Monday, 30 August – Wednesday, 1 September 1993

Hogwarts

The first few days of the new school year passed incredibly quickly. There were new elective classes on Monday and Tuesday, as well as a return to the core classes of previous years. Between these, Mary found herself dodging an increasingly irritable Marcus Flint, who wanted a straight answer as to whether she would be available for Quidditch trials on the second Saturday of term, and an increasingly curious Lilian, who very clearly still wanted to talk about the fact that Mary had apparently been hiding the information that she had been on first-name terms with Snape all summer. Lessons began on Monday without delay, heedless of the presence of dementors around the castle, the presence of a muggleborn in Slytherin, and the fact that Mary quite suddenly felt that she needed an extra week or two of vacation before dealing with her ever-more-complicated social life.

The class which Mary was most and least looking forward to was Remus' Defense Against the Dark Arts. Most, because she just knew that Remus would be a good teacher – she could tell from his letters that he was good at explaining things, and after seven years of adventuring, he definitely knew his stuff. Least, because none of the other Slytherins knew that, and after Quirrell and Lockhart, they weren't too keen on the idea of yet another potentially worthless professor. It had been Tracey, of all people, who had proposed on Monday at breakfast, while looking over their new schedules, that they ought to test him a bit in his first lesson, and in a rare moment of intra-Slytherin unity, Blaise and Malfoy had both agreed.

Remus had decided to break up their first lessons, so that he could get to know the students in smaller groups. The Hufflepuffs were excused from their first meeting of the year. This was considered by most of the Slytherins to be a good first move, especially since it meant they had an extra free period themselves later in the week. Unfortunately for Remus, without the Hufflepuffs to serve as a buffer, the Slytherins would be free to do their worst to the new Professor. Fortunately for the new professor, since the Slytherins were scheduled to have DADA first out of all the third-years, on Monday morning, they had no idea what their first lesson would entail.

The plan, therefore, was fairly simple: Blaise had volunteered at once to play the obnoxious student and see how many buttons he could push. Everyone else would help out as they saw an opportunity arise. Mary had a bad feeling about the whole situation, but she reluctantly decided to just sit back and let things unfold. After all, Remus was a professor. He would have to figure out how to deal with students sooner or later, and warning him about this plot was a sure way to make sure she would be excluded from any others. Besides, it wasn't as though she had much time, anyway.

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The Slytherins filed into the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom nearly fifteen minutes before their first lesson was scheduled to begin. Remus was already there. Mary wondered exactly what Blaise was planning as she watched Remus – No, Professor Lupin – shuffle his notes and the class settled into their seats. He looked even more tired and raggedy than he had on the train. The classroom was undecorated, and there was a large trunk standing on its end in one corner.

Remus cleared his throat and Pansy and Millicent – the only students still speaking – finally quietened. "Hello," he said. His voice was just as unexpectedly confident as the first time Mary had heard him, back in her first year, despite his obvious exhaustion. Even Blaise and Draco sat up a bit straighter, looking at the scruffy, clearly-ill wizard before them with interest. "My name is Remus Lupin, and this is Defense Against the Dark Arts." He took roll quickly, fixing names to the faces before him. "I think you'll find this class even more informal than most, this year. I'm not one for standing on ceremony myself.

"Due to the unfortunate nature of this position, I'm sure you'll have realized by now, each of the professors attempts to teach all years something that is their own specialty, and then fills in the curriculum gaps as they can for the OWL and NEWT students. We'll be focusing on Dark creatures this term, through Class Three.

"If you'll all stand and join me at the front of the room, I thought we'd start with a practical lesson."

There was much murmuring as the Slytherins stood and shuffled forward, mostly to the effect that clearly no one had told poor Lupin how their last practical lesson had gone.

As Vinnie and Greg passed the last row of desks, Lupin banished them with a wave of his wand. The tables and chairs flew to the back wall and stacked themselves neatly. Another wave and the students' bags followed them, settling gently on the floor. The students spread out into the newly open space, their two usual cliques gravitating away from each other.

"Today," the professor said blandly, ignoring the looks his casual display of highly controlled, coordinated, wordless magic gathered, "we will be studying a boggart." He motioned toward the trunk in the corner as the students shifted restlessly. "Who here can tell me what a boggart is?"

No one seemed inclined to volunteer, though Mary was certain someone knew. If it came to it, she knew. It was in their textbooks, and at least half the Slytherins were the sort to read ahead, especially in the DADA text. Draco stepped forward after a long moment. "It's a minor demon. A shape-shifting, class two-X Dark creature, capable of reproduction on our plane. It takes the shape of whatever it thinks will scare you the most."

"Excellent. Five points to Slytherin for Mr. Malfoy. Now, since the boggart is a shapeshifter, and its shape is dependent on our fears, it will not have assumed a form in the trunk. When I let it out, it will immediately become whatever each of us most fears.

"This means that we have a huge advantage over the boggart before we begin. Can anyone tell me what it is? Somebody other than Mr. Malfoy," he added, as Draco opened his mouth again.

"We know we're facing a boggart," Blaise drawled with a smirk, hands tucked casually into his pockets. "So we can decide ahead of time what we want it to turn into."

Remus frowned slightly. "Not quite. Someone else?"

