Defense Against the Dumb Antics; The Tired Joke Extravaganza
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CountvonBarnOwl
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Moving swiftly along, let's get to the good shit.
Warning: The following fic contains out-of-character moments, in character moments, deliberate mischaracterization of dramatis personae, spelling, grammar, and syntax that look slightly better than what was typed up over the course of a single lunch hour, profusely blatant evidence that the author was more concerned with forcing cheap laughs and ham-handed wisecracks than he was with Harry Potter, the Wizarding World, Malfoid, Malfoid-posting, Malfoid Shipping and so on, an insufficient use of the words: bum, knickers, botty, and wee-wees to be included in the NSFW (which was where this idea started).
Defense Against the Dumb Antics; The Tired Joke Extravaganza
Alastor Moody – the Dark Lord had mad sure to acquaint him with the dangers of even thinking of himself as Bartimeus Crouch – looked over his class. "Constant vigilance!" He barked, startling the students and getting the rise that he had desired out of them. He was no real teacher, no real Auror-emeritus, and that meant that his lessons had to be stacked high with impenetrable nonsense that he could boil down to one or two-word truisms to sound profound.
Which had, to Alastor's surprise, been hilarious. There was a joy to having people think that you were deep when you weren't even shallow. The dimwitted and the dishonest would always tell him that they understood him, and tried to pull meaning out of his words. He'd nod, smile, and even award a point or two, all the while laughing to himself knowing that each and every student who did had sourced their meaning from their own cavernous backsides in the way that he had sourced his teaching materials.
It was almost as funny as what he had planned for today's lesson, with all of the materials hidden under a large blue tablecloth out in the middle of the field.
"With that said, ordinarily I wouldn't be allowed to show you what I am about to show you until your sixth year. And I should, according to most of my predecessors, the Board of Governors, the Ministry, and the Headmaster – until I prevailed on him otherwise – just teach you the counter-spells without telling you what you're going to be using them against, how they work, or why."
"But a Dark Wizard is not going to explain the curse that he is going to throw at you in advance. He will not outline it in detail, explain its requirements and anticipated effects, or otherwise be polite. There is just going to be a whip of a wand and an incantation, some of you might be lucky enough to see them coming, the rest… oh I don't know… some rainswept alley, a dark room, or maybe just from behind a hedge or stone wall… and that will be that. So, the answer is Constant Vigilance. Forewarned is forearmed. You know the Dark Wizard's plan. So, you can plan around his plan. Of course, the clever ones will plan around your plans, so you have to plan around the plans that they planned around the plans that you planned around their plans. AND THE ORNERY ONES," Alastor curled his arms in and stomped his peg leg. He let an old hate that did not actually exist weigh on the students for a bit, "the ornery ones, they plan around the plans that you planned around the plans that they planned around the plans that you planned around their plans. So, you'll have to plan for those too." He added, as if it were an afterthought."
"Now, since you aren't actually my sixth-year class. I will not ask you to deal with what I am about to show you silently and windlessly." Alastor let that statement weigh on the students too, and from the way a few of them started to shake below the knees, it looked like it had weighed an ocean. "Not initially, anyhow." He appended.
With fear like a thousand-foot-high glacier that stretched off into the horizon on both sides bearing down on them at full gallop, a few students fainted. And each House lost two points per.
Alastor unveiled his lesson plan. It was a large burlap sack, sat next to a trunk, and atop the trunk, a bottle of pungent-smelling, dark brown liquid, and a House-Elf, vainly squirming at his magical bindings.
"Now, class, who can tell me what the Unforgivable Curses are?" Alastor asked, before instantly saying "Malfoy." It wouldn't do to have Lucius Malfoy's daughter silently resenting him for turning her into a ferret, when she had apparently mastered silent casting by the start of her fourth year, for no other outward purpose than to seemingly get a boy's attention. Of course, that boy was Potter, which forced Alastor to contemplate the possibility of the girl having ulterior motives that the Dark Lord would invariably smile on.
