The first Quidditch match of the year is the day after Harry’s first lesson with Wood, and subsequently he views it with far more knowledge than he would have – it’s an exciting game, Harry thinks as he watches the blobs of green and red shuttle past each other – as Seeker, bizarrely, is Gryffindor’s fifth year prefect, Percy Weasley.

He’s surprisingly good on a broom, and given how uptight he is, Harry had never expected him to be so flexible, but he moves easily with the wind and dodges the Bludgers sent his way by the Slytherin team.

“I didn’t know your Weasley could fly!” Harry says, impressed.

“He’s not my Weasley, Harry,” Hermione retorts disapprovingly, and Harry laughs – she spends a bit of time with the boy, as he's often very willing to help her with her homework, and Harry does like him. Officious, certainly, and surprisingly easy to fluster given how authoritative he tries to be, but he’s decent.

Better than Ronald.

“And the Weasleys all play Quidditch together at home,” Hermione supplies. “They've got a little pitch out by their house.”

“Mrs Weasley never mentioned that! With Bill and Charlie, then?”

“Must be.”

Harry watches as Fred and George speed through the air together, hitting twin Bludgers away from their elder brother, and both of them pat him on the back as they speed off again. Percy, though, flighty as he is on a broom, just isn’t as good as Terrence Higgs, the Slytherin Seeker, and he catches the Snitch. The scores end up with Gryffindor almost winning, with Slytherin only ten points ahead after the Snitch – Harry still can’t quite comprehend that bit of the points system, but it doesn’t matter.

“That was quite short.”

“God.” Hermione complains. “What, they’re usually longer?”

“Hours longer, they can be.”

“Ugh!”

Harry nudges her playfully, but Hermione just shakes her head as they both move to stand – they’d sat together on one of the stands unofficially designated to the Ravenclaws, wanting to settle on some neutral ground, and Padma Patil taps Harry’s shoulder.

“You think you’re gonna win this year, Harry?”

“Flint says Gryffindor’s crippled without their old Seeker, Charlie. Dunno about the other teams though – is yours any good?”

“Not sure! Never been one for Quidditch, really,” Padma says reasonably, and Harry does like her – the Ravenclaws are perfectly apathetic where house rivalry is concerned, mostly, and it’s certainly easy to talk to her than one of the Gryffindor lads or worse, one of the Hufflepuffs.

Harry’s looking at her when he notices the wood of the stand’s wall crack behind her, and he grabs Padma by the front of her robes, shoving her backwards: she lets out a harsh scream, but her hand grasps at the bench behind her as the part of the stand he and Hermione is on begins to crack underneath them.

The floor of the stand’s box, built as it is about twenty feet up, is beginning to segment beneath their feet, separating and sectioning off the corner the two of them are stood on. “Hermione, get over there!” Harry yells, and he grasps at the proffered hand of Penelope Clearwater, a Ravenclaw prefect, as she tries to pull he and Hermione back. Hermione scrambles onto a safer panel, but Harry’s feet are, inexplicably, stuck to the wood underneath him as he tries to struggle to one of the intact floorboards, and he loses hold of Clearwater’s hand as he begins to tumble backwards with the piece of wood under his trainers.

He closes his eyes tightly as he starts to fall down to the ground, feeling the air whistle past his ears as he gets that sickening falling sensation – he just keeps going, Merlin, how far up is he? He’s going to die for sure-

“Arresto momentum!” Harry feels himself freeze in midair, and he cautiously opens one eye, seeing himself four feet above the ground – everyone is ridiculously silent as they all look at him, and Harry, weakly, with a glance at Professor Snape, says,

“Alright, sir?”

“Anything broken, Potter?” Snape asks, looking at him in the same impassive, slightly hateful manner he always does.

“Just my fall, sir.” Perhaps an inappropriate answer to such a brusque question: Snape stares at him, and looks like he’s resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

“Finite incantatem,” Snape says, and Harry drops unceremoniously onto the ground. He gets to his feet, and a cheer erupts through the stands, Harry looks to Snape, and he claps himself, enjoying the way his Head of House’s scowl deepens. He storms off, and Harry’s left laughing a little giddily as Hermione rushes over to him, grabbing him by the arm to look at his face.

