Chapter 2
The next morning, as Harry exited the Floo (this time with the chocolate for sharing), he again elbowed his way through a crowd of reporters. How long would they keep this up, he wondered grumpily. Again, reporters spilled out into the Auror offices; again, the other recruits had to fight their way to the conference room; again, Robards yelled at everyone to leave.
With the help of the Honeydukes chocolates, the morning seemed to pass pleasantly. The other new recruits seemed to have stopped staring at him. Since most of them had overlapped with him at Hogwarts at least some of the time, he would think that their interest in him would dissipate. Nothing of great interest happened until they all gathered in the training room after lunch.
"Robards wants us to pair you up with one of the trainers, Harry. You two can work on some of the more advanced stuff, while the rest of us work with the new trainees. Robards also wanted to let you know that there will be some weekends when you need to come to training sessions with the full Aurors. We can let you know when those occur."
Harry moved to the side of the room with Thomas Thibbault, an Auror ten years his senior, so they had never overlapped at Hogwarts. "Have you ever tried to throw off the Imperius Curse, Harry? As Aurors, it is really important that we are strong enough to not be taken over by those we are trying to arrest."
Harry thought back to the fake Alastor Moody's lessons on the forbidden curses at Hogwarts; "Yes, I have." Of course, he also had a lot of experience trying to push Lord Voldemort out of his mind, at which at certain times he had been more or less successful.
"O.k., I am going to try to put you under the Imperius Curse. You try to resist me."
As Harry felt Thibbault try to enter his mind to take it over, he pushed back as hard as he could. Thibbault flew backwards and hit the wall. Harry and the other trainers ran over to him, but it was obvious that he was out cold.
"What happened, Harry?"
"He told me to resist him as much as I could. I didn't mean to hurt him though."
The head trainer sighed. "Let's get a Healer in here to check him out. Harry, you help the others with their lessons for the rest of the afternoon." Luckily, Thibbault seemed to be o.k., but he didn't make an effort to speak to Harry for the rest of the day. Harry noticed that the other recruits were beginning to stare at him again.
As soon as training was over, Harry hurried toward the elevator. "Potter," one of the junior Aurors called. "Come over here."
Harry approached his cubicle. "Do you have your copy of today's Daily Prophet for your scrapbook?" Harry examined the front page with a huge picture of himself in his Auror's robes with the words, "Youngest Auror Ever."
"We're starting a betting pool. How many consecutive days you'll make the front page. Want to join?"
Another Auror chimed in, "Or maybe you would like today's copy of Witch Weekly. 'Most Handsome and Powerful Wizards.' Look who's on the cover! We were thinking of using it as a dartboard but were afraid some of the female Aurors would cry. They want it to hang in their cubicle."
"I would definitely vote for its use as a dartboard." Harry slammed five galleons on the first Auror's desk. "My bet is five consecutive days on the front page of the Prophet. See you all tomorrow." He could hear his new colleagues laughing as he finally left.
That night he had a wonderful dream. He set his patronus on a group of dementors all with microphones peppering him with questions such as, "Can you show us the Elder Wand, Harry?" His stag cleared them all away.