Hearing Snape's snide remarks about Sherlock and Harry, the Slytherin students burst into unrestrained laughter.
Even some of the Gryffindors couldn't hold it in, and a few stifled giggles escaped.
There was no help for it—Snape was simply too cutting.
"I'm beginning to wonder whether you can read, Pot-ter."
Snape's gaze shifted to Harry, his eyes were sweeping across the boy's face like a blade: "A potion made by someone else is utterly worthless. Even if you scrape through this time, who will be there to help you in your O.W.L.s?"
As he always did, he drew out the syllables of "Pot-ter," his tone was laced with contempt: "Of course, if you one day marry Mr. Holmes, do feel free to send me an invitation. I would be only too delighted to watch you spend the rest of your life depending on others."
With that, he turned away from Harry whose face had gone scarlet and addressed the class as a whole:
"Those of you who actually read the instructions will decant your potion samples into a wide-necked bottle, label them clearly with your names, and bring them to my lectern for inspection. Homework: a twelve-inch essay on parchment concerning the properties of moonstone and its uses in potion-making. Due Thursday."
"Harry, you really shouldn't let it bother you."
The Gryffindor table at lunch smelled of roasted potatoes and pumpkin juice.
Ron stuffed a piece of roast beef into his mouth and mumbled his consolation. "Even without Sherlock's help, your potion was miles better than anyone else's."
"That's right—certainly better than your rotten egg," Hermione added beside him as crisp and unhesitating.
"That wasn't me, it was Goyle, Goyle, alright?" Ron protested, looking thoroughly aggrieved. "When he went to pour his into the bottle, the whole lot suddenly splattered everywhere and scorched his robes."
Watching Hermione and Ron bicker, Harry's expression grew complicated.
Ron assumed Harry had been silent since the lesson because he was angry.
But the truth was, he wasn't particularly angry at all.
Even Harry himself found that surprising.
In the past, words like those would have had him trembling with fury.
But this time, he didn't know why—he only felt a kind of weary helplessness, and, stranger still, a faint urge to laugh.
How very odd.
With that thought, he couldn't help glancing over at Sherlock.
Sherlock, for his part, appeared entirely unbothered by Hermione and Ron's squabbling. He was calmly working his way through lunch as though nothing had happened.
"You know, I half-expected him to go easier on you this year," Hermione said, noticing the state of both Harry and Sherlock, and lowering her voice. "You know what I mean—he's joined the Order, and he's been teaching Harry Occlumency and all."
"A toxic mushroom doesn't change its spots."
Ron speared a piece of bread and bit into it firmly. "Honestly, I've always thought Dumbledore's gone mad, trusting Snape like that."
He looked across at Sherlock with open curiosity. "Sherlock, mate do you really think he's stopped working for You-Know-Who?"
"My dear Ron, on that point I can assure you without reservation," Sherlock said lightly. "He stopped doing so well over a decade ago."
"Er—"
Ron shot Harry a glance.
By now, Harry, Hermione, and Ron all knew about Snape's particular feelings for Harry's mother, Lily.
Ron's question had carried an obvious subtext: had Snape's love for Lily truly run deeper than his hunger for power—or his loyalty to Voldemort?
Only, with Harry right there, the question was nearly impossible to voice aloud.
Sherlock had no such compunctions.
He continued, straightforwardly.
"In point of fact, Snape's reasons for becoming a Death Eater were rather different from the others'. It wasn't devotion to Voldemort—it was the pursuit of power, dark magic especially.
Given the circumstances at the time, joining the Death Eaters was simply the most effective path to that end. But his love for Harry's mother ran so deep that he chose to abandon all of it in order to protect her life. After she died, Snape transferred that love onto Harry."
He paused briefly. "Along with, I might add, his hatred of Harry's father and Sirius—that transferred rather neatly as well."
The three of them stared at one another.
Typical Sherlock—always able to say the most uncomfortable truths with the most effortless ease.
Next came the overlap in their schedules: Divination and Arithmancy.
Harry was eventually dragged by Ron to the North Tower classroom for Divination.
Sherlock went with Hermione toward the Arithmancy room.
By fifth year, Arithmancy had grown considerably more challenging. The intricate formulae and charts, the rigorous mathematical calculations, many students sat slumped over their open copies of Numerology and Grammatica, sighing, too listless even to pick up their quills.
There were, of course, exceptions.
Hermione's quill flew across her parchment, pausing every so often to exchange a few words with Sherlock in a low voice.
Sherlock leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping idly against the desk, occasionally pointing out a small error in her calculations.
Watching the Lion King and the Know-It-All working with such casual ease, most of their classmates looked on with unconcealed envy. Professor Vector was nodding approvingly throughout, and when the bell rang, Hermione had earned Gryffindor ten points.
As the two walked out of the classroom side by side, they passed a landing and came upon the large portrait of Sir Cadogan.
The knight drew his sword and brandished it ferociously at them, shouting from beneath his visor in a muffled roar: "Come back, you cowardly runaway! No retreating—face me in battle!"
Sherlock, naturally, didn't give him a second glance.
Sir Cadogan, refusing to be ignored, leapt into a neighbouring canvas in pursuit. A fierce-looking wolfhound in that picture promptly chased him back.
Hermione shook her head, tearing her gaze away from the portrait.
"Sherlock," she said curiously, "are you planning to sit all twelve exams this year?"
"I'll be sitting twelve examinations," Sherlock replied, not breaking his pace, his tone as even as ever.
Hermione understood immediately.
He would sit every exam. Whether he actually wanted the certificates—that depended entirely on his mood.
The thought made her quietly clench her fist, her eyes were set with resolve. "I am going to get ten certificates. All ten."
