- CHAPTER FOUR -
Unpleasant Surprises

Later that evening, Harry was sitting in the common room, getting thoroughly thrashed at wizard chess by Ron. It was difficult to find much fun in a game where he was so obviously out of his depth, but anything was better than trying to sleep. He found that the mental walls he'd managed to put up during his safely grey and boring existence with the Dursleys were lower here at Hogwarts. Too many things made him think of Sirius, and Cedric, and all the other horrible mistakes he'd made that had hurt other people.

"Go on, thump him!" Ron cheered on a plucky pawn that was doing a remarkable job of beating up one of Harry's much more imposing castles. He really wasn't any good at this game - he found chess tough at the best of times, and after losing to Ron so many times his pieces were openly rebellious, questioning every move he tried to make.

Harry didn't look up as he heard the Fat Lady's portrait swing open, but he did at the sound of somebody tripping over on their way in. "Hi, Neville," he said, before he'd even finished turning.

It was nice to know some things didn't change.

Neville's round face was flushed with worry. He glanced at a group of second-years playing Exploding Snap, and came all the way over to their table before starting to speak.

"Harry! I was just up in the Owlery," he hissed. "I wanted to send a message to my gran, but the owl came right back with my letter still attached!"

"You think something's happened to her?" Ron said, paling. Voldemort might have been suspiciously quiet over the summer, but there had still been all too many disappearances, and not all of them the result of panic or evacuation.

But Neville shook his head. "Nothing could happen to my grandmother," he said, quite firmly. Having met Mrs. Longbottom on a few brief occasions, Harry had to privately concur. Any Death Eaters who tried to mess with Neville's gran would probably be very, very sorry. "Anyway, I don't think the owls can even go out. It was only gone for a couple of minutes - it must have flown around the grounds and come back."

"The owls must be trapped in by the barrier as well," Harry realised. It hadn't occurred to him that this might be a consequence of their isolation from the outside world, but he supposed it only made sense.

Ron, however, looked gobsmacked. "Harry - do you have any idea what kind of magic it takes to stop the owl post?"

"No?" he said tentatively.

"Neither do I, but it's got to be a lot! I mean, the Apparating shield is one thing, but this... The owls are supposed to be able to go anywhere. Doesn't matter if it's supposed to be Unplottable, or under the Fidelius Charm, or anything. Everybody needs to get messages, so practically every defensive spell ever made has a loophole for the owl post." He shook his head. "Hermione was right. This can't be just to keep You-Know- er, Vol-"

"Voldemort," Harry supplied, and the other two controlled their flinches.

"-Him from getting in," Ron continued. "They wouldn't seal everything just to shield us from Dark wizards trying to get in."

"There's something else out there," said Neville nervously. They all fell silent.

That night, Harry tossed and turned in bed, finding it difficult to sleep. Both bad memories and new worries nagged at him. What if something horrible happened to- to Lupin, or the Weasleys, or anybody? What if it had already happened? With the owls unable to travel back and forth, they'd never even know about it. What on earth was Dumbledore playing at, isolating the whole school like this?

It took him so long to finally get to sleep that he didn't wake up at his usual time, and would have missed breakfast if Ron hadn't shaken him awake and dragged him down there. Hermione, like Harry, didn't immediately see the significance of cutting off the owl post, but she certainly saw the inconvenience.

"What are they going to do?" she wondered. "Practically everybody writes home to their parents! Probably no one but the first-years will be trying to send anything for the first few days, but sooner or later everyone's going to realise that we can't send messages. Professor Dumbledore will have to say something."

"Dumbledore doesn't have to do anything," Harry pointed out darkly. "Who does he answer to now? He barely listened to the Ministry of Magic before, and now not even the Governors or the parents can get messages to him."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Really, Harry, you're acting as if you think he's planning a military coup. Even if he can't get any information from the outside world, he's not going to suddenly start plotting or anything."

"Yeah, Harry, Dumbledore knows what he's doing," Ron agreed, a trifle uneasily. But Harry wasn't at all sure that he did. Not after last year.

"Anyway, we have to be going, or we'll be late for Defence Against the Dark Arts," Hermione said, gathering up the books she'd been poring over at the breakfast table. Harry jumped up, having forgotten that it was their first session of that class this morning.

"Who do you reckon is going to be taking us for the NEWT class, then?" Ron wondered, as they made their way through the busy corridors. "If the new teacher hasn't arrived, then it'll have to be one of the other staff. Maybe it'll even be Dumbledore himself!"

"Professor Dumbledore taught Transfiguration, remember?" Hermione reminded him.

"So? Come on, Hermione, it's not like he's underqualified or anything! Besides, how could anybody be worse than Lockhart?"

