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AU. When Sirius and Remus go looking for Peter Pettigrew, they make a wrong turn and someone else finds him first. Eight years later, Sirius owns a book store and Remus manages it for him. When Harry stumbles into the store and they find out the truth, they decide it's time to be Stealing Harry. (SB/RL slash relationship in later chapters.)

This is where they keep the magic.

There's always the chance, after all, that someone might be innocent, and plenty of people serve their time in Azkaban and survive it, even if they're never the same afterwards. They don't snap the wands of prisoners, whether or not they're serving life-sentences. They bring them here.

Only when someone dies is the wand disposed of, in a careful manner, by a trained expert. The current Ollivander, of the generations who have owned Ollivander's, has both provided and destroyed the wands for many of Azkaban's residents.

Among those he'd supplied, and those he had every expectation of disposing of, was the wand of Lucius Malfoy. Ten inches, Yew with a core of unicorn hair. Ollivander found this whimsical, as the boy himself looked vaguely like a unicorn: a pale-haired, inquisitive, and calm child, so very calm that Ollivander had peered into the boy's eyes to make sure he wasn't...damaged, somehow. There had been a keen intelligence there, but also an upsetting coolness of emotion. There was no hint of mercy in those eyes, even when he was eleven. That he should be a murderer had not shocked Ollivander.

This is the room where they keep the wands of the condemned, row upon row of cubicles lined in velvet, a name and the Azkaban serial number etched on the glass front of each small case. Some are empty; not nearly all are full, but enough are occupied that a wizard, on entering, would feel a chill down his spine. A wand is a part of one; seeing this room is like seeing a roomful of extracted teeth, carefully labeled and preserved. It is deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic, accessed by an unassuming little door labeled "storeroom."

(Real storerooms are never actually labeled that.)

And several floors up, a rat has crept into the Ministry and is beginning what he knows will be a long series of tests against the magical wards placed around the room of wands.

***

Remus finally made the appointment for his examination at St Mungo's in mid-September. It was the Ministry's not-terribly-subtle way of keeping tabs on werewolves, and though Sirius offered to come along, he didn't want Sirius there, hovering and making a fuss. He'd rather just quietly get it over with. Sirius was bound to raise hell if he had to actually see what werewolves underwent on the medical end, and he couldn't come into the private evaluation anyway. It was easiest for all concerned if he simply had the row ahead of time and convinced Sirius to meet him for lunch afterwards.

Not that he was ever very hungry. The whole process was humiliating, and even looking forward to the friendly, scatter-brained company of his official evaluator, Rubin, didn't do much to assuage that.

The medical examination passed without incident; blood, hair, and saliva samples, a detailed history of the last three years' worth of Changes, physical appearance documentation including scars (plenty of those), and the tolerance tests. Remus hated that part more than anything, even stripping down for the physical appearance photographs. Technically the tolerance tests were supposed to measure how close he was to "feral" by exposing him to increasing doses of silver; a nasty side effect was that it also tested his tolerance for pain.

Finally, tired and nursing three bandaged burns on the back of his hand, he walked down the corridor to the evaluation office with something approaching relief. Seth Rubin was a friend of Moody's and had known Remus since he was a child; he'd treated him not only through the incident at school with Severus, but through the scheduled Ministry-required checkups and a brief but memorable flip-out when he was nineteen. He knew everything -- the lycanthropy, obviously, but also about the weird, sometimes prescient dreams, and his feelings for Sirius back before, long before, Sirius himself had known about them.

"Come in!" the Healer called when Remus knocked, and he let himself into the unchanging office full of files, some of them charmed to float in the air for lack of desk space. "Eleven o'clock...must be Remus Lupin."

"Hello, Seth," Remus called, pushing a floating pile of files to one side. A small, tidy-looking man beamed up at him from where he was scrawling notes on a Muggle yellow legal pad.

"Have a seat. I've been waiting rather impatiently for this meeting," the man said with a grin. "You had such exciting things to tell me, three years ago, and then you up and disappeared until last year..."

Remus nodded. "I'm sure you heard about Harry."

"One can hardly avoid it," the Healer said with a smile, passing a sheet of parchment across the desk. "That's your official certification of continuing stability. I thought we might as well get the formalities out of the way."

