Harry's Future

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

It was Monday morning and Harry was sitting at his desk, awaiting the arrival of his first class of the new term. He was starting with the fifth years of his new class in Applied Magic. He was feeling in a rather good mood. He was happy to be starting his sabbatical year and his knee was relatively pain free. This was largely due to a rather pleasant surprise he received the previous evening. As the welcome back feast was concluding, Professor McGonagall had informed him that as a result of concerns raised about the issues with his knee and the walk to and from the school it was decided to assign one of the thestral pulled carriages to him. 

It was a bit odd to have the driverless carriage outside his door that morning but it made for a quick, painless ride and he was very grateful. So it was that as the students began to arrive they found him smiling and greeting them warmly. 

"Good morning, fifth years. Please come in and find yourselves seats and we'll get started." 

What they found was a slightly different arrangement than usual for a Hogwarts classroom. Harry recalled the remarks that Eleanor had made regarding the stories about him overawing some impressionable first year and he made a decision about how he was going to conduct all this classes. The students' desks had been pushed back a bit and a tall stool was on the floor directly in front of Harry's desk. After every one had taken their seats Harry stood up and using the cane stepped out from behind his desk and down off the raised platform. He sat on the stool and looked at the faces regarding him. 

"Firstly, I'd like to thank you all for taking a risk and signing up for such a new course. As you saw from your list there is no formal textbook for the course. You'll be working from notes and assigned reading. As we need to we will also make reference to texts from other classes. As I said this is a new course and I and some of the other Professors have put in a lot of time this last year pulling it together. But that doesn't mean that we got it all right. So I'm going to be asking for your help this year. If you see things that don't make sense to you or you think might be presented in a better way, please feel free to let me know. You can talk to me after class, drop me a note or since I have a few more free periods than the other Professors there's a good chance I'll be sitting in the Great Hall and you can talk to me there," he said. 

He looked out over the class, a group of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. Despite it being a new elective the classes for Applied Magic were fully subscribed so he had two sessions of each level, with two houses in each session. While very gratified at the response Harry privately hoped that he didn't wind up disappointing them. With a deep breath he began, 

"So, let's begin." 

And they did and by the time his first session was over he had to admit to himself that it went pretty well. He saw the students scribbling furiously as he talked. When he asked a question there were many hands raised and when he asked if anyone had any questions there were usually more than a few. When it came time to dismiss the class he was almost sad in a way, it had been great fun. But he realized there were many more to come over the span of the year so the feeling didn't linger. 

That afternoon he had his first session with his first year DADA class. He intended to start it the same as he had when he was a teaching assistant but with the bad knee he wasn't prepared to make that walk so he had requested the assistance of a pair of senior students who had the afternoon free. His volunteers were a Ravenclaw seventh year witch and a Slytherin sixth year wizard. 

Harry was using the DADA classroom with all it's strange and scary models and creatures and such so he started from the lower position on the stool. His two assistants were standing off to one side. Harry watched with a small smile as the group of eleven year olds walked into the room, looking about with wide eyes, and for some, not a small amount of anxiety.