Just Plain Harry

Chapter 9 Miss October Stuart

Life settled into its usual routine at Hogwarts, though it was slightly busier than normal. The Auror classes intrigued Harry, since they were half learning new jinxes, curses, and counter-curses, and half learning new ways of thinking. Hermione seemed uplifted after every one, and both she and Ginny came back from their extra Charms classes excited but exhausted. Professor Flitwick was teaching them the theory behind creating new Charms, which even Hermione admitted was one of the hardest things she’d ever tried. She also said that both Ginny and Brenna O’Keefe were better than she was at it, but Harry had a hard time believing that, and Ron flat-out refused to try, which Harry noticed made Hermione somewhat misty-eyed.

Ron came back from his lessons with Professor Dumbledore more involved than Harry had ever seen him about anything, even Quidditch. They were playing chess, and after every one, Ron challenged someone to a game, trying to figure out ways to beat the headmaster. He would have completely neglected his homework for his regular classes if Hermione hadn’t tricked him. She got everyone in Gryffindor to promise that they wouldn’t play chess with Ron until she said it was all right, and she only said it if he had done his school work. It surprised Harry that Ron put up with this - it would have been fairly easy to circumvent - but he did. His friends had been fighting less, too, but that was probably just because there was less time in which to fight, since they were all so busy.

Besides the Auror training, Harry had one class a week with Professor Vector, who was Hermione’s Arithmancy teacher. Harry wasn’t learning Arithmancy, though. Instead, Professor Vector was trying to teach Harry to tap into his extra reserves of power. Everyone knew he had them - he wouldn’t have survived against Professor Quirrel in first year if he hadn’t, just to name one example - but calling them up intentionally was proving to be more difficult than Harry could have imagined. Theo Black joined him in these classes, not because he also had reserves of power, but because he had the ability to augment others’ power, which everyone thought would help Harry immensely. Of course, the theory was once again much easier than the practice. Harry came back from these lessons both physically and mentally drained.

The hardest extra class for Harry to deal with, though, was his Seer training. He and Ginny had gone to the first one late Thursday night, not sure what to expect. Neither one of them enjoyed their usual Divination classes - Ginny confessed that she usually fell asleep in them - and they weren’t exactly comfortable with the visions they had already received. They entered the room timidly, and were greeted by Dumbledore and a very pretty witch with long, curly brown hair, of about Sirius and Professor Lupin’s age.

"Ah, Miss Weasley, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore said, as they came in and took their seats.

Harry had never been in this room before. It was smaller than most of the classrooms, with six comfy-looking armchairs gathered around a table by the fireplace. On the table was a crystal ball, a mirror, a large bowl full of water, a few pieces of crystalline rock, and several candelabra. Harry looked at them with trepidation, but then turned his attention back to the headmaster.

"This is Miss October Stuart," Dumbledore said to them. "She is one of the most talented Seers I have ever known. I know that you both are somewhat skeptical of Divination, but I ask that you give this an honest try."

His blue eyes twinkled at Harry and Ginny over his half-moon glasses. They exchanged glances. Did they even have a choice?

"Professor, if this is something we can do to help, we want to do it," Ginny said, turning back to the teachers. "We’ll try to keep our skepticism to a minimum."

Dumbledore and Miss Stuart both chuckled, but Harry just stared at Ginny in amazement. Really, where had this Ginny Weasley been hiding for all those years?

"All right, then," Dumbledore said, getting to his feet. "I’ll leave you to it. Good luck." With one last smile, he was gone.

Miss Stuart took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

"There are a few things you should know about me before we begin," she said. "When Professor Dumbledore said that I’m one of the most talented Seers he has ever known, he was about fifteen years too late. I used to be a Seer, and he was right, I was talented - I never had a vision that didn’t come true. The problem is, I had one that, well, ruined my life, and I haven’t been able to have one ever since."

Harry and Ginny exchanged glances again, but before they could say anything, Miss Stuart continued.

