XXX
"Alright, so why did you do it?" McGonagall glared at her, still looking a bit worse for wear.
It was close to midnight, and Harriet had been discovered before noon, and basically all the time in between those two moments had been spent having a running battle all across Hogwarts. Harriet was feeling pretty frazzled herself.
"He was using 'A History of Magic' like a textbook!" Harriet exclaimed, still more than a bit outraged at the idea of using that book for anything more than a quick guide to finding out if an inventor was British or not. Rule of thumb was that if the book treated them as if they didn't exist, even if their inventions did, then they weren't British.
McGonagall clenched her eyes shit and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You killed my History Professor, because you didn't like his choice in required literature?"
"Exorcised! I exorcised your History Professor." Harriet corrected her. "And if he was using a book like that, to teach History, then he was either pathetically incompetent or a nationalistic buffoon."
"And, pray tell, why would that be?" McGonagall returned to glaring at her.
"It's-..." Harriet made a helpless gesture with her hands. "It basically refuses to admit that France is a thing, except for a few mention of wars, which includes an extremely abbreviated footnote to admit the existence Beuxbatons, in order to mention that Hogwarts is better. It mentions Germany only in direct conjunction with Grindelwald's rise to power, a rise which is basically two sentences long, only to conclude the war in three paragraphs dedicated to Dumbledore's final duel against him, and six pages of British recovery in the aftermath."
Harriet took a deep breath, vaguely satisfied to see that McGonagall was starting to look like she was having an inkling as to why Harriet was so outraged.
"If an invention was British, it receives a page worth of description. If an invention wasn't British, it's only included if a British inventor invented something further on it, otherwise it never happened." Harriet shook her head. "That book is a giant 'long live the British for we're the only ones who have ever made anything worthwhile' pat on the back, and anyone who'd think to use it as a textbook for impressionable children deserves a prison-sentence."
McGonagall was quiet for a long moment, clearly considering that, before speaking again. "So you killed my History Professor for being an incompetent buffoon who should've been fired well over a century ago, and for poisoning our youth with his foolishness."
Harriet nodded, not entirely sure if McGonagall was agreeing with her, or if she was planning on going for her wand again. She probably wouldn't, considering that they'd more or less fought themselves hoarse a few hours ago, and had only continued fighting past that through sheer inertia and foolhardy stubbornness.
McGonagall made an aggravated noise, before summoning a bit of paper and a quill and writing something down on it. "Welcome to Hogwarts, Professor." She glared at Harriet when her jaw dropped open. "I really don't have the time to try and find a new History Professor when I already need to find a Deputy Headmistress and a Transfiguration Professor. Not to mention the rest of this-... this mess."
She didn't actually motion towards the aftermath of their great running battle, so she didn't seem to be thinking about the collateral damage.
"Umm, 'mess'?" Harriet had been pretty sure that Dumbledore had let McGonagall handle most of his paperwork, so there really shouldn't be any worries about a faulty filing-system or the like.
McGonagall's eyes sharpened, and she was silent for a bit, before relenting with a sigh. "Well, you're the new History Professor, and the rest of them will find out before the beginning of term anyway." She shook her head. "Tradition dictates that the Deputy is a Head of House, or of similar standing in the school, before they become such. Unfortunately, Filius and Pomona both refused, citing academics and Head of House duties, respectively."
Harriet frowned, not entirely liking where this was going. The only other Head of House was-...
"I've never been on good terms with Severus. But then, I'm a Gryffindor, and he's a Slytherin, and it wouldn't be the first time a rivalry got to my head." She took a deep breath. "So, I looked into his records to make sure that I was just being foolish, and then-..."
She made a gesture that was eerily similar to Harriet's own previous helpless gesture of frustration.
"Then I find out that he's been using his position to bully his students. To taunt them, to be cruel to them, to mock them, and to punish them for things he had no right to punish them for. And Albus had been-..." McGonagall's voice wavered slightly, a righteous kind of fury in her eyes. "Albus had been covering it up, letting it slide, all the while reassuring us that it was exaggerations from excitable children, and that nothing was happening."
Oh. Harriet had always wondered about that. Snape had known his craft, yes, but he'd never really taught it. He'd acted more as an inspector, looming over them and demanding perfection, instead of sitting them down to explain why things worked certain ways or to give them advice on how to perform the process, beyond the instructions he'd written on the board.
Dumbledore covering up his indiscretions with taking points for 'breathing too loudly' and similarly outrageous things? That sounded very much like Dumbledore with his great many plans. Keeping a loyal man close enough that he would never be able to slip his collar, in order to use him to the utmost he could be used, without stopping to consider exactly what he was destroying in the process.
It also explained why no professor ever seemed to make a case about it. If they didn't know the details, and Dumbledore reassured them that it was just hyperbole, then that was probably what it was. They were overworked enough as it was, without going digging for trouble that Dumbledore assured them was not there to be found.
McGonagall was silent for a long moment. "I-... I would dearly love to fire the man for that. But who would I hire to replace him? Head of Slytherin? Potions Professor? Oh, perhaps if I could drag Slughorn out of retirement, if that could be managed. But I can't." She made another helpless gesture. "So I have to put him on probation instead. Any sign that he's acting out of turn, I can toss him out. But that's it. So he'll be bitter and meaner than usual, and he'll undoubtedly act out of turn within a few months, so I'll have to find a replacement anyway, but there isn't one!"
"Don't look at me. I barely scraped by an OWL in Potions." Which wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't like Harriet had ever actually gotten a NEWT in anything, technically. Hermione was the only one of the three of them who'd properly graduated from Hogwarts, and she never let them forget it.
"Which is why I hired you as the bloody History Professor!" McGonagall huffed, before taking another calming breath. "So, instead of having to find a Deputy and a Transfiguration Professor, or getting Hagrid ready for his responsibilities as a Professor in Care of Magical Creatures, I also have to look into replacing both my Potions Professor and the Head of House for Slytherin."
Harriet glanced at her face, and grimaced. "Let me guess, no other Slytherins on staff?"
"None." McGonagall barked a bitter laugh. "Several Ravenclaws, a few Hufflepuffs, and two Gryffindors, but not a single Slytherin."
