Chapter 12:
Harry, Hermione, Neville, Severus and Minerva returned to the school 5 days after the recovery of Frank and Alice Longbottom. They had spent their remaining time getting to know Frank and Alice again as well as receiving treatment for the things Dumbledore had done to them. Neville's magic was the most affected by the removal of the blocks. It seems that Albus had placed multiple layers on the block and Neville's magic had only a handful of outlets compared to the hundreds a normal wizard would. Hermione's blocks were the least and were more talent specific. He had taken the time to block any talents that she would receive hereditarily like the animagus ability, the parsel gift which she wouldn't have been able to use as a female anyway and a few other family specific gifts. She had the easiest time adjusting to the changes to her magic since her power levels didn't really change that much. Harry had to be put in a magic containing room for the first 20 hours after his blocks were dropped as he had a lot more power to contain and his anger at Dumbledore was making it unstable. Severus was able to help him through it and the two bonded even more as they got to know the other's real personality.
Hermione said goodbye to everyone before they got out of the carriage and put on her invisibility cloak so she could sneak back down to the chamber. She knew she was not safe yet and Severus and her mother both agreed that she should stay in hiding, even Harry agreed with them so she had no choice. She was just glad she would be able to see Severus still. The rest of the group entered the Great Hall during dinner and it seemed that everyone let out a sigh of relief when they saw that the group was safe. Minerva made her way to her new seat as acting Headmistress. She would be officially offered the job over summer break as the wards would need to be readjusted to her. Severus had to hold in a smirk as Harry was attacked by Pansy in what could only be considered a bear hug as the girl rambled on about how he was home safe and was he alright. Harry might not have realized it but he would have a hard time shaking off Pansy's affections, though judging by the goofy smile on his face he wouldn't care. Ginny Weasley smiled at her friends as she sat next to Draco at the Slytherin table and waved at Neville as he tried to decide where to sit.
Seamus and Dean, thinking themselves funny and that the great hall was too boring, decided to pick on Neville. They had been on Ron's side of things before he was arrested and still thought that Neville and Harry were insane for being friends with Slytherins. "So Longbottom did they fix you or are you still just a glorified squib?" Dean called out as Seamus laughed.
Neville decided he's had enough of the teasing from his roommates and now that he had his power and his family back he was not going to stand for it. "Just give me one good reason Thomas and I'll show you exactly what I'm capable of now." Neville growled as he fingered his wand.
"What blowing up caldrons and pathetically weak spells?" Seamus laughed loudly making sure he had the attention of the entire hall. "You barely know what end of you wand to hold there's no way you could take on either one of us."
Severus placed a hand on McGonagall's shoulder to tell her that he would handle it. They had gotten to know the quiet and shy boy over their stay at St. Mungo's and both wanted to throttle the two idiots taunting him. "Mr. Longbottom I believe that was a challenge and as the challenged party you may choose to either accept or decline. If you accept I agree to be the referee." Severus told Neville with a nod of his head.
"I Neville Franklin Longbottom accept the challenge voiced by Seamus Finnegan. I as the challenged party lay down the rules as thus, this will be a formal duel using any spells in our arsenal except the unforgivables or mind spells. The duel will continue until one side is able to incapacitate the other. I declare Harry James Potter as my second." Neville spoke in the formal acceptance of a wizards duel much to the shock of the other two boys who thought he would back off as always.
"Mr. Finnegan you must now state if you agree to the terms and name your second," Severus said even more amused as he saw Harry transfiguring both his and Neville's clothing into dueling robes and glaring at the other two like they had just personally insulted him as well. Severus knew this was going to be a very entertaining evening.
"I Seamus William Finnegan accept the terms set by Neville Longbottom. I declare Dean Julian Thomas as my second." Seamus said, fear of humiliation setting in as he saw the serious looks on his one time friends faces and wished that he and Dean had just kept their mouths shut for once. When Ron was arrested he had thought it was a fluke and then when Dumbledore had been arrested he figured it was a ploy of the Dark Lord but he was beginning to believe that Harry was behind both and both he and Neville were no longer pushovers.
