Harry had really never found more than a few skill books at once before. In his normal investigation of the Hogwarts library, he was finding only about one per hour. Upon reading it the knowledge would have time to situate itself over the time it took him to find the next one. Even on that first day, when he'd found five skill books in the Little Whinging library, he'd done so over the course of a couple of hours.
It turned out when he tried to mainline a whole library that was entirely skill books, it gave him a giant headache. He got through the first ten before suddenly his vision started swimming, and he had to lie down and wait for the information to sort itself into his brain. The few seconds it took to consume a skill book wasn't the time required to digest it. "You'll go down in history as the only person to make himself physically ill by trying to read too fast," Sirius joked.
"Well, at least when not trying to read on a moving vehicle," Hermione corrected. When she got a lot of blank looks from those raised without car trips (beyond the Weasley rides to King's Cross for school), she explained, "People get carsick. It's not really the reading, I don't think, just taking your eyes off the moving terrain for too long. Anyway, I think you should limit yourself to maybe one every ten minutes, and we'll see if you can go faster or slower."
The more hours he put into constant skill acquisition, the more he wound up needing to slow down even further. Consequently, it took Harry most of the second week of holidays to get through the 100-plus skill books from Ekrizdis' set. It was still better than having to find them in the school library: rather than checking book after book after book, he'd just have a stack to hand and periodically quick-read one while hanging out with his friends.
About a quarter of them were either ones he'd already read at Hogwarts or otherwise way out-leveled, so he got nothing from them. That left several dozen that gave him XP in skills, mostly of the magical persuasion (though Ekrizdis had focused on Greek, Latin, and French as well). At the end of the week he'd maxed out all of his OWL skills to 20, as well as Conversational Greek and Latin, gotten Conversational French to 15, and had a whole new block of NEWT skills with one, two, or three ranks in them. Remus and Sirius tested him on his new knowledge, and figured that once he learned all the spells to match, he'd be out-casting everyone in fifth year, and set to get reasonable grades in sixth-year classes.
Hermione was basically over being jealous about it.
"I do think that Ekrizdis might have seriously overestimated how fast he could get his apprentices up to speed with that collection," she opined. "It barely got you into the NEWT level, and you were almost to twenty in most of your OWL skills."
"He'd have probably been giving them to apprentices that already had some years of school, though," Ron argued. "And it did get Harry basically even in everything. He was behind on the electives compared to the core subjects."
"Hmph," she acknowledged, unable to fully rebut the argument. "I still think that it would have been more useful if it were more comprehensive, and able to get someone all the way through schooling from basically a fresh start. He did have five centuries to plan it. If I'd had five centuries, I'd have done better."
Harry just shrugged. "Anyway, between your plan and these books, I'm not even done with second year and I'm already ahead for sixth."
"And you've got all five electives," Ron pointed out. "McGonagall told us we can take three at most." They'd been given a brief overview of the electives before the Azkaban trip, and had to make their choices by the end of the holidays.
"I'm planning to take all five, if they'll let me," Hermione insisted. "Though I suppose that I should take the Sight on the next level up for divination to be worth my time…"
"If anyone could keep all that straight, it would be you, Hermione," Ron told her. His maxed-out Charisma guided him away from asking her if she was mental. "But you might be better off, uh, what's the word, specializing. Plus you probably already can pass OWLs for muggle studies. Harry could."
"Not a bad point," she agreed, fluttering a little at the compliment that she could manage all the classes if she wanted. "Professor Lupin, do you think they'd let me sit the muggle studies OWL without taking the subject?"
"With Minerva's recommendation, almost certainly," Remus concurred, having been only half-listening. "The class is mostly to keep clueless purebloods like that one," he gestured across the room to Sirius, "from constantly breaking the Statute and having to call in obliviators to cover up their sartorial mistakes."
"Oi," Sirius objected, tearing himself away from the recovered tome he'd been reading. "I didn't even take that class and I fit in fine! Admittedly, Lily helped a lot, but I've never been as bad as some."
"My mum taught you to dress muggle?" Harry checked, not having realized that. He also didn't clock that his variety of foreign languages helped him figure out what "sartorial" meant.
