"Well, at least Dumbledore managed to let me keep my position until the end of the school year," Professor Lupin said. "He said it was impossible to get anyone else this late in the term."
Snape hadn't taken the escape of Sirius Black at all well. He'd been convinced that Lupin had somehow orchestrated the escape despite knowing that he'd been unable to help anyone on the night of the full moon.
"You've been the best Defense professor we've ever had," Harry said. He scowled. Lupin was the only defense professor they'd ever had who'd actually taught them anything worthwhile. It was frustrating.
"It's so lame," Amethyst said. "So you have to be a wolf a few nights a month; I can be a wolf whenever I want."
"Nobody is asking you to teach either," Pearl said. She sniffed. "Although I have to question the judgment of any institution that hires you to help clean things up."
"I beat up on monsters and keep the kids in line," Amethyst said. She snickered. "I leave the cleaning to the house elves."
They were all in Amethyst's temple, except for Sirius Black. Black had fled, not wanting to cause trouble for the gems should Snape manage to convince the aurors to search the temple.
"I had to threaten the house elves to keep them from cleaning my piles," Amethyst said. "You'll be glad I did; if they ever got in here, you'd never get to do any cleaning again."
The gems seemed to be ignoring Harry, Hermione and Lupin. Of course, it had been a while since they'd seen each other, but it was almost as though in Pearl's eyes humans didn't rate.
Steven did, though.
His face almost glowed as he talked to Pearl excitedly. It occurred to Harry that this was the happiest that he'd ever seen Steven. It was almost as though Steven was shedding a layer of gloom and despair with each member of his family who was restored to him.
Given that he'd left his father behind, and the girl Connie, Harry doubted that he'd ever get to see a Steven as happy as he'd been in his old world.
Hermione was holding Steven by the arm and listening as Amethyst and Pearl bantered back and forth.
Peridot was sulking because Snape was refusing to help her in her research since her plan had failed to capture Black.
He'd been convinced that Harry'd had something to do with Black's escape, but he'd been unable to prove anything. Part of Harry had wanted to smirk at him, but he'd wisely protested his innocence.
Harry couldn't help but feel content, though. Although there were still two more months of classes, so far it genuinely looked like no one wanted to kill him this year. That was a vast improvement over previous years.
Furthermore, he now had a godfather. Even if he couldn't see Sirius Black right away, at least he now had family who didn't hate him. The feeling of actually being wanted by someone was new and unique. It left him understanding Steven's glow a little.
Was this what happiness felt like?
He had nothing to compare it to, but it had to be.
The pale woman walking up the stairs with Steven Universe was unfamiliar to Aurora Sinestra. It was unusual for an adult she didn't know to be in Hogwarts, much less at the top of the Astronomy tower at midnight.
The way Steven was chattering at her suggested that the woman wasn't any sort of danger.
"Professor Sinestra!" Steven said. "This is Pearl!"
Sinestra blinked. This was another one of Steven's "aunts?" The luminescent Pearl on her forehead should have clued her in.
"She's the one who taught me all about the stars,' Steven said.
"Steven's been excited to show me all of his classes," Pearl said. She sniffed. "This seems much more appropriate than that horrible chemistry class in the basement."
"It's potions in the dungeon," Steven said.
From his expression, having Pearl in Snape's classroom hadn't gone well at all. Sinestra was sure she'd hear about it from the school gossip mill.
Still, looking at the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw faces around her, she realized that class had to go on.
"Today we are studying the moon," she said, clearing her throat. "With the revelation that one of our own professors is the victim of an unfortunate lunar based affliction, it's been suggested that we move lunar studies up a bit."
"I've been there," Steven said.
"You haven't been to the moon here," Pearl corrected him. "You've been to the one back home."
"It's pretty much the same thing," Steven said. "Except there's no gem base here. Amethyst helped me check."
Sinestra cleared her throat. "Only twelve muggles are known to have stepped foot on Earth's moon, and it is the only celestial body yet to be directly visited by men."
"Why can't someone apparate up there?" asked a pureblood Hufflepuff.
The Ravenclaws rolled their eyes but didn't bother to make fun of her, even as her muggleborn housemates looked embarrassed.
"Only the strongest wizards can apparate even to the other side of the planet," Sinestra said. "The distance to the moon is twenty times as far."
"Dumbledore could do it," one Hufflepuff said loyally.
A Ravenclaw finally had to speak up. "And what would he do when he got there? Explode from a lack of air?"
