A Gifted Amateur

In Harry's first class with Madam Spurl, the aged witch limped slowly from her office to the front of the class. "Burn those books Lockhart put on the syllabus. Worthless as the man who wrote them. Today we'll begin with enchantments. You, you, you: stand up and wheel that table over here. Go slowly and don't rock it too much..."

She certainly had a voice and a presence. Her eyes on Harry as she scanned the room made Harry feel guilty for things he never done – and he didn't know why.

"Why can't you move it with magic?" someone a little brave and a little lazy asked. Malfoy, perhaps?

"Ask me that after the demonstration."

The nervous students from Slytherin who'd been nominated to move a table got up and did as she had bid them. Then they promptly sat down and tried to dissolve into their desks, as if they weren't witches and wizards but were rather oddly shaped planks of pine.

"These objects are from my private collection. I always keep at least one copy, and hopefully the original, of any enchantment I'm called on to defeat or outwit."

She pulled the cloth on the largest item on the table. What was underneath was disappointing, a stone like any stone that might have been used to construct Hogwarts. How was it enchanted?

"This stone was in the foundation of a home in France sixty-three years ago. It had probably been there for two hundred years or longer. It takes any magic cast near it and uses it to summon ghosts, poltergeists, wraiths, and even worse members of the spirit class. The home it was in was filled with ghosts by the time the team I was on came to work on it. Some were pleasant, if confused. Some were violent. It was a horrible situation..."

Hermione had her hand up. Madam Spurl nodded at her.

"Who did it and do you know why they did it?"

"Who? No. Someone long dead. Nameless by that point in time. As for why, I have my guesses. Perhaps it was a clever attempt to ruin a family rather than declaring a blood feud. Fill a house full of ghosts, drive everyone insane. Perhaps it was a way to clear out unwanted ghosts and ghouls from a different property. The actual exorcism of spirits, after all, can curse a location for decades or centuries. This is why Hogwarts does not banish even its resident poltergeist. The unluckiness, or worse, that might result stops every petition."

Harry sat forward in his desk and began to pay attention. The teacher might not look like much, but there was nothing wrong with her mind. Nothing at all. She was chattering away, explaining more about ghosts than Harry had been able to find in any of his books.

Yes, this was a very different teacher.

Harry gave his full interest to her presentations on the other two items. One converted magic into heat. Boring? No, not at all. The statue had been in a tunnel section that had killed three different teams of curse breakers and no one could figure out how they kept dying. The curse breakers had used magic, of course. The magic had caused the statue to heat up. That heat had melted small amounts of wax which had been mixed with vaporous poisons, gases which had survived for thousands of years just to stop anyone magical from bypassing the trap.

"There was enough of that wax on the walls to kill thousands," Madam Spurl said.

"How did you survive?" Hermione asked.

Madam Spurl just smiled. She knew how to keep a room interested.

The third item was a hand mirror in an old style. Madam Spurl put on a glove before picking it up to show the class.

"This mirror belonged to the Princess Victoria who would become Queen Victoria. At some point, it came into a witch's hand, a devious specimen of our race. She cursed the mirror and attempted to return it to then-Queen Victoria. Thankfully, that return did not happen. For if any magical, including a squib, which Queen Victoria was believed to have been, touched the mirror barehanded and looked into it, then the Medusa's Curse would slowly turn him or her into stone..."

"Slowly?" Hermione echoed.

"This mirror killed five people we know of so we understand how this particular curse works based on what happened to the victims. First, the fingers would numb, prompting the user to put the mirror down. Then the toes, the nose, the knees, the elbows. Then the fingers would harden, never to release. Within three hours, the witch, wizard, or squib would have a heart of stone, thence be fully dead according to healing lore. The eyes, however, could still glance around even after the tongue was immobilized. The eyes weren't frozen for some time nor the brain fully dead. It was a horrible version of an already horrible curse."

Madam Spurl smiled. No one made a sound, not a cough or the slightest movement. She covered all three objects again.

"You and you, push this cart back against the wall. No magic. Unless someone wishes to try..."

There were no objections this time.

Everyone was still and silent during the remainder of her lecture. "You must understand the particular dangers of being a witch or wizard in this world. Others have come before you and left horrible things behind. I am particularly interested in showing you how the dark forces of the world hid their dire works so that you do not lose your freedom or your lives or your magic. This class, this year, will cover curses and enchantments and wards, particularly detecting and avoiding them. Not disarming them or defeating them."

"You're twelve and I know that. So don't ask. Beg, borrow, or steal the notes from the seventh years and study them when you're old enough. Creatures are among what I'm teaching to my third and sixth years, but I'm no specialist. Just a gifted amateur. Fourth years get deeper into curses and jinxes. The OWL students get battered about the head and ears with everything. Be glad you're young right now. Dismissed."

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