Teacher’s Assistant
After getting cornered by a young boy named Colin Creevy after lunch and being forced to take a photo for him with Lockhart, Harry had been dragged off to Defense Against the Dark Arts by said professor as he prattled on by some nonsense about coaching him in the way of fame. As if Harry wanted anything to do with fame.
Once Lockhart finally released him as they arrived at the classroom, Harry roughly adjusted his robes and stalked off to a seat in the back. He stacked up his gaudy textbooks as a wall between himself and the front of the room in an effort to not have to look at Lockhart anymore. The rest of the class came in and Ron and Hermione sat down on either side of him.
“Could’ve fried an egg on your face,” Ron snickered. “You’d best hope Creevy and Ginny don’t get together, they might start a Harry Potter fanclub.”
“Shut up,” Harry hissed with burning ears, already half melted against the table as he tried to hide behind his wall of textbooks from anyone who might have seen what happened in the hall. Hermione poorly stifled a giggle and Harry shot her a glare as well. By both of their shaking shoulders, he wasn’t very effective.
Once the whole class was seated, Lockhart loudly cleared his throat. Silence fell. It would be impressive if Harry hadn’t had class with McGonagall since first year– whom could silence a room by closing the door.
He reached forward, picking up Neville’s copy of Traveling with Trolls. He held it up for the class to see, winking at the portrait of himself on the cover. Harry glowered over his wall of textbooks as the man began another one of the long-winded speeches Harry was already sick of.
“Me,” he smiled charmingly. “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 paused, as if waiting for the class to laugh. A few boys smiled weekly, and a shocking number of females in the room swooned– though Harry noticed a few stone-faced girls from Ravenclaw who seemed entirely unimpressed.
“I see you’ve all bought my books-”
He was interrupted by a small but pointed cough. Lockhart faltered for almost a moment, before recovering his beaming smile.
“Ah yes! Allow me to introduce you all to my assistant teacher, Professor Jackson! I’m afraid he’ll be rather bored with not participating-”
“Thank you, Gilderoy,” Professor Jackson said, appearing from where he’d apparently been seated on the side of the classroom. He took Neville’s book form Lockhart and returned it to the boy, before he addressed the class with the same easy-going smile he’d had earlier.
“Hello, class. As Gilderoy said, I’m Professor Jackson. As you all know, I will be here to fill in any gaps Gilderoy might leave-”
He raised his voice to speak over Lockhart’s sputtering protests at the notion.
“-given your previous year of teaching. Now then, I believe Gilderoy has something for you?”
Lockhart cleared his throat as Professor Jackson stepped back to be at the corner of the blackboard.
“Yes. We’ll be starting with a little quiz– nothing to worry about, just to see if you’ve read the textbooks and how well you gleaned information…”
He passed out the sheets of parchment with obnoxiously pened cursive questions.
“Now then, you have thirty minutes, and your time starts… now!”
Harry looked down at his paper.
- What is Gilderoy Lockhart’s favorite color?
- What is Gilderoy Lockhart’s secret ambition?
- What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart’s greatest achievement to date?
It went on along the saem lines for three sheets of paper, ending on number 54: ‘When is Gilderoy Lockhart’s birthday and what would his ideal gift be?’.
Harry started down at the quiz in an awed disgust.
Half an hour later– in which Harry simply doodled on the sheet since it was apparently ungraded– Lockhart had Professor Jackson collect the papers and hand them to him. He 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 with the Yeti-”
As he gives them egotistical criticisms– to everyone but Hermione, who apparently got every one of them correct and went red when this was said– Professor Jackson walks to the other side of the board and begins to write something.
“Right then, to business,” Lockhart said, setting aside their ‘tests’. He bent down behind his desk– Professor Jackson was still writing, Harry was getting very curious as to what he was writing– and lifted a large, covered cage onto it. Those in the front row either leaned back or forward.
“Now– be warned! It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind–”
As Lockhart gave an– admittedly good– speech, Harry seemed to be the only one who noticed Professor Jackson turning the board around. A sketch of spintly, pointed-faced creatures with bulging eyes and what seemed to be dragonfly wings. There were things written next to the image, but they were written in a language Harry did not understand. At the same time, Lockhart whipped off the cover to the large cage. The very same creatures buzzed around in the cage. They were electric blue and had horribly shrill voices.
“Cornish pixies!” Lockhart announced dramatically. Professor Jackson rapped twice on the board and one of the lines of the foreign language twisted and changed to match the name. Harry found himself rather awed by the display. More intrigued than with what Lockhart had to say, anyway.
The Cornish pixies began jabbering and rocketing around the cage, rattling the bars and making funny faces at the people around them. Harry smiled, amused by their display. Professor Jackson rapped on the board again and another line changed.
‘Cornish Pixies: mischievous creatures, always up for a good laugh, but their idea of fun can be very dangerous’.
There was a small scramble for parchment as everyone began to note down what Professor Jackson had written.
“Yes,” Lockhart cleared his throat. “Thank you for these notes, Professor Jackson.”
“Of course Gilderoy. After all,” Professor Jackson’s grin was positively shark-like. “I’m here to fill in what you miss.”
Lockhart cleared his throat again, before turning back to the class with a grin. “Right then! Let’s see what you make of them!”
He opened the cage.
“GILDEROY!” Was roared over the sound of shrill cheers as the pixies swarmed the classroom as soon as they were free. It was chaos. The pixies shot every which way. Two grabbed Neville by the ears and hoisted him into the air before they were sent careening into the wall by a shock of purple. Neville was dropped and caught by Professor Jackson. He adjusted Neville’s cloak before slamming the two now unconscious pixies into the cage with a wand he suddenly had.
As the pixies smashed and tore through the room, half the class took shelter under their desks.
“Come on then, round them up, their only pixies!” Lockhart called, rolling up his sleeves. “Peskipiksi Pesternomi!”
Nothing happened aside from one of the pixies snatching his wand and throwing it out the window along with a multitude of other things. Lockhart paled and lunged under his own desk. An arc of purple swung through the air, taking out half the swarm and shooting them into the cage. The rest of the pixies turned to Professor Jackson. He bared his teeth at them– a threatening face that had most of the students shivering– and they darted back to the safety of their cage. A padlock slammed shut behind them.
Professor Jackson stood in front of the class, smoothing down his shirt– he was not wearing robes, just simple slacks and a dress shirt– before sharply waving his wand wordlessly. Everyone’s items mended themselves and neatly stacked upon the desks. Seeing as the danger was over, students slowly began crawling out from under their desks. The bell rang.
Professor Jackson smiled as everyone shakily took their items.
“Right then, read up about Cornish pixies from the library and give two paragraphs on what you learned for Monday! Have a good rest of your day everyone.”
There was a mad rush to the exit.
“Can you believe Lockhart?” Ron sneered.
“He was just trying to give us a demonstration,” Hermione defended.
“Demonstration?” Harry gaped. “Hermione they nearly carried Neville off-”
He patted the poor boy’s shoulder as he whimpered at the reminder, rubbing his ears before he broke off from the group to head to the hospital wing.
“If anything it was Professor Jackson who gave the demonstration. Hermione, Lockhart didn’t have a clue what he was doing!”
“Rubbish,” Hermione sniffed. “You’ve read his book– look at all those amazing things he’s done–!”
“He says he’s done,” Ron grumbles. Harry was inclined to agree.
“Oh you’re both impossible,” Hermione huffed, speeding away to Gryffindor tower.