"What about hiring a Slytherin Transfiguration Professor, pretending like your Potions Professor will correct his ways, and then sticking them with Head of House the moment he backslides?" Harriet suggested, feeling a bit guilty at watching her old Head of House so clearly upset.
McGonagall stared at her for a long moment, and then made an expression that was probably the scariest approximation of a smile that Harriet had ever seen in her life. "That would solve a few of my problems, wouldn't it? And if it's like that, I'm sure I could convince Filius to spend a few months as an intermediate Deputy until things settle."
Harriet wasn't sure exactly how much evil scheming was running through McGonagall's head at the moment, but that was mainly because she'd never seen her old Head of House scheme before. McGonagall wasn't really the type of person who lent themselves to schemes much more complicated than finding a good time and place for bashing in someone's head.
Harriet had always considered the woman as something like the epitome of Gryffindor-like qualities.
XXX
It'd taken Harriet more time than she'd like to admit, but she'd finally tracked down a History-textbook that'd be worthy of being called such. 'The Magical Historian' wasn't exactly renown for its accuracy, but it definitely covered the basis of a time-line a hell of a lot better than 'A History of Magic'.
Mainly, its problem stemmed from being a summarization of history, meaning that it ended up skipping a lot of details in order to properly cover the bigger events. It also tended to be pretty vague about the aftermath of certain events, but it'd definitely be a very good primer for teaching students that a world existed outside of Britain.
Once Harriet had hopefully countered the worst of Binns' teaching, she should be able to start the latter years on more detailed but less 'overview-centered' books. She already had a few she was considering, but she probably shouldn't get ahead of herself.
As for Harriet's own book, she'd finally managed to get it completed. She'd had to edit out a few things from what it'd used to contain, since she couldn't reference a few digs that hadn't happened yet, but then she could fill the empty space with all of the things she'd uncovered or encountered in Yharnam, so it hadn't been too much of an issue.
Actually getting it published also wasn't that hard. Most of the academic institutions of the world were starving for good books on Curse Breaking, since Gringotts tended to keep most of the 'trade secrets' locked behind 'employees only'-signs.
It wasn't completely terrible, seeing as most anyone who wanted to be a Curse Breaker needed to join Gringotts anyway if they wanted to actually be able to access a dig. After all, no government would really be willing to meet with a single unknown individual over getting the rights to start messing around with dangerous magic within their borders.
Not unless that individual was filthy rich and willing to spread the money around to grease the wheels, or if they were ridiculously famous and regarded as highly competent at what they did. The latter of which having been how Harriet had managed to start competing with Gringotts over dig-sites, much to their offense.
Regardless, getting her book published – especially in the wake of official proof that she was indeed the Curse Breaker who'd been clearing out Yharnam – was fairly easy. Now that it was written, anyway.
Which meant that she didn't really have anything to focus on except for being introduced to her fellow staff-members. Though, thankfully, she wasn't alone in being new.
Between the always-undeniable presence of Andromeda Tonks, and Snape's half-snarling silence in regards to his new probational status, when McGonagall pointed at Harriet and declared that she'd be the new History Professor, everyone just kind of rolled with it.
Harriet noted that McGonagall very blatantly didn't mention what happened to Binns, or why the barely-out-of-her-teens Harriet Azalea ended up as his replacement. She was introduced as merely another addition to the changing staff, where the main focus of the meeting was the teeth-gritting realization that they'd allowed a bully of children to linger in their midst for years without anything keeping him in check.
Pomona spent most of that meeting taking long deep breaths, and sending a few plastic smiles of welcome at the newcomers. Sirius spent it silently clenching and un-clenching his fists, keeping them carefully away from his wand. Filius looked bitterly disappointed, but not surprised, having already heard the gist of it when he'd been badgered into temporarily accepting the position of Deputy Headmaster.
Hagrid looked furious, but also clearly hurt, likely having issues imagining Dumbledore deceiving them about it. Andromeda kept herself politely neutral, even though Harriet was willing to bet that she'd already caught on to the fact that she was the only other Slytherin in the room, and what that likely meant for the man's position as Head of House.
Everyone else appeared to be some version of silently scandalized and bitterly unsurprised.
It was a very somber kind of gathering, and Harriet basically tipped her hat towards them, and then shut herself in her rooms until the students arrived nearly a full week later.
Seeing Sirius and Andromeda and even Hagrid face-to-face was-... It was both easier and harder than she'd imagined. Her godfather had been dead for two decades by now, and the memories had faded into shadowy shapes of a good man too tormented by Dementor-exposure to be entirely sane.
This Sirius had none of that. He was clean-shaven and for all that he was clearly furious with Snape over what he'd done, there was a certain settled stability that Harriet would've never expected from her godfather.
Andromeda was a different can of worms entirely.
She looked so young, even when it was clear that she was closer to McGonagall's age than Harriet's own. The war and the losses it'd brought with it had been hard on her. And even if Teddy had brightened the woman's world, Harriet had never really been able to forget that she'd been hurting.
Seeing both of them, so untouched by the war, by the horrors and loss that'd held true for so many people-... It was-... Harriet didn't have the words for it.
She wanted to scream, she wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry.
This was the first time she'd really met people that she'd loved in her own world.
McGonagall she'd been fond of, but for all that she'd respected her, there wasn't quite that same feeling of knowing her.
Hagrid and her had grown distant as time had passed, their interests only rarely overlapping, and both of them too busy to really find the time to talk about old memories. Oh, they could still talk about Teddy, but her godson hadn't exactly been the second coming of Charlie Weasley and his mad passion for dragons, so even with that there was a distance.
It was painful to see him look at her and not recognize her, but for all that she'd considered Hagrid one of her oldest friends, Andromeda and Sirius were family.
And seeing both of them, so completely unaware of her own memories of them-...
She needed that week to get her head back on straight.
After all, in this world, she was a young woman named Harriet Azalea, and she had no personal history with any of these people. And her precious godson would never be born, because the man who'd fathered him had died nearly two decades before Teddy's birth.
And it hurt.
XXX
"So... whatever happened to Binns?" Sirius asked, sounding a bit more awkward than what Harriet would've expected from him.
