When night fell, Severus Snape strode the silent corridors of the castle, drifting much like one of the many resident ghosts, who took no notice of the black-clothed professor walking in their midst. He came to the stone gargoyle on the floor of the highest tower and muttered "Lemon drops," to the sneering creature. The gargoyle leapt aside. Snape entered the revealed entrance and climbed the steps to the Headmaster's office. He knocked on the door.
"Come in, Severus."
Albus waited for him, leaning against his desk, hands folded before himself as he watched the flickering flames within the hearth. A dish of sweet candies sat on the desk at his side, and as Severus slid into one of the comfortable armchairs, Albus proffered the dish and offered him some. Snape shook his head.
"Have it your way, Severus. What have you discovered today?"
"Nothing of true note," Snape admitted, hand coming to rest on his chin in thought. He too stared at the fire, at the snap and crackle of ever-burning wood. He inhaled the smell of hickory and it eased his less than tranquil mind. "My suspicions of Quirrell have yet to prove...fruitful, yet I'm convinced something of the man is not what it seems." His lip curled, annoyed by his own lack of evidence. "I found him and your new hire in one of the classrooms this afternoon."
"Oh?" Albus's brow rose in interest. "I assume you mean Ms. Dullahan."
"Yes. They were shaking hands."
Snape saw Albus consider and dismiss this info. "Quirinus offered to escort Ms. Dullahan to her classroom."
"Perhaps it was a ruse? An excuse to conduct a meeting?"
Albus shook his head, then stroked his beard. "While I found Quirinus's offer puzzling, I do not sense anything malicious to Ms. Dullahan's person. Their interaction at dinner was stilted at best."
Snape wasn't convinced. He knew well the guile an innocent face could hide, and while the new Magical Theory professor seemed harmless in appearance, she had sharp eyes and hadn't balked at Severus's intimidating presence. "Any person who seeks access to the school this term is suspect, Headmaster."
"Of course," Albus demurred. He popped another candy into his mouth. "She is an Occlumens. An accomplished one."
"And you don't find that suspicious?" Snape demanded, taken aback. "Those who practice Occlumency are those who have something to hide."
Albus shrugged. "Or she simply enjoys her privacy. Ms. Dullahan pretended she didn't detect my intrusion but did offer a sense of her intent and of her gratitude. I have verified her references, several from wizards and witches I know personally who could not be Confounded or coerced into giving false praise. Griselda was among the references."
Snape grimaced, waving a hand. "Madam Marchbanks is half senile, Headmaster. Her word means little."
Albus frowned, and when his reply came, it was given in a strict tone. "I trust Griselda's opinion very much, Severus. Old she may be, but foolish she is not. In our correspondence, she confided to me a certain disquiet in Ms. Dullahan's behavior, though she would not say more upon the matter. She asked I do what I could for the woman."
"This disquiet could be a shift in Dullahan's allegiance, if indeed that allegiance has not already been sold." Snape's brow furrowed, because there was something to the woman he did not like, something he could not place, like a missed step on the stairs. Harmless in and of itself, but abrupt and stumbling all the same.
"Ever suspicious, Severus." Even though his voice carried an amused note, Dumbledore's eyes didn't twinkle. "We will be wary. We cannot afford to blindly offer trust in these times. I have the oddest inkling that I have met Ms. Dullahan before, and yet...I cannot say where."
Albus moved, pacing. Snape glanced toward his desk—and there, glittering on the blotter, rested a red stone.
Yes, they would be wary indeed.
* * *
The skull on the shelf had been complaining for almost an hour.
On most occasions Fi found she liked her mentor's nattering, especially when living alone in the wilds, but tonight the hedge witch was quickly growing frustrated with her mentor. Everild had been rather difficult for the last two weeks, ever since they'd taken up residence at Hogwarts.
"Ever, will you kindly shut your trap?" Fi barked as she twiddled with the dials and levers on the heavy silver mirror. Her back ached from crouching for so long.
"This space will never do," Ever continued. "It does not have the proper exposure to the celestial sphere!"
"It will when I am finished," Fi retorted. "Merlin's backside this bloody mirror—!"
From his roost in the far corner, Puck shrieked and his cry echoed in the otherwise empty section of the castle. At least, Fi hoped it was empty. It was quite late, and she wasn't sure how well the other professors would tolerate any of her midnight shenanigans.
She and her companions were in Fi's newly appointed office, and though it had taken a number of days, she had last procured several items needed for the space. One such item included the awkwardly formed silver mirror with its many clicking dials and gleaming spheres. Fi gently aligned each item by hand, pausing to gaze out the window every so often at the bare sky before continuing. She tipped and tilted and fussed with the heavy mirror in the corner of her office until the face reflected the light of the moon and spilled the white glow upon the cleared section of the floor.
On the shelf behind the desk, Ever grumbled. "It would be better to work outside."
