Secrets

Chapter 3 - Professor Bale

The first class of the semester for the sixth-year Ravenclaws was History of Magic. It was an interesting topic, but Binns the ghost was the single most boring teacher in the history of Hogwarts. After yawning their way through class, the students gathered up their books and headed to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

"Gosh, I hope Professor Bale is a good teacher," Padma commented as they walked to class.

"What kind of odd quirk do you think he'll have?" asked Terry. "The freaky glass-eye's been done, as has the werewolf..."

"I bet he's a troll," Noel guessed. "We haven't had one of those yet."

"What about a merman?" asked Lisa.

"Not unless he teaches us from a fishbowl," Kyra replied. "They can't breathe air for more than a few minutes at a time."

"Oh, right. Forgot about that," Lisa returned.

"With what we've seen though, I wouldn't rule it out," Terry commented wryly. "I just hope he doesn't work for the Ministry of Magic."

Their vocal guesswork ended as they entered the classroom and took their seats. Lisa sat beside Kyra in the second row, which had become their usual places. Padma sat to Kyra's right. The boys sat in front of them. This year it appeared that the Ravenclaws would be taking Defense Against the Dark Arts with Gryffindor, as they watched Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and their friends file in and sit on the opposite side of the room. Padma waved at her twin sister Parvati as she came in.

Towards the front of the room a young man was pulling books out of a trunk and placing them on a bookshelf behind the desk. The students whispered amongst themselves, peering around and looking for Professor Bale. Once or twice the man in the front of the room turned enough for the students to catch a glimpse of him.

"Ooh," Lisa cooed when she first caught sight of his face. "He's cute!"

"But who is he?" Padma asked. "I don't recognize him."

"I don't know who he is either," Kyra commented, "but he looks like someone I know."

"Who?" questioned Lisa curiously.

"I don't know," Kyra shook her head. "He just looks familiar, somehow."

The Gryffindor students appeared to be wondering the same things, as they looked around and whispered back and forth. Finally, when all the students had arrived, which happened to coincide with the placement of the last book on the bookshelf, the young man stood up turned around.

"Good morning, everyone," he greeted them, smiling. He appeared to be in his early twenties, was about six feet tall, and had short cropped brown hair, blue eyes, and a very smooth, deep voice. Lisa almost swooned when he spoke. He was wearing a deep blue robe that brought out his eyes. Lisa was convinced that he was the most gorgeous male she'd ever laid eyes on.

"My name is Justin Bale," he continued warmly, walking around to stand in front of the desk at the front of the room, "but you can call me Professor Bale."

Half of the students in the classroom gasped audibly. The other half just stared at him wide-eyed. Kyra heard Ron Weasley mutter, "I told you." He was promptly shushed by Hermione.

Professor Bale smiled. "Seeing as how you are all bright individuals, I'm sure that by now you've noticed that I am quite a few years younger than the rest of the Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers you've had. I also believe that in keeping with the tradition set for your class, I am the sixth such teacher that you've had.

"Professor Dumbledore, however, seems to be convinced that I am qualified to teach you. In fact," he added, "he almost has me convinced."

The students that had managed to pick their jaws up off the desktops and push their eyes back into their heads laughed. Kyra and Padma were among those students; Lisa just sighed.

Professor Bale continued. "Now, I'm afraid I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I am employed by the Ministry of Magic." Everyone groaned. "The good news," he paused and looked around the room, "is that I do not have a glass-eye that can see through my head, I am not a werewolf, and I am not holding your real teacher hostage in a trunk in my office." This time everyone laughed.

"I see you all brought your books with you," he commented, leaning back against the desk behind him. "I apologize for making you carry all of them with you today. In the future you will not need to carry more than one book at a time." Everyone looked down at the stack of three books they'd brought with them and murmured gratefully. "We'll begin with Self-Defensive Spellwork, and will be using only that one for the next couple of months. You can leave A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter Measures and The Dark Arts Outsmarted in your dormitories for now."

