There was an air of tenseness in the dueling hall as Harry explained the finer points of using the fire charm. He couldn't help but feel like a pyromaniac as he did so. And judging from the gleams in certain eyes he couldn't help but wonder if there were some real ones in the crowd as well. That Luna had that gleam as well scared him a bit.
Faintly worried he'd be indirectly responsible for an upcoming rash of fire related incidents he continued the lesson. "Alright. Now on the wall you can see the targets I made." he pointed to the crudely painted circles. Courtesy of the twins who were always up for vandalizing the school. He'd half expected the centers to be faces of certain teachers but the twins somehow managed to restrain themselves.
"I want…" he was cut off as the door flung open. Looking in with a triumphant sneer on her lips was Dolores Umbridge. "What do we have here? A large group of students using magic unattended." She shook her head as she walked into the room. "I do not know what magic you are attempting. But it is against the rules." Harry briefly wondered how she was missing his presence for her to be this confident.
"What rules?" A female voice said behind her "They are not using magic in the halls and they are hardly unattended." Professor Sprout said with a smile that did not reach her eyes. The relaxed professor who had been watching the meeting upon her house members request turned into a woman ready to unleash her ire upon Umbridge for her behavior.
Harry likened it in his bear as a mother bear who saw somebody interfering with her playful cubs and belatedly realised Mia was not the only person whose patience Umbridge had exhausted. And the Yule break clearly had done nothing to replenish the supplies of patience.
For a moment he thought himself mad that the kind herbology professor would be spoiling for a fight. The glint in her eyes were unmistakable and the crowd, still leaning fairly heavily towards Hufflepuff clearly had the same thoughts as he did if the poorly to mediocre attempts at subtlety aiming up their wands were to go by.
Umbridge clearly was oblivious to the danger. "I am sure you are a skilled witch, Professor Sprout. However as a ministry certified educator I am appalled you let the children use magic in such a reckless manner." "I have been giving these lessons for quite a while." Harry cut in. "And none of the students have had to visit the infirmary."
"Hem hem." The woman cleared her throat while looking shocked. "You let a student teach other students. He is…" ".. A campione." Cressida reminded Umbridge sharply. The woman faltered for a moment. It was clear she had forgotten just what that title meant. "Are you implying that my king is incapable of teaching?"
The trap was obvious and Umbridge replied in a forcefully calm tone. "Not at all. But is mister Potter aware of the ministry defined expectations of a student's capability." she tried to weasel herself behind the perceived safety of the bureaucracy. "And I am aware of what the department of Magical Education expects of students, Professor Umbridge." Professor Sprout inserted, spitting the title as if it was an unsavory object. "I have been a teacher for a while now after all."
The sarcasm was lost on Umbridge who narrowed her eyes. "That might be so. However I am the only ministry certified educator present." She repeated her point. "And it is quite… upsetting that a defense club has been made without my input."
"Your input was not required. I was merely the first choice." Sprout corrected the other professor with an unfriendly grin. "I believe Filius was the student's second choice. He is an accomplished dueler."
"Hmph. I disagree. I shall contact the relevant authorities." Umbridge declared and beat a sudden retreat. Professor Sprout put away her wand with clear disappointment. "Carry on." she told the class as she sat down. Most of the students goggled for a moment to see a professor sulk in the figurative corner. "Right." Harry called out to get the attention back to him. "Fred, George, if you could decorate the targets to provide extra motivation. I shall repeat what we were going to do."
The lesson continued, although Harry felt it necessary to note at the end of the lesson to not practice their newfound pyromania in a manner that could be traced back to him. "I am surprised that she came here to interfere." Susan said to Harry at the end of the session. Hannah beside her giggled out of the blue.
"Maybe she thinks you are making an army of Hufflepuffs to take over the ministry." she explained as everyone still present looked at her. Harry made a faux haughty sniff "If I want to conquer the ministry an army of Puff's. It is my right as a Campione to do so." Professor Sprout shook her head even as the smile gave away her amusement. "It would mean things would get finally done, house of Hard Work afterall." One of the puff's said proudly.
"Indeed. Not trying to think too cleverly or rushing off without a plan. Everyone is hard at work and not trying to backstab each other. Conquering the world afterwards will be easy." Harry agreed with a grin. "I have mixed feelings about your plans, Mister Potter." Professor Sprout interjected. "On one hand it is nice to see my Hufflepuff's involved in your plans. On the other hand, well 'World Domination'."
Most people laughed at the overacted way the Herbology professor seemed to weigh her choices. And they dispersed in high spirits.
"Can Badgers be rabid?" Harry mused out loud as surveyed the defence class room, or the smouldering remains of it. He knew the desks were fairly hardy to stand up to the abuse of inexperienced spellcasters, so that they were burning was impressive. "Also I am pretty sure these can be.. Well you know." he caught himself as Umbridge shrieked loudly at finding her classroom interior being turned to ashes. "I think they decided that there was an insult that had to be readdressed." Mia observed with a smirk.
