#abraham ronen

Professor Hecat

Dina Hecat had rarely found herself as impressed with a student as she was with you. Your tenacity, your aptitude for magic, your ability to pick up new and complex defensive magic was unmatched, though Sebastian made a valiant effort to maintain a solid second place behind you. Such was your prowess that Dina thought you might make an excellent Auror, and determined to tutor you privately once you expressed an interest. It was a thrill to begin with, to teach you all the tips and tricks an Auror might need in their arsenal, you picking them all up as if it was as easy as breathing, to the point that Dina grew complacent.

She’d heard tales of your exploits during your fifth year, of course, and fought beside you during the Battle for the Repository. She was confident that you could handle anything thrown at you, and you impressed her over and over and over. But all it took was one tiny misstep, one foot wrong, and all her Ministry training and the reason behind it was thrown into sharp relief.

The troll was supposed to be an easy dispatch. You’d defeated one when you were brand new to magic, after all. Dina had taught you an advanced form of confringo, or at least, she’d taught you the theory. It was a powerful spell, a short step below feindfyre, and she was eager to see it in practice. But the troll had flung its club just as you began the incantation, and everything went wrong. You were distracted as it flew towards Dina, and you lost control of the spell.

The resulting inferno was too much for mere aguamenti, and there was nothing Dina could do but wait for the flames to die down, listening to you scream as you blundered about in the middle of the fire, unable to find a way out. When the smoke cleared, all that was left of you was a charred skeleton, your clawed hand leaving sooty streaks on her skin as she took it, hoping that this was some kind of nightmare, some kind of illusion or hallucination, anything but brutal, cold reality.

There was an investigation, of course. Why was a seventh-year student out fighting trolls? Why was this student doing so under the instruction of a faculty member that should have known better? Why had this professor allowed things to get so out of control?

Dina avoided Azkaban for her neglect by a narrow margin, but she had to give up her teaching post. She passed a little over a year later, having drunk herself to death, unable to cope with the guilt.

Professor Ronen

Abraham Ronen had always had such a love of fun and games, determined to make each of his classes a joy for his students. Yes, he recycled ideas through the terms, a large timetable in his office holding large lists of games he could incorporate that was appropriate for each year of Charms classes. But even so, after several years in his position, he found these games began to grow repetitive, and he wanted to liven things up.

That’s where you came in. Your ingenuity was famous throughout Hogwarts for a reason, and so he called on you one day after class, requesting your assistance in thinking up new games to play. He gave you a list of the spells he was to teach his seventh-year students, promising to waive your homework for a month if you helped out. You took to the task like a kappa to water, assailing Abraham with a variety of ‘games’ that would help the other students learn. The problem was, most of your games involved far too much risk for his liking, including trying to steal a dragon egg. Despite your protestations that you knew where to find one, Abraham wasn’t having it. But he’d promised, and you’d promised, and a deal was a deal.

So extreme were your ideas that when you proposed the still dangerous but comparatively tame idea of delayed-action bombarda combined with glacius, Abraham thought the idea of students running through a booby-trapped field, freezing the latent explosive spells, was a positively marvellous idea.

The students were less keen. They, unexposed to your particular brand of fun, saw the folly in such a practice. But you, determined that everyone should have fun, decided to be the first across the field. Abraham realised far too late just how foolish this game was, and had barely raised his wand as you danced across the minefield before disaster struck, and you were blown apart.

He tried his best to gather the pieces of you that rained down. A severed foot here, a shattered forearm there, holding his robes like an apron and gathering you up. It was futile, of course, for once a witch or wizard’s head is detached from their body, even the very best healers only have a few seconds to make it right.

He could never get that image out of his mind. One moment you were smiling, laughing, joking, teasing the others for their hesitancy, and the next you were in bits, everything that you were tumbling from the sky in slow motion. Every student in that class was scarred for life, set to fail their Charms NEWTs, fifty promising careers suddenly thrown down the toilet. Abraham resigned in shame, and did not go home to his wife. He wandered until he became lost, and lost himself until he found a cliff. Only by shattering himself on the rocks below could he find some form of atonement for his sins.

Professor Sharp

Aesop Sharp had always preferred to be somewhat gruff and stern. It kept his pupils in line, and his firm but fair approach ensured that everyone that took his classes passed with good marks, even if they had a tendency to blow things up, a practice he’d secretly taken to calling “doing a Garreth.” You, on the other hand, slipped past his guard. Maybe it was your incredible aptitude for offensive and defensive magic, or perhaps it was your endearing wit and charm. It could have been your happy-go-lucky nature, your ability to smile no matter how dire things seemed to be, always poking fun at yourself before anyone else. He found himself growing fond of you, thinking of you as some kind of wayward nibling.

He still had to give you detentions on occasion, of course, because even you couldn’t cheek the Potions Master and get away with it, no matter how well-intentioned your words had been. He found such hours to be more of a delight than a chore, happy to talk to you about anything and everything, even laughing a little as you revealed some of the mischief you’d gotten up to, things he’d normally give more detentions for.

