Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to the authors, producers, and companies with whom the material in question is affiliated.

A/N: Sorry, again, for the wait, everyone! And thank you so much for your kind wishes. The job hunt's hectic, but I'm hopeful something will crop up, soon! Thanks for your continued interest and for taking the time to read.

Chapter Six – The Smiths go to School

2 September 2013

Jenny Renette yawned hugely as she blinked open her eyes. She shivered a little beneath her fluffy duvet, and marvelled for a moment at her not-yet familiar surroundings.

An aged, vaulted ceiling soared above her bed. Thick, luxurious fabric stitched with woodland creatures and vines hung in the spaces between the ribs (to keep it from being too draughty, her dad had said) and flowed to the floor behind the shelving, armoire, and other furniture that had been pushed against the walls to make space for her massive four-poster bed.

Jenny had never wanted to be a princess – she rather thought the girls at school were silly for thinking that way – but, after spending her first night in a real enchanted castle, she couldn't help feeling like one, or perhaps a queen. Hogwarts was truly magical, beyond the ways wizards saw it. She smiled a little to herself as she stood and slipped into her dressing gown. The small living room already crackled with a merry fire, and Rose sat on the loveseat sipping chilli-spiced hot chocolate. A small whipped-cream moustache clung to her upper lip, but she hadn't noticed around reading the latest news in the Daily Prophet.

"Morning, Mum," Jenny chirped, hopping onto the loveseat beside her. "Anything interesting?"

"Not much," she hummed and absently wrapped an arm around Jenny's waist in a lateral hug. "Usual nonsense. I've found a least favourite reporter already. This Rita Skeeter woman's written this horrible, fawning piece about the wonderful Professor Lockhart."

Jenny wrinkled her nose at the overblown photograph featuring an unpleasant-looking woman beside a larger shot comprised of the preening blonde, who cycled between grinning and waggling his brows.

"Didn't Daddy say you two would probably make the paper?"

The Doctor poked his head out of the kitchen, a bit of bacon clenched between his teeth.

"Too early, yet," he managed around the nibblet. It'll take them at least today to get a good enough story together. I'm sure the Prophet wouldn't pass up a chance to report on the famous Harry Potter's parents."

"Will I be in the story?"

Mr and Mrs Tyler exchanged a wary look.

"Darling," Rose said gently. "We don't want to be in the paper, and we definitely don't want you to be, either. I know magic seems like this wonderful thing – and it is, don't get me wrong – but wizards and witches are just like everyone else. There are good and bad ones, and unfortunately, some of those bad ones don't like Harry, and wouldn't think twice about hurting his kid sister. The less attention we bring to you, the better."

Jenny shifted in her seat and pouted.

"So its dangerous?"

The Doctor nodded.

"That's why you're not to wander the castle without us so long as school's in session," the Doctor said. "While most of the professors seem all right, excepting a couple, I wouldn't put it past some of the kids or their parents to want to do you wrong."

The little girl accepted the cup of cocoa and the plated breakfast her father offered her. She contemplated her eggs and bacon with more solemnity than usual to a child of six, nearly seven.

"Is that why Harry ended up in the hospital in the spring?"

Rose sighed and pulled her daughter into her lap.

"You're very perceptive, and that's good, but we didn't tell you this to make you worry. We just want you to be aware."

Jenny Renette kicked her slippered feet anxiously.

"But Mummy, I don't understand," she prodded uncertainly. "If people want to hurt Harry, why don't we go somewhere else? Isn't there a magical school in France?"

The Doctor sat on the floor in front of his daughter and shoved another piece of bacon in his mouth with a wry smile.

"We'd go if Harry wanted to."

Rose poked her youngest in the ribs to urge her to eat her rapidly cooling food and slowly began detangling her long, red hair with a gentle touch.

"He said it'd be running, and that it wouldn't be right to run," she murmured.

"Why not?" the girl said around a mouthful of eggs.

"Tylers-sometimes-Smiths never run because they're scared, and they help when they can. Harry thinks he can help, and he's stubborn and resourceful enough to find a way to do it abroad without our help. Honestly, we'd rather support him and know what's going on than walk around in the dark."

Jenny wore a thoughtful expression while her mum and dad finished their breakfasts and joined her dressing for school, but asked no further questions on the subject. Fifteen minutes before eight and dressed in his customary blue pinstripe suit, the Doctor escorted her through the floo to the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade. She held tightly to his hand for the quick apparition to Seaton House School, exited the broom cupboard her father had brought her to, and joined the kids headed to her second-form class. Her parents, on the other hand, considered her questions long through the morning, and both wondered whether they had made the right choice.

Nine o'clock was fast approaching, though, and it was the first day of classes for the newly minted professors, so they quickly shelved those worries for later discussion. The bells tolled long and loud over the grounds, and the castle rumbled with a thousand feet wandering through its halls in pursuit of different classrooms.

