Chrestomanci Arc

Chrestomanci Arc 01: Extra Credit, part i.

****

It was a glorious, glorious day.

To any normal person, it was a day that would not have looked particularly extraordinary. Grey clouds hovered dismally in the air, took dark and wet to be fluffy, and while it was not raining exactly, they would occasionally let a drop or two fall on an unsuspecting passer-by, who would declare in surprise, "Was that rain? And here I left my umbrella!" and start looking for shelter before realising that the clouds were just having a bit of a joke.

The wetness hung in the air, too, heavy and humid. It was the sort of damp chill that soaked into the body no matter how warm one's clothes were, an uncomfortable, listless cold. And yet Harry Potter greeted this overcast, dreary day with an enthusiasm most people reserve for Christmas morning.

He woke up at dawn, even though he hadn't been able to fall asleep til well after midnight. By seven, he had packed almost everything he owned into a damp cardboard box, wrapped his Firebolt broomstick carefully in rags, and was waiting impatiently with his owl-cage perched on his lap. The rest of the house remained stiflingly silent.

He pulled out Creative Quidditch Strategy from the box and tried to read. It had been a fifteenth birthday present from Ron, and he had already read the entire book twice through, plus scribbled notes in the margins and memorised the diagrams. It was still a good book the third time, but some of the novelty had worn off.

Finally, at half-past eight, the stirrings of other members of the household began. At ten minutes to nine, the teakettle began to whistle. And fifteen minutes after that, Uncle Vernon's loud bray bellowed through the upstairs hallway:

"BOY! GET DOWN HERE!"

There was a good deal more, mostly about how ungrateful Harry was that his relations were going out of their way to drive him into London and how it was horribly inconsiderate of him to expect them to conform to his schedule when they had their own, never mind the fact they were actually thrilled to be getting rid of Harry for the length of the school year, and had never once entertained the notion of doing anything by according to his schedule. The truth was that he was under strict orders to stay in his room unless his presence was specifically demanded, and as they frequently neglected to do so at mealtimes, he probably would have starved to death over the summer had Ron not been sending him twice-weekly care packages full of snacks. The Weasleys would cheerfully have had him the entire summer, but it was Expressly Forbidden by Those In Charge for Harry to spend his holidays anywhere but Hogwart's or the Dursleys, so Mrs. Weasley made herself feel better about his welfare by making sure he was well fed.

Well fed, however, was still not enough for Harry to grow into his clothes, which were all handed down from his whalish cousin Dudley. Three Harrys could have fit into his jeans, cinched as tight as he could get them with a belt that was near worn through, and the cuffs were rolled up several times to keep them from dragging on the ground and tripping him. The same was true of his sleeves, and his shirttails nearly reached his knees, even if he had managed a bit of a growth spurt during the summer. His pyjamas almost fit, but only because Dudley had been nine when he outgrew them. They were bright green with dinosaurs on them, and had holes in the elbows.

Harry didn't care about the clothes, as they would soon be covered by Hogwart's robes anyway. He cared a bit about the pyjamas, but decided that if any of the boys in his dorm so much as giggled in his direction while he was wearing them, he would hex them with--well, something suitably awful, anyway. Besides, he may have dinosaur pyjamas, but he had a Firebolt. (There was a certain logic in this viewpoint.)

He ignored most of the unpleasant things Uncle Vernon ranted at him--he had it all memorised anyway, and his body had learned when to make appropriate noncommittal noises--and concentrated on Going Back to School. Hogwart's, where he had a real bed with feathers, where the paintings talked and ghosts roamed the hallways and there were secret passages and moving staircases and Quidditch. Gryffindor would need a new team captain this year, there were spots on the team for a Keeper and a Chaser. He wondered if Ron would try out--his best friend made a decent Keeper when they had a chance to play for fun. Ginny wasn't bad either. He considered the idea of a Gryffindor team made up only of himself, Angelina Johnson, and four Weasleys, and couldn't decide whether to be delighted or terrified.

