Harry drew quite a few stares from all around as he sat in the Defense Against the Dark Arts class, waiting for it to start alongside the other students.
Blaise was sitting by Harry's other side, and a boy named 'Theodore Nott' was on the other, and both were looking quite worried and nervous for some reason. Not to mention that they were gripping their wands with a white-knucked hold.
Whether they were preparing to move against Harry or to defend him against some unknown enemy was not clear, but Harry took precautions either way- He had already been caught slipping once today, he would not allow it to happen the second time.
'Oh… And just in case…' Harry pulled out the tarot deck.
The Slytherin students who saw the deck froze still, and then gained a determined, dark expression as if preparing to guard Harry.
Harry listened in on the conversations of the Slytherin students, as he was aware enough to do so without even turning his head or making motions that'd reveal his awareness.
"...So Moody is next…?"
"I knew it, the Dark Lord is cleaning house…"
"...This might get dangerous- I'm out, you-"
"...Get back here you fool, don't you realize he sees you-"
Harry sighed internally. 'What are they on about? Dark Lord?'
He laid out three cards, even though it looked like the tension amongst the Slytherin students rose exponentially with each card.
Harry lifted his eyebrow at the Chariot, the Magician, and the Emperor.
He shuffled the deck, and tried to make an actual reading, and not just pull out a pre-stacked deck from either past or the future.
The Fool, the World, and the Tower stared back at Harry.
Harry wiped away the blood that had started to drip down from his nose and decided that he should consider caution over blowing his head up again for the second day in a row. Not to mention that one streak of gray hair was relatively stylish, but a second would probably spoil the look. Assuming that the Backslash or Paradox occurred and that it was as minor as it had been earlier, and didn't just end up with Harry landing an incurable arthritis or something along those lines. 'Well, that is ominous.'
"Hey, Harry, come sit with us!" A boy called from somewhere and Harry glanced in the direction to see that Ronald had arrived at the class, looking like he had been running and almost missed the class as he and Harry had split up after the dinner to go and fetch their bags from their respective Common Rooms.
"Greetings, Ron. You made it, well done." Harry nodded to Ron, and for some reason the Slytherin students seemed to snicker at Ron after hearing Harry's words almost as if they thought that Harry was mocking him.
Ron looked angry and betrayed for a split second, and then seemed to remember something and nodded with grim determination in his face. "Guys! Don't be fooled- The Slytherins are trying to make us think Harry is one of them! Don't fall for it! Harry was a Gryffindor at first but the Hat was confounded somehow!"
'Nice one, Ron. That'll help flip over the house of cards I've made… Heh. Let's see your next move, me.' Harry nodded internally while adopting a neutral posture externally.
"What are you on about- Potter's clearly a Slytherin! He even tried to kill Moody just now!" A Gryffindor boy stood up. "He's clearly evil!"
"No, he's not! The Slytherin are trying to deceive you to think Harry is evil, but he's really not! Dean, you trust me, right?" Ron tried to convince the other Gryffindor student.
"...Are you evil, Potter?" Dean pointed a finger at Harry.
"I'm not." Harry replied easily.
Dean seemed to relax a bit, as did Ron who looked like he had tensed up for a split second when Dean had asked the question.
"He's lying, he's totally lying."
"Wow, those Gryffindors are really that gullible…"
"I see… So he pretends to be a 'good guy' for the Gryffindors… And when they trust him, he'll lead them astray and have them killed… Cunning…"
The whispers from the Slytherin students caused the Gryffindors to gain conflicted, angry expressions, at least from the few that they managed to overhear.
"Do not listen to those whispers, see, that's how the Slytherin gets to you!" Ron stood in front of Dean and opened his arms. "Remember! They're trying to turn us against Harry so that they can hog him!"
"Oh- Ohhhh!" Dean seemed to get it. "Right- Stand aside, Ron- Let's go save Potter-"
A huge bang came from the end of the classroom and the door that had way too many locks on it swung open, revealing the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
"There will be no heroic rescues today, Dean Thomas of Gryffindor. And for the record, head-on assault against similarly numbered enemies is a supremely idiotic thing to do. Flank, counter, strike from all sides, isolate small groups, never fight a 'fair fight'. Fair fight is how you end up with a wooden leg." The teacher waddled the front of the class while keeping his normal eye on Dean and Ron, and the swirling bulbous electric blue eye on Harry, while occasionally sending the blue eye spinning.
