The Imposter Complex, Chapter Twenty Nine: That's Professor Riddle To You.
A/N: Embarrassingly, I accidentally uploaded the wrong version of the last chapter. I have corrected this error. It's mostly identical, save for a conversation between Tom and Garrow before meeting with the Delacours.
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I sat alone at my desk, deep in thought. Occasionally, I would scribble a note on the parchment in front of me, annotating the notes Remus had so kindly given me, but my focus drifted from the dull work.
I rarely used this study (once Sirius' bedroom), usually preferring to do my work down in the cellar. But it was raining heavily in Hogsmeade, and I found a good storm helped me think.
Sirius had been over for lunch earlier. He had been overjoyed at my release, and would not stop professing his apologies no matter how many times I told him he was not at fault. He was, of course. Blatantly so. But in truth the failure of Grindelwald's containment had been just as much my own fuckup, and triply so Dumbledore's. There was little point in hypocritically focusing my ire on a friend I actually cared about, rather than the Headmaster.
I had decided to take a break from adventuring over the Summer. My official explanation to Garrow and Sirius had been that I needed to prepare for my teaching role.
In truth, I remained shaken by my vision in Château Delacour. I still wasn't sure what it had meant, and I was in no hurry to find out either. That Fountain haunted me. Even with my occlumency restored, I would still get the occasional flashes of panic, instants of irrational belief that anything and everything was about to bring about my doom.
Not to mention the shame of being made so pathetically vulnerable, so suddenly. I had had such... episodes before, but not in a very, very long time. Not since I'd discovered magic, and with it Occlumency.
Worse still that I'd been seen by others in such a state, especially... well. Never mind that.
In other words, a bit of rest and relaxation was just what the Healer ordered.
Said Healer being myself.
That wasn't to say that I was giving up the hunt though. I knew already that Voldemort had returned to Europe after Australia; one final loop before Britain. I simply needed to figure out what he'd done there. Perhaps once the school term began I would feel ready to fully pursue him again.
I eventually had gotten around to informing Dumbledore of the textbooks I wanted. I had contemplated submitting Magick Moste Evile as my chosen text for all year groups, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth the joke.
Instead, I played it safe, and went with mostly the same set Lupin had used up until NEWT level, where I selected a choice text of my own.
I also conned some of his old lesson plans off of him too, to give myself something to work off. Fuck knows I wasn't going to Mad-Eye Moody for help. I had all the old curriculums off Dumbledore so I knew at least what they'd been nominally taught so far.
The one silver lining to this whole teacher business was that at least it would give me a pretext to stay in Potter's general vicinity. I had scarce little to work on regarding Voldemort's plans for him. I presumed he wanted the boy for his resurrection ritual, it was the only reason I could think of for why he hadn't already completed that task before I'd destroyed all our ancestors' remains.
Then again, he also hadn't done much of anything for the prior decade either. His thought processes remained alien to me. If I wanted to strike at the boy, I'd just walk up to him in the street in disguise and punch him in the back of the head. Hell, that's essentially what I did do to get my Holly wand.
I shook my head ruefully. No amount of contemplation was going to give me insight into a madman.
I returned to my work, correcting a couple of very minor misconceptions in Lupin's understanding of how the Killing Curse operated. They could be forgiven; he'd almost certainly never cast it before, and it's not like we were trying to teach these kids how. Still, I would permit no such inaccuracies in my own classroom.
:—:
A week before the term began, Dumbledore led me down the hallowed halls of Hogwarts, ostensibly giving me a tour of the place. After all, Thomas Grey had had his education in Hong Kong, not Britain.
And I had the documentation to prove it if anyone wanted to start talking bollocks.
'The Transfiguration classroom.' He said, leading me into the third-floor chamber. I looked about inquisitively, attempting to act as though I had not seen it hundreds of times before.
The room was, as it turned out, already inhabited. A severe looking witch in bottle-green robes and a tartan scarf sat at the teacher's desk, going over papers. I recognised her from the Weasley waif's memories.
