Thursday's Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson saw the class finally victorious against the Cornish Pixies. Harry had convinced most of the other Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs – save for, unsurprisingly, Ron and his friends – to plan ahead the night before how they were going to take on the Pixies. They agreed to a strategy, exploiting the Pixies' preference for attacking people and not furniture, to construct 'desk forts' similar to the ones which they had made on Monday, then fight the Pixies, who would now be forced to all dive from above to reach them, from a position of relative safety.

When Thursday afternoon came, they stuck to it. Immediately as Lockhart released the Pixies, Harry, Lavender, Neville, and Justin pulled together their desks, the others present at the meeting mirroring their actions. The Pixies quickly took their bait, dive-bombing them from above to try to reach their ears and hair. When they got close enough to grab, an accurate Freezing Charm stopped them in their flight, and they collected them with ease into the bags that Lockhart had provided for them.

Those who had not participated in the planning, however, fared much worse. Ron was once more the victim of a game of catch, though this time, it did not end with his injury. Hazel was nearly dragged out of the window before Lockhart Stunned the offending Pixies, rescuing her, while Gerhard Edel and his friend Vladimir ended up dangling from a light fixture by their robes as their reward for refusing to join in the planning session due to some unexplained dislike of Susan Bones.

Despite all that, the strategy was successful beyond Harry's expectations. In just over twenty minutes, the Pixies had all been caught and returned to their cage, and Lockhart even let them go early as a result. 'Good planning and execution of your plan,' he told the class at the end of the exercise, despite nobody ever having told him that they had planned. 'I would have expected this of you, and you have met my expectations. Planning is an important skill, and if you know what you're going to face, not planning would be the peak of stupidity. Forty-five points to both Houses. Weasley, MacTavish, Noriega, Edel, Kamchenko, and Perks. You've clearly and obviously ignored the opportunity given to you to plan ahead and decided not to learn from your previous mistakes and experiences. You lose your Houses five points each for your negligence, but more importantly, you have lost and died in a situation where you had every opportunity to live and win. You disappoint.'

'Nonetheless, while planning is important, you should not expect to have such an opportunity for every situation you encounter,' Lockhart continued, addressing the whole class again. 'Thinking quickly is still an important skill. Do not let the takeaway from this lesson be to forget that. Dismissed.'

The mood of the class as they left the room was far more uplifted than Tuesday. Seamus was excitedly recounting to Parvati how he had taken down six Pixies with a single Freezing Charm, and Ernie, along with the three other Hufflepuffs with whom he had partnered, were talking about how Hannah had almost been dragged away by two Pixies before Leanne saved her just in time. Some of the less fortunate students, though, were grimmer. Ron was grumbling again about Lockhart's supposed sadism to Hazel, who was the only one about as enthusiastic in hatred of him as he was, while Gerhard was complaining about the Gryffindors not inviting him and Vladimir to their planning session, despite Harry knowing for sure that Ernie did.

As McGonagall had told them on the morning of the first day of classes, teachers had constantly reminded them through the week that there was to be an Exploratory on Friday. Harry, curious, had asked teachers what the Exploratory was to be about, but none of them seemed to know for sure. Anna had given him the best answer, telling him that it would be a fair of some sort, but she did not know more than that, either.

Finally, at the end of Finding Magic on Friday – just before Exploratory – Professor Cauverina revealed what had been planned. 'You'll all be attending a club fair,' she told them. 'Headmaster Dumbledore thought that would be a good idea for a first Exploratory, considering Hogwarts's clubs have been rather…dead…for years. You'll be with the second-years and first-years from all the other Houses, and you'll have fifty minutes to look around. At the end of that period, Professor Katic will bring both Gryffindors and Ravenclaws to Elementary Studies.'

Professor Cauverina brought them down to the Great Hall, where they found one of the House tables set up in the middle of the space. Around the tables stood older students under floating signs showing the names of the clubs they were representing. Some of the students had also brought objects for exhibition to represent their clubs. Harry spotted a Beater's bat, several games, and a large poster of what looked like a football pitch.

