Harry Potter - The Accidental Animagus

Chapter 47 - The Chamber is Open

The next Duelling Club had been postponed for a week pending a reorganisation. The rumour was that Flitwick didn’t trust Lockhart to run it after his clueless first attempt (although, ironically, Harry thought the ponce could have done much worse), and Snape had clearly only been there to blast Lockhart in public. Some of the older students did the maths and decided that the next best duellist in the castle who actually had the time to run the club was Professor Vector, the Arithmancy teacher, of all people. Flitwick apparently thought the same thing, and he managed to recruit Vector for the club.

“That could actually be a good combination,” Harry said one day as he and his friends talked the situation over with Hagrid. “Lockhart’s incompetent, but he knows the forms really well, and Vector’s supposed to be good with the spells, so if you put them together, they might actually be good at teaching duelling.”

“If Vector doesn’t kill Lockhart first,” Ron said.

“Nah, I think Professor Vector likes him, fer some reason,” Hagrid said.

“For now,” Harry quipped.

“Yeah,” Neville added. “I don’t know about Professor Vector, but Gran’s been telling anybody who’ll listen how much she doesn’t like him. I think people think he gets annoying pretty fast.”

Hermione scoffed: “I really don’t think you two are giving Professor Lockhart enough credit—Harry, I know he’s not such a good teacher, but you can at least respect him for his skill with dark creatures.”

“But we only have his word on that,” Harry countered. “I’ve been looking around, and there’s hardly any corroborating accounts for any of his books. I’m starting to wonder if he made a lot of that stuff up.”

“Harry! How can you say that? I’m sure Dumbledore wouldn’t have hired him unless he was sure about him.”

“Um…” Hagrid started, “‘fraid teh disappoint yeh, Hermione, but Dumbledore didn’t have much choice. Lockhart was the only man who applied.”

“What? No one else wanted the job?” Hermione said.

“Nah, they didn’t. It’s that ruddy curse—keeps gettin’ harder teh find Defence Professors, “specially after Quirrell died.”

“But he was possessed by Voldemort!” Harry protested.

Hagrid flinched, but he answered, “Don’ matter. It’s always somethin’ happenin’ to the Defence Professor. One o’ these years we might not get anybody, an’ then the Ministry’ll probably send somebody they pick.”

Hermione set her glass down with a look of intense concentration on her face.

“Er…somethin’ wrong, Hermione?” Hagrid asked her.

“Hagrid…that’s brilliant!”

“Huh? What?” the boys said.

“Well, o’ course it is,” Hagrid said, blushing. “Erm…what’d I say?”

“Sending someone from the Ministry to teach Defence.”

Harry stared at his sister in confusion: “Uh, Hermione, do you really think getting the Ministry involved would make things better?”