A/N: I have had an extremely bad case of writer's block, but am hopefully finished with that for a while. I've also written couple of scenes that happen later and I can't post yet.
Thoth: 'Pete' will be in this fic. Not quite as bloodthirsty, but just as vicious, when necessary.
Disclaimer: Rowling is rich. I am not. This should tell you that Rowling and not me came up with Harry Potter.
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Chapter 5: VERY Practical Defense
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1975
As Professor Barone let the sixth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins into his classroom, everyone was silent, not sure how tolerant he would be; as the teacher took up his position behind his desk and reached for the roll call, the students studied him as a naturalist might a dangerous creature: attempting to take in every detail, while not daring to make a sound lest it take notice of them.
This particular class was rather popular, including all the sixth-year Slytherin boys and most of the girls (which included a surprising number of future Death Eaters), all the Marauders (except Pettigrew), Lily and another two Gryffindor girls Mordecai didn't know. As Mordecai took a seat in front next to James Sultzey and Barone began the roll call, James took out his textbook and alternated between 'grumbling' through their connected legilimency fields about idiots who shouldn't be writing textbooks and 'worrying' about what the class would be like.
If the mean professor curses you I'll help you to the hospital wing, Mordecai 'said' in amusement.
I can uncurse myself, and you don't know where the hospital wing is.
As Mordecai mentally reprimanded himself, he felt his mental senses connect with another's and saw that Snape had sat near enough to connect with them; the other Slytherins' mental energy took the form of a pool of water, and his mind was fortified with a wall of icebergs. Snape sneered at him and Mordecai could feel it through legilimency even when he turned away; apparently you could send facial expressions as well as words with legilimency, and probably images too.
Mordecai gripped his desk as he felt a force pressing against his shields and steadily breaking them down; icy cold water began slipping through the cracks, reaching freezing tendrils into his mind. Mordecai withdrew his senses and cut off his mind from the others and attempted to prevent another connection from forming by filling his senses with wind, a process simplified by a future Snape as 'clearing your mind.'
The water rippled and tugged at Mordecai's mind, trying to make him take notice; the time traveler was having less and less success at ignoring Snape when he felt tiny ice fragments floating in the water grinding against his mind. As his concentration shattered and Snape reestablished the connection, Mordecai felt the freezing water pouring into his mind, chilling it as thoroughly as a dementor, and an image began to materialize…
Then the waters jerked out of his mind.
Puzzled, Mordecai looked back at Snape, who was sweating profusely and gripping his desk as well; James was looking at the professor, pen in hand to take notes, the picture of oblivious innocence. Sending his senses out again and reassembling his walls (which took a depressingly short time), Mordecai saw that the cloud of fog was exactly as it always was–except that an occasional lightning bolt was crackling inside the storm clouds that fortified James' mind.
What exactly did you do? Mordecai 'asked.'
An image flashed momentarily before his eyes, of Snape's mind lying in a heap of charred and smoking iceberg fragments.
You burned his icebergs!?
Yep.
Mordecai was having difficulty suppressing a laugh when Professor Barone helped him out with that by asking, "Are you paying attention, Saunders, Snape?"
"Yes, professor," both immediately answered.
"Then you can be first, since you're paying such close attention, Mr…?" the professor looked pointedly at Mordecai while gesturing towards the front of the room.
"Saunders," Mordecai managed through his instantly dried mouth. As he moved to the front, wondering what in the name of Merlin he was supposed to do, Mordecai sent a murderous glare at Snape, but in a few moments his embarrassment overtook his anger as he stood in front of everyone else, fruitlessly searching their faces for some clue to what he should do.
Sniggers were just starting and Mordecai had gone ruby red when Barone announced, "I'll start, then," and drew his wand and fired a curse without any more warning than that.
Mordecai jumped out of the way with a cry and whipped out his wand, instinctively casting a banishing charm (which required no incantation and was therefore very quick to cast) that struck Barone full on and propelled him across the room.
"Expelliarmus! Stupefy! Rictusempra!" Mordecai called out, having learned his lesson about not cursing someone when they were down in his fight with Malfoy in second year.
Barone rolled out of the way and was back on his feet in an instant, "Triala stupefy!"
Mordecai's eyes widened as three stunners flew from the tip of Barone's wand, spreading out so that it would be nearly impossible to dodge them, so he conjured a sheet of plywood that reflected the stunners only to have it banished into him a moment later.
Mordecai was thrown onto his back with a grunt and as the plywood sailed over him he began to fire retaliatory spells, but a moment later Barone hit him with a disarming spell and his wand sailed into the professor's waiting hand.
