Chapter 2 

When Harry woke up the next morning he was confused about why he was sleeping in some random cupboard. It wasn't until he opened the door and saw the portrait on the outside that he remembered what had happened the day before.

The school was still quiet when Harry left on his way up to Dumbledore's office five minutes later. He wasn't very surprised about that, the headmaster's speech yesterday was enough to make anyone behave and keep their head down for a while.

Harry passed some Ravenclaw students in the corridor and he was surprised by the glares they directed towards him. They didn't say anything, even though one of them- Michael Corner- had been in the DA last year, when they had been on good terms.

The gargoyle at the bottom of the stairs let him up when he gave it the password. If Dumbledore minded him coming, then he probably would have changed it, right?

It couldn't have been any later than 6.30 but the headmaster was already up in his office. He called for Harry to come in and waved his wand, causing Harry's now packed bag to fly towards him. Harry managed to catch it before it hit him. It didn't look like Dumbledore was going to say anything else so Harry thanked him as politely as he could manage and left him to his papers.

Harry went back to his room to finish his essays. There wasn't much hope that the Great hall would be open for breakfast yet so Harry had to just hope he could finish in time.

Harry made it to Transfiguration at 9 o'clock, without getting his breakfast. He only just made it in the door with his homework and Professor McGonagall raised an eyebrow as she closed it behind him.

The first thing he noticed was that Ron wasn't in his usual seat. Ron wasn't in the room at all. Harry took the seat on the other side of Hermione instead. She gave him a quick hug before leaning back to her own desk.
Harry was surprised, normally they only hugged each other after their annual flirt with death. She must have really been worried about him.

McGonagall started lecturing the class but Harry couldn't focus properly.

"Hermione, where's Ron?"
She looked reluctant to answer, not wanting to stop taking notes.
"I'll tell you after Harry, shush."
"Hermione, tell me. Is he okay? He didn't get hurt yesterday did he?"
"Harry..."
"Please Herm..."

"Mr. Potter!"
Harry looked up guiltily. The whole class was staring at him.
"Please could you try to pay some attention to the lesson Potter? Miss Granger is trying to do so, please desist from distracting her. Mr Weasley will be fine as soon as he has stopped growing Snargluff pods in place of his ears."
A couple of Slytherins on the other side of the room sniggered and high fived each other.
"Thank you, Mr. Goyle, Miss Parkinson. 10 points from Slytherin. Mr Potter, do listen, five points-" She broke off, remembering that Harry wasn't in her house anymore.
"If you keep talking, I shall have to move you, Potter. Or else I will have to take points from Miss Granger and she is working well."
"Yes Professor, sorry."

The double period went on and Harry really did make a decent attempt at his notes. He thought McGonagall appreciated that because she gave Hermione some house points with a pretty feeble excuse.


When the bell rang, Harry had to run to his new Charms class, so he didn’t have a chance to talk to Hermione. This was the lesson he was going to share with the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs. The Slytherins took their time Leaving Transfiguration but Harry had to finish his essay conclusion before the next bell rang.

Professor Flitwick didn't say anything when Harry handed in his parchment with the ink still wet, simply telling him to take whichever seat was free when everyone had arrived. Harry stood by the chalkboard, waiting for everyone to make their way to their seats.

There wasn't actually any free desks. That was because the Ravenclaw students seemed to prefer spreading the contents of their bags out over an entire table whenever they came to class. The Slytherins were already sitting three to a table so Harry picked a place next to the least cluttered Ravenclaw. She threw him a dirty look but he just shrugged back. There wasn't anything else he could do about it. He had to sit next to someone.

This class was a Charms practical and they were going over the same lesson that Harry had done on Monday. He did well at casting the spell and Professor Flitwick asked him to make an attempt at helping Crabbe.
Crabbe didn't seem to understand why the whole school was so down, despite having sat through the rant yesterday. He kept trying to turn around and ask Malfoy questions before remembering he wasn't there and turning back to growl at Harry.