It'd been a very long time since the last time Harriet had seen the Sorting of the First Years, and she'd probably been a little bit too wrapped up in nostalgia to think too carefully about where she'd decided to sit.
Or perhaps Sirius had just wanted to speak to the new member of staff that wasn't an already-known relative of his. The staff-member who'd been isolating themselves in their room for the past week.
Regardless, now she was stuck next to him, and even if the food had been distracting, it clearly wouldn't be distracting enough to keep Sirius from trying to strike up a conversation.
Still, for all that Harriet was silently hurting from the man not knowing who she was, there was no need to take that out on Sirius by being rude.
"He considered 'A History of Magic' to be a suitable history-textbook for all ages." Harriet answered perhaps a bit too sharply than she'd intended.
Sirius opened his mouth, then hesitated with his eyebrows scrunched together, before slowly closing it again.
"He had it coming." Andromeda said primly from Sirius' other side, as she took a perfectly measured sip of her tea.
Harriet's lips twitched slightly, because of course Andromeda would understand. She might be a wonderful person, but she could get vicious when someone insulted something she was fond of. Whether that be a person or a skill.
Thankfully for Harriet, the only insult she'd ever offered the woman had been her desperate attempts to cover up exactly how much trouble toddler-Teddy had managed to get into when Harriet had been babysitting.
By the fifth time, she'd started to learn wandless-magic, purely to make sure that the woman wouldn't be able to guess what had happened by checking Harriet's wand for repair-spells. Teddy had thought that it was all great fun, but then Teddy hadn't actually been face-to-face with Andromeda as she stared her down.
The little sneak had just been peering at Harriet's painfully contorting face with the innocent glee of someone who had no idea about what's going on.
Thankfully, by the time he got old enough to go to Hogwarts, Andromeda had stopped putting all of the blame for Teddy's antics on Harriet. Which meant that Harriet got to sit back and watch with not-so-innocent glee as Andromeda expressed her opinions about his taste in fashion.
Harriet didn't particularly care what Teddy wore, as long as he didn't walk around naked in public, but she sure as hell wasn't going to defend him from Andromeda's wrath over it.
Sirius glanced between them, looking a little bit as if he was trying to guess if he was now a witness to a crime and needed to tell someone, or if he'd be silenced before he made it away from the table.
Considering that he wasn't actually doing anything except looking like a deer watching an oncoming train, Harriet decided to just ignore him and continue drinking her tea.
Instead the blissfully awkward silence was interrupted by another voice.
"Oh yes, 'The Magical Historian' was it?" Filius joined the conversation, sounding like he didn't at all think there was anything wrong with Binns' mysterious disappearance. "I'm guessing there'll be supplementary reading as well?"
"Of course." Harriet nodded. "It's a good summary, but it's too simplistic in regards to a lot of what it covers. I haven't quite decided which books I ought to be recommending to which years, though."
Filius smiled brightly at her. "I'm sure it'll come to you after you've been through a few classes."
And that was true enough. It'd been what Harriet had already decided on herself. She'd need to see how rooted her students were to Binns' ideas of Britain being the be-all-end-all of magical history, and she'd have to pick books going from there.
"And you, Andromeda? Any last-minute worries?" Filius asked, still sounding cheerfully helpful.
"Thankfully, my predecessor was at least competent in her work." Andromeda's lips twitched in amusement. "Though I do wonder at why her notes on her grading-system involved so many spells for removing whiskey-stains."
"It's vital for the process." Harriet defended McGonagall with a small smile of her own. "Merlin knows that I certainly drove my Transfiguration-teacher to drink."
It hadn't actually been because of her grades, so much as that McGonagall had been nominally in charge of Harriet when she'd run off to her many dangerous adventures. And the stress and worry of that had driven her into a bottle more than once.
Filius chuckled good naturedly, and then paused. "Oh, speaking of driving poor professors to drink, I trust that you will take responsibility for what will happen to my Ravenclaws, Harriet?"
Harriet blinked, turned to stare at Filius in confusion, and then rapidly paled. "Filius. The book is in the Restricted Section, surely I can't be held responsible for what students who are allowed to enter there might try doing?"
Filius smiled, but there was nothing kind about that usually genial expression. "Unfortunately, Madam Pince doesn't have that much control over exactly which books are being read or not. Nor what the students who enter might decide to share with their housemates."
Harriet felt a little bit like the floor was crumbling underneath her feet. "Filius, I make several mentions of how dangerous Curse Breaking is."
"And yet it's written as if a second-year could manage the same with a flick of their wrist." Filius said, still smiling that cold smile. "And I'm really quite busy, what with my new duties as Deputy Headmaster."
Harriet felt something cold and dark slipping its way down her spine, and swallowed dryly. "Right."
Maybe she shouldn't have written that book, after all?
XXX
Had it been anyone other than Filius, and had Filius not recently been promoted to Deputy Headmaster – no matter how temporarily – thus severely limiting the man's time for dealing with the antics of his House, Harriet would've probably assumed it'd been a joke.
Unfortunately, for all of Filius inherent cheerfulness, the Ravenclaw Head of House didn't really joke about the safety of his students.
Considering that, Harriet had concluded that she needed to take precautions. And the easiest way of doing that – without outright removing the book, and draw the ire of a Madam Pince on the warpath – was to make her way into the Restricted Section and use a somewhat obscure variation of a contamination-charm for that copy of her book.
Certainly, there was a chance that a student simply bypassed the Restricted Section by outright buying the book from a bookstore instead, but that was a bit less immediately worrying than someone stumbling across it in the library.
The contamination-charm wouldn't stop someone from reading it, but it would leave a sort of 'smudge' on the aura of the individual who'd come into contact with it. A smudge that would only really be apparent to a person who had some type of magical sight, which had been part of the charms that Harriet had included on her Stone-eye.
It wasn't a perfect solution, since someone who'd read the book could end up teaching its content to someone who hadn't ever touched the book itself, but it would at least give her a heads-up on whether the book had been read by her students or not.
It wasn't exactly what Harriet wanted to do before breakfast on her first proper day as a teacher, but the world had never really bothered to care about what she wanted before, and it certainly wasn't the worst thing she could imagine doing.
The library was empty, the Restricted Section was emptier, and Harriet was done in just a few minutes.
