Umbridge ended up getting fired by the board of Governors. Eric was a little disappointed by that, it had been so fun prodding her during class when she couldn’t punish him for it. Today they were all waiting for the new transfiguration teacher that had been found. Eric let out a loud snort as the man swept into the class haughtily. The man walked to the front with a confident look on his face.

“Silence, children,” The teacher said as he turned around in front of the chalkboard in the front of the room, “I am John Barnaby, your new transfigurations teacher. Pay attention, I do not like to repeat myself.”

With that, he went to the chalkboard and started explaining transfigurations down from the base concepts all up to its various uses without even a pause. Eric raised an eyebrow as the lesson continued. Huh, this guy really knew his stuff from top to bottom. And he was a surprisingly good teacher. Strict and tolerating no foolishness, but fully answering any question that he was asked. Eric asked a few more complicated questions for fun and the teacher answered them easily without even a shred of hesitation.

At the end of the class, he abruptly stopped after finishing his explanation of a last one of the transfiguration laws and dismissively waved his hands.

“That will be all for today. Hope that your notes are good enough to record my explanations. As I said before, I do not enjoy repeating myself. We will continue from where we left off tomorrow.”

Everyone left, including Eric. He shook his head. Seems he’d have to have a little chat with teacher later. He’d felt the most interesting thing with his magic when the teacher had walked by him during class and they were having their spell practice…

After classes and just as it was about to get dark, Eric tracked down the new professor’s office and knocked on the door.

“Yes?” The man said, “Come in.”

Eric opened the door and the man stiffened as he saw the grinning Eric walking in.

“Hello, old friend. You miss me?” Eric said as he shut the door behind himself.

“Old friend? What are you talking about? Enough of this nonsense,” the new teacher said sternly.

Eric shook his head, “C’mon Voldy. I know that it’s you. It’s like you’re wearing a fake mustache and a hat to disguise yourself. Did you actually apply for the position or did you kill the poor chump who was supposed to be our teacher?”

“I took his place of course,” Voldemort said as he stood to his feet, “And I took the polyjuice potion to turn into him. I don’t believe you were able to discover me just on sight. How?”

“Believe what you want,” Eric said non-committedly. The man’s magic clearly identified him as Voldy, eyes had nothing to do with it, “Say, you haven’t considered settling down and actually becoming a teacher, would you? After how much I humiliated you last time, maybe it's time for Lord Voldemort to fade into the background, hm? You weren't half bad today.”

“I did wish to be a teacher,” Voldemort admitted, “Many years ago when I was a boy. The chance to mold young minds to my vision was something so fascinating to me. But I have some business to take care of first. You.”

Voldemort stood up and raised his wand.

Eric was quicker on the draw and pulled out his finger gun and pulled the trigger by pressing his thumb down to his hand. A red stunner spell shot out of his pointer finger quicker than Voldemort could react and struck the man on the chest. The teacher slumped forward onto the desk in front of him unconscious.

“And now for the imperius,” Eric muttered as he drew his wand from his robes, “Maybe I’ll keep you as a teacher this time, might be worth it with that lesson you just gave…”

Before Eric could react, a pendant around Voldemort’s neck flashed with a green light and shot into the unconscious man’s chest. Eric blinked as the enchantment on the pendant destroyed itself as the killing curse went into Voldemort’s body and killed him in an instant.

Eric stood there blinking, looking between his still raised finger gun and the dead teacher still under polyjuice to look like whoever it was that Voldy had replaced. Eric inspected the pendant for a moment, but it was completely inert now. Not even the smallest scrap magic remained in it after it cast the killing curse at its owner. Eric’s mind churned for a moment before he finally figured it out.

“Oh, you sly dog!” Eric told the corpse, “You had a failsafe to kill yourself in case I was about to put you under the imperius again. That’s one way to do it. Ah, I guess this works too. Better luck next time, Voldy.”

Eric turned and walked out of the door to the office and shut it behind him. He walked a nearby hallway wall and used his connection to the Chamber of Secrets to request an opening. He didn’t do this too often because of the chances of getting caught if he overused it. But escaping the crime scene was probably most important right now just in case somebody spotted him near the office and brought suspicion on him.

A second later the wall in front of him twisted until it formed a dark tunnel lined with obsidian and dark marble. Eric went through for a few dozen steps, the spatial enchantments twisting around him to carry him a large distance with each step until he stepped out into the Chamber of Secrets itself far below the ground.

The black tunnel behind him closed as soon as he was fully inside of the Chamber of Secrets. Eric turned back around. He glanced at the giant basilisk staring at him with its second eyelids shut so that it wouldn’t petrify him with its gaze.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Hey, Nidhogg,” Eric said, “Just passing through. I’ll be back down for the weekend though.”

Nidhogg hissed and settled back down into his coils in the pool in front of the giant statue of Salazar Slytherin’s head.

“Yes, I remember. I’ll get you some food when I come,” Eric promised, “Being my familiar comes with all the best perks, doesn’t it? Even if you only let us form a temporary one rather than the full thing that Ginny's got with her phoenix... Anyway, got to go now. See you later, Nidhogg.”

Another dark tunnel opened up where the last one had just closed as Nidhogg the basilisk hissed again.

