Ch. 27 — Plans
The new term started with the notice that apparition lessons would start on February first.
Draco had finished his sentence in Azkaban, and was at the Feast. Astonishingly, he had not sought them out on the train as was his usually want. It was very out of character. Or, perhaps, he had learned his lesson.
Harry discovered, at breakfast the next morning when The Daily Prophet arrived, that Draco had been forced to give a wizarding oath before he was allowed to return. He could use his wand against another student only in self-defence, or in the defence of another. Minor spells, such as the colour changing charm, the hot-air charm, a mild tickling charm, and so forth, were allowed. Spells he was instructed to cast by a professor were exceptions, so long as they were not cast intending permanent harm — so the slug-vomiting, jelly-legs, and leg-locking jinxes could be cast.
Any spell he cast at or on a fellow student had to be easily reversed. Or it would be back to Azkaban for him. It would be for a more extended stay, too.
So, he wasn't entirely defanged.
Of course, casting a harmless spell, such as the leg-locker, or similar jinx, on someone on the stairs would be considered a harmful attack with intent for permanent harm — the victim could easily fall to their deaths.
The onus was entirely on Draco. Should his victim come to permanent harm, no matter the spell cast, he would lose his magic. His complaint about how unfair that was, was dismissed. He had chosen to be marked as a Death Eater, an organization of terrorists who were known to torture and kill for entertainment. He should count himself lucky he was allowed to keep his wand!
Harry had another meeting with Dumbledore about Tom's past that very first day of classes. Surprisingly, Professor Slughorn was withholding an important bit of information from Dumbledore.
"Excuse me, sir," he said at the end their session, just as he was being dismissed. "There's something I don't understand. You told me a long time ago that you should not be afraid to call something by its name, that by refusing to call something its true name, you are giving it power over you."
Dumbledore sat back in his chair and templed his fingers, eyes twinkling. He said, "I'm happy to hear you remember my advice on that subject. Far too many dismiss it, out of hand."
"Why don't you call Voldemort by his true name, Tom Riddle? Why don't you tell everyone what his true name is? By allowing him to use his fake name don't you give him power over others by concealing the truth?"
Dumbledore's expression fell into sadness and he sighed. "I'm afraid that is a complicated situation. Not everyone would believe me if I were to inform them of the truth."
Harry shrugged. "So? To those who trust you, you could explain the truth, and then show them the evidence you have that proves you are correct. Those who trust you will copy you, those that don't, don't matter." He gave a lopsided smile. "And I don't think saying Tom Riddle will cause people to scream and faint. It makes him more . . . human, less of a larger-than-life monster. People are more willing to say such a common name, too. After all, if you only call him Tom, you could be talking about the Tom who runs The Leaky Cauldron. And he's certainly not one to inspire dread and fear — unless you're a drunk and slow to pay your tab.
"Plus, there are thousands of people named Tom, or called Tommy. If he made that a Taboo of his name, he'd go mad in a day as the thousands of alerts poured in."
"Otherwise, isn't it rather . . . hypocritical to tell people to call something by its real name, and then refuse to do so yourself?"
The Headmaster slowly shook his head and regarded Harry sadly. "As I said, the situation is far more complex than you know, my boy."
Harry noticed that he didn't, however, say that Harry was right. That they should call Tom Riddle by his real name. The Headmaster, it seemed, was a hypocrite.
After he had left the Headmaster's office, Harry wondered why he hadn't admitted to already disposing of the horcruxes? Was it because the old wizard certainly had to know of the one in Harry's head and hadn't revealed it? If the Professor had told him of the horcruxes, or even just deigned to talk to him, last year, Harry would have told him of the locket as soon as he had found it. Instead, he had gone to the Goblins, and they had found the rest. Would the Headmaster have done that? Or would he have destroyed the locket and depended on some sort of silly scavenger hunt to find the anchors, where a single misstep could ruin everything?
