AN: This is a fic to celebrate 1 year on fanfiction. It's a crossover of Harry Potter and Doctor Who. There are three Doctors: the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth. (The companions are Martha (post Smith and Jones), Amy and Rory (post series 5, pre series 6) and Clara(sometime in series 9)) I love the ninth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and classic doctors… but more would be basically entirely overkill, so I'm drawing the line here. This takes place in Harry's first year. If none of that made sense to you, sorry, fandom stuff.
DavidoDaVinci
PS. At least 75% a crackfic, you know.
"Remember," the Doctor said, raising a finger warningly because Martha looked far too excited. "You get one trip and only one, and it was only because of the hospital."
Martha looked at him. Properly looked at him, like she hadn't had the chance to since they had met. Messy hair, sideburns… it would have been difficult to tell, had she not known previously, that he had two hearts, for the very slight movements on each side of his torso were very, very slight, and yet it was impossible to imagine the possibility that the man standing by the TARDIS controls might not have multiple.
In any case, he seemed to take it for granted (and rightfully so) that she did, in fact, understand that this was a one time thing, for with a swish of his long coat, he pulled one of the many levers down, and the TARDIS made a series of vworps, and a whooshing sound. It had dematerialised.
"So?" The Doctor said. "We've caught a time stream, so where do you wanna go? Past? Future? Present? Earth? Mars? Space Stations? Birth of a star? Wanna see aliens?"
"Oh…" said Martha. She hadn't thought of that. The yellow circles, console, and high brown arm things were all well and good, but thinking of where to go in the whole universe was much harder than swallowing, and coming to terms with, its existence. "Uh, I guess… somewhere in the pa-"
She would have finished this sentence with the sound 'st', had the TARDIS not suddenly jeered off course. With a yelp of surprise, the two of them skidded over to the other side of the room, and she was only just in time to grab onto the handrail, and only just in time again to stop herself from falling off the edge. The TARDIS rocked from side to side, and it was all Martha could do to hold on and not fall to the floor in a heap.
The console and walls were flashing and glowing ominously, bathing them in red. She thought she saw out of the corner of her eye smoke billowing out from below the platform on which they stood.
And, suddenly… it stopped. They actually did fall in a heap this time, right against the console. She could feel something throbbing on the back of her head, but she couldn't have cared less, and she was just happy that they had stopped being bounced about. She got to her feet, breathing heavily, and chancing a glance at the Doctor, who had already stood up, and was now staring unblinkingly at the door.
"I'm guessing," she said, in a forced calm voice, grimacing as she got to her feet. It looked like she had broken her ankle. "That that doesn't normally happen?"
He seemed to come to his senses, and turned away from the door. "No. It doesn't. You okay?"
"Yeah." she answered. "Provided you have bandages and stuff…?"
"Take the corridor furthest to the left, turn right, straight ahead, left, second left again, and in the back of that room there's a cupboard containing a first aid kit,"
She nodded, and took the instructions he gave her. The Doctor returned to staring at the TARDIS door, white from the inside, but with the same unmistakable shape. A small amount of natural light was emitting from the misty windows.
What had he gotten himself into this time?
When she finally returned, with a heavily bandaged right ankle, left middle finger and forehead, she decided to exit the TARDIS to see what could have caused so much chaos. Cautiously sliding open the door, Martha saw that they had crash landed in the middle of a dense forest. Vines, bushes, and all manner of wildlife surrounded them, but it was all plant-based, and, as far as she could see, it was completely deserted of all animals.
She gingerly closed the door again, and turned to the Doctor.
"Sorry if this is a bit… sci-fi, but… are there any readings or anything to explain where we are?"
"Yes, I was just wondering that, too." he answered.
Striding over to the console, he stared at a screen which she hadn't noticed before, and began pressing buttons below it in quick succession. When he finished, his eyes widened.
"It looks like we've arrived in an alternate universe. Damn it. Okay, well, the portal closed behind us, and it… will… open again? Yes, in seven years. Well, that's fine."
"I'm sorry?" She asked, startled by the long time gap that they would have to spend here. "We have to be here for seven years? Are you mad? How the hell is that fine?"
"Oh my goodness, you're all the same, aren't you?" the Doctor asked, face-palming. "Martha. We have a perfectly good time machine, we could head over to seven years from now and leave whenever we want to. We could leave now if you really want to that badly, or… we could explore? Can't hurt, can it, eh?"
