Seeing the Past, Present, and Future

Midnight Break-In

"We have Defense Against the Dark Arts now, right?"

"Yeah. I wonder what horrible flaw this teacher has."

"Ron! You don't know that. At least we have a teacher this year; I was afraid we might not. Imagine if they got rid of the subject! It'd be awful!"

"Considering all we learned from Umbridge last year we might as well not even had it. Still though, Ron makes a point. If he's qualified and all why didn't he take the job earlier? And you can't say he just got out of school because he's at least 50."

"I wasn't going to say that," Hermione said in a tone which suggested that she was just about to say something along those lines. "Maybe he's from a foreign country."

"That could actually work if he was working abroad and returned to England this year. Maybe we'll actually have a qualified teacher which isn't possessed, a werewolf, or a Death Eater!"

Harry laughed. "There's the optimistic Ron we all know!"

The trio was all laughing when they walked in the classroom door. The bell hadn't rung yet and students were standing around and talking, the better students sitting in their desks and talking. It seemed to be a pretty ordinary classroom and dusty rays of sunshine fell through the scratched windows. Although the classroom was not dirty in anyway, it still had the feeling of disuse, as though only a few people had set foot in it the past decade.

The chatting of his fellow classmates quickly disappeared as Professor Sullivan strode through the door in a business like matter. Silently, the new teacher opened a briefcase and took out several sheets of paper along with his wand. Harry could already tell he was very organized.

"Brown, Lavender."

Lavender raised her hand from the back of the classroom and Sullivan glanced up as he marked her present. Silently going through the list, he looked up after stating each name and Harry realized, for the first time, just how many kids there were in his class. There was a slight pause and Harry looked up, wondering if roll was done. But, no, that couldn't be. His name hadn't been called yet.

"Potter, Harry," the teacher said, slowly and with a slight smile tugging at his lips.

Harry glanced up as he silently raised his hand. Well, at least Professor Sullivan hadn't made a big show of being surprised to meet him, like many of Harry's teachers had in his first year. His rather lazy thoughts were interrupted by a loud bark.

"Class! Wands out!"

"That was fun," Ron said as they exited the classroom.

"And useful, too," Hermione commented.

They had spent the period practicing a new shield charm which, instead of absorbing the attack, splintered it and sent it back to the opponent. While they were doing this, they had also practiced their dueling skills.

"He's a pretty good teacher, maybe we can actually learn something this year," Ron replied, smiling happily.

"Yeah," Harrysaid rather distractedly. Something about the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher rubbed him the wrong way, a feeling, obviously, his friends did not share. And considering the scraps of conversations he had overheard from other Gryffindors' conversations, his friends' opinion of the new professor was widely shared.

The trio of friends found their way to the Great Hall where lunch had already appeared upon the gleaming gold plates. They took their seats and Ron was soon eating voraciously, with Hermione expressing her disbelief at how much he could devour in such a brief period of time. Harry put a small amount of food on his plate but he wasn't feeling particularly hungry, something his friends would have thought out of the ordinary if they were not so busy squabbling among themselves.

"Hello, Harry."

Harry jumped slightly but then returned the greeting to their rather odd young friend, who was currently sitting besides him.

"Have you had Defense against the Dark Arts yet?" she inquired.

"Yes, have you?"

"Yes."

Silence reigned over them while they both thought of how to say what they were thinking. Finally, Harry broke the ice with a question which encompassed his own opinion. "What do you think of the new teacher?" he spoke slowly.

"I don't like him. Not in the least." She opened her mouth to say something more, but evidently decided against as she closed it again.

Harry smiled, glad someone shared his opinion. "I don't like him either. He just strikes me as...off."

She looked at him and smiled mischievously. "And I thought I was the only one."

"So what exactly are we looking for?" Harry whispered, jumping slightly at how loud it seemed in the quiet corridor.

"Anything. And we have to remember to not whisper across the classroom; someone might hear us and investigate. Normally any sound at night is investigated." She tried the classroom's doorknob. "Aw, it's locked. Alohomora!"

