The much better, Dursley's can fuck off, Slytherins are people too AU

by Lindie de Waal

Collection of the The much better, Dursley's can fuck off, Slytherins are people too AU Collections books. Extremely long chapters as complete books are loaded as chapters. MATURE /SLASH Don't read if you don't like it. NOT my stories, credit goes to Alwayslily22 and Des98

1. the chamber of secrets

The Chamber of Secrets and Half the Adults are Idiots Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/13557357.

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Categories: F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi Fandoms: Harry Potter - Fandom, Harry Potter (books) Relationships: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy, Millicent Bulstrode/Pansy Parkinson, Luna

Lovegood/Ginny Weasley, Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger, Narcissa Malfoy/OFC

Characters: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini, the whole gang basically, Minerva McGonagall, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Gilderoy Lockhart

Additional Tags: abusive dursley's, Abusive Lucius Malfoy, Fic based on a tumblr prompt, multi-chapter fic, Albus Dumbledore learns he's a bloody fucking idiot, Snape learns he's an arse, And slowly learns not to be so much of an arse, maybe..., Gryffindor/Slytherin Friendships, Inter-House Friendships, Fix- It, AU, obviously, if you haven't got that, Sporadic Updates, Unreliable Narrator, The golden trio is basically a golden clusterfuck, because everybody is friends now yay, Well - Freeform, Somewhat, slytherins are cool okay?!

Language: English Series: Part 1 of The much better, Dursley's can fuck off, Slytherins are people

too AU Collections: Harry Potter Fanfic Must Reads, The Best Fics I've Read, Epic To Read

List, Series that I want to read once they are complete, The Overly Toasted Bagel Collection, Expecto Petroleum (aka these fics are GAS), my favs :), mark for later list is shit, Amazing Epic Stories, If I could marry these fanfics I would, Pocky's Favorite Completed Works, He was rapidly becoming obsessed with Draco Malfoy, For the Giggles, Like A Favorite Sweater, bumblebee's fav hp fics! :-), Violent Zombies Faves, Zombies graveyard, dino's library of obsessions

Stats: Published: 2018-02-03 Completed: 2018-03-04 Words: 42,832 Chapters: /collections/dinos_mega_library

The Chamber of Secrets and Half the Adults are Idiots by Des98

Summary

So this is based on a tumblr prompt by Mauraders4evr (https//dashboard/blog/marauders4evr) "Harry Potter AU where Harry is hiding in the cabinet in Borgin and Burkes. And he sees Lucius grab Draco with his cane. And he hears the hiss, "What did I tell you?" And he hears the quiver in the blonde boy's voice, "Don't touch anything."

And Harry knows.

Because he's used the voice that Draco uses for the past twelve years.

He knows.

Because now that he's lived with the Weasleys for over a month, he knows that that's not the way that a father's voice should be.

He knows..."

And it wouldn't leave me alone so...

Notes

Okay, so this is obviously gonna be way different from canon (the slytherins aren't mindless evil-doers, somebody does something about the Dursley's... etc) and some of the ideas for this fic (like Harry's extra-sensory perception of magic) are my own details. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this but I honestly cannot wait to get there. Me and my fickle muse (Bassy the Basilisk) hope you enjoy it. Well, I hope you enjoy it; Bassy's still mad that I won't let her slither out and eat any of you. Love forever (unless you're an asshole), Des ;)

See the end of the work for more /users/Des98/pseuds/Des98

And so it begins...

Harry slid further back in the cabinet in Borgin and Burkes as he listened for signs of Lucius Malfoy leaving with his son. It was ironic that this cabinet would have been far more comfortable than his cupboard at the Dursley's if it weren't for the tangible, visible presence of dark magic cloaking the entire place, threatening to choke him. With effort, he did the same thing he did at Hogwarts and the Burrow so the swirling colours of the magic there wouldn't blind him- he imagined closing the 'eyes' in his core to the putrid black, fetid swirls of magic. He'd been so blissfully ignorant last year, when he thought that the darkness in Quirrell's turban was merely his fear of everything, but now especially he couldn't ignore the taint of forbidden magics in the air without extreme effort. He wondered how anyone could. His vision cleared, but he could still feel it, still smell it, like rotting flesh, still hear it, like whispers from the grave. Which was why, despite the habit of attention to his surroundings he had developed of necessity in his many years with the Dursley's, he didn't notice how near Draco Malfoy had ventured to his hiding place until he heard his voice.

"Father, you promised you'd buy me a present." Harry's schoolmate tried to sound confident, detached, but Harry could hear the whine in his voice. Notice me, it seemed to say.

"Not here! What did I tell you?" Lucius' voice was harsh and cruel.

"Don't touch anything." Draco warbled, and his voice had gone from a posturing but desperate cry for attention to a warble of true fear. And all of a sudden Harry knew.

Harry hadn't spent twelve years with the Dursley's without knowing what that tone meant. In his case, he knew that the tone precipitated swings with frying pans and hits with belts and canes and even Marge's dog chains, knew that it meant pain and hunger and lonely nights in his cupboards trying not to cry at the thought of the new scars that further signalled him for what the Dursley's thought he was, what he had spent every moment of his life until last year believing he was: a freak. He assumed that all parents used that tone before they punished their children, and that his punishments were just more severe than others.

But a month with the Weasley's had taught him that loving parents didn't talk to their children like that. Even when the twins had created an explosion in their room, scorching the walls, Mrs. Weasley hadn't responded like that. She'd yelled, to be sure, and George and Fred had scrubbed the wall until it shined, but her voice had not once, in the entire month Harry had been there, sounded like that. Hadn't sounded the way that Uncle Vernon's did nearly every time he spoke to Harry: like the sharp edge of a knife, promising retribution.

When Harry made his decision, he made it without really making a conscious decision. Sure, Malfoy had been a prat to him, but they were twelve, for Merlin's sake. Harry wouldn't have even wished upon Dudley the things he was subjected to at 'home,' and Dudley had claim to a good handful of Harry's many scars. So why would he wish it on a

boy who had called him a few names? These thoughts flashed through his mind more in abstract concepts than actual words as he burst out of the cabinet, grabbed a very surprised blonde by the hand, and began running for all he was worth.

Malfoy, Draco, didn't seem to fully understand what was going on, but he picked up his pace and ran alongside Harry, which was good, because even after a month of being fed properly (too properly, in fact, as the rich home cooking of the Weasley's had left him running to hidden places to be sick more often than not after being starved since term ended), Harry could not drag the other boy. They skittered along without really getting anywhere, and it wasn't until a creepy old hag tried to shove a disembodied finger practically up their noses that Draco's brain seemed to catch up with his legs and he took the lead, grabbing Harry's overlarge sleeve and dragging him down another alleyway, and then another, and another, until Harry forgot how long they had been running.

Then they burst into the sunlight of Diagon Alley, and Harry was almost blinded, because Gringott's magic was so vivid and he was just so tired from running that the level of suppression he'd been using to block out excess ambient magic was almost too much. As the spots cleared from his vision, he witnessed Mrs. Weasley galloping towards them like the blessed cavalry, sweet little Ginny practically being dragged along.

"Oh Harry! Where have you been? We were so worried about you! Oh, I should have floo'ed with you!" It was a long moment of checking him over before she noticed the blonde beside him.

"What on earth is the Malfoy boy doing with you?" Her hands stilled from rubbing soot off his face long enough to really look at who Harry had dragged along.

Harry was still winded, and very, very overwhelmed, so all he managed to squeeze out was something along the lines of "bad shop… dark… Lucius…mean" before Draco took over.

"This prat got himself lost in the floo, I presume, and he was hiding in exactly the worst possible place to be hiding, because even Crabbe and Goyle aren't too thick to tell you that his luck is absolutely terrible, and he witnessed my father being a bit of a prat, and because he's an idiot and far too noble for his own good, he comes charging out and grabs hold of me and then we're running like bloody mad." Mrs. Weasley looked like she didn't know quite which part of that statement to react to first, and there wasn't time, because suddenly a very dishevelled and enraged Lucius Malfoy is running at them, green light spilling out of his wand at every angle, and Harry is frozen for a minute, because he's seen the green ones before, it's right there tugging at his subconscious, if he could only remember…

And then there's no time for any more thinking, because Molly Weasley is shoving all three children behind her and pulling out her wand, maternal fire practically spitting from her eyes as she faces Lucius Malfoy, and then Draco is telling him to "run, you idiot, run!" And it all seems so insane as he's trying to apologize to everyone they've nearly bowled over, and Draco is telling him to do that later, and they're already going a little bit slower than they were at first because Draco, oddly enough, is making sure Ginny is placed firmly in front of

him so they can't misplace her, and everything seems to blur around him in a flurry of sensation and oh Merlin are those magical colours or is he about to lose consciousness?

Then there's a veritable flock of redheads crying "Where could he be?" and suddenly Fred and George crying "found him!" as one and they're in front of Flourish and Blotts. Then everything seems to calm down for just a moment before it all goes further to hell. Because suddenly there's Mrs. Weasley, and she's been chased into the storefront and hit with some kind of stunner that Harry can feel is darker than a stunner is supposed to be, and it smells like ozone and sounds like the sizzle of a hot pan when you run it under cold water and then Arthur Weasley's face is redder than his hair as he launches himself, wandless, at Lucius Malfoy, who is so surprised that he too, drops his wand. Two adults are rolling on the floor like angry muggle school children, ripping robes and hair and punching as Harry tries to make it to Mrs. Weasley to see if she's okay, but is near the point of falling over himself, and Draco's arm is holding him in place and a distant voice that sounds like his school nemesis but far nicer is telling him to just sit down, dear god.

Finally, finally, Harry, who has lost track of even what he himself is doing at that time, sees the blessed form of Hagrid pulling apart Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley by the scruff of their necks, gripping Malfoy noticeably harder. And then there's a lot of talk, none of it which Harry can quite catch, like when Vernon is yelling at him after a hard hit to the head and he just can't focus, and then there are aurors and Lucius Malfoy being dragged away in ropes of vivid magic and some weird blonde ponce yelling "are you getting this? It will launch us to the front page!"

Suddenly Harry feels himself being lifted into the arms of one of the twins (George, he thinks, because he has a small mole on his right collarbone), and then George is saying something about how he's "still so pitifully light, even after a month of good food," and he tries to respond but he ends up drifting off to sleep against the comfortable chest, and the last thing he hears is Mrs. Weasley telling Draco that "of course you can stay with us dear, we'll take care of you," as she waves off a hovering medi-witch.

Hours later, after the streets have cleared and all is relatively quiet as everyone closes up shop, Susan Bones is returning from her shopping to meet her best friend Hannah Abbot and her parents as she realizes that she forgot to get a new diary. And then her eyes snag on a small black book, in good condition and blank, and sweet little Susan thinks it must be a gift from Mother Magic herself. Smiling to herself, she picks it up.

Chapter 2

George Weasley was concerned about the small child in his arms. Of course, George Weasley had been concerned about him since they'd gone to pick him up and seen the bars on his windows and his gaunt, tired face. And then they'd gone to get his trunk and he and Fred had shared a look because, was that a cot? Another look when they saw the blood stains on the sheets of the bed in the locked room. Harry clearly didn't want to talk about it though, and he was safe with them at The Burrow, so George and Fred, in silent agreement, had kept silent for the time being. But then Harry comes charging through Diagon with Draco Malfoy, of all people, followed by Draco's father, who looked completely unhinged, and George's suspicions grew to the point that he couldn't ignore them. Now he was holding his brother's best friend, who is so very light, and so tired from the exertion of the day that he doesn't even wake up when George carries him through the floo, and his unease grows. He goes to readjust Harry in his arms, and his hand brushes against some odd ridges under his over-large t-shirt, and the dark-haired boy groans slightly in his sleep. George swallows a sense of dread as he gently pulls the collar of the shirt away from Harry's neck and casts an eye at his back. What he sees has him choking back bile. As soon as the last of their eclectic group is through the fireplace, he acts.

"Mum, Dad, Fred- kitchen. Now," he says, and they listen, because his voice is as grave as they have ever heard it. Still carrying Harry, who he has come to love as much as any of his biological siblings, he leads the way into the cosy breakfast nook and shuts the door- the other kids will have to find out eventually, but by Merlin, they sure as hell don't need to see it now.

"George, what is it?" Arthur asks his son, and he is afraid, because George looks like he doesn't know whether to cry or murder someone.

"Didn't you guys wonder how, exactly, Harry knew to drag Draco away?"

"Well, to be honest dear, there wasn't really much time to think about it," Molly Weasley wrinkles her forehead, knowing the question can't be rhetorical.

"It's because he knows what to look for. I found this carrying him through the floo." Without any further theatrics, George slide's Harry's shirt up, and the adults gasp as Molly has to choke back a sob.

Harry looks like he's been tortured- his back is covered in scars, some that look years old, far too many years old on the body of a twelve-year-old, and some that are still red, inflamed welts, clearly from just before he came to stay with them. They can see every bone in his spine, even though he's been eating well for a month, and Arthur and Molly know that they don't want to know what the poor child looked like a month ago. They thought their boys had been exaggerating when they claimed Harry was living off scraps, but clearly 'scraps' was a charitable term for whatever food his relatives had seen fit to give him.

The world seems frozen for a moment, and it's like the kitchen in The Burrow has suddenly become a liminal space, the most horrible liminal space one could possibly imagine. Then Harry stirs, and everything springs into a flurry of activity.

Molly casts a sleeping spell on the little Potter- he doesn't need to be awake for what's going to come next. Then she motions her husband and her twin sons to follow her into the living room again, where three sets of eyes immediately turn to them, questioning.

Ron and Draco are playing chess and the blonde looks only marginally uncomfortable, and Molly takes a moment, somewhere in the back of her subconscious, to feel proud of her son. Ginny is watching them, and Draco is letting her tell him where to move the pieces, because he seems to have taken an odd sort of protective position when it came to Ginny, ever since he made sure she was safe from errant spell-fire back in Diagon Alley. But now they've frozen as if in a painting, astute enough to see that something is wrong, but none wanting to be the first to ask what.

"You dears keep playing; we're just going to pop over to see Dumbledore right quick." Mrs. Weasley has injected so much false cheer into her voice that even Draco can tell their suspicions were correct.

"Why're you taking Harry, mum?" Ginny pipes up.

"He's still asleep Gin, we just don't wanna wake him." Ginny is about to say something else, as Fred looks far too serious for this to be anywhere near the truth, but Ron interrupts.

"Hey Gin, how about we go show Draco our quidditch field?" He wants to know what's going on as much as any of them, but he knows that something is seriously wrong with his best friend, and that fixing it should take precedent over everything else. As oblivious as he is to some things, he has the mind of a chess-master when it comes to strategizing and finding patterns, and he wants to help his parents help Harry.

"Alright…" Ginny takes Draco by the hand, not convinced that everything is alright, but knowing when to follow Ron's lead when he has an expression on his face like the one he's currently wearing. "C'mon Draco, we don't have any fancy brooms, but it's fun to toss an apple around."

"That does sound nice. And uh, maybe tomorrow I can owl my mum n' see if she'll send over my Nimbus." Draco sounds unusually shy, but Ron gives him the first genuine smile Draco's seen all day, and that's enough for him smile shyly back as they race towards the yard.

As soon as they've ensured their younger bunch won't try to follow them into the floo, the four, well, five including a sleeping Harry, make their way to the fireplace, and Molly wastes no time calling out "Hogwarts' Hospital Wing" in a slightly tremulous voice.

Poppy Pomphrey is organizing Potions stores for the upcoming school year when her fireplace flares to life, and she is immediately on alert, wondering who could possibly be coming in on a random Wednesday evening in the summer. When she sees four Weasley's and a sleeping Harry Potter, her stomach drops all the way to her sensible shoes. This can't be good.

"What's the problem?" She asks, putting aside her personal anxiety in favour of being brisk and ready for business.

The group looks at each other before Arthur speaks up tentatively. "We've accidentally discovered some… unfortunate truths about Harry's home life that require immediate medical attention."

"Very well." Poppy swallows around the knot in her throat. "Which area needs my attention?"

"His torso," George responds, setting Harry on his usual bed with the utmost care.

Poppy wastes no time vanishing the offending article of clothing and the entire group gasps. The Weasley's hadn't seen his chest yet, or the many deep scars and prominent ribs there.

"It… um, it was his back, that we saw," Fred stutters, his voice little more than a whisper, and Poppy turns him softly, needing to have a complete picture of what she was dealing with. This is when she loses her composure, and a sob wrenches its way from her chest.

"What can we do?" George prompts the woman, wanting to prod her out of her catatonic stance.

"I need, I need the, um, the fireplace. I have to call Severus." Nobody groans at the name of the hated potions professor, and it truly settles on them then that things are more serious than they'd thought.

"Severus- I need you here now with the following: Blood Replenisher, Fever Reducer, Anti-Inflammatory salve, Infection-fighting potions, whatever you have, Nutrient Potion, various balms for skin lesions, and…" she looks back at the bed, where one of Harry's prominent ribs looks bent out of its proper shape, "an extra bottle of skele-grow. Now!"

Severus Snape has no idea why Poppy would need these potions immediately in the middle of the summer, but he's learned not to question her in his years of working with her to create potions for the hospital wing, so he grabs everything on her list with years of learned efficiency and steps through the fireplace to the hospital wing. At first, he's not sure why he's here, but then his eyes snag on Harry Potter, the son of his enemy and his beloved best friend, in a state that Severus remembers all too well from his own childhood, although he's sure he never looked that bad.

The phials in his arms go crashing to the floor, saved only by a rapid levitation spell by Molly, and Severus feels like his whole world, his whole perception, has been flipped on

its head and then bashed repeatedly against the hard-stone floor. "I think… I think that I may owe the child an apology…" he breathes, his whisper so soft it's almost a wheeze, and then he clamps his mouth shut and stares some more, each scar, lash, and prominent rib driving in the fact that he's failed, he's failed her, he had one job, to protect her son, and he was so blinded by his hatred that he couldn't even do that right.

"Severus, you bumbling idiot, get your arse over here and feel sorry for yourself later!" All four Weasley's eyes widen, because none of them had ever heard Poppy Pomphrey talk like that, not even at the height of the war. It serves its purpose however, as Snape is shocked enough to mechanically move his feet to Harry's bedside and follow Poppy's instructions as they begin their work.

"Weasley's!" Madam Pomphrey barks, and Fred and George look up, because that is the Fred and George tone used by all the teachers. "Go get Dumbledore, and Minerva. The password to the headmaster's office is 'Bertie Botts.' Feel free to accidentally break something of his on your way." Fred and George set off immediately, not even taking the time for a sarcastic salute.

Chapter 3

When Harry awakens, it takes him a few moments to figure out where he is. In the state he's in, it requires much more effort than usual to supress the vibrant sights and smells and scents and tastes of the magic surrounding the area enough for him to see the actual place. When he does, he begins to panic. "Hospital wing oh no oh no ohnowhatdotheyknow?!" he thinks, frenzied with worry.

He becomes aware of Dumbledore's presence, and the fact that he's spoken out loud, when the old man looks down his crooked nose at Harry, eyes bereft of their usual twinkle.

"Everything, I'm afraid, my dear boy," Albus says softly, and Harry's head stops spinning long enough to see that the headmaster is looking at him with pity. Harry is horrified. This is why he didn't tell anyone and dear Merlin what would the Dursley's do when they found out would he even survive the summer?!

This time Harry is sure his thoughts are quiet, but it doesn't matter as he feels Albus' magic probe his mind gently, and he's reeling far too hard to push it away.

"You will not be going back there, child. I am man enough to admit I've made a mistake. I knew you were unhappy there, and I should have kept closer oversight. I thought, for the sake of the protection offered, that a general state of discontent and some mutual dislike would have to be acceptable. This, however" and he waves a hand at Harry's body, "is absolutely not."

"Sir…" Harry begins, not entirely sure what he plans to say.

"Your guardianship has been transferred to Minerva per her request. As your head of house and the fact that your relatives, your only biological relations, have been arrested, it was easily granted."

"Arrested?!" Harry gasps, and this time Albus (thankfully) does not need legilimancy to know what he is thinking.

"Not for child abuse, although in different circumstances, I would love to see… never you mind, he's been arrested for embezzlement and tax fraud, and as Petunia now has no means of support, she is unable to take you. This can stay your secret. Although," he continues, "I would recommend you tell your closest friends, as it is unlikely you can keep it from them for long. Molly and Arthur are rather upset." Harry blanches. "Not at you, of course," Albus is quick to amend, wondering how he, a headmaster, is apparently so terrible with vulnerable children. "I'm afraid I have some work to do in my office. Minerva will probably be by tomorrow. She's currently sleeping- we had to pour quite a few calming draughts into her, you see." And Dumbledore left.

Out of everything the professor had said, Harry found himself most upset (after the fact that he now had to tell Ron and Hermione, and oh god, Draco, about the Dursley's, of course) that it looked like he'd have to spend at least tonight in the hospital wing. And he'd

been so careful. He'd used wandless (and therefore untraceable) scouring charms to get the blood from his back and chest off his clothes and sheets, he'd not changed in front of any of them, made sure they couldn't hear when his malnourished body got sick and forced him to throw up after meals where Mrs. Weasley piled too much on his plate. He found himself wishing that he hadn't thought he'd gained enough weight to take the glamours down. Except… he never had to go back to the Dursley's, so that was something. It was also hard to process after he'd been wishing in vain for so many years, and he was glad when the twins' entrance provided him with a distraction, even if their smiles did look rather forced.

"Harry, old chap!" Began Fred.

"So good to find you awake!" Continued George.

"We wanted to bring you a Hogwarts toilet seat, but it seems that they've magically nailed them all down after our escapade last year."

Harry smiled. He loved the twins and how they seemed to know, instinctually, that what he needed now was normalcy.

"That's alright guys. I wish I still had the one from last year, but it's probably better that Madam Pomphrey took it. The Dursley's aren't too fond of modern art." Harry immediately wished he could take back that last sentence, because now his little offhand remarks about the Dursley's had a much darker meaning.

George and Fred merely looked at each other and smiled tightly again. "Well that's okay Harry, because mum's gonna put another bed in Ron's room for when you stay with us, and you can hang as many toilet seats there as you want."

As if summoned by her name, Mrs. Weasley appeared with a plate of food. "Harry darling, you're awake. Wonderful. I've brought you some dinner. But," she added with a rueful smile, "don't eat any more than you can handle. Madam Pomphrey and Professor Snape are going to start you on a nutrient potion regimen until your appetite improves."

"Professor Snape!" Harry's big green eyes widened.

"Yes dear, Professor Snape. Madam Pomphrey needed him to help heal you, and right now he's down in the dungeon having a good long period of introspection. We've all given him a good scolding, although to be honest I think he's being hardest on himself, and I expect that he's going to start being much nicer to you."

"Snape… nice to me! That'll be so… weird." Taking a look at Harry's face, Molly laughed despite herself.

"Well I suppose you'll just have to get used to it then," she smiled, kissing his nose and setting the plate on the nightstand by his bed. "Well, I've got to get back through the floo. Everyone is currently trying to help Draco beat Ron at chess, so that's them taken care of, but Arthur's been into these things called 'spark plugs' lately, and I'm not sure how long I can be gone without the child I married blowing up the house." Harry smiled at her. He loved the Weasley's so much.

"We'll stay with ickle Harrykins until he falls asleep." Fred and George said in unison.

Harry didn't think he could ever fall asleep at this point, his head was swimming with so much information. To top it off, another worry came to his head.

"Draco… is he…" Harry didn't know quite how to finish the sentence.

"He's fine, Harry. His father did sometimes get physical with him, but nothing that would cause lasting damage, and nothing that would leave a scar. He's perfectly healthy right now, but his dad is looking at a pretty long sentence in Azkaban for his rampage down Diagon. Those were some pretty dark spells he was tossing about all willy-nilly," Said Fred.

"Yeah," added George, "and even if he wasn't looking at hard time, not even the ministry is dumb enough to leave a kid with someone who's that clearly bonkers. Mum and Dad have temporary custody while the aurors try to figure out if his mum was complicit in the abuse, and if she wasn't, if she's sound enough to care for Draco."

"Wow, so Draco's living with us now?" Fred and George both glowed at the way Harry said us without even thinking about it. "How's Ron taking that?"

"He's actually pretty cool with it. We all saw how he was protecting you and Ginny back when all the craziness was going on. And apologized, actually. He said to send our apologies on to you as well. Ron may be a bit of a git sometimes, but he understood how it might have influenced Draco's behaviour, having a father like that with very clear expectations for 'how a Malfoy should act." Fred said, while George mimicked Draco's expressions as he'd mocked the way his father lectured him about 'filial piety' and all that nonsense. Harry laughed again, and was surprised to realise that he'd managed half the plate Mrs. Weasley had sent him, due to the fact that Fred and George had been feeding him forkfuls and he'd absentmindedly swallowed them. He yawned.

"Oh, ickle Harrykins is getting sleepy, Fred. I dare say it's time for a bedtime story."

"Right you are, old chap. Let's see…" George thought for a moment before beginning. "There once was a greasy dungeon bat and two noble red-headed heroes…"

Chapter 4

Draco Malfoy was marvelling how much his life had changed in the past twenty-four hours. His father was in Azkaban, and Draco would be lying if he said he felt anything other than relief. While his father might not be as bad as some physically, only occasionally hitting him hard enough to leave bruises, he was emotionally a nightmare to live with, and the pressure to be the perfect pureblood heir was stifling. And Harry Potter had rescued him! If Draco hadn't been so worried about him, he'd still be smiling and blushing hours later. Did this mean Harry wanted to be his friend? It was like a genie had granted Draco's greatest wish! And wait until he told Pansy and Blaise that he was friends with the Weasley's now, and that Ron was even better at chess than Blaise- they were going to be besides themselves with shock. But Draco knew that after that, they'd be perfectly willing to make nice with his new friends, even if they were Gryffindors, because Pansy and Blaise were his best friends, and they trusted him to know what he wanted.

The only thing that worried Draco was his mother. She loved him, surely, and she had tried to balance out his father's rougher side, so he hoped he was able to live with her again. It's not like she'd chosen to marry Lucius, after all. That was all her father's idea. And if his mother couldn't take him, who would? The Weasley's couldn't take him forever- they had their own family to support, and as bad as Draco felt for making fun of them before, it is true that having an extra mouth to feed would be a real strain for them.

