"We call it Dark Magic, not because the magic is bad, or wrong, or worthy of fear. We call it Dark because it is still the magic of the unknown, the magic of esoteric powers that work in ways beyond our comprehending. It is the magic of extremes, the magic that works only in desperation, the magic that demands the whole of the person. This is the magic of old, the magic that has been and will always be. And it is the edges of which we try to harness for a greater purpose, to lead our lives beyond the mundane into permanence."
Antonin Dolohov looked at the room full of bored pupils. Here he had tried to recount Anastasia Maximovna's great speech in Durmstrang, the one that taught him early on not to fear the dark but to embrace it as part of the whole of life. Anastasia Maximovna was perhaps one of his favourite teachers in Durmstrang, and here her wisdom was wasted on these Hogwarts-trained imbeciles.
The parents of these bored pupils, members of the Dark Lord's inner circle, had procured a small room in the attic of a Hogsmeade shop where he was to correct the deficiency in the Hogwarts education and tutor these younglings in the Dark Arts. The pupils were here under the guise of the Gobstones Club (Recreational Division), and they ranged from first years to those recently out of school.
He knew that the most effective period of learning was right at the start of the class, so he delved straight into heavy theory. After twenty minutes, when he began to notice students dozing off, he stopped and picked out the sleepiest of the lot.
"You," he said, jabbing his wand in this student's direction. "What's your name?"
The student was large with a square face, and he sat at the back of the class, probably hoping the location would allow him to slack off. "Rowle," he grunted.
"Will you come to the front, Rowle?" Antonin asked. "I couldn't help but notice you were getting bored. Why don't you join me in leading the class for the next section?"
"What next section?" Rowle scowled.
"I like to mix things up a bit, keep you students on your toes. That way you'll never get bored and you'll retain more of what you've learned."
"Fuck off," Rowle said. "How old are you, twenty? You don't look like a fucking teacher. Is this your first job?"
"I'm twenty-two, but age is no matter because we never want to stop learning. Get up, you'll like the next part."
Rowle made a rude gesture.
"Tarantallegra."
Rowle began dancing uncontrollably, his legs high-kicking and tap-tap-tapping in a sprightly jig.
"All right class, let's all join in! A bit of dancing will get the blood flowing and then you'll remember everything I teach!" Antonin exclaimed, perhaps a bit too cheerily.
A sullen-looking teen with a large nose looked at him incredulously through the curtain of his centre-parted black hair. "Are you having us on? Is this what they teach you at Durmstrang?"
"These are highly effective methods of learning! Do it or I'll make you dance like Rowle here."
The sullen boy stood up slowly, letting the legs of his chair drag on the floor noisily as he did. Antonin gestured for the rest of the class to do likewise, and he made them do a few stretches.
"After the theory, it's time to practice! Into the starting position for duelling, pupils!"
The pupils shuffled into place, standing by their tables.
"Your stance is terrible! Your feet must be angled at forty-five degrees. This is the optimum position that lets you spring in any direction. Bend your knees a little, flex your joints, so that you don't lock your legs and fall over at first hit."
He looked around the room, as the students bent their knees slightly, feet pointing outwards. "Okay, now I want you to hold."
Some of the students began to exchange sideways glances. It must seem to them so trivial and insignificant, this practice, but Antonin knew well enough that those who did not have the requisite stamina would find their legs wobbling like jelly in a few minutes.
He stood at the head of the class, leading by example what the perfect starting stance was supposed to look like. His posture and positioning was impeccable, the product of relentless hard work and training.
Without warning, he jumped into an offensive position and flung a spell at a student whose stance was absolutely dreadful. This student, a wiry-haired pre-teen, toppled over immediately.
"Voila, that is what happens when you lock your knees and forget to move."
His point proved, he next went on to ask the students to levitate their desks and chairs to the side of the room in neat stacks.
"Your swish-and-flick is terrible! What's your name?"
"Carrow."
"You must not apply so much force. You do not mean to fling the table into the wall. You want to set it just at the edge of the other table so you can flip it over in a neat motion."
Carrow nodded.
"And you! Your flicking is insufficiently forceful! You're not moving feathers, you're moving a solid wood desk! What's your name?"
"Black, Regulus."
"And you're not even bothering to try at all!" Antonin looked to another student, who was listlessly standing around with his arms by his side.
"Rookwood. This is such bollocks, it's not like they don't teach this in school. I learnt it in my first year."
"And do you stop using the spell after first year? How will I gauge your ability if you aren't even going to demonstrate a simple spell?"
Rookwood shot him a disdainful look. "Crucio," he said, raising his wand at Antonin.
Drawing his wand horizontally in a short, straight line, Antonin nulled the spell while the red sparks were still at the tip of the wand.
"Your elbow is all wrong," Antonin offered by way of criticism. "You don't want to swing it too far to the side like you're pushing people out of your way. It makes you slow. You want to raise it upwards, so you can bring your arm down swiftly in the second move using gravity." He swung his elbow up and brought it down swiftly, repeating the move, so that the class could see. "Here, try it," he said to Rookwood.
Rookwood lifted his arm and brought it down.
"That is frankly laughable. Has the spell ever worked for you?"
"It has," Rookwood replied indignantly. "It worked on a dormouse."
"A dormouse," Antonin replied flatly. "That must have been a lot of effort."
Rookwood looked incensed with rage. "You're a shit teacher and we hate you! We're not here to waste time practicing stupid moves we do all the time in school. We want to do real magic. Dark magic."
The class began to murmur in agreement.
In a matter of seconds Antonin cast the Cruciatus on no fewer than three students, caused four other students to suffer from internal trauma so that they doubled over and began spewing blood, and the remaining two students had to grapple with the sensation of being burned alive with no visible fire to put out.
"There are no shit teachers," he said matter-of-factly. "Only shit students."
This seemed to enrage some of the students, of which the sullen boy and the Carrow girl began to resist his spells. The sullen boy fought his hold on the Cruciatus to hit him with some self-concocted spell, which from the looks of it would create a bloody mess had the aim been accurate. The Carrow girl fought her way through immense nausea and gut-spewing to attempt to trip him over, and another student attempted to bludgeon him on the head with a flying chair. See, the levitation spell is always handy, Antonin thought with much satisfaction.
"That's very good!" he announced chirpily. "You must always fight back, hit back at your opponent, resist whatever they're trying on you."
He let the class riot and rumble for another fifteen minutes before calling a truce and ordered them to put their desks and chairs back in place. The students seemed all too glad to be able to sit and rest, and obliged willingly.
"Now," Antonin began, "let's move on to a surprise test!" He began shooting rolls of parchment from his desk onto their desks. The students groaned.
"If you want a comfortable and unchallenging life, why don't you join the Ministry after you finish school?" he said. "If you want to be part of the status quo and do meaningless work pretending to help people while mostly waiting to collect a nice salary at the end of the day, just sign up to be a civil servant. We don't want you here. We want real soldiers—we want tough people—people who believe in change and want to fight for something they believe in. You have to show us what you're made of."
"Not by surprise tests," some student muttered, but Antonin glared so hard at him he nearly wet his pants.
"When you're done with the test, please come to the front and hand it in to me. I will pass you your assigned readings and homework, and then you can leave."
Nearly every student in the room grimaced at those words. This was worse than he thought. Could Hogwarts truly be breeding students of such overwhelming laziness? This was not the Hogwarts of the Triwizard days, when the three best schools of magical Europe came together in an impressive showcase of magical learning. Perhaps the end of the competition spelled the end of Hogwarts's competitiveness. The school was probably now languishing in the academic tables, without any awareness of how the rest of the world had advanced.