Harry, Hermione, and Neville walked around the room, trying to get a sense of which clubs even existed at Hogwarts. Dumbledore had been quite right to say that clubs were quite dead, Harry thought, for aside from some of the more famous ones such as Quidditch Club, Gobstones Club, Duelling Fan Club, or Chess Club, Harry did not know any clubs at all. He had no idea, for instance, that there was a Reading Club, or a Sweets Club, or a Muggle Culture Club with an extreme focus on football, judging by its large, moving poster of a Manchester United-Arsenal match – something that had immediately attracted Dean's attention.

'I think I'll go take a look at the Reading Club,' Hermione said after one walk around.

Harry and Neville continued to walk. 'Maybe I should have a look at Current Events and Politics Club,' he told Harry after a little while more of wandering. 'Maybe that way I'll learn the stuff Gran's been telling me for years I need to learn without wanting to fall asleep. Though that might be a bit too much to hope for seeing how nobody else seems to be interested…'

Having lost the other, Harry was left to pace completely aimlessly on his own. He did not know which clubs he was interested in finding out more about, something not helped by the bored expressions on the faces of many of the older students manning the stations of a good portion of the clubs, something that did not make him particularly excited about the whole thing.

'Harry!' a familiar voice called.

He turned around to see Tracey behind him. He had not really spoken to her since that day on the train – greetings outside their shared classes did not count in his opinion – and he was glad to see her, especially without Pansy and Daphne. 'Oh, hey, Tracey.'

'Have you found any clubs you're interested in?' Tracey asked.

Harry shook his head. 'None of them seem very exciting,' he replied. 'Have you found anything?'

Tracey shook her head. 'Not really. The older students aren't really doing a great job of promoting their clubs.'

Harry laughed, glad that she felt the same. 'Not at all.'

'Do you want to find a club, then?' Tracey proposed. 'Maybe we can find one we're both interested in, and we'd have some way of seeing each other regularly?'

'That sounds great.'

The two of them walked around. The most popular clubs – Quidditch, Gobstones, and the like – were not to Harry's interest, and in any case, Tracey wanted to avoid the area, for Pansy was there, trying to hear about Quidditch Club.

'How's things with them?' Harry asked.

'I haven't really talked to Pansy since I got here,' Tracey answered quietly. 'I don't think she really misses me. She's been spending a lot more time around Millicent Bulstrode and Lisa Murke anyway. Daphne noticed…she asked me why, and well, I told her the truth. She didn't seem to mind…yet.'

'See? I told you it'll all be fine.'

Tracey gave a nervous smile. 'I suppose…you were right.'

They continued to walk. 'How about Games Club?' she asked, stopping in front of an empty station on which a Galleons and Chess set were laid out. 'It seems easy and fun.'

'Sure, why not?' Harry answered.

They walked up to the two older students in charge, and they seemed quite happy to have visitors. From them, Harry learned that the club was rather small – just six or seven regulars in total – and met on Tuesday evenings, and they spent most of their time playing a variety of what Harry would call board games, though the older students did not call them that, simply referring to them as 'games'.

'What do you think?' Harry asked Tracey after their visit.

Tracey shrugged. 'I mean…it's not the most exciting, I suppose, but nothing really interests me that much more. Maybe being not too exciting is good. That way, we can relax more.'

'Good point,' Harry agreed. 'Let's try it out, then. There's no disadvantage to doing that, right?'

Tracey smiled. 'Sounds – '

'You knew!' suddenly came the sound of Ron's voice behind him, screaming at maximum volume. Harry and Tracey spun around to see what was going on, Harry's heart skipping a beat at the unexpected sound.

'What the bloody – '

'How many times did mum and dad tell you that story?' Ron roared, interrupting Tracey's swear. 'You knew that Slytherin is bad luck, but you got sorted there anyway!'

'It's not like I had a choice!' Ginny shouted back. 'The Sorting Hat put me in Slytherin, what could I have done about it?'

