Three: The Classes

Anti-Litigation Charm: It all belongs to JKR; I play for non-profit amusement.

Author's Note: Neither HBP nor DH compliant.

Conversation in Italics signifies MindSpeech.

I'm delighted to announce that The Problem with Purity has been made one of the Featured Stories here on TPP for the month of May. *beams*

Sorry for the delay in getting this next chapter posted to you guys here on TPP. The admins here are amazing grammar gods so I like to look over the chapter one more time with a fine-toothed comb before posting to get rid of stray commas and what have you. I've been really busy the last few weeks, so the comb fell by the wayside. I will try to do better from here on in.

Reviews make me smile. Many thanks to those who have reviewed thus far. ^_^

The Problem with Purity

Chapter Three: The Classes

They met Ron for breakfast the next morning.

"I thought the two of you might at least say goodnight," he complained as he piled food onto his plate as though he hadn't eaten in several weeks.

Hermione and Harry exchanged amused glances and served themselves at a more sedate pace. Harry raised an eyebrow at her, indicating that she got to field this one.

"Our quarters are ... a little further away from the Gryffindor dorms than we'd anticipated. By the time we finished unpacking, it was pretty late. You didn't really think I'd not get a good night's sleep before my first day of school, did you?"

Ron instantly dropped the topic, years of experience having taught him not to get between Hermione and her schoolwork unless he wanted to get into a fight.

A few minutes later, Minerva came round with the timetables, giving Hermione hers before the rest were distributed alphabetically.

"Why does she always...?" Ron unwisely began to complain, showing that perhaps she'd been too generous in according him an allotment of common sense.

Hermione glared at him. "Because it takes me longer to read than it takes you, as I have roughly twice as many classes."

This was the simple truth. All of the N.E.W.T. classes were double periods, running for three hours from nine to noon or one to four. Hermione's schedule was quite full:

Monday: 9am, Potions and 1pm, Charms

Tuesday: 9am, Runes and 1pm, Muggle Studies

Wednesday: 9am, Transfiguration and 1pm, Arithmancy

Thursday: 9am, History of Magic and 1pm, Herbology

Friday: 9am, DADA

Harry and Ron's schedule, by contrast, had a great many more blank spaces:

Monday: 9am, Potions and 1pm, Charms

Tuesday:

Wednesday: 9am, Transfiguration

Thursday: 1pm, Herbology

Friday: 9am, DADA

They had theoretically agreed to disagree about their course loads, as Harry and Ron thought Hermione was insane to be trying for nine N.E.W.T.s, and she thought the two of them were wasting their education in only going for five. Since the Ministry required a minimum of five N.E.W.T.s to qualify for Auror training, she thought it would be wise to take at least six. Harry and Ron had argued for taking the minimum but doing really well in them, which she thought was a fine argument but unlikely to be the real reason for their decision.

To give them their due, it was mildly ludicrous to think that the Department might not seriously consider Harry and Ron after all they'd been through from ages eleven through seventeen. Their childhoods had been quite effective pre-training, and it would be impractical not to take that into account. On the other hand, Harry hated to be judged by his Boy Who Lived status, so if he was really looking at his future career as though he had the same background as everyone else, it would surely make more sense to have an excellent education....

Realizing that she was having the argument she'd agreed not to have out loud in her own head, Hermione forced it out of her mind. The choices were made.

Since the first had been a Monday this year, Harry and Ron were jubilant about two things: they had no classes today, and they didn't have to suffer through Potions until next week.

Hermione thought they should be bloody grateful they were in Potions at all but barely refrained from saying so. She knew that deep down, they were grateful, but that didn't mean they weren't excited about a random free day.

When they had received their O.W.L. results in the middle of July after fifth year, both Ron and Harry had received Exceeds Expectations in Potions. Realistically, this was an extraordinary achievement given their day-to-day work in the class, but Severus had been adamant about only accepting students who had received Outstanding O.W.L.s to his N.E.W.T-level classes. Exceeds Expectations had therefore dashed the boys' hopes of becoming Aurors and solidified their dislike of Severus into something resembling glittering hatred.

It was like that moment when Umbridge had declared that Harry was unsuitable to be an Auror or when she had banned Harry from Quidditch for life; being a horrible teacher was bad enough, but actively trying to quash the life goals and dreams of students was outrageous.

When Hermione had broached the subject with the Potions master, he had cut her off, stating that if Minerva hadn't convinced him to admit the two boys, a fifth-year Gryffindor student had no chance whatsoever. Hermione understood standing by principles, but she suspected that this particular decision owed itself more to vindictiveness than righteousness. Given the number of Harry's potions that had been sabotaged...usually by Slytherin students and occasionally by the Potions master himself...she didn't think this was about making an exception for the Gryffindor Golden Boy, either.

