After the schoolwide shock at the petrification of the students, there was a scramble to learn more magic, get lucky charms and amulets, and other dubious objects to ensure safety. The students were quite afraid and it was hampering the mood in the entire castle. The one light on the horizon were the upcoming Duelling classes.

The students were really looking forward to it and there was a poster set up in each of the common rooms that said that even 1st years will be allowed this year. The only problem was that I had this feeling of unease regarding it. I had worries regarding Flophart. The fool better not muscle his way into the classes and ruin them.

The day of the duelling class dawned and there was finally some semblance of normality in the castle. Almost all the students gathered for the lessons, at least those other than those of the top years. I was standing there with the twins and Lee as usual. We were among the best duellists last year and were looking forward to see our improvements.

Harry, Hermione and several other Gryffindors soon joined us and all the other houses got together as well. We had another 10 minutes to go before the scheduled time and the juniors were eagerly asking for advice about the duelling and the standards of the students in the last year.

Hermione sidled up to me and asked, “It isn’t dangerous, is it? I mean, I know how important it is but I’m somewhat scared of what might happen.”

I reassured her, “Nothing will happen, ‘Mione! We were in the club last year and it was awesome. Some students did suffer very minor injuries but they were set to rights by Madam Pomfrey in no time at all.” She blushed at the shortened version of her name but did not ask me to not do so. I grinned. I was liking the little bookworm more and more by the day.

I had told myself that I would not judge people by what I read of them but by what I know of them in this world. But I still ended up liking her. Well, no harm in seeing where it goes.

And then I saw the two of them and let out a loud groan. It was Flophart and Snape. I don’t know how this came about but this is a disaster. I would have thought that the changes that I had wrought would be enough to stop this from happening in this time line but apparently some things just don’t change.

“Crap! This is going to be a waste of time. Flophart and the greasy Bat would be equally pants at teaching us to duel. One of them doesn’t know how to and the other couldn’t be bothered to do so properly.”

‘Mione, who had been thoroughly disabused of the notion of Lockhart’s greatness was of the same opinion. But the hall was full now and we were right near the front. There was no way of leaving without drawing excessive attention to ourselves.

Lockhart waved an arm for silence and called, “Gather round, gather round! Can everyone see me? Can you all here me? Excellent!”

“Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to take over this little duelling club, to train you all in case you ever need to defend yourselves as I myself have done on countless occasions – for full details, see my published works.”

“Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape,” said Lockhart, lashing a wide smile. “He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about duelling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin. Now, I don’t want any of you youngsters to worry – you’ll still have you Potions master when I’m through with him, never fear!”

It was shockingly similar to the events that happened in the original timeline and in fact, felt a bit eerie.

“Now I realize that some of you have been trained last year. While I do not wish to put down other teachers, I will admit that my teachings should serve you a lot better. Now, I shall show our first-timers the demo to let them have a look at duelling in its true form.

Lockhart and Snape turned to face each other and bowed; at least, Lockhart did, with much twirling of his hands, whereas Snape jerked his head irritably. Then they raised their wands like swords in front of them.

“As you see, we are holding our wands in the accepted combative position,” Lockhart told the silent crowd. “On the count of three, we will cast our first spells. Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Harry murmured, watching Snape barring his teeth.

“One – two – three –”

Both of them swung their wands above their heads and pointed them at their opponent; Snape cried, “Expelliarmus!” There was a dazzling flash of scarlet light and Lockhart was blasted off his feet: He flew backward off the stage, smashed into the wall, and slid down it to sprawl on the floor.

Malfoy and some of the other Slytherins cheered. Lockhart was getting unsteadily to his feet. His hat had fallen off and his wavy hair was standing on end.

“Well, there you have it!”, he said, tottering back onto the platform. “That was a Disarming Charm – as you see, I’ve lost my wand – ah, thank you, Miss Dunbar – yes, an excellent idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don’t mind my saying so, it was very obvious what you were about to do. If I had wanted to stop you it would have been only too easy – however, I felt it would be instructive to let them see…”

Snape was looking murderous. Possibly Lockhart had noticed, because he said, “Enough demonstrating! I’m going to come amongst you now and put you all into pairs. Professor Snape, if you’d like to help me –”

They moved through the crowd, matching up partners. Lockhart teamed Neville with Justin Finch-Fletchley, but Snape reached Harry and 'Mione first.

“Time to split up the dream team, I think,” he sneered. “Weasley, you can partner Finnigan. Potter -”

Harry moved automatically toward me.