Harry followed the young Gryffindor girl. Truthfully, he was a bit doubtful of their plan now. What if they were caught? And hadn't he misjudged people's characters before? In his first year he had thought Snape was trying to get the Sorcerer's Stone but, in fact, he had been the one trying to protect it. Couldn't they be misjudging Sullivan's characters? "Look," Harry started, lightly touching her on the shoulder. "Maybe...maybe we shouldn't be doing this."

She looked up at him with eyes which suggested she was thinking "What, you gonna back out now, Chicken?" Harry avoided her look and tried to put out another argument. "I mean, what if we get caught? You really shouldn't get a spot on your record so early into the school year."

The girl he was talking to continued looking up at him and said "If you don't want to go in, fine, but I am. I know something is weird and don't you lie, I know you felt it too." When Harry didn't respond she pointed her finger in the direction from which they had came and said in a voice above a whisper: "If you want to go, then go. If we're wrong, which we're not, it won't matter because we won't leave any trace that we were here. Now," she propped open the door a bit more, "are you coming?"

Harry, still fighting some small part of himself, nodded and walked in the door, stuffing his invisibility coat in his pocket. (He was not actually the first person who suggested he should bring it, the friend he was with now had suggested it. Harry had been slightly surprised that she knew about it and she herself had had a look on her face like she was afraid of being caught. When asked how she knew, she had replied, in more of a question than a statement, that she had overheard Harry talking about it over the summer. Harry wasn't sure if he entirely believed that, but he hadn't thought of it as of much importance, and thus he had put it out of his mind.)

"You search the file cabinets, I'll searchthe briefcase," she whispered as she carefully shut the door. Harry nodded and opened the top drawer of the file cabinet. It was incredibly heavy and he saw that it was full of papers with the tabs of the files containing the names of different students. He took one out and quickly looked at the few sheets of paper. The first sheet had a list of a few spells, in a rather shaky handwriting, and letter grades next to them. A sentence at the bottom summarized the grades and stated that the student needed to focus more. The second sheet was about half a page long and written in a large, fancy script and magenta ink. Harry looked over it and realized that it must have been written by Lockhart because although the first sentence mentioned the student, saying they were not excited enough about the class, after that it deteriorated to self-praise. The third (and fourth) pages were written in a neat, familiar printing, and divided into several paragraphs. Each paragraph discussed a different defensive topic and how the student had done at it. At the end of these two pages was a paragraph describing the student overall and Remus Lupin's signature. At this point, it struck Harry that these were students' Defense Against the Dark Arts portfolios. The first page must have been Quirrell's, with each teacher leaving behind grades and descriptions of the students at the end of the year. He looked at the next page and saw that it was consistent with the course Moody (or rather the imposter Crouch) had taught. There was no page after that and, after a moment's thought, Harry realized why. All of the previous teachers had at least lasted until the end of the year. Quirrell and Lockhart would have already written their end of the year reports by the final week and Lupin and Crouch knew they were going to be leaving. Umbridge had been driven out of the school too early to write anything, and this was in addition to being busy as the "Headmaster" before that.

Harry closed the drawer (which took longer than it should have as it was now several meters long) and decided to try the next one. This one was considerably shorter and seemed to contain a variety of papers. The first folder contained lists of books and brief summaries. Harry had just put back that folder and was about to pick up a second one when his Gryffindor friend quickly hissed his name.

"Harry!"

Harry looked up and saw that she had already closed Sullivan's briefcase, a piece of paper clenched in her hand. Oddly enough, she was running toward him with a frantic look on her face. She slammed shut the file drawer with surprising stillness and pushed Harry aside, pulling the invisible cloak out of is pocket and covering both of them in the process. He was about to yell at her, to ask what she was doing, when the door to the classroom silently opened and in walked Professor Sullivan.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or his world.

A/N: Next chapter should come next weekend. Oh, and please leave a review on your way out.

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