On the morning of the second day of the Hogwarts school year the Headmistress stood behind the podium of the Great Hall of Hogwarts ready to give a morning announcement. The whole hall was looking at her full of expectation. Of course they had all heard the rumours about the first defence lesson of Professor Lockhart and were now eager to find out the truth about this event, so when Professor McGonagall began to speak, the hall went silent instantly.

"As some of you might have heard there was an incident involving the Defence Professor yesterday. I will not go into details about that since you will be able to read about it in the Daily Prophet shortly, but I will say that the Defence Professor was not who he pretended to be and had done little of what he claimed to have. Since Professor Lockhart had never actually done anything that qualified him to be a Defence Professor I had to release him from this position and was forced to find a replacement. Fortunately I have gotten quite some practice with finding new Defence Professors over the last years and therefore I already managed to find you a new teacher, actually two new teachers. Please welcome Professor Unterberg and Professor Moody."

A murmur went through the hall as the second name was announced. Mad Eye Moody was a famous veteran of the first wizarding war and his skill was undoubtable, but people said that his Eye was not the only thing that was mad about him and that his years of fighting dark wizards had left him totally paranoid, seeing enemies everywhere. Ginny was confused by the announcement. It was unheard of that two people were teaching the same topic together at Hogwarts, but that was not what confused her. When Ginny had asked her about the new Defence Professor yesterday, Professor McGonagall had said that she hoped that she did not have to ask whomever she intended to ask. Was that referring to Moody or this Mr. Underberg? As far as she knew Moody was a long-time friend of Dumbledore and therefore probably also of Professor McGonagall so she would probably have no problem asking him to teach at Hogwarts. Then her comment probably referred to Professor Unterberg. But why ask him at all if Mad Eye Moody agreed to teach? Moody would surely be a competent Professor and able to teach the classes on his own. Sure people had started questioning his sanity after some incidents in the recent years, but people had called Dumbledore Insane as well and he was Headmaster, so that was no reason why Moody could not teach on his own. What about this Professor Unterberg then? Ginny knew nothing about him and given his name he was probably not from Britain but from somewhere in the Germanic parts of Europe. Moody and Unterberg had now entered the Hall and were walking towards the teachers table. Ginny took a close look at Unterberg and saw a man with blonde hair who seemed to be in his late forties. She was sure that she had never seen him before. The two new teachers had now reached the podium in front of the teachers table and Professor Unterberg began to speak.

"I am sure that some of you wonder why I have been chosen to teach defence against the dark arts here at Hogwarts since none of you has ever heard of me. In a way I am exactly who was intended to teach you this year, for I am the one who actually did what Mr. Lockhart claimed to have done. He heard of my deeds and approached me under the pretence of wanting to write a book about my adventures. That was not even a lie since he did write multiple books about them after he obliviated me and presented them as his own."

"That is what happens to you if you are not careful", interrupted him Mad Eye Moody. "Constant vigilance!"

"Thank you for your advice, Mr. Moody. I will certainly be more careful in the future. Anyway, luckily Mr Lockhart was not very talented in obliviation, so parts of my memories could be restored and my skills have not been affected by his spells. I think I will be able to teach you well and I look forward to it. It is certainly the most interesting thing I have done in many years."

That can't be true, thought Ginny. Lockhart told us that he made up everything he wrote about, so there was no one who had really done this. She considered the possibility that Lockhart lied about that part, and came to the conclusion that this was a possibility, but less likely than the new Professor being someone who did not want his true identity to be known and needed a cover story, after all that was not uncommon for Defence Professors. She planned to ask Harry about the new Defence Professors when she met him the next time, but doubted that he would tell her anything. Before she could think further about that Moody began to speak.

"Just to get this clear I do not look forward to teaching you lot. I only agreed to help out Professor McGonagall. I will only do a little teaching to share some of my experience in fighting dark wizards with you, so that some of you might last longer than a week when the next wizarding war comes. I will also supervise the army battles this year. I will do it a bit differently than Professor Quirrell did last year. For example I will not choose the generals myself. Everyone who wants to be a general can sign up and the selection will be done based on the results of some tests you will have to undergo. The test will give you points. After the tests are completed all students will be allowed to vote for one general and every vote you get will also give you some points. In addition to that everyone who voted for you will also be assigned to your army, however if your number of supporters exceeds the size of your army the remainder will be randomly distributed among the other armies. The first test will take place next week and you will be told about it in your next defence lesson."