'I don't know, tell it to not put you into Slytherin?' Ron snapped back sarcastically. The entire Great Hall was now watching the Weasleys' argument with rapt attention, perhaps even waiting for a real fight to start.

'It's not like the Sorting Hat gave me any options!'

'Yeah, right. Who told you that?' Ron demanded, even more furious than before.

Ginny, unexpectedly, fell silent, and her face, for some reason, grew blank. 'I read it somewhere,' she said, much more quietly.

Ron snorted. 'Like I'm supposed to believe that!' he derided.

'I'm telling the truth!' Ginny cried in despair.

'Am I supposed to believe that?' Ron yelled. 'It's not even been a week and you're already lying to your own brother! You know you're going to mess up our entire family – mum, dad, George, Fred, me, all of us – and you don't even care!'

'I'm not trying to do anything!' Ginny protested. 'The Sorting Hat chose me to be in Slytherin, and – '

'Well, the Sorting Hat made a mistake!' Ron snarled. 'You can't be in Slytherin! Remember all the stories mum told about Herbert? Unless the Sorting Hat is out to get us, why would it ever decide to put you in Slytherin?'

'I don't know why!' Ginny replied timidly. 'It just did!'

'Well, then get it to do it again!' Ron demanded. 'Go tell Dumbledore you need to be sorted again! Tell him…I don't know, something like how everyone in your House hates you and you need to go somewhere else. He can't not let you!'

'But…but nobody in my House hates me,' Ginny whimpered, sounding like she was on the verge of crying. 'Nobody's said anything bad to me all week.'

'I don't care, go make up some other excuse,' Ron snapped. 'Just get re-sorted!'

'But why? Why do you – '

'You know why!' Ron roared. 'Do you need me to repeat to you every single story you ever heard about Herbert? Do you need me to repeat to you all the former – '

'What if I don't want to go to another House?' Ginny argued. 'What if…what if I was supposed to be in Slytherin! Have you thought of that?'

'That has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say!' Ron bellowed. 'A Weasley, belonging in Slytherin? Are you out of your bloody mind?'

Ginny let out a whimper, which was followed a moment later by a torrent of tears. 'And you th-think that I'd want to…I'd want to be in G-Gryffindor after…after what you j-just did?' she choked through her sobs. 'M-Maybe the Sorting Hat put me in S-Slytherin because…because of you! Maybe because it knew you…you were a m-mean and – '

'Shut it, Ginny!' Ron exploded. 'You're calling me mean? All I'm doing is trying to protect you, but you don't want to listen to a word I say! Well, if you don't want to get re-sorted on your own, then fine! Then I'll write a letter to mum and tell her to send you a Howler! Do you want that instead?'

Ginny's sobs suddenly stopped. 'You won't do that,' she said fearfully.

'Oh? Try me,' Ron challenged. 'If you want to keep being selfish and not get a second sorting, then that's exactly what I'll do!'

'You will not be doing anything of the sort, Ronald Weasley,' Professor McGonagall's voice suddenly echoed from the entrance to the Great Hall. Immediately upon hearing her voice, Ron's furious façade collapsed, replaced by a look of fright. 'The only thing you will be doing is leaving your sister alone and coming with me.'

Ron turned around slowly. 'Professor McGonagall…I was just…'

'I heard what you said,' McGonagall replied, a cold anger in her voice. 'Every sentence that just came out of your mouth stood against all of Gryffindor's values, Mister Weasley. You should be ashamed of yourself.'

'I…but Ginny – '

'Cannot be re-sorted, if that is your question,' McGonagall interrupted. 'The magical rules of the House system forbid this.' She looked at Ginny, and her countenance softened several shades. 'Miss Weasley, are you all right?'

Ginny nodded feebly, and satisfied that she was indeed fine, McGonagall's ire focused itself back onto Ron. 'You will be coming with me, Mister Weasley. We will be having a long chat about your behaviour just now. Suffice it to say that it is not your sister who may be in danger of receiving a Howler from Molly Weasley, but rather, you.'

