thighs, Crookshanks' tail twitched strongly and the heavy rhythmic weight against the mattress bounced the bed. He had no idea what Ron was talking about and Crookshanks couldn't help with that.

He was a little surprised when, instead of Ron's voice responding, instead it was Seamus who spoke up. "It was all Ron's idea, you know, although Dean was the one who managed to make it work all together, you know."

Dean was there too. "And Seamus was the one who actually cast all the spells, don't let him fool you."

"We just," Ron's voice took over again. "We know how much you like your studying, Harry. And how frustrating not reading must be for you. I mean, I don't get it myself, but I'm your friend, after all. So we got you this."

A pause.

"Er…could you hold out your hand, mate? I can't give it to you unless…Yeah. There you go."

Harry felt something light settle into his outstretched palm and drew it closer to turn it over carefully, his mind already drawing an image of what it looked like based on its weight, its scent, the soft bits and pointy bit and…

A feather. A quill?

Ooh. Harry felt his face flush hot red as he recalled how upset he'd been with Ron for not visiting him in the hospital wing. But Ron was a do-er, not a talker. He'd been making…this, whatever this was.

"It's a…whatever the opposite of a dictaquill is," Ron explain, and Harry was filled with a sudden sense of astonishment and surprise. Did Ron mean what he thought he meant?

"I know you can take notes, somewhat," his red-head friend continued to explain, even as his voice moved backwards and away from Harry's bed again. "But you can't read your notes, and even I thought that that must be frustrating for you. I mean, I think Hermione would explode if it was here."

Harry stifled a grin.

"So," Seamus continued after Ron had paused a beat too long. "We figured you needed something to read back to you. We…pulled this together. I think it will last a bit, at any rate."

Dean's voice from a little further back surprised Harry again. "It's…it's not perfect, but with the tip of the feather – the opposite end to the quill bit, you know – you just brush that against words and Ron's voice will read everything out to you."

"That sounds amazing!"

"It's not that great," Ron rushed to say. "Only Dean has even made stuff before, and never with these charms, he said, so we don't know how long it will last. But it should work, we reckon."

"We've tried it ourselves, for a bit," Seamus picked up. "Ron's voice does the speaking. It's not too bad. We managed it so that most of the words are pronounced correctly."

"If they're not, it's because they're pronounced how they're spelt," Dean added.

Harry turned the lightweight thing over in his hands some more, feeling the emotional weight of it and embarrassingly astonished at what he'd just been gifted.

"You really made this for me? From scratch?"

He heard Ron's robes rustle as he shrugged or flailed a little in embarrassment. "Like we said, it's not perfect, but…do you think it will be useful?"

He couldn't help but grin. "Ron! This is amazing! Seamus, Dean…this is just…I mean, wow! I wasn't expecting…Thank you so much! I'll use this all the time!"

"Oh good," Harry heard Ron exclaim. "It's nothing like what Fred or George could have made, of course, but we did our best—"

Harry waved his voice away. "No, no, really. This is great!"

It made a huge difference; from then on, classes were a huge struggle but possible to follow now, after all. Harry felt a little less useless, and doubled down to work.

A day later he found himself with time to sit and revise in the Room of Requirement while Hermione did her own homework in the Library.

Crow was his seeing-eye bird for the day, but had flown a few feet away to sleep on the back of another chair, Harry figured.

He, meanwhile, assumed he was sitting at a desk in the study-room version of the Room, Harry's own high-backed chair surprisingly comfortable, with his dictaquill notes spread out on the table before him.

Harry rolled the charmed quill-feather over on his left hand and ran a gentle finger up the edge of the feather. He felt the soft vane buckle against his skin as he followed the outer edge all the way up to the tip. The tiny feather-barbs tickled his fingerprints as Harry teased the thing, and he wondered what kind of charms the boys had included in it, so that Ron's voice would recognise the written words beneath it and then pronounce them. It was brilliant.

Then Harry patted the desk before him to finally put his hands on his Runes notes, and brushed the feather blindly over its surface.

Ron's voice spoke monotonously and without echo, dropping into the Room of Requirement's space like a raindrop without a ripple.

Harry pricked his ears.

