After lunch, they took a short nap and then headed to Transfiguration Class. In every sense, Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration Class was one of the most difficult courses. Today, she asked the students to turn a Beetle into a button. Crabbe and Goyle's performance was downright like that of two Muggles; facing the agile Beetle, their clumsy hands could barely hold their wands steady.
As for Pansy, the button she transformed still had several legs left around it, scurrying about on the desk. Most students didn't fare much better either. It was as if after going home for the holidays and having fun, all the knowledge they had learned had leaked out of their brains. Professor McGonagall's expression was very serious. Only when passing by Draco's desk did her tightly furrowed brows slowly relax. The button he transformed was exquisite, with not a trace of the Beetle to be found.
"Ten points to Slytherin," Professor McGonagall said approvingly.
"Honestly, I really don't know what the use of learning all this is," Pansy complained to Draco in the corridor after class. "Although I don't much care for Muggles, sometimes using their things isn't bad. No one would actually pin a Beetle-turned-button on their clothes, right? You can just buy one when you need it."
Draco frowned, unsure how to change her perspective. No one knew what the future might hold. Even he himself, having already altered so much history, couldn't be sure if the future he once knew would become unrecognizable. Anyone could end up in a fight. For ordinary students, every bit of foundational knowledge was crucial now.
"Pansy," Draco called out seriously, ready to instill some correct ideas in her, but was interrupted again.
"Our Dark Arts Class today is actually with Gryffindor," Pansy said, pulling out a piece of paper and glancing at it. "Let's go quickly. I don't want to sit with that bunch. Maybe we should pick good seats?" As she spoke, she pulled him along swiftly towards the Defense Against the Dark Arts Class classroom, not giving him a chance to speak.
Draco could only helplessly let himself be dragged away.
When they arrived at the classroom, class hadn't started yet, but it was already nearly full, almost entirely with girls. The rest of the students trickled in just before the bell rang. The seating arrangement was clearly demarcated: Gryffindor on one side, Slytherin on the other.
Once the whole class was seated, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly to quiet everyone. He reached out, picked up Neville Longbottom's copy of Travels with Trolls, and held it up, showing the cover with his own winking photo.
"I," he said, pointing at his photo and also winking, "Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award — but I don't talk about that; I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!"
He waited for everyone to laugh. A few people gave faint smiles. Draco also looked at him with a mocking grin.
Then he handed out a quiz to everyone. The questions were all about his personal preferences and such, for example:
1. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color?
2. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition?
3. What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date? And so on, for a full three pages.
"A waste of life," Draco muttered quietly. He only wrote one sentence on the quiz before starting to ponder his own matters, like how to make Pansy love studying, or who the culprit was who took the little black book.
Ron and Harry seemed a bit dazed. They knew almost nothing about this teacher, only that he was a bit showy. Watching Hermione scribble away furiously, they also picked up their quills, but the pens felt as heavy as a thousand pounds—picked up but hard to put down. Most of the male students were in the same situation. They scratched their heads, not knowing where to start. Harry even felt he'd rather be doing a Potion Class quiz right now. After all, aside from Snape,
He wasn't actually too averse to Potion Class; at least the answers could be found in the books.
Half an hour later, Lockhart collected the quizzes and began flipping through them in front of the whole class.
"Tut-tut — hardly anyone remembered that lilac is my favorite color. I mentioned it in Year with the Yeti," he commented on everyone's papers. The boys were bored, while the girls listened intently. Suddenly, Lockhart mentioned Hermione's name, startling her.
"...but Miss Hermione Granger knows my secret ambition is to rid the world of evil and market my own range of hair-care Potions — good girl! In fact —" he turned her paper over, "— full marks! Where is Miss Hermione Granger?"
Hermione raised a trembling hand. "Excellent!" Lockhart said with a smile. "Very good! Ten points to Gryffindor!
"Hmm," Lockhart continued, flipping through the papers. Suddenly, his brows furrowed tightly, as if he had seen a blankpiece of paper. But his expression quickly smoothed out again. He laughed heartily: "Twenty points to Slytherin! Mr. Draco's answer is too perfect. But this is a secret between him and me, so I won't tell you what he wrote." Lockhart said with a beaming smile, even winking in the direction of Draco's seat.
Hermione, who had been immersed in joy just moments before, couldn't help but feel a sudden daze upon hearing this familiar name. She looked towards Draco's direction but found him seemingly lost in thought.
