It was August before they would start their sixth year at Hogwarts. They had all gotten their letters for school books and equipment and there were hardly any on it that they didn't already have. One item was perplexing. "What's a gun?" Ron asked.
"It's like a wand that Muggles use," Erin told him. "It shoots fire, I think. They use it to try and hurt each other...oh!" She had just realized it was on the list. Below it said in large letters "NO AMMUNITION". "What Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is going to show us how to use a gun?"
"Are they those things Muggle kids have that glow?" Ron asked.
"No, those are glow rods," Harry told him. "They're mostly harmless."
"They are a little like wands, you do point them at your intended target," Hermione said. "They fire bullets and they're often fatal. If you have them made of silver or other concoctions they can dispatch supernatural creatures like certain breeds of...well...werewolves and other creatures." She replied. "Sam and Dean use them often, especially Dean, although I can't say that I'm a great fan of the weaponry in most cases, but I suppose it might be useful to know how to use one just in case."
"That's probably why they're on here," Erin said. "Silver knife, that will be easy to find... and it says to get another one that's not used in our potion making. I think Dad will have to buy the guns for us...I don't think kids are allowed to."
"They're not, certainly not at sixteen anyhow." Hermione said.
They looked in the phone book, well, Hermione did anyhow, and they found a gun shop near there. They called to see what they would need to buy the guns. The man told them he had some guns especially for teens that take classes in gun safety. They went there after exchanging some money for Muggle money at Gringott's. Once inside the man helped them pick out guns that they could hold comfortably, he was able to get them their permits to have them. They had to sign papers and everything and Sirius paid for them and the cases they came in.
"Thanks so much." Sirius told the shop keeper once everything had been taken care of and the guns, cases, and permits had been taken care of.
Dean Winchester missed his car, but he could deal with the train travel to get to the school. At least it wasn't a plane. When Sam wasn't being disgustingly cute with the new girl Louisa that he had met in Diagon Alley (she was helping them get accustom to the Wizarding World) he had his nose in a book. He had picked up a lot of them since they got to the hidden magic parts of London and now they were on their way to the school. Dean had disassembled, cleaned, oiled, and reassembled all his weapons a ridiculous amount of times out of boredom. All his knives were polished and sharpened. He had everything he needed in perfect working order and he was bored again...until he saw a cart go by that looked like it was jam packed with candy. "Oooh," He sprang up and opened the door to their compartment and felt around in his pocket for some of the funny wizard money Louisa had given him.
"Oh! Sweets for you, Mr. Winchester?" the cart lady asked.
"Oh god yes," Dean said eyeballing the cart, but he had no idea what anything was.
Louisa got up. "He'll like the cauldron cakes and the pumpkin pasties." She told the witch. "I'll take some of everything."
Louisa helped Dean count out his money for his goodies and he took handfuls of the sweets the witch gave him. Then she helped Louisa with her purchases. Sam actually unstuck his nose from his current book, A History of Hogwarts, when he smelled chocolate. "What did you get?" He asked them both.
"I dunno man, but they have way better candy than we do." Dean said through a mouthful of deliciousness. He might fall into a sugar coma, but he would die happy.
"About as close to pie as you can get." Louisa said closing the door to the carriage they were in once the trolley witch had moved on. "I got some of everything for you to try. Lots of the kids like collecting chocolate frog cards, there's a famous witch or wizard in every pack." She explained, "Careful of the frogs though they jump. And there're licorice wands, they're almost just like licorice whips. The cauldron cakes are like little cauldrons filled with foam and ooey gooey goodness and pumpkin pasties are like pumpkin pie all closed up, the crust is slightly different though. There're lollies and chocolate slabs in almost every flavor. Oh! And Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans! They mean EVERY flavor in the world, so you have to be careful what you put in your mouth."
Sam took a slab of chocolate Louisa offered him knowing he liked it. "These are awesome." Dean said munching on a Pumpkin Pasty.
