Outside Professor McGonagall's office – a few minutes earlier
"Sorry about the detention, kid," Sirius told his godson as he exited McGonagall's office after him, closing the door behind them. "But on a more positive note, at least it's not with Snape, which is always a victory."
"At least it ends just before the team's last Quidditch game," Harry added in relief. "They'd murder me if I couldn't make it to the game…"
"I'm sure Ginny would step in your defence before they had the chance to kill you," Sirius pointed out. "After all, she needs you alive in order to snog you."
"Are you kidding me? She'd be the one leading the angry mob towards me," Harry corrected him. "She might not want to kill me but she'd at least hex me badly for missing the game. Ginny really doesn't mess around when it comes to Quidditch."
Sirius let out a fake emotional sigh. "Ah, redheads. Hair as bright as lava; fierce as a volcano." He clapped his godson's back, grinning. "Perfect for you, isn't she?" But before he could say anything else, loud voices coming from somewhere on his right on the opposite side of the hallway – a supposedly empty classroom – caught his attention.
He turned to Harry with an inquisitive expression on his face and the young boy nodded, confirming he'd heard it too. They casually took a few steps to the right until they had a visual through the open door of what was going on. "Looks like someone is hearing it," Sirius whispered to Harry, who nodded. Inside the classroom, they could see a red-faced – not from embarrassment but from anger instead – Draco Malfoy being scolded by none other than Snape.
"Am I seeing things?" Harry mumbled as he stood by his godfather's. "Is Snape actually lecturing Malfoy?"
"Seems like it." Next thing you'll know, Sirius thought in disbelief, pigs will be flying over our heads. He wasn't close enough to hear what the scolding was about (not to mention the slight ringing sound coming from the room indicated the use of a Muffliato) but the fact that Severus Snape was giving a lecture to someone from his house, let alone Malfoy who was undoubtedly one of his favourites, was definitely… weird. Narcissa was in the room as well, though she seemed to have chosen to remain silent, only intervening from time to time – her face was blank like whatever was being discussed bothered her.
The lecturing went on for a few minutes more, growing more and more tense by the second. At some point, Draco even started to shout back at the teacher, though neither Sirius not Harry could make out his words though the Muffliato barrier… In the end of it, the youngest Malfoy stormed out of the classroom angrily and quickly disappeared from their view – he neither acknowledged Harry and Sirius, leading them to believe maybe he hadn't noticed them there, nor his own mother's voice, yelling at him to come back.
If she had looked freaked out earlier, now Narcissa seemed furious. She took it out on Snape first, yelling at him with an accusing look on her face and poking his chest with her index finger repeatedly. And then, after storming out of the classroom as her son had, she noticed her cousin's presence along with Harry's. They couldn't have been in a worse place at that moment.
From the spot where he stood, Sirius raised his eyebrows at Narcissa's staring and found it fitting to give her a mocking grin and a wave. At that, the blonde gritted her teeth and deepened her glare – and then, to Sirius's surprise, started making her way to them. Well, damn, he thought – provoking her had definitely been a very bad idea…
"Keep your hand on your wand, kid, looks like we're about to get company. Let me do the talking," he told Harry under his breath, who nodded and reached for his pocket keeping his hand in it. Then, after taking a breath, Sirius took a few steps forward, towards Narcissa, hoping that it would show his cousin that she'd have to go through him if she intended to have a one-on-one with Harry.
Narcissa's eyes were blazing when she reached him and stopped only a few feet away from him. He'd known that face back when they were kids – it was her I'm-not-done-with-you-yet face. "Don't you dare stand there looking so smug," she hissed.
"You know, if the way I look bothers you, maybe you should do what normal people do: look away," he told her without humour in his voice. "Actually, do even better: go away."
"You always thought you were so good, didn't you? Defying the family, our beliefs… " she asked him with hostility. "All smug about your little blood-traitor friends and your blood-traitor new family."
It was like she was actually trying to cause a fight. Of course she is, Sirius thought. Narcissa was looking for somebody to throw her anger at and there he was… might as well be wearing a bow and everything. Well, she wouldn't be so lucky with him.
"You're so proud, aren't you? That your brat," the woman continued, looking at Harry standing immobile, not a few feet behind Sirius as he had intended but instead by his godfather's side, and glared some more, "got my Draco in trouble."