She could still remember the conversation that had ensued word for word. It had taken place in the Grimmauld Place library two days before Harry's sixteenth birthday. Severus hadn't looked as though he wanted to be disturbed, but she had been determined.

"In the entirety of your almost twenty-year career, you've never admitted a Slytherin student who had less than an Outstanding?" she asked sceptically.

His expression sharpened. "I hardly see how that relates to the current discussion."

She knew he understood quite well. "You've made exceptions in the past."

"With good reason," he said coldly.

The pleading of Minerva, Albus, and herself did not even approach a good reason, apparently.

"If the reason were good enough in this case?" she pursued doggedly.

"I sincerely doubt that possibility."

It sounded dismissive, but she could tell that he was listening to her.

She threw caution to the wind. "Here's my offer: re-test Harry and Ron at the end of the summer. If they achieve the equivalent of an Outstanding, accept them in N.E.W.T. Potions."

"And if they fail?" he demanded imperiously, eyebrow raised, clearly doubting that she could come up with anything even remotely tempting.

She swallowed but forged ahead, keeping her voice even: "Then you'll have three fewer Gryffindor students in your sixth-year Potions class."

Black eyes narrowed to veriest slits, he regarded her for several long moments, and she actually checked to make sure that her Occlumency shields were still in place.

"You would truly risk your place on their Potions acumen?" he asked doubtfully.

She regarded him steadily. "I would do what is in my power to help my friends towards the career of their choice."

He continued to regard her intently and then declared abruptly, "They will be tested on the twenty-ninth of August. You will pay the price for their failure."

Convincing Harry and Ron to spend the month studying Potions had been no easy task, especially as she had not wished to divulge how her own scholastic career now hung in the balance.

The beginning of August had not been pleasant. She had dragged them to the basement of Grimmauld Place day after day, bought them ingredients, given them detailed notes, and done her best to bully them into learning properly, but despite the brilliant second chance they were being offered, they were squandering it with complaints against Severus's unfairness and sneaking out for impromptu Quidditch matches.

She had suffered through a week of this grudging compliance before their attitudes had undergone an abrupt about-face. They had become positively studious, with the result of their actually learning and soon completing their work on the first or second attempt. This, in turn, meant that they often finished earlier in the day and could then have their fun. Hermione could have wept for joy.

She did cry in earnest when Severus informed her on the thirtieth that, to his horror, he would be accepting three Gryffindors into his N.E.W.T.-level class. Harry had needed to pry her out of Severus's arms when she'd lost all common sense and flung herself at the man. She'd sobbed on Harry's shoulder instead. Once Severus had left in a flurry of ruffled robes, Harry had confessed that three weeks earlier, the Potions master had made a snide comment about how lovely it would be to have no Gryffindors in his sixth-year class. Harry's immediate leap to Hermione's defence had resulted in the revelation as to why she wouldn't be there. Suddenly, they had a reason to take this chance seriously.

Severus had informed Minerva and Albus after the Order meeting the next day that he was accepting Harry and Ron, and Fawkes's bird's-eye view had allowed her to see the utter shock on Minerva's face. Albus had looked pleased, but Hermione was pretty sure he had been taken aback as well.

Minerva had demanded to know why, and Severus's response, "Because Miss Granger offered me something I wanted," still saddened her. She knew she'd seemed a bit of a pill those first few years, but she'd improved, hadn't she? And it wasn't her fault that she had been a Muggle-born tossed into the wizarding pool; she had been desperately determined to swim rather than sink and that had meant knowing everything that wizards knew. That gap was still there, but at least she had learnt to be less ostentatious when trying to catch up.

As breakfast finished this morning, Harry and Ron were deep in discussion about what they could do with their newfound Tuesday freedom when a shadow fell over them. They looked up to find the Potions master staring down at them with a glint in his eyes. Uh oh.

"Mr Potter. Mr Weasley. Minerva was kind enough to inform me that you are at liberty today. I am in need of assistance, and she recommended you."

Hermione had to hide a smile at their instantly woebegone expressions, but they knew better than to argue with the Head of Slytherin, especially when he was backed up by their own Head of House. Garnering sympathetic expressions from the rest of their housemates, they trailed disconsolately after the Potions master.

Smiling to herself, Hermione headed off to Ancient Runes. She was both deeply excited and mildly terrified by the fact that she was in her final year at Hogwarts. N.E.W.T.s had never loomed so close and that was alarming, and yet it was the culmination of what she had worked so hard to accomplish in the previous six years of schooling. It was her chance to prove her worth...scholastically at least...with finality.

