Here's the newest chapter for the "Harry Potter: the Serpent Lord" story for your enjoyment. Sorry for being a bit late with the update - had some trouble with free time because of my magistracy exams.

* Review response:
Naginator, Aura Knight-Lyrin, Penny is wise, obsessivegirl73, Hanzo of the Salamander, RE5 forever, Arct1cfox, Still Not Dead Yet, James018, GoldenGod Rah, thank you, folks!
AlsoKnownAsMatt, no, not really.
Highvalour, wait and see. no spoilers here.
The Sinful, Malfoy's political assassination will happen later, but it will.
Victorules, Draconica is rather stubborn, and since she decided that they are 'just associates' then they are 'just associates', even if she does have some feelings for him (not exactly romantic (yet), but more than 'just associates', even if says otherwise). As for never speaking to each other - they worked together as they studied DADA since the early spring 1992. And even before that, they interacted from time to time... Harry sees Draconica as a friend (almost on the same level as Hermione and Neville) - she was the first magical child his age he met, and she was nice (even if rather cold) to him. And they can relate to each other somewhat, as they both had not perfect childhood. He doesn't have any romantic feelings towards her at this moment, but that doesn't mean he won't in the future

c0dy88, here are the characteristics of the Slytherin four as I see them:
Draconica Malfoy: slightly dark in her magic and politically neutral (and is actually as much a Ravenclaw as she is a Slytherin). She has a sharp mind, but is somewhat stubborn. She also keeps people at arm's length, while only Harry and Daphne, and Tracey to a lesser extent, can be considered her friends (Draconica would deny that, stating that they are 'just associates').
Daphne Greengrass: moderately dark in her magic and also politically neutral. She isn't as studious as Draconica, but she would do well in the house of ravens as she is very rational and calculating. Much like Draconica, she too keeps people at arm's length, already being named the Ice Queen, and is friends only with Draconica and Tracey.
Tracey Davis: neutral in her magic and slightly pro-muggle in her political stance (she's half-blood, after all). She's actually a rather cheerful and friendly girl, but since she was sorted into Slytherin, she has to limit herself and play an ice queen. Tracey isn't the most intelligent girl around, but she isn't stupid by any means.
Theodore Nott: dark in his magic and pro-pureblood in his political stance. Unlike many of the Death Eaters, though, he understands that someone needs to do the dirty works, so exterminating everyone with impure blood is stupid in his opinion. He is average in his intelligence, but he is still cunning, so he accepts knowledge - if it can help him - no matter where it comes from. He also prefers fighting from the shadow, partly because he isn't that powerful magically.

* Disclaimer: I DO NOT own "Harry Potter" and its characters in any shape or form.

"human speech"
"wraith speech"
'human thoughts'
"spells / parseltongue"

This chapter was not beta-read. Yet.

chapter 16: The club and the voice

Since Lockhart's 'teaching' methods didn't improve the following week – the man still had scenes from his books role-played – the everyone who joined the club were looking forward to Thursday afternoon, when the first meeting will be held... On Thursday morning, during double Transfiguration, even Ravenclaws were waiting somewhat impatiently for the lessons to finish, not something one could see normally. Of course, professor McGonnagal noticed that, but decided to ignore it for some reason.

Even though the first meeting of the club wasn't until three in the afternoon, many of those who were coming were hastily eating their lunches. Harry couldn't understand why: they had an hour and a half, more than enough to eat at a normal pace and have quite some time left... But then again, their restlessness was coming from the fact that they were finally getting some (hopefully) decent instructions for DADA...

The 'golden trio' arrived to the reading room of the Hogwarts library with five minutes to spare, but they actually were the last ones – unless someone else decided to join the club – everyone else was already there, sitting in the groups by school houses or families (in Patil twins' case). Harry, Hermione and Neville took one of the remaining free tables for themselves as they joined the group.

"Now that everyone's here, let us begin." Draconica said. "Potter, if you will." The green-eyed Gryffindor was a bit surprised that his Slytherin friend delegated the leadership to him, but he quickly recovered.

"Um... Well... Welcome to the club for those who wants to learn about how to defend themselves. We are all here, because the level on which DADA is taught seems inadequate to us and, thus, we have to learn what we need on our own." The young Potter said, hoping that he didn't sound too anti-Hogwarts. "The group is going to be working this way: if you have some knowledge you want to share with your classmates, queue up – we won't have a single person that will always play the role of the teacher. But before we start today, we should name our club. Any ideas?"