They had already returned Slytherin's locket and Hufflepuff's cup to the Smith family — "Hogwarts: A History," had said that they had belonged to that family. They hadn't known how those two family-treasures had ended up in Riddle's hands.
Rather than explain the situation, Harry had had the Goblins tell the Smiths that they had accidentally found them while looking for something else. Zach was under the impression they had been recovered from one or another of the Death Eaters. Which, actually, was quite true, just not in the fashion Zach imagined.
Harry didn't have a clue to whom he should give Ravenclaw's diadem. The Ministry was so corrupt that if he gave it to them, it would disappear not soon afterwards under the guise of "protecting" it. If they gave it to Hogwarts, Headmaster Dumbledore would put it on display in his office, probably beside Gryffindor's sword — which, by all rights, should be displayed where everyone could see it! However, Harry was sure a future Headmaster would just add them to his private collection. Of course, that future Headmaster would claim he was doing it for their "protection," he had no doubts. Leaving them in plain sight would be too much of a temptation for thieves, he would say. Then he would squirrel them away in his personal vault until everyone forgot they didn't really belong to his family.
After a time, they would disappear into the annals of history, never to be seen again.
The Gaunt family ring belonged to Harry, the Goblins said, so maybe he should just keep the diadem, too. Maybe he should emulate the Smith's and just relegate both of them to his vault, for future generations to gloat over having such famous heirlooms.
As for asking Slughorn any questions? Why bother? He knew the answer. Tom had made five on purpose, with Harry probably being an accident. Maybe he had even been planned as the last, sixth, one. That meant Tom had decided on seven soul pieces. Nagini might have been another, but that meant Tom hadn't known Harry was a horcrux. Likely, but unprovable one way or the other. Bringing that up now only muddled the whole situation.
He would inform the Headmaster at their next meeting that Tom had decided on seven as the perfect magical number. He was interested to see what other memories the Headmaster might have. Maybe he could explain how Tom had managed to get his hands on Slytherin's Locket and Hufflepuff's cup?
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Draco had been quite thoroughly cowed. It was so nice not to have him wandering the school, sowing fear and chaos. Oh, he still derided muggle-borns and blood-traitors, but now it was under-his-breath or behind closed doors. No more gleeful taunting and proud boasting in the corridors and classrooms.
Probably being unable to say, "When my father hears of this," because his father had been tossed through the veil, did the most to silence his ranting. His mother no longer having the galleons to throw around to enforce his retaliations probably had a lot to do with it, too.
The culling of the parental Death Eaters had silenced the remaining "pure-blood" children, as well. Hogwarts had an almost pleasant atmosphere.
It probably helped that, except for Hermione, all the Sixth- and Seventh-year muggle-borns had permanently left the school. They all had positions on the Requirement, Uranus Base, and the small, but growing group that would be at Mars Base when it came online. That last group wanted to terraform Mars.
One reason Mars didn't have an atmosphere as thick as Earth's was that the planet was just over one-seventh as massive, and half Earth's diameter. They had considered trying to bulk-up the planet, but dragging enough material from the Ort Cloud —almost thirty planetoids, each the size of Pluto! — would have been a monumental task.
It was doable, but time-consuming in the extreme, taking more than a decade of hard work and planning — and lots of twiddling their thumbs, waiting. Moreover, crashing so many objects into Mars would heat the planet so much they would have to wait hundreds or thousands of years for the surface to cool-off enough to be stable. Then there was the worry that suddenly changing Mars into an Earth-sized planet might have an adverse effect on the stability of the entire Solar System. The simulations in the library indicated they were safe to add mass to Mars, but they weren't sure if they had asked all the right questions, yet. Plus, guiding the planetoids through the outer planets might cause problems, too.
So, instead, they planned to harvest ammonia, nitrogen, and oxygen from Uranus and its moons. Then they would haul the massive frozen blocks of magically shrunken gases to Mars using the Galileo. They would place the blocks at the poles and remove the reducios. Using low-powered plasma and laser blasts from the X-wings, whose pilots would love the target practice, they would heat the gasses from solids to gasses. Which would also warm up the planet a bit instead of freezing it as the planet lost heat melting the ices.
