Protection From Nargles

V - Charcoal

January, 1996.

Hermione Granger was not happy, suffering through another Defence Against the Dark Arts class under Professor Umbridge. As usual, the class was reading from their textbook, Defensive Magical Theory by Wilbert Slinkhard, making notes, and not doing much else. This was actually the more preferable scenario under Professor Umbridge, as the other option was listening to her put forth her views on the proper role of teaching, her views on the moral deficiencies of the students, and her views on the the delusions of Harry Potter. Wasting time copying a textbook was by far the lesser of two evils.

Hermione sighed. She was not used to thinking of any educational endeavour as a waste of time. Even Professor Binns' History of Magic class, which most other students thought was tremendously boring, usually held her attention. If asked, she would concede that Binns was an ineffective teacher, and that a fair amount of the historical minutiae he concentrated on was relatively pointless, but there were some interesting gems of information in there. History of Magic was dry, at least the way Binns taught it, but it was not pointless.

Unlike this.

The worst part of it was that Professor Umbridge had the core of a good idea. Hermione was convinced that with a solid grounding in defensive magic theory, Defence Against the Dark Arts could be learned far more successfully by students than it had been. Her experience with D.A.D.A. classes had been haphazard at best, given the instability in the teaching staff in the subject, but she knew that a good base of theory with the practical laid overtop of it would make it better for everyone.

But Professor Umbridge had made it clear there would be no practical component to her teaching. Without practice, the theory was completely useless. The students would fail their O.W.L.s, fail their N.E.W.T.s, and be completely defenceless against anyone trying to do them harm.

Fortunately, Harry was helping to do something about that.

She glanced over at her friend. He was looking intensely at his textbook and his parchment, but Hermione could tell his mind was not on his work. Harry had been behaving unusually these last few weeks - he was distracted, and except when he was dealing with Professor Umbridge, oddly happy much of the time. This puzzled Hermione somewhat, as the last year was not a good one for him. There had been no wholeheartedly positive events for Harry in 1995, as far as she knew - what would otherwise have been his greatest moment, his victory in the Triwizard Tournament, was irrevocably tainted by the death of Cedric Diggory and the return of Lord Voldemort. The rest of the year had been similarly awful for him.

And yet he was smiling a lot more recently, ever since Christmas. Perhaps he had simply had an excellent time with his godfather Sirius Black.

Or maybe it was because Dumbledore's Army had been so successful. Harry should rightfully be proud of that, in her mind.

The D.A. would have been unnecessary had it not been for Professor Umbridge's gutting of the Defence class. And even that couldn't be wholly laid at the feet of the woman at the head of the class. All of the changes being made at Hogwarts were the direct orders of the Department of Magical Education, and behind that door was the Minister of Magic.

No, Hermione corrected herself, not the Minister but the whole Ministry.

Britain's magical government was hopelessly corrupt and bigoted. It had pained Hermione greatly to find out the extent of it this last year. She had always been an idealist, and while she was a Muggle, at least, had always believed in authority and the rightness of that authority. Queen, Country, the Government, the Girl Guides, her school and teachers, and the good old Church of England, looking out for everyone and all doing their best. The results may not have been ideal all the time, but she didn't doubt the sincerity of most of the actors in the system. There may be bad apples here and there, but the system worked.