FitzSimmons' first class of the new year was Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, taught by Hufflepuff Head of House, Professor Sprout.

But as they waited outside of the greenhouses for class to start, it wasn't just Professor Sprout who arrived. Professor Lockhart, resplendent in turquoise robes that morning, walked up with her, talking a disgruntled looking Professor Sprout's ear off, apparently not having any class of his own to teach during first period.

Seeing an audience, Professor Lockhart beamed around at all of them, saying, "Oh, hello there! Just been showing Professor Sprout the right way to doctor a Whomping Willow! But I don't want you running away with the idea that I'm better at Herbology than she is! I just happen to have met several of these exotic plants on my travels!"

Fed up, and actually having a class to teach, Madam Sprout cut him off with a sharp, "Greenhouse three today, chaps!", and started shuffling everyone into said greenhouse.

As FitzSimmons followed everyone in, Simmons whispered into her husband's ear, "You know, people who actually know how to do things well don't usually go around unsolicitedly telling everyone else how to do said things."

But before Fitz could agree with her, he felt a hand grab his shoulder. Instinctively, he grabbed the unknown hand with his own and twisted it hard as he spun around, landing a blow with the flat of his other hand under the attacker's jaw. Threat taken care of, he looked down to see that it was Professor Lockhart, now lying on the grass holding his most likely broken wrist and gasping from the blow to his jaw and upper throat.

"Harry!" Professor Lockhart exclaimed weakly. "It's me! Lockhart! I just wanted to say hi to a fellow star! I hadn't got the chance to speak to you yet!"

"Oh. Sorry professor — thought someone was attacking me," Fitz replied not at all apologetically, as he had done nothing wrong. "And just a heads up, it's best not to randomly grab people from behind without warning. They might think you're trying to hurt them."

Despite having supposedly spent his entire life defeating dark creatures and protecting innocent witches and wizards from harm, Professor Lockhart had clearly never thought about a person assuming that someone grabbing them from behind might be an attack, as he just stared up at Fitz — and by default Simmons as well since she had come to stand by her husband when she turned around after hearing Professor Lockhart's wrist crack — in shock for several long seconds, before finally standing back up and brushing his robes off as best as he could with his one hand that wasn't attached to a painfully broken wrist.

"I, um…I'll keep that in mind," he replied flustered, before continuing on with a little more bravado, "I just wanted to say hi, Harry — you know, one star to another. Well, uh, you best be getting on to class, and I'll just, uh, just be heading back up to the castle."

And with that he gave Harry an awkward wink and strode off towards the castle holding his broken wrist, doubtlessly heading towards the hospital wing to have it mended by Madam Pomfrey.

Finally free to attend class, FitzSimmons quickly hurried into greenhouse three as they had started to a few minutes earlier before Professor Lockhart had attacked Fitz. And other than a slightly scolding look from an already-moody-because-of-Lockhart Madam Sprout, nothing was said about their very slight lateness actually into the greenhouse, or their injuring of a professor (even if he most certainly deserved it), since everyone else was already inside of the greenhouse and not looking out through the foggy windows when the incident had occurred, and therefore no one saw anything. So Madam Pomfrey didn't see the incident in order to give Fitz an illegal detention for protecting himself, none of the other students saw it either in order to report it to Madam Sprout or any other professor, and Lockhart certainly wasn't about to give another star like himself detention.

As for their Herbology class itself, it went much smoother than meeting Professor Lockhart, simply transplanting mandrakes and avoiding the teething venomous tentacula. Sure, there was a quite a scramble at the beginning of class as everyone tried to seize a pair of earmuffs that wasn't pink and fluffy — except for FitzSimmons and a few of the girls who immediately dove for the pink and fluffy ones — and the mandrake seedlings didn't particularly like being removed from their current pots or put back into larger pots, but no one tried to attack Fitz or Simmons again, and no more wrists had to be broken for the remainder of the class period.

