A/N: I'd like to sincerely thank everyone who reviewed last time. Your reviews were devoured with relish, and your concerns were noted.

The DADA Professor

Professor Horace Slughorn sat in Professor Dumbledore's chair, and repeatedly ran through his thinning hair a sweaty hand. His flickering tongue coated with saliva his chapped lips, and his rheumy eyes— they glistened in the faint light— flitted from face to face, alighting on each for no more than an instant. When these hasty glances were reciprocated, Slughorn's gaze shot to the ground, like a giant that by accident trips itself and tumbles four floors down in a tangle of limbs; then it shot up and affixed itself to the false ceiling. The food in his plate lay untouched.

Harry smiled whilst sipping his soup. Such, he mused, were the pressures of trying to replace, for a few days, the great man.

And at last, when the feast was done and the plates put away; when the ghosts that had through the walls emerged had into them returned; when the rattle of the Bloody Baron's chains ceased, and Peeves the poltergeist with a final drawn out cackle swooped away; when the din of merriment had in volume dwindled to a murmur, which in turn gradually died out, Slughorn stood, and, drawing a deep breath—

But he knocked over his goblet; acknowledged with a timorous smile the titters that broke through all four tables; set it straight again. Professor Flitwick, who sat by his side, vanished the spilled contents whilst clucking of his tongue in sympathy. Slughorn cleared his throat. Silence.

"I am your deputy headmaster," he began, "and this is not my chair—" Sniggers. "But then I was not Deputy last year," he continued hastily, the faint beginnings of a blush breaking out on his jiggling jowls like a rash too often scratched; he had forgotten whatever speech he'd thought out. "It was professor Robards, who, of course, has retired— but...but we will get to that later, I suppose," he finished lamely. He cleared his throat again and composed himself.

"Professor Dumbledore, who— and I say this for the benefit of the first years—is headmaster, will return tomorrow, and… and I have some announcements to make.

"The forbidden forest is forbidden, with good reason. You do not want to see what is in it. Your timetables will be handed to you tomorrow by your—" he turned to Flitwick, and Harry was certain the whole hall could hear him mouth heads? "your... heads of houses," he said, after Flitwick favoured him with a nod. "In place of Professor Robards, who for over twenty years taught defence here and was the best deputy headmaster one could ask for— and whose farewell, of course, some of you would have attended... he liked the candy; he told me to tell you he liked the candy you gave him." This, in the prepared version of the speech, was presumably meant to be a joke, but it was met with stony silence, for Slughorn had delivered this proclamation in an ominous whisper, white faced. He fished out from his pocket a handkerchief and nodded, nodded as though his life depended on it.

"In place of Professor Robards, we will have Professor Tom Marvolo Riddle, a former student—" and before the figure at the end of the table could get to his feet, Slughorn continued, "and—oh yes, there will be an event—a tournament— for which we will be holding trials...but, but I believe, ah, yes, Professor Dumbledore will tell you about that when he returns, of course, of course." And then, wiping his brow, wiping in haste his hands against his waist coat, ignoring the gracious smile that professor Riddle sent his way, he said, "Prefects, please lead your charges back to your common rooms. Good night. Good night everyone. See you tomorrow morning." And with that, he slumped back in Dumbledore's chair.

All around him, Harry heard the scraping sounds of chairs being drawn back. The shuffling of feet followed. He tried to manipulate the corners of his lips into a welcoming grin, then stood and made his way to the edge of the table, where the fidgety first years (had he ever been that tiny?) were, whilst emitting the odd squeak, listening to Amelia Bones, the other sixth year Gryffindor prefect.

"We'll wait for the others to leave; it's easier that way, see?" she was saying earnestly. "Hogwarts is your home for the next seven years, and, I promise, you'll love every moment here. Great facilities. The classes, the activities, they're all amazing, and you'll make so many friends." The words gushed out in a cascade, and yet they were distinctive and her diction precise. When she stressed on facilities, amazing and friends (an odd sort of stress with no pause, no deep drawn breath), the words were with some vehemence delivered: a sudden sharp upturn of pitch, a jerk of the shoulders, a bob of the head, a shimmy of closely cropped brunette. She nodded to him as he approached, and swept behind her left ear a few stray strands of hair. "Hey, Harry," and to the rest, "this is Harry Potter. He's the other sixth year prefect. Harry, we're going to wait for the everyone else to file out."