"Allons-y, Professor Smith," the Doctor crowed, looping his arm through his wife's.

"Indeed, Professor Smith," Rose grinned cheekily.

Pepper-up potions, in addition to providing near immediate cure for all sorts of non-magical colds and viruses, acted as a stimulant and allergy remedy. Its only side effects were a rather dramatic issuance of steam from the patient's ears and slight mania not uncommon to any stimulant – If one didn't count the increased thirst some experienced due to the potion's extremely spicy flavour. In fact, the name "Pepper-up," aside from playing on the word 'pep,' referenced its most important ingredient. Harry had looked at a recipe once and was horrified to discover it used a whole chopped Bhut jolokia (or ghost) chilli for each two-litre batch, in addition to a gram of fresh ginger, honey, a quarter-pound brick of dark chocolate, one gram of shavings from Nux Myristica, two gumweeds, and a fluid ounce of dragon's blood.

So, despite having fewer hours of sleep than they would like but with a readily available cure-all, most students traditionally arrived early at breakfast for the first day of classes. The vast majority appeared overly excited to be there. Harry, who still woke often from nightmares, was no exception to the rule. Unlike his peers, he also had a private stash, which led to interesting behaviour at breakfast. Daphne shot him odd looks as he cajoled Draco into competing to see who could make the most impressive construction out of his bacon. Blaise and Tracy watched in amusement and took bets on who would win. The upper years ignored them, but only because they tried to affect an uninterested air in all things concerning Harry Potter and the scion of House Malfoy while in view of the general public.

At the end of breakfast, the second-years returned to their dorms to discover another surprise.

"We don't have any classes with Gryffindor," Draco observed while Harry fetched his books. "Most of them are with Hufflepuff, according to Nott. I don't think that's happened in years."

"Only a couple," Harry corrected. "A prefect told me last year Dumbledore rearranged things for an experiment. Maybe he's tired of seeing no results."

"Right," the blonde sneered. "And Kilat's a warty toad."

The snake poked her head out of Harry's collar to glare at the boy, hissing angrily.

"Sarcasm," Harry explained quickly. "He thinks you're very pretty."

Despite her promise not to bite anyone he liked, he wasn't sure the oath would extend to those who insulted her vanity. She was exceedingly proud of her shimmering scales and serpentine beauty.

"It had better be," she hissed back.

Draco shuddered

"You have got to be less casual about that," he grumbled. "Even among Slytherins, it's a gift to fear. Aside from Salazar, You-Know-Who's the last known wizard in Britain to use it in the last millennia."

"Merlin was a parselmouth, too," Harry complained.

"Yes, but Merlin was born in the seven hundreds, and most people regard him as the founder of our society," the blonde countered drily. "He could have destroyed Europe and most of Asia, and no one would care to remember."

"All hail Dark Lord Merlin," Harry huffed.

"It's funny you think you're joking."

Draco laughed a little giddily and led the way out of the dormitories.

The second-year potions class outwardly looked much the same as it had for first year, except it took place in the lab adjacent – Marked as Lab 1B on his schedule – and shelves of protective garments bordered the door at either side. Since he had already established himself as a deliverer of swift and often undeserved ire, Professor Snape also saw no need to make a grand, sweeping entrance. Rather, he stood at the centre of the room when the door finally swung open to admit his queuing students.

"Do not enter this room without an apron, eyewear, and dragonhide gloves. You need not don them right away," he thrummed in his cold baritone. "Unless you are a Hufflepuff, that is. Who knows what malady may befall you, otherwise?"

Hermione rolled her eyes at that and pointedly slung her gear over her arm before dragging Harry to sit by her at the rear left corner of the room. Most of her housemates weren't so brave, but to their surprise, the professor made no further comment until his students occupied their workbenches. He allowed the shuffling of parchment, books, and sundry for exactly two minutes before flicking his wand impatiently. Anything not stowed rapidly shoved itself into its owner's bag, which jerked from surprised hands to hang off the hooks edging each workbench.

"Now that you're finished," the professor murmured. "We shall begin with the perfunctory lecture on safety: If you don't have the common sense to follow directions, conduct yourself with constant self awareness, and maintain meticulous cleanliness, you will likely hurt yourself and your friends, and also earn my ire."

Most of the Slytherins laughed mutedly, and even Harry smiled a bit. He wondered whether he would have come to appreciate Snape's dry humour and endless sarcasm without frequent exposure to the man over the past year and summer. Most of the Hufflepuffs reacted with fear at his assertion, and contrary to popular belief, most were clever enough, so he thought not.

The rest of the lesson featured an overview of the term's syllabus, to include a refresher on the interactions and qualities of common potions ingredients, followed by short round of ingredient preparation for the next lesson.

