It Might As Well Be Magic

Will's A Prophet

Nico sneered throughout the woman's entire speech, about being excited to be back at Hogwarts (yeah, sure), and getting to know everyone, and blah blah (it was honestly so boring everyone pretty much dozed off halfway through), until she finally shut up and allowed Dumbledore to continue speaking.

"Yes, it certainly was illuminating," Hermione whispered.

"Huh?" Nico asked, having tuned out pretty much everything the toad-like woman was saying.

Nobody seemed to acknowledge my confusion. "You're not telling me you enjoyed it?" Ron asked, disbelief clear in his tone. "That was about the dullest speech I've ever heard, and I grew up with Percy."

Nico and Harry both chuckled softly.

"I said illuminating, not enjoyable," Hermione clarified. "It explained a lot."

"Did it?" Harry questioned. Honestly, Will and Ron seemed confused as well. Nico had a small inkling of what this meant. "Sounded like a load of waffle to me."

"There was some important stuff in that waffle, I'm sure." Nico piped up.

Hermione nodded. "Was there?" Ron asked.

Hermione rolled her eyes and huffed. "How about 'progress for progress's sake must be discouraged'?" She pointed out.

"And when she said 'pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited'?" Nico added.

"It means that the Ministry is interfering with Hogwarts."

Everyone fell silent.

Nico was the first to break it. "Those bastards," He muttered.

Will kicked him under the table, and Nico met Will's warning look with a death glare.

Then Hermione jumped in surprise, as if she had forgotten something. "Ron, we're supposed to show the first years where to go! Nico, Will, we'll show you where our dorm is as well, come on."

Nico and Will followed after the pair, laughing as Ron called the first years 'midgets', earning a lecture from Hermione.

On the way to the dorm, Will and Nico shared a silent conversation.

If the Ministry is interfering at Hogwarts, what will this mean, for not only our quest, but the school?

***

The next day, everyone met up once again in the Great Hall, for breakfast, and had just received all of their schedules.

Ron was complaining about how horrible his schedule was, but Will and Nico were having they're own problems just trying to read it.

"Umm, you guys okay over there?" Hermione asked, looking at their dazed expressions.

Nico's face turned red. "Actually, we both happen to be dyslexic, so we're having trouble reading the schedule." He admits, his face reddening even more, if that's possible.

She smiles gently. "Well, it's looks like you have mostly the same classes as us, so we can show you where to go. First, we have history of magic. Second, we have double potions, and I'll warn you ahead of time that the teacher there likes giving out random questions to random students, so be prepared (Nico kept a mental note of that). Next, you all have divination, which I stopped taking a while back, so it'll just be you two and the boys. Lastly, we all have double defense against the dark arts together." She read out.

Nico nodded and thanked her, rewriting it on the back in Ancient Greek so he could recall it later.

Not much later they all left, Nico paying close attention to where they were going so he could get to classes just fine on his own.