Chapter 7 Skipping the Sinking Ship

Amelia Bones had been murdered. The newspapers had a lot of speculation, but a marked lack of facts. Harry wanted to scream. He was convinced that Voldemort was taking over Britain, but he was operating from the shadows, so the aurors had very little to go on. Harry wrote to Susan Bones with his condolences, and offering to help if she needed to leave Britain. He sent off the letter with Hedwig, telling her to be careful and wait for a reply.

"Harry Potter."

"Accept."

"I …" Hermione made a failing attempt to stay calm.
"Is there an emergency?"

"No."

That calmed Harry a little, "but there's bad news?"

"Neville got his Hogwarts letter. I didn't."

"Oh. So the quiet takeover by Tom and his lot continues."

"Yes. I'm going to call the other muggleborns to tell them about it. I worry what's going to happen to those whose parents can't afford to send them abroad."

"Hmm." When Hermione started to speak, Harry held up his hand to interrupt her. After a long moment of silence, he said, "I might be able to give them interest free loans."

"Harry, we're talking about dozens of students."

"Yes, I realise that, but some of their parents will be able to pay, or pay part of the cost, and some will choose to go to muggle schools, and if needed, I think Sirius would be willing to pay for half. And when Neville comes of age at the end of the month he might be willing to chip in as well. It's an investment into the future that just makes sense." "How have you been getting on with the under 11s?"

"I've convinced the parents of one of the eleven-year-olds to write to Beauxbatons, and two to write to an international school in The Netherlands that teaches a full muggle education with a condensed magical education, but the other seven I've spoken to so far either didn't believe me about how bad the situation is or about magic, or couldn't afford to send their child abroad. The situation with the younger children is worse. With two of them I was tempted to steal them from their parents. The situation was especially bad with the youngest of the children. She's two, and did her first magic last year, and there's every indication that she used magic to protect herself from getting hurt by her parents. I notified the authorities, but you know better than I do that there's no guarantee that that will help. Can you ask Sirius and Remus to ask MACUSA about legally stealing an abused child? And whether they would take her in? My parents said they would be willing to do what they can, but they're in the middle of emigrating, so it will take at least two months before they could get together the basics of living, and several more months before they could offer a proper home."

"I will ask. What about the other child?"

"I went to the local authorities about him as well. It's not as bad. Although I suppose it's possible they were just better at hiding it."

After a morose silence, Harry asked, "did you at least persuade the unconvinced parents to stay in touch?"

"Most of them accepted my contact details, and I also slipped all of the children the information, including instructions on what to do if they were obliviated."

"Aren't you worried the ministry will find out?"

"Ministry workers are so set in their ways and dismissive of muggleborns that I think it's not very likely, but I did try not to give away any vital information. I disguised myself, and I've set up a magical mail forwarding box inside a P.O. box."

Harry laughed, "'merely ploddingly tenacious' as usual." "Did you say you have more children to visit?"

"Yes, I've visited 24 families with 39 children under 11, I've written to 7 families with a child under 11 who had a sibling in Hogwarts, which leaves three families with six children to go, including one 11-year-old."

Dear Neville,

Thank you ever so much for the present (A.N. The Diadem of Ravenclaw, that the house-elves found in the Room of Requirement after a futile search of the Chamber of Secrets). I've treated it like the other two.

Please find enclosed a communication mirror. As presents go, it doesn't match yours, but I worry that owl post is not secure enough.

Hermione told me that she didn't get her Hogwarts letter, and you must have heard about the murder of Amelia Bones, showing the increasing influence of Tom. Would you please reconsider about going back to Hogwarts?

Hope you are having a pleasant summer,

Harry

Once Hermione had finished visiting the last muggleborns, she had joined them in the USA. Sirius, Remus and Harry had agreed that they wanted to keep an ear open to follow the developing situation in the UK, so they wouldn't go from place to place, as they had done the previous two years, but take day trips with days at home in between to read the Daily Prophet and telephone Hermione's parents, who would fly to Canada in another month. Hermione was worried. After Madam Bones had been murdered, and the muggleborns had been thrown out of Hogwarts, they all knew that the situation was deteriorating rapidly.

