The Greatest Weapon, Chapter 4
The next few weeks were interesting, to say the least. Harry didn't even need to keep feeding Rita articles; she was happily digging up dirt on former Death Eaters, with ministry approval, and without Lucius Malfoy pulling his strings, Fudge was quite happy to uphold actual justice. That might also have been because Amelia Bones was holding the threat of a no-confidence vote over his head every time he started considering going back to his old tricks. Death Eater after Death Eater was discovered in ministry employ and arrested, by the simple method of requiring a check of the left arm- after dispelling any glamours, of course. All in all, ministry corruption was at its all time low, and most of the Death Eater children in Slytherin and Ravenclaw had completely subsided, keeping a low profile.
Here and there, knots of speculating Slytherins and gossiping Gryffindors wandered the halls or gathered in the lunch room, and even Snape's patented death glare no. 7, the one that said you would be potion ingredients if you didn't shut up, had reduced effect. But then, considering Snape was a known Death Eater, his authority in general was having reduced effect, as most of the students expected him to be sacked before long. Harry himself thought that was too optimistic a view.
It is to be noted that to his friends, at least, Harry had very little to say concerning the changes sweeping Britain. Not that he didn't have an opinion, of course, but he didn't exactly trust anyone, even his friends, not to accidentally break his confidence. Besides, he'd never shown the slightest interest in politics before, and now was not the best time to start. For one thing, questions might be raised, questions he could not answer, did not have any interest in answering. For another thing, he didn't want to seem too competent; people might make a connection between him and the anonymous source who was so helpful to Rita. That would not be good at all.
So instead he took advantage of the overturn of his Quiddich ban to throw himself into practices, always the first on the pitch and the last off of it, making sure to be seen playing the Golden Gryffindor and chattering and messing about with his friends, so that if anyone even thought of making a connection between him and the mysterious articles, he would always have an alibi.
At night, however, he crept into the library under his invisibility cloak to research, or, his bed curtains carefully plastered with silencing and obscuring charms, sat up long hours by wandlight, scrawling sheets after sheets of notes and drafts. It was time Hogwarts had a spring cleaning.
Two weeks after his last article, when the Prophet finally stopped being interested in printing articles about ministry corruption, the fickle public's interest having mostly subsided, distracted by the latest pureblood scandals, a fresh new article appeared, one which actually made Dumbledore's famous twinkle disappear. It didn't help that the howlers actually began to arrive before the newspapers.
"ALBUS PERCIVAL WULFRIC BRIAN DUMBLEDORE!" Molly Weasley's voice roared at a pitch usually reserved for chewing out the twins. "YOU BETTER HAVE A BLOODY GOOD EXPLANATION! DEATH EATERS? BASILISKS? WEREWOLVES? ACROMANTULA? WHAT HAPPENED TO "THE SAFEST PLACE IN BRITAIN"? SO HELP ME MERLIN I'M GOING TO PULL RONALD AND GINNY OUT OF HOGWARTS UNLESS YOU GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!" At this point, the letter burst into flames. Ron's face was crimson.
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!" screamed an entirely different voice. "HOW MUCH MORE ARE YOU NOT TELLING US! WHEN I WENT TO HOGWARTS, IF DIPPET HAD PULLED HALF THE DRAGON CRAP YOU'VE BEEN GETTING BURIED UNDER THE RUG, THE MINISTRY WOULD HAVE HAD HIM IN AZKABAN! "
"I'M PULLING MY SU OUT OF HOGWARTS IF YOU DON'T STEP DOWN!" roared a third. "I SENT MY GIRL HERE TO LEARN, NOT TO BE HURT! IF THIS IS THE 'SAFEST PLACE IN BRITAIN', I'M SENDING HER TO DURMSTRANG! DARK ARTS IS BETTER THAN A NICE BED IN ST. MUNGO'S!
More and more howlers began to appear, some deluging the various faculty members, while most others headed for the headmaster, until at last all the staff and the headmaster together cast a "maxima tace", silencing them, although still more kept dropping and bursting into flames. The students were amazed.
"What on earth happened?" Dean asked in bewilderment. "Don't they always tell the parents? Why hasn't this happened before?"
