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Not long after Dobby entered the employ of Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter became the number one suspect for the Petrification of Nick, the children were given something entirely new to fret about.

In third year, two or three more hours were going to be added to their day in the form of new elective classes, depending on achievement. Sooner or later some of these classes would become important pillars of their OWL and NEWT examinations, and all of them seemed either interesting or necessary. Once in a while they were even both.

Draco, now long indoctrinated in the Way of the Flashcard, made little cards which outlined the benefits and failings of each course as passed on to him by older, wiser Hufflepuffs. He spent a great deal of time rearranging them to see which ones would fit together properly and adding little gold stars to the ones his mum was insisting on, to see if he couldn't possibly take the classes he liked and still please his mother. Harry spent just as much time taking the gold stars off and lecturing Draco on letting Narcissa Malfoy run his life. Dobby happily obeyed both of them, adding and removing stars at their behest until he ran out of stickers.

Neville got advice from Dora and long letters from Andromeda, Ted, and surprisingly his great-uncle Algernon, who had never shown any interest in him since he'd come to live with the Tonkses. All the other Gryffindors were trying to get into classes as a group, which didn't help matters any, especially since a good portion of them were also trying to get into the easiest classes as well. Neville knew he wasn't the brightest student ever to attend Hogwarts, but a year and a half of Padma and Harry's high standards had inspired a certain academic ethic in him.

Padma herself had not, apparently, made index cards -- or if she had, she was keeping them private. When Draco asked her what she was taking, she shrugged and said she hadn't decided yet; she seemed uninterested in discussing the problem of Arithmancy versus Divination, Muggle Studies against Ancient Runes against Care of Magical Creatures.

Harry had letters from Remus and Sirius, of course. In addition, he had the entire Wizarding World to contend with; there were no less than three articles in the Prophet about his academic choices and a contest to "Pick Potter's Picks!" in Witch Weekly. Sirius was all for betting on the one with the longest odds and then telling Harry to choose that one, but Remus was more levelheaded about it.

***

"Oh, that's very good," Helena Broosh said approvingly. "You're both being perfect gentlemen this week. What reason this docility? You didn't have a pint beforehand, did you?"

"It's ten in the morning!" Sirius protested. "Even unemployed layabouts must have some standards."

He was leaning over Remus' leg, almost draped over it, in fact. In the last ten minutes, Remus' hand had strayed from its posed place on the book he was holding and begun stroking his head, absently smoothing down his hair. The effect had not been lost on Sirius, who was bonelessly relaxed and satisfied with the world. Even Helena hadn't found it in her heart to order his hand back onto the book. Instead, she asked pleasantly, "Good book, Mr. Lupin?"

"Blank book," he replied, tilting it slightly so that she could see the handwritten page tucked inside it. "Harry sent me a letter this morning, I'm reading that."

"He's in the middle of choosing classes," Sirius added. "Far too grown up to take his godfather's advice, of course."

"His godfather's advice is what we call corrupting a minor," Remus said calmly. "He'd do much better to listen to me and diversify his classes. He has the academic standing to take three new courses -- "

"On top of Quidditch?"

"Why not? If he finds he can't handle the workload, he can cut back next year. It'll keep him out of mischief."

"That's not true, that never worked on me," Sirius pointed out.

"You skipped class half the time and copied my notes," Remus replied. His fingers tightened playfully in Sirius' hair before releasing it and returning to holding his book. Sirius gave Helena a see what you've done look.

"How much longer before we get to inspect the masterpiece?" he asked.

"It's almost finished; I think perhaps next time we may start putting the movement charms on it. I'll need to schedule a few sessions with you alone, Mr. Black -- Mr. Lupin is welcome to attend, but we'll need to concentrate on you in order to get the canine half of your personality sorted out quite right."

"If you're lucky she'll play fetch with you," Remus murmured.

"If you're lucky I'll forget you said that," Sirius answered cheerfully.

"You'd sit up and beg if I dangled a treat in front of you -- "

"Mr. Lupin!" Helena said, feigning scandal. Remus laughed. "Mr. Black, what have you done to my polite, obedient sitter?"

"Don't answer that," Remus advised.

"No fear," Sirius said.

"Do tell me more about Harry's classes. What do you think he ought to take, Mr. Black?"

Sirius shrugged without falling out of pose. "Divs is an easy slide and I think he'd enjoy Care of Magical Creatures, but if he wants to spend all his time swotting for Ancient Runes and Arithmancy he's quite welcome to do so. I never tell Harry what to do anymore unless he asks; if I haven't taught him to make smart decisions by now, I doubt he'll ever know."

