(no subject)
Title: Between Here and Now and Forever, Chapter 6
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: The Founders, various OCs
Rating: PG
Summary: The professors of Hogwarts plot ways of getting Rowena's mother, the Chief of the Wizards' Council, to go away and leave them alone. 6111 words.
Author's Note: thinkatory: still awesome, still my beta!
Chapter 1
Master Founders post
Chapter 5
It was nearing May, and Lady Aeaeae had not yet seen fit to leave. Rowena had brought the subject up numerous times, but each time it had been brushed off with a calculated distraction. It was becoming obvious that her ladyship not only wanted to keep an eye on her daughter, but also on Lord Salazar, her rival in the Council. But Lady Aeaeae's activities did not stop at observation. Recently, she had rearranged all the books in the library by size and color, insulted a staircase, and changed the Blue Common Room's password three times because she didn't like the way it was pronounced. She was becoming a nuisance.
Rowena spoke first at the monthly staff meeting. "We need to make her leave." They all knew which 'her' she referred to. "Any suggestions?"
Helga raised a hand. Rowena pointedly ignored it. "Anyone?"
Lord Salazar cleared his throat. "I could call a meeting of the Council," he said. "We'd have to go to all the way to Rome, and the Glendower issue could even be cleared up by the end of the month."
Godric blanched. It seemed that in his opinion, the Glendower issue was best left untreated. "No," said Rowena hurriedly, imagining Godric stuttering and pale in front of the Council, "with all due respect, sir, that would only get her away temporarily. We need something permanent, or at least as close to permanent as possible."
"We could feed her to the Venomous Tentacula," said Helga. "That'd be permanent."
"No," said Rowena.
"I could feed her to the Venomous Tentacula."
"No."
"Someone else could feed her to the Venomous Tentacula."
"No."
"I thought you said it wasn't dangerous," said Godric.
"I lied," Helga said, grinning. "Besides, what's life without a little danger?"
"Longer?" Godric asked.
"He's got a point," said Rowena. "Oh, that reminds me, there've been some... botany-related complaints." She rolled her eyes at Godric, who shrugged. "Lord Salazar, Helga, could we set up a due date for Whomping Willow removal?"
"But -- but -- the Muggles!" said Helga. "If anything, we need more Willows!"
"She's trying to take over the world with them," said Basil skeptically.
"Come, my minion! Help me brainwash them!" said Helga, ruining the effect by poking Basil in the shoulder.
"You can't take over the world with plants!" Basil insisted.
"I can try," said Helga grumpily.
"Ahem," said Rowena. "Can we save the take-over of the world for later? You have significant competition from my mother."
Lord Salazar snorted. "The Council is hardly the world, milady. Those on the Council have no more power over the common wizard than you or I have over the students. We may ask the children to be quiet while we are speaking or to write this essay on that subject by a certain date, but we cannot force them to obey us any more than the Wizard's Council may enforce its petty laws on basilisk breeding and interspecies trade."
Rowena blinked. It was, quite possibly, the longest speech she had ever managed to get out of Lord Salazar, and by far the most enlightening. Though there was no official leader at the staff meetings, by all rights Salazar was the one who should have the authority, being the oldest and the only one with a high-ranking governmental position. Yet Rowena always seemed to preside over the meetings. She wondered why he let her do that -- if he wanted Lady Aeaeae's secret schemes, he wasn't going to get them from her. Ophelia Aeaeae trusted her daughter less than anyone, save a trained assassin or two.
"That was a very interesting speech, sir," said Rowena quickly. "Will you be giving it to the Council?"
"Certainly not," he said with mild distaste. "No one on the Council has ever attempted to teach twenty-three eleven-year-olds how to brew wart remover. The concept of 'work,' especially homework, is far too distant for them, I fear."
"That's an idea," said Basil. "We could make Lady Aeaeae teach a class if she wants to stay any longer. She wouldn't want to waste her time by actually doing something for a change."
"It's a start," said Rowena, "but what would she teach?"
"Why, napkin folding, of course," said Helga. "Why do you even have to ask?"
"She's never folded a napkin in her life," said Rowena. "That's what house-elves are for."
"House-elf directing, then," said Helga. "Make something up. Divination. Snail racing. Gossip-mongering."
"Book-arranging," said Rowena. "If I think of anything that sounds legitimate, we'll go with it, but offhand I don't think any of those could possibly be of practical use to anyone. What about you, Godric? Are you just going to sit there whining about trees or do you have anything useful to add to this meeting?"
"No," he said, "I'm here to whine. Besides, she's your mother. You work out what to do with her. I don't care if she stays here until Lucifer is kind enough to come and take her back."
Rowena perceived some insult in his speech, but wasn't sure what it was. She shrugged it off. "Very well, then," she said. "We shall, as Godric says, wait until Lucifer takes her back, whoever this Lucifer might be," she added, frowning. "Does anyone wish to discuss something else at this meeting?"
"The Muggles," said Helga. "How did they get through my Willows? None of them were harmed at all, thankfully, but I should think they'd prevent an army from attacking. They nearly circle the castle, after all!"
Rowena shrugged. "You should ask Lord de Malfoie himself, unless Lord Salazar wishes to enlighten us. He may know." She watched Lord Salazar out of the corner of her eye, waiting for a reaction of some sort.
"I don't know at all," said Lord Salazar, looking quite innocent. "It's rather vexing. Perhaps the defenses of the forest prepared them for your trees? And as to the issue of removing them," he said to Rowena, "I agree with Mistress Hufflepuff in that they should certainly be kept until further notice; Muggle armies are known to be savage, even with the admittedly crude weapons they use."
"I've changed my mind," Godric announced. "I'm going with what he said." He jabbed a finger at Lord Salazar. "I don't want to be sent out there for another army. If they hadn't run away when they did, I think I might've run. And de Malfoie nearly slit my throat before I let him in."
"Then why did you let him in?" asked Rowena.
Godric shrugged. "What was I supposed to do, say 'Go away!' and shut the door in his face?"
Rowena sighed, for that had been exactly what Godric was supposed to do. She couldn't exactly berate him for it, though, because good had come from it. "All right, we'll keep the trees as long as they don't hurt anybody other than Muggles. Does anyone have anything else to bring up?"
There was silence.
"Meeting adjourned," said Rowena with an informal wave of her hand. "I'll go and tell Jasper about the new class so he can recalculate all the timetables." She left the room without another word.
After climbing what seemed like an infinite number of stairs, she came to the final flight. She rested on the landing for a moment, waiting for the Arithmancy class to finish. There was a small window here, just under the top of the tower, and as she looked out onto the grounds she saw the huge forest, the Whomping Willows that circled the castle, and the large lake that interrupted the circle of trees. It was a very nice view, even now when the sky was grey and the trees bare. Students began coming down the stairs, chattering to each other as they walked, some carrying thick rolls of parchment and abacuses under their arms. Most of them nodded or waved at her as they passed. When they had gone, presumably off to Potions in the dungeons (or were they 'storage facilities'?) below, Rowena continued on to the classroom at the top of the tower.
She knocked sharply on the thick wooden door, which opened almost immediately. Jasper blinked when he saw her, but she pushed him aside, stepping into the room.
"We will be adding a new class to the curriculum shortly," she said, sitting down on a student's desk. "Can you fit it in? You can take time out of the other classes, but be sure not to make it more than ten minutes per class. And don't shorten the time given for students to travel between classes," she added. "This is a large castle and students need time to find their ways around. Especially with those moving staircases we added. Can you do that?" she asked.