"When we next meet, we shall begin class by observing the effects of different preparation methods on the properties of ashwinder scales," Snape said a few moments before the hour's conclusion. "Therefore, each of you will study these effects and create a chart cataloguing them for your personal reference. If you arrive without completing the assignment, you will receive no marks for the day. Your homework score will be weighted by your performance during the lesson."

He turned to reset the room for his next second-year lesson, and the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs departed in a haze of anxious disbelief.

"He's having us on," Hannah grumbled to Susan and Hermione. "Lulling us into a false sense of security so we panic when he goes back to that 'Instructions are on the board. You have an hour' nonsense."

Susan shrugged and Hermione grimaced.

"You're probably right about him messing us about," Harry offered lightly. "He's the type to enjoy driving you mad with anxiety over when he'll revert, but I think he may have adjusted his methods for the sake of his own sanity."

"Sorry," Susan quipped. "I thought you put 'sanity' and 'Severus Snape' in the same sentence. I think I can hear the former crying already."

"What is it with you and personifying non-beings?" the Slytherin complained.

"I'm just glad we only lost twenty points," Hermione wryly interjected. "Most of them even had almost valid reasoning behind them."

Several other Hufflepuffs made begrudging noises of agreement, and the houses split as they returned to the main floor, the Badgers for Transfiguration and the Snakes for Defence.

Harry shared a look with Draco when they entered the bright, airy classroom. The juvenile dragon skeleton, affectionately called 'Henry,' still hung from the ceiling like a bony, animated mobile. Innumerable drawings and diagrams of dangerous creatures still adorned the walls. The same badly damaged and scorched duelling dummies lay beneath the windows on the east side of the room; however, the new décor felt so awkward it managed to create an entirely foreign-feeling environment.

From every flat surface, the same face peered at the entering students. Lockharts dressed in garish, frilly, eighteenth century French-inspired robes of every colour and pattern winked, smiled, and waggled eyebrows at the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs. Kilat hissed anxiously in the pouch against Harry's collarbone.

"Human younglingsss' hormonesss are ssstrange," she complained. "It tastesss unpleasssant."

He shuddered a little at the thought. Draco smirked beside him and proceeded to mime one of the largest portraits, in which their parading professor seemingly bellowed while swinging a sword a too big for him. The figure wobbled dangerously upon his perch, constantly threatening to fall sideways out of the frame. Several of their housemates snickered, but Daphne rolled her eyes and dragged him to sit with her at the back of the room.

"Now that was a lovely memory!" a too-cheery voice crowed.

Draco and Blaise immediately took seats in the desk in front of theirs. They tried not to laugh while Lockhart, clad in periwinkle robes embroidered with silver embellishments over a white and silver frilly shirt, descended the curved stairs leading to his private apartments. Harry felt sorely tempted to send a low-powered banishing charm at the man's hair to check if it were real, so perfect were the golden curls.

"The painter, you see, decided he knew better than I how a hero should be depicted, but when I attempted to use my sword for the portrait – the very blade I used to slay the Werewolf of Maramures – the painter said it was too small," the professor elaborated. "He cast the engorgement charm a little overzealously, but he insisted it was the perfect size to represent the weight of my duty as a fighter against the dark forces."

Many of the girls in the class had taken on a dreamy look to their eyes, Hermione included, though Daphne and Tracy, Harry was glad to see, remained unimpressed.

"When he finished with the likeness, he felt badly about his mistake, but I found it so very entertaining, I decided to leave it as is. I do admit the weapon shines far more impressively upon my wall."

He flourished to the highly polished sword mounted on above his desk, which glinted so brightly Harry swore there must be a charm on it.

"Anyhow, I hope to have the time to tell you exactly how each of these portraits came to be as we explore, together, how to best fight dark creatures over the course of this term," Lockhart said as he strolled to the front of the classroom.

"I am, of course, Gilderoy Lockhart, five-time winner of Witch Weekly's most charming smile award, Order of Merlin, third class, and honorary member of the Dark Force Defence League."

He turned with a flourish of his cape, which he wore tied across his back over the ostentatious robe. Several of the girls, Pansy Parkinson and several Hufflepuffs Harry wasn't too familiar with, sighed in a way he could only describe as 'longing.' Daphne and Tracy, on the other hand, looked vaguely annoyed to those who could read their twitching brows and tapping fingers, respectively.

"Let's start with a little post-holiday exam to see how much you've read, so far. Nothing too difficult, I assure you! Completion marks and bonus points for every correct answer."

The class hummed either disapproval or excitement (in the case of some overeager Hufflepuffs and Parkinson), and it only got worse from there. He got a whiff of sickly-sweet vanilla tinged sandalwood as the professor passed and glared at the assignment.

