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// Chapter 9:  First Report 
// Story: The Accidental Invasion 
// by computerneek 
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“Come in,” Dumbledore called.
It was Saturday afternoon, time for the foreigners’ first weekly update on how the student instructors were doing.  Their contact point, which could always be reached by sending letters to the ‘Hogwarts Student Instructor Program’, had been informed of how to reach his office that morning- and, of course, of the password.
The door opened, and a student stepped in.  Her candyfloss hair was split between a bright pink and a dark blue.  “Good afternoon,” she greeted, bowing as she crossed the threshold.  “My name is Bonbon, and I’m in charge of the Student Instructor Program.”  She carried a thick deck of what looked like paper rather than parchment under one arm- though parts of it were rotated ninety degrees from the rest, so he rather suspected it was actually multiple decks of paper that had been stacked together in such a way as to keep them separate.
He nodded.  “Please, take a seat,” he said, gesturing towards the chair opposite him.  “I would be delighted to hear how everything has been going.”
The girl didn’t smile, her expression staying sternly businesslike, but she did cross to the chair and take the offered seat.  “Alright then.”  She placed the papers on his deck.  “The Student Instructor program has been going decently well, when compared to what we expected.  The first point of contention would be the Slytherin Potions instructors; many of them have approached us with the news that they hadn’t learned enough in Professor Snape’s class to be of any use in their lesson.  They apparently weren’t sure what he was even trying to teach, and cited him favoring them too much as their reason why.”  She sighed.  “Unfortunately, this was a common theme- except the favoring- across two of the other three houses, the exception being Ravenclaw, but they were each only slightly over expected turnover instead of well above it.  Unfortunately, all told, it meant that only four of our Potions classes this week had the intended two instructors- and that about a third of the remainder were unable to have an instructor from the same House as any of the students.
“While only one of the Ravenclaw instructors expected an inability to teach anything, a vast majority complained that Professor Snape’s teaching methods amounted to little more than supervised self-study.”  She looked up at him, as if expecting a response.
Dumbledore sighed, didn’t say anything, and nodded for her to continue.  He would have to talk to Snape after this.
She gave a small, sharp nod of acknowledgement, and continued.  “As you no doubt know, we have been asking for all instructors and professors to rate the in-class performance of each student individually, not just for the students to rate their teachers- and we did notice that the performance of Professor Snape’s students was about thirty percent lower than any other Professor, on average, and he had almost fifty percent more failing students than any of the other Professors.”  She glanced meaningfully up at him.
He already knew that, though.  He wasn’t very good at potions himself, though, and believed it was simply because of the wildly different nature of the subject.  “How is Harry doing?” Dumbledore asked.
She smiled.  “Harry was in one of the single-instructor courses taught by one of the few remaining Slytherin instructors, even though half his classmates were Ravenclaws.  He told his instructor directly that he found her class easy to follow and felt he had learned quite a bit.  He does seem to like doing that when he has a glowing report.
“The next problem area is Charms, where a vast majority of all of our instructors expressed some confusion over the material, and felt that they didn’t have enough time to study it before their own classes.  However, Professor Flitwick approached us early this week to warn us he normally expects a high degree of confusion for the first few weeks.  This is because, according to Flitwick, it takes those first few weeks to deliver the foundational knowledge that he can then build upon, and without that full foundation, the rest of it can be just as confusing.”  She sighed.  “We don’t like it, but we’ll take it.  We’ve made sure our instructors are aware of this as well.
“Finally, and perhaps worst of all, we have Defense Against the Dark Arts.  Professor Quirrell reported one hundred percent uptake on his material and said our instructors were learning very well, but our instructors have all, to a student, complained that there is nothing to learn in his class- and have asserted that his classes are, what was it?”  She lifted the top page on the stack to peer at it.  “ ‘A bit of a joke and the rest a useless waste of time’,” she quoted.  “Naturally, they each used their own language- but considering our Student Instructor pool for the subject includes not only several high-ranking members of our nation’s military force but the thousand-year-old Commander In Chief of our armed forces, who- how did she put it?”
As the girl looked down at the page again, Dumbledore got the distinct idea that she already knew what she would find there, but wanted to make it clear that she was quoting it.
She nodded briefly.  “ ‘We have determined the classes of Quirrell’s design to be woefully inadequate and a loss of otherwise useful time.  Verily, the youngest student thereof will without doubt teach a greater lesson of British Defense Against the Dark Arts from memory, for this class contained absolute absence of usable information’.”  She sighed.  “You know she’s angry when she starts using oldespeak like that- but I’ve never seen her angry enough to mess up even its grammar.  So whatever Professor Quirrell did in that class, it wasn’t just useless, it was provocative.”  She glanced down at the page again.  “We also received at least six reports from our Gryffindor student instructors that Quirrell seemed sorely disappointed when he learned he would not be seeing Harry Potter in his class, and not in a good way.  Two of them used the word ‘predatory’ in their reports.