"Of course it would—it would also be less private. I do not need a few hundred students for my audience." Fi shut her eyes and infused the mirror with a measure of her Will, attuning it to the visible rotation of the moon and stars so the mirror would always rotate to perfectly reflect the light. She stood barefoot in her tunic and leggings, her black hair unbound and falling about her shoulders in tangled waves. Fi paced to the desk and picked up the bag there, rocks clicking together as she moved to the floor's middle.
"Do not snap at me, girl. Impertinent thing."
"I do not mean to be cross, I am simply tired." Sighing, Fi dug into the bag and retrieved one of the unrefined crystal stones hidden inside. The mineral sparkled under the moon.
"You have set too many wards today."
"I mean to finish tonight. Term starts tomorrow and I have spent a bit too much time idling about with my lesson plan and exploring." Fi's face scrunched. "Not that this blasted castle will cooperate. It knows, Ever. I know it knows."
"You're as paranoid as Mathilda now."
Fi set the rocks about the room and tossed the empty sack aside. "I pray I am not that old yet."
Ever huffed, an odd sound to come from a skull, considering it could not breathe. Fi glanced toward the High Witch and at the warded shelf holding the bones, several warding runes, and a few of Fi's favorite possessions: a stick of yew, a faded straw doll that had long lost its Mobility Charm, a thatch of unicorn hair freely given, Grigor's broken pocket watch, a river stone bleached white by the stars. The items were simple but quite precious to Fi—even Ever, who she was considering stuffing back into the hat box for a bit if it bought her some quiet.
"You are still a bairn," Ever said. "No matter the years, you will always be our bairn, Delphinia."
A fond smile curved Fi's mouth as she settled on the floor, sitting cross-legged with her hands pressed together. The hedge witch shut her eyes and gathered her thoughts, shooing out stray ideas and notions and the lassitude in her bones. She pictured clearly in her mind what she wished and spun her magic about the desire, showing it what must be done, then she let the magic go, allowing the energy to spill from her mind and attach itself to the stones arrayed about the room. As one, the crystals melted and pooled about the stone floor, spreading outward until the whole of the surface was encased in a smooth layer of sparkling white stone.
Fi flopped backward without getting up and stared at the ceiling. She had run into difficulty placing her own wards and enchantments on Hogwarts itself. The castle always sent her annoyed feedback, like a sharp slap on the wrist to quit mucking about in things she did not understand. Exhaling, Fi tapped a hand upon the crystal beneath her and instantly felt the frigid rock shift to gentle, crisp grass.
"And this is what could not wait until tomorrow?" Ever's displeasure was obvious.
"I've place wards of intent in it, not just a nice aesthetic change," Fi explained as she stretched and, at length, rose to her feet. "I mean to sleep here more often than not. I'm not particularly fond of my quarters, nor do I like the idea of being so far from you."
"Good, then. You should ward the classroom as well."
"I did the other night." Fi swept her hand out and the crystal floor resumed its normal appearance. She went to the divan stationed under the largest window and laid back, making herself comfortable. Like any proper hedge witch, Fi could rest in the most unforgiving of spaces, could sleep on stone or wood or a bed of hay, but she had acquired a taste for some of the finer things while traveling abroad and the intricate embellishment on the divan spoke to that fact. "I don't know about you, but I'm quite excited about tomorrow."
"You would be."
"Imagine all the new people you will get to spy on, Ever," Fi teased.
The skull did not like that. "I am not a spy. Besides, no one will tromp through this space aside from naughty little children."
"I heard Filch muttering we should hang the naughty blighters from the dungeon ceiling by their thumbs."
"Maybe we should have done that with you. You wouldn't have become such a glib girl."
Fi laughed.
A knock sounded on the door.
She froze, but nonetheless rose to her feet and gave the entrance to her office a leery look. She had nailed a rather simple Silencing rune to the back of the barrier, something that would catch her or Ever's voice, but not something that would muffle Puck's caterwauling or screams for help. Fi picked up the patched blanket laying across the divan and threw it over the mirror, dimming the light and hiding the contraption, before she went to the door.
To her surprise, Albus Dumbledore stood outside in her dark classroom, dressed in vivid emerald robes with a jaunty hat on his head. Fi eyed the hat with some envy, and not for the first time she made a mental note to get herself one. "Good evening, Headmaster."
"Professor Dullahan." He inclined his head. "I went first to your quarters and was surprised to find you were not in residence."
Fi winced at his chiding look and stepped back, allowing Dumbledore entry. His gaze took in all there was to see, lingering long on the covered mirror, the floor, and Fi's mismatched collection of objects. To him she imagined her shelf looked like some crow's accrued hoard of strange bits and baubles.
"I find I sleep better here," she confessed, though she didn't tell him about the unsettled feeling she kept getting from her neighbor, who she suspected was Quirrell. Sometimes she heard voices bleeding through the walls in the middle of the night. She hadn't told Ever about that either, for fear of the High Witch regaling her yet again on the paranoia of Mathilda Greengrove, a coven-sister who had spent much of her time shrieking about Muggle spies and invisible sprites stealing her thoughts.
"Oh? We could accommodate you with a different room if you need."