Break

Ron being led out of the Great Hall in utter and complete humiliation and disgrace nearly instantly became the latest popular topic of discussion among not only the first- and second-year Gryffindors, but somehow the entire school, as well. To make things worse, Ron became the target of much mocking, most notably from Draco and Pansy and their gangs, though they were far from the only ones taking advantage of such an easy target. Even Ron's own friends, Raul, Sally-Anne, and Hazel, seemed to be keeping some distance from him as the first week of lessons drew to a close, not wanting to be accidentally caught in the fire. To make things worse, once it had become known that Ron had received a week's detentions and lost Gryffindor fifty points in one go, all except his most loyal circle began to give him the silent treatment.

Most unusually, however, were the behaviour of Fred and George. The twins, who had never missed an opportunity for a laugh at their younger brother's expense, did not participate in the school-wide ridiculing of the youngest Weasley son. Instead, they spent nearly the entirety of Friday evening talking quietly in the Gryffindor Common Room with, of all people, Percy. Early on Saturday morning, Harry saw all three Weasleys writing something together, which Harry guessed might have been a letter to their mother, for that was the person from whom Ron had received a letter at breakfast, a letter which seemed to anger and shame him enough in equal measure that he soon shuffled unenergetically out of the Great Hall, his face red and his head down.

If the humiliation should have, at the very least, served to teach Ron some sort of lesson, it was evident that he did not learn it, for just after dinner Saturday evening, the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room opened, revealing a once-more angry Ron, dragging a furious Ginny by the sleeve into the Common Room.

'What're you doing, Ron?' Percy asked, rising out of his seat and walking towards his brother. Fred and George, upon realising what was going on, also stood up in the corner where they had been talking to Lee to join Percy.

'Ask Ginny that question instead,' Ron growled.

'Does this have something to do with Slytherin, Ron?' Percy asked. 'Mum has already told you. Whatever history Slytherin has with our family can't change the fact that Ginny's been sorted into that House, and there's nothing for us to do except to help her whenever she needs it.'

'That's exactly what I was trying to do!' Ron insisted. 'I caught Ginny scheming in the corridors after dinner with Astoria Greengrass and Kyra Flint, and all I did was pull her away from them!'

'Scheming?' Ginny demanded, scandalised. 'You call that scheming?'

'What would you call it, then?' Ron snapped.

Ginny looked at her three oldest brothers. 'All I was doing was talking to Astoria and Kyra as we were walking back to the Slytherin Common Room after dinner,' she told them. 'Ron then came out of nowhere and dragged me away – and I mean drag.It's like he thinks that I'm not allowed to even interact with anyone.'

'I never said such a thing.'

'You as good as said it,' George noted.

Ron glared at his brother. 'Do you want Ginny to get cosy with the Slytherins?'

'Do you want your own sister to spend seven years alone and miserable because of a decision the Sorting Hat made?' Fred asked. 'Look, Ron. None of us is very happy about this whole situation. Ginny isn't thrilled about being sorted into Slytherin, either. But it's not like you can do anything to change it now, so just accept it and stop trying to dictate everything she does.'

'I just don't want another Great-Uncle Herbert to happen!' Ron persisted. 'We're still suffering because of him! Am I not allowed to protect Ginny from those people so that we don't end up…worse?'

'Herbert ended up the way he did because he was stupid!' Ginny protested. 'I'm not stupid enough to do what he did! And just because Herbert trusted a few bad Slytherins doesn't mean everyone there is automatically bad!'

'I'm not defending what Ron did, Ginny, but he has a point,' Percy said. 'You have to be careful. Greengrass and Flint – especially Flint…you know yourself what their always clean and law-abiding parents have certainly never, ever done. I'm not saying their kids have to be bad or anything, but you have to be careful about spending time with people who might not have you and your family's best interests at heart.'

'How do you know they don't have our best interests at heart?' Ginny shot back. 'We're all eleven years old! What're they going to do, crash a broom into our house?'

