Harry amidst the Vaults of Stone

Chapter 22

By breakfast on Tuesday, the number of strange glances Harry was garnering seemed to have increased. The initial outright gawking at his scar had fallen off in favour of looks that varied from intrigue to revulsion. He had resigned himself to being known as an eater of bugs, and all that entailed. So far, it meant snide names like "Potterpede" and "The Boy Who Grubbed".

There was a surprising amount of vehemence behind the sentiment, and it came from a markedly Slytherin direction. He guessed that this was more than the simple response to a cultural slip-up: the Sorting Hat's warning about trouble from that quarter based on who he was came to mind. Of course, his comments about not caring for ancestry couldn't have helped.

Reasoning this out didn't make him feel any better about it, though.

After the second burst of apparently choreographed laughter from the Slytherin table across the hall, Harry got up and moved away to sit amongst the Hufflepuffs, with his back to them. Wayne Hopkins was rambling about History class – the boy had apparently been none too impressed by it – while Neville stabbed fitfully at a fried egg.

The arrival of the mail afforded a distraction. Harry received an offer, delivered by a great grey owl, for an owl of his choice for free, in return for the Emporium's use of his name in promotional material. There was also an unsolicited request that he appear at a charity event in December.

Harry read both with mild curiosity, then put the former back in its envelope and rolled the latter back into a scroll, thrusting both into his pocket. He would forward them to his foster parents when he wrote home in the evening.

"I- can I- Harry Potter, right?"

Harry turned.

An earnest-looking Hufflepuff boy proffered a quill and a copy of The Rise And Fall Of The Dark Arts.

"Can I have your autograph?"

That seemed to open the mine doors for half of Hufflepuff to clamour for similar attention.

Even if Harry had been inclined, which - in light of his rather mixed reception at Hogwarts - he wasn't, growing up amidst bankers had ensured that he knew better than to sign anything handed to him.

As the disappointed throng dissolved, Padma Patil and Jan Runcorn eventually managed to clear their way to seats at the Hufflepuff table, converging from opposite directions in a small piece of unplanned synchrony.

"Are we allowed to sit here?" Padma asked curiously.

"How did that girl expect you to sign the tip of her wand?" Jan interrupted, unceremoniously dumping bacon on Harry's plate by way of greeting. "She must think you've got amazing penmanship, huh?"

"I don't know," said Harry, looking dubiously at the hogmeat. "And what is this for?"

"All I see's crumbs on your plate, mate," Jan said cheerfully.

As breakfast continued, she persisted in attempts to make him eat a wizard breakfast, and Harry grew more and more exasperated with the graceless Gryffindor. He ignored her in favour of Padma, who talked about the weird lake creatures she'd seen through the Slytherin common room windows, until somebody tugged at his sleeve.

"Come on, Harry." He turned to find Terry standing behind him. "Transfiguration!"

Harry fished in his bag for A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration, then set it on the desk in front of him and looked around with interest.

The ground-floor Transfiguration classroom was large, with stained-glass windows set high in the walls. There were several empty cages standing around the room. Another contained a dozen specimens of some sort of long-bodied surface rodent. Some of the creatures were brightly-coloured, and one had a knotwork pattern in its fur; Harry supposed they were the results of semi-successful transfigurations.

Professor McGonagall sat motionless behind her wide desk, a book open in front of her. A tabby cat sat rigidly in front of the book, appearing to examine the students.

All eleven Ravenclaws were seated, and most of them holding whispered conversations despite Hermione's glares, when the hands on the clock above the teacher's desk set upon half-past-nine, signifying that class was due to begin. Harry had found this time-based scheduling strange at first, but it made sense in light of the group nature of the lessons.

At that precise moment, the cat stepped to the front of the wooden surface and transformed into Professor McGonagall, leaning against the edge of the desk and regarding the students levelly. This elicited several startled squeals from the children in front of her.

After recovering from his surprise, Harry smiled toothily, appreciating the trick. The version of the professor that had been seated behind the desk since they came in had not moved at all. He really should have spotted the facsimile.

Professor McGonagall flicked her wand wordlessly at her duplicate, and it shrunk away with a shimmer, turning into a seat cushion.

"Transfiguration," she said, turning back to the class. She presented her wand to them, holding it delicately with a thumb and forefinger at each end.

"One of the most difficult and dangerous forms of magic you will encounter, either at Hogwarts or in later life," she continued, slowly spinning the wand. "I cannot impress upon you strongly enough that I will tolerate no shenanigans, tomfoolery or childish poppycock whatsoever in this classroom. To that end, we will be going over three simple ground rules."