They hoped.
Naturally, such activities would take place when Mars was furthest from Earth, and taking advantage of the night-side of the planet's day.
It would take a while, but the ammonia would trap heat to the entire planetary surface and bring the polar temperatures up from negative two hundred and fifty degrees to a more normal zero degrees. Ammonia was hundreds of times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon-dioxide, and it would rise to cap the oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Thus, it would prevent the heat of the day from dissipating into the cold of space at night.
That would give the equatorial regions night-time temperatures that approached what one would consider comfortable, short-sleeve-shirt weather. The oxygen and nitrogen gases would bulk-up the atmospheric pressure to make the place actually liveable. Using reducio, they could pack a thousand cubic miles of water into one of the meeting rooms on the Galileo, and add lakes and oceans to Mars. That sounded like a lot until Hermione told Harry that the Earth had hundreds of millions of cubic miles of water. To match the percentage of land-to-sea that Earth had, about seventy-percent, they would need nearly eighty million cubic miles of water.
So, packing every available space on the Galileo with shrunken water, they'd only be able to carry one or two hundred thousand cubic miles of water. They'd need to make a trip a day for two years, never mind the time needed to mine the water, and load and unload the ship.
Their current schedule indicated that it shouldn't take more than ten years after they started before a person could walk about on the surface in sleeveless shirts and shorts in the summer, just as you could in England.
There was some discussion about crashing one or two large meteors into Mars, just to heat it up enough to melt all the water and gasses they would end up bringing.
However, eventually, those gases and liquids would all slowly leak off into space because of Mars' low gravity. After all, its surface gravity was just over one-third that of Earth, which was why it had lost its atmosphere and water in the first place. According to Hermione and the librarians, however, it was a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, or more, before it would become something to be concerned about.
There was also the problem of mass ejections of particles from the sun slamming into the atmosphere. Those high-speed particles hitting the atmosphere would strip off portions of what they had brought to Mars. Which was how Mars had lost most of its old atmosphere.
To combat that, the information in the Requirement's library suggested the strategy of placing a Filter Terminal between Mars and the sun. Such a station would generate an artificial magnetic field and simulate the one that protected the Earth's atmosphere. It would also shield the inhabitants from other dangerous particles that routinely bombarded Mars from the sun, just as they did Earth. But Earth had a strong magnetic field to protect it, which funnelled the particles to the poles and created the Northern and Southern Lights.
According to what Hermione told him, there was a stable orbital location between the sun and Mars that she labelled Mars Lagrange Point One. It was a mere six hundred thousand miles away, and easily maintainable for a helium-three powered satellite. It would also make a convenient location for a communications relay.
That unit would be in place by summer hols.
Harry's original objection had been simple. "How will we hide all this from the muggles? Their scientists aren't stupid, they'll surely notice the atmosphere building up on Mars, and its subsequent warming."
Most of the section commanders in the meeting room had just looked at each other. How could they terraform the planet without the muggles immediately noticing the changes and suspecting aliens? And then learning of the Defensive Space Force?
It was Ron who had provided the answer. "Crash a comet into one of the poles," he had said calmly. "The muggles will see that and think the comet's impact and gases are responsible for all the changes."
Hermione and Lee had slowly nodded, followed by Zach and Marietta.
"That would work for a little while," Hermione had mused. "But they'd quickly be able to see the atmosphere was growing far more than one comet or volcano could explain. The comet would have to be . . .." She had stopped and moved a few controls on the console beside her. After much frowning and moving of stones, she had continued, "Almost forty miles in diameter, and solid ices." She had looked up at them. "Not bloody likely. They're usually only twelve miles in diameter — and most have rocky elements in them, too. We'd need . . .," she looked down and touched her display. "Thirty-seven normal-sized comets."
Ron had shrugged. "So, maybe the extraordinarily-large comet broke open an underground cavity that was under a lot of pressure."
