The Acromantula, suddenly rearing up into a full attack stance without warning, sent a fresh wave of terror rippling through the prisoners in the classroom below.
Stripped of their wands upon arrival here, the vast majority of these wizards were no different at all from ordinary Muggles when it came to defending themselves.
Even genuinely elite wizards had some working grasp of nonverbal spellcasting, but wandless magic, the kind that could actually protect a person, was something only a rare handful of witches and wizards alive could ever manage to pull off.
Looking down through the square pane of observation glass at the faces twisted with real fear on the other side, the watching young wizards on the platform fell entirely silent.
Professor Gilderoy Lockhart had once been nothing less than a celebrity of the entire British wizarding world, adored by countless devoted fans who'd bought his every book the moment it hit the shelves.
But one trip to prison, it seemed, and there was no trace left of his old charm and swagger at all.
Perhaps it was the two-plus years spent in Azkaban, day and night in the close company of Dementors—whatever the actual cause, the face now staring back through the observation glass bore no real resemblance anymore to the handsome, dashing man of old that Harry remembered so vividly. It was filled instead with raw fear and total helplessness.
Harry glanced sideways at Hermione; from her stunned, wooden expression, frozen mid-blink, it was clear enough that the shock had hit her every bit as hard as it had him.
And really, he thought, why would it possibly be any different for either of them, given everything.
The young wizards gathered on the platform had all recognized Professor Gilderoy Lockhart simultaneously, the face was too famous to mistake. And without anyone quite meaning for it to happen, the once-celebrated star author's wretched, diminished appearance today only deepened, in each of their hearts, a respect for the authority and weight of the law.
"Silence!"
The instructor standing at the podium at the front of the classroom barked the word out with grim severity, raising one hand that flared abruptly with green light.
As if summoned directly by that light, the wooden collars fastened tight around the Acromantulas' abdomens, and the matching ones fastened around every single prisoner's neck in the room, flared the exact same shade of green all at once in unison.
The green light held a formidable, undeniable power over both sides of the room—the inmates still pressing desperately at the classroom door and the agitated, half-risen spiders both froze absolutely on the spot.
"Everyone, back to your seats, now!" the instructor called again, his voice now carrying sharp authority.
Having already watched, more than once, what happened to prisoners who lost their heads—throttled unconscious in an instant by those same wooden collars—none of the inmates dared resist the order a second time. They scrambled back hastily to their seats and sat up properly straight.
Once order had been fully restored across the room, the instructor stepped down from his podium and walked toward the door where the visitors stood watching.
"Ah, Mr. Watson—"
Opening the door, the instructor only now seemed to notice the whole group of people standing gathered on the platform just outside. He'd evidently been told well in advance that students would be visiting today, so his surprise at the sight was small and quickly, smoothly composed away; he gave Bryan a respectful nod of greeting.
"My apologies—my students disrupted your lesson rather badly there, I'm afraid."
Bryan nodded an apology of his own in return, then added, "Would it be all right to leave the door open like this for a while, so the students can observe?"
"Of course, Mr. Watson, no trouble at all on that account—"
The instructor nodded readily enough and turned to head back toward his podium to resume the lesson—but at that very moment!
"Bryan Watson!"
A voice filled with pure hatred suddenly rang out across the classroom, cutting through everything, and a woman rose sharply from her seat near the back.
Even Theodore, still gazing sorrowfully through the glass at his own father, couldn't help but turn his eyes away from that grief for a moment at the sudden interruption.
Hermione tore her own gaze away from Lockhart's face too, the shock of that discovery was briefly forgotten.
"Harry!"
She stared instead at this newly risen woman, her eyes was clouding over for a moment with effort as she searched her memory, before she came back to herself and called out, "We've met this witch before—remember, Harry! She's one of the black-robed lot who attacked at the World Cup final—she tried to kill Sirius that night!"
Harry's own reaction came almost identical to Hermione's. "I remember her—her name's Melanoff!"
From Harry and Hermione's quick, urgent exchange, the rest of the young wizards worked out soon enough who exactly the woman standing there actually was, and every single eye turned at once toward Professor Watson, watching for his reaction—but his own expression stayed perfectly, entirely unmoved throughout.
Such a minor figure, really wasn't worth his getting worked up over.
"Bryan Watson!" The woman's whole face twisted, contorted violently with hatred, and she snarled the name out through clenched, grinding teeth, "You ruined my life! You ruined everything!"
"Back to your seat this instant, Melanoff!" The instructor's shout came full of real fury now, but the woman seemed not to hear him at all, her whole attention was fixed completely on the man standing calmly by the door.
