The Road so Far...

Castiel and Gabriel have arrived at Hogwarts, and join in on a meeting with Dumbledore and the Winchesters regarding the attacks on the school. They learn that the attacks have happened before in a similar fashion, and are ready to kick some monster butt. If only they could figure out what Slytherin's monster could be...and how a dead man could possibly infiltrate the school.

And Now...

-.-.-

Thirteen Years Ago

Sam rifles through his bag as he walks, glancing up occasionally to avoid running into other students as he navigates the halls of Ilvermorny. Sam had just finished his last class of the week and decided that it was time to get a head start on his assignments.

He is so caught up in debating whether he has all the books he needed from his dorm, that he doesn't hear the rapid footsteps approaching him.

An arm slings around his shoulder, dragging him down and almost throwing him to the ground. Sam looks up with a start and sees a blond hair and golden eyes which were filled o the brim with barely-restrained energy.

"Sam. Sammy. Samuel, what the hell are you doing with all of those books on a Friday?"

"I'm going to the library," he replies as if it's obvious. He shakes Gabriel's arm from his shoulder.

Gabriel whines in a way that is unfitting of his age as Sam walks off.

"But Saaaaam, it's only the second month of school!" He runs to catch up, and matches Sam's stride. "You have only been here for a few weeks. There is no way that you have that much homework yet."

"I think you'd find that there's a lot of homework that needs doing if you actually decided to hand it all in, Gabe."

Gabriel makes a dismissive gesture. "It's my last year at this stupid school, I'm not about to have an academic awakening. Nice try, though. You however are a young and fresh face. The world is your oyster and all that. You have time to change your ways." Gabriel steps in front of Sam, facing him with open arms. "I can show you how to stop working all the dang time and have fun."

"No, Gabe." Sam side-steps him and walks a bit faster. "Dean's told me all about the stuff that you get up to, and I don't want any part of it. If I get into trouble, my Dad will kill me."

"Dean gets into trouble all the time," Gabriel persists. "You've probably handed in more papers already that Dean has in his whole schooling so far. And he hasn't been expelled or executed."

Sam hears a thump behind him and turns around. Gabriel is on his knees, pleading.

"Pleeeeaassseee! I need your help. I've got a great idea, and I'm having a brainstorming session with some people. You don't even need to do anything – just bring that big brain of yours and let me bounce some ideas off of you."

Sam glances around at the other students walking in the hall, either politely ignoring the scene, or smiling as they passed. Sam eventually gives up. "Will you leave me alone if I come?"

Gabriel gives it serious thought. "Probably not. But I won't bother you if you're in the middle of studying for two weeks."

Take it where you can get it, Sam thinks to himself. He accepts Gabe's offer, resigned.

Gabriel whoops. He leaps to his feet and practically drags Sam to the dormitory building assigned to those of the Thunderbird house.

Sam only has time to eye the chaotic mess that is the common areas of the dorm before Gabriel drags him upstairs. He leads Sam to what must be his dorm room and opens the door without a knocking or using a key.

"Hello!" He announces to the room. "We're all here now."

"Why are we here, Gabriel? I have work to do." Sam enters the room to see Castiel Novak and his brother, Dean sitting on opposite beds of the room. Dean pauses in throwing a ball onto the wall next to Castiel's head to glance at Sam.

"Why are you dragging Sam into this?" Dean asks. "He's got a good-boy rep to maintain."

"Because I have it on good accord that he's smart, and God knows we need it."

"That's why we have Cas." Dean grumbles.

"Really?" Cas frowns, thoughtful. "And here I was thinking I was the looks of this operation."

Dean throws the ball in his hands directly at Cas, causing him to flinch and squawk.

Gabriel kicks the door shut. "Shut up. We're planning-"

"Gabe is planning," Cas corrects.

"-to break into the staff bathrooms and replace their shampoo with hair dye."

"You know," Dean rolls his eyes. "The most original prank ever. I literally did that to Sam when I was eight. It's old. It's boring, and easily corrected if you know the spell."

"Which is why we're going to make it better." Gabe pound his fist into his other hand. "Give this old prank a glow-up! Some razzle dazzle! I want to see Mr. Kamorn try to finish his lecture on history with the whole class snickering at his lime green hair."

Sam rolls his eyes. "So put an age charm on the dye. Make sure it can only be seen by students."

Gabriel snaps at him, so close to his face that he blinks in surprise. "That's the kind of innovation that we need! Not just complaints and bad attitudes." He gestures to Dean and Cas who are still sitting there looking bored.

