Hello? Anyone still out there? Honestly, I'm still surprised this story had any positive feedback at all, and I'm grateful to those of you who reviewed while I was blanking this story out due to some sort of INTENSE writer's block. Every time I saw the review count tick up a bit of guilt weighed me down and closer to the keyboard to write this.

I don't own Harry Potter and co, nor do I claim to.

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Here's a summary of the story so far: Harry had died at a ripe old age, only to be greeted with the clogged up bureaucracy of death. The Powers That Be shoved him into a parallel world where his counterpart was near soulless to keep him occupied until they could figure things out - or so they implied. Harry tried his best to join his family in the true afterlife only to be constantly rebuffed and accidentally terrorized a muggle man by the name of Garrett into an uneasy friendship with his eldritch self, eventually revealing the truth of his existence to the poor man.

Upon his eleventh birthday, he did not receive a letter inviting him to a magical school and thusly went searching for a way to Hogwarts. Along the way, he was suckered into becoming acquainted with Ollivander and learned that Neville Longbottom was the defeater of Voldemort in this universe, leaving his parents alive. They, of course, found him and took him home. What else could happen? He wriggled out of that situation by virtue of feeling more suicidal than usual around his little sister, Fennel, and taking advantage of Ollivander's loneliness to fake an apprenticeship. Sort of.

Finally, he made it to Hogwarts, but not before learning the Malfoys were innocent - for once - of supporting the Dark Lord of their own will and that there were some interesting differences in wizarding culture he couldn't quite put his finger on. On an unrelated note, there were dragon pins. And pendants. Everywhere. Nothing important, he was sure. Honestly, he's already forgotten even mentioning it in this summary. He pulled off a cunning plan to hide his otherworldly nature and was looking forward to the multitude of ways he could play Hogwarts: Death Trap Edition.

Then he was Sorted into Hufflepuff and everything went to pot.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore greeted merrily, putting a hand on his shoulder, "Shall we?" Guiding him down a side corridor, the Headmaster explained without prompting, "Our resident poltergeist, Peeves is guarding the mud pile in the atrium from cleaning, despite Mr. Filch's best efforts, and I would rather she refrain from including me in her list of enemy warriors while I'm wearing my favorite robes."

Harry noted and accepted the gender-bender Peeves appeared to have undergone without protest, in lieu of attempting to imagine a female Peeves. His bracelet spun to something green in approval.

"Now then," Dumbledore continued, "I never like to make a journey in silence. Shall I explain our situation as we walk?" At Harry's nod, he stroked his beard thoughtfully and began, "I should start by asking if you've heard mention of treatied species yet?"

"Yes, sir."

"The acromantulas in our forest are, at a certain age onward, sentients covered by one such treaty. Before that point, there's still a pact of non-aggression, but communication is a lost effort." Taking a quick left, they passed an archway into the atrium, where globs of mud seemed to be flinging themselves at something dimly recognizable as a human figure under the dirt. Hysterical cackling echoed behind them as they picked up the pace. "Ah, by which I mean to say, we've agreed not to harm one another," Dumbledore twinkled down at the pseudo-eleven-year-old with mild chagrin for his slip up in vocabulary, "Though the younger ones cannot speak. You may well imagine the chaos that caused in the warding industry. All across the nation, people were flooing to have their spider-killing wards replaced with spider-repelling ones! Well!" He shook his head, "Suffice to say, Hogwarts is still on the waiting list."

"Couldn't you change the wards yourself, Professor?" Harry asked distractedly, still peeking down the hallway behind them for a glimpse of a female Peeves- his bracelet was decidedly orange, but Common Sense was keeping quiet. There was a distinctly curious feeling coming from that general portion of his brain that Harry didn't want to think about too deeply.

