It has been a long time and I am not really making any progress on this story, so I have decided to post a little bit of what I have written. The chapter is a lot smaller than my usual, and I am probably rolling years six and seven into this as well. I have just not been able to get back into writing, despite having many plots and story ideas.

At any rate, here is the next small part of Harry The Hufflepuff. Let me know what you think.

#

Harry Potter really loved Magic.

The sheer potential for it to make everyday life so much easier sometimes made him giddy with excitement. The fact it also made everyday life extraordinary was just the magically enhanced, flavoursome cherry on the eight tier cake.

Literally.

An enormous birthday cake, that was at least 8 tiers high with a cherry the size of a medium apple on top, had just unexpectedly sprung out of the rather smaller box his owl, Hedwig, dropped onto his bed just few seconds before.

"Whoa," gasped Harry as traditional birthday music started playing from somewhere and small bursts of sparks exploded above the cake like miniature fireworks while the different tiers began rotating in opposite directions to each other.

Harry's birthday wasn't until later in the week, but it didn't really surprise him to have something like this show up a bit early. He had been getting lots of mail since winning a farcical 'magical sports' tournament the school year just gone, and the quantity and quantity of owl delivered mail and gifts had been steadily increasing as it got closer to his birthday.

Suddenly the cake started spinning slightly too fast and began listing heavily to one side.

"Oh damn," yelled Harry jumping into action.

Harry tried to catch it with his hands, not really thinking about how he was going to hold onto handfuls of frosting and icing sugar in his rush to stop the whole thing tipping over and making a huge mess that he would then have to clean up. Subsequently his hands immediately sunk into the impossibly soft cake, tearing into the layer he grabbed as the one above and below continued to turn.

"Hedwig, help!" cried Harry, turning to the only other living thing in his room.

His owl immediately launched herself at the opposite side of the cake like a falcon driving its claws into a tasty fish, sinking herself halfway into it as she began gorging with unbridled enthusiasm.

"That's not what I was thinking," growled Harry fighting to hold the cake even more now that his pet was adding to the unbalancing dessert. "Aren't you meant to be a carnivore or something?"

Hedwig ignored him and sunk her whole head into the interior of the enormous lower cake tier as it slowly spun her around.

Harry's losing battle only got worse as some of the fireworks got overly enthusiastic and started firing off with even more gusto, whizzing and whirring around his room in wild abandon.

"What the bleeding heck are you doing?" asked Dudley Dursely, Harry's obese cousin, from the now open door of Harry's room.

"Who me?" asked Harry. "Just a spot of cake wrestling. It's all the rage now days."

Dudley had been much more sociable towards Harry this year. Apparently arming everyone in a boys school with sticks and encouraging them to enforce the rules had been good for teaching manners and respect for some reason, making Dudley much more polite and respectful.

The two had spend more time together over the last few weeks than in all the years they lived together before, and were getting along surprisingly well.

"Freaks," mumbled Dudley, reaching out the grab the door as he prepared to leave.

"Dudders," yelled Harry, "Quick, help me before it falls over! I was joking, help!"

Dudley sighed and calmly walked into the room, closing the door behind himself.

"How do you manage to get yourself into these kinds of situations?" he asked reaching up to pull Hedwig out of the cake with one hand while pushing the top of the cake with his other hand to straighten it up and allow Harry to extract himself from the tower of sugary goodness. "I swear this magic crap causes more trouble than it is worth."

Technically Harry was not allowed to actually perform any magic with his wand while not at school, but there were so many other magical things he could do and use that he did not lack for options. Unfortunately many of the knick-knacks and tools Harry brought home were a bit 'experimental', resulting in some unexpected incidents that Dudley found side-splittingly funny.

Dudley's parents did not find any of it at all amusing but had stoically decided that rather than fight it as they had for all the years previous, they would do the proper British thing and just pretend nothing was happening.

This was a great improvement on their normal attitude towards Harry and his "freakishness" and had made Harry's holidays fairly enjoyable.

"Are you kidding me?" said Harry standing back from the mess as it finally stopped turning or shooting out sparks. Even the music spluttered to a stop. "Look at this cake. Look at the size of it. How fantastic is it? Even Hedwig couldn't resist and she is only meant to eat meat! Come on, Dudders. You have got to admit it is one of the most fantastic cakes you have ever seen."

