Dumbledore sat in his office, muscling through the last pieces of paperwork required of him before his the new year started. It was the last day before his students would arrive and he was having to sign all kinds of forms as respond to messages from worried parents who always sent him letters at the beginning of the year.
It had been an interesting few weeks to say the least. He half considered starting up Summer classes in order to try to imitate how much more enjoyable the summer had been. What Flitwick had said was true, without students around life was unbearably slow, and most of them had long moved past the point were a summer trip was enticing. Of course, they would need to find a student as gifted, interesting and respectful as Ms. Inoue.
The girl had taken to magic like a fish to water and was so genuinely excited and pleasant that she quickly became a favorite of nearly all her instructors. Kettleburn in particular had become very attached to the girl, offering to be the one to instruct her in Defense Against the Dark Arts, as they didn't have a proper instructor of the course on Campus at the moment.
Dumbledore received almost daily updates on the girl's progress. She mastered the wand movements quickly, her reciting of the words was almost completely flawless and her results spoke for themselves. In Charms, Transfiguration, and Defense, she mastered all the first year material in a matter of days. Of course, when your wand has a mind of its own and helps you succeed, it is hard not to excel.
Theory had been the hardest thing as her own language for the driving forces that ran the world of magic. Dumbledore had learned a little about her past training, though all of it was hard to believe. First she was trained for a week by a talking cat she called Yoruichi-sama, followed by one day of training by a one armed fireworks engineer and finally and perhaps most surprising, a month spent training underneath one of the Soul Reapers' legendary Taichous of the Goten Thirteen. But it seemed as though they were always only interested in her more unique abilities rather than the general use of magic.
She was an oddball, but was still a favorite of her instructors who all prayed for her to be sorted into there house. All save one.
"That is it! I have had it!" Dumbledore jumped in his chair as Professor Snape's voice boomed from the entrance of his office. The tall black haired professor moved into the room with out his usual flowing stride as he was stomping on the ground, uncaring for grace as his blood pressure hit the roof. "Headmaster, I will not have that... that thing in my dungeons any longer! I want her out! Her and those accursed insects she keeps with her!"
Dumbledore looked into Snape's headed face, his pale completion turning red from frustration, or perhaps it was pure rage, and he seemed to have a black eye. "I suppose this means there is still no luck in teaching the girl the art of Potions."
"I would have better luck teaching a troll the art of potion making than that girl!" Snape growled, his body shaking. "Incompetence doesn't even begin to describe it! Everything she does is pure unadulterated failure! She destroyed my entire lab while trying to make cough syrup! COUGH SYRUP! She isn't just bad, she is impossible! And every time I try to scold her, those demons assault me! I refuse to let her set one foot in my dungeons again!"
"Severus, please, Potions is a required course." Dumbledore said, trying to calm the man down.
"I'll write a waver if I have to, I don't care! Cancel all of my classes! FIRE ME! I will not teacher her!" Snape's breathing became ragged as he started to tremble. Rage had blinded him and he seemed ready to pass out from stress overload.
It was the only thing that Orihime seemed incapable of doing. She couldn't brew a potion to save her life.
"Hey, it's not nice to laugh." Orihime whined as she sat in the corner of Kettleburn's classroom using a charmed rag to get the layers of goo from the latest mishap off of her clothes.
She had modified her school uniform to look like the shihakusho she had warn while in the Soul Society. It helped remind her of what she was working for and all of her friend. Plus, the tightly wrapped black cloth was easier to move around in and she liked the way she looked in it. None of the professors really complained when she started to show up in it. Mcgonagall even congratulated her on her transfiguration work. It was apparently against the rules, but all of them were willing to make exceptions, claiming that it was because of cultural sensitivity.
"I can't help it! You honestly couldn't even get cough syrup right!? Even I wasn't that bad at potions!" The elder professor chuckled. "I wish I could have seen Snivels' face. He never had a sense of humor. I remember how uptight he was, even as a first year."
Kettleburn had become even more energetic since Orihime healed his old injuries away. Some of the professors even wondered if it was a smart idea to get the spritely man back on his two real feet again as he managed to get into more and more trouble.
Orihime still pouted at the teasing so Kettleburn decided to give her a break. "Alright, I know what will cheer you up. How about I show you my old friend Potter." Kettleburn said, pushing himself up onto his feet and moving towards a barn yard style door that lead to where he kept some of the more tame magical creatures. Orihime, having got the worst of the slug off herself, went after him.
They passed by a few large pens filled with verious kinds of snakes, spiders, and beasts with large tusks that Orihime couldn't identify, but seemed to be related to pigs, before finally stopping in front of one larger pen that's fence was entirely made of sheet metal. "Well little lass, meet my old friend Potter."
Potter looked like some kind of large tortes, as big as a fair sized bull, with six toeless legs and a massive black shell that seemed to have a multitude of gems embedded into the shell itself. The creature didn't give any sign of having noticed the two come in, just stared blankly forward, its slow breathing releasing steam.
