Harry Potter and the Memories of a Sociopath, Ch 10: Defense and Offense

Here's how it is:

During his second year at Hogwarts, Harry is still concerned about the fate of the world, but has made significant progress: Hermione has obtained a phoenix and destroyed Azkaban's dementors, and Bones is grudgingly taking his cues on national policy. Progress toward a functional Philosopher's Stone based hospital at Hogwarts has stalled due to ward incompatibilities and a temporary solution has been set up in the now-abandoned Azkaban tower.

Sprout has mysteriously received a gift: the long-lost and apparently cursed Hufflepuff Cup and has displayed uncharacteristically aggressive behavior afterwards. Moody detected evidence of dark magic on her but found nothing conclusive. Sprout had requested Hermione's help with research of a vaguely defined nature. Draco, after having found the Riddle Diary, is showing some very Voldemort-like thoughts and behaviors, working to amass power and followers for himself, and brutally knocking down anyone who gets in his way.

Luna demonstrates uncanny knowledge even though she's obviously not a real seer. Moody has hypothesized that Defense professor Gilderoy Lockhart is incompetent and relying on liquid luck for his accomplishments. Bellatrix is still at large and able to appear in public despite being Magical Britain's most wanted. The inmate assumed to be Pettigrew has disappeared, leaving questions about his true identity and possible crimes.

Harry has a relatively long list of things he intends to investigate, including big picture items like Merlin's Interdict, prophecy, magic-technology interactions, and helping Dumbledore, as well as smaller scale things like revisiting his conclusions about comed-tea, looking into Ravenclaw's Diadem, and looking into whether the potion liquid luck is a real thing or a cover story. Magical interferences with technology are proving more difficult to pin down than he had hoped. Moody, Bones, McGonagall, and Hermione were all concerned when Harry advocated releasing Voldemort from the ring in order to question him about the mirror and help rescue Dumbledore.

Harry took a deep breath and addressed the arithmancy class. "I'm sure you're all familiar with this object, as it's one of the dueling targets from Battle Magic. They use several standard magic-detecting charms which, when activated, trigger one of two noisemaking charms: if the spell impacts a roughly circular area, it triggers the higher pitched sound, and if the impact area is elongated, it triggers the lower pitched sound.

"When I chose this project, I was especially interested in how the targets hover. It turns out that the spheres are hollow, and have a long, thin rod attached to the inside. That rod carries a hover charm which I believe to be one of the spells applied to flying brooms. It lacks any charms required to make it move forward, turn, or anything else; it's apparently designed to be moved manually with hover charms.

"When activated...", Harry tapped the sphere with his wand, "it casts a relatively complicated set of shielding charms, including at least six variations of protego, which result in that blue color. The outer shields protect it from cutting curses, blasting curses, heat, shield breakers, and spells which dispel magic (like finite incantatem). I can't get analytic charms to read anything deeper than that while the shields are active, but the magical power output indicates that it would probably take a trained auror to break through the shields. These things were designed absorb some serious attacks.

"The most interesting thing I found is", Harry tapped the sphere again, "when deactivated, this red color is associated with a spell that I haven't been able to identify. The analytical charms indicate that it has a small but negative power output. I haven't found a book that mentions anything like this, but I believe it's slowly recharging its internal magic stores off of Hogwarts' ambient magic. I tried to find some information on how old the spheres are, but haven't found evidence of a Defense professor buying or requesting anything like them in the last two decades. So either that paperwork is gone or they've lasted much longer than most charmed objects that channel this much power. That's weak evidence that they have the ability to recharge."

Professor Vector stood and walked over, waving her wand in the direction of the sphere, "Very interesting, Mr. Potter. I've never heard of a charm like that either, but I'm curious. I'll have to do some research." She shook her head slightly and turned to face the class, "Mr. Weasley, you're next."

Percy produced a Quick-Quotes-Quill and began describing a set of charms enabling a voice recognition ability that would make any muggle programmer jealous. Harry wanted to pay attention but found himself distracted. He reread the note several times, trying to make sure he'd remember its contents. Once in a while, he would absent-mindedly try to put the note into his pouch, only to have his focus restored by the sharp jerk of the string which tied the note to his finger.

After the presentations were finished and the class was dismissed, Harry walked up to Professor Vector's desk. "Mr. Potter?"