The professor strode to the front of the classroom, and waved her hand. A list appeared on the blackboard. Block letters in coloured chalk at the top said: Rules Of Practising Transfiguration In Professor McGonagall's Classroom.

"Rule One: You will not practise transfiguration outside the castle. Hogwarts classrooms have wards which can minimise the harm done when something goes wrong, which it almost inevitably will during your seven years here. These wards do not extend to cover the grounds! If I or any teacher catches you transfiguring objects unsupervised outside the castle, it will be immediate detention."

"Rule Two: You will never attempt to transfigure any living thing, except under the direct supervision of a member of staff. We do not even begin to learn human transfiguration until sixth year, and for very good reason! When we do practise animate transfiguration, it will be on conjured, unintelligent animals. It is not my intent to teach you that it is acceptable to change the fundamental nature of a being able to feel pain – even if the magic is performed correctly."

"Rule Three: If you break a transfigured object, you will Vanish it or find someone to Vanish it for you. The reason for this is simple. As students, you lack the power for permanent transfiguration. When a transfigured object is broken, the form it returns to with time will be dangerously destabilised. A piece of timber, turned into a clay urn and dropped, will become jagged splinters on its return! A glass jar, turned into a piece of parchment and cut up, will revert to dangerous shards!"

She regarded them solemnly, and lowered her voice.

"If you do something as stupid as transfiguring a grandfather clock into a nail and hammering it into a classroom wall, you will leave my Transfiguration class and you may be expelled."

Harry frowned. The ...specificity... of that strongly suggested that it had happened. He really, really hoped the professor didn't give the same speech to Jan's class. Or Blaise's, for that matter.

Professor McGonagall tapped the last rule on the blackboard with her wand. "Because it is an absolutely vital safety skill, we will start learning Vanishing relatively soon, even though few of you will be able to master the art before your OWL years. I positively relish the prospect of wasting time attempting to teach it to you if it saves even one foolish student - or an unwitting bystander - from hideous injury."

She put the tip of her wand to the surface of her desk, and incanted a long phrase. Up sprung an animated and partly translucent model of a tall building, people bustling around inside it like blurry ants.

"St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries," she said, and tapped her wand. A decent-sized portion of the model became bright red.

"Spell Damage wing, ward for Transfiguration damage," she added. "Or rather, wards. There are three: reversible, irreversible, and fatal. I am sorry to say that they are all in high demand."

After a solemn pause, she gave a flicker of a smile, and said, "We will return to this point in future lessons. For now, let us review. Brocklehurst, for one house point, explain to me Rule One Of Practising Transfiguration In Professor McGonagall's Classroom."

The class continued in that vein, the first-years somewhat subdued by the speech they had heard. Soon they moved on to the theory work that would precede them attempting to turn a matchstick into a needle. After a lot of listening and writing, the matchsticks were handed out.

"Alterligna acus," Harry intoned carefully. It wasn't a spell he knew, but luckily he had focused mainly on metals in his previous transfiguration work. It took only a dozen tries before his matchstick was a passable needle. He automatically used mutum ullus to return it to its original form, squinting closely at it to make sure he hadn't missed anything, and then looked around at the busily-working class.

"Okay, how did you do that?"

Harry went to reply to Terry, and blinked in concern. The matchstick on the desk in front of the long-haired boy was distinctly thick and orange.

"How did you do that?"

Terry prodded it with his finger, causing it to smear. "I think it's partly a crayon, now," he admitted.

Harry stifled a grin, remembering some of his own earliest transfiguration attempts. "You may be having trouble concentrating. Don't even attempt to cast the spell until you've got every aspect of the needle pictured firmly in your head. And make sure your wand is actually touching it, that will help, yes?"

He took Terry's needle and demonstrated, turning it back into a matchstick and then slowly into a needle, then looked up to find Professor McGonagall looming over his desk. "Have you practised transfiguration before, Mr Potter?"

"Yes, professor."

She cast a critical eye over his needle. "A point to Ravenclaw for helping another student, then. You have some talent. However, I would prefer you take another matchstick to practise on, rather than use spells I have not approved to return it to the original state."

She summoned the box of matches from her desk and put a dozen on Harry's desk. "Continue."

By the end of the lesson, Hermione and Lisa had each gained Ravenclaw another point for making their matchsticks thin and pointy, and metallic, respectively. Terry hadn't got his match to look any more like a needle, but he had managed to stop turning it into a crayon, oil pastel or coloured chalk. Harry amiably agreed that this was a step in the right direction.

