Professor by Right of Conquest

<:-[Harry Potter]-:>

“Excuse me, what?” Asks a scraggly haired eleven-year-old boy lying in a hospital bed having only just, once again, survived an attempt on his life – the fourth so far in his rather short life – at the hand of the Dark Lord Voldemort with his elderly school headmaster – who’s obviously going senile with what he just told the boy – looking right at him, a box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavoured Beans in hand.

“In summary my boy, as you ‘technically’ defeated the DADA professor just days ago, the position has now been passed onto you by right of conquest.” Popping another – unfortunately Dung flavoured – bean into his mouth the headmaster cringes at the taste for a moment before continuing. “This means I’ll be expecting a full seven-year curriculum in accordance with the ICW education standards in three and a bit months’ time before term starts.”

“B-but sir,” Stutter out the flabbergasted student. “I’m only a first year, how am I meant to teach something that I’ve barely learnt myself? I’m the furthest thing from being qualified to teach at all, let alone Magic.”

Leaning forward, a twinkle in his eye, Dumbledore replies. “Why my boy, I’ve already worked the entire thing out. Professor Snape has been brewing Wit Sharpening and Memory Enhancing potions to help you rapidly learn at least up until early NEWT level in DADA in around a month or so. From there on you should be able to get through most of your next year curriculum on a similar schedule under the other teacher’s personal tutelage with a similar regimen of potions. Lastly, once you’ve finished your second year, I’ll teach you a bit of Occlumancy to help organise your memory so that you don’t end up forgetting most of what you’ve learnt up to then. That should leave you with two weeks at the end to organise your classes and get everything prepared alongside enough time for you to rest – maybe even work your way a bit further along in Defence for the seventh years – and recuperate before term begins.”

Flabbergasted at the absurd and yet rigorous workload that has just been dumped on him Harry sheepishly blinks for a few moments, his mouth opening and closing like a fishes in shock. Dumbledore, ignorant to the boy’s confusion, claps his hands together cheerfully and adds. “But until then I best have a house elf lead you to your new quarters so you can get everything organised and rest. Your classes will begin two days from now, after tomorrow’s grand feast and the students have all left for the summer break. Your guardians have been informed you won’t be returning to them this year, and likely any subsequent, and now I’ll have to go. I’ve got some lemon drops with my name on them and wouldn’t dare let Fawkes pinch them once again.”

With that last remark he turns and heads towards the hospital wings door, stopping briefly mid-way in pause as he suddenly speaks up. “Also, no-one among the students can be informed of this until the start of next term, including Mister Weasley and  Miss Granger. As far as they’ll know is that your being transported home via floo due to security issues. Toodles.” And thusly the mildly insane headmaster sprints out, chasing with his lemony delights at the forefront in his mind.

Leaving the dumbfounded newly deemed professor slamming his head into his hands and cursing for the first – and definitely not the last - time. “Fucking Potter luck.”

<:-[Harry Potter]-:>

Tripping out of the open fireplace inside the Leaky Cauldron, the currently glamoured Harry Potter, slams down – face first – into the concrete floor. Causing his already horrendous migraine – caused by a mix of stress, lack of sleep and the side effects of the potions he’s been taking for the past one and a half months – to worsen, making his currently brown eyes squint under the harsh ringing in his ears.

Grouchily crawling upwards, the young professor scowls, something he picked up from his many private lessons with Snape, as he dusts off his grey trousers and looks up to face the mostly empty bar. The normally busy bar being devoid of all but Tom, the barkeep, and a handful of regulars due to the fact that the usual influx of Hogwarts students hasn’t passed through yet. Mostly because their letters haven’t arrived, the exact reason Harry is standing here today.

Over the past several weeks Harry’s life was what one could easily refer to as a student’s worse nightmare. He’s crammed and forced every last drop of Defence knowledge he could from both the restricted and unrestricted areas of the library. Much faster than Dumbledore predicted due to a combination of Snape’s higher quality potions and Harry actually putting in the effort to learn, something that he barely did the past year due to both Ron’s influence, it being an ingrained habit from his Dursley days and because he didn’t want to upset Hermione by scoring better than her – and god is she worse than Ron when she gets jealous. Followed by another month of going through not one, not two but almost three years of every other subject in the goddamn curriculum because his next year schedule won’t afford him more than one free period during a five-day school week.

But regardless he charged on, trying to meet goddamn unreasonable standards – for an almost twelve-year-old at least -, qualifications so he doesn’t lost his position. As such an event occurring would likely lead to him losing his magic, the main reason no professor has ever dared try to run away before the full year ends due to that stupid jinx on the post. Something that Harry has sworn several times thus far will kill him from the sheer overwhelming amount of workload he’s suffering under to even try and become an actual professor.