Sam smiled a little. "I bet you wish we went to this school when we were kids. Huh?" Sam teased.
"If they were gonna feed me all the time then hell yes." Dean said.
Louisa laughed. "And I bet the subjects were much more interesting."
"Well, geek boy over here is interested in everything if there's a book about it." Dean said. "But I might notta dropped out here." Assuming he got a pass.
"You actually learn about Dark Creatures and defending yourself against them and how to make different kinds of potions." Louisa said. "And there's a class totally devoted to learning about all sorts of Magical Creatures and the care of them. There's also Charms and Transfiguration. And once a month on Saturdays we go out and look at the stars and learn constellations and all of that: and Divination, and Arithmancy, and Ancient Runes, History of Magic, of course. I had a blast all my time at Hogwarts."
"Sounds more interesting than Algebra, that's for sure," Dean agreed. "Doesn't really matter now anyway, we've been there done that in good American public high school."
"We didn't have classes like that, Dean." Sam said.
"I just mean we don't have to go back to school."
"If you ask the other teachers they'll let you sit in on a class if you're interested in the subject." Dean could already tell Sam would be sitting in.
"You know, I'm still not sure why this Dumble-dude know who WE are." He said shaking his head. "Not that I'm knocking the gig," any more anyway, not after he and Sam had the knock down drag out about it in the motel room when they were offered the job.
"Dean, everyone knows who you are in the Wizarding world!" Louisa told him like he was crazy. "Your Dad was a LEGEND! Defeating Dark Creatures and everything."
"Seriously?" Dean asked her, raising his brows. Then why the heck had they never gotten any magical help?
"Well, Dean, I mean...why make that up?" Sam asked.
"I'm not saying she's making it up I just find it hard to believe." Dean confessed. It was weird foreign territory to Dean, being legendary for something.
"Yeah, I mean your lives are talked about all the time in the Daily Prophet and the Quibbler. You have reporters following you around to get the stories."
Dean blinked and glanced over at Sam and Sam shrugged a little. "Can I see some of those?"
"Sure," she climbed up on the seat and opened her back pulling out a scrapbook. She hopped down and opened it. It was filled with newspaper articles all about them and their Dad, along with moving pictures.
"What the hell..." Dean said skimming some articles.
All the articles were extremely accurate if a bit flowery talking about the boys and the cases they had, how they found out what it was they were dealing with and how they dispatched them. "You have quite the following. You have fan clubs all over the world. And if you've ever discovered anything missing, chances are it's been sold to one of these fan clubs."
"Holy Crap," Dean blinked.
"Dean, look at this." Sam said a bit awed. There was an issue that memorialized and mourned the loss of John Winchester after the deal he made with the YED (Yellow-Eyed Demon). It was like a Kennedy had been assassinated or something. John Winchester was the baddest badass to someone other than just Dean. There were all sorts of letters in there that people had sent in to mourn his loss. The Prophet and the Quibbler had printed the best of the letters to share them with the readers. The picture of John Winchester was much how the boys remembered him.
It was kind of a little emotional... the sincerity of most of them, the respect. There were also pictures of Sam and Dean at the pyre, and how the Wizarding World's hearts went out to the two men who kept the world a safer place. After awhile they had to kind of put them down. It was a little much. "So who's supposed to do our job while we're...teaching or whatever?" Dean asked.
"There are other Hunters in the world, Dean. Just because you're two of the most well-known doesn't mean that the work isn't being done at all if you aren't doing it personally." Louisa reminded him.
"Think of it this way, Dean. We're teaching magic users how to defend themselves and others and the world without magic. This is only going to better the world." Sam said.
"And think about how much you could learn while you're there." Louisa said. She grinned and whispered in Sam's ear. "Potions, History..."
Oh God, drive a spike through his head. Dean didn't want to be here for the geek make out session.
They got to Hogsmeade station after dark and exited with the students to the carriages. They left their things on the train and they would be taken up separately. They got up on one of the carriages, there was a skeletal looking horse drawing it. "That's a thestral." Erin told Sam and Dean as they joined them on the carriage. "Only people who have seen death can see them."
