The Great Hall looked indescribably different viewing it from this side.
Harry couldn't help but pick at his food, having eaten only about half. With all the things he'd seen in his life, this shouldn't be getting to him, but it was.
Four tables crammed with loudly chatting students were arrayed with their different colored robes, different ghosts, and different familiar faces. The last of the first years had just had their names called, leaving the Sorting Hat atop its stool in the middle of the room. The staff table felt different than it had over summer, with everyone present and the Great Hall full of life.
"It's quite a sight, right?" said Aurora Sinistra.
Harry flashed a quick smile. "It's not one I'll forget soon, that's for sure."
The ghosts were floating around their tables, chatting with students and frightening first years. There were so many voices; so many sets of silverware scraping plates; so many different laughs, each coming from a different portion of the room. Harry felt intimidated and at home all at once.
He found himself smiling as he looked at the Gryffindor table. His eyes slid over familiar face after familiar face until they arrived on one that looked a little different.
Neville Longbottom was still Neville Longbottom. Harry could see the brown hair, understanding eyes, and wide jaw. Yet at the same time, this was someone new. He was thinner than the boy Harry had known, and he carried himself with a straighter back. Harry watched him laugh at something Seamus said. As he did, Harry could make out a splotch on his cheek; the scar Voldemort left there.
Sitting close to Neville, Hermione saw Harry looking. She smiled, offering a large wave. Harry waved back. He watched Hermione turn to her friends, drawing them into a huddle and saying something. His nervousness having significantly lessened, Harry returned to his food and finished off his plate.
Not long after, when the clanking of silverware had died down, Dumbledore stood.
"A full belly is a wonderful thing, is it not?" he said once the students had quieted. "Now that the important business is over with, I have a few words if you don't mind—"
"Mm-hm," Umbridge cleared her throat.
The frog-faced woman was sitting next to Dumbledore. It was probably the most prestigious seat she could manage to get her hands on. She was looking at the headmaster, making it clear she'd like for it to be her turn. The rest of the staff were torn between looking outraged and looking shocked… except Dumbledore, who ignored her existence entirely.
"Now that the Triwizard Tournament has passed, the Quidditch Cup will be resuming." This announcement immediately met with cheers, headed by the Weasley Twins. "Quite right. The list of banned items has grown once again—"
"Ah–hem!" Umbridge coughed.
"Bless you, Professor Umbridge," Dumbledore said. "As I was saying, Filch has seen fit to add Mnemonic Mittens and Self-Lighting Fireworks to the ever-growing list of prohibited items. If you are in possession of any of these, please hand them over to your head of house at the soonest convenience. We find ourselves welcoming new professors this year—"
"Ah-HEM!" Umbridge said, rocking her seat as she stood, forcibly queuing her own introduction.
It took a few moments for her to realize that Dumbledore hadn't gone on, and he had ceded the floor to her as she was so desperate for, and that all eyes were on her. She straightened her woolen pink vest, preening under the attention of the students.
"Goodness, look at the little faces in the crowd!" Umbridge said in a nasty falsetto. "I'm Professor Umbridge — your new Defense professor — and I am just as utterly happy to see you as you all are to see me!"
She said this in a tone implying that to be: very. No matter where he searched, however, Harry couldn't make out a single smiling face. Most just looked surprised that Umbridge was addressing them like small children.
Umbridge soon adopted a more business-like tone— less preschool teacher-ish and more like a middling politician. She talked dully about the importance of tradition, the wonderful art of teaching, and was beginning to get around to the dangers of unnecessary progress when Harry picked up his water.
He took a long swig, and for the first time in his life, intentionally sent it down the wrong pipe.
What followed was a raucous coughing fit three times as loud as Umbirdges faux-polite coughs she used to interrupt Dumbledore. Everyone looked at him, from the student body to the other professors, as Harry hacked up a proverbial lung. For the briefest of instants, Umbridge's polite facade was pierced by a nasty glare.
As he coughed harder, Harry stood up and pressed a hand to his chest. His coughs faded gradually, until he could finally lower the elbow he'd tucked his face into.