"What? What's the class?" asked Jasper, looking utterly bewildered.
"We don't know yet," Rowena told him.
"But -- but who's teaching it? Which students are taking it? When is this effective by? How long --"
"My mother is teaching it and I've no idea what it will entail except that it must be very irritating to her. Put it as near as you can to breakfast -- she's not a morning person --"
"Are you trying to get rid of her, then?" asked Jasper, with great interest. "Because I can adjust the wards momentarily --"
"No, no, I want her to stay away from here under pain of extreme annoyance," said Rowena. "I don't want her to be driven away by spells."
"All right, I'll see what I can do," he said. He was silent for a moment, as if expecting her to leave. When she didn't, he nodded his head hopefully at her. "Is there anything else?"
"I would like you to make some wards for me," she said.
"Wards?"
"Yes, you know, those things that are supposed to keep armies out, but don't? The things we were discussing several seconds ago?"
Jasper looked hurt. "They don't keep Muggle armies out. Besides, there's only so much Muggle-repellent charms can do. Muggles simply don't exist to most wards. Why don't you ask your pet werewolf to make wards for you, if mine are so horrible?" he said grumpily.
"Because it's not Basil's week for wards -- and he's not my pet werewolf, he's Helga's," she said. "I only need wards against one person -- Godric. He's been turning my classroom upside-down lately, and all evidence suggests he enjoys teaching morning classes."
"How exactly has he been causing trouble?"
"I told you," she said impatiently. "He's been turning the classroom upside-down. Once he turned it sideways," she added helpfully.
"With some sort of matrix spell?" he asked hopefully. "I can block those with a --"
"I'm afraid not," she said sadly. "Very strong glue. He is hopelessly Mugglish."
"All right," said Jasper. "Come up to my office and sit down -- I'll need to write things down, anyway." He waved his wand at a spot on the floor, causing a spiral staircase to emerge from it, climbing up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Jasper ascended the staircase, stopping halfway up to wait for her. She followed after a moment, leaving the dusty Arithmancy classroom behind.
They emerged into a room with a stained-glass skylight of geometric patterns. The cold winter sunlight dimly illuminated a small round room, surprisingly warm, and filled with equal proportions of scribbled-on parchments and leatherbound books. Distributed with the same regularity as stars in the night sky were tiny orbs of light of various colors, contained in what seemed to be glass. A scale model of the castle sat on one side of the room, while on the other was a battered wooden cabinet full of quills, inks, and more of the strange globes of light, including a clear glass bulb that was apparently waiting to be filled. When both of Rowena's feet had left the stairway, the trapdoor snapped shut and melted into the rest of the floor. She saw that a huge pentagram had been built into the floor.
Rowena looked around the room with raw avarice. Jasper grinned naively at her wonder - she supposed he thought she was impressed, and she was, to a degree, but Rowena was not one to stay impressed for long. I want it! said a little voice in her head. She ignored it and tried to look bored, but it was impossible -- what were the little glass balls? -- and there were so many books! She didn't have most of those books. How dare he own books that she didn't have? The sheer impudence of it was astonishing.
"What's this?" Rowena asked, pointing at the tiny castle, and without waiting for a response, ran over to it and reached down to take one of the tower roofs off, as though it were a dollhouse.
"Don't touch that!" said Jasper, running over to pull her away from it. "It's an experiment in sympathetic magic -- very delicate -- don't even breathe on it. Sit down over there," he added, pointing his wand at the farthest point of the pentagram, where a cushioned stool suddenly popped out of the floor. Rowena hung back to examine the model. Now she could see that there were little tiny people moving about inside the castle: there was Helga in her greenhouse scolding the Tentacula (it looked as though it'd eaten another cat) and Godric was lost in the forest again. She wondered what would happen if she put her hand in front of the little figure representing Godric as she had sometimes done with ants crawling back to their nests; would the real Godric notice, and how would it affect him if he did?
She opened her mouth to ask Jasper, but then remembered she should be in and out of this room as quickly as possible. This was, after all, Jasper Slytherin, the patronizing one. Reluctantly, she sat down at the far side of the room. "What's it for?" she contented herself with asking.
"It controls the wards," said Jasper.
"Surely there's an easier way," said Rowena.
"Well, yes, but this one's more interesting," said Jasper helplessly. "But what's this about wards?"
"Oh. Yes," she said, "the wards. I only want them to keep Godric out -- none of the students should be prevented from coming to see me if they need to speak to me."
"And your classroom is on the third floor?"
"Yes, it's at the end of the corridor that opens into the oubliette," confirmed Rowena.
"Ah, yes, the oubliette," said Jasper, nodding. "There's actually a whole series of rooms in that oubliette; quite a pity we can't use them for anything, since we don't have anybody to ouble." Jasper grabbed a spare piece of parchment and wrote something on it. "Do you want just a simple facial-recognition block, or something more complex?"
"I don't want just a facial-recognition spell -- he might use some sort of invisibility spell," said Rowena, "though I don't know who he'd get it from. He's awful at normal spells. It would be best if you did the facial-recognition and blocked things over ten feet tall. If one doesn't work the other can take over."
"What is he, anyway?" asked Jasper.
"I don't know," said Rowena, frowning as though all was not right with the world. After all, she ought to know everything. "I mean, well, he's human. He's Muggleborn. That might have something to do with it, I don't know all that much about Muggles. But he used to be short! And his aura's clearly human, but there's funny magic shot through his bones, like someone put a spell on him and then it faded away."
"Funny magic?" Jasper sounded curious.
"It's not human -- elvish, perhaps. The closest I've seen to it was house-elf magic, but this is much wilder and it has a savage, hungry sort of edge to it. No decent house-elf would be running around with that magic. Quite odd." Anyone else would have asked her how magic could be hungry, or have any edge to it at all, but Jasper simply nodded.
"It's too bad we can't just make the wards keep that sort of magic out," he said. "Of course, if we don't know what it is...." He frowned. "Now, if you'll just answer a few more questions, I can have them set up by tomorrow."
"All right," said Rowena. "What do you need to know?"
* * *
Godric stomped up several more staircases than any reasonable building needed. He wanted to get to his common room quickly so that he could light a nice big fire and unfreeze his blood. He'd spent several hours in the forest, pretending not to hear its creatures' eerie noises, and trying to find out where Lord de Malfoie and his army had come from. Lord Slytherin seemed to be worried about it -- he apparently had no faith in his son's wards -- and Godric, being the only professor who had ever known how to survive without magic, had been sent out to go and find any paths through the forest that would be relatively safe for a Muggle army. Godric had ascertained that no army could pass through the forest without being noisy enough to be eaten by things like the notorious Grendel and his mother. It was only common sense. But, he thought bitterly as he stopped at the doorway to work out what his password was, nobody listened to him, because he was the big stupid one who'd been hired to move furniture and drive armies away. He wasn't allowed to have common sense.
This, combined with Godric's total lack of directional sense, had got him very lost for several hours. Oh yes, and he could have sworn he'd seen a giant hand in the sky somewhere... best not to think about that, though. Probably just a cloud.
Godric suddenly remembered what the password was, and the door swung open. He ducked inside and knelt on the floor to light the fireplace. With a quick poke from his wand and a muttered spell, a warm, crackling flame rose from the logs.
Godric closed his eyes for a moment. He thought perhaps he should just drift off to sleep right now, but he shook his head to stay awake. Missing a hot dinner was not in his plans at the moment.