“What happened? I know you took Penny Clearwater’s hand, but--”

“My feet were stuck to the floor! I dunno, someone must’ve jinxed me-” Harry says, shaking his head as he looks up to the splintered stands, where Padma Patil is still sat down, breathing heavily and holding tightly to the bench underneath her. Harry gives her a little wave, and she returns it awkwardly, nodding her head. If he hadn't pushed her back, she'd have fallen straight through the gap in the stand.

“Potter! Are you alright!?”

“Oh, Madam Pomfrey, I’m fine – Professor Snape caught me before – okay, I’m going with you, aren’t I? See you later, Hermione!”

He resigns himself to it, and lets Madam Pomfrey drag him aside for a few diagnostic spells. He likes her, though, and manages a crack or two asking if this is how Quidditch matches always go, but she doesn’t find that funny at all.

---

Harry is in a good mood as he walks down to the dungeons – it’s only a few days before the Christmas holidays start, and he’s just had his third session with Oliver Wood, Neville and Hermione. The Weasley twins had even been kind enough to lend their brooms to Neville and Hermione (Harry suspects this kindness will come with a later price for Harry to pay, but he's okay with that, as Neville and Hermione had been far more confident on brooms that didn’t shake ominously with their weights). And Harry is actually quite confident of Quidditch, too – Oliver had let him have a go at catching a snitch, and after seeing the way he’d bulleted after the thing on Oliver’s Comet 260, lithe body moulded to the wood, he had whistled and remarked he was very glad of their deal.

The last few days have been uneventful – they’d had a few conversations over dinner about what had happened with the stands, but Dumbledore had insisted it must have been an accident and that the protective warding on the wood had been lost. Draco had grimly said that his father had recommended the school’s temporary wardmaster himself, and that she’d never be so STUPID as to put iffy wards in place.

“Means someone’s trying to kill you then, Potter.” Blaise had said unconcernedly, and around his glass of pumpkin juice, Harry had given a casual nod.

“Seems that way. Bit how I started out, really, isn’t it?” Draco had sniggered at that, and Harry had remained in a good mood despite the somewhat unsettling idea.

“Potter.”

“Professor Snape, sir?” Wordlessly, the dour Potions Master holds out a sheet of paper on a clipboard: a list of the Slytherins who’ll be staying during the holidays. The list is upsettingly short, but Harry takes it anyway, scrawling his name on the sheet. “Thank you, sir.” He speaks politely, but Snape’s scowl does not budge.

“How’d you know I’d be staying?” Professor Snape walks past him, and Harry honestly wonders why he bothered. Much as Snape had saved Harry’s life, he remains as sadistic as ever in Potions – subsequently, it’s Harry’s best subject, as he has to make so much effort to avoid getting the Ts Snape so obviously enjoys giving him. He makes his way down the corridor and towards his office, and, with an exasperated huff of a sigh, Harry steps into the Slytherin common room.

He has letters to work on tonight – a dozen of them, and he wants to send them off by tonight, before the sun goes down.

“I don’t get why you do it.” Nott says with an unsympathetic shake of his head as he looks at the stack of three already-written letters on his desk, and the waiting, blank papers that are still to be written.

“I’m well-connected, Theodore. What can I say?”

“They only write you back because you’re the Boy Who Lived.” Draco says, pretending he isn’t as green as his robe crest. Of course, as the scion of the Malfoy line, they'd all probably write him back too, but he hasn't so much as tried.

“So? The important thing is that they write me back.” Harry knows full well this is the reason some of them write him back, but it’s not the only reason – he has three photographs of his parents pinned to the wall beside his bed, now, in amongst photos of all sorts of people – Harry’s paternal grandparents, some aunts, some uncles, even a few cousins. They’re all dead now, of course: they’d been killed in the war for being on the wrong side, and now Harry is firmly an orphan.

It doesn’t feel so bad, though, with all the stories some of them are telling him – Augusta Longbottom’s son had been friends with his dad, and she’d gone to school with Harry’s grandmother, who’d apparently been a devil at wizarding poker, even at Harry’s age.

He’d never known anything about his dad’s side of the family at all, except that the Dursleys despised them, but knowing that there were so many good wizards? Light wizards, war heroes?