The bigotry that pure-blood families like the Malfoys expressed bothered her. She didn't believe any of their "Mudblood" nonsense for a moment, but the fact that they could honestly hold such beliefs was disturbing on a fundamental level. She knew her doing exceptionally well on her N.E.W.T.s wouldn't likely change their minds, but it would become one more fact that proved their reasoning was invalid.

Today's classes showed that the professors and most of the students were quite serious about this year's course load; they were only months away from N.E.W.T.s and the results that would impact their futures. This attitude fit Hermione's frame of mind quite well.

With the exception of Tonks, all of the professors had taught Hermione before, and she and her fellow students had all taken the sixth-year N.E.W.T. classes together, so after just one class this year, it pretty much felt as though they'd never left. Bathsheba and Charity had both started with the lectures they had promised at the end of last year: the added security of warding with runes and glyphs worked into the spells versus the dangers of doing so, and a debate on the reaction of the Muggle population were the wizarding world to be revealed to it in the present day and age.

Harry and Ron hadn't been at lunch, and they were late for dinner. When they finally arrived, they positively slunk in, dusty, dishevelled, and looking thoroughly disgusted with their day. They sat down on the bench next to her with two heavy thumps, and she smiled.

"Look what the cat dragged in."

They glared at her, but having survived six years of death glares from a master, this didn't faze her.

"There's no need for unholy glee," Harry grumbled. "You'd feel the same way if you'd been tortured like we had."

Ron was already inhaling an unholy amount of food.

"I'd hardly call it unholy," she responded dryly, eyeing them critically. "I'd have been happy to help sort the Potions stores, but I had class."

She was subjected to a mouthful of half-chewed food as Ron sputtered to a halt and then complained, "Would you not do that?"

"Use a process of deduction to establish with reasonable certainty what was occupying your time and include such gleaned knowledge in my everyday conversation?"

He swallowed, seemed to take a stab in the dark: "Yeah, that."

She made a face and then addressed the two of them. "The two of you have realized you're wizards?"

They looked at her cluelessly. With a sigh she took out her wand and cast Cleaning and Neatening Charms which left them looking perfectly presentable.

"Huh," was Harry's comment.

Ron sort of gestured at her with his fork before continuing on with his meal. With a shake of her head, she gave up and went back to her own dinner.

Afterwards, they invited Ron down to see their rooms. It was difficult to gauge what he found the most upsetting, because he became speechless somewhere around their initial descent down the stairs. He gawked at the gargoyle, gaped at the common room, goggled at their bedrooms, and glared at the bathroom. From the look of him, he hadn't quite grasped that they would be living as together as they were living, but both she and Harry refused to address that issue unless he explicitly brought it up.

The Slytherin colours probably didn't help.

When he finally found his voice, Hermione was hugely impressed that what came out was a strangled, "It's lovely."

"We like it," they answered in unison.

This, to Hermione's surprise, seemed to snap Ron out of it.

"Oy," he protested. "I get enough of that at home with the twins."

They smiled, and Ron flopped onto the couch and pronounced his final verdict: "Location's the pits, but it's not half bad otherwise."

The next morning, they met for breakfast before heading off to Transfiguration together. Minerva's extremely high standards continued to rule in her classroom where they were moving on to increasingly difficult transfigurations. In both the sixth-and seventh-year classes, Hermione had noticed a marked increase in what could be termed "defensive transfiguration": transfiguring common objects into physical shields for protection, dirt into mud to slow down an opponent, water into ice to trip someone up, and so on. Since these spells were self-sustaining and couldn't be quickly stopped by an opponent with a simple finite, they could be very useful in battle.

At its most advanced, this could even mean objects that actively defended someone, as Albus had done for Harry during the battle in the Department of Mysteries. Most wizards either weren't strong enough or couldn't react quickly enough to make this useful in a battle situation, but Hermione believed strongly in her magical and cognitive abilities, and she would use every advantage that the Hogwarts staff was offering.

To Hermione's amusement, Harry and Ron refused to come to lunch, worried that Severus would find them and draft them for work that afternoon. They made a quick kitchen run and then escaped outside with their brooms. Severus, Hermione was amused to see, did note the boys' absence from lunch and fleetingly met her smile with a smirk of his own.

In Arithmancy, Septima continued with the plan she had instituted the previous year. In sixth year, they had concentrated on Arithmancy in its pure form. All their work was theoretical. This year, they would be putting the theory they had worked so hard on into practice, using it with complex potions, advanced transfigurations, and upper-level charms.

They wouldn't necessarily be performing all of these potions and spells...her classroom was not a laboratory...but their work on paper would be applicable in the real world. There would be a certain quantity of testing to ensure that their results were accurate, and other projects would offer bonuses for theories that they actually tested.

