Guest #2: No, Harry is not going to receive support from the Weasleys like canon Harry did. This Harry is not the Harry from canon, and his needs and wants are different.

Thanks to everyone for their understanding about my impromptu vacation two weeks ago. I just really, REALLY needed some time off.

Disclaimer: When Lockhart's dueling club fumbled after its first meeting, did Flitwick, a former dueling champion himself, take over to teach the students how to fight and defend themselves against the monster that had been let loose rather than leaving the entire to flounder? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

Chapter 26
The Second Victim

"Here we are," Harry said excitedly, opening the book fully rather than just skimming over the page. "Scarpin's Revelaspell. 'When cast upon a completed potion, Scarpin's Revelaspell reveals the ingredients that were used in its production. This spell is generally taught in concurrence with analyzing the composition of and neutralizing unknown poisons, as identifying the specific toxins involved is the first step in the brewing of a perfect counteragent, but it is actually used more commonly in the business world to study commercial potions created by one's competitors and from there reproduce them for one's own uses or sale. Considering Alexandra Scarpin, according to her contemporaries' accounts, was far better with charms than potions but nevertheless sold a wide variety of potions similar to their own in the shop she inherited from her father, not to mention that she only published her charm following her retirement, it is likely this was even its original purpose.

"'Of all this spell's limitations, the most important is that it only reveals the ingredients used, not their amounts nor the order in which they were added to the cauldron. This has turned out to be the most common way by which modern potioneers have prevented unscrupulous competitors from eating into their profits; by adding small volumes of ingredients that do not affect the efficacy of the potion, they make their products that much more difficult to reproduce without the recipe. Many an accident in commercial laboratories, regardless of the official cause of the incident, has been assumed to be the result of a mistake in this duplication process.'"

He shook his head. "Well, this is what we need, though the history is a bit weird. Aren't there supposed to be laws that prevent people from copying things you make and selling them for themselves? I remember Uncle Vernon ranting about something or other like that before…"

"Patent laws, yes, but that is in the normal world," Lash reminded him. "We do not know if similar laws have been enacted in this society, and even if they have been, there are always loopholes and strategies by which to get around such restrictions. Regardless, you do not plan to use this spell in that manner, so the point is moot. We have a different task to accomplish."

"I know, I know." Pulling one of Lockhart's books closer to him, he picked up his wand. The slip of holly had become easier to use ever since he had figured out how to attune it to his emotions, admittedly by route of a silver ring slid down its shaft, and just recently it had become easier to cast spells with the wand than it was without it, a sign that it had finally changed to match him the way it was supposed to. He grimaced as he remembered that the Ollivander had told him that would be the case, which was the entire reason the imp had initially refused to remove the spell laid upon it that would complete that process automatically, but doing it the wand-maker's way would have prevented him from using any of his other foci. Since his homemade tools had saved his life on more than one occasion, that was not an option he was willing to entertain. Harry rapped the tip of his wand against the romance novel masquerading as a textbook and intoned, "Oculus stellionis, pedis ranae. Ex quo creata es."

Shaking her head with a grimace, the ex-angel muttered, "They have butchered that language. And why they require that incantation to be so long, I will never understand. It is not as if the words actually matter."

"Shush. It's working."

A soft golden light was shining through the page, almost as if there were a candle sitting on the other side of the paper, and flecks of that light rose up into the air before they clumped together as letters. "Agrimony. Ashwinder egg. Bladderwrack—"

"Ashwinder egg," Lash interrupted, a brittle smile twisting her lips. "The Fantastic Beasts book mentioned that once frozen, the eggs of the ashwinder are used in a variety of love potions. None of the other books you have flipped through listed any other use for them. Besides alleviating chills from fever, that is, but that is only when eaten whole, not in a potion."

"So that's it, then." He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. "Ashwinder eggs are used almost exclusively for love potions. There is a potion on this book that contains those eggs. Ergo, this potion is a love potion."

"I suppose it is good to have proof of our suspicions," she sighed. Vanishing from his sight, Harry wondered where she had gone before he felt and then saw a pair of arms wrapping around his shoulders from behind and felt a chin nestling in his hair. "The boys in this school, with only a few exceptions, have neutral or negative views of him, so we need not worry about you falling under his sway. Nor is there any immediately obvious evidence that he has performed any illicit acts upon the residents of this castle beyond manipulating the girls. I say we deem this question answered and let it drop unless or until he steps out of line."

