Lindon Sartorius stands surrounded by a shield of bright, flickering flames. The heat that comes off it is amazing, and Harry gasps in a surprised breath as he stares at it: he can just see Sartorius' black-clad form silhouetted on the inside of the orange-red sphere, and as a spell is fired into it the flames let out a spark or two but remain surrounding him. Harry turns his head, and he recognizes the American from his photograph in the Prophet when he was arrested - Chad Arnett has black hair that shows blond at its roots, and it's moulded into a quiff with a strategically loose strand of hair artfully tousled over his forehead.

His robes are cream-white with pink ribbons twisted at his waist, sleeves and the sides of his legs, and Harry's certain he's seen the exact look in one of the fashion magazines he pretends not to look through when Daphne Greengrass leaves them in the common room. He holds his wand aloft and keeps casting at Lindon, but the wall of flames absorbs every spell.

"Expelliarmus!" Harry yells, but Arnett turns before the spell can hit him in the back, and he turns to face Harry, who doesn't stand out. He dodges a purple stream of light that flies towards him, throwing a Knee-Reversal Hex in his direction, and Arnett buckles, falling backwards. Harry throws up a shield as Arnett casts towards him, but a woman in lilac robes runs towards him, grabbing him by the shoulder before they disappear together.

Lindon drops his shield, leaving dark smoke filtering up into the air around him. A black ring marks the dirt path around him, and Harry can hear him yelling something indistinct to Cecilia, shaking a leather-bound book in his hands. Harry strains his ears as he walks forwards, but then he hears a, "Oh, Harry!" from behind him.

Harry turns on his heel in a split second, and he faces Lockhart with his wand held aloft.

Lockhart's hair is a little longer than before, in loose blond locks around his head, and Harry can see his Azkaban number tattooed on his neck, poking visibly out from under the Chinese collar of his robes. His eyes are filled with a cold fury, but of any wizard on Earth, Gilderoy Lockhart is probably one of those Harry would feel completely comfortable facing in a duel.

"How'd you like Azkaban?" Harry says sharply before Lockhart can say anything more, and the fraud's cheeks go slightly pink as he watches Harry, his mouth twisting into a snarl that could easily make its way into Witch Weekly's catalogue of evil snarls.

"Do you think I can't kill you, Harry?" Lockhart demands. Harry can see a few teachers coming forwards from the sides, pushing students behind their bodies to shield them slightly, but none of them try and cast in his direction. There are only two or three metres between him and Lockhart, and Harry knows none of them want to hit him with a hex when Lockhart's right in front of him.

"You can't even kill a pixie, you useless hack," Harry retorts, and he twists his arm before hissing, "Colei Novis!" The spell hits Lockhart directly despite the older man's attempt to dodge, and he lets out a cry, dropping his wand and cupping his crotch in horror, falling to his knees. Harry steps forwards to try and Stun him, but before he can manage Lockhart disappears.

"He had a Portkey," Sirius says, running forwards to put his hand on Harry's shoulder and frown down at him. "You alright?"

"I'm fine," Harry says. "Annoyed I didn't catch that bloody twat-" He blinks as a flash is aimed at him, and snaps, "This isn't the time, Colin!"

"I got a picture of you casting that spell, Harry! What spell was it? What did it do? It looked like it hurt! Where did you learn it? One of them got me!" Colin proudly holds up his arm, and Harry groans at the little Gryffindor, horrified at the sight of it: Creevey's white-sleeved arm is thick with blood, and Harry grabs his wrist before he can hold up his camera, pushing up the sleeve. It's not a cut: it looks like he's just taken a harsh graze across the side of his forearm, and his Muggle shirt has made it look more dramatic than the wound is.

Harry ignores Sirius talking behind him, focusing on Colin's arm and murmuring a healing spell as Colin excitedly chatters about pushing Neville Longbottom out of the way of the man with the black hair and trying to cast a few spells but failing to hit with any of them. He murmurs a cleaning spell, but it only draws a little of the blood out of Creevey's shirt, leaving it with one pink sleeve and one white one. Despite the slightly annoying nature of Creevey's excited chatter, Harry can't help but be slightly impressed - he's definitely showing off his Gryffindor bravery on his first Hogsmeade trip.

