Disclaimer: See Chapter One
Updated: Friday 27 May 2005
Chapter Seventy Nine: Defence Against the Dark ArtsThe last week of Summer went extraordinarily quickly for Estella. She was looking forward to seeing what the school was like during the 70s, if only because it would mean James and Sirius would not be so near by and persistent with their attempts to pair her up with Remus… which was just wrong.
Despite Remus' newfound allegiance, Sirius and James were unrelenting in their pursuit to see the pair of them romantically linked. If anything, the werewolf's sudden tolerance and acceptance of the new girl only cemented their resolve. Their constant innuendo and insistence was growing annoying, and both she and Selina were happy to be escaping to the relative 'freedom' of the Ravenclaw House.
One thing she had always admired about the stories she had been told growing up was the strong bond of 'brotherhood' the 'fictional' characters had shared. Now she was seeing it in the flesh, she was beginning to see how Remus had found it so difficult to reconcile the Sirius he'd grown up with, to the Sirius who had gone to Azkaban. Her mind elsewhere, Estella began to wonder what her family back home was doing. How her Uncle and father were getting along; whether or not any progress had been made in trying to clear his name. Watching them across the Great Hall from her place at the Ravenclaw table, it ate away at her that these were all questions she wouldn't know the answer to until she got back to her own time. Spending the meantime with the oblivious, teenaged forms of said parties – their presence forming a constant reminder of what awaited her back in her own time – was going to be sheer torture.
"What are you frowning about, Aries?" Selina nudged Estella from where she sat next to her future child at the table.
"Nothing." Estella sighed. "I'm just dreading our first DADA class."
"Why? Mr Potter will be great!" Selina frowned.
"Well I did really well in my entrance exam, I'm worried that he's going to expect too much." Estella said, not entirely lying – she was never one for being a class extrovert. "My written stuff is all good, but I lack the timing. It's silly I know."
Selina spared Estella a worried glance. "No, of course not." She said. "Though I am sure Harry won't push you where you don't want to go. I doubt he'd be able to."
"What do you mean by that?" Estella asked, her eyes narrowing.
"Well look at how you handled Remus last week." Selina said, her lips curling. "You made him seem like nothing more than cauldron scum at breakfast that day yet ten minutes in a locked room and you're friends. I must say I was impressed."
Estella responded by giving her mother a sidelong look, her own lips curling as she brought her glass to her mouth. She said nothing.
Twenty minutes later they were sat in their first class of the year, Defence Against the Dark Arts… with the Gryffindors.
"Good Morning class, my name is Henry Potter." Henry Potter swept into the room, addressing his class as he paced. "Some of you may know me as James' father." – Here he looked pointedly at them – "But I assure you right now there will be no favouritism in this classroom. Defending one's self and one's livelihood is a serious business… Sirius, don't give me that look… and it is imperative that we do not approach it lightly."
Estella cast her eyes over to her future father, taking in his flabbergasted look of indignation. Mr Potter hadn't, she soon realised, been looking in their direction when he'd scolded Sirius!
"I am not a Professor of my craft, so I will not expect you to grace me with such a title." Mr Potter continued. "I do, however, have 20 years of extensive experience being an Auror…" a collective hush filled the room. "As such you may refer to me by my professional title outside of this classroom, Auror Potter or…" At this he swung himself onto the edge of his desk. "You can call me Harry… why? Because on the battlefield we're all the same to the enemy and if we're to fight against them side by side there's little room for social class and etiquette." He hopped off the desk and began prowling up the aisle. "Now, would anyone else like to share with the class why it's not a good idea to call me 'Auror Potter' during an attack? Selina?"
Selina spun around in her chair in front row to face Mr Potter where he now stood at the back of the class. "In an act of warfare it is tactically advantageous to eliminate the ranking officers. If you were identified as a Auror you would be duly targeted, leaving the less experienced without a leader."
Henry Potter smiled warmly and clapped his hands together in appreciation. "Excellent work. Five points to Ravenclaw." He said, walking back down to the front of the classroom to pick up the roll. "Now, another important aspect of Defence is to never underestimate your opponent! It is, for example, a very inane, archaic impression of our chivalrous male egos to readily assume that our female counterparts are weak or in some way inferior in the discipline of Defence." He stared knowingly at Estella. "I can assure you that this is hardly the case, it is merely a consequence of conditioning. Some of the worthiest Aurors are female; and to prove that girls, you are just as competent as the boys and boys, girls do not always need you to act as a human shield; I will be assigning you all with a class partner of the opposite gender." The class groaned. "So, as I call out your names, if you could please go and introduce yourself to your partner and ensure you sit with them for all classes this year. Sirius Black, if you could join Selina and Aries at their table you will be Selina's partner." The Marauders and those who knew of the handsome Gryffindor's intentions towards the omniscient Ravenclaw sniggered.