Harry frowned and glanced back at the note he was carrying, "I wanted to ask you about confundus charms. Specifically, if you know a way to detect or analyze them. I think I bought something with a confundus on it, and want to confirm and determine exactly what it's doing."

She shook her head, "I generally avoid confundus charms; there's just too many things that can go wrong when working with them. But you can use 'nullus confundio' to dispel a confundus charm from a person or an object. I believe the instructions are in the fourth or fifth year Charms textbook. If the object behaves differently after you cast one of those, that's proof it was using a confundus."

Harry nodded, "I'd rather leave that as a last resort, but thank you."

Professor Felthorne addressed the second-year Gryffindor-Slytherin potions class, "Today, we'll be making something more practical than usual: doxycide. For totally unrelated reasons, instead of banishing your potions after I've tested them, you'll be storing them in the containers provided."

Nott raised his hand and asked, "So who has the doxy infestation?"

"Why would you think someone has a doxy infestation?"

"We're saving a potion for the first time, and a lot of potion, judging by the size of that pile of containers. Also, instead of using Essence of Doxy like you'd get from a potions shop, we're making our own by crushing these doxy skeletons. So someone has a doxy problem."

"You're right; some of my relatives recently obtained a fairly large property with a fairly serious infestation. It's best to poison them all at once so they can't learn to recognize and avoid the poison. So the plan is to spread a ton of it and invite a bunch of people over for target practice."

There were no further questions and the class began preparing the ingredients for the potion.

Professor Flitwick opened his office door, "Good morning, Harry. Come in."

"Good afternoon, professor. I'm looking for analytic charms to..." There was a pause as Harry rechecked the note in his hand, "detect confundus charms and what they're set up to do."

Flitwick smiled, "Is there a specific object you suspect is charmed with a confundus?"

Harry put one hand near the mouth of his pouch and read off the note, "can of comed-tea." He looked back up at Flitwick, paused, then shook his head, looked at the can and put it on Flitwick's desk.

Flitwick chuckled, "I don't need an analytic charm to see that's confunded to try to prevent someone from thinking about it. You've clearly been putting significant effort into fighting it." He pulled out his wand and waved it over the can for a moment. "That's strange. It's not charmed to prevent people from thinking about it; it uses a confundus to make people either want to drink it or not want to drink it. It can also put an inhibition-lowering confundus on anyone nearby." He scanned the can for another moment. "There's very complex web of charms to trigger those effects and another set of effects that apply after someone starts drinking. I'd normally suggest asking Professor Vector to look at something with a web of interacting spells like this but you probably already did. She probably wanted to break the confundus just to be safe. But I don't see anything that would cause what you appear to be experiencing."

"At the beginning of this year, I decided to try to drink it at regular times to investigate what it did. I'd guess that it can't determine the difference between me thinking about it versus thinking about drinking it anymore, so it's interrupting either thought. Anyway, can you show me the analytic charms you were using?"

At that moment a cat patronus appeared, "Filius, there's been an explosion in the potions classroom. There were a few minor injuries, but Rianne is magically exhausted. I need you to try to figure out what happened and make sure there are no more volatile potions."

"The library has an multi-volume encyclopedia of analytic charms in the advanced charms section; look for the 'confundus' section", Flitwick quickly concluded as they exited his office.

Moody stepped through the floo, "I found a pair of spells that should work for detecting whether someone is currently possessed or has been possessed in about the last 18 hours. So from now on, we're going to do a little extra verification before meetings, to make sure we're all us."

Harry replied, "Uh... it's probably a good idea, but before you start, you should know that there's a good chance Hermione and/or I will produce false positives as a result of some of the magic we've been exposed to."

Moody stared at Harry, "Really."

Harry shrugged, "A remembrall could detect what what Voldemort did to me nine years after the fact. I'd imagine a spell designed to detect horcrux effects would do at least as well."

"And her? What did Voldemort do to her?"

"It's possible that it will appear that she's possessing herself as a result of the process that brought her back to life."

"Noted." Moody pointed his wand at Harry and began casting spells.

A moment later he concluded, "Your paranoia was not justified. This time. The scans were both negative."

He shifted his wand to point at Hermione. A moment later he frowned and her wand flew across the table to Moody. Hermione let out a brief scream.

Harry and McGonagall both immediately drew on Moody, who looked up at Harry and smiled, "I provisionally believe you now."