The students weren't talking to each other now or zoning out like they had been during Umbridge's speech, because they were busy giggling at him. Umbridge had gone silent. None of the other staff members were filling the silence… so Harry gave the Great Hall a wave.
"Hullo!" he said. "I'm Harry! I'm going to be teaching Muggle Studies this year!"
"Do you mind?" Umbridge asked in a sickly sweet voice.
"'Course not," Harry said. "I love Muggle Studies. That's why I applied for the job."
Students cracked up, and they weren't the only ones. Septima choked on a laugh, and Harry knew — with long years of experience reading her stoic face — that Professor McGonagall was hiding a smile.
Umbridge was torn, unable to decide if he was provoking her or merely an idiot. She settled on being politely outraged, in no small part because Harry had just gotten a better reaction than any part of her speech so far.
"That's wonderful," she said, smiling a smile that failed to reach her bulbous eyes. "If you could sit down, now…"
"Sure can!" Harry said. To prove it, he promptly settled back in his seat. When Umbridge opened her mouth to go on, Harry said, "Told you I could do it!"
A new wave of laughter swept the Great Hall. Umbridge chose to ignore Harry from that point on in the hopes he'd stay quiet. And he did! But the first third of her droll speech ended up lost underneath continued laughter from students. Eventually, Umbridge's smile became polite to the point of fragility. She cut her talk short, drawing her remarks to a premature close and sitting back down.
"Now that you've heard from our newest additions, I feel there's little left for me to add," Dumbledore said. "So I suppose all I can say is good night… and welcome to another year at Hogwarts!"
There were a few muted cheers. Prefects stood, organizing students to bring them to the dorms. Heads of house excused themselves to fulfill their duties. With less people between them, Harry soon found Umbridge's attention on him again.
"You really ought to change the way you speak to the children," she told him. "They're at a very impressionable age right now. It's important to impress proper decorum upon them, and to build the right kind of relationship. Take my speech, for example… I've established myself as an approachable but respectable figure in their minds."
"Oh!" Harry said. "Is that why none of them laughed while you were talking?"
Umbridge's eye twitched.
"That's right," she said. "We are here to educate the youth, not entertain them. If you can remember that, I'm sure you'll find teaching to be no problem! If you have any troubles, you can always come to me, of course. Like, say, if your curriculum is failing…"
"I'll keep that in mind," Harry said. "Thanks!"
Umbridge nodded, collecting a small pink leather purse and leaving the table. She walked away briskly, her arms swinging at her sides, cutting a frustrated figure. Harry smiled.
"Just wait," he muttered under his breath. "This is only the beginning…"
O-O-O
Twenty minutes out, Harry was pacing. Fifteen minutes out he was sitting at his desk. Ten minutes out he was sitting on the windowsill, staring over the grounds. Five minutes out he was pacing again. When the first students filed into the room, he was back at his desk, humming and patting the surface. He smiled at them as they entered.
He wasn't sure if it was lucky or unlucky, but his first period happened to be with the class he'd thought the most about. It was the fifth years— his year.
Traditionally, Hogwarts classes would have the students from only one or two houses up until N.E.W.T. years. Muggle Studies, however, worked a little differently. Harry found out quickly when he took the post that it was the least least-picked elective at Hogwarts. Harder than Divination, more boring than Care of Magical Creatures, less useful than Ancient Runes or Arithmancy… purebloods scoffed at it, while Muggle-borns knew just how inaccurate it was… You could accurately say that Muggle Studies was a class without an audience. When you pooled all the students from every house, you just about filled a single class.
That said, Harry couldn't help but blink. This classroom was starting to look awfully full…
There was a strong Hufflepuff presence. Harry recognized Susan Bones, Hannah Abbott, Megan Jones, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Ernie Macmillan.
From Ravenclaw Michael Corner, Anthony Goldstein, and Terry Boot all took their seats. Harry noticed they pulled out quills and parchment the moment they were at their desks, looking eagerly at him. It seems he had made an impression.
