It was Saturday morning, and unusually warm for early September. Not that it mattered to Severus Snape - he was in his office grading the fifth year potions samples from the previous day's class. A row of vials sat on the desk before him. They all contained a liquid in various yellow hues. The potions master picked up a vial and held it up in front of his eyes. The color was the correct hue of yellow, and tilting the vial revealed the liquid to be of the appropriate viscosity. Upon directing a beam of light from his wand, he saw small particles drifting in the liquid. Snape set down the vial in the rack, muttering "failure to filter the precipitate, how unfortunate." He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms behind his back. He was about halfway done with the grading, and only two students had produced a sample of sufficient quality. Evaluating such mediocrity was tortuous, but it was better to get it out of the way now so that it would not spoil the rest of his weekend.

He was jarred from his thoughts when he heard a knock on the door. The silent alarm had not notified him of the arrival, so it was probably not a student. The school staff were keyed into the alarm, but they could call in via floo, so it was likely not one of them either. His curiosity piqued, Snape stood up from the chair and briskly walked towards the door. Upon opening it with a flick of his wand, his gaze fell upon the svelte figure of the new defense professor. She was wearing an indigo robe that hugged her hips. Her hair cascaded down around her shoulders, and framed a modest but nonetheless captivating neckline. Snape's eyes rose up to her face. She was staring back at him with a raised eyebrow. He coughed, and rushed out some words.

"What are you doing in the dungeons, Jones?"

The woman crossed her arms and smirked. "I am here to see you, Severus. Good morning!"

Severus called forth his occulumency training and composed his expression. "What do you want from me?"

"I was told you have an interest in defense against the dark arts, so I thought I would have you check over my lesson plans. And call me Hestia please"

"Who told you that?" Snape questioned.

"Oh you know, people talk. May I come in?" She peered into the office around the potion master's shoulder. He sighed and stepped aside. She walked past him, and Snape did his best not to let his gaze wander as he followed behind.

"It's quite gloomy in here, isn't it?" She waved her wand, and the curtains covering the small windows were swept aside. Snape stepped in after her and swept his wand, closing the curtains back over the windows.

"Lots of light-sensitive ingredients in here," he intoned coolly, gesturing at the shelves off to the side of his desk. He waited a moment, but it didn't seem like she was going to leave. He sighed wearily. "I suppose you'd better have a seat." He flicked his wand and a chair slid towards the desk.

"Aww, thank you." Hestia sat down in the chair, her eyes still wandering over the various objects in the office. Snape joined her in his seat on the opposite side of the desk.

"What are these," she questioned, picking up one of the vials.

"An attempt at a cleaning solution from the fifth year Hufflepuffs. Some of it is even usable." Hestia uncorked the vial and took a whiff before quickly putting the cork back in.

"Doesn't smell very fresh," she replied with a grimace.

"That's the sulfur. This concoction is not supposed to smell good. What it does well is remove magical graffiti."

Hestia looked up at Severus with a puzzled expression. "I don't remember making this when I was a fifth year." The potions master shrugged casually.

"Somebody plastered the walls in the Slytherin first year boy's dorm with Gryffindor colors. Whoever did it was at least somewhat capable as it's resistant to basic cleaning spells. I thought I'd let my students brew something practical. Clearly, I hoped for too much."

"It's nice to see you care about your firsties, Sev!"

"I care only as much as is contractually obligated," the man sneered. "And if you must, call me Severus"

"OK, Severus," Hestia pouted. "Now, would you like to look at my lesson plans?"

"Not particularly, but I'll do it anyway." In reality, Snape was excited to move past the current topic. He reached out, and Hestia placed a scroll in his hand. He undid the ribbon keeping it closed, and spread the parchment over an empty portion of the table. After taking a few minutes to skim over the chart, he looked up at the woman before him.

"Very ambitious." He turned back to the parchment. "You do realize the dueling club was shut down for a good reason."

"Yes, but that was a decade ago! I will be taking the proper safety precautions, I assure you."

Snape rolled up the scroll and deftly tied the ribbon back on. "If you follow through with this dueling club, the lessons you have planned out will go along nicely. How did you persuade our headmaster to agree to your idea?"

Hestia bit her lip. "Well, I haven't exactly spoken to him about it yet. I was hoping for your advice on that."

Snape burst out laughing. "Do it at next week's staff meeting, please! I want to see everybody's reaction." He saw her face turn red, and he laboriously settled back into his occulumency state. The witch snatched the scroll from his desk and rose to her feet.

