As soon as Professor McGonagall handed them their class schedules the following morning, Fitz and Daisy both handed theirs over to Simmons to see if they would be taking Divination that year.
"I only need one, you two have the same schedule," muttered Simons as she took their proffered schedules, quickly skimming over them. Almost instantly she said, "Nope — Arithmancy is during Divination this afternoon. You're free from having your death predicted on a weekly basis this year, Fitzy."
But before they could not have Fitz's death predicted by Trelawney, the had to have an uneventful Herbology with the Puffs, followed by Care of Magical Creatures with the Slytherins yet again, because apparently whoever set up the schedules at Hogwarts was incapable of conceiving that it was possibly a good idea not to stick the same Houses together every single year for the same classes. But arriving at Hagrid's hut, FitzSkimmons found the gamekeeper holding Fang away from several open crates that sounded like they were exploding inside.
But before they could check out the crates, Hagrid greeted them. "Mornin'! Be'er wait fer the Slytherins, they won' want ter miss this — Blast-Ended Skrewts!"
"Pardon?" said Simmons, quickly wracking her brain. "I don't recall ever having read about anything by that name in any of the books I've ever read."
But Hagrid merely pointed down into the crates, so the three of them took a look.
"Um…Biologist?" whispered Fitz to Simmons.
"It's clearly hideous freckled stepchildren — oh wait, that's you," Daisy smirked at Fitz, causing him to smack her on the arm.
Simmons meanwhile mumbled to them as she stared at the creatures in fascinated disgust, "My guess would be some mutated salamanders got drunk and got it on in an abandoned nuclear plant with some of those fireworks the twins have. But seriously, I have no clue — and for once, I'm actually not sure I want to."
By this point the rest of the Gryffindors had made it down and started looking in the crates as well, with Lavender giving the most articulate description of the creatures yet when she leapt back squealing, "Eurgh!"
Although apparently wherever Hagrid came from this was an expression of profound praise, as Hagrid proudly said, "On'y jus' hatched, so yeh'll be able ter raise 'em yerselves! Thought we'd make a bit of a project of it!"
But before any of the Gryffindors could question whether that was exactly the best use of class time for a class that was supposed to be about the care of all magical creatures, not just deformed, hideous, possibly speckled stepchild ones, the cold, drawling voice of Malfoy did it for them. "And why would we want to raise them?"
FitzSkimmons thought it rather presumptuous of him to make this declaration before he'd even looked at the creatures they were to be raising, but at the same time they did have to wholeheartedly agree with him for once.
As the Snake strolled up with his thugs by his side, he continued, "I mean, what do they do? What is the point of them?"
"Malfoy's right, Hagrid — what are they useful for? And what exactly are they actually to begin with?" picked up Daisy, causing Malfoy, Hagrid, and all the Gryffindors to stare at her in surprise — it was a well-known, time-honored, unwritten, never-disobeyed tradition that Gryffindors never, ever, ever agreed with Slytherins on anything, simply on brainwashed principle of House-hating.
Hagrid spent several seconds clearly trying to think of a suitable answer to Malfoy and Daisy's questions, before finally looking at Malfoy and saying gruffly, "Tha's next lesson. Yer jus' feedin' 'em today. Now, yeh'll wan' ter try 'em on a few diff'rent things — I've never had 'em before, not sure what they'll go fer — I got ant eggs an' frog livers an' a bit o' grass snake — just try 'em out with a bit of each."
As FitzSkimmons grabbed some frog livers a minute later to drop on the slimy demons' heads, Daisy muttered to her spouses, "So why is he having us try to raise these…things? I'm used to dangerous creatures from him, especially outside of class, but at least in his mind he's always had a good reason for them — always wanted a dragon, and they are admittedly cool in a way and if the stories are to be believed will collect lots of gold for you, if you can get it away from them; three-headed dog protecting the stone; Ungoliant's lesser known little brother and the great-uncle of Shelob — Aragog, the big-ass spider that he raised in a cupboard as a thirteen year old; hippogriffs are useful — but he just completely avoided any kind of why on these things. What is he hiding?"
