Cursed With Curious Minds | Hp Next Generation

45 - Misunderstanding History

The Easter holidays soon came to a close, but the group didn't exactly mind, as they would finally be able to find out what the weird coin James stole from the room actually was. James had never been so excited for a defence against the dark arts lesson – he was even there ten minutes early.

"You're quite enthusiastic, James." Harry commented.

"What can I say? I'm just riled up to learn." James replied.

Harry laughed. James has never been riled up to learn.

Soon, the rest of the class arrived, and Professor Potter began teaching his lesson.

"Today we'll be talking about identifying and destroying dark objects." He began. "I apologise in advance, but this lesson will be far more theory based than any of the other modules – I can't exactly be bringing horcruxes to my lessons." He chuckled to himself, but the rest of the class looked blankly.

"Professor, what's a horcrux?" Astrid asked, considering no one else would.

Harry looked around the class. "Do any of you know what a horcrux is?"

They all shook their heads.

Harry leaned back onto his desk, took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes in annoyance. "Blimey, what does Professor Binns teach you about the second wizarding war...?"

"Not much." Delilah said, intending to be quiet, but saying it a bit too loudly.

Harry chuckled. "No, I don't expect him to." Harry stood up again and looked seriously at the class. "In basic terms, horcruxes are extremely dark forms of magic that, before the second wizarding war, were hardly known about at all. Since they played such a large part in the second wizarding war, and are now tied into our history, I argued we should actually be able to teach our students about them."

"If they're so important... how come we haven't heard of them?" James asked.

"Because Professor Binns is the world's most boring teacher." Harry said, bluntly. "Don't tell anyone I said that – I'm not supposed to speak ill of my colleagues. Anyway, we're not doing horcruxes today. We're just covering the basic jinxed items."

The class looked quite disappointed.

"You can't say all that and then not tell us what a horcrux is!" Astrid argued. Most of the class were speaking out in agreement.

Harry was looking quite baffled, but quickly thought everything over. "I suppose I could move my lessons about slightly. But now that I've done this for you, I expect all of you to be paying complete attention."

The class nodded in agreement, and Harry had their undivided attention.

"Horcruxes are items, containing an extremely powerful, extremely dark piece of magic. They contain a part of the person's soul who created them. The process to create a horcrux is a mystery, known only to those who look hard enough, and the only thing we know is that in order to split the soul in the first place, an act of murder is required."

The class gasped audibly, and Harry continued. "There are very few known makers of horcruxes, but one of them was Lord Voldemort himself. He actually created six horcruxes – well technically seven but I was a bit of a fluke-"

"You?" A member of the class said aloud.

"Oh yes, for the first seventeen years of my life, I was a horcrux." Harry said nonchalantly. "But we'll get back to that. Horcruxes can be anything," Harry continued. "Babies – for example. Or diaries, rings, lockets, cups, diadems, snakes..."

"Slytherin's locket... Ravenclaw's diadem... Hufflepuff's cup..." Astrid was mumbling under her breath.

"What's that, Astrid?" Harry asked.