In third year, Hermione had used a Time-Turner to attend every class. But as the school year drew to a close, she'd finally taken Sherlock's advice and dropped Divination and Muggle Studies, opting for a normal timetable instead.
Naturally, she would not be sitting those two subjects in her O.W.L.s now.
"Good luck," said Sherlock slowly.
Faced with that utterly level response, Hermione wasn't quite sure what to say.
Just then, they spotted Harry and Ron coming toward them from the far end of the corridor.
"That class didn't go well, by the look of it," Sherlock observed, his gaze was passing over both of them.
"Complete waste of time, if you ask me. We've started interpreting dreams this term." Harry said it without ceremony, then shot Ron a sideways look.
If it weren't for Ron, he'd have been in Arithmancy with Sherlock and Hermione right now. The complicated formulae and charts were headache-inducing enough, but at least that was better than consulting the idiotic The Dream Oracle to decode his own dreams.
Harry was fairly convinced the author of that book had a screw loose—possibly worse than Lockhart, in some respects. At least Lockhart's books had been vaguely entertaining.
Inigo Imago's The Dream Oracle, by contrast, had informed him that Ron dreaming about playing Quidditch meant he was about to be eaten by a giant toffee.
Yes. That was genuinely what the book said.
"Oi, don't look at me like that, mate!" Ron said, half-pained, half-resigned, catching his friend's reproachful gaze.
"What was I supposed to do? I'm desperate too, you know! Do you have any idea how much homework we've got? Binns wants a foot and a half on the Giant Wars.
Snape wants a foot on moonstone. And Trelawney just assigned us to record our dreams every single night for a month! Fred and George said this O.W.L. year was going to be brutal and honestly, they weren't wrong—"
"You've only got Divination and Care of Magical Creatures," Hermione observed coolly. "Harry and Sherlock are sitting all the electives."
She didn't even bother citing herself for comparison because next to Sherlock and Harry, even she was taking fewer subjects.
"Well, Harry and Sherlock are the Chosen One and the Lion King, aren't they?" Ron said with a self-deprecating shrug. "How could I possibly compare? All I'm hoping now is that Defence Against the Dark Arts doesn't pile on more homework. I never understood why the school had to replace Professor Lupin when he was perfectly brilliant—"
"Not replaced," Sherlock corrected. "Other teachers have been brought in to assist Professor Lupin—it's also connected to his mission."
"Come to think of it, with four Defence Against the Dark Arts professors teaching at once, maybe we don't even need that Animagus restoration spell—"
Ron rubbed his nose and muttered under his breath.
Harry shook his head, his expression grave. "No. Even without any of that, Professor Lupin would still need it."
"Exactly," Hermione agreed, dropping her voice. "Transforming is an agonising experience. The spell eases the pain considerably—even if he weren't teaching us."
When the four of them filed into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, they found Professor Umbridge already seated behind the lectern.
She was wearing the same fluffy pink cardigan from the opening feast the night before, with that black velvet bow perched on top of her head.
Once again, Harry was struck by the vivid and inescapable image of a large fly that had foolishly landed on an even larger toad.
The rest of the class exchanged glances, and a low buzzing of commentary broke out across the room: "Oh no. Not her."
"I thought it'd be Professor Lupin—it's the first lesson!"
"Even Mad-Eye Moody would be better. He was brilliant at the feast yesterday!"
"Honestly, even Karkaroff would be preferable—"
Nobody dared say it loudly, though. She was still a professor, after all, and they owed her at least a pretence of civility.
"Good afternoon, class!" Umbridge said, once everyone had settled.
Sherlock didn't bother acknowledging her. He leaned back in his chair, arms folded, and wtih utterly blank expression.
The little Gryffindors nearby followed his lead, turning their heads away.
Even so, a few students mumbled a half-hearted "Good afternoon" in response.
"Tsk, tsk." Umbridge's brow furrowed.
Her pudgy fingers tapped against the lectern as her gaze swept across the room, slow and sticky as syrup. "That simply won't do, will it? I expect you to reply like this: Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge. So, let's try once more, shall we—Good afternoon, class!"
This time, most of the class answered in grudging unison: "Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge."
Still sullen, but at least it was there.
"Much better." Umbridge's smile returned, and in her signature tinny simper she continued: "That wasn't so difficult, was it? Please put away your wands and take out your quills."
The second half of that sentence sucked the remaining energy out of the room.
In Defence Against the Dark Arts, "put away your wands" had never been a good sign.
In third year, Professor Lupin's very first words had been "put away your textbooks and take out your wands."
That lesson they'd faced a Boggart, and it remained one of the most memorable classes any of them had ever had. Time had borne out what they'd already sensed: Lupin was the finest teacher they'd ever had.
And conversely, "put away your wands" had never once preceded anything they actually found worthwhile.
For once, even without Sherlock's extraordinary powers of deduction, that conclusion required no effort at all.
Professor Umbridge opened her handbag, produced a wand that was absurdly short, and gave the blackboard a sharp tap. Two lines appeared:
DEFENCE AGAINST THE DARK ARTSBack to Basics
"Students, in light of You-Know-Who's return, the Ministry of Magic has prioritised the importance of this subject—and so I, Dolores Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic, have been specially invited to serve as your teacher."
She paused, her gaze sweeping across the tense faces in the room, a trace of poorly concealed smugness crept into her tone:
"I must say, a great many of your previous instructors appear not to have followed the Ministry-approved curriculum. This has regrettably left you well below the standard expected of students at O.W.L. level. But—"
Here she raised her voice slightly: "You will be relieved to hear that these deficiencies are about to be corrected."
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