Tuesday morning.
Slytherin and Ravenclaw dragged themselves toward the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom for their second lesson of the year.
Elias took a seat in the front row without hesitation.
After the soporific disaster that was History of Magic, he was ready for something real.
Defence was a subject worth paying attention to.
Then Quirinus Quirrell shuffled in.
The man mounted the podium like a nervous rodent approaching unfamiliar food, and the moment he opened his mouth to speak, the smell hit.
Elias recoiled.
His throat seized.
Something ancient and violent rolled through the air — garlic, but weaponised, as if someone had crushed entire bulbs into paste and smeared them across every available surface.
The stench clung to the inside of his nostrils.
His stomach lurched.
“What is that—” he muttered, half to himself.
Around him, students were going pale.
Several pressed sleeves to their faces.
One Ravenclaw girl looked genuinely ill.
“C-children… y-you… hello… I’m Professor Quirrell. P-please take out… your textbooks.”
The stammering made it worse.
Every halting syllable pumped fresh garlic reek into the room.
Draco Malfoy, nose pinched dramatically between thumb and forefinger, voiced what everyone was thinking.
“Ugh, Professor, have you ever taken a bath?!”
Heads nodded across the classroom.
No house rivalry here.
Just collective suffering.
Quirrell’s face flooded scarlet.
“Th-this isn’t… I’m doing this… to w-ward off… v-vampires. They… are terrified of g-garlic.”
“Hogwarts doesn’t have vampires, Professor!” Pansy Parkinson was on her feet, disgust written across every feature.
“P-please, students… turn to… page one.”
He didn’t look at her.
Didn’t acknowledge the objection.
Just fumbled with the textbook and began to read aloud in that stumbling, fractured cadence, as if the words themselves were obstacles he had to navigate around.
Elias stopped breathing.
He held the air in his lungs until his chest burned, then snatched both quills from his desk.
His wand was in his hand before conscious thought caught up.
The Transfiguration wasn’t elegant — he was too desperate for elegance — but it worked.
The quills flattened, stretched, shaped themselves into twin cloth masks.
He pressed them to his face and breathed through the fabric.
It was like surfacing from deep water.
[Transfiguration LV.3 — 892 EXP]
The students nearest him stared.
First-years didn’t do that.
First-years didn’t have the presence of mind to Transfigure their own supplies into protective equipment before the second week of classes.
Their quills sat untouched on their desks, and now they looked at them differently — not as writing implements, but as potential salvation.
Decorum held.
Barely.
No one asked for his help.
Instead, wands came out.
Hesitant pokes at unused quills.
A few muttered incantations.
Nothing happened.
The masks stayed masks, and Elias had the sense to keep his eyes on his textbook and not on the small humiliations unfolding around him.
Page one, then page two, then page three, his voice trembling and dropping syllables like loose change.
He never stopped to explain.
Never paused for questions.
Never did anything except recite the assigned text with the mounting terror of a man who knew he was failing and could not stop himself.
By the time the period ended, the entire class was demoralised beyond salvage.
They had learned nothing.
They had understood less.
The Defence Against the Dark Arts professor was a fraud, and everyone in the room knew it.
Elias stared at his pristine textbook.
No notes.
Not a single mark.
How did someone this incompetent get the position?
His jaw tightened.
He could do better.
He could read aloud better.
And he’d get paid for it, instead of wasting his mornings suffocating on garlic fumes while a man who couldn’t finish a sentence pretended to teach.
In the hallway after class, Draco Malfoy’s voice cut through the crowd.
“This kind of person doesn’t deserve to be a professor! I’m going to write to my father!”
For the first time in his life, Elias found Malfoy completely agreeable.
He meant it.
He sincerely hoped Lucius Malfoy had the influence to get Quirrell removed.
He’d come to Hogwarts to learn, not to develop respiratory damage.
“Good luck,” Elias said, and patted Malfoy on the shoulder.
Malfoy jumped backward so fast he nearly collided with Crabbe.
He retreated behind his two bookends, eyes narrowing, watching Elias like he’d just been handed a live snake.
Elias was already walking away.
“Good luck,” he repeated, half over his shoulder.
Other students echoed the sentiment — carefully, from a safe distance, hands firmly at their sides.