"What the hell was that?" McGonagall demanded.

"She tested positive for current possession, like Harry predicted. I had to make sure it really was a special circumstance and not Voldemort spying on our meetings. So I used a quick legilimency probe to break her occlumency barriers and check."

Harry scowled, "Her occlumency barriers aren't that strong."

"And if Voldemort were possessing her, he'd know that and be able to imitate weak barriers failing under an attack. I had to look for an occlumency barrier under the occlumency barrier."

"Voldemort is a perfect occlumens. That test wouldn't mean anything."

"True, but I know a few tricks that I'd expect Voldemort to get wrong."

There was more disagreement during which everyone was outraged about something and no one's opinion changed. After this, Bones scanned Moody, and Moody finished scanning the others and the meeting started.

Bones began, "So, I have worse news than usual. A low-level ministry employee reported his time turner missing. He claimed to have no idea what happened, so investigators went through his memories with a pensieve and discovered that it was stolen by Bellatrix Black in Diagon alley. During follow-up questioning, he recalled a woman bumping into him and apologizing before walking away. He repeated this under veritaserum, despite the pensieve showing Bellatrix (completely undisguised and looking identical to her wanted posters), walk up, trip him, and pull the time-turner off his neck, then sneer at him and apparate away."

Hermione asked, "Does that mean he was memory charmed?"

"No, a badly done memory charm will look faded or foggy in a pensieve, but I've never heard of a case where someone believes something different than what they remember."

Harry added, "But one of the main uses of pensieve is to recover details people can't remember anymore. That implies they're displaying information that people don't have conscious access to. Someone might consciously recall a version of a memory that their mind reconstructed, while a more accurate memory of the same event is stored somewhere else."

Moody replied, "I have actually seen that before, when someone strongly believes something then sees something that contradicts that belief, the real memory will show up on a pensieve but they'll insist under veritaserum that it didn't. Of course, normally that means you've got an occlumens. But there have been two cases where I knew that the person wasn't."

Harry asked, "Why did a low-level ministry employee have a time turner, anyway?"

Bones sighed, "Unspeakables are under the authority of the Ministry, not the Wizengamot. I'm working on it."

Harry smirked, "After becoming a major player in the government, I keep seeing more dangers in democracy and finding myself wishing this country were more like a dictatorship. I should probably be more concerned about this." Only Hermione actually appeared to be concerned by this.

Bones looked at McGonagall apologetically, "If I get my way, time-turners won't be available for students either."

Harry waved off this concern, "Scheduling classes without conflicts can't be that difficult. If nothing else, I can ask my dad to use his computer to brute-force a solution. That shouldn't take a very complicated program, and even if it needs 12 hours to run, he can start it before going to work."

McGonagall looked at Harry skeptically, "Have you really had that much success making muggle technology and magic work together?"

"We don't need them to. I can get a punch-card reader, and we can have students select the classes they want on punch cards."

"I don't know what that means, but I don't think I'm going to like it."

"We can try a small-scale test later. Maybe over Christmas break."

"Perhaps. Anyway, Amelia, what is the Ministry doing to catch Bellatrix?"

"Very little. There were already auror patrols at Diagon Alley and other crowded places. There were already aurors tasked with finding her, though I've told you about every lead they've gotten. They've also been watching the homes of suspected death-eater sympathizers, but of course, some of them have decent wards, so we wouldn't notice anyone apparating in and out, much less be able to identify them."

Harry asked, "Aren't there spells for finding someone? It doesn't seem to be a problem for an owl or a patronus."

Bones shook her head, "If anyone knows how to use those tracking spells for themselves, they're keeping it secret. Next you'll probably ask about using those things directly. There's an obvious problem with trying to will your happy thought to go to a dangerous criminal you intend to capture or kill. And I'm guessing you've never tried to follow an owl; they tend to disappear when you look away or even blink."

"Luckily, we have someone here who doesn't blink."

Moody snorted, "They apparate. They still wait for my normal eye to blink for some reason, but they disappear with the same magical signature as wizards apparating away. And it's possible to put up wards to block owls; we tried owling lots of fun stuff to the death eaters, unfortunately they were expecting it after the nasty surprises they'd owled to the Ministry. We stopped after they found a way to redirect the owls to random innocent people. Luckily that was around the time the Wizengamot was debating what to do about Monroe using the killing curse or the Order might have been under more scrutiny."