"And anyway, I'm sure he's much too busy," she said firmly.

They filed into the Defence classroom, amidst all the expectant murmurs. "Hey, Harry, are you teaching us this year?" called Terry Boot cheerfully from across the room. Harry almost blushed, but managed to switch on what he hoped was a coolly casual smile when he saw Malfoy glaring at him. The room was packed; it looked like everybody who hadn't failed the OWL spectacularly had opted to stay on for the NEWT.

Ron had his fingers crossed, and was chanting faintly to himself. "Let it be good this year. Let it be a good class this year," Harry heard him saying.

"Er... Ron..." Hermione sounded disturbed. Harry followed her gaze to the doorway - and nearly swallowed his tongue in horror.

Oh, no. Please say no.

The teacher in the doorway was none other than Severus Snape.

Ron began thumping his head on the desk in a rhythmic and painful-sounding manner. Harry was very tempted to join him.

Snape strode through the classroom, which fell silent row by row in a sort of Mexican wave of dismay. He executed a sharp about-turn at the front, and slammed the door with an abrupt flick of his wand.

"The door is locked," he said shortly. "Any students who are not on time will not be permitted to enter the lesson. Nobody will be permitted to leave early, for any reason. You are here to learn, and the topic of this class is self-defence. I am not prepared to make allowances for students too slovenly to make an effort even in matters of their own personal safety."

In an astonishing act of bravery, Hannah Abbott raised a hand. "Er, Professor... will you be teaching us for the whole year?"

Snape's lips thinned. "It appears that nobody was prepared to take on the onerous task of drumming basic defensive skills into your woefully inadequate minds, for which we can only applaud the unemployed of the education world for their wisdom. Therefore, tuition in this subject is being handled by various other members of staff, according to the gaps available in their timetables. To my great misfortune, the sessions for the sixth-year Defence group coincide with mine."

Ron, who had stopped thumping his head against the desktop, began to do it again. A few seats away, Neville gulped loudly, and with a look of abject misery attempted to shrink down in his chair until he was invisible. Harry was feeling pretty damn rotten himself. Ron and Neville were lucky - at least they only had three lessons a week with Snape. He was going to have six!

Fully half his timetable, given over to lessons with Snape? He was suddenly thinking longingly of summer with the Dursleys.

"Accio orb!" Snape snapped suddenly, making half the class flinch. In Potions lessons, they rarely actually saw him use spells. He frowned on the students using spoken spells at all, insisting that even grindingly dull menial tasks like stirring a potion for an hour be done by hand.

A dark grey sphere, roughly the size of a Bludger, rose up from the desk and streaked towards his hand, but stopped several inches away, as if it had hit an invisible cushion. "Who in this class, who is not named Granger, can tell me what this is?"

Anthony Goldstein raised a hand. "It's a curse ball."

Snape barely acknowledged this correct answer. "And what does it do... Miss Bones?"

Susan jumped and scrambled for an answer. "It- um, it's a-"

"One point from Hufflepuff for lack of background reading, and four more for failure to come up with an educated guess from context." Snape's eyes narrowed as he spotted another victim. "Mr. Weasley."

Harry could see Hermione almost physically restraining herself from blurting it out as Ron fumbled for the definition. "It, er, you fire curses at it, and it absorbs them. Except it doesn't always."

The professor sneered. "Correct, and yet remarkably stupidly expressed."

Snape tapped the hovering curse ball with his wand, and it briefly glowed red before beginning to dart about in a random manner that reminded Harry somewhat of the Golden Snitch.

"The curse ball," Snape continued, "is a duelling aid supplied to students who are too incompetent to be trusted firing spells at a real live opponent. Naturally, therefore, you will be seeing a lot of it." Neville leaned back in dismay as the orb chose that moment to swoop dangerously close to him.

"When you fire a spell at the curse ball, it absorbs the energy, recording damage according to the strength of the spell, and analyses it. From that point on, the orb is capable of targeting anybody designated an enemy with the same spell that was used on it. Hence, the more different forms of attack you use, the more dangerous the curse ball becomes in response. However, if you should attempt to circumvent this by repeatedly using the same hex, within three to five attacks the curse ball will have learned to reflect it back at the caster. Therefore, it is necessary not just to remember which spells you have used, but also those cast by everybody else around you."

Snape pointed his wand at the dancing curse ball, and said, "Scopus Omnio!" Immediately, everybody in the room including Snape himself exhibited a small blue circle of light hovering above their wand hand. Curious, Harry waggled his arm, and found that the circle followed his movements.

Snape turned the wand on himself. "Excludere!" His own blue circle winked out. Clearly, he had no intention of being targeted by the curse ball himself. He surveyed the room, with a look that eloquently expressed how little it impressed him. "Mr. Malfoy," he said. "Kindly cast the first spell."

