I went to bed pretty much as soon as I got to the dorms. I woke up the next morning and headed to breakfast, ready to start day two of classes. Jackson had DADA first thing, and then we'd see each other in Care of Magical Creatures for our last period of the day. I knew he'd be just as unsettled by the Unforgivable Curses as I was, so I was already planning a strategy for learning to resist the Imperius Curse together after that class. Barely two days into the year, and the Astronomy Tower was already back in use.
At lunch, I took a trip to the owlery to mail a letter to Oliver about training with Pietro. I sent him a copy of everything I'd gotten from the omnioculars too, since he seemed so excited about that the last time I talked to him. I made it back to the Great Hall in time to grab a quick snack before my second DADA lesson. Moody continued his teaching of curses, although it was a bit less graphic for this second lesson. The class went by quickly, and so did our Charms class after that. Finally, it was time for Care of Magical Creatures, and time to get Jackson on the same page about this curse.
I saw Jackson walking with Adrian and Myrah a bit ahead of me and the rest of my friends as we walked down the Hogwarts lawn. I picked up the pace, trying to catch up to him as I caught his attention.
"Hey! Jackson!"
He turned around at the sound of his name, and instead of looking annoyed like I thought he might, he looked deadly serious as he waited for me to catch up to him.
Moody's lesson must have had exactly the impact I was hoping for.
"Stark. You were right. We have to do something about that curse."
"No kidding. The only question is what?" Jackson took a breath like he was going to answer, but I'd planned it all out this morning, so I continued before he could. "I'll tell you what we're gonna do, we're gonna go up to the Astronomy Tower after class and practice on each other until we can resist it."
"Good plan. Let's get started as soon as this class is over."
"My thoughts exactly."
It was nice to have Jackson actually agreeing with me, for a change. Although, given who his mother was and who she spends time with, I guess it makes sense he wouldn't joke around about mind control.
Hagrid's lesson was interesting, but Jackson and I were both itching to get to work as quickly as we possibly could. The less time spent in the world where wizards could use a simple spell to get us to do anything, the better.
Our friends all knew that we were going up to the Astronomy Tower to work on something after class, so we didn't do much more than call goodbye over our shoulders as we booked it back up to the castle.
"Alright Stark, you wanna cast first or resist first?" asked Jackson as we walked to a nice, open space in the Tower.
"I'll resist first." Jackson nodded and pulled out his wand, but I had a sudden thought before he cast the spell. "Just don't try to make me do anything to embarrassing, okay? Remember, you're next."
"Don't worry Stark, you're gonna be fine," said Jackson with a grin that actually made me very worried. Oh well, there really wasn't much I could do about it now. "Imperio!"
Just like that, every muscle in my body relaxed. It felt like I was floating on air. I couldn't imagine any reason for the worry and determination I'd felt before. Why not just go with the flow?
"Pat your head and rub your stomach." The voice was faint, just barely whispering what to do. Still, it only made sense to listen to it, right?
I started to move, the voice repeating the instructions over and over, and I managed to get it right on the first try. I vaguely thought that was impressive, since I'd never managed to get it right on the first try before, but the thought was gone as quickly as it'd come.
"Do jumping jacks." The voice came again, with new instruction. I started to shift, to start doing my jumping jacks, but this time it didn't make as much sense as it had the first time. Why would I just start doing jumping jacks in the middle of the Astronomy Tower, at the drop of a hat? That would look and be stupid.
I tried to stop my arms moving, but I couldn't all the way. I was still fighting with the voice, on repeat in my head, when the haze suddenly lifted and I was back to normal.
Jackson was doubled over laughing in front of me.
"What?" I demanded, hands on my hips. I certainly hadn't managed to resist, so there was no reason for him to be stopping.
"You— you looked— so ridiculous," he managed between wheezing breaths and big bursts of laughter.
"You're kidding me."
"No! You should've seen yourself." He regained his composure enough to start doing some weird flailing movements that sort of looked like jumping jacks if you squinted, and then he broke down laughing again.
"Jackson, the whole point of this is learning to resist the Imperius Curse. The entire point is defeated if you can't hold your own spell!"