Soon, a day trip every other day became a trip every week, as the severity of the situation began to sink in in Britain, and a stream of emigrants started. MACUSA had agreed that as long as Sirius was willing to underwrite the cost of their education, they were willing for people to show up by airplane or portkey without muggle green cards, and still facilitate their immigration into the magical USA. Their house was overflowing with students. Sirius had rented another property which was larger and equally crowded; it hadn't made sense to find lots of space for just over a month. A third house had been organised by three muggleborns who had just graduated from Hogwarts, and they had taken in students as well. The number of people was not clear yet, as people were in various stages from being convinced to leave Britain, deciding whether to attend Ilvermorny, and making travel arrangements, but at least 40 British students would be attending Ilvermorny in September. Smaller numbers were going to other places. Although the majority were muggleborn, there were others who had also decided to leave the encroaching darkness, including Susan Bones.

Despite the crowded conditions, people mostly got along. They had a common enemy, not to mention that they knew it was temporary. To further relieve any building stress, Remus started a Fight Club. It was quite popular, because some were already making plans to take back magical Britain, while others wanted to prepare in case Voldemort got secure enough at home to start making forays abroad and might target ex-pats.

Harry mentioned his worry that Voldemort seemed to have consolidated his power in Britain, and might send more Death Eaters to the USA. Sirius tried to calm him down by pointing out that Ilvermorny had withstood the sneak attack by Pettigrew where Hogwarts had failed, and that their house was heavily warded, but he also admitted that it might be a good idea to review their safety procedures when they were in the shopping areas or MACUSA, where anyone could walk in.

Although no-one said so to Harry's face, he was told about people who were unhappy that Harry had run away. Harry had no doubt that the people who blamed him for that were the same people who had believed every rumour that Rita Skeeter had invented about him, and couldn't bring himself to feel particularly guilty. He had reported his confrontations with Tom Riddle in first and second year to the Chief Warlock, and if the country was now unprepared, that was hardly his fault. Remus had warned him again and again that just because the Dursleys had blamed him for everything and anything, that that didn't mean he should automatically assume he was guilty, and after 6 years the message was starting to sink in. He asked those who reported hearing such complaints to point out to these people that they were trying to make him the sole person responsible for solving a problem that had been around since before he was born.

Harry and Hermione both belonged to the camp that wanted to go back. In public, the discussions tended to focus on what guerrilla tactics might weaken the new regime, but in private Harry confessed that because prejudice was so deeply ingrained in magical Britain that he felt they couldn't count on a majority to democratically choose to dismantle the discrimination against muggleborns and the corruption that allowed Death Eaters to buy their way out of Azkaban, not to mention the many legal loopholes that allowed the rich purebloods to ignore things like restriction of underage magic and laws against enchanting muggle cars to fly. Therefore, even if they miraculously managed to kill Voldemort and get the Death Eaters convicted, he had little hope that they could get popular support for a sea chance in the political climate, so he had no faith that going back looking for a fight would solve the main problem. He saw more hope in a less confrontational approach, where they would start a hybrid society with both muggle and magical elements, and which would be secret from both the muggle and pureblood governments. Hermione wholeheartedly agreed, saying that she had had similar ideas, but that had focussed more on starting a school that would cover both primary and secondary education and that would possibly be registered with, and therefore sponsored by, the muggle government, but that would teach magical subjects as well. Hermione speculated that by spreading NEWT level education out over all 13 years of schooling, starting as soon as the Hogwarts book of admission detected accidental magic of sufficient magnitude, that they might be able to offer a full muggle curriculum, with at least one magical elective, but with the option of getting the full Hogwarts curriculum as well, partly by treating magical education as a hobby that would take up the evenings and weekends, and partly by either starting early or by finishing one or two years later. If the graduates of such a school were to band together in a few villages, they could, by continuously taking in new muggleborns, in time expect to supersede the pureblood society, who tended to have few children. The latter was to some extend a conscious choice, to keep the family wealth together, but inbreeding among the purebloods was also a significant factor in reducing fertility. The two of them agreed that safety from the existing British magical society would be their biggest concern, and that if they told others, word was bound to spread until their enemies heard about their plans. Therefore, they decided to come up with safety measures before they went public with details. For the moment they would limit themselves to having a definite, but vaguely defined, position of non-violent resistance. In response, several people came to either of them to indicate their interest to contribute. The conversation he had with Colin Creevey was a typical sample of such a conversation:

"Harry?"