"Sure," he said, and offered the first years the smile he'd painstakingly manufactured. If Amelia's delicate snort was anything to go by, it didn't have the intended effect. He turned to Amelia. "Didn't get to ask you in the prefects' carriage, how was your summer? Trip to France, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes. Edgar didn't wish to be saddled with me for two weeks. But he roamed the city, and I found a duelling society, so it worked out all right. Oh, and he's an auror now! Gave his exams last month, and then the trip to France— but you know all that already. Mother and father bought him a, what was it now— something quidditch related, some kind of robes." She rolled her eyes.

"Falmouth Falcons," Harry said. "He wrote to me last week. There was an implicit invite to go to three broomsticks and get smashed. Sadly, I was busy."

"Oh?" she raised an eyebrow. "Dumbledore's a taskmaster?"

He hummed an affirmative. "Also," he said, "your brother's a cheapskate. I'd expected a feast, given how much you and I helped with his projects."

"Tell him that." She smirked. "No, seriously, write that to him. But Amy, trainees make so little." She was imitating Edgar's low monotone. Then she looked smug. "But I know for a fact that half his stipend-" she glanced at the first years and shrugged. "I'll tell you later. Grownups doing grown-up things is a subject best left to the privacy of the common room, no?"

He hummed again; shut out the noise swirling around him; peered over Amelia's head—she stood facing him and was a head shorter than him— at the new defence professor. With a slow movement her body tilted sideways and her head swiveled to stare in the same direction.

"He's very good looking. There's that, at least," she remarked.

True, Harry thought. Professor Riddle was probably in his mid-thirties. He stood at six two and had draped over his wiry body a plain black cloak, the kind one expects to find on a caricature portraying the studious, sleep deprived, Hogwarts going recluse; the kind of caricature that has neither the means nor the inclination to remedy its social situation, and no desire to bear upon its person some shallow symbol of ostentation that could, perhaps, catapult it into the company of those of a higher station—this studious caricature shunned such things. However, despite its bland nature, that cloak somehow helped enhance Riddle's charm: trust me, I am one of you, his clothing seemed to say; I too am poor and live within my means.

His hair, jet black, was neatly slicked back, and this helped emphasize an aristocratic face— high cheekbones, sharp nose, kind brown eyes, sensitive lips that whilst conveying amusement quivered into a carefree smile. He was laughing at something Professor Mcgonagall was saying.

"Think he's competent?" Amelia asked.

"Would Professor Dumbledore hire him if he weren't?"

"Harry, we've had this conversation before," she said. "Dumbledore is better than most, but, well... you didn't take divination in year three, did you? I've purged from my memory the professor's name. Yes, he was really that bad. Horrible hire. I still remember... but I can see I'm not making an impression. Either way, I shifted to runes the next year, and— Oh, where's he now? Fired. Yes, yes, I know. And I know that you know he's gone. Stop giving me that smug grin, you greasy git, I'm not wrong. It was a mistake to hire him in the first place, that's what I mean. But let's not discuss this. The hall is nearly empty. Come, let's take them to the tower now." And, turning to the first years, she said, "Try and memorize this trip; it's why we waited for the others to go first. There should be fewer distractions. Now, pay attention. The stairs shift around a fair bit, but—"

The other houses, Bellatrix imagined, pictured the Slytherin common room as a foul-smelling lair that was dank, dark, monstrous and muddy. A place with serpent shaped tiles—tiles that when trodden on emitted ominous hisses; a roof that shed crimson tears; walls that on their slick surfaces bore several twisted tapestries depicting in a splash of violent colour the death of innocence and the end of the world; and perhaps this mental picture was completed by hooded figures, decked in dark clothes and high boots, that bathed in unicorn blood as they ritualistically thrust at the air their daggers and sibilantly sang in an ancient tongue some dark, dark song as a tribute to the dark arts.