"It might be," returned Hermione grimly, "because of this." And she held up the copy of the Daily Prophet she'd just received.
Hogwarts School Unveiled! screamed the headlines
Despite what is often believed, going to Hogwarts is no safer than staying home and taking your OWL's at the ministry, and in some classes, the quality is no better, either. While some classes (Herbology, Arithmancy, and Charms) are indeed quite good, there are other classes that aren't so much.
Muggle studies is a joke- it's not even taught by a muggleborn!- and DADA is notorious for both the bad quality of its classes and of its professors. In the last five years alone there has been only two good professors, one being a werewolf and one being Barty Crouch Jr, a Death Eater, under polyjuice. The others were a possessed former muggle studies teacher, a fraud and pedophile who knocked up the seventh years and then obliviated them (and not just the females, either), and a sadistic ministry-planted birch who tortured the students. A fabulous track record!
Divination is nothing more than a easy O, with the professor always on sherry and the textbook too convoluted to read.
And then there's potions. Professor Snape is a potions genius, the only potion master in history to get his mastery at twenty-five, but he's not the best teacher, simply because he doesn't have patience for the slower students, and is prejudiced against Gryffindors.
Runes, Transfiguration, and Astronomy are some of the best classes in Britain, but the teachers are astonishingly biased against one particular house, namely, Slytherin. In fact, this prejudice is almost school wide, and Slytherins are commonly expelled for doing things that would get your average Gryffindor a slap on the wrist and a week of detention, despite the fact that it is usually the Gryffindors (and a large number of Ravenclaw girls) who bully the other houses, and it is the Gryffindors again who do most of the rulebreaking.
Even disregarding the academic problems, there are actual genuine safety issues at Hogwarts. So much for being the safest place in Britain! From hiding the philosopher's stone in a third floor corridor, without so much as an age line or a specialized lock, only a XXXXX Dark creature and traps that three firsties managed to get through with ease (a decision which ended with two first years in the hospital wing, a dead professor, and a destroyed philosopher's stone) to the Triwizard tournament, which statistically kills eighty-four of it's participants, the trophy almost always awarded posthumously, Hogwarts is full of dangers. When you consider also the petricications of students three years ago, the acromantula nest in the Dark Forest which more than one student has come afoul of, the whomping willow on school grounds (without protection wards), the troll that got into Hogwarts in 1991 and nearly killed a first year girl, the mysterious dehabilitation of the famous fraud Gilderoy Lockhart, the basilisk rumored to have been released in 1992, (which petrified four students and a cat before finally allegedly being killed by Harry Potter, who, while not available for direct comment, was heard to remark that if it wasn't for phœnix tears, he'd be dead) although Dumbledore has never actually released a statement about the veracity of this rumor, the dementors stationed around Hogwarts in 1993, and Sirius Black's break in, as well as the debacle about four Triwizard champions and the rumor of Voldemort, as well as the fact that the wards should have prevented about 75% of this from happening, even the most negligent of parents should be worried.
Not only this, but Dumbledore has never actually made his students aware of these dangers, nor has he informed the parents. What else is he hiding?
Harry did his best not to grin like a maniac. That is, until Hermione frowned and set down her paper. "Something's fishy here."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked, trying not to sound that concerned.
"These don't sound like Rita's writing; you've read her stuff. And since when has she ever written the truth?"
"Since when would Rita let anyone else write under her name?" Harry shot back.
"She might let them if they threatened her or blackmailed her, and God knows there's enough blackmail to work with. Or maybe she thought the headlines would make her look good." Damn, he should have known Hermione would figure it out. "Ron, what do you think?" Hermione continued.
"Sme cudda beph plegerifing uf somphin," commented Ron, who had just taken a bite of scone. "I mean, she could've been plagiarizing someone else's work,"
"You'd think the Prophet would notice that..."
"Since when?"
Hermione looked like she was almost convinced...and then Neville made a quiet comment.
"Rita would never actually write 'V-Vol-Voldemort'." He said, staring at the table.
Damn. Judging by the looks of the staff, Neville was not the only one who'd noticed it either. It was only a matter of time before he was busted.