Hi, here is the next chapter of Embracing Destiny. I'm astonished that I got over a hundred reviews just for the first chapter. THanks a lot for that. Special thanks for this chapter go to my new beta Reader4972. She corrected this chapter really fast.
Now happy reading.
Announcements
The Daily Prophet praised the finals of the Quidditch World Cup and the new World Cup winners, Ireland, in the morning edition the next day. Harry knew that around this time the crystals with the recordings of the match would already be watched by the fanatic fans on their TVs. He knew that the JWT team had left as soon as the winners had been determined to get the crystals ready for sending out. Transferring the recordings took an hour per full original crystal and at one time you could deal with ten thousand crystals at once. While the full match was transferred into the crystals, the crew created the cut together versions with comments and presentation ceremony. Time was of the essence in this as the people paid good money to get their crystals close to the end of the matches.
Harry was happy that everything had worked out so well. Now that the Quidditch World Cup was over he would be able to relax a bit on his public appearances. He had planned to visit the Weasleys and Neville before returning to Hogwarts and his Pa had promised him to take him school shopping next weekend. Sadly they would have to take a few bodyguards with them, but he would endure that for a day out with his father. On the plus side, most of the aurors that normally got stuck with guard duty were cool. He especially liked his Pa's cousin Tonks, who was a blast and never stopped entertaining him with her metamorphmagus abilities. Seeing her use them made him realise how much you could do with the talent. His own attempts at morphing weren't as advanced as hers by far.
His Pa had told Harry that thanks to the school reforms, students could now return home two weekends each month even if they weren't the heirs of their family. Hogwarts was after all a school and not a prison. Many families had massively greeted that change even if Professor Dumbledore had argued that it wouldn't be safe and a massive organisational problem to allow it. Sirius had put the Department of Magical Transportation on the task and they had come up with a simple schedule system. The heads of the four houses' floos would be the ones that each student had to use to leave or return which meant that, as each house had currently at most ten students per year, if each house got an hour and a half on Friday to let the students return or for those that preferred Saturday morning during that time it wouldn't be any trouble at all. The floo system could take the additional use no problem. Not to mention that with the time-window the heads of houses would know exactly who had left and was now in the care of their parents. The parents had to sign permission forms before the students could use the option which relieved the teachers of their responsibility for the student in question for the weekend until the student returned and signed in again.
So the plan was that two houses would have their free weekend opportunity at the same time changing each week. For example Slytherin and Ravenclaw the first weekend and Gryffindor and Hufflepuff the second, then the other two again and so on. The one thing the students needed to make sure of was of course that they got their homework done on time. Those that slacked off and didn't get passing grades or didn't do their homework would lose their privileges. Nobody was worried about that. With a bit of organisation, getting everything done in time was more than possible. Also without Snape to fail students intentionally just to take away privileges, this would work out just fine.
Sirius was looking over the final draft for the tasks for the Tournament. They were difficult, that was for sure, but they were manageable and not too dangerous. More than perhaps a few burns from firecrabs or cuts from thorns of plants shouldn't happen to the champions. And contrary to the old version this would involve more students of the school. While Madame Maxime and Professor Karkaroff, who had been warned that he wouldn't be able to pass into Hogwarts itself thanks to the Dark Mark wards that had been set up over the summer and that he needed to send a proxy to represent Durmstrang, had argued that the Triwizard Tournament had always been a contest between three students, one of each school, Sirius had won them over for the idea of having a Trischool Tournament from now on.
It allowed more students from each school to show their skills which would help promoting the excellent education each school offered. In the end, they had all signed and the Tournament would be announced at the opening feasts of each school. This would bring a lot of positive attention to the schools and especially Hogwarts needed to show his new educational reforms were working.
Albus was looking over the contract for the Tournament. While it wasn't what he had wanted, it would suffice. It was a breach of tradition to make the Triwizard Tournament into a Trischool Tournament. His plans to enter Harry outside of the allowed participants wouldn't work anymore as the minimum age for entering a team was fourteen. And the one choosing wouldn't be the Goblet of Fire as it should have been, but another artefact of the Ministry that would determine the team that would be allowed to take a task. Sirius had put his foot down at forcing teenagers into magical contracts that could take their magic away. Instead now if anybody decided to retreat he would be fined one hundred galleons which would go into the fund for stipends and another student would replace him. In case of a documented sickness or severe injury on the participant's part by a neutral healer of St. Mungo's the fine would be waved and another participant chosen to replace the leaving one for the rest of the Tournament. Of course that wouldn't happen often and the seriousness of the commitment would still be stressed. And a hundred galleons for simply getting cold feet was harsh. For most families with one person working that was a quarter of their monthly income.