"Its gaudy and ridiculous," said Dudders, who for the first time in life had found something at school he actually took seriously, in the form of cooking classes. "There's no balance to it, all just sugar and cake. It'll be so sweet it will make most normal people gag, like all that other crap you lot eat."

"You love it," accused Harry, digging out a couple of desert dishes and spoons from the pile of dishes stacked up on his dresser.

They were all clean, the house elves that secretly followed Harry around everywhere made sure of that, and Harry found having random cutlery on hand a necessity with the sheer amount of food people had been sending him this year.

Dudley shrugged and grinned a bit, before pushing Harry over onto the bed and grabbing the huge Cherry.

"This is all right," he admitted, taking a bite. "But your lot are a bunch of lunatics."

"True," agreed Harry, digging into fill up his plate with sugariness. "I won't argue that."

#

Harry woke with a start, a Tourette's curse inspired profanity laced statement almost bursting from him out of habit.

In a split second he regained full awareness and looked around, taking in the slight rocking of the carriage and the surprised looking faces of his school friends, which was a bit of a shock since the last thing he recalled was going to bed at Privet drive just before his birthday.

Plus, they looked older. Like, a lot older.

"What the hell?" he asked. He thought about adding a few more pertinent questions but it would likely be fairly redundant as someone was sure to start filling him in soon enough.

"Oh, finally woken up have you?" said Sue in a far too casual tone. "Typical."

Harry waited, but everyone returned to their various separate endeavours, which appeared to be mainly reading or staring off into space with a look Harry was sure he had seen on some of his former primary school teachers, and Petunia after her third glass of sherry had kicked in (but before the fourth, which was a totally different Petunia who was surprisingly flexible dancer).

Thousand-yard-stare it was called by some people. Harry preferred to call it "beeteeching"which was his shorthand for "been-teaching too long", in honour of his former educators.

The thing was, Harry normally only saw that look on people his age as the school year neared its end, which meant he was somehow missing an awfully long period of time from his memories. In fact, the state of J's robes made Harry suspect they might have been heading home at the end of the year! Was he missing the whole of his fifth year?

Then he noticed the date on the newspaper that had been carelessly jammed in between the cushions of the train's seat. Moving with and decidedly unusual haste, Harry snatched up the paper and looked at it closely.

"This can't be right!" he mumbled, hurriedly turning the pages to check it wasn't just a misprint. Even the headlines made no sense.

"New Minister of Magic Lucius Malfoy declares 'No new taxes' on purebloods."

"When did that happen?" Harry mumbled out loud, only to be heard by Moon Girl, who was lying on the floor of the compartment for some reason.

"It's his one year anniversary gift to the people for electing him," she said.

"One year anniversary?" asked Harry, starting to feel a foreign queasiness rising in his waters.

"Oh,yes, you have been asleep for a very long time," she said.

"Asleep?"

"Well every since you cast that spell to let you skip over fifth year, you just haven't really been here."

"Skip-over?"

"Yeah, Harry, you boring git," said Ern. "That curse was meant to let you go through all the boring bits of class without waking up, but it just means you weren't there to make anything not boring. You've been pretty much a walking corpse for three years now."

"Three Years!" yelled Harry, finally getting the attention of the whole cabin.

"Oh dear," said Moon. "It looks like he has rotted his brain and can only repeat things. I bet he can't even clean himself anymore and someone will have to devote themselves to caring for his body until his rapidly deteriorating mind finally gives in and lets him die in his sleep, just as he lived."

For a moment Harry thought he heard an excited "eeep" come from nearby and then the sound of a body falling to the floor, but he was far too distracted to think about it.

"What? I'm missing three years. This is Seventh year? That's why you all look older? What happened? What did I miss?"

"Everything, Harry. All the lessons, all the study and exams, the days with your friends, you missed everything!"

"Cool," he said relaxing back into his seat which seemed a lot uncomfortable than usual. It was also a lot noisier than he thought it was normally, and the rocking was making him feel a bit unsteady.

A horrifying possibility entered his thoughts.

He looked at his hands, seeing them decidedly more wrinkled and worn. He stood up rapidly only to groan in pain and almost fall down again with feebleness as muscles felt suddenly stressed beyond their usual limits.

"No," he screamed realising just what it meant. "I can't be old, this can't be happening! Nooooooo!"

Harry woke with a start, a profanity laden curse spilling from his mouth as he struggled to sit up while fighting with the entangled blankets of his bed. A heavy book and a small wooden box tumbled off him to thump loudly on the floor and completely wake him up.

