Many thanks to lubabpaul for the beta-ing!

1995-31 June

I slowly put down the empty mug of beer. I never understood the reason behind why someone would willingly drink butterbeer. That shit was a watered-down, spineless version of a coke.

Maybe for the same reason people drink pumpkin juice instead of water.

I blinked, finding the answer: "Peer pressure."

I felt better, finding answers always made me feel better, like I was going somewhere important.

"You could reconsider." Flitwick told me once again. That my Head of House managed to find me in a muggle pub in Cardiff irked me, a lot.

I'll add no-tracking charms to my list. I thought with determination.

The fact that said professor was drinking just as much as me and keeping himself from getting drunk without any magic I could detect irked me even more.

"That's it!" I decided "you're going to pay my beers too."

The half-goblin laughed.

Laughed!

Like there was something funny about our situation.

"Just explain it to me one last time." he asked.

I sighed. I considered briefly how to properly tell him to fuck off, but he always had time to talk with me about magic, and we gave each other presents every Christmas. He was a good fellow.

"I only expect a fair trade. Dumbledore wants something that he believes I can do teaching. And it's not about believing in myself, we both know I know enough to teach DADA to some bratlings. It's just that I do not wish to teach, and DADA is boring. And the position is cursed. If I wished to endanger myself, I would become an Auror. Did you know Amelia Bones herself wrote to me? Puah! I even had to be polite in my refusal."

"Focus, David, focus." reminded me my professor.

Oh, yeah, I was rambling.

"Trade works in a very simple way. I have something you want, and I want something you have. It's been made very clear that the headmaster wants me to teach DADA. Because in doing so I would be under his thumb. Because there is nobody else. Because the ministry is pressuring him. Because if I accepted, he would have the time to try to guilt-trip me into entering his war. Because neither the Board or the Ministry can deny my skill after the way I handled the dragon and the sphinx. Because he would be seen as the first headmaster to let a muggle-born teach, like he is in a position to let me do anything. But the point is, he doesn't have anything I want. So, no trade." I explained.

"You're a muggleborn too, it's your war too." gently objected the older wizard. "But nobody is asking you to go against death eaters, with wand and sword. Minerva agrees, we only want you to teach."

I snorted. "Oh, spare me the rightful justifications. There is always a war, or a dark lord, or a military dictatorship, or a child being abused, or a murderer walking free, or corruption in a government. It's not my problem. And what will happen when Potter will go in his next adventure? As a professor, I would have to protect him, and then giving him points for breaking the rules. No, thank you. And while I honestly believe Dumbledore didn't know about the abuse, he is still raising Potter as a martyr."

Flitwick drank his beer in silence. Once we ordered the next round, he turned once again toward me.

"Yes, you've told me your theory. Every evidence you brought forward is circumstantial at best, and hardly anyone fault. Mr. Potter makes his decisions, like everyone." he reprimanded me quietly. "While Albus may not have anything you want, Hogwarts has much to offer, like the library reserved to professors and their apprentices. And while your friendship with Hagrid might be gone, the grounds and the forest are still there."

It hurt a bit hearing about Hagrid, but I liked the grounds. The garden room at Rabbit's Hole had become a whole grass field, with cherry and peach trees that would bear fruits in a couple of years. With only a little part of the surface used to grow vegetables, flowers had grown in bunches here and there, Raven could fly freely, and at least once a day, I enjoyed running in it with my fox form.

Winky, after years holed up in Crouch's house, found the work in Rabbit's Hole soothing.

"I have more interesting things to do." I repeated. And it was true! I still had a bunch of research to do with the dragon's parts, I had two dragon eggs to experiment with, soon Gringotts would complete the rendering of the sphinx, I wanted to learn why turning into different animals was impossible, I wanted to try some forge work, I wanted to fix myself an eye, and I wanted to carve a boat that could both fly and dive underwater.

"Are you still having problems completing your Gubraithian fire?" Flitwick asked me. "You know, if we were colleagues, I would gladly give you pointers. The others too if you let them onto your projects. I'm sure Minerva would love to work on multiple Animagus forms, Albus is far too busy to explore the limits of transfiguration." I snorted at the blatant tentative to cripple my determination. He knew my buttons; I gave him that.

