Harry Potter fell backwards onto his bed. "This job is going to be the death of me."

"Possibly literally, if we don't break the jinx," Ron said.

Harry groaned. "I welcome death by jinx. You know that first year Hufflepuff?"

Ron nodded. "Colin Aitkins, hand always in the air. Mum reckons she knows his family, you know."

Harry shook his head without raising it from the pillow. "The other one. Wilkins."

"The one who isn't 'significantly evil'?" Ron chuckled. "Am I the only one who worried about the use of a modifier there? What's she done now?"

"Read something about the Imperius curse and decided she needs to know everything about how to defend herself from it, right now."

"Did you Imperio her and send her straight down to lunch?"

"Tempted," Harry admitted. "But no." He turned his head to look at Ron. "I mean, I know we're not supposed to cover them in the curriculum until the sixth year, but she already knew quite a lot about it. It's not like it was in our day — a lot of stuff was just out there in the papers, at the end of the War."

Ron snorted. "What's an age-appropriate way to tell an eleven-year-old about the Unforgivables?"

"Merlin knows," Harry said. "I did my best. She did seem to be mainly worried that someone might Imperio her without her knowing they had, so I set her mind at ease on that." He grinned. "And I didn't correct her assumption that the incantation was Imperius, either, on the off-chance she decides she's more-than-significantly-evil."

"She's a Hufflepuff," Ron said. "The chances of her being significantly evil are vanishingly small to none whatsoever."

"Maisie Wilkins strikes me as someone who'd Imperio a classmate to finish his homework, for his own good," Harry said.

"You know, it occurs to me … " Ron said thoughtfully. "We were both bloody lucky Hermione didn't know about the Unforgivables in the first few years we knew her."

Harry laughed, and sat up. "Come on, lunch," he said, dismissing Maisie Wilkins from his mind.

Not entirely, however. Not too much to ask Hermione over chicken salad and soup if there was anything in her Quest for the Quidditch Key that might be solved with the Imperius curse.

She gave him a wide-eyed stare. "No! Why? What do you think I am, Harry Potter?"

"Just asking," he said quickly. "One of the three asked me about it, today. I was wondering if there might be something that, in a completely mental way of course, they'd think it would solve."

"No," Hermione said firmly. "Which one?"

"Wilkins."

"Oh, I know why she would ask." Hermione looked over the heads of the students to the Hufflepuff table for a moment. "That Boggart, you remember? She was the one who … well, I saw hers. It was the Morsmordre. If Death Eaters are her nightmare …"

Harry nodded. "She probably worries about getting grabbed by them, poor kid. I'll tell Pomona to keep an eye on her, or have the Hufflepuff prefects do it."

"Not too close an eye," Hermione said quickly.

Harry winked at her. "Not too close an eye."

He did drop a word to Pomona Sprout about Maisie Wilkins, and he kept an eye on the girl himself when she was in his classes. She didn't button-hole him to ask him any more awkward questions about curses, but he did think she was quieter than usual. She and her two friends, Rowland and Aitkins, applied themselves diligently to their lessons — even Aitkins seemed to be daydreaming less than usual.

He also dutifully did his best to keep his promise to Hermione to instill a little more ethics and empathy into his classes, although he suspected it wasn't as effective as she would have hoped. His own general moral philosophy being largely limited to hurting people for fun tends to end badly and murder is wrong, as well as do not, under any circumstances, make any Horcruxes, he felt rather under-prepared for a lengthly discussion of right and wrong in an abstract sense. The books Hermione lent him didn't help, although he tried to read them when he sat up on watch. More than once Ron woke to find Harry nodding over one or the other of the battered tomes.

"If I get killed in my sleep because you've dozed off over … what's that one, then?"

Harry turned the book to read the spine. "Critique of Practical Reason."

Ron snorted. "Doesn't sound like our Hermione, criticising reason."

"It's crap." Harry tossed it aside. "I can't make head nor tail of it. Categorical imperative blah-blah autonomous something-something universal moral law whatever."

Ron picked it up and flipped to the end. "Always read the end of Hermione's books first," he advised. "That's where the author says, 'as I have previously proved over four hundred pages, X.' Or in this case, 'people are not means to an end'. So, you know, don't murder them just to make Horcruxes for yourself." He paused. "I might have added that last bit."

Harry stared at him. "That's it? All that book, and that's it?"

Ron tossed the book back to him. "I imagine there's nuances."

"Circe curse the nuances," Harry said with feeling. He eyed the stack of books still waiting for him. "I don't suppose you could check those out and tell me what's in them in the morning?"

"No," Ron said cheerfully. He picked up a brightly coloured magazine from his bedside table. "Because I have this early copy of next month's Quidditch Quarterly."

"I hate you," Harry said, and went to bed.

