Defense Against the Dark Arts
Raph made his way down to the Great Hall with Harry and Ron the next morning. He had just barely stepped foot into the hall when Professor McGonagall stopped him, a frown on her face.
“Follow me,” was all she said. Raph groaned silently, waving at a concerned Harry and Ron and wondering what he could have possibly done to warrant an interrogation this early in the morning.
Professor McGonagall led him to a room tucked away in a corridor not far from the Great Hall. Raph assumed it must have been a meeting room for the teachers, because he had never been in there before. Still, he entered skeptically, catching sight of a frowning Donnie and anxious Leo sitting at one end of a large oak table. Sitting at the other end, he noticed with a small jolt, were Professors Flitwick and Snape.
“Sit,” Professor McGonagall said, gesturing at an empty seat next to Leo and Donnie. Raph sat hesitantly as Professor McGonagall settled between the Charms and Potions professors.
Hardly a minute later, the door opened again, and Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher, came in, followed by Mikey.
“Now that we’re all here,” Professor McGonagall said as Sprout sat next to her, “I believe we should start, shouldn’t we?”
Professors Flitwick and Sprout nodded while Snape looked over the brothers coldly. Raph was tense, and he could tell his brothers were, too.
“If we’ve done anything wrong, Professors—” Leo started, but was soon cut off by Professor McGonagall.
“No, nothing of the sort—well, at least, not since yesterday,” she amended, her lips pursing slightly. But they soon formed a frown as she continued, “We simply need to ask about the whereabouts of your parents.”
At once, Raph and his brothers all stiffened.
“You see, we tried to contact them,” Professor Sprout said, brows furrowed in concern. “But we couldn’t locate them.”
“Er—we have an apartment,” Leo said. “In London.”
“Yes, yes, we found that,” Flitwick said, a bit impatiently. “But we haven’t been able to find your parents.”
Next to Raph, Mikey laughed uncomfortably, and Donnie chuckled awkwardly. Raph and Leo, meanwhile, were staring straight at the teachers, eyes wide.
“This is the part where you tell us where your parents are,” Snape said. It was the first time he’d spoken to them that morning, and Raph had a hunching suspicion that he still wasn’t over their little adventure yesterday.
“Er—about that,” Leo said, and Raph could tell he was frantically searching for words to say. “You see, our parents—”
“We don’t have a mom,” Raph said suddenly. His tone was blunt, and all of the teacher’s heads snapped to him. His brothers all looked at him like he had three heads, but Raph continued, “Our father’s in Japan. He won’t be back for a while, so just leave whatever note you have for him at our apartment in London. He’ll see it eventually.”
It wasn’t the worst lie, Raph thought. The teachers, however, weren’t so convinced.
“I have a sneaking suspicion that you are not being entirely truthful, Hamato,” Snape said, his cold eyes boring into Raph’s.
Raph held his gaze and forced himself to shrug. “Why would I lie about that?”
“What Raph means to say,” Leo cut in quickly, before Snape could be even more ticked off than he already was, “is that our father really is in Japan, but we’re not entirely sure where, exactly, in Japan he is. Our father is very… secretive.”
“Yeah,” Donnie agreed. “You could probably fill the entirety of the New York sewer system with information that he kept from us.”
Mikey nodded. “At least half of it,” he said.
Snape clenched his jaw. “We have ways of making students talk—”
“Severus!” McGonagall hissed, shooting a glare at the Potions professor. “We do not threaten students, you know this.” She turned to the Hamatos and sighed. “But,” she added, and Raph heard Mikey gulp, “if we find out that you have not been entirely truthful to us today, I can assure you your punishment will be far worse than that of Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley’s, are we clear?”
“Yes, Professor,” they all mumbled.
Mikey’s stomach gave a loud growl.
“Well,” Professor Sprout said, standing. “I believe that is our signal to get to breakfast.”
“You four are dismissed,” Flitwick said, also standing.
The brothers almost sprinted out of the room, anxious to get away from Snape’s vicious stare and McGonagall’s calculating gaze.
