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Professor Monroe	By : Athey1024 Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Slash - Male/Male Views: 15727 -:- Recommendations : 8 -:- Currently Reading : 25
Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter. This is a work of fanfiction and no profit is being made. It is a for-fun endeavor and no infringement is intended.

Chapter List
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He went back to the book and found a section on lighting a personal wick-less light in much the same way, using his breath. It sounded like the floating bluebell flames that Hermione would sometimes conjure for them, only this was, once again, done without a wand. Harry felt empowered by his early success and decided to give it a shot.

He finite'd the lumos globe that had been illuminating his curtained bed area, leaving him in nothing but darkness. He held his hand, palm up, in front of his face and focused on that tingly sense of power in his chest that he had only just come to understand was there. Blowing out a slow breath, he breathed life into a small glowing ball of yellow-orange flame. He nearly dropped it when it grew to be quite hot in his hand, but managed not to. The book said it wouldn't burn, and it was only his fears that he had to contend with.

After staring at the flames in his palm for a minute in delight, he lifted his hand and guided the magic to float out of it and into the air, hovering a bit over his shoulder. The flames existed there, not just because of Harry's own magic, but also because of ambient magic in the air. It was the ambient magic that was supposed to sustain it and hold it in place – Harry just had to direct it and sort of mentally request it's help. He was thrilled to feel a sort of silent acquiescence from something, and the little ball of flames just stay floating there, even when he had removed his own conscious control over it.

It wasn't quite as bright as the lumos he'd been using, but it was a nice gentle glow and it produced warmth that he found quite nice. And it was bright enough to read by, so Harry considered it more than satisfactory and went back to the book.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been reading – engrossed as he was – when he came across the first reminder that this book was written in parselscript. The eighth chapter was about medical magic, and it was the first time Harry had ever seen the phrase 'magick o þi searpente tounge' and the word 'parselmagic'. Magic with it's incantation spoken in parseltongue. Magic that could only be performed by someone who was a parselmouth.

For a moment Harry had thought the author of the book was being rather presumptuous, since most people wouldn't be able to do that sort of magic, but then it registered in his brain that the whole book was written in parselscript and only a parselmouth could possibly be reading the book. The realization made him feel rather silly, and he quickly pressed on, trying to ignore it.

Harry was surprised to find that there was so much healing focus to parselmagic. The book talked about something called a 'Rod of Asclepius', which Harry finally figured out was sort of like a wand that was used by ancient Greek healers who spoke the serpent language. It was a staff with a magical serpent's body wrapped around it from bottom to top, to serve the same sort of purpose that wand cores served now. Then Harry realized that the modern-day symbol for the medical arts – often found on hospitals, ambulances, and medical buildings of all sorts in the muggle world – was a serpent entwined around a staff. It was the same symbol as this ancient magical wand.

The Rod was named for Asciepius, an ancient Greek Healer who was apparently a parselmouth – although the Greek muggles believed he was the son of the 'god' Apollo. He would keep magical snakes and use their power along with his own to draw sickness from people. The shrines dedicated to him were healing centers and were often home to many species of magical snake and places that parselmouth healers would gather in order to tend to the ill.

The book talked about the wizard a bit since many of the spells shown in there were of his or his students and descendents creation, and then it went on to list a number of said spells and how to perform them.

Almost every one of them required having a magical serpent as a familiar, though, so no matter how much the whole thing intrigued Harry, he wasn't willing to face the wrath of the other students – and the whole of wizarding Britain for that matter – by getting a pet snake.

Still – it made him wonder why there was this huge stigma about parselmouths being evil, when they could specialize in a whole powerful branch of magic that's sole purpose was to heal the sick? It just didn't make any sense!

Stupid close-minded people. Harry muttered bitterly in his head.

Harry was probably half-way through the chapter on medical parselmagic when the time and exhaustion finally caught up with him and he fell asleep with the book still in his lap.

Harry woke up with his face smushed up against a piece of crumpled parchment and the pointed corner of the book beneath it, jabbing him in the temple. He blinked rather groggily for a moment before jolting upright and checking the book and the notes he'd taken to make sure he hadn't destroyed them in his sleep. He heaved a sigh once he was sure that things were still in tact and nothing was ripped or overly wrinkled. He was flipping through the book one last time and the last page ended up laying open for a moment before he was about to close it when a word caught his eye and he looked closer.

It was in a single paragraph on the very last page, and a quick skim made him realize that it was a basically a short author's bio.