Barone vanished the plywood and held Mordecai's wand out to him, saying, "You have excellent reflexes; you could be an excellent dueler if you pay attention to your opponents."
"Err… thanks," Mordecai said a little uncertainly as he took his wand back and returned to his seat, reflecting on the duel; Let's see… keep your opponent in sight… and practice occlumency… Maybe he would be able to get James to help him with the occlumency part.
"Who's next?"
Potter and Black both had their hands in the air faster than Hermione had ever managed. "Mr…?" Barone asked pointing at Potter, who had already jumped out of his seat.
"Potter," the marauder said, practically running to the front.
"One," Barone began, "two, stupefy!"
"That's not fair!" Potter shouted, almost forgetting to get out of the way, before furiously counterattacking.
You know, James 'said,' I'd really like this teacher if I wasn't taking his class.
Barone stepped aside, allowing Potter's first few curses to fly past and then began to fire second-year spells back as quickly as he could. Both dueled like this for several moments until Barone summoned Potter's shoes, causing his feet to fly out from under him.
"Finite–" Potter began, before his back slammed into the floor, knocking the breath from him.
"Accio wand!" Potter's wand flew from his hand.
"–incantatem!" the summoning spell on his wand broke, causing it to skitter to a stop at Barone's feet, and the professor dropped the spell that was still dragging Potter across the floor by his shoes.
"Not bad, but you need to watch out for sneaky tactics."
Groaning, Potter got back to his feet, before collecting his wand and throwing Barone a dirty look.
"Black!" the corresponding marauder announced as he jumped up.
"Ready?" the professor asked when Black reached the front.
"Su-AAAAAAA-" Black cried out as an invisible spell blasted his feet out from under him and he fell face-first with a resounding THUD.
For a moment, Black lay unmoving, before rolling onto his side and moaning loudly; Barone took a cautious step forward, and, as he looked for injury, Mordecai noticed that the Marauders' nose had somehow come through relatively unscathed, though one side of his face looked rather battered and a little bloody. "Nice try," Barone said as he smirked and stepped back to his former position.
Instantly, Black was back on his feet and yelling out incantations so quickly the words slurred together, "Stupefyrictusempramordalaacciodeskinanimatusconjurus!"
Barone blocked two curses, ducked a flying desk and sidestepped a massive anvil that had appeared over his head while being hit with a tickling charm and shooting his own spells back.
Black nimbly evaded two streaks of light and was busily transfiguring the chandelier over Barone's head, when a third spell flew past him before curving around and hitting the Marauder in the back. Black stumbled forward, but maintained his balance as he cast a shield charm in anticipation of Barone's next attack.
The shield stopped the professor's summoning charm, but Barone kept on with a relentless barrage of summoning charms, and spells that changed direction or covered a large area so that they could not be dodged. Black, forced to use shields instead of his usual dodging tactics, was immediately put on the defensive, but held out for several minutes before being disarmed.
"Excellent job," Barone commented, "but you need to work on your shields."
"Snape," the corresponding Slytherin sneered as he rose, somehow making his name sound like a terrible insult directed at everyone except himself. Snape glided forward, wand out, trading nasty looks with Black on his way.
"Are you ready?"
"Protego," Snape enunciated clearly, and a moment later the chandelier Black had been working on earlier exploded, no doubt due to an invisible, silent spell of Barone's that had been reflected by the shield. "Yes, I am ready."
Immediately, both began to duel furiously, and Mordecai was sure he'd never seen half the spells they were using; Snape was mumbling his incantations almost as an afterthought, while Barone kept his mouth firmly shut, except when using a particularly powerful spell. Mordecai couldn't help but feel a grudging respect for Snape's dueling ability, as Barone was now being forced to run around his side of the dueling area in a desperate attempt to get out of the way of Snape's spells, while the latter had not moved an inch since the start of the duel, defending himself entirely with shields.
"Edangar!" Barone called out, causing a deep green, metallic shield with a golden lion emblazoned across it to materialize on his left arm and using it to reflect several curses with a string of deep gonging sounds. Now that Barone could block the vast majority of the spells in Snape's substantial repertoire without taking time to dodge or cast shields, he wasted no time in pounding through Snape's shields and taking his wand.
As Snape took his wand back and returned to his seat, Barone was too out of breath to comment. After the professor had regained his wind, the duels continued, though no one else did as well as Black or Snape, and Mordecai was relieved to see that he had done better than most of the class.
