A/N: WAAAHOOOOO! I did it! I did it! I really really did it! Wahey! I AM NINJA!

Ahem. In other words - I updated! I recovered my inspiration! I did it before I hit the "one year" mark!

((sniff)) I'm so proud of me.

But - ye gads! Last chapter had no quote! Therefore, the quote for last chapter shall be at the beginning of this one, and the quote for this chapter will be at the bottom. 'Kay?

Now ... on with the plot! Yes, this, THE LONGEST CHAPTER YET WRITTEN, actually moves the plot along! Remember, pass it on - breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Replies to my preciousss ... I mean, my reviewers ... will be at the bottom.

"Friendship with one's self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Green Eggs and Ham

The first real day of school at Hogwarts dawned bright and clear. Gryffindor tower was filled with students sleeping peacefully in their four-poster beds – but in the sixth-year boys' dormitory, that peace was abruptly shattered.

"BRRRIIIIING! BRRRIIIIING! BRR-ZAP! BRR-ZAP!"

Harry shot up and out of his bed with a startled shout, clapping his hands to his ears in an effort to block out the sudden, piercing din. Across the room, the other boys were also startled out of sleep by the raucous clamor that seemed to be filling the room. Sheridan, tangled in his bed-sheets from restless sleeping, gave a sort of half-jump of surprise before losing his balance and falling to the carpeted floor with a loud "THUMP" and "Aaaaghck!", barely audible over the remarkable din, dragging most of his bed-sheets with him.

"NEVILLE!" Ron hollered over the noise, which was now giving up its failed imitation of an alarm clock in favor of a "RACKA-RACKA-RACKA" sound not unlike a very loud train. "WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS DOING THAT!" The red-head had wrapped his pillow around his head and was pinning the ends over his ears in a vain attempt to shut out the ruckus.

"I'M SORRY!" the accident-prone boy yelled in reply, while trying vainly to capture a strange contraption dancing about on his bed-side table with his own pillow. "HELP ME TURN IT OFF!"

Harry, Dean, Seamus, and Ron immediately leaped forwards and began walloping Neville's bed-stand, trying to pin down the contraption down, an endeavor hindered by the need to continue covering their ears. Sheridan, still struggling in his tangled cocoon of sheets, almost managed to stand upright before falling to the floor once more. His confused flailing was amplified by the tremendous noise.

Finally, Harry's noise-addled brain managed to remind him that he was, in fact, a wizard. He grabbed his wand from his bedside table, his hand luckily landing on it on the first try, before squinting his blurry eyes in an attempt to aim at the dancing figure. "MOVE!" he hollered at his roommates, who quickly fell away from the thing as Harry bellowed, "RICTUMSEMPRA!"

A jet of red light shot out of his wand and hit the thing squarely, knocking it into the stone wall and, blessedly, quieting it. Silence abruptly fell as the boys stood panting about Neville's bed. Harry, his ears ringing, gave an indecipherable grunt before fumbling his way back to his bed-stand and picking up his glasses.

Sheridan, having finally managed to free himself from his bedsheets, poked his head over the side of his bed and asked hoarsely; "What th' effing hell was that?"

"I'm sorry," Neville said again, lowering his pillow to his bed once more as Dean reached behind the small table and pulled out the … thing. It was a rounded, black little contraption, with several knobs and edges sticking out of it. Knobby little pegs at the bottom of it whirred and twitched with rapid movement, obviously meant to be legs of some sort. The whole thing was about as big as an outstretched hand, and certainly did not look capable of producing the tremendous noise of a few moments ago.

"I know what that is," Seamus said after a moment. "It's a Gerrup. It's some sort of alarm …"

"Yes," Neville agreed, looking miserable. "My gran made me take it, so I wouldn't be late to classes … but I thought I left it locked in my trunk."

"It must've crawled its way out," Ron said wonderingly, looking at Neville's trunk, which was slightly ajar and dented at the edges.

Sheridan, who had now come over to stare at the Gerrup with the rest of the boys, said in a slightly fearful tone, "My sis told me about these. She used to have a roommate with one of them. She said they're damn well near impossible to get rid of, or lock up, or anything like that."