He saw something move out of the corner of his eye, and, twisting around to see what it was, he detected a small, long-nosed figure dressed all in green. A goblin. He hated goblins more than Jasper hated werewolves. Godric was not a hateful person by nature, but he loathed goblins with a vengeance that anyone who knew him would have been astonished at.
With an almost inhuman roar, he grabbed the goblin by the throat and stood, bringing it up to eye level as he did so. "Who sent you?" he demanded of it.
It looked down nervously, and, realizing it was being suspended twelve feet above the ground, ceased struggling.
"It was Rowena, wasn't it? She's mad -- bringing goblins into a school -- do you have a name? ...probably only speaks Gobbledegook," he muttered, disgusted.
"P-peeves, sir," it squeaked. "A-and I don't belong to Lady Ravenclaw, and I didn't mean any harm, and I'll leave immediately, sir, if it suits you."
"It does not suit me," Godric said. "You're coming with me," he added.
"I can't breathe!" it whined.
"Get used to it," he growled. Keeping a tight hold on the goblin he left the room, the warmth of the fire forgotten.
* * *
Rowena sat in her classroom; a book propped up by a bottle of ink on her desk. She leaned forward to turn the page, and inspected the colorful illuminated 'D' at the beginning of the paragraph, which showed a knight and a dragon in combat. She grinned as the dragon shot orange flames, and the knight realized that his metal armor was an excellent conductor of heat. Jasper was actually not all that bad, she decided, although he did have far too many delicate experiments in his study. He was, at the very least, intelligent, a fact which far outweighed many of his bad qualities. Although, she thought, frowning, he knew more than she did on certain subjects. She skimmed the paragraph at the top of the page, which was detailing the exploits of particularly foolhardy Muggles and what had been done to get rid of them.
Godric burst into the room, eyes wild with some illogical rage. She couldn't wait until Jasper's wards were done. She sighed. "What?" she snapped.
"Why are there goblins running around this castle?" he demanded, holding up his fist. In it was clenched a terrified Peeves, who had shut his eyes tightly and was muttering something very rude in Gobbledegook.
"There's only one that I've ever seen, and he's not mine, he's Lord Salazar's. Ask him."
"How do you know there's only one?" asked Godric. "What are goblins doing at a school? Isn't that dangerous?"
Rowena rolled her eyes. "Really, Godric, you're afraid of everything! Goblins, armies --"
"Fear of armies is perfectly sensible," Godric interrupted.
"-- carnivorous plants, heights..." continued Rowena. Godric turned bright red at the mention of his long-standing fear of heights, but said nothing. "Is there anything you're not afraid of?"
Godric scratched his head and frowned.
"Never mind," she said. "Put that down," she snapped.
Godric obediently placed Peeves on her desk. "I'm not afraid of ...rocks," he said sullenly.
"Congratulations," she told him. "Now go away."
"And I'm not afraid of you, either," he continued boldly.
"What a pity," said Rowena. "Petrificus totalus," she added, enunciating the spell carefully for his benefit. Godric fell backwards onto the cold stone floor. "Righteous anger makes people do foolish things," she said conversationally to Peeves, who looked as though he might bolt at any minute. "Why don't you give me your notes," she asked, "and I'll let you go before I let him go."
"I can't," said the goblin, backing away from her.
"I won't do anything to them," said Rowena, "I just want to read them."
"No, you don't understand," said Peeves, grabbing his scroll as though it might run away. "I can't let you -- I'm under orders --" He backed up even more and, with a frightened squeak, toppled right off the desk onto the chair.
"I'll take that," she said, forcing his hand open. A tormented wail cut through the quiet classroom, and she looked back at the goblin, who was screaming as though a thousand red-hot pokers were burning him up. Appalled, she Stupefied the goblin, but he continued to whimper in pain, even when he was unconscious.
He must be under a spell, she thought, otherwise he'd do something useful like try to take it back from me. If I had a servant like this, I wouldn't make disobedience so painful. Well, I'll just wipe his memory afterwards. I hope he forgets. She was still troubled, but she quickly scanned through Peeves' notes anyway. After changing several words so that they would give Lord Salazar a slightly more favorable impression, she rolled up the scroll, put it in the goblin's hand (at which point he stopped squealing) and Obliviated him. Then she leaned him against the wall just outside her classroom and woke him up. Leaving the disoriented goblin, she returned to the classroom, waited for a few moments by the door to make sure Peeves had left, then performed the counter curse to the spell on Godric. He sat up, looking quite grumpy.
"I suppose you're going to wipe my memory as well?"
"Nonsense. You haven't got enough memory to wipe. You'd forget everything."
"What was in that scroll?" he demanded.
"None of your business."
"You changed things in it -- it certainly is my business," said Godric stubbornly.
"I don't really see the logic in your argument. Get out of here, Godric, or I'll turn you into dogmeat."
"I didn't know you had a dog," he said thoughtfully. "What sort of dog is it? What's its name?"
She glared at him. Godric, she realized, had the attention span of a two-year-old when it came to most things.
"Oh. That wasn't the point, was it?" he asked.
"His name's Rex. He's a hunting dog and he's not mine," said Rowena for some absurd reason.
Godric looked as though he were starting to question Rowena's sanity. "I'll just be going now," he said, edging towards the door. When he reached it he hurried out, having forgotten completely about goblins and scrolls.
Rowena glared after him. Dogmeat. I should have turned them both into dogmeat.
* * *
"Look, Mother," said Rowena soon afterwards, walking to dinner with her mother, "I think maybe you should... er, be on your way. After all, won't they be missing your guidance at home?"
"Nonsense, dear, no one ever misses me," Lady Aeaeae told her daughter, dismissing her concerns with a wave of the hand. "Oh, this castle is so draughty. Shoddy construction, that's the only explanation. Either that or he's drilled little holes in all the stone to spy on everyone."
"I doubt it," said Rowena, thinking of Peeves. "Anyway, as I was saying --"
"Would you look at that? He still has those little thin arrow-shooting windows! Ha! Just like a Muggle castle! How silly."
"Mother," Rowena said, "as I was saying --"
"Does anyone in this castle even know how to shoot a bow?"
"No, Mother, but I'm sure Basil --"
"Oh, and how is poor Helga holding up under the strain?"
"Admirably," said Rowena, though she didn't tell her mother which particular strain she was talking about.
"It's an awful thing to happen, isn't it? She really does deserve better than that, but the poor girl's always been so honorable. It's a fault I'm glad to say you never did acquire, dear," she told Rowena, who wondered how that could possibly be considered a compliment.
I would very much like to prove her wrong, she said to herself. Why can't I? There must be something horribly wrong with me. "I suppose I haven't," she said. "Anyway, she seems quite happy with Basil. I don't see why she shouldn't be. It's her choice, after all. As I was saying before we --"
"It may be her choice, dear, but I don't think you should let her do such dangerous things."
Her mother, Rowena reflected, evidently had no idea what the word 'choice' meant. She sighed -- this conversation was going nowhere -- and as a last-ditch attempt to get back on topic, said, "Well, before I was so rudely interrupted --"
"I was the one who interrupted you, dear, and it's not very nice to call your own mother 'rude,'" said Lady Aeaeae. "Besides, I'm a guest at the castle. I deserve to be treated with some courtesy."
No you don't, her daughter thought. "Well," said Rowena, "that's what I'm getting at --"
"Oh, here we are," said her mother as they came to the doors of the Great Hall. "I must go and talk to Lord Salazar -- he doesn't agree with me on some things yet."
"I can't think why not," said Rowena to herself as she watched her mother walk away. She felt someone jab her in the shoulder, and turned to see Jasper. "Don't do that," said Rowena.
