Chapter 4: Pesky Pixies

[In which Lockhart learns from his mistakes, and the Slytherins have target practice.]

Tuesday, 1 September 1992 Hogwarts

The term started calmly enough. If Mary thought the Welcome Feast was familiar, it was nothing to classes. The course schedule hadn't even changed noticeably. Slytherin still had Astronomy, Herbology, and Charms with the Ravenclaws; History of Magic, Transfiguration, and DADA with the Hufflepuffs; and Potions Friday morning with the Gryffindors. Even the times were still the same, since they had the same number of hours for each course until third year. Mary supposed it was on rotation like the dorm rooms – the new first-years would have the old schedule of the now-third-years. Binns was still boring, Professor Snape was still prejudiced against the Gryffindors, and Professor Flitwick was still far too easily excited. Professor McGonagall was slightly less terrifyingly strict than she was in their very first lesson, but Mary and Lilian thought that was probably because everyone had made it through their first year without trying to transfigure anyone else into a tea cozy, so they had earned a tiny bit of trust.

The unchanged schedule, unfortunately, meant that Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had the new DADA 'professor' (after that display in Diagon Alley, Mary was reluctant to consider Lockhart a real professor) before Slytherin and Hufflepuff. This was unfortunate for two reasons: First, Mary was curious whether the new celebrity professor would be competent, and second, Hermione was able to form her opinion of the sparkly-toothed man before either of her friends. She decided, based largely on the "textbooks," that he must be a great wizard, and declared that what most of her class described as a "bumbling, idiotic lecture" was actually some sort of subtle lesson, designed to give them hands-on experience in dealing with sudden chaos and moving targets.

If it was a test, or a real lesson of some sort, the Gryffindor/Ravenclaw class had put on a rather poor showing, from what Mary heard. Not even Hermione was willing to say exactly what had happened, but the second-years had been spotted afterward looking distinctly bedraggled, and Neville Longbottom had been heard complaining to Ron Weasley about how the 'damned things trapped me on that chandelier, broke my wand when I fell…'. Most of the Ravenclaws were miffed that he had wasted the first half-hour of class making them take a quiz over his stupid books.

The Slytherin/Hufflepuff lesson the following day did not go particularly well, either. Mary would have liked to think it would have gone better if she hadn't already been in such a poor mood to begin with, but she suspected it wouldn't have really made a difference.

The reason for Mary's bad mood on Tuesday morning was named Colin Creevey. He was a first-year, and carried a large, flash-bulb muggle camera with him everywhere. He was small, and had mousey hair, and a very irritating, squeaky voice. His robes had a Gryffindor badge, and he himself obviously had a good measure of Gryffindor bravery (or reckless stupidity), because he approached the Slytherin table at breakfast and asked for a photo.

"All right, Mary?" the boy said breathlessly, taking a tentative step forward as Mary turned around to look at him.

"Who are you?" Her words were a bit rude, perhaps, but no more so than his assumption of familiarity.

"Colin," he said. "Colin Creevey. I'm a new Gryffindor…"

"And what are you doing over here, kitten?" Lilian asked. "Are you lost? Your table's back that-a-way." She pointed, and the other second-year snakes (and several nearby first-years) sniggered.

"No! That is, er, I… could you – would it be all right – d'you think –"

"Oh just spit it out!" Mary's porridge was getting cold.

"CanIhaveapicture?" the boy asked, very quickly.

"A picture?"

"So I can prove I've met you," Creevey said eagerly, edging closer. "I know all about you. Everyone's told me. About how you survived when You Know Who tried to kill you, and how he disappeared and everything, and how you've still got a lightning scar on your forehead" (his eyes raked at Mary's fringe) "and a boy in my dormitory said if I develop the film in the right potion, the pictures'll move." Mary stared at the boy, stunned. A fan boy. She had a creepy fan boy. "It's amazing here, isn't it? I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got the letter from Hogwarts. My dad's a milkman, he couldn't believe it either. So I'm taking loads of pictures to send home to him. And it'd be really good if I had one of you. Maybe your friend could take it and I could stand next to you? And then, could you sign it?"

Before Mary could even process the request, Draco jumped in, loud and scathing. "Signed photos? You're giving muggleborns signed photos, Potter?"

"No, I'm not." She might have no idea how to deal with her fan boy, but she could definitely deal with Draco. She'd been half-waiting for him to say something bitchy in public since their encounter on the train.

"Everyone line up!" he called to the hall, "Mary Potter's giving out signed photos!"

"Draco Scorpius Malfoy, if you don't shut up this instant, I will owl your mother!" Mary snapped. She didn't know what she would say to Draco's mum, but she was sure she could come up with something convincing to get him in trouble.