Or perhaps to them, to these other houses, this was a place where yarns were spun, power plays made, brutal politicking with a renewed vigour pursued; perhaps to them this place was a microcosm of a smarmy society that to sustain itself devoured its misfits.

But no. No. In reality, once one put aside the odd social climber such as Malfoy, Slytherin house, much to her agony, bar their notions of, and their devotion to, blood purity (and they too had their fair share of refuse: half bloods and the like, and someone even said this room had once been desecrated by the tremulous tread of a mudblood; if true, then the sorting hat had heaped on them great indignity), did not have much by way of collective personality or additional privilege to adequately differentiate themselves from the trash that dwelt in the other three houses. Slytherin too had idiots, idealists, poets, romantics, and all-round bumbling buffoons. Here, in this common room, the majority, in place of a pursuit of fructifying activity and burning ambition—or dare she say radical ideology?—meekly wove for themselves, with mediocrity as raw material, a shuddering pall for intellect; wrapped it around themselves like one would a quilt during a cold winter; submitted themselves to a thoughtless state of repose; exchanged brainless witticisms; and with sweet smiles figuratively sucked each other off. Which is all to say that self-indulgence was here the norm, and that most here had all the charm of an uprooted mandrake muddling through fiendfyre. How, at times, she wished she could empty half the house, consequences be damned!

As for facilities, then well, barring the green drapes, and the snake carvings— randomly scattered throughout the common room— and perhaps also the low temperature, a benefit of being situated in the bowels of the castle instead of atop a tower, she had her doubts about them being any better off than the others; that senile old fool would not allow it.

In Slytherin, influence got you exclusive access to...sofas in the common room, or to couches; allowed you to exchange with someone your bed, or monopolize the seats in front of the fireplace. And if you were enough of a hotshot, then you could cast silencing charms during conversations in the common room and get away with it; no prefect would strut up to you and request that it be taken down.

Her circle of acquaintances had... influence. This is a closed society, Rodolphus, now in his seventh year and still a prefect, had declared during a Hogsmeade weekend, when they were all drunk; exclusive access to all slytherin privileges for my blood brothers and my sisters. Then he'd wept into his firewhiskey; and even whilst intoxicated she'd wanted to strangle him and bash his head in with a brick for suggesting that this trivial rubbish, the token privilege that he'd wheedled out of Slughorn, was a display of power.

But either way, his influence had got them seats tonight in front of the fireplace. Not that it mattered. Now that everyone else had ambled away to sleep, they were anyway left with an empty common room for themselves. It was nearly twelve. There were four of them seated there. Her, Lucius, Rodolphus, and Alecto. Amycus and Rabastan had retired a while ago, citing sleep deprivation.

Her thoughts returned to her conversation with Dolohov. He had only offered vague hints after that thrice damned Prewett had blundered his way into their compartment, but she was sure that she would find a way to piece it all together. She knew what she wanted.

"Bella? What do you think? Bella?" Alecto's face was scrunched up in consternation. I think if I had a knife right now, I would remove from your face all that excess fat, Bellatrix wanted to say. You flobberworm. You revolting mediocrity. On a mental and physical level you are a monstrous error; a bulbous blotch of ink spilled by a slip of hand on a footnote in the book of nature.

She felt a sudden urge to scream; to cause someone immense pain; to throw something at a wall and watch it shatter.

"Nothing," she said instead, offering Alecto a smile. They shared a room. They were in the same year. "My mind was elsewhere. You were saying?"

"Riddle," Alecto said. "The new Defence—"

"Tom Riddle," Rodolphus cut in. "Sounds like a mudblood, does he not? But Lucius here—" Lucius was a close friend of his, and despite Bellatrix feeling no great desire to be treated to his society, these fireside conversations more often than not saw Lucius occupy a seat and offer his opinions. This, of course, was a roundabout way of saying that here he practiced his diplomacy, for he never seemed to have an opinion on anything that mattered, and he could be maddeningly vague if you tried pinning him down. Bellatrix joined in on these conversations if she had nothing better to do and if she was not sleepy, which, admittedly, was not all that often. "Lucius thinks," Rodolphus continued, "that he has heard the name Marvolo somewhere."

