Things I Never Knew: Chapter Five
Chapter 5
What's In A Name?
Harry was nervous about the first DA meeting. Sure, he had taught it last year and under much more threatening circumstances, but that had basically been a small group of Harry’s friends and acquaintances. The number of people who had signed up for the DA this year, at more than seventy, made it the largest student organization at Hogwarts. Hermione had suggested splitting the class into two sections. One for the first through third year students, and one for the fourth through seventh years. Since difference in ability level had been a minor problem even last year, Harry thought that this was a good idea. The class would meet once a week in the Defense classroom since it was the biggest. This was a development that Adele had not been pleased about, but as she had no say about what went on in the classroom when she was not using it, she hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Frankly, Harry was baffled as to why exactly she was against the DA, usually she could care less about things. Hermione had hinted that Adele was afraid that Harry would be better at teaching Defense than she was.
The class would first meet together, then they would be split into the two different groups. Harry and Hermione would alternate teaching the two groups, Hermione would focus more on the necessary technical “book” explanations, although the DA material would contain a much smaller amount of this than a real Hogwarts class, and Harry would focus on practical demonstrations. Hermione had said that it would give the students two different “views” of the material. This whole business made Harry feel very uneasy, as though he were a Hogwarts teacher. Hermione, of course, was reveling in it.
Harry arrived at the classroom early to prepare. “I can’t do this! What was I thinking? I’m not a teacher! I’m not even smart. I’m just a pretentious little celebrity.” Harry continued on this same destructive line of thought for several minutes.
“Harry. Harry!” a voice was saying at his side.
“Huh? What?” Harry snapped out of his dark thoughts to find Ron looking at him with concern.
“Bit preoccupied mate?” Ron asked with a slight chuckle.
“Huh?”
“Oh, it’s just that I had to call your name four times before you heard me.”
“Oh sorry. I was just thinking.”
“You’re not nervous are you?” Ron asked in disbelief.
“Well, a little,” Harry admitted.
“Oh, come on! With all the stuff you’ve done? The Triwizard Tournament and all those Quiditch matches and everything?”
That was exactly what Harry didn’t need to hear. He definitely didn’t need to be told that he would be more competent at running the DA because he was the boy wonder.
“None of those things make me better at this!”
“Yeah...but what about all your experience teaching the DA last year?”
That was slightly better, but Harry still wasn’t convinced. “Yeah, but that was different. The DA was so much smaller last year.”
“So? Same concept, bigger group. Besides Harry, the only reason that so many people signed up this year is that all the people in the DA last year put out the word on how much fun it was.”
“Really?” Harry asked. That actually sounded pretty good.
“Well, I wouldn’t call that the only reason,” said a voice from the doorway, it was Hermione.
“Why do you have to be such a killjoy, Hermione?” Ron said irritably.
“I just meant that it was a reason, it wasn’t the only reason,” Hermione said honestly. Harry, however, was somewhat comforted by the fact that both his friends seemed to consider this a reason for the increase in DA members.
Hermione looked around the room disapprovingly. “I thought you guys were supposed to be preparing! You haven’t even moved the desks!”
Harry stood in front of the group of expectant DA members nervously. “Welcome to the DA, year two,” he said finally. There was a good amount of applause. Harry gained some confidence. “Well, as you can all tell, we have grown tremendously this year! We’re going to split the class up to make it easier to teach, so I want to ask all the first through third years to move to the back of the room. They all did so and Hermione walked to the back with them and said a spell to create a partition in the middle of the room.
“Wow, where did she learn to do that?”
Harry felt very comfortable while he was teaching the older class. It really was like last year. They picked up where they left off last year. Of course, those who had taken the DA last year were quite a bit ahead of those who hadn’t, so Harry set those people to helping the rest. He didn’t expect that everyone would be able to do well right away, but at least they were all learning the basics. Harry just had to keep everyone working hard and keep Neville from killing himself and he would be fine.
When he switched to the younger class, however, Harry felt considerably more nervous. Unlike the upper level students, most of whom knew Harry in at least some small way, these children actually looked at Harry like he was a teacher. They sat attentively on the floor as he taught them Expelliarmus, raised their hands to ask questions and some of them even took notes. Caydon Snape scribbled notes furiously any time Harry opened his mouth. It was starting to creep Harry out. Most of the Slytherins were in this group as well.
“I wonder how furious Hermione would be if I encouraged people NOT to take notes?”
After class, Harry stayed to straighten things up. He felt content. Overall, the first meeting of the DA had been a success.
“Excuse me,” came a small voice from behind him.
Harry looked around and then down to find Caydon Snape looking at him unblinkingly, a page of notes in his hands.