"So basically, we need someone to report her while she's still around so we can time-turn and have a team meet her. Luckily, we're not facing the entire group of death-eaters this time. A dozen or so aurors shouldn't have any trouble putting up an anti-apparition jinx and taking her down."

Moody nodded, "A twelve to one advantage sounds good. Usually there aren't that many people available for anything significant. Just make sure they're all familiar with death eater tactics."

McGonagall sighed, "There was also an incident here today. During the second year Slytherin-Gryffindor Potions class, a cauldron exploded. Ms. Felthorne saw an unexpected reaction and was able to cast a shield around it in time, but some of the explosion was released after she passed out from magical exhaustion. Most students had enough time to take cover, but Seamus was treated for a minor burn, and those near the cauldron required treatment for hearing damage. The side of a potions cabinet was broken; it was near the cauldron, so it could have been a result of the explosion, but we believe a significant number of ingredients were taken. I currently believe the explosion was intentional."

Moody scowled, "What was taken?"

"Unfortunately, Ms. Felthorne hadn't performed a thorough inventory of the supplies. If Severus had a list, no one has found it. At the very least, we must assume that they have the ingredients required to set off more explosions."

Moody grunted, "Your Defense professor is probably running low on his liquid luck. He probably only took the professor job here so he could restock on potions supplies. You should fire him before anything else happens."

Harry argued, "I doubt this was the work of a dark wizard. People can buy ingredients at shops in Diagon Alley without raising suspicion. Even if Hogwarts had something very rare, I can't believe that that would be the optimal way to get it. A dark wizard may have used such an incident as a misdirection, but if we don't find anything strange that happened at around the same time, it's more likely a student who aspires to be a dark lord behaving according to that role."

Moody grunted, "I'd agree that Voldemort would've been more subtle. Unless that's what he wanted us to think. But for another dark wizard, one who didn't care about putting children at risk, brute force may have simply been slightly faster or simpler. I've seen Hogwarts Defense professors take lots of senseless risks while putting students in danger. Trust me, it was Lockhart."

Harry asked, "Um, have guys tried to end that curse? Or is everyone just hoping that it will go away on its own?"

Moody rolled his normal eye while the other continued spinning as it normally did, "No. Everyone just enjoyed having a high turn-over of violent, self-destructive, or otherwise doomed professors at Hogwarts."

"You say that sarcastically, but we all know Dumbledore did stranger things. Maybe he thought eventually there'd be a defense professor who would be mysteriously immune. Someone who was destined to teach everyone Defense Against the Dark Arts or something."

McGonagall sighed, "I've talked with Dumbledore about this extensively. Tom Riddle applied for the Defense position soon after Dumbledore became headmaster. Dumbledore originally assumed Riddle was bluffing because the wards would have reported such a curse being cast. The first person he hired to that position was fired for regularly missing classes and the second for coming to class drunk. At that point, Dumbledore just thought that he was bad at hiring people; after all, it was a new responsibility for him.

"After the third Defense professor to be hired within three years was drowned by the giant squid while swimming in Hogwarts Lake, Dumbledore started to wonder if he'd been mistaken. He cast analytic charms in the Defense professor's office and classroom, but found nothing and decided it was just bad luck.

"For the next few years, he confided in a few professors and some of his other allies and they helped him scan for curses over progressively larger areas of the castle. Eventually, he convinced Nicolas Flamel to personally come to Hogwarts to help him. None of them found anything. Flamel believed any curse powerful enough to last for a decade should have been detectable. He admitted there was a chance that a strong curse could be hidden in a rarely-visited section of the castle, but that just raised questions about how to guarantee that someone would get close enough to be affected.

"Dumbledore then considered that Riddle might be coming back to Hogwarts and personally sabotaging the Defense professors. He spent the next few years upgrading the perimeter detection wards. At one point, he was responding to an alarm whenever anything as large as a fly crossed into the wards, but never caught anything other than students sneaking back from Hogsmeade.

"After that, he decided that Riddle must have learned powerful spells that even Flamel was unfamiliar with. Dumbledore already suspected that Riddle had stolen books from the restricted section. He had the professors and his other trusted allies move through Hogwarts and cast 'finite incantatem' as powerfully as possible at basically everything. They had to replace every magical object that wasn't part of the school, and probably depleted a few years' worth of Hogwarts' magical reserves. You already know how well it worked out.

