DADA Class 2

The first class.

It was an exciting thought for Marcus. He already knew his students would like him. He wasn't strict but he was firm. And he was going to teach them in a way that interests them. Marcus took a seat at his new desk that Hogwarts had provided. There was a thick swivel chair that almost made him sink into it.

He waved his wand and the words: Marcus Dakota appeared on the board. He didn't really care what his students called him just as long it wasn't anything ridiculous.

"Now to sit and wait."

Mariposa wasn't sure of what to expect for class today. She wondered if Professor Wilson was still teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. She only wondered this because she knew that there was a new Head of House for Gryffindor and she really wanted to know if he was still around. Wilson had been a grwat teacher one of her favorites actually and it would be a shame if he wa no longer teaching at Hogwarts. The new Head of House wasn't bad though, he was young, maybe a year or two older than her, but he was quite professional and ur really made a good impression on Mariposa. Seems that he was also the new CoMC Professor.

The seventeen year old made her way quickly to the DADA classroom with these thoughts floating around in her head. Seems she was early, as she liked to be, but she was a bit frightened of being alone in a class with anyone but Wilson, he had been her Professor for a long time and she really found it hard to have someone else in the room with her, so she just hoped he was still around. At the door to the room, the Gryffindor hesitated a bit in entering. But she soon opened the door and peeked inside, before entering completely.

Her eyes darted around the room for a moment before they fell upon the other person in the room. It definitely was not the Professor she knew and she let out a small disappointed sigh. She pulled the boy-ish hat she had on down a bit to hide her face as much as possible without covering her vision and she walked to her seat, hearing her footsteps echo in the empty room. "Good morning Professor..." her eyes darted to the board that had his name on it. "Dakota." Mariposa finished her sentence as she made her way to her seat.

Sam entered the room and mumbled a greeting, making his way to the centre of the room before pausing in his tracks and looking at the floor for several seconds, an appearance of intense concentration appearing on his face. He then tilted his head up and looked at the man at the front of the class before blinking several times and opening his mouth to speak, before closing it again.

Finally, without much tact, he managed to form some words. "Where's Professor Wilson?" he asked bluntly, his face set in a look of absolute indignation as he surveyed the intruder before him.

He didn't mean to be rude, of course, but if there'd been one constant over the years, it'd been Professor Wilson and his DADA classes... there was no denying that he'd been taken by surprise upon seeing the new guy

Hitame practically ran through the corridors with her little sister to make it to the DADA classroom. The Gryffindor's had apparently gotten a new Head of House and that really made her wonder where Professor Wilson was. She wondered it he was still at the school, if he was still teaching the class. With her sister close behind her, Hitame entered the classroom almost breathless and she looked around the room before hearing what Sam had said.

His comment caught her attention and her eyes immediately darted to the front of the room. It wasn't Professor Wilson, not at all. She pursed her lips and then stepped forward a bit. "Yeah, where is he?" she asked softly as she slowly walked to her seat. The look of disappointment on her face was evident and really she didn't try to hide it.

This had really caught her off guard. She felt a sort of void without Professor Wilson there and she really did not like it. She had gotten so accustomed to seeing him everyday that now it just felt weird without him. Hitame sighed softly as she sat down in her seat and put her head down.

Class was a trial, regardless of who was teaching it. However, Defence Against the Dark Arts was a personal favourite of Elijah’s. Professor Wilson was quite possibly the man’s favourite teacher. The Professor’s attitude towards students - which was hostile at best - made the lessons something Elijah enjoyed. Trundling down the hallway, he wracked his brains as to what to tell the man. It had to be something that ruffled his feathers. Then again, his presence was sure to do it. Elijah would settle for that, he decided, and so with a smile, he turned the corner and entered the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. It was exactly the same as it always was. Wilson’s stamp of clean, no-nonsense decoration (or lack thereof) was still present. The change was who was stood at the front of the classroom and it was someone who was quite obviously not James Wilson.

“Children, children,” Elijah spoke from the back of the room as he made his way to a table where he set down his bag and his outer robes. He straightened the green and silver tie around his neck and walked down the aisle between the desks, taking in who was there. Gryffindors. “Evidently, Professor Wilson got married and took off to live his life somewhere else. He’s not married to the school, you know. Well, not anymore.” Elijah smirked. “And we now find ourselves with a man who cannot be any more than twenty two...and that’s at a stretch. You have the undeniable mark of youth on your face, sir. Are you sure you’re qualified for such an undertaking? You are aware you have to teach the next generation of Witches and Wizards how to defend themselves. At best, you must have only a N.E.W.T’s worth of experience. Now, I’m not suggesting I could do better. I’m suggesting someone else could. Now, do give us your life story, sir. I’m sure everyone’s riveted to hear it.”

