(Obligatory no ownership disclaimer)

AN: Hey guys.

The first scene of this chapter was supposed to be on the last one, but it was already large enough; so I cut the scene and put it into this one.

I hope you guys enjoy this one.

Crimson: The RoR will be pretty important to the story, but mostly in a way to advance the group's research, remember Harry's theories of how magic takes knowledge and willpower, and the room is basically a magical whishbox, one that can make whatever you want, as long as you have enough understanding of how it works.

Grim: Everyone will have their time to shine, Harry will make some pretty major discoveries starting on chapter eleven.

Chapter 7

Harry woke up feeling pretty good.

It was Christmas morning, a week after the Hogsmeade visit, and in the last week had spend his time productively. He had quickly worked together with Hermione to finish their homework, the two of them were able to write all essays within a day, so they had the rest of the week free to work on their projects. Harry had made another attempt at transmutation and again managed to lower the amount of lost materials; this time only losing 60%, but he was quickly running out of materials to use, so he would have to dive trough the sea of broken objects in the room of hidden things to find some more material to work with. Hermione also worked hard on her project, following Penelope's idea and finding out how to better insulate her test box against the heat of the environment, and apparently she had seen some slight improvement just the day before, so it was quite likely that she was still losing efficiency on her runes due to outside factors.

They had also spent some time with Ron; exploring the castle with the help of the map. They had found a few places as well as some secret passages that they never knew about. But there were also places that the map didn't show, the RoR was one, and the chamber of secrets the other. Hermione had studied the map as much as she could without the map insulting her, which happened pretty frequently, and was still as amusing as the first time; and she found out that Harry's theory of how the map worked was right, it was connected directly to the castle wards. It was an intricate piece of magic and Hermione was almost salivating at the possibility of learning how it worked, and in time making one of her own.

Harry also spent some time scratching his head, trying to think about how he could buy Christmas gifts to all of his friends without sneaking out of the castle. He had a gift for Ron that he bought all the way back in the summer, during his stay at the leaky cauldron, as well as a gift for Hermione, but that one he wanted to change; he wanted to give her something a lot more meaningful than just some book on arithmancy, his problems were solved when Dobby showed up one night and asked him if he needed to do some shopping. He sometimes forgot that the little guy had bonded with him, the elf really saved him when he said that bonded house elves are able to take money out of gringotts, as well as make purchases in non magical society by using glamours and other charms. So he gave his vault key to Dobby and made a list of things for the little elf to buy, for Hermione he bought a silver and sapphire necklace, as well as a book on nuclear fusion, Penelope got a book on mastery level charms, Padma got an interesting book on how television stations function, for Sue Li he bought a book on electrical engineering, Hannah got a book on black holes and supernovas, but his favourite gift was for Luna, who got the complete works of H.P Lovecraft, some would think it would be bad to give Luna horror stories, but she would definitely think they were fun; he couldn't wait to hear Luna try to talk with Hermione about Cthulhu.

He stretched and rose from his bed, rubbing his eyes to drive away the sleepiness, he looked to the foot of his bed and saw the pile of gifts there.

"Morning, mate." He heard Ron say from his side of the dorm. Looking around he saw that only the two of them and Neville were still in the room, Dean and Seamus were already on the showers judging by the noises he heard from there.

"Morning, Ron. Morning Nev." He responded.

"Morning, Harry." Neville said from his own side of the dorm, already opening his gifts.

"Thanks for the Cannons shirt by the way, its brilliant. So, going to open your gifts now?" Ron asked, already diving trough his pile of presents.

Harry just nodded in response and started to work on his gifts. There were the usual ones like Mrs. Weasley sweater and box of chocolate, as well as Hagrid's rock cakes, which probably were made of actual rocks with how hard they were; Dobby had given him a giant portrait of himself, which the guys laughed about; Harry hoped the little guy was happy with the sewing kit he had bought for him. Hermione had got him a book on advanced alchemy, which was pretty cool since it had a few pages written by Flamel; Penny had got him a rune carving kit, Sue got him a book on metallurgy, Hannah got him another book, this one on gases present on the atmosphere, and Padma had got him a sherwani, a type of traditional Indian clothes, together with a note signed by her and Parvati saying he would look cute in it; he tried not to blush as he read that. There were a few other gifts by various people, but what really grabbed his attention was the broom shaped package at the bottom of the pile, by that time it was only him and Ron inside the dorm, the other guys having already left. When Harry opened the package he saw it was a brand new Firebolt, the best broom in the world.

