Chapter Eight
"Please settle down, class." Professor Cardille, despite his rather commanding appearance, seemed to have a rather docile and submissive personality. He stood in the front of the room, which was decorated rather sparsely compared to some of its previous forms, near a large desk stacked with mountains of paperwork. "Since it's your last year of school and war is upon us, I thought I'd start off with a few real-life skills."
"Like what?" Hermione asked from Harry's side, predictably shooting her hand into the air.
"Basic dueling, the best way to defend yourself and your family from a dark wizard's attack, and how to search for escape routs. We'll probably do a lot of review, too, since you'll be taking your N.E.W.T.s this year," Cardille replied, not even bothering to look up from a sheaf of papers he was reviewing. Continuing with the lecture Cardille said, "Now, I want you to…"
"Hmph," Ron snorted. The Trio had all taken seats in the middle of the room, which, due to the number of early arrivals, were the closest to the front that they could get. "His lesson plans don't sound too much different from yours in the D.A., Harry."
"Isn't that a good thing?" the black-haired boy wondered as he paged through his textbook, 'Advanced Defense in the Modern World', half-listening as Cardille elaborated on the syllabus for the year.
"Perhaps," Hermione cautioned him, pausing for a moment with her note taking, "but only if he actually sticks to it."
"What's the D.A.?" Yuusuke butted in inquisitively. He and Hiei were seated in the row behind the Trio. Shuuichi had been unable to join them, having been literally dragged over to the other side of the room by snooty Slytherins who wished to prevent any more corruption than had already occurred during mealtimes.
"Well, you see," Ron began in an eager undertone, attempting not to catch the attention of the professor, "in fifth year, we had a little problem with our Defense professor, and Harry and we decided that we needed to do something about it, so Harry started a little club…" The redhead went on to explain a bit about the D.A., with the occasional piece of input from Harry or Hermione.
"…So basically," Yuusuke summed up when they were done, "your teacher was an incompetent nincompoop who couldn't teach to save her life, so you started a secret militia named after your (now deceased) headmaster, only to be betrayed by one of your own members and saved by a stressed-out house elf. Am I correct?"
"Well, not entirely, but you have the general gist—" Harry laughed nervously.
"Would Mr. Potter care to remind us what the most commonly used defensive spell is?" Harry discovered that the previously meek professor appeared a lot more intimidating when he was hovering over you darkly.
'Ulp.' Harry had not been paying attention at all to Professor Cardille's instructional talk. Neither had Ron or Yuusuke, but he was pretty sure that Hermione and Hiei were.
He glanced at them both, looking for help, but found the pair to be unrelenting. Oh well, then. He'd have to take a stab at a guess. "Is it 'expelliarmus'?"
"Though that was not meant to be answered in the form of a question, that is correct." Cardille frowned down at the Boy Who Lived, clearly upset over his early lack of class participation. "Would you now care to explain why that is so?" Ron and Yuusuke winced in sympathy, but offered no aid.
"Er, because it's really simple and effectively disarms the opponent?"
"Again, that wasn't supposed to be a Jeopardy answer, but yes." Raising his voice, Cardille turned to the rest of the class, leaving behind a very relieved Harry. "And for the record, the second most common spell is 'stupefy', mainly because it is more difficult and harder to aim correctly, as well as having a chance of severely injuring select people.
"Now," he continued, "I believe it is time to begin today's lesson. We are going to be holding a class discussion on current events. You may speak at any time, as long as you are interrupting no one else and your comment is on-topic. We want to discover what is going in the world and how we can defend ourselves from it. Take notes, because you'll need them for your homework assignment. Does anyone wish to begin?"
Not surprisingly, Hermione was the first to raise her hand. As she did so, Hiei nudged Yuusuke. Harry heard the shorter of the pair mumble, "Pay attention; we could both use the review."
Hermione, meanwhile, had decided to start with the depressing events of the previous year. "Several months before the release of school," she began, sounding as if she had rehearsed the speech weeks earlier, "our former Headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, was killed during a Death Eater attack on the school. Since then, Death Eater attacks have increased immensely."
"Very good," Cardille mused. "Especially since it directly relates to and affects all of us here."
Hermione beamed.
"Now, would anyone like to add or comment on that?"
A girl in the back—Harry thought she was one of those invisible one whose names he still had never learned, even after seven years—timidly raised a hand slightly into the air. "My aunt said that You-Know-Who was only waiting to reveal his true power until Professor Dumbledore was out of the way."