Uncle Vernon, his face swollen and nearly purple with nameless rage, paused the car. He did not really pause telling Harry how horrible and ungrateful and inconsiderate he was, but he did interrupt himself long enough to snap, "Well get out then, boy!" and Harry, wondering if he was actually going to bring the car to a complete stop, threw open the door and scrambled out, trying to carry all his things at once. Hedwig squawked in irritation when her cage swung nearly upside-down, and he very nearly fell down right in front of a car when he tripped over the cuffs of his two-large trousers, but finally he made it to the sidewalk with his box and his owl and his broomstick, and by the time he looked back into the street, Uncle Vernon had pulled away and was nowhere in sight.

A fat raindrop fell and splatted on his glasses. Yes, it was a truly glorious day.

****

"Harry! Over here, Harry!" It was Hermione, her arms loaded down with books, with Crookshanks the cat at her heels. "Have you seen my list?" she demanded breathlessly, as Harry made his way to her. "I know I'll be able to read them all, but I'm not at all certain I can carry them!" She was taller and a little curvier than she'd been at the end of the previous year, though between her robes and her books, it was hard to tell.

"Let me help," suggested Harry, peering over her list as he took some of the books from her stack. "Anyway it's your own fault for taking so many courses." Two years before, Hermione had taken so many subjects that she'd had to turn time back just to make it to them. At least she'd gotten over that.

He bought his books, plus a few other little things, refilled his bag of wizard gold at Gringott's, and then he and Hermione stopped for ice cream at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. They waved wildly when they saw the Weasleys approaching--an entire family with bright red hair, clamouring and making as much noise as possible, so that Harry and Hermione almost had to scream to get their attention.

"Whew! Good to see you!" Ron called, popping into a chair next to them.

"How's the Firebolt, Harry?" Fred and George asked almost simultaneously. Harry patted it and assured them it was fine.

Ginny, who up til this point had barely been able to look Harry in the face and mumble, grinned hello and asked pertly, "Do I get to ride it?"

"Not til after I do," Ron said meaningfully. Harry felt a possessive urge to cuddle his broomstick.

Conversation slid easily from topic to topic. Harry heard about the Weasleys' eldest sons, Bill and Charlie, who were off researching exciting things in other countries. He heard about Percy, who now that he was Working For the Ministry of Magic, had decided he was too good to do the school shopping with the rest of his family, and abandoned them in favour of his girlfriend Penelope. He heard about Hermione's holiday to Italy with her family, who despite being Muggles, always seemed to find interesting things to do.

"Wonder who's going to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts this year?" Hermione wondered, idly stroking Crookshanks, who curled in her lap. "You don't suppose they've given it to Snape at last, do you?" Professor Snape hated all three of them, and had wanted the job for a long time. There was little chance they would enjoy or do well in another class that he taught. Even--or especially--Defence Against the Dark Arts, at which Harry had always had a kind of innate advantage.

"Ugh, I hope not!" Ron said with a shudder. "I think he was starting to go a little crazy, at the end of last term...."

Harry frowned. "I don't think they would have...Dumbledore needs him to do something else, remember?" Just saying the words reminded him of some of the less-than-cheerful aspects of the coming school year. For one thing, his proclaimed arch-enemy Voldemort had been returned to power, and he was still after Harry's life. Evil wizards can hold a grudge for a very long time.

//Hufflepuff's going to need a new captain, too.// He had avoided thinking about it all summer. The first casualty in the War Against Evil was Cedric Diggory, House Hufflepuff, Quidditch team captain, Tri-Wizard Champion. Cho Chang's boyfriend. Almost Harry's friend.

Harry felt a strange sort of twinge in the pit of his belly, and tried to go back to Not Thinking. He had the indescribable, indefinable feeling that nothing was going to be the same as it had been before. Not even Hogwart's. It wasn't invigorating or inspiring. It was sad.

For the rest of the day, he kept expecting something to go wrong. He finished his ice cream, wandered through Diagon Alley with Ron and Hermione, made plans for the first Hogsmeade weekend, ran into Neville Longbottom and said hello to the Creevey brothers, and lost a chocolate frog when it decided to leap out of the package and into a mud puddle where he didn't feel much like retrieving it. And all the while, the feeling of Wrongness persisted, twisting what had begun as such a promising day.

