A different beggining

Unlike the previous days, Thursday's morning class, Herbology, took place in the spacious gardens of the manor. Daphne,Stephen and Astoria instantly recognized their tutor, a Mr. Owens who was a Senior Botanical Surveyor for their father's company. Lord Greengrass's massive conglomerate was the prime importer into Britain of all kinds of magical supplies, from magical plants and creatures and simple potions ingredients to black market artifacts and poached dragon parts, the latter of course being known only to a select few customers who could afford them. Mr. Owens explained that he would usually lead expeditions to remote places such as the Congo or the Amazon in search of rare magical plants. He then went on to lecture about several of the more common plants that were available in the gardens. He spoke with passion about his field and actually managed to make it sound interesting, even to the initially skeptical Theo. After an hour and a half, he got them to put on their gloves and practice the proper way to harvest the plants so that they could be used as potions ingredients,Neville and Lyra looked like they were born for it. When they were done with the exercise, he assigned them some reading from their books and was off. The weather had become very hot by now, so the seven students hurried back to the manor, where and elf awaited them with a tray full of refreshments.

The rest of the afternoon was spent reading their previous assignments. At six o'clock, Sirius again welcomed them to his study. "For your first lesson in finance and political economy, I thought something practical might again be useful. It did work out last night, after all," he said with a smile. Everyone was now in anticipation, knowing that they would not be disappointed. Sirius motioned them to their usual room, which looked unchanged from the previous night save for the fact that a large pile of books and newspapers now occupied the table. When they had all gathered around the table, he continued, "Here you have several primers on stock market investments, as well as newspapers and magazines, both British and foreign, for the past two weeks. There are also market reports and analyses by experts. If there is any other book or periodical you would like, feel free to ask. You will each receive a thousand galleons." As soon as he said that, four elves appeared carrying sizeable bags of gold. The students stared in amazement at the massive amount of money before them. "Feel free to invest them in any way you like. Once you've made your decision, tell your treasurer elf and he will go and invest then at the Magical Stock Exchange in my name, as you are still too young. You can keep any profits you make until next Thursday. But," he added with a tone of warning, "any loss will be deducted from your trust vaults over a period of time. You have the next two hours to inform yourselves and make your decision. Best of luck." With that, he left them to their task.

Friday's class was the last of the week, History of Magic. They were back in the grand dining room, where they were met by their tutor, a Junior Curator from the Museum of Magical History named Harris Watson. He first outlined what they were to cover in the following weeks, and then began his lecture on the wizards of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. He had a very engaging style, pausing often to ask questions to make sure his student were following him. He also showed them several artifacts that he had brought from the museum, explaining their significance. At the end of the lesson, he became the first of their tutors to give them a written assignment for homework.

As there were no more lessons that day, Daphne left as she had promised to spend the afternoon with her younger brother and sister,. The three boys(Lyra did not like quidditch much) spent most of the afternoon playing Quidditch outside before Theo also had to leave after tea time. Following a light dinner, Harry and Lyra played several games of wizard chess before deciding to turn in early. As he lay in bed that night, Harry looked back on the first week of his magical education with contentment. He realized that it would only get better from there and could hardly wait for Monday.

The novelty and excitement of the lessons wore off after the first week, and Harry,Lyra and their friends had settled into a comfortable routine. The only real surprise during the second week was in Harry's group's finances class on Thursday evening. After his usual greeting, Sirius had asked, "Well, how did you do?" A silence descended during which Daphne, Neville and Theo looked intently at the floor. Eventually Daphne spoke up hesitantly.

"I lost 127 galleons, Mr. Black. I'm sorry," she said.

"Two hundred eighty-three here," Theo added quietly.

"F-four hundred and nineteen," Neville said in a half-whisper.

"Ah, well, that's unfortunate,You didn't do as bad as I did,I think it was 800 galeons,gave my grandfather an anureysm" Sirius commented, "How about you, Harry?"

"Eight hundred sixty-four galleons," Harry said in a low voice. He then grinned and added, "Profit, that is." Everyone else looked at him dumbfounded.

"How?" Neville asked, his voice rising, "How's that even possible?"

"Well," Harry replied, still smiling, "remember the Cleensweep prototype I got for my birthday? It went on sale this Monday."

"So?" Theo continued the questioning, "It's only available to professional teams. It's not on the market yet. Cleensweep couldn't have made such a profit."

"I didn't invest in Cleensweep," Harry explained, "I shorted Nimbus. I borrowed a lot of shares on Thursday and sold them on Friday just before the exchange closed. Come Monday, their contract with the Montrose Magpies expired and they were replaced by Cleensweep as official suppliers, so their stocks plummeted. I then bought back the shares and returned them, making plenty of profit along the way."