A chuckle brought Harry back to the present, "While I did disable the spider-killing wards, even I would be at a loss to introduce an entirely new ward into Hogwarts' web without outside assistance." Whoops, Harry had forgotten exactly where he'd been talking about for a moment there. Dumbledore shook his head, "That does bring us to our task tonight. Acromantula are related to the jumping spider Bagheera kiplingi, the only non-magical spider whose diet subsists of-" Dumbledore remembered his audience again and cleared his throat, "In different terms, young Acromantula can eat leafy foods, and seem to prefer the ones in our granary. Our task is to shoo them out without hurting them. They're active in our area for two hours alone each night before moving on."

Quest received, Common Sense drawled.

"I know it's rather late, and before your first classes, as well, but these are the consequences of accepting such an honor," Dumbledore appeared to have forgotten the details of Harry's oath, and finished with a smile, tapping the side of his own nose in a conspiratorial manner, "But perhaps before we whisk you off to sleep, we'll stop by the kitchens for a nice hot cocoa. The elves are always pleased for the company."

It is a quest, Common Sense repeated with an entirely different tone, almost in disgusted awe, there's a quest reward if you succeed.

"How do I shoo them out?" Harry asked, hopping down a small set of steps in one go as Dumbledore was sedately taking them step by step. I do not miss the arthritis, Harry noted to himself, Common Sense humming noncommittally, It did help slow you down, though.

As Harry waited for Dumbledore to the finish the descent, he wondered whether the man was under a similar oath to protect the school. He didn't think it was exactly the same, or he'd have had little prods at him any time a shady figure made its way into Hogwarts' hallowed halls… Quirrell, Lockhart, and "Moody" Crouch, among others put that line of rubbish in the trash where it belonged.

"We have a few nice brooms to help us with our task," Dumbledore replied to the question Harry had forgotten asking, and the man's eyes twinkled at the look of horror on Harry's face, "None of them have ever touched the open skies, I assure you. I see someone introduced you to Quidditch on the train…?"

"One of my fellow Hufflepuffs," Harry explained, fighting the soul-destroying shame of willingly identifying himself as such.

It's… not that bad, Common Sense put in, almost perplexed, but Harry mentally hand-waved such nonsense away.

Anyone who belonged to a house of yellow and black fluffy badgers, full of hard work and fuzzy feelings, had better be feeling some shame.

It rather felt like Common Sense was actually twitching in his mind. At least it was keeping its incredibly wrong opinion to itself.

Dumbledore had been explaining something else- likely something important, if Harry's luck held out - when a small crowd of students converged on their hallway in a bit of a hurry. Hands were covering heads and mud splattered some backs, revealing the cause of their haste.

"...And here they are, now," the Headmaster said with a conclusive tone, eyeing the mud and the hall from which the students had exited with some dismay and quickening his pace, "Come along now, children."

The small group hastened to do as instructed and Harry took the time to identify these interlopers. Percy Weasley was wiping ineffectually at the mud on Penelope Clearwater's shoulders, while Terence Higgs and Eadberht Urquhart (who Harry vaguely remembered as the current seeker and the future captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team in his sixth year, respectively) were badgering Rodger Davies (ah, Fleur's date to the Yule Ball and another future Quidditch captain, oddly) while Belinda Barclay and another Hufflepuff girl lingered towards the edge, appearing to be consulting on some sort of cleaning charm and- wait.

"Hey, aren't you the one who-" Harry started, a tinge of amusement to his tone as the familiar girl's eyes widened upon recognizing his face. Apparently, that split second of hiding in their compartment from her suddenly murderous school supplies had been enough to foster recognition.

"Who helped you on the train? Yep, that's me," she cut in, smiling even as her eyes promised death if he brought up the Incident in front of her friends and the Headmaster, "How could you forget the ever helpful Hilda Swithin?" And she made sure he knew her name, too. How quick thinking. Turnabout would be fair play, but Harry would rather watch her squirm.