"Draco," one of the redheads- Ron this time- poked him in the side. "Stop worrying. Everything's gonna work out."

"With me maybe," Draco countered, "but what about Pott- Harry? Why is he still at Hogwarts? They wouldn't be keeping him there overnight unless he was in the hospital wing."

"Maybe he's just over-exhausted, y'know, from all the excitement, so Madam Pomphrey decided to keep him for the night, like for observation or something," Ron ventured.

"Weasel," Draco huffed, exasperated, but lacking malice, "c'mon. You've seen Harry ride out a bucking broom, fall off of it, catch the snitch in his mouth and walk away like nothing happened. Do you really believe he'd be bested by a little running unless there was something else wrong?"

"I was just trying to be positive…"

"Being positive gets you killed. Think, Weasel, think!" Draco made the motion of hitting his palm against his forehead while exhaling huffily.

"I can't believe we're friends now…" Ron grumbled, but still offered Draco one of his pepper imps.

"If anyone wants to know what I think," Ginny piped up. "It's that your both idiots."

The two boys, both smoking at the ears from the candy, turned to look at her, affronted.

"Oi! Why's that?" Ron took another candy from the bag and threw it at his sister, who deftly caught it and popped it in her mouth.

Ginny took her time chewing the imp before she answered. "Well, think about it. You guys went to get Harry in the flying car," Draco's eyes widened at 'flying car,' but he kept his mouth shut. "You find him locked in his room with bars on his window and looking like he's been put through the ringer. Then he just knows there's something wrong with your home life from witnessing one interaction with your father, Draco? The Dursley's were obviously abusing him, and that's why mum and dad and the twins were in such a hurry to get to Hogwarts. It's Dumbledore who put him with those awful muggles after all, and haven't you seen mummy giving Harry worried looks all month? She's obviously gone to give the headmaster a piece of her mind, and it must be pretty bad if Harry's still there…"

The boys' eyes widened, and they looked at each other, swallowing nervously. "Why didn't he tell us?" Ron asked.

"The same reason Draco didn't tell anyone. He was scared and ashamed and they probably told him to keep his mouth shut." Draco's hands clenched slightly, but he nodded to concede Ginny's point.

"But I can't believe there weren't any signs or anything," Ron said. "I mean, Draco was a right arse because he was acting like his dad wanted him to." Draco hit Ron on the arm, but had to nod in agreement. "And Harry didn't like, show anything."

"Did he not show anything or did you just not see it?" Ginny prodded.

"Well, he was kinda weird at meals sometimes…" Ron mused. "He had this look on his face, like he wasn't sure if he was allowed to just reach out and grab for something. And on the train!" Ron jumped suddenly, remembering something. "We asked if his relatives might be proud that he rescued the stone, and he laughed and said they'd be mad he didn't manage to get himself killed. We thought he was joking!" Ron looked absolutely stricken.

"You couldn't have known…" Draco began, only to be interrupted as Mrs. Weasley walked in.

"What are you children up to? It's almost time for bed," she tutted, picking up various toys and games and she bustled around the living room.

"Mum? Did the Dursley's hurt Harry?" Ron blurted out.

Molly dropped a book and averted her eyes. "Well dear, that's something you're just going to have to talk to him about," she muttered, and the three knew that that was an unfortunate 'yes.' "Now, why don't you run along to bed and you can see Harry tomorrow if he's feeling well enough. Off you go. Draco, I'm sure Ron can loan you an extra pair of pyjamas, although they might be a little big…"

"Anything you can give me will be fine, ma'am," Draco said. "Thank you for… for being so nice to me. I know I don't deserve it."

"None of us can help being victims of circumstance, dear. We're just glad things are going to be better for you from here on out. Now sleep tight, and don't mind the ghoul. He's harmless." Draco looked a bit taken aback but then nodded. On an impulse, he reached out and hugged Mrs. Weasley. She looked a bit surprised, indeed Draco was surprised himself, but it could never be said of Mrs. Weasley that she didn't have a hug for everyone who needed him, so she took him further into her arms and hugged him back, and by the time the three slinked off to bed for an anxious night's rest, Draco at least felt like things might be looking up from here.

Chapter 5

Minerva McGonagall woke up the next morning and immediately headed for the hospital wing. She wasn't done yelling at Dumbledore, but her child came first (although honestly, she'd made it very clear from the beginning that Harry was not going to be well- treated in a place like that. Why she'd listened to the man, as if he were God or something, well, she wasn't quite sure she'd ever forgive herself for that).

Minnie found her little boy sleeping angelically on his bed, long dark eyelashes brushing toffee-coloured cheeks. The next thing she noticed was Dumbledore sitting haggardly in a chair beside the bed, looking as if he'd passed a rough night. "Good," Minerva thought vindictively, which was most unlike her, but she'd be lying if she said that sweet, selfless, good-mannered Harry Potter hadn't secretly been her favourite student since he'd walked into the Great Hall that first day last year, blinking owlishly as if he'd never seen something so wonderful.

"Minerva," the headmaster greeted her tiredly.

"Albus." Her voice was tight, barely restrained. "Let's go into Poppy's office and have a little talk."

Professor Dumbledore followed his Deputy Headmistress into the office looking like a man on his way to the gallows, but who knew he deserved what he was about to get. Minerva shut the door behind them and turned towards the old wizard, struggling to keep her voice down.

"I understand for the sake of Harry's privacy that we are not going to bring your… disgusting negligence and lack of oversight to the school governor's or the Wizengamot. So, I shall decide your punishment, and you will take it with your mouth shut, are we clear?"

"Yes ma'am." Dumbledore had never called his younger colleague by the honorific before, but with the tone she was using on him there was really nothing else he could have addressed her by.

"Good. First, I understand there was a monthly stipend from the Potter fortune going to the Dursley's for Harry's… care, correct?" Her tone implied that she knew she was correct, and that any other answer would mean deep trouble. Dumbledore nodded in confirmation anyway. "I thought so," the tabby animagus pursed her lips. "Well, they clearly didn't use it for Harry, probably to buy more toys for that monster of a son; thusly, you will repay the total sum of all the stipends to date out of your own salary, back into Harry's vaults. I don't care if it doesn't really make a difference in his fortune, I will not see him having paid galleons out of his own pocket only to get it stripped out of his skin." Her eyes were fire, and it was clear she was only just beginning. "Furthermore, for any classes Harry has to miss for Dursley-related health reasons, such as his severe immune-deficiency wrought by malnutrition and being beaten and worked like a slave, you will tell the other teachers to

be extremely lenient." Her nostrils were flaring, and anyone who didn't know Minerva would have thought her animagus a dragon, not a cat.

"Finally, any other hare-brained plans you have for this school, like putting a precious relic guarded by potentially fatal obstacles in a castle full of children, will have to be approved by me first, as I will not have you doing anything stupid that puts my child at risk. Now, I think I hear him stirring, so I'm going to check on him. You, get out through the floo here. Harry doesn't need you to be around him right now. Don't let me see you near him without my permission." Dumbledore, suitably chastised, got up, head bent, to do as he was told, and Minerva congratulated herself on managing not to hit him in the face.

Chapter 6

Chapter Notes

TW: A lot of child abuse referenced in this chapter.

Harry woke up again to see Professor McGonagall standing over him, a worried look on her face. "Pr'fess'r?" He slurred.

"Yes Harry, I'm here." Her eyes misted up a bit as she added "I'll always be here," in a soft, emotional voice.

Harry looked up at her, vision still slightly out of focus. "So, you're my guardian now? Like, permanently?"

"Yes dear, permanently. I am, for all intents and purposes, your legal adoptive parent. As such," she smiled at him slyly and winked "you may call me Minerva or Minnie when we're not in class."

Harry looked up at her like to do so would be sacrilege. Minnie laughed. "Baby steps then, we'll get there. Do you need anything."

Harry wrinkled his brows… come to think of it, he did need something, but he didn't want to be a bother…

Minerva sensed his thought process. "It's alright dear, you can ask me anything." "Oh, alright…" Harry ventured nervously. "I was wondering if you could maybe draw the curtain over the potions cabinet? The magic's really bright. Normally I can block it out, but I'm just so tired…"

Minerva started, her mouth an 'o' of surprise.

Harry panicked slightly. "I'm sorry… it's no big deal, really, I'll be fine, never mind." He chewed his lip.

"Shhh, Harry, it's alright. Of course, I'll close the curtain. I'm just a little surprised, is all. Being able to see magic is a very rare ability."

"You mean, not everyone can see it? Or feel it or hear it or smell it or taste it?" Minerva had to work very hard to keep her draw from dropping to the floor.

"No, sweetheart. Those are called mage senses, and to have even one is very rare. To have them all together, well… that's almost unheard of." Minnie tried not to sound as surprised as she felt.

"Oh. I was wondering how everyone else had such an easy time controlling it."

"Oh, sweetheart, we really didn't tell you much, did we? I imagine you felt quite overwhelmed."

"Yeah…" Harry smiled softly at her.

"Well, you still managed to get fantastic grades despite everything else you had demanding your attention last year," Professor McGonagall remarked, trying very hard not to think of her child half-dead, miles underneath the school. "And we can at least get you some glasses that help temper extraneous magical input. It's probably time for a new pair anyway. How long has it been since you've seen the eye doctor?"

"I've never seen the eye doctor, Pr'fess'r." Harry looked embarrassed, like the failings of the Dursley's were his own fault, and Minerva had to fight down her anger at them all over again.

"Never, sweetheart?" Her heart was breaking for sweet little Harry. She didn't think it could break anymore after yesterday, but she'd been wrong.

"No. Aunt Petunia got those out of a charity bin. She said if I could see well enough to do my chores, then they were good enough." Harry's cheeks, which should still be round with baby fat at his age but instead were far too hollow, were red in shame.

Lilly is rolling in her grave, Minerva thought, but out loud she said "well, we'll just have to take you to the eye healer once you get out of here, then."

"Do you know when I can get out?" he asked her, and Minerva's shattered heart gave a pang at the way he looked so like James, bored to death of being in the hospital wing after yet another quidditch accident.

"Another couple of days, I'm afraid. You have a couple of broken bones that have started healing the wrong way, so Madame Pomphrey is going to have to rebreak them and set them properly. You'll be sore for a while so she'll have to keep you here; it's a bit more complicated than fixing a bone the first time."

"Oh." Harry sighed, but he showed no signs of complaint. Blessed sweet child, Minerva fretted. She hadn't felt so sentimental in years, not since she'd reluctantly seen a little boy with a fresh lighting bolt cut left on the front steps of a quiet muggle neighbourhood. She'd cuddled him as a tabby cat all night and wished she could keep him forever. Now she could, but there'd been so many years of damage since then that the only thing keeping her from bursting into tears was the thought that she had to stay strong for the little boy in front of her. She almost asked how he'd broken his wrist, two ribs and three bones in his right leg since he'd left school in June, but a selfish part of her didn't think she could handle the answer, and a less selfish part of her didn't want to make Harry face it yet. He needed to heal physically first, then she would do everything necessary to help him, slowly and gently, through the emotional trauma.

She cursed herself for being so macabre and forced a smile on her face, offering to show Harry some of the transfiguration on the curriculum for the next year.

He smiled as she turned beetles into buttons. "C'n I try?" He breathed excitedly. She started to explain that not even in Hogwarts was it permitted to use magic in the summer, but the scrawny boy had already placed one slightly crooked wrist above the beetle in her hand, and, with his earnest little face scrunched in concentration, produced a (slightly shiny) button. Minerva gasped. Controlled wandless magic at his age! Raising Harry Potter was going to be… exciting. Minnie couldn't wait.

Chapter 7

Severus Snape put his head in his hands and sighed. Two days in a row now, he had put off seeing Potter in the hospital wing. What was he even supposed to say to the child who he'd relentlessly bullied for a year, turning his safe space from an abusive household into another place where he couldn't let his guard down, all because he, a professional, had schoolboy issues with the child's long-dead father? Had he really asked a first-year questions from a N.E.W.T.'s-level textbook on the first day of term just so he'd be able to take points from Gryffindor? It was all such a giant mess, a mess he, Severus, had created. And the thought kept circling in his head that however much he deserved this suffering he'd wrought upon himself, there was an innocent child in the hospital wing suffering far worse, partly through his actions.

Snape thought back to the year that had just passed. Besides when he'd been hovering over the boy, making him nervous, Harry had been a competent brewer, and he had a feel for the mechanics of it that pointed to years of experience in the kitchen. He had, on more than one occasion, shown a reckless disregard for his own safety that suggested he'd never had someone care before. Overlarge clothes, taped up glasses with scratched lenses that still didn't keep him from squinting at the blackboard… the signs were all there, he'd just refused to see them. He'd known Harry was living with muggles, he should have realized that it would be Petunia, and that Petunia wouldn't have matured from her childhood grudges any more than he had. Well, less than, really, because as horrid as Severus could be, he would never hit a child under his care.

Snape sighed. Wallowing in pity and self-loathing were all well and good, but as much as he wanted to flee the country so he'd never have to face the boy he'd wronged, he had a job, and that job currently involved bringing more nutrient potions to the hospital for said boy. Additionally, Harry's treatment was heavily potion-oriented, and as Poppy wasn't as well-versed in potions as he was, it was his duty as both a teacher and a potions master to make sure that the regimen he was on was working for him. Severus swept up the phials he needed in long fingers and wrenched himself reluctantly from the sanctity of the dungeons.

When he opened the door to the hospital wing, Harry immediately turned to look at him, despite the fact that Snape had entered quietly and that the Weasley twins were loudly entertaining him. On the lookout for threats… another sign then, Severus thought bitterly.

Harry looked nervous to see him, and no wonder. Snape exhaled slowly and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Mr. Potter," he began in a neutral tone, "it's good to see you looking slightly better."

"Er… um, thanks?" Harry phrased it as a question, still searching for the hidden insult in the statement.

"Indeed." He looked at the Weasley twins, who had steel in their eyes, and their unusually serious faces seemed to say be nice to our brother or else, try us. Severus had no intention of trying them.

"Messrs. Weasley, if you would be so kind as to let me a moment alone with Potter so I may check his that everything is on schedule with his potions?" George and Fred nodded stiffly, and Fred squeezed Harry's hand and leaned down to whisper in Harry's ear.

"We'll be right outside the door. Cough twice if you need us." Severus rolled his eyes. Honestly, Weasleys had no sense of subtlety.

"Alright Mr. Po- Harry, I know that you are, understandably, uncomfortable in my presence, so I will try to keep this brisk. Are you having any discomfort or odd reactions to any of the potions you're being treated with? Any excessive pain from the skele-grow?"

"N'sir." Harry mumbled, although he had a look on his face that told Severus that he did have something he was debating on bringing up.

"Whatever you need to say, you may say it and trust that I will not fault you for asking." Snape felt the need to clarify this point, as any abused child had trouble asking for something, more so for an abused child who needed something from an adult who'd shown him animosity in the past.

"Well, it's just… the potions are working great, and the skele-grow doesn't hurt too bad, and the cuts I've got are healing real nice, but well, now that they are, they're a little itchy. Erm, a lot itchy…" Harry flushed red and looked decidedly embarrassed, as if he were confessing some taboo he had broken.

"May I?" Severus asked, gesturing to the dressing gown over Harry's back and chest. Harry flushed again but nodded, and Severus sat him up gently and moved the fabric to look at the lesions.

"Ah yes, they do appear to be at the stage of healing where such a reaction is common, and I can easily make something to help ease the discomfort. I must commend you, Mr. Potter, for not clawing at the afflicted areas like a toddler with dragon pox, as that would make both our lives a lot more difficult."

Harry looked dumbfounded at receiving a compliment, even a backhanded one, from Severus Snape of all people, and the man couldn't help a bitter chuckle.

"I should wonder at your reaction, but I do believe that's the first nice thing I've ever said to you, is it not?"

Harry looked wary that to answer that question would be to fall into a trap, so Snape briskly stood up.

"Well, I must get to brewing a salve, and I will let the twin terrors continue with their roguish influence. I will come back in a couple hours once it is ready. Do try not to scratch between now and then, as it might open the skin and risk inviting the infection we've only just gotten rid of." Harry nodded once, his mouth still a wide 'o' of surprise at the strangeness of a civil conversation with the evil bat of the dungeons (and yes, Snape was aware of all the nicknames and rumours circulating around him. And no, he did not drink the blood of innocents or sleep hanging upside down). Snape forced his face into what he hoped

was a kind smile, but probably more closely resembled constipation and left through the floo, calling "Potions' lab" and disappearing in a flare of green smoke.

Chapter 8

The Burrow was a veritable hive of activity as everyone bustled about putting things away and straightening up. Harry was coming home today! Draco's mum had sent him his trunk, which he was currently trying to lug up the stairs with Ron's help. Ginny was picking up all the schoolbooks the others had been using to do their summer homework in the living room, Fred and George were sweeping the floor and singing along to the new Celestina Warbeck song on the radio, Molly was trying to scrub a scorch mark off the living room wall, and Arthur was sadly carting his spark plugs, the cause of said scorch mark, out back to The Shed of Banished Muggle Things.

"Uh, Mrs. Weasley, the soup's boiling over!" Draco called from his vantage point on the stairs. Ron turned 'round to look as well and lost his grip on the trunk.

"Bloody buggering hell, Ron- that was my foot!" Draco cried out just as the floo flared to life and McGonagall stepped through with Harry.

"Mr. Malfoy! If I heard that kind of talk during the school year I'd be taking points," Minerva barked.

"Sorry ma'am," Draco mumbled, before catching sight of Harry, who was smiling slightly at the whole interaction, squeaking, and falling down the three steps he and Ron had actually managed to surmount.

"Oi! Draco! I can't hold this thing up on my own," Ron cried, and Professor McGonagall took pity on them and flicked her wand so that the trunk floated neatly up the stairs. Ron skipped down to the first floor, where Harry was trying to help Draco off the floor, and Draco's blushing face was the colour of a strawberry.

"Harry, mate, you're back! We missed you. Mum said we might be able to visit, but then later she said you weren't feeling up to it." Ron sighed as if five days without his best friend was the greatest travesty in the world.

"I felt alright, but you know how Pomphrey is," said Harry, blushing and nervously scratching his neck. "I'm just glad you haven't completely replaced me with Draco."

"Who? This git!" Ron laughed, "he's great, but you're kind of irreplaceable. I've just added him to our group. It was getting kinda overrun by girls, so this is really great."

"Weasel, there's one girl in our group." Harry smiled; he didn't miss the way Draco said 'our group.'

"Yeah, but Hermione nags enough for three!" Ron complained. Ginny came over and smacked him.

"You know," she said, "one day you're gonna fall madly in love with Hermione, and right as you ask her to marry you, I'm gonna tell her you said that."

"No, you won't, because even if I were to marry Hermione, which will never happen, mum wouldn't let you sabotage it. I'm her first hope for grandkids."

"And just how do you figure that, young man?" Minerva had been listening and was very curious to hear this line of reasoning.

"Well, Bill's gay, Charlie only wants to raise dragons for the rest of his life, Percy is too annoying for any girl to put up with, Fred and George scare away anyone who isn't family or crazy, although they kinda overlap, to be honest, and Ginny's gonna be a famous quidditch player who's not gonna want to start a family until later in life." Ron looked quite proud of this line of reasoning.

"Gay people can start families!" Molly cried, at the same reason Ginny smacked Ron and said "Bill's bisexual, dumbass."

"Ms. Weasley! Ten points from whatever house you go to for your atrocious language!" Professor McGonagall chastised.

"Shame," Draco said, faux-haughtily, "I was thinking you'd be good to have in Slytherin, but not 'worth-ten-points-right-off-the-bat' good." Ginny smacked him too, and stuck her tongue out. Minerva and Molly, luckily, didn't see, as Minnie was handing the Weasley matriarch a large bag.

"These are Harry's potions," she told the other woman, "and there's a list in there of the dosages and frequency with which he must take them. There are a couple that have to be applied directly, so I will let you and Harry work out how that should be done and by whom. Harry dear," she said, redirecting her attention to the short boy talking animatedly with his friends, "have fun, be safe, floo if you need anything, anything at all, and I will see you in a week, alright darling?" Harry nodded, and she kissed his head of messy hair, leaving Harry blushing at being hugged and kissed by his head of house, of all people, but he hugged her back awkwardly (he was still getting used to the whole concept of people wanting to be affectionate with him, especially adults) and waved goodbye as she stepped through the fireplace and back to Hogwarts.

Harry looked around to see Ginny, Draco, and Ron casting curious eyes between him and the large bag of potions, and he sighed.

"Alright, I guess I have some explaining to do, and you guys are my best friends, so I might as well get it over with…"

Chapter 9

Chapter Notes

Another chapter- the longest so far, and the last for the night, unfortunately. But I'm quite proud of this one. They go back to Hogwarts, I've changed a lot from canon, and I happen to think it's quite humourous. Although... I've been told I'm only funny to myself, so who knows? Anyway, enjoy! Lots of love (unless you're an asshole), Des ;)

The rest of the week passed in a haze of happy memories and soon it was the early morning of September the first. They'd all been kept up late by Draco's animated impressions of 'Things Professor Snape Does in the Common Room," and Ron and Draco were struggling to keep their eyes open, but Harry, a natural morning person and sleeping better than ever due to the blessed and unusual absence of pain, was wide awake and chipper about going back to school. He'd tried to enthuse about the upcoming year's transfiguration curriculum with Ron and Draco, but all he'd received in response was a "nrmagerd, Harry!" from Ron and a "Shove it, Potter," from Draco, so he turned to talk to Ginny instead, who was going into her first year and thus filled to the brim with excitement to match Harry's.

They'd eaten a quick breakfast (Molly was glowing with pride that Harry had managed to finish his whole plate) and packed the car, Mr. Weasley proudly and surreptitiously showing Harry the expanded trunk of the Ford Anglia. They piled into the car, which comfortably fit them all thanks to Arthur's tinkering, but Harry had no sooner said a silent 'see you next summer!' to the beloved old house when they were back for Fred and George's filibuster fireworks, then again for Draco's new Weasley sweater. ("I had it hanging out to dry! I can't go without it- it has my name on it! And a dragon!")

By the time they'd gotten to King's Cross, it was very late. Harry wasn't too worried- he was a hell of a runner thanks to Dudley and his gang- but Percy's fretting of "I can't be late! I'm a prefect!" was starting to try even his considerable patience. He looked at Draco and rolled his eyes as they rolled into the station with five minutes before the train departed.

They rushed to platform 9 with 90 seconds to make it through, and Mrs. Weasley went through with Ginny, then Arthur with Percy, followed by Fred and George. Harry had just taken off at a run with Draco and Ron in his wake and a good 45 seconds to spare when… BAM! He hit a solid brick wall, and even for a kid with a considerable pain tolerance, that hurt.

Draco and Ron crashed behind him, and he got a back full of Ron's trunk (and ouch! Some of those scars were still tender!) and a chest full of Draco, who, while blushing profusely, seemed strangely serene with the state of things as he made no move to get up.

Ron was the first to react. "What the hell was that?" he sputtered, getting to his feet and hauling Draco to his before supporting a still-dizzy Harry by the arm.

Harry blinked the rest of the spots from his vision and then looked closely at the platform, tapping the lenses of his new glasses to remove the magical suppression so he could evaluate the situation.

"I don't know, but it's not natural… Somebody purposely blocked us from getting on, and it doesn't look like any human magic I've ever seen." Harry tapped the lenses again to restore them so that they blocked out the colours of the wall and then cast a wandless reparo on a crack in the frames.

"Well that's just bloody brilliant…" Draco grumbled, having picked up Ron's tendency towards colourful language. "Come on, we're starting to attract attention just standing here."

They pushed their trunks back out to wait by the car. Ron put forth the brilliant idea of flying it to Hogwarts, but Harry and Draco vetoed that idea immediately, Harry because he actually had a loving parent that cared about his safety now and didn't want to do something that would no doubt worry and upset her, and Draco because "I'm not a bloody Gryffindor, thanks. Honestly, why I'm so fond of you, Weasel, I'll never know…"

So, they waited. And waited. And waited some more. When Arthur and Molly finally did return to the car, they looked rather frazzled.

"Oh, thank Merlin!" Molly cried upon seeing them. "We didn't see you lot get on the train, and we searched the whole station. Harry, is that a bruise?!" Harry did, indeed, have a very large bruise on his forehead and a bloody nose that he hadn't noticed in all the excitement, both of which tend to be common results of hitting a brick wall.

"The platform was blocked, Mrs. Weasley," Harry explained, sounding very nasal indeed as Molly performed a spell to fix his nose while he talked. "Someone did it on purpose, and the magic looked and felt really odd… I think it was some sort of creature magic. It sounded like it was underwater, kind of, but I couldn't smell it or taste it because, well, I hit my face," he finished, his voice going back to normal as the fretting wand moved up to his forehead.

"Hmm, that is strange, and concerning… well, let's get back to the house, and you can floo to school. And I'll have a word with Minerva about the platform as well…"

The noontime traffic from London was horrendous, and the true depths of Mrs. Weasley's worry about someone trying to keep the children from boarding the train was revealed when she said "Arthur, maybe you ought to put the invisibility booster on and fly home… we need to get the kids to school on time." The three boys knew it was a thinly veiled excuse over her worry about the strange magic blocking the platform, but none of them could bring themselves to be overly concerned because… holy shit! Flying car!

Draco especially embodied this sentiment, as he had never ridden in it at all, and he had his face pressed against the glass of the window as they flew high above the city, until the

poor buggers still stuck on the highway looked like multicoloured ants in a line. Ron took the other window, and Harry jostled his face up next to Draco's and marvelled just as much, as he'd not ridden in the car in the day when he could see everything, and it was even better now that he wasn't starving and injured and could properly appreciate being up in the air in a vintage ford.

The ride was over far too soon (for the boys, and the side of Arthur that was giddy over his flying car) and not soon enough (for Molly and the other side of Arthur, that was a responsible, worried parent). Yet they all climbed out and piled inside, Draco stopping to pick up an errant gnome and swing it over the fence, earning a "Good Show!" from Ron, and then Mrs. Weasley was absently putting a plate of sandwiches in front of them and handing Harry his nutrient potion (he kind of wished she would've forgotten that bit; it tasted like dirty socks and rotten spinach. Ron said it was because it was essence of Snape. Draco explained that it was due to the necessary balance of magic and macronutrients). Harry was still making a face and chugging pumpkin juice to wash down the potion when McGonagall stepped into the kitchen.