"Later, he tried to think of less conventional ways of defeating the curse. He had one Defense professor change classrooms and offices every month. For a few years, he checked all professors returning to the castle for legilimency or imperius. One year, he resorted to ordering a house elf to invisibly follow and observe the Defense professor. At first the elf reported nothing out of the ordinary. Later the elf found that the professor was abusing cheering potions. Dumbledore ignored it as long as he could, but having an addict as a professor was as catastrophic as you might guess.

"Dumbledore considered that Riddle may have legilimized or otherwise influenced one of the elves to create the curse, so he obtained a pair of new elves and assigned them to watching the Defense professor, with special instructions to watch what the other elves did around that professor. They saw nothing suspicious over the next few years. During the same period, he cast wards to detect any magical creatures entering the castle from the grounds, but they produced no useful results and were apparently difficult to maintain.

"By then, the curse was common knowledge and it was becoming difficult to find anyone qualified and... well, sane to take the job. Dumbledore decided to eliminate the Defense professor position by having the Charms teacher cover dueling (shielding and stunning spells, with some practicing) and a basic overview of dark curses, while the dark creatures in the Defense curriculum were covered by the Care of Magical Creatures professor in required first and second year classes. One day, the Charms teacher went missing. Later, his body was discovered in the Forbidden Forrest. He'd apparently been eaten by acromantulas-"

Moody smirked, "Maybe you're wondering how they found a body if it was eaten?"

"No", Harry replied, "I'm familiar with how spiders eat-"

Moody continued anyway, "Acromantulas inject their victims with stomach acid, then wait a few hours for them to dissolve in their own skin before sucking out the liquefied flesh. When you find a skeleton wrapped in skin with a couple of puncture wounds, you know an acromantula nearby has a full stomach."

McGonagall continued, "Anyway, the replacement Charms teacher stole a time-turner from the ministry and used it to steal valuable magical objects from both the ministry and private houses. Both he and auror assigned to the case ended up committed in St. Mungo's."

Bones shuddered, "It was the worst case of trans-temporal psychosis anyone had seen in three centuries. The DMLE still gets auror recruits who are afraid to touch a time-turner because they've heard rumors about that incident."

Hermione interrupted, "Shouldn't they come with a stronger warning; 'may cause insanity'?"

"They're perfectly safe if used according to the directions distributed with them."

Hermione and Harry didn't appear satisfied with this, but didn't reply, so McGonagall continued.

"At that point, the rumor spread that both the Defense and Charms professorships were cursed. That's how Filius got the Charms job; back then the Hogwarts board of governors would whine any time Dumbledore hired someone who wasn't a pure-blood. They never would have allowed a half-goblin to get hired unless there were an emergency. Luckily for Hogwarts, most major government positions and large companies were similarly bigoted at the time, or he'd likely have been able to get a better, or at least safer, job somewhere else and never applied here."

Moody interrupted, "Speaking of safer jobs, the alleged double-curse almost continued that year when the Defense professor tried to set Flitwick on fire. If he hadn't been a dueling champion, Hogwarts might have never found another decent Charms teacher."

McGonagall concluded, "Because fighting it only seemed to make things worse, Dumbledore resigned himself to having a cursed Defense position. He tended to hire the people he thought were weakest magically and most incompetent, in order to limit the damage they could do. He was mostly hoping the curse would fade away after enough time passed. Unfortunately, the students scored progressively worse on their Defense OWLs. I finally convinced him to hire someone good last year. Of course, we all knew from the beginning that Quirrell would only be available for one year, so I'm hoping that the curse faded years ago, and Dumbledore was unknowingly maintaining it as a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if you think of any interesting ways one might cause, fix, or ameliorate such a curse, feel free to let me know."

There was a brief silence during which a device behind the desk began emitting a high pitched squeal. Moody drew his wand and nearly blasted it. Bones sighed and said, "I thought we were going to meet somewhere else."

Harry frowned, "Earlier this week, I noticed some things in my office weren't quite were I remembered leaving them and called Mad-Eye to check everything."

Moody added, "I couldn't detect anything odd, but decided it would be best to avoid his office, just in case something escaped my detection. Even though trying to secure this office is like trying to waterproof a sieve."