But Simmons could only shake her head, not having a clue.
The only particularly good thing about the lesson was that Malfoy fortunately seemed too shocked at a Weasel agreeing with him on anything to say anything else nasty to Hagrid about the Balrog pupae (as Fitz had taken to calling them) for the remainder of class, and not too soon the bell finally rang for lunch, allowing them all to flee from the demon spawns as quickly as possible.
~FSK~
After lunch FitzSkimmons had Arithmancy that thankfully was not with the Slytherins, so they didn't see Malfoy again until that evening when they were crossing the Entrance Hall to get to the Great Hall for supper.
"Weasley! Hey, Weasley!"
FitzSkimmons turned as one to give Malfoy a bored look to show him just how tired they were of his shit — like normal, he didn't get the message.
"Your dad's in the paper, Weasley!" shouted Malfoy gleefully, waving the morning's Daily Prophet around in case there was anyone who hadn't heard him, so he could get their attention that way. He then began reading the article aloud — very aloud.
The gist of the article as FitzSkimmons understood it, was that Mr Weasley had rescued Mad-Eye from the bobbies (policemen, in Daisy's case) the day before, presumably in part so that he could make it to Hogwarts that night to assume his teaching position.
After a sentence where it called Mr Weasley 'Arnold' instead of 'Arther', Malfoy paused to taunt Daisy, sneering, "Imagine them not even getting his name right, Weasley. It's almost as though he's a complete nonentity, isn't it?"
"It's his first cousin twice removed on your mother's side," retorted Daisy boredly, but Malfoy wasn't paying any attention as he resumed reading.
Finally finishing up, he held the article out towards Daisy triumphantly, concluding with, "And there's a picture, Weasley! A picture of your parents outside their house — if you can call it a house. Your mother could do with losing a bit of weight, couldn't she?"
"Yes — she could. She definitely needs to lose some weight before she has a heart attack and dies because she's so fat and never exercises while eating like shit," replied Daisy matter-of-factly, once again taking Malfoy completely by surprise that she was agreeing with him on an insult about her mother, giving Simmons an opportunity to snatch the paper out of Malfoy's hand to take a closer look at the photo.
"Where would they have got that picture from, though?" she said to her spouses as she looked at the photo. "Your parents clearly knew they were being photographed when this photo was taken, they're clearly posing for it, but there's no way it was taken for this article, and I'm also rather positive that they wouldn't have given the Prophet permission to publish it for this article even if it had been taken for this article — at least not if they knew what the article was about beforehand. Which means someone apparently took the photo, held onto it for a while, and then gave or sold it to the Prophet when the Prophet needed a photo." Turning to Daisy, she added, "You recognize when it was taken?"
"Nope," answered Daisy after looking at it. "Maybe last school year, or something? Kind of looks like spring to me, you can see some flowers in the background, and none of the kids are in the photo."
Not getting the reaction he was hoping for out of Daisy, Malfoy turned to Fitz as Simmons and Daisy continued studying the photo. "You were staying with them this summer, weren't you, Potter? So tell me, is his mother really that porky, or is it just the picture?"
"She's worse in real life," replied Fitz boredly. "She looks practically skinny in that photo compared to actually having to be next to her. True land whale — absolutely ginormous. Not sure how she manages to get around the house on her own — you know, physically fit through doors and such."
By the end Malfoy was staring in complete disbelief at Fitz, clueless as to what to say — never in all his spoiled life would he have expected Potter to agree with his insults about the Weasel mother, even in a half sarcastic manner, and Potter didn't even seem to be doing that at the moment. He really had no clue what he was supposed to do now. So he just stood there and stared after the three of them as the mudblood led Potter and the Weasel into the Great Hall, even keeping his copy of the Daily Prophet that she'd stolen from him.
Thursday afternoon they had their first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson with Professor Mad-Eye. He quickly jumped straight into the lesson, wasting no time with idle chit-chat or banal pleasantries.
"You're behind — very behind — on dealing with curses," he growled at them. "So I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other. I've got one year to teach you how to deal with Dark Wizards, so straight into it. Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you countercurses and leave it at that.