"You know, you could be more supportive. I was even going to ask you to be the co-instructor!" With that, she turned around and made her way to the door. Snape split his focus, simultaneously struggling not to laugh and not to stare at her derrière as she walked away.

Most of Harry's weekend was spent cleaning. He would have thought there was a spell to get rid of the graffiti. Instead, Gemma had provided them with vials of cleaning potion courtesy of Snape, and instructions to soak it into cloth and get scrubbing. It took Harry all of Saturday afternoon and evening to clean his room by himself, and most of the following day to tackle the first year corridor with the other boys. Draco seemed to be hit the hardest, constantly asking why they couldn't get the house elves to do it for them. Harry wasn't sure himself, but if Snape had suggested this method, then it must be the only way. Personally, he didn't mind it. The manual labor reminded him of his earlier years at the Dursley's, and while he didn't miss his aunt and uncle, there was something comforting about old habits.

Harry was the first to finish his section of wall, so he decided to help out Draco. The blond boy was so tired of scrubbing that he didn't have anything clever to say. Together, they finished in sync with the rest of the group. The corridor smelled like rotten eggs, but Gemma had assured them that the stench would fade in a few hours. Not eager to stay any longer than necessary, the boys made their way over to dinner. The meal was great as usual, but after finishing they still had a couple of hours to kill. The conversation turned to quidditch, a popular topic on any day.

"So Harry, have you been practicing for the tryouts?" Theo piped in. All eyes turned to Harry, and he shook his head.

"Are you going to practice?"

"Nah. It's not like it will do any good at this point. I mean, how much can I learn in less than a week?"

"Do you even know the rules to the game?" Draco questioned.

"Sure I do, you guys talk about it all the time. I'm trying for seeker, so all I have to do is catch a golden snitch right? How hard can it be?"

His house-mates groaned, and Draco covered his face with his hands. "I can't believe what I'm hearing. OK, we're going to the quidditch pitch right now. I have a practice snitch in my room, so you're in luck."

Harry rolled his eyes. "You would have a golden snitch in your room."

The blond boy looked at him blankly. "Mine is made out of silver - Slytherin colors."

The group made their way back to their dorm so Draco could retrieve his snitch. Most of them did not have quidditch robes, so they changed to something more comfortable than the school robes they were walking around in. For Harry, it was a pair of Muggle sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt. He received some looks from the other, but they did not comment. Next, they made a trip to the broom shed and picked out some of the less beat-up brooms. Eventually, they made their way over to the quidditch pitch. Unfortunately, they were not the only ones. Some older Slytherin boys were already occupying the area. Unperturbed, Draco steered the group back to the open grassy field where they had their first flying lesson.

"I only have the one snitch, so everybody's going to have to play seeker. We can see if Potter is really better than the rest of us. Let's keep it clean - that means no hitting people, especially not me. If you can't help yourself, at least stay away from the face and hair." He glared at Vincent and Gregory, and they gave a sad nod. With that, Draco released the silver ball in his hand. Two wings unfurled from the sides, and it whizzed away in a blur of silver. Draco kicked off from the ground, immediately followed by the rest.

It only took a few seconds for Harry to understand the stupidity of his earlier statement. The snitch was fast! Even keeping track of it was a problem. Between the rest of the boys, Draco was his closest competition. He was largely neck and neck with Harry. Theo was a close second, with Vincent and Greggory tied for third. They were all seemed rather skilled compared to the rest of the class at the flying lesson. Harry guessed that they had been playing quidditch from childhood. It was probably a pure-blood thing. After ten minutes of dips, turns, and areal acrobatics, he finally held the snitch in his hand. Harry landed on the grass, shortly followed by Draco and the others.

"Not bad Harry," he muttered reluctantly. "What do you think of playing Seeker?"

"It's much harder than I thought it would be," Harry conceded. "It moves so fast!"

Draco smirked. "That's just a practice snitch too. The real thing is even faster."

"How am I supposed to keep track of it for the entire game?"

"You don't. A big part of being seeker is spotting the snitch in the first place. The first one to do so has a head start and a major advantage over the other seeker. Let's try it again. This time, lets shut our eyes for five seconds before we take off."

Harry closed his eyes and released the snitch. Five seconds later, he opened them and took off on his broom. It really was considerably more difficult when he didn't already have his eyes on the snitch. It took them twenty minutes to spot it. By the end, only Draco, Theo, and Harry were looking, while Gregory and Vincent were seeing how close they could fly at each other without crashing. Draco caught the snitch this time, and seemed happy to have done so. They repeated the game two more times, with another two victories for Harry.

