Ok so I have no idea but for some reason there's this thing wehre the internet is now genderbending Draco Malfoy. I did not start writing this because of that; this came long before I discovered it. This actually was supposed to be a fanfic where Harry literally died and transmigrated into the past of 1940-ish and became a bloodthorne and got with a genderbent Voldemort. BTW IM NOT DOING THAT. VOLDEMORT IS A DUDE HERE.
Anyway, this chapter is kinda pretty much shot for shot from the movie, which is kinda boring, but it leads to change where It's no longer shot for shot. It's not gonna be totally different, but it's moderate.
https://discord.gg/WCRYgKDbuR
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The Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom had been dressed like a shrine.
Lucian took the desk beside Theodore Nott and let his eyes travel the room once, slowly, the way a man walks the edge of a field he already suspects is full of traps. Portraits of Gilderoy Lockhart hung in every available space. Lockhart smiling. Lockhart winking. Lockhart posed against a banshee that looked suspiciously well-groomed. A chandelier of candles burned beneath the ribbed vault of the ceiling, and from the beams above them hung the pale skeleton of something large and long-dead, its spine coiled like a question the room had never answered. The skeleton at least looked honest. Everything else in the room was trying to be a mirror.
Behind Lucian, Draca Malfoy sat with Vincent Crabbe and regarded the back of his head as if it had personally insulted her. She had not spoken to him since the common room. She had not needed to. Disdain, when it was practiced enough, could do its work without language. Nott had the sense to pretend he did not notice. Blaise Zabini had taken a seat farther along the row and was already looking bored, which Lucian was beginning to suspect was Zabini's native condition rather than a mood.
Near the front, Hermione Granger sat beside Susan Bones with her quill already uncapped and a stack of Lockhart's books aligned so precisely they might have been inspected by a quartermaster. Directly behind them were Harriet Potter and Ron Weasley. Harriet had her arms folded and her attention on the skeleton, not the portraits. Ron looked as though he were trying to decide whether the class would be funny or merely humiliating. The rest of the second-years filled the benches in their usual uneasy mixtures. Gryffindor and Slytherin did not quite share rows. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff filled the gaps and pretended the arrangement was accidental.
On the desk at the front, a large portrait of Lockhart was painting another portrait of Lockhart. The brush moved with loving care over a smile that had already been perfect in the first frame. Lucian watched it for a moment and felt something close to secondhand embarrassment.
He had met vain people. The Lostlands were not a monastery. Nobles preened. Royals kept tailors. But this was a different species of vanity, the kind that required an audience even when the audience was paint. Most of the girls in the room were already leaning toward the empty office door as if the man might appear by the force of their attention alone. A few were not. Harriet was one of them. Pansy Parkinson, surprisingly, looked more calculating than enchanted, and Daphne Greengrass was cold as Ice itself. The boys, almost to a one, wore the expression of people who had been invited to admire a mirror and had declined.
The office door opened.
The chatter died so quickly it left a mark in the air.
Gilderoy Lockhart stepped out in robes the colour of a robin's egg that had been allowed to develop opinions. His hair caught the candlelight and held it. His smile arrived a half-second before the rest of him, as if it had been sent ahead to prepare the room.
"Let me introduce you," he said, spreading his arms, "to your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Me. Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award."
He paused, as though the list required a moment of private humility, then gave the class the smile in question.
"I don't talk about that one much."
A sound moved through the girls that was not quite a sigh and not quite a cheer. Hermione's quill hovered over her parchment and did not touch it. Several boys stared at Lockhart with the blank hostility reserved for a man who has just told a room he is humble. Lucian rested his chin on his hand and studied the portrait behind the desk, which was now painting a second, smaller smile inside the first.
Lockhart continued his prattle, "But I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at it."
The Professor then flashed a pearly white smile at the class.
Lucian turned the claim over the way he turned over a questionable track in the forest. He had spent most of his life among creatures that did not care what a wizard's teeth looked like. Nundus, Basilisks, Dragons, Wampus cats, Yetis. Things in the deep green that would take a man's arm off for standing in the wrong patch of moss. He had watched a thunderbird split a storm because it was annoyed, and he had sat in the shadow of dragons who considered human speech a kind of weather. None of them had ever been persuaded by dentistry. A Dementor, perhaps, might mistake those teeth for a Patronus if it were very tired and very stupid. But Lucian couldn't for the life of him imagine Dementors were that stupid.
