Title: All You Need is Faith.

Author: Knife Hand

Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated

Spoilers: None.

Rating: R

Disclaimer: I do not own either Buffy or Harry Potter.

Summary: In desperation, with the threat of Dolores Umbridge hanging over his head, Dumbledore reaches out to find a new DADA Professor. What he gets is a survivor, a warrior and a rebel… who can't do magic. But maybe this Dark Slayer is exactly what Hogwarts needs.

Harry wondered what DADA would be like this year. In general he did not expect it to be that good a year. At the end of last year he had fought Voldemort and watched Cedric die; then over the summer he had been vilified in the press and put on trail for defending himself. Now, for the first time the DADA professor has not appeared at all during the Welcome Feast. Another thing that was different in this, his Fifth Year, was that the DADA line up had changed, instead of having the class with the Slytherins, which had been the norm up until now, the Gryffindors had it with Hufflepuff.

Harry looked up out of his introspection and saw that Ron had already entered the classroom, and hurried into the room himself. He instantly noticed that the Professor was not at the front desk so, with the paranoia of having all of his previous DADA Professors try to kill him at some point, he looked around and noticed a figure that he concluded must be the Professor in the shadows at the back of the room. Noticing that he had seen them, the Professor nodded to Harry and he sat down, not with Ron but at an empty table, near one with a redheaded and a blonde Hufflepuff he vaguely remembered as Susan Bones and Hannah Abbot, suddenly he wondered at how few classes the Gryffindors actually had with the Hufflepuffs and why they were usually paired up with the Slytherins given the house rivalry.

A few minutes later Hermione entered the classroom, having come from Ancient Runes while Harry and Ron had been in Divination, where the nutball Professor had predicted Harry's death, yet again. Pausing for a second at the door, Hermione's eyes quickly sought out the Professor before taking the seat next to Harry. A few more Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors floated into the room just before the bell.

When the professor emerged from the shadows, she was vastly different than anyone expected. Firstly she looked to be in her early twenties, with long black hair held back in a ponytail. She was dressed in a pair of combat boots; black leather pants that looked skin tight and a black tank top with a few tattoos visible on her biceps. She stalked to the front of the class, lighting up a cigarette as she went then she hopped up to sit on top of the desk facing the class. She shifted her posture to pull the roll out from under her ass as she took a drag of her cigarette. She quickly ran through the roll then looked over the class.

"Right. My name's Faith, and I'll be teaching you Defence this year. By the way, congratulations. Apart from Potter, Bones and Granger, you are all officially dead." She began. "You all came into your Defence classroom and thought nothing was wrong when the teacher was absent. Only these three were aware of their surroundings. The rest of you would have been ambushed."

The Professor took a long drag of her cigarette then let it out into the silence.

"That's unfair." Ron said quietly.

"Weasley, ain't it? Of course the damn thing's unfair. That's why they call it an ambush. Tell me, Weasley. How many exits are there to this room?" Faith asked.

"Two." Ron replied.

"Any one else?" Faith replied.

"Three, Professor." Hermione said, getting some shocked looks. "The door to the corridor, the door to your office and the Trapdoor under Dean's desk."

"You forgot the false bookcase door." Harry added, ignoring the stares he was now getting.

"Fucking right." Faith said, the students all now staring at her in shock. "I assume you two have been in the thick?"

"Thick of what?" Harry asked confused.

"Combat." Faith replied, getting a slow nod from Harry and a shrug from Hermione. "Good, maybe I ain't wasting my time. As for the rest of you, forget your textbooks. I didn't want a textbook but Prof D insisted."

"Professor." Susan Bones said with her hand in the air. "If we are not using the textbook, where will we learn the spells from?"

"Spells?" Faith said with a snort. "All I know about spells is don't speak Latin around the books, Love Spells are a big no-no unless you want the whole place loven' the Boy Toy and scrubbing bubbles amulets are probably not all they cracked up to be. Red and Tiger usually took care of all the Hocus Pocus."

"What?!" Ron exclaimed. "Defence Against the Dark Arts is being taught by a Muggle?"

"This ain't Defence Against the Dark Arts." Faith retorted. "This class will teach you to defend yourself regardless of what you come up against. Give me a simple spell, something seemingly harmless. Something light side, if you will."

"The Geminio Charm. It makes a duplicate of any item that disappears after a few hours." Hermione provided.

"Ok. Now how would you uses the… Geminio Charm, was it? How would you use that in a dangerous situation?" Faith asked. "Ideas? Anyone?"

"Well." Susan began, hesitantly. "If someone was after something, you could use the Charm to make a copy and switch it for the real item, so they think they got what they came for."

"Not bad." Faith said. "You would need to relocate almost immediately though in case they find the deception. How about in a stand up fight? Potter?"

"Thinking up the plan is usually Hermione's job." Harry said with a chuckle. "But I guess, in a stand up fight the bad guys would be after me, so if I could make duplicates of myself that would at least help distract them. Mione, would I need to do an animation spell to get them to move around?"

Hermione's mind was running, considering the possibility.

"Let's table that for the moment. Decoys are a good idea. Another way you could use it would be to duplicate weapons. Knives, arrows or bullets to attack the enemy. Physical shields or barricades to form a defensive position." Faith outlined. "You are all going to need to start thinking outside the box on ways to defend yourself or fight. And remember, if all else fails, decapitation usually works."

Faith looked around, noticing the shocked and shaken expressions on most of the student's faces as she took another drag from her cigarette.