Once the bell had rung signifying the end of class, FitzSimmons and the rest of the Gryffindors headed inside the castle to wash up, and then make it to Transfiguration class where they turned beetles into buttons. Or FitzSimmons turned their beetles into buttons, and everyone else gave their beetles lots of exercise scuttling over the tops of their desks avoiding the wands being pointed at them, earning FitzSimmons lots of jealous looks. Including one Ronald Weasley, who was sitting at the desk next to the one that Simmons was sitting at — Fitz sitting at the very end of the row like all of the year before so as to prevent Ron from sitting next to him and bothering Fitz during class — watching the couple transfigure their buttons back into beetles before turning them back into buttons again for the last fifteen minutes of class.

And after class was over and everyone was making their way through the hallways heading down to lunch, he made his way up to FitzSimmons and burst out jealously, "How could you do that?! I couldn't do anything! It feels like I forgot everything over the summer!"

"Did you not practice, and start working on all the new spells once the booklist came out?" Simmons asked, already knowing the answer based on the redhead's work ethic (or lack thereof) during the previous school year and his inability to perform the transfiguration spell during the class that they had just finished. "Beetles to buttons is the first Transfiguration spell in The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2."

But to her surprise, Ron gaped at her instead of giving some flimsy excuse for not practicing like she had expected him to.

"We're not allowed to do magic over the summer!" he exclaimed.

"The notes?" Fitz said. "Oh, that's just the school covering their arses in case a student blows themselves up or something over the summer — liability issues, you know."

"Mum says it too!" Ron argued back angrily. "As soon as we get home from Kings Cross every summer she reminds everyone that magic isn't allowed! And she's spent half her summers that I can remember stopping Bill, Charlie, and the twins from doing magic when they're at home from school! Percy of course never gets in trouble, but that's Percy — probably never broken a stupid rule in his life."

"Well, that sounds like a her problem, not anything real," Simmons replied. "It just sounds like she doesn't like her children doing magic, especially if she's constantly having to stop your brothers because they are actively doing magic all the time."

But before Ron could retort that his mum was a perfect angel and never wrong and everything she said was better than scripture, Neville, who was walking behind them and overheard their conversation, cut in.

"Actually, we're technically not allowed to do magic over the summer, though the rule is usually ignored amongst magical families. But there is a law by the Ministry of Magic — the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery — that forbids underage wizards from performing spells outside of school. Well, sort of — because magical families are technically allowed to train their children at home if they want to, though no one actually does it, and it is highly frowned upon by the Ministry who wants everyone to go to Hogwarts. At least, that's what I've heard my gran say — something about more control.

"But as for the actual law itself, while it is illegal for us to perform magic over the summer and you'll get a warning from the Improper Use of Magic Office if you do and can eventually get expelled, it can only be enforced on underage wizards who aren't around adult wizards when they're doing the magic. It works on something called the Trace, I don't know much about it, but I do know that if you are around adult wizards, the Ministry can't tell if you're performing the magic or the adults are. And all the pureblood families for sure, and I'd assume most of the half-blood families where the wizarding parent is there, have their children practice magic over the summer. My gran absolutely insists that I practice for hours every day, with as bad as I am — not that it seems to have done much good based on today's classes."

"Well, that's intrusive!" Simmons exclaimed vehemently when he finished. "Not to mention criminally biased against students who aren't growing up in wizarding families! It's a guaranteed way for purebloods to keep themselves in power because on average they'll be better at magic than most muggleborns because they're allowed to practice all summer when muggleborns aren't, and more often than not keep half-bloods above muggleborns as well, because at least some if not most of them will have the wizarding parent or parents there so that their children can practice as well! It's systematic oppression of the blood-type they don't like!"

Fitz reached over and lightly stroked his wife's back to soothe her righteous anger at the Ministry and all who enforced such travesty and bigotry, as Ron stared back and forth between FitzSimmons and Neville, unable to reconcile what his mum had always told them with the new information that both Neville and Hermione had muddied the waters with. But Neville had another thought.

"If you two practiced all summer, though, how did you never get any letters from the Ministry?" he asked in confusion. "Because you're a muggleborn, Hermione, and don't you live with muggles as well, Harry? And the Ministry always detects you, no matter who or where you are. Or did you only practice in places like Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, where there are plenty of adults around so the Trace doesn't work?"