He blinked, glanced at Daphne, and stared incredulously back at the parchment before him while shuffling announced his classmates' resignation to the three-page long assignment. After ensuring he'd read the questions correctly, he sat back in his chair only to find Draco wearing the same dumfounded expression he imaged for himself.

"What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite colour?" the blonde whispered. "Is he serious?"

"Have you read question fifty-four, yet?" Harry hissed back.

The prompt, written in crisp blackletter, asked:

What is Gilderoy Lockhart's ideal birthday gift?

A good portion of the classroom, aside form obvious fans whose quills scratched madly across their parchments, seemed to have fallen into a state of shock. Several whispered conversations later, everyone came to a consensus as to the assignment's veracity, so at the half-hour mark, Lockhart collected everyone's work, guaranteeing full marks for all.

It seemed the class had disagreed on how to answer; however, and as Lockhart began reading their answers aloud, the second-years quickly realised the remainder of class would be an exercise in self-control.

"Ah, here we go-" he waggled his brows in apparent anticipation. "Let's see how this one did."

Harry rolled his eyes as the professor's gaze turned to him.

"Harry, Harry, Harry…" he hummed to himself and scanned the form. "You'll have to study a lot harder to succeed in my class. For example, my perfect birthday gift is not, as you put it-"

The boy in question carefully kept his face blank. Across the room, a couple of the Hufflepuffs he was friendlier with, Sue Li and Anthony Goldstein, snickered behind their respective stacks of smiling, winking books.

"-To dance with a garters-and-lipstick-wearing unicorn under the full moon while a flock of swans serenade us in celebration of our…" the professor trailed off with a high, nervous laugh. "Anyhow, Harry, you would have found the answer if you had read chapter six of Gadding With Ghouls, where I clearly state my ideal present would be to have succeeded in my ambition to unite the muggles, magicals, and creatures in one peaceful society."

Hardly anyone heard his correction over the incredulous laughter.

"Similarly," he said once the guffaws at his expense (something Harry thought the professor must not have realised) had quieted. "My favourite pastime is experimental spell-making, particularly with work on those intended for healing and defensive purposes, not, as you said, 'raising up a lovely crop of dental floss'."

The giggles broke out anew, and only grew in volume as the Professor's patronising expression morphed around his uncontrollably moving lips, which seemed incapable of stopping the flood of nonsense suddenly pouring out of Lockhart in song.

"Movin' to Montana soon, gonna be a Dental Floss tycoon! Movin' to Montana soon, gona be a mennil-toss flykune-"

Harry breathed in and out through his nose and mentally sung the mirrored spelling of 'God Save the Queen' backwards in his head to avoid joining Justin Finch-Fletchley in paroxysms of laughter, which the Hufflepuff badly disguised as coughing.

"-Well I might ride along the border, with my tweezers gleaming in the moon-lighty night, and then I'd get a cuppa coffee 'N give my foot a push . . . Just me and the pygmy pony
over by the Dental Floss Bush-"

Eventually the bell rang, and Harry lazily collected his things with his friends, who had started singing along by the first repetition while Lockhart tried, red-faced, weak-chinned, and sweating around his nervously smiling, singing mouth, to undo the jinx that had inexplicably befallen him. A few people stayed behind and threw the Slytherins angry looks as they exited, but Harry couldn't bring himself to care after the complete waste of the last two hours of his life.

He only considered regretting the prank when a wide-eyed, excitable first-year boy interrupted the Slytherins' Charms lesson following lunch. He paused his practice of the scouring charm to glance at the interloper.

"Sorry, Professor Flitwick, Sir," the red and gold-trimmed boy chirped. "It's Professor Flitwick, right?"

The diminutive charms master stood on his omnipresent stack of books to smile in welcome.

"Indeed I am, Mr..?"

"Creevey, Professor," he offered. "Sorry for interrupting, but Professor Lockhart asked that I fetch you up for a little assistance. He said someone's managed to tag him with a babbling jinx on his way back from lunch, but one of the garden gnomes gnawed on his wand before he could take the time to come down between setting up for our lesson, you see."

"Garden gnomes?"

Draco couldn't hold back his guffaw when several of their classmates broke into giggles. Flitwick's wispy grey brows twitched. Harry jabbed his elbow in the boy's ribs.

"Er- So garden gnomes have prevented the professor from ending the enchantment," he summarised. "So he sent you to fetch me. Is that the whole of it, Master Creevey?"

The boy bobbed his head and grinned wider.

"Yes, Sir. Professor Lockhart didn't want to leave the others unattended, and I've already managed to fling five gnomes through the ring he set up, so he thought it best."

"Indeed," Flitwick sighed resignedly. "Very well. I'll be with him after I dismiss my second-years."

