Battle of Will, Not Wit

Harry was very nearly skipping down the hallway to his next class; whereas Ron and Hermione trudged behind him, obviously much less enthusiastic than their friend. Earlier, that morning Harry exclaimed that he was excited to return to his favorite class, Defense against the Dark Arts; this class, however, was hated by most. Teenagers were treated like small children, which if you ask any teenager is the best possible way to irritate them, and the younger students were treated as invalids.

Even the Slytherins, despite having inexplicable and ever so subtle favoritism by Umbridge, despised the class. Their beloved superior pureblood abilities were wasted where magic was forbidden.

Therefore, Harry's claims were quite beyond the understanding of his friends, but they had slowly gotten used to their friend's enigmatic ways since the beginning of the year when he seemingly lost his bloody mind.

"Oh I'm so excited for this!" Harry stated, in a breathy way that made all those close to him vaguely uncomfortable. "I think I'm going to cum in my pants!" He stated loudly—so loudly that all those in a twenty-foot radius got an unpleasant earful. Most of the students were his age and older; the older students either broke into that annoying giggle adults use when children say something beyond their years or otherwise rolled their eyes thinking they were much too old for such low-brow crassness. Thankfully, no younger students were around to be traumatized for life.

The two Gryffindor girls ahead of the trio broke out into uncontrollable and near-hysterical giggling fits, as much as they tried to suppress it out of contempt for Harry. From everyone else there was a general murmur of "gross", "sicko", and the ever popular in reference to Harry, "freak".

Hardly three milliseconds after Harry shouted out his latest bit of TMI, Ron had spun on his heels -ready to go back the dorms, or perhaps even step right off the ledge of a very high tower, what difference did it make anymore really?

Thankfully, Hermione, ever levelheaded, grabbed his sleeve and propelled him forward, completely intent on keeping as much satisfaction from Harry as possible.

Draco Malfoy crossed paths with Harry in just enough time to hear the admission, (perhaps this was Harry's plan). Although he was quite disgusted and the bully in him (about 85 percent of his overall "personality") saw fantastic bullying material, he was still somewhat affected by Harry's thinly veiled confession of wanting to lick his face, and thereby quite reluctant to draw the boy's attention.

However, his precautionary silence was not enough to save him from the tongue glide and sultry wink Harry shot his way when his head involuntarily whipped around at Harry's loud proclamation. Seeing this caused a shiver of disgust and, humiliatingly, fear to shoot through him. He reflexively grabbed unto to the arm of the student next to him for protection, and was subsequently further mortified to see that it was an older Hufflepuff boy who sent a smug self-satisfied eyebrow quirk in his direction.

Shocked, Draco stumbled back only to have his behind press straight into Goyle's crotch, which Draco was instantly sickened to find was slightly hard. In his astounding stupidity, Goyle grabbed Draco about the hips and pushed him gently away, giving him a placating pat on the side of a buttock clearly, but still moronically, trying to soothe his "master".

After this chain of events, Draco stared at the wall where he stood frozen in the middle of the bustling hallway. He felt tears of embarrassment and defeat welling up in his eyes along with the familiar and horrifying beginning of one of his infamous bratty-rich-boy tantrums.

Instead, Harry and the gang passed him by. Once again Harry winked; but his was no wink of seduction, it was unquestionably a wink that conveyed an extremely smug "gotcha".

Draco's tantrum faded instantly, only to be replaced with blinding anger. Potter would pay, oh how he would pay so dearly. Just as the beginnings of an evil plan formed in his mind, he felt a hand grab him very much too near his butt. "Stop grabbing my ass Goyle!" He shouted indignantly. This outburst was heard by the entire hallway, and every student burst out in mocking laughter.

A hilariously red-faced Draco Malfoy decided right then and there that he hated this entire school and everyone would pay dearly for daring to exist without his permission.

"Stop grabbing my ass Goyle!" Harry heard just as he was entering the DADA classroom. He snorted and smiled proudly when he met Hermione's speculative gaze.

"Did you plot out that whole incident to happen as it did, or was it mostly by chance?" She asked him, her tone somewhat disbelieving.

"Oh, Hermione. You act as though I am some kind of evil genius. Maybe you could have devised such a detailed and thorough humiliation, but I am but a simple detail-ignoring teenage boy and no way could I have foreseen such a spectacular outcome." Harry stated bemusedly.

Hermione's mouth twitched. "You can never just give a straight answer can you?"

"Now you know how we feel when we ask you to explain something." Ron mumbled from where he had seated himself on her other side.

This comment seemed to worry Hermione. "I'm not that bad am I?"

Ron pondered this for a bit, as much as Ron could ponder anything. "No I suppose you're not as bad as Harry. You at least want us to understand; I think he just wants to drive us all mad." Ron said with a small amount of venom and a sidled glare at Harry.

"Oh, you think so?" Hermione asked sarcastically. They both laughed lightly while Harry pretended to pout.