They, again, walked out of the TARDIS, into the forest that Martha had seen before.
"Oo, feel's magical, doesn't it?" he asked, striding over to a fungus. "I do love a good forest, they're nice and quiet, you can be as loud as you-"
Just then, they strode into a clearing, only to find themselves surrounded by at least twenty creatures, with the naked torso and head of men, but the four legs and lower body of a horse. In the time it took for the Doctor to finish his sentence, the centaurs all drew their bows, and pointed them right at the hearts of the Doctor, and Martha.
"-like."
"Who are you, humans?" spat the centaur in the middle, with black hair, and an ugly grimace.
"Oh, no- no need to- worry. We're just… passing through," said the Doctor, a little too quickly to be entirely believable.
A second centaur laughed, and the others followed. "Passing through? Passing through!? Do you hear yourselves? Nobody passes through our forest! There's nowhere to pass through to! Oh, they're idiots and humans! I suppose they'll be from the school, so it won't be a great loss…" he said, eyeing his crossbow lovingly. "What do you think, Bane?"
"Bane? Why would you ever ask Bane? Magorian, I hope you are not forgetting who holds power here!" exclaimed one of the centaurs closest to the back.
"Oh, for goodness' sake, Firenze! You haven't been anywhere near the top of this herd for years!" said the centaur called Bane. "Anyway, Magorian, yes, I think we should kill them, it's been a long time since any of these bows tasted blood, if I am not mistaken?"
"Now, hold on here!" the Doctor said, raising a hand warningly, though he was not quite in time to stop the first few arrows lightly grazing his shoulder and drawing blood. "I'm sure we can figure something out. There's no need to resort to violence!"
Martha was just standing there, shock etched across her face, as though she had just realised something.
"You dare walk straight into the heart of our forest, which was claimed by our ancestor's ancestors centuries ago, before either of you even existed and you say there is no need to resort to violence? Forgive me for asking, but are you by any chance insane?" asked Magorian, mockingly.
At the word 'existed', the Doctor had muttered 'I highly doubt that'. Magorian, caught up as he was in talking to them, had not noticed, but Bane had.
"I'm sorry?" he shouted, advancing.
"Now, just hold o-" said Firenze.
"Run!" screamed the Doctor. Martha did not need to be told twice. The two galloped as fast as they could away from the herd, which was itself quickly advancing. More than once, Martha tripped over a twig, but she never took more than a second to right herself. Eventually, the sound of hooves grew fainter, and the two of them felt safe enough to stop and rest.
"Are you okay?" The Doctor asked her, wiping the blood off his arm. It had run down it, and was staining his coat. She knew that under other circumstances, this would have annoyed him deeply, but right now, he was only worrying about Martha.
Ignoring the question completely, she asked, breathlessly. "Hang on. School. Forest. Centaurs. Bane. Magorian. There's no way-"
"Yes." he replied, pointedly. "In this universe, Harry Potter is clearly… not fictional. Try not to get too excited."
"But that means that this is the forbidden forest!" Martha exclaimed, excitedly. "And if we get out, we could see Hogwarts!"
"Yes, and there are also killer centaurs running about the forest where the TARDIS is, so we might be stranded here for ages," he deadpanned. "Look, let's just see if we can find Hogwarts."
She laughed, and strolled off away from the clearing where the centaurs had found them. But as the trees cleared, she saw something out of the corner of her eye that made her stop dead in her tracks.
"Um… Doctor,"
"Yeah?" he asked, casually.
"We can't leave,"
"Yeah…"
"Because there's only one TARDIS, right?"
Nearly jumping, the Doctor saw what she was talking about. Just outside the forbidden forest, and very near what she supposed must be Hagrid's hut, were two other TARDISes. They were both slightly different shades of blue, and they both had slightly different patterns on the windows, but they were both, unmistakably, the TARDIS.
Could today possibly get any weirder?
It had occurred to Martha, of course, that it must be possible for the Doctor, in his adventures through time and space, to meet himself, but this? Even stranger, both of the blue boxes had their doors ajar, and housed occupants, who were all gazing at the same thing. One of them contained a woman with red hair, and a man with grey hair, the other, one woman, with brown. The latter was the only one who was looking amused rather than confused. What they were staring at became obvious very quickly.