"Hello Colin."

"I'm not very good at duelling, but I'd like to do something to reverse the takeover of the ministry, and you've said you're more interested in building something better, rather than focussing on tearing down the current ministry."

"Yes."

"I still have time to change what NEWTs I'm going to do. Are there subjects that would make you more likely to let me join you?"

"What is your best subject?"

"Care of Magical Creatures. And you know about the photography."

"Keeping magical animals is going to take some doing, so it will be some time before we need someone who would be responsible for that. You could do a mastery anyway, if you're prepared to wait several years until we've grown enough to have space for a menagerie."

"A mastery? I'm not sure I'm good enough for that."

"Our plans are not well defined at the moment, so I can't say for sure, but I'm not sure that with just a NEWT you will have enough experience to keep a variety of the magical creatures, which I imagine will mostly focus on ingredients for healing potions. If you're worried about being good enough at magic to do a mastery, then you might want to consider doing some GCSEs. We'll want to integrate more of what muggle society is doing. It will help us hide among the majority, and we intend to integrate some of the accomplishments like equality before the law and tolerance for diversity. Or, if doing GCSEs is too focussed on book learning, you could try to acquire some practical skills, like wandmaking, cooking, healing, making cloths, etcetera."

"What about journalism?"

"To start with, we need to cover all the basic needs. In the beginning there will be so few of us that everybody will know what everybody else is doing, and we'll use newspapers from outside to keep track of what is happening in the rest of the world. It will be several decades before we need our own newspaper."

"Oh, ok. I guess I can ask about GCSEs. What subjects would you recommend?"

"Probably the most popular ones would be most useful, the compulsory maths and English; since you're interested in journalism, history might suit you." When Colin nodded at that, he added, "it would be great if you also studied recent magical history. Thanks to Binns hardly any of us know what power struggles and shifts in public opinion led to us ending up in this mess, and it would be good to have an idea what political factions and which compromises could help us get out of it."

"Thanks Harry, that's very helpful."

Sirius was giving out lots of loans, with only a token contribution from Harry, because the Black family fortune was much larger than Harry's trust vault. Sirius had decided against donating the money outright, mostly because they expected the conflict to last for years to come, and for the emigration wave to continue, so the hope was that in due course, people getting back on their feet and paying back their loans would be able to finance new emigrants.

On a more practical note, Sirius had organised a workshop for students to make pairs of communication mirrors. Once they had enough of those, Hermione convinced them to start on making ward stones, especially for making houses unplottable. She mailed these to the under-elevens, as they were the most at risk of being detected by the British Ministry while doing accidental magic at home. They wouldn't be able to use active magic to charge the wards, but over time the wards would absorb ambient magic. It was not a fail-safe precaution, but as long as the wards grew at least as fast as the magical power of the inhabitant(s), it would at least reduce the risk of discovery.

On 31 July, Harry came of age. Sirius and Remus had organised a big celebration, inviting all Harry's yearmates from Ilvermorny and from the Hogwarts expats, his quidditch teammates, and many other people besides. Although the party was great for building bridges between his American and British friends, and for the British to have something to celebrate when there was so much bad news from back home, and the new arrivals were feeling uprooted, if it had been just for Harry's enjoyment he would have preferred a much smaller party. As it was he spent much of the day welcoming and saying goodbye to relative strangers, and having hardly any time to properly talk to his friends.

Harry got access to several Gringott's vaults, either from being the head of house Potter, or from having inherited from families that had died out in the first war against Voldemort, and where the last surviving member had left the inheritance to the Boy-Who-Lived. In two cases, the reason had not been an absence of family members, but the surviving family had been on Voldemort's side. This gave Harry pause, because it showed both how intermarried the propertied class of wizards were, but also the heartbreak inherent in a family that had been divided across both sides of the civil war.

Harry also got an apparating license, which would make it much easier to get around to places that didn't have a floo.