"You can see them I take it?" Hermione asked.
"Oh yeah," Dean agreed. Thestral wasn't all that bad when you've seen so many deaths, demons, and reapers. Heck even died yourself. "Downright cute and fluffy compared to a hellhound."
"They're actually really gentle creatures." Sam said. "They just look off-putting to some people."
"Like I said, the My Little Pony of the supernatural world if you ask me," Dean added.
The boys ate their fill at the feast. Pie seemed to be a big part of dessert as it was a favorite of Dean's. They were set up in a part of the castle by the Defense Against the Dark Arts Classroom. The creepy thing was there was this moving portrait of their Father in there and even weirder... one of their mother. Dean wasn't sure he was going to be able to sleep around it. "Where did those come from?" Dean asked.
"I don't know..." Sam said watching his mother smile down at him, her eyes following him as he moved to look at a note left on a table for them.
'Sam and Dean, I hope you enjoy these paintings, they were commissioned by your parents many years ago. I hope they will be a source of peace and comfort to you. They are, in all ways, your parents. They will live forever in these paintings. Thank you for accepting the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Yours, Albus Dumbledore.'
Dean was kind of moving back and forth watching his father give him a bemused look as if this were some typical 'everywhere I go the eyes follow me' painting. "It's kind of creepy." Dean said.
"Well, I guess it's the thought that counts." Sam said glancing back up at his mother.
"John, stop teasing him."
"I can't help it, it's better than the 'I've got your nose trick.' when he was two." John laughed. Dean went a little bug eyed glancing back and forth between them, then saw his father disappear from his portrait and didn't know where he was until he showed up in Mom's.
"You can talk?" He asked.
"Of course we can talk." John told him. Sam ran a hand through his hair not sure what to make of this. He hadn't read about magical portraits yet. He knew they weren't their parents because their parents were dead, but...it was weirdly convincing. It was also really weird to think he was practically his mother's age when she died. He remembered when Dean turned the same age it had really messed him up.
"Oh, dear, I see this is upsetting you." Mary said to Sam. "Let's see if I can explain this. The portraits are us, just not our spirits. It's us at the moment of our deaths captured in the painting so we don't really die to those we were close to. We are your parents. We're their minds captured here. We're still us and everything you ever knew of us and things you never knew as well. The sum of all our lives are caught up in the paintings. Every thought, every action, everything we remember consciously and unconsciously is here and then we live on through this."
Sam and Dean stared up at them. Mom was just how Dean remembered her and Dad looked like he did before he had died. "I don't get it, I mean..." Dean reached out to touch the canvas. It just felt like a canvas, but his mother reached out to put her hand to his, kneeling down in the picture.
"It's magic," Sam said, even hearing what his mother said really that was the only way to justify it at all. "It's them it's just not their souls…" At least that's how he tried to understand it based on what he heard. He smiled up at them. His mother was so beautiful.
"We're here and not going anywhere." She promised them. "Now, you two should go to bed. Your rooms have been prepared." Two doors were on the other wall they hadn't noticed them with the paintings there.
They glanced at the rooms and figured out pretty quickly who's was whose. "Get some shut eye, boys." Dean heard their Dad say.
Dean stood beside Sam in front of their first ever class. Typically while Sam was excited Dean was skeptical at best. "Welcome to Defense Against the Dark Arts." Sam addressed the room.
"Or you might as well call it 'defense against anything trying to gank your ass'." Dean added.
Sam didn't really condone the swearing in a classroom, but it seemed to grab the attention of anyone whose attention wasn't already grabbed. "Now magic is great in the right hands, but you have to know how to work without it instead of solely relying on it." He explained. "You might get disarmed, you may not have the luxury of your wand...or a potion, or any other specialty tool. You might just have your bare hands and whatever you can improvise around you which is why it comes in handy to learn other skills. You practice something enough and it'll become almost instinctive and unconscious when you really need it."