Gabriel looks like he has a fire under him. "Alright. Cas can look into what charm we'll use. Dean can brew the potion dye. It's got to dye hair different colours without it being a whole different brew because we're not made of money. Bonus points if the colour changes throughout the day."

Sam frowns at Gabriel. "What are you talking about? Dean's not that good at potions."

Castiel raises an eyebrow. "It's because he gets bored and experiments during class. Not because he's not good at it."

"And," Gabe continues, "he's got a pretty little boy-toy that can get him access to the labs." Gabriel winks at Dean. "You smooth criminal."

Dean shakes his head. "No can do. We broke up over the summer. He got too clingy. I'm dating Alice now."

Gabe looks positively devastated. "How could you do this to us! Why would you dump such an important resource?"

"If you like him so much, why don't you date him?"

"I would if I could, but he's missing a few assets for my taste." Gabriel mimes holding breasts. "And I don't like stringing people along. Is Alice of any use to us?"

Dean rolls his eyes. "Not everyone I date has to be useful to you, Gabe."

Sam pipes up. "I could probably convince Mrs. Kethall to let me have some time in the potions lab. I could pose it as tutoring Dean, and then he brew whatever he needs to."

Dean's face sours. "Sam," he warns, but it interrupted before he can go full big-brother mode.

"That's a brilliant idea!" Gabriel shrieks. Sam notices that Castiel has his hand raised up, waiting to speak. Gabriel calls on him. "Yes, Mr. Novak."

"I was wondering, why are we doing all the work?" Castiel raises an eyebrow.

"Because I'm doing the reconnaissance," Gabriel says with his hands on his hips. "And I've got to figure out how I'm going to buy shampoo in bulk without anyone questioning it."

-.-.-

Present Day

As they gather in Sam's bedroom, he is getting serious flashbacks to their school days when Gabriel dragged them all together to hatch another of his, occasionally brilliant, schemes.

Gabriel is sprawled onto Sam's bed, looking like he had tried to make a snow angel but got tired.

Castiel is curled up by the fireplace in what used to be an arm chair, but was now a sofa. Dean sat next to him with his legs outstretched across the couch, and Cas.

Sam sat in his desk chair, wondering where the heck they would go from here.

"So what you're saying," Gabe drawls, "Is that you've been doing jack shit for a whole month."

"There has been jack shit to do," Sam says. "All we knew before last night was that a cat was petrified on Halloween, and a student had the same thing happen a few weeks later. Dumbledore didn't tell us anything more until today. Now I think we have enough to at least start guessing what we're up against."

"We didn't come half-way across the world to help you with research," Gabe protests.

"You can leave at any time," Dean calls from the couch.

Gabe raises his head slightly to glare at Dean.

"Need I remind you that I am getting paid at this very moment to bring your ass back to America, dead or alive?"

"I'd like to see you try."

Sam's eye twitches. "I will absolutely kick both of you out of my room if you don't stop."

They both turn on him. "He started it!" They say in unison.

'I'll help you,' Castiel mouths from the couch.

'Thanks' Sam replies in the same fashion.

Sam interrupts before Dean and Gabriel can find something else to argue about. "If you two are sticking around, you'll need an alias. Novak is well known as a pure bloodline, even here in Europe. We don't want any word getting back to your bosses."

"Danger," Gabriel suggests.

"No."

"Shurley?" Cas offers.

"Surely you can't be serious?" Dean smirks.

"I am serious." Cas frowns at Dean. The air becomes heavy with anticipation. Cas looks around, confused. "What?"

The room erupts into groans, and sounds of pain.

They settle on Shurley.

-.-.-

Harry had heard of the new additions to the faculty. Of course he did. News spread through Hogwarts like a fire – quick, relentless, and without a care as to who it burned along the way. He knew it first hand, and was especially glad that for once, we was not the center of the gossip.

As it was, he'd only seen the guests from a distance – their closeness to each other was only matched by their closeness to the Winchesters.

"They obviously know each other," Hermione musses as they walk to class. "But why are they here?"

"To help with the attacks, I'd reckon," Ron says, shrugging his worn bag higher on his shoulder. "Why does it matter?"

"It matters because if Dumbledore was recruiting help to protect the school, surely he would hire Aurors before the friends of staff!"

Harry shakes his head. "Professors Sam and Dean are experts on magical creatures, though. There's probably a whole bunch of people they know who could help them."

As they enter the classroom, Harry isn't at all surprised to see they have a guest in their Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom.