After all, a normal shop assistant got about four hundred galleons a month and an entry position at the Ministry brought six hundred. Arthur Weasley as head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Department had earned about thousand. Healers earned around five hundred in training and started with nine hundred when they passed their tests. Specialised healers normally had around two thousand. But with how the level of competency had sunk most people earned around four to six hundred galleons.
Compared to former Tournaments the tasks were tame, but by trying to make it safe for all participants while still keeping it a major challenge, the ones that had been tasked to think up proper tasks had really achieved a good end result. He remembered them all of course, some of Hogwarts' brightest graduates. While they had given them a basic idea what kind of tasks they had discussed and which subjects would be included they hadn't given away the final tasks. That way nobody could cheat to give his students any advantages. Well, he was an experienced player of any field; he would manage to turn this into his show and not Sirius'. The dratted man had taken too much power from him already thanks to being the father of the boy who was a triple Hogwarts heir. He had replaced teachers that had been important for Albus' plans, remedied curriculums of several subjects, freed enough of the budget for things that were absolutely needed like new brooms and had reinstated some subjects like Wizarding Traditions that had fallen away over time.
The only positive thing was that the budget of Hogwarts was now higher thanks to the Ministry giving a high percentage of confiscated Death Eater gold to the school and more money that was gained from the fund the founders had set up. It was a publicity coup, that much was obvious. For those Death Eaters that had lost their magic thanks to the new ruling at the Wizengamot the Ministry had confiscated a quarter of their fortunes as reparation fines to help repair the damage that had been done in the war against Voldemort. Hogwarts got forty per cent of the gold, St. Mungo's thirty and the Ministry thirty. For any future dark uprisings the same would hold true.
So far Sirius had made the important points, but he would strike back. While he couldn't directly attack Harry, who was Sirius' one major weak point, at Hogwarts thanks to his heir status, he could make life for Harry more difficult otherwise. Of course he needed to conceal his involvement in the incidents that would soon make Harry's life more difficult. He was sure that the children of the Death Eaters that had lost their magic would be eager to get back at Harry to hurt his father. And who could have eyes everywhere all the time?
Harry sat at the Gryffindor table watching the line of first-years march up to the head table. Contrary to past years they didn't all wear black robes, but the new school uniforms. Their feast robes were ready to be handed to them after the Sorting Hat announced his decision. Therefore, as the four heads of houses were going to hand over the robes based in black with trims and hoods in red, yellow, green and blue to each new student, the one leading up the first-years was Remus this time. The four heads of house, Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout and Sinistra, who had taken over Slytherin House from Snape, were standing in front of the table smiling at the new students warmly.
After the hat had finished his new song about bringing the houses closer and embracing traditions and progress in their world equally Remus started reading out the names.
"Ackerley, Stewart," he called out loudly and the boy walked forward, trembling from head to toe, perhaps because he was the first one to be sorted.
The hat pondered a bit and then declared 'Ravenclaw'. Professor Flitwick stepped forward and handed Stewart a blue cape, welcoming him to Ravenclaw, which the boy placed on his back and then walked over to the table sporting the same blue capes as him that was clapping loudly for him.
One after another the new students were called forward by Remus and the head of their new house handed them the cape welcoming them. Soon the tense atmosphere of the first-years lessened and they found their places with their new house-mates. With the new welcoming and handing over of capes the sorting took a bit longer than normally but the new first-years clearly appreciated it.
Finally the last student was sorted and Dumbledore stood from his seat once all the other teachers had taken their seats and the stool and Sorting Hat had been taken away. He greeted everybody and told them to 'tuck in'.
Once everybody had eater their fill, or more in some cases, Dumbledore stood again.