And the brainstorming began... At some point Kevin Entwhistle offered the 'Self-defense Association of Students' name – SAS for short – causing many of those who were close to their non-magical origins chuckle. There were many other ideas, of course, and, in the end, after more than an hour of debates, the club got its 'official' name as 'Defense Study Group' or DS in abbreviation.

"Very well, let's begin..." Harry said, once the name of the group was approved by the majority of the students present. "If no one has any objections, I will 'lecture' first..." Since no one was against that, the young Potter began: "What I will teach you isn't exactly related to the Defense Against the Dark Arts, but is something I feel everyone must know..." At this point, though, he was interrupted by madam Pince finally deciding to see what the group of students in the reading room was up to.

"What are you lot doing here?" The stern woman asked, a bit surprised to see members of all four houses sitting together and not insulting each other or outright fighting.

"We have a study group here." Several members of the DS chorused in response. The librarian looked at them with some suspicion, but since so far they weren't braking any of the rules – their debates about the group name were held under muffling charms, so they weren't even too loud – she couldn't do anything to them.

"I see." She said to them. "Do follow the rules of the library, or I will have to kick you out." Madam Pince warned them, before returning to her table in the next room... Harry breathed out a sigh of relief: they wouldn't have to relocate the club.

"Oh, well... Where was I? Oh, yeah, what I'm going to teach you is something, I think, everybody must know, even if it is not exactly related to DADA. I'm going to tell you about the first aid techniques, both magical and muggle." There was a murmur among the 'listeners', as some understood why this was important, while others just wanted to learn some offensive, or at very least defensive, magic.

"I kinda understand magical first aid, Potter, but why would we ever need muggle first aid? And what muggles could have that is good enough to learn?" Theodore Nott asked. Harry sighed: he expected that someone would ask something like this, even if he hoped that this wouldn't happen.

"To answer your first question, what if your wand cracks or breaks? You remember what happened to Ronald Weasley's? I personally don't find such wand to be safe enough for giving the first aid, or any other medical treatment. Plus there are poisons and spells that prevents blood clotting – you can bleed to death if you don't know counter spell or have an antidote. While muggle techniques won't stop the bleeding completely, they can slow it down significantly, giving you extra time find a true treatment." The scion of the house Potter explained. Nott nodded slowly, understanding how this knowledge could help. "As for your second question... I will tell you this: muggle and magical worlds are too different to be compared as whole, but as for the areas that are common to both worlds... muggles have much much more knowledge about how human body works, and there some diseases that magical world can't cure at all, while muggle can at least partially... Muggle astronomy too is much more advanced that its magical counterpart... But let's not divert from today's topic." Harry said. "If you don't want to listen to this ...lecture, you can leave, no one will hold it against you." Surprisingly, everyone stayed. "In that case, the first thing I will show you is..."

The 'lecture' lasted for almost two hours, and still covered only the very basics: how to stop bleeding, how to fix broken bones, what to do, if you are poisoned... And, like Harry had said, this wasn't exactly DADA study material, everyone, even Nott, was quick to understand, why the dark-haired boy wanted them to know this.

"...And I'd like to stop here: the dinner will be served soon, and we all need to prepare for the astronomy lesson tonight." Harry said, exiting his lecturing mode. Of course, others contributed a lot too, especially about magical methods of the first aid, but he was the main narrator... The students were now leaving the reading room and heading back to their houses' common rooms, while Harry was packing the books he used to show how the things he was telling about should be done.

"That was very informative, Potter." Draconica, who was leaving among the last, said as she passed by him. "But next time, please, tell us something that can help us in DADA more directly." Despite her choice of words, her tone was saying that she didn't mind much his choice of the topic for today. Harry shrugged: so far he didn't have any ideas about when and what about he will be lecturing next.

"I'll try." Was his reply. The blond witch, though, was already by the door out of the room. She stopped for a moment to show that she had heard him, before continuing on her way to the Slytherin dungeons.

~/ *** \~

The next meeting of the DS, again on the Thursday afternoon in the reading room of the Hogwarts library, was led in collaboration by Hermione, Padma and, surprisingly, Daphne. The girls showed their classmates the basic magical shield, protego, as well as a couple of 'offensive' spell, the disarming charm, expelliarmus, included. Of course, since they were in the library, they couldn't practice magic, but even the theory given by the three witches was enough: everyone could practice spells later in the common rooms or anywhere else.

A week later, shy oriental Ravenclaw witch named Su Li, urged on by her housemate Padma, showed a couple of relatively harmless, but very annoying and somewhat 'dirty' hexes – even though these were easy to block, if you managed to hit your opponent with one of them, unless he was a master of self-control, you had a great chance of winning...