And with that said, Elijah turned on his heel and wandered back up the aisle where he took his seat, kicking his feet up onto the table as he did so. “Well,” he told the Gryffindors. “Don’t look so gormless. Sit down, it’s story time!”

Marcus was about to respond to the various questions of the students of where their previous teacher was , but then an answer he couldn't come up with was replace by an older student's joke. "Yes that's exactly what happened. And I assure you that I am fully qualified for teaching this class," Marcus said matter-of-factly. "Now I would just love telling you guys my life story but I'm afraid we don't have that kind of time. The reason I have the NEWT's and the basic's together because this is much of an introduction class. If you haven't read the board already, I'm Professor Dakota."

There was a lot of dark things going on out in the Wizarding World and Marcus was going to prepare them for it. "I'm not going to change up a lot of things from your previous teacher. I even have his lesson plans for the rest of the year. Today we're gonna be covering the Unforgivable Curses. The NEWT's have probably already gone over this but I want the basic's to see it."

Marcus wasn't going to do the Moody kills spider thing but he would show them in a way that doesn't mentally scar them. "Can someone tell me how many curses there are?"

As the older student spoke about what had happened to Professor Wilson, Hitame turned her head away from everyone and stared at the wall next to her. She really just wasn't in the mood to hear what the Slytherin had to say. She wasn't in much of a mood to do anything really. The girl didn't even bother to pay attention to the beginning of what their new Professor was saying. All she heard from that was that his name was Professor Dakota. She gave a soft sigh and just stared at the wall again.

But when he began to speak about the Unforgivable Curses she picked her head up immediately. Het hand shot up when he asked who knew how many curses there were. "There are three Unforgivable Curses." Hitame stated simply before lowering her hand and head again.

Marcus smiled. "Right! There are three. They were first classified as "Unforgivable" in 1717. The use of one of these curses can earn you a life imprisonment in Azkaban Wizarding Prison. Aurors were permitted to use them during the First Wizarding War, while under Lord Voldemort's regime in 1997-1998, the curses were made legal, though this was repealed following Voldemort's demise."

He pulled out his wand. "Since the Unforgivable Curses are very powerful, their use requires both great willpower and great skill in order to bring about the effects. Can anyone give me the first one?" Marcus asked the class.

With her head down again, Hitame listened to what the Professor was saying. Though further into what he was saying she began to think of the curses and repeated them in her mind. But she could only remember the names of two of them, the ones that she had actually heard a lot about. And the one she had seem someone try to use before but couldn't go through with it. She sighed again and raised her hand at his second question.

"One of the curses is Crucio." the third year said. Her gaze dropped to the floor after she said the name of the spell and she quickly lowered her hand again. She began to wonder if anyone would care that she knew so much about the curses. Hitame really didn't think it was normal for someone like her to know a lot about the Unforgivable Curses.

Melissa Finnigan was not a girl with particularly good attention span. She found the strangest of things utterly fascinating and that was mostly because reality was so frightfully boring. Wrapped up in her robes, she was toasty warm in her seat in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. A pencil was loose in her grasp and she was leisurely doodling the margins of her text book. She’d been in the class about as long as everyone else and she’d seen the exchange between the Slytherin and the Professor. Though she’d cared more for Wilson than she had any other Professor, Millie didn’t particularly mind the change. Wilson had been in Hogwarts since the Stone Age, she was sure. It was about time they shook things up. Still, she couldn’t help but half agree with Elijah. He seemed too young to be qualified to teach them about DADA. Not that Millie cared so much about that. She didn’t have any intention of getting into a duel. It wasn’t that she couldn’t, she just didn’t fancy fighting Dark Wizards.

Lifting her head, Millie looked around the room. Her eyes fell on the younger Gryffindor who seemed to know a lot about the Unforgiveable Curses. That wasn’t nearly as unsettling as perhaps the girl thought it was. There was nothing wrong with being learned in the Dark Arts. Of course, Millie had no desire to do so and with her mind now in the class instead of its own world, she knew she had to disrupt somehow. How though, was the difficult part. So, Millie decided to go for something simple. She rose from her chair, her robes swishing around her legs, and, with her quill between her teeth, skipped down the aisle to the front of the room where she proceeded to place herself in Wilson’s seat behind the desk. She didn’t know whether the drawers had been cleared out yet but she didn’t dare check. Instead, she leaned forward and folded her hands together on the desk, looking seriously at the back of the Professor’s head, waiting for him to turn.

“Aye, me’hearties!” She crowed.