AN: My thanks go to MirnyiAtom who reminded me that this story existed by following it and leading me to reinvestigate whether I had any more chapters or anything tucked away on my Google Drive inamidst paperwork and other such things.

Minerva hated staff meetings. They were cold, they were drafty, they were annoying. And that was just Binns, should he remember to turn up and haunt the room at the right time. She was semi-convinced that Dumbledore only kept the translucent professor because he occasionally needed a way to cool off during summer, and walking through a man so bored by his life that even he slept through his lectures was an easy way of doing so. Which isn't to say, in anyway, that there weren't other uses for a ghost.

She still remembered the Christmas that she bound his spirit to the Christmas Tree in the Great Hall so that the snow remained snow over the break to let her feel the true Christmas spirit. It was the same year she stole Trelawney's sherry, and whilst Pomona had pretended to be disapproving, Pomona had also provided the glasses.

Good years.

But staff meetings? Staff meetings were utterly pointless, so far as she could see. They would bring their issues. Dumbledore would nod his head meaningfully, Snape would sneer and insist that everyone favour his Slytherins, there would be an argument between two other faculty members and everyone would go away feeling like they lost, except Dumbledore who wouldn't even notice that the meeting was over.

She sipped her tea sternly, peering over her glasses at the table with some trepidation. Filus' face was grim, and that normally spelt bad news for everyone. They'd all heard about the brawl at the start of the year between the Ravenclaw girls, and they'd all heard about the minor prefect rebellion that was ongoing now that he'd condemned them to not being able to gain the esteemed private room for the next seven years. Harsh, but fair, was her opinion. Brawling in the common room just wasn't on, especially when everyone was sober. Firewhiskey may have made it more acceptable, of course, but firewhiskey had a habit of making everything more acceptable.

More worryingly yet, Kettleburn seemed almost cheerful. Which meant, sure enough tha-

"I want to resign". Kettleburn spoke up, jumping into the inane chatter that prefaced all such meetings.

Minerva sighed. Dumbledore nodded meaningfully. Kettleburn's resignation was politely, but firmly, rejected.

Chatter surged back for a second or two, before Filus finally got around to his issue. "I'm afraid that we have a third contender in my 'claws for overt academics."

"The Granger girl?" Severus spoke up, looking almost interested in the meeting for once, "I've noticed that she's started to work a lot more closely with the other two." There was no doubt in anyone's mind who he was talking about. "She has a startling tendency to remain completely within the purview of the textbook. Lacks any originality or finesse, unlike that of Evans or Lovegood."

"Evans?" Dumbledore frowned at the potions master over his glasses, his brow furrowed in confusion.

"No one with that much of a brain could ever have been a Potter, Albus."

"James was always a very bright boy."

"Light travels faster than sound, and it seems you never spoke to the twat."

McGonagall coughed, surprised that Severus, of all people, would try to make a joke. Even if it was at James Potter's expense. But still, it was her job to keep these meetings moving, "Are you suggesting that we should push up Hermione into advanced classes as well?"

"Are you sure she's going to be capable?" Pomona spoke up as she hustled across the room towards the never-ending teapot. "The girl always has her head buried in a book, and it's always a litany of books that seem to be quoted in her essays. If we give her too many books to read, there won't be any left in the library."

Dumbledore nodded meaningfully. "That's certainly something to consider Pomona, but I think that Hermione is always going to be able to cope…"

-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-

"How do you two do this?" Hermione's head sunk against the table, taking a short break from banging her head against it, "It just doesn't make sense. No sense whatsoever."

Luna blinked, before pulling the book towards her, "This isn't that nonsensical."

"You can't just make things appear. Conservation has to be a constant in magic." Hermione gesticulated wildly with her hands, attracting the amused eyes of Harry, "We can see conservation even. Look at transfiguration. The runes for air form part of nearly all of the movements for every spell, the arithmetic calculations nearly always include significant transformations to or from air. Big things to small things creates air, small things to big things uses air."

Harry flicked his wrist, producing a wand, before casually tapping the table in front of him, making a glass box rise out of it. "Vanish the air."

Hermione glared at him, "It's an airtight box, where is it supposed to go?"

He blinked, "I didn't tell you to move it, I told you to vanish it. Poof. Pawoof! Woompf!"