When James Sultzey had started his duel with an incredibly fast-moving bolt of liquid blue light, Barone had been forced to conjure his lion shield again and was nearly thrown off his feet by the impact; James then conjured a similar, deep-golden shield with a winged cat on it that was the exact same kite shape as the one Voldemort had used in the Ministry, rather than the rounded, flat-topped shape of Barone's. James' shield had not visibly recoiled, despite some impressive-looking spell work from the Defense teacher.
But, despite his spell-knowledge and failure to use any magic that looked like it could be done by anyone else in the room, James' dueling abilities were somehow on par with Neville Longbottom's, and he was quickly defeated.
The final duelist, Lily Evans, had just lost her wand and was holding out her hand expectantly; Barone eyed her for a moment, before seemingly coming to a decision, leveling his wand at her, and shouting, "AVADA KEDAVRA!"
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1996
"Mr. Weasley."
Ron jumped in surprise and looked up from his essay (yes, he was bored) to see the headmaster of Hogwarts standing in the doorway of his room at Grim-mauld place.
"Getting an early start on your summer work?"
"Yes, professor."
Dumbledore sighed, and some of his strength seemed to leave him as he sat on the end of Ron's bed, and spoke again, "I am afraid there are some things I need to discuss with you, about recent events."
"It's not about Voldemort, is it? He's not coming after me, is he?"
"No," Dumbledore reassured him with a kindly smile, "he will be much more concerned with Harry, and with his a now-necessary 'PR' campaign. No, I fear there may be repercussions for what you did at the Department of Mysteries."
"I didn't do anything wrong, did I?"
"Only brave acts of heroism; in better times you and your friends would have been given awards for services to the Ministry and offered scholarships to auror college. But, while Fudge has been removed from power, everyone in the line of succession is one of his appointees, and it takes time to select a new minister."
"But," Ron protested, "they can't do anything! We were fighting Death Eaters!"
"But not until after you broke into a highly secret Ministry facility; if the Minister's office presses charges, they'll have no difficulty getting a conviction, since you are very plainly guilty. But I'm sure one of the next minister's first acts will be to pardon you all and invite you to a very stuffy banquet where he can talk about righting wrongs and demanding justice."
"So I'm not going to have to go to Azkaban?" Ron asked hopefully.
"If I am able to delay your trial until we have a new minister. But I must warn you that you'll likely be spending some time in a holding cell, and maybe even a week or two in Azkaban, but at least they no longer have use of the dementors."
"Okay," Ron said, "I guess that's not too bad, for breaking into the Department of Mysteries, but what about the others? What about Harry?"
"You don't have to worry Harry; I don't think anyone wants to be spat upon by every light wizard they meet for the next year," the headmaster answered with a twinkle in his eye.
Translation: everyone else is in the same boat, except Harry. "Are any of the Order members in trouble?"
"Alastor, Mr. Shacklebolt and Miss Tonks are all aurors, retired or otherwise, so they are perfectly fine."
Sirius couldn't be in any legal danger, for obvious reasons, but that still left… "Professor Lupin?"
Dumbledore sighed wearily before answering, "I fear he may be in much the same predicament as yourselves."
That was bad, if you were a werewolf. Ron may have found politics as boring as Professor Binns, but he had grown up in the magical world, and knew how the Ministry worked: mostly through a sordid combination of cronyism, nepotism and money changing hands. This gave the pureblood elite an inordinate amount of power, not to mention Fudge's many years of accumulated anti-werewolf cronies.
"I am afraid I must be going now," the headmaster announced as he got up.
It was not until Dumbledore had left the room that it occurred to Ron that Ginny and mum hadn't been told (evidenced by a lack of shouting). Ron wished he had the headmaster's cunning, but Gryffindor courage would have to do…
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1975
Mordecai had his wand in his hand before Barone's spell could reach Lily, but too late to save her. Before her body had reached the ground, Mordecai had launched a banishing charm at Barone with all his prodigious magical strength, blasting him into the opposite wall with a satisfying crunch.
She can't have died, didn't die… It isn't possible to change the past! What if he had?
Mordecai ran to the front of the room in a daze and dropped beside Lily, not sure whether to mourn her, or curse Barone or himself; in his arrogance, he had gone into the past, sure it couldn't be changed, despite all the warnings.
Abruptly coming to his senses, Mordecai stood and turned towards Potter, waiting for what he knew would happen next. For several minutes, no one in the room moved a muscle, except to shift their eyes from Lily, to Barone, to Mordecai; then Potter came out of his shock and grabbed his wand, fumbling in his fury, and leveled it at Barone.
