Another City, Not My Own

"ANOTHER CITY, NOT MY OWN"
By R.S. Lindsay

Chapter One
"Breakfast At Hogwarts"

Hogwarts was certainly more peaceful, certainly a lot more pleasant, Harry Potter had to admit, now that Draco Malfoy was gone.

Harry sat by himself at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. It was early morning on the first Monday in March in his sixth year. Overhead, the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall showed dark gray clouds and rain outside. Harry had two books on the table in front of him and, in between bites of his breakfast, was looking over his notes for his Arithmancy test. Now and then, he glanced over his shoulder at the half-empty Slytherin table. It surprised him that he was having trouble getting used to the fact that Draco Malfoy was no longer there, leering at him behind his back, plotting some horrible mischief for Harry and his friends to fall victims to.

The gaps at the Slytherin table had become increasingly wider and more apparent in recent months. About a third of the Slytherin students hadn't returned to Hogwarts after Christmas break. Every week or so since then, Harry and his friends saw another group of Slytherin students with their trunks packed, heading down to the Hogsmeade train station to take the Hogwarts Express back to London. This mass exodus of students from Slytherin House had not been entirely unexpected. As Lord Voldemort was gaining new ground, making his presence more than known throughout Europe now, many parents of Slytherin children were openly declaring their support for the Dark Lord--or, if they had been Death Eaters before, were now returning boldly to their master's side. The last thing these supporters of the Dark Lord wanted was to have their children under the watchful eye of a good wizard like Albus Dumbledore.

Throughout the exodus, Draco Malfoy had stayed. For two years now, ever since the return of the Dark Lord had been announced, Malfoy had been working hard to form his own group of Voldemort supporters at Hogwarts. He had used scare tactics, prophecies of doom, loosely-veiled threats, anything he could think of to bring the frightened and worried students at the school under his control. "Mark my words, when the Dark Lord takes over, the Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers are going to be the first to feel his power. It's inevitable. It's only a matter of time. Better to join in with me--I mean, with him--now than to face the wrath of the Dark Lord."

Most of the Slytherins had gone over to Malfoy's side, attending secret meetings of what he called the "Pure Society" down in the Slytherin dungeons. Even a few terrified students from Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw had joined Malfoy's group. But Harry and his friends had stood up against Malfoy's influence of fear, and had fought a long and hard struggle over the past two years to convince the students at Hogwarts that their school, their world, was worth fighting for.

There had been small victories along the way. After Cedric Diggory's death, Cho Chang, in her grief, had all but given up Quidditch. Draco Malfoy had promised his followers that she would never ride her broom again, would never catch another Snitch, and had cited this as proof of the Dark Lord's far-reaching power. But Harry and his friends had persuaded Cho to get back on her broom, and Harry himself had retrained Cho as a Seeker.

Not only had Cho regained her confidence, she had even beaten Harry to the Snitch in the Gryffindor-vs.-Ravenclaw Quidditch Cup final the previous year. If he closed his eyes, Harry could picture Cho's outstanding game-winning move, an aerial maneuver that was now being called a "Chang Corkscrew." Just as Harry was closing in on the Snitch, rising up towards it on his broom with his fingers just inches away from grasping it, Cho had swiveled up and around from beneath him. She had done a barrel roll in midair over his head and snatched the Snitch away from him while hanging upside-down on her broom. While he'd been somewhat disgusted with himself for losing the Quidditch cup, Harry counted Cho's comeback as a personal victory--not only for himself and for her, but for the school as well. Cho's victory had proven to the school that the Dark Lord's influence could be overcome, and that despite Draco Malfoy's claims, Voldemort's triumph was not inevitable.

Then, at the end of Harry's fifth year, Lucius Malfoy had managed to frame Harry for the murders of four wizards down at the Hog's Head Pub in Hogsmeade. Harry had been sent to Azkaban by the incompetent Cornelius Fudge. But he hadn't stayed long. Ron and Ginny Weasley had led their older brothers in an assault on the island prison, breaking Harry out and spiriting him to safety with the help of Sirius Black and Remus Lupin (aided by some "unofficial help" in the form of anti-Dementor charms supplied by Dumbledore). Harry had returned to Hogwarts and, with Hermione Granger's help, had managed to prove his own innocence and clear his name. It was a large blow to Draco Malfoy, who had thought he was finally rid of the "Hogwarts Hero."

And then, just last November, during the autumn of Harry's sixth year, Draco Malfoy had shot off his mouth once too often around Hermione Granger. He had made the comment that, when Voldemort took over, Hermione would serve well as "the Dark Lord's Mudblood concubine." Enraged, Hermione had finally snapped and challenged Malfoy to a Wizard's Duel in front of the entire school.