Hermione was definitely looking forward to the advanced potions portion of the course and was hoping that Severus wasn't going to be too difficult about letting her use the lab to work on them. At worst, hopefully Harry wouldn't mind if she built a mini-lab in a corner of their common room. Or really, she grinned at the thought, that bathroom was huge, and it had a source of running water and everything.... It would have the added benefit of aggravating Severus, were he ever to hear of it, and perhaps he'd be offended enough to let her use the lab after that.

On Thursday, Harry and Ron continued their mission of "Avoid the Snape" and took breakfast in her and Harry's quarters. She left them to it and went off to History of Magic, ignoring their opinions of the subject and her for taking it.

What many students never appreciated because they dropped History as soon as they could was that sixth- and seventh-year History of Magic finally got beyond the witch burnings and Goblin Rebellions of the 1600s and the Giant Wars of the 1700s of which Binns was so fond...or at least as fond as he was of anything, since he managed to make everything from the founding of the Ministry to the institution of the International Code of Wizarding Secrecy sound as dull as possible.

In sixth year, they had learned about the 1800s and the continued changes to the Ministry and the wizarding world through the Romantic and Victorian era, and this year, they would be looking at the 1900s; although the delivery still left much to be desired, the subject matter was fascinating. They would be learning about Albus's defeat of Grindelwald and the Years of Terror, wizarding involvement in the World Wars, and much more.

She was going to have to make sure Harry never knew that he was covered in History of Magic. Of course, since both boys tuned her out as soon as they heard the word "History", she probably didn't have much to worry about. Perhaps it was just as well that Binns strayed so rarely from his lectures, or he might have realized that there was a source for many cold hard facts right in his school.

Harry and Ron reappeared for lunch and didn't once look at the High Table as though that would keep them safe from Severus's potential wrath. Personally, Hermione thought that they had afforded him enough amusement for the day to keep them quite safe, but she refrained from saying so.

After lunch, they trekked outside with Neville and Seamus, and Pomona reminded them straight off that if they wished to submit a bonus project in Herbology, she was only considering hybridized plants with particular consideration to their ultimate use. The latest she would accept a proposal was the beginning of November.

For their final year at the school, they were encouraged to show their creativity and ingenuity with bonus projects. These projects were not required...although students were strongly encouraged to submit at least one...but would supplement their grades in whichever subject they chose to do one for, assuming that the project was a success.

Both Hermione and Neville had taken Pomona up on her offer of having their choice pre-approved at the end of last year so that they could begin the process in a timely manner this year. From the look on Ron's and Harry's faces, they hadn't given it much thought at all. She had the feeling that the two of them weren't going to be submitting a bonus project in this class. Pomona did not belabour the point any further but took them out to greenhouse number three and the most dangerous plant life on the premises.

Friday's arrival and its morning class were heralded with especial enthusiasm by the seventh-year students. As happened every year, there was a furor surrounding Defence Against the Dark Arts that didn't occur with any other subject. Hermione wasn't sure what Tonks had done, but no whisper of what had occurred in the six other years of classes reached the seventh-years, who, being in one of the last time slots of the week, would normally have expected some sort of advance notice of what to expect.

Since no one was supposed to know that Tonks worked for the Order as well as for the Ministry, the vast majority of the trio's interaction with her could not be revealed, so they were spared being pumped for information, answering only to having seen her a time or two at the Ministry and interacting with her very little there.

The Defence classroom this year was in the dungeons. Hermione wasn't sure if this was to facilitate Tonks's coordination with Kingsley, Severus, and Remus or because of her House affiliation. The room was closer to the Hufflepuff common room than the Slytherin one, a fact which lightened the mood of the students who were hurrying down to meet her for the first time.

Speculation was rife, however, many students recalling their previous professor and hoping that an Auror would be a vast improvement. Professor Judex had been another Ministry pick. He hadn't been working for Voldemort like Quirrell or Barty Crouch Jr. He hadn't been a charlatan like Lockhart. He hadn't been a Ministry toady like Umbridge.

He'd known his material well enough, although not brilliantly, but unfortunately, he hadn't been enough like Remus. No, he'd been firmly convinced that Harry was going to be the next Dark Lord. Oh, he believed everything Harry had said about Voldemort being back, but nothing they'd been able to say had convinced him that the Parseltongue-speaking, Dark Lord-defeating Boy Who Lived wasn't going to take over the world the first chance he got.

To be fair to the Ministry, Hermione didn't think that the man had betrayed his prejudices before he got the job. Given the current political climate, it hadn't been a sound idea to have someone who strongly disliked Harry as a Defence teacher for the second year running.

