— Dumbledore POV—
I stood up from my seat, before applying a sonorous on myself: „Welcome again to Hogwarts after your break. I am sure you all have an enormous appetite, but you will need to bear with me. Firstly", I said, before dropping my glamour: „I have a new look, don't try to find out how or why, the only thing I can and will say, is magic." That got a bit of silent chattering, before I continued: „As most of you already know, I retired from all my political posts and together with that I have following announcements to make. Following this day, Hogwarts will be reinstated as neutral ground and will distance itself from anything political and also the britain ministry of magic." This sent the hall into a slight uproar from those who understood the ramifications: „Quiet please, let me end my announcements first. Due to this, the OWLs and NEWTs will be given in house by their respective global guilds, which also means, that the content will be different and also harder, as the international standards are not as lax as ours." That got the whole hall to erupt into rants, curses and unwillingness. I gave it a moment, before I continued: „Once again, I would request that you stay silent for the following. As we no longer need to conform to the guidelines, I will expand the curriculum of the school.
The first addition will be a seven year course for the mind arts, given by Henry Flacks, with our very own Clara Ollivander as assistant. Both of them are grandmasters of the mind arts, so you will be in good hands. This also means, that the unofficial course of DADA will be discontinued. Both of them are also subject to even stricter oaths than the twins, so your security is more than guaranteed." Now the hall got lively. It was like a bombshell exploded in the middle of it. I needed to wait multiple minutes, until I could speak again: „The second change will be in divination. Professor Trelawney will only teach the NEWT course from now on, while a local centaur named Firenze will take over the first 3 years. This also means, no more easy Os in divination, as he is not as lenient as your current professor."
This sent another wave of unfriendly murmurs through the crowd: „The last change for this year will be the discontinuance of muggle studies as an elective. It will be replaced by a required course over the first three years called common sense of both worlds, where we will explain the magical world and traditions, while also educating about the muggle side of things. Similar to DADA this year, it will be held as a shared class of all grades. It will be taught by a muggle and wizard who I will introduce shortly."
This sent an even angrier response through the crowd: „Together with all these changes, it will be possible to test out of classes, it will be even encouraged. Through this you will be able to skip years or take your OWLs and even NEWTs sooner. An international recognized mastery in a subject will automatically give you a pass for that subject, which is the case for Clara Ollivander and her mastery of mind arts. Silence!", I stopped the next unrest, before continuing: „This will also result in messier timetables, which will be distributed tomorrow, while I will also announce that some and in the next years probably most electives will be taught on Saturdays if not even Sundays."
Raising my voice I continued: „The next few years will be a bit more chaotic, as we test out new things in that regard. Some teachers will also have special fast track classes, where you can get invited to, if they deem you good enough. These classes are mostly advanced self studying with a teachers guidance for sooner OWLs and NEWTs in that particular subject. The general timeframe for these classes will be half a year for OWLs and another half year for NEWTs. These and other circumstances can also get you a pass from normal classes, though those privileges can also be taken back."
This time I needed to wait 10 minutes, before it slowly got less noisy: „While I will introduce Firenze tomorrow morning, Professor Flacks is already sitting right over there", I said, while pointing to the right end of the table. At that moment Professor Flacks stood up and said: „Good evening, as Dumbledore introduced me already, I am Henry Flacks, grandmaster of the mind arts, mind healer and teacher. Together with Clara I will be your teacher for mind magic. We will have a shared class of all years, while I will slowly segregate you into classes depending on your age. These classes will always be all four houses at the same time. While some teachers here let house rivalries get into the way of classes, I can assure you, that it won't fly in my classes." I took over again: „Now, on the other end of the table are the new professors for common sense of both worlds, I introduce to you the professors Herschel. Mr. Herschel is a muggle, while Mrs. Herschel is his wife and magical pureblood counterpart."
„Thank you headmaster for this opportunity", Mr. Herschel said: „We will be your teachers in this new and exiting subject. The rest has time until the first lessons."
„Thank you professors. Now, before you all get to eat, one last information. In the next years the will also try to change the current system of houses, as inter house unity was the original goal, which got twisted over the years, so I will try to correct that, though that will take a very long time. Enjoy your meal!" I ended the introduction, before food appeared on the tables. While most started eating, the hall only got noisier as the dinner went on.
— Clara POV —
I knew I had no chance at a quiet dinner, the moment the headmaster revealed my new position. While I was originally against teaching, the headmaster and Henry coerced me into taking up the assistant role. And I gave in, Dumbledore gave me an other which I couldn't resist. That moment I was already bombarded with a lot of questions, which luckily got interrupted by the rest of the speech, after which most students were talking about the other things, except a few of those sitting next to me. After a lot of debating, I could coerce them to wait until the next lesson, where I would explain everything. While dinner got more peaceful afterwards, it was still slightly annoying and I didn't see it stopping anytime soon. The only anomaly was Luna, who just stared at me for most of dinner. Although this was normal, normally she would at least talk a bit. The moment we stepped into our room though, she bombarded me with questions and somehow overwhelmed me so much, that I somehow agreed to tutor her on the mind arts. While it was not the original plan, I was not bothered by it that much, just the manner of recruiting bothered me by quite a bit. While I originally wanted to meditate that night, without knowing I drifted of to sleep, the last two months having left their scars on me, which would need a long time to fade.