Judging purely by the depth of hatred showing so nakedly across her face, it was probably that very hatred for Professor Watson, burning steady, that had actually carried her through those two brutal years in Azkaban in the first place.
Without seeming to realize she'd even done it, Melanoff had risen to her feet by now; the prisoners seated around her shrank away in their chairs, afraid of ending up sprayed with blood.
"First warning, Melanoff!" the instructor shouted.
And that particular phrase seemed to carry a very different kind of weight within this prison—the Acromantula nearby, which had just begun lowering itself back down to the floor, sprang back up again. Its two great pincers clicked together rapidly, almost thrilled at the prospect, its bright green compound eyes blinking wildly now, anticipating something.
Melanoff's expression changed instantly at the sight—she noticed the spider's shift immediately. But she still didn't sit back down right away. Instead, she glared, bitter and utterly unyielding, at the man standing so calmly by the classroom door.
"Second warning, Melanoff!" The urgency in the instructor's voice sharpened further.
"I'll kill you someday, Watson! I swear it!"
Before the instructor could deliver the fatal third and final warning, Melanoff screamed the words out first, shrill and utterly desperate, the sound tearing at her own throat, then dropped smartly back down into her seat all at once.
"Given your conduct today, Melanoff—" The instructor left the visitors standing at the door and strode over to her seat directly, saying angrily, "You'll spend your next rest day in solitary confinement for this outburst. What's more, the Avalon Prison Oversight Committee will formally convene to discuss whether your existing sentence ought to be extended as a result!"
Melanoff only lowered her head at that, saying nothing further, hiding whatever venom still burned behind her downcast eyes.
The small disturbance settled at last. The Acromantula went back to lying in sullen, watchful wait near its post.
Professor Watson looked over then at Theodore Nott.
Nott kept his own head down too at the attention, bracing himself for Professor Watson's thunderous anger to fall on him next—the watching young wizards all privately assumed Nott was in for it now, having caused the whole disruption in the first place.
"Don't let it happen again." But Professor Watson tossed out only that one light, almost gentle remark, and nothing more.
Nott himself clearly hadn't expected to get off quite so easily either, judging by his face. He blinked, genuinely startled by the mildness of it, then nodded once, and turned to silently look back through the observation glass at his father sitting upright inside.
This feeling—
Harry and Hermione exchanged a private glance between themselves at that, and both gave an almost unnoticeable, shared shake of the head.
Put yourself in Nott's place for a moment, and the feeling would be simply beyond words to describe.
Your own father, locked away behind glass in a place like this—and the very man holding him there, the one with the power over his fate, is standing right beside you at that same moment, a professor you otherwise genuinely respect—while you yourself can do absolutely nothing about any of it, can't even manage to direct your resentment at a fair target.
"Let's continue with the lesson, then—" The instructor returned to his podium and launched back into his lecture from where he'd left off,
"Life has no hierarchy of worth, remember that above everything else. Whether wizard or, as you call them, Muggle, all possess the equal right to live, all are human beings in the end, all are tiny parts of a vast and ancient nature. All living things survive only because they are nourished by that great nature around them, and so we should look on all of nature's creatures with a reverent heart, a grateful heart, a heart at peace with itself."
In the classroom below, Professor Rahansen's own people were teaching a whole room of grievously guilty criminals, convicted of real and serious crimes, to love life itself, to love nature.
Outside the classroom, meanwhile, a group of young Hogwarts wizards watched on in silence as the prisoners received their strange education.
Of everything Harry had ever personally lived through up to this point, this particular scene, for sheer strangeness, could easily rank among the top three moments of his entire life.
The little disturbance that had just occurred left both the prisoners inside and the students watching from outside noticeably more restrained afterward. The students didn't dare chatter loudly and disrupt the class further, and the prisoners in their seats didn't dare glance around and openly size up the visitors watching them either.
"That's all for today's lesson, then. Class dismissed!" Half an hour later, the instructor checked the clock on the classroom wall and said it plainly to the assembled prisoners.
"Goodbye, Professor—" A soft rustle of noise swept the room as the prisoners rose one after another from their seats, bowing properly to the instructor on their way out.
"Everyone, line up, please!" Barry, standing beside Professor Watson the whole while, stepped forward now and called out the fresh order himself, "Now then, if you'll follow me, I'll be leading you all to today's labour assignments!"
The prisoners fell obediently into a neat line on the open ground behind the classroom, forming up without complaint.
"Labour." Fred couldn't hold back his own curiosity any longer at the word and muttered it aloud under his breath, half to himself.
"Just clearing new farmland, mostly—" Bryan said with a smile, "The Ministry only provides regular food for the guards stationed here at Avalon Prison. As for the prisoners themselves—what they get to eat depends on what they manage to grow for themselves—"
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