"But we have proof that he is lacing his books with potions," he said weakly.

Lash's head shaking on top of his cut him off. "Unless you find books on magical law, we will not know whether or not that is something illegal, and even if it is, he can deny that he had any part in it. All we know for a fact is that there is a potion on the books. Who brewed it; who applied it? There is no way you can definitively prove that he had a part in it, no matter how obvious it is."

A low-pitched creak could be heard from deeper in the stacks as he forced himself to relax into her embrace. "I guess you're right," he muttered unhappily. After a moment, he shook his head. "Okay, so that's one problem solved and shelved. Moving on. Do you want me to find some more history books?"

"I doubt more will be any help. The three I read either ignored the story behind Slytherin's departure, summarized it in two or three sentences, or in the case of Hogwarts, A History devoted all of a single paragraph to him and his Chamber." She scoffed in disgust. "The most detailed story we have about the Heir is the racist messianic tale Bertram recited. How irritating."

He couldn't disagree with that. With no one obviously plotting anything against him this year, he had allowed himself to lower his guard somewhat around his Housemates, but the story they had heard the previous night had been a brutal reminder of just what kind of people shared living space with him. Malfoy was not the only one who had been eager for some psychopath to go around committing genocide on school kids. "So what do we do about it?" he asked, raising his voice a little to hear himself over the increasing volume of the creaking. "Sally-Anne is a Muggleborn, and while I myself am not, the blood purists don't like me for being a Halfblood, either."

"I do not really know…" She trailed off, and he turned around to see what she found so interesting about the bookcase next to him.

…thud… thud… Thud… Thud…

"Move!"

At her barked command, Harry threw himself out of the chair and around the table to the far side of the sitting area, his chosen spot near two rows that would allow him a choice of where to run if necessary. Safer for the moment, he waited with nerves tensed to the breaking point. What was that noise, and who was making it?

Both questions were answered when the bookcase tipped over and crashed down on top of the table where he had been sitting, the books pouring out and covering the floor. Looking over it, he winced when he saw the trail of fallen shelves stretching back seven or eight rows back. A loud shriek came from the front of the library, and Harry just knew that any goodwill he had earned from Pince with his questioning of Lockhart's credentials had just disappeared.

Now was not the time to worry about that, though. There, standing on top of the farthest bookcase, waited the cause of this debacle.

"Harry Potter came back to school," hissed Dobby through gritted teeth. "He said he would not come back. He said he would stay at home where it was safe. Harry Potter lied to Dobby!"

So much for Dobby not finding out.

"Do not tell him that we doubted the sincerity of his warning," Lash commanded instantly. "Tell him… Tell him this."

Harry did not bother giving her a nod, instead repeating what she said word for word. "I've been keeping an eye out for anything dangerous. I couldn't stay in Little Whinging, though. I already have enemies who are trying to hurt me, and"—he shot her a sharp glance—"I'm safer from them here than I would be outside the castle. Here I only have to worry about one danger, not several. And I have friends here to whom I needed to relay your warning, and I couldn't get in touch with them while I was home, not to mention I—"

He cut himself off and jumped to the side to avoid the thick book that had raced at his head with all the fury of a cannonball.

"Dobby does not believe Harry Potter!" the house-elf screamed back. Behind him, an entire shelf's worth of book rose into the air and hovered menacingly. "Harry Potter does not have friends! No friends wrote to Harry Potter over the summer! Harry Potter is lying again, and Dobby does not like being lied to!"

"Mister Potter! What is the meaning of this?!"

Madam Pince poked her head out from between the stacks, frown firmly in place and glare aimed at him. Dobby threw his hand out at Harry. The books all lined up to point their spines at him.

"Run!" Suiting action to words, Harry sprinted away from the deranged house-elf and his leather-bound ammunition and toward the surprised librarian. He had to duck underneath a book that had been aimed to tear his head off his shoulder and jump over a couple more, but he reached the woman and grabbed hold of her outstretched arm. "We have to go!"

"What are you—"

"No time! Vahan!" He threw his left hand behind him and called up his shield just in time to deflect a quintet of encyclopedias that had turned the corner and continued their pursuit. Unlike the original shield bracelet he had made, this one he had attuned with a clearer idea of just how he wanted it to work, and the results proved how beneficial that change had been. Now, instead of just being nudged away from him, the projectiles' paths were completely bent, and the books shot out from the edge of the translucent blue circle to collide against the shelves.

