Harry amidst the Vaults of Stone

Chapter 20

Ten minutes later, Harry had been too busy answering questions to eat more than a few forkfuls. British wizards apparently had a lot of essentially arbitrary limits on what they would or wouldn't consume. They didn't eat any carnivorous mammals, but many other mammals were fair game – generally the larger ones, horses notwithstanding. Some of the small ones, like rabbits, were eaten, and some, like squirrels – he had asked because of Dumbledore's ongoing antics at the head table – were off limits.

Also, they apparently cooked and ate bird eggs, which was just weird. And it put paid to Harry's half-formed hypothesis about spurning inaccessible foods. After all, rabbits were easily caught, because they lived in the ground. Squirrels, apparently, lived in trees, which put them firmly out of reach in Harry's book, so forbidding them wasn't really going to cause any problems. But didn't birds nest in trees, too? Did wizards climb for eggs?

Weird, weird, weird.

But not as weird, apparently, as eating insects. Fellow Ravenclaw first-year Mandy Brocklehurst had left her spot opposite him in favour of a seat much further down the table when the topic came up.

It seemed that it wasn't just moth grubs which wizards objected to. Interesting. Harry could relate to not liking hard-shelled beetles or centipedes – even candied – but wizards didn't eat insects at all.

"What about, er-" he couldn't find the English word. "hard-shelled – crabs and shrimps and things?"

"Crustaceans," said Pip, who had pushed his plate away part-way through the conversation. "Well, sure. But they're not... I mean..."

"They cannot be very different from insects that live underwater, surely?"

Faces continued to watch Harry from all down the table with variously appalled or interested expressions as the older boy tried to explain.

At least one face at the head table, too, was turned in the direction of Harry Potter.

Albus Dumbledore gazed pensively at the boy, who had spent even longer under the Hat than Percy Weasley had, several years ago. Not for the first time, Dumbledore wished the Hat could be persuaded to share what it had learned during the Sorting.

He always tried to keep an eye on the students for whom the Hat took its time – the cases that weren't cut and dry, or when a student pushed hard for a House they were not suited to, or when the Hat found a character interesting enough to stop and chat with – as it had with Dumbledore himself. He was watchful, because there was a pattern he had picked up on during his long decades as Headmaster. Those students tended to have complex personalities... often leading to complex problems.

Harry Potter in Ravenclaw; where did that fit into the scheme of things? Filius had been rather tight-lipped on the boy. Perhaps he got his mind from his mother, just as he had his looks from his father? Dumbledore shook his head and looked up into the candle-strewn air of the Great Hall, gazing into the morass of flickering light in deep thought.

When conversation eventually turned away from goblins, Harry found that the sixth-year prefect Pip, or Peregrine Barne, was from a long line of Barnes in Ravenclaw. The heavily-built boy made some joke about owls which Harry didn't understand.

He also learned what a prefect was, in fairly vague terms. It sounded like an important responsibility, and his respect for the boy ratcheted up a notch from the initial one point Harry had secretly awarded him for being well-read.

Eventually, a boy scooted a little down the opposite bench to take Mandy's vacated seat. Kevin Entwhistle, another new yearmate, was wiry and gaunt-looking. He had tried – subconsciously and unsuccessfully – to smooth his ruffled hair while asking Harry about his family. Harry changed the topic before discussion of his goblin upbringing could reignite, resulting in a debate about exactly what sort of spell was holding the candles in mid-air.

That somehow devolved into a discussion about Quidditch. Kevin seemed to think the idea of riding broomsticks at all was ridiculous, while Terry, another muggleborn, was amazed that some of the balls were made of wood laminated over solid lead. When an older girl mentioned that falling from a broom or colliding with a post at speed were relatively common, even in school matches, Terry refused to believe it. "There'd be terrible injuries, all the time! It wouldn't be allowed!"

Pip grinned and shook his head, and explained about the Hackard-Pewlett Scale, "named after a witch named Hannah Hackard and a wizard named Ponce de Pewlett. They theorised that magic-users were tougher than squibs, d'you see, who were tougher again than muggles." People never seemed to be hurt by their own accidental magic. Professional duellers tended to only get seriously damaged by spells rather than the physical backlash. And there were all sorts of dangerous wizard games like Quidditch and Quodpot and Contact Hunt The Slipper.