"I understand that you are in contact with Sirius Black, Harry," she said. "Has he ever mentioned me?"

Harry shook his head, but as soon as she mentioned Sirius’ name, Harry realized that he recognized her. She looked much older, of course, but she was the woman in the picture Aunt Petunia had given him - his mother’s maid of honour.

"I’m not surprised. Sirius and I were...close. So close that people expected us to marry some day, though we hadn’t really talked about it. Your parents thought we would, too, Harry, and they wanted to name me your godmother when you were born. Nothing would have made me happier, except that..." She trailed off, then took a another deep breath and continued. "I had a vision a couple of months before you were born. In it, I saw that Sirius would be the cause of your parents’ deaths. I...couldn’t face that. I did something very cowardly - I broke up with Sirius, without telling him about the vision, and went and hid myself away on my family’s estate. I never even saw you when you were a baby, Harry, and I had to watch from afar as my vision came true."

Harry sat in shock. One of these days, he thought, the relevations about my parents and their friends will just stop, won’t they?Some day, I’ll know everything I need to know about them, right?Because I’m not sure how much more of this I cantake. He looked over at Ginny, to see that she had tears in her eyes. She wasn’t looking at him, though, she was looking at Miss Stuart.

"And you haven’t had a vision ever since?" she asked.

"No. For many years, I didn’t even try. Finding out that Sirius betrayed James and Lily was...devestating. I hope neither of you ever have to go through that kind of experience. When Remus wrote me last year to tell me that Sirius was innocent, I did try again, but nothing came then, and nothing has ever come since."

"Professor Lupin wrote to you last year?" Harry said.

"Yes, we were good friends, once, and he thought I should know. Sirius hasn’t written, of course - I certainly don’t expect him to. And you know, my vision was true - Sirius was the cause of your parents’ deaths, Harry. If he hadn’t persuaded them to name Peter their Secret Keeper, Peter couldn’t have betrayed them."

Harry bowed his head, staring at his hands. He knew that, and he also knew that Sirius still blamed himself, but hearing it from this woman somehow made it sound worse. Ginny, though, was furious.

"How dare you say that?" she said, glaring at Miss Stuart. "Sirius loved Harry’s parents! And at least he stuck with them, instead of running away. Maybe if you had told them about the vision, things would have been different!"

Miss Stuart smiled sadly at Ginny, not fazed at all by her anger. "I know. Why do you think I cannot call a vision now, when I desperately want to? I’ve developed a block, which is something that happens to most Seers at one time or another during their lives."

She leaned forward in her chair, fixing both of them with a piercing stare. "Now that we’ve gotten the family history out of the way, I want you two to know something. True Seers are very rare. What you have learned in your Divination classes is...not exactly useless, but it is just preliminary. Students always begin with the methods of Divination that are most grounded in every-day things, that have the most concrete signs. When someone reads your palm," she said, reaching out and taking Ginny’s, "she can look at the lines on it and try to interpret them. According to this, you come from a large family, you have an episode in your past that you are very ashamed of, your fate is intimately entwined with another person’s, and you will have five children."
She dropped Ginny’s hand and chuckled at the amazed stares Harry and Ginny were giving her. "I take it some of that was right, anyway. That sort of thing can be useful, and it does take some talent, but it is nothing like what a true Seer does. Professor Dumbledore told me that you both have had true visions. Would you mind describing them to me?"

Harry looked at Ginny to see if she wanted to go first, but she was staring down at her palm, so he described each of his dreams of Voldemort. Miss Stuart kept asking for more and more detail, and he tried to oblige. When he finished, Ginny was staring at him, and Miss Stuart leaned back in her chair and shook her head.

"Those are some of the clearest visions I have ever heard about," she said. "You don’t even need to interpret them; it’s almost as though you were right there in the room with him. Professor Dumbledore thinks that your scar links you to Voldemort, enabling you to have these visions, and I agree. What we will need to do is see if there is any way we can induce them, so that we can find out what he’s planning even when it doesn’t involve his intense hatred for you." She shook her head again, then turned to Ginny.