"Wouldn't be seen with your dad and me out in London until she'd gotten us both a whole wardrobe," his godfather agreed. "The hard part was just converting galleons to pounds so we could go shopping. The goblins really don't like it when you want to convert the other way."
"I think I'm going to take divination, since I do have the Sight. Might make it more useful," Harry figured. "No on muggle studies. I don't know what to pick from care of magical creatures, arithmancy, and runes."
"Well, Kettleburn is retiring," Remus revealed, "so there will be a new professor for care that would probably enjoy having you all in his class." He wasn't supposed to make it common knowledge that Hagrid would be getting the position. "But you've indicated that you haven't really been able to use your arithmancy or runes skills much at all without a basis…"
"Take arithmancy and runes," Hermione agreed. "You can self-study creatures. Or take four classes like I will!" She considered the logic then admitted, "I guess I could also self-study creatures."
"Well I'm taking care," Ron revealed, "so it would be great if I had at least one of you in class to help?"
"Take muggle studies," Harry shrugged. "Then we can help even if we're not in class with you. You taking divination, too?"
"Yeah. Might get the Sight, too, if we level up again before then. But I hear it's an easy class anyways." Ron edited his choices, "So, yeah, okay, muggle studies and divination. I'll see if I can get Nev to take muggle studies with me."
"He really could use it," Hermione agreed. "So arithmancy, runes, and divination for me and Harry, and maybe the other two for me if Professor McGonagall lets me. And divination and muggle studies for Ron. And he can take both of those with Neville."
"We should have brought Neville," Ginny insisted, only hearing the last statement as she, Lee, and the twins entered the house from the garden. "Gred had to save me from a tenticula."
"It wasn't as close as all that," Lee disagreed, as the others in the room began to stand, worried that the team on garden cleanup had been in danger. "But, to save the village we had to, uh, burn the village."
"You can grow all new plants in the ashes!" Fred said.
"Less evil plants," George agreed.
"Thank my mother," Sirius replied, that statement explaining everything.
"I think that's all the question marks cleared and most of the hazards dealt with," Harry said, confirming it on the guild menu.
"Then I suppose it's near enough time that we should get back to the school, rather than surviving another night on takeaway," Remus decided, marking his place in his book.
Owing to the inability to apparate onto Hogwarts grounds, and the need to keep Sirius secret, the elder Marauders began to drop the kids a pair at a time into the ruined house they'd left from over a week earlier: the Shrieking Shack. "We really should turn this into another clubhouse," Fred opined, taking a moment to wander the dusty, werewolf-damaged home that had been Remus' safety spot for transformations as a boy.
"Though maybe after we've taken a well-deserved break from cleaning and repairing," George countered, calculating the vast amount of effort to make the place tolerable to hang out in. It was a total wreck, even compared to Grimmauld Place or the gnome hole under the Weasley orchard.
"It's a bit less accessible than the Room of Requirement," Lee figured, not having enjoyed the crouched crawl along more than a quidditch pitch of dirt tunnel, and not looking forward to repeating it on the way out.
"But we can't always use that, because the Headmaster is in there," Ginny argued.
"And we really should share the Room with the rest of the school eventually," Hermione suggested. When the rest of the kids looked at her, scandalized, she argued, "What? It would be a valuable training resource for several classes!"
"The Room?" Remus asked, having worked out what she must be talking about as he and Sirius cracked in with their last load of Harry and Ron. "I admit, it would be very valuable for my class. Though if I'm only here for two more months, I'm loathe to lose it to whoever replaces me next year."
"I never mentioned it!" Hermione realized. "The jinx! I worked out that it's probably anchored to the Diadem. Defense professors started having problems only after Tom Riddle wasn't hired. Unless he came up with the plan much earlier, it had to be something he created about the same time he was hiding the horcrux. It could very well simply be perverting one of the Diadem's powers intended to protect the school. Once we destroy it, the problem could be over."
"I wonder if there's a way to test that, until a teacher lasts the whole year, though?" Ron countered.
"I'll consider whether I want to risk it," Remus shrugged, clearly not totally convinced. "Though I may suggest to Albus that he get on with disposing of it." He lifted the trap door into the tunnel and motioned for the crew to go on ahead. Sirius had already shifted into Padfoot.
"Why hasn't he?" Harry asked, dropping down into the dirt tunnel.
