Ginny’s return to Hogwarts was mostly uneventful. She reunited with her friends and they all caught up. They’d been sending letters all the time, but Ginny hadn’t been able to tell them everything about Olivia or the wolf-kin in case someone tried reading her letters for whatever reason.
So that’s what they talked about mostly on the train ride to Hogwarts. Alexa and Jack were both outraged by how Olivia’s parents had treated her, and were glad to hear that it had all worked out. They had both been in the muggle world all summer, so neither of them had heard about Balthazar or all the hubbub about the new wolf-kin. Tonks had come up with that name, saying that they had to give the new group its own name before someone labeled something more harmful first. Luckily it seemed to have caught on pretty quickly and now no one referred to them as anything else.
Although Olivia was the only member of the wolf-kin at the moment, in the coming weeks Balthazar would be working to cure a few more of them. Since he already knew what to do he seemed to think that it would go much quicker, but it was unclear exactly how quick he meant by that. But there was no doubt that more wolf-kin would soon be created in the coming months.
Olivia had actually started working at the clinic full time under Sirius. She’d be the ‘wolf-kin’ face of the clinic and there to talk with the werewolves and convince them that it was real and tell them about her own experience with transitioning to a wolf-kin. She was a celebrity now, especially among the werewolves, something that she was uncomfortable with. But she seemed excited to be working at the clinic either way, and to be getting used to her fame somewhat with how many people she had to talk to recently. The clinic was out in the countryside with a few apparition platforms set up, so none of the locals could complain about the ‘dangerous’ werewolves coming near them.
Alexa and Jack hadn’t done too much. Vacations with their rich parents, and various summer camps. Alexa went to some intense sports camp for football and seemed to have liked it. Jack talked about all the strange products he’d gotten to try out due to his Dad trying to test them out before investing in a particular company. There were some really strange ones that Jack couldn’t even properly explain what they did.
Apparently that was part of the test Jack’s dad did on the products. If it took him more than a few minutes to figure out what it was for then he didn’t invest in that company if he bought the product to test them.
The train ride ended and they went to the great feast where all the new first years were sorted into their houses after Alexa had to split up to sit at the Gryffindor table. Ginny didn’t recognize any of the first years coming in.
After the feast, they went back to the common room and Ginny suppressed a groan as she saw who their prefect was. It was Preston of all people, smugly looking down at everyone with the shiny badge pinned to his chest. The girl Prefect didn’t look too happy with him either. It wasn’t someone that Ginny had ever talked to, so Ginny didn’t have an opinion on the girl yet.
Preston stepped up to Amvatroz’s statue and waited. The Eagle looked at him with what Ginny could tell was a rather unimpressed look.
“Preston,” he said, “I see you bumbled your way into the Prefect position somehow. Congratulations.”
Preston flushed and looked back at the group, “Just give me the riddle, Eagle. We’re all tired.”
“Very well,” Amvatroz said, “Assuming a decay of 1.2% in the magical potency of boomslang skin per year of storage, what is the last possible year that it can be used in a intensified fever cure potion assuming that it is stored directly after it was harvested?”
“What? Potion’s, Eagle? Seriously?”
“Yes.”
Preston grumbled and thought about it for a few minutes, getting frustrated as he wasn’t able to answer in front of the whole crowd.
“It’s fifteen years,” The girl prefect finally said, “Right, Eagle?”
Amvatroz swiveled to her.
“Yes. I suppose I will have some mercy since it is your first day back, and allow you to answer for this buffoon…”
He faced his head forward again and the wall swung open to reveal the common room. Preston looked humiliated and Ginny had to suppress her smile at seeing the unpleasant boy be humbled. Catching her smile before she could turn away, Preston glared at her for a moment before looking away.
They all went into their dorms and Ginny caught up on the superficial details on how her roommate’s summers had gone. Ginny didn’t talk about herself too much.
— — —
The first day of classes was going pretty smoothly. She was curious about the Defense against the Dark Arts position or just Defense as some people were calling it since the whole thing was such a mouthful.
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They all walked inside and saw that there were dozens of banners filled with a wide grin and smiling face covering the walls. Ginny had heard of him when her brothers had led out a loud groan when they saw who their new teacher would be.
Gilderoy Lockhart was back as the Defense teacher. Ginny had never had him, but her brothers assured her that he was vain and self-centered, always talking about himself and incompetent at his magic to boot.
“Hello, hello, students!” Lockhart said with a wide smile, “After that horrible debacle last year with your last teacher, I was practically begged to come back to fill the vacant teaching position by my adoring fans. Now, my first year teaching I was still working out the kinks in my methods. Practical lessons on my many adventures don’t always translate the best to paper. As I found out first hand much to my chagrin last time.”
