[Songs of the Stormy Season]: Creatures of Pride, PG-13, 3/3, These Creatures series

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the current story arc, but I will probably write more in the future.

Part Three

Madam Marchbanks met with Harry before she left Hogwarts. Her nostrils and her mouth were both pinched tight, and Harry’s heart sank a little.

“You can’t just restore the Petrified people using the mandrakes?” he asked.

Madam Marchbanks blinked at him, and then snorted, stamping her cane into the soft mud of the lakeshore. “Of course we can. Albus was certain that the Petrification was too arcane to reverse with such a simple method, but we tried it on the cat, and it worked.”

“Oh. Then what’s wrong?”

“Nobody knows where the Chamber of Secrets is or who the blasted Heir of Slytherin is!” Madam Marchbanks stabbed the ground with her cane again. “That’s what’s wrong.”

“Dumbledore doesn’t have any leads?”

“No. He claims he has been looking, and that Ministry Aurors came and swept the school. He’s telling the truth as far as I can tell. It’s what I heard from the Ministry before I came here. It’s bollocks that no suspect can be identified, but apparently the last descendant of Slytherin died years ago.”

Harry sighed. “Then it must be someone who doesn’t know they have the bloodline?”

“They know they have it if they’re opening the Chamber of Secrets, lad!”

“Right. Of course.”

Madam Marchbanks looked at Harry’s reddening face, and then out into the trees of the Forbidden Forest, clearing her throat. “Anyway. I’ve brought you a few things that I want you to use to protect yourself from the monster and the Heir. I’ll send you more in the post. You’re to be cautious, you understand? No traveling by yourself.”

“Even under my cloak?”

“Especially under that. Imagine what would happen if you were Petrified while underneath it and no one could find your body for months?”

Harry shuddered. That was a nightmare that hadn’t occurred to him, even when he thought he might have to suffer Petrification himself. “Right.”

“So.” Madam Marchbanks reached into a satchel slung around her left shoulder and pulled out what looked like a smooth silver globe. “This detects magical creatures, which the beast must be since it’s managed to Petrify people,” she said gruffly. “It’ll light up and sing if a creature is nearby, and begin to burn if it’s dangerous.” She held it out to Harry, who accepted it solemnly. “And here’s a chain to string it around your neck so that you can always keep it close.”

Harry relaxed a little. He had wondered how he would carry the ball with him without being obvious about it, or having to stuff it down in his bag or pocket where he might not hear it singing. “Thank you, Madam Marchbanks.”

“This, too.”

“This” was a little flat black dart, which looked like the kind that Dudley had sometimes played with when Harry lived with the Dursleys. Harry hefted it in his hand and tilted his head at Madam Marchbanks. It weighed nothing at all.

“It’s not active unless you throw it at someone or something,” Madam Marchbanks said. “Then it’ll come to life and begin burning. It’s tipped with poison, as well. The combination of flames and poison should make whoever that bastard is run away.”

“The poison is fatal?”

“What would be the point of having a non-fatal poison?”

Harry smiled a little, but a new anxiety had made itself known. “I don’t know if I can actually hit anything with a dart like this. I’ve never practiced with it, in either of the educations I’ve had.”

Madam Marchbanks waved a hand dismissively. “The dart will aim itself, don’t you worry about that.” She cackled. “That ought to give you enough time to get away. No dueling with the Heir of Slytherin, Harry.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Really? Erik told me how eager you were to learn lethal spells.”

“Only if I’m cornered and I have no hope of getting away otherwise.” Harry looked into her eyes, trying to show her pure sincerity. “All I want is to be left alone. And not Petrified, in this case.”

Madam Marchbanks nodded, looking satisfied. “And this.” This time, what she handed Harry looked like the egg he had taken on the Hogwarts Express last year, which had hatched a metallic spider that had woven a web over the door of his train compartment. “Use this, and the net will bind anyone who tries to come through it. The spider will return to its egg when it’s done and the first web will fade if you use the second, but you can only use it twice. Then it needs to be enchanted again.”

“Thank you, Madam Marchbanks.”

“You can call me Griselda, lad. If you think it won’t make you soft.”

Harry eyed her, balancing the request in his head. It would probably make her happy—well, as happy as she got, anyway—and it didn’t have to mean that he trusted her fully, any more than it did with Theo and Michael and other people he called by their first names. “All right, Griselda. Thank you.”

She beamed at him and had him walk her down to Hogsmeade, discoursing the whole while on how she would get Harry a Potions tutor for the upcoming summer, as well, since obviously this one wasn’t worth a toad’s pickled arse. Harry treasured every word.

*

There were no more Petrifications before Christmas. Harry was glad and disappointed at the same time. He would have liked to try out using his dart or the spider’s egg.

But instead, he rode the Express home with his friends, waved farewell to them, and went to Madam Marchbanks’s house. There were fewer presents this time, probably because a lot of people had got their guilt out by sending him gifts last year. But there were still a few from unexpected people.

“Who’s Remus Lupin?” he asked Madam Marchbanks, picking up and turning around a book-shaped package. Madam Marchbanks had already vetted them for curses and charms and poisons, so he simply shook it and looked at the strange tag.

“Never heard of him.”

“Hmm,” Harry said, and opened the package.

It turned out to be a Defense book on Dark creatures. Harry flipped it open and saw that Lupin, whoever he was, had written a personal message to him on the first page.

To Harry Potter, Happy Christmas. I was sorry to see the story of how you had grown up in the papers. It’s not what your parents would have wanted for you. I hope to see you someday and talk to you about how I knew them.

“He’s evidently a friend of my parents’,” Harry told Madam Marchbanks, looking at the book with slightly more interest. There was nothing else about it that particularly caught his eye, but he reckoned Dark creatures was an area he could stand to learn more about, given what Slytherin’s monster probably was.

“Hmm.”

Harry grinned at her and went back to opening the rest of his gifts. More Dark detectors of various kinds from Madam Marchbanks, and a dragonhide-lined cloak that would deflect a lot of physical attacks and some curses. Theo had got him gloves that were similar, and Zacharias a history of “prominent magical families” that made Harry snort. Michael had got Harry a book on runes that made Harry frown a little. He hadn’t really practiced with the wax tablet and carving tools Michael had got him last Christmas.

He should. He definitely wanted to take Ancient Runes when the end of the year came and he could pick new classes for his third year.

Parvati’s gift was the most interesting. Harry opened the tiny box and blinked at the silver ring that lay inside. Madam Marchbanks immediately pointed at it with her wand.

“It’s so small that my spells might have missed some kind of curse on it,” she explained, and fired a detection spell that made the ring blaze like it was aflame for a moment. She studied it, then settled back with a grunt. “No Dark magic or curses. Curious, though.”

“What’s curious?”

“There’s powerful magic of some kind on there. Just not sure what.”

“Parvati sent a note,” Harry murmured, and picked it up.

“Then read it, why don’t you?”

Harry laughed a little and unfolded the note.

Dear Harry,

Happy Christmas! I remembered that you might not have a ring that detects poison in your food or drink. There are other devices that warn you when you just come near one, but the ring is more localized and will tell you what kind of poison it is in black letters on the stone it’s set with. My family developed it because one of our ancestors died from a poison that blended in with the spices in the food she was eating. One of these could have saved her life.

Blessings,
Parvati.

Harry looked at the ring with new appreciation. It did have a dark blue stone set in the band, which looked like sapphire, although Harry was sure it was cheaper. He slid it onto his finger, and it settled snugly, resizing itself a bit.

“A good gift.”

“Yes.” Harry looked at Madam Marchbanks with a smile. “I think all of the ones I received are good gifts. Thank you for the Dark detectors, and especially the cloak. It’ll come in handy if the Heir of Slytherin is still haunting the castle.”

Madam Marchbanks sniffed. “At least the boy and the cat are awake now, after I talked Albus out of his stupid idea that Hogwarts shouldn’t be in anyone’s debt. If it happens again, we have the Mandrake Draught.”

Harry nodded. He hoped it didn’t happen again. He would prefer to just enjoy a peaceful term, and be able to get on with his punishment of Snape and his studying with his friends.

*

“Thank you for the book on curses, Harry. Wherever did you find it?”

Harry grinned at Theo, who had arrived for one of their practice sessions without the others again. “Madam Marchbanks gave it to me. But I already knew most of the spells in it, so I copied the ones I didn’t know out and thought that you’d like to see it.”