"I have a few announcements to make for this year. First let me introduce our new teachers to you. Professor Quirke will take over the new mandatory class of Wizarding Traditions that is being added to the time-tables of all students up to fifth year, after that you can decide if you want to continue the class, but like all others it depends on achieving an OWL in the class. For our sixth and seventh years that obviously didn't have the chance in the past Professor Quirke will offer the class as an elective" Great applause greeted that announcement as many students looked forward to the class. "The next of our new teachers is Professor Daffodil who will take over Muggle Studies which is also now a mandatory class up to fifth year. Those of you that have taken the class as an elective so far will of course continue where you left off under Professor Burbage who has taken a sabbatical to increase her knowledge of the muggle world to catch up to recent developments." Polite applause greeted the second Professor and some sneers from students whose parents detested muggles.
"The next new teacher is Professor Simonson who will take over History of Magic." That caused cheers in all houses as Binns had been dreadfully boring.
Dumbledore had to hide his annoyance that he hadn't been able to stop the replacements, but with Harry being the heir of two founders by birth right, and if he suspected correctly, the third one through right of conquest, there was no stopping this. He would select battles that he could win from here on.
"Now for Potions we have two new faces on staff, first Professor Gildenstir and second his apprentice Miss Topper. Miss Topper will take over the first and second year classes and give a refresher course of two double periods on proper ingredient preparation and brewing techniques for all the older years." This caused louder applause and cheers from three houses as Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor had hated Snape. "To assist the heads of houses in their duties we have hired three more teachers which are Mr Flowfeather for Charms, Mr Talbot for Herbology and Miss Velcrom for Transfiguration." They were all greeted with polite applause. "They will take over the first to third-year classes in their respective subjects. Now replacing Professor Snape as head of Slytherin is Professor Sinistra. As few students take her class beyond OWLs she has told us that she can take over the duties of head of house in addition to her teaching responsibilities without an assistant."
Dumbledore waited until the talking about the new teachers calmed down.
"Now that I have introduced your new teachers, I have to inform you that the normal Quidditch Cup won't take place this year." That caused protests from all houses. Dumbledore held up his hands placating the students. "As we are aware that you love your sport too much to completely go without it, we have decided to hold a short tournament in one week in April where on four days all Quidditch matches will take place. The reason for this is that this year Hogwarts will be hosting a famous event that has been given a new face and which will take up most of the time of the teachers." Dumbledore explained, seeing that the students had calmed down hearing that they would at least have some Quidditch even if it was concentrated on four days.
"It is my pleasure to announce that in October the Trischool Tournament, formerly known as the Triwizard Tournament will be taking place at Hogwarts." Dumbledore announced grandly.
"You're joking." Fred Weasley called out excitedly.
"No, Mr Weasley this isn't a joke, but I know a good one about a Japanese wizard," he caught the disapproving look of Professor McGonagall, "well, perhaps another time. For those of you that know about the Triwizard Tournament already, please be patient while I explain to those that don't its history. The Tournament was instated as a competition between the three leading magical schools in Europe, Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. One student from each school was chosen as a champion and had to compete in three difficult tasks against the other two. Eternal glory and fame awaits the winner of the Tournament. But, due to the high death toll, the Tournament had been stopped in the seventeen hundreds. Now our very own Ministry of Magic has decided to restart it with a new face. Instead of one champion of each school a team of seven students will be chosen to complete three tasks. The members of the team will either have to solve the tasks on their own or as a team, their points will be put together and the team with most points will in the end be declared Trischool Tournament winners. The winning team's members will get trophies to keep and personal prize money of five hundred galleons."
This brought excited talking about again which Dumbledore waited to stop for a few minutes.
"I know that you all are eager to be chosen for Hogwarts, but to make sure that only the best of each school that are also capable of dealing with the tasks can compete only those in fourth year or above are allowed to participate. You can sign up as a candidate for Hogwarts with your head of house who will then hand in a list of potential candidates. Be aware that the Tournament will be taking up a lot of time and you still have to deal with all of your normal schoolwork. While the champions are given some privileges two weeks before each task, you still have to sit your end of year exams. In the past the champions were exempt from the exams but it was pointed out that it wouldn't do any of the champions any good if they skipped their exams, especially if they are in fifth or seventh year where OWLs and NEWTs are coming up. The tasks therefore are going to take place in November, February and May. With exams taking place in June, you will have enough time for revision and you should learn a lot more than normally anyway to prepare for the tasks. The delegations of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will arrive on the thirtieth of October. I trust you to welcome them as the honoured guest that they are. Now I have taken up enough of your time, off to bed you lot." He chuckled in the end, knowing that his presentation had been a good one.