"How do you know my middle name?" the blond boy asked, momentarily derailed.

"It's in Nature's Nobility, isn't it, cousin?" That shut the poncy boy up. Mary was more than willing to bet that he'd never expected her to have opened the most famous pureblood genealogy text, but that wasn't the point. She was sending him a message: if he wanted to get into a spat with her in public, she was much better-prepared now to deal with him than she had been the year before. He gave her the same, strange, almost confused look he'd given her in the bookstore two weeks before.

The Creevey boy was looking back and forth between the two of them, still holding his camera hopefully. The Slytherins were evaluating the power-play going on in front of them. Draco looked away first, and the tension dissolved.

Unfortunately, the call for signed photos had attracted the attention of the new 'professor,' and he arrived on the spot half a second later. "What's all this, what's all this?" he said, eerily reminiscent of the scene in the bookstore. "Who's giving out signed photos?"

"No one, sir," Mary said quickly. "A misunderstanding."

But Lockhart was ignoring her. "Shouldn't have asked! We meet again, Mary!" he thundered jovially, flinging an arm around her, just as he had in Flourish and Blotts. "Come on, then, Mr. Creevey! A double portr – ow!" Mary had spent several hours after the previous incident thinking of what she should have done in the bookstore. Stomping on the obnoxious celebrity's foot was only the beginning of the tortures she had imagined for him.

"Don't touch me!" She said, scrambling away, and then turned to the boy, whose finger was dangerously close to the shutter button. "If you take that picture, Creevey, I will make you wish you'd never been born!" Mary practically hissed at the younger boy. When he still appeared to be thinking about it, Lilian snatched the camera out of his hands, holding it above his head.

"Come, now, Mary," the 'professor' said, "one would think you don't want to be seen with me!"

Taking Catherine's advice on how to deal with obnoxious morons, Mary did her best impression of Lady Urquhart. "I find your presumption of familiarity distressing, Mr. Lockhart."

The wizard stiffened, as though she had smacked him, his overly-friendly attitude gone in a flash. "You will address me as 'professor,' Miss Potter."

"Of course… 'professor.'" The sarcasm in her voice was pure Professor Snape. There were a few titters amongst the other Slytherins, but Mary couldn't tell from whom.

The 'professor' looked as though he very much wanted to object to her tone, but didn't dare, lest he sound like a petulant child. All the Slytherins and most of the Ravenclaws who were still present were watching him carefully, judging him.

And then Malfoy, of all people, broke the tense and awkward silence. "If you will excuse us… 'professor,' we needs must be going. Wouldn't want to be late for our first class, would we?"

"Quite right, Mr. Malfoy!" The jovial Lockhart was back. "Well, off you get, then, off you trot!" And he swept back toward the High Table, where, it seemed, most of the other professors had also been watching their interaction with interest. Professor Sinistra winked at them, and visibly flipped a galleon to Professor Snape. Mary wondered what the bet had been.

Lilian tossed Creevey's camera back to him, and the second-year Slytherins trooped off toward the DADA classroom.

"Why do you get to be 'Mr. Malfoy' and I'm always just 'Mary'?" Mary muttered to Malfoy as they left the Great Hall.

"Because, cousin, my family has a reputation for using dark magic on those who don't show us proper respect. Yours, on the other hand, is known for noble self-sacrifice and, generally, dying." And with that, Draco began to walk a bit more quickly, catching up with Pansy and Tracey and joining their conversation.

Lilian continued the explanation, "Plus there's the fact that most of the world thinks they know you personally from the stories, so they assume familiarity that's not really warranted. I mean, if half the stories were true, you'd be a Gryffindor. Well done, handling those two, by the way. Miss Cat would be proud."

Mary just groaned, and hoped that 'professor' Lockhart wouldn't be as bad in lessons as he was outside of them. It was already shaping up to be a very long day, and they'd only just had breakfast.

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Lockhart strode confidently into the classroom, at least two minutes after the last, harried-looking Hufflepuff arrived. His robes billowed behind him almost as impressively as Professor Snape's, or might have done if they weren't a lurid orangish-yellow. He looked like an overgrown pumpkin, Mary thought uncharitably. Dumbledore had probably hired him for their shared fashion sense. She was sitting slouched in the back row, and re-arranged all seven of the "textbooks" so she couldn't see him from her seat. Lilian smirked when she realized what Mary was up to, and did the same.

After a few moments of surveying the class, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly. Silence fell among the ever-talkative Hufflepuffs. The 'professor' snagged a book off the desk of someone in the front row, and held it up so that they could see his winking photo on the front.

"Me," he said, pointing at it and giving them a matching wink. "Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award – but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!"