"Well, we're going to have to get rid of it somehow," Harry said, walking back over with a finger dug into one ear in an effort to halt the ringing; "if we don't want to wake up to that every morning."

"Maybe if we stuffed it in a box with some pillows, and put Silencio and a locking charm on it …" Dean suggested, looking hopeful.

"Let's do that," Ron agreed, still shaking his head from side to side in order to get rid of the aftermath of the Gerrup's overly-enthusiastic wake-up call. "Even if it got out, we wouldn't be able to hear it, right?"

With assorted mumbles and groans, the boys dispersed to get dressed and ready for their first day back at Hogwarts. Harry, very much amused, had to help Sheridan with his school tie after catching him attempting to tie it in a large bow. The American boy seemed rather confounded by the prospect of school uniforms. "It doesn't make sense," he complained, to immediate replies of, "You're in England now, mate!", and "Welcome to a proper country, Yank!"

"America is so a proper country!" Sheridan protested as the sixth year boys clattered down the stairs into the common room below; "And I am not a Yankee, that's them folks up north! I'm from the south." His complaint was almost comically accented by his southern drawl, which resurfaced with his consternation and turned "south" into "sa-owth".

"Well, excuse us," Seamus replied, grinning at the indignant look on Sheridan's pale face. "But you're American, which means you're still a Yank to us!"

"What on earth are you people arguing about now?" Harry heard a familiar voice demand, as Hermione appeared from where she'd been sitting in an over-stuffed armchair turned away from the stairs, several large textbooks tucked neatly under her arm.

"They keep calling me a Yank," Shi grumbled, glaring at the other five boys surrounding him, who only offered wide grins in return. "I'm not."

Hermione rolled her eyes in exasperation as she shifted her load of books from one arm to the other. "Does it really matter all that much?" The question was directed at all of them, and though Sheridan looked properly chastised, she didn't wait for a reply. "Boys. Honestly."

"What are all the books for?" Ron inquired curiously – a peace offering of sorts, after last night. At least, Harry thought it was …

Hermione stared blankly at him for a moment, before evidently deciding to accept peace and replying shortly, "I was studying."

"Studying?" Ron exclaimed incredulously, his eyes growing huge with shock. "But we haven't even had any classes yet! How can you be studying?"

"One must always be prepared," she replied irritably, glaring at him. "Besides, we're sixth years now. The course work is going to be much more advanced, and I want to be sure I'm all caught up."

"Caught up? You're five bloody yards ahead!"

"Well, Ron, if you'd just apply yourself, then you could be a bit ahead as well!"

Harry sighed, part in exasperation, part relief, as his two friends fell back onto their usual bickering as they all piled out of the portrait hole and headed down to the Great Hall, busying himself with pointing out landmarks to Sheridan so the American boy could at least find his way back to the common room, if no place else. Sheridan looked slightly confounded with all the twists and turns the old castle offered, and mostly simply nodded his head quickly while trying to commit all of Harry's advice to memory.

"You know, it'd be faster if you used a couple of the moving staircases," Harry offered at one point, but Sheridan only gave him a squeamish look, saying he'd think about it.

They made it to the Great Hall without too many mishaps, although they had to drag Sheridan away from a few of the suits of armor frequenting the halls – he'd kept lifting their visors and looking down, as though he'd catch a sprite inside them or something.

"But why do they move?" he kept asking as they entered the Great Hall. "What's the point?"

All queries of that sort were soon silenced by the arrival of breakfast. The four of them eagerly tucked in to an abundance of excellent eggs, bacon, ham, porridge, and buttered toast. Sheridan took a sip of pumpkin juice at some point, and frowned. "This orange juice tastes funny," he commented to the world at large.

"That's because it's pumpkin juice, mate," Ron replied absently before returning to his description of the Gerrup's wakeup call to Hermione.

Sheridan blinked. "Ah. Right. Pumpkin juice." He paused, then asked Harry, quite seriously, "Are oranges too expensive, or are pumpkins just traditional or something? I mean, it's not like they're native to England or anything …"

Harry shrugged, paying more attention to the other conversation.

