Allow me to introduce you to your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher; me. Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary member of the Dark Force Defense 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 Banden Banshee by smiling at him.
He felt as though all three of them had reached an understanding they didn't need to put into words.
"I'm glad that's over," muttered Neville. "Strange man, isn't he?"
"Yeah, he is a bit," said Harry, his eyes on Zabini. "How come you ended up in there, Ginny?"
"He saw me hex Zacharias Smith," said Ginny. "You remember that idiot from Hufflepuff who was in the D. A. ? He kept on and on asking about what happened at the Ministry and in the end he annoyed me so much I hexed him--when Slughorn came in I thought I was going to got detention, but he just thought it was a really good hex and invited me to lunch! Mad, eh?"
"Better reason for inviting someone than because their mother's famous," said Harry, scowling at the back of Zabini's head, "or because their uncle. . . "
“There you go,” said Ron. “We got as much as we could carry.”
A shower of brilliantly colored sweets fell into Harry’s lap. It was dusk, and Ron and Hermione had just turned up in the common room, pink-faced from the cold wind and looking as though they’d had the time of their lives.
“Thanks,” said Harry, picking up a packet of tiny black Pepper Imps. “What’s Hogsmeade like? Where did you go?”
By the sound of it — everywhere. Dervish and Banges, the wizarding equipment shop, Zonko’s Joke Shop, into the Three Broomsticks for foaming mugs of hot butterbeer, and many places besides.
“The post office, Harry! About two hundred owls, all sitting on shelves, all color-coded depending on how fast you want your letter to get there!”
“Honeydukes has got a new kind of fudge; they were giving out free samples, there’s a bit, look —”
“We think we saw an ogre, honestly, they get all sorts at the Three Broomsticks —”
“Wish we could have brought you some butterbeer, really warms you up —”
“Well, it’s just that I was sort of right about the Half-Blood Prince business,” she said tentatively.
“D’you have to rub it in, Hermione? How d’you think I feel about that now?”
“No — no — Harry, I didn’t mean that!” she said hastily, looking around to check that they were not being overheard. “It’s just that I was right about Eileen Prince once owning the book. You see . . . she was Snape’s mother!”
“I thought she wasn’t much of a looker,” said Ron. Hermione ignored him.
“I was going through the rest of the old Prophets and there was a tiny announcement about Eileen Prince marrying a man called Tobias Snape, and then later an announcement saying that she’d given birth to a —”
“— murderer,” spat Harry.
“Well . . . yes,” said Hermione. “So . . . I was sort of right. Snape must have been proud of being ‘half a Prince,’ you see?
Harry remained within the confines of the Burrow’s garden over the next few weeks. He spent most of his days playing two-a-side Quidditch in the Weasleys’ orchard (he and Hermione against Ron and Ginny; Hermione was dreadful and Ginny good, so they were reasonably well matched) and his evenings eating triple helpings of everything Mrs. Weasley put in front of him. It would have been a happy, peaceful holiday had it not been for the stories of disappearances, odd accidents, even of deaths now appearing almost daily in the Prophet
With another shock of excitement, Harry saw Sirius give James the thumbs-up. Sirius was lounging in his chair at his ease, tilting it back on two legs. He was very good-looking, his dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance neither James's nor Harry's could ever have achieved, and a girl sitting behind him was eyeing him hopefully, though he didn't seem to have noticed.
The very first time I saw you Harry, I recognized you immediately. Not by your scar, by your eyes. They're your mother; Lily's. Yes, I knew her. You mother was there for me at a time when no one else was. Not only was she a singularly gifted witch, she was also an uncommonly kind woman. She had a way of seeing the beauty in others, even, and perhaps most especially, when that person couldn't see it in themselves.
“I'm Draco Malfoy, I'm Draco, I'm on your side!"
Draco was on the upper landing, pleading with another masked Death Eater. Harry Stunned the Death Eater as they passed: Malfoy looked around, beaming, for his savior, and Ron punched him from under the cloak. Malfoy fell backward on top of the Death Eater, his mouth bleeding, utterly bemused.
"And that's the second time we've saved your life tonight, you two-faced bastard!" Ron yelled.
The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible.
October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces. The skies and the ceiling of the Great Hall turned a pale, pearly gray, the mountains around Hogwarts became snowcapped, and the temperature in the castle dropped so far that many students wore their thick protective dragon skin gloves in the corridors between lessons.
He did not see how he could possibly explain to Hermione that what she had done to offend Ron was kiss Viktor Krum, not when the offense had occurred so long ago.
“How come she married him?” Harry asked miserably, “She hated him!”
“Nah, she didn’t,” said Sirius.
“She started going out with him in seventh year,” said Lupin.
“Once James had deflated his head a bit,” said Sirius.
“And stopped hexing people for the fun of it,” said Lupin.
fem!Severus Snape x Lily Evans
“, .. thought we were supposed to be friends?” Snape was saying. “Best friends?”
“We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with!”
“Daddy, look — one of the gnomes actually bit me!”
“How wonderful! Gnome saliva is enormously beneficial!” said Mr. Lovegood, seizing Luna’s outstretched finger and examining the bleeding puncture marks. “Luna, my love, if you should feel any burgeoning talent today — perhaps an unexpected urge to sing opera or to declaim in Mermish do not repress it! You may have been gifted by the Gernumblies!”
“I thought you could start,” said Snape, a malicious smile on his lips, “with boxes one thousand and twelve to one thousand and fifty-six. You will find some familiar names in there, which should add interest to the task. Here, you see . . .”
He pulled out a card from one of the topmost boxes with a flourish and read, “ ‘James Potter and Sirius Black. Apprehended using an illegal hex upon Bertram Aubrey. Aubrey’s head twice normal size. Double detention.’ ” Snape sneered. “It must be such a comfort to think that, though they are gone, a record of their great achievements remains. . . .”
Harry felt the familiar boiling sensation in the pit of his stomach. Biting his tongue to prevent himself retaliating, he sat down in front of the boxes and pulled one toward him.
It was, as Harry had anticipated, useless, boring work, punctuated (as Snape had clearly planned) with the regular jolt in the stomach that meant he had just read his father or Sirius’s names, usually coupled together in various petty misdeeds, occasionally accompanied by those of Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew.