A Very Unhappy Holiday

Durmstrang Jan. 11 th

It was an unhappy Harry Potter who returned to Durmstrang following the Christmas holiday. After finding out that Calypso had been looking up and recording information about both him and his family, Harry had gone home hoping for a very quiet and relaxing break. Instead, he found himself constantly at odds with Nathan, and his parents worried sick about what was happening at Hogwarts.

Not only had there been another attack, resulting in a Muggle-born Hufflepuff and a ghost having been Petrified by Slytherin's monster, but Nathan was the school's prime suspect to be the heir of Slytherin. Nathan, it seemed, had somehow managed to acquire the very rare and obscure talent of Parseltongue from the Dark Lord after Voldemort's killing curse failed.

According to Professor Dumbledore, who had personally taken the time to explain everything to Harry on the second day of the holiday, Nathan had discovered his Parseltongue ability while taking part in an extra-curricular dueling club run by Professors Snape and Lockhart, Hogwarts' newest Defense teacher. Draco Malfoy had Summoned a snake, and, after a mishap involving Professor Lockhart, Nathan had intervened to stop it from attacking the crowd. Unfortunately, the Muggle-born who Nathan had apparently stopped the snake from attacking was later victimized by Slytherin's monster, proving without a doubt to most the students that Nathan was the heir of Slytherin.

After Harry told Nathan that he didn't believe him to be a future Dark Lord because of some silly talent, it seemed like the holiday was going to bring the Potter family closer together than ever. All that had unraveled the moment that Harry decided it would be interesting to see Nathan talk to a snake. Nathan had promptly refused to ever use the talent, which Harry felt was completely ridiculous. There had been only six recorded Parseltongues in the last century, and very little was known about the ability besides rumor and conjecture. As far as Harry was concerned, his brother was wasting a rare magical talent by refusing to use it. Nathan, however, felt the ability was a disturbing connection between him and the Dark Lord, and he resented it.

The difference of opinion about Nathan's new talent was never resolved during the holiday. It was simply ignored when another, larger, argument took its place. After a heated argument between the two brothers, Harry had attempted to change the subject and informed Nathan that he copied the instructions for Polyjuice Potion. The only catch was that Harry wanted to know what his brother was planning to do with it before he handed over the instructions. This resulted in Nathan explaining Hermione's idea about sneaking into the Slytherin common room to find out what Malfoy knew about the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry had instantly argued against the plan, pointing out several places where Nathan could not only get expelled, but arrested, and he refused to give the Polyjuice Potion instructions to his brother. Much to Harry's annoyance, however, Nathan, Hermione, and Ron had somehow gotten their hands on a book from the Restricted section of Hogwarts' library, and the potion was now nearing completion. Hermione was, according to Nathan, staying at Hogwarts over the break to ensure that it would be ready when they got back.

Nathan's desire to go through with the Polyjuice idea had led to the first ever duel between the two brothers. Harry had threatened to tell their parents about his brother's plan, and the two had ended up exchanging spells, which resulted in both boys getting grounded for the last week of the holiday. For Nathan that meant no Quidditch, while Harry had to do extra chores around the house.

Harry never did tell his parents about Nathan's idiotic plan to sneak into the Slytherin common room. After Nathan had hit him with a Jelly-Brain Jinx while he was reading in the library, Harry had decided to just let his brother get expelled for attacking another student and using their hair in Polyjuice.

For the first time ever, Harry wanted to leave home and go back to Durmstrang. In fact, the only reason Harry stayed the entire length of the holiday and didn't return to school early was his mother's promise to help him with his Charms and Potions final projects. It had taken a bit of convincing, but Harry had managed to demonstrate that he was good enough at Charms for his mother to teach him how to properly enchant an object.

While Harry wanted to build on his previous Charms project and enchant his room, he soon found that was unlikely to happen. Learning how to enchant was like going back to his first-ever Charms class and re-learning how to do everything. A charm to make a teacup dance was simple enough, but to enchant the same teacup to permanently dance required a lot more effort.

By the end of the break, Harry had succeeded in enchanting a small butterknife to repel water, but that was all. When he realized that he wouldn't be doing any large-scale enchantments to his room any time soon, Harry had decided to make his final project a single small object that had many enchantments on it. Since he already knew how to enchant a knife to repel water, he made a list of other enchantments he could add to a knife.

When he was younger, Harry had loved reading about medieval wizards who enchanted swords for Muggle knights, and he went back to those stories to find ideas. Eventually, Harry decided he would order a small dagger and enchant it to be unbreakable, repel water, and have lasting sharpness, with an added self-cleaning charm. If he could make it work, the dagger would be a very impressive final project, and would easily put him in the running for the mastery award for Charms again.

For his final project in Potions, Harry decided to taunt his brother a little. After looking at the instructions for Polyjuice Potion one night, Harry decided to take a chance at brewing the potion for his final project. While his mother had been initially skeptical of his ability to brew a N.E.W.T-level potion, Harry eventually won her over by pointing out that the most difficult part of the potion was making sure that the ingredients were picked at the right time, and that it did not require any complex stirring techniques or especially rare and expensive ingredients.

Harry had enjoyed sitting at the diner table as he talked about the potion with his parents while Nathan stewed. At one point near the end of the break, their mother had said how proud she was of Harry for trying to learn such a complicated brew at such a young age. Harry was almost certain that Nathan was going to blurt out that he too was making the potion, but he managed to hold his tongue and instead gave Harry the cold shoulder for the rest of the break.

Another thing Harry was upset about was that he didn't get a chance to ask his brother's advice about Calypso during the break. Between the constant arguments with Nathan, working on his final projects, and not wanting to reveal Calypso's identity to his parents, Harry managed to constantly find excuses to not bring up his friend's suspicious activities to anyone in his family. In retrospect, Harry knew he should have. If Calypso was making notes about his family, Harry knew his parents or uncles should have been informed.