"For example, when your life depends on it," Dean added pointedly.
Everyone was hanging on every word now eagerly, even the Slytherins. "Some of us get raised in this life." Sam said. "Where darkness and death and hunting is all you know from the time you're a kid. Monsters are real...others have no idea how terrifying the world really is until it collides with us...usually in a very deadly unapologetic way and that can go for a witch, wizard, or a squib, or Muggle as you call them." He said seriously.
"A vampire, a shifter, hell do you think a demon gives to craps whether or not you're magical?" Dean asked. "You better believe the answers no. They might find it cute for a second. And angels...Angels don't even have a sick sense of humor about it. They're just prideful dicks with wings. And don't get me started on the crap kicking around purgatory because that's actually less fun."
"We'll cover all of this and more, as much as we can this term, but everyone needs to come prepared and willing to get their hands dirty." Sam said. "Does everyone have their gear that we asked you to get before the term began?" He asked the room.
Everyone began to take out the gun boxes from their bags, along with the other stuff they had asked for: Silver knives, holy water, vampire blood, and a lot of other things as well.
They would start with knowing your weapons and learning how to care for them all the ins and outs and intricacies of the weaponry before they would use any of it. Knives first then they would move on to others. Cross bows, guns, so on.
Seamus raised his hand. "My mum said she sent you the key to my gun box." He said. "She said that I'm not allowed to use it without your supervision and it was better that way." Some people laughed, but it was good natured knowing Seamus' penchant for blowing things up.
"We did receive it." Sam said kindly. "And that's probably for the best." Better to be safe.
The kids all had a rudimentary knowledge of caring for knives from potions class and how to clean them, so it was just building on that.
It was probably the most hands on they had been in a long time. As they worked Dean got to showing them all different kinds of blades from some as seemingly harmless as a paring knife up to things as wicked as machetes. They also branched off a little into the uses of silver and iron. What they repelled, what they could hurt. The second half of class would get them physically moving, working on their physical abilities. Like a gun needs cleaning or a knife needs sharpening, your body also needed attention in order to perform at its best. Sam was even happy to inform them they he never liked this part either but he couldn't deny that his Dad had only ever done it in order to make them stronger. "Lemme tell you, man, even the dorkiest dork has a prayer of becoming strong." Dean told them. "You guys didn't know Sam when he was twelve. Kids was kind of a loser, now he's kind of a badass." Dean told them.
They could tell right away which of the kids weren't used to physical exercise, The Gryffindor boys were all pretty good, and Erin was definitely the most fit of the girls. Hermione, Lavender, and Parvati weren't doing so well. Hermione was in pretty good shape, but she didn't do much physically. It was a good idea to start though. The Slytherins were in bad shape. Draco and Blaise didn't do too badly, but the rest were almost hopeless so far. The Hufflepuffs were pretty good and the Ravenclaws weren't bad, but not too good either. Of course certain individuals stuck out as being ahead of the others or behind.
"Don't give in, the more you do it the easier it'll get." Sam said encouragingly. "Remember this could save your life one day."
"Dodging and outrunning Death Eaters throwing spells at you." Erin said, "Very important."
When they were done Sam had them cool down and stretch, got them water and something to put into their stomachs. This entire week would be weapons training and handling and physical work. Next week they could start getting into more training and information about different creatures.
Erin stayed after class. "I wondered if you're aware of what we've already studied in here?" She asked them. Teachers usually got a rough overview, but nothing too in depth.
"A little more knowledge can't hurt." Sam said.
She took out a thick book from her bag. "This is what we've worked on. The creatures anyway, you can look through it and see where our knowledge should be expanded. We have studied most nocturnal creatures already, but you might not think it's extensive enough."
"Thanks, Erin." Sam said.
"Just return it when you're finished with it, there's no hurry." She added before offering him a good day and leaving.
"Well, welcome to Hogwarts," Dean said looking at the book. "That's your department."