Notes: This story is a remix of Taking the First Step by JosephineStone.
When Irma Pince was twenty she slipped in and out of the magical world as easily as breathing, slipped into Muggle shirts and trousers, into Muggle bars where some girls wore suits and some girls wore pearls. Into relationships which she would not have known how to find in the world of robes and parchment and densely impenetrable silence. She was more amused than troubled, then, by how much being one of those peculiar girls felt like being a witch. All codes and secrets, a little exciting. Naïve, certainly—quite unaware—but never mind.
A Muggle girl she was terribly in love with for years and years took her to the talkies whenever she could. It was the 1930s, and Marlene Dietrich turned a cigarette between her fingers and smirked, wore a tuxedo and kissed a girl; Greta Garbo ruled a country. Katherine Hepburn went into hiding with her short hair side-parted and the collar of her boy's shirt carelessly open. How did those films end? Marriage, presumably, or perhaps death; it doesn't matter. All she remembers is those other moments. Chiaroscuro lighting that threw stripes across Marlene Dietrich's face on the train to Shanghai.
But one must earn a living, and eventually one loses one's hold—not all at once, but by degrees, over decades. The wars sped the process for Irma. That Muggle girl went to the continent, she seems to remember—off in a muggle flying machine to try and save lives or whatever it was they let women do. How it went she isn't sure. Still, she refuses to see it as an ending, even if there are days when Hogwarts castle feels heavy and oppressive around her—even if she was so sure, once, that she would never be one of those stuffy old witches who wouldn't know a wireless from a gramophone. Irma Pince dislikes endings, in any case. She has always mistrusted them, as any queer girl ought: suicides and breakdowns and descents into lonely bitterness. The figure of the spinster which creeps out from the imagination of the male novelist and tries to wrap itself around one—Muggle men and wizards have more in common than wizards would like to believe, of course.
All the same, the years pass terrifyingly fast, even if students are eternally the same. She takes to putting minor but creative hexes on books, self-defence and pleasure in craftsmanship coinciding happily.
There is comfort, too, in the fact that Minerva McGonagall exists, sharp and amusing and not visibly ashamed of anything. Irma learns that although some relationships may not be named, the secret may be an open one. Shared rooms and invitations to Minerva and friend which Poppy and Minerva roll their eyes over together at the breakfast table. Still—at some point, Irma has forgotten how to be bold. How does one begin, she thinks, angry, glancing down the table. It used to be so simple, when one was young. And there's the loathsome spinster again. Soon she will begin to feel compelled to confess her supposed sins in a letter to some irritating man, if one is to believe those novels.
She leaves her coffee unfinished and retreats to the merciful emptiness of the library.
One Friday evening in October, Rolanda Hooch comes to the library and leafs through Quidditch rulebooks distractedly. She is rarely there; their paths rarely coincide at all, in fact, although she has been the Hogwarts flying instructor for several years now.
Irma considers her. Her hair is quite short, a little wavy, and she wears her robes open over a practical shirt and trousers. Quite modern, or quite political. She is not young, not close to it—but who is? There is something compelling about her—handsome, but also beautiful. Marlene Dietrich, Orlando.
She feels rather caught out when Rolanda looks up, abruptly decisive, and says, in a curiously deep voice, "do you do Muggle books?"
The nearest lamp flares, casting her face into a kind of chiaroscuro that throws Irma back fourty years in time. There is a little shock of knowledge which she is sure will stay with her for years to come: there can be an exact moment when you fall. A moment when someone who has been a part of the backdrop of your life is brought suddenly into the foreground, transformed, made brilliant. She has never believed it.
"Of course I don't," she says, too sharp. And, lower, in a little burst of flustered rebellion: "I can order some."
The book Madam Hooch would like to read is Rubyfruit Jungle. It's really quite new. Irma brought a copy only a week ago, on one of her occasional Edinburgh visits, and although it was promising in its way she doesn't think she quite approved of it. But her nerve fails her before she can say either of these things—it feels like public exposure. Instead she fills out an interlibrary loan form for the first time in her life, and if it's modified in a number of creative ways to make sure she gets the damnable book despite policies on the loan of fiction and the fact that her library doesn't exist in any Muggle register—well, that's a detail.
She is still startled, two weeks later, to find that her legally dubious charm-work actually paid off—and startled again by Rolanda's obvious delight. She is quite certain that Rolanda hardly sees her as a person, only as her function, but just in that moment it doesn't particularly matter.
It begins to matter later, of course. She fancies that Minerva notices her irritation—why did she think it was so refreshing to have an observant friend? But nothing is said. One doesn't say things, Irma thinks, sour. Or perhaps Minerva is only refraining to spare poor old Irma's delicate sensibilities. She can't quite decide which would be worse. Of course Minerva has no reason to see her as anything but sheltered—by the 1950s she hardly talked to her Muggle friends any more. To Minerva she's the school librarian—perhaps a source of stories about the antics of her students outside of the classroom.