The author of the book.

This was substantial because the word that had caught Harry's attention was the word 'Slytherin'.

Salazar Slytherin.

This book was written by – Salazar Slytherin.

Harry nearly dropped it in shock.

Surely not?

Harry gaped at the book, reeling with disbelief. It was a two-part shock, really. One part of the shock was simply that he had a hard time believing that he could possibly be holding a book that was written by one of the founders of his school. A book that wasridiculously old, and probably outrageously valuable. The thing was probably priceless!

But the other part of Harry's shock and disbelief was simply because of the impression he'd built up in his mind about what sort of person would write a book like this. That image just didn't mesh with the image he'd built up over the years of what sort of person Slytherin was.

They were just such monumentally different images, Harry couldn't reconcile them, no matter how he tried.

The author of the book loved magic, but he also loved community and people. He was enthusiastic about the people coming together and sharing in the magic of gaia and melding it with their inner magics and each other... He was also a man who held great value in human life, and healing the sick. He saw the fanciful beauty of the children's faerie magic, and spoke of songs and dances performed on the Holy days. He seemed like such a... a positive sort of person. And he loved teaching. Sharing knowledge.

Maybe it wasn't such a far concept to accept? Slytherin had to have loved teaching to have been part of a group of school founders. And a love of community and sharing knowledge – that's the sort of thing that a school founder would feel. It just didn't mesh with the idea Harry had long-held about Salazar Slytherin.

He snapped out of his stupor and began flipping through the front of the book, looking for any indication, anywhere else, that it was really and truly written by Salazar Slytherin. On the inside of the front cover there was an elaborate looking S S symbol, with the two letters intertwined together that he'd just sort of disregarded before, but now he couldn't help but see it as the founder's initials.

He sat back against his headboard, with his mind still reeling with confusion when his curtain was suddenly pulled back and Harry found himself face-to-face with a sleepy-looking Ron. Harry instantly snapped the book shut and shoved it under some of the parchment on his bed, hoping he didn't look too suspicious or guilty.

Ron blinked and frowned at the place where the book had disappeared to and then at Harry.

“Were you reading? Blimey, Harry, here I thought you were sleeping in and I was gonna have to wake you up. You better not be turning into bloody Hermione.”

“Er, I only just woke up, actually. I fell asleep reading though, which is why all this stuff is still here.”

“Oh. Well, you'd best be getting up. We'll miss breakfast if we take too much longer.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Harry said as he quickly tried to straighten all of his papers before climbing out of bed and storing it all in his trunk.

It was Tuesday, so there was no Defense class and no morning workout. Harry looked for Professor Monroe at breakfast, but he wasn't there. Not that Harry was very surprised since the man always took breakfast rather early. Harry had Charms, Transfiguration and Herbology that day, and they kept him busy and his mind from wandering too much, but during the lulls in his day he couldn't help but thinking about the parselscript book and it's author.

He'd been rather taken with the book, if he were honest with himself. Once he'd gotten over the difficulty with reading the darn thing and gotten used to the language, he'd found the content fascinating. It just seemed so... magical – which he realized was sort of silly, all things considered. Maybe it was just that it was such an old and different sort of magic than he was used to. It felt more fanciful.

Yet some part of him felt like he should hate anything written by Slytherin on principle. But that was just stupid, wasn't it? That was the sort of reasoning that people used for being afraid of Harry when it came out that he was a parselmouth. People jumped to conclusions and made biased decisions based on bad information.

Despite realizing this for himself, Harry was almost sure that others would have a harder time understanding the same concept. Ron, for example, Harry was sure, would want to hate the book on principle. Harry felt fairly confident that Hermione would love the book... if she could read it. But since she couldn't, she would probably be hesitant and skeptical of it. In fact... the fact that no one else could read it would probably be a huge problem for him. How was he supposed to convince people that the book had perfectly safe and honestly, quite amazing, magic in it, if he couldn't prove it to them by letting them read it for themselves? They'd just have to take his word on it, and they would be wary and on guard just by the fact that it was written in parselscript at all.

Harry had scowled and brooded in annoyance whenever these thoughts passed through his head. Hermione had tried to get him to talk about whatever was apparently bothering him, but he'd dodged her and insisted he was fine.

