Chapter 1

The tabby cat had been sitting on the wall at the end of Privet Drive since sunrise, and in all that time it hadn't moved a whisker. A man leaving for work had seen it reading a map. He'd told himself he hadn't, then spent the rest of the day not noticing a street full of people in cloaks, three owls flying around in broad daylight, and a lot of strangers whispering about the Potters and their little boy. By evening the neighborhood had gone quiet, and the cat was still there, ramrod straight, staring down the road like it was waiting for a bus that was very late.

Then the street lamps went out. They went one at a time, with a small click each, as if somebody were walking down the road switching them off with a lighter. A tall wizard with a long silver beard tucked the lighter back into his cloak and sat down on the wall like it was the most ordinary place in the world.

"I should have known I'd find you here, Professor McGonagall," he said.

The cat turned into a stern witch in emerald robes, with a tight bun and a tighter mouth. "How did you know it was me?"

"My dear Professor, I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly."

She sniffed. Then she asked what everyone had been asking all day. Was it true? Had he really gone, after all those years? And the Potters, Lily and James, were they...

"I'm afraid so," said Dumbledore, and for a while neither of them said anything. The boy had lived, he told her. He was on his way here now.

McGonagall turned and looked at number four. It had a tidy hedge and gleaming windows and not one single thing out of place. "Here? Dumbledore, I watched these people all day. They're the worst sort of Muggles. And they've got a son who spent the whole afternoon screaming for sweets."

"They're his family. It's the safest place for him." Dumbledore took a letter out of his cloak. "He'll be famous in our world before he can say his own name. I'd like him to grow up somewhere nobody's heard of him, until he's ready to be told."

"A letter? You think you can explain all this in a letter?"

A low rumble came from the sky before he could answer, and it grew into a roar. A motorbike came down out of the clouds, with a man on it so large that the bike looked like a toy, and he had a bundle of blankets in his arms. His beard was wild, his face was red and blotchy, and he'd obviously been crying for some time.

"Young Sirius Black lent me the bike," said Hagrid, sniffling. "Fell asleep over Bristol, the little tyke. Never made a peep."

There was a boy in the blankets, about a year old, with a tuft of black hair. On his forehead, just over his eye, was a cut shaped exactly like a lightning bolt. Dumbledore touched it very gently with one finger, then laid the baby on the doorstep, tucked the letter in with him, and stood for a moment with his head bowed. Hagrid blew his nose like a foghorn. McGonagall dabbed her eyes with her sleeve.

The baby turned over in his sleep, not knowing he'd just become the most famous person in the country.

It was ten years before he found out.

By then the baby had a name that everyone in Privet Drive used mostly as an insult, a pair of round glasses held together with tape, and a bed in the cupboard under the stairs. It had a dead light bulb, a mattress that was mostly springs, and a family of spiders who were, honestly, better company than the Dursleys. Harry Potter had never been told about any of the things that happened that night. He'd been told his parents died in a car crash, that it was probably their fault, and that he should be grateful nobody had put him in an orphanage.

Dudley had two bedrooms and a mountain of broken toys. Harry had Dudley's old clothes, which fit him like tents. He'd also gotten very good, over the years, at being quiet and not being where Dudley was, because Dudley and his friends had a game called Harry Hunting, and it wasn't a fun one.

Strange things happened around him anyway. His hair grew back overnight when Aunt Petunia gave him a terrible haircut. He once ended up on the school kitchen roof with no idea how. And on Dudley's eleventh birthday, when the Dursleys took him to the zoo (only because nobody would take him for the day), he met a snake.

It was a boa constrictor, as long as a bus and sound asleep. Dudley banged on the glass and demanded that it do something. It didn't, so Dudley lost interest and wandered off, and Harry stepped up to the glass by himself and said, "Sorry about him. He's an idiot."

The snake opened one eye. Then it winked.

Harry stared. He glanced around to see if anyone else had seen, which they hadn't, and then he leaned in and asked quietly where it came from. The snake pointed its tail at a sign on the glass. Bred in captivity. "Oh," said Harry. "That's rotten. Do you miss your family?" The snake shook its head, and Harry understood perfectly. It had never met them either.

Then Dudley was back, shoving Harry out of the way to get a better look, and Harry went down on the concrete. Nobody could say, afterward, what happened next. The glass simply wasn't there. The boa slid out onto the floor, thanked Harry in a long, polite hiss, and left through the reptile house doors, and Dudley and his friend Piers shrieked their way across the whole zoo with the whole zoo watching.

Harry was in the cupboard for a month.

He didn't think about the glass much after that. He was too busy being punished, and then the summer started, and then the letters came.

The first one was waiting on the doormat. Harry picked it up on his way to the kitchen and saw a heavy, yellowish envelope with a wax seal and his name on the front in green ink. Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard Under the Stairs. Nobody had ever written to him before, and he was still working out whether it was a joke when Dudley snatched it. Uncle Vernon snatched it from Dudley, read it, and turned the color of old oatmeal.

The next day there were two. The day after that, twelve, and then twenty-four, hidden inside eggs and pushed under the doors, and by Sunday they were coming down the chimney in a flood. Uncle Vernon nailed the mail slot shut. He nailed the doors shut. Finally he put everyone in the car and drove them around the country for two days, hoping the letters would get lost, and when they stopped at a dingy hotel the clerk walked up and handed Harry one addressed to the boy in Room 17.

So here he was, on the night before his birthday, lying on the floor of a shack on a rock in the middle of the sea, with a thin blanket and a storm outside. Dudley had the sofa. Dudley's glow-in-the-dark watch said it was a minute to midnight.

Harry watched it tick over and whispered happy birthday to himself.

The door fell in with a crash.

A man filled the whole doorway. He had to duck to get under the frame, and his wild black beard and hair made it look like his face was somewhere in the middle of a hedge. He set the door back where it belonged, said, "Sorry about that," and sat down on the sofa, which complained, with Dudley still on it.

He took a squashed cake out of his coat and gave it to Harry. It had HAPPY BIRTHDAY HARRY written on it in green icing. Nobody had ever given Harry a cake, so he looked at it for a while.

"Who are you?"

"Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. You'll know about Hogwarts, of course."

"No."

Hagrid's face went through shock and then something close to thunder. Uncle Vernon came in holding a rifle, and Hagrid took it from him and tied the barrel in a knot, like it was a pipe cleaner. Then he asked how it was possible that the Dursleys had never told the boy. Not a word, in eleven years?

"We swore we'd stamp it out of him," Uncle Vernon squeaked.

"Stamp it out!"

The tea took a while, because Hagrid made it by lighting the fireplace with a pink umbrella. Harry's parents had been a witch and a wizard. Harry was one too. He'd had a place at Hogwarts since the day he was born, and the letters had only been trying to tell him so.

"I think you've got the wrong Harry," said Harry.

"Black hair. Green eyes. Scar like a bolt of lightning."

Harry's hand went to his forehead before he could stop it.

"Yeh're not the wrong Harry."

Hagrid was bad at telling the rest of it. He wouldn't say the name of the wizard who'd done it, only that he'd been the worst there had ever been, and that he'd tried to kill every one of the Potters. He had killed James and Lily. He'd gone for the baby last, and for reasons nobody had ever worked out, the curse had bounced back on him, and he'd disappeared. Harry had been left with a scar. The whole wizarding world knew his name.

"They told me it was a car crash," said Harry slowly.

"A car crash," Hagrid said, in a voice that made Dudley slide off the sofa.

After that Harry asked about his father, because it was the only part of the story he could stand to hear. Hagrid brightened up. James Potter had been a charmer, he said, quick on a broom and quicker with a joke. Had a way with the ladies, he did. Never met a girl in the school who didn't fancy him at least a bit, though Harry's mum had held out for years before she gave in.

Harry's ears went hot. He took a very large bite of cake.

There was a letter for him, too, a proper one, that Hagrid had to dig out from the bottom of a pocket. It said HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY across the top, and Harry read it four times without reaching the end of the second line. Hagrid watched him, and if Harry had looked up, he'd have seen the way he was smiling, proud, and a bit worried, as if he was thinking about something Harry hadn't been told yet. But Harry was too busy.

He asked, a little shyly, whether Dudley would be going to Hogwarts too, and Hagrid snorted, and then Dudley, who'd been staring at the cake the whole time, got a tail. It was a curly pink one. Hagrid said he hadn't meant to, exactly, he'd only been aiming to give the boy a bit of a fright.

Later, when the storm had mostly blown itself out and Hagrid was asleep in front of the fire with his coat spread over Harry like a blanket, Harry lay awake and looked at the ceiling. His whole life, he'd wondered whether he'd ever be anything but the boy in the cupboard. And all along there had been a school, and a world, and two people who'd died to keep him alive.

He lay there until the sky went grey, listening to Hagrid snore and Dudley whimper in his sleep about the tail. Something was about to change. Harry wasn't sure he'd ever felt hopeful before, and he found, to his surprise, that he didn't mind it.

Chapter 2

The Leaky Cauldron was the grubbiest pub Harry had ever seen, and nobody on the street seemed to see it at all. People walked right past the door with their eyes sliding off it like water off a window. Hagrid, who'd gotten Harry to London by boat and train and a very long walk, ducked inside and was greeted by half the room.

It took about four seconds for somebody to notice who was behind him.

"Bless my soul," said the barman. "Harry Potter."