FitzSimmons glanced at each other for a second, psychically debating how much of their secret it would be safe to reveal, before Simmons answered, "The Trace, and the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery — which is anything but reasonable, it's criminally and systematically oppressive, and stupid to boot — are apparently only a British Ministry of Magic thing, and can only be enforced inside this country. And at the end of the day, hopefully only work inside this country's borders — the Trace, that is, the Restriction is just a words on a piece of paper. What I'm trying to say is, hopefully the massive violation of privacy that is the Trace only works inside the borders of the United Kingdom, and hopefully the criminal oppression that is those words on a sheet of paper, is only written down and enforced inside of this country."

"No idea," Neville answered with a shrug. "Never learned much about the magical communities of other countries."

Ron, meanwhile, was still confused.

If Neville was to be believed, Britain had some magical Trace thingy that monitored magic usage and that is why his mum constantly worked so hard to make sure that her sons weren't breaking the law during the summer. And if Harry and Hermione were to be believed, there were other countries out there somewhere that didn't follow Britain's laws for some inexplicable reason. But what any of that had to do with Harry and Hermione, though, he had absolutely no clue, as obviously they hadn't left the country during the summer — no one left Britain unless their job required it, like his two oldest brothers working in Egypt and Romania.

But fortunately by this point they had reached the Great Hall and he was distracted by food, and forgot all about the impossibility of Harry avoiding the Trace as he joined Neville with the rest of the first years at the Gryffindor table, while FitzSimmons slipped away to their normal seats alone at the end of the table to avoid any more potentially incriminating questions.

~FS~

That afternoon they had their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class with Professor Lockhart.

After talking for the entire first half of the class about himself and his achievements, while telling them that he didn't talk about himself or his achievements, he handed out a quiz and gave them forty-five minutes to complete it. Only instead of having anything to do with 'defense', 'dark arts', 'against', 'class', or quite frankly even 'the', it was all about himself and his books — because apparently written questions about himself didn't count as talking about himself, because he would obviously never do that. Of course, FitzSimmons remembered most of the correct answers pretty easily, having exceptional memories, but as this had absolutely nothing to do with Defense Against the Dark Arts, and everything to do with Lockhart being completely full of himself, they decided to have a little fun with the assignment, highly doubting that it would affect their grade at the end of the year, especially after they proved how good they were at actual defense.

1. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color? — The dark red of the blood of his enemies pouring out of their fatal wounds.

2. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition? — World domination, or writing fan fiction.

3. What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date? — Fooling people into believing that he did anything in his books.

4. How many times has Gilderoy Lockhart won Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award so far? — Fewer number of times than teeth visible in said smile.

5. In his book 'Break with a Banshee', how did Gilderoy Lockhart bravely banish the Bandon Banshee? — Amazingly and awesomely alliterating it away.

6. Which is Gilderoy Lockhart's best side for photographs? — Why photograph, when you can make an entire motion picture?

7. Has Gilderoy Lockhart ever won the Dunstable Dueling Championship for wizards or just been pipped at the post? — Can one actually 'win' or 'lose' something, or do we all ascend together through our mutual struggles and accomplishments?

8. Which product does Gilderoy Lockhart use to clean his teeth with to achieve his famous dazzling white smile? — A really good computer post-effects photoshop program.

9. What is the personal name which Gilderoy Lockhart has given to his broomstick? — And here I thought guys only named their wands and cars.

10. What is the name of Gilderoy Lockhart's book that will help you in dealing with garden gnomes? — Any of them if you throw it at the gnomes hard enough.

11. What is the name of Gilderoy Lockhart's best-selling autobiography? — 'Me, Me, Me, Me, and more Me: All About Me'.

12. What Hogwarts House was Gilderoy Lockhart in? — Gilderoy Lockhart wasn't in a House - the Houses were reflected in him and his most-charming smile.

13. What organization is Gilderoy Lockhart an honorary member of? — Isn't the honor really simply in being human? But that being said, he's an honorary member of the loose organization of beings we call humans.

14. What is the composition of Gilderoy Lockhart's wand? — Delusions, a pinch of fairy dust, and imagination.

15. Where was Gilderoy Lockhart born? — Generally thought to be Earth, but a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse still hasn't been ruled out.

...

54. When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be? — Between January 1st and December 31st inclusive, and even brighter and more obnoxious fluorescent robes.