Raph sat down at the table and was greeted by a very stunned Harry, a very red Ron, and a very smug Hermione.
“What’d I miss?” he grumbled, grabbing a slice of toast and some eggs.
“Ron getting humiliated,” Hermione said matter-of-factly, pushing her book away as she had a bite of oatmeal.
“I got a Howler,” Ron said miserably, putting his head in his hands.
“Well, I don’t know what you expected, Ron, but you—”
“Don’t tell me I deserved it,” snapped Ron.
Raph wasn’t exactly sure what a Howler is, but Hermione leaned in and explained it to him.
When she was done, Raph patted Ron on the back sympathetically. “Sorry about that, man.”
Harry pushed his porridge away, and Raph glanced over to see guilt written clearly across the boy’s face. He grimaced, about to tell him not to sweat it, but then McGonagall came along the Gryffindor table, handing out course schedules. She fixed Raph with a stern look before she handed him his. Raph’s grimace deepened as he took the schedule and saw that Gryffindors had double Herbology with the Hufflepuffs next.
He sighed.
Raph, Harry, Ron, and Hermione left the castle together, crossed the vegetable patch, and made for the greenhouses, where the magical plants were kept. As they neared the greenhouses they saw the rest of the class standing outside, waiting for Professor Sprout. Mikey caught Raph’s eye and waved, grinning widely. They had only just joined them when Professor Sprout came striding into view across the lawn, accompanied by Gilderoy Lockhart. Professor Sprout’s arms were full of bandages, and with another twinge of guilt, Harry spotted the Whomping Willow in the distance, several of its branches now in slings.
Raph looked over the two professors. Sprout was a squat little witch who wore a patched hat over her flyaway hair; there was usually a large amount of earth on her clothes and her fingernails that would, at times, remind Raph of Mikey after missions in the woods when they were at the farmhouse. Gilderoy Lockhart, however, was immaculate in sweeping robes of turquoise, his golden hair shining under a perfectly positioned turquoise hat with gold trimming.
Raph held back a snort.
“Oh, hello there!” Lockhart called, beaming at the crowd of assembled students. “Just been showing Professor Sprout the right way to doctor a Whomping Willow! But I don’t want you running away with the idea that I’m better at Herbology than she is!” Raph rolled his eyes, but Lockhart was still talking. “I just happen to have met several of these exotic plants on my travels…”
“Greenhouse three today, chaps!” said Professor Sprout, who was looking unusually disgruntled, not at all her normal cheerful self. Mikey noticed this too, looking at Raph from where he stood.
There was a murmur of interest at Professor Sprout’s announcement. They had only ever worked in greenhouse one before—greenhouse three housed far more interesting and dangerous plants, which Raph had some reserves about. Ever since he was turned into a plant at the farmhouse, he’d been… hesitant, to say the least, around plants and shrubs. Just as he was about to make his way inside, fighting against the smell of damp earth and fertilizer, Lockhart grabbed Harry’s hand.
“Harry! I’ve been wanting a word—you don’t mind if he’s a couple of minutes late, do you, Professor Sprout?”
If the scowl on Professor Sprout’s face was any indication, she minded very much, but Lockhart said, “That’s the ticket.” He closed the greenhouse door in her face, shutting the rest of the class off from Harry and Lockhart’s conversation.
Professor Sprout turned to them, fuming.
“Well,” she spat, rolling up her sleeves. “I suppose we’ll just have to wait for Mr. Potter to start this lesson.” She walked over to a trestle bench in the center of the greenhouse. Around twenty pairs of different-colored ear muffs, Raph noticed, were lying on the bench. “Talk amongst yourselves until Professor Lockhart is done with his conversation.”
Mikey sidled over to Raph, frowning at the closed greenhouse door.
I wonder what Lockhart wanted to talk to Harry about, Mikey signed, moving his hands around in the air.
Raph shrugged. Based on what happened in the bookstore, I’d say nothing important, he signed back.
Ron glanced over at them, brows furrowed in confusion. “What’re you two doing with your hands?” he asked.
