Fanfic / Another Prisoner, Another Professor

"In Harry's third year he must learn the many truths about the new DADA teacher, Professor Black, and an escaped convict, Remus Lupin."

— Summary on FanFiction.Net

Another Prisoner, Another Professor is a Harry Potter Fanfic, written by Marauder. It starts off as a retelling of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, with one difference: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin have switched places.

A simple premise, but this fic does more than switch the names around. It comes with its own subplots, and is written in precisely the same style as J. K. Rowling.

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Another Prisoner, Another Professor provides examples of the following Tropes:

• Accidental Misnaming: Before formally meeting and being introduced to her, Regulus referred to Nymphadora Tonks as "Nymphatlantis".
• Adaptational Backstory Change: In this continuity, the Fat Friar, here named Friar John Overhill, wanted magical people of England to be able to attend church like Muggles without fear of persecution because he saw magic as an ability given by God. After several years of preaching, he was asked to return to Hogwarts as the school chaplain. He brought Octavius the Black with him as his secretary, being his companion for years after Octavius sought shelter from him after he had a row with his friend Salazar Slytherin and no one else would take him in. The Friar stayed for a year until he had a heart attack and died. In canon, he joined the clergy as part of a mendicant religious order and was executed because senior church officials grew suspicious of his magical abilities.
• Adaptation Name Change: Though Sirius doesn't have a canon middle name, and most fan-works posit with giving him the middle name 'Orion', this fic names him Sirius Aurelius Black.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Downplayed. Cedric Diggory appears a couple of months earlier than canon, while exploring the library and before the first Quidditch match against Gryffindor.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Chapter 53 mentions a product called Wendolyn Wembly's Web Wremover.
• Alliterative Title: "Another Prisoner, Another Professor".
• Allohistorical Allusion: In Chapter 22, a book on werewolves mentioned that Remus taught at 'The Schwartz Academy for Lycanthropic Wizards' in Berlin prior to his arrest.
  Ron: Wow. Imagine having Lupin as your teacher.
• The B Grade: Alluded to when the Trio break into Sirius' office in Chapter 31 and find some graded seventh-year essays in his drawers.
  ("Percy got ninety-nine percent, it'll kill him")
• Badass Biker: Like in canon, Sirius owned a flying motorbike (which was unfortunately confiscated by the Ministry because of its flying abilities).
• Chekhov's Gun: The Fair Art of Blood Magick, a book on blood magic and how to perform it, found in the basement of a bookshop in Hogsmeade. Hermione wants to purchase it as of Chapter 38 in the hopes of figuring out Remus was doing with all the blood in his cell, but the shop owners refused to sell it to her. She later considers sneaking out to Hogsmeade three chapters later to purchase it, and discusses it with Harry and Ron over this, but when Sirius bans Harry from sneaking out, Hermione writes to Brutus Swift, Sirius' lawyer, about it. In Chapter 48-49, the book reveals that what Remus was doing in his cell was doing a protective ritual for Harry, and this, along with later logical deductions, can get him acquitted for his "crimes".
• Chick Magnet: Both Lavender and Parvati have obvious crushes on Sirius, thinking that him and his long hair were good-looking.
• Combat Pragmatist: Sirius as a DADA professor believes that "half of dueling is the element of surprise", and many students' fear of serpents can be exploited during a serious duel, as the opponent can easily cast Serpensortia (conjuration spell for a live snake) to intimidate them.
• Cool Teacher: Sirius is considered to be this in this continuity; he compliments students on their spellcasting abilities and even spends 21,000 galleons to purchase Firebolts for the entire Gryffindor Quidditch team to support his godson.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Or, well, godfather. Harry has been shown to have a lot of issues with Sirius after learning he was his godfather but "abandoned" him to the Dursleys, who treated him like dirt, but it's later clarified that Sirius had a blood condition with multiple complications (as a result of doing something something "reckless" and "stupid") that prevented him from taking physical custody as opposed to legal custody, as explained in Chapter 44.
• Dead Fic: The last update on the fanfic was in 2015, with the author announcing that they had a baby in the end notes. One might presume that they are currently busy raising their child.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Instead of being drowned by Inferi while retrieving the Locket Horcrux, Regulus was (most likely) killed by Lucius Malfoy.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "No one chooses to be a werewolf."