It’s a nice thought, and he smiles a little as he glances to the wall – the photographs he has are all scattered against the wall where he’d stuck them with Spellotape, and beside them is a big piece of parchment he’d started drawing his family tree on. Loads of people knew his mum, but apart from knowing her parents were Muggles, no seemed to know much more about them.

Harry doubts he’ll want to ask Aunt Petunia much about it – she doesn’t even have any photographs of them up.

Harry has a good thirty five people on his list now, and it’s nice to have people who’ll answer his questions about his house and his family and his wand – Mrs Longbottom even HAD given him some help on his Transfiguration homework, and he’d managed to turn a match into a needle in his lesson recently.

For tonight it’s letters to Molly Weasley (Harry’s primary penpal, who tells him everything from charms to fix a scraped knee to how to point a brick wall), a journalist at the Daily Prophet named Yolanda Hartbrook, Florean Fortescue, Gideon Flourish (no relation), Lucius Malfoy (he likes to hear about Draco, mostly, but he dispenses hair tips, as well), Mr Ollivander (Harry had wanted to know some more about his wand, and he’d been ecstatic to comply) and a few others: at the bottom are a few owl order forms to order gifts for Draco and the other boys, as well as for Hermione, Hagrid and Neville.

“Alright, Harry?” Hagrid greets him merrily as Harry begins to walk down to the owlery, and Harry grins at him.

“Alright, Hagrid?” Hagrid has long since overcome his issue with Harry’s housing (at least where it concerns Harry himself, though he’s very cautious over his fellow snakes), and Harry’s even been down to tea with him the once, with Hermione.

“Come down for a cuppa before you head up the castle for yer tea, alrigh’? I got summat to show ya!”

“Will do!” Hagrid’s show-and-tell, it turns out, is a book about magical creatures, and Harry takes it readily, beaming at the other man. “’Cause ye’ve been askin’ about magical stuff an’ that-”

Harry throws himself forwards and, as best as he can given Hagrid’s tremendous height and bodily girth, hugs him tightly: Hagrid grins down at him, patting his back ever-so-gently with one massive hand. The book is battered, and Harry guesses secondhand from the village, but it’s a sort of bestiary, and it looks much more affectionate than Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, its title, written in fading silver script, is simple: Living Wonders of the Magical World.

Harry takes it with him to dinner, though he knows to sit on it and not to try reading it at the table: Afifa had cuffed him hard upside the head when he’d done that the once – strict dining etiquette is to be observed at evening meals, without exception.

“Who’s staying over the holidays, then?” Afifa speaks with authority (Harry has never known her to speak without authority).

“Me,” Harry says, and the only other person to say yes is a rather sad looking fourth year. Cheerful, really.

“You two are just stuck with me, then.”

“Aren’t you going home?”

“My parents are refurbishing the shop. If I go home, I’ll have to help,” she points out, and Harry nods his understanding.

“Sneaky.” Afifa winks at him, and Harry grins, turning back to his food.

Christmas time, Harry discovers as the days go on, is a very colourful affair at Hogwarts. There are twelve massive trees in the hall, all decorated, and Flitwick was delighted to teach Harry a charm for making baubles when he asked if he could help. It was surprisingly cathartic, actually, hanging them regularly along the tree, and Flitwick had given him three points to Slytherin for his technique.

Harry suspects he actually earned the ten points for cutting Flitwick’s decorating time in half, but he didn’t point this out, and instead thanked the Charms professor with a smile.

A tree had also been settled in the middle of each of the Slytherin dorm rooms, as Harry was delighted to discover when he went to the common room that evening. It had been put in the very centre of his and Draco’s imaginary line, back against the wall.

Each of the dorms, Harry has discovered, are the same, and all of them are usually kept symmetrical; his and Draco’s beds are in opposite corners, furthest away from the door, with their trunks set at their foot like ottomans. Directly across from each of their beds is a wardrobe, and beside the beds, small mahogany tables with drawers for cards and assorted things.

The tree, now put well into place, sits between their beds, but it is very bare, but for a silver envelope neatly set into the branches.

"What, are we meant to decorate them ourselves?”

