Chapter 22: The New Defence Professor

The next morning, I brought my copy of Voyages with Vampires down to breakfast. I simultaneously wanted to pointedly ignore Harry and Ron in an attempt to impress upon them that what they did was wrong, and read more about Gilderoy Lockhart's adventures. Since I had gotten my books from Diagon Alley, I had read them all twice and I was astounded at all the things Lockhart had done in his life.

It seemed that most witches were taken with his for his good looks and the fact that he had won Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award five times in a row, but I found that it was his feats that were amazing.

When the post arrived, the Weasley family's owl fell into my jug of pumpkin juice. Ron had sent me letters over the summer with Errol, so I knew he was getting old and wasn't the best flier out there. I was pretty sure his time was coming, the way he kept crashing. One time, he flew straight in through my bedroom window and didn't stop until he hit the opposite wall.

As it turned out, Mrs. Weasley had sent her son a howler. Served him right, too. After what he and Harry had done, he deserved at least this. In all of last year, not one student had received a Howler, and Ron was going to have to listen to it in the middle of the Great Hall with everybody watching. I found myself quite satisfied with his punishment.

Ron opened it and it went off. Mrs. Weasley's voice screamed at him and filled all the corners of the Hall. Everybody stopped and turned to watch Ron's humiliation. Even Harry was mentioned, and I saw him look down at his lap, both trying to make it appear as though he was not a part of what was going on, but also I think, feeling more than a little guilty. Ron simply looked horrified.

When the Howler had finished and had burst into flames, it took a moment, but everyone eventually went back to their own business and the attention turned away from Ron and Harry. Ron was still staring at the ashes of the Howler as though shocked that his mother was so angry.

I decided two things in that moment. First, I decided that I quite liked Mrs. Weasley. She had the right idea about things. I don't know where Ron's penchant for rule breaking came from – maybe it was from his father's side of the family – but Mrs. Weasley had the right idea about rule breaking.

The second thing I decided was that I would let Harry and Ron off the hook. They both looked appropriately shamed, and they were each stuck with a detention as well. There was no reason to punish them forever, and I suspected that they had learned their lesson by now.

Professor McGonagall came around with our timetables, and after looking it over quickly, Harry, Ron and I left the Great Hall and headed to the greenhouses for Herbology with the Hufflepuffs. Professor Sprout wasn't there when we arrived, and soon arrived with Gilderoy – I mean, Professor Lockhart. He had apparently been helping her to fix up the Whomping Willow.

Professor Sprout announced that we would be working in Greenhouse Three, and I felt a shiver of excitement course through me at this. Greenhouse Three was supposed to be filled with much more interesting and dangerous plants than those we had worked with so far and I looked forward to learning about them all.

As we entered, Professor Lockhart called Harry back for a moment, and once we had all assembled around the Greenhouse, Professor Sprout waited until Harry had arrived to begin the lesson.

The lesson began – we were learning about Mandrakes – and I felt myself relax and ease right into the lecture. I had missed being in class during the summer, and I found raising my hand and answering questions refreshing, finally able to share some of the knowledge I had acquired during my summer reading.

After the lecture part of the class, there was a demonstration, and then we began to practice repotting Mandrakes. Harry, Ron and I were joined at our tray by Justin Finch-Fletchley, a Hufflepuff, who shook my hand and complemented me, making me smile widely. It's not a lot of people who take the time to notice me outside of my immediate group of friends.

We didn't get to talk to him for long as we had to put on our earmuffs, and by the end of the class, I was glad we were going to Transfiguration and that we would be using our wands instead of our hands.

I spent the majority of lunch color-coding my timetable. I tried stealing Harry and Ron's timetables to color-code them too, but the boys refused to give them up.

When Ron asked what we had that afternoon, I told him immediately that we had Defence Against the Dark Arts. I had been very much looking forward to the class, as it would be our first with our new professor. He was bound to be a much better teacher than Professor Quirrell had been, and not just because he didn't have a dark wizard growing out the back of his head.

Ron saw my timetable and noticed that I had drawn hearts around each of Professor Lockhart's classes. I hadn't really done it consciously. As I was colour coding my timetable, they had just happened. I grabbed my timetable away from Ron, my face heating up in embarrassment.

After we ate, we still had some time before class, so we went out into the courtyard and I went back to reading Voyages with Vampires. A small boy, who I vaguely recognized from the Sorting came over and introduced himself as Colin Creevey. He began to talk to Harry, but I remained focused on my book. Then Malfoy came over, but I only had two paragraphs left of the chapter I was on, so I chose not to pay attention to what was going on around me.