"Professor Moody- Potter tried to kill you! With that deck of cards! Like he killed Professor Trelawney!" A student from Gryffindor pointed his finger at Harry almost instantly, causing Ron to let a protesting squeak.
"Yes, I saw." Moody glanced at Harry. "Wasn't very successful now, was it?"
"Alas, the Fate Deck is not exactly suited for murder, I'm afraid. What happened to Professor Trelawney was… An unfortunate accident. I suspect she tried to protect me when I made a mistake during the reading, and ended up absorbing most of the 'impact'." Harry bowed his head a bit. "I am deeply grateful for her guidance and hope that she'll heal from the encounter soon."
"I take it that you have something else that is better suited for murder, then, Potter?" Moody asked.
"There are many things that are better suited to murder than a deck of cards, Professor." Harry commented neutrally.
"Very good. Always keep your weapons hidden until the last moment. You're a quick learner- Or someone with experience in murdering people." Moody spoke, causing whispers to spread among the Slytherin students. "What a fascinating theory, Miss Pansy Parkinsons. You think that mr. Potter is Lord Voldemort reborn?"
The mentioned girl snapped upright on her seat while turning deathly pale and froze still as if she had been petrified.
The rest of the students in the class flinched from hearing the name of the Dark Lord, except for Harry.
Pansy sent a small glance at Harry who turned to lift his eyebrow at the pale girl.
Pansy passed out instantly while white foam started to bubble from her mouth as if she had suffered a major panic attack from Harry's questioning look.
A group of Slytherin students stood forward to flank Harry while drawing their wands and pointing them at Moody.
The rest of the Slytherin students just stared a bit at what was going on and started to creep away.
The Gryffindor students drew their wands and pointed them at the Slytherin students, collectively.
"Two points per student from Slytherin from each of you. What did I tell you about fighting against fair odds?" Moody commented while having his hands up in surrender and looking at the group of Slytherin students who had drawn their wands. "Even more so against overwhelming odds. Moreover, I am not here."
"What do you-" Theodore started as he had drawn his wand as well as Blaise, but he never got to finish his sentence.
A hurricane of red light enveloped the group of Slytherin students.
The Slytherin students around Harry fell over, and their wands clattered on the floor.
"A projection…" Professor Moody commented from behind the class while the professor in front of the class had frozen still.
Moody had his wand out and pointed at the group of now-unconscious students, while the Professor Moody at the front of the class let out a small puff of smoke and disappeared. "...Is a very good tool of subterfuge and can result in a careless or green enemy focusing their attention on something that isn't actually there. However, a Projection can be spotted easily- For instance a projection's hair does not move in a breeze. Moreover, if you cloak yourself with a Disillusionment Charm while keeping said Projection going, you will be able to perform a one-man bait and ambush."
The Professor flashed a grim smirk. "For the record I was present in the room for half an hour before the class began. Speaking of which, five points from Gryffindor, mr. Finnigan, for calling me a paranoid owl before the class began."
"But- H-how did you open the door if that was a projection?" A Slytherin student blurted out while having her hands up in surrender.
"Magic, miss Gleam, I used magic. You do not necessarily need to open a door with your own hands. Perhaps your Charms professor has not taught you how telekinesis is performed, or perhaps you have elected to sleep during the class, hm?" Moody commented, causing the named student to turn scarlet from embarrassment and look away in anger while still having her hands up in surrender.
The professor walked to the front of the class and waved his wand once to cause the unconscious Slytherin students to float up while iron cages formed around them and hooked the cages to the ceiling, resulting in a set of somewhat macabre ceiling decorations.
Professor Moody then glanced at the students, of whom Gryffindor were still pointing their wands at the rest of the Slytherin students, and the rest of the Slytherin students bar Harry were holding their hands up in surrender.
"Very good. It's important to realize when you're overmatched- Although escape or suicide is preferable to surrender. You don't want to find out what a Dark Wizard can have in store for you if you get caught." Moody nodded to the rest of the Slytherin students. "One point per student who chose to not fight against overwhelming odds. That includes you, Potter."