Maybe it was just the weather, Hermione suggested, when he mentioned it. The damp dismal greyness would make anyone feel like something was wrong. She didn't believe it even when she said it. Neither did Harry.

And yet, despite the formless lingering fear, nothing happened. The Hogwart's Express arrived on time at Platform 9 ¾, they made it on with all their luggage and no mishaps, and they rode the entire way without even a visit from Draco Malfoy. Harry did see him climbing aboard--his trunk had gotten stuck on something, and he couldn't quite pull it free, though he maintained an expression of absent idleness until Vincent Crabbe, muscles bulging, seized the corner and hefted it properly aboard. Crabbe had grown over the summer, both taller and broader. Malfoy had not. He was a little taller, but it actually looked as if there were less of him--he seemed paler, and his hair, no longer greased to his head, was short and downy. It made him look young. He caught sight of Harry and leveled a steely-eyed glare in his direction, but that was all. He glided down the aisle of the train cars between Crabbe and Gregory Goyle (who had not grown quite so much as Crabbe) without so much as a glance in the Gryffindors' direction.

The feeling persisted, and by the time they reached Hogwart's, it had given Harry a stomachache. It was almost worse, having nothing bad happen and knowing that eventually it would, having to wait for it. He greeted the tall pillars of Hogwart's with growing dread polluting his excitement, and he noted with a nostalgic melancholy how very young the first-years were when the Sorting Hat divided them up. Ron was shooting him concerned looks by the time they settled into the Great Hall for the Joining Feast, though he was too tactful or else too concerned to actually say anything not directly related to classes, Hermione, or Quidditch.

Then Professor Dumbledore made his customary speech. He fairly bounded from his chair. He was very old, but he didn't seem it--his energy appeared infinite, as did his power, and it was instinctive to trust and like him. At least Harry thought so, and Professor Dumbledore had always justified that trust to Harry.

"Welcome, welcome!" he called happily. "Another year at Hogwart's is about to begin! And this year we've had no strange unpleasantness to start off the year!" He did not seem to be in the least concerned about Voldemort's return, but Harry had learned, over the course of things, that just because Dumbledore didn't look concerned did not necessarily mean he wasn't. "Off on the right foot at last!" he continued. "And as has become a bit of a tradition on its own, I should introduced to you the newest addition to the faculty. We have a new teacher for Defence Against the Dark Arts, who I hope will last more than our last few choices have. Allow me to introduce Professor Chant!"

A young pretty woman with blue robes and dark curls was sitting next to Hagrid at the teachers' table, at the announcement she stood up, a polite smile plastered onto her face. Harry thought she looked a bit uncomfortable, and her reception--lukewarm at best, because the students had learned not to get too enthusiastic about Defence Against the Dark Arts professors by this point--didn't help matters. She mumbled a thank-you and looked pleadingly at Dumbledore.

"Well then--enough of all this talk, let's get on with the feast!" Dumbledore concluded, and sat back down. Professor Chant sank back into her chair, where she was hidden from view behind the bulk that was Hagrid.

"Look!" Ron squealed enthusiastically, directing Harry's attention to the food appearing in quick bursts of sound and light on the table. "Custard!"

A real Hogwart's feast, it seemed, was the one thing able to dull the Feeling of Impending Doom, and by the time they got to the ice cream and apple crumble, it had faded entirely.

****

Hour 1: Transfiguration.

"Professor? Professor!"

"Yes, Miss Granger?"

"I was wondering, this year will we be learning about Animagi?"

A frown, and the deepening of the crow's feet around the tall woman's eyes. "I'm afraid not, Miss Granger. The Animagus spells are not only complicated and dangerous, but also restricted. You'll have to settle for more mundane magic for this year." A long, probing look at not only Hermione, but Harry and Ron as well. "Restricted and dangerous," she repeated meaningfully. Harry swallowed and nodded.

Hour 2: Divination.

"So let's see," Harry said, trying to keep both laughter and sheer disbelief out of his voice. "I'm going to fall out of the Gryffindor Tower window on Thursday next and crack my head open, then the following Monday it's a rogue painting with a battle-axe, and the week before Christmas I'm to contract an--an STD? And then by February I'm being poisoned? I should have been born a cat with nine lives, else I won't even make it through the term."

