I know I've kept you waiting, and I'm really, really sorry! I hope you like this chapter, as it helps me to keep my thought process neat... It helped me settle alot of things, like whether or not Harry is coming back for a second year at Hogwarts, which you don't get to know now, but it settled the issue in my own head. I know the match challenge is out of order, but I could have sworn it was in the last half of the book not the first- which now that i've unearthed my copy I realize has been in grave error... as is almost everything considering I thought almost everything of import happened after christmas... I'm just an idiot, and you'll just have to explain it away as it being AU, not wholey cannon.
Anyway, thanks for reading, these characters do not belong to me and I make no money off of them.
Enjoy!
"That's it! I absolutely refuse!" Harry stood from the bench, his hands flat on the table as he glared across at Draco Malfoy.
"Refuse what you little coward?" Draco sneered. "I just challenged you to a match and you refuse?"
"Not only to the match, Draco, but to everything. I'm not going to fight you anymore. In fact, to me, you don't even exist." Harry just smirked slightly and sat back down, continuing his conversation with Hermione about hair frizz potions
"What?" Draco took a step back and flung a few insults. He even called Granger a mud blood, and Potter didn't flinch!
"So do you really think that serum would work? You know I just have a terrible time trying to get it to lay flat."
"As long as you enhance it with moon flowers I don't see why not," Hermione nodded. "I've been trying to tweak what's available for my own mop and it's starting to work!" She pulled her hair from her perpetual pony-tail and let him examine the difference. It was much silkier than it had been when she first arrived.
The pair ignored Malfoy as his face turned red and he stalked away.
"Do you really think that's a good idea mate?" Ron leaned over the table as the Slytherin left the Great Hall.
"Well, one of three," Harry shrugged.
"What does that mean?"
"It means Malfoy's got one of three decisions to make right now. One, he could continue trying to torment me and get nothing but a headache for his efforts. Two, he could escalate his attacks and come after me physically or with magic, which would get him expelled. Or three, he could give up and leave me alone. At this point, I win."
"That is remarkably mature Harry," Ron's brother, the Prefect Percy overheard. He nodded, finally proud that someone in his house could solve his problems by rational intercourse. "Five points to Gryffindor!" Now that he had something to gloat about to the other Prefects he was going to milk it all the way, so he quickly disappeared to spread that his house was finally thinking for once!
"Of course if that fails for some reason," Harry shrugged reasonably, "I could always coat his bed in flobberworms."
"AH!" the startled scream along with the hurried apologies caught the attention of most of the hallway. When the students looked over most of them smirked and continued onto the next class. Once again Harry had vaulted over a railing and nearly landed on someone's head. The only difference was that this time it was a teacher.
"Sorry Professor Quirrell!" Harry hurried as he started picking up the books the Professor had dropped.
"N-no, tha-a-atss p-p-p-p fine! I will see you in c-classs then?" He stammered out, accepting his books back from Harry and hissing as their hands almost contacted. He backed up and steered around Harry with a very wide berth.
After a few minutes had passed and the hallway was deserted Harry looked into the corner where his partner in crime was hiding in the shadows.
"So?" he asked.
"It's in there," was the reply.
"Maybe now we'll find why he's so nervous. Aunt Lara said he never had been before. She called him charming and didn't add on the obligatory, "for such a bastard", that she does for most men."
"Are you sure you want to know?"
"Don't you know me well enough by now?" Harry grinned, "I always want to know."
"Hagrid said there's something killing unicorns in the forest," Hermione said as she joined her year mates for lunch.
"Unicorns?"
"Yes," she started to put together a club sandwich as Harry poured her juice, eager for more details. "Why are you so interested anyway?" she asked, suspicious.
"We've got a puzzle Hermione, and I'm counting on you to help me put it together," he confided. "War council tonight, common room. We'll go through the evidence then, but I need your assistance," he added knowing she would want to prepare. "Write down every odd thing that's happened this year."
"Harry, I'm muggle-born. Everything has been weird." She confessed wryly, taking a bite of her sandwich.
"No, I don't mean magically. Just things that have seemed out of place. Like a party hat on a snake or something. Anything that left a niggling thought of, "gosh is that normal, I'll have to look it up later." You know what I mean?"
