[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
A Bit of Logic


Because the were beyond exhausted, Sirius and James had very nearly overslept, and the lot of them missed breakfast in the Great Hall. They had to hurry in getting ready after Remus and Peter got them up just so that they could get to the Defense corridor in time.

It was becoming a bit of a tradition for the boys to gather outside the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and press their ears to the wall to see if they could hear anything going on inside. “We should sell merchandise for the event,” Sirius said as they trotted through the halls of Hogwarts to the wing, “T-shirts, balloons, commemorative drinkware…”

“Who all is going to purchase it?” James asked.

“Everyone of course. It could be like I was taught by Professor Veigler September 1973-January 1974. They’ll be like collectables, see, and the more teachers you have, the smarter you must be.”

“Nobody’s gonna buy that,” said James, rolling his eyes.

“Speaking of people buying things,” Sirius said, his eyes suddenly lighting up with memory, “We ought to work on duplicating the Map.”

Peter looked up from his toast, which he had been thoroughly engaged with prior, having run down to knick it from the kitchens in a frantic panic when it became apparent they weren’t making it to the Great Hall. “Duplicating it? Why?”

“To sell it,” Sirius said, “Remember? We were gonna sell it to all the lost little firsties.”

“Are we still doing that?” Remus asked, confused, “I thought we ended up getting off from that idea and just doing it for ourselves?”

“Yeah,” James said, “I don’t reckon I want some ickle widdle firsty knowing all about our secret passages and stuff! That’ for us to know. Plus, if we sold it, you know Filch would end up with a copy of it somehow and there would go all our secret escapes from him!”

Sirius frowned, he hadn’t considered that. “Well… what keeps Filch from finding our copy sometime and knowing about the passageways?”

“Well we aren’t leaving it laying about and -- morrrrrning Evans,” James sing-songed, changing mid-sentence what he was talking about. He plastered a grin over his face as they walked up to her in the corridor outside the Defense classroom, where she was standing before the door, patiently waiting.

“Yes, good morning Evans,” said Sirius with a wide smile. “How are you today?”

“I don’t want to know what you lot were up that’s made you miss breakfast,” she said.

“They overslept,” Remus supplied.

Lily raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s incredibly boring compared to what I expected of you lot.’

“How’s… how’s Severus today, love?” James asked. Sirius quickly elbowed him.

“I haven’t seen him yet,” Lily replied, sounding a little anxious and she sighed, “I do miss him.”

Sirius asked, “He wasn’t at breakfast? Odd, isn’t it?” He snickered and James did, too.

“None of the Slytherins were,” Lily said, “There was some sort of problem in the dungeons by --” she stopped mid-sentence, a dawning lighting up her eyes as she put the two and two together and she looked at them. “What did you do?”

“Us? Evans! We’re innocent. We wouldn’t have had time to do anything. We’ve been, er, swamped,” Sirius said.

James nearly busted a gut at this.

Lily opened her mouth to further the discussion, but at that moment the door to the classroom opened and there was Kingsley Shacklebolt.

“NO BLOODY WAY!” James exclaimed, excitedly, jumping away from Lily, “Kingsley! Hey! I know you!” He grinned and quickly gave Kingsley a super secret high-five-handshake like his father always greeted the young auror with. “Merlin! This is going to be a grand second half of term with you here. Blimey - I never expected - of all the people - !”

Kingsley chuckled, “Well hopefully you’re this enthusiastic about the cass, too, then.” He waved for them all to come in and closed the door behind them.

It was odd calling him Professor Shacklebolt when James had seen so much of Kingsley about the house. He’d been an intern at the Ministry for Magic under his father’s care and they’d become friends, Kingsley often showing up at the Potter’s for advice from Charlus, who was considerably older than the young auror. Charlus was something of a mentor for Kingsley and a couple of other guys from the ministry, like Arthur Weasley and Ted Tonks. It was one of the things that made Charlus Potter so well liked - the way he took interns at the Ministry under his wing and treated them like sons. Often, James felt like he had a billion brilliant brothers that knew everything there was to know about how things at the ministry worked thanks to his Dad. One day, Charlus had promised, he’d do the same thing for James. But James had shaken his head and reminded his father he’d be a quidditch player, not a Ministry worker. Perhaps that was part of why Charlus put so much of his efforts in with the interns, because he knew his son would never need the information he had to give… Whatever the reason, Kingsley Shacklebolt had gained a lot of knowledge and spent a lot of time with Charlus and James certainly didn’t see him as Professor-type.