For homework, due in two days, they were given the task of writing four paragraphs on Vanishing. They each also had to find a historical example of injury resulting from botched human transfiguration or breaking a transfigured object. Harry checked with Kevin that he had properly understood the concept of 'homework', and then they had a short break before History Of Magic.

Harry was no fool; he had no high hopes here.

A class on history, taught by wizards? The fact that the teacher was a ghost was just extra froth on the waterfall, as far as he was concerned.

Professor Binns floated in his desk, various scrolls of parchment hovering around him in a spectral haze. The signal that class was starting was the ghost beginning to speak in a fast monotone.

"Boot. Brocklehurst. Corner. Cornfoot..."

The students realised he was calling the register and hastily scrambled to catch up, but the professor didn't seem to take any notice whether he received a reply or not.

At the end, Binns coughed dryly and launched into a terse explanation of what would constitute their year of lessons. There would be an overview of British wizarddom for the first quarter, discussion of the 17th century with a focus on 'goblin rebellions' for the second, and then sorcery during the War Of The Roses in the third. In the final quarter, Binns would focus on one of his specialities, the Giant Wars of the early 1800s.

Then he launched straight into a decade-by-decade monologue on the history of Britain, from the fascinating perspective of a dead historian.

At no point during the class did he look up.

At one o'clock, Professor Binns halted somewhere in the 1760s and slowly floated out.

"Boring," Terry moaned.

"Informative," Hermione corrected primly.

"Depressing," Harry muttered.

And then, of course, there was Potions.

It was a double period, held with Hufflepuff, in one of Hogwarts' deeper dungeons. Harry and Kevin took the wrong staircase down from the Great Hall after lunch, somehow finding themselves in the gatehouse, and were very nearly late.

Harry had time to get a brief impression of the Potions classroom: austere, filled with books and jars, dimly lit and windowless. He was strongly reminded of Brassruuk's medicinal storehouse in Borogrove Way, where he had learned to suture, and was assailed by a surge of homesickness.

Then Professor Snape appeared through a side door, glowering around the room like some dark-eyed tunnel phantasm from a children's story.

"Sit."

The door closed loudly behind the teacher, echoing in concert with the main doors of the classroom, which slammed shut of their own volition. Everyone hurried for their seats, and Harry found himself at a long wooden bench between Neville and Kevin.

Professor Snape strode to his table at the front and immediately began calling the register. There was a brief pause when he got to Harry, and looked up. "Ah. Our newest goblin student... Potter!"

"Yes, sir," Harry said, fighting down a flash of annoyance at being singled out.

The professor's eyes lingered on him for a moment. "Remove that disturbing expression from your face, Potter. ...Rivers! …Roper!"

The register duly taken, the potions master sneered around the classroom. Harry gave himself a mental reprimand when he found himself automatically interpreting the scowl goblin-fashion. He doubted the professor was really indicating concern over an unrelated elder's increasing forgetfulness.

He snapped to attention when Professor Snape spoke, voice soft but carrying. "I suppose it is too much hope that anyone has read their books?"

There were a few rather hesitant yesses, largely from the Ravenclaws, including Harry.

"Well. We shall see. Potter! Name two herbs that can be used in basic draughts to alleviate stomach pains."

Harry thought carefully, as the professor loomed over him. His potions text mentioned... "Old-Man's-Toes. And, uh, Yellowfeather, in season, yes?"

"Old-Man's-Toes is a fungus, not a herb. And what, pray tell, is Yellowfeather?"

Harry met those dark eyes. "A type of fern. It grows at depths of about five hundred to a thousand feet. It's used in several pain potions, including for stomachs. But only in winter, I think, otherwise-"

"I don't wish to hear your goblin nonsense, Potter. Second attempt. Why do a Charisma Concoction and Syrup Of Translucence use the same rare substance as a base solvent?"

Harry dug his nails into his palms – could the professor be deliberately antagonising him? Why would that be productive? – and thought about it. "I don't know, Professor," he said eventually. "What substance is it? Maybe the two potions share a common ingredient which would react with, say, water, so a rarer substance which they're both neutral in has to be used?"

Snape smirked, and leaned closer, fishing in his robes for something. "Pathetic guess, Potter. I take it you have not properly read the seventh chapter of your textbook. Perhaps you need somebody to help you with the longer words."

The professor's hand came up with a jar full of jagged white grains, which he waved in Harry's face. "Third attempt. Remora teeth in potion-making."