"Imperius, Cruciatus, and Old Reliable." She replied without pause.
"That is right, Miss Malfoy. The Imperius Curse, the Cruciatus Curse, and Avada Kedavra, also variously known as The Kedavra, the AK, Old Reliable, the Universal Counter-curse, Problem-Solver, Lickety-Split, the Fun One, or by its proper name, the Killing Curse. And yes, these will all be on the test." Alastor said, eliciting another collective groan from the students.
"Now, using any of these spells for any reason whatsoever on any other living, thinking, feeling being will usually lead to one of two outcomes. One, for members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight who are still flush with galleons and other assets. You just need to say that you were Imperius'd yourself by whatever self-styled Dark Lord has been occupying a recent news cycle, or by – and write this down – Unidentified Muggleborn Males. Everybody else will have to go to Azkaban and have their asses pounded both by the Dementors and their very large, temperamental, and sexually curious cellmates."
Most of the class displayed a level of maturity that one could reasonably expect in responding to his remark, and burst out laughing.
Mostly.
"Professor, Dementors don't do… that. They just take away your happiness and your ability to feel joy." The girl next to the Boy Who Lived saw fit to remind everyone. Of course, she had made the fatal error of leaving herself open.
"They do, Miss Granger, but did anyone ever tell you how the Dementors take away all of your happiness and your ability to feel joy?" Alastor replied, heralding a rise in the guffaws.
"The Kiss, the Kiss, Professor. Dementors Kiss you and suck out your soul." Alastor smiled, 'Merlin, bless this girl, she needs help,' he thought.
"Young lady, I've put away a lot of Dark Witches and Wizards in my time. I've seen more of that shivering rock than anybody should ever need." Alastor said, letting a haunted expression crease some parts of his face and pull other parts taut. "And let me tell you, no Dementor stops at first base."
Having had his laugh, Alastor got on with class, making sure to dock points from any student who had laughed him or her self unconscious as he turned everything Hermione said into a ribald crack. And then he docked another round of points for each student who failed to notice the tripping jinx that he had subtly cast during the exchange.
"Now, as I said, it is illegal to use any of the Unforgivable Curses against another sentient being, and it has been since 1717. And that rule used to be universal, until the 1993 Wizengamot session amended the statute to permit the use of the Imperius and Cruciatus curses on House-Elves currently and/or formerly serving the House of Malfoy, and who are named Dobby. Like Dobby here." Alastor explained, leaving many of the students slack-jawed. It would forever be a mystery to both Alastor Moody and Bartimeus Crouch Junior exactly what passed between Albus Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, the Minister for Magic, the DMLE and the whole rest of the Wizengamot for that to happen. But Alastor was happy that it did, whatever it was, as soon as he had tracked the hapless House-Elf down and unclamped him from that muggle car battery.
"Now I will show you all the Imperius." He said, "Imperio." There was perhaps, a golden wafting in the air at the tip of his wand, and a slight glazing-over of Dobby's eyes before Alastor undid the restraints. "You see, class? Completely unresponsive." He explained, going from waving his hand in front of Dobby's face to gently rapping his knuckles atop the House-Elf's head.
"You see, class, I am in complete control of Dobby's actions, observe. Ahem, Dobby, drink that bottle of hot sauce." Dobby unscrewed the cap and downed the entire bottle of brown-orange sludge in record time. Much to the astonishment of the students. "Now Dobby, jump off of the trunk, and do a double front flip on the way down."
Dobby took an impressive leap, and while none of the students particularly acquainted with the House-Elf knew him to be a particularly excellent gymnast, he found space enough in the air to tuck into himself and complete the full double rotation.
"Maybe I should have told him to stick the landing," Alastor muttered after the thud. "Wait, had I told him to stick the landing he would have stuck the landing. See class, even I have a few things yet to learn about…" Alastor trailed off as he pointed to the class with his free hand.
"Constant Vigilance," they all chorused.
