*IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE LAST CHAPTER, DO IT NOW! I UPDATED IT!*
Like Yesterday Previously
Their steps slightly echoed in the tall ceilinged classroom as the morning sun gleamed through the tall picture windows.
Hermione immediately strode to the seat right in front of the teacher. She fluidly sat, pulled in her chair, and placed two collapsed hands into the desk in front of her. Her face was expectant but firm.
Harry and Ron decided to sit in the farthest corner of the room, away from Lockhart's golden yellow teacher's desk.
The students came in one by one with several groups of two or three every once in awhile. The teacher, however, was still nowhere to be found.
Like Yesterday
The last student arrived into the classroom with not a second to spare. He took his seat in the only empty desk and immediately noticed the absence of a teacher. The other students, who had been there before them, had displaced all of the chairs around the room and moved them around their friend table.
The bell rung and there was still no sign of the teacher. Some were wondering that there might actually be no teacher. It was their first lesson with him, however, so why would he be late?
A few minutes seemed to pass on the clock hung on the wall. The chatter was only growing louder and Hermione wanted to read her book in peace.
Harry and Ron were settled next to one another and Neville and Seamus Finnigan were behind them. Ron placed his shoes onto the desk in a relaxed position.
"C-Come on," Neville said, a bit afraid. "Y-You shouldn't do that. Professor Lockhart could come in at any moment."
Right then, Professor Lockhart opened the double oak doors with a single push.
"Hello, class," He said with a dazzling smile. "How are you all today? Fine? I am doing fantastic, thank you for asking." He walked through the center aisle with a certain snobbish posture. He walked with long, measured steps and he looked at the now quiet students. Everyone was stopped in their tracks. Ron had a dumb expression on his face and looked at him with his feet still up on the desk while the Slytherins were relatively unchanged.
Professor Lockhart stopped at the right of Ron. "Can you please get your shoes of the desk?"
Ron did just that in less than a second.
Lockhart looked away from Ron's black shoes with a grin and then met Harry's green eyes. "Mister Potter, how nice to see you again!" He spoke with a certain glee.
Harry did not say anything. Ron groaned. Draco Malfoy made a face.
The classroom was silent before the Slytherins returned their chairs and took their seats.
"Please, let me introduce myself," He said once he turned dramatically in the front of the class. "I am Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin First-class, of course, and an honorary member of the Defense Against the Dark Arts Defense League." He looked into the eyes of all of his students with no shame. His eyes were piercing, even though they were a mellow brown color. "Also, one of my greatest achievements, however, is that I am the five time recipient of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile award for the past few years." Lockhart looked at the ladies in the first row with this pearly white teeth while the second-year boys scoffed behind them.
"How about we talk about me?" Lockhart suggested, putting his hands into his pockets, strutting around the center stage. "It is my classroom, after all."
"First off, we'll be taking a quiz. 'About what?' you ask. It's about me!" Lockhart took his right hand out of his pocket and pressed it up against his heart. "It will be about the books that you were supposed to read about my travels over the summer. I do hope that you enjoyed them. They were quite interesting journeys if I'm allowed to have a say." Lockhart continued on.
Harry groaned, this was going to be a very different type of year if he kept going off tangents like this again.
"I will speak about this matter later in the future, we have to do the test," Professor Lockhart went and grabbed his pale oak wand out of his golden cloak and waved it into the air, soon his pile of parchment that was resting on his black desk were being distributed around the classroom by the work of magic.
"Please turn them in onto the corner of my desk once you're finished. We'll grade them shortly after. You have fifteen minutes, go!" The curly haired, brown haired professor turned his back to the class and took a seat on his chair, overlooking the students. After a few moments, he was bored and looked at his desk for something that he would deem worthy of his interest. He focused in on his reflection on his personal golden mirror. He had bought it for a few galleons at an antique shoppe a year before.
Lockhart grabbed a sterling white handkerchief with intricate lace designs on the corners out of his pocket. He grabbed the mirror by his left hand and wiped until there was not a spec of dust visible onto it. Smiling to himself, he placed it onto his desk and he soon began to pose in several positions as he looked. He looked at himself straight on for a moment before he noticed a single strand of his golden hair was not fitting in. 'Oh no you don't,' he thought.
A few minutes passed by and Professor Lockhart was still checking himself out, Harry noted.
Professor Lockhart poked out his tongue out of his mouth and licked his thumb. He brought it up to his curls and fixed one particularly stubborn one. He felt accomplished and threw a smile to the circular mirror on his desk.
"Um, sir?" Lockhart looked up from his reflection.
Hermione held out her paper with a blush, she wasn't meeting his eyes. "I-I have a question, sir."
"Yes?"
Ron and Harry looked up from their papers. They were boggled. Hermione would never had done that. Hermione never does things like that. Hermione always looked people in the eye. She never blushed, let alone-! Their thoughts were suppressed when Hermione felt their stares and fired one back at them.
Harry and Ron immediately looked down as fast as they could, Professor Lockhart was just now adjusting his eyes to their position.
Lockhart furrowed his eyebrows for an uncountable moment before he looked back at Hermione. "Miss…?"
"Granger," She filled in.
"Miss Granger, I like that name."
Hermione was now as red as a tomato.
"What is your question then?"
