Henry first saw Dolores Umbridge ten years ago, at a formal party hosted at the Greengrass Manor. Henry knew back then that there was something suspicious about her, as his parents, mostly his mother, always looked a bit irritated when she came near them. He also remembered being distinctly wary of her whenever she looked at him with that patronizing gaze.
That wariness he felt before came back in full force when she stood up from her seat in the Great Hall to speak to the students.
Henry paid absolutely zero attention to her speech, quietly stood up from his spot on the table, and walked behind the Headmaster. Although the students noticed this, nobody on the staff table did.
Then he started grabbing candy from inside the Headmaster's beard.
Dumbledore stared warily at him before he realized what was going on, then he chuckled and grabbed some candy for himself.
"I, myself, am particularly fond of the Chocolate Frogs," whispered Dumbledore. Henry stared at the Frog in Dumbledore's hand in disbelief. Was it croaking?
"Personally I prefer the Pocky," Henry whispered back, waving a red box of the chocolate-covered sticks. "It reminds me of home."
"Ah, that's right, you came from Japan, did you not?" Dumbledore whispered. "It is a beautiful country."
"Bit weird, sometimes," muttered Henry, with a wink. "Or maybe that's just me. But yeah, I really love it there."
Because the students below started muttering and pointing at the two during their whispered discussion, the staff slowly turned to their esteemed Headmaster pulling candy out from inside his beard. Next to Henry, the Deputy Headmistress stared between the two with a twitch in her eye. Henry caught this and grabbed a handful of assorted-flavored drops from the beard, then stuck one in his mouth.
"Hey, Minerva, d'you want some?" he offered quietly, shaking his candy-filled fist in her general direction. She refused as politely as she could, under the circumstances. "How about you, Severus?" Said Professor sneered but remained silent, so Henry took this as agreement. He placed some on the table next to Professor Snape as he quietly walked back to his seat.
Henry actually didn't get to know his fellow co-workers all that well, but he was at least aware of them and knew their names, if only in passing. He figured it was mostly his fault, though, for not leaving his room until the Start-of-Term Feast. He did, however, take the liberty of calling them by their first names.
Throughout all this, Umbridge continued her speech, never once noticing the goings-on behind her.
"I think this has gone on long enough," announced Dumbledore once Umbridge appeared to stop, "but there is one more staff announcement to make. Please welcome the new professor for Applied Runes, Professor Henry Greengrass."
Polite clapping filled the Hall as Henry stood up to bow, but the majority of the people in the Hall groaned. Henry took a look at his sisters, who were rapidly trying to make themselves as scarce as possible in their seats, and ignored the urge to laugh at them. Instead, he grinned widely and mentally prepared his speech.
"Well, I know how to shut up, so unlike the person before me, I'll try to make this as fast as possible," Henry announced with a wink towards Umbridge, ignoring the rapid reddening of her face. Then he took a deep breath.
"The Study of Ancient Runes course is now the Applied Runes course and Professor Babbling is now the History of Magic teacher because Professor Binns tried to assault me the other day and it failed horribly and he's now exorcised but that's irrelevant to the fact that I'm your latest Runes teacher and Applied Runes is slightly different from the Ancient Runes course as the Ancient Runes course was a language study at best while Applied Runes has more applications in the real world and I'm also quite good at it although I've never actually taught it to schoolchildren but besides that I hope you all at least consider taking the course as I can assure you that it will be entirely worth it."
Henry stopped to take a few deep breaths. The students looked less irritated and more confused, which Henry took as a good sign.
"Also I'm a Squib and I hate you all," he finished with a grin and two thumbs up, then plopped down on his chair ungracefully and munched on a Pocky stick, ignoring all of the whispered comments erupting from the Hall. Dumbledore stared at him but Henry waved dismissively and so Dumbledore, after a few finishing comments, started the feast.
After taking a quick head check, Henry stood up from his desk and addressed his new class.
"Alright, hello, class, and welcome to the first ever class of Applied Runes in Hogwarts!" Henry watched all of his new class with a smile on his face. "Put your wands away and shut your gaping mouth-holes as I serenade your aural cavities all with information that will probably make your feeble little wizard-minds explode and almost certainly change your entire perception of magic."
"Why should we listen to you? You're just a nasty little Squib," one Slytherin boy muttered, glaring at the Professor as if Henry was responsible for kicking his puppy or something. Henry thought it was rather adorable.