In the beginning of August, Harry got his exam results. He had passed 2 more OWLs, bringing his total to 8, with quite good marks. Maybe not Hermione level good, but still he was happy.

The transcript read: Transfiguration (1995) A-, Arithmancy B- (1996), Charms A- (1996), Defence Against the Dark Arts A+ (1996), Herbology B (1996), Potions B+ (1996), Ancient Runes (1997) B-, Care of Magical Creatures (1997) B, History of magic Fail.

Over the course of the rest of August, Harry made repeated visits to Gringott's New York to talk about merging vaults where possible, about selling or making management plans for land, properties and businesses, and to make it easier to receive information and return instructions whether he was at Ilvermorny, doing a mastery at a currently unknown location, or in hiding in Britain.

Hermione was very relieved when her parents made it to Canada without problems.

"Snape has been appointed as the new headmaster of Hogwarts."

The murderer of Dumbledore had just been made his successor. "Did it say anything about the muggleborn students?"

"Nothing. Every time we see more bad news I wonder how I could have been so blind to Dumbledore's many shortcomings all these years."

"You think this can be blamed on Dumbledore?"

"Gorbachev managed to galvanise the population to not stand idly by."

"The Russian president? What did he do?"

"There was a coup by communist hardliners in 1991, who objected to Gorbachev granting the different states in the Soviet Union more self-governance. But the population wouldn't accept the hardliners trying to turn back the clock. Which was an important factor in why the coup failed. It's rather a sharp contrast to what's happening in magical Britain: Riddle has essentially taken over the Ministry and Hogwarts, at least 2% of the population has emigrated, and yet the Daily Prophet doesn't even mention any of that. And the ICW hasn't complained either."

Going back to Ilvermorny was pretty strange for Harry. For almost three years, he had been the only Brit in his classes. All of a sudden, there were all these people that he had barely known at Hogwarts who came to him when they were trying to find out how things worked in the USA. Mostly, Harry was happy to help everyone. He could still remember quite clearly how much he had had to rely on his classmates and professors to learn to navigate the hallways and the library catalogue and the quidditch schedule and uncounted other details, so in the first week he happily put up with the fact that there were many British students and only one of him, not least because the professors accepted that he was often late to classes. The strangeness was more due to the fact that two worlds that had been strictly separated spheres all of a sudden overlapped. In the second week, a few people still thought they could come to Harry with every little problem, and Harry quickly realised that if he didn't want this to become a habitual response that he would have to tell them quite clearly that they had had a week to reach out to their American classmates, and that he had his own classes to go to.

The British Ministry of Magic had become even more blatant in its pureblood dogma. There was a muggleborn registration commission that ran what the foreign press suspected came much too close to essentially being concentration camps. And there was no official acknowledgement that all of that had been initiated by Voldemort. The ICW had put in a request to investigate the practices of the commission, to which the British government had replied that it was a matter of national sovereignty, thus essentially admitting that what it was doing couldn't pass muster, because in the past the ICW had interpreted its own mandate of ensuring the stability of national governments as an injunction to protect minority groups from persecution, but still the ICW had not decided to intervene.

Classes were settling into a routine. Harry had always done well with the practical side of the three wanded classes, and now that he had Hermione to check his theoretical work before he handed it in, he also progressed well with the theory. Potions was more of a slog for him, but it was central to healing, and he was sure he would run into trouble sooner or later, so he put in the hours that were needed to keep up. Harry was sorry that Hogwarts didn't offer Ancient Runes from first year. The more he learned, the more he became convinced it was underutilised in the British magical community, as shown for instance because as far as they knew the sabotage of the underage magic detection and the distribution of unplottable wards to the muggleborns had gone unnoticed. Unfortunately, that meant Herbology was sometimes skipped over, but as long as he knew enough to correctly harvest potions ingredients, was able to detect problems with bought ingredients, and maintained the scores that the auror academy required he would be happy. Even though Hermione was always studying, Harry didn't understand how she could maintain her standards of perfection for 7 NEWT classes.

"Harry Potter"

"Accept. Hey Neville."

"Hello Harry, how are things?"

"Studying hard. A bit frustrated that staying on top of NEWT work is taking so much time that it's difficult to keep moving forward on the long-term plans. How about you?"