"I'm not supposed to show you what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year. You're not supposed to be 'old enough' to deal with it till then. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of your nerves. He reckons you can cope, and I say, the sooner you know what you're up against, the better. How are you supposed to defend yourself against something you've never seen? A wizard who's about to put an illegal curse on you isn't going to tell you what he's about to do. He's not going to do it nice and polite to your face. You need to be prepared. You need to be alert and watchful."
"I like this guy!" whispered Simmons and Daisy to each other at exactly the same time, causing them to have to stifle their chuckles, and causing Fitz to roll his eyes at them, though he agreed entirely with what they'd said. But fortunately for the two girls, Mad-Eye was busy growling at Lavender at the moment for showing Parvati something under her desk, so he didn't hear BioQuake's muffled giggles.
Finished scolding Lavender and Parvati, Mad-Eye asked the class, "So — do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"
Several hands rose tentatively into the air, plus Simmons and Daisy's confidently. Moody pointed at Daisy.
"Imperius Curse."
Fitz looked at her in slight surprise for knowing something like that, especially with how little Ron seemed to know about the wizarding world most of the time despite growing up in, so Daisy muttered out of the side of her mouth, "Dad told me once." Fitz assumed Mrs Weasley probably hadn't been around at the time.
But up at the front of the room Mad-Eye was saying, "Indeed — the Imperius Curse. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time."
He then took a spider out from inside his desk and proceeded to give them a demonstration of exactly how the Imperius curse could be used to control someone (or something), along with a few words about how extremely popular it had been in the first reign of Riddle.
Then he asked, "Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?"
Simmons' hand rose again of course, but to everyone in the class's surprise, so did Neville's.
"Yes?"
"The Cruciatus Curse," answered Neville in a small voice.
Just like with the Imperius curse, Mad-Eye gave them a demonstration of the Cruciatus Curse as well, on a second spider — apparently not wanting to torture the first spider right after mind-controlling it.
"Right...anyone know any others?"
Once again Simmons' hand rose in the air, but this time she was the only one.
"Yes?"
"Avada Kedavra — the Killing Curse," answered Simmons.
"Yes — the Killing Curse."
For the third time Mad-Eye reached into his spider jar. A flash of green light and the spider was dead.
"Not nice. Not pleasant. And there's no countercurse," he said. "There's no blocking it with spells, either. And only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right here in this classroom."
Well — at least he now knew how his character's parents had died, something no one else had thought important enough to tell him in the past fourteen years, and especially the past three since Harry'd been allowed to return to the world he belonged in.
But how? thought Fitz to himself as everyone but his wives turned to stare at him — well, they did turn to look at him as well, but in loving adoration instead of shock or fear or envy or whatever the hell everyone else was staring at him with. How did I magically — pun fully intended — survive when no one else ever has? Can you answer me that, Mad-Eye?
But Mad-Eye was already speaking again, so Fitz couldn't ask even if he'd actually wanted to.
"Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it — you could all get your wands out now and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed. But that doesn't matter. I'm not here to teach you how to do it."
He went on to explain why they needed to know curses they couldn't perform or defend against (or at least not easily), and they spent the rest of the class taking notes on these three curses that the Ministry had legislated as Unforgivable and instant one-way tickets to life in jail, never mind their potential uses to save your own life when you were pinched between a rock, a hard place, and an alien parasite with the face of Grant Ward mimicking your dead lover, with no other options.
As they all walked out of class and down the hall after the bell rang, and everyone else began excitedly and awedly talking about the lesson, Simmons said as they headed off in the opposite direction of everyone else so that they could drop off their books in their dorm before heading back down for supper, "I like him. That is what a proper defense class should be like. Tell everyone what they're actually going to have to face out there, not just what they would have to face against other good people who wouldn't be attacking them in the first place, because of, you know, the whole 'good person' part."
"Lupin did do a good job with animals and creatures last year, but I know what you mean," agreed Daisy. "A little additional research on our own — yes, I just said that, don't swoon, either of you — and we'll actually be able to defend ourselves and shield everyone else from anything that might get thrown our way while we're here."