With proof that he was innocent in all this, or at least that there were extenuating circumstances in play, Pince stopped fighting him and instead tugged him along behind her through the corridor between the bookshelves. "My desk!" she shouted. "Keep that spell up!"

"I was doing that anyway!" he yelled back as a chair tumbled over the bookcases between them and Dobby onto to hit the shield and be deflected sideways toward the Restricted Section. "We need to get out of here!"

"We stay! It's easier to defend when you aren't moving!" They scrambled behind her desk, and the now thoroughly irate librarian pinned him with a sharp glare. "What is going on?"

"House-elf didn't want me to come back to Hogwarts, but I did anyway, and now he's in a frothing rage. I think he knows who this Heir of Slytherin person is, but I don't know for sure."

Pince stared at him for a second until the thump of a table slamming into the floor distracted her for a moment. "If he keeps going, he's going to tear the entire library apart," she groused. "You really think he knows the identity of the Heir?"

"Pretty sure," he confirmed. "He hinted at something dangerous happening here when he showed up at my house, but it only makes sense now."

"Then we need to capture him. The last time someone calling themselves the Heir showed up in Hogwarts," she explained to his questioning expression, "three people died and the school was almost shut down. If we can find out who the new Heir is now, we can prevent anybody else from dying."

"I don't know if I can catch him—"

She cut his protests off. "I know a couple of hexes that should be able to reach him from here. All I need you to do is keep this shield up for a few seconds while I cast one."

"That I can do." He stood to look over the top of the desk and stared in awe at the hundreds of books that had already been thrown against his shield. Blocking this many attacks was taking its toll on him, though; already he could feel the torc beginning to burn and a dull pounding pain drilling into the middle of his head. "But I'd appreciate it if you'd do whatever you're going to do quickly."

Pince ignored his complaints and waved her wand in front of them. This was not the simple wand motions like those Flitwick and McGonagall had been teaching them, however; her motions were wide and curving, almost as though she were drawing something in the air. "Beschädigt keine Bücher oder Menschen! Greift nur Elfen an! Tötet nicht, sondern fangt ein und bindet! Magnetischer Lanzenreiter, Völkermord Veränderung." Pulling her wand back, she stabbed it into the middle of her invisible sketch. "Feueren!"

Bright blue light flashed in front of the woman in an elaborate design for just an instant before dissolving into hundreds of sparks, and those became streaks as they shot away from the witch to swerve and zig-zag around the cavernous room. Only a few seconds after she cast the spell, Harry heard a startled yelp, and then the true power of Pince's spell was revealed. The plethora of sparks stopped in their tracks, and then they all converged upon the fallen bookshelves. A moment after they disappeared from his sight, a loud shriek echoed through the room.

Silence fell over the library.

"Did you get him?" he finally asked.

"I… I think so." The woman did not immediately leave the safety of her desk and his shield, though. Instead, she grabbed a quill and a sheet of parchment and jotted down a few lines; a tap of her wand and a muttered incantation, and the note folded itself into a paper airplane and zipped away under the closed doors. "That should bring Albus here. Now we can see what happened to that blasted elf."

Unfortunately, they combed through the remains of the reading area where, by all appearances, Dobby had demolished the bookcases for more ammunition only to walk away empty-handed a few minutes later. The house-elf had obviously held on to consciousness for long enough to teleport away.

"This will take forever to sort out," the librarian muttered angrily while looking over the rubble. She glanced down at him, and for a moment Harry worried that she was going to blame this all on him they way she had when she first stormed toward him. Thankfully, she just blew out a harsh sigh and shook her head. "Good job shielding us from him. I've never heard of a shield like that before. Where did you learn it?"

"I was tutored in magic for a little over a year before I started here," he answered honestly. Curiosity was better than anger, and besides, it wasn't like he considered Lash's lessons to be any great secret. Lash's history and that she lived in his head, absolutely, but just that she had taught him? McGonagall already knew that much from her visit to his shed. "That was one of the things she taught me."

"Which makes that bracelet of yours a secondary focus, I suppose." He barely had time to nod before the doors slammed open. "Took you long enough, Albus!"

"My apologies, Irma. There was quite a crowd we had to wade through," the elderly headmaster called back. Dumbledore walked into the disaster area, Snape slinking behind him. Looking around, he turned his piercing gaze onto Harry. "I do hope this mess isn't your fault, Harry. You would still have detentions to serve when you returned from the summer holidays next year."