Rolanda asks after Nightwood, The Well of Loneliness, and then, in fact, Orlando—Irma longs to ask how she's picking titles, what she thinks of them. The last is really very nearly too much to resist. It begins to feel as though she's being dared to speak, although she doubts it's anything so deliberate. She's so terribly drab, after all. Uninteresting. Students will try to provoke anyone—James Potter is already enough of a horror that she has taken the trouble to commit his name to memory, to Minerva's amusement—but she can't imagine why a grown woman would bother with her. Quite probably Rolanda is so careless about her literary preferences because she has no reason to believe that Irma would recognise the books in question, or the broader patterns. But the uncertainty makes her skin crawl.
At the same time she finds she is developing a particular fascination with Rolanda's hands, long-fingered and perfectly manicured, stretching out towards her to accept a book. Why should she be so surprised that Rolanda Hooch has beautiful hands, just because she flies?
The autumn turns out very cold, and in the middle of November the sporadic sleet turns to snow and starts to settle, inches deep. Irma pulls her robes close around her as she hurries along to breakfast and, glancing out of a window facing the grounds, catches sight of Rolanda inspecting school brooms on the lawn. It must be freezing out there, and Irma can see the wind pulling at her clothes. But twenty minutes later Rolanda is in the Great Hall, flushed and smiling, reporting on the prospects for the weekend's Quidditch match. She seems to be in an excellent mood.
She pays attention to Rolanda, to the little circle of people around her, and misses most of the words. Minerva seems very focused on the report; Horace Slughorn is feigning indifference, but Irma would bet that he isn't missing a thing. Tiresome man. One should apparently be loyal to one's house, for reasons that are slightly unclear—but she has never been able to find it in herself to like him. Not that he would care, of course; she isn't anyone, as far as he's concerned. Last Christmas she had to buy him a present, and goodness knows it was a chore for both of them.
The draw for gifts must be coming up again soon, she supposes. Minerva likes to spring it on them unannounced at the end of a meeting so that none of the more misanthropic members of staff have a chance to escape.
The cold weather makes for a busy library. Irma sets up careful little observation spells for all those hard to see corners, and later the same day catches Sirius Black half way up the second Transfiguration bookcase, his foot right on the library's only copy of The Transfiguration of the Self, allegedly chasing a rat. She would like to see the rat that could get away with chewing on her books.
Minerva quite nearly manages to look severe all the way through the story that evening, but the corners of her mouth betray her. Rolanda doesn't try to hide her own amusement, and Irma knows she really is in trouble when she fails to feel annoyed. She is only glad for Rolanda's laugh. And oh, she really is terribly attractive whatever she wears—there must be some particular talent to it, to taking quite ordinary clothes and making them sit so pleasantly unconventionally.
The draw. Of course it can be a terrible bother, wondering who one is meant to buy presents for and who won't mind being left out—certainly there is a point to formalising the whole thing. A simple exchange means that everyone gets something. Yes, she understands the reasoning.
Irma suppresses a sigh and reaches into Minerva's third best hat, currently filled with smooth white pebbles, each neatly marked with a name. They clatter and shift against each other, and she burrows her fingers in between them. It reminds her a little of being a child on Cromer beach—in the cold, waiting for her older sisters to be done poking among the stones for slimy secretive little creatures to turn into potions. But these stones are only cool, and quite clean, no coating of salt to cling to her fingers. Best to get it over with.
She takes one from the very bottom of the hat carefully between her fingers and extracts it, and is interrupted in her silent plea for anyone but Horace by the brief sensation of something shifting—a little flicker of something that might be magic, or might be nothing but her imagination.
Written on her stone, in the usual curling gold letters, is the name Rolanda Hooch.
"How nice," says Minerva, blandly. "Well then, Filius, if you would?"
So Minerva really did know, Irma thinks, pushing her hands deeper into the pockets of her overcoat—like someone's aunt, whispy hair escaping from its pins to hang around her face, half-lost in the bulk of Muggle winter clothes. The first Saturday in December and she has been walking up and down icy Edinburgh streets, Muggle and Magical, for hours already. She didn't go out with any particular plan, in fact, but the more she stares at window displays and worries at all her options the more convinced she becomes that something must be done. If she chooses to be safe and dull today then she will be stuck that way forever—an irrational idea, of course. One can always change. But that knowledge is overridden by emotional conviction. She must declare herself. Now or never.
Why is one afraid, anyway? What is one afraid of? Oh, yes—society—expectations—all of those things. But what's the point?
She thinks of Minerva and Poppy, of Albus Dumbledore—of open secrets and the indulgent acceptance of the rest of the staff. Rolanda's secretive smile in the library which is never for her, but which she is allowed to see.
Once upon a time Marlene Dietrich wore a tuxedo and kissed a woman. Once upon a time, Irma pince walked a girl home from the pictures to lodgings crammed with too-large furniture and more papers than one would imagine a person's life could really contain—and certainly they did more than kiss. Certainly she would like to kiss Rolanda—to begin with. She would like Rolanda to smirk and curl the fingers of one of those beautiful hands against the nape of her neck and bend to kiss her—perfect and masculine and feminine and entirely herself.