"You won't need any of them today, however," he continued. Turning, he picked up a stack of parchment that had been lying on the desk behind him. "Because you have had such a hodge-podge of instructors over the last five years, and some of you have taken it upon yourselves to teach yourselves about the Dark Arts," (the members of Dumbledore's Army cast nervous glances at each other) "I want to give you all sort of a, well, we'll call it a questionnaire, because if I call it a pre-course examination, you're all going to hate me," he grinned at them. "Before we begin though, are there any questions?"

Neville Longbottom raised his hand.

"Yes?" asked Professor Bale. "Oh, and please tell me your names before you speak to me, so I can try and learn them," he requested.

"Neville Longbottom, Sir," Neville replied. "I was just wondering what you do for the Ministry of Magic."

"I'm an Auror," the Professor replied. A chorus of "Ooohs" swept the room.

"So did you work with Mad-Eye, um, I mean Professor Moody?" Ron Weasley interjected.

"Ronald Weasley?" Professor Bale guessed.

"Ron, Sir," Ron replied meekly.

"Right. No, actually, I never worked with him. He retired before I became an Auror."

Lisa raised her hand, and Professor Bale called on her. "Lisa Turpin," she informed him, smiling one of her most charming smiles. "Will you be working with sixth-years on their Magical Arts Projects?"

"Yes, Miss Turpin, I will be available as a M.A.P. mentor," he replied, and her smile broadened. Kyra could just see the wheels spinning in her friend's head, and she tried not to roll her eyes.

"Are there any more questions for me?" he looked around, and no one else raised their hand. "No? Well then, let's get started." He picked up his wand and flicked his wrist, and the stack of papers flew out of his hand and began distributing itself to the students. "I want you all to be completely honest with me on this survey," he told them. "It is extremely important that you all learn as much as you can about defending yourselves against the Dark Arts, and it is my duty to see that it happens. If you don't know anything about a certain topic, please tell me that. Lucky guesses won't help here, because I won't know that it was a lucky guess, and chances are pretty good that a guess in a life or death situation will probably not be all that lucky. On the other hand, I do not want to waste time teaching you about something you can all do in your sleep."

The survey was quite extensive, and the students took the entire rest of the class period to finish filling it out. Kyra noticed that she and Padma filled in quite a bit more of it than Lisa did, and hoped that Lisa didn't notice as well. Ravenclaws all had a very competitive streak, and Kyra didn't want Lisa to realize that she was way behind a few of them in knowledge of the subject.

Lisa had a hard time concentrating on the topics queried, as her thoughts kept drifting to her handsome professor. Why had Professor Dumbledore chosen him, of all people? He was going to seriously interfere with her studies this year, she was sure of it. What was a pogrebin again? She was certain she'd read about it somewhere, but was drawing a blank. Well, Professor Bale did say to be honest. Next was a boggart. That she was well acquainted with, and scribbled furiously all she knew about them.

She finally finished up her questionnaire just as class time was ending, and got up to hand her parchment to Professor Bale. To her utter embarrassment, however, her elbow ran into her textbooks as she stood up and all of them clattered to the floor. Red-faced, she bent down to pick them up. As she stood up to place them back on the desk, she found the professor standing right in front of her.

She blushed even more furiously as he held out his hand towards her. "I can take that from you, Miss Turpin," he said, smiling at her and taking her parchment as she sheepishly handed it over.

'Way to go, Turpin,' she thought as she gathered up her books and prepared to dash out of the classroom. Professor Bale was collecting the surveys from the other students, and Kyra managed to catch Lisa by the arm before her friend could flee.

"Hey, girl, where are you off to in such a hurry?" she teased her friend. "At least he knows your name."

Padma giggled, and Lisa shushed her. Her skin was still a nice shade of pink, and she wasn't sure it would ever return to its normal color.

"I can't quite put my finger on it," Terry commented as they exited the classroom, "but that bloke looks so familiar to me."

"Really?" Noel asked. "I've never seen him before."

"I thought he looked familiar too," Kyra agreed, "but I can't place him either. I think he reminds me of someone."

"Maybe that's it," Terry returned. "Oh well, I'm sure we'll figure it out soon enough. I think he's cool though. If he's as qualified as Dumbledore thinks he is, we might actually learn something this year!"