Ginny told the dream that Ron had already described to Harry haltingly, not looking at Harry. When she mentioned the flickering between Harry and herself and Harry’s parents, Miss Stuart gave both of them sharp looks. Harry tried not to blush, forcing himself to concentrate on the details of the dream. Miss Stuart didn’t look at all surprised at the wolf, dog, and rat, so Harry guessed that she now knew, even if she hadn’t before, about Moony, Padfoot, Wormtail, and Prongs. She pressed Ginny for more detail, too, especially about the status of the rat when the dog brought him back, but Ginny really couldn’t add any more. Then Miss Stuart asked Ginny how she had induced the vision. Ginny flushed.

"I was in my room, staring into my crystal ball, practising for Divination," Ginny said. "I had a candle close by, but off to the side, and the flickering made interesting patterns in the crystal ball. I just stared at the patterns, then I seemed to fall asleep. That’s when I had the dream."

Miss Stuart gave her a keen look. "Did you try to reproduce the conditions?"

"Of course," Ginny said, and Harry thought back to her room with all the candles on every surface. "But I couldn’t. It was so frustrating!"
To Harry’s surprise, Miss Stuart reached out and patted Ginny’s hand.

"I know," she said. "And it will probably be frustrating for awhile, until you learn how to induce the proper state of mind. But I have no doubt that you’ll be able to do it."

Ginny looked much calmer after that statement.

"Now, we seem to have two different situations here. Ginny, I think you are a true Seer, and hopefully you’ll be able to tap into your talents fully, with my help. Harry, I think you’re a bit different. Your dreams are not visions per se, they just seem to be tied into Voldemort. But that can be most helpful, especially if we can induce them when we want - think of the advantage that will give us!"

"You say you think," Harry said. "You don’t know?"

"No," Miss Stuart said, smiling at him. "I know Professor McGonagall calls Divination guess-work, and in some ways it is. But the better trained you two get, the clearer your visions will be, and the easier they will be to interpret. Now, here are the basic ways of inducing visions." She indicated the items on the table in front of her.

The rest of the lesson was just taking notes about different ways of scrying. Both Harry and Ginny were very interested, but Harry couldn’t help watching Miss Stuart and thinking about her and Sirius. He knew Sirius was very busy, helping Dumbledore and his Order of the Phoenix, but he also knew that Sirius was lonely. He couldn’t help smiling - maybe he could do something about that. Suddenly, he realized that Miss Stuart had mentioned Voldemort several times, and each time she had used his name. Well, if she had been his mother’s maid of honour, she had probably been in Gryffindor, so she valued bravery, and maybe having had her life ruined once by cowardice, she would want to make sure she didn’t fall into that trap again. It’s what he would want to do.

After the lesson was over, while they were packing up, Miss Stuart turned to Harry, looking almost shy.

"If you write to Sirius, tell him...tell him Toby says hi," she said. Then she reached out and smoothed Harry’s wayward hair. "You do look so like James," she said, and practically fled the room.

Harry and Ginny just stared at each other, finished packing up, and returned to Gryffindor Tower.

* * * * *

Chapter 10 Scheduling Fun

The next few weeks were the busiest of Harry’s life, and he had a feeling that it would only get busier from here. All the teachers piled on work - the fifth years had thought it bad last year, but this was much worse. The teachers were all increasingly testy, too, and never missed an opportunity to mention the O.W.L.s

"Longbottom, if you cannot master a simple Hair Growth Potion, perhaps the only O.W.L. you will receive will be in Herbology," Professor Snape said during one particularly trying class. Hermione had been a little inattentive, and Neville had melted another cauldron as a result.