"I am not sure," Lucius offered. "I could send my father a letter and ask, of course. I think I saw this name while studying a family tree." He hesitated. "Which one, I do not remember, and it was so long ago that I cannot say with certainty if—"

Bellatrix waved her hand, a hint of disdain hardening her features.

"Mudblood, Half Blood, what does it matter? The creatures that that fool with one foot in the grave hires...and the ministry lets him. They are all gutless. Incompetent. The ministry, the professors here, Dumbledore, Robards. Now Robards was a clown. I will not have you talk about the arts your family dabbles in, Ms. Black; I see a darkness in that and I see a darkness in you. No, no, say no more. Mr. Potter! Mr. Potter! Yes, very good. That is the answer I was looking for. Very good. 20 points to Gryffindor." Her face was twisted into an expression of mockery."Your father's coin, Lucius; your father keeps that corpse, Bagnold, in power. Your father is on the board of Governors and yet he does nothing; and Dumbledore, like a parasite, leeches the life out of our traditions, our arts, our society. This Riddle, this third-rate clown, this con artist with sludge flowing in his veins, is just another in a long line—"

Her voice had risen as she spoke, and now she was gritting her teeth. She could feel a headache coming on. She looked at his placid expression—she felt that her outbursts had lately ceased to have an effect on him—and scoffed. She pushed back her chair.

"I am going out," she said. "Good night."

"Bella—Bella, you can't." Alecto's fat face duly trotted out a disturbed expression. "Filch must be making his rounds, and—"

"And you think that that squib frightens me? Pray I do not find him, for if I do I will stun him, bind him, obliviate him, and banish him into a broom closet." And with this, ignoring the open mouths of her acquaintances, she pushed open the portrait and strode out into the darkness.

From the indents in the walls there protruded flaming torches. Down the corridor ran this column, a pair of torches every ten meters, and this was the arrangement for the next fifty meters, till the corridor itself swerved upward, and then so did the lights—upwards, out of sight, exuding throughout that angry red.

Where to now? she wondered. I am above the lake, and further upward lies a labyrinth of stairways. Fourth floor, perhaps? There is an abandoned classroom there. I could, if I wished to, go there and work on a few spells. But she wasn't in the mood. Storming out had, in the heat of the moment, seemed right. But now as the corridor transitioned into a dungeon, and the dungeon into a chamber, and as she stalked through the chamber to a stairway that with a groan slid away and took her to a passage that, if followed to the end, would take her to the doors of the great hall, the pointlessness of this whole exercise struck her; and with a huff she blinked in irritation, let her head drop to her chin, and, with slumped shoulders, prepared to make her way back to the common room.

Then a form coming her way caught her eye. At a distance it seemed like a reflection, for the similarities were remarkable. The vision had a similarly slender frame, and a pale face so like hers that she might've been staring into a mirror; but as the other with tentative steps approached, the differences became more pronounced: the silky hair was a different colour; a tinge of pink on the cheeks like a blemish marred her double's face; and frightened brown eyes met her violet ones for a moment as they stood opposite each other, now only two meters apart.

Bellatrix's lips curled into a mocking smile.

"Evening, Andy," she chirped, taking some pleasure in how Andromeda drew away as she approached, attempting to make herself smaller, praying perhaps that the ground would swallow her up.

"Bellatrix," she mumbled. "It's way past bedtime." Then she winced as Bellatrix with an extended arm grasped her jaw.

"So it is," Bellatrix cried. And then in a small voice that one would associate with a hurt child, she said, "Why, will you give me detention, dear sister?"

"I—no, no. Please, let go."

Bellatrix's eyes lost some of their joviality, and now there was a hardness to her down drawn lips.