'Percy's not saying that they don't,' Fred replied fairly, marking perhaps one of the first times Harry had ever heard him publicly back up his older brother. 'He's just trying to tell you to watch out. You might not be Herbert, but Herbert didn't know he was getting swindled until it was already too late, either. There's nothing wrong with telling you that you need to watch your back just in case, especially in a place like Slytherin.'

'I doubt Ginny knows how to – '

'Shut it, Ron,' George snapped. 'The only thing you've accomplished this last week is irritating everyone and making a fool of yourself. Go do something more productive.'

'Are you telling me to go away?'

'I'm not telling you to go away, I'm telling you to piss off.'

'George, too far,' Percy warned.

'See, even – '

'Ron, go do your homework,' Percy interrupted his brother's latest protest. 'You haven't started any of your weekend work yet, and considering your performance so far this year, you'd best get started now rather than Sunday night.'

Rebellion blazed in Ron's eyes, but he could do nothing about it, and submitted to Percy's command and stalked away up the spiral staircase back to the dormitory. With Ron gone, Percy turned back to Ginny. 'Ginny, look,' he said, 'what Ron did was wrong, but I still want you to be careful. You know the type of people who could be out there. Promise that you'll look out for yourself.'

'Percy's right,' George chimed in. 'We promise to leave you alone and keep Ron in line, but in return, you need to promise us to be careful and stay away from the wrong crowd.'

Ginny paused for a moment before nodding. 'I promise.'

'Good, thank you,' Percy replied. 'Come, I'll bring you back to Slytherin.'

Ginny shook her head. 'It's fine. I can walk back on my own.'

Break

It looked to Harry as if Ron was attempting to assume a low profile all of Sunday morning, though perhaps even that was an understatement. He refused to talk to anyone all through breakfast, not even Raul, Sally-Anne, or Hazel, who had since taken to sitting at the Gryffindor table with the rest of her friends. After breakfast, he returned to Gryffindor Tower and continued to avoid everyone there, tucking himself away in a corner with a book to read – or pretend to do so, for the page which Ron was reading was the same when Harry entered the Common Room and when he left, nearly an hour later.

Anna had invited Harry, Hermione, and Neville to her new office for tea Sunday afternoon. It was the first opportunity that they have had to really talk to her since she had left for France in July. 'I told you it was my office, but it's actually a little more than an office,' she corrected when they arrived. 'It's got everything.'

'It looks like just a regular office to me,' Harry said. It was really just like any other office he had been in, be that Professor Cauverina's or McGonagall's, though of course furnished slightly differently. There were two bookshelves in the back, a desk, and a window which looked out to the grounds. Given the amount of time that Anna had occupied it, there were few decorations in it, though there were already plenty of books and piles of scrap parchment.

'Well, the bookshelves hide many things,' Anna said with a grin. 'Let me show you.'

She walked over and gave the left edge a pull. There was a momentary grinding sound as the bookshelf slowly swung outwards. Behind the bookshelf was a doorway into another room, a living room by the looks of it. There was a large sofa facing a fireplace, a small breakfast table, and several more bookshelves. 'That's the living room,' she said. 'Haven't been able to furnish that yet. Or actually, anything. To be honest, I don't have many things to decorate with, anyway. It's mostly just books.'

Anna walked over to the other bookshelf and gave it, too, a pull. This one revealed a bedroom with a large four-poster bed much like the ones in the dormitories and several chests of drawers. Behind the bedroom was another door. 'That one goes to the bathroom,' she explained. 'It's pretty nice. Definitely an upgrade from last year.'

'Anyway, that's the tour,' she said. 'Let's go to the living room.'

Harry, Hermione, and Neville sat down on the sofa while Anna poured them tea from a large, brass contraption on the counter in the back of the room. 'I got this from an Ottoman merchant in France who imported them from Persia – quite the journey,' she answered to the three's questioning looks. 'The Turks call it a semaver, the Russians a samovar, the Persians a samavar, apparently. Same thing, basically. Reminds me a little of when I was little.'