Arriving at the Great Hall with no signs of having taken a detour on her way to breakfast, Harriet was treated to a few stares as the students were suddenly reminded of the fact that Harriet was their new History Professor.
There'd been a lot of whispers after McGonagall's brief speech of introducing the new teachers, but most everyone had probably been too tired and too full of food to bother much with curiosity. In the light of day, that curiosity reared back up, and Harriet-... Honestly, Harriet was so used to people staring at her that she barely even noticed it.
That's the kind of stuff that happens when you grow up as a famous person. And Harriet had never really stopped being famous, back in her old time-line, what with defeating Voldemort – and several other Dark Lords, in the few years she'd been active in that line of work – and then jumping straight into Curse Breaking.
The weirdest thing about the whole scenario was how the blatant curiosity wasn't accompanied by semi-fanatical awe. And Harriet couldn't say that she particularly missed that part of it, so it all worked out.
The various Head of Houses spent large portions of the morning handing out schedules, whilst most of the rest of the staff leaned back and enjoyed the fact that they didn't have to do it. The notable exception being McGonagall who kept glancing over towards Sirius, likely wanting to make sure that he didn't screw it up, but also looking weirdly nostalgic about the whole thing.
Andromeda also glanced over at Snape, but it was more... calculating.
As far as Harriet knew, McGonagall hadn't shared with anyone that Andromeda would likely end up the new Head of Slytherin, but it certainly seemed like Andromeda had her suspicions. She'd always been a ruthlessly practical kind of woman, and she looked like she was in fact keeping an eye on the entirety of Slytherin House.
Cataloging how they interacted among themselves, with the other Houses, with their own Head of House, and how their Head of House interacted with them. From her perfectly neutral expression, Harriet was guessing that she was either refraining from direct judgment, or she'd already come to a conclusion that she didn't particularly wish to share.
Harriet was willing to bet that it was a mixture of both. Andromeda having made some conclusions that painted them in an unfavorable light, but which she'd allow them to remain ignorant of in the hopes that they'd prove her wrong at a later date.
Harriet hid a smile behind her tea. Andromeda would be good for Slytherin.
Or she'd tear it down completely and dance upon the ashes, but that was just the kind of woman that she was.
XXX
With a wave of a wand, Harriet wrote down event after event on the blackboard underneath the much larger words 'magical history', before finally stopping and turning to her class. "Alright, can anyone tell me what this is?"
A long moment of silence as the various students eyed each other, all of them likely having their own guesses, but also not being certain enough in them to blurt out a guess without some certainty of success.
A hand was raised, and at Harriet's nod they spoke. "The curriculum?"
"Of the late Professor Binns, indeed." She smiled wryly at the student. "Though that wasn't what I was going for." She made a bit of a show of glancing around. "Anyone else care to take a guess?"
Another uncomfortable moment of silence, as the students silently weighed their luck.
And then another hand rose. "Umm... It's historical events that have affected Britain?"
Harriet's smile turned a bit warmer. "Ten points to Hufflepuff. That's exactly what it is." She made a show of turning a bit to stare at the blackboard. "Now, can anyone guess what's missing from these events? Broadly, not specific details."
This time a hand rose almost immediately. "Things in history that didn't effect Britain?"
"Ten points to Ravenclaw." With a flourish, Harriet added 'of Britain' to the blackboard's title. "And unfortunately, here we run afoul a rather disturbing blend of nationalistic pride and sheer ignorance."
Several of the students blinked to attention, a few in offense, a few in intrigue.
"The history of one place is rather impossible to untangle from the history of another place. As an example, one can't outline the history of the British isles, without also including the history of Rome to which they once belonged, or the Saxons they fought numerous times after Rome's fall." With a wave of Harriet's wand, the blackboard that had already been filled with events took to the sky, only to grow smaller as it rose.
With another flourish of her wand, two new blackboards appeared. The first one she wrote a quick 'magical history of Rome' as a title to, and the second one she wrote 'magical history of the Saxons' on instead. Harriet turned both those blackboards airborne as well, shrinking them too, in order to keep things from getting too crowded.
She noticed more than a few wide eyes in her audience, but was willing to bet that it had more to do with the unexpected nature of using magic in the History classroom, rather than anyone actually being all that impressed with the magic in question. She was only using it to prove a point, and she was pretty damn sure she'd seen Filius use this trick several times in the past.
"And if we're looking into the history of Rome, then we need to look into the histories of the various peoples it ruled over." Nearly a dozen other blackboards were conjured and sent into the air to join the first three. "Not to mention the outside influences that finally brought the crumbling empire to its breaking point." And even more shrunken blackboards took flight.
By now, things were starting to get more than a bit cluttered, even airborne and shrunk as the blackboards were.
Harriet allowed everyone a long moment to take in the complicated mess of shrunken blackboards drifting around and occasionally bumping into each other, before she continued.
"History is fascinating in how it reflects the societies it springs from. And sapient life has always been interconnected." Harriet gathered up the free-floating blackboards and vanished all but one, the original one, which she instead erased all of the text on. Before again writing 'magical history' in big letters. "So, rather than attempt to summarize all of recorded magical history, when this class will never have the amount of time necessary for doing that, we're going to have to learn to prioritize."
Now the students were looking confused, which was only to be expected. Start off by telling them that it was impossible to write out the history of one place without entangling yourself in the history of another, only to then immediately dismiss that as being impossibly cumbersome. Harriet would've been confused too.
"In more blatant words, the victor writes the history books. And though I hope you'll keep that in mind when handling the records of 'justified' wars and incidents, the victor is generally the one with the most profound effect on history going forward." Harriet smiled another wry smile. "Grindelwald's World War is a good example. Had he been victorious, things would've been massively different from what they are today, and though the scars of the war and his ideals can still be easily seen if you know where to look, they're only scars. Had he won? Those scars would've been open wounds, and the scars to be seen would've been the traces of everything Grindelwald's many enemies united to protect."
Harriet let that settle for a moment, before nodding and continuing.
"All of history is entangled, and there are multiple viewpoints on any given moment of history, but trying to account for all of them would translate into trying to explain the viewpoint of every single individual alive at the time. And that's impossibly complex, and largely pointless." Harriet shook her head with a weary smile. "It wouldn't do to lose sight of the forest for all of the trees, and that's a fine line to walk. But never forget what a forest is made of."
