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Story: [Technically A Professor]

Summary: Harry arrives at Hogwarts for his First Year, and is introduced to... the less advertised professors. Specifically, the one they haven't managed to get rid of yet.

Crossover: (Harry Potter) (Negima)

Genre: Humor

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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

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Harry looked over towards the staff table, a little bit uncomfortable with the hook-nosed man's glare.

"That'd be Snape, the Potions Professor." One of the two identical redheads said. "Nasty piece of work. Hates Gryffindors down to the bone, that one."

And oh boy that sure sounded like it'd be a lot of fun. Especially considering how his glare felt more like it was trained on Harry in particular than the entirety of their table. Hopefully, Potions turned out to be a very minor class that nobody cared about. Harry doubted it though.

Letting his eyes continue to roam across the strange collection of people that were Hogwarts's staff, Harry felt himself stop again. "Umm?"

"Ah yes, the girl is Evangeline McDowell, aka the Dark Evangel, aka the resident evil vampire that nobody has managed to banish yet. The boy is Negi Springfield, aka the resident not-so-evil vampire that nobody has actually tried to banish yet." The twins nodded to each other with a grin. "Turns out, when a vampire wanders through all of your defenses like they're mist, and the only reason she doesn't empty the castle permanently once she's settled in is her apprentice being willing to teach children about magic? You let the apprentice stick around."

That... sounded kind of unpleasant.

"So what? They just broke in and started teaching?" Comes an incredulous voice from down the table, proving that Harry wasn't the only one listening to the twins.

The twins kind of make a face, but then shrug. "Yeah, pretty much." The one on the left agrees. The one on the right continues. "They've been around for longer than Binns, and he was here when Dumbledore was a student, so the details are... kind of fuzzy."

"How come none of that is in any of our books?" Hermione pipes up, frowning suspiciously.

"It's embarrassing." Percy answers before the twins manage to say anything. "The Ministry has – justifiably so mind you – a very poor view of vampires in general. Allowing two of them to simple settle down in the middle of Hogwarts?" Percy shook his head. "They've been trying to throw them out for centuries. There's no way they'd willingly record for how long they've been failing at it in a book."

Harry glanced back towards the staff-table, only to be met with a cruel smirk that showed that the female vampire knew exactly what they were talking about.

Suppressing the urge to swallow, Harry turned back to the twins. "What do they teach?"

The redheads grinned happily at him. "No idea!" They answered in a chorus.

"They were around since before proper lesson-plans." Percy answered for them. "And they've yet to submit to a single educational reform." There was a horrified noise from Hermione's side of the table. "I think their 'subject' used to be something like 'dueling', but..." He grimaced. "It's a bit like Defense, except with a lot of interruptions to rant about people cutting in line back before the Roman Empire fell. And sometimes the classroom gets blown up."

He didn't sound very happy about it, but the twins looked to be nearly vibrating in their seats with glee at the mere memory of it.

Harry guessed that it came down to personal preference.

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The first lesson they have with the two vampires is in an empty classroom. Professor Springfield waves them in and then disappears off somewhere.

Then Professor McDowell entered, jumped up a little to sit on top of the teacher's desk, and smiled-...

For an instant, Harry was completely convinced that he's dying. Trapped inside a classroom with something that will kill him as easily as breathing.

He's not entirely sure what it was, or how he's supposed to stop it, but-...

The feeling stopped as suddenly as it began.

"Hooh?" Professor McDowell drawled. "We've got three this year."

Harry blinked stupidly at her, before glancing around.

Two girls were also standing, same as him, the wild look in their eyes probably very similar to his own. The rest of the class? Four people seemed to have passed out outright, with Neville still gasping for breath like he'd come very close to joining them. Seven were conscious on the floor, either trying to hide under their desks or simply having assumed a fetal position. The rest were conscious at their desks, eyes wide and frozen like deer before a headlight.

"Names." Professor McDowell ordered the three that had leapt to their feet.

"S-..." The red-haired girl swallowed, before continuing in a steadier voice. "Susan Bones."

Professor McDowell blinked at the name, before turning to where Professor Springfield had entered the classroom again, arms full of books. "Boya, why do I recognize that name?"

"Amelia Bones." Professor Springfield answered, a vague feeling of fond exasperation at the blonde in his tone. "The one who stayed after class."

"Ah, yes. The masochist." The blonde nodded, as if she hadn't said something outrageous. "She was fun. Could barely make her blink there at the end. Whatever happened to her?"

"She's the new Director of Magical Law Enforcement." Professor Springfield answered her as he placed the books down on the desk she was sitting on.

"So that paranoid little shit managed to dodge another promotion, did he?" McDowell smirked.

"Actually, Alastor Moody retired a few years ago." The other professor said.

McDowell blinked stupidly at him for a little bit. "He did what?"

"There might've been some pressure from above. Apparently, serving as an auror is supposed to be for younger people with more limbs attached." Professor Springfield smiled slightly. "And the way I hear it, the retirement just means that he's not on the clock anymore. They didn't even bother to revoke his security-clearance."

McDowell echoed his smile, a viciously fond kind of thing. "He still shows up to scare the recruits, doesn't he?"

"That he does." Negi nodded.