"Er..." Remus scanned down the questionnaire that Rubins was supposed to administer. "It's filled out."

"Stupid, pointless things," Seth said agreeably, leaning forward. "Only someone who has never had contact with a werewolf would ask if you had come to terms with the fact that you turn into a hairy slavering beast once a month."

"Oh." Remus gave him a slightly confused look. "You never did this before."

"You rarely had anything you needed to discuss, before," Seth replied. "Other than what's on that questionnaire."

"And I do now?"

The Healer leaned back in his chair. "Well, you've been raising a child, and the last time we spoke there was the issue of a relationship..."

"Oh...Sirius. Yes." Remus coughed. "Er...yes. Raising Harry. That's going well."

Seth grinned. "In your own time, Lupin. If you don't want to talk, I won't make you. Tell you what, play you two games of Exploding Snap while you tell me all about Harry, and you ought to be right on schedule for discharge."

Forty minutes later, Sirius sniffed the air as Remus emerged from the hospital, pulling on his coat.

"It smells like sulfur," he said. "What do they DO to you in there?"

"Relaxation technique," Remus answered with a grin, as Sirius straightened the collar of his coat. They were careful, in public; more careful than either of them wanted to be, but there was a lot at stake. The Wizarding World took as well to two men kissing as it did to publicly-acknowledged werewolves. Sirius had begun fussing with his clothing as a sort of substitute affectionate gesture, and Remus rather enjoyed it. "Where are we going for lunch?"

"Actually, we're meeting someone," Sirius said. "My solicitor."

"Ah yes, the Payne," Remus said with a grin. "Business lunch?"

"Yeah, there are one or two things I need to talk to you about before we meet. Er, I'm making you Harry's legal guardian if I die."

Remus frowned. "Can we do that? Does Payne know about...me? I mean, if you're doing it without his knowledge, it'd never stand up in court."

Sirius gave him a guilty look. "I did sort of mention the situation. But -- " he added anxiously, " -- but he knows about me, too, about the animagery, I mean, and about us."

"Us?" Remus asked with a grin.

"He's really very confidential."

"Should be, for what you pay him," Remus sighed. "He knows a way around the laws?"

"He seems to."

"I'm not so sure I'm happy with you telling him about me, but we can have a shouting match about it later."

"I sort of had to, for the other thing."

Remus raised his eyebrows. "There's another thing?"

"Yeah. You remember the Dorian Gray portrait thing?"

"The letter you got?"

"I was thinking about doing it."

Remus grinned. "Vanity, thy name is Sirius. This year is a good look for you, I think."

"I want you to have it done with me."

At that point, Remus blinked in shock and, distracted, walked into a lamppost.

***

The first few days of school went quietly enough, and they were well into the third week by the time Snape stopped Harry as he was leaving Potions class and asked if he could have a word with him that evening. Harry, who had been expecting this, went back to his rooms after dinner and fetched the Quidditch playbook he'd been working on all summer, when he wasn't out with his friends or socialising with the snakes at the bottom of the garden. He assumed Snape had probably been giving him time to finish it at school, without wanting to seem like he had. Harry was keen on Quidditch, though, and if he couldn't play it, making up new plays was the next best thing.

"You've anticipated my request, I see," Snape said, looking up from his desk as Harry entered with the playbook folder under one arm. "Settling into your second year?"

"Yes, sir."

"Gryffindor has already begun practice."

"Yes, sir, Oliver Wood has had to train some new players."

"A good excuse."

Harry smiled a little at the sour expression on Snape's face. "I thought it might be better if you told Captain Flint that he was lagging, Professor. I don't think he wants to hear it from me."

Snape gave him a sharp look. "I'd like you to present your new plays, please."

Harry opened the playbook and turned it around so that Snape could peruse them. "I didn't know what you wanted specifically, so I wrote three plays for Seekers and two formations for coordinated offence," he explained.

"Offence?" Snape asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, when I was playing last year, it looked like nobody changed much," Harry explained. "I mean, the Seekers fly low and high a lot, but mostly the rest of the players stay on a level with the hoops, even midfield. Nobody's really making use of the full space. If a player...here, I drew pictures, but it doesn't help much..." Harry flipped to the first play, and Snape looked down at the page, dismayed. It was covered in notes and scribbles. Harry had copied it out four times, but it was frustrating to discuss a three-dimensional game in two dimensions.