It honestly felt more like a philosophy-lesson than a history one, but philosophy wasn't an actual subject in Hogwarts, and the intricacies and complications of social sciences were largely unheard of from the rest of the Hogwarts curriculum.
If a potion did one thing, then it did that thing. If it was created one way, then it was created that way. If any of those things happened differently, then your information was either incorrect, or you were failing at translating it properly.
History could say two completely contradicting things, and have both things be true. That was the wonder and frustration of a social science. And it meant that being critical to your sources became suddenly a lot more important, since you couldn't simply 'try it yourself' and see if you received similar results.
Certainly, if you followed faulty instructions to making a potion, you might kill yourself and your surroundings. But at least you'd be able to prove the author wrong.
XXX
By the end of the week, Harriet's new students were clearly anticipating some of the twists-and-turns of her lessons, meaning that she was very much part of the rumor-mill.
Harriet didn't particularly mind that, seeing as the more her students talked about how she went on and on about how complicated and twisty history was, the more they also helped remind themselves of that same fact. Repetition was the key to memorization, and though Harriet wasn't overly fond of people just repeating the same thing over and over again without thinking about what it meant, she could appreciate that memorizing at least the core philosophy of social sciences wasn't a bad thing.
Unfortunately, the fact that her students now sort of understood the point she was trying to make before she ever stepped inside of the classroom, meant that her students ended up asking questions that were unrelated to the actual lecture.
Where had Professor Binns gone? Why did Harriet become a History Professor? Not to mention the way a few more nationalistic brats kept trying to trip her up with demands for trivia-questions to prove that she obviously didn't know anything about magical history if she didn't consider Magical Britain to be a perfect entity of the only true history of the world.
Now, Harriet's subject had never really been History. She'd been a Dark Lord vanquisher, and then a Curse Breaker, with very little actual recent history involved. But when you went looking for lost civilizations and places, the best way to know where to look was to try to read between the lines of as many historical events as you could get your hands on.
So, by trying to trip her up with bizarre and largely-unspoken trivia, her students actually helped her out. There was no real point in reading the 'common' stuff when you were trying to find obscure things, after all.
Basically, her students grabbed one of the few fields that she'd actually read enough on the subject of to be considered an expert in. Obscure history-trivia.
The fact that she was able to also defunct a lot of the theories that those nationalistic students spewed at her was just an added bonus. After all, the main reason that she'd managed to memorize most of them was that she'd personally investigated if they were false or not, both by more mundane means, as well as by her Stone-eye.
As for the other questions about how Harriet ended up a History Professor, Harriet generally deflected by saying that History was something of a dying subject on the British Isles, and that their Headmistress had been rather desperate to find a new History Professor when Binns suddenly moved on.
Obviously, whenever someone brought up how Binns might've 'moved on', Harriet did the sensible thing and blatantly lied that she didn't have a clue.
Now, it should probably be mentioned that Harriet wasn't the best of liars. Sometimes she managed to hit the nail on the head, but generally her ability to lie or bluff was dubious at best. Thankfully, all she really needed to do was to deny knowledge and immediately continue with her lecture.
Whether they believed her or not, it wasn't like they had any way to prove that Harriet had been involved in the matter.
No, rather than covering up her own exorcism of their previous professor. The true awkwardness of the situation had been seeing her old friends looking so much younger than she remembered them being. And having Hermione ask her questions rapid-fire, eyes aglow with the kind of demanding and half-worship that she'd looked at authority-figures, way back when. That'd been surreal.
Except, then of course came Luna.
And if Harriet had never even known her name before then, she'd probably have fallen in love with the adorable little weirdo on the spot. Even if she did end up asking questions that made it very obvious that either herself or her father had in some way heard of some of the particulars surrounding the Yharnam-dig.
It'd been a bit like being interviewed by a reporter, which Harriet supposed that Luna technically counted as. Except with less talk about if Harriet was going to get married and have kids any time soon, or if perhaps there was a lucky woman among her known friends.
Harriet didn't particularly like reporters. Back in her old world, they'd kept asking her pointless questions, when they could've been asking her about things like at what frequency you needed to resonate the magical tuning-fork in order to bypass the wards of that one dig in Tibet. That'd been one hell of an interesting collection of wards, both in how it worked and how it was designed to be bypassed, and how it was possible to bypass that bypass by following along with that built-in feature.
Harriet could've talked about magical tuning-forks and the implications for hours. Instead, all anyone ever seemed to want to talk to her about had been about if she'd been dating anyone recently.
Harriet had stopped dating people when she and Ginny had broken up, way back in the day. The reason had simply been down to neither of them being particularly suited for long-distance romantic relationships, and the fact that for all that both of them traveled in their work, they never quite traveled to the same places.
Ginny went to international quidditch-games in busy magical areas, Harriet went to random places out in the middle of nowhere to poke at rocks for days on end. And it'd become obvious fairly quickly that Ginny wanted someone to come home to, and Harriet was about as likely to be at home as she was to be halfway across the planet.
Ginny had gone on to date a collection of people before mostly settling down – Harriet didn't exactly keep tabs, but she seemed happy enough – and Harriet unofficially married her work.
Oh, she still made time for Teddy, but the only reason Harriet really kept in touch with anyone at all – beyond Ron and Hermione, who didn't count – was because Bill bribed her into Weasley-reunions with stories about some obscure thing he'd stumbled across and refused to tell her about in the field.
Also, to gossip about how completely smitten Victoire and Teddy were. But that'd only really started to happen the last couple of years.
Harriet supposed that she might've tried dating someone else, but she was always really busy. Maybe if she could've found an attractive Curse Breaker who could go on digs with her, but that still sounded like it'd be really awkward. Just... in a different way.
Harriet had liked the constant competitions that Ginny and her had come up with, and the idea of having a Curse Breaker following in her wake like a puppy wherever she went sounded like-... It was weird and probably a bit too stalker-ish for Harriet's comfort.