"Did you tell her about the class?" he hissed.
"No," said Rowena.
"Good. There's just no way it will fit evenly into the school day," Jasper said.
"There isn't? Why not?"
"Time distortions in the castle. The architecture makes it a slightly different time of day everywhere, with differences of up to ten minutes. There's no way the new class would work."
"Is that why I'm late to lunch all the time?" she asked, suddenly understanding. "And I thought it was poor planning on my part. How should we drive her away?"
"I've taken care of that," said Jasper. "I hope you don't mind -- I couldn't ask anyone for permission and now I can't really undo it."
"That's all right," said Rowena. "As long as she leaves this castle alive, I will be quite content." At this, Jasper looked worried, but she ignored it. "By the way, what is your father's horrid little goblin up to? Godric caught him in his common room, went completely mad, and barged into my classroom as though I'd done something wrong."
"Peeves, you mean?" asked Jasper. "There's nothing wrong with Peeves," he said defensively.
"There is plenty wrong with Peeves," said Rowena.
"Peeves is so useful," said Jasper. "He's very good at stealing things, and he can get into any room of the castle without a password."
"You know," said Rowena conversationally, "you're all mad, aren't you? There's something in the water here. I assumed before that I was the only sane one in the castle, but now I'm beginning to question even that."
Jasper pondered this for a moment. "They say that if you question your sanity, you're sane," he said. "But if you've heard that, you're assured that you're sane. That means you're no longer questioning your sanity, which opens up the possibility of madness. So you have to question your sanity again. Which leads to the inevitable assurance of sanity. That makes it possible --"
"Sit down before you hurt yourself," ordered Rowena. "And uncross your eyes."
He nodded, and went to sit down. She sat at the table between Helga and Basil, preferring to silently wonder what Jasper had meant when he said 'I've taken care of that,' rather than take part in the discussion. It seemed to be about Quintapeds again, only this time it was their eating habits.
"They're fighting again," muttered Helga. "How do I make them stop?"
"Feed them to your plants," suggested Rowena. "That's permanent, mind you."
Helga stuck her tongue out.
Rowena overheard Lord Salazar speaking to her mother. "Well, Lady Aeaeae, have you been enjoying your visit to the school so far?"
"I have not," said Lady Aeaeae. Rowena turned in astonishment to watch -- she had to see this. Her mother was speaking with an even more astonished expression on her face. "In fact," she continued, speaking unwillingly, "it is embarrassing how much nicer this castle is than mine. Furthermore, Rowena refuses to cooperate with me on any plans I might have, and you, sir, are an arrogant fool." She stopped speaking, merely staring in amazement. Then a cruel smile crossed her face. "How much did you bribe the workers to keep silent about the design of your castle?"
"I didn't bribe them," said Lord Salazar. "I wiped all their memories completely and sent them into the forest. They were probably eaten by Rodents of Unusual Size." There was an uneasy silence. Then Salazar stood up and leveled an angry glare at the rest of the table. "All right!" he said, looking livid. "Who put the Veritaserum in the soup?"
"I told you I'd taken care of it," said Jasper matter-of-factly. No one else had heard him -- everyone, including the students, had started looking around, asking 'Did you have the soup?' This was further confused by the fact that there were three different kinds of soup and Lord Salazar hadn't indicated which one the potion was in. But Rowena decided right then that it didn't matter if Jasper was mad, or hated werewolves, or, in fact, if he was willing to sell his soul for a bottle of Butterbeer and a cheap Veela.
She grinned at him. "You put Veritaserum in the soup? You are evil."
He blushed. "Actually, it's only in their soup," he said. "And I had to," he added modestly. "The extra class didn't fit into the timetables. I had no other choice!"
Basil, overhearing this, stepped forward. "I should congratulate you," he said earnestly, reaching out to shake Jasper's hand. "Even if you are a smug, biased git, who's wrong about everything," he added, just to make sure he wasn't being too agreeable.
Jasper blinked in shock, then looked both ways to make sure no one was watching before punching Basil in the face. Basil's expression was more of surprise than of pain, and he soon recovered enough to retaliate.
Meanwhile, Salazar was taking full advantage of this situation. "What passwords do you need to get into the Council War Room?" he was asking Lady Aeaeae, who had stuck her fingers into her ears and began to chant 'I can't hear you! I can't hear you!' before he finished the question.
In short, the Great Hall was in total chaos. Godric stood up, conscientiously but hopelessly trying to keep everything from self-destructing.
"What are you doing?" he shouted at Jasper and Basil. "Stop!" He pulled them away from each other, holding each by the front of the robes. "How old are you two, anyway? Four? Most of the students are better behaved than you!" he snapped. "Do you think it'll make you right if you strangle him? Because I know well enough that I am frequently wrong, and I can strangle both of you." Basil cringed; Jasper merely folded his arms and looked haughty -- a very odd sight indeed on someone hanging by the neck of his robes. Annoyed, he dumped the two of them on the floor.
"That's right," cackled Lady Aeaeae. "Send him to bed without dinner!" She had taken her fingers out of her ears in response to Lord Salazar poking her in the arm with a dull knife.
"And you two!" said Godric, turning on the two Council members. "You're supposed to be concerned with matters of government! And for God's sake, put that down!" He grabbed the knife Lord Salazar was now nervously fiddling with and drove it halfway into the wooden table, where it stuck. "You've got more control than kings in this world, from what I've seen, and what do you do? You bicker like children, make life miserable for the rest of us, and fight over petty differences like the spoiled brats you are! You can't be arsed to enforce any of the laws that actually keep people safe, and the ones that don't matter are the ones people always end up getting sent to Drear for disobeying. And then you -- you -- er..." He suddenly looked around at the others, halting his extemporaneous speech on The Decline of Western Civilization. Everyone was staring at him. He gulped. "I -- I'm sorry," he said nervously. "I'm very sorry. I didn't mean any of it." Then he turned and rushed out of the Great Hall.
Lady Aeaeae tried to tug the fork out of the table, but it was stuck. "That was decidedly odd," said Rowena, after she had put Silencing Charms on her mother and Lord Salazar. Both of them were too busy gaping to notice.
"Very," agreed Helga. "I wonder what's wrong with him. He's usually so quiet."
"He hasn't got the intelligence of a dead snail, that's what's wrong with him," said Rowena.
"I think you're being quite harsh," said Helga. "He's obviously got at least the intelligence of a dead snail, if not a live one. After all, you're still worried about him and that Animagus thing, aren't you? And he did have a point."
"If he hasn't got the intelligence of a dead snail yet, trying to become an Animagus will do the trick for certain. I'm not worried at all."
"Well, then, I hope you know what you're doing," said Helga.
"I always know what I'm doing," Rowena insisted.
Helga paused; Rowena supposed it was because what she had said was nearly irrefutable. "I hope you both know what you're doing," she insisted. "Do me a favor. If Runty's as confused as ever and you can tell he'll try to do the spell anyway, give him some help."
"He won't ever get to the spell," said Rowena. "He'll hem and haw and be afraid of the spell, and then he'll give up."
"No he won't," said Helga. "Godric never gives up. He's a bit mad -- you know that, I know that, and probably he knows it as well."
"If you doubt your own sanity, you're sane," said Rowena.
"What?"
"Never mind. I'll see what I can do for him if he gets lost, but I can't guarantee it. If, one day, we've got a white rabbit instead of a Transfiguration teacher, I will not be held responsible."
