Chapter Ten
That Teacher
Draco was used to starting each school term out with a quick sweep of the dormitories to be sure they were all in order, then taking the long walk down to the dungeon of an ancient castle, surrounded by personable ghosts, lively portraits, and magically preserved stone that would otherwise be crumbling with age and damp. There in the dungeon, he would check that all the ingredients for his potions were stocked, that his classroom was organized and not drafty or freezing, and that none of the arriving students had decided it would be amusing to leave him a "present" in the form of a living creature or highly volatile substance left unattended.
Today, Draco was entering territory that was extraordinarily strange to him, yet familiar in many ways. The gray-and-green industrial carpet in his new classroom and the white walls covered with drab yellow posters of conjugated French verbs were nothing he had come to expect from the school environment. But at least it wasn't as foreign as it could have been for him. He'd worked in a nondescript cubicle at the Muggle British Embassy for four years, and he knew about boring carpets and unread notices. He was going to have to get used to this whole idea of writing with a marker on a dry erase board, on the other hand. He was used to flourishing his hand and having everything he wanted appear on a chalkboard older than his grandmother.
He was also not used to the idea of a school that everyone vacated at the end of the afternoon. He thought he might enjoy knowing that once he walked out the front entrance, the kids were no longer his responsibility. At 3:45 pm, their troubles were under someone else's authority. Merlin, what would it be like to relax in the evenings? He feared he wasn't really going to get the chance to find out, because he was going to (speaking optimistically) be spending his evenings working out the nature of the potion these kids were addicted to, solve the case, and rush back home to help Vianne renovate the house.
He stood at the front of the classroom, eyes the posters with distaste, and decided that a little magic where no one could see it wouldn't hurt anyone. He could always switch things back when they wrapped up and went home and the regular teacher came back. He supposed it wasn't particularly smart to keep his wand on a string under his shirt, but he was doing it anyway. He pulled it out, whispered a few spells, and grinned. The kids ought to like this. Their regular teacher appeared to have no imagination whatsoever. He wondered if the woman had ever even been to France.
He'd also come prepared with a few items of his own. Never hurt to start things off with some diplomacy, and he happened to have a few things that fit perfectly into the intelligent French teacher's arsenal for getting students to like them. He hadn't wanted to transport any glass around, so he'd brought a package of paper cups to Transfigure. These kids were going to get the real experience. He wanted to be that really awesome teacher whose classroom you hung out in when you didn't have to. He was that teacher at Hogwarts, but it had taken three years to get there, and he had to make his impression fast here at Greenwood.
The first teenager stepped into the classroom, talking on her cell phone animatedly, then saying regretfully that she had to go, it was time for stupid . . . French . . . ohmigod. She had to go. She really had to go. Apparently, it was a Code Blue, whatever that meant. Draco just turned toward the dry erase boards casually and wrote "Jamie Edwards" on it.
Two other students came in and immediately started chattering with the first girl in excitement. A boy bounded through the door, which slammed against the wall and caused the girls to make faces of disgust at him.
"What's that smell? It smells great!"
More students poured in, ignoring him completely in favour of looking at the room. The verb conjugation posters were there, of course, although they were a much more appealing sky-blue colour now. They were nestled in among black and white photographs of Montmarte, an outdoor café, an angled shot of the Eiffel Tower, and an aerial view of a farming community. The stereo he'd brought was playing a French hip-hop album he'd picked up a few years ago when he was doing the club scene, and the smell of fresh baguettes—he'd Apparated all the way down to New York City and back this morning to get good French bread—wafted through the classroom. The surprisingly empty classroom. He'd Vanished the desks for the day so the floor would be open space. A huge checkered cloth was spread out in the middle of the floor.
The bell on the wall, which rang to let students know they had one minute to get to their classes, emitted a musical tone rather than the shrill ring Draco had been expecting. Still facing the board, he took a deep breath, and put on the persona of Jamie Edwards, then turned around. The students were milling around the edges of the cloth in confusion, staring at his back. When he turned, half of them gasped in surprise at seeing his eyepatch and asymmetrical appearance.
"You're not Ms. Danvers," one girl blurted out, and immediately flushed.