The door closed quietly, and the lesson continued beneath the professor's thoughtful gaze, which roved over his students more sharply than Harry felt comfortable with. The hour ended without further comment about Creevey's message; however, and Harry felt he might have gotten away with it. Never one to give away his guilt when he hadn't done anything actually harmful, he took his time gathering his books and was among the last to stroll from the room with his Hufflepuff and Slytherin friends. Just as he cleared the threshold, however, he caught Flitwick grinning out of the corner of his eye. The professor held the door open, winked, and squeakily whispered:

"Five points to Slytherin for an excellent example of advanced spellwork."

Harry swore he heard the professor humming the avant-garde melody later, during dinner.

He definitely noticed several students singing it, and by the accuracy of the lyrics, he realised there must have been more fans than he thought among his peers.

Rose smiled easily at her students, watching as they hesitantly filed into the room. Their eyes flitted around to evaluate their surroundings, and the newly minted educator thought she saw more approval than worry.

Before her arrival, the space reserved for the course previously known as Muggle Studies had not changed in nearly forty years, according to everyone she asked. Gone were the neat rows of old desks facing and the outdated display of matches, batteries, some plugs, and a rubber duck. In their place, the room's new mistress cultivated an entirely different atmosphere.

The windows, generally shut against the elements, stood open to let in late summer breezes. Long, rich umber curtains fluttered around each casement, and light flooded in to chase away even the persistent shadows that always clung to the vaulted arches overhead. A large, round carpet occupied the centre of the room, around which several bean bags and floor cushions sat in a riot of warm colours and shapes. A large, flat, black panel hovered to the side of the arrangement of seating, and the non-magically savvy recognised it as a screen by the series of little blue lights blinking lazily on its edge. A mechanism with a lot of gears and cogs sat beneath it, and a tangle of multicoloured wires connected them. The slate remained at the head of the room, but Rose had painstakingly lettered its surface with multicoloured paint markers until it resembled an attractively old-fashioned looking ad from the earlier twentieth century.

Welcome to the Study of Non-Magical Cultures!

A stylised rendering of a hand pointed to the other side of the board, which read:

Class Goal: To understand what separates Muggle and Magical Society.

"Come on in," the redhead invited, grinning at the kids' faces and ruefully recalling how she had always felt about school at their age.

Not long ago, even after travelling time and space, she would have laughed if anyone told her she'd end up teaching, nevertheless that she'd have the qualifications to do it.

"Take a seat wherever you like. I imagine this class is going to be very different from how you remember it, those of you who've been here before."

A Ravenclaw boy raised his hand and grinned sheepishly.

"We're all third-years, Professor. So none of us had Muggle Studies. It's just not what we were expecting from what upper-years have told us."

Rose nodded her acknowledgment and took a quick visual survey of their house colours: Ravenclaws represented the majority, and the rest seemed evenly dispersed.

"Well, that's probably going to be the norm for this year," she quipped, beaming around at them all. "I'm Professor Smith, but since there are two of us running around, you can call me Professor Rose, or you can call my husband The Doctor, because that's what he went by in his last position. Anyway-"

No one said anything.

"O.K. Right. This is going to be extremely boring if we don't establish some familiarity, and my husband's going to take the Mickey out of me if he hears that's the case, so let's try this. Let's everyone go around the room, introduce ourselves for my sake and one another's, in case you haven't been introduced."

She smoothed a few flyaway hairs back from her face and shed her outer robe to put her hands on her hips. Her green eyes surveyed glinted a bit in protest against the post-lunch lethargy permeating her students.

"So again, I'm Rose Smith," she repeated. "I enjoy dancing, jazz, and travelling. Before this, I worked at the ministry in Law Enforcement for the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office. Before that, I did consulting work for the non-magical government to help keep the general public unaware of how often odd things happen."

She grinned to herself at the purposeful misdirection and swept her gaze over the uncertain teenagers. When no one volunteered, she raised a brow and glanced to the girl on her left.

"E-Edgecombe, ma'am," the girl stuttered. "Marietta Edgecombe."

"And what's something you wouldn't mind sharing about yourself?"

"Pardon, Professor?" Marietta frowned.

Rose smiled at her expectantly.

"For example, what's your favourite pastime? Mine's travelling."

"Well," she began nervously. "My grandmother taught me to knit, and I've always enjoyed it, but I also like to read."

"I'm glad to have you, Marietta. Who's next?"

One by one, each student introduced him or herself, and by the time they reached the last person, everyone had quite relaxed into their chosen bean bags or floor cushions.

"Excellent," Rose hummed, clapping her hands together. "So, I've been reading through the syllabi and materials of the previous professors, and I'm very sad to say the materials that've been available to you are all really, really out-of-date. By that I mean they're off by almost a hundred years."

Several students groaned.

"But I've got my older brother's text!" a Slytherin complained.

Rose shrugged.