• Double In-Law Marriage: Discussed. According to Chapter 53, as a child, Andromeda used to plan to find three Pureblood brothers to marry with her sisters, before she developed more egalitarian views as she grew older. Of course, this turns out very differently from the sisters expected.
• Dramatic Irony: In Chapter 4, Draco Malfoy cites the fact that his mother is a first cousin of Sirius and implies he might receive preferential treatment as a family member. Later the same chapter, Sirius orders Draco and his cronies out of the train compartment for starting a fight, not to mention that Sirius is a Cultural Rebel who hates Pureblood supremacists like most of his un-disowned family. Malfoy comes to realize this after a few weeks and tries to distance himself from Sirius in terms of blood relation as much as possible.
• Enemy Mine: On a smaller scale. Pansy Parkinson convinces her Potions classmates (well, everyone except Draco Malfoy, whom she had a row with) to sign a Petition to End Assigned Seating because Snape has previously assigned students that dislike each other to sit next to each other and partner up, and she felt that "they just make everyone miserable". Although this fails because Snape argues that the class was "not a democracy", it earns her Ron's respect as proof that "she's not a hundred percent rotten".
• Establishing Character Moment: In his first scene, Sirius yells at Malfoy to leave the compartment because he started a fight with its occupants, and explains the reason he's riding the Hogwarts Express is because his flying motorbike got confiscated, showing he's a Cool Teacher, relatively Reasonable Authority Figure, and a Cultural Rebel. In the next few chapters, the Trio decide to trust him because of this, as well as the facts that he fought off a Dementor and that Hagrid sees him as a friend.
• Everyone Is Related: Like in canon, all the Pureblood families are interrelated, which leads to some interesting conversation material in Chapter 4:
  Malfoy: ("spat") [...] That's our new professor, isn't it?
  Hermione: Well done, Malfoy.
  Malfoy: Do you know what my mother's maiden name is, Granger?
  Ron: (snarling) 'Course we do, it's Malfoy. There has to be something to account for why you're a pea-brained midget.
  Malfoy: (turning slightly to look at Ron) Black. Narcissa Black.
  Ron: (after a split second) Big deal. If you go back far enough you've got a something-great[-]grandmother with the maiden name Weasley.
• Family Theme Naming: While sisters Lily and Petunia Evans (later Potter and Dursley, respectively) are both named after flowers, it's clear that they got it from their mother, named Daisy in this fic according to Chapter 51.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Due to Remus being the one rumoured to work with Voldemort, anti-werewolf prejudice is very apparent and rampant, moreso than canon. In the first chapter alone, Stan suggests that Remus was "a big follower of You-Know-Who" because of his lycanthropy, among many other comments. Later chapters reveal that even normally-sympathetic Gryffindor characters show bias against werewolves, some even thinking werewolves did not deserve to be educated for being "a bunch of dark creatures".
  • Pureblood supremacy remains a common belief throughout the magical world, especially among Slytherins. Regulus Black, at the very least, got over it enough to get engaged to a Half-blood witch with a Muggle for a grandmother.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • The reason Hogwarts has to put up with Severus Snape as a Potions teacher is because Sirius, Dumbledore's first choice, had "other plans".
  • The reason Sirius was unable to be the Secret Keeper for the Potters in this continuity is because he was already one for his cousin Andromeda and her family, who had gone into hiding around the same time, kicking off the events of the plot.
  • Snape recommends that Harry should find information on Remus in the published records of the Wizengamot the year he was arrested, rather than books on werewolves, in Chapter 21. When the Trio check the records for real eight chapters later, several fishy things in said records reveal that there's something up with the judicial system in magical Britain, and as it turns out, one of the reasons for Remus' conviction was Lucius Malfoy's clout and influence.
  • Hermione writes a letter to Brutus Swift, Sirius' lawyer, about a book on blood magic, which contains information on why Remus' cell was covered in blood. Brutus later concludes from these findings in Chapter 49 that Remus might be innocent and could be acquitted.
    Brutus: Sirius, if Remus ends up being found innocent because she wrote to me about this, I won't just like Hermione Granger, I'll throw her a party, write her an ode every year, and remember her in my will.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Chapter 27, Harry notices that one of Sirius' mugs was blue "with white curly handwriting on one side, saying something in another language" that Harry speculates to be German.
  • In Chapter 33, Sirius teaches that "a person's sacrifice of their own blood can protect others". This turns out to be the basis of the ritual Remus was performing in Azkaban to protect Harry.