"He's definitely better looking than our previous professors," Padma commented, giggling.

"Oh, great," Anthony Goldstein groaned, "it looks like all the girls have crushes on the new teacher."

"Hey, that's not true," Kyra protested as Lisa smacked him. "But he is pretty cute," she admitted, grinning.

The boys rolled their eyes at the giggling girls and led the way into the Great Hall. They ran into Roger Davies on the way to the Ravenclaw table.

"Hey, did you guys just come from Defense Against the Dark Arts?" he asked, spotting the books they were carrying.

"Yeah, why?" asked Terry.

"That's so cool that Justin Bale is our new professor!" he exclaimed, obviously excited. "Is he a good teacher?"

Kyra eyed her Quidditch Captain curiously. "You sound like you know him personally, Roger."

Roger looked back at her, and then looked at the rest of the group with a dumbfounded expression on his face. "Of course I know him, and the rest of you should too. He's only in five of the photographs in the locker room," he told them.

"Oh my gosh," Kyra slumped onto the nearest bench and smacked her palm to her forehead as realization struck her. "I am such an idiot!" She looked up at her housemates. Terry was the only other one who showed a glimmer of understanding. "Justin Bale was a Ravenclaw Chaser! He graduated..." she ticked off the years on her fingers as she counted, "five years ago?" She looked to Roger and Terry for confirmation, who nodded. "I took his place on the team!" she finished in exasperation.

"I knew he looked familiar," Terry added. "I only look at those photos before every match, and he's always there smiling right back at me. God, we're dense," he muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Yeah, well, some of us have an excuse," Padma spoke up. "Not all of us have been in your locker room."

"Still," Roger pointed out, "You all shared a common room with him for a year before he graduated."

"I remember him now," Anthony commented.

"Yeah, I do too," agreed Noel. "And to answer your question, Roger, I think he is going to at least be a pretty decent teacher."

"He's an Auror," Kyra spoke up, "so he at least knows more than Harry Potter does."

"Although I'm not sure how much experience he can have," Anthony said. "I mean, don't Aurors have to go through several years of additional training once they leave Hogwarts? That means he can't have much field experience."

"Well, that may not be such a bad thing," Padma commented. "I mean, if he's only just out of Auror training his lessons should be pretty fresh in his mind. I would think that would be pretty helpful, wouldn't you?" she asked the group.

"Well, I've decided that I'm definitely going to do my M.A.P. with him," Lisa said. "What?" she asked in exasperation as Terry rolled his eyes at her. "I didn't learn a darn thing from that horrible witch last year, and I've always thought it would be cool to be an Auror."

Kyra couldn't resist taking a shot at her friend. "Lisa, you've only thought being an Auror was cool for about the last hour."

Everyone laughed, and Lisa pouted. "Fine," she retorted, "be that way. I'm going to go get lunch. I'm hungry." She whirled around and walked down to their normal spot at the table and plopped her books down. Everyone laughed once more at her expense, and then followed suit.

Kyra had to admit that her friend had a point. Being an Auror would be pretty cool, but had to be the most dangerous job out there. She continued to ponder the idea throughout lunch. She finally apologized to Lisa, who promptly forgave her and spent the rest of the afternoon convincing Kyra why she should study with Professor Bale as well. Kyra tried to resist, because she wanted to be able to decide for herself, but most of Lisa's points were extremely valid, and she had said last night that she wanted to study either Charms or Defense Against the Dark Arts. Professor Bale did seem very cool, and he was a Ravenclaw, and a Chaser no less, which made him both cool and intelligent.

The only flaw Kyra found in Lisa’s theory was that she was pretty sure Aurors needed to be really good at Potions, and Lisa wasn’t. She had all of the book learning down, but when it came to mixing potions, Lisa couldn’t do it to save her life. She had managed to get an Exceeds Expectations on her Potions O.W.L., but only because Professor Snape hadn't been present at the examination, staring down that long crooked nose of his and daring them to make a mistake. Despite the passing O.W.L, Lisa had decided to drop Potions from her schedule this year. Kyra had tried to convince her to stick with it, because as Lisa had said about Defense Against the Dark Arts, she needed the practice. Lisa argued that she enjoyed her other classes too much to drop any of them, and she had withstood as much of Snape's torture as was humanly possible.