One evening in the dungeons, you were cheerfully scrubbing out the cauldrons, and you asked him about is days as an Auror. You told him about an Ashwinder camp you’d caught wind of, and how you wished you could eradicate them. Aesop knew he should report it to Officer Singer and keep you out of it, but hell, he’d seen you fight, and there was something in him that yearned for that spark of excitement that came with defeating his enemies. He suggested travelling with you to wipe them out, considering it worth at least three detentions. You joked that this meant you had two free passes to be cheeky in class, and he told you not to push your luck.

If only he’d known. If only he’d taken a moment to think. If only he’d listened to his Auror instincts that told him this was a bad idea.

You’d both crept up on the camp, wands at the ready. There weren’t many of them, but enough to pose a bit of a challenge. Aesop had every confidence in you, he knew your skills after all, but unfortunately, the Ashwinders did as well. The moment they saw you, they didn’t bother with their typical hexes. They knew enough about you to know they couldn’t waste a second if they wanted to live. Three Killing Curses were sent your way, and one found its mark.

Aesop thought he knew loss when his partner was killed in Scarborough, but this was something else. Watching the light go out of your eyes, the ghost of your last, confident smile on your face, broke him like nothing had broken him before. He didn’t even try to resist when the Ashwinders took him, snatching his wand and throwing him in a cage along with the kneazles they’d poached. He couldn’t get the image of you out of his mind, your still body lying amid the debris of the Forbidden Forest, already ignored and forgotten by your foes, left for whatever scavengers crept through the night to feast. He refused food and water as he was dragged from one end of the country to the other, kept prisoner by those that had killed you. It took weeks to kill him, but one morning, lying on the floor of that cold, hard cage, he just didn’t wake up.

Professor Black

Phineus Nigellus Black preferred to let the students of Hogwarts think he was a cold-hearted, pompous bastard. It was much easier to work this way, easier to make the tough decisions a Headmaster of Hogwarts needed to make. Budget cuts, cancelling quidditch, extending exam season and banning Hogsmeade visits to ensure student safety was easier to weather if his heart was already hardened to the complaints and cries of woe, the bitter mutters, the whispered insults, the playground songs made up to poke fun at him. Yes, it hurt, but he was better than that. Stronger. Prouder. He had a job to do, after all, and Merlin only knew the previous Headmaster had left a hellish mess for him to set right. He had to be hard to be kind. He preferred not to pay attention to those around him, erecting a hard wall around his heart.

You, however… you were different. He heard about what you did in your fifth year, and though he found it hard to believe at first, he paid a bit more attention to you as time went by, and found the tales of your prowess were, if anything, undersold. Phineas made an effort in your final year to take you under his wing, seeing a potential candidate for the position of Minister for Magic in your future. He wanted to teach you the finer points of politics and bootlicking, introduce you to the right people, like the Gaunts, the Blacks, the Malfoys and more to give you the boost you needed to clamber up that slippery ladder. The only gifts he knew how to give.

You were resistant, of course. What kind of firecracker would you be if you weren’t? Phineas relished the challenge, demanding more and more of your free time until you began to understand just what kind of privileges came along with knowing the right people and scratching the right backs. Ominis knew it and used it to his advantage perhaps less than he should have done, but this seemed to tip the scales in Phineas' favour, and you finally began to listen and learn from his wise tutelage. He found himself swelling with pride as you whipped about your newfound allegiances, terrifying students and teachers alike, reining you in when you frightened Hobhouse so much he wet himself, his scolding gentle and warm. He might have had five children, but you showed promise.

Unfortunately, even the shrewd and clever Phineas couldn’t have foreseen the simple dangers of existing in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

He’d taken you to the trophy room, waxing lyrical about the famous witches and wizards that had come through Hogwarts, pointing out their accolades with relish, his hand on your shoulder, a rare and affectionate gesture of genuine pride. He told you that you could achieve just as much, perhaps more, if you applied all your skills and knowledge in the right ways. He even smiled at you, and his eyes were warm.

You asked to see a particularly bright medal on a high shelf, and Phineas, taking a leaf out of your muggleborn book, decided to give the other life a try, just for once. If a muggleborn could be as impressive as you, perhaps he didn’t have to use magic for everything. He tried to reach the medal by hand, even climbing on the shelf to do so, smiling as it made you laugh. He climbed down, medal in hands, his brow furrowing as your face grew ashen. The next moment, you had barrelled into him, throwing him out of the way of the falling shelf.

By the time he picked himself up, scolding you for your behaviour, it was too late. The falling shelves and shattered glass had crushed you, slashing your neck. By the time Phineas realised you weren’t just pratting about like you usually did, you’d bled out, your skin pale, your eyes wide and unseeing. Phineas sat on the floor beside your corpse, holding your fingers closed over the medal that read:

Most Impressive Display of Honour.