Moody stepped away from the podium and Ginny began to process the new information. She definitely wanted to be a general next year, so her first thought was to immediately start trying to get as many people as possible to vote for her. On a second thought however that did not necessarily seem to be the best cause of action, considering that everyone she convinced to vote for her would also be likely to end up in her army so ideally she would want only skilled students to vote for her. After thinking the whole thing through for a while she came to the conclusion that waiting to approach other students would give her time to find out who was skilled and who wasn't and would also give her a better picture about how strongly she was dependent on votes and how much points she would be able to score through the tests. On the other hand there was probably a significant first mover advantage in trying to get people to vote for you. It would be much harder to convince somebody who already planned to vote for someone else than someone who had no clue on whom he wanted to vote for. She also realised that she could promise some potential voters that she would make them into lieutenants to get their vote. In the end she decided to immediately start approaching others, but save the promise of becoming a lieutenant for later. She was quite confident in herself and thought that she would not need a major amount of votes to become a general and it was still possible that not more than three students would even apply to be a general, but becoming a general in the first place was significantly more important to her than having a strong army and the possibilities to find out who was strong in battle and who was not were limited anyway.

In the evening of the same day Ginny sat on a comfortable black leather sofa in the Slytherin common room next to Pearl Darcy. She had not been able to get a casual conversation going with her so far, as the other girl blocked every attempt she made. The rest of the day had been more successful. She had started to take notes on how fast her classmates were able to learn spells during charms, to get a better picture of their abilities. She had also gotten Dudley Dursley to vote for her. That had been easy since she had been talking to him a couple of times during the two days they were at Hogwarts already and from how he acted she was probably the first person that had been friendly to him in many years. Since her attempts to get into a conversation with Pearl had failed and she had the feeling that this was not due to her being in a bad mood but because she was just not interested in small talk, Ginny now approached to topic she wanted to talk about directly.

"Pearl, do you plan on joining an army this year?"

"Why do you want to know that?" replied Pearl in a suspicious tone.

"I plan to become a general and would like to have you in my army."

"You mean you would like me to vote for you, why should I do that? I could try to become a general myself or vote for someone else."

"If you want to be a general yourself then I will not try to convince you to do otherwise, but if you don't want to be a general, you have to side with someone. You can of course wait and see how the candidates do in the tests first, but I will value it highly if you decide to vote for me now, before it is clear how good my chances are."

"Why should I care what you value highly? If you are not completely stupid you will use anyone in your army to their fullest potential no matter when they decided to vote for you or whether they decided to vote for you at all."

"Of course I will, and I already have something in mind for you. I don't know you very well, but you did seem like you were good at magic in the few lessons we had together. You practised concentrated and did not engage in any conversation. I think you don't work very well in teams. In the armies you will have to work in teams, no matter if you join my army or any other, but I will not make you work in teams unless it is necessary and there will be tasks where one skilled fighter can work alone. If you join my army I will give you the opportunity to work on your own as often as possible."

"You can promise me lots of things now, but no one will be able to hold you responsible for them if you break your promises."

"Sure, no one can, but that is true for every other general who might promise you anything, and If I don't stay true to my promises you can simply betray me; traitors were allowed last year and I am sure they will be allowed again this year. I was the first one to approach you, I promised you an attractive position in my army, what better do you expect to get from any other general?"

"I guess I won't get anything better. Very well, I will vote for you as my general."

"Great", said Ginny. She smiled and pulled out a paper. "Please sign on this list, that way I can show anyone that you cannot be trusted if you decide to switch alliances again."

"A clever move," replied Pearl and signed on the list below Dudley's name. She took a look at the headline of the list and said "Boggard Division, I like this name."

Authors Notes Update

I have been far more busy in the last moth than i expected to, so that is why there were no updates in the recent time. The story is not discontinued, I will start writing again, however, I am currently not able to say when.