12 Moves Sideways
I
Light Yagami is beautiful. That is what Harry thinks the first time he sees him sitting at the teacher's table, hair falling into his eyes, a study of casual elegance, young and ancient and ageless in the same moment. He might be seventeen, he might be twenty-five, he might be forty for all Harry knows. He is beautiful the way a spell is beautiful, the silent wings and flash of avada kedavra green.
He thinks of Gryffindor's sword, goblin-made and indestructible, shining silver and rubies, or maybe he thinks of the giant serpent king he had to fight with it, he's not sure.
II
Professor Yagami is dazzling, is charm and elegance and charisma so great it's deadly. The students do their best for the bright white of his smile, for the momentary glittering regard of his eyes, for the singular experience of watching his head tilt back and his lips curve and his eyes gleam, all it without the barely concealed impatience and not quite gentle mockery of his normal gaze.
Harry thinks of Tom Riddle without being aware of it, thinks of Dumbledore and his twinkling eyes, wonders if the price of brilliance is to be without human understanding.
Professor Yagami is a supernova, and sometimes Harry watches his face when he is looking out of the window, away from the class. Impossible to believe that the sun doesn't shine just for him, impossible to believe he's quite human, impossible to think this man can be real. The third time he watches, Professor Yagami turns his head and catches his gaze with his own. Harry feels his breath stop in his throat, isn't quite sure if it's the same as the fear that stopped his breath when he saw Voldemort reborn, or if it's the same as the wonder he felt the first time he laid eyes on a unicorn. Yagami surveys him for a moment, looking into him and calculating his worth, and he smiles.
Harry decides it's the unicorn he's thinking of, beautiful and magical and dead and so terribly sad.
III
The ghosts are afraid of Professor Yagami. Harry is not surprised.
IV
Professor Yagami keeps an apple on his desk, shining and red and the personification of sin.
The first class he gave he held out the apple as if offering it to the entire class, taught them the muggle superstition of the snake in the Garden of Eden, of power and knowledge. "I will be the serpent," he continued, cool and unruffled and smiling faintly. "And in every class I will give you knowledge, I will give you power," and he laughed and Harry felt a chill down in his spine, like the moment he begged Tom for help and received nothing but scorn. "However," he said, his laughter gone in the same instant, "the knowledge of good and evil is not kept in the flesh of an apple. I cannot make you decide what use you will put your knowledge to. But there are things out there that I assure you will make you think very carefully before you act."
Harry wishes he saw the fruit on the desk and just thought of muggle schoolchildren and the phrase of an apple for teacher. Something about the gleam in the professor's eye, the gold of his skin and the power of his words frightens him.
He tells himself he's never seen the apple disappear into thin air when leaving class late and in a hurry, eaten in large gulping bites by an invisible mouth.
V
Harry is in the Room of Requirement with Ron and Hermione, watching them practise charms and hexes and jinxes, a private duelling tournament, when the Room begins to change around them. Suddenly they are being hidden behind bookshelves and boxes of forgotten things, and the professor walks in, not looking for anything in particular but finding it none the less.
