The day after his strange encounter with Quinn Peter was attending his first Defence Against the Dark Arts class, a class he had always done miserably in. the last professor, Quirrel, had told him in no uncertain terms that he was abysmal at it. It wasn’t his fault, and he knew it, it simply wasn’t his subject. He had pulled his socks up last year though, and had scraped past with an acceptable grade.

This year however the dreaded OWL’s loomed ever closer and the DADA class was an important one. At least they had a new professor, if the rumours were to be believed. So far he had heard a wide array of rumours about what had happened to Professor Quirrel ranging from retirement through to his being possessed by He-that-shall-not-be-named…

As far as Peter was concerned, it was good riddance; Quirrel had treated him like a simpleton, even going so far as assigning Perfect Percy to be his tutor last year. That had irked the Ravenclaw to no end, being tutored by a Gryffindor. Even if he was a year older, the Gryffindor golden boy had taken great pride in showing off that he was tutoring a Ravenclaw, scheduling their sessions in the very open study areas.

There was still a lot of tension between the two boys after that. Peter going out of his way to avoid Percy when ever possible.

He sat near to the back of the classroom staring up at the painting of a man painting a painting of himself, a good looking fellow with wavy blonde hair and a roguish smile, he reminded Peter of that Kenneth Brannagh guy that had put out all those atrociously long adaptations of William Shakespeare. If it was long and artsy his Gran had loved it.

A loud booming voice rang out across the classroom, “I bet you are all eagerly waiting to find out who your new Defence Against the Dark Art’s professor is, aren’t you?”

Peter glanced up at the man from the painting; he took a dramatic pose as he waltzed down the stairs.

"Me," he said, standing with a hand resting against the gilded frame of his portrait, pointing at it and winking as well. "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 – “ he made to make a joke, but Maggie Chiang put up her hand.

“Excuse me sir, but didn’t you also find the lost city of Riolzahn?” She asked.

“Of course,” Lockheart beamed at her, “I see my formidable reputation has preceded me,” He gave a charming smile at her and the other Ravenclaw prefect melted.

“Now I was planning a demonstration, unfortunately my second years had a little problem with my Cornish Pixies…” he seemed to grow a little uncomfortable at the memory, “However I soon rounded them up and put them back in their cage.”

“So instead we will start with a test to show how well you have read my books,” he patted the formidable stack of books sitting in front of each student.

When he had handed out the test papers he returned to the front of the class and said, "You have thirty minutes - start - now!"

Peter blinked, it was absurd, a test on the first day of a class. He hadn’t read the books, he had expected, like most of the other people in the classroom to cover the material in class. He had tried to get into them, sure, but there had been so verbose and… well they smacked Peter as glorified fiction. Adventure stories with little real substance.

32. What is Gilderoy Lockhart 's favorite color?

He looked up at the Professor in shock, What? Was this some kind of twisted joke? Or was it Quirrel’s ghost coming back to haunt him. No… Quirrel was many things, but he wasn’t that cruel. Lockhart was either testing them or he was a complete egomaniac. He turned over the three sheets of paper filled with the most ridiculous of questions.

34. What product does Gilderoy Lockhart use in his hair?

Peter set his quill down, stunned and raised his hand, “Excuse me professor,”

“Yes?” Lockhart inquired looking up from polishing his name plaque on his desk.

“Forgive me sir, but I was wondering what the relevance of these questions are…” Peter was nervous.

Lockhart seemed astounded that someone would question his quiz, “I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Peter Watts, sir.” He said standing up.

Lockhart squinted, “Not related to John Watts are you?” there was a hint of trepidation in his voice.

Peter frowned as he nodded, “Yes Professor, he’s my Dad.”

“You’re the son of John Watts, my god what a small world it is we live in.” He swept up to put his arm around Peter, guiding him to the front of the class. “Everyone put your Quills down, I want you to meet the son of my very best friend.”