"Oh, sweetheart, are you alright?!" she rushed up to Harry, gently grasping his chin and looking him over. "Molly said the platform was blocked, and that you hit it!" Harry had never seen his head of house looking frantic, and supposed it must be the addition of 'parent' to her title that made it so. He'd never had that before, not that he could remember, at least, so as unnecessary as he felt this particular worry was, it felt… nice.

"M'fine Minnie," he mumbled shyly, and Professor McGonagall took a moment to glow in satisfaction that he'd called her 'Minnie,' even if he hadn't realized it. "Mrs. Weasley fixed me right up." He smiled at the redheaded woman, who patted his shoulder gently in response.

"You know, we hit a wall too," Ron grumbled half-heartedly.

"From what I understand, you hit Harry, and I'm sure your parent has taken the time to make sure you suffered no ill effects as a result, Mr. Weasley." Minerva said primly, back to teacher mode.

Mrs. Weasley mentioned that they should probably be getting back to school, and the boys and their teacher headed back through the floo, McGonagall going through alongside Harry, as nobody seemed quite ready to let him go on his own after the events in Diagon Alley that day.

It was a good three hours before the rest of the school was to arrive, and Harry smiled at the thought that they'd have the whole school to themselves for that time. Then he noticed that they were in a corridor outside the hospital wing, and his stomach sank. Uh oh, this can't be good, he thought to himself.

"Mr. Potter, I understand you hit a wall," Madam Pomphrey exclaimed, bustling up to him.

"Yeah, but I'm fine! Mrs. Weasley already fixed my face!" Harry protested.

"Yes, well, I'll be the judge of fine," the medi-witch informed him, waving her wand over his head in a diagnostic charm. "Ah! See, you've a mild concussion, and I wouldn't consider the headache you're indubitably suffering 'fine,' Mr. Potter."

"But I didn't notice a headache," Harry told her. After his stay in the hospital wing last year, Poppy was one adult he felt comfortable arguing with.

"Yes, well, I suppose it's understandable that you wouldn't," Poppy softened, her eyes bearing a hint of just-concealed sadness. "Nevertheless," she bristled, "I'll be keeping you overnight for observation."

"What about Draco and Ron? They hit the wall too," Harry tried, using Ron's earlier argument against him as the two shot him a dirty look.

"That's not how I heard it- which reminds me, I need to have another look at your back. If you're good, you can have an ice lolly. Minerva, would you take those two back to their common room, please?"

"But I'm not a Gryffindor!" Draco seemed affronted at the very thought. Sure, he might be happy to hang out with some now, but it should be quite clear to everyone that he was the common sense and rationality of the group…

"Of course you're not, dear," Madam Pomphrey muttered absently. "But Minerva will have no problem taking you back to Hufflepuff, I'm sure…"

Draco's indignant sputtering was almost enough to make Harry okay with being stuck in the hospital again.

Chapter 10

Madame Pomphrey, very reluctantly, let Harry out the next morning. She'd wanted to keep him another night, "just in case," but Harry pointed out that unless there was an actual verifiable reason to keep him, there was no point in his missing the first day of classes, and she'd reluctantly let him go. He was happily skipping down to breakfast, and looking very much like an ecstatic Snoopy from those Peanuts comic strips he used to sneak out of the trash and into his cupboard, excited to see Hermione again for the first time since the year ended, when he was almost bowled over by the running green-clad form of someone just slightly taller than he was. Looking up, he saw that he was encircled in the arms of none other than Pansy Parkinson.

His first macabre thought was that he was being suffocated very slowly for accidentally taking the House Cup out of the Slytherins' grasp last year. He was about to apologize and gasp please pretty please can I have some air when the pressure ceased slightly and Pansy pulled back.

"Um…" was Harry's very articulate response to whatever was going on.

"You saved my best friend- thank you!" she gasped before hugging her again, and Harry had time to register that her magic smelled like cinnamon and felt very, very hot against his skin before she let him go completely.

"Sorry about that," Pansy said, looking not at all sorry. "But I've been worried about Lucius for years, and no one would listen to me. So- thanks, for getting him out and all."

"Um… it was no problem," Harry responded, scratching his neck.

Pansy looked him up and down. "Yes, you'll do perfectly. I'm sure we'll get on quite nicely," she said, patting Harry genially on the head before walking back to her table, leaving him to wonder what, exactly, he'd do perfectly for.

Snape had also been on his way to breakfast when he witnessed the interaction. "Ah," he said to a gobsmacked Harry, "I see you've made friends with Parkinson, Potter."

"I don't think it was so much making friends as it was a friendly assault, Professor," Harry responded, shaking his head.

"That does tend to be the way with her," Snape chuckled. "If you were planning on making allies in Slytherin, I would have suggested starting with Ms. Greengrass- far more subdued. But when Pansy chooses someone, they've made a friend for life. There's nothing for it but to accept your fate, I'm afraid, Mr. Potter." Harry blinked at him. Was Severus Snape… smiling… and joking? Had he slipped into a coma after hitting the platform and merely imagined everything since?

Professor Snape stood smirking at him a moment longer before handing him a phial of the nutrient potion. "Well, don't just stand there, Potter, go eat. I expect you to have the

energy to maintain your performance in my class." Harry stood looking at him a moment longer before walking into the hall in a daze.

Harry was almost bowled over again as he reached the Gryffindor table, but he recognized this magical signature- the smell of old books and the feel of warm rain was uniquely Hermione. "You're back! I was worried about you last night."

"Um, sorry about that. I missed you too." Harry smiled and hugged her back.

"You're doing better, then?" Hermione asked. Harry had explained everything in a letter about the Dursleys and such the same day he'd told the others in person.

"Yeah. And I just had a civil conversation with Snape, of all people. It felt… wrong, almost.

It was Hermione's turn to laugh. "Bet it wasn't as weird as when I got Draco's apology letter."

"I got a hug from Pansy Parkinson this morning… well, more of an enthusiastic attack, actually."

"Fine. You win," Hermione giggled. "Now drink your potion. I've already made you a plate with a balanced mix of all the food groups you need."

Harry smiled. How predictably Hermione. He was just uncorking the phial and wrinkling his nose when Draco came over and plopped down. He was proudly wearing his Weasley sweater and seemed impervious to the astonished stares from the rest of their table.

"Hey, prat," Ron greeted, mouth half full. "Slytherin's that way."

"As if I could possibly not know where I am amongst all this obnoxious red. I merely didn't want to miss Harry's face as he drinks the potion; I've come to view it as my morning entertainment. Now pass me a waffle and scoot over, Weasel." Draco took command of the situation as if he did this every day, and Ron merely shrugged and made room as Dean, Seamus, and Neville gaped at them.

"Longbottom, I assume you know what we're doing in Herbology. Care to divulge?" Neville's eyes just about bugged out of his head, but he managed to squeak "mandrakes" in response to the questions.

"Oh bugger, I've heard those are simply monstrous to work with. You're good with this stuff, any advice?" And just like that, Draco was integrated.

They were listening to Neville enthuse about his new Venomous Tentacula when Harry caught sight of that blonde ponce from Diagon Alley.

"Oh no, what's he doing here?" he groaned.

"That's our new Defence teacher!" Hermione bubbled. "Gilderoy Lockhart, teaching us! Isn't it brilliant?"

"A brilliant pain, maybe," Harry grumbled. "I read his books while I was in the hospital wing, and I think I prefer staring at a blank wall."

"Come on, Harry, you can't mean that! Just look at all the brilliant things he's done."

"You mean the ones he put in a paragraph or two about in between talking about how pretty he was?"

Draco snorted and choked on his waffle, and Ron had to pat him on the back.

"Is someone making fun of Lockhart?" Fred and George asked, on their way out of the hall with their drinks.

"Careful!" Draco screeched at them. "You almost spilled pumpkin juice on my Weasley sweater!"

"Aww, is ickle Dway-Dway obsessed with his sweater?" George teased.

"Don't worry, you'll get another one for Christmas," Ginny told him, whacking her brother on the arm. Honestly, couldn't they see he loved that sweater so much because it was the first thing somebody ever made for him? She shook her head. Boys were so dense.

Hermione gasped and looked at her watch. "Come on, we're gonna be late!" she exclaimed, shoving a last piece of bacon in Harry's mouth and shooing them out of their seats.

Chapter 11

They were making their way to Herbology when Harry got an eyeful of a bright flash that definitely was not magic. He blinked the spots away to see a kid in Gryffindor robes that was almost exactly his height (Harry was actually an inch or two shorter, but this was the closest anyone had come to being his special brand of tiny that he'd encountered so far).

"You're Harry Potter!" squeaked the first year (he must be a first year, as Harry didn't recognize him). "I'm Colin Creevey! I'm a muggleborn, but I've heard all about you. Can I get a picture to send home to my da? He's a milkman, and he'll be so excited to see pictures of what I'm doing here at Hogwarts. And a kid in my dorm said that if I develop it in a special potion, the picture'll move! And then maybe could you sign it?" Colin was chattering so much he was nearly hyperventilating in excitement.

"Umm…" Harry started.

Draco came to his rescue. "Harry doesn't really like giving out signed photos. He just wants to be treated like a regular person," he informed the boy, kneeling slightly so that he could make eye contact. Harry shot his friend a grateful look, and that would've been the end of it if one Gilderoy Lockhart hadn't been walking by.

"What's this about signed photos?" he asked, intruding on the conversation. "Oh, Harry, I should have known it'd be you." Harry thought this rather presumptuous, as this git had never actually met him before.

"Um, nothing," Colin stuttered. "Just a misunderstanding, Professor." But the 'professor' didn't pay him any mind.

"Hey, how about I do you one better? You take a picture of Harry and I and we'll both sign it." Harry opened his mouth to refuse, but then he was being tugged to Lockhart's side, and the older man clearly didn't plan on letting go. His magic was cloying and smelled like cheap drug store perfume, so Harry signalled to Colin to 'just take the picture' so he could escape, and then he was rushing towards the greenhouses as fast as he could without breaking into a sprint.

"Greenhouse two today chaps," sweet, dumpy Professor Sprout informed him, and Harry went to file in with the rest of the class when a hand gripping his shoulder from behind made him flinch and jump a mile in the air. He turned to face his Gilderoy Lockhart, and was suddenly very glad his wand was in his robes, because otherwise he would have been instinctually pointing it at anyone who snuck up on him.

"Might I have a word with Harry before class, Pomona?" In different circumstances, Professor Sprout might have conceded, but she knew that Minerva had taken custody of Harry and could figure from his reaction to Lockhart coming up behind him that it had been out of necessity and that the child clearly did not feel comfortable around the stranger, so she brusquely denied him and waved him into the greenhouse, waving off Harry's relieved thank you and patting him gently on the back. Harry silently resolved to extend his mage senses a

bit whenever he was walking the halls or the grounds so that he could feel Lockhart coming and avoid him the next time.

They were, as informed by Neville, working with Mandrakes, and Hermione won points for Gryffindor by reminding them that the cry of the Mandrakes was fatal. Draco and Ron lost points for making moss moustaches and trying to see who could do a better Dumbledore impression. Harry thought it was worth it.

Then it was time to repot the Mandrakes and everyone rushed to grab a pair of earmuffs that wasn't pink and fluffy. Harry, being short and unable to elbow his way to the front very well, was unfortunately stuck with one such pair. Fortunately, one silent switching spell later and Draco was holding the pink monstrosities and thinking bemusedly that he had surely grabbed a green one while Harry smirked behind his hand. Wandless magic was awesome.

Repotting Mandrakes was hot, sweaty work, and they all marched back to the castle for a wash before their next class. Normally Harry put up glamours when he was in the boys' shower room so he could make it to class with time to spare, but today he waited until the rest of his dorm mates finished showering and then went in. Glamours were an energy-intensive spell, and to be honest, he wouldn't mind being a little late for Lockhart's class. Ron seemed to share the sentiment, as he waited for Harry to emerge so they could head out of the tower together, Harry fighting with his hair all the while and thinking to himself that this was the last time he used a drying charm…

Chapter 12

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Harry and Ron were not late. They slid into a table in the back row, where Neville and Draco were complaining about pureblood etiquette lessons and Hermione was studiously setting up her books, nearly shaking in excitement. Pansy came in a moment later and slid in bedside them as they all sat waiting for their teacher. Harry was still struggling with a curl that was sticking straight up at the back of his head when she reached over and neatly tucked it behind his ear. He looked at her in astonishment.

"Witchcraft," he gasped.

Pansy smirked. "Yeah, well that is kinda why I'm here."

"Right," Harry turned red in embarrassment.

"Oh, quit it Potter. Besides, your hair isn't that bad. It merely requires some raw talent and- what is it that the muggles say? A little bit of knee-joint grease."

"Elbow grease," Hermione supplied.

"Thank you, Mia." Hermione was rendered speechless for a moment as she stared at the other girl, unsure how to react to being thanked by Pansy Parkinson, of all people. After a moment, she settled for:

"It's Hermione."

"I know," the other girl smirked again, somehow obnoxious and endearing at once. "But that's so long. Even my name only has two syllables, ergo, nobody needs more than that."

Hermione stared at her a moment longer before saying "you should probably get your books out; this should be a brilliant lesson."

Pansy rolled her eyes. "If being good-looking were all that was required to make someone a brilliant teacher, Professor Sinestra would be world-renown. I'm calling bullshit on this guy."

Hermione looked scandalized (not by her apparent preferences, but because she had insulted a teacher, and with such crude language. She was still opening and closing her mouth like a fish when 'Professor' Lockhart walked in.

"It is I…" he began, and that is all Harry heard before he zoned out, uninterested in hearing the man ramble on about his charming smile award or whatever. His mind wandered to quidditch. Madame Pomphrey and Professor McGonagall had confiscated his Nimbus until he managed to put on ten more pounds It was so bloody unfair, he'd been playing at his current weight- or less- for all of last year, after all. Yes, but you were either wearing glamours or baggy clothing that hid that, his mind supplied. His thoughts went on in that

vein for quite some time, trying to come up with an argument for why he should be allowed to have his broom back, like, right now, until a piece of paper landed in front of him. A reading quiz- well, that shouldn't be too bad, then. He had read all the books, after all, even if they'd nearly bored him to death.

But the quiz wasn't on DADA techniques. It was a bunch of personal questions about the stupid git. Harry remembered the defence-pertinent information, but he had no idea what Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite colour was. Nevertheless, he struggled through the first few questions. By the time he got to, "What is Gilderoy Lockhart's ideal birthday gift?" however, he was fed up. He bit the end of his quill angrily and scribbled "how is this even useful? Am I supposed to just go up to a troll and yell 'Oi, pea-brain! I know what Gilderoy Lockhart wants for his birthday, so you better back off!'? I'd be better off hitting him in the head with his own club.'" Then he put his quill down and crossed his arms in a huff, trying to ignore the many Gilderoy Lockhart photographs winking at him stupidly.

By the time their quizzes were collected, even Hermione was looking ruffled, and actually looked embarrassed when Lockhart announced she was the only one to get a perfect score (but of course she did; she was too concerned with her class performance to sacrifice a quiz grade to be cheeky like Harry did).

Then Lockhart started talking again. Ugh. When he mentioned that "no harm can befall you while I am here," Harry actually snorted. Extending his mage senses to the covered cage, he realized that there were Cornish pixies under there. This should be interesting.

As he expected, it was Pandemonium with a capital P. The pixies grabbed Lockhart's wand and threw it out the window (Harry hoped they'd broken it). Two had picked Neville up by the ears, and it was only through the combined efforts of Draco and Seamus holding his legs that he managed to stay close to the ground instead of on the chandelier. Then the bell rang, and it was only their little group in the back as everyone fled, many without their things, and Lockhart asked them to "take care of it."

They were still wrangling the nasty (and fast) little buggers without much success fifteen minutes later when Ron said "Harry, can't you use your magic?"

"What do you think I'm trying to do?" He retorted as he swung a book at one and flung a silent stunning charm at another and Hermione's freezing charm just missed a cluster of them as they scattered.

"No, your mage senses!" Ron ground out, yelping as a particularly malevolent pixie bit him on the finger.

"I never thought I'd say this, but Weasel, you're brilliant!" Draco exclaimed.

"Harry, tune into the atmosphere and see if you can do anything," Hermione joined, apparently thinking it was their best shot. Neville, Pansy, Seamus, and Dean looked rather shocked that Harry had not only a mage sense, but mage senses, plural, but now was not the time to discuss it. They looked at each other and shrugged as they joined the circle protecting Harry so he could work, most putting up their wands again (except for Pansy, who grabbed a

discarded candlestick, lit it on one of Seamus' randomly smoking eyebrows, and started swinging it about. One of them had scratched the sleeves of her favourite blouse, and she was out for blood).

Harry ignored the sounds of the scuffles raging and felt around, trying to block out everything except for the pixie's specific magical signatures. Having no idea if this would work, he felt for the hyperactive core of one of the pixies and imagined giving it a 'tug' with his own magic. He felt the pixie jerk, and flung it back into the cage. Glad he'd found something that was effective, he did it again, picking up the pace so that he could grab three or four at a time after he'd gotten into a rhythm. Five minutes later, they were all safely locked away as the children wiped sweat of their foreheads.

They looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing, the adrenalin and sheer absurdity of the situation going to their heads. By the time they managed to start walking to lunch, the were out of breath from prolonged fits of giggles.

Lunch was halfway done by the time the group made it to the Great Hall, and this time Pansy too joined the group of red-clad students at their table, ignoring the stares coming their way. She grabbed a corn beef sandwich and ripped into it ravenously as McGonagall came their way. She and Draco both prepared to refuse to leave their friends, but McGonagall wasn't even paying them any mind.

"Where have you all been?" she asked anxiously, but looking at Harry almost exclusively as she laid out his various lunchtime potions in front of his plate.

"Lockhart couldn't handle the Cornish pixies he set loose and left us to deal with them," Harry grumbled, uncorking the first phial and tossing it back.

"Oh, that man!" Minerva looked furious. "To think, Dumbledore… I'll have to have a word, why we even…" she eventually stopped her rage mumbling long enough to look at the group of second-years again.

"Is anyone hurt?" she asked again, once again looking only at Harry, who shook his head no for himself but added that a couple of the others had been bitten. McGonagall healed the cut on Ron's finger and then looked at Pansy's nose, which was speckled with dried blood.

"My, miss Parkinson, that is quite a nasty nip." She tapped the wound with her wand, then tapped it again so that it closed completely.

"Pans got 'em back though," Seamus enthused, apparently not even noticing that he'd called the Slytherin by a nickname. "She set it on fire!"

McGonagall looked impressed. "Ten points to Slytherin," she said. Then, "wait, scratch that. Ten points to everyone who helped with the pixie conundrum. I wish I could terminate Lockhart right on the spot, but even if Dumbledore allowed it," the tabby animagus' face clearly showed what she thought about the fact that he surely wouldn't, "no

one else applied for the position." Then her face lit up in a smile that the Marauders would have given anything to see, as it was a pranking smile.

"Well, I'm afraid that you children will have to deal with his incompetence on your own. All I have to say on the matter is that any detentions that he gives you will be overseen by me," she said, emphasising the word detention in such a way that the group knew that it wouldn't actually be a real punishment. "Oh," she added, as she turned to walk away. "Tell the Weasley twins this offer extends to them as well. And just some completely general advice that has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion, try to ensure everyone stays out of the hospital wing." Then she was gone, and Hermione and Pansy were both smiling like Cheshire cats as they leant their heads together and took out a piece of parchment. The boys couldn't decide whether to be scared or exhilarated by this.

Chapter 13

Chapter Notes

Well, this chapter's a lot less humourous than the last one, but I happen to think it's very good and shocking (and uniquely my own) although you're free to disagree. I hope you enjoy, though. Lots of love (unless you're an asshole), Des ;)

At breakfast the next morning Draco got a letter from his mother telling him that she'd been awarded sole custody, and he smiled. He wasn't really surprised however, as his mother had always done everything she could to shield him from his father's abuse, even going so far as stepping in and taking a blow meant for Draco. That was two years ago, and the first time his mother had directly witnessed any physical abuse. It was also the last time his father tried to get physical with him, as the bruise on his wife's cheek and the fire in her eyes deterred him from hitting her son again. With his hands, at least. It wasn't until he got to the end of the letter that he was truly concerned.

Oh, and Draco dear, there will likely be an alarming news story in the prophet this morning. However much it may shock you, it is true, unlike most of that rubbish they print, and just remember that I am an adult and that I know what I'm doing, that this is what I want, that I'm free now. Oh, and do be sure to tell Harry that his parents were completely in love with only each other by the time they got married. And tell all of your friends (yes, even the loud but endearing Weasley brood you've grown so fond of) that they are welcome at the manor any time.

Love,

Mummy.

Well that didn't sound ominous at all. Draco looked at Hermione, who was spreading jam on her toast and humming to herself.

"Mia!" he yelled, startling her, and she looked up, but seemed to expect that the nickname was stuck. "Have you looked at the prophet this morning?"

"No…" she began, but Draco had already ripped the copy away from her plate, where it rested, waiting to be read, and the entire group of Slythendors (the nickname that Seamus had given them) crowded in to look as well, intrigued by Draco's reaction.

If they were expecting something shocking, they weren't disappointed. There was a picture of Draco's mother, wearing a loose blue muslin dress with her hair curled down her

back, looking more relaxed than Draco had ever seen her. She was holding hands with another woman Draco didn't recognize, who had short brown hair and was wearing a muggle t-shirt and shorts. They were spread out on a picnic blanket in the grass, looking blissfully happy. Next to the pictures, there was an article even more surprising.

Narcissa Malfoy Caught Snogging Muggle Woman

By Rita Skeeter

By now, everyone knows that Lucius Malfoy is in prison for his unexplained rampage down Diagon Alley, and that it has since come out that he was abusive to his wife and son. Narcissa Malfoy, who has filed for a divorce and now has complete custody of heir Draco Malfoy, has created even more of a scandal as of late when this reporter managed to catch a peek of just what she's been up to. Hidden in a perfect spot to watch and listen, I discovered her on a romantic date with a muggle, and not just any muggle! This muggle, whose name is Aralynn Smithson, I have learned, has been having an affair with the Lady Malfoy for years, almost since the birth of her son! I was shocked to discover the truth of the illustrious pureblood's illicit philandering, as shocked as you surely are now, dear reader. I stayed in my spot, suffering discomfort in order that I may bring you, my devoted following, the full scoop on these juicy dealings.

The Lady Malfoy leaned in close to whisper in her lover's ear, and it was only through the use of a silent sonorous charm that I was able to determine what was said.

"I'm finally able to get away," Narcissa whispered lustily. "Now we can do the thing properly. No more hiding."

Muggle Aralynn seemed delighted by this proposition, stating that she "couldn't wait to meet little Draco," and "was so glad that things were better" for her magical girlfriend. It is obviously a seriously committed relationship, as besides its duration, I personally witnessed Lady Malfoy casually performing simple cleaning charms as they got up to leave their secluded picnic spot. While doing magic in front of a muggle partner is not against the law, it is advised to wait until the relationship is serious, and it is mandatory to send an owl to the Obliviation Department in the event things don't work out. This obviously isn't the case with these two, however, as they walked away smiling, hand in hand and trading chaste kisses. I'd have been touched if it weren't for the sheer immorality of the thing.

For those who are old enough to have gone to Hogwarts with Narcissa Malfoy, however, such scandalous behaviour shouldn't strike one as completely out of character. It was swept under the rug for years, but those of us who attended Hogwarts during Narcissa's sixth and seventh year and were privileged enough to have access to closely guarded gossip will remember that Narcissa Malfoy nee Black's marriage contract with Lucius Malfoy was almost terminated by the latter's father, Abraxas. Why, you ask. Well, even fewer were privy to that information, but it's not for nothing I'm a journalist- I have excellent contacts.

I have been informed by a very reliable source (who wishes to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the material) that the marriage, a result of an agreement between the not-so-happy-couple's noble parents, was almost called off because Narcissa Black had been involved in a romantic relationship with Lily Potter, then Lily Evans.

That's right, readers. Noble Lily was not always enamoured with her husband-to-be (I have it on good authority that she more than once called the Lord Potter an 'arrogant toe- rag' during the earlier years of their education), and from her fourth to fifth year was involved in a secret liaison with Narcissa. Our beloved Lady Potter, future mother to the hero of the wizarding world and Boy Who Lived Harry Potter, was not as innocent and pure as we would have liked to believe. I only hope that our poor saviour is not too traumatised by his mother's checkered past.

By the time they'd finished the article, Draco was pale, but Harry was furious. A burst of fire shot from his hand and torched the paper. Ron grumbled something about embers in his cornflakes to try to ease the tension, but was unsuccessful as Harry tried desperately to control his breathing.

"How dare she say such a thing!" he boomed, and the entire Gryffindor table (and the Slytherin's therein) were shocked that such a loud voice could come from such a small body. They had never heard Harry yell before, as he tried his best, however unsuccessfully, to be unnoticed most of the time (the only exception being quidditch, and even there the eyes of the school were just an unfortunate concession to be made for the feeling of swooping around after the snitch). "How dare this awful woman imply something was wrong with my mother because she liked girls too, or because she dated Draco's mum, or because she might not have been a… a virgin when she married my dad! How dare she!"

Draco and Hermione, who were closest to Harry, tried rubbing his shoulders gently in the hopes of relaxing him slightly, as the dining hall was starting to shake. Harry was doing his best to reign in his temper and his magic, but the one thing that could infuriate him beyond all reason was someone insulting his parents. He'd had to listen to the Dursley's do it for ten years, and some of his worst beatings were from the few times he lost his temper and dared argue with them, and without the threat of the belt or the cane, he was having trouble holding it in. Pebbles were beginning to rain down from the ceiling of the Great Hall when McGonagall came to the table.

"Harry, sweetheart, I know you're angry, you have every right to be, I'm angry too. But if you don't manage to reign your magic in, I'm afraid the ceiling will cave in." She murmured soft, soothing words into his ears and ran her fingers gently through his hair and along his shoulders as her child, breathing raggedly, slowly stopped shaking in anger, and the vibrations of the castle in turn came to a standstill.

"There's a good boy," Minerva praised. "So strong, so brave. Come on, I think you need some time to decompress." As she said this, Harry, exhausted from his outburst of anger and accidental magic strong enough to shake the foundations of a thousand-year-old stone castle held together by ancient and powerful magic, swooned and passed out in his guardian's arms, and Minerva, impervious to the concerned glances of Harry's friends and the stunned stares of the rest of the school, picked Harry up as if he weighed nothing at all (which he nearly did, in her motherly opinion) and carried him out of the hall, followed quickly by Poppy and Severus, who sensed their help would be needed.