Hermione meanwhile was looking aghast while Cressida pinched her nose in frustration. Umbridge saw him take in the carnage and started to stomp towards him. Halfway through she seemed to change her mind. "Campione Potter." she simpered. "Could I prevail upon you to find out who did this… dastardly deed? I would be most grateful and in your debt."
Cressida and Hermione clearly both had their own advice. "I will look into it, Professor Umbridge." Harry said in the most polite way he could muster. "I can assume the lesson is cancelled so the room can be set to rights?" The woman agreed and Harry left. He grinned the moment his back was turned.
"What did you plan out?" Hermione asked. "Well we have a list of suspects. During the next lessons I will most thoroughly chastise the person responsible. I am sure professor Sprout has her own words to add." Harry said with a sly grin. Three baffled looks greeted his words and Harry felt very Slytherin indeed.
"I am completely disappointed in you." Harry said to the group the moment the din had subsided. The defence group blinked confused and glanced at each other. "You blatantly used your newly learned magic to burn down the defence classroom. Either wait a couple of weeks or do something different, like using the levitation charm." Harry scolded.
"I am sure Professor Sprout has her own punishment for those responsible." He found it amusing he could spot at least one of the guilty badgers by the sudden outbreak of sweat. Professor Sprout looked confused for a moment. Then she had a visible 'Oh' before it transformed into a smile.
"Yes. I am quite disappointed that you blatantly vandalised and destroyed Hogwarts property. It took the Headmaster a full five minutes to put the room back to the rights." The professor said to the entire group. "As punishment. I will have you here every monday, wednesday and friday after dinner until I say otherwise." She nodded as if pleased "Yes. I know you are very sorry but the punishment stands. Now pay attention to mister Potter."
Harry grinned at the professor. "Thank you professor. I shall let professor Umbridge know that the students responsible have been caught and punished and that there is no future input needed from her." A few giggles and chuckles broke out as people realised that the vandals effectively got away with it.
"Now. We will work on the patronus charm first before moving on to another spell." Harry started his lecture on what the patronus charm could and could not do. Prongs made his appearance when it came to a demonstration. Harry considered it a success that most of the class managed to get a silvery cloud going at the end of it.
"Professor Umbridge." Harry greeted the woman after the end of the class. Which was as useless as expected as the woman herself struggled with the practical spell they had to read about. "Mister Potter?" "I have found the students responsible for the destruction of your classroom and handed them to their head of house for punishment." Harry said in an dead official tone as he could muster.
"Already?" Umbridge blurted out in surprise before a vindictive glee entered her eyes. "Who did it?" she demanded. "The head of house asked me to keep it silent. I had no problem acquiescing to his request." Harry felt slightly guilty for throwing professor Sprout into the firing line, but he was not going to try to come up with anything better. He was still afraid that the pink loving woman would think she was in his favor now somehow.
"I must go." Harry continued before Umbridge could form a way to push for an answer he did not want to give. "Have a nice day professor." He legged it out, grateful that Mia agreed to distract Hermione and Cressida before they could object to his plan.
Harry stared at the book without reading it. He had been doing so for the past thirty minutes. "What is bothering you Harry." Cressida decided to ask after it was clear the young man would not tell so of his own accord. "You know Hermione will be done with Arithmancy soon if that is the case." Mia stated with an eye roll before closing her eyes again to resume her nap.
"Things seem to be going to easily lately." Harry replied, sounding more thoughtful than really answering. "Umbridge backed off. The lessons are going well. Snape just sneers and I haven't gotten a peep out of Malfoy or his cronies. While Voldemort seems to be happy to be two steps behind us and poke his nosehole."
"It is entirely possible things are simply in your favor. You are a Campione." Cressida suggested. "Harry has a point. Things are most suspicious when it is too quiet." Mia argued with her eyes closed. "And silence around a Campione is usually a bad thing, Cressida. It means something worse is about to happen.'' She corrected her colleague.
Cressida was about to reply about superstitions and confirmation bias before she remembered an earlier incident and wiseley decided to keep that opinion to herself. "Well until something shows up we can stab. There is nothing we can do." Harry said after a moment of silence had fallen.
Despite what the students tended to think. Dolores Umbridge was far from an unintelligent woman. Unenlightened perhaps, but not stupid. She was also a proud woman and the blatant tell off she received from Harry sat poorly with her. She was smart enough to recognize her preferred options, like using the might of the ministry, was no longer an option or a viable option in the first place.
Still she swore she would get even with the boy for the slight. His status as Campione was merely another obstacle for her stewing revenge. She'd just have to plan a way to get back into the halls of power after Fudge had dragged everyone he could down with him.
A smile made it to her pudgy face. 'Yes. I will get you for this Potter.'
Draco Malfoy left out a sigh of relief. Doing something plebeian as repairing a magical artifact was below his station, but the Dark Lord commanded it to be done. He thought initially he could just walk to the cabinet, cast the reparo charm and be done with it. Only to find out the hard way that the charm does not work on heavily magical artifacts.
