A Matter of Black and White

DISCLAIMER: This story is based upon the works of JK Rowling. Anything you recognize is hers. I’m making no money off of this. I’m just having some fun adding my own little corner to the amazing world she has already created.

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CHAPTER 18—ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

The start of the term came as a relief for Aurora. Spending her days surrounded by a castle full of young people gave her new energy and distractions from the wider world of events into which she was diving. The students at Hogwarts were not quite as carefree as her Beauxbatons classmates had been—all but the Slytherins wore anxious expressions every morning when the post was flown in. All the same, the electricity of youth was still in their favor, and Aurora found their vivacity infectious.

With the exceptions of Horace, around whom she was still making a wide berth whenever possible, and Severus, who was an entity unto himself, her colleagues were all pleasant enough. In the second week of the term, she brought a runic scroll about a medieval goblin rebellion to Cuthbert Binns’s fourth-year History class. The text was magically inscribed and brought to life miniature, ghostly versions of the battle’s participants when one of her Runes students read aloud from the parchment. Cuthbert had nearly fainted when one of the fighting dragon apparitions had landed on top of his head. In the end, though, he and the students were all cheering madly when Crookrod the Devious, who had hexed Eobryht the Fair in the back, was finally blasted off his mount. Since that day, which one cheeky student had described as “the only History class I’ve ever stayed awake in,” her idea of interdisciplinary projects had taken off like a Filibuster rocket. Even Minerva, who had seemed somewhat skeptical about her at first, had taken to her once Aurora had told the Transfiguration professor about a Holdahexe spell for changing a bit of flax into a rich golden fleece. They were now planning a joint class on early transfiguration spells for the late autumn.

As for her own lessons, they were generally going well. The classes were small—a little disappointingly so until Aurora stopped to appreciate how much more she could do with fewer students. Also, Fleur wasn’t quite right about Hogwarts students being “behind.” It was more a case of them being generally uninspired by the subject, which was probably the reason so few individuals had elected to take Ancient Runes in the first place. Most of the participants were there because the class was necessary for their future careers or because there was simply nothing better to take. (The Ravenclaws generally pshawed Divination, Muggle Studies, and Care of Magical Creatures, leaving them few options.) Her N.E.W.T. students, of which Hermione Granger was one, were a studious bunch, disciplined but somewhat skeptical after four or five years with Professor Hrothgar that the subject could consist of anything more than spending hours bent over a text with a dictionary. Her third years, at least, were entirely new to the subject and more readily accepted the idea that one could take a more active approach to studying Ancient Runes.

The only less than desirable class was with the fifth years, who made up for their seniors’ excessive discipline tenfold. Like the rest of her small classes, this one threw all of the houses together into one bunch, though she couldn’t say that Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin shone any brighter with the opportunity for direct comparison. This group included Ginny Weasley, who was rapidly confirming her mother’s fears by spending more time batting her eyes at the boys or staring out the window at the Quidditch pitch than she was staying focused on her textbook. Meanwhile, the Hufflepuffs were an exceptionally chatty lot, and Luna Lovegood from Ravenclaw, while gifted at reading ancient runes, liked to provide her own running commentary about how the extinct monsters described in their texts were actually alive and well and being bred by the Ministry in a plot to overthrow British rutabaga farmers. Though her classmates secretly rolled their eyes at her stories, they nevertheless enjoyed egging her on in the hopes of getting lessons off track.

Then there were the fifth-year Slytherins. Beval Harper had already made one of the Hufflepuffs cry by calling her a Mudblood, and he and his friends were constantly testing how little of their homework they could complete without getting detention. In addition, she had a straggler in her class—a sixth year named Gregory Goyle, who had failed to receive any O.W.L.s and was having to repeat much of his coursework before attempting to sit the exams again. He was too much of a follower to do any more than chuckle at his housemates’ taunts of their fellow students, but he provided his own set of pedagogical challenges insofar as that he was utterly clueless about the subject matter, even the second time around.

“I can’t imagine how anyone has done him the disservice of letting him get this far along in school,” Aurora complained to his Head of House one day after an Occlumency lesson. “How did he end up taking Runes anyway?”

“He failed out of Arithmancy a month into his third year,” Severus answered blandly, “once Vector discovered he was incapable of doing basic maths.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” she said with exasperation. “Why hasn’t anyone taught him the basics, and why have his teachers been looking the other way for the past six years? Sometimes I think he can barely read English, let alone runes.”

“Mr. Goyle had the misfortune of having been born to numbskull parents who would themselves have had to have learned ‘the basics,’ as you call them, before teaching them to their son. Since coming to Hogwarts, his one grace has been—in typical Slytherin fashion—knowing the right people. Goyle is friends with a boy named Malfoy, whose father, up until recently, was on the Board of Governors. Any time Goyle failed his year-end exams, Lucius was happy to approve a special dispensation for him.”

“And what good did that do him? He still couldn’t pass his O.W.L.s. I take it Gregory didn’t have any friends with a parent on the Administering Board.” She paused as a new thought washed over her. “Wait, don’t those dispensations have to be signed by a faculty member before being sent to the Governors?” She gaped at Severus’s impassive face. “Oh, don’t tell me you did it.”

“I am the boy’s Head of House,” he answered simply.

“But you of all people…if anyone wouldn’t be satisfied with their students’ work…”

“Like I said, Mr. Goyle has the advantage of knowing the right people,” Severus answered, suddenly more interested in returning to his grading.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” he said more impatiently, “that his father is a Death Eater, and Death Eaters protect their own.”

Aurora shook her head. “But how can you be so…so…hypocritical?”

“Once again,” Severus drawled, “I see why you are completely unequipped to become a spy. Do you think I enjoy sending dunderheads out of here with the same degree I received from this school? I assure you I walk a fine enough line with the Death Eaters as it is without making enemies because of their idiot children.”