Severus gently moved the house tables father apart, leaving a wider center aisle. He then began to set wards to protect the watching students and was glad to feel Professor Flitwick adding to them as well as Minerva. Ginny, Draco and Pansy were standing with Harry and Neville whispering and shooting calculating looks and smirks in the direction of the Seamus and Dean who had been abandoned by everyone and stood alone and scare at the other end of the aisle still trying to break out of their shock at what was happening. When Neville and Harry turned back to Snape and the other three returned to their seats Severus began. "This will be a formal wizard's duel. When one of the opponents is incapacitated the second will step forward to continue the duel until only one wizard remains. The rules set forth by Mr. Longbottom stipulated that no unforgivables or mind spells were to be used; any use of these spells will result in immediate forfeiture of the duel and constitute as a breach of a magical contract. You will bow and begin on my mark."
Neville bowed and readied his wand, ready to let Seamus know what it felt like to be humiliated. His first spell hit and Seamus was wearing a pink frilly dress with matching pink high heal shoes. He easily blocked the disarming charm sent his way and proceeded to finish his transfiguration work by giving Seamus boobs, blonde ringlets and full makeup. He then hit him with a babbling hex as well as a tarantula hex so he was chattering nonstop as well as dancing around making him unable to cast any spells at Neville. "As you can see Finnegan I am not a squib and you would do well to remember it. Now I expect you to mind your manners from here on out or you will get a repeat of this performance." Neville told him before hitting him with a stunner and ending the first part of the duel. Dean stepped forward and cast a cutting charm trying to hurt Neville for embarrassing his best friend. Neville rolled his eyes as he sidestepped the charm and send an unraveling charm at Dean as everyone watched as Dean's robes began to fall apart. He then hit him with a hex that Ginny had taught him that she learned from the twins. It made Dean sing and dance to whatever song the caster desired so Dean was singing 'I'm a Little Tea Pot' with the motions as well. As soon as the song ended Neville sent a stunner at Dean and ended the entire duel. "Well that was easy," he said to Harry as they made their way to the Gryffindor table for dinner.
"Yeah I thought you would have had to at least block two spells from each, very disappointing really." Harry commented, knowing everyone in the hall was hanging off their every word. "I mean to think that they are 7th years and can't even duel properly. It just proves that Dumbledore did his best to make sure we were all as ignorant as possible. How could anyone be expected to defend themselves when the only spells they know are 3rd year material?"
Severus joined Minerva at the head table unable to hide his amusement at the situation and especially with Harry's comments. "We are going to have to offer advanced dueling and defense classes to the students," he told her. "Harry is right that they do not know anything. Their teachers have all been jokes other than Lupin." The current teacher was another pathetic attempt to keep the students ignorant. The man was older than Albus, more paranoid that Moody and about as knowledgeable as Lockhart and was named appropriately Professor Blank.
"Perhaps we should have Harry teach them and petition the Governors to let Remus come back," Minerva suggested.
"I will be happy to help with teaching dueling protocol," Flitwick added as he had been a champion dueler in his day. "I have always wanted to be able to sponsor a student in the dueling tournaments yet Albus wouldn't allow it."
"I think it would be best to invite the Governors here for a meeting to discuss all the changes we feel are necessary and to figure out what we can do to undo some of the damage Albus has done to this school," Minerva told them and they all agreed to meet the next morning with their ideas and requests so they could consolidate them for the Board of Governors.
"You should have seen it love, I have never wanted to laugh so hard in years," Severus told Hermione as he recounted the story from dinner to her. "The teachers are going to set up a list of changes needed in the school to present to the Board of Governors if you want to help with it." He told her giving the top of her head a kiss.
"I've been working on something like that for a while now," she told him with a grin and went to grab her notes. After looking over everything she had he decided to bring her to the staff meeting with him as she could be the voice of the students and that could help unite the teaching staff.
"I notice there is no mention of Divination in any of your schedules," he commented with a chuckle.
"That's because it is pointless to have a class to teach students something they will never be able to do. I agree that Divination is important for anyone who shows any natural ability as a seer but for the general school population it can be covered in History and then students can be tested for ability and taught independently if they show an aptitude for it." She told him with a smirk.
They spent the night arguing about her plans before they went to bed so they could take on the staff in the morning. Minerva was surprised to see her daughter appear from under her invisibility cloak at the meeting and had to hold in her motherly pride when she saw the stack of information she had to share. "I decided that Hermione should be included so we can tell the Governors that we included the students in this process." Severus told the staff, "Besides she has better ideas than I could have come up with." The rest of the meeting went fairly smoothly once Sybil Trelawney was stunned to keep her quiet. The rest of the staff had agreed with Hermione that Divination should only be taught to those who had the gift and Trelawney freaked and ranted until they stupefied her.