"I did the best I could," Harry said. Snape continued to examine the page, fingers drifting here and there over the notes, until finally he rose and went to the bookshelf behind his desk. He took down a thick book with "Quidditch Practical Guide" in gold on the black calfskin binding, and opened it flat on his desk.

To Harry's delight, it wasn't a book at all -- it was a platform from which six golden hoops sprung, a Quidditch pitch in miniature. Fourteen little figures rose up, half black and half white, along with four dots of light -- two blue, one green, and one gold.

"Show me," Snape said. "Use your wand to guide the players."

Harry, fascinated, prodded one of the little black figures with his wand, and it stuck to the player's robe so that he could move it about. He placed the Keepers at either end, the Seekers, Beaters, Bludgers, and Snitch out of the way, and the six Chasers closely clustered at one goal.

"If a player gets the Quaffle," he said, attaching the little green point of light to one of the black players, near the black goal, "He generally either shoots straight through the crowd, or he passes. Sometimes he'll rise up a little -- " he stuck the player to the end of his wand and drew it along, over the heads of the other figures, " -- but that's considered sort of arrogant, right?"

"Generally," Snape said, reservedly. "It looks like trick-playing. Flying circles around the other team."

"But the problem is, nine times out of ten, if you get the Quaffle, you're going to lose it within ten seconds."

"The Chaser's Median. You've been researching."

"Yes, sir." Harry leaned forward, dragging the player back where he'd been. "But if you can break away from the crowd, in any direction, you've got a good chance of keeping hold of the Quaffle long enough to get in scoring range."

Snape was silent, waiting for him to continue. Harry, carefully, tipped the player's broomstick up in a flyover feint, and then dropped player and broomstick straight down, executing a backwards move in a vertical plane.

One black eyebrow lifted.

"If I may," Snape said, and Harry sat back. Snape took out his own wand and re-set the figures, then flicked his wand over the entire arrangement. The players burst into motion, and he watched for several seconds. Finally, the tip of his wand, hovering over the playing area, dipped. The player Harry had demonstrated with executed the move flawlessly, and sped towards the goal while half the players shot upwards and the other half collided with each other in confusion.

"Seems to work," Harry said, a little proudly.

"Indeed. Did you have much assistance with it?"

"Assistance?" Harry asked, confused.

"From your godfather."

"Well...we talked about it..." Harry said. "I didn't cheat!"

"I'm not implying you did. This is...very reminiscent of his playing style, that's all," Snape said.

"Is it all right?"

Snape closed the Quidditch Practical, and steepled his fingers over it, resting his hawklike nose against his knuckles.

"I'd like to examine the other plays, if I may -- I'm fairly sure I can re-create them from your notes, with the help of the Practical. If they are acceptable, I'll pass them on to Mr. Flint."

Realisation dawned on Harry. "You're not going to tell the team I wrote them, are you."

"Not unless you want to be ostracised by your team for the rest of the year. If you present them to the team, you will be ignored. If I force them upon the team in your name...I think you can see where this is going, Harry."

Harry sighed and sat back. He knew it was no good; Snape was right, of course. But he said it anyway. It had to be said. "That's not fair."

"Life rarely is, especially for those who represent the bottom of the age scale in any given group," Snape said, almost absently.

"On the other hand..." Harry said thoughtfully, "We'll still win if we use them."

Snape nodded, gravely.

"When do we start practice?" Harry asked.

"Sunday," Snape replied. "I'd be ready for an early wake-up. You're dismissed."

"Thank you, sir," Harry said, standing. "Sir..."

"Yes?"

"Could I try the Practical sometime?"

Snape frowned. "It's a complicated magical mechanism. Perhaps next year."

Harry nodded and left the office, wandering down the labyrinthine maze of corridors that led to the Slytherin common room. It was disappointing, knowing that he wouldn't get credit for plays that Sirius and Remus had both said were brilliant, but Snape was right; at least this way the plays would get used --

Come...come to me...

Harry stopped, just outside the common room, startled.

