Draco nudged him quietly and Harry looked up to see Ron standing a few feet off, looking nervous himself, Hermione standing next to him with Ginny on the other side. Leaving Draco with their things by the front door, he walked over to... his friends, and stood before them, not wanting to say goodbye, despite what they had put him through in the last six and a half months.

"You're really leaving then, aren't you?" Hermione asked, looking as if she were going to start crying.

Harry nodded and bit his lip. "I'll be back. The school year isn't as long and-" he stopped talking when he found Hermione in his arms suddenly trying to squeeze him to death.

"I'm really sorry Harry. If I hadn't been so involved with studying I would have been there fore you more and you wouldn't be going away now."

Feeling awkward, Harry cleared his throat and when she stepped back, he said, "It's not you guys. It's just, time for something new. They teach Magery there and I think that will be interesting."

"And the Dark Arts?" Ginny questioned, brows raised. Harry turned his attention to her, surprised the question was coming from her and not Ron.

He cleared his throat again and said, "Yeah, well, I'm not sure about that yet. Dad says it's not all the same as the dark arts we defend against, but I still don't know that I want to take it." He thought back to the long conversation he'd had with his father the night before, about locator spells and other magic that was forbidden in most parts of the world because it did things like invade people's privacy. ‘Even Occlumency is still considered dark in the America's,' his father had told him, ‘and yet they teach that at Beaubatons and at times at Hogwarts to those with a certain aptitude for it.'

Harry just couldn't shake the feeling that he would be learning things that Grindewald and Voldemort had learned, and that he had spent so much time worrying about trying to defend himself against.

"Well," Ginny said quietly, "so long as you don't come back to us Harry Grindewald or Gellert Potter." She gave him a sly smile to let him know she was joking, but the only laugh was Hermione's nervous giggle.

"Send pictures Harry," Ginny said, and came forward to give him a gentler hug than Hermione had. Harry didn't want to let go, but it was Ron's turn to clear his throat then, and Ginny stepped back, giving Ron room to say what he needed to.

"I heard that their Quidditch team doesn't play like ours does against houses... Charlie said that sometimes they play other small schools, and that once when he was in school they played Hogwarts."

Harry nodded. "Dad says they're not big on Quidditch there, because they have fighting clubs instead."

"Yeah, well just know that we'll give you a run for your money if you come back to play against us."

Finally Harry cracked a grin and said, "You'd better Captain." He had handed over his Captaincy of the Quidditch team to Ron two days ago, sad to know he was going to a school where Quidditch was not the big sport. Draco was none too pleased with this fact either.

"It's time to leave."

Harry turned to see Severus coming up through the entrance to the Dungeons with a jet-black trunk levitating in front of him. "We have a long journey tonight."

Nodding to his father, Harry turned back to his friends and got another hug from Hermione and Ginny.

Ron approached again nervously and held his hand out. "Friends?" he queried, unsure if Harry's offer to remain friends still stood.

A small smile passed over his lips and he took the hand. "Friends."

* * *

It was dark, and positively icy when they arrived by Portkey in front of a tiny brown two-story house outside of Printzhof.

"Leave the trunks here and I will levitate them in," Severus instructed, wanting the boys to get inside as quickly as possible.

"Ugh, why is it so cold when it was fine three days ago?"

"The winters come earlier and harsher here," Severus said, closing the door behind him. The living room was small and connected directly to the kitchen and dining room, which turned out had a rounded wall. There was a small square table in the middle of the room with four wooden chairs, and two small couches against the walls in the living room, with a round firepit in the middle of the stone floor. Severus aimed his wand at the firepit, and immediately there was a roaring fire, which Harry and Draco stood next to in the hopes of warming up.

Off of the large room there were two doors as well as a narrow staircase along one wall. Severus opened the first door and said, "This is the bathroom." A second door next to it revealed a long narrow bedroom with a wardrobe, a desk, and a queen-sized bed. "This is my room. I suggest you go up stairs and see to your room while I bring your belongings in."

Reluctant to leave the fire, Harry and Draco headed to the stairs, and Harry noticed for the first time that the ceiling in the living room went all the way up to the roof over the second floor.