• Good Shepherd: The Fat Friar, according to his backstory.
• High-School Sweethearts: Other than canon instances like James and Lily, Regulus mentions in a diary entry that Narcissa and Lucius "have been together since they were fifteen", got married when Narcissa was a few months short of turning 21, and have stayed married to the present day of the plot.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Sirius describes the Remus he knew to be this, that he would have preferred to have "a nice pot of hot tea and a peaceful life" over "ruling over Muggles or sitting at Voldemort's right hand".
• I Want Grandkids: Regulus' aunt and Bellatrix and Narcissa's mother, Druella, is quite insistent on her daughters bearing their own offspring. Regulus has a couple of accounts of this recorded in his diary — one (dated to 27 December, 1975) about how Druella thought Bellatrix's biological clock was ticking and wanted her to see a specialist to see how much longer she had until she wouldn't be able to bear a child, and another (dated to 26 April, 1976) about her wanting her recently-married youngest daughter, Narcissa, to have kids as soon as possible, even though Narcissa didn't want to risk after having a miscarriage a couple of years before.
  Bellatrix isn't speaking to their [her and her sisters'] mother because she said Bellatrix ought to see a specialist and find out how many years she has left to have a baby. I don't understand why everyone acts as though she's so old. Mum didn't have Sirius until she was thirty-nine and Bella isn't even thirty.
  [...]
  Narcissa says Aunt Druella is driving her mad because she keeps asking when Cissa and Lucius are going to have a baby. Why is everyone fascinated with other people having babies? I told Narcissa that she should tell Aunt Druella they can't have a baby until they figure out how to make one, which Cissa thought was funny. Later I wish I hadn't said it, though. Sometimes there are things you don't want to think about.
• Kissing Cousins:
  • Defied. Sirius' parents wanted him to marry his cousin Bellatrix (yes, her) because "she was nearing the ripe old age of twenty-seven without any marital prospects", so much that this was apparently one of the reasons Sirius' mother tried to get a court order to make him go home. (Sirius, of course, hated this potential arrangement, and so did Bellatrix; even Regulus thought it was ridiculous until Sirius pranked him.) Thankfully, they eventually backed down.
  • Later, Regulus realized he was attracted to his first cousin Narcissa, but Narcissa was already married by the time he made that realization. He got over it at some point in the next several years.
• Loophole Abuse: An antagonistic example, as Kreacher the House Elf and Sirius mutually despise each other even though the former has to follow the latter's orders, so Kreacher resorts to loopholes in Sirius' orders just to make his life difficult.^note Quotation from Chapter 53.
  Sirius: I tell him to stay out of my bedroom and he stands in the doorway levitating my things. I tell him to make chicken soup and he leaves white feathers floating in the bowl. Once I told him to get out of my sight and he put out all the lights in the room.
• Matchmaker Failure: One of Regulus' diary entries notes that Evan Rosier kept trying to match him up with his sister Charis because he didn't approve of the boy Charis liked.
  As you might suspect, it's not working. It would be funny if it did, though, because then I'd be both Narcissa's first cousin and her first-cousin-in-law — Evan and Charis's father is Aunt Druella's brother.
• May–December Romance: Chapter 54 has Sirius mention one of his family's ancestors, Octavius the Black, fathering his first child at the age of 70... while his wife was 24.
• Meaningful Name:
  • One of Percy and the Weasley Twins' past DADA professors was named Professor Somna, an old witch who retired after a year due to problems with narcolepsy. 'Somna' is a letter off from Somnia, the sons of Somnus, the Roman personification-god of sleep.
  • A book on werewolves mentioned that Remus taught at 'The Schwartz Academy for Lycanthropic Wizards' in Berlin. 'Schwartz' is a German-Yiddish surname meaning "black", alluding to the surname of the founder.
• Memetic Badass: In-universe. One of the rumours about what Sirius was doing before taking the DADA post is that he was fighting Nundus in East Africa. For context, Nundus are essentially beasts of mass destruction that usually take a hundred trained magical people to subdue. Sirius later confirms that this particular rumour isn't true, though he did visit East Africa to collect potions ingredients.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • The Fat Friar is named Friar John Overhill, who didn't live over the hill.
  • Edgar Bones' wife was named Charis Rosier and was the sister of Evan Rosier, and the two's children were named Ambrose, Felicity, and Rosamund.