Crabbe did eventually manage to make his coin jump up in the air and start spinning as they were supposed to. Harry was amazed to notice that every time the coin landed, it was heads up. Harry even tried swapping the knut for a sickle, but it kept happening.
"Are you trying to do that?" Crabbe shook his head. "You could probably win money with that. Try out that gambling shop in Knockturn Alley."
Crabbe tried to suppress a grin, failed miserably and let out a chuckle. It was a far cry from the 'hur, hur' noise he usually made. Goyle turned around in surprise and punched his friend in the arm.

"You're not supposed to be nice to Potty, idiot. He hurt Draco yesterday."
Crabbe looked defiant, "Snape said we can't go after him.  He said that we need to not mess everything up. Then everything'll be okay."
Crabbe turned his back on Goyle.
"My dad goes there sometimes, Potter. He always seems to be lucky with it. It drives my mother mad though. Wouldn't have thought you'd have been down Knockturn, but the Professor says you do always break the rules."

Harry couldn’t fault that logic, even coming from Crabbe.

Sitting at the top table, playing with his lunch, Harry wondered why the Slytherins weren't trying to kill him for once. Especially after Malfoy yesterday. But weirdly they seemed to be the happiest students in the school. Their younger years seemed to be pretty much oblivious to everything that was going on and the older ones were oddly cheerful for people who had been outnumbered so badly in a skirmish. To be fair to them though, they had held their own really well. The other pupils were still licking their wounds and muttering darkly about whichever professor had set them detention.

The conversations at the staff table were also about the detentions. Professor Vector was complaining about how many students she had to supervise tonight. Sinistra, still bleary eyed from waking up, was trying to convince McGonagall that she should be allowed to take students for detention at midnight after she had finished teaching her classes. It wasn't working out. She should have been able to guess that really. Harry was honestly surprised that McGonagall didn't insist they do Astronomy during the day like all their other classes.

The depute headmistress had always been strict about curfew. He got a detention from her every time he snuck out to use the prefects’ bathroom- Ron always gave him the password. He wasn't sure how she managed to know which days he was going there, but she always caught him. Of course she never came back after that, so Harry accepted the weekly detention- an hour on Sunday after lunch- and walked to the bathroom after she had gone back to her rooms.

Harry was suspicious that she was just using him as a spare cleaner. Especially since she had him do the same thing every week. McGonagall's magical orrery was apparently too delicate for the house elves to look after. Afterwards, she would always let him pick a biscuit from her tartan tin before he went upstairs to finish his homework. She could be quite helpful with dropping hints about the week's Transfiguration questions as well.

He was also quite impressed that she could make it up to the Gryffindor common room from her office so quickly.

But the Headmaster still wasn't back in the great hall, and according to the conversation between Madame Hooch and Sprout he hadn't been at breakfast either. Harry thought that while he must still be angry with them, he was really too old to sulk.

Having Dumbledore missing made Harry feel like Umbridge was about to walk through the front doors of the hall in her ridiculous pink tweed robes. He supressed a shudder at the memory. Thankfully, she didn't and Harry left for his free period, so that he could properly prepare for his first ever teaching period.



Harry cobbled together an oral quiz for them on the creatures they had covered with Snape. He hoped that they had taken in more than he had in Lockhart's classes. He was worried that he wouldn't have time to cover everything he was supposed to before Easter and the exams.

Hopefully the questions he had would be enough to get them started thinking about the weaknesses of the magical animals. Then he could get on with showing them the spells which would help them escape or capture them.

That took him through the rest of lunch and half of his free period in the library. With a pile of notes in his bag, he wandered down to the classroom. Harry stood outside the door listening to see if the room was empty. Unfortunately, Snape was still inside teaching the fourth years. He was telling them about the Unforgivable Curses. Suddenly the door burst open and Snape was right in front of him, hauling him into the room.

"Mr Potter, thank you for your timely appearance. I was just telling my class that there was only one person on Earth too stubborn to be not be killed by the Avada Kedavra curse, and here you are! I do not suggest that you practice it between yourselves,” he said to the class, “even though you would not get much more of a reaction than a nosebleed. Feel free to try it out on Mr Potter though. I am intrigued as to whether he is still so immune."

Harry laughed a little nervously. But the contemplative looks that the Ravenclaws and Slytherins were giving him were more than a little scary.

"I like to think I've become less stubborn these days Professor. Maybe they shouldn't risk the trip to Azkaban if I'm right."

