"I don't really wanna set bugs on fire either," says Feral.

"Do you squish them when they get in your room?" Bella asks.

"...Sometimes, why?"

"I'm not sure why you'd squish them but not want to burn them. They can't feel much of anything."

"I dunno," he says, shrugging. "Maybe I'll find a bug and set it on fire and see how I feel about it."

"Makes sense," says Bella.

Feral laughs.

"What's funny?"

"...It's funny that I'm going to set a bug on fire to see if I want to or not?"

"Well, if you worked out doing bugs instead of mice with the teacher like I did ahead of time and then it turned out you didn't want to that'd be a wasted effort. You can just find a spider somewhere outside and check real quick."

"Okay." He shrugs again. "I'll do that, then, I guess."

"And then you won't have to be held back in transfig' any more."

He grins. "Yeah, that'll be good."

"I wonder if they'll skip you up to grade level or what."

"Bet you they won't," he predicts.

"Yeah, probably not, unless there's standardized tests for it later that I haven't heard about yet."

"And if the standardized tests involve mice, I'm back to square one."

"...That's true, I guess that's probably part of them being. Standardized."

Feral shrugs.

"Well, you could at least stop having to sit out entire lessons. You can get really really good at sixth grade stuff," she snorts. "And practice outside of classes, if you want to catch your own bugs and read other years' textbooks from the library, I dunno if you care enough."

"I probably don't care enough," he says.

"Oh well. At least I found a way around the problem. I'll even do mice once I'm good enough - I guess you can too when you grow out of the fire thing."

"If I grow out of the fire thing," he snorts.

"Did you ever ask the library elves to help you find stuff about it?"

"Nah."

"I might. Maybe there's something you can do to make it go away and none of the teachers have bothered looking for it, for some reason."

"Knock yourself out," says Feral.

Bella nods. She writes it down.

He grins.

"A Memory Charm," Sherlock says softly.

Mr. Phelps sighs and puts his hand over his eyes. "I did not single you out, Miss Swan, it's part of a demonstration -"

Bella screams at the top of her lungs, clenching her hands in her school robes. "You can't do that! For - for a stupid demonstration - you can't just Memory Charm us - I don't even know how I stopped you - what if I hadn't, what were you going to steal -"

"The last few seconds," says Sherlock, his tone carefully even.

"Yes, Miss Swan, there's no need for this stridency, I was hardly -"

"Those seconds are mine!" she screeches. "You can't have them! You can't! How dare you!"

Sherlock stares expressionlessly at the teacher.

"Miss Swan! Compose yourself at once!"

"Or what? You just tried to do one of the worst things I can think of already! Without warning, without asking for a volunteer, you were just going to casually -" She emits a nonverbal sort of howl and clutches at her head.

"How about," Tony pipes up from behind Bella, "you don't ever do a 'demonstration' like this again, and I don't write my mom about not feeling safe in your class."

"I've been doing this for second-semester sixth graders for nine years," says Mr. Phelps. "I am not an unsafe practitioner of the charm - none of you would have suffered more than a moment's disorientation similar in effect to inattention or drowsiness that children invariably experience in school anyway -"

"The charm isn't safe because it's designed to do something bad!" shrieks Bella. "That's like saying the Killing Curse is safe because apart from being dead its victims suffer no side effects!"

Mr. Phelps sighs and rubs his temple. "Perhaps one of Miss Swan's friends would like to take her out of the room to compose herself."

"Sure," says Tony, and she picks up paper and pen off her desk in a deliberately conspicuous way.

Bella is still clutching at her head, near where her wands stick out from her bun. But she'll follow Tony out.

"This does not constitute an excused absence; I expect you back and prepared to conduct yourselves appropriately in the next fifteen minutes," says Mr. Phelps.

"Uh-huh," says Tony. She's already writing the letter to her mom.

Bella sits by the door to the classroom in the hall, breathing hard.

"You okay? I bet I can get him fired if you want," Tony offers.

"That sounds fantastic. Let me double-check that impulse," mutters Bella, and she puts her notebook on her knees and starts scribbling, pausing occasionally to scrub a tear away from her face. "But he's been doing it for years, I don't know how your mom would do it."

"She's a rich pureblood mom. If she yells loud enough, the school will probably listen. Even though she married a Muggle."

"Maybe. But that just implies that no one else has a rich pureblood parent who chose to yell about it." Bella pauses. "Or that Mr. Phelps has been Memory Charming extra people. But - apparently he can't do it to me - so - will you believe me if he tries to cover it up?" she asks dubiously.

