Seeking Solutions

As Harry packed up to leave, he decided Madam Spurl's first class was better than McGonagall's and on par with Flitwick's. Harry was enchanted with the material. It was cruel and horrible stuff, but ever so interesting. It was also the material he needed to know. He didn't intend to let a Killing Curse wash over him again.

"What book should we purchase?" Hermione asked after almost everyone was gone.

Harry had to temper his smile. Of course she would ask about the book.

"I give notes. There is no assigned text, not for your year, not for any year. None of them are worth the galleons. A few pages here, a few lines there are of acceptable quality. I'll point you to the things you need to know."

Hermione was, predictably, scandalized. "Why?"

Harry thought she'd explained it well enough.

Madam Spurl was willing to try again to make herself clear. "Theory is..." She cleared her throat.

"Theory isn't my interest, let's say that. What I treasure is experience from people who have done things. The problem there is that those who really do things never write it down for the public. They're too busy doing something or planning some future adventure. The ones who slip from that path to write down what they know...there's almost no reason to read what they wrote."

Harry stayed after the next class and asked her opinion about the Trimble book, specifically the two pages he admired in the first edition. Madam Spurl approved of the recommendations, but cautioned Harry that two pages out of six hundred was a very poor ratio. Genuine information was almost always that rare and precious.

At the end of her second week teaching, Madam Spurl speared all of her students into silence. The lecture was over. What else was there?

"I believe in hard tasks. Impossible ones. I've waited a century to complete some of the things I've done. We don't have the time for that, so I'll go a little easy on you. A little. I'm assigning a year-end project. You will share this project with every one of my students."

"Including the NEWT students?" Hermione asked.

"They are part of 'every one,' Miss Granger. I'll put you in pairs so you have someone to help. Your task? I've been thinking about it a while and I've got a good one. The role of the Defense Professor at Hogwarts is rumored to be cursed. Ask around, it's part of the task. I want you to collect facts, gossip, observations, whatever you like and decide on a hypothesis.

"Don't tell me your guess, that's not enough. What I want from you by Yule break is a test I can perform: a spell, a ritual, a potion, something definitive. Do this so I can see if your guess is correct or not. After the New Year, I will perform each suggested test, assuming it's safe and likely to help diagnose this supposed curse. I will not perform any ritual that requires me to sing, dance, or take off my clothes. Understood? We'll repeat the process in the spring if we need to. Dismissed."

"That's impossible," Hermione muttered. Then Ron. Then Neville. Then pretty much everyone in the hall after the class was over said it was impossible.

It did sound challenging. Harry liked it all the better, aside from the fact he'd been assigned to work with Lavender Brown.

....

Ron only seemed to love something when it disappeared. Case in point: his rat, Scabbers. It disappeared the second day of October. Ron milked his unhappiness for three weeks before he couldn't find anyone in the school of listen to him. Then he was back to normal, fun, demanding of one game or another, or perhaps a bit of flying. The twins' pranking him might have either sped things up or slowed them down. It was hard to tell with the twins. They could make things better and worse at the same time, as if chaos had been given a pair of bodies it actually liked.

Hermione and Neville and Harry spent more time together, often in the library, during Ron's Tantrum as it came to be known. Neville turned out to be a stable, fine chap. He could talk an ear off if you talked about a potions ingredient or made some observation about herbology. Hermione was like that about books, generally. Harry supposed he was like that on the topic of magical preparation or adventuring.

Lavender refused to have anything to do with Madam Spurl's assignment, but Harry enjoyed the challenge. He thought he was a little young to actually come up with something valuable, but he enjoyed trying to think the way she wanted them to think.

What could the curse be?

Harry looked through many books and talked to many sources of gossip, including more than a few of the castle ghosts. The Defense Professors really had fared poorly. Some were old and died of natural causes, some were young and died of unnatural causes. The worst were the ones who did not die, but suffered some permanent malady or infirmity. Then there were the weird ones. One professor had been crushed by a transfigured chicken. Another had stepped on a disappearing stairs and lost his legs – and his life. A third had tucked his wand into a pocket in trousers he was wearing and blown off his back side.

They had laughed about that, the group he considered his friends, but it worried Harry. He was glad Madam Spurl was trying to do something about it.

One very unpleasant thing happened in the middle of November. Harry had been on the fifth floor doing Lightning-Bearer practice when Peeves barged in. Not only did the poltergeist demand to be assaulted by the lightning, but he made it clear why he enjoyed it. Harry had never exactly gotten The Talk before, not from Uncle Vernon and certainly not from a spirit. But the words "Potty" and "Rotty" had been overwhelmed by Peeves trying to explain why he had to be shocked. Often. Tingly, in Peeves' language, had rhymed with many other words, none of which Harry ever wanted to hear again.

The goop the poltergeist left on a wall after Harry used the fulmenifer... Harry thought he was going to be sick. The poltergeist hadn't twitched in pain, but from the opposite, pleasure.

These were not things Harry needed to know. Ever. He would never be able to unlearn the details of poltergeist romance... Yeuck.

He decided he needed a way to confine a poltergeist or keep it away from him. Perhaps he could get Hermione to help without explaining exactly why he needed the spell or enchantment. He didn't want to give The Talk to his female friend. No way. Not even if he was talking about the pain poltergeists had to receive for pleasure. Horrible, all of them. Thankfully Hogwarts only had one spirit stalking Harry, for now. He intended to keep it that way.

.....

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