It hadn't been pretty. The Wizard's Duel between Hermione and Draco had started in the Great Hall, spilled over through the hallways of the school, and finally ended up in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Harry and Ron, who had been serving as Hermione's seconds, had finally been forced to step in and stop the duel in order to save Hermione's life. Had the duel gone on any longer, Ron said (and Harry agreed), Hermione would have gotten the death penalty for savagely killing Malfoy.

With one final sweep of her wand ("Draco Malfoy, you are the weakest link! Goodbye!"), Hermione had settled the matter, levitating Malfoy in midair, turning him upside-down, and dropping him head-first into a toilet with his body spinning like a drill screw. It had taken over an hour for Crabbe and Goyle to get the crown of Malfoy's head unstuck from the top of the U-bend in the toilet. Moaning Myrtle had laughed for weeks.

In spite of this humiliation, Draco Malfoy had continued to stubbornly insist on his "Pure-Blood Superiority," still predicting that the Dark Lord's triumph was inevitable. He pretended not to care as the attendance to his Pure Society meetings got smaller and smaller. As Slytherin students started to leave the school en masse, Harry had kept a close eye on Malfoy, in case he tried some evil stunt, some desperate last-ditch attempt to prove the supremacy of his Dark Magic. Not that any such attempt would work, Harry was sure--the feelings of courage and hope that he and his friends had fought to instill in the students at Hogwarts were slowly and surely taking hold. But a "final assault" by Malfoy might do serious damage to the school, and possible harm to the students there. So Harry had kept a close watch on Malfoy's movements.

And then, two weeks ago, Draco Malfoy had been caught cheating on an Arithmancy test.

It had surprised Harry that Malfoy could be so ingenious and so stupid at the same time. Attempting to prove his superiority over Hermione Granger in grades, if not in magical dueling skills, Malfoy had bullied a Ravenclaw first-year into stealing the answers for the next Arithmancy exam from Professor Vector's office. He had then figured a way to get past the anti-cheating spells that were normally attached to the quill pens that Hogwarts students used in their exams. These enchanted pens were always very sensitive to the students who used them. If they sensed that you were copying answers from someone else's paper, or that you had written the test answers down on your arm before the exam, or that you were otherwise getting the answers from any source except your own memory, the pens simply refused to write. They jerked back and forth in your hand, leaving incoherent scribbles of ink all over your test paper--scribbles that were very hard to explain to your professor when you handed in the exam.

But apparently no one had ever thought of putting anti-cheating spells on the test papers themselves, or on the ink that the students used to write their answers. All Hogwarts students brought their own bottles of ink to the exams. In some cases--such as Arithmancy exams, where they might have to write out long, complex arithmantic formulas--the students wrote their answers on separate "answer sheets" of blank paper, which they then handed in along with the test papers.

Somewhere, Malfoy had discovered a spell used for secret writing. A piece of paper could be enchanted to absorb written messages like a sponge, and the writing could later be recalled using enchanted ink You simply wrote your message on the paper and pronounced a spell ("Atramentum absorbio!") over it. The ink would then be sucked into the paper, making it appear blank. Then all you had to do was to sprinkle enchanted ink from the same bottle onto the paper, and your message would magically reappear just as you had written it, like lemon juice under a heat lamp. It was, Harry thought later, probably similar to whatever spells Tom Riddle had used to enchant his notorious diary, except that Malfoy hadn't tried to preserve any elements of himself in his test paper.

Armed with the stolen answers for his next Arithmancy test, Malfoy had written his figures out in full detail on a piece of paper, and had then enchanted that paper so that it absorbed the ink. He had come to the exam with his enchanted answer sheet and a bottle of the same magical ink, and had spent the hour-long exam scribbling casually on the answer sheet. It didn't matter that his pen sensed that he was cheating and only made incoherent scratches across his paper. The ink was absorbed into the paper and magically reappeared in perfect, neat little arithmantic figures. At the end of the hour, Malfoy--and Crabbe and Goyle, who were also using the enchanted-ink-and-paper technique--had handed in test papers with perfect scores.

But Malfoy had blundered badly. He hadn't known that Professor Vector had made up two tests, one for her Gryffindor class, and one for her Slytherin class. Unbeknownst to Malfoy, the Ravenclaw first-year had stolen the answers to the wrong test. Malfoy had handed in his answer sheet with perfect answers for the questions on the Gryffindor test! Apparently, the questions on both tests were so similar that Malfoy hadn't noticed that he was giving answers for the wrong exam on his paper.