"Sir?"

"How would I prepare the teeth, boy, and for what?"

Well, that one was easy. "Usually by crushing, sir. And for any number of potions. Shrinking Solution... Hecate's Oil... a Draught of Peace and all its variants... ah, that one which makes you forget language skills..."

"Philtre of Miscommunication, Potter. Very well." The imposing figure turned away, to the rest of the class. "Who can tell me what I would get if I boiled a chaldron-weight of dried borage in an infusion of rabbit sputum and dilute harpy tears? Yes, Granger?"

"Gold Zyme, sir! It's the only known remedy for scrofungulus, but the name is actually a misnomer, because it's neither gold nor anything to do-"

"Yes, yes, correct." The professor wheeled. "What about our Hufflepuff contingent? Who can tell me where I might find an achewood gall?"

After a pause, he added, "Put your hand down now, Granger, and go see Madam Pomfrey for an Elixir Of Recollection if you can't even remember which house you were Sorted into!"

Seconds ticked by, while Hermione stared at the surface of the desk, face burning.

"Nobody at all?" A nasty sneer spread across the teacher's face as he stared at each young Badger in turn.

"Er... Greenland, sir, maybe? Er, because I read that the achewood root grows under permafrost?"

"Finally. I will not give points to Hufflepuff for guessing, Hopkins, and be aware that the next time anyone calls out without raising their hand, it will be detention."

Snape clasped his hands behind his back and walked across the room. "I have very seldom had a first year class I considered teachable. You will strive to become an exception to this or you will suffer," he said quietly, and his dark eyes roamed across them.

"In this class you will learn the precise and taxing art of potionmaking. The absolute power inherent in as common an assemblage of items as a cauldron, a knife and a shelf of apothecary bottles is one you may never understand fully, but rest assured that you will at least leave this classroom with an appreciation that magic is more than simple wandwork, whispers and wishery."

He surveyed the utterly silent class, then spoke more sharply. "Our time for practise is limited, so we will begin immediately. You will work in pairs on a basic Burn Salve. If this preposterously simple test of your abilities is completed successfully, we will move on next week to a Boil-reducing Solution, and then a Decongestant Potion. By the end of term, we will have worked through all the basic medical potions, and may move on to a more complex and varied curriculum."

His head whipped around. "Five points from Ravenclaw, Corner. Whatever it is, spit it out. Now. Form pairs at your benches, take the instructions down from the board, and begin."

Harry bent down to check the flames under Neville's cauldron, brushing away a trickle of sweat. Neville himself had returned from fetching more sea cucumber ink – having dropped the first bottle – and was chopping some sort of root called Djinni's Delight.

Harry could hear Mandy and Morag arguing about who was going to have to touch the crup liver at the bench to his left. To his right, Hermione seemed to be directing not only everything she and Kevin were doing, but Terry and Su at their adjacent cauldron as well.

Towards the back of the classroom, the various pairs of Hufflepuffs were working in cowed silence as Snape swept around the room, angrily adjusting cauldron temperatures and ordering piles of ingredients re-chopped.

"Does this go in now, Harry?"

"Yes." He straightened up to see Neville throw the diced root into the cauldron, and winced.

"Try not to let it splash." Harry peered into the potion, which had started to churn and bubble, and winced again. This one was more of a scowl. "How finely did you chop that?"

"I, uh – fairly small, I guess?"

Kevin looked over from his own table with detached interest. "That's not right, is it? Our pot didn't react."

"I'm, um, sorry, Harry." Neville leaned dangerously over the cauldron and wrung his hands. Harry scaled his sense of the boy's worth down again, and grabbed Neville's collar, firmly hauling him back.

"Careful. Now. I think it needed to be chopped much more finely, yes?" As the cauldron continued to froth, Harry mentally sorted through Arsenius Jigger's discussions of potency and consistency. "Since it's the active ingredient. The whole thing is taking on that purple root colour, so we should be able to simply add more butterwort to make up for it."

As he spoke, he began shredding butterwort into the mixture, fragment by fragment, until the liquid settled down again. "I think we can add a little more Djinni's Delight as long as it's chopped very finely, yes? But it won't be anywhere near as strong."

"Well, I'll add the ink-"

"No, that wouldn't... wait, did you start churning the flobberworm mucus yet?"

"You said-"

"Cracked shovels, don't put that..."

Through a process composed of hubbub and desperation, during which their potion changed colour three times, the pair ended up with Neville fetching the ingredients and reading the instructions aloud from the board, while Harry managed the cauldron and everything that went into it.