"Well," Lockhart said, not reading the mood at all. "I'm glad that's taken care of. Although rest assured, we were never in any danger. Should it have come to that, I knew just

the spell to stop the shaking." Pansy glared darkly at him (not that the pompous git noticed) and crossed several of the more benign pranks off the list she was creating with Hermione.

Chapter 14

Chapter Notes

This chapter is a bit shorter (only about 800 words) and more of a filler than anything, but I was still angry with Dumblefore and wanted an excuse to yell at him some more, so here you go.

Minerva rushed with Harry to the hospital wing, putting him down on his usual bed and beckoning Madame Pomphrey over to run diagnostics on him. She waved her wand over the unconscious boy as quickly as she could while still maintaining accuracy. When the results flashed, she breathed a sigh of relief. Then anger again as she noticed Dumbledore had followed them. She shot him a glare but stayed silent for the time being.

"He's fine. Just emotionally and magically exhausted."

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose. "The level of depletion to his core- is it dangerous?"

The medi-witch pursed her lips and ran a hand through her hair, unintentionally teasing a few strands out of their tight bun. "Surprisingly, no. Not even potentially. Around the exertion of a fifth year after O.W. L's- completely exhausting, but not harmfully so."

"You mean to say that he threatened the structural integrity of Hogwarts in a fit of accidental magic and then suffered no lasting repercussions as a result?" Snape, a man very good at hiding his emotions, seemed to have an impossible time doing it with Harry Potter.

"Yes Severus, that is what I said." Poppy wasn't going to ease the potions master through his flood of newfound emotions.

"Merlin's saggy balls." Minerva surprised even herself with the expletive.

"Yes, well, what are we going to do about it?" Dumbledore obviously wasn't intimidated enough by the glares of his colleagues to stay silent.

"Don't insult his dead parents, obviously." Severus drawled.

McGonagall jumped in. "I don't think we need to be talking about my child as if he's a miscreant or a danger to the school. He clearly had every right to be angry; I was furious when I saw how that Skeeter woman slandered Lily." Her eyes were still spitting fire. "And he was able to calm himself down. The structural wards would have kicked in before any real damage occurred."

"Still, you can't deny that was an extreme show of magical power." Dumbledore stroked his beard, still looking concerned.

"So, you're going to punish Harry for having a large magical core!" Minerva's nostrils flared.

"Now, no one said anything about punishment…" Dumbledore began, but Minerva was finished putting up with him.

"Silence, Albus! I've had enough of your insinuations. I thought I told you to stay out of the way I'm raising Harry! Harry is, in most respects, a model student. The only time he's ever broken school rules was when you, Albus, were manipulating him into doing so. Perhaps we should view this as what it is- Harry feels safe enough to express his anger now that he's out of an abusive home, a home that you, again, placed him in, and his magic got a little out of hand. Accidental magic is still quite common at his age. And if Harry's a little more powerful," seeing the looks on her colleagues' faces, she amended, "or a lot more powerful than is perhaps common, children come to Hogwarts to learn how to use their magic. Considering his position in the wizarding world, and those who might wish to harm him because of it, I'd say that his impressive abilities can only be a good thing." She exhaled angrily. "Honestly Albus, it's not as if he's an obscurial- and we should thank our lucky stars that it didn't come to that!"

She cast a glance to Madame Pomphrey. "Is there a reason he must stay specifically in the hospital wing?"

Poppy shook her head. "Anywhere he can rest that is peaceful and comfortable should be just fine."

The tabby animagus nodded. "I shall take him to his room in my quarters, then."

Albus turned to face her. "You had a room built in for him? I'm surprised I hadn't heard of construction in the castle."

Minerva actually growled. "Yes, well, in case you've forgotten, you may be headmaster, but you don't own the school, and not every decision has to go through you. Of course, I built a room for my child! Unlike some people, I know how to raise a child. Now, I need to leave before my magic acts up." She picked up Harry, almost impossibly gently, and cradled him to her chest as she left.

The others also turned to go back to the Great Hall while Albus stood frozen, still stunned from being disciplined by his deputy for the second time in as many weeks. Just as he grasped the handle, Severus turned back.

"A word of advice, Albus," he said, and the irony of the situation was almost too delicious. "You're a skilled wizard with a good heart, but perhaps you would do well to remember that you're not the only one with any authority." And he twirled on his heel and stalked out.

Chapter 15

Harry hovered just out of consciousness in the most comfortable bed he'd ever felt. As he slowly came to, he realized he was lying on a soft mattress, propped up by pillows and covered by a warm red tartan patchwork quilt. He could vaguely make out walls in red and gold, a pattern without his glasses that looked indistinctly blurry. If he'd had his glasses, he would have seen the wallpaper was red with golden snitches, and that they were also decorated by various quidditch posters, with a bookshelf on one end. At the moment, however, all he noticed was his guardian leaning over him feeling his forehead.

"M'na?" he slurred, and Minerva froze for a minute. It almost sounded like he said mama. She tried not to tear up, but her eyes got misty anyway.

"Yes Harry, I'm here."

"Wha?" he struggled with his thoughts for a moment before bolting upright so quickly he startles Minerva, and Harry himself wobbled a little.

"Is everyone okay? Did I break anything? Is…" Minerva squeezed his hand gently.

"Shhh Harry… everything's fine. Nothing happened."

"And I'm not in trouble- shouldn't I be punished?" Minnie's heart broke again.

"Harry, of course not. It was just some accidental magic. Granted, it was powerful, but it's still normal at your age. Especially with all the stress you've been under lately." Or forever, she thought grimly.

"I don't… I'm still not sure how this is supposed to work. The whole thing with, well, having a good parent. I'm sorry if I don't get it right sometimes."

"Oh, Harry." Professor McGonagall ran a thumb along his cheek. "The only thing you have to do is be a kid. You just have fun, play with your friends, go to class and let me take care of any problems that come up. If you need anything, I'll help you. I'm your guardian now, and we're going to figure this out together. Okay?"

"Okay," Harry looked down at his hands, intertwined in his lap, and blushed.

"Good, that's it darling. I love you." Minnie realized what she said and worried it would be too much. Of course, it was true, but she was afraid it would overwhelm him.

Before she could figure out what to say, however, Harry smiled so brightly Minerva felt like the room lit up. "I love you too."

Minnie smiled back at him and kissed his forehead. "I have to go teach my afternoon classes, but you should rest for the rest of the day. This is your room, and your glasses are on the night table. If you get bored and want to read a book or have a snack, just call for Plonky.

She's my personal house elf, and she'll get you anything you need. Your bathroom is attached through that door," she pointed at the back wall. "I'll be back as soon as the last period is over."

Harry blinked at her. "This is my room?"

Minnie smiled. "Of course, dear. My child gets his own bedroom. Now, I really have to go, or I'll be late, and then I'll never be able to lecture tardy students again with my dignity intact."

Harry smiled at her as she walked out and then called for Plonky. Considering his experiences this summer, he figured it couldn't hurt to learn about house elves.

Minerva got to her classroom just before the bell rang (she might have run most of the way as a cat, but nobody need know that). Just as she was opening her door, she was accosted by Harry's group of friends.

"Professor!" Pansy had stepped directly in front of her, demanding her attention.

"Is Harry okay?!" Hermione stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her Slytherin friend. The boys jostled for a position where they could watch the professor's face as she gave her answer, but the girls weren't yielding their space, and quick (and eerily matching) side-eyed glares from the two were enough to have them standing still.

"He's fine, children, just exhausted." Pansy watched her face carefully and then squeezed Hermione's hand twice, the signal for "telling the truth." Growing up in pureblood political circles, Pansy was an expert at reading the sincerity in someone's voice and body language. She was thinking of teaching Hermione, but she knew the boys were a lost cause. If Draco didn't get it after all these years…

Anyway, Harry was fine, and she gave a sharp nod to the professor before turning to go back to the classroom. The rest followed them in.

"Draco," she ordered her best friend. "Your handwriting is pretty; take notes for Harry." The blonde looked like he might argue with Pansy about her characterisation of his handwriting, but he just bit his lip and took out a peacock feather quill. It was for Harry, after all.

They were walking out of the room an hour later when Ron poked Draco in the shoulder. He smiled as if this were a splendid joke. "He already knows how to turn beetles into buttons, you know, those fancy notes are pointless."

Draco hit him in the shoulder. "You couldn't have told me an hour ago, git!"

Ron hit him back. "I didn't say he wouldn't like to have them." Draco blushed.

Pansy whacked both of them in the back of the head. "Stop it, you two, and go fetch the twins. We have a prank assault to plan, and we're waging it gorilla-style."

"Guerrilla-style," Hermione corrected.

"Thank you, Mia."

Chapter 16

Chapter Notes

So, next chapter! Quick note, in this version, Harry is not a horcrux (there still are Horcruxes, but Harry isn't one. It just doesn't work with what I have planned). This is also where the plot really gets going. Anyway, enjoy.

Harry was almost assaulted by all his friends the next morning, plus Blaise Zabini and a little blonde Ravenclaw first year, who were apparently part of their group now. Harry shrugged. The more the merrier.

"Misstaaa Pottah!" George Weasley greeted him in a good imitation of an irate Professor Snape.

"Hey guys," Harry giggled, and from the head table, Snape reluctantly ceased his plans of giving the Weasley terror a detention for his unflattering role playing.

"So, Harrykins," Fred picked up. "You know Blaise, and this little eaglet is Luna, Ginny's playmate."

Ginny smacked him. "Best friend, doofus. We haven't been playmates since we were five."

"Ginny, don't blame your brothers for their giggledrake infestation," Luna chided. While that made no sense to anyone else, Ginny just sighed and smiled, plopping her arm on the other's shoulder.

"If we could all get down to business, please," Pansy declared.

"We have an announcement." Hermione continued, pulling out the parchment she and the Slytherin had been working on since yesterday. The boys had dubbed it The Super- Secret List of Doom, not least because any attempts to look at it or add their input resulted in head smacks.

"LET THE PRANK WAR ON ONE DILDO-DOY LOCKFART BEGIN!" George whisper-shouted.

"We did not approve that nape," Hermione snorted, and Harry and Draco looked at each other and gulped. Both of them were worried that Hermione and Pansy had started mimicking each other's inflections and mannerisms in the first two days of their friendship.

"Okay, so we've narrowed down the list of possible first pranks to four options, and we're gonna let you guys give your input on which one we should do." Hermione said.

"Yeah, but only one of them is right, so this is a test. We're curious as to your competence." Pansy added. Hermione nodded in agreement.

Just then, Harry heard a voice bouncing along the walls, reaching his ears. "Let me rip. Let me tear. Let me kiiiiiillll you…" He started.

"Guys, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Ron asked.

"You know, that voice!" Harry reiterated.

"There's no voice, Harry," Fred said, looking concerned.

"Yeah, lil' bro. You're probably still a bit tired from yesterday."

"Yeaaahhh," Harry hummed, non-committal, but he knew he wasn't imagining it. He knew that type of voice- he'd heard it from the snakes when he was talking with them in Petunia's garden for years. But he didn't want to say it here. Apparently, understanding snakes wasn't normal for wizards either (of course it wasn't). But he wasn't going to bring that up at the table; he'd wait until they were somewhere more private.

He barely registered that they were going to be putting a slow-acting hair removal potion in Lockhart's shampoo and a discolouration serum in his teeth whitener as he ruminated on the implications of what he'd heard.

He pulled all his friends (including Luna and Blaise) aside the during morning break. Luckily, first, second, and third years had the same study period- right after the first class of the day. He'd pulled them all into the Gryffindor common room and up to his bedroom in Minerva's quarters.

"Where are we?" Blaise asked, once he'd shut the door and they were all seated on Harry's bed, floor, armchair, or squashy-puff seat.

"This is my bedroom." Harry answered, and he couldn't help being a little bit of pride leaking into his voice.

"Brilliant!" Ron said.

"Yes, yes, but let's talk about that later. We have a problem."

"Is it that voice again, mate?" asked Fred. "Because you know we don't doubt you, Harry, but…"

"Yes, I know, you didn't hear it," the first year interrupted. "But I know it was there. And I know what it was. I didn't know not everyone could do this, but I talk to snakes. I know it was a snake."

"You speak Parseltongue!" Blaise gasped, and Draco almost squeaked in excitement. Pansy was excited too, but she could restrain herself, thank you very much.

"That's what it's called?"

"Yes, you dork." Draco flung an arm around his friend's shoulder.

"Harry, that's really uncommon…" Hermione breathed. Oh, the academic opportunities!

"Aren't the Potters descended from the Perevells?" Pansy asked. "They were a really old family; I wouldn't be surprised if they had some Parselmouths in their line somewhere."

"Pans, 'Mione, you can salivate over the research opportunities later. The point is, there was a snake, and I heard it talking about killing people!"

"Maybe it was a grass snake and it was just talking about hunting mice or something…" Ron put forth.

"Yeah, did you feel it, or like, sense it in any way?" Hermione asked, referring to Harry's mage senses.

"No, but it wasn't right, I'm telling you. If there were little grass snakes running around, I would have heard them before now!" Harry said. "I can prove it too! Summon a snake."

"Does anyone know the spell for that?" Draco asked.

"You do, idiot." Pansy snorted.

"Right," Draco blushed and put his head down. Honestly, he was so flustered lately…

Draco did the Serpentsortia spell, and Harry watched carefully. Could come in useful…

A long black snake popped into the room, and everyone jumped back. Of all the snakes to summon, an adder had to pop up. He wriggled angrily for a moment before Harry spoke.

"Hello," he soothed the little (well, not-so-little) snake.

"A speeeeakerrr," the adder hissed in wonder.

"Yeah, that's me. Listen, can you tell me- there's a snake in the walls, right? Like, a really big one?"

"Yesssss," the adder responded. "Biiiig snake. Verrry big snake."

"How big?"

"Hundreds of meeee big, at leasssst." Harry gulped. The snake was very big for an adder, about a metre long, so hundreds of her could not be good.

"Thankssss," Harry hissed.

"Pleased to help a sssspeeeakkker," she responded. "Listen, speeeeakerrr, I do not want to be alone in the forest, can I stay here?"

Harry thought a moment. "I'll have to ask my nest-mother, but I think it should be alright. Let me just…" he summoned a terrarium beneath the sunny window and carried the snake to it, setting her on a rock.

"Thank you speeeeakerrr."

"Call me Harry," he corrected. "Speaking of which, do you have a name?"

"My nest-mother called me Du." Harry knew from a short Welsh unit in primary school that the name meant 'black.' It certainly fit the obsidian serpent.

"Thank you for the help. Why don't you take a nap while I talk to my friends?"

"I have no objectionssss." Du got comfortable on her rock.

"So, guys, it is a big snake. Like, a really big snake. Like, a-can-eat-all-of-us-and- still-have-room-snake. We should talk to Professor McGonagall."

"I guess this takes precedent over our pranks…" Fred sighed sadly.

"Never mind that!" Draco gasped. "I am not comfortable sharing a castle with a people-gulping reptile. Do you guys realise how delicious I am?"

"You're bitter as fuck." Pansy snorted, and it said a lot about the Slytherin's influence on her new friends that Hermione didn't scold her for her language, merely hid a laugh behind her hand.

Harry was already running out the door. "Minnie's class ends in fifteen minutes; I gotta go tell her."

The group looked at each other. "With his luck, he'll get killed on the way there," Blaise voiced. "We should follow him." They all stumbled up and after him, although Ginny especially did so with some reluctance (she had commandeered the puffy chair).

They never went looking for adventure, but it looked like it had found them again.

Chapter 17

Chapter Notes

So, this chapter is pretty long... one of the longest I've written, which I hope will satisfy as it's all I've got for the night. Anyway, we getting into the thick of things! Yay!

Harry ran urgently towards Professor McGonagall's classroom, but slowed when classes ended and the hallways filled- no need to cause suspicion. He felt his friends and their distinct magical signatures following him, Blaise in front. He was glad that he had a group that was willing to back him up- he remembered wishing he had friends like that for years during primary school, and he felt so lucky that he finally did. Of course, it would be better if they weren't trying to figure out what to do about a man-eating snake, but you can't have everything.

He reached his guardian's classroom and knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" Professor McGonagall called.

"It's Harry, professor." He heard a book being immediately laid aside.

"Come in, dear. No need to knock when it's you."

"Umm, okay. Thanks." Harry entered and wondered exactly how he was going to tell her that there was a potentially immediate danger to the school. He was used to taking care of his problems on his own, so this was new for him, as well as a bit of a leap of faith. It seemed a lot simpler in his room.

His room, he thought. Given to him by his guardian, who told him he could come to her with anything.

"Umm… I'm a parselmouth!" he blurted out quickly.

"Oh?" McGonagall raised an eyebrow, but didn't show her surprise otherwise; she didn't want to make him nervous.

"I… I found a snake, and I really like her. She's in a tank in my room. C'n I, can I keep her, please?"

"Well, of course dear, as long as she knows not to bite anyone or wander about in areas crowded with students."

"Okay! Thanks Minnie!" Harry smiled at her, a moment of happiness for his new pet temporarily overriding his anxiety. Key word: temporarily.

Minerva was still smiling because he called her Minnie when the little boy tentatively pulled at her sleeve.

"Hmmm?" she asked, still glowing with contentment.

"We also have a bigger problem…" Minnie's stomach sank as she saw Harry's friends inching into the room. If Harry thought it was a problem, especially a problem that needed an adult to solve, it had to be serious.

"Well I promise I will do everything in my power to help," she told him sincerely, trying not to think about when he tried to warn her about the stone and her dismissal almost got him killed.

"I know you will," he smiled up at her, and despite everything he'd already been through, his green eyes were so innocent and captivating it was heart-breaking. "Well, this morning, I thought I heard a voice that sounded like a snake. And it didn't feel right, so we," he swept his arm towards the group, "summoned a snake and I asked her- Du, that is, my new pet- if she could sense the snake too, and she said she could, and that it's a snake… a big, man-eating snake. And woman eating snake," he added, catching Pansy's glare.

"Oh my…" Minerva gasped.

"And it's really hungry…" Harry was about to say more, but just then, Draco gasped.

"Ohmygods! The Chamber!" The other Slytherins, and Hermione, blanched.

"Fuuuuuuuck…" Pansy groaned, squeezing Hermione's shoulder so hard her knuckles were white.

Minerva didn't even scold her for her language; hell, she was feeling a similar sentiment.

"I… no; it cannot be… it… dear Merlin, no! Last time it was opened, a student died." Minnie had to sit down at her desk, her hand reaching for Harry, as if to assure her he was still there, still safe.

"Moaning Myrtle!" Hermione and Pansy gasped at the same time.

"It's called the Whomping Willow, and it's not gonna do us any bloody good in this situation," Ron grumbled.

"No, idiot! Moaning Myrtle is the ghost in the girl's bathroom on the first floor." Ginny sighed. Honestly, for a brilliant chess-master, her brother….

"First a troll and now a ghost! What the hell is wrong with the girls' lavatory?" Was Ron's only response.

"And you wonder why we go in groups…" Pansy grumbled.

"Well, I should say we must go see what she has to say…" McGonagall was reluctant to bring the children to danger, but she knew Myrtle would not wish to talk to her. She was a prefect the year the chamber was opened, and in all the chaos, Minnie hadn't realized the lonely Ravenclaw was being bullied.

"I don't think she'll wanna talk to us," Hermione said, motioning to herself and Pansy. "She's really sensitive with any girls who come into the bathroom; she thinks we're there to bully her."

"It makes it very hard to do what we came to," Pansy added.

"Harry's good with people," Ron broke in. "He should talk to her. He made Draco like us, after all." Draco opened his mouth to argue, found nothing to say, closed it again, and hit Ron on the arm.

"Just because it's true doesn't mean you need to say it out loud, Weasel," he pouted.

"I don't know about that…" Minerva was nervous to let her child have any part in this.

"It's okay Minnie, you'll be right outside the door. And I'll be super careful." Harry was intuitive enough to sense the cause of her hesitation.

"If we must… alright. I suppose there's no way to keep you out of an issue you discovered." She was still reluctant, but better Harry know that she trusted him to be capable and come to her for help than have him feel stifled and go off on his own.

Myrtle's bathroom was very wet, Harry noticed as he lifted his robes and waded through to the sound of anguished sobbing. He was glad he was no longer wearing Dudley's old trainers; they would have soaked through right away. He also noticed that there was an odd patch of old and ambiguous magic over by the sinks, but he was distracted from that as the sobbing reached a crescendo.

"Who's come to bother me now?!" Myrtle wailed, and Harry couldn't help but smile a bit. No matter the situation or the age (or corporal status, apparently) teenagers had a repertoire of basic reactions in common.

"I'm not meaning to bother you- sorry. I'm Harry."

The sound of his voice caused the ghost to poke her head through the stall door. "You're not a girl; you're a boy! Are you even old enough to go to Hogwarts?" Harry sighed; malnutrition was a bitch.

"I'm actually a second year- just really short. I get a lot of grief over it, too."

Myrtle perked up. "You've been bullied too?" she asked excitedly, and Harry sensed his opportunity.

"My whole life," Harry confirmed, silently apologizing to his friends- it would probably hurt them to hear this. "My cousin and his gang used to chase me around and try to beat me up, so I spent most of my free time hiding in a tree."

"I didn't have any trees to hide in, so I always came here," Myrtle informed him. Then she sighed theatrically. "In fact, I died here too…"

Harry had been worried about brining it up, but hearing this he was relieved. Not only did she bring it up, she seemed rather proud of it.

"About that… we're investigating something of the sort. Would you mind if I asked you about that?"

Myrtle's face lit up even further. "Oh, it was simply terrible!" She enthused. "I was hiding in this stall, right here, after Olive Hornby made fun of my glasses, when I heard a boy's voice speaking some weird hissy language. I opened my door to tell him to use his own bathroom, and then there was a great pair of bulbous yellow eyes, and I just… died. Like, I sort of seized up and then I was floating away… oh, it was so strange."

Blaise and McGonagall both gasped from outside the door. "Basilisk…" this word seemed to resonate with the group, and they were the most ruffled they'd been all day, which was saying something. Harry didn't know what a basilisk was, but he figured it couldn't be good.

He walked over to the area that Myrtle had pointed to, and where he felt the strange magic. "Guys, there's a little snake emblem here! I bet it opens with Parseltongue." He turned to Myrtle.

"Can my friends come in to look at this? I know you don't feel comfortable with a lot of people, but we're trying to get to the bottom of what happened, of why you died."

Myrtle bit her lip but looked pleased with all the personal attention, and someone respecting her boundaries. "Go ahead," she waved them in. "I need to know what happened, and why it happened to me. I may have haunted Olive Hornby, but I lost a lot. It's time to put this to rest." For all she was damaged and depressed, Myrtle had also had decades of experience with some cognizance or other, and she wasn't immature.

The group practically fell through the door in their rush to join their friend and examine the emblem. Hermione and Pansy elbowed their way through first, then made way for McGonagall.

"How does it feel, Harry?" was the first thing she said after looking at it for a moment.

"Weird… not dark exactly, but old. And…" Harry took a deep breath and tuned in further, "it's not bad in itself exactly, but somebody used black magic here a very long time ago. It's very faint, but it's there. I, I can't put my finger on it, but it feels… vaguely familiar. I've… I haven't seen this exact signature before, but something similar… I don't…" he trailed off, not sure exactly what it was that was making him uneasy. Besides,

what he'd already said was enough to fill the assembled (including Myrtle, who decided she rather liked this nice, living boy with the crazy hair) with a deep sense of foreboding.

Minerva practically rushed them out the door, Harry first. "This is an immediate threat." She pursed her lips. "Luckily, basilisks have an exploitable weakness."

"Hagrid!" Hermione exclaimed, and that was all the incentive needed to head towards the groundkeeper's hut. But before they were halfway there, they ran into the man himself.

"Hagrid, thank Merlin!" Minerva began, "We need to talk to you."

"C'n it wait a moment, pr'fessor? I need to talk to Dumbledore- got to get permission to do a bit of magic. Summat's bin killin' all ma roosters."

"Did a say summat wrong?" the large man asked as everyone in front of him blanched.

Chapter 18

Chapter Notes

Hey guys! So, here's another chapter. I realized today that this document for the fic is 76 pages, double-spaced, as of this chapter! That's an insane amount of writing for me to get done in the space of the week. Maybe Bassy just likes that she's working on a fic featuring her kin, lol.

Hagrid watched confusedly as there was a moment of panicked silence and anxious looks. He didn't understand what was so frightening about something pecking off his roosters- it was inconvenient for him, yes, but it was probably just a stray fox or some smaller magical carnivore.

"But couldn't we bring in more?" Harry was asking.

"That's a good idea," Minerva acknowledged, "except for the caveat- for the cry of the rooster to be fatal, it has to have been hatched on and spent its entire life on the same property as the basilisk was created."

"Ere's a basilisk?!" Hagrid boomed. He wasn't excited, either. Even he knew that those were fatal and should not be messed with.

"Shhh… Hagrid, you're gonna send everyone into a panic if you just go blurting it out!" Pansy reprimanded, tugging his arm to get him to look at her.

"Well, I think we still need ta tell Dumbledore!" he told the Slytherin.

Not even Minerva could disagree with the necessity to inform the headmaster, so they all headed to Dumbledore's office. "Lemon Drop." Minerva pursed her lips as she said the password. She never could tolerate the candies since the night when Dumbledore was happily sucking on them as he casually dropped Harry on the Dursley's doorstep. Harry did not seem to have the same sentiment of malcontent, his big eyes widening adorably as the staircase started rotating upward and he stared at the paintings lining the stairway.

All the children and their adult escorts piled into the office, and they all looked around interestedly. Harry caught sight of the brilliant red bird in the corner and gasped.

"His magic is gorgeous! What is he?" Dumbledore looked at Harry and forced the usual twinkle into his eyes despite the sadness and guilt he felt over his recent interactions with him.

"That, young Harry, is a phoenix. His name is Fawkes; he's my familiar."

Harry scrunched his eyebrows. "Fawkes is your familiar? But the bond feels weird; it's different than the one I have with Hedwig."