"Look, you can't be the Doctor, because I'm the Doctor, and I don't remember you!" shouted the one on the left. He was wearing a light brown jacket, a pink shirt, and a red bow tie, and he looked distinctly young. Martha could not think for the life of her why two adults would be arguing about which one of them was the Doctor, when she knew what the Doctor looked like, and he was standing right next to her.
"My friend, has it possibly occurred to you that it could potentially be that I remember being you, and I am in your future. There are two TARDISes here, and it doesn't take a genius to realise that that means that there are two Doctors! Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to leave this place in peace and get back to living my life away from the world of Harry flipping Potter!" shouted the other one in a scottish accent, and he was so loud that momentarily, the other was silenced. This supposed doctor was, by contrast to the one he was arguing with, much older. He had grey hair, and his face was visibly lined with age. He was wearing a black suit with red insides which were clearly visible thanks to the hands in his pockets.
The Doctor, the one she was with, seemed to understand exactly what was going on, and stepped forward.
"Hello?" he said. The two Doctors whipped around immediately.
"Now there's a face I do remember!" said the younger one. "Though, I must say, you do look much thinner than I remembered. It's like- I don't know, CGI?… no offence, of course."
"Oh. You too." the older one said. "Where's your TARDIS, then?"
"Being guarded by centaurs," he replied, and, before either of them could comment, he quickly said, "So, introductions? Who are your lovely friends here, then?"
"This is-" the younger one began, but the Scottish one who supposedly came after interrupted.
"The redhead's Amy. Her husband's Rory, my friend is Clara, and yours is Martha. Shake hands, you lot, go on."
There was a rather uncomfortable silence as the four of them exchanged greetings. Up close, Martha found that Clara was quite a bit shorter than everyone around her, and yet seemed to emit some kind of authority, like a schoolteacher, perhaps.
"But that's not the point!" said the young one, looking very annoyed now, "What I want to know is how the hell you ended up surrounded by centaurs with Martha, when I don't remember anything of the sort!"
"Well, babyface, I regret to inform you that he won't know why you don't remember it happening, and why I don't remember it happening twice, because he comes before you, and I'm sure you remember him!" shouted the old one.
"Oh no, I regenerate into him?" asked the one Martha had arrived with.
She decided, on balance, to let the three 'doctors' continue arguing, and to instead talk to the other three people who seemed to have each arrived with different doctors to her, given that she couldn't understand a single word of what any of them were saying, and it was beginning to get confusing just turning thoughts like this into sentence structures in her head.
"Okay," she said, seeing them all turn to her, "Does anyone know in any capacity what's going on back there?"
The couple, Amy and Rory, shook their heads. Clara, however, nodded enthusiastically.
"Um… how long have you three known the Doctor?" she asked, leaning against what Martha thought must be her TARDIS, and sounding, again, very much like a teacher.
"A few years now?" said Rory, sounding unsure.
"Only a day," Martha replied, in what she hoped sounded like a confident voice.
Clara seemed unbothered by both of their answers. "Well, basically, whenever the Doctor's on the point of dying, he instead regenerates- uh, he changes his face, like, and his personality, somewhat, to stop himself… dying, if that makes sense. I've met all three of the Doctors here, but I'm guessing you've only met one each?"
They all gestured to their Doctors, something made a little more difficult by the fact that they were now shouting into eachothers' faces, the old one, Clara's one, looked exhausted. There was an awkward silence.
"Wait, hang on!" exclaimed Amy, "How come you've met both of those Doctors, but you haven't met any of us!"
Clara turned ghostly white. "Oh- well- I-"
"Alright!" shouted the young doctor. "We've decided to-"
"I'm sorry, but who are you?" asked a strict, imperious, female voice from behind him.
As he turned around, Martha resisted the urge to burst out laughing. It was surreal enough seeing centaurs, but Professor McGonagall was a bit much, she thought to herself. She looked exactly as she had imagined when she first read the books. The glasses, the black, rimmed hat, the green dress, it was as though she had been designed perfectly to recreate her experiences. It almost felt… too good.
"We're- I'm, well-" he spluttered.
At this moment, her Doctor came to the rescue. "Well, I'm John, this is my friend, who's also called John, and we call the old one the Doctor, because he won't tell us his name," he said. She was certain he was just saying things in order to sound convincing, but, for better or worse, it worked.