"A dream," he gasped. "A sodding dream; or a nightmare really."

"Note to myself, never eat anything the twins send me without reading the instruction first, and never read anything Hermione ever gives me ever again, especially not a book dissecting the classic fairy tale of Rip van-winkle," he mumbled to himself as he rolled over went back to sleep.

Vague thoughts about how cool it would be to have a spell that would let him sleep through all the boring bits of his life drifted through his mind, bringing a disturbing smile to his face.

#

On the day of his birthday, Harry discovered that being popular was even more annoying than his old defence professor Smiley had indicated. Barely an hour went by without an owl or some other flying monstrosity dropping another bundle of cards and presents near and sometimes on him.

Dudley found it damn funny every time Harry was brained a package by of course, the git. It didn't help that Harry had been forced to leave the house by his Aunt and Uncle after things started getting silly – probably about the eight or ninth time something got caught in the blocked up chimney.

He had retreated to the local park where a laughing and unhelpful Dudley later found him knocked out on the ground and covered in letters, cards, and boxes.

Harry was just starting to get worried his expanded backpack was not going to be able to hold everything when the flood of mail suddenly dwindled to a stop.

"Thank Merlin. Must be lunch time," he thought to himself as he stuffed even more letters into his pack while Dudley watched from the swings nearby.

The sudden loud 'crack' noise of apparition echoed across the park as an usual looking group of people suddenly appeared in front of Harry, startling Dudley enough to almost fall off his swing.

Harry was just considering engaging his preferred automatic defence of screaming loudly and running away, when he recognised a few of the people.

"Professor Lupin and Professor Moody" he greeted his former teachers happily. "And Ron's dad," he added, recognising the father of about a dozen of his school mates. There was also a smoking hot, goth-looking bird with bright purple hair Harry sort of recognised, and another older looking lady he didn't. "What are you lot doing here?"

"We've come to wish you a happy birthday," said Lupin, sounding anything except sure of himself. "And to see if you wanted to stay somewhere else for the rest of your holidays..."

"Tell the boy the TRUTH!" yelled Moody, making everybody jump.

"I don't think that-" began Ron's dad started saying.

"That'd be the first true thing anyone has said all week," interrupted Moody rudely, his face twisting strangely. Harry figured it was meant to be a grin, but it was just horrific.

Purple-goth sniggered.

"Dementors caught a stinking Death-Eater just a block over from here two days ago," said Moody loudly cutting off anyone else's objections. "Ministry thought he was dead and buried in Azkaban years ago, but he was sneaking around your neighbourhood, probably planning on finding you and turning your face into a hat."

"That's disturbing, but good, right? I mean, it's good that he was caught and all, not that he figured my nose would make a nice fascinator, so what's the issue?" asked Harry.

"The problem," said Lupin, interrupting Moody's less than tactful explanation. "Is that before the Dementors were allowed to take his soul, he was heard to make a lot of very worrying accusations about you."

"Yeah I tend to get that a lot," admitted Harry nodding his head.

"These were slightly different to the usual things I imagine people say," went on Lupin. "He claimed you had accosted him and Peter Pettigrew and tortured him until he agreed to help you with nefarious some deeds. He called you the Dark Lord reborn."

"He also said the boy had glowing green eyes of a demon and the face of a nightmare," said Moody like he was spitting out something foul.

"It's not that bad a face," said the Purple-Goth with a huge grin and a wink that sent Harry's heart beat racing so much he was suddenly worried he might have been experiencing the first stages of a heart attack.

"At any rate," said Lupin. "The Ministry is for reason taking these claims a lot more seriously than they should be."

"Nothing to do with the fact the piece of dragon fewmet was the son of one of their Ministers of course," Moody spat out again.

"So Professor Dumbledore decided it might be best if you were to come stay somewhere a bit more, protected, as it were. Now I know this is a bit of a surprise and you are probably a bit hesitant-"

"Okay," said Harry, leaving the group a bit unprepared with his sudden unopposed agreement. "Let's go."

"Er, Harry, don't you think you should probably think things through, maybe talk to you family first?" asked Ron's dad, who Harry decided to think of as Mr Ron because it was just easier to remember.

"No; all good. I figure you can send someone to get my stuff, right? My family won't care much; be relieved to be rid of me early again actually."

"Just like that? No objections or questions, just 'Okay' and you are ready to leave you home and family?" asked Lupin.