Pince leapt to his defense. "No, it wasn't the boy's fault. A rogue house-elf snuck into the castle and started attacking him."

"And just where is this elf?" Snape asked with a sneer. The woman shook her head. "Then how do we know that there even was one? Being attacked would certainly buy quite a bit of attention, especially considering last night's events, and I am sure the story would quickly change the attacker from a simple elf to some more threatening figure—"

"You think I did all this? Just to get attention?!" he demanded. His interactions with his Head of House, all in the Potions classroom, had never been warm or friendly, but neither was Snape as antagonistic there as he was being now. Then again, all those times Harry had been with the rest of the Slytherins and, more importantly, the Gryffindors, for whom Snape seemed to hold a special hatred. Here and now, with no witnesses? Maybe Snape was letting his real feelings shine through.

"Are you going to call me a liar, too?" retorted Pince, looking up at the tall man but still possessing an air of utmost condescension. "I heard the elf's voice, and no second-year is good enough to cast an auditory glamour. Furthermore, Harry has never given me any reason to believe that he is anything other than a curious student, especially not the sort of hooligan you are making him out to be."

Dumbledore smoothly stepped between the pair, his hand held in front of him in an effort to calm the situation. "I do not believe I have ever heard you speak so well of a student before, Irma," he said in a light tone. "His treatment of your books must be impeccable. If you say he was not involved, than he was not involved." Turning to Harry, the old man smiled. "Don't worry, Harry. We will get to the bottom of this and discover whose elf that was."

"If it helps, he said his name was Dobby," he said. He had no idea if there was a master list of who owned which elf – something that he hoped was not the case considering what it would mean if the wizards' society at large still found slavery acceptable – but even if there were not, they would still need Dobby's name to find him. "He didn't give me a last name, though, so I don't know how much that will narrow down the list. I don't know if Dobby is a common elf name or not."

Dumbledore smiled slightly and shook his head, but rather than explain just what he found so amusing, he beckoned Pince to follow and drifted out of the disaster zone. In doing so, he permitted Snape to storm up to Harry. "What were you doing here?" the bully snarled.

Harry's mouth flattened into a hard line. "I was studying," he answered eventually.

"Today is the Slytherin–Gryffindor game. All of your Housemates were in the stands. Why weren't you there instead of causing trouble here?"

"I don't enjoy Quidditch," shot back Harry. "It's not like we're required to attend them. I had better things to do."

"You are not required to go, but you are expected to support your House." Snape's sneer was full of loathing. "But no, Potters do what they want when they want. Rules and conventions are too plebeian for such exceptional people."

Unable to stand these baseless accusations any longer, Harry burst out, "What are you talking about? The school rules say I can be in the library, and students are expected to do well in their classes. Last year, there were a bunch of people here during Quidditch games—"

"Twenty points from Slytherin for talking back to a teacher," Snape interrupted, a nasty smirk on his face. "And detention after classes on Monday. Perhaps scrubbing out cauldrons will teach you to do what you're told when you're told."

Lash glared daggers at the wizard's back as he swooped away. "It has been some time since I last checked, but angels are permitted to execute self-absorbed, contemptible mortals like that one, yes?"

"No, Lash, I'm pretty sure that still counts as murder."

"Murder? No, I do believe ridding this world of a petty bully like this one would be classified as a public service." The Fallen huffed and turned away, her blue-green eyes still dark with hate, and the smile she gave him was cruel. "You will not serve detention with him. Enter his lab that night on schedule and grant me control, and I shall weave an illusion in his mind that will make him believe that he is supervising you cleaning those cauldrons when really it is he who will be doing the work."

Harry needed only a moment to nod in agreement with her plan. No one wanted to serve detention, and honestly, his momentary hesitation had nothing to do with avoiding Snape's undeserved vitriol and everything to do with wondering if it was a good idea to let Lash rummage around in the head of someone she despised and give her the chance to cause an 'accident'. Then again, if their experience with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were anything to go on, he would be pulled into Snape's head should she try real psychomancy. If all she used was an illusion, there would be no problems; he had been the recipient of her illusions for the last three years, almost, and he was fine.

Well, he was fine as far as he could tell.

Looking underneath the demolished bookcases, he finally found his bag and his books. "What are we going to do if Dobby attacks us again?" he asked as he packed everything back up. "I think he's past the point of trying to get me to go back to Little Whinging."