“I do.” Theo’s eyes glittered. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Yeah?”

“How much do you trust Michael and Parvati and Zacharias?”

Harry paused. “As much as I can trust most people who are friends,” he said slowly. “Not as much as I trust you.”

In truth, his degree of trust in Theo was only a little higher than his degree of trust in the others, and was there mostly because Theo didn’t object to violent spells and had been the first friend Harry had made. But he didn’t see the point in getting into that now.

Theo looked at the floor for a moment, then back up with an expression of steely determination on his face. “Then why won’t you tell me about the punishment you have planned for Snape?”

“You might not think it was appropriate.”

Theo’s eyebrows went flying up his face, and he gestured to the corridor with his wand. “You gave me a book full of Dark curses, Harry.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is?”

“That I’m not planning on a magical punishment. Not in the traditional sense,” Harry corrected himself, since he’d thought of a way that the punishment might involve magic. “It’s going to be humiliating. I didn’t know if you would want to be involved in that.”

“Why ever not?”

“Snape is your Head of House. And he’s a professor, who some people still respect. And you might think I’m a hypocrite, using bullying and humiliation on him when I go so far to avoid it myself.”

“You’re only returning the dishes he served.” Theo’s nostrils flared. “I want in.”

“What about him being your Head of House?”

“Even among the Slytherins, he has those he favors, like Malfoy. He’s never particularly favored me, and so there’s no reason I should do anything for him.”

Theo smiled. Harry smiled back, knowing his expression was an echo of Theo’s.

It was useful information to have about Theo, Harry thought, that he was most concerned with what people could do for him, and that his sense of right and wrong was more flexible even than Harry had assumed.

Very useful, in case Theo someday turned on him.

*

Harry came to a dead stop when he heard the voice ahead of him, which sounded like snapping bones.

Come to me…I will kill you, rip you, tear you…

At the same time, the silver sphere Madam Marchbanks had given him began to vibrate and sing on its chain, and then burn.

Magical beast, right, Harry thought, and turned and hurried away from the voice. Luckily, he had only been on his way to the library, and he ran all the way to Ravenclaw Tower and reached for parchment and ink.

“Potter?”

Anthony Goldstein was watching him with big, blinking eyes. Harry barely paused to give him any acknowledgment as he began to scribble a desperate letter to Madam Marchbanks. He didn’t know if she would get here in time before anyone else was Petrified, but he knew that she would be proud of him for running away from danger that he couldn’t handle, and that was all he needed to know.

*

“I am sorry to announce that Dean Thomas was Petrified.”

Harry winced a little. He knew Thomas, vaguely—the only Gryffindor Muggleborn in their year, Harry thought, now that Granger was gone—and he was an inoffensive sort who never gaped and stared at Harry like some of the others their own age.

He didn’t deserve to be Petrified. But then, no one did, except perhaps Snape and Malfoy.

“If you have any information about Slytherin’s Heir or his monster, any at all,” Dumbledore was saying solemnly as he stared around the Great Hall, “I ask that you approach one of the professors at once.”

Why would we? Harry thought, blinking at the Headmaster. You lot haven’t done anything so far.

As if he could feel Harry’s stare, Dumbledore turned towards him. Harry shrugged and looked back down at his food.

“Didn’t you tell Madam Marchbanks?” Michael whispered.

“Yeah, but she’s doing her own investigation. She doesn’t think anything’s to be gained from showing up and yelling at Dumbledore this time when he honestly doesn’t seem to know who’s doing it.”

“Shame.”

“You just like hearing Dumbledore humiliated.”

Michael shrugged unrepentantly.

*

“It must be a snake of some kind, since you heard it speaking. And that means that there’s Parseltongue involved.”

“Do you think Dumbledore lied about all of Slytherin’s line being dead?”

“Funny thing,” said Madam Marchbanks. They had met up near the lake, during a period when Harry was supposed to be in Potions. It was the best class to skip, in his opinion. Snape would yell at him anyway, so Harry might as well skive off and get something productive done. “When I did more investigation, I uncovered claims that Voldemort made, about how he was the last descendant of Slytherin.”

“And he’s not completely dead.”