Their salve was rather mottled and rank-smelling by the end of class, but with Neville removed from the active brewing process, there had at least been no more blunders.

Hermione and Kevin had produced a perfect bottle-green and aromatically spicy salve, which Snape pronounced "relatively passable", awarding them a house point for it. Terry and Su had done a little bit better than Harry and Neville, earning the comment "sub-par". Michael and Stephen had managed to turn their potion into tar, which the professor pointedly vanished without a word.

The Hufflepuff groups had produced what might charitably be called 'variations' on a Burn Salve. They ranged from what was effectively lumps of Burn Wax to a sticky lime-coloured substance which, after tentative stirring, Snape called "possibly the most poisonous example of a medical potion I have ever encountered".

He loomed over Neville's cauldron, raised an eyebrow at the lumpy salve within, and smeared a bit between his fingers. He stood in silence for a while, then simply said, "nearly worthless." As he turned away, Harry nodded in silent agreement.

"At the start of class next week, you will turn in ten inches of parchment on the proper methods of preparing roots, stems and tubers for use in unguents."

He waited until they had copied this down. "Dismissed."

"What a git," Terry muttered as they headed wearily up one of the many staircases that would take them, eventually, to the Ravenclaw common room.

Harry snorted, stumbling on a stone stair.

"What's so funny?"

"What does 'git' mean?"

"Eh? Like, a berk, a prick, a bastard."

"It means 'romantic conquest' in Gobbledegook."

Terry paled. "The goblin language, right? I... no, that's really... anyway, he's a git in the English sense."

Harry shrugged, turning off down a hallway. "He reminded me somewhat of my jewellery instructor, Bidpruk. High expectations, no mercy, not at all approachable."

"Or he's just a git."

Harry shrugged. "That, also. We'll see, yes? What do you think, Transfiguration homework first?"

Terry groaned. "Can't it at least wait until after dinner?"

"I wanted to explore the library properly after dinner. We have barely seen it."

"Yeah well, you would. Huh..."

They had come up short in front of a door. Kevin almost walked into the two of them, and blinked distractedly. "Wait, where are we?"

"Cankerous cavern collapse," Harry muttered to himself. There was a heavy padlock on the door. He absently reached for it. Maybe he could...

"I think it's that third floor corridor. The one they warned us about."

Harry took his hand quickly off the lock.

Kevin had now focused on the door with interest. "What do you think's there?"

"Other than certain death, you mean?"

"You're not even curious?"

"I'm curious," Harry admitted. "I was just hoping to survive at least to the end of my first week of school, yes?"

The three of them stood together, staring at the door for a while.

"Back to the stairs and find our way from there, do you think?"

"Yeah."

"Yes."

Harry, Kevin and Terry ended up working on the Transfiguration homework during an extended library visit soon after dinner. Hermione, who was already there, joined them.

Harry read about a dozen different forms of Vanishing, each with a different purpose. There were vast regional enchantments set up by magical ministries, which could be accessed to direct Vanished matter into garbage zones around the world. These zones were generally inside volcanoes. On the other hand, there was Vanishing for conjured objects, which simply reversed the conjuration and dispersed them into nonexistence. There was the Vanishing of transfigured forms, and special rules for Vanishing gases, and powerful restricted Vanishing of the sort which destroyed actual matter.

Blaise wandered into the library, almost visibly dripping boredom, and slumped to the table, resting his chin on his hands. Harry ignored him in favour of poring through Bugblatter's Fundamental Principles Of Alteration. Blaise rewarded this attention by wiling away the time coming up with ridiculous variations on the Harry Potter Eats Insects Theme.

"Potterfly."

"The Bug With The Lightning Scar."

Harry wasn't really bothered, but was obliged to resolutely ignore the Slytherin.

"Harrypillar."

"The Bee Who Lived."

Terry marked his place with his finger and raised an eyebrow. "Arthropotter," he said, beaming in the manner of an amateur card player laying down an ace.

As the bemused stares of the other boys fell upon him, he blushed and went back to his book.

"Honestly," Hermione scoffed, shaking her hair out of her eyes and not looking up.

That night, Harry watered his seeds on the dormitory windowsill, laboured over a letter to Badluk and Sibilig, and went to bed.

He lay awake, staring at the strange clothy canopy of his strange large bed in the strange tower room, and tried to find his place in this world.

After some time, he drifted off, and dreamed of bubbling cauldrons and deep, beautiful caverns and Bugblatter's Third Equation.