Kyra had Potions class just after lunch. Noel had also dropped the course, so Kyra and Terry sat next to each other. Today Snape chose to pick on poor Susan Bones of Hufflepuff, who turned her burn-healing paste into a burn-causing paste. He’d ordered her to slather it onto her arm to test it, and she cried for ten minutes while her friend Hannah Abbot rubbed her own correctly brewed paste onto the fresh burns.

Arithmancy was the girls’ final class of the day, after which they dropped their books off in Ravenclaw Tower and met their friends for dinner. Dinner conversation naturally revolved around the new professor. Roger Davies was giving everyone the third degree, because the seventh-years didn’t have Defense Against the Dark Arts until Tuesday. Lisa finally told him to give it up, because he talked about Justin Bale so much that even she tired of listening to the subject after a while. Kyra suspected the real reason was that she tired of hearing Roger after a while.

----------

That evening, all of the desks in the Ravenclaw Tower study room were full. As usual, Professor Snape had given all of his students homework on the first night. Kyra pulled out a piece of parchment and opened Magical Drafts and Potions and set to work on an essay on the properties, preparation, and use of Exploding Fluid. Terry and her other classmates surrounded her. Lisa worked on her assignment for Arithmancy, silently gloating about not having to do the Potions homework.

Professor Flitwick had also given homework and there were a number of students attempting a variety of different charms. Third-years were all blowing bubbles out of their wands and fifth-years were having fun practicing Drought Charms on glasses of water and other such liquid that could be found in various glasses around the room. The house cats were having a ball pouncing on bubbles, much to the annoyance of a few students.

After she finished her Arithmancy homework, Lisa grabbed her copy of Self-Defensive Spellwork and curled up on the couch in the common room to read the first chapter. It hadn’t been assigned, but the Ravenclaw students thrived on knowledge and she was eager to see what they’d be learning from Professor Bale this year. Kyra, Padma and Terry joined her after they finished their essays and Arithmancy homework. Anthony and Noel had gone off with Roger and several other students to practice for the Quidditch tryouts, which would occur in another two weeks.

Eventually everyone grew tired of studying and the common room filled with the murmur of conversation, punctuated here and there by groans and laughter. The Quidditch hopefuls returned after a while, some of them looking much worse for the wear. Noel was covered in mud, a third-year named Lucy Pebble sported a black eye, and Joseph Lange, a fourth-year, was cradling his right wrist.

Noel caught Kyra's gaze and smiled ruefully. "Hey, if you think I look bad, wait until you see Roger," he commented. "At least I'll look normal after a shower," he grinned.

"What happened to Roger?" Kyra asked, curious. A second-year girl standing behind Anthony blushed furiously.

"Took a Bludger to the face," Anthony replied. "It was pretty nasty, but Madame Pomphrey says he'll be alright. Assuming he can see around his nose, that is," he added, chuckling.

Lisa laughed, finding a great deal of amusement in Roger's predicament. She grinned at the embarrassed second-year, whose name was Sarah Kingston. "Don't worry about it - Roger won't hold it against you. He'll just blame me for letting my klutziness rub off on him," she laughed again. Knowing Roger, he'd probably been too busy giving advice to pay attention to the Bludgers zipping back and forth across the Quidditch pitch.

The students eventually called it a night, drifting off in pairs and small groups to head upstairs to their dormitories. Lisa dreamed she was rescued from Potions detention by Professor Bale, who swooped into the dungeon on a flying carpet and flew her off into the moonlight. Kyra dreamed that Professor Bale joined their Quidditch team as honorary captain while Roger was in the hospital wing with a nose the size of a pumpkin. Cho caught the Golden Snitch on her new Firebolt so quickly that Harry Potter didn't even realize she had it until Lee Jordan announced that Ravenclaw had beaten Gryffindor and won the Quidditch Cup!

~*~