Upstairs they found a semi-circle bedroom with two beds, two desks, two chairs, and a small two-seat couch. There was one window in the very center, and a long straight half wall, which they could look over to see the living room and fire pit.

"Well, at least the heat will rise up here," Draco mumbled, not happy with the living arrangements. Harry understood since he had seen Draco's large bedroom with a queen bed, and private bathroom.

"Where do we put our clothes?" Draco asked.

Harry motioned to one of the beds, which had drawers underneath just as his bed at home did, and then to the second bed, which along with the desk next to it sat on top of a long two foot high wooden platform. This bed also had drawers underneath of it, but the platform also had two long rows of wooden drawers that pulled out of it.

"That one's mine," Draco said, climbing the two wooden steps up onto the platform and throwing himself down onto the bed. Harry shrugged and began pulling open drawers below the platform. They were full of dust and old spider webs.

"I don't think anyone has lived here for a while," he said, clearing the cobwebs away with his wand, and then turning eight of the 16 drawers crimson on the outside. "The red drawers are mine."

Draco watched as Harry leaned over the half wall and used his wand to lift his heavy trunk up to the second floor and next to his bed.

"What, not going to lift mine?" Draco asked, and Harry shook his head.

"Get up and do it yourself," he joked, and Draco threw his pillow at him.

They spent the next half hour unpacking and organizing, before they started to hang their posters on the wall, Draco scoffing as Harry hung three or four baseball posters next to his Quidditch posters above his bed and in various places around the room. Draco rooted for an opposing Quidditch team clad in silver and blue, and made a point of hanging his posters right next to each one of Harry's.

They were almost done when Harry heard his friend let out a noise of disgust. "Ugh... you've got to be kidding me."

Curious, Harry set Kenai down on his desk next to Hedwig's cage, and went to look at a hole in the floor that Draco had uncovered when he had moved the couch. It looked like a chute that curved downward and towards the other side of the house.

"Do you smell that?" Draco asked, and Harry nodded, wrinkling his nose.

"Smells like something died."

Just then they heard the toilet downstairs flush and looked over the banister to see Severus coming out and going into the kitchen, and the boys immediately broke into laughter, unable to contain themselves any longer.

"We're going to have to plug this hole," Harry said, and Draco nodded, wiping his eyes of tears.

"Why in the world would they put this here?"

Harry shrugged. "Too cold to have a vent go outside?"

Draco looked into the hole again, and said, "I don't think so. Look, there's something slimy in there."

Harry looked, and sure enough it appeared that the room's previous occupant had once used the hole in the floor as a toilet.

Before they went down to eat the late-night dinner that Severus had cooked for them, they stuffed both old pillows down the hole and transfigured them into a clay plug, satisfied that they would not live in a bathroom for the next six months.

That night as Harry lay in the strange bed in the strange little home, in this strange new place, he wondered what his friends were doing at that exact moment in Gryffindor common room. Probably wondering about me, he thought, and he lay awake for the rest of the night, too excited and anxious to sleep.

* * *

Harry was thankful that they had made the move on a Friday night so that they could have Saturday and Sunday to adjust before having to go to classes immediately. He was also too anxious to do much adjusting, and took to sitting on the couch looking out one of the living room windows as a few students passed by on their way to and from Printzhof and Durmstrang in the cold, windy weather.

"Do many students live with their parents in Printzhof?" he asked Severus on Sunday after two young men that looked about his age passed by.

"It is my understanding from the Headmaster that around fifty live in the area, some in Printzhof, some in a small village in the other direction on the other side of the Durmstrang grounds.

Draco set down the Dark Arts book that he had been issued by the school and said, "I thought there were Muggles there too."

"There are. This is the only Muggle Magic village in Norway. Many of the families in the village who are not magic, have parents, siblings, or children that are, and have grown accustomed to this way of life."

Looking like he had smelled something rotten again, Draco went back to his book and didn't ask any more questions, and Harry went back to looking out the window, almost starting to dread what was to come Monday morning. He desperately did not want his life at Durmstrang to end up as his life at Hogwarts so often had... distant, lonely, and left wide open to criticism.