It was a truly fascinating read. Upon hearing rumors of a vampire terrorizing a village in Northern England, Professor Lockhart had embarked upon a mission to not only protect the village, but the vampire as well.

Where most vampire hunters would have simply exterminated the creature to neutralize the threat, Professor Lockhart had, through a combination of great skill and cunning, tricked the vampire into drinking a potion that would quell his thirst for human blood, and then cast a complicated spell to make it so that the vampire would be able to survive as long as he ate a great deal of lettuce.

It was revolutionary, in that it was one of the first accounts of dealings with feral vampires that did not end in death for the vampire. It was a monumental step towards establishing peace with the creatures. Professor Lockhart had even appeared at a couple of events for the Society for the Tolerance of Vampires after publishing his book.

When I finished reading, I shut my book and looked up to see that Ron was preparing to curse Malfoy and that Professor Lockhart was approaching. I quickly warned Ron, not wanting him to get a second detention before serving his first. Especially not for cursing someone as uninteresting as Malfoy.

When Lockhart arrived, he had Colin take a picture of him and Harry – apparently the whole fuss had been because Colin wanted a picture. Then Lockhart began to steer Harry along with him as he entered the castle and Ron and I were left behind to gather up our things and follow, as we did have Defence next.

When we arrived in the classroom, we found Harry sitting in the back of the class, hiding behind his seven textbooks. I felt a little bad for him – it's no secret that Harry hates the fame that comes with his name – but I also found the situation altogether amusing. I could have laughed, but I didn't, because Professor Lockhart was starting the class, and I focused all my attention on him.

He started by handing out a quiz with fifty four questions on it. I smiled excitedly, and began to fill it out. I loved pop quizzes. And I knew that there would be a reward for having read through all of Professor Lockhart's books thoroughly before the start of term. Harry and Ron surely wouldn't make fun of me in the future for reading ahead.

When half an hour had gone by – I had finished after fifteen minutes and had spend the second half of the time looking it over – Professor Lockhart collected the quizzes and began to look through them. When he got to mine, he praised me for knowing his secret ambition, then looked over the rest of it and announced that I had received full marks. Then he gave me ten points for Gryffindor. I felt a rush of pride that was familiar, and yet different. I was honored to be recognized by such a famous and distinguished wizard.

Then he began to teach. There was a cage at the front of the room, and he told us he would be teaching us how to fight dark creatures. I wondered with curiosity and a bit of apprehension as to what was in the cage. Perhaps an Erkling, which lures children to it with a high-pitched cackle to be eaten, or maybe a Pogrebin, a demon that makes their prey fall into a state of despair before attempting to devour them.

Professor Lockhart pulled the cover off of the cage to reveal a cage full of Cornish Pixies. As far as I was aware, they weren't so much dangerous as they were irritating and destructive, but I trusted that our teacher had a good reason for bringing them to class. Before any of us had a chance to prepare, Lockhart opened the cage and released them into the room – a test I supposed, to see how we would face up to them.

Everything went crazy. The pixies began wreaking havoc on the room and students ran away from them screaming. A few of them even pulled Neville up to the ceiling by his ears and hung him from the candelabra. Finally, Professor Lockhart pulled out his wand and said an incantation I had never read about, but the pixies grabbed his wand, and I could only assume they had interrupted the spell.

The bell rang, and everyone began to run for the door. Harry, Ron and I were the last ones there, and Professor Lockhart asked us to round up the pixies, as he rushed into his office.

I was overwhelmed by the trust and level of responsibility he'd bestowed upon us. I suspected that my having got the top grade on his quiz had something to do with him giving me the task of rounding up the pixies. It was obvious that the quiz had been a test – if I could remember something like his favorite color, then I had obviously also read and remembered the more important aspects of the book.

I raised my wand and used a freezing charm on a couple of pixies that were coming my way, and put them back in the cage. It wouldn't be very helpful if Professor Lockhart took care of the pixies, then we would never learn. This was great experience, and probably next class, Harry, Ron, and I would be praised for succeeding in our task instead of running away like the rest of the class.

Harry seemed to think that Professor Lockhart had given us the task because he himself was incapable of completing it, but I couldn't believe that. He's fought vampires and werewolves and trolls and all sorts of horrible creatures. Pixies would be easy for him. But as a teacher, it wouldn't be constructive to just show us how to do something. This hands-on approach was much better.