"The Carrows are getting worse. They tried to make me practice the cruciatus curse on first-year students. When I refused they cast it on me."

"Shit." Harry thought for a moment and then continued, "do you think reporting it to the ICW might help?"

"I don't. They really only get involved if a problem becomes international. And even then they are so slow to respond that I think I would have finished my NEWTs before then, … if I made it that far. But since I'm unable to shut up and do as I'm told, I don't think I would make it, so I'm going to try to leave."

"I'm glad," Harry interjected, and Neville continued, "I'm trying to convince others to leave as well, but the staff tries to keep the houses separated, and the Gryffindors tend to argue that it's cowardly to run."

"Do they have a plan for stopping the Death Eaters? I think the only effective strategy by this point is to kill them, which might be impossible without getting caught. And I wouldn't advise a suicide mission. Unless they disagree with that, staying legitimises the status quo."

"Now that I belatedly admitted you were right that it was a mistake to go back even for purebloods, I tried to convince other people, but as I said the older Gryffindors are trying to outlast the problem, and it's difficult to have private conversations with other houses, but some of the younger Gryffindors might agree. Do you think you could get portkeys to the USA for some families?"

"Yes, MACUSA has accepted all British refugees so far, and Sirius and Remus are on a first-name basis with the immigration officers by now. We also have a way to get portkeys to Britain that do not involve international owls. Just let me know who agrees to leave."

"Thanks, Harry. Would it be ok if I gave the Marauders' Map to someone who stays?"

"Yes, of course, but you will need the map to escape, so how will you get the map to them?"

"The house-elves help us; as long as they haven't been explicitly forbidden from doing something."

"The Death Eaters' contempt for all beings that are not pureblood wizards is going to be their downfall."

"Indeed. I'll talk to you again when I have the names of those who agree to leave."

A week later, Neville reported back that 4 more families wanted to leave Britain, plus 3 individual students. Neville was included in the latter, as Augusta Longbottom had refused to leave. Harry thought it best not to ask what Augusta thought of Neville leaving. Hermione had hinted that Neville had always had unrealistic expectations placed on him by his relatives, and Harry thought he would be better off simply accepting Neville's decision to leave, rather than bring up a potentially fraught topic when he didn't know enough about the background should he subsequently need to defuse it.

The 3 students would leave directly to the USA from the tunnel under Honeydukes in Hogsmeade, while the students who were leaving with their families were first transported home by Kreacher and a Longbottom house-elf. After a brief stay in the USA, Neville continued on to Brazil, to finish his NEWTs at Castelobruxo, which was world-renowned for its herbology teachings.

A month later, Hannah Abbott left with a group of Hufflepuffs and their families, shortly followed by a group of Ravenclaws. It wasn't just students and their families who were leaving, and by then, 417 humans had left Britain, reaching the 10% of the population mark. Although Voldemort punished Headmaster Snape with a heavy dose of the Crucio curse, the students had had no illusions about what would happen if they were discovered, and had been quite careful to be discreet while organising their escape. This meant that the headmaster had been able to hide the fact that he hadn't tried very hard to stop the exodus, so Voldemort hadn't suspected him of defection, which in turn set a virtuous cycle in motion. The students' escape not only allowed the headmaster to force the Carrows to tone down their destructive behaviour towards the remaining students, it started to leave skill gaps in Britain's magical society and to weaken the hold that Voldemort had on it, as it exposed his promise of strengthening society by getting rid of the purportedly bad influence of muggleborns and blood-traitors as empty rhetoric.

Since Voldemort had been unable to stem the exodus at home, he would try over the following months to assassinate Sirius and Remus, but MACUSA stopped first a civilian under the Imperio curse and subsequently a Death Eater before they even left the MACUSA building, and this line of attack was also aborted. The British emigrants had skills and financial resources, so MACUSA continued to support the exodus. The only downside was that they also continued to argue against intervention on British soil in the ICW.