Malfoy insisted that he hadn't cheated, that Professor Vector must have given him the Gryffindor test by mistake, but it was perfectly obvious that he was lying. Crabbe and Goyle had both given the exact same answers, figure for figure, on their answer sheets, each achieving a perfect score for the wrong test. (And Crabbe and Goyle had never achieved a perfect score on anything in their entire academic careers.)

And then came the axe. Encouraged by Harry Potter and Cho Chang, the Ravenclaw first-year who had stolen the test for Malfoy came forward and confessed. She was a timid Muggle-born girl who had never even heard of Hogwarts before she'd received her official owl letter from Professor McGonagall. She was just now starting to understand the magical world, and the conflict that was raging between the Death Eaters and the Ministry of Magic, aided by the Order of the Phoenix. Playing on her fears and unfamiliarity with the magic world, Malfoy had threatened to have the Death Eaters target her family if she didn't steal the Arithmancy test for him. Dumbledore had seen to it that the girl had served a mild detention, but was not expelled for stealing the test.

With that, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had been put on the Hogwarts Express back to London. There had been loud cheering, even singing and dancing, in the Gryffindor common room when Hermione Granger announced that Draco Malfoy had been expelled. Harry was only sorry that his best friend, Ron Weasley, wasn't there to see it. He knew that Ron would have cheered the loudest, and would probably have kissed everyone in sight.

Harry would never forget the boiling look on Draco Malfoy's face as Rubeus Hagrid jovially carried his bags down the Hogwarts steps to the carriage that would take the three expelled students to the Hogsmeade train station. ("It's the least a half-breed like me can do fer a Pure-Blood like yerself, Draco.") Malfoy's disgrace was compounded by the fact that he would be the first member of his family in over four-hundred years not to graduate from Hogwarts.

* * *

Harry flipped through his Arithmancy notes once more as Ginny Weasley sat down beside him at the table. She slipped her hand comfortably under his arm and smiled at him. "Morning," she said, pleasantly.

"Good morning," said Harry, returning the smile.

She looked at the notes and papers laid out around Harry's breakfast plate. "Arithmancy today? What's this?"

Ginny started to open a yellow folder lying to Harry's right, on the outer edge of the circle of papers. Harry reached over and put his hand down on the folder, stopping her from opening it. "Sorry, that's--"

"Oh, I see," Ginny said, pulling her hand back. "That's what you're working on with Professor Snape, huh? I know. You could tell me about it, but then you'd have to kill me."

"Right," Harry said, grinning. He took the yellow folder and put it back in his bookbag. "I probably shouldn't even have it out here, but I need to talk to Snape before I take the Arithmancy exam. I'll tell you someday. I promise."

Harry sighed. He hated keeping secrets from Ginny, but it was better that his friends didn't know anything about his and Snape's attempts to reconstruct the ancient magic of the Green Flame Torch. Dumbledore was the only other person at Hogwarts who knew what Harry and Snape were working on in Snape's dungeon. In the past two weeks, Snape had been especially uncooperative. He had been bitter over the expulsion of his favorite Slytherin student, Draco Malfoy. But Snape's obstinance seemed to have worn down a bit in the past few days, and he and Harry were slowly getting back to their regular, if somewhat strained, work routine.

Harry and Ginny sat together at the Gryffindor table, eating sausages and eggs, and quietly enjoying each other's company. As Ginny passed Harry a plate full of cruellers dusted with powdered sugar, they saw Hermione Granger enter the Great Hall, wearing her prefect badge, and carrying her usual double-armload of books.

"How long do you think it'll take her to ask?" Ginny whispered.

"I'm betting fifteen seconds or less," Harry replied.

"Morning," Hermione said, as she sat down opposite Harry and Ginny. She looked at Harry's notes, scattered across the table. "Oh, I see you have a test today. Transfiguration logarithms? Well, I'd pay close attention to the cosines and tangents of the Henning reciprocals, if I were you. And don't forget the Gibson-Grant ring factor when you're doing the double-helix equations."

Harry nodded. "Thanks. I'll remember that."

Hermione was silent for a moment. Harry and Ginny waited. Then Hermione gave them a questioning glance, and started to open her mouth.

"No," Harry and Ginny said together, both smiling and shaking their heads.

"You've heard nothing?" Hermione asked, a troubled look in her eyes. "Nothing at all?"

"Not since the last time you asked us," said Harry.

"Which was last night," Ginny added.

"I'm really starting to get worried," Hermione said. "I mean, it's been weeks now, without any word."

"Ron's fine, Hermione," said Harry. "He'll be back here before you know it."

"Yes, stop worrying, for heaven's sake," said Ginny. "If anything happened--I mean, if there were any news or anything--Charlie would have contacted Mum and Dad."