"Perfect." Alastor said, "Now I can teach you all about the Cruciatus. But first – keep it down Dobby," the perspiring House-Elf swallowed on Alastor's command, "but first, I must release the Imperius." Alastor flicked his wand and the sweat-drenched, red-faced House-Elf immediately did the stop-drop-and-roll before hurriedly shoveling handfuls of loose dirt into his maw.
"Unlike this next curse, class, the Imperius can be fought against, and resisted. Don't tell anybody but I am going to try to sell the Headmaster on the idea of live-fire resistance training. I'm sure that if I can convince him that some if not all of you can learn to fight it off, then one or two in a safe, controlled environment won't be a big deal." Alastor droned. "This one, on the other hand, we will not be training for. Crucio."
Dobby went from being mid-swallow to doing an impression of a bug on a zapper.
"You see, class, the Cruciatus Curse requires real intent to cause pain, harm, suffering, or misery. Cruelty for cruelty's own sake. Wanting to harm somebody because they have done you wrong or taken somebody you love away from you will pretty much guarantee the spell's failure, or just make it tickle. So, you should all know, that anybody using the Cruciatus means to cause suffering, on purpose and for no reason per se." He casually explained, as Dobby seized and spasmed near his feet.
"I should probably stop now. Under a Cruciatus, the muscles seize and contract violently enough that they can tear themselves, shear ligaments, and even snap bones. This usually results in the death of the victim, by the account of having a broken bone puncture something, or a broken neck. There is a theoretical point where the pain permanently sears itself into the target's nervous system and renders them completely insensate, but I have only ever seen that twice, and it was achieved only with the copious use of magical and physical restraints." Alastor explained as he silently thanked the Lestrange family for their encyclopedic knowledge of binding jinxes and knot-tying.
"Anyway, Dobby here is starting to look a bit well-done around the edges," Alastor said, releasing the Cruciatus. "So now we will be moving onto the Kedavra. Or, something similar to the Kedavra. First, you need pure killing intent, kind of like the Cruciatus. Which is why I am confident that if all of you raised your wands, pointed them at me, and said, 'Avada Kedvra,' I wouldn't get so much as a nosebleed. You're all fourth-years in peacetime. You lack that raw killing intent. Your enemies, class, will probably not. Moving on, for most of human history, Avada Kedavra was believed to be the perfect spell. Near instantaneous. Easy to cast, what with its simple requirement of intention, and an incantation that every muggle off the street almost knows by heart already. There is no counter-curse, no ward or protection works against it. It is just a green light, and boom. It was also, once, believed to be always effective. With no documented case of miscast or failure, until Halloween night, nineteen-eighty-one. Check Mr. Potter's forehead if you wish to see proof."
The students gawked at the Boy Who Lived again, and bask in the legendary achievement that he could barely, if at all, remember as Alastor hefted the burlap sack onto the trunk before opening and starting to fish through it.
"Since casting the AK on any of you would make teaching you how to protect yourselves against it a moot point, and I don't want to find out what Dumbledore will do to me if I used it on Dobby, I went to a wholesaler and bought a few hundred wrenches and charmed them all to glow green." Alastor explained
"How are wrenches going to help us defend ourselves against an infallible curse?" One of the Slytherins asked as Alastor began fishing through the sack.
"How do you think, Mr. Zabini?" Alastor said, fixing a mad-eyed stare onto the student, "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" As he shouted he brought up a pipe wrench, and in a single, fluid motion, sent it hurtling through the air toward the bridge of the Gryffindor Seeker's glasses.
Harry Potter, having the awareness and reflexes of career Seeker dropped as soon as he saw the wrench airborne. Neville Longbottom, who had been standing behind him and having the awareness and reflexes of a Seeker for the Chudley Cannons, dropped as soon as the wrench connected.
"Two points from Gryffindor." Alastor announced, socket wrench in hand. The snakes, quicker on the uptake, scattered first. Not that it was of very much help, as the Gryffindors joined them running circles in the field fractions of a second later, just as Alastor's socket wrench caught Theodore Nott in the ribs.