"It will have to choose which of us to try to frighten?" Lilian suggested, ignoring Blaise's scowl, either at being told he was wrong, or that Remus had done it so deftly. He would obviously have to try a bit harder to fluster the former Marauder.

"Correct! Five points for Miss Moon. Now, the greatest weakness of a boggart is that it must focus on one person to be effective. For this reason, it is always best to have company when you are dealing with one. It will become confused, or be forced to shift between targets as they draw its attention in turn. For example, should it become a headless corpse or a flesh-eating slug? I once saw a boggart make that very mistake – tried to frighten two people at once and turned into half a slug. Not remotely frightening."

Remus paused for the students to giggle at the image of half a slug (or even a full slug) trying to scare someone. Blaise used the opportunity to grumble to Daphne, something about the greatest weakness of a boggart really being suggestibility, not numbers. Theo elbowed him and hissed for him to shut up, but it was already too late.

"I heard that, Mr. Zabini. Since you are so eager to share your knowledge of our subject, perhaps you would like to be our first volunteer…?" It very clearly wasn't a question. Blaise stepped forward with a put-upon sigh, so that he was closest to the trunk. Mary couldn't help but think that Remus was playing right into Blaise's hands, even if she didn't know quite what her fellow Slytherin was planning. "Excellent." Lupin turned back to the rest of the class and continued lecturing. "The charm that repels a boggart is simple, yet it requires force of mind. You see, the thing that really finishes a boggart is laughter. What you need to do is force it to assume a shape that you find amusing."

Mary caught Blaise rolling his eyes and shaking his head behind the professor's back. Daphne was glaring at him as though she could stop him from doing exactly what he wanted by force of will alone. Theo edged up between Daphne and Mary and murmured, just loudly enough for Mary to hear, "Relax, Daph. You know he's more than a match for a boggart."

"That's not what I'm worried about, and you know it," she hissed back.

Lilian, Draco, and Pansy looked over at this. Remus raised an eyebrow. "Am I disturbing your discussion?"

"No, sir," Daphne and Theo chorused. Mary took a small step away from Daphne. Blaise was grinning from behind Remus now, his eyes sparkling with suppressed mirth.

"Right, then. We'll practice the spell without wands first. The incantation is riddikulus."

"Riddikulus!" the Slytherins repeated obediently.

"Good. Very good. But that was the easy part, I'm afraid. You see, the word alone is not enough. And this is where you come in, Mr. Zabini."

"Oh, joy," Blaise muttered sarcastically, and got an eyebrow-raise for his trouble.

"Right, Mr. Zabini," Remus said, "First thing's first: what would you say is the thing that frightens you most in the world?"

"Daphne glaring at me as though she's going to strangle me after class," he said promptly, with a confident smirk.

Remus glowered at the boy. "You would do well to take this seriously, Mr. Zabini."

"I am… deadly serious," Blaise said, in a fair imitation of Professor Snape, then nodded toward his friend. "Look, she's wringing my invisible neck, now."

Daphne was, indeed, making suspicious hand motions, though she stopped when the professor turned to look at her.

Remus sighed, obviously resigning himself to an unsuccessful demonstration. "Very well. And how will you make… angry boggart Daphne… look amusing?"

"I suppose I could dye her hair red and gold again, like the Weasleys did last year."

"You're dead to me, Zabini," Daphne said coldly. She had spent three hours with Gryffindor-striped hair, on the day of the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match. Mary had missed it, between her first-game nerves before the match and her stay in the hospital wing after, but it was well-known that she had contrived to have the Weasleys hexed by a few older Ravenclaws over that little incident. They hadn't tried it again, and most Slytherins knew better than to bring it up.

Remus ignored her, which Mary thought might have been a mistake. "Right. So you will concentrate hard on the image of Daphne with dyed hair. You will raise your wand – thus –" he demonstrated the wand motion, "and cry riddikulus, and if all goes well, angry boggart Daphne will be forced to assume the Gryffindor colors." He shot an apologetic look at the girl, who didn't spare him even a second of her glare. "If," the professor cautioned, "all does not go well, and the boggart assumes an unexpected shape, step back at once, and allow me to take over."

"Yes, sir, of course," Blaise replied, confident smirk still in place.

"Now, if Mr. Zabini is successful, the boggart is likely to shift its attention to each of us in turn. I would like all of you to take a moment now to think of the thing that scares you most, and how you might force it to look comical."

Mary's first thought was the smirking, teenaged Riddle, his expression so like Blaise's, but she quickly thought of the Basilisk, and then Quirrellmort's mutated skull, and Sirius Black hunting her down, and then…

A rotting, glistening hand, slithering back beneath a black cloak… a long, rattling breath from an unseen mouth… a cold so penetrating that it felt like drowning…

Dementors. They were definitely the scariest thing she could think of.

She looked around, wondering how long they had left. Remus was helping Vinnie and Greg on the other side of the room. "What's yours?" she whispered to Lilian.

"Sean telling me I'm just a burden to him, I think," she said, very quietly. "I'm going to make his voice break like it used to when he was our age, if it comes after me. You?"

"Dementors. How do you make a dementor funny?"

"Pink robes and a migraine," Theo suggested.

"Give it Gilderoy Lockhart's hair, too," Lilian added. "What's yours, Theo?"

"Blaise in a snit after Daphne tears him a new arsehole after class," he whispered.