In the previous three years Harry may have grumbled about the childish behaviour of Sirius and Remus, but this year he had to admit that they were invaluable. They were everywhere; bringing together the rich heads and heirs of ancient families to pool financial resources, running in and out of MACUSA and Ilvermorny with paperwork, providing places to stay for new arrivals and helping them find their way. If it hadn't been for them, Harry would have been forced to choose between organising the exodus or finishing his NEWTs. Now, he even attended sixth-year Runes classes, though, unlike with his OWL classes, he didn't try to catch up with his year mates, mostly because Hermione and he were studying various options for starting a school in Britain.

That is to say, he mostly provided a sounding board for Hermione to clarify her plans. Initially, they had discussed buying a farm in a low population area, but if they protected the place with wards, the wards would leave magical traces that would allow the Death Eaters to find them. All the ways of hiding a place that they had been able to find out about didn't work for a school full of people coming and going. And without wards the teaching of magic would be detectable. In the end Hermione had come up with a potential solution: to dig out a school under the ground between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. There was so much magic in the area that adding to it would likely not draw attention. They had concluded the biggest risk of detection would be bringing in resources, the bulkiest of which would be food. They had sworn Neville to secrecy and told him that they were exploring their options of starting an underground school, and he had agreed to look into the possibility of creating a sufficiently powerful light-source to grow most of their food and magical plants.

"Harry?"

"Yes?"

"Are we together?"

Hermione and Harry were always together these days. They sat next to each other for meals and if they had the same classes, did their homework for those classes together, went to duelling club together, spent much of their unstructured free time together, and Hermione did most of her extra studying while Harry was at quidditch practice to enable the former. So, Hermione's question obviously meant, 'are we a couple?'. Knowing Hermione, she was obviously going somewhere with this question, and Harry was momentarily distracted with what it could be, but then broke off that line of reasoning to return to the original question. Harry realised that whatever they were doing, they tended to be physically much closer than mere friends. Especially Hermione was always hugging him, bumping into him as they walked next to each other, and using him as a prop. And Harry, who, thanks to growing up with the Dursleys, disliked being touched by other people, hadn't even noticed until this moment that she was doing it. She had started when he was 11, and had continued despite spending most of 3 years apart. The question of where Hermione was going with this re-asserted itself. Did another boy ask her out? Harry was surprised at the level of horror that question conjured. 'Well,' Harry thought, 'I guess that tells me the answer'. "Yes, if you want to be."

Hermione smiled and kissed him, but it was more of a peck on the lips. "Yes. I've been thinking, …"

'Here it comes.' Harry smirked, saying louder than words, 'surprise, surprise.'

Hermione swatted the air in front of his shoulder, chasing away that thought, and also giving him her patented 'pay attention' look.

Harry didn't break off his smirk, but also dipped his head, indicating, 'I'm listening.'

"… we could try to start the school next year, or the year after, and part of me wants to, because every year we wait, more muggleborns go without a magical education, but the other part of me thinks it would lead to problems in a few years' time. To teach NEWT students you really need a mastery. And obtaining a mastery while running a hidden school is going to be very difficult, if not impossible. What do you think?"

"I hadn't thought of it in terms of NEWT teaching, but it had occurred to me that staying one step ahead of the British Ministry would require more training than just NEWTs. Rather than a mastery, my own thoughts had gone towards auror training, because to stay hidden, we'd need to have a better idea of what methods magical law enforcement uses to find fugitives. But I do see your point; except that doing both auror training and a mastery in defence is going to take at least four years."

"Yes. You see, this is where the question of us being together comes in, because to cover as many bases as possible, not to mention that I'm not as good at defence as you, we'd need to do different masteries. And it would make most sense for you to do auror training here in the USA, while I'd like to do a mastery in the arithmancy of potion development, and the world expert on that lives in Japan. I worry that long-distance relationships hardly ever work. I messed up, didn't I? I should have started with the masteries idea. I was just worried that the biggest risk to starting this school is how we are together. And I thought -"

"Hermione! Relax. We're good." Harry took a deep breath himself. "We don't have to plan every last detail in the next five minutes. Let's both make enquiries about possible masteries. Once we know more, we can then talk about how to make that work." Not wanting to leave all the organising to Hermione, Harry withdrew a quill and parchment from his bag, and started a list, reading out as he wrote, "we can come up with ways for the muggleborns to move forward as much as can be done remotely. Maybe occlumency training to suppress their accidental magic. Maybe we can find some exercises for wandless magic. We can ask around if others might be interested in doing masteries and come join our school in due course. Although we'd have to consider vows of secrecy. We should probably come up with a timeline, at least a rough one to start with. And a list of things we'd need to have in place before we can start the school, like the idea we discussed about digging a series of underground caves that would form both classrooms, living spaces and food growing areas. What else?"