"That is an interesting color combination, Weasley, but I don’t remember asking for ribbons on the cat, since they won’t be on the O.W.L.s," Professor McGonagall said, when Ron managed to transfigure a sculpture of a cat into a live one, which unfortunately looked much like Crookshanks and had a big pink bow around its neck. The entire class rolled on the floor laughing, except Hermione. That class was just before the class on Hair Growth Potions.

Fleur Delacour was still teaching Care of Magical Creatures, since Hagrid was still away, presumably still on his mission for Dumbledore. Even Hermione enjoyed Fleur’s classes; they were studying centaurs, but Fleur wouldn’t let them actually see one until they had had weeks of class. She said, with a look at Draco Malfoy, that she didn’t want to risk it.

Even Professor Binns seemed to be paying attention to the essays they were turning in for him on the goblin rebellions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - at least, he commented on how some students seemed to be confusing goblins with house-elves, which wouldn’t be on the O.W.L.s. Luckily, though, he couldn’t seem to remember who had done it.

Hermione, of course, was in her element. She drew up study schedules for herself, Harry, Ron, and Neville, and even Ron tried to follow his, once she added in time for chess and Quidditch. She even offered to draw one up for Ginny, though Ginny didn’t have nearly as much work as the fifth years.

"I know you probably don’t need it, and I trust you to do your work, anyway, not like these lazy things," Hermione said, poking Ron with her foot. They were all in one corner of the common room, Ginny and Ron on the floor in front of the fire, and Harry and Hermione working at a table nearby.

Ginny had been stretched out on her stomach, her feet in the air, twirling a strand of her hair around one finger as she wrote in a book, but at this she sat up and asked to look at one of the schedules. Harry handed her his, which she took with a smile. Then she let out a very un-Ginny-like snort of laughter.

"What is this? You can’t schedule fun!" she said.

"Gin, how long have you known Hermione?" Ron said, not looking up from his work. "Besides, just wait until next year, when we’ll be done with all this, and she’ll have no one left to nag except you."

Hermione threw a pillow at him, but just said, "Do you want to fail your O.W.L.s?" before going back to her own work.

Ron didn’t even answer, and quiet descended on them again. Harry couldn’t concentrate, though, because he was worried about Ginny. She kept writing in that book, then pausing as though reading, then writing again. Sometimes she smiled, and once she almost laughed, before containing herself. It looked to Harry like it was an enchanted diary, and he couldn’t help but be concerned, after the Tom Riddle fiasco in her first year. As unobtrusively as he could, he stood up, stretched, then went and sat down near her head.

"Ginny, can I ask you something?" he said, trying to keep it quiet so Ron and Hermione wouldn’t notice.

She looked up at him and grinned. "You just did, but you can ask me something else."

"Very funny. No, I wanted to ask...is that an enchanted diary?"

So much for keeping things quiet. Ginny sat up, slammed the book closed, and glared at him. Ron and Hermione couldn’t help but look up at that.

"Why, yes, it is, Harry," Ginny said. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"No, it’s just...I just...Ginny, I’m just worried about you!" Harry said, completely surprised by her response.

Her face softened a little at that, but she still looked extremely annoyed. "Well, I’m fine. If you must know, Mum got this for me in Diagon Alley, from the same place that Hermione got hers. But if I start killing roosters again, I promise, you’ll be the first to know!"

She jumped up, whirled around, glared at Ron and Hermione, both of whom were staring open-mouthed at her, and stormed up the girls’ dormitory steps.

"What was that all about?" Ron asked, staring after her.

Even Hermione looked confused. "I’m really surprised she reacted like that - she didn’t when I asked her about it."

All of a sudden, though, Harry thought he knew what Ginny’s problem was. Miss Stuart had read in her hand that Ginny had a time in her past that she was ashamed of, and Harry suspected that that had opened some old wounds. He just wished he had thought of that before he had opened them some more. He was about to tell Ron and Hermione what he thought, when a large grey owl swooped in the window and landed by Hermione. They all recognized the owl - it was Viktor Krum’s. Hermione removed the letter from the owl’s leg, while Ron hurredly gathered up his books and disappeared as quickly as Ginny had. He did this every time Hermione got a letter from Viktor, and, though it had amused Harry at first, now it just annoyed him.