Lockhart potentially was.
Lockhart was still talking. Achievements. Titles. A summer in which he had apparently saved a village by the simple application of confidence. Lucian let the words pass over him and watched the room instead. The enchanted girls leaned in. The unenchanted ones, Harriet among them, did not. Draca, behind him, had the particular stillness of a person refusing to be impressed on principle. Nott's mouth had gone thin.
"I see," Lockhart said at last, turning from his own portrait with the air of a man reluctantly abandoning a dear friend, "that you have all been good enough to purchase the complete set of books. I'm proud of you. Truly. It shows initiative. It shows respect for the craft."
He lifted a stack of parchment from the desk.
"So we'll begin with a little quiz. Just to see how closely you've read. Nothing to fear. Think of it as a conversation between friends who happen to be sitting an examination."
A groan tried to rise from the boys' side of the room and was murdered by several sharp looks from the front row. Lockhart began to move between the desks, setting a sheet before each student as if he were distributing blessings. When he reached Hermione she sat up so straight her chair complained.
"Thank you, Professor," she said, and the words came out brighter than she had probably intended.
"Of course, Miss Granger. I do like an eager mind."
He moved on. Harriet accepted her parchment without looking at his face. Ron took his as though it might bite. A Hufflepuff boy two rows over gave Lockhart a look of such pure dislike that Lucian almost admired the efficiency of it.
Then Lockhart reached their desk.
He stopped.
The pause was small, but it was there. Lockhart's eyes moved over Lucian's scar, over the cut of his robes. Something wanted to be said. Lucian could see it arrive behind the man's eyes and then think better of itself. Lockhart set the parchment down with a smile that had been adjusted by half a degree and moved on to Draca, who received the sheet as if it were a bill.
Lucian turned the parchment over.
The first question asked for Lockhart's favourite colour.
The second asked for his greatest achievement.
The third asked what he would do if he found himself in a room with a werewolf, a hag, and a Dark wizard, and then, in smaller script, suggested that the correct answer involved smiling.
Lucian read the rest in silence. Every line was about the man who had written it. Not one question asked how a student might shield, disarm, or survive. He glanced at Nott's sheet. The same questions. The same smiling werewolf. Nott met his eyes and gave the smallest shake of his head, the gesture of a boy who had already decided the hour was lost and was merely confirming the diagnosis.
Lockhart returned to the front, set the remaining parchments aside, and clasped his hands.
"You all have thirty minutes," he said. "Begin."
Quills came out. Ink bottles opened. The room filled with the soft, frantic scratch of people trying to remember whether Lockhart preferred lilac or periwinkle.
Lucian leaned back in his chair, rubbed a hand over his face, and made a sound that was not quite a groan and not quite a laugh. A few students snickered. Most of them kept their heads down. Hermione was already writing as if the parchment would decide her fate of her future for the rest of time.
He reached into his robes and found the pen.
It was a plain thing, black, Muggle, reliable in a way quills were not. He had carried one since he was old enough to be annoyed by ink on his cuffs. Nott stared at it. So did Crabbe, craning around Draca's shoulder. A Muggle-born two desks away recognised it at once and looked quickly back at her own work, as if witnessing the object might be considered collaboration.
Lockhart had already started his circuit of the room. He stopped again when he saw the pen.
"Everything all right, Mr Bloodthorne?"
"Fine," Lucian said, not looking up. He clicked the pen once and began to write.
Lockhart stayed, his eyes landing on the pen.
"And what, exactly, is that?"
"A pen." Lucian kept his eyes on the parchment. "Muggles invented them. They make writing a great deal easier than a feather and a bottle of something that stains."
A small, awkward quiet opened around the desk. Lockhart's smile held, but it had to work for it.
"I'm not sure that's permitted," he said. He held out a hand, palm up, the gesture of a man who expected objects to come when called. "If you'd be so kind."
"No."
The word was quiet. It was also finished. Lucian spoke it with such ease it was less an insult and more a command of his own.