"Go away, Colin," Harry says, patting his shoulder, and Colin beams up at him. "I want copies of those pictures, okay?"

"Yeah, sure! I can't wait to tell Dennis, Harry!" Harry watches after him as he runs off, shaking his head slightly. Hermione is talking with Ron Weasley, and Harry winces as he sees him - the Gryffindor has his head half-shorn, and Harry recognizes the effects of a Scalping Hex immediately. A few of the Gryffindors seem to have their own scrapes and wounds, Harry realizes as he glances around, but no one seems to be seriously injured.

"You alright?" Harry asks as he comes over. Glancing over his shoulder, he sees McGonagall and Flitwick rapidly talking. Flitwick looks ready to commit a few murders, and Harry's sure they'd be creative if he was permitted the license.

"I hit her with a Conjunctivitus Jinx," Ron says, "Darling, the lady in the lilac robes. Flitwick says they're going to call into St Mungo's to look out for a Splinching, because he doubts she's been able to Apparate both herself and Arnett without doing it."

"Well done, Ron," Harry says, and Ron gives him a grin. His lip is split, but Hermione fixes it up pretty quickly, and he stands up straight as they walk towards the teacher. "You think they'll be able to fix your hair?" Ron's head is shorn all up the left side, and while on the right he's got the same thick, red hair, the left side is nearly bald and a little bloody in places.

"Dunno," Ron says, giving a shrug. "Thinks it makes me look battle-hardened."

"It makes you look stupid, if anything," Hermione says, and Harry laughs.

"Thirty points to Slytherin, Potter, and twenty to Gryffindor, Weasley!" Flitwick says as soon as the three of them approach: his tone is stiff and his expression has a lingering fury, but neither of those seem to be directed at the two of them. "Excellent form!"

"Thanks, Professor," Harry says, and he watches McGonagall's deep frown as she glances around the village. "Where'd they get in?"

"They Apparated onto the roof of the Hog's Head," she says, "I'm going to have a word with Aberforth. For the time being- I think we'll get everyone back up to the castle. You three walk up to the gates: Severus will let you in." Harry frowns slightly, slightly surprised - he's seen Sinistra, Flitwick, McGonagall and Cecilia in the village, but he's surprised Snape was stationed at the gates.

"Is everyone okay, Ma'am?"

"There are a few glancing injuries, but nothing serious, Potter," McGonagall says. "Up you go now."

---

Hogwarts is awash with hurried conversation that afternoon. Harry sees Ron sat on the floor of the great hall, letting Lavender Brown coax his hair into its previous length again on the one side, and Luna Lovegood is examining a bruise on her face with a mirror. "You didn't get hurt, did you, Luna?" Harry asks. She glances up at him, apparently surprised at the question, and then gives him a smile.

"Oh, I didn't go into Hogsmeade today, Harry," she says with a small shrug. "I was walking with a unicorn in the forest, and took rather a tumble. It does give me a sense of the dramatic, I feel. Do you know any charms for bruises? I'll teach you one for fixing a broken nose."

"Sure, alright," Harry says, sitting down beside her. Luna sets her stone-framed mirror in her lap, and Harry cups her chin to hold her head still. Her skin is warm under his cold hands, and he mutters an apology as he soothes the thumb-sized bruise from the side of her cheek. He writes down the charm for her, and he takes the parchment she offers as trade. "Episkey," he murmurs under his breath, giving a nod of his head.

"Have you enjoyed your taste of battle today, Harry?" Luna asks, fingering the cool obsidian of her mirror's casing, and Harry sighs. He looks at the mirror in Luna's hands as he speaks: it's pretty in a rugged sort of way, like a mountain at sunset, and it looks too heavy to be held so easily between Luna's dainty-looking hands.

"I'd rather they were back in Azkaban, to be honest," he admits, and he glances up as a gaggle of Beauxbatons girls come into the room.

"'Arry!" Fleur Delacour says, clapping her hands together. "You are like a man on the duelling field, non?"

"I am a man," Harry says, and she laughs.

"A very petit man," she says, making a gesture with her hands, and Harry frowns at her as she and her friends giggle. They settle into eating some food, though, and Harry stays at the Ravenclaw table beside Luna, talking with her about the Quibbler's recent feature on Heliopaths and their infiltration of the Ministry of Magic. If he's honest, the conversation is utterly mad, but he'd be a liar to say he didn't find the Lovegoods' theories on the wizarding world to be interesting.

Besides, Luna's a nice girl, and Harry thinks she's quite pretty, too.

---

"Professor Hayworth?" asks Hermione, leaning forwards against her desk and peering up at her. There are twenty minutes left to the lesson, but they've finished the theory they need before learning a Knockback Jinx next lesson, and Celia doesn't want to start the practical just yet. "What was that book Lindon had in Hogsmeade on Saturday?" Immediately, most of the students in the room lean forwards, interested.

She sighs, rolling her eyes, and leans back against her desk. Sitting on the edge of it, her red boots swing on her feet, and Harry glances at their rainbow laces absently, wondering where she got them. "For the past few years, Lindon's been pursuing the stories of spell tomes."

Harry glances around: a few of the Slytherins look interested, but Harry's fairly certain he's only ever heard the term in one of Dudley's stupid video games. "What's that, a spell tome?" He's learned a lot about the wizarding world over the past few years, but he still often feels like he's missing the most crucial part of legends and popular culture, and he's always eager to pick up a few new bits of knowledge.

"Mr Nott?" Cecilia asks, and Theodore pulls his head out of his book, looking like a startled deer for a few seconds before Blaise hurriedly whispers in his ear, and then he pulls himself together.

"They're legendary magic - they were used in Ancient Egypt onwards, developed from scrolls in the times of Mesopotamia. You'd use the tome instead of a wand or a staff, and you'd be able to cast powerful magic at a second's notice just by brushing a page."

"And he's made one?" Ron says excitedly. "He can do that?"

"No," Celia says bluntly. "After scrawling runes over a hundred pages, he can cast one spell that barely works." Harry laughs. Despite Lindon's best efforts, a lot of his attempts at practical magic seem to go wrong - Harry likes the man, but he sometimes wonders if the academic would be better off being a Squib. Nonetheless, though, the shield had worked fairly well, and Harry had been impressed by it. "He can't move with it, and he burnt half of his eyebrows off." He laughs again: perhaps not he's that impressed.

"Aren't runes just an old language?" asks Pansy Parkinson, scrunching up her pug nose and seeming rather disgusted by the idea. Harry isn't alone in shooting her an annoyed look: Pansy Parkinson is a girl that pretends to be stupider than she is, and for all Harry's general understanding of his fellow Slytherins, he can't for the life of him understand why.

"Yes," Hermione answers, "but you can perform magic with them like you can with Latin or Ancient Greek. It can just be more complex and drawn out - Ancient Runes, the subject we study here, is all just reading and understanding the language, but people use it to cast complex spells on objects all the time. The best enchantments in clothes, shoes and furniture use runes to sustain themselves - it's why cheaper enchantments tend to wear out." Harry is quiet: he likes reading the runic passages they study in class, but he's never gone to too much effort to read up on the language's modern applications.

"Certain ward structures make use of runes, as well as various enchantments. Spell tomes likely used a written language similar to our runes, but that language is almost certainly lost. Trying to replicate it now is- It's insane. But he's making some progress, at least. It's a very complex form of magic - in the same way spell incantations require exact pronunciations, runic magic requires precise inscriptions. It's far too difficult to be taught here." Celia claps her hands together, glancing around the class; everyone likes her well enough, and it'll only improve people's opinions of her to end class early. "If anyone wants to see an example, you can check out the Goblet of Fire."

Harry does have a look at the Goblet of Fire that evening. Dumbledore had revealed it on Saturday, and he has to stand on a stool to peer down into its cup to see the shadows of carved figures visible under the soft blue flame. He stands down, and Lindon enters the room, looking around for something.

"She's in her office," Harry says. Lindon's eyebrows are burned, a little soot still clinging to their partly destroyed curve, and he tries not to laugh as he looks at the historian.

"Thank you," Lindon says, disappearing, and Harry watches him go. The spell tome is interesting, he supposes, but not something that needs to be his priority for now.