Author's Note: Congrats to James Sirius Potter for starting Hogwarts and getting Sorted into Gryffindor! I always thought he was two years older than his brother Albus Severus, so I was excited to have confirmation of that and his Hogwarts house. And since this fic is about Harry being in Hufflepuff, I am also extremely excited and happy to hear that Teddy Lupin was Sorted into Hufflepuff like his mother, and is Head Boy this year.
The next morning, at breakfast, schedules were handed out and the Hufflepuff Nine saw that their first class of the day was Herbology, with the Gryffindors. When they arrived for the lesson, Professor Sprout informed the class that they would be working in Greenhouse Three today. This caught their interest, since they had never been in Greenhouse Three, which held the more dangerous plants.
The lesson was on mandrakes, and Neville and Hermione won Hufflepuff twenty points for answering Professor Sprout's questions on them correctly. After that, the class was told to split up into groups of no more than four and re-pot the baby mandrakes. While Professor Sprout had made it look it easy, it was much harder for the students, and only Neville didn't have much trouble. In fact, after ten minute of trying to squash a particularly fat one into a pot, Harry confessed defeat and had to mime for help to Neville (since they were all wearing earmuffs to avoid being knocked out by the mandrake's cry).
After Herbology and a quick wash, the Hufflepuffs headed for Defense Against the Dark Arts, while the Gryffindors had Transfiguration. Professor Lockhart started off the class by having the students do a 'little quiz' to see how well they had read his books, consisting of three sides of paper of fifty-four questions. They had half an hour to do it, and when Harry looked down at his paper at the start of the quiz, he stared at it in disbelief. None of the questions really had anything to do with Defense, instead being composed of questions like 'What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color?' and 'What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date?"
Once he got over his surprise, Harry decided to have a bit of fun. For the favorite color, he wrote down 'The color of Lockhart's eyes', for the secret ambition he wrote down the stuff Lockhart had said he would one day back when he was at school, the greatest achievement was all the stunts he had done to garner attention at Hogwarts, and similar responses for the other questions. For the final question, Harry left the part about Lockhart's birthday blank, since he had no idea when it was or how to make it funny, but did write down that Lockhart's ideal gift was 'a chocolate cake filled with Love Potion from a fan'. Not that Harry actually thought that Love Potions were funny or harmless, but it would be amusing to see Lockhart go gaga over one of his fans for a bit.
Half an hour later, Lockhart collected the papers and rifled through them in front of the class. It appeared that Harry wasn't the only one who had deliberately messed around with the answers, for most of his friends had put down the same responses he did to the questions of Lockhart's secret ambition and greatest achievement. Meanwhile, Hermione was the only one that had answered all the questions correctly, for despite her dislike of Lockhart, it didn't stop her from reading all his assigned books and retaining the information. She was awarded ten points for Hufflepuff, but didn't look happy to be singled out for it.
Lockhart then bent down behind his desk and lifted a large, covered cage onto it. "Now - be warned! It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm."
The Hufflepuff Nine exchanged looks, while Zacharias Smith leaned forward to get a better look at the cage.
"I must ask you not to scream," said Lockhart in a low voice. "It might provoke them." As the whole class held its breath, he whipped off the cover. "Yes," he said dramatically. "Freshly caught Cornish Pixies."
Harry and Susan exchanged bewildered looks, since pixies weren't exactly dangerous, just nuisances, while Zacharias let out a snort of laughter that even Lockhart couldn't mistake for a scream of terror. "Yes?" he smiled at Zacharias.
"Well, pixies aren't very dangerous, are they, Professor?" Zacharias said, stifling another snort.
"Don't be so sure!" said Lockhart, waggling a finger annoyingly as him. "Devilish tricky little blighters they can be!"
The pixies were electric blue and about eight inches high, with pointed faces and voices so shrill it was like listening to a lot of budgies arguing. The moment the cover had been removed, they had started jabbering and rocketing around, rattling the bars and making bizarre faces at the people nearest them.
"Right, then," Lockhart said loudly. "Let's see what you make of them!" And he opened the cage.
It was pandemonium. The pixies shot in ever direction like rockets. Two of them seized Neville by the ears and lifted him into the air. Several shot straight through the window, showering the back row with broken glass. The rest proceeded to wreck the classroom more effectively than a rampaging rhino. They grabbed ink bottles and sprayed the class with them, shredded books and papers, tore pictures form the walls, upended the wastebasket, grabbed bags and books and threw them out of the smashed window; within minutes, half the class was sheltering under desks and Neville was swinging from the iron chandelier in the ceiling, though he managed to have the presence of mind to pull out his wand and levitate himself to the floor seconds later.
"Come on now - round them up, round them up, they're only pixies," Lockhart shouted. He rolled up his sleeves, brandished his wand, and bellowed, "Peskipiksi Pesternomi!"
