Some proposed curriculum changes to be enacted next year. Well, I say proposed. Strongly advised. Dictated with considerable exasperation, if you must know.

warnings: Canon-compliant through book 7.*

story type: gen, no pairings, humor/tragedy/friendship/administration. Yes, that.

Process notes: This was written because Daashi on AO3 asked all my Valley of the Shadow characters, "what subject that isn't taught at Hogwarts do you think that should be? And what subject would you remove from the current curriculum?" 1980!Severus's answer was a paragraph long, like everyone else's (and included bitching about Peter Pettigrew), but his older self had, er, a bit more to say.

Story notes: Jenks' name is actually Jinky. Severus Has Issues.

Interdepartmental Memo (Scheduled Delivery, Event-Triggered)

TO: All faculty
FROM: S. Snape, Headmaster

Please find below the proposed adjustments to next year's curriculum. What I anticipate to be the first of many meetings to waste time arguing over them should be scheduled for no later than one week following receipt of this memo, depending on the state of the infrastructure.

Be advised that pages 1-2 are an in brevi summation of necessary alterations. Details to be found farther in as indicated or not at all. If you lot can't fine-tune your own subjects once the desirability of doing so has been brought to your attention, I wash my hands of the boiling of you.

Said Summations

Arithmancy: See below (Badly Needed Additional Subjects, Integrated Theory).

Astronomy: Acquire a goddamned planetarium. Keeping adolescents up till midnight results in disrupted sleep cycles, poor information retention, sleeping in class, and premarital sex when they can't get to sleep at their normal bedtime the next night. See related neurological/developmental data pages 50-52.

Care of Magical Creatures: Hagrid, you hypersensitive twit, sit your stubborn arse down with Grubbly-Plank and hammer out a stable seven-year curriculum that will cover creatures students might encounter in life and on their exams, whether or not you are personally entranced. They like you well enough when your classes aren't boring them stiff or sousing their pants for them. Repeat five times before each meal: "I am not the Skrewt. They hate and fear the Skrewt, and I am not the Skrewt. I am not the Flobberworm…"

Charms: Standard Book of Spells series seriously outdated and does not focus on spells with effects useful in modern life. Seek alumni input, especially recent graduates and those managing households. I can't imagine why you don't show them what you can do, at least in the unclassified spheres, they all know about your dueling trophies anyway. Might I note also that the club wasn't a bad idea, with the gilded toothpaste-advert subtracted, and it would be much better all around if their first impulse were to reach for charms before hexes and curses. There is after all, as I have always maintained, very little of practical use that one can achieve with an only-damaging spell that can't also be effected with an ordinary one.

Custodial:

1) Minerva, although the elves do prefer cream, I have discussed possible outcomes with them. They understand we will be experiencing a budget crisis if significant rebuilding and reorganization are required, particularly if the confidence of the population in its institutions is shattered. They're willing to accept tribute in whole milk for the duration, although lesser, er, denominations would feel like a hardship to some and a slight to others. Most of them will not fuss about species derivation, see Jenks for the exceptions. Do someone please explain life to Granger (see Badly Needed Additional Classes).

2) In the event that significant rebuilding and/or grounds repair is necessary, the elves have pre-existing orders to focus their efforts on the infrastructure, walls, roof, and such other work as wizards can do less lastingly and less efficiently. Certain elves will remain on-call to faculty and to distribute but not prepare meals (again, see Jenks), and I have assigned Wrankle and Winky to Poppy. Making a substitution for Winky is not advised, as she does poorly without a single master on whom to focus her attention; Wrankle has volunteered for this duty but will serve without fuss where instructed. Otherwise, the students would be well-advised to consider doing without servants to be a community-building exercise. Or character building. Or life preparation. Or residual torture. I have no interest.