She had raised her eyebrows. Then nodded again. "Yeah, that could happen."
Dennis suggested that they plant a hot reactor in the middle of their main deposit point at the pole. It would fool the observers on Earth into thinking this was all the fault of an erupting volcano.
"Zach?" Harry had said. "Do you think you could find us a likely comet? Maybe an unusually large one? Hermione? Which pole is best? Marietta? Do you think you could figure out where we'd have to put the comet for an orbit to hit Mars with the least amount of force? We don't want to lose half the comet as it splashes back into space."
Zach had sighed and looked much put upon, as he usually did when asked for something new. "Probably. I'll just have to spend a few weeks searching the Ort cloud." Harry suspected he said it that way to make it look like he had worked really hard when he provided a solution in half the estimated time.
Hermione had nodded agreeably. "Shouldn't be that difficult to get a contour map of the planet. We'll want it to hit at the pole with the highest elevation, so as the remains melt, the liquids will flow downhill and make rivers and oceans, as well as hydrate the planet faster."
Marietta had grinned. "Easy. Just give me the starting point and time. The Requirement can give it a good shove and the rest is just physics."
"Then," Harry said, "we can plant that hot reactor to simulate a volcano. The Earth scientists will think the impact set it off."
So, now they were just waiting. The trajectory they had given their comet had it barely catching up with the red planet from behind. They had launched it from behind Saturn, with several small booster packs planted on its surface. Those would use jets of compressed ammonia to allow them to make any needed course corrections. An advantage of that was that and the jets would appear as if they were natural pockets of gas escaping from the comet.
The comet would hit the planet in August, just before the next term.
Another group was talking of terraforming Venus by transporting large quantities of hydrogen. The hydrogen, coupled with the iron particles naturally suspended in the atmosphere, would convert most of the carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere into water. That reaction would decrease the pressure from its current ninety-two times the Earth's pressure at sea level down to only twice as much. At which point they could begin injecting the excess carbon-dioxide into the ground, decreasing the pressure even more.
The time scale for that project would be limited to how fast they could move the hydrogen from Jupiter to Venus. Using the reducio charm, they could probably move a thousand cubic miles of liquid hydrogen in a Runabout without too much difficulty. Unfortunately, the cold hydrogen would also remove a great deal of heat from the planet's atmosphere, which might cause the suspended iron to precipitate out of the atmosphere and stop the reaction.
They would have to carefully monitor the situation.
The only problem would be getting the hydrogen there without the Earth scientists noticing the changes for a while.
That still gave them an estimate of about fifteen years after they started before anyone could venture out onto the surface without fear of being toasted by the heat or crushed by the pressure. They wouldn't want to stay outside for long, even then, but it wouldn't be an instant death.
Venus, too, would need a Filter Terminal in place. The Venus group was rather upset that they couldn't use a comet impact to deliver a huge volume of hydrogen at once, but they didn't really want to add so much ammonia, and the heat generated by the impact would be counterproductive.
It also left the problem of speeding-up the planet's rotation from two hundred and forty-three Earth days to twenty-four hours. Maybe crash a Pluto-sized planetoid into it, like had happened to Earth billions of years ago? Might that impart a bit of spin, as well as maybe create a close moon to use tidal forces to speed up its rotation? But, that, too, would add a great deal of heat to the situation.
Again, though, the orbital mechanic effect on the rest of the Solar System required careful study.
Harry could only shake his head in disbelief every time he realized that they were actually planning to prepare two separate planets for habitation, not to mention their other projects.
Not because they needed to do that, but because it was a challenge.
Between the werewolves, ostracized Muggle-borns, and disgruntled Half-bloods, Enterprise had over four hundred families living and working in space, and the numbers were growing steadily.
When Mars became habitable, those numbers would jump up to include thousands of magical creatures as he recruited merpeople to help the wizards populate and manage the oceans, and centaurs to assist them with foresting the lands.