"There may have been a few incidences."
"Good, write them down, bring them to the meeting. Eight o'clock."
"So, did you get it?" Harry asked as a couple of red heads passed him in the hall.
"As always-"
"My good man."
"And you contacted your brother?"
"The shipping details have been seen to-"
"He knows what's coming and he's rife with questions…"
"I don't care what you tell him, as long as the Professors' don't butt in."
"Not possible-"
"Darling Firstie-"
"We know you haven't been here long-"
"But already you should know-"
"We always get away with it."
The Gryffindor common room was once again packed, students sat on the stairs, on the floor, even on the end tables in order to listen and perhaps contribute to the discussion.
Number one on Harry's list, and really the only bullet point for the meeting, was simple in the extreme.
"What's wrong with this year?" He asked, to the mass confusion of everyone in the room.
"Harry, more specific, less abstract," Neville nudged his friend.
"All right then. It's been noted, that in not less than four instances, students have been put into extremely dangerous circumstances, is this normal?"
"What do you mean by "dangerous circumstances" Harry?" Hermione wondered if his list matched with hers.
"First off, start of term, Dumbledore announced that the third floor corridor was off limits to any who, and I quote " does not wish to die a very painful death," end quote." Harry shrugged, "Is that normal?" he asked the higher levels gathered round.
"No," Percy replied for them all. "We've never had that kind of warning inside the school, just the Forbidden Forest."
"That's another thing, It's a forest next to a school, why is it filled with dangerous magical creatures that want to eat children? And we've all heard the rumors from that detention Malfoy got himself thinking he was tracking me outside the tower after curfew. Cut out the parts were he miraculously saved a bleeding unicorn all by himself, and it's feasible. In fact, I got the twins to get the entire story out of Hagrid," He motioned to the Weasley twins to take over.
"Basically Hagrid had Malfoy take Fang out to search for a wounded unicorn-"
"He knew there was one around-"
"So they split up-"
"Hagrid going one way, Fang and Malfoy the other."
"Malfoy found the unicorn-"
"But also what injured it. A big, black shadow-"
"Is all the information Hagrid could shake-"
"From a traumatized Malfoy. It ran away without confrontation."
"So, that's what really happened, and while the twins were down at Hagrid's hut they discovered something else, if you would continue?" Harry started to indicate the twins, but was interrupted by Hermione.
"Please, just sum up Harry. It's not that I don't find the Fred and George act charming," she smirked at their leering grins. "But bouncing between them makes my brain tired."
"All right, they found a dragon's egg."
"That's illegal," Percy started.
"Don't worry-"
"Oh stuffed shirt-"
"We called Charlie-"
"Shipped it to him for safe keeping."
"Oh, well, good job then," Percy relaxed, causing the rest of the tower to relax with him. Baby dragons were dangerous creatures, of course Hagrid would want one for a pet.
"Anyway, back to the odd part,"
"That's not the odd part? Hagrid had a dragon's egg!" Seamus exclaimed.
"Yes, and that is the odd part, where did he get it?"
"Ah," Ron just shook his head after a second of contemplation. "You can't get them in England, or Scotland. It's not possible unless you've got underground contacts, like the Dwarfs…" He blinked as he noticed everyone staring at him. "What? I pay attention to dad sometimes too, you know!"
"So the twins got the story out of Hagrid that he got the egg from a friendly fellow at the bar who in return got a famous Hagrid slip of the tongue. Hagrid accidentally let it out where the Philosophers stone is currently hidden, and just what is guarding it. Namely,"
"Fluffy!" Hermione jumped up. "This coincides with my list rather well Harry, which I assume you'd thought of and just wanted confirmation that you weren't the only one connecting the dots, as it were."
"Exactly Hermione," Harry smiled at her.
"Merlin, get a room already," Hermione blushed at Ron's muttered comment. Harry ignored it to get to the next point on his list.
"So the bad guy knows the first trap, which is Fluffy, and knows how to get around the dog, which we all know by now is playing it music. Which means our evil git is not Snape, no matter how much we might wish it."
"Yes, his leg was chewed up, he didn't know how to bypass Fluffy!" Hermione put in, "Which means our suspect pool has gotten shorter and more unreliable. At this point, it really could be anyone."