"Thank you, Professor." Harry bowed slightly while not breaking eye contact with Moody.
Moody nodded appreciatively. "Very good. Now then, class, today we're going back in time somewhat."
The Gryffindors glanced at the Slytherin students and then slowly put their wands away. The Slytherin students saw that and slowly crept back to their seats.
"Boggart, as some of you may know, is a creature that is capable of reading minds and projecting a form that is most frightening to the observer." Moody walked to the blackboard and tapped it with his wand, causing the pieces of chalk in the board's holder to fly up and start writing letters and scribble a picture of a man falling over in fright when a murderous creature sprang from a cupboard. "Boggarts are generally harmless in terms of physical ability to deal damage. However they can still injure you if you do not take appropriate precautions, and are capable of doing mental damage by causing a terrible fright."
Harry wrote up what was said, following the lead of the other students in the class as he had made the mental decision to at least try his best to learn Hermetic magic- And for all he knew, the notes of mentioned beasts could be used as magical foci against them like Scrolls of Magic.
"You should have learned about these things during your third year, but from what I gathered Dumbledore employed a literal rank-and-file rooster as the Defense Against Dark Arts professor for that year so the quality of teaching may have dipped somewhat. However, ignorance is only an excuse, and won't protect you against a Boggart. Nor will it protect against anything else." Moody drew an underline on the 'Boggart' on the blackboard with his wand, although the wand didn't leave a mark on the board. "Just because you don't know about something, doesn't mean you are invulnerable against it. Rather, an encounter with an unknown creature is more likely to spell your doom than an encounter with a known one. But just because you know about something, doesn't mean that you can take a victory for granted. This also applies to facing Dark Wizards."
"The spell for evicting a Boggart is 'Riddiculus', whereupon you force the Boggart to take a form that you are thinking currently and not the one that it has picked from your deep, dark memories." Moody clanked in front of the class. "What drives Boggarts away is laughter. However it is hard to laugh when you are facing your worst fears, unless you are clinically insane or otherwise a hard nut to crack. By forcing the Boggart to take a different shape you take its teeth from its mouth, and allow yourself an opening to laugh. Preferably laugh at the Boggart, it hurts their self-confidence. That also makes them less likely to nest near you again. Therefore try to think of a scenario that makes you laugh when you face a Boggart, and use the spell."
"The alternative is to withdraw. Boggarts are highly territorial and rarely give chase. That's all you can learn of them through study." Moody stopped pacing around in front of the class and waited.
The sound of scribbling stopped.
Moody then glanced over the students. "Time for a practical test. Wands out, and form a line."
.
.
.
Roughly five minutes later the students were facing a rattling cupboard.
"Wands out already. Remember, in this scenario you don't know what is in that cupboard. It just started rattling on its own. Could be a disturbed rat, could be a bomb strapped to a vibrating wand. Could be anything. Constant vigilance!" Moody roared the last word. "Weasley. You defended Potter with such fervor. Step up. Wand at the ready!"
Ron took a step while his expression was wavering between determination and terror, and he approached the rattling cupboard.
A giant spider sprang out from the cupboard that was way too small to be able to contain the monstrous creature, and the spider lifted all four of its front legs to a intimidating pose.
"G-gyaaaah" Ron let a shrill scream and fell on his butt, but managed to point his wand. "R-riddiculus!"
Sparks shot out of Ron's ramshackle wand but nothing happened to the boggart.
"Strategy two, Weasley!" Moody barked as Ron froze in terror and the spider kept approaching him.
Ron fled, tripped on his worn and patchy robe, and fell on his face with an audible crack. The spider paused as it saw Ron lying flat on the floor and then withdrew back into the cupboard.
Ron pushed himself up… and saw that his wand had cracked and snapped in two. "Oh… Oh no!"
Part of the Slytherin students laughed while the rest merely had condescending expressions.
"You really gotta keep your wand in better condition, Weasley. Ten points from Gryffindor and a detention. A dark wizard is not going to stop and laugh if you break your wand, and neither is a magical beast that is hell-bent on killing and eating you- in that order, if you are lucky." Moody spared no pity on Ron's plight. "Next student."
A couple of students approached and banished the Boggart one at a time until it was Harry's turn to approach the cupboard.