He'd been quiet excited about the book, and sharing what he'd learned from it with Hermione the night before – up until he'd woken up this morning to discover who the author was. He'd been fairly sure that he would be able to convince Hermione that it was actually really cool, despite being written in parselscript, up until that point. But knowing now who the author was, he wasn't so sure.

Was Hermione open-minded enough to look past the dark biased stigma that hung from the Slytherin name?

He wanted to think so, but he wasn't sure.

Harry called it an early night again and once again secluded himself behind his bed hangings and sat with the book in his lap for several minutes debating what to do. He considered just giving it back to Professor Monroe with what notes he'd taken so far and being done with it. He'd written down loads of stuff from the book so far – probably more than that professor even expected of him, so honestly, he'd already done the task. Just the same... he wanted to keep reading it. He wanted to finish the book – it was interesting.

Finally, Harry just huffed out an annoyed breath, and set himself up with his notes, history-book lap desk, and self-inking quill, before cracking the book back open to where he'd left off and resuming his efforts.

The following morning Harry got up early for the morning exercise class. He felt refreshed, despite his late night, and had a vague sense of having rather pleasant dreams. The images were too faded and seemed to slip just beyond his finger tips whenever he tried to remember what he might have dreamed about, but they left a warm tingly curling in his gut.

He showered and ended up relieving some 'tension' while he was at it, enjoying the privacy one earns by waking up long before anyone else. Images flitted through his mind while he worked his cock with the warm soapy water cascading down his frame, and it wasn't until after he'd cum and cleared his head from the post orgasm fog that he realized he'd been fantasizing about cock.

It wasn't nearly as jarring a realization as he would have expected it to be. He'd already started to question his own preference after his reaction to Professor Monroe – a person who seemed the very ideal of strong masculinity to Harry. But that was just a silly crush on his teacher – not something he could actually pursue. People got crushes on their teachers all the time – heck, Hermione had fancied Lockheart way back in second year.

Harry's mind lingered on these subjects while he dressed in a comfortable tshirt and some sweat pants. He'd wondered a few times about his lack of interest in girls, but always just sort of figured he had too much going on to spare the mental capacity to think about something as stressful as dating. The whole debacle with the Yule Ball had practically been traumatizing.

But maybe... maybe he was just gay?

The fact that he wasn't completely freaking out over the thought was probably a fairly positive indication of things. Or maybe he was just too tired and overwhelmed with other things to worry about to really spare the mental bandwidth for one more perception-altering discovery.

Harry pushed the thoughts from his mind as he came upon the Defense classroom and the other fifth, sixth, and seventh years gathered there. Monroe appeared a minute later, gave a very brief talk and instructed them all to do stretches and then led the group out of the school and on the same path they'd taken before.

An hour later, when everyone was leaving the classroom after they'd been doing some calisthenics for the last half hour, Harry approached his professor, wondering how the man would take what he was going to tell him.

“Professor?” Harry started hesitantly.

“Ah, Mr. Potter. Great job today. Your stamina is quite admirable.”

“Oh, er, thanks,” Harry said, ducking his head and flushing a bit, and feeling stupid for feeling so utterly thrilled by the simple compliment. “Er, I've been reading that book.” Harry hesitated and glanced over his shoulder towards the door as the last of the other students left the room and closed the door behind them.

“Oh yes?” Professor Monroe asked, sounding interested and maybe even a bit excited.

“Yeah, and I've been taking loads of notes too. I'm still a few chapters away from finishing it, and I figured I'd wait until then to put the notes together and bring them, but er... well, I guess I sort of wanted to tell you something I sort of figured out about the book.”

“Well, you've got my curiosity piqued. What is it?” Monroe asked as he settled his hip against the edge of his desk.

“Er, well, do you know who wrote it?”

“Who wrote it? I'm assuming that you're asking because it's someone interesting?”

Harry let out a weak sort of laugh and nodded. “Yeah, you could say that. It's er... well, it's Salazar Slytherin.”

Harry glanced up worriedly, watching his professor for any reaction. The man's eyes widened slightly before a wide grin spread across his lips.

“My word... that's quite phenomenal, isn't it?” Monroe said in an almost hushed but awed voice.

“Yeah, I mean... I could tell the book was old by the language, but I didn't realize it was that old – you know? I mean, it's got to be priceless – being a book written by one of the founders. Or... well, it would be if you could convince anyone it were true. Seeing as how I'm the only one that can read it, they'd have to take my word for it –“

“I had somewhat suspected...” Monroe said in a thoughtful sort of tone.

“Oh?”