"Very good foresight, Harry, well done indeed,your grandfather would be proud" Sirius said, "As for you three, as this was your first time, consider your debts forgiven. I just wanted you to take this seriously and apply yourselves. But be warned, when we try this again in a few months, it will be for real. Now, on to today's lesson."

After that little episode things returned to normal. As the months passed, the four and three younger students steadily progressed through the material. In Transfiguration, they finished cutlery and other similar small objects, and by October their tutor had them transforming living things into inanimate objects and vice versa. In Charms, they had finished the basic array of first-year spells by late November, so Mr. Johnson started explaining how to break down charms to their constituent elements. The levitation charm, he explained as an example, consisted of three basic effects: one counteracting gravity, another providing the force that propelled the object around, and the third linking the object to the caster's wand so that it could be controlled. It was by combining such basic effects that almost any spell could be created. At first, the students were excited by the prospect of getting to make their own spells, but their tutor had disappointing news. The differential equations and statistical analysis that were needed to successfully do this required at least sixth-year arithmancy. After some very insistent requests, he eventually promised to start them on arithmancy if they managed to get through the second-year curriculum by next winter.And Cassie told them she would teach them when they were older if they wished to try spell crafting. 

In their Combat Magic lessons, Cassie had covered the few spells of the first year curriculum that a she deemed marginally useful in two weeks. They had then moved on to the defense books for second, third and eventually even fourth year. However, their primary textbook was still the one Cassie had gotten them. It was the one from what Cassie had told the children were used for auror recruits in the first year of training. The students covered the theory mostly on their own, as though Cassie had little affinity for lecturing or assigning and marking essays. Instead, she would make them practice and spar each lesson until they were nearly exhausted, physically and magically(of course she exempted the younger ones,which Harry thought was unfair). She explained that the purpose was to build up their stamina and magical reserves. She would also occasionally ambush them to drive home the point about 'constant vigilance'; at one time things had gotten so bad that all seven of them had taken to sleeping with their wands under their pillows. The practice ended when Sirius who had spotted Harry putting his wand under his pillow(he said he was at far more risk than Lyra due to her being younger which resulted in Lyra shooting a stinging hex at him) told them the story of a similarly paranoid auror trainee with the same habit who had blown his brains out when his wand had malfunctioned during a night-time drill.

Things were going well in the other two curriculum subjects as well. When the weather became too cold, their Herbology tutor had a greenhouse set up. Having soon covered the first-year plants, Mr. Owens began introducing more dangerous and exotic specimens. They earned how to plant and harvest mandrakes, venomous tentaculae and devil snares. Not all the plants were that dangerous, and some, such as the Japanese golden chrysanthemums, whose petals actually became solid gold during the summer solstice, were exquisitely beautiful. In history, they had covered the ancient magical civilizations and moved on to wizards' role in the rise and fall of Rome. In addition to teaching the material, their tutor would also instruct them in essay writing techniques; he taught them how to construct balanced arguments, as well as to critically examine sources and historiographical interpretations, a skill which was of great use in their assignments on other subjects.

Harry and his friends made great progress in their non-curricular studies as well. It took several weeks of confidence and elocution exercises, but eventually all four were able to deliver an entire oration before the crowd simulacrum without a single display of disapproval. By January, they had the crowd clapping politely; a month later it was cheering and by May it would be driven to absolute ecstasy. Sirius and now with Cassie had also taught them all the different styles of rhetoric, with many examples from the magical and muggle worlds; they studied the works of almost every major political figure, from Salazar Slytherin to Gellert Grindelwald, from Cicero to Adolf Hitler. Eventually all four had developed their own distinct style. Harry would speak with controlled intensity and inner fire; he had evidently inherited his father's charisma and could imbue each word with such passion that many would follow him willingly. In contrast, Theo had emulated the silky, manipulative rhetoric that his father would often use in the Wizengamot; he would try to appeal to his audience's self-interest and make them forget about his own designs and machinations. Daphne used a similarly manipulating approach, but she would take advantage of her personal charms to get the crowd to sympathize with her. Neville had the least verbose style of them. His speeches would be short, sharp and often sarcastic or derisory, but they were effective nonetheless. In early June, just two days before Lyra's birthday, Sirius had declared that they were now competent orators and gave them one final task – to improvise a speech on a topic of their choosing. Harry had decided to condemn all the flaws, crimes and abuses, past and present, of Albus Dumbledore. He spoke animatedly for almost an hour, demonstrating a perfect mastery of the Rhetoric of Hate. By the time he was done, the crowd had taken up pitchforks and torches and was screaming for Dumbledore's head on a pike.