* * *

"What do you have first?"

"Breakfast."

Harry narrowed his eyes at Draco. Both schedules said that they were to appear at Breakfast in the Feast Hall for their first few weeks, ‘in order to better become acquainted with customs and traditions' the note attached to their time-tables said.

"After that," Harry clarified, looking over his own schedule. He didn't mind setting out alone for a few classes a day, but he didn't like the idea of going at the whole day alone either.

"Defense, then Dark Arts, then Lunch."

"Those are the same for me," Harry said. "After lunch I have Magery and Charms."

Draco shrugged. "Huh. I have Transfiguration and then Occlumency," he said.

Harry looked at his schedule for Tuesday and concluded that he had Transfiguration while Draco was taking Herbology, and Occlumency while Draco was taking Charms.

"You're not in Herbology at all?" Draco asked, and Harry shook his head.

"Well you're not in Magery."

Draco stuck his tongue out. "If you ask me Occlumency sounds bad enough without having to take Magery too. Father tried to teach me occlumency before and I was daft at it. You won't be able to do anything like a Mage if you can't control your mind in Occlumency."

"Maybe that's why Professor Agda teaches both," Harry said. He didn't know of any professors at Hogwarts that taught two subjects, but then again Hogwarts and Durmstrang had different subjects and requirements.

"At least we have Potions together. I heard the new Potions Master is a real piece of work," Draco said a little louder as Severus walked by, buttoning his black sleeve cuff.

"And I heard that the new Potions Master has the ability to assign detentions to whomever he wishes," he said pointedly in Draco's direction.

Draco raised his brows and went back to stuffing books in his new school issue bag: a tan messenger bag with the Durmstrang logo in red on the front. "Will they give you detention for not wearing the uniform uncle Severus?" Draco asked with a falsely sweet smile.

Harry looked up at this. Severus had not approved of either the red or brown uniform that had arrived the evening before over dinner.

"Black shirt and slacks are also allowed, provided they are in good repair. Do you not remember Andon Spas wearing the same attire during your interviews?"

"I'm just saying," Draco said, hands in the air as he stood and spun in his own new brown school uniform. "If I have to wear this piece of junk, you should too."

"Do you not approve of the red one issued to you?"

With a snort Draco shook his head, "What am I? Gryffindor?" He gave a sly smile down to Harry, who was wearing the crimson one, feeling more at home in it, even though it was basically the same thing Draco was wearing.

"The letter said either one was acceptable for classes."

Books and schedules securely tucked away in their bags, Harry and Draco set out across the crisp ground and down the dirt path towards the school a few minutes later. Their rented home was just a few minutes from school grounds, but the castle was still a good fifteen-minute walk from the edge of grounds. Severus had promised to check in with them at lunch, and did not leave the house with them.

"Do you have the map?" Harry asked anxiously, and Draco pulled it out.

"Where's the Great Hall?"

"First floor near the Entrance, just like Hogwarts, and it's the Feast Hall," Draco reminded him, pointing to the parchment with his finger. "We can't get terribly lost. The school is only four stories high." He and Harry looked up to the short towers then, and Draco finished with, "Don't get any ideas."

Harry sucked in a deep breath of the crisp morning air. "It's different now. You know that."

"Yeah, well, just hold onto your Firebolt, because you're going to need it if you're going to beat me out during tryouts."

"Can't be that hard," Harry said. "Everyone I've talked to said they're not that into Quidditch here."

Upon nearing the castle, they followed groups of students coming from the village and the dorms into the castle and then into the Great Hall.

"Where do we sit?" Draco whispered to Harry as they watched groups of friends find seats together. "There aren't any houses here."

Harry pointed to two empty seats at one of the many long wooden tables and they moved that way, only to be thwarted by a group of girls giggling loudly as they tried to sit there.

"Maybe a different spot," Harry said, and the girls giggled again.