"Heh. I hope he dies in a fire. Annoying little shit." McDowell shook her head, before turning her eyes back to her students. "Now, names."

Seeing as Susan Bones had started, that meant that next was...

"Lavender Brown." Her voice was steady, clearly having been expecting to be called on for a while.

McDowell didn't so much as blink. Simply turned her eyes to Harry.

"Harry Potter." He answered the unspoken question that was probably more of an order.

McDowell's nose scrunched up. "Well, you didn't start screaming, even if you did get the brat's face. That's something."

Harry felt his brain pause, startled at actually hearing something about his father from a teacher, no matter how obvious it ought to have been that there would've been people at Hogwarts who still remembered him.

Still... what was that about screaming?

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Hogwarts was interesting in many ways. The professors and their quirks, the many different versions of magic, the normality of being stuck doing homework despite the wonders of the magic surrounding them, and the vampire-duo.

Evangeline McDowell was-... Much like with Snape, nobody really called McDowell 'professor', but for very different reasons. McDowell didn't really care what she was called, as long as they didn't bother her.

Snape tended to act much like Filch, stalking around the school in the hopes of getting someone into trouble, however much he tended to focus on specific – and very obviously non-Slytherin targets. McDowell, on the other hand, rarely came within speaking-distance of any student outside of classes, and would in those cases mostly just glare at them until they went away.

Lessons with either one of them would send Neville into a nervous mess, but at least with McDowell she tended to ignore most everyone who had failed to leap to their feet during that first lesson.

Unfortunately for Harry, he was on that list, along with Lavender Brown and Susan Bones. Apparently, their instinctive reaction to 'fight back' against their imminent and unavoidable death proved some measure of their character. Or something. Most purebloods had gone to the floor, several of the ones more well-versed with vampires had gone so far as to hide their major blood-vessels from something like bites.

McDowell considered those pathetically clever – like a pigeon learning to play dead – and would be outright contemptuous of everyone who'd either passed out or been unable to move at all. No, it was the defiant ones that she'd focus her attention on.

Professor Springfield was a lot better, happily discussing magical theory or history or culture or politics or much-of-anything-at-all with anyone curious about it. He had a fantastic memory, and seemed to remember almost everyone who'd ever gone to Hogwarts, for centuries. Not to mention the great many things he'd learnt during that time.

Hermione and several Ravenclaws stuck to the male vampire like glue. Whenever McDowell didn't show up to scare them off.

As for the relationship between them-... Harry didn't really know anything at all. He'd tried to figure it out, but he didn't have a clue. There were lots of rumors, some of them several decades old, but little was known for a fact except that there was some kind of level of romance between them.

Though what those two considered romantic was anyone's guess.

Still, with Harry having been among those singled out by McDowell, he had something of a first-row seat to the oddities of it all.

He did also end up learning a lot of stories about the previous ones who'd caught McDowell's eye. People like Susan's aunt, Amelia, who'd been so humiliated by her showing during that first day that she'd gone back to McDowell and asked her to do it again, just so that she could prove that she could do better against it.

Harry wasn't sure if he was impressed or disturbed by that kind of dedication to prove herself. Though apparently the woman had graduated completely immune to intimidation of all sorts, so it wasn't like he could really call it 'stupid', no matter how crazy. Harry wouldn't willingly experience that ever again. Even if you paid him.

Alastor Moody was an old auror who had – at eleven years of age – managed to smash his chair to try and use a broken leg as a stake on McDowell. He'd then spent most of his years in Hogwarts trying to come up with new ways to kill her. McDowell was reluctantly fond of him.

And as for the screaming-comment from when Harry himself had introduced himself? James Potter had apparently reached a very high pitch, and kept it for a very long while. The reaction of his classmates to this had played a large part in him branching out into pranks, which a few of his friends had happily joined in with.

McDowell didn't much remember anyone who she didn't need to however, and were completely unsympathetic to the whole orphan-thing. Which had been her own words, rather than Harry's.

Professor Springfield remembered both of Harry's parents fondly, and for all that it felt strange to ask the professor that looked no older than himself about them, he looked so understanding about it that Harry couldn't help himself from coming back for more stories. It was weird to hear about them being kids the same age as him – and a little bit older – though. Not that Harry really understood half of the discussions that the professor remembered them so much for.

James's father had been a Potion Master, and he'd been fairly talented in it himself, for all that he only truly shone in Transfiguration. Whereas Lily was brilliant with Charms, and actually stayed awake during History of Magic.

Beyond that, it was weird how Harry's fame as the Boy-Who-Lived had been reinforced with a 'one of McDowell's'. He wasn't sure how much he liked that, but at least he wasn't alone in being chosen by McDowell.

Lavender and Susan were perfectly happy to talk about makeup and stuff, but anytime McDowell was in the area, they tended to very quickly switch to sensible things like where the exits were. Harry liked those conversations a lot more. He didn't feel quite so much like an awkward interloper whenever McDowell popped out of the woodwork.

There were usually a few of them for every year, so there was some interaction on that front too, even if it wasn't really enough for Harry to even properly learn their names. Normally there tended to be more than three, though with how small their year-group was in comparison to others, perhaps that was to be expected.

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