Professor Garlick

Mirabel Garlick had endured her share of enamoured students, villagers, and even fellow professors in her time. She dealt with it all with the grace and decorum that was expected of such a sunny personality, treating all and sundry with the same level of ardent attention and big, bright smiles. She had a soft spot for you though, someone who appreciated magical plants for the marvels they were. She didn’t mind when you stayed after class to quiz her on the less known properties of pufferpods or the right way to tamp down earth around a mandrake to ensure maximum comfort. She’d heard all about your little adventure to see the giant venomous tentacula, and had been curious about your knowledge ever since.

She was more than happy to help you grow your plants bigger and better than what the school board advised. She even cleared out Greenhouse Four for your personal use, encouraging you to grow things most students would only ever see if they were extremely unlucky. But she trusted you. She believed you knew what you were doing, swept up by your enthusiasm, tempted by her own curiosity to see just how far you could push your skills.

So it was that the pair of you ended up breeding a new kind of Devil’s Snare, one that was resistant to light and heat. It took time, and though you both occasionally wondered what the purpose of such a plant would be, you were too excited by the prospect of your experiments bearing fruit to worry about consequences. Mirabel should have known better. The only defence against a Devil’s Snare is light and heat, and both of you pushed away thoughts of protection against such a thing. It seemed playful, intelligent, happy.

It was early on a Saturday morning when Mirabel decided to look in on Greenhouse Four. It was only by chance that she had decided to do so, and she would spend the rest of her life wishing she had been five minutes sooner. She saw the Devil’s snare distract you with dancing tendrils as it had so many times before, only this time, you were too close. It wrapped you up faster than a spider wraps a fly, crushing the life from you. No matter how many incendios she cast, no matter how much she shouted and beat at it, even conjuring a torch to hold against the vines, all it did was hurt you more as it crushed the life from you, each snap of your ribs loud above your gasping breaths, the crunch of your spine grinding in her ears, the blood from your nose splattering on the floor as your lungs punctured, your eyes bulging out of their sockets. Even still you fought to draw breath until there was no more room in your chest.

Mirabel had never felt so helpless. She sank to her knees, waiting as the Devil’s Snare took you into its core to feed upon your corpse. She didn’t resist when the vines caressed her face, then wrapped around her throat, her wand lying forgotten on the floor of Greenhouse Four.

Professor Fig

Eleazar Fig had always had a soft spot for you. He’d watched you grow from a novice to a master in the space of a year, popular and clever, beloved by your peers and professors alike. He always made sure to make time for you in his office, sharing a cup of tea as you discussed your past adventures, gossiped about the students, or just had a jolly good chinwag. You both shared a love of adventure, and made time at least once a month to get up to mischief, whether it was investigating old ruins, clearing out mongrel dens, or just running the occasional errand for those in need. You delighted in having your mentor along for the ride, and he adored helping you where he could.

Unfortunately for you, your exploits over the years made you enemies. Though you helped a good many people and made plenty of friends, there were those that were hard done by when you stole from them or caused them trouble on behalf of someone else. Eleazar knew this, and made sure to continually warn you to watch your back, clucking like a mother hen. Perhaps he warned you too much, his words of caution becoming background noise as you continually avoided retribution for your misdeeds. Eleazar did his best to keep you safe all the same, ardently researching your enemies and eliminating plots before they came to fruition.

But after almost a year of no schemes against you, he dared to relax. He invited you out to lunch at Steepley and Sons, intending to enjoy a quiet cup of tea, some nice sandwiches, and perhaps even a slice of cake, his treat, of course. He wanted to catch up properly, to make sure you were happy, on top of your homework, getting on with your friends. You wanted to know how he was coping after Miriam’s passing, if he was back on the scene, how his work as a teacher was going, and can he please get you out of detention with Professor Sharp?

Neither of you expected after all this time there were still those that held a grudge. The young wizard helping Mrs Steepley was actually an Ashwinder, and they poisoned your cup of tea. It took a moment to take effect, but once it did, the only way to save you was locked away in Hogwarts Castle. Even accio couldn’t have got the antidote to you in time.

Eleazar watched as your face went ashen, seemingly sinking in on itself as you clawed at your throat. He caught you as you listed sideways, his eyes locked on yours, trying to comfort you, soothe you as you struggled to draw breath, not even a pin able to pass through the tightness of your throat. Your nails left bloody furrows on your neck, your feet kicking feebly even as someone ran for J Pippin’s, hoping he’d be able to help. Eleazar knew better. He just held you as your body jerked, the last of your life sliding through his fingers as he tried oh so hard to hold on to it, begging you silently to just hold on a little longer. You were all he had, the last spark of joy in his cold, dark life. Once you were gone, there was nothing left for him. A swift unforgivable curse delivered to his temple as he lay in his chamber was enough to ensure he could see you and Miriam again.