"Well, yeah," said Harry. "I mean, arguing with you all when you look pretty serious seems like it would be a lot of effort and I have no real reason not to just go with you, so why bother? I'll find out everything else important soon enough, right?"

"Excellent," said Moody, reaching out to grab Harry's shoulder before disappearing with a loud 'crack'.

The sudden disappearance caught the other wizards by surprise, but they quickly stopped muttering and disappeared as well, leaving Dudley alone on the playground swings playing with one of Harry's packages he had swiped.

"Bleeding nutters," he said shaking his head and starting to unwrap the present.

#

Sirius's house kind of sucked.

It was dark and dreary and tempted Harry with every muggle boy's dream of what a haunted house should be like, but was also actually quite boring when all of the spookiness turned out to be the mundane things dark wizard families put up with every day.

A portrait that screamed obscenities was funny the first few times it ranted and raved at him and others, but playing peek-a-boo with it got old pretty quick, and the mysteriously moving curtains in one room turned out just to be an infestation of a bunch of fat bugs that could cause a lot of problems if they stung you. The stuff in the cabinets needed far too much care when handling to be worth the effort too. although they were interesting to look at.

At least Sirius was good fun. His years in Azkban jail along with many months living on various strange mushrooms in the Forbidden Forrest at Hogwarts had apparently turned his brain into a very random place, although Lupin claimed he was always a bit like that anyway.

They spent days playing some truly ridiculous magical board games that had rules so esoteric and weird that Harry actually learned to understand more about magic from them than he had in half a year at Hogwarts.

"I don't care how many of my Muggles it kills, I want to turn your Pureblood into a newt using the blood of the Manticore potion and ten Amulets of shape changing," he told Sirius. "The magic types are compatible if I perform the Rite of Aske-whatever it is –"

"-Ashkente-" added the sometimes purple haired goth girl Harry now knew as Tonky, a former Hufflepuff prefect he had encountered at school in his first year.

"-yeah that, with the mouse blood and stuff. That means I win because you can't use a counter curse against that combination without having mastered wordless casting, right?"

After a brief pause, Sirius turned into a dog and viciously mauled the board, throwing it and all the cards and play pieces into the air.

"Yep, you win," agreed Tonky, watching Sirius take out his frustration from a safe distance away. "I don't get how you can understand and like this game so well. It's obviously designed to reinforce hating Muggles and to foster an unhealthy sense of cut-throat competition into the family while teaching the fundamentals of Dark Arts magical combat."

"This is nothing. Zac taught us all to play Monopoly a few years ago, now that was brutal," explained Harry.

#

Harry even got to have a few friends come and visit, not that he particularly could have been bothered himself, but Sirius was told it was a good thing to do for Harry by Ron's mum and so made the arrangements for Harry.

Hermione found the house fascinating and spent a happy few hours with Harry showing her all the truly weird parts, including the the library of books so evil even she was not game to read them, and the troll-like house elf curled up in a rag bed in the boiler room, which she found both disgusting and strangely compelling.

"But he doesn't want to move and forcing him to would be treating him like a slave," argued Sirius, who was having one of his more lucid moments.

Unfortunately Hermione had left hours ago and Sirius was talking to a statue of one of his ancestors, but Harry thought it was a good point, and the stationary statue wasn't making much of a debate out of it.

Sue was horrified at a lot of things she saw in the house and managed to convince both Sirius and Harry to come to her aunt's house where she lived for a lunch, along with Sue's best friend Han.

Sue's Aunty was a big shot in the law enforcement arm of the magical police so her house was almost as secure as Sirius's, and a lot cleanser, friendlier, and generally nicer. They had really nice visit and Harry learned a lot from conversation with Sue's Aunty.

"I suppose we could clean up a bit," said Sirius looking around his dreary residence after returning from the visit.

"Can we use magic?" asked Harry. "I mean a lot of magic, like for absolutely everything."

"Can't see why not," agreed Sirius. "Ministry can't tell if it is you or me casting spells even if the trace could detect this place."

"Sweet," said Harry, a gleam in his eyes.

#

"Well that didn't go the way I was hoping," said Harry watching from across the road as flames leapt out of the roof of the former Black homestead while it made a valiant effort to burn to the ground.

"I was kind of expecting it," admitted Sirius.

"Oh yeah, I just hoped it wouldn't happen," said Harry.