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Chapter 5
Having the first full day back to school be a Saturday was weird. Harry woke up ready for classes, but quickly realised the only thing he had to do that day was show the new students around a bit. He climbed out of bed and smiled to himself as he spotted his own reflection from the two-way mirrors stuck to the canopy over his bed. The night before had been a lot of fun.
He was one of the first down into the common room, as most of the older students had decided to sleep in. Hermione hadn't come down yet either, so Harry sat in one of the comfier chairs where he could see the stairs that lead up to the dormitories so he could watch for not only Hermione but the first years as well. He also started to put some serious thought into what he was going to do as his personal project this year. He and Hermione still hadn't mastered their animagus training, but all that was left was practice. He would have to ask Professor McGonagall if she would still be prepared to supervise their practice, because as headmistress it was possible that she wouldn't have the time anymore. It was only now that he sat there thinking about it that he realised that the ban on working with runes was probably lifted, as it was Professor Dumbledore who had wanted Harry to focus on something else. Professor McGonagall had been supportive of Harry working with runes, and with Professor Babbling now being the Head of Gryffindor Harry strongly suspected his Head of House would support him doing his personal project in her subject.
People were coming down the stairs in small numbers as he sat there waiting, and Harry made sure to call the first years and the lycanthropy students over to him telling them that he would show them the way down to breakfast shortly. Two of the lycanthropy students declined, having already arranged with their dorm mates to be shown the way. After about half an hour, Hermione came down, the lycanthropic girl in their year walking with her as they chatted about something. Seeing Harry waiting for her Hermione came over and greeted him with a good morning kiss. The first years that were sitting close to Harry all "ohh'ed" at the two of them, causing Harry and Hermione to blush a little.
They did a quick head count and found that they were one short of the first years. After a few quick questions, it turned out one of the boys was still in bed and wanted to stay there, so it was on Harry to go get him. He was clearly not used to getting up this early, but as the boy needed to get used to it for class Harry was insistent. However, when Harry told the boy that he risked missing breakfast, he was up and dressed in minutes. Harry remembered having to do the same thing for Ron in their first year. About halfway down to breakfast, they met up with Michael Corner and Su Li, the Ravenclaw prefects who were leading a similar group of clueless individuals down to breakfast. When they got there, the group saw the new Hufflepuff and Slytherin students were already there, but as their common rooms were so close to the Great Hall Harry doubted that they needed a prefect to show them the way.
Harry was just about to start filling his plate when suddenly the lycanthropy students at every table suddenly had their plates transfigured into what looked like the type of bowls that dogs get served their food in. A bunch of them, Kathryn included, stood up outraged at the sight, only to have their protests drowned out by the sound of a wolf howl coming from the transfigured plates. Hermione grabbed and covered her ears, the howling (already painfully loud to Harry) must have been torture to her. Harry was angry. Not only was this bullying and not a prank, but the lycanthropy students were not the only ones targeted. Hermione's plate had also turned into a dog's bowl and was howling. The message was clear: whoever had done this saw lycanthropy sufferers as animals, and they saw Hermione the same way.
Harry stood up so fast that the bench he was sitting on flew back a few feet and feet and the few Gryffindors that were sitting on the same bench as him had to struggle to keep from toppling over. He cast a silencing charm over Hermione to protect her from the loud noise, then cast a Finite Incantatem on it. Seeing that the plate returned to normal, Harry walked along the Gryffindor table and turned the rest of the plates back to how they were before. Seeing what Harry was doing, Professors Babbling and Vector, as the new heads of Gryffindor and Slytherin, stood up from the staff table and started to fix up the other tables. Harry did fix two on the Hufflepuff table before Professor Babbling got there, but the rest of the hall was sorted by the two professors.
Harry looked up at the head table to see why the other heads of house weren't helping, only to find that they hadn't made it to breakfast yet. They probably didn't even know anything had happened yet, depending on how far through the castle the noise had carried. However, Harry did see at the head table a very pissed off Professor McGonagall, who was on her feet leaning over the head table and looking down on the students, just waiting for everything to settle down enough so she could start yelling at all of them.