Professor Trelawney, far from being insulted, stared glassy-eyed back at him, nodding slowly. "That may be, that may be," she said distantly.

Harry nudged Ron, who rolled his eyes and muttered, "At least you know you'll be getting some before Christmas."

"Laugh you may," Trelawney told Ron fiercely, "but you must remember not to shower on Tuesdays."

Ron blinked.

Hour 3: Charms

Between coughing and sneezing and brushing soot from cheeks: "Neville?"

Sheepishly: "Um. Yes."

"Will you be terribly insulted if I say I never want to be your lab partner again in this life?"

A pause. A cough, that might have had a bit of a giggle in it. "Not really. I think--I think maybe I'm better off with Hermione, anyway."

"Good. Because I don't want to insult you, but I was always kind of attached to my eyebrows."

"Oh, don't worry. Parvati can grow them back for you. She has to help Lavender out once a week."

Hour 4: Potions

Ron, whining: "Whose brilliant idea was it to have Potions right before lunch?"

Harry: "Better than right after."

Draco: "I'm forced to agree...seeing you right after lunch would make me nauseous."

Hermione: "It's nauseated. But you're right, you are nauseous."

Silence.

Lunch.

"I still say that house-elves--"

"Hermione, please stuff it."

A withering glare. The sounds of munching. Talk of Quidditch.

****

Hour 5: Defence Against the Dark Arts

Fifth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins slid into desks, stacked parchment and ink and quills and copies of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Five and Dark Creatures of the British Isles. Their new instructor was conspicuously absent, and the room was full of the low curious buzz of students.

The door swung open at last, and Professor Chant brushed in, her pace hurried, wisps of electrostatic black hair sticking out, flyaway, around her face. She gave them a frazzled smile and dropped a tall stack of books onto the mahogany teacher's desk at the front of the room. "Hello...good, you've all got your books...I'm Professor Chant, for anyone who wasn't quite paying attention at the feast yesterday." The class, as a body, mumbled a suitable greeting. Professor Chant was slight and very pretty, with pale skin and very blue eyes, and long black hair that would have been curly had it not been for the crackles of static electricity that made it misbehave. She looked rather young to be a teacher, but that might have just been because the students, most of them now all of fifteen years old, were getting older and bigger themselves.

"Get out a bit of parchment," she directed, without any preamble or explanation. "Sign your name at the top, please."

Obediently, the students did, and there was much rustling of parchment and scratching of quills as an entire class scrawled their names in their most impressive handwriting. There were tails and curlicues and fancy letters, some who wrote tiny and some whose names took up the entire width of the parchment, some who only used their initials and some (mostly from very old wizarding families with many dead relations to keep happy) who had six or seven names. "Just rip that bit off and turn it in when you finish," Professor Chant directed, and they did, even if they were a bit confused.

When she had collected all the names, she leaned against the front of the mahogany desk and folded her arms across her chest and asked, "Who can tell me why what you just did was extremely dangerous?"

The class looked expectantly at Hermione, who was looking distraught and leafing frantically through The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Five.

"You won't find it in there," the professor told her, almost gently, as if she understood how Hermione hated not knowing things. "But would anyone like to hazard a guess?"

They all looked at each other, there was a low buzz and rumble of ideas and guesses, and Draco Malfoy raised his hand. "A signature is binding," he said, slowly as if he were still working out in his head what to say. "So if someone has it, maybe that gives them a bit of power over you?"

"Very good," Professor Chant said, nodding. She held the room still with fierce blue eyes. "A signature gives power to the person who holds it. I could take any one of your names, here, once you leave this room, and use it to find out where you are...or summon you to me, or even bind you from doing any magic." Silence fell as this sunk in and students shifted nervously in their seats.

"So now," she continued, matter-of-fact, "you're all going to learn how to add protections to your signature so that it can't be used against you."

A collective sigh of relief rose from the class, except for Pansy Parkinson, who said petulantly, "But you've still got all our names the old way!"

Professor Chant smiled the smile of a very wicked child who is pretending to be good. "Of course," she said sweetly.