No one else made physical contact.
No one wanted to find out what that might cost them.
Malfoy watched them go, bewildered, as if some invisible weight had just been draped across his shoulders and he couldn’t figure out who’d put it there.
Hermione came for him that afternoon.
She appeared at the entrance to the Slytherin common room with that particular light in her eyes — the one that meant she’d already decided how the next hour would go and was only bothering to inform him out of politeness.
Transfiguration was in forty minutes.
They were leaving now.
“The classroom’s a five-minute walk,” Elias pointed out as she tugged him down the corridor.
“We should preview the material. Half an hour of preparation is reasonable.”
“You’ve already read the textbook cover to cover.”
She didn’t dignify this with a response.
This was the first class Gryffindor and Slytherin shared, and Hermione was vibrating with an intensity Elias hadn’t seen from her before.
She steered him toward the front row with the focus of someone executing a military maneuver.
“Front row has disadvantages,” he said, attempting reason.
“Professors notice when you’re reading ahead. They call on you more. You can’t see who’s behind you.”
“Professor McGonagall is the head of Gryffindor house.”
“That’s not actually an argument.”
“It’s an excellent argument. Sit.”
Elias sat.
“Fine. But you owe me the back row for Defence Against the Dark Arts. Every lesson. No debate.”
Hermione nodded absently, already pulling out her textbook.
They settled into silence.
His was Intermediate Transfiguration — third to fifth year material.
Neither of them commented on the disparity.
The tabby cat on the podium watched them both with unblinking eyes.
Professor McGonagall, in her feline form, had heard the whispers about Quirrell’s performance that morning.
The students hadn’t been subtle.
Incompetent.
Fraud.
Couldn’t even read.
She’d worked alongside Quirrell for years — he’d been the Muggle Studies professor before his sabbatical, and while he’d never been particularly forceful, he’d never been this.
Whatever he’d encountered during his year away had hollowed something out of him.
She put the thought aside.
It wasn’t relevant to the two children reading in her front row.
A Slytherin and a Gryffindor.
Studying together before class.
Helping each other.
It was rare enough to be notable, and the sight stirred something old and complicated in her chest.
They reminded her of Severus and Lily, before everything went wrong.
Before all the choices that couldn’t be unmade.
She shook off the memory.
Sentiment was not useful.
At five minutes before the bell, the classroom was nearly full.
Every student had arrived early — her reputation for punctuality preceded her — and the air carried that particular tension of children waiting for the hammer to fall.
The bell rang.
The tabby cat twitched.
Any moment now, she would shift—
The door slammed open with a crack that echoed off the stone walls.
Two figures stumbled through, gasping.
Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.
“The third time,” Hermione hissed, her voice dropped low so only Elias could hear.
“Third time they’ve been late. If Professor McGonagall weren’t so generous with her point deductions, my house would be in negative numbers by now.”
Elias’s lips twitched.
It was the second day of classes.
Ron, spotting the empty podium, broke into a relieved grin.
“Looks like the professor’s not here yet. Can you imagine McGonagall’s face if she’d seen us?”
Harry exhaled, tension leaving his shoulders.
“Yeah. Close one.”
The tabby cat leaped.
She sprang from the podium with a fluidity that should have been impossible for a creature her size, twisting mid-air — and then she was Professor McGonagall, landing directly in front of the two boys with her robes settling around her like folded wings.
The silence was absolute.
“Perhaps I should have you copy ‘I must not be late to class, nor discuss my professors behind their backs’ fifty times. With a quill. By hand.” Her gaze flicked briefly to Elias, who was calmly sliding Intermediate Transfiguration into his bag.
“Or perhaps a more creative solution is required.”
Harry’s mouth opened and closed silently.
“I— we got lost, Professor.”
“You mean I should turn one of you into a map. So you won’t get lost.” Her tone was dry as winter dead grass.
“A novel solution. Practical. Permanent, even.”
Neither boy spoke.
“I trust you two won’t get lost finding your seats.”
A ripple of suppressed snickering ran through the room.
Harry and Ron fled to the nearest empty chairs with the desperate speed of men escaping a closing door.
“Gryffindor will lose two points because of the two of you.”
McGonagall turned back toward the podium, and the lesson began.