Chapter 95: The Hugely Popular Defense Against the Dark Arts Class?

Professor McGonagall was as good as her word. Silven had just finished lunch in the Great Hall and returned to the common room when Jin Ni walked over holding a piece of parchment.

"Professor McGonagall asked me to give you this," Jin Ni said.

"Thanks." Silven took the parchment and opened it.

More than fifty book titles were crammed together, nearly filling the parchment like some sort of thesis, and the sight made Silven's scalp prickle.

He had expected there might be a lot of books to read, but he hadn't expected this many. He even suspected Professor McGonagall was doing it on purpose, trying to use this method to make him give up on learning to be an Animagus.

Silven immediately shook his head again. Snape might be the sort to do that, but the rigorous Professor McGonagall certainly wouldn't — she wouldn't joke about Transfiguration.

But this really was too many.

Silven scratched his hair. With this many books, even borrowing them all from the library would take quite a while. Better head to class first.

In the afternoon was Defense Against the Dark Arts — also the class most people looked forward to the most.

The moment the lesson began, Lockhart gave everyone a show of force… ahem, a questionnaire.

"What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color?"

"Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition."

……

Nearly half the students were dumbfounded, and Ron kept checking the parchment over and over, insisting it had to be the end-of-year exam paper.

Although Silven knew this was coming, he couldn't possibly have read through that many books in advance. So during class he deliberately sat next to Hermione and, by cheating, got a decent enough score — barely preserving his status as a "Lockhart admirer."

"What a pity. If Mr. Silven Ollivander had read *Voyage with the Vampire* more carefully, he would have remembered that my secret ambition also includes selling my own line of hair-care potions."

Silven put on a look of feigned regret.

Anyone who's ever copied homework knows you can't copy it all wholesale — you have to deliberately miss or get one or two wrong, out of respect for the one helping you.

Just like now. Silven left out one answer, making Hermione the only student to get a perfect score. She earned Lockhart's highest praise and won ten points for Gryffindor.

Hermione was so thrilled that she immediately overlooked Silven's cheating just now.

Silven sighed faintly inside. What a sweet little witch — but a shame that after this class, the beautiful illusions she held about Lockhart would begin to crumble.

Hopefully she wouldn't take it too hard.

Then…

"That was amazing. I've never had such an interesting Defense Against the Dark Arts class." After class, as the group walked back to the Gryffindor common room together, Hermione's cheeks were still faintly flushed.

"Ah, I'll admit he's a bit better than Quirrell," Ron said, unusually not arguing. "But only a bit — after all, he was just standing on the side watching."

Silven followed the three of them in a daze.

Things seemed a little different from what he'd expected. Lockhart's Defense Against the Dark Arts class had, against all odds, become hugely popular.

Not because Lockhart had displayed any extraordinary skill — in fact, he hadn't touched his wand once the entire class, only said a few words.

Silven instinctively thought back to half an hour earlier, to the scene when Lockhart released a cage of Cornish pixies.

"Come on, drive them together — they're just a bunch of pixies."

"Careful, don't make them angry."

"Well done, Miss Granger, that's it — but if it were me, I'd choose a more efficient spell."

"Potter, go rescue Mr. Longbottom. I'm sure you can handle a little thing like that, can't you?"

"No worries, no worries — in this class you can use magic as much as you like. I've got everything under control."

Lockhart just stood there, holding forth as if at the start-of-term feast, but he didn't run around — he stayed in place the whole time, giving verbal commands.

Whether or not it was his words taking effect, the students below gradually calmed down after the initial panic and discovered the true nature of Cornish pixies.

They were merely magical creatures that liked pranks, but they wouldn't actually cause them any real harm — their teeth couldn't even bite through school robes.

So it didn't take long for someone to recall that, in the Ministry of Magic's official danger classification, Cornish pixies were rated XX, meaning harmless/domesticable. Sharing the same rating were nifflers and bowtruckles.

That's right — only Hermione. She was the one who'd memorized the entire thick *Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them*.

Now everyone's courage grew, and especially after Lockhart allowed them to cast spells freely, things really got out of hand. Spells flew everywhere in the classroom, and excited shouts could be be heard through an entire floor.

It was hard to imagine such commotion in a class. At the same time, Gilderoy Lockhart's first lesson was a great success — students praised him as confident, composed, and utterly in command, as if he were certain he could handle any mess and its consequences.

The truth, however, was that he had simply stood there without moving. Even when Neville was dragged by the Cornish pixies up to the chandelier on the ceiling and nearly fell and broke something, Lockhart only told Harry to go rescue him.