Hackard and Pewlett had tried to come up with a mathematical formula for calculating magical power from a person's physical resilience, and vice versa, even going so far as to devise a series of brutal tests to prove their ideas. Their potentially ground-breaking research had been hindered only by a severe lack of volunteers. The Hackard-Pewlett unit of vitality they established was never used, but the theory was still around.

Harry was trying to think of ways to conclusively prove or disprove it when an older student walked up to him, shook his hand and told him that it was "so cool" that Harry Potter was in her house, and that it was "way wicked" because she "never thought it would happen, right?"

"Well, it's a baseline twenty-five percent chance," Harry said automatically, still trying to parse the bits he hadn't understood. "Actually, wait." He scanned the Hall, becoming distracted as he thought about it properly. "Yes, it looks like there are about as many students in all the houses – but not exactly the same number, which is a relief."

The girl put her goblet down. "Why?"

"Well, if the Sorting Hat maintains too strict a ...parity, I think the term is, then it means some people must be nudged towards a House they shouldn't be in. The only alternative would be that exactly a quarter of the population are studious, exactly a quarter are hard-working yet somehow not studious, exactly a quarter are ambitious but, presumably, aren't willing to work hard to achieve their aims, and exactly a quarter are 'brave and righteous', yet not 'loyal and true'."

He mulled this over as the girl shrugged helplessly, retrieving her cup and retreating to her own seat. He could see that a rough balance must be maintained. Probably the Sorting Hat kept track of how many people had which qualities the last few years, making its criteria for each House more or less stringent to compensate. After all, he doubted a single person in the room would count as 'cunning' in, say, goblin banker terms.

...And then in any given year, it might even have to start shunting people towards the houses that had fewer sorted into them so far. That would come at the end of the Sorting, if it had ended up with too much of a bias. Harry hummed quietly to himself, trying to remember the numbers from earlier in the evening, and who had been Sorted last. Ron Weasley, Blaise, a Ravenclaw girl...

He looked around the room, food forgotten. And now that he was looking for it, there was another thing...

"Something on your mind, Potter?" Pip asked, rapping his spoon against Harry's water goblet to get his attention.

"Hmmm? Oh. I was thinking... How many year levels are in the school?"

"Seven."

"Strange. There were about forty students Sorted, and there are far more than two-eighty in total here. I'd guess something like twice that number. I'm sure forty children a year wouldn't be enough to sustain a population, anyway. There must be more than that back home, and we're a smaller enclave than the British wizards."

The older boy glanced away for a moment, then spoke quietly. "You might not be aware of it, but this is the damaged generation. The history books will tell you that there used to be close to a thousand students here at any time. The war hit everyone very hard, d'you see. A few children died, but it was mainly that future parents were killed, and those who lived – well, it wasn't a good time to be having more. Many fled the country, too. There'll be a boom next year or the year after, I guarantee it, what with the eleven-year anniversary. I wouldn't be surprised if we had three times as many firsties next time around."

Pip rattled his spoon idly around the edge of his plate. "So... yeah. At the moment there's about a hundred fifty Ravens, the same in Hufflepuff. Fewer in Gryffindor and Slytherin, probably closer to a hundred each. Houses do tend to get passed down in families, and those two groups tended to ...pick sides in the war. And didn't come out intact."

He seemed to grow maudlin, and Harry nervously rubbed the two invisible family rings he wore. He hadn't really assimilated the real impact the war had had on wizarding Britain. All those people who seemed obsessed with him as their miraculous saviour ...suddenly didn't seem quite so funny, or even quite so annoying, now.

A conversation at the head table was mirroring Harry's own thoughts.

"I remember a time when we had two dozen new entrants in each House. It was not so terribly long ago..."

Minerva McGonagall frowned at her employer. Normally Dumbledore didn't speak like this unless he was deep in his cups.

"I will admit I thought we could have done better than just seven new Gryffindors, Albus," she said. This was something of an understatement. Pomona now had a round dozen first-year badgers. Filius had done almost as well, and had managed to lay claim to both Ms Granger and Mr Potter, to boot. Even Slytherin had managed to claim double digits, which meant Severus was going to be more insufferable than usual.