Raph turned to him and smirked. Wouldn’t you like to know?
Hermione’s eyes suddenly lit up. “You’re talking in sign language, aren’t you?” she said. Mikey nodded. “I think I saw you guys doing that last year, but I never got the chance to ask about it.” She paused, as if wondering how to phrase her next question that was so painstakingly obvious that Raph cringed.
Luckily for her, Mikey decided to rip the bandaid off. “You see my throat?” he asked, pulling his robes down to reveal the large scar Mikey had gotten from the Shredder. “Sometimes, it hurts so badly I can’t talk. It was really annoying, trying to talk to my brothers without actually being able to speak, so we decided to learn sign language in case it happened too often.”
“And do you use it often?” Hermione said quietly, her gaze lingering on Mikey’s scar.
Mikey shrugged. “Whenever Leo or I can’t talk, yeah.”
“Leo’s voice is also pretty rough sometimes,” Raph said at Hermione and Ron’s wide eyes. They seemed like they wanted to ask more questions, but before they could Raph said, “But that’s his story to tell.”
Just then, the greenhouse doors opened, and Harry walked in, looking positively confused. Everyone took that as their cue to line up at the center table while Professor Sprout moved to the front.
“We’ll be repotting Mandrakes today,” the Herbology professor explained. “Now, who can tell me the properties of the Mandrake?”
With one last uneasy glance at Raph and Mikey, Hermione raised her hand.
“Mandrake, or Mandragora, is a powerful restorative,” said Hermione, sounding as usual as though she had swallowed the textbook. “It is used to return people who have been transfigured or cursed to their original state.”
“Excellent. Ten points to Gryffindor,” Sprout said. “The Mandrake forms an essential part of most antidotes. It is also, however, dangerous. Who can tell me why?”
Hermione spoke again. “The cry of the Mandrake is fatal to anyone who hears it,” she said promptly.
“Precisely. Take another ten points.” Raph raised a brow. This didn’t exactly seem… safe for a bunch of twelve-year-olds. “Now, the Mandrakes we have here are still very young.”
She pointed to a row of deep trays as she spoke, and everyone shuffled forward for a better look. A hundred or so tufty little plants, purplish green in color, were growing there in rows. Raph suppressed a shudder. He hated this class.
“Everyone take a pair of ear muffs,” Professor Sprout said.
There was a scramble as everyone tried to seize a pear that wasn’t pink and fluffy. Raph and Mikey were there first—Raph grabbed a pair of sleek red earmuffs while Mikey’s were more orange in color.
“When I tell you to put them on, make sure your ears are completely covered,” Professor Sprout instructed. “When it is safe to remove them, I will give you the thumbs-up. Right—ear muffs on.”
Raph snapped the ear muffs over his ears; they shut out sound completely. Professor Sprout put the pink, fluffy pair over her own ears, rolled up the sleeves of her robes, grasped one of the tufty plants firmly, and pulled hard.
Raph nearly recoiled at the sight.
Instead of roots, a small, muddy, and extremely ugly baby popped out of the earth. The leaves were growing right out of his head. He had pale green, mottled skin, and was clearly bawling at the top of his lungs.
Professor Sprout took a large plant pot from under the table and plunged the Mandrake into it, burying him in dark, damp compost until only the tufted leaves were visible. Sprout dusted off her hands, gave them all the thumbs-up, and removed her own earmuffs.
“As our Mandrakes are only seedlings, their cries won’t kill yet,” she said calmly, as if she’d just done nothing more exciting than water a begonia. “However, they will knock you out for several hours, and as I’m sure none of you want to miss your first day back, make sure your ear muffs are securely in place while you work. I will attract your attention when it is time to pack up.
“Four to a tray—there is a large supply of pots here—compost in the sacks over there—and be careful of the Venomous Tentacula, it’s teething.”