3) Filch is to be promoted to Custodial Supervisor or some such nonsense; someone take that goddamned mop away from him before he gets himself lynched waving it about. As it continues preferable that the students should see that their lack of consideration and thoughtfulness has consequences that must be dealt with by someone, an assistantship to replace his presence in the halls might be advisable. See page 12 for low-budget options. Do not fail to note that any use of the post as any sort of rehabilitation must be anonymous and not known as such. See pages 13-18 for anti- bullying measures.

DADA: Replace with Self-Defense. Continue to cover DADA material but include survey of martial arts, critical thinking, social defense (Horace will know who to ask if Mrs. Malfoy is unavailable), such skills covered in basic Auror training as footwork, stamina, quick-draw, terrain, strategy, assessment of clothed persons, microexpressions (Sybill will be useful here if you can twist her arm into admitting her expertise in carnie tricks, see below), etc. Liase with Shacklebolt or other less than moronic Auror/Hit Wizard to review suggested curriculum (see pgs 30-119). Enforcement agents who had difficulties in particular areas but did pass and survive in the field (ex: Mrs. Lupin re stealth) will be valuable resources as they will remember their training in those areas clearly from having it repeatedly shouted at them.

Divination: Sibyll, you're not sacked unless you keep refusing to teach the cold-read and how to tell who in the room is the best subject for hypnosis and so on. You don't understand what the students actually learn in your class. Believe it or not, there is something (someone catch Trelawney before she faints). Speak to Mrs. Malfoy or, if she's unavailable, Miss Greengrass.

Firenze, (if you will not be returning to your family), your classes would benefit from more theory, more collaboration with Professor Sinistra, and fewer assurances to the students that it's entirely pointless for them to be studying your subject. Suggestions that they are overrating their intelligence and ability to swallow the material by skimming and should therefore be working harder have, however, worked well for others in the past…

Flying: Why the hell do we have a live-in flying-instructor year round to do nothing but teach the first years and referee games when there are students in their seventh years who would fall off a broom if placed on one for the purpose of emergency evacuation? Get off your arse, Hooch. Additionally, see page 7 for revision of Quidditch schedule. Sabbatical's over. Longchamps in Nottingham, who worked on the Silver Arrows line before his retirement, will be receptive to a reasonable deal regarding an overhaul of the school brooms, particularly a recurring contract, but you and Horace should both attend that negotiation if you would like to walk away with your shirts. (I presume Xiomara to at this point to be jumping up and down squealing like a toddler in a sweetshop. She is to be prevented from breaking anything, or kissing anything even remotely connected with me.)

Herbology: Pomona, please consider making Herbology elective-only after second year (see page 5 for Pre-Elective-Selection Career Guidance Sessions). It's not as integral to everyday life as it once was, and your time might be spent at least as valuably elsewhere (see page 9 for Proposed Additional Extra-curriculars Program)

History of Magic: Not understanding the patterns of the past got us here now, and it will get you right back here in ten or twenty years if you don't FIX THIS. If Binns won't move on or retire he could be of great use teaching students research and library skills in a first-year seminar and as remedial work. Half of them don't have the first idea how to really use a library and even the ones that do are missing concepts (ex: Granger's complete inability to evaluate the credibility of a source that claims to be an authority or expert). He's solid on facts and skills, but hire a teacher who can summarize the dates into stories which will be remembered and cover more than one or two periods of particular obsession, or you are irretrievably doomed. Again. And again. Ad eternum.

Muggle Studies: To be taught in future by someone who can function effectively in the muggle world. If no useful textbook can be found, forgo the use of a textbook. Any such class which does not teach computer literacy is a waste of time. To be made mandatory for at least two years (not necessarily years one and two, see pages 120-126 for some possible schedules that do not require all students and faculty to wear time-turners) for those who don't test out of it. See Badly Needed Additional Subjects.