Chapter 7
Notes:
The phrase "Rodents of Unusual Size," obviously, come from The Princess Bride.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: The Founders, various OCs
Rating: PG
Summary: The professors of Hogwarts plot ways of getting Rowena's mother, the Chief of the Wizards' Council, to go away and leave them alone. 6111 words.
Author's Note: thinkatory: still awesome, still my beta!
Chapter 1
Master Founders post
Chapter 5
It was nearing May, and Lady Aeaeae had not yet seen fit to leave. Rowena had brought the subject up numerous times, but each time it had been brushed off with a calculated distraction. It was becoming obvious that her ladyship not only wanted to keep an eye on her daughter, but also on Lord Salazar, her rival in the Council. But Lady Aeaeae's activities did not stop at observation. Recently, she had rearranged all the books in the library by size and color, insulted a staircase, and changed the Blue Common Room's password three times because she didn't like the way it was pronounced. She was becoming a nuisance.
Rowena spoke first at the monthly staff meeting. "We need to make her leave." They all knew which 'her' she referred to. "Any suggestions?"
Helga raised a hand. Rowena pointedly ignored it. "Anyone?"
Lord Salazar cleared his throat. "I could call a meeting of the Council," he said. "We'd have to go to all the way to Rome, and the Glendower issue could even be cleared up by the end of the month."
Godric blanched. It seemed that in his opinion, the Glendower issue was best left untreated. "No," said Rowena hurriedly, imagining Godric stuttering and pale in front of the Council, "with all due respect, sir, that would only get her away temporarily. We need something permanent, or at least as close to permanent as possible."
"We could feed her to the Venomous Tentacula," said Helga. "That'd be permanent."
"No," said Rowena.
"I could feed her to the Venomous Tentacula."
"No."
"Someone else could feed her to the Venomous Tentacula."
"No."
"I thought you said it wasn't dangerous," said Godric.
"I lied," Helga said, grinning. "Besides, what's life without a little danger?"
"Longer?" Godric asked.
"He's got a point," said Rowena. "Oh, that reminds me, there've been some... botany-related complaints." She rolled her eyes at Godric, who shrugged. "Lord Salazar, Helga, could we set up a due date for Whomping Willow removal?"
"But -- but -- the Muggles!" said Helga. "If anything, we need more Willows!"
"She's trying to take over the world with them," said Basil skeptically.
"Come, my minion! Help me brainwash them!" said Helga, ruining the effect by poking Basil in the shoulder.
"You can't take over the world with plants!" Basil insisted.
"I can try," said Helga grumpily.
"Ahem," said Rowena. "Can we save the take-over of the world for later? You have significant competition from my mother."
Lord Salazar snorted. "The Council is hardly the world, milady. Those on the Council have no more power over the common wizard than you or I have over the students. We may ask the children to be quiet while we are speaking or to write this essay on that subject by a certain date, but we cannot force them to obey us any more than the Wizard's Council may enforce its petty laws on basilisk breeding and interspecies trade."
Rowena blinked. It was, quite possibly, the longest speech she had ever managed to get out of Lord Salazar, and by far the most enlightening. Though there was no official leader at the staff meetings, by all rights Salazar was the one who should have the authority, being the oldest and the only one with a high-ranking governmental position. Yet Rowena always seemed to preside over the meetings. She wondered why he let her do that -- if he wanted Lady Aeaeae's secret schemes, he wasn't going to get them from her. Ophelia Aeaeae trusted her daughter less than anyone, save a trained assassin or two.
"That was a very interesting speech, sir," said Rowena quickly. "Will you be giving it to the Council?"
"Certainly not," he said with mild distaste. "No one on the Council has ever attempted to teach twenty-three eleven-year-olds how to brew wart remover. The concept of 'work,' especially homework, is far too distant for them, I fear."
"That's an idea," said Basil. "We could make Lady Aeaeae teach a class if she wants to stay any longer. She wouldn't want to waste her time by actually doing something for a change."
"It's a start," said Rowena, "but what would she teach?"
"Why, napkin folding, of course," said Helga. "Why do you even have to ask?"
"She's never folded a napkin in her life," said Rowena. "That's what house-elves are for."
"House-elf directing, then," said Helga. "Make something up. Divination. Snail racing. Gossip-mongering."
"Book-arranging," said Rowena. "If I think of anything that sounds legitimate, we'll go with it, but offhand I don't think any of those could possibly be of practical use to anyone. What about you, Godric? Are you just going to sit there whining about trees or do you have anything useful to add to this meeting?"
"No," he said, "I'm here to whine. Besides, she's your mother. You work out what to do with her. I don't care if she stays here until Lucifer is kind enough to come and take her back."
Rowena perceived some insult in his speech, but wasn't sure what it was. She shrugged it off. "Very well, then," she said. "We shall, as Godric says, wait until Lucifer takes her back, whoever this Lucifer might be," she added, frowning. "Does anyone wish to discuss something else at this meeting?"
"The Muggles," said Helga. "How did they get through my Willows? None of them were harmed at all, thankfully, but I should think they'd prevent an army from attacking. They nearly circle the castle, after all!"
Rowena shrugged. "You should ask Lord de Malfoie himself, unless Lord Salazar wishes to enlighten us. He may know." She watched Lord Salazar out of the corner of her eye, waiting for a reaction of some sort.
"I don't know at all," said Lord Salazar, looking quite innocent. "It's rather vexing. Perhaps the defenses of the forest prepared them for your trees? And as to the issue of removing them," he said to Rowena, "I agree with Mistress Hufflepuff in that they should certainly be kept until further notice; Muggle armies are known to be savage, even with the admittedly crude weapons they use."
"I've changed my mind," Godric announced. "I'm going with what he said." He jabbed a finger at Lord Salazar. "I don't want to be sent out there for another army. If they hadn't run away when they did, I think I might've run. And de Malfoie nearly slit my throat before I let him in."
"Then why did you let him in?" asked Rowena.
Godric shrugged. "What was I supposed to do, say 'Go away!' and shut the door in his face?"
Rowena sighed, for that had been exactly what Godric was supposed to do. She couldn't exactly berate him for it, though, because good had come from it. "All right, we'll keep the trees as long as they don't hurt anybody other than Muggles. Does anyone have anything else to bring up?"
There was silence.
"Meeting adjourned," said Rowena with an informal wave of her hand. "I'll go and tell Jasper about the new class so he can recalculate all the timetables." She left the room without another word.
After climbing what seemed like an infinite number of stairs, she came to the final flight. She rested on the landing for a moment, waiting for the Arithmancy class to finish. There was a small window here, just under the top of the tower, and as she looked out onto the grounds she saw the huge forest, the Whomping Willows that circled the castle, and the large lake that interrupted the circle of trees. It was a very nice view, even now when the sky was grey and the trees bare. Students began coming down the stairs, chattering to each other as they walked, some carrying thick rolls of parchment and abacuses under their arms. Most of them nodded or waved at her as they passed. When they had gone, presumably off to Potions in the dungeons (or were they 'storage facilities'?) below, Rowena continued on to the classroom at the top of the tower.
She knocked sharply on the thick wooden door, which opened almost immediately. Jasper blinked when he saw her, but she pushed him aside, stepping into the room.
"We will be adding a new class to the curriculum shortly," she said, sitting down on a student's desk. "Can you fit it in? You can take time out of the other classes, but be sure not to make it more than ten minutes per class. And don't shorten the time given for students to travel between classes," she added. "This is a large castle and students need time to find their ways around. Especially with those moving staircases we added. Can you do that?" she asked.
"What? What's the class?" asked Jasper, looking utterly bewildered.