"I must say, you are the best seeker I have played against. I was hoping I could be the Slytherin seeker, but I see I will just have to stick to just being the smartest and best looking in our year."

Harry stuck his tongue out at Draco. "You should try out with me."

"They probably won't let me. Flint specifically invited you."

"Come along. They will probably need a backup seeker, and you are almost on par with me flying wise. You definitely know more about tactics than I do. I'll tell them that I won't try out if they don't let you try out too."

The blond boy looked at Harry oddly for a moment before smiling. "Alright. Tell you what, I'll give you some dueling pointers in return. You just got lucky last time. Knockback jinx? That was pathetic. I will teach you some real spells. Now, let's get back to the castle before Vincent and Gregory hurt each other."

Monday was extremely dull. They started the day by potting plants in Herbology. Afterward, they had history of magic. They were discussing Merlin's feud with Morgana, but once again, Professor Bins made it sound only marginally more exciting than scrubbing the dorm walls had been. The final class of the day was DADA. Harry was quite excited about it, but it turned out to be just further practice with the knockback jinx, combined with some new instruction on how to break a fall safely. Hermione, with a newly mended ankle, astutely pointed out that it would have made more sense to teach falling before teaching the knockback jinx. Professor Jones waved her comment away with something about how getting hurt was a part of DADA and helped build character.

Harry teamed up with Neville once again. This time, the tall boy was brandishing a shiny new wand. Harry got to look at it for a couple of seconds before he was thrown onto his back. He got up slowly - nothing seemed broken, thanks to the mats padding the floor - but it hurt anyway. Neville rushed over rattling apologies. Harry told his friend that there was nothing to apologize over, and complimented him on the new wand. They spent the rest of the class taking turns casting at each other. Harry got some pointers on rolling out of the falls from Professor Jones, and getting knocked down felt much less painful by the end of the class.

On his way out of the class, Harry felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to see Hermione staring at her shoes.

"Hey Harry, I just wanted to thank you for saving me at the flying lesson."

Harry blushed. "It's nothing, anybody would have done the same thing."

The girl lifted her head and met his eyes. "I'm not so sure about that. There were eighteen other people there but you were the only one that dived after me."

Harry shrugged with a smile and rubbed the back of his head.

"See you at the library later?" she asked hesitantly.

"Sure, see you then."

Hermione turned and walked out of the door. She was barely out of earshot when Harry heard somebody jeering behind him.

"OOoooo… Harry's got himself a girlfriend."

He turned to look for the source and saw Ron and Seamus.

"Knock it off you guys," Neville interjected.

"Come on Neville. You're a Gryffindor - you should be on our side."

"Hermione's a Gryffindor too, Ron. You shouldn't be talking about her behind her back."

Ronald turned a brighter shade of pink and muttered something unintelligible. He walked out with Seamus, and Harry turned to Neville. "Thanks mate."

"Don't mention it," the boy grinned. "Next time, I might be the one that falls off the broom. You better be there to save me too," he added, playfully punching Harry on the shoulder.

"For sure. Professor Jones may think she knows about breaking falls, but she has nothing on me."

"What's that?" Professor Jones called from the other side of the room.

"Nothing, Professor" they called out, and filed out of the room. Outside, Neville gave a wave to Harry and walked off towards the grand staircase. Harry spotted Draco waiting for him by the door, sans Greggory or Vincent.

"What was all that about, Potter" he smirked.

"Don't worry about it, Draco."

"Alright, if you say so. I was thinking we could get some dueling practice in. Think about it - what if you have to defend Hermione's honor from Ron. Do you think you could fend him off?"

Harry was about to answer, but Draco beat him to it. "You know what, he's a Weasley. A squib could probably fend him off."

At that moment, professor Jones stepped into the doorway. "Did I hear you boys talking about dueling practice?"

"We were just talking, I know there is no dueling in the corridors," Draco stammered.

Professor Jones looked at Draco with scrutiny, and then turned to consider Harry. "You two will do just fine."

"For what, Professor Jones?" Harry replied, puzzled by her cryptic statement.

"For dueling practice, of course. You'll be my guinea pigs!"

Draco looked at Harry with a confused expression, and he mouthed back 'later.'