"Unfortunately, circumstances have left us temporarily without a teacher for this class. However, Professor Dumbledore has arranged for a former Hogwarts professor to return to a teaching position, and he should arrive in time for your next class on Friday."

Professor McGonagall was introducing the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors to Defence Against The Dark Arts. It was a double period in the morning, held in a sparsely-furnished classroom with burn marks in one corner. There was a distinct air of excitement in the room, apparently not abated by the lack of an instructor.

Professor McGonagall called on a Gryffindor with his hand raised.

"Is it true there's a curse?"

The professor's lips thinned, and she seemed to choose her words carefully. "While it is true that Hogwarts has had a run of particularly bad luck in staffing the Defence Against The Dark Arts position, and there are various persistent rumours, I don't think we need to conclude there is an actual curse in play."

Michael leaned over to whisper to Harry. "They haven't had a teacher last more than a few years since the rise of You Know Who, apparently. And often not even that."

Harry nodded, thinking. He wasn't surprised that there was no teacher available this year. Fairly reliable rumour had it that the man Quirrell had taught here for five years, then applied for the Defence position, and hadn't managed to teach a single day in his new position before ...well, he didn't really want to think about that.

Harry, through Gringotts and the Brotherhood, knew at least the rudiments of cursebreaking. It was nothing short of absurd to think that a curse could be placed on something as abstract as a position, or even a name. A curse - in the broad sense of the word of course - had to be anchored to a place, person or object. Some physical thing.

It might be possible to set up some ward reacting to the phrase "Defence Against The Dark Arts". Harry was no expert, but that sounded like it would be hideously complex, and easily detected. Easily solved, too, by changing the class name, but surely they'd have tried that.

Harry scribbled ideas on his notepad. Even if the actual numbers were available somewhere, he didn't have anywhere near enough mathematics to be able to work out the chance that the 'bad luck' really was simple coincidence. Maybe he could write to one of Underfoot's actuaries.

Professor McGonagall was still speaking. "For today's introductory lesson, Auror Jason Carrington will be speaking to you about some of his experiences from many years of actively fighting the Dark Arts."

She gestured to a scarlet-robed man with an eyepatch, standing near the door. "Auror Carrington, if you will?"

Auror Carrington's stories, at least in the second part of the double period after he had introduced them to the idea of Defence, were enough to keep everyone on the edge of their seats. Harry noticed with some amusement Ron Weasley's mouth hanging wide open as he listened.

Carrington held back the grisly details, despite the Gryffindors' questions, but it was interesting to hear about the usual character of dark wizards and the easiest ways to deal with hags. The stories were interspersed with a bare-bones introduction to 'magical' (wizard) law; who to report cursed objects to and so on, which Harry found almost as interesting.

Defence Against The Dark Arts led naturally to a lunchtime discussion of Black and Lestrange. People never seemed to mention just one name without the other.

Hermione persisted in giving Harry sympathetic looks, no doubt having read extensively about Black's history. It was a little annoying, even if well-intentioned.

"Auror Carrington seemed very competent," she asserted earnestly. "I'm sure they'll both be caught very soon."

"When the Aurors do catch them they're going to be Kissed," Michael Corner said with apparent excitement.

"I don't care how many times you explain it, that still sounds weird to me," Terry muttered.

"What's with the face, Potter?" Michael added.

Harry shook his head, fiddling with a 'butterknife'. What was the point of making a knife without a, well, point?

"Using Dementors is barbaric," he replied eventually.

"Well, what would happen in-" the blue-eyed boy was obviously searching for an acceptable phrase - "in your world?"

"For the crimes that put them in prison?"

"Yeah."

"Execution."

"That's wrong," Hermione said primly, covering her mouth for a moment.

"That's life," Harry shrugged. "Those who help to fill charnel houses are doomed to fill them early."

He cocked his head, immediately aware that hadn't translated into English very well.

"You can't..."

"I shall be the first to admit that I don't fully understand the English word 'soul'," Harry said, laying the knife down decisively and waving his hands vigorously to halt Hermione's next objection.

"But it appears to be tied to a notion of immortality – aeons of reward or punishment, yes? If the Dementor's Kiss destroys this so-called 'soul', then in doing so it consigns a person to utter oblivion, like that Vanishing spell we were reading about. Whereas mere execution would simply bring about those aeons earlier. Yes? And if the Kiss doesn't work like that, then what does it do? A blade is simple. It kills. But the word 'Dementor' seems to only appear in sentences that also contain the word 'torture'."

