Chapter Seventeen: Muggle Studies with Quirrell

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

By and large, the Hogwarts staff didn't change much over the years with the obvious exception being the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Since Gilderoy was going to be leaving the castle next year and someone else was moving in and going to try to shape Harry, it was only responsible to try to get some sort of an idea of what that would be like.

Fortunately for him, he already knew who the likely replacement professor would be since Quirrell had applied for the job the previous year. The position had gone to him instead because this way they could get at least another year out of Quirrell as the Muggle Studies professor before losing him to the Defense Against the Dark Arts curse. Next year, it was possible that Quirrell would be denied again (and that he and Snape would form some sort of denied-position bond out of it when they weren't competing over the job at the end of the year) but the chances seemed good that during some point in Harry's years at Hogwarts Dumbledore wouldn't be able to find anybody to fill the position and so hire Quirrell.

Gilderoy wasn't really sure why anyone would want to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. With over forty years of something coming up to prevent a teacher from being around for longer than a year, it was clear that the position was cursed. All this staff-changing meant that the curriculum was uneven at best, which was a shame for such an important topic. Even he was there mostly as a means to stay close to Harry during his first year (and to sell a lot of books) than to actually help prepare the next generation of wizards for facing off against Dark creatures. Still, best he avoid the things he couldn't do and not teach it wrong which could really end up backfiring on a student someday.

Really, Gilderoy would have preferred to teach history because that was something he was really good at and that didn't require him to fake anything (not that he minded but it was always best to not fake where you could so there was less of a chance to get caught) but Binns would never leave. He couldn't even wait around for the old man to die given the fact that that had already happened decades ago.

Gilderoy stuck his head into the Muggle Studies classroom. "You don't mind if I sit in today, do you?" He had asked Dumbledore about it and the headmaster was fine with it as long as Quirrell didn't think he would disrupt the lesson.

There was a spasm on Quirrell's face and for a moment it looked like he was going to say that actually he did mind very much but then it passed. "O-of course not, G-Gilderoy. It's a-always n-nice to see another p-p-professor taking an interest in my w-work. Y-you'll probably be a b-better judge of how I d-do than my students."

"I'll make sure to let you know what I thought when you're done," Gilderoy promised, grinning at him. Listening to Quirrell speak (or stutter, more like) was actually really annoying and he hadn't taken that into account when he decided to watch the man in action. Still, if being an annoying stutterer hadn't stopped Quirrell from getting hired, or rather gotten him fired when he came back from his sabbatical with it, then there was no reason to think that it would prevent him from getting a different subject to teach.

Well…maybe. He wasn't sure how stuttering would affect spells. As an adult and a teacher, Quirrell could probably cast them silently but he'd have to teach them out loud and the stutter could throw off his inflection and thus prevent the students from learning it correctly. Dumbledore would probably take that into account.

After a few minutes, the students started to trickle in.

It looked like this was the third years.

"W-welcome class," Quirrell greeted them. "Allow me to r-read off the r-roll call."

Gilderoy did his best not to twitch as Quirrell slowly stuttered his way through all of the students.

"N-now t-today I thought we could discuss how v-violent muggles can b-be," Quirrell announced.

Sarah Fawcett raised her hand. "My father told me that muggles aren't any more violent than wizards are and if anything we carry dangerous weapons around all the time while they don't."

"W-well I w-would never think of trying to t-tell you what to think s-so I suggest that we l-look at the f-facts," Quirrell told her. Gilderoy thought it was pretty obvious that he thought her father was full of it but was too tactful to say so. "N-name the last t-two serious d-dark wizards."

Cedric Diggory raised his hand. "You-Know-Who and Gellert Grindelwald."

Gilderoy wondered how long it would be until people stopped calling him You-Know-Who. As terrifying as his reign had been, sooner or later people would forget or else enough time would pass that no one could remember it happening. In a hundred years they weren't going to talk about the reign of the Dark Lord You-Know-Who. Stripped of its context, it really didn't sound particularly intimidating. Neither did Tom Riddle but that was why, Gilderoy supposed, he had changed his name and Grindelwald hadn't felt the need to.

"A-And those two were the only t-two major dark wizards of the t-twentieth century," Quirrell pointed out. "There m-may have been m-minor dark wizards but there are also minor m-muggle killers. The second W-World War may have b-been fueled on by Grindelwald's forces but w-what about the first? W-what about the war in K-Korea? V-Vietnam? The Chinese C-Civil War? The Iran-Iraq W-War? The R-Russian Civil War? F-French Indonesia? The Mexican R-Revolution? The Spanish Civil War? The French-Algerian W-War? Afghanistan? The R-Russo-Japanese War? The Riffian W-War? The S-Sudanese Civil War? The Russo-P-Polish War? The B-Biafran War? The Chaco W-War? The Abyssinian W-War? And th-those are just the big ones. A-At any given t-time you can be assured that m-muggles will be fighting."

