Easter break had finally come to Hogwarts, but to listen to the common room complain, it wasn't much of a break. In fact, as she came back after breakfast on the Saturday after classes, she saw something she'd never seen: Fred and George Weasley with open textbooks.

Since she didn't have as much homework as the others, one of the few advantages of being a first year, she had been drafted to help Ron work on the appeal of Buckbeak the hippogriff. She finally had been told what happened, how Draco had insulted the proud creature, and gotten his arm broken as a result. The Slytherin was lording the upcoming execution over the care of Magical Creatures professor, as well as Harry and his friends.

And much like the caretaker, Mr. Filch, Frisk wondered exactly what had happened to Draco, if his soul had been damaged in some way. But he did, at least, seem to talk to his fellow Slytherins, and she never saw him without his lackeys... but she wasn't confident that they were really friends. So if Harry didn't actually apologize to Draco, she wasn't going to press the issue, even if she did thin k they should be better than their antagonist.

As the calendar had passed into April, it had finally gotten warm enough that she was able to spend more time with some of the others outdoors. One day, Steven had joined her, Opal, Luna, and Ginny under the watchful eye of Madam Hooch. On that day, Frisk attempted to prove how far she'd gotten by engaging in quaffle throwing.

To her surprise, she found that having the ball to throw actually made flying easier. It kept her from remembering just how far it was to the ground, and once she was no longer reminding herself of that, she had a much easier time balancing. Which isn't to say she didn't nearly fall, because she did, but she enjoyed the time more than she normally did.

"It's been fun to watch your dedication," Madam Hooch said. "You've turned into at least a, well, a reasonable flier. If only they matched your aiming and throwing skills, I'd think you might make an excellent chaser. Alas."

"So much for my dreams of Quidditch stardom, I guess," Frisk said, grinning. "But thank you for taking a day of your break to be out watching us."

Madam Hooch smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "I have to be out here with Mr. Potter anyway," she said, nodding to the nearby Gryffindor team practice. "Oh, but I love watching him with that Firebolt. Such a magnificent broom. I've heard that several of the national teams have switched to Firebolts for the Quidditch World Cup."

Frisk continued to listen, because it was always fun to listen to someone with real passion for a subject talk about their joy. Now, if only they could get someone with that same passion for History of Magic, instead of a ghost who was convinced she was someone he taught three hundred years ago... like Napstablook was with his music.

When classes resumed the next Monday, the tension that had been building over the week between Gryffindor and Slytherin spilled out of the common rooms. Steven might have been the first person bullied in the Hogwarts halls, but he certainly wasn't the last. Frisk tried to be the voice of reason whenever she could, but usually the best she could do was point out the portraits were always watching, and keep out of the way of flying jinxes.

She saw more than her share of aftereffects of curse and revenge curse between classes, but the absolute strangest was on the Thursday of that week. Professor Sprout had, after Herbology, asked her to take a spray bottle full of liquid up to Madam Pomfrey. The request took Frisk by surprise, but the professor said she was the one the healer trusted the most.

"Why? Is this some kind of dangerous potion?" Frisk had asked, eying the bottle skeptically.

"No, it's weed killer," the professor told her. She shook her head and gave Frisk a wry smile. "You'll see."

And Frisk did see. Madam Pomfrey only let in Frisk after seeing who was at the hospital door. Frisk had to promise, again, not to repeat what she saw to anyone else. And that was probably for the best. Just how do you explain, after all, that she'd seen two very unhappy students with leeks growing out of their ears?

So she was a bit behind the majority of the Gryffindors that came into Defense Against the Dark Arts that afternoon. Which meant she was among the last to realize that, for a second time, Lupin was not at the teacher's desk. Instead, there was a woman with a warm smile, green eyes, and white fur... "Mom!" Frisk said in shock. Any sense of decorum was lost, she dropped her school bag in the doorway, and raced to embrace her adopted mother. Her mom returned the embrace, gently, before disentangling herself from her adopted daughter.

There was a brief titter of amusement through the Gryffindors, but Frisk didn't care. The sound of someone older clearing his throat, on the other hand, got her attention. She stepped back and looked around. There, sitting next to a pale looking Professor Lupin, was a smiling Headmaster Dumbledore.

Frisk turned the scarlet of her Gryffindor scarf, retrieved her school bag, and took her seat.

"I seem to have been upstaged," Lupin said, and his soft voice was even softer than usual, but he was smiling. Frisk stammered through an apology to the professor. "As I am coming down with something," Lupin said, acknowledging Frisk with a nod, "The Headmaster has invited one of the 'Monsters' formerly trapped behind the Mt. Ebott barrier to give a guest lecture, and allow all of us to learn more about them. So, please allow me to introduce Ms. Toriel Dreemurr. I trust you will treat her with the same respect you give to me."

