Chapter 16 SPIC & SPAN (Scaring Pupils Into Compliance & Soothing Parents About Nightmares)
'So many details,' Harry reflected in exasperation. The coming school year would see the first class of GCSE pupils who hadn't started out at a muggle secondary school. The pupils therefore didn't have a logical place to go to for their exams. They could have made each pupil register at their local school, but that would have meant they would have had to lie about being homeschooled, a lie that might get exposed. So, they had chosen to apply for a license to administer the exams themselves. As a consequence, there was lots of paperwork to be filled out, and because their school didn't fall under any local authority, that made the process complicated. The queen had appointed one of her administrators to liaise with Harry to iron out the irregularities, which at least meant that it had stopped being impossible, but still, it was as if there were forms to get permission to fill out other forms.
Harry had been the logical choice to do most of the work. Ted and Andromeda had primary responsibility of the children who stayed over summer, Lilian and Hermione were working on their next line of attacking Death Eaters who targeted muggles, and Noêmia and Neville grew their food. Despite the small number of mouths to feed, summer was more busy than the rest of the year, because during term time teaching took up most of Neville and Noêmia's time, so during the holidays they did a lot of preserving. Mags did help Harry, but as she was still new, there were details of the school and their agreement with the prime minister and the queen that only Harry knew, so he did most of the work.
In addition, Neville was registering their school for ICW accreditation. Having a magical school at an undisclosed location was much more normal, and in any case, magic did alleviate the need for some bureaucracy, or maybe the effort to keep magic hidden took up so much of the confederation's resources that they couldn't afford to be particularly strict about educational standards. Still, Neville and Harry had fallen into an easy competition of who had encountered the most outrageous administrative demand that day.
It wasn't inconceivable that the British Ministry would hear about the accreditation test, so they were going to install wards around the ICW facility to make a magical map showing every human who was there. Because it was only a diagnostic ward it shouldn't interfere with existing protective wards.
Summer was also the time for coming up with a new way to disrupt the ministry-controlled magical society, but Harry was so busy with muggle administration that he didn't have time for any major plans. He asked Dora Tonks to discretely look into the British potion-ingredient trade, both legal and illegal, with India. Harry wondered whether he could continue where he had left off, trying to dismantle the smuggling ring. Although magical India had never been a colony of magical Britain, the muggle occupation had created a stronger connection between the magical societies than most. India had therefore become a gateway for trade between Britain and Asia. None of the three yearmates, Harry, Hermione and Neville, had stayed in touch with the Patil twins, so Harry had asked Dora Tonks to broker a contact with the Indian aurors through MACUSA, while checking that they would still allow Harry to operate as an unpaid MACUSA auror.
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The coming three school years were going to be the busiest years. The coming year they were going to teach both OWL and final year NEWT classes during the weekend, plus 6 years of magical classes and 7 of muggle classes. The next year they would have a full set of weekday classes, but still have both years of NEWT classes during the weekends as well. After that, they would have the last year of weekend classes. During the first two years of their school none of the first years had wanted to go through the effort of attending muggle school during the week and have more classes in the weekend. After that, they had stopped offering the option, even though one or two in each year had complained that the muggle curriculum was too restricted. They had had to accept that they were a small school and couldn't cater to every wish. Time would tell how well the option of self-study with a pensieve worked, when the first pupils using them sat their GCSE exams. Of course, some of the complaining pupils hadn't even tried the self-study option, which had led the staff to try and find a polite way of pointing out to those pupils that a lack of self-discipline was not the same as a restricted curriculum.
The previous year's Polish-Lithuanian pupils, who had had a portrait to teach them English, even if it had only been for 4 months, had had noticeably fewer language problems than the ones of the year before. Therefore, they wanted to roll out the lending of portraits to all potential pupils, and ideally start from an earlier age. However, Hermione estimated there were about 30 muggleborns per year in the countries they were reaching out to, provided they got accreditation, so they only had enough portraits for all the 10-year-olds. They didn't want to force the 10-year-olds to decide which school they were going to attend, and the alternative of only reaching out to the pupils in the countries where the average level of English was low didn't appeal to them either. Even the idea of buying second-hand portraits in the USA was met with at best a lukewarm response. Even Noêmia had to some extent picked up the consensus opinion that American and British English were not the same language.
