Veronica needed a few moments before she understood what Sirius had just said. "Really, you got into police training? Oh, that insane thing you did paid off at the end!"
"Insane? Yes. Especially considering I went along with it and put all my plans on hold. Some people just don't have any patience..." Remus again gave Sirius a telling look.
Why do I have the feeling I will hear that for some time? In retrospect, his rush to get an accepted school degree had been kind of insane and he understood Remus' annoyance.
"As happy as I am for you, you know what I told you countless times, but I think one more time won't hurt. Roping your friend into it had not been especially nice," Veronica told Sirius, though she didn't look angry at all.
"See, not only I thought that," Remus told Sirius, unable to resist the temptation.
"Well, considering you went along with it to the end..." Veronica knew both men understood that she wasn't assigning blame, just reminding them they made this foolish decision together. "Oh, but enough of that! We do have to celebrate this once Thomas is home! That was your dream and you are now so close to fulfilling it."
Little Harry didn't know what exactly was going on, but if they were happy, he surely was as was. "Auntie Verni happy! Auntie Verni happy!"
o
The meeting would not have been out of place for the town hall of a middle-sized city, or the board meeting of a bigger company. It was a perfectly ordinary conference room, the afternoon sun shining through the big windows, and at the long table sat a dozen men and women in suits, who were going through many papers, giving their reports to the head table, where several men sat.
"We are slowly making progress penetrating deeper. It's very slow work, however. After all, most of our agents were recruited well after they left in disappointment. Expanding our net onto the other side with those who never left will take significantly more time," one of the men reported.
"That was to be expected, considering past progress.," came from the head table. "What about our special units?"
"Considering the small pool we have to use, it's still not up to our standards. Using magic outside of what they think is the only way to use it in battle is also difficult to implement," a woman reported.
"Hm, is it the same with our allied countries?" one man at the head table asked.
One man looked through his papers. "More or less. They at times have more difficulties than we do, considering how set in their ways magical society in Britain is, compared to other countries. The more liberal countries have more recruiting difficulties. It's especially difficult in Germany."
"We'll review this during the international meeting. Now, we all have read the report about this earmarked person we spoke of in the previous meeting. Your thoughts now?"
"Honestly, it came a bit as a surprise that he was applying to enter the police force of all things. However, considering that he earned his education fair and square, we are giving him the benefit of the doubt. Right now there is nothing to hint that he doesn't want to honestly become an officer of the law. If anything, this can only be to our advantage."
There was general agreement to this conclusion.
...Hogwarts, December 6th 1982...
In past years, Potions class at Hogwarts had been a favorite amongst students, since Professor Slughorn, besides knowing what he was doing, also knew how to make the class interesting and being a fair grader. However, since the start of the new school year and Slughorn's retirement, a new opinion about Potions had formed within the students.
Now Potions class was a kind of torture.
Professor Snape was a petty perfectionist, who seemingly felt that everyone should be a genius like him at potions, and thus didn't explain anything, apart from writing instructions on the blackboard at the start. And once something inevitably went wrong due to lack of direction, he would show his nasty side. Not to speak of his blatant favoritism towards Slytherin, which had already gotten him the enmity of the students from the other three houses.
However, not only the students felt that Potions class was a chore. Snape himself also wasn't thrilled having to teach it in its current form.
Severus Snape was frustrated while watching the first-year students from Gryffindor and Slytherin stir their potions. To him, having to teach these little brats was a punishment in itself.
At least this bunch of little snots is learning fast not to test my patience, he thought. Only too bad that this new year of Slytherins is not promising at all with potions.
While him being frustrated was nothing new, the source of his frustration no longer was of a personal nature, and instead connected to his new job. He'd started teaching at Hogwarts starting with this school year, replacing Horace Slughorn as the Potions Master and Head of House Slytherin. This was not what he had imagined his life to turn out to be, since he had little patience with children - especially the younger ones.
If at least he could have gotten the Defense position - that was the one position he really would have liked to take - but the Headmaster had nixed that idea right from the start.
The Headmaster had laid it out to him that the position was cursed and that he couldn't risk giving him the position, or something horrible was going to happen to him. He had even shown him the list of previous professors and how they were forced out of the position. He had not believed the Headmaster, despite having gone through seven Defense professors during his own school years, until the end of the previous school year. That year's Defense professor got trampled by some centaurs near the Forbidden Forest and she left Hogwarts in critical condition directly for St. Mungo's.