"Well, John, John and the Doctor, I was not asking for your names, I was asking who you were."
He immediately pulled out a piece of paper and showed it to her. Craning her neck a little, Martha saw that it was blank, but McGonagall raised her eyebrows.
"Oh! An- inspection! You should have said… we haven't had one of those in years… well, come this way, Mr…?"
"Smith," he said, quickly.
And McGonagall led the way into the castle, completely ignoring the two TARDISes. It seemed out of character for her, Martha thought uncertainly, but she pushed the thought from her mind.
"Well, it's after hours, so I'm afraid the classrooms will be empty, but uh… oh! Here we have a few charms classrooms!" she pointed towards three near identical doors next to each other, and the Doctor nodded, with an air of 'this seems to be in order'.
Martha would have liked to ask the Doctor if she thought they were from the ministry of magic, but obviously couldn't, under the circumstances. She tuned out most of the rest of the tour, aware of the multiple Doctors' reactions. She vaguely registered as McGonagall pointed out the Great hall, the transfiguration classrooms, and the potions dungeons, but otherwise she spent it inside her head.
Why had it been so easy to escape from the centaurs? They'd been running, but horses, and animals with the lower half of horses by extension, must have been faster than them. Hm. She brushed it off, but she felt uneasy. The term 'plot armour' came into her mind.
Ah well. They'd survived, so it didn't exactly…
She awoke from these thoughts when Amy tapped her on the shoulder. Glancing upwards, she saw McGonagall say 'Sherbert Lemon' to a rather ugly gargoyle. It leaped from its stand, and a spiral staircase appeared.
They were about to talk to Dumbledore.
Professor McGonagall knocked on the door.
"Come in,"
The door swung open, and Martha saw his office. It, like the forest, McGonagall, and Hogwarts, was almost indistinguishable from its description in the Harry Potter books. It was tall, and there were a ton of shelves housing various magical objects and paintings lining the walls, all of previous headmasters and mistresses, and all, apparently, snoozing in their frames. Behind the desk in the middle of the room, sat an old man with half moon spectacles on a high backed chair. His face was blank as he surveyed them, but his eyes lingered a little too long on the old Doctor.
"You may go, Minerva," said Albus Dumbledore.
She swung the door behind herself, and he immediately addressed the Doctor he had been staring at.
"Fancy seeing you here, Doctor…"
She was aware that everyone else in the room was staring and gaping at him, but was a little too caught up staring and gaping herself to particularly care.
"Oh- ah… hm…"
"Doctor, what?" Martha heard Clara whisper into his ear.
"Yes, well, a few months ago, I helped someone called Albus get back to their universe when they crashed into mine- I didn't realise it was this Albus, though,"
"And why should this Albus in particular be surprising?" asked Dumbledore, raising an eyebrow.
"Because this Albus is very slightly very part of a book in our universe," said the young doctor, who looked equally confused and amused at the sudden turn of events.
Dumbledore did not speak, but looked surprised. "In any case, Doctor, I should like to know how you got here, and to be introduced to all of your friends,"
The Doctor- the Scottish one, that was, explained that they had all crashed here, and that two of the people there were also Doctors. Dumbledore looked shockingly unsurprised by this information, and indeed the closest that came to an expression on his face was a twitch of the eyebrow.
"Hm. I see," he said, when he had finally finished speaking, and explained that they had up to seven years to kill. "Well, I cannot pretend that your situation is not unique. I wonder if you would, perhaps, like to get a job in the meantime?"
"What like?" he asked, sniffing and grabbing a handkerchief from nowhere in particular.
"I am one job short. Would you like the post of… Defence Against The Dark Arts?"
"Well?" Clara asked, crossing her arms once the two of them were safely back on the TARDIS.
"Well what?" asked the Doctor, closing the door behind him and relaxing.
"What were you thinking?"
"It depends on what point you're referring to," he answered, perfectly honestly. "First of all, there was, where are we, Harry Potter, who's this, I know this person, him too, shake hands, McGonagall, nice cla-"
"You know full well at what point I'm referring to," she answered, raising both eyebrows and clenching her teeth, "Defence Against the Dark Arts? Have you read the books, you won't last a year! In fact, what year is this anyway? And what are the rest of us going to do while you're busy running about Hogwarts teaching students how to cast Patronuses or something?"