"Would he?" Hermione asked. "They're deep under cover in Romania. What if something happens to both of them out there? How would we ever find out?"

"Calm down," Harry said, reaching across the table to grasp her wrist, reassuringly. "Ron will be fine. He's smart, he's tough, and he's got Charlie with him, and Charlie knows the territory out there."

Ron Weasley had been absent from Hogwarts for almost three weeks. His brother, Charlie, had requested that Ron join him for a special assignment in the Dragon Mountains of Romania, and Arthur Weasley had obtained a special leave of absence from Hogwarts for his son. Harry wasn't exactly sure what the assignment was, or why Charlie had requested that Ron should come along, but he suspected that it had something to do with Ron's recent research into Animagic.

Every day that Ron was gone, Hermione fretted a bit more. And, to tell the truth, Harry did too, although he was trying to put on a brave face for Hermione's sake. He missed having Ron there to joke with and gripe with. Harry hoped that, whatever Ron was doing in the Dragon Mountains, it wasn't too dangerous. But of course, his own few encounters with dragons had taught Harry that there was no such thing as an encounter with a dragon that "wasn't too dangerous." (A recent report in the Daily Prophet about the Death Eaters trying to purchase dragon eggs in the small town of Alt-na-Shellach in Scotland had made Harry's stomach do an additional flip-flop. Did Ron's assignment in Romania have any connection with this?)

Ginny had been less worried. She knew her brothers, she said, and if Ron was with Charlie, that meant he was okay. According to Ginny, Charlie could stare down a Romanian Longhorn at 500 feet. (The fact that Charlie might need to stare down a Romanian Longhorn was not exactly reassuring to Harry or Hermione.) But even Ginny admitted privately to Harry that she was getting a bit nervous as the days passed without any word from Ron or Charlie.

Harry quickly changed the subject of conversation at the breakfast table, asking Hermione for more pointers about transfiguration logarithms for his exam. A few minutes later, Ginny tapped him on the arm. "Here comes your little brother."

Harry looked up to see Jeremy Wight, a small sandy-haired boy, enter the Great Hall with a group of Gryffindor first-years.

"Would you stop calling him that?" Harry said, annoyed. Ginny giggled.

Jeremy gave Harry a small wave and a smile. Then he sat down at the far end of the Gryffindor table and started a conversation with his first-year friends.

"You see?" said Harry. "If he were really my little brother, he'd have come down here and started bugging me when he saw me talking to two gorgeous young ladies."

"Oh! Get Mister Charming here," Hermione said to Ginny, with a smile.

"Flattery'll get you nowhere, Harry Potter," said Ginny. She leaned over and kissed him on the temple. "But don't stop trying."

Ginny and Hermione stood and collected their books. "We'd better go," said Hermione. "We've got molecular magic class in ten minutes."

* * *

A few minutes after the two girls left, Jeremy Wight came down the table, alone, and sat down opposite Harry. "Hi," he said, with a smile.

"Hello, Jeremy," said Harry. "Any change in the eggs?"

Jeremy shook his head. "Ought to be hatching any day now, though. I felt the eggs this morning. They're both very warm. Hedwig tells me she can't sleep a wink in the day, 'cause they're moving too much underneath her"

"How's Hornsby doing?" Harry asked.

"Typical owl father-to-be," Jeremy replied. "He's about worn out the rafters up in the Owlery, pacing up and down the length of 'em. I don't know who's more nervous, him or Hedwig. 'Course, the other owls aren't helping much today."

"What do you mean?"

Jeremy shrugged. "I don't know what's wrong with 'em. I was up in the Owlery a few minutes ago, and there was some kind of fight going on up there. Some...black owl, I'd never seen it before. It was fighting with the Patil twins' owl."

"Hmm, that's strange," said Harry. "Usually, the owls get along pretty well up there, don't they?"

"Aye, usually," said Jeremy. "Owls are just like people, though. They have their little tiffs now and then."

One of Jeremy's friends called to him, down the table. Jeremy waved to his friend, then stood up. "Gotta go. Transfiguration class."

"See you later," said Harry. He watched the first-year leave with his friends.

Jeremy Wight was the progeny of a prosperous and very respectable wizard family that lived in the Yorkshire Dales. His family had gotten rich through several centuries of breeding and training magical livestock, especially owls. Jeremy had come to Hogwarts from a distinguished country manor house, located on a wizard farm just outside the small town of Darrowby. He spoke with a slight trace of a Yorkshire accent, but was very articulate for such a young age. He was small in size, but very strong in stature--the result, Harry thought, of being brought up on a farm. He had a calm, confident manner about him, and walked with the poise of a young nobleman. He was not arrogant or swaggering, like Draco Malfoy, but treated everyone--teacher or student, magical or Muggle-born, rich or poor--with a simple respect and courtesy. These good manners, Harry knew, were something that the boy had obviously been taught by his family, something that he had taken time to practice and learn well.