• Nice Guy: Like in canon, Cedric Diggory is very nice; due to him befriending Harry a year earlier, he personally visits him in the Hospital Wing after the fateful Quidditch match and secretly sends him advice on what replacement broomstick to get. Even Oliver Wood trusts him to keep their Firebolt broomsticks safe to settle a 'debt' because he saw him as "goodness and honor personified".
• No Such Thing as Wizard Jesus: There's a discussion about religion, and Chapter 59 even takes place in the magical version of the Catholic Church. Jesus, however, isn't stated as a wizard.
• Nom de Mom: It's mentioned in one of Regulus' diary entries in his fifth year (the Marauders' sixth) that Severus Snape was having a feud with both his parents because he wanted to change his surname to Prince but neither would let him. Since it was mentioned a sentence earlier that Snape claimed he was a Death Eater then, it's not hard to guess why.
• Noodle Incident:
  • While asking Neville to demonstrate the Leg-Locker Curse on him in his first class in Chapter 9, Sirius advices him not to hesitate because "[a] friend of [his] stuttered once casting Orchideous and instead of [conjuring] a bouquet of flowers ended up with a deformed porcupine, which didn't go over too well with the girl he fancied". Knowing the circumstances, this is most likely referring to James and Lily.
  • Hermione mentions in Chapter 12 that she has an aunt named Emily who hunts rabbits at the weekend and once shot her uncle, Cecil, in the leg.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Several sympathetic characters in Gryffindor are revealed in Chapters 40-41 to show Fantastic Racism against werewolves after the fact that Sirius previously started a school for them was stated in a news article.
  Percy thought that it was very dangerous and irresponsible for Black to start a school for werewolves, which led Fred and George to declare that they intended to do the exact same thing. Though he was the twins' best friend, Lee Jordan still maintained that wanting to start a school for dark creatures was decidedly dodgy, which led to some noisy arguments in the common room. Ginny seemed to find the very idea of werewolves to frightening to talk about, while Colin Creevey decided they were probably misunderstood like hippogriffs. Angelina said she didn't care one way or another what Black had done before coming to Hogwarts, because he was a good teacher; Alicia thought teaching magic to werewolves would give them too much power; Katie told Harry that Black probably had good intentions, but she didn't think it was a very good idea; and Oliver Wood finally yelled one evening at Quidditch practice that he wished Black had never so much as met a werewolf, and if he heard anyone else talking about Black's werewolf school when they should be concentrating on defeating Slytherin, he was going to make them run extra reflex drills.
• Role Swap AU: The fic tries to retell the story of the third book with Remus Lupin as the titular Prisoner of Azkaban, while Sirius is the DADA Professor.
• Room Full of Crazy: Remus' cell in Azkaban is filled with Harry's name written in blood. Later, it turns out that it was a ritual to protect Harry.
• STD Immunity: His lawyers think that Sirius has a VD, but since magical people doesn't usually contract muggle diseases, Ron thinks that he had actually developed lycanthropy.
• Sympathy for the Devil: In Chapter 59, Harry feels sorry for Regulus even though the latter is still a Pureblood supremacist who formerly experienced incestuous attraction to his cousin as a teenager.
  He couldn't say he liked the teenage Regulus who had written the diary — they probably would have despised each other if they'd ever met — but at the same time, Harry felt sorry for him. He could understand Regulus in a way — he knew what it was like to feel lonely, to want a happy family. Had Regulus truly wanted to kill Muggles and Muggle-borns? Or had he just never seen them as equals? It was hard to imagine Regulus wanting Nymphadora to die — or Selene Harris, the beautiful Muggle-born [actually Half-blood] girl in his house.
  From what Harry could tell, Regulus had truly longed for two things at the age of fifteen: to have his family reunited, and to be with Narcissa Malfoy. I don't even care if Narcissa is in the Dark Lord's service, he had written, because I know how passionate she is about family. Was that what Regulus had sought in the Death Eaters? A way to have his family reunited?
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Kreacher often does this to Sirius. He puts chocolate into his master's food because Sirius is allergic to it.
• Throat-Slitting Gesture: Ron does this at Malfoy in Chapter 64, just before the Quidditch Cup finale starts.
  Ron pointed at Malfoy, closed his eyes, and drew one finger across his throat.
• Your Mom: When Draco Malfoy comes knocking on the Hogwarts Express in Chapter 4:
  Malfoy: Oy, Granger, I think there's a rule about not bringing deformed dogs to school.
  Ron: Stop talking about your mother, Malfoy.

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