"YEAH——!"
The moment Lupin announced that the next class would be free of the textbooks they'd been grinding through—all those dreary Foundational Principles—the little lions snapped to life. They shot up from their chairs, cupped their hands around their mouths, and let out a roar.
Some slapped their desks with open palms, sending a satisfying thwack of wood reverberating through the room.
Some exchanged high fives, the bright crack of fingertips meeting laughter was floating up to the ceiling.
Others rose on their tiptoes and waved with all their might toward Professor Lupin.
This was what Defense Against the Dark Arts was supposed to be.
Not the stiff recitation of theory, but a real class—wands in hand, spells in the air.
By contrast, Professor Umbridge now stood in the shadowed corner of the room like a wedge of mouldy cheese.
She could only watch as Lupin calmly, effortlessly, stole what should have been her lesson right out from under her.
What made it truly unbearable was that the theft had been met with the students' wholehearted cheering.
Her thick jowls trembled. Beneath her robes, her hidden hand had balled into a fist so tight her fingernails were nearly cutting into her palm. The hatred growing inside her was wild and tenacious as kudzu.
But then she remembered being knocked flat twice in a row by Moody. She remembered that the man was a pure lunatic. A shiver ran through her.
Mad-Eye Moody cared nothing for her rank as a Ministry official. If one pushed him too far and there was no telling what he might do.
So she ground her back teeth together and swallowed every curse that rose to her lips.
In the privacy of her own skull, of course, she had already damned the pair of them—Moody and Sherlock a thousand times over.
Just then, having witnessed Moody's defence of Sherlock, Harry felt courage kindle in his chest.
He raised his hand, his voice was carrying a thread of nerves but holding firm: "Professor Moody—Umbridge just took fifty points from Gryffindor, and she's put Sherlock in detention. Is there any chance you could—"
"Oh?"
Moody's eye sharpened in an instant.
His magical eye began to spin rapidly. His right hand dropped instinctively to the wand at his hip, and something in his manner suggested he was very eager to use it.
Beside him, Lupin stepped quickly forward and laid a hand on Moody's arm. "Alastor. That's enough—"
"Relax, Remus. Do I look like someone who just goes around hexing people?"
Moody turned to look at him, the corner of his mouth was curling into a smile that meant several things at once.
Lupin said nothing. He simply looked at Moody. His expression said everything.
The little lions bit down on their laughter. Do you not have any self-awareness at all?
Moody appeared not to catch the look. He bared a set of yellowed teeth and turned back to Harry. "Tell me, Harry—how many points did she take?"
"Fifty—"
Harry answered at once.
Everyone in the room—Sherlock excepted, felt a flicker of anticipation.
"Gryffindor gains fifty points," Moody said, without a moment's hesitation. "Call it a commendation for Sherlock Holmes's courage. As for the detention—"
He glanced over at Lupin.
"I'll have a word with Professor McGonagall," Lupin said, and exhaled slowly, pressing two fingers to his brow.
As much as anyone might dislike her, Umbridge was still a teacher with every right to deduct points and assign detention.
Moody had restored the points by exercising his own authority as a teacher—fair enough. But detention could only be cancelled by the Headmaster or the Deputy Headmistress.
"Why the heavy sigh?" Moody raised an eyebrow and clapped Lupin on the shoulder hard enough to make him wince. "If you think it'll be trouble, I'll go straight to Albus. Letting a woman like that—filthy, contemptible—be the one to haul students into detention? You might not find it embarrassing. I do."
Moody's undisguised contempt drew laughter from the entire class.
A warm and light mood flooded the room.
The moment Umbridge slunk away, Defence Against the Dark Arts immediately reverted to the lively, engaging class it had always been.
Professor Lupin had the students review wizard duelling.
When the lesson ended, he called the excited Gryffindors to attention and spoke to them with quiet sincerity:
"On at least one point, Professor Umbridge was not wrong—your O.W.L.s matter enormously. They will shape your futures for years to come. If you haven't been taking your career prospects seriously, now is the time to start. And in order to make sure you all perform to the best of your abilities, I'm afraid we're all going to have to work harder than before."
The bell rang. The little lions poured out of the classroom in a cheerful huddle around Sherlock.
"That's our Lion King!"
"Absolute legend!"
"Thank Merlin we still have Professor Lupin and Professor Moody. If that old hag were the only one teaching us, I'd be dead in the water for O.W.L.s this year."
"Don't flatter yourself—you'd be dead in the water regardless."
"What did you just say—oi, you've got a nerve—"
After saying their goodbyes to the chattering crowd, the Gryffindor four made their way to the Great Hall for dinner.
Word of what had happened—Hermione's challenge, Sherlock's rebuttal, Moody's intervention, spread through the castle with uncanny speed.
Even by Hogwarts standards, it was remarkable.
Beyond their own year, Gryffindors from every other year came over to greet Sherlock and Hermione.
In a short time, students from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw were pressing in too, hungry for a firsthand account. After all, even in Hogwarts' long history, a student openly defying a teacher was rare enough—a teacher physically disciplining a colleague was something that might very well be unprecedented.
Only the Slytherin table seemed untouched by the excitement.
The little serpents either kept their heads down over their plates or murmured among themselves; the occasional glance they cast across the hall carried cold detachment or outright hostility. Perhaps because Umbridge was herself a Slytherin alumna, they instinctively closed ranks around one of their own.
"Since Gemma left, Slytherin hasn't had a single person worth respecting."
Cho Chang had come over to sit with Harry, and she stirred her pumpkin soup with a thoughtful air, her dark hair falling in thick curtains on either side of her face.
