Chapter 12: And all Hell Breaks Loose.
Harry woke, extra early in the morning. It was still dark when he called out to Moira for a cup of tea and fruit. He found it somewhat difficult to sleep past sunrise in a new bed and a new place. Moira pushed the boxed gift at him and he was delighted to see the marauder's map in its original glory. Moira passed on the message from James, a note on how to unlock and utilize it optimally. He saw that his friends were still sleeping. Then he wrapped the cloak and walked around.
The amazing thing was, the Cloak hid his presence even in the primary map as well as the Ravenclaw map. He wanted to offer the Ravenclaw map to the whole school but he would have to learn how to re-create it from the portraits of his parents, first. And as long as Dumbledore walked free, he would have to maintain the illusion of an untrained, muggle-raised young wizard. He noticed Luna and her room-mate now waiting in the commons.
Harry decided to get on with the day and poked Neville awake. They hurried through the morning rituals and then joined Luna. She introduced them to her roommate Li Soo Jin. The girl, a muggle-born, who had recently moved with her parents from South Korea to London, had been a practitioner of Karate and Tai Chi for nearly all of her life. She shook hands with the boys and offered that they could call her Soojin. It was the same girl who had been mistakenly been referred to as Su Li, even by the staff and other English students. Apparently, Li was her surname and it always came first when spoken, as a matter of cultural nuances.
The two boys admitted that they had met each other and Luna earlier than they let on, to the others in the magical world, and requested that she keep their close friendship and it's origins a secret. The three of them practised MMA and planned to go for the Black Belt in a year or two depending on their training sessions. The three of them combined Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu, kickboxing and Karate and they were at a purple belt level before they joined Hogwarts. Soo Jin was thrilled for the like-minded company at last.
The four stepped out of their common rooms and found an empty classroom two floors below that looked spacious and empty enough for the four of them to practice. The next hour and a half was a pleasant but vigorous workout and they soon set to cool down, very pleased with their morning work out. Soojin then taught them by practice a few simple moves in Tai Chi that seemed to help her centre her magic.
Harry, Neville and Luna attempted it and found it combined movement with foundations of Occlumency and Core Expansion techniques. They taught her that in turn and soon the four were all set on adding the new practice to their routine. It was too beneficial and powerful to ignore. Done for the day, they returned to their dorms to freshen up and meet up in the Great Hall for breakfast.
Seeing that his dorm mates were still sleeping, Harry showed Neville the cloak and the original version of the map and shared the pass-phrase to activate it. Neville understood that this was a really special family heirloom and he promised to keep it a secret. They checked their assigned time-table and packed their bags, Harry inserted the cloak and the Marauder's Map into his niffler-skin bag and secured that bag in a chain around his neck. They then re-charged and set their nobility rings to the invisible mode and set off.
Neville was extra excited to finally have his first class with Mistress Pomona Sprout, the foremost expert and celebrated Herbologist in the British Isles. He was already chatting in rapid tones about the greenhouses here on campus. Harry, however, didn't really want to be here at Hogwarts. He would have been ever so much happier at Castle Black, safely away from Dumbledore. He still remembered the choking sensations of the man's magic wrapping around him and the resulting years of pain and grief.
Knowing that it was an irrational fear and dismissing it were two completely different things, to Harry's mind. But Neville and Luna wanted to come to Hogwarts; Grandfather and Aunt Cassie wanted him to earn accolades for the Blacks, and Mum and Dad had such exciting and happy memories of this place. So he kept silent on his misgivings and projected a gladness he did not feel yet.
At the Hall, they sat with Luna and Soojin and soon were joined by Justin, Daphne, Tracy and Blaise. The Slytherin friends had discovered their table full of rich foods they did not feel like imbibing early in the morning. And Ravenclaw fare seemed lighter, less sugary and had more variety. It was convenience as much as the good company that tempted them in.