"You should be more confident Potter." Snape smirked and dropped his voice, "After all, you continue to listen at doors despite constant reminders of the inappropriateness. You seem sufficiently stubborn to me.”

“Fourth years, your homework for next Monday is to complete three feet on the use of unforgivables in the war against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

"Which war?" Called out a Ravenclaw with particularly pointed ears.

"The War. The one which culminated with Mr Potter's facial adornment, and the temporary fall of the Dark Lord." Snape sneered at the boy. "Class is not dismissed until the bell rings, unless you fancy tripling however many detentions you currently have due. If any of you are lucky enough to have none and think you are exempt, I will award you 9 hours of detention."

Harry was fairly sure that most students had been awarded detentions by now. There were only a few fourth years (mostly Ravenclaws) who hadn't been at the battle. They had been studying or at the gobstones club, choir rehearsal or something else. Not earning any since had required staying quiet and not annoying the most irate teachers but only two or three of them had managed it. 

Harry followed Snape through the connecting door into the DADA teacher's office. Harry was delighted to see that it had changed since last year and Umbridge. Apparently she couldn't bear to leave the kitten plates behind when she ran away. It would have been amazing if she had stuck them up with some permanent sticking charm though- like the one holding up Sirius' mother at Grimmauld Place. Harry took a seat, grinning at the thought of Snape trying to mark essays in a pink room with kittens gambolling around him.

Snape's eyes narrowed, probably anticipating Harry's thoughts. He took a seat on the edge of the desk so that Harry had to crane his neck to look at him.
"Mr. Potter," he started, "While I do not approve of your methods, I do think that trying to learn the content of some of my classes is important. I am mildly surprised that you didn't take it into your head to simply knock on my door to see if there was anybody inside. That is what any professor would have done but then, you are not known for your brilliant planning abilities."

Harry blinked, "I didn't want to interrupt, sir. That didn't quite work. How did you know I was there?"

Snape rolled his eyes. "Potter, after five and a half years here, I would have thought you would be aware of the school truancy measures. Especially you. As an aid for teachers, so they need to be aware of messengers from other classes when there is a silencing spell cast on the door: they may always look out for the appearance of colour in the silencing charm. It shows up a red silhouette of anything on the other side which has a pulse. You should test this out at some point with your classmates, if they are ever out of detention. It could be of some use to you."

Harry didn't know silencing wards could do that. That could be really useful to know for the other times he used it. It could be helpful for finding out what was on the other side of walls as well- it had worked through the door. He made a mental note to ask Hermione to look it up for him sometime. Muffliato was helpful but other spells did have their benefits.

The bell rang and the noise of chairs being dragged across the floorboards in the classroom stirred both of them into action. Harry stood up and Snape walked forwards to put a restraining hand on his arm.

"Mr. Potter, do not forget we will have our first lesson tonight. We shall commence immediately after your 'happy hour' in the staff room. Meet me at the external door to this office."
Snape released Harry and sat behind his desk.
"Mr. Potter, do your best to not destroy my classroom, if you would. Or at least not the entire castle."

Harry gave a small (unreciprocated) smile. "I'm only giving a small quiz, sir. "

"Indeed. The warning stands."

Harry walked through into the classroom. The class were expecting Professor Snape so they were probably all lined up outside the door already. Harry grinned at the thought of them being terrified by the sudden appearance of Professor Snape from his office door instead of the classroom one. They'd probably all be having panic attacks out there.

Harry set down his notes on the big desk and cleared the chalkboard. He used his wand to move the desks and chairs to where he wanted them. He took one last, deep breath, then opened the door wide.

"Come in second years, and sit down. We're having circle time today!"
The class was made up of Gryffindors and Slytherins. The Gryffindors seemed confused to find him there, but some of them smiled at the reference to the muggle activity. The Slytherins looked less surprised to see him- Snape had told the seniors after all, but they looked a little bemused by the seating arrangement.

Harry had arranged the chairs so that they were in a sort of horseshoe shape with the teacher's desk and blackboard making up the top. This way he had a little room to pace and he could use the edge of the desk and draw on the board where everyone could see. Out of all of the classroom designs it was closest to Divination. At least they're still sitting in actual chairs, Harry thought.