"Sorry, Miss Meads, and anyone else who falls into this category, but you'll have to purchase or borrow a copy of this year's text. I requested it myself both at Flourish and Blotts and at Tomes and Scrolls, but for those of you comfortable with it, I've also got some order forms for a Glasgow shop called Aye-Aye Books. I've set it up so the U.K. Owl Postal Service will make sure you get what you need. They also sell our text for less than ten pounds, or compared to the six galleons for the one on our end. See me if you've got questions."

That put most of the grumbling to rest, especially for the Ravenclaw students. Rose smiled and strode to the floating screen.

"I'm sure you've seen the class goal on the board, and I want you to consider your thoughts on the issue while we go through this first demonstration for the term," she began, calling their attention to the device only a few of them recognised. "What is it, really, that separates non-magical from magical?"

She crouched and twisted off the little cap on the reservoir connected to the device beneath the screen.

"Does anyone know what petrol is?"

A Hufflepuff hesitantly raised her hand.

"Miss MacAvoy?" Rose asked. "Heidi, right?"

"Yes, ma'am. Isn't it sort of like liquid firewood or coal?"

Rose grinned as she poured a beaker of shimmery yellowish fluid into the reservoir.

"Right you are. It's a fuel made from very, very old carbon, like coal. That forms when wood's compressed and aged for millennia, and people mine it with machinery from underground. It's a significant source of fuel for most non-magicals the world over. Petrol is a refined version of oil, which goes under a similar process, but comes from mixed animal and plant matter. Non-magical people drill for it, and they refine it to get this stuff."

"So, you burn it?" Zacharias Smith grunted.

"Kind of. If you just light it on fire, you could actually end up blowing yourself up. It's really volatile, so non-magicals figured out how to make more efficient use of it," Rose explained. "Everyone knows how steam power works, right?"

She saw nods all around.

"While wizards and witches use magic to sustain fires to heat water for steam-powered mechanics, non-magical people use petrol or coal. The same principles used in making gears turn to move pistons eventually led to the invention of the modern combustion engine," she began, gesturing at her device. "This is an electrical generator, and it's going to channel electricity by burning the petrol, which we'll spark by pulling this cord. The reaction created when we burn teeny drops of petrol will turn a mechanism sort of like a turbine inside. Scientists figured out that they could use the manipulation of magnetism this way to channel electricity."

Rose capped the reservoir and pulled hard on a little red handle protruding from the generator. The machine made a grating sound and sputtered. She yanked again, a little faster, and with her second attempt the machine came to life. It began huffing and vibrating subtly, and the students leaned in. Some recoiled a little from the smell the petrol made.

The woman grinned at their reactions and pushed one of the little lights on the far edge of the screen. Soon, no one paid any attention to the generator, too absorbed in the video explaining the intimate workings of its internal parts. Rose sat among her students while the video talked about the inner workings of the generator, and how generators across the world to powered televisions, cars, homes, and more. Thirty minutes later, the students looked more uncertain than before.

"Can I clarify anything?" Rose invited innocently, sitting at the edge of the circle, nearest the buzzing generator.

"How is that at all possible," Zacharias Smith demanded. "I mean, Muggles are clever enough, I suppose, but how can they even figure that out without magic?"

"I was hoping you'd ask," she smiled, cutting through his frustration. "I've been talking to the headmaster and my son over the last year, and I have a proposition for all my classes. I know you've all been told a lot of things about non-magical people, so here's what I was thinking-"

She paused, played with a few buttons on the side of the screen again, and a new image flashed into being. An air ship smoothly took off from a beautiful green lawn to sail gracefully into the sky. The scene cut to a tour of the cabin, where a pretty stewardess led the camera crew further into the airship while pointing out the amenities.

"I'm sure you've seen these in the sky every now and again. It's a favourite in non-magical leisure transportation," she elaborated. "How many of you would like to ride in one?"

An excited murmur swept the third-years, and she saw curiosity if not interest on most of their faces.

"I intend to give you that opportunity. For fall term, we're going to focus on sciences and mechanics, which have allowed non-magical people to achieve not only the control of electricity, but flight and space exploration. If you all perform well enough in discussions and on your quizzes, you'll be invited to join me for an out-of-school excursion in a zeppelin reserved just for our use. You won't be required to attend, and you will need a parent or guardian's permission to leave school grounds, but it would give you an extra edge on your exams just because you'll have practical experience in everything we'll be discussing."

No one protested outright, so she stood and grabbed a box from her desk. She passed a slim, canvas-covered binder to each student. The kids with exposure to non-magical office supplies eagerly opened them up and flipped through the contents.

"Since I knew some of you might not have the text, yet, I've given you all some sections from a non-magical sciences primer. Please read chapter one and complete the exercises inside. I will be quizzing you next class, and your overall performance in class will weigh on your homework averages," she warned lightly. "I also believe in teamwork, so if everyone does especially well, I'll be inclined to give out rewards. Also-"

She paused to pass around a box of biros.