"Well, not that you mention it, Cissy, yes, I am. I really am," Sirius replied matter-of-factly. "Pity all he got from trying to use an unforgivable was a week's worth of detention. But, really, keep your son going that way. Worse that can happen is him sharing a cell at Azkaban with his daddy. Speaking of which, how's Lucius enjoying the five-star treatment from the Dementors? They're a bit cold to their guests but you can't blame them – it's just their nature."
His cousin's face went even more furious and she lifted her hand, intending to slap him. He got a hold of her arm first, though, stopping her midway. "Who do you think you are to slap me? My mother?" he asked her in an ice-cold tone.
She gave him a nasty look, pulling her arm away. "Auntie couldn't have made a better choice when she kicked you out," Narcissa hissed.
His eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. He felt as amused as one could feel in the middle of a fight like that. "That's what she told you? Oh, that's just… typical. So typical. Well, sorry to destroy your illusion but I ran away," he told her. "Nobody kicked me out. And that is to this day one of the best choices I've ever done in my life."
Her lips pursed together and seemed to lose all the red in them. Sirius knew that look too – wounded pride or at least something close to it. She seemed tempted to leave but what was left of that pride wouldn't let her walk away without having the last word in that fight. Her eyes aimed at Harry, seeing as she had no more stones to throw at Sirius, and she glared. "You stay away from my son, Potter." And then, Narcissa Malfoy walked away before giving either the chance to respond.
"Why doesn't she tell her precious son to do the same?" Harry mumbled under his breath as the woman walked away in a superior fashion, apparently returning to the classroom where she, Snape and Draco had been having their dispute in order to get the things she'd left behind. He turned to his godfather, whispering. "Was she always this…?" He gestured in frustration with his hands, unable to find a word suitable enough to define her.
Instead, Sirius came up with several. "Superior? Bitchy? Snobbish? A pain in the arse?" Sirius suggested. "Take your pick."
"Merlin, you sure have a lot of names to qualify her," Harry mumbled.
"Narcissa has always inspired me in what came to profanity," he informed his godson. "But, answering your question, yeah, she was always like that, though the reasons for it varied along the years. See, when we were kids, she was also insufferable all the time as she thought she was the best because she was blonde and nobody else in the family was. Said she was 'gifted'," he stated, rolling his eyes. "I say she's blonde because Auntie Druella went apple-picking outside of the family orchard, if you know what I mean…" And just as if he'd been timing it, Narcissa exited the classroom again, carrying a horrid crocodile-skin bag along with her right when he was about to finish his statement. Because he felt daring at that moment, Sirius raised his voice a few decibels when he spoke again making sure his words came out just as she was walking past them. "Maybe it is no coincidence that out of that wretched brood, Andromeda was the only one that came out normal."
Narcissa only hurried her pace as she walked away, not looking at Harry nor Sirius as she muttered something about Bellatrix teaching him a lesson someday soon, which made Sirius bite his own lip.
"What did I just miss?" the two of them heard Mia's familiar voice asking from behind them. Both turned around to see her watching Narcissa's retreating from McGonagall's doorway with a confused look on her face.
"Nothing worth witnessing," Sirius told her shortly. "Cissy and I only had a mild exchange of words."
"And she tried to slap Sirius," Harry pointed out.
Mia nodded, an unconvinced look on her face. "Awfully mild, I see."
Her husband shrugged. "It was nothing." Discretely, he reached with his hand to touch hers, recalling how upset she'd seemed earlier. "Are you okay?"
She nodded. "I'm fine," she replied shortly before turning to Harry. "Let's go to the kitchens. I suppose we should have a little chat in private."
Harry swallowed hard in a way that made his already aching lip, product of his altercation with Malfoy, sting in an even more uncomfortable way. "In how much trouble am I, really?"
Mia shook her head. "None with me, actually," Mia replied with a sigh. "I don't expect you not to defend yourself when some spoiled bratty kid attacks you. And speaking of which…" she said, her eyes fixed on his split lip. She used her hand to shift his jaw slightly to its left, where the cut was. "That ought to be painful."
"Just hurts a little," he said bravely.
She shook her head. "Don't be silly."Mia reached for her wand and pointed it at the cut. Harry didn't need to think twice in order to recognize the healing spell Mia whispered – back when he and Izzy were little, his godmother using it to fix their scraped knees and elbows was as much part of their routine as bathing or having breakfast. "Most of it is healed but it will still feel tender."