"Thank you, Professor Lupin," Toriel began. "While monsters come in all shapes and sizes, we have been, like wizards and witches, classified as magical beings..."

While Frisk knew everything that Toriel went through, she couldn't help but to listen transfixed. She knew her mother had always wanted to be a teacher, but this is the first time she'd realized just how good she would be at it. She managed to keep the entire classes attention throughout the period, pausing to ask questions (but not let Frisk answer them) when she thought they could answer them. She even managed to remember names, something Frisk had struggled with off and on with the entire year.

While there was no mention of soul magic, which didn't really surprise her, Toriel did demonstrate her innate skill at conjuring fire, by lighting a candle. "My friend Undyne can conjure straight force, which I cannot do." It was still no substitute for wand magic, something that Toriel said she had been forbidden from exploring for herself or other monsters. That was the one time Toriel's smile had slipped, but she'd recovered quickly.

After class, Frisk waited patiently as the rest of Gryffindor filed out to have a chance to talk to her mother. "So, what do you think, Headmaster Dumbledore?" Toriel asked politely.

"I think you did very well," he responded, his eyes twinkling. "Professor Lupin has told me that you've performed similarly during the previous classes, so I hope that you will continue to be able to lecture the remaining classes tomorrow."

"It would be my honor, and my pleasure," Toriel told him, trying, and not quite succeeding, to not show just how excited she was to the headmaster. "You've given me a chance to do something I've always wanted to do."

Frisk's happiness for her mother was tempered by Lupin's appearance. He looked sick. Was it that phase of the moon? Was that what was doing it? "I hope you feel better, Professor Lupin," she told him.

"Thank you, Frisk. Your daughter is an extremely compassionate individual, Ms. Toriel," Lupin told her. "She has been a real pleasure to have in my class." Toriel beamed at her.

"I apologize, Frisk," the headmaster said. He shifted his gaze between Frisk and Toriel, "I must speak to your mother privately for a little bit. She should have time after dinner tonight, at least, if she would like to join us at the staff table. If Frisk thought her mom was excited before, she was practically glowing now.

"Okay." Frisk said, nodding to the two teachers, and if wasn't for them, would have probably given her mother another hug. Instead, "How about we meet in the entrance hall after dinner, it should be relatively quiet there," This seemed to be agreed, at least, nobody told her no, so she headed out to drop off her bag in her room before dinner.

But as she left she heard Dumbledore ask. "Is it true that Frisk was risking her soul to save the monsters underground?"

Frisk flattened herself outside the door to listen in.

"It is, kind of." Toriel admitted. "I tried my best to stop it from happening. She wasn't risking her soul the same way you would around dementors, but monster soul magic is what it is. King Asgore, and his guard, were collecting human souls to break the barrier. When it was broken, however that happened, they were gone, wherever human souls go, I guess."

"How do you feel about that?" Dumbledore pressed. "Would you let her do it again, if you had to?"

"To save people? Save people she hadn't even met? I hope so. I am so proud of her, and so happy she was willing to stay with me..."

Frisk realized what Dumbledore had just done, and slipped away, grinning to herself. Now she really could count herself. But she really did have to get her bag put away, and she wanted to find the others, especially Opal, Ginny, and Luna, to introduce them to her mother.

As it turned out, that wasn't very hard. There was only two conversation topics over dinner, the Slytherin and Gryffindor Quidditch final (being given as a toss-up. Gryffindor was the stronger side, but Slytherin had the advantage going into the final), and that Dumbledore has invited a monster to lecture. From what she overheard about Toriel, though, from the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs around her, suggested they'd really enjoyed the lesson. "I wanted to tell you over lunch," Opal, who was sitting behind her, admitted. "I had Defense this morning, but she asked me not to."

Frisk looked up to the staff table, where she seemed to be having a good conversation with Professor Flitwick. "I guess she wanted it to be a surprise. It worked, too," Frisk admitted, "I was certainly surprised. I hope I didn't embarrass her in front of Dumbledore."

"It was a bit unexpected," said Kevin Duncan, who was sitting next to her. "But I don't know how I would have reacted had my mum showed up in the middle of my school day."

Frisk carefully watched the staff table, and when it was clear her mom was done eating, she pulled her friends along, ready to introduce them all. They gathered in the entrance hall, and Frisk introduced them one by one: Opal, her personal flying instructor, Steven, her new potions partner, Luna, her most insightful friend, and of course, Ginny, without whom she'd have never have made it to Hogwarts.

Her mom personally greeted them all, right back. "Some of you I've had the chance to meet in class, the rest of you, I'm looking forward to it." They talked for a short time, before the students had to get back to their respective common rooms for curfew. "And thank you for being good friends with Frisk, she's spoken so well of all of you. It's a pleasure to meet you at last."