"Well, I'll have to do some research on what exactly a Gerrup can do," Hermione was saying. "It's certainly worth a shot to put both a locking and silencing charm on it, but if it's a really magical alarm, it might be designed to overcome those …"

"Just so long as we aren't deafened every morning by that thing, I think we're good," Ron assured her, wincing slightly at the memory. "My ears are still ringing …"

"Unless you want us to be throwing hexes at the crack of dawn," Harry added, "because that's the only way we could shut it up."

"And if you're half-asleep, you don't exactly aim," Sheridan muttered around a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

"Chew and swallow before talking," Hermione admonished automatically as she picked up the copy of the Daily Prophet that had been dropped on top of the bacon platter moments before. Sheridan was effectively silenced as he chewed his way through a large portion of scrambled eggs.

Ron reached over and pulled out one of the newspaper's middle leaves, scanning through the page with a serious expression on his face.

"What's that?" Harry asked, curious.

"Obituaries," Ron mumbled, still scanning. "They put missing blokes here, too – 'vanished and presumed dead' … hey!" He stopped suddenly, a shocked look on his face. "Mr. Ollivander's gone missing!"

"What!" the other three exclaimed. "How can he be missing?" Hermione demanded. "He's wand-maker for all of England!"

"More than that," Ron continued, reading further. "His shop was all ransacked – wands scattered everywhere, broken chairs, things like that … but he's been there forever!" He raised his face, shocked. "What's the good of taking a wand-maker?"

"Easy," Harry replied without thinking. "Less wands, less wizards."

Hearing himself say that caused cold shiver to run down his spine. He'd known that Voldemort had returned, and that he was growing in strength … but he'd never really fully thought out what that would mean to parts of the wizarding community he knew. Sure, he'd known that bad things were going to happen, that something needed to be done – but he'd never realized that it would mean that wizards and witches that he knew would start vanishing, without a trace.

"We really are in the middle of a war," Sheridan murmured quietly. No one answered him – no one really needed to.

Their sudden bout of melancholy was abruptly interrupted as none other than Hagrid walked up to their table, a large grin taking up most of his face.

"Hey there, you three!" he called out as they turned in their seats, happy to see their friend. "Or should I say four? Yeh've picked up a straggler, then!" Harry, Ron, and Hermione glanced over to Sheridan, who grinned sheepishly.

"Err … how's your brother?" Hermione asked carefully. They hadn't told Sheridan about Grawp yet – Hagrid's half-brother, a very large, very vicious giant – but all were devoutly hoping that Hagrid had managed to find some other place to keep him other than the school grounds. None of them wished to visit Grawp again.

"Oh, he's grand," Hagrid assured them. "He's livin' up in the mountains now, got lots of company an' all that. He's lots happier. You never know, I might bring him down fer a visit or two sometime!"

"Really? That's … great!" Harry replied with a smile, very carefully not looking at either Ron or Hermione – their previous experiences with Grawp were not anything that left them wishing for return visits.

"Yep!" Hagrid agreed happily. "Anyway, I'll see yeh soon, firs' lesson's straight after lunch!" With that, he strode away, leaving three teenagers with rapidly sinking expressions.

Harry turned to Ron, whose face mirrored his own. "You … aren't taking Care of Magical Creatures as well?"

Ron shook his head. "And, Hermione, you're not either?"

Hermione shook her head, her expression despairing.

"I am," Sheridan offered, glancing about at his friends' faces with something like alarm. "What's wrong? You look like Armageddon just blew over."

"Oh, he's going to be so upset!" Hermione wailed first, covering her face with her hands. "We're his favorites! No one will be taking it!"

"But we worked hard because we like Hagrid, not the subject," Ron objected weakly.

"But he thinks we did," Harry groaned. "How are we supposed to tell him?"

There was a pause. "Tactfully?" Sheridan finally suggested.

The other three turned to stare at him. He stared right back. "Or grammatically?"

Harry sighed. "We'll just have to tell him after lunch," he decided. "We have to show Shi where the class is held, anyway, if he's taking it."

Hermione sighed; Ron nodded, albeit grudgingly. No one wanted to think about how Hagrid would feel when he found out that his three favorite students had dropped his course.