"I'm guessing that's because he's Jamie Edwards," said a boy confidently, pointing at the board. "Unless the music is Jamie Edwards?" he asked the slender man at the front of the classroom.
"No, that would be me," he answered.
"I love this music," another girl offered tentatively.
The bell let out another pleasing ring and the last of the students dashed in. Mr. Rosado was fairly strict about tardies, but nowhere near as strict as most of their parents. There usually were no tardies.
"If everyone would like to sit down?" Jamie Edwards said, gesturing with a graceful hand to the checkered cloth.
His voice was British. He was wearing all black. His thick brown hair hung rakishly over his forehead. He was wearing an honest-to-God eyepatch. Every girl in the room immediately sat down with much flaunting of their more attractive parts, trying to impress him with obedience and perky young breasts at the same time. He'd been counting on such a response, and he smiled inwardly.
"What's all this?" asked one of the boys, disgruntled at the instant loss of female attention.
"This," Jamie said crisply, "is how I plan to get to know this class today. I have no lesson planned, just a picnic of sorts. It seemed when I saw the classroom yesterday that no one was familiar with anything French but the verbs, so I thought I'd introduce you." They were all sitting and watching him with strict attention. "So, class, meet France." He picked up the wide basket full of sliced baguette and cheese hunks, and handed it to the nearest student. "Pass this along to everybody." He started pouring very small amounts of slightly altered wine (that he'd personally altered, removing most of the alcohol content) into the tiny wine glasses he'd Transfigured from paper cups and handed those along as well.
"You can't give us wine," someone blurted out. "You're a teacher!"
"And I will no doubt be fired by noon. Assuming Principal Rosado finds out. I'm not planning to tell him, myself." He raised his eyebrow and smirked at the class.
"Who are you? Where is Ms. Danvers?"
"Ms. Danvers is taking a short holiday. I'm your substitute teacher for the next couple of weeks. And I, apparently unlike this Ms. Danvers, have been to France. I feel confident that I can teach you to love the country enough that the language won't seem so boring by the time your normal teacher returns. Maybe she'll even leave up the pictures, oui?"
Jamie watched with amusement as people tentatively took slices of bread and accepted their little wine glasses with awe. It was a stroke of brilliance, it was. The perfect way to tell them that he was on their side, certainly not cozy with the principal, and he was familiar with the concept of secrets. He wasn't planning to be seen anywhere near Detective Christine Bernard.
"I am going to start by introducing myself," he said, in French. This was a second-year class, and he was hoping they would keep up. "I am Jamie Edwards, and I am from England. Some of you will meet my brother Drew today, because he is teaching European History while Madame Collette is having her baby. Now, I would like to meet all of you. Let's start with you," he said, turning to the boy on his left. He jerked in surprise to see how intently the boy was staring at him.
Someone laughed. The boy slowly blinked, and shook his head. He turned to the girl seated next to him and nudged her. She grudgingly became his spokesperson.
"That's Dumb Eddie, sir. He can't actually speak, he's deaf. He's really good at reading lips, but not that great in French."
Jamie had been told about this student, but hadn't realized he'd be in his first class. Edward Cavanaugh had insisted on taking French class. He was probably one of the most intelligent students in the school, and was somehow getting a 'B' in foreign language without hearing a word of it.
He'd worked incredibly hard to keep up at this school, and the teachers were accommodating enough to remember to face the classroom at all times so that Edward could read their lips and wouldn't need to hire a personal translator for all his classes, nor need to go to a specially designed school for the deaf. He wanted to be at Greenwood Prep to have that advantage on his college entrance applications—he planned to go to a prestigious university. His parents didn't push him to succeed, either. He pushed himself, and his parents gave him whatever support he asked for—like the freedom to choose his own high school. Jamie had known when Hank told him about the boy that he would like Edward Cavanaugh. Now he found himself meeting him for the first time in the middle of a serious social flub. Oops.
"You must be Mr. Cavanaugh," he said in English. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were in my first class." Then it struck him at last. The question he ought to have asked Hank last week. "How do you participate in your lessons for this class?"
The slim, hollow-cheeked boy held up a finger to indicate that Jamie should wait for a minute, then wrote something down in the notebook that sat in his lap. He withdrew the sheet of paper with a quick jerk to rip it from the binder and handed it over.