"Two points from Slytherin." Alastor said as he primed another pipe wrench, already zeroing in on Dean Thomas whose wand was already halfway up. "Avada Kedavra has no counter-spell, don't try it!" Alastor barked as the wrench's heavy, adjustable head slammed into the knuckles of Dean's wand-hand. The boy fell and curled up into a ball of pain and tears to the sound of another "Two points from Gryffindor," while Alastor picked out his next target.
Harry Potter proved himself to be a slippery, limber, hoppy bastard to Alastor, and between knocking the wind out of seven students, concussing another three – four if he counted Longbottom again – kneecapping six Slytherins, giving two girls the sort of a facelift that would ruin their Yule Ball, and ensuring that Ronald Weasley would not be following his sire's example, Alastor had wasted scores of wrenches trying and failing to connect.
Lyra Malfoy had proven even harder. She moved like a Seeker too, albeit one who had far fewer compunctions about using her classmates as cover and a pair of bodyguards who had decided that Dobby and Longbottom made excellent shields, and – once the lady Malfoy gave the order – projectiles.
"Neutralize!" She yelled, and Dobby intercepted a Klien wrench midair and Alastor made for the bag to grab another. Alastor smirked, Gregory Goyle seemed not only to have not yet grown to his father's terrifying size, but also lacked a good measure of the dark wizard's wits. But where was he? Alastor Moody looked, only to see Neville Longbottom coming in hot. Alastor was not surprised, skull-faced Crabbe's son Vincent was built like a hippopotamus and was probably about as strong. Getting a classmate over his head and airborne was probably an easy thing for him without magic.
Alastor dodged, as best he could. But even four times concussed, Neville Longbottom was rather large and he could not completely withdraw his arm from the bag in time and get away cleanly. With a feral swing of his trailing arm, Alastor clocked Frank and Alice Longbottom's son with another Klien, but his grip had been poor, and the alignment of his swing awkward. He lost the wrench, and his balance when the tumbling student ended up taking his peg leg out from under him.
Then came the hippo. Vincent Crabbe's fat face did not have the sunken blue eyes, pronounced jaw, and flat, wide proboscis that made his father look like death warmed over. But the diabolical grin stretched across it made him no less terrifying.
Tree-trunk arms wrapped around Alastor's midsection and the student planted him in the dirt. As if having a meat loaf that measured over five and three-quarters feet any which way dropping itself on top of him had not been enough, every Gryffindor that was still able to move (barely half a dozen) surged forward and flung themselves onto the pile.
"Tell me, professor," Lucius' daughter said in a sing-song voice, "what happens when we get your bag of wrenches?" She was smart, he noted, the fact that she had her other ox holding it.
Seeing that he could not penalize her for holding the wrenches, Goyle-the-younger's smile was starting to look troubling in the way his goatee-sporting sire's did – especially with the way that the boy was holding that wrench aloft like Thor's own hammer, he would be needing his hip flask soon, and the weight on top of him was becoming unbearable, Alastor chose to lose with grace.
"Very good, very good students." He said, "Ten points to Slytherin, five points to Gryffindor, two more for each of you still standing, two for every student who successfully played possum or silently escaped my attention. You're all free to go for the day, and leave the cleaning up to me, but do help your classmates to the infirmary if they appear to need it." Alastor said.
As the students got off of him to collect their classmates, and turn a very disoriented Neville away from the Forbidden Forest and back toward the castle, mis-dilated eyes and all, Alastor called out again. "Good work today class. A few more weeks of this and you kids will be dodging Unforgivables in your sleep." Then, to the tune of teenagers groaning and occasional quiet sobbing, he turned about, and began to pick up after his class.
Tune in next week or some other time thereafter for Defense Against the Dumb Antics 2; Playing in Traffic
Also Yandere-Malfoid vs Umbrage is still forthcoming. It ended up being a multi-chapter thing but I already have C1 done.