"Sounds like there will be no snogging with our favourite redhead for the next few days," Sirius told him in a mocking tone as they started walking towards the kitchens.
They reached the main staircase and made their way down to the entrance hall before taking the usual way to the kitchens through the little door behind the Great Staircase. The proceedings were also the usual from then on, involving Sirius tickling the pear in the large fruit bowl portrait that covered the entrance to the kitchens, which opened to let them in.
Mia gestured towards a table in the corner and Sirius and Harry followed her there. They sat, unnoticed by most of the elves that too were busy cooking and preparing dozens of platters for the dinner banquet that was to happen around three hours from then to mind them. When Harry tried to place on a chair the book-bag he'd been carrying all that time, which was getting rather heavy on his shoulder, he missed it by a few inches and it fell down, sprawling his books all over the floor. "Oh, damn it," he cursed under his breath, reaching down to the floor to pick up the books. Before he could pick them all up, Sirius leaned down too and picked one of them, bringing it up. It was his copy of 'Advanced Potion-Making', Harry realized with a gulp – seemed like his secret weapon to triumph in potions about to be revealed.
"Blimey, kid," Sirius mumbled, noticing the heavy scribble all over the textbook's margins as he placed it opened on their table. "Have you been possessed by Moony or Hermione to take this many notes?"
"Er… I…" He had no idea what to say.
"Let me see that," Mia requested, getting a hold of it. It didn't take her long to look up at Harry and raise an eyebrow. "This is not your handwriting."
"Ah, the typical the-exams-are-starting-in-two-weeks-let-me-borrow-all-your-notes act," Sirius concluded. "Classic. Don't be ashamed, Harry, we've all done that. Some more than most"
It would have been so easy to just go along and not tell them that was actually his book… or rather the book that he'd switched with his real one because it had oh-so-great notes all over it that made him for once do anything decent in his potions class… But going along would have been lying and, Merlin, after the issue with the Horcruxes, he couldn't just do it flat to Sirius and Mia's faces. Worse that could happen by telling the truth was him getting a lecture… and well, Mia taking the book away by using the same logic Hermione did and assuming it was cheating… But it was still the right thing to do. He gulped once and spoke. "Actually," he said, "that's my book."
Mia raised her eyebrows. "Than whose handwriting is this? It's not Ron's or Hermione's. I've corrected enough of their essays to know that. So whose is it?"
"I don't really know," he confessed. "Those notes were already in the book when I got it."
She raised her eyebrows. "When you got it?" she asked as Sirius got a hold of the book again and started examining its pages. "That book came straight from Flourish & Blots months ago and I'm pretty sure they don't sell books that have stuff written by hand all over them."
"Well…" Harry started. "Remember how I thought that because I got an E in Potions, I wouldn't be able to attend the NEWT level class because Snape only accepted people with an O in his class so we didn't get me a textbook for it?" He said that part awfully fast, causing Sirius and Mia to only make some sense out of what he'd said a few seconds later, just as he continued. "And how it turned out that after all Slughorn took over the class, he let me in it so I had to borrow an old textbook from his stash?"
Sirius looked up from the pages he was reading for a moment. "I'm gonna take a wild guess and say this is actually the book you borrowed and not the one we got you later," he said, finding Harry's storing rather intriguing in a good way.
Harry nodded slowly and turned to his godmother. "Er… sorry?"
"Oh, no you're not," Mia replied, her eyes narrowing. "Why on Earth would you switch an old book for a new one?"
"Because this book is bloody brilliant," Sirius replied before his godson had a chance to speak, pushing the open book in front of Mia. "It has instructions all over, tricks, tips… stuff that makes your life a lot easier."
Mia covered her face with her hands and huffed. "Aw, Harry," she said in frustration. "So that whole success at Potions… it was actually cheating?"
It was almost like hearing Hermione's lecturing all over again. "Not cheating. I was just… following slightly different recipes than the ones the other people were."
Mia didn't seem very convinced while Sirius… well, he didn't seem to see anything wrong about the book, so fascinated he was with it. "Merlin, I would have killed to have a book like this one. It would've saved me a lot of trouble…" he mumbled as if he were a kid delighted with a new Christmas present.
That one had Harry confused. "Trouble? According to McGonagall, you aced at most of the subjects without really trying," Harry replied, his eyebrow raised.