The whole pub stood up. A tiny old witch burst into tears. A man in a pointed hat said he'd been waiting years for this, and a woman named Doris Crockford shook Harry's hand with both of hers and said, again and again, that she couldn't believe she was finally meeting him. Harry kept saying thank you without knowing what for. He'd never been so thanked in his life, and he felt like a fraud. Whatever they thought he'd done, he'd been a baby, and mostly what he'd done was cry.

A pale man in a purple turban hovered at the back of the crowd, twisting his hands together. "P-P-Potter," he said, and had to stop and start again, "I c-can't tell you how p-pleased I am to meet you." Hagrid introduced him as Professor Quirrell, who'd be one of Harry's teachers. Quirrell looked at Harry's forehead and swallowed, and he seemed so nervous that Harry felt almost sorry for him.

Out the back of the pub was a small courtyard with a brick wall. Hagrid counted up three bricks from the dustbin and tapped the wall twice with his umbrella. The bricks shivered. They folded back on themselves and made an archway, and on the other side was a cobbled street so crowded and strange that Harry couldn't decide where to look.

There were cauldrons stacked up outside a shop, and a window full of owls, and a place that sold nothing but telescopes. A group of kids stood pressed up against a window gawking at a broomstick, which had a sign underneath calling it the fastest model ever made. A shopkeeper was selling something from a barrel that Harry was fairly sure was still alive. He had a sudden, wild urge to see everything at once, to run up and down the whole street, and Hagrid had to put a hand on his shoulder.

"Bank first," said Hagrid. "Gringotts. Safest place in the world, 'cept maybe Hogwarts."

Gringotts was a gleaming white building that leaned over the street, and it was staffed entirely by goblins, who looked at Harry like he was a coin they weren't sure was real. Hagrid handed over a tiny golden key. A goblin named Griphook took them down a tunnel and into a cart on tiny rails, and the cart took off so fast Harry's stomach stayed behind at the top. They went around corners and down hills, past an underground lake and a dragon (Harry was almost sure about the dragon), and finally pulled up at a little door.

Vault 687 had his name on it, which was a thing he'd never expected to see. When the goblin turned the key and the door opened, Harry's mouth fell open. There were mountains of gold coins, columns of silver ones, and heaps of tiny bronze, all of it left to him by two people he'd never gotten to know.

"Galleons, Sickles and Knuts," Hagrid said. "Seventeen silver ones to a gold one, and twenty-nine bronze to a silver. Easy."

"That is not easy."

"Take what yeh need. Rest'll stay here."

The second stop was Vault 713, which was much deeper down, and which Griphook opened with one long finger instead of a key. Hagrid went in. He came out a minute later with a small grubby package wrapped in brown paper, and he shoved it deep in his coat.

"Hogwarts business," he said, when he saw Harry looking. "Don't ask."

Harry didn't. He had a feeling there'd be a lot of things in this world he wasn't supposed to ask about. The ride back up made Hagrid a rather alarming shade of green, and he said he needed to sit down. Maybe have a drink. Harry should go and get his robes at Madam Malkin's, which was just there, and Hagrid would come and find him after.

Madam Malkin's was a small shop with robes of every color in the window, and a witch in mauve with a mouth full of pins who put Harry on a stool in the middle of the floor before he'd finished saying hello. She pinned the hem of a black robe around his ankles. It was the first time anyone had ever measured him for something that was just for him.

He was thinking about that when the bell over the door rang.

A girl came in. She was about Harry's age, with white-blond hair pulled back with a green ribbon and grey eyes that took in the entire room in half a second. She was wearing a good coat and good shoes, and she walked like the floor had been laid down for her. She went straight to the big mirror and tilted her chin, adjusted her collar, and looked at herself like she was checking a ruler against a line. Harry guessed she was pretty, in the sort of way that looked like a lot of work.

She didn't look at him until she'd finished. Then her eyes went down from his hair to his enormous borrowed sweater to his trainers, which were taped up at the toes, and Harry felt like a stain on a tablecloth.

"You're in my way," she said.

"Sorry. I didn't realize I—"

"Are you even here for robes? You look like you've been wearing those for years."

"They were my cousin's." He tugged at a sleeve. "I'm getting new things. For Hogwarts."

"Hogwarts. You." She seemed to find that very interesting. "They'll eat you alive."

She turned back to the mirror. Harry's face had gone warm, and he had no idea why her opinion should matter. She was just a girl. A rude one. But something about the way she'd said it made him want to prove her wrong, right there, out loud, which he knew would only make him look worse.

Then someone knocked on the window.

It was Hagrid, with his face squashed against the glass and an enormous ice cream in each hand, waving them like flags. "Harry! Chocolate or raspberry? I got both!"

The girl's head snapped around. Her grey eyes went to Hagrid, then to Harry, and widened.

"Harry?" she said slowly. "Harry Potter? You're Potter? The Boy Who Lived?"

"I... yes?"

"You're shorter than I expected. And shabbier."

But she'd stopped looking at him like something on her shoe. She walked over and held out her hand, fingers perfectly straight, like she'd practiced it in front of the mirror at home. "Draconia Malfoy. But you can call me Draco."

Harry shook it. Her hand was small and cool, and she let go after what felt like exactly three seconds.

"Is that a boy's name?"

"It's a family name. Not that you'd understand." She nodded at the window, where Hagrid was waiting with his ice cream. "Is that your keeper? I've heard about him. He lives in a hut on the school grounds and gets drunk, and he once tried to do some magic and set his bed on fire."

"He's brilliant," said Harry, and was surprised how much he meant it.

"If you say so." She tilted her head, and for a second Harry thought she might laugh. She didn't. "My father knows your father. Or he knew him. They weren't friends."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you should be careful who you spend time with, Potter. The wrong sort can drag you down." She said it quietly, as though it was something she'd been told so often that it had stopped sounding like words. "I can help you, if you like. My family is influential. We could show you how things work."

It was the nicest thing anybody had said to Harry all day, and it was the strangest, too. She was standing there with her hand still half out, her chin high, and Harry had the funny feeling that he was being offered something very important and also being tested on it.

"I think I can figure it out myself," he said.

Her hand went back to her side. "Suit yourself."

Behind her, a woman had been standing quietly in the doorway the whole time. She was tall and pale-haired, in dark robes, with the same pointed chin. She was looking at Harry with a long, unreadable stare that traveled up to the scar under his hair and stopped.

"You'll regret that," said Draco. It was quiet, and it could've been a warning or a threat or a promise, and Harry couldn't tell which.

"Draconia," said the woman.

They left together. At the door, Draco looked back over her shoulder once, and then the bell rang and she was gone.

Harry didn't know why his heart was pounding. He felt like he'd just failed a test he hadn't known he was taking. The witch in mauve spat out a pin and said he could get down now, dear, and Hagrid pushed through the door with the ice cream and asked who that was.

"Draco Malfoy," said Harry.

"Malfoy." Hagrid frowned. "Don't know the name. Here, yer ice cream's melting."

The last stop was Ollivanders, a narrow, dusty shop that had been making wands since 382 B.C., according to the sign. It was dim and silent and stacked to the ceiling with long thin boxes, and the old man who came out of the back had pale, silvery eyes that seemed to glow in the dark.

"Ah, Mr. Potter. I wondered when I'd be seeing you." He'd sold Harry's mother her wand, he said. Ten and a quarter inches, willow, nice and swishy. Harry's father's had been eleven, mahogany, good for transfiguration. He said it as if he'd been waiting years to say it to someone.

A tape measure appeared on its own and went to work on Harry's arms and shoulders and the distance between his nostrils, which seemed unnecessary. Ollivander pulled box after box off the shelves and pushed wands into Harry's hand, and every one of them was wrong. One blew up a vase. One set the curtains on fire. Ollivander seemed delighted. "Difficult customer," he murmured. "Not to worry, we'll find the perfect match."

The one that worked was eleven inches, holly, with a phoenix feather in the core. The moment Harry touched it, his fingers went warm, and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end of it and danced around the room.

"Curious," Ollivander said, and he didn't sound delighted anymore. "Very curious. The phoenix who gave the feather for this wand gave one other, Mr. Potter. Just one. It's curious that you should be destined for this wand, when its brother gave you that scar."

Harry's hand went to his forehead.

"Yes. Thirteen and a half inches. Yew. Funny, the way these things happen." He paused. "I think we must expect great things from you. After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible, yes. But great."

Harry paid seven gold Galleons and left, with the wand in his pocket and a chill down his back he couldn't explain. Hagrid had bought him an owl for his birthday while he'd been inside, a snowy one in a cage, who looked at him with her head tilted like she was thinking things over. He named her Hedwig, because it was in a book he'd found in the shop, and she seemed to approve.

Harry stood in the middle of Diagon Alley with a wand and an owl and a bag of gold and a name that apparently meant something. He'd been in this world for less than a day, and he knew it was going to take him a long time to figure out all of it.

He was still thinking about a pair of cold grey eyes in a mirror when Hagrid told him to hurry up. There was a train back to Privet Drive to catch, and then a month of waiting for the first of September.

Chapter 3

Uncle Vernon drove Harry to King's Cross on the first of September, parked in front of the station, and said with a very nasty smile that he hoped Harry found his platform. Platform nine and three-quarters. He thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. Then he drove off, and Harry was left on the pavement with a trunk, an owl, and a ticket that said nine and three-quarters, in the middle of a station that only had nine and ten.

He spent twenty minutes walking between the two. He asked a guard, who thought he was being funny. By quarter to eleven, he was beginning to think nobody could help him, and then a woman went past him with a trolley and a whole flock of red-headed children, and she said the word Muggles at the top of her voice.

