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Chapter 27: Almost Christmas
To think that some twelve weeks ago Hermione had no NEWTs, a new job and a new life. She had worked her tail off and the students had certainly got used to her heads down arm pumping scooting down of corridors when she was in a hurry. Bugger sometimes using the chair had such an advantage.
The magical world had certainly changed in the last 12 weeks. The magical AOL called MAZE had been created and seemed to be generating a considerable amount of income for the school and its development investors. Magical Access Zapello Enterprise the name certainly reflected the eclectic mix of investors and their diverse backgrounds.
Hermione had been each fortnight to her physiotherapy appointments at the QEH seeing the old gang and meeting new faces who were introduced to the Firecracker as a ward legend. As soon as Tonks was confirmed to having another Lupin on the way she had to find another a physical therapy partner and there seemed to be a willing group of Slytherin 8th years who lined up to help her with her practice and exercise sessions. Tonks still supervised and Hermione had noticed that she constantly had a watcher from the House of Snakes whenever she was in the student population. Tinky and Hermione had found that Kreacher often joined them when Harry was off at training. Winky seemed to join Teddy to keep him company. Harry better watch out cause the little elfess wanted a baby to care for and she could and probably would do all she could to ensure that was the case.
The evening class program had started and many of the day scholars were taking additional subjects for both education and recreational reasons. The staff had got into the development program and the number of laptops found in the school had more than trebled in the first couple of weeks. The school was almost at saturation point laptop wise. Some of the 8th year students were now running IT classes in the new Adult Education Centre located in Hogsmeade on several weeknights and all day on Saturday. The fad for the Internet and MAZE had spread into the adult magical population. Those who from their own family interaction had knowledge of technology jumped to participate and get their accounts charmed. Thanks to Ken Thompson's association with Google and other internet business connections MAZE was able to do deals where the users accounts were charmed so that only those who were magical users could see the magical components of individual users posts on Twitter, Facebook and other sites they registered with. MAZE was employing a lot of squibs and it was improving the interaction between this group and the world that had previously excluded them. Muggle partners of magicals who had key skills such as network administration where also sourced to help in the management of MAZE's technology.
There was three weeks to Christmas and Hermione had organized Christmas at Grimmauld Place with Harry, Kreacher, Winky and Tinky. There was no way now that Tinky was not going to join in the Potter Lupin Granger household celebration. It was strange that her parents were not going to be there but she would get through this time as she had friends and a new life she was enjoying. Harry had become so frequent a visitor in her apartment that he had clothes there in the second room and she actually thought of it as Harry's room.
Ron was being Ron off doing what ever with fan girls and quidditch. Ginny had been verbally bitching about her but her little warning had seemed to hold the twit off but it did not mean that Hermione did not look out for her. Yes she would keep her guard up for the next skirmish of the on going border conflict that was her post Battle of Hogwarts relationship with the witch.
It had been fun watching Harry and Luna start a relationship. They didn't know they were but you could see that he was falling head over heels for the unique girl and she was doing the same for the boy called Harry. Yes Luna loved him for what he was, not what everyone said he was.
There was no invite for either Harry or herself for the Burrow so they were doing Xmas for themselves. There were holding an Orphans Christmas House Party with a couple of ring ins thrown in. They had invited some of their workplace colleagues to stay along with some of the old and new friends that they had made since the last battle. It would be interesting as they were going to have a full house and this time they were not bunking down under the pressure cooker of war.
The student population had gotten used to seeing other students wearing tinted lenses and students like Greg Goyle had started to feel the sense of achievement and success that many of their peers had felt before while they had not. The new Study Skills team had increased to four tutors. Thanks to Poppy's links in mediwitch world they had hooked up with an Educational Psychologist who knew about magic due to his brother being a wizard healer.
From this link Hermione had met others who had the professional qualifications and training she would need if she wanted to continue working in the field. She had gone to several Dyslexia Action Training days and now knew what she wanted to do as a professional career when she completed her NEWTs. There was only one more NEWT examination for her to complete and she was going to sit her Potions exam on the 15th of December. Three weeks before she was finished and she had achieved so much.
Harry had been doing an exam a month while she sort of did one a fortnight on average. There were some exams that the intelligent witch did just to say she had the qualification like the old Muggle Studies. Neither Harry nor Hermione really had to study for that one it was one of those since we are here we might as well do it. Harry had knocked off his DDA and History of Magic exams and he was joining Hermione in the exam room on the 15th for his Transfiguration exam. She had done the Transfiguration exam the first weekend of November and apparently according to Minerva she had a very good mark. Hermione had requested that she was not given her grades until she had completed all the exams as she did not want to get over confident or disheartened by her results. If Hermione did not have time to think about it she could keep working her way through the rest of the materials.