"That's a very mature attitude for a parent."

"Well, I never had to change diapers. We met Harry when he was already quite well-developed enough to decide things for himself; I just made sure he knew which decisions were going to be good ones."

"Which Divs is not," Remus replied.

"You don't approve of Divination?" Helena asked, paintbrush flicking across the canvas.

"I don't."

"Remus is the only student in the history of Hogwarts School to fail Divination," Sirius said sourly.

"I'm sure that's not true," Remus answered. "And anyway, I didn't fail. I conscientiously refused to take the exam."

"It was an OWL!"

"I didn't need it."

"You refused to take an OWL?" Helena inquired.

"I got tired of faking prophecies and disagreeing with the professor," Remus said. Helena grinned. There was a spark of defiance in his eyes even after twenty years. "I thought it was a pile of bunk, teaching students who didn't have a natural gift and expecting them to actually produce something. Class was structured entirely wrong -- we should have learned Divs theory as a unit of some other course. The professor told me off for being a swot, which I daresay I was, and I told him precisely what I thought of Divination. He sent me to the Headmaster and I told him, too."

"What did the Headmaster say?"

"He said it was nice to see me rebelling a little and then offered me a butterscotch dragonfly, " Remus sighed. "Apparently I was an unnaturally obedient child."

"You were, you know," Sirius said.

"But I'd taken it, thanks to this idiot's suggestion -- "

"Hey!"

"And they wouldn't simply let me drop out, so I refused to attend class and didn't take the OWL." Remus grinned. "Needless to say, I will not be advising Harry to take it. I think Ancient Runes wouldn't present too much of a challenge, he's rather good with languages, and Care of Magical Creatures is fun. He doesn't really need Muggle Studies, but Arithmancy could be very useful."

"What's he going to need a lot of runic tosh for?" Sirius asked.

"He might be a historian."

Sirius snorted. "You don't have very high career standards."

"He's never going to need a career," Remus said firmly, "so he can do whatever he jolly well likes. He ought to be developing his academic mind so that he'll at least put it to some use for the good of wizardkind."

"You'll have to take it back," Helena said to Sirius, laughing. "He wants young Harry to be the saviour of wizardkind!"

Remus flushed and fell silent, but he was still smiling slightly.

"Anyway, it's just a relief he's not an idiot. I can do something with a plucky, bright boy," Sirius said.

Helena smiled and tried to capture, in the brief moment it appeared, the proud smile on Sirius Black's face.

***

Harry was not, however, feeling either plucky or particularly bright that morning.

It was a Monday, and much to his regret he'd been up late the night before, hiding out behind the Quidditch supplies shed with the others. Dobby had been cleaning the common room (as he often had to be commanded not to do twice a day) and found a hidden packet of Lucky Stripe cigarettes, clearly secreted away by one of the older students. He had dutifully presented them to Draco, who had put them before the group for consideration.

Padma had been the one to suggest they try them, as children of a certain age generally do, and while Draco and Neville refused, in fear of their respective mums, Harry hadn't been able to resist Padma's dare. He'd matched her through two cigarettes while all four of them laughed at the colours their eyes changed as they smoked. Afterwards he'd been really splendidly sick, as had Padma, and he'd spent all night with a rotten taste in his mouth that no amount of toothscrubbing charms would get rid of -- and the Voice had lurked on the edge of his hearing all night.

Neville and Draco had gloated indecently over breakfast. His head still hurt.

The screeching chirps of the Cornish Pixies in the cage at the front of class weren't helping. Dora -- Professor Tonks -- had brought in a cageful of them as a practical demonstration. She was showing the rest of the students how they reacted to various stimuli: freezing charms, bright lights, sudden noises. Needless to say, Harry was suffering the consequences of his actions.

Class couldn't end too soon. Even as Dora was dismissing them his headache seemed to be getting better, but then...

It Happened.

"Don't forget to read chapters nine and ten and come up with three questions the chapters didn't cover," Dora said as they were packing up. She leaned on the table on which the Pixie cage rested, crossing her arms. "And no cribbing, I shall know if you do -- "

She raised her hand to shake an admonitory finger at them in jest, but the wide sleeve of her robe caught on the cover she'd just put over the cage, which in turn snagged on the cage and the whole thing, including the now-unbalanced table, went over backwards in a really tremendous crash.

"Not to worry!" Dora called from the floor, as everyone crowded around. "Just got to untangle -- "

There was a scream of joy from the Pixies as their slightly smashed cage door popped open. There was a matching scream, not quite as joyous, from the class.