So Harriet had never bothered with dating anyone new, and she'd been pretty okay with that. It'd nearly driven Mrs Weasley to tears, but that was because Mrs Weasley was a big believer in love somehow making life worth living. Which was ridiculous, because if Harriet died, she wouldn't be able to find any more cool magical rocks to poke at, and that was more than enough reason to live.
In comparison to those kinds of questions piled on top of her by reporters however, Luna's questions actually were about Harriet's work as a Curse Breaker.
It also included questions about whether or not she'd run into any obscure magical creatures in her travels. Or if she'd found proof of some conspiracy-theory that she might as well be inventing on the spot for all that Harriet had heard of them, which was still a hell of a lot more interesting than someone trying to get Harriet admit that she had some kind of secret love-life to be uncovered to the public.
Though Luna's question did end up meaning that her classmates ended up taking notes on some of Harriet's personal history of Curse Breaking, and then built on that for the sake of the rumor-mill.
It was a bit awkward to have students start making very accurate guesses about Binns' sudden demise, coupled with Harriet's ability as a Curse Breaker, but it was still a hell of a lot better than everyone whispering about which other Hogwarts Professor she might have the hots for.
Sirius was a weird version of her own godfather, Andromeda was a younger version of the woman who'd taught Harriet how to change a child's nappies, and everyone else were people she remembered as being old when she was still just a kid.
Sure, Harriet might be more their age than she was her students' age – at least in her mind, her body was technically probably around seventeen at this time, even if she was legally nineteen – but they were still people that she simply considered old, because that's what they'd always been to her.
XXX
Not long after the inevitable rumors about Binns sudden disappearance took to Hogwarts, Harriet ended up being approached by a few of the ghosts.
It was less that the Hogwarts ghosts were scared of being exorcised, and more that they wanted some kind of ground rules to be established between them. And they all seemed satisfied once Harriet admitted that she'd only ever exorcised Binns because he was hurting people both directly and indirectly with his shitty teaching.
Basically, as long as none of the other ghosts took up teaching a subject Harriet cared about, and tried to run it into the ground with incompetence and prejudice, Harriet didn't really give a damn about what they got up to.
Unfortunately, the ghosts weren't terribly concerned with subtlety on the matter, and so obviously everyone took the figurative conga-line of ghosts wanting to talk to Harriet as proof that she had indeed offed her predecessor. It wasn't a false thing to assume of course, just inconvenient for her.
Sirius seemed to be straddling the line between a classical Ron Weasley of 'she's bloody scary' and a Weasley-twin impression of 'this is hilarious'. Harriet wasn't entirely sure which side was winning out, and Sirius seemed just as uncertain on the matter as she did.
Andromeda just nodded, as if she'd known this all along and was satisfied with everyone else for finally figuring it out. Though she did ask Harriet to keep any exorcism-material away from the students, lest they do something regrettable to Hogwarts' ghost-population on some fanciful whim, which was reasonable enough.
Minerva finally convinced Harriet to refer to her as 'Minerva' instead of by her surname or title, but otherwise showed enough blatant disinterest in the rumor that everyone immediately figured out that she'd known about it all along. As a result of that, Sirius spent the better part of a week pretending at great offense over not being told.
Filius hummed and reiterated Andromeda's note about children in the proximity to exorcism-rituals, but it wasn't like Harriet hadn't already done what she could about her book, so that was somewhat moot.
Pomona kind of glanced around and realized that the rumors were true, admitted to being shocked, made sure no other ghost was on their way to the metaphorical chopping-block, and then disappeared back to her greenhouses. Hagrid did something similar, though he looked a bit warier about it.
Snape just continued glaring, having at some point after being put on probation become nearly completely non-verbal in his seething outrage. A situation that wasn't being helped any by the fact that his various students were already beginning to pick up on something being very different in Snape's ability to torment his students.
Had it just been Snape stewing in his bitterness over being unable to bully the children under his care, Harriet would've given him good odds for lasting possibly even for as long until the next school-year. Unfortunately, with the man de-fanged and surrounded on all sides by children whom he'd been cowing into obedience with nothing but threats? Harriet doubted he'd last until Christmas.
The kids were smelling blood in the water.
And with the kids circling, Snape's temper would only wind itself tighter and tighter until he eventually snapped. And then he'd be thrown out on his nose by Minerva for violating his probation.
Listening to, and being targeted by, the rumor-mill wasn't the only thing Harriet was doing with her time however.
It'd be safer for everyone if Voldemort was removed from Mr Potter's scar before the Amulet was destroyed, because doing otherwise could potentially result in some hiccups. Which meant that Harriet needed to get access to Mr Potter without alerting everyone to the fact that she'd been hunting down the horcruxes and destroying them.
This meant that she couldn't exactly walk up to Mr Potter and ask him to let her help him with his cursed scar. It also meant that she should probably avoid giving him a detention and then performing an exorcism with him knocked out, since that could be traced back to herself.
That left kidnapping, and randomly breaking into his dorm in order to perform the exorcism there. Technically, she might be able to have someone else work as an intermediary for doing it, but unless it was done perfectly there was a high-chance of them taking out not just Mr Potter, but the whole castle along with it. So it wasn't much of an option.
Kidnapping would probably be awkward, unless she could ambush the boy when he decided to take a walk under the Cloak one evening. And ambushing him in his dorm ran a high chance of being interrupted or found out, both of which would end badly.
Harriet would've loved to set up an alert-ward for children running out of Gryffindor after bedtime, but it wasn't like she could be certain she could make it remain undetectable for possibly months. And considering how she was the one person really good with making and breaking wards, she'd be the first suspect.
Unless-... Well, they were all expected to catch students who were up after hours, and it wouldn't surprise anyone if Harriet just... decided to cheat, a little bit.
If she set up the alarm-wards around all of the Houses, and then included a pathetically weak tracking-charm that'd barely last two hours? Enough time to leisurely make her way over and decide what to do about the rule-breaking?
Why, that was practically admirably industrious of her, wasn't it?
Not to mention that it would give Harriet an excuse to spend most of her 'patrol-nights' comfortably in bed, rather than wandering around cold corridors at night for no reason.
Harriet briefly considered the idea of sharing the wards with her fellow teachers, before shrugging. Alert-wards might be easy enough to set up for her, but that wasn't necessarily true for everyone else.