"Cruci–"
"Silencio!" Mordecai snapped, cutting Potter's spell off.
Mordecai turned back to his mother–and Barone; the latter would have to be revived, interrogated (veritaserum would be nice) and… Mordecai wished wizards had public hangings, or burning at the stake, or crucifixion, or… Whatever it was Mordecai wished wizards had, he knew he didn't want to do it himself, didn't want to feel the anger and guilt he had after cursing Lestrange, no matter how many times he told himself the spell hadn't worked…
"You're in with him on this."
Mordecai jumped at the sound of the rasping, angry voice behind him; he whipped around to find Potter, apparently un-silenced by one of his friends, standing right behind him as he began to yell. "You're protecting him! Get out of my way!"
"I'm not! What are you, blind?" Mordecai protested, gesturing at Barone's crumpled form, now sitting in a disturbingly large pool of blood and complete with limbs projecting at weird angles.
"You're just trying to… to keep anyone from questioning him!"
As Potter tried to dive around Mordecai, the Slytherin seized him and threw him back with little difficulty, due to his ritually enhanced strength.
"James!" Lupin called as he ran forward and held Potter back with his also superior strength.
The noise level in the room then rose rapidly as everyone came to their senses and started talking at once.
"Its all the Slytherins' fault!"
"Shut it, Black!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"She's still breathing."
"Someone get Dumbledore!"
"I'd like to see you shut me up!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"Get a grip on yourself!"
"She's still breathing."
"I don't want to be within twenty feet of that old fool! Get Slughorn."
"You're happy about it, you filthy muggle-hater!"
"She's still breathing!" James Sultzey yelled at the top of his voice.
Mordecai and Potter were instantly at Lily's side, Mordecai on the pretext of checking her pulse, vaguely hoping that no one would notice that he cared more than a new Slytherin would for a Gryffindor.
"Enerv–" Potter's voice was cut off for the second time that lesson and he looked up, angrily, at James, who had his wand out.
"You have no idea what sort of injuries she may have. Now if you would kindly leave this to us clever Slytherins…" Potter didn't take well to that comment, and was trying to curse James while gesturing for Sirius to remove the silencing charm, when the door opened and Dumbledore stepped in.
As silence descended on the room, the headmaster seemed to know exactly what was going on as he strode toward Barone, drawing a vial of clear liquid from his robes. At first Mordecai thought it was veritaserum, but, when Dumbledore tipped the vial into Barone's mouth and the professor's body began to rearrange itself into a normal-looking position, he began to realize it was phoenix tears.
"She is unharmed, you may wake her up," Dumbledore announced, not even having looked at Lily yet.
"Enervate!" Mordecai snapped, casting the spell before Potter had a chance, just to spite him.
Lily's eyelids opened to reveal confused, startlingly green orbs, before she remembered what had happened and sat up abruptly. "Where's–"
"Everything is under control," Dumbledore reassured her, and Lily breathed a sigh of relief as those twinkling blue eyes silently communicated that everything was fine, even humorous. "I warned you that might happen, Randolph."
"Well, yes, but I didn't have time to blink," Barone protested, "I never even saw who hit me!"
"That would be me," Mordecai informed him smugly, "you should pay more attention to you opponents."
"Before things get any further, I should tell you all that Randolph's–Barone's–spell was a stunner modified to look and sound like a killing curse, and that he had my permission for this," Dumbledore announced in an impossibly casual tone as he exited.
"Fake… killing… curse?"
"You have the gist of it. And what did you hit me with Mr. Saunders?" Barone asked conversationally.
"A… um, banishing charm, professor," Mordecai mumbled to his professors' left knee.
"Those were impressive reflexes," Barone praised, "much better behavior than sitting in your seat and gaping like a fish would have been."
Now it was everyone else's turn to look guilty.
"Back to your seats!"
"What was that for!" yelped a girl from the Slytherin side just as Mordecai reached his seat.
"If you take your eye off a Death Eater, you'll get a lot worse than a stinging hex," Barone admonished, "in fact, I'd encourage you to shoot spells at each other at random times to keep each other on your toes."
Now, Professor Barone was definitely a cheater, and a bit of a prankster, too, but he certainly knew his stuff: he was an excellent duelist, and his stinging hexes would no doubt teach constant vigilance much better than sneaking up on people and yelling it at them. But telling a roomful of Gryffindors and Slytherins to start hexing each other was the height of stupidity.
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A/N: So, what do you think should happen to Ron and Lupin? I've pretty much decided about Ron, but I don't have any good ideas for Lupin, yet.