Author's note: Thank you all my readers, and thanks for the feedback so far! Remember, reviews breed plot-bunnies.
"I don't think it's Madam Hooch," Ginny whispered. She shifted her weight a little, and Harry bit back a groan.
They were in the small, single room in Gryffindor Tower that was Ginny's for the moment, the first moment they'd had together in private for two days, and what had been intended as a debriefing session on their investigation had quickly turned into an enthusiastic and horizontal reunion.
Harry managed to regain enough higher brain functions to ask, "Why not?"
"Do you really want to talk about this now?" she whispered.
"Not really, no." What he really wanted to do was take her back to Grimmauld Place, by Floo or Apparition or by bloody broomstick, and to take her to bed for the next week. "But we have to, don't we?"
Ginny sat back, which didn't really make it easier for Harry to concentrate. "I've spent a week with her. She's never been exactly subtle, you know. She's just exactly the same as she always was."
"What about Poppy Pomfrey?"
Ginny frowned. "I don't know. I never knew her that well. I think you and Hermione and Ron spent more time in the Hospital Wing than I ever did."
He reached up to run his fingers through her hair, its vivid red drained of colour in the moonlight streaming through the window. "But you think something's wrong."
"I don't, not exactly, it's just …" She shrugged. "She seems sad. But … I haven't seen her more than a couple of times since it all happened. And it must have been truly awful for her, you know? Everyone we buried was someone she'd patched up and worried over and cured. So perhaps she's just sad, now."
"Binns is the same as ever," Harry said. "If he's got a desire to go towards the light, it's well hidden."
"Three more down, then," Ginny said cheerfully, and Harry grinned. "So it's Trelawney or Flitwick. And I can't see it being Trelawney, really."
"Because she would have seen it coming, whatever it is?"
Ginny giggled. "No, I just don't think she'd be able to hide it from anyone. She'd get into the sherry in the staffroom and tell the world."
"In the most dramatic terms possible," Harry agreed. "Filius Flitwick, then." He frowned. "I hope it's nothing too terrible."
"We'll deal with it, whatever it is." Ginny shrugged. "We always do. And M-Minerva —" She stumbled a little over the familiarity. "Thinks we're up to it, doesn't she? Or she wouldn't have arranged for us to be here."
"I just wish, if someone's in trouble, it could be someone I don't particularly like," Harry said. "Oh, well. Ron's been talking Flitwick's ear off about the use of non-combat charms in combat, and he's agreed to do a demonstration duel in one of our D.A.D.A classes. That'll give us a chance to do a bit of discreet probing."
"Sorting tomorrow," Ginny said with a faraway expression on her face. "It's going to be strange, with the new Heads of House."
"Pomona Sprout and Filius are the same," Harry said. "Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. And I think Madam Hooch is a good choice for Gryffindor. I don't know Aurora Sinistra well enough to know how she'll do with Slytherin, but we have to trust Minerva's judgement."
"It seems … wrong, having a Head of Slytherin who isn't the Potions Master." Ginny absently-mindedly traced a circle on Harry's chest.
"I think Hermione's going to have enough on her plate, teaching for the first time." He captured her hand and kissed it. "She is alright, isn't she?"
"Well, she's staying up half the night rewriting her lesson plans, and she's done a practice run brewing every potion for every class all the way through to November, and she's changed her mind five, no, six times about what she should wear," Ginny said. "So, yeah, she's alright."
"Why don't you tell her tomorrow morning that we've worked out it's Filius," Harry suggested. "That should take at least one weight off her mind."
Ginny nodded. "She asked me to meet her in her classroom after breakfast, so that's perfect. Something about a demonstration for her first year class." She sighed. "I wish you could stay here tonight."
"I do too." Harry drew her closer and kissed her in demonstration. "But there's this curse …"
"What you need to do, is make a list of all the D.A.D.A teachers and what happened to them," Ginny said. "That will give you the sort of shape of the jinx, won't it?"
Harry nodded. "I'm working on it. The records are a bit patchy, but it seems clear that it isn't always something terrible. I mean, there was one teacher who only turned up to class one day in ten, and as a result he was shown the door at the end of the year. Ron and I only plan to stay for the year no matter what, so we've probably fulfilled the conditions of the jinx already."
"So the curse is on the school, really, isn't it?" Ginny said. "Not the person."
Harry nodded. "On something in the school, too. Otherwise it would have dissipated when Tom Riddle died." He scratched his head. "But we've been right through the classroom and the quarters, and there's nothing. We even checked the teacher's table in the Great Hall and all the cutlery and crockery, in case it was there. And I've been racking my brains to think of what else the D.A.D.A teacher could be absolutely guaranteed to come into contact with."
"The gates?" Ginny suggested.
"Bloody hell, that's right. The gates, the front doors … I'll check them first thing tomorrow." He looked at his watch, and groaned a little. "Ginny, I've got to go."
Reluctantly, she wriggled off his lap. "You know, there's one good thing about being back in Hogwarts and not being students."
He raised his eyebrows and stood up. "And what's that? Because right at this moment I think it's the worst thing in the world."
"Well, what with all the getting-ready-to-save-the-world and so on when we were at school, we never did get to carry on that fine old Hogwarts tradition of making out in the off-limits corridors after lights out …"
It was a fine mental image, and it took Harry a moment to find his voice. "Right. Well, I'm properly motivated now. I'll break that jinx tomorrow or die trying."