'Just so that you're aware, the tea is pretty strong,' she warned when she handed them three cups of tea. 'It's different from the English style.'

Harry took a sip, and just as Anna said, the tea was indeed abnormally strong, though not enough to make it undrinkable. 'How was your summer?' Hermione asked as they got settled.

'A lot of work,' Anna answered. 'A lot of reading – and in French, too, which I'm still not too great at – and a lot of wasted time tracing his work. Flamel's not exactly a believer in writing his thought process clearly, which is a major issue, because modern alchemy has so much mathematics. It's the worst of potion-making combined with the worst of spell-creation. Flamel can start the page with the general form of an equation, then skip ten steps and jump right to the form he's going to solve without giving the mathematical assumptions he makes for his specific problem. Then he jumps right to the solution. That I don't even care about, because solving the differential equation itself is easy. I need to know why he approached the problem that way, so I have to go look through the last ten pages of his notes – and remember, they're in French – and reconstruct his entire thought process from scratch. I swear I got grey hairs.'

'And bloody hell – forgive my French, so to speak – the Gringotts arrest warrant was such a major pain in the arse,' she continued. 'Thank every Creator and every God everywhere that they finally cancelled it right before I got back to Britain after Albus proved to Gringotts that it was actually Voldemort – he told them Quirrell, but you know, Voldemort – who did the robbery. I had to travel by a false name, take Polyjuice Potion to change my appearance whenever I appeared in public in the magical city, and stay in muggle Marseille and take the metro every day to "work". Well, I guess it had its advantages. The beaches were nice and there were all sorts of people around. Don't you dare mention the Austrian guy, Harry. I'm not getting married at age 20. Anyway, the muggle city. There was good food, nice sights to see, places to go. I honestly prefer it to staying in the tiny magical city.'

'Are you still working on it?' Hermione asked. 'The Flamel archives, I mean.'

'I am,' Anna answered. 'I can't tell you what I'm working on, but I'm still researching it. All my things are locked in a secret place in the castle. I don't have as much time as I did over the summer, though, which is unfortunate.'

'Oh, right, you're teaching now,' Harry said. 'How's that?'

'I'm bored every class,' Anna replied with an eye-roll. 'Modern Languages are not interesting to teach. I get it needs to be taught and I'm the only one around who can do it, but it's so mind-numbing. I don't want to spend fifty minutes twice a day, every day, teaching how to conjugate in two languages to students who still think sie spricht means the same as sie sprechen and sie sprechen is the same as Sie sprechen, or some other combination of those, after a week of repeating to them the difference. I've been asking Albus to start an alchemy class, which would actually be fun for me to teach, but even if that happens, it won't be able to start until next year. Well, just in time for you all, I guess. You'll take my class, won't you?'

'I'll take it,' Harry said. Despite his relatively bad first encounter with alchemy last year, the research he had done on the subject thanks to the Philosopher's Stone ordeal had made him quite interested in learning more about it. Taking Anna's class would be a fun bonus, too.

'I'll hold you to that promise,' Anna joked. 'Oh, speaking of teaching. Have you had classes with Gilderoy Lockhart yet?'

There was something dark in Anna's voice as she pronounced the name. 'We have,' Hermione answered.

'What do you think of the man?'

'He's a pretty good teacher,' Harry answered truthfully. 'His lessons are much better than Quirrell's. I mean, of course they are, but we actually learn useful techniques to defend ourselves with him.'

'He definitely knows what he's talking about,' Hermione agreed.

'I see.'

'Do you know anything about him?' Harry asked, sensing there was something that Anna was not telling them. 'Neville told us about his life story. It sounded really odd and confusing and nothing added up. Do you know anything about that?'

'I have no idea about his life story,' she answered carefully. 'Frankly, I also don't really want to know.'

'Why not?'

