The Marauders of Slytherin

What is and what should never be

Defence against the dark arts – Fight

I absolutely loathed the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. No one could be better than Rakepick of course, she was a phenomenon to be sure. She always had amazing stories about her career as a Curse Breaker and her adventures in all parts of the world. Perhaps she found teaching a little too boring and had thence left. I didn't really know why she had to leave, but her replacement was certainly worse than I had expected. Our new professor: Quirrell, was anxious and timid, appearing like some kind of rodent, which soon landed him the suitable nickname 'Squirrel'. During his first lesson, on Monday, he had been bleating about protection circles and shields, but I questioned if he was strong enough to conjure one himself. Now, we had only just sat down in his second class, and I was already bored, which made me resort to talking to Theodore. Something that would never happen if I had other things to do with my time. Last year, I hadn't been in class with him or Mattheo, but since their frequent misbehaviour, the staff had thought it right to put me with Theodore in the new class division. Mattheo had however also joined, because usually they only looked at one schedule and not at their own. Quirrell was too afraid to send Mattheo to his own class but had wisely managed to separate them. I was sat beside Theodore and desperately searched for different company around me, but this seemed to be in vain. Aside from a pitiful glance from Heidi and Rosalia, who had offered to sit beside me at first.

So, I had consorted to speaking to Theodore of his strange collection of books about Dark Creatures Quirrell kept asking us if we could please be quiet, but he was too scared to actually throw us out. He did act severely strange and paranoid the whole time.

"I heard he used to teach Muggle Studies before, what a tragedy."

"Really? Seems a bit low in comparison with his new job."

"Yeah, and to consider that Snape has tried to apply for this job for years. He would be way more competent. After all, he could actually teach us about –"

I kicked him under the table. No strategic move to praise our Head of House for his knowledge on Dark Arts in the middle of a classroom full of mud- and half-bloods.

"At least the mudbloods aren't learning much on how to defend themselves against us this year."

I looked around the classroom, noticing the seven half-bloods sitting beside purebloods, that didn't seem to sense any difference between each other. There were only three mudbloods in our year: Katie Bell, Julia Roberts and Tarek Shafiq. Still, they were all quite popular amongst the students. They didn't appear to want to defend themselves against anything, or anyone. I wondered why this class was really given at Hogwarts. It was after all 'Defence Against', and not: 'An Attack On', making it sound so polite and honourable. Probably a way of making us – followers – feel small. As if we were the ones that kids needed to protect themselves against, when in truth it was the aurors that snatched away my family one by one and made us feel unsafe. This class was a political signal toward the Magical United Kingdom that Hogwarts wasn't neutral in this old fight. I did still like Defence Against the Dark Arts, because it was real magic. Magic that had a purpose other than the evolution of wizardry mapping in Geography of Magic (I almost regretted choosing Geography, until Theodore mentioned that in History they learned about the founding of Hogwarts). I wondered why Mattheo had been sent to this school, when it was so obvious that this was a school that taught bullshit about how Dark Magic and the families practising it, were bad. As I looked in his direction, our eyes met. I looked away, as it had been a coincidence, but when I felt his stare on me, I looked again.

And then, I felt something. It was snatched away as swiftly as it came, but I had felt it. Just as my mind crossed Mattheo, I felt him cross... me. It was a prickling sensation, like a spark of electricity that just went from ear to ear inside my head, in a high-pitched almost inaudible sound. I turned at Mattheo, two tables away from me. Why, I didn't exactly know. He quickly looked away, bending over his notes; ears red as though he had felt the same unpleasant zing of energy inside his head. He didn't look at me, but he clearly had. There were a million chances of our glances, and this was no coincidence. I turned back to Theodore, but he didn't appear to have noticed anything strange, or felt the same shock. I stared at my blank sheet of paper, arms crossed and sliding down in my seat, fixing my skirt to not creep up. Stupid skirt, I should really get rid of it.