"Not bad. See, Potter is covering all angles. Five points for Slytherin." Moody pointed out as Harry had his shotgun drawn and held in his right hand and his stick held with the other.
The cupboard opened and Harry felt a fleeting touch in his mind.
A dark mass oozed almost drunkenly out of the cupboard, let out a drunken hiccup, and then withdrew back to the cupboard.
"Are you a practitioner of occlumency, mr. Potter?" Moody asked. "Or was that the result of your alternative 'approach' to spellcasting?"
"Entering the mind of one of my persuasion is dangerous, sir."
"Very good, but while that gets results, it's more to do with you being lucky that the boggart couldn't read you, than it was the result of your skills. Both are important in battle but you can't train luck- And make no mistake, we're here so you can train before you are thrust into battle with enemies unknown." Moody noted. "Try again. And try not to drive the boggart mad this time."
"I shall attempt to do so." Harry nodded and withdrew, allowing the boggart some time to compose itself until the cupboard started to rattle again.
.
.
.
Alastor Moody kept a close eye on Potter.
Even though Moody was roughly seventy-two percent sure Harry Potter was not, in fact, a dark wizard, a fae creature, Lord Voldemort reborn, or worse, a Elder vampire of Tremere bloodline that was using some sort of arcane artifact or remnant True Magik to operate during the day, he was still keeping a close eye on the boy.
The grizzled Auror had survived two wizarding wars, several brushes with the supernatural, an ambush by Second Inquisition who thought Moody to be an Infernalist based off his magical eye and scars, and even survived a close call with a garou of Dreamwalkers lineage of Werewolves.
He was not going to slip up now and get waffle-stomped through a cheese grater by a teenager-looking boy if Potter turned out to be someone- or something- else than what was widely thought.
Dumbledore was fairly certain that while Harry had developed some bad habits, Potter would eventually mellow and come around to either join the flow of Hermetic Order or at least help them against Voldemort when, if, he returned.
Dumbledore was certain that Voldemort would be back, and Moody had no reason to doubt the old wizard. After all, what you didn't expect to return to life could still come back somehow and kill you. The existence of Dementors, or Wraiths who had escaped Stygia and had gotten themselves slaved and driven to insanity of their Shadow by Unspeakables to become a weapon of Hermetic Order, was a clear enough sign of that.
So while Dumbledore was preparing his song and dance, Alastor Moody took an alternative approach- Namely, hands-on intelligence gathering.
A boggart would be a good test of Potter's character, and would give a hint as to what the boy had witnessed during the nine or so years between his disappearance and reappearance.
The time manipulation that Potter had done had made Moody somewhat certain that the boy was possibly of the Tradition that he claimed, but being able to manipulate time did not make one a Sahajiya. And neither was using drugs. They could be part of the Tradition, but likewise they could be a false lead to make Moody and the rest of Hogwarts think that Potter was Sahajiya, when in fact he could be anything else capable of manipulating time- And in the very worse case scenario the boy might even be a Demonhost.
Moreover, a boggart would be easily sacrificed pawn, as Moody was not willing to use Legilimency on an unknown creature like Potter- Indeed, if Potter indeed was a Demonhost, and the Legilimens pushed through the surface-layer of fake Occlumency to see at what lies underneath, the demon inside of Potter would drive whoever looked into his mind irrecoverably insane and possibly even cause the witness to literally turn inside out from the amount of torment that would flow to them through the link to the demon.
And that was if the Legilimens got lucky and that was the extent of the demon's retaliation. At worst-case scenario the demon might even burst out and reveal it's True Apocalyptic Visage, which would in turn effectively render the rest of the class brain-dead or comatose. Again, assuming that the Demon didn't then use that exposed power to rend entire Hogwarts to rubble stone-by-stone within seconds of being exposed.
Naturally, Moody had prepared for the possibility, and thus had installed an array of sprinklers to the ceiling and hidden them from view with Invisibility Charm, and filled the sprinklers with water that had been blessed by a Wayward Hunter who possessed True Faith.
So Alastor Moody waited under his invisibility cloak in his office above the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, wand drawn, while observing the class through his magical eye.