At the end of forty-five minutes Lockhart collected the papers and looked through them with ever increasing disappointment, plus flummoxed confusion on the ones that FitzSimmons assumed were theirs.

"Tut, tut — hardly any of you remembered that my favorite color is lilac. I say so in Year with the Yeti. And a few of you need to read Wanderings with Werewolves more carefully — I clearly state in chapter twelve that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples — though I wouldn't say no to a large bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky!"

Setting the papers down on his desk, he lifted a large, covered cage up from behind his desk. "But enough about me — to business. Now — be warned! 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 whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm. Please do not scream, as it might provoke them."

And with that he whipped off the covering and they were presented with —

"Freshly caught Cornish pixies."

Little, blue, Cornish pixies — definitely not 'of death'.

Seamus let out a snort of laughter, as everyone else in the classroom visibly relaxed after the epic buildup that turned out to be nothing. Of course, 'nothing' might not have been exactly the right word when Lockhart let them all loose a minute later. Though 'dangerous' still wasn't the correct word either, maybe something more like 'incredible nuisance'. Also 'pandemonium' — pandemonium suited the situation quite well, if not the pixies themselves per se.

Little pixies shot everywhere, wrecking havoc wherever they could. When one came soaring towards Fitz, he instinctively ducked and threw up the easiest to reach relatively large solid object as a shield, Break with a Banshee in this case, which the little blighter glanced harmlessly off of and kept soaring. When two of them grabbed Neville by the ears and pulled him up to the iron chandelier, making both English and African swallows look weak by comparison, Simmons pointed her wand at the poor boy and muttered, "Wingardium Leviosa," using the levitation charm on his clothes to unhook him from the chandelier and float him gently back down to the floor where he could promptly run out of the room as fast as his short, stubby legs could carry him. Fitz, meanwhile, had taken up more of a baseball or cricket (or beater in quidditch) approach, holding Break with a Banshee as much like a bat as he could, swinging hard every time one of the little pests came within arm's reach.

Through the panicked shouting of all of the other students, FitzSimmons heard Lockhart shout, "Come on now — round them up, round them up, they're only pixies! Peskipiksi Pesternomi!"

Whatever it was supposed to do, it did not. Unless it was not supposed to do anything, in which case it succeeded perfectly. Or if it was supposed to make a pixie come grab your wand and throw it out the broken window that a couple pixies had smashed through a few minutes earlier, it did that quite efficiently as well. After this, Lockhart joined most of the rest of the class in hiding under his desk — well, he was hiding under his desk, and they were hiding under their own desks — until the bell finally rang ten minutes later, causing a mad dash of all the remaining students out of the classroom.

As Lockhart quickly but definitely not cowardly followed right in their wake, he spotted FitzSimmons still standing armed and ready with books in their hands to swat any pixies that dared come near them (although the pixies had mostly started staying away from the spy duo after several of them met their untimely unconsciousness at the pair's deft hands), and said cheerfully, "Well, I'll ask you two to just nip the rest of them back into their cage," before sweeping out the door and slamming it shut behind him, closing FitzSimmons in with the rampaging pixies.

Fitz waited thirty seconds to make sure that no one would be right outside of the door, before strolling over to the door and flinging it open wide, giving a shrill whistle towards the pixies that remained flying about the classroom. Within seconds they had all zoomed out the open door as blue blurs, into the castle at large — if Lockhart was going to release the pests on his second year class without being able to control them, he could bloody well face the wrath of the rest of the professors when his creatures started wrecking havoc across the entire castle.

Walking back over to his wife Fitz gave her a quick kiss since no one was around to see them, and then they both stored away their books and shouldered their backpacks, before picking up the four pixies that they had successfully knocked the lights out of during the pandemonium and carrying them out the door with them, dropping them onto the hallway floor right outside of the classroom door, so that when they woke up again they could join their brother and sister pixies in wrecking havoc throughout the entire castle, and no one could accidentally or intentionally close them up in the DADA classroom by closing the door.

~FS~

Saturday morning found FitzSimmons snogging in their bed at the exact same time as the Gryffindor quidditch team was running into trouble.