"There are a variety of options for what we could do to punish his impudence. The real questions are how will we catch him and much time will we then have in which to do them." She shook her head. "Regardless, whatever sympathy his status might have earned from me has been erased. He will not enjoy what I will do to him should you catch him."

Harry shuddered faintly at the ex-angel's cold voice. "Then again," he said with forced brightness, "Maybe now that I've thoroughly brassed him off, he'll wash his hands of me and leave me alone. We can hope, right?"

"…And now it is practically ensured that he will cause some other disaster before this year is up."

"Albus, we need you at the hospital wing immediately. There's been another attack. A student this time."

Those were the words that had been rattling around in Albus's head ever since Minerva's Patronus had woken him from a dead sleep only ten minutes ago. He burst into the infirmary in something just short of a run, his night robes flapping around his knees. "What. Happened?"

"Mr. Anderson, one of my sixth-year prefects, found him lying on one of the landings when he was finishing his patrol," Minerva reported. "At first, we thought he had had an accident with the staircase above it, that he tumbled off when it was moving or something. I brought him here, and then…"

Poppy stepped up, her eyes flickering once or twice to the small boy lying on the white sheets before she focused all her attention on her report. "I can't do anything for him. Broken bones are simple; I can mend them in a heartbeat. Shattered bones are a little more difficult, but still something I can handle. We had enough of them in the first few years after we planted that damned Whomping Willow that I can probably give a seminar on how to properly care for those injuries. But Mr. Creevey?" She shook her head. "Every time I try anything, the fragments immediately separate again. These injuries aren't from trauma. He was cursed."

"Because injuries caused by Dark magic cannot be healed magically," he whispered sadly. Alastor was a walking,talking reminder of that fact. Taking a few steps closer, he gazed down at the small, pale boy who lay there unmoving. First-year Muggleborns should be having fun experiencing magic for the first time and making friends who would last them their entire lives. They should not be worrying that they would be attacked because of who their parents were, and they definitely should not look like they were lying at the foot of the Veil. "How bad are his injuries?"

"Bad enough that 'bad' doesn't even begin to cover it," Poppy scoffed. "Both humeri, shattered down their entire length. Radii, ulnae, carpals—"

"In English, Poppy. It's too early for me to translate."

"Fine. All the bones in his arms and his legs were shattered like glass," she bit out. "The same is true of his pelvis and four of his five lumbar vertebrae. That's more proof that this was deliberate, honestly; if he incurred all these injuries traumatically, he would have so much internal bleeding that he would have been dead before anyone found him."

Albus sighed and wiped his face with his hand. That was bad news, all right. "And his prognosis?"

"Poor." He turned a sharp expression on her, but the look on her face softened his own. She was not being curt because she did not care, something that would be extremely out of character for her; she was being so short because it obviously pained her to dwell on all this. "The fractures themselves will take months to heal. He'll need to have all the fragments positioned properly and then held there magically, and then once the bones themselves have more or less healed, the tendons and ligaments will need to be reattached. Then there's the physical therapy to undo all the atrophy that will have set in. Worse, with those vertebral fractures, there's a definite possibility that he sustained an injury to his spinal cord, and magic can't fix that." Poppy chewed on her lip for a moment. "Albus, he needs to go to St. Mungo's. These injuries are so far beyond the scope of my abilities that I don't even want to consider being the one taking care of him."

That was the statement he had been afraid he was going to hear. "I hoped to keep this situation quiet," he admitted to the two witches. "News that there is someone promising to purge the school of Muggleborns? That is the kind of scandal that I don't know that Hogwarts can survive getting out to the public. Not to—"

"You'd keep the students here and in danger just to avoid bad press?!" Poppy demanded. Next to her, Minerva appeared conflicted, but even she was looking at him in slight disbelief. "I love Hogwarts, too, but there's a time and a place to admit that a problem is too big for you to handle by yourself! This is about the children's safety!"

"Which is another reason I wanted to handle this internally," he replied sharply. "Right now, we know one thing for sure, and it is that this so-called Heir is inside the school. Considering the first victim was Argus's pet two weeks ago, it's most likely a student. Anyone fully trained in magic would not consider her to be enough of an obstacle to bother butchering her, even if he did want to leave a threat for all the school to see. Because it is a student and not an adult skulking around unseen, there is a major advantage to keeping the school open: we know exactly where the Heir is and how much room he has in which to hide. Furthermore, this is our territory, not his. Portraits keeping watch, house-elves wandering unseen and unheard. Eventually, we will catch him.