Henry Potter ignored the disruption and continued as soon as Sirius had taken his seat next to Selina. "Remus Lupin, if you could be so obliged as to join with our newest student, Aries, I would be forever grateful." Estella narrowed her disguised honey eyes at her teacher in suspicion, seeing straight through the feigned coincidence in his selection and catching the conspiratorial wink he shared with James and Sirius. "James, I do believe Lily would be best suited to put you in your place…"
…and so the sorting continued, until, five minutes and a multitude of chair scrapings and muttered curses later, the entire class was paired off. Glancing around the room, Estella was surprised to note just how many future life partners were paired together. A lot of the people in that room were parents of her classmates; and here she was, perhaps, witnessing just how it all began.
"Right." Henry said, tucking away his roll and pulling out his wand to conjure a duelling platform. "Now who would like to demonstrate?"
Estella hit her head on the table a little too forcefully. 'not me, not me, not me, not me!' She inwardly screamed.
"Aries, Remus… how nice of you to volunteer." Henry smiled, unbidden challenge and mirth dancing in his twinkling eyes. Looking directly at Estella as she slowly rose from her chair, he added. "Let's see what you can do."
In turn, Estella groaned softly. "What's the matter?" Remus whispered, only he had been able to hear her.
"I just find it ironic, is all." She sighed. "One of the first rules in defence is to be unpredictable, yet even a blind man could have seen that he would have gotten me to demonstrate."
"Well it should certainly be interesting." Remus smiled slightly, half hoping that the new student's reputation was somewhat embellished.
"Assume your positions. You may begin when ready." Henry invited them onto the stage, then moved to stand a discreet distance away.
Estella and Remus, meanwhile, had taken their places on opposite ends of the platform, turning to bow to each other respectfully before drawing their wands.
"Expelliarmus!" Remus fired the disarming spell at Estella, which she almost lazily parried with a deflective shield.
"Protego! Tarantallegra!" Estella shot back in rapid succession, catching Remus unawares, causing his feet to dance against their will.
"Finite!" Remus pointed his wand at his legs, after hurling a bat bogey hex at Estella.
"Rictusempra!" Estella shot back, having been hit by Remus' hex, but still able to cast spells.
"Reducto!" Remus dodged Estella's spell and cast a blasting spell at the table she'd ducked behind so she could counter the Bat Bogey hex. "Furnunculus!"
"Fumos Alarte!" Remus had missed Estella completely with his boils curse, having not anticipated that she would stay where the blasted desk was; and so he was therefore caught by her anti-gravity mist and spun upside down. "Impendimenta!" She followed through, slowing Remus' actions down to a disadvantage.
"Petrificus Totalus!" Remus somehow managed, but before Estella had thrown a Disarming spell at the boy, who had slowly but surely step out of the anti-gravity mist and floated the floor, the Impediment Jinx not yet worn off.
It was then, how, Remus; unable to move very quickly, found himself wandless, and Estella found herself on the floor in a body bind, her wand in her hand and Remus' wand by her side.
"Excellent! A draw!" Henry smiled, cancelling the respective spells and leading the class in applause as the pair stood up, side by side.
"Well done, both of you." Henry smiled, his hazel eyes glistening. "15 points each for both managing to cast spells whilst hexed and for being able to counter the curses you were exposed to." Estella and Remus shook each other's hands and returned to their seats whilst Henry turned to continue teaching the class.
Estella felt as though Henry was disappointed in her performance. For assessment purposes her vocabulary of hexes and curses was extremely high because of the sheer level of tutoring and reading she had done in her youth; but thinking of what spell to use and when and putting her knowledge to practical use was still her Achilles heel when it came down to timing. Her father, whom she had never duelled, had after all beaten her that night in the Shrieking Shack – with a inferior wand at his disposal, no less! Estella's prowess lay primarily in the knowledge of spells at her disposal, and the survival basics of Defensive tactics – how to recognise a unthreatening spell and take a curse without becoming incapacitated; and how to use her smart mouth as a weapon to destabilise a stronger foe. Years of practice had honed her reflexes and response time, and given her a breadth of spells to cast, but in the event of a real attack, her energies would be thrown into getting away from her attacker, not overpowering them.
The rest of the lesson covered tactical manoeuvres, with most of the time spent with Henry answering questions about his years as an Auror. As the class was filing out for their next class (which was Herbology), Henry asked her to stay behind.