They had reached out to Fred and George, asking them to put on disguises and buy at least 30 more paintings. Paintings were not exactly popular second-hand items, so on the one hand they were fairly cheap, but on the other hand there was only one shop in Knockturn Alley that sold them, and they only had a few in stock. The twins thought that over the coming year the shop might be able to find more of them. As pureblood families held on to paintings of family members even when they didn't have anywhere to hang them, the paintings that were for sale were predominantly of the sort of families that had no problem with muggleborns. The few that might have expressed reservations quickly swallowed them when it became clear to them that the alternative was to be stuffed in an attic of a Potter or Longbottom property and forgotten about.
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It was Hermione's turn to give the opening speech, "We have had to defend two pupils from the ministry obliviators over the holidays because of accidental magic. Accidental magic is to some extent inevitable, so we're not blaming anyone for that, but during interviews afterwards we felt the pupils involved didn't understand the seriousness of the situation. The biggest thing that we have going for us is that the people who see us as vermin to be exterminated also think of us as unimportant, so as long as we don't draw attention to ourselves we can continue to exploit their blind spot. We ask everybody to keep doing their occlumency exercises. I have obtained a memory of a Death Eater raid from 1980. It resulted in the death of an auror, and it makes for horrible viewing, so we decided that viewing this memory would be on a voluntary basis. These same Death Eaters are now running the ministry of magic, so if you are having doubts about why we keep harping about the necessity for these exercises and other security measures, then I encourage you to stay for the viewing of this memory after dinner.
On a completely different note, we are pleased to welcome a new member of staff, Mr Colin Creevey, who will be teaching History, will coordinate General Studies, and teach first year Geography."
They now had 9 teachers, most of whom taught 2 or 3 subjects at both OWL/GCSE level and NEWT/A-level. Only Hermione taught four subjects. Two of those were for 5 years only, but she also taught their charms, their most popular magical subject, including weekend classes for the upper years, therefore it was still too much to keep doing long-term. It was the reason that Colin would be eased into Geography teaching even though he didn't have a QTS for that.
Meanwhile, Liz Opportell had entered Hogwarts Castle with their returning pupils, and had gone to the Room of Requirement to photo-copy a chapter of an arithmancy book that Hermione knew to be in the Hogwarts library, but hadn't been able to find anywhere else. She had made copies of a few other sources as well, that Hermione thought they might need over the coming years. Neville had also asked her to steal some plants from the greenhouses. They were for potions ingredients that were so rarely used and had a relatively short shelf-life that they were not sold in apothecaries, and, with how isolated their school was, they wouldn't be able to go to a distributor for a rush order if they ever did need one of them. In place of the plants Liz had left a note that said.
Minerva said that you had offered to help. Thank you.
The note was not signed, but they had agreed that, if it was in Neville's handwriting, Professor Sprout would recognise it without it posing a significant security risk.
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The response to the memory of the Death Eaters against the aurors was wildly different; some of the pupils treated it as if it had been a TV-show of simulated violence, while others had nightmares about it. Although the staff commiserated with the latter and provided counselling, the former was seen as much more of a problem. Harry had announced a month of Pink Panther scenario, where during an hour every day he would, without warning, cast spells at the pupils. To simulate the use of unforgiveables, NEWT pupils were only allowed to block spells with conjured or summoned objects. Although, of course, the spells that Harry used were all easily reversed, he did use ones that were painful to keep it from being too much of a game. Those who were not in the duelling club quickly learned that there was safety in numbers only when they were co-ordinated, that they needed to think in three dimensions, and that there wasn't a single defence that worked for all modes of attack.