The class cringed.

****

By the end of the hour, Harry had written his name twenty-six and a half times. (The half was when he ran out of ink in the middle and gave up.) It wasn't until number twenty-four that he finally got it right, but just to make sure, he did two more for practice. Signing one's name was not particular interesting in and of itself, even with the warding-charm Professor Chant had taught them to add to it, but her demonstrations of why it was important were rather convincing. She would walk around the room, watching them, and sometimes test them by resting her hand on the parchment where one of the students had signed--and the next thing that student knew, they would get up and dance a jig, or their hair would turn green, or they would start chattering away and everything they said would come out in Swahili. Harry himself had already found himself singing "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" to Millicent Bulstrode, who had laughed at the time but very shortly afterward had clambered up on top of her desk and started twirling around until she got dizzy, at which point she toppled and landed on top of Draco Malfoy, who complained for a good while afterward that he couldn't breathe properly. Ron had braided Seamus Finnigan's hair, Hermione balanced her wand on the end of her nose, and Vincent Crabbe stood on his head in the corner until his ears turned purple. Dean Thomas picked up Neville Longbottom and swung him onto his shoulders, and Neville had to keep clapping his hands. It was noisy, and highly entertaining if you weren't the one being manipulated like a puppet, but most of them felt it was just safer to learn to write their name properly as quickly as possible.

"From now on," Professor Chant said, when everyone was finally seated and quiet again, "you should sign this way always. Whenever you write a paper for a class, or send a letter home--because you never know when someone will be able to get hold of it who ought not to."

"Constant vigilance," someone--probably Dean Thomas--snorted from the back of the room. The class giggled.

"Laugh, then," said Professor Chant mildly. "Just do as you're told while you're laughing at it. It's one thing to see your classmates making fools of themselves, and another thing entirely--well, you can imagine for yourselves."

There was a long moment of silence while the students imagined some of the more interesting and awful things that could happen to them.

"Now, for tomorrow," the professor said, her voice changing, calm and placid and authoritative, "you will all please read through the first three chapters of Dark Creatures of the British Isles and choose one you are most interested in discussing. Oh--and one other thing. I'd like some volunteers for some extra credit projects throughout the term...come talk to me or slip a note into my office if you're interested." She smiled, and her young face lit up, and quite a few boys who would not have cared about extra credit in any other class suggested that they might like to do just such a project. "It'll be in the evenings, and sometimes very late, so don't volunteer if you can't stay awake, or have other obligations after supper." Harry noticed Hermione fairly bouncing on her toes, waiting for Professor Chant to finish speaking so she could volunteer.

"Oh, I've just got to put my name in! You should too, you know, both of you. Think of the things we could learn from doing extra credit in /this/ class!" she said under her breath. "You especially, Harry. Now that You-Know-Who is back and all...you're going to need all the help you can get."

"I guess so," Harry said, because he'd really been trying not to have to think about that any more than he had to, but knew she was right. (That was the irritating thing about Hermione, and about girls in general, really. They were right far too often, and they knew it.) "Ron?"

"Huh?" Ron spoke up at the sound of his name, but he'd been watching the professor with a glazed-over look on his face. "Oh, sign up. Right. Sure, I will."

Hermione rolled her eyes and elbowed him. "Boys!"

"Gilderoy Lockhart," said Ron, and Hermione blushed and stomped out of the room. Harry and Ron chased after her. "Herm? I thought you were going to volunteer for extra credit."

"I'll write a note later," said Hermione, not turning around.

****

By the end of the week, Defence Against the Dark Arts was almost everyone's favourite class. There were various reasons for this, but most of them had to do with the teacher, who was very pretty (as the boys kept saying, and the girls kept denying) and wildly unpredictable. Unpredictability by itself was not a strange thing among the teachers of this particular class--Hogwart's had had a string of them, and from Professor Quirrel to Bartemius Crouch Jr-in-disguise-as-Mad-Eye-Moody (both of whom ended up being servants of the Dark Lord), each was a bit more odd than the last.

The hiring qualifications apparently did not place much importance on mental stability.