"Thanks again," he replied, "You were completely right. My hair does look better styled this way." The birds' nest atop his head was given an eyebrow raise by Belinda that she turned back onto Hilda without much pause.

"I'll explain later," Hilda muttered to her friend, who mercifully let the subject drop.

Belinda still murmured, "Wruenele protect us," at the guilty look on her friend's face, however.

"Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore called as they came to a stop outside a solid-looking wooden door, "Would you care to retrieve the brooms? I'm afraid with our recent addition, it slipped my mind entirely."

"Yes, Headmaster, sir," Percy replied, with a lower (if not by much) level of starstruck hero-worship than Harry would have anticipated. He darted down the hall and around the corner, as Dumbledore surveyed the group and then gestured for Harry and Belinda- or at least in their general direction.

"Ah, it appears we have another newcomer this year; come closer, my dear, I don't bite." He sparkled at them for a moment in pure Dumbledorian cheer, "Now, I take it that you haven't taken the oath, just yet?"

"I didn't want to bind myself irreversibly to the castle on accident," she said, shrugging.

Harry blinked as the relatively simple oath took place in front of him. It wasn't quite that he was overly surprised that there were a handful who had pledged themselves to protect the castle, after all student numbers had started to pick back up on that after Voldemort- but that had been after Voldemort. All signs so far pointed to this Dumbledore believing him well and truly gone this time around, but though Harry had trusted his Dumbledore's judgment, he found himself harboring just a little bit of worry.

A miniscule amount.

Almost non-existent.

If they all die by Voldemort's hand, the afterlife will probably be ready for them, though.

It. Didn't. Matter. Harry was going to splat spiders- er, peacefully wave off spider babies?- and that was that. Voldemort and Neville were none of his concern.

"Brooms!" Percy called, holding armfuls of just such cleaning supplies, and Harry could see these had never been intended to fly from the crazy bristle alignment, as opposed to racing brooms' sleek, aerodynamic designs, "Get a move on."

"Quite right," Dumbledore nodded, reaching for a broom, and Percy blushed.

"I- I wasn't referring to you, Headmaster," he watched helplessly as Dumbledore tottered off with his prize, chuckling, "I wouldn't-"

"I'm afraid I'm a little deaf in this ear, Mr. Weasley, so I didn't quite catch any of the last minute or so," Dumbledore said cheerfully, "Was it important?"

"No, sir," Percy squeaked, the other students emptying his arms of brooms just as he could feel his own dignity draining out of his soul.

Or at least, so it seemed to Harry, who snatched a broom from the flustered Weasley's lax hold and followed Dumbledore as he unlocked and entered the granary, which- Huh.

Harry hadn't been in this room before.

He hadn't thought that was possible.

A ramshackle set of steps curved about what seemed to be the inside of a tower (were they under the Ravenclaw dorms?) and shelves of different size, shape, and material covered in drying bundles, wooden cartons, and boxes were placed near randomly about, some entirely independent of the wall in a veritable explosion of colors and patterns. Occasionally a shelf would detach with a light shudder and float towards small tunnels leading from the castle-side walls deeper into Hogwarts. Harry ducked when a crate labeled Smoked Meats - Exotic Fare and its associated shelf dipped over his head on its journey.

A particularly stubborn crimson shelf covered in boxes labeled such things as Particularly Pungent Pickles and Less Lovely Legumes nudged Higgs and Urquhart apart before settling back into a low section of the wall with a shiver.

Oddly, the room was a well-lit riot of color with the varying styles and decor of the shelves- a far cry from the purely functional storeroom Harry was berating himself for imagining. Half a smile made its way onto his face, Hogwarts never did do anything halfway.

"Hogwarts is pretty cool, eh, firstie?" Rodger winked, nudging Harry out of the half smile and into a full one.

"It is," he said softly, nostalgically.

"I'm Rodger Davies," the Ravenclaw said, extending a hand, and Harry took it reflexively.