"Hah!" Dean Thomas burst out. "My granny says that if Snape can kill off Dumbledore, than either You-Know-Who is a whole lot weaker than he's letting on, or Dumbledore really lost his touch."
"That's 'cause your grandmother's senile!" Blaise Zabini drawled out.
"You're only saying that because your mother has been in and out of St. Mungo's mental ward for a year now! I heard that she insists on wearing hats knitted out of howling hydro-blooms!" Pansy Parkison taunted whilst making a gruesome face.
Harry glanced towards Neville to see how the boy would react to the comment, even though it was not directed towards him. Neville, however, seemed not to notice, opting instead to offer a hesitant comment himself. "My gran says that we should focus on learning enough defense to give us time to call the Aurors. She says that we shouldn't even need to have to defend ourselves, because the ministry should be taking care of that for us."
"Now, that's ridiculous!" Ron challenged angrily. "My dad works for the ministry and—while I do admit that they could be doing a lot more—it's stupid to think that they're gonna be willing to baby-sit everyone."
"Oh, yeah?" Dean demanded. "What should they be doing, then? The way things are now, it seems like nothing!"
Harry could tell that the whole discussion was quickly spiraling out of control. It appeared that, in their vexation with the ministry, the majority of the students had forgotten that their teacher was not only a Hogwarts employee, but an auror, and therefore in the employ of the ministry, too.
It seemed that Cardille was of a similar opinion. "Er, class… If you would quiet down a bit…"
His attempts at restoring some semblance of order were lost among the uproarious shouts and arguments.
Harry thought that he heard someone mutter, "Then why are they wasting aurors on us?"
"My father works there, too—in the Asian Relations Department!" Parvati Patil exclaimed. From what Harry had gathered from Hermione, Parvati and her sister, Padma, had somehow managed to convince their parents that the question of their safety paled in comparison to the need to complete their education. Harry though that this was merely an excuse to see one more year of the handsome and mysterious Professor Firenze, but hadn't seen fit to mention it.
"I can assure you," Parvati continued, "that the ministry is doing its utter best to gather foreign support. We already have Japan and India on our side, and China is under negotiations. And according to his sister department, American Relations, Canada has pledged its full support, though we are still working on the States."
Shuuichi saw fit to speak up now. "While I cannot say for any of the other nations, I can truthfully tell that Japan would not be so quick to ally itself with a western nation, and the same probably goes for China. Our magic is remarkably different; on levels that are nearly incomparable."
"Yeah?" Parvati demanded, face red with rage. "In just what manner?"
"We do not train ourselves on such petty things as spells and jinxes," Shuuichi sniffed. "We have considerably more magic, or ki as we call it, to work with. We Japanese wizards tend to be priests or priestesses in Shintou or monks in Buddhism. Others, of course, prefer to channel their ki through weapons or limbs in martial arts, among other uses. Incredibly useful in an attack, but beyond the comprehension of gaijin."
"Wow, Shuuichi!" Pansy cooed from beside him, having to raise her voice a bit to be heard over the numerous other conversations taking place around theirs. Harry almost gagged at the false sweetness pouring from her mouth and expression. "Do you think that you could teach me?"
"Fool," Hiei snorted. Harry whipped his head around so fast, he had to pause to caress his neck. "I doubt that any in this room but us has the power to do it. In fact, it would be rather amusing to see you try."
'Power?' Harry wondered. That didn't make much sense. What did power have anything to do with the use of a technique?
Apparently Pansy was equally lost. "What does he mean, Shuuichi?" she whined.
Several smaller arguments and conversations had stopped their talking to pay attention to the current one going on.
"Well," Shuuichi paused, thinking a bit in an attempt to organize his thoughts, "if you can think about it like this, perhaps it will help. Normally, humans are surrounded by ki and can emit it from any point on their bodies, but most are unable to control it. Western magic users can, but in their attempts to do more precise tasks with their energy, they put a shield, so to speak, over most of their ki, allowing only a small, fine trickle to leak out. Think of it as filling a plastic bag with water and punching only a small hole in the side. The problem is, though, that once the shield is formed, it is almost impossible to destroy. However, eastern magic users with a lot of control, such as us, have the ability to do western magic, as well."
"So," Hermione frowned, "you're saying that if we had started training in Eastern magic before Western, we would able to do it?"
"Nah," Yuusuke grinned. "Didn't you hear Hiei a while back? I may not get the whole subject as much as the other two do, but I do know that Western sorcery requires way less energy than ours, so probably most of you wouldn't have enough in the first place."