"Is that a Firebolt, mate?" Ron asked, his eyes wide with shock, the same way Harry's own eyes were.

"Yeah, it is." Harry responded, his voice low, still in shock.

"Who sent it, you think it was Dumbledore?" Ron asked, getting over his shock and starting to get excited.

"I don't know, but there is a note, maybe it will say who sent it." Harry responded, as he picked up the note that was inside the same package with the broom. Opening the note he saw a single sentence and a signature. Enjoy your new broom. Siriusly Padfoot. It was a little weird to have such a small note in such a large piece of parchment, and the word seriously was spelt wrong. Wait, Siriusly. It was a hint, the gift was from Sirius Black. Harry had been a little annoyed when Hedwig returned from delivering the letter without any response, but now he knew why, he sent he response with his gift, the parchment was probably as large as it was because there was a hidden message in it; he just had to figure out how to access it. He read the note again and found his the hint about how to access the hidden message, the name Padfoot, the same one he saw on the map the twins had given him.

"What does it say, Harry. Does it say who sent it?" Ron asked, after a few moments of silence.

"Yeah, Sirius Black." Harry responded, and smirked a little when Ron jumped from shock.

"There is also some hidden message on it, so just wait a little." Harry added. He then grabbed his wand, touched the parchment with the tip of it and said. "I solemnly swear that i am up to no good." watching words appear on the parchment, he waited until it seemed like nothing new would appear and then started to read.

Prongslet.

If you're reading this you probably have a copy of the map with you; I don't know if it is the one from your father, or if it is the one that belonged to the rat and Filch confiscated, if it is the latter one, congratulations, the map is your birthright as the son of prongs, and the rat certainly doesn't deserve one after he betrayed us all.

The rat, Peter Pettigrew, is the one who betrayed your parents, not me. He was the one that we four together decided to make the secret keeper of the fidelius charm, I was the decoy. And he was the one that guided the dark wanker straight to your parents.

I didn't manage to kill him that day, he blew up a street, killing all those muggles and ran away in his animagus form of a rat. And he is currently hiding in Hogwarts as a pet; I saw him on the newspaper. Things only got worse when I reached Hogwarts and saw that the Weasley boy he was with seemed to be your friend. Be careful Harry, the rat is dangerous, if you see him grab moony, your professor Lupin, and tell him everything, or better it, show him this letter.

And if he tries to tell you everything in this letter is a lie, remember him that when I became your godfather I made an UNBREAKABLE VOW to protect you, he should remember it, since he was there to witness it.

Once I kill the rat, I will drop his body in the middle of the atrium of the ministry; that should clear my name, and then I can start being an actual godfather to you, something I messed up going after the rat and losing all those years ago. Until then stay safe, and I love you Prongslet.

Siriusly your dogfather.

PS. touch the map with you wand and say that the son of prongs claim this heirloom, something funny should happen. Just ignore anything Wormtail, the rat, says.

Harry finished reading the letter and smiled. The letter gave him some hope that his gut feeling was right, he still wouldn't trust it completely, mainly because he didn't want Hermione complaining about him being too trusting again, but it did give him hope. He also didn't know what and unbreakable vow was but it sounded serious; he gave Ron the letter to read, if he knew anything about the vow he would say something.

While he waited for Ron to read the letter, he decided to grab the map and try to do what Sirius wrote, grabbing the map from his trunk, he touched it with the tip of his wand and said. "The son of Prongs claims this heirloom." and immediately words started appearing on the parchment.

"Mr. Prongs would like to welcome little prongs and inquiry who is his mother."

"Mr. Padfoot would like to express his shock that someone actually tolerated Mr. Prongs enough to have a child with him."

"Mr. Moony would like to welcome little prongs to the noble art of pranks."

"Mr. Wormtail would agree with Mr. Padfoot and further asks if the lady in question has suffered damage to the head."

Harry smiled as he read the few short sentences. It felt good to read them for some reason, maybe it was because it showed how his father was with his friends in his school days, or at least he hoped so. Deciding to try and see if the map did anything else, he touched the map with his wand again and responded the question that his father asked.

"My mother w... Is Lily Potter, formerly Evans." Harry said, hesitating a little. He didn't want to know how the map would behave if he referred to his mother in the past tense.

"Mr. Prongs would like to gloat about how he finally caught his soul mate, and remind Mr. Padfoot that he owes Mr. Prongs ten galleons."

"Mr. Moony would like to express his disbelief that someone as sensible as Evans would settle for Mr. Prongs."