Harry sat with his friends at the Gryffindor table looking at his time-table for the year. It was pretty full, which was to be expected with the addition of the new mandatory classes. He only hoped that the teachers would keep the homework load to a doable level. Otherwise many students would crack this year. He saw that he first had History, which would be interesting to see how the new teacher was, then Herbology, double Charms and Muggle Studies before lunch. After lunch he had a double period of Transfiguration and Ancient Runes. He knew that next to the classes a few teachers had been asked to adjust their curriculum. From what Neville had said there had been orders for a few new plants for the greenhouses. And normally Neville knew what was going on in his favourite subject.
So after breakfast the Gryffindor fourth years trooped to the new History of Magic classroom on the second floor. Professor Simonson was already waiting for them while looking out of the window. Harry saw that the Hufflepuffs, who shared this class with Gryffindor, were nearly all present already. To all of their surprise, there were no tables and chairs in the room. When they were all present Professor Simonson turned to them.
"Good morning class." He greeted them cheerfully.
"Good morning Professor." They greeted back.
"Alright, first things first, I guess you are wondering why there are no tables and chairs in the room." He said and got united nods. "Well, there is a good reason for this. After hearing how badly you are in need of more exciting History classes I decided to get you into action before we start with lectures. I need to know how much or little you have taken in from the classes my predecessor held. So I have prepared a little game. All over the school I have placed checkpoints. At each checkpoint you will have to answer a question or solve a task that is related to History of Magic. You are only allowed your wands and your textbook which is set for this class. Of course you will get more points in this game if you don't need to look answers up. There are twenty five checkpoints that you need to hit to finish the game. Of course it is impossible to finish this within the little time we have for this period, therefore you get three days to finish. You can do it whenever you aren't in other classes. I have cleared with my colleagues that you won't get any homework the first three days that is anything but practicing spells so you shouldn't have any problems getting to all stations." He earned excited whispers about this.
"Now, of course a game like this is boring if you do it by yourself. Therefore you will draw numbers. Two people will be a team and you have to get to the checkpoints together and tap the red marker with both of your wands at the same time to get the question or task that is set. Don't wonder if you find more markers of other colours, I have set this game up for all years. Your questions and tasks will only be found with the red markers. The first-years for example mostly get tasks to learn more about History as they of course didn't have classes so far. Their markers are blue. Alright, come up here to draw your number and then find your partner. Once you have your partner you can come up to me and get the official game sheets. There are twenty five numbers on it, giving you more than enough space to either write the answer to a question down or write a short description of the task and what you learned from it."
All students formed a line and then were allowed to draw pieces of paper with numbers on them. They looked for their partners for this game and formed the teams. As the number of students in the class was even, there was no team of three. Harry found himself next to Hannah Abbot. They had the number five. Soon they got the answer sheet which bore the number five circled in the top left corner.
"Come on; let's see if we can find some red markers." Hannah said and they took off, only taking one history book with them as was the rule.
Within the first period which they had History in Harry and Hannah found three markers. One was on the same corridor as the History classroom; one was at the Owlery and one in the Entrance Hall. All three held questions. Harry could easily answer the one about witch burnings and Hannah knew the one about the invention of the floo network. The last one both had to look up as neither of them had really spent much time reading up on the settlement of the potioneer revolt of 1547. They compared their time tables and agreed to meet again after lunch to use the half hour that they would have to find more markers to get the game going on. Not to mention that they would look out for more markers to get there faster. The next time they would have would be after dinner, which they also agreed to use. This was a fun way to deal with History of Magic after all.
The three days that the students had got to finish the History game were filled with laughter and running of students around the school. Especially the first and second-years loved the way Professor Simonson was having them learn about history. It was fun and the fact that the other teachers didn't give them much homework was only a bonus. The other teachers had agreed to this as they all knew that History had suffered massively in the past decades that Binns had taught and were willing to postpone longer homework for when the game was over. Not to mention that nobody cared that much during the first week of term.