“Not from what I know, no. So Albus didn’t lie to me completely, but by omission. I’ll have some words with him for that.”

“In public?” Harry asked, mindful of Michael’s need for entertainment.

“Doesn’t change his mind when I do that, does it?” Madam Marchbanks subjected more innocent mud to stamps of her cane. “No, I think this time I’ll drop some words in other ears. Take some of his Wizengamot allies away.” She hesitated. “And Harry.”

“Yes, Griselda?”

She gave him a smile like a hunting hawk’s. “I heard another interesting rumor from someone I asked. Dumbledore is probably a Legilimens. That means he can read your mind with eye contact. Don’t meet his eyes if you can help it. Tell your little friends.”

Harry felt as though someone had frozen all his limbs. But he nodded, clasping his hands in front of him to keep from simply snapping and screaming. “Yes, Madam Marchbanks.”

“And you were doing so well, too.”

“I mean, yes, Griselda.”

“Better.”

It did feel better to get one of those smiles, Harry thought. She wasn’t a Legilimens and didn’t need to know how he thought of her.

*

“This is impossible,” Theo said, staring down at the notes and books that Harry had spread out over the table in the alcove near Granger’s bathroom.

“Impossible to do the way you wanted to do it, Harry, yes,” Granger said, hovering over a charmed book whose pages flipped for her with increasing speed.

Harry nodded. He had come to that conclusion a day or so ago, and had already figured out what he would say in response. “So there’s no concrete evidence that we can turn into an accusation of plagiarism against Snape. But you can do a lot more with insinuation and rumor than with outright evidence, anyway.”

Theo frowned. “Would the people you want to convince really believe you, though? The people who buy his potions probably wouldn’t care who came up with the idea in the first place, as long as they can continue to buy good potions from him.”

“It’s not buyers I want to convince, Theo. It’s other potioneers. Potions masters at other schools. People Snape would see as his peers.”

“It’s going to be even harder to do that.”

“I wonder,” Harry said. “I wonder.”

Theo gave him a skeptical look. That was all right. Harry had another plan, too.

*

On Valentine’s Day, a dwarf tried to ambush him and read a love poem to him, but Harry bound it with Incarcerous and kept walking to class, Zacharias chortling behind him. Zacharias did have kind of a nasty sense of humor.

Then again, a little Gryffindor first-year, Colin Creevey, laughed, too. And asked Harry for an autograph and a picture.

*

Dean Thomas had been revived after being Petrified, and Harry hadn’t heard the voice again. But he did think that the Heir of Slytherin was still out there, and they would probably try again. They hadn’t achieved what they wanted, whatever it was.

Harry walked with other people, and took the gifts that Madam Marchbanks had given him everywhere he went.

*

Harry finally decided that he was ready to move in April. It was only six weeks until they went home, and Snape had continued to sneer at him and accuse Harry of prancing and try to assign him detentions for existing. Harry hadn’t managed to find convincing evidence that he could send to other potioneers, either, but that was all right.

He was going to use Snape’s perception of Harry against him, and that was kind of poetic, as Parvati probably would have said.

Harry waited quietly for Snape in an out-of-the-way corridor near the girl’s bathroom where Mrs. Norris had been Petrified. He had seen Peeves a few minutes ago and made faces at him, then said loudly that he didn’t think Peeves would dare go find Snape and tell him Harry was out after curfew. Peeves, of course, had swallowed the bait and zoomed off.

Now loud, angry footsteps approached him. Harry smiled and cast the spider’s egg onto the floor.

It rolled to a halt, and just as Snape ducked around the corner, the spider came out and fired its web. Snape drew his wand and cast a curse of some kind at it, but his balance was already off as the web tangled around his feet, and the curse missed. A second later, the webbing had bound the wand to Snape’s side and filled the corridor from top to bottom. Snape hung upside-down in the middle of a dense lattice of metal strands.

His eyes were fixed on Harry, and his face was reddening steadily, although that might just be because he was upside-down.

Harry walked slowly towards him, watching Snape’s wand all the while. He was pretty sure that it was bound, though, and the webbing wouldn’t dissipate for another hour. That should be enough time for Harry to either make Snape understand what he wanted from him, or to reach the point where he would have to call in Madam Marchbanks.