"Mr. Wormtail would like to express his hope that little prongs looks like Evans, because no one deserves to look like Mr. Prongs."

"Mr. Padfoot would like the see the look on greasy old snivellus' face when he sees 'his Lily' going on a date with Mr. Prongs."

Harry laughed loudly at the responses he got, it was only an enchanted piece of parchment, but he could still almost feel how smug his dad was about getting together with his mum. The other responses were also pretty funny, even Wormtail's, and he didn't know who this snivellus that Sirius was referencing was, but something about it seemed familiar. By the time Ron finished reading the letter, Harry was still chuckling, his good humour increasing every time thought about the responses again.

"You alright mate. You've been laughing for a while." Ron asked, looking at him suspiciously. He had said many times that whenever someone laughed like that around him was because he was about to get caught by one of the twins' pranks.

"I'm fine. Everything is perfect." Harry said, controlling his laugh and wiping a single tear from his face.

"If you say so." Ron responded, still looking at him suspiciously. "Anyway, this thing is serious; I heard dad talk about an unbreakable vow once, if you break them you die." He added after a few seconds of looking at Harry weirdly.

"That's good to know. And what about you, if this thing is true then Scabbers is a man pretending to be your rat." Harry asked a little concerned.

"Don't even mention it, mate." Ron said, going a little green. "If I think about it I'll get sick, and then I will puke on you since you are right in front of me." He added, making Harry move a little to the side.

"Fair enough; just don't say anything about it out loud, we will mention it to Hermione, and I will show her the letter. But if we have to talk about it again, we will do so after I check the map to see if Scabbers is around. If it is true then he could hear that we know his secret and run away." Harry said, making sure Ron knew not to open his mouth about it. He would have to keep remembering him every once in awhile, since Ron could be quite forgetful.

"Don't worry; I won't say anything." Ron responded distractedly, having already gone back to his chocolates.

Harry when back to his presents and started sorting them out and storing them into his trunk, after that was done he grabbed the book that Hermione had given him, the map, and the letter, and then went to the common room. Reaching the common room he saw that Hermione was the only one there, seating near the fireplace and reading a book, when he got closer, he saw that it was the book on nuclear fusion that he had given her, and that she was also wearing the necklace. She jumped from her chair when she saw him, thanking him for both the two books and the necklace. Thanking her for the book, and showing he was going to read it now got him a beaming smile, and that made him feel pretty happy; after that he looked at the map and saw that there was really no one around, he then showed her the letter.

"It gives some credence to your thoughts, Harry. But it's still not enough to completely believe him; he could be lying about the unbreakable vow." She said, after reading the letter, a look of concentration on her face.

"I know, but it gives us something to work with. We could even ask Susan for a meeting with her aunt, see if this letter serves as enough proof for her to reopen the investigation." Harry responded, with a hopeful tone. He still believed in his gut feeling that Sirius was innocent.

"Maybe it does. Just don't get your hopes up, since it might not work." Hermione said, giving him a soft smile. "Now, be quiet. I want to read this book." She added in an imperious tone and giving him a wink.

"Yes ma'am." Harry responded, chuckling and giving her a mock salute.

The week after he received the broom and letter from Sirius was spent looking all over the castle with the help of the map, trying to find Scabbers, but they still ended up with nothing to show from it. Harry also took his new broom for a flight, it almost caused a fight between him and Hermione, she was concerned for his safety and wanted him to give the broom to the professors and have it checked, but he was able to convince her to his point of view by saying that he would fly really low to the ground at the beginning, if the broom was charmed to drop him, he would be close to the ground and would only have superficial injuries. Hermione ended up accepting that compromise and didn't went behind his back to tell the professors, something he saw on her eyes she was willing to do, and it annoyed him that she was actually thinking about it. The three of them, together with the twins; spent some time in the quidditch pitch; Harry spent the first half hour with his new broom flying no more than two meters above ground, once that time ended and he proved to Hermione the broom was safe he started to fly progressively higher and faster, the broom staying safe the entire time. It was almost like the broom was reading his thoughts with how quickly it moved, and he couldn't wait to fly it in a game. By the end of a fun couple of hours on the pitch the twins were almost vibrating with happiness and the thought of him playing with such an amazing broom, and to Harry, Hermione and Ron the broom staying safe the entire time was another mark in Sirius' favour in proving he was telling the true.

When the next week started, it came with the return of the rest of the students, and the return of classes. The girls returned to the castle and all hugged him in thanks for their gifts, he also received thanks from a few other students he sent minor gifts to, including a girl in slytherin called Daphne Greengrass, he sent the gift in to thank her, since she apparently help Hermione sometimes with arithmancy work. He also had a lot of fun watching Luna talk about Shoggoth, Mi-Go and Cthulhu, as he expected she found the books really interesting and not scary at all.