"Very astute, Harry." Harry didn't see how a talent he just naturally had for perceiving magic could be 'astute,' but Dumbledore was still talking. "Our bond is different than a normal familiar bond because Fawkes is the familiar of all Hogwarts Headmasters, so it isn't an exclusive familiar bond of the type you are blessed enough to have with Hedwig."

"Hedwig is your familiar, Harry? That explains why you seem to understand each other so well," Hermione remarked, while Hagrid looked ecstatic that the owl that he picked out for Harry was his familiar; finding one was a lucky and fairly rare thing for a wizard. It was also a blessing more ways than just magically; a familiar and their wizard had an implicit understanding of each other and their lifelines were tied together, meaning that as long as the wizard or witch didn't die young, the animal would live much longer than a normal pet.

"I believe we're getting off track here." The fact that it was George who said this only served to reinforce the knowledge that they were here for a serious problem.

"Harry, you know the situation best." Minnie gently nudged him, and he began explaining. When he'd finished, with occasional input from his friends, the headmaster sat back and stroked his beard.

"This is indeed a serious problem…" he began, "but I believe it can be dealt with quite simply.

"The roosters are dead, Albus," Minnie pulled a very Snape-ish mood and pinched the bridge of her nose in irritation.

"That is of no consequence, as we are not going to kill the creature."

Minerva openly gaped at him. "And why ever the hell not?" she snapped. She seemed to be cursing a lot lately in her interactions with Albus.

"Well, there is no need. Harry only heard the snake wake up, that does not mean that it can feed without the heir, of which there is none. So, we simply seal the chamber for extra protection and go on as usual and the basilisk should go back to sleep soon. They don't need to feed often to survive, so it will eventually return to hibernation without the heir present."

"And in the meantime, Harry will just go through his lessons hearing a giant snake going on about killing people?" Minnie didn't like that one bit.

"Unfortunate side effect of being a parselmouth, I'm afraid." Dumbledore looked only mildly concerned.

Minnie was about to say more, but Harry broke in. "S'okay. I'm used to hearing people tell me how much they'd like to kill me." He kicked himself afterwards as he saw the other's faces. He had to be more mindful about his tendency to gallows humour when he was nervous…

"Well," Professor McGonagall cleared her throat awkwardly. "What spell are we going to use to seal the chamber?"

"Something very strong," Dumbledore said, and Minnie was glad to know that he at least had that much sense.

The headmaster cast a sonorous charm on his voice. "All teachers to my office," a thought flashed visibly across his face. "Except Professor Trelawney: you may continue whatever it is you are doing."

The staff all entered the already crowded office. Snape looked especially disgruntled at being summoned.

"I was in the middle of brewing, Albus." He ran a hand through his greasy hair.

"You smell like skele-grow," Harry blurted, wrinkling his nose. Then his eyes widened. He was already nervous, and when added to his uncertainty as to how he was supposed to interact with the potions master as of late, he seemed to just be offering completely useless information.

"Yes, well- Quidditch is starting soon, and I had a feeling a little Gryffindor brat might be needing it soon enough." Severus quipped, deadpan. He couldn't quite keep the corners of his mouth from twitching into a smile, though, so Harry felt safe enough to stick his tongue out at him. Minnie shot Severus a look, one that said 'don't you dare give him any ideas.'

All playful banter ceased, however, when Dumbledore explained why they were there. Then they were at first shocked, then horrified, then grimly determined to do what they needed to do.

"This spell will need the combined effort of all of us, as it involves an immense output of magic. Ideally it could also use the aid of a parselmouth…"

"No." Minerva refused. "You don't seem to think there is enough danger to inform the student body to be on their guard, so there will certainly be no foolish thoughts of involving a second year in a spell that requires multiple trained adults with knowledge far beyond N.E.W.T.'s level."

Flitwick, who had an extensive knowledge of the particular charm they were performing, was looking particularly stony-faced. "I agree. I would sooner recommend shutting the school down than involving a child in this spell. We will just have to be confident that our combined prowess is enough to deal with this threat; it certainly should be if the threat is merely hypothetical, as you are suggesting, Albus."

That was that, so Harry merely led them to the bathroom, requested of Myrtle permission to do the spell in her space, and showed them the chamber. Then he waited outside the bathroom with the rest of his friends while the adults did the spell. It was

complicated, taking nearly two hours, so they had a lot of time to just kick around. Harry had already finished all his homework for yesterday's and this morning's classes, and courses were cancelled for the rest of the day for 'a teacher seminar' (that's what the rest of the school thought, anyway), so he played gobstones with Draco while Blaise and Ron played wizard's chess with a portable set the Slytherin always carried, Fred and George whispered together about some prank or other, and Hermione and Pansy sat side by side, pouring over a very large book. Ginny laid on her stomach scribbling in a sparkly pink notebook with a muggle pen Harry had bought her, while Luna was giving her tips such as "no, not quite. The radshanopper's tail is slightly puffier and not so long."

When the adults finally came out, they looked rather exhausted, but Dumbledore smiled. "It went well."

Snape grunted. "It better have, if I have no more energy to brew. I'm going to go take a nap."

"Wash your hair first," Fred mumbled under his breath.

"Detention, Weasley." Severus snapped, but tired enough that it didn't sound as menacing as usual. When four redheads responded to the surname, he sighed. "Or, which one of you demon twins- oh, never mind. I'm sure I'll have reason to assign another soon enough."

As he walked away, Ron whistled. "Bloody hell, someone needs to make him do that spell before every class."

"Unfortunately, Mr. Weasley, that would create an inhumane work environment," Professor Sprout remarked, wiping a hand across her sweating forehead. "I will see you all at dinner- if I'm awake for it."

The rest of the adults dispersed to their well-earned respite as well, but Minnie stopped in front of Harry first. "You know where my bedroom is, don't be afraid to come get me if you need anything: consider it your compensation for not getting to scream me awake as an infant." Harry smiled and promised he would before turning back to his game.

"Draco! Those stones were on my side of the board!"

"You said he wouldn't notice…" the blonde grumbled at Ron as Harry took his winning game pieces back.

Chapter 19

Chapter Notes

So this chapter is mostly just a bit of mindless h/c fluff because, heck, it's Monday, but it does have a purpose in the plot as well, as you'll see at the end. Shorter than usual, but it's one am and I'm ready to see the Sandman.

When Harry woke up the next morning, his head felt like it was full of rocks that hammered his skull when he so much as blinked; his throat was sore and he couldn't breath through his nose. An attempt to take a deep breath through his mouth only ended in a coughing fit that tore at his chest and already-sore throat. A cold then- he found it unfortunate, but force of habit kept him from even realizing that he should consider begging out of classes for the day; the thought that he could didn't even cross his mind. So, when Neville spoke up, aggravating the pounding in his head, what he said took him off guard a bit.

"Merlin, Harry! You look awful; you should go to the hospital wing."

"Wha? Why would I do that? S'just a cold," the smaller boy rasped at his friend.

"Well you should still go; even if it was just a cold, which it doesn't sound like, it should still be treated before it gets worse." Harry took a moment, somewhere in the back of his fever-addled brain, to note that they didn't give Neville nearly enough credit for his blunt practicality.

"Here, Harry, you just lie back down; I'll go get Minnie," Ron said. Harry's friends had taken after his new habit of calling her Minnie outside of classes (of course, unlike Harry, they never said it to her face).

Harry thought bed sounded like a good idea, so he fell back in and was burrowing around trying to find a cool spot on his pillow when he felt a blessedly cool hand on his forehead and the relaxing embrace of Minnie's magic, which felt like crisp Scottish evening and smelled like fresh shortbread.

He was dragged up from his half-aware fugue by her worried voice. "You feel quite hot, luv. Let's get you to Madame Pomphrey, yeah?"

"Mm'kay Min," he agreed, sure that he would regret his easy compliance later when he was stuck there bored out of his mind, but so out of it that he felt sleepily compliant and couldn't really bring himself to care.

Minerva reached for his hand to help guide him along, and Harry placed his little hand in her larger one without further prompting, practically purring as he basked in the

affectionate contact. Even when due to sickness, Harry was much better at accepting affection when he was half asleep. He looked much younger than he was in his oversized Gryffindor pyjamas, rubbing his eyes with his free hands as he stumbled along after his guardian, who gently placed his glasses on his face so he wouldn't be dealing with an influx of visible magic to worsen his headache.

Madame Pomphrey merely clucked in concern when he walked in. "There's been a cold going around, so I was wondering how long it would be before he wandered in with a full-blown case of the flu," she tutted, feeling his forehead. She left Susan Bones, who had been administered a pepper-up potion and was looking a little peaky, and helped Harry into bed. She had to gently shake him awake twice so she could get all the necessary potions into him, and the last thing Harry noticed before truly dropping of was that Susan's magic was oddly faded for just a normal cold.

Chapter 20

Chapter Notes

New chapter; love y'all.

"Nice snake. Good snake… please don't bite me!" Draco screeched as he dropped a dead mouse into Du's terrarium. He had no idea why he'd agreed when Harry asked him to feed Du while he was in the hospital wing. While he thought snakes were awesome and fascinating, he had no desire to actually get close to one. The adder merely snatched at the rodent and looked at him, as if to say really, human? Who's the bigger one here?

"Well who's the one with poisonous fangs?" Draco said out loud. Oh dear, he was having a conversation with a snake, and unlike his friend, he couldn't actually speak to them, so this just was just an opportunity to question his sanity.

"Draco!" Pansy called, "have you already fed Du? Professor McGonagall said we could take her to Harry." She poked her head into Harry's bedroom.

Draco gulped. "Feeding her was one thing, but now you want me to pick her up?"

"Honestly, Dray, you're such a wimp." His best friend rolled her eyes at him, turning to lift the lid off the tank.

"May I?" she asked the adder, who laid her pretty black head across the Slytherin's hand in acquiescence. Pansy picked her up, avoiding the area of her mid-section that was bulging with her recent meal.

"She won't hurt you, you know. She knows Harry likes you."

Draco nodded shakily but stepped back. "Still…"

"You are an embarrassment to our house sometimes, you know."

"You can always go to Gryffindor if you're so bothered by it." Draco quipped back, and Pansy's wrinkled nose showed exactly what she thought of that idea.

"I could always just trade you for Mia; I don't know what that tattered old hat was thinking when it put her here- she'd be a credit to Slytherin." Pansy started walking towards the portrait of the fat lady before Draco could respond to the insult.

"You've bitten off more than you could chew with that one, huh dear?" the portrait asked him as he in turn went to scramble through the hole.

"You don't just decide to make friends with Pansy- she claims you and you're stuck with her," Draco snorted.

"Yes, I know the type. My girlfriend was like that; but she was fiercely loyal. And an excellent kisser." Draco awkwardly sped away at this admission.

"Hmph. Little Pansy seemed to quite like that bit of information." The painted lady smoothed her dress and sat down to her novel.

"Du!" Harry exclaimed, voice still raspy, when he saw his friends with his pet.

"No love for the rest of us, Potter?" Pansy quipped, fake-indignant.

"Thanks Pans, you're the best." The corners of Harry's mouth quirked into a smile.

"Tell me something I don't know," she sniffed.

"Can I copy your notes, Draco? Madame Pomphrey won't let me have any of my work." Harry asked the other student in the room. But he had no sooner performed a duplicating spell on Draco's neat notes (wandlessly; Pomphrey had confiscated that as well) than the Medi-witch, sniffing rebellion, came out of her office.

"I'll be taking that," she said, snatching the parchments.

"But I'm feeling better! And I'm bored!" Harry whined.

"Well then I suppose you'll just have to stay bored until your fever's gone," she responded, mercilessly.

"It's just schoolwork…" her patient grumbled.

"While you're here, it's contraband. Besides, Minerva tells me you're already ahead in all your classes," Poppy pointed out, unimpressed with Harry's argument. "And," she added, "no more wandless magic, either, or I'll charm your hands to the blankets." Harry figured now wasn't the best time to point out he didn't actually need to move to cast wandlessly, so he just nodded and sighed.

"It's like I'm being punished for having a bad immune system," Harry grumbled to his friends as the nurse returned to her office.

"Honestly, Harry, it's just a bed and some free time to rest. I'd love a nap right about now. You're the most dramatic creature I've ever met, unless you actually should be reacting to something, of course." Pansy rolled her eyes.

"You're one to talk about being dramatic," Harry giggled, rubbing Du's scaly black head with one finger. Pansy could swear the serpent was smiling.

"Humph, if I'm going to be insulted, I'll be on my way." She stuck her nose in the air.

"No! I was just kidding- please stay! I'm bored," Harry sort-of apologized.

"We'd love to, oh great chosen one, but Minnie told us to let you rest after we dropped of Du, and Mia and I have an assault on Lockhart to plan. You didn't think we'd let him off with just thinning hair and yellow teeth, did you?"

"I'm just glad Hermione's there to keep you from going full-out evil queen," Harry told her honestly.

"Oh, you're so cute, thinking Mia's holding me back- I've long since corrupted her," Pansy smiled like the cat that got the canary as she pulled Draco out with her.

It was two days later and classes had just ended for the week when Harry was deemed well enough to leave, just in time to head to the great hall for dinner. Draco couldn't figure out why he blushed when Harry walked in, rested his chin on the blonde's shoulder, and reached to nab a chip from his plate.

"I've already made you a plate, Harry, so you can stop stealing from Draco's now," Hermione scolded him.

"Mmm, but he's already got vinegar on his chips," he responded, licking his lips. Draco blushed again and had to look away.

"Sit down and drink your potions; we all know that's what you're really putting off."

"Snape revolutionized the sleeping draught by cutting the brewing time in half, but he supposedly can't make any of these taste better? I call bullshit; he wants me to suffer," Harry sighed, pulling the cork of a bone-strengthening draught. He finished the rest of his regimen (nutritional, immunity, respiratory, and heart-strengthening potions, all designed to combat the long-term effects of malnutrition) and reached for the pumpkin juice before saying anything else.

"You good?" Blaise asked as he finished chugging his drink and made a face.

"Yeah, anyway- I ran into Nearly-Headless-Nick, or rather, through him, on my way down here, and he invited me to his Deathday party, and I said yes. Anyone else wanna come?" He held up his hand and Hermione jumped up. "I already know you and Pansy are coming for the 'research opportunity,' 'Mione. Anyone else?"

"I'm good, thanks," Seamus said.

"Make sure you bring food; there won't be anything edible there," Neville said, having gone to more of Great-Grandfather Longbottom's deathdays than he cared to remember. "And a coat, it'll be freezing with so many ghosts there." Seamus looked like he

regret his decision now as he looked over at Dean; a freezing room full of ghosts would have been a great excuse to snuggle his best friend/crush.

"I know Fred and George won't be there; they have some big Halloween prank planned," Ginny said. "But Luna and I'll come."

"Sure, why not?" Blaise shrugged. "There's a feast every year, after all."

"I'll invite Millie too," Pansy cut in. "But nobody tells her to bring a coat; this is my chance to make my move." The others just rolled their eyes; Pansy's infatuation with the other Slytherin girl was common knowledge in the group.

"Say what you will; at least I'm aware of my emotions," she harrumphed, and once everyone had looked away she slid her eyes almost imperceptibly towards Draco, who was blushing as Harry laughed at a joke the blonde had told him.

Chapter 21

Chapter Notes

Hey guys, last chapter for the night /. Quick note- I've changed the timing of the quidditch game a bit to fit my plotline. And don't worry, Draco will still be on the quidditch team for slytherin, just not his second year. With everything going on and without his father to pressure him into trying out the minute he was eligible, he just didn't quite get to it this year. He will still be the seeker his third year, though, and I do plan on taking the story that far, and farther, I hope.

Time passed quickly the next few weeks, filled with schoolwork and social time amongst the group, who traded between sitting with the Slytherins, Gryffindors, and Ravenclaws. Fred and George joked that they ought to pick up a Hufflepuff next. The mention of Hufflepuff jogged something vague in Harry's memory, but he could never quite grasp it, so he dismissed it as unimportant.

The quidditch between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw match was scheduled for the day before Halloween, and by the night before that, Harry, who had been weighing himself obsessively all week, finally managed to put on the last of the ten pounds required to be allowed to play. McGonagall sighed at him fondly when he went bursting into her office to show her.

"Very well," she said, looking at the numbers coming from his wand, which he had used to cast the weighing spell, "you may play in the match. But eat a complete breakfast tomorrow, and be careful! And keep working on putting on weight afterwards- don't think I haven't seen you struggling through seconds this whole week." She ruffled his hair in mock exaggeration.

Harry smiled sheepishly at her; caught out. "Thanks Minnie! I'll make Gryffindor proud."

"I know you will," she told him, running a thumb over his cheek. "But I'd rather you didn't take any unnecessary risks."

"The snitch will stay out of my mouth this time," he told her solemnly, before they both broke into giggles.

The next day dawned gloomy and overcast, the sky pregnant with impending rain. Harry was put off by the thought of food, but he struggled through his breakfast and gulped

down his potions, which seemed to taste even worse than usual. He and his friends made his way down to the pitch, and they split off as he and the twins headed to the changing room.

He tried to find a quiet corner to change, ashamed of his scars but seeing no point in putting up the glamours since Fred and George would only scold him for it, so he was grateful when the two sensed his hesitation and positioned themselves in a way that no one else would see the spot Harry picked to put on his quidditch robes. As soon as he was dressed and going for his broom, he was accosted by Wood, who was disgruntled that Harry hadn't been able to come to practice and was talking at him so quickly that his words about strategy and plays were barely comprehensible.

They'd lined themselves up at the field and were waiting for Madame Hooch to bring the balls when Oliver turned to Harry one more time.

"Alright Potter, the Ravenclaw seeker, Cho, is good, two years older, and a heck of a lot bigger than you, but you're better. We were so close last year; we've simply got to win the cup this time, so get the snitch or die trying."

Before Harry, or anyone else, could respond to that, Madame Hooch called for the captains to shake hands, then she'd blown the whistle and they were off. Things seemed to be going well at first as Harry watched the game from above. But Gryffindor had barely scored their second goal when a bludger came rocketing at Harry's nose. He managed to dodge it when he realised that there was some sort of curse on it. Before he could register why the magic felt familiar, however, it came at him again, this time from the back.

Fred and George looked worried, and what started as just George tailing him out of concern soon turned to both of them surrounding him as the bludger doubled its violent efforts.

"Someone's tampered with this bludger," Fred ground out as he whacked it away for the fourth time.

"I know; I can feel a curse. I just can't seem to"- Harry was cut off as the bludger came from it again. Two more minutes and Wood called a time out.

"Fred, George- what is going on! Angelina nearly got hit by a bludger and now Ravenclaw is ten points up!"

"We were trying to stop the other one from hitting Harry," George grit his teeth as he responded.

"Someone's messed with it!" Fred added.

"Can we call for an inquiry?" Harry asked, thinking of Minnie's plea to be careful.

"Not without forfeiting the match," Wood replied. "Look, Harry, you're a good flyer. You can handle this. Fred, George, you need to back off so he can actually see to look for the snitch."

The twins both opened their mouths to argue, but Harry held up a hand. "It's okay guys, I'll be fine. Besides, I couldn't play the finals last year, and we lost. I owe Oliver this."

Before the twins could respond that Harry didn't owe Wood anything, Madame Hooch asked if they were quite finished, and Oliver, who had taken Harry's response as the end of the matter, shouted that they were. They were up in the air without any time for more discussion, and while Fred still trailed Harry, he was zipping around too fast both to look for the Snitch and evade the bludger that the beater, on his old Comet 260, couldn't hope to keep up. He only hoped someone caught the snitch soon and put an end to this madness; at this point he didn't care who won.

Harry finally spotted the Snitch hovering just below Cho, who had stopped to take a breather, and dove for it. The bludger trailed after him. The Ravenclaw's eyes widened for a moment as she just saw Harry rushing towards her, only to drop towards the snitch, which, along with Harry, was already far ahead of her.

Harry's hand was two feet from the snitch…one foot… eight inches, when- BAM! The bludger smacked him in the elbow and he saw stars as he felt the familiar sensation of bone cracking. But never mind that; he was so close. He gritted his teeth and shot forward, quickly reclaiming the ground the snitch had covered. He took his good arm off the broom handle and reached for the little gold ball, holding on with his legs as he managed to get a hold of it and the match ended. He was a foot from the ground when he rolled off his broom and into the soft mud.

Professor McGonagall rushed up. "What the hell was that? Why did no one call of the match! I tried to get Hooch's attention, but she told me you all had decided to continue."

"Blame Oliver," Angelina ground out bitterly. "He told Harry to get the snitch or die trying, and Harry of course was too sweet to disappoint." Nobody on the team was very happy with Oliver at the moment.

"Mr. Wood! Detention for a MONTH! Of all the sheer stupidity- report to my office later, where we will examine your eligibility to remain captain this year. Harry darling" she changed her tone quickly as she went to help her charge up gently, "let's get you to the hospital wing."

"There shall be no need for that!" Lockhart, who had was the only one not aware of his lank, thinning hair and yellow teeth (another part of Pansy and Hermione's brilliant plan) came rushing forward in a flourish. "I shall get you fixed right up, Mr. Potter!" McGonagall stepped in front of him, pointing her want at his throat.

"You will do no such thing if you value your extremities," she growled, and the emphasis she put on the last word told everyone exactly which ones she was talking about. "I'm taking him to a qualified medical professional. Lockhart, who was angry over the insult to his pride but even more afraid of the threat to his balls, did as instructed.

"I really tried to be careful…" Harry told Minnie as she half-carried him in the direction of the castle.

"I know dear. Of all the people at fault for this atrocity, never believe for a minute that you were one of them." Then she picked him all the way up, despite his insistence that he could walk, and mother and child made their way towards the arching back doors.

Chapter 22

Chapter Notes

HI! More stuffs for my pals.

Madame Pomphrey had fixed his arm in minutes, and Harry thought that he'd be able to leave after that, like Neville had first year after their first flying lesson. He was thusly very disappointed when she said she'd 'only be keeping him overnight.'

"But my arm is all fixed!" Harry couldn't see why Poppy was so much stricter with him than other patients.

"Your bones are also weaker than normal, hence the bone-strengthening potion you take daily, so I'm just going to keep you for observation and make sure the healing holds properly." Pomphrey clucked at him; he was harder to keep still than the snitches he chased after.

"C'n I at least have an ice lolly, then?" He turned big pleading eyes on the medi- witch, who couldn't have refused even if she wanted to, so she accio'd one from the icebox in her office, green to match his eyes.

She left the little Gryffindor licking his frozen treat, somewhat contented, and smiled a little before going to her office to analyse his charts. She was hoping that by Christmas, his immune system would be strong enough to start receiving the vaccinations the Dursley's never bothered with.

Minerva left her own office after having a long discussion with Oliver Wood. By Harry's request, he hadn't been kicked off the team, but he was going to be serving a month's gruelling detention's cleaning cauldrons for Snape. Suffice to say that now he knew better than to be telling impressionable second-years to do foolish things. Poor Harry took this stuff very seriously- due to his traumatic upbringing, he didn't find orders like that unreasonable like a well-treated child would. She didn't tell Wood that, of course, but he would not be telling Harry anything like that regardless. If he hadn't learned his lesson by now, he would have by the time he had scrubbed countless cauldrons caked with first years' botched potions efforts.

Speaking of potions, as Minnie walked along the second-floor corridor, she nearly ran into Severus.

"Minerva, just the woman I was hoping to see. I am working on an experimental potion that requires venom from a particularly rare Patagonian ice cobra who is refusing to be

milked. Do you think that once Harry's been released from the hospital wing, you could ask if he would come down and talk to her?" Severus looked slightly awkward making the request, but Minnie noticed that he'd referred to Harry by his first name.

"I will see if he's open to the idea, yes. But he won't be released until tomorrow, and keep in mind that he is going to Sir Nicholas' Deathday party and is rather excited about it, so don't keep him too long."

"Ah yes, the infamous Deathday party. I believe a couple of my students are accompanying him. Pansy Parkinson has designs to capture the heart of Millicent Bullstrode during said event, as I hear it." Snape drawled, deadpan.

"Someone's been keeping up on common room gossip, I see," she smirked at him.

"And you don't?" The Slytherin raised an eyebrow. "Conceded," Minerva said. "Now, don't you have things to brew? Students to torture?"

"Ah yes; Marcus Flint is hanging upside down by his toenails in the spare lab. I'll let him down when he asks out Mr. Wood and gives us all some peace from his obsessive ranting."

"You are far too invested in your students' love lives. Nobody would believe it of you, Severus," Minnie teased her colleague.

"I am not invested; I am merely a conscientious head of house." Snape stuck his nose in the air.

"Keep telling yourself that; I'm going to go see my child." Minnie shifted into her animagus form and ran the rest of the way into the hospital wing. Harry smiled as the tabby cat pounced onto his bed and curled up at his side.

"Hey Mins." He scratched her head as he continued reading the comic book Draco had leant him.

Harry thought that Professor McGonagall would go back to Gryffindor tower as it drew near to curfew, but she merely curled closer into his side, purring, and he realised she meant to stay the night with him. He was touched by her thoughtfulness; she realised what tomorrow was and didn't want him to wake up alone on the anniversary of his parents' death.

He was awakened in the middle of the night by a cold sponge on his forehead, and he snapped to awareness immediately. He managed to stop himself from automatically hexing whoever it was, and he was glad he did, because the wrinkly little face was familiar.

"Dobby? What are you doing here?" Then he gasped as he was struck with a realisation. "You were the one who cursed the bludger- and blocked the platform! I didn't

recognize your magic because I was too distracted the first time we met to really take notice. Why were you trying to get me killed?!"

"Dobby is sorry! Dobby just wanted to get Harry Potter hurt so he would have to leave Hogwarts- but not killed, never killed! It is too dangerous for the Great Master Harry Potter to be here this year!" The elf wailed, pulling his own ears.

"Dobby, I live here now!"

"The Great Harry Potter be living in Hogwarts?" Dobby looked up at him with his tennis ball eyes. "Why would Harry Potter be living here when it is not being safe?"

"The Dursleys were horrid, Dobby. They beat me all the time! The night you spilled the pudding, they gave me so many lashes with the belt that I lost consciousness for a whole day." Minnie, who had woken up when Harry first talked to Dobby, but had stayed quiet so that she would have the advantage of surprise in case things went downhill, had to bite her lips to stop from mewing in distress.

The little creature started crying again. "Dobby is being sorry! Dobby didn't know! Dobby was just wanting Harry Potter to be safe."

