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Chapter 55: A Dispreferred Weapon


Thursday, January 24, 1991


"Alright then, let's get started. As you know, I don't have a very definite syllabus—"

Laughter. Professor Eeles was outdoors, lecturing to his seventh-year class. He had them meet outside fairly often, even when he didn't have any articulable reason. A popular theory was that he was scared of breaking things indoors.

Now that it was the middle of winter, students were expected to dress appropriately or use warming charms, and whiners were generally mocked.

"Thank you. So, there's been a lot of talk about dealing with this basilisk lately . . . it makes a nice excuse to get into a topic I meant to return to by now."

Eeles waved his wand, held it vertically, and conjured a small ball which he kept hovering above the wand-tip. He dropped it into his other hand, on which he was wearing a dragon-hide glove.

"I'll pass this around — scourgify your hands or gloves after handling it, though, since it's a little toxic."

The ball, heavy and metallic, was passed from hand to hand, with most students nodding in recognition and others looking puzzled.

"Obviously, this is lead. Since it's such a heavy element, the conjuration won't stick around for all that long, but it will last through the class period just fine. Miss Tonks, can you conjure one of these?"

"Uh, I think so. Let's see — okay, there."

"Excellent! Don't worry, I'm sure before the year is out I'll find something you can't do on the first try."

She rolled her eyes. Eeles seemed to enjoy calling on her.

"Now," he said, pointing to one of his targets standing a hundred feet away, "using whatever spell you like, I want you to fling it at that target as hard as you can . . . very good!"

The ball had hit the target with a satisfying 'thunk!', then fell to the ground, where it presumably vanished a few minutes later. Eeles reached into his pocket and brought forth a small rectangular wooden box, which he unshrunk until it was around four feet long. Opening it, he withdrew a long muggle hunting rifle.

"This is a modern hunting rifle. I took it off of a, let's say, 'adversary', at my last job. Don't worry, it's unloaded. But it will fire just fine at Hogwarts — can anyone tell me why? Yes?" he said, pointing.

"It's not electronic?"

"Precisely. Three points to Gryffindor. You know, if you weren't wearing that red and gold scarf I would have had to ask, so thanks for making it easy for me! Anyway, I dug this out of my trunk because everyone keeps talking about how the basilisk is magic resistant, and asking me whether we could just, you know, use muggle weapons on it. There are two answers to that, sort of, and I thought it would be instructive to discuss them."

He put the gun back into the box while talking, leaving his hands free to gesture.

"The short answer is 'yes, probably', at least with a powerful enough weapon to pierce the basilisk's hide. This gun here probably wouldn't do it. It wouldn't work on a dragon either, although it sure looked like that wasn't going to stop its former owner from trying!" He shook his head. "To pierce the hide of a dragon-like animal, you would probably not be able to use a handheld firearm. Dragon hide is insanely tough. You would need something with a serious tripod or the like, to absorb the recoil . . . I see some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. That's okay — don't worry about it for now. Suffice it to say that I have actually encountered bigger guns than this one in the camps of poachers, so at least some muggles know what they are doing."

Eeles rarely just said 'don't worry about it'; students were never sure if 'for now' meant something would be on an exam, or not.

"So," he continued, getting his wand out again, "the first problem with that is that you can't look at the basilisk to aim, and the second is that you would not be likely to get a shot in before it struck at you. So you would need something remotely triggered and non-directional, which would probably also kill any bystanders. So that leads us to our second answer."

Eeles surveyed the class.

"And that second answer is 'Merlin, that's stupid!'"

Laughter.

"So, the bullets I'm about to load this with aren't anywhere near the most powerful it can take, and they would still go through a whole line of those flimsy targets I have set up for spell practice. Let's see . . ."

Eeles conjured a log of wood, maybe a foot wide and several long, set it down and cast a few more charms on it, then slowly hovered it a hundred yards away to rest on a boulder. "Shields up, please. Physical projectiles. Just in case there are any shards of wood flying around." He watched, making sure this was done to his satisfaction. "Miss Tonks, would you come up here please? I'm going to stand behind yours and fire through it. Thank you."

Eeles removed the rifle from its case again, and stood inside Tonks' shield, the long barrel of the gun poking through it.

"You should normally never agree to that, by the way — I've made some, uh, modifications to this this thing to make it safer and quieter. It's not very representative."

He checked over Tonks' shield a second time.

