Ginevra Weasley and the Disorder of the Phoenix

Episode 5: A Spoonful of Paranoia

"Ahh, I do love being at Hogwarts again!" Professor Fortescue said. It was first class on the first day of classes. For Fourth-year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, that was History of Magic. Ginny had a front-row seat to the first run of the new material.

Someone in the back had raised their hand. "Professor Fortescue? Who's going to be running the ice cream shop in Diagon Alley?"

Everybody laughed. Professor Fortescue thought for a moment. "What's your name, miss?"

"Tamsin Applebee, sir."

"Well, Miss Applebee, the ice cream shop is usually only open during the months that Hogwarts is closed. In years past I would go off on research trips under the name of Dakota Smith during the off-season, but this year I was presented with the opportunity to teach history at Hogwarts."

Ginny raised her hand. "What kind of research did you do, Professor?"

"You're Miss Weasley, right? Well, my area of focus is more on similarities between the Wizarding and Muggle worlds. For example, Grindelwald and Hitler rose to power around the same time, under similar circumstances. Not a lot of historians on the Wizarding side even know who Hitler is or what he did, and no Muggle historians have even heard of Grindelwald. Yet both believed that they were born to a superior race – Grindelwald a Wizard, Hitler an Aryan – and both had considered exterminating inferior races necessary in order to prevent their alleged superior race from being polluted. Grindelwald wanted to exterminate Muggles, and Hitler actually approved something called the "final solution", which basically was an order to kill anyone of Jewish blood during his reign in Germany." There was a stunned silence. "And you thought You-Know-Who was the first to be so vehemently anti-muggle as to desire their extinction? Racial Wars have been going on for as long as humans have been using sticks as weapons. And I don't mean magically."

There was a murmur through the classroom, and after a while someone else raised their hand. "Yes, mister…?"

"Wayne Bostock, sir. What kind of history will we be learning?"

"You don't happen to be related to a Gerald Bostock, do you?" Florian said with a chuckle. Seeing that nobody caught the reference, he cleared his throat and continued. "Officially, I am teaching History of Magic. I have to prepare you for your OWL examinations, which means that we will still be spending a lot of time on stuff that you may or may not remember having from my grandfather. However, a critical portion of History that my grandfather would overlook is legend – for without the legends, how would we know where to look for the truth?"

A fourth hand. "Professor, why didn't you assign us a book? Are we still going to be using the old book?"

Florian thought for a moment. "I think we will keep using the old book. No sense in assigning a book now that you're all here, now is there?"

There was another murmur throughout the classroom. "Now that the introductions are out of the way, I would like three volunteers to come up to the blackboard and write what they know about Goblins."

Ginny stood up, as did two Hufflepuffs she didn't recognize by sight. She briefly thought about the ethical consequences of using future knowledge for this assignment, then decided that there really wasn't any future knowledge that she had that would change the outcome anyway.

After a few minutes, Florian asked them to step back and he read off the lists on the board. "Let's see what we have here... Vicious, treacherous, warlike, tribal, cunning, they control the money supply, they bear much resentment against humans for not allowing them to carry wands, they are not loyal to the ministry; smelly, they have a lot of rebellions, they have long fingers, they run Gringotts; they own the Wizarding bank. Thank you, you three, you may sit down. Now, there's one thing common to all three of these lists – the fact that the Goblins have been given stewardship over pretty much all of our money. We will be spending one month on Goblin Rebellions, and by this time next month you should be able to write a very informative essay explaining how Gringotts helps keep the peace between Wizards and Goblins."

He wiped the blackboard clean. "Let's start with the most recent rebellion, in 1964…"

Ginny's next class that morning was double Ancient Runes with the Ravenclaws, which was no different from the usual "Welcome back to school, let's see what you remember" review period. It was the final class of the day that she was waiting for the most – Transfiguration, if one wanted to be precise. Not that she would be in Transfiguration, mind. She had permission from both Dumbledore and McGonagall to be out of class for that period.

Of course, she only had that permission because she'd come back through time and could easily get the permission again for any of her classes save for Defense Against The Dark Arts and History of Magic, but that little detail was unimportant. She was eager to see how Harry handled Umbridge – and she was perfectly happy with having little refresher courses throughout the day on the other classes anyway.

After the refresher exam, which Ginny was confident that she had aced (they were reviewing basic Ancient Runes, after all), Professor Babbling started in on the dangers of not being observant. Ginny smiled and leaned back in her seat. She remembered this particular lecture – Professor Babbling had triggered a rune-based curse while visiting Uganda and had been forced to speak in rhyme for a month.

After an uneventful lunch and Charms class, it was time to watch Harry put his plans into action. There was the slight worry that this would backfire horribly and cause all sorts of problems for the plans that Harry had in place, but Harry was planning on playing to Umbridge's prejudices. Something about how he had been attacked by Sirius Black and a Werewolf and a veritable army of dementors just a couple years back.

She was quite lost in her thoughts and almost failed to notice that Professor Babbling was standing right in front of her. "Miss Weasley, do you need to go to the infirmary? You've been sitting there unresponsive for the past minute."

Ginny blinked and tried to guess what was going on by context. "Sorry, professor, just a little distracted by the story about the babbling curse. Can you repeat the question."

"Class is over for the day, Miss Weasley. The homework is to review the first chapter of this year's text. Perhaps you should go find your boyfriend and be distracted by him now."

Ginny blushed. "Are we that obvious?"

"To the observant, yes. You've not done a good job of hiding your relationship, if that's what you meant. You and Harry were seen sneaking off together during the start-of-year feast by several students and almost all of the staff – Umbridge excepted – and you were spotted by one of the Gryffindors coming out of a side room on the seventh floor with him." Professor Babbling smiled sadly. "Do be careful about what you're doing. I know you understand the consequences of being intimate, but all the same you are fourteen."

No I'm not, we're both a few years older than that. Not as though that needs to be public knowledge. Ginny shrugged. "Harry and I haven't gone quite that far yet, and we didn't even get as far as kissing last night before we were interrupted. Thank you for your concern, though."

Author's note: And I'm doing it again. Basically, I'm going to be skipping over Harry's interaction with Umbridge for the simple fact that it's been done by someone else a heck of a lot better than I ever could. Go read Sarah1281's "Run That By Me Again", specifically chapter 9 but the whole thing really. This particular update is really more to tide things over until I can get things moving properly – I've been sitting on the scene with Professor Florescue for about a year now. In the meantime, I am still working on Kingdom of Magic and a new project with the working title of Experiment Twelve. Hopefully the next update - which I'm planning to actually be the first part of Experiment Twelve - will be ready and uploaded sometime before Christmas.