"That was rather more...enthusiastic than I expected, Miss Hebert," Lockhart said.

Cornish Pixies apparently had blue blood. I hadn't known that; it was an electric blue that didn't appear in nature.

"They were coming right at me," I said absently. "Had to defend myself."

"Couldn't you have stunned them?" he asked faintly.

"I suppose," I said. "But I've read that they reproduce like cockroaches, and if you let them get loose next thing you know the whole place is infested with them. We had a boggart infestation last year you know."

"I've heard a little about that," he said. "Weren't you involved?"

I shrugged.

Everyone else in the room seemed shocked. They really shouldn't have been; they'd gone to school with me for a year.

I was proud that Hermione had gotten off some shots as well, even though the others hadn't done nearly as well.

Most of them had frozen when the pixies were released. The few who hadn't were dueling club alumni, and I needed to keep an eye on them.

"Am I in trouble?" I asked.

Part of me almost wished I was. I had a plan to escape Hogwarts, and I could likely make my way in France reasonably well now that I knew where the magical neighborhoods were. If it didn't mean leaving Hermione and Neville and the others, I might do it anyway.

After all, why should I save people who were too stupid to save themselves?

Voldemort was a big deal in Britain, but I doubted that he'd get much traction in the wider magical world. The Americans would set things right if he caused too much trouble.

There was pixie blood all over my robes. I cleaned it with a spell.

He shook his head.

"Five points to Slytherin for a rather enthusiastic defense. I fear I'll have to change my lesson plan for the other classes though... those were the only pixies I had."

"You've got bodies," I pointed out. "Some of them aren't even completely exploded. Why not do an anatomy lesson?"

He stared at me for a moment, and then smiled.

"An excellent idea Miss Hebert. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

"I've heard that Cornish Pixies also are used in some potions ingredients," I said. "You might ask Professor Snape if he could use any of the rest of this."

He frowned thoughtfully. "You are full of ideas, young lady."

"My life is full of lemons," I said wily. "You either roll with it, or you get rolled."

He stared at me for a moment.

"It's good to have practical lessons," I said. "Are you going to bring other monsters for us to kill?"

"I think this will be the only time," he said carefully. "I'd thought the rumors about you to be exaggerated."

I shrugged.

"All lies," I said. "I'm a perfectly normal twelve year old girl."

"I have trouble believing that," he said.

"Ask anybody," I said.

I heard a few incredulous guffaws in the background, but I chose to ignore them.

"I had planned to have a pop quiz," he said finally. "But it looks like we are well out of time. Please study the first three chapters of my book Wanderings with Werewolves."

We all nodded.

As we stepped out of the room, Hermione turned to me.

"He's really pretty, isn't he?" she asked.

"Yes?" I said dubiously. He wouldn't have been my type even in my old body, and in my new body that sort of thing hadn't even been on my mind.

It would have been disgusting anyway.

"But I remembered what you said about people lying, even in books," she said. "And these things in the newspapers about us being werewolves has really made me doubt some of the things that I've read."

"OK?" I said slowly.

"I think he's a fraud," she said in a low voice.

"Oh?"

"I've read all of his books three times," she said. She flushed a little. "And at first I was really, really impressed. But I started to notice that the timelines don't match up."

"That's interesting," I said.

"Supposedly he fought the Wagga Wagga Werewolf in Australia at the exact same time that he banished a banshee in Thailand."

"Maybe he apparated?"

"It gets more dangerous the farther you go. Maybe Dumbledore could apparate that far, but nobody else. Most wizards can barely apparate the length of Britain in one go; it's part of the reason we use portkeys."

"Maybe he used a portkey," I said.

"He was also rescuing the Giant Fire Crab in the forests of Fiji and fighting vampires in Romania on the same day too," she said. "There's other discrepancies."

"Maybe he got the dates wrong," I said. "It could be human error or maybe his editors made a mistake."

"Not this many," she said. She scowled. "And I really wanted to believe that we had a good defense professor this year. Professor Travers was decent last year, even if he was a little..."

"Opinionated?" I asked mildly.

"What if he made it all up?" she asked.

"Maybe he exaggerated a few things to make it sound better," I said. "They call that artistic license."

She stared at me.

"Are you actually Taylor, or are you a transfigured Death Eater?"

"You should have your wand out when you ask me that," I said. "But I'm really me. Why?"

"Why are you defending him like this? I'd have thought you'd be the first one to be suspicious."

