This update took a bit longer than usual, I'm sorry. With the end of the school year coming up I've been super busy. I'll try to keep updates pretty regular, but they'll probably still be slowing down a bit here.

~o~

An demon drags an unconscious angel into a cheap motel room.

There's a punch line there somewhere, Meg thought irritably as she bundled the injured form into bed (only one, because she didn't sleep, stupid smirking pimply teenager behind the front desk). When did she end up playing nursemaid anyways?

'Welcome to the team... Nurse Masters.'

Oh, right. That. Fuck.

But she was stuck here until her feathery transportation got back on his feet (teleportation, especially long-range, was tricky for even higher-up demons. Crossroads demons were the only ones who could really pull it off, the unholier-than-thou pricks) and managed to track down Moose and Squirrel.

Oh Go- Sa- somebody, Crowley was rubbing off on her.

She sighed, dragged a chair over to the side of Clarence's bed, propped her feet up and opened a trashy tabloid.

~o~

Something about 'Inquisitor' Umbridge made Sam feel wary. He couldn't pin it down- maybe it was the dark glitter in her eyes that was far too reminiscent of the look demons got sometimes when others were suffering.

'Sic 'em, boy!'

'No stink of blood or sizzle of flesh or the wet flap of flayed skin...'

Maybe it was the manipulative, power-hungry attitude reminded him entirely too much of Ruby, and wasn't that a disturbing thought.

Maybe it was the vaguely disgusted sideways glare that she kept shooting at them whenever they passed in the halls. He'd done some research after the 'mudblood' incident with the pale kid and found out that wizards could be nearly as bad as normal humans when it came to stupid prejudices, so that could be it.

Whatever it was, it was probably the same thing that made Dean determined to piss the woman off as much as humanly possible. Mostly middle-school pranks, the sort the two brothers used to pull on each other all the time, but the woman's eye twitched whenever she saw a rooster now (and apparently there was a whole story involving a giant snake and a possessed diary regarding exactly why the school had so many roosters), so whatever it was it was effective. Not that Dean was the only one screwing with her, either- Sam was fairly certain he'd formed an unholy alliance with the two redheaded Gryffindor twins.

Sam figured that friendship was one best admired from a safe distance.

And yes, they were sure she wasn't a demon. He was about seventy percent sure Dean had been joking when he first proposed it, but after watching her for a few days they decided they had to test her just to make sure. They'd spiked her pumpkin juice with holy water (Sam was pretty sure Dean had snuck some laxatives in there too) and no screaming and burning had commenced. Unfortunately. They knew how to deal with demons- people were a whole different story. Demons at least had an excuse for being the way they were. People were just crazy.

And that was all without even mentioning the way she treated the students. Sam was pretty sure even some of the other teachers were at least a little scared of her, so he couldn't imagine what it was like for the students.

He sighed, and shook the thoughts out of his head as the class filed in- fifth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins, he remembered. Dean was sitting in his chair with his feet kicked up on the desk.

"Today we're talking about angels," Dean declared as soon as the class was fully present and seated, and Sam noted the frizzy-haired Gryffindor girl who'd gotten a perfect score on the last test jerking her head up from her notes in recognition. She elbowed the two boys next to her to attention- they looked half-asleep- and a moment later he recognized them as the three he and Dean were supposed to keep an eye on, according to Dumbledore.

"The first thing you need to know," Dean said, sounding serious for once, "is that angels are dicks. They are not the fluffy-winged diaper-wearing babies you see on Hallmark cards- though some of them act like it sometimes."

Dean's voice changed a little bit in a way no one who hadn't grown up with him would have been able to even hear, and Sam knew he was worrying about Cas. They hadn't even seen the angel in months, ever since the botched rescue mission for Alfie the angel. Some way or another, Alfie'd ended up dead. Cas said he'd been compromised by Crowley and he'd been forced to kill him in self-defense, before vanishing with his empty vessel.

Cas was always terrible at lying.

"Angels are self-righteous bastards with no sense of collateral damage. If you see one coming, get the hell out of its way. They don't die easy, either- try to punch one and you'll break your hand."

He would know, too.

"There's pretty much no way us humans can kill an angel without one of these babies," Dean continued, pulling a four-sided angel blade from under the desk (of course he'd keep it close on hand) and holding it up for them to see. "This is an angel blade. You'll probably never get to use one, and if Fate is less of a bitch you'll never need one."

"There's ways to slow them down, though," Sam prompted in the pause that followed, looking up from the heavy leather textbook he was half-paying attention to (A Compendium of Mythical Creatures).

"Yup," Dean agreed. "Holy fire is the most reliable- angels can't get out of it."

'So what, huh? You're just gonna leave me here forever?'

"But you need to light it with holy oil, which is just a bitch to find, so angel banishing sigils are a better bet, even though you need to draw them in blood." Sam clicked the projector on cue and brought up the symbol. The three- Potter and his two friends- were whispering animatedly among themselves now as Dean went through a short lecture on how to draw and activate it.

"Copy that down," Dean ordered. "Might save your life someday."

Once all the class had complied, he sighed and shook his head. "And all that's without even getting into fallen angels."

Sam huffed a laugh without looking up. "And you know all about getting into fallen angels, don't you?"

"That... that was... shut up," Dean eventually decided before turning back to the class, whose heads had been following the exchange between the two brothers back and forth. "So, basically, there's two kinds of fallen angels- angels that fell to Earth, and angels that went a bit further. The first kind isn't so bad, and since they're basically human without their Grace, they don't usually pose any threat. The second kind... well, can any of you name a fallen angel? Not the devil, that's too easy."

Hermione's hand went up, and Dean nodded expectantly at her and she said a name that she'd found between the pages of an encyclopedia of Heaven and Hell.

"Azazel."

The leather textbook slipped out of Sam's hands and hit the floor with a heavy thud.

Cold Oak and yellow eyes and a knife through his spine and 'only one of you crazy kids is gonna make the cut!' and his heart thudding too loud pumping demon blood through his veins and-

"Class dismissed!" he was vaguely sure he heard Dean shouting, practically shoving the students out of the room before his brother was kneeling in front of him and shaking him awake. "Hey, hey, Sammy, you're okay. You're okay, I'm okay and that bastard is dead, okay, Sammy?"

He blinked owlishly and realized he was on the floor. Huh.

"Yeah, Dean," he said, letting his brother haul him to his feet. "I'm okay."

~o~

The quotes in italics are, in order:

The doctor in The Born-Again Identity (7.17)

Lilith in No Rest for the Wicked (3.16)

Alistair in Heaven and Hell (4.10)

Gabriel in Changing Channels (5.08)

Also, Sam's bit about understanding demons but people being crazy is paraphrased from something Dean says in The Benders (1.15). It seems like an opinion they'd share.

This was a very SPN-centric chapter and I'm sorry for that, we'll get more Harry, Ron and Hermione in here soon and Meg and Cas should show up soonish, too.

And finally, holy shit I just realized how similar Umbridge and Naomi are.