Harry followed her. He'd have followed anything.

She was short and plump, and she turned around after about a minute and asked if it was his first year too. She told him not to be nervous. All he had to do was walk straight at the barrier between nine and ten, and not stop, and if he was scared, a bit of a run would help. The oldest boy went first, a stiff-looking one with a prefect badge, and vanished into the brick. Two identical girls went next, laughing, and a smaller girl hid behind the woman's coat and stared at Harry the whole time, then went pink to the roots of her hair when he caught her at it.

"That's Ginny," the woman sighed. "She's shy."

Then it was the turn of the tall girl, who'd been standing at the back of the line with her arms folded.

"Ronnie, you've got something on your nose," said her mother, and licked her thumb.

"Mum. Stop."

Harry waited until they were all gone, then took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and ran at a brick wall.

He didn't hit it.

The train was already full, and the corridors were packed with people dragging trunks, so the best he could do was a compartment near the end of the train, where he sat by himself with Hedwig and a view of the platform. They'd barely gotten moving when the door slid open and the tall girl from the barrier was standing there, scowling at her shoes.

"Is anyone sitting there? Everywhere else is full."

"No. Sit down."

She did, dragging in a trunk that looked like it had been through three other people first. Her red hair was long and a bit messy, she had freckles all across her nose, and her robes were an inch too short in the sleeves. Her name was Ron, she told him, short for Veronica, in the tone of someone confessing to a crime. She was the second-youngest of seven, and every one of her older siblings had been at Hogwarts, and every one of them had been better at it than she was ever going to be.

Bill was Head Boy. Charlie had been captain of Quidditch. Percy was a prefect. The twins were the funniest people in the school, which she said like it was a bad thing. Bill worked for Gringotts now, in Egypt, and Charlie was in Romania doing something with dragons. "There's nothing left over for me," she said, going red. "Not even new robes. This was Bill's. And my wand was Charlie's, and my rat was Percy's. Look at him. He's useless."

The rat on her lap was fat and grey and sound asleep. Harry said he thought the rat was fine. She looked up, surprised, and when he smiled at her, she went pink again and had to look out the window.

When the lady came by with the trolley, Harry bought everything. It was his first time spending his own gold, and it seemed rude not to. Ron had a sandwich wrapped in paper, which she shoved under her seat when she saw the sweets, but he told her to help herself, and in the end they ate pumpkin pasties and chocolate frogs and a bag of beans that came in every flavor, including grass and sausage and earwax. Ron ate like somebody who hadn't been told she could have seconds. Harry decided he liked her.

"Is it true?" she asked, around a mouthful of pasty. "About your scar?"

He pushed back his hair. She stared at it for a moment, then dropped her eyes. "Sorry. Mum said not to stare."

"It's fine. Everyone does." Harry opened a chocolate frog, which tried to jump out of his hand, and found a card inside, with an old wizard on it in half-moon glasses. "Who's this?"

"That's Dumbledore! You don't know Dumbledore?" Ron stared at him. "I've got about six of him. He's the best one."

She was in the middle of telling him about Quidditch when the compartment door opened again and a girl with a lot of bushy brown hair stuck her head in. "Has anybody seen a toad? A girl called Neville has lost hers." She looked at Ron's wand, which was out on the seat. "Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see, then."

"I was only going to turn Scabbers yellow," Ron said, going red, and she tried it, and it didn't work. The rat went on sleeping. Hermione looked at it with great sympathy. She said she'd tried a few small spells herself, just for practice, and they'd all worked. Nobody in her family was magic, so it had come as a lovely surprise. She'd learned all the course books by heart, of course, and she hoped it would be enough.

"I'm Hermione Granger, and you are?"

"Ron Weasley," said Ron.

"Harry Potter."

"Are you really?" Hermione's whole face lit up. "I know all about you, of course. I got a few extra books, for background reading, and you're in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts." She seemed to run out of air. "You're the most famous wizard of our age."

"I'm just Harry," Harry said, a little helplessly.

She looked at him as if he'd said something she would have to think about, and before she left, she reached over and tapped her wand on his broken glasses. The tape fell off. They were perfect. Harry took them off, looked at them, and put them back on.

"She's a lot," said Ron, after the door shut.

"She fixed my glasses."

"She's a lot, though."

Harry laughed, and Ron laughed too. They were still laughing when the door opened a third time, and nobody was laughing after that.

There were three girls this time. Two of them were big and stolid and stood on either side of the door like furniture. The one in front was Draco Malfoy. Her hair was still pulled back with the green ribbon, and she took one look around the compartment with the air of somebody who'd been told it would be better.

"They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in here," she said. "So it's true. This is Crabbe, and this is Goyle." The two big girls grunted. "And you must be a Weasley."

Ron's ears went red.

"It's the hair, and the robes." Draco's eyes went from the patch on Ron's elbow to Harry. Her voice went smooth and friendly, which was somehow worse. "Hanging out with the Weasley? I heard her family can't afford anything new. You could do better, Potter."

Harry looked at Ron, who'd gone stiff and was staring at the floor, her jaw clenched so hard it had to hurt.

"I think I'm doing fine," he said.

Draco's smile didn't change. "We'll see."

One of the big girls had been looking at the leftover chocolate frogs on the seat. She reached for one, and Scabbers, who'd been asleep on Ron's lap through all of this, woke up and sank his teeth into her finger. The girl howled and flung her arm until the rat flew off and hit the window, and Draco's mouth twitched in what might've been the beginning of a laugh. She smoothed it down, fast, and swept out, with the other two stumbling after her.

Ron caught her rat, checked it over, and said, quietly, "Well. That's one thing he's good for."

Harry laughed out loud. After a second, so did she. But he went on looking at the empty doorway for a good while after that.

The rest was a blur. A huge voice on a dark platform shouting for first-years. A fleet of little boats on a black lake and, up on the cliff, a castle with so many windows lit that Harry forgot to breathe. A stern witch in emerald robes, who Harry realized was the one from the wall, led them into a hall so big he couldn't tell where the ceiling was, until he looked up and saw it was the night sky, with a thousand candles hanging underneath.

"It's the Sorting," Hermione whispered, at his elbow. "I think it's a test. I've been practicing for weeks."

It wasn't a test. It was a hat. A patched and shabby old hat on a stool, which opened up a rip near the brim and sang a long song about the four houses and the kind of person who ended up in each. Harry heard about half of it. He was too busy looking at all the faces turned toward him.

Hermione went first, and the hat had hardly settled on her head before it shouted Gryffindor. She nearly ran to the table. Neville Longbottom was the round-faced girl who'd lost the toad, and the hat took such a long time over her that people began to whisper, and finally it called out the same house. She was so relieved that she ran off with the hat still on, and had to bring it back.

"Malfoy, Draconia."

She walked up the aisle like someone had run a ruler along her spine. The hat touched her hair and roared Slytherin so fast it was almost an interruption. She took it off, set it on the stool as if it might break, and walked to a table of green and silver without looking at any of them.

Harry realized he'd been holding his breath.

"Potter, Harry."

The room went completely silent. Then everybody started whispering at once, and he walked up on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else, sat on the stool, and felt the hat slide down over his eyes.

Hmm, said a small voice in his ear. You're a hard one to place. There's a lot of courage in here, and a decent mind, and real talent, and an appetite for proving yourself. It sounded pleased. Slytherin could take you a long way, you know.

Not Slytherin, Harry thought, as hard as he could. Please. Not Slytherin.

Sure about that? There's greatness in this head of yours.

He remembered what Ron had said, on the train, about how all the bad wizards came out of that house. And then, because the hat seemed to be listening to more than what he'd said, he found himself thinking of a girl in a mirror, with her chin up and a smile that didn't reach her eyes. He wasn't sure why. He only knew that if he got sorted into her house, he'd have to look across a table at that smile every night for seven years.

Ah, said the hat, almost fondly. So that's part of it. Very well, if you're certain. Then it will have to be GRYFFINDOR!

The table on the far left erupted. Two tall twin girls were already chanting, "We got Potter!", and Ron, who was still in the line, was jumping up and down and whooping at the top of her lungs. A prefect shook Harry's hand. Hermione was clapping like it was her job.

He slid onto the bench, still dizzy, and looked across the hall. He couldn't help it.

Draco was watching him from the end of the Slytherin table, her hands folded, her back as straight as ever. When she caught his eye, she raised one pale eyebrow, slow and neat. It was impossible to tell whether she was impressed or disappointed.

He didn't know which he'd prefer.

Ron got sorted into Gryffindor a few minutes later, and the plates filled up with more food than Harry had ever seen in one place. There were roast chickens and mashed potatoes and Yorkshire puddings, and some kind of pie that kept refilling itself. A pearly white ghost with a rather droopy collar sat down beside him and introduced himself as Nearly Headless Nick, and then showed them why by tugging his own head halfway off his neck.

Harry was reaching for a second helping when he caught somebody staring at him from the staff table. It was a man with a hooked nose, greasy black hair, and dark eyes that went through him like a drill, and before Harry could even look away, his scar flared up with a hot, sharp pain.

He clapped a hand to his forehead. "Who's that?"

"Professor Snape," said Percy, the prefect. "Potions. He's the Head of Slytherin. Why? Are you all right?"

"Fine," Harry said. The pain was already fading. He couldn't have said why it had happened, and he didn't like it.