Oh, most anyone could set up a basic alert-ward. The problem came in trying to set up a ward that would only react during a specific time of day – after curfew, for example. Not to mention the difficulties of combining it with an open-ended tracking-charm, no matter how light the actual charm itself might be.
Setting up more classical house-wards was very different from setting up open-ended wards that were supposed to 'stay connected' to the person using them. Sure, Harriet might've been able to simply modify her idea to allow for someone to make the wards capable of being 'tapped into' instead of being forcibly kept active by a person's input.
But that would likely require her to fix the wards to Hogwarts's wards, which meant that – even should anyone decide that it was an inappropriate breach of privacy – nobody would be able to remove them. And that also ran the risk of her work being used to support an Umbridge-esque takeover of the school at some point in the distant future.
The other possibility was to try to keep them separate from Hogwarts's wards, but in that case it'd likely degrade every time it decided to track someone, until it unraveled. Which could take everything from a week to a few months. But mainly, it'd leave it very open for being tampered with, which might not sound so bad, until you realized that it was a ward designed to make something happen when someone passed through it.
The possible uses of a ward like that could range from someone changing the hair-color of everyone passing through, to having them puke rainbow-colored slugs, to having to be sent off to St Mungos after being turned inside-out.
Basically, to set the wards up separately and reasonably easy to tamper with, was a disaster waiting to happen. Just one clever prank-move from the Weasley-twins could result in having to send every First Year in Gryffindor to St Mungos, if anyone decided to take too much offense in their retaliation. And that really wasn't something that Harriet wanted to be responsible for.
Now, it was entirely possible that someone might be able to modify a ward that was still 'attached' to its creator, but the odds of someone pulling that off without also alerting said creator that something was wrong was-... In Harriet's old world, Bill and her had spent more than a few evenings arguing about if it was even theoretically possible, let alone something that school-children might figure out.
So, whilst Harriet wouldn't mind the other professors following in her wake and setting up their own versions of alert-wards, she knew the complications behind it well enough to guess that it was unlikely that anyone – excepting maybe Filius – would be able to set it up.
No, a much more convenient solution for the more general public would be something like the Marauder's Map. And if Sirius didn't have a version of that thing hidden away somewhere to help him during his own patrols, then that was really nobody's fault but his own.
Beyond the more practical concerns however, there were a few ethical concerns as well. Beyond just risking turning Hogwarts into a police-state.
See, teenagers didn't deserve to be constantly monitored for the slightest insubordination. And, considering that Hogwarts was a boarding school out in the middle of nowhere, they were in fact directly responsible for the mental and emotional well-being of their students.
Which raised the question of 'how much was too much', because they still needed to enforce the rules that they set. A certain amount of disobedience wasn't really appreciated, but it was kind of to be expected.
Students caught sneaking out to the kitchen after dark for a snack, students sneaking out to meet with friends, or to meet with lovers, or even students who'd stayed out until well after curfew because they'd forgot the time. Denying them all the ability to do those kinds of things was a bit like denying them the opportunity to grow up.
An interesting side-note to Harriet's hope of being able to completely ignore her patrol-schedules, and instead sit with a nice cup of tea whilst waiting for someone to break curfew, was that those students who didn't return to their dorm in time for curfew, wouldn't be tracked when they then left it afterwards.
Meaning that if the Weasley-twins wanted to perform a prank, all they needed to do was find some way to trick – or simply distract – any prefect who might think to check on them, and then make sure not to enter Gryffindor tower until they'd already finished their prank. Though that would still make it very obvious to Harriet who'd been outside during curfew, since her ward would allow her to track them back to their dorm. Though, again, since it wasn't an identifying ward, she'd likely need to investigate the incident in person in order to be able to blame anyone.
In the end, she'd simply settled for popping up in the aftermath of whatever adventure they'd been on, and scold the individuals depending on their reasons for breaking curfew.
Pranksters lost House-points and received detention, with the exact amount largely related to repeat-offenders and what kind of pranks were being set up. The hungry kids lost a few House-points and received a semi-stern word or two about being out after dark. And the lovers-... Well, Harriet figured that the embarrassment of being found out by a professor was probably more punishment than anything else she could think of, but she was still expected to take House-points, and so she did.
It was a bit mean of her, to stop their excursions dead like that, but it wasn't like she was going to do it until they were done with it. Give them their outlets, and then have them deal with the consequences of their actions.
And if she made the embarrassment of the lovers worse by mentioning the various ways to 'keep safe' in those kinds of situations – making it all the more obvious that she knew exactly what they'd been up to – then it was better than the alternative of either side remaining in the dark about that kind of stuff. Best to have both parties know what they're doing.
However, even with all of those limitations and self-imposed rules, it became clear very quickly that her catch-rate was abnormal.
By the beginning of October, Harriet had become somewhat infamous in certain circles of students, and when the other staff-members had finally found out how and why she'd suddenly become the boogeyman of the curfew-breakers?
Well, the reactions were somewhat mixed. Sirius and Pomona were both clearly envious of Harriet's ability to set up those kinds of wards, whereas Filius was more intrigued about the magic involved.
The one to bring up the ethical concerns was Hagrid, actually, and she wasn't entirely sure she managed to reassure him about some of her personal self-imposed rules. But with Hagrid bringing it up, Sirius started to re-imagine his own school-days with an inability to break curfew without getting caught, and then he spent the rest of the talk struggling with the fact that he'd become an adult at some point.
Minerva pinched the bridge of her nose for a long moment, and declared with a perfectly straight face that if she ever found out that Harriet was neglecting actually doing the patrols that she'd now so conveniently bypassed, Minerva would personally wake her up with a bucket of ice-water.
Andromeda seemed to be of a similar opinion, though Harriet was willing to bet that the woman would be looking into the possibility of replicating the wards for herself. Not that she'd probably need it. Andromeda could read a guilty conscience from a mile away, and she had plenty of ways to make people talk.
And whilst Harriet had nothing but the utmost respect for Andromeda, Harriet sincerely doubted that she'd be able to replicate the ward.
It wasn't necessarily a complicated one, in the sense that it didn't do much, and it didn't have a lot of variables to keep track of. It didn't exclude anyone from being 'tagged', or from triggering the alarm. It, in fact, didn't actually care about if it was night or day, only if the ward itself was active or inactive.