"'Most' being the keyword. Potions was by far my worst subject, which is probably related to the fact that most of my cooking experiences involve coal-like food in the end…" he mused, giving Mia a shippish look that made her roll her eyes. "But, Merlin, I was bad at potions. There was this time during class in my fifth year when the fumes of a potion actually burned out your father's eyebrows."
Harry stared, his mouth hanging open. "No way. I don't believe it. Neville is bad at Potions and not even he has done something like that," he said in disbelief.
Mia sighed, allowing herself to let go of the cheating matter for just a little and relax. "It's true," she confirmed, turning to her husband. "Though I'll point that it had less to do with your lack of knack for potions and more with the fact that you were busy playing hangman with…" she paused for a moment, recalling it had been Wormtail that Sirius had been disytracted with, and chose not to say his name out loud. "You were playing hangman instead of paying attention to your potion."
Sirius seemed to remember that too as he tensed, even though she hadn't said the traitor's name out loud. He did his best not to let it bother him, though. "It might have had something to do with that," he admitted, clearing his throat and looking back down at the book, rummaging through the pages some more in silence.
"But Harry, about you using that textbook…" Mia started.
"You don't think it's a good idea," Harry guessed easily.
"Can you even imagine who wrote all those notes, Harry?"
"Sort of," he said. "It says on the last page of the book that it belongs to some bloke who calls himself the Half-Blood Prince."
"The Half-Blood Prince?" Mia asked sceptically.
"The kid is right. It's right here," Sirius declared as he opened the book, showing its last page to Mia. The words were clear in it: This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince. "That must have been a cocky bloke to call himself a prince…"
"Harry, you know there's no royalty in the Wizarding World," Mia said, then.
"I know but…" He sighed. "Look, whoever it belonged to, this book – the notes in it – saved Ginny's life. If it didn't say that a Bezoar could fight most sorts of poison, I wouldn't have used it back in March when she was poisoned and she would have died. I also know it's not cursed because I had Hermione checking it herself and if she said it didn't have dark magic, it's because it didn't – she doesn't like the book much either."
"Still, Harry…" Mia started before sighing and pausing, letting a long moment of silence flow, leaving both her and Harry awfully uncomfortable. There were just so many reasons for her not to let him keep that book…
"Hey. What's this spell? I never heard of it," Sirius said at some point, pointing at a specific piece of scribble on one of the books' pages. It said Sectumsempra, a word that was followed by little note, pointing out that it was meant to be used on enemies.
Harry shook his head. "I don't know. I never tried it."
Both his godparents looked at him in surprise. "You never tried it?" Mia asked, astonished. That was so unlike Harry: as much as she told him to be cautious, he usually always ended up giving in to curiosity instead…
"Not even in a tree or something just to see what it does?" His godfather added, receiving a head-shake in return. "Why not?"
Harry sighed. "It's a long story."
"Well, shorten it up, then," Sirius urged him.
He looked at them uncertainly at first but then went ahead and spoke. "It's Ginny," he told them. "At first she freaked out about me using the book. I mean, you now what the diary did to her – it's pretty understandable she'd freak out over me using a book that told me what to do. After Hermione checked it and it turned out not to have any dark magic in it, Ginny calmed down a little but just in case, she asked me to promise her that I wouldn't use any spell or any weird ingredient in it that book that I didn't know already and wasn't mentioned in any regular textbook."
"And you kept that promise," Mia finished for him, her lips curling slightly – somehow knowing he'd done that for Ginny eased some of her doubts about the book…
"I figured that even though it might be really fun to use that spell on Malfoy and cause his toenails to burst into flames or something, it wouldn't be worth it if the cost was having Ginny freaking out over it…"
Sirius just looked at him for a few moments, his arms crossed over his chest. "Boy, you're really arse over elbow in love with that one, aren't you?" he observed.
His godson blushed slightly even though he knew that already.
"Alright," Mia started in a conclusive tone. "So, the book is not cursed and it helped Ginny. I get it, Harry, I really do. But even if I'm willing to let you get away with it as your godmother," and she wasn't all that much, "as teacher I simply can't ."
"Why not?" he asked in a mumble. "Wait, are you going to tell Slughorn…"
"For all intents and purposes, outside this kitchen I'll have no knowledge of you ever using that book before today," she assured him at first. "But I can't let you keep it. If you used it in your exam, it would be cheating. You know it would, Harry."
"So I have to get rid of it?" Harry asked weakly, his hand reaching protectively for the book – he really didn't want to do that after all the help the Prince had provided him with.