What this meant, in practical student terms, is that the Defence classes were always, in some form or other, exciting. At some point in their school careers--probably about the time Remus Lupin was teaching them about boggarts, and intensified when the Moody imposter demonstrated the Unforgivable Curses--they had realised that this was where they were going to learn the things that their parents (or the Ministry, or the school Council) did not want them to know.

And Professor Chant did not let them down. The first day was spent signing their names, which admittedly did not sound exciting at first but became quite a challenge after the first few embarrassing things one found one's self doing. The second day they discussed their favourite creatures from the first three chapters of their book, and it didn't seem to matter that most people had picked violent, nasty things like the Grim. ("Actually," Professor Chant said, "I read something about the Grim in a bestiary once when I was little, and I was terrified of even looking at a black dog for years after." Harry remembered Sirius and Trelawney and concentrated on not laughing.)

The third day they wrote essays about the things they had learned in Defence classes in previous years that they thought had been most useful and important. Harry wrote about facing Dementors and the Expecto Patronus spell. Ron, Seamus and Crabbe wrote about Boggarts. Parvati Patil wrote about Quirrel and Moody and how you can't trust appearances. Draco Malfoy wrote about the Unforgivable Curses. Hermione wrote about everything.

The fourth day, they learned about wandless magic.

Professor Chant asked if any of them had ever tried it before. They all looked at her blankly, some shaking their heads. Nobody spoke up. She waited.

Finally, after what seemed like it must have taken the entire class period but had really only been six minutes, Harry remembered something, and raised his hand.

"Before I came to Hogwart's," he said, "things used to happen. I let a snake out of a cage once by accident."

Professor Chant looked thoughtful. "And that was before you knew about magic at all, isn't it?" Harry nodded. "What about the rest of you? Anything else ever make things happen without understanding why?"

A few other students, mostly Muggle-born, tentatively raised their hands, murmuring that yes, they had, they just hadn't known what was going on at the time, and it had been rather embarrassing really, and by now they'd just forgotten. Several of the Slytherins just looked superior, because of course as purebloods from old wizard families, they had never bothered to consider a life without understanding magic.

Professor Chant held up her wand--holly, eleven inches--and pointed it toward the ceiling. "Several of you," she said, "don't really need these at all."

The class became very quiet.

"They're useful for a few reasons," she continued. "It's easier to focus your magic on a smaller point--not literally, mind, but figuratively, on a purpose--if you use a wand. And at the same time, it acts as an amplifier." She flicked the tip of her wand toward the chalkboard, and a diagram appeared. Hermione bent her head to copy it onto her parchment at once. "See--all this vague, formless, magic floating around is directed by the wizard into the wand. Aim and fire--and it's not vague and formless anymore, but purposeful and stronger than it looked before." Bright blue eyes scanned the classroom for signs of comprehension. "You all know about levels of wizardry, right? Warlocks and enchanters and such?"

The class started back, blankly. "You mean levels, like O.W.L.s?" Pansy Parkinson ventured tentatively.

Professor Chant shook her head. "No, but thank you for guessing, at least. I mean levels of ability. Of innate magical power. Or do they teach you everybody's got the same potential, here?" The looks from the students said quite plainly that yes, they did, and someone who was quite close to the professor might have heard her mutter something under her breath about the political correctness of the school system.

"Well, everybody's /not/ the same," she said flatly. "Some of you are more powerful wizards than others, and always will be. I know it's not what you want to hear, and that you've probably suspected it for a long time anyway. But it's important that you understand it. Because being successful at magic is about how you use the power you have. Even the most powerful enchanter in the world can get into trouble by not paying attention, and anyone with even a little power can do great things with it by applying it properly. And I'd rather have you all being creative and clever in the application rather than just blowing big holes in the sky."

Interest had kindled in most of the stares now, and a good many students were fingering their wands and hoping, hoping that they were the ones with more power, and not less. The ones who weren't were Harry and Malfoy, who both knew they had magic to spare, and Neville, who was equally sure he didn't.