'Ah, Minerva, wondrous. I'd like to introduce you to Professor Thomas Grey, our new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher. Professor Grey, this is Professor Minerva McGonagall, our Transfigurations Master.
I was going to get sick of the word "Professor" quickly, I could tell.
McGonagall stood and extended a hand, which I accepted. She regarded me with a clipped expression.
'A pleasure, Professor Grey.'
I was caught momentarily off-guard by the thickness of her highland brogue, but rallied quickly.
'The pleasure is all mine. But please, call me Tom.' An easy smile slid across my face.
She smiled thinly in response. I suppose she was well-used to the revolving door that was my position. 'Very well, Tom.'
She turned to Dumbledore. 'Albus, Severus has yet to check in with me, do you know if he has arrived at the castle?'
'Alas, I have not seen him.' Dumbledore replied mildly. 'If I do, I shall advise him to seek you out.'
She nodded briskly, and returned to going over her papers. It didn't look like classwork.
'Minerva is our deputy headmistress,' Dumbledore informed me as we left her to her work. 'and Head of House for Gryffindor, as well as Transfiguration teacher. I have offered her the opportunity to reduce her workload, but she merely called me a hypocrite.'
He chuckled at his own joke, but I remained stony-faced.
We ambled down along the third-floor corridors, Dumbledore steadily chattering away about some piece or another of the castle's history that I already knew.
'Ah, and here we are. Your new classroom.'
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Defence classroom had changed significantly more than any other he'd shown me. The dominating feature had to be the full dragon skeleton that some absolute madman had taken the time to string up across the length of the room, a dozen feet above where the students' heads would be.
I looked incredulously up at it. 'What's with the Hebridean? Dragons aren't even Dark.'
'Ah yes, a contribution by the late Aramis Hobbes.' At my blank look Dumbledore continued. 'He became rather famous in Britain in the late seventies for slaying that dragon with naught but a longsword in hand. When he came to teach here, he brought it with him.'
'...and didn't take it with him when he left.' I murmured. I glanced askance at Dumbledore. 'Hebridean Blacks verifiably less dangerous than this job, I'm guessing?'
'You guess incorrectly. Aramis left the skeleton to the school in his will; I believe he met his end attempting to replicate his feat on a Nundu.'
I snorted. 'Good to see I'm preceded by real intellectuals.'
He looked disapproving, but did not comment. 'Your office and private chambers are up that stairway there. Most of Professor Joplin's things have been cleared out, though his widow did choose to leave his teaching materials.'
'I'm sure I'll find something to make use of.'
'On that note, I believe our tour is at its terminus. I shall leave you here to get settled in. Dinner with the staff begins at seven, you are not obligated to attend but I recommend it. You will be working with these people, after all.'
Dumbledore took his leave, and I was alone in my new demesne.
I looked up at the dragon skeleton again. Those cables holding it up looked precarious, like at any moment they could snap and the whole multi-ton skeleton would come crashing down on-
I shuddered, scowled, and ripped that train of thought apart. Idiotic. I was nigh-invulnerable, even if the skeleton did fall I would be untouched.
My mood darkened, I stomped up the half-spiral stairway to my new office. Clearly nobody had bothered to tidy it up since Joplin's widow had had at it; it looked thoroughly ransacked. Every drawer hanging open, save one. Loose papers strewn all across the floor. Nothing that couldn't be fixed by two or three spells, but still. This was a bit egregious, even if she was angry at the establishment.
A few moments later, the room was back in order again, and I was taking inventory. Joplin's lesson plans were rather dull reading, to say the least. Jargony to a fault, and there didn't seem to be any part where he covered what the terms actually meant to the students. I can't imagine he would have been popular.
Giving up the dry lectures as a bad job, I turned my attention to the only drawer in this desk that hadn't been yanked out of it on my arrival. A cursory inspection revealed a series of enchantments which, judging by the little plaque on it reading "Confiscations", was to prevent less scrupulous students from taking back their contraband.