"Okay, that should work. Now to load this thing." Eeles fiddled with the rifle for about two minutes while the class watched nervously, then spent another minute simply aiming at the log, making sure his hands were steady. There was a loud 'BANG!' as he pulled the trigger. The log wobbled. Eeles hovered it back again, showing that the bullet had gone straight through — the long way.

"Okay, one more demonstration. Instead of taking more risks with your historic landscape here, I'm going to try to conjure a block of stone like what the castle is built with. Hmmm. Okay, that's close enough. Put your shields back up — this is going to be messy."

Eeles hovered the resulting foot-wide block of stone to a spot on the lawn that was far away from anything else, took aim, and fired. The block shattered, and pieces of stone flew in all directions.

"Just a moment."

He cast a spell on the gun to clean it, then put it away.

"Not much left to hover back. Let's go over there and take a look . . . This is what would happen if a stray bullet hit the wall of the castle. It could be repaired, probably even if we couldn't find all the fragments, but those ejected fragments would fly fast enough to cause damage elsewhere, and the bullet could either ricochet or pass through walls, bodies, or other solid objects. Some of the castle might be reinforced against muggle weapons — I don't know. I wouldn't count on it, though. So, at the end of the day, even with my modified gun here, shooting the basilisk ought to be a strongly dispreferred method." Students were nodding.

"Of course, as I said, you probably wouldn't be able to hit the basilisk with a gun, even if you had one powerful enough to hurt it. So you would need something that sprayed multiple projectiles in several directions at once. Now, if the presence of such a contraption didn't tip off either the basilisk or its handler, the measures you would need to take to contain collateral damage might. I'm not saying it's impossible, of course. You have some very clever folks here who could conceivably rig something up, but I believe there's got to be a better way. Let's go for a walk."

Eeles was obviously happier this way, tromping through the snow while lecturing conversationally. A minor amplifying charm made up for the size of the group, the direction he was facing, and the muffling effects of the snow. 'Whiners', the class had learned, could count on being mocked.

They were slowly making their way down the slope towards the Black Lake, past Hagrid's hut, into patchy, currently-leafless, and non-forbidden forest. On the southeast corner of the castle, now behind them, a high bridge spanned the northeast end of the valley between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. The bridge connected the entrance courtyard of the castle to the carriage road to Hogsmeade.

Beneath the bridge was a deep chasm, where the lake fed into a rocky stream which, when not frozen over, meandered more or less northwest, down glacier-carved valleys, widening here and there to form small lochs, and emptying out ten miles later somewhere in the northern Minch.

The Black Lake itself — which had a more official but utterly unpronounceable name in Scottish Gaelic — was half a mile wide by several long, and stretched away from the castle to the southeast. Circumnavigating it was a nice morning walk for Eeles and pretty much no one else. He would not attempt that today with the class.

Around the lawn of the castle to their west were the whomping willow, the greenhouses, and in the distance the quidditch pitch. Down the hill, by the lake, the Forbidden Forest was a dark, looming presence several hundred feet to their west.

"It's so beautiful here!" Eeles exclaimed. "I missed snow at my last job. Anyway. I had more I wanted to say . . . right! The difference in velocity between Miss Tonks' attempt and my own with an actual bullet was due to the bullet using stored energy. Wizards generally do not make use of stored energy, mostly because we are not trying to do things that would require it. Muggles are not trying to do the same things as wizards, and you can see this in the fact that their weapons are far, far more deadly. Watch your step here, the rocks are loose." Eeles paused in his lecture to let the students navigate the steep section of the path below Hagrid's hut.

A few minutes later, he resumed. "Everyone okay? Good. So, the point, or a point, of bringing all that up is to note that much of the world has never heard of the statute of secrecy. You stick a dragon reserve in the middle of a country where every village has its wizards, untrained as they may be by Hogwarts standards, and you are never going to be able to hide that reserve. Not that dragons are easy to hide! Hah. So my point is that I have faced down an awful lot of muggle firearms — far more than I've seen of wands, actually — but I've been hired here to teach a class called 'Defense Against the Dark Arts' . . ."

He fell silent for nearly thirty seconds, letting the students hear the sound of their own footsteps, birds calling in the distance, and clumps of snow falling from trees.

"I've been doing some reading about European history, so I think I will get this next part straight. Let me know if you are sure I am wrong!"

This line was classic Eeles; no one knew what to make of it. Eeles walked backwards for a moment.

