-- Clara POV —
After the first week of actual classes, there was a surprising lack of complaints. Well there were no more than before I would say.
Apart from that, I had little to do. While I did not test out of most standard classes, I already knew the theoretical aspects up to the NEWTs or even further. The only problem was the practical aspect. Through that simple fact I had enough free time to at least look at Hogwarts wards.
I visited the ward chamber for the first time and I would need to say it was beautiful. The whole chamber was the wardstone, which is insanely hard to do, espacially if you had four people work on their own, which was the next discovery. The very heart of the wards were written in parseltongue and another three from each other different magical languages. I could at least see, what was done by whom, depending on their style and language but it did not get better afterwards. Amateurish wards were layered upon this masterpiece in such an ungraceful way, that it was apparent, that none of the headmaster had any real experience in warding on this level.
Normally, I would not be qualified to change anything at those wards, but due to the idiocy of some headmasters and the instructions from Hogwarts, I could tear away hundreds of duplicate, useless and just straight up broken wards. For most wardstones this alone would be their end, but the founders had an automatic repair function built into the ward's chamber, which was arguably the most complicated ward in this whole room, through which this was possible.
Most wards I removed were power trip wards from some headmasters, who just wanted their privileges to prevail, while others were corrections of broken wands, which were badly added instead of just repairing the old ones. I could not even start to decipher most of the more ancient and complicated wards which were written in languages I was not familiar with but through Hogwarts I even found a few of those, who were just straight up ridiculous. A ward to keep out ants, layered over a ward to keep out non magical animals, another one which should originally serve to stop seers without sight to see Hogwarts, but was faulty and as such just made divination inside the wards harder, which would also explain Trelawneys teaching results. There was even a ward, which transfigured any juice into pumpkin juice, but thankfully that one was already disabled, apparently an April fools joke gone wrong.
All this already took the edge on Hogwarts wards off, as there was less wasted mana, less manaflow needed and more stability. Through this, the castle could finally start repairing itself, as the energy to do this was missing, as way too much was wasted. This would still be a long process, as it first needed to store a huge amount, before doing minute repairs, rinse and repeat.
Dumbledore was frantic when he came mid way through, seeing me disable or just straight up vanish parts of the wards, though I could placate him with my explanations. The only real mistake in the end was the removal of the ant one, as the underlying animal ward only worked on larger animals to not disrupt the more normal ecosystems, though it still had an additional filter section, where you could add specific animals and even micromanage things like amount, amount per time, bonds and so much more I did not yet understand. I reconfigured that one to keep out ants out for now, tasking Dumbledore with the risk assessment and what to do in the long term.
You could see though, that some rare headmasters really did think about the wards, as this one would let through any animal with a bond to a student, regardless of anything else. Now some would consider an animal with a bond as magical, which was half right. The animal slowly transformed into a magical one, after it had met their partner, as they needed the partners energy to power the metamorphosis. Another headmaster though just straight up blocked bonded animals with a misguided attempt of an anti chimera ward, which saw animals with an unfulfilled bond as a chimera and as such blocked any such signals. What made this so much worse was, that there already was such a ward in place, without such problems, Hogwarts informed me. It was just disabled as an energy saving method, as it was one of a few wards who needed substantially more mana than others.
The final thing I did was disabling the aptly named war mode on some wards, as Hogwarts could not change that itself, yet anyway, and for anyone who did not know, Hogwarts had not seen any war in quite a time. Without all the problems of the wards, not even Grindlewald would get through even the normal wards. The war mode was designed for prolonged sieges which could even hold on under constant bombardment of a few weak adepts.
Long story short: Hogwarts had a lot of headmasters who were Idiots!
These repairs also proved the dorm security ward project of mine useless, as that was already part of these wards, though disabled to save mana. I promptly reactivated it.
Other idiots, students this time, brought house rivalries into Henry's class though, which did not end good for them. Last I heard they had three months detention with Henry, those poor souls. I came to know that it was basically a seminar on racism and similar things, which will probably help shape them into better people, though it was quite a harsh detention for self centered bigots as those, as all fifteen of them were the worst of pureblood slytherin. This also marked the first time when the whole school saw an angry Henry, which was quite a sight to behold. Instead of his cheerful attitude, he was grumpy for the whole remaining week.
This resulted in more students asking me questions, as they did not want to disturb Henry. Two of those were under those, who had gotten detention, which just showed how little they understood Henry's moral compass.
We also had the first few enlightenments, that meditation cannot replace true sleep indefinitely, though that was to be expected, took longer than we both thought though.
Slughorn on the other hand was ecstatic, as he had found so many promising students through the new rules, which meant his networking was in full swing. I heard murmurs that he wants to extend his tenure, but only as a slytherin head of house. Still, he was our potions professor for now and his fast track class was surprisingly empty: „While I love networking, the only way into this class will be dedication, talent and potential in potions and as such are the criterions to get and stay in this class", he said and after a few gruntled murmurs added: „While I can understand that you are skeptic, I can assure you that Harry Potter and Clara Ollivander are expected to operate on the same standard as everyone else, if not even a higher one to truly bring out their potential. Apart from that, if at any point in time you have problems with the workload, talk to me. It will not mean instant removal from this class and a burnt out potion master or mistress will be useless for anyone and just bring shame to my teaching methods. Understood?" This little speech got a round of nodded heads and even awkward applause from one person.
The next four hours were filled with the theory of a lot of advanced stirring technique, which we are supposed to dry practice, without anything in the cauldron, till they are ingrained to our very instincts. For reverence, ordinary NEWT courses only learn one advanced stirring technique. This was, as he put it: „The start of your very own brewing style!", which was a reference to free brewing and its requirements I guess.
The next seven weeks were filled with pure potions theory and self study, as at Slughorns best we had seven fast track classes in one week, most five hours long. The things he taught were stirring, cleaning, preparation and safety with homework to learn as much about different ingredients and their possible preparations as possible. He vocally warned about trying to learn about the difference between the different preparation methods, as that would be entailed in our first few practice lessons.
This practice lesson finally came and it was interesting, though most would say boring. For the next five lessons, all five hours long, we made a cleaning solution. It was an interesting solution, as it could not be bottled but would show a specific effect before leaving the cauldron completely cleaned. The original effect was a white cloud, but through preparing the ingredients differently each time, you could get different reactions. We were only supposed to change a single thing about the recipe at once, as he explained that anything else would already intrude on a way more complicated subject called interdependency, for which he would need another potion to explain.
Sounds simple so far? Hell no, though the potion was just a spiced up soup, it still needed very specifically processed ingredients, a total of twenty-five to be exact. There were more variations for the future with fifty, hundred and even a thousand differently prepared ingredients though. The whole potion was a skill test for preparing ingredients and I quote: „We will only move on, after you have these practice potions and their variations down to a tee!" And there were similar brews for stirring practice and then both combined, with even more complexity added. At least we were allowed to use the fast track room for practical self study and did not need to use our own herbs. As soon as we finished these, we would go straight to modding already existing potions at which we would learn more about interdependency, he teased.
And let me tell you, even if it is deathly boring, it shows extraordinary results. I also found out, that these potions were an invention of Slughorn himself and not readily available, though he told me after I asked, that the international potions guild has that information for any apprentices or higher, though most disdain his extreme approach to teaching through self discovery. They completely ignore, that he taught three of the most prestigious grandmasters of the current time.
This years halloween rituals was devoid of any interruptions and I made a slightly more complex ritual this year, still centered around death and his bearers.
The only other notable change was that Harry Potter left the quidditch team due to the given reason of focusing on studying.