Snake? he asked, reaching into his pocket. Snake, now almost too big to be carried around with him, complained sleepily.

What is it? Snake demanded. I was napping.

Harry shook his head. He must have been hearing things.

Let me...

He hadn't imagined that.

Let me...

Rip you, tear you, kill you...

In his pocket, Snake had pulled himself into a tiny ball, and was actually shaking with tension.

What is it? Harry asked. There was silence, and Harry bolted through the portrait-hole, closing it quickly behind him. Only when he was alone in the dormitory, with the door closed on the noise of the common room, did Snake stop shivering. He took Snake out of his pocket and set him on the pillow of his bed, watching as the muscular, sinuous body quivered with alertness.

What was that? Harry asked again. Snake curled in on himself and slithered under a corner of the blanket.

Big, came the muffled reply.

***

Sirius had gone to bed late, having stayed up reading, and he was barely asleep when he was bothered by the noise of the bedsprings and the shift in weight on the bed. He opened his eyes to slits, just enough to see Remus sitting on the edge of the bed, the hollows and ridges of his spine sharply outlined by the moonlight spilling in through the windows. His head was bowed, and his hands were running through his hair, smoothing and then disordering it, as though he were thinking deeply.

"Moony?" Sirius asked, propping himself up on one elbow. "All right then, mate?"

"Didn't mean to wake you," came the reply, slightly muffled. "Sorry."

"Not to worry, I can sleep through the day. Something bothering you? Dreams again?"

"No, just...uneasy sleep. It's all right, Pads, honestly, you can go back to sleep. Sometimes I think better at night, that's all."

"Care and feeding of the urban werewolf, Lupinus bibliophilim," Sirius said, placing one hand on Remus' spine. The skin was cold and taut under his fingers.

"You're warm."

"Come find out just how warm," he invited, grinning. Remus leaned back into his hand a little, but that was all.

"I keep thinking about the portrait," he said. "I'm sorry I haven't made up my mind yet. I know you're waiting."

"Hell, I don't think that much about it. Take your time. I'm still uncertain myself."

"It's not just that. It's...telling another person what I am. Explaining that I'm...sick. Knowing how people think of it."

"She said in the letter she'd be all right with it."

"They always do say."

"I was all right with it."

"Yeah, after a week or two. Don't think I didn't notice. Not that I blame you, mind." Remus was silent for a little while. "Does it strike you, Sirius, that I'm a little high-strung?"

"Not particularly. You worry too much, that's all." Sirius slid his hand down Remus' spine, inching forward to wrap one arm around his waist and pull him gently backwards. Remus shrugged and went, laughing a little.

"That," he said, "is because you don't do this often enough."

"Throw you down on the bed and ravish you? I do it all the time."

"I know," Remus said happily.

"What are you worrying about at two in the morning?"

"Stupid things people worry about at two in the morning. Harry. You. Whether or not I remembered to send off the owl-post orders at the shop yesterday. The portrait."

Sirius snuffled the small, soft hairs on his neck. "The portrait."

"We haven't talked about it in a while."

"I figured you needed to think about it."

"I did. But I haven't been, really. It's just...how do you tell someone that? Hello, I'm a werewolf. This is Sirius, he turns into a dog once in a while, and occasionally we have mindblowing sex."

"Occasionally?" Sirius asked, scornfully.

"All right, well, I'm not going to go into the details of my sex life with anyone, portraitist or not, but if your solicitor guessed, they will." Remus sighed. "It's such a huge...you hide this thing all your life, and then you're expected to just blurt it out to a stranger. You know what I mean. It's like telling people you're an Animagus. It's personal."

"But you do tell secrets sometimes. I mean, you never seemed very careful about people knowing you fancy blokes."

"Not in Muggle society. It's not really okay, there, but it's...more okay than in our world. And it's one thing to talk about that, it's another thing to...to have a bloke, and tell people about that."

Sirius was silent for a while. Finally, he took a breath.

"Want to have sex?" he asked. Remus burst out laughing. Sirius scowled. "It's not funny!"

"Sex is not the answer to every existential dilemma, Sirius."

"I don't see why not. It's a good distraction, and most existential dilemmas are caused by not having enough to do," Sirius said persuasively.