"Shut the door! Keep your heads!" Dora called, still floorbound by her sleeve. "Remember your lesson! OW!" she added, as one of the Pixies grabbed her nose and tugged at it.

Most of the students took cover as the Pixies began to zoom around the room, knocking over books, flinging papers everywhere, shaking the fixtures and overturning the desks. Harry tried to grab one and nearly lost a finger to needle-sharp teeth. Hexes were flying everywhere but only a few Pixies didn't manage to dodge. The crashing grew louder; a fortunately-unlit chandelier fell, and Dora shrugged bodily out of her still-tangled robes, raising her wand just as the door burst open and thus missing the bulk of the Pixies out of sheer surprise.

"Professor Tonks, my classroom is, as you know, below yours and I cannot -- "

Snape stopped in mid-tirade. A Pixie grabbed him by the ear and he batted it off so hard it hit the wall with a loud thud. He slammed the door shut behind him.

Harry watched, impressed, as he stalked down what had been the central aisle of the classroom, hexing into petrification anything that got in his way. But the Pixies were regrouping and there was another ceiling-suspended candelabra --

"Look out!" Dora shouted, pointing over his shoulder. He turned, ducked, leapt, and knocked her off her feet, successfully if painfully protecting them both from the swing of the second chandelier. Harry saw him rise up on his knees again, twist, and shout a freezing charm that managed to petrify all but one remaining Pixie, which hooted and fled for the safety of the cage.

Snape seemed to take a moment to contemplate his handiwork, then twisted back around to look down at Dora, whose waist he was more or less straddling.

"All right?" he asked.

"All right," she replied. "You?"

He stood and stepped around her, offering his hand. She was already pushing herself up, however, and didn't notice his offer of help as she dusted off the trousers and plain Muggle t-shirt she had been wearing under her robes.

"Class is dismissed," she called. There was a mad rush for the door. Harry, whose books had been scattered, began to gather them together again after the dust had settled.

"You ought to ward the cage doors," Snape said, examining the bent and twisted Pixie cage.

"I didn't intend the whole table to go over," she answered, rather tensely Harry thought. "Thank you for helping."

Snape, with a gracelessness that was rather typical of him, shrugged. "I have a class still in session. If you will excuse me."

"Of course."

He left quickly, shoving hovering Pixies out of his way as he went. After the door shut behind him, Dora slumped down on one of the desks.

"Damn," she said quietly.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked hesitantly, finally standing. She started and glanced at him.

"Oh, yes Harry -- thanks," she said with a smile. "One just feels a fool being a professor of Dark Arts and letting loose a cageful of Pixies."

"Oh," Harry said. He wasn't sure it was quite proper for a student to comfort a teacher.

"Especially in front of Professor Snape. He does still make me think I'm an idiot, a lot of the time."

Harry shifted his weight from foot to foot. "He does that to everyone," he ventured.

"Yes, I know." She shook her head. "I'm fine, Harry. You'd better run along to your next class."

Harry hesitated, then shouldered his bag and left. He could hear her begin to slowly sweep up the debris and re-cage the Pixies as he left.

He was startled to see Professor Snape leaning against the wall outside, eyes closed, breathing deeply. He suspected now was not a good time to disturb him, and crept away in the other direction as quietly as he could.

***

Harry had very little time that week to puzzle out just what was going on between Professor Snape and Professor Tonks, however. The Quidditch season was speeding towards the final championship game, and practices were becoming more intense.

Slytherin, having pretty much wrecked the Quidditch rulebook that year, were well ahead of the rest of the school in terms of game wins. They were slated to play Hufflepuff, who were surprisingly their biggest contender this year, while Ravenclaw would be playing Gryffindor just for a chance to stay in the running. If Slytherin won, as they were expected to, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor would probably be competing for the other spot in the championship.

Harry, adjusting a strap on his glove as they walked out to the field, listened to the usual good-natured bickering between teammates and again wondered how he'd ended up in this position. True, it felt terribly grown-up to walk out onto the Pitch in his Quidditch leathers, but the fact that he was so small that his leathers had to be specially shrunken for him last year sort of balanced that out. Being watched by the entire school was not exactly low-pressure, but then they were all watching him anyway, these days. Watching and saying things under their breath.

Parselmouth. Slytherin. Heir.

Harry watched Flint shake hands with the Hufflepuff captain and prepared to mount; it all fell away when he was in the air, anyway. Then it was tactics, true, but it was straightforward and there were limits to the movements you could execute on a broomstick. And it was flying which mattered, anyway. Nothing could touch him when he flew.