"Who can tell me the main differences in strategy between Voldemort and Grindelwald? There are lots of right answers here, go ahead! Just speak up — fine, raise your hand, make me keep walking backwards — you."

"Er, You-know-who used more of the Dark Arts?"

"And what the bloody hell is that supposed to mean? Oh, don't bother explaining, but a point from Ravenclaw for willful vagueness. I don't think I want to hear your answers, after all. So. The big difference, at least as I see it, was that Grindelwald had an army of muggles, while Voldemort had a few dozen like-minded psychopaths, and wouldn't have anything to do with muggles. There's an icy patch on this rock — watch out. Grindelwald was fighting to control territory — land — and although he said he was opposed to the Statute of Secrecy, he was too reasonable to break it outside of his inner circle. Historians say he was waiting to finish conquering the world. Fine, I'll buy that. In any case Grindelwald was very easy to clean up after in terms of obliviating muggles — so now every muggle knows the Nazis were, I think they'd say, 'into occultism'." The class laughed.

"Anyway, Grindelwald mostly sent wizards and magical beings to fight each other, and muggles to fight muggles, and it was a very traditional war all around. Voldemort attacked plenty of muggles, but only defenseless civilians, which as best as I can tell was meant to force your Ministry to spend resources handling that cleanly and discreetly. In Grindelwald's war, mostly muggles died. Under Voldemort, it was mostly wizards."

There was some muttering and grumbling now, which Eeles ignored.

"So my point — oh, look at those icicles! — my point is that Voldemort never seriously learned how to fight against muggles who were militarily significant. Never apparated in front of someone who was armed. And, from everything I've read, I don't think it was that he was being cautious or anything, or that he knew better — I think he just didn't give a shit about actually taking over the country in any meaningful way, didn't give a shit about the muggle government or military or what they would do the moment wizards broke the Statute the way he said he wanted. And he would have been in for a nasty surprise if he had tried, because he completely underestimated them!"

Eeles had raised his voice now, and with the mild amplifying spell it was echoing across the lake, profanity and all.

"If you take one thing away from today's class, I want it to be this — do not mess around with muggle weapons! For the umpteenth time I am going to urge you to learn one or more bullet-deflecting spells if you have any reason to think you might have a job like I did."

In the auror academy they had spent several weeks on this topic, so aside from issues of usefulness, Tonks thought Eeles was completely justified in leaving it out of the curriculum in a class that only met a few times a week. She had only had one or two occasions to cast spells to deal with muggle weapons, and most British wizards never had any reasons at all for it. They were tricky spells, too, which didn't so much repel bullets as bend their trajectories around you — imperiling bystanders.

Eeles continued. "Wizards wave their wands around and at most kill a few people at a time! Our fights are neat and tidy compared to what muggles do. Muggles have weapons that destroy large cities in one go, and they use those without any regard for civilians! Sufficiently powerful muggle weapons will not just pierce dragon hide, but will go straight through ordinary shields! Do not underestimate them! European wizards, after Grindelwald's war and the one before it, seem to have developed an intense aversion to muggle weapons. If you travel to Africa or South America or parts of Asia, you will find this is not universal."

Eeles cast a Tempus. "Damn. I suppose I should start getting you back to the castle — don't worry, I'll give you a note if you need one."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


As everyone was chatting informally on the way back, Tonks tried to stay near Eeles, hoping to get a word in and ask him a question. Currently he was regaling students with the story of how he got the hunting rifle he had used earlier. All Hogwarts Defense professors Tonks had ever known loved telling stories, and most were quite biased by their own experiences. In this respect Eeles was no different from what Harry had reported about Gilderoy Lockhart, aside from the minor detail of Lockhart being a total fraud.


The trail up past Hagrid's hut left most of the students out of breath, and even Eeles took breaks from talking in order to navigate some tricky bits. It was after one of these that Tonks made her move.

"Professor Eeles? Did you coordinate that lecture with the interview with Lucius Malfoy in the Prophet yesterday?"

Eeles laughed. "No, actually! Although I can see how you'd wonder. Lucius and I had lunch a week ago, so I think the business about muggles was on his mind when he talked to the reporter. Sounds like she's a real character — Skeeter, right? Anyway he said it all more dramatically than I would, but sure, I suppose it's my doing that a lot of that got in the article."

"Huh."

That wasn't exactly the answer she was expecting; she had naively imagined Malfoy pressuring Eeles somehow. In retrospect that seemed silly.