Searching for something else to occupy her attention, Hermione landed on Sheridan's breakfast plate, which wasn't even half empty – two slices of ham and most of his scrambled eggs remained. "Eat that," she ordered, pointing the jam knife at him threateningly. "You've barely touched anything. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

Sheridan poked at his eggs for a moment, before spearing a slice of ham on his fork, holding it out in front of himself, and declaring: "I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam-I-Am!" A pause. "Maybe you should tell him in rhyme. That might work."

"Eat," Hermione insisted. When she decided she was going to take care of something, she never let it rest.

"Green eggs! And ham!" Sheridan insisted, waving the perfectly normal (and perfectly pink) slice of ham under her nose.

"Think of the house elves! They slave away, all day, with no pay or vacations or anything!" she demanded. "The least you can do is eat their food instead of wasting it!"

"Ho, boy," Ron sighed, edging away. "Not this again."

"But I'm full!" the smaller boy protested. "And I did eat!"

"Not enough."

"I'm a grazer! I can't eat a whole lot at a time!"

"You can eat more than two slices of toast and three bites of eggs!"

Sheridan frowned and crossed his arms stubbornly, moving his plate as far away from himself as he could manage. "Green. Eggs. And. Ham."

Hermione opened her mouth, but before she could protest, Harry and Ron had both reached over and started eating the remains of the stubborn werewolf's breakfast. She scowled at them.

"Give it a rest, Hermione," Ron advised her as he accepted the impaled "green ham" from Sheridan. "It's not like he's starving, or anything."

"I eat brains," the boy in question declared. "I is zombie. This not brains! Green eggs and ham!"

Ron and Harry both nearly choked on their food as they burst into laughter, unable to contain it any longer. Even Hermione couldn't withhold a small grin from the werewolf, who beamed happily as he took a long draught of pumpkin juice.

Once they had finished eating (those who were not refusing to eat, at any rate), they managed to sit more-or-less quietly. This year, the Professors would be handing out class schedules after breakfast, personally clearing them as able to continue on with their chosen subjects. Unfortunately, Sheridan had serious problems with sitting quietly. He was in the middle of a rather complicated sort of street beat, drumming his fork and spoon against various plates and cups, when the food (and cutlery) vanished, signaling the end of the breakfast period. The four of them rose with the rest of the sixth-years and headed towards the staff table, in front of which their Heads of Houses were standing.

Neville passed by, having already gotten his schedule, positively beaming. "I don't have to do Transfiguration anymore!" he whispered to them jubilantly. "And Professor McGonagall says I can do Charms no matter what my gran says!"

"Good for you," they congratulated him happily. By now, even Sheridan had heard of Neville's mishaps in McGonagall's class, and they all knew how proud he was of his score in the Charms OWL's.

Hermione, when they reached McGonagall, was immediately cleared to take all of her chosen classes. Harry, glancing at her schedule, couldn't help but wonder if she had changed her mind about never using a Time-Turner again, after all – but she had raced off to her first class of the day before he could ask.

"Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall began as he approached her. "Your marks are very good, you're cleared for all your chosen classes … but, I was under the impression that it was your wish to become an Auror. Why didn't you sign up to continue your Potions classes?" She peered at him from under her brows – Harry felt as though she could read his mind. Maybe she could.

"I, ah, did, Professor," he replied, confused; "but you told me I had to have an "Outstanding" on my Potions OWL to take the NEWTs course."

"Well, for Professor Snape, you did," she informed him. "But your new Potions master, Professor Slughorn, is only too happy to accept "Exceeds Expectations" in his NEWT class. Perhaps you might reconsider?"

"Absolutely!" Harry replied, surprised and delighted. Maybe he could become an Auror after all! So far, Snape's unexplained absence, however worrisome, had brought only good.

"Very well. If you have no books or ingredients, I'm sure the Professor will be willing to supply some." She gave him a wry look. "Professor Slughorn is always, ah … eager to assist young hopefuls such as yourself."

Harry nodded as he accepted his corrected schedule, puzzled but grateful. She then handed him another piece of paper, this time a list of maybe twenty names. He frowned, and looked up at the Professor's face.

"Hopefuls, young Mr. Potter, for the Gryffindor Quidditch team," she told him with a small smile.