When everyone had chosen a seat -there was an obvious divide between the two houses- Harry walked up to the front.

"Good afternoon, class. My name is Harry Potter." One of the Slytherins couldn't suppress a snorted 'duh'. "Professor Dumbledore has asked me to teach both of the second year classes for the remainder of the year in order to free Sn-  Professor Snape for other duties. I had some experience last year of teaching Defence and I received an O grade on my OWLS so I promise you I do know enough to teach you."
Some of the students looked apprehensive about that.
"Honestly, I have done something like this. Anyone have any questions for me before we start?"

A Slytherin boy put up his hand. Harry thought he recognised him a little, but he didn't know why. "What are we supposed to call you?"

Harry hadn't thought about that, "Just Harry, or Potter. Scarhead, I don't really mind" there were a few nervous giggles, "as long as it's not Professor, I don't have a mastery in anything like most of your other teachers. What's your name?"

"Barnabas Granville, si... Mr. Potter." The boy hesitated, "Is it true that you killed Draco Malfoy?"

Several Gryffindors spun in their seats to glare at the boy. He didn't look particularly ruffled though. The tension in the room was higher than even the usual Slytherin/Gryffindor classes.

"Calm down, guys." Harry said. "Granville, no, I didn’t kill him; Malfoy and I got into a fight. He is recovering in the Hospital Wing at the moment but will soon be back in classes." Harry was not looking forward to that. He paused for a minute.

"I know that everything is a bit odd at the moment, with all of the older years being twits and the professors handing out hundreds of detentions but everything will settle down soon enough and we'll be back to normal. Everyone just needs to calm down a little."

A Gryffindor with a ginger afro put his hand up and spoke when Harry nodded to him. "I'm Riley, Potter. Why is Professor Dumbledore so mad at us? It's like last year when he just disappeared."

Harry ran his hand through his hair and leant back against the desk. "The headmaster is very busy at the moment with a lot of things. I know that he is very unhappy about the fight downstairs, he is not particularly pleased with anybody. Out of everybody, the first and second years are behaving the best and that's another reason for us older ones to be embarrassed. Try to not worry too much, everything will blow over in a couple of weeks."

"Now we need to get started," He said, standing up and starting to pace a little. "If anyone has any other questions, they can come and ask after class. Professor Snape tells me that you have been studying magical creatures. Specifically Dark creatures of greater intelligence. We are going to start off with learning the spells to combat these and then we will move on to some general defensive spells and charms."

Some nods, at least they hadn't fallen asleep quite yet, Harry didn't intend to give them the opportunity. He looked around the desk for an object which might be useful. Seeing nothing else, he picked up an ugly stone paperweight and transfigured it into a red rubber ball. He tossed it to Granville who caught it easily by his fingertips.
"I'd like you to tell me your name and tell me the name of a creature you covered this year along with one weakness. When you’ve done that, throw the ball to someone else. Everyone got it.”

There was a chorus of yeses from the students. The wizard-raised pupils looked very confused. Obviously this wasn’t a technique used in wizarding primary schools.

The small Slytherin with the ball thought for a second, seemed to accept that Harry was mental and went along with it. “Granville, we covered Banshees. They’re strength is their voice and their premonitions, I suppose being without those is a weakness.”

Harry nodded and turned to write this on the board. He drew up three columns; creature, weakness and a blank one as well, “That’s the right sort of idea, throw the ball to someone else, would you.”

Granville nodded and handed it to a girl a couple of seats down. She glared at him for putting her on the spot. Harry chuckled.

“Everyone will have a go, better to get it done with while there are loads of answers.”

She nodded, “My name is Vaisey. We looked at Trolls before the Christmas break. Their weakness is their stupidity.”

“Good, pass it on.”

She threw the ball to a tall Gryffindor girl who looked surprised and almost dropped it. The girl blushed.

“Goodwin, um. Ghouls need to have a home. They don’t like it when you change their nest.”

She passed the ball carefully to the boy next to her. The way the boy was cautious about taking it told Harry that the girl probably had a reputation for being clumsy. It was a lot like how Kingsley behaved around Tonks.