"No, I'll be perfectly fine here, Headmaster, thank you." Fi gestured him toward one of the chairs before the desk and prayed he didn't want tea. Her wand still wasn't cooperating. She went to her own chair. "Was there something you needed?"
"Not precisely, no. I wanted to see how you were adjusting to life in the castle." Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Fobley."
Before Fi could ask what in the world a Fobley was, a house elf wearing a toga appeared by the headmaster with a crack! of sound. Fi startled and almost toppled from the seat she had perched herself on.
"Yes, Headmaster?"
"Some tea, Fobley, for Professor Dullahan and I."
"At once, sir!"
Fobley vanished with a deep bow. Fi watched the spot where the house elf had last been with some suspicion. More often than not, she had run afoul the little things and had been cursed with their particularly meddlesome magic.
"Where was I? Ah, yes. How are you adjusting otherwise, Ms. Dullahan?"
"Call me Delphinia or Fi, Headmaster," she responded, uneasy.
"Fi, then."
Fobley appeared again and Fi jumped, banging her knees on the underside of the desk. The creature gave her a puzzled look as she set a cup and saucer before Fi, then before Dumbledore. "Is that all, sir?"
"Yes, thank you, Fobley." When Fobley vanished, Dumbledore chuckled and sipped his tea. "I take it you are not familiar with house elves."
"Unfortunately," Fi responded, reaching for her drink. "To answer your question, I believe everything's going well so far. I have my lesson plan and am looking forward to teaching."
"Good, good. We have a staff meeting in the lounge tomorrow morning where we'll discuss normal routines and any specific rules the professors wish to be implemented. For sake of simplicity, I would like to have you as a representative of Slytherin along with Professor Snape."
"Are there any specific responsibilities that come along with that role?"
"A few. In times of emergency we find it more expedient for each professor to be assigned to a House they are responsible for monitoring and protecting if need be. Students are also more comfortable confiding problems or asking for assistance from professors of their own house. If need be, you will need to hand out discipline to the Slytherins if Severus is unable to."
Fi wrinkled her nose at the mention of discipline but only said, "Of course, Headmaster," and set her cup aside.
Dumbledore gazed at Fi over his half-moon spectacles, folding his hands together in his lap, his look serene but calculating. "I would also like the discuss the arrival of a new student. Harry Potter will be matriculating this year."
The weight he gave the name meant Fi was supposed to know of whom he spoke, but she did not. "Who?"
Dumbledore couldn't have looked more shocked if she'd stripped naked and had declared herself Queen of the Faeries. "Harry Potter, Professor Dullahan. The Boy Who Lived."
"What kind of a tacky moniker is that?" Fi asked before she could help herself, frowning. "Is that not a bit of an oxymoron?"
Dumbledore took a steady breath and rubbed a hand over his face, blinking. "I assumed even wizards in America knew of his legend, but it seems I was mistaken. Harry Potter, Fi, is regarded by many as the savior of the wizarding world. Voldemort killed his family when Harry was but a baby. When the Dark Lord cast the Killing Curse upon Harry, it rebounded upon Voldemort, destroying him."
Supposedly destroyed him, came Fi's grim thought. The Dark wizards sniffing at my heels are far too enthusiastic to be serving a dead Dark Lord. "So they call him the Boy Who Lived because he survived the slaughter of his family? How wretched. Why would he wish to be reminded of that?" Frankly, Fi thought it would be a bit like her taking the title The Last Hedge Witch: a morbid and saddening reminder of what had been lost.
"I had come hoping to...warn you about his arrival, as many wizards and witches can be rather fanatical." Dumbledore chuckled, and Fi suspected he was relieved. "But I see my warning is not needed. He was raised among Muggles, so I would ask you show him a measure of patience as he adjusts to life among us."
"Naturally. I'll help any student who requires it." Fi leaned back in her chair and eyed the Headmaster, miffed for a reason she could not rightly name. Fi was both fascinated and terrified of children. She thought them quite like a brand new stationary set just waiting for letters to be written, but she worried about mucking the pages with sloppy handwriting if she wasn't careful. "He is just a boy, is he not? I do not like that title, Dumbledore. I find it rather offensive and would ask others not to use it."
He eyed her, speculating. Fi met the Headmaster's gaze and didn't look away, though her mind remained firmly locked behind iron walls. The reckless part of her considered letting him see just a bit of what she knew, of her ruthlessness and her hatred for those who abused the innocence of youth, but Fi kept a lid on her emotions, lest the Headmaster revoke her position.
He finished his tea. "I believe young Harry will appreciate your concern and disregard for his fame, Fi. He will face many trials in his life, and could use a bit of normalcy."
Dumbledore and Fi said their goodbyes. The Headmaster made his way out of the room and Fi shut the door, her placid expression melting to a unhappy scowl. She flicked her wrist and the blanket tossed upon the mirror whipped back, flooding the room again with the ambiance of the moon, setting the crystal floor ablaze.
"The Boy Who Lived," Ever seethed on the shelf. "What a load of harpy dung."
Fi agreed.