Draco complains as he comes in behind Harry, and Harry reaches out, taking the envelope and reading the note within aloud.

First years are expected to decorate their own trees
in order that they learn appropriate methods and
charms for use in later life. A prize will be given
for the best tree.

Following is a list of three or four charms – one Harry recognizes for tinsel (Argentum Lux), and another for glitter (Caelum Micat), but the other he doesn’t recognize.

“What’s stellaris in Latin?” he asks, and Draco reaches for the Latin dictionary on his bedside, encouraged for independent study, glancing through.

“Stella is star. It’s probably for the top of the tree.” They set out together, starting with the tinsel. Draco puts the star on the tree as Harry says “Cruso!” and begins to set baubles (which aren't actually baubles like Aunt Petunia had, ceramic or plastic, but silver, shining balls that are warm to the touch and wriggle if you poke them) on to compliment the black tinsel.

“Oh, splendid!”

“Flitwick showed me.” Draco nods, and he notes the incantation down in the spell journal on his bedside table – Draco had a habit of writing almost everything down in diaries, and Harry suspects, based on the methodical way Mr Malfoy writes his letters, that his father does the same thing.

Harry stands back, then, and they grin together at the tree. It does look good, but it’s missing something – it looks a little too orderly to Harry, too much like the picture perfect trees Aunt Petunia had always decorated, and he wants to add to it. “Have you got any green ink?”

Giving him a perplexed and curious look, Draco retrieves a bottle, and Harry hands him a piece of parchment as he begins to cut another with a knife, instructing him to brush over the parchment until it’s green.

“What we do, is we take fat bits of parchment like this, and fold them into sort of ovals with the flat bits together, yeah, and then stick them with Spellotape so it’s green, white, green white...”

Draco hums thoughtfully, and by the time they’re done both of their hands are COVERED in green ink, but they have five of them: fat little paper flowers that hang from the tree on twine. “Where’d you learn that?” Draco asks curiously, though he seems impressed enough as they walk down to the bathroom to wash their hands. He’s not nearly so rude now – Harry suspects because it’s not so easy to be a pillock when you share a room with the victim.

“Muggle primary school.” Harry speaks with confidence. “At Christmas they teach all sorts of crafty stuff.”

Draco hesitates, lips pressing together: Harry is pretty sure of his internal dilemma. On one hand, it’s Muggle stuff, but on the other, he likes the decorations. “D’you know any others?”

“A few...” He’s intentionally evasive, for now, but he’ll tell Draco how to make paper angels before he goes home for the holiday – Malfoy will like that. “Oh, wow. Frank, we’ve a winner.

It’s not Afifa, but a thin, beautiful seventh year boy that calls down the hall: his voice is mellifluous, and Harry beams at him as Francois and the other prefects all gather at Harry and Draco’s door, the other first years pushing under their arms to get a look.

“Oh, those charms weren’t on the sheet!” comes Pansy Parkinson’s shrill complaint, but the handsome boy just tuts at her.

“Now now, Parkinson: we were rewarding you for creativity, not for reading.”

“What’s the charm for those paper things, Malfoy?”

“Oh, they weren’t magic,” Harry supplies. “Just paper, ink and Spellotape.”

There’s laughter amongst the prefect judges, but it isn’t unpleasant – they all look very pleased, and Harry and Draco are rewarded with wrapped gifts. They turn out to be green, flannel dressing gowns decorated with snakes, and Harry laughs with delight, trying his on immediately.

“Oh, they move!”

“Course they do.” Draco tuts at him as if it’s obvious, but even he is grinning at his Christmas prize - he’s very proud, Harry thinks, and it’s something to tell his mum and dad about when he gets off at the platform.

“Merry Christmas, Potter!” Draco says with fake bile in his voice as he runs down towards the entrance hall, and Harry waves him off, grinning as he returns the sentiment.

“Merry Christmas, Malfoy! See you in January!”

Even with the joking, though, he’s a little sad to see the other boy go – it’s weird, sleeping in his dormitory with no one else across from him, but it can’t be helped, he supposes. Hermione and Neville have gone home for the holidays as well – the only friends Harry has around (if “friend” can be used so loosely) are the Weasley twins.

Shame, really. He almost thought Christmas would be a little less lonely this year.