Harry Potter's sister ~~~ Fanfiction

hermoine's explanation part 49

Harry, Ron and Neville made their way from the last class of the day, Charms, to the Trophy Room to sit out their third day of detention. Because so much of the staff had to work on patrolling the corridors round the clock they simply could not supervise all ten students constantly for three weeks. So it was decided that the Second Years would serve three weeks, then when they had finished Emma, Demelza, Luna and Ginny would serve detention for the next three weeks and finally Vicky, Natalie and Geoffrey would serve detention for the three weeks after that.

The three of them were being escorted by Percy and Professor Vector, who turned out to be the Arithmancy teacher. When Harry and Neville learnt who she was they began bombarding her with questions about what sort of stuff would be covered next year and whether they'd get to design new spells.

"No boys, by the end of third year you'll be able to modify certain simple spells but you're not expected to make spells until seventh year."

Percy seemed really irritated, he had not thought losing all but 37 points was worth a battle against giant spiders, but here was a Hogwarts Professor happily chatting away with two of the misbehavers about Arithmancy and spell creation.

He would probably have taken some satisfaction given Filch was supervising but, because of the rule that patrol and guard duties had to be in pairs, Filch wasn't the only one supervising. The previous two nights it had been Snape with him, but tonight was his night off so the Fat Friar took the second role.

"Oh my, this takes me back." He said jollily "When I was at Hogwarts, this was all done by magic, except for detentions. Some say that it has to be done with good hard elbow grease but I found that a good focused Scourging Charm did wonders."

"You used to clean these?" asked Ron.

"Oh yes, I had more than a couple of detentions in my day. But my happiest days at Hogwarts were definitely when I was in charge of the infirmary. Oh at the time Muggleborns weren't that highly thought of but I found them and their culture absolutely fascinating. They found the Wizarding World absolutely fascinating too. I used to have this late night book club where we would read literature from their world, much harder to get in those days, especially from the Wizarding World. Some of it was absolutely marvellous."

"Yeah this castle is great." Said Harry.

"I know, when I first entered, I never wanted to leave. In many ways I haven't. After I trained my apprentice and retired, I was on the Board of Governors so I visited all the time. This was back in the day when the Governors always had two members living in the castle of course. Wouldn't get that today, bunch of upstart upperclassmen living in mansions, care more about their wine than the running of the school."

"You got that right." Said Ron, obviously thinking of Lucius Malfoy.

"Yes, strangely enough my finest moment came after I died. When I was asked to be the ghost of Hufflepuff House. Truly the greatest moment of my life… My Death to."

"Do all the ghost here have a patch?" asked Ron "I only ask because we once met this ghost who haunts the girls bathroom on the Second Floor."

"Ah yes Myrtle, very sad that. She became a ghost for all the wrong reasons. Immensely attached to that bathroom though, spent much of her Hogwarts years having her private moments in there, died there too the rumour goes. That was always the one downside of Hogwarts, not a lot of room for privacy."