Disclaimer: Dissolution of Harry Potter yields JK Rowling.
Parts of this chapter are quoted from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
A/N: I have been sitting on this chapter literally for years. Note that I am NOT restarting this story, and it is still up for adoption for anyone who wants it. However, I have had a second chapter sitting half-finished on my hard drive for ages, and I always wanted to finally finish it to tie up that loose end, so here's your bonus chapter of this story.
Chapter 2
The next day started alright, beginning with a dreary, but uneventful morning re-potting mandrakes—which was actually a pretty good result for working with something that can kill you, given Harry's track record. However, just about all of the girls—and Harry, which was a bit awkward—were excited for their first afternoon class, which would be their first with Professor Gilderoy Lockhart.
Things took a turn for the worse after lunch, however, as Harry, Ron, and Hermione wandered out and sat on the stone steps, and Colin Creevey, the tiny muggle-born first-year from last night, walked up to Harry and asked for a signed photo within earshot of Draco Malfoy.
"Signed photos? You're giving out signed photos, Potter? Everyone line up!" Malfoy roared to the crowd. "Harry Potter's giving out signed photos!"
"No, I'm not," said Harry angrily, his fists clenching. "Shut up, Malfoy."
"You're just jealous," piped up Colin, whose entire body was about as thick as Crabbe's neck.
"Jealous?" Malfoy scoffed. "Why would I be jealous of Potter? I don't need to hand out signed photos to prove something."
"Eat slugs, Malfoy," said Ron, gripping the handle of his wand.
"What's this? What's all this?" The voice of Gilderoy Lockhart cut across the courtyard with seemingly prescient timing. "Who's giving out signed photos? Besides me, of course."
"No one—" Harry started to say, but Master Flamel threw an arm around his shoulders and spoke over him.
"Ah, of course, Harry Potter. I should have known," he said before Harry could protest, still beaming. "Come on, then, Mr. Creevey. A double portrait, and we'll both sign it. That'll be something to write home about."
Just go with it, Harry again heard Flamel's natural voice in his head.
Harry didn't have to act to appear very grumpy about the photo, but Flamel did at least shoo the crowd away when the bell rang and started to escort Harry to his classroom for the lesson. "There we go, Harry. A word of advice—I covered up for you just then," he said in a stage whisper that would carry to the retreating crowd. "If he was photographing me too, your school mates won't pay so much attention to you and think you're getting big-headed. I am the hot new thing at this school, after all."
Harry started to protest, but Flamel winked at him, and he saw what he was driving at: drawing the attention away from Harry and Malfoy's mocking of him by generally making a fool of himself. Harry wasn't sure he agreed. He whispered back, "I really hope this works, sir."
Don't worry, Harry, he heard Flamel's voice, I've been in public relations for over four hundred years.
Despite his interest in what Flamel had to teach, Harry took a seat in the back of the classroom after that incident. Ron and Hermione sat beside him.
"You could've fried an egg on your face," said Ron. "You'd better hope Creevey doesn't meet Ginny, or they'll be starting a Harry Potter fan club."
"Be quiet," Harry hissed, shooting a glance at "Lockhart." "Don't give him any ideas."
Once everyone was seated, Flamel took to the front of the class, picked up the nearest copy of one of his books (which happened to be Neville's) and winked along with Lockhart's picture on the cover to start the lesson.
That was probably a bad sign.
"Me," he said. "Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award—but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!
"I see you've all bought a complete set of my books. Excellent. I happen to think the narrative form is one of the best ways to teach so that people will remember," he gave his paper-thin excuse. "But you won't need to lug all of them around with you at once. We'll be starting with Gadding with Ghouls for our first unit." Most of the class looked relieved. Lockhart's books weren't even that thick, but it was inconvenient having to carry around seven of them.
