Even with Madame Glossy's Mold Extractor applied vigorously over the summer break, the dungeons always made Celestina sneeze. Just the other day, she found a note, flung from a student's desk with a crude drawing of her floating down a river of what looked like green greasy snot