Chapter 6.2 Autumn 1996

"Professor Algar has fallen ill and is taking a sabbatical and the course in Duelling has been suspended while he is recovering. The course in Defence Against the Dark Arts has been reinstated, and will be taught by Professor Binns. It will be a core subject for the first two years, and an elective after that. The Ministry of Magic's Wizarding Examination Authority and the Hogwarts Board of Governors have agreed to start a new course in Health and Safety, which will be taught by Professor Lupin." This announcement was greeted with loud approval, that was shortly interrupted by Professor McGonagall, who continued her announcements. "The course will be one of the core courses for the first five years."

"I see that you've bought several polytunnels."
"Yes, thank you very much for that suggestion."
"Maybe one of the classes needs a project to find a charm, transfiguration or a rune sequence to make the plastic last longer."
"You don't think that the Reparo spell will work?"
"I don't know. The thing is, the UV will make it more brittle over time, so if you tear it, a Reparo might close the tear, but leave it as brittle as it was before, until even the wind will break it."
"UV?"
Harry was taken aback. Professor Sprout was a world famous herbologist. Surely, she knew about photosynthesis and the way plants used light of certain wavelengths? He was too polite to ask, not to mention that he only had the barest inkling of the relevant sciences, therefore, he limited himself to explaining about ultra-violet light.
Over the summer, he had thought about the financial budget of the school, and what might be achievable now that there was some extra money coming in. "Professor, I've been thinking about how you said the rents of Hogsmeade are the major income source for Hogwarts, and I was wondering whether a new elective or a club could be started to build a new house. It could be a teaching tool for many of the classes."
Professor Sprout looked thoughtful for a long moment and then reflected, "if it's a class, the Ministry might object that it would be child labour, but a club might work. Or possibly limiting the class to of age students. I will bring up your idea at the next teachers' assembly. I thank you for the suggestion."

Professor Tilley was the next person to catch Harry, "Mr Potter, I've heard you made several suggestions to improve Hogwarts, including more facilities to grow plants that can be used for potion ingredients. Would you have any suggestions for saving money on animal derived potion ingredients?"
"What animals did you have in mind?"
"When I asked Professor Hagrid, he mentioned the basilisk that killed some of the acromantula at your behest. Would you be willing to ask it to kill one once a year for the school?"
"I don't speak parseltongue anymore."
"It's possible to lose the ability?"
"Apparently, I wasn't born with the ability, but acquired it, and lost it, with my scar. Maybe you could hire a parselmouth?"
"I will look into it. Thank you. What exactly did you ask the basilisk to do?"

Harry explained about spelling glass containers, conjuring rats, and his instructions to the basilisk, including making sure it didn't kill Aragog and obtaining various useful parts from the acromantula before letting the basilisk eat the body. He also told the professor about Slytherin's instructions to the basilisk, and that a hired parselmouth should explain that the proceeds would go towards helping run Hogwarts.

Professor Tilley was very impressed to hear how much basilisk venom Harry had obtained with the acromantula parts. She thought that that alone would be worth more than the school's annual expenditure on potions ingredients, even after paying for a parselmouth to be hired from a country where they were viewed in a positive light and therefore publicly announced they had the ability.

The course in Health and Safety was very interesting. It still contained a large component of duelling, because in a society where everybody walked around with a wand that was both a tool and a weapon, self-defence was always going to be an important skill. However, the course also had lessons in first-aid healing, which were taught in guest lectures by Madam Pomfrey in the days after the full moon. It also included guest lectures from Tonks about the ways in which the Ministry helped keep citizens safe. These lectures took place at irregular intervals when Madam Pomfrey had patients after the full moon. It made for rather complicated contingency planning, because Tonks had her own duties as an auror, which meant she wasn't always available, but everybody involved agreed that testing the limits of the curse on the Defence Against the Dark Arts professorship was worth the effort.

Harry had decided not to attend the apparation lessons. He wouldn't be allowed to obtain a license until his birthday during the following summer, and he had already learned to apparate in his effort to stay one step ahead of any Death Eater threats, so skipping the lessons was just a few hours saved that he felt he could put to better use. Although he didn't have exams that year, he was still very busy. Not that he minded, he had grown up staying busy to avoid being put to work by his aunt or being chased by Dudley's gang, and in more recent years staying ahead in his had saved his life several times, not to mention that the average Ravenclaw student was more dedicated than students from the other houses.

His map of Britain was starting to get filled in with warded properties, and he had the elves spy on the large manors to find out which families lived where. Unfortunately, there were quite a few unused properties. Far too many relative to the Death Eater families of which all the members were in Azkaban. That meant his map would not be all that useful to try and find a horcrux in one of the empty properties, unless the flying horcrux detectors could be made not to trip the wards. The detectors with pages from the diary didn't have enough detection range, while the detector with the locket of Slytherin was too precious to risk ending up with the detector stuck inside the wards and Harry unable to retrieve it, so for the moment he abandoned that option.

Harry had asked around, and the day after Theodore Nott came of age, he asked him if he would agree to a vow of silence. Although Nott had continued to be a prefect who could be relied on to defuse tensions between Slytherins and students from the other houses, Harry was still rather surprised when he agreed to a vow. He said he would ask for a favour in return for a favour, to which Harry agreed, and said he would like Theodore to test the Nott home and Gringotts vault with a detector he had built, and that the vow would need to include a promise to tell the truth about the test result and to return the detector. Theodore knew that Harry had been going to every broom-making workshop of the previous four years, and asked for a custom-made broom. When Harry asked about the wood and core of Theodore's wand, he asked that the vow would include a vow of silence of that information, and that Harry would only use it to make the broom. Harry then explained that he could either have anti-jinxing enchantments, or a broom that could be shrunk, for which Theodore chose the latter. The former he could buy in any shop. The tests came back negative. Theodore was really impressed with the broom. Noticing this, Harry asked him if he could possibly arrange for a similar agreement with a Selwyn, which he agreed to try.

On their 52-week anniversary, Harry and Luna had gone on a date inside Hogwarts, but then, the next day Luna had broken up with Harry. Harry was disappointed, because they had had fun together. However, he didn't protest too much, because Luna had more or less announced this would happen before their first date, and he had to admit that some spark might be missing that they would have needed to make a long-term relationship last. By breaking things off while they were still getting along, at least they would save their friendship.

Harry hoped that their break-up would not result in a return of the bullying of Luna. Despite Harry's efforts to downplay how much he had done over the years, from only facilitating communications between the goblins and Madam Bones to get Sirius a trial, to pointing out the mismanagement of Hogwarts by Dumbledore, the majority still insisted on seeing Harry as the caricature who had single-handedly defeated a basilisk, and even as if the novels about his purported adventures before he even turned 11 were anything but fiction. Because of that majority view, the bullying of Luna had stopped when they started dating. And although the bullying in the hallways had decreased a lot since the start of the year after the teachers had started to assign more detentions to replace the point-loss that Professor Dumbledore had encouraged, Harry worried that bullying inside the Ravenclaw tower might not be caught so readily, since Luna had never been inclined to call her tormentors out for their behaviour. Harry resolved to keep an eye on the situation.