Jeremy's special talent was that he could talk to animals. Hermione Granger had discovered this one day in the Gryffindor common room, a few days after they'd all returned to Hogwarts from the summer holidays. She'd picked up Crookshanks around his middle, and he'd yowled in protest and struggled in her arms.

"Goodness, Crookshanks," Hermione had said. "What's the matter with you?"

"He's got a sore spot on his tummy," said Jeremy Wight, who was sitting at a nearby table doing his Transfiguration homework.

Hermione had turned Crookshanks over, and sure enough. There was a white, swollen abcess on his tummy, hidden under a matting of fur. "Oh, you poor dear. How on earth did you get that?"

Crookshanks yowled again. Jeremy stood up and came over to examine the sore spot. "He says he got it some place called 'The Burrow.' He was chasing a gnome and it bit him on the tum."

Hermione blinked in surprise. "You can understand him?"

"Aye, I can. Don't worry, I won't touch it," Jeremy said to Crookshanks. He looked at the white abcess. "Yeah, that'll burst itself off in a day or two. It'll be a bit messy. He'll have a bald patch there for a while, but the fur'll grow back. There's a magical vet in that town down the hill--Hogsmeade, I think it's called? Y'might take him down there, get the vet to give him a shot so he doesn't get an infection."

A few weeks later, Harry had gone up to the Owlery to send a message to Arthur Weasley. But Hedwig was nowhere to be found. Harry was searching the Owlery for her when, behind him, a small voice said, "Excuse me? Er, you're Harry Potter, right?"

Harry turned. Jeremy was standing there looking a bit sheepish, the way first-years often did when they tried to speak to the "legendary" Harry Potter.

"That's right," Harry said, with a reassuring smile. "Uhh, your name's Jeremy, isn't it?"

"Er, yes sir," said Jeremy, with a small shudder. He seemed startled that Harry Potter knew his name. "You're looking for your owl, aren't you? The white one? Hedwig, I think her name is?"

"Yeah. You know where she is?"

Jeremy nodded. He pointed to his left. "She's over here. You should come take a look at this. I think you and I might have a little problem."

Harry followed Jeremy to where Hedwig was sitting on a remote rafter, high above the floor. A large brown owl was sitting very close beside her. It was obvious from the way the two owls were snuggling together on the rafter that they were very much in love.

"That's my owl, Hornsby," said Jeremy, pointing to the brown owl. "As you can see, they've taken a bit of a liking to each other."

Harry looked up at Hedwig and burst out laughing. "I don't believe it!" he called up to her. "Hedwig, I'm devastated! After all I've done for you! I feed you, I give you water, I care for you. And now you've gone and thrown me over for another man!"

Hedwig hooted down indignantly at Harry from the rafters. Beside him, Jeremy Wight stifled a laugh.

"What's so funny?" Harry asked.

Jeremy looked embarrassed. "Well--she said it, you understand? I didn't. She says, if you hadn't spent all your time fooling around with that Ginny Weasley girl, she wouldn't've started looking around for a new friend."

"Did she really say that?" Harry looked up at the rafters and clutched his heart dramatically, like a jilted suitor. "Oh, Hedwig, you wound me! Don't you know that you'll always be my best girl?"

Hedwig turned away from him, her nose in the air, and nuzzled her new sweetheart affectionately.

"I don't think she believes you," said Jeremy, with a grin. He watched the two lovebirds on the rafter, thoughtfully. "You know, we should make them a box."

"A box?" Harry asked.

"A nest box. They're going to want to build a nest together."

The following weekend, Harry, Ron Weasley, and Jeremy had borrowed some wood and tools from Hagrid and made a private nest box for Hedwig and Hornsby. Jeremy had obviously made a few nest boxes before, and directed Harry and Ron on how to cut the wood and hammer the square planks together.

As they worked inside the wood shed, Jeremy told Harry and Ron about his farm in the Yorkshire Dales, and his family's business. "We've been raising and training owls for over a hundred years now. A lot of the owls up in the Owlery here came from our farm. Like that one you've got, Mr. Weasley. He's one of ours."

"Pigwidgeon?" Ron said in surprise. "He came from your farm?"

"Aye, he was hatched on our farm when I was about seven," Jeremy said, nodding. "I remember him! Cheeky little devil. Bit of a loudmouth, isn't he? But he really wants to be a good owl, y'know, do his duty to his master and all that?"