"Alright, what do you two know that we don't?" Mary asked.

"Oh, so many things, Potter."

"It's the Dark Arts approach to dealing with boggarts," Daphne said with a dismissive sniff. "You'll see. Blaise keeps one of these things as a pet, the sick bastard."

"And what's yours, Miss I don't do Dark Arts where people can see me?" Theo asked scornfully.

"Blaise's mum when she finds out he's been showing off," she suggested with a vindictive scowl in the direction of the boy in question.

Theo shivered. "Yeah, okay, that's a good one."

"Everyone ready?" Remus called. Everyone nodded.

"Finally," Blaise drawled.

"On the count of three, then," Remus pointed his wand at the trunk. "One… two… three… now!"

The lid swung open, and a copy of Daphne crawled out, her features an absolute parody of murderous rage. "I'm going to kill you, Zabini," it growled. Remus looked slightly surprised that it had actually taken the expected form.

Blaise just raised a bored eyebrow at it, then turned to address the class in his most pompous tone. "Note, the boggart has taken the first form it found in my mind associated with the emotion fear. It is not especially difficult to associate different images with this emotion. For example, if I convince myself I am more afraid of inferi…" The boggart shifted behind the boy with a crack like a bad apparition to look like a rotting zombie. "Or, say, the basilisk that was purportedly roaming the school last year…" There was another crack, and an enormous snake appeared, poised behind him, ready to strike. It looked nothing like the basilisk, but Mary supposed that was because Blaise didn't really know what a basilisk looked like. "The boggart will shift accordingly. It is more difficult to make it shift to something that you're actually less afraid of, which is why you use the riddikulus spell."

He turned around to face the boggart and waved his wand negligently in its general direction. "Riddikulus!" It transformed with a loud crack into a tiny black kitten. Blaise picked it up by the scruff of the neck before explaining to the class: "Riddikulus forces the boggart to shift to the shape you determine. It doesn't have to be especially funny. In fact," he added with a mischievous glint in his eye, "if you don't laugh at it and force it away, you can capture it while it's disoriented. Nott, Malfoy, either of you up for a round of Timore?"

"No," Remus interrupted before either of the other boys could answer, his calm tone at odds with the sharp look in his eye.

"But –"

"No buts, you're done."

"I was just going to –"

"I know perfectly well what you were just going to, and I know how Timore Maxime always ends, and I need that boggart for the Ravenclaw class as well, so hand it over. You're done."

"Fine!" Blaise dropped the kitten and stalked back to the sidelines of the classroom. As soon as he was further from it than Remus, the boggart turned into a glowing white orb with a sharp crack.

Remus banished it back to its trunk while he addressed the students. He was obviously angry – enough that he no longer looked nearly as tired – but he kept his temper well, speaking sharply, but not yelling. "The method Mr. Zabini just demonstrated is a more advanced technique for dealing with boggarts, and is widely used when dealing with captured or bound boggarts. Bound boggarts are directed by their masters and are much more difficult to defeat than the standard free boggart, which you are far more likely to encounter throughout your lives. Bound boggarts are class four-X. If we make sufficient progress this term, we may move on to class four and other wizard directed creatures next term, but at this rate, I shouldn't count on it.

"Bound boggarts are most commonly used as a training tool for Occlumency by certain Old Families, so they are a relatively low priority for defense purposes. They are also, as I do believe Mr. Zabini offered to demonstrate, used in a particularly cruel game called Timore Maxime." The former Marauder's level gaze raked over the students, looking for signs of recognition at the name. "I will leave Mr. Nott, Mr. Malfoy… and, yes, I think Miss Greengrass too, to explain it to you later, if they so choose. Mr. Zabini, see me after class.

"Completely aside from the legal issues of allowing a student to demonstrate Shadowmancy for the class – and make no mistake, the Chains of Erebus is Shadowmancy, even if you are using it as a parlor trick or for children's games – this class is Defense Against the Dark Arts, not Dark Arts and Defense, and we are at Hogwarts, not Durmstrang, so I will not be allowing students to pretend at being dark wizards during our lessons." Blaise snorted. "You have something to add, Mr. Zabini?"

Faced with a clearly-irritated professor who equally-clearly knew what he was talking about, Blaise evidently decided that not saying whatever he was thinking was the most intelligent option. "No, sir." He even took a step back and dropped the professor's gaze first.

Remus glared at the Italian boy, but was quickly distracted as Draco asked the question that was on everyone's (or at least, apparently, his as well as Mary's) minds: "How do you know about that game?"

Mary was rather surprised that Remus answered. "Someone I once considered a friend taught me when we were your age." His tone was so dark that no one dared ask a follow-up question about who that former friend might have been – though Mary strongly suspected it was Sirius Black – and after a moment, the professor continued his lecture.

"Well, now that the kneazle's out of the bag, so to speak, I suppose I'd better explain the reasoning behind this exercise, otherwise it will never work.

"As Mr. Zabini demonstrated, if one is sufficiently capable of controlling one's emotions, it is simple enough to trick a boggart into transforming into something you are scared of, but which will not leave you incapacitated with fear. Most students, however, even in Slytherin, do not have such control, and so it is standard practice to prime children who are strangers to the boggart by informing them that it will take the shape of their worst fear, and ask them to focus on a single fear and methods to counter it immediately before releasing the boggart.

