A sirius matter

Chapter 23 - Adjusting to School

The schedules were hurriedly handed out before everyone was sent to their dormitories. Classes for the day were cancelled as the castle was searched for Lucius, to make sure he wasn't hiding inside the castle. Since he had a son in Slytherin, special care was taken in searching that dormitory before the Slytherins (minus Draco) were allowed inside. Dumbledore, however, had to leave for an emergency meeting of the Wizengamot. After they got over the initial shock of what they'd seen, Harry told Hermione and Ginny about his conversation with Dumbledore the previous evening, starting with how his contact lenses let him catch the Headmaster spying on him. Hermione persuaded Harry to spend most of the day studying, although he did play a few games of chess and exploding snap with Ron. He didn't want to risk going into his trunk with other people watching. He could just imagine what Fred and George would do to the trunk or where they'd put it if they found out he was inside it.

-ASM-

Harry and Hermione got up early the next morning and exercised. They resolved to use the living room of Harry's trunk to do their training. They decided to go in the trunk and study their daily lesson an hour after dinner for an hour, followed by an hour of dueling, followed by an hour of karate. They had only one class (Charms) on Wednesday, so they spent most of that day working on homework, as well as most of the weekend.

They let Ginny know their plans so she could continue practicing with them. They also told Neville and he decided to practice dueling and karate with them. They also invited Ron, who reluctantly agreed to do the dueling practice.

Harry made it a point that they had to practice flying every Saturday as well, pointing out that there's no point in being able to charm a broom if you can't properly fly it away. Reluctantly, Hermione agreed. Ron and Ginny were easy to convince to go flying with them. Harry knew she'd have to get comfortable enough on a broomstick to be able to do defensive flying to avoid getting cursed if they were escaping from someone. Harry had actually gotten six muggle brooms to take to school in his trunk so that they could practice charming and uncharming them so that with his Firebolt, he could have enough brooms for one Quidditch team.

Their revised extra subject study schedule was now Sunday-magical travel, Monday-defensive magic, Tuesday-magic potential, Wednesday-wordless-wandless, Thursday-animagi, Friday-advanced charms, Saturday-flying brooms defensively. Occlumency would be studied separately with Dumbledore on whatever days he chose for them (for Harry it was Thursdays after dinner).

They let Sirius know about their plans as well, and he vowed to join in the dueling as often as he could, at least once a week. He also reminded them of the dueling club he was going to start, but knew that Harry's practice was a lot more advanced than the club would be. Whenever they were going to use the trunk, Harry would bring it (shrunk down to the size of a credit card and in his pocket) into Sirius' office (after they made him take a wizard's oath to do no pranks on them regarding the trunk) so no one would find it when they were inside. Hermione was working on learning to make a ward that would protect the trunk from tampering, and was also working on a way to see the outside of the trunk while inside it.

When Harry and Hermione got to breakfast, Dumbledore still wasn't back at the castle. The Daily Prophet that arrived carried a front page article called, 'Fudge Assassinated at Hogwarts: Lucius Malfoy Exposed as Death Eater: by Rita Skeeter.' The article was very uncomplimentary of Fudge, the Ministry, and Dumbledore for letting this happen. It also said that an emergency meeting of the Wizengamot was being held to appoint a new Minister of Magic.

Harry honestly agreed with the reporter that this could have easily been prevented if Fudge had any ability to discern someone's character or the ministry hadn't let Malfoy off all those years ago. He did, however, think that Lucius' assassination of Fudge was a complete shock to him, so it would've been hard to avoid without having previously arrested Malfoy.