"Don't tell anybody, but I'm planning on reinstating the dueling club. I will need to make my case before the other professors, and you to will make for a perfect demonstration of how safe dueling can be with proper instruction."

Draco crossed his arms and turned to the professor. "What do we get out of it, professor?"

The woman rolled her eyes. "How about one-on-one instruction from me? Tell you what, I'll even throw in a few house points to sweeten the deal."

The blond boy nodded quickly. "I think we should give it a shot, Harry."

Professor Jones was already walking back into the classroom, so they followed her in. The mats were already set up from the class, and the three made their way over. When they reached the mats, the professor turned to face them, a big smile on her face.

"All right you two, today we are going to learn about dueling! Before we start, do either of you have any experience?"

Harry shook his head.

"I know a bunch of defensive and offensive spells. I've had some tutoring, and my father is a big dueling fan," Draco chimed in.

Professor Jones frowned, but then quickly resumed smiling. "Nothing? That's great! We are going to start off with the proper stance for a duel. You are to stand in the center of the arena, face your partner, and bow to each other." She waved her wand in a circle, and the mats rearranged themselves end to end until they resembled a dueling platform. Draco scowled at being ignored, but professor Jones didn't seem to care. The two boys walked to the center of the platform and bowed to each other.

"Now, you turn around, walk ten paces, and wait for my signal."

The two boys did as she asked. Harry held his wand tightly, ready to spin around. "Go!"

He whirled about and cast the knockback jinx. He heard Draco shout "expeliarmus!", and felt his wand go flying from his hand. He looked at Draco in confusion - the blond boy had stepped aside and out of the way of his knockback jinx. "What was that?"

"Disarming charm," Draco proclaimed proudly.

"Quite so, albeit a bit underpowered," professor Jones chimed in. "Nonetheless, it should be a fine choice for our demonstration. Do you know how to cast it, Harry?"

"First time I've heard of it"

"Ah well, there is a first time for everything. We can go over it today, as well as a primer on movement. As you probably noticed, Draco here moved as you were casting your knockback jinx. You, unfortunately, did not do likewise for his spell. It is generally not a good idea to stand in one spot during a duel unless you fancy yourself Merlin."

Harry blushed, and Draco perked up a bit at the compliment. Professor Jones walked over to Harry, and guided him through the motion for the spell. They spent the rest of the class dueling each other with the disarming charm. Harry was able to get a decent grip on it, although it was still too weak to reliably knock the wand out of Draco's grip. Instead, he focused on improving his mobility, with some success. By the end of the training, they were both sweating profusely, and Jones had a wild glint in her eyes.

"Great job, everybody! Are you free tomorrow evening?"

Harry was about to say something about practicing for the quidditch tryouts before he was interrupted.

"Terrific! I'll see you here."

He turned to Draco, who had a wide-eyed expression similar to his own. Wordlessly, they walked out of the classroom. He could swear he heard the professor cackle 'that will show Sev..." as the door swung closed.

After the dueling practice, Harry took a shower and headed off to the library. He hadn't gotten around to doing his charms essay yet, and Flitwick wanted it the following day. He was halfway there when he remembered that Hermione expected him to sit with her. He groaned internally - there was little chance of him doing his work uninterrupted if she was there to monologue about all the new things she had learned since the last time they spoke. On the flip side, she might have some useful input on the essay he had to write. Resigned to his fate, he kept going. When he made it into the library, Hermione shot her arm up to get his attention. "I see you" he muttered under his breath, and made his way over to 'their' table.

The bushy haired girl was reading through her astronomy textbook. She smiled at Harry as he sat down. He smiled back awkwardly, and started setting out his school supplies.

"Hi Harry, you're here a bit later than usual."

"Yeah, professor Jones kept Draco and I after class."

The girl frowned. "Did you get in trouble for something."

"No," he replied, spreading out a piece of parchment on the table. "She asked me not to talk about what we did - it's like extra credit of sorts."

"Wow," she gasped. "It's great to see somebody else taking school seriously for once."

"Right," Harry muttered.

"What are you working on now?"

"This Charms essay."

"You didn't do it yet!? Flitwick assigned it last week."

"Yeah, let's just say I was preoccupied this weekend." Hermione looked at him expectantly. "I was cleaning up magical graffiti along with the rest of the first year boys. Some upperclassmen decided to paint every inch of our rooms with Gryffindor colors."

Hermione covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh my god. I hope they didn't do that because you saved me at the flying lesson."