They decided to offer their current classes, make a few changes to those as well as to add new courses and clubs. The base classes would be the same: Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology and Potions the other base class would be Magical History which would be taught by a real person and cover the major events in magical history as well as touch on the differences in magical cultures around the world and Flying and Physical Education as wizards were getting lazy and out of shape. Those 7 classes would be required to be taken every year. Astronomy would only be offered the first 3 years, from 2nd year to 5th year students would be required to take 2 new classes, the first being Art & Music to expose them to painting, photography, singing and musical instruments and the second new class being Ancient Languages to teach them to speak and read Latin and other languages related to magic like runes. Additionally 1st years would be required to take Magical Culture and Theory to explain the magical world and how magic works, this would be especially important for muggleborn students. 3rd year electives would be available in Muggle Studies (3rd & 4th year only), Rune Magic, Care of Magical Creatures and Arithmacy. 4th year a 1-year Defense Against Dark Creatures class would be required in place of Astronomy. 5th year more electives would be offered in Dark Arts and Spell Creation as well as this is the first opportunity to take the 1 year class on Household Charms to cover cooking, cleaning, sewing, etc. 6th year & 7th year only the base classes are required, Art & Music and Ancient Languages become electives at that point as well as the additional electives of Warding & Protective Magic, Healing and Politics & Wizarding Law in addition to the previous electives. They also decided to offer an official Dueling Club, Newspaper Club, a variety of Art Clubs, Self-defense/Martial Arts Club, as well as research and study groups and independent study with professors in areas such as Animagus training, sword fighting, and Divination.
"These changes are going to frighten many of the students," Minerva warned her colleagues. "The students have gotten lazy and complacent and their test scores are showing it. We may continue to out score Beauxbatons and Durmstrang but the margin of victory has been getting smaller every year. Last year we were barely a percentage point ahead of Beauxbatons and Madame Maxime was bragging that her students were getting so much better when in reality it is our students that are doing worse."
"We will have to hold an all school meeting once the Board approves the changes," Flitwick said. "We should have a synopsis of each class in some sort of handout that the students can read. Then the teachers can be available to answer questions before the students make their course selections for next year."
"I think it may be prudent to offer an 8th or extra study year to the 7th year students so they can catch up as well as test in the newly offered classes," Hermione told them gently. "I mean everyone is so behind and still young enough that an extra year wouldn't really affect their future too much."
The teachers all pondered that for a moment before Professor Vector said, "I think it might be a good idea. As there are no magical universities the only options students have is to get a job or become an apprentice. We could offer a post NEWT year to students who want to further their education in specialized study or to take further electives to test in."
"I think the idea has merit but as it is we have a 7 year gap in ages of students in the dormitories, I think we would have problems if we added another year especially if they will already be considered fully qualified." Minerva said with a frown. She liked the idea but the problems it could cause were hard to ignore.
"I don't think the students in the 8th year should be in the dorms," Hermione said quietly. "They will be studying and practicing too advanced magic to be around the younger years. If we set up one of the extra towers as a 5th house for the older students it would solve the problems. They could still eat at their house tables or even at a separate one in the great hall and they would have their own common room to study and practice in. Separating them would also allow them greater freedom to show that they are acknowledged as adults."
""This is definitely something we would need the full support of the Board of Governors as well as the Ministry," Severus commented. "If we decided to do this we could be starting a new trend in education across the wizarding world. If there is a large enough amount of interest we could really turn it into a magical version of university. It could increase the number of trained witches and wizards in specialized fields but reducing the length of apprentiships and ministry specialized training. If we offered specialized potions training for say 2 to 4 years then the regular 8 year apprenticeship could be cut back to 4 maybe even two years with the master, meaning the master could train 2 to 4 more apprentices than before."
"I see what you are saying Severus," Flitwick added. "The main constraint with apprenticeships is the time commitment, if they could get a lot of the preliminary training out of the way in a school environment then the master would only need to teach the dangerous or guild specific skills and guide the apprentice instead of spending countless hours in instruction of what to them would be basic material."
"And if additional training could be made available in the areas the ministries are currently training in they could save time and money as well as get more students through in a shorter period." Sprout told them. "I know they have been having problems with training enough people for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement because the training is time consuming, its expensive for the Ministry so they don't pay the candidates enough to live off of, and they don't have enough space. The same is true for healers and other areas of the ministry and the private sector."
Hermione just sat back grinning as the teachers spent the next two hours debating the pros and cons of the "University" program as well as figuring out the details of how it would work and what courses of study they would offer. She had always dreamed of their being a magical equivalent of a university but everyone she had talked to had told her it was unnecessary. She knew her idea would revolutionize the way the students trained in their field as well as how the wizarding world viewed education. She laughed as she imagined Harry's face when she told him what she had set in motion!