"Alright. I think I've fried your brains enough for one day. For next class I want you to come up with one way to creatively use one spell you have learnt for a purpose other than what you were taught in an emergency situation. So a spell with an offensive purpose you need to find a way to use it solely defensively without directly affecting the opponent or vice versa. Get out of here, ok?" Faith said, and then added. "Potter, what did you mean that the bad guys would be after you?"

"Haven't you heard, Professor." Ron said bitterly. "Harry's the Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One."

"Chosen One huh?" Faith said with a chuckle. "Welcome to the club. Meetings are the third Thursday of every month. They were originally on Tuesdays but the world kept almost ending."

With that, the Boston born Slayer half stalked, half sashayed out of the classroom and into the Professor's office.

Faith sat in the armchair in her office, taking a drag on a cigarette. God, that was weird, her having an office. Hell, even the thought of her being in a position of responsibility was fucking scary. When G-man had approached her to do this gig, her first thought was that the Watcher had finally lost it. Her second thought, and first question to Giles, had been what had his precious Buffy said when he offered the job to the Blonde Slayer. She had been genuinely surprised when he had replied that Buffy had never been considered for the job. G-man had gone on to explain that Hogwarts would be facing some difficult times, and they required someone who would not flinch at doing what was needed, someone tempered in the fire of pain and suffering, like Faith had been and, she had been surprised to learn, as Giles himself had been.

When she had arrived she had been told that she was to be teaching 'Defence Against the Dark Arts', and was given an outline of what she was expected to teach over the following year. She had taken one glance at it, screwed it up and threw it in the fire. She would have pissed on it just to make a point, but her leather pants were skin tight and it would have taken too long to get them back to justify the effort.

"I don't do magic, I don't follow orders well and I ain't doing that shit." Faith had told the Headmaster and Deputy Headmistress, indicating to the burning course outline. "Teaching specific responses to specific threats is useless unless you know exactly what you are going to face. I'll teach 'em how to survive. I do this my way, or I bail and you deal with whoever the authorities were going to foist on you before you came begging to Giles."

With that she had turned and left the Staff Room. Since then she had done a hell of a lot more forward planning than she had in years, which was probably why she had ended up in prison for a stint. First thing she had done was rearrange the schedule for almost every year level. One of the first things she had heard about when she had been briefed by Giles was the animosity between Slytherin and Gryffindor Houses, yet when she had gotten here, the existing schedule always had those two Houses paired, so she had mixed things up. For First, Third, Fifth and Seventh Years the Lions were paired with the Badgers, while the Second, Fourth and Sixth they were paired with the Ravens.

The clock on the wall chimed and Faith looked up, taking one last drag from her smoke. It was time for the first class with the First Years. Unlike the Fifth Years she had taught that morning, she was not planning on doing the scare and confuse routine. For this one she actually had a proper lesson planned, one she had cobbled together from all the lectures and advice she had gotten from Giles over the years. She walked out of the Professor's Office and into the classroom, and leant against the front of the desk and waited. Under a minute later the first Ravenclaw and Slytherin First Years began filing in and sitting at their desks, most after staring at Faith in shock.

"My name is Professor Lehane and this is Defence class." Faith introduced herself, and then started taking the roll.

Listening to the advice of Giles, she had decided that she would be more formal with the first through third years than she was with the older students.

"You will not require your Wands in this class." Faith ordered, and saw the look of disappointment on the students faces. "Look, I understand that you are all eager to learn whatever spells you can, but there is no such thing as Defence specific spells. Any spells you will ever need to know you will learn in Transfiguration or Charms class. I'm here to teach you how to defend yourself, not to duplicate effort of the other Professors."

"Professor, how are we to defend ourselves if you don't show us what spells to use?" A Ravenclaw Girl asked.

"If I tell you what to use, then that's all you'll be able to do. What if someone does not react how I tell you they could?" Faith asked.

"I don't know." The girl said, looking guilty at her lack of knowledge.

"Exactly." Faith replied. "Don't worry, I will never punish you for not knowing an answer. That's why you are here. To answer, in that scenario, you would lose, or possibly die, depending on the situation. So, no, I will never give you a specific response to use, what I will do this year is to show you how to decide for yourself how to respond. Once you learn how to do that, then you will be ready for any situation."

Faith looked over the faces of the students. The Ravenclaws were, unsurprisingly, eager to learn this, while the Slytherins seemed to be split between sceptical interest and bafflement.

"Now, the first step is something that has both saved my life on a number of occasions and something I have hated with a passion." Faith said, before pausing for effect. "Research."

Faith spent the rest of the lesson with the students brainstorming the best methods of researching a topic. Naturally, being eleven years old, most of them seemed to think research was limited to simply looking in the text book. Some of the Ravenclaws suggested looking in the library for other books on the topic or asking others who had more knowledge. As the class drew to a close, Faith finished up the brainstorming session, having written down the ideas the students had come up with on a blackboard.

"Alright." Faith said. "For homework, I want you find out as much information as you can on Vampires. Just a hint, there is not much in your textbook on them. Write out a summary of what you have found and, more importantly, how you went about finding it."

"How long?" a Ravenclaw boy asked.

That stumped Faith for a second until she remembered that homework length was set in feet of parchment.

"No minimum, it is just a summary. I expect more than a few lines, but don't give me anything huge. I doubt you'll need more than two or three feet." Faith replied.

Faith wondered how they would go. She had arranged with the librarian to have some basic books on vampires, including some fiction novels, put in various areas of the library for this purpose, as she intended to set the same assignment with the Second and Third Years as well as the First Years.

TBC….