It had been almost amusing at first, since they all found the idea of evil Harry so ludicrous...even those who had been uncertain in fifth year were completely won over by now...and Judex didn't have the clout or the vindictiveness of Umbridge, but by the end of November, Hermione had found herself having to remind the man nearly ever class that Harry couldn't be excluded from practical demonstrations just because the professor didn't think the Gryffindor needed any more practice defeating other wizards. She'd had to just as frequently remind Harry to keep his temper, and she was pretty sure that Albus had had to step in and make sure that the Gryffindor Golden Boy was graded fairly.

The students had got over the Parseltongue revelation several years ago, and since DADA included a great many students who were part of the DA...which had been instituted as an official club with Ginny running it and Filius supervising...the class had been almost universally united in their dislike of their professor.

He might not have owned any blood quills or made them read the textbook every class, but he had been messing with their Saviour at a time when everyone knew that Voldemort was back, and they had resented that. The man's practical experience had been adequate but not extraordinary, and this had meant that he was teaching students who'd battled Dark Arts he'd never had to face; the upper-year students had found this gap frustrating.

Judex had seemed to think it his duty to protect the rest of them from Harry's evil influence, making most everyone delight in being especially friendly with Harry instead.

It was never made explicit whether he had refused to come back for another year or whether he had been dismissed, but there had been no complaint from the Ministry when it had become plain that another professor would be required this year.

Hermione, Harry, and Ron couldn't have been more pleased that it was Tonks who'd been chosen. Since Ron already knew Tonks, he wasn't engaged in the gossip with the other students but had slipped up to talk to Neville, questioning him, it seemed, about hybridization options. The two boys made it through the door with the rest of the class before Harry and Hermione had the chance to stop them. They were at the back of the queue of students, and the magical buzz of wards around the doorframe stopped them in their tracks.

Hogwarts was one of the most heavily warded buildings in all of Britain. A huge portion of these wards, however, surrounded the outer perimeter of the grounds. It was these which protected the school from attack, barred Death Eaters from the grounds, prevented Apparition and airborne arrivals, and so on. There were wards around the Quidditch pitch and some of the greenhouses, as well, and there was a whole set of wards that kept away Muggles and changed the appearance of the castle for them. Other wards guarded the castle proper, fortifying the ancient building.

There were also many personal wards within the building. Severus warded his private stores, office, and quarters with his own wards, and many of the other professors did the same; it was a common practice, especially these days. Warding around open doors, however, was far more unusual, and Harry and Hermione found it immediately suspicious. They took out their wands and attempted to discern just what they were up against.

Tonks smiled from her position inside the classroom. Her hair was bubblegum pink today, matching the colour of the Weird Sisters t-shirt she was wearing with dark blue jeans. If she'd been wearing robes at some point that morning, they weren't in evidence right now.

"Are you going to join me or remain in the hall?" she called cheerfully.

By then, they'd a pretty good idea of what the wards entailed.

"We'd be pleased to join you," Harry said with a grin.

Hermione smiled back. "But we'd prefer to be able to speak about it later."

"And we'd rather not have blue hair all weekend."

Together, they disabled the wards around the door, and as they were crossing the threshold, Hermione followed this up with a discreet shielding charm about their persons. Tonks saw, but none of the students appeared to notice, as they were all focussed on their smirking professor. Hermione and Harry took their seats at the front of the room; Tonks was an unknown element, and the rest of the class had apparently left a safety buffer.

Hermione saw that Malfoy and Daphne Greengrass were still here; ever since they'd joined the class last year, she'd wondered how much of their choice was motivated politically. Were they keeping an eye on what the other students were learning, or did they want to learn it as well?

The door closed, although not with the slam Severus was known to employ.

"I trust that many of you remember Professor Moody?"

Almost en masse, the students nodded nervously, since as far as an opening salvo went, it was not the most reassuring ever. Hermione, Harry, and Ron wore smirks that matched their professor's.

"He was my mentor. And while I'm less likely to bark 'Constant Vigilance!'"...there was a gratifyingly large number of starts..."than he was, you should all note that it's a tenet I enforce to the fullest." Tonks's hair went bright blue as she smirked at them. "Those of you who are not as paranoid as Mr Potter and Miss Granger will have cause to be practically reminded of this advice. Although this school is meant to be a safe-haven, as several of your younger peers thought to point out to me earlier, nothing that has occurred to you since entering my classroom today is in any way life-threatening."

The nervousness amongst the students seemed to grow, as most of them had thought that nothing had yet occurred in the classroom.

