A Room With A View

It is September 1st. The lights are off. The windows are closed. A thin layer of dust is now forming over the abandoned desks that you see before you. It is the summer holidays, but you don't know if your doors will ever admit students again. You never imagined that day would come. It was today seven years ago that you should have sensed the cause of all this commotion walking through your doors.

At that time, you smelt of garlic most of the times. You harbored the unruly conversations of the man with two faces. At first you just thought he was a crazy man who talked to himself. But after a time, it became more apparent that something else was torturing this innocent man. You remember the day you saw it. It was a strange sight, you recall. You hadn't seen the Dark Lord in some time. You remember hearing Dumbledore speak of his desire to own you. In a way, he got his wish, by possessing that poor man. That was a bad year for you. But in the end good triumphed, like you have seen so many times before. You should have foreseen that this was the start of the spiral downward, but you were in too much of a mood of bliss to consider that.

The following year brought, if you had to choose a word, good looks. By June you had become sick with that face as it stared at you from every corner. You remember his late nights, studying the Standard Book of Spells from years one through seven. Often times you asked yourself, if you were able to show him your knowledge, would you? Probably not, was always your answer. Lies will never take you very far, contrary to his belief. And, when you look at it, it had gotten him pretty far. An autographed picture still lies under one of your bookcases and inside one is an autographed copy of Magical Me. You do not look at it often, as that image still makes you sick, to this day.

With a fresh September and a new year, brought another former pupil you were surprised to see. His lessons, out of all of those you have seen, and you have seen many, were the best. You smile as you remember the Boggart he brought. The students did enjoy that lesson immensely. Yet, once a month, you found yourself alone in the dark, wondering where he was. It wasn't long before you realized it. Those nights he was gone were those of the full moons and he returned looking more tired and scratched up than ever. You remember he was one of your best students, during his younger years. You love seeing old students return to pass on their knowledge to the blossoming and the brilliant. You saw much of Harry Potter that year as he spent hours trying out his Patronus. You remember the glee you felt when he finally produced one. Yet June came, and everything was packed up once again, to much of your sadness. You didn't want him to leave, but you knew he had to because of his problem.

Dark and strange objects filled you the next year, along with the occasional scream and rattle from a chest in the corner. For the whole year you wondered what possibly could he be keeping in there. He was a very strange man, nonetheless. You knew that the first day when he had sought to teach fourth years the Unforgivable Curses. That was a lesson that many of your previous inhabitants kept as the last lesson of seventh year. But he was an Auror, so maybe he knew what he was doing. You did suspect however, because of those constant swigs from the flask on his belt, that something wasn't quite right with him. You remember uncovering the truth. When the man everyone thought was turned out to be not. An imposter was a new experience to add to your collection. And the real man was the cause of that yelling and shaking from the chest in the corner that had haunted you for so many hours.

After the next year, the sight of pink and kittens made you sicker than a gleaming wavy-haired, blue-eyed fraud did. The constant mewing from kittens painted on plants almost drove you bonkers that year. And not only that but the lack of student participation in defending themselves hurt your morale as well. There was no wand waving or spell muttering, only the scratching of quills on papers. The portrait of Cornelius Fudge also haunted you as it watched you from everywhere. But adding to your numerous pet peeves was the ear shattering, ahem that you heard at least six times a day. She was a piece of work, you think, a textbook version of one who had been brainwashed by the poisons of the Ministry of Magic. Never again do you ever want to see the color pink.

This past year is still fresh in your mind. In contrast to the pink that surrounded you was the dark and mustiness that you would soon become. Odd bottles of eyeballs and strange figurines of contorted body parts were littered all around you. Once again, another one of your former pupils inhabited your grounds. Yet he you were not so excited to see. You were not the only one who questioned his allegiances, and you wished you were able to find Dumbledore and tell him of the mal-doings that were taking place within you. You didn't trust him, you never have. To this day you still hope you were wrong about him and that he will come through in the end, but then you think, the hat did not choose him to be a Gryffindor.

Through these past guests, you have not acquired any more knowledge of the Defense Against the Dark Arts than you already knew. You did acquire the knowledge of people and their beginnings, as in stead of paying attention to the lessons you paid more attention to their habits and their private doings.

You wait desperately and hope that the elves will open your rusty hinges carrying in boxes of belongings to a new suitor you can evaluate. But there is a feeling deep inside you that tells you this is a fool's thought. You are over. You are done. There will be no more wand waving or incantations within your boundaries. You can no longer pick out the bright from the dull. The knowledge you hold can no longer be past down to the next generation. This distresses you deeply. This has been your life, and the only one you have ever known. And it's over. It's all over.

But then, a ray of light beams in through your door shining from outside. Your heart lifts. It is happening. They're back! The house elves scurry around bringing in Dark objects. You gaze at them curiously as you have never seen some of them before. A poster is hung brandishing the Dark Mark in front of the classroom. After the house elves have set everything in its place, a squatty man walks in. Amycus Carrow. You remember him. He was a troubled boy. Taken up into the wrong hands. A wretched sister as well. But can it be true? You had heard it through passing portraits buy only by rumor. Can Albus Dumbledore really be dead? It is not until a few days later that you realize Severus Snape has now taken up the role as headmaster. You realize now that it will all come to an end. You can predict that you will no longer be Defense Against the Dark Arts giving advice for ways to counter the curses that would be cast by people like the very teacher instructing the class. Now, you will become simply the Dark Arts and treacherous spells will be cast used to torture one another. You won't take any part of it. You will make it as hard as possible for Carrow to teach. You will do everything in your power to find justice.

You know eventually it will be served and you hope things will go back to normal. But how long must you wait? How many more screams will fill your air? How many more evil looks will you brandish within your walls, until justice is restored? How much longer?

A/n: I've had this idea in my head for a while. If the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom could talk, what would it say? Its also kind of like a memorial to Hogwarts, because none of us know its fate, at least not for a couple more hours ; ). Hope you enjoyed it. Please review!