Lockhart blinked. His hand remained in the air a moment longer than dignity recommended. Around them, quills slowed. Harriet had turned in her seat. Ron was watching with the open interest of someone hoping for a small disaster. Draca's expression, reflected faintly in the polished wood of the desk in front of Lucian, had sharpened into something almost pleased.
Lockhart recovered the way a performer recovers when a prop fails: he laughed, lightly, as if the refusal had been a charming misunderstanding.
"Well," he said, "I suppose we can allow it this once, given the circumstances. Do come better prepared next time, Mr Bloodthorne. Wand, quill, the usual tools of the trade." He straightened, and the smile became official. "Five points from Slytherin."
A hiss moved through the green-trimmed half of the room. Someone muttered his name like a curse. Lucian sat unbothered, not giving them the satisfaction of looking up. He finished the first answer in a hand that was not English, turned the parchment, and went on.
Thirty minutes passed in the scratch of quills and the occasional despairing sigh. Lockhart collected the sheets with the tender care of a man gathering love letters and carried them back to his desk. He read. He tutted. He made small wounded sounds when a favourite colour was wrong.
"Almost no one," he announced, "seems to know what my favourite colour is. Extraordinary. And as for my greatest achievement—" He stopped, brightened, and lifted one parchment as if it had personally saved him from a fire. "Miss Hermione Granger seems to be the only one to know my favourite colour is Lilac. And the hope, I see, that the world might one day be rid of evil and in possession of a proper hair potion. Excellent. Ten points to Gryffindor."
He winked.
Hermione went pink to the ears. Several boys rolled their eyes with a unity that briefly transcended house.
Lockhart turned another sheet. The brightness faltered.
He looked toward the back of the room.
"Mr Bloodthorne. What manner of writing is this? Is it… a language?"
Lucian set his pen down.
"It is the language spoken where I was raised," he said. "It seemed appropriate. The questions were for a prestigious wizard. I answered them in a prestigious tongue."
Lockhart stared at the page as if it might translate itself out of pity. It did not. His smile returned in a reduced form, the version he used when he was not entirely sure what had happened and did not wish to ask.
"How flattering," he said. "Truly. In future, though, English would make the grading rather simpler."
"Of course," Lucian said. "I should have thought of that."
Nott made a sound into his sleeve that might have been a cough.
Lockhart set the parchments aside with visible relief and took up his wand. He circled the desk to the far side, where a velvet cloth covered a cage. The cloth shivered once, as if whatever lived under it had come alive.
"As your Defence Against the Dark Arts professor," he said, lifting the wand like a man about to conduct a very small orchestra, "it is my duty to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind. What you are about to see may alarm you. It may even provoke the beasts. Remain calm. No harm will come to you while I am in the room."
He struck the covered cage with his wand. Something inside rattled. A few students leaned back. Neville Longbottom had gone the colour of old parchment.
Lockhart seized the cloth.
"Be not afraid!"
He whipped the velvet away.
The cage was full of small blue bodies, pointed ears, and the kind of grinning malice that did not require size to be effective. Seamus Finnigan laughed before he could stop himself.
"They're Cornish pixies."
"Freshly caught Cornish pixies," Lockhart said, as if the adjective improved them. "Laugh if you must, Mr Finnigan. You will not be laughing when you meet one in the wild."
Lucian closed his eyes for a moment.
Nott leaned in. "What is it?"
Lucian turned to him, wondering if he was actually asking that. "Are you serious?"
Nott did not answer, which was answer enough.
"This is Defence Against the Dark Arts," Lucian said, low enough that only the nearest desks could hear. "Cornish pixies are a nuisance. They steal, they bite, they make a mess of a kitchen. They are not a lesson. Where are the shields? Where is the counter-curse? Where is the part of the class in which anyone learns how not to be humiliated by something the size of a teapot?"
At the front of the room, Lockhart unlocked the cage.
The pixies came out like a decision the room had not been consulted about.
Lockhart went sprawling as the first of them hit him in the chest. Desks scraped. Someone screamed. A blue blur snatched Pansy's ink bottle and emptied it over a Ravenclaw's head with what looked like professional satisfaction. Students dropped under tables. Two Hufflepuffs made for the door and were driven back by a pixie swinging a stolen compass like a flail. Neville rose into the air with a startled yelp, a pixie on each ear, his shoes kicking at nothing.