"So, this should be an experience." He clapped his hands once and grinned wider, if it were possible. "Teaching is a new adventure for me, so I made sure to review the curriculum thoroughly before I arrived. Now, last year, you should have learnt basic magical theory, a few simple hexes and jinxes and their counters, ways of summoning aid in an emergency, such as conjuring sparks, and how to deal with common magical household pests—all the basics you would need to live in a place like muggle London, where the worst threats you're likely to face are doxies and the occasional muggle mugger." He chuckled at the pun.
Harry was stunned, his eyes wide. That actually made sense. He'd done pretty well in Defence class last year despite the constant headaches from Voldemort, but he'd never imagined that Quirrell's rambling, stuttering lectures were actually driving at something coherent. Looking around the room, most of the rest of the class was surprised, too, although Hermione was nodding along eagerly, and Neville and a couple others looked like they thought it was perfectly reasonable.
"Professor Lockhart," spoke up Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff. "All we really learnt last year was how to decipher Professor Quirrell's stuttering. A lot of us barely scraped an Acceptable."
A girl Harry later learnt was Susan Bones spoke up, too. She was one of the girls who was most taken with "Lockhart," but she turned serious, now. "Professor, I think some of us actually failed last year," she said. "My Auntie Amelia says they pass everyone along anyway because most of the Defence teachers aren't any good."
"Really?" Flamel said in exaggerated surprise. "That would be Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement?"
"Yes, sir," Susan squeaked, blushing. Harry stared at her. He hadn't known that—or even that there was a Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
"Yes, charming woman, Amelia," Flamel said. "We've met, of course. Well, this won't do at all. You'll have to catch up pretty quick. It's lucky I caught you this early in your schooling. I'll have you all up to snuff in no time. Luckily, the little demonstration I've prepared fits into that plan nicely."
The class started to perk up. They were getting a demonstration already?
"This was meant to be a challenging hands-on review of everything you learnt last year," Flamel continued, "but I think we'll be making it into a proper lesson." He lifted up a large, covered cage from behind his desk—large enough that it looked to be awkward to handle—and set it on top of the desk.
"I must ask you not to scream," said Flamel in a low voice. Then, with a flourish, he whipped the cover off the cage as he said more loudly, "It might provoke them!"
Inside the cage were several dozen small, blue chittering creatures flitting around and pulling at the bars to get out.
Half of the class laughed, and Seamus Finnigan said, "Cornish pixies?"
"Something funny, Mr. Finnigan?" Flamel asked.
"Well…they aren't really dangerous, are they?"
"Aren't dangerous, eh?" Flamel grinned. "Let's find out. Who can tell me the Ministry of Magic Classification of Cornish pixies?"
Susan raised her hand again: "Three-X, Professor."
Harry made a note to get to know Susan better. It sounded like she was on top of things more than most.
"Correct, Miss Bones," Flamel side. "Five points to Hufflepuff. Three-X, when 'harmless' magical creatures are supposed to be rated Two-X. True, Cornish Pixies aren't very dangerous, but you can't ignore them, either. They're devilishly tricky little blighters—household pests—but among the fastest and most intelligent pests you're likely to encounter. You'll need all the cleverness you'd need against a muggle, and a quick wand to best them. So, let's see what you make of them."
"Aren't you going to teach up how to defend against them, Professor?" asked Lavender Brown.
"I believe in learning on the job," he said, and he opened the cage.
The pixies bolted from their cage and scattered around the room, and before Harry could blink, it was pandemonium. Some of them smashed through the window, but the rest didn't follow. Instead, the pixies whirled around like Peeves on a bender, destroying everything within reach. Flamel's books and papers seemed to be protected, but the students weren't so lucky. Showing surprising strength for their size, they started throwing the dozens of Lockhart books the students had brought around the room, making the air even thicker with flapping pages. Ink bottles were spilt, pictures were torn off the walls, and a couple people had their bags thrown out the broken window. Two pixies tried to pick up Neville by the ears, but he and Parvati swatted them away. Meanwhile, one of them got tangled in Hermione's bushy hair, so Harry whacked it off with a book. Some of the students were trying to use their wands, but none of the limited defensive spells they had learnt from Quirrell were really meant for more than one person—or pixie.