He waited for them to laugh. A few Hufflepuffs obliged him, and Lilian passed Mary a note: OM3 = funded the Ministry Yule Party one year; Dark Force Defense League is a bunch of nutters who 'fight evil' from their mums' spare bedrooms. Can't imagine what you have to do to only be an 'honorary' member...

Mary stifled a snigger and wrote back: I'd run from his smile if I were a banshee.

"I see you've all bought a complete set of my books – well done! I thought we'd start today with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about, just to check how well you've read them, how much you've taken in…" He passed out the tests, and declared that they had thirty minutes.

Mary was hardly paying attention. She was already skimming through the questions, and thinking that the Ravenclaws had been right to complain. It was all about their new 'professor':

1. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color?

Something that wouldn't look out of place on an Easter egg, she wrote snarkily, looking at the pastel-garbed photos on his walls. She doubted any of the Slytherins would take this seriously.

2. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition? – If we knew, it would hardly be a secret, would it?

3. What, in your opinion is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date? – Taking the esteemed position of DADA professor at Hogwarts. You know the last one died, right?

These continued over three feet of parchment to:

54. When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be? – The 31st of February, and a mirror, because he's obviously a total narcissist.

Just after Mary finished scribbling her last response, Lockhart collected the tests and rifled through them in front of the class. He didn't look pleased.

"Tut, tut. Hardly any of you remembered that my favorite color is lilac. Puce, Miss Davis? And a few of you clearly need to re-read Wanderings with Werewolves – I clearly state in Chapter Twelve that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples, not, as… seven of you have suggested, a mirror."

Mary looked around. Even some of the Hufflepuffs looked as though they were trying not to laugh.

"Fully half of you noted that if you knew my secret ambition, it wouldn't be a very well-kept secret. I see Professor Snape is training his little Slytherins well," the 'professor' said with a rougish grin, "but the answer we were looking for was from Break with a Banshee: to rid the world of evil and market my own range of hair-care potions."

He winked at them, and set the stupid quiz aside, lifting a large, covered cage onto his desk.

"Now, to business… Be warned," he declared dramatically, "It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that no harm can befall you while I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm."

Mary sat up and shifted her stack of books to get a better look at the cage. Several people in the front rows (all Hufflepuffs, since the Slytherins had chosen to sit as far from Lockhart as possible after breakfast) were leaning away from it.

"I must ask you not to scream," said Lockhart in a low voice. "It might provoke them." The whole class held its breath, and the man whipped the cover off the cage. "Yes! Freshly caught Cornish pixies!"

Zacharias Smith started laughing and couldn't stop, but Blaise and Lilian, on either side of Mary, actually looked pleased.

Theo, who was on the other side of Blaise, noted none-too-quietly that, "Generally one teaches a few spells before allowing free-target practice," but none of the Puffs or Lockhart seemed to hear him over Smith.

"You have something to say, Mr. Smith?" Lockhart asked.

"Well," Smith said, trying and failing to maintain his usual drawl through his laughter, "I wouldn't say my greatest fear is pixies."

"Perhaps not," the 'professor' said, wagging a finger at the outspoken Hufflepuff. Mary was certain that would come back to bite him, as Smith didn't take condescension well, even from teachers. "But they can be devilishly tricky little blighters, and dangerous in large groups."

The pixies were electric-blue and about eight inches high. They had pointed little faces, and very shrill voices. The moment the cover had been removed, they had started jabbering and rocketing around, rattling the cage bars and making faces at the students. There were at least two dozen of the things.

"Right, then, let's see what you make of them!" Lockhart said loudly, and then he opened the cage.

Pixies shot in every direction. Several went straight out the windows, showering the back row with shattered glass. The rest proceeded to thoroughly wreck the classroom, overturning the wastepaper bins, throwing ink and chalk at the walls, and lifting a boy named Hopkins, complete with his desk, six feet into the air before dropping him with a spectacular crash on top of Smith, who didn't get up. Mary was suddenly glad she hadn't laughed. Lockhart put up some sort of shield around himself and sat back to watch. In a matter of minutes, most of the Hufflepuffs were disarmed, either by friendly fire, or by the pixies themselves. Mary saw more than one wand pitched out the window.

Lockhart just grinned, safe behind his shield. A pixie threw a framed photo at him, and it bounced away, glass shattering as it hit the floor.

The pixies were largely avoiding the Slytherin half of the room, as Blaise, Lilian, and Draco seemed to be having some sort of competition to see who could freeze (and summon into their respective piles) the most of them. Blaise was winning, with four. Draco only had two, but that might have been because Vinnie and Greg kept fouling his shots as the pixies bit at their ears and darted at their faces and hands. Theo was practicing a red spell, stupefy, and had hit two pixies as well as Daphne.