Malfoy smirked and raised his wand. "Accendio!" There was a brief flare of flame before the curse ball managed to absorb it, and Harry recognised it for a pretty strong fire-starting spell.

Idiot, he thought contemptuously. Of course, Malfoy would show off and use a flashy spell. And now the curse ball could cast it at any one of them! It was obvious that the only way to do well was to start with really low-level spells that it wouldn't matter to take hits from, and build up to more powerful hexes gradually.

The blue glow above Malfoy's hand had turned into the number eight, and Harry realised then that the circles were actually zeros. A points system? Well, this was one game he was pretty sure he could do well at.

The air was soon thick with flying curses. Harry got in one of the first Stun spells, and managed to keep up a fairly constant barrage of hexes, though it was amazing how quickly everything went blank when it came to trying to remember one he hadn't used yet. Unfortunately, even though he and a couple of others were managing to think tactically, a lot of people weren't, and the curse ball was firing off and reflecting spells all over the place. By the time Snape stopped the chaotic practise session, almost nobody was completely unscathed. Harry himself had got off relatively lightly, with nothing more than a slightly wobbly left leg and a scorched patch on one sleeve. Poor Ernie Macmillan had pink feathers and spots, and Dean Thomas appeared to have been half transfigured into a squirrel.

Harry hadn't had much of a chance to consult his score while he was struggling to survive, but he glanced at it now, and saw that it read forty-seven. Looking around, he saw that most people's scores were much lower, although Hermione had a sixty-three. Ron and Neville both had respectable scores in the upper thirties, and Harry was proud to see that most of the students he'd trained in Defence last year had done better than their comrades. Malfoy, annoyingly, had two points more than he did, but he also had purple hair and the lower six inches of his robes missing, so Harry considered it a victory.

Snape sneered at the panting, exhausted survivors of the exercise. He woke Theodore Nott and Lisa Turpin, who had both been caught by Stun spells, but made no move to help anybody else.

"A disgraceful display," he said coldly, stalking between the rows of desks. He flicked his wand, and the hovering numbers left the students they were anchored to, taking on house colours as they flocked together and merged until there were only four final scores visible. Gryffindor red stood the clear winner at 218, with Ravenclaw narrowly beating Slytherin to second, and Hufflepuff lagging some way behind.

Snape regarded the scores, and curled his lip. "Ten points from Hufflepuff." Draco Malfoy started to smirk. "And five from Slytherin."

There was a gasp of complete shock, followed by dead silence. Snape, taking points off house Slytherin for poor performance? Harry shared an incredulous glance with Ron.

Fortunately, Snape didn't continue the scoring to its logical conclusion and award points to Gryffindor for winning. Harry didn't think his heart would have withstood the shock if he had.

"Perhaps I was not entirely clear," the teacher said curtly, not sparing so much as a glance for his flabbergasted house members. "There will be no mollycoddling in this class. Everyone will perform, or they will leave." He narrowed his eyes. "Return to your desks. The practical part of the lesson is over."

The students limped - if they were fortunate; wobbled, hopped, danced or even slithered if they were not - slowly back to their chairs. Justin Finch-Fletchley, currently custard yellow and exhibiting what appeared to be scales, cautiously raised a hand.

"Er, Professor? Could we...?"

"You will complete the lesson in your current condition," Snape said flatly. "In future, perhaps, you will be more aware of the consequences of stupidity. Open your books, and turn to the third chapter."

Harry found, to his surprise, that the rest of the double lesson actually seemed to pass quite quickly. Snape was as horrible as ever, but the adrenaline boost of the early part of the class made it easier to rise above it. He didn't even mind the homework assignment; after all the background reading he'd done last year trying desperately to come up with ways to train his students, he was confident he could complete it without difficulty.

Ron, still occasionally hiccoughing green bubbles but otherwise relatively unscathed, shook his head in amazement as they left the classroom. "Is it me - or was the first part of that actually fun?"

Harry grinned. "I never, ever thought I'd say this about a lesson with Snape..." he admitted, "but that was definitely better than Umbridge or Lockhart."

"Professor Snape is actually a very good teacher, you know," Hermione said, while they both pulled disgusted faces. "Well, he is! He's very informative, and he certainly knows what he's talking about. He just also happens to be a complete-"

"Hermione!" Ron gasped, laughing in surprise.

"-ly unpleasant person, is how I was going to finish, Ron," Hermione said sternly. But then she giggled, and linked arms with both of them to drag them along. "Come on, let's get to Transfiguration. I promised Neville I'd help him get rid of those tentacles before Professor McGonagall sees him."