“I don’t think so,” said Snape, smiling coldly. “Mr. Malfoy, come over here. Let’s see what you make of the famous Potter. And you, Miss Granger – you can partner with Miss Bulstrode.”

“Face your partners!” called Lockhart, back on the platform. “And bow!”

Harry and Malfoy barely inclined their heads, not taking their eyes off each other.

“Wands at the ready!” shouted Lockhart. “When I count to three, cast your charms to disarm your opponents – only to disarm them – we don’t want any accidents – one…two…three –”

“Harry swung his wand high, but Malfoy had already started on “two”. His spell hit Harry so hard he was pushed back several steps. He stumbled, but wasting no more time, Harry pointed his wand straight at Malfoy and shouted, “Rictusempra!”

A jet of silver light hit Malfoy in the stomach and he doubled up, wheezing.

“I said disarm only!” Lockhart shouted in alarm over the heads of the battling crowd, as Malfoy sank to his knees; Harry had hit him with a Tickling Charm, and he could barely move for laughing. Harry hung back, with a vague feeling it would be unsporting to bewitch Malfoy while he was on the floor, but this was a mistake; gasping for breath, Malfoy pointed his wand at Harry’s knees, choked, “Tarantallegra!” and the next second Harry’s legs began to jerk around out of control in a kind of quickstep.

“Stop! Stop!” screamed Lockhart, but even before Snape could take charge, I was already on the move, “Finite Incantatem!” I muttered; Harry’s feet stopped dancing, Malfoy stopped laughing, and they were able to look up.

A haze of greenish smoke was hovering over the scene. Both Neville and Justin were lying on the floor, panting; Ron was holding up an ashen-faced Seamus, apologizing for whatever his broken wand had done; but Hermione and Millicent Bulstrode were still moving; Millicent had Hermione in a headlock and Hermione was whimpering in pain; both their wands lay forgotten on the floor.

I got her loose with a quick Relashio and sent off a stinging hex at Bulstrode for good measure.

“Dear, dear,” said Lockhart, skittering through the crowd, looking at the aftermath of the duels. “Up you go, Macmillan…. Careful there, Miss Fawcett…. Pinch it hard, it’s stop bleeding in a second, Boot–”

“I think I’d better teach you how to block unfriendly spells,” said Lockhart, standing flustered in the midst of the hall. He glanced at Snape, whose black eyes glinted, and looked quickly away. “Let’s have a volunteer pair – Weasley and Finch-Fletchley, how about you –”

“A bad idea, Professor Lockhart,” said Snape, gliding over like a large and malevolent bat. “Weasley would cause devastation with the simplest spells. We’ll be sending what’s left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox.” Ron’s face went as red as his hair. “How about Malfoy and Potter?” said Snape with a twisted smile.

“Excellent idea!” said Lockhart, gesturing Harry and Malfoy into the middle of the hall as the crowd backed away to give them room.

“Now, Harry,” said Lockhart. “When Draco points his wand at you, you do this.”

He raised his own wand, attempted a complicated sort of wiggling action, and dropped it. Snape smirked as Lockhart quickly picked it up, saying, “Whoops – my wand is a little overexcited –”

Snape moved closer to Malfoy, bent down, and whispered something in his ear. Malfoy smirked, too.

Harry looked at me nervously and said, “Darius help me out here; show me something useful.”

I was worried too. So far things had gone nearly the same as canon and I didn’t want the poor guy too suffer through being called the Heir of Slytherin over the next half year. The way things were going, it was extremely likely that Malfoy would use the serpensortia spell and Harry would use Parseltongue to stop it from harming others. While I couldn’t stop Malfoy without raising suspicion, I could handle things from Harry’s end.

I leant in and muttered, “You only need to point the wand straight at Malfoy and say depulso with all the magic you can muster. It’s the banishing charm and slightly high level for you but I think, with your level of talent, you will be able to manage it.”

“Scared?” muttered Malfoy, so that Lockhart couldn’t hear him.

“You wish,” said Harry out of the corner of his mouth.

Harry looked at me with a nervous glance but I just gave him a confident grin and gave him a thumbs up.

Lockhart stood and the back, “Three – two – one – go!” he shouted.

Malfoy raised his wand quickly and bellowed, “Serpensortia!” but Harry was just as fast and got his spell out at the same time.

