I do not own Harry Potter nor World of Darkness
Hagrid's hut, Hogwarts, 2nd September 1993 (Thursday)
Harry was pleased to get out of the castle after lunch. Yesterday's rain had cleared, the sky was clear and the grass was springy as they set off for their first ever Care of Magical Creatures class, finding Hagrid waiting at the door of his hut, impatient to start.
"C'mon, now, get a move on! - he called as the class approached. - Got a real treat for yeh today! Great lesson comin' up! Everyone here? Right, follow me!"
Hagrid strolled off around the edge of the trees and, five minutes later, they found themselves outside a kind of paddock.
"Righ' then. Yeh've got yer books an' now yeh need the Magical Creatures, so I'll go an' get 'em. Hang on... "
He strode away from them into the forest and out of sight.
"God, this place is going to the dogs. - said Malfoy loudly. - That oaf teaching classes, my father'll have a fit when I tell him."
"Shut up, Malfoy. Your father is on the edge of losing his job, he can't do shit." said Harry, not in the mood for Draco's antics.
"Careful, Potter, there's a dementor behind you!"
"Oooooooh!" squealed Lavender Brown, pointing toward the opposite side of the paddock.
Trotting toward them were a dozen hippogriffs led on a leash by Hagrid.
"Gee up, there! - he roared, shaking the chains and urging the creatures toward the fence. - Beau'iful, aren' they?"
Harry could sort of see what Hagrid meant. Once you got over the first shock, you started to appreciate the hippogriffs' gleaming coats.
"So, if yeh wan' ter come a bit nearer…"
Harry, Ron and Hermione approached the fence cautiously, shortly followed by Theo and the rest of the class.
"Now, firs' thing yeh gotta know abou' hippogriffs is: they're proud. Easily offended, hippogriffs are. Don't never insult one, 'cause it might be the last thing yeh do. Yeh always wait fer the hippogriff ter make the firs' move. It's polite, see? Yeh walk toward him, and yeh bow, an' yeh wait. If he bows back, yeh're allowed ter touch him. If he doesn' bow, then get away from him sharpish, 'cause those talons hurt. Who wants ter go first?"
Most of the class backed farther away in answer. The hippogriffs were tossing their fierce heads and flexing their powerful wings and didn't seem to like being tethered.
"No one?"
"I'll do it." said Harry.
"Good man, Harry! Five points ta Slytherin. - roared Hagrid. - Right then - let's see how yeh get on with Buckbeak."
He untied one of the chains, pulled the gray hippogriff away from its fellows, and slipped off its leather collar.
"Easy now, Harry. - said Hagrid quietly. - Yeh've got eye contact, now try not ter blink... Hippogriffs don' trust yeh if yeh blink too much..."
Buckbeak had turned his great, sharp head and was staring at Harry with one fierce orange eye.
"Tha's it…Tha's it, Harry... now, bow."
Harry gave a short bow and then looked up. The hippogriff was still staring haughtily at him. It didn't move.
"Ah. - said Hagrid, sounding worried. - Right… back away, now, Harry, easy does it."
Harry backed away, slowly reaching back to the rest of the glass.
"Who wants ter try next?"
After a few seconds of hesitation, Ron stepped forward, following the same process as Harry, but once again the hippogriff didn't budge. Hagrid frowned.
"Buckbeak ain't feeling cooperating today. One last try?"
Malfoy stepped forwards with a much more confident pace than Harry or Ron, and offered a bow to the creature.
Much to everyone's surprise, the hippogriff bent its scaly front knees and sank into what was a small, yet very clearly recognizable, bow.
"Well done, Draco!" said Hagrid, ecstatic. "Right… yeh can touch him! Pat his beak, go on!"
Malfoy stepped forward and did just that, looking rather proud with himself.
"This is very easy. - he drawled. - Even this one is smart enough to realize that I'm better than Potter."
The hippogriff snorted, shaking his head in irritation.
"Back away now, Malfoy, he ain't liking that!"
Buckbeak stomped his feet on the ground. Malfoy blinked at the creature, staring at it in confusion.
"Back off!" shouted Hagrid, stepping in between Draco and the hippogriff.
It happened in a flash of steely talons; Malfoy let out a high pitched scream and next moment, Hagrid was wrestling Buckbeak back into his collar as he strained to get at Malfoy, who lay curled in the grass, blood blossoming over his robes.
"I'm dying! I'm dying, look at me! It's killed me!"
"Yer not dyin'! - shouted back Hagrid, finally tying Buckbeak's bristle to the fence. - Someone help me get him outta here…"
Hermione ran to hold open the gate as Hagrid easily picked up Malfoy. As they passed, Harry saw that there was a long, deep gash on Malfoy's arm, leaving a red trail of blood over the grass and Hagrid ran with him towards the castle. Honestly, it didn't look anywhere near as bad as Draco made it out to be. He'd seen more blood back at Park Royal when chef Bridget took them to the kitchen to teach them how to cook a steak.
