AN: This is really more of a transition/background chapter that probably would have done better as something other than an actual chapter except that it was a little long for that. The events of this chapter cover all of September and some of what Harry does throughout October (although the next couple chapters will also be taking place during October, while he's in the middle of his research).
Happy Yule and Merry Christmas! :)
Memento Vivere
Chapter V / Playing Catch-Up
The next few days were full of nasty surprises for Harry.
The booklists finally came, as Dumbledore had finally found someone to take on the Defence Against the Dark Arts job, and with them came two shiny new prefect badges, one each for Ron and Hermione. Harry could not help but feel a tad resentful that it had been Ron to get the badge and not him, especially given how much Dumbledore had ignored him that summer. He pushed that feeling aside for Ron's sake, but he wasn't able to let it go completely.
Then, of course, they learned that Malfoy had been made a prefect as well. Hermione might have felt that they shouldn't abuse their power as prefects on the Gryffindor side, but Harry felt Ron was quite right in his take on the matter; better to get Malfoy's mates before he got the three of them for something.
Then there were the strange horses that had been pulling the carriages, which only he and Luna Lovegood seemed to be able to see. He did not try to convince his friends they were there once he had learned that the only other person to see them was the same girl who kept her wand behind her ear and read magazines with articles about Fudge baking goblins into pies. He was not so convinced himself that he had really seen them after that.
Then at dinner, they learned that not only had Hagrid not returned from the mission Dumbledore had set for him at the end of June, but also the identity of their new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher: a woman called Dolores Umbridge who had been at his hearing and had been one of the few who had not voted to clear him. Harry listened to considerably more of the speech than most of his classmates, although he was still glad for Hermione because he had not understood quite as much of it as she had. But what he had understood agreed with Hermione's assessment: Umbridge was there to give the Ministry a chance to interfere at Hogwarts.
He also found that it was surprisingly unpleasant to be back among his fellow students when a good number of them believed what the Prophet had been saying about him all summer—that he was delusional and only saying Voldemort had returned to get attention. Not once had this been more clear than that night, when Seamus had basically said as much. He had known Seamus for four years, and yet he still believed the lies and thought he was lying.
Harry went to bed that night feeling more miserable than he had since he thought he might be expelled.
The next day, if it was possible, only got worse. Their class schedule was miserable, packed full of every teacher he hated and Umbridge—and by the end of the day, he was quite cemented in his hatred of Umbridge as well. He had landed himself with a week's worth of detentions because she was taking the official Ministry line that Voldemort had not returned and he refused to stand for it. Even if he didn't feel passionately that people needed to know, that it would make things that much harder for Voldemort if everyone was expecting him, Harry was not going to insult Cedric's memory by pretending his death had been an unfortunate accident. It was out of the question.
And so it was that he spent the rest of his evenings that week in the most awful detentions he'd ever had, which resulted in not only horrible pain in his hand, but also in his becoming disastrously behind on his homework and his missing the tryouts for Gryffindor Keeper.
Then, as if one week hadn't been awful enough, he landed himself in another week of detentions during their second Monday with Umbridge. He supposed he should have been grateful that they were not any worse than they were—he could tolerate doing lines and cutting into his hand over and over if it meant getting one up on Umbridge—but thinking that did not make the long hours in Umbridge's office any less miserable, nor did it get his mounting pile of homework done.
The one shining beacon of light that second week had been Hermione's suggestion that they start learning Defence Against the Dark Arts on their own, and that he be the one to teach them. Harry did wonder if the suggestion had been borne out of Hermione's concern for his new interest in Dark creatures as much as it had her frustration with Umbridge's useless classes, but he found he didn't care much either way. He also wasn't sure just how much he liked the suggestion, but at least it was a nice distraction from how miserable his life was becoming otherwise.
On one hand, he didn't think he'd be much good at it. He rarely ever got through his various encounters with the Dark Arts with planning; usually he just stumbled through riding on dumb luck to the other side of things. And he nearly always had help of one sort of another—if it wasn't Ron and Hermione helping him, it was Fawkes or a centaur or a quirk of his wand. That was one thing Ron and Hermione didn't understand, that it was as much luck and thinking on one's feet as it was knowing the right spell. That wasn't something he thought he could teach.
On the other hand, if there was one subject he really, truly enjoyed, it was Defence Against the Dark Arts, and after two years of fairly decent classes, Umbridge's almost Muggle teaching methods were frustrating to no end. And he really did think he would enjoy looking up more spells and teaching the ones he already knew, especially when they would be doing it under Umbridge's nose. Over the next couple weeks, he even found himself dreaming up lesson plans and figuring out which spells had really helped him in which situations.