"It is not recommended to advise children to actually try to think of their greatest fear. For example, I am certain that at least half of you fear familial disapproval far more than you fear whatever monsters you have been thinking of, were you to truly think about it. After all, an inferius can be set on fire. Lady Narcissa Malfoy's expression of utter disappointment cannot."

Draco flushed at this. Mary cringed, recalling Emma Granger's howler. She might not be Mary's mother, but the idea of being a disappointment to her still stung.

"Once you have faced a boggart, any subsequent boggarts you face are more likely to take the same shape, as it is engrained in your subconscious as your 'worst fear,' even if you are intellectually aware that there are things you truly fear more. For example, if you feared the basilisk Mr. Zabini showed, and the boggart took that form, you would associate that form with boggarts in the future, rather than, for example, your dearest friend lying lifeless on the ground."

At least half the class shuffled uncomfortably at that.

"Now, however, it is far too late for that." Mary could have sworn there was a hint of reluctance, or maybe resignation, under Remus' stern tone, which made her rather nervous. "I could not in good conscience allow you all to address what you thought was the most likely form for your boggart, while subconsciously second-guessing your 'worst' fears. It is always better to do so consciously. And now that you are all consciously and explicitly aware of how the boggart works, you must face it, the sooner the better, because, I am sorry to say, worst fears tend to become progressively traumatic as one ages and has more experience with the horrors of the world, not to mention you are more likely to think of worse fears the longer you have to dwell on it."

"Does that mean we're still going to do it today?"

"Yes, Miss Bulstrode, that is exactly what it means. Now, in case it was unclear, the purpose of this exercise is to drive the boggart off, not to capture it or force it to discorporate. You will each have one chance to force it into a different shape. I will call you forward in turn, and – yes, Miss Parkinson?"

"Can we do it in private?" Pansy asked, sounding uncharacteristically subdued.

Remus hesitated. "It is commonly thought that facing your boggart in public helps to lay the fear it echoes to rest, so I would not recommend it, but… I suppose. If there is anyone who does not want their boggart seen by the rest of the class, you may come and face it after dinner."

"Thank you, sir."

"Anyone else want their privacy?"

Vinnie and Tracey raised their hands.

"Right, and who has experience with boggarts? Zabini, Nott, Malfoy?"

All three boys nodded. They could hardly deny it after Blaise had asked them to play that game. Daphne also reluctantly raised her hand. "And me, sir."

"Okay, so that leaves… Bulstrode, Goyle, Moon, and Potter who have never faced one, and will do so now?" Mary nodded along with the others. "Right, then, I'll call you up in that order. Greengrass, Malfoy, and Nott can have a turn after that. Crabbe, Davis, and Parkinson, I'll expect you at my office by seven-thirty this evening. Mind you keep well back while it's out.

"Bulstrode, front and center."

Millie walked forward rather reluctantly to stand in front of the trunk. When Remus spelled it open, a horrible caricature of her crawled out: fat, ugly and misshapen. The girl backed away from the twisted vision of herself before closing her eyes and shouting riddikulus at the top of her voice. With a crack, the boggart's features shifted, the hair becoming lighter as the body shrank to become a parody of a dwarf on teeny, tiny feet, rather than a trollish hulk.

Millicent let out a bark of harsh laughter at whomever the boggart was now pretending to be, and it recoiled.

"Goyle!"

The boy advanced, and the boggart shifted with another crack to become an older, taller boy, who looked like he might have been Greg's brother. He unbuttoned his robes slowly and reached a hand inside his trousers, fondling himself. It took Greg longer than Millie to react, but when he finally did, the boggart's clothes vanished, and the boy flushed, recoiling and trying to hide himself as Greg laughed hollowly. Draco and Vinnie clapped him on the back as he retreated.

"Moon!"

Lilian shuffled forward, looking very much as though she would have preferred to be anywhere else. Mary just had time to wonder if it would still be the expected – and entirely horrible – form of her brother rejecting her, with it shifted with a crack to become Aerin, lying on the ground, her neck obviously broken. Lilian hesitated, her eyes filling with tears.

"It's not real, Lils!" Mary shouted at her from the sidelines.

"R-riddikulus!" Lilian choked out, and with a crack, the boggart became a marionette, its strings cut, lying on the ground in the same position, but clearly a puppet. "Ha!" she shouted, not really a laugh, but enough to make the boggart flinch away from her.

Remus seemed to think that was good enough, because he called, "Potter!"

Mary's feet carried her closer and then, with a crack, the boggart became a dementor. A chill began to seep through the room, and Mary could hear screaming in the distance. Somewhat nearer at hand, another voice was yelling, "Potter, you idiot, you gave it mind powers! Stupefy!"

The next thing she was aware of was the jolt of a Reviving Charm. Lilian was standing over her, wand out, as Blaise argued with Remus over whether it had been appropriate to stun her. His argument seemed to be that stunning Mary was the fastest way to neutralize the threat, while Remus was insisting that it was not Blaise's responsibility in the first place. Daphne and Theo had cornered the boggart and somehow forced it to turn into Narcissa Malfoy, who was lecturing Draco on the state of his tie. Draco was glaring death at them and insisting that this wasn't funny at all, but even Pansy was sniggering at the frustrated blond.