Dumbledore of course thought it wasn't dignified to let the children learn this way but he was more or less ignored. It was seen as an experiment and anything was better than the monotonous droning of Cuthbert Binns. As all years had their first class of History within the first three days, they were all done once the week was over. Professor Simonson now only needed to look over the answer sheets that the different teams had handed in. What none of the students knew was that he had placed charms on both the markers and the sheets to know which questions were answered without the books and which weren't. Simple observation charms would do that. By tapping the markers with their wands he could activate the charms and if the book that each group had with them was opened there would be an automatic subtraction of a point. He planned to hand out small prizes for the three best teams in each year. The presentation ceremony would be held in the Great Hall. By mixing tasks with knowledge, he could make sure that not only the few that had done self-study in previous years had a chance.
It was Saturday evening and Professor Simonson had asked that all students were in the Great Hall at eight o'clock, because he wanted to announce the winners of the History game and present the prizes that the winning teams had won. That led to all students being excited to see how they had done. The game had been fun and even if no sixth and seventh years had taken History as a subject, they were curious as they had heard from their younger housemates about the game. So after finishing with eating all students remained in the Great Hall. Finally Professor Simonson stood up and picked up a big bag from behind his chair and walked around the head table to stand in front of all students.
"Thank you all for following my request. I'm sure you all are curious how you have done in the game that I arranged the past week. I'm happy to say that most teams got at least half of all questions and tasks done which I was really worried about after how most of you thought History to be nap time." He said and got some laughs from the students. "Now, I have decided that each game is only really good if you get a prize if you did well. Therefore I made a little trip to Hogsmeade and bought a few sweets from Honeydukes which I think you will find suitable for the winning teams."
This made the students listen more attentively as free sweets were always great. They wondered if they were among those that would get some.
"I have finished looking over the answer sheets of each team and have listed the points each team received. To make everybody understand how the points were given I'll give a brief explanation. The markers and the answer sheets were charmed to tell me if for answering a question the books were used or not. That cost you a point per question, but as each question was worth at least three points that wouldn't kick you out of the running automatically. Oh and added pieces of parchment weren't considered by the way as the space given for the answers was more than enough to get the information I was looking for written down." That caused some Ravenclaws and Hermione to slump down in disappointment. "Which offers me the chance to give an advanced warning. I won't read through essays that are much longer than what I requested. If I, for example, set you ten inches I will at most read eleven. Everything above that will be ignored. I expect you to do your homework in concentrated form, not skipping any important details. Otherwise your grades will reflect it, so you have been warned."
He knew that a lot of students that tended to hand in overly long essays would have trouble with that but he didn't care. He wouldn't read more than necessary. He had enough work to do with getting the students caught up after years of improper teaching.
"Now back to the prizes which are probably what you are interested in most. The ones coming in third for each year will get a box of five chocolate frogs each. The ones being second get a box mixed with three chocolate frogs, three liquorice wands and three ice mice. And for the first place winners I have a small basket with a selection of ten kinds of sweets." The students cheered at that announcement. "So let's get to the winners of the prizes. For first year, which I have to admit did a lot better than I thought as you had to look up facts in the book as you didn't have prior classes before, the third place goes to Orla Quirke and Fin Glommes." The Ravenclaw and Slytherin happily came to the front and took their chocolate frog boxes.
The announcement of the winners took a while. Finally for Harry it was time for his year.
"Now the fourth-years. In third place we have Terry Boot and Tracy Davis." The two grinned and stepped forward.
Tracy was especially smug as she had been the one to point out that if they were required to give more information than the space allowed their teacher would have said so.
"The second place goes to Daphne Greengrass and Blaize Zabini." Professor Simonson called the next team. They took their boxes smiling.
"And first place goes to Hannah Abbot and Harry Potter-Black." He said, surprising many as they had thought that Hermione Granger would win for sure with her being the only one to ever stay awake in history all the time.
Harry and Hannah stepped forward and took the baskets grinning at each other. Harry's pensieve lessons had really come in handy and Hannah wasn't a slouch either as she and many other Hufflepuffs had taken to ignore Binns and read the textbook on their own to pass their exams every year.
The presentation for the fifth-years followed and then they could all go back to their dorms. Harry was really happy that he had managed to beat Hermione in something that should have been her strength. When they were back in the common room she admitted grumbling that she and Earnie had been among those that had added additional pieces of parchment to be sure to get all the information they had on the questions mentioned.
And finished. How did you like it? Till next time.