Dumbledore ran a thumb around his goblet, humming in harmony with the sound it produced. "It will make for rather small classes, in some cases."

"Yes." Minerva was well aware; she was in charge of the timetabling. On the bright side, she wouldn't have to split her attention too far in first-year Transfiguration.

"I suspect the Hat is padding the numbers towards the green and the red as much as its remit allows. Oh, how the Houses have changed since my day."

Minerva was unable to stifle a sigh as she watched Dumbledore's hand slowly edging back to his wand. He had been on a squirrel high for a week now. "Indeed. The muggleborns become more and more enthused with learning, the purebloods grow more and more cloistered within Slytherin, and Hufflepuff's reputation has dwindled to something akin to a joke. Hence the extraordinary composition of the Houses."

Dumbledore blinked at this. "What do you mean, Minerva?"

She pushed her glasses back on her nose. "Essentially, every muggleborn student goes to Ravenclaw, because they are more excited to be learning magic than those who grew up with it are, or to Hufflepuff, because they haven't been exposed to the idea that it's a joke House. That pushes their overall numbers up, since the muggleborns make up so many of our numbers these days. Then the oldest families go straight to Slytherin, with a few exceptions like Mr Longbottom and Mr Weasley. That leaves few for Gryffindor."

Dumbledore peered about the hall. "Surely you exaggerate."

Minerva snorted. "Please, Headmaster. Pomona or I visited every muggleborn student this year, and have done for the last two decades. Precisely one of them – Mr Thomas – is in Gryffindor this year. There are none in Slytherin, and there have not been for as long as I can remember! I can only assume that the Hat knows that if it dared put a muggleborn student into Slytherin, they would end up leaving the school rather than endure their housemates!"

Dumbledore slumped in his seat a little, but did not try to deny it. He watched a small, tawny squirrel, which a minute ago had been a pickle fork, scuttle away down the table. "There must be a way to heal this rift, but I find myself stretched so thin these days. Perhaps it will only be time... time. You know, I have often thought we Sort too early. Perhaps it is a mistake to Sort at all."

Minerva glanced about. On Dumbledore's left, Severus was resolutely ignoring their conversation. Beyond him, Pomona was beaming down at her table of badgers. To her own right, Filius was talking enthusiastically to the newest professor, Septima Vector, who had been working in the classrooms for the last year, preparing to take over from Professor Turing.

She leaned in closer to Dumbledore and said quietly, "Something is troubling you, Albus. The... object? Quirinus? Or the search for his replacement?"

Dumbledore shook his head sadly. "Not even a term did he last... it is past time to call in a curse-breaker yet again, but the school's funds are not so great as to allow us to hire anyone of skill."

"So no luck with the search?"

"It has been hectic, Minerva. The business with Quirinus and Hagrid, and then negotiating with the Minister about his Dementors... quite apart from the latest rout in the ICW." He shook his head again, this time as if to clear it of cobwebs, and straightened up, drawing his wand and eyeing the water pitcher speculatively. "Who can cover the Defence classes this week?"

Minerva consulted the schedule in her head. "Lance for the first, third or fourth years, Aurora the fifth, second or sixth. Severus could take either the seventh or the first. Or," she added pointedly, "I could skip my usual office hours to introduce the first years to the subject."

Dumbledore paused, obviously considering the idea of either Lance Kettleburn or Severus Snape introducing impressionable first-years to Defence Against The Dark Arts.

"Yes, that might be advisable. Aurora will not have time to take three extra classes, though."

A scowl flickered across McGonagall's face. The Astronomy teacher got on her nerves almost as much as her sister-in-arms, Sybill Trelawney. "I suppose Filius could do the second-year class. It would be him or Cuthbert."

Dumbledore winced this time. Professor Cuthbert Binns was not exactly representative of the high standard to which Hogwarts professors should be held. The mental image of him teaching Defence was hard to even construct, let alone seriously consider. "...Indeed. I have petitioned Aurors Bacon, Proudfoot and Higgs to volunteer their services in their off-hours while they are stationed in Hogsmeade, but I would certainly not wish to rely on them. It would be best if they merely helped with the practical work."