I thought about it for another thirty minutes, that we passed into a pleasant kind of silence.

It was true, Hogwarts could offer a lot. Not only what Flitwick just told me, but there was still Ravenclaw's diadem, that I didn't know how to uncurse while preventing the enchantments from unravelling, and the Chamber of Secrets, that probably held more than just a big snake. It was Secrets after all, not secret.

Maybe I could try and replicate the RoR.

"I don't care what the ministry does, my class, my rules. NEWT only for EE in OWLs and above." I started, before my Head of House could jump in joy however, I went on. "Wait a minute professor, I have conditions: I'll string together my notes, polish them a bit, add references and tips, tomorrow I will send them to you. You're going to pull strings and have them published in time for the students. The money will go into new brooms for the school, parchment for me, and paying a proper history professor. Binns must go. And I'll have a Time-Turner. I'll pass the extra time into the professor's library, when I'm not playing with magic with you or Professor McGonagall. We will research seriously, I'm used to thirty hours long day, so the professors that I'll research with will probably need to find a way to keep up. I need a house elf that will willingly bound himself to me, male, on the young side, not Dobby. Said elf will stay with me even after I leave Hogwarts. You and I are going to have friendly battle sessions twice a month. And I can harvest stuff freely. Wands aren't going to get their cores themselves." I outstretched my right hand, with my lone eye looking at my favourite professor.

"I can't promise anything about History of Magic. But we'll give it a try." replied Flitwick. We shook hands.

"I will teach to the best of my ability until we keep researching to the best of our abilities, the moment one of my colleagues slacks off, I'll teach à la Snape."

The half-goblin laughed again. "Deal!" he exclaimed.

I'll end up abusing my time room anyway.

I finally opened my NEWTs results. It irked me that somehow my Head of House intercepted them. But, listening to the letter, I couldn't hear any magic, so it probably wasn't a trap.

Transfiguration: O Practical: O Theory: O

Charms: O Practical: O Theory: O

DADA: O Practical: O Theory: O

(The theory of wand based subjects didn't focus on a list of spells to memorize, but on the understanding of the theory behind. So I wasn't penalized.)

Astronomy: A

History of magic: EE

Potions: EE Practical: EE Theory: EE

Herbology: A Practical: A Theory: EE

Care of Magical Creatures: O Practical: O Theory: O

Runes: O

Arithmancy: O

Divination: EE

Muggle Studies: O

(The O meant I was head and shoulders above the stuff students should know)

Well, I didn't attend a single lesson, so it's pretty cool. I thought.

I passed the paper to Flitwick, who was watching it with an eager glint in his eyes.

"Oho!" He exclaimed "Very impressive! Even if not nearly as much as your match with the sphinx, don't you agree?"

This time, we laughed together.

1995-01 September

I had an interesting summer. From Monday to Saturday, I worked with Ollivander for ten hours each day. He did not give me formal lessons in wand crafting, nothing like that. I followed him around and helped him either trying to give the first wand to an 11 year old kid or throwing him ideas for possible core-wood combination. I gained a constant flow of tips on every aspect of wandmaking. From the proper way to choose a branch from the correct tree, to how to carve an appropriate handle, to how effectively coerce a core to work well with a particular wood.

Once at home, I passed 8hours in the Time Room, in which I basically had 24hours to rest, research whatever, and rest again before another day with Ollivander.

Dumbledore gave me a flamboyant introduction, to which I answered with a wiggle of my fingers. I didn't rise from my seat. Professor McGonagall bristled, but Professor Flitwick, or Filius, as he wanted me to call him, just smirked shaking his head.

The ministry saw fit to place Umbridge as Supreme Inquisitor at Hogwarts from the very first day.

During the dinner, Raven stole me a chunk of beef and gobbled it down before I could snatch it back. I pointed my fork at her: "Keep doing that and I'll eat you."

She squeaked and flew to play riddles with Luna. I could have risen from my seat, but then every single student would have noticed my Chinese Fireball coat, and the dragon bones that protected my shoulders, no thank you.

My classroom was a big one. Almost vast. Circular, with dummies and blackboards arranged against the walls. At the wall on the opposite side from the entrance, a short staircase led to my office, that held a second door which led to my living quarters. From my living quarters, there was a secondary staircase that led to the seventh floor. I choose the perfect place.