But what would stymie the average schoolboy did little to dissuade me, and I soon had it cracked open. I was disappointed by what lay within; a couple of Fanged Frisbees, a whole brace of dungbombs, some suspicious looking lollies and a few folded up sheafs of parchment. Flipping one open, I saw it was a list of text questions and their answers. Dull.
I flicked the drawer closed. It was getting towards time for dinner anyway. Time to meet the rest of my colleagues.
:—:
I elected to be late to dinner, so as not to seem too immediately familiar with the castle's layout. Instead I wandered the halls for a time, taking in the old memories. Without Dumbledore's chatter it was a far more nourishing experience. I could almost see my younger self, leading the self-styled Knights of Walpurgis on some merry adventure or another.
I traced my finger along a section of wall that looked as if it has sagged like clay, the bottom beginning to spill into folds of stone. Nott's doing, fifth year. We'd stuck a second year Gryffindor kid into the wall for a laugh, only for Nott to bollocks up the stoneshaping spell. We'd gotten him out eventually, but the wall had been permanently marred.
I smirked. Professor Merrythought had practically tanned Nott's hide over that one.
I arrived at the Great Hall at 7:26 on the dot. The other teachers had already started eating, but Dumbledore stood at my entrance.
'Ah, attention everyone. Permit me the opportunity to introduce the newest member of our faculty. Professor Thomas Grey, for Defence Against The Dark Arts!'
There was a general murmur of welcome; like McGonagall, the rest of the, had clearly gotten over the novelty of new Defence teachers some time past.
I took the furthest free seat from Dumbledore. This wound me up next to a diminutive moustachioed wizard, whom if the waif's memories served was named Flitwick. The Charms teacher.
Flitwick (who had already began to insist that I call him Filius) turned out to be an exceedingly good conversationalist. We discussed my false past in Hong Kong, and I was glad to have done my proper research; he'd actually briefly lived there in the 60s, working the Dueling Circuit. He wasted no time in regaling me with his tales.
'-So there I was, on the ropes outright of course, Lau Kun-Kei bearing down on me. All appeared lost, so you could imagine Amanra's surprise when I spun about and nailed the chap in the shin with a Bletchley twist! He must have done a full backflip before he came down. And that was the day that one Egyptian bookie learned never to bet against the "quaint little fellow"!'
I chortled along with him, and took a sip of my wine. In the lull of conversation, I glanced down the table. One seat remained empty, right next to Dumbledore's.
I nodded down towards it. 'Any idea where Snape's at, Filius?'
He peered curiously over. 'Do you know, I'm not quite certain. He's never been late to one of these faculty dinners before. Albus! Have you seen Severus at all today?'
Dumbledore looked up innocently from his goulash. 'I have not, no, but he was kind enough to advise me by letter that he would be delayed by a few days. He should be with us by term's start, worry not.'
Flitwick seemed to accept this, and engaged me in conversation again before I could enquire further. But something about his answer felt like a detail had gone unsaid.
:—:
'RAVENCLAW!'
As the last tiny pre-teen stumbled over to his new House Table, Dumbledore stood. He nattered on in his usual fashion, something about new school rules.
The Great Hall was looking utterly resplendent, they'd never put this much effort in when I was a kid. I suppose there had to be some advantages to having a Headmaster as ostentatious as Dumbledore. The hundreds of floating candles over the tables would have been an utter pain to enchant individually, and regular levitation would be too power-intensive to maintain in such quantity all evening.
There must be some runic work hidden somewhere close by to them. The underside of the tables maybe? Or perhaps woven into the tablecloths even...
Hearing my name mentioned shook me from my distraction. Oh, he had just announced me to the student body, to general if generic applause.
Regularly, this would be the sort of thing I'd soak right up. Indeed, I graced the crowd with a jaunty wave, until I noticed several of the older girls clapping particularly fiercely. I quashed the ensuing feeling of discomfort before it showed.
The Potter boy and his band of mates were also applauding hard. I'd bet Sirius had been encouraging the hero worship ever since my release solely to get a rise out of me. He'd been too apologetic for too long at this point, I knew a cover when I saw one.