Tonks settled back against her desk, standing in front of it with arms and legs crossed casually. "Defending against the Dark Arts is more than fighting in pitched battles or skirmishes in dark corridors. Defending yourself against the Dark Arts means always being aware of your surroundings, keeping your eye out for unusual behaviour, and not letting your guard down.

"I won't make it a habit of warding the door but," she smiled cheerfully at them, "that only leaves you with no idea what I will do. There'll be no indiscriminate cursing in my classroom, but learning to defend yourselves both subtly and substantially will form part of your weekly Friday morning agenda.

"My name is Tonks. I will answer to Tonks, Professor, or Auror Tonks. Now who can tell me what classifies a spell as Dark?

In between all her class prep and the homework that had already been heaped upon them, Hermione had also been researching Coming of Age and Pure Adults, and she put her free Friday afternoon to good use. After she, Harry, and Ron went out to have tea with Hagrid...who was in fine form because he had several new and interesting creatures for his classes this year...she speedily researched and wrote two papers before moving on to personal research.

Harry had taken one look at the multitude of books that Hermione had spread out over an armchair, most of the couch, and a fair portion of the floor and blanched, but he had gamely pulled out his own books and took a stab at his work. Ron, Hermione knew, would have run for the hills. Getting the work out of the way now, however, meant that it didn't loom over the rest of the weekend, and Harry knew that they'd be starting training, needed to discuss her research, and would begin their Head Boy and Girl duties in earnest.

The research on Pure Adults was not going as well as she had hoped. The recent stuff was complete nonsense, but some of the older Black tomes and Restricted Section offerings had interesting information, although it was limited in many ways. None of the accounts she read seemed to have been written by Pure Adults themselves, so a lot of it was hearsay, and none of the answers were as definite as she wanted.

After Albus's explanation of the Child Massacre, this ambiguity began to make sense, but that wasn't very helpful when it was her life and Harry's life that she was trying to understand right now. She'd take anything she could get, of course, but that didn't mean she was happy with it.

By dinner time that evening, Hermione saw that the hair of fifteen of the seventeen members of the seventh-year DADA class had turned bright blue. Each student had discovered when they tried to tell anyone why their hair was blue that they couldn't speak about the class they had had that morning. The blue was particularly clear on the once-blond locks of Draco Malfoy and Hannah Abbott, and the former was hiding the fact that he was fuming mad with little success.

Hermione thought it was well-reasoned of Tonks to spell the other years not to speak about it but only to make the oldest students wander around with their hair dyed. The surprise was priceless, and they were currently supposed to be the most highly educated students in the building. Lesson learnt, Hermione would wager.

She and Harry finally took pity on Ron's desperate pouting and explained to the nearby Gryffindors what had happened. The news rapidly spread throughout the Great Hall, and Tonks's reputation was made. Hermione wondered how many students were now convinced that she had been a Slytherin and would be surprised to learn the truth.

Tonks raised her glass to Hermione and Harry in toast, and Hermione noticed Severus eyeing the woman warily. Fortunately, no second beverage mishap occurred to risk the health and safety of their second competent and non-evil DADA professor. Hermione wondered how Albus had forced the seating arrangements, because although Tonks was an infinitely more pleasing conversationalist than Quirrell, Lockhart, Judex, or Umbridge, there was a certain hazard associated with such close proximity to the Metamorphmagus. Severus might be one of the bravest people Hermione knew, but he didn't take foolish risks for no reason.

On Friday evening, after realizing that they'd assembled in front of the fire to do their homework for the fourth day running, just as they'd done for the last six years in the Gryffindor common room, she and Harry jointly decided that the desks in their common room were a waste of space. They moved them into their bedrooms where they fit under the window. If they needed some private time to work quietly and effectively on a flat surface, the desk was there; otherwise, they'd be on the couch or on the floor in front of the fire.

This left a wide open space in the room which they turned into a sparring area complete with the clever padding spell Hermione had discovered over the summer. Casting it over the walls and floors would minimize injury without detracting from the decor; walk across the floor or lean against the wall and they both still felt like the hard stone that they were; impact either at an accelerated pace and they gave as though they were cushioned. Picking oneself up off the cold hard stones of the dungeons had become rather tiresomely frequent in their early training with Severus, and Harry was as relieved as she was that this would be minimized in their own home.

They shielded the rest of the room against inadvertent spell fire, projectiles, and other likely destructive forces coming from this area, as well as shielding the area they were in, spelling rugs to the floor and casting anti-flame spells on them and anything else that looked capable of catching fire. They cast protective spells that prevented water and freezing damage and put a Skin Deep spell on the walls so that damage would not penetrate more than a couple of inches into the stone. By now, they were very familiar with how their instructors worked.