The second Projection that he had cast Disillusionment Charm on and then broken was observing the class, and it looked like no-one in the class had expected there to be a second Projection pretending to be the real Moody after the first Projection had disappeared, nor did they notice the array of inwards-facing Stunning Hex traps that he had remotely triggered to catch the Slytherin students unaware, or the Imprisoning Ward that would trap anyone who fell unconscious in the classroom except for Moody himself.
And just in case the enemy got past that, Moody had trapped the staircase leading to his office with a muggle flamethrower that contained napalm blessed by a priest that possessed True Faith, making it a potent weapon against just about anyone.
…And should that fail, Moody had a backup trap in the form of a Soviet-era nuclear warhead that had been stored into his travel-trunk and was primed to go should anyone open the single unlocked compartment of the trunk that he had stored inside his office.
Moody's pronouns were 'Constant Vigilance' and his orientation 'Overkill is a myth created by the cloud government'.
All in all, Moody was utterly appalled by the lack of focus or paranoia in the students who just waddled about in the class and didn't look like they were aware that they could be wiped out in a split second with just a few remotely triggered traps.
Or perhaps they did suspect that, collectively, and wanted Moody to just think that they didn't realize it.
Perhaps the students were part of a conspiracy aimed at killing Moody, like Crouch Junior who had tried to approach one of Moody's fake houses earlier during the summer.
Dumbledore had alerted Moody when the Philosopher's Stone had been stolen a couple of years ago, and Moody had been improving his capture-and/or-kill net ever since, and it had caught him a couple of fish, some birds, one unlucky muggle, a Fledgeling vampire who thought to investigate a 'haunted house', and a big fat raid by Aurors from the Ministery of Magic who had gotten reports that the entire neighborhood had been rendered uninhabitable due to excessive trapping.
Unfortunate for the Aurors, none of them found any traps. Or so they remembered.
No-one expected an entire team of Aurors to fall prey to Stupefying traps and then get obliviated to think that there hadn't been any traps and that they had been very thorough in their search.
No-one except Moody, who was very apt at countering- or in this case, rendering, those sorts of scenarios.
And as for Mr. Crouch Junior…
The boy had Apparated into the building that had been officially registered as Moody's apartment.
This, despite the fact that a) being able to Apparate into the house of an ex-Auror or b) assuming Moody's house was on any sort of official record should have warned anyone with more than two brain cells that they were walking into a trap.
Perhaps it was due to the boy's extensive stint in Azkaban doing a number on his brain.
…Which, naturally, had been plastered all over the wall of the fake apartment when the array of Muggle shotguns and layers upon layers of traps both magical and mundane had been triggered, the split second the boy's Apparition ended.
Of course, it could be that mr. Crouch Junior was just faking being dead, again, and was trying to catch Moody unaware, so the ex-auror had set his fake house on fire, just in case.
There was also a possibility that the boy had escaped, somehow, because when Moody analyzed the ashes of the house, he found enough human-based ash that could constitute the remains of a one very skinny person- Or someone who had deliberately fattened themselves up so that they could shed the excess weight to leave a fake trail.
That too was a possibility.
Moody thus had only told Dumbledore about the event, and not the Ministery as he didn't want the gaggle of clowns they called their new Aurors to go and ruin Moody's investigation by traipsing around in the ashes or something.
Regardless, it looked like Potter had relaxed significantly in the classroom and approached the boggart-container, and the cupboard opened…
Harry Potter stared at another Harry Potter.
The fake one was wearing a tidy, well kept suit and was dressed in sharp muggle clothes.
The fake Potter smiled. "Man, working from nine to five at an office is such a great time. I even managed to file two reports yesterday. And get this, my coworkers actually thought that magic was real? Heh, can you believe that? Ridiculous. We all know that reality is objective and constant. Well, I better get back to the daily grind, so-"
The real Potter jumped out of the window with a huge crash without even attempting to use Riddiculus.
The class, meanwhile, just stared at the Potter-shaped hole in the window.
"Next student." The projection-Moody barked, and the class continued.
'Alright. So Potter is possibly not a demonhost. But there's still a chance that the boggart wasn't allowed past the thickest part of the fake Occlumency layer.' Moody raised the likelihood of Harry Potter being Harry Potter to seventy-seven, and noted it down, all the while he was still under the invisibility cloak. 'Observations continue.'