She gave a sharp slap to a spiky, dark red plant as she spoke, making it draw in the long feelers that had been inching sneakily over her shoulder.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione took a tray with a Hufflepuff boy while Raph and Mikey joined a tray of two Gryffindors. There was really no chance to talk to them, however, because their ear muffs were back on and they needed to concentrate on the Mandrakes. Professor Sprout had made it look extremely easy, but it wasn’t. The Mandrakes didn’t like coming out of the earth, but they didn’t seem to want to go back into it either. They squirmed, kicked, flailed their sharp little fists, and gnashed their teeth. At one point, Raph got so fed up that he gave a particularly troublesome Mandrake a bit stronger of a shove than he needed to.
Panting slightly, he looked up for a moment as he dusted off his hands, then paused when he saw Mikey. His brother was frowning at the Hufflepuff that had joined Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
What’s up? Raph signed. Mikey shook his head.
That’s Justin Finch-Fletchley. Raph looked at the boy again.
Is he a bad kid?
Mikey shook his head. No. He paused. But I just got this feeling that…
Whatever he was about to sign, Raph wasn’t sure, because at that moment Professor Sprout walked over to them, glancing at them sternly. Mikey chuckled sheepishly and went back to potting the Mandrakes, which he was much better at than Raph (much to Raph’s irritation). Though, Raph supposed as he picked up another Mandrake, nose wrinkling in disgust, Mikey was also much more eager to participate in this class, as well.
By the end of class, Raph was eager to change out of his sweaty, dirty robes, much like everyone else. He and Mikey followed the others back up to the castle for a quick wash, and then the Gryffindors hurried off to Transfiguration while Mikey and the other Hufflepuffs made their way to Potions.
Professor McGonagall’s classes were always hard work, but today was especially difficult. Everything Raph had learned last year seemed to have leaked out of his head over the summer (though, in his defense, he was working, patrolling, and training on a daily basis, which didn’t leave much time for homework). Raph was supposed to be turning a beetle into a button, but he, not unlike Harry, was only succeeding in making it scurry around his desk the whole class block. It didn’t help that he wanted to curl back every time it came near him (flashes of a certain bug-infested planet came to mind every time he thought too hard), and that Donnie had managed to do it on his second try.
At least I’m not doing as worse as Ron, Raph thought, looking over at the red-head. Ron had patched up his wand with some borrowed Spellotape, but it seemed to be damaged beyond repair. It kept crackling and sparking at odd moments, and every time Ron tried to transfigure his beetle it engulfed him in thick gray smoke that smelled of rotten eggs. Unable to see what he was doing, Ron accidentally squashed his beetle with his elbow and had to ask for a new one. Professor McGonagall wasn’t pleased.
When the lunch bell finally rang, Raph was relieved. He and Donnie filed out of the classroom behind Harry, Ron, and Hermione (“Just get another wand,” Hermione suggested as Ron whacked his wand furiously on his hand).
“What’ve you got next?” Donnie asked Raph as they made their way down to the Great Hall.
Raph sighed. “Defense Against the Dark Arts,” he said.
Donnie rolled his eyes. “Good luck,” he said, frowning. “Lockhart may claim to be amazing at everything, but he’s a lousy teacher—trust me. He made us all take a quiz on the most specific aspects of his life, and then he tried to tell us about pixies—” Donnie threw his hands up in the air, exasperated, “—and he couldn’t even get their scientific name right! He’s such an egotistical airhead it makes me shocked that he’s ever defeated a werewolf in a telephone booth.”
Raph smiled, rolling his shoulders. “Well,” he said, thinking of a certain hockey-stick-weilding-egotistical airhead he used to know, “now I’m intrigued.”
After lunch, however, they had a few minutes to spare, so Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Raph wandered out to the overcast courtyard. Raph’s brothers were all doing their own things—Mikey was catching up with his friends in Hufflepuff, Donnie was in the library, and Raph had seen Leo talking with his dormmates at the Slytherin table. To Raph’s surprise, Leo seemed to be enjoying the conversation, so Raph didn’t want to disturb his brother; it was good that he was finally finding some friends in that House.