"They should fire him straight away!" said Pansy Parkinson in tears.
"It was Malfoy's fault!" snapped Dean Thomas.
"I'm going to see if he's okay!" said Pansy, and they all watched her run up towards Hagrid and Draco.
"You think he'll be alright?" said Hermione nervously.
"Course he will. Professor Pomfrey will have him fixed before the end of class - huffed Theo - Malfoy's just being a drama queen."
"That was a really bad thing to happen in Hagrid's first class, though, wasn't it? - said Ron, looking worried. - Trust Malfoy to mess things up…"
"He'll be fine. We all saw Malfoy standing like an idiot when Hagrid told him to back off." commented Harry.
"Still… with his dad…"
Sally scoffed. "After the whole House elf fiasco from last year, I doubt Lord Malfoy wants to risk what little influence he has over a scratch. And if Harry were to ask, I'm sure Sir Harold can just have the whole thing dismissed."
"That's corruption." said Hermione, frowning.
Sally shrugged. "Call it however you want. The important thing is that it's in our favor."
They never noticed the uncomfortable look Harry and Theo exchanged when Sally mentioned Sir Zettler.
They were among the first to reach the Great Hall at dinnertime, hoping to see Hagrid, but he wasn't there.
"They wouldn't fire him, would they?" asked Theo, an eyebrow raised.
"They'd better not. Not after all the accidents under Professor Kettleburn." said Daphne, glaring down the Slytherin table as a relatively large group was huddled together around Malfoy, his right arm covered in bandages and bound up in a sling, clearly acting, in Harry's opinion, as though he was the heroic survivor of some dreadful battle.
"How is it, Draco? - simpered Pansy Parkinson. - Does it hurt much?"
"Yeah." said Malfoy, putting on a brave sort of grimace.
Harry's group saw him wink at Crabbe and Goyle when Pansy had looked away.
"Disgusting." muttered Daphne.
"I can't believe I used to be friends with him." muttered Theo, hiding his face.
"I was talking about Pansy!"
"Why are you so surprised? They're basically made for each other."
"I should be surprised, but considering they've been snogging in Draco's room all evening..."
Incredulous stares were affixed towards Sally.
"What?"
"How do you know that?"
"Everyone knows it! How do you three not know about it!?"
Potion's classroom, Hogwarts, 3rd September 1993 (Friday)
"Settle down, settle down." said Professor Snape idly.
They were making a new potion today: a Shrinking Solution. Malfoy set up his cauldron right next to Ron and Hermione, causing the two Griffyndor to look at him as if he had grown a second head.
"Sir - Malfoy called - sir, I'll need help cutting up these daisy roots, because of my arm…"
"Well, Mr. Malfoy, perhaps you should have thought of it before acting up yesterday. Instead of complaining, you should be thankful Professor Hagrid didn't send you to clean up hippogriff manure for detention."
A few chuckles echoed across the room before it returned to silence.
"Weasley, cut up Malfoy's roots for him." said Snape without looking up.
Ron went brick red.
"There's nothing wrong with your arm," he hissed at Malfoy.
Malfoy smirked.
"Weasley, you heard Professor Snape: cut up these roots."
Ron seized his knife, pulled Malfoy's roots toward him, and began to chop them roughly, so that they were all different sizes.
"Professor - drawled Malfoy - Weasley's mutilating my roots, sit."
Snape approached their table, stared down his hooked nose at the roots, then gave Ron an unpleasant smile.
"Change roots with Malfoy, Weasley."
"But, sir…!"
"I'm not stupid, Weasley. I know what you're trying to pull. The only reason I'm not taking house points for sabotaging another student's potion is because I know Malfoy is doing this on purpose. - He glared at Draco, causing the boy to turn red and look down. - I expected better from third year students, but I see neither of you have matured a day since you started Hogwarts. Disgraceful. Detention for both of you."
DADA's classroom, Hogwarts, 3rd September 1993 (Friday)
Lupin smiled vaguely and placed his tatty old briefcase on the teacher's desk. He was as shabby as ever but looked healthier than he had on the train.
"Good afternoon. - he said. - Would you please put all your books back in your bags. Today will be a practical lesson. You will need only your wands."
Professor Lupin beckoned the class toward the end of the room, where there was nothing but an old wardrobe. As the professor went to stand next to it, the wardrobe gave a sudden wobble, banging off the wall and causing the students to jump back in alarm.
"Nothing to worry about. - said Professor Lupin calmly - There's a boggart in there."
Neville gave Professor Lupin a look of pure terror.