"Alright Stark, point taken," he said, finally straightening up as he wiped a tear from his eye. "Just wait though, when it's your turn you're gonna be even worse at keeping it together than me."
I rolled my eyes and shook out my arms, mentally preparing to resist the spell again. I didn't do very well that round, but it seemed like it was easier to resist when you were being asked to do a more ridiculous task. Obviously we wanted to be able to resist any request, but if my theory held, it might work better if we built up our strength with something easier to say no to.
Jackson cast the curse again, and the waves of peacefulness and relaxation immediately returned.
"Activate the Iron Man armor."
Now this one I immediately knew I didn't want to do. Sure, right now it was just Jackson, but I never wanted to be in the position where someone successfully forced me to activate the armor.
Jackson's quiet voice was persuasive, but a very big part of me knew that I couldn't listen. I couldn't activate my armor. I couldn't.
"ACTIVATE THE IRON MAN ARMOR."
The voice was so loud I couldn't block it out anymore. My left hand went to push the arc reactor that always sat on my chest to turn it on, and my right hand came up to deflect it. Unfortunately for me, my right hand shoved my left hand up as hard as it could, but my left hand kept going with the usual force I used to activate my armor. Long story short, I ended up smacking myself in the face.
I felt the spell lift again as Jackson was consumed by laughter. I swore and rubbed my cheek, just watching Jackson try to keep from falling to the floor.
"Alright, yeah, laugh it up. I looked stupid. But I resisted, which proves my theory."
I expected Jackson to calm down a little and ask what my theory was, but he didn't. He kept wheezing laughing, and talking between breaths about how "he wished he had that on video". Eventually, when it was clear he was gonna be a while, I decided to just explain anyway.
"What theory? Well, I'm so glad you asked Jackson," I said sarcastically. This only made him laugh harder. "Basically, I'm pretty sure some things are easier to resist than others. I don't have any particular issues with rubbing my head and patting my stomach, so I did it without much resistance. Jumping jacks are a little weirder and more stupid-looking, at least to me, so I was more able to resist. And then the armor... well, obviously I don't want anybody having power over that besides me, so it was the easiest to resist."
Jackson had been calming down throughout my whole speech, and now he was standing up straight with his hands on his hips. He looked far more serious now.
"Stark, that's actually a good theory."
"You don't have to sound surprised about it, I'm actually right about a lot of things."
Jackson ignored my comment and started pacing, following his own train of thought. "So some things are easier to resist than others. That makes sense. I mean, if someone told me to go to the Great Hall and eat dinner, it would be harder to resist because I was going to do that anyway."
"Exactly. That's why I'm thinking we start with the easy stuff, the stuff we would never want to do, so that we get practice resisting when we have the best chance to shake off the curse. From there we can go to the harder stuff, once we've had some practice with an easier level."
"Yeah, good plan. So, you wanna keep going?"
"Ugh, no. I've made you break down into uncontrollable laughter twice, and I'm almost definitely going to have a mark on my cheek tomorrow from the last time. I think it's your turn now."
Jackson didn't look excited about switching places, but he hid his nerves well. He crossed his arms and looked at me defiantly as I pulled out my wand and said "Imperio".
Just like that, Jackson's posture relaxed. His arms dropped to his sides, and he got a dreamy look on his face. Now the only question was what I should make him do.
Several different thoughts flashed through my mind at once. Jackson didn't have an obvious weakness like my arc reactor, but he had a tough guy, too cool for everybody image that he worked hard to maintain. There were plenty of things that could ruin that image that he'd never want to do.
Finally, I decided on one. When we were in the pre-college program together the summer before last, I had a lot of fun singing songs from Disney and musicals with our other two teammates, Alana and Dale. Jackson had refused to participate, even going so far as to threaten destroying our phones and speakers if we kept trying to make him sing.
It was the perfect activity to try to make him do now. Either he'd resist, or I'd get to see the Jackson Rappaccini sing Let It Go from Frozen.
"Sing a Disney song," I said, leveling my wand at Jackson and speaking as firmly as possible. He didn't do it right away, and his face scrunched up a little. Exactly as predicted, he was trying to resist.
