"I think you've gotten it!"

For much of the evening following the second day's dinner feast, the Gryffindor common room had been bustling in activity. Around the mildly roaring fireplace, its intricate stonework of lion's heads and various flourishes darkened and scarred by centuries of nighttime flames, sat a grouping of older girls sharing with one another the observations and gossips from the first full day of the schoolyear. Elsewhere, sitting around each other in a triangle of plush armchairs, were a trio of older students widely regarded by the school's staff as troublemakers; each were leaning in, firmly entrenched upon only the edges of their seats, to see what the outcome of the current round of their game of exploding snap would be. In a clearing devoid of furniture, two seventh-year students were standing and casting various charms and jinxes at each other, much to the enjoyment of the gathering of first and second years that was thoroughly enraptured by the magical display. Beneath all of the noise, some of the more studious students were looking through their books, fretting about the next day's lessons and the homework assignments they'd been given hours earlier. There was an ebb and flow to the population, with both individuals and the occasional group making their way to and from the stairs that led upwards to the dormitories.

In one corner of the tower chamber, sitting comfortably beneath an overhanging window sill, were two first-year students gazing at a needle with nothing but an utmost fascination.

"And nobody else did but you? In class?" Ginny Weasley asked Harry Potter, not for a single second looking away from her success.

"There were a couple others that managed it too," Harry shrugged.

"Oh," Ginny muttered, frowning and looking down at her lap as she did.

"Yours is definitely better than mine, though," Harry assured Ginny, truthfully. Her attempt at transfiguration did look a bit better than what he had managed, though he was sure that what he'd managed wasn't too great regardless.

"I'd have probably gotten it done sooner if your handwriting wasn't so horrid," Ginny commented before holding up the parchment covered in Harry's notes, her expression inscrutable. "Practically scribbles, these are. Chicken scratch, really."

Harry, not sure whether he should feel insulted, caught a hint of a smile tugging at edges of Ginny's dead-serious eyes. He laughed and leaned forward, snatching away his notes. "Don't insult the professor, Ginny."

"I'm completely serious, it's awful," Ginny laughed before calming. "I do reserve the right to insult a professor."

Harry felt his eyebrows rise. "Was Professor Snape really that awful?"

Ginny leaned forward. "He seriously would not stop with the snide comments."

"Like what?" Harry wondered.

"Well, he said that he'd give me detention if I dropped my wand on him again."

"That's not too bad," Harry shrugged.

"It just was the way he said it, and everything else. He was just so mean!" Ginny complained at a high volume.

"Who was so mean?" came a shaky voice.

Harry turned his head to see who it was that had asked the question. Standing, and so towering, above him and Ginny, who were sitting, was Neville Longbottom. Harry hadn't spoken with him since that morning's breakfast, and, judging by the look on her face, Ginny didn't really have much of a clue as to what to make of the boy.

"Snape," she sneered in answer.

"B-but didn't he take you to the hospital wing?" Neville questioned, standing very upright with his arms stiff at his sides and looking very ready to retreat behind a curtain, a curtain that wasn't there. Was there a spell for that, to conjure up a curtain? Harry imagined that it would be quite useful if there were.

"Technically," Ginny affirmed with as much distaste she could muster. For Neville or for Snape, Harry wasn't entirely sure, though he suspected that it was mostly for the latter.

Neville flinched at Ginny's tone, now looking even more as though he'd like to hide. "You're alright, though, right?"

"Right," Ginny nodded slowly and spoke accordingly. "Good as new."

"T-that's good," Neville stammered.

"Though what did you actually do?" Harry jumped in. "To your leg, that is?"

"Ankle, actually," Ginny answered with a glance that told Harry a firm you know this already. "Broke the bone at four spots and tore the tendons, too, whatever they are."

Neville turned a mild shade of green at the thought. "Was it bad getting it healed?" he asked.

"Felt a bit weird, really, especially the tendons, but it didn't hurt much," Ginny shrugged.

At that, Neville abandoned his bout of nervousness and replaced with an appearance of real interest. "Just like that? How long it'd take?"

"Only a couple of minutes," Ginny explained, leading herself and Neville into a conversation about healing magic that Harry only gave the faintest bit of attention to. Instead, he paid great interest to a piece of stonework sitting near his head, and thought about the sallow-faced, greasy-skinned professor who had driven Ginny to hatred within an hour and had given Harry the distinct impression that his presence was not welcome. Was he like that to all the students? To all Gryffindors? To just Ginny in particular, and maybe Harry too? The sound of Neville's voice inquiring about the specific spell floating past Harry's ears as his thoughts turned from Snape to Dudley. Had the muggle doctors been able to get rid of the tail? They could have simply, he supposed, just cut it off, unless there was some sort of magic preventing it. That would, Harry thought, have to have hurt at least a little, an observation that put a bit of a smile onto his face.