"But that's not the last of it," Harry mused. "The troll, that's really the other thing that bothers me. How did it get in to the castle?"
"You suspect Quirrell?" Wood asked.
"Why? Do you?"
"I saw him just before the feast. He was the only one not in the Great Hall during dinner, and before it he was disappearing into the dungeons."
"All right, that dovetails nicely into my theory."
"Which is?" Angelina asked straight out, tired of the runaround.
"Something's taken over Quirrell."
Harry had to shout down a lot of objections, many of the students couldn't see how the ineffectual teacher was actually a criminal mastermind. It was explained, by a few upperclassmen to the younger set, that one way of getting a stupid kid to follow you was to offer it candy and be nice, unthreatening. That seemed to mollify them, none of the Gryffindor set were exactly brain dead, though some might act it sometimes.
He explained how Quirrell had been before his teaching career at Hogwarts, and the students where shocked when he told them how competent the man had been not that long ago. None of them had seen the man Harry was describing to them.
"Then, the other thing, he refuses to touch me, and I keep getting twinges in my scar when his back is to me."
That pronouncment met with an eerie silence.
"What?"
"You got that scar from the Dark Lord Harry. Why would Quirrell make it twinge?" Hermione asked.
"I don't know, maybe it's an all-purpose evil detector?"
"Let's shelve that for now, and get on with what to do next. Do we tell McGonagall?"
"We don't have any proof, of anything."
"I thought that's what this meeting was about?"
"No, it's supposition. We've got to have something more solid to accuse a teacher of being evil."
"So we watch him."
The entire tower got caught up in the Quirrell matter, debating how to watch him to the fullest effects. Hermione, Neville and Harry stayed out of the conversation for the most part, while Harry looked over Hermione's list. He was right, they looked a lot alike, except…
"Hermione, why are you asking about Malfoy being a right git to me? We just don't like each other, that's all."
"Harry, stop, think about it. Every child in the Wizarding world knows who you are. Why would Malfoy deliberately antagonize you when it could further his career, down the road, if he were nice to you and was your friend? Isn't he a Slytherin? Isn't he supposed to be thinking about this stuff?"
"Yeah, but he's also an arrogant little toe-rag who thinks that his father will give him everything he wants, including respect. I'd admit it was odd if he wasn't a spoiled rotten brat."
"I guess."
"And one more thing, the muggle education point you've got at the end? Why do you think they would teach that to a bunch of kids who they want to keep in the Wizarding world? They want to keep everyone dependant on their wands so that their tradition and history doesn't disappear completely. Think about it, if you could learn magic in a muggle school, would you still come to Hogwarts?"
"Most likely not," Hermione admitted. "If they taught magic in a muggle school, but not maths and science in Hogwarts I wouldn't find that a proper use of my time. But I need to learn magic or I could be a danger to others, while I can take summer courses for my compulsory education and not really miss out on anything. Of course I have to thank you for getting me signed up for home schooling like yourself and Neville, I don't know why I didn't think of that before I saw you doing your coursework down here."
"You're welcome," Neville grinned. "Those were good points Hermione, I'm sure that will factor into Harry's decision for next year."
"Next year?" Hermione asked, puzzled.
"I don't know if I'll be coming back next year," he announced to her utter shock.
"But-"
"It's not that this isn't a lovely place and chock full of knowledge Mione," Harry hugged her shoulders, unconsciously calling her the nickname he'd only really called her in his head as she blushed at the physical contact. "But I miss my Aunt, and debates with Remus. Hilary's cooking… I don't know, I really think eleven is too young to be away from my family for over three fourths of the year. I don't know if I like Hogwarts enough to do this again. My Aunt made me promise I'd try it for one year… that deadline is coming up and I'm just confused right now."
They stayed silent for a while as the debate between their classmates came to a close.
They'd keep an eye on Quirrell. Anything that was odd would be reported to Hermione, who would keep a file, and if they got anything incriminating they'd take to whole thing to McGonagall.
Hermione agreed to her role almost absently, still thinking about the bombshell Harry dropped. He was her first friend, he couldn't leave her now! Hopefully, she mused as she got ready for bed later that night, hopefully he'd give her a chance to change his mind.