It wasn't only the Ravenclaws he'd whooed, either. Not only were Parvati Patil and Fay Dunbar from Gryffindor present, so were some very familiar faces. The golden trio nearly arrived late, Hermione pulling the boys by the wrists with a beaming smile.
Harry scratched his head. Maybe he should've paid more attention to who was transferring in. There were more than a few faces here that he distinctly remembered not taking Muggle Studies in his past. Hermione, for one (after her third year), and Ron for another. It was possible things were different here, the same way Neville was the Boy Who Lived… But Harry had a feeling it was his actions over summer that caused this change.
When all the Hufflepuffs, Gryffindors, and Ravenclaws were accounted for, Harry stood.
"Is that everyone?" he asked.
"Not quite, Professor," said a voice from the door.
Harry (narrowly) kept from doing a very unprofessional double-take.
Daphne Greengrass entered the room with a perfect poker face. A handsome dark-skinned boy walked beside her— Blaise Zabini. They stopped just inside, Daphne arching a blond eyebrow at Harry.
"May we sit?" she asked.
"Anywhere there's a seat," Harry said with a smile.
Daphne nodded. She and Blaise picked seats near the back, some of the last that were open.
Harry looked around, and finding no other interruptions, cleared his throat.
"I'm Professor Potter," he said. "You already heard that back at the feast, but it doesn't hurt to introduce myself again. I lived in the Muggle world for a number of years, so I hope I can bring my experience into these lessons."
He noticed a few faces — notably Hermione and Justin Finch-Fletchley — perk up. It was the Muggle-borns. He supposed he couldn't blame them, having seen the things even well-meaning pureblood 'Muggle experts' often taught.
"Let's see here…" Harry reached under the desk, pulling out a thick hardcover book. He lifted it with one hand, dropping it heavily on the desk. "This is our textbook. In my class, we are going to read it extensively, and it is going to lie to you."
He saw eyebrows knit together around the room. Hermione's hand shot into the air.
"Yes, Hermione?"
"Why would a book lie to us, Professor?" she asked.
"That's a broad question, so I'll answer the one that I think you mean," Harry said. "This book was written by wizards who are very well-read when it comes to Muggles. And when I say well-read, I mean that they read lots of work written by others who also learned by reading, and so on. They do a lot of deductive reasoning to explain all the ways Muggles are different from us. It's logical. Plausible, even. But at the end of the day, there's plenty that they guess at. Do you understand?"
"A little…" Hermione said, looking slightly sick at the thought of an inaccurate book.
"Two points to Gryffindor for an inquisitive mind," Harry said. He clapped. "I think a demonstration will make things a bit easier to grasp."
He walked around his desk, striding to the middle of the room where a gray box-like shape had been set up. It had a glass top, with an arm that reached up and curved over the center: a traditional overhead projector.
Well, it had been traditional when Harry bought it from a Muggle department store. Since then he'd had to get a bit creative to make it run inside Hogwarts, including a fairly comprehensive set of enchantments. Which was ironic, considering what he brought it here for… But that was fine.
Harry pressed the power button on the side and watched the projector whir to life, throwing an image up on the wall behind his desk. It was a simple white square, until he slid a sheet of parchment under the light. The parchment was projected with four words on it: What makes this work?
"Anyone?" Harry asked, gesturing toward the question. "For Muggle-borns who grew up with these, I'll ask that you sit this one out. But for the rest of you… What do you think is projecting that image?"
"It's gotta be magic," Terry Boot said when called on. Harry smiled noncommittally and called on the next one.
"I think there must be some kind of a trick," Hannah Abbott said. "But all I can think of that could do that is an enchantment. I'll say… a mix of magic and something Muggle?"
"I know this one," Ron said confidently, going third. "It's that eclecticity stuff."
"Interesting," Harry said. "Anyone else want to take a stab?"
There were no takers. Harry pulled a pen from one of his coat's many pockets, bending forward. He scrawled the three answers he'd gotten onto the parchment, then added a single tally mark underneath each.
"Right then!" he said. "I'm going to point to each of you, and you're going to tell me which of these you think is most likely. No pressure for getting it wrong! We aren't playing for house points here."