"Bu-"

"Evanseco". Luna tapped the case with her wand, enunciating clearly, a smile toying with her lips as the case suddenly cracked, spiderwebs seeping across the surface before collapsing onto the table, imploding with the sudden vacuum.

Hermione's glare transferred to the blonde, "That's a sixth year spell." Luna shrugged, obviously uncaring, before turning back to her book, letting Hermione ramble onwards, "And where did the air go? You can't just get rid of things.. That's nearly as bad as just creating things. Did you turn them into components of air? Maybe if you were to break down the larger molecules into something less stable then you could compress them more? Or you could even break them down into something submolecular, split each atom up into it's constituent quar-"

"I have no idea what you're talking about Hermione." Harry stared at her in vague horror, "Literally no idea. And I've been around a lot longer than you have."

"My birthday is before yours." She sniffed haughtily before waving her wand, reconstructing the glass box, "And I want to see the wand motions for evanseco. And the rune construction."

Harry's wand cut through the air, slashing once, the box collapsing once more, before flicking a small stream of ink from his wand onto Hermione's parchment to sketch out the rune construction in elegant lines. "There's no air rune in it, of course. It's vanishing, not transfiguration."

"Bu-"

"Your mistake is trying to apply principles of transfiguration into conjuration. When you vanish something, where does it go?"

"Into everywhere, which is to say nowhere."

"RIght, okay, so why can't you pull something from the everywhere, which is to say nowhere, and hence conjure?" Harry's wand carved a lazy loop through the air, and a quaffle appeared on the table. "Conjuration isn't transfiguration. Conjuration is conjuration."

"But where do the things come from?"

"Nowhere? Everywhere? Something like that."

Hermione's head banged against the table, a muffled growl escaping her lips.

Luna blinked. That looked mildly painful.

-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-

"Is anyone going to do anything about Hagrid's dragon?" Minerva finally voiced the issue that had been on her mind for the last week or two. "It can't be that far away from hatching, and then we'll have a real problem."

"Our groundskeeper does not have a pet dragon Minerva." Albus' eyes were almost wide with horror, "Don't even suggest such."

"He has an egg," Quirrel offered, "he was telling me about it on the way home from the pub the other night."

"You go to the pub together?" Severus stared at Quirrel incredulously, "Really?"

"Have you ever seen how amusing a drunk half-giant is?"

"No!"

"You're missing out. Tuesdays. You should come. There's nothing quite like watching Hagrid try to flirt with Rosmerta. It reminds me of my days at Hogwarts with the bo-"

Minerva frowned, "I thought you went to Beauxbatons."

Quirrel's eyes darted from side to side, "I meant at school. Er, Beauxbatons. We had a very similar pub in a very similar village."

"Beauxbatons is in the middle of the French countryside. Do the French even have pubs?"

Pomona glanced up from where she was spiking her tea with brandy, "They do have a few. I found this absolutely charming one the other day in this tiny french village."

"That's wonderful Pomona!" Dumbledore's twinkle was back in full-force, "You must tell me where it is and I'll visit it next time I pop over to the continent."

"Well if you start in Pari-"

"Aren't we supposed to be talking about the dragon?" Minerva cut across the swapping of niche wizarding pubs, a touch of hissing in her speech. "The dragon that is most likely entirely capable of burning down the entire school before it's a month old?"

Kettleburn frowned, "Now that's a bit hyperbolic. Dragons can breathe fire from a young age, yes, that's true, but it's unlikely to be able to melt stone for several months. Most of the time, it takes about six weeks before they hit their first early growth, and even then they're easily controlled by a group of only fifteen or sixteen trained handlers."

"And how many "trained handlers" do we have at Hogwarts?" Minerva stalked around the room towards the Care Of Magical Creatures professor, "How many "trained handlers" are going to get here before the dragon sets fire to my bedroom?"

"Maybe you shouldn't have the bedroom at the top of the tallest tower then." Kettleburn sniffed.

"It sounds like the two of you have this well in hand, and I don't need to do anything at all!" exclaimed Dumbledore cheerfully as Kettleburn nervously edged out of the room, as Minerva stalked after the errant professor, "Are there any other issues anyone would like to bring up today?"

Snape peered dubiously after the rapidly disappearing deputy headmistress before turning back to the room, "I think we should really have another word about the unfair struggles that my prefects have."