He had the N.E.W.T students first thing the next morning, the class that included the student Hermione had complained about more than once: Fiona Firesmith. Harry would have been happy to give her a detention or two, just for the crime of upsetting Hermione, but he forced himself to be fair. Let's not show any anti-Slytherin prejudice. I mean, let's not feel any anti-Slytherin prejudice.

He set the class to non-verbal spells, keeping a close eye out for anyone whose moving lips showed they were muttering the spell instead of casting it in true silence, and also watching for anyone trying any truly nasty jinxes.

The general level of competence was high, despite the fact that this class, like every other D.A.D.A. class for decades, had had a different teacher every year. After forty minutes, Harry called a halt, and the students put the room back in order and took their seats. "Right," he said cheerfully. "Now for the theoretical part of the lesson." Someone groaned, and Harry grinned. "There's a written exam as well as a practical, you know, so any of you hoping to be Aurors, now's the time to listen up."

Fiona Firesmith's hand went up. "Is it true you never took your Defence Against the Dark Arts N.E. ?"

"It is," Harry said.

"Then do you really think you're qualified to prepare us for ours?"

That got shocked looks from some of the other students.

"Professor McGonagall does, and I've learnt never to argue with her," Harry said cheerfully. "Now — yes, Miss Firesmith?"

"Is it true that when you taught an illegal Defence Against the Dark Arts club as a student, you deliberately excluded students from House Slytherin? Was that because of your House prejudice, or because you wanted to leave them defenceless when you attacked them?"

"It was because at the time, Miss Firesmith, many Slytherin students in my year had lined up on the same side as Dolores Umbridge. You've heard of her, I'm sure? Sentenced to a lifetime in Azkaban for her crimes?" She gave a small, reluctant, nod. "Good. Now. Theory. How many of you showed signs of your magic when you were kids? Before Hogwarts, I mean." Every hand went up. "And did you have wands? Know any incantations?" Every head shook 'no'. "And yet, today, when you were casting wordlessly, was it harder than when you're allowed to say the spell aloud?" Nods from all — except Fiona Firesmith, who gave a supercilious sniff. "There are actually some places in the world where witches and wizards don't use wands at all, but in our tradition, we use wands and words to focus and control our magic, so we can use it more reliably. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to why that's important?"

There was a small pause, and then Marcus Selwyn raised his hand. "When I was a kid, I set fire to half the garden on a winter's day. I wanted it to be warm, so I could play outside. We get taught to need wands, and words, so we don't just cause things to happen without really meaning them."

Harry nodded. "Which means, all of you, that when you're learning wordless casting, and if any of you ever learn wandless magic, you have to remember to focus on just what you want. If you're using a wand and an incantation, your Wingardium Leviosa is going to levitate what your wand is pointing at. But if you're just vaguely thinking 'up' in the general direction …"

His arms were folded, concealing his wand poking out from his sleeve, as he sent a silent Levicorpus at a forewarned Ron. It was cheating, of course, but it had the desired effect: there were shocked gasps from the students as Ron was hoisted in the air by his ankle.

Harry cancelled the spell and slipped his wand back out of sight. "Focus and discipline become more and more important the more charms you learn to cast without voicing them. Do not ever get in the habit of casting them half-thought, or without using the incantation in your mind, even if not with your mouth. That's another good reason not to resort to using your wand in anger. Anger makes it hard to think through what you're doing, and if you get into the habit of flinging spells in a temper, you'll have much more trouble using voiceless spells reliably. Alright, you lot, class over for the day."

There, he thought as the students filed out, looking suitably subdued. That's Hermione's project taken care of for this week, anyway.

Or one of them, anyway.

There wasn't much he could do about the ongoing effort to 'cheer up' Severus Snape. Even Ron was better suited to the task than the man who had to remind Snape of all his worst memories.

Harry hadn't even returned Snape's own Pensieve memories to him, despite his promise to do so as soon as possible. The vial was still securely locked in his vault at Gringotts. He felt a little guilty about it, but given the larger consideration of Snape possibly facing a Wizengamot trial, not very. It would be a lot easier to argue before the Wizengamot that they were true memories, unedited, if they'd been spilt as the last desperate act of a dying man. As opposed to the calculated one of a man knowing he was on trial for his freedom, and him the greatest Occlumens of the age.

That was if Snape would even offer Pensieve testimony in his defence. Knowing Professor Snape, he'd rather rot in Azkaban than let the whole Wizengamot know some of the things in his mind.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as if he could rub the thoughts away. There'd be plenty of time to worry about what Kingsley might do if he found out that Severus Snape was alive later. Right now, Ron and I still have a jinx to break.

If they could ever find it.

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Author's note: canonically, all I've ever been able to find about wandless magic is that it can be 'unreliable'. It's my own interpretation of what 'unreliable' might mean.