Harry smirked, "Well, since we won't be using my office, I could take some of these things back there. I'd like to practice using some analytic charms to see what this stuff does and how it does it."

"Take as many of them as you'd like, Mr. Potter", McGonagall replied, a little too quickly.

At lunch a few days later, Harry was frowning and picking at his food, preoccupied by pondering everything that had happened, bothered by connections his subconscious mind hadn't yet shared.

Padma sat down at the table and asked the nearby students, "So what's with Professor Lockhart's super-secret class today? The third and fourth year students seemed to be either excited or frightened afterward, but no one's talking. Tracey said not even Millicent knows what's going on!"

Harry, who generally disliked surprises that he wasn't responsible for, checked his watch and made a mental note to time-turn back to now and slip himself a note. He waited for a few moments, starting to become annoyed with future-Harry's lack of punctuality.

Padma interrupted his thoughts again, "Hey, where's Hermione?"

Harry continued frowning, "She said she was tired. She went back to her room to lay down until her next class."

"I guess she is taking a lot of classes this term. I've barely seen her outside class or meals and she's usually saying she's busy and running off somewhere. I hope she's not getting burnt out already."

"Yeah, hopefully not. She dropped Divination this week; maybe she'll have a little more free time or rest time or whatever. But she really needs to learn that not every assignment requires full effort; sometimes 'good enough' is good enough."

Dean walked over and asked, "How are your experiments with technology going?"

Harry looked up as his expression brightened- into a less serious frown, "Confusing. I falsify my hypotheses almost as fast as I can generate them. Except for my growing but untestable suspicion that the effect is artificial and deliberate."

"That's disappointing. After you put that radio in the Muggle Studies classroom, I was kind of hoping you'd have a TV working soon. Or at least a music player."

"That's not really the direction I've been focused on. I tried to make a low-power AM transmitter and after that failed, I tried to make a simpler spark-gap transmitter. I couldn't get anything to send a signal that I could receive, even though I had a working AM radio receiver nearby which continued receiving muggle signals while I was trying to transmit. So I've ruled out the hypothesis that wizard-built electronics are exempt from magical interruptions. And I have no idea what radio transmitters, watches, and calculators have in common, if anything."

Ron and Ginny were walking over and caught part of the conversation. Ginny added, "Your calculator and watch didn't work anywhere on the Hogwarts grounds, at least not anywhere I checked. I didn't check the Forbidden Forest, of course."

Harry nodded, "Well, that's the least confusing result I've gotten recently. I guess that's something."

Ron put a scrap of parchment in front of Harry, "There. Rules."

Harry glanced at it and shook his head, "'We get on brooms and race from the south end of Hogwarts Lake to the north end and then back. The first person back wins.' That's all you wrote."

"It's a simple race. What the bloody hell do you want from me?"

"How do you tell who gets back first if it's close? I think one of the first years has a camera; maybe we could rig it to photograph the finish line when someone crosses it. Otherwise we could just appoint someone to judge."

Dean raised his hand, "I'll judge."

Ron smiled, "That's fine with me. Harry?"

"Agreed. We'll also need to find a line judge for the north end."

"What?"

"To make sure everyone actually passes over the northern shore rather than turning early to shorten their path. I assume by 'north end', you meant the northernmost point on the waterline. Technically, that's not a fixed point, but the waves on the lake and any erosion effects are probably small enough to ignore."

"We'll both be there. If 'one of us' cheats, the other will tell everyone."

"Then what stops the loser from claiming the winner cheated regardless of what actually happens?"

"Fine." Ron took a moment to locate the nearest qualified person, "Ginny-"

"I'll do it."

Ron nodded, "Perfect. Let's race."

"Not so fast. We still have to discuss brooms. What are we allowed or not allowed to use? We should probably find two school brooms that are the same model so no one has a special advantage..."

"Aw. I want to use my mysterious new Nimbus 2000."

Padma rolled her eyes and interrupted, "It's not mysterious. Headmistress McGonagall bought it. It seems a bit biased to me, but it's understandable; she was the head of House Gryffindor for a long time."

Harry smirked, "Oh, now I get it. You want me to have to decide between racing with a speed disadvantage or having to buy the most expensive racing broom on the market. That would have been a pretty Slytherin plan if you hadn't so careless as to publicly admit it. You should have just said we can fly with whatever we want."

