"But anyhow, the first time we knew Dumbledore was out of the Castle,"
Ginny interrupted with a frown, "He's been gone a lot this year for some odd reason. He's usually never gone when school's in session. Sometimes he'll go somewhere for a few hours but usually never for a full day. But this year he's gone more than he's here."
Ron rolled his eyes. "Doesn't matter now, Gin. He's not Headmaster anymore." He turned back to his Dad. "Anyway Hermione found out the Headmaster was going to be out of the Castle. Something about a mess at the bank. I don't know how she found out and honestly, I don't really care. We should've stopped right then as soon as she said the word 'bank' but we didn't. I mean, it doesn't take much brain power to realize we no longer had the keys to the vaults he set up for us and now he's having Banking issues? Must mean he's already working on the problem. Right? But we didn't stop. Figured we were smart enough to solve our own problem."
"So we tracked Harry down in the library and confronted him about our keys no longer working. We demanded he give us back access to our money saying we had earned it and he had no right to keep it from us. He questioned us about it. Even used the term Services Rendered which we each agreed was how we earned the money. Not one of us gave a second thought to what it meant or why he used that particular term when we agreed to that classification but we should've. We really should've. Because that's really not a nice term."
Arthur had paled as his son had been talking but now he flushed a bright red. "No, no it's not," he murmured.
"And we really should have realized if Mr. Dumbledore had to be out of the Castle due to a mess at the Bank, then maybe Harry wasn't the reason our keys weren't working anymore." Ginny frowned. "I mean, he was as it turns out. But we had no reason to assume that given Hermione told us why Mr. Dumbledore would be out of the Castle."
Ron looked his father in the eye. He was trying really hard to be mature and own up to his bad behavior and blame in what had happened to him this year. He still felt like being angry over it and finding someone else to blame for his misfortune. Anyone else he could blame. But he was trying to get past it.
"We were wrong, Da. Wrong about everything. We thought he didn't know. He did. We thought we were entitled to that money because Dumbledore had authorized it for us. We weren't because it wasn't Dumbledore's to give. We thought Dumbledore was his legal guardian. He wasn't. We thought Harry didn't know he was the sponsor of our scholarships. He does. But worse. We thought he didn't know what exactly Dumbledore was paying us to do. He did. Every single thing."
"He knew we were being paid to be around him and act like his friends while keeping all the other kids in the castle away from him lest he like some of them better than he did us. When it suited Dumbledore, we were to spread rumors about him to isolate him from the school while keeping our distance and we thought he didn't know. He did. And Mione was paid to keep his grades low so he wouldn't out-perform any of the pureblood kids. Again, she assumed he didn't know what she was doing or why. He did. I'm still not sure why he wanted us to do that actually but at the time I didn't care and just did as I was told. Which was to distract him from doing his schoolwork as much as I could and make his daily life here as uncomfortable for him as possible."
"I honestly thought Harry didn't know a lot of his bad reputation was due to our rumor spreading. But I was wrong. He knew. We thought he didn't know we were leading him by the nose into traps we had set up over trouble Dumbledore had allowed into the school. We were wrong. He knew. Both about the traps and who brought the trouble into the school."
"Secondly, Dumbledore. Like we said earlier, he hasn't been here much this year. Probably why the school year has been running so smoothly this year. Because even when he was here physically, he's been preoccupied and not really paying much attention to anything school related. He certainly hasn't been paying attention if he thought we were good friends again."
"Harry's the king of the school again and all the students are taking their lead from him as to how to behave. And I mean all the kids. Even the Slytherins. The other teachers have even started a Round Robin kind of thing to teach us all our Defense Against the Dark Arts because we've had such lousy teachers for it under Mr. Dumbledore the fifth and seventh years were worried about failing their Ministry exams. All because he told Seamus to ask one of them for help in learning what he needed to know. And then named names and gave reasons as to why each might be a good choice for outside instruction and supervision. Word spread and soon all the named teachers found themselves being hounded by the student body to teach them real Defense so they could pass their exams in May. That Round Robin Defense class is the favorite class of the year according to the school rumor mill and several of the students in it are likely to get upset if it stops because the new administration is bringing in aurors to teach us now that Umbridge has been evicted."
Augusta made a note of the information. Her staff might not like being told they needed to continue the defense lessons they begin giving the student body but the last thing she wanted was a Castle full of unhappy teenagers. Nor did she expect the students to automatically trust the aurors Amelia was sending her for the scheduled class. The students had suffered under bad instruction for too many years now to easily trust their new instructors.