The meeting with the Board of Governors went better than any of the teachers had imagined. The changes to the curriculum were all made and the Board commended them on their quick thinking and great planning. The changes were set to be put in effect completely for the next school year and some would be implemented throughout the remainder of the year if possible. The University plan was a heated topic of debate. The majority of the Board thought it was a great idea that would significantly improve the quality of performance in the specialized fields as well as bring in extra revenue to the school without really needing too much to get it running other than teaching staff.
There were a few members of the Board that were concerned that the advanced programs would be forcing the students into higher caliber jobs than they were capable of and that the extra expense of years of schooling would deter any student from attending. They were finally able to show that the cost of tuition for the students would be able to be offset by the students' marketability after school. For example it cost the Ministry 1,500 galleons a year to train each Auror candidate and they only paid the trainee 1,000 galleons a year which was not enough to live off of if the trainee had to rent a flat. The current Hogwarts yearly fee was 600 galleons and the same fee would apply to the university students assuming they could maintain approximately 105 students or more. The current Hogwarts population was roughly 350 students.
It was decided to try and get Ministry approval for the university type program if they could find both qualified masters in the fields to teach as well as interested students. The courses they anticipated offering were Mastery classes for Potions, Transfiguration, Charms, Herbology, Spell Creation, and a combined Defense/Dark Arts which would all consist of a 4-year program followed by 2-4 years of apprenticeship depending on the skill level of the apprentice. They would also offer the preliminary Auror training 4-year program and 2-year Hit Wizard training to feed into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. They would also offer the preliminary 4-year Healer training and 2-year medi-witch training to increase the number of trained medical personnel in the country. Three other courses would also be offered: 2-year Magical History and 2-year Law & Politics would feed into the Ministry of Magic or to a Law Wizarding apprenticeship and there would be a 1-year teaching course offered to certify teachers for primary school or early magical education. After studying the projected numbers of interested students (research Hermione had been doing for a while) they determined they would need approximately 11 Master Professors and 3 Assistant Professors along with a Dean to oversee the entire specialized curriculum. This would increase the staff of Hogwarts to approximately 35 people and the student body to 455 students.
Severus was surprised by how willing and open to change the Board of Governors was and realized that they had been held back by both politics and Dumbledore over the years. The Board may have final say in the school but without a very good reason they were never able to override Dumbledore's control. Minerva was sure the Ministry would approve and perhaps even provide scholarships and additional funding for the extra training as it will save them many thousands of galleons per year. Flitwick was just excited that he was allowed to teach dueling to select students. The only teacher that seemed worried at all was Trelawney and that was because under the new arrangement Divination and Astronomy would be taught by the same teacher and they would have to prove their seer skills with the same test the students would undergo to test for latent talents. In fact most of the staff was looking forward to having Sybil gone as none believed she could pass the test. Professor Sinestra the current Astronomy teacher had been asking Albus to let her teach language classes to the students for years as she was fluent in English, Latin, French, German, Spanish, Romanian, Italian, Swedish, Gaelic, Dutch, Japanese, Mandarin, Gobbledegook, Mermish, Runes and Egyptian Hieroglyphics, as well as familiar with Troll, Elfish, Portuguese, Aramaic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Erse, Greek and Slavic. She was a natural at languages and studied them in her spare time. Minerva had already told her that she would have the Ancient Languages job.
They decided they would need 20 new professors to fill all the newly created positions. Many of the current professors would move up to teach the higher level classes and new professors would be hired for the younger students. Minerva had decided that both teachers would help each other out so that the standard of teaching the students were currently used to would not lessen. She was looking forward to be able to interview new instructors. Even if the Ministry didn't approve their specialized classes they would still be needing new professors for Dark Arts/Defense Against Dark Creatures, Art & Music, Muggle Studies, Rune Magic/Spell Creation/Warding and Protective Magic, Magical History/Magical Culture and Theory/Politics and Law, Defense Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration as she couldn't teach 7 years and be Headmistress. If their university type program was approved she would also need new professors for Charms, Potions and Herbology as the current Heads of House would be moving up to the advanced level. They would also need 11 other professors for the advanced classes. She knew it would be a lot of work but she was looking forward to it. For the first time in a long while she felt like she was making a difference and that the world was becoming a better place. She just had to wait for the Ministry to realize that as well.