"Question 1. I'm the Doctor, I'll be okay, you know me, I'm the king of okay. That's- not my title… have I said that before?"
She watched him as he muttered. "Doctor?"
"Yes, right! Question 2. 1991, so before all the books, you can meet Hermione, you'll get along like mustard and control freaks! And Question 3. Explore. I don't think I really need to explain further on that one, even to you, do I?"
"Question 4." she stated, grumpily, "How the actual hell do you expect to teach magic, when you cannot do magic yourself?"
"Ah. There's the fun bit," he answered, grinning stupidly, "Time travel!" he flicked a lever down.
"Time travel. Time travel to… where, exactly?"
"Well, Ollivander's of course! Go back a month or… about that, get a wand, come back! How am I meant to do magic without one, Clara?"
"Yes, but how are you meant to do magic in general? In this universe, you're meant to be a muggle, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yes, unless," he clicked a row of buttons, "I'm not meant to be a muggle in this universe at all, and you're just wrong!"
He gave her a thumbs up. The TARDIS skidded to one side, and then…
Was still.
He opened the door, and Clara saw Diagon Alley. The buildings, which stretched out on either side, seemed to all be spectacularly tall. Indeed, there were a few which she could barely see the tops of, between the dark moonlight and heavy fog. The road, if one could call it that, stretched out far into the distance in a straight line. It was heavily paved with stones and pebbles, and she saw more than one wrapper in the spots between them all, clearly littered by uncaring children. Or alcoholics.
Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans: Every bite is a chance for terrible loss!
Zonko's Lion Breathing Candy Bars: Can you get them all the way down?
As they walked forward, she saw places which she recognised. Flourish and Blotts, Madam Malkins… but it seemed eerie in the night, as do all streets without visitors. A few lights were feebly attempting to illuminate the dark cloak of rest. They were all failing.
The tinkle of a small bell, such as one might hear when walking into a charity shop, rang out through Diagon Alley very suddenly, causing both of them to jump. Whipping around, Clara saw an old, harassed looking woman with messy black hair leave Ollivanders, muttering curses. Unfortunately for Clara, the speed at which she turned around caused her own hair to momentarily slap her square in the face.
"Looks like it's open, if customer service is still going on, don't you think?" whispered the Doctor into her ear. She nodded, and raised no objection to the joke. For once.
The same bell could be heard for a second time, as the two of them entered the wandmakers. As they stepped over the threshold and towards the rickety wooden desk, an old man, Ollivander, appeared from behind it, though his back was turned to them.
"For the last time, Adia, I can't give squibs wands! It won't work, and it's not even strictly legal, so even if I- oh, hello there. How can I help you?" The majority of this disjointed sentence was shouted, seemingly in relation to the woman who had just left. The rest was practised and spoken with a robotic smile when he realised she was not, in fact, back for more.
"Hello, sir. I need a new wand," he invented on the spot, "My old one snapped a few months ago, you see,"
Ollivander narrowed his eyes and tilted his head slowly, "I haven't seen you before…"
"No, this is my first time here. Anyway, wands?"
The old man jumped. "Oh! Yes, of course. Um… let's see… six inches, dragon heartstring, birch? Try waving that around."
The Doctor did so. The best that could be said was that this proved he was, in fact, magical on some level. The worst was that it set fire to Ollivander's desk. They tried a few more, but they were having no luck so far. He had achieved twelve knocked over shelves, and had managed to partially submerge the shop in gooseberry jam, before they finally found a wand, eight inches, spruce wood, and with a unicorn hair in the centre, that produced a few red butterflies when waved, as opposed to red pimples.
Ollivander clapped his hand, before shooing them out of the shop, and muttering something about four hours of sleep.
"I thought, on balance, that went quite well," said the Doctor, before scanning his new wand with his sonic screwdriver, and putting the wand in his pocket. Clara looked confused.
"What?" he asked, climbing back aboard the TARDIS.
"Well, what did you just do?" she asked, "As a question 5?"
"My sonic can now do everything that a wand can do. Basically, this is my wand now."
"I thought you used sonic sunglasses these days!"
"Have you ever seen sunglasses doing magic?" he asked, surprise etched on his face as he once more pulled a lever down and they dematerialised.