Ron sputtered for a moment while trying to insist he wasn't careless and wasn't plotting before recovering. His eyes narrowed. "No muggle crap!", Ron practically growled.

Harry chuckled and replied, "You realize brooms are a muggle invention? They were cleaning floors long before wizards made them fly."

"You know what I meant!"

"This is why rules are important, Ron. You may have meant that you don't care what the vehicle is made out of as long as it's propelled using magic rather than by a muggle propulsion device, but you may have also meant that we had to use vehicles where each part is a wizard invention and was constructed by wizards. Or something in between."

"Of course I meant the first one."

"Okay. Then write all that down so we have official, documented rules, then we'll schedule a race."

"Hold on, I'll write it now. We can race after dinner tonight."

Harry shook his head, "I don't actually have a racing broom. I have a three-person heavy-lift broom, but I'm sure you don't really expect me to race against a Nimbus 2000 on that."

"I challenged you days ago. Why didn't you get a broom already?"

"I could say I was busy with more important things or I could say I had to wait for your rules to see what brooms were allowable, and those things would be true, but mostly I thought there was a good chance that if I stalled until after the quidditch tryouts finished, you'd lose interest and stop bothering me. And I've become somewhat curious about the limits of your stubborn annoyingness."

Ron scowled, then sighed, "This weekend we're racing. No more delays." He pulled out a parchment and quill, "Now, repeat everything we decided."

Ginny smiled and held out a piece of paper, "I already wrote it down for you."

After they left, Harry waited a few more minutes, then scowled as he got up and walked away. Future Harry had failed to fulfill his pre-commitment.

"Do you know anything about what Professor Lockhart has planned?", Neville asked Harry.

"No. I take it you haven't heard anything either."

"No, the rumor mill is suspiciously ill-informed. There have been lots of guesses, but none that are sane."

Ernie added, "The guesses for today are even stranger than the guesses for why he's always eating at his desk before class. Someone's suggested everything between him being affected by a hunger curse and him secretly being some kind of dark creature that makes itself look human."

Hermione rolled her eyes, "He teaches all four houses together for each year like Professor Quirrell did, and he teaches all seven classes on Mondays and Wednesdays in a row without a lunch break. So he eats between classes all day long. He also does office hours and class preparation Tuesdays and Thursday mornings, so he can have a three and a half day weekend every week. Everything doesn't have a mysterious explanation; he just consolidated his free time."

They split up as Harry and Hermione went to the Ravenclaw section of the room and Neville and Ernie to the Hufflepuff section.

Lockhart began, "So I've gathered that learning from a famous hero-slash-author..." He paused and smiled brightly. "...hasn't been enough for some people in my classes. You apparently got used to do lots of hands-on activities in Professor Quirrell's classes. So I planned a fun little activity for today." He paused theatrically and waved his wand, summoning a cage from behind his desk, "Let's see what you make of a swarm of Cornish pixies. The cage is spelled to open in 30 seconds, so you have a little time to think about your tactics."

The students all paused for a second, then turned to look at each other. After a few seconds, Draco, Neville, Daphne, Ernie, Lavender, and Dean, who were all close to the front of the room, cast concentric prismatic spheres around the cage.

The cage opened and the pixies flew out and began pushing against the inner shield. Draco announced, "They're stronger than you'd expect. I suggest we take turns holding them for about a minute, then drop your shield and recast it on the outside. That way we should be able to hold them for an hour without getting exhausted." He turned, grimacing, "And I'm sure we'd all appreciate it if the rest of you came up here to help out."

Lockhart chuckled, "Yes, well... this wasn't intended to be an exercise in keeping a handful of pixies contained. Though your reaction wasn't exactly hard to predict." A swarm of pixies flew up from behind the desk and scattered in all directions, "That's why I prepared two cages. Enjoy."

The students who were in the armies quickly grouped together and shielded themselves. In the Gryffindor section of the room, nearly everyone had fighting experience and most of of them could cast shields. Dean, Seamus, Lavender, and Parvati had been sitting together in the front of the room and decided to alternate shielding each other. Lavender quickly got bored, "Are we really just going to stand here? Drop the shield for a second; I want to shoot something." They discovered that it was relatively safe for three of them to cast a somnium while the fourth prepared to cast a new prismatic barrier. Others quickly copied this tactic.