"And it is exactly that attitude that makes me hate people like you!" Henry replied happily. "Thanks for volunteering for being the test subject for the week, I certainly appreciate it," he finished, winking at the boy.
"Now then," he continued, ignoring the boy's outraged reaction. "For those of you who don't know, I lived in Japan for five years, studying Oriental runic arrays and learning more about utilizing runes in a magical environment. I can tell you right now that Applied Runes are very important if any of you are interested in a job that takes you international; a lot of countries have very well-established 'rune societies', for lack of a better term, like the Russian Federation, the Nordic countries and, of course, Japan. These are people who spend their lives around runes, learning to shape and change their environment using only the ambient magic around them. I'm one of these people by association; my teacher while in Japan was a member of a prominent rune society and a master of using the environment, any environment, to his advantage. It didn't hurt that he was also a wizard, the advantage of which I'll get to in a moment.
"I call them 'rune societies', although a better term would be 'magic camp', despite that sounding a bit disparaging. While technically I'm a squib, I'm also considered a magician; that is, someone who is able to manipulate magic. The difference between a wizard and a magician, overseas at any rate, are that wizards can inherently generate their own magic, whereas magicians have to rely on ambient magic. Let's talk a bit about that.
"Since you're all wizards, you'll have an inherent advantage over me: the ability to use runes at any time, using your own generated magic. It's different for me, being non-magical. I have special devices," he pointed to his gloves, his arm sleeves, and his belt, "that hold magical charges so I can do the same, but they're a bit like Muggle batteries, in that they have a limit and they need to be recharged every so often. (No, keep your hands down, you don't need to know what Muggle batteries are.) Without them I'd have to rely on my physical strength, although I'm a pretty good hand-to-hand fighter, so don't try to take these things away from me or I will literally kick your butt. They're pretty much indestructible via magical means, though. The point is, I have to rely on all this stuff, whereas by the time you graduate you'll be able to do a bit of Applied Runes without relying on these things. There's also the bigger difference of you being able to perform spells with a wand, whereas I have to rely on runes. But that's a story and demonstration for another time.
"Now that my long-winded spiel is over, anybody have any questions?"
He repeated his speech verbatim for each and every one of his classes. A few of his students thought up interesting questions, but there were a bunch of people who glared at him distrustfully, muttering about the unfairness and/or uselessness of being taught by a Squib. Henry received a lot of 'volunteer test subjects' as a result.
Then, of course, there was his fifth-year class.
"What are you going to be teaching us, exactly? How long have you been studying this? Are you going to follow Professor Babbling's lesson plan? Is this going to help our OWLs and NEWTs? Have you even taken your NEWTs? I read in Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms that there were only a few kinds of runes, you know, and they had nothing about Oriental runes. How did you even get the job on such short notice? Why didn't the school inform us that our class was going to change? What will this mean for our grades?"
Henry listened to her rambling questions with one ear, idly wondering what kind of lungs the kid had to pull off a sentence like that without taking a breath. Then he realized that train of thought was rather hypocritical, so he decided to try to think of nothing. He didn't do so well.
When the girl finished speaking, Henry raised an eyebrow. "I'm assuming that, since you just rolled through your questions without waiting for me to respond, you didn't actually want any answers and just wanted to hear your own voice. That's fine, but please do that in your own time. Moving on."
When the girl moved to open her mouth, Henry added, "Also, that'll be five points from Gryffindor for wasting my time." She shut her mouth and glared at him. He smiled innocently back.
He heard sniggering in the corner of the room and spotted a familiar mop of blonde hair. "Is something funny, Ms. Greengrass?"
Daphne was going to respond with her usual snark, but then she looked at Henry's face. His eyes were cold, hard, and menacing, despite the obvious smile on his face. She gulped minutely, unnoticeable to anyone but Henry. "Um, nothing, sir."
The people around her started whispering, so Henry pointed out one of them. "You, with the black hair. What are you doing." It wasn't a question.
"'Um, nothing, sir,'" the girl replied snootily, obviously mocking his sister's answer. Henry raised his eyebrow.
"Five points from Slytherin." When the girl made to object, Henry interrupted her. "Did you know that I've already taken upwards of fifty points from Slytherin today? I'm completely willing to take more."
"You can't do that! You're nothing more than a Squib!"
