Once Lupin released the boggart, casting the patronus stopped being easy. Harry couldn't do it at all and Steven's patronus dimmed to a flickering thing that kept the boggart at bay but didn't drive it back.
Each time they tried again, Harry heard more and more of his mother's death. Only the thought that this might help him never have to hear it again kept him from throwing his wand down and giving up. The thought that this might be the last time he ever heard his mother was something he had to put out of his mind entirely.
Finally, on their last try Harry managed to conjure a patronus and drive the boggart back into it's chest.
Steven had managed it three tries earlier and was now resting. He looked haggard. Despite the brightness of his patronus, it was hard to cast when the chill of the dementor was leeching away all happiness.
Real dementors would be worse, and if there were more than one...it was hard to imagine managing to draw up a good memory in the middle of all that darkness.
It occurred to Harry that the real reason that the spell was advanced wasn't that it was hard to cast; both he and Steven, mere third years had managed to cast it on the first try. The problem was that casting it in the face of real adversity was going to take a lot more than classroom practice.
"We're going to have to do this a lot, aren't we?" Steven asked glumly.
"We can stop," Lupin said, looking at them intently. "It's possible that you are both too young for something like this, and nobody would think any less of either of you for giving up."
Harry looked at Steven, who looked back at him. They both shook their heads,
"We can't give up," Harry said. "It's life or death."
Lupin nodded. "All right. Let's begin again."
Ron and Hermione came back from Hogsmeade acting strange. They glanced at him multiple times and had furious whispered arguments when they thought he wasn't looking.
Harry was exhausted and drained from the Patronum practice and he couldn't find the energy to care.
That night, however, after lights out, Ron revealed that he and Hermione had overheard the professors talking about how Sirius Black had been the one who had betrayed his parents to Voldemort. He'd been their secret keeper.
Hermione had wanted to keep it from Harry, for fear that he'd go after Black. That was why she and Ron had been arguing throughout much of the evening.
Harry promised Ron that he wouldn't do anything foolish like go after Black right away.
Considering that Black seemed to be doing everything he could to get to Harry, Harry suspected that he wouldn't have to.
Steven wouldn't approve, probably, and neither would Hermione, but Harry fully intended to enact vengeance when he got a chance. Knowing his luck, it would happen before the school year was out.
All he had to do was watch and wait.
Faster than he'd expected, the winter holidays arrived. Ron and Hermione stayed at school, supposedly to catch up with work, but Harry knew it was really because they were worried about him.
Steven, of course, lived on the school grounds.
Without Quidditch or classes to interfere, Steven had more time to spend with the rest of them, although he still had time to work with his band.
Harry, Hermione and Ron got to listen to the band for the first time. It was composed of Steven, a fifth year Ravenclaw playing bass, a fourth year Hufflepuff playing the piano and strangely, a sullen looking sixth year Slytherin playing drums.
They were actually good, although it was strange to hear Steven playing a guitar instead of his ukelele.
According to Steven they were still looking for a vocalist. Most Ravenclaws were too focused on school to want to join and most Gryffindores were too focused on Quidditch. None of the other Slytherins wanted to be involved with a half human abomination like Steven at all.
Christmas came, and with it presents. He received another sweater from Molly Weasely. From Steven he received a book about how to use a sword, along with a promise to teach him more in person later.
Harry wouldn't have thought much of the gift, but after his experience the year before, knowing more about how to fight with anything was a gift worth having. Basilisks weren't the only spell resistant monsters out there. Inevitably, monsters that were spell resistant tended to be wizard killers.
It was the broomstick he received that caused the most trouble. It was a beauty; the most expensive broomstick on the market. Given their money from the basilisk, Steven could have afforded it, or Flitwick, but both of them swore they didn't give it to him.
Flitwick in fact insisted on keeping the broom for fear that it was a trap, cursed by Sirius Black as a way of getting to him.
Steven and Hermione were both adamant that it was for the best that it be checked out, but Harry had really wanted that broom. He needed a new one anyway.
Ron and Hermione fought more over Crookshanks obsession with eating Scabbers. Ron actually kicked Crookshanks, which led to Hermione not talking to Ron for days.