"English?" one of the girls asked in a thick accent, and Harry nodded. She drew out her wand, a rough piece of wood, and aimed it at him, encanting the translation spell that Harry and Draco had forgotten to charm themselves with that morning before leaving.

"Better?" Harry asked nervously, and she nodded.

"You'd best sit before they fill," she told them, and not knowing where else to go in the swarming hall, they did as they were told, uncomfortable not knowing anyone around them.

"I am Anika, and this is Jannike," she said, indicating her friend with hair as blond as Draco's.

"I'm Harry," he said, offering out his hand as Severus had told him to, along with direct eye contact.

"And your friend?" she asked, nodding to Draco, who was staring off distantly at a group of boys at another table.

Harry nudged him and he came back to reality. "Draco," he said, not bothering to give her any eye contact. She frowned and turned her attention back to Harry.

"Your friend... he is of the male persuasion? Yes?"

Harry snorted with laughter then and knocked into Draco who looked horrified as he broke eye contact with the boys at the other table.

"No!" Draco shouted. He gave one last look at the other table then, and asked, is that Nikola Yan? Keeper for the Bulgarian National Team?"

Anika leaned to the side better to see around Draco and said, "Yes. That is him. He is always gone on weekends for practice."

Draco looked back at the table at the boy that was clearly popular, and Anika asked Harry, "You are sure, because I have a friend?"

Harry grinned and said, "He's just stupid is all. Bulgaria is one of the teams he roots for. He's got a big poster of Krum on our bedroom wall."

"Well I have to root for someone," Draco said, "might as well be a Quidditch team," he said, feeling snarky all of the sudden because Harry had already seemed to make a new friend and he had seemed to get off on the wrong foot so early in the morning.

Food appeared on the tables then, and instead of continuing on with the conversation they had started as Harry had expected, Anika and Jannike turned to each other and ignored Harry and Draco for the rest of the meal as they tried to figure out what they were eating.

There was a tart red berry sauce next to cereal and some little balls that tasted like fish. Unlike Hogwarts, there was not a choice of what to eat. Everybody in the hall had been served the same meal. Also, instead of pumpkin juice, there was water or coffee, and nothing else to drink.

When they were finished with breakfast, they tried to stand in order to leave and find their classes early, but received dirty stares and a reprimand from a boy with mousy brown hair who said they were being rude and were supposed to wait until their table was dismissed.

Finally, at eight am sharp, two professors started moving amongst the tables, dismissing them one by one.

"This is going to be a long year," Draco whispered to Harry when they were finally dismissed, the last table out of ten.

Harry shrugged. "It's very orderly."

They headed outside with a mass of other students and followed a small group of students their age away from the castle and towards the woods, labeled Tumma Wood on the map. They had to cross a small river over a low wooden bridge and walk into the woods a short ways before they came to a clearing surrounded by a ring of odd stones marked with runes. Professor Spas (Ratko, the younger of the two brothers), waited in his brown uniform in the center of the clearing.

Unsure of what to do, Harry and Draco did as the other fifteen or so students did and circled him, bags on the ground near the stones circling them.

Professor Spas snapped his fingers, and a long wooden staff appeared out of thin air. This was one of the classes Harry was truly looking forward to. Charms and Transfiguration, couldn't be too different from Hogwarts, and he knew Potions wouldn't be, but Defense was something new altogether, and Harry looked forward to regaining the feeling of flying on his feet with the staff an extension of him once again.

"The staff is sacred, like a wand." His words hung in the chill air, and Harry was curious as he listened with the others, waiting for the professor to say something else. Instead, they heard only silence for long moments, before Harry was startled by the lighting fast movement of his professor, swinging the staff over his head and spinning around in a mesmerizing way. When he came to a sudden stop in front of Draco, students around them laughed when Draco flinched, the end of the dark wooden staff less than an inch from Draco's nose.

"And the depth of courage, will tell the depth of a man's soul," said Professor Spas, before swinging the staff over his head again and then down once again towards Draco, who flinched again, but refused to move away from the man who was swinging the staff too close to him for comfort.

