A New Subject (Nico di Agelo and Harry Potter)

Reaching an Understandment

Nico's P.O.V.

He rubbed his face tiredly. After his first class he needed a little pause. Everything kept piling up; his ghosts kept seeing more and more suspicious behavior; he repeatedly had to rescue students from Umbridge's detentions; he was unable to contact anyone on the quest to save his sister; and although Harry seemed to like him, he caught the boy staring at his covered tattoo almost daily. All of that combined with the news that Umbridge was supervising his class next was just horrible.

He pitied Harry Potter's class; every time he had the class he was in a bad mood or needed to be more severe to help them catch up with his other groups. That class had the rottenest of luck, because he had them next.

Just after taking a deep breath and forcing a kind smile onto his face, he heard the little 'hem hem' noise that Umbridge loved to do.

"Professor di Angelo, it's no pleasure to have to come here," she said with a tight voice. She tried standing tall, but the large black ceiling stood what seemed like meters over her head and the marble floor highlighted her tiny legs.

"Toad," he greets "any new detentions I have to save our students from?" Sure, he knew he was supposed to stay polite, after all, he was a teacher, but Umbridge made his skin crawl and his veins electrify.

They scowled at each other like two lions about to fight. As his watch beeped 11 o'clock, he walked over to the door.

"You can sit silently in the back." She huffed in response and produced a chair beside his desk as he let his students in.

He really did pity Harry's class, as they walked in, eyes lowered and shoulders small. One or two students mumbled good morning's and Harry greeted him with a smile but everyone seemed to feel the tension between the two professors.

"Okay class, today we'll start with-"

"Hem hem." He closed his eyes and sent a silent pray to Hestia before he actually killed the witch.

He continues on as if she didn't interrupt him. His students continue where they left off last class, and begin working on the levitating spell. But as his students begin muttering 'wingardium leviosa' Professor Umbridge begins to pester him again.

"Why are you practicing charms in a defense class?" she asked, sneering at the word charms. In response, he snapped his fingers in front of the Gryffindor girl to his right and asked her the same question.

"We are not learning to only defend ourselves against enemies, but also to protect our friends. If someone is injured we need to know how to remove them from the battlefield." He grinned at the pink professor and shrugged his shoulders. "It's simple defense Mam, everyone knows that." His smile grew as she turned bright red and huffed.

Excluding the furious scribbling of her quill on her notebook, she hadn't been an annoyance to his class. So he continued on with his class like she wasn't even there, but she couldn't contain herself as he began a new spell.

"Now there are many varieties to the shield spell: protego, protego duo, protego horribiis, protego maxima, and protego totalum. But it is a moderately difficult spell, you wouldn't even know how many people, including people who work at the ministry who can't do a simple shield spell." Cue an offended huff. "Obviously, we'll start with the easiest one and then get to harder ones. But be warned, a shield spell can protect you from charms, spells, objects and even people, but not even the strongest shield spell could protect you from the killing curse as it is unblockable." With that last bit, Umbridge produced a loud squawk.

He sent the students to work and faced the frustrating woman.

"You can't speak about that-that- that curse!" she explodes, waving her hands around madly. "This is supposed to be a protected environment!" she scrunches her eyebrows and hisses "You can't be a teacher anymore."

Nico stares at the woman for one second with a look of surprise. He never thought she'd actually argue with him surrounded by students where her image could be ruined.

"You may have fired Rubeus because you're an uneducated, prejudice woman who doesn't like demi-mortals, you may have fired Sybill for being a fraud fortune-teller but you will not fire me for protecting my students. You will not keep my students in the dark about the dangers of the world. You will not let my students die because I wasn't allowed to tell them a shield spell cannot block the killing curse. Do you hear me?"

Stumbling back in surprise, she nodded.

"Out," he growled, pointing at the door. Without a sound she slumped out the class. The class becomes silent as every student stares at him with wide eyes and dropped jaws.

He wants to give in to the trembling in his bones, he wants to let the tears fall and the sobs wrack his body. The fight left his body and he couldn't move any longer. He could see flashes of dead bodies of people he cared about or knew, he heard their screams and their cries, smelt their blood on the ground and the smoke in the air.

He wouldn't, couldn't let more innocent people die because of the cruelty that enveloped the world. He couldn't let children die because 'it was better if they didn't know the truth.'

"Class dismissed," he said, choking on the huge knot in his throat.

Quietly, the students filed out of class. Harry left last, his green eyes filled with worry. But there was also some type of understanding deep in her eyes, like he knew what it was like to suffer because others thought it was easier to hide the truth. Because others had opposed him when he tried to fight for the truth.

And Nico guessed Harry did know, after all, he was put on a pedestal because his parents died and he survived. After all, he was shamed for tried to speak the truth. After all, he was put on trial because the ministry was trying to find ways to eliminate the threat that the truth posed.

After all, they were both just puppets fighting to live.