Hermione seemed to be spending a lot more time with Steven than she had in the past, even without studying being involved.
There were times when Harry would catch them after hours in the Gryffindor common room talking in low voices, Steven playing his guitar quietly.
The holiday ended faster than he would have wanted it to, with Hermione and Ron still angry with each other, and Harry still without a broom.
Worse, the Patronus lessons weren't going as well as Harry had hoped. He could manage a silvery cloud, but all it did was drain him of energy. He couldn't drive the boggart-dementor away, only hold it at bay.
Steven was doing better, although he too had only managed to create a silvery mist. According to Lupin, properly performed, the spell should create a corporeal animal that would charge the dementors and drive them away.
Hearing that the dementors could actually eat a person's soul had almost made Steven physically ill. It hadn't bothered Harry as much; after all, there were some people who deserved it as far as he was concerned.
The blood trail was pretty definitive. Scabbers was dead, and Crookshanks was the culprit. Hermione denied it, of course, and this enraged Ron to no end. They'd been fighting for the entire school year over their respective pets, and no it was at an end.
Ron wasn't speaking to Hermione, and this placed Harry and Steven in a difficult position.
It was easier for Steven; he had the excuse of his band and Quidditch and he didn't have to spend all that much time with Ron. When Ron tried to get him on his side, Steven was carefully noncommittal.
Harry, though was living in the same room as Ron, and yet he had to face Hermione from across the breakfast table every morning.
Hermione refused to even consider apologizing, although she did start spending more time away. She would sometimes go to listen to Steven's band practice, and she would spend much of the rest of her time studying obsessively.
Fortunately, Steven had talked her out of Muggle studies and into dropping divination. She'd been determined to take an impossible load at the first of the year, but she was much more relaxed now.
Still, the bad blood between Hermione and Ron remained.
Eventually he was given back his Nimbus, which proved free of all hexes, curses and other magical traps. It was just in time for the first game of the season.
For once Amethyst and Peridot chose to attend, even though Steven wasn't playing. As Harry played, he could see Steven and Lupin animatedly explaining the rules of the game to Peridot and Amethyst. The smaller green gem seemed to be complaining and gesturing wildly, but Harry couldn't hear what they were saying.
It wasn't until late in the game that he looked down and saw three dementors looking up at him.
His wand was out before he could even think, and he was shouting "Expecto Patronum!"
A huge blast of white light, bigger than anything Steven had produced in the classroom blasted out of his wand, sending the three figures flying.
Harry was so excited that he was barely aware of having caught the snitch.
Ignoring the people congratulating him, he dropped down to where Lupin and Steven were waiting.
"I didn't feel anything at all!" he said excitedly.
"That's because those weren't real dementors," Steven said.
He nodded in the direction of the three figures on the field. Draco and his two cronies were being grabbed by Professor McGonagall. Punishment was going to be sure and swift.
"Good reflexes though," Steven said. "When it actually happens, looks like you'll be ready."
It had been good to see Ron happy for once, although Hermione hadn't participated in the festivities. She'd gone off to do something with Steven and his aunts instead.
Although it hadn't been real, the experience with Draco made Harry feel a little more confident about his progress with the patronum spell. All the work he and Steven had been doing was going to make a difference.
Harry went to bed confident that this night, at least would be free of the nightmares that had been plaguing him since starting the patronus training.
If he'd been learning alone, he suspected that he might not have been as driven. Facing the darkness alone was hard and unforgiving. Having Steven there made him push himself harder, and he suspected that Steven pushed himself harder because Harry was there.
They both pushed Lupin to teach them longer than they probably should. Harry had told no one of the nightmares, although Ron knew, of course. Sleeping in a bed a few feet away from someone else, you knew everything about them.
Normally it was Harry's voice that woke Ron.
Tonight it was the other way around. Harry's eyes snapped open, and he rolled over to the side. He pushed aside his bed curtains just in time to see a silhouette standing over Ron's bed.
He grabbed for his wand and his glasses, but by the time he had both, the figure was gone. He cast a lumnos to be sure, and what he saw chilled him to the bone.
Ron's bed curtains were slashed and torn. Black had tried to murder Harry and had simply gotten the wrong bed.
Nowhere was safe.