Fewer people in the Hufflepuff section could cast a shield, so a handful of students produced large shields which kept everyone covered. They were stretched thin and this arrangement wouldn't have held out for long except...

There weren't enough people in Ravenclaw to shield everyone. Some of them managed to reach a shielded area in one of the other sections, but many resorted to running around the room, trying to stay clear of the expanding swarm.

In Slytherin, the response was mixed. Daphne, Tracey, and Theodore copied the Gryffindors, trying to stun the pixies for as long as possible before recasting a shield. Draco, Vincent, and Gregory took turns shielding a large group of students.

Pansy tried to reach a shielded area but arrived too late. She looked around, then ran toward Blaise, who was watching the classroom with an amused expression and had his wand out but hadn't yet cast any spells. "Aren't you going to cast a shield?" she demanded? Blaise smirked, "I think I can do better." He watched a large number of pixies buzz past Ernie's shield, and cast a shield breaker. One shot was all it took to collapse the over-stretch shield. Most of the pixies converged on the area. "This is a fun little activity", he concluded.

Harry, who was at the back of the room where the pixies hadn't yet arrived, turned to Hermione and asked, "You want to take this one or should I?"

"I don't have any great ideas. I thought about transfiguring a tennis racket, but it's probably better to just use shields. I don't really want anyone to see how fast I am."

"Oh. Thinking about all the options you don't want to use is distracting you from thinking about all of the other options. And I can relate; I'd really like to transfigure a small dragon to fly around and eat them, but I haven't been able to transfigure anything living yet. And I'd like to transfigure a flame thrower, but that's a bad idea for all kinds of reasons. I'm not sure if an over-sized bug-zapper would work, and nets would just be boring. We could probably do something interesting by sweeping the room with hover charms. Or by combining an aguamenti with a cooling charm, though we probably couldn't put enough power into both spells. I'm just going to use my first Arithmancy project."

Harry stood up and leveled his wand while calmly watching the few pixies which had reached the back of the room turn and flew toward him. "Ventus", he said quietly.

A jet of air blew the pixie in front of him all the way across the classroom through the door of the cage. Then the jet twisted and expanded into a miniature tornado. Harry directed the upstream end to move around the room, while keeping the downstream end at the door of the cage. The pixies tried to fight the flow, but most were disoriented from spinning and crashing into random objects. The ones that were successfully resisting capture were hit with various spells from every direction and vacuumed in without further resistance.

After the last pixie was caged, Harry twisted the airflow again, slamming the door shut. Several students leveled wands at the cage, calling "colloportus".

Quills, sheets of parchment, and other light objects were scattered everywhere, mostly concentrated on the floor in the front of the room. Students were tiredly dropping into their chairs, take advantage of the opportunity to rest. Lockhart looked around the room, "Excellent teamwork from many of you. And you are much better with shields and stunning spells than I'd expected for second years. I see why you were expecting more from my class. I'll have to step up my teaching. Although, some of you weren't in a sustainable position. I'd like to have seen how you would've adapted once you were no longer able to stall. And Blaise, that was an effective tactic, though not one that will win you many friends. You nearly violated my rule #1 for heroes."

Blaise asked, "What's your rule #1?"

"When thinking about making enemies, remember that you'll have to sleep eventually. I noticed you avoided firing on any Slytherins, though some people can hold grudges for a disturbingly long time." Lockhart looked toward the back of the room, "And Harry, that was an interesting spell. Almost as effective as what I'd have used. Mind if I ask what that was?"

Harry shrugged, "It's a less-common variant of ventus that lets you change the flow direction around while the spell is active and put a vortex around the central flow axis."

Lockhart nodded, "Okay, everyone, class dismissed. And remember, don't tell any of the other students what they have to look forward to. We wouldn't want to deprive them of this experience, right?"

"I really need to learn some better tricks to handle multiple attackers when I don't have an army backing me up", Neville commented to himself. "What else would Harry do?"

After Harry exited the room, he quickly separated himself from the others and pulled out his time turner. Immediately, a scrap of paper flew in front of him with a note reading, "PARADOX WARNING; NATURE AND CAUSE UNKNOWN. Relay no more information to your past than the contents of this message."

"I guess I have to add understanding the rules for time-turner paradox avoidance to my list", Harry muttered to himself.