Specifically, trouble named Severus Snape, who in his spare time when he wasn't abusing children like Neville and everyone who wasn't in his House, freelanced as the world's most gigantic dick — and not in a pleasurable way. Draco Malfoy had somehow convinced his father to buy Draco's way onto the Slytherin quidditch team as seeker since the old one had graduated, using the just released Nimbus 2001 professional quidditch brooms as a bribe, and instead of being a reasonable human being and telling his team to practice with their new seeker at any point during the twenty-plus daylight hours of the weekend that hadn't been booked since the previous spring by Gryffindor Captain Wood for Gryffindor to practice during, Snape had deliberately written a special note for Slytherin Captain Flint to be able to take over half of Gryffindor's legally booked field.

But as Wood didn't think to storm into Deputy Headmistress McGonagall's office and rightfully demand that the Slytherin quidditch team forfeit their match against Gryffindor and Snape lose all quidditch pitch booking privileges for the remainder of the year for subverting Gryffindor's pre-booked practice — something that probably wouldn't have worked anyway as every adult in the school either worshiped Snape or was too cowardly to stand up to him and certainly to report him to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for eleven years of constant child abuse and general cruelty — Wood instead started a yelling match with Flint that only served to leave neither team practicing for the next thirty minutes, having no other choice besides that than cursing the domestic enemies and taking Gryffindor's rightfully booked time by force, which none of the adults in the castle would have recognized as a legitimate course of action, and would have got them in far more trouble than quidditch was ever worth.

Meanwhile as Wood and Flint yelled at each other, a naked Fitz rolled on top of an equally naked Simmons, pinning her to the bed with a giggle — a giggle by Simmons, that is, as she ran one clawed hand lightly down his chest leaving the faintest set of scratches, while the other lined him up with her entrance for him to push home and make two really become one. But when FitzSimmons climaxed together a while later, it turned out that Fitz wasn't the only one at that moment who was shooting something out of a wand, though in Ron's case it was a spell out of a literal wand, not ropes of hot sticky cum out of a metaphorical wand.

And the spell he was shooting was, "Manducare Limax," better known as the slug vomiting spell, at Malfoy. After grabbing a piece of toast out of the Great Hall for breakfast, the redhead had gone down to the quidditch pitch to watch his twin brothers practice and just generally bask in the ultimate gloriousness that was the magnificent and all-important magical sport of quidditch. And upon seeing the arch-rival scum Slytherin House taking over his Gryffindor's field, he had left the stands and walked down onto the pitch to see what the yelling match was all about, and what the bloody hell Slytherin thought they were doing on Gryffindor's field. Which long and short, had led to him finding out that Malfoy was the new Slytherin seeker; Malfoy taunting Ron and the Weasley's in general about being destitute and possibly being able to sell their brooms to a museum to make a little money; and finally, Ron snapping and casting 'Manducare Limax' at the blonde bully and all-around arsehole.

As Malfoy began belching up slugs, the Slytherin team launched themselves at the Gryffindors, an all-out brawl replacing the shouting match that it had been restricted to before Ron attacked Malfoy without cause, that by the time Madam Hooch happened upon the situation and broke it up a few minutes later, necessitated six students heading up to the hospital wing for Madam Pomfrey to heal, after all fifteen of the students involved received detentions for fighting, and neither team was allowed to practice on Madam Hooch's quidditch pitch for the rest of the weekend.

FitzSimmons, however, were experiencing no such pain or displeasure from fighting, detentions, slug belching, or loss of practice time, as they alternated between sex and Fitz eating Simmons out during his refractory period, until as the eighth orgasm in way too short of a period of time hit the English biochemist, she roughly shoved Fitz's mouth away from her overstimulated and extremely sensitive clit, squeaking, "Enough! Enough! I can't take it!"

Smirking to himself in the satisfaction of a job very well done, Fitz shifted up to lie on the bed alongside her, holding her close as her body continued to occasionally spasm in the aftershocks of her repeated orgasms that continued to wrack her pretty, lithe body from time to time.

A few minutes later though she had finally recovered enough energy to turn her head and kiss him on the lips, saying, "I would give you a hard time about your self-satisfied, cat got the cream, smug smirk, but you earned looking however the bloody hell you want to."

A/N: "Manducare Limax' — Latin for, 'Eat a slug'.