"I'm all right."

"Good, because I'm knackered." Sirius said, eyes drooping shut again. "Remind me at breakfast."

"Remind you?"

"Mmm, 'bout the portrait. We'll talk."

"All right," Remus said, softly.

"Sleep now."

"Yes, Sirius."

***

The next day was Saturday, which meant there was no reason for an early-morning breakfast; Harry and his friends could sleep late until the Great Hall was almost empty and still meet up at the Slytherin table for a breakfast together. Draco and Neville were already in the Great Hall, standing together under the Gryffindor banner and talking, when Padma met Harry as she came down the stairs and he came up.

Harry had lain awake the night before, huddled completely under his blankets with Snake wrapped tightly around his right wrist, wondering if he should share what he'd heard. None of the others knew he was a Parselmouth, although he'd once spoken to Snake in front of Neville, and he wanted to keep it that way. When he was eight or nine, he'd hated all the secrets he'd had to keep -- Remus' condition, his own identity, who his parents were...

Now though, back in this world, the Wizarding world -- back in a place where his scar marked him and everyone knew his history -- Harry clung to his secrets with a perverse determination. And perhaps it had merely been a big snake passing through the area, anyway. It could have been talking to the rats on the grounds, for all Harry knew.

Snake, having migrated upwards and wrapped around his neck like a living choker, still trembled from time to time, and he kept reaching up to adjust the little creature's chokehold on his throat. He used a quick warming charm on a plateful of bacon and scrambled eggs, sharing scraps of the egg with Snake.

"What about you, Harry?"

He glanced up from his plate, blinking. Draco was looking at him intently.

"Sorry, what?" he asked. Neville snickered.

"I have extra Transfigurations, Padma wants to re-write her Astronomy paper, and Neville needs books," Draco said. "But then we're all going on an adventure this afternoon. Game?"

Harry shrugged. "I have to be in bed early -- Quidditch practice starts tomorrow."

"It won't take long," Padma replied. "It's just up near the Ravenclaw tower."

"This isn't going to be the three-headed-dog all over again, is it?" Draco asked.

"Whose fault was that?" Padma retorted pointedly. "It's fine, it's not even dangerous. It looks like it might be a music classroom."

"They used to teach music at Hogwarts," Harry said.

"I hear they still do, at Beauxbatons," Draco put in.

"Beauxbatons?"

"It's a wizarding school on the continent. Mum almost sent me there, except they said they weren't taking any foreign students," Draco answered. "Just as well. Wretched school uniforms, all blue satin and bows."

"Aww, but wouldn't oo wook adorable in ickle bows?" Harry teased.

"Suck it, Potter."

"Don't you wish, Malfoy," Harry replied amiably. "Anyway, they used to teach all kinds of things in the olden days. Music, elocution, dancing -- "

"Ew," Padma said, wrinkling her nose.

"Girls had to take domestic arts," Harry added.

"Did boys have to take a class in being Kneazles' arses?" Padma demanded. "Wait, no, you don't need extra lessons in that..."

"You could go play with Mandy Brocklehurst and Hermione Granger if you want," Neville offered.

"I don't see what's so great about some music classroom, anyway," Draco said.

"You will when you see it," Padma promised. "But first, we have to visit the library so that Harry can help you with your Transfiguration."

"Why, what're you going to do?"

"Neville and I are going to find his books," Padma said, as they rose to leave. They all nodded, including Neville himself. It wasn't that he wasn't good at finding books, it was just that he was easily distracted and tended to wander off in search of interesting books as opposed to relevant ones.

"I have extra Transfiguration, you know, it's not that I haven't done any," Draco complained to Harry, shouldering his book-bag. "I can do it without your help."

"Suits me," Harry shrugged. "I can work on my Quidditch plays, and see if Goyle wants to play a few rounds of Gobstones."

"Goyle's a moron. I don't know how he got into Slytherin."

"Me either, but that's why I play with him," Harry answered. He'd learned that you could take away a lot from playing chess against someone smarter than you, but all you got from a Gobstones opponent with a high IQ was a faceful of noxious Gobstones scent.

