At the Christmas party hosted by Professor Slughorn, the host himself gazed at Harry with undisguised fondness, his eyes already faintly bloodshot.
"You might not believe it, Sybill, but this boy has a gift for Potions just like his mother did!
"In all my years I've only taught a handful of students with this kind of talent and I can say with complete honesty, Sybill, that even Severus—"
Under the horrified stares of the young wizards around him, Slughorn extended an arm and hooked Snape as though plucking him out of thin air. "Don't go sneaking off on us! Come and join the conversation, Severus!"
Slughorn clapped Snape warmly on the shoulder and let out a satisfied belch.
"I was just telling everyone about Harry's remarkable talent for Potions! Of course, credit's due to you too—you taught him for five years!"
Snape tried to shrug free, but found Slughorn's arm locked firmly around his shoulders, and gave up the struggle. Sherlock watched the whole scene and understood at once.
It seemed Slughorn, like Professor McGonagall, was one of the few people Snape actually respected.
But at Slughorn's words, Snape's gaze slid down that hooked nose to settle on Harry, his black eyes narrowing. "How curious. I don't recall ever teaching Potter anything."
Snape meant it, too—every word.
Never mind that Harry had earned an "E" on his Potions O.W.L.
No, you did teach him, the young wizards who already knew about the Half-Blood Prince all silently cried out in unison.
There was no question that Harry's meteoric improvement in Potions this term was entirely Snape's doing.
And it was for that very reason that the looks they were giving Snape had turned rather strange.
"Ah, a natural talent, then!"
Slughorn, of course, had no idea, and let out a happy little hum at Snape's words.
"You should have seen the Draught of Living Death, he handed me in his very first lesson!
"I've never seen a student do better on his first attempt—I daresay not even you, Severus—"
Please, for the love of god, stop talking, Harry thought, deeply unsettled.
Sherlock, for his part, found it all rather amusing.
He knew perfectly well that Slughorn's feelings for Harry had always run a little differently than for other students—on account of Lily, Harry's mother. How else could they have gotten that crucial memory out of him in the first place?
And now that Harry had displayed a "gift" for Potions, that fondness had doubled and redoubled.
Still even accounting for all that, Slughorn was laying it on far too thick.
After all, that Draught of Living Death had been made following Snape's own instructions to the letter.
How could it possibly have turned out better than Snape's own?
There was simply no reasoning with favouritism once it took hold.
"Is that so?"
Snape received the praise with striking composure.
His eyes swept over Harry, up and down, as though trying to see straight through him.
Harry, seeing this, immediately threw up Occlumency, careful not to let Snape discover that the true source of his newfound talent in Potions was that battered old textbook.
Thankfully, he'd taken Sherlock and Dumbledore's advice seriously last year and studied Occlumency in earnest.
So the defence came easily now with barely a thought.
Though it did strike him as more than a little strange, using the very skill Snape himself had taught him against Snape.
Just as Harry was doing his best to turn the enemy's own methods against him, Professor Slughorn spoke up again.
"Now then, remind me—what other subjects are you taking, Harry?"
Harry breathed a sigh of relief and answered quickly. "Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology—"
"In short," Snape supplied helpfully, though his mouth curled into something like a sneer, "everything one needs to become an Auror."
Harry blinked, a little startled, and glanced instinctively toward Sherlock.
Catching an encouraging look from his old friend, he nodded firmly.
"That's right. I want to be an Auror."
"You'll make a fine one!"
Slughorn immediately voiced his support for his star pupil, his voice booming as though he meant for the whole office to hear.
"Though personally, I don't think you should be an Auror, Harry."
Luna spoke up suddenly.
Everyone turned to look at her.
"The Aurors are part of the Rotfang Conspiracy—I thought everyone knew that. They're using Dark magic and gum disease to bring down the Ministry from the inside."
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then everyone burst out laughing.
Harry choked on his mead and got half of it up his nose.
Cho Chang handed him a napkin at once.
