Chapter 9
The Leaky Cauldron, London, England, 1st September 2011
Sam lay down in his bed at the crack of dawn, in their room, thinking about the things that happened over the past couple of days. At times, it felt disorienting to think about. How long had it been since they were at the motel? A couple of days? Months? It was actually only been around 2 weeks, but it felt longer. It took a while for all the information to set in.
First, it was finding out that there was a whole other world that they never knew about right under their noses, then there was this evil wizard who wanted to destroy all Muggles and preserve magical blood. Then there were the near-constant revelations from Dean about what happened while he was soulless. It bothered Sam how much information Dean kept from him with the pretext of not wanting Sam to get riled up, but still, he deserved to know.
All of their purchases from Diagon Alley were put in trunks to be taken to the train station where they would board the train to go to Hogwarts. A magical school for kids that they would soon be teaching at. Sam rolled his eyes, never thinking he'd put Professor and Dean Winchester in one sentence together.
He knew of the other two wizard schools in Europe but wondered if there was an American equivalent. Surely, he and Dean would have found it during their travels, right? He rubbed his forehead, a headache beginning to form behind his eyes.
Meanwhile, Dean lay in the other bed. His eyes were still closed, not willing to commit to being awake just yet. Like his brother, his thoughts were centred around what lay before him. Some magical school sitting God knows where.
I wonder how they conceal a magical castle from the Muggles? He wondered. I guess there are spells strong enough to conceal something that large. He assumed Sam knew. He'd been gushing about some book called Hogwarts: a History since they got there. Then he thought about the people from the Order meeting. He had to admit, going without Minnie rattled his confidence a little bit. She had been the only witch they encountered, and he grew familiar with how to deal with her. He remembered meeting Remus in the Leaky Cauldron, thinking there was something sketchy about him. But when Dean looked past the unkempt hair and long scars down his face, he found his grey eyes reminded Dean of what he looked at in his reflection. Then there was the Weasley's. The perfect representation of a family in Dean's opinion. A loving mother, a curious father, and lots of siblings with diverse interests.
Dean didn't want to think too hard about Crazy Eye…. Not that anything had gone wrong in their first meeting, but he seemed like the kind of guy you wouldn't want to cross. On the other hand, anyone who looked at the guy could see that, unless they were stupid, or had a death wish.
Then there was the 16-year-old that this whole Order was trying to protect. Dean couldn't help making the comparison to Sam's upbringing in his head. They both lost a parent young, were forced to grow up too fast, and their lives were far from perfect. You would think those kids would be terrified. Out of all the Weasley kids, and that other girl (Heather? No, that doesn't sound right…. The last name was Granger though.) Harry seemed to be the one Dean would pick as the one to buckle under pressure. But he sat there calmly discussing the tragic events of his parents' murder and the subsequent 15 years of hell he had to endure.
Dean finally opened his eyes and looked over to his brother's bed. Sam sat up and his back was turned to Dean. Something about that kid made him want to protect him, like his dad asked him to protect Sam.
They mostly stayed in their rooms for the final 2 weeks before term. Sam was researching and working out lesson plans. Right before they left, Minerva had given them a piece of paper with the year schedule. It also contained some information about the subjects the students were taught. Sam discovered that third-year students and up took elective subjects.
Through correspondence with Albus, they determined it would be best for students third year and up to take the class, but instead of an elective, it would be treated as a core subject. Meaning everyone would have to take it.
"It's a great way to piss off a bunch of 13-year-olds," Dean mentioned offhand.
Sam got up and prepared for the day. He sat in the bed and looked through his laptop while waiting for Dean to wake up from his beauty sleep. He remembered at the last minute to give his laptop to Arthur as well as their phones. Arthur got it back to them fairly quickly. To their relief, it worked. As soon as they turned their phones on, they lit up with messages and missed calls from their friends, mainly Bobby. It was nice to still be connected to the non-magical world, to some degree at least.