Flamel seemed to be loving it. He grinned as he dodged the whizzing pixies. When they flew at him, he leaned to the side, effortlessly slipping between them, or when he couldn't, they bounced off of what looked like some kind of force field. "Come now, pixies aren't dangerous!" he called to the class mockingly.
Freed from the pixie in her hair, Hermione spun around and pointed her wand at two of them that were making another attack run on her. "Immobulus!" she cried, and they froze in place. She quickly grabbed them and stuffed them back in the cage.
"Now there we go!" Flamel said over the din. Then he pointed his own wand high in the air and shouted, "Immobulus!" A bright blast of magic flared across the whole room, freezing all of the pixies in mid-air. Everyone stopped and stared at Flamel in awe—or at least relief.
"Five points to Gryffindor for Miss Granger's clever use of the Freezing Charm," he said. "Now, one that covers the whole room like this won't hold for very long, but a smaller one can certainly freeze two or three pixies as a time, and you don't have to hit them exactly like you do for Impedimenta. So, as the pixies unfreeze, I want you all to try to freeze them again long enough to put them back into their cage. Like this." He showed them the wand motion and repeated, "Immobulus."
The pixies were already starting to drift faster through the air, and their wings began to beat intermittently. In moments, the ones at the edges of the room began to move faster, and with purpose. Harry waved his wand at two of them that looked about to break free entirely and said, "Immobulus." His spell wasn't as good as Hermione's, but the pixies did freeze back into a slow drift, from which he could easily grab them.
The other students were getting the hang of it too, to varying degrees—at least, enough of them were to keep the pixies in line. Even as they began spinning back up to full speed, more and more of them were being re-frozen and re-caged by Harry's classmates. A couple of pixies, showing more intelligence than Harry expected, dove for Flamel's wand, making a grab for it. But he snaked his arm around them and froze them before they could get it.
"Now, you're getting it," he said. "No beasts will stand up to a properly trained group of wizards if they work together and know their strategy. Teamwork is key against a swarm like this, and against human threats as well." He casually started helping them with the effort, and after a few minutes, all of the pixies (save the ones that had escaped out the window) were back in their cage.
"In retrospect, perhaps I should have assigned Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests to the younger years, but I wanted to hold that one until I do a rewrite," he concluded. "Honestly, the section on de-gnoming was rubbish." Harry was sure he saw Flamel wink, but he couldn't have done, because not only did he not know what had happened at the Burrow, but also, the other students would have noticed it.
"Now, I'd like to point out a few of the issues I saw," he continued. "First of all, Mr. Weasley, I saw your wand sparking. Could I take a look at it?"
"Um…I guess?" Ron answered, turning red. He held his wand out to Flamel.
Flamel took it and twirled it between his fingers, frowning slightly. "What happened to this wand, Mr. Weasley?" he asked. "It looks like a dragon chewed on it."
"Er, it did, Professor," Ron said, turning even redder. "It was my brother Charlie's."
"Well, this won't do at all," Flamel said cheerfully as he handed it back. "You'll have to get a replacement as soon as possible."
"What?" Ron gasped. "But it's working fine! Mum said I don't need a new one…Besides…" He lowered his voice so the rest of the class couldn't hear. "We can't really afford one." It was the first time Harry had heard Ron admit this out loud, but he figured Ron felt the need to justify himself to a teacher.
"The core is exposed, Mr. Weasley," Flamel countered, turning serious. "It's not safe for heavy use. You wouldn't want a Disarming Charm to go wide or a Slug-Vomiting Hex to backfire on you. Even if you can't get a properly fitted wand, I'm sure your family has a few other heirloom wands available for you. It is a rather large family, isn't it?"
Ron blushed deep red, but agreed to write home. "Don't know if we've got a spare, though," he glumly told Harry later. "Ginny has Bill's old wand, and Fred and George have Uncle Gideon's and Uncle Fabian's, and they always worked great for them. Percy's got his own—lucky."