"I assume we'll be learning those three curses, along with any more he brings up during the year, if we can find any books that will actually help us," said Fitz mostly to Simmons.
"Of course," replied Simmons. "Avada Kedavra is basically just the magical world's version of a gun, only always with the perfect combination of armor penetration but not overpenetration. It's a black-tip fifty that turns into a super-expanding hollow point when it gets inside a person's body — or just a perfect head shot every time. Except of course the part about blowing the entire back of your skull out, since Avada doesn't leave any mark."
"You've come a long way from the two brilliant scientists who'd failed their field assessments, that I met ten years ago," smiled Daisy. "Or at least ten years ago real world time, twelve years including here, and an extra half a year for Fitz when we were in the future, and not including the Framework at all — okay, I don't even know anymore how long it's been since I met you, or how old any of us are."
"Go into the field, she said. It'll be fun, she said — 'Oh, Fitz, it's the most perfect opportunity for us to see the world! We'd be fools to pass this one up!'," Fitz playfully teased in his fake-Simmons voice.
"Being out there, seeing the lives we were changing — we really did end up being the ones most changed by it. All three of us," replied Simmons to Daisy, before she turned and slapped her husband in the chest as she said, "I still hate it when you use that voice. That's really not how I sound."
"Of course you hate it, dear, of course you hate it," chuckled Fitz, not believing her for a second.
"And it really kind of is how you sound," added Daisy teasingly. "Really quite uncanny how well he can mimic your voice. Guess ten years of being best friends was good for something."
"Uh-huh," said Simmons, rolling her eyes at both of them. "But getting back to the topic of learning curses, based on everything Mad-Eye was saying, we're probably going to have a really hard time finding any books, especially ones not in the Restricted Section of the library, that will teach us how to actually cast them. So we're probably going to have to just try to learn them on our own, and hope no one finds out. Maybe if we ask Crookshanks nicely, he'll bring us some still alive spiders and mice to practice on, so we'll know if we're actually succeeding or not."
~FSK~
That evening, FitzSkimmons were sitting at their table in their dorm room, Fitz helping Daisy finish up the last of her homework while Simmons flipped through the stack of books on curses she'd borrowed from the open section of the library against Madam Pince's better judgement, looking for anything that would tell them how to cast the three curses Mad-Eye had showed them in class that afternoon, when there came a peck on one of the windows.
When Fitz opened it, Hedwig fluttered in with a letter. Taking it off the owl's leg, he took it back over to the table and spread it out in front of them to read. Apparently, Sirius was headed back into town, that rumors were going around that concerned Harry, Harry's scar hurting just one of them.
"I wonder what these rumors are that he's heard," said Fitz when he'd finished reading. "Have we heard any of them, or are all the adults keeping them secret from us again like normal?"
"Well, there was that Ministry chick who's been missing for a while now, that Mr Weasley was asking Mr Bagman about at the quidditch match — her disappearance might be a rumor," said Daisy. "And we know from Trelawney's prophecy last year that Pettigrew is having tea with Riddle. Plus Sirius says here that Dumbledore getting Mad-Eye to teach is one of the four signs of the apocalypse."
"Okay, so I guess we have heard a few rumors," said Fitz. "I wonder if there's any more, though."
"There's always more," sighed Simmons. "No one ever gives mid-thirty year old, professional spy children all the important news. But I say let them have their rumors, and we'll deal with the fallout when it inevitably happens, like we always do. No need to worry about things we can't control or do anything about until then."
And with that they returned to what they'd been doing before Hedwig had popped by to say hi, finishing up Daisy's homework and researching for their own homework of learning the 'Unforgivable' curses.
A few weeks later in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, Mad-Eye had them practice throwing off the Imperius Curse so they would be able to do it if anyone ever cast it on them for real.
After watching Dean, Lavender, and Neville do everything Mad-Eye told them to, it was Fitz's turn. Mad-Eye pointed his wand at Fitz and said, "Imperio!"
