Welcome to the next chapter in 'Like a Lightning Bolt'.

Shall I just say, yay for making it to the second day of school year 3. Which brings me to a point I wish to raise based on reviews. Harry planned to go and speak with the CoMC teacher yes, he found out it was Hagrid and still planned to go and see him. However, during the one class Harry had off, he knew Hagrid was teaching, therefore, wouldn't have gone to ask Hagrid, then of course, everything else happened and he didn't go and see him after dinner.

Someone actually managed to guess a part of the phoenix, while several of you got close to figuring out another, good job. I also had people trying to guess who owned the Horse patronus, I apologise to those of you who didn't understand who it belonged to. The horse patronus belonged to Amelia, who was interrogating Peter at the time, and informed Shacklebolt of the results of said interrogation, causing him to add additional questions. After all, Amelia would have wanted to know how Peter became an Animagus, therefore she would have found out Sirius was as well.

Once again I do apologise for tense changes, unfortunately while I am working on it I can't help it sometimes and usually if I try and fix them I don't like how some of my sentences flow.

Now, onto the chapter.

"Speech"
'Thoughts'
"Spells"
Book Names

Disclaimer: I got no more of these, at first they were fun, but unfortunately now they annoy me more than entertain me, so, from now on these shall just reference previous chapters unless I think of something while writing the chapter. Anyway, read previous chapters disclaimers.

Chapter 9

"Harry, Harry! Wake up." Neville's voice abruptly brought Harry out of his dreamless sleep. Reaching for his glasses and putting them on when he found them, Harry looked around the room, seeing that only Neville was awake at the moment he focused back on his friend.

"What is it Neville?" The curiosity on Harry's face shone through his tired visage.

"Professor Lupin was right, Professor McGonagall just came into the Common Room to put up a notice, classes are cancelled today after what happened last night." Seeing the grin slowly crawl across Harry's face as he spoke caused Neville to grin back at his friend.

"Awesome, I'll get ready and meet you down in the Common Room?" Harry asked Neville as he began to sort through his clothes, pulling out casual clothes instead of his school uniform.

"Yeah, Hermione's already down there waiting for us, she woke up earlier than I did. See you down there." Neville got up and walked out of the room, going down to wait in the Common Room for Harry.

Walking down to the Common Room after having a quick shower and getting dressed, making sure not to wake the others, Harry walked into a scene that made him smile. Neville was sitting in one of the chairs practising some of his spells on random things that others had left out last night, judging by the dancing quills and multi-coloured book covers laying on the table in front of him. Hermione was sitting in the chair opposite him, reading a book while occasionally commenting on the spells Neville is using, as well as chastising him for using magic on other people's books.

"Morning Hermione, you two ready to go get breakfast?" Harry's question broke Neville's concentration, causing him to drop a book he was levitating onto his dancing quills.

"Morning Harry, I'm ready to go when Neville is." The boy in question was slowly lifting up the book to look at the quills underneath, seeing them all smashed and twitching he lowered the book back down.

"Damn. Well, now I am." Neville stood and walked over to where Harry was waiting, Hermione walking over to them right after putting her book into her bag.

As the three walked out of the Common Room, they heard humming, looking up the staircase they saw Luna skipping down from the floor above.

"Why do I get a feeling you knew that we were about to come out of the Common Room." Harry gave Luna a curious look as he watched her get closer, the expression on her face showing her to be thinking about his answer.

"Then you would be feeling wrong, I've been skipping up and down the staircase for about ten minutes now." Luna's admission caused the others to be rendered speechless, not knowing how to respond to that.

"Eleven minutes and forty-three seconds my dear." One of the paintings that Luna had skipped past waved a pocket watch in her direction as he finished, showing that he had been entertaining himself by timing her.

"Thank you Herbert, it certainly didn't feel that long." Nodding in the paintings direction as she finished skipping towards them.

"Right. Let's, uh, let's go to breakfast." Harry began walking down the stairs towards the Great Hall, the others following him down. As they walked the group further worked on their plan, Harry and Neville already drafting a letter to send to Rita Skeeter, while Hermione and Luna came up with the letter Luna would send to her dad telling her that he may receive an important article written by Rita Skeeter to publish.

When they reached the Great Hall the group saw it was practically deserted, suggesting most of the students were taking advantage of the day off to catch some more sleep, the older years knowing that extra sleep will be rare later in the year, while the younger years just wanted to sleep more. Only a few members of each house were present, no more than ten students a piece, while most of the staff were present. Professor McGonagall chastising Professor Bloodrune, most likely about what happened the night before with Madame Bones.