It would take a couple days, but Mr. Weasley would eventually send Ron a letter and a parcel containing a wand that apparently had belonged to Ron's late Uncle Bilius. Ron wasn't sure how he felt about that, but he was glad his mother hadn't given him a hard time about it, especially since, he said, "It was totally Charlie's fault."
History Class was another unknown, although one that the boys were rather interested in, given "Alaina Lockhart's," or rather Perenelle Flamel's new look. The woman looked almost too young to be a teacher, Harry thought when he got a good look at her, only in her early twenties. She had a warm, friendly face and a wide smile that was just as gleaming white as her husband's. Her dark hair, which had fallen down past her shoulders in gentle waves at the Welcome Feast, was now tied back in a practical braid, and Harry saw the same sharp look in her eye that he saw from Nicolas Flamel. She must have perfected her light Italian accent with rigorous practice—enough that there was no doubt about her supposed origins, but not thick enough that Crabbe and Goyle would struggle to understand what she was saying.
"Good morning, and I think I know the drill by now," she told the class when they were seated. "While I never studied here at Hogwarts under Professor Binns, the other classes have told me more than enough about him. It sounds like many of you saw History Class as nap-time rather than study time, and those of you who did well in the class only did so by reading the textbook. I'm sorry to say I will be expecting you to stay awake in my class."
There was some nervous laughter from the students for whom that was a real imposition. As much as Binns annoyed people, there were sure to be many who were equally annoyed about getting rid of him.
"I hope to make this a more exciting class than Professor Binns did," she continued cheerily, showing what sounded like real earnestness about her subject. "There are so many firsthand accounts of history to be heard at Hogwarts, and I don't just mean from the ghosts. In fact, I came here this year—and asked my dear Gilderoy to come here—because a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity opened up. You see, the Hogwarts Library was recently gifted a rare prize in the history community: several centuries of diaries from the late Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel. So, when I am not teaching I will be studying and documenting those.
"Of course, the Flamels' diaries only cover the past six hundred years, and we have much more history than that to learn," she continued. "In this class, I hope to give you a wider view of the magical world than Professor Binns did. For example, who was the most powerful wizard of all time?"
"Merlin!" several people said at once.
Perenelle laughed with an almost musical tone that Harry also wondered if she practised it: "Maybe here in Britain they teach that. However, the most powerful wizard in the history of Europe and possibly the world was widely agreed to be the ancient Greek wizard Andros the Invincible. Among his many exploits, to this day, he is the only wizard ever recorded as successfully casting the spell known as the Giant Patronus. And this was not a mere historical curiosity. Andros was a crucial ally of Alexander the Great and was said to have single-handedly held the western flank of his empire against attack by Herpo the Foul…"
Harry stared at the note he had received from Master Flamel yesterday:
Please see me in my office at 8 o'clock on Saturday night.
He assumed he wasn't in trouble. Otherwise, the note would have said something about a detention, so he guessed that this was the start of the training Flamel had promised him last spring. He knocked on the door, and it opened on its own. Flamel, still wearing Lockhart's face even on the weekend, was seated at his desk. Harry stepped into the room. Then, Flamel waved his hand, no wand in sight, and Harry jumped as the door closed behind him.
"Er, you wanted to see me, Professor?" he asked, now put slightly off balance.
"Yes, Harry. I hope your first week went well?" Flamel said conversationally, a slight smile on his face.
"Yeah. It was pretty good," Harry told him, no less confused.
"Good. Good. I heard your friend Ronald Weasley made quite the scene this morning. Something about a Slug-Vomiting Hex?"
Harry winced as he remembered. The Slytherin Quidditch Team had crashed Gryffindor's first practice, and then one thing led to another, and it ended with Ron hexing Malfoy with that slug-vomiting spell Flamel had mentioned. "Yeah," Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "Ron hexed Malfoy because he called Hermione—my other friend—a 'mudblood,' which I guess is really bad."