"He's all right," Ron admitted, with his usual reserved tone. "Gets the messages there and back. Wish he'd shut up sometimes, though."

Harry and Ron were surprised when Jeremy told them that his family farm employed Muggles as farmhands. "Don't they talk to people outside the farm about the things they see there?" Harry asked.

"Not really," said Jeremy, with a shrug. "Yorkshire farmers don't talk too much to outsiders. And what they see on the farms doesn't really surprise them any more. They're good at keeping secrets. Besides, who'd believe 'em if they said that they work on a farm with magical owls and unicorns and winged horses?"

"You have winged horses on your farm?" asked Ron.

"Aye, a few," said Jeremy, as he hammered a nail into the side of the nest box. "In fact, we just bought three new Granians this past spring. They're the small, gray ones, y'know, they're really fast--on the ground and in the air. They're magnificent. When they fly, you never saw anything so beautiful. My dad says he'll start breeding 'em for air polo ponies next year."

"Air polo? What's that?" Harry asked.

"Oh, I've heard of that," said Ron. "It used to be really popular with the upper-crust wizards. I've heard it's coming back into style. It's like Quidditch, but the players ride on winged horses instead of brooms. And they use a flying ball with wings on it--sort of like the Golden Snitch, but it's a little bigger, and easier to hit with your mallet. And they don't use hoops as the goals; they use big nets set up on poles. They're like the goals in Muggle football, or that other game that they play on ice. What do they call that again? Hickie?"

"Hockey," Harry corrected him. He shook his head in wonder. "Wow! Polo with flying ponies? That's got to be something to see! I'd sure love to play in a game like that." He had a mental picture of himself riding on a winged horse, knocking a ball through the air with a red polo mallet.

"Yeah, but you wouldn't want to be watching it in the stands," said Ron, with a smile. "I mean, think about it. All those winged ponies flying up over you." He held his hands over his head, as if shielding himself from something heavy dropping out of the sky. "It'd get a bit smelly after a time."

"Oh, they put an awning up over the stands during the match so you don't have to worry about that," said Jeremy. "I've heard it's a fun game. I've never seen it played but I'd like to see it sometime. They used to play it here at Hogwarts, as a matter of fact."

"Really?" said Harry.

"Yeah, they stopped around the beginning of World War I, 'cause it got too expensive. You know those big cinder blocks in the grass down around the Whomping Willow? That's what's left of the stables where they used to keep the winged horses."

"Huh! I didn't know that," said Ron, amazed.

"Didn't you fellows ever read that book, Hogwarts, A History?" Jeremy asked.

Harry and Ron stared at him, then looked at each other ruefully.

"What?" Jeremy said, looking back and forth between them. "What'd I say?"

* * *

Harry soon discovered that there was a good deal more worth knowing about this young boy from the Yorkshire Dales. Jeremy Wight was an excellent student. He studied hard and did well on all his exams. His dedication to his studies came not from an obsession to be the best in the class like Hermione Granger, but from a simple desire to learn as much as he could. It was like a natural edict to him. He had come to Hogwarts to learn, he said, and that was what he was doing. Harry and Hermione both saw the makings of a future prefect and Head Boy in Jeremy.

One day, when they were in the Owlery, watching Hedwig and Hornsby build their nest together in the nest box, Jeremy told Harry that he wanted to follow in his family's footsteps, not just as a breeder of magical creatures, but as a healer as well.

"I have an uncle, named Siegfried. He's a vet. He goes around to all the farms in Yorkshire. Cares for all the sick animals. And not just the wizard farms, although there's quite a few of those up there. He goes around to the Muggle farms, too. Cares for all the cows and pigs and sheep. Sometimes, I go with him on his rounds, y'know? He's really good. Everyone says he's got a magic healing touch with the animals. I think I'd like to be a vet, like him--maybe take over the practice for him when he retires." He looked at Harry, apprehensively. "You think that's a silly thing to want?"

"I think that's probably the best plan I've ever heard from a first-year," Harry said, sincerely. It occurred to him that any boy with Jeremy's intelligence (and who could talk to animals besides) would make an outstanding veterinarian.

On a crisp fall afternoon, Jeremy had stopped by the Quidditch field after his herbology class to watch Harry, who was now captain of the Gryffindor team, put his Chasers through an awkward series of passing and defense drills. After practice, Harry had invited Jeremy to take a turn around the field on his Firebolt. It took three minutes of watching Jeremy soar through the air on his broom for Harry to know that he was looking at his successor as Seeker on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Jeremy was fast and agile, a natural flier, even though he said he'd never ridden a broom before coming to Hogwarts. (He had, however, been riding winged horses since he was six.) Harry hoped to put Jeremy on the team as an auxiliary Seeker next year.