"Don't blame Zabini," Mary said, dragging her attention back to the professor. "Sir," she added belatedly. "It's fine. I'd rather be stunned than have to deal with a dementor. And given our last two Defense professors, you can't blame him for dealing with it himself."

Remus gave Mary a look as though she had betrayed him personally by making this already-difficult lesson even harder, but ground out, "Fine," before turning to tell off Daphne and Theo and reclaim the boggart.

Finally, he announced, "We're out of time. Everyone read the chapter on boggarts in your textbook, summarize it, and we'll have the theoretical discussion about them same time next week."

Mary didn't think she had ever been happier to leave a classroom.

The only plus side of the whole ordeal was that the third-year Slytherins had judged Remus and found him an acceptable professor. Even Blaise, who had been thoroughly lectured on the ethics of playing sadistic games with magical creatures and assigned a detention copying out all the laws related to Shadowmancy and their legal penalties, admitted later that the professor had handled his heckling extraordinarily well.

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Lilian was apparently too shaken by the dementor ordeal to attempt to corner Mary before lunch for the discussion she had been promising (threatening) since the train. Flint, however, had endured no such trauma, and Mary was forced to flee the Great Hall halfway through the meal, as she still had not thought of a way to break the news to him that she had a prior commitment every Saturday until further notice.

This was complicated by the fact that Mary and the rest of the Conspirators had been directly instructed not to tell anyone about their detentions – such a punishment would raise too many difficult-to-answer questions about what the ten of them had been up to in order to earn it, and it would be very, very bad if the rest of the school found out that they had been drugged by a group of underclassmen. Mary imagined that the week and a half of Slytherin pranking she had endured her first year would pale in comparison, and that was if they didn't write their parents and demand the Conspirators' expulsion. Still, Snape had not given them any indication of what they ought to say instead of admitting that they were being punished for what Mary now knew was a Class Four Felony.

Why exactly Lilian wasn't being stalked by their Captain, or what she had told the older boy, if she had, in fact, already been cornered, Mary had no idea. Finding the answer to that question would mean sitting down and talking to Lilian for more than five minutes, and that was liable to end with awkward questions about what the hell was going on with Snape, which Mary was not prepared to answer. She hated going into a conversation knowing it was only going to end in confusion.

Monday afternoon included the first of Mary's new electives – Ancient Runes. This and Arithmancy, her other elective, were widely regarded as the most difficult out of the five, so no one seemed to think her an underachiever for taking only two.

Both Runes and Arithmancy would be held with the Ravenclaws. There was such a demand for Runes in Slytherin, where students were responsible for warding their own rooms come fourth year, that it had its own time slot, like the core subjects. Nearly every third-year Slytherin had elected to take it. Arithmancy, which was essential to understanding advanced magical theory, had a similar popularity among Ravenclaws. There were also a smattering of students from Gryffindor and Hufflepuff in each class whose two or three chosen electives overlapped – Mary had overheard Red Patil (who would apparently be joining the Slytherclaw Arithmancy section) complaining to her twin that Gryffindor was scheduled to have Divination, Muggle Studies, and Arithmancy at the same time.

Runes began with discussions of the applications of the subject. Professor Babbling, an old witch with a rather absentminded air and a quiet voice, explained that Runes were used in warding and enchanting (which apparently were not the same thing, though some wards could be considered enchantments, and some enchantments had warding functions). Though 'Runes' technically only referred to Futhark and Ogham, the three-year OWL in Ancient Runes also covered Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs, a cursive form of Egyptian called Hieratic, and a proto-Greek language called Linear A. NEWT students could choose to study Cuneiform, an Ancient Chinese dialect, proto-Arabic, or Phoenician, which Professor Babbling said was the language of Atlantis, along with practical applications of the scripts. Each symbol in these languages had a variety of meanings, and they could be arranged in a number of ways to express specific meanings in relation to each other.

Learning runes was exponentially more difficult than trying to learn French or Latin, because the symbols could be mixed and matched by any given enchanter to create a more personalized and nuanced composite language, with meanings slightly different from any unmixed language. Real enchanters like Bill Weasley and Devon Troy carved runes into the objects they were enchanting, but the class would learn and practice just by drawing them, and before they could even do that much, they had a lot to memorize. By the end of the first lesson, Mary was beginning to suspect that it was a good thing she had dropped Creatures. Her French was still atrocious after a whole year of practicing, and the thought of learning at least six more languages in the next three years was incredibly daunting. Hermione, of course, was thrilled with the outlined course of study, though Lilian seemed to share Mary's reservations.

The Slytherins' first Arithmancy lesson was not held until Tuesday, and sounded more difficult than Runes, if such a thing was possible. Professor Vector had begun the lesson by asking simple maths questions, like what is two plus two, and proceeding to prove the students' every answer wrong using principles Mary thought had to be made up on the spot. The unholy glee she took in doing so went some way toward illuminating how the apparently nice and outgoing witch could maintain a friendship with the sharp-tongued Professor Sinistra and ever-sarcastic Snape. She then gave them a quiz on their knowledge of muggle arithmetic, geometry, and algebra (which Mary was certain she performed abysmally on, despite her study of Formal Logic over the summer), and finally talked for the rest of the period about the different uses of the subject.