At the end of the meal, Dumbledore got to his feet, and the whole hall went quiet. There were a few words he'd like to say, he told them. Nitwit. Blubber. Oddment. Tweak. He sat down, and everybody clapped, and Harry decided he was going to like it here.

Then Dumbledore added, in the same cheerful voice, that the Forbidden Forest was forbidden to all students, and that the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side was out of bounds to anybody who didn't wish to die a very painful death. He said it like he was reminding them to wipe their feet.

"He's joking," Harry whispered to Ron.

Ron gave him a look. "I don't think he is."

Percy led them up a dozen staircases to the tower, which had a portrait of a fat woman in pink at the entrance and a fire in the common room that felt like a hug. Harry's bed had red velvet curtains and a warm blanket, and somebody had already put his trunk at the foot of it. He lay in the dark, listening to the others fall asleep, and thought about the day. The hat. The ghost. The man at the staff table. And a pale eyebrow, lifted across a crowded hall.

He wasn't sure which part he'd remember best, and he fell asleep before he could decide.

Chapter 4

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts, and as far as Harry could tell, about half of them were in a mood. Some of them went left when you wanted right. Some stopped halfway, or had a trick step that swallowed your leg to the knee, and on Wednesday one decided to take the whole first-year class to the fourth floor instead of the second, for no reason anyone could work out. Doors didn't open unless you asked politely. Others weren't doors at all, just walls pretending. And there was Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat, who had lamp-yellow eyes and a way of turning up just when you were somewhere you shouldn't be.

By the end of the first week, Harry had stopped asking whether he was used to the castle. He was only asking whether the castle was used to him.

Potions was on Friday, in a dungeon that smelled like damp and old cabbage, and it was a double lesson with the Slytherins. Professor Snape didn't give a speech. He called the register in a soft, silky voice, and when he got to Harry's name, he stopped.

"Ah," he said. "Our new celebrity."

He wasn't being nice about it. His dark eyes ran over Harry's face and caught on his eyes, and they stayed there longer than eyes should stay on anything. His mouth went thin, like he'd bitten into something sour. Then he looked away quickly, as if Harry had burned him, and the class began.

It began with questions, and every one of them was aimed at Harry. Snape wanted to know what you'd get if you added a certain root to an infusion of wormwood. He wanted to know where you'd look for a stone from the stomach of a goat, and what the difference was between two plants that, as Hermione explained later with great irritation, turned out to be the same plant. Harry hadn't opened a single textbook. He said so. Hermione's hand was straining so hard toward the ceiling that she'd started to lift off her seat, and Snape ignored her completely, and took a point from Gryffindor for Harry's lack of effort.

"Clearly," Snape said, "fame isn't everything."

He didn't ask anyone else a question until he did.

"Miss Malfoy."

He hadn't said what he wanted. He'd only said her name, and Draco stood up from the Slytherin side of the room and answered all three questions without a pause. The wording was straight out of the book. Snape nodded, very slightly, and gave her a look, and Harry couldn't tell what it meant, except that it went on for a second longer than it needed to, as if he was checking something. Draco sat back down and folded her hands on the desk.

Harry thought that was strange. A person who'd just gotten every answer right in front of the whole class ought to look pleased about it, and she didn't. She looked tired. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and her shoulders were so straight that they seemed to take effort. When the class paired off to brew a potion that cured boils, she finished first, and her potion was a perfect clean green. Snape stopped at her desk and stayed there longer than he had at anyone else's, and he didn't say a word about it. Draco kept her eyes on the table until he moved on, and then Harry saw her let out a small, quiet breath.

"Why do you care what she looks like?" Ron muttered, scraping out her cauldron. At the next desk, Neville's had melted into a puddle, and she was covered in boils.

"I don't," Harry said, which wasn't quite true.

Hagrid had asked them to tea that afternoon, so after lessons Harry and Ron walked down to the hut at the edge of the forest. Hermione had said she had better things to do, in the voice of someone who hoped she'd be asked again.

Hagrid's hut was one room, with hams hanging from the ceiling and a copper kettle on the fire, and an enormous black dog named Fang, who put both paws on Harry's shoulders and tried to lick his ears off. Hagrid made tea and put out a plate of rock cakes. They were exactly as hard as the name suggested. Harry ate one anyway, to be polite, and nearly lost a tooth.

Ron told Hagrid about Snape, and Hagrid said that was just Snape, and that he didn't like anybody much. Harry thought that was a bit too fast. He was about to say so when he noticed a newspaper clipping on the table, with a headline about a break-in at Gringotts.

Investigations continue after unsuccessful attempt to rob a high-security vault... It had happened on the thirty-first of July, the article said, and the vault had been emptied earlier that same day. The thieves had gotten in, and they'd found nothing.

It was the thirty-first of July. It was his birthday. And Harry remembered a tunnel and a little grubby package in brown paper, and Vault 713.

"Hagrid," he said slowly. "This happened the day we were in Gringotts."

"Dunno what yeh mean."

"The vault they tried to rob. It was the one you went to. It was the one you took the package out of."

"Coincidence," said Hagrid, so loudly that Fang jumped. He took the clipping off the table and shoved it in a drawer. Then he offered Harry another rock cake. Harry took it, because he didn't know what else to do, and he filed the whole thing away to think about later.

The first flying lesson was on Thursday, on a patch of lawn behind the castle. Their teacher was Madam Hooch, who had yellow eyes like a hawk, short grey hair, and a whistle on a string, and who told them all to stand next to a broomstick, hold out a hand, and say up.

Harry's broom leaped into his palm on the first try, which felt like something he ought to get a prize for. Ron's rolled over. Hermione's did nothing, and she looked as if she were about to cry. Draco's came up without any effort, as though she'd done it a hundred times, and she didn't smile when it did.

Neville's shot off the ground like a cork. She'd been so nervous that she'd kicked off before Madam Hooch blew the whistle, and now she was twelve feet up and rising, hanging on to the handle and screaming. She stayed up for a good four seconds. Then she fell, and there was an unpleasant crack when she landed, and Madam Hooch ran to her side and said her wrist was broken. She told everyone to stay on the ground, and she marched Neville off to the hospital wing, and every one of them stayed on the ground, except for one.

Neville's Remembrall had been lying in the grass where she fell. It was a glass ball, about the size of a large marble, that her grandmother had sent. If you'd forgotten something, the smoke inside went red. Draco picked it up, and turned it over in the sun.

"Look at that," she said. "Do you think she'll notice if it goes missing?"

"Give it here, Malfoy," said Harry.

"I don't think so. I think I'll leave it somewhere for her to find. Somewhere high. How about on top of a tree?" She swung a leg over her broom, and before Harry could say anything else, she kicked off, and she didn't wobble. She went up and up, higher than the tallest oak, with the ribbon in her hair whipping out behind her, and hovered there with the Remembrall in her hand.

"Give it back, or I'll knock you off that broom!"

"Come and get it, Potter."

He didn't stop to think. He kicked off, ignoring Hermione's shout behind him, and the wind hit him in the face, and something in his chest dropped out and didn't come back. It was the best feeling he'd ever had in his life. He steered up toward her without any idea how he was doing it, and Draco, who'd obviously expected him to fall off, stared.

"Fine," she said, and her voice went high and strange. "Catch."

She hurled the Remembrall as hard as she could, and it went arcing away toward the castle. Harry dived.

He heard Ron screaming. He heard the wind roar in his ears, and he saw the little ball shrinking in front of him, winking in the light, and the castle wall rushing up to meet it. He stretched until his shoulder hurt, and his fingers closed on the glass six inches from the ground, and he rolled off hi broom, safe in the grass, with his heart going like a drum.

"Harry Potter!"

He had expected to be expelled. It was Professor McGonagall, striding across the grass with her robes flying, her face white, and he didn't hear a word she said until she grabbed his arm and dragged him back to the castle. She didn't take him to the headmaster. She took him to a classroom, interrupted a lesson, and pulled out a large, serious older boy named Oliver Wood.

"Wood, I think I have found your Seeker."

It turned out Gryffindor had been missing one for years, and that Harry was the best flyer McGonagall had seen in a hundred years, and that he was going to be on the team, in spite of the rule that first-years couldn't have brooms. He found out afterward that he'd also be getting one. He told Ron at dinner, and she nearly choked on a bread roll. Draco didn't say anything at all. She was sitting at the Slytherin table with her back straight and a very stiff look on her face, and she hadn't touched a bite.

After the meal, she walked over to the Gryffindor table, which no Slytherin ever did, and stopped at the end of the bench. Her voice was low and cold.

"Tonight. Midnight. The trophy room. Wands only, and no touching." She looked at Harry without blinking. "Unless you're scared. Bring a second, if you can find someone who'll stand next to you."

"I accept," Harry said.

"I'll be his second," said Ron, before anyone else could.

Hermione followed them out of the common room anyway. She said they shouldn't go, and then she said they'd get caught, and then she said somebody had to keep them from doing something stupid. By then they were already out of the portrait hole, and the Fat Lady had gone off to visit a friend, so Hermione couldn't get back in, and she came along because she didn't have a choice.

The trophy room was empty. There was a lot of silver, and a pool of moonlight on the floor, and no sign of Draco or her second.

"She's not coming," Ron whispered.

"It's not midnight yet."

"It's ten past."

A voice at the end of the room rasped, "Is that you, Peeves? I know you're in here." It was Mrs. Norris, with her lamp eyes, and behind her somebody was breathing very heavily, and Harry realized with a drop in his stomach that Filch was coming. The caretaker never came to the trophy room at night. Somebody must've told him.

