Ether looked at the mass of owls from the other Ravenclaws. It seemed his attempts to bring Hogwarts out of the Dark Ages had gained him a rather large following. He also received a note from Flitwick (who had heard about the fact Hogwarts was in the lower tier of the magical schools) that he had looked up the facts and had been horrified to find that Ether wasn't joking.
The magical communities didn't just look down on Britain...they made a running gag about their graduates. Apparently being a Hogwarts graduate meant that you had extra fingers or toes, and didn't know what a computer was.
Flitwick wasn't pleased by the fact that having a Hogwarts education meant you could only get jobs in Britain, and those the lowest paying ones world-wide.
Naturally the half goblin teacher immediately brought this to the Board of Governors who were just as horrified at this news, and were now in the process of adding new classes. They also went over Dumbledore's records as Headmaster...to say they weren't pleased was an understatement.
His position as Headmaster was in serious danger. Since becoming Head of Hogwarts, several classes had been removed which had been on the curriculum for centuries. They had been running on a skeleton crew of teachers and classes available, and the results showed.
Was Ether happy about all the work he caused Dumbledore?
Yes, yes he was. After the old man attempted to sabotage his efforts to bring Hogwarts back up to standards, he felt the old goat deserved a few sleepless nights.
The very idea of getting a substandard education simply because some senile old man was being lazy and stubborn rankled him.
Dumbledore knocked back another batch of potion laced lemon drops. These had migraine relieving and calming draughts added.
Ever since that foreign brat let it out that Hogwarts wasn't considered one of the best schools available for magic around, he had to deal with the Board of Governors, several angry parents, and the Ministry.
The Board was actually taking notice in the school now, and forcing him to hire new teachers in order to bring Hogwarts back to its former glory as one of the best magical schools in the world. Several parents, when informed of the substandard teaching, had been so angry that they removed their children and sent them to other schools in order to be properly educated by international standards.
And the Ministry was still angry that because of him, they had to deal with being the laughing-stock of the international magical communities.
The teachers, at least, weren't at fault. One had to be fired with benefits (the Muggle Studies Professor) and Binns had to be let go as the History of Magic teacher after the Board of Governors learned students didn't even bother listening to him, but rather studied the book on their own time.
Trelawny was only spared from this round of the fact that the Department of Mysteries had a prediction she had made personally on record within the last ten years. However now she wasn't allowed to drink on the job and the amount of incense had to go down considerably.
Her classroom had to be aired five times just to get the overwhelming scent out.
If Dumbledore got his hands on the foreign brat, he would strangle him the moment the kid came within reach. He hated paperwork, and had mostly gotten rid of classes to lighten his load. Now it was going to be months before he could work out a system to get rid of the massive pile on his desk.
At least Snape had shut up about teaching the students under fifth year. Dumbledore had to hire an extra teacher to handle the fourth year and below after Snape went ahead and registered his own complaint about teaching the younger students and made a request for some help.
Now they had an extra potions teacher who was friendlier to children and would actually teach them how the ingredients reacted to the potion. The book she was assigning?
The same one Ether had digitized for the school and was now a widely used study aid for potions and the few pure bloods had ordered when informed of it.
The worst part was the fact that when informed of the PErsonal Terminals being a standard teaching device in schools around the world, Dumbledore lost his only chance to have them banned.
The fact Ether had gotten a working model up and running before his first year had ended only made it worse. Until they could get a newer one installed and a better internet connection created, Dumbledore was kept far from the devices.
All in all, he needed those migraine relievers and calming draughts desperately. It was the only reason he hadn't hexed his phoenix for trying to calm his nerves down with his song.
Though Dumbledore was rather annoyed that the sorting hat was laughing at his predicament.
Lan was bored. Ether was the only person who could challenge him anymore, and he was gone nine months out of twelve at that rather backwards school. While his brother had always been driven to advance his mind, Hogwarts was only now coming out of the Renaissance period.
When Ether offered to get him set up in the school and meet his friends, Lan had declined saying he wanted to hang around his some more. Frankly going to England didn't appeal to him that much, since the school barely had a working internet connection and he was the one Chaud called whenever Ether wasn't available to deal with trouble.
Which happened once every three months or so.
Maybe if Hogwarts wasn't regarded as the laughing-stock of the world he might consider joining his brother.
Ether looked at the new school list with interest. Apparently his little speech did more than he had anticipated.
Over half the old classrooms were being renovated and cleaned by the house elves, and several old classes were being brought back. The book list had filled out quite a bit, including books he had expected to find needed but never were. It was part of the reason he had pushed so hard to get those servers up and running.
Now it was starting to look like a proper magical school. At the very least he would have something to do while he dealt with the absolute nonsense that he would likely have to deal with because of the Lockhart fan.
The man was an absolutely disgrace, and it wasn't exactly a secret that he wiped the memories of the not so famous and took credit for them. Someone had once asked around about something he supposedly did and learned that the man hadn't even been there at the time.
There was a book that detailed his so-called exploits and corrected them.
Ether fully planned to bring it to school and skip the Lockhart books altogether.
Hermione's parents had gotten in contact with the Hikari family, so he had a place to stay while in England. Since he was supposed to go into Gringotts to check on the server and insure it was working properly (he promised a free inspection until he graduated from Hogwarts each year during the time he came in to get some cash to pay for the new books and the goblins had jumped on it) he was preparing to leave Japan for a few days. Inside his trunk was his revenge kit, prepacked since last time he never had a chance to use it.
If Dumbledore tried anything, he was going to find himself on the wrong end of Ether's favorite revenge prank on those with magical blood.