Minerva nodded. "What shall we do for lesson plans?" It was common knowledge that all of the papers and personal effects of Professor Dimitrius Dervish had been lost when he spontaneously combusted the year before.

Dumbledore gazed around the happily feasting school. "Professor Wyggin's workbooks should still be filed in the library. They're old, but..."

"They're almost a century old, Albus!"

"It's only temporary, Minerva."

"Who are your current candidates?"

The old wizard sighed. "There are so few to draw upon. Dedalus Diggle is still in Spain. I have been in contact with Remus Lupin quite recently, but he is in a very difficult situation. There are some extant conflicts which are unlikely to be resolved quickly enough to put him on the staff this year."

He began ticking them off on his fingers. "Alastor Moody told me to come back when he'd enjoyed more than six months of retirement. Maude Mackleby has become too infirm to teach. The Ministry would never allow Healer Thorpe back at Hogwarts, even if I could convince him to return to his old position."

"Emmeline Vance?"

"She is happy in her current employment. No, it is difficult indeed. The Board of Governors are making unhappy rumblings. The Ministry would love to step in and assign someone to keep a close watch on things here, so they will be inspecting anyone I select with extraordinary vigour. I do have one candidate in mind from within the Ministry, which should assuage them, but I fear it will take some work to convince him."

"Oh?" Minerva cocked an eyebrow.

When Dumbledore told her who, she nodded approvingly. "We have seen far worse. I will compose a plea myself, if necessary. And now, Albus, would you please turn that rodent back into Severus' napkin ring before it escapes."

Harry watched curiously as the small animal once again became a wide brass hoop. He couldn't determine its function from this distance.

"Who is that?" he asked Pip quietly, jerking his head towards the sour-looking owner of the utensil. "He keeps looking at me."

The prefect glanced up at the head table. "Oh, Professor Snape? He's probably as curious about you as anyone. Don't worry about the scowl, he always looks like that. He teaches Potions, although it looks like we don't have a Defence Against The Dark Arts professor right now, so maybe he's going to finally get that position. England's youngest Potions Master in centuries, you know. Oh, Head of Slytherin, too."

Harry nodded, sure there was something more to the man's insistent glare, but instead asked about each of the other teachers. Before he had learned even half of them, all the large platters on the tables vanished, a new selection of food appearing in their place.

Harry tentatively identified the new choices as things in the 'sweet' category. There were small tarts and large pies, dishes piled high with candies similar to the ones on the train, and dishes of dense, cold ...stuff. When he asked Terry what it was, it resulted in a full minute of choking and boggling and then in Harry learning about ice-cream. It was slightly like the Ice Mice he had once had in Diagon Alley, which was to say, much too sweet.

The table's centrepiece was an enormous jelly in the shape of a bright blue bird. Harry saw the other tables had their own jelly animals in their own colours: a green serpent, a yellow badger, a red cat. The staff table had what he eventually decided was a quivering orange phoenix; Dumbledore had just excised most of its head and ladled it into his bowl.

Kevin Entwhistle proffered various things in Harry's direction from across the table, while leaning protectively over an entire coffee cake in an attempt to defend it against all comers. Harry tentatively tried some of the foods, but after the first disaster of 'exploding bonbons' he avoided the rest of the pudding, electing to just look around the hall and sometimes talk.

When things had wound down, Dumbledore stood up. "Now that we are all stuffed and dozy, the rest of the words I promised," the old wizard said cheerfully.

"I would remind you of some of our most important school rules. First years, you will no doubt be instructed further by your teachers on your first day, or find out by breaking them.

"Firstly, there is to be no magic used in the corridors. This is particularly important, as we will be hosting a number of Aurors this year. They will be wandering the school through the day, for your protection, and will brook no arcane shenanigans or thaumaturgical tomfoolery.

"Secondly, as many of you will have noticed, the Ministry has seen fit to send a trio of Dementors to patrol the school boundaries. They are here, of course, because of the recent breakouts from Azkaban. These are dangerous creatures, and you will not stray out of the gates. Should you disregard this warning, detention for the rest of the year may be the least of your worries."