"Okay, but how are you going to learn a bunch of spells to teach students before school starts for them?"
"Easy," he answered, as they stopped.
Clara bursted out of the TARDIS, and waited for him to join her. Instead, the TARDIS disappeared. Two seconds later, it reappeared in the same place, give or take a metre. He exited.
"Done!"
"How long were you gone?" she asked.
"Three months,"
"Okay… right…" she muttered, turning towards the school.
Harry walked slowly into Defence Against the Dark Arts, followed closely by Ron. This was the lesson everyone had been looking forward to the most, and there was supposedly a new teacher this year. Supposedly, there was a new teacher every year.
There wasn't an awful lot in the classroom. There were a ton of desks, but only one was occupied. A seat right by the teacher's desk was filled by Hermione Granger. Because of course it was, Harry thought quietly. There was also a woman, who introduced herself as Clara, and told them that their teacher would be with them soon. This puzzled Harry. He didn't understand why the person teaching them how to defend from dark magic needed, for want of a better term, a teaching assistant.
Regardless of Harry's musings, the classroom slowly filled up with students, all very calm, and in a post-lunch sort of relaxation period. Seamus, Dean, Neville, Parvati, Lavender, all the Slytherins, and before he knew it, the entire room was filled with low murmurs, mutterings, and laughs. Harry had never quite figured out the secret behind any large group of people, even a large group of quiet people's, ability to be noisy.
It caused, therefore, quite the shock amongst the assembled students when a voice from the back of the room yelled 'shut up!'
Clara rolled her eyes.
"I thought we agreed you wouldn't be doing that!"
"Well," said a man emerging from a cupboard, "You're not exactly one to complain, introducing yourself by your first name to young children!"
The man in question was grey-haired, and very wrinkly. His clothes were quite unlike the other teachers' robes and variations upon standard robes, for he wore a muggle suit, and, strangest of all, sunglasses.
"Now!" he said, confidently striding to the front of the room and pocketing his sunglasses. "In your timetables, you have written down in this time slot, the lesson 'Defence Against the Dark Arts', beneath which you have the name 'The Doctor'. I don't think I shall need to explain to any of you what this means… the name should be fairly self-explanatory, but, just in case, could anyone tell me what Defence Against the Dark Arts is?" Harry noticed, for the first time, that he spoke with a Scottish accent.
Hermione's hand soared immediately into the air, to the surprise of approximately nobody.
"Please sir, Defence Against the Dark Arts is the class at Hogwarts that teaches defensive magic to students so they can protect themselves against the Dark Arts,"
"Correct!" he said, "5 points to Gryffindor, Miss…?"
"Granger," she answered.
"Anyway, I gather that everyone here with a positive IQ will have figured out that yes, this does teach defensive magic against the dark arts. Now!" The word 'now' was shouted, startling many people in the class. "The phrase below the name of this lesson is, as you have all seen 'The Doctor'. I am the Doctor. You may call me Doctor, Professor Doctor, Mister Doctor, Doctor Smith, Professor Smith, whatever you please, any combination should reach me. Regardless of names, I will be teaching you Defence Against the Dark Arts this year. Is everyone understood?"
Everyone nodded.
"Well, you're already one step ahead of the fourth years, then," he said, grinning in spite of himself.
Harry thought that the lesson was by far the most interesting which he had thus far experienced. The Doctor didn't seem to mind much that they didn't get any work done. He instead spent the entire lesson answering questions which the class had, and nobody, not even Hermione, had thought they would be very popular if they reminded him to give them work. The cupboard he had emerged from initially was blue, and had POLICE written on it. Harry was very surprised that nobody, not even himself, had noticed this until he stared at it for a while, and even then, it was hazy. Probably some complex magic.
The strangest thing about their Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, however, was his wand. Every wand he had seen had been wooden, with something, phoenix feather, dragon heartstring, etc, in the centre. The Doctor's wand not only did not fit this description, but looked like a small metal pole, glowing green in places and with a strangely intricate shape. It looked alien.
When he had been asked about this by Draco Malfoy, he had demonstrated Wingardium Leviosa on his desk, much to the Gryffindors' amusement.
"Hm." said Ron in an undertone to him as they exited. "He's alright, isn't he?"
Harry was sure he heard 'that could have gone better' from the classroom.