"He's been testing it to try to work out how to find the others that were likely made," Remus shared. "Though as busy as he's been, I'm not sure he's made much progress."
There wasn't too much else to discuss on the long, crouched walk between the off-campus building and the Whomping Willow. Harry used his map to confirm nobody was nearby, then reached out to tap the special knot on the tree that temporarily paralyzed it before exiting onto the Hogwarts grounds. It was weirdly bittersweet: with each time he returned to campus from the Marauders guildhall, it felt less like returning home than just going back to school. The acquisition of a real home had taken away some of the previous allure of the place he would spend most of his time for the next five years.
But it was still a lovely mid-April Saturday to spend outside. Or at least it would have been if the school had completely cleared out for the holidays. However, the younger Marauders had barely had a chance to drop off their stuff in their rooms then go to sit down by the lake (Remus and Sirius having headed back to Remus' office), when a whole cluster of purple dots began to bear down on them on Harry's map. Not quite the red of enemies, they certainly weren't the blue of normal students just out to enjoy the lake themselves. "Incoming. Like ten people. I think they might be a problem," Harry warned.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before they could see green-accented robes coming into view over the rolling hills of the grounds near the lake. The Marauders were already standing, having spread out to avoid bunching up as targets and placing Ginny to use the tree they'd been lounging near as cover. A particularly-recognizable platinum-blond head of hair was toward the front. "Potter!" Draco yelled as soon as he spotted the group and thought he'd be overheard, "You killed members of our families, and we demand justice!"
The Malfoy heir couldn't help but end his yell with a smirk, but some of his housemates looked genuinely angry. And they included upper-year students like Ursula Avery, Fortinbras Tuft, Aidan Oakham, and Kelly Burke—whose last names Harry vaguely recalled matching names he'd seen in the prison—as well as the usual suspects on the Slytherin quidditch team.
The one that hurt, though, wasn't a member of Slytherin at all. Morag Macdougal, a Ravenclaw in his year that Harry'd had regular classes with for his entire time at Hogwarts, didn't look angry so much as she looked distraught. "My dad was supposed to get out this summer," she accused. "He was only in for two years. And you brought the prison down on top of him!"
Harry barely followed the rest of the conversation, his friends standing up for him in increasingly-loud voices. It had been one thing when it was just a bunch of faceless criminals that had been hurt, but somewhere in the back of his head he'd known that Morag's father was in jail for what she'd long claimed was trumped-up charges over a misunderstanding. He was wracking his brain over whether there was anything else he could have done. Played along with Ekrizdis' plan for longer? Figured out how to keep the horcrux-powered machine from exploding catastrophically? Thought ahead to warn the aurors that something bad enough to put the prisoners at risk could happen?
In a logical world, Harry was the least to blame. A megalomaniacal dark wizard had built a structurally-unsound cursed tower, and centuries of adult wizards had used it as a penitentiary with no evacuation plan. He'd managed to take the one action that surprised a lich with the Elder Wand enough to end his ancient plan to nuke Europe. He'd been surrounded by several grown men, including the greatest wizard of his generation, that had been equally flat-footed by the collapse of the tower with people inside.
But Harry had his saving people thing. And suddenly he realized that there were people he didn't.
He must have absently sent a message to Remus, because several professors showed up in time to prevent the seven-on-ten argument from becoming a spell battle on the grounds. Barely. There would be speeches from the Headmaster at multiple meals, increased attention to prevent encounters in the hallways for the next few weeks, and lots of casual dismissals from his friends that he had anything to be guilty of.
But a 12-year-old's emotions are not logical. And Harry didn't mention that a new goal showed up on his quest log.
THE GOBLET OF FIRE (MAIN QUEST)
Who will be the greatest mage in Europe?
O Attend the quidditch World Cup
O Escape the riot
O (Optional) Don't let anyone else die
We're back, but going to an every-other-week schedule for now. Due to a bunch of (positive) changes this year that affect my available free time, I have to be very diligent to get enough writing time in, and I'm not convinced yet that I can keep up the thousand-words-a-day rate I managed last year. I'm optimistic that I can stay on a regular schedule semi-weekly, and will try to get enough in the buffer that I eventually feel good about going weekly again.