"We could just take it home and let you have it back when the year is over," Sirius suggested – he found the book too brilliant to end up in a trashcan… He turned to his wife. "We could, couldn't we?"
Mia sighed. "Alright. We could do that," she accepted before looking at Harry. "Honey, you know it's the right thing to do. I'll be damned if you can't ace that potions exam without some smartarse book with a few more instructions than the other ones. That 'E' you got at Potions didn't come out of thin air. You don't need to cheat to be good at potions."
Harry sighed. She did seem to have a point. "Alright," he said, handing his godmother his copy of 'Advanced Potion-Making'. "But I'll still need a textbook for the rest of the year and I can't get the one I switched for this one. I mean, Slughorn keeps the books in his ingredient stash and he always keeps it closed. Either I'd have to break in to get it or ask him for it – Merlin knows he'd start asking questions if I did…"
"Well," Sirius suggested. "I do know where your father's old book is, if you're interested. It's right in this school, by the way."
Harry's face turned to him in surprise. "It is?"
Sirius nodded. "James sort of had this end-of-the-year ritual. First thing he'd do right after his last exam was grabbing the books he wouldn't use anymore and dumping them in the Room of Requirement's place to hide things, hoping to never lay eyes on them again. His old Potions book is most likely there too and if you want it, it's yours."
"Thanks," Harry said, a small smile on his face. Sure, he was still a bit annoyed for having to let go of the Prince's book but it seemed like a pretty good deal getting his father's old one instead…
"Great, let's get it now," Sirius said eagerly, motioning to get up before his wife stopped him.
"Wait," she said. "We were supposed to come down here to talk about Harry's fight with Malfoy, weren't we?" Mia turned to her godson. "And there's no way I'm letting you walk away without at least telling us what you were actually doing to 'run into' Malfoy in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Because I don't buy it the way you said it."
"Oh," Harry mumbled. Sometimes she could see right through him so well that it was… well, it was scary. "I… I was watching him through the Marauder's map. Just to see if he would vanish from the map again, that is. I couldn't help going to check what the guy was doing just when he walked into a girl's bathroom alone. I didn't know he was weeping."
"What were you expecting to find him doing? Cosmetic charms in front of a mirror?" Mia asked in return. "I'm not going to say you shouldn't go on those spying missions because there's just no use doing it – but you still shouldn't go alone, Harry."
"If Ron or Hermione had been with you, they'd have had your back," Sirius agreed with his wife. "Not to mention it would have been much easier to prove he had actually tried to use the Cruciatus curse on you…"
"If I took Veritaserum…"
"Kid, as long as you believe in something, Veritaserum would deem it as the truth," Sirius told him. "They could have just said that, because you felt threatened by Malfoy, you imagined one of the curses he used to be an unforgivable. Do you realize how many suspected Death Eaters have pull within the Wizengamot? Malfoy would be protected in there…"
Harry huffed. "Well, seems like I'll just have to get used to another week of detention…"
"McGonagall believes you," Mia told him. "That's why she arranged for you to serve detention with Slughorn – apparently his detentions are a joke. She won't be so nice with Malfoy."
"Still sucks," Harry mumbled.
"Aw, get that pout out of your face, kid," Sirius told him, clapping his back. "See the positive side: Malfoy is serving detention with McGonagal. She can be really mean when she's pissed off. Believe me, I know. Once made me scrub the whole floor of the Great Hall by hand. Took me days to finish it."
Harry sighed. "Let's hope she has him scrubbing every toilet in the castle instead," he mumbled.
When the door of the room of requirement – now acting as the room of hidden things – opened, Harry's jaw nearly dropped. It's size seemed to have tripled and inside the large room, there hundreds… no, thousands of the most varied sort of objects one could possibly imagine.
"Neat, isn't it?" Sirius asked with a grin as he stepped in after Harry and closed the door behind him. Having ran into Izzy on their way up, Mia had stayed back chatting with her daughter while the two of them took care of getting the book in the room of requirement.
"Merlin, I'm pretty sure this place is even a bigger mess than it used to be," Sirius mumbled under his breath as he had to step over what seemed to be a birdcage in order to make his way to where he believed his late best-mate's books to be. "You should probably be careful while wondering around here," Sirius told his godson, knowing he was following him. "You never know what could jump on you coming from a pile of rubbish."