He wrote his name on the chalkboard up front with a neat, precise hand and dusted his hands, “As you know, I’m Kingsley Shacklebolt,” he said and James clapped. Peter, Remus, Sirius, and Lily looked ‘round at him and he stopped. “Thank you for the enthusiasm, James,” Kingsley laughed, “But maybe tone it down a notch?”

“Alright,” James nodded.

“Professor Veigler, as you know, will not be resuming his position as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher this term --”

Remus’s hand shot up, “Will he be back next term?” he asked hopefully.

Kingsley shook his head, “No, I’m sorry, Mr. Lupin,” he replied, “Professor Veigler has found himself elsewise employed and will not be returning to Hogwarts.”

Remus nodded. That was, of course, what he already knew, but he’d been hoping perhaps that Kingsley Shacklebolt had somehow heard something else and that maybe Ned Veigler would come back after all and Remus would be able to resume their talks… but the conviction in Kingsley’s voice told him that Professor Veigler was indeed not going ot be coming back.

“In the interim between now and the end of term, or whenever Dumbledore finds a replacement professor, I have been employed by Dumbledore to stay here at the castle and assist with teaching the lot of you in the skills needed to defend yourself against the dark arts,” Kingsley went on. He cleared his throat and looked down at the messy array of stuff Veigler had left across the desk - various slides from their werewolf lessons and a copy of the textbook, splayed open on the page featuring the Da Vinci werewolf. Kingsley looked up, “I assume, given the events of the past month, that you lot know quite enough about werewolves to last you the rest of your lives.”

“And then some,” muttered Remus.

“Very good.” Kingsley pushed the Da Vinci aside and closed the textbook. He came around the desk then, sitting on the very edge of it, crossing his ankles and bracing himself up with his splayed palms. He looked ‘round about them. “Alright, then, I’m not going to be very conventional about all this, honestly, I remember what it was like being a student - it wasn’t so long ago - and I remember how stupid I thought it was that the professors always taught out of the book when, obviously, I could just read the book and learn whatever it had to say. Wasn’t the point of a professor to have some new knowledge that I couldn’t find in the text book? Some person with an experience in the field I was supposed to be learning about?” Kingsley’s voice was deep and rumbling, “Well, you know, most professors don’t have a ton of hands on experience in their fields because they’ve spent all their time becoming professors rather than becoming the things they teach you about. Like Kettleburn for example. He’s got the degree of a magizoologist, but he doesn’t practice it much because he’s too busy teaching it.” Kingsley shrugged, “I’m not a classically trained professor, I’m an auror for the Ministry of Magic. I have experience defending muggles and wizards alike from the power of the Dark Arts. So I’m not your typical teacher and now we’re going to have not your typical class.”

Sirius grinned, “Awesome.”

Kingsley said, “So let’s begin with a bit of logic. If Lord Voldemort were to walk in the front doors of Hogwarts right this second, what’s the first thing we should do?”

“Get our wands out,” Sirius guessed loudly, his voice covering up Peter’s answer of, “Run away?”

Kingsley shook his head.

“Cast a Shield Charm,” James guessed, remembering what Dumbledore had done upon arriving into the clearing in the Forbidden Forest in first year. “So that any first moves he makes are blocked.”

“That’s a good one,” Kingsley nodded.

“So I was right about getting the wands out,” Sirius gloated.

Kingsley asked, “And then what? What’s our first tactical, logical thing we need to do?”

“Figure out how he got in,” Remus guessed. “He can’t apparate here, the grounds of Hogwarts cannot be apparated to or from, so he’s found another way into the castle. So we need to know how he did get there so we can block the source of him getting back up from his Death Eaters.”

Kingsley nodded, “That’s a good one, too. So you’d run off and find the source…” he waved his wand and the chalk on the board drew out a little drawing of the entrance hall door with Voldemort coming in. Remus was drawn off to the side and below the little stick figure representing him, the chalk wrote out find entrance point to block. “What about you, James? What are you going to do?”

