The Marauders: Year Seven Part One

Defensive Dark Arts

The man who Remus had come to think of as "the tooth collector", aka, one of the two new Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers, was sitting behind the desk in the DADA room the next morning when the seventh years arrived after breakfast. He was leaning back in the chair, feet up on the desk top, his ankles crossed, picking at his fingernails with his teeth as he stared up at the Dragon skeleton that dangled from the rafters. He wore his striped trousers and a billowing red shirt that was easily four sizes larger than he required.

He likes those pants, Remus thought as he walked in, clutching his books, nervously sticking close to Sirius. He was worried, above all, that the man would recognize him from that day in the woods. Worried, too, that the man wouldn't have the mind to stay quiet about what he knew of Remus - what he knew Remus was, that is - without first consulting Albus Dumbledore about the nature of Remus's secret. Sirius kept close to Remus, too, so that some part of them were always touching - shoulders nudging, knees knocking, hands in contact - so that Remus would not feel alone facing his fear.

The second man - the shorter one that Remus hadn't seen before - he was standing outside in the hallway, waiting for the students, ushering them in to have a seat. He was twitchy in a way that reminded Sirius of Peter when he was his most nervous. Sirius wondered why there were two of them. Although, it wasn't unprecedented - after all, the Prewett twins had been their DADA teachers once, sharing the position jointly - but it was still odd, especially since as far as Sirius could tell the first man had yet to do much of anything besides be a lazy lie-about.

James and Lily came into the room just before the second man closed the door, James carrying Lily's books as well as his own on his elbow, and looking a bit red in the face. When he plopped down across the aisle from Sirius, Sirius smirked over and winked and James looked down at his desk, trying to suppress a grin as Lily extracted her books from the pile he'd just deposited before them.

The man with the striped trousers stood up languidly - he was a lot taller than he appeared when he sat down, and even Remus was surprised by how tall he was, his memory of the man fogged by recovering from his wolfish form. The man swaggered around the desk to the front and leaned back against his hands on the edge of it as the second one locked the door.

Remus looked over his shoulder at the clunk of the lock, feeling uneasy. His eyes traveled over who else was in the room, nervously wondering who else would discover his secret should the Tooth Collector decide to divulge it. The class was a mix - there were a couple Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws in the room, as well as two Slytherins, one of which was Severus Snape, who sat in the far back of the room, and whose eyes had yet to divert from the back of Lily Evans's head. Snape, of course, knew the secret already, and that only made Remus more uneasy remembering that, especially when Snape's eyes suddenly moved from Lily to meet his own, and Remus hurriedly turned around, his stomach knotting up.

"Morning... I'm Garm Tyr... but you can call me Garm. None of that Professor bullshit. Not Professor Tyr. Not Professor Garm. Just Garm. Oh - and that over there is Frek... my assistant." Garm nodded to the short, pudgy man, who had come up to sit on a stool at the edge of the raised area upon which the professor's desk stood, next to the chalkboard that stood waiting for something to be written upon it. "We are here to teach you Defensive Dark Magic."

Sirius said, "You mean defense against dark magic, yeah?"

Garm's eyes trailed to Sirius in an almost lazy fashion and he tilted his head in a way that looked as though the braided dreadlocks that hung down his back might be too heavy for him to continue holding his head upright. He stared down at Sirius with his eyebrows slightly raised. "Is that what I said?"

"No," Sirius answered.

"Then it ain't what I meant," Garm said. He straightened up and he drew a deep breath, "Sometimes, you can't fight dark with light."