"Harry," he replied, "Harry Potter," and hadn't it been a long time since he'd introduced himself to another wizard? There wasn't a flinch or a flash of surprise across Rodger's face at the revelation. Apparently the missing Potter wasn't as big a deal as the Boy who Lived had been.

"A baby Potter, huh?" He pointed towards the others with the handle of his broom, "Well, we should join up with the rest, so Professor Dumbledore can fill you in on where you'll be stationed."

"...About halfway up," Dumbledore was telling Urquhart, who nodded and trotted off up the stairs, glancing at a roll of parchment he'd pulled from nowhere through tiny half-moon spectacles, "And that leaves the top for you, Mr. Davies, while Harry and I," he looked over his spectacles Harry's direction with a wink, "will tackle the first floor windows together. An old man like myself needs a little help."

As it turned out, Dumbledore was a lying liar who lied. He needed no help, deftly demonstrating the sweeping motion best to fling spiders out the door or the window before engaging Harry in idle smalltalk as something like a shallow, dark wave crested at the edge of the Forbidden Forest and swept unerringly, if slowly, towards the granary. A call from the top of "incoming" breached the air when the spiders were a few yards away. Abruptly, the forward edge of the incoming scrabble of Acromantula crawling over and under one another launched themselves across the remaining distance, webs trailing behind them like the rope behind a grappling hook as their (less jump talented?) kin clambered after them. Once the webs were secured, the young Acromantula dutifully began either climbing up past the first floor or in through the open-air windows and doors.

"Couldn't this have been fixed with a few panes of glass?" Harry asked, pushing a bit harder at a stronger specimen until it gave up the ghost and dropped off the windowsill, hastily sweeping over the next nearest, before running to the next. Wow, actually, this was not as easy as he'd thought it be once Percy pulled out a bunch of mundane, unenchanted brooms as their main weapon. Sure, the baby Acromantula were not doberman size and more dinner plate proportioned, but it felt like an enlarged, cardiac-intensive whack-a-mole game, where occasionally the mole refused to go down. Due to the frenetic nature of the activity, it took Dumbledore a few moments to answer, not sounding even a touch winded.

"Ah, but their ballistics are a tad safer to be around without it," the Headmaster pointed out, glancing over his half moon spectacles at Harry as they rushed by one another, finishing his sentence the next time they passed, "and enchantment breaks just as easily unless it's been specified to them. Which would require, as we've spoken of, a ward."

"You have a point," Harry conceded.

He didn't even attempt to ask why the tower needed windows in the first place. There were some things that just made sense to wizarding-raised folk that didn't to those with a more mundane background. Towers have windows, would be the most likely answer.

It only took about an hour of this before the spiders ended their attack, in tandem, the wave retreating back into the forest and leaving trampled and occasionally nibbled vegetation in its wake.

"Cocoa!" Dumbledore announced, to some mild cheering from Higgs and Hilda, as the group made their way out of the tower and to the kitchens. Despite the clear fatigue of the older students, the mood was light. Chatter between the students was unimpeded by the Headmaster's presence, flowing around him without the stilted air Harry had often encountered with his grandchildren's friends. Somehow, he managed to stifle his natural Adult Authority with a twinkle over half-moon glasses even as he herded them all into the kitchens and sat them down.

The only available Weasley addressed Harry upon seeing he wasn't engaged in conversation with anyone, "It's refreshing to see a first year taking on such a responsibility as this." Percy had multiple mugs in hand, and Penelope reached up to support his efforts as he passed the first free mug to Harry. Somehow, Harry wasn't surprised Percy had fallen into the role of errand boy for the group with seemingly little prompting.

"Yes, if Ron would follow your example, perhaps we wouldn't have to worry so much," Penelope chimed in, redistributing Percy's mess of mugs with a practiced ease, "He's Percy's youngest brother - in your year, you see - and he spent practically the entire summer with the extended family on a retreat."

