First class with Umbridge, and I already can barely stop myself from trying to murder the racist bint.

This time, I'm in History, when I'd much rather be asleep. With Dumbledore's message still echoing through my head, I'm not risking anything. I think it's about twenty minutes into the lecture right now, but with no clocks or ways of keeping track of time, it's extremely difficult to gauge it.

Of course, you know that the Ministry has got him by the balls, when Dumbledore is forced to put Umbridge's class first thing in the morning. I mean, it must just line up that way for us, but I wouldn't put it past the shrew to make sure that her face is the first thing students see.

Looks-wise, I prefer the basilisk. At least the basilisk kept itself in the dark, where it belonged.

To be honest, I might actually even prefer the ghost to her.

At least the ghost's voice is sorta soothing. Puts you to sleep, instead of filling you with murderous rage.

Ginny's beside me, and is still gritting her teeth in frustration. She apparently spent the first (mostly introductory) class flipping through the textbook, looking for something, anything that might be of value.

She had no luck.

The damn textbook's a joke. It's got some of the incantations for the spells, but they're only written, with no pronunciation guide. In other words, absolutely worthless for anyone who doesn't already know the spells. Add in the fact that the rest of the book is either random, unrelated snippets about past ministers and notable Dark Creature Hunters and their pasts, and I believe that this useless wad of butchered tree is actually worth less than the raw ingredients used to create it.

Let me open mine to a random page and copy down an example of what we're

dealing with here. I can't make this shit up.

Okay, ew.

Turns out, these textbooks must've been laying around for so long, that the spiders got into them. I found a nice, ripe spider nest in between the pages of my textbook, which I promptly removed with a wand flick, lit aflame, and hurled into a random direction. There was a small gasp from the rest of the students, but let's be honest here, any action in here is good action.

The ghost, of course, didn't even react to the flaming wad of web and dying spiders. I didn't really expect him to.

Ginny's brother is terrified of spiders, right? Might want to tell him to go through his book and make sure that it doesn't contain any surprises-in-waiting. I don't know when spiders usually hatch, but if they're going to do so, it'll probably be before the frost sets in.

Right, so here's pretty much the entry on the Stunning Spell. I'm not writing the whole damn thing down, it's a page and a half long. I have my own comments in

The Stunning Spell

Stupefy

Dangerous spell

This red spell was invented by (blah blah blah) in the year (blah blah blah) for (blah blah blah).

Knocks a victim unconscious. Counter is Ennervate.

Known users of this spell (blah blah blah).

And all of the spells are like that. One sentence description for what the spell actually does, and at least three paragraphs of worthless information no one cares about.

Even better, the book isn't even accurate. Not only is the counterspell wrong (a year and a bit ago, they apparently discovered that 'Rennervate' is more magically efficient than 'Ennervate'), but they have it described as dangerous!

As far as spells go, the stunner is pretty much the lowest threat you can have a spell be: it does the same thing, every time.

And the stupid doesn't stop there: In between each spell is something like four or five rambling stories of the author's experiences using magic, or obviously-filtered stories of some other random schlub which was put in to pad the textbook. The entire time, the book tries and fails to keep the audience's attention, by talking about people who no one gave a damn about in the first place.

And that's before the random idioms creep in. Seriously, I understand a slogan for each and every spell…

Like if you had brain damage and remembered your spell rotation solely through the power of song…

But please...

Please try and be creative when you're butchering the English Language.

Honestly, if you removed the crap

Well, besides the obvious result of holding an empty, blank book, which is probably what would happen

You could drop over nine-tenths of the book's content and it'd pass on just as much information as it does now.

So yes, as Ginny flipped through more and more pages, getting progressively more and more angry, Umbridge flitted around the classroom like a bad smell, alternatively complimenting high-class Purebloods and giving backhanded, thinly-veiled pseudo-insults to everyone else.

Speaking of smell: I got a good look at her magical potential. Turns out, Umbridge has less magic in her than a three-year-old muggle Christmas fruitcake. This bloody wretch isn't supposed to be here. Not in this school, not in this world, and definitely not in that classroom.

Let me tell you, despite that she is worthless as a spellcaster, despite that she is a horrible human being, and even despite the horribly things she'll likely try to do to me, should she discover me, I never had reached the sheer amount of hatred that I reached when she opened her mouth to attempt to bribe me.

"My dear, it is truly horrible that the little Half-Bloods and Sub-Wizards are dragging the name of your family down through the mud with their horrific gossip, isn't it?" whispered the overweight bint, as she leaned in close.

Yes, she actually said that. I don't know if anyone else heard her, but I don't think that I'm the only person she tried that approach with.

So, rather than flat-out murder her (which was very, very tempting), or denying that I felt that way (because that'd paint a target on my back I can't risk), I could only smile and state that my house would handle the rumors on our own terms.

So yes. The bint that'll probably try to kill me before the year is up, is doing her very best to use me to raise her own status.

All the while she assumes I'll help her, because I got immediately pegged as a racist, stupid, supremacist piece of shit. All because my family is using a big name, rather than my other name, which would call up all sorts of other problems.

The other option, of course, is that she thinks she can use me to get to Potter, because it's not known yet that Potter's still supporting Dumbledore. After all, he had all-but-denounced the Headmaster in public last year. If that's the case, then why ask me? Why not ask Ginny?