"Just like Latin grammar," Harry heard Ron mumble, a tad stilted, but repeating Professor Babbling's words verbatim, "Proto-Germanic grammar functions very differently from the structure of its modern equivalents. I have a comparison up on the board, Mister Potter, which you can get later. In the meantime, I'll tell you how, unlike English, in which sentence construction tends to follow the subject-verb-object pattern, Latin often uses a subject-object-verb pattern and yet can vary wildly through other sentence structures also. Additionally, it is what we call a 'pro-drop' language; as in, it tends to use suffixes and context to replace the usage of pronouns and does not necessarily use articles either. Six or seven suffix-types, or 'cases', allow for meaning changes, and thus, verbs in particular can have one root word and over one hundred different verb-endings to shift and specify meaning. Take note…"

Harry found himself reliving the lesson of an hour earlier, thanks to Ron's voice, Seamus' charms and Dean's creativity, or so he assumed. It was embarrassing to realise he'd believed Dean when he said Ron was 'too busy' with gobstones to visit Harry in the hospital wing. Ron had always been big-hearted. Harry should have known better. That hot flush up his neck came back.

But then his mind focused back on the subject before him. Runes this year was going beyond rune meanings to sentencing in Eldar Futhark, Harry knew. He needed to learn Proto-Germanic, he realised with a jolt, sometimes called Common Germanic if he recalled his last year's classes currently.

Then Harry pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a sigh. Another language to learn, he realised with exhausted amusement. And German itself had been hard enough to do in Germany, with speaking Germans, when he could see.

He puffed out his cheeks as the exhalation escaped. It would be intense, Harry realised, so he tilted his head back in his seat to better focus on his plans.

Maybe he'd go outside to reread the notes on his own in the evening, he mused quietly – do his homework outside with his own eyes, get more stuff done out there with the use of his Time-Turner. Yeah, that sounded good.

So, Harry mused silently as he felt tension bleed back into his shoulders again, the year would be doable, theoretically, even if far harder than he had planned.

Even if Harry's eyes stayed messed up for longer than he hoped.

Fortunately, as October passed by at its unpredictable pace, Harry found his control of the lights in his eyes improving. Mildly.

It was good enough outside now, that he could begin working on his own animagus transfiguration as long as he was facing away from the castle, and he learned that Fred and George were right.

Harry found himself shaking his head in frustration on Wednesday evening as he settled down in his regular spot by the Thestral herd and got ready for another attempt to shift into a crow. He half-wished that the older boys were here with him: for advice, for humour, and for safety, because he was rather close to the Forbidden Forest.

But at the same time, they weren't blind, had other things going on, and had far outpaced the rate that Harry's animagus form was shifting.

They would probably not be keen to hand out with him in this chilly, damp wind either, Harry acknowledged, but he was forced to work through it himself. Outside and away from Hogwarts was the only place he could keep his eyes open for a while, after all, and he had stuff to do, dammit.

The problem was, Harry figured, his thoughts going back to his crow-transformation again, that he wasn't attempting mainstream human transfiguration. He wasn't using his wand or the familiar process of external control. Instead, the internal pathways that his magic now followed were new, sore, and unfamiliar.

He was crouched on the damp green grass – and wasn't that a joy to see – and had his brows furrowed in focus, but the process was slow, slow going.

Mostly focused, there was a small corner of his mind that still marvelled at the sight as his perspective shifted ever so gradually. His head and limbs shrank slowly, oh so slowly, as they followed the new pattern in his magic and shifted – inch by minuscule inch – from his human body into that of a crow.

His torso would shift last, Harry realised, and was pleased for a beat that no one would be watching the embarrassing shape.

While using his wand and the usual process would be faster, Harry knew, to shift into a crow or a snake or whatever, it would not be animagus practice; he half-wondered if he should give up on the animagus thing to just work on his mainstream human transfiguration instead. He was good at it now, Harry knew. Very good indeed at Transfiguration. He could probably pass his N.E.W.T.s with an outstanding if he sat them tomorrow.

Then Harry shook his head a little, bird-like, at settled down to focus.

That wasn't the point. He'd done the hard yards already, and transforming without the use of his wand was another survival strategy that he needed in his arsenal.

On his left, in the late afternoon light, Crow sat perched on the outcropping of a fallen branch and stared at Harry while his arms sprouted feathers, and his joints slowly – painfully, awkwardly – turned themselves around.