Susan Bones backed her best friend, and so did Parvati Patil. Harry skipped over Hermione and Justin, who seemed to be the only Muggleborns present. Neville voted for Ron's suggestion, and surprisingly, so did Blaise. The vast majority — about eighty percent of the class — did not hesitate to vote 'magic,' however.
"We've got our winner," Harry said. "Would you two like to chime in now?"
He turned to Hermione and Justin. It was Justin who answered first.
"Ron was right," he said. "Although it's 'electricity' not 'eclecticity.'"
"Perfect! Eight points to Hufflepuff," Harry said. "Anything to add, Hermione?"
"I think all the answers were right," she said. "In the Muggle world those projectors run off of electricity. But if that one is working inside Hogwarts, you must have replaced part of it with enchantments. And that includes magic, so…"
Harry couldn't help but smile proudly. "Fifteen points to Gryffindor for going above and beyond."
While Hermione blushed, he powered down the projector and walked back to his desk, sprawling in his seat.
"You must be wondering what the point of all that was," he said. "Frankly, today isn't a lesson. It's just an exercise to get you in the right mindset going. You all, with only a few exceptions, were convinced you were witnessing magic."
"But we were!" Terry Boot complained.
"Technically," Harry said. "But that's only because Hogwarts interacts badly with technology. If I took you to a school in London, you'd see dozens of devices exactly like this one working just as well without the help of a single spell. When we want to put a message on a wall, we come up with a spell to do it. When Muggles want to put a message on a wall, they invent a machine to do it. For all their differences, there are a lot of similarities as well. Now, let's take a look in this book. I assume you all have your own copies?"
Harry flipped through the pages of the book he dropped on his desk earlier while students scrambled to get their own copies out. "Page seventy four, if you would," Harry said.
When the students reached the page, they discovered a picture of a projector nearly identical to the one Harry showed them. Beside it was a short blurb:
A marvel to the Muggle mind, these trinkets create images akin to primitive versions of a Displaying Charm. These see extensive use in Muggle schools and other social gatherings, wowing crowds with their results which, to the average Muggle, must seem utterly incomprehensible. It is suspected that they run off of electricity.
"What do you see wrong with this?" Harry asked.
Surprisingly, it was Daphne who raised her hand first.
"That device's results aren't inferior to a Displaying Charm in any way," she said. "There is nothing about what you showed us that qualifies as primitive. Further, if multiple of our classmates understand its workings, I highly doubt that it wows crowds to the extent the book implies. It should also be easy to confirm that it uses electricity, rather than leaving the assertion as a mere suspicion."
"Exactly right on every count," Harry said. "Ten points to—"
Daphne held a hand up to stop him.
"Instead of house points, may I receive that?" she asked.
She pointed at his hand, which was still holding the ballpoint pen he used as part of his lesson.
"This? If you'd like…" Harry said. He was hardly running out of them.
He threw the pen across the room, where Daphne caught it, her face impassive. Giving him a nod, she tucked his pen into her bag. Rather than ask what she intended to do with it, Harry chose to move on.
"Daphne is completely correct," he said. "This is exactly the kind of reasoning I will expect from all of you this year. We will study Muggle culture, Muggle technology, and Muggle history from a variety of angles, many of which your textbook will fail to account for. It's your job to catch the moments when it's lacking. I don't expect perfection, but I do expect improvement. I'll be there to help you every step of the way."
The rest of the period felt like riding a bike down the backside of a hill. Harry had made the point he hoped to, and it seemed to have sunk in. After that, it was just a matter of introducing class policies, describing the structure of the course, and assigning the first batch of homework.
When the last student filed out at the end of the period — Hermione, who flashed him a final smile — Harry sat completely still in the empty room. He didn't move at all except to breathe.
Without warning, Harry shot to his feet, knocking back his chair as he pumped both fists.
So many hours spent on interviewing professors. Of picking out books. Of writing lessons. He put in early mornings and even a few late nights. He practiced in his head over and over. All for this moment. And it went as well as he could've asked for.
He danced around like a fool, celebrating.
One class down.
Who knew how many left to go.