“Well, the insignia on the inside of the front cover was one he often used in his early years according to various historical sources.”

“Oh yeah?” Harry asked with interested curiosity.

“Mmm, yes. It was likely from before the school's founding. It's said he often wrote his own text books... so what is the book about? Or at least, the parts you've read so far.”

“Oh, it's brilliant!” Harry exclaimed enthusiastically. “I mean, I've never really heard about magic being practiced the way it's described in this book. It's just so... so magical!”

Monroe laughed, grinning with obvious mirth. “That's wonderful Harry. I'm trilled that you're enjoying it.”

“The first chapter was just sort of fascinating because I could see how the rituals in it would be useful for people who live on farms and stuff a long time ago – it was like, keeping wolves away from livestock and keeping pests out of crops and stuff. But the next section on controlling the weather – I didn't even know we could do that! I mean, I suppose I should have realized, but it still caught me off guard. How come we don't do that more often, nowadays? If we could keep the snow away during Quidditch matches, that'd be brilliant!”

“Ah – yes, weather magic is quite a wondrous thing, and it truly is ridiculous that we cannot practice it anymore in England.”

Harry frowned. “We can't? Why not?”

“Back in 1590 North Berwick held a series of witch trials that span over two years and resulted in the torture and execution of over seventy people – this was a full hundred years before the establishment of the Statue of Secrecy of course, and there wasn't yet a Ministry of Magic, per se, but we did have some sort of governing bodies attempting to form order among the magical people of the time. Among the many varied charges, one of the most severe was the accusation that several of the witches used 'black magic' to summon storms to murder King James VI of Scotland by seeking to sink the ship upon which he traveled. The muggles were especially outraged and they were on quite a rampage.

“The early group that would eventually become the Wizengamot made a deal with the muggles in charge of the trials to put a stop to the trials – as part of the deal, it was agreed that weather magic of such a magnitude would be outlawed. Powers of that level were deemed heresy – powers on such level were deemed too 'god-like' by the muggle bishops to be tolerated. The church was threatening an all-scale crusade against the magic users, and the wizards of the age weren't willing to risk all-out war, so they folded to their demands. Weather magic wasn't the only thing sacrificed either.

“To convince the masses to actually follow through with the agreement, instead of just ignoring it, a campaign was started to convince the masses that such magic was bad for them, or was in some way connected to evil sacrificial magic, when there was no such connection at all. But without giving the masses some reason, the witches and wizards would have completely disregarded it, since they held no real respect for the muggles or their demands.”

Monroe ended it with an exasperated sort of sigh and shrug.

“But... but that's stupid! And we still have to pay attention to this agreement?”

“It's been grandfathered into newer agreements made with the muggle government over the years, and has been renewed in several treaties. The stigma of being taboo or forbidden for some reason has also stuck with it over the years. There's whole branches of magic that have been abandoned because of such political agreements, and in order to appease the masses for the sake of getting the people to cooperate with the treaties, similar evil stigmas have been attached to them as well. People will inaccurately associate a type of magic as 'dark' when in reality, it's nothing of the sort.

“Most people these days really are under the impression that weather manipulation is some sort of so-called 'dark' magic. But it just isn't. That's just silly. Ritual magic as a whole is now considered 'dark' as well, but of course, it's not. Even faeire magic is considered dark, because it can be performed without a wand from a young age, and the Ministry of Magic uses wands as a way to control who among the magical communities can perform magic.

“They can prevent an average wizard from performing magic by removing his wand because these days we don't learn how to perform magic without one. Our wands are also how the Ministry tracks underaged magic because from the age of eleven until the age of seventeen, the Ministry has a magical Trace placed upon your wand to detect any magic performed within a radius of it, and whether or not there are any magical adults within that range as well.

“Group ritual magic was banned because now that we do have more advanced channeling devices, if even a small group of skilled wizards get together to perform these old rituals, they could amass a tremendous amount of power between them and perform so-called 'god-like acts' that have been forbidden by our agreements with the muggles. Of course, if people knew that the only reason we weren't allowed to do these things was because the muggles don't want us to, most witches and wizards wouldn't care and they'd do them anyway. So the magical government has intentionally misled the masses. And with our utterly pathetic history education, no one ever bothers to do the proper study to realize the truth.”

Harry stared at him in shock. Stunned, and honestly angered, to learn that the magic that had so sparked and intrigued his interest was all now banned by the Ministry. And for what reason? Because the muggles didn't understand what it was and were scared and intimidated?