Slughorn, passing by on his way to the head table, awarded them all two points for inter-house unity on the first day, and beamed at Harry in passing. That seemed to stop Professor McGonagall in her tracks. Harry, Neville and Luna showed their copies of the Ravenclaw folder to Daphne, Tracy and Blaise, proudly declaring that it was Harry's mum who had created this. Daphne immediately marched off to the Head Table, dragging Harry and his folder along with her, to speak to Slughorn about getting copies of this for herself.
Professor Flitwick intervened and apologised to her saying that other houses had not been able to purchase more copies from Lily Potter before she died, and this was made using Potter Family Magics. Harry promised to try and figure out how it worked and make her a copy as soon as possible. And Flitwick offered to help, but Harry politely declined, saying he wished to keep the secrets behind the last of his mother's contributions to himself. It involved family magics, after all. Flitwick nodded, saying he understood only too well and wished him well.
Seeing Daphne's downtrodden look, Harry requested that he be allowed to share his folder with Daphne, and he could easily share with Neville. Flitwick considered the idea for a moment and then agreed, provided Daphne vowed to protect and safeguard the folder against theft or tampering at any costs. Flitwick explained the magic behind vows and how it would help her connect with the safety of the file and be aware of any disruptions to its magic at all times.
It was fascinating, the sentience behind the magic. When Harry said as much, everyone was startled; they hadn't really considered that magic itself could be sentient. In retrospect it was true; magic often read the individual intent and will of the casters and affected the outcomes. So there had to be a degree of sentience involved. Flitwick advised Daphne to keep that in mind when she spoke her vows.
Daphne eagerly agreed and they finalized the wording of the vow so that it would only alert her, and not harm her in any way as long as she did her best. And that is when Dumbledore got curious as to why Slughorn, Flitwick, Potter and Greengrass were deep in discussions on the morning of the very first day of class. He watched in alarm as the Slytherin girl took out her wand and swore a vow, the blue glow settling on her as she took a folder that Potter offered her.
He immediately came over, intending to discover and put a stop to whatever it was. Discovering that Lily Potter had gifted her mentor with such an incredible gift thirteen years ago, and no one had ever told him about it, really angered him. When he demanded to have a copy himself, Flitwick admitted that there were no more free copies left.
It was a very angry Dumbledore who stormed off before the newspaper owls arrived. Lucky him!
Harry shared Neville's newspaper, grimacing at a cartoon depiction of himself gracing the front page. But he would endure it because the cartoon Harry was blowing a wet raspberry at what was clearly a caricature of Dumbledore. The article announced his new status as a Ravenclaw, and his upbringing as a muggle, and how the hero of the wizarding world was unhappy about being forgotten. The reporter wondered why the hero did not receive their fan-mails or gifts. The article re-iterated Harry Potter's brief history as the world knew it and speculated if the child had not consented to Dumbledore's decision of not placing him with a respectable family.
Harry was startled because he hadn't considered the possibility of fan-mail at all. Students began to turn around and question him about the article but he frankly admitted that he hadn't given any interviews. But he also had no idea about any fans because the only magical letter he had received was his Hogwarts invitation letter. And that had been hand-delivered by Hagrid. Many looked shocked and outraged by that.
Harry then chuckled wryly, pointing out the article that his Aunt had found him left at the doorstep in a basket on the Halloween of 1981. Other than a vague idea of his date of birth, his Aunt herself had known nothing about him other than snippets of his mum's childhood. A one-year-old baby can't consent to sneeze, and living arrangements are a bit more complex than that, he quipped, bringing peals of laughter all around.
Then he stated that he had never been approached by anyone in any official capacity to ask for his consent or opinion regarding his living arrangements, until now. Nor had anyone asked him exactly what had actually transpired the night Voldemort came calling and murdered his parents.
Whispers rose in volume as the students dissected this new, previously unknown angle to the Harry Potter legend. Harry hid his smirk and whispered to Neville and Luna that they could expect Grandfather to drop by around Lunch Break. This would be an opportunity that probably wouldn't come again. All three of them mentally prepared to brush up their acting chops as they set off to the first class of the day, which was with Professor McGonagall.