The magic within him, Harry noticed while his body took long, aching minutes to shift, had changed as his animagus form grew more familiar; possibly it had been the same name-gifting that had incited his mage-sight to come in full-blown and too early.

Where previously his magic flowed like water within him, now it seemed to move like light motes or molten gold: swift and fluid, less hasty but more responsive. His magic was more, somehow, even inside him. And somehow it felt good.

Was his magic more mature, Harry found himself wondering, even as his head finally shrank down to size and sprouted feathers, and his knees turned backwards so that he could hop like a bird on the ground.

Was it the effect of his birthday gifts? The second-self within him? Something else?

Harry didn't know.

Somehow, and Harry wasn't quite sure how, Luna learnt that he could open his eyes outside the castle. Within three days his little Ravenclaw friend had organised for the Patronus Club to start meeting again.

That's how he found himself on the Quidditch Pitch, Thursday afternoon, in front of about 150 students. Professor Flitwick and one of his master's students hung at the back of the crowd as supervision.

Making sure that his back was facing the castle, Harry sat on his broomstick to hover an extra few feet in the air and cast a silent sonorous. His wand pattern flickered in his vision, leaving a tiny trail of light motes in the air.

"Alright, alright, people! Settling down, thanks. Eyes on me…thank you, thank you – Fred, you too, mate…Alright."

With the burden of being mostly blind these days, it was a delight to be able to take in the motley crew in front of him.

Fred, George and Lee were huddled together on Harry's left, wands already in their hands and Gryffindor scarves loose around their shoulders. The old members of the quidditch team were nearby: Katie and Angelina and Alicia looking politely interested in what Harry was to say.

Ron, Seamus, Dean and Neville and Luna were there, even Hermione was taking a break from her intensive research on wizarding healthcare and psychology.

Dark-skinned Andrew Kirke was standing further back, his short head peeking out between two older Hufflepuffs, with his future Quidditch teammates and a bunch of Ravenclaws whose names Harry wasn't sure of and they shuffled their feet quietly and stepped a tad closer to listen to Harry's instructions.

Blond Draco and the Slytherin quidditch team, their Slytherin scarves also on display, hung out on Harry's right. Unlike last year, where they eyed Harry and the rest of the crowd with suspicious sneers, they seemed relaxed and at ease despite the smattering of Gryffindor red throughout the group.

Marcus Flint had left school as had Oliver Wood, Harry remembered, but the familiar faces of Lucian Bole and Peregrine Derrick both shot Harry a friendly grin as his gaze swept over them. He shot them a quirk of the lips back.

Cedric and Cho stood together, bumping shoulders, and a range of their friends stood around them.

Then Colin Creevey, and Ginny and their friends waved at Harry cheekily as he spotted them near the front of the crowd, and little Benny Basset beamed up at Harry, surrounded by a whole crowd of tiny Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff kids, from the very first row.

Harry hovered before them all, feeling the warmth of his protective instincts surge up within him as he counted the familiar faces and their interested, respectful glances. And, at the very back and almost hidden behind the tall shoulders of the older students and new seventh-year students, Harry spotted a nervous gaggle of new students. They came from a range of houses, all mixed up together chaotically, and they stood on their tiptoes and bounced up to spot the Great Harry Potter from afar. Low whispers reached his ears, no doubt excited to see the Boy-Who-Lived in action, and Harry chose to ignore their fuss.

He took a moment to glance up at the darkening sky: the cloud cover was pale but stretched from horizon to horizon, and the sun was settling down into a late-afternoon haze as Harry wet his lips and coughed.

"Welcome back, everyone!" Harry heard his magnified voice echo out across the green pitch before him. "I'm glad to see so many familiar faces back to continue their good work, and a particularly warm welcome to the new faces." He nodded at the extra Slytherin seniors tucked behind their quidditch team, some second-year Ravenclaws, and the first-years near the back.

"We'll start off with a quick refresher of what we covered last year before I'll split you up into two groups: returning students will be on my left," he waved an arm grandiosely, "while I'll work with you new folks on the right for a bit, and cover the basics." His wand arm gestured to the other side.