"Boggarts like dark, enclosed spaces. - said Professor Lupin. - Wardrobes, the gap beneath beds, the cupboards under sinks… I've even met one that had lodged itself in a grandfather clock. This one moved in yesterday afternoon, and I asked the headmaster if the staff would leave it to give my third years some practice. So, the first question we must ask ourselves is, what is a boggart?"
Hermione put up her hand.
"Boggarts are Thallains. They are opportunistic creatures with a talent for organization, a very industrious spirit and an endless amount of greed. They delight in inflicting pain on others, sometimes physically but most often economically. Nothing is too far or too shameless for a boggart, and they frequently threaten or kidnap loved ones to get their way."
Professor blinked for a few seconds, as if trying to puzzle what Hermione just said, before a flash of realization dawned on his face.
"Oh, right…You're from the Fae studies club, correct? I've been warned about it by Professor Flitwick… apparently there are two different creatures that, for some yet undiscovered reason, share the same name. Unfortunately for you, this one - said Professor Lupin, tapping against the wardrobe - is the other one. Anyone else would like to try?"
Pansy Parkinson's hand shot up.
"A boggart is a shape-shifter. - she said. - It can take the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us most."
"Couldn't have put it better myself."
Pansy smiled, glancing back at Hermione with a smug expression of superiority.
"So the boggart sitting in the darkness within has not yet assumed a form. It does not yet know what will frighten the person on the other side of the door. Nobody knows what a boggart looks like when it is alone, but when I let it out, it will immediately become whatever each of us most fears. This means that we have a huge advantage... Have you spotted it, Harry?"
Harry looked surprised at being singled out. He looked around, as if to make sure Professor Lupin was not talking to another Harry.
"Er… because there are so many of us, it won't know what shape it should be?"
"Precisely. It's always best to have company when you're dealing with a boggart. It becomes confused. Which should it become, a headless corpse or a flesh-eating slug? I once saw a Boggart make that very mistake: tried to frighten two people at once and turned itmself into half a slug. Not even remotely frightening."
Professor Lupin proceeded to teach them the boggart-banishing spell and asked Neville forward to demonstrate. The boggart took the shape of Professor Snape, and Neville's spell turned its clothes into something his grandmother wore, causing many chuckles from the students.
The boggart shifted his attention to the closest student. Parvati walked forward, and Professor Snape was replaced by a bloodstained, bandaged mummy. A bandage unraveled at the mummy's feet, causing it to trip and fall face forward.
Seamus darted past and the mummy turned into a banshee. She opened her mouth wide and an unearthly sound filled the room. With a flick of his wand, the creature made a rasping noise and clutched her throat, coughing violently.
The banshee turned into a rat, which chased its tail in a circle, then it became a rattlesnake, which slithered and writhed before becoming a single, bloody eyeball.
"It's confused! - shouted Lupin. - We're getting there! Dean!"
The eyeball became a severed hand, which flipped over and began to creep along the floor like a crab, only for it to be caught in a mousetrap.
Ron leapt forward and quite a few people screamed when the giant spider advanced on him.
"Riddikulus!"
The spider's legs vanished. It rolled over and over causing Lavender Brown to squeal and ran out of its way and it came to a halt at Harry's feet. He raised his wand, ready, but…
"Here!" shouted Professor Lupin suddenly, hurrying forward in front of him.
The legless spider had vanished. For a second, everyone looked wildly, then they saw a silvery-white orb hanging in the air in front of Lupin.
"Riddikulus!"
The orb deflated, flying around like a popped balloon, then bursted into a thousand tiny wisps of smoke, and was gone.
"Excellent! - cried Professor Lupin as the class broke into applause. - Very well, everyone, an excellent lesson. As homework, kindly read the chapter on boggarts and summarize it for me... to be handed in on Monday. That will be all."
As the class left the staffroom, Harry stayed back. Professor Lupin had deliberately stopped him from tackling the boggart, and that had ticked him off. Why? Was it because he'd seen Harry collapse on the train, and thought he wasn't up to much? Had he thought Harry would pass out again?
As the last student left the classroom, Professor Lupin looked at Harry with a quizzical look.
"Why didn't you let me fight it?"
"I would have thought that was obvious, Harry." he said, sounding surprised.
Harry was taken aback.
"Why would it be obvious?"
"Well - said Lupin, frowning slightly. - I assumed that if the boggart faced you, it would assume the shape of Lord Voldemort."
Harry blinked. Not only was this the last answer he'd expected, but Lupin was probably the first wizard he had heard saying Voldemort's name.
"From your expression I was in the wrong. I apologize, but I didn't think it a good idea for Lord Voldemort to materialize in the room. I imagined that people would panic."
"I didn't think of Voldemort. I… honestly don't even know what he looks like. I mean… I saw him back when he was in school, but Tom Riddle isn't… scary." said Harry honestly.
"I see. - said Lupin thoughtfully. - Well, if you don't mind me asking… What were you thinking about?"