Sitting at the Gryffindor table Hermione pulled out parchment and quills, giving some of it to Harry and the rest to Luna, so they could write their letters while they ate breakfast. Finishing their letters the two placed them into envelopes and addressed them, Harry telling Luna that she could send hers with Hedwig as well, the two set the letters aside, Harry assuming Hedwig would come down for a visit and to steal some bacon. As expected, when the mail arrived Hedwig flew down to the group, landing right beside Harry's plate.

"Hey girl, come for some bacon I take it?" The look Hedwig gave him could only be equated to 'duh', "Well, when you've had some would you mind running a letter for me and my friend? Her letter needs to go to her dad and mine needs to go to a woman named Rita Skeeter."

After Hedwig ate some bacon she stuck her leg out, waiting for Harry to tie the letters onto her leg. When the letters where securely in place she nipped Harry's hand affectionately before hooting as she flew off to deliver the letters to Xenophilius and Rita.

"Now that's out of the way, what do you all want to do today?" Neville asked the others.

"Well, I was going to go and see Hagrid, considering we don't have classes today I was going to ask him about being an assistant occasionally." Replied Harry, waiting to see what the others had planned as well.

"I was just going to keep going back through my Transfiguration book, I'm a little unsure about how well I can perform some of the spells we learnt last year." Hermione lifted the book she had been reading up to show the others what she had been reading, revealing it to be the second year Transfiguration text.

"I'll come down to Hagrid's if you want Harry, I wish to know what kinds of animals he keeps nearby, especially now that he is the Care of Magical Creatures teacher." The near ever present dreamy expression on Luna's face had changed to a curious one as she reached the end of her sentence.

"I'll come as well, what about you Hermione? I'm sure Hagrid wouldn't mind you practicing down there." Neville looked at Hermione, a thoughtful expression on her face as she thought through what Neville was suggesting.

"Ok then, that sounds like a plan." Hermione smiled at the others as she responded.

Packing up all of their things the group of four began walking down to Hagrid's hut, the group discussing what Harry should do if Rita responds to his letter positively. They went over a few ideas, such as Harry telling her about what caused him to be suspicious of Peter, giving her a few bits of information on his life before Hogwarts in order to help gather public attention to the article. More attention than the article was already going to get from it being Harry's first official interview.

Arriving at Hagrid's hut Harry walked up to the door and knocked, waiting for a response. What was unexpected was for Fang to come bounding around from the side of the house and jumping up onto him, knocking Harry to the ground as Fang began licking his face.

"Fang, Fang get off, get off of me!" Harry tried to shove the very large dog off of himself, however he was not strong enough to move the massive dog off of him, "Guys, guys help me!"

Managing to tilt his head to look at his friends, at the expense of Fang now licking his ear instead of his face, Harry saw that his friends were incapable of helping him, primarily due to them falling onto the ground laughing at his expense.

"Fang, get off of him!" Hagrid's booming voice rang out as he came around the corner, seeing Fang pinning Harry to the ground. Fang got up and moved back over to Hagrid's side where he sat, watching everyone else as they picked themselves up from the floor.

"Thanks Hagrid, it's not like that lot were going to help." Hagrid began laughing as Harry gestured at the others, who themselves were still laughing.

"So, what can I do for you four?" Hagrid asked of the group.

"Well you remember when we got off the train and I asked you about Professor Kettleburn's office? I was hoping that I would be able to help out sometimes for your class, being a free period for me." Harry replied, helping the others off of the ground from where they fell.

"Hmm, I would like the help Harry, the problem is I would only be able to have you do that if you had completed your OWLs in the subject first, and then only for the classes that are for OWL level." Hagrid recited, the look on his face showing that he was focusing on what he said more than Harry.

"Wow Hagrid, I wasn't expecting that." Neville said, his tone showing that what he meant was not supposed to be hurtful.

"I actually asked Professor Kettleburn about rules like that and because he didn't know we asked Professor McGonagall. She actually brought all the staff in to tell us when she realized none of us knew that." Hagrid's sheepish smile made the other's smile back.

"Go Hagrid, asking the questions the other teachers didn't think of." Harry's words caused Hagrid's smile to go from a sheepish smile to a proud grin.