It was half-past eight; Minerva said that the Aurors would be there at ten to pick them up. Sam sighed, if they were going to be ready to leave by then he had better wake up sleeping beauty.
"Dean? Wake up, man." Sam said.
Dean snored a little louder in response.
"Dean?" Sam got up and shook the bed. "Dean?"
"Five more minutes dad!" Dean whined, deciding to annoy his little brother. "I'm canoodling with the Olsen twins." And he smiled a sleepy smile.
Sam pulled out his wand, a little wary of using it, but deciding to have a little fun. Sam's wand was elm, dragon heartstring and ten inches while Dean's wand had a core of phoenix feather, made of oak and was twelve inches long.
"Hey Sam, mine's bigger," Dean grinned.
"Hum…" He picked up a book. "Hexes and Curses to Entertain Your Friends huh?" Sam grinned impishly. "This should be fun."
He found a particularly nasty one and waved his wand. He frowned; the spell didn't seem to work at first, just like the levitation charm. He looked at the page and wondered if he had mispronounced the spell.
Just then Dean finally decided to wake up. "Hey bro, what are you up to?" He swung his legs off the bed, facing away from Sam, and stretched.
"I'm fi-" Sam was about to reply, but then he caught sight of something curly sticking out of Dean's underwear and then realized that it was a pig's tail.
"What?" Dean turned to look at Sam. "Do I have something in my teeth?" Then his eyes bugged out. "Is my hair messed up?"
"No, you look good." Sam tried to keep the smile off his face. Dean looked perplexed.
"Whatever man, I'm gonna take a shower before those guys show up." Sam couldn't control his laughter. Three… two… one…
"WHAT THE FUCK!" Dean's voice came from the bathroom. "Sam what the fuck is this?!"
Sam tried to contain his fits of laughter and be ready for his brother to come out.
Dean came out of the bathroom with his towel on and looked as mad as Sam had ever seen him.
"Did you do this?" Dean muttered. "What in the hell did you do?" Sam busted out laughing and almost rolled off the bed.
"Dammit Sam this isn't funny!" Dean growled. "Fix it now!" Sam continued to laugh, so he reached over for his wand. "Do it or I'll…"
"You'll what? Leviosa me to death?" Sam kept the mood light but the look in his brother's eye made him mutter the counter curse quickly. Dean huffed and went to take a shower, an idea forming in his head that he may have to use something from the Weasley shop to get him back. Of course, Sammy's probably knows all those spells already by heart.
Once he got out and traded places with Sam, Dean spotted the food trays that had been brought up for them. Dean crept over to his trunk and pulled out the box of puking pastilles and looked back over to Sam's plate with a wicked gleam in his eye.
Sam was going to kill him for this.
Sam came out of the shower and dressed quickly, seeing that Dean was already scarfing down his food. Better eat mine before he gets to it too.
"Dude slow down," Sam commented as he sat down.
"I want to be ready to go when those guys get here," Dean spat between mouthfuls.
"Alright fine…" Sam held up his hands defensively, he looked down at the food, kind of wishing for once that it was a greasy burger and fries. But beggars couldn't be choosers, right?
Everything was going great until he got to the toast with grape jelly on it. He sniffed it and looked over to Dean who was focused on one of the spell books he recovered from the trunks. "You did something didn't you?"
"What?" Dean looked up. "You're paranoid, man…. It's just toast."
Sam pushed his plate away at once, grimacing.
"Bullshit. Dude, I know you," Sam accused. "You're getting payback."
Dean rolled his eyes, internally cursing his brother's pickiness. I'm offended you'd think I'd stoop so low."
"You have a bag of crap from the Weasley's shop in your trunk… and if I opened it, I'd find something open. I'm not stupid Dean."
Dean grumbled under his breath as they finished. Sam laughed smugly. Just then there was a knock on the door and Dean put on some pants and a t-shirt and answered the door.
"Can I help you?" Dean looked at the two suspicious characters on the doorstep, it was a man and woman. The man was a tall black wizard with broad shoulders. He was bald with a cap on his head and a single gold hoop earring in his left ear. The woman was shorter and had dark twinkling eyes and a pale heart-shaped face and short spiky brown hair.