"I'll give a point to every person who can explain how this works after reading the chapter. You can turn that bit in on paper or parchment. I'll collect them at the start of class."

The bell rang, and the kids clamoured to make it to their next hour with mumbled thank-yous and other greetings thrown over their shoulders. The time traveller expelled a long, cleaning breath and grinned at the thought she might be rather good at teaching.

"History. History."

Thirty-some blank faces stared back at the Doctor as he paced in front of his desk, the tail of his brown robes billowing a bit in his wake. He idly wondered if he could get away with just his duster, but quickly dismissed the idea as a bad job.

"History, history, history, his-stor-ee…"

The professor paused and blinked.

"Why do I always do that? Never mind. Moving on – " he spun on his heel, grinned at his students, and tucked his hands into his pockets in one smooth motion. "Hello everyone. I'm the Doctor, which I think should cause less confusion all around, but you can also call me Professor Smith or Mr Rose Smith if you prefer."

Several students laughed.

"Don't knock it. It may very well happen to you one day, if you're lucky. Well, assuming you like that sort of thing. Well, if you've got a good personality or you're especially good looking. Well, sometimes even without either, hormones being what they are."

The few students who had been doodling or whispering side conversations had all turned their attention to him at that point, so he quickly determined he shouldn't waste the opportunity he'd been given.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," he advised seriously. "Anyway, we're here to learn about wizarding history, and I'm told my predecessor, the honourable Mr Binns, liked to discuss the Goblin Wars, is that right?"

He observed a range of reactions sweep his audience, but the most pronounced stemmed from complaints.

"What year is this?"

"Fourth year, sir," a red-headed twin with a multitude of freckles volunteered. "Not that it really matters."

"If you like, Professor," said his brother. "You can just let us have a kip."

"Never!" the Doctor crowed.

With that, the professor turned with an impressively dramatic flourish to catch the edge of the freestanding blackboard. The spinning slate spun and stopped in a position perpendicular to its original orientation to reveal a map of the UK. The rendering shivered until it crisply projected a three-dimensional topographical model rising smoothly from the slate's surface. A great creaking filled the class as everyone leaned forward in their seats.

"My dear friends," the Doctor began, "You've been horribly wronged. You've been led to believe history is this stagnant, dusty old thing! That times past have no relevance to the world around you today, and if you haven't got that message, you've been discouraged from learning more.

"History is fun!" he boomed, eyes manic and hands gesticulating excitedly. "Amazing! And I'm going to show you."

The Doctor grinned widely and prodded the hologram with his sonic wand, what Rose called 'unholy amalgamation of wizardry and technology'. The image obligingly shifted to zoom in on London until the city sparkled impressively before the class in all its glory.

"Everyone stand up!" he commanded, popping the 'p'.

The class hastily scrambled from their seats, and a sweep of his wand had the desks, chairs, and the students' belongings neatly sorted against the walls. Another couple of taps disconnected the swivelling slate from its stand and guided it to the centre of the room, where he proceeded to enlarge it until the students barely managed to stand around its edges.

The projection filled the room with such vibrance and opacity it was hard to believe the street before them was an illusion, at all. The kids goggled, amazed as they watched tiny people, horses, and carts traverse the city's streets.

"It is the twentieth of June, 1215. Not quite a week ago, King John of England was forced to sign the Magna Carta at the Water Meadow at Runnymeade, but what most Barons failed to realize was John had no intention of following through because-"

The Doctor paused to examine their faces expectantly.

"Because?" he prompted.

A Hufflepuff boy blinked and frowned.

"…Because the Goblins had bribed the muggle king in exchange for muggle-owned lands after their rebellion?"

"Who are you?" the Doctor asked.

"Cedric Diggory, Professor," the boy said with a modest sort of smile.

The Doctor immediately approved of his manner and enthusiasm.

"Mr Diggory, you get ten points for volunteering and for remembering anything that idiot said – I mean, who in their right mind keeps a ghost on as staff?"

The twins snickered at that, as did several others.

"-But no, you're completely wrong. Well, he was completely wrong. You're just misled. It's very clear in your text, and in history, what really went on. The thing the Barons didn't realize was that John had a court wizard."

A girl raised her hand in the Doctor's periphery, but he waggled his brows at her and grinned.

"Yeah, I know – What was a wizard doing working for a non-magical king? But remember the date: The Statute of Secrecy wasn't signed until 1689. The Wizengamot, however, has existed in some form since the early ten hundreds," he rattled off. "After William the Conquer skipped out on Normandy and earned his epithet in 1066, he officially gathered the wisest scholars and nobles he could muster and created a council. This included the body that would later become the Wizengamot in addition to the non-magical house of lords, later turned into the Royal Congress, and more recently, the elected Congress for the United Democratic Kingdom of Greater Britain. William's court wizard was a Sir Armond Malfoy, who very helpfully formed the first council of wizards.