The short summation was that arithmancy allowed a witch to model abstract concepts like time and magic and the development of interpersonal relationships, which were otherwise nigh-impossible to grasp. It had sub-disciplines, like Numerology, which was about the inherent magical principles of numbers, and Prognostication, which was a way of modeling a situation to predict the most likely future outcome. Mostly, though, arithmancy seemed to be used in spell development, modeling magic itself to determine how a new spell could, should, or would work. Third-years would be dividing their time between muggle algebra and geometry on the one hand, and Numerology and Magical Postulates on the other. Fourth-year they would work on diagramming and modeling known spells, and then in fifth year, they would try their hand at spell creation and "disruptive interference" which Mary thought meant countering jinxes and hexes. It was a very intimidating prospect, having the next three years' topics laid out like that. Prognostication was a NEWT topic, as were curse-breaking and the theoretical mechanics of enchanting. All of that was a far-off dream, however: their first assignment was to memorize a list of arcane symbols, far stranger than anything Professor Babbling had shown them in Runes.

By the end of day Tuesday, Hermione and Lilian had had their other electives once each as well, and they gathered in the library after dinner that night to discuss their initial impressions. Both of the other girls were taking Divination and Care of Magical Creatures, and Hermione was still in Muggle Studies as well, despite Mary's objections.

Despite her mousy, quiet demeanor, Hermione reported, the professor of Muggle Studies turned out to be quite vocal about her subject. At the Muggleborn Shopping Trip, Mary had hardly noticed her presence, but she had apparently treated her class to a massive rant on all the shortcomings of the program in their first lesson. According to the Ravenclaw, Professor Burbage was muggle raised, and actually knew what she was talking about, but her curriculum, which had been changed every year since she began teaching, was severely limited by what the board of governors and the Headmaster would approve, so it was all quite out of date, and tended to vacillate widely between harmless (and useless) technological studies, like how to use a toaster, and discussions of muggle warfare. The professor claimed that she tried to include things on muggle politics, geography, and finance, and the basics of passing as a muggle, but these were almost always crowded out by new curriculum requirements. The OWL, she said, was mostly concerned with technology, but the questions asked were about thirty years out of date. The Gryffindors had mostly been amused by this, but the Ravenclaws, Hermione included, were concerned that the quality of their education was going to suffer, either because the professor was unwilling to teach them what the Ministry thought they needed to know, or because the Ministry had no idea what they would actually need to know in the muggle world.

Both Lilian and Hermione agreed that Divination was taught by a crackpot, and would contain little to no actual learning. Hermione was highly distressed by this, and was hoping that she would be able to get something out of the book and class exercises, even if Trelawney (whom she had declared after only one lesson did not deserve the title of Professor) was a complete fraud. Kevin Entwhistle, the only other Ravenclaw in her class, was already planning to drop it. Lilian, in contrast, was perfectly happy to treat the lessons as a sort of social networking venue mixed with a creative writing class. She had spent much of her first period chatting with Tracey, Pansy, and the three Hufflepuff girls in the class, learning nothing about divination, but quite a lot about the latest gossip. When Hermione asked despairingly how they were meant to finish their assignment if they hadn't seen anything in their tea, Lilian told her to just make something up. The 'professor' would likely be too drunk to care, anyway, but would probably give bonus points if it was horrible, given that she had predicted the untimely death of a student in both sections. Hermione had looked like she wanted to disagree with this assessment, but couldn't, because it was likely completely accurate.

Her two friends had given Mary mixed reviews on Care of Magical Creatures. The first lesson had been on hippogriffs, and in Hermione's section, it had gone off without a hitch. Everything she had to report was surprisingly positive, even if she did think that hippogriffs (half-eagle, half-equine creatures about the size of a centaur) were a bit advanced for their very first lesson. In Lilian's section, however, the first class had been nothing short of a disaster, even more so than Remus' first lesson.

It had apparently started off rather poorly, with no one able to open their books. Mary, whose Monster book was currently living (silenced) in its owl cage next to her rubbish bin, could sympathize. She didn't actually want to throw it out (it somehow seemed wrong to throw away a book, and doubly wrong to throw away a living book), but she was seriously considering trying to foist it off on Madam Pince. She just kept forgetting it every time she left the room. Apparently the trick was to pet the spine, at which the ridiculous, violent things would calm down and consent to be read. Perhaps, she decided, she would look through it before getting rid of it now that she knew this, but she couldn't see keeping it long-term, even knowing how to read it.

Lilian's COMC class was mostly Gryffindors, with only a few Slytherins, including Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, along with Lilian and Tracey Davis. Vinnie and Greg had chosen the class because it was one of the easiest, along with Divination. Draco had taken it because there was some Malfoy family tradition of cross-breeding magical creatures, and his father wanted him to continue it, or at least have the OWL to talk about it intelligently at parties. Lilian didn't know why Tracey had signed up, but, as she said, that wasn't important to the story, anyway. What was important was that all the third-year Gryffindor boys except Neville Longbottom were also in the class, and the Little Weasel had been singled out as the one to demonstrate how to properly approach a hippogriff. He had followed Hagrid's instructions and done so successfully. He had even taken Hagrid up on his offer to ride the beast, and been given a quick flight over the lake. (Hermione put in that no one in her class had been so stupid as to accept that offer.)

