Yay, I survived another rotation of the planet around it's primary. Lets celebrate with another very short chapter.
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Deloris basked in the glow of the perfectly obedient children sitting perfectly in perfectly straight lines. Every uniform was crisp and perfect in every way, and the silence as the former rebellious brats studiously examined the text she had selected was, of course, perfect, only being broken by the sound of the students turning the page.
All of them, at exactly the same time.
It took a few seconds for her mind to register that, then she froze. At first she thought she was mistaken and must have imagined it, but after a few minutes it happened again, and there could be no mistake.
Every student in the room, from the front to the back, turned the page, at exactly the same time, never raising their heads from their books to look around or even glance sideways at another student.
Her hand automatically reached out to grasp her stubby little wand from where it had been laying exactly parallel to the edge of the desk. She rose quickly from her seat, but then suddenly stopped to look around.
She waited, and sure enough, after a few minutes, every student reached out to turn the page of the book, again in perfect time. She watched for a minute more, slowly making her way around the classroom, looking for some indication of what was happening.
The students turned the next page, again at exactly the same time.
"What's going on?" she asked. "What are you all doing?"
Every student stopped looking at their books and turned to look directly at her, all in perfect unison.
"We are studying our text book," they all said, again in perfect unison. "Pages 45 to 54."
Deloris stumbled backwards, almost tripping before regaining her composure.
"Stop it," she said. "Stop this nonsense right now."
The students put down their books and just sat, perfectly still, not even blinking, staring at her.
"Stop it right now or you will all have detention!" she said, raising her voice in as threatening a manner as she could.
Nothing changed. The students just perfectly still. None of them flinching even when she whacked her wand on the table of the student closest to her, who just happened to be the one student she truly despised, Harry Potter.
"Did you hear me? Detention!" she almost yelled into his face.
"Yes, Professor Umbridge," came back the monotone reply from every student's mouth, all in perfect harmony. Harry didn't even blink as he joined his classmates.
"STOP IT," screamed the professor angrily.
Nothing changed of course, since nobody was doing anything to stop.
"You," she said, pointing to a random Ravenclaw student. "What's going on? Why are you all acting like this?"
The student looked confused, but in a wooden, almost manikin-like way. "Sorry Professor, I do not understand," the student replaied.
"Detention!" yelled Deloris before turning on another student and screaming another demand to know what was happening. The response was the same; a deadpan, perfectly appropriate response that just drove the professor's anger higher.
Again and again, she yelled and raged, almost raising her wand to cast a curse at one point, but nothing she said, or did, made any of the students even flinch.
"Get out," she finally screamed nearing collapse.
The students all rose, in again in perfect unison, and marched out the door, silently and without a glance towards the almost sobbing-in-frustrated-anger professor.
She had barely recovered her composure by the time the next class came in.
Walking in perfect in step with each other and in otherwise total silence.
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"So, Harry, now that we have a way to deal with attending that useless defence class, thanks to your modified sleep walking curse, we need a way to learn enough to pass the exam," said Sue as she slid up the bench to sit next to Harry.
Harry lost control of the food he was trying to wordlessly levitate into his mouth, causing to fall onto the table where it splattered.
"Bugger," he said, not making it clear if he was talking about the loss of his food or the situation.
"Hermione wants to hold private study sessions," said Han, sliding in on the other side of Harry, putting him instantly on guard.
He instinctively knew that when two girls suddenly surrounded you, something bad would surely follow. More specifically, that they wanted something from him, and it was something he was not going to want to give.
He was also self-aware enough to know he was much more likely to give in to them this way, because they were girls, and he really liked girls paying him special attention, most of the time.
"Sounds like a great idea," he said trying to sound positive but disinterested. "She really knows her stuff and you will likely learn a lot from her."
"Don't you want to attend?" asked Sue. "I mean there is no way you are going to be able to pass your OWL otherwise, is there?"
"I don't need to," said Harry, reaching for more food to practice with. He was determined to remove the need for cutlery, since in his opinion it represented a waste of resources and effort. So far, he had only managed some limited success with a few spells, but it was looking promising, so long as he could find the right spells to repurpose. "All we have to do is pass one OWL and we can use our wands as adults. I've got Muggle studies all lined up, and since I pretty much designed the whole course, I don't even have to study for it."
"But that would mean all your other years of studying defence will have been wasted," said Sue. "I mean all that effort you put in. Don't you want it to have some purpose?"
"I learned stuff," said Harry with a shrug. "I don't really come here in order to pass exams, you know. I come here to learn how to do stuff, and I've learned a lot of things that I wanted to."
He demonstrated by deftly slicing a chicken into several sections with a casual swish of his wand and a barely mumbled word.
"I don't know if you realise this, but you are pretty good at defence, Harry," said Han. "You are way ahead of most of us, especially with Pinky not showing us anything this year."
"Coincidence," he said, once again trying to levitate piece of the chicken without a wand. He had tried soup first, thinking it would be easier as he could just take a bit. It had not worked out well, for him or the three people who had been sitting near him at the time. "I learn and practice these spells because I have uses for them, not because the exam needs me to know them."
"What use do you have for a shield?" ask Han. "I saw you casting that yesterday."
"Ask Ernie about the soup incident," Harry answered. "A shield would have saved me from having to clean my robe, and his, and Terry's too."
"I know you can cast the stunning spell," Sue added. "That's purely defence with no other practical application."
"I learned that so I could knock myself out," said Harry. "It's come in handy a couple of times already, and before you say it, the Patronus does double duty as a way to send messages easily – well it would be if Flowers hadn't banned me from casting it. That makes like eight things she has banned now. Almost as bad as Filch and his list."