Eric waved goodbye to his familiar absently before walking into the tunnel. After some walking he emerged into another empty hallway. This one was close to the Gryffindor common rooms but not close enough that there would be people going by. Eric went back to the Gryffindor common room, the other Gryffindors also streaming inwards from across the castle for curfew not seeming to suspect him of anything. Eric didn’t let his bored and disinterested expression drop until he was all the way in his bed.

Seems they would be getting another transfigurations teacher again. Such a shame, Voldy had been so good at his job.

— — —

“I can’t believe it,” Alexa raged, “How can they appoint Umbridge of all people as headmistress? Like she’d do any good in finding out who murdered the new transfigurations teacher? Umbridge is useless!”

“I’ve heard it was by order of the minister,” Ginny said, “Sirius sent a letter explaining it all to me. Him and a lot of other people aren’t happy with Umbridge being chosen either. But she was the secretary of the Minister I suppose. So the Minister wants her in charge so she’ll be reporting what security measures she’ll be taking to stop ‘Pettigrew’ from striking again. It doesn’t matter how incompetent she is, people are saying it’ll be the Minister giving her orders and she’s just going to follow them.”

“If she tries to give you detention you just tell us!” Alexa said while growling slightly, “Even if she’s headmistress she can’t do things like that to you. You’ll tell Sirius about it right away and he’ll get her fired again!”

“I will, I promise,” Ginny said, “I hope I won’t have to though. You be careful too, Alexa. Jack and I won’t be around to defend you during classes.”

“I’ll be fine,” Alexa said, “My Gryffindor friends will help me. And my new boyfriend, hopefully.”

“Yeah, when are you going to introduce us?” Ginny said, “We’ve never even talked to Sean Taylor before. House separation between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw and all that. We hardly know anything about him!”

“Well… well, we only just started dating last week,” Alexa said quickly, “I don’t want to rush things…”

“It’ll be fiiiiiine,” Ginny said before clapping Alexa on the shoulder, “Just bring him over to say hi, it’s no big deal. I want to meet the guy that’s stolen your heart from us!”

Alexa blushed, “Er, uhm. Okay, I’ll bring him over tomorrow,” she muttered.

“I’m just kidding Alexa,” Ginny said quickly, “I’m happy for you. I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“Oh, good,” Alexa said with a sigh of relief, “Thanks, Ginny. What’s up with you and Jack by the way? Are you still dating, what’s up with that?”

The two of them glanced at each other.

“Well, I don’t know,” Ginny said slowly, “Are we still dating, Jack? We haven’t really done anything all year.”

“I guess not,” Jack said, “You want to do something, Ginny?”

“Sure! Uhm. What to do though…”

“How about we sneak out at night to go stargazing?” Jack said, “That could be exciting. It’d be better than just wandering around the castle alone.”

“Yeah, that sounds pretty romantic,” Ginny said, “Want to do it tonight?”

“Sure.”

Alexa looked between the two of them. “Huh. That was quick.”

“What?” They both asked at once.

“It’s just like you both almost forgot you were dating each other but as soon as I mentioned it you just settled right back into it like nothing happened at all.”

Jack grabbed Ginny’s hand and she squeezed his hand back, “We’re great friends and the dating’s just on top of it, right? Don’t see how forcing it to be more important than it has to be would help anything.”

“If you say so,” Alexa said, eying their clasped hands. Upon seeing Alexa’s stare they quickly released their hands.

“Have fun, you two!” Alexa said with some false cheer, “Make sure to not get caught.”

“We won’t,” Jack assured her.

— — —

“This feels so dangerous,” Ginny said as she and Jack laid on their backs on the empty Hogwarts lawn, staring up into the starry night sky, “Even if we’ve been through so many other dangerous things before. Why is this setting my heart pounding so much?”

“My heart’s pounding too,” Jack said as he shifted his grip on her hand. They both sat up slightly and stared at each other in the darkness for a few minutes silently and Ginny’s heart started beating even faster. Oh.

Without either of them saying anything they started slowly leaning towards each other until their faces were inches away from each other. With a quick dart forward, Ginny impulsively mashed her lips against Jack’s. She shifted her head to the side as she went to kiss him more and smacked him hard with her nose on his as she turned. Ginny retreated along with Jack in shock at the impact as the force vibrated through her skull.

Jack reached up and rubbed his nose.

“Ow,” he said.

“That was terrible,” Ginny declared after he lowered his hand from his face and they had both recovered a bit, “We’re trying that again,”

Before Jack could react, she dived back in again and she started sloppily kissing him again.

This time Ginny had come in too quickly again and their teeth clacked together, sending Ginny’s mouth buzzing with little sharp tingles as the impact reverberated through her skull again with a loud click. She drew back and started getting frustrated.

“Why is this so hard!” She said while panting slightly, “People in the movies make it look so easy.”

“Here, let me try,” Jack said breathlessly. He leaned forward slowly, not rushing in like how Ginny had. His lips slowly sank into hers and they started kissing again. This time it worked and they kept going until Ginny had to draw back for a breath of air with a gasp.

“I… I think that worked,” Ginny said in a daze, her lips tingling as she and Jack stared at each other.

“Let… let me try again,” she said. She slowly leaned in, and this time didn’t mess anything up as she and Jack kissed again.

By the time they got back to bed, Ginny felt light, her lips tingling like crazy as she remembered Jack’s lips on hers. She carefully opened the door to her dorm room and slipped into bed without waking up her sleeping roommates. She went under the covers and sighed in contentment as she hugged a spare pillow to her chest.

Their first kiss, ah it was so romantic and perfect…