Her first class was all theory and very elementary for the trio. She had made the first move impressive by demonstrating her animagus form, but then abruptly switched gears to lecture about the elementary theories and rules for transfigurations. Harry assumed it was geared for the uninitiated and the muggle-born and raised students, given the simplicity of the explanations and core points.
If that was the case, it was rather self-defeating, as there was no theoretical introduction to the concepts that most magically raised kids would have grown up learning instinctively. Simple things like the function of visualization, intent and will and its effects on the end results, the sentient nature of magic, how the magic of the wizard/ witch connects from the core, through the focus (usually a wand, staff or ring) and on to either conjuration or alteration of the existing state of the subject into an altered/transfigured/charmed form and function.
All the little nuggets that Grandfather, Auntie Dora and Uncle Xeno had taught him, the things that his mum and dad had explained in such detail.. it was all skipped entirely in their very first class. Other muggle-raised children, and even some magically raised kids looked rather lost. Harry wondered who would help all these kids.
For the untrained, or inadequately trained, even the elementary classes of the very first day seemed complex. But the trio had already trained past the primary lessons. So they simply doodled, in place of taking notes. By the end of the hour, they had to struggle to remain awake, though. This looked to be a problem they would need to address soon. Maybe Harry could persuade his friends to team up and write an introductory book for all magical students and publish it under a nom de plume? Right now, none of them wanted to attract the unwanted attentions of their school's administrative heads.
It was a worthwhile project he could see himself happily engaging in, while he moved through classes in utter boredom.
The second lesson was Defence against Dark Arts with Slytherins. And when they saw him in daylight, their DADA professor looked even older than parchment, if that was even possible. Dumbledore would be called sprightly and youthful, next to the man, even without the Merlin-Esque beard as the headmaster sported. The professor Glorumper was quiet, elderly and preferred to conduct the entire session sitting and resting his ancient bones.
And despite all that, apparently, he wasn't even half as old as Dumbledore, just tired from a heap-full more action in real battles. And everyone seemed to like him because he seemed to have somehow ended the curse of the DADA, by the virtue of having taught three years now, without having any sort of catastrophic accident or personal emergencies to make him quit. The senior students seemed to consider that an achievement, in and of itself.
But his lecture was indeed very intriguing and enlightening and peppered with anecdotes and fascinating narratives of his experiences as an Auror and his forty years in the force. He had joined the Auror corps at the tail end of the Global Wizarding War and had lived through the Blood Supremacy War as well. And real battles had taught far more than a certified training in school or Auror Academy. And he used these anecdotes of his experiences in the two wars, to teach.
Instead of teaching them spells, he focused his lecture on tactics and pointers to remember. The spells he would teach would begin at a minor power level and gradually increase in intensity. But he added that low powered spells, cleverly used to great effect would always trump over high powered spells in his class. Stamina trumped over a small spurt of high power-intensive defence strategies according to Glorumper. And his statements were always backed by his recall of actual instances when a random first-year jinx, hex, curse, charm or even elementary transfiguration had actually been useful defence tool.
All practical spells, he stressed were considered homework. He would demonstrate spells only once and then focus on lecture sessions. The students were expected to practice wand movements as homework and assignments, and demonstrate each spell at the end of their discussions on each chapter. He projected that he would cover one chapter per week and demonstrate one spell at the beginning of the chapter and expect a demonstration from each student at the end of the week.
Harry thought it a very clever way to learn defensive spells. The class, unlike the transfiguration lesson, had been fascinating to him, but many students found it boring and stagnant for the lack of practical demonstrations. But Neville, Luna and Harry were well versed in the practical side and very ready for the strategy training sessions, the DADA was turning out to be; the three loved it. The class ended on a satisfactory but sedentary note with a demonstration of the impediment jinx. And yawning and stretching students trooped out for lunch.
And the trio discovered as they trooped into the great hall, hungry enough to eat Hagrid, that Harry's prediction had indeed come true.