The return of classes also returned something else he had almost forgotten about, the mystery of how Hermione was taking every single class. He had grown used to seeing her with bags under her eyes, and being short tempered enough to explode on anyone who annoyed her just a little. But the winter break had done wonders to her health and brought back the Hermione he knew since first year, so the problem was once again visible when she started to have bags under her eyes again. He was almost starting to consider time travel, since he had recently read about time turners; but they were restricted objects, closely guarded by the department of mysteries, and he didn't believe someone would be crazy enough to give such a powerful artefact to Hermione just so she could take extra classes.

Another thing that started on the first week of the new term was Harry's lessons on the patronus charm. He had managed to convince professor Lupin to teach him the charm so he could combat the Dementors if they decided to attack him again during the next quidditch match. The charm was apparently really difficult and many adult magicals still couldn't perform it, but Harry was motivated to learn it; as nice as it was to hear his mother's voice, he didn't want to keep hearing last moments. He also hadn't said anything to the professor about his supposed friendship with his dad. Harry was actually a little annoyed with the man; he was a friend of his dad's but had never once said anything to his friend's son, even after spending months as his professor. Harry was also annoyed that the man never once visited, or even tried to check in on him during his time with his relatives, he thought that a friend of his dad would at least try to check on him once.

The girls returned to the new school term with new ideas, and a few minor tests done to their projects. Padma apparently gave a few mirrors to her aunt and cousins in Mumbai, and the mirrors still worked perfectly when she called them both from her home in London and from Hogwarts. It was a major test to the viability of the mirrors as a long distance communication system, they still needed to know how long the enchantments on the mirrors would last with constant use, the little less than 150 mirrors they all had already given to their families and some students were providing a nice test group, but it would still take a couple of months before they were secure in saying that the mirror project was a success, and that was just the smaller mirrors used for communication. The larger mirrors that Padma was trying to turn into some sort of magical TV were going slowly, but she did make some improvements to the modified scrying charm that the mirrors used during the break; apparently it was another idea from Parvati, the gryffindor Patil twin was really good with divination magic.

Luna also had a new long term goal. Since she had shown some interest in it during the last school term, Hermione had given her a book on biology for Christmas, and it appeared Luna was really interested in DNA, she found fascinating how connected two completely different species of animals were in that level, and she wanted to see if the DNA of magical animals was similar to non magical ones. It was still a relatively new area of research when it came to humans, even if it was some decades old; the human genome project had just started a few years ago, and it promised to be the most complete mapping of human chromosomes available once it finished. There wasn't much information about the human genome available, but that didn't discourage Luna; she was more interested in animals than humans anyway.

Hannah had visited a planetarium during the break and found everything there to be fascinating. She was really interested in how advanced muggle research into celestial objects was, even something as basic as the hypothesis of how the moon was formed was something new to her, since the magicals didn't really focused on it too much; magical astronomy was more focused on how the planets and some stars interfered with magic, particularly rituals, and not on actually studying the celestial bodies. She was also blown away by the few pictures she saw from the moon landings.

Sue Li spent her entire break taking apart old electronics; she brought a bunch of copper wiring, circuit boards and some other pieces of scrap to Hogwarts, so she could work on them in her workshop. She wanted to see if she could build a steam power generator, and wanted to work with Harry what they were calling the Magical Exclusion Runic Array, or MERA; the same one Harry carved on the portable radios, in a unused classroom and see if they would be able to lay some wiring on the room and use the generator there. It was an interesting project and Harry agreed to work with her on it, as soon as he completed him own project.

Speaking of his project; he dove trough the room of hidden things again to gather more metal, and did another transmutation, this time using a few precision scales that he asked Dobby to buy to measure the base materials, and it ended up giving him a better than ever result, lowering the amount of lost materials all the way to 45%, from the previous 60% loss, a good amount of progress, but it also seemed that it would be a lot more difficult to reduce the amount of loss this way going forward, his new idea was to try and see if he could use transmutation to clean the copper and tin from impurities before using them again to make bronze. It would take some time of research, but it seemed promising.