“Of course I see that you don’t want to make enemies,” she said testily, “but surely there is something you can to make sure these children get a decent education.”

“Feel free to risk your own neck if you think you have a better idea, but for the time being take my advice. Do what you have to do to get Goyle past his O.W.L.s, and make friends with Harper and the rest. A few Slytherins in your favor might lend the credibility you are so desperately lacking if you are to play as a Death Eater.”

Aurora sent him an indignant glare. She had no intent of sabotaging her chances of surviving the Death Eaters, but there was no way she was going to get manipulated by their children either. Slytherin or not, these kids were going to learn something, even if—and it was quite literally possible—it was the last thing she did.

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Aurora chose to spend her free lesson on Friday morning in the staff room. She had already had her first class of the day with the fifth-years, and it was already high time for a break. Harper had been in full form this morning. He had handed in homework that had the exact same mistakes as one of the Muggle-born Hufflepuffs whom he always taunted. She had no doubt that he had bullied his way into being able to copy his classmate’s parchment. Nevertheless, she had no way of actually proving who had originally done the work and didn’t want to punish the Hufflepuff just to teach Harper a lesson. She had tried exposing the young Slytherin’s dishonesty by asking him to explain the rationale behind a difficult passage from the copied translation, but he had enough natural aptitude in Runes to still be able to answer tolerably well, even without having done the work in advance.

Teaching was supposed to have been the one decent, the one worthwhile thing she was going to do in Britain—not that contributing to the downfall of the darkest wizard in history wasn’t worthwhile, but she had known it was going to be a morally relative activity. But teaching…teaching was supposed to be something pure. She loved getting to know her students, loved helping them discover new things, loved watching them grow. Now it seemed that teaching at Hogwarts was also going to be a practice in fuzzy ethics, for she would have to sacrifice a few lessons that students like Harper desperately needed if she wanted to live to teach another day.

She was so preoccupied with how she could balance her academic integrity with her sense of self-preservation that she passed by the gargoyle guards without even noticing the topic of their latest argument. Entering the room, she then managed to collide straight into Jane Dunot, sending the Muggle Studies teacher’s books and papers flying.

Jane knelt to the ground to pick up her things, crouching in a kind of feet-on-the-ground fetal position, her chin tucked in toward the book that lay between her feet. The stance seemed designed to minimize her space on this earth. It was a self-protective mechanism like a turtle retracting into its shell, and it banked on the probability that whomever had collided into her would now look blankly around their eye-level space and assume he or she had crashed into something inconsequential, perhaps some of the staff room’s randomly rearranging furniture.

“I’m so sorry!” Aurora cried, bending down to pick up a book. She recognized it as the one Arthur Weasley had kept on his coffee table. “Muggles of the World,” she identified it at once.

Jane flushed under downcast eyes as she reached out to take back the book.

“I’ve seen this before,” Aurora continued. “It has some nice photos.”

Jane’s sunken eyes raised to the level of Aurora’s waist, ready to retreat back to the scuffed brown toes of her own shoes at a moment’s notice. “It’s not a textbook,” she mumbled, “but nothing else has pictures like these.”

“Yes, I recall. The one of the Alpine ski-jumper is exquisite.” She remembered how Arthur had been convinced that the skis were a kind of Muggle broomstick that allowed the athlete to fly through the electric blue mountain sky.

Jane’s eyes crept up to neck level. “It’s the most many of the students will ever see of Muggles outside Britain. If they don’t care to see non-magical people in their own country, they’ll never care to in another.”

Aurora nodded, startled by how near the timid Muggle Studies teacher had come to making an overt political statement. “Aren’t there other Muggle Studies researchers who take a camera when they go abroad?”

“Nothing like this,” she answered, stroking the cover fondly. “International Muggle Studies isn’t a very popular field.”

“Have you ever gone out of the country to do some research yourself?”

“Oh, no!” Jane exclaimed, as if Aurora had suggested flying to the moon and stopping by the Dark Lord’s for tea along the way. “I don’t even know a foreign language.”

“They do seem to be difficult to come by around here,” Aurora pointed out forgivingly. At Beauxbatons, everyone had been required to take a series of modern language classes in additional to the magical curriculum. There wasn’t anything like that here at Hogwarts.

“I suppose it’s because there’s no one to teach them,” Jane answered, “though they’d help the students so much.”

Then Aurora felt the onset of a brilliant idea. Of course, there were all sorts of things one could do with a Runic Muggle Studies unit. After all, the original runic authors had lived side by side with the Muggles. That being said though, Ancient Runes were, well…ancient, and there were more important present-day issues that a Muggle Studies class in particular might address. “I could teach them,” she volunteered.

Jane’s pale mouth hung open. “You…you would?” It was hard to say whether she was more flabbergasted that Aurora would bother with a Muggle Studies course or with the meek and humble Jane Dunot, the only teacher easier to see through than Binns.

“I know it’s not quite the same as doing an official interdisciplinary project between our two classes, but I’d still love to do it…if you’re willing to have me, of course.”

She blinked. “Of…of course.”

“What language would you like them to learn?”

Jane got that distinctly romantic look that Aurora had always found accompanied just one language in the world. “Well, French has always seemed quite beautiful to me.”

“French it is then,” Aurora declared with a wide smile. Of course, she wouldn’t get much beyond bonjour and merci in just a class or two, but at least, she thought, she’d be doing something worthwhile.

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AN: I think it’s funny that we know almost nothing about Muggle Studies at Hogwarts and even less about its teacher. It’s almost like he or she is, well, invisible. With Dunot, I think we can understand why.

Thanks again to Trickie Woo for reviewing and for everyone else who is reading. Get ready, the next chapter is a Snapey one.