“You’re going to stop accusing me of cheating,” he said.

Snape snarled at him. He could have talked—the webbing wasn’t across his face—but he didn’t speak.

Harry shrugged. “All right. Then I’m going to start writing to Damocles Belby, and Horace Slughorn, and Abigail Plumeria at Durmstrang.”

“And exactly what are you going to say, you wretched child?”

Harry looked at Snape, and whatever was in his face shut Snape up at least temporarily. “That you accuse me of cheating, all the time, even when you can’t find any actual copying in my work. I’m going to ask them how they teach, or how they taught, and if that’s the way they do it. I’m going to ask in a heartbroken way what would make someone constantly accuse someone else of cheating, and insinuate that someone who does that is projecting their own anxieties.”

It didn’t take Snape long enough to grasp. Stupidity had never been his problem, Harry thought, just stubbornness. He might have done well in Gryffindor. “You stupid child. They will not believe you?”

“Won’t they?” Harry let his eyes widen and his lip wobble. “But I’m Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived! Why would someone abuse me all the time when they already know what I suffered from the papers? Why would I cheat when I’m a Ravenclaw, and value academic excellence? I’ll offer to send them my essays, of course, along with Zacharias’s, so that they can compare them. I wonder what they’ll say about your accusations of cheating then? I wonder what they’ll think?”

“They will not believe you!”

“They don’t have to believe me completely. They just have to doubt. They just have to go back to your published work, and start looking at it, and wondering whether a mistake you made is the result of carelessness or malice. They only have to start wondering whether other people you’ve turned your vicious temper on deserved it, or not.”

From the way Snape paled, Harry knew he’d hit the target. Snape didn’t care so much about what Harry might insinuate. He cared about the fact that he had had disagreements with colleagues, and people who had sided with him in those might start taking a second look at whether the victims had deserved it.

His belief that his peers would turn on him, his distrust and envy of other potioneers, was a far more powerful thing than what Harry might get them to believe.

“You are cheating, you ungrateful brat.”

“You’re flailing now. I don’t plan to write those letters unless I have to. But I will if you keep accusing me of cheating.”

“You are cheating.”

“Tell me how.”

“You come to the same conclusions!”

Harry almost laughed. “You give us lower marks when we use anything outside the book and your lectures, Professor. How many different conclusions do you think there are to arrive at?”

Snape stared at him and said nothing. Harry just looked back at him. “I think it’s simpler than that,” he said softly at last. “I think it’s because you saw that Zacharias is my friend, and because you can’t deny that he’s a brilliant Potions student and he’s helped me, you’ve decided that I’m cheating.”

“You are nothing like as brilliant as your mother.”

“I don’t care. Do you want me to write those letters? Or not?”

Snape stared at him as if he had never seen Harry before. Then he said, very slowly, “No.”

“Good,” Harry said quietly. “But I think you need some extra help keeping your word, don’t you? Since you might decide to go back on it when you’re out of the web.” He reached into his pocket and took out the other thing he had come prepared with. “So I’m going to give you that help.”

“Potter!”

Harry backed up a few steps and carefully snapped the best pictures of Snape upside-down in the web using Colin’s camera, which he’d asked to borrow. Then he nodded and said, “These pictures wouldn’t do anything in letters except maybe get a chuckle. But if I spread them around the school, I wonder what the reaction would be from your students?”

Snape was, by now, cursing steadily, and also looked like he might be about to pass out from the blood rushing to his head. Harry decided that was enough, and turned around. He would release the webbing once Snape fainted, and then make his way as fast as he could to Ravenclaw Tower.

Then he saw the immense shadow moving in the entrance of the bathroom, heard the voice.

“Kill…rip…tear…let me consume you…”

The device around his neck began to sing and burn like mad.

Harry didn’t hesitate. He cast the spider egg on the floor again, which made the webbing dissolve from around Snape as the spider rushed out on clacking legs, and he drew the dart and hurled it as hard as he could.

Exactly as Madam Marchbanks had said it would, the dart caught fire as it flew, and landed in what seemed to be a large scaled neck. Harry ducked and rolled, arms around his head, hoping to escape whatever magic it used to Petrify people. He heard the webbing springing into existence around the monster, whatever it was.