'Well, where do we start?' Anna recounted. 'The first time we met, he wanted me to help him write his newest book. I knew who he was, obviously, and I asked him what he was writing about and why he wanted my help. Keep in mind that this is also the first time we met – who asks for a favour on the first meeting? Anyway, Lockhart told me that he was writing a book about "fighting dark creatures" in Russia and wanted my help interpreting letters. Well, I found that odd, considering the only dark creatures anyone there cares about right now are the ones being deployed by the two armies against each other and cities they want to destroy.'

'I asked him what creatures he was hunting,' she continued, 'and he told me that he was protecting cities from dragons. I asked him which cities he was protecting from dragons, and he told me that he was first in Minsk, then near Kiev, then Kishinev, before he left from Odessa in July. At that point, I started really getting suspicious – '

Something suddenly occurred to Harry from the depths of his memory. 'Odessa in July…wait, I remember seeing something in the Prophet about it falling to the Protectors in August. Do you think…'

'That's exactly what I thought,' Anna affirmed. 'I've been following the war a lot because…well, I mean, of course…and the Protectors started attacking that city in June. The Hwjerikwunists' defence centred around – guess what – dragons, and the Protectors' offence was built around – again, guess what – also dragons. Dragons don't normally live in that area of Ukraine, so near to the coast, so the most obvious way he could possibly have been fighting dragons is if – '

'He was fighting for one of the sides,' Neville finished. 'But why would Lockhart fight with them? He never talks about fighting wars in his books, just whatever "dark magic" he happens to come across.'

'I don't know why, but there're a ton of foreigners fighting on either side for a lot of different reasons,' Anna replied. 'Money, fame, thrill…whatever else. Lockhart might've wanted one of those things, I don't know. What's pretty clear to me is that he was involved somehow in the war…probably fighting for one of the sides. I mean, the cities he named fit the profile. The Protectors started a major offensive this year to cut off the western border of the Empire from Poland to Ukraine so that the Hwjerikwunists can't get supplies from the rest of Europe. Well…Minsk, Zhytomyr, Kishinev, and Odessa were some of the biggest battles of that campaign.'

'Could he have been trying to…I don't know…defend civilians from getting hurt by dragons?' Harry asked, playing the devil's advocate. 'It'd be more in line with what the rest of his books are about.'

Anna shrugged. 'Maybe. It seems rather difficult, though, considering you have to try to not get killed by fighters from both sides while also trying to not get roasted alive or eaten by angry dragons. Even if Lockhart is more experienced than the vast majority of people at dealing with those things, it would still have to be at least a miracle if he survived that.'

'I guess the other possibility is that he was trying to impress me,' Anna speculated, cringing. 'He's a pretty well-known womaniser…but…that seems like a pretty big logical stretch, considering everything else he'd told me.'

'That's disgusting,' Harry said, trying not to imagine the scene in his mind.

Anna shrugged. 'Honestly, I've been trying to convince myself that this is actually the case rather than him having fought in the war. I mean, I'm disgusted by the thought of someone something like ten years older than me trying to…' she shuddered, '…but at least that'd mean he might not have been murdering civilians.'

'If he did fight in the war, could he possibly not have been involved in murdering civilians?' Hermione asked. Harry thought the question was rather naïve, but he realised that he had never told either he or Neville Anna's story, and she had no idea the horrors that she had seen.

'No,' Anna replied harshly, startling Hermione with her tone. 'Sorry, I didn't mean anything against you. It's simply that there's no one in that war who has clean hands anymore. The Hwjerikwunists may have started with some noble intentions, but…it's just some sick contest now between the two warring sides to see who can slaughter the most people. The Russian Empire today is nothing but a bloody tomb. I try to tell myself every day that there's some reasonable doubt that he's not responsible for anything like that, that Albus would've never hired him if he had ever been involved in any war crimes, but if I find out that he was…'

'I know whatever he did or he didn't do, he'd probably not have ever been directly responsible for the death of anyone I know,' Anna said, 'but that hardly matters anymore. If he lent himself to be a part of the war responsible for the needless death and suffering of maybe millions of people – my families and my friends and their families among them! – then I know I will never be able to not hate him, nor forgive him.'