Lucian stood.
"What," he said, and his voice cut through the shrieking more by anger than by volume, "were you thinking?"
Lockhart had regained his feet and was waving his wand in the general direction of the chaos. The spell that left it was not a spell Lucian recognised, which was not in itself surprising. It also did nothing, which was.
A pixie darted in, neat as a pickpocket, and took the wand out of Lockhart's hand. It zoomed upward, cackling, and began to crack the windows with experimental flicks. Lockhart stared at his empty fingers. Then he did the only sensible thing he had done all hour. He retreated toward the office door at speed.
"I'll leave you three to tidy this up," he called to Harriet, Ron, and Hermione, and vanished up the stairs. The door shut. A pixie threw a piece of chalk at it and missed.
The classroom had become a small weather system. Books flapped. A portrait of Lockhart was being enthusiastically redrawn with ink. Neville turned slowly beneath the ceiling, suspended by his collar, and said, in a voice of pure exhausted recognition, "Why is it always me?"
Harriet had her wand out. Hermione was already calculating. Ron had grabbed a book to use as a shield and looked as though he resented the book for not being larger.
Pixies noticed Lucian.
Three of them broke from the general riot and came at him in a tight, delighted line, teeth bright, wings a blur. He did not raise a wand. He drew a breath, let the irritation settle into something colder, and spoke.
The words were not loud. They did not need to be. They carried the old weight his family used when a creature had forgotten which of them was in charge, and the room felt the change the way a pond feels a stone. The pixies stopped. Not all at once, and not cleanly. One crashed into a desk. Another hung in the air with its stolen wand still raised, ears flicking, as if a command had arrived in a language it had not expected to obey and had obeyed anyway.
Lucian looked at them.
"I am annoyed," he said. "By this class. By that man. By the quiz. You are not improving any of it. Get back in the cage before I decide a Swooping Evil would find you educational."
They knew the name, or they knew the tone. It hardly mattered which. The pixies formed up with a discipline that would have shamed several of the students and filed, single-file, back through the open door of the cage. The one with the wand dropped it on a desk as it passed, almost politely. Lucian walked up and shut the cage. The latch clicked. He smiled at them, brief and genuine, because the creatures had at least had the sense to listen.
"Thank you." He spoke, his entire mood shifting from annoyed to somewhat pleased.
The room was a wreck. Ink on the walls. A bench overturned. Neville still rotating, slowly, like an unfortunate mobile. Harriet, Hermione, and Ron came out from behind the front desks and crossed the aisle. Harriet's hair had come half loose. There was a streak of blue dust on her sleeve.
"Thank you," she said.
Lucian nodded. "That was stupid. What an absolute Oaf of a Proffesor."
Ron, who had spent the last day looking at Lucian as if he might invoice the common room for existing, let out a breath that was almost agreement.
"Yeah," he said. "He is."
Lucian glanced around the ruined classroom. The Slytherin desks were empty. Draca was gone. Crabbe was gone. Nott had vanished sometime between the first scream and the cage. Zabini, who had a talent for not being where trouble finished, was nowhere in sight.
"My friends appear to have fled," Lucian said. "I should go and find out whether they survived their own courage." He looked up. Neville was still attached to the chandelier's general neighbourhood, turning with dignity. "Sorry, Longbottom. I have to go."
"It's all right," Neville said, faintly, from the ceiling. "Thanks for getting the pixies at least."
Lucian lifted a hand without turning, a lazy wave, and stepped over a fallen chair on his way to the door. Behind him, the golden trio stood in the wreckage and looked at Neville, then at the cage, then at each other. Someone sighed. Someone else dragged a chair toward the place where Neville's shoes were slowly rotating.
Lucian decided it best to go find his friends and find a new way to spend his time when he had this period so he could actually tolerate Hogwarts.
The corridor outside was cooler and blessedly free of portraits. He stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets and listened to the muffled chaos still leaking through the classroom door. A Defence lesson. Thirty minutes of a man's favourite colour, and then a cage opened by the same man because he liked the sound of his own warning.
He thought of the forests under the Lostlands, and of creatures that would have eaten the pixies, the quiz, and the professor without distinguishing between them.
Then he went looking for his friends.