"Correct," Shuuichi nodded.
"Aw, this is stupid!" Blaise yawned. "I don't see why you people even care about stuff like that. What is the point of having magic if you don't use it for spells?"
"I dunno about that," Dean challenged. "This other stuff sounds pretty useful now that the whole war business has escalated so much."
"Not that you'd care," Ron tacked on spitefully. "Seeing as how you're probably all chummy with You-Know-Who right now."
That was going a bit far, in Harry's opinion, though he was careful not to voice it, instead waiting to see what Zabini's reaction would be.
"That was uncalled for, Weasley," Blaise spat angrily. He reclined a bit, his furious expression quickly melting into a smirk. "However, if I just so happened to be 'chummy' with the Dark Lord, as you so eloquently put it, I'd make sure that he went after you as soon as he'd dealt with Potter."
Ron wisely kept his silence, settling with only a violent glare in the Slytherin boy's direction. Meanwhile, the conversation continued to rage about them on the topic of Eastern versus Western magic, finally degenerating into a argument about the most useful household spells.
Harry was not quite sure how the class had managed to derive such a mundane topic from the prompt of discovering 'what is going in the world and how we can defend ourselves from it'. But then again, it wasn't particularly often that Hogwarts professors held class wide debates.
Somehow, the hour and fifty-minute period managed to vanish rather quickly in all the confusion. Before Harry was quite sure what was happening, Cardille had resumed his position at front of the room and, after assigning the classwork again as independent homework, ushered the students out the door.
"Now that," Ron said, grinning, "completely made up for Herbology."
"How can you say that?" Hermione demanded indignantly. "Cardille was nothing like I expected. He had absolutely no control over the discussion. We'll never learn anything this year if it's like this everyday!" She, of course was the only one who had bothered to take notes, with the possible exception of Shuuichi.
"Isn't that the point?" Ron wondered, before continuing, "That's probably the most fun I've had in a Defense class since Lupin was teaching. (Moody doesn't count 'cause that was a fake…and he used spiders.)"
"Well, that's not really that hard to accomplish, considering that our other teachers were Quirrell, Lockhart, Umbridge…and Snape," Harry pointed out, unconsciously pausing on the name of their previous professor. "But it was a lot of fun."
"Really, you two!" Hermione harrumphed. "You should be viewing this seriously! Even if N.E.W.T.s may not be the first thing on our minds, we still have to focus on locating and destroying—" she glanced behind them, noticing that Yuusuke, Hiei, and Shuuichi were trailing in their wake, shamelessly listening in on the conversation with interest. "…the you-know-whats," she finished, lowing her voice several to a soft pianissimo.
"So," Ron announced loudly for the benefit of their eavesdroppers, "we have a free period next, right? What do you say that we head over to the library and work on the essays that Cardille set us with?"
Harry could have sworn that he heard Hermione mutter, "Idiot. That assignment doesn't require any research," but knew that she got the hidden meaning just as well as he did. And, thinking upon it, it was a perfect opportunity to research Horcruxes away from prying companions. Namely, the three Japanese students who were trailing behind them. Hiei and Yuusuke were going to be too wrapped up with History of Magic, which the Trio had had the good fortune to be able to drop, and Shuuichi would be occupied with Herbology. They would not have to fear any pesky interruptions from that corner.
They bid the 'pesky interruptions' farewell when they had to leave to head toward their respective classes, they themselves heading to the library.
Kurama was in heaven. Not literally of course, for he was still alive and kicking. Well, not kicking…but he had found his niche.
Kurama, as nigh on all of you should know, is a renowned plant master and is also known for being a deadly, cold-hearted thief. So naturally, he fit quite well in the Herbology Greenhouse 6, among Sprout-hakase's most dangerous specimens.
His class had the exact same assignment as Yuusuke and Hiei's had, with one slight difference. While it had taken a great deal of urging for the other two to get the motivation to actually put any effort into their task, Kurama was gliding through the lesson with almost surreal ease.
The darts of the venomous dart-shooter plant sailed in a graceful arc through the air to land in a perfect bull's-eye in the kitsune's thorn-catcher. Had Professor Sprout not known better, she would have said that it was as if they were flying upon command, leaving Pansy (his partner) standing dumbly off to the side with nothing to do.
Kurama, of course, would have made numerous denials of this fact, no matter how true it may or may not have been.