Nor did the other half a dozen 'easy' methods he tried afterwards. It had been a blow to his ego to find out that he would have to perform manual labour. This was soon replaced by fear of failure when he found out that he had no skill in the repair of magical objects.
Thus the reason for his sigh of relief was that he was finally making progress. Which hopefully would make his nights more restful again. In the back of his mind he acknowledged his OWLS would not be as good befitting the heir of the Malfoy family. But he waved it off that it wouldn't matter, considering he would be in the ruling hierarchy of the world Lord Voldemort would make.
'Mother worries for nothing.' Draco thought self-assuredly as he continued his labour. 'But I suppose that is what mothers do.' He winced slightly as another splinter found its way into his hand. With a mumble he pulled it out with a spell he had gotten far too much practice in lately.
Draco once again muttered complaints about doing manual labour and swore he'd somehow get Crabbe and Goyle inducted as well so that they could do this work.
"Calm down Hermione." Harry said with a sigh as his girlfriend seemed to be revisising everything. For a moment he considered following George and Fred's advice and shag it out of her. Words long lost their potency to make Hermione stop and actually think. "You should be studying." Hermione snapped in return. "You can't just coast through your studies as your job is already ensured."
"Well I suppose I did have a pretty strong recruitment pitch." Harry joked. The tiny smile he had fell down when he saw that it had fallen on deaf ears. "Hermione, you are going to burn yourself out like you did two years ago. Now drop the books or I am going to burn them." "You wouldn't dare." the girl growled and Harry wondered if she was going to go all mother dragon over her books.
Harry merely raised an eyebrow. With some mental effort he managed to get a candle light going above his wand without saying move it or saying an incantation. Hermione tried to glare him into submission but Harry did not give an inch. With a snap she closed her book. "Fine." she spat. "What are we going to do?"
"A walk around the lake where we are going to talk about what we are going to do this summer. Not a single word about school or the defence class we give. Then it is time for dinner and maybe, just maybe, afterwards we spend one hour going over our charms OWL." "But!" Hermione instantly objected to Harry's plan. Only to see he would not be moved.
She tried a second attempt at glaring him into being a good boy and start studying, only to be met with the same success as her first attempt. "Up you get or books start burning." Harry stated idly. The young woman complied, although her glare hardly let up despite it's failure. "You'll get wrinkles if you keep glowering like that." Harry offered as he took her head and started to drag the girl out of the room.
Hermione glare only slightly lightened.
Harry smirked slightly as Hermione snored against his shoulder. The weather was a bit brisk, but nothing a good warming charm could fix. It had only taken two reminders to get Hermione fully out of her studying frenzy. Without her brain locked on stuffing more information on it, the rest of the body finally got through a signal that it was exhausted. Halfway around their walk around the lake the girl had started to waver and soon fell into her current position when they sat down for a breather.
"You Hermione…" Harry said fondly with a smile. "Can be so hopeless." He tried to slowly settle into something comfortable without waking up Hermione. He then closed his eyes and simply enjoyed the peace when he felt a more petite head settle against his other side. "Hmm, this is quite comfortable." Luna's voice said.
"Hello Luna." Harry greeted the odd girl. Somehow her intrusion into his personal space didn't feel like it. For a moment he wondered if his 'possessive' magic had somehow managed to claim the girl. "The Ravenclaw tower must be filled to the brim with frantic students going over everything again."
"Actually most know how to pace themselves. You won't get good grades if your head is full of Wrackspurts." She looked at Harry who did a poor job of hiding just how surprised he was. "I know, I am surprised as well. It is downright sensible of them." Luna agreed at his surprise. "Right… I suppose you don't have anything that will scare away whatever is making Hermione's brain go fizzy?" Harry decided to go along with it.
"She is just being silly." Luna answered airly. "Maybe if you kiss her more often she'll pay more attention to you instead of books. "You make it sound like I am jealous of her books." Harry challenged in good humour. "Well she does love them very much." Luna agreed.
"You should keep a close eye on your map tonight." Luna suddenly said out of the blue. "And don't put things on your head you do not know about." Harry's stomach clenched and for a moment he wanted to do nothing more but to shake details out of Luna. The knowledge of the future was so tempting once more.
"I see." He tried to speak neutrally. "Do you want to stay over until I found what made you worried?" If she asked, Harry would admit there was a tiny bit of selfish desire to have her close in case she saw or heard more. "I'll be fine I think." the girl noted after a moment of silence. "You think?" Harry pressed with concern. "I think." Luna agreed happily.
Harry sighed. "If you are sure." a nod agreed with him so the Campione decided it was wiser to let it go. A companionable silence fell and Harry soon realised he had two snoring witches at his side. 'As long as neither of them starts drooling.' Harry thought with a hint of worry. He refreshed the warming charms and tried to get a feeling of the time. 'I'll wake them up soon for dinner.'