Which did mean that she'd need to activate it by the time curfew came around, but considering that the wards connected to the dorms were partially 'anchored' in herself in order for the tracking-charm to work for her, it'd take her maybe five minutes to set all of them to 'active'.
Of course, a student could also just tear down the ward, without getting tagged themselves, and then just leg it before Harriet managed to show up, but they were fairly light wards with very little attached to them, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue if it happened.
At the most, Harriet would be arriving to the scene of a flash-bang having gone off. And whilst that wouldn't be a fun thing to experience for whoever managed to bring the ward down, it'd give her plenty of time to get there.
Then again, if the students ever reached the point where they'd start to be able to disassemble her wards – no matter with how much brute-force or finesse they used to get there – Harriet was going to need to sit a bunch of them down and talk to them about the dangers of cascade-failures.
It was fine if they disassembled a tiny ward that did virtually nothing, but if they then brought that ability with them in order to start poking at actual house-wards designed to keep intruders out and the like?
That was very much the kind of thing that could kill you.
XXX
"Miss Granger, I asked you for ten inches of writing, not nearly two feet."
A very young-looking version of Hermione was squirming in the chair in front of her, clearly feeling a lot of conflicted feelings. Her desire to defend her own academical brilliance, fighting against her desire to obey authority-figures, and probably some other stuff mixed in as well.
Not particularly wanting to make the girl squirm, Harriet continued. "Had I asked for 'at least ten inches', the blame would've been on me. However, whilst I wouldn't blame a student for writing out eleven or even twelve inches, any more than I'd blame someone for writing out nine-and-a-half, yours is nearly twenty-three inches long." Harriet paused to let this sink in. "Considering this, I'd guess that you missed some of the point behind this assignment."
Miss Granger didn't quite give an outraged gasp, but from the way she bit her lip, it was clearly a very conscious decision.
Harriet had expected this younger version of Hermione to be somewhat awkward to teach, but she hadn't really considered that it'd be because the girl tried to 'outdo expectations' in all of her work. Whilst it was an admirable quality, it seemed that she'd ended up not comprehending what classified as that, and what classified as misunderstanding the assignment.
"Miss Granger, the essay I asked you to write isn't just a-... A test, or an exam, where you have to prove everything you've ever learnt about anything related to the subject. It's a way for me to evaluate not just your knowledge, but my own ability to teach you my subject." Harriet reached into a desk-drawer, and pulled out a gigantic stack of parchment. "If some events are never mentioned in close to every essay my students write me, then I need to go back and perhaps solidify the importance of the event in question."
Miss Granger nodded quietly to show that she understood, but still very obviously didn't see where Harriet was going with this.
Harriet motioned towards the giant stack of parchment she'd placed down on her desk. "I'm sure you've read books thicker than this, Miss Granger, I know I have. But there's a big difference between reading a book, and reading several hundred essays all repeating the same events over and over again." Harriet allowed herself a small rueful smile. "They do tend to blend together after a while. And whilst I do try to space the assignments out so that I'm not overwhelmed, I'd like it if my students didn't give me more writing to analyze and grade than what I asked of them."
Miss Granger's eyebrows scrunched together a little bit, and Harriet could almost hear her old friend complaining with great offense about how Harriet's work-ethic was getting in the way of her grading. Best to nip that in the bud.
"I believe I made myself rather clear during our first lesson, no? Miss Granger, you've written a wonderful account of trees, with a great amount of detail, when I asked for a forest." Harriet shook her head, feeling a little nostalgic. "It's a fine line to walk, Miss Granger. Trust me, it's a balancing-act that you never quite outgrow, but it appears that this is a balancing-act that you haven't yet quite grasped. Details and trivia are all well and good, but if you can't summarize it properly within the allotted time or space, you'll have to learn to pick and choose which parts to keep and which to discard."
Miss Granger looked suitably outraged at the idea of discarding any knowledge whatsoever, no matter how unimportant, but she remained obediently quiet. Harriet's old friend would've probably started hexing her by now, though whether that difference was due to their informal friendship, or because Harriet's old friend was a trigger-happy madwoman who'd barricaded herself in the Department of Mysteries for the better part of a week in order to not be interrupted in her research, who could say.
"It's part of why your textbook is so dreadfully lacking in details, for all that it's a very good summary of events. It's in fact so dreadfully lacking that it's considered somewhat infamous in how inaccurate it is." Harriet suppressed the urge to smile at how Miss Granger's outrage nearly started to overflow into a proper tirade about the importance of good books. "But when it comes to summarizing events? It's quite literally the best one in its field."
The girl paused at this, clearly thrown for something of a loop at the idea that an inaccurate book was still the best there was at being accurate.
"Now, back to your essay." Harriet motioned towards the giant pile of parchment again. "Just this one time, I'm going to grade it as if it's thirteen inches long and simply written with very small letters, but I trust that you'll manage to keep it to the limit for the next time?"
Miss Granger nodded stiffly, and they said their goodbyes.
Hopefully, she'd learn from this, instead of just making the text so small it was nearly unreadable. But Harriet wouldn't exactly count on it. Hermione had always been a very opinionated individual, and she was kind of recklessly blunt in how she dealt with much of any issue she found herself faced with. Harriet wouldn't in the least put it past the girl to do something like that to spite Harriet's apparent dismissal of important things, like cramming more knowledge into a piece of parchment than it really ought to hold.
XXX
A/n: There's been a lot of reviews about my apparent inability to "show don't tell", and I would just like to set the record straight here.
"Show don't tell" is a phrase for helping make some scenes and characterizations feel less stilted, but it's been grabbed by the public as the be-all-end-all of writing-advice. And it's useless for that, at least as long as you're not writing a movie-script, which is an entirely different way of writing.
Oh, I know that I'm an avid "teller", and I'm perfectly content with that, because dialogue-heavy stories are unreadable for me. They're just so... yuck. But that's my right as an author, so kindly fuck off with the unsolicited advice that I'm sure you're also harassing people with thinner skin than mine with.
I'd much rather lose a hundred reviewers, than have a single thin-skinned author quit because of their harassment. And you can quote me on that.