"We need a financial plan, a teaching plan, a living plan and a protection plan. We already had noted that we would need a light source strong enough to grow food. I had also thought that we need to modify the unplottable ward to protect a volume rather than an area, so that it won't be detectable above ground. Please make me a copy of your list. We can both add to it as we think of things."

"I've come up with a plan that would allow us to teach both muggle and magical subjects without having to pay teacher salaries for every class every year," Hermione said out of the blue. Harry had become used to Hermione doing this; she was working through all the aspects that would be needed to set up a combined muggle and magical school that would run from pre-school till NEWT/A-level graduation, and would continue the discussion where they had left off, even if that had been several days before. Harry thought it was one of the ways which allowed Hermione to do her multi-tasking. "You see, the school will start with few students, but we'll still need to teach all the subjects, so I've been trying to think of a way to limit how many teachers we would require before we can start, and I think I've found it. We would need volunteers, magical volunteers to audit classes of a subject, and extract a memory for every class period in every year. If we send the volunteers to teachers that have top credentials for their exam results, we could create libraries of all the classes. Then, if we have a pensieve for every age group, we could have the students go through the lessons by themselves. It would reduce the need for teaching staff to a few people to monitor progress and answer questions."

"I can see how that would help a lot." Harry brought out the sheaf of planning parchments to take notes. "We could ask the students who at present go to muggle school to audit all their classes during the year before we start. We'll have to cover security with those pupils in any case. We'd have to get them wands, though. And make the schools they attend unplottable. What about the magical subjects?"

"That should actually be easier, since we don't have to organise for magical volunteers. We could simply ask for permission to extract memories for all the classes at Ilvermorny."

"OK. Shall I make an appointment with the headmistress?"

"I'll do it. Can you ask Sirius and Marny whether he or you have a pensieve? And a tutorial for making pensieves?"

"You want to make the pensieves?"

"Yes. If we're going to do this, we'll need a pensieve for every year-group. Buying that many would both cost a fortune and attract unwanted attention."

After Easter, as the NEWT exams approached, Harry and Hermione started sniping at each other over how much time either of them spent studying. Part of their falling out over the contrast in their respective studying habits was because they had grown much closer in the preceding months. They had used to be somewhat dismissive of each others' studying, or lack thereof, both while they had both been at Hogwarts and at the start of their final year, but when they had agreed to be together they had stopped doing that for several months. But that honeymoon had ended as the end-of-year stress mounted. Harry hoped that going back to their old background disagreement for 10 weeks wouldn't be enough to end their relationship. For the moment he would pretend that the disagreement was unimportant. Harry was aware that his habitual response of pretending that disagreements didn't exist had been ingrained in him by the Dursleys, as it had been his only permitted defence for 10 long years. And while in general he was trying to leave the habits that had been conditioned into him at the Dursleys' behind, in this case the efforts of Remus and Sirius to make him more self-confident re-enforced this behaviour. Not that he was so self-assured that he expected Hermione to convert to his studying habits, but nowadays he was much more studious than he had been in first year, but as long as his herbology homework put him on track for the pass grade that was a requirement for auror training then he saw no reason to give up quidditch for a slightly higher score.

In a way, it was surprising to him that Hermione was so immoderate about studying, when she had approached several problems with a refreshing open-mindedness, such as her use of muggle computing to solve a problem in runic array modification, and her willingness to listen to Sirius' input when he tried to talk her out of her plan for protecting her parents. But when he looked at it from a different angle, he could also understand it. Being the best had been a sort of vindication for her own lonely existence throughout primary school, and then had become one way in which she could prove the senselessness of pureblood prejudice. It pained Harry to be so dismissive of Hermione's opinion, but not enough to adopt her habits when he knew he wouldn't be able to keep it up.