Snape had, true to Dumbledore's word, returned to Hogwarts in time for the feast, though not entirely intact. He was sporting an absolutely savage-looking new scar right across his face, like someone had tried to cleave his head diagonally across. I hadn't gotten close enough to get a good look, but I'd bet anything it still reeked of Dark magic.
Which of course raised the question: What exactly had Dumbledore sent him off to do? Assuming he had, of course, though my only evidence was tue Headmaster's earlier cageyness. I didn't know Snape at all really, perhaps collecting curse-scars was a hobby of his.
He caught me looking, and sent a truly venomous sneer my way. I wonder if he practiced that look in the mirror. I probably would if I knew how to pull it off. More than one person had warned me that he was never a fan of the new Defence teachers. That, and I can't imagine the part I'd played in getting his arch-nemesis exonerated would have endeared me to him much either.
I, of course, beamed at him and waggled my fingers merrily in greeting. He looked away first, and I made sure to laugh loud enough for him to hear. I never was very good at not stoking the fires of belligerence . I'm not sure how on earth Lord Voldemort had managed to work in retail after graduation.
Maybe Snape would have come to like me better if I intended to be as biased towards the Slytherin House Point tally as I wanted to be. Unfortunately, I had appearances to uphold.
I turned and engaged Filius in a discussion on non-human rights. I wasn't yet certain if he was a part-human himself, but did not wish to assume. He did seem rather passionate on the subject though.
:—:
'Alright spill it, what did you make Snape shove his wand into?'
Dumbledore had not looked up from his desk when I barged into his office early the next morning, and he did not look up at my first remark either.
'Professor Grey, good morning to you as well. I see you have wasted no time getting into the habit of flooing to work.
I brushed the remnant ash from the shoulder of my fine waistcoat. 'Answer the question, Dumbledore.'
He paused in scribbling away at his parchment to dip his quill in his inkpot. He resumed, still without looking up at me.
'What Severus does with his free time over the holidays is hardly my concern nor yours, Professor Grey. So long as he is not impugning upon the school's reputation, it is entirely his business.'
I scowled. 'You told me that you were going to keep me in the loop.'
'And so I have, Thomas.' He looked up at me then, with a bit more steel in his voice. 'About my pursuit of Gellert Grindelwald. There has been no further news in that regard.'
'Then it was about Lord Voldemort.'
'This may be a jarring realisation, but I hope do you recognise that there is more to this world of ours than Dark Lords.'
'Is this one of those things, or not?'
He actually scowled. 'If it were relevant to you, you would be informed of it. If you intend on spending every morning of the next year interrogating me for the latest news, I must warn you that what little working relationship we have built will become strained rapidly.'
I'd pissed him off. Interesting. Whatever were you so touchy about, o Headmaster?
'You had best be off, Professor Grey. Your first class is in twenty minutes.'
I sneered. 'Of course, we can't keep impressionable young minds waiting.'
I stalked out, playing up my own irritation.
:—:
The Gryffindor and Slytherin sixth years filed steadily in, my first ever class. Each of them looked about, slightly startled, as they entered a room wreathed in shadow. I had blotted out the windows, and the only light came from a few small lanterns at the back. Their flickering flames gleamed sinisterly off the polished dragon bones above, and I noted more than a couple students look up apprehensively at it, as if noting the potential danger for the first time.
In the left corner, next to my desk, sat an antiquated-looking music box the size of a small chest. It quietly creaked out its tune; a hollow, scratching, rattling, rumbling sound that almost seemed to ripple across the classroom. The students shuddered at its notes, and shied away from it. Not a single seat on the left-hand side of the classroom was taken until there was simply no room anywhere else. A few of them looked contemptuously at the thing, as though they recognised it.
I was stood leaned against my desk, watching them take their seats, my eyes gleaming with reflected firelight through the gloom.
Let it never be said that I don't know how to make an impression.