Less than 5 seconds later, the Scots professor seemed to decide that the room was quiet enough, because she started ripping into them. "I have never in all my time as a professor or a student been so disgusted in the conduct of Hogwarts students! This kind of close minded bigotry has absolutely no place in a school. When I find out who was behind this they will receive an entire month of detention. Mr Potter, what are you doing?"
Harry had been casting a counter charm on Hermione, and when Professor McGonagall addressed him he straightened up a little and looked her in the eye. "The noise was so loud that it hurt Hermione, Professor. Before returning the plates to normal I cast a silencing charm over her ears. Now I'm removing it."
The headmistress's expression softened a touch before she nodded at him. "Very well, please continue. Oh, and ten points to Gryffindor for your quick thinking." Harry nodded to her in acceptance and returned to removing the charm from Hermione, who sighed in relief when the silencing charm was removed and heard that the howling had stopped. Professor McGonagall continued to make her displeasure known for the next five minutes. Hermione pulled Harry back into the seat next to her as she silently fumed over what had happened while they listened to their headmistress.
Eventually, Professor McGonagall warned them that if there was even one more incident like this, she would ban the whole school from visiting Hogsmeade until she found the people responsible. That had surprised everyone, it was well known throughout the school that Professor McGonagall was one of the stricter professors, but this was more than they ever thought she would do. However, when Harry considered her recent policy of scheduling detentions so that you would miss something you wanted to do, it fit.
Just as Professor McGonagall was finishing up her warning, Professor Lupin and a few other professors (including Flitwick and Vector, who looked like they had been talking together before coming down to breakfast) arrived and were surprised by the subdued atmosphere in the room. Harry and Hermione both picked at their food while they watched the professors as they joined the rest of the staff at the head table. Harry could see the moment that Professor McGonagall told the late professors what had happened, as the look of curiosity on their faces was replaced with looks of anger, more pronounced on the faces of Professors Lupin and Flitwick, whom the students could easily work out had been the targets of such discrimination themselves in the past.
Professor Flitwick handed out piles of parchments to the four Heads of House, and Hermione's guess that the parchments were this year's class timetables were proven right as they all got up and started to hand out the parchments to the students in their house. Professor Babbling did hesitate before speaking with Harry, obviously trying to remember something, but soon remembered to tell him he would need to speak with her about this year's hole in his schedule. That Harry was able to tell her right then that he was planning another personal project involving runes was enough to put a slight smile on the woman's lips, though whether that was because Harry already had an idea about what he was going to do (thus making her job a little easier) or because he was focusing on runes (her subject) he had no clue.
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Harry and Hermione spent the first half of the day showing the new Gryffindors around the school classrooms, greenhouses, Quidditch pitch, astronomy tower, the hospital wing, and of course the library. There were no Professors in their classrooms but they did run into Professor Sprout in Greenhouse One. The Herbology professor was watering a few of the plants that needed attention every day and she took the opportunity to greet the new students. The Quidditch pitch and the astronomy tower were both big hits. A lot of the first years were excited to hear that Harry was the Gryffindor seeker and that he had gotten his position in his first year. At the astronomy tower, Hermione was a little disappointed that the enthusiasm was more for the view than for any kind of academic zeal, even if she had to admit that the view on a clear, relatively sunny day like today was spectacular.
When Harry told Madam Pomfrey that he thought it was a good idea that the new students knew their way to the hospital wing in case of emergencies, the school medi-witch took the opportunity to tease Harry that most students don't have anywhere near as much need for her services as he did. The library was the first place they went that was relatively populated. A number of students seem to have left their homework over the summer, knowing they would have two days before lessons started, and they were now rushing to finish it before their first lessons on Monday. Hermione took the opportunity to lecture them all on what she considered proper behaviour in a library and how to check out books.
When Harry got back to the common room that evening, he was cornered by Angelina Johnson. "Hey Potter, I got made Quidditch captain this year, are you sticking with the team?" The now seventh year girl who played chaser asked.