"Is that something to worry about?" Belinda cupped her hands around her mug, a flinty glint to her eyes, "Sounds like he's on the right path to me."

"I do wonder if this is an appropriate conversation for the table," Dumbledore hummed into his cocoa, eyes innocently upward.

"Yeah, for one, it's boring," Hilda put in unabashedly, waving a hand for emphasis perilously close to Belinda's face. Said victim was unamused, but the lack of fidgeting or scowling made it clear she was used to it. "Who wants to talk about religion all night? Especially when we could be talking about anything else."

A ripple of amusement went through the table before Rodger leaned in with a mischievous glance at his fellow athletes, "Alright, Hilda's asked us to talk Quidditch for once, so I say we go deep and long on the count of three."

"Not Quidditch!" she corrected hastily to general laughter. Faces were made, tongues were shown, and the topic forgotten.

The conversation from there on was pleasant but unremarkable, and Harry found himself almost nodding off more than once. Soon he wavered back to awareness with a hand shaking his shoulder, as Hilda leaned into his field of vision.

"I'll take him back to Hufflepuff, Headmaster," she was saying, directing the words somewhere behind him and receiving an affirmative Harry didn't care about. The hand on his shoulder replicated on the other side and she plucked him from his chair, setting him on his feet with surprising strength. His expression must have given him away, because she smiled, "I don't go in for all that nonsense about it making you better than others, but I do have some Nari way back in my bloodlines." Magical creatures weren't his strong suit and again, it showed. Hilda's smile went amused, "Nari are bigger, smarter versions of Erklings - they're fae that lure children away with their laughter. It's why I've got this honker," she indicated her unattractively long, almost pointed nose, "but I can also lift a small horse and I'm suited to charms. Tradeoffs, you know? The Potters are usually more about Transfiguration, though. Do you know if there's any extra in your family?"

The deluge of unprovoked information left Harry wrong-footed as he followed her through the halls, thoughts on her sudden confession rather than the route they were taking. Why would she tell him that? Harry barely knew her. He could tell anyone. Although, she'd said that bit about it not making her better than others, and Hagrid had been similarly open about his extra-human origins.

Common Sense sat in the back of his head like a small stone in a stream, radiating ripples of confusion but not saying a word.

"I've no idea," Harry answered honestly, after settling on what he'd say in a hasty moment of silence in which his bracelet whizzed back and forth between yellow and green, "Does it matter? I was fostered in a remote area growing up, so I'm not really all that well-informed on wizarding trends."

"Oh," her tone was carefully neutral, "I didn't know the Potters would go for fostering. Not that it's a bad thing, or anything. Just not what I expected."

"It was a unique situation," Harry pressed on, "But thanks to that, I don't know exactly what it means to… have extra in your family." This hint was blatant enough for her, despite Common Sense's delayed protest at the blunt approach.

"Creature heritage, that's the extra," Hilda explained, looking relieved to drop the fostering. It was an older tradition in which purebloods foisted their kids on another family - Harry paused in his mental monologue for Common Sense to interject. No, I'm on your side this time, it told him after a beat of odd mental stillness with the sense of hands held up in exasperation.

Anyway, fostering was basically used to raise a kid without having to raise a kid and additionally forge stronger political ties, induct a child in a desired trade, or, in the rare case that a 'foster' was forced from the family in question, to ensure cooperation.

As in that case, the fostered child was more like a well treated hostage, if that wasn't clear.

"...so there's still snobs, of course, who will rub it in your face, or who can cite their extra ancestors up to Merlin's time, but it's not a huge deal. Most people just think creature blood is cool rather than a status symbol."

Oh, Hilda was still talking.

When he'd tuned back in, his bracelet swung from an orange are you listening to a green focus. From what he picked up, it sounded like creature heritage wasn't as big a secret family shame as it had been in his world. That heritage seemed to be bandied about neutrally or even as a mark of pride. For some reason.