Padma and Neville betook themselves to the Catalogue Room, a small cubicle filled with little card catalogue shelves and the only place where students were permitted to speak above a whisper. Harry could hear, distantly, Neville request "books about herbology" and Padma add "magical spices"; after a second, the sound of paper shuffling could be heard as the catalogue reorganised itself, index cards flying madly around the room until the requested information settled into a neat stack in one open drawer. After two years of the little village library, where it was easier to ask the librarian than to check the card catalogue, Harry had spent hours in the catalogue room, watching in fascination as the cards whirled and dipped around his head.

He didn't join them this time, however; instead he sat down at one of the study tables, tucked into an alcove just back from the doorway, and folded his arms on the table, resting his chin on the backs of his hands. He watched Draco unpack his bag, including an enormous book on basic transfigurative spells.

"Catching up from last year?" he asked.

Draco sighed. "Professor McGonagall says if I don't master the basics I'll never get anywhere," he said. "It's just so much easier to do it my way."

"Your way?"

"Yeah. But when she asks me to tell her how I'm doing it, I can't. I'm just as good as any of you, you know," Draco said. "It's like you and flying. You could fly even without having to do all the stupid basic stuff, but they made you do it anyway. Are you going to work on Quidditch? It makes a person nervous when you stare at him."

Harry made a face. "Can I borrow some parchment and a quill?"

Draco nodded his head at the pile of writing supplies, and Harry picked out a short sheet of parchment and one of Draco's quills.

"Where'd you get this nib?" he asked, examining the metal tip of the quill.

"Mum gave me a set," Draco replied. "They're real silver. They write awfully smooth."

Harry tested it out on the parchment. "Guess we know you're not a werewolf," he joked.

"Brrr, don't even think it." Draco shuddered expressively. "Can you imagine?"

"Imagine what, being a werewolf?"

"I think I'd rather die. Ugh."

"It's not like it matters that much," Harry protested. "When you think about it, I mean."

Draco sniffed, and opened his book, beginning to copy notes from a page marked with a brass book-dart. Harry, dipping the silver-nibbed quill in the ink, felt almost like a traitor to Remus for using it.

Instead of doing the usual pitch-overview sketch that he always saw in playbooks, Harry tried drawing a picture of the Quidditch Practical that Snape had shown him, the way Sirius did when he'd doodled on the margins of Harry's drawings when Harry was younger. Harry had learned a lot from watching Sirius, and while he was better at drawing things without straight lines -- snakes and grass, the river, the trees -- he didn't do too badly imitating Sirius' style, which tended more towards odd assemblages of line and angles. He'd just finished sketching out the hoops, which were the hard part, and was beginning to draw in a new play when Padma and Neville returned triumphant from their expedition.

Padma was a discerning sort of scholar, but she was also of what Draco called the Grab and Run school of library research; she and Neville each had an armload of books, and she began sorting them as they were deposited on the table. Harry knew from experience that she would take her time helping Neville go through each book, and most of them would be left on the returns cart when they were done. He set himself to copying his original drawing, fixing the scratched-out bits in the new draft.

"Ready?" Padma asked finally, as Neville carried his final handful of selections to the desk to be stamped and signed out. Harry rolled up the parchment and stuffed it in his back pocket.

"Let's go see this sad little music room, then," Draco said with a grin, and Padma rolled her eyes. They followed her dutifully out of the library and up the stairs, pausing every so often for the stairs to readjust themselves, as they sometimes did. Padma led them further down a corridor, past the portrait-entrance to the Ravenclaw dormitory and around a series of corners, until none of them knew precisely where they were. Finally she stopped, in the darkest part of the castle they'd ever encountered, and stood in front of a large portrait.

"Lumos," she said, and held up her wand, illuminating the figure in the portrait.

It was a blond man, seated at a piano in what looked like a library; behind him a fire crackled soundlessly, and between shelves of books there was a second portrait-within-a-portrait of a striking woman with wildly curly hair. The man looked up at them and adjusted a monocle in one eye, thoughtfully.

"Password?" he asked, fingers picking out a complicated arpeggio of notes on the piano.

"Polyphonic," Padma replied. Harry expected the portrait to swing open, but startlingly, the woman in the portrait-within-a-portrait turned to them, too, and asked, in a deep voice, "Password?"