I gave it another second, and then I repeated my instructions, trying to sound as authoritative as possible. Still, Jackson didn't sing. His face twitched, his mouth kept opening and closing, and I could tell I almost had him.
"SING A DISNEY SONG," I commanded, trying to match his voice when he told me to activate my armor. Jackson's voice came out strangled and horrible, like he was choking on something at the same time he was trying to sing.
"HAKUAHHHHHHH" He got part way through a horrible, guttural yell of Hakuna Matata before he changed it mid-word to just yelling.
Suddenly I understood why Jackson couldn't seem to keep it together whenever I did weird stuff while trying to resist the curse.
I broke down laughing, dropping the spell and doubling over. I glanced up and saw Jackson had come back to himself, looking extremely cranky. Needless to say, that only made me laugh harder.
"What the hell was that?" I asked between laughs. I was starting to get tears in my eyes. "That was the worst thing I've ever seen!"
"Alright Stark, whatever. Low blow, trying to make me sing Disney songs. It's nice to know you haven't forgotten anything from the pre-college program."
I didn't respond, but I did start to calm down. I could stand again, and I wiped at my eyes while the massive smile never left my face.
"Okay, I know this is all very serious because, well, wizards being able to mind-control us is obviously not ideal, but this is such a massive perk that never even occurred to me," I said. Jackson just rolled his eyes.
"I think we need to make a pact that we never record these training sessions," he said.
"Oh, one-hundred percent agreed." We shook on it, then I sighed, having finally caught my breath. "Okay, so what do you think? You wanna go again?"
"Yeah, I should. We'll do it a few more times and then we'll head down to dinner."
"Sounds like a plan."
I came up with different things to make Jackson do, so he'd have to deal with the element of surprise too. After he half-managed to stop himself from dancing and dabbing, we decided to call it a day.
"We still have a lot of work to do," he said as we headed down to dinner together. That was the understatement of the year.
"I think our biggest problem right now is breaking the spell because we laugh. We need to be able to keep the spell going no matter how stupid the other person looks, or we're never going to get good, realistic practice breaking the curse all the way."
"I agree. We both have some seriously scary, superspy-type people in our families. We just have to channel them, and we'll be fine."
"Next time, for sure. You wanna try again tomorrow?"
"No, I can't tomorrow. Adrian's helping me with some Charms crap before dinner. I know I make it look easy, but it's a little hard to keep up with people who've been doing this for more than five years when you've only done it for a little over three months."
"Fair enough. We'll find a time in the next couple days that works." We reached the Great Hall, and moved to split off to our separate tables. "And hey, if you ever need help with anything else, let me know!"
Jackson snorted. "I think I'll stick with the more experienced teachers, not the one who only barely knows this world better than me." I rolled my eyes and he paused before continuing in a quieter voice, so nobody else could hear him. "Thanks for the offer though, Stark."
I gave him a small smile and a thumbs up before turning around and walking to sit at my own table with my Gryffindor friends. We ate and chatted all through dinner, and Jackson and I's little project didn't really come up. I could have told them, but part of me didn't want to, especially since it would involve a long conversation about my Uncle Clint and Uncle Loki. This world was a nice break from a lot of things in my normal life, and dwelling on bad memories would only ruin it.
We all went up to bed that night, and the rest of my poor, poor friends had Astronomy just a few hours later. I, on the other hand, dropped that subject along with History of Magic, so I got to sleep peacefully right through the night.
It was even better knowing the rest of my class was hiking around the castle half asleep, trying to do work and pay attention to Professor Sinistra, while I never had to leave the comfort of my nice, warm bed.
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A/N: So I know in the books Harry shakes off the Imperius Curse successfully in like, six tries or something, but that's always seemed a little unrealistic to me so we're going to chalk that up to jumping on a desk being one of the easier things to resist as well as Moody going a little easier with letting him break the spell since it's not Moody and is actually a Death Eater. And hey, maybe that whole thing he has going on with Voldemort made him better at resisting the curse too. Whatever the case, in these books the curse is going to be harder to break than that, like Moody talked it up to be.