Just then Umbridge entered the room and cleared her throat to silence the students; she did this even though her voice works perfectly fine, aside from being aggravatingly grating, and she could just as easily of asked politely.

"Good morning students." Her sickeningly sweet voice abused their ears.

"Good morning, professor", every student replied following another ridiculous rule of her creation. Having been forbidden to attend classes until a clear diagnosis of his mental state was achieved, Harry had knew not of this rule and dutifully replied with a gleeful, "Hey there".

To his disappointment, Umbridge paid his greeting no mind. The only sign that she even heard him was an ambiguous look of self-satisfaction on her face; which only Harry knew was due to her having successfully ignored him. To his chagrin, he felt a tiny blush form on his face; having his outbursts ignored was far more embarrassing then having everyone react to them.

Harry raised his hand. Umbridge thought over whether she would prefer to have class go on uninterrupted or call on Harry and have him further prove the Prophet's claims of his mental state. She was so very evil. "Yes, Mr. Potter?"

He furrowed his brow endearingly. "Excuse you, but did you not get the memo?" He innocently asked.

Umbridge pursed her lips and greatly struggled to correct herself, "Sorry, Ms. Potter". At this several eyebrows raised amongst the students, quite a few snickers and snorts were unsuccessfully stifled.

Yet Harry ignored them and smiled happily at his teacher. "I was just wondering, I mean I've asked almost everyone, and looked through our text book; it seems that no one can tell me what we actually learn in this class." Harry asked naively with his sappy eyes staring widely at Umbridge.

Next to him, Hermione smirked at the underhanded slice; her smirking abilities would certainly put Malfoy's chinless face to shame.

Despite the clear aggravation on her face, Umbridge tried her best to keep her voice calm and cheerful. "Why, my dear boy, we study the theory of Magical Defense. We read about why certain spells are used to deflect or counter-act other spells, we learn the difference between spells, curses and hexes, and we discover how a witch or wizard's will can affect the strength and efficiency of their magic." She finished looking proudly around the room.

"Oh, okay. But, well, don't take this the wrong way, but can't we learn all those things in like…a week? If even it takes that long... I mean, how long does it take to tell us what a hex is, or that for a spell to work you have to really want it to work?" Harry asked, he acted as if he was merely being a curious lad, but there was just the tiniest bit of cheekiness about him.

Hermione's smirk had blossomed into a full faced grin, much like a wolf watching a lamb stray from the flock.

Most students also smugly watched their teacher flounder; despite their current distaste for Harry's presence, they were glad someone was finally giving this annoying professor a hard time. She cleared her throat-not in that high-pitched annoying way she usually did.

"Well, dear boy, it all is much more complicated than all that." She said strained. "Believe me, one cannot fully grasp, nor practice, magic without first having a full understanding of its uses and the theory which gives it as much structure as magic can possible have. Otherwise, all you are really doing is memorizing words and wand movements. Not a particularly solidified knowledge if you ask me." Umbridge concluded smugly.

Damn! Harry thought. That actually makes a fantastic amount of sense! He looked to Hermione; she was positively fuming, suggesting she too saw the sense in this.

But Harry thought quickly and found the flaw in her logic. "Yes," Harry started, "but wouldn't it still be more beneficial and make a heck of a lot more sense if we also put into practice what we learn in theory?" Harry smiled in confidence again. There, now he'd gotten her.

Umbridge gave a great exasperated sigh, her body language suggested she was about to put an abrupt end to the conversation. "My dear boy—"

"Girl." Harry corrected half-heartedly.

"My dear girl this is not a matter up for debate. I have my syllabus and I will follow it; no whining of an un-well child is going to change my teaching methods." With that said, Umbridge stalked off to the board to commence the lesson.

She left Harry decimated. He quite looked like he was having a conniption or was perhaps horribly constipated. He trying in vain to keep up his appearance of blissful unawareness and naivety; but his smile was faltering and there was a great twitching about his brow and cheeks. His expressive eyes seemed to flash between empty bliss and bright anger before they settled and dulled into a frightening cold anger.

"Are you okay?" Ron whispered, having momentarily gotten over his grudge.

"Of course I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?" Harry said in an eerily empty voice, his unblinking eyes not moving from where they stared across the room at Umbridge.

Over his head, Hermione and Ron exchanged very worried glances. So far that year, Harry had not gotten angry, or at least, had not shown any anger. They had no idea what horrors such a powerful emotion, and one that Harry was exceptionally sensitive to, would cause in his new deluded state.

TBC

Sorry it's been awhile but I was busy re-editing the first few chapters to fit in better with the more recent ones. I wrote the first two many many months before I posted this story. There was a gigantic discrepancy between the first two chapters and the ones after because when I wrote the first two I was going for full on parody and not too worried about making sense, and I was uncharacteristically lazy about it.

I have already written the two after this as well, but I want to be ahead of myself in case I have one of my infamous lazy weeks.

Thank-you reviewers!