I arranged the desks in two half circles, with the second one put on a three feet high stage. I wanted anyone to be able to follow everything. I promised to teach at the best of my abilities, and that I would do. Outside the classroom, I hanged the heavily modified syllabus for each year (I checked with Griselda Marchbanks, if I covered enough of the topics, I was free to tweak it to my preferences).

I was playing riddles with Raven when my first class arrived. Oh, Potter's group. I still had no idea why someone would pair Slytherin with Gryffindor in a wand based subject, but while I wouldn't have cared otherwise, how they interacted in my class would influence how they learnt. So, to keep my word, I had to shuffle them together. Before they could sit, I spoke: "Make sure to not sit with a member of your house either to your right or to your left."

Raven flew out of the window.

There had been some grumbling, but I silenced Malfoy and Weasley with a twitch of my wand before they could utter a single word in protest, so everyone noticed I didn't hold favourites.

I noticed there where several amateurs at occlumency among the Slytherins. Since everyone was stalling, I waved my wand, and a piece of paper with the surname of every student appeared at one of the desks. I took care to separate Crabbe from Goyle, both from Malfoy, and the infamous Golden Trio. They took five minutes to settle down. I put Granger near Zabini and Potter near Greengrass. Yes, the one I recognized from fanfictions, yes, she was adept at occlumency. I added 'how fanfiction influenced the canon potterverse' to my list of research topics.

Then I started with my lesson. "I don't care about your houses. In here, you are my students. Period. I'm David Taylor and I'll explain to you how it's going to work. Outside of the classroom, there is a list of topics for each year, the ones written in red are known to pop up often at the OWLs. The ones in black are topics I added because of reasons. While we will follow the broad strokes of your textbooks, in class we will work on the more practical aspect of DADA." I waited for a second or two for the joy brought by my revelation to be subdued.

"At the end of each lesson, I'll assign a reading. For the next lesson, you'll bring to me a foot long essay which will summarize the topic and contain your personal observations on it. And miss Granger, one foot means one foot." I shot her an amused glance while she blushed and bristled at the same time. When I heard something that sounded a lot like mudblood coming from Malfoy I kept my even tone of voice. "Thirty points from Slytherin and a week of detentions with Mr. Filch." when his expression turned outraged and he rose from his seat to protest I cut in with: "Do you wish for the points loss to be of fifty? And the detention to last a month? If so, go ahead."

He bristled but sat down. That's enough for now. "We will work on the proper way to apologize in the next month, Mr. Malfoy."

"Now, as I said, in class we will work on the more practical parts of this subject, because god knows if letting you practice stunning spells on your own is not a stupid idea. I'll leave the last fifteen minutes of every lesson free for you to ask questions. If you are researching something we do not face in class, take an appointment and we will discuss it in my office. I could have added the names of the books about the topics in black to the list, like I have done for the first and second years' syllabi. I didn't do so because researching a topic will bring you through things you wouldn't have learned otherwise, and because in this way you'll learn how to properly study any given subject. One Saturday every two months, I'll prepare a room in which you'll work together to complete certain tasks. It could be keeping safe half of your classmates, disarming me, taking something from a place and bring it to another. I can be very imaginative, I assure you. I'll also make you work in teams of three, that I will choose, and shuffle once every month. Starting October, I will be giving extra lessons to learn how to cast a Patronus, open to everyone that wishes to attend them, if you are interested sign that piece of paper on the wall before going to your next lesson. I also suggest each of you take a moment and read the syllabus from the first to the fifth year. Make sure you know at least the topics in red." I waited for everyone to finish writing down whatever they thought it was important among the things I told them.

"Now, what exactly is DADA? You won't find yourself facing a vampire coven or a necromancer anytime soon, so let's focus on the Defense part. In magic, very much like in life, intent is the real power behind any of the spells the ministry will test you upon. In the syllabus there are a lot of different kind of spells, some are branched from a curious tweak of a transfiguration, some are simply charms. Examples?"

For the rest of the lesson, I challenged their understanding of spells, charms, and transfigurations, trying to give more room to breathe to the Slytherins, that managed to gain back twenty points. I waited patiently for Goyle to explain how he cast a lace knotting charm and had him think out loud to his applications. We took five minutes, but he gained ten points for an 'aptly put consideration of the dangers of wearing laces'.