People were giving him looks of discomfort or simple non-understanding. Sensing that pushing any more might cause things to break, he dropped it.

"Anyway, that's how it is with the Brot- with goblins. All murderers and psychopaths are executed. If they are without reason, they are without worth. A liability, is your word for it. So they get a choice: noose, sword or axe. Most go for axe. It's a different matter if the crime is something done in the second's heat-"

"The what?" Kevin frowned. "Oh, the heat of the moment."

"Ah, yes. If exchange of blows leads to death, it can be different. There is exile, in the worse cases. A goblin might go his whole life and not finish making restitution for it. The family might demand the right to fleskgyldr - ah, I suppose you'd say scar-cutting, it's when they can disfigure the culprit but not diminish his ability to toil..."

"But- but that's awful. And all, all lives should matter," Hermione said in horror. Several of their classmates pushed their plates away, appetites apparently diminished.

Harry had always taken goblin justice for granted, never really thinking about it. He waved his hands around again, wondering how he could begin to explain the whole metric of acceptable risk and loss, the waste of resources in guarding someone offset against the innate worth of life, the cost of loss of potential due to murder, the probability of reoffending, and so on.

It didn't help that some small, treacherous part of him thought that she was right.

That afternoon, Transfiguration class found Harry gritting his teeth in a grimace of puzzlement. It seemed that the class would not move forward until everyone could handle the matchsticks-to-needles trick.

Funny to think that he'd been worried about his grounding in goblin magic holding him back.

By halfway through the period, Harry couldn't call the spell anything but well and truly mastered. Hermione and Lisa seemed engaged in a silent race to be the next, but neither could yet produce a perfect needle.

...Nothing left to do but experiment, then. The spell was specifically for matchsticks to needles. What would that allow, then? How long could he make a needle? How large could he make it, using only the materials afforded by the matchstick? What metals could he transfigure it into? Could he make several needles from one match? What about casting the spell on two matchsticks? What if he used half a matchstick? What if he tried the spell on a long, thin piece of matchbox?

Professor McGonagall, collecting up the class's efforts at the end, raised an eyebrow at the tangled assortment of mismatched metal and wood on Harry Potter's desk. She made no comment, reasonably sure that the boy would have let her know if he had lost the knack overnight.

"What're you doing?"

"Examining the grass of your surface lawns."

"You can't possibly be that bored," said Terry. "And they're not my lawns."

Harry raised his head from the lawn. "What? Why would I be bored?"

There followed a brief pause, which Harry had begun to identify as him having said something which caused a disconnect in the minds of fellow students.

"I think most people just lounge around in their free periods," Kevin ventured.

"That's what you're doing, yes?"

"Well, we kind of followed you out here, since you seemed to have some sort of goal."

Harry plucked a leaf of a different shape and held it up to his glasses. "I was planning to research the killing curse this afternoon, but it looks like all the books that go into any detail are restricted to older students only."

"The 'killing curse'? Macabre. Why?"

Harry rolled onto his back and tapped his scar. "I want to know what happened."

"Oh, that's right, that- yeah. Can't you ask..." Kevin trailed off. "Yeah, I guess not, huh."

Terry frowned. "I've only heard what the other boys have said about you and ...well, what happened to you. I, uh, don't know which bits are just made up. All this stuff about a Dark Lord... it sounds like a story. I mean, sorry, if you don't mind me saying."

Harry scowled back at him. "I'll tell it to you sometime. Action, adventure, really wild things. What a story, yes?" In truth, he was rather amused by how hesitantly his dorm-mates were dancing around the topic, presumably out of some misplaced concern for his feelings.

"Sorry if I brought up bad memories," Terry said, abashedly scratching his head.

"Memories? I was one. I have had a mother and father since I can remember, yes? Can you eat grass?"

"What?"

"Grass; is it edible?" Harry elucidated.

"No...?"

"Poisonous?"

The other two boys glanced at each other and shook their heads.

"Cows eat it," Terry said helpfully. "But they've got extra guts and things, I think."

Harry nodded. Disappointingly, he hadn't found any creatures on the Hogwarts lawns. Maybe there were wards to keep them away, or maybe the fauna of the surface world wasn't as diverse as he'd been led to believe.

Astronomy was held late that night in the tallest tower of Hogwarts, along with the Gryffindors.

Professor Aurora Ambia Sinistra was tall and gold-bangled, and introduced herself by her full name in a deep, lilting voice. Harry noticed that she occasionally muttered strange and incomprehensible things while the class assembled. Perhaps it was some habit of astronomers.