All this was starting while he was still in Hogwarts.
He wondered how long it would take the muggle scientists to notice the changes they would be making.
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Major General George Hammond leaned back in his chair. He was waiting for Colonel Jack O'Neill to return from his foray through the Stargate to Abydos. His goal had been to meet with Dr. Daniel Jackson, and assess the threat level of the "aliens" on Abydos.
He had a bit of a quandary to resolve.
The Stargate program was going to come back online. No matter what happened on Abydos, that was a certainty. That the SG team had arrived in 1969 but originated at a time beyond today meant there was more going on than that one antagonistic group of aliens. Fortunately, the politicians had not hidden their heads in the sand and hoped the problem would go away. There would be more missions as they tried to map out the extent of their problem, and if there were any allies they could rely upon.
He had both Jack and Captain Samantha Carter together, now. When they would make a trip to 1969, he still didn't know. But all the players were under his command, now.
However, it was clear from what he had seen of the aliens at the Stargate that these new aliens and the ones hovering over the United Kingdom were two totally different sets of beings.
One group seemed only interested in saving lives while the other had no qualms at kidnapping and violence.
Plus, Colonel O'Neill had been quite insistent that the alien he had met used a ship shaped like a giant pyramid, whereas the "British" aliens seemed to prefer something more . . . rectangular.
And still no mention of anything with the name, zat.
Which meant, sadly, he would not be retiring anytime soon.
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Two weeks after Easter Hols finished, Harry told the Headmaster that Riddle was obsessed with the number seven, and had mentioned it when talking with Professor Slughorn. The Headmaster was very pleased with that information.
Then they proceeded to view the two memories he had prepared for the night.
Harry discovered that Tom had stolen Slytherin's Locket and Hufflepuff's Cup from Hepzibah Smith after he killed her and confundused their house elf, Hokey, into confessing that she had poisoned her mistress. Which meant that returning the two items to the Smith Family had been the right thing to do.
It also meant that the Headmaster had known those two objects had been missing for at least thirty years, but not that he had proof Tom had them. He also knew that the Gaunt ring had been in Tom's possession for at least forty-five years.
On the other hand, it had been only when they discovered the diary back in Harry's second year that the Headmaster had been able to confirm the Riddle's use of horcruxes. Until then, all he had known was that Tom had stolen a number of valuable items.
"Riddle must have made a total of five horcruxes," Harry finally said. "And he probably wanted to do six for a total of seven soul pieces. The first was probably the diary, because he was still in school and it was the most complex," Harry mused. "Then, according to your memories, Tom had the Gaunt family ring the following year, which became number two. After he graduated, we know he stole Slytherin's Locket and Hufflepuff's Cup, so those are probably his third and fourth horcruxes. The Goblins told me they found a horcrux here, Ravenclaws Diadem, in Hogwarts, which makes five. If we assume he made his pet snake one, then that makes six. So, seven pieces. Which means Riddle is mortal, now." Harry gave him a brilliant smile. "Anyone can kill him."
The Headmaster had been staring at him expressionlessly, but that news clearly startled him. He narrowed his eyes. "The Goblins?" he repeated questioningly.
Harry grimaced. He hadn't really meant to say that. After a moment's thought, he sighed and started explaining about finding Slytherin's Locket in Grimmauld Place the previous year, and how he had enlisted the aid of the Goblins to track down the other missing horcruxes. He finished by explaining how they had used basilisk poison to destroy them.
"Harry," the Headmaster said reprovingly, "you should have come to me immediately when you found the locket. That was incredibly dangerous. Tom might have discovered what you were doing and moved them!"
Harry shook his head. "Yeah, sure," he waved his hand dismissively. "I tried to meet with you last year, several times. You turned me down for ALL of them, without any explanation. What did you expect me to do? Tackle you at the Head Table and tell everybody listening to us that I had found a horcrux?
