Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Day 26: Curse

The first time a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor only held the position for a single year, no one though anything of it. The second time, it was merely noted in passing as a coincidence. When the position was left vacant at the end of the third year in a row, it began to raise a few eyebrows. By the fifth year, people were speculating about the stress of the job. The fact that the fifth professor had had a nervous breakdown lent credence to this suggestion.

By the end of the sixth year, people had started whispering that the position was cursed, though no one, save Albus Dumbledore knew why such a curse may have been placed.

By the tenth year, Hogwarts students had started placing bets on what would cause the latest Defense professor to leave. The tenth professor to hold the position did not take kindly to this practice and any student caught doing it received a week's worth of detentions. Yet sure enough, by the end of the year, he had resigned.

By this point it was becoming a bit difficult to find Professors willing to fill the position. It became something of a joke in the British wizarding community, if you're looking for a temporary job until you can find something better, apply to teach DADA at Hogwarts.

The twentieth teacher to hold the position died in a mysterious accident and after that the humor faded, replaced by a more fearful view. Those who now accepted the position tended to either be skeptics who refused to believe in the curse or confident and brash types who were sure they could break it.

In all 40 different professors held the position for a single year only, 41 if you counted Amycus Carrow, though as he had never actually taught Defense most didn't.

As the young witch about to be interviewed to become the 41st (or 42nd) DADA professor since the beginning of the curse approached the school, she couldn't stop thoughts of all her predeccesors from running through her head. Her mother had begged her not to apply for the position. The departures of the professors in the last few years had been more filled with trouble than ever. Gone, it seemed, were the days of simple resignations, now it was deaths and dark wizards in disguise and near werewolf attacks that drove the professors from their posts.

However, as the young witch had reminded her mother, the school seemed quite confident that the curse had broken when You-Know-Who had been vanquished. Her mother had merely sniffed and said that she'd believe it when she saw it.

Despite her bold words to her mother, the witch couldn't help but have misgivings of her own as she approached the school. She went as far as to voice these to the school's new headmistress, Minerva McGonagall.

McGonagall told her, in a manner that managed somehow to be both crisp and soothing, that they had good reason to believe it had been Voldemort who set the curse on the school, and as such, it should have broken with his death, but frankly, there was only one way to tell.

The young witch may not have been Sorted into Gryffindor in her youth (she had been a Ravenclaw) but she had never been one to miss an opportunity because she was afraid. She took the job. And when she returned for her second year of teaching in the 1999-2000 school year, her colleagues threw her a party.

So, I'm not entirely sure about this one. A lot of it is more description than story, and it's the first time I've written a drabble for this focused on an OC but I hope it was at least somewhat enjoyable to read. Leave a review and tell me what you thought.