The next day was a Sunday and you could see me sitting in a slightly hidden part of the library, reading thousand page books in just a few moments, before continuing with the next one. I had given up on leaning languages three at a time and was currently memorizing the dictionaries of many different languages at an alarming pace. I had bought them on a shopping spree. A total of fifteen thousand books, with a total value of around two million galleons, which were kindly sponsored by my parents. I had also given an order for grammar books for most languages, which were still being either searched for or in transit and would probably cost another three million and amount to just over ten thousand books. While these numbers are huge, I memorize them in a bit under a minute and handle the rest in my mind, which meant that I was already halfway through the first dose and would probably done with the rest in around two weeks. Another month for the second dose of books, before I would go over to basic magical ones. Learning languages also got easier, the more I already knew as there were millions of cross reverences between all those languages. I had also decided to sponsor the books to the library of Hogwarts, the moment I had repaired it, which will be my first big project, the moment I learnt a few magical and runic languages. While the castle was not that thrilled about it, it was my inner Ravenclaw speaking, so it stopped trying to persuade me.
That was another change, as I could now clearly communicate with Hogwarts from anywhere. We had a long but fruitless chat, as I talked about my future plans and Hogwarts was less than thrilled about them, but decided that it could wait for a few years after decades of neglect. With much coercion it had also forgiven the headmaster, though it was still not on speaking terms with him. Forgiveness is easy, acceptance afterwards is hard. I also could monitor every single particle of dust in the castle, though I had promptly disabled that wards connection with me. It was perverse and even perverser was, that it was one of the most damaged wards, I don't even want to know its capabilities if it is ever restored, it would come close to my current senses probably, just applied to the whole of Hogwarts. Privacy? Dream on.
The whole castle was alive with discussions, theories and so much more, not a single owl was in the owlery, the daily prophet filled only with that one thematic and the britain ministry more than unhappy with Dumbledore, as his announcement was ignoring most of his politic agenda over the last years. The current Hogwarts board was also less than pleased, though Dumbledore just disbanded it without much thought, which was met with another backlash, though it will be reinstated at a later time with different people, which would also need to sign a magical contract to only have the best interest of Hogwarts as a school at heart. Even the headmaster had sworn that oath a few nights prior to the announcement, so you couldn't even say, that he had too much might. Those contracts and oaths were sworn to the catsle itself, so they were stringent.
He had also shown me a slave contract, which was more than perfectly written as far as I could see. And he left directly afterwards heading to nurmengard castle, where he gave it to Grindelwald. While I didn't know if he had signed it, I am pretty sure that he will in the near future. Maybe we will even see him teach here at Hogwarts? That would be funny, though the ministry would probably wage war against Dumbledore, if he ever did that.
On to more exciting news: The castle lost approximate one/forth of its students, most pureblood, who left the castle accompanied by angry parents and while the ministry tried to get a few orphans and muggleborn out through a few loopholes in the laws, Dumbledore and Hogwarts shut that down very very fast. One Mrs Dolores Umbridge even went missing, after she tried to annex the wards of the school with some shitty law as excuse. At least that was easy to resolve, as Dumbledore just swore, that he had nothing to do with it, which ended that investigation into him. He and most other professors were marked as fugitives and wanted criminals though, but while inconvenient, Dumbledore had already forseen it and gave every professor the chance to leave, if they wanted to distance themselves. None did, though, which was unsurprising to say the least. Most were ecstatic over the changes happening in Hogwarts.
The ministry also nearly started another war with the goblins, as they tried to force their way into the vaults of these new „fugitives", which ended with a few lost limbs and luckily no dead, though the goblins got a good amount of money through ransom of these ministry officials.
The new timetables were also very different. Most classes were now given to all four houses at once, instead of just two, with the exception being potions and herbology. The reason behind this is, that it is foreseen, that a lot of students will skip a few years, if not straight up already have or will do their mastery, especially the older ones. Together with the dwindling students, it would work for now. Like Dumbledore said, it is a testing phase right now. As a consequence, most classrooms got a good overhaul, while abandoned parts of the castle were cleaned and readied for future use. The potions classroom was also relocated onto ground level, with a lot of huge windows and different side chambers for specific hard or peculiar recipes. Overall, Dumbledore took the first step of many, for a better education system and future.
Hogwarts also had another huge hall, which was used as a magic firing range and was currently frequented by Dumbledore.