I think it will run for a total of 6.
Moving swiftly along, let's get to the good shit.
Warning: The following fic contains out-of-character moments, in character moments, deliberate mischaracterization of dramatis personae, spelling, grammar, and syntax that look slightly better than what was typed up over the course of a single lunch hour, profusely blatant evidence that the author was more concerned with forcing cheap laughs and ham-handed wisecracks than he was with Harry Potter, the Wizarding World, Malfoid, Malfoid-posting, Malfoid Shipping and so on, an insufficient use of the words: bum, knickers, botty, and wee-wees to be included in the NSFW (which was where this idea started).
Defense Against the Dumb Antics; The Tired Joke Extravaganza
Alastor Moody – the Dark Lord had mad sure to acquaint him with the dangers of even thinking of himself as Bartimeus Crouch – looked over his class. "Constant vigilance!" He barked, startling the students and getting the rise that he had desired out of them. He was no real teacher, no real Auror-emeritus, and that meant that his lessons had to be stacked high with impenetrable nonsense that he could boil down to one or two-word truisms to sound profound.
Which had, to Alastor's surprise, been hilarious. There was a joy to having people think that you were deep when you weren't even shallow. The dimwitted and the dishonest would always tell him that they understood him, and tried to pull meaning out of his words. He'd nod, smile, and even award a point or two, all the while laughing to himself knowing that each and every student who did had sourced their meaning from their own cavernous backsides in the way that he had sourced his teaching materials.
It was almost as funny as what he had planned for today's lesson, with all of the materials hidden under a large blue tablecloth out in the middle of the field.
"With that said, ordinarily I wouldn't be allowed to show you what I am about to show you until your sixth year. And I should, according to most of my predecessors, the Board of Governors, the Ministry, and the Headmaster – until I prevailed on him otherwise – just teach you the counter-spells without telling you what you're going to be using them against, how they work, or why."
"But a Dark Wizard is not going to explain the curse that he is going to throw at you in advance. He will not outline it in detail, explain its requirements and anticipated effects, or otherwise be polite. There is just going to be a whip of a wand and an incantation, some of you might be lucky enough to see them coming, the rest… oh I don't know… some rainswept alley, a dark room, or maybe just from behind a hedge or stone wall… and that will be that. So, the answer is Constant Vigilance. Forewarned is forearmed. You know the Dark Wizard's plan. So, you can plan around his plan. Of course, the clever ones will plan around your plans, so you have to plan around the plans that they planned around the plans that you planned around their plans. AND THE ORNERY ONES," Alastor curled his arms in and stomped his peg leg. He let an old hate that did not actually exist weigh on the students for a bit, "the ornery ones, they plan around the plans that you planned around the plans that they planned around the plans that you planned around their plans. So, you'll have to plan for those too." He added, as if it were an afterthought."
"Now, since you aren't actually my sixth-year class. I will not ask you to deal with what I am about to show you silently and windlessly." Alastor let that statement weigh on the students too, and from the way a few of them started to shake below the knees, it looked like it had weighed an ocean. "Not initially, anyhow." He appended.
With fear like a thousand-foot-high glacier that stretched off into the horizon on both sides bearing down on them at full gallop, a few students fainted. And each House lost two points per.
Alastor unveiled his lesson plan. It was a large burlap sack, sat next to a trunk, and atop the trunk, a bottle of pungent-smelling, dark brown liquid, and a House-Elf, vainly squirming at his magical bindings.
"Now, class, who can tell me what the Unforgivable Curses are?" Alastor asked, before instantly saying "Malfoy." It wouldn't do to have Lucius Malfoy's daughter silently resenting him for turning her into a ferret, when she had apparently mastered silent casting by the start of her fourth year, for no other outward purpose than to seemingly get a boy's attention. Of course, that boy was Potter, which forced Alastor to contemplate the possibility of the girl having ulterior motives that the Dark Lord would invariably smile on.