I do written assignments to make up the class participation grade, and Ms. Danvers and I type the oral exam questions and answers out on her computer. She does most of the lessons in English, so I keep up pretty well. The rest of the note was written in French, which made Jamie grin. It said that if he felt the need to work out a new system while he was teaching this class, could he please contact Edward's mother Veronica Cavanaugh to discuss it.
"I'm okay with the system you have with Ms. Danvers," Jamie assured him. "Mr. Cavanuagh, do you use sign language?"
Surprised, he nodded after a moment of hesitation, causing a lock of silky black hair to slip over his forehead. He brushed it away self-consciously, and Jamie immediately pegged him as one of those unfortunate people who had no idea how many people would kill to have hair like that. Or cheekbones like that. Or lashes like that, surrounding eyes like that. Edward could be getting laid every night, but Jamie knew on instinct the poor kid was a virgin.
Jamie raised his hands. "I know American Sign Language. Do you want to communicate with me this way?" he asked, going through the motions that had taken him the better part of all four years at the embassy to perfect. But damn, had she been worth any minute when he finally approached her to show off what he'd learned.
The boy looked pleased and said he'd love to. Jamie asked him to bring in a copy of his past few assignments with Ms. Danvers so he would get a feel for the type of assignments he'd need to create for Edward's participation grade. Edward agreed to do so, then welcomed him to Greenwood Prep shyly, looking down at his notebook. Jamie tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he'd rather work on something else today, since he wanted the class to speak only French. Edward shook his head, still shy, and said he'd rather watch. He was trying to pick up the rudiments of reading lips in French, despite the frustrations that it caused.
The rest of the introductions were a little more traditional. Jamie simply wanted their names, their favourite subjects and extra-curricular activities, and their hometown. None of the kids seemed to have been born here, and as two more classes stumbled their way through the simple exercise, Jamie found only five who'd been here long enough to consider it their place of belonging. Of course, he only had about a third of the students at the school. There were Spanish and German classes at Greenwood Prep, too. They were all quite bright and hard-working, but Jamie didn't meet any others who impressed him as much as Edward did. He did, however, meet the one person in the school he planned to avoid at all costs.
They called her Flip. Since they called Edward Dumb Eddie, he assumed "Flip" was a stupid and possibly even mean-spirited nickname. Her real name was Courtney Ware, so unless her middle name was Philippa, Flip came from something else. It didn't take too long to figure out what that was.
It was the girl's tendency to freak out. She had enough mood swings to be bipolar, PMSing, and god knew what else all together. She couldn't sit through a class without jumping up from her seat to use the bathroom, to sharpen a pencil she didn't even write with, or just switch desks. If someone spoke to her, she sometimes responded with enthusiasm and warmth, and sometimes were bitter enmity and fury. The other students seemed rather afraid of her, but Draco planned to avoid her for an entirely different reason. She came to introduce herself all over again after her class period was over with.
"I'm Courtney, but everybody calls me Flip," she said without preamble.
"I remember," Draco answered, having learned just this fact not fifteen minutes ago.
"Anybody ever told you that you're pretty hot, for a teacher?"
Draco figured she was giving him a hard time on his first day. "My wife says that all the time," he said lazily.
"Would your wife do a threesome?"
"What?"
"Just wondering whether or not she would be okay with you and I hooking up, maybe want to get involved."
"But— no, she wouldn't."
"Well, we don't have to tell her then."
"Who said I was okay with that? I'm married. You're my student."
Courtney-and-or-Flip shrugged, and the mood around her became sorrowfully depressed just that quickly.
"Okay, I understand. I'm not that great-looking, right?" She turned away.
"Courtney, that's not what I said. I don't even want to get into that dicussion. I just said no, and I told you why. That's it. That's all. And that's plenty. Okay? Don't even think about it."
"Yeah, sure," she whispered as she trudged out.
Draco stared after her in bewilderment, and became even more confounded when she was hailed outside by another student and immediately became bright and bubbly in greeting. He'd seen her snarling at someone earlier for chewing their gum too loudly. It was like she had six personalities floating around in her brain. He made a mental note to ask Hank what in hell was wrong with the girl. He got the feeling she wasn't finished with him yet.