"We don't know yet," Rowena told him.
"But -- but who's teaching it? Which students are taking it? When is this effective by? How long --"
"My mother is teaching it and I've no idea what it will entail except that it must be very irritating to her. Put it as near as you can to breakfast -- she's not a morning person --"
"Are you trying to get rid of her, then?" asked Jasper, with great interest. "Because I can adjust the wards momentarily --"
"No, no, I want her to stay away from here under pain of extreme annoyance," said Rowena. "I don't want her to be driven away by spells."
"All right, I'll see what I can do," he said. He was silent for a moment, as if expecting her to leave. When she didn't, he nodded his head hopefully at her. "Is there anything else?"
"I would like you to make some wards for me," she said.
"Wards?"
"Yes, you know, those things that are supposed to keep armies out, but don't? The things we were discussing several seconds ago?"
Jasper looked hurt. "They don't keep Muggle armies out. Besides, there's only so much Muggle-repellent charms can do. Muggles simply don't exist to most wards. Why don't you ask your pet werewolf to make wards for you, if mine are so horrible?" he said grumpily.
"Because it's not Basil's week for wards -- and he's not my pet werewolf, he's Helga's," she said. "I only need wards against one person -- Godric. He's been turning my classroom upside-down lately, and all evidence suggests he enjoys teaching morning classes."
"How exactly has he been causing trouble?"
"I told you," she said impatiently. "He's been turning the classroom upside-down. Once he turned it sideways," she added helpfully.
"With some sort of matrix spell?" he asked hopefully. "I can block those with a --"
"I'm afraid not," she said sadly. "Very strong glue. He is hopelessly Mugglish."
"All right," said Jasper. "Come up to my office and sit down -- I'll need to write things down, anyway." He waved his wand at a spot on the floor, causing a spiral staircase to emerge from it, climbing up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Jasper ascended the staircase, stopping halfway up to wait for her. She followed after a moment, leaving the dusty Arithmancy classroom behind.
They emerged into a room with a stained-glass skylight of geometric patterns. The cold winter sunlight dimly illuminated a small round room, surprisingly warm, and filled with equal proportions of scribbled-on parchments and leatherbound books. Distributed with the same regularity as stars in the night sky were tiny orbs of light of various colors, contained in what seemed to be glass. A scale model of the castle sat on one side of the room, while on the other was a battered wooden cabinet full of quills, inks, and more of the strange globes of light, including a clear glass bulb that was apparently waiting to be filled. When both of Rowena's feet had left the stairway, the trapdoor snapped shut and melted into the rest of the floor. She saw that a huge pentagram had been built into the floor.
Rowena looked around the room with raw avarice. Jasper grinned naively at her wonder - she supposed he thought she was impressed, and she was, to a degree, but Rowena was not one to stay impressed for long. I want it! said a little voice in her head. She ignored it and tried to look bored, but it was impossible -- what were the little glass balls? -- and there were so many books! She didn't have most of those books. How dare he own books that she didn't have? The sheer impudence of it was astonishing.
"What's this?" Rowena asked, pointing at the tiny castle, and without waiting for a response, ran over to it and reached down to take one of the tower roofs off, as though it were a dollhouse.
"Don't touch that!" said Jasper, running over to pull her away from it. "It's an experiment in sympathetic magic -- very delicate -- don't even breathe on it. Sit down over there," he added, pointing his wand at the farthest point of the pentagram, where a cushioned stool suddenly popped out of the floor. Rowena hung back to examine the model. Now she could see that there were little tiny people moving about inside the castle: there was Helga in her greenhouse scolding the Tentacula (it looked as though it'd eaten another cat) and Godric was lost in the forest again. She wondered what would happen if she put her hand in front of the little figure representing Godric as she had sometimes done with ants crawling back to their nests; would the real Godric notice, and how would it affect him if he did?
She opened her mouth to ask Jasper, but then remembered she should be in and out of this room as quickly as possible. This was, after all, Jasper Slytherin, the patronizing one. Reluctantly, she sat down at the far side of the room. "What's it for?" she contented herself with asking.
"It controls the wards," said Jasper.
"Surely there's an easier way," said Rowena.
"Well, yes, but this one's more interesting," said Jasper helplessly. "But what's this about wards?"
"Oh. Yes," she said, "the wards. I only want them to keep Godric out -- none of the students should be prevented from coming to see me if they need to speak to me."
"And your classroom is on the third floor?"
"Yes, it's at the end of the corridor that opens into the oubliette," confirmed Rowena.
"Ah, yes, the oubliette," said Jasper, nodding. "There's actually a whole series of rooms in that oubliette; quite a pity we can't use them for anything, since we don't have anybody to ouble." Jasper grabbed a spare piece of parchment and wrote something on it. "Do you want just a simple facial-recognition block, or something more complex?"
"I don't want just a facial-recognition spell -- he might use some sort of invisibility spell," said Rowena, "though I don't know who he'd get it from. He's awful at normal spells. It would be best if you did the facial-recognition and blocked things over ten feet tall. If one doesn't work the other can take over."
"What is he, anyway?" asked Jasper.
"I don't know," said Rowena, frowning as though all was not right with the world. After all, she ought to know everything. "I mean, well, he's human. He's Muggleborn. That might have something to do with it, I don't know all that much about Muggles. But he used to be short! And his aura's clearly human, but there's funny magic shot through his bones, like someone put a spell on him and then it faded away."
"Funny magic?" Jasper sounded curious.
"It's not human -- elvish, perhaps. The closest I've seen to it was house-elf magic, but this is much wilder and it has a savage, hungry sort of edge to it. No decent house-elf would be running around with that magic. Quite odd." Anyone else would have asked her how magic could be hungry, or have any edge to it at all, but Jasper simply nodded.
"It's too bad we can't just make the wards keep that sort of magic out," he said. "Of course, if we don't know what it is...." He frowned. "Now, if you'll just answer a few more questions, I can have them set up by tomorrow."
"All right," said Rowena. "What do you need to know?"
* * *
Godric stomped up several more staircases than any reasonable building needed. He wanted to get to his common room quickly so that he could light a nice big fire and unfreeze his blood. He'd spent several hours in the forest, pretending not to hear its creatures' eerie noises, and trying to find out where Lord de Malfoie and his army had come from. Lord Slytherin seemed to be worried about it -- he apparently had no faith in his son's wards -- and Godric, being the only professor who had ever known how to survive without magic, had been sent out to go and find any paths through the forest that would be relatively safe for a Muggle army. Godric had ascertained that no army could pass through the forest without being noisy enough to be eaten by things like the notorious Grendel and his mother. It was only common sense. But, he thought bitterly as he stopped at the doorway to work out what his password was, nobody listened to him, because he was the big stupid one who'd been hired to move furniture and drive armies away. He wasn't allowed to have common sense.
This, combined with Godric's total lack of directional sense, had got him very lost for several hours. Oh yes, and he could have sworn he'd seen a giant hand in the sky somewhere... best not to think about that, though. Probably just a cloud.
Godric suddenly remembered what the password was, and the door swung open. He ducked inside and knelt on the floor to light the fireplace. With a quick poke from his wand and a muttered spell, a warm, crackling flame rose from the logs.
Godric closed his eyes for a moment. He thought perhaps he should just drift off to sleep right now, but he shook his head to stay awake. Missing a hot dinner was not in his plans at the moment.