The boy grinned, “I’m Dawson. Talking about trolls, Mr Potter, I heard it’s best to distract them by shoving your wand up their nose and getting a friend to knock them out with their own clubs.”

The class laughed, apparently some stories of his earlier years got passed on in the common rooms.

“It is possible, Dawson.” Harry smiled, “I wouldn’t advise it though. If it happened to me again,” (“It will” a Slytherin muttered.) “Then I would try to conjure something else to amuse the troll to allow me and my friends time to escape.”

“But that wouldn’t be as fun, sir. That way you don’t get to ride piggyback!”

More laughs, “Yes but it also reduces your chances of being smashed to a pulp by an angry troll. Death by troll would be a bit embarrassing, they’re just that stupid. Who’s next?”

Orange afro boy waved his hand and caught the ball easily. The boy could be a good chaser if he was any good on a broom, Harry thought idly.

“Vampires, sir. The obvious ones; garlic, holy water, sunlight and all that.” Riley didn’t wait to be acknowledged but tossed the ball across to a dark Slytherin who didn’t even bother to sit forward, instead he made it seem like it took immense effort to open his eyes.

“Zabini. Werewolves, silver.” He dropped the ball into the lap of the girl on his right and closed his eyes again.

“Is that it, Mr. Zabini? Nothing else?”

The boy sighed and sat up a little more, resigned to having to converse a little. “They’re also pretty much human for the rest of the month, but they’re really weak for a couple of days after the transformation. I guess if you count it as a weakness, werewolves are a lot less fierce if they take the wolfsbane potion before they transform.”

He seemed to have exhausted himself by that extensive speech and collapsed back again. He was a lot like the Zabini in Harry’s year- always bored but never missing anything either.

Harry went on with the rest of the class, getting each of them to speak about a creature. Mostly he was trying to work out everyone’s names and find out a little about each person. For example Riley being full of confidence and Goodwin being cautious. It was more than halfway through the lesson by the time everyone had had a turn and everyone had had a laugh at one girl’s experience at a hag’s birthday party.

“Right, time for the next thing.” Harry scrawled out the top of the third column; Defence technique.

“This time, I’ll have the ball. We’re going to go down the list and work out what we could do if one of these creatures appeared in this classroom right now. Then later in the term, we’ll do this again and hopefully you will all be able to cast some spells which could make everything easier. Alright, if you get the ball, give me an answer. Try to pay attention so I don’t smack you in the face, chaser was never my favourite position.”

The list grew quite quickly. Harry was impressed that Zabini knew about the differences between Lumos Solem and Lumos Duo already. Those spells weren’t covered properly in charms until third year. He was equally impressed by the Goodwin girl’s knowledge of Hinkypunks, but less so of her catching abilities. Yes, she got a nosebleed. Luckily, Harry now carried Nosebleed Nougat in his school robes and he gave her the right side to chew. She didn’t seem too bothered by the incident and Harry suspected that it happened quite often and he pitied her at flying practices.

A Slytherin called Alptraum had some insightful information on getting rid of ghouls which Harry planned on verifying and passing on to the Weasleys, although he thought they actually quite liked theirs when he kept quiet.

Harry got them to help put all the desks back in place before the bell. He knew there was a spell for that but he couldn’t for the life of him remember it right now. A couple of them had questions which he managed to get through while the rest of the class was copying the chart down from the board.

He set them eight inches on the differences between the four types of troll. They all looked a little amazed, that was only two inches on each troll. That was probably the easiest homework they’d been given since the beginning of first year. That didn’t matter, three or so lines on the characteristics of each would be enough to engrave it in their memories for a few months.

Harry was quite happy with how it had gone, they all left the room still smiling which was a rare enough occurrence for students leaving a Gryffindor and Slytherin class. There wasn’t any mixing between the houses but there didn’t seem to be any obviously abrasive encounters either.

Harry jumped as the office door opened and Snape walked in. Harry wondered how long he had been there and wondered why he hadn’t put up a silencing charm on the doors. Wait a minute…

“You said you knew I was there because a silencing charm flashed up!”

Snape didn’t bother to turn around from his scrutiny of the blackboard. “Did you just figure something out Mr Potter? Do share with me why it wouldn’t have worked, I am eager to hear.”