"I know from your test results that you know far more advanced spells than those." He said gravely. "I was wondering why you didn't choose to use any of them to better effect? You would have won the duel."
Estella looked the Potter patriarch straight in the eye and smiled wanly. "Remus is my friend. It was a friendly duel, I did not see the need." Estella replied. "I wasn't out to win."
Henry sat on the edge of his desk, his hands clasped in his lap. "Do not be afraid of damaging a boy's ego, Aries. You need to feel free to develop your abilities and learn from experience. A little bruising to one's ego is the lesser of two evils when you consider the lesson that could be learned from it. Here's a pass for you to give Madame Sprout to account for your tardiness."
Estella took the gold piece of parchment gratefully, her mouth falling open in shock when she saw that while it had her teacher's signature the details were blank.
Seeing her quizzical look, Henry smiled. "It's a little something of my own invention." He grinned. "It will fill in the details as you need them. The boys all have one."
"You're encouraging us to skive?" Estella frowned.
"On the contrary, I just understand that sometimes it's easy to lose track of time; and you're sure to get lost getting to class for the next couple of weeks until you find your way around. Use it wisely – the other teachers will start asking questions if you all start turning up late to every class with a pass always signed by me."
"Uh, well, thank you." Estella smiled, nodding her assent before rushing off in the direction of the Greenhouses for her next class, leaving a overgrown child smiling mischievously behind her.
One downside to her selection of subjects, was that Estella was in hardly any of the same subjects as her mother or Remus. She'd hardly even been introduced toher Godmother even, the girl being not only in separate classes, but a different house.Instead, Estella found herself in the omnipresent company of Sirius and James, two men that up until that point in her life, remained an enigma. Herbology, she shared with the Hufflepuffs, and so Selina and Estella worked together, Estella keen to find out more about her mother without the interference of the boys in their lives. After lunch in Potions, incidentally, Estella had been partnered with none other than her uncle – a situation that proved entirely difficult given the Slytherin's diligent suspicions and keen mind. Trying to even befriend Severus was simply out of the question, as she quickly came to realise. The young man was presently too readily swayed by the influence of the dark arts to approach the revelation with a level head. It pained Estella to acknowledge it, but the young Severus was a danger to her… especially given the crowd he surrounded himself with.
"Just who are you really?" Severus snarled at her in a hoarse whisper as they huddled over their potion. It was clear he was affronted by her ability – he'd evidently resigned himself to a horrid lesson of waiting for the unassuming new girl to catch up to him. "Who tutored you?"
Estella averted her eyes from the dominant presence beside her and concentrated on mincing her mandrake roots. "Aries Ollerton. I was privately tutored before coming to Hogwarts." She answered carefully, reinstating a thoroughly established fact. "Why ever won't you believe me."
"You look different." Severus said finally, his eyes still scrutinising her. "You're a little taller than those of the Ollerton line, your features aren't as dark, and there hasn't been a woman of Llwellyn linage who hasn't had blue eyes."
Exhaling a breath she didn't realise she'd been holding, Estella forced herself to be calm. Trust her uncle to have read up on prominent Wizarding families. Even though her apparent lack of physical likeness to the Ollerton trademarks was something of a dilemma, at least it was better than turning up with the distinctly grey eyes of her father and poise of her mother – bloodlines the young Slytherin was more than intimately familiar with.
"If I didn't know any better, Severus, I'd suspect your observance was a sign of your affections." She drawled, intentionally pushing his buttons in an effort to steer him away from his line of thought.
"That's preposterous!" Severus spluttered, almost dropping the dragon's liver he was holding into the cauldron in his shock. "I was simply making note of the obvious, though it perplexes me how my sister has yet to make note of it. Families such as ours are supposed to take pride in familiarising oneself with our peers."
"So I wanted to make myself fit in a bit more by not appearing to be a undersized gnome!" Estella rolled her eyes, safe in the knowledge that her status as a pureblood afforded the Slytherin a measure of tolerance towards her. "You're reading far too much into the situation. Does everything have to be a conspiracy?"
Conceding defeat, the wry Slytherin inclined his head. "You still haven't answered my question." He stated firmly, leaning in so close to her that his breath fogged her glasses menacingly.
Inwardly, Estella smirked. It appeared that the tables had been turned – so often it had been herself that was left to painfully extract answers from her uncle. Her lips twitched with the irony. "How I acquired my skills behind a cauldron is of little incidence." She said matter-of-factly, turning away from him to work. "I will not dignify such a inane question with an answer at this time. The question of my competence is demonstrably sound, and is the only relevance here."
A muscle in Severus' jaw twitched as he set his jaw in frustration. While he was not accustomed to someone being so forthright with him, he could not help but respect the girl's spirit – her response was something he would expect from a fellow Slytherin, an equal.