After two weeks, Hermione brought the idea up again, and Harry accepted. It helped that Hermione had finally begun saying Voldemort's name properly rather than hiding behind a lot of silly words like most everyone else.
These first few weeks were miserable for another reason as well—between his detentions, the dramatic increase in homework, and Quidditch practice, Harry had absolutely no time or energy to even jot down a few words to Sanguini. Nor could he entertain the idea of doing research outside what he needed for class, either in the library or through the books he had borrowed from Sirius's house. He desperately wanted to, but he just didn't have the free time. He had no idea how Hermione did it—and was still doing it, even now that their homework load had doubled. He was just glad that his request seemed to be keeping her from other pursuits, such as knitting hats and scarves for the Hogwarts house elves. She could still be found in the common room every so often directing a set of knitting needles and yarn, but Harry could only imagine how much more often it would be if she weren't in the library just as often.
But he couldn't help but feel he might be letting his new friend down in some way—even though he was sure Sanguini knew how hard O.W.L. year could be and he didn't know that Harry had decided on his own to do some serious research into wizard law. He just knew that Sanguini had to be lonely and he didn't want to be the reason for that.
It wasn't until the very end of September that Harry finally found enough time and energy to sit down with the journal and write.
He excused himself from the common room a bit early with the excuse of wanting to get some much needed rest and made his way up to the fifth year dorm. He was the only one in the room when he got there, which suited him perfectly.
He crossed to his trunk, pulled out what he needed, and then climbed on the bed and pulled his curtains shut. A quick incantation, and his wand tip was alight, filling the small space with plenty of light to read and write by. He smiled a bit as he set his wand on the bed and pulled the journal onto his lap. It was very nice to be back at school where he could use magic when he liked.
Opening the journal revealed a bit of a surprise; Sanguini had not been as silent these past few weeks as he had been. He seemed to have picked up where Harry had left off in using it as more of an actual journal than a communication device.
Harry looked over the elegant writing eagerly, sure there would be more clues about what Voldemort was up to.
To his disappointment, however, there was very little about Voldemort, and much of what was there he already knew. Voldemort was still building up his army. He had begun reaching out to more magical creatures, but those negotiations would take time. Sanguini had heard nothing else about his plans; if he had others, he did not trust his vampire allies enough to tell them about it.
Otherwise, it reminded Harry of his own rambling about Grimmauld Place. There were a few places where Sanguini had only described what his day had been like, which was interesting, since Harry still had very little idea what he did one his own time. There were even more where he wrote about the various laws and regulations facing, not only vampires, but all the creatures Voldemort was interested in courting, leaving out just enough detail that Harry felt even more bitter that he had not had an opportunity to join Hermione in the library yet.
Not once, however, had he asked if Harry was still there. There were a couple times that he asked how Harry's day had gone or if he was enjoying his classes, but everything he wrote was with the confidence that Harry would be reading it, maybe not right away but sooner or later.
It was the same confidence Harry had written with at Grimmauld Place, and he appreciated it just as much as he thought Sanguini probably had.
Harry took a moment to read through everything, then he pulled out a quill and ink so he could start to return the favour. He would write down everything that had happened, from the strange horses, to Umbridge, to Umbridge's awful detentions, to Ron being made Keeper of the Gryffindor team. It would be good to have someone to vent to, someone new who didn't already know everything.
He decided not to include Hagrid's absence, worrying though it was. Hagrid was probably off on Order business, and Harry did not feel comfortable talking about that to anyone not already in the know.
He did, however, include Hermione's suggestion that they teach themselves Defence Against the Dark Arts as part of the larger spiel about Umbridge. He thought Sanguini would probably approve of the idea, but he did want to know what he thought about it.
It was almost an hour before he thought he might be done, an hour full of furious writing that nearly tore the page in more than one place. As he paused to consider whether there might be anything else worth mentioning (and to give his hand a break), elegant words that were not his own began scrawling across the page.
I am sorry to hear that your time at school has not been as enjoyable as you had hoped. Perhaps you have reached the bottom and it will only get better from here.
"Cheers," Harry wrote, grinning a bit. "Hello. You've been busy."
As have you, it seems. I am glad you found an opportunity to write. I was beginning to worry.
"Yeah, sorry about that. I barely had time to do my homework, forget anything else."
Yes, so I see here.
The writing stopped for a moment, but that could hardly be all, so Harry waited eagerly for him to go on.
I had heard your new teacher was Dolores Umbridge, and her new title of High Inquisitor. There was an article in the paper.
