Stacking the Deck

Chapter 7

School started in its usual combination of chaos and structure. Half of her first two classes were late. Using Wronski's rule-of-thumb, she made a point of putting little stars next to the "richer than thou" students, most of whom were the late ones and most of those sauntered in with a bored air. Having the little illusions that she was a teacher and that she was free to teach and grade as she wanted ripped away made everything look different. Her second section of Ritual Magic was composed of the usual mixture of girls stealing glances at boys and boys trying to look tough. She looked at her syllabus and wondered whom she was fooling.

"You'll all find a list of topics I plan to cover over this year. Take a minute to read through them." Her voice sounded as tired as she felt. Aching for a cigarette, she waited as twenty-three students bowed their heads over the sheet of paper she'd handed to each as they'd entered her room. Watching as the enthusiasm drained out of each and every one of them, she had to admit those subtle signs of sagging shoulders and dull shock blanking their bright, privileged faces cheered her slightly. "As you can see from the syllabus, we have a lot of work ahead of us. I do not grade on a curve. I expect all of you to do the homework and keep up on the reading. Tests will be given after each section is completed." As with every other year, a collective moan issued from the assembly. "I also give surprise quizzes, so be prepared." A few of the younger faces actually paled. Better, she thought. "Are there any questions before I begin today's lecture?"

One, two, three…

A hand trembled its way above the sea of heads. "Stand, introduce yourself and ask your question." A cigarette and a cup of coffee would definitely help improve her mood.

"Ja, Frau Professor. My name is Ingrid Hjelm and I would like to know when we will address the topic of…" Ingrid turned bright red. Someone close to her giggled loudly. Someone else whispered encouragement. "Love rituals." With her face burning, Ingrid started to sit down and then stopped. The rest spilled out in a breathless rush. "I had thought that we would learn how to cast love spells and how to perform rituals to attract a lover or to help others. The woman in my village is growing old and there is a steady trade in such things. I would like to know how to do it and I think many others here would, too." Flustered, the girl curtseyed, stopped, bowed and then flumped down onto her seat, her white-blonde head disappearing behind others.

"Love spells." What had she expected? "No, I don't address love spells in any way, shape or form. This is a class in the Dark Arts. You did understand which area this class is in?"

Another hand waved in the air. Inwardly, she groaned and tried to keep the scowl off her face. Giving them a chance to ask questions was always a mistake. "Yes? Stand, introduce and ask." Less than a half-hour into her first class and she was already yearning for lunch. Not a good sign.

A tall boy rose from the corner that Jones had long ago dubbed "trouble central". It seemed to be where the Quidditch players and their hanger-ons all gravitated. "I am Heinrich Adler. You have, of course, heard of my family." Adler preened.

A headache began to announce its imminence at the base of Jones' neck. She quickly sneaked a peek at her roll sheet to make certain that she had placed a big star next to that particular name. There it was, nestled in a column of three others. It was going to be a long year.

"My family has long been well-versed in the Dark Arts. Surely, my uncle, Hilbert Adler, is a name well-known to you, Frau Professor?" Adler didn't wait for a reply. He smiled condescendingly at the other students, one hand placed on his chest as he turned from side to side to take in his audience. "There are many such spells that could be considered quite dark in matters such as love." Adler turned his attention towards the front of the room and shifted his stance, easily moving from orating senator to lecturer. "If you are not schooled in these sorts of spells, Frau Professor, I would be happy to allot some of my time discussing them. Many of them do require advanced skills, but I am quite certain that you could learn them."

"Thank you for your offer." Jones made certain to pause and look at her roll sheet as if searching for his name. "Heinrich. However, in this class, we have enough to cover without bringing something as trivial as playing with such simple emotions such as need and love into it." Wronski's warning that she was no politician whispered loudly in her memory only to be drowned out by a growing need to squash the pretentious little rich brat where he stood. "I'm not acquainted with your family, Heinrich. In this class, I expect you to succeed on your own. Your family is not being graded, only you." She squeezed out a smile consisting mostly of bared teeth. The headache decided that this was the perfect time to arrive in pounding waves of dull pain. A very, very long year indeed.

* * *

"The who?" Wronski asked at lunchtime.

"Adlers. Ever heard of them? I've got the newest scion of that supposedly noble branch in one of my classes. He's going to be a problem. I can hardly wait to see what else he has to say." Jones stabbed a wedge of cheese hard enough to pierce it through and scrape the plate beneath.

Haken glanced up from a sheaf of handwritten notes. "The Adlers have attended the Institute for several centuries. They are very wealthy and quite powerful in their homeland. Most of the family resides in Austria, but a branch also lives in southern Germany. Which member is enrolled in your class?"

"Some smart-ass named Heinrich." Her normal enthusiasm for eating dulled as she cut away part of the cheese, preparing to return most of it to the platter. "I take it they're part of the pureblood upper class and I'll just have to cope with it."

"Politics, Rose," Wronski muttered. "Just remember, if you don't pass them, you'll see them again next year or, worse yet, you'll have to put up with another scene like the one you just had. Ignore him. Don't give him a chance to say anything."

"That will be difficult. Each member of their vast family appears to believe it is their right to assist in guiding the professor through his class." Haken set his notes down and, folding his hands onto his lap, smiled his trademark grin. "I have been unfortunate enough to teach at least ten of that august line. Please recall that I see most of them at the ages of eleven and twelve, tender years when most children will not argue or press their families' position in class for any advantage. Each one with that surname has proven to be rather difficult. As a sixth or seventh year student, I can well imagine what a," he searched for the exact word he wanted, "challenge this will provide you throughout the school year. I will warn you now that any sort of academic censure does little. I myself have spoken with two of the Adler clan fathers as well as three of the mothers. Those conferences were not pleasant."

The information did not bring any joy to Jones. Haken was the easiest person in the department to get along with. If he had problems with the Adlers, then her year looked particularly bleak. "Did the Headmaster get involved?" Her voice squeaked on the last word.

There was a brief flicker in Haken's calm at an unpleasant memory. "Yes. But only once. I try to learn from experiences such as those."

"Yeah. Me, too." I just wish the lesson stuck. "Are you taking any of Lester's classes?" Hoping for something to distract her from the headache and probable misery of a year's worth of Heinrich Adler and his attitude, Jones wheezed the question out.

Haken's lip curled. "Perhaps. I have been examining his notes. I would disagree with many things there. His attention to procedure in many of these examples is lacking. My experience with cases of these sorts is quite different."

Jones jerked out of her deepening funk. "Experience? What sort of cases? What did he get wrong?" Her eyes brightened and, momentarily, the thudding headache skipped a beat. Haken's dead eyes met hers. In that brief instant, Jones felt the warmth drain out of her. There would be no more information. He had slipped, but only for a moment; she knew there would be no others. Deprived of its distraction, the aching pressure resumed at the base of her neck.

* * *

By Wednesday afternoon, Jones had begun to feel as though she had recaptured the rhythm of teaching. She had managed to wake up when the morning bells had tolled, drunk her coffee, dressed in what she thought of as her professional clothes and managed to get out of the Dark Arts building with her uniform coat and all of her various folders of notes and homework assignments. When she remembered all of the names of the students enrolled in her two sections of Ritual Magic and only mispronounced one name in her first Blood Rites course, she gave herself extra credit. The monthly care package from home had arrived and her cousin Jackie had included two packages of Oreos and all the different flavors of Moon Pies made. For being good, she deserved double the ration of cookies!

When the bells tolled three, heralding the end of her day, Jones closed the folder containing her lecture notes and only half noticed as her students trooped out the door. Done! The day was done - except for the endlessly annoying weekly staff meeting at four. It never started on time and she envisioned a lazy stroll as far as the bottom of the outside stone staircase where she planned to smoke two, maybe three cigarettes and gossip with Wronski. Things had worked better today than they had on Monday. The aggravating Heinrich Adler had spent the hour and a half of class time passing what looked like a magazine back and forth between his other aristocratic friends. Normally, that would have prompted her to confiscate the thing and harangue the class about proper behavior; however, taking Wronski's advice to heart, she tried hard to ignore Adler, the magazine and the coterie of rich brats in the corner.

Knowing that the hallway and stairs would be crowded with students, she took her time. The homework folders were starting to bulge with ungraded assignments. There was also an armload of scrolls. She hated getting homework on scrolls. They didn't fit in her satchel and they always tried to re-roll themselves while she read them. The students who stubbornly refused to use anything else always seemed to be the ones with a sort of fey look to her. She had come to associate the students who arrived bearing quills, pots of ink and enormous rolls of parchment as alien life forms or maybe their particular exalted line was descended from faeries or elves. They certainly didn't seem real to her. Those students' entire universe was contained in a succession of drafty castles and manor homes, isolated from technology and Muggle weirdness. Jones had spent more than one afternoon during her office hours trying to explain to a member of that elite order what some of the terms in her lecture meant. Trying to convey what a syringe was or any of the electrical items she glossed over during lecture was almost impossible. Even showing them photos from magazines didn't help.

Predictably, the scrolls didn't fit into her bulging satchel. Shifting them this way and that, the rolls of heavy parchment seemed destined to boil out of the cramped confines. Concentrating on stuffing them in endwise, she only vaguely recognized that someone was standing in her doorway. The someone shuffled into her room and politely coughed to get her attention. Jones continued to ignore whoever it was. If it were Paul, he'd wait. Anyone else, well, she wasn't interested. The scrolls still poked out no matter how she arranged them. It seemed a shame to crease them, too. The parchment was the real thing. It always seemed a waste to her that it was used for homework. She shifted a handful of folders to buttress the rolls and then pushed down to hold the entire thing in place. Ugly, but it would work. There had to be a better way to cope with the paperwork. Satisfied at last, she hefted her burden and turned to leave. The mysterious someone proved to be a wide-eyed student who kept glancing from her to the staircase that her classroom was wedged behind.

"Yes?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

"You are Professor Jones?" He looked uncertain. Eyes flickering over her, he nodded when he spotted her name and department designation on her coat. "I am to come and find you. We are awaiting you."

"Awaiting me?" Jones' brow furrowed as she tried to look beyond him into the hall. "Who's waiting for me?" Before he could respond, she grumbled, "Look, I need to have a cigarette. I haven't had a smoke since lunchtime. You know how long ago that was? Why don't you talk to me while we head outside?" At the base of the stairs, she turned to stare down the long, dark and very empty corridor where the Dark Arts classrooms were. A quick look up the stairs confirmed that there was no one there, either. "Are you alone?" For an awful moment, she wondered if the kid had been sent to fetch her to see yet another of the Headmaster's immense staff of aides. There was probably one waiting to escort her to yet another interview, this one no doubt concerning the rights and privileges of the Adler clan.

"Your class awaits, Frau Professor. Professor Heiniger sent me to remind you."

Class? Jones leaned against the banister. "I don't follow. What class? This is where I teach. My last class just ended."

"We have our first meeting today. Professor Heiniger feared that you would forget. We are all so looking forward to learning from a professional such as yourself."

Caught between confusion and pride, she stared at the earnest young man who kept glancing up the stairs and then back at the long dungeon hallway as if it were new to him. Odd that she didn't recognize him. If he was taking a class from her, it seemed as if she should have at least seen him before. While she tried to place him, she followed his gaze, taking in the long dark hallway, lit by gargoyles holding torches. She'd always liked the ambiance. A bit dark, but it set the mood for Dark Arts courses.

"Haven't seen you before," she mused aloud. "When was the last time you were down here?"

"Five years ago. I had forgotten what it looked like."

"Five, huh?" While he looked over his shoulder at the dark passage, she did the math. He looked to be seventeen, maybe eighteen. Subtract five and that meant he had only taken the first two mandatory years of Introduction to the Dark Arts and hadn't been back since. "Who'd you say sent you?"

"Professor Heiniger."

Heiniger. "It's Wednesday, isn't it?" Groaning, Jones craned her head back and mentally traced the long path up to the top floor. "Great. I'm late already."

"That is why I was sent. When you did not arrive at the bells, it was realized that the rest of your courses were down here, in the lowest depths of the dungeons. Professor Heiniger sent me to find you." Smiling now that he had made her understand, he swept his hand out as an invitation for her to take the lead. When she didn't immediately start to climb the first of the three sets of staircases to the main hall, he said, "I was honored to be accepted into this class. It filled quickly."

"Filled?" Jones closed her eyes, envisioning more homework to grade. "How many?"

"Oh, fully twenty of us. There are many more on a waiting list should they convince you to open another section."

"They're gonna have a long wait." Settling her satchel as comfortably as she could, she began the long trudge up the stairs.

The three floors up seemed to take forever and, once she reached the main level, the breeze from the open front doors stopped her in her tracks. She could smell the cigarette smoke wafting in with the breeze. A nicotine headache took its first dance step between her eyes. I can't do this. The smell almost made her drool. She was so late already, another five minutes wouldn't matter. She needed that cigarette.