"Why can I never find a chance to ask him clearly?" She thought of the series of events that had happened before, asking herself this question. Yet she knew it wasn't that there was no opportunity; it was that she herself didn't dare. Thinking this, the joy of earning ten points for her house seemed to fade quite a bit.
"Now, let's get down to business..." Lockhart bent down and lifted a large, cloth-covered cage from behind the teacher's desk, placing it on the table.
"Now — be warned! My job is to teach you to defend yourselves against the very worst the magical world has to offer! You will face the most frightening things in this room. But remember, as long as I am here, you will come to no harm. I only ask that you remain calm."
Harry couldn't help but crane his neck from behind a pile of books to get a good look at the cage. Lockhart placed a hand on the cloth cover. Neville in the front row shrank back, and Pansy also moved a few steps closer to Draco's seat.
"I must ask you not to scream," Lockhart said in a low voice. "It might provoke them!"
The whole class held their breath, except for Draco. Then Lockhart pulled off the cloth.
"Yes," he said dramatically. "Freshly caught Cornish pixies."
A male student couldn't help but snort with laughter. Even Lockhart couldn't have mistaken that for a scream of terror.
"Be serious!" Lockhart said irritably, shaking his finger at him. "They may be devilishly cunning little wreckers!"
Draco examined the pixies in the cage. They were electric blue, about eight inches tall, with pointed faces and voices so shrill it was like the sound of many budgies quarreling. Once the cover was removed, they started chattering, jumping up and down, shaking the cage bars, and making various strange faces at the people nearby.
"Right then," Lockhart said loudly. "Let's see what you make of them!" He opened the cage door.
All hell broke loose. The pixies shot in every direction like rockets. Two of them seized Neville by the ears and lifted him. Several shot straight out the window, shattering the glass in the back of the classroom. The rest wreaked havoc in the room, more destructive than a rampaging rhinoceros. They grabbed ink bottles and splattered them all over the class, tore books and papers to shreds, pulled down pictures from the walls, upended the wastebasket, threw schoolbags and textbooks out the broken window, and some climbed onto the girls' heads and started pulling their hair.
"Petrificus Totalus!" Draco immobilized several pixies charging at him, helped Pansy out of a fix, and then settled in to watch the show.
"Come on now — round them up, round them up, they're only pixies..." Lockhart shouted. He rolled up his sleeves, brandished his wand, and roared: "Peskipiksi Pesternomi!"
It was completely ineffective. One pixie seized Lockhart's wand and threw it out the window as well. Lockhart gasped and dived under the teacher's desk, narrowly avoiding being hit by Neville, because almost at the same second, the chandelier gave way and crashed down.
"With skills like that, he can be our Defense Against the Dark Arts Class teacher?" Pansy asked with a skeptical look. The same expression was written on almost every student's face; they also looked doubtful. The teacher was helpless against a problem the students could barely handle, which made them suspicious.
"Maybe his wand is broken," Hermione explained for him. "Like Ron's," she added before continuing. "You've all read his books — think of the amazing things he's done..."
Some students accepted Hermione's explanation, and the strange looks on their faces gradually faded. But Ron still muttered, "He just says he's done them."
Soon after, the students managed to catch all the pixies and put them back in the cage, even though it was quite an effort.
"It seems your practical application was quite effective," Lockhart said, having emerged from under the desk at some point, wearing his signature smile again as if nothing had just happened.
Draco could only cast a look of disdain at him.
"Well, let's see. For every pixie caught and returned, five points will be awarded to their house. Please come up and register." Sensing the subtle atmosphere in the room, Lockhart began to change the subject. Clearly, he succeeded. Almost all the students forgot their earlier disgrace and rushed to claim points.
"This works?" Draco was dumbfounded. He had never seen someone so shameless.
A little later, the class bell finally rang, and the farce came to an end.
"What did you write on that paper earlier? I saw you hardly wrote anything," Pansy immediately asked Draco once they were out of the classroom. She was one of the few girls not infatuated with this teacher, but that didn't stop her curiosity.
"Flattery won't put food on the table," Draco shrugged and continued, "I just wrote on it: 'My mother accidentally packed a large bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky in my luggage before term. As you know, minors shouldn't drink, so I was hoping you could help me dispose of it."
"Open bribery?" Pansy widened her eyes at him.
"No, it's just a student showing a bit of appreciation for his teacher," Draco said sarcastically, glancing at Lockhart.
Lockhart's Teacher ethics were truly hard to comprehend.
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