"Of course I'm in." Harry confirmed, grinning.
"Excellent. I'm holding tryouts next Saturday. Be there to defend your position." She told him, surprising Harry. Angelina must have seen it show up on his face because she added, "No automatically being on the team while I'm in charge. You're great, but there might be someone better, plus I want a few backup players for the team in case one or more of us can't play."
That made sense to Harry, if there was someone better than him he would miss it but he would gladly step aside. "I'll be there."
"One more thing. Ron Weasley has put his name down for keeper, would it cause a conflict if he made the team?" It was clear from the way she asked that she expected Harry to be the seeker, even if she was making him try out.
Harry thought about it for a moment. "No, Ron and I haven't fought since our third year. I'm sure we can get on well enough if he makes the team."
She nodded. "Good, see you around, I need to go corner Professor Babbling and get her to book the pich." Angelina disappeared through the portrait hole.
Harry went to join Hermione, who was sitting in one of the tower's more comfortable loveseats reading a book. When he sat down, she asked what Angelina wanted, and after hearing Harry's answer her response was, "Well it makes sense to have reserve players, Gryffindor may have won the Cup our first year if there was a reserve seeker."
"Wood couldn't even find a seeker that year, Professor McGonagall put me on the team because Wood had no one else."
"True. What time are we calling Fleur?" Hermione changed the subject. The two girls were planning to spend a couple of hours every Saturday evening using the mirrors to teach Harry how to speak French.
"Well, she is an hour ahead so we should probably call soon," Harry admitted, and they left the tower to look for an empty classroom where they could set up Harry's mirror that connected to Fleur.
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The first week back at Hogwarts was enough to show that Hogwarts under Headmistress McGonagall was different. In Harry's first History of Magic class there was no one mention of goblin rebellions. Instead, Professor Lupin had them go over the First Blood War with Voldemort, and he paid extra attention to just how many purebloods were killed and how many pureblood families were completely wiped out. It wasn't subtle, in fact it was obvious he was showing how even if you believed the pureblood dogma that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his supporters preached, their organisation was the leading cause of the reduced population of purebloods.
Another big change was that Gryffindor found out what it was like to have a Head of House that actually had the time to do the job. Professor Babbling had office hours where she would meet with her runes students to help them, but the rest of the time she spent sitting at a table to the one side in the Gryffindor common room. The result was that any Gryffindors with problems found that they were easy to take to their new Head of House and got solved right away. The common room also became a lot easier to work in, as with the professor in the room there was naturally a homework first attitude. That's not to say that it became like the library, it was still the place Gryffindors relaxed and had a bit of fun, it was just less chaotic until after dinner.
Prefect rounds were interesting. At first, Harry felt a little guilty using the Marauders Map to find people who were out after curfew, until he learned from Lupin that, as a Prefect, he had used the map for the exact same thing. The weirdest part was finding people they knew and liked shearing a broom cupboard, like when they caught Dean Thomas snogging a half-naked Hufflepuff girl. Harry quickly developed a policy where if they liked someone they caught, then that person was told to get back to their common room sharpish or they would have them in detention. As long as they didn't see them again for the rest of the night, then they forgot about it.
People who they didn't know or care about were given a warning the first time they were caught, and as long as they went a few weeks without being caught again Harry and Hermione would let it slide. However, if they were caught again (like the Ravenclaw fourth year they caught two or three times a week), then no more warnings were given and it was detention every time. If it was someone they didn't like, for example Crabbe, Goyle, or Bulstrode, then they would go out of their way to catch them and put them in detention. They had all three by the end of their first week, the map being a great tool for that.