Sighing once again he, under a glamour to make him look more like a half-goblin than an eleven-year-old boy, passes through the tavern and out through the back alley into Diagon Alley. Not even pausing to appreciate the organised chaos that is the alley, he marches into Flourish and Blotts and starts to flicker through each and every Defence book that he hasn’t already consumed in his quest to find the ‘perfect’ course book for each year. Eventually settling upon having all seven total Defence Against The Dark Arts Revised – books one through four – and Advanced Defence Against The Dark Arts Revised  -books five through seven - books serve as his mandatory textbook for the term. The series was originally by Galatea Merryford and updated by Albus Dumbledore and Gerrelt Grindlewald in the mid-1930s before their relationship floundered and Gerrelt became a Dark Lord – a person whose both reached a certain level of power in the Dark arts and has applied it in such a way never done before whilst having a following of over a hundred bonded individuals. Harry’s mind habitually provides before he slams down some rudimentary Occlumancy barriers, only a few days into their existence, to keep him from getting distracted by all two hundred and eighty-seven Dark Lords who’ve existed in recorded history.

Jotting down the registration numbers of the books and their prices he pockets the scrap of parchment – linked to one in Dumbledore’s office so that he doesn’t need to deliver it himself later – Harry lets out a deep sigh of relief before he realises that in his, rather long, browsing session through the Defence section of the store a crowd appears to have somehow formed all around and throughout it. Popping his head out of the piles of tomes that are shelved all around him he peeks around the corner and spots a rather familiar blond-haired idiot. Realising that such a brief description could both apply to Malfoy and to this other… being Harry mentally corrects himself with; the writer of the most flawed, inconsistent, and backwards Defence texts he’s ever had the horror of reading. One Gilderoy Lockhart.

Wincing at the dunderheads – he really needs to stop picking up insults from Snape before it gets worse – blinding grin he hides back behind the shelves of books as he considers briefly how reasonable strangling the bastard would be. Eventually holding said murderous urge back with the intent of maintaining his honestly non-existent thus far career in mind he exales a deep breath before dropping the exhausting stream of glamours that had been layered onto his person all day – his only partially developed stamina being stretched to its thinnest in order to maintain the spell – as its unlikely he’ll be spotted out amongst such a crowd.

Slipping into the hoard of braindead fans he made decent, and slow headway, across the crowd until he heard a familiar loudmouth yell. “Harry!” With a brief twitch in his eye being the only possible sign of the growing irritation in the young boy he turns to look right at his two sole friends: Ron, the red-headed loudmouth in question, and Hermione, the brunette bookworm who’s a lot quieter but a lot bossier. He likes the two of them honestly, Ron’s the first person he ever met who was nice to him  – and he kept following you around like an ill-mannered dog for weeks until everyone else left you alone – and Hermione’s kind-hearted – and she get’s Ron studying, thus giving you an excuse to having at least decent grades. It’s not like I’m using them or anything – even though they irritate you so much day in day out, supplies the Slytherin part of him that he honestly tries to ignore most the time – they’re my friends so we help each other out – and since the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, they are still too useful to get rid of so soon.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts he momentarily debates pretending that he didn’t hear him and just walking off before they catch up to him. But sadly, in that one moment Hermione, like a speeding bullet of hugs, slammed right into Harry locking him up with her arms. Oh, how much he missed this. Being suffocated is just so very great. Not.

Choaking out a single. “Hermione.”

Was all the relief he ever got as the foremost of all that embodies hell in his sleep ridden mind steps forth from the podium before which he stood above all others like a shepherd leading his flock – an idiot leading wizards, as the two words are practically synonymous – with the three most resented words Harry could call forth to mind. “Could it be? Is that Harry Potter?”

Bounding forward with unrefined strength the sunny dispositioned demon known as Lockhart grapples himself onto Harry’s shoulder like a fucking parasite as he grinningly swung the duo towards the camera. “Smile Harry, together we’ll make the front page.”

And that was when the stress Harry had piling up and up and up over the past few weeks finally boiled over and in one utterly satisfying burst of accidental magic Harry swung Lockhart over his head in a feat of unwithheld fury just as the camera’s flash clicked. Leaving the very image captured in the frame that of the infamous ‘Boy-Who-Lived’ throwing the renowned author Gilderoy Lockhart halfway across the alley with the latter’s smile still plastered onto his face.

Panting heavily from the exertion of sheer magic paired with his admittedly above average strength – as he’s been relying on nutrition potions instead of meals for the past few weeks paired with regular exercise and yoga to help him relax after studying for so long – Harry stands before the frozen crowd and with one final glare in the direction of the author he marches off and into Madame Maxin’s for some professor robes – preparing himself for a rather lengthy explanation as to his situation as he does so -  leaving the majority of the Weasleys, Hemione and the approaching Malfoys put off by the surprising reaction of the Boy-Who-Lived – not Ginny though as her fantasised ‘lover’ has just elevated themselves to a level reserved for gods of might unfound leaving all dreams her mother tried to nurture within her at marrying him replaced with boundless worship.

Later on, after the alley cleared, a group of aurors led by one Alistor Moody would help the poor author out of the wall he got himself stuck into due to the throw and upon him recklessly going to obliviate them the overly paranoid auror would banish him so hard he once again socketed right back into the stone brick wall. Then, once they’d removed him once again, they arrested him for attempted memory erasure and following a rather short trial in which he inexplicably confessed to using the spell to steal all ‘his’ achievements from other witches and wizards. In the end he was immediately and irreversibly kissed leaving all mention of the idiot to be mere memories.