"What?" Harry exclaimed. "But … I thought Katie was …"

"She was, indeed, Mr. Potter," McGonagall kindly interrupted. "But she has since decided that, since her own schedule is quite demanding, you would be far better qualified to be this year's Quidditch captain."

Harry was fairly certain he was gaping at the Professor, but he couldn't really help it. With a friendly smile, McGonagall motioned him aside and proceeded to clear Ron for the same subjects as Harry.

When she came to Sheridan, after clearing him for all subjects (much the same as that of Harry and Ron, with the exception of Potions and the addition of Care of Magical Creatures), she informed him: "I am afraid we do not keep ready maps of the school, Mr. Parker, but I believe your friends - " Here she paused and indicated Ron and Harry, who were waiting for Sheridan; "will be able to help you find your way. Punctuality is expected of all students, no matter how new to the school. And, sometime in one of your free periods, if you could please visit Madame Pomfrey in the hospital wing – I'm sure Mr. Potter can show you the way, he spends so much time there already - " Harry grinned as Ron quickly changed his laugh into a loud cough; "- as she has a few things she needs to discuss with you."

Sheridan snapped her a quick salute as he took his schedule. "Aye-aye, Professor, ma'am!"

Professor McGonagall pursed her lips, but Harry was fairly certain he had caught a glimpse of a smile. "That won't be necessary, Mr. Parker, thank you."

Sheridan saluted her again anyway, as the three of them strolled off at a leisurely pace.

"Ahh …" Ron sighed once they were in the hallways, stretching his arms out above his head. "Sweet freedom … free periods this year! Look, we've got one now, and one just after lunch -"

"Not me," Sheridan interrupted. "I've got Care of Magical and Inherently Dangerous Sorts of Creatures then."

"Is that really what it says?" Harry asked curiously, peering at the werewolf's schedule.

"No. But it's probably true."

"But you've got a free period where we've got Potions," Ron added, also comparing schedules with the smaller boy.

"Why aren't you taking Potions, anyway?" queried Harry – true, he couldn't actually see the easily-distracted Sheridan excelling in the course, but …

Sheridan shrugged. "Oh, it's no big thing. I just never really got the hang of mixing different ingredients together in a non-explosive way." He paused. "It was just a little lab room. And it wasn't really destroyed, just a little scorched."

"You blew up a classroom?" Ron repeated incredulously.

"No. I just … scorched it, a little. It was my partner's fault, anyways."

"So your lab partner blew up a classroom?" Harry asked carefully.

Sheridan shook his head. "No, I did. He just kept muttering, telling me to pour acids into bases."

"And you listened to him," Ron said more than asked.

"He was very persuasive!"

Harry snorted as he slung an arm around Sheridan's shoulders. "Shi, you and Neville need to get together and swap Potions stories sometime," he chuckled as they continued on down the hallway, headed for the common room. Ron and Sheridan just grinned and laughed.

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought." -John Kenneth Galbraith

shedoc: Abso-bally-lutely! It is, after all, still J.K. Rowling's world, and she's got stuff I really can't do without. So, yes, elements of the sixth book will be in here. But not all. By far and away, not all! Because, while it is her world ... it's my plot. ((evil cackles))

Satio: I do believe I'll start having to thank you in other languages, just to have variety. But in the meantime - thank you! Your reviews are life to me. And, see? I did not hit the one-year mark! (One of my other stories did this recently, so it's an important issue for me.) Hope you like this chapter - the longest yet, and I do believe it moves the plot along. If you say I do breather chapters (and do them well), then I'll take your word for it - the chapters just write themselves that way, normally I have no clue what it is I'm really doing. But I do hope that you enjoy this chapter, and that this "updating regularly" idea I've heard so much about will become an oft-repeated trend. Much love!

Twin Tails Speed: Gratzi! I hope this one is worth the (longer) wait, as well!

Zoe Saugin: Funny is life! Oh, and I love your new name. So pretty ... and, y'know short. Like mine isn't. Because I made it up when I was twelve ... yeah. Thankyou from the bottom of my heart! ((blows kisses))

Okay, y'all know the drill - REVIEW, AND THE PUMPKIN COOKIES WILL BE YOURS.