Two things finally seemed to have convinced those pupils who were too relaxed about the risk of being discovered by the ministry. The first was that a few had concluded that in Pink Panther both parties were fair game, had tried to land a spell on Harry, had even been praised for their efforts, but had failed every time. The other was that during Runes and Arithmancy classes, Lilian and Hermione had explained what they had done to make it more difficult for the ministry to find them, and how the things they had been learning formed the basis for things like the modification of the underage magic detection network and the wards protecting the school. This brought home the message that the staff had gone to great lengths to keep everybody safe, and what the pupils were asked to contribute was relatively modest in comparison, that there were things about magic that the pupils didn't know yet, and that the inconvenient security measures that they were asked to go through were part of a carefully thought out strategy.
That wasn't quite the end of it, though, when some parents wrote to complain about exposing their children to things that only adults should be asked to deal with. The response they wrote apologised for the worries and nightmares, but that unfortunately, it had been a choice between protecting their lives or their innocence. They had reiterated their explanation of the political landscape of the two magical Britains, in a few cases arranging to visit the parents to reassure them that they took the emotional wellbeing of their pupils very seriously, and that they might be forcing the pupils to grow up faster than they would like, but that with help from the school staff the children were proving their resilience.
One pair of parents were unconvinced by these reassurances and said they were withdrawing their son from the school, but, when given the choice, the pupil in question chose to become a virtual orphan over having his magic bound. Only when presented with the stark reality that the school considered the underage pupils competent to decide their own lives did the parents back down and agree to let him continue his magical education.
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Dora had called to report back what she had been able to find out about potion ingredients trade between India and Britain. MACUSA was happy for Harry to continue acting as an unpaid auror abroad. However, corruption in India was almost as bad as in Britain, so working with local aurors was too risky without an in-depth knowledge of who was being paid by whom in the shifting alliances of the highest bidder. As a consolation prize, a MACUSA auror, a friend and former colleague of Harry, had suggested to Dora that economic inequality was so high in Britain that only the privileged few could afford the things that were expensive enough that it paid for smugglers to trade in them, like rare potions ingredients, and that if their goal was to boost the emigration rate, that it might be better to leave the British smugglers be, as it fostered resentment of the majority against the rich oligarchy. Harry was not convinced by the latter argument; that the silent majority, who for one reason or another felt disinclined to try their luck in a new country, adjusted to any existing difficulties, but might change their mind if the situation kept changing. However, he did agree that the former argument meant they had better avoid India in their ongoing efforts to keep changing the status quo.
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The book chapter that Liz Opportell had copied in the Room of Requirement allowed Hermione to provide arithmantic support with which Lilian had managed to modify the anti-apparation and anti-portkey wards to not prevent travel, but to put up resistance. Harry had volunteered to test it and they confirmed that the ward resulted in splinching even from the use of a portkey. The Death Eaters wouldn't die of splinching, but they would definitely be in pain and spend time in St Mungo's. They still hadn't found a way to prevent the raids, so they would have to settle, for now, for irritating the Death Eaters.
There was a logistical challenge, though. The impact of having the ward in place in advance would be far bigger than placing it while the raid was in progress, because an already splinched person would find it much more difficult and risky to portkey out through the ward. Because there were so many villages in Britain, it might take a while to make a significant impact; then again, the raids were not random, avoiding cities and towns, but also hamlets, and though they had yet to revisit the same village since the maps had been made, they had raided villages near ones they had attacked before more frequently than they would have based on a random choice.
After they had found out the new wards worked, they had asked their expatriate rune-carving friends to make a whole bunch of them, and they would teach their NEWT pupils as well. They would start with the 3 areas where two raids had taken place in a five mile radius since they had made the maps, and to go for quality over quantity, installing duelling wards in every street and unactivated anti-travelling wards and unplottable points from which to activate them around each cluster of villages, so that they could protect the muggle houses, direct a fight, trap raiders inside, delay reinforcements and stack the odds of a fight in their favour.