Now, Flamel turned serious: "Yes, Harry, that is very foul language, if you didn't know already. Not the sort of thing I want to hear from my students—not that I would expect you to hold those sorts of views, given your history. In the future, that sort of language should be brought to the teachers and handled through the normal disciplinary process. But at least your friend had a working wand to cast it with."
Harry nodded, then got to the point: "Professor, what is this about? Is this about the training you talked about?" Suddenly he remembered something else: "Or did you find out something about that plot Dobby was talking about?"
"No, to the second one, Harry. I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. But yes to the first. We won't be doing any training tonight, but I did want to discuss where we stand and what direction you want to take it.
"Well, I know I need to fight Voldemort eventually, because of the prophecy—" Harry started.
"No, Harry," Flamel cut him off with a fierceness he hadn't seen from the man before. "You are prophesied to be the one to defeat Voldemort, but prophecies do not always have to come true. That is something that is very important to remember. You are the master of your own destiny. You do not have to fight if you don't want to, and even if you are the prophesied one, it won't stop others who are willing and able from doing the job. But it does mean that you are at much greater risk than your classmates. According to Albus—" Harry jolted at Flamel using such a familiar name for Dumbledore. "—Voldemort knows at least some of it, or at least that there is a prophecy, and that means that he will come for you again. That is why I want to train you, at least for the time being. You have much greater need to learn to defend yourself, and unfortunately, you may not have the luxury of waiting until your finish school. But to do that, I need to know where you're starting from…"
Flamel kept Harry there for a while, asking him detailed questions about what Quirrell had taught him (only the basics), what he had retained from those lessons (a reasonable amount, Harry thought), what magic he had used in Dumbledore's obstacle course last spring (no wanded spells at all, now that he thought about it), and what he would do if he encountered various low-level threats. (Harry was ashamed to admit that while he was technically competent with the spells, he knew very little about the application, and his instinct in a fight was just to wing it.)
"I think your instincts are basically good ones, Harry," Flamel concluded. "Your quick thinking against Quirrell down in the Mirror Chamber showed that. But instinct alone does not a fighter make. You need to have a repertoire of defensive spells on hand that you can deploy without having to think about it in many different situations. That's the first thing that will keep you alive in a real fight. So we'll start with that—a little more focused than the regular Defence Class. You might think of it as closer to duelling lessons, although you should keep very aware of the difference between a duel and a true fight."
Harry nodded, feeling a little overwhelmed, albeit more confident than he had before. Flamel really did know his stuff.
"Now, it is getting close to curfew," he said, "and I wouldn't want to keep you late. But before we finish up, did you have any questions for me?"
"Well, yes," Harry said hesitantly. There were a couple things he had been wondering. "Professor, you said the real Lockhart was hurting people with magic. What was he doing?"
"Ah." Flamel leaned back with his fingertips pressed together and looked at him seriously once more. "Gilderoy Lockhart is a fraud, Harry—and an incompetent, from the little I saw from him. Not unintelligent, by any means, but he made very little effort to learn magic, with few exceptions—instead preferring to believe the world should hand him everything on a silver platter. He did not do any of the great feats he described in his books. Instead, he would find other wizards who defeated dark creatures all over the world, erase their memories, and take the credit. I'm compiling a list of the people he's hurt. Even Albus knew a couple of them, but it's slow going."
"Whoa," Harry said. That was…actually pretty scary when he thought about it. He'd known vaguely that wizards had ways of ensuring magic wasn't noticed by muggles, including altering memories, but he hadn't considered before what that really entailed.
"Indeed," said Flamel. "I will concede, however, that the man is a very good con artist. It ought to be obvious that his books are fake from the inconsistent dates and numerous technical errors, but sadly, the lay public who are interested in reading them don't know enough about dark creatures themselves to spot them—a problem that has no doubt been exacerbated by the poor quality of Defence teaching in this school over the past thirty or forty years."
