Well, here you are. A long time in coming, I know. Thank you all so much for your kind comments and ideas. Some of you might recognize your contributions to this chapter. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter 3

Ron was more than ready for potions. He had never achieved anywhere near an Outstanding, but he was solidly competent at least. Plus, he had never forgiven the slimy git of a professor for his abysmal treatment of his students. Ron felt like it was time for some serious, "accidental" magic to hit the dungeons.

As the giant clock tolled the beginning of class Severus Snape stood in the hallway working himself up. He bounced on his toes like a boxer and rolled his head around his shoulders. With a silent karate yell he strode forward and burst into his classroom ready to ignite a terror and a love for potions in the hearts of the first years.

Severus drew in a breath and sagged in disappointment when he realized the classroom was completely empty. Even his Slytherins were not there to appreciate how hard he tried. His shoulders slumped and he flopped backwards into his cushioned chair. Just once he wanted to have students who loved potions as much as he did. Severus sighed with resignation and pulled himself upright to go hunt for the little miscreants.

As he stepped out of the door a wobbling voice said, "Professor? Are you going to let us down? We are really sorry, we thought since the door was open we could sit down."

Glaring back into the classroom Severus realized that all of his missing students were plastered to the ceiling. His jaw started to drop before he caught it. "What are you all doing up there," he scolded.

The Weasley responded, "We all just sat down and then alleyop we were all up here. Honestly though, I really do not like it. No, I do not like it at all."

Snape scowled at life in general and experimentally tried to spell the chatty brat down from his ceiling. All that resulted was the boy was dressed in a fuzzy pink bunny suit. The boy wiggled in place before commenting, "You got rid of my boxers!"

A noise similar to "Kapow" slammed through the dungeon room and all of the children suddenly fell from the ceiling. Severus cringed expecting nineteen spectacular belly flops, but as it was the students all managed to get their feet under them. Severus admitted to himself that he was a tiny bit disappointed.

After a moment of general chaos the little buggers were all seated and watching him expectantly. Severus belatedly realized they were waiting on him to do something, perhaps teach them about the wonders of potions, but the whole incident had discombobulated him and he felt entirely unprepared. He slowly pulled his thoughts together, regrettably they were the wrong ones, and so he taught his little first years an excellent lesson on the intricacies of love potions, which ones worked best and were in the shady part of the law. It was all valuable information, it a tad bit misdirected. The first years were quick to realize the bounty of information being offered to them and copied down word for word his lecture. Snape was so out of it that they were able to sneak in some questions about his love life and experiences of snorkeling with great white sharks. While many students had never realized Snape was actually that cool, sadly this led to imagining Snape in swim trunks. Urgh.

As the lesson finished and he vaguely dismissed the wide-eyed and slightly green students he heard someone shout, "We have a free period and lunch now, lets go get some practice in!" As Ron left in his bunny suit he felt disappointed he had not used more chaos, but poor Snape had looked so lost Ron could not bring himself to further damage the bitter man. Plus he liked the floppy ears on his new outfit.

Severus briefly contemplated stopping whatever madness was about to occur, but decided instead to feign ignorance.

Down by the shore of the Black Lake the little firsties had transfigured their uniforms in to wetsuits. Neville, Hermione, and Susan were quickly sketching in the sand ideas for a speedboat design. Susan was mostly concerned about what color the boat would be. Neville wanted enough horsepower to be able to tow the giant squid around if he wanted to. Not that Neville abused animals; he just thought the squid might enjoy moving faster than a jellyfish.

Seamus, as one of the only people who had ever water skied before, began a short lesson on exactly what to do. Most everyone was not listening, except Draco who had never even heard of the sport before, and was mildly concerned. For this reason he had created a neon yellow personal flotation device to wear. Everyone else knew they would be able to cast a bubble-head charm if they had to.

Hermione suddenly stood up, tossed a rock from the beach in the air, and transfigured it into a shining black powerboat before it smacked into the water. Nautical Seamus proudly did his water into wine transfiguration and bashed the bottle open on the bow of the boat, before realizing the beautiful machine did not yet have a name. Seamus turned to the others for suggestions and from the shouted ideas chose, "The Boat" in honor of the wizarding worlds lack of practicality. Gregory Goyle beamed as his name idea was chosen. Seamus added the new name to the stern and jumped in to turn the key.

Inside the castle as everyone else gathered for lunch once again they noticed the youngest members of the school were missing. Dumbledore sighed and cast a detection spell. His eyebrows shot up and he launched out of his seat.

The school was treated to the spectacle of the ancient Headmaster legging it out of the Great Hall. Dumbledore's velvet fuchsia robes were hiked up over his knees and his beard fluttered over his shoulder. Naturally, everyone else leapt up to follow the ancient sprinter out of the castle. The stampede of excited students and staff members ended on the shores of the lake and suddenly became a picnic.

Delighted house elves popped in with the plaid blankets and wicker hampers they kept in storage for occasions just like this. Or at least similar to this. Students and staff began settling onto the lawn as they viewed the spectacle of the first years bobbing around in the lake.

With the buoyant wet suits on the students were able to merrily float around on the surface of the dark water. Draco's bright life jacket stood out among the crowd. Seamus was in charge of driving "The Boat," and was also busy yelling instructions at poor Hannah who was nervously clinging to the handle of the tow rope about thirty feet behind the boat.

"Ready?" yelled Seamus to Hannah and completely ignoring her howl of, "Nooooo!" he gunned the boat. Hannah miraculously launched out of the water and actually made it about fifteen feet before face planting into the wake. Stubbornly though she clung to the handle and was hauled along under the water. As she twisted on to her back Seamus took the opportunity to race the boat even faster across the calm water of the lake and a second later Hannah was barefooting spectacularly.