"Yeah, Fudge forced her on us, so he'd have eyes here in Hogwarts, Hermione reckons." Harry frowned and tapped the end of his quill against his lips. That wasn't quite what he'd expected in reaction to his story about what Umbridge had been doing. "Do you know her?" he asked finally.
Oh yes. I am quite familiar with Miss Dolores Umbridge. She has a certain hatred for those of us you would consider to be "part-human." She was behind a certain piece of legislation which makes it exceedingly more difficult for werewolves to find a job, for instance.
Harry hand clenched tight around his quill. He had definitely not known that. As if he needed any more reasons to hate Umbridge. She might have even overtaken Snape as his most hated teacher by now.
"Has she done anything to you?" Harry wrote furiously. This time he did end up tearing through the parchment. He hardly noticed when the tear repaired itself before Sanguini started writing back.
The werewolf legislation was based on an earlier bill that was for us, yes.
"Well, now I have another thing to yell at her about to get myself into detention," Harry wrote, only mostly joking. If he had the opportunity to take her to task on this particular subject, he probably would. It was worth whatever awful phrase she might have him cut into his hand next. It had been worth it for Cedric and it would be worth it for this.
Harry, I appreciate the sentiment, but you mustn't give her a reason to attack you further. And you mustn't draw suspicion to yourself, especially with regards to us. We have been fighting Umbridge and others like her for years; we will be fine for now.
"Yeah, but it's like Cedric said, it's not fair to you! And she's horrible. She a horrible, twisted, foul—"
I agree, but please do not get yourself in trouble with her for our sake.
Harry slammed his quill down on the parchment and crossed his arms, glaring at it so fiercely that he though the paper might catch on fire. This was something on which he had thought Sanguini would agree. That he too was arguing for exercising caution above all else, when he was the one hurt by Umbridge and the Ministry's stupid policies...
Now, Harry, you said you might be teaching some of your classmates Defence Against the Dark Arts?
Harry glared a bit more at this bit of writing that appeared. He did not particularly want to move on to another subject, not even this one. But he also did not want to possibly make Sanguini angry by insisting they stay on a topic he wasn't fond of.
So after a moment, Harry picked up his quill again and wrote back. "Yeah. Hermione isn't sure how many—she thinks I should teach anyone who wants to learn. But I don't think anyone except her and Ron are going to want to learn from me."
I think you might be surprised by how many might want to learn from you.
"That's what Hermione said. But the whole school thinks I'm barking; no one's going to want to spend any more time with me than they have too. Maybe the Weasleys, but I bet Fred and George already know most of this stuff."
They might think you're lying or delusional, but they are also not learning anything from Dolores Umbridge. And obviously, whether you are lying or not has nothing to do with whether you can perform certain spells.
"So you think we should do it?"
Absolutely. You can never know too much, and you can never be too prepared for what may lie outside the walls of the school.
Harry wrinkled his nose. "You sound like a Ravenclaw. Or Hermione."
From everything you have told me about your charming friend, I assure you, that is a great compliment.
"Well, I forgot to mention, she's been making hats for the house elves. She's obsessed with this idea that if only they had the chance to know, they'd see that they really want to be free and paid."
She might not be wrong about that. I don't know that freeing them without their desiring it is the way to go, however.
"That's what I told her! Ron, too. But she wouldn't listen."
People can be quite stubborn. Particularly those people who are used to being right.
Harry smiled at that. The sounded exactly like Hermione. He wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
He leaned down to start writing again, but words started appearing on the page before he could.
Harry, I had something I wanted to ask you once I knew you were here. When is your next Hogsmeade weekend?
Harry definitely did not answer that right away. He was too busy staring at the parchment instead. Why on earth would he want to know that? Was he planning to come visit or something? But that was crazy; even if they did sell things like Blood Pops in Honeydukes, Harry doubted that most of the village would be happy to see him there. And he would risk running into Umbridge; Harry could only imagine how gleefully she might watch over their exploits in Hogsmeade, trying to catch someone breaking the rules when they weren't being as careful as the would in school.
And that was ignoring what Sanguini had been saying all this time, which was that no one would want to see him in the company of a vampire. That would get them both into trouble all on its own.
"Are you mad? You can't come see me in Hogsmeade!"
It will be fine, Harry. Do you think I've never been in Hogsmeade before? It would not be me to see you, in any case, unless Hogwarts has extended visiting hours to after dark this year?
"Yeah, but I can't be seen with any of you, remember? No vampires near the Saviour of the Wizarding World. You're the one who keeps telling me that."
There are ways around that.
"I'm not telling you."
