Harry Potter and the Ties that Bind

Chapter 40

Although Harry had managed to curtail Umbridge for the moment, he knew that wouldn't be the end of it. This woman had a hidden agenda. No, he was sure that she was pushing someone else's agenda.

The first thing he needed to do was find out who's agenda she was pushing. That was why he had Blaize, Susan, and Neville contact their families for information on the woman. Each of those three families had different contacts in the wizarding world due to their stances, so there was a good chance that one of them would know about possible connections a specific family might have to Umbridge.

Outside of trying to figure out the new headmistress's game, Harry attended classes with everyone else. Classes weren't anything special. In Study of Ancient Runes, they were beginning to string runes together to form arrays--or at least, they were learning the theory behind it.

Runes were a language, and in order to create a magical effect, they needed to create sentences that invoked magic. A good example would be creating a jet of water. It wasn't enough to just write the characters for water. A sentence would need to be written that said something along the lines of "Shoot a stream of water for x-distance."

Of course, it wasn't as easy as that. There were still rules that needed to be followed. One of those rules followed a law that was similar to conservation of mass, a principle that stated mass cannot be created or destroyed. In other words, even if someone created a runic array to shoot water a certain distance, without having water to shoot, it wouldn't do anything because there was no water. While magic could be used to conjure, that would require creating another runic array and combining the two arrays together, which opened up a whole other can of worms. It wasn't something they were learning this year.

Arithmancy was still his best elective subject, which he excelled at because the math in magic was nowhere near as complex as mundane math. If he had to give arithmancy a "difficulty level", then he would have to say that it was around the same level as basic geometry and algebra. There was nothing particularly hard about it.

There was only one real problem at the moment--outside of his normal problems. This one technically had nothing to do with him. Even so, Harry felt obligated to do something about it.

The problem was with the headmistress's new policy on not allowing students from other houses to mix. Umbridge might have been lenient with Harry and his friends. However, even though she'd made an exception for them due to their political status, others did not have the same protection. Several students had already gotten into trouble with the headmistress. Harry had seen numerous students being given detentions for just walking in the hall with students from another house.

Because he didn't want to cause a scene, or incite jealousy from others thanks to their preferential treatment, Harry and his friends spent their free time in the Chamber of Secrets. What had once been his private work room had now become a lounge.

Harry glanced around at the interior, wondering about the changes to the chamber. The large space appeared to have more in common with a house than it did a laboratory. In the center of the room were several lounge chairs and sofas centered around a coffee table, which had a chess set currently sitting on top. Underneath the furniture was a soft rug.

The lounge-like area didn't take up much space. However, next to the lounge was a fully equipped gym. Harry had bought the equipment, placed some featherweight charms on them, and brought them in his trunk. There was also the spell casting range, which was basically just a series of self-repairing dummies that people could use for target practice. His personal workspace, which consisted of a large desk that curved around to form an L shape was easily the smallest part of the chamber. Even the airspace wasn't safe since Tracey's broom track was up there.