The disconnected muttering continued even while the professor took the register. Kevin was therefore given the distinction of being called out as "Kevin Entwhistle, Radnar, Radnar". For Hermione, it was the inscrutable "Hermione Granger, Virgo and Mercury."

When she got to Harry, Professor Sinistra said, "By the Moat of Moggoth, Harry Potter", which was depressingly similar to how other teachers had reacted.

Harry decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. He hadn't had any real experience with astronomy, per se, although he had learned a little 'astrophysics' from his precious few 'human muggle science books' (Badluk's phrase).

Or, at least, he had learned enough to know he didn't know much. But his fingers had been itching to take apart his telescope ever since buying it. Maybe he'd get the chance to in class sometime.

As it turned out, what the students got was a speech introducing them to the "wonders of the cosmos, whose mysteries we may never hope to fully understand". This irked him on a fundamental level, although he couldn't quite put into words the reason why.

"...completes an orbit once per year, during which it completes its own axial turn almost exactly the 365 times of the inferior calendar year. I saw the Eye, over the horizon, like a rising sun. The turn of the planet gives rise to seasons and to tides, to the migration of birds, to the mysterious lights of the north, to, to... yes? Mr Potter?"

Harry, unable to contain himself any more, had politely raised his hand.

"Professor, why exactly are there lessons in astronomy at Hogwarts?"

The students giggled, and Professor Sinistra bristled in the moonlight. Harry was already wondering if he might have phrased that better.

"Mr Potter, Hogwarts has instructed in Astronomy since its founding, centuries ago. Rowena Ravenclaw herself offered tutelage in the field, which surely commands respect," she said severely. "Historically, understanding of the universe has been the domain of the uppermost echelons of society."

"But why is a relatively mundane subject still taught, though? Has the, ah, curriculum of the school not changed over the centuries?"

Now her eyes were narrowed.

"Rad, Nar. Mr Potter, feel free to spend more than half an hour in my class before you decide whether you are interested in it! Astronomy is an incredibly complex and mysterious field of study!"

Harry amended his question one last time. "What I meant was, I am confused because astronomy seems to be a non-magical 'field of study'. And yet it is a core class, yes? Why not other sciences?"

Professor Sinistra hooded eyes widened a little from what had been a hostile stare, made eerie in the dim light. "Mr Potter, I will leave aside the historicity of this class and its permanent fixture in any remotely classical education. By the Stone of Daggoth," she mumbled, and stood ramrod-straight.

"I could speak to you of solar winds and calendar rituals, the breathing of the planet, the prophecies of the comets, places and times of great import. I know of the great flows of power in the sky, the mysterious balance of the arcane and the stellar, the dance of seasons and the position of all things magic and mundane amongst the stars. The fundaments of magic lie firmly upon the rigid and timeless geometries of the planets and stars! However, you are simply not equipped to appreciate these mysterious complexities without a proper groundwork! You seem to think you know everything, when you know nothing! If we could please return to our lesson?"

The class giggled some more.

Harry kept quiet, hoping the darkness was hiding his flushed face. He knew several things.

He knew that everything in the universe was moving relative to everything else, in what amounted to all directions, and that 'the rigid and timeless geometries of the planets and stars' was therefore essentially non-existent.

He knew that having any interest in the night sky whatsoever was unrelated to magic, if the sorcerers of the Brotherhood were anything to go by.

He knew that if he heard the word 'mysterious' one more time that night, he might have to jump off this tower.

He also suspected that he had made an enemy of at least one teacher today.

An hour later, the young Ravenclaws and Gryffindors stumbled wearily to their respective common rooms. Harry went to bed with a headache, and dreamed of matchsticks amidst the stars.

Author's notes:

→ Trivia: I wrote most of this chapter with a family-sized peanut butter jar full of cicada husks in front of me.

→ So, Snape is one of those characters for whom everybody has their own opinion. The only thing I can really say without fear of controversy is that he's an undeniably complicated character. Snape has a major role in every single book - unlike, say, Sirius or Voldemort - and these roles are very fluid. There are about a dozen fanon versions of him, all of which are easy to write, and them there is the canon version, which is almost impossible to write. While I don't think I truly hit the mark here, I'm satisfied with how close I got.

→ Anyway, I'd just like to say that I'm glad to be able to bring you another chapter. I don't think I managed to write a single reply to your reviews last time, which is a new low, even for me. So, um, sorry. Please continue to review, whether you've found a typo, or have some constructive criticism, or want to make any comment at all.