"I is being- I am safe, Dobby. We found out about the danger with the chamber; the adults fixed it." Harry hadn't heard the basilisk in a few days; he honestly believed that he was telling the truth.

"Wise Master Harry Potter has been finding the danger? All is well now? Harry Potter is in no danger?" the elf's lip quivered.

"None at all, Dobby. I promise. Are things better at home for you?" Harry noticed the elf hadn't tried to punish himself this time.

"Yes, things is being better for Dobby. Master is… out of the picture here, and Mistress and little Master is always being good people, so we is all having better times now."

Harry was struck with a strong suspicion just then. "Dobby…" he intoned, "are you the Malfoy's house elf?"

Dobby squeaked. "How did Master Harry be knowing that?"

"I'm friends with Draco; and his mum said we could come over to the manor anytime."

"Master Harry might be visiting Dobby's home?" He looked so excited Harry was afraid he might start ping-ponging off the walls.

"Well, probably, yeah. We were thinking it might be nice to go for Christmas; and Draco wants to meet his mum's girlfriend."

A happy look came over Dobby's face. "Yes, Mistress Aralynn is the most wonderful. And Mistress Narcissa is being much happier since her mate is being living with

her and Dobby in the manor."

"That's great Dobby!" Harry was happy for him; the elf may have accidentally put him in danger while trying to save his life (three times), but he was well-intentioned.

"Yes, and now Dobby can play gobstones with Little Master Draco without Lucius catching us and making Dobby iron his fingers."

"That's… also great," Harry responded. He'd had his hands burned a few times as punishment as well. Not fun.

"Thank you, Master Harry! Would Great Harry Potter be wishing Dobby to stay any longer or do anything for him before he be going to check Little Master Draco?" the elf asked reverently.

"No, I'm good Dobby. But thank you. I'll see you around."

Dobby looked even more ecstatic at this pronouncement, and he squeaked with joy as he popped away. Harry just turned over and pulled cat-Minnie back to his side, not realising she was awake and still distraught over what she'd heard.

Chapter 23

Chapter Notes

This chapter is a VIPP- Very Important Plot Point. Dun Dun Dun.

After breakfast and the usual routine of choking back disgusting potions the next morning, Harry headed down to the dungeons as soon as Madame Pomphrey had finished fussing over him (after receiving a forehead kiss from McGonagall before she went back to finish grading quizzes- she might have already informed him he'd gotten an O along with Hermione).

He was slightly nervous about being alone with Snape, not because he was afraid of him- he'd served plenty of detentions with him and had never been hurt, physically at least. But he was still a little wary of this new dynamic, what with Snape going out of his way to be nice to him, albeit in a very Snape-ish way.

When he entered the potions lab, the professor was there trying to coax a gorgeous blue snake towards a jar with a piece of canvas fastened on top, not that he was having much luck.

"Ah, good morning Harry. There are biscuits in a bowl on the table if you'd like a snack before we start," Severus called in his general direction.

"Uh… thanks." The dungeon bat offering him biscuits? This had reached a whole new level of weird. "So, um, what do you need me to do?"

"I need this snake to bit the canvas on this jar and inject some venom so that I may work on developing this industrial-strength fever reducer. If you could ask the picky little thing to cooperate, I would be very appreciative." The way Severus rubbed his forehead suggested he'd been trying without success for quite some time.

"Okay, I'll give it a shot." The snake was a very fussy little thing, but in the end it only took five minutes, a promise of frozen rats, and Harry's word that he would come by once in a while to make conversation with her (she was delighted to find a speaker), and the jar had a good 5 centilitres of venom, more than enough for at least two attempts at the potion.

"Thank you, Harry." Harry was still taken by surprised when Snape called him by his first name, although it was at least the third time he'd done so.

"It was no problem," Harry chewed his lip.

"Be that as it may," Snape began, reaching into the pocket of his robes, "I have something to give you in return for your help. This," he said, showing Harry a small glass bottle full of gold liquid, "is Felix Felicitus, otherwise known as liquid luck. Carry it with you at all times, and the next time you are in serious danger," Snape didn't even try to fool himself into thinking there wouldn't be a next time, "drink it. It may save your life."

"Thank you, sir; this means a lot."

"Yes, well, I was friends with your mother once, a long time ago. I… I made a promise to her, a promise to protect you in case she wasn't there." For the first time since Harry had known him, Professor Snape's voice was shaking.

"I know," Harry said softly, surprising him. "Minnie believes in being open with me. But thank you sir, for trusting me enough to tell me." He smiled at the professor, who merely nodded and waved him off, swallowing around a lump in his throat and swiping irritably at eyes stinging with what felt suspiciously like the beginnings of tears.

The Deathday party was fascinating but cold, and Harry was glad Minnie had wrapped him in multiple thick layers. Pansy, wrapped in an emerald cloak and with a face of perfect makeup, had her arm around Millicent's waist, telling her how she couldn't believe they'd forgotten to tell her to dress warmly while Hermione gave her a discreet thumbs-up from the side. Luna was talking serenely with an older female ghost decked out in Elizabethan court clothes. Ginny listened intently to the conversation while Draco stood shyly off to the side, cheeks red from what Harry assumed was the cold.

"Hey Myrt!" The Gryffindor greeted cheerily, glad to see that the ghost was getting out of her toilet.

"It's good to see you Harry! I know you visited on Tuesday, but you'll never believe what happened yesterday!" And she proceeded to tell him how Peeves didn't bother her anymore, not since she'd possessed him for an entire day and forced him to hit himself over the head with his own rubber bat until he promised he'd leave her alone. It was a grand achievement for a castle ghost; it was incredibly difficult to possess a poltergeist, and only the Bloody Baron had ever managed to do it.

The group of living children stayed on the other side of the room from the rotten food, munching on the sandwiches and pumpkin pasties the house elves had given them. They were having a lovely time until the headless hunt came in and stole Nick's thunder. After the children failed to convince them that Nearly Headless Nick was absolutely terrifying, they felt the mood shift and decided to leave. The were laughing and trying to toss Bertie Botts into each other's mouth when Harry stopped suddenly.

"Shit! I hear the basilisk again!" He cursed, and his friends followed him as he headed in the direction of the voice. They knew the chamber was closed, so they assumed it wouldn't be dangerous to do so; however, they all thought it would be wise to keep tabs on the situation.

Then they got to a corridor on the third floor, and the all stood stock-still. Mrs. Norris was hanging, stiff and frozen, from a rope strung to the ceiling, and written in red paint (or blood) on the wall, were the words "Enemies of the Heir, Beware. The Chamber of Secrets has been opened again."

"How…" Hermione began, before they were startled yet again by the sounds of a harsh, angry scream.

"My cat! You've killed my cat, you bloody menace!" Filch said, staring right at Harry. Before he could tell him that he hadn't had anything to do with this, the caretaker had him pinned against the wall, hands around his neck. Harry gulped. The stones rubbing against his back made him hyper-aware of the scars there, and he was uncomfortably certain he could very well be about to get more.

Then a strong spell, red in the spell of the aura (borderline dark, Harry noticed. Whoever cast it was furious) hit Filch in the chest, and he was violently knocked away from Harry. Then Minerva's hands were on his shoulders and her worried eyes were looking him over as she paid no notice to the frozen cat.

"Harry! Are you alright?" She was still shooting daggers at Filch with her hard amber eyes.

"M'fine M'na," he rasped, rubbing his aching throat, and as Minnie saw the finger marks there she wished she'd hit Filch with something worse than a very painful stunner.

"Argus! What were you thinking, you motherfucking fool!" The assembled crowd of students gasped. Had professor McGonagall just cussed out the caretaker?

"That devil child killed my cat!" he screeched, pointing. Minerva looked at the cat, and the message on the wall, and blanched. But she held firm.

"My Harry did not do that, and you have no right to lay hand on a student! Pack your things, you are dismissed!"

"Minerva," Professor Dumbledore had entered the hallway. "We are not firing the caretaker, and the cat is merely petrified. A solution of Pomona's mandrakes shall fix her right up." Filch breathed a sigh of relief, and Minnie shot a glare of unadulterated menace. Dumbledore, seeming to remember that he was very much under her thumb at the moment, let out a long sigh and spoke again.

"Actually, Argus, you are dismissed. Hurting a student is an irreconcilable offence. Be gone by the end of the week, and we will owl you when your cat has woken up." Argus Filch turned red but merely grunted, rubbing his chest, as he saw that the deputy headmistress was still glaring at him. The students cheered as he stalked away.

After the crowd had dispersed, Dumbledore had insisted they check the barrier they had put up, and Minerva had to agree that it was necessary. However, she refused to let Harry anywhere near the bathroom, and had him instead tune in to check the magic from down the hall.

"I don't know how it happened," he said, blanching so hard that his normally mocha skin turned the colour of overly-milky cappuccino. "But it's completely gone; it looks like it's been violently shattered."

The other teachers and Harry's friends all gasped as one, and total chaos broke out.

Chapter 24

Chapter Summary

Wow, so I absolutely did not intend to make this the longest chapter I've written so far, but I just love the duelling club scene and thought it would be so much fun to explore it with the new dynamic I've created between the characters. Also, I'm super excited, because now this document is 102 pages, double spaced- yay! Anyway, we are beginning to wind down with the chamber arc, and I'm really excited for you guys to see how I plan to wrap it up. Then we are gonna have Christmas and meet Narcissa's muggle girlfriend! Yay! I am also so excited to go into year three, it's gonna be so much fun. Anyway, sorry I haven't updated in a bit. I was really on a roll with this story, but then Thursday I had like six hours of homework and yesterday I got distracted reading fanfiction when I meant to write it. Ooops... Anyway, lots of love (unless you're an asshole), Mod des ;)

The next few weeks, the entire school was on edge and travelled in groups, accompanied by a teacher at all times and surrounded by rotating mirrors, so that in the event they were to meet the basilisk, they would be petrified rather than killed. Harry especially was stressed; he could hear the basilisk hissing the usual about eating people, and it was setting him constantly on edge. He'd already lost five of the twelve pounds he'd gained on the nutrient potions; Pomphrey had to set him on a higher dose. Not even the news that their whole group- he, Draco, the Weasleys, Pansy, Blaise, Seamus, Dean, and Neville- were going to be spending Christmas break at the Malfoy manor with Narcissa, Dobby, and Aralynn managed to ease the overarching wave of anxiety that seemed to settle over the castle.

Hoping to ease the tension, especially out of fear for Harry's health, Minerva had owl- ordered a muggle television, and with the combined genius of Hermione, Pansy, and the Weasley twins, had managed to rig it to work with the castles magic. Now the entire Gryffindor common room crowded around it in the evenings to watch muggle telly programs, and for a short time, it seemed to relax the students, although after some trial and error, it was generally agreed that sitcoms were the better choice in the current situation, as the students, especially Harry and Draco, tended to jump and flinch frequently at any programme that included loud noises or excessive violence.

"I'm telling you, Mia, you're such a Monica…" Pansy was telling her friend in the hallway one day.

"I'm not saying that I'm not, I'm just saying that you're just as much of one." Hermione was waving her hands around as she argued.

"Well yes, but I've got a delightful touch of Phoebe thrown in."

"Hey, I thought we all agreed that Luna was the Phoebe of our group." Ginny shouted over them.

"I'm not claiming all of Phoebe, just like, a little bit. I'm too gay to be completely Monica," Pansy shouted as she waved her hands around and almost smacked an unwary Draco in the face.

"Quiet down, Miss Parkinson," Snape, who was escorting them to Herbology, barked at her.

"Such a Ross," Pansy rolled her eyes.

"It's a good thing he doesn't know what that means," Harry giggled, nudging Pansy in the side, exactly where she happened to be ticklish. She screeched and reached to give him a noogie, and for a moment they almost forgot why Professor Snape was escorting them in the first place. That is, until one of the mirrors surrounding them caught the light and glanced over a paper on the wall.

"What's that?" Ginny asked, as they all crowded closer.

"Duelling club, open to all students, starts this Thursday at 6 pm," Blaise read.

"Should we go?" Draco asked, nudging Harry.

"Is that even a question? Of course we're going- we need to learn to defend ourselves!" No one was surprised that this came from Hermione.

"Couldn't agree more, Mia dear," Pansy said, looping her arm through the Gryffindor's. "I wonder who's going to be sponsoring it; I do hope it's Flitwick, he was a duelling champion."

"Plus, he might be privy to some goblin war secrets." Hermione picked up again, brown eyes gleaming like a bronze warship.

"How did I ever get along without you, Mia dear?"

"Stop doing that! It's creepy; you're starting to sound like the twins," Ginny shuddered.

"Come along children," Severus drawled, but Harry noticed he had just a hint of a smirk around the corners of his mouth. He knew something, then. Thursday couldn't come fast enough.

The Great Hall was, as expected, filled to the brim come Thursday evening, and the house tables had been pushed to the side. A platform had been erected where the teacher's table normally stood, and on it stood a grinning Gilderoy Lockhart, what little hair he had left clinging in wisps to his scalp, his teeth the colour of lemsip (the kids had been waiting for the ball to drop, but nobody seemed willing to tell Lockhart and ruin the splendid joke).

"Welcome, welcome, girls and boys, to my duelling club!" he exalted, opening his arms as if he were welcoming an adoring crowd, who, in place of being adoring, seemed to be stuck between whether to groan or snort derisively.

"Oh no," Ron groaned, gripping Neville's shoulder.

"Wait, guys, look," Harry pointed to Snape, who was leaning against the wall in a shadowy corner, smirking faintly. "This might get interesting."

And indeed, it did, as the blonde ponce continued talking (wow, there's an unusual sentence, Harry thought idly).

"I have with me today Professor Snape, who has a little duelling experience himself and has agreed to be my assistant." Snape, instead of looking bitter, merely smirked harder.

The entire school waited with baited breath. Snape had been much less of an arse this year, and although nobody outside of Harry's group really understood why, the fact was that Severus' somewhat improved demeanour, when set alongside Lockhart's incompetence and arrogance, made him a clear fan-favourite that evening.

Lockhart and Snape stood at opposite ends of the platform, and when Lockhart announced that they would bow and begin, Snape responded to his gratuitous flourish with a jerky little nod.

Gilderoy shouted something incomprehensible and wiggled his wand, and a weak spell shot towards Snape. Harry, who'd removed the magical suppression on his lenses to better enjoy the show, leaned over to whisper to Draco that it looked like a pixie fart, and the blond was trying so hard not to laugh that he almost missed Severus lackadaisical sidestep and shout of Expelliarmus!

Gilderoy was knocked bodily off the platform, and the assembled students cheered. Lockhart, trying desperately to conserve his dignity, began to mumble something about "Let him win," and "could have easily blocked it" before Severus' venomous glare shut him up.

"Very well, do quiet down," the potions master drawled, although not sounding at all like he meant it. "I am going to pair you up to do a practice. Harry, Draco" the two boys, who had been giggling over some private joke, both looked up at the sound of their names.

"You two would be an excellent pair for a demonstration, if you're amenable," the teacher said, and Harry was struck by how much he had changed, that he was even framing it as an option instead of a demand. He looked at Draco.

"You ready to lose, blondie?" He quirked his left eyebrow, and his scar, which ended just after cutting through the outside of that eyebrow, wrinkled mesmerizingly. Draco, who had been distracted watching it, almost missed the question before he shook himself back to reality.

"I'm ready to look good while winning, you giant twat." He lowered his voice. "But no mage senses; that's cheating."

"I think a Slytherin would call it playing to your advantages."

"Sucks that you're a Gryffindor, then."

"If you're quite done flirting," Snape's voice cut across the hall. "We don't have all night." Both boys blushed brilliantly, although Draco's was far more visible under his fair skin.

They stepped onto the platform. "Scared, Potter?" Draco asked, trying to save face.

"You wish," Harry responded as they bowed to each other.

As they began the duel, Draco got the sense that Harry was going easy on him. In another world, he would have responded to that by using a Serpentsortia, but besides knowing that summoning a snake would probably help Harry more than him, he didn't want the whole castle knowing that Harry was a parselmouth. Besides the fact that it would surely foster distrust, Draco liked the idea that it was something that very few people knew about. It made him feel warm inside, like Harry had acknowledged him as special over everyone who didn't know. He shook his head again and shot a Rictumsempra, which Harry blocked with a Protego at the last second.

"Don't go easy on me, you arse," he taunted his friend. "I'm a big boy, I can take it!"

"Alright then," the Gryffindor laughed, emerald eyes alight. "Just remember that you asked for it.

Draco suddenly found himself flat on his back, but his back was flat against not the floor, but a small muggle trampoline that bounced him up and down, up and down, automatically. He tried to shoot a spell Harry's way, but it missed by a mile before his friend blessedly disarmed him. When he once again found himself blessedly upright, he caught his reflection in one of the mirrors surrounding the students and gasped: his pale blonde hair and eyebrows were now a vibrant shade of red and gold.

"Oh, you complete and utter prat!" he shrieked, running towards his friend. Harry was laughing so hard that, even though he saw Draco coming, he could do nothing to respond. Draco, who had the advantage of height, had trapped him in a bear hug and was giving him a very long noogie.

"Change it back you twat; change it back!" he screamed, although he hurt his own cause when his hysterical screeching only set Harry laughing again.

"Okay, okay, I'll fix it!" his friend gasped once he could breath again. "Just loosen up so I can move my wand arm."

"No- I know you can do it without, and I'm not letting you go anywhere until my hair is its usual perfection, something you wouldn't understand." Harry, whose hair was, if possible, even more mussed than usual, had to concede he had a point as he silently cast a counter-charm.

"Boys, boys, as amusing as that is, I would like to have another demonstration. Granger, Parkinson, would you like to come up and do a practice before we turn you all loose to practice on your own?" Snape ushered a still-laughing Draco and Harry off the stage and Pansy and Hermione walked gracefully up to take their place.

Pansy and Hermione were clearly more evenly-matched, skill wise, than the two boys, but they also weren't normal second years. They spent a lot of time doing independent studying, and it showed. As close as they were, there was no holding back, and spell-fire was flying so quickly, to Harry, the stage was like a firework show. Harry was glad Dumbledore wasn't in the hall, as he knew the headmaster would not approve of some of the spells the two second-years were learning. It's a good thing the group themselves knew that it wasn't the spells they used, but how they used them that made the real difference.

It was twenty minutes later when Severus, who had taking over as the unofficial club leader, called a stalemate. The two girls were sweating and panting, but as for actual damage, Hermione sported only a slightly singed curl in her bushy hair, and Pansy's robe dragged a ripped hemline like a tail when she walked off the stage.

"Merlin's saggy balls, Pans, 'Mione, I don't think most seventh years fight like that!" George whistled.

"Well then, they should get on our level," Pansy tossed her hair over her shoulder and put her arm around Hermione. "We aren't gonna be sitting ducks the next time something in this school tries to kill us."

"How many times has something actually tried to kill you?" Blaise rolled his eyes.

"Well, none for me, and only once for Hermione," Pansy admitted. "But now that we're all friends with Harry, The Boy with the Worst Luck, "I think that number's about to go up."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Pans," Harry remarked, looking up from where he'd been tracing patterns in the air with his wand.

"Harry darling, you know we love you, so why don't you just be content that we'll either die together or not at all?" Pansy sarcastically waved her fingers at him.

"Cheerful," Seamus snorted.

"Shut up and pair up!" Snape shouted from the front of the room, and for the remainder of the hour, there was very little talk and a lot of flying wands.

Chapter 25

Chapter Notes

Now we're getting somewhere! And yes, the gang is now very into muggle entertainment. And thank @Bairnsidhe for the idea for the final line of this chapter. And yes, I know snakes on a plane didn't come out until 2007. Just go with it- they still had snakes and planes in 1992. Lots of love (unless you're an asshole) Des ;)

Two days after the duel, Draco, Harry, Pansy, and Hermione were enjoying some quiet time in Harry's room. The others had all laughed at Hermione's offer of homework and study schedules, but now they were busy catching up on everything they'd procrastinated while the Hermione and the three of them, who'd thought it was a good idea to take Hermione's advice, basked in the sunlit warmth of Harry's bedroom. Draco had his nose buried in a Spiderman comic while Pansy and Hermione devoured some new muggle vampire series the Granger had sent their daughter. Harry, who had been rereading his favourite Spiderman comic until the blonde who currently sat engrossed in it had snatched it away, lie on the carpeted floor with Du lounged on his chest, translating a Wonder Woman graphic novel into parseltongue for the adder.

"You know who we haven't seen in a while?" the question came from Draco, who had just finished his comic and was now tickling Hermione's bare feet with an eagle-feather quill?

"Who?" the muggleborn asked as Draco dodged the kick she sent his way.

"Myrtle. We've been visiting her less than usual since we can't go anywhere without a teacher. We should ask Minnie if she'd mind taking us down there."

"That's a good idea," Pansy agreed, setting down her own book. "Besides, all the protagonist has been talking about for the past ten pages is this stupid boy. Personally, I don't see why she doesn't just drink him and spare herself the trouble."

"This! This is why most of our year is terrified of you!" Harry emphasized, going back to an argument they'd been having the day before.

"Wimps. It's not as if I go around drinking boys."

"You would if you had half a chance," Hermione, hummed, setting down her own novel.

"Point taken," Pansy agreed stoically.

Draco, who, hands on his neck, had gone to get McGonagall during this conversation, returned with the professor.

"If you're all quite done with your plans to drink away the patriarchy, perhaps you'd like to see Myrtle," Minnie said primly, but couldn't stop the twinkle in her eyes. As she led the foursome down to the first-floor bathroom, Pansy continued outlining how she would be the best vampire overlord. ("I'd be like, the anti-Buffy, Mia. Wouldn't that be awesome?!")

"Hey Myrt, sorry it's been so long," Harry said cheerfully as he almost bounced into the bathroom, eager to see a female friend that wasn't discussing a new world order.

"Hi Harry," the ghost greeted distractedly, floating outside her usual stall and looking mildly puzzled.

"Whatcha doin'?" the Gryffindor asked.

"It's very strange. I was just sitting in my toilet, having a nice nap after having Peeves do my bidding all morning, when somebody chucked a book through my head? As best as I can figure, it's just a normal blank book, so why would somebody try to throw it in a toilet?" She rubbed her incorporeal chin as she stared at a black, leather-bound notebook in a puddle of toilet water on the floor.

"That is weird," Draco agreed, going to pick it up, but Harry, who had extended his mage senses to poke at it, practically knocked him over as he reached for it.

"DON'T TOUCH THAT!" Draco jumped; the only time he'd ever heard Harry yell that loudly was when Rita Skeeter had insulted his mum in that Prophet article. "It's gross; it's black as hell. It's practically slimy." McGonagall grew even more concerned than she had been when Harry yelled; her boy almost never cussed, certainly less than she'd been doing lately, so it must be bad.

"Why would a notebook be a dark artefact?" Pansy wondered aloud.

"I don't know, but I think it drains magic. It's got this other signature in it, and it feels like a kid's."

Draco blanched and scrambled further back, dragging Harry with him.

"We have to take this to Dumbledore," Minerva sighed. "As much as I loathe to admit it, he may know more about this type of thing than I do."

"How are we going to get it there? I don't want any of us touching it or levitating it until we know exactly how it works," Harry warned, and since he was the only one who could sense its magic in any way, the others nodded their head in agreement.

"I have an idea!" Myrtle actually brightened as she put her fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle.

"You called, my lady?" A tired looking Peeves called a moment later.

"Ah, hello Peeves. Pick that up and carry it to Dumbledore's office with us." Peeves did as instructed, and Myrtle floated behind, keeping a close eye on Peeves to make sure he was cooperating and that the diary didn't seem to be possessing him instantly.

Minnie said the password (Bertie Botts) and they all mounted the moving staircase. Dumbledore looked mildly surprised at being disturbed, but he stopped instantly when he saw the diary, which had flipped open as Peeves set it on his desk. The name Tom M. Riddle stood out like blood on white sheets.

"This… where did you find this?" the headmaster asked, almost in a whisper, and Myrtle explained what had happened.

"And you think this diary has been possessing a student?" he turned to Harry when the ghost had finished her story.

"Yes. And," he took a deep breath. "It obviously has something to do with the chamber. The signature on the diary is similar to the residual black magic around the chamber, and there's someone else's magic being held captive in there."

"Do you know whose magic is trapped inside?" the headmaster asked Harry.

"No." Harry sighed. "It feels slightly familiar, but if I knew exactly whose it was, I would have said that." Despite the situation, Minerva smiled a bit. She really appreciated Harry's sass.

"Well, in that case, I suppose we must handle the situation otherwise." Dumbledore cast a sonorous charm and made a general announcement for the student who lost their diary to please come to his office, and that the Gargoyle would open for them.

When a tired Susan Bones trekked up the stairs ten minutes Later, Harry bit his lip so he wouldn't gasp. It was Susan! He distantly remembered when he had the flu a few weeks back, when she was in for a pepper-up and her magic had felt faded. Enough time with McGonagall had taught Harry to know that a situation like this wasn't his fault; he couldn't be expected to remember that when he had a fever so high he was only dimly aware of where he was. No, what surprised him was how faded Susan's magic was now. Whatever the diary had been doing to her, it had obviously only gotten worse.

"Susan, dear, this is yours?" Dumbledore asked, motioning to the diary.

"It…it was… but I don't want it anymore." Her lip quivered and the dark circles under her eyes stood out in stark relief against her skin, which was far paler than her normal skin tone.

"I see. Would you mind telling us why?" Dumbledore asked, and McGonagall thought that all this circumnavigating around the topic was rather cruel to the girl, but before she could say so, Susan broke down in tears.

"I… I di- hic, I didn't mean to!" She sobbed. "I found the diary in Diagon alley, and when it wrote back, I… I thought it was just an interesting little novelty… I didn't know it

would do that!"

"Do what?" Dumbledore prodded, and Minerva shot him a glare.

"I… I think I ope- I opened the… the chamber!" She wailed. "I started feeling really tired all the time, and I wasn't too worried, but then… then I started losing my memory. And I woke up covered in rooster feathers. And then the red paint- and the whole time I was talking to Tom, and I, I didn't think that… that he could be doing it! I thought there was something wrong with me, but I was afraid. I didn't want them to lock me up, but I swear I didn't mean to. Tom didn't want me to throw him away, but I forced myself. Please don't send me to Azkaban!"