Jeremy's courage and sense of justice were strong as well--almost too strong, Harry discovered. On a muddy November day, Harry was walking outside the greenhouses when a Hufflepuff first-year boy whose name he didn't know came running up to him, looking very scared. "M-M-Mister Potter? Sir?"

"What's wrong?" Harry asked.

Gulping for air, the boy led the way around the corner. Harry followed, and saw three burly Slytherin third-year boys kicking a small, muddy object around the lawn. With a start, Harry realized that the object the boys were kicking was Jeremy Wight.

"Hey!" Harry shouted. "What's going on here?!"

The three Slytherins spun around and stared at him in shock. They were all very large boys, Harry noticed, and he wondered if they might be second cousins to Crabbe and Goyle. One of them had a bleeding lip. Another had a large, swelling bruise on his chin. When they saw Harry, they turned and ran.

Harry and the Hufflepuff boy ran up to Jeremy, who was lying on his face in a mud puddle. "Jeremy, are you all right?" Harry asked.

"Oh, aye!" Jeremy groaned sarcastically. "I always feel wonderful after a couple o' blokes've been kicking me 'round the yard like a football."

The Hufflepuff boy pointed after the three Slytherins. "They were botherin' me, and Jeremy came up and told 'em to quit it."

Harry took Jeremy up to the Hospital Wing, where Madam Pomfrey checked him over and diagnosed cuts and bruises, but no broken bones. Jeremy took a very painful bath in one of the Hospital Wing bathtubs to wash off the mud, while Harry went down to the boy's room in Gryffindor tower and brought back a change of clothes.

"So let me see if I've got this straight," Harry said later, when they were back in Jeremy's room in Gryffindor Tower. "You saw those three Slytherin boys bothering Toby Caitiff. You walked over to them, and you stepped between Toby and the three boys? And you said--do I have this right?--'Leave him alone, you bloody oafs!' Didn't this plan seem, maybe--I don't know?--a bit suicidal to you?"

Sitting on the edge of his bed, Jeremy gave Harry an exasperated look. "They were shoving Toby around the yard. What was I supposed to do? Just stand there and watch them beat him up?"

"You were supposed to come get me. Or one of the prefects, or a teacher, someone who could deal with those kids," said Harry. "Marching up to three boys who are bigger than you and challenging them head-on is never a good idea. Look, you're new here, so let me give you the facts about Slytherin boys. Most of them have very small brains and very large muscles. They look at you, and they think to themselves"--he lowered his voice to imitate a typical Slytherin grunt--"'Little guy! Must hit! Must hit!' Your best strategy is to simply avoid them--which, believe me, isn't that hard to do."

"I got in some good licks on 'em," Jeremy insisted.

"Yeah, the way they were kicking you around the yard, I'm sure their feet will be bruised and swollen for days." Harry was sitting on a chair next to the wall. He leaned forward and put his forearms on his knees. "Jeremy, you've got to realize something. This isn't your father's manor house."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jeremy asked.

"It means that--" Harry paused, took a deep breath, and looked at the boy. "You've got this--attitude of authority about you. I know, you're not a snob. You don't go around ordering people about, like Draco Malfoy. But--when you do give people orders, you seem to expect them to obey you. Those three boys, today. When you walked up and told them to stop bothering Toby, you expected them to do what you said, right?"

Jeremy looked at the floor, and Harry knew he'd guessed correctly.

"See, you've got to remember that you're not the manor lord's son here. People aren't going to just obey your orders without question, like your servants and stable hands do at home. And when it comes to challenging Slytherin boys, you've got to know when you're out-matched."

"Right," Jeremy mumbled, still looking at the floor. "I guess I didn't do too well out there today, did I?"

"Look, if it's any consolation, I had to learn it the hard way, too. My first year, the first fight I ever got into here at Hogwarts...I fought with a troll."

"A troll?" Jeremy's eyebrows shot up.

Harry nodded. "Someone let a troll into the castle on Halloween night, and Ron and Hermione and I tangled with it in one of the bathrooms."

"What did you do?"

"Oh, I did just what you're supposed to do when you encounter a nine-foot troll with a huge club," Harry said, rolling his eyes. "I jumped up on its back and stuck my wand up its nose."

Harry kept an eye on Jeremy for the next week or so, in case the three Slytherin third-years tried to start more trouble. But the three Slytherins apparently decided that it was not a good idea to persecute a boy who had Harry Potter as a friend. Sometimes, being a "legend" did have its advantages. As for Jeremy himself, Harry wasn't worried. The boy wasn't the type to go looking for fights; in fact, Jeremy rarely seemed to lose his temper at all. It was only when he saw someone else being pushed around that he tended to step in and stand up for them. The rest of the time, Jeremy was content to go his own way and be a normal kid. In that, Harry realized, they were very much alike.

