STROKE

He wanted to become an Auror, but found halfway through that it was all just too tough, and so dropped out. After a few years miserably travelling the world, trying to decide what to do next, he decides to take his hand at teaching. There's rumour that the job is cursed, but he doesn't believe in curses, not of that sort. He's young, not easily corrupted and can take any dark creature or wizard that decides to throw itself at him. Or so he likes to think. He decides that he will not let anything stop him from going to a second year of teaching, and then a third, a fourth.

There is not much competition for the job. With an O in NEWT level DADA, Dumbledore only gives him a short interview to make sure he isn't some kind of maniac then welcomes him aboard. Determined to do this well, he spends the time leading up to September working out plans for the year for all seven years, trying to keep a good balance between studying dark magic and dark creatures, straight out curses and inner corruption. He picks the set books with deliberation and care, not just setting the standard books like he knows his predecessors did.

In the first few days he finds he loves to teach. The innocent fascination of the first years, so many of them muggle-born now, regarding each new thing with amazement. The seventh years, young adults rather than children. He doesn't remember the teachers at Hogwarts being as cool as he sees himself when he was a pupil.

He didn't notice the girl in his Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff study group in fifth year for a long time. Well, he knew who she was, knew her name, but didn't properly notice her as a person until December. Now, as the snow starts to fall outside the windows, he feels self conscious as her eyes quietly follow him around the room. Her friends all seem to be bleach blondes with shiny nails, short skirts and grinning faces plastered in cheap potion. She stands out, a crow among doves. He's always liked crows.

The previous DADA teacher, an old witch, had been gradually poisoned. The water supply going up to her office had become the home of a tiny but deadly breed of frog. Its eggs, each coated in a protective layer of jelly, were too small to be easily seen and her eyesight had been going anyway. The poison in the eggs gradually got into her bloodstream, reaching her brain in small amounts. Everyone assumed she was just going senile.

As a result, all seven years are badly behind.

The fifth years are used to DADA being a doss lesson and they are often difficult to control. His Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff group contains a pair of troublemakers that incite the entire class to be as brattish as possible, throwing quills at him when his back was turned and competing to see who could come up with the most outlandish excuse for not doing homework. He doles out detentions left right and centre but nothing has any effect. Only the girl sits quietly while her friends pass notes and giggle, listening to what he has to say. She is the sole thing that stops teaching the group becoming a living hell.

One day after the class has finished she stays behind, wanting to know more about the NEWT level Basilisk that he mentioned in passing during the lesson. He's happy to oblige, having a huge stack of parchment to mark in his room that he's procrastinated over for weeks. He pulls a chair round to his side of the desk for her and gets a book from the storeroom, telling her about complex mix of magic and biology behind the snake's eyes. She seems fascinated, and he feels rather bad when finally the guilt of the parchment becomes too much and he says he has to go. They both stand up, the chairs forcing them closer together. He can smell her hair, and somehow his hand touches her arm. She glances up at him, shy but a little coy. All of a sudden she seems so perfect and he finds himself wrapping his arms around her, hugging her close. She doesn't resist and he kisses her lightly on the lips before the shock that he's just sexually abused a pupil hits him, but by then it's too late, she's wrapped her arms around his neck and pulling his head down to meet hers.

It spirals over the following few months, going from innocent kisses to copulating on the desks. The more it goes on the harder it is to look at her and her work deteriorates. She no longer needs to be good at the subject to be noticed.

He knows that it's wrong. But she's fifteen, not a child. He knows what her friends get up to in their teenage dormitories, behind their own closed doors. He is not taking advantage of her. He keeps telling himself this as she quietly waits with a crumpled piece of homework in her hand, her excuse should anyone discover she was there. He feels guilty as he unlocks the door and lets her in, the parchment dropping to the floor the moment the door is closed.

It's hard to treat her the same as the other pupils in class. He takes note of how he interacts with the others and then tries to apply it to her but she makes it so hard, shooting what she thinks are secret and intimate glances across the room at him when to him they seem as obvious as daylight.

She's forgotten her homework for the sixth time. He threatens to take her to her head of house. They both know it's an empty threat.

Next week, he thinks, next week I'll put a stop to this. She has natural talent with Defence Against the Dark Arts but he knows she's far too distracted in lessons to pay enough attention. Not to mention the trouble it could cause him; he could be sacked or worse. But the truth is he's made this same resolution the week before, and the week before, and the week before that. There's a great chance he'll make it next week as well. It's not his fault she doesn't choose to apply herself with her work. As for being found out… he isn't going to tell anyone and he knows she won't as somehow deep down he knows that she's as ashamed as he is.

The hardest part is always afterwards, with the uncomfortable fumbling with buttons and laces and mumblings of the next arranged meeting time. It's at this time that he knows he should say something but he never does.

He predicted her an E grade for her OWL, somehow thinking that even with her flagging work she'd somehow pull through. Now he holds the list of grades for fifth year and he can hardly believe that she's only managed a P, and only just scraped that at that. Now he realises he was stupid to ever expect she could get an E. If anyone else had presented him with such shoddy work so consistently he would have gone to Dumbledore, but of course she was a special case. He never wanted to draw attention to her.

He'd told her one hot afternoon in his office, at one of the times that he felt so natural with her it almost felt as if they were in a happy, normal relationship like any other, that she had the talent and skills to take DADA to NEWT and maybe even then train to be an Auror. At the time, he had believed it. It's only now, sitting alone with his head in his hands, that he decides once and for all to end it.

It's the last week of the school year and she's waiting outside his office for one last time before the long six week gap of the summer. He's predisposed, going over some work with one of the first years. He keeps talking to them for as long as possible, trying to delay the moment when he'll have to see her again.

Finally the little first year says he has to go and leaves the room. She passes him as he goes out, so sure of herself that she doesn't wait for him to invite her in.

She asks, lightheartedly, what her OWL grade is. He doesn't answer her. It's not for him to tell. She tries to kiss him and he pushes her away, telling her that she's not to come to his office again. He knows he's going about this too harshly but he doesn't want to give himself the opportunity to back out. She leaves abruptly. He sees the tears she wants to hide from him.

She does not appear in the next few DADA lessons. Her friends watch him accusingly, making thinly veiled accusations.

The last day of the year, Dumbledore calls him to his office. There's a lot of talk of how he is sure he is a good man, but child abuse is child abuse and it wouldn't be appropriate for him to continue teaching at the school. She has got her revenge.

As he leaves, he thinks about just how well crafted the curse has to be.