Harry scowled, clenching his jaw in angry frustration. “So... so how did you learn the truth?” Harry asked.

“All you have to do is visit a few other countries and it becomes rather obvious. The stigmas that we have attached to these magics simply don't exist in quite a lot of other countries – and that is entirely because they didn't have the same agreements in place with their muggle governments, or they handled the regulations and restrictions imposed upon them in different ways.”

“But... I mean, how can people have been fooled so easily by the Ministry?! They'd really give up whole branches of magic that they'd been practicing for ages because the Ministry told them it was dark? Shouldn't they have known better?”

“Well, surely there are people who know you who should know better than to believe the rubbish being printed about you in the Prophet, and yet they still fall into the trap of popular public opinion. The masses are surprisingly easy to manipulate when you know how to do it, and if the Ministry is good at any one thing, it's good at lying to people.”

Harry gaped in horror, feeling disgusted. It was so true. Professor Monroe was right. People were easily deceived – so easily. It was like they were eager to believe whatever they were told by the Ministry, no matter how absurd, or how little proof there was to back it up. It seemed outrageous to Harry that anyone could look at the Faerie magic he'd been so entranced by the last two nights and actually believe that it was dark, but people really were fickle.

“A person can be brilliant, Harry,” Professor Monroe said gently, “but people are sheep.”

Harry's jaw dropped and he just stared at his professor, finding himself completely lost for words.

“You know, Harry –“ his teacher pressed on, pushing himself up off the corner of his desk and pacing gracefully across the space of the classroom in front of Harry, “if a person finds themselves in an emergency situation, let's say they're choking on a piece of meat, they're more likely to get help if there is only one other person near by. If there is just one person, that person will feel obligated to jump up and try to help, however if there is a group of people, it's more likely that they will all just stand there and do nothing, each hoping or expecting that someone else will step forward and do something. It's the diffusion of responsibility. The expectation that someone else will step forward and fix it.

“This is why people can see that something is wrong, and yet they still stand by and do nothing. They expect that someone else – someone who is better or in a better position than they are – will do something about it.”

“I'd do something,” Harry said, scowling in anger and annoyance. “If I was in a group of people and someone was choking or dying, I'd try to do something.”

“Ah – yes. Exactly. You see, Harry, you are one of those few people who doesn't feel satisfied to stand aside and watch as something unacceptable happens right in front of you. But because of this, people – the masses – also expect you to be that person who steps forward and does something. If something awful were to happen to threaten the safety of their comfortable lives, they would sit back in the safety of their homes and do nothing, expecting someone like you to save them, no matter how unfair or unreasonable those expectations are. And if you somehow fail to live up to those unreasonable expectations, they blame you. Not because you did anything wrong, or failed to protect them – because it was never really your responsibility to do any such thing in the first place – but because they are weak.”

Harry felt like his heart was going to burst from his chest, it was beating so quickly. It was like Professor Monroe had perfectly expressed in words what Harry had been trying to work out in his head for years. Things that had frustrated and angered him, and bewildered him. Things that had torn him up inside with frustration and confusion. Professor Monroe had summed it up, so simply, and it just made sense. It was horrible... but Harry felt the truth in his words.

Monroe heaved a sigh and looked down on Harry with sad, sympathetic eyes before reaching out and gently placing his hand on Harry's shoulder.

A tingling pulse seemed to shiver it's way from Harry's shoulder, and up and down his spine in every direction. Like a wonderful, surprisingly pleasant chill and made Harry release a surprised shuddering breath and close his eyes.

The hand fell away almost as fast as it was there, but an echo of the feeling still lingered, leaving Harry feeling rather off-balance with the intensity of it.

“I suppose we managed to get rather distracted again,” Monroe said with a small chuckle. “You're not going to have any time for breakfast if you go back up to your dorm and shower. You'd best hurry.”

Harry blinked for a stunned second before his brain caught up with what his teacher had just said. “Oh bugger! Er! Sorry!”

Monroe laughed and made a shooing gesture. “Get off with you now. I'll see you in class on Thursday.”

Harry flushed and ducked his head, but grinned up at his professor as he realized the man wasn't going to pitch a fit about his language, and was, in fact, laughing. He gave the man a grateful grin, waved and raced from the room, hoping he could squeeze in a quick shower and still have time to grab some toast and bacon.
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Professor Monroe