Up in his room, Harry Potter froze once more as another owl came swooping in. And another, two more, a few more – what was this, an owl festival?

All the owls were unknowns, and Harry felt the fear rise up in him once more. The all too familiar sense of dread was rising up like bile; Harry felt physically sick at the thought of expulsion. In his first year, after they had met Fluffy for the first time, Hermione had said that being expelled was worse than death. At the time, Harry and Ron had thought her to be mad, but now, Harry wasn't too sure – he had faced death more times than he could count on one hand, and never felt this type of real fear, like now. The only thing that came close was the Dementors, but he knew how to counter them, so they weren't much of a threat anymore.

Thinking of the Dementors, Harry remembered what his Bogart was – fear. What Harry feared most was, in fact … fear. That may be impressive to some people, but to Harry, it just signified another weakness; Harry could quite easily be paralysed by fear, and it scared him. He scoffed at himself internally; disgusted that he was more scared of being expelled than of dying.

The boy came to his senses quickly, and realised that it had been the adrenalin rush that took the place of fear, and Hermione had been (and still was) mental! All those times, after the events, he had had nightmares, and was absolutely terrified – death was just as scary as it ever had been, and expulsion wasn't quite so bad as it seemed to start with.

The young man swallowed hard, licked his paper-dry lips, and reached for the first envelope …

I think I've been mean enough for now…

… and breathed a sigh of relief – feeling rather foolish.

Once Harry had sorted through that massive amount of mail, it was well into Thursday morning, and he was still grinning, still refreshed from his impromptu nap earlier. The letters were from the various bookshops, and all the owls were needed to carry the vast amount of books he had ordered a few days before.

Now he could really get started!

At three a.m. Harry called it a day, and went to sleep.

He woke to his aunt's screech of

"GET UP!" just about five hours later (his family might have been being nicer, but they still hated him). Nearly fifteen years of practise meant that he immediately jumped out of bed and began to get dressed. It was only after he was half way down the stairs and thinking about what to cook for Dudley that he remembered something very important.

"I don't have to!" and he went back upstairs.

The young wizard sat at the repaired desk, and remembered all of yesterday's events. He had done magic, underage and out of school, and the Ministry of Magic still hadn't sent an owl.

"Maybe they wont…

"That's it! They wont send one, because it wasn't wand magic! I could ask Moony about that"

Dear Professor Moony,

I have been thinking a lot recently, and going back over my time at Hogwarts. There is one thing that I don't understand though – when Dobby did magic, why was I blamed? This was during the summer of 1992.

Thanks!

Prongslet.

As before, the boy discretely dropped the parchment on the ground, before trudging back up to his room. He wanted to have finished the book on Occlumency before Friday evening, and looking at the number of pages and size of print, that would be a tall order.

Talking of Friday, he really needed to ask permission to go – he would go anyway, but it was just the polite thing to do!