"And who wouldn't want a court wizard?" he suggested. "The tradition carried on, as you see-"

The scene changed to show a richly clothed king clasping arms with a man draped in deep burgundy robes.

"Until Lord Heston Godelot won the appointment," the Doctor continued, gesturing to the latter. "Godelot adored power. He enjoyed the power he had over the wizard council, and under the Magna Carta, the council members' influence would go up while his would fade to something much more reasonable for the average, well-adjusted man. The way he saw it, the Magna Carta undermined his leadership of the council, because the vows he'd have to take would force him only to advise the king based on the council's consensus. You see Godelot's problem?"

"But there was definitely a Goblin rebellion that year," protested one of the Hufflepuffs, flipping through his textbook. "It says so right here."

"Yes. But if you go to page 129," the Doctor quickly retorted. "You'll see it was Godelot who betrayed the Council of Wizards and the Great Council, which would become the modern Congress, when he promised the Goblins – falsely, of course – that King John would grant them their own sovereign soil if they agreed to go to war for him."

"But…" a girl said slowly, frowning as Godelot met with goblin warriors in the projection.

"Yes, miss-"

"Stimpton, Sir. Sally Stimpton. The Magna Carta was a basis of just treatment under the law. Why would the goblins-"

"The language only included any freeman," the Doctor reminded her drily. "And that's what Godelot used to persuade the Goblins to fight for John. Thus, the first Goblin Rebellion began."

The scene shifted again, exchanged for one of absolute horror. The Doctor grimly looked around at his students who gasped and shied from the violence so poorly represented in their previous decades-old text. Wizards, soldiers, and goblins fought bitterly across a gore-strewn landscape. For the first time since he started the lecture, sound accompanied the action in a sustained roar of fear and anger not quite drowned beneath the cacophony of sizzling spells clashing steel. With a delicate touch, he carefully blurred the worst of war's visceral truths from their view. The bodies fell, and blood flew everywhere, but he spared them the disembowelments, compound breaks, and severed limbs. Even so, the effect was enough. With a pang, he noted tears in some of their wide eyes.

"This was the result," he said more gently. "Wizards, non-wizards, kids, and goblins fighting because petty little men wanted power, the goblins – poor fools – caught up in it because of a lie."

He allowed the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs to watch in utterly silent awe and horror for several minutes while the scene played out until, gratefully, it faded and two figures stood at the centre of the blurred carnage carpeting the now quiet field.

"Enter Robin of Shrewsbury, better known as Robin, son of Baron Robert Locksly of Sherwood, or also as 'Robin Hood.' He was a young man who had been born to a talented witch and his non-magical but ennobled father. Both died, that day, defending their village from King John's might. He'd just had their bodies removed from the battlefield and was looking for other faces he recognised when he came upon a lone goblin wandering the muck."

Robin raised his sword, grief and fury etched into his face. The smaller figure turned, Robin's swing halted before it could strike, and the class gasped.

"That's a-"

"Girl!" George finished for his twin.

"No," the Doctor reprimanded. "She's a goblin warrioress. Hedwig Curved-Claw. She was a future matriarch, a princess, if you will. It was her brothers that'd been wrongfully tricked into this war with the hope of freedom from the humans' harassment and persecution."

He paused while Robin of Shrewsberry steadied his weapon and approached the goblin. She glared fiercely at the young man who held a blade to her throat. Her own hand curved around the handle of a wicket axe strapped across her back.

"Now imagine," the professor urged. "You've just lost your family. You probably saw it happen, or saw the aftermath. You're furious! Horribly sad! But more than that, you want it to stop."

Robin withdrew his blade and slumped heavily onto his knees in the muck. The goblin's snarl relaxed as she eyed the human's behaviour with unveiled interest.

"But these two were special! They recognized killing each other wouldn't solve anything. And they were smart enough to see why it was happening. So, they made a revolutionary decision that would change our world forever."

The image winked out, the curtains shading the windows slid back, and the students blinked about in confusion at the sudden luminescence and abrupt end to the intense lecture.

"For homework," the Doctor instructed, "You will read pages 900 and 901, the Magna Carta, in its entirety. Make notes. If you're interested, there's a biography for Robin Hood and his friend, Hedwig, on 143, where you can read what happened in brief. We'll pick up there for our next lesson."

The bell rang. School bags, books, and belongings found their owners, and a slightly shell-shocked group of students retreated from their first experience with the Doctor for other, duller, lessons.

"Well," he said to himself as he re-shrunk the board and returned it to its stand. "Not too bad for a first day's lesson."