Dumbledore stared around the school with great gravity before speaking again.

"Thirdly and in much the same tone, the Forbidden Forest remains forbidden to all students. The name is meant to be a sort of clue, you see.

"Fourthly, flying lessons begin in the second week. Try-outs for this year's Quidditch teams will be scheduled later in the month at those teams' discretion.

"Finally, I would like to alert you to the fact that the third floor corridor on the right-hand side is now completely out of bounds and that students attempting to enter it will likely die a very painful death indeed."

One or two people laughed nervously. Next to Harry, Pip was frowning. "The third floor... strange, he didn't say anything to the prefects. And that's practically an invitation for some Gryffindors I know. What's he up to?"

Harry frowned right back. "If he was serious about the painful death, perhaps he is trying to thin the ranks of idiots." He was awarded a mildly shocked look for his trouble.

"And now," Dumbledore was saying, "Be upstanding please, and we shall sing the school song." As the school rose with a great clatter, he waved his fork, which turned into a squirrel for a fraction of a second before settling on a slim black baton.

"Those who don't know the words, feel free to just repeat ner ner, ner ner. Alright, one, two, three!"

The school belted out what could roughly be described as a song, and Harry tried to pick out some of the words. Judging by the amount of ner ner going on, very few people knew them. The generally lacklustre attempt and the English language hindered him, but he was sure he heard a few interesting phrases like "scabby knees" and "bits of fluff".

Until at last, "Bedtime!" Dumbledore called. "Off you go!"

The crowd moved out of the Great Hall like one huge, noisy, poorly-coordinated organism. Pip and the other Ravenclaw prefects shepherded their first-year charges along between them.

Together the senior students kept up a running commentary on Hogwarts as they went, and Harry tried to build up a picture of the school inside his head. Most of the other first-years seemed to be dead on their feet.

They travelled up two wide marble staircases - "watch out for them shifting" - to the third floor, then down a wide corridor identified as "Archchancellor Bowell's Thoroughfare" to the base of West Tower - "usually known as Ravenclaw Tower, but that's inaccurate". Then came a long, spiralling staircase with landings of irregular shape, and an outsized statue of a duck – or what one prefect claimed was a statue of a shapeshifter in the form of an outsized duck. They passed a wide window over a narrow bridge which spanned the gap to the main keep like a long needle, leading from Professor Flitwick's office in the tower to his separate quarters.

They passed an open doorway which led out into the night air, where a staircase wound bizarrely around the outside of the tower, in perfect step with the one inside, until it reached the school Owlery. Another short staircase somehow led from near the top of the tower to a corridor in the fifth floor of Hogwarts, even though the windows showed empty space where the intervening steps should have passed through.

Finally, the tower split - "like a tuning fork, d'you see? One prong for each set of dorms" - into two towers, their tops bridged by the bulbous Owlery. Immediately below the split, an almost spherical bulge of stone housed the Ravenclaw common room. The group halted on the landing at the top of the stone steps, in front of a sturdy wooden door. They clustered blearily around the prefects.

"Alright, pay attention now," said a tall, snub-nosed girl, pointing to a bronze knocker wrought in the shape of some sort of surface bird which Harry didn't recognise. He didn't think it was a raven, though. "This is the common room entrance. You will need to answer a question or riddle from the guardian's extensive repertoire in order to enter."

She raised the knocker and tapped it once. Instead of ringing, the bird blinked and asked, "Poverty is to honesty as ignorance is to..."

"Bliss," she said promptly, and the door swung inwards.

"If you answer wrongly, you must spend a few minutes out of sight of the door before you can try again. The riddle changes twice daily, at midnight and noon. We're not sure where the questions come from, but there is quite a variance in difficulty, and sometimes it gets rather abstract or bizarre. We seventh-years check each morning that it's not too fiendishly difficult, or that it's not asking for the punchlines for dirty jokes again." The shadow of a memory flickered over her face.

"Professor Flitwick can change it if there's a problem," Pip continued for her. "Sometimes even we have to research the answer. It wanted to know what Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite colour was last year," he added, shrugging. "Alright, come on, then."