When they were done, they had a place to keep in shape and work on the hand-to-hand combat that Remus had been teaching them as well as the duelling they were learning from Severus and Kingsley. The room would pass a cursory inspection as the same as when they had first entered it, and it continued to look pleasant and homey.

They tested their spellwork's efficacy with a fast and furious duel that ended in a draw and left the room unscathed and the two of them gasping for breath as they moved across the room and tumbled onto the couch to survey the room.

"It's kind of an inverted home decoration." Hermione observed the final results. "We could put a new series on the telly: 'How to protect your home and leave it looking exactly how it did before you started in ten easy steps...'."

Harry laughed. "You could publish a self-help book for wizards. You said you'd worked out a spell for the gargoyle?"

After contemplating their needs, Hermione had worked out a complex bit of transfiguration and charms that would make the gargoyle guarding the door announce anyone who wanted to get in. As the Marauders had discovered, the inherently magical castle made it possible for its inhabitants to be tracked. In this particular case, she and Harry were only concerned with the several feet surrounding their door, and they wanted the results to be reproduced orally rather than visually. With this method, their potentially clandestine visitors wouldn't have to announce themselves in the corridor, but she and Harry would know for certain who was out there, as the gargoyle, like the Map, would in essence "see" right past any disguises to the real individual.

A voice-displacement charm would throw the voice from the gargoyle to right beside their ears, making the announcement discreet inside their quarters. They could either finite the announcement, indicating that they'd heard and would either answer or ignore the caller, or, unless they'd specifically shielded against it beforehand, it would get progressively louder at fifteen second intervals until they noticed or were woken, like a polite knock turning into insistent pounding.

She, like Harry, was capable of wandless magic, though she had learnt this much less dramatically than he had, the ability increasing as she had approached and then passed her seventeenth birthday. As a result, the gargoyle would respond to either of their desires for the door to be opened if they did not wish to physically answer it. By the time she'd finished working out exactly what would be most efficient and practical for them, she thought she understood at least one of the mysteries of the headmaster's office.

"Brilliant," Harry declared cheerfully.

Pleased, Hermione set to work to put her theoretical spell into practice. With parts of the castle that were integral to Hogwarts, as the stone gargoyle was, it was a little more like "convincing" than spelling, but the gargoyle correctly announced both her and Harry when they each took a turn testing it, and they'd have to wait for more visitors to be one hundred percent certain of its effectiveness.

She then made the two of them override the gargoyle's announcement so that they wouldn't constantly be announced to one another. They could decide on a case-by-case basis if they gave anyone else unfettered access whether or not that person would also be announced to them.

"Would you like me to limit the effective distance of the announcement?" she asked Harry.

He looked at her blankly.

"Do you want to know in DADA that Luna's at the door to our rooms?"

A slow grin spread over his face. "Do I ever!"

She had rather suspected that would be his response, and since it was easy enough to modify later if it drove them bonkers, she let the spell dissipate naturally without any predefined boundaries, suspecting it would fizzle round about the wards surrounding the grounds.

Now that they lived in their own room rather than a shared dorm, they could do more than simply make a fancy door. The Map didn't have to be hidden away from roommates any more, and Hermione now felt able to admit to its brilliance and usefulness. She hoped it meant that she'd grown a bit as a person but suspected that it was really just because she understood it now and thought she had a fighting chance of duplicating their work if she wished.

Harry stuck it to the wall outside his bedroom with a temporary Sticking Charm; against the wall, it could be coaxed into lying out completely flat and unfolded, making a fair-sized wall decoration. She cast a Glamour on it so that it would appear to anyone else as an ink-on-parchment seascape, thus blending it in with the established décor.

When she, Harry, or Ron were looking at it, they would continue to see the Map and everyone in Hogwarts. At the end of last year, she had discovered that the Map had different modes, or different ways of displaying its information; rather than showing the location of each resident in Hogwarts, it could display lists of people, such as all the Slytherins, seventh-year students, professors...or non-students and non-professors. With this display ability, they could periodically check to ensure that no one untoward ended up on the list of current occupants, such as B. Crouch in place of A. Moody.

Thanks to a Protean Charm, every time a new person appeared on the list of "others" on the Map, the name was replicated on the bracelets that she and Harry each wore. The bracelets...which were also word-activated Portkeys that would bring them to the headmaster's office...were made of two plain bands of gold and silver which had been twined together, and the metal would heat to advise them when they needed to take a look. She had given Harry's to him for his birthday that summer, and he had been pleased but bemused until she explained what it did. They would have to look at the Map before they knew where this person was, but they would at least be made immediately aware if any rogue Animagi or other potential malefactors were on the grounds.