Before Dumbledore can respond again, Harry slowly and gently wrapped an arm around Susan and started rubbing her shoulders. "No one's gonna send you to Azkaban, Susan. It wasn't your fault- whatever this is, it's super dark. A grown wizard couldn't have resisted that kind of power. Nobody's gonna punish you; nobody is even gonna know you were the one possessed," Harry soothed. "Right, Headmaster?" Harry looked at Dumbledore, and there was a note of steel in his kind eyes. Even if Dumbledore hadn't felt like he owed the child something, the power and conviction in his small face would have convinced him to go along with his ideas.

"Of course not, Susan. No lasting harm has been done, we'll just lock the diary away and reseal the chamber."

"No lasting harm! Albus, an innocent student has been possessed by a dark artefact and traumatised in her place of learning- we cannot go on as before!"

"Well, what do you propose that we do?" Dumbledore asked, rubbing his forehead tiredly.

"Send Miss Bones to the hospital wing to be taken care of and tell Severus to prepare to gather potions ingredients from a very large corpse. As for me, I will need to borrow Fawkes and the Sword of Gryffindor." Professor McGonagall clenched her hands.

"I'm going to blow up a monster," Minnie said, covering Harry's ears with her hands. "I've had it with this motherfucking basilisk in this motherfucking chamber!"

A quick note on mage senses

Hey babes: so lthis isn't a chapter, but I hope to get another one or two up today. This is, rather, a quick little note on Harry's mage senses and to adress some of the plot holes that could potentially come up from this idea. Harry sensing magic is one of my favourite headcanons, but it's definitely kinda difficult to work properly- hence why I didn't make Harry a horcrux. But Harry, although unusually magically powerful in this story, is not invincible or all-powerful.

For example: Scabbers. While Harry would normally have the ability to detect a witch or wizard in their animagus form from a normal, non-magical animal, magic is more or less visible depending on how often it is used (in my opinion). So Scabbers, who has been in his animagus form constantly for the last eleven years and is also surrounded by the magic of the burrow and also carries residual magic from all the Weasley kids practicing spells on him. And since Harry can't remember meeting human Peter and his magical signature is so weak because he hasn't used his magic since the night Voldemort killed the Potters, Harry just doesn't pick up on it. Also, Harry is surrounded by a lot of magic, all the time, when he's at Hogwarts, so he doesn't really pay a tonne of attention to any one thing- he actually spends a lot of time trying to block out most of the surrounding input. So he doesn't notice everything.

Next is Snape's dark mark. I don't know if you guys spend as much time thinking about all the potential plot holes as I do, but Harry can feel the dark mark on Snape; however, he doesn't really know what a dark mark is yet, and a little bit of dark magic in Severus' overall magical signature wouldn't be all that surprising to Harry, because, well, he's Snape, and everyone has a mix of different feelings of magic. It's not necessarily the classification of magic that affects it, but how it is used. So dark magic isn't necessarily bad, although Harry can feel when it's been used to kill people and such, hence why the black magic surrounding the chamber feels so abhorrent to him. Although Snape has the dark mark, the fact that he doesn't really fall into the category of 'devoted death eaters' means his own magical signature would temper that input a little bit (and I'm not defending canon-Snape's actions here; I'm just saying that however much he sucked, he wasn't as abhorrent as the devoted, really-believed- in-Voldemort's-cause death eaters).

Also, Harry doesn't recognise Tom Riddle's magic as Voldemort's magic (although it feels relatively familiar) or Quirrell's turban magic as Voldemort's magic because Voldemort's magic has changed forms a lot. Voldemort fucked up his soul so much that the residual magic in the chamber, the magic in the diary, the magic in Snape's dark mark, and the magic in Quirrell's turban all felt somewhat different. As I mentioned in the first chapter, Harry thought the darkness in Quirrell's turban was his fear of everything; he was new to the wizarding world and it didn't make a lot of sense yet. Also, Voldemort was sharing Quirell's own magic and his turban, not-corporeal form is different than body-of-his-own Voldemort's magic; mainly in that it's weaker. In the same vein, another death deater who is more devoted to Voldemort, like Bellatrix, and thus would have welcomed the dark mark further into her and made it more a part of her own identity would have a mark that feels closer to Voldemort's own magic. Lucius would be somewhere in between, because while he believes in the blood-purity bullshit, his main loyalty is to himself, and besides, Harry didn't really

have that much time to focus on Lucius at all when he was surrounded by the black magic of Borgun and Birke's and then running for his life. Anyway, I've spent a lot of time doing a world-building sort of exercise so I can include this but not have it make Harry some sort of invincible wizard or have this create a bunch of plot holes. I'm gonna get back to working on my next chapters now, so just read this please, because I think it's important.

Chapter 27

Chapter Notes

For what was, in the original book, a pivotal chapter, this part's rather shorter than you'd think it would be. But well, it's Minerva McGonagall, and she goes BAMF! Hope you enjoy, and that it's not too anticlimatic.

"Uh, Minerva…" Albus began carefully in response to this bold proclamation.

"Oh, do shut up Albus," she snapped at him. Then she turned to the kids.

"Alright team, this is how it's going to work…" despite the situation, Pansy was nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet- this was like a muggle spy movie! "Pansy, you're going to go get the rest of your group with Draco. Even though I'm the only one who's actually going down into the chamber, Harry's the only one who speaks Parseltongue, and there's safety in numbers." Pansy nodded and headed off.

"Harry, you and Hermione take Susan to the hospital wing." Hermione nodded, but Harry looked at his guardian.

"Uh, Minnie… if I go anywhere near the hospital wing, Madame Pomphrey is gonna try to keep me there for one reason or another."

She nodded at her child. "Good point… Hermione, catch up to Pansy and Draco. When you've gotten the others, bring Neville and Luna with you back here to aid Susan. Leave Neville with her as moral support and bring Luna to Myrtle's bathroom." Hermione nodded briskly, sprinting down the stairs.

"Okay Harry," she knelt down to look her boy in the eyes. "Your part is very important, but I also need you to stay safe. You are going to open the chamber, I am going to descend. Then you are going to call the basilisk; as a parselmouth, you should have some measure of control. I am going to have Fawkes peck out the eyes and then I am going to stab it until it dies."

"Sounds simple enough. But shouldn't we do something about the diary first?"

"Ah yes, smart boy. What would I do without you?" Harry blushed at the compliment as Minerva grabbed the sorting hat off a stool in the corner and stuck her arm in it, fishing around a moment before she pulled out a great, ruby-encrusted sword.

"Albus, step back from the desk and send your Patronus to Severus to ask him to meet us up here." The headmaster, accepting that he was no longer the one in charge of the situation, merely nodded and did as instructed.

Minerva picked up the heavy sword with as much ease as she picked up her wand- it wasn't for nothing she was named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and battle. She closed one eye and lined up the blade before plunging it downwards into the diary, and the book let out a terrible scream and a putrid cloud of fetid blackness, visible not only to Harry but to the others in the room, exited the pages with a scream. Harry gripped Susan's hand reassuringly as she blanched.

"Well, that's one obstacle out of the way," she said, her voice far calmer and steadier than the situation called for. Pansy and Hermione came rushing into the room with the others a moment later, and Severus Snape (who had not run but merely walked briskly; he wasn't at Albus' beck and call, thank you very much) followed shortly after. Minerva quickly explained the plan to them, and they were all serious faces and ready for action. Hermione, Neville, and Luna patted Susan on the arm and led her gently out, and the rest of them (minus Dumbledore, Minerva made it quite clear he was not welcome) headed to Myrtle's bathroom. Peeves had been dismissed as soon as he'd deposited the diary, but the ghost had stayed quietly in the corner of the room.

"I'm going down with you professor," her tone was confident and steady, with no trace of the sobbing ghost of earlier years. "I'm already dead; the worst that could happen is petrification, and it would be good for you to have an extra line of defence."

"You make an excellent point, Myrtle, and if this is truly your wish, I cannot stop you. I will merely remind you that, should you get petrified, it will be until nearly June before the mandrakes are ready to restore you," Minerva told her seriously, not with the tone of a teacher to a student, but of one talking to another, equally qualified professional.

"I've been dead for fifty years and I'll be here for thousands more. What's a few months?" she shrugged, and Minerva nodded in approval. They were ready.

Minnie led the way, holding Harry's hand to make sure that he was safely ensconced beside her. Although he knew he was probably to old for it, Harry didn't argue- he rather enjoyed it, to be honest, and it wasn't completely ridiculous, considering the situation. His friends didn't say a word about it either, wonderful people that they were.

They got to the bathroom, and Harry hissed the chamber open. Fred and George stepped forward, each putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Alright professor," Fred said.

"We're going to put a sonorous spell on Harry; after he calls the basilisk, he can feel for it and tell you if you're in danger of looking into his eyes. After Fawkes, who Harry will also be feeling for, has blinded it and thus rendered it safe to look at, Fred and I are going to cast a videotaping spell, because let's be honest, this is going to be bloody brilliant and it must be documented for posterity. Once you've gone all boss on it and killed it, Professor Snape can come down to start harvesting the corpse. Also, I think it's fair to say that anyone who wants to take a peek around should be allowed down once it's dead- this is a thousand- year-old hidden chamber, and it'd be fun to check it out," George picked up, and both teachers present had to agree that this would be an excellent educational opportunity, and after the basilisk was dead there would be no reason to stay away.

"Very well; I approve these requests," Minerva said, and Severus gave a brisk nod as his colleague slid into the unknown. There was a tense few moments of waiting before the professor's magically magnified voice called out a terse "ready."

"Okay, I'm calling it!" Harry yelled, before switching to parseltongue. He wasn't sure exactly what to say, and he wasn't exactly the most articulate on the spot, so he eventually just went with "come on, big snake. Just uh, find the pretty bird!" He was glad none of his friends spoke the language, they'd never let him live it down.

Pushing his not-so-epic battle cry out of his mind, Harry set himself on the floor, Fred and George moving in front of him, and tuned in to feel around for the basilisk. It wasn't hard, he just looked for the really fucking big, snake-shaped magical signature and followed it.

"Incoming!" he shouted down.

"It's about to be outgoing!" Minerva yelled back up, and Harry stifled a tension- giggle.

As soon as the basilisk entered the central rotunda, Harry expanded his senses to include Fawkes, who was dodging the angry serpent as it thrashed about, trying to reach him.

"Ssssstoppp it, sssssstupid fire-chicken," the basilisk yelled, followed by a scream of agony as Fawkes managed to peck out the fatal magical orb in its right eye socket. It flapped upwards for just a moment, diving back down with the precision of a hawk when the snake's angry thrashing exposed its other eye for the phoenix's waiting claws. The red bird seemed to take special pleasure in pecking this eye out with a lot more vehemence than was strictly needed.

"Eyes down, eyes down!" Harry yelled, and this time he watched his guardian's signature, anxiously, specifically, as Minerva danced around the chamber, dodging the basilisk's fangs as it lunged randomly in a blind rage. With far more agility than one would expect from a prim, seemingly straight-laced middle aged academic, everyone watched through the newly-cast video spell as the tabby animagus leapt onto the base of a statue of Salazar Slytherin.

An overpowered levitation spell and another leap had her perching elegantly on top of Salazar's hands, and strands of grey-streaked ebony hair loosed themselves from her bun and whipped around her face with a vengeance as she took a great, bounding jump and landed atop the basilisk's back. It thrashed again, but she adjusted herself with an agility that bespoke her feline side as she plunged the great red sword directly in between two bones in the spine. The snake gave a great shudder that shook the chamber, and the students gasped as one as even Myrtle's bathroom gave a small shudder. The professor herself merely dismounted the corpse, cast a charm to rid her robes of the scarlet blood, and pulled her hair back into its proper bindings.

"You may come down now!" She shouted up to them. "It's perfectly harmless at the moment." The kids wolf-whistled and cheered as they lined up to slide down. Their

professor was a goddamn boss!

Chapter 28

Chapter Notes

Yay, another chapter! Not too much integral happening here, but it's almost 2000 words. Somehow my fluff chapters seem to always be longer than my crucial, integral plot- point chapters.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Harry, who'd never had the pleasure of going to any amusement parks with the Dursleys, very much enjoyed the ride down through the twisty slide. "Woo!" he laughed as he tumbled to the bottom and landed against Ron.

"Oy mate!" the redhead laughed, picking Harry up off the floor as Draco came tumbling down.

"There's dust all over my new robes!" the blonde complained, brushing himself off. Harry sneezed.

"Now there's dust in my nose!" he coughed.

"Is your nose made from 100% silk?"

"You're such a prat!" Harry hit him on the arm as Draco jumped back.

Before the boys could get too involved in their wrestling match, a very disgruntled Severus Snape came rocketing down the slide, a large messenger bag in his lap and a scowl on his face. The Weasley twins looked unbelievably delighted.

"One word from you two and you'll be looking at the insides of the cauldrons you'll be scrubbing until you leave school." Then he caught sight of the basilisk corpse, and all irritation left his face and he looked like he might actually cry of joy.

"So many ingredients- so rare!" he whispered, walking forward as if in a haze. He crouched down and gently stroked one of the large fangs in the basilisk's open mouth. "I can do so much with these…"

"Has he gone mad?" Neville nudged Seamus as they watched Snape reverently run a finger over the scales by the basilisk's ruined eyes.

"Oh, you poor, non-Slytherin, out-of-the-loop little darlings. Snape has never been normal." Pansy laughed, patting Neville's shoulder.

"Guys, guys! Look over here!" Harry, who had broken away from the main group and started running his hands along the walls, pointed to another snake symbol. "I think there's a secret door."

"That's such a mystery novel cliché," Pansy groaned, but looked excited nonetheless as Harry hissed something and the wall slid open.

"It's a secret library!" Dean gasped.

"Another cliché," Pansy muttered. Then, pulling Seamus back, "Woah there sparky. You'll probably burn the amazing historical cliché."

"Some of these books are in parseltongue. I didn't even know there was a written language…" Harry said reverently, pulling out a book and wiping the dust on Draco's robes. The other made a face in protest, but Harry merely put a finger to his mouth before he could say anything. "They're already dirty, you twat. Look at this!" He pulled out another book and smiled.

"Merlin's balls!" Draco yelled, his expletive ricocheting around the room.

"It's Salazar's personal journal! It's got his homemade spells and everything!"

Hermione practically ran over and leaned over Draco's shoulder as he thumbed, enraptured, through it. "Look at this! Do you know how much wizard historians would give to be right here?"

Pansy called out to her from another shelf. "Mia, there's multiple volumes!"

Their noise had drawn Severus and Minerva to them. "Dear gods of old, have I finally died and ascended to a better plane of existence? Look at this place?" Snape's eyes were the size of large black saucers.

"While I cannot possibly let that comment by without pointing out how unbelievably dramatic you are, I must agree that this is an absolute wonder," Minerva responded.

"Professor Snape- look over here! There's a parseltongue potions journal," Harry called, and Snape, with effort, kept himself from sprinting over.

"How much do I have to offer you to translate this?" the potions professor asked him?

"Free quiz grade?" Harry shrugged.

"Done." Snape agreed without hesitation.

"Wow. I didn't think that would actually work." Harry's mouth was hanging open.

"Harry, this is Salazar Snape's personal library. You could melt every single classroom cauldron I own and I wouldn't care." Snape didn't even seem to be aware of what he was saying, he was so lost in reading book titles.

"I wouldn't recommend trying that, though," Pansy told him.

"Yeah, he'll be back to normal when he comes down," Draco added.

"Whenever that is."

"Not for a while, I'd reckon. I've never seen him without a scowl or a smirk." George, who had slinked into the room with Fred while everyone was distracted watching Severus Snape lose his damn mind over the Chamber of Secrets, had put another discreet filming spell on the scene.

"Shhh," he whispered to Harry, "I want a free quiz grade too."

"Good luck," his surrogate brother snorted. "Blackmailing a Slytherin, that'll end well for you."

"Never thought I'd be spending Saturday night in the library," Ron muttered, but he was looking interestedly at a moving jade statue of a drakon.

"What's the difference between a dragon and a drakon?" Dean asked as he read the inscription.

"A dragon is bigger and stockier," Pansy told them. "A drakon is like an overlarge lizard with wings."

"Do dragons speak Parseltongue?" Harry asked.

"I don't know, chosen one, considering I've never asked one."

"You know Pans, sometimes you are unnecessarily sarcastic."

"You can be unnecessarily sarcastic?"

"According to my calculations," Hermione looked up from where she was reading a large old tome. "You cannot."

"Mia has spoken, and she's smarter than all you bitches!" Pansy made a peace sign.

"Why did we let her watch F.r.i.e.n.d.s. again?" Harry turned to Seamus.

"Because there were only two of us that knew muggle entertainment well enough to voice an opposition?" the Irish boy guessed.

"Yeah, Hermione wasn't about to argue when she and Pansy are practically joined at the hip," Dean added, resting his elbow on Seamus' shoulder.

The Hogwarts dinner bell was apparently a powerful force, because it could be heard all the way down in the Chamber.

"Do we have to go?" Hermione and Pansy asked, as one.

"Yes, you all need to eat," Minerva said, looking at Harry specifically.

"And some of you still have homework." Hermione reminded them not-so-gently, as she, Pansy, Draco, and Harry, the 'no homework left' crew, made plans to come back after dinner and explore the chamber some more.

Riding up in a giant human chain hanging by Fawkes tail was kind of awkward, so Harry, before sealing the chamber again, hissed "stairs" as an experiment before leaving, and the slide folded up over itself into a set of heavy stone steps. Snape, in a true testament to his good mood, didn't even grumble about how they should have tried that in the first place, although Draco, apparently not forgetting about his 'ruined' robes, certainly did.

"Have a Snickers, you're not you when you're hungry," Harry quoted an American commercial at him.

"Then who the hell is Weasel?" Draco asked, and he and Harry both broke down giggling, while Ron mumbled that he 'must have been bloody mad when he made friends with Draco," although anyone who knew him could tell he didn't really mean it.

"Someone's mad he didn't do his homework earlier!" Pansy sing-songed, and Ron just transferred his mumbling to general complaints about Slytherins.

They got to the Great Hall, and the heavenly smell of curry wafted over them. Harry was inhaling deeply, a smile on his face. He loved Indian food.

"Hungry?" Draco teased.

"Starving." Harry smiled at him as the unlikely group all wandered into the hall together.

Chapter End Notes

Hope you enjoyed. And for anyone who follows the baker street boys, yes, that was a johnlock reference at the end. ;)

Chapter 29

Chapter Notes

Not too much going on here; just a fun little chapter. Forgive me if there are more grammar errors than usual; I'm exhausted. Lots of love (unless you're an asshole), Mod des ;)

In the weeks that followed, Harry and his friends had taken to hanging out in the chamber, specifically the library. Once Susan recovered from her experience in the chamber, she and Hannah Abbott started spending time with them as well, and as genial and fun as they were, they were easily assimilated into their group.

Hermione, Draco, and Pansy were trying to find ways to better the standards of living for house elves. Hermione had been uncomfortable with the idea that they were basically bonded slaves, but a trip to the kitchens had opened her eyes to the fact that they seemed to like the current state of affairs. However, they all agreed that something needed to be done, and Draco felt very keenly for Dobby's former state of misery. So they had started The Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare (the three founders called it the society, and the rest of the group jokingly called it SPEW behind their backs) with the goal of puzzling out a way to ensure that house elves were well-treated and had at least the option of autonomy, should they desire it, without coming across as threatening to the elves who felt it an offense to be freed.

Harry had offered to help with SPEW, but the other three claimed to have it well under control, and Harry didn't understand the subtleties of house-elf culture, being muggle-raised, so they had told him they might recruit his assistance once they had a plan of action. Thus, as November faded into December, those three worked on SPEW and the rest of his friends spent their time in a quiet nook of the chamber library, cramming for exams because they'd laughed at Hermione's study schedule and thus had no free time like the other four, while Harry sat surrounded by Salazar Slytherin's parseltongue manuscripts on various subjects. He spent hours, quill in hand scribbling away as he translated and memorized everything from previously unknown potions formulas to alternate, meditation-based pathways of achieving an animagus transfiguration. He even found a spell that allowed for the temporary creation of mental walls that worked even for those without knowledge or skill in Occlumency, and he practiced this until he could do it both wandlessly and silently, figuring it could come in extremely useful.

Another thing he found interesting was the founder's view on muggleborns. It seemed unlikely to Harry that he was as invested in pureblood superiority as wizards like Lucius Malfoy seemed to think he was, and that his selective admittance policy was more out of fear of medieval witch hunts than anything else. He reasoned that it was dangerous to expose

young wizards to the truth of their identity when it could only endanger them in the interim years between learning they had magic and becoming trained fully enough to keep themselves safe with it. While Harry had to agree with that, he thought that the founders should have worked together to find ways around that instead of squabbling over ideology. He also thought that Salazar's idea of secretly putting a basilisk in the castle as a last line of defence in the event of a total apocalypse (or whatever reason) was a terrible idea. Whatever, he was just pleased that the man who'd created such an incredible library wasn't an awful racist like they'd thought he was.

He was so fascinated by everything he was learning that Minerva sometimes had to come down and shake him awake near curfew, when she realised he'd once again fallen asleep over his books. Even his dormmates, who were studying desperately for exams and not in pursuit of independent knowledge, didn't spend as much time holed up in the library as he did, and the Weasley twins had teasingly placed him firmly in the same category as Hermione, Pansy, and Draco, or 'the nerds' of the group.

Exams were easy, and he'd prepared (and studied far ahead of his grade level via Salazar's library) well enough that he could have performed them all wandlessly (although he didn't; he wasn't a show off). Ron groaned and said he hadn't known that Harry was as much of a bookworm as Hermione, but the truth is Harry had always been smarter than people gave him credit for. He had enjoyed reading, and had often hidden from Dudley and his gang the one place they would never look for him, i.e. the library. He just normally didn't take quite so much of an interest as Hermione, but with the discovery of the chamber library and Wood firmly prohibited from dragging the team outside to practice in the ice and snow, he had a lot of time on his hands.

Harry also put a lot of thought into what he should get for his now much-increased number of friends and his guardian. He knew Minnie liked his homemade shortbread, but that wouldn't stay fresh long, and besides, he wanted to get her something nicer than just that.

Since Snape had been so nice lately, Harry had copied the newly translated parseltongue manuscripts into nice, leather-bound notebooks. He had, ironically, been the easiest to take care of, gift-wise. Ron had gotten a limited-edition Chudley canon's jersey and some new quidditch gloves, and for Draco, Harry bought the same gloves in green and a cashmere jumper in a soft grey to match his eyes. Each of the Weasley twins was getting a three-month subscription to Zonko's new Surprise Me Sampler Basket, Neville, Seamus and Dean got a similar subscription from Honeyduke's, and Harry was sure that Pansy would be pleased with her soft, rose-coloured ballet flats and the lavender midi-skirt he'd bought her, as the Slytherin had been expressing an interest in muggle fashion as of late.

For Susan and Hannah, Harry had Fred and George give him the spell they used on the television set and bewitched a pair of new CD players to work in the castle. He'd gotten Minnie a felt mouse full of catnip as a joke, and all that was left before the holidays was to figure out her real present and to get something for Narcissa, Ginny, and Luna. Ginny was more of a tomboy than the other girls, and Luna was… well, Luna was Luna. Draco had told him the name of his mother's favourite jewellery shop, and Harry eventually picked out, on the advice of Du, a silver brooch in the shape of a snake with emeralds for the eyes. He

eventually decided to get Ginny a collector's edition set of all his favourite Wonder Woman comic books, as he had a feeling she'd love them as much as he did, and he found a muggle jumper with a picture of a rainbow unicorn that just screamed Luna.

Which, again, still left him without a clue for what to get Minnie. When he'd asked if there was anything she might like, she'd responded with "why, I've got everything I could ever need; I've got you, dear," which, while it made Harry glow in satisfaction, brought him no closer to having something to wrap and put under the Christmas tree. Eventually he realised that since Minerva loved him so much, she would indubitably enjoy something made by him. Petunia had made him learn to knit so that he could make all her contributions for the children's charity events at the church, so he'd ordered some red and gold wool and begun to knit, without using magic to speed up the process, a warm checkered shawl. He'd tied off the last stitch on the morning school ended for the term and spent the train ride adding a fringe along the edges. Minnie had stayed in her office to do some work but would be using the floo to join them at Narcissa's that night. As the train pulled into King's Cross, Harry slipped the shawl into his trunk with the rest of the gifts he needed to wrap and put a strong locking charm to keep his friends (especially Ron and Draco) from trying to peek at what he'd gotten them.

Narcissa and Aralynn had welcomed them on the platform, and Harry liked both of them immediately. Draco was a bit shy about meeting his mother's long-time girlfriend, but she'd swept him up into a hug right away.

"Draco! It's so good to finally see you. Although, with all the stories your mum's told me, I feel like I've known you for years." She was wearing a soft yellow blouse with jeans and trainers, and her short hair was wind-swept from the floo-ride to the station.

"I'm afraid I can't say the same, unfortunately, but it's lovely to meet the woman who's made my mum so happy. Are you living at the manor full-time now?" Draco asked her.

"Yes, I have been for a few months now. I haven't sold my flat yet, but if you decided you were amenable to having me around all the time I might- not for a few months though, so no pressure to make a decision about me yet." Her laugh sounded pleasant, with a sweet little snort at the end.

Draco looked her up and down. "I don't think I'll need that time. I like you already, and besides, my mother has impeccable taste."

Narcissa laughed. "That I do, dragon. That I do. It's so lovely we will be able to host all your friends and their families this year." She turned to the group of students. "Harry luv, Minerva told me she'll be arriving in a few hours after she finishes grading exams, and Neville, your grandmother said she'd be staying in her own manor until Christmas eve. Seamus, Dean, your parents have made friends with the Grangers and are currently playing muggle football in the gardens, I believe, and Molly Weasley has commandeered my kitchen for the past three days and has made so many goodies, I soon won't fit into my robes." She laughed and winked at Ginny, who was closest to her out of all the Weasleys, and then looked at Luna, who was leaning against the redhead's shoulder.

"Luna, I must say, your father is a fascinating man. He was going to accompany us to bring you all back, but we wanted to be less of a crowd, and besides, he been distracted in the library, painting all the horklumps?" Her face betrayed she hadn't the foggiest clue what that meant, but Luna smiled serenely, so Narcissa waved them all through to the floo at the end of the platform.