"Imperius, Cruciatus, and Old Reliable." She replied without pause.
"That is right, Miss Malfoy. The Imperius Curse, the Cruciatus Curse, and Avada Kedavra, also variously known as The Kedavra, the AK, Old Reliable, the Universal Counter-curse, Problem-Solver, Lickety-Split, the Fun One, or by its proper name, the Killing Curse. And yes, these will all be on the test." Alastor said, eliciting another collective groan from the students.
"Now, using any of these spells for any reason whatsoever on any other living, thinking, feeling being will usually lead to one of two outcomes. One, for members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight who are still flush with galleons and other assets. You just need to say that you were Imperius'd yourself by whatever self-styled Dark Lord has been occupying a recent news cycle, or by – and write this down – Unidentified Muggleborn Males. Everybody else will have to go to Azkaban and have their asses pounded both by the Dementors and their very large, temperamental, and sexually curious cellmates."
Most of the class displayed a level of maturity that one could reasonably expect in responding to his remark, and burst out laughing.
Mostly.
"Professor, Dementors don't do… that. They just take away your happiness and your ability to feel joy." The girl next to the Boy Who Lived saw fit to remind everyone. Of course, she had made the fatal error of leaving herself open.
"They do, Miss Granger, but did anyone ever tell you how the Dementors take away all of your happiness and your ability to feel joy?" Alastor replied, heralding a rise in the guffaws.
"The Kiss, the Kiss, Professor. Dementors Kiss you and suck out your soul." Alastor smiled, 'Merlin, bless this girl, she needs help,' he thought.
"Young lady, I've put away a lot of Dark Witches and Wizards in my time. I've seen more of that shivering rock than anybody should ever need." Alastor said, letting a haunted expression crease some parts of his face and pull other parts taut. "And let me tell you, no Dementor stops at first base."
Having had his laugh, Alastor got on with class, making sure to dock points from any student who had laughed him or her self unconscious as he turned everything Hermione said into a ribald crack. And then he docked another round of points for each student who failed to notice the tripping jinx that he had subtly cast during the exchange.
"Now, as I said, it is illegal to use any of the Unforgivable Curses against another sentient being, and it has been since 1717. And that rule used to be universal, until the 1993 Wizengamot session amended the statute to permit the use of the Imperius and Cruciatus curses on House-Elves currently and/or formerly serving the House of Malfoy, and who are named Dobby. Like Dobby here." Alastor explained, leaving many of the students slack-jawed. It would forever be a mystery to both Alastor Moody and Bartimeus Crouch Junior exactly what passed between Albus Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, the Minister for Magic, the DMLE and the whole rest of the Wizengamot for that to happen. But Alastor was happy that it did, whatever it was, as soon as he had tracked the hapless House-Elf down and unclamped him from that muggle car battery.
"Now I will show you all the Imperius." He said, "Imperio." There was perhaps, a golden wafting in the air at the tip of his wand, and a slight glazing-over of Dobby's eyes before Alastor undid the restraints. "You see, class? Completely unresponsive." He explained, going from waving his hand in front of Dobby's face to gently rapping his knuckles atop the House-Elf's head.
"You see, class, I am in complete control of Dobby's actions, observe. Ahem, Dobby, drink that bottle of hot sauce." Dobby unscrewed the cap and downed the entire bottle of brown-orange sludge in record time. Much to the astonishment of the students. "Now Dobby, jump off of the trunk, and do a double front flip on the way down."
Dobby took an impressive leap, and while none of the students particularly acquainted with the House-Elf knew him to be a particularly excellent gymnast, he found space enough in the air to tuck into himself and complete the full double rotation.
"Maybe I should have told him to stick the landing," Alastor muttered after the thud. "Wait, had I told him to stick the landing he would have stuck the landing. See class, even I have a few things yet to learn about…" Alastor trailed off as he pointed to the class with his free hand.
"Constant Vigilance," they all chorused.
