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Chapter 21: Student induction
Hermione was up bright an early. With the help of Tinky the youngest member of Hogwarts staff had moved her books into her new office. It seemed that she would be having a very busy day. Irma Price was also pottering round and the two bibliophiles shared a cup a tea while they reviewed the new library and resource centre layout. Hermione got to have a little bit of a nosey through the new areas and looked at some of the collections.
Irma was particularly proud of the new index catalogue system that they had in place, which could be accessed by magic and electronically. Apparently this was a joint project between Filius and the Weasley Twins. The electronic access could enable students who were external to the school to place facility bookings and requests for tomes. The number of books in the library had considerably increased and Irma was excited about the prospect of a couple of apprentices in conjunction with more dedicated trained house elves to manage the extended library. Yes they needed more Information Management specialists and Irma had enthusiastically jumped at the learning opportunities when the Muggle ICT was demonstrated to her.
Tinky reminded Hermione it was time for breakfast and escorted her into the Great Hall. On her way past the Gryffindor table she was able to say hello to some old friends like Neville. Apparently he had accepted the herbology apprenticeship with Pomona so he was redoing his NEWTs and starting his professional training. As an apprentice he was staying in the student house area. Seemingly he was not the only apprentice as others were found in other houses as well. Neville introduced the staff member to the new first years and there were quite a few who were shocked to find this famous girl to be so friendly and willing to talk to them. Hermione had not seen any sign of Ginny yet. Leaving the student table she made her way up to the top table area, as there was a ramp so she could move up onto the dais.
Filius greeted her and moved one of the chairs so she could join him for an early breakfast. They had a discussion over the hot breakfast about his work in the Library and he appreciated her opinion on the new catalogue system. Remus joined them at the table with Teddy and Hermione got to say hello to the little man. She sat there looking after Teddy while Remus tucked into his breakfast. Teddy was changing his hair colour again and it was causing a little stir amongst the students as they observed this wonderful ability.
Tonks came down a little later with Pomona and took Teddy off Hermione so she could have another cup of tea. The end of the table was having quite a lively conversation when Professor McGonagall rang a hand bell to get everyone's attention. Minerva proceed to outline the schedule for the weekend and ordered the first years to file out of the hall where they would be met by some of the alumni who were taking them for their medical screening in the Infirmary wing. At that point Hermione noticed that Hannah Abbott stood up and followed them out. Pomona explained that Hannah was a healing apprentice.
Once the first year throng had cleared from the Great Hall entrance way Professor McGonagall called for the second years to assemble in the entrance way. This was her cue to go into action. She headed down to the student gathering with Remus, Professor Sinistra and some familiar faces that included Draco, Pansy and Neville. After a nod to Minerva Remus called the group together and took the second years on their tour of the teaching facilities in the building before heading out to the external teaching areas. After seeing the new sports fields and greenhouse classrooms it was time to take the students into the Library.
This is where Hermione was going to take the lead the tour of the new facilities. She guided them through the new developments and she felt that she had answered most of the questions well for this group. This year group was a little strange as there were second years that were coming to the school for the first time and some old hands from the last year. The quirky year group was going to take the most work to ensure that they blended well together and that they were all caught up with the curriculum. There had been an intensive fundamentals block for August for the new second year recruits where they were sorted into their houses and basically had the first year taught in four weeks.
The first couple of weeks of teaching for this year group would be interesting and Hermione would definitely be seeing many for the extra tutorial sessions that they would need to keep up with the pace of teaching. The students did not know it at the moment but just before the Christmas break they were going to be taking the first year examinations to confirm that they had this material down pat. The examinations would be over lapping the start of the second year teaching but it was hoped that the students would be able to cope with this additional load with the provision of support.
When the second years were directed into an early lunch as they were going to be the next group through the infirmary Hermione stayed in the library to greet the next tour group the third years. By the time the witch had seen the fourth years through the library she was glad to have her lunch break. The fifth, sixth, and combined 7th years had all had an ICT session with the new American Professor Ken Thompson. Apparently there had been lots of activities and great high jinx with the combined group but they all felt that they had grasp the use of computers and some of the students were planning to contact their families to get their laptops send to school.
For those who did not have laptops already there were introduced to the Weasley Twins school procurement plan. This is where student families would be able to hire purchase laptops for their children at a reasonable rate but the school would get a percentage of the income. Ken Thompson was going to do the initial network management while he recruited a number of apprentices who would then be available for employment in the public or private sector of the magical world. Eventually the school would be able to recruit a qualified network technician to take the load off the Professor and to help in the management of the organizational information.
The afternoon session for Hermione consisted in doing the individual year tours of the Library for the upper grades who had been in the ICT suites in the morning. Listening to the gossip at lunch it appeared that there were a high number of students in the lower grades that would need monitoring over the next couple of weeks. Apparently the Headmaster, the new potions teacher and a potions elf crew were going to be very busy in the new potions laboratories.
The scheduled medical visits for the upper years had now been postponed to tomorrow morning, as it appeared that the infirmary had a high number of inpatients. There were a couple of cases where Professor Tonks had been called in as an Auror and it seemed the MLE had got some business out of the student population that morning. At least under the new Headmaster they were going to be more reactive to cases like Harry where the family abused the magical child.
Having Tonks on the Hogwarts campus meant that the school always had a semi official MLE presence and that was reassuring particularly for those on probation. There had been a fear of many of the probationary students that if there were reprisals on them for war incidences that they would be victimized. The friendship of the Slytherin Prince and Princess with Hermione Granger and therefore greater exposure to Tonks had led to trust amongst this suspicious group of students for this MLE officer.