"And without further ado, we'll get straight into it! As you might remember, we're here to practice an advanced charm, Expecto Patronum, which can be used for messaging, and keeping you safe from the presence of Dementors, Levifolds, and a variety of other Dark creatures. The emphasis of the incantation is on Ex-pecto and pat-ro-num, the second syllables of each word, and the spell is powered by a surge of intense and positive emotion: joy, hope, relief, anticipation will all do, but they must be entirely positive without any regret or concern.

"The wand movement," Harry continued, "which I'm hoping the returning members still remember, is a tight tweak when you're beginning, and the forearm should be fixed – this is a bend of the elbow and wrist, people! No rolling of the forearm at all, please. Keep it in mind! I'll have you all repeat the process with me as a whole in a minute, and then you can break up into your groups to practice in pairs or threes. Repeat after me, now…"

He glanced at the pale clouds above him, then closed his eyes.

For a bare moment, Harry recalled the sheer joy of his most recent birthday: his self-made little family standing by in support, his godfather alive and well, Remus talking to him and teaching him wisdom, the Germans delighting in his presence. He remembered the sheer honour and humbleness that he'd felt when he'd realised how grateful people were for his birth and life, their willingness to write fan letters, and gift presents, and especially names and magic in acknowledgement of how Harry's existence brought hope to people without any.

His lips curled up without any conscious input from him.

He remembered the people who supported him: Percy last year, the twins and Lee now, Mr Lloyd-Elliot and Gladys from the Owl Office, Hermione and Ron and Neville and Luna, Draco, Crookshanks and Kreacher and Dobby and Crow.

Warmth began bubbling up from his chest.

Harry brought to mind the absolute freedom that he had now, to save lives, teach these kids, and keep them safe from all kinds of dangers and worries and attacks. And he remembered, with pride and joy, how – despite everything – he was improving in memory, in power, and in magic. And in hope for the future, and in possibilities.

His body was filled with golden warmth that surged up, and out of him, and brought tears of joy and awe to his eyes. There was a lump in his throat he swallowed back, his eyes burned in the corners where the emotion was gathering, and the clouds seemed to glisten an extra silver light and…

"Expecto Patronum!"

A huge, silver bird flew out of his wand tip and soared over the assembled group of students.

It was silent as it swept across the quidditch pitch, its mouth open in a glorious, soundless shout of defiance against fate; its feathers rustled noiselessly as its wide wings beat against the air.

Harry barely heard the low cries of amazement below his hovering broom – from both returning and new students – as his eyes tracked the light of the bird, the crow, as it turned and swept over the audience full of fierce pride and might before it swooped back to land on the back of his broom brush, still glistening with silver light. It was bigger than he thought, as it flapped its silver wings to land behind him: three feet high at least with a wider wingspan, and taller than Harry's back as he sat there, and still glowing, radiating a warm silver light that had Harry's heart pulse in peace, and joy, and patient hope.

Crow, a much smaller, blacker smudge of feathers, lost his balance on Harry's left shoulder and flapped awkwardly to the ground four feet below in surprise while the crowd continued to exclaim.

"My God," one of the muggleborns said and broke the sudden, shocked silence. There was a clamour of other voices.

"Blimey!"

A female voice: "I knew he could do it; I told you last year he was telling the truth about his corporeal Patro—!"

"It's gorgeous!"

"-ck me sideways," someone muttered.

"It is a crow, do you think? Or a raven?"

"Sweet Circe herself!"

"—and the horse he rode in on, too."

Recollecting himself, but not stopping the unconscious smile on his face, Harry spotted Professor Flitwick wide-eyed and mouth gaping as he took in Harry's Patronus. Draco Malfoy was looking competitive and determined down beneath; Hermione's eyes were alight, and Ron and Neville clenched their jaws in gritty resolution, even as their hands clenched about their wands.

"Uh…thanks, people. Eyes on me now. Settle down," Harry instructed.

It took the crowd a moment.

"Er…right. Now, repeat after me," Harry tried again, once more raising his wand up into the air. He paused a moment as the crowd recollected itself slowly, before once more incanting, "Expecto Patronum!"

A second, smaller silver crow blossomed out of his wand tip, and this time the crowd responded with their own spurts of silver mist.