I was lucky to have a double period. And I was almost having fun, I felt like I was modifying the stats of NPCs in a game.

Then I had them demonstrate the disarming charm. Disaster. Bar Potter, nobody had the proficiency necessary for an Acceptable at the OWLs. I put Potter against a mannequin explaining him how to cast silently, before walking around and correcting their pronunciation or wand movements. "Intent is important here. If you have a dream, something, or someone you wish to protect. If you don't disarm the one in front of you, they will take away what you hold most dear. Find that determination and push it into your spells." My pep talks are getting good. After that explanation, a lot of people started casting fast. Aim wasn't really a problem with people staying still in front of each other but having them moving around while casting was a possible idea. I whispered something to Neville while under a cloud of not-eavesdropping charms. Five minutes later he disarmed his adversary.

At the end of the lesson, everyone signed up for Patronus lessons.

When everyone was about to leave, I spoke: "Miss Greengrass, Mr. Potter and Mr. Longbottom, stay behind a moment please."

They glanced at each other before walking to my desk.

"Mr. Potter you are far too advanced for this class. I can do one out of two things. I put you with sixth years, or I give you a lot of extra material to self-study that we will discuss on weekends, if you choose the latter option, I will have to put you against team of three members during our practical's. Either way, this class only holds you back, but you will still participate in the Saturday's Hell Games along with your classmates."

He stammered something along the lines 'I'm not that good'. I stopped him. "You already know the difference between a classroom and the real deal, and not only because of the Triwizard, we both know it. You won't be left alone to fend for yourself but holding yourself back only in fear to leave your friends behind does a disservice to you and them both. You want to protect them all, but to do so you should try to live up to the potential you've been squandering until now" I kept a very kind tone all the time, he didn't look convinced. I let him go, he would give me an answer in my next lesson.

I had Neville take a deep breath, focus, and disarm once again the mannequin. "That wand does not sing for you, Mr. Longbottom." I said while unrolling a 15 inches high band of leather. Inside there were all my creations, from my first (olive and unicorn tail hair) to my last (yew and dragon eyestring). I took up a delicate-looking one: "Twelve inches of willow, with a sphinx heartstring. Kind and protective, with the not so well tamed lion's aggressivity. Only apparently bendy." I had him cast the disarming charm again.

The mannequin lost his whole arm. I took back the wand: "This weekend I will accompany you to Ollivander, where a wand will choose you. The one you have will serve you well as a secondary one."

He tried to protest, but I talked him down with the promise I would write to his grandmother and sort things out. I shooed him to his next lesson.

I turned toward miss. Greengrass. "You probably know that I can't legally teach occlumency." She raised a single eyebrow. Damn if it isn't unnerving seeing a fifteen-year-old girl with a blank face. "When I started learning occlumency, someone started poking around on my surface thoughts, from time to time. This person would then nod when I answered properly and rub his or her chin when I didn't. Coincidentally, I started getting much better, very fast, because I knew when I wasn't having success."

She was staring at me with wide eyes. Probably her parents were teaching her, but occlumency required a lot of dedication over a long period of time. Having a constant check would help a lot and find any flaws that would otherwise have time to become ingrained in her mind. She slowly nodded. I would have winked, but I still had only one eye, so a grin had to do. "Then you should go to your next lesson. Oh, and an absence of facial expressions is an obvious tell you're hiding something."

The lessons kept going well. I thought my approach was very effective. Whit the first years I focused on 'how to not kill yourself with stupidity', and I got the second years to learn how to use the charms of their first year as a way to defend themselves, like using Wingardium Leviosa to float a desk in the path of a spell. With them I was pedantic. Third and fourth years all came soon to either love or hate me. Research was a battle to win in order to gain knowledge, and I had to prod several of them in order to not give up. A few blossomed, adopting a random pattern of research that I encouraged them to discuss with the various professors, or even myself.

Potter choose to stay with his classmates and work on things I gave him to do.

Even if nothing groundbreaking, there had been several original ideas or approaches in regards to this or that topic. I shamelessly devoured every idea, shuffling it with mine, before discarding it or improving it until it was something completely different.