"F-F-For number twenty-three, are you talking about the Goblin tales or the Vampiric Mansion?"
Professor Lockhart gingerly took the test from Hermione's hand. He put his thumb onto his lip and read his question.
"I'm sorry about that, Miss Granger," He confessed. "I am referring to the Goblin tales."
"Okay, sir," Hermione replied, taking back her test into her arms.
"Miss Granger, it's not 'sir', it's Professor Lockhart."
"O-Okay…" Hermione went back to her seat, her heart beating fast for multiple reasons.
Ronald and Harry quietly told one another that there was something wrong about Hermione and vowed to help her.
Hermione quickly finished up the other questions and was, unsurprisingly, the first person to finish. Ron and Harry did not enjoy the books and therefore were one of the last few people to finish.
When Lockhart read out the questions and answers Hermione knew that she got all of them right and Harry and Ron knew that they did… well… very bad.
"And now, class, we can adventure into the second reason why you are here," Lockhart looked at them with his smile, once more, aka the thirty-second time. "Defense Against the Dark Arts. We shall have our first lesson today. I hope that you all have brought your books? Yes? Well then, open them up to page thirteen, we're going to be learning about Cornish Pixies."
The students obediently got out their books.
"Please read the section while I go and get something."
Lockhart quickly retreated up his ostentatious steps leading to his office. The student read without the supervision, there was a small conversation between Ron and Harry, though.
Professor Lockhart opened the door a crack and called out from above, "Did you read it yet?"
No one answered, just like all the other times he asked for an answer.
"I hope you did because I have a surprise for you!" Professor Lockhart opened the door fully and held out what seemed to be a cylindrical wire cage hidden under a pale blanket.
Lockhart walked down the steps carefully and went past his gigantic golden framed portrait of himself to get down to the floor. He turned towards the class once he took the last step. He held out the cage with another smile. "It is a very nice surprise, I think, for your first day of schooling. I believe that I am correct."
Lockhart placed the cage onto the corner of his black oak desk, where the stack of test parchment had been a few minutes before. "Behold!" He threw off the sheet and then the students could immediately see what was underneath. Blue creatures.
'We're doing a hands on approach the first day of school?' a few students thought.
"I know, I know what you're thinking," said Lockhart, putting his hands on his hips and walking aimlessly across the stage. "That 'Why are we doing a hands on approach the first day of school?', well… it's because that I learned, in all of my adventures, that sometimes you need to do something, whether you're prepared to or not." Lockhart stopped next to the cage and placed his left hand onto the wire top.
"I will release them now and I wish for you to learn how to control them before the end of class," Lockhart said, patting the cage as if it was a docile animal.
"What?" the class cried out at once, their first real response of the day.
"I will demonstrate, you shouldn't worry," he said, opening the cage and releasing chaos.
The twenty or so pixies flew out at once. They swarmed around the classroom in packs and stayed around the ceiling. Professor Lockhart grabbed his wand out of his cloak and pointed it at one of the "innocuous" creatures as the book called it.
"Peski-" His chant was caught short as a pixie stole his wand. Lockhart looked at his empty hand, still in position for a spell, and said, "Oh my."
Another pixie went for his head and soon, they were flying down at the students, pulling at their hair, cloaks, and swinging the glass chandelier.
It was total chaos in under three minutes. The blue creatures were yelling in shrill voices and were flying in troops. Hermione, Ron, and Harry were busy fighting them off with the books when Neville was caught by two pixies by the ears and pulled him up and hung him onto the chandelier.
Lockhart looked from under the cover of his desk and rolled out from under it. He made a mad dash up the stairs and to his office door. He tripped on a stair, hit his forehead, but kept going and tried to pry the door open when the pixies were trying to keep it closed. Lockhart did, however, win the small fight though, and immediately snapped the door shut.
A few students were now screaming in distress now and the dinosaur bones above their only exit door was now beginning to rumble, it could fall in a moment's notice.
"I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS!" Hermione yelled and hit a pixie with the book at the same time.
She grabbed her wand out of her pocket and held it in a firm grip as she yelled out, "IMMOBULUS!"
As a pale blue light came out of her wand, the pixies immediately slowed down their actions. They were rather easy to put back into their cage.
Harry, Hermione, and Ron sat down onto three chairs and looked up at the swinging Neville above them. It seemed that all the other students had somehow gotten away by hiding in the corner behind some desks and bookshelves, Draco was one of them and he looked up at Neville with glee.
"It's not funny. You're the real coward here," Neville said underneath his breath, but that didn't stop anyone in the room from hearing it. Draco grew a blistering red and stomped out, after he tripped onto one of the bones of the dragon.
"D-Did you get them back already?" They heard a voice ask from above.
It was Professor Lockhart.
"I-I went to grab some pixie repellent. I-I thought that it would stop them."
Ron scoffed underneath his breath.
I LOVED WRITING THIS CHAPTER. I have a teacher just like Professor Lockhart (he's very eccentric but it's as a joke and it's great) and I also have a teacher just like Professor Umbridge (she's short and slightly plumper, nice but still slightly strict). So it's kinda fun to substitute my teacher into Professor Lockhart.
TWO THOUSAND WORDS OF JUST DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS FOR YOU.
Have a nice day, week, night, morning, and Sunday.
Goodbye.