"Honestly, Sherlock, bringing Luna along was worth it just for that," Hermione said to Sherlock, struggling to keep a straight face.
Luna's remark had breathed new life into the party.
Slughorn asked a few interested follow-up questions, but the moment he learned that Luna's father, Mr. Lovegood, was the editor of The Quibbler, his interest evaporated instantly.
He wasted no time finding a new target, though.
"What's this—your mother is the Lady Chang?"
"Yes, Professor," Cho said politely. "Do you know her?"
"Well, I had a student once who happened to be acquainted with her—"
After a good deal more conversation, during which Cho revealed a fair amount of her own talent and family background, she was unsurprisingly recruited into the Slug Club on the spot.
"You must bring young Harry along with you next time!" Slughorn said cheerfully. "That way he'll have no excuse to refuse. You have no idea—the boy's already skipped out on me several times this term!"
So that was your real motive all along, the young wizards' expressions all seemed to say at once, the truth was shown together.
"It's all right."
Cho leaned in close to Harry and murmured, "If you don't want to go, I won't either."
Touched by her consideration, Harry felt his eyes go a little misty.
Despite the various diversions along the way, Professor Slughorn's Christmas party wound down without incident in the end.
All things considered; the mood had stayed pleasant throughout.
The only real disappointment was that no case had come up.
"Sherlock, what on earth are you saying?"
Mrs. Holmes gave her son a reproachful look.
He was back on King's Road by then, recounting the term's events to his parents at their request.
Having finished with the story of the Christmas dance, he'd tacked on his own opinion of the evening which had immediately drawn his mother's disapproval.
"I was only saying," Sherlock sighed, "that it was all a bit dull, mostly."
Ever since the new Minister for Magic had taken office, Voldemort and his Death Eaters had gone conspicuously quiet.
The wizarding world at large took this as a sign of the fresh atmosphere brought on by the Ministry's new policies.
For a time, the former Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, now Minister for Magic, Pius Thicknesse, saw his reputation soar. Naturally, people took the opportunity to declare that Cornelius Fudge had been utterly useless by comparison.
"I promised Harry I'd come to Grimmauld Place for Christmas," Sherlock said. "His godfather still hasn't come back, and it would be lonely for him there on his own."
Sirius and Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, had gone to retrieve Lupin and Tonks from their mission and still hadn't returned. So, Harry had gone to stay at Privet Drive first.
But when Christmas Day finally arrived, he played host and invited all his friends to Grimmauld Place for a party.
"Sherlock! Come in!"
December 25, 1996.
The moment Harry saw who had walked through the door of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, his face lit up with a joy he could hardly contain.
"I take it I'm not the first one here."
Sherlock's eyes swept the room, and he stated his deduction plainly.
"I won't even ask how you knew!" Harry laughed and pulled Sherlock inside. "Go on, then guess who got here before you."
"Ron, Ginny, the Weasley twins… and Cedric, I'd say."
"You really are uncanny, Sherlock!"
It wasn't Harry who'd spoken it was Cedric himself, the last one named.
He strolled out of the nearby bedroom with a grin and extended his hand to Sherlock.
"Come to think of it, this is the first time we're meeting as fellow Order of the Phoenix members—it's been too long!"
Compared to his school days, Cedric had changed a little too. If before he'd been an ordinarily-built strong man, now he was more like an ordinary man who happened to be strongly built.
Not long after Sherlock's arrival, Hermione, Cho, Luna, and the others trickled in as well.
"Isn't Neville coming?" Ron asked curiously as everyone tucked into the feast Kreacher had prepared.
"Oh, he said he was going to St. Mungo's, to spend the holiday with Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom."
At Harry's words, the cheerful mood in the room dimmed just slightly.
Ginny shot Ron a fierce glare.
Ron looked wounded—how was he supposed to have known that would be the answer?
"Never mind that—the new Minister's doing a fine job these days," Gemma said with a smile. "Harry, I heard he even met with you not long ago. Is that right?"