Raph had been absentmindedly twiddling with his sais around his neck when Harry, Ron, and Hermione all looked up. Raph followed their gaze to see a very small, mousy-haired boy clutching what looked like a regular camera.
“All right, Harry? I’m—I’m Colin Creevey,” the boy said breathlessly, and Raph raised a brow, watching the interaction with piqued interest and trying not to laugh. Colin took a tentative step forward. “I’m in Gryffindor, too. D’you think—would it be all right if—can I have a picture?” he said, raising the camera hopefully.
“A picture?” Harry repeated blankly.
“So I can prove I’ve met you,” Colin said eagerly, taking another step forward. Raph leaned back, amused. “I know all about you. Everyone’s told me. About how you survived when You-Know-Who tried to kill you and how he disappeared and everything and how you've still got a lightning scar on your forehead, and a boy in my dormitory said if I develop the film in the right potion, the pictures’ll move!” Colin drew a great shuddering breath of excitement and said, “It’s amazing here, isn’t it? I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got a letter from Hogwarts. My dad’s a milkman, he couldn’t believe it either. So I’m taking loads of pictures to send home to him. And it’d be really good if I had one of you! Maybe your friend could take it and I could stand next to you. And then, could you sign it?”
Raph looked at the kid and smiled slightly. The boy reminded him much like how Mikey used to act when he was younger—so many thoughts and not a great way to get them out. But just as he was about to volunteer to take the photo (and not least because he knew Harry’s already-red face would grow redder still), a shrill voice pierced the courtyard.
“Signed photos? You’re giving out signed photos, Potter?”
Malfoy stopped right behind Colin, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle. Crabbe met Raph’s eyes over Malfoy’s shoulder and scowled. Raph smirked at him, and Crabbe’s scowl deepened; Raph could only guess it was because he had shoved Crabbe up against a wall last year (he had told Leo it was purely to get detention with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, but that hadn’t been the only reason).
“Everyone line up!” Malfoy roared to the crowd that had gathered around them. “Harry Potter’s giving out signed photos!”
“No, I’m not,” Harry said angrily. “Shut up, Malfoy.”
“You’re just jealous,” piped up Colin, whose entire body was about as thick as Crabbe’s neck.
“Jealous?” Malfoy said incredulously; he didn’t need to shout anymore: half the courtyard was listening in. “Of what? I don’t want a foul scar right across my head, thanks. I don’t think getting your head cut open so that it leaves a scar makes you that special, myself.”
Raph’s eyes narrowed, and he was tempted to ask Malfoy how he would feel if he was strapped to a metal table while a worm that could control his brain dug its way into his eye, but Raph refrained. He shook off the memory as he stood up.
“I think you should leave, Malfoy,” he growled, and he felt everyone’s eyes train on him, but he was focused solely on Malfoy.
Malfoy barked out a laugh. “And why would I do that?” He smirked at Harry. “If I can get a signed photo, then why should I leave?”
“Eat slugs, Malfoy,” Ron said angrily. Crabbe and Goyle began cracking their knuckles, and Raph stepped forward, his eyes trained on them as he tensed.
“Be careful, Weasley,” Malfoy sneered. “You don’t want to start any trouble or your Mummy’ll have to come and take you away from school.” He put on a shrill, piercing voice. “‘If you put another toe out of line’—”
A knot of Slytherin fifth-years nearby laughed loudly at this.
“I’m sure Weasley would like a signed photo, Potter,” smirked Malfoy. “It’d be worth more than his family’s whole house—”
Ron whipped out his broken wand, but just as Raph was about to do the same, Hermione shut her book with a snap and whispered, “Look out!”
“What’s all this, what’s all this?” Gilderoy Lockhart was striding toward them, his turquoise robes swirling behind him. “Who’s giving out signed photos?” He saw Harry and flung an arm around his shoulders. “Shouldn’t have asked! We meet again, Harry!”
Raph shot a sympathetic look to Harry, who was pinned to Lockhart’s side and burning to humiliation. Malfoy slid back into the crowd with a smirk.