They ran. They ran through a long gallery, and up a flight of stairs, and through a suit of armor that rattled in protest. Harry turned the corner and collided with something soft and round and screamed, and the thing screamed back. It was Neville, in pajamas with ducks on them, and her wrist in a bandage.

"I couldn't find the tower," she gasped. "They let me out of the hospital wing, and I thought it was this way, and then the stairs moved, and I've been walking in circles for an hour."

"Come on," said Harry, and grabbed her good hand.

They didn't stop until they'd reached a locked door. Filch's footsteps were still echoing behind them. Hermione took her wand out, said a word, and the lock clicked, and the four of them fell through and slammed it behind them.

It wasn't a classroom. It was a small stone room, and most of it was filled by something with fur. It had three heads. Each of them had a set of yellow teeth the size of a man's hand, and all three of them were looking at the intruders and starting to drool.

Nobody screamed. It was probably the best proof of how scared they were. They backed out of  the door in a bunch, and Harry slammed it shut, and then they ran until they couldn't, and stopped only when they ran out of corridor.

"A dog," Ron panted. "That was a dog. It had three heads."

"Did you not see what it was standing on?" Hermione said, bent over her knees. "A trapdoor. It's guarding something."

"I saw its heads, Hermione. All three of them."

Harry hadn't seen the trapdoor, but he'd seen the dog's faces, and he'd never forget them. Neville was shaking so hard that her pajamas rattled. They took her back up to the tower between them, and Hermione, who'd gone very quiet, was the one who finally thought to ask whether anybody had the password. Ron said it was pig snout, and the Fat Lady, who'd come back in a bad mood, swung open.

"I'll say this much," Hermione said, once they were inside by the dying fire, "if you'd listened to me, you'd never have gone. We could've been killed. Or worse, expelled. I'm going to bed." She marched up the stairs with her nose in the air, and stopped at the top, and said, much more quietly, "I'm glad nobody got hurt."

Ron was already half-asleep on the couch. Harry stayed where he was, looking at the dying coals.

Malfoy hadn't turned up. Filch had. It was too much of a coincidence, and Ron thought so too, and she'd said so more than once on the way back up. Harry wasn't so sure. He tried to picture Draco going to the caretaker and telling on them, with her chin up, calmly, the way she did everything, and it was easy enough to see. It was harder to see her face when she did it.

He sat there for a long time without getting anywhere, and then he went to bed. Somewhere behind a locked door on the third floor, a dog with three heads was standing on top of something it had been told to guard.

Harry wondered what.

Chapter 5

By November, Harry had been at Hogwarts for ten weeks. In that time he'd been made Seeker, been chased through the castle by a caretaker, and helped to knock out a mountain troll on Halloween, mostly by accident and with a lot of help from Ron. It had also turned out that rescuing a girl from a troll was the quickest way to make her your friend. Hermione had lied to McGonagall to cover for them, and then she'd sat down next to them at breakfast the next day as if she'd always been there. Ron said she was still a lot. Ron also saved her a seat.

The broom came on a Saturday morning, brought in by six owls who dropped a long thin parcel into Harry's porridge. It was a Nimbus Two Thousand, and it came with a note from McGonagall that said nothing except I trust you'll use it for practice. Harry was so happy he forgot to eat. He was still staring at it when somebody stopped behind him.

"Is that a Nimbus?"

Draco was looking at the parcel like it had insulted her. She had her ribbon in and her Slytherin scarf on, and she'd gone a bit pink along the cheekbones, which Harry took to be annoyance.

"First-years aren't allowed brooms," she said.

"McGonagall said it's fine. For the team."

"I know the rules, Potter." She left, with her back very straight. It was the first time she'd spoken to him since the night of the duel that had never happened, and he'd been half-hoping she'd mention it so he could ask. She hadn't. He noticed that she hadn't, and then he noticed himself noticing, and he put a whole sausage in his mouth so he wouldn't have to think about it.

The week before the match, he took a library book out of the library, which turned out to be against the rules. It was called Quidditch Through the Ages, and Snape caught him with it in a corridor, held out a hand, and said, "That doesn't leave the library. Give it to me."

Harry gave it to him. He'd have given him anything just to get away, because Snape's eyes had gone to his forehead again, and the scar had started to prickle. It was ten minutes before he realized that Snape had been limping.

He found out why when he went past an open door and heard the caretaker's voice. Filch was kneeling on the floor of a cold little room, winding a bandage around Snape's leg, and the leg was torn to ribbons. There was blood on the bandages and on the floor, and Snape had his robes hitched up to his knee.

"Curse that dog," Snape was hissing. "How are you supposed to keep an eye on all three heads at once?"

Harry backed away before either of them could see him. He walked all the way back to the common room without feeling his feet, and when he told Ron and Hermione, Hermione said the dog was obviously guarding something, and Snape was obviously trying to steal it.

"Probably what Hagrid had in that package," said Ron.

"That's a leap," said Hermione. But she looked worried.

The match was on a bright, cold Saturday, with a wind that tugged at the flags. The whole school turned out in scarves, and the stands were a roar of red and green. Lee Jordan, who was commentating, was a loud boy with a lot of opinions, and he spent most of the first ten minutes calling Professor McGonagall a ray of sunshine, until she took the microphone away and told him to stick to the match.

Snape was refereeing. Harry thought that was a mistake. Flint, the Slytherin captain, spent the entire first half knocking people off their brooms, and every time anyone complained, Snape announced a penalty to Slytherin for something that sounded like it had been made up on the spot.

Harry stayed high, circling and looking for a flash of gold. He found the Snitch after twenty minutes, a tiny whirring ball by the Slytherin goal, and he was about to dive when his broom gave a sudden lurch and tried to throw him off.

It bucked. It spun. It jerked up and down like a horse with a bee in its ear, and he was hanging on by one hand with his legs swinging out over a hundred feet of empty air. Somebody in the stands screamed. Ron, he heard later, had her hands over her face and was shouting that she couldn't look, couldn't look, was he dead yet.

Hermione didn't look away. She was on her feet, with her binoculars trained on Snape, who hadn't moved. He was staring at Harry's broom with his lips moving, and he never blinked. She knocked over half a row of Slytherins getting to him, dropped a lit match on the hem of his robes (it caught at once), and was back in her seat before anyone noticed.

The jinx broke. Harry swung himself back up onto the handle, and the whole crowd made a noise like a sigh. The Snitch was still there, by the goalposts. He dived so fast that the wind turned his eyes to water, and the Slytherin Seeker went for it too, and he felt something hit the back of his throat and cut off his breath. He nearly swallowed it. He landed on the grass, coughing, and spat it into his hand.

"I've got the Snitch!"

The crowd went wild. It was a short, confusing game after that. He remembered Wood hugging him with both arms, and the twins chanting his name, and Hermione crying, which she insisted was the cold. At some point, searching the stands to see whether Ron was alive, he found the Slytherin section instead, and the girl at the end of the front row.

She was sitting by herself, away from Crabbe and Goyle, who were screaming something rude. Her hands were gripping the rail, and her face was white. She hadn't been cheering. When his broom had gone wild she'd stood up, he realized now, and sat very slowly back down when he'd landed, and she was still holding the railing as if she'd forgotten she could let go.

She saw him looking. Her face closed like a door, and she turned away.

Hagrid's hut was warm, as usual, and smelled of tea and dog. Harry told him about Snape, and the jinx, and the leg.

"Rubbish," said Hagrid. "Snape's a teacher. Why'd he try to kill yeh?"

"Because he did. I saw his leg. He's been trying to get past that dog."

"That's Fluffy," Hagrid said, and then clapped a hand over his mouth. But it was too late. Fluffy, he explained, in a hurry, was his. He'd borrowed him off a Greek bloke at the pub and lent him to Dumbledore, to guard something. It was between Dumbledore and a man named Nicolas Flamel, and nobody else was supposed to know. "Shouldn't have told yeh that. Shouldn't have said a thing."

Nicolas Flamel. Harry turned the name over in his head all the way back up to the castle.

None of them knew who he was. They spent the next few weeks in the library, going through shelf after shelf, and Hermione even went so far as to take out heavy books on alchemy, and still they found nothing. Neville, who tagged along most evenings, fell asleep over a book on famous wizards and drooled on a page about Merlin.

Christmas came with a thick layer of snow and a nearly empty castle. Ron and Harry stayed behind, and so did Percy and the twins, because their parents were going to Romania to see Charlie. Hermione had gone home. Harry had never had a Christmas where anyone gave him anything, so when he woke up on the twenty-fifth with a pile of parcels at the end of his bed, he stared at it for a full minute.

There was a wooden flute from Hagrid. There was a hand-knitted maroon sweater with an H on the front from Mrs. Weasley, and a tin of fudge. And at the bottom, there was one more parcel, wrapped in plain brown paper and not signed.

Inside was a cloak, silvery and strange. It felt like water. Harry held it up, and when he threw it around his shoulders, Ron screamed, because he didn't have a body.

There was a note. Your father left this in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you. Use it well. There was no name.

"Well, I'll be," whispered Ron. "I'd give anything for one of those."

Harry knew exactly what he was going to do with it.

He went that same night, to the library, to the Restricted Section, where he wasn't allowed. He didn't find a thing about Flamel. He did find a book that screamed when he opened it, and he ran, with Filch's footsteps right behind him, and ducked into the first empty classroom he found.