Harry gazed about the common room with a calculating eye. His steps made no sound on the deep blue carpet of the large, round room. The ceiling was meticulously painted with the constellations. Below, curtains were drawn across wide, tall windows. Interspersed between the apertures were bookcases of dark wood, jammed higgledy-piggledy with tomes. A few older Ravenclaws were standing around talking, while others had headed to their rooms.

A solid bronze door stood across the room from the first-years. Set prominently beside it was a tall statue of white marble.

"Ravenclaw herself," said one of the prefects as they walked past it, bobbing a curtsey.

The bronze door led up to the dormitories, girls and boys in different 'prongs' of the tower. Pip and another prefect led the six new Ravenclaw boys to their rooms.

There were two dormitories, each a wide teardrop shape comprising a quarter-sector around the central stairwell of the boys' tower. A bathroom took up another quarter, and the doorway to the final sector was bricked up.

Three names in cards were slotted into a rack on each dormitory door: BOOT / POTTER / ENTWHISTLE on one and CORNER / GOLDSTEIN / CORNFOOT on the other.

"Here's your dorms," the prefect Harry hadn't met said briskly. "The globes with the candles provide light. Tap them to light or extinguish them. Don't waste candles. No open flames or rough-housing. No practising unfamiliar spells alone." He scowled at each boy to make sure he had their attention.

"We'll be getting you up tomorrow and will help you get to classes, but after that you're on your own. If necessary, learn an alarm charm or, best case, get enough sleep. For the junior years – that's first to fourth – there's an eight o'clock common room curfew and twelve o'clock dormitory curfew. But it's up to you to make sure you have enough sleep."

Harry pointed to a blank metal plate on the dormitory door. "What's this for?"

"For when you've learned locking charms. No more questions? Good. You'll get your timetables tomorrow."

"Goodnight," Pip added.

Terry opened their shared dormitory door, while the other trio of boys disappeared into their own room opposite. Inside, beds and drawers were spaced against one wall. Shelves stood on the wall opposite. The curved tower wall had several large windows, and a long table and chairs stood beneath it. There was a pinboard in one corner, and crystal globes everywhere contained steadily-burning candles.

While Kevin walked over to a window and pressed his slightly haggard face against it, Harry admired the beds. They were large and beautifully carved from a hardwood, but he winced at visible tool marks on one leg.

Their school trunks stood in the middle of the floor. Someone had taken the shrinking charm off Harry's.

"I wonder who brought them up?" Terry asked with a yawn, lugging his own trunk over to a bed and putting his glasses on a side table.

Harry quickly claimed the bed furthest from the windows. He wasn't used to having so much empty space around him, and it would be worse when the view from the window wasn't obscured by night. "I don't know, but they must have seen the three of us talking together at dinner," he guessed.

"Whah?"

"Well, what are the chances that I would be ...rooming, I think you'd say... with the two Ravenclaws I already met, and not strangers?"

Kevin turned away from the window, and his lips moved for a moment. "Ways to divide six into two sets of three is ten, with only one way having no strangers, so: ten percent."

Terry stared at him, then looked at Harry, who shrugged. "Don't look at me. I can hold my own with arithmetic, and that's all."

"I don't even know why I'm in Ravenclaw," Terry said, yawning again, and closing the hanging blue curtains around his bed to change into pajamas. "I'm no great shakes with schoolwork. I just like to write, sometimes draw..."

Harry kept silent, not wanting to discuss his Sorting, but wandered around the room, tapping globes until the candles turned off. How did they burn in an enclosed space to begin with?

Kevin sat staring into the depths of the last one, and waved Harry away to stop him turning it off. Harry asked what the ruffled-looking boy was thinking.

"I was wondering how many trips the train makes each year. How big a village is Hogsmeade?"

"I don't know," said Harry and Terry together.

"I thought it was just for the school," Terry added dubiously, "given it's called the Hogwarts Express. The driver must have a day job."

Harry finished checking the contents of his trunk and closed it again, suddenly feeling exhausted. He tuned out the random chatter of the other two boys, and the last image he saw before he closed his curtains and dropped into bed in relative darkness was Kevin Entwhistle staring into the candle flame.