There were exceptions though. Hermione absolutely refused to give detention to someone they caught returning from the library, she empathised with them having lost herself in the books more than a few times herself. It was mostly Ravenclaws who got let off for that. Harry, on the other hand, absolutely refused to call the twins on anything he and Hermione only caught because of the map. In his mind, even if the map had belonged at least in part to his father (making Harry the rightful owner), the twins had been the ones to give it to him and it just felt wrong to use it against them. Not that they went giving the twins detention often enough anyway. Apparently, when they had spoken to Sirius at Harry's birthday party, they had told the old Marauder about their idea to open a joke shop and he had loved the idea. Sirius had bought into their business and was even now collaborating with the twins on joke products they could produce. The twins were now testing those products in the common room whenever they thought they could get away with it, and they seemed to accept any detention they got as being worth it, leaving Hermione extremely frustrated about what to do. It wasn't helping Hermione's or any fifth year's mood that every single teacher they had started off their first lesson of the year by telling them that this was their O.W.L. year and that their results this year could affect the rest of their lives.
Harry and Hermione stuck around after their first Transfiguration lesson, and seeing the two teens waiting around Professor McGonagall smiled and said, "Let me guess, the two of you want to know if I'll still supervise you practising your animagus transformations?"
"Yes professor," both Harry and Hermione said at the same time, causing all three of them to smile.
"I am prepared to do so. Mostly you just need someone there to fix things if you get stuck, so you can come to my new office on Sundays. As long as you don't disturb my paperwork you can practice there, and I'll be right there if you make a mistake." She told them. "Now both of you need to get off to your next class." The two of them thanked their professor-cum-headmistress and quickly made their way to their next lesson.
Harry spent a lot of time that week trying to come up with a runes project that would impress people and gain him recognition after school. Having a patent to his name and being a registered animagus were both brag-worthy when it came time to find a job, and he didn't want his next project to be a let down compared to them. He had an old notebook where he had jotted down a few ideas, but none of them seemed good enough for some reason or another. For example, his idea for temperature-regulating bed sheets already existed, and his ideas for a runic listening device and a flash bang grenade were just not appropriate for a school project.
In the end, he had two ideas that he wanted to pursue. One was a doorway that when you walked through it would prevent any water passing through it, and the other was a cupboard that when you put something into the cupboard it would make a copy in a paired cupboard. A full version of the second one would probably need so much power it would burn out the runes, but short range and with simple things like documents or something similar he could probably do without too much trouble. And he could see how it could make things a lot easier in places like the Ministry if they had a device that could send memos instantly instead of the paper planes he saw them using whenever he went there.
He showed both of his ideas to Professor Babbling, who approved them after checking that Harry was aware of some safety concerns with the drying doorway. He had already worked out that he would have to test it on things like fruit first. The last thing he wanted was to risk removing all the water from inside a person's body. Well, almost the last thing he wanted to do; there were a few people he would gladly push through something like that.
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Saturday came and Harry was woken up by Ron - not maliciously, nor even intentionally, Ron was just digging around in his trunk looking for his Quidditch gear as he got ready for tryouts. And as Harry had to get to tryouts as well, his red-haired roommate had actually done Harry a small favour waking him up. About half an hour later, Harry was walking down to the Quidditch pitch with what was left of his original team, a bunch of hopefuls, and a few supporters like Hermione and Colin Creevey.
Angelina had all the hopefuls start with a basic drill, flying from one side of the pitch to the other in formation. It was basic and any flyer shouldn't have a problem doing it, and unfortunately for Angelina none of them did. It was clear that she was hoping to thin out the numbers, but everyone who had come was at least a decent enough flyer to pass that test, meaning they would all get the chance to try out. She then broke them up into groups based on the position they were trying to get. As testing for chasers needed a keeper, Angelina did them first.
It soon became clear that there were only two contenders for the Keeper position. One was Ron and the other was sixth year Cormac McLaggen. McLaggen was busy telling all the other hopefuls that his friends had challenged him to eat a pound of doxy eggs, but when he called them out to provide the eggs they had been unable to get them, apparently having been confiscated by professor Babbling. But if you listened to the hopeful Keeper talk, he seemed to think he deserved the credit for doing it just because he said he was going to.
The testing of the keepers was done with the last year's chasers all taking three shots at goal, which gave each keeper a score out of nine. Ron and McLaggen both scored an eight, but the highest that any of the others scored was five, which was from a second year boy Harry only recognised because he was one of the lycanthropy sufferers that had joined Gryffindor this year. Harry made a mental note to watch that kid as he could be a good keeper in a few years.