Hermione went right back to her research of superconductors, this time working on Harry's suggestions and building a pressure chamber using a runic array, she also had some proper tools now, to both measure the pressure and to measure temperature on her other research with cooling runes. The pressure chamber was quite weak at the moment, it was something she was just starting and it would take some time to work out a way to push the runic array so far out of its normal working conditions. Her research on the cooling runes also progressed a little bit, now with proper tools to measure the temperature of her test box she saw that it was operating around the 246 K, and that it was also losing a lot of efficiency due to poor insulation. Her new idea was to work the test box into layers, progressivity getting them colder; it would make insulation a lot easier since she would only need to insulate the first layer against the environment, and that layer wouldn't be that much colder than room temperature. It would take some time for her to build a new test box with those specifications, it would take a bit of time to carve all those runes; and it would also be quite a bit larger due to how many layers it would have.

Penelope also took some time out of her studies to help Padma with her magical TV project. Penny knew a lot more about how the mirrors worked since she was the one driving that research forward for the first generation of mirrors, the ones that lasted only a few minutes, and also the one that designed most of the second generation, the ones still being tested. She was able to help Padma implement the changes that Parvati had helped her with during the break, Padma knew how the mirrors worked, and how the scrying charm transmitted images, but she was a bit like Hermione in her disdain of divination and usually tried to overcomplicate the charm work; something that Penelope was perfect to help with, being a aspiring charms mistress. Together they were able to work a little bit on the charm and finally were showing some progress in improving it, it would take a few weeks of testing, but it appeared the improvements would make the charm transmit images clearer, and since magic imaging didn't have a problem of frames per second, the only thing that could be improved was colour and accuracy of the images. If the new method actually improved the mirrors as much as it promised to, then it could finally be used to make magical cameras, a major step towards magical TV.

But during the first weekend of the new term they all decided to take some time off and brave the snow and cold of the Scottish Highlands in January to see the new experiment Harry and Hermione were planning.

"So, this thing is a pressurized box." Penelope asked, as the group stood around a box that was 1 meter high and 30 centimetres wide.

"We are just trying to see how much pressure it will take, we have some measurements devices installed to see just how much it will be." Hermione said, making a few last minutes preparations.

"Which means this thing will make a pretty nice explosion once it fails. That's why we asked you to transfigure that rock over there, Penny, so we could watch the explosion." Harry said, pointing towards the large rock with a small viewing hole protected by clear plastic around 100 meters away.

"I was wondering what that thing was for, is nice to know what it is." Penelope responded.

"So, what you're saying is that this thing will cause an explosion so big we will need to be that far away and still be protected by rock?" Hannah asked.

"The rock is just to protect us from flying debris. It is not a typical explosion; there is no real detonation to it, just a metal box failing to deal with the increasing air pressure." Hermione responded, after finishing her last minute preparations. "Now, we should go behind the rock so Harry and I can activate this thing." She added.

They all nodded in response and together started to walk towards the transfigured rock, getting behind it the entire group saw that the rock was actually transfigured into three walls and a roof, with only the back of it open, a viewing window on the rock wall facing the side that the box was in, and the wall seemed thicker there. It was pretty well protected from anything coming from that side.

"Everyone ready?" Hermione asked, when everyone nodded, she added with a smirk. "Then just enjoy the show, its already started."

"I thought you two would activate the box from here." Padma said, in a confused tone.

"And how were we going to activate the runes from this far away? The runes were already active when we started to walk here." Harry responded, also smirking. It was a nice little prank to play on their friends; something he started to enjoy doing when he learned that his dad used to be a prankster.

"You guys suck." Sue complained.

"We do. Now, watch the box." Hermione responded.

They all turned to watch the box; it took a couple of minutes for anything to start to happen, Hermione had set the runes to increase the pressure slowly so it would give them enough time to reach cover. The box started to bulge a little on the sides, a few seconds later there was a small crack and a jet of pressurized air appeared in one of the corners, and just a few seconds later the entire box gave into the pressure and exploded with a loud BOOM, louder than any exploding curse.

"That was fun, can we do it again?" Luna asked excitedly a few moments after the explosion.

"Not now, Luna. Now we need to see how much pressure the box could take, and then figure out how to improve on that." Hermione responded also in an excited tone, but for her it was probably because of the new data, instead of Luna, who was just excited to see more explosions.

They all walked out of their viewing box and walked towards the debris of the experiments to see how it did. After all, explosions can also be successful experiments.

AN 2: The start of a new school term also brought some new things to our group of researchers.

Also a fun new experiment being performed.

Chapters 8, 9, 10 and 11 are already out on the pat re on. If you guys think my work is good enough to support and want to read ahead you can find me at pat re on .com (slash) TheUnseenScribe

I will see you guys in the next one.