He heard the hisses of pain as the dart landed and began to burn.

Harry ran, straight past the stunned Snape and back to Ravenclaw Tower.

*

“Well, Harry, my dear boy…”

It was the first time Harry had ever had a close conversation with the Headmaster, and he didn’t care for it much. The Headmaster’s office was too full of whirling contraptions and sparkling lights, and the Headmaster himself sat behind his desk and kept trying to catch Harry’s eye. Harry sat with his hand clenched on the fold of his dragonhide-lined cloak and his eyes lowered.

He listened in silence to the Headmaster’s tale of a poor student who was possessed by an artifact that had some trace of Voldemort in it, and how that poor student had been the one entering the Chamber of Secrets and releasing the basilisk. (A basilisk). Harry had injured the basilisk with his dart and confined it with his webbing—not enough to kill it, but enough to slow it down. Snape had got back up and conjured a rooster or Summoned a rooster or something like that, and killed it.

Harry didn’t care if Snape got credit for killing the basilisk, and said so.

“I am afraid I am not here to speak to you about that,” Dumbledore said heavily. “I must speak to you about summoning Professor Snape to that corridor and then trapping him and attempting to blackmail him.”

“I don’t see that it’s blackmail, sir. All he has to do is ignore me in class, the way he did last year, and stop accusing me of cheating.”

“Mr. Potter, I will need those pictures.”

“I can’t do that, sir. I don’t have them anymore.”

“You destroyed them?”

“I sent them to Madam Marchbanks, sir.”

In the silence that followed, Harry sneaked a look at Dumbledore. He had his eyes closed and was rubbing a hand across his forehead.

Serves you right.

“This pointless antagonism with Professor Snape should cease, Harry,” Dumbledore said, opening his eyes. Harry looked back down at his cloak again.

“I agree, sir. Which is why he should stop accusing me of cheating.”

“Harry, there are reasons you do not understand for why Professor Snape hates you…”

“I don’t care what they are. If he doesn’t stop, I’ll spread the pictures around the school and write those letters.”

“You cannot think that all the people you plan to write to would believe you.”

“I think enough of them would,” Harry said simply. “Or they would go along with me because they’re flattered that the Boy-Who-Lived is writing to them, and start distancing themselves from Snape. A famous child hates someone who’s already hard to get along with, no matter how brilliant he is, and who’s always accusing him of cheating without proof, and who might have made similar accusations about other people, even ones that were believed at the time? I think they’ll reconsider their positions on Snape.”

Dumbledore looked pained, from what little Harry could see of his face. “I had thought you nobler than this, my boy.”

Harry didn’t mean to, but the sharp laughter that came out of his mouth was probably better than a more thoughtful response. It certainly startled Dumbledore.

“What nobility? My so-called family crushed that out of me before I was nine. Sir.”

Dumbledore lowered his eyes. He said nothing for a long time. Then he said, “I trust that you will not spread those pictures around, my boy.”

“I trust that I won’t need to.”

Dumbledore said nothing. Harry stood up, nodded to him, and left the office.

*

Madam Marchbanks sent a letter to Snape. It was private, not a Howler, but it came with her owl, and Harry watched Snape turn pale as he read it. That was all he needed.

Snape ignored him for the rest of the year.

Theo was angry at Harry for confronting Snape without him, Michael was disappointed by the lack of free entertainment, Zacharias explained how he would have liked to see the pictures, and Parvati wanted Harry to write the letters anyway, but they got over that. Harry, meanwhile, picked Ancient Runes and Arithmancy as his electives for the next year, and laughed when Lockhart managed to stab himself through the eye with his wand and had to retire.

*

On the last day of term, Harry went to visit Granger, a new barn owl he had bought and named Garnet for the color of her eyes on his arm.

Granger appeared at once in the alcove and tried to smile at him, but her lip was wobbling the way Harry had made his do when he was taunting Snape. “I—I’ll miss you over the summer, Harry.”

Harry smiled at her and lifted Garnet from his shoulder. “This is Garnet. She’s a specially trained owl. You see, some people have ancestral ghosts haunting properties they’ve had to move out of for one reason or another, or places where no one can live. They still want to communicate with those ghosts even if they can’t see them on a regular basis. So they train owls like Garnet to deliver messages back and forth.”