"Oops. Ennervate!" The girl sat up with a start, coming face-to-face with a leering pixie.

She swatted it out of the air with a rather vicious backhand. "Watch where you're aiming that stunner, Nott!"

"Sorry, Greengrass! Stupefy!"

"Vi ál teró!" Mary snapped her wand at a nearby pixie. It crashed into the floor with a tiny crunch.

"Nice one, Liz!" Lilian shouted between her calls of immobilius.

Hermione had found the spell after the incident where Quirrellmort had been cursing Mary's broom, and she hadn't had an occasion to use it. It was only a hex, and she doubted it was what he had used, since her broom hadn't crashed straight into the ground, but it seemed to be good for this. She sent it at another one, but missed, hitting a boy named Rivers instead. He tripped, hitting his head on a desk as he went down.

"Sorry, Rivers!" Mary shouted, but he seemed to be down for the count.

"Nice one, Potter," Draco said, snickering, and then, "Vinnie, if you hit me one more time…"

Pansy, Millicent, and Tracey were working together to summon the pixies back into their cage, and knock them out with a close-range Sumerian Strike Hex, which was very like being punched in the nose, once they were trapped.

Draco stunned Vinnie and made Greg step away from him at wandpoint. His concern over his associates (Mary hesitated to call them his friends) distracted him from the pixie sneaking up on him with a bottle of ink. It was upended over his perfectly coifed blond head before he could blink, to the other Slytherins' amusement and his outrage. He sent an Immolation Hex at the creature in retaliation, but missed, setting fire to one of the few photos still on the wall. Photo-Lockhart grinned and winked as his face distorted from the heat. The real Lockhart looked a bit irritated.

Then there was a pixie tangled in Mary's curls, pulling as hard as it could to get free. "Ouch! Lilian? There's one in my hair!"

Lilian smirked, but froze the pixie before using a Detangling spell to retrieve it and throwing it into her pile.

It was about then that Draco, still dripping, realized there was no way he was going to catch up with either Lilian or Blaise. He cast a terminus on each of their piles, which was like finite, but was intended for multiple targets. The dozen pixies they had captured between them were suddenly loose again. Lilian sent a Stinging Hex at him in retaliation.

"Hey!"

"Oops. Sorry Malfoy, target moved." Lilian's tone held not the slightest hint of remorse.

The newly-freed pixies took flight, hiding behind Lockhart's shield and taking the others with them.

"What time is it?" Blaise asked in the sudden lull.

Mary cast a quick tempus. "Class ended two minutes ago."

The Slytherins, except for Malfoy, who was busy trying to terego the ink out of his hair, looked around at the chaos they had wrought.

"Shall we?" Daphne suggested, nodding toward the door.

"Might as well," Pansy said, dropping the levitation charm she'd been holding on the cage. "Seeing as class is officially over, anyway."

Lockhart was trying to get their attention, but his shield obviously stopped sound as well as pixies and photos, because they couldn't hear anything he was saying.

"We'll be late if we don't get going," Lilian grinned.

And with that, they summoned their bags and scattered belongings, and filed out the door.

Blaise used a mass revival charm Mary hadn't heard of before on his way out – "Concio omnes!" – to revive the fallen Hufflepuffs (and Crabbe) and all the knocked-out pixies.

The creatures fell on the still-disoriented Hufflepuffs until Theo, with a positively evil grin in place, sent a dark green curse sizzling at Lockhart's shield. Mary didn't know what the curse would have done if it had landed, but it caused the shield to crack and fail, as Theo had obviously intended. The pixies rushed the 'professor,' and the Hufflepuffs, with a few torn, backward glances, made good on their chance to escape. They tried to thank the Slytherin boy, but he claimed to have done it solely for the look on 'that poncy arsehole's face.' It had, admittedly, been quite good. Wide-eyed panic was a bad look on the flamboyant author. The other second-years got a laugh out of it when Theo imitated it over lunch.

Mary, the last Slytherin but Crabbe out the door, thought she heard the professor say a very naughty word as one of the pixies snagged his wand out of his hand and made a beeline for the nearest window.

Lunch was spent at the Ravenclaw table, trying to convince Hermione that just because he was a successfully published author did not mean that Lockhart had any business being in a classroom. His lesson had been fun, but he hadn't actually taught them anything, and had spent half an hour on that stupid How Well Do You Know Gilderoy Lockhart Quiz. Hermione wasn't having any of it, though, so the argument quickly devolved into Mary and Lilian simply mocking the studious girl for doodling 'Mrs. Hermione Lockhart' in her dayplanner.