The quidditch final was that weekend, and Frisk spent breakfast insisting she really didn't care to attend the match. "I know it's for the cup," Frisk said. "I just don't actually care about quidditch!" In fact, it was hard not to feel sorry for the Slytherin team. It seemed almost everyone in both Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff had lined up against them too, and here was Harry showing off his Firebolt like it was some sort of trophy. Were sports really supposed to be about the tools?

But she was dragged to match by Opal and Ginny anyway. Once the game had started, the horrible sportsmanship that the Slytherin side was demonstrating was making it really hard not to actively root against them. On the other hand, the interplay between the seekers was the best of any match she'd seen. It'd probably have taken Hermione's dentist parents to extract it from Ginny, but Malfoy was actually a pretty good seeker. That said, Harry had a better broom (unfair), and adeptly skilled at realizing each trick Malfoy was trying to escape his stalker and blocking him out of it (fair). Frisk's sympathy vanished completely when Malfoy grabbed on to Harry's broom.

When it was all over, and pandemonium was reigning for Gryffindor house (even Hermione had gotten in on it), Frisk couldn't help but notice how dejected the Slytherin house members looked. She supposed that was the thing about sports, there'd always be winners and losers. "Don't feel bad for them, Frisk," Opal told her, as the rest of the Gryffindor dogpiled the team. "The Slytherins won at least the last two years running. If you want to feel bad for someone, Hufflepuff's quidditch team could use the sympathy. We've been in the basement for at least that long."

The party in the common room went on the rest of the evening and well into the night. For a change, no rat, nor attack, nor even a complaining head of house spoiled the party. Even Hermione had given up trying to study, and had joined in with full fervor.

That Sunday, as a majority of Gryffindor slept in, and slept off the party, Frisk found herself in a less busy great hall than normal. As the owls swept through, dropping their mail, Frisk began to once again, think about who she should be asking for her seventh person. But each person she thought of, she discarded. She was so focused that she didn't notice Steven coming up behind her until he tapped her on the shoulder, causing Frisk to let out a "Yipe!" of surprise, and several Gryffindors to look around to see what the issue was.

"Oh," she told him. "Sorry, Steven, I didn't see you there. How are you?" she said, her heart rate slowly returning to normal.

"I've got my form signed," he said, holding out an envelope, smiling at her.

"Did your parents say anything?"

"Only that they trusted me to have thought what I was doing through," he told her. "Otherwise, they didn't think Dumbledore would let us do anything truly dangerous, and it was a privilege to be asked. My parents don't have a large circle of friends, but are very close to the ones they do have. They believe Slytherin have to be loyal their own, because nobody else will. So they encourage me to be very loyal to the friends I do have."

"Are there any loyal friends that we could ask to be our seventh?" Frisk asked, as a bleary-eyed Ginny sat down across from her, searching for pumpkin juice.

"No, and I think it's a bad time to ask. You'd think someone died in the dungeons last night," Steven said.

"I'm sorry, Steven. It's just that exams are what, a month or so away now? And I'm starting to run out of time, and I still only have six..."

Whap! A piece of paper was swatted down on the table near Frisk, causing her orange juice to wobble dangerously. Frisk blinked at it for a moment before realizing what it was: One of Dumbledore's permission slips. As she reached the bottom, she realized it had been signed: Augusta Longbottom. As Frisk looked around in astonishment, her eyes rose to meet the eyes of Neville, the proudest she'd ever seen him. "You have seven," he told her.

"How?" she managed to get out, as Steven and Ginny both stared at him.

"Hermione told me, Frisk. I was sitting next to Ron when his came, and I asked her if she knew what it was he was so excited about," he told her. "But, why didn't you ask me? You could have, you know."

"Because," Frisk said, feeling her face turning red, "I didn't want you to feel like you were in my debt. My help doesn't come with a price tag."

"Neither does mine, Frisk," Neville said.

Frisk stood suddenly and hugged Neville, much to his surprise. There was some laughter at Neville's shock, but nobody was paying that much attention to them.

"Besides," Neville said, "Gran was so excited. She included a long letter about how both Mum and Dad would have been proud of me, and she's sure of it. Because she was proud of me." He looked up at the staff table. "Dumbledore is here, we should go take them up." Steven, Frisk, and Neville all headed up.

The topper for Neville, Frisk was sure, came that evening, as he was moping outside the portrait hole entrance to Gryffindor tower that evening. Frisk was running to help him get into the tower, but it was, of all people, Professor McGonagall who beat her there.

She looked at him, smiled and said, "The password is Carpe Diem, Mister Longbottom. And you have done so, admirably."