It was full of old desks and broken chairs, and in the corner, standing against the wall, was a tall mirror in a gold frame. There was an inscription carved along the top, in words he couldn't read.

He stepped in front of it and saw himself, small and thin, with his untidy hair. Then he saw someone standing behind him.

It was a woman, with red hair and green eyes just like his own, smiling at him. And a man beside her, with glasses and untidy hair, who put a hand on her shoulder. Harry turned around, with his heart jumping, and there was no one. He turned back. They were still there, waving, and the woman was crying a little, and the man grinned and ruffled his own hair, exactly the way Harry always did, and there were others behind them, a crowd of faces, all with his nose, his chin, the same green eyes.

He stayed there for hours. He had no idea how long it'd been when he realized there was one more figure at the back of the crowd, a small, pale girl with white-blond hair, who wasn't smiling or waving. She was just looking at him, with her head tilted, and her hands tucked behind her back like she was waiting to be told what to do. Then she was gone, as if he'd imagined her.

He blinked, and the rest were still there, and he stopped thinking about it.

He took Ron back to see it the next night. She stood in front of the mirror and said nothing for a long time, and then she said, in a funny, quiet voice, "I'm Head Girl. I've got the Quidditch Cup. I'm holding it up, and everyone's cheering. And..."

She stopped. Her ears had gone red, then her cheeks, and she turned away fast.

"And what?"

"Nothing. It's just a mirror. It's rubbish." She wouldn't say another word, and Harry, who couldn't work out what she was so embarrassed about, shrugged and let her pull him out. He looked back once from the doorway. In the glass, his mother was still waving, and behind her, so faint he might've been wrong, was a pale gleam of white-blond hair.

He didn't tell Ron.

On the third night he went by himself, and he'd only been sitting in front of it for a few minutes when a calm voice spoke up from the dark.

"So, Harry. You've found the Mirror of Erised."

It was Dumbledore. He was sitting on a desk, with his half-moon glasses catching the light, and Harry hadn't seen him at all, even though he'd been there the whole time. He wasn't angry. He explained, kindly, that the mirror showed the deepest, most desperate desire of a person's heart. Harry, who had no family, saw his family. Ron saw herself, successful and admired. It was no use to anyone, and it had driven men mad, or let them waste away in front of it, dreaming.

"It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live," he said. "They're moving the mirror tomorrow. I'd ask you not to go looking for it again."

Harry nodded. He thought about asking what the headmaster saw when he looked, and then he did.

"I?" Dumbledore smiled. "I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks."

Harry laughed. He was still laughing when he climbed into bed, and long after, when he realized he hadn't told Dumbledore about the girl.

He wasn't sure why. He only knew that whatever it was he wanted most, he didn't understand it yet, and he wasn't ready to say it out loud.

Chapter 6

The answer had been in Harry's pocket the whole time.

It came to him in the middle of a Charms lesson, sometime in January, while he was trying not to listen to Professor Flitwick explain the same spell a third time. He'd gotten a chocolate frog card on the train, and Ron had given it to him later because she'd had six of the same one. Harry dug it out of his trunk that night and turned it over. On the back, under a picture of Dumbledore, it said that he was famous for defeating a dark wizard, and for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and for his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel.

"Flamel!" he said, loudly enough to wake up Seamus. Ron fell out of bed.

By morning, Hermione had it all. She'd gone to the library in her dressing gown, come back with a book so large she needed both arms, and dropped it on the table at breakfast in front of the two of them. Nicolas Flamel was the only person who'd ever made a Sorcerer's Stone. It turned any metal into gold, and it produced an elixir that made you live forever, and he was six hundred and sixty-five years old. He lived in Devon with his wife.

"So that's what Fluffy's guarding," Ron said, once they'd all read it twice. "Dumbledore's got it hidden in the school. And Snape's trying to get in."

"We don't know that," said Hermione, but she said it very quietly.

Harry had his own reasons for believing it. He'd caught the Snitch against Hufflepuff in about five minutes, a record, and Dumbledore had come down to shake his hand, with Snape looking on from the referee's chair as if somebody had stepped on his foot. Three days later, he'd walked past the edge of the forest and seen Snape standing in the shade of a tree with Professor Quirrell. Quirrell was twisting his hands together, and Snape had him backed up against the trunk. "...your little shows of loyalty," Snape was saying, in a voice like silk over a blade. "Once you've decided where your loyalties lie, you and I will have another talk."

Harry had stayed behind a bush for ten minutes afterward, thinking, I knew it.

Hagrid's hut was too hot that spring, and it was because of the egg.

It sat in the middle of the fire, black and mottled, about the size of a football, and every time it rocked, Hagrid went red and said it was a bit of a surprise. He'd won it off a stranger at the pub, and he'd always wanted a dragon. Harry hadn't known about the stranger, or the egg. He'd come down to ask about the guards on the stone, and Hagrid had told him, at last, over a cup of tea. Professor Sprout, Flitwick, Quirrell, and McGonagall had each put a spell on it, and Dumbledore had done something too, and Snape. Nobody else knew how to get past Fluffy, which Hagrid said made it a perfect plan.

"Because yeh'd have to know," he said. "And nobody does. Only me and Dumbledore." Harry decided to stop pushing. He was just reaching for a rock cake when the egg split.

The dragon was about the size of an umbrella and looked like a crumpled black umbrella too, with spiky wings and a snout. It sneezed out a few sparks. Hagrid was already crying. "Norbert," he sobbed. "Oh, bless him, look at his little face."

There was a movement at the window. Harry spun around, and for half a second there was a face pressed against the glass, a pale one, with pale hair under a green ribbon. Then it ducked out of sight. By the time he'd run to the door, there was only a girl's footprints in the garden, going away fast.

"Malfoy," he said. "She saw."

Ron swore. Hermione said that was it, they were done for. For two days, Harry waited, at breakfast, in Potions, and every time he saw a green scarf in a corridor, for the news to get around. She'd tell Snape, or McGonagall, or the headmaster. Nothing happened. She looked across the Great Hall at him once, with her chin up, and then went back to her food. The longer it went on, the more he wondered why.

The dragon, meanwhile, was growing fast. By the end of the week, he was the size of a large dog, and he'd bitten Ron. Her hand swelled up to twice the size and turned green, and Madam Pomfrey would only be told it was a dog. Hagrid couldn't keep Norbert much longer. Ron's sister Charlie, who worked with dragons, agreed to take him, and sent two friends with brooms, to meet them at midnight on Saturday at the top of the tallest tower.

It took a lot of work. They got Norbert into a crate, and the crate under Harry's cloak, and Harry and Hermione carried it up seven flights of stairs, with Ron in the hospital wing and Norbert bumping the sides. The tower was freezing and open to the sky. Charlie's friends arrived on time, on brooms, and they were so delighted with the dragon that they very nearly cried. They strapped the crate between them and flew off into the dark.

Harry, who had never been so relieved in his life, was halfway down the stairs when he noticed something. He was cold. The cloak was missing.

"We left it up there," he whispered. "On the tower."

"We can't go back."

They crept along the corridor at the bottom, and a light came on behind them. Filch was standing in the doorway with a lantern, his eyes shining, and Mrs. Norris was winding around his ankles.

"Well, well, well," said Filch. "Students out of bed."

It went downhill from there. Professor McGonagall was waiting in her office in a tartan dressing gown, with her hair in a net, looking more furious than Harry had ever seen anyone. They'd been caught red-handed, she said, with illegal creatures, in the middle of the night. She could hardly believe it. Neville, who'd been waiting in the corridor to warn them, was standing in front of the desk too, looking miserable. And so, to Harry's surprise, was Draco.

She was in the corner with her hands folded and her robe buttoned to the neck, and she didn't look at any of them. Apparently McGonagall had found her wandering around the second floor an hour earlier. Draco hadn't said why. She'd said she couldn't sleep, and then she'd said nothing at all, and McGonagall had told her she'd have a detention for it. It hadn't occurred to Harry until that moment that she could've saved herself by telling on him. He couldn't remember her mentioning the dragon once.

"Fifty points," McGonagall said at last, "from each of you. And a detention."

That was a hundred and fifty points, and it dropped Gryffindor from first place to last in a single night. The next day, the whole house knew who'd done it. People stopped him in the corridors to say it was a disgrace, and the twins wouldn't look at him, and when he went to sit down at dinner someone moved their bag onto his chair. Even Wood was short with him. Ron, whose hand was healing, said she'd stick by him, and Hermione looked as if she'd been through something, and the two of them kept Neville laughing in the common room until she cried for a different reason.

Harry kept thinking that it hadn't been Draco's fault, which was a strange thing to be sure about.

The detention was set for eleven o'clock on a Friday night, and it was in the forest.

The four of them stood outside Hagrid's hut in the dark, in their robes, with Filch's lantern jerking away across the lawn behind them. It was freezing. There were lights in the trees, but they weren't the kind you could trust. Hagrid had a crossbow over his shoulder and a worried look, and Fang was cowering behind him.

"Summat's been killin' the unicorns," Hagrid said, in a low voice. "Found one dead last week. We've got to find whatever's hurt it. So stay close, and if yeh see anything, send up green sparks from yer wands."

"I'm not going in there," said Draco.

"Yeh are, if yeh want to stay at this school. Look, it's me who's got to be there for yeh. Don't make it hard." He thought. "Harry and Draco, yeh'll go with Fang. Hermione and Neville, with me."

She stared at him. Then she put her chin up, in the way Harry was starting to recognize, and said in a very small, very controlled voice that she'd be fine.