By the time he reached scanning altitude, the Quaffle was already up and the game was well in hand. Hufflepuff weren't strategists, and they relied on good defence and a very solid set of Beaters to carry them through whatever convoluted tricks Slytherin was likely to play. They had one real star player, their Seeker Diggory, who had been mainly responsible for their very decent season and was even now circling Harry's position. He tossed Harry a wink as he dove past him, but Harry didn't follow and the feint proved fruitless.

He could see the glint of Draco's omnioculars from the Hufflepuff stands where he was sharing them with Neville, who had defected to the Hufflepuff side out of sympathy. In the Slytherin stands, Professor Snape was a black blot at the end of one bench. Across the aisle, in the Gryffindor half, Dora was a wild mess of Hufflepuff colours, as were most of the Gryffindors. Harry never thought of Dora as a Gryffindor -- he never thought of her as anything, really, since unlike Snape and McGonagall, she didn't seem to be tied up in House affiliations. He supposed she would support the underdog; she always did.

He didn't see Cricket, which didn't seem to matter much at the time.

He dipped down into the level of regular game play and dodged around the Hufflepuff Chasers, keeping one eye out for the Snitch while generally making a nusiance of himself to the Hufflepuff team. Diggory was still circling above, but he looked like he was about to dive...

Yes....let me kill...rip...feed --

The Voice brought him up short and he nearly collided with Towler, who shoved him away quickly. He shook his head to clear it and climbed for altitude.

Feed...so hungry...NO!

Harry had no time to be startled by the sudden cry of the Voice; beyond the Pitch, in the Forbidden Forest, an enormous flock of birds took flight. Not simply a flock, in fact, but a multitude, an exodus -- birds of every shape and size and colour, birds of every breed the Forest housed, rising at the treeline and spreading across the canopy. As if some large predator was wending its way through the trees...

Yes....

Prey....

Harry dropped like a stone, catching the Quaffle in mid-toss as he did so and ignoring the furious shouts of the players.

"Stop the game!" he shouted to Madam Hooch, who stared at him. "Stop the game!"

The Hufflepuffs were chasing after the Quaffle, and Lee Jordan was shouting that Potter had just executed an illegal move subject to forfeit, but Harry wasn't giving up the ball.

"Stop the game!" Harry repeated.

"He's right!" Cedric yelled. "Something's happened -- look at the birds."

Hooch turned to see the mass migration; in another minute the birds would be over the stands. She blew her whistle, shrilly, and the players slowly skewed into halts and hovers.

A thick black shadow poured over the stands as the birds, whirring frantically through the air, rushed past. There were nasty crunches as some of them whacked into goalposts in their panic. Diggory, still descending, had to duck low against his broomstick to avoid getting bowled over by a large, ornate bird that looked vaguely like the vicious ancestor of a peacock.

"What's going on?" the Hufflepuff Keeper asked. The other players were drawing into little knots, watching the flight.

"Something's in the forest," Madam Hooch said. Her voice chilled Harry's blood more thoroughly than even the Voice had. He was aware that the Quaffle had slipped his grasp and landed on the Pitch with a soft thud, and that the Bludgers were having a field day with the birds; the Snitch was probably lost somewhere in the avian melee.

There was a shrill, inhuman scream from the forest; Harry dimly recognised it as the furious hiss of a she-snake defending a burrow, multiplied a thousandfold.

The thing that owned the Voice was in the Forest.

He drifted away as the birds continued to flock overhead. The students in the stands were staring upwards, stunned. Professor Snape was watching the treeline from the top of the stands, looking like nothing so much as a large black crow himself. Dora was nowhere to be seen.

"What is it, Harry?" Draco whispered, as Harry drifted over the Hufflepuff stand.

"It's a snake," Harry answered. "A big one."

"How big?" Neville asked.

"I'm going to find out," Harry said.

"Harry -- "

"I'm going to," Harry said defiantly, glaring at Neville. "I can carry one of you, but I haven't got much time before my cover's gone."

"You'd better take Neville," Draco said. "I've been in enough trouble."

"Coming or not?" Harry challenged. Neville looked scared, but he hooked his leg around Harry's broomstick and took the offered hand, hauling himself up. The Nimbus bucked a little under the sudden weight shift, but Harry got control and dropped down between stands. The flock was thinning out.

With a burst of speed, the Nimbus darted out and upwards, almost into the flock itself; Harry slid them around the edge of the flock and up above it, where they couldn't be seen. He made for the place the last few stragglers were fleeing from, Neville clutching tightly to his ribcage.