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By the start of the Christmas holidays they had warded the villages around the 3 pairs that had previously been attacked by Death Eaters. Depending on how much help the expatriates could provide and how many other tasks they had to take care of during the holidays, it would take them 2 to 4 years to ward all the neighbouring villages to the ones that had been attacked over the previous 4 years. That would still leave new villages that would be attacked during that period, but they didn't need to ward every village before cumulative chance would have the Death Eaters target a warded village. Still, even 2 years seemed like too long a break to give them, but for the moment they had no new ideas on how to kill the remaining Azkaban escapees or how to capture those who attacked muggles before the Death Eaters could call for reinforcements, so they started to think about other strategies to make their lives difficult.
Since they had already gotten good results with economic and guerrilla warfare, they considered adding some good old agitprop to their repertoire. However, their information about magical Britain was limited to what emigrants told to Sirius and Remus, and the emigrants all came from lower and middle class families, so they had little insight into those who shaped politics. The recession and political corruption notwithstanding, daily life went on much as it always had, so they didn't know which angle to use from which to agitate. It was frustrating, and Harry in particular chafed under the lack of struggle. Cooler minds convinced Harry that he'd become an adrenaline junkie who was raring for a fight. That they were not losing ground, only gaining it more slowly. That they could afford to sit back and let their alternative prosper.
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"I think we should release two of the American prisoners," Ted announced at a weekly staff meeting. "Their magic takes longer to recover with every dosage with Draught of Living Death, and the personnel and facilities we have are inadequate for helping them recover. The Americans were only there as hired wands, and since we obliviated them they won't know who to target if they wanted revenge."
"What if they told their friends what they were going to do?" Harry asked, worried for Sirius and Remus.
"You know the answer to that better than any of use," Hermione chided, "they wouldn't have told anyone, because that would have only meant a risk of being ratted out."
Harry had to concede that that was likely true. "What is the risk of transporting them to the USA?"
"Nobody showed up when we brought them into the country," Ted pointed out, implying they could do the same thing again, stick them in an expanded trunk, ask Dobby to take the trunk to the unplottable cave in the USA, then drop them in an unpopulated spot with their wands, feed them wiggenweld potion and leave before they woke up. They decided to release all 6 American prisoners. Four years of imprisonment, plus an unknown time to recover from repeated dosing with Draught of Living Death, seemed enough for having a minor role in an unsuccessful assassination attempt and before that repeated smuggling offences.
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Opal gave birth to their first free-born house-elf. Hermione had recognised what would happen next and had convinced Sirius to break with tradition and refuse to name the baby. Opal must have concluded that if her former masters had a tradition of naming their children after heavenly bodies, she could name her child after another gemstone, and named her Agate.
Although she wasn't past the three-months point yet, and didn't want to make a big deal out of it, Noêmia announced that she was pregnant.
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The OWL teachers had decided that they didn't want to put the pupils through the stress of two sets of OWL exams, but the ICW required a grade before they sat their ICW exams, so they had agreed that the penultimate four weeks of term they would get at least one each of an essay, a set of short questions, a multiple-choice test, a review of practicals covered over the previous four years, a practical assignment that challenged fifth-year pupils, and a practical test that they had had no previous experience with. The teachers also warned against the potential pitfall of treating the theoretical and practical exams as entirely separate; that during the practical exam an examiner might ask for the theoretical background of a wand-movement, and that a few well-placed words could do as much as showing understanding rather than rote learning as an exhaustive essay.
During the last week of term, the OWL pupils, accompanied by Harry, Andromeda, Noêmia and Dobby, flew by owl to The Netherlands and took a portkey from there to the ICW. The Polish ministry of magic was sponsoring their application, and they had registered Noêmia as the headmistress, which apparently was enough to deflect any interest Voldemort might have shown, or possibly he didn't want a repeat of the ICW censure, and/or there were enough problems in Britain that he wasn't interested whether the British muggleborns were getting their education in Poland. Harry didn't get his fight and was content with that.