Then I will find out through other means.
Harry slammed the journal shut in disgust. He did not want any vampire to risk getting in trouble because of him. And if it wasn't going to be Sanguini anyway, then what was the point of any of them being there? He didn't think he'd have time to talk to whoever it was if they came; Hermione wanted that to be the day that they met with whoever wanted to take lessons with him.
He gathered everything up again and shifted his hangings aside so he could go out and dump everything back in his trunk. It was probably better that he had ended their conversation when he had; in the time he had been writing, all but Ron had come up and gone to bed. Ron, he suspected, was a little more behind on his homework than he had been, so he was probably still down in the common room, trying to wheedle help out of Hermione.
Harry climbed back in his bed and frowned up at the ceiling. He could worry about vampires showing up in Hogsmeade when the time came. He didn't think he could talk Sanguini out of sending someone by Saturday. But at least now he was prepared and none of them would take him by surprise.
Now that he finally had his own homework situation under control, he really should find out how Hermione had been doing in her research and even start helping her. It wasn't anything she was particularly interested in that she was researching, after all. This was his project, and he really should be doing the work.
"I was wondering when you'd come ask," Hermione said when Harry brought it up the next day.
Harry winced and looked away. "I know. I'm sorry, Hermione. You know I would've said something before now if I'd had the time."
Hermione smiled and shook her head. "I know, Harry. It's all right. I'm glad you didn't put it off anymore, though; what I've found has actually been really interesting."
"So you were able to find something, then?" Harry said eagerly. He knew from experience that the library held all sorts of books on law and magical creatures and both, so he'd never thought that Hermione would have a hard time finding something. He just hadn't been sure how long it would take her to find anything she thought might be relevant.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Of course I was, Harry."
"So what did you find out?"
Hermione eyed him thoughtfully for a long minute. Then she shook her head. "No, I think you ought to look some of it up yourself. I'll point you to some of the books I found that I think might be what you're looking for, all right?"
Harry grinned. They'd been lucky that Hermione had agreed to look over their homework and help them correct it this year. On something extra like this that she was only helping him with out of the goodness of her heart, he felt that was more than fair.
"No problem. Thanks, Hermione, I owe you one."
And so it was that Harry found himself in the library whenever he had free time over the next few weeks, surrounded by several large piles of books. Quite a lot of them had come from the restricted section, quite a lot more than Harry had really expected, and he had wondered Hermione could have gotten back there to find them.
"Oh, honestly, Harry," Hermione said when Harry wondered this aloud. "I asked Professor Grubbly-Plank for a note. I told her I wanted to do a little extra research into magic creatures, and she pulled out her quill to sign before I'd finished the sentence."
Truthfully, Harry had entertained the idea of asking Hagrid for a note himself, before they had arrived at school and discovered that Hagrid was not there. But he hadn't quite made the leap to asking the other Care of Magical Creatures teacher instead. He was quite glad Hermione, who was always far more clever than he was, had thought of it instead.
Hermione only pointed him to which books she had thought would be useful, so he had to muddle through them for the answers all on his own. It was not quite as difficult as he had thought it might be; although the language in many of the books was technical and dry, he had a fierce, burning hatred for the Ministry in his gut to drive him through it. He would do whatever it took to learn everything there was to know about the Ministry's laws and regulations regarding vampires (and other creatures if he came across them, vampires were hardly the only group the Ministry legislated against) so he could then figure out exactly what he wanted to do to fix things.
What he found was awful.
Most of the restrictions on where vampires were allowed to go and how they were tracked to make sure they weren't going anywhere else had been there for two centuries, ever since they had helped breach the Statute of Secrecy in 1749. The truly severe restrictions, such as the tracking vial, had not been put in place until the first time Voldemort had risen to power. The Ministry had begun passing more and more severe laws regarding all sorts of magical creatures in an attempt to keep them under control and away from Voldemort.
What was perhaps most frustrating about this, though, was that all the Ministry had done was make things worse. Far more creatures joined Voldemort in those years than might have if the Ministry had been more welcoming. They ended up driving many of them away, either to Voldemort or to simply not help anyone. Most of the vampires had taken this stance; the Ministry obviously did not want them and Voldemort would hardly be any better, so they had stepped back and helped no one. And the Ministry had punished them regardless.
In fact, it looked like most of the more severe laws had only been passed in the last fifty or so years, and most of those only in the last twenty.
He found the law Sanguini had mentioned that Umbridge had supported and it made him see red. He could not see how any vampire could possibly get a job anywhere with that in place, unless he was able to walk in sunlight, like Lorcan, and was extremely good at hiding who he was. Lorcan only seemed to be safe because he might as well have been self-employed and most people wouldn't know what he was if they were just listening to his music.