"Perfect." Alastor said, "Now I can teach you all about the Cruciatus. But first – keep it down Dobby," the perspiring House-Elf swallowed on Alastor's command, "but first, I must release the Imperius." Alastor flicked his wand and the sweat-drenched, red-faced House-Elf immediately did the stop-drop-and-roll before hurriedly shoveling handfuls of loose dirt into his maw.
"Unlike this next curse, class, the Imperius can be fought against, and resisted. Don't tell anybody but I am going to try to sell the Headmaster on the idea of live-fire resistance training. I'm sure that if I can convince him that some if not all of you can learn to fight it off, then one or two in a safe, controlled environment won't be a big deal." Alastor droned. "This one, on the other hand, we will not be training for. Crucio."
Dobby went from being mid-swallow to doing an impression of a bug on a zapper.
"You see, class, the Cruciatus Curse requires real intent to cause pain, harm, suffering, or misery. Cruelty for cruelty's own sake. Wanting to harm somebody because they have done you wrong or taken somebody you love away from you will pretty much guarantee the spell's failure, or just make it tickle. So, you should all know, that anybody using the Cruciatus means to cause suffering, on purpose and for no reason per se." He casually explained, as Dobby seized and spasmed near his feet.
"I should probably stop now. Under a Cruciatus, the muscles seize and contract violently enough that they can tear themselves, shear ligaments, and even snap bones. This usually results in the death of the victim, by the account of having a broken bone puncture something, or a broken neck. There is a theoretical point where the pain permanently sears itself into the target's nervous system and renders them completely insensate, but I have only ever seen that twice, and it was achieved only with the copious use of magical and physical restraints." Alastor explained as he silently thanked the Lestrange family for their encyclopedic knowledge of binding jinxes and knot-tying.
"Anyway, Dobby here is starting to look a bit well-done around the edges," Alastor said, releasing the Cruciatus. "So now we will be moving onto the Kedavra. Or, something similar to the Kedavra. First, you need pure killing intent, kind of like the Cruciatus. Which is why I am confident that if all of you raised your wands, pointed them at me, and said, 'Avada Kedvra,' I wouldn't get so much as a nosebleed. You're all fourth-years in peacetime. You lack that raw killing intent. Your enemies, class, will probably not. Moving on, for most of human history, Avada Kedavra was believed to be the perfect spell. Near instantaneous. Easy to cast, what with its simple requirement of intention, and an incantation that every muggle off the street almost knows by heart already. There is no counter-curse, no ward or protection works against it. It is just a green light, and boom. It was also, once, believed to be always effective. With no documented case of miscast or failure, until Halloween night, nineteen-eighty-one. Check Mr. Potter's forehead if you wish to see proof."
The students gawked at the Boy Who Lived again, and bask in the legendary achievement that he could barely, if at all, remember as Alastor hefted the burlap sack onto the trunk before opening and starting to fish through it.
"Since casting the AK on any of you would make teaching you how to protect yourselves against it a moot point, and I don't want to find out what Dumbledore will do to me if I used it on Dobby, I went to a wholesaler and bought a few hundred wrenches and charmed them all to glow green." Alastor explained
"How are wrenches going to help us defend ourselves against an infallible curse?" One of the Slytherins asked as Alastor began fishing through the sack.
"How do you think, Mr. Zabini?" Alastor said, fixing a mad-eyed stare onto the student, "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" As he shouted he brought up a pipe wrench, and in a single, fluid motion, sent it hurtling through the air toward the bridge of the Gryffindor Seeker's glasses.
Harry Potter, having the awareness and reflexes of career Seeker dropped as soon as he saw the wrench airborne. Neville Longbottom, who had been standing behind him and having the awareness and reflexes of a Seeker for the Chudley Cannons, dropped as soon as the wrench connected.
"Two points from Gryffindor." Alastor announced, socket wrench in hand. The snakes, quicker on the uptake, scattered first. Not that it was of very much help, as the Gryffindors joined them running circles in the field fractions of a second later, just as Alastor's socket wrench caught Theodore Nott in the ribs.