* * *

It was perhaps inevitable that Jeremy should take some ribbing for his friendship with Harry, especially after Hedwig laid two eggs in her nest box in the Owlery at the beginning of February. With all that Harry had going on right now--his studies, training the Quidditch team, his research with Professor Snape, and his work with the Order of the Phoenix--he didn't have time to check in on Hedwig every day. So Jeremy had done it, providing Harry with regular updates on the status of their new "grandchildren." This meant that Jeremy was seen talking to Harry in the Great Hall almost every morning, which had led to the comments about Jeremy being "Harry Potter's little brother."

Although Harry privately admitted to himself that having someone like Jeremy Wight as a little brother would not be a bad thing, he found the nickname annoying He thought that those who called Jeremy his "little brother"--like those who defined Harry simply as "the Boy Who Lived"--never saw the true worth inside the Yorkshire boy. Jeremy was not a hero worshipper. He didn't follow Harry around with a camera taking snapshots, like Colin Creevey had done. He was very careful not to take any kind of advantage of his friendship with Harry. (He politely refused the many requests he received from his first-year friends to "get Harry Potter's autograph" for them, explaining calmly, "He doesn't give out autographs, not to me or anyone else. He's not like that. He's just an ordinary chap like you and me.")

As for the "little brother" comments, Jeremy took them in stride. "We're not brothers, we're in-laws," he was fond of saying. "Our owls are hatching a couple of eggs together. Harry's the father of the bride."

Draco Malfoy, of course, had something to say about the matter. He claimed that Jeremy must have purposely enchanted his owl to seduce Hedwig just so he, Jeremy, could kiss up to his idol, Harry Potter. But unlike Ron Weasley, Jeremy didn't seem to be bothered by Malfoy's taunts. He had a "sticks-and-stones" mentality, he said, when it came to insults and name-calling.

"Malfoy's nothing but noise," Jeremy told Harry, with an expression of amused disgust. "He's a whinnying gelding trying to make himself out to be king of the barnyard. Back home, we'd say that Draco Malfoy's the kind of fellow who could fertilize an entire field just with his tongue."

Then, two weeks ago, Jeremy had noticed Draco Malfoy cornering a Ravenclaw first-year in a back hallway. He had overheard Malfoy threatening the first-year to "keep her mouth shut about the test." Knowing that Malfoy was under suspicion of having cheated on his latest Arithmancy exam, Jeremy had reported what he'd seen to Harry Potter, who had gone to see his friend, Cho Chang. Together, they'd convinced the Ravenclaw first-year to tell Professor Dumbledore what had happened. It had been Malfoy's downfall.

With plenty of courage and intelligence, Jeremy Wight was exactly the kind of soldier that Harry needed in his campaign against the Dark Forces. He could only hope that the current war against Voldemort and his followers would be over and done with before Jeremy or any of his classmates ever had to fight in it.

* * *

Harry closed his Arithmancy book. He had thirty minutes before his exam. Time enough to corner Professor Snape outside his Potions classroom and talk to him. The Great Hall was almost empty now, except for a few lingering students and a couple of teachers, including Professor Dumbledore, at the staff table.

As Harry stood up to leave, he saw Professor McGonagall enter the Great Hall. Something about McGonagall made him stop and look at her. She was pale, and seemed to stumble a bit as she walked. Harry could tell that something was not right with her. She came over to the teacher's table with an armload of papers and handed Professor Dumbledore a small, folded note, sealed with a red seal.

Beside Harry, Seamus Finnigan noticed the Transfiguration teacher's condition as well. "What's wrong with McGonagall? She looks like the ragged end of nowhere!"

At the teachers' table, Dumbledore opened the note but did not read it. He was staring at McGonagall, and speaking to her. Harry was sure that Dumbledore was asking if she was sick. Then, without warning, Professor McGonagall toppled over backwards and landed with a crash on the floor behind the staff table.

Harry ran for the table. Dumbledore and the other remaining professors jumped up from their seats and hurried to help McGonagall. Harry could hear the Transfiguration teacher groaning behind the table. It sounded as if she were in great pain.

"What happened?" Harry shouted to Dumbledore, over the table.

"I don't know," said Dumbledore, in a horrified tone. "She just collapsed."

Harry spotted the note that McGonagall had just delivered, lying open on the table. Dumbledore pointed to the piece of yellow paper. "Don't touch it, Harry."

But Harry had already read the single sentence scrawled on the inside of the note.

"Compliments of Lucius Malfoy."