There was a unilateral groan across the room as Dumbledore lent across the table with a sparkle in his eyes and a lemon drop in his mouth.

-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-TDD-

"What about potions then?" Hermione's book landed on the table with a satisfying oomf, blowing dust into the face of the unimpressed, yet increasingly bemused, duo. "You were rambling on about something in potions that first lesson. Phoenix dust and arithmetic properties. Where does all that come from?"

"Nowhere, really. Not even sure it's right. It probably isn't, in fact." Harry shrugged, "It's just a theory. One that Snape is inordinately fond of. It was useful for making a point."

"A theory of what?"

"Everything". He paused for a second, to glance at the book she'd almost thrown at them (Potions and their Measures) before clarifying, "Or rather, of magic."

"Expand". She almost growled, her fingers curling around themselves as she leaned across the table. Luna, glancing up from her book, snorted to herself quietly. Harry was quite right, most wizards didn't really distinguish between everything or magic.

"It's one of these ideas that's kinda hard to pin down. Some say it started as far back as the 16th or 17th century, if not sooner, but really it's a modern idea. Last generation. Late 19th century at the earliest." He opened the book she'd thrown on the table and flicked through it's pages quickly, finding one that he knew mentioned it, "Some bright scholar decided to propose a big theory of magic and how it all worked. The superstitious concept of threes and sevens being powerful was proposed and so people began to build up spells and potions and everything else around it."

"But threes and sevens are powerful!" Hermione objected, "Everyone knows so."

"Why?"

Hermione's mouth fell open, before she mouthed silently for a few seconds. "Huh." She finally finished, "I see your point."

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm fairly sure that you'll be able to disprove the concept." Harry seemed almost unconcerned, but the slight glassy feel of his mind let Luna know that he was thinking back on something both painful and secret.

It had, she admitted to herself as the discussion between the other two continued, been happening more and more as Christmas had passed. Luna was concerned for her black haired friend. She knew, logically, that he knew that he could talk to her. She also knew, based on living the life of everyone ever, that he had never had anyone to talk to before. Not in this life or the last.

It was very easy to forget that he wasn't just an eleven year old boy with a bright and inquisitive mind. It was almost too easy to forget, she pondered, as if he himself was trying to embrace it for all of his complaints to the latter. She chewed absently on her hair as she watched Hermione calm down, once again, feeling the false dichotomy of magic and logic begin to peel apart a little more in her only other friend's head.

The entire situation was maybe unfair to Hermione as well. She was the only one of the two of them who didn't have some way of catching up. Not that Harry seemed to be aware that they were competing - boys never did seem to be aware of that kind of thing, years beyond their grasp or not.

But, future plans aside, Luna was worried. Secrets between them had always - at least for the last year or so - been mostly pointless. Considering that she lived in his head and that he could effortlessly slip into her head, secrets between the two of them were like a chocolate teapot. Perfectly fine as a decoration, but utterly useless in the desert or when compared to more sensible forms of decorative chocolate, like Easter Eggs (which were a muggle invention that Luna had learned to love. Chocolate, but in an egg! Whoever would have thought of that as a way to improve scrambled egg breakfasts?).

Secrets were, to her, a sign of his failing trust, or at least his own closing doors. Occlumency, to her senses, was very much like a house. Which was completely incorrect as anything but a metaphorical implication, given that Occlumency - like most other pieces of magic - was really magic, not a metaphorical place inside someone's head and really understanding what goes on inside someone else's head was mostly a matter of guesswork and experience rather than any innate ability to instantly understand how they thought. But still, it was a metaphorical implication sufficient enough for her to view Hermione's occlumency as a particularly thick pair of curtains on vaguely opaque windows, Dumbledore's as a rather esoteric front door, Snape's as a castle moat and Harry's as a indomitable wall beyond all other comprehension.

An open invitation is something he had offered her once, and now he wasn't even letting her glimpse the barest of his darkest thoughts and that worried her. She knew - only too well - the dark thoughts of those that had escaped a war alive. She had read Argus, she had read Minerva, She had read Quirinus and sensed the lingering gloom of his passenger. Luna pouted then awkwardly clambered into Harry's lap. At least, she thought, she could demand some attention, in the hopes that giving her attention would be as liberating as providing any other cat with attention.

Even if she wasn't a cat.

Yet.

AN: This has been sat on my hard drive for a few months. No promises about future updates and when they might show up.