And after class, the broken desks, chairs, and benches in the classroom, along with the chandelier that nearly came loose — those were all repaired by the students with magic. Lockhart left behind only two rows of gleaming white teeth and a golden back of the head.

And this is what made him leap to most-popular professor?

Hmm… it really did seem to work.

Even Silven had to admit that a professor who set no restrictions and allowed students to use magic freely in class was genuinely very appealing.

Silven suddenly realized his impression of Lockhart might have been a bit one-sided.

Granted, Lockhart was a fraud — the adventures in his books were other people's stories, which he'd shamelessly stolen and claimed as his own.

But that didn't mean he was an empty-headed fool. On the contrary, Lockhart was clever — you could tell from the fact that he'd been Sorted into Ravenclaw at school. Silven himself hadn't even been Sorted into Ravenclaw.

And Lockhart's track record —

Silven thought: if he were Lockhart, could he have swindled those adventure stories out of other people?

Track them down, ask them exactly how they'd done those things, draw out the whole story, then wipe the evidence with an Obliviate.

The answer was: very difficult.

Because any wizard capable of driving off werewolves or taming trolls couldn't possibly be a fool — they were highly vigilant, and not easy to trust a strange wizard.

Yet Lockhart had succeeded seven times, and several of those people were even friends of Dumbledore's.

If he could fool these long-established wizards, surely he wouldn't be so easy for a few students to see through as a fool.

The only thing he couldn't understand was why those Cornish pixies didn't go bother Lockhart. Could it be that just standing still didn't attract their attention?

Maybe.

Though… Silven suddenly felt a bit of regret. If he'd known Lockhart's class would be at this level, he shouldn't have been in such a hurry to sell that copy of *The Magical Me*.

Being able to use magic freely in class — that pitch would clearly appeal more to Slytherin. There were more wealthy witches there, and selling it for a hundred galleons wasn't out of the question.

With that feeling in mind, Silven parted ways with the others on the staircase.

"I need to make a trip to the library," Silven said. "You all go on ahead."

He planned to borrow the book from the parchment.

"The library?" Ron jerked his head up and blurted out, "You're not really going to turn into Hermione, are you… oh, sorry, Hermione, I didn't mean it that way."

Seeing the unfriendly look Hermione shot his way, Ron hurriedly explained, "I mean, why has Silven suddenly taken a liking to reading? He clearly only liked fiddling with wood before."

"That's a good thing," Hermione deliberately drew out her tone, sounding exactly like Professor McGonagall giving a lecture. "If you lot could also take a liking to reading, you shouldn't need to borrow my homework every single day!"

"We don't borrow it every day either!" Ron retorted.

"Yes, except Saturdays," Hermione said with a cold laugh. "Because on that day you lot simply don't do the homework at all!"

Watching the three of them suddenly start bickering, Silven shrugged and turned to head downstairs.

He didn't dare to cut in, because he might also need to borrow Hermione's homework.

If possible, Silven hoped he could master the Animagus transformation before third year.

Of course, this also meant he needed to devote more time and energy to Transfiguration. At this point, homework with Hermione's model answers became very important, as it could help him squeeze out more time.

On the other side, facing Hermione who held the homework in hand, Ron also quickly beat a retreat and began to change the subject.

"This year's Defense Against the Dark Arts class is really interesting. Did you see? I caught five Cornish pixies!"

"I caught three," Harry said with a smile. "Looks like we all misunderstood Luohate Sect before—his class really is very interesting."

"I told you long ago that he is a remarkable wizard, but you never believed me." Hermione's mood immediately improved."

"But I still don't think you should keep using the Levitation Charm," Hermione recalled Ron's performance in class and said. "One pixie got knocked up to the ceiling by your book, its wing was broken, and Harry, you almost stepped one to death too."

"Those pixies snatched my glasses away, I couldn't see," Harry explained.

At the time he was looking for his glasses and didn't notice at all that a pixie had happened to drop right at his feet.

"Yeah, and the scene was so chaotic back then, we didn't do it on purpose either," Ron said. "Don't worry, isn't Professor Luohate Sect here? He'll take good care of those pixies."

"Remember that book my mum always reads? *Gilderoy Lockhart Teaches You to Clear the Pests in Your Home*—he must know those little things inside out."

Whether it was for the homework's sake or some other reason, Ron's way of addressing him had already changed from this morning's Luohate Sect to Professor Luohate Sect.

Naturally, Hermione was the happiest about this change, and the three of them made up once again.

(End of this chapter)