The Theory of Magic (Book 1)

10 // Weasley & Weasley

Fi soon learned that if you taught no classes in the afternoon, you spent your night roaming the corridors.

Two days after the start of term was Fi's free period, in which she did nothing more than host office hours and spend the afternoon working on her wards or reading books she borrowed from Madam Pince's library. She had two students pop by for consultations: the first-year Hermione Granger who asked a plethora of questions about the feasibility of various spells, and a sixth-year Slytherin who said he had heard from one of his classmates that she could preform wordless spells and wanted some pointers.

Fi rather hoped her little displays of magic wouldn't arouse suspicion in the faculty.

After dinner, it was Fi's turn in the rotation to patrol the corridors. She returned to her office with the grimness of a prison inmate awaiting sentencing, watching the warm glow of the sun slip over the lawns and dive behind the eerie trees, stretching wide shadow toward the castle as torches sputtered to life along the grounds. Curfew came, the clock tower chimed the hour, and Fi slipped from her sanctuary with a weary sigh, sealing the office behind her as she went.

This will be a nightmare.

Exploring the castle at night proved as onerous as it was during the day. Fi set out without any true destination in mind, robes rippling about her lithe frame, thinking of her lesson plans and, in the abstract, the Masked Ones. Hogwarts soon convoluted her path, stairs switching, door leading to all the wrong places. At one point Fi wound up in the dungeons, though she hadn't headed in that direction. She walked the lightless passage, listening to the plop! plop! plop! of dripping water.

"The bloody students are less likely to hurt themselves than I am," Fi muttered to herself as she sought the stairs that would lead her out of the dungeons again. She whacked a shin on a serpentine bench bordering one corridor. "Bugger."

Five minutes later she almost ran headlong into Professor Quirrell.

"My apologies," she told the cringing man, fighting the urge to cringe herself. He had his wand illuminated and it cast light over both professors and a generous swath of the dungeon, though his face remained in shadow from the lay of the turban. I thought I was the only one with patrol tonight?

"T-t-that's alright, Delph-ph-ph—."

"Fi," she said, holding up a hand. "Just Fi is fine." Spare me, please.

Quirrell nodded, relieved. Fi had the morbid desire to see how exactly the man managed to teach his class, and she figured the next time he had a lesson, she would linger in the hall and listen to how he managed. She had the greatest sympathy for the poor dear, but she couldn't understand why he would subject himself to this kind of environment when he jumped at the sight of his own shadow and couldn't string words together.

A second light joined theirs and Fi winced when Professor Snape appeared from a corridor she hadn't even realized to be there, hidden in the dark as it was. He glowered upon recognizing Fi and Quirrell.

"Another midnight meeting?"

Another? Fi shook herself with no small measure of frustration. She was quite cold from mucking about in the dungeons and was annoyed she had been told it was her responsibility to patrol tonight when there was obviously some kind of miscommunication. "Why are you awake?" she growled, flicking a look at both Quirrell and Snape. "It's my night to patrol on the schedule."

"So it is, Dullahan." Snape said her name with bitterness. "Which makes me curious why you and Quirrell would be meeting outside my private potions store."

Fi brightened. "You have a potions store?" She craned her head to look by him, but with a flick of his wand, Snape slammed the door in the corridor behind him closed, locking it. Fi pouted. "If you didn't want to share you could have just said so."