"I realized you were avoiding me, which meant you weren't going to help me with anything. I had to take care of this myself — as usual. So, I went to the Goblins." He sighed heavily. "It took a lot of gold, not more than I had in my vault, fortunately." That he hadn't actually needed to use the gold in his vault was something he didn't want the Headmaster to know. "This would have been soo much easier if you had been straightforward with me last year." He sighed again, and shook his head, still somewhat upset at being ignored last year.
"This is all on you, Professor. You're the one who refused to listen to me."
"Are you sure that those were horcruxes?" Dumbledore said doubtfully. "The Goblins aren't beyond stretching the truth, at times. Maybe they only claimed what they found were horcruxes."
Harry shook his head, again. "No, they were real. Based on my experiences with Professor Quirrell in my First year, the diary and Prefect-Tom in my Second year, the graveyard in my Fourth year, the Locket and the visions last year — they all made my scar hurt tremendously — they were the real things. I figure that whatever happened that Halloween night in 1981 must have made my scar a Tom Riddle detector."
The Headmaster stared at him a long time, then sighed wearily and looked out the window for a moment before turning back to Harry. "I am so sorry, Harry," he said regretfully, and sounded sincere. "As I told you earlier, I was worried that Tom could use your scar to listen to you as you listened to him on occasion, and so learn that I knew of his horcruxes; that he would then move them."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Thus, your ignoring me without explanation led directly to my going to the Goblins!"
Dumbledore said nothing and just stared at Harry with that faintly disappointed air that implied this was all Harry's fault.
Harry shook his head, irritated. The Headmaster refused to believe anything that conflicted with what he "knew" to be the facts.
Just as he had ignored Snape's many flaws for all these years, believing that all the students were either lying or exaggerating about what the Potions Professor did — or didn't do. He couldn't conceive that the wizard might lie to him by omission, or mislead him by framing the facts in a way that supported his outrageous stories. Snape was "his" wizard, and wouldn't dare fudge the truth around him, Dumbledore believed. Not even seeing the wizard do that very thing in Third Year regarding what happened in the Shrieking Shack had shaken his faith in the truthfulness of his spy.
Or, the Headmaster simply didn't care what Snape did as long as the wizard stayed loyal to Dumbledore.
Harry glared back at the old wizard. "Right," he said. "Is there anything else we need to talk about? Because if not, then we don't need these silly, time-wasting lessons any more. I haven't learned a single bloody thing of true value, here, except that you sat on your arse for fifteen years while Tom Riddle built an army to destroy the wizarding world!"
"That is quite enough, Harry," the Headmaster said quietly.
Harry narrowed his eyes. "Yes, you are right. It is quite enough," he said emphatically. "The horcruxes have been destroyed, and Tom Riddle can be killed by anyone, or by simply tripping and falling down the stairs."
The Headmaster sighed deeply, but didn't say a word.
"May I go?" Harry said frostily.
Dumbledore nodded slowly, and said nothing as Harry exited the office.
Harry headed for the closest of the new hidden passages. He needed some time to think, and to relax. The Requirement's Bridge seemed like the best place, at the moment.
It was clear that the Headmaster loved his secrets more than anything else. He could have said something about the horcrux in Harry's head just then, yet he hadn't. However, Harry had given him a lot of information, so maybe he needed some time to mull it over before deciding on his next move? If the old wizard didn't tell Harry his suspicions about Harry's scar, then Dumbledore moved from his current position as a dubious ally to being an actual enemy.
Perhaps he was the Dark Lord mentioned in the Prophecy. Harry's life with the Dursleys certainly qualified as him leaving his mark on Harry!
The first thing he would do tomorrow would be to contact Rita about the Snape's teaching methods. Harry knew there were plenty of students who would be willing to share their memories of Professor Snape and his actions over the last few years. It would be simple to prove the man an incompetent Professor. While the Professor might have Dumbledore's every confidence, that didn't mean he was a competent teacher of anything.
Maybe it would make the Headmaster start to take Harry seriously.