It all made sense, though. Eeles clearly saw himself as an apolitical pragmatist, and probably didn't care how his ideas got used in British politics. He had some very convenient anecdotes to tell, and Malfoy — who probably lay awake at night writing speeches in his head — was nothing if not opportunistic. The difference between the two was that Eeles never demonized muggles in the way British pureblood supremecists did — Eeles just thought everyone other than himself was nuts, wizard and muggle alike.

"So," she said, tentatively seeing if she could get more information out of him, "do you agree with everything Mr. Malfoy said?"

Eeles laughed. "Merlin, no! He's a great guy, but he lets his . . . I'd say 'personal interests' . . . he lets them get in the way of advocating policies that make sense."

Tonks grinned and suppressed laughter.

"Eh, it's okay," said Eeles, "go ahead and laugh at him. Everyone else does, I think, and he can take it."

"So what do you disagree about, then?"

"Oh, well, Lucius can't bear the thought of Hogwarts being anything other than the center of the universe. You go to a prestigious boarding school, and even long after you graduate, you try to preserve its reputation out of self-interest." Eeles shrugged.

"The problem with that," he explained, "is that he also wants to get the muggleborns out of Hogwarts. But Dumbledore won't have any of it, since he thinks it's the best way to integrate them into society to have them come here. Lucius seems to think Dumbledore wants a chance to influence them before anyone else can, too."

"So what's the conflict, exactly?"

"You mean, in Lucius' views? It's that he basically agrees with Dumbledore on most points. They're both completely set on the idea that Hogwarts is the only pathway muggleborns could possibly have to wizarding society and good jobs."

"To be fair, it mostly is."

"Bullshit. The vast majority of wizards in the world have never even heard of Hogwarts, and they turn out alright. You're just so intent on preserving an old-boys network here that you don't care about anything else."

"I'm sorry professor, but you're not from around here. The few muggleborns who don't go to Hogwarts have very bad outcomes."

"Do you even know why they didn't go here?"

"I guess they rejected it and asked about other schools?"

"I am assured from all sides that no one ever turns down Hogwarts." He rolled his eyes. "But Hogwarts turns down a number of muggleborns every year. Specifically, it turns down anyone Dumbledore thinks would fail out. And trust me, those students wouldn't have had a very good outcome at most other schools, either, wizard or muggle."

"I still don't see the problem."

"Well, there isn't one, from Dumbledore's perspective. The problem is everyone who doesn't want muggleborns at Hogwarts." He shrugged.

"I'm still not following. So you're just saying muggleborns should be allowed to attend Hogwarts, right?"

"Don't lay this on me! Not my school, not my politics, not my country. I meant what I said about Lucius and Dumbledore agreeing on everything else, though." He counted on his fingers. "They both agree Hogwarts is the center of the universe. They both agree no sane person would turn up a chance to attend here. They both agree muggleborns can't possibly make an informed choice for themselves about what school to attend. They agree that the choice should be made for them, and they agree that, because Hogwarts is the center of the universe, if muggleborns must attend Hogwarts, the Hogwarts headmaster should get first pick of them."

"Huh. Still, those are pretty basic things to agree on."

"Mayyybe. But they mean Lucius can't advocate for any sort of school choice bill that would let muggleborns voluntarily choose to go elsewhere, since that would mean backtracking on dozens of other positions he's taken. And he can't get the votes to get muggleborns out of Hogwarts any other way, or to get rid of Dumbledore. So everybody stays mad at everybody else, and they fight."

"So your disagreement with Mr. Malfoy . . ."

"Basically comes down to whether the sky would fall if Hogwarts weren't treated like the center of the bloody universe."

"It's true, though," said Tonks, keeping a straight face. "Civilization would collapse, and the seas would boil."

Eeles just snorted.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"Shooting things again, Erasmus?"

"Mmmph, mm, yes." It was dinner, and Madam Pomfrey was skilled at saying things to people when their mouths were full.

"You know," said Dumbledore, "whenever I hear loud noises outside, I have learned to look for that hat of yours. I know when I see it that I shall have significant paperwork to look forward to."

Dumbledore smiled genially; he didn't really mind. Eeles' stunts were nothing compared to the problems previous defense professors had caused, and those in turn rarely rose to the level of an average day for Kettleburn.

"So what was it today?" Dumbledore asked.

"Elephant gun. Or the modern equivalent, really. I did make it quieter than usual." Eeles bit into the drumstick of a roast chicken.