"There are many more muggles than there are wizards, though, so it makes sense that there is a muggle war going on more often than a wizarding war," Roger Davies pointed out.

"Y-yes to s-some extent," Quirrell conceded, "but there is l-literally never a time when th-they aren't fighting each other. Even the n-numbers difference does n-not account for that a-alone."

"We can use magic while muggles are forced to use less effective methods of killing each other," Andrew Kirke offered. "Therefore they can afford to go to war more often while we really can't. Does that have anything to do with it?"

"I-in the past that m-might have been the case but i-it is simply n-not true a-anymore," Quirrell replied. "M-muggles find themselves in p-possessions of guns that can fire m-multiple bullets a s-second or that can be p-properly aimed from very f-far away."

Victoria Forbisher raised her hand. "Professor, what's a 'gun'?"

"D-does anybody know?" Quirrell directed the inquiry to the class.

One of the Weasley twins' hand shot straight up. Gilderoy didn't even pretend to be able to tell the pair apart and as long as he admitted that, the twins didn't feel the need to try and mess with him about the matter.

"A gun is a muggle weapon that shoots small projectiles with deadly force at people," the Weasley said promptly. "It's awesome."

"We've seen 'Die Hard' and 'Terminator'," the other Weasley explained. "Awesome."

"I-I'm sure that those m-movies are very g-good examples of how d-dangerous muggles can be," Quirrell said, trying to keep the class on topic. "A b-bullet can go through a shield ch-charm and they t-travel t-too quickly to hide b-behind something."

"But still," Andrew argued. "Wizards can kill that quickly too, particularly when they don't have to say the name of their spell. That doesn't make muggles more dangerous than wizards, especially since we have our wands on us always and they probably don't have guns on them at all times."

"G-guns are regulated by the m-muggles, yes," Quirrell conceded. "But those that w-would be most d-dangerous with g-guns aren't going to l-let something like that stop them. And there a-are other m-means muggles have of causing death. You m-may have h-heard of bombs, which a-are long-r-range weapons that explode. Th-they can be h-hidden until they e-explode and cause m-much damage."

"Surely magic can protect us from that," Sarah said, looking disturbed.

"P-perhaps," Quirrell allowed. "But that i-is assuming that there i-is enough warning to p-protect yourself and th-this is often n-not the case. O-over four decades a-ago, muggles in the U-United States created a n-new type of bomb that n-now many countries have: nuclear w-weapons. They c-can vaporize people, destroy wh-whole cities, cause r-radiation sickness shortly after the f-fact, and c-cancer after y-years have passed. What spell could d-do that?"

There was no answer.

"A r-ritual perhaps b-but those w-will be dark and w-will be nasty and no d-doubt illegal," Quirrell continued. "A s-straight up fight between a w-wizard and a m-muggle will usually not e-even be a contest but y-you have to remember that m-muggles are not a-always as harmless a-as they seem and there are f-far more of them than there a-are of us. At s-some point, you m-may need to defend y-yourself."

Strictly speaking, everything Quirrell had said was true. Muggles could be very adept at killing people and many wizards – maybe even most – underestimated them which could lead to them being hurt or killed. What he had said about their weapons was true. There was an almost obscene difference in proportion between muggles and wizards. Muggles were dangerous and could be violent when provoked or when faced with something they didn't understand, such as magic, and it would be foolish to ignore it.

Just the same…no one (nearly no one) took Muggle Studies because they already knew all about them. Muggle Studies was more of a class for purebloods or half-bloods who were curious about how the other half lived. Quirrell's lessons might be the only bit of instruction these students ever received on the subject and Quirrell was spending his time talking about the dangerous muggles that might try to kill them?

Something was seriously wrong with this picture.

As Harry's detention drew nearer, he was really starting to get concerned about it. He had never had a detention before, of course, but he knew that it couldn't be anything too bad or Dumbledore wouldn't allow it. Logically, he knew that and yet who knew how bad was 'too bad'? He knew that Gilderoy just had people help answer his fan mail which, while it could be annoying if they weren't interested in celebrities, was pretty harmless overall.

His real problem was just how worried everyone else seemed to be and the rampant speculation about what, exactly, Snape would do to Harry during the detention. The offence itself, flying unsupervised, wasn't particularly bad and Draco had actually gotten away with it but it was no secret that Snape definitely did not like him. Well…to the people who didn't believe that secretly he was very fond of Harry and just putting on a gruff mask to hide his true emotions. Harry may or may not have been discretely encouraging that line of thought.