They had been similarly successful in Sirius's other disciplines. The four students drudged their way through volumes of magical law until they had acquired enough of a grounding to do some simulations of court cases. Sirius had set up the special room to simulate one of the courtrooms at the ministry, and they had gone through several landmark cases. In the spring In their study of Diplomacy, Sirius first had them get a firm grasp of geography and geopolitics; they learned all the major sources of magical raw materials and creatures and the implications of that on international relations. Some countries were specialized in a few products, for instance Switzerland and its intricate enchanted mechanical devices, whereas others, such as the vast Russian(In the magical world is called Slavia,due to the swaths of lands it had) realm could supply anything from rare wand woods to exquisite dragon-hide. They learned as well about Britain's trading partners and the major trade routes, nautical and aerial. After thoroughly covering geography, they moved on to the works of renown statesmen and their theories on international relations; they read and discussed the works of both magical leaders such as Pierre Bonaccord, the founder of the International Confederation of Wizards, and the legendary Sirius Black II, as well as their muggle contemporaries Talleyrand and Clemens von Metternich. When Sirius had them play another game of Realpolitik in their last lesson before Christmas, they had applied what they had learned with amazing efficiency. However, it was Harry who yet again demonstrated the limitations of the game as a simulation of actual politics; he called in a favor that Daphne owed him after losing a bet the previous week for an alliance, and together they proceeded to utterly demolish Neville and Theo's armies before coming to a stalemate. In Economics and Finance, they finished stock markets in a few weeks and went on to more general economic theory: supply and demand, the laws of markets, equilibria and disequilibria, taxation, and government intervention. Sirius used mainly texts from magical authors and goblins, occasionally supplementing them with muggle ones, but, as he had explained in the beginning, most of the latter were barely applicable to the magical world due to the muggles' insane monetary systems. In the spring they had moved on to international economics, covering trade, excise duties, tariffs, comparative advantage, and exchange rates. The latter were thankfully very simple in the magical world, as it was a question of the mass of the respective coins of the same metal; anyone with a properly calibrated set of scales could freely convert between British galleons, German thalers, American eagles or Japanese kaichin. More unusual currencies, such as the jade coins sometimes used in China, had their exchange rates set by international agreements.

Lyra's birthday, August 5, marked the end of the lessons. A lavish party was held at the manor, at which Harry and Lyra made the acquaintance of several others of their peers that would be joining them at Hogwarts in a year's time. It was evident that Sirius was expanding the list of invitees gradually each year. At the end of the evening's festivities, he called Harry,Lyra,Neville,Stephen, Theo, Daphne and Astoria to his office and informed them that from the following week, all their lessons were on hold. The suddenly jubilant expressions on their faces darkened, however, when they learned of the reason. For the following three months, they would be intensely studying potions. After a moment, Lyra asked, "But dad, who will teach us–"

He was cut off when the doors suddenly opened and a tall man with shoulder-length blond hair and onyx eyes entered. He was dressed entirely in green robes and his over-cloak billowed behind him as he walked. "That would be I," he said in a measured voice.

"Uncle Cyrus!" Lyra exclaimed gleefully, immediately recognizing her godfather, "Thank you for the gift." She was referring to the hand-crafted silver cauldron that she had received earlier.

"You are welcome, Lyra," Cyrus said, "Sirius, I was looking for you but it seems I have come a very fortunate moment. I take it those are the other two students?"

"Mr. Nott, Mr.Longbottom, in case you did not already know, I am Cyrus and I am a potions master. I have agreed to take over this aspect of your education during the summer because I have been assured that you show the necessary potential and will not make me regret my life choices every lesson,. Pray that this assessment is correct." He paused and produced four pieces of parchment which he handed the students. "Our lessons begin in two weeks, when school finishes. This is a list of the equipment you must acquire. You will notice that it is much more exhaustive than the official Hogwarts supply list. You will also read and learn the entire first year book over the following two weeks. A laboratory will be set up for you in the dungeons of this manor and ingredients will be provided. Lessons will start at nine a.m. precisely. I will not tolerate tardiness or unpreparedness. Lessons will be on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays."

"Does that mean we have the rest of the week free?" Harry asked with a hopeful expression.

 "Forgive me, Cyrus, I was just about to tell them." Sirius then addressed all four, "On Tuesdays and Thursdays you will begin your study of occlumency,with a friend of mine. It is customary for heirs of prominent families to begin it around your age, so that any family secrets can be kept safe when they go to school. That goes especially for you, Harry. Added to that, Dumbledore is one of the world's most accomplished legilimens and I certainly don't trust him to keep his mind probes to himself." He paused, before concluding, "But enough of that now. Professor Greengrass and I have important matters to discuss. Please leave us." He had a tone of finality, which the students sensed, so they left, eager and slightly apprehensive of the trials which awaited them over the summer.

