The infuriating Miss Poppins

Chapter 1 - Snakebite

Amando flopped into his unfamiliar throne, cringing deeply, as if his bones were being scraped when the chair closed slightly around him. This was not what first days were supposed to be like. Hogwarts had chosen the right time in his career to rip it from the soil of his research, but The Castle could have been a little kinder about it. No sooner had Amando packed the last of his laboratory into his home when Hogwarts had taken his front door hostage, connecting his alarmingly cluttered cottage directly into his grand, vacant office. It felt as if The Castle was squeezing his home like the bulb of a pipette to force his life into Hogwarts.

Since then, The Castle intruded into Amando's life with all of the sensitivity of a snake attacking prey. His owls now only delivered to his Hogwarts office, not his own breakfast table, houselves apparated with abandon inside his home and worst of all; the portraits. The bloody portraits. It was stomach churning.

Armando had always been particularly obsessive about information. So often, like a flower, a beautiful idea thrusts its head out of the blank landscape. For Amando, it was not good enough to just look at the bloom. He had to see it. All of it. The mechanical stem. The chemical leaves. The hidden roots. An organism. It must be understood before it can be invited into the curated garden of Amando's understanding. How else will he keep it alive?

This level of scrutiny was simply not possible with the portraits.

Information flowed like a waterfall upon him from each expert mouth. Advice, opinions, news from other portraits, suppositions about the causes of phenomena occurring in The Castle that Amando had not even noticed. Saliva would be more welcome. The matrix of potential connections to be made but no time to do it was terrifying to Amando. As if his inability to process the information at the rate The Castle provided it made him unable to protect Hogwarts the way it demanded to be. After the feast and everything else, public speaking, the cacophony and olfactory assault of dinner, the portraits set off a cascade of anxiety he simply could not deal with and so he didn't. He sat still, glassy eyed, head in hands and silent as the portraits babbled about each student currently settling into their dormitories.

A new sensory experience roused Armando's sentience. The papers on his desk were pulling themselves free from under his elbows in an attempt to join several other parchments sorting themselves on his desk into neat piles. Some of them were leaving his desk altogether to slip into a drawer in the cabinet opposite. Armando had become used to assuming that The Castle was doing something to him without warning, however the bronze gryphon statue above his door was announcing that someone else was currently walking up the stairs to his office and potentially causing this new unwanted experience.

"Mary Poppins." it cawed.

All of the other portraits stopped talking and Professor Scamander started reeling off information about her from his wooden frame above the door. "Muggle born, first year, Ravenclaw. As I was saying she's in a foul mood and doesn't want to go into her common room, seems to have an objection about..." Armando's ears heard his blood rushing and his chest tightened. There was no more sound to hear.

This was not safety. Enchanted papers, a visitor? Connection? Coincidence? He didn't understand this room any more and that made it unsafe. His mouth dried as he looked at the door to his home only he could see in the corner of the office. Even if he had time, his legs would certainly not obey him and this chair felt like it was stuck to him like glue.

His wand rose to his head in a sharp jerk and a disillusionment charm oozed down his neck. He locked the door with a furious prod and held his breath as someone tried to open the door a moment later.