"Sweet sister," she said in a sing song voice, "sadly, we did not speak this summer. You barricaded yourself in your room. And on the train your friends stopped a heart to heart. So let it be here. Why, my dear, are you out at this time?" As she spoke, her voice was still pleasant, but her arm had snaked down Andromeda's jaw and now her nails were digging crescents into Andromeda's right arm, breaking skin, drawing blood. The writhing arm evoked in Bellatrix a memory of the throbbing pelt she had toyed with last winter— the squirrel she had held under cruciatus until its eyes exploded, its brain burst, till she'd stolen from it its pitiful squeals, till its pathetic squirming morphed into a weak pedalling of the hind legs; then, when it had ceased to move, boredom set in and she'd rid herself of it. No one had known. She was yet to cast about for a new toy. But perhaps, here— no, no, not here; even the walls here had eyes. Such a pity.

"I'm a prefect; I have to do these rounds," Andromeda hissed, wrapping around her sister's wrist her hand and wrenching it away, the slightest flicker of a spark in her eyes. "I'm fifteen; you, you of all people don't get to tell me—" and then, just as quickly as it had come, the spark died, and she seemed to shrivel up.

"Oh, but there is more," Bellatrix said acidly. "Your rounds ended an hour ago. I saw the other prefect return—no, no I will not buy into your filthy lies, you blood traitor. Mother and father might; they love you the most; but I, I know! You are dragging through the dirt our family's name. Whoring yourself out in some broom closet, were you not? Who was it?" With a giggle she grabbed her sister's hair. "Tell me, tell me, Andy; trust your big sister. Or shall I pluck out from your mind his name?" She fingered her wand. "You have not forgotten last time, have you?"

Andromeda's cheeks, now pink with injury, went well with her watery eyes.

"What's happened to you?" she asked, brushing away from under her eyelids the little droplets that were threatening to fall. "You and I, we were so close three years ago, and now— what's wrong with you now? I'm not your enemy. I— I still love you, and this is how you treat me. I swear, I've told no one about your use of legilimency on me, and I never will. Never! I... I am your sister, Bella. Surely, you—"

"Spare me the sentimental slop," Bellatrix said coldly. "I grew up; that's all there is to it. I hate what you have become; I hate how the affection that our family has shown you has got to your head and turned you into...into this!" Her face showed disgust. "If I catch you out again, then I promise, you will not be let off this easily; as it is, I can smell the filth on you. Get out of my sight, and do not forget to scrub yourself clean tonight, lest I take it upon myself to rid our family of this blemish— you get me, do you not? Good. Now out of my sight you go." And with this, she stepped back and let her trembling sister pass, watching her disappear into the dark.

Then, with a carefree whistle, she began to make her way to that abandoned classroom on the fourth floor. A mood for some spell training had suddenly taken hold.

A/N (and this will probably be the last of its kind. A man can hope. I too know how annoying it can be when the writer decides to use their A/Ns to type out an essay on some random shit):

Yes, Amelia Bones is in Gryffindor here. It's fascinating that in every fic of this sort I've read, she's a Hufflepuff. Now, I don't ascribe much importance to houses per se, but Bones being in Gryffindor suits this story well, so Gryffindor it is.

I will not confirm or deny any theories regarding Tom Riddle, but feel free to speculate. You'll have to wait several chapters for an explicit explanation behind why Dumbledore hired him-Is Dumbles after all a moron? Have I too fallen into the blackhole of mindless Dumbledore bashing?-but, if you were to read between the lines, then, over the next few chapters, it should frankly be quite obvious as to what I have in mind...

There might be mis-steps over the course of this work, and despite me trying my best I will make mistakes that make the prose clunky, or that leave you wondering what the fuck the writer was trying to say. Feel free to point out such issues with the prose, or with the grammar. Feel free, too, to comment on minor details that I've missed out on or written differently; it's after all been five years since I last read the HP series (I have, however, to my credit, read it five times, so I'd hope that I remember most of it), and a few inconsistencies here and there throughout the work may be chalked up to having spent a lot of time reading fanfiction.

Thank you for reading and please, please leave a review! I greatly appreciate them! Cheers, and have a wonderful week!