"Does that make sense?" Hilda asked with an air of finality as she came to a stop, hand resting on a wooden barrel.

Well, he wasn't going to admit he hadn't paid the slightest bit of attention beyond her last few words. "Yeah, thanks."

You missed half the exposition, Common Sense mused, I never thought I'd say this, but maybe there's too much going on in this head.

Ouch.

At least he'd garnered creature blood good from the whole thing, and that the prejudice wasn't on the level of blood purity from the good old days. Harry didn't think anyone would describe those purists as believing wizarding heritage was just 'cool.' Though he would have paid good money to see Voldemort's expression should anyone lose enough brain cells to call his mad rampage 'cool' to his face.

It was all an interesting slant to a world with which he was otherwise familiar, but ultimately unimportant. Unless, of course, Harry could find some previously hidden halfbreed that had a knack for killing evil coathangers, in which case he would applaud and point them at his dementor problem.

"Listen carefully," Hilda instructed him for no reason Harry could comprehend. Before he could react to the non sequitur, however, she rapped her knuckles against the rim of the nearest sidelong barrel in a specific pattern. "If you get the wrong pattern, you'll be drenched in vinegar; wrong barrel, you'll get drenched, too." The barrel's front popped open and she ducked through without another word. Harry followed with a complete and conscious lack of caution.

He'd figured out they had to be entering the Hufflepuff common room.

What could possibly go wrong?

Three steps into the common room, Harry fell flat on his face. Glancing behind him showed the culprit to be an unnatural bulge in the carpet that smoothed out under his gaze. The floor rippled and patted his cheek before settling back into its natural state of being a floor.

"Helga likes you, looks like," Hilda was already helping Harry to his feet before he could even decide whether to be cross or not, "That's what we call the common room poltergeist, after Helga Hufflepuff, you know. She was reputed to be quite the prankster, in her time. Pulled the wool over Slytherin's eyes more than once. This is you," she had escorted him to a rounded corridor past the homey common room while she chattered and now Hilda nudged him forward slightly, "End of the hall - most defensible position - you'll be moving up towards the common room each year. Let me know if you need anything, since you'll probably be seeing more of me than the prefects, what with our mutual status as defenders of the castle. Sleep well and all that! Night!"

And Harry was left to his own devices.

Excellent. The bracelet wavered into an orange, Stop.

Eh. He did wander into the dorm and check the sleeping arrangement - Draco's bed was next to his and the boy was tossing and turning as if the horror of it had seeped into his slumber - but he had better things to do with his first night at Hogwarts than sleep.

Time to do some tests.

There was no good way to monitor ill will in a castle this size, filled to the brim with angsty adolescents, but on the other hand, Harry had never heard of a successful suicide at Hogwarts, either. It was possible there was magic at work there, but hopefully it hooked onto despair and other such accompanying emotions rather than certain actions. To be safe, however, he'd need to stay away from the obvious routes. No jumping off the Astronomy tower, drinking poison, or sending a cutting charm at himself.

Harry had to be smart about this.

While Common Sense was resigned to this sort of scenario, the thoughts in his head had his poor bracelet whipping through confused colors as the logic of the irrational plans sank in.

At least Harry knew it wasn't sentient, now. You never should have thought it might be, in the first place, Common Sense sighed, and there was a beat of almost silence in his head before it suggested, Chamber of Secrets.

"What?" Harry said aloud, clapping a hand over his mouth and dragging himself back behind a statue in the empty hall off the entrance to the common room.

There's a basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, isn't there? It's here in your second year.

Well, yes. That was true, but why would his Common Sense suddenly… come to its senses, for lack of a better term?

"Are you feeling alright?" Harry whispered, and got the equivalent in pain of a knife to the back of his head in response.

Might as well keep this relatively contained for the sake of the other children, it said primly, releasing the pain to dissipate and sounded somehow winded, Since you can't be dissuaded.

