Everything seemed to pick up as that week went by. Classes were in full swing, although Harry's schedule was pretty light. But he kept himself especially busy with his own training and the HA. Quidditch practices began at the end of the week as well. Right now they were to begin practicing three times a week, and as their first game approached, Harry imagined Ron would step up the practices a bit.
His class work load was nothing compared to what it had been the year previous. Not only was Harry well ahead in his reading, but he actually had less homework to do because he was always one of the first to get the spell correct in class. He realized that part of the reason Hermione was always able to stay ahead was because she never had as much actual work to hand in as the rest of the class. The professors tended to add on additional assignments to those who were struggling in an attempt to help them better grasp the concepts.
This just freed up more time for Harry to study even further ahead and to do some independent reading. He still found himself enthralled with the subject of wards, but he also take a vested interest in healing spells. He put his studies in the field to the test on the minor cuts and bruises he often acquired during his training sessions. They were the simplest spells of the field, but he was able to perform them with ease.
Harry didn't get a chance to do any animagus training with Ginny that week, but they did manage to sit down and schedule out a couple hour long sessions each week that they would try to abide by. He met with Professor Snape for another Occlumency lesson on Thursday, to similar results as the last. Snape attempted to break into his mind with even less success than the previous week, but he didn't seem as strained as the last time. Perhaps Harry had just caught him off guard. Regardless, after several attempts to break into Harry's mind with very little success, Snape told him to continue practicing and to be there at the same time next week.
His HA classes during the week went off smoothly for the most part. It was his weekend HA classes that brought about something unexpected, though not entirely a surprise. Once everyone had arrived, he performed his usual ritual of checking for anybody present who had not signed the contract when, to his surprise, a red glow emanated from a corner of the room, a corner of the room that to the naked eye looked empty.
Harry surreptitiously drew his wand from his holster and called out, "Accio invisibility cloak." The charm worked to perfection, revealing the interloper to be none other than Professor Snape. When Harry asked why Snape was hiding in his class, the man sneered at him and got into a long-winded tirade about Potter showing favoritism in his classes and wanting to be able to watch without Harry's knowing so that he could see how he handled the class unsupervised.
To Harry's great surprise, the two Slytherin members came to his defense against the Professor's accusations. They emphatically stated that Harry had been nothing but fair thus far and had stood up for them even when some of his own best friends were yelling at him for allowing them into the class. That seemed to quiet Snape down, though he didn't seem any less unpleasant toward Harry as a result.
Other than that, the class went great. Professor Snape even offered a very helpful suggestion when Harry once again had trouble getting the class to take the dodging sessions seriously. Rather than allowing the students to just pair off with their best friends as they had been doing, he suggested that they be forced to pair up with someone from another house so that they wouldn't mind hexing their partner as much as they would their best friend. It made sense, and it worked well too. He still spotted some people giving less than their full effort, and he called them on it. But for the most part, the performance of the casters was greatly improved after the switch. Harry made sure to offer his thanks to the Professor for the suggestion. He received a curt nod in reply, but there was no scathing reply to accompany it, so Harry took that as a good sign.
The next week flew by even more quickly for Harry. He met with Ginny twice that week to work on her animagus form, without much success. He tried to start her off the same way he had: concentrating on her form and willing individual parts of her body to make the change into its animal counterpart. But thus far she had been unable to make any changes to her body. Sirius said that it had taken him months of hard work to accomplish even that, so Harry wasn't discouraged by her lack of success. He told her the same.
He was a bit taken aback when he was asked to stay after his Defense class that Tuesday. Professor Caldwell requested his help teaching the Patronus charm to his seventh year class, having heard how familiar Harry was with the charm. Harry had almost forgotten the comment that the Headmaster had made that he would be asked to help the Defense Professor occasionally throughout the year, either in class demonstrations or in helping him grade papers. Luckily, the class didn't interfere with anything he had planned. He would help out a week from that Friday. The class was directly after his own DADA class on Fridays, so he would just remain after class to help out with the seventh years.
It was good that his help was not required on the Friday of the current week because Harry had another engagement that day. The class would not actually have interfered with what he had planned, but it would prove to be a nuisance that he didn't want to have to worry about given what he was planning to do that day.
That Friday was a full moon. It would mark the first full moon he would spend with Remus while the man turned into a werewolf. He let Ginny in on that secret since she already knew of his animagus form. If nothing else, she could always help to cover for him if people became curious about his absence. She also helped him work out his plan for how to slip away unnoticed.
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