He turned, still with Peter locked under his arm, “Oh the fun I used to get up to with your father, I bet he told you all about how I looked after him when we went to school together…” He gave another wink, “I remember when he decided to sneak into the potions class to prank old professor… well any way he got caught and I, naturally, had to come to his rescue…”

Peter blinked, he had heard that story actually, his father had told it differently, something about catching a Hufflepuff misfit trying to steal gord root which apparently was used in memory charms, and that it had been up to him to rescue both of them from a rather vengeful Potions master who happened upon the scene.

Come to think on it, there were a ton of those stories. Featuring that misfit Hufflepuff…

“Oh you’re father was lucky to have a loyal friend like me looking out for him, I even dedicated my third book to him…”

When they finally got out of the DADA class, Peter had a dull expression on his face, despite the fact that he had single handedly saved the entire class from an insane quiz, he had become the teachers pet. Which was better than the class simpleton he had been the year before… but by how much?

“You look worn out!” Nicholas exclaimed bounding up to him, “Did you hear, Gilderoy Lockharts our new DADA teacher…”

Peter turned to he overtly enthusiastic best friend, “Really? I hadn’t heard.” He said dryly, seriously contemplating chucking Nicholas out of the nearest window. After narrowly surviving the DADA classroom that had seemed so small when filled by Lockhart’s ego the last thing he felt like talking about was the resident superhero.

Nicholas, as usual, didn’t pick up on Peter’s mood but fortunately before he could throttle the little Gryffindor, Professor Flitwick intercepted them in the halls, he was holding a strange silver rod that Peter didn’t recognize.

“Ah Peter there you are,” the professor was sporting a strange green boil on the end of his nose, and Peter shot Nicholas a glare that said if he was responsible there would be hell to pay. The Professor seemed oblivious to his condition, as he waved the rod in Peter’s direction.

“I had a word with Coleville this morning, and he claimed he dared Quinn to take it for a prank.” He sniffed at the idea of one of his Ravenclaw’s being so easily manipulated by a Slytherin.

Peter stared at the professor blankly, “Sir?”

Flitwick didn’t notice Peter’s confusion as he continued, “I tried to identify this artifact based off of the description you gave me of its function last night, but as near as I can tell its some form of oath rod, more than that I would have to do more research.” He shook his head, “no time for that though. There was no harm done, I have given them both detention and deducted points.”

Peter looked in confusion at the professor, glancing at an equally confused Nicholas. “Uh sir, I don’t understand why did you give them detention?”

A look of aggravation passed over the charm Masters face, “Your discovery of Master Coleville and young master Quinn in the halls last night with this,” Flitwick held up the rod, “I am telling you that the matter is closed.”

Peter nodded his head, “all right…”

Flitwick shook his head, “And I thought senility only affected the aged.” He murmured sweeping away, tugging on the end of his beard as he muttered absently.

“What was that about?” Nicholas inquired curiously after the Charms master had moved on.

“I have no idea,” Peter said drawing a complete blank, “I think Flitwick’s flipped his wig…”

“Yeah,” Nicholas said as he dropped the subject, “Anyway are you patrolling tonight?”

Peter shook his head, “No, I patrol ever third night. Though I do have to catch up on my studying…”

Nicholas looked dismayed, “But we haven’t had a chance to play stones yet this year, and I was practicing real hard…”

Peter chuckled; he had tried to teach Nicholas stones in an effort to get the young Gryffindor to focus on something for more than the six minutes it took for him to find something new to captivate his attention. For some reason stones was fascinating to Nicholas, it was a game that could be learned in a matter of minutes and yet took hours to play. And Peter had been lucky enough to find a set in Hogsmeade that had wonderful magic effects. Each time they played it was like they were in a whole different world directing miniature armies complete with explosions and dragons.

“Ok, I’ll get the board if you meet me in the study hall, but we can only play for a few hours…” he warned, knowing full well that they could while away several on a single game if they weren’t careful.

***

As usual they hadn’t been careful.

It had to be getting late, the torches and braziers around the castle had been lit and it was dark outside. Peter suppressed a yawn as he reached out and moved another stone, sending his heavy Calvary charging towards Nicholas’s valiant infantry.