The Harry part of Fitz's mind seemed to float away from him — it was really the oddest sensation. He had always been in complete control of his characters' mind, perusing it at will for any information that could be useful to him, but now it was like those memories and personality were clouded over, and had floated behind a mist. Then he heard Mad-Eye's voice echoing in the mist, clearly trying to talk to mist-Harry, who wasn't at home.
"Jump onto the desk...jump onto the desk…" Mad-Eye's voice echoed.
It felt like a cheap Chinese knock-off version of Leopold. But Leopold at least told him to do things that really did need to be done, just in the wrong way to do them — not stupid shit like 'jump on a desk'. Then again, Leopold did have Fitz's genius intellect to work with since he was just the dark side of Fitz, so it made sense that all of his suggestions would be smart, just the cruel Hydra Doctor way of doing them. And Mad-Eye's voice certainly wasn't conscience-Jemma, who'd tried her hardest to help him through his brain injury, even if seeing her and not being able to always distinguish between conscience-Jemma in his mind and the real Jemma by his side had caused more strain between them than problems it had fixed.
But after a few seconds, he heard Mad-Eye's echoing voice again, repeating, "Jump onto the desk...jump onto the desk…."
Bored with his internal exploration, and highly doubting Mad-Eye was going to say anything he would be interested in doing, especially after watching the trivial things Mad-Eye had had the other students do before him, Fitz began boredly looking around the room to see what all his classmates were doing while Mad-Eye tried to mind-control him. And what they were doing was staring at him in a shock that after three years he was rather more used to than otherwise, unfortunately.
By this point, Mad-Eye had apparently realized that Fitz had no intention of obeying his Imperius Curse, and said gruffly, "Look at that class. That's how you throw it off."
But despite his normal gruff manner, he seemed quite surprised by how easily Fitz had broken the curse, and stared at him strangely for several long seconds.
Fitz just shrugged. "Not the first or even second time I've had to deal with voices in my head talking to me or telling me to do things. And last time I listened I got in quite a bit of trouble, so don't plan on doing that again anytime soon."
He decided it best not to mention the fact that it had also sounded like a secondary voice telling a mostly different person to do whatever it was — just like with the dementors, this spell seemed to only affect the Harry half of his brain, and not the Fitz half that was actually in control. Which made him expect that Simmons and Daisy wouldn't have any problem with it either when their turns came. Daisy had of course had her own dealings with mind control with Grant 'HIVE' Ward, but even without that, and even without their own minds being separate from their characters, he still wouldn't have expected his wives to have any trouble ignoring the curse — they were both just too damn stubborn to listen to anyone they didn't know and trust.
Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, Mad-Eye tried the spell twice more on Fitz, and both times Fitz ignored it as easily as he had the first time. Similarly, when it came Simmons and Daisy's turns, neither of them even flinched any of the three times Mad-Eye cast the spell on each of them, while no one else in the class could even come close to fighting against the curse, at least not visibly.
At the end of class, as everyone else hurriedly exited before they could be Imperiused to do anything else, like their homework on time, Mad-Eye told FitzSkimmons to hold back for a few minutes.
Once everyone else was gone, he said gruffly, "No one has every completely ignored the Imperius Curse on their first try, and yet none of you three had any trouble. Have you done it before?"
"No Sir, but we also aren't affected by dementors like normal, either," replied Simmons politely. "You can ask Professor Lupin —"
She quickly stopped short, remembering that he couldn't in fact ask Professor Lupin, as everything had reset between years.
"Actually, no, you can't, and don't try, because he'll tell you a completely contradictory story to this — so just completely forget I ever said that. But we aren't affected by dementors, or really anything that has to do with the mind. Just consider us fortunate, and be thankful that three of your students will never have any trouble being Imperiused," she said instead, before adding as an afterthought, "Though I don't know how we would fare against the Cruciatus Curse. Pain is both physical and mental, and while you can certainly create physical pain in our bodies, I don't know how the mental aspect would work. Avada would obviously still kill us though, because it wouldn't matter how much we can mentally separate ourselves from something if our bodies were dead."
Mad-Eye studied them inscrutably for several long seconds, but didn't ask any more questions, and finally let them go.