Half-formed shapes fluttered in the shapeless clouds below him; here, Harry spotted hooved legs from near the front of the returning crowd, there, a long and whipping tail. What was almost certainly the head of a horse reared up from near the Slytherin Quidditch team; a flutter of butterfly wings roiled into shape and then away again.

This time, Harry heard the exclamations from the crowd as they responded to their own successes.

"Hang on – did you see that just now?!

"I almost did it!"

"—Wait, wait, once more and I'll get it—"

From their places at the back of the group, Flitwick and the master's student, somebody Griffiths, started moving forward and into the crowd the better to help. Fred and George turn to stare at each other in excitement, their wands already raised to try for their magpies one more time. Draco leaned down to stare fixedly at what Harry was almost sure was going to be a silver-white peacock, and Harry felt another beat of pride and warmth and triumph in his chest.

They were going to get this.

He was teaching them one more survival strategy as the chaos or war approached, unseen.

The triumph of the thought distracted Harry just enough that he lost the focus on his mage sight, and the world shifted again back into the rainbow prisms of colour and light. But, his back still carefully, carefully pointing towards Hogwarts so he couldn't blind himself with magic, the patroni before him blazed into glory.

No longer simply silvery-white, the misty, indistinct shapes before Harry glowed a multitude of dazzling colours. Gold, purple, green and blue brilliance: gem-coloured lights twinkled and sparkled and shone in Harry's vision.

Each student's patronus mist, indistinct as they were in normal vision, shone a different colour in Harry's sensitive eyes, and the colours weren't blocky or dull. Instead, the details of each patronus hue grew and blossomed in his eyes, so that the purple dog that was forming on his right was lavender-light where the tail would soon be, and a brilliant violet where its haunches would form; the silver-gold badger kit would one day be agate in the eyes and citrine-patterned on its body. With and within the colours, Harry could see the shapes in the formless mist, and blinked rapidly in delight.

And each twinkled and shone and throbbed with light and life and beauty. He forgot to breathe, for a moment, until Crow fluttered back to his spot on Harry's shoulder and pecked him on the ear. He came to himself with a bird-like, full-body shiver and breathed out deeply with satisfaction and pride.

Harry had his hovering broom slowly drift down to the ground so that he could hop off and wander over to the newer students. With a single thought, his huge crow Patronus took flight again to join the smaller one, to glide and hover over the crowd and fill them with inspiration and positive emotions.

It might be just enough for a couple of seniors to have success next time they cast the spell.

And, as Harry stepped over towards the overwhelmed first-years with wide, staring eyes and hopeful faces, Crow stepped more firmly up Harry's shoulder and settled himself in comfortably for a long stay, the better to supervise him with.

The rest of October continued the same way. Blind in classes, but seeing his homework and animagus and the Patronus Club outside.

Harry got good enough at the mage-sight thing to take his blindfold off for the outdoor Astronomy lessons, and started spending more time alone again, using all that he could to catch up on his lessons. Kreacher visited him at school, their first meeting being dominated by alternating tongue-lashings for stupidity and praise for coming into his mage-sight a full forty years early.

Sirius mirror-called in to chat regularly and discovered Harry's latest challenge, which made him roar with laughter and completely miss the danger and frustration that Harry was facing when he was blind. Harry was proud of that one; he was getting better at…'managing' Sirius sounded bad, like manipulation. He wasn't really manipulating people, Harry knew. He was mostly just lying, so that was alright.

With a little more distance from Hermione and Neville, both Crow and Crookshanks got better at protecting Harry from his rabid fans, and it only took a few claws to the face or beaks near the eyes before the rampaging crowds of students kept a nice space between them and Harry in the hallways. Peeves was a bother, but he only threw a vase at Harry's head once, and then Crow and Crookshanks knew to look out for the poltergeist too.

As his little family of defenders grew in determination, Kreacher decided to visit Hogwarts regularly again, in that mysterious way that his house-elves did. As such, it only took two days for Harry to fall back into the habit of using the secret passages made by Kreacher as the Room's master. The space inside them was still acting rather odd, but Harry didn't bother worrying about that because he had so much other stuff to now catch up with.

He barely remembered to worry about Not-Moody, but the fact that he escaped being put under the Imperious because of his 'spell-damage' – the simplest excuse for his blindfold that Harry had thought of – made Not-Moody grumble and ignore him, and Harry was rightly pleased that the returning Dark Lord would not know how he could resist the Unforgiveable.