"I do not appreciate my sister associating with such illusive entities." He scowled warningly. "You unnerve me with your candour."
Smiling brightly, Estella wanted nothing more than to hug her uncle and compliment him on how adorable he was being in the over-protective brother role. Holding herself back, she forced herself to take his threat very seriously. "I admire your protectiveness over your kin, Severus." Estella said, her eyes twinkling. "Though I do happen to believe that Selina is more than capable of making the right decisions for herself." Ignoring his scowl, she went on. "I won't misguide my hopes by anticipating your trust, Severus, but I would like to hope that you trust your sister enough to make her own decisions."
Severus scowled at her but said nothing.
Estella sighed contentedly for although the boy beside her would not even blink before hexing her if she were to annoy him in some dark hallway, she couldn't help but feel like she was in familiar territory. It was kind of like making a potion with a cross between her Uncle and Draco Malfoy. Both she and Severus were at home behind the cauldron and quite capable of working together for the common cause (the potion) but at the same time both were equally on their guard.
Thought that was the first and only time Severus had ever questioned her so openly, Estella just knew she hadn't alleviated his suspicions. Every now and then she could feel his eyes on her, scrutinising her with the unasked question. She always had known her uncle was a highly intuitive, perceptive individual, and it was now she was beginning to experience first hand just how unnerving that it could be to be on the receiving end of his penetrating gaze. It was a good thing he had taught her some occlumency in her time, for she had no doubt that the 15 year old version of her Uncle would be only too willing to put his developing skills in legilimency to the test.
"Don't let him get to you." Selina whispered in her ear as they left the dungeons after another unnerving Potions lesson – thankfully the only class she shared with the future head of Slytherin House – a few weeks later. "He's just off kilter because he's met his match in Potions and he doesn't like sharing the limelight."
Grinning, Estella could not help but muse at the irony of the statement. For years her Uncle had besmirched Harry for his apparent celebrity – a status Harry neither sought nor wanted – and yet all the while it was her uncle himself that craved recognition for his accomplishments! So much for thinking that the man was the silent, unassuming type. Then again Estella was astonished to realise that perhaps his reluctance to publicly credit himself as inventor of innovative potions such as Wolfsbane probably had more to do with the fact he did not want those sympathetic to the Dark Lord's cause knowing the full extent of his talents than his desire to remain in the shadows where she assumed he felt more comfortable.
The grin vanishing from her face almost as soon as it came, Estella cast her eyes to the unforgiving stone floor. Her whole life she had never truly appreciated just how much her Uncle had sacrificed. It was no wonder he was cold and embittered towards Harry, who was free to 'relish' in his notoriety if he so chose. That Harry had the freedom of choice in the matter and yet chose to not take advantage of his fame was probably akin to a slap in the face to her Uncle who not only had to wear the reputation of being something dark and sinister, but he received little to no acknowledgement for all the times he had risked his life as a spy and all the work he had contributed in the subtle art of potion making.
Faltering in her step, Estella wanted nothing more at that moment than to find the young, as yet unmarked Severus, and warn him against making the biggest mistake in his life. After all he had done for her, he loved her uncle emphatically and knew he deserved better.
"Aries!" Selina was frantic, her eyes shifting back and forth, confirming they were alone in the corridor before dragging Estella into a disused classroom. "What's wrong with you? You just stopped walking all of a sudden and became unresponsive. Aries?"
Shaking her head out of her reverie, Estella peered at her mother curiously. "What?"
"I thought you were going to pass out or something!"
Taking a deep breath, Estella looked at her mother with sad eyes. "I can change it." She said in a breathy voice, barely above a whisper, not making any sense to the confused teenager before her. "I can change everything for the better! But I can't. It will change everything!"
"What do you mean?" Selina asked shakily, a little caught out.
"What if I was meant to come here?" Estella said excitedly, resting her hands on her mother's shoulders. "What if things need changing?"
"What things, Aries?" Selina said lowly, shaking her head desperately. "What are you talking about? You're not making any sense!"
Shaking her head dismissively, Estella brought herself back down to earth. "Sorry, just having a rant. Don't worry about it. It's nothing."
"No, it is something, Aries." Selina frowned.
"Just stuff at home, really." Estella struggled to cover up her slip. "There was, just, um, some reservations about me coming here. My father and Uncle didn't particularly think it was safe. Your brother's comments just reminded me, is all."
"What change are you talking about?" Selina was not convinced.
"Just a few perspectives." Estella said distantly.
"Oh."
End Chapter: Defence Against the Dark Arts