Harry frowned at him, “I could hear what was happening through the door, so obviously you didn’t have a ward set up.”

“Obviously.”

The man had a talent with that word, Harry swore nobody else could draw it out like that.

“So it had to be something else.”

“Quite right.”

Harry held in a groan. Snape evidently wasn’t just going to tell him. The man had gone back to studying the board. “Potter, your spelling is atrocious. Did you let them copy this down?”

“Sorry, sir. I’ll correct it properly in their work.”

“See that you do.”

Harry finished his written copy of the information and Snape cleared the board while he was writing the last sentence out.  By then the rest of the sixth year NEWT class was arriving and Harry had to go take his seat.

There was the sound of a door slamming nearby and Harry turned to look out of the door just as a swirl of purple and gold robes flashed by. Dumbledore, and by all indication he had just left the DADA office. Harry grimaced. It was odd to imagine that Snape and Dumbledore had been in the next room the entire time, listening to him teach. On the other hand, neither had been annoyed enough to burst into the room while he was running the lesson.

Snape got started and spent not an insignificant time lecturing Harry for his inability to use non-verbal spells. He still couldn’t get anything useful to work apart from Levicorpus and Harry knew better than to try to use it on the head of Slytherin. Especially since Harry had watched his father use the spell in one of Snape’s worst memories. And the man was a Death Eater. How embarrassing must the experience have been if that was on his worst memory list?

 Harry was practicing curse breaking with Hermione, they were supposed to be doing it verbally first and then moving onto the non-verbal through the lesson. As always Hermione was progressing with annoying ease. Harry was fine with the first step but couldn’t get anything to work without speaking. Once he did think it had worked, but had to be rescued from his rapidly shrivelling ears by Hermione who was quick with the counter. He didn’t get very far on and knew he’d have to keep going in the next lessons, until he could get the bracelet they were practicing with safe enough to put on.

The class was oddly quiet without Ron and Malfoy there. They both had a tendency to whine a lot in this class. Every class if you were being honest. The hospital wing was probably becoming more and more unbearable as they both recovered. Snape gave Harry an extra 3 inches on his homework for transfiguring his paperweight, giving Harry two feet on identifying curses with shifting properties.

Dinner was another quiet affair. Dumbledore seemed to have returned to his office after his brief spying session on Harry’s class and was once more absent. Professor McGonagall announced that there was now a schedule of all of the detentions received by the students, which was available on the wall of the great hall. Apparently detentions were due to be from 7 until 10 every weekday evening and a further eight hours over the weekend. Quiddich matches were suspended for a month in the hope that by then some members of each of the teams might be free to play.

Harry wondered again how they were going to fit so many people into detentions. They could probably clear the Forbidden Forrest with this many, not that anyone wanted to.

When all of the dishes had been cleared away, everyone rushed off to get in some homework time before today’s detentions. Harry remembered that he had to spend some time in the staff room and made his way there. He hadn’t been in there when there was staff before- unless you counted the time when everyone had been panicking as the Chamber of Secrets was opened and he and Ron had hidden in the cupboard. Harry didn’t. Maybe it would be best to not tell anyone about that.

Harry made it to the stone gargoyles before realising he didn’t know the password, he wasn’t sure there was a password. How were you supposed to get hold of teachers after classes? Hermione would know. The gargoyles weren’t the most sympathetic to his plight.

“What do you want Sonny Jim? Classes are over.”

“I need to get in, they’re expecting me.”

“Ooh, expecting you are they? That explains why they are here to let you in, doesn’t it.”

Harry groaned and barely resisted smashing them with a blasting curse.

“Please open the door. I don’t want to get detention for the rest of time.”

“That might be a slight exaggeration Mr Potter.”

Harry spun around. Professor McGonagall was standing there, watching with a small smile on her face.

“Probably only a couple of weeks, what with the volume we are going to be getting through with this new schedule. Shall we go in? Hugo, Victor, if you would.”

“Of course ma’am.” They said together, moving aside to clear the door.

McGonagall laughed at the look of nervousness on Harry’s face, “Be brave Potter, we aren’t all that bad. Except Severus, of course.” She walked into the room.

Harry gulped, trying to gather his nerve. He schooled his expression into one that was slightly calmer and stepped through.