He saw something move out of the corner of his eye, and, twisting around to see what it was, he detected a small, long-nosed figure dressed all in green. A goblin. He hated goblins more than Jasper hated werewolves. Godric was not a hateful person by nature, but he loathed goblins with a vengeance that anyone who knew him would have been astonished at.
With an almost inhuman roar, he grabbed the goblin by the throat and stood, bringing it up to eye level as he did so. "Who sent you?" he demanded of it.
It looked down nervously, and, realizing it was being suspended twelve feet above the ground, ceased struggling.
"It was Rowena, wasn't it? She's mad -- bringing goblins into a school -- do you have a name? ...probably only speaks Gobbledegook," he muttered, disgusted.
"P-peeves, sir," it squeaked. "A-and I don't belong to Lady Ravenclaw, and I didn't mean any harm, and I'll leave immediately, sir, if it suits you."
"It does not suit me," Godric said. "You're coming with me," he added.
"I can't breathe!" it whined.
"Get used to it," he growled. Keeping a tight hold on the goblin he left the room, the warmth of the fire forgotten.
* * *
Rowena sat in her classroom; a book propped up by a bottle of ink on her desk. She leaned forward to turn the page, and inspected the colorful illuminated 'D' at the beginning of the paragraph, which showed a knight and a dragon in combat. She grinned as the dragon shot orange flames, and the knight realized that his metal armor was an excellent conductor of heat. Jasper was actually not all that bad, she decided, although he did have far too many delicate experiments in his study. He was, at the very least, intelligent, a fact which far outweighed many of his bad qualities. Although, she thought, frowning, he knew more than she did on certain subjects. She skimmed the paragraph at the top of the page, which was detailing the exploits of particularly foolhardy Muggles and what had been done to get rid of them.
Godric burst into the room, eyes wild with some illogical rage. She couldn't wait until Jasper's wards were done. She sighed. "What?" she snapped.
"Why are there goblins running around this castle?" he demanded, holding up his fist. In it was clenched a terrified Peeves, who had shut his eyes tightly and was muttering something very rude in Gobbledegook.
"There's only one that I've ever seen, and he's not mine, he's Lord Salazar's. Ask him."
"How do you know there's only one?" asked Godric. "What are goblins doing at a school? Isn't that dangerous?"
Rowena rolled her eyes. "Really, Godric, you're afraid of everything! Goblins, armies --"
"Fear of armies is perfectly sensible," Godric interrupted.
"-- carnivorous plants, heights..." continued Rowena. Godric turned bright red at the mention of his long-standing fear of heights, but said nothing. "Is there anything you're not afraid of?"
Godric scratched his head and frowned.
"Never mind," she said. "Put that down," she snapped.
Godric obediently placed Peeves on her desk. "I'm not afraid of ...rocks," he said sullenly.
"Congratulations," she told him. "Now go away."
"And I'm not afraid of you, either," he continued boldly.
"What a pity," said Rowena. "Petrificus totalus," she added, enunciating the spell carefully for his benefit. Godric fell backwards onto the cold stone floor. "Righteous anger makes people do foolish things," she said conversationally to Peeves, who looked as though he might bolt at any minute. "Why don't you give me your notes," she asked, "and I'll let you go before I let him go."
"I can't," said the goblin, backing away from her.
"I won't do anything to them," said Rowena, "I just want to read them."
"No, you don't understand," said Peeves, grabbing his scroll as though it might run away. "I can't let you -- I'm under orders --" He backed up even more and, with a frightened squeak, toppled right off the desk onto the chair.
"I'll take that," she said, forcing his hand open. A tormented wail cut through the quiet classroom, and she looked back at the goblin, who was screaming as though a thousand red-hot pokers were burning him up. Appalled, she Stupefied the goblin, but he continued to whimper in pain, even when he was unconscious.
He must be under a spell, she thought, otherwise he'd do something useful like try to take it back from me. If I had a servant like this, I wouldn't make disobedience so painful. Well, I'll just wipe his memory afterwards. I hope he forgets. She was still troubled, but she quickly scanned through Peeves' notes anyway. After changing several words so that they would give Lord Salazar a slightly more favorable impression, she rolled up the scroll, put it in the goblin's hand (at which point he stopped squealing) and Obliviated him. Then she leaned him against the wall just outside her classroom and woke him up. Leaving the disoriented goblin, she returned to the classroom, waited for a few moments by the door to make sure Peeves had left, then performed the counter curse to the spell on Godric. He sat up, looking quite grumpy.
"I suppose you're going to wipe my memory as well?"
"Nonsense. You haven't got enough memory to wipe. You'd forget everything."
"What was in that scroll?" he demanded.
"None of your business."
"You changed things in it -- it certainly is my business," said Godric stubbornly.
"I don't really see the logic in your argument. Get out of here, Godric, or I'll turn you into dogmeat."
"I didn't know you had a dog," he said thoughtfully. "What sort of dog is it? What's its name?"
She glared at him. Godric, she realized, had the attention span of a two-year-old when it came to most things.
"Oh. That wasn't the point, was it?" he asked.
"His name's Rex. He's a hunting dog and he's not mine," said Rowena for some absurd reason.
Godric looked as though he were starting to question Rowena's sanity. "I'll just be going now," he said, edging towards the door. When he reached it he hurried out, having forgotten completely about goblins and scrolls.
Rowena glared after him. Dogmeat. I should have turned them both into dogmeat.
* * *
"Look, Mother," said Rowena soon afterwards, walking to dinner with her mother, "I think maybe you should... er, be on your way. After all, won't they be missing your guidance at home?"
"Nonsense, dear, no one ever misses me," Lady Aeaeae told her daughter, dismissing her concerns with a wave of the hand. "Oh, this castle is so draughty. Shoddy construction, that's the only explanation. Either that or he's drilled little holes in all the stone to spy on everyone."
"I doubt it," said Rowena, thinking of Peeves. "Anyway, as I was saying --"
"Would you look at that? He still has those little thin arrow-shooting windows! Ha! Just like a Muggle castle! How silly."
"Mother," Rowena said, "as I was saying --"
"Does anyone in this castle even know how to shoot a bow?"
"No, Mother, but I'm sure Basil --"
"Oh, and how is poor Helga holding up under the strain?"
"Admirably," said Rowena, though she didn't tell her mother which particular strain she was talking about.
"It's an awful thing to happen, isn't it? She really does deserve better than that, but the poor girl's always been so honorable. It's a fault I'm glad to say you never did acquire, dear," she told Rowena, who wondered how that could possibly be considered a compliment.
I would very much like to prove her wrong, she said to herself. Why can't I? There must be something horribly wrong with me. "I suppose I haven't," she said. "Anyway, she seems quite happy with Basil. I don't see why she shouldn't be. It's her choice, after all. As I was saying before we --"
"It may be her choice, dear, but I don't think you should let her do such dangerous things."
Her mother, Rowena reflected, evidently had no idea what the word 'choice' meant. She sighed -- this conversation was going nowhere -- and as a last-ditch attempt to get back on topic, said, "Well, before I was so rudely interrupted --"
"I was the one who interrupted you, dear, and it's not very nice to call your own mother 'rude,'" said Lady Aeaeae. "Besides, I'm a guest at the castle. I deserve to be treated with some courtesy."
No you don't, her daughter thought. "Well," said Rowena, "that's what I'm getting at --"
"Oh, here we are," said her mother as they came to the doors of the Great Hall. "I must go and talk to Lord Salazar -- he doesn't agree with me on some things yet."
"I can't think why not," said Rowena to herself as she watched her mother walk away. She felt someone jab her in the shoulder, and turned to see Jasper. "Don't do that," said Rowena.