"JS Bach," Padma said confidently. With a creak, the portrait swung aside.

"How'd you figure out the passwords?" Harry asked, as they filed through.

Padma shrugged. "It wasn't that hard."

The portrait swung shut again behind them as she spoke, and Harry wondered suddenly who had turned off the sound.

"What happened?" Neville asked, in a strangely muted voice.

The room was almost perfectly round, and as Harry looked out the curving, thick windows set in the far wall, he realised where they were -- somewhere inside the curved facade set into the front of the school. Six or seven floors below them, steps led up to the front entrance; above them, a small spire rose out of the dome.

Padma, meanwhile, was pushing Draco to the centre of the room, where a series of triangles set in the floor all met in a sort of bizarre blue sunburst mosaic. She stepped back, and said, in the same muted tones, "Say something."

Draco, as with most people when requested to speak suddenly, stared owlishly at her for a minute, speechless. Finally, he took a deep breath, and even on the breath, Harry knew something important was about to happen.

Know this, the ancient words are not forgot --
Vesuvius the phoenix bodies show,
Their bones unbleach'ed by the waning sun
Which our full faces and strong fingers know.

Draco's young voice echoed off the walls with the clear tones of a precisely tuned bell, each small breath and movement of his lips perfectly audible. Neville was staring, round-eyed, while Padma beamed approvingly.

Unblest by knowledge we these later times
Have sought and to our ruin unwise seen,
Pompeii and Herculaneum sleep fast
While wasteland where a city once had been
O'ergrows once more in tempered steel and glass --
Far better to have died these centuries past.

Draco licked his lip as he finished, blinking at Padma.

"That's a strange poem," Neville said. "Who wrote it?"

"A Wizarding writer in the forties," Draco answered, giving him a sidelong look, as if to ask whether Neville knew anything. "Ellis Graveworthy. It's amazing," he added, turning to Padma, voice still perfect and clear. "It's like I'm not even the one speaking. I can hear myself."

"It's accoustically perfect," Padma said. "And it's blocked somehow -- look."

She went to the windows and unlatched two of them with audible clicks; when she threw them wide, however, there was no change -- the room was still silent except for the sound of Draco breathing.

"You can't hear anything," Neville said. "No birds, no people talking."

"Brilliant place to drop water balloons from," Harry added, leaning out one of the windows. As soon as his head passed the barrier of the walls, he was assaulted with noise -- people splashing in the lake in the distance and gossipping on the lawns, the thump of a football being kicked around by some of the Muggleborn students, and the distant noises of animals and birds in the Forbidden Forest. He pulled his head back inside, and the noise abruptly ceased.

"How did you find it?" Neville asked, as Draco stepped off the centre sunburst.

"Dunno, I was just exploring," Padma answered. "It's brilliant, isn't it?"

"I can see why it was a music classroom," Draco replied, gazing around the room at the wall-paintings of violins, pianos, flutes and harps, as well as chalkboards with permanent musical-notation lines ruled on them in white. Neville sang a note, uncertainly and not at all proficiently, and a small white dot appeared on one chalkboard. Harry laughed.

"Sing something!"

Neville laughed too. "What should I sing -- no, wait, I know." He took a deep breath. "Fight Gryffindor Fight, For we're glorious and might-y! Win Gryffindor Win, Cos we're House Champi-ons!"

"Merlin, what an awful fight song," Padma murmured, even as the musical notes to the old Quidditch cheering song were appearing on the blackboard, together with the lyrics.

"Do you think the professors know about it?" Harry asked, brushing the thickly-coated dust off a bookshelf.

"Wouldn't they use it? Imagine teaching a class in here," Padma said. "I mean, talk about having everyone's undivided attention."

"There must be all kinds of secret rooms and stuff at Hogwarts," Neville mused. "I bet there's loads of places the professors don't know about."

"Yeah, that's what we thought about the room with the three-headed-dog in it," Draco replied.

"Oh, stop complaining about the dog already," Harry said. "Come on, let's go talk Denbigh into giving us some sandwiches and have a picnic. It's too sunny to spend the whole day inside."

The other three agreed, and the man in the monocle gave them a friendly wave goodbye as they left to the faint strains of the portrait's piano being played softly.

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