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That Friday, they decided to take care of the acromantulas. With Hagrid burying his former pet, Aragog, there was now no leash on the giant spiders. Harry and Ron already knew from their trip into the forest in Second year that only Aragog had been keeping the acromantulas from attacking the students. Now, it was only a matter of time before someone wandered too close and ended up being eaten. Or a spider got hungry enough to cross the tree-line.
After their experience in Second year, neither Harry nor Ron were very sympathetic to the monsters.
Colin, oddly enough, came up with the best solution. Rather than having a rain of spiders falling from space to burn up in the atmosphere, and possibly attract attention at the unusual meteorite shower, he suggested sending them to the ocean. Not the bottom, though. Just a mile of so down. The pressure at that depth would instantly crush them, and, at the same time, provide the sea life with an interesting variation to their diets. There were plenty of undersea mountains that were a mile below the surface and teaming with sea life, unlike the very bottom of the sea which was mostly a barren wasteland.
The marines loved their new game. The larger spiders were much more agile, and the variety in size meant the marines had to be far more accurate in their shots with their portkey guns considering their inability to get close to the spiders. The webbing added an extra element as the thin threads could deflect or trigger the portkeys before they hit their targets.
The smaller spiders could be easily handled by incendios.
The webbing turned out to be both a problem and a solution. Acromantula thread, being magical, was in high demand for creating expensive and exotic cloth. Dismantling the webs provided the marines with a large surplus that they were more than happy to provide to weavers. They used the profits to stage some pretty raucous parties.
By the end of the month the spiders were on the defensive. They were rigging trip-threads on the ground, in the tree-tops, and everywhere in between as early warning systems around their section of the forest.
The marines were thrilled.
Harry had to wonder how disappointed they were going to be when they ran out of enemies to hunt.
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A month later, just past the middle of May, the first article about Professor Snape's lack of teaching skills hit the public. The second article, the next day, highlighted his bias to "look the other way" and "blame the victim" when any Slytherins did anything to a non-Slytherin in the previous years. With pictures from the memories Harry had supplied.
Harry made sure to include memories from many students of all three houses. They demonstrated Snape "not noticing" when a non-Slytherin was about to make a mistake, while helping a Slytherin when it looked like she or he was about to ruin a potion. Or blatantly ignoring a Slytherin sabotaging another student's potion. The third and fourth articles, on the following days, detailed the results of his failure to teach properly. That is, he had driven down, quite sharply, the number of students who went on to be healers, potioneers, aurors, and other careers where a good understanding of potions was required. Britain was in the midst of a shortage for all those careers.
The Headmaster was most displeased. He expressed great disappointment in Harry not trusting the Headmaster's word that Snape was loyal. Harry had simply responded, "A dog is loyal, but that doesn't mean he can teach you to be as good at sniffing out foxes as he is, nor that he won't bite anyone who comes close enough."
May was also when Professor Slughorn again proved his Mastery in Potions was not an accident by delivering the one hundred doses of Felix Felicis right on schedule. Harry handed over a year's salary in galleons at Hogwarts as a bonus to the wizard, then immediately ordered another hundred doses, with half the payment up front to help pay for the ingredients.
The doses were immediately secured, under stasis charms, and divided across Uranus Base, the Requirement, the Galileo, and Mars Base.
Plan for the best, prepare for the worst.
By the first week of June, according to the Daily Prophet, the Board of Directors were questioning Professor Snape's qualifications to be a professor. His defence that he was a Master of Potions was struck down with the observation that just because someone was a Master Quidditch player, that didn't make them a great teacher on flying. Also, his current position was as a D.A.D.A. professor, not a potions professor, so being a Potions Master was not relevant to the discussion.
That the Headmaster "had every confidence in Professor Snape" was likewise ruled irrelevant. As one member put it, "I have every confidence in my wife's cooking, but that doesn't mean she can run The Leaky Cauldron's kitchen, even if she is a dab hand at making beef wellington, now does it?"
Snape had been suitably outraged at hearing potions being compared to mere cooking, Harry heard.
