All the staff was told to remain in the Castle over the Holiday and several of them had to cancel their plans as they usually went home to their own families. Several students were staying as well including Harry since Dumbledore hadn't dared to carry through on his threat of evicting him for the season. Not that it really would have mattered if he had since the Dursley's weren't there. Harry had discovered he could use a glamour casting item on himself to make him appear in any condition he wished so long as he loaded the image into the item along with enough magic to power it for however long he needed the image. Glamours cast from items were much harder to detect though no harder to dispel. However, he was glad he hadn't needed to do it as it did run the risk of exposing the fact that the Dursley family were in the wind much sooner than he would like.
On the day after the carriages left the Castle, the staff minus Mr. Filch and the elves were pulled into a behind closed doors meeting. The staff minus Albus Dumbledore, who had slipped off to the bank for his bi-weekly haggling spree with the goblins, and Delores Umbridge, who was at the Ministry delivering her weekly report to Cornelius. The rest of the staff weren't surprised to find the full body of the School Board waiting for them.
But they were very surprised with what said Board had to say to them. Very soundly, all the staff was raked over the coals and berated for failing the students who were bored and often went looking for anything they could find to relieve that boredom. Having up-to-date and top of the line classes to offer the students was all well and fine but when there was nothing to do to fill their down time teenagers will find something to do anyway. Even if that meant going out of bounds or picking fights in the halls.
As it was, if you weren't a Quiditch nut or a bookworm, there was nothing here for the kids to do except study and fight with each other. And children will only spend so many hours a day in study before they throw the books into the nearest fireplace for burning. If Albus wouldn't approve any other venues of entertainment, the staff should have put their heads together and came up with something on their own.
Class project competitions for instance. Maybe a treasure hunt through the Castle finding different small treats left by the elves in out of the way locations by solving clues. Or even a chess Tournament in the Great Hall for those who liked playing chess. Or a Gobstones or Exploding Snap Tournament. They could even have found out which students had a vid globe and what shows they had loaded onto it and had a show night. Or if there was music loaded on to a globe or two, they could have had a school dance in the Great Hall. Not every school dance has to be a sanctioned Ball.
But the staff had done none of these things. All they did was complain about students breaking the rules and earning detentions which they then had to supervise. Then they went through the Detention and Points Gained/Lost Master book line by line since the beginning of the year. Severus was the only teacher not wincing as the reasons for said deductions and detentions were read out. It wasn't that he hadn't abused the system so much as it was he knew he'd abused the system and simply didn't care. He'd done what he did for a reason and it was a good reason so he refused to feel guilty about it now.
Minerva was in tears when they were finally released and several students stood together whispering questions of what had happened. None of them wanted anything bad to happen to the stern Scottish woman. And none of them had ever expected to see her in tears. That just told all of them something bad had happened. Sybil Trelawney was also shaken up when she came out of the meeting but no one really noticed since most the school did what they could to ignore her at the best of times. Filius and Pomona came out together and took charge of their own students while Aurora and Septima took charge of the prowling lions since Minerva hadn't even noticed them. Severus came out and nodded to Harry before going to break up the watching students.
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