The Defense class met on Thursday afternoon, third period, in the classroom on the second floor that had housed the subject for as long as anyone remembered.
She had arranged the room while they arrived — the desks in precise rows, the board already prepared with the words Ministry of Magic Approved Educational Decree No. 31 written in a hand that communicated, in the specific way that administrative handwriting sometimes did, the personality behind it. The pink of her robes was identical to the pink she had worn at the leaving feast. He wondered if she owned other colors or had simply decided that consistency of presentation was its own kind of power, which it was, in the way that small things could be powerful when deployed with sufficient commitment.
He sat in the third row. Not the back — the back communicated avoidance, and he was not avoiding anything. Not the front — the front communicated the desire to participate, and he had no particular desire to participate. The third row was correct. He could see everything from the third row.
She began.
'Welcome,' she said, in the voice that was sweet in the specific way that things are sweet when the sweetness is performing itself, 'to Defense Against the Dark Arts. I am Professor Umbridge, your new teacher, and I am delighted to be here.' She clasped her hands together. 'Now. Before we begin, I think it might be productive to assess where we are. Would anyone like to tell me what they think they need from this class?'
A pause. The room had the quality of a classroom that has not yet determined how to respond to a new teacher and is waiting for more information.
He answered her question.
He answered it precisely and correctly, drawing on the specific theoretical framework of the OWL Defense curriculum, the documented magical threats that the curriculum addressed, and the gap between theoretical understanding and practical application that the OWL examination assessed. He spoke for forty-five seconds. Everything he said was accurate. Nothing he said gave her a point of entry.
She looked at him with the specific quality of someone who had expected to direct the room and had received a response that was technically impeccable and entirely outside her intended script.
'Well,' she said. 'Yes. Quite.' She recovered smoothly — this was not a person who did not recover — and moved the lesson in the direction she had already planned for it, which was to say: toward the course textbook, which she had written, and which outlined a theory-only programme that would produce, in two years, students with excellent Ministry-approved theoretical knowledge and no practical competence whatsoever.
He took notes throughout. The notes were detailed and accurate and cross-referenced where her theory diverged from the established practical literature, which was in several places, and some of the divergences were significant enough to matter in conditions where the theory would need to become practice.
He did not raise these divergences. He was not there to debate her curriculum. He was there to watch, and document, and wait for the reason.
He was patient. He had been practicing patience since second year.
After class, in the corridor, Hermione fell in beside him. She had her textbook under her arm and the expression of someone who had been in the same room for the same reason and had reached the same conclusions.
'She's competent,' Hermione said quietly. 'At the management of a classroom. Not the subject.'
'Correct on both counts,' he said.
'The theory she's teaching isn't wrong,' Hermione said. 'Some of it is actually quite thorough. It's just —'
'Incomplete,' he said. 'In the ways that matter.'
'Yes.' She paused. 'The group needs to start as soon as possible.'
'October,' he said. 'I want to watch her for a month first. See the full shape.'
Hermione looked at him with the quality she had when she disagreed with a timeline and had decided that the reasoning behind it was sound. 'October,' she agreed, and they went to Transfiguration.