“How can she do that?” Granger’s face was lively with curiosity.

“Say something to her.”

Granger looked puzzled, but she obediently floated around to face Garnet and said, “Tell Harry that I will miss him.”

Garnet’s eyes opened wide, and she stared at Granger for a long moment with a little shimmer of magic on her feathers. Then she turned around and stared at Harry, and he looked into her eyes.

Tell Harry that I will miss him. The words sparkled in Garnet’s eyes, written as though on bright orange parchment.

“The message is in her eyes,” Harry said softly, and leaned close to whisper to Garnet, so Granger couldn’t hear what he said. “Watch.”

Garnet turned back around and thrust her face forwards at Granger. Granger hovered close, and then began to silently cry.

You’re a good friend, was what Garnet’s eyes said.

Granger stopped crying eventually and began to chatter away, asking about how long the messages could be and how long it would take Garnet to fly back and forth between Hogwarts and the home where Harry lived with Madam Marchbanks. Harry answered them patiently, now and then stroking Garnet’s feathers.

She was highly magical, to the point that she was a beast that made the bauble around his neck sing, and she had cost a lot of Galleons. But Harry thought that having a ghost report to him what was going on at Hogwarts during the summer was worth every Knut.

When he confirmed that Granger could use the owl to communicate with her parents, she really did begin to howl, and Harry left as soon as he could. No matter what she might consider him, Harry didn’t think of her as a close friend.

*

“Um, Harry? Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Harry blinked and looked up. It took him another blink to recognize the small red-haired girl lingering determinedly near his train compartment. “Yes, all right,” he said slowly, and stood up at a nudge from Michael.

He followed her out into the corridor, which was empty presently, and shut the door of the compartment.

Weasley looked up at him with red cheeks and whispered, “I was the one the diary possessed.”

Harry hadn’t known the artifact was a diary, but he didn’t mind knowing. He controlled his expression and nodded. “But you’re all better now?” he asked. “What happened with it, anyway?”

“I don’t know exactly what happened. Professor Dumbledore took the diary. I think he destroyed it.” Weasley began to shake, and wrapped her arms around herself. “I had to spend ages in the hospital wing. I don’t know why anyone didn’t notice.”

Harry had to wonder that, too. He had no reason to notice when Weasley wasn’t staring at him anymore—which she didn’t get as much chance to do since they were in different years and different Houses—but it seemed that at least one of her four brothers at school should have noticed. He gave her as friendly a smile as he could. “Well, I’m glad that you recovered.”

She turned even more tomato-red and whispered, “I swear, I owe it all to you. No one would have known what was going on if you hadn’t stopped the basilisk long enough for Snape to kill it. I—I owe you. If you need anything, just let me know!”

Harry smiled at her more sincerely. Having someone in his debt wasn’t a bad thing, even if right now Weasley was a bit weak and he couldn’t see an immediate use for her. “Thank you, Miss Weasley.”

She giggled at him and scampered away. Harry went back into the train compartment in a thoughtful mood.

He didn’t have to make friends with everyone, he thought, except people who shared important secrets with him. He just had to make them think he thought of them in a friendly way. Granger was an example of that. Now Weasley.

He would spend time thinking about how they could be useful.

*

“Hello, Mr. Potter. My name is Professor Abigail Plumeria. Your guardian told me that you needed instruction in Potions.”

Harry smiled at the tall, thin woman with straight dark hair. “Good morning, Professor Plumeria. Yes. I’m afraid that my own Potions master isn’t that great a teacher.”

Madam Plumeria’s eyes narrowed. “That is Professor Severus Snape?”

“Yes,” Harry murmured, watching her closely.

“We have had our differences.”

I’ll keep that in mind. Harry spread out his books on the big table in the library where he would have his lesson with Greengrass tomorrow. “Could we begin with the Color-Changing Potion? I don’t understand that one well.”

“It is a very complex potion. And many people prefer to simply use the charm.”

“I want to master both, Professor Plumeria. I want to master everything.”

Harry held still while her violet eyes raked him. Then she nodded abruptly. “Then let us begin.”

Harry dived happily into another summer of learning all he could.

The End.