When a fourth year Hufflepuff gave a snide comment about 'Looney' I wrapped him into an illusion and for the rest of the hour, he took pointers on proper duelling stances from a chair. At the end of the lesson, I freed him and then asked the whole class if they were sure that what they were looking at was real, before vanishing like smoke in the wind. At least in their eyes. Luna's distant smile turned into an impish grin.

Several professors asked me about why so many of their fourth years had an existential crisis. I laughed in their faces and blamed the Daily Prophet.

I had a harder time with the NEWT students. No, I couldn't teach them how to summon a thunderstorm. No, even if they asked nicely, I wouldn't allow them to learn cursed flames. Yes, I honestly expected them to be able to accio their own wand using their casting hand. No, I wasn't going to teach them how to use a sword.

It was harder for them to see me as a proper professor, since even if we weren't acquainted, they were just a year behind me at school. But they signed up for DADA's NEWT under their own free will, and so they were, while often joking about it, willing to learn. Our relationship was more that of one older student guiding younger ones than a proper professor-student one.

I was trying to teach everyone how to think. Because I was appalled that there where people around able to summon rain but that wouldn't stop for a second and think about the floods they would cause.

Hermione Granger was often in my office asking me about this or that tidbit of magic. I was glad to point her in the right direction. While her approach to magic was a bit... cold, and she wanted to learn things mostly to get high marks and to be praised by the professors, thusly proving to both the world and herself that she was worthy of magic, I couldn't deny she was driven. She would never be able to be one element, because she didn't let herself feel, she could still become a fearsome witch. It was a pity that the truly magnificent enchanting needed emotion. In one of our talks, I asked her that when shit hit the fan, she was to come to me and ask for help. I could only hope.

As a professor, I was granted minor access to the wards. I used that access together with my illusions to protect my students. The castle subtly reinforced those, since a very important part of the intent that had been soaked into the stone that made it had been protecting the students from the dangers outside. Umbridge was in Hogwarts on the ministry's authority. The castle couldn't care less. Basically, the hateful woman couldn't find my class, and a thing or another happened during mealtimes so she kept not noticing me.

So, teaching worked well.

The teaching staff-only library was obviously much smaller, and a real treasure trove. There was an entire section made only of unpublished works and abandoned researches, all original stuff written by Hogwarts professors since half a century after the founding. Here that I learned that the Madam Pince everyone saw in the Hogwarts library was, in fact, a golem. Irma was always working into the professors' library, she knew a lot of shit, and was always reading this or that work. It was a pity she couldn't produce a single original thought, but she was able to string together facts nobody knew a single thing about, and thusly finding really interesting patterns. The books in that library were very advanced and tended to give a very subjective point of view on each topic. I had to learn Old English and gain a working knowledge of both Latin and Greek.

From Monday to Friday, after dinner, I slept a couple of hours before going back in time with Flitwick, McGonagall, or Babbling. Then we would research stuff old and new for five hours straight. I would then go to sleep in my Time Room, where I would also go over the students' homework. I would leave the Time Room around dawn to walk into the Forest or around the Grounds, or to poke around either the access to the Chamber of Secrets or the RoR. Then breakfast and another day of lessons. I had to hold the same lesson twice for every year, since the classes were split with students from two houses at the same time. At least I had to hold NEWT lessons only once. Being one of the core subjects, I ended up teaching 40hours every week. And that was without the one on one talks about magic I held on Saturdays.

I had no idea how others managed it without a Time Room. Eh, they must love teaching. Then I imagined Snape. I laughed. I often spent whole the whole Sunday in my Time Room. Basically, I had three Sundays every week. I also kept copying down interesting books from the Hogwarts library (the part opened to students and the restricted section both) and the only-for-professors material.

My new house-elf, named Tummy, made sure I ate enough and slept the appropriate amount of time.

Irma was often around to help organize the work. It was then that I realized that to reach the top in any given field of magic, you needed to be at least a bit obsessed with it. And while I knew I was obsessed with... well, everything that was even remotely related to magic, the professors I worked with were the same as me, even if only on their respective fields.