He led out a wide grin with shining pearly white teeth as his eyes scanned the classroom.
“Although,” He said in a conspiratorial tone, “I do try to do my best in my books of course.”
“So!” He said, “I’ve realized that if we can’t give you real experiences, then we’ll be doing the next best thing! We’ll be acting out each of my adventures as a class. I of course am an experienced adventurer and know how to react in even the direst of situations! But we’ll see how each of you reacts to the clues and mysteries that I was presented with and play it out from there, with an expert providing you notes and advice the whole way on how to do it! So, do we have any volunteers come up to the front?”
The room was quiet and Ginny hesitantly raised a hand. He didn’t seem that bad? Maybe it would be fun?
“Ah, Ms….?”
“Weasley,” Ginny said, “Ginny Weasley.”
“Excellent, excellent. Come on up, then. Ah, let’s go with… you, you, you, and you as well.”
The five of them including Jack went up to the front.
Lockhart picked up a book from a nearby desk and showed them the cover.
“Now, have any of you read ‘The Miasma of Tesma’s bog?’ It’s one of my oldest works, back from the beginning of my career.”
All of them shook their heads.
“Hm, yes. Only the really dedicated fans would read this one. It’s one of my less popular works, of my wide collection. That’s good, we’re trying to do this without any foreknowledge of what I myself did to answer the conundrums presented to you.”
They all nodded.
“Now!” Lockhart said with a grin and opened the book to the first page, “I will begin reading my wondrous tale. At the points of greatest intrigue and mystery we will pause! Our five volunteers here will set the scene as best as they can and as a class we will determine the best course of action for what to do next! I am an intrepid hero, but even I do not make the optimal choice with only limited time to think or act. Now, let us start at the beginning, chapter one. There I was, resting at the local inn, when I overheard two men nearby fearfully muttering about the strange sickness and behavior from the people over at the nearby village of Tesma’s bog…”
— — —
“Alright, Harry,” Stupid Lockhart said as Eric lay there on the floor of the classroom, “Move your arm a bit there up, a little more… Yes! There the body lay, sitting in the house near the door. Do you see the illustration in the book, class? Now, of course knowing that the famous Lockhart was visiting their humble village they called me in for my help. Now we must solve what could have killed the poor fellow in his own home with no one else noticing until the next day.”
Eric lay there as the dead body as the class discussed what spells they should use and what to do to investigate. Every time he tried to move, Lockhart would remind him that he was supposed to be dead and Eric would be forced to lay there still again.
“Alright, Harry. Sorry about that, got to have authenticity to really set the scene you know,” Lockhart said, “All good thoughts class. Now, one spell that you all seemed to have missed was the one your intrepid hero ended up using first. Let’s read onwards to see what I did to get to the bottom of the mystery…”
Eric stood and brushed some dust from his knees and stood with the other four volunteers. Eric wasn’t a volunteer, Lockhart had just picked him even though he hadn’t raised his hand.
“Alright, Harry…”
Eric had thought the man would be gone. Would he really have to go through another year of this crap? If Lockhart called him Harry one more time…
“Ah, Harry…”
Eric gritted his teeth. Resist the urge to murder the professor, resist the urge, it wasn’t worth it…
— — —
Ginny sat back down at her desk. “Very good job, let’s give a hand to our five volunteers today,” Lockhart said, “Remember to start practicing those spells mentioned today for next class. They’ll all be in ‘Spells of a Hero’ that you’ve picked up with the rest of your books.”
Everyone politely clapped.
“Alright, class dismissed. Until next time, to be adventurers!”
Ginny picked up her things and left the classroom.
“That was kind of fun,” Ginny said to him as they moved through the hallways, “A little silly, but way different than I thought it would be.”
“He is rather full of himself though, isn’t he?” Jack said, “I couldn’t tell if he was just being dramatic or if he really thinks he’s that amazing at everything he does.”
“He was really good at telling the story though,” Ginny said, “And it really was interesting trying to think of what to do when he presented the situations in the book. It was much harder to think of what to do than I thought it would be from our tests… And that was with plenty of time to sit around and talk about what we should do.”
“Yeah, that was pretty good,” Jack agreed, “I’m glad we won’t have to go up there every time though. We mostly were just standing around as props while the others debated what to do.”
“Well, now we know. My brothers made it sound like he was terrible, but I didn’t think he was that bad really.”
“Definitely could be worse.”