"I hope he's as good as he says he is," I said. "Because we're going to need that going forward. If he's a fraud, we'll deal with that when it comes to it, same as if he's a Death Eater."

If he was a Death Eater, it was likely that this was going to be my last year at school. I didn't say it, but I could see understanding on Hermione's face.

Stupid no murdering rule.

"I'll keep an eye on him," I said. "But there isn't really anything we can do about it now. I don't think the Headmaster likes me, so if I run to him complaining that the Defense Professor is a fraud, he probably won't listen. And maybe he'll be good."

"It was irresponsible to release the pixies," she said. "Especially when he knew how you'd react."

"Maybe that was the point," I said. "It was our class that he released them in. Maybe he was trying to see how I would react."

Judging me by my own actions. It was manipulative, but I could respect the urge. He'd heard rumors about me, and he'd experimented to see whether they were true. It wasn't a bad thought process. It also made me think that he wasn't a Death Eater; they wouldn't have had to test me. They'd have known how I would react.

Still, it was possible that he was going to be a fraud. I'd have to pay attention in the future to how he taught the class. If he was good, I didn't particularly care if he'd embellished his actions.

Hermione's lips tightened. The idea that books would lie offended her on a fundamental level, and she was outraged that a man would be reaping benefits from being a good liar.

I didn't care personally. The Wizarding public was gullible; that was probably because in the absence of decades of television and radio and with basically only one outlet for news they were more credulous.

In all likelihood, the muggles of this time were probably more credulous than they had been in mine. The generation before that had probably been even less so. I'd heard somewhere that forty percent of the men who fought in World War Two couldn't read.

A population like that would believe anything, which is why people like P.T. Barnum had been able to sew half a monkey on a fish, and people had believed him.

Wizards only had the benefits of a fifth grade education before starting a school that didn't educate them at all in anything other than their specialty. While there were credulous educated people too, not having a basic understanding of political science and history would make anyone less prepared to deal with what they read.

Even Umbridge's strategy was suspect.

It was likely that she was ramming through legislation as fast as she could while she still had support due to the "emergency" at a time when she still had the votes.

Yet she was likely to create more problems than she solved by scapegoating the werewolves.

It was likely to drive them into the arms of Voldemort, simply as a way of protecting themselves. Scapegoating the muggleborn might actually create resistance movements.

She should have implemented the changes more gradually, but it was likely that she was doing it in part to placate a panicked public. People liked to see the people in charge doing something; it made them feel safer.

Even if it didn't accomplish anything, in the eyes of a politician, doing something was always better than doing nothing.

In reality, sometimes doing nothing was the best thing.

"I heard you were asked to be a beater this year," Hermione said. "Are you going to try out?"

"Millie told you?" I asked.

She nodded.

"No," I said.

"It's a good way to become popular fast," she said. "In fact, I've heard that Harry is trying out."

"A year ago, I'd have said it was just an excuse to get me up on a broom where someone could hurt or kill me," I said. "But that's no longer true."

"So why not?"

"Being a Beater will make me popular with the Slytherins," I said. "But how will the other houses feel about me?"

She frowned.

"How will Harry and the twins feel when I give them broken arms and black eyes, knock some of their teeth out?" I asked.

I shook my head. "I already have a reputation as somebody who is crazy and unstable. Seeing me up on the pitch beating the hell out of people will just make that worse."

"You do that in the Dueling club," she said.

"It's accepted... wizardly," I said. "Beater...that's just going to remind them of what I did with a sock full of galleons that time."

"All right,' she said. "I just thought you might enjoy yourself."

"I might, but it's not worth the risk of losing friendships over," I said. "And I suspect that before this is over we're going to need all four houses if we're going to get through this with minimum casualties."

"Maybe you could be seeker," she said.

"Take the K out of that word, and what do you get?" I asked.

"Seeeeeer?"

"Right. It wouldn't be fair to anyone. How fun would the game be if I caught the snitch in the first five minutes each time? How soon would it be before everyone hated me?" I asked. "Even if I was somehow able to shut it off, which I wouldn't because that would leave me vulnerable, would anyone believe that I had?"

She frowned, and then sighed.

"It's not fun if one team always wins," I said.

"So how are you going to get everyone on your side?" she asked. "And what are you going to do with them if you have them? We're just school kids."

"School kids have killed Death Eaters before."

"You've killed Death Eaters," she said dryly. "A lot of people don't even believe that you're actually a school kid."

I carefully kept my expression neutral.