It looked like a huge black dog, often mistaken for a grim, and it generally made people paranoid as hell. It tended to howl like an Irish Black Dog on the moors, which made it even worse for the victim.
The look on people's faces when they saw it and heard the howl made him laugh. The fact he had a camera set to capture their expressions, more so. Though it had been a pain to get a recording of an actual Black Dog howling in the Irish moors.
"You have everything this time Ether?" asked his mother.
"Yes mom. Chaud won't be showing up asking for any of my kits this time around. Though to be fair, I wasn't anticipating a need to use the revenge kit at Hogwarts."
"As backwards as that place is, I'm amazed you want to go back," said his father.
"I owe it to my friends and those poor students at the school to finish what I've started. I'm the only person there qualified to fix their PETs, and the teachers barely know how to use theirs."
"Never leave a project unfinished. Like father, like son," said his mother.
"Well at least I can fully support this one. Your last project..." his father left hanging with humor.
Ether winced. His previous project was made out of boredom, and it tended to get him into trouble more often than not.
His last project was to make digitized versions of dragons in place of a firewall. While his father had originally approved of it, he didn't like the fact that Ether had accidentally given the dragons the one thing that was guaranteed to cause trouble.
He gave them a sense of boredom, just to see what would happen.
Ether still heard rumors of dragons on the net that caused absolute havoc to government sites. Thankfully he had made it impossible to trace back to him when they were isolated and taken apart. Too bad no one could completely remove the things because Ether had the core data and didn't want to come up with something to wipe out the dragons.
Mostly because if someone asked why he had that particular data he would be in a lot of trouble with quite a few people for creating them.
Chaud had nearly strangled him bare handed after a run in with one. Lan had laughed himself sick when he heard where they had come from...up until the point where Megaman ran into one during a mission and nearly got broiled alive.
Then Ether had an idea...he could always set them on Dumbledore if the man ever got his head out of his arse and got a PET. He knew Hagrid would love to play with them, since Ether had found a PET the man could operate vocally without mangling the device with his strength. The buttons were simply too small for his fingers, and to make them larger would be highly impractical.
Hermione was practically bouncing while waiting for Ether. He was taking a plane to England and her parents had agreed to pick him up.
The reason why she was so eager to see her best friend was simple enough. Because of his little speech that had been heard by quite a few people, Professor Flitwick included, there were even more classes for her to take. Several of which interested her more than the lack luster Arithimancy and Ancient Runes class.
She had little doubt that had the head of Ravenclaw not been informed of the fact that the school was considered one of the worst places to get a magical education, she would have been forced to take all the classes available just to feel challenged. How she could have accomplished that, she had no idea.
Finally she spotted a familiar goggle headed boy and waved her arm.
Ether saw her and went straight to the Grangers.
"Hermione! Konnichiwa! Daijobu deska?"
"Ether, either you speak the Queen's English now or I will have to hex you!" she growled.
"Gomen. However I thought you would enjoy learning Japanese seeing as how my father said he was interested in your rather impressive school resume."
"What?"
"Your parents kept going on and on about how intelligent you were that he had someone find out. He was very impressed, since the only other person who had that kind of record was, well me or Chaud."
Ether saw the fan girl glint in Hermione's eyes and did a quick calculation.
"So you like Chaud do you?"
Her father Dan chuckled.
"She's had a crush on him since he was ranked as one of the most intelligent boys and net battlers when he was eight."
"Bah, the only reason he got first was because I hate fan girls with a passion. I was never interviewed, since I was still in magical training for firsties."
"Um, Ether...do you think you could...?"
"I could introduce you...with a few requirements."
"Name them!"
"No fan girl tendencies. He hates them almost as much as I do. If I did introduce you, then try to keep an intelligent conversation going. I could possibly get your net battling experience up so you could hold your own for ten minutes with Protoman. Most fan girls barely last that long, which would really impress him. Don't become upset if he doesn't pay attention to you for longer than ten minutes at a time, he's rather busy policing the net. And whatever you do, never bring up the digital dragons that have been roaming the net for the past two years."
"You mean the ones that cause havoc after wandering around government and secure sites? Does Sci Lab have any idea where those things came from?" asked Hermione's mother Emma.
Ether coughed embarrassed.
"I plead the fifth."
"You're Japanese. You don't have the Fifth Amendment," said Hermione, looking at him suspiciously.
"Fine, I refuse to answer on the grounds that I would be incriminating myself for doing something rather foolish," he amended.
Hermione glared at him.
"You set the dragons loose."
"No! I never set them loose!" said Ether.
"Then why won't you talk about them?"
"I'm not saying."
"Ether..." Hermione said warningly.
Dan and Emma watched with open amusement as Hermione attempted to get Ether to spill about what he had to do with the digital dragons that were more of a nuisance than anything. The boy wisely kept his mouth shut and attempted to change the subject.
It wasn't until Ether found a way to get the girl to drop the subject that they actually laughed.
Hermione had bought the Lockhart set early and read them already. Ether handed her a book, told her it had been verified by several sources and was accredited by several accomplished magical people, and waited for her reaction.
The second she realized what she was holding in her hand, her jaw dropped and she nearly went ballistic on Ether.
He had given her the book that detailed the fact Lockhart was a third-rate fraud who stole the accomplishments of others. It even went on to explain what had actually happened, and how it was accomplished.
Hermione was devastated that her new books were in fact a pack of lies. Ether mollified her by saying he would get her an entirely different set and help her when he finally introduced her to Chaud.
Dan and Emma silently applauded the trick. He saved her from a lot of heartache in the future, and even made it so she could possibly meet someone she admired without making a fool of herself.
The fact he was possibly setting her up to get a boyfriend from Japan didn't bother them, so long as she was happy and he respected her.