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// Chapter 4:  Owls 
// Story: A Hogwarts Harmony 
// by computerneek 
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“Does anyone know where all the owls went?”
All the Professors in the room blinked, and Dumbledore suppressed a wince.  He’d been so busy with the logistics of the numbers that he’d forgotten to tell his teachers how many students were going to be coming this year!  As it was, today was the day that the first wave of letters would have been sent…  and Hogwarts only had six hundred or so owls.  “Ahh,” he began.  “I believe the new student invitations went out today.”
Everyone looked at him.
“We have over five hundred owls,” Professor McGonagall observed bluntly.
“Six hundred,” Dumbledore corrected, “and eight.”
She rolled her eyes.  “And the record was a hundred and eighty-three invitations in one year almost thirty years ago.”
He shrugged.  “We have one thousand, one hundred and twenty-eight invitations this year.”
“Thousand,” McGonagall echoed.
He nodded.  “A bunch of foreign students from another universe, believe it or not.  Saw the portal myself.”
“Have you, perchance, hired additional Professors to teach them?” Professor Sprout asked faintly.
“Ahh-!”  He paused.  “Good point, I must’ve been too busy making sure they wouldn’t break the economy.”
She facepalmed.  “A class of five hundred won’t fit in any classroom in this School, let alone the greenhouses.”
He rubbed his chin.  “Well, basically all of the foreign students- Equestrians- are actually grown adults in childrens’ bodies,” he mused.  “We’ve actually already got a few in the school- those few funny-haired students each year.”
It was Snape’s turn to rub his chin.  “Perhaps we could find the best of them, and have them pass on what they learned?  I do not fancy working disaster-control for a couple hundred students at once.  Do you, Mr. Filch?”  He looked, but Filch had already ducked silently back out of the room, having evidently decided he didn’t want to know what was coming next.
“I don’t fancy the idea of hoping our picked teachers remember everything on their own either,” Professor Sprout added.  “They might only be teaching first-years, but some of our material can be incredibly dangerous if they teach it wrong.”
“Perhaps if we double them up, then,” Flitwick observed.  “Scare together a team of skilled Equestrians to teach these…  Student Instructors how to take good notes and teach effectively, then I expect we could use upper-year British students as well.”
Dumbledore nodded slowly.  “Yes, that’s a possibility.  What do you think, Aurora, Cuthbert?”
Aurora Sinistra, Professor of Astronomy, shrugged.  “I already do a lot of that- there are only five weekday midnights a week, and I have to teach seven midnight classes, as you know.  I do first and sixth together, then second and seventh as the other pair, and have the more on-the-ball upper-years help out the lower-years on a team basis.”
“Team,” Dumbledore muttered, rubbing his chin.  “Hmm, good point.  If we’re going to instigate a Hogwarts Student Instructor Program, it needs a management team that reports to us, because none of us will have time to manage it directly ourselves.  I expect we can pick those from the best Student Instructors with the most extra free time?”
“They could also be our Instructor-teacher team,” Flitwick suggested.
“Probably a good idea,” McGonagall observed.  “I don’t think our two hundred and thirty-six second-and-higher year students are going to be enough to teach all subjects to a thousand first-years, so we’re going to have to pick first-year Student Instructors as well.  And use bloated class sizes, depending on exactly how many Instructors we can find.”  She sighed.  “And the only people I can think of that can pick Student Instructors before school starts would be the upper-year Equestrians that know their fellows.”
“True,” Dumbledore agreed.  “And of course, as we’re expecting Equestrian first year counts to double for the next few years running, a hierarchy might be good to put into the Student Instructors.”
“A hierarchy,” Flitwick observed, rubbing his chin.  “How about…  regular Student Instructors report to the Lead Student Instructor of their House, subject, and year, who is the best Instructor of said House, subject, and year.  Said Lead Instructor reports to the Head Student Instructor for the subject, who is the best Instructor school-wide, and may or may not also serve a Lead position as well.  That Head instructor would report to the Professor of their subject, and have a position on the Management Team you mentioned.  Then, the management team lead reports directly to the Headmaster.  On top of that, every Student Instructor, from the Lead level upwards, reports to their Head of House as well, and the Heads of House have broad authority to assign Lead and Head instructors within their House.”