"I'm…not sure, Professor. - Harry thought back to his past. There weren't many things that had truly terrified him, except two instances. Did the events of this summer scare him enough for Zettler to become his greatest fear? Or perhaps it was still… - Probably a Garou."
Professor Lupin raised an eyebrow, waiting for Harry to elaborate.
"Back when I was at Park Royal… I think it was the same week I became a… - he thought back at what Aragog said. - a Drone, I think… They showed me a video of a Garou attack in a facility… they said it was necessary for me to know what could happen if we got attacked… It was horrible. Have you ever seen what happens when someone is eaten alive by a pack of werewolves, professor?"
Lupin winced, a mixture of emotions appearing on his face. Horror, fear, disgust, sadness, hurt and… shame?
"I see… I understand that it might have been… traumatic for you." he said in a somber tone.
An uncomfortable silence fell between the two.
"Uh… I should probably go. Wouldn't want to miss my fist class of Muggle Studies." he said, gesturing at the door.
"Of course, of course. If you ever need anything, please feel free to come." said the professor, putting on a courtesy smile.
"Oh, Harry… if you ever want to learn more about your parents… I have quite a few stories to share. If you want to hear them, of course."
Harry nodded.
"Thank you, professor." he said, dashing out of the room to catch up with his friends.
"What was that?" asked Sally.
"Sorry. Just asked why he didn't let me fight the boggart."
"And?"
"And he was afraid he'd take the shape of… You-Know-Who."
Ron winced. "Blimey."
"I can see why he didn't let you fight it then. It would have caused a panic." commented Daphne.
The group reached the first floor and entered the Muggle Studies class, where almost twenty students were gathered. As they took their seat in the front row, Professor Burbage made her appearance.
"Good morning students and welcome to Muggle Studies. I am pleased to see that many of you have decided to take my class, but I suspect that many of you, especially those with muggle relatives, have done so in the hope of an easy A to add to your school curriculum."
She looked around, noticing how many students suddenly found the floor very interesting.
"I will not lie to you: for those students this first year will, most likely, be the easiest A of their life. If you are muggleborn, this first year will most likely be a free O. After all not everyone here is familiar with the muggle world and we need to start from the basics. If you're not particularly interested in the subject, you'll be happy to hear that attendance to my class isn't mandatory. I don't intend this elective to be another History of Magic class: if you don't want to listen, you can leave."
As expected, no one took the professor up on her offer. For now, at least. Harry wondered how many students would be back for the next class.
"Today, I will introduce the curriculum for all five years of Muggle Studies, all the various essays that you will have to complete before the end of the year with their own deadline. Completing these essays will be ninety percent of your grade, with the remaining ten percent being an interview at the end of the year. Those of you looking for an easy A can leave their essay in my office and hope that their first-hand knowledge of muggles is enough to get a passing grade. As for everyone else…"
Professor Burbage picked up a remote control and pointed it at the back of the class. With a distinctive beeping sound, a projector turned on, shocking most of the students. On the wall next to a smiling professor there was now a detailed list of the various subjects for the year.
"Our first subject will be electricity."
Notes
Buckbeak's incident is upon us! It went down a bit different from canon, but nothing too relevant
What is reevant is the fact that Harry did not to ride the hippogryff. It may come off as a surprise, but consider that Harry is Wyrm-tainted: magical creatures that are alligned to the Wyld are not going to accept him. Some may even go so far as to attack him, altough that probably won't be the case with the ones in Hagrid's class because they are either tamed or domesticated
The only reason Hagrid got into trouble in canon was because Mr. Malfoy has the power to make it so. In this timeine, he lost A LOT of influence and goodwill, so things will play out different.
Speaking of different, Harry's greatest fear has changed! And it makes things VERY awkward between him and Lupin...
I was tempted to rename one of the two boggart, but decided it was probably easier to just make it a classification mistake. After all, changeings and fae are not really understood by wizarding britain, I don't think accidentally givinh two creatures the same name is that hard to believe.
Muggle studies! Boy, I have issues as to how this class is handled in canon. The wizarding world is LAUGHABLY ignorant about muggle world, despite having PEOPLE WHO GREW UP MUGGLES WITHIN THE GODDAMN CASTLE. That also mean that muggleborn wizards and witches should get essentially an automatic O on Muggle Studies on the account of... you know... being muggleborn. Which in turn, has interesting implications for the lessons...
I think my solution is passable, but let me know what you think about it
Do not worry, next week you'l get some action.
The longer I write this story, the more I have to change and thus the more I have to take time with each scene. Add the fact that I'm starting to work on my thesis and I'm slowing down the writing process to a crawl, but I still have 250 pages ready to be publishes, which means... about 40 more chapters before I run out of material. Hopefully I'll get the time to finish uni by then. Or I get a weekend of inspiration and write more