It had absolutely no effect, especially as it sounded like 'Pesky Pixie Pester No Me', and not a proper spell, to Harry's ears. One of the pixies seized Lockhart's wand and threw it out of the window, too. He gulped and dived under his own desk, as Hermione, Harry, Susan, and Ernie managed to get some order by hitting a number of the pixies with Freezing Charms. The rest of the group joined them seconds later, and when the bell rang, Zacharias grabbed his bag and ran out the door, while his housemates finished immobilizing the rest of the pixies and stuffing them back into the cage.
Lockhart got to his feet and started to thank them for their help, but Lil said curtly, "Don't bother. If you're pathetic enough to not be able to handle a bunch of pixies, to the point of making up nonsense spells in a failed attempt to stop them, then I seriously question how you did all the stuff in your books."
"Yeah, it looks odd when you, who's supposed to be a competent wizard, can't handle something as simple as pixies and need a bunch of second-years to get you out the mess, Professor," added Justin. With that, the Hufflepuff Nine stuffed the last few frozen pixies into the cage, grabbed their school bags, and strode out of the room before Lockhart could formulate a response.
At lunch, they made sure to tell their housemates exactly what had occurred during Defense class. The other Hufflepuffs frowned over Lockhart's behavior, and considering the questions that had already been raised after Rita Skeeter's article, they found this as further proof that perhaps he wasn't as great as he seemed. Those that had friends or relatives in other houses got up to spread the word, and it wasn't long before the whole school knew about the disastrous Defense lesson.
Meanwhile, Ron took out his copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. He flipped to the section on pixies, who were classified with XXX, which meant competent wizards should cope. With a grin on his face, he added 'but xxxxxxx if you're Lockart' next to the M.O.M. classification. His friends chuckled at that.
When the Hufflepuff Nine finished lunch, they went outside into the overcast courtyard. They were discussing what they might be doing in Transfiguration, which was their next class, when Ginny came over, with Colin Creevy, who was clutching his camera, right behind her.
"Sorry to bother you, Harry, but Colin wanted to meet you," Ginny said. "He heard all about you from his dormmates, as well as reading about you in a book he got for background info on the wizarding world. When he heard that I was casual friends with you, he asked if I could introduce you to him."
"Hello, Colin," said Harry, deciding to be friendly for the time being. No doubt the younger boy hadn't gotten over his excitement of being in the wizarding world yet, and it wouldn't hurt to be nice to him. "Have you met my friends?" Harry introduced the rest of the nine.
Colin looked thrilled to meet Harry Potter and his friends. "It's amazing here, isn't it? I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got the letter from Hogwarts. My dad's a milkman, he couldn't believe it either."
Justin chuckled. "I felt the same way as you last year, Colin. I was a bit amazed at first to have Harry be in the same house as me, and never thought he'd become my friend, but after the first few days, I got to know the real him, not the famous image that books and newspaper articles built him up to be. He's just a regular student like us, good at some things, okay at others, and complete rubbish at the rest."
"Yeah," said Harry. "I know I'm famous and all for defeating the Dark Lord as a baby, but I had help with that. My parents died that night, and their sacrifice was what enabled me to win." Technically, it was just his mother's sacrifice that allowed him to win, but Colin didn't need to know that.
"Oh, so your parent's deaths created some sort of magical protection?" Colin asked.
"Something like that," answered Harry. "That's what Professor Dumbledore and my godparents think, anyway."
"Er, would you mind if I took your picture, Harry?" Colin asked hesitantly. "Ginny said you don't really like that kind of stuff, but I promised Dad I'd take loads of pictures to send to him, and it'd be really good if I had one of you."
"As long as my friends are in the picture too, I don't mind," said Harry.
"That'd be awesome!" Colin exclaimed. "Ginny and Luna told me yesterday about your group trying to stop the Dark Lord from getting the Phil-Philosopher's Stone last year. It was really brave."
The Hufflepuff Nine exchanged amused looks, but obligingly posed in front of the stone steps so Colin could snap a picture of them. When he was done, he thanked them, and promised to give them copies of the picture once he'd developed the film. (Ginny had told him that they had photo albums that they were filling up with pictures of their school years, since that was what Harry had given his friends as an end-of-year gift the previous school year.)
Shortly after that, they all left for class. In Transfiguration, they were to turn beetles into buttons. Harry didn't have much luck in the beginning, since everything he had learned last year seemed to have leaked out of his head during the summer. All he managed to do was give his beetle a lot of exercise as it scuttled over the desktop avoiding his wand, before he finally made some change to the beetle. Unfortunately, it wasn't anything that Professor McGonagall would praise him for, as the only change was that the beetle was now plastic, meaning he had produced (at best) a beetle-shaped button.
Hermione, on the other hand, produced a handful of perfect coat buttons, and was awarded ten points to Hufflepuff. Harry very sternly squashed any feeling of envy he felt about this, and instead, after class, asked her if she would give him some Transfiguration tutoring so that he could succeed next time. She agreed, and the Hufflepuff Nine left the classroom.