Angelina then used the two keepers to test the chaser hopefuls. She did end up keeping the same lineup as last year but added Demelza Robins and Ginny Weasley as back ups, though Ginny said she also wanted to try out for reserve seeker. She claimed that only the reserve seeker spot was available because Harry was seeker, not because of favouritism but because Harry was a demon on a broomstick and that no one in the school had a chance of unsettling him from his position. It was a similar affair with the beaters, the twins got their position back and Angelina added two reserves. Coote and Peakes were almost as good as the twins, but hopefully if the twins didn't need to take a game off the two of them would have a year to practice and work with the twins, giving Gryffindor a good run at the cup next year as well.
The drama came when McLaggen, who was still waiting for Angelina to make a decision on the keeper position, seemed to get bored and was trying to coach one of the younger beater hopefuls on the best way to swing a beaters bat. The idiot used his wand to release one of the Bludgers, and when it came after him he hit it and sent the cannonball hurtling just like you were supposed to, but directly at the boy who had scored a five out of nine in the keeper trials.
The boy had taken his loss well and had seen that the ones who had been him were quite a few years older and he had high hopes that he could make the reserve spot in a year or or two, and maybe even full keeper after that. He had stuck around to watch the rest of the trials out of a pure love of the sport that a lot of young boys had until it was replaced when they discovered girls (or boys) were far more interesting. The problem was, at the time he was watching another group, not the one with McLaggen, and didn't see the ball coming until it was already embedded in his stomach. Luckily Katie knew enough first aid to help the poor kid, who was left throwing up and struggling to breath while he was hunched over on the pitch. Hermione who had come down with the spectators, froze the Bludger before it could return and attack someone else, then got right in McLaggen's face and gave him detention for dangerous behaviour.
A few of the seeker hopefuls complained that it wasn't fair for Harry to try out on a Firebolt, at least before Harry pulled his broom out of its cover and revealed his old Nimbus 2000. While Harry was more than prepared to use his Firebolt to win him games, he wasn't going to use it to compete against fellow Gryffindors. He even decided that he was going to play extra fair and he let all the seeker hopefuls try out on the Nimbus 2000. That led to a more exciting try out for the hopefuls, and the tryout was much closer than it would have been otherwise. Harry was still the best, but Ginny was a lot better than Harry had expected, and he decided if he couldn't play seeker for a game this year then he would happily lend Ginny his Nimbus for the match.
After Quidditch Tryouts they all went back up to the castle and finally had breakfast. Once they were all finished eating, Harry had to go round up the first generation first years and corral them into a classroom for his little letter writing club. They all looked at him in relief when he handed out not quills and ink but regular old ball point pens. The professors may not let them use pens for class work, but they had no say what they used to write to their parents, and Harry was sure the parents would prefer something that was easier to read (at least until the first years were more comfortable writing with quills). The biggest struggle the first years had was one Harry hadn't expected at all, though he should have now he thought about it. About half of them needed to ask how to spell something, most commonly Transfiguration. After about an hour, Harry led them all up to the owlery and they all sent off their letters, giving him a few hours to knock out some homework before he mirror-called Fleur for his second official French lesson.
A/N
It is canon that prefects cannot take house points, in book five when Malfoy takes points form the trio Hermione says that prefects can't do that and Malfoy replies that inquisitorial squad can. In old British boarding schools it was (is?) common for prefects to give detentions.
So Harry has started to learn French. He is focusing purely on speaking and ignoring the written language so I'm gonna say it's gonna take about 600 hours of work until he can have a conversation that an average French person would understand and Harry would understand them (as long as they stick to relatively simple topics). I'm crediting Harry with ten hours to start with, because he has spent a few weeks in France and most of a year in the company of Fleur, even if he wasn't focusing on learning French my guess is that something would have sunk in.
So at the end of this chapter Harry's skill in basic verbal French is 14/600