Harry fell asleep to the sound of wind whistling around Ravenclaw Tower.

Badluk the goblin replaced the kettle with a metallic clank and held out the pottery cup to his mate. Inscribed upon its side in runes of power was the missive, "World's Best Manager". Beneath the carved marks was a picture of a cross-eyed puppy, embossed in gold.

The smell of acorns, lime galls and bitter-bark accompanied the little plume of steam rising from the cup. Sibilig gripped its handle gratefully in a clawed hand; raised it; drank.

Badluk peered thoughtfully into his own mug, musing. The pair shared a comfortable silence for a while in front of the fire. Both felt, though neither would admit, that the dwelling seemed strange and large and empty without their foster son.

Prettyroot lay coiled on the kitchen table, watching the pair. It was already awkward, with nobody to interpret for the rock worm.

"He will make something of himself," Badluk said reflectively.

"Yes."

"Yes."

Harry's peers of the same age were drawing their numerous apprenticeships to a close, each narrowing themselves to a specific craft or trade. As journeymen, they would travel between various masters, often out beyond the bounds of Underfoot. Within a few decades they would be making their own way, learning all the while, becoming more adept in their chosen field, be it banking or artistry, for the rest of their lives. Each would become a master in the process.

It worked differently for humans, of course.

"Hogwarts School," Sibilig said, without any particular enthusiasm or malice. It was more as if she was trying out the words. "Of Witchcraft, yes, and Wizardry also. He will do well there."

"He hasn't quite developed the vicious streak of his peers."

"I am aware. The thief..."

"Yes."

"Yes. Guilt over ending the life of a thief. Ha. Of course, no child should have to witness murder."

Badluk put down his cup, and yawned. "He sees revenge as a practicality rather than an artform. It is unfortunate, yes? He is dedicated, though. A strange child."

One by one, they enumerated the talents of Harry Potter. The child was a decent, but not skilled, artist. A promising, but not inspired, craftsman. No real knack for numbers, which was embarrassing, but at least he worked hard. No area of metallurgy or stonework in which he excelled, but he was powerful, perhaps the most powerful budding sorcerer of that age in Underfoot.

And he had an intrinsically questioning nature, of course. Harry's deep curiosity and innate skepticism as a child had been seen as a talent by the goblins, who were cautious but not typically given to deep thought. It had set the child off from his goblin friends, and it had been nurtured.

"May it stand him in good stead for his wizarding education," Sibilig said aloud.

"I hope it will be enough. There will be great weights on his shoulders," Badluk muttered.

"We have prepared him. He is well-read, has met many people. He has four great works, four grisherurs," Sibilig added, reluctantly counting the two human-made rings of lordship along with the child's goblin-made spectacles and dwarf-crafted staff. The wizard wand was nothing spectacular, really. "This is more than most goblins of his age, yes?"

"Yes. Should we mail him another dagger? I should not have let him leave with only one..."

"He will be fine," Sibilig chided. "The wizards will have daggers if he needs them. He has sturdy wormhide and school supplies and money for books, and we have helped as much cunning and viciousness to bloom in him as we could. He will be fine," she repeated.

"He will make something of himself." Badluk clasped Sibilig to his side, and together they gazed into the embers of the dying fire.

Author's notes:

→ I knew ending the last chapter where I did was a bad idea, giving rise as it did to people commenting that horses are edible. Well, yes. Let me clear this up. Realistically, if you brought up the idea of tasty horseflesh amidst modern British schoolchildren, you would be regarded with disgust (I doubt many wizards had to eat horsemeat to get by in WWII). So that's the response we hear from the crowd. It is not the case that every single thing a given person or group believes is the absolute truth and the correct way of doing things. If you don't understand this simple principle, then you are going to have a lot of difficulty, and not just in reading this work of fiction!

→ Another thing I've been prompted to mention, though: arguably 'canon' information will keep coming out from Pottermore. I'm afraid that I don't have the time or inclination to constantly go back and revise things like Ollivander's first name now that we know it, so things will diverge a bit from these little new details.

→ Chapter 20, a nice round number, and I'm keeping my eye on the review counter with what amounts to frankly inappropriate levels of excitement. Thanks, as always, for reading and reviewing!