"Two points from Slytherin." Alastor said as he primed another pipe wrench, already zeroing in on Dean Thomas whose wand was already halfway up. "Avada Kedavra has no counter-spell, don't try it!" Alastor barked as the wrench's heavy, adjustable head slammed into the knuckles of Dean's wand-hand. The boy fell and curled up into a ball of pain and tears to the sound of another "Two points from Gryffindor," while Alastor picked out his next target.
Harry Potter proved himself to be a slippery, limber, hoppy bastard to Alastor, and between knocking the wind out of seven students, concussing another three – four if he counted Longbottom again – kneecapping six Slytherins, giving two girls the sort of a facelift that would ruin their Yule Ball, and ensuring that Ronald Weasley would not be following his sire's example, Alastor had wasted scores of wrenches trying and failing to connect.
Lyra Malfoy had proven even harder. She moved like a Seeker too, albeit one who had far fewer compunctions about using her classmates as cover and a pair of bodyguards who had decided that Dobby and Longbottom made excellent shields, and – once the lady Malfoy gave the order – projectiles.
"Neutralize!" She yelled, and Dobby intercepted a Klien wrench midair and Alastor made for the bag to grab another. Alastor smirked, Gregory Goyle seemed not only to have not yet grown to his father's terrifying size, but also lacked a good measure of the dark wizard's wits. But where was he? Alastor Moody looked, only to see Neville Longbottom coming in hot. Alastor was not surprised, skull-faced Crabbe's son Vincent was built like a hippopotamus and was probably about as strong. Getting a classmate over his head and airborne was probably an easy thing for him without magic.
Alastor dodged, as best he could. But even four times concussed, Neville Longbottom was rather large and he could not completely withdraw his arm from the bag in time and get away cleanly. With a feral swing of his trailing arm, Alastor clocked Frank and Alice Longbottom's son with another Klien, but his grip had been poor, and the alignment of his swing awkward. He lost the wrench, and his balance when the tumbling student ended up taking his peg leg out from under him.
Then came the hippo. Vincent Crabbe's fat face did not have the sunken blue eyes, pronounced jaw, and flat, wide proboscis that made his father look like death warmed over. But the diabolical grin stretched across it made him no less terrifying.
Tree-trunk arms wrapped around Alastor's midsection and the student planted him in the dirt. As if having a meat loaf that measured over five and three-quarters feet any which way dropping itself on top of him had not been enough, every Gryffindor that was still able to move (barely half a dozen) surged forward and flung themselves onto the pile.
"Tell me, professor," Lucius' daughter said in a sing-song voice, "what happens when we get your bag of wrenches?" She was smart, he noted, the fact that she had her other ox holding it.
Seeing that he could not penalize her for holding the wrenches, Goyle-the-younger's smile was starting to look troubling in the way his goatee-sporting sire's did – especially with the way that the boy was holding that wrench aloft like Thor's own hammer, he would be needing his hip flask soon, and the weight on top of him was becoming unbearable, Alastor chose to lose with grace.
"Very good, very good students." He said, "Ten points to Slytherin, five points to Gryffindor, two more for each of you still standing, two for every student who successfully played possum or silently escaped my attention. You're all free to go for the day, and leave the cleaning up to me, but do help your classmates to the infirmary if they appear to need it." Alastor said.
As the students got off of him to collect their classmates, and turn a very disoriented Neville away from the Forbidden Forest and back toward the castle, mis-dilated eyes and all, Alastor called out again. "Good work today class. A few more weeks of this and you kids will be dodging Unforgivables in your sleep." Then, to the tune of teenagers groaning and occasional quiet sobbing, he turned about, and began to pick up after his class.
Tune in next week or some other time thereafter for Defense Against the Dumb Antics 2; Playing in Traffic
Also Yandere-Malfoid vs Umbrage is still forthcoming. It ended up being a multi-chapter thing but I already have C1 done.
I think it will run for a total of 6.