"There used to be classifications of wizards by ability," Professor Chant explained, "though they're officially not used anymore except in really private records--your school records, and Ministry ones, if any of you are unfortunate enough to be kept on file there." Some awkward but very real tittering. "They range from witch or warlock--those with just a little magic--to enchanters, who have a great deal. You don't have to know them all, and we won't be using them." Relieved sighs. "But back to wands. Witches or warlocks need wands to collect their power and amplify it. Enchanters need wands to focus, and keep things from happening that they don't mean. But anyone can do magic without a wand if they need to."

Her face grew serious suddenly, her blue eyes darkening, a little sad. "You probably all know, whether you're supposed to or not," she said abruptly, "that the Dark Lord has returned to the world. That, my dears, means that there is a very good chance that some of you here--" and she didn't look right at Harry then, but everyone else did-- "are going to need, at some point, to defend yourselves. And evil wizards don't play fair. If you get into a fix, it won't be just after breakfast when you've got your wand and your spellbooks and are feeling like you could take on the world. It's going to be when you're the most defenceless, when you look like you couldn't fight off a bug."

"And /that/," she finished defiantly, fiercely, "is when you will prove that evil wizard wrong. You aren't to go looking for trouble--that's just stupid--but in this class we're going to bloody well make sure you're able to get out of it if it finds you."

The class was not entirely sure how to react to this pronouncement. There was scattered clapping, a little giggling from the back row of Slytherin girls, and Dean Thomas whistled loudly between his fingers. Professor Chant grinned a bit sheepishly.

"That will be all. Homework is to complete one small, simple spell without the use of your wand before class tomorrow, and be ready to talk about it. And quite possibly demonstrate it again," she added with a meaningful look at several of the boys, who quite suddenly started adjusting their plans for what spells they would attempt. "And would Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy kindly come have a word with me before leaving the room. Class dismissed."

Blinking in surprise, Harry gathered up his books, told Ron and Hermione he'd meet them out in the hall, and waited for the rest of the class to leave, all without looking at Malfoy, who was doing the same thing on the other side of the room. Finally, when only the two of them and Professor Chant were left in the room, they walked purposefully up to her desk, still studiously avoiding actually looking at each other.

"You wanted to see me, Professor?" Malfoy said stiffly, in a tone Harry recognised as the one normally reserved for Professor Snape.

"Both of you, really," said Chant dryly. "You volunteered for an extra project, if you haven't forgotten, and I'd like the two of you to meet me tonight. After supper, in my office."

Harry and Malfoy forgot about ignoring each other and exchanged a look of abject horror. "The two of us?" they began, almost simultaneously. "Together?"

The glare she fixed on them was cold, authoritarian, and just a little bit amused. "Yes," she repeated, "together. And yes, I'm aware you don't like each other. You're going to learn to work together anyway." The amusement grew and glinted and pulled the corners of her lips upward. "I expect you to be civil and helpful to each other for as long as we're working. After that, I don't care, and you can tell your friends any tale you please. Agreed?"

As pleasant as she sounded, they both had a feeling they were not actually being given a choice. They nodded, and said "Yes, Professor," and hurried out the classroom door. They'd gone back to not looking at each other. Outside, Ron and Hermione were waiting for Harry one side of the hall, and Crabbe and Goyle were waiting for Malfoy on the other. There was not so much as an exchange of unpleasantries when they split up and went their separate ways.

"What was that about?" Ron asked.

"Extra credit project," said Harry.

Ron looked disgusted. "With /Malfoy/?" Harry just nodded.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said, sympathetic. "What are you going to be doing?"

"I'm not sure," Harry answered, deciding it was finally safe to sneak a glance over his shoulder at the Slytherins' departing backs. They were apparently having a conversation very similar to this one. "We're supposed to meet up after supper and she'll tell us what to do from there."

"Still," said Ron, trying to be encouraging, "you get in extra hours with Chant. At night, no less, and you're practically going to be alone together."

Harry--who agreed that Chant was pretty, but thought having actual crushes on teachers was really a bit pointless--gave Ron a strange look. Hermione sighed, and swatted him with her notebook.

****

[to be continued in Extra Credit, part ii, in which Harry learns more about wandless magic. And Draco. And Professor Chant. And Hagrid. And there is consuming of tea and very bad cake.]