All Hail the Dark Lord, Or Something Idiotic Like That

Tea With a Professor

A/N: Not my story! Original available on ao3

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"This is why experimental spells are experimental!"

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"Hermione, give me some parchment," Harry put Sephie on the table and held out a hand to his friend.

"What makes you think I just carry around parchment on me," she rolled her eyes and scooped up the pink clad cat who was wondering around the plates looking for something to knock off the table.

"My nerds have failed me," he sighed and pulled out his new wand to conjure some parchment and a quill, not having tried his old wand yet and not trusting it in a pinch.

Ron was looking at Flitwick with a frown of concern. "Harry, mate, I'd classify you are a nerd at this point, so you might want to start putting that brain to use to come up with some way out of this. Flitwick looks like he's just trying to figure out the best way to attack to limit collateral damage."

"What's going on?" Neville leaned around Ron to ask as Harry frantically scribbled a note on the paper.

With a quick wordless and wandless spell, the parchment folded itself into an origami bird and fluttered lowly towards the head table just as McGonagall led the new first years into the hall and towards where the sorting hat was sitting. "Nothing, Nev," Harry told him with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "I forgot that I needed to tell Professor Flitwick something about my schedule this term. I had asked for some extra tutoring in Charms later on in last year."

Neville nodded but still shot a look up to where the half-goblin professor grabbed the note from the air with a hard look on his face. "I don't know...he looks a bit upset. Maybe he lost his last tournament," Neville remarked just before the sorting hat began its song for the new year.

Harry kept an eye on the man who read the note and didn't look any less suspicious at all. He did look slightly less murderous though, which Harry would count as a win currently. Flitwick returned his look and slowly, and very deliberately, pulled his wand from his sleeve and sat it on the table beside him. Yeah...that clearly wasn't a threat...

With a flick of his wrist, Flitwick disintegrated the note in his hand and banished the ashes beside his plate. "I'm not so sure that helped, whatever you wrote," Hermione whispered from where she was scratching Sephie behind the ears.

"I just said that I'd meet him in his office after the feast and explain everything," Harry sighed and reached out for the cat. He needed his emotional support inferius since he just caught sight of Colin Creevey out of the corner of his eye down the table, and he was decidedly repressing the emotions that brought up in him.

Hermione passed the cat back and looked up at the head table with another huff. "If he gets on board with your ridiculous plan, maybe he would give us some extra tutoring in DADA. It looks like another year of sub-par teaching. At least this professor won't try to kill you."

"I wouldn't put it past Percy," Ron added on with a glare towards his brother who was clearly trying to not look at the Gryffindor table. "He's been a right arse since...well, forever, but even more since what happened at the end of last term."

Harry opened his mouth but closed it again. He wanted to defend Percy who really had been going through a lot when he was actually nineteen, and who had grown up quite competent, capable, and just wonderful in Harry's opinion. He definitely didn't want to spoil the surprise they were going to get later on though.

"Er...maybe we give him the space of a lesson or two. He might have come around," he lamely attempted instead. Hermione and Ron just both looked at him like when he'd said Kreacher was a friend again though.

The rest of the welcoming feast was uneventful if you discounted the death glare Harry got from Flitwick the entire time. There were no interruptions from Umbridge, Hagrid was still missing like he had been the first time, and Snape still glared in Harry's direction occasionally. As traumatic as it was, Harry felt like he was home again, and it felt like he could finally work past some of what had been weighing him down over the years as well. He just had to survive their dueling-champion, Charms professor first.

Flitwick leaned over and said something to Percy, getting a frown and a nod in response before they left the hall together. Harry sighed, at having to go deal with this issue on top of the stressors of the day. At least he got to do it with his partner, and at least he still had a bottle of whiskey waiting for him in a very secret compartment he'd spelled into his trunk to evade the Hogwarts security check.

"Hermione, please take Sephie and get her settled in the dorm," Harry passed the cat over to Hermione. "Don't let her get too near Crookshanks though, they still don't like each other."

"You did check that she isn't an animagus, right?" Ron frowned at the cat in suspicion once more. "We did learn our lesson third year."

"Yes, Ron," Harry rolled his eyes and gave the inferius a parting scratch behind her ears.

"You sure you don't want us to come too?" Hermione checked, even though neither of them seemed to actually want to deal with this.

Harry shrugged. "I know our standard go-to is to not trust the adults to handle anything, but I guess I'm the adult now, weirdly enough. Let me handle this and you all just get settled, and maybe hex Seamus for me if you get a chance, Ron."

Ron frowned and paused as they had turned to leave. "Er...why hex Seamus? What did he do? I thought we liked him."

"He's going to be a prat this year," Harry smirked at his friend. "I'm just getting a head start on not dealing with his crap. Plus, it's less icky if another fifteen-year-old hexes him instead of me."

Hermione poked him in the chest. "No taking out future actions on people before they did them. That's not fair, and if you're changing things anyway, then they may never do whatever it is they did."

Harry rolled his eyes but didn't disagree with her. "Seamus is just a nuisance and a child, so I'm not going to do anything major to him besides make it known that I disapprove of him hating me. He got over it by the end of this year anyway. If I were going to go after someone for future actions, it would be Justin Finch-Fletchley, and if you noticed, I haven't even looked his direction. See...I'm being good."

"The Hufflepuff prat?" Ron frowned, craning his neck to find the boy. "What did he do?"

"I'm being good...!" Harry called with a smirk and a wave as he strode away towards where he thought Flitwick's office might be. He'd never actually had detention with the man, and it had been years since he was in the school, so it was an educated guess as to where he was even going.