Right. Ginny's family is apparently not a 'big name' house, and therefore not worth approaching.

Yes. The two options are either she's trying to use me for power, or she's trying to use me to get at my friends.

I hate that worthless wretch.

Ginny looked up at me when I nearly snapped a quill in my frustration. I had to mouth back 'later' under my breath.

I'm going to end up burning something a lot more solid than a spider nest if I keep writing about her. I think I might be getting a little bit obsessed.

So, besides the bint-who-should-not-be-mentioned, the rest of my classes today weren't terrible!

Potions started up as usual: Snape goes through my pack, finds the new stuff (Blood Restoring potions, Lungfish potion), and a few bottles of something I accidentally brewed up over the summer.

Needless to say, the Professor recognised a homebrewed concoction, and 'confiscated' a bottle of the mix, before moving onto the next person. Here's to hoping he'll tell me whether or not it's a known potion before the week's up, plus it'd be nice to have an opinion about whether or not it's any good.

I'm actually quite proud of what I ended up making: I was brewing based on the 'properties' paradigm: each ingredient has a bunch of 'properties'. For instance, hydra bile, something of which I used a ton of, has the properties 'Healing', 'Poison', and 'Regrowth'. Other ingredients have 'counter-properties', which weaken the effects of an active property.

Needless to say, mixing together troll marrow, hydra bile, and a bit of my mother's blood, along with a few macerated cockroaches and a whole bezoar, I was able to whip something up that works wonders at mending average-to-serious wounds, but tastes like death and is still relatively poisonous. Oh, and it apparently goes down like a dozen chilies and numbs the entire face for a half-hour, if my father's statement is true. I only feel the numbing, and even then, only for ten minutes.

Of course, it took a couple dozen tries, and two near-meltings of my cauldron before I was happy with the results. And even then, I depleted two whole batches making sure the damn thing wasn't going to kill anyone.

Things'd have to be pretty bad for me to ever consider using it, but if we ever run into another 'Fleur bleeding out' scenario, I'd rather take the 'minorly poisoned, and with no feeling in face, but stable' over 'bleed out and die'.

Anyway, we sat ourselves down, and whipped up a Calming Draught, as described on the board.

Ginny struggled a bit, as usual, but I managed to help her muddle her way through to an acceptable potion. It wasn't expert-quality, but in a pinch, it'd do.

'Course, I remembered to bottle mine, and stow it away for later. Never know when you'll need Calming Draught.

Actually, one of these days, I'll need to figure out how to concentrate it, or put a poison in it or something that'll let it work on me. I swear, some days I really could use it.

Right. Potions was good.

Anyway,

Up in our dorms now. Ginny's already asleep, but I'm not tired. Probably going to stay up for another hour or so.

So.

Ancient Runes continues to be really backwards. Unlike potions, we did a refresher rather than jumping right back in, meaning that we really accomplished nothing, all first class.

This of course meant that I spent a majority of the class staring at the board. I mean, I like the class, I like the teacher, but seriously, I'm hoping we get back into it soonish.

We only ended up drafting a few small arrays, mostly to get back into the spin of things. We're mostly using Nordic runes, but I am occasionally twisting in an Infernal or Deep rune instead, which always leads to fun effects. Luckily, everyone seems to be used to it now, so it's not like it's surprising anyone.

Ancient magic continues to be something that's both more, and less advanced than usual charms. We're digging through Latin and Greek spellbooks now, which are less censored than the Egyptian tomes we were shown earlier. I don't know if it's because they want students to believe that the more recent books are more useful, and therefore more valuable, but I honestly still am interested in the rather brutal curses in the old Egyptian tomes.

The textbook is at least nine-tenths intact, rather than the thirty-something percent censored Egyptian book we were given.

Herbology is now actually interesting, with a few rather dangerous plants with strange effects coming up. There was this shrub that continuously bled corrosive black sap, which apparently is useful in certain types of poisons.

I'm not sure whether I'll start collecting ingredients as I go, at least not yet.

Astronomy is

Well, that's a bit embarrassing.

I passed out with my diary open, face in between the pages.

Good thing I don't drool, I guess, otherwise I'd need to rewrite the entire last few pages.

I swear, with History no longer to be slept through, I'm more tired than I've been for years. It's sort of just an absolute mess here, since there's so little time to stop in between everything I'm doing.

Never know what you have till it's gone, I guess.

Astronomy continues to suck. I don't quite remember the last class, but I know I've never liked it.

Charms…

We learned a small charm, that when applied to a wand, displays the last cast spell from said wand.

I mean, it only picked up me using a Burning Charm to kill a spider, but I'm actually pretty curious about what'll show if it picks up one of my spells. Would someone be able to learn one of them, if they did so?

Transfiguration is going to be interesting, much more so than the last few years.

We're finally doing nonliving-to-living, which means we can start getting into 'summoning'. I can't say I'm looking forward to the difficulty that's in store, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

I mean, we don't start that till winter, at the very least.

That was Granger, knocking on our door.

This Saturday, we need to go to 'the place' to do 'the thing'.

I swear, one of us is going to need to teach her how to lie correctly.

Still, I'm looking quite forward to it, much more than the 'actual' DADA class.

Only two more days until then...