Professor Potter

Chapter 43

Chapter 43 

Harry stared up at the white blob that was the ceiling of his private room at St. Mungo's. Without the aid of his glasses he could not make out any of the detail that might have distracted him while he awaited the return of the Healer, Doctor Elsewhere. In fact, the small wizard was simply the leader of a team of Healers that had been working together to try and determine the source of the skull splitting headaches that Harry was suffering from for the past three months. After much prodding from Ginny, Abagail and nearly all the members of his extended family, he agreed to check himself into the magical hospital for tests. With nothing else to do he let his mind range back over the past year or so. 

The last twelve months began with the closing of Harry's fourth year as a full time teacher. The first go-round of the sixth year project class had ended well. The broom tinkerers had finished with somewhat of a mixed bag. They demonstrated that they had obtained a thorough understanding of the magic that allows a broom to fly and respond to its rider but had not been successful in developing the equivalent of a Firebolt III. Harry was not inclined however to decrement their grade as a result once he found out that the Nimbus company, with all its resources and expertise, had been working to do just that for the last ten years and still had a ways to go, according to Eddy Hillchurch. 

The students working on the wand project had developed a very interesting first level corollary between the materials used in a wand and the personality and talent of the 'optimal' user. They also indicated that a pair of then fifth years wanted to do a follow up as their sixth year project with the intent of developing a predictive tool that would enable someone to know ahead of time what kind of wand would be best for them. And they did just that. Only a month ago they demonstrated how their tool helped to quickly narrow the possible range of materials that would work best for a particular witch or wizard. Mr. Ollivander was quoted as saying it would never replace the knowledge and experience of a master wand maker but it would be helpful in saving time by narrowing the initial possibilities. 

The muggle/magical relations project had a similar conclusion to the broom project. The young witches had demonstrated that they had acquired a thorough understanding of how the magic used to hide the wizarding world from the mundane worked but their assessment of the hopes for a more open coexistence was pessimistic to say the least. The fact that the Reverend Armbruster was ramping up his witch hunt at this time did little to help. 

The summer that followed had begun well with the now annual trip to the south of France and the seaside house of Fleur's aunt and uncle. Angus had been added to the mix as the relationship between he and Abagail had grown much more solid and his boss had suggested he needed to take a break since he had been working nearly non-stop on the coded files left behind in the Mysteries Department, on top of the work he was doing for the study group. Angus and Abagail had taken a trip by themselves to Beauxbaton and while there Madame Maxime commissioned Abagail to produce several paintings based on her 'visions' of past configurations of the palace and its surroundings. The young artist's reputation was spreading within the magical community and she had a fairly steady workload with book illustrations, working with the Salisbury Plains Construction company folks and a small enterprise she had begun making and selling the small hand painted pins that she had given out the one Christmas. 

These events combined with the continued good health and overall fortunes of the extended Weasley family had Harry in a reasonably good mood at the beginning of last summer. However, there were some issues. The irascible Reverend provided a certain level of background annoyance with the occasional report of another bombastic sermon or on the last summer solstice, his attempt to interfere with a group of Druids that had gathered near Stonehenge for their annual rite. Harry had a few conversations with Milligan about what they were observing but they still had no inkling about the 'supposed' evidence that was said to exist.