"That's right." Harry took a deep breath and nodded. "He wants me to visit the Ministry more often."
"Visit the Ministry? What does that even mean?" Fleur looked up from her slice of cake, curious.
"Exactly what it sounds like," Harry said, a little helplessly.
"Thicknesse says people have decided I'm the Chosen One, or whatever you want to call it, and that if I show the Ministry some goodwill, it'll give people more confidence in the place.
"He says it'll help with the current situation—keep people calmer, and bring Hogwarts, the Order, and the Ministry closer together."
"Sounds reasonable enough, actually," Ron said, rubbing his nose. "So—did you agree to it?"
Harry nodded.
None of them seemed particularly surprised by his answer.
If it had still been Cornelius Fudge's Ministry, Harry never would have agreed, not after Fudge had tried to cover up the truth about Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew.
Never mind his disgraceful conduct on the night Voldemort formally returned.
But things were different now, under the new Minister, Pius Thicknesse.
He'd been Dumbledore's pick from the start, naturally inclined toward Hogwarts.
And since taking office, he'd rolled out a string of policies favorable to the school.
What was more, when the two of them had met, the new Minister had struck Harry as remarkably warm—almost too warm, if anything.
"Understandable enough, I suppose," Sherlock said, nodding once he'd heard Harry's account. "He needs something from you, after all."
"Speaking of which—still no word from Lupin and Sirius?" Ron asked curiously.
Everyone present that day, even those who weren't Order members themselves, had connections to the Order running deep enough that it hardly mattered. And since the Order's existence was public knowledge now, there was no need to keep the topic under wraps.
"Not yet," Gemma said, frowning. "Though Mr. Black and Ms. Bones sent word a little while back that they'd found Professor Lupin and Ms. Tonks. They should be reunited before too long, I'd think."
"Good—oh, by the way, Harry, did Sirius send you anything for Christmas?" Fred asked curiously.
"He did."
As Harry spoke, he reached into his robes and pulled something out.
It was a small square mirror, somewhat old—originally rather grubby, though he'd since polished it clean.
Harry turned it over to show everyone the handwriting scrawled across the back, as reckless and free-spirited as Sirius himself.
"It's a two-way mirror—there are two of them, and I've got the other one.
"If you want to reach me, all you have to do is call my name into it, and I'll appear in your mirror, just as you'll appear in mine, and we can talk.
"James and I used to use these to keep in touch whenever we were apart."
"Now that's a good bit of kit!" the Weasley twins exclaimed at once.
"No wonder you weren't worried about Sirius at all!" Ron said, elbowing Harry. "Here you were, hiding this little gem the whole time!"
Harry just smiled and said nothing. He'd already used it to speak with Sirius the moment he'd received the gift that morning which meant he actually knew a bit more about Lupin and Tonks than Gemma did.
Though Sirius had also warned him: if Sirius didn't answer through the mirror, there was no need to worry.
It just meant he was caught up in something at the moment, and he'd call back once it was over.
The mirror got passed from hand to hand, everyone was marvelling over it in turn.
Good times, as always, were short-lived.
As the day wore on and evening drew near, the group began to peel off from Grimmauld Place one by one.
Even Ron and a reluctant Ginny were called home by Mrs. Weasley, since it was Christmas Day after all.
In the end, it was just Sherlock and Harry left.
That was because Mrs. Holmes had asked Sherlock to bring Harry along to King's Road for dinner.
Harry had agreed readily enough. He'd managed to cover all his bases this holiday, in the end.
Right after break started, he'd gone to the Dursleys' at Privet Drive and stayed several days, spending Christmas Eve with them.
Then, early that morning, he'd come to Grimmauld Place and spent a happy day with his friends.
And now, as evening approached, he'd head off to the Holmeses'.
All things considered, it had been a full holiday indeed.
But just as the two of them finished tidying up and were about to leave Grimmauld Place, something unexpected happened.
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