He found a law that dictated where and when and how a vampire could find sustenance. Vampires were not allowed to feed in the Muggle world, period, and to be caught doing so would mean a lifetime stay in Azkaban (which could only be very long and miserable to a vampire). Vampires were not allowed to feed on anyone who wasn't willing, either (which Harry didn't think was so bad, although he did wonder how many wizards would be willing), and killing someone while feeding was also worth a lifetime sentence. They could feed on and kill animals if they liked, so long as that animal was not a magical creature of any kind. There were also blood banks they could go to, but they were run by wizards and had to register with the Ministry, who could choose to shut any of them down any time they chose.
Hermione had been right; vampires were not even supposed to wander into a Muggle area without a wizard escort or unless that area was also inhabited by wizards, such as Ottery St. Catchpole. (And Harry wondered now, had it been happenstance that the Ministry had activated their tracking devices when Lorcan happened to be in Surrey, or had someone tipped them off?) Vampires had to live in a magical area, and if they were moving into an area with a large Muggle or wizard presence, they had to alert the Ministry and have someone help them move in (he had seen that for himself in the Pensieve).
Another thing that became clear in his readings was that a lot of wizards were very uncomfortable with some vampires having wands (and a lot of them were uncomfortable with werewolves keeping their wands too, but it was much harder to justify taking them away when werewolves spent the majority of their time as humans). There had been numerous attempts to pass laws to keep any vampire from owning a wand, much the way laws had been passed against other creatures, like goblins and house elves. The current law seemed to be something of a compromise—a vampire could own a wand if he or she had once been a wizard, or had a wizard as a parent—and it didn't seem to be enforced unless the vampire in question was already causing trouble.
This did not seem like much of a compromise to Harry, as much of the vampires' own magic had also been outlawed in an effort to combat Voldemort, and a lot of wizards did not keep much of their wizard magic after becoming vampires. And Harry had an uneasy feeling that once the Ministry finally realized that Voldemort was back, however, this would probably be one of the first laws they might look at making stricter.
Testing for vampires by using the Sunlight Charm was another thing that had only been allowed after Voldemort's first rise to power. Harry quickly turned to another page as soon as he saw that. It still infuriated him.
As he went through book after book, he did notice that vampires were hardly the only intelligent magical creatures to have ridiculously strict limitations passed on them. Just about every other creature was not allowed to use a wand, something which was the cause of numerous goblin riots through the centuries. Centaurs were only allowed to live in certain places, and these limits were far more strict as they were classified as "Beasts" by the Ministry and therefore their opinions on such matters were never considered officially. Werewolves, while not quite as heavily monitored or restricted by the Ministry as vampires, seemed to have been dragged along a similar path, and those wizards who had adamantly pushed for more were really only hindered by the fact that werewolves were only dangerous once a month. Veela, hags, banshees, merpeople, and giants all had laws of varying hindrance passed against them, depending on how Dark the Ministry thought them to be and how cooperative they were during the process (and how much the Ministry thought they might have been helping Voldemort).
The one thing that struck him most of all, as he went through book after book, was how unfair this all was. He had been aware that wizards didn't always get along with other races and that it often ended in conflict—if there was one thing that tended to pop up in History of Magic on a constant basis, it was goblin riots and wars. The usual History of Magic texts tended to portray wizards as always being in the right, and it looked like they also glossed over the nastier outcomes of the battles that had been fought throughout the ages. Looking over all these laws and regulations, Harry could not think of wizards as being in the right at all.
The other thing that struck him was just how difficult it was going to be to overturn any one of these regulations, much less all of them. The Ministry had made sure that it would be difficult, and many of them were either still popular with the general populous (or, more importantly, the Wizengamot) or no one was aware of them, and so half the struggle would be getting people to care. He had another sudden flash of sympathy for Hermione and resolved to actually wear his SPEW button occasionally from now on.
But he was also struck by just how much easier it might be to force the Ministry to change its ways. That might also take years, but maybe not as many, and as long as they won they would be able to change what laws they wanted.
He did not particularly want to go that route, but he did feel that it would take a little more than peaceful protest to get the Ministry to see that it was in the wrong and things needed to change. Maybe not all out war—not with Voldemort waiting in the wings to start his own war back up again—but something.
Then he felt a sudden burst of sympathy for Voldemort, of all people, and the purebloods whose cause he had taken up, who must have also felt it was the only way to get anyone to listen, and he knew that he had read far too much for the night.
