"First, allow me to introduce to you all—Professor Horace Slughorn—"
At the staff table, Bryan directed the young witches and wizards' attention toward a round, bald old man seated on the far side of Snape who had risen halfway from his chair and was beaming out pleasantly at the crowd.
Fred leaned over toward Harry with a wide grin. "So that's the poor sod they've dragged in, then. At his age, he doesn't exactly look like he'll hold up long, does he?"
Like a good number of others scattered through the Hall, George studied the old wizard with open, unabashed curiosity as the man rose more fully from his seat to offer a small, genial bow to the gathered students.
Harry knew perfectly well what Fred's comment had actually meant but he gave nothing away in his expression.
"Professor Slughorn will be taking over Potions for years five through seven this term. He is a highly experienced educator who previously served, for a great many years, as Head of Slytherin House. I trust you will all find him a genuine pleasure to work with. And furthermore…"
Before Professor Watson could finish his sentence, the Great Hall erupted in a sudden, rolling wave of murmuring that spread from table to table with remarkable speed.
Nearly every head in the room spun toward Snape at the staff table, eyes turned wide with open disbelief, the murmur was swelling into a heated buzz.
"That old man is teaching us Potions?"
George stared at the resolutely expressionless Snape as his own face was caught somewhere between bewilderment and the beginning of a real hope.
"Then what on earth is Snape doing instead? I don't suppose we can hope he's actually been sacked— he and Professor Watson seem far too thick with each other for that fantasy to come true."
Hermione shot George a withering look across the table and made a sharp, unmistakable silencing gesture with one hand.
"Oh, starting to manage people already, are we?"
George caught Hermione's warning gesture and dismissed it entirely with a breezy, untroubled smile, settling back in his seat without the slightest reduction in volume.
"As for Professor Snape—"
Professor Watson's voice rang out again from the front of the Hall, drawing every face back toward him.
"He will be responsible for teaching Potions to years one through four."
The explanation drew a fresh wave of puzzled faces from much of the crowd.
"I thought he was here to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts—" someone murmured from somewhere near the Ravenclaw table, the comment picked up and echoed in variations across several other tables in sequence.
At the Gryffindor table specifically, there was no shortage of open cheering at this particular piece of news—most of it concentrated among the fifth, sixth, and seventh years.
Fred turned eagerly to share in this apparently cause-for-celebration development with Harry and the others nearby, only to find calm, entirely unbothered faces looking back at him instead of the matching enthusiasm he'd expected.
"What's wrong with you lot? Cheer, for goodness' sake! Harry—Snape can't torment you in Potions anymore, can he! That's worth a proper celebration, surely!"
"Oh, we've already celebrated, actually."
Harry laughed lightly.
"He invited the lot of us into his compartment on the train this afternoon for a little impromptu party of his own."
"An impromptu party?"
More faces along the table leaned in immediately, bright with sudden curiosity in exactly the sort of attention Harry had always found uncomfortable regardless of how many times he'd been subjected to it.
"Frankly, it was rather dull," said Neville, who had been quiet up to this point.
"We spent the entire afternoon listening to him go on and on about his various connections to famous witches and wizards he'd known over the years. It seemed like that was rather the whole point of inviting us in the first place—to show off the connections."
"Shh!"
Hermione gave the entire group an even sterner glare than before, which earned her nothing in return except Fred and George's cheerful, entirely unrepentant contempt for the concept of discretion.
Professor Slughorn, meanwhile, received a modest, polite round of applause from the students as he settled back into his seat.
His amiable, smiling, round face was, after all, considerably easier to look at across a dinner table than Snape's which showed its permanent expression like everyone in the room currently owed him a great deal of money.
"As for Defence Against the Dark Arts—"
Professor Watson smiled and continued moving the announcements forward.
"The school did extend a formal invitation to a well-known individual for the position, but we have, as of this evening, yet to receive a response. Accordingly, Defence Against the Dark Arts for years one and two will, unfortunately, be suspended for the time being until the matter is properly resolved. Years three, six, and seven will see their scheduled Defence lessons temporarily replaced with Physical Education in the interim."
Harry's eyebrows rose sharply. This particular detail, at least, he genuinely hadn't known about in advance.
"What about us?" Hermione demanded, twisting in her seat to glare directly toward the staff table with indignation. "We have neither Defence Against the Dark Arts nor Physical Education to fall back on!"
"Oh, you think you've got it bad?" Fred grinned wickedly, deliberately drawing Hermione's rising indignation straight onto himself with evident relish.
"…Over the past year, Hogwarts hosted the Triwizard Tournament, and we shared a memorable year alongside the finest students Beauxbatons and Durmstrang had to offer."
Professor Watson's voice carried on smoothly moving the Hall's attention forward again. "This year, Hogwarts will once again welcome a group of most distinguished guests to our halls. They are expected to arrive this coming weekend and will be spending some time with us here at the school."
"As a matter of basic courtesy," Professor Watson said with a smile, "I would ask that all of you gather outside the castle gates at five o'clock this Saturday afternoon, so that we might welcome them together, as one school."
"Who are they!" someone called out immediately from somewhere near the back of the Hall, the question was repeated almost instantly by several other voices.
"Ah, well—life does rather benefit from a little anticipation now and then, doesn't it?"
Professor Watson gave an amused, entirely unhelpful chuckle in response.