The trees closed over their heads after about two minutes. Fang walked ahead, with his tail between his legs, and Harry's lamp threw yellow circles across the roots. Draco was walking beside him, with her robes gathered in one fist and her feet picking at the mud, and she hadn't stopped talking since they'd left the hut.

"This is barbaric," she said. "My father will hear about this. Detention in a forest? What's next, detention in a dragon's den?"

"Scared, Malfoy?"

"I'm not scared. I'm cold. And my shoes are ruined, and there's probably something in these trees that wants to eat us."

She was scared. Harry could hear it in her breathing, which was too fast, and in the way her voice was a little too high, and the way she kept her eyes fixed on the ground. It occurred to him that this was the same voice he'd heard in Madam Malkin's, the one that said things that sounded cutting and were mostly meant to keep someone out. He didn't say anything. He found himself smiling a little in the dark, which he knew was unkind, and tried to stop.

A twig snapped, somewhere off to the left.

Draco jumped. She let out a tiny, high, involuntary squeak, and clapped a hand across her mouth, and her eyes went enormous over the top of it. Harry made a very bad job of not laughing.

"Did you just squeak?"

"No. Shut up."

"You did."

"I did not, Potter, and if you say it again I will personally—" There was another rustle, closer this time, and her hand shot out and grabbed his arm. Her nails dug in through his sleeve. "If we die, I'm going to kill you."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Neither does following you into a dark forest. And yet here I am."

"You didn't follow me. You got assigned."

"Shut up."

She didn't let go of his arm. Harry was careful not to mention it.

They'd walked on for ten minutes when Fang stopped dead and began to whine. Something silver was shining on the ground, a pool of it, thick and bright, and then another, in a trail leading off between the trees. It was the blood of a unicorn. Harry crouched down beside it, and the back of his neck prickled.

"Come on," said Draco, very faintly. "We should go back."

They didn't. The trail led to a clearing, and the clearing had something in it that made Harry's heart stop. There was a white shape on the ground, as pale as moonlight, with long, slender legs, and a thing bent over it. It was dressed in a hooded cloak that trailed along the grass, and it was drinking.

Draco's hand tightened so hard on Harry's arm that it hurt. He pulled her behind the nearest tree, and they crouched together in the dark, with their knees touching and their breath coming in short little gasps. He could feel her whole body shaking. She'd put her other hand over her mouth again, and above it he could see her eyes, wide and wet, fixed on him as if he was the only thing in the forest that was solid.

The cloaked figure raised its head. It turned, slowly, toward the tree. And Harry's scar split open with pain.

He fell on his hands and knees. He couldn't see, or hear. He thought he heard Fang screaming off through the trees, and Draco saying his name, over and over, high and shaking, and then there was the sound of hoofbeats, so fast and loud that the whole ground jumped. Something flew over his head, and something snarled, and the pain stopped.

He looked up. A centaur was standing over him, with a pale gold body and a human chest, and a face as calm as the moon. Behind him, the cloaked thing had gone.

"Are you hurt?" said the centaur.

"I'm okay." Harry sat up, and his scar was still burning. "What was that?"

"I am Firenze," said the centaur, in a low voice. "Come. You should not be here. Both of you."

Draco was still sitting against the tree with her arms wrapped around her knees. She'd stopped saying anything. When Firenze offered her a hand, she looked at it, and at Harry, and then slowly got to her feet. She didn't let go of Harry's sleeve until the centaur had lifted them both onto his back. She'd gone so quiet that Harry would've preferred it if she were shouting.

Firenze carried them back to the clearing, where Hagrid was waiting, wild-eyed, with Hermione and Neville and a bleeding Fang. Hagrid said he'd heard the scream. He picked Draco up himself and set her on her feet, and she stood there, with her face scrubbed clean of expression, and said she was fine, thank you, and could someone take her back to the castle. And then she did something that Harry would remember later. She reached up, in front of all of them, and retied her ribbon.

"Wait," said Firenze, as Hagrid was about to lead them off. He'd drawn Harry a little aside. "Do you know what unicorn blood does, Harry Potter?"

"No."

"It will keep a person alive, even at the very edge of death. Even if they are dying. But it is a monstrous thing to kill something so pure, and the one who does it has a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches his lips." Firenze looked at him. "Only a creature who has nothing to lose and everything to gain would do such a thing. Is there nothing in the school at this moment that might bring a creature like that back?"

"The Stone," Harry whispered. "He wants the Sorcerer's Stone. He's been drinking the blood to stay alive until he can get it."

"You must go," said the centaur, but Harry already had the answer, and it made his blood run cold. The figure in the clearing hadn't been a creature at all. It had been him, the one with no name, the one who'd killed his parents. And he was close.

He was walking back up toward the castle, behind Hagrid and the others, when Draco fell into step beside him. She was a few paces off. She didn't look at him.

"If you ever tell anyone I squeaked," she said, very quietly.

"I won't."

"Good." She walked on a few steps. "And you're an idiot, Potter. You know that, don't you?"

"Probably."

She pulled away and went on ahead, and she didn't say anything else, and Harry watched her go. The back of his arm was sore where she'd gripped it. She smelled like flowers, expensive ones, and woodsmoke. He'd have liked to know what she'd been going to say to him when the hooded thing turned around, because it had been something, and he'd missed it.

It would've been nice, he thought, if he'd stopped wondering.

Chapter 7

Harry spent the weeks before exams in the library, which was a strange place to be when you were pretty sure the school was about to be robbed.

He couldn't help it. Every time he sat down with a revision timetable, his scar gave a small, sour twinge, and he remembered a hooded shape bent over something silver. Ron said it was his imagination, and Hermione said it was stress. Nobody said the other thing.

The answer to the other puzzle came on the last day of exams, in the middle of History of Magic, when Harry sat bolt upright and said "Hagrid" so loudly that Professor Binns, who was a ghost and rarely noticed anything, looked up from his notes.

He dragged Ron and Hermione out of the hall afterward and told them everything he'd just thought of. Hagrid had won his dragon egg off a stranger in a pub. The stranger had a hood pulled low over his face. He'd bought Hagrid a lot of drinks, and he'd asked about Fluffy, and Hagrid, who'd been very happy by that time, had told him the one thing nobody else was supposed to know. You only had to play him some music, and he'd go straight to sleep.

"That wasn't a stranger," said Hermione.

"No." Harry's mouth was dry. "I think someone tricked him. And I think someone's about to go through that trapdoor."

They ran to Professor McGonagall's office. She listened to them with a stiff face, and when they'd finished, she said, quite calmly, that she knew what was in the third-floor corridor and that it was perfectly safe. Dumbledore, unfortunately, had just left for London, summoned by an urgent owl. There wasn't anything to worry about. They were to go and enjoy the sunshine.

"It's tonight," Harry said, as they went down the stairs. "It's got to be. He's gone, and Snape knows."

"Then we'll go," said Ron.

"We can't," said Hermione, and then she looked at their faces, and sighed. "Fine. But I'm bringing my books."

That evening, when Harry came up to bed, there was a parcel waiting on his pillow. It was his cloak. It had been lost on the tower for weeks, and someone had folded it up very neatly and left a note on top, in thin, slanted writing. Just in case.

They waited until the common room had emptied out. Harry had the cloak under his arm, and Ron and Hermione each had a wand, and Hermione had her book. They were halfway to the portrait hole when somebody stepped out of the shadows and blocked their way.

It was Neville. She was in her dressing gown, with her wrist still a little stiff, and she had her chin set in a way that Harry had never seen before.

"You can't go out," she said. "You'll get caught again. Gryffindor will be in even more trouble."

"Neville, you don't understand. This is really important."

"I don't care. I won't let you." Her voice shook. She stood in front of the portrait hole with her fists clenched, looking like she was about to cry, and Harry felt awful.

"I'm sorry," said Hermione, and raised her wand. "I'm so sorry. Petrificus Totalus!"

Neville's arms snapped to her sides, and her legs locked together, and she toppled forward onto the carpet, stiff as a plank, with her eyes rolling. Harry felt sick. They stepped over her, and Hermione whispered an apology again, and Ron said that if they got out of this alive, they'd owe her a lot of chocolate frogs.

They crept up to the third floor under the cloak, with the castle so quiet that every footstep seemed to shout. The door was already ajar. Inside, a great shaggy dog lay on the floor with all three of its heads hanging open in sleep, snoring like a bellows. A harp was playing by itself in the corner, a soft, slow tune, and as they watched, it began to run down, and one of the heads gave a grumble.

Harry pulled out the flute Hagrid had given him at Christmas and blew. It came out thin and wobbly, but it worked. The head settled. Ron and Hermione heaved aside one enormous paw, and underneath was a trapdoor, with an iron ring.

"Someone's already been," Ron whispered. "The harp isn't ours."

"Then we'd better hurry," said Harry, and he jumped.

He fell for a long time. He landed on something soft and cold and damp, and the next second Ron landed next to him, and then Hermione. It was pitch black, and the soft thing was crawling up his arm.

"It's a plant," Hermione said. "Devil's Snare. Don't struggle. It only gets tighter if you do, and it hates light and heat..."

"That's great," said Ron, whose legs were already wrapped up to the knees. "Do something."

Harry's stomach rolled. He could feel the vines winding around his chest and squeezing. He tried to stay calm and relaxed, which was the hardest thing he had ever done, and Hermione was fumbling with her wand, and then a sudden jet of blue flame went up, and the plant screamed and let go.