McGonagall rubbed her chin.  “So what happens if, say, Severus assigns a Slytherin Head Instructor of Transfiguration, then I find someone better in Ravenclaw?”
“Each Professor ought to have the ‘supreme’ authority over the Head and Lead assignments of their subject,” Dumbledore decided, “except by majority vote of the Heads of House and Headmaster as a group.  And perhaps the Head Instructor can assign Leads as well?”
Snape nodded slowly.  “Works for me,” he agreed.  “I imagine the rest of us can send candidates without issue.  I’d also like to omit the LSI and HSI positions when there’s too few Instructors for them to oversee, and just have the lower levels they would oversee report to the Management Team Lead, as well as whichever official staff that the missing positions would.”
“LSI?” Cuthbert Binns, the ghostly Professor of History, suggested.  “What does that mean?”
“Lead Student Instructor,” Flitwick answered promptly.  “He’s abbreviating them.  And a good idea, too, it’ll make them easier to talk about.”
“I imagine our Lead and Head Instructors should have review and inspection duties on their lower ranks, as well as us Professors on them,” McGonagall suggested, “to make sure everyone’s getting an equal education, and we’re detecting…  deficits as quickly as possible.”
“Good point,” Dumbledore agreed.  “If we find at some point that it needs more levels in the hierarchy, we can worry about that then.”
“Perhaps,” Snape began, rubbing his chin.  “Perhaps, contingent upon Professor endorsement of their assignments, the HSIs and management team, possibly LSIs, should have point and detention powers, reporting to the Prefects of their House?”
“True,” Dumbledore nodded.  “Hmm…  First and second-years could report to the fifth-year Prefects, third and fourth to the sixth-year, then the top three to the seventh year Prefects.  That work?”





It happened at the zoo.
Vernon and Petunia Dursley had been unable to think of something to do with Harry Potter for their son Dudley’s birthday after the local cat-lady and babysitter, Mrs. Figg, broke her leg.  So, apparently afraid that he might convert the house into a crater in a similar manner as Dudley did aliens on his computer, they had taken him along to the zoo.
The zoo visit was…  boring, to say the least.  Even when they visited the reptile house- Harry already knew he could talk to snakes, as he’d meet one in the Dursleys’ garden from time to time.  As such, all it took was a quick request that the Boa Constrictor pretend that it wasn’t talking to him, and they weren’t interrupted.
Until, of course, someone with a particularly dusty cloak walked by while the Boa Constrictor- its name was ‘Slytherin’- was asking him if he’d begun to notice girls yet.
So, while he was thinking about his answer- he actually had to think about it, because he…  sorta had, but mostly hadn’t- he sneezed.
It happened at the zoo.
The snake, resting its head lazily on its coils while they talked, raised its head to look at him.  “Huh.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”
He blinked slowly, still processing the sudden…  shockwave of tingling the sneeze had sent through his entire body.  “What?” he asked Slytherin.  It was an interesting name for a snake, a play on ‘slither in’ if he translated it into English- yet, in the snake language that he could apparently speak without thinking, it was a pun against ‘slither forth’ instead.
“You’ve changed,” Slytherin observed.
He glanced down at his hands, resting on the railing in front of the cage, and back up again.  “I have?” he asked.  To be fair, his hands did look slightly smaller, and something felt different about his voice box…  which he wasn’t using to speak Parseltongue; no, that was all in his lips, tongue, and teeth.
Which felt a bit different too, but it didn’t seem to affect his parseltongue voice.
Then there was a series of sharp cracks behind him, like someone had stomped on a piece of exceptionally loud bubble wrap.  He jumped, letting out a small gasp of alarm as he spun around.
“Obliviate!” cried one of the cloaked people that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the room.
“Sure is handy that we don’t have to clutter the Trace with underage magic detection anymore, isn’t it?” another one asked.
“Definitely,” the first agreed.  “All those exceptions kept it from detecting a lot of Statute breaches too.  Hmm, that family already knew,” he continued, gesturing towards where Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley had backed against a wall, staring at them in horror.
“What the-!?” the third of the men gasped suddenly, and turned sharply away from Harry.  “Auror, could you, ahh, transfigure her…?”  He gestured over his shoulder.