After Weasley had successfully ridden his hippogriff, Draco, Vinnie and Greg had taken over with it, successfully approaching it, and even petting it, until Draco had said something insulting to it, at which point it had savaged his right arm. He had been bleeding very badly, and Hagrid had carried him up to the infirmary at a run, leaving the rest of the class and the hippogriffs unsupervised. Most of them had had the good sense to back away from their hippogriffs slowly, but the Gryffindor boys had been joking around and very nearly pushed Dean Thomas into the talons of a second one before finally wandering back up to the castle with their biting books.

Rumor had it that Draco had nearly died of blood loss before he reached Madam Pomfrey, and he was blaming Hagrid and the fact that he wasn't qualified for his position for his injury. While the former claim was questionable, the latter was undoubtedly true. He had supposedly already written his father about the incident, demanding everything from the oaf's resignation to the death of the hippogriff in question. According to Tracey, who had it from Pansy, he was really hoping that his father would allow him to drop the class (Draco didn't like the outdoors unless he was on a broom. Watching him try to do Herbology without getting messy was positively hilarious), but if he did manage to get Hagrid fired, he wouldn't complain.

Mary rather looked forward to watching his little crusade develop over the course of the semester. After all, it was taking place in a class she wasn't in, so for once, she was certain, she couldn't possibly be involved, and she liked watching a good drama as much as the next Slytherin.

She was so enamored of this idea that she failed to realize that Hermione had slipped away to return to the Ravenclaw common room until Lilian dragged her into a corner of the stacks and said, "Okay, you. Professor Snape. Spill."

Mary squirmed uncomfortably under the taller Slytherin's gaze. "There's nothing to spill. What's going on with you and Aerin?" It was even more evident now that the Moon sisters were back in the Castle together that they weren't getting along.

"She was just pissy because dad said I have more promise with the Infernal Dogs than she does. We made it up after the boggart. Which you would have known if you weren't avoiding me. And there is so something to spill. If there wasn't, you wouldn't have spent two days practically running every time we're alone together."

"Ugh!" Mary sighed. "It's weird, and I don't even know what's going on, okay?"

"Well tell me about it!" Lilian sat down with a grin, patting the floor next to herself. Mary joined her rather reluctantly.

She tried desperately to remember what excuse she had given Lilian when she had slipped away to do the lineage test. She failed miserably in the time it took for her hesitation to become obvious. "All right. Remember that day I stayed after Potions last year?"

"Yes," Lilian's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You told me he was asking if you had remembered anything else about the Chamber." Ah, yes, that was it.

"Weeeell… He did. And I didn't. But we got to talking – he's weirdly talkative if you can get him going – and he mentioned he was friends with my mum. Like, really good friends. Like, he would probably have been my godfather if things had gone differently kind of friends. They met when they were five or so, and, well, it sounded like she was the sister he never had, basically." Lilian snorted at this. She was, Mary recalled, quite convinced that Snape had been in love with Mary's mum.

"So I told him that I thought I would have liked that – mind, I didn't know then what being a godparent actually means, here in the magical world, but I mean, I still think he would have been a good one – much better than Black, at least, but I don't know if he knows I didn't know that then, or if he thinks that I'm thinking of him in basically a parental sort of way or what. Which I wasn't. Don't. Whatever. I don't really think I need a parent at this point. If I did, I might choose him, maybe, I mean, he's been nice enough to me, always saving my life and stuff, and like, turning a blind eye toward our messes… but I don't really know how to think of him now that I do know what he meant. Or probably meant." Mary knew in some distant part of her brain that she should stop and let Lilian get a word in edgewise, but now that she was finally talking about the problem she had been dwelling on for months, she found she couldn't stop.

"And then he invited me to be informal, and I said yes, because you don't turn down an offer of informality from Professor Snape of all people, but it's like, super weird calling him by his first name, and I don't want to call him 'Uncle' or anything, and honestly it's practically impossible to think of him as anything but a professor and our head of house first, and it's been bothering me all summer.

"And then I saw him at Diagon Alley and he was all Miss Potter like he always has been when everyone was making introductions and greetings, and I don't know if that was just because it was, like, public, or what, because he called me Mary Elizabeth when I went to talk to him about dropping Hagrid's class, and I just have no idea where I stand or if this is like some kind of conditional invitation to informality. Merlin and Morgan – some days I just hate all this propriety BS. Lilian, I'm so confused!" She gave the older girl her best helpless look.

Lilian's mouth was hanging open a bit, and she started to snigger at her friend's predicament, even as Mary added, slightly manically, "Oh, and I'm pretty sure he sent me a potions knife as a thirteenth birthday gift, but I don't know for sure, because the note wasn't signed. I can't think of anyone else it might have been, though."

"So do you call him…" she looked around furtively and then whispered, "Severus?"

"NO!" Mary hissed back. "I call him Snape. Or sir. I'm not sure even Professor Sinistra calls him 'Severus,'" she pointed out with a nervous giggle.

Lilian smirked openly at her. "Is that it, then? That is the secret turmoil that you've been hiding for days?"

Mary heaved a dramatic sigh. "More or less. About Snape, at least."

"What else are you not telling me?" the older girl asked in a teasing tone.