Sirius said. “I’m going to, uh, to make sure everyone knows he’s there, so they can get to safety.”

“Very good,” Kingsley nodded and the chalk scrawled out another figure, labelling it, alerting others below it.

Peter announced, “Somebody’s gotta get Dumbledore.”

Another figure - getting Dumbledore.

“I suppose it would be important to try to find an evacuation route, something leaving the opposite way they he’s come in,” Lily said, “And to get all the youngest students out of the castle as quickly as possible.”

Another figure, this one with long hair - protecting the children.

James had been looking at Lily, and now, being the last one to speak, he looked up at Kingsley and he announced, “Somebody’s got to go Avada Kedavra the sonuvabitch!”

Peter choked on the toast he was still sneakily eating from under his desk and Remus’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head as he whirled about to look at James. Sirius hooted and high-fived James excitedly, “Good one, James!”

Kingsley smirked, shaking his head in disapproval, “And get yourself killed in the process of trying.”

“Something’s got to distract him while everyone else gets all those spectacular things done. Lily’s got to get all the children out of the castle and Dumbledore’s coming so soon he’ll engage the Dark Lord once he gets there if the Dark Lord hasn’t fled yet (and we all know Dumbledore would defeat Moldy Voldy in a duel). Sirius is getting everyone up to go get helped by Lily and Rey’s trying to keep him from calling for back up. Well if he’s busy being distracted by somebody… all that stuff has time to happen. If nobody goes down there, he’s just gonna waltz right in, make himself at home with a cuppa and call all the death eaters he wants long before the entrance is blocked off.” James shrugged, “Somebody’s gotta be the shiny object that keeps him from following through his plan. If it means sacrificing oneself then bloody hell it’s worth it to see him defeated, isn’t it?”

Sirius looked warily at James, “You’re an idiot.”

“Well it makes sense to me,” James said with a shrug.

Kingsley stood up from the desk and said, “While all these are good answers, save for maybe one of them, let’s talk about what the actual plan is here at Hogwarts, in the event of a security breach, shall we?”

“As long as it doesn’t involve Potter being our only line of defense against the most powerful wizard alive, I’m sure it’s a brilliant plan,” Lily said, glancing over at James.

“C’mon Evans, you know you’d think me the hero if I did it,” James said.

Lily rolled her eyes and turned forward.

“What would your boyfriend be doing, Love?” James asked. He paused, “Wait. He’d be one of the Death Eaters being summoned, wouldn’t he? Him and his Slytherin mates?”

Lily said, “Don’t talk about Severus like that! He’s not like the other Slytherins!”

James muttered, “Yeah, he’s greasier for one.”

Lily set her jaw.

Kingsley cleared his throat to regain attention to him. “Let’s not talk about other students in such a derogatory way, James,” he said, “Voldemort would never have a child for a Death Eater. Loyalty in childhood is easily bought, but it’s also easily lost. The Dark Lord would never trust a child to do the work he needs doing for all it would take is the offer of a good sweet and the loyalty would be ended.”

“Malfoy was a Death Eater,” argued James.

“Malfoy was a special exception,” answered Kingsley.

“Severus isn’t a Death Eater,” Lily said. “He’s my boyfriend and you’re just jealous that you aren’t as good looking and intelligent as he is.”

James snorted, “I wouldn’t wanna look like Snape! Blimey, that nose of his. It’s like a bloody scythe coming out of his face.”

Lily said, “You’re jealous I’m dating him and not you.”

That one, James couldn’t deny, and he turned rather red. “Well he wouldn’t be running to stop Voldemort from taking the castle like I would be.”

“He’s not arrogant enough to think that he could take on the Dark Lord singlehandedly,” Lily snapped, “Like you would be.”

Kingsley cleared his throat again, though he was smirking at bit at Lily’s sassiness. He turned to the chalkboard and waved his wand… a map of the castle appeared. Sirius couldn’t help but notice it was nowhere near as detailed or complete as the Marauder’s Map and he grinned to himself. “Alright,” Kingsley said, “In the event of an actual attack on Hogwarts Castle… here are the emergency routes…” And he started drawing on the diagram.