G. Lippert - James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper

He beamed out at the room, his dark crew cut bristling. After a moment, Kevin Murdock began to clap. The rest of the class joined in halfheartedly.

"I know you probably aren't excited about my approach," Debellows said, raising one hand. "There are those who do not utilize the same methods as I do; those who do not respect the importance of physical prowess, who believe that Expelliarmus spells and Patronuses are more than enough to battle the most evil of foes. In the Harriers, we call those people 'Aurors'." He grinned, and there was a smattering of laughter. Kevin Murdock smirked back at James, nudging a fellow Slytherin. Debellows went on, "But I think you'll find my approach quite effective in the long run. And I promise you: I will not ask any of you to do anything that I am not willing to do right alongside you. And now!" He clapped his hands together eagerly. "Let us see where we stand. How many of you have ever heard of the Gauntlet?"

James glanced around the room. No one raised their hand this time. Debellows seemed undeterred.

"The Gauntlet is an ancient tool used by those training for battle. It is a sort of clockwork obstacle course. Granted, being wizards, we have outfitted ours with certain, er, specialized capabilities. There is no point to the Gauntlet other than to surpass it. Surely, you have all heard the phrase 'run the gauntlet'? I am about to illustrate what that phrase actually means."

Debellows paced briskly across the room and stopped at the end of the line of clockwork apparatuses. He clasped his hands to his elbows and twisted back and forth at the waist, jumped from foot to foot half a dozen times, and then finally dropped to a crouch. He extended one arm, pointing his wand at the line of devices.

"Defendeum!" he barked.

Immediately, the apparatuses ratcheted, whirred, and clanked to life. Debellows launched forward, tucking and rolling beneath the first device as it swung a padded club across his path. With a grunt, the man leapt into the remaining clockwork. He moved in a sort of muscular ballet, lunging, crouching, and leaping through the mechanical melee. He dodged spinning wheels of padded fists, ducked under Stunning Spells fired from a bank of pop-up wands, leapt over kicking pommels and snapping padded jaws, and finally dove, flipped, and landed neatly on his feet at the end of the Gauntlet.

There was no applause this time. James stared, horrified, at the wildly thrashing clockwork monstrosity.

"So!" Debellows called over the noise of the Gauntlet, jamming his fists onto his hips. "Who'll be first up, then?"

"He's completely daft!" Graham exclaimed as he limped his way to History of Magic. "He must've taken one too many Stupefies to the brain when he was a Harrier or something!"

"No spells until Year Four," Ralph said, shaking his head. "And what was that stuff at the end? Who's Artis Decerto?"

"It's not a who, it's a what," Rose said, falling in next to Ralph. "It's a sort of magical version of karate."

James nursed his elbow where it'd been pummeled in the Gauntlet. "Where are you going, Rose?"

"History of Magic," she replied primly.

Ralph glanced at her. "Our History of Magic?"

"I don't know what you mean by that," Rose said, pulling herself to her full height, which was approximately to Ralph's Adam's apple. "My schedule has me in History of Magic, second period, Professor Binns. I can't help it if my advisor suggested I skip to some higher-level classes. So things didn't go so well with Professor Debellows?"

"We aren't supposed to call him 'Professor'," Graham said sourly. "He wants to be our mate, don't you know."

"The kind of mate that makes you do fifty pushups if you can't manage to avoid getting plastered by a giant, padded fist," Ralph said mournfully.

"I hate to say it, but it will probably do some of you some good," Rose said, eyeing the boys appraisingly.

"Just wait until you have your first class with him," James growled. "See how perky you are afterwards."

As they filed into the History of Magic classroom, the ghostly Professor Binns seemed to be in midlecture. His back was turned as he wrote on the chalkboard with a piece of phantom chalk. Strangely, he seemed to be writing notes on top of older notes, creating a nonsensical mish-mash. There was the distinct impression that the chalkboard contained years of the professor's ghostly writings, layer upon layer fading into dimness. As James knew, Binns had only the slightest grip on temporal reality. Last year, Ted had told James that the school had tried to move the History of Magic classroom to another wing so as to make space for the visiting Alma Alerons. Unfortunately, Professor Binns continued to promptly appear in the old room every day to perform his lectures despite the fact that the classroom had been temporarily converted to an Alma Aleron girls' dormitory. No amount of persuasion could convince the ghost to relocate his classes, and the room was shortly converted back to a classroom.

Awkwardly, the students found their seats and began to produce parchments and quills. After a minute, Rose cleared her throat rather loudly and called the professor's name. Binns stopped writing on the chalkboard and turned, peering mistily back at Rose through his spectacles.

"Yes, Miss Granger?"

There was a ripple of laughter and Rose reddened. "I'm not Miss Granger, sir. I'm Rose Weasley, her daughter. I, er, think we missed the first part of your lecture."

"Another generation already," Binns muttered to himself. "Very well, then."

The ghost reached for a phantom eraser and began to swipe it across the chalkboard, producing absolutely no effect.

"You'll never make sense of his notes. You just have to listen to his lecture," Graham whispered confidentially. "It's a challenge, but the good news is that he's been giving the same tests for forty years. The answers are carved right into the tops of the desks. See?"

James had had Professor Binns last year, but he'd not heard this particular legend. He looked down at the worn graffiti carved into the desktop. Sure enough, buried in the center, was a list of numbered terms and phrases. At the top, like a headline, was the phrase, 'WHEN IN DOUBT, JUST SAY "GOBLIN REBELLION"'.

"That's cheating," Rose said without much conviction. "Er, technically."

"You will recall," Binns said, removing his glasses and wiping them absently on his ancient, ghostly lapel, "last year, we completed our studies with the end of the magical Dark Ages, in which men and wizards finally parted ways after centuries of unrest. The magical world allowed the Muggle kingdoms to believe that they had dispersed and eventually died out. Contrariwise, of course, the magical world developed in secret, as it has existed ever since, bypassing the typical frictions inherent in the interaction of the magical and the nonmagical. This brings us to the very beginnings of the modern age of wizard history, in which strictly magical establishments came into existence. This year, we will study the histories of those establishments, from governments to economy to education. Initially, nearly all of those details were managed inside the same walls, and by the same people. You may be aware that this very castle was the center of the magical world for quite some time before it was exclusively classified as a place of learning."

Rose studiously scribbled notes on her parchment. Ralph was watching her with curious fascination, either because of her persistence in taking notes or because her handwriting was so meticulously precise. James wished Zane was here to make an amusing drawing of Professor Binns. Idly, he doodled on his own parchment.