"Hello, my name is Kingsley Shacklebolt, and this is Nymphadora Tonks."
"I told you not to call me that!" The woman's hair changed again to bright pink. "It's just plain Tonks!" Kingsley rolled his eyes. Tonks shook her head violently and her hair changed back to mousy brown. "Are you Sam or Dean?"
Dean laughed, turning on the charm. "I'll be whoever you want me to be, baby."
Tonks looked behind him and smirked. "Keep it up, and I'll give you a pig nose to go with that tail."
"Tonks one, Dean zero," Sam mumbled, realizing the tail had returned. Dean scowled as he glared at his brother Sam rolled his eyes.
"I'm Sam, and he's Dean," he said, looking at the witch. Tonks smiled and waved her light-coloured wand. The tail disappeared from the backside of Dean's jeans, and he sighed in relief.
"So, you're the Muggle Professors," Kingsley said with a smile.
"Yes, we are." Sam came to the door.
"It's nice to meet you both." Tonks smirked. "I've read your files. Sam is the smart and polite one."
"Oh really?" Dean grinned. "What did my file say? That I was ruggedly handsome?"
She chuckled. "You don't want to know. Besides, Remus and I are seeing each other. I assume you met him at the meeting?" Two points Tonks, Dean still zero, Sam thought. He watched his brother's face fall.
"Are you all set to go?" Kingsley asked.
"I think so." A delivery boy came up to them then and a covered cage in his hands. "Delivery for Mr D. Winchester?"
"Ah, it got here before we left. That's me, thanks." Dean took the cage from the delivery boy.
"What's that?" Sam asked, his curiosity piqued.
"It was gonna be a present for you but since you gave me a pig's tail…."
"You got me a present?" Sam sounded incredulous. When would he have had time to go get it? We've been together since we got here.
"Not anymore. She's mine." Dean hugged the cage close and hid it from Sam's view.
"Come on."
The two wizards looked at the exchange. Kingsley thought Dumbledore had finally lost his mind and Tonks was trying to keep from laughing, her hair turning a sunny yellow colour
Eventually, Dean caved and showed Sam his present. He revealed a beautiful barn owl that hooted dolefully. Sam grinned. It was the owl he had been admiring two weeks beforehand, while they were waiting to go to Grimmauld Place. She had large dark eyes set in a white heart-shaped face, tilting her head from one side to the other, looking at her new owners curiously.
"Thanks, man," Sam said gratefully.
"No problem. I've joint custody now," Dean grinned. "I bought her."
"She's not some girl you hooked up with at a bar, Dean," Sam said, rolling his eyes.
"I know that! Plus, we could send Bobby letters. Even with these charms Arthur put on them, I don't think our phones will be very reliable and Bobby'd be pissed if we didn't contact him somehow. Maybe we could send Cas a letter too. And don't tell me seeing their reactions wouldn't be priceless."
"Why don't we get this show on the road?" Tonks cut in before Sam could reply. She glanced at the clock with a worried expression.
"Speaking of roads, what about my car? Will she be coming too?" he asked with a worried expression. His baby was now at Singer's Salvage Yard, though not for the reason most cars went there for.
"Your car will be brought to Hogwarts magically?" Tonks said it like it was a question not realizing that they wouldn't understand how they could transport large objects with relative ease.
"That's great, thanks," Sam grinned.
"We will be Side-Along-Apparating you to King's Cross station, where you will pass the barrier," Kingsley said. "Minerva told us you were familiar with that mode of travel. Grab your bags." Sam and Dean picked up the small duffel bags and the owl cage and stood facing the witch and wizard. They grabbed their arms and turned on the spot. They had the sensation of moving way too rapidly and suddenly, they were outside a huge old looking train station.
"A bit of warning next time?" Dean said irritably. Tonks smiled. Sam looked at his ticket.