After I completed the Perfect Gubraithian Fire, that I put at Rabbit's Hole in a stone basin (for Winky's joy it didn't produce soot), Flitwick and I started working on the project Prometheus. We wanted to craft a spell that would bring into life an animated flame that would smother Fiendfyre. We still didn't know if trying to develop something that would encase the cursed flame and let it eat itself, or a spell that could satisfy it with a split second of something that would pacify the hunger that Fiendfyre was built upon. He sent me a stern look when he discovered I could safely cast it. Working with him was humbling, his mind was like a hammer and a drill at the same time, unrelenting.

What I also experienced in our mock-duels was that, against him, I could only react, oh sometimes I landed a hit, or even won, but it exhausted me, while he was ready to go after 5minutes.

With McGonagall I was facing the Multiple Animagus Form problem, it was an old one, we weren't the first to try and understand why I couldn't be both a fox and a hawk. Once we had that answer, we could work on a way to circumvent it. We started with where the mass goes when we turned into our other form. Why do we keep our clothes and wand with us simply focusing on feeling them as a part of us? I also suggested working out the Patronus angle: while often Animagus and Patronus forms were one and the same, it wasn't always true, like in my situation. Did that mean I held an affinity also for the albatross? If yes, how should we bring it out? If no, what determined it? For this part, we also asked Flitwick's opinion. When I suggested her, we should look for a way to learn parseltongue, just to see if it could bring forward an affinity for snakes, she made such a horrified face I cried. Hilarious.

She also told me she was too old to use a time turner every week, so we often ended up studying together on Sundays. She was an old cat used to her independence, so I didn't whine too much. When she learned Filius and I were having duels, she insisted to act as a third observer. She basically laughed at my errors.

Babbling and I played with enchantments. While I anchored almost everything with Norse Runes carved with magic through my wand, she wrote them with her bare fingers, and from time to time I could notice her writing an array with her right hand while jotting down stuff with her left.

During the year, I was also exchanging letters with Fleur, who had kept researching and sent me an enchanted pair of wireframed glasses (with neutral lenses) that made you listen to music through the vibration that run long the bones of my cranium. So, my ears kept hearing the world around me, I also had the Beatles singing in my head. She wrote in her letter that they were the only half-decent thing the UK ever produced.

Since I had already tried the 'conjure a snake-imperious him to open the Chamber' routine, I was determined to become a parselmouth. So, I thought: How does someone become a parselmouth? I naturally started thinking about the only two known ones that were coincidentally in Britain at the same time. Ok Voldemort inherited it so I really couldn't use his method. Harry Potter, however, did not receive his ability through blood (And yes, I researched his mother family tree, Lily Evans wasn't secretly a Slytherin Heir. Honestly, the bullshit people write in fanfictions). And while I really didn't want to eat the soul shard in Ravenclaw's diadem, it was a possible path to walk down. There were several books about souls in the professors' library, but quite obviously there wasn't a ritual ready for me on 'How to safely absorb a specific skill from a soul shard without dying, going mad, and destroying the body of the artifact' that would have been useful, but there is luck, and there is poor plot development (yes, I was thinking about a lot of fanfictions I had read in my first life).

Before trying anything, I had to understand exactly what parseltongue was. It was quite clearly a very subtle, very powerful magic. Since in the books snakes actually spoke with Harry and understood his answers, when a 'speaker' interacted with the slithering reptile, he probably imprinted a measure of intelligence into the otherwise normal animal.

In my understanding of magic, the soul-voice of a parselmouth could touch the soul of a snake and giving it something that gave the reptile the ability to think like a human.

All the shit I did to hatch Raven wasn't going to fly in this case. I refused even to think about getting myself another familiar, since my white feathered friend would eat my last eye, mixing unicorn and human blood with memories and an experimental potion had been a stroke of madness-genius-luck.

It stood to logic that if a parselmouth could give something to a snake and enable it to 'speak' it could do the same with a human. If I could manage to listen to the magic while Potter spoke with a snake, I could try to isolate that sound (that would be 'parselmagic') and try to twist my magic, my being, to mimic it. That twist was not, however, something you could do without a second thought since your magic is your soul-voice.