The only girl of the group of four turned to look at Harry.  “Her what?” she began, then blinked- and her hair changed in an instant from bubblegum pink to a bright, candy apple red.  “O-Oh,” she stuttered, then stepped towards Harry, a wooden stick of some sort held in her hand.  “Um, why are you wearing that?” she asked.
“Uh-!” Harry began, and paused.  The voice that came from his mouth wasn’t his own, but he found it pleasant.  “It was…”  He trailed off, searching for an acceptable excuse to be wearing Dudley’s oversized castoff- it probably looked to her like he was wearing bits of old elephant skin.  It did to him, whenever he looked in the mirror.  “It was what I had…?”
“That,” she said, her voice suddenly a lot sterner, “is what you had?  Don’t your guardians provide you with proper clothes?”
“Nothing that fits,” Harry answered honestly, even though he doubted anything would come of it.  The Dursleys always managed to explain away his elephant skins- Harry’s ‘affectionate’ name for Dudley’s castoffs- any time Child Services got called on them.  “Only Dudley’s castoffs.”
The woman’s jaw clicked shut firmly, and Harry saw what looked like absolute fury in her eyes.  Then she raised her stick…  and there was a flash of light.
Harry felt a sudden swish of fabric and air against his legs.
He looked down.
His elephant skins were gone, and in their place, he was wearing a long but dainty dress.
Not only that, but there were a couple of small bumps on his chest…  in a position that would easily have been left exposed by Dudley’s castoff shirt.  He never passed them down without first busting the top few buttons.  “Ah-!” he began.
“So where was your family again?” the woman asked, a note of what struck Harry as artificial kindness in her voice.  She was absolutely furious, though apparently not at him.
“Ah-!” he began again.  “The Dursleys are…”  He trailed off, looking down as he took a step to the side to get a clear view of the Dursleys.  The feeling of the dress swirling around his ankles was so strange.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“N-No,” he stuttered.  “It’s-  It’s just-!”  He paused, then decided to go with the truth, and nervously clasped his hands together over his belly.  It felt weird to do that, like his belly was a different shape than usual or something.  “It’s the first time I’ve ever worn a dress,” he muttered softly.
She blinked.  “Oh, sorry, it’s…”  she paused.  “It’s the only thing I know how to make, sorry about that.  Um, where were the, ahh, Dursleys, was it?”
He nodded.  “Over there.  The kid that’s wider than he is tall is Dudley.”  It was an exaggeration, but not much of one- and judging by how her face contorted when she saw the Dursleys, she didn’t think it was enough of one.
He could practically feel her hand itching to point her stick at them too, but she held it firmly down by her side as she led him towards them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley?” she asked.
Both adult Dursleys looked up cautiously, but acknowledged their names.
“What?” Vernon demanded sharply.
“Is this your daughter?” she asked.
“Nephew,” Harry corrected automatically.  If she was calling him their daughter…  then it must not be just him, and he must have actually somehow turned into a girl.  Which would make him a niece rather than a nephew, he supposed.  Eh, too late.
The woman seemed to have noticed.  “Nephew…?” she asked softly, looking confusedly down at Harry.
“Y-Yes, that’s our nephew,” Vernon snarled.  “What’d he mess up this time?”
The woman closed her eyes, schooled her face into nonexpression, and turned to look back up at Vernon, before gesturing towards Dudley.  “And is this your…  son, Mr. Dudley?”
Dudley flinched at being addressed like that.  Harry suppressed a smirk- as nice as it was to see the bully uncomfortable for once, he probably would have reacted the same way if the woman had called him ‘mister’ or ‘missus’.  No, ‘miss’, ‘missus’ was for married women…  and it would have made him raise his eyebrows even higher, he’d have to admit.
“Yes, he is?” Petunia asked, sounding as confused as the woman had been a moment before.
The woman sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand.  Then she lowered her hand.  “Alright.  Does your…  niece, nephew, whichever, live with you?”
“Uh-  Yes,” Vernon said haltingly, also confused.
“Then I am officially charging you with one count of willful neglect of a child and one count of willful neglect of a magical child.  If you don’t want to go to magical prison, then when I visit your house with Magical Child Services the day after tomorrow, your son had better be on a diet, and your…  relative,” she gestured vaguely at Harry, “had better be properly fed and clothed.”