The smile didn't leave for the rest of the evening, as the common room gradually emptied and Harry found himself dazing off in the soft heat of his surroundings. At some point into the night, well after the last remnants of the sun had vanished over the horizon beyond the window pane and long since Ginny herself had retired up the tower, Harry and Neville made the way, not completely aware of their surroundings, to their own beds. They parted ways without a word, and Harry fell asleep before his head had even touched the pillow.

The subsequent morning was a difficult one for Harry. Everything felt as if it were happening at half-speed, from the effort to raise himself out of bed to the ordeal of reaching the baths to freshen up to the complexities of getting into the school robes. The journey down to the Great Hall for breakfast alongside the rest of his year went more quickly, with all the students being very mindful of any trick steps or missing landings, particularly Ginny, whose unpleasant experience the day before had evidently made an impact. Harry himself wasn't too attentive to what was underneath his feet, though he did take mind to make sure he never lifted his back foot until the front was on solid ground.

The breakfast itself did a decent enough job of getting him, and the rest of his classmates, going for the day. It was with only a little weight dragging down on his eyelids that Harry made it to his first class of the day, Defense Against the Dark Arts with Professor Quirrell, whom Harry found to be somewhere far below his expectations, or at least far below his hopes. For a class about battling dark magic, the stench of garlic didn't do much to build an atmosphere; for a wizard who claimed such achievements as did Quirrell, the professor couldn't quite tell a believable story about how he managed them; for a subject that at first hearing sounded fascinating, the curriculum seemed remarkably boring as it was described. On Thursday night, when Harry expressed his thoughts on the matter to Ginny, she dismissed his concerns, assuring him that "all of the interesting stuff gets taught when we're older."

Harry supposed that made sense. Eleven year-olds really probably couldn't do much. He knew he couldn't do any more than most anyone else, and not even Hermione or Ginny or any of the Ravenclaws had been able to cast even the basic charms with any real consistency. It really helped, though, that all of the professors clearly understood the situation, and had experience with it. Professor McGonagall, who hadn't spoken much to Harry since he reported on his one-off tutoring session with Ginny, was spending most moments lecturing on the simplest theories. Professor Flitwick, on the other hand, allowed for plenty of fun in his charms classroom, Harry thought as, late Thursday evening, he laid on his bed while twirling his wand in the air. The rest of the teachers fell somewhere between the two on the spectrum, with Professor Binns, in the two History of Magic classes of his that Harry had gone through, taking a dip into sheer boredom. The only real constant between all of the classes was the mounds of homework that they all handed out.

The only class that they hadn't had yet was Potions, with Professor Snape, about whom Harry had heard no positive things from the older students. Ginny's testimonial, too, had, of course, not been glowing. When she and Harry had parted ways after finishing the four tons of transfiguration work that had been assigned that day, Ginny told him that she was going to do some reading in the potions book, that she didn't want to Snape to catch her off guard.

Harry had taken her idea for his own and returned to his dorm to read his own book on his own bed, and had managed to do so for a little while before putting the tome down and starting to throw his wand in the air. The dormitory was empty, everyone else still out in the common room, leaving Harry alone with his dwindling thoughts. It was not long until he was asleep, well before any of the other first-year boys appeared.

The next morning made Harry thankful for his early bedtime the night before. He was awake before anyone else, even before, as a glance towards of the window revealed, the sun had risen. He set off preparing for the day even as there were still stars hanging in the sky beyond the castle's walls, and had finished by the time the first blazing red rays of the morning sun peeked over the horizon.

The view was magnificent. Beyond the battlements and the walls were rolling grass hills that melded smoothly into the lake, which was as smooth as glass this morning, its surface softly reflecting the rising sun's red glow. Beyond the rolling hills and calm water was the so-called Forbidden Forest, an unending bloc of thick green above which only the faintest hints of distant mountains were visible. And down by its edge was a large hut with yellow light spilling from its windows and soft puffs of smoke curling upwards from a stubby chimney.

An idea struck Harry. He cracked open the window, intending to check on the very early morning air. It was, he discovered, pleasantly cool, and so he set out towards the portrait hole and had soon left Gryffindor Tower well behind.

For a short minute, as he carefully descended down the caste's moving staircases, Harry wondered if the nighttime curfew still applied to the early morning hours. He also wondered if he particularly cared at the moment, and found the answer to be that no, he didn't. The question turned out to be unimportant when he ended up reaching the ground floor and pushing out into the open air through a pair of side doors without any interruption.