"You think there's… living stuff in here?" Harry said, stopping as he stood in front of some mysterious cabinet – likely one of many in that room…
Sirius turned around and shrugged. "Who knows? I mean, nothing happened to me or the guys when we were in here but it's probably safer to have your wand in hand just in case if you're planning on exploring or something while I try to find your father's books in here. If something does jump on you, well, yell."
Harry narrowed his eyes. "You're joking about the jumping, right?"
His godfather grinned. "Guess you'll have to wait to find out."
Harry being Harry couldn't help the urge to actually explore, though he was cautious to keep himself close to his godfather, not more than a few yards out of his view. There really were all sorts of stuff in there: moving portraits; a skeleton of a five-legged thing; creepy-looking jars that, Harry saw at a distance, had things floating in them… And then his eyes landed something golden and sparkly: it was a diadem.
What such a valuable piece of jewellery was doing in that room was something he couldn't phantom… It was carelessly shoved into a half-open drawer of a damaged dresser and Harry couldn't help feeling temped to get a closer look at it. He pulled the drawer further open and reached with his hand to grab the diadem from inside it.
When his fingers touched the jewelled piece, he felt a sudden excruciating pain in his scar. It felt like someone had just showed a knife into his forehead. For a moment, he thought that whatever had happened to Katie Bell after touching the cursed necklace in the beginning of that year was happening to him too – yet, that thought slipped out of his mind when he was able to pull his hand away from the diadem and the pain vanished. He had no idea of what had just happened but it occurred to him that maybe he should think twice before touching pieces of jewellery from unknown sources again.
"Ah, found'em!" Sirius's voice echoed in the room, making Harry's attention snap back to him. "Harry, did you get lost?"
"No, I…" he paused and walked towards the source of his godfather's voice, finding him only a few yards away, lifting what seemed to be a heavy box made out of paper and placing it on top of an arch. "I'm here."
Sirius raised an eyebrow when he saw him. "You okay, kid? You look kind of pale."
"I'm fine," Harry said almost too fast. "I was just… people hide weird stuff in here."
"Oh, let me guess: you ran into that jar full of pickled eyeballs," Sirius said, making a disgusted face. "I was almost sick when I saw that one too." He shook his head, looking down as he opened the paper box and cleared the dust out of the air. "Merlin, there were some freaks in this school…"
"Yeah," Harry mumbled, glad to have an excuse for his paleness other than his odd reaction to the golden diadem. He approached the box and saw dozens of books in it: there were textbooks starting from the first-year charms manual to a runes dictionary. He'd used half those titles himself, which made him feel strangely… connected. They seemed something so insignificant… his father's school-books. Yet just looking at them felt so important to him – his father had actually touched those books, studied then….
Sirius rummaged trough the box until he found the book he was looking for. "Here it is. A copy of 'Advanced Potion-Making'. Use it well, mate."
As he handed it to the Harry, a crumpled piece of parchment fell down from the book and Harry reached down and picked it up. It seemed to be one of those little notes one passed in class and, from the looks of it, it had circled between his parents. The first line, written in a boyish messy handwriting had 'Wanna be my date to Hogsmeade this weekend, Evans?' written on it, to which another handwriting, this one neat, responded. 'How about the one that falls on the 30th and 31st of February instead?'. Harry snorted as he read his father's clearly annoyed response saying 'Very Funny' and then his mother replying by telling him to stop passing notes and pay attention to class.
"Well, that's pretty much the sentiment of Lily and James: the early years," Sirius said with a chuckle as he read the note over Harry's shoulder. "Tell you what, how about I go ahead and take this box home so you can check it for more pearls like that one when you have a little more time?" Sirius suggested, understanding just how important those little things might be for his godson.
"I think I'd like that," he said, folding back the little note and putting it back inside the potions book carefully. "We should probably go. Aunt Mia is waiting."
Sirius nodded and closed the box of books again, shrinking it with his wand to a smaller size and putting it in his pocket. "Let's go – I guess we're done here."
And as they left, Harry didn't give another thought to that mysterious diadem he's so unpleasantly ran into earlier. Little did he know that less than a year later, he'd be desperately trying to find it again…
A/N: Came late again, sorry. I went out for the weekend - spent a little time at the beach... Anyway, here it is, the new chapter. Hope you noticed some 'easter eggs' in the middle, hinting for future things... Feedback is always welcome! Review!