Harry's eyelid twitched. He couldn't believe he hadn't made the connection earlier. It made a lot of sense - Flint had specifically asked him why he had saved the Gryffindor girl. Many other upperclassmen were probably wondering the same thing, and some may have decided to act on it. He could feel his temper rising - partially angry at his own stupidity for not seeing the connection earlier, and partly from irrational anger at Hermione for being the cause of his suffering over the past weekend. He put his occulumency lesson with Snape to use, and focused on reigning in the anger. He was partially successful - he didn't say or do anything he would regret, but Hermione could see on his face that something was wrong.

"I'm so sorry Harry. I wish there weren't different houses. All it does is make people hate each other for no reason."

He exhaled slowly, and forced a smile. "Don't worry about it. It wasn't your fault."

Hermione smiled back, but she still looked worried. "Can I help you with your charms essay? It's the least I can do."

Harry nodded, his anger fading away as he remembered the assignment in front of him. "That would be awesome, Hermione. Any idea where to start for a history of the levitation spell?"

"Of course. You should start off with the section in our textbook - just as a primer. I saw a lot of people in my common room writing their entire essay from it, but I don't think there is enough information there to do a good job. I found a couple of other books here that expand on the topic. You can start writing the introduction, and I'll go fetch them."

Harry put his quill to the parchment, and started outlining everything that he remembered learning about the spell in class or from the textbook. True to her word, Hermione returned with a pair of thick leather bound books. One of them was a biography of Jarleth Hobart - the 16th century wizard that had created the spell. The second was a technical primer on charms that went into far greater detail than the introductory book they used for class. With Hermione's help, Harry was able to finish his essay in a only couple of hours. By the time he was done, his head felt pretty heavy.

"I think I'm going to head back to my room. I feel ready to drop."

"You have your own room!?"

"Yeah, all the Slytherins do."

"Lucky! OK, see you tomorrow!"

When the weekend finally arrived, Dumbedore felt like shouting for joy. He didn't do so, of course. Instead, he helped himself to a lemon drop. Over the past few days, he had orchestrated Zabini's transfer to Drumstrang, and had recruited a new student for Gryffindor. He even managed to do both in the same trip. The houses were structured to have ten new students each year - five boys and five girls. He could have left it at nine Gryffindors, but it would have created all sorts of logistical problems down the road. On top of that, he had taken care of some issues that popped up over the course of the week. According to Severus, Draco Malfoy had spent a brief stint in the hospital due to an unintentional legillimency attack from Harry. A manifestation of this type of power in a boy so young was both worrying and extremely rare. However, he had been assured by the potions master that occulumency training was already on the way, and Albus felt it should be sufficient to prevent any further legillimency outbursts.

After his brief respite, the headmaster turned to the letter he had received from Quirrell. He carefully dispelled the charm keeping the containment envelope sealed, and levitated the letter into one of the brass contraptions that lined the shelves of his office. First, he had to be sure that the letter had not been forged. He pulled his memory of Quirrell, and added it to the machine. It would use advanced alchemy to determine if the magical signature of the man in his memory was consistent with the trace amounts of magic left on the letter. It was tricky in that it only worked with Dumbledore's own memories - few other people were able to sense magic, and hence their memories were incomplete. Nonetheless, he felt confident he had enough experience with Quirrell to have sufficiently strong memories of the man's magical signature. He occupied himself with some paperwork while he waited for the machine to complete the analysis.

An hour later, a metallic chime alerted Albus that the results were ready. Upon looking at the runes freshly etched into the display, he frowned. The results were inconclusive - there were traces of Quirrell's magic on the letter, but also traces of something else - something darker. This sort of mix was often seen in cases of lycantorphy, vampirism, or possession. Vampirism seemed like a likely case, especially since the contents of the letter detailed that Quirrell would be staying behind to research Vampires. This was bad - professors getting infected on Hogwarts sanctioned trips wasn't very good for the school's reputation. Dumbledore knew that he should check up on Quirrell personally to see if his suspicions were true. He glanced back at the paperwork piling up on his desk. Juggling his duties as Headmaster, Supreme Mugwump, and Chief Warlock was difficult in the best of times. He would have to put off his excursion to Albania until the following weekend at the earliest. After all, there was little he could do if Quirrell was already a vampire, and as such the situation was not time sensitive.

A/N: Hope you've enjoyed the story so far! I am writing parts of year one chapters from Snape and Dumbledore's points of view because Harry is still 11, and his life is relatively unexciting - at least compared to what it will be like in the subsequent years ;)