"Some people think that you are actually an auror polyjuiced into the form of a little girl, or that you are the reincarnation of Grindlewald, which is ridiculous considering that he is still alive. Some people think you're the Queen of Boggarts, or that you're a little girl who's been possessed by a demonic spirit."

The last one was a little too close for comfort, but I didn't let my face show any expression.

"But I know what you are," Hermione said.

"What's that?" I asked.

"A Genius," she said. "I mean, some people are geniuses at math or physics, and some people are geniuses at... uh...hurting people."

I stared at her flatly.

"Just the people that need to be hurt," she said hurriedly. "I know you'd never hurt an innocent person."

"Right," I said.

There were extenuating circumstances for that one time I had. It had been a mercy killing.

"Are you ready for the class in Wizarding Culture?" she asked. "I'm actually kind of excited."

"I'm not," I said. "They've had a couple of days to prepare it, so it's probably going to be half assed and insulting."

"Well, they've lived as Wizards their entire life, so they have to know something about the subject."

"They'll put a pureblood in the position," I said. "and he won't know what we don't know. All he'll know is what muggleborns do that annoy purebloods."

"Well, won't it be good to at least learn how not to annoy them?" she asked.

"Maybe," I said. "But a halfblood would be a better professor. Someone who knows how both worlds work would be able to tell us just how far apart those worlds are."

"Maybe you're wrong," she said. "At least this professor hasn't published any books."

"We'll see," I said.

We headed for the classroom we'd been assigned. Wizarding class had been shoehorned in during a period that normally would have been free time for us.

That means that the pureblood kids would have three hours a week where they could study or relax that we didn't. The fact that it would make studying for OWLS harder probably had nothing to do with it.

If the muggleborn suddenly started struggling with their classes, that couldn't be blamed on the administration, right?

Stepping into the classroom, I heard Hermione murmur beside me.

The classroom was at least twice as large in each dimension as it normally was, presumably to accommodate the larger numbers of students.

As I entered, the first years turned and stared at me, murmuring to themselves. Apparently I already had a reputation. The older students however were very careful not to make eye contact. They were very quiet.

I suspected that they were afraid that I would sit by them. Whether it was because of what I might do, or because my roommate had been sent to me in a box and they were afraid of what becoming my friend might mean, I didn't know.

I was the only Slytherin in the room, but the other three houses were equally represented.

I took a seat next to Hermione in the Ravenclaw section, and I heard an audible sigh of relief from the other sections. I turned to stare at them, and people paled, turning away quickly.

"Welcome class," a woman said.

She was a tall and slender woman. Her face was long, and not entirely attractive, but her robes were immaculate and hung well on her frame.

"My name is Morana Burke," she said in a sing song voice..She spoke slowly and loudly, as though all of us were in Kindergaerten. "I will be your professor today."

I glanced at Hermione, who looked perplexed.

"The Wizarding world may not have any of your televisons, or electricity, but it's got charms of it's own. There are also dangers; it's easy to offend people when you don't really mean to. The way I spoke to you just now? How did it make you feel?"

Everyone was silent for a long moment, as though they were afraid she would take points for what they were inevitably going to say.

Hermione raised her hands slowly.

"Like you thought we were stupid," she said. "Slow."

"But I just introduced myself," she said. "How could that be a problem?"

"It was the way you introduced yourself." a male fourth year said, without raising his hand.

"And that's the problem with the Wizarding World," she said. "Sometimes it's not what you say, but how you say it. There's a lot of little assumptions that people don't understand, and it creates friction."

"And what makes you an expect on what we don't know?" I asked.

"I married a muggleborn," she said. "And I watched him struggle for years, even with my help. I've been pushing for a class like this for a long time, and this is the first year that they called me up and decided to give it a try."

"I thought this was just a way for the Ministry to humiliate us," a seventh year said.

"It is, I think," Professor Burke said. "But I've been given free reign over the curriculum, and I'm going to work hard to make this a class that will actually be of use to you. This won't be a class like muggle studies."

"Oh?" I asked.

"When I was in school, muggle studies was a class created by people who didn't know the first thing about muggles, or their information was outdated by fifty years. It didn't really prepare me for the world my husband lived in, and I want something better for all of you."

"How will this help us?" a third year girl asked.

"Some of you will be in the opporite of my situation. You'll marry into pureblood families, and you'll have to deal with the in-laws for the rest of your lives. Others will have to do business with purebloods. At the very least, it would be useful to know when they are insulting you."

I saw a lot of people sitting up, suddenly looking more interested.

Maybe this wouldn't be a waste of time after all.

Beside me, Hermione began taking notes.