"It has been decades since I have been barefooting," Dumbledore said contemplatively to himself. Fortunately Madam Pomphrey was close enough to hear his mutterings and quickly put a stop to any future water skiing plans of the old man.

Seamus finally allowed poor Hannah to exhaustedly sink into the water and selected his next victim to be Draco. Draco was very light weight and it did not take much to have him skimming awkwardly along the surface of the water. The smallest Malfoy had his knees locked straight and was leaning forward uncomfortably with his butt sticking out. Hermione giggled madly from her blanket on the beach as she made sure to have photo documentation of the event with her extra zoomed in camera. It was actually super adorable how Draco skied with his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth in concentration. Whenever he focused on a physically challenging task he would poke his tongue out. He had once bitten the tip of this tongue off while parachuting, but he still could not kick the habit.

Naturally Harry could not back down from the awesomeness challenge issued by Malfoy and was the next water skier to give it a shot. He was doing fine until he attempted to jump over the wake and lost his left ski. Harry refused to give in though and quickly learned how to slamon. The remaining first years quickly had to find ways to be more impressive than the person before them. Lavender used a swivel ski, Crabbe and Goyle went double, and Neville wore a large teddy bear costume. Harry mused that the teddy bear was fitting for Neville's personality and really looked quite dashing. Secretly, he thought Neville looked much better in his bear outfit than Ron did in his bunny costume, but he would never tell Ron that. Best friend code, you know. The eye roll that Hermione sent him conveyed that she agreed with him, but would also never let the words cross her lips. That was part of the future wife code. From the shoreline the rest of the school cheered the skiers on with chants being led by Malfoy and Hannah, who were happy just to have survived.

McGonogall perched carefully on a chunk of wood having given up on controlling the students rampaging around on the lawn. Glancing around surreptitiously to see if anyone was watching, she reached up and undid the pins and binders holding her long grey hair up. Minerva released a sigh of relaxation as she tipped her head back and shook out her hair. Around her in the grass she began to pluck dandelions and she began to braid them into a crown. Shortly a flock of chattering girls descended on her and she patiently held princess crown lessons.

Snape had to look away from the sight of Minerva relaxing because it was tipping his whole world at an odd angle. Snape had a sudden thought and suspiciously peered around for the Weasley twins. The last time he had seen the world from an odd angle they had spiked his drink with something he had rather enjoyed. Today though it seemed he was substance free (unfortunately). The only thing Snape enjoyed more than a stiff drink was fishing. He loved pulling on his hip waders and vest with thousands of pockets so that he could never find what he was looking forward. He loved wading into the water and casting the line toward the prospective site and patiently waiting for hours. He did not love placing the wriggling bait on the hook, every time he felt immeasurably sad and guilty. On especially hormonal days he would always have to discreetly wipe away a few tears. Oddly enough he did not mind bashing the fish over the head once he had it on land. Something about the poor earthworms tugged at the heartstrings many would say he did not have.

Dumbledore reached down to his knee high socks and pulled out his sock watch to see that most of third period had already passed. Oops. As Headmaster he was really supposed to be on top of these things. He was getting tired of Percy Weasley informing him of all the mistakes he was making. Actually, the fact that Percy was not lecturing him for the entire school's tardiness suggested that Percy might actually be having fun somewhere. It was about time.

As Seamus let the last skier drop into the water the rest of the first years began to organize themselves in the water. The half that had been best at skiing had skis and the less talented were carefully balanced in front of them or on their shoulders. A huge tangle of tow ropes was tossed off of The Boat and carefully sorted out. The activity on shore calmed as everyone sensed the intense concentration that the first years were using.

A tentative call of "Ready?" from Seamus brought an equally timid answer of, "Maybe?" from the time travelers. Seamus took this as an affirmative and gunned The Boat. Forty kids began to skim across the water in a tight formation. Arms were linked, knees were bent, and slowly the students began to pull themselves into a tiered pyramid. As the third tier steadied themselves Draco began to crawl to the very top. He made sure to put his foot on top of Potter's head as he settled himself in to a strong Superman pose with one fist raised majestically.

It was in shocked silence that Seamus pulled the group around to pass in front of the beach. The pyramid would not be described as artistic in any way, but it was recognizably a pyramid. Once again it was Hufflepuff that began to lead the congratulatory celebrations. The fact that beginning water skiers had the ability to construct a pyramid was nothing short of miraculous. This was of course including the fact that the first years had wanted to, or even thought about skiing in the first place.

It was clear to everyone that Hogwarts had better brace herself if she wanted to survive the next seven years. Dumbledore was grinning like the lunatic he was. It was about time that some fresh blood hit the wizarding world, and he did not mean that in a vampire-mauling-a-village-in-a-blood-thirsty-craze sort of way. More of the Enlightenment-in-Europe sort of way. Maybe he could come up with some advanced classes that could help these youngsters on their way to greatness. Since really, it would all be for the greater good.

From the top of a tree Percy Weasley peered down on all the gathered school. On his lap was scattered the remains of several delicious cupcakes. Now that his peaceful snack was finished it was time to get everyone back inside and learning. Percy quickly located Dumbledore among the masses and marked where the man stood before scrambling down the tree. It was a full time chore to keep Dumbledore doing his job. The man was unable to remember the simplest orders and clearly it was up to Percy it anything was to be done around the place. Percy straightened out his uniform as he stood solidly on the ground before drawing a deep breath, puffing out his chest, and striding in to start to work. Order must be restored.