"I was not aware," said Madam Pomfrey, "that the defense curriculum now covered elephants. Their neglect by past professors was shameful really, given all the elephant related-injuries I see each year."

"Huh? Oh." Eeles took a moment to process that. "It's amazing what you can say with a straight face, Poppy. No, it's just a hunting rifle that can take large bullets for big game. Like elephants. Guy I took it from thought he would try it on dragons."

"Would it have worked?" Dumbledore looked genuinely concerned.

"Nah. Dragons are tough little buggers."

"Probably make 'em right mad, though!" said Hagrid, who had been listening in from the far end of the table.

"Absolutely," said Eeles. "It could be a real problem. Even if the poachers weren't well armed enough to hurt the dragon, if I didn't get to them first, the first dragon they'd find would burn down an awful lot of jungle in the fight. And there just isn't enough of the right kind of jungle anymore, so all the conservation people would be yelling at my boss. Bad scene."

"I'm sure it was," said Sprout. "We're very lucky to have the Forbidden Forest. If the founders hadn't planted it, you know, there would be sheep grazing here now. The Ministry couldn't care less."

It was a sore spot with Sprout that no one at the Ministry had anything to do with magical plants outside of regulating some of them as contraband.

After a few minutes of explaining exactly why he felt the need to fire off a high-powered hunting rifle in class, Eeles turned around in his seat, looking for a way to change the topic.

"Why am I the only one who ever talks about their classes here? Hey, Quirinus — what did you teach today?"

"M-me? Oh. I had the th-third years giving pre . . . presentations on muggle transportation . . . Trains. The sixth-years were d-discussing muggle religions. I spend a m-month on it . . . m-make sure they read what religious b-books say about m-magic. Some . . . some years we go into more depth than others, of course, d-depending on student interest."

That seemed to have taken Quirrel a lot of effort to get through. He looked up, evidently hopeful that everyone would be satisfied with his answer.

"What good does that do?" asked Eeles. "It's not like the muggles you have here have actual gods or anything to worry about, right?"

"Wh-what do you mean?" Quirrel looked lost. So did everyone else.

"Up here in Europe, you managed to kill off all your gods, or drive 'em away somehow. But you go way out in the middle of nowhere in Africa or somewhere, and there are all these tribal godlings and so on. Nasty pieces of work, those. Closest I've seen around here is Peeves. Bad comparison, really. Peeves is pretty harmless."

"S-so these are j-just p-powerful spirits, right?"

Eeles considered this. "You could call them that, I suppose, if you didn't say it or think it around them. It's not a big deal, really, since Hogwarts students are so unlikely to ever meet one."

"Actually," said Dumbledore, gesturing with his fork, "quite a few of our graduates find jobs that take them abroad. But, perhaps not everywhere."

"So," said Madam Pomfrey, glancing sideways at McGonagall, "do you suppose there was a real Minerva at some point?"

Eeles shrugged. "I don't see why not. What, the one you've got isn't real enough for you?" He grinned, pointing at McGonagall, who was smiling but trying not to get involved.

"Oh, this one's real enough, of course," said Madam Pomfrey, affectionately poking her on the shoulder. "And I have to admit it's a miracle that I don't see injuries from her classes all that often."

"Her record is indeed better than mine was, I believe," said Dumbledore. "I'm afraid I didn't instill the same sort of fear in my pupils as she has been able to." He laughed, then quickly added "I mean fear of botched transfigurations, of course!"

"Of course," said Madam Pomfrey, smirking.




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Author's notes:

I spent a while on geography in this chapter so I don't have to do it later.

My layout of Hogwarts is idiosyncratic to this story, and while it's based on what was in my head when I read the books, it's not intended to mimic canon.

As to the location, Rowling's Hogwarts is more on the eastern side of Scotland, which is flatter, drier, and much more densely-populated. I didn't know she had specified anything when I first started writing this story, so it was yet another thing that went into my notes. Hogwarts in this story is closer to the west coast of Scotland, because that seems to match the rest of canon better in my mind (not that I care about canon all that much, disclaimer, disclaimer).

The highlands of Scotland are stunningly empty -- you could fit lots of Hogwartses in them. Once I had picked a location I liked (meaning, somewhere withing a 15 mile radius or so), I went hunting around for the nearest roads and cities on Google maps, but mostly there weren't any.

The Minch is the body of water between northern Scotland to the east and the Outer Hebrides to the west.