Chapter 30

Chapter Notes

So this is a pretty short chapter today, mainly just some filler. I'm gonna do a chapter about Christmas then another chapter or two just wrapping up second year, although there won't be too much action happening, which is also why I've been a little slow updating the past couple chapters (that and I had the flu). Then this work will be finished, but I've decided to make this a series of works. I've got ideas for the next one- It's gonna be called The Prisoner of Azkaban and the Incompetence of the Wizarding Judicial System. Then I hope to do fourth year, which I will call The Goblet of Fire and Juesus Fucking Christ what the fuck is wrong with you people?! After that, well, who knows? Lots of love (unless you're an asshole), Des ;)

Harry swore he had never seen a house as impressive as Malfoy manner. In its own way, seeing it gave him the same sense of awe as Hogwarts had, although in a different way. The magic, in place of the busy, vibrant warmth of the castle, had a more subdued but comforting feel, and the colours were mainly soft pastels instead of the vivid brightness that overwhelmed him at school when he didn't close off his senses.

"Do you like it, Harry?" Narcissa asked, looking at his wide eyes.

"It's amazing, Mrs. Malfoy," he smiled at her, and she ran a thumb along the dimple in his right cheek.

"Please dear, call me Narcissa, or Cissa's even better."

"Okay," he blushed again, and Narcissa thought that surely he was the most adorable child she'd ever seen (well, Draco was equally as cute when he wanted to be, she supposed, but he was her child so she had to say that).

"Minerva should be here soon; in the meantime, why don't you show Harry your room, Draco," Narcissa turned to her son, who nodded and dragged Harry away by the hand. Cissa smiled at her before dragging Aralynn away to their room.

"Woah, Draco, your room is so cool!" Harry enthused as he looked around the giant bedroom. In the centre was a giant canopied four-poster bed with sky blue bedding, and a pair of silver and green painted dragons flew and twirled about on the painted walls.

"Thanks, I designed it myself," Draco said, blushing brilliantly.

"Um…" there was an awkward silence on the blonde's end as Harry fascinatedly took in the rest of the room and Draco wondered what he should say next.

"Do you wanna play chess?" he eventually asked, watching the shorter boy examine the marble set on the activity table.

Harry agreed, and spent the next few hours playing with his friends and losing spectacularly. He was trying to coax a rook into capturing Draco's night (it was a trap, of course) when there was a knock on the door.

"Boys, are you in there?" It was Professor McGonagall, and Harry smiled and ran over to give her a hug before chattering excitedly about how exciting his day was and didn't she think the peacocks on the front lawn were amazing? Minerva smiled at how much more open Harry was with her since she'd adopted him over the summer.

"Yes, Narcissa told me the birds took a liking to you. From what I understand, that's not their usual reaction to new people."

"Or familiar people," Draco mumbled under his breath, thinking about the time he'd been chased across the lawn as a child the one and only time he'd try to pet one. He couldn't help feel a little irritation that Harry was just so damn likeable that even the murder birds were gentle with him.

"I got to feed one and it ate right out of my hand," Harry added, and Draco grumbled some more about how lucky he was to still have all his fingers.

"Alright, speaking of feeding, time for dinner," Minnie told them, rolling her eyes at Draco's antics.

Harry thought dinner was amazing- there was a four course French dinner, the kind Petunia made him cook when she had parties but never let him eat. It had always smelled amazing, and Harry resolved to get the recipe for vol au vents from the Malfoy elves; their crusts were much airier than the ones he got from Petunia's old recipe books.

The entire group was in the giant living room chatting and relaxing. Narcissa was explaining some of the intricacies of the wizarding world to the Grangers while Arthur Weasley, who'd dropped by after work, was interrogating them about muggle things, and Luna and her dad were talking about the Quibbler, the magazine Xenophilius ran. Seamus and Dean's parents, who got together regularly, were trading old stories while the kids sat scattered about in various little groups. Harry, for his part, was sprawled across the floor with his back resting against Draco's shoulder as he read a potions book from the chamber library.

"Draco!" Hermione called from where she had her head together with Pansy as the huddled over a very dense sheath of parchment. "Do you have any ideas for that problem we were working on?"

"What problem?" Harry pulled his head up from where it was buried in his book.

"It's something for the society, we're trying to decide if its fairer to advocate for fewer workdays but longer shifts or shorter shifts but less mandatory time off. There isn't any research on house elf stamina, but for humans doing similar labour, the research seems to differ as to what's healthier."

Harry scratched his neck as he thought for a moment. "If you're doing hard labour, it's easier to have a concentrated block of time as a break rather than be working, say, 18 hours seven days a week instead of 20 every day except Sundays." He spoke from experience, as he'd had periods at the Dursleys where he'd experienced both.

"Eighteen-hour shifts are unconscionable even for house elves," Molly butted in. "They don't do well unless they sleep for at least 8 hours to rejuvenate their magic. Even the worst wizards wouldn't work their elves to the point of reducing their efficiency."

"Oh," Harry nodded. "See, I was thinking on a purely physical level. But I'd guess the principal's the same either way." He went back to his book, and the adults traded dark looks as they contemplated how Harry must have learned the limits of the human body to be able so speak so knowingly about it.

Chapter 31

Chapter Notes

Hey, so another of my heacanon-y AU's towards the end of this chapter. Don't worry; all shall be explained eventually...

Also, I don't speak Latin, but as a Spanish major I realise that the fact that I used google translate means that the translation is most likely fucked. I apologise to anyone who speaks Latin and is offended by this.

Christmas Eve saw the children sitting in a haphazard semi-circle drinking hot apple cider, curled up in blankets and pillows on the floor while the adults relaxed comfortably, chatting at the kitchen table.

"What does mine feel like? What does my magic feel like?!" Pansy screeched excitedly, tossing a pillow at Harry.

"How am I supposed to talk when you're screaming," he laughed, dodging the feathery projectile. "But your magic is hot; like the sun beating down on you. It makes me wanna take my jumper off before I hug you. And it smells and tastes like cinnamon and looks just as red."

"What does it sound like?" She asked, leaning forward.

"I don't know; I've been too afraid to listen."

"Liar!" She tossed another pillow at him.

"Okay, fine. But you can't be mad when I say it sounds like Seamus's; you both give off the sound of crackling fire."

"I sound like the pyro?" Seamus threw a pillow at her.

"Yeah, but you don't smell like him. Seamus, your magic is all fire."

"Wicked!" The others didn't like the way his eyes gleamed.

"Oooh! Do me, do me!" Ginny yelled.

"Gross! You're like, practically his sister." Ginny gave Dean a dirty look for twisting her words as Harry started talking to Ginny, not quite sure what just happened.

"Um, Ginny is like this deep red colour, like blood-red. She smells like the air after a lightning strike and sounds like thunder. The feeling of her magic is like being caught in a strong wind. I uh, I don't know what you taste like; I try to block that bit because, well, tasting someone's magic feels really intimate… I know what Ron and Hermione taste like because I spent a lot of time with them before I learned to block my senses as well, and Pansy because she basically hug-assaulted me when I wasn't expecting it."

"You know what I taste like?" Ron asked, looking a little put off.

"See, this is why I don't make a habit of it!" Harry waved his hands about.

"Ron, quit being so immature." Hermione smacked him and turned to Harry.

"What am I like?" she asked him.

"You taste like toffee and treacle tart, let's get that out of the way first. And you smell like old books and feel like warm rain. Your magic is like this warm tan colour with flecks of bronze, and it sounds like a river going through a damn- really strong, but strictly controlled." Hermione smiled brightly at this.

"Figures that the magical daughter of two muggle dentists tastes like the sugariest sweets you can think of," Pansy teased, leaning against her friend's shoulder.

Draco began pressing him to talk about his magic, and Harry blushed. Draco had been the first wizard he'd ever met, so he couldn't help but taste his magic. But for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to admit this like he had about Ron, Hermione and Pansy. He muttered something about how his magic looked and felt like liquid mercury and sounded like wind chimes before the talk turned to what ages they stopped believing in Father Christmas.

"I was ten," Neville admitted embarrassedly. "Nobody wanted to tell me, so they fought over it for years until I heard them one time. So, in a way, they all told me."

"What about you, Ron?" Fred and George teased, turning to their brother.

"Shut up! You know perfectly well you ruined it for me when I was five."

The others all said that they'd been anywhere from 7-9 before the talked turned to Harry, who blushed. He hadn't been looking forward to when he was eventually pressed to answer.

"I never believed in Father Christmas," he admitted, looking away. "I sort of was Father Christmas."

"What, what does that mean?" Hermione ventured.

"The Dursleys never wanted to wake up to put Dudley's presents under the tree, so I kinda did the whole Father Christmas thing. Minus the cookies, though. Petunia told Dudley that Father Christmas would be too full by the time he got there…"

"Spiteful old bitch!" Pansy swore.

"Language, children!" Augusta Longbottom's stern voice called from the kitchen.

"We were talking about Petunia Dursley, Gran!" Neville yelled back.

"Oh, do carry on, then! From everything I heard from James and Lilly, that's fairly tame when it comes to her," the woman harrumphed.

Harry's eyes opened with the rising of the sun, as had been his habit since he was a child. He smiled; he couldn't wait for everyone to open the gifts he'd gotten.

"Dray. Wake up," he prodded the friend nearest to him from where they were all sprawled on the floor.

"Shove off Potter," the blonde grumbled as he swatted at Harry's prodded finger.

"Alright, I just thought you might want to know that your hair is a real mess," Harry sing-songed, and the other popped all the way up.

"Where?" he gasped, and that plus the sound of Harry's laughter brought the others to consciousness.

"Woah, look at the tree!" Ginny squealed uncharacteristically, and heads turned towards the centre of the room, where the magnificent Christmas tree they'd all decorated a few days before was surrounded by a pile of presents so high it covered half the branches.

There was a clamouring as everyone tried to find their piles and the adults gradually came out of their room, rubbing their eyes and heading to the coffee machine.

Harry was gobsmacked when he saw his pile; it was the biggest one there. The vast majority of them were from Minerva as well; Harry had never pictured her as the doting type before she'd adopted him, and this was just beyond anything he could have imagined. When he'd looked at her, mouth hanging open, she'd chuckled and said that there were, after all, eleven years of Christmases to make up for.

"I… I only got you one thing though," Harry looked crestfallen when he realised how ungrateful that must seem in comparison.

"That is one more than I asked for dear, so thank you." She ran a thumb along his cheek as Harry held out the box he'd carefully hand wrapped.

When Minerva pulled out the handknit shawl, she was overcome with emotion for a moment before she spoke in a tight voice. "This is truly amazing Harry. You really made this?" Harry had said as much in the note he'd pinned to it.

"Yeah…" he looked away sheepishly.

She wrapped him in a tight hug and the rest of them politely ignored the display so as to give them a sense of privacy. Although, most of the children were already knee-deep in wrapping paper.

Harry's gifts were amazing. Many of the packages from Minerva had been a brand- new wardrobe (with a 'little room to grow' as she explained when he saw that many of the things were a bit large. She wasn't about to tell Harry that all the clothes his size were made for children three and four years younger and thus all had cartoons and things on them that would make him feel foolish). There were also lots of age-appropriate toys and games from Minerva and more from the rest of his friends. Piles of sweets from his friends as well, along with Professor Dumbledore and some of the other adults (the Granger's had, however, gotten him a lovely set of muggle comics. Hermione must have told her parents he liked them).

He was surprised that Professor Snape had gotten him a set of rare potions ingredients, as well as some potions journals he'd been hoping to read. Harry had to admit that they'd had a much better working relationship as of late, but Harry didn't think he'd liked him well enough to give him a gift. Well, Harry had gotten him one, but that was different… or he thought.

Narcissa had gotten him a lovely warm cloak with his name initials on the silver buttons and the Potter family crest (the profile of a stag in front of the Latin words for fidelity and honour) embroidered on the chest. Harry's favourite gift had also been another from Narcissa.

"This was a muggle football jumper that belonged to your grandfather originally, I'm told. Lily brought it to Hogwarts with her every year, and I used to love to wear it when we were, you know…" the word involved hung unsaid. "Anyway, when I was about to graduate and marry Lucius I tried to give it back, but, well, she told me to hang on to it, to remember her by. We couldn't ever talk safely after that; we would have loved to stay friends, but on opposite sides of a war, even if I didn't want to be, it wouldn't have been… anyway, I kept it in a safe all these years where no one could get to it. I figured that if I ever had the chance to meet you in a situation where we could talk without restraint, that I would give it back to you. I never thought I'd be giving it back and thanking you for saving my son, and for enabling me to have the happiness that I had always wanted, and that Lily had wanted for me. Your mother… she was an amazing woman, and she would have been proud of the young man you'd become." There wasn't a dry eye in the room when Narcissa finished with her speech, which was good because Harry was crying reverently. He'd surprised himself when he launched himself at her to hug her tightly before taking the old hoodie and reverently putting it on. It came down just below his knees, but he thought it was better than anything he'd ever worn. Narcissa informed him that he didn't need to worry, because she'd put all kinds of preservation and anti-damage spells on it; it would take an actual hurricane to do any harm to it.

Perhaps the second most emotional moment of the morning was when Narcissa called Dobby and presented him with a beautiful custom-made pair of socks, granting him his freedom. When Dobby had been ecstatic but professed his concerns about leaving the family, his mistress had told him she'd been hoping he would consent to stay on as a paid elf, and the smile on the elf's face shown brighter than all the candles in Hogwarts' Great Hall.

Hours later, after dinner, the children were all playing with their gifts under the Christmas tree. Harry, still wearing his hoodie, furrowed his brow as he looked at Hermione and Pansy puzzling over one of their new books.

"What's wrong?" he asked them.

"It's this phrase…" Pansy pointed to a line of the book, and Harry ambled their way and peered over her shoulder.

"Mater semper laetus obtuli sanguine hostium vim potentioris," he read fluently. "Blood of the mother willingly given shall always be stronger than force by the enemy. Kinda dark, but it seems pretty straight forward. What's giving you trouble?"

"We don't speak Latin, Harry," Pansy said, looking at him as if he'd grown another head.

"That can't be right; every wizard speaks Latin, right?" he said, his voice rising to a question towards the end.

"No, Harry. Even the purebloods don't learn more than what would be enough to give them a head start at Hogwarts. Most parents push French or some other useful but elegant language. The only family that still pushes a rigorous level of comprehension is the Blacks, but they're not really much involved in wizarding affairs these days…"

Narcissa and Minerva had been watching the interaction from the doorway. Narcissa, a Black by birth, stepped towards Harry.

"How did you learn the language, dear?" she asked him in Latin, and Harry responded with perfect fluency in the same language.

"I… I didn't. I just always knew it. I thought everyone did until I talked to my relatives in it one day and they… well, they weren't happy. After I went to Hogwarts and saw all the spells were in Latin, I thought it was just an innate wizard thing. But now, now I… I don't know how it happened. I've always been fluent, and I taught myself to read and write in Latin when I was in school because it felt like mine. So, I guess I advanced it on my own, but I don't know where I got the foundation. Is… is this bad?"

The others were all staring at Harry, especially Draco, who knew his mum learned Latin but never heard her use it, so to hear her and one of his best friends having a rapid-fire conversation was… ethereal, almost. He started back when his mum started speaking English again.

"I'm sure it's nothing to be worried about, Harry. True, it's unusual, but you're also a parseltongue. Maybe there's some innate magical language gene no one's discovered yet." Narcissa knew this to be untrue, but she wanted to reassure Harry, who was looking very nervous. She looked at Minerva, who mouthed talk to me later, and figured that whatever explanation Harry's guardian already had might only upset him more than the uncertainty.

She was right, of course. Minerva did remember a casual conversation with James when Harry was a baby that made her laugh at the time and would explain Harry's odd bilingualism (trilingualism, if one were to count parseltongue). And while she believed in sharing things with Harry and being completely open with him, the revelations this conversation would involve would no doubt be incredibly painful, and he was just starting to heal. Surely it could wait for another time…

Chapter 32

Chapter Notes

Gods, this fluffy little bit was so much fun to write. We are winding towards the end of the chamber, and then it's time for the next work...

The rest of the winter flew by and soon they were passing into March. Minerva was working at her desk while the children were off playing, well, somewhere. It was a nice day, so they could quite well be puttering about on the quidditch pitch this afternoon. She had just finished her grading for the day; now she was frowning over Harry's medical files. Madame Pomphrey had been hoping to be able to start giving him his vaccinations by now, but with the state of his immune system at this point, a vaccination would only make him sick. The immune-boosting potions were a poor substitute for an actual, well-developed immune system, and Harry had been in the hospital wing with a bad cold or case of the flu three times already since the return to school after the Yule holidays. Severus was worried as well (he would, of course, deny this if asked) and was trying to develop a more effective potion since the standard brew wasn't working as hoped. But it was a tricky thing to make an industrial strength potion that would be safe to give an underweight twelve-year-old. It was… a troubling conundrum, and Minerva was rubbing her temples when she felt something nudging her ankles.

She looked down to see a tiny black kitten bumping her insistently with its little nose.

"Hello dear. Have you lost your owner?" She gently leaned down to pick up the little guy when it looked at her with brilliant green eyes. Emerald eyes. The kitten looked at her intelligently and mewed.

"Harry? Is that you?!" The kitten mewed again, and Minerva switched to her animagus form.

"What on earth?" She mewed at the kitten, who was, presumably, her kitten.

The little cat nudged her with a paw, and Minnie saw that kitten Harry, too, had a lightning scar. "I, I think I'm stuck," he squeaked at her.

"Well, yes, I guessed that much, but how? A child your age should not even be able to achieve the animagus form, let alone be trying without supervision." She looked down at the kitten, waiting for an explanation.

"I wasn't trying to transform, Min," Harry protested. "I was meditating- just to see what my form would be, you know, when I was older and could try to transform and get

registered and stuff, but then all the sudden, I was a cat, and this wasn't supposed to happen!" He rubbed a paw along his face in distress.

"They're isn't… one shouldn't be able to simply meditate into a form. Unless, were you using one of Salazar's spells?"

"No- that's the thing! I was just using the normal meditation pathway that you use to discover your form- you know, the one that you use before the potion?" He was talking, of course, of the potion that was used in the standard animagus transformation that allowed the user to channel the essence of the animal in order to facilitate the first transformation- the one that Minerva may have accidentally told the Marauders about before accidentally disabling the wards in the restricted section for just enough time for them to coincidentally grab the book that would have been needed to access the recipe.

"How on earth? Well, I must say I'm quite glad you weren't trying to attempt something so difficult on your own," her feline face conveyed her approval in relief.

"I wouldn't do that!" She shot him a disbelieving look. "Well, I might have a year ago, but I know I could come to you with that stuff now." One wouldn't think a kitten could blush, but there was really no other word for Harry's reaction.

"Well, I am glad you came to me for help, anyhow, even if it was on four paws. Since it seems you have unwittingly become an animagus, I am going to teach you how to wittingly get out of it. Then this weekend we'll go get you registered." Her feline-momma instincts kicked in, and she scraped her tongue over a messy patch in his fur. It didn't move.

"Before we do that, can you just tell me… my animagus form will grow, right?"

Minerva looked down at him and had to bite back a smile. "I'm afraid not dear; the animal one transforms into the first time is the animal one will always transform into."

Harry mewed indignantly. "I'm gonna be an adult wizard with a kitten animagus?!"

"I'm afraid so, dear," the older cat told him, but she didn't seem at all sympathetic to his predicament, moreover, she was visibly amused. "Now come on, let's get you from cute little kitten into cute little wizard again." Harry hissed grumpily as Minnie picked him up by the scruff of the neck and brought him to an open area in the middle of her office.

Twenty minutes later and Harry was human without issue. "Well done dear," his guardian told him. "Normally it takes at least an hour to change back the first time."

"Normally nobody's stuck with a kitten for an animagus," a newly-human Harry grumbled, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Aww, but you're so cute. Let an old woman have this," Minerva said, ruffling his hair.

"Fine," he sighed, pouting. "But at least don't tell professor Snape," he begged, referencing his guardian's habit of fondly regaling the staff room with his exploits. "He'll

never let me live it down!"

"Sorry dear," his guardian told him, not sounding at all sorry. "But Severus is responsible for working with Poppy on your potions regimen, and a brewer needs to know about any special conditions like an animagus form."

"You're making that up!" he cried, dismayed.

"Harry, darling, you're a stellar potions student. You know very well that I'm not," she told him, trying not to laugh.

"Oh Merlin, I'm never gonna hear the end of this…"

Chapter 33

Chapter Notes

LAST CHAPTER OF MY FIRST COMPLETE FIC IN THIS SERIES! YAY! I AM CRAZY PROUD OF MYSELF FOR MANAGING TO FINISH THIS. Okay, small letters now. I am so excited to start the next work in the series, The Prisoner of Azkaban and the Incompetence of the Wizarding Judicial System, and I hope to have the first chapter or two up in the next few days.

Severus did excessively tease Harry about his animagus form, but he also excessively threatened the ministry official who registered him, the result being that Harry's status as an animagus (however adorable it may be) was kept out of the Daily Prophet. And alright… it must be admitted that his new tiny, furry skill was wonderful for perpetuating their prank war on Lockhart, who, in addition to being bald and yellow-teethed, had been proven to be a fraud.

It turned out he was only too willing to make conversation with the kitten who'd started visiting him in his office, which included telling him all his secrets, such as the fact that he wasn't really a competent wizarding hero (go figure) and also that he had a deathly fear of spiders (and if Harry's new kitten form happened to be wonderful at hunting, catching, and relocating spiders to Lockhart's quarters, well…).

Lockhart's secrets being released to the public (and he still couldn't figure out how the Weasley twins had managed to get that recording. The only one he ever talked to about his deepest, darkest secrets was that friendly little kitten…) had embarrassed him to such a degree that he had immediately resigned his post, effective as soon as the school year ended. His classes had gone from awful re-enactments of his shitty books to quietly studying defence from a standard-issue textbook, occasionally punctuated by the sounds of sobbing. March turned into April, Harry got the flu again, April turned into May, the Weasley twins somehow became the first to claim the honour of having ridden the giant squid, and then May turned into June, during which finals were completed without fuss (the entire group had decided to utilize Hermione's study plan this semester, although Ron did so with some grumbling) and Mrs. Norris was revived and sent to Filch's new address in a perforated box. Soon it was the night of the goodbye feast, and the Harry and his happy little group of friends were sitting at the Hufflepuff table laughing at some reference to one of the muggle telly programmes they all gathered in the Gryffindor common room to watch.

"I can't believe Slytherin and Gryffindor tied for the house cup this year," Pansy was saying.

"At least no 'last-minute points' were awarded this time. That trick Dumbledore pulled last year was rather cruel…" Harry responded. He'd felt a little guilty at the time, but his

fellow Gryffindors had been so happy he'd kept himself from saying anything.

"See, Weasel! Even Harry admits we deserved to win last year!" Draco yelled, tossing a bread roll at Ron.

"Hey now," Hermione said. "The manner of the thing was uncouth, but we definitely deserved those extra points. Saving the stone was no piece of cake." Pansy stuck her tongue out at her best friend and snatched the piece of cake off her plate.

"I don't see what the big deal about some cup is, anyway. It's ostentatiously gold and wouldn't even match the ambiance of our common room," Blaise put in between bites of treacle tarts.

"Speaking of, how are they going to decide which common room gets to display the cup, since there was a tie?" Ginny asked as she slapped Ron's reaching hand away from the last brownie and grabbed it herself.

"Minnie told me she and Snape are gonna duel for it," Harry said brightly.

"Wicked!" Fred and George said as one, before George began to say something else.

"I know Forge, use the filming spell. I will, I will!" Harry cut him off.

"You're so lucky you get to stay at Hogwarts over the summer," Hermione told him wistfully. "All that access to the library, and the chamber…"

"You know you can come visit, 'Mione."

"I wish, but my parents and I are going to Italy for the summer."

"Oh, you poor thing," Pansy teased her.

"Shut up Pans, you know our parents went 50/50 on that villa in Rome." Hermione slapped Pansy's arm.

"I never thought I'd see the day the Parkinson's became best friends with muggles," Draco told his childhood friend.

"What can I say, Grangers are charismatic." Pansy shrugged, tweaking Hermione's ear.

"Careful, you're gonna make Millicent jealous," Ginny teased the other girl.

"Millicent still hasn't figured out that I like her, the thick-headed angel; Mia and I are gonna have to dedicate some serious time to formulating another plan," Pansy grumbled.

"We can plan at the forum," Hermione squeaked excitedly.

"After we spit on Cesar's ashes!" the other girl picked up the thread, bouncing up and down.

"What've you got against Julius Cesar?" Ron asked, mouth full.

"He burned down tonnes of ancient libraries," Harry answered, having heard the 'fuck- Cesar' rant from Hermione and Pansy countless times.

"He probably talked with his mouth full, too." Pansy glared at Ron, who just tossed another bread roll at her.

"So, Harry, you're still riding the train with us tomorrow, right?" Susan asked, trying to change the topic of conversation before Pansy started firing hexes at their friend- it wouldn't be the first time.

"Yeah, and then Minnie's gonna apparate over and we're gonna spend the day in London before we come back."

"Sounds fun, what're you gonna do in London?" Luna asked dreamily.

Harry's face lit up. "She's taking me to an amusement park! As a reward for getting all O's on my exams." His eyes were sparkling so brightly they would not have been out of place in a jewel mine.

The train ride the next day was uneventful. Harry had placed an expansion charm on a cart in order to fit them all, and despite said cart including amongst its numbers Fred, George, and Seamus, it only almost blew up once. They got off the train to find their parents speaking casually like old friends (apparently, the entire group of guardians, even reclusive Augusta Longbottom, had been meeting at least once a week to have lunch together), and since adults can gab on forever, they had an enjoyable time laughing and chasing each other around for a good half an hour before everybody dispersed to head off the platform. Harry, grasping Minnie's sleeve excitedly, practically bounced on the balls of his feet as he followed his guardian off the platform. He couldn't wait to find out if a rollercoaster could stand up to the thrill of sliding down into the chamber.

End Notes

Next chapter will hopefully be up soon-ish, but I've got a service project early tomorrow (don't worry, I usually have Saturday's free, it's just this one day for this one class, so weekends will probably be my most usual time to update. Well, maybe not every weekend, and maybe it will be randomly in the middle of the week. I try to make plans and life laughs at them, so, eh).

Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their /works/13557357/comments/new

Preface

And so it begins...

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

A quick note on mage senses

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Afterword