"Well, I was only thinking about what I would do if I needed help with something in the class. So, while I can't let you do that if you want you can come down on weekends and help me look after some of the animals I have for the class and those that live on the school grounds. The offer extends to the rest of you if you want to."

"That sounds brilliant Hagrid." Harry and the rest of the group all smiled at Hagrid.

After a short bit of discussion about the times that they would be able to come help Hagrid the group said their goodbyes then went to go and practice their spells in an abandoned classroom. On their way inside the group were stopped by Oliver Wood, the Gryffindor Quidditch Team Captain.

"Hey Harry, you got your schedule? I'm trying to work out when we can do our practices." Oliver appeared to be huffing, having probably run over when he saw Harry in order to make sure he didn't vanish on him.

"Sure, here you go." Harry pulled out his class schedule and handed it to Wood, who replicated a copy and then gave Harry back the original.

"Alright, thanks, will get back to you when I've worked out a time." Oliver waved to them as he ran off, sprinting after the twins who had just vanished into the Great Hall.

Continuing their walk to the classroom the group arrived and began working through the spells in the list that they hadn't began practicing last night. Harry and Neville began practicing the less harmful Defence spells on one another while Hermione worked through Transfiguration while also helping Luna learn the spells she would be learning throughout the year.

After a while Harry and Neville noticed Hermione watching them while they were mock duelling, using the method that was briefly covered last year in Lockhart's Duelling class.

"You know Hermione, it's hard to focus on each other when you're staring at us." Harry remarked.

"It's not you two I'm staring at, I was looking at your spells. Harry's move a lot faster than Neville's, but Neville's are larger than Harry's. Why is that?" Hermione queried, a curious tone to her voice as she did so.

"That's most likely just the personality of their magic," Seeing a confused expression from the other three, Luna explained in more depth, "It's a theory that some magical cores can have a personality to them, causing some modifications to spells that the person casts. In this case, Harry's personality causes his spells to be faster, whereas Neville's personality causes his spells to become larger. They use slightly more magical energy than someone whose magical core doesn't have a personality to it, but at the same time their cores are usually larger."

"So, does it change how the spells themselves function?" Harry asked, slightly worried now that one of them might have been capable of hurting the other.

"No, usually it's a change in an attribute, such as the speed or size of the spell. Daddy's spells usually come out wider than the spell usually does." Luna replied, her tone remaining serious the entire time.

"So, the spells I fire would move faster, whereas Neville's are larger. So, they have a shorter time to bring a shield up against mine, whereas Neville's are generally bigger, while not having an effect on most spells, the more offensive orientated spells would be able to hit a larger area."

"Like the Bombarda spell, it would hit a larger area, causing a much wider explosion than Harry's, however Harry would be able to use a spell like Stupefy making it hit his opponent before they are able to bring up a shield, taking them down that way. Both would be equally beneficial against an opponent who dodges as well, they have less time to dodge Harry's and they need to cover more ground to dodge Neville's." Hermione spoke mostly to herself, however the others all listened as she summed up her thoughts on what Luna had just told them.

"Exactly, in most cases due to the extra magical energy used by their spells when they perform them, even though they usually have a larger magical core, they can only perform the same number of spells." Luna remarked.

"How do you find out the size of your magical core in comparison to an average core size?" Neville asked, curiosity in his tone.

"Well, from what I understand you learn how to make a Rune cluster that can show you roughly how large your magical core is, you would have to ask the Runes teacher though, I only know what my mum taught me." Luna replied.

"I'll ask at the end of my Runes class, I'd like to know roughly how much magical power I've got, it could come in handy to have a better understanding of how much magic I can use." Harry said, making a mental note to ask his Professor when they would make such a Rune cluster.

Going back to their practice the group began moving through the various subjects, focusing mostly on the list for the rest of the day.

And that is this chapter finished. I am sorry both for the delay and the shortness of this chapter.

The main reason is all I primarily wanted to address for this day is the meeting with Hagrid. The main reason for this is the next chapter will be skipping through a few days, I will be including a recap of what happens roughly over the skipped time at the top of the next chapter.

Again, I apologise for it being delayed, I had both a mixture of personal life cutting into my time available to write, and there being no drive to write when I had the time to. As I'm sure all of you who are writers know, it is very difficult to force yourself into the mood to write, it can make you feel resentment towards your work which I do not want. The next chapter should be on time however, and should be much larger.

Until next time,

Lucison.