"Wow, its so pretty." Ayame said flying around the thing.
"What is your classification of the word 'pretty'?" Lily said holding her nose. "All that glitters ain't gold, and it smells like rotten eggs."
"Haha! Yeah it does, doesn't it!?" Kettleburn laughed before throwing himself over the fence and motioning for Orihime to follow. "It does give off a lot of sulfur, which is what you are smelling. Potter's a fire crab, I got him back when I first started teaching, sixty-three years ago. This fella has fathered many a child's school project. They grow throughout their entire lives which is how he became so massive. Even when I got him he wasn't young. Boy is somewhere around a hundred and thirty, meaning he's even older than Dumbledore. Come over here and feel it."
"Alright." Orihime said, moving up to the fire crab and placing a hand on its onyx shell. The soothing warmth radiated from it, making her skin feel all tingly. "It kind of tickles." She said with a laugh.
"Doesn't it? Fire crabs can raise their body temperature at will, and they use it as one hell of a defense mechanism. Gets hot enough to burn the flesh clean off your hand!" He laughed. Orihime quickly pulled her hand off of the shell, and some of the spirits gave the man dirty looks, but he just laughed. "Don't worry. They only activate it when they sense greed. These boys are now a protected species because they were hunted for their shells by people who thought they made pretty cauldrons. So whenever they feel like someone is after there shells, they heat up to try to defend themselves. I figured you were pure enough to get away unharmed."
"Well don't test things like that!" Alba shouted angrily at the man.
Orihime sighed with relief as her spirits all jumped to defend her. She was a little surprised, but it was true that there was no harm done. Her eyes drifted around the room until she saw a large wall covered in framed papers. "What are those?" She asked, pointing to the wall.
Kettleburn followed her finger and then grinned as he saw what she was pointing toward. "Ah, my wall of memories. Come on, I'll show you." He said leading her out of the fire crab's pen. "These are my greatest moments from over the years. I keep them here as a reminder of the good times."
"Professor Kettleburn... The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures hereby... place you on probation!" Hinagiku read off in shock.
"This one is a probation warning too." Baigon said from the other side of the board.
"Same with this one." Alba said from up top.
"Thats right, sixty one probationary warnings in total so far. More than doubling the record in the history of the school." Kettleburn said pulling one of them down. "This one was for releasing exploding worms in the punkin patch to deal with the crows. Oh, and this one was for keeping a litter of cubs born to a wolf that had been impregnated by a werewolf. And I got this one for using magic to enlarge a badger until it was the size of a house."
"You... you're insane." Ayame squeaked. "How could they still let you teach after all this."
"Oh, no one was really hurt. Just a few broken bones and a couple burns. Nothing big." Kettleburn said with a shrug. "Teaching students about how to properly take care of magical creatures is naturally dangerous, but it is important. So I'm given a bit of leeway."
"Explains how he lost all his limbs." Tsubaki mumbled as he read through the impressive number of reports. "Incited a riot using an army of hypnotic toads..."
"Good times." Kettleburn said with a smile. "Speaking of good times, you excited for school to start up?"
Orihime flushed and nodded. "I'm a little nervous, I know that the others say that I'm caught up, but I really don't feel like I learned enough."
"Don't worry about it. Hardly anyone learns anything in their first year. There's too much work." Kettleburn said, waving down the girl's concerns. "Just wait, you'll see that your ahead of the curve. Just try not to make everyone less look to bad, and try to hide whenever someone brings up potions."
"Don't remind me." Orihime said, wincing at the thought of being in a potions class with other students to see her messing up. She didn't understand how things kept going wrong. She only made little additions that she thought would make it better, but it always just blew up in her face.
"You still insisting on going all the way to London to take the train with the other kids?" Kettleburn asked.
Orihime nodded. "I want to have that experience, just once. I want to see what Hogwarts looks like for people coming her for the first time from the train."
"Little late for that, but alright. Your call." Kettleburn said before looking at a clock. "Oh geez, look at the time. I was going to meet up with Hagrid thirty minutes ago. We are working on a way to crossbreed Fire Crabs with Manticores. We're thinking of calling them, Blast-Ended-Skrewts. Hope you have fun with your train ride tomorrow." He said as he guided her out of the barn and locked the door behind them.
"How has that man managed to live this long?" Shun'ō wondered aloud.
"I have no idea." Orihime replied honestly.
So Orihime's sorting is coming up. I've got a plan in mind though I am not sure if people have guessed it yet. I'm guessing not, because I didn't have a very high opinion of people, but I could be surprised.
Kettleburn is actually canon, and did have three of his four limbs lost long before he retired as a teacher, and he was supposed to have retired with 62 probationary warnings on record.
Looking for a beta, or really just someone to help with my spelling errors. I try to find them, but I've found that I'm not very good at it. The person who challenged me to write this has been trying to beta for me, but is having hardware problems, as in she doesn't have a computer. Message me if you are willing.