~/ *** \~

On the first weekend of October, the first quidditch match was played. Traditionally, it was Gryffindor versus Slytherin one. The match was unusually long, lasting for more than four hours, and ended with Harry catching the snitch, making the final score five hundreds thirty – one hundred ten in favor of the house of lions.

There was an incident during the match, when the bludgers suddenly decided that the only target for them was one Harry Potter. Once that became obvious, madam Hooch stopped the game, and professors examined the bludgers... Since the magic used on them wasn't cast by anyone from Hogwarts, it was simply dispelled – which, actually, wasn't that easy, even for the headmaster himself – before the match was resumed.

During the match, Draconica scored only once, but six of goal sendings were made by her, and the blond witch was rather content with such results. And, apparently, her opinion about the game changed a little, as it brought out her competitive streak a bit that day. She would never be a true fan of the game, like many males (and several females) were, though.

~/ *** \~

The next Monday, Lockhart decided that he had taught his students enough to quiz them, but, of course, the man had all of the questions centered around himself. At least the questions weren't about his favorite color or his dream – they were about his (supposed) accomplishment he had written about.

Of course, with the books being role-played in the classroom, no one had big troubles answering the questions like 'How did Gilderoy Lockhart act when he came face to face with the Himalaya Yeti?' But, the student body still wasn't very thrilled by this test: the blond man had only a small fanbase left in the Hogwarts institution, since everyone who had at least two brain cells had already seen that he wasn't nearly as good as he portrayed himself in his books. Plus no one liked to be quizzed...

This quiz, though, showed those who were willing to see it, that they had wasted entire month of DADA lessons, and hadn't learn anything useful. Unfortunately, those, who saw this were either already in the Defense Study Group, or didn't want to go there because of their prejudiced against the members of other houses...

Three days later, on the next meeting of the DS, 'professor Susan Bones' explained to her classmates about the ways of avoiding being hit by opponent's spells. Apparently, the niece of the current DMLE head was well versed in defense, even if her knowledge of 'offensive' magic was kind of limited.

"...The magical shields are good and all – they are fast to create, and they will protect you from most magical attacks – but there are curses that can pierce certain types of such shields, and there are at least three curses that cannot be blocked by any known magical shields." Susan lectured. "The other way is to levitate or conjure something in the path of the spell. Conjuration is well beyond what we can do now, but levitation isn't. The downsides of this method is that it takes some time to bring the object where you need it,.. and some curses cause solid objects to explode, so if you don't know what exactly you are attacked with, this method of defense isn't the best one." The redhead continued. "The best way would be dodging, of course, but this requires lightning-fast reflexes a good physical form and enough space to maneuver, plus if your opponent is using area-wide attacks..." That was the idea of Susan's lesson: compare different defensive techniques and point out which is better in which case.

Since ms. Bones' lecture ended just an hour before the dinner, it was decided that the group should end their meeting for today... After thanking the red-haired Hufflepuff for her lecture, the 'golden trio' headed back to the Gryffindor tower.

'Kill... Rip... I want to kill'em...' Harry suddenly heard in a muffled hissing whisper. Of course, the young Potter immediately stopped and looked around, hoping that this voice was a hallucination. There was no one in the corridor, aside from him and his friends Unfortunately... 'I'll rip them...' The voice hissed again, but much quieter and from a different place this tome.

"Harry, are you alright?" Hermione asked with concern in her voice as she saw her friend's strange behavior. Neville just nodded, agreeing with the bushy-haired witch: to them, Harry stopping in an empty corridor and looking around, as if he felt hunted, looked strange.

"Did you hear that?" The scion of house Potter asked in response. "There was some voice here... And it wanted to kill someone."

"Harry, mate, I think you are hearing things." Neville said, shaking his head.

"Harry, I think you've worked too much these recent days with all of your extra studies. You should relax more." Hermione added, though it didn't sound very convincing: the girl spent much more time studying than he did. "I will talk with Wood, so that you don't have to go to your quidditch training this Saturday."

"No, no, I'm fine!" The young Potter replied quickly: he didn't need anyone else knowing that he was hearing things. And he also knew that arguing with her was often useless... "I promise, I will repose more, Hermione." The bushy-haired witch shrugged. She would have dragged him to the hospital wing for a check up, but knowing how much her friend disliked hospitals this wasn't going to happen without extensive use of magic...

For the next several days Harry was trying to find the source of that mysterious voice, even if he didn't wander around the castle – he simply tried to listen to every sound in the castle he heard. But there was no luck, as whatever he had heard that day never appeared again. In the end, the young Potter decided that what he had heard that afternoon was indeed a hallucination and nothing more...

That's all, folks!
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