The fact the caretaker's list often listed unusual items or spells most students hadn't heard of and only worked to peak their curiosity had been completely lost on the rather dim man.
"To be fair, you did make a habit of sending it at the most inappropriate times," grumbled Sue.
"Well I wasn't going to go into the loo to talk to you," said Harry.
"It's lucky I was already sitting down or I would have had to change my robes!" growled Sue. "And you nearly made that first year fall Ravenclaw off the tower when it charged through the wall into their common room because you wanted to ask Luna what day of the week it was!"
"Moon Girl has the best answers," said Harry, smiling broadly.
"Never the less," said Han, trying to get the conversation back on track, "You have mastered or at least gained some proficiency in a lot of the spells we need to know, and you are also pretty good at reacting to threats quickly for some reason. It's really hard to sneak up on you or surprise you even when you are sleeping..."
"Yeah, thanks to Dudders," mumbled Harry sourly.
"..So you could really help the rest of us get a passing grade."
"I really don't want the responsibility," said Harry finally managing to get the chicken to float close enough to his mouth to take a bite. "It's too much like having to work."
The girls looked at each other, silently coming to an agreement.
"You know, I heard that Pinky is very anti-muggle," said Sue. "Aunty says she was always backing any call for legislation that put muggle-born or half-bloods at a disadvantage."
"Yeah, I heard she was one of the people pushing to make it impossible for any non-pureblood to hold any position in the Ministry. She even wanted to create a register of everyone to show how pure their blood was."
"Hmmm," mumbled Harry, accidentally letting the spell go too late and stuffing a huge piece way too far into his mouth and nearly chocking on it.
"I imagine if she manages to get her way, everything to do with Muggles will be degraded, if not outright banned," continues Sue.
"Hmmm," repeated Harry, still chewing, but starting to feel very suspicious about the line of reasoning been presented.
"I bet she could even turn around and take away the Muggle Studies O.W.L.," said Sue, taking a bite of her own food and looking thoughtful.
"That's terrible," said Han, looking horrified.
"Hmmmmm," growled Harry, starting to look a bit worried, or possible just having issues swallowing the huge mouthful of food.
"Imagine suddenly no longer being allowed to use a wand because the only O.W.L. you got was no longer considered valid!" continued Han.
Harry chewed silently.
"Of course you will be okay, Harry," said Sue. "We all know you are doing well in your other subjects, well aside from never turning in assignments that is. I'm sure you will do well enough in your exams to get a good enough grade to pass, if you work hard that is. Except for defence of course, you are doing fairly well with your class work there, mainly because you just have your quill copying bits out of the book. Pity Defence has such a high mark based on how well you do the practical at the end of the year."
Harry continued chewing, his frown deepening.
"I mean really, all it would take is a bit of effort to help us, and you would be certain to pass Defence as well. Probably less work than getting your other grades over the line."
"Hmm," he mumbled again, eating another mouthful.
"Come on, Harry," said Sue, giving up an pretense. "Don't be difficult. We need your help and you will get a lot out of helping others. Think of the good will people will give you, the favours you might be able to use later."
"Hmm," said Harry, nodding thoughtfully as more food drifted into his mouth the moment he opened it.
"They do say teaching is easier than doing," encouraged Han.
"Hmm," nodded Harry again, eating yet more.
"So that's a yes?" asked Sue.
"Uh huh," mumbled Harry.
"You've lost control of the spell and it is force feeding you isn't it?" asked Sue.
Harry nodded, looking slightly embarrassed.
Sue sighed and took out her wand ready to cast a Finite. To her credit she only briefly thought about not cancelling the spell for a while, making Harry suffer just a little bit.
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Fred was struggling to contain his excitement as he sat down to the most hated detention since Filch made students clean his non-magical privy, which had been built when the castle was first erected and likely never cleaned since.
He paused before starting to write with the dreaded quill, waiting for someone else to start so as to deflect suspicion for at least a moment or two.
Suddenly a third year in the front row screamed.
Umbridge leapt to her feet, well, leapt was probably too ambitious a word to describe the struggling involved in getting the ungainly woman up out of her chair where she had been poised to sip her tea and wallow in the misery of the students cutting their own flesh.
The screaming student was clutching her hand, blood running freely out from under her fingers.
A lot of blood.
Way too much blood.
Fred giggled.
Before Umbridge could make it to the crying student, another suddenly yelled and grabbed his hand, then a third, then more. Almost half the room was suddenly screaming and bleeding excessive amounts of blood all over the desks and floor while crying out for the confused professor to help them.
Fred quickly used his own quill, hastily writing a nonsense limerick he had picked up from Hagrid when the huge groundskeeper had been returning from the pub late one evening and didn't notice the brothers hiding nearby.
George suddenly cried out and held up his hand, a fountain of blood shooting up out of it several feet into air, spraying out of the small wound as he started to scream in apparent utter despair '"I am going to die! I am going to die! Help me!"
Trust him to go even further than they had planned. The idea Harry had come up with was to use their Nosebleed Nougat trick sweets to make it look like the quills had malfunctioned and were actually doing people real harm. The twins took his initial idea and ran with it, deciding the blood had to be more than just a bit. George had obviously gone off script to add even more drama. Show off.
Fred's own fake hand suddenly burst open, exploding with enough force to knock him off his chair and spreading chunks of animal meat over the whole room, some even hitting the roof.
"Oh Merlin it hurts," he screamed dramatically. "I am ruined for life. My poor pureblood is leaking away, wasted in this torture chamber of horrors! Who did this to me, who? Who will pay for maiming a scion of a pureblood house?"
Nobody actually heard him, but it didn't really matter. Detention was most definitely over.
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