Henry's arms twitched and his arm bands started to glow. "Is that so?" he said innocently, despite the obvious hardening of his eyes. "I suppose you're correct. Then again," he bent towards his desk and traced runes over the top. Fireworks started shooting from the top of the desk, exploding in a miasma of noise and flickering lights. The students recoiled in shock and surprise.
"Also," Henry continued innocently, as if his desk didn't just shoot fireworks from out of nowhere. "Thanks for volunteering to be the test subject for the next two weeks or so. I really appreciate it."
"That...that was just a trick! Squibs like you can't do magic!" one foolhardy girl said.
Henry stared at her, all amusement gone from his face. "Detention tonight, and twenty points from Ravenclaw." She immediately protested, of course, but Henry completely ignored her.
"The next time someone decides to foolishly insult my life's work," he said in a near-growl, "I will take more than points from them. I'm only letting you off this once, girl, because you were unaware of just how seriously I take my subject, but do it again and I will use all of my substantial power to fail you out of the course."
Amid gasps, Henry looked at all of the students in turn. "This class is more than a theoretical course designed to help you pass your OWLs and then allow you to completely forget about it afterwards. This class is the introduction to the origins of magic itself, and will allow you to gain a deeper understanding of magic. Your magic, and the magic of other beings, and magic in general. If you choose to let it. If you want to dismiss everything I say as useless, then you will fail this course. If you want to treat this course with mockery and scorn, then you will fail this course. If you are going to treat me with contempt because I'm 'nothing more than a Squib', you will fail this course.
"This class has the potential to change your life. It can be either the most important class in Hogwarts, or the most pointless, and it all depends on your attitude and your choices. Take it seriously, and you will be rewarded with more knowledge than you can currently imagine. Slack off and you will learn nothing. You will get a grade of nothing. You will be nothing."
Henry noticed that his students were now looking at him in awe and not a little bit of fear. "But, yeah, it's kind of just a trick." He grinned at the girl he gave detention to, who looked faintly vindicated but mostly terrified. "I'll talk about the trick to it later in the year. By the way, I changed my mind about the detention, but the point deduction stands."
"Will we learn to do that?" the question-firing girl from earlier asked, as she fired her hand up in the air. Henry grinned wider as he noticed that she only asked one question. Good, some people can learn.
"Probably not. It's a lot more difficult to apply runes to thin air, and that's way more advanced than what I'm supposed to be teaching. But I'm sure some of you can figure it out by the time you graduate." Then he tilted his head. "But, um, you don't have to raise your hand."
All in all, Henry thought it was a rather positive day. He was mildly thankful that his father gave him oration lessons every so often, but he was still irritated that they were necessary. On the plus side, I'm still the heir, so it wasn't utterly useless.
Striding to the Great Hall, he noticed a group of Slytherins walking towards him angrily, some of whom were chosen to be his volunteers, so he knelt down and pulled a stack of parchment out of his pocket. As they stopped in front of him, as if making a human wall, Henry activated the pre-selected runes on the parchment. Steam flowed out of the stack, turning it into a cloud; Henry jumped on the cloud and it flew towards the Great Hall, faster than he expected. He idly heard more gasps of outrage or anger or something but focused on steering the damn thing.
Upon his arrival at the Great Hall, he hovered above his seat for a few seconds, then released the cloud. Parchment fluttered harmlessly onto the desk as he landed haphazardly onto his seat.
"I, uh, I didn't do it," he said dazedly as he straightened himself out, noticing that everyone was staring at him. "That was, um, yes. Experiment. Yes," he coughed, shifting in embarrassment. He cleared his throat. "Cheers," he tipped his cup to Dumbledore, then drank his water.
"What in the world...?" asked Professor McGonagall, wide-eyed. Henry continued drinking and pretending to be oblivious to the comments of the other professors.
"That was certainly...interesting," remarked Dumbledore. Henry placed his glass down.
"Interesting. Yes." Henry looked shifty. "Not the word I'd use, but...interesting. Yes."
"How in the world did you do that?" Dumbledore asked, looking intrigued and not in the least bit concerned. "That must have been done by rune work, but that seems more advanced than even I could do."
"Well," Henry pulled out parchment. "I wanted to test if it was possible to stack multiple runes onto something as thick as parchment and have them interact properly. To make a long story short, yes I can." He shrugged and stared at the surprised smattering of students. "And you can do this too if you study Applied Runes for a few years!" He laughed. "Haha, shameless self-promotion. Join my class."
And the weeks flew by.