It was the taller of the Shurleys. The one with perpetual bed-head and a persistently weary look about him. The informality of his crooked tie was matched only by the rolled sleeves of Professor Dean's dress shirt. They both sat on the desk, chatting idly to each other while they waited for the classroom to fill up.

As was typical, the desks were pushed to the side of the room, leaving a wide open space for their, now routine, practical lessons. Harry sets his bag on the growing pile at the back of the room.

As the last students filter in, Dean stands up from the desk. Shurley follows.

"Mornin' everyone." As informal as ever. "We've got a guest today."

"Hello. I'm Cas Shurley."

"Cas is a good friend of mine," Dean continues. "He's going to help with protecting Hogwarts and getting to the bottom of what happening here."

"Told you," Ron whispers to Hermione.

"Mr. Weasley," Dean calls out. "Since you're so eager to get started, could you tell me what we learned last class?"

Ron's face reddens. "Err…we went over The Shield Charm."

"What's the incantation?"

"Protego."

"Good stuff. Today's spell is also defensive. It's the Impediment Jinx. As you could probably guess, this spell impedes, or stops the motion of an object or person."

With a wave of his wand, the spell and pronunciation appears on the black board, as well as the counter-spell. "If a person is hit while they are motionless, they will remain motionless for a longer time, but that's not the case if the target is moving."

Dean says something to Professor Shurley who walks to the other side of the classroom, only to turn around and run at Dean.

Mid-stride, he is hit by Dean's spell. Instead of freezing, his motion is merely slowed, as if he's running through molasses. Dean continues, "As the name implies, the spell doesn't prevent movement, it usually just slows it down. Basic physics. How the spall works is also affected by how large the object it. If I were to cast the spell on one of you, your rate of movement would be much slower than…Shurley's is now."

A crack at the front of the room startles the entire classroom, including Dean. As Dean breaks his focus on the spell, Castiel's movement returns to normal speed. He charges into Dean, knocking him to the ground with a yelp.

Harry is at the front of the room so he hears Dean mutter, "Alright you piece of shit," as he pushes Professor Shurley off of him. "Why do I even let guests into my classroom. All they do is insult me and ruin my street cred." The class erupts into chatter as soon as they realize there's no real danger.

"Focus," Castiel calls out, getting everyone's attention, "is the key to this spell." Castiel rises to his feet with a shit-eating grin. "The person or object under the spell will continue their motion as soon as the spell is released. If you know that someone is casting the spell on you, but you don't have time to complete the counter-jinx, you can begin preparing a different spell to combat theirs. It is something that takes practice, but it can be done."

"Thanks for that demonstration Professor Shurley." Dean grumbles in good humour. He raises his voice to address the class. "As you pair up and practice, keep in mind how it feels when you're under the spell. It will help you understand the limits of the spell and how you can use it to your advantage."

Harry pairs up with Ron, as per usual. By the time the class ends, he is grateful that he is still in one piece. Something that is never a guarantee with Ron's busted wand. They catch up with Hermione, who Harry had seen speaking with Professor Shurley numerous times throughout the class.

"What did you learn from him?" Harry asks.

Hermione looks exasperated. "Not a single thing. Anytime I asked a question, he would give me short, to the point answers. Or if I tried to ask something else, he would just say 'I don't understand what that has to do with the lesson.'" Her impression of the Professor's deep voice and American accent is so comical and has Ron and Harry laughing.

"Well, he's only been here for a few days," Harry consoles her. "I'm sure we'll figure out more about them soon. In the mean-time, I had an idea about sneaking into the Slytherin dorms." Ron and Hermione's faces light up. "I've got my cloak. We could sneak in and listen to Malfoy talk to Crabbe and Goyle."

Hermione frowns. "It's too risky. People can still run into you even though you're invisible. And there's no guarantee that he would discuss anything to do with the Chamber."

"What if Harry just used it to poke around their dorm?" Ron suggests. "There must be something in there that's useful. If he did it over the holidays there would definitely be less people around."

"And if there's not, will you admit that maybe you should leave it to the teachers?" Hermione asks to them both. Harry and Ron look at each other.

"Probably not," they admit. Hermione purses her lips, but otherwise doesn't look like she expected anything less.

Their discussion turns to Quidditch as they make their way to Herbology.

-.-.-

AN: January is "National Finish What You Damn Started" month for me...or at least a month to get my ideas flowing and get back into the habit of writing. I'm hoping that 2020 is the year that I can put this fic to rest. I truly hate that I've been working on it since 2016 (yikes!), and the fact that people are still reading it is very humbling. So, thank you again to each and every one of you! I hope that these chapters that I'm putting out are still worth the wait :)