Last year, she had figured out how to disguise their presence on the Map, a secret she had shared with no one but Harry, given the possible abuses to which the ability could be put. They had removed Ron from the Map as well, but she had not explained to him how to do it. This had been only a half-conscious decision, as he had blown her off mid-revelation, apparently desperately in need of discussing some dire Quidditch move with someone; he hadn't brought the conversation back up and neither had she. Both she and Harry knew how to see one another in emergencies, but they were both pleased with one more way in which they could not be spied upon.

By the time they had finished with all these alterations, it was late, and the long week had caught up with them.

"Since I doubt either of us is at our best at the moment, shall we bump research revelations to Sunday morning?" Hermione suggested hopefully.

Harry grinned. "I was sure you were going to sit me down just now and reveal these really important truths that I couldn't take in for the life of me."

She smiled back. "I'm much more aware of your retention skills than that, Harry. Ron'll be sleeping, I trust?"

Harry shook his head. "He's gone officially Quidditch-mad. He's already scheduling pre-tryouts or some such, as actual tryouts aren't until next weekend. He's determined to have the world's most stellar team come hell or high water. After last year...." Harry shrugged.

Last year, Gryffindor had lost to Slytherin in the Final. It hadn't had anything to do with Ron's leadership abilities, and it hadn't even been Ginny's fault. Both she and Draco had flown extremely well, both teams had played extremely well, but in the end, Draco had caught the Snitch. Gryffindor had still won the House Cup, so it had hardly been a complete wash, but Ron had been inclined to take the loss personally. Very personally.

"I admire his dedication to something," she tried to remind herself.

Harry dragged her up off the couch. "To bed, then. Tomorrow's going to be a busy day, too."

Saturday morning, the Prefects were supposed to present her and Harry with a list of the rounds they had established for themselves as well as a schedule for their meetings. When the Prefects were doing their jobs, the Head Boy and Girl rarely had to interfere with them, but it was up to her and Harry to keep an eye on them just in case. They tried to resolve any conflicts before they had to be escalated to a member of faculty and similarly tried to help any students whom the Prefects couldn't help.

They had to perform their own rounds, independent of the others, with emphasis on unpredictability so that if any students worked out the Prefect schedule, there was still a chance of their being caught by the Head Boy or Head Girl. They also liaised with the faculty, meeting with them as needed and disseminating information to the Prefects.

She and Harry had agreed that their rounds would take place as insomnia, homework, and extra training dictated, supplemented by necessity based on what the Map was telling them. Harry had reconciled himself to the Marauders' creation being used in such a way with the intention of being lenient where leniency was permissible. As she had pointed out, they were also in the middle of a war where foolish antics could have unexpected side-effects; being out on the grounds, in the Forbidden Forest, or sneaking around the dungeons could truly put students in danger.

Both she and Harry wondered a little about their early years at Hogwarts sometimes, and they had agreed that Albus must have had a very great hand in much that went on. There was no way, for example, that Charlie's friends on broomsticks could have made it to the top of the tower to rescue Norbert without the headmaster's intervention. Of course, the man must have wanted Hagrid's dragon disposed of nearly as badly as they did, although using eleven-year-olds to accomplish this still seemed a little cavalier. Then again, that whole year had been a "forged in flame" sort of experience, and Hermione suspected that this year was going to be much the same.

Unfortunately, she didn't think anything really prepared one for suddenly becoming a desperately sought after Pure Adult who was capable of bestowing great power on the first person one had sex with, but she was going to do her best to see that she and Harry made it through one way or the other.

Author's Notes: I don't believe JKR actually specifies what grades Ron receives; she says only that he receives seven O.W.L.s and has no O's. Given that he is approved for the same courses as Harry in HBP, however, and I'm guessing that Slughorn wouldn't take him with an Acceptable when he has no, er, special talents, I'm extrapolating that he has an Exceeds Expectations like Harry.

Many thanks to Kyerie from Ashwinder who figured out for me that the fic in which I first read about defensive transfiguration is GreenGecko's Resonance. All I could remember was that hallways were transfigured into ice and Dean uses it in battle. I thought the idea was brilliant, so I borrowed it, and I'm very happy to be able to correctly attribute it now.

The Goblin Rebellion of 1612 is canon. I've invented the Giant Wars for the 1700s, but they'll not be mentioned again. It amused me to think of Binns continuing on down through the centuries and ending up with Harry Potter at the end (and Harry having no idea of that fact), so that's how it ended up in fic. I'm sure there are people out there who are sure that Binns would never stray beyond his death (whenever that is), but I'm happily using artistic licence on this one.

Chapter four, in which Hermione and Harry try to discuss what Hermione has researched, will be posted in the near future.