No, Neville and Ginny were great friends. And he considered himself lucky to have them. Neville had always been around, Harry realized, but he had been too quiet and reserved. Harry was shy enough himself. Stick him with Neville a couple years back and the conversation would be scarce. And of course, a few years back, stick Harry in a room with Ginny and the latter would blush like mad, stammer an incoherent something, or do something else equally embarrassing, then flee from his presence. How she went from the girl that was terrified by his simple presence to the young woman with whom he had become such good friends, Harry had no idea. But he wasn't complaining.
The day passed by quickly enough after lunch, especially considering that it was a much shorter day than usual for Harry. The next morning he was back on his morning workout routine and another week of classes was laid out in front of him. Harry continued to coast through most of his classes. The only class that put any type of strain on him at all was Potions. He was actually getting the subject material pretty well for once, and he rarely had difficulty producing a passable potion. The main problem in the class was dealing with Snape and his merry band of Slytherins.
In the few weeks of class they'd had so far, Harry had managed to avoid five different sabotage attempts by the Slytherins in the class. Draco Malfoy was the "master mind" behind them all, Harry was sure, but he was not against recruiting other Slytherins to do the dirty work. Not only did this alleviate him of all blame should something go terribly wrong or they get caught, but it also kept Harry on his toes at all times. Rather than just having to keep his eye on Malfoy, Harry now had to pay attention to every single Slytherin in the class.
On top of that, Harry had to put up with Snape's incessant barbs and insults. The personal insults didn't faze him at all anymore. He could only be called an attention-seeking, arrogant brat so many times before the words lost all meaning to him. The man's insults about his father still bothered him a little, but even those were beginning to lose their edge as well.
The ones that really rankled him were the comments relating to Sirius. The first time Snape made such a comment, Harry almost lost it. He was only barely able to rein in his anger before he lashed out at his Professor. He was lucky that he had been able to control himself because with his newfound abilities, he wasn't sure exactly what would have happened. But he was pretty sure that it would have ended up with Snape hexed into oblivion and Harry in deep trouble. Hermione was beside herself with anger after that class. It was comforting to know that she could get so upset on his behalf. She had even confessed that she had been close to hexing Snape herself, and she praised Harry on his newfound self control.
Hermione was also curious as to how he got so good at potions and all his other subjects for that matter. He had already at least somewhat explained his success in his other classes through his summer studying. Add to that the fact that he as almost always with a book of some sort these days and it wasn't that hard to believe. Potions class was somewhat different though, plus he had always been abysmal at it. Harry tried to explain to her that part of it was that he never put forth an effort in the past, and he was never able to concentrate with the Slytherins and Snape all breathing down his neck. He was simply ignoring everybody else this year. He did manage an Outstanding on his Potions OWL, he reminded her. So the talent must have always been there. She wasn't as happy for him as Harry would have liked, but she accepted his explanation nonetheless.
His Beginner HA class, or BHA as he began calling it in his head, was progressing fairly well. Having a set schedule was definitely helpful in keeping everything going on track. The previous year, the DA had met at irregular intervals so as not to arouse suspicion. And they didn't have two meetings a week either. The only thing that was slowing the class down in any way was the sheer size of it. There were many more students than he had to teach in the DA or even in his Intermediate HA class, IHA. Nevertheless, he knew he would have this bunch caught up to where the IHA began this year by the end of the term if not sooner. For that he was very happy.
In his IHA class that week, he had them doing their dodging drills for the first half of the lesson. The second half he spent introducing them to a new type of shielding spell. Protego was the most basic shielding spell there was. There were more powerful versions of that spell to withstand stronger spells, but there were also entirely different types of shielding spells. Contego, for example, allowed the caster to shield another person.
Protego was only for personal protection. It put a shield right in front of the caster and blocked a single spell. Contego worked similar to protego except that the shield could be directed to appear anywhere. But it, like protego, would only block a single spell and would not hold up against the more powerful curses and hexes. There were also more powerful versions of each shield which would hold up against stronger attacks. But it would be quite some time before the class was ready for those. Harry was still working on perfecting those spells himself.
Harry's Occlumency lesson that Thursday went even better than the previous two. Snape immediately went on the offensive when Harry came into the room, but Harry was prepared for the assault. For the first time, Harry was able to keep Snape from ever penetrating his outer barriers. Snape continued to assault Harry's mind, but he was never able to penetrate the wall Harry had built.
....
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