“That kid has really scary eyes...”
“Did you want something Snape?” Harry asked.
“Yes, I have a question about the lesson,” Caydon answered.
“Um, okay. Let’s hear it,” Harry said.
“Okay, I can already cast Expelliarmus, but what I don’t understand is why factors such as your stance, degree of motion, and inflection of voice effect the spell so much.”
“Good question...”
“Well, uh, things like that commonly effect spells.”
“But not nearly to the degree as in Expelliarmus. Let me show you what I mean.”
Caydon took out his wand and pointed it at one of the practice targets (Harry hadn’t wanted first years casting spells on each other without practicing on something else first). “Expelliarmus!” A thin stream of pink light burst out of his wand and hit the target.
“That’s the idea,” Harry said.
“Yes, but watch this.” Caydon pointed his wand at the target with no change that Harry could see and said cast the spell again. This time a bright red pillar of light shot out of his wand much more quickly and it hit the target hard, causing it to rock back and forth alarmingly.
“See?” Caydon said. “All I did was straighten my arm a bit and plant my feet firmer into the ground and there was that much difference?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Expelliarmus is a very unpredictable spell. If you aren’t forceful enough, then it may not work, too forceful and you could knock someone across the room and thus cause some serious physical damage to them or even ahh...uhh...” Harry trailed off into incoherent babbling.
“What?”
“...knock someone out,” Harry finished, thinking of how he knew this from personal experience in casting the spell. “It would be hard to do that with just one Expelliarmus though,” he reassured Caydon.
“But why is it like that?”
“I don’t know, I never really thought of it. Isn’t it enough to know that it is like that? I mean that’s all you ever need to know to use the spell.”
“I like to understand things.”
“Didn’t Hermione explain all this?”
“Not in depth. Not even as well as you just did.”
“Well,” Harry said feeling dumb, “you could look it up in the library or ask a teacher, but I wouldn’t recommend Adele.”
Caydon giggled. “I’ll do that,” he said, “thank you, sir.”
“Sir!”
“Wait, don’t ever call me ‘sir’ again. I’m not a teacher or even an adult.”
Caydon shrugged. “I was just being respectful. You’re sort of in a position of authority and you’re older than me.” Caydon ran out of the room before Harry could respond.
“Okay, that was definitely weird. I didn’t think that even a first year would ever call me ‘sir’ and it was Snape’s kid of all people!”
Harry resolved to study the spells that he planned on teaching more carefully from now on.
The next couple of DA classes went well. Harry became used to Caydon staying after class to ask him annoying, irrelevant questions. Harry only knew the answers about half the time. Occlumency was also going surprisingly well. Harry finally seemed to have caught onto the concept of clearing his mind and was now learning quite rapidly. Snape was slightly less irritable than usual, probably because Harry was actually learning something.
“Well, Mr. Potter,” Snape said one day, “as you have become rather decent, although by no means flawless at keeping me out of your memories and thoughts, I think that it is time that we started on the second, more difficult part of Occlumency.”
Harry didn’t like the sound of that. “The more difficult part?” he said faintly.
“Yes. Surely it cannot have escaped your notice that although you can keep me out of your memories, I have full access to your emotions. Yet another reason that clearing your mind beforehand is considered so important in Occlumency.
“Oh God. He knows my emotions? My thoughts are pretty dark right before I Occlude sometimes.
“Emotions are much easier to read and to use than thoughts alone. A skilled Legilimens, if unable to read your thoughts, will seek to use your emotions such as fear, anger, or despair, against you. This can sometimes give them a foothold into your actual thoughts. You may have noticed that most of the times that I was able to break into your thoughts, this was the technique that I used. This form of Legilimency is much easier to perform and can often occur accidentally. Due to your link with the Dark Lord, you have probably felt his emotions before now, whether you realized it or not.”
Harry said nothing.
“Now, in order to...”
But at that moment there was a knock at the door.
“Enter,” Snape said irritably.
A fifth year Slytherin boy whose name Harry couldn’t remember, but whom he recognized as one of Snape’s favorite students walked into the room.
“Um, Professor Snape,” he said, looking oddly at Harry, “I think that Adele needs some...help.”
“What has she done this time?” Snape sighed.
“Uhh, maybe you should just come.”
“I’ll be right there, Darius.” The boy nodded and left the room. “Potter, I think that this concludes our lesson.”
“What? But you were about to teach me that other thing.”
“You heard Darius. I have to go help the sixth in a long line of incompetent, idiotic Defense professors.”
Harry ignored the insult to Lupin and protested some more. He didn’t want the lesson to end yet. He was very interested in concealing his emotions. “But I could wait here until you were done, sir.”
