Only Time

Chapter Five

Harry's mind wandered as he absently taught about Red Caps to the third year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. He knew enough about the subject to answer questions even when he wasn't thinking about it; Red Caps lived in battlefields, and he'd been in plenty of those. So he let his mind wander, and it wandered right to the topic of his parents.

James was different from what he'd expected. He remembered the scene he saw in Snape's Pensieve way back in fifth year, but so far he hadn't seen any evidence of James being cruel. He thought back to his last class with James, and how the young Marauder had respectfully waited for Lily, and couldn't reconcile the James he saw in the Pensieve with the James he saw here; the James he had seen imperiously demanding Lily to go out with him against the James who courteously waited for the young woman. Maybe it's being Head Boy this year, Harry mused. A little responsibility will cause anyone to grow up. Or maybe it was the Whomping Willow incident, which would have been a year or so ago. Saving your rival's life because your best friend was an idiot could have shocked anyone into growing up.

And then there was Lily. He didn't know as much about Lily as he would have liked to; so far he knew that Lily was quiet and studious, would defend even those she didn't like from unnecessary cruelty, and that she had a reaction similar to his own about the Killing Curse. Has she seen someone murdered? Her parents, maybe? She had to have lost her parents sometime before 1981, Harry thought, because Aunt Petunia never took Dudley or me to see our grandparents, and they never came to see us. So unless they hated us--which is unlikely considering Petunia herself said they were proud of Lily, so they would have wanted to see me at least--I would have know them.

Harry's musings on his parents were interrupted as the bell rang and the third years streamed out of the room. Next he had second year Gryffindors and Slytherins, a class which included young Bill Weasley, which gave Harry a shock when he saw the name on the register. Bill was continuously fascinated by all the curses Harry had shown the class, and several times already Harry had caught Bill looking ahead in the text book for more advanced curses and countercurses. Already Harry could see the adventurous Gringotts cursebreaker in the cheerful second year Gryffindor.

Another couple days passed and slowly Harry relaxed, finally getting used to being a teacher. He found he liked it more than he had ever thought he would, even in the two years or so he had been the leader of the D.A. The D.A. was only a group he used to teach people curses and ways to defend themselves from Death Eaters, but the Defense Against the Dark Arts class was so much more than that. Through essays and class participation, Harry was able to begin to get to know his students in a way he hadn't know many of his D.A. members. The euphoria he felt when he helped a student understand, to see all the information come together and just click, and know that it was he who helped that student understand...not even the relief of beating Voldemort could beat the feeling of accomplishment he got when he was teaching. But soon came the class he was dreading; the seventh years, who he would now be putting the Imperius curse on. He'd be doing the same to the sixth years, but he didn't know the sixth years the way he knew the seventh years. Or some of the seventh years, at least.

When the seventh years slowly filed into the room for the anticipated-yet-dreaded Imperius class, none of them talked, no one chatted idly about anything. When the bell rang and Harry stood up, every eye in the class swiveled towards him. He walked around to the front of his desk and surveyed the class grimly.

"I wish I didn't have to do this, you know," Harry said quietly. "But chances are you'll come face to face with this curse if you join the war once you graduate, and it is my job to teach you to defend against it. In order to defend against it, you must have it cast on you--very few people are able to cast it off, or even fight it, on their first try. But if you can cast it off, you won't have to worry about someone using you to kill or torture your friends or family. People have come out from under this curse to find they'd done exactly that. And as I'm sure none of you want that to happen...could all of you please stand up and move to the front of the room?"

Eyeing each other nervously, all the students did as Harry asked. With one sweep of his wand, Harry pushed all the desks towards the walls, leaving a large space clear in the center of the room.

"I will call you up in alphabetical order, but don't worry, I won't make you do anything unduly embarrassing," Harry said, attempting a small joke, but no one even cracked a smile. Harry went straight to business. "Mr. Black!"

Sirius walked to the center of the space, and turned around, facing Harry. His eyes, bright blue and piercing, were focused on Harry, and Harry could see no trace of fear in them, only trust and determination. Harry took a deep breath, pointed his wand at Sirius, and said, "Imperio."

A relaxed expression came over Sirius's face, and Harry ordered him to skip around the room, clapping his hands. Sirius's hands came up, and his legs started twitching with the effort of not following the order. Harry simply raised an eyebrow and exerted his will harder, slowly growing suspicious of something. Eventually, Sirius started skipping around the room, clapping his hands every few skips. The class just watched him, not even Severus Snape offering any derisive comments. Finally Harry took the curse off, and Sirius came to a stop, right in front of Harry's desk. He looked up and met Harry's eyes for a brief second before lowering his head a bit and moving back to join his classmates.

Harry called up the rest of the class, finally ending with Amelia Weathers, a tall, brown-haired Slytherin girl. He'd made Snape stand up on a desk singing Beatles songs, causing some of the Gryffindors to smirk, but none said anything. Peter Pettigrew he had pretend to be a bird, so he'd been walking around the center of the room, flapping his arms and cawing. Lily transfigured her shoes to tap shoes and tap danced on the desks. James jogged in place and did several stretches. So far the only person other than Sirius who had even begun to fight the curse had been Remus, and he'd just hesitated for several seconds before finally doing as the curse ordered and jumped on and off several chairs. With another sweep of his wand, Harry returned the desks to the center of the room, and the students sat down.

"Fighting the Imperius is hard," Harry said, perching on the end of his desk as the students watched him. "Mr. Potter, what did you feel while under the curse?"

James shifted nervously. "I...it was...it felt...odd. Happy, I suppose. Or maybe carefree is a better word. Like I had no problems, nothing to worry about, as long as I did what I was told." He flushed as several of his classmates looked at him.

"Good way of putting it, Mr. Potter. 'Nothing to worry about, as long as you do what you're told.' Mr. Black, I noticed you were fighting the curse a bit. What did that feel like?" Harry asked, and the class's attention switched from James to Sirius.

Sirius frowned. "It was like there were two voices inside my head, one telling me to do something, and the other telling me it was a stupid thing to do. They just argued with each other for a bit so I didn't do anything, but then the one telling me to do something got stronger and I just did it."

Harry nodded. "Two conflicting voices, one telling you to do something and one telling you not to. The first is the curse, and the second is your will. To truly defeat this curse, you must develop your will until it is stronger than the caster's. That's why this curse is so hard to defeat. Many people have strong wills, and Voldemort..." Harry shook his head slightly as everybody winced. "...Voldemort is strong. I hope that none of you ever have the misfortune of having him cast the Imperius on you."

"You sound like you speak from experience," Snape commented archly, and everyone looked at Snape, then back at Harry to see his reaction.

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Do I?" he asked, smiling slightly.

"You do," Snape said stubbornly, sitting back in his chair and folding his arms over his chest.

But Harry only continued smiling slightly. "Interesting," he replied. He then turned to the rest of the class. "Where was I? Ah yes. Fighting the Imperius curse is a battle of wills. Yours only needs to be stronger than the caster's for the second it takes to break the spell." Snape looked furious at Harry's neat sidestepping of his observation, but Harry completely ignored him.

"How do you develop your will?" Sirius asked eagerly.

Harry shrugged. "It's different for everyone, really. Some people never are able to resist the Imperius curse, and others already have strong enough wills that they can fight it almost as soon as it's cast on them. When my teacher first cast it on me, he told me to jump onto the desk. I both jumped and tried to keep myself from jumping, so I crashed headlong into the desk, and I woke up from the Imperius curse to a headache. He then insisted on casting the curse on me until I could throw it off entirely."

The class stared. After now having first-hand experience of how hard it was to fight the curse, they knew how impressive it was to be able to fight it successfully, especially on the first several tries. When the bell signaling the end of class rang, all the students jumped. They gathered their stuff and made their way out of the classroom, Marauders at the end.

"Mr. Black, could you stay behind a moment, please?" Harry called just as Sirius was about to walk out the door. He said something to his friends, who nodded and walked on. Sirius walked back into the room and put his stuff down, sitting on top of one of the desks.

"Yes, Professor?" Sirius said politely.

"Mr. Black, you're free to refrain from answering this, of course, but during your demonstration, I'd noticed something," Harry began as he sat down behind his desk, absently rubbing his scar. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Sirius stiffen. Harry continued, watching Sirius carefully. "It seemed almost as if...this was not the first time you've encountered this curse."

Sirius sat still, eyes wide, breathing a little heavily. Harry stood up, concerned. "You don't have to say anything--" Harry began, but Sirius interrupted him with a shake of his head.

"No, I--I trust you, Professor. I'm not entirely sure why, as I barely know you, but I trust you," Sirius offered Harry a quick smile, who returned it as he returned to his seat. "I'll tell you."

"What do you know of the Black family?" the question was so unexpected that Harry blinked. He wasn't sure of what to say, so he just started with what he generally knew from what Sirius had told him the summer before his fifth year.

"Ah...they're very into the whole pureblood issue. They don't like the Muggle-born or the people like werewolves or vampires. They're an old rich family and generally very proud of it," Harry said carefully. He knew that Sirius hated his family, but he didn't know how much of what the Blacks did was known to the public.

"That's not the least they are," Sirius said darkly, then sighed and ran his hand through his shoulder-length black hair. "Anyway, my family's Dark. They actually agree with all the stuff that You-Know-Who--"

"Voldemort, Sirius," Harry interrupted, and Sirius winced. "Call him Voldemort. Remember what I said last class?"

" 'Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.' I'll try to keep that in mind, Professor," Sirius said, then continued. "They agree with the stuff that...Voldemort is doing. And they think I should agree with it too."

"And you don't," Harry said with confidence. Sirius sighed again and nodded.

"I don't," he agreed. "But my parents, my mother especially, didn't like that. I remember how she sent me a Howler when I was Sorted into Gryffindor instead of Slytherin. I stayed at Hogwarts that Christmas, and when summer came she had to drag me back to that place. Darling brother Regulus was always her little angel because he's a nasty Slytherin purist just like the rest of them, and I was always her disappointment because I don't think all Muggle-borns and werewolves should be killed!"

Sirius was breathing hard as the words just kept pouring out of him. Harry listened to his babbling with growing sympathy. He knew Sirius's family life had been bad, but Harry's only contact with his godfather's mother had been her portrait, though that was bad enough.

"Mother always pretty much hated me," Sirius continued after taking several deep breaths to calm himself down. "She'd tell me to do something, and I, of course, wouldn't do it. She'd usually just settle for locking me in the cellar with the spiders for a day or so as punishment" Harry winced as he remembered his cupboard--though a cellar would be larger than a cupboard, and he didn't live in it, so Sirius had the advantage there "but last summer she apparently just got tired of me ignoring her orders. So, in an effort to teach me to 'do something useful', she cast the Imperius curse on me."

"Your own mother cast the Imperius on you?" Harry asked, feeling a bit sick. I knew she was bad, but casting the Imperius curse on her son...that's just horrible.

Sirius nodded, his face rather pale, his hands clenching each other tightly. "She cast the Imperius on me--then she took me Muggle-baiting. She'd have me do horrible things that I'd rather not talk about or I'll be sick, to the Muggles, and after weeks of being under the curse, I finally just--snapped, I suppose, one night. It felt like I woke up, all of a sudden, only I'd remembered everything she made me do...and I just couldn't stay there anymore. I had to get out, so I packed everything I had into my school trunk, shrunk it--my parents fixed it so the Ministry couldn't tell when someone was doing underage magic there--got on my broom, and flew to James's house. I told his family what happened, and I've been staying with them ever since."

"So you just sort of woke up, huh..." Harry mused, then sighed. "Well, that's better than many other wizards. Some of those currently in Voldemort's employ are under the Imperius curse, and have been for months, even years."

"But I don't want to take months or weeks or whatever to be able to break the curse!" Sirius exclaimed, jumping up and pacing around in front of Harry's desk. "I want to be able to break the curse before I'm made to do anything horrible."

"You could have private lessons with me," Harry offered, and Sirius abruptly turned to face him, hope warring with fear on his face.

"You...really? You can make sure that I'll be able to break the curse?" Sirius asked slowly, as if making sure that that was what Harry was really saying.

Harry nodded, but just as Sirius broke into a wide grin, warned, "This will be dependant on you, of course. You're going to be the one working on breaking the curse. I'm just going to be the one providing the opportunity. It will be hard work."

"It'll be worth it!" Sirius replied fiercely. "I'm never going to fall victim to that curse again! Thank you, Professor!" With that, he grabbed his stuff and ran out of the classroom, undoubtedly to tell the Marauders.

"You're welcome, Sirius," Harry said quietly, long after the door had banged shut in the wake of Sirius's enthusiastic departure. "I'm just glad to be able to help."