"I don't know where humans ever got a silly idea like that," Pearl said. "Your skin would swell up like a sausage, and the moisture on your tongue would burn away, but you'd be unconscious long before you noticed the radiation burns, and you'd suffocate before you'd freeze."
"It wouldn't be a good idea," Sinestra summarized.
The purebloods in the class looked slightly sick, although the muggleborns seemed fascinated.
"Have you really been on the moon?" one Ravenclaw girl asked.
"Not the one in this universe," Pearl said. "Although Steven is right; it looks much the same as ours."
A light appeared from the gem on her forehead, blossoming into a stark moonscape. Despite herself, Sinestra found herself leaning forward. This wasn't an area seen in any of the muggle photographs she'd studied.
"Humans call this the dark side of the moon, although its really no darker than any other part," Pearl began. "There's water on the moon if you know where to look, and this crater happened to have a particularly high concentration...it's useful for construction and saves the bother of carting water up from the planet."
Sinestra didn't say a word for the rest of the lesson, especially after Pearl showed them all how to find the tenth planet in the solar system.
Within the week she was officially working as an assistant to Sinestra teaching Astronomy. Unofficially, Sinestra was learning from her. Pearl had been to other worlds; other galaxies even. Furthermore, she'd spent the last six thousand years staring up at the sky studying it both in longing and in fear of what might be coming.
People had barely been learning how to write when this woman had started skywatching. Sinestra had emphasized to Dumbledore that it would be criminal to let that kind of expertise go to waste, especially as the woman was willing to work for free.
Only the fact that parents expected an accredited wizard to teach each course kept her from fearing for her job.
At least she wasn't having the kind of trouble Remus Lupin was. The Slytherins had staged a walk out at being forced to be taught by a werewolf, although it hadn't lasted long.
The man outwardly seemed unruffled, although it had to have bothered him. She admired his courage under the pressure he had to have been under. Weeks of howlers from parents and pressure from the Ministry had to be draining.
Most likely by the end of the year he'd be grateful to be rid of the post.
Exam week fell and still no one tried to kill Harry.
He managed to turn a teapot into an adequate turtle, although he heard Steven worrying that turning back into a teapot was hurting the turtle. Hermione tried to explain to him that it wasn't a real turtle, but Steven seemed dubious.
Considering that his "aunts" bodies were really made out of light, Steven's concept of real might be a little different than everyone else's.
The Astronomy exam went well. Even if Steven's "aunt" liked to go on and on, she was able to illustrate things in ways that made Astronomy class interesting. The idea that she'd actually been to some of the places they talked about was fascinating.
His other exams went well, except for potions. Snape had been more vindictive than usual since Sirius Black's escape, and he'd found a variety of ways to punish Harry.
It was the Defense final that was the most interesting though. It was an obstacle course in which students had to deal with a variety of the creatures they'd talked about during the year, ending with facing a new boggart.
Steven Universe was asked to take the course last of anyone, in case there was a repeat of what had happened earlier in the year.
His aunts were waiting on the sidelines, covered with the spell to make the boggart ignore them. The last thing any of them needed was to make something that would scare a gem partially real.
Furthermore, all students had been cleared from the grounds, although much of the class watched from the windows. It felt like a strange repeat of the year before, except that this time Harry was one of the spectators instead of fighting on the ground.
Despite everyone's fears, Steven performed admirably. He tricked the Grindlow by transmuting snacks from his pocket into tasty fish. He didn't even bother to cast a spell on the redcaps, simply ducking and dodging them, leaping from hole to hole. He talked to the hinkeypunk but ignored it's directions.
When the boggart appeared everyone held their breaths. It appeared as a dementor, but as Steven pointed his wand and shouted, a woman's stockinged leg appeared from inside its robes, kicking up into the air as the dementor started waving a cane and singing something that was too far away to be made out.
He drove it back into it's chest with no problems.
Harry wondered if his life and Steven's were always going to be some kind of spectator sport. Some of his classmates almost seemed disappointed that some sort of disaster hadn't happened, although not the Hufflepuffs.
For once the rest of the school year went uneventfully. The Gryffindors finally managed to win the house cup by the skin of their teeth from the Hufflepuffs. The Hufflepuffs had taken it in good spirits; they'd won the previous two years and had proven to their classmates that they weren't just a group of duffers and weaklings.
It had been a close thing, though, especially when Dumbledore awarded points at the end of the year, but at least it didn't change the rankings.
With no more murder attempts outside the dementors, Harry considered it to be a successful year. With any luck, he'd be able to finish the next year out quietly, in peaceful anonymity.
Next year would be just about classes and Quidditch. Harry knew it in his bones.