"Platform 9 and ¾, where's that?"
"It's one of those things that they can't see," Tonks replied in a whisper. "The entrance is hidden in the place that they would least expect."
"Why not just be like normal people and have it right smack dab in the middle of it all?" Dean mouthed off.
"That kind of puts a damper on the whole 'secret wizarding world' Dean." Sam rolled his eyes.
The four of them got strange looks from everyone at Kings Cross. They even heard one person say, "That must be one of those people. They are so strange."
"We have arrived," Kingsley announced.
Dean and Sam looked at the wall that separated the trains at platforms nine and ten, and then they turned to get onto the train on platform nine.
"What are you two doing?" Tonks grabbed them.
"Getting on the train?" Sam wondered still if this was all a big joke that Cas was playing on them, but if it was, it was pretty elaborate. Come to think of it, the angel really didn't have much of an imagination for human stuff, much less a whole secret society of witches.
"No genius. The platform is there." She pointed at the wall. "And I thought you were the smart one."
"I thought the ¾'s was a typo," Sam confessed, under his breath. "I thought we were going to get on platform nine and then connect somewhere else."
"No sir, Platform 9¾ is hidden behind that wall, we are going to go through the wall," Kingsley informed them.
"You want us to run into a wall… on purpose?" Dean looked at the two wizards. "You've got to be kidding me! That's it, I'm out!" He threw up his hands and walked away. He could take everything else, but he had to draw the line somewhere. Appearing out of thin air and stepping out of fireplaces was one thing….
Tonks was about to go after him and drag him back, but Sam interceded. "I've got this, he just needs a few minutes."
"Well, he'd better get a move on!" Tonks looked at her watch. "The train will leave soon, and it's the only way to get there."
"I promise we'll be on it." Sam gave her his 'good guy' smile.
"Dude, this is crap! I've put up with a lot of things, but this is too much." Dean said when Sam approached.
"We've dealt with a lot of crap in our lives Dean," Sam pointed out.
"But running at a wall?" Dean said exasperatedly. "It's gonna hurt like hell and then these people are gonna have us arrested. Then we'll get transferred back to the States, and it'll probably be a one-way trip to the electric chair for me, Sammy."
Kingsley approached them. "Watch," he said in his deep tone. Dean and Sam shared a weary glance. Kingsley pointed towards an eleven-year-old sprinting towards the wall and just as Sam and Dean thought he was going to collide with the very hard looking brickwork, he vanished. The Winchesters' eyes widened.
"Great, now we're being shown up by eleven-year-olds!" Dean said. "It is cool though."
"It wouldn't be the first time. Remember that ghost kid that beat you up when Pamela made us spirits?" Sam grinned.
"He beat you up too!" Dean said indignantly. Tonks turned to them.
"Your turn!" she grinned.
"Best to get this over with," Sam sighed. "Oldest first," he grinned. Dean huffed. He ran towards the wall after checking that no one was looking. He saw the brick wall growing nearer and nearer and his eyes screwed shut as he met the wall. He didn't feel the impact. It was as if walking through the cold, and then the loud noise of a steam engine met his ears. He opened his eyes as his brother appeared with the Aurors.
"Better get on," Tonks smiled. "Wouldn't want to be late."
"Thanks," Sam smiled a little.
"Our pleasure," Kingsley replied. Sam and Dean walked through the crowd of kids with their parents, getting on the train. They walked down the corridors, past compartment after compartment.
"Maybe we should just kick one of the compartments out," Dean suggested with a shrug. "They'd have to listen to us. We're teachers." Sam didn't bother answering. He walked further.
"Hey look, there's a free one here," he said, opening the door. The Winchesters walked inside and dumped their bags on the seats beside them. Sam put the owl cage down, looking to see that the barn owl was asleep with her head under her wing.
"On a train to a magic school… and I thought our life couldn't get weirder," Dean mused. Sam laughed.
"I'd say it would be a long journey," Sam said, pulling out Hogwarts: A History again.