Meanwhile, there was fun to be had on the way.

Harry had always wondered what would happen if something other than a foot got caught in a trick step.

The answer turned out to be suffocation. When he wiggled his head free after the second reset, he sat there for a moment on the stairs panting to catch his breath. That had almost been three deaths stuck in the same step and not a panicked professor to be seen. While this didn't narrow down whether any hypothetical wards or enchantments looked for emotion or action, it did confirm that atypical deaths of abnormal emotion flew under the radar, in a sense.

The stairs, which had been idly floating between stations, came to a shuddering halt on one of the upper floors to allow a short figure to trip over Harry and to their death in their haste to get downstairs. Well, not really. Harry caught them with an overpowered levitation charm before anything unfortunate could happen.

"Oi!" Ron exclaimed, waving a parchment at him irritably, "What are you doing sitting on the stairs in the middle of the night?"

"What are you doing running down the stairs in the middle of the night?" Harry returned easily, setting Ron on his feet and watching the Weasley flush take prominence as Ron realized he, too, had been caught out of bed.

"Look mate, I won't snitch on you if you don't snitch on me," the young Gryffindor offered through the uncomfortably red hue he'd taken, clutching the railing in a small concession to his near-death experience.

"Where are you going?" Harry pressed curiously. He'd already gone on a bit of a detour from the second floor bathroom and from what he knew, Ron hadn't had much reason to be wandering the corridors of the school at night their first year.

"It's just-" Ron glanced down the stairs, then back at Harry, "Can you keep a secret?" Before Harry could respond, Ron's nose crinkled as he thought of something, "S'pose you could answer anything to that, yeah? It's not really against the rules, but Dumbledore isn't fond of people who make the muggleborns feel left out, so it's at night, you know?"

"No, obviously, I don't know or I wouldn't have asked." Leaning back against the railing he sat near, Harry turned over the possibilities. There… weren't many, actually. Anything he brought to mind could be discarded with a little thought into it.

"You know," Ron shuffled awkwardly, "The, er, the little rituals of Wruenic practice."

"Ruinic practice?" Harry echoed and was treated to the sight of Ron's jaw dropping just enough for his lips to part with surprise.

"You don't know about Wruenele? You have to be pulling my leg, mate."

"I was fostered in an isolated place." Sticking to the story he'd already given Hilda seemed like the best idea - Harry didn't want the conversation sidetracked with oh no, you were kidnapped as a youth? and who did it? or are you sure you're okay to be planning dementor murder? Thoughts stumbled for a moment, before Common Sense pointed out hesitantly, He wouldn't know anything about that to ask.

Ron's voice brought him back to reality, "...so, you know, my uncles told me there's a group that meets to do the little rituals. They aren't, er, serious or anything. They aren't even proper rituals, just little things to help you feel better-" his flush deepened into a blotchy mess, "or to be respectful, since that's the reason you're supposed to do it." He eyed Harry, offered hesitantly, "Do you… want to come with? You don't have to, but, you know, if you really don't know anything important about wizarding Britain, it'd be a good place to start." Another look down the stairs, "I'll be late, soon, though, so we'd have to run."

Why not?

At least this is less likely to end in crying children tripping over your corpse, Common Sense put in snidely, still stuck on Harry getting sidetracked on the way to a more contained attempt.

Plus, it was… exciting to have something new to explore. A mystery to investigate. He felt like a kid again.

He stood with a grin he truly felt, "Well, we should hurry, shouldn't we?"

Ron returned the grin - he'd missed seeing Ron with all his teeth, but it hadn't really hit him how… Ron-like this kid was until he'd seen him smile - and started down the stairs with a sheet of parchment in hand, "Come on, my uncle gave me directions."

Neither of them noticed Harry's bracelet spin frantically through red cards before dying quietly with a nearly inaudible hiss.

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I know I don't deserve it, but don't forget to review anyway, hahaha...