"Why are we doing this?" Neville shouted into the wind.

"I want to know what this thing is!" Harry shouted back. There was another scream. "Whatever it is, it's angry..."

He scanned the canopy, looking for breaks in the leaves. Out here the forest grew thick and dense, but it was uncultivated and there were a lot of dead branches. He caught a glimpse of a herd of horses -- no, of unicorns, wheeling hard away from the source of the disturbance. He thought he saw centaurs riding the edge of the herd. Looking over his shoulder, he could see deer and some kind of small antelope stampeding in the opposite direction, out towards Hogsmeade. He pulled up sharp and turned west.

Down below there was a flicker of sunlight on something that looked suspiciously like scales.

He hovered, becoming aware that even as he stared at what must be a snake, a snake as thick around as the trees it was moving past, he was also hearing not the Voice but a roar composed of loud clicks and clacks, like rattles banging together.

"Oh Merlin," Neville said, pointing. A head rose out of a clearing in the forest, an enormous serpentine head. It was about a hundred yards away and it was facing the other direction; even as they watched, it ducked back down in a striking motion.

"It's fighting something," Harry said. He dropped slowly down to the canopy-level, then just underneath it. Up here in the highest branches it was cold and wet; he inched forward slowly, then dropped again when the branches thinned a little.

They could see the thing more clearly now, an enormous serpent with a spiky crown jutting out from the back of its head like a dinosaur -- triceratops, his nine year old self reminded him. Up came the old rhyme from a book Remus had found for him which he had treasured for years -- triceratops was dangerous, impervious and strong; the predators that challenged it did not last very long.

From here they could almost see what it was attacking; Harry lifted a broad leaf slightly, and he and Neville both sucked in their breath. Down below they could see the high, vaulted opening of a stone-paved tunnel, clearly man-made and vaguely resembling the pictures Harry had seen of Roman viaducts in some of Remus' books. He could even make out the legend over the cave mouth, but that wasn't what stunned him.

In front of the cave was an enormous spider, easily ten feet tall, with fangs upraised and red eyes glistening. Other spiders were clustered around it -- smaller, but still much larger than a man. They were darting forward towards the enormous serpent, trying to bite through its scaly hide and not making much headway. The biggest one was repelling every attempt the snake made to get back into the cave, assisted by a blur of blue and silver --

"The Anglia!" Neville cried.

Arthur Weasley's flying Ford Anglia was indeed joining the fray; its windscreen and rearview mirrors were gone and its bumper and hood were heavily dented, but there could be no doubt that the automobile was alive and thriving in the Forest.

But even as they watched, the spiders were losing ground and the Anglia with them. The serpent had coiled itself through the trees and now, with a flick of its tail, sent the spiders tumbling; the Anglia's horn blew, and the rest of the spiders began to retreat, the smallest leaping onto the Anglia's body. It sped away through the forest, bumping and bouncing, and the way was clear. The serpent, pausing at the entryway, flicked its tongue into the tunnel; satisfied there was no further danger, it vanished inside with lightning speed.

It was only then that Harry realised there were more spiders, and they were climbing up the tree he and Neville were sheltering in. He wheeled the broomstick just as a sticky spiderweb caught him on the ankle; kicking off his left shinguard, he urged the Nimbus on faster while Neville shouted and cursed behind him. Harry didn't know Neville knew words like that.

Branches slapped at their faces and leaves tangled in their hair as they flew, avoiding the leaping, spitting, clicking spiders in fast pursuit. They burst out through the treeline trailing spiderwebs and a split branch of an oak tree, somewhere west of the Pitch. The spiders came as far as the edge, no further, but Harry was not paying the slightest attention. He made for the Pitch like a bat out of hell, which at that point he rather resembled.

Most of the school seemed to be milling around on the grass. Harry dropped down between the stands again and landed, shaking the oak-branch loose and tearing spiderweb tendrils off his clothing. Neville was slapping at leaves, pulling them out of his hair and spitting bark out of his mouth.

"What's going on?" Neville asked, as Harry leaned around the edge of the stands. Two people were carrying what looked like a very small mannequin on a stretcher towards the school. Too small, and with upraised hands...

"Something got Cricket," Harry said, horrified.

"What?"

"Cricket's hurt -- looks like he's been frozen, like Nick was..."

"Harry, this is really serious, we have to tell -- " Neville broke off as a shadow loomed over them.

"Harry," said Headmaster Dumbledore, quietly. "Once more, I think perhaps you have some explaining to do."

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