“Come on then, Mr. Creevey,” Lockhart said, beaming at Colin. “A double portrait, can’t do better than that, and we’ll both sign it for you.”
Colin fumbled for his camera and took the picture as the bell rang behind them, signaling the start of afternoon classes.
“Off you go, move along there,” Lockhart called to the crowd, and he set off back to the castle with Harry, who shot one last panicked look at Ron, Hermione, and Raph before disappearing into the castle.
“Well,” Raph said after a moment of stunned silence. “That was certainly… something.”
“Come on,” Hermione said, standing with a sigh. “We’d better get to class.”
Ron groaned, but he and Raph followed her inside to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. They all sat down around Harry, who was sulking in his chair in the back of the classroom.
“You could’ve fried an egg on your face,” Ron said. “You’d better hope Creevey doesn’t meet Ginny, or they’ll be starting a Harry Potter fan club.”
“Shut up,” snapped Harry.
Raph snorted. Lockhart would probably have a field day if he ever heard the phrase “Harry Potter fan club”.
When the whole class was seated—and, surprisingly enough, it was just Gryffindors—Lockhart cleared his throat loudly. Silence fell, and Lockhart reached forward, picked up Neville’s copy of Travels with Trolls, and held it up to show his own, winking portrait on the front.
“Me,” Lockhart said, pointing at it and winking as well. “Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award—but I don’t talk about that. I didn’t get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!”
He waited for them to laugh; a few people smiled weakly.
He’s an egotistical airhead, Raph remembered Donnie saying, and at the moment, he couldn’t think of a truer statement.
“I see you’ve all bought a complete set of my books—well done. I thought we’d start with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about—just check how well you’ve read them, how much you’ve taken in—”
Raph didn’t even bother putting down any answers on his quiz. Like Donnie had said, they were all incredibly specific questions about Lockhart that even if Raph had read the books, he wouldn’t have remembered anything at all.
Half an hour later, Lockhart collected the papers and rifled through them in front of the class.
“Tut, tut—hardly any of you remembered that my favorite color is lilac. I say so in Year of the Yeti. And a few of you need to read Wanderings with Werewolves more carefully—I clearly state in chapter twelve that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples—though I wouldn’t say no to a large bottle of Ogden’s Old Firewhisky!”
He gave them another roguish wink. Ron was now staring at Lockhart with an expression of disbelief on his face; Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, who were sitting in the front, were shaking with silent laughter. Raph was a strange mixture of bored and amused. Hermione, on the other hand, was listening to Lockhart with rapt attention and gave a start when he mentioned her name.
“But Miss Granger knew my secret ambition is to rid the world of evil and market my own range of hair-care potions—good girl! In fact”—he flipped her paper over—“full marks! Where is Miss Granger?”
Hermione raised a trembling hand.
“Excellent!” beamed Lockhart. “Quite excellent! Take ten points for Gryffindor! And so—to business—”
He bent down behind his desk and lifted a large, covered cage onto it.
“Now—be warned! It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourself facing your worst fears in this room.” (Fat chance, Raph thought.) “Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here.” (Fatter chance.) “All I ask is that you remain calm.”
Even as Harry leaned around his pile of books for a better look at the cage, Raph remained reclined in his seat, his arms crossed. He looked at the cage with suspicious apprehension as Lockhart placed a hand on the cover. Dean and Seamus had stopped laughing now, and Neville was cowering in his front row seat.
“I must ask you not to scream,” Lockhart said in a low voice. “It might provoke them.”
As nearly the whole class held its breath, Lockhart whipped off the cover.
“Yes,” he said dramatically. “Freshly caught Cornish pixies.”
Raph sighed through his nose and let out a quiet chuckle of disbelief. Seamus Finnigan, however, couldn’t control himself. He let out a snort of laughter that even Lockhart couldn’t mistake for a scream of terror.
“Yes?” He smiled at Seamus.
“Well, they’re not—they’re not very—dangerous, are they?” Seamus choked.
“Don’t be so sure!” Lockhart said, waggling a finger annoyingly in Seamus’s face. “Devilish tricky little blighters they can be!”