They finished Switching Spells in Transfiguration, which Harry managed to do without looking at either of the targets and won ten points for Gryffindor. Runes started talking about actual Common Germanic vernacular. Muggle Studies began covering entertainment like board games, and a small fad of Transfiguring Connect Four spread fleetingly through the Houses. In Charms, Harry overcame his inability to banish unseen objects and earned a further five points for his house, and Divination began Astrology, one of Harry's least favourite aspects of the subject. Arithmancy began covering Algebra for the year, Herbology finally moved into Greenhouse Four, and in Care of Magical Creatures Hagrid moved on to teaching about Streelers, which were giant, venomous snails that Hagrid adored.

Meanwhile, Harry kept on skipping Potions and used the time for homework instead. Professor McGonagall never bothered speaking to him about it.

In short, Harry found himself falling back into a routine, right up until October 31st when Professor Dumbledore made an announcement at breakfast.

"As you all no doubt know," his familiar voice rang out over the Great Hall while Harry scooped his porridge up much more skilfully than he had a mere fortnight ago. "Today is a most exciting day for the school. Your fourth-period classes will all finish half an hour early, to give students a chance to return their things to their dormitories, and to tidy their robes and other accoutrements up."

Harry slowed the movement of his spoon.

"I am aware that you have all read the notices in your common rooms—" Harry hadn't; he was blind inside the castle, "—and the gossip and chatter about the castle has been dominated by this subject for a week—" not that Harry had had the time to listen to it, "—but I entreat you to listen, one final time, to the instructions for this afternoon."

Harry sat up straight and, with a quiet clink of his spoon against his bowl lip, place his spoon down without splashing any porridge as far as he could tell.

Dumbledore spoke into a Hall filled with energised silence. "As mentioned, your classes will be let out early, at four-thirty, to give everyone time to return to their common rooms, tidy everything as per your prefects' instruction, and then assemble in the Entrance Hall at five.

"Your Head of Houses will meet you in the Entrance Hall, where they and the prefects will organise you into lines by year group," Dumbledor continued happily. "From there, we will proceed in an orderly manner to the battlements to watch our guests arrive. Please remember to wear your warm cloaks and leave such implements as cameras and omnioculars behind in your dormitories."

Harry swallowed and thought about removing his blindfold to look around the Great Hall.

Only for a moment, mind, because he didn't want to blind his brain or anything, but he had this most horrible feeling that he'd forgotten something very important that everybody else knew about.

The urge to resist the sensation was strong, but a rock settled in Harry's stomach nevertheless.

He practically heard Dumbledore spread wide his arms and beam at the assembled, breakfasting students. "Our two sister schools, Institut Dŭrmstrang and Académie de Magie Beauxbâtons will arrive shortly thereafter. You may," the Headmaster continued, "be more familiar with their English names, Durmstrang Institute and Beauxbatons Academy of Magic. Please be aware that Hogwarts will be opening up more corridors in the West Wing for the visiting students to take classes in—" Harry heard Hermione make an oooh noise on his left, "— and we expect to see you all displaying your very best, most welcoming behaviour over the course of this year."

Right. Of course.

Dumbledore kept speaking. "As per the information in your Common Room notices, there will be scheduled times for cross-cultural exchange, cross-curricular discussions, and time to socialise and meet the visiting students. However, with the exception of our Champions, the year's lessons will continue in the same routine for all students, and we expect you all to take your exams and assessments as seriously as you always do."

He clapped his hands and the whole Great Hall seemed to sit up a little straighter, judging by the rustle.

"As such, I release you all to have a marvellous day. All club meetings today will be cancelled. Any last-minute organisation should be run by your Heads of House. Lost items should be listed with a prefect. Students should attend their lessons as per usual today, and we shall meet again at five-thirty tonight. Blibberment! Sponge! Convivial!"

He stopped talking, and the breakfast hall descended into hurried whispers.

Beside Harry, Neville leaned over to mumble something to Hermione. Ron called lowly across the table to Seamus, and he could hear Fred's identifiable voice rapidly whisper excitedly to Katie Bell.

"Crap," Harry found himself muttering mildly, the traditional Halloween worry burgeoning in his gut. "I can't believe I forgot."