While the fox easily fed tendrils of his ki into the plant, nudging its shots towards his target, he pondered whether or not to add it to his inventory of seeds concealed in his hair.
To his surprise, there was no exact Makai cousin to the plant. Several similar ones, but no parallel. He found himself wondering if he would be able to crossbreed it with any of those relatives in his supply, creating… The possibilities were promising. He'd have to try it at some point.
Meanwhile, Yuusuke was struggling to contain his laughter. "Can you imagine the fox's face when he heard this garbage?" he asked Hiei, who was seated next to him in History of Magic. "I can't decide whether he would have be laughing or flushing."
"Hn," Hiei replied, biting back a ruder, "Shut. Up."
Professor Binns continued to drone on with the exact same lecture that had put students asleep all day, failing to notice that, for once, he had managed to amuse at least two of his pupils.
"This is hopeless!" Ron groaned, tossing down a stack of books beside him.
"Don't give up now, Ron!" Hermione admonished, her nose stuck in a book titled Dark Wizards of the Century.
"You've got to admit that it would help if we knew where to start searching," he retorted.
"Yeah, Ron," Harry said sarcastically. "I'm sure that if we ask Madame Pince quite nicely, she'll be happy to hand us over Hunting Horcruxes for Dummies. Yeah, real likely, that."
"I'm not saying it has to be that specific," Ron retorted. "Just anything at all. We don't even know if we're looking in the right place. For all we know, R.A.B. may be a house elf!"
"Honestly, Ron," Hermione cried out indignantly, "S.P.E.W.—"
"House elves do have to follow their master's orders," Harry reminded him, effectively preventing Hermione from continuing her burgeoning tangent.
"But it could be true for just that reason!" Ron argued. "I mean, the guy orders his house elf to use its special magic to steal the Horcrux, instructs it to leave the note, and therefore takes all the credit!"
"Ron's idea does have some merit," Hermione frowned. Harry wasn't sure if this was because she didn't quite agree or because of the mentions of house elf enslavement. "But that would mean that R.A.B. came from one of the older, richer wizarding families."
Ron looked rather nervous now that his scheme was being taken seriously. "Er, Hermione…It was just a joke, you know…" Seeing that she seemed intent on pursuing the subject, he attempted a second jest. "Hey, Harry! Did your grandparents own a house elf?"
"What?!"
"Well, I figure that R.A.B. couldn't have come from a dark wizarding family, right? Otherwise, what would be the point in him destroying a Horcrux?"
"That's not necessarily true," Harry pointed out. "Sirius was good, even though his family was pretty much on the Dark side."
"And they had a house elf, too…" Hermione mumbled. "How coincidental."
"You don't think--" Ron said, her conclusion dawning on him, as well.
"The initials don't fit," Harry pointed out.
"The last does," Hermione realized.
"Maybe a relative?" Ron wondered.
From the hall, the bell signaling the end of the period briefly drowned out their hushed voices.
"I'll check the school records and see if the library has a family tree," Hermione volunteered, hefting a stack of books.
"If that doesn't work, I'll see if I can get Lupin to make a sketch of the one in Sirius' house," Harry offered.
"But if we're wrong, it's back to the beginning," Ron warned.
"It's worth a try!" Harry declared, he spirits rising immensely as the trio happily headed down to dinner.
Disclaimer: Yuu Yuu Hakusho belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi and all related industries. Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and all related industries. I make no profit off this work of fiction.
Notes:
-As you may have noticed, I'm changing the spelling of certain names to the more accurate 'Shuuichi', 'Yuu Yuu Hakusho', and 'Yuusuke'. Eventually, I'll get around to reposting the previous chapters with this edit.
-I'm too lazy to add the little line thingy over the 'o' in 'Shinto', so I'm just gonna spell it 'Shintou'.
-The whole RAB thing was completely unexpected, even for me.
A/N: I'm seriously really sorry for this super late update. Whoever believes that summer vacation equals more free time is seriously wrong. I've had/will have/am having a dance recital (ballet and jazz), week long, all day music camp, week long, extremely painful pointe camp, two week car trip to Quebec, week long overnight music camp, assisting at an art camp, another dance camp, new manga, second fanfiction, gotta reread the entire HP series b/c of DH, and…yeah. So I can't guarantee swift updates. Filler arc (which I am definitely looking forward to writing) will definitely start at Chapter Ten.
I would also like to take a moment to thank all my wonderful readers and reviewers who have stuck with me this far. Doumo arigatou gozaimashita!