"Frau Professor?"

"Wait here," she said and ran towards the doorway, stopping just outside. A staff member, clad in his uniform red jacket, wagged a finger at her when she lit the cigarette. He pointed down the stairs at a group of others indulging in the same vice. "Can't," she said, exhaling a long plume of smoke. "I'm already late for a class." It was the fastest cigarette she'd ever smoked and it hung over her in a dissipating cloud as she raced towards the long staircase up.

By the second set of stairs, she was wheezing and had to stop to catch her breath. Students heading towards their rooms flowed around her. As soon as she could breathe, she climbed upwards as fast as she could, only to have to stop again at the top landing, leaning over, hands on knees to support herself while she gasped loudly for breath.

Footsteps softly padded towards her. "Are you all right?" Professor Heiniger asked, sounding concerned as he helped her stand upright. "I had assumed that you would have forgotten. The students have been told to wait for you. This class can be rescheduled for a half an hour later, if need be."

Coughing, she shook her head and held up a hand to get him to wait. "Next time," she wheezed, "we have the students meet me in my classroom downstairs, ok?"

"All of the Defense Against the Dark Arts courses are held here, on this floor. Why should this one be any different?" Heiniger's face went hard. Whatever sympathy he had had for her disappeared at her suggestion.

"Look, my classroom is in the lowest of the dungeons. That's three floors down. This is three floors, no four floors, up. That's a lot of stairs! Send the kids down next time, ok? They're faster than I am." Summoning up a shred of spunk, she managed a wry grin.

Heiniger clasped his hands behind his back and rocked onto the balls of his feet while he listened and thought. "If the students come to you, then the course could start on time, no?"

"Well, it would start a lot earlier, that's for sure!" Jones set her satchel down and shook her hands to ease the cramping. "Plus, I'd be a lot happier about this."

"Hmmm," was the response as Heiniger turned. "Follow me."

The classroom was a lot different from her other room. For one thing, the floors were polished hardwood, not stone and there was a window overlooking the courtyard. Setting her far too heavy satchel down on a desk at the front of the room, Jones was drawn to the window. It was the first good look she'd had at the day in hours. The afternoon sun shone brightly onto a scene of endless green lawns peppered with bright red spots representing students. A glitter in the distance was the corner of the greenhouse complex.

"Wow," she whispered, "what a view!" Turning to her patient students, she threw open her arms. "You all waited for me on a day like this? How can you bear to be inside?" The students stared and then broke into nervous laughter as she walked back to the desk from the window.

Clearing her throat, she sorted through her satchel, plopping out the carefully arranged scrolls onto the desk. Next, came folder after folder of homework and class notes. The one for this course was by far the thinnest, holding only Lester's pristine notes and a few pages she had scribbled. She arranged the lot and scanned them as she tried to think how to begin. Almost immediately, she felt like a thief. Her notes were trivial, puffed up snippets of information culled to waste time, misdirect and quell the feelings of guilt and not a little fear she had about teaching the course's topic. It seemed like a cruel joke when she looked up at the earnest faces, faces of students eager to learn. They trusted her to teach them.

These students bore little resemblance to the ones she usually taught. Everyone in this course was prepared to take notes. The room was laced with a nervous energy. They were ready to hang on her every word. Bright, shining faces, all grave and eager, she could tell them anything and they would all dutifully write it down and commit it to memory. It was almost a drug.

"Sorry to be late," she said, stalling. Pens, pencils and quills poised, ready to take notes, her students waited. "Uh, since I've never taught in his area before, I need to know what your background is before I start." Nervously, she watched Heiniger hover at the doorway; he was clearly planning on monitoring her lecture. Time. She had to buy some time until she figured out what to make of this dilemma. These students were like those in her Special Projects course, only different. A lot different. Any of these bright, shining faces could become the next Auror to knock on her door to arrest her or present evidence against her in a tribunal. She needed time.

"Today, I would like each of you to introduce yourselves and let me know what your background is, how much you know about detection spells and what you expect to get out of this class." Hadn't the few courses she'd taken at the community college all started this way? Funny how she hadn't realized then that this was a way to actually avoid doing anything. Besides, they were legitimate questions since she didn't know what they had been taught thus far. When no one looked outraged or disappointed and, most importantly, Heiniger nodded in agreement, she relaxed.