That's another reason people are skittish around dark wizards and witches. To use magic is to use the soul-voice. Intent is important because is the only thing that directs your soul-voice. If your intent is always to tear, destroy, kill and otherwise cause pain, your magic naturally twists ever so slightly to better accommodate your intent. It's more like muscle memory than anything else. However, the changes in your soul-voice naturally bleed over your soul, which is your identity. And who you are guides the more instinctual direction in which your thoughts move. And so, using magic based upon the intent of violence (stuff that everyone calls 'dark' magic) carries the risk of generating a 'positive feedback loop'. From that process comes the abused expression of 'losing oneself in the dark arts' or 'falling to the dark side'.

Twisting my soul to adapt to parseltongue was similar to the twist one applied to his own identity to assume his Animagus form. And there I was hit by a stroke of genius. Salazar was likely a snake Animagus that managed to walk the thin line between twisting to assume his animal form and keeping a hold of his own human identity.

He then probably performed a very dangerous, very original, very costly blood ritual to give the potential to become a snake Animagus to all of his descendants, while finding a way to stabilize the walking on a tightrope process that was keeping a hold of your humanity while being about to become a snake. Aesculapius had a snake familiar, so Salazar hadn't been the first Parselmouth, just the only one to force that ability to bond with his blood.

After weeks of meditation, I conjured an artic fox in Minerva's presence and gave it a rasping bark.

The fox yapped back: "Speaker?"

"Run around the woman than jump on the table." I growled. The fox obeyed. I tried and made it work with dogs and wolves. Minerva learned how to speak with cats in three days. But in my defence, she had more experience with being an Animagus. She could also speak with kneazles, even if they didn't have to listen. But it made sort of sense. I could talk with dogs and wolves, ordering them around was a different kettle of fish. But maybe it was because they were naturally more intelligent than snakes, so it was inconclusive. Minerva could order around every race of domestic cat. She could speak with a lion, or a jaguar, any feline really. But only the domestic cat obeyed her wishes, if being a bit sassy at times. Her words, not mine. We polished the results of our research and put it into the professor's library. We published a short, but intense book on animal-speak. It would be interesting only for other animagi, but with enough time it would take away a lot of mysticism from parselmouths. We sat in an interview for Transfiguration Today, in which we gave the gist of our explanation. We made the first page: a one-eyed fox with a tabby cat seated to drink tea.

The new plan was convincing Minerva that while we had proven that being a parselmouth was A-Okay, the fact that the ability travelled through the Sōwilō shaped scar into Harry Potter was not a good thing. She agreed, and we started meeting weekly with The Boy Who Lived to sort it out. It was very hush-hush, since the personal nature of the problem, even Dumbledore didn't know, and we most certainly didn't want Umbridge to find out. 'Mad young professor experiments on Liar Student to revive the Dark Arts!' yeah, I could already read the Prophet first pages.

That busy and wonderful routine lasted for two whole months.

1995-31 October

She did it. She cornered a student, dragged him to detention, and made him write stuff with her blood quill. I knew it was only a matter of time before it happened, and I was prepared, but still. All of this because the slander campaign against Dumbledore and Potter wasn't enough for a Ministry led by little and fearful men, who dared threaten the human right to think what the fuck they want. Oh, I agreed that a lot of people didn't really want to think for themselves and preferred to have others do their work for them, but I was trying to teach everyone how to think! HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK WITHOUT SPEECH FREEDOM!

So, when I noticed a bandaged right hand during dinner, I rose from my seat and slowly walked down the Gryffindor table.

"Let me see." I said, while unwrapping his hand. I must not tell lies.

I put my other hand on his shoulder and asked a single thing: "Who?" I was beyond furious. He was a child for the love of Merlin. My voice had been calm and collected, my face carefully blank. I didn't really hear him answer, I had blood rushing into my ears. But I read his lips. I looked to the nearest prefect, and spoke, one again with the sort of heavy calm that comes between the lightning and the thunder. "After dinner you will walk your housemate to the infirmary, where you will make sure he listens to whatever madam Pomphrey says." after I said that, I pulled a jar from a pocket that shouldn't have been able to contain it. "This is murtlap. Keep it on the wound as much as you can."

I then walked to the professors table. I noticed that the Hall went quiet. My wand was in my hand, and in a split second Umbridge was bound, gagged, and without her wand. I had to control myself to take away her wand instead of her hand. "She hurt a student. I need a fireplace that opens in Madam Bones' office." Dumbledore's eye was no longer twinkling merrily.