The end of Malfoy’s wand exploded. Everyone watched, as a long black snake shot out of it, fell heavily onto the floor between them, and raised itself, ready to strike. By this time the overpowered banishing charm had hit Malfoy and he had flown back 20 feet in the air and landed in a crumpled heap off the stage. Snape had rushed to him, the slimy git, while Lockhart seemed to be barely holding in his panic.

Lockhart brandished his wand at the snake and there was a loud bang; the snake, instead of vanishing, flew ten feet into the air and fell back to the floor with a loud smack. I took the time to cast a strong Muffliato on Harry. I couldn’t let everyone know about his Parseltongue abilities as of yet.

The snake was enraged, hissing furiously, it slithered straight toward a petrified Neville and raised itself again, fangs exposed, poised to strike.

Harry walked forward and shouted something at the snake, probably in Parseltongue but none of us heard it. The snake was about to lunge forward when I got it with a stupefy and stunned it.

Snape finally stepped forward, waved his wand, and the snake vanished in a small puff of black smoke. Snape was looking at me with a glint in his eye and I could see he wasn’t too happy with my help to Harry.

Lockhart finally pulled himself together and stepped forward with his ridiculous grin, “Ah, excellent job, Mr Icarus. I was hoping somebody here could step up to the challenge. Not everyone is as brave as I am and step up to every opponent. This was just a small test to see the abilities of my students.”

The foppish idiot even tried to turn this around in his favour. I gave him the most murderous look I could muster; one that foretold of enormous pain if he did not shut up. He got the hint and spoke up, “While we had a wonderful class and I’m sure you all learnt a lot, there has been lot of excitement for one evening and we will adjourn for the evening.

Harry walked over to me, “Thanks a lot for that Darius! What spell was that?”

“That was the banishing charm, the opposite of the summoning spell. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure you would be able to do it well, so, I told you to overpower the spell. Turns out, you did it just fine, and the extra power blew him several feet more than normal. Well done, Harry.”

Mione finally couldn’t hold it in anymore and asked me, “What did you do to Harry, Darius? I was right next to you so I noticed the spell you cast on Harry before dealing with the snake.”

“You are absolutely right Mione, I did. There is a reason as to why I did so and I will tell you in a more private spell.”

Mione looked like she wanted to argue but finally huffed and started to follow us. Harry also looked surprised and a bit curious. We took one of the shortcuts from the great hall to a place very near to the Gryffindor tower. The both of them followed me as we made our way into an abandoned room.

I sealed the door and stunned the only two portraits in the room. I then cast almost all the wards I knew on the room to seal us off before turning to face them. They looked a bit surprised when I stunned the portraits and then had no clue when I fired off several spells in rapid succession.

“Alright you two, for Harry’s sake, what I’m about to tell you should stay between us. Harry would be severely ostracized if this gets out. Harry happens to be a Parseltongue.”

Harry looked a bit bemused but Mione gasped. She already knew the significance of that fact.

I had to explain to him, “Harry, Parselongue is the ability to speak to snakes. One of the most well-known Parseltongue was Salazar Slytherin; and that is why the symbol of his house is a snake. If you revealed this ability in the hall, you would have been immediately taken to be Slytherin’s heir.”

“But I’m not Slytherin’s heir. And I did talk to the snake; everyone must have seen it.”

“You can’t possibly know whether or not you are Slytherin’s heir. Slytherin lived a 1000 years ago; it is very likely half the students here are related to him in some way. What everyone means when they mention Heir is the Heir apparent, the person who is in the direct line of inheritance.

And you don’t need to worry about anybody hearing you. I used a spell that created a field of white noise around you. Nobody would have heard you. Just be careful not to reveal this fact to anybody.”

After that, we headed for the common room and got there just as the rest of the students were reaching. I asked them to wait, while I got something from my trunk. I went upstairs and got the book on the Basics of Mind Magic and created two duplicates with the Geminio charm and grounded them with permanence runes. I gave both of them one copy each after casting a glamour on them that made them seem like a book on DADA.

“The two of you need to learn this. It contains a very important skill called Occlumency. The skill allows you to prevent others from reading your mind. Higher levels of proficiency can get you better memory recall, emotional control, higher thought processing capability and the ability to access your mind expanse.

There are people in this castle who read others minds. I would rather you are able to shield yourselves from them. Put in diligent efforts and I will be testing you once a week. I will also not tell you who they are, in case you start behaving differently around them and that makes them suspicious enough to pry into your mind.”

The two of them both looked a bit shaken up to know there were people capable of reading minds in the castle and hurriedly took the books.

We parted ways to our own dorms and I turned in for the night.