When the last of the students had taken their seats, the poor lad running two minutes late now stuck right up next to the music box, I pushed off from my desk, and mercifully turned it off. I left the lights dim.
'Welcome, sixth years. My name, as you heard last night, is Professor Grey, and if you haven't figured out that I am your new defence teacher by now, you are surely very lost indeed.'
A chorus of nervous chuckles slid across the room. Potter was here, listening with rapt attention.
'I have assessed the curriculums that your past teachers had submitted to the headmaster. At first glance, they seemed fairly well rounded, with the one obvious exception of course.'
A more open tittering broke out at the oblique mention of Lockhart.
'Professors Moody and Joplin ensured you were well versed in recognising Dark curses and how to counter them. Professors Quirrell and Lupin taught you of many Dark creatures and their weaknesses. However, I have noticed a distinct gap, which I hope to fill this year.
'But before we get to that, I have my first class question of the day. Can anybody here tell me what this nasty little device is?' I asked, gesturing to the music box with a flourish.
As expected, scant few hands did go up, from those same students who had been giving it the stink-eye earlier. Almost all of them, judging by familial traits alone, were Purebloods, from old lines to boot. That made sense.
A boy that could not have more clearly been Abraxas' grandson if he tried was among them, but I was more intrigued by the hand belonging to Potter's female companion. Now how had a Muggleborn stumbled across this bit of trivia?
'Miss Granger?'
'Sir. It is a Discordia Irregulatum. A Dark artefact used to daze and discombobulate its victims using magical soundwaves.'
I nodded along.
'A good, if incomplete answer.' She slumped, looking deeply disappointed in herself. 'Mister Malfoy?'
'Sir, the Discordia Irregulatum also prevents its victims from using magic in its presence. It was invented by the Swedish Dark witch Idunn Holger in the nineteenth century.'
'Indeed it was. Five points each to Gryffindor and Slytherin.'
I pivoted, and began to pace slowly as I got into the meat of the lesson.
'The Discordia Irregulatum, also called the Holger Device, is one of the nastier pieces of modern magical engineering. The sampling that I treated you all with was its lowest intensity. At full bore, it can cause deep nausea, agonising pain, and if maintained long enough, permanent damage to your ability to perform magic. It can leave you little more than a squib.'
I let that hang in the air, as those who were learning this for the first time looked upon the device with horror.
'Holger liked to use it for crowd control, with it she was able to seize a sizeable chunk of magical Scandinavia in a mere couple of years. But we are not here for a history lesson.
'She based its design on her studies of two magical sounds from nature; Phoenix song, and the burbling of a Jabberwock. Both of these creatures are considered to be, for lack of a better word, inherently "Light" creatures.
'Which brings me to my point, and your first lesson, obvious though it may seem. It is the nature of the Dark Arts to corrupt. Anything and everything that can be twisted to suit the cruel purposes of some Dark wizard or monstrosity will be. Even something so universally lauded as a font of purity as Phoenix song. Nothing is sacred.'
I looked at my students and they looked back at me. I was careful to cloak my disdain for my own words. Sure, they were objectively true. But praising a glorified hoatzin for anything, even tangentially, left a bad taste on my mouth.
'So. How do we fight such an ever-mutating, ever-consuming threat? As Professor Moody is ever fond of saying, through constant vigilance. We study the same techniques that Dark wizards use to create their abominations, and in so doing we find the secret to their undoing.'
I gestured my wand upward, and the curtains covering the windows parted, the chandeliers flanking the dragon skeleton flared to life. The students could now see their surroundings fully, and several gasped.
Evenly spaced around the room were a collection of Dark artefacts, each one on a pedestal and covered by a glass dome with stronger protective magic than any student could hope to break. At least if Gerard Delacour wanted to retain his reputation they were.
'Each of these artefacts is an example of the Dark Arts corrupting a benevolent piece of magic into a tool of malevolence. Over the course of this year, you will be learned about each one of them, and through them the methods you can use to confound whatever other twisted enchantments you may encounter.'