Certainly not a message that will be sent by Quidditch gloves, anyway, she thinks wryly—turns away from the Wizard's Wynd and hurries back down towards the Royal Mile, although she doesn't yet know what she's looking for. For a declaration—a secret phrase—some sort of opportunity. Though she is too cold the air is very clear, the sky a brilliant deep blue; there is the no real warmth in the sunlight but she welcomes it against her face anyway as she scurries along the pavement. The hum of half-incomprehensible Muggle conversation all around her and, more distant, the drone of automobiles on some other road. Just here, now, in this moment, she is quite in love with all of it—with the city, with the Muggles, with the bite of the air in her lungs when she breathes in—with all the possibilities that exist.
It is this peculiarly affectionate impulse that drives her into the next shop she passes, and that sees her parting with several times the amount of money she had planned to spend—she will have to give up on those new boots she had been considering after all. But why not? A little spellwork will patch her old ones well enough—she can make them last another six months if she really must.
The pleasantly reckless feeling of unplanned expenditure carries her all the way home, packet tucked carefully under her arm.
One has time for second and third thoughts. Irma avoids everyone, and feels watched. She perfects a little spell that squirts ink at anyone who tries to write in a library book, and begins with the Defence section—oh, yes, she has her suspicious about Severus Snape's proclivities. There are things she has been meaning to read, clothes she has been meaning to adjust—who has time to sit in the staff room and pretend that one really does want another cup of tea?
At meals she sneaks furtive glances at Rolanda, assessing.
The staff party is traditionally on the last day of term, before people begin to drift away to see their friends or families and the castle settles into its peaceful Christmas routine. Mince pies and mulled wine and gifts. Irma places her packet on the modest pile near the fireplace at lunch time, and bans herself from the room for the rest of the afternoon so that she cannot be tempted to take it back. She can hardly remember what it was she wanted to prove, or to who-she is only a foolish, rather unsympathetic woman who has spent too much money on a present for a colleague she cannot even claim any particular friendship with.
In the happily chattering crowd in the staff room she feels more of a vulture than ever, hunches uneasily in on herself in her chair and waits for the sword to fall. They work their way around the circle of staff. Albus Dumbledore opens a large packet of bubble bath from Tailor, the Muggle Studies professor. On Irma's left, Minerva is meticulous in opening a tiny ball of a present which keeps on unfolding and unfolding until she is holding ten pairs of thick woollen socks; Albus smiles at her. What does he say? One can never have too many, after all. Something of the sort. He has given socks to a different member of staff every year since Irma took her post here, hasn't he? She completely misses what Minerva says in reply. Everyone laughs. Why didn't she pick something ordinary and dull and unobtrusive? Rolanda has hardly given her any reason to think—that is—why on earth would anyone want—but her thoughts are broken off by a present being pressed into her hands. A little reading lamp that hovers over the right part of the page, from Filius Flitwick. Presumably she thanks him properly enough—she thinks she does—he smiles and nods and the people sitting closest peer admiringly and then the focus moves away, and for a moment she thinks she is safe, but of course the person to her right is Rolanda.
Irma's mouth is very dry. She watches Rolanda's hands undoing the ribbon, beautiful, precise. Rolanda folds the paper back carefully, as though she might save it, although it must only be habit; pauses before lifting the lid of the box inside. Perhaps she is considering it critically, or glancing around at Irma-perhaps she is momentarily distracted by something someone else has said. Irma cannot seem to look away from her hands. She is going to panic, she thinks, distantly-she can feel it in her chest, an icy little bubble that's expanding fast, pressing against her ribcage.
Rolanda opens the box, but she doesn't say a word. Pearls, a neat string of them lying against dark blue velvet. Irma thought it should be something beautiful, something to match beautiful, handsome Rolanda. But it's all wrong, it's all wrong, she's missed her mark—she is only strange and dull and old-fashioned, she shouldn't have tried. She doesn't mean to move, but she can't stop herself, the reflex to try and take it back is too strong. But Rolanda lifts the box out of her reach.
"I love them," Rolanda says, and Irma dares to look up. "Thank you."
Beyond Rolanda, Flitwick is already being handed his parcel, some great lumpy thing in lime green paper.
"You surprised me," Rolanda says, low and confidential, turned towards Irma in her seat. "That's all."
She is smiling. She is smiling—cocky and devastating. Right at Irma. For Irma. She is not Marlene Dietrich, not film-star flawless, not young. But she is everything that Marlene Dietrich ever meant. All that hope, just in that moment.
Irma flushes—actually flushes, right there in front of all her colleagues. She can't help it.
Something sharpens in Rolanda's expression, decisive, just like that first time in the library, that one moment when Irma fell.
"Why don't you give me somewhere to wear these to?" she says, and Irma feels suddenly light, so light she could float away, just as though someone had flicked their wand at her. Wingardium leviosa. A perfect, terrifying moment.
[end]