"For a real Slytherin, someone like Umbridge—all toadying and with low cunning should be a source of shame. But all they see is that she's a Slytherin, and that's enough for them to look the other way."
Everyone around the table nodded. If they had any fond feelings toward Slytherin at all, those feelings came entirely from Gemma Farley. Even Severus Snape whose alignment was no secret, had never managed to earn their goodwill.
At the thought, Hermione glanced sideways at Sherlock, her expression was complicated.
She had spent no small amount of time at his home over the holiday. Living under the same roof had made things between them easier, more natural. But she wasn't the only one who had gained something from that.
Take right now, for instance.
Cho Chang, as Harry's girlfriend, had every reason in the world to leave the Ravenclaw table and come sit beside him. That was entirely ordinary.
What was less ordinary was that Luna, who had come with Cho, had unceremoniously shouldered Harry aside from his seat next to Sherlock and claimed it for herself.
Harry found himself mildly displaced and slightly unsure what to do with that.
Ginny, however, was delighted. The moment Harry was edged away from Sherlock, she immediately settled into the seat on his other side.
Cho noticed. She glanced at Harry. When he showed no particular reaction, she turned back and said, slowly: "Penelope used to say that Gemma was like a Crumple-Horned Snorkack that had wandered into a nest of vipers. Truer now than ever."
At the mention of Penelope, Ron couldn't help jumping in. He'd already bitten off a large chunk of steak and spoke around it indistinctly: "Speaking of which, Percy is such a complete idiot. A girl like Penelope, and he doesn't know how to keep her—all he cares about is those blasted Ministry reports on cauldron regulations—"
In the middle of the lively chatter, Luna turned her head and asked, quite suddenly: "Sherlock, I heard Umbridge put you in detention. Are you going to go?"
"Professor Lupin said he'd speak to Professor McGonagall about it," Harry added quickly, looking over with a faint flicker of worry. "Did he come find you? Did he say when he'd have an answer?"
"No."
Sherlock shook his head.
"It'll be fine—didn't Moody say if Professor Lupin couldn't sort it out, he'd handle it himself?" Ron said enthusiastically, still glowing. "He was absolutely brilliant today. Even better than yesterday."
"Whether they say anything or not, I'm not going," Sherlock said, his tone perfectly even. "It would be a waste of time."
A moment of silence then every hand at the table went up in a thumbs-up salute.
Because every teacher had loaded them with homework, even on the first day back, the four of them gathered in the common room after dinner to work through the assignments.
Harry knew nothing about the Giant Wars.
Ron couldn't fathom what the Moonstone had to do with anything.
The rest of the class was much the same.
As they always had, the others had no choice but to pin their hopes on Sherlock and Hermione.
By the next morning, the sky was just as grey and smothered as the day before.
A fine, delicate rain came drifting down soft as cat's fur tapping the stone windowpanes of Hogwarts Castle and leaving long, glittering trails.
The weather seemed to mirror the term itself: heavy, close, pressing in.
Neither morning Charms nor afternoon Transfiguration offered any relief.
Professor Flitwick and Professor McGonagall, seemingly without any prior arrangement, both delivered the same solemn address just as Lupin had done the evening before stressing the critical importance of O.W.L.s.
The difference was this: Lupin had mentioned it in passing at the end of class. Flitwick and McGonagall each devoted a full fifteen minutes before the lesson even began, and they meant every second of it.
"There is one thing you must understand," Professor Flitwick said, teetering as always atop his stack of books, which was the only way he could see over the lectern to the class below. "If you fail to pass even a single subject, your academic career at Hogwarts will be over."
"What?"
"That can't be right!"
"Don't think for a moment that it's impossible." The little professor's voice rose to a sharp, reedy pitch as he surveyed the stunned faces before him.
"I once had a student who left without a single certificate to his name. He had no choice but to leave after fifth year—ended up in Knockturn Alley, getting into all kinds of trouble—"
"Sherlock," Hermione murmured beside him, "isn't that the one you met when you were investigating that case?"
Sherlock gave a small nod.
During the investigation into the Greek Interpreter affair, he and Professor Flitwick had made a brief visit to Knockturn Alley, where they'd encountered a red-haired wizard named Morgoth.
He was there precisely because he'd never earned a single O.W.L. and therefore couldn't continue to sixth year—he'd simply been withdrawn from Hogwarts.
Things had turned around for him after that chance encounter with Flitwick, though. Out of regard for a former student, Flitwick had pointed him toward something better: a letter of introduction and a place at a unicorn sanctuary in Norway, run by another of the professor's old pupils.
But that was then.
Now, the magical economy had deteriorated across the board. The wizarding job market had grown difficult. Much like the Muggle world, graduates of magical schools found it hard to secure a good position.
In that climate, an O.W.L. certificate had become an essential foot in the door. Without even one to show, they would be very unlikely to have Morgoth's luck.
The remainder of the lesson was devoted to reviewing Accio and its variations—work they'd first done in fourth year. Flitwick was gracious enough to say outright that this would appear on the O.W.L. exam. Before releasing them, he also assigned a substantial stack of written work on Charms theory.
That last part was unprecedented. In years past, aside from Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms had always been the class that assigned the least homework.
O.W.L. year, it turned out was a completely different creature.
Transfiguration was no different.
"Without dedicated study, practice, and application, you will not pass your Transfiguration O.W.L.," Professor McGonagall told them, just as Flitwick had—before the lesson proper, her gaze moved steadily across the class.
"I believe that, with sufficient time and effort invested, every student in this room has every reason to earn a Transfiguration certificate. There is no reason you cannot."
At that, Neville let out a small, disbelieving sigh.
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