"I'm sending this letter before I go back to class," says Tony. "And if I forget all about it afterward, Mom's going to raise some hell for sure."

"He thinks there's nothing wrong with it," says Tony. "But he's, you know, wrong. I'm gonna run and see if I can find Nike. You coming?"

"Yes," says Bella.

Off she goes!

Bella follows her, getting her tears under control.

"...Seriously though, are you okay?"

"He didn't actually do it. But I could feel him trying. I - don't know how I stopped him. And it felt bad."

"Weren't you trying to learn how to do that kind of thing? Maybe it worked," says Tony.

"I didn't even come up with anything good to try. Feral was going to test stuff for me because he didn't mind me trying to break through, but eventually we figured out he wasn't a good subject. I've been working on other stuff. And a little bit of made-up Occlumency practice, here and there, but it's supposed to be really hard to get to be a good Occlumens."

"I guess you're just lucky, then."

"Maybe. Have you ever heard of someone just doing it automatically?"

"My parents couldn't do anything, I guess," Bella says gloomily.

"If there's a lot of people yelling, it might help if yours are too," says Tony. "But if it's just my mom... yeah."

"Nobody else in class seemed fazed. Except Sherlock."

"Honestly, I didn't care that much either," says Tony. "But it is kind of creepy and weird, and I care that you care."

"It would be one thing if he asked for a volunteer and Feral raised his hand and then didn't remember doing it. But he just went and cast it on everybody."

"Yeah."

"Tempus." Bella sighs. "We should probably head back. In case he doesn't get fired."

"Yeah," Tony repeats. "...Do you want a hug, or something?"

"Yeah." Bella hugs her.

Hugs.

And slow, reluctant return to class.

The class is in the process of receiving a lecture about how many hostile moves - actually hostile, not a teacher with their very best interests at heart making a point - can be subtle and that their best defense is their perceptiveness!

Sherlock is staring unblinkingly at him while he makes this speech!

"In fact," says Mr. Phelps, "as happens in about half my classes, someone - welcome back, Miss Swan, Miss Stark - was able to identify what happened, although I don't know how much of a part the subsequent outburst played in providing clues. Nicely done, Miss Stark - can you lead us through your thought process as you came to realize what I'd done?" Mr. Phelps asks Sherlock.

Bella hisses under her breath as she resumes her seat.

"A few seconds of my experience of the world went missing just as you were passing by me," he says. "And then Bella yelled, just as you were passing by her - it seemed obvious that you were Memory Charming us to make a point and she had thrown you off or at least noticed."

"Thank you," says Mr. Phelps. "Unfortunately, allowing the front half of the class to try their respective hands at noticing something amiss would require more editing than I ever perform on students at this point, but do notice that everyone behind Miss Stark here, who was charmed, merely assumed they'd 'spaced out', re-read the paragraph that had gone missing, and otherwise went on undisturbed. In other words, 'spacing out' - making a general habit of it - is a hazard to your ability to react to your surroundings. Attention, and the readiness to react, are the core of Defense."

Completely inexplicably, the end of Mr. Phelps's sleeve (opposite his wand hand) starts smoldering.

"Exstinguo," says Mr. Phelps, and he repairs the scorch. "Case in point, but there will be no more of that. This is my classroom and points are mine to illustrate."

Feral grins.

"Should I develop cause to believe that this was not one of your accidental pyrotechnic outbursts, Mr. Orphan, you will not have a pleasant afternoon. Now -"

"I won't?" he inquires brightly. "You sure?"

"Do not interrupt me," says Mr. Phelps. "Now, if you'll all turn to chapter two."

"Are you okay?" Bella murmurs under her breath to Feral.

He shakes his head.

"What's wrong?"

"Read the first section," says Mr. Phelps, "and produce a list of examples. At least three per person."

"Didn't like the way he was talking to me," he murmurs. "I'll be fine."

Feral successfully manages not to set anything else on fire.

Bella catches his hand and squeezes it, then lets go.

He smiles hesitantly.

"I bet it was scary," she murmurs.

"Scary is not the word I would use."

"I was scared. What were you?"

"I was that too. After I was sure it was gone from my head."

"It was not especially damaging, but it was - obvious. And obviously an attack, once I knew it was of human origin."

"Tony wrote to your mom and thinks she can get him fired," says Bella, declining to sound optimistic.

"So I gathered."

"Do you think she can?"

"I think she could. But I'm not sure she will. Try, yes, succeed - maybe."

"I'm going to find someone who's taken his class before and find out if that's the only nasty surprise," Bella decides.

"Wise."

"I'll let you guys know what I find," she adds, expanding her address to include Tony.

"Thanks."