"Did you tell her about the class?" he hissed.
"No," said Rowena.
"Good. There's just no way it will fit evenly into the school day," Jasper said.
"There isn't? Why not?"
"Time distortions in the castle. The architecture makes it a slightly different time of day everywhere, with differences of up to ten minutes. There's no way the new class would work."
"Is that why I'm late to lunch all the time?" she asked, suddenly understanding. "And I thought it was poor planning on my part. How should we drive her away?"
"I've taken care of that," said Jasper. "I hope you don't mind -- I couldn't ask anyone for permission and now I can't really undo it."
"That's all right," said Rowena. "As long as she leaves this castle alive, I will be quite content." At this, Jasper looked worried, but she ignored it. "By the way, what is your father's horrid little goblin up to? Godric caught him in his common room, went completely mad, and barged into my classroom as though I'd done something wrong."
"Peeves, you mean?" asked Jasper. "There's nothing wrong with Peeves," he said defensively.
"There is plenty wrong with Peeves," said Rowena.
"Peeves is so useful," said Jasper. "He's very good at stealing things, and he can get into any room of the castle without a password."
"You know," said Rowena conversationally, "you're all mad, aren't you? There's something in the water here. I assumed before that I was the only sane one in the castle, but now I'm beginning to question even that."
Jasper pondered this for a moment. "They say that if you question your sanity, you're sane," he said. "But if you've heard that, you're assured that you're sane. That means you're no longer questioning your sanity, which opens up the possibility of madness. So you have to question your sanity again. Which leads to the inevitable assurance of sanity. That makes it possible --"
"Sit down before you hurt yourself," ordered Rowena. "And uncross your eyes."
He nodded, and went to sit down. She sat at the table between Helga and Basil, preferring to silently wonder what Jasper had meant when he said 'I've taken care of that,' rather than take part in the discussion. It seemed to be about Quintapeds again, only this time it was their eating habits.
"They're fighting again," muttered Helga. "How do I make them stop?"
"Feed them to your plants," suggested Rowena. "That's permanent, mind you."
Helga stuck her tongue out.
Rowena overheard Lord Salazar speaking to her mother. "Well, Lady Aeaeae, have you been enjoying your visit to the school so far?"
"I have not," said Lady Aeaeae. Rowena turned in astonishment to watch -- she had to see this. Her mother was speaking with an even more astonished expression on her face. "In fact," she continued, speaking unwillingly, "it is embarrassing how much nicer this castle is than mine. Furthermore, Rowena refuses to cooperate with me on any plans I might have, and you, sir, are an arrogant fool." She stopped speaking, merely staring in amazement. Then a cruel smile crossed her face. "How much did you bribe the workers to keep silent about the design of your castle?"
"I didn't bribe them," said Lord Salazar. "I wiped all their memories completely and sent them into the forest. They were probably eaten by Rodents of Unusual Size." There was an uneasy silence. Then Salazar stood up and leveled an angry glare at the rest of the table. "All right!" he said, looking livid. "Who put the Veritaserum in the soup?"
"I told you I'd taken care of it," said Jasper matter-of-factly. No one else had heard him -- everyone, including the students, had started looking around, asking 'Did you have the soup?' This was further confused by the fact that there were three different kinds of soup and Lord Salazar hadn't indicated which one the potion was in. But Rowena decided right then that it didn't matter if Jasper was mad, or hated werewolves, or, in fact, if he was willing to sell his soul for a bottle of Butterbeer and a cheap Veela.
She grinned at him. "You put Veritaserum in the soup? You are evil."
He blushed. "Actually, it's only in their soup," he said. "And I had to," he added modestly. "The extra class didn't fit into the timetables. I had no other choice!"
Basil, overhearing this, stepped forward. "I should congratulate you," he said earnestly, reaching out to shake Jasper's hand. "Even if you are a smug, biased git, who's wrong about everything," he added, just to make sure he wasn't being too agreeable.
Jasper blinked in shock, then looked both ways to make sure no one was watching before punching Basil in the face. Basil's expression was more of surprise than of pain, and he soon recovered enough to retaliate.
Meanwhile, Salazar was taking full advantage of this situation. "What passwords do you need to get into the Council War Room?" he was asking Lady Aeaeae, who had stuck her fingers into her ears and began to chant 'I can't hear you! I can't hear you!' before he finished the question.
In short, the Great Hall was in total chaos. Godric stood up, conscientiously but hopelessly trying to keep everything from self-destructing.
"What are you doing?" he shouted at Jasper and Basil. "Stop!" He pulled them away from each other, holding each by the front of the robes. "How old are you two, anyway? Four? Most of the students are better behaved than you!" he snapped. "Do you think it'll make you right if you strangle him? Because I know well enough that I am frequently wrong, and I can strangle both of you." Basil cringed; Jasper merely folded his arms and looked haughty -- a very odd sight indeed on someone hanging by the neck of his robes. Annoyed, he dumped the two of them on the floor.
"That's right," cackled Lady Aeaeae. "Send him to bed without dinner!" She had taken her fingers out of her ears in response to Lord Salazar poking her in the arm with a dull knife.
"And you two!" said Godric, turning on the two Council members. "You're supposed to be concerned with matters of government! And for God's sake, put that down!" He grabbed the knife Lord Salazar was now nervously fiddling with and drove it halfway into the wooden table, where it stuck. "You've got more control than kings in this world, from what I've seen, and what do you do? You bicker like children, make life miserable for the rest of us, and fight over petty differences like the spoiled brats you are! You can't be arsed to enforce any of the laws that actually keep people safe, and the ones that don't matter are the ones people always end up getting sent to Drear for disobeying. And then you -- you -- er..." He suddenly looked around at the others, halting his extemporaneous speech on The Decline of Western Civilization. Everyone was staring at him. He gulped. "I -- I'm sorry," he said nervously. "I'm very sorry. I didn't mean any of it." Then he turned and rushed out of the Great Hall.
Lady Aeaeae tried to tug the fork out of the table, but it was stuck. "That was decidedly odd," said Rowena, after she had put Silencing Charms on her mother and Lord Salazar. Both of them were too busy gaping to notice.
"Very," agreed Helga. "I wonder what's wrong with him. He's usually so quiet."
"He hasn't got the intelligence of a dead snail, that's what's wrong with him," said Rowena.
"I think you're being quite harsh," said Helga. "He's obviously got at least the intelligence of a dead snail, if not a live one. After all, you're still worried about him and that Animagus thing, aren't you? And he did have a point."
"If he hasn't got the intelligence of a dead snail yet, trying to become an Animagus will do the trick for certain. I'm not worried at all."
"Well, then, I hope you know what you're doing," said Helga.
"I always know what I'm doing," Rowena insisted.
Helga paused; Rowena supposed it was because what she had said was nearly irrefutable. "I hope you both know what you're doing," she insisted. "Do me a favor. If Runty's as confused as ever and you can tell he'll try to do the spell anyway, give him some help."
"He won't ever get to the spell," said Rowena. "He'll hem and haw and be afraid of the spell, and then he'll give up."
"No he won't," said Helga. "Godric never gives up. He's a bit mad -- you know that, I know that, and probably he knows it as well."
"If you doubt your own sanity, you're sane," said Rowena.
"What?"
"Never mind. I'll see what I can do for him if he gets lost, but I can't guarantee it. If, one day, we've got a white rabbit instead of a Transfiguration teacher, I will not be held responsible."
Chapter 7
Notes:
The phrase "Rodents of Unusual Size," obviously, come from The Princess Bride.