Potions: Horace, you're better than I am with the intermediate years where they primarily need patience while they practice, but you're rubbish at instilling basic safety and techniques and you had no business whatsoever in front of a class learning theory and experimentation even when your reflexes were faster. Besides, I want you mostly on extra-curriculars and hitting the Ministry over the head with Minerva for funds and goodwill. Good-Auror/Terrifying Dragon Lady, you know the drill. Get a junior instructor for 1,2, 5-7. Now.

AND STOP USING BORAGE.

Study of Ancient Runes: Rename it Spellcasting Languages and maybe you'll get more students than two blackbirds a year. The students look at the name and think it means 'dead alphabets of no practical use' even though they use runes on the damn Prophet.

Transfiguration: If you appoint Rita Skeeter to replace you just so you can have another animagus teaching the class, I shall either haunt you for the rest of your days or haunt you in order to continually sing your praises for getting her off the Prophet. I haven't decided yet. Do you want to risk it? You might wish to recall before making the gamble that you haven't heard me sing (Filius, not a word.)

Badly Needed Additional Classes

Pre-school program for muggle-raised: Wizarding culture. Consult muggle-raised current students and alumni re what no one taught them. Consult purebloods re what behaviors in muggle-raised peers shocked and pained them. Quill-use and walking-in-robes instruction, introduction to cultures and manners of magical sentients.

Pre-school program for wizarding-raised: Maths to standard of geometry and algebra needed for success in potions and arithmancy, rudimentary geography-with-cultural-history, basic tenets of biology, physics, chemistry, scientific method. Spelling and grammar. Test-out option in each subject for parents preferring tutors etc. acceptable, but material must be covered. Especially bloody spelling and grammar.

(See page 127 for a pro/con comparison of pre-school classrooms made available in a few locations vs home-school tutoring by older students or recent graduates needing experience, connections or goodwill more than income. Horace can devise an attractive program of incentives to suit any budget, I have no doubt.)

Civics: If they don't know how it's supposed to work, or could work, or works well elsewhere, they'll keep doing what's been done here. See History (above). Include sections on economy, law enforcement, judicial systems, governmental systems, corruption, checks & balances, journalism (yellow and otherwise), etc etc (see pgs 18-30).

Advanced/Integrated Theory: We all know the subjects all start running together at the advanced levels, and that advanced work is needed for many crafting and active careers. And we all know how often the NEWT students trip over their wands trying to wrap their tiny little minds around the idea of multidisciplinary magic. This was a school, last I checked, at least nominally.

Enrichment: Craftsmen buying things, including tickets, from each other keeps the economy purring along smoothly (an important consideration with the nation's primary employer thrown into chaos). Hobbies occupy desk-workers who might otherwise channel those energies into ambitions for which they are unsuited (you can tell because otherwise the hobbies wouldn't distract them). Additionally, can you imagine how much less trouble such students as Sirius Black and Draco Malfoy would have made if they'd been able to jump on a stage occasionally and shout, "TA-DA!"?

Do not underestimate the danger. I repeat: go on as we've been, and you'll find yourselves right back where we are. Are you enjoying yourselves? I'm not. Make it happen, my purblind plodders. (Again, potential schedules p. 120)

Of importance: Just as soon as you possibly can, get everyone inside, close the doors and shutters, and tell the elves, "Disable Operation Tartarus, authorization Victory Need Not Be Pyrrhic." Best to stay off the grounds and definitely out of the forest till they report they're done. Master the temptation to inquire. Or ask for the blueprints. Or look out the windows. You don't want to know. Really.

The necessity of abandoning a prolonged and difficult job to others is somewhat embarrassing and not what I would wish. However, the swindler cannot carry off his four-or-five dimensional, typically byzantine shell game if the mark becomes aware that the shill has swapped the pea on the table for the pearl he's been flashing. I can only hope that in providing at least the bones of a curriculum you will consider that I have contributed to the renewal to the best of my ability in the time available.

As to my personal effects….

* ...however, I consider this to be a direct prequel to Inconceivable.

Credit to Didodikali for Draco the Diva.