Harry had survived the three-month training program of the Auror Corps and she had to find a dress for his graduation next week so it meant this Saturday she was going dress shopping with Tonks and Luna. Since it was an official reception at the Ministry of Magic she was most certainly taking her own seat. Hermione was hoping she could get Professor Snape to escort her to this event, as she needed some of his snark to help ward off those insipidly falsely sympathetic toe-licking toadies that she just knew she would encounter at a ministry event. Ministry of Magic = Toadies like Dolores Umbridge – Check.
The Salon experience that had been redeveloped in the staff room after a lull thanks to the war had certainly created a greater research and development ethos in the teaching staff. Hermione had several run ins with Marcus Turner the new Head of Slytherin who she thought was a lazy useless git. He certainly was not acting as a Head of House and Hermione knew she was tutoring many of his students just to pass the subject.
When the new professor had called Specific Learning Difficulties a load of bunkum she was glad Tonks was there to hold her wand cause she wanted to hex him from here to Timbuktu and back again. Fortunately she had the science and facts to debunk his attitudes but it was probably attitude like his that cause younger magicals to be unnecessarily classed as squibs and if they were lucky cast out of their families. It was just that their brains and bodies processed neural messages differently.
Dyslexia just indicates that the individual has a different wiring in their brain to the so call medical NORMAL or Abby Sodding Normal as she like to explain to students. What is normal for one person was a different construct for another. Individuals with an SpLD had such a discrepancy in their abilities that they developed compensation strategies to enable them to work round the difficulties. For some it meant that they never did simple mathematical calculations without the assistance of a calculator or calculation spell. Yet these individuals could do complex calculations for spell creation using runes and advanced arithmetical formulas. It was just that their short term memories would not allow them to manipulate the figures and with a quill and parchment they had the ability to chunk the task into manageable sections.
Severus Snape had enjoyed Hermione's participation in the teaching staff salon sessions and was pleased to see her achievement with the students and her own studies. He particularly enjoyed the day she took Marcus Turner apart with facts, figures, science and logic. The new Head of Slytherin tried to belittle the witch and she stomped on him. The witch had fire and spark and he was seeing more of this now she was a colleague rather than just her potions master. Severus Snape knew she only had one more NEWT to do and he hoped that at dinner he could get out of her why she had not asked for a revision session from the current Potions Professor Arsen, the grandson of Arsenius Jigger a well known potions author or from himself. Heck they used one of Arsenius Jigger's texts for the 7th year students he had seen her head down in her own copy of the text often enough.
oOoOo
Coming into dinner Hermione observed that she was seated on the right of the Headmaster again. It seemed that at least twice a week she was an evening meal companion for Professor Snape and Hermione did not know what to think about this obvious favouritism. From her perspective as a member of staff she most certainly could see that the rest of the staff were different from this side of the table to her old perspective as a student.
Even when she was just a member of the Order of Phoenix and colleague of the professors in the Order she did not see this side of their individual personalities that she had been able to observe from her close working relationships and participation in salons, staff meetings and student sessions.
"Good Evening Ms Granger, Apple Juice for you?" inquired Severus wondering if she was going to have something different to drink this evening.
"Yes please Headmaster" was the polite response. "Do you want me to pass the peas?"
"Yes please" the polite interaction continued over the meal amongst the din that was the great hall with a full complement of students attending the evening meal.
"Ms Granger how is your potions revision coming along?" the Headmaster inquired while cutting up his steak hoping she would take it as a general interest question rather than an negative enquiry.
"I have done most of the theoretical revision and I am now focusing on the practice brewing at the moment. I want to use the next two weeks to get as much brewing done as possible."
"Remember you shouldn't brew alone"
"I won't be I have been brewing with Pansy and Draco most of the time. Even Harry has been in the individual projects lab with me working on potions at least one night a week. Of course I have been working with Greg and we have been working our way through the OWL brewing component. This revision of the earlier work is helping both of us. Professor Jigger seams to be happy with his output and I have found that I am very familiar with most of the possible potion brewing tasks that I could be asked in the exam time. Now I am mostly working to improve my technique," explained the witch.
"I have to start brewing some of the necessary potions for the Christmas period so I will probably be seeing you in the individual projects lab in the next couple of weeks" advised the quiet man.