“Because of that, even though we’re sure he would be a great instructor should we need a Gryffindor substitution, we’ve actually decided not to consider him for Defense Against the Dark Arts openings.  It doesn’t matter how good of an instructor he might be, we’re not going to knowingly place him in harm’s way.”  She finally drew to a close, and looked up at him.
“That’s…  quite enlightening,” Dumbledore agreed.  “What about the other three subjects, though?  Transfiguration, Herbology, and Astronomy?”
“There was some confusion amongst the Herbology Student Instructors, but with no exceptions, their partners were able to help them- this is the reason they have partners in the first place, though we didn’t expect them to need them quite so quickly.  They have been able to teach their students equally well- better, even, than Professor Sprout, in some cases, though we think that’s because of the confusion and recovery- they had some more recent experience of how their students might be confused.  We have passed that information back up to Professor Sprout to help her anticipate and understand future confusion, and have our eyes on a potential Head Student Instructor for Herbology.
“Astronomy and Transfiguration were…”  She paused, thinking.  “Right about the same as each other.  The Student Instructors told us, to a student, that they didn’t understand the material fully and expected it was because they didn’t have the full picture, but had learned lots to teach their own classes.  For Professors McGonagall and Sinistra, they were both impressed with their students, and told us that in-class performance was well ahead of any of their other classes, including past first-year classes.  When we compared their classes’ performances with those of their students, there was very little difference, so we expect the dual-instructor system is working well for us there too.”
He scowled.  “Any news on the magic of your home?” he asked, referring to a secondary effort of the foreigners to bring the magical capabilities they had where they came from into Britain.
She shook her head.  “No luck, unfortunately.  To be entirely honest, none of us know where to start- so we expect it to take possibly many years.  That may change, depending on what we can learn here.”
He nodded slowly.  “How about…  whats-her-name, Miss…  Grainer, was it?”
Bonbon tilted her head in question.
“The other reserve instructor you told me about,” he clarified.  They had sent him a very long and detailed letter about their instructor assignments during the first night of term, and had mentioned two more they had trained up but that they hadn’t assigned.  He’d been very tired when he read it, so while he knew Harry Potter was one of them, he didn’t remember the other one’s name very well- and it hadn’t been important enough for him to interrupt his already enormous workload to reread it since.
“Ahh,” she muttered, and nodded.  “That’d be Hermione Granger.  At the moment, she’s one of only three students across the entire body of first-years to have a perfect score in every class.  The only other thing about her worth noting is that she seems to have been an instant friend of Pinkie Pie’s.  Which is not surprising, knowing Pinkie, but they seem closer than most- and I’ve heard they’ve been seen talking nonsense to each other as if it made perfect sense.”
It was Dumbledore’s turn to be confused.  He tilted his head.  “How is that significant?”
“Pinkie Pie is rather well known where we come from for, ahh…”  She shrugged.  “For starters, the laws of physics and magic alike seem to mean very little to her.  Just about everyone where we’ve come from has been forced to accept that she defies explanation- but it would seem Miss Granger is actually making headway on explaining her.  She’s much more analytical than Pinkie, though, so we’re waiting to see how that’s going to pan out.”
“Interesting,” Dumbledore mused.  He might even be able to use that, if Granger was good enough, in his Plan; she would widen the safety margins, which the foreigner’s presence already did to an extent.  He tilted his head.  “You mentioned a ‘Head Student Instructor’?”
“Yes,” she stated simply.  “Thanks to the number of Student Instructors we have, we’ve built a hierarchy into them.  For any given subject, there are four levels- and the students are at the bottom.  Whenever they have a problem, they turn to their Student Instructors- and if those have a problem, or are unable to solve their student’s problems, they turn first to their partners- that’s what they’re there for, after all- before going up the chain to the Head Student Instructor.  We don’t currently have HSIs for most subjects- Twilight is HSI for Charms, and I’m HSI for Potions, but the slot is unoccupied for Transfiguration, Herbology, Astronomy, and Defense Against the Dark Arts, though we have our eyes on a candidate for Herbology.  If the HSI is unable to help them, does not exist, or has a problem of their own, they go to your Professors at the top of the ladder.
“Additionally, it is the HSI’s job to periodically review and sit in on the other Student Instructors’ classes for their subject, as a verification step to ensure all students are being taught properly.  For the subjects that don’t have HSIs, our management team periodically reviews them.
“And finally, our management team periodically sits in on our HSIs’ classes as well, for the same purpose- and if ever someone isn’t up to snuff, we’ll either help them get up to snuff or exchange them for someone else.”