“Ah ha!” Nicholas said excitedly as he moved his stone, producing his canons that he had been hiding in reserve, “I have you now Blown-a-part.”

Peter shook his head as the cannons cut apart his charge, so much for winning this game. What had been a one-sided battle up until that moment had suddenly been turned against him as he realized Nicholas had been holding out on him. “You sneaky little…” he began grinning like a maniac, “You sure you’re not a Slytherin?”

Nicholas folded his arms smugly, “Nah, my dad taught me a few tricks this summer, he said you would fall for that move.”

“Over confident, typical Gryffindor…” Peter said conceding defeat by turning his stones over.

“Predictable, typical Ravenclaw,” Nicholas tossed back. He smiled that beaming smile and Peter sighed, one day that smile would get Nicholas into the kind of trouble that resulted in wedding vows and two point four children. Though if they wound up being half the nuisance Nicholas was, that would be poetic justice.



“What?” Nicholas asked self consciously, aware that Peter had been looking at him strangely.

“Nothing,” Peter said gathering up the stones and putting them away, “just thinking.”

“I try to avoid that,” Nicholas joked looking over towards the door where a Hufflepuff was bouncing up and down and pointing up the corridor. “Hey I think something’s up.”

Peter sighed, “This is Hogwarts, something’s always up, just ignore it and-“

But Nicholas was already up and bounding towards the door, and Peter shot a reluctant look at the empty chair before he too got up and followed the herd of people now heading for the door. He caught up with Nicholas and the two best friends were swept along with the crowd.

A large crowd was gathering around the inner courtyard, keeping to the loggias rather than actually out into the dimly lit gardens where two boys were facing each other down, their wands drawn. Peter sighed as he slipped his own wand out of his sleeve and stepped out into the garden.

He was surprised to see Quinn squaring off against Kyle of house Gryffindor. The two were close friends, almost as close as he and Nicholas. He blinked uncertainly for a moment and glanced at Nicholas who had stepped out with him. What could have made them angry enough to pull wands on each other and risk punishment?

Peter decided he couldn’t wait and let this play out, he was, as far as he could tell the only prefect there, no doubt others would arrive soon, but right then and there, it was his responsibility to break up the fight.

“Expell-“ Kyle began.

“If you finish that word,” Peter’s voice grew ominously threatening, “You’ll be in detention for the rest of the year!”

Both third years started when the realized the fifth year prefect was standing in the courtyard. They turned at the same time, and Peter saw an all too familiar smile of amusement pass over Quinn’s face.

He turned again and raised his own hand, and Peter blinked there was no wand in it… surely there had been a wand just a second ago…

“Expelliarmus!” Kyle bellowed, and the wash of light sent Quinn spiraling backwards across the courtyard colliding like a rag doll against the pillar of the loggias. He crumpled into a heap and Peter was over to him in just seconds.

Groggily he sat upright his eyes staring in pain and hurt for just a second across at Kyle, who in turn looked dumbstruck at what he had just done., his arm fell uselessly to his side as his jaw worked on trying to find the words.

Peter checked Quinn over before he stood up, “that’s it, detention!” he stated firmly, rounding on the Gryffindor, “I warned you!” He could see Maggie Chiang pushing her way through the crowd to join him. And he nodded to her that he had it under control.

“Alright, nothing to see here,” Nicholas said with his usual jovial nature, though he did cast Peter a confused glance, “Everyone back to your rooms go on…” As usual everyone ignored him, until Maggie started threatening to hand out detentions to anyone caught loitering.

Peter helped a shaken Quinn to his feet, considering taking him to Madame Pomfrey, but the young Ravenclaw was merely a little shaken. Peter turned back to the stunned Kyle, and shook his head, “I will get to the bottom of this,” he muttered, feeling that he was beginning to sound like Professor Snape… He affixed a very Snape-esque look on his face as he clasped a hand onto Kyle’s shoulder and led him towards the school.

From the shadows of an alcove, a pair of eyes flashed, a look that was mirrored in Quinn’s eyes as both pairs watched Peter lead Kyle away. Another suspicion averted…