They fell through the floor, and they landed on stone, in a corridor, in the dark, with a fluttering sound ahead.

It was a room full of birds. They weren't birds, exactly. They were keys, hundreds of them, with wings, whirring around the ceiling and glittering in the lamplight, and at the far end was a heavy wooden door with a lock. There were brooms propped against the wall. Harry, who was the only one who could really fly, picked one up and took off.

It wasn't easy. The keys dived at him and pecked at his hands, and there were so many that it was impossible to tell which was which, until he noticed one, large and old-fashioned, with a bent wing. It was the one that kept getting away. He went after it like it was the Snitch, and he caught it against the wall, with a hand that stung from a dozen scratches, and tossed it to Ron, who opened the door.

The next room was dark and enormous, and its floor was a chessboard. On the far side stood a row of black pieces, each of them taller than a man, with blank faces and white marble swords. Harry and the others were standing on the white side, with their own enormous pieces facing them.

"We have to play our way across," Ron said. She'd gone very still. She'd always been better at chess than any of them, and she knew it, and it was the first time Harry had seen her take charge of anything. "Harry, you be a bishop. Hermione, that rook. I'll be a knight."

It was a violent game. Harry stood by while the pieces smashed each other with swords, and Ron called out moves in a clear, calm voice, and then the black queen knocked Hermione's piece clean off the board. Harry had to take hold of himself. He had a feeling, from the way Ron kept looking at him, that she'd been working toward something.

"I've got to be taken," she said, in a low voice. "It's the only way. And then you can checkmate him, Harry. Don't stop. Don't come back for me, whatever happens."

"Ron—"

"Move."

He moved. The queen took Ron's knight, and she was struck off her horse and lay unconscious on the floor, and Harry walked three squares to the left and said, in a voice that shook, "Checkmate."

The white pieces bowed. The door swung open, and he and Hermione dropped to their knees beside Ron, who was breathing. She'd have a headache in the morning, and a bruise, and a lot of explaining to do.

"We have to go on," said Hermione. She looked terrified, but she took Harry's hand. "She'd want us to."

They went through a room with a mountain troll already lying unconscious in the middle of it, and Harry didn't ask who'd done that. The next door led to a small room with a table, and seven bottles of different shapes. There was a roll of paper beside them, and as soon as Harry touched it, a wall of purple fire shot up behind them, and a wall of black fire in front.

Hermione read the riddle twice, mouthing the words, and her face lit up. It was a logic puzzle. She worked it out with her finger moving down the lines. Two bottles were poison, three were wine, one would get you forward and one would get you back. She poured out a tiny bit of the smallest one and said there was only enough for one person.

"You go on. I'll go back and get Ron. I'll send an owl to Dumbledore." Her eyes were bright. "You're better at this than you think, Harry."

"I'm not as good as you."

"I'm not that clever, really. Not about the things that count. Just promise me you'll be careful."

He drank. It felt like ice pouring down his throat. And he walked through the black fire without being burned, and out the other side, into a room with a single figure standing in it.

It wasn't Snape.

It was Professor Quirrell. He was standing in front of a tall mirror in a gold frame, and when he turned around, he wasn't stuttering anymore.

"You," Harry said.

"Me." Quirrell smiled. It wasn't a good smile. "I wondered whether I'd be seeing you here, Potter. I thought it would be Snape. Dear old Severus. He's been following me all year, as you've seen, but it wasn't me he was trying to stop. It was the other way around. He was trying to protect you." He laughed. "He's the one who was hexing your broom. No. He was counter-hexing it, the whole time. I was the one trying to knock you off."

Harry's brain felt as if it were coming unglued. He'd been so sure.

"The Stone's in the mirror," Quirrell went on. "I know that much. I just can't think how to get it out. You, however, can. Come here. Tell me what you see."

Harry walked up to the mirror. He saw his own reflection, white and scared. And then it winked at him, and put its hand in its pocket, and took out a small red stone. In the glass, it smiled and put the Stone back. And Harry felt something heavy settle against his leg.

"Well?" said Quirrell. "What do you see?"

"I'm shaking Dumbledore's hand," said Harry. "I've won the House Cup for Gryffindor."

"He's lying," said a voice. It was a high, cold, whispering voice, and it didn't come from Quirrell's mouth. "Use me."

"Master, you aren't strong enough—"

"I have strength enough for this."

Quirrell began to unwind his turban. It took a long time. Underneath, his head was bald and small, and when he turned it round, there was a face at the back of it. It was white as chalk, with red eyes and slits for nostrils, and it looked at Harry like a snake looks at a mouse.

"Harry Potter," it whispered. "You see what I have become. Mere shadow and vapor. I have form only when I can share another's body. Unicorn blood will keep me strong, but there's a better way. Give me the Stone."

"No."

"Don't be a fool. Save your own life. Join me, or you'll meet the same end as your parents. They died begging me for mercy."

"Liar!" Harry shouted, and made for the door.

"Seize him!"

Quirrell leaped, and caught him by the wrist. And Harry's scar split with a pain so great that he screamed. But Quirrell was screaming too. Wherever his hands touched Harry's skin, they blistered and peeled, and he let go and staggered back, staring at his own fingers. Harry grabbed his arm and held on, and held on, with the pain going through his head like a hammer, and Quirrell shrieked and tried to prise him off, and the face at the back of his head howled, Kill him! Kill him!

Harry felt himself slipping. He heard someone shouting his name from a long way off. The last thing he knew was a wide black space, and a hand that wasn't his own.

He woke up in the hospital wing.

It was a white room, full of afternoon light, and there was a table next to the bed so piled with sweets that it looked like a sweetshop had exploded. A man was sitting by his bed in a purple robe, and his half-moon glasses were turned toward Harry.

"Ah," said Dumbledore. "You're awake. I did rather hope you'd wake up for dinner."

"Where's the Stone? Is Ron all right? Hermione—"

"Calm yourself, my dear boy. The Stone has been destroyed. Nicolas and I discussed it, and we agreed it was best." Dumbledore smiled. "And your friends are quite well. Miss Weasley is already eating her way through a dozen of those sherbet lemons."

Harry sat back. He told Dumbledore everything, and Dumbledore listened with his fingers pressed together, and when he'd finished, he explained. Quirrell had died. Voldemort had left him to die and fled, and he wasn't dead either, only gone. He might come back someday, and it was best that Harry knew that.

"But why couldn't Quirrell touch me?"

"Your mother died to save you," said Dumbledore gently. "That kind of love leaves a mark. Not a scar, no, nothing visible. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us protection forever. He couldn't bear to touch something so full of it."

Harry looked down at his hands. His eyes were stinging.

"And how did I get the Stone?"

"Ah. That is one of my favorite things about you. Only one who wanted to find it, but not to use it, could have got it. Anyone else would have seen themselves making gold, or living forever." Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "You wanted to do something good with it. That's why you saw it. It's a very rare gift."

"I hear a certain Slytherin young lady has been asking after you," said Dumbledore, studying the ceiling. "Rather politely, I'm told. It's a very unusual thing. I've told her you're quite all right."

The Great Hall was decorated in green and silver for the end-of-term feast. Slytherin had won the House Cup seven years in a row, and the whole table was in a good mood, cheering and banging their goblets. Harry sat down, a bit shaky, between Ron and Hermione, who both looked as if they'd been scrubbed.

Draco was at the end of the Slytherin table. She hadn't been to the hospital wing. She was sitting up straight, with her hair held back with a green ribbon, and she looked exhausted. There were dark smudges under her eyes. She looked like someone who'd been up all night waiting for news, and hadn't wanted anyone to see.

Dumbledore stood up, and the room went quiet. He said that it had been another year, and that he hoped their heads were a little fuller than they'd been. First, the points. Slytherin was in first place. A great cheer went up from the green table. Dumbledore said, "However, recent events must be taken into account."

He gave fifty points to Ron, for the best-played chess game Hogwarts had seen in many years. He gave fifty to Hermione, for the use of cool logic in the face of fire. He gave sixty to Harry, for pure nerve and outstanding courage. And when the room had gone completely silent, he added that it took a great deal of bravery to stand up to one's enemies, but just as much to stand up to one's friends, and he awarded ten points to Neville Longbottom.

Neville went white, and then red, and then fell backward off the bench. Gryffindor had won.

The whole room went up like a bomb. The Gryffindors screamed and stamped and flung their hats in the air, and Hermione was crying again, and Ron was hugging Harry so hard that his ribs hurt. Down at the Slytherin table, he saw some people clapping, and some looking stunned.

And at the end of it, with her back as straight as ever, Draco Malfoy caught his eye across the hall.

She didn't smile, and she didn't sneer. She looked at him for a long second, with her grey eyes quite steady, and nodded once. Then she turned away.

The train ride home was mostly sunshine and card games. Hagrid had given Harry a photo album, with a picture of his parents in it, and he looked at it a great many times. They weren't allowed to do magic at home, which was a pity, since Dudley was waiting on the platform.

He couldn't sleep that night, in the little room with the bars on the window. He didn't mind it so much, though. He had a wand in his trunk, an owl on the sill, and two friends who'd come through a troll, a dragon, and a chessboard with him.

He lay in the dark and thought about a girl with a green ribbon, with her chin up, and the way she'd looked at him over a crowded hall. He thought he'd be thinking about her, on and off, for years, and that it was going to take every one of them to understand her. Harry turned over, and pulled the blanket up, and was surprised to find that he was looking forward to it.