"Go ahead geek boy," Dean grinned. "What are you going to call the owl, anyway?" he asked. Sam looked down, in all the excitement of getting to the train he forgot that she still didn't have a name. His thoughts turned to the different names he thought of as a child when he would ask his father for pets, but nothing seemed to fit her. She was beautiful and quiet, putting Dean in his place when he wouldn't let Sam hold her by biting him on the finger. "I was thinking of Jess," he replied with a note of sadness. "She's got many of the qualities I liked in Jess."
"Yeah, Jessica was pretty alright," Dean said, lacking the usual cockiness he would have supplied with the words. "I think it suits her." Sam smiled a little.
"So, I was thinking," Sam said, changing the subject. "Maybe some of our classes should be inside and outside we would have physical training once a week," he suggested.
"Yeah, sure. They have to be able to fight without weapons and with them. Just the knowledge won't help," Dean said.
"True," Sam replied.
They didn't say much more after that. A few hours passed, and they heard a woman's voice calling out. "Anything from the trolley?"
"Great, I'm starved!" Dean exclaimed. "Hope they got liquorice." The cart stopped outside the door and the woman smiled.
"Would you like anything, sirs?" she asked.
"What have you got?" Dean asked.
"Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, Cauldron Cakes, Chocolate Frogs, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Jelly Slugs, Liquorice wands and Pumpkin Pasties," She smiled.
"Awesome. Can I get two of those beans, the liquorice, and some cakes?" Dean asked.
"No problem, dear," she said, handing him the sweets. "That will be four Sickles." Dean handed her the money and went inside, grinning. He picked up the Liquorice Wand and took a bite, moaning in ecstasy. Sam grimaced.
"Dude do not make those sounds… it's just plain creepy," he shuddered.
"Shut up Sammy, here, have a jellybean," he said, tossing him the box. Sam sighed but took a bean out of the box and popped it into his mouth. He spit it out at once.
"What the hell is that?" he exploded. "It tasted like vomit." Dean examined the back, seeing that vomit was one of the flavours.
"I guess they mean every flavour," he muttered with a grin.
"Shut up De-" Sam was cut off by a disturbance down the hall. The brothers stood, sensing unease. They nodded to each other and left the compartment, seeing a blond boy who looked sixteen with what could only be described as two goons beside him a few doors down.
"Potter, you'll pay for what you did to my father!" The blond boy said angrily
"Funny," a familiar voice sounded. "What will happen, Malfoy? Voldemort will do me in? He hasn't had much success so far, has he?"
"You!" Malfoy shouted as he lunged forward. Sam and Dean sprinted up.
"Hey what's going on here?" Dean interrupted loudly, trying to sound like an authoritative teacher. Malfoy stopped and looked back, eyes narrowing.
"Nothing Professors," Harry told them, standing with Hermione and Ron. Malfoy's eyes darted from the brothers to Harry Ron and Hermione. Two other students came out of the compartment. One was a girl with dirty blonde hair and mystical blue eyes, and she was standing beside a boy with dark brown hair, who looked slightly nervous.
"No rough-housing," Dean said simply. Except for Malfoy and his goons, the kids stood up and looked at them with shocked looks on their faces. This is cool, now I know why the teachers at school seemed to have a power trip…
"Sorry but are you our new Professors?" the blonde girl asked.
"Yeah, we are. Now, you guys leave and stop causing trouble," Dean said, looking to the three students in green. Malfoy's eyes were filled with disgust as he glared at them. Dean caught on.
"What's with the look? Is it because we're… Muggles?" Dean asked in a calm tone, but only Sam could see the anger that lay beneath. He shot a sharp stare toward Malfoy.
"No," Malfoy lied.
"Look, I know you're lying. Listen, at the end of the day, we're all human, and the creatures we're gonna be teaching you about? They don't care if you're a witch or wizard or human. They'll still kill you. So, I would drop the prejudice," Dean said calmly.
"Come on Crabbe, Goyle," Malfoy said uncomfortably and the three left.