The Japanese master potion developer had accepted Hermione as an apprentice, subject to her achieving outstandings on her Arithmancy and Potions NEWTs. Harry had received a conditional offer of a defence apprenticeship as well, subject to being accepted into the MACUSA auror training program.

Hermione had convinced Harry that his growing appreciation for the usefulness of runes should translate into a willingness to try the NEWT exam, and Harry had agreed, but he found that the extra studying this required meant that his grades in Herbology were slipping even further, so he was having second thoughts. Hermione thought that playing in two different quidditch leagues was excessive, and didn't contribute anything to their plans besides, and therefore Harry should drop out of one. Harry disagreed; quidditch was his stress reliever, and he argued that instead of complaining about Harry, she would be better off taking a step back and admit that she didn't need to study more to guarantee getting 7 outstanding NEWTs. This was despite Harry's better judgment that Hermione had gone through the same obsession with exam preparation as she had in the first three years that they had been in the same school. Remus pointed out that Harry's attitude that it was temporary and therefore unimportant might contribute to the tension between them. Harry was ready to admit Remus was right, but still neither of them could step outside of their assigned roles.

There was one silver lining, Hermione might have been grumpy with Harry a lot of the time, but she thought that arguing took time that was better spent studying. Harry in turn felt that Hermione's NEWT results were more important than having her admit that she was being unreasonable, which left them in their demilitarised stalemate.

In the end, exams were survived, and everybody sighed in relief when it was over.

"Are you still upset with me that I was content with a low pass in herbology?" Harry asked.

"I guess it's no use to cry over spilled milk."

"And yet you cried while I was spilling it, even though you knew that is was too late by then as well."

"Let's just agree that now it really is too late."

Several hours later Harry continued their previous discussion, "I wonder whether you have trouble with duelling because you're always worrying about the milk that is being spilt."

"What do you mean?"

"I'd like to test something. Let's find a practice room and cast 10 Stupefies as fast as we can." They did that. "You see, if we decide on the spell in advance then you're almost as fast as I am. And yet, when we duel, I win most of the time. I don't think that's because I can cast 10 Stupefies while you cast 9½. I think you spend too much time deciding whether to cast a stupefy or a depulso or a bombarda."

"And yet, when you duel Remus or Sirius, you mostly lose because your spell choice is too limited."

"But you lose against them at least as often as I do, so it's not like my strategy works against some people, while yours works against others. I'd say my strategy works in general, but against people who use my strategy, and who in addition have a wider spell choice, it's not enough."

Hermione got a thoughtful look. After some time, she said, "I have a counterhypothesis: that you aim for a rapid response, and I aim for a wide spell-choice, and that the end-goal of both is the same, to combine them, and that the starting point hardly matters. I wonder whether we could test them. If your hypothesis is correct, if we have a duel with only one spell, … only two spells allowed, Protego and … Chiroptera mucosa –"

"Yuck."

"Exactly, a spell that you dislike will help level the playing field. If your hypothesis is correct, with only two spells we'd be more evenly matched. Now, if my hypothesis is correct, if we had duels in which you can use each spell only once, then the longer the duel lasts, the better my chances would become. Hmm, that's not quite satisfactory, we could easily find that both are true."

"I like it, though," Harry interrupted, "if we try both, it would force us to address our respective shortcomings, and help us progress."

"OK, but it's a duelling exercise, so it will mostly help you. I want another concession: if you failed herbology or runes, then you will spend at least three hours a week studying each, and redo the NEWT exams next year."

"How Slytherin of you, to ask what for. I provisionally agree, but you're asking for a yearlong commitment, so you will also have to commit to spending at least three hours a week on fitness training, with duelling training counting as fitness training."

Hermione made a distasteful face, but nevertheless said, "I guess that's fair."

When they tried the two restricted duelling practices, they did indeed find that both Hermione's predicted outcomes came true: when they limited the spell choice to two spells Hermione won more often than usual, though still less than half the time, while in duels in which they could use each spell only once Harry would win if he could overpower Hermione early on, while, if Hermione managed to drag a duel out, she tended to win. Although Hermione didn't learn to enjoy the duelling practice, she had to admit that with their plan to take up residence in the dragon's mouth it was bound to become necessary preparation.