To the class's visible disappointment, the rest of the lesson was dedicated to an extensive (if hypocritical) lecture on safety protocols when handling Dark artefacts. I had been intentionally vague with my NEWT-level curriculum, knowing that Dumbledore would not be pleased to learn the exact subject matter of my lessons. So I needed to at least establish a foundation of responsible behaviour if I was going to get away with it.
:—:
'Professor?'
I looked up from my desk. All the other students had filed out of the classroom, leaving only Harry Potter standing nervously in front of me. Past him, I could see his two mates waiting for him outside of the chamber.
'Yes mister Potter? Did you have some query about the lecture?'
'No sir, I was just wondering- that is, er, Professor Joplin confiscated something off of me last year, and he said he was going to give it back at the end of term but he, er-'
'Died, yes.'
'Er, yeah. So I was wondering if I could, er, have it.' He finished, sort of lamely.
I regarded him with a shade of amusement. I detected no deceit from the boy, at least not yet.
'What is the item?'
'It's... something Sirius gave me.' Lie. 'It's an enchanted bit of parchment, a prank really. It's, er, designed to insult anyone who tries to write on it.' Half-truth. Not even.
'I see. Well let's see what Sirius has to say about it.'
I got up from my desk, and beckoned Potter to accompany me up the stairs to my office.
I pulled out a pinch of floo powder from the jar above my mantelpiece, and tossed it into the low crackling flames.
I called out to the fire as it surged, bright green. 'Padfoot Place. Sirius, I want a word.'
The fire died back into coals, but remained viridian. A few minutes later, it surged again, and the familiar form of Sirius Black materialised within.
He stepped out, dusting the ash off himself. 'Tom, what's up?'
He spotted Potter immediately. 'Oh don't tell me you've got yourself into trouble already, Harry! You'll have me shedding tears of pride.'
I rolled my eyes, and stepped over to my desk. I opened the drawer of confiscated items and plucked out the only piece of parchment that exuded an air of magic.
'What do you make of this?'
Sirius took it from me, eyes lighting in recognition. 'Ah yes, this old thing.'
'So it did come from you?'
'In a way, sure. Harry told me Joplin confiscated it.'
'Indeed. What does it do?'
Sirius' eyes darted to Potter's. Something unspoken passed between them. Not legilimency, Sirius was pants at that, but some more subtle mode of human communication.
'Well... it's been a while since I made it,' he said, handing it back to me. 'So if you're asking how I did, I'd have to go through my old notes. It's essentially just a cleverer study assistant though. Remus, James, and I enchanted it to have a rudimentary personality, sort of like a portrait.'
I turned my gaze on Potter. He did not meet my gaze now, instead he looked at his feet and mumbled.
'Professor Joplin said it was cheating.'
I arched an eyebrow. 'Nonsense. We used these things at the Hong Kong Sorceror's Academy all the time.'
I flicked him the parchment. He caught it with a grin.
'Thank you sir!'
'Run along mister Potter. You've Charms class to get to.'
Potter scurried off, and I turned to Sirius.
'So what does it actually do?'
'Nunya beeswax.' Sirius chirped cheerfully. 'Let a lad keep some secrets.'
I wrinkled my nose. 'Never.'
'You doing anything today?'
I gestured incredulously to my office. 'Working. Like a mature adult.'
'Sounds like peasant talk if you ask me.' Sirius puffed his chest out in a mockery of a Pureblood rich kid. I laughed.
'More like indentured servant talk, but I'm making do. Although, this is probably going to be my last free week night for a while. Bevvies at Lang's tonight?'
'You're on.'
:-:-:-:-:
A/N: JKR's introductions of the new Defence teachers always seemed to imply that they arrived for the first time on the same night as all the students did. This seems, frankly, absurd to me. Especially on years where classes would begin the very next day.
So no, similar to actual schools, I decree that the teachers do get an amount of prep time to settle back in before the term begins, even if they appear to "arrive" on September 1st.
The Discordia Irregulatum is inspired by the music boxes seen in the video game Dishonored, where they have a similar effect.