Still, he wasn't stupid or particularly suicidal so he decided to sit on the information about his mother until after the detention was over. Who knew? If he pushed hard enough, Snape might decide that Dumbledore's wrath was worth it and just snap.

What must have been half of Slytherin house (who reported nothing more than homework detentions when they themselves had been supervised by Snape) followed him down from the common room to Snape's office. One third-year girl that Harry didn't know actually hugged him like she was expecting to never see him again which was a bit…disconcerting, to say the least.

For all the build-up, Harry was almost disappointed. Snape had barely glanced at him once while he had to hand-scrub some dirty cauldrons lying around. Okay, so maybe that had taken three hours and he didn't have much experience with cleaning but he'd been expecting something far worse.

When Harry eventually returned to the common room at just past eleven, he found that everyone in his year and quite a few others were waiting up for him.

"Well?" Tracey demanded. "Did you survive?"

"I think so," Harry said neutrally.

"I know that you wouldn't have any idea about this but I'm half-way certain that he tortured you for three hours, erased your memory, and then implanted the memory of you doing something that wouldn't get him fired and thrown into Azkaban," Theodore declared dramatically.

"What would be the point in torturing him if he wasn't going to remember it?" Daphne asked sensibly.

"His own personal satisfaction," Theodore answered just a bit too quickly for Harry's comfort.

"He certainly doesn't look tortured," Blaise said, eyeing him critically. "Unless you count his hands which look a little raw."

"It's fine, guys. I just had to scrub some cauldrons," Harry promised them.

"But that's servants' work!" Pansy cried out, horrified.

"Not even that," Draco corrected her, grimly. "It's house elf work. If Snape didn't have Harry in detention, you know that's what he would have done."

"You should complain," Pansy said seriously. "It's just not right to do that to a student."

"It really wasn't all that bad," Harry protested.

Pansy shook her head, appalled at his lack of indignation. "What exactly has Professor Lockhart been teaching you, Harry?" she demanded.

"How not to needlessly antagonize someone in a position of power over me because I'm mildly annoyed by a detention I probably deserved," Harry replied smoothly.

"Well I wouldn't stand for it," Pansy sniffed.

"Fortunately, you didn't have to," Harry told her.

"Did he say anything to you during the detention?" Daphne asked him.

Harry shook his head. "Not really. He just told me what to do and when I could leave. He did say that he might have the house-elves redo one or two of them."

"If he's going to do that then he might as well not even have you clean them in the first place," Millicent pointed out.

"Are we even sure that he had Harry do that in the first place?" Theodore demanded. "I mean, it would be far too easy for someone like Snape to pull something like that over someone like Harry."

"Hey, what do you mean 'someone like me'?" Harry demanded.

"I meant 'someone who would not notice if their memories were tampered with'," Theodore helpfully clarified. "You know, I could have sworn that I was being clear about that but oh well."

"You're not going to change your mind about this, are you?" Harry asked, almost resigned to it. Theodore was smart but his devotion to whatever conspiracy theory happened to catch his attention often led him to say and do very bizarre things.

"Not unless you offer him some proof that that did, in fact, happen," Blaise said dryly. "Then he'll likely insist that someone's trying to frame Snape."

"I have no biases," Theodore claimed.

"I don't think this is a good sign," Draco declared. "Even the people who have had multiple detentions with Snape have all just had to sit for awhile and do homework that we would have had to have done later. This is only Harry's first detention and already he's being treated like he's not even in Slytherin!"

"What makes you think that Harry's going to get more detentions with Snape?" Daphne asked him.

"The fact that I have, in fact, met Harry and he doesn't seem the type to give up because of one wasted evening," Draco replied.

"Would you?" Daphne challenged.

"If it weren't possible for me to involve my father then that certainly does seem like the sensible thing to do," Draco agreed.

"Maybe not everyone is a quitter," Daphne said pointedly.

"And maybe there is very little point in taking great risks and being willing to suffer for such a petty cause," Draco countered. "I mean, honestly Harry, what are you even doing this to Snape for?"

"Doing what?" Harry asked innocently. "Holding him up as my favorite teacher? I don't know, there's just something about his classes that appeal to me."

"You may have a point about that one," Daphne said grudgingly.

"Of course I do," Draco said as if it was obvious and he was surprised that she might have doubted that for a moment. "And when he continues to get these detentions, who knows what Snape will do to Harry? He might even start giving him Gryffindor detentions."

Harry wasn't quite sure what that was but from the way everyone started shuddering it couldn't be good (or at least how they thought Gryffindors got treated in Snape's detentions wasn't good).

It was almost a shame he was practically guaranteed to find out.

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