Snape gave Harry a significant glance. “No I don’t believe that you can, Potter.”
“You’re not still upset about when I- I mean the last time you left me alone in your office.” Snape raised an eyebrow at him. “Look, it was a stupid thing to do and I wish to hell that the thought had never even entered my mind. I am NOT about to do that again.”
“He doesn’t know how much I wish that I had never seen my father like that...”
“Unfortunately, you have demonstrated to me in the past that you are a very untrustworthy individual. I will not discuss this further. This lesson is OVER, Potter.”
“I wish that you wouldn’t call me Potter,” Harry said without even thinking. He immediately wished that he could take back his words.
“You say the oddest things, Potter,” Snape drew the name out, savoring each syllable. “Why is this?”
“Oh great, now I have to explain. And I’ve never even thought of the answer. But I DO hate it when he calls me that.”
“It’s just that every time you call me that, you’re not even thinking of me. You’re thinking of my father, I can tell. And you immediately become more...”
“More what?” Snape snapped.
“More angry.”
“I see,” Snape sneered at him, “and what would you like me to call you? ‘That idiot who plagues my life’? Potter is your name.”
“You could call me by my first name.”
“That would be inappropriate for the teacher/student relationship!”
“Oh come off it. Dumbledore calls everyone by their first name and I’ve heard you call students by their first names too. Why just now, you called that Darius boy by his first name!”
“Regardless, I am not calling you Harry!” Snape was starting to get angry.
“But I think that it would make things easier...”
“No.”
“You could...”
“No!”
“You know,” Harry said in a last ditch effort, “some people would say that you confusing me with my father is something that you had in common with Sirius Black.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“Really?”
“Go away, Potter.”
Harry skipped Quiditch practice and went up to his room to nap. He knew that his teammates would be angry, but what could they do? Kick him off? Not likely. He didn’t expect, however, to have the full fury of Hermione Granger, who usually couldn’t care less about Quiditch, unleashed upon him.
“Harry I’m really worried about you,” she said after invading his room and waking him up from one of his few peaceful rests. “Before this year, I couldn’t have gotten you to miss a Quiditch practice if I had told you that your life depended on it! But now, Ron tells me that this is the second time you’ve missed practice this year.”
“Look Hermione, I don’t have to come to every practice to be able to catch the snitch.”
“But you’re the captain. Shouldn’t you be pushing the team or something like that?”
“No.”
“Harry...”
“Hermione I don’t CARE! I JUST DO NOT CARE ANY MORE!”he repeated.
“Harry, if you have something you want to talk about...”
“Leave me alone.”
Harry avoided Hermione all the next day. He could tell that she was on the hunt and he was terrified that she was going to find out more about him than he wanted her to know. Hermione had a way of figuring things out. She finally found an opportunity to talk to him alone after that evening’s DA meeting.
“Harry,” she said without even a greeting, “Ron and I are both really concerned about you.”
“Nice to see you too, Hermione,” Harry said.
“Excuse me,” said a small voice from behind Harry.
“Yes! Saved!”
He turned around and looked at Caydon. “You had a question?” he asked.
“What is he doing here after class?” Hermione asked. She had begun to refer to the DA meetings as “class”, something that annoyed Harry to no end.
“It’s not a class! And he always stays after DA meetings to ask questions.”
“Really? He’s never asked me anything.”
“Okay, I admit it Hermione! I hid him in the corner so that in case you started nagging me, he could come out and save me from you.”
Hermione glared at him. “Funny.”
“Um, should I leave?” Caydon asked.
“No, Hermione was just about to go.”
“Okay, Harry,” she sighed, rolling her eyes, “I’m leaving. But this conversation is not over.” She tromped out of the room.
Harry turned to Caydon. “Thank you so much! You’re a life saver.”
Caydon laughed. “She’s very enthusiastic, isn’t she?”
“Very,” Harry laughed. Then he realized how light hearted he was being and that just seemed wrong somehow, especially when talking to this kid. “So,” he said, putting on a much more somber face, “what was your question, Snape?”
“Caydon.”
“What?”
“My name. It’s Caydon, you know.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“When you call me ‘Snape’ you’re thinking of my father, and since you don’t like him very much, it bothers me.”
“Wait a minute. Didn’t I just have this conversation?”
“Uh, how do you know?” Harry asked.
“Your eyes.”
Harry didn’t ask what Caydon meant by that. This whole conversation was just a bit too coincidental, however. “Have you talked to your father since yesterday?”
“What?” asked Caydon, confused.
“Nothing,” said Harry wondering if this whole thing was some kind of weird mind game that Snape was playing with him. “I’ll call you by your first name. I do not have a problem with it,” Harry finished, a little overzealously.