By then, the sun had fully risen over the horizon, making it very easy for Harry to make out where he was going. There was a footpath leading from the castle to the hut at the edge of the forest, and Harry walked along it, mind blank and relaxed.

It was when Harry reached throwing distance of the cabin that he realized that he didn't actually know for sure that Hagrid lived there. It seemed strongly implied that he did, by most all indications, but he didn't remember ever being explicitly told that the giant of a man made his home. Shrugging, Harry kept forward, really doubting that there could be anyone else living in such a place.

Just before he would have knocked on Hagrid's very solid-looking wooden door, Harry caught in the corner of his eye a very, very large crossbow leaning against the walls of the cabin in the shadows by his feet. Was there really much a crossbow could handle that magic couldn't? Or maybe it was a magic crossbow? Hagrid had said that he wasn't allowed to do magic, but he still could and did manage it, as Harry had seen firsthand.

Deciding that he hadn't come so far just to admire an abnormally large crossbow, Harry raised his knuckles to the wood and rapt off a knock that he hoped didn't sound too demanding. One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds passed by until the heavy slab of wood flung inward and was replaced by an even more impressive mass of brown.

"Eh, an' who's there?" Hagrid asked the air before looking down and seeing Harry. Half-illuminated by the distant sun, his features, as much as Harry could see them through the mess of facial hair, lit up. "What're you doin' here, Harry?"

"I was up early, so I thought maybe I'd drop by," Harry explained.

"Oh, get in here," Hagrid bellowed as he moved aside and waved Harry in. "Careful ter be quiet, wouldn' wanna wake Fang. He don' much like it when he gets woken up."

Harry resisted the urge to comment that he simply couldn't be louder than Hagrid had just been and sat quietly in the chair that Hagrid quickly pulled out for him.

"Make yehself at home." Hagrid insisted, soon putting down a mug of a very strong-looking tea in front of Harry. "It's good ter see yeh. I was gonna write yeh an invitation to come here this afternoon, actually."

Harry took a tentative sip of the very dark liquid in front of him, and then a second one as Hagrid started up talking again. "So, have yeh made any friends, Harry?" Hagrid asked.

"A couple, I think," Harry said, softly, before taking a third sip.

"Who? Not any of the Slytherins, I'd think."

"No," Harry shook his head, "not any of them. Ginny Weasley, for one."

"One of the Weasley, eh? Have yeh met her brothers? The twins?"

Harry sharply nodded, earning himself a laugh from Hagrid. "They're a lot to handle," the very large man laughed. "I don' think I've had ter chase the rest of the school away from the forest as much as I've had ter those two. This girl much like 'em?"

It took Harry a moment to ponder the question. "A little bit, but not a whole lot."

"That's good. It'd be good not ter have ter deal with any extra trouble she'd cause if she were," Hagrid commented. "I'd offer yeh some breakfast, but I can't cook as good as what you'll get up at the school."

"Oh, I'm not too hungry," Harry demurred.

"And how're your classes?" Hagrid added. Harry answered, going into his complaints and into the stuff he'd been liking, how he'd been good the first day of Transfiguration and how Charms seemed like a fun class, and how Defense Against the Defense Arts felt like a bit of a joke. Hagrid, eyes narrowed, asked what Harry thought about Potions.

"I haven't had it yet- got it today, I'm pretty sure," Harry answered. "Ginny really hates Professor Snape, though."

"That so?" Hagrid asked.

"She says he was mean to her the first day, when she fell and broke her ankle."

"I remember hearin' about that," Hagrid nodded.

After the exchange, Harry and Hagrid sat alone in silence for a little bit, Harry quickly downing the strong tea Hagrid had served him. A thought popped into his head. "Hagrid, what's on the third floor that's so dangerous?"

"What? Why do yeh think there's somethin' dangerous there?" Hagrid said, suddenly belligerent. In the corner of the hut, Fang, the dog, seemed to wake.

"Dumbledore said we'd die a most painful death if we went there," Harry shrugged. "Sounds dangerous enough."

"Ah," Hagrid muttered. "Don't you worry, Harry. What's there isn't for you to worry about, it's Hogwarts business."

"Hogwarts business?" Harry asked, thinking he'd heard that term before.

"Just ignore it, and focus on yer studies, won' yeh? Hagrid insisted. He and Harry sat in his hut for a little while longer, talking a bit and being happily silent even more, up until the moment Hagrid took a look at the clock over his fireplace and announced that they should be heading up to the castle for the real breakfast.