Mary shook her head. "Just trying to figure out what to tell Flint about Saturdays. And worrying about Runes. I suck at languages."

"Oh, cheer up, Liz," Lilian ordered, rolling her eyes. "It's only the first week. Just do what I did and tell Flint that you'll be there on Saturday. We'll deal with him after we figure out what our official excuse is for Snape. And Sean says 'that's what reference books are for.' You only need to know enough Runes to get through the exams. You can look up anything important when you need it. Now, was that so hard?"

Mary shook her head, and leaned against her friend's shoulder. It wasn't, really, not nearly as difficult to tell as it had been to avoid talking about it for a whole two days. She still didn't know where she stood, but she felt a bit better for having laid it out. It seemed less overwhelming, somehow, now that Lilian knew. For the first time, she seriously considered telling her friends about the Evil, Undead Grandfather Thing, in the hopes that that too would seem less awful if it was shared, but she held her tongue. She rather suspected that telling that secret would have the opposite effect.

"And what have we learned from all this?" Lilian asked rhetorically, hauling Mary to her feet. "You shouldn't try to avoid me! Now, tell me how you think Jeanie's making it to all her classes. I'm not stupid! Some of those electives she's taking are at the same time as other classes, you know!" Speculation about Hermione's class schedule carried the two Slytherins back to their common room, where Mary promptly ignored Lilian's advice, and hid from Flint in her room. If she didn't hear anything about their detentions by the following day, she decided, she would inquire during Snape's office hours that evening.

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On Wednesday at breakfast, as though Snape had somehow heard Mary's silent resolution, the Conspirators received notes from him alerting them that their "Tutoring Sessions" would be held on Saturday afternoons for the foreseeable future in Potions Lab 3, beginning at one PM that very week. On learning this, Mary stopped trying quite so hard to avoid Flint. At least now, she thought, she had an excuse to offer him.

He caught up to her at lunchtime, and Mary resolutely informed him that she would only be available in the mornings on Saturday. While this was fine for trials and practices (or would be if they managed to get the same schedule as the year before) it was absolutely not okay for matches.

The captain grew quite irate as she explained that she couldn't think of asking to reschedule her tutoring sessions for Quidditch, and she finally grew irritated enough herself by his insistence that she told him to talk to Snape if he had such a problem with it. Quidditch was, when push came to shove, only a game, and as much as she loved it, she had other commitments which took precedent. All the nearby Slytherins, and about half of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws within earshot turned to stare at this declaration, and Mary had flushed scarlet with the attention as Flint turned on his heel and stormed off. Lunch, after that, was a lost cause.

By Wednesday afternoon, Mary had attended each of her core classes at least once. Professor Snape had marched them directly into new material. Apparently third year was the point at which he decided that they had proven that they were not all "hopelessly insufferable morons" because if they had been, they would surely have been killed by the castle before now. Since they had not, despite some people's best efforts (both of the Gryffindor boys' tables received a stern look at that) he supposed their brains might finally be sufficiently developed to consider the whys of his art, and not merely the hows.

All this meant that, for the first time, they had a lesson that was not focused on the technical aspects of brewing (ingredient preparation, stirring techniques, spells to heat or cool or dissolve ingredients and so on) but on the theory behind every choice, from ingredient selection to the timing of every stir. It took a full hour and a half to explain the Boil Cure Potion they had brewed in their very first lesson, and their homework was not only to prepare to brew something entirely different in their practical session, but to find five examples of other potions where one or more of the principles that were used in the Boil Cure Potion were used in similar ways. If this workload was to be maintained throughout the term, Mary was not looking forward to it.

In contrast, much as they had done the previous year, Professors McGonagall, Sprout, Flitwick, and Sinistra were beginning with a review of the last concepts they had learned before exams, which lent the impression that nothing had changed in those classes at all. (No one really knew whether Binns was picking up where he left off or not, because no one had really been paying attention to him in the first place.) This provided a core of familiar normality for the somewhat-overwhelmed third-years to cling to in the face of new electives, a daunting extra-curricular schedule and the promise of intra-house upset: Even distracted as she was by her own problems, Mary couldn't miss that there was a storm quietly brewing among the younger years in regard to their new muggleborn Snake, and it was only a matter of time until it broke, not to mention the fact that if she didn't fly seeker and the Slytherins lost their first Quidditch match, she would become decidedly unpopular very quickly.

On Wednesday evening, Flint cornered his seeker again and informed her that he had indeed spoken to Snape, and if she made the team (as though there was really any doubt), she would be expected to complete double-hours on Sunday to make up for any "tutoring" she missed due to Quidditch matches on Saturdays. Mary was given to understand that this special dispensation had only been arranged because Snape really wanted Slytherin to win the Quidditch cup, and possibly as a favor to Flint, who would owe their head of house and for which Mary now owed him in turn.

The scorn with which the Captain said "tutoring" suggested that he knew "tutoring" meant detentions, even if Snape hadn't told him the reasons behind the detentions. Lilian he chewed out for lying to him for a good twenty minutes before finally admitting that she would be given a similar exception, conditional upon her making the starting team.

Both girls thanked him as sincerely as they could, but Mary at least was more than a little irritated. She would rather have let Draco play seeker against Gryffindor than take on yet more detention. She was certain that whatever Snape had come up with over the summer was bound to be terrible.