The final decision, rendered just before exams, was complicated. Snape had just started the D.A.D.A. Professor position. It was possible, the Board of Governors concluded, that his approach to his new D.A.D.A. classes would not emulate the obvious House-oriented bias's that he had demonstrated so amply in his potion classes.
As a result, the Board would renew his contract for the next year. That came with the provision that his classes would be randomly spot-checked by disillusioned observers. The Headmaster was welcome to see if Professor Snape handled his classes in a fair manner. However, an independent observer would be picked by the Board for the official report, considering the Headmaster's obviously-biased failure to reign in Professor Snape's handling of his Potions classes.
If he taught in a fair manner, treated his students impartially, and taught competently, the board would take no further actions on this subject.
Oh, joy! They were still stuck with the reprehensible dungeon bat.
Unless Snape did decide to bugger-off on his own and open an apothecary.
Harry wondered if he could get one of the half-bloods to front for him in setting up Snape as a research potioneer — or anything, really, just to get him out of the castle.
In any event, without Death Eater wannabes in the castle, nor other hazardous situations, the students were better prepared for exams than in the four previous years. The exams themselves went smoothly.
For Harry, the last term was the calmest he had had since his first year. That Hermione had consented to be his girlfriend just made everything better. Knowing that he was going to spend the summer hols on the Requirement and not with the Dursleys? Well, he was about as content as he could be with that.
Hermione's plans were simple, she wanted to give her parents a tour of the solar system starting the weekend after she returned home. Then the family would take a holiday in southern France — and she fully intended that Harry would go with them. Especially because he had never been out of Little Whinging while living the Dursleys. "It will be," she said, "the perfect opportunity to teach you how to swim!" A skill the Dursleys had deemed unnecessary — perhaps in the hope Harry would fall into a puddle and drown.
The End-of-Year tests were stressful, as always, then it was just a matter of waiting for the train home.
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A.N. Several people had problems with the magicals being incompatible with Stargates and/or Stargates not being simple tunnels.
First, it is canon (100 Days) that energy transits the Stargates without issue (using laser-light that "heats up" the gate's iris, for example). Besides, if it didn't, then SGC could not communicate with their MALPs once they transited the gate, nor could they use radio to let SGC know they were friendlies coming through and to open the iris. Thus, the information contained in energy remains unchanged.
Second, there are repeated references that the way the iris works is by preventing incoming matter from reforming. From the Stargate Wiki: "The iris sits less than three micrometers from the event horizon, so, while an incoming wormhole can still form, any matter sent through will not be able to re-materialize (The Enemy Within)." Not once do they say that incoming soldiers (troops, things, etc.) are merely bounced off the iris and back into the Stargate's wormhole.
Further, from Wikipedia (Stargate (device)), "Objects in transit between gates are broken down into their individual elemental components, and then into energy as they pass through the event horizon, and then travel through a wormhole before being reconstructed on the other side."
Thus, energy transits without being de-materialized and any information contained in the energy is retained, which means an energy being would transit the gate without any issues.
So, magicals being able to transit the Stargate unharmed is a bit unlikely, as they are both energy and matter, and a certain amount of interaction between the two is required for magicals to remain alive. Which means, that while the Stargates can reassemble matter, they can't renew the connections between matter and energy (they don't affect energy).
This wouldn't affect the electrical pulses generated in living matter because all such pulses are biologically created in the instant they are needed. A human might notice an odd feeling passing through, but that's all. Even standing in the Gate wouldn't be a problem as each "half" of the individual would be sending electrical (energy) pulses to the other.
As for other races having magic? I don't know of any such instances. They are all explained as telepathy, telekinesis, or similar "mind" powers. From GateWorld Forum: "Nothing in Stargate is supernatural. It's all perfectly natural, just beyond our level of understanding, just like most of the technology itself. Telekinesis, ascended powers, Ori will-sucking devotion, the Nox, and the Omeyocan; that's not magic. It's either technology or evolution that's beyond our understanding."