"That long?" Harry asked. "Is the job really cursed?"
"Albus certainly thinks so. It's a long story and more his to tell, but we think Voldemort cursed it so that no teacher can stay longer than a year. I'm going to look into it while I'm here, but if it was a custom job, which it probably was, it might not be something I can unravel while school is in session."
"Oh…So where's the real Lockhart now?"
"Ha, I decided turnabout would be fair play," Flamel said, grinning again. "I bound his memories and exiled him to the muggle world. When I no longer need his body, I'll restore his memory, expose his crimes, and leave him to face the Ministry…" He frowned. "If I can, anyway. Last I checked, he was running for parliament in a by-election in Aberdeen. With our luck, he'll probably wind up becoming Prime Minister or something."
That sounded…terrifying, if for no other reason than that a wizard probably wouldn't have the first idea how to be Prime Minister. "Professor, can I ask—who is your wife…?" Harry pressed on.
"Impersonating?" he said, still smiling. "A muggle. No one of significance to the magical world—her life history entirely fabricated. Young, to be sure. Mr. Lockhart is only twenty-eight himself, and he has a certain type, if I'm not mistaken. Still, I don't think even the muggle-born boys will be likely to spot the resemblance to a successful Italian model in the muggle world."
"Right," Harry said. "Er, and there was one other thing."
"Yes?"
"How do you make me hear your voice in my head?"
"Ah, with a little something called Legilimency, Harry."
"Legilimency?"
"The art of entering a person's mind and interpreting what one finds there."
"You mean you can read minds?" Harry gasped.
Flamel gave him a disapproving look. "Only in the crudest sense," he said. "At its simplest level, Legilimency consists of reading thoughts. A more skilled Legilimens can also read emotions, memories, and other, subtler aspects of the mind. The most advanced level, however, can be used to project thoughts and images into someone else's mind, and it is that skill I have been using to speak to you when I was unable to do so out loud."
"Wow. Can other people do that?" asked Harry.
"A few. It's not common. It takes a lot of discipline, and most people don't bother. Certainly, Voldemort can, as can Albus. Most immortals can as well. When you live as long as I have, you pick up a little of everything eventually."
Harry suddenly got a worried look on his face. "Can Snape do it?" he asked.
Flamel frowned. "I don't know firsthand. Why do you ask?"
"Well, sometimes it seems like he can read minds—like he knows things he shouldn't be able to know."
"I see. From what I've heard about Professor Snape around this school, is it safe to assume that these incidents involve times when you're in trouble?"
Harry wasn't sure what to say to that. He could tell where Flamel was going with that, but he also felt like he might not be the best person to answer, given his relationship with Snape. "Er…I kind of feel like I'm always in trouble around Snape, Professor."
"Hmm…I see…Well, I will double-check, to be sure, but I strongly suspect that Professor Snape's behaviour is merely the product of instinct honed over years of teaching."
"Voldemort knew I was lying," Harry blurted. "When I got the—er, fake Philosopher's Stone."
"Yes, that was almost certainly Legilimency," Flamel confirmed.
Harry didn't like that. If Snape knew what he was thinking, it was bad enough, but if Voldemort did… "Is there a way to defend against it?" he asked.
"There is. It's called Occlumency. I was going to wait until later to introduce you to it. It's nearly as hard to learn as Legilimency, especially at your age. But if you wish to try it now, we can begin sooner."
"I think I'd like that," Harry said.
"Then I will being making lesson plans," Flamel said. "But for now, it's nearly curfew. Now, if anyone asks, I conned you into a thoroughly boring session of helping me answer my fan mail under the guise of trying to help you 'manage your fame.' That should keep people suitably distracted. We'll arrange something for the longer term once we finalise our plans."
Harry blinked and half-laughed at that excuse; then, Flamel sent him on his way. Unlike the real Lockhart would have done, Flamel did not keep Harry in his office until nearly midnight. If he had, Harry might have been able to alert him to the voice of a very large snake slithering through the walls.