[This Lordship Business]: I Have Been a Brother to O.W.L.S, gen

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

Harry hears people screaming as they enter the Defense classroom, and starts hurrying down the corridor, his only thoughts focused on The curse, the curse, I thought I had more time before it started affecting Sirius—

And then he skids to a stop as he comes to the doorway, and sighs. There’s a very realistic Nundu standing in the center of the classroom, roaring and opening its mouth as if to breathe poison all over everybody.

Realistic, that is, if you don’t notice its tiny size or the way that its head thins into wispy nothingness as it approaches the ceiling.

“Sirius,” Harry says wearily.

“What?” Sirius’s head pops up from over the Nundu’s back, his mouth wide open. “Help, help, I’m being kept captive!”

“It’s an illusion,” Harry calls down the corridor. Hermione and Ron step up beside him. Hermione is shaking her head with disapproval, while Ron peers at the illusion with curiosity. “Notice the way it turns into little more than shadow and light near the ceiling?”

“And the floor,” Ron says, pointing out the way that the Nundu’s paws appear to hover above the stones.

“Five points to Gryffindor for observation skills!” Sirius rolls his wand, and the illusion fractures into light and disappears.

Harry sighs and enters the classroom. “You don’t have to scare anyone,” he says to Sirius out of the corner of his mouth, as students take their seats.

“Everyone.”

“What?”

“I don’t have to scare everyone. Some of you are probably good enough at Defense not to need it. But I have to scare anyone. Anyone who can be fooled by illusions like that needs a better grounding in prank spells.”

Harry is sort of starting to regret that he suggested Sirius take over the Defense post, although to be fair, Dumbledore didn’t have to listen to him.

“Welcome to your first real class of Defense Against the Dark Arts this year!” Sirius winks at all and sundry and points with his wand to the blackboard. Large, angular letters appear, spelling out Sirius’s name, the name of the class, and a list of five spells. “How many people already know how to perform all of these spells?”

Harry blinks at the list. The Shield Charm, the Blasting Curse, the Disarming Charm, and the Stupefying Charm are familiar to him, but not the last one.

“What’s the Light-Blinder, Professor Black?” Hermione asks at the same time.

“One that constructs illusions like the Nundu I had in front of the class!” Sirius says, waving his wand around with enthusiasm. “It keeps your enemies from seeing what’s right in front of them. Light-Blinder!”

Harry thinks that’s a somewhat roundabout name for the spell, but he’s willing to try it. He puts up his hand. “Is there a way to keep it from fading out near the extremities so it’s not as obvious what it is, sir?”

Sirius snorts a little, maybe because Harry is calling him “sir.” “If you concentrate hard when you cast it, yeah. It also works better when it’s an illusion of something that your enemy expects to be there.”

Harry nods, already determined to master it. He didn’t practice any illusion spells except a few very basic ones with the Defense study group, mostly because he thought it was more important for them to master other hexes.

Sirius looks around the classroom with a glint in his eye. “These are the five most useful spells you can have when it comes to defeating your enemies.”

“But it’s a mixture of defensive and offensive magic, Professor.”

That’s Neville. Sirius points at him, which makes Neville flinch in his seat a little. “That’s right! But when it comes to defeating someone, it doesn’t really matter if you leave them Stunned or just make yourself able to run away. What matters is that they’re not coming after you anymore.”

“What about injuring them, Professor?” Padma asks.

“Well, of course, the Blasting Curse does that…”

And Sirius starts going on about the Blasting Curse, while Harry takes notes with a sense of relief. It’s important to have a competent Defense professor.

Now, more than ever.

*

“Hermione, are you all right?”

“Yes, of course I am,” Hermione says, turning around to stare at Harry as if it’s much more insane to come back into the common room at midnight with a cage full of struggling Niffler than it is to be sitting by the fire at midnight huddled over a book. “Where were you?”

“Salazar got out and went to the seventh floor again. I’ve retrieved him.”

“Have you figured out why he wants to go there?”

“No.” Harry scowls down at his pet. Salazar rears on his hind legs and chatters at Harry. “I hate saying that he’s being unreasonable, when he saved my life in Vince’s house, but he won’t give us back the locket, either.”

“What locket?”

Harry gives Hermione a sidelong curious glance as he sets Salazar’s cage down beside the couch. “I thought I explained? Salazar took a locket from Grimmauld Place that Kreacher wants back, and normally he lets me take things out of his pouch without a problem, but he’s not giving this back.”

“Yeah, I think you explained.”

Harry watches Hermione for a second. She’s staring at the page of the book in her hand so hard that her eyes appear to be watering. “Are you okay, Hermione?”

“I can’t do it!”

Harry blinks as Hermione flings the book into the air and breaks down, her arms wrapped around her head, sobbing. Even Salazar stops scratching the cage bars to watch her. Harry pats her awkwardly on the back.

“You can’t do what?”

“Study everything I need to study for O.W.L.S! I can do some of the spells, but I can’t do all the practice I need for the practicals, and I need more time for the written exams, and the Muggle Studies exam is going to be hard because it’s based on what people think about Muggles, not what’s actually true—”

“You’re brilliant, though, Hermione—”

“I could do it if I had a Time-Turner! But I don’t! So I can’t do it!”

“I promise, Hermione, we’re going to—”

“What if I fail? What if I get the worst score on any exam since Barnaby the Useless?”

“I think his name was Uriel the Useless,” Harry says thoughtlessly.

Hermione gapes at him for a moment, and then bursts into tears. Harry pats her back awkwardly.

Ahalam, who insisted on coming with Harry while he searched for Salazar and then just slept through the whole thing, wakes up and edges his head out of Harry’s robes. “What is the matter with your friend? Does she have a torn sinew-thing? Does she want me to show her my scales? They are beautiful and glow in the firelight.”

“I don’t think she would like that right now,” Harry tells Ahalam, who only stretches and goes back to sleeping in Harry’s robe pocket without answering. He pats Hermione’s back again and hugs her when she goes on crying.

She does calm down eventually, and lifts her head, drying the tears on her face with the back of her hand. “You’ll help me, Harry, won’t you?”

“Calm down?”

“Help me study!” A truly terrifying fire has come to life in Hermione’s eyes. “If I have a study partner who’s great at the practical magic, then I can handle studying for the written portion of the exams. If you help me. If you stay by my side every day and never abandon me—”

“Uh. Sure, Hermione.”

Hermione beams and hugs him. Harry goes up to the dormitory with Ahalam and Salazar’s cage, and lies awake for a while hoping that Hermione doesn’t mean to make him keep that promise literally.

With his luck, though, she will.