"If Hogwarts closes? Those advantages all disappear. If he is smart, he already has the names of many if not all the Muggleborns in this school, and from there he can track them down to the schools they will transfer into or even to their homes. He will have many, many more places to run and hide, and as a result, he will not need to be quite so cautious as he has been so far. Also, since I doubt this crusade of his was purely his own idea, once he leaves this place, he will again be in close contact with those who not only set him on this path but are likely more capable of inflicting harm and death on those they view as beneath them.

"That is why I want to keep this a secret as much as I can," he concluded. "Not because of reputation or ego, but because this is the best way to catch him. 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer'. I want to find this Heir and hand him over to the DMLE, but that will not happen if he scurries away and hides among the rest of the country."

Minerva and Poppy shared a long look before the latter sighed. "I… can probably get Mr. Creevey into St. Mungo's with a minimum of questions being asked about the circumstances. If need be, I could imply that he heard exaggerated rumors of how bad bullying can be at this school and so he tried to learn a curse that was far beyond his current skill. It will paint him in a negative light, but it should keep everyone's focus on him rather than here."

"And when he denies that story?" the Head of Gryffindor challenged.

"A story like this? Everyone would expect him to deny it. Unfortunately, I don't believe that he will be able to identify his attacker once he wakes up. The evidence points to him being cursed from behind, so he won't be able to help us catch the Heir."

He nodded. "I agree, that is unfortunate. Still, if that is the reality, there is little point in worrying about what might have been. Minerva, please show me where he was found. We need to talk to the portraits now if we hope to learn just what happened here, and maybe one of them was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Heir's face."

"I already asked the paintings. None of them saw anything," she said.

That was not a good sign. "What did the message say?"

"There wasn't a message. Not like there was with Mrs. Norris."

Albus frowned. The victims and the title that had been claimed pointed to Tom Riddle, to Voldemort, the same person he was convinced had been responsible for the original Heir of Slytherin attacks in 1941 and '42. Making this look like it might have been an accident… not so much. There had not been a message over every victim the first time around, but in each case, it was obvious that it had been deliberate. This was different, and when dealing with someone as deadly as Tom, different was bad.

Then again, this was not Tom himself. It was, as Albus had told the pair of witches, assuredly a student; perhaps he had been coached by Tom, which would explain how he knew whatever spell Tom had created to move unseen by the castle's portraits, or maybe he had learned of it from a relative's tales of that horrific year and decided to take the action demanded by the blood purists' bigotry. Either way, this imitator was probably a member of the families that had supported Tom's rise from the beginning. Someone like Theodore Nott, for instance, whose father and grandfather had both been Death Eaters and had appeared overjoyed at the fear the rest of the school felt when the cat's butchering had been discovered.

But suspicion was not enough. He needed proof.

"I still want to see it," he finally told Minerva. "We need a lead on his identity as soon as possible, and that is the best place to find one."

"Why do you want me to join the Dueling Club?" Harry demanded in a whisper while entering the Great Hall on Thursday. Ever since a first-year Gryffindor boy had been found crippled the previous Saturday night, the whole non-Slytherin student body had been walking on eggshells, so it came as no surprise that practically the entire school had packed themselves into the room to learn how to protect themselves from the Heir. "You're an excellent teacher, and it isn't like you can't give me lots of people to practice against."

Lash shook her head, the angel floating in the air in front of him and slipping through the people that stood in her way. "I can teach you how to fight with the kinds of magics used in my old world and how to take advantage of obvious combinations of spell effects that you have learned from books. Do certain spells synergize with each other in predictable but counterintuitive ways? Are there strategies for making the most out of simple spells? These are the kinds of things I have no way of knowing and therefore cannot teach you. If you have a teacher who knows how to fight with your style of magic, however…"

"Fine, fine. As long as it's not— Oh, come on! You have got to be kidding!"

Prancing onto the stage was none other than Lockhart, the ponce flapping about in ridiculous deep purple robes. And to make matters worse, who should be accompanying him but Snape? "Gather round, gather round!" Lockhart shouted. "Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me?"

"I stand corrected," groaned Lash. "You will learn nothing useful from this club."

"Good to know." Thankfully Harry was already near the edge of the crowd, so it was but the work of a moment to break free. With a muttered "T'ak'un", he faded from sight, and then he was out the door and making a break for his dorm.

He had better ways to spend his time than waste it listening to Lockhart's drivel.

I have entirely too much fun coming up with spell incantations sometimes.

Silently Watches out.