The pixies themselves were electric blue and about eight inches high, with pointed faces and voices so shrill it was like listening to a lot of budgies arguing. The moment the cover had been removed, they had started jabbering and rocketing around, rattling the bars and making bizarre faces at the people closest to them.
“Right then,” Lockhart said loudly, and Raph suddenly straightened. He knew where this was going. “Let’s see what you make of them!”
Lockhart opened the cage.
The room erupted into chaos.
The pixies shot in every direction like rockets. Two of them seized Nevile by the ears and lifted him into the air. Several shot straight through the window, showering the back row with broken glass. The rest proceeded to wreck the classroom more effectively than a rampaging rhino. They grabbed ink bottles and sprayed the class with them, shredded books and papers, tore pictures from the wall, dumped out the waste basket, grabbed bags of books and threw them out of the smashed window, and within minutes, half of the class was sheltering under desks and Neville was swinging from the iron chandelier in the ceiling.
“Come on now—round them up, round them up, they’re only pixies,” Lockhart shouted. He rolled up his sleeves, brandished his wand, and bellowed, “Peskipiksi Pesternomi!”
It had absolutely no effect; one of the pixies seized his wand and threw it out of the window, too. Lockhart gulped and dove under his own desk, narrowly avoiding being tackled by Raph, who had leapt forward to catch Neville as he fell from the chandelier.
The bell rang; there was a mad rush toward the exit. In the relative calm that followed, Lockhart straightened up, caught sight of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Raph, who were almost at the door, and said, “Well, I’ll ask you four to just nip the rest of them back into their cage.” He swept past them and shut the door quickly behind them.
“Can you believe him?” roared Ron as one of the remaining pixies bit him painfully on the ear.
“He just wants to give us some hands-on experience,” said Hermione, immobilizing two pixies at once with a clever Freezing Charm and stuffing them back into their cage.
“Oh, yeah, because that’s super effective, leaving a bunch of second-years to clean up after him, right?” Raph growled. He was punching the pixies out of the air, and they fell to the ground as they were knocked out. He already had an impressive pile around him.
“Hands on?” repeated Harry, who was trying to grab a pixie dancing out of reach with its tongue out. “Hermione, he didn’t have a clue what he was doing—”
“Rubbish,” said Hermione at once. “You’ve read his books—look at all those amazing things he’s done—”
“He says he’s done,” Ron muttered.
Raph nodded. “I agree with Ron,” he said, knocking the last pixie out. He sighed, dusting off his hands, and surveyed the two-dozen-or-so pixies lying on the floor around him. “Lockhart doesn’t seem to be the most… intelligent.”
He began picking pixies off of the ground and throwing them back into their cage. Hermione looked at him, brows furrowed. For the moment, at least, all conversation of Lockhart seemed to be forgotten. “Don’t you think we should try being a bit more gentle?” she asked, as the faint sound of pixies hitting the back bars of the cage filled the room.
Raph paused, realized what he was doing, and winced. “Sorry,” he said, placing them lightly into the cage. He shuddered. “They reminded me a bit too much like bugs for a second.”
“Are you scared of bugs?” Harry asked incredulously. Raph turned to him, glaring, and Harry quickly added, “It’s just that—I don’t think I’ve ever seen you or your brothers much scared of anything. Even last year, in the Forbidden Forest when Voldemort attacked”—Ron and Hermione winced at the name—“you and your brothers didn’t seem all too frightened.”
Raph’s expression softened. “If we were scared of everything that posed a threat to our lives,” he said, closing the cage and locking the pixies in, “well… I don’t want to live every day in fear.” He looked at the floor. “We did too much of that growing up.”
There was a heavy silence in the room as the three of them fumbled for something more to say.
“I’m afraid of spiders,” Ron volunteered finally.
Raph barked out a sharp laugh. “Me, too,” he said. “But I’d choose a spider over a cockroach any day.”
The four of them chuckled, and the mood was considerably lighter as they made their way to their next class.