"You'll find out exactly who they are when they arrive on Saturday, same as everyone else. In the meantime, I do hope you will all extend them every courtesy and genuine respect during their stay here at Hogwarts. If any conflicts were to arise during their visit, I would be most considerably disappointed—"
The Hall broke into a fresh wave of whispers as students up and down every table began speculating eagerly about the identity of these mysterious, unnamed visitors.
"That's a rather strange way to put it, isn't it…" Neville muttered, resting his chin thoughtfully in one hand.
Harry and Ron both glanced, almost in the same instant, toward Hermione who had gone visibly stiff in her seat, her expression was tight with worry.
The two open questions hanging over the Hall: who the mysterious guests arriving on Saturday actually were, and who exactly the school's still-unanswered invitation for a Defence professor had been extended to—wound themselves through the remainder of the opening feast like twin threads of gossip that nobody at any table seemed willing or able to set aside.
Harry and the others, as it happened, knew the answer to one of those two questions already but none of them were remotely prepared to say so aloud and risk setting off a Hall-wide panic on the very first night of term.
As for the other question, the matter of the still-unanswered Defence position—they were every bit as thoroughly in the dark about it as everyone else around them.
A whole summer spent apart meant there was no shortage of things to catch up on between old friends, and this particular summer had seen considerably more than its usual share of momentous, world-altering events to discuss.
Conversation around the Gryffindor table drifted, almost inevitably, toward the battle that had reduced Diagon Alley to rubble, and from there toward the members of the dark faction who had since been arrested in its lengthy aftermath.
"Serves them right," Ron said, with genuine feeling, glancing with obvious, undisguised satisfaction across the Hall toward Malfoy and the rest of the Slytherin table.
Harry and Hermione both turned to look in the same direction.
Theodore Nott and the Greengrass sisters sat rigidly apart from the festive atmosphere filling the rest of the Hall around them, their faces were closed and blank.
Harry could understand them being upset, given everything their families had been through but Parkinson, Zabini, and several others nearby looked equally subdued and passive, which puzzled him somewhat.
"The Plaza Accord have probably hit their families' businesses rather hard," Hermione said with a faint trace of sympathy in her tone.
"They must all be in a very difficult position right now….."
"I'll say what I've always said," Ron muttered, looking grimly, stubbornly satisfied with his own position on the matter.
"If someone in my family turned out to be a proper Death Eater, I wouldn't have the nerve to show my face anywhere at Hogwarts, let alone sit calmly through an opening feast like nothing had happened."
"And how do you feel about Sirius, then, Ron?" Hermione asked it pointedly, cutting him a sharp sideways glance.
"Don't forget—his brother Regulus also served Voldemort."
"That's different, Hermione—"
Harry felt genuinely compelled to speak up at that.
"Regulus turned in the end, didn't he?"
Hermione drew a slow breath, clearly choosing her next words with care.
"Even so, Harry—Daphne, Astoria, and Theodore haven't actually done anything wrong themselves. They never helped Voldemort. They're simply unlucky enough to have been born to the parents they happened to be born to."
"I can't believe you're actually defending them, Hermione."
Ron stared at her, his brow was furrowed deeply with something between confusion and frustration.
Hermione fired back, a sharp edge was creeping steadily into her voice now.
"All I'm saying, Weasley, is—can you honestly claim there isn't a single person anywhere in your own extended family who's ever broken the law in some fashion? And that it had absolutely nothing to do with you, simply by virtue of sharing a surname? The law has never—"
"Oh, my dear Miss Granger," George interjected smoothly, arching one eyebrow with dramatic provocation, clearly delighted to have found a new angle to needle everyone with,
"I can tell you with some confidence that the last Weasley to end up properly imprisoned for breaking the law would have to be traced back well over a century at this point. We're a rather law-abiding lot, on the whole, whatever else people might say about our finances."
Harry was already preparing to step in and defuse the rapidly escalating exchange before it could go any further, but the Great Hall itself beat him to it—the opening feast was formally declared concluded from the staff table, and the sound of several hundred chairs scraping back against stone floor simultaneously swallowed whatever Ron had been about to say in response.
Students pushed back from their tables and began gushing toward their respective common rooms in chattering streams, eager for the traditional ritual of settling back into their dormitories on the first night.
"Oh!"
Hermione came back to herself with a sudden, visible twitch of alarm.
"Hurry, Ron—we're Prefects now! We need to lead the first-years up to the common room properly!"
Ron who had been mid-sentence in his rebuttal, caught himself at the same moment with an equally startled jolt.
He scrambled up from the bench, flushing crimson across his whole face, and fished the gleaming Prefect badge out of his robe pocket with fumbling, anxious fingers.
Predictably, this entire sequence produced another fresh round of sharp, delighted commentary from both Fred and George simultaneously.
Flustered as he clearly was, Ron's fingers fumbled helplessly against the small clasp, unable to get the badge properly pinned in his current state.
"Let me help you with that, dear—"
Lavender said it warmly, slipping smoothly away from Parvati's side with a small, possessive smile already forming, and came to his immediate rescue.
Hermione, watching this unfold, was already losing what remained of her patience with the delay.
"Hurry up, Ron—those poor first-years are completely lost without us, we genuinely need to go and—"
"Hey—Granger!"
A seventh-year girl came walking briskly over from the far end of the Hufflepuff table, her voice pierced cleanly through the chaos of departure and caught Hermione's bewildered attention.
She pointed back over her shoulder toward an empty seat at the staff table.
"Professor Watson asked me to pass along a message before he stepped out. He'd like to see you in his office."
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