"Hermione, when are you going to tell Ron that you and Viktor are just friends?" he asked, watching her as she read the letter.

"When he asks," she said, not looking up.

Harry opened his mouth to say something else, but then he thought about what she had just said. That actually made sense. Besides, he really should just stay out of this. He went back to his seat, where he still had a long essay to write for Defense Against the Dark Arts.

That class was the hardest of all. Professor Figg seemed to be trying to make up for the two years that they hadn’t had good teachers in a few short months. She did

surprise Harry, though, by inviting him and any friends he wanted to bring to tea in her office. Harry had glared at her all through her first class, because she had acted like she had never met him before when she said his name in roll call. He was really getting sick of all these new revelations about his life. If she wanted to pretend she didn’t know him, that was fine by him. But when he tried to sweep by her on his way out the door, she stopped him.

"Hagrid tells me that you all are used to having tea with professors, so I assume you’ll know how to behave?" she said.

Harry just continued to glare at her, while Ron and Hermione looked on, unsure what to say.

Professor Figg sighed. "Please let me prove to you that I do know how to bake a cake, when I use magic," she said. "I’ll explain everything then."

Harry was still angry, but he nodded once before leading the way out of the room. He knew he’d surprised Ron and Hermione by asking Ginny to go with them, but he just didn’t want to have to keep them from bickering in front of a teacher without help. Though they actually behaved well, probably because they were both so interested in what Professor Figg had to say.

One thing hadn’t changed about her from the Muggle world to the wizard one - she had five cats in her office. Each one was soon curled up in somebody’s lap, which made drinking tea rather difficult, though Hermione and Ginny, at least, didn’t seem to mind. Professor Figg told them that Dumbledore had asked her to live near Harry and help keep him safe. She had had to live as a Muggle, to keep a low profile, which was, she said, the hardest thing she had ever done.

"The worst, though, was spending time with you, Harry, and not being able to say anything. I hadn’t expected that - I certainly didn’t expect the Dursleys to be so horrible, or that they would actually like my Muggle persona."

Even after the explanations, Harry was still a little annoyed at her. She could have given me a hint, or something, he thought. Or at least been a little nicer to me.

All in all, it was a good thing he had Quidditch to take his mind off his studies once in awhile. In the first week of the term, the Gryffindor Quidditch team met with Professor McGonagall to select a new captain and to arrange tryouts for the vacant Keeper position. The team had almost unanimously voted for Angelina Johnson to be captain, with Angelina herself as the the lone nay vote. Harry thought Fred and George were horrified thinking that one of them might get it. What with their N.E.W.T.s and the extra classes, which for them included Advanced Potions classes from Professor Snape, adding the responsibility of Quidditch captain, or co-captains, would put a serious cramp in their work on Weasley’s Wizard Weezes. The tryouts were set for the end of the week, because the team wanted to get as much practice in as they could with the new Keeper, and to get his insights into new strategies. Most of them just assumed Ron would make the team.

They were right. The only person who even came close in the tryouts was, to Harry’s surprise, Colin Creevey. Harry had no idea when Colin had found the time to get that good, especially being a Muggle-born, but he certainly had. Luckily, Ron’s mind for strategy was well-known, and he made one save more than Colin in the tryouts, or Harry would have worried that people might think there was favoritism going on, what with two of Ron’s brothers and his best friend on the team. But not even Colin or his brother Dennis seemed to take his defeat too badly.

So, what with intensive studying, exhausting sessions of trying to tap into his reserves of power with Professor Vector and Theo Black, even more exhausting sessions of trying to induce visions with Miss Stuart and Ginny, and draining Quidditch practices, Harry was really looking forward to the first Hogsmeade weekend of the term.