The next Monday, the seven students walked down to the dungeons of the manor to find them completely transformed. Most of the dark, cold rooms were usually used as storage for all types of miscellany, but now an entire potions laboratory had been set up in the largest of them. There were several workbenches covered with cauldrons, phials, distilling equipment, and a veritable arsenal of smaller tools – mortars, knives, scalpels, thermometers and several scales. The walls of the room featured several shelves completely covered in jars, vials and boxes containing all manner of animal parts, plants, liquids and powders. A blackboard took up most of the far end, where Cyrus was already waiting for his class.

"Good morning, Professor Greengrass," the students said almost in unison.

"Take your seats," he said, indicating the workspaces. "And when you do that, clear away that equipment."

"Excuse me, Professor," Lyra asked, rather confused, "Aren't we going to practice potion making?"

"In due time, Miss Potter-Black. But before you even touch a cauldron, you must learn how to handle the equipment, and even more importantly, how to properly prepare the ingredients."

"With respect, Professor, can't we learn that as we go along–"

Cyrus put his hand up, silencing him. He then took his wand out and summoned a large jar containing a number of plum-sized glandular organs in a pungent, clear liquid. He took one out and held it up. "Can anyone tell me what this is?" he asked. Harry raised his hand. "Mr. Potter-Black?"

"It's a venom gland from a snake, sir. A Malayan adder, to be specific."

"Indeed, Mr. Potter-Black," Greengrass said, turning to the class, "And its market value is around twelve knuts apiece. Whereas a basilisk gland can go for thousands of galleons. And yet the extraction method is the same for both. Learning how to do it properly now will save you much frustration and money later, when you are working with more exotic ingredients for more advanced potions." He then took a scalpel and proceeded to demonstrate the correct method. "It is similar to preparing a prawn for cooking, if you've ever done it," he explained, "First remove the large vein on the upper side. Then make an incision of roughly half an inch on the upper front side. Use a pair of tweezers to open it and carefully extract the venom with a pipette. The venom is stored in two ventricles; you can do them in any order." He carried out the procedures as he talked, and by the end he held a pipette filled with an amber translucent liquid which he deposited into a small test tube. "Your turn," he said, handing out four fresh glands.

The rest of the day was spent practicing how to prepare many of the ingredients that they would encounter during their first three years in Hogwarts. The students did well with the plants, on account of their practice in herbology lessons, but found the animal parts more challenging. Cyrus would always push them, and he did not accept anything less than perfection. Whenever anyone of them made a mistake, he would make a derisive yet well-earned comment. "No, Miss Potter-Black, I said sal ammoniac, not antimony. And I said crush it to a powder first. If you put those crystals in a potion you will kill yourself." "Mr. Nott, that was pathetic. Have you ever shredded anything in your life before? And why didn't you wait until the salamander skin was fully desiccated?" "Stephen, why is that thermometer upside down? And for the love of Merlin, why haven't you filled the condenser with water? Must I teach you rudimentary physics?" "Mr. Potter-Black, I clearly said you must filter the solution before you distill it. What you now have is highly toxic, which would be great for a poison but hardly so for a calming draught. And what could have possibly compelled you to add sulfuric acid?"

Professor Greengrass was certainly a very strict and demanding teacher. In fact, out of all the other tutors, only Cassie came close to this level of expectations or strictness. Yet none of his students could really complain: whatever criticisms they received were always justified, regardless of the harshness thereof; and the positive results were immediately apparent, especially when by the end of June, all four of them had bashed through the pathetic first year curriculum. Greengrass had actually explained his pedagogical philosophy at the end of the first lesson. Facing his students, who had by the end of the day sliced, diced, dissected, shredded, extracted, liquefied or grinded a myriad of animal parts, he said, "That is sufficient for today, I believe." Beckoning them closer, he continued in his deep monotone, "When I look at all of you, I see potential. Immense potential. In fact, the kind that comes perhaps once per generation. A sentiment which, alas, the imbeciles that set the Hogwarts curriculum do not share. Thankfully, I have managed to get my hands on you beforehand and will try to rectify that situation. I fully expect you to master the curricula for the initial years to perfection. Do not be concerned about having too much free time in your future at school. I will certainly see to that you be kept occupied with tasks more befitting of your level. You may find several of your teachers making similar arrangements. But enough of that."

"Your assignment for Wednesday," Cyrus continued, "is to select six of the ingredients that you have been working with today and write eight inches of parchment on all of their properties, including their use in as many potions as you can find. Now, clean up your workstations and you may go." The students quickly set about the task. Greengrass watched them as they worked. "Also don't forget to read up for your occlumency lesson tomorrow." He added with a barely noticeable smirk, "I will know if you are unprepared."