Spas snapped his fingers again and another staff appeared, this one blonder in color. It hung in the air before Draco, who snatched it up and stood at the ready. Spas backed up and motioned for Draco to move out into the center of the circle, away from the protection of his peers. Harry's stomach clenched then, suddenly worried about his friend. He had not seen Draco in the interview and did not know how he had preformed.

Draco and Professor Spas stared at each other for long tense moments, and Harry was aware that several of the males on the other side of the ring were smirking. Without warning, Spas made the first move, stabbing towards Draco and swinging his staff upward, trying to take Draco's legs out from under him, but Draco jumped and dodged and what followed was like a mesmerizing dance, as beautiful to watch as it was to be the dancer holding the staff in the interview, flying on your feet. For several minutes, both opponents moved deftly and quietly, the sound of the staffs whooshing through the air keeping all eyes on the battle. Suddenly Spas was on the ground and Draco came down hard onto one knee in the dirt, staff coming down hard with him, stopping short an inch from the man's face. Harry was surprised to see Draco looking angry now that he was still, breathing hard with sweat running down his face in a single bead.

The other boys were not smirking now, and seemed eager to witness the finish of the professor who so often bested them in the ring, but it did not come.

"And the compassion of a man, will show you his willingness to change and grow," came out Spas' voice, steady and even, not laboring for breath as Draco still was.

Draco stood and Spas pushed himself up off of the ground.

"List the ten tenants of defense," Spas said quietly, snapping his fingers and surprising Draco as the staff he was holding disappeared.

Harry and Draco listened mutely as the ring of classmates said in unison and with vigor, "Face your opponent without thought to your own failings. Face your opponent with courage. Face your opponent with thoughts of his next move in mind. Feel the earth and wind as you move. The staff is sacred, like your wand. Without balance, life is void. Without heart, the battle is lost. Without order, victory is useless. Believe not others have compassion for your life. Do not assume you are better than your foe."

Silence rang in Harry's ears when they were done, and he pondered on the ten tenants of defense. Many of them didn't make sense, but then again, that's what they were here to learn.

* * *

"You cannot sit there." The voice was gruff, and Harry and Draco turned to see a large boy with a smooth wand sitting on his desk behind them.

"Why not?" Draco asked.

The boy glared and Harry grabbed Draco's sleeve. "C'mon, better to sit someplace else and not make enemies on our first day."

Draco grumbled something and then moved with Harry to two empty seats in the back.

Just before class started, Harry watched as a pretty girl with brown, flowing hair sat in the seat he had previously tried to occupy. The large boy did not stop her.

Harry tried to sit through the Dark Arts lesson with an open mind, trying to keep in mind what his father had said about locator spells and other things that invaded privacy but were otherwise harmless, but today was not one of those days they were learning a harmless spell. First up on the agenda was a nasty slicing hex that would slice open a person's flesh right down to their bone. Andon Spas, the Dark Arts professor, was so different from his brother, that aside from similarity in looks, Harry would not have thought them related. He was gruff and sharp with his words, again reminding him very much of how Severus once seemed to him, especially as a smaller child. While Ratko was fast with a staff, he was gentle with his tone and words, coming off to Harry as thoughtful and strong. His brother Andon came across as downright mean, threatening students who didn't get the spell right the first time, calling them names, and sometimes even snatching their wand away from them when they didn't move it right.

"At least we're not practicing on each other," Harry mumbled to Draco, who was intent on getting the spell right before the end of class.

"At least we're not getting house points taken away for being awful at it," Draco replied.

Harry had to agree, for as much as he wanted to do well here, he felt he could not put his heart into learning the Dark Arts he had spent so long fighting, and without his heart in it, his wand refused to work.

"Prissy Potter Snape won't do the dark little spell?" Spas taunted him then, coming up behind Harry. "Better give me your wand then and sit by the window before you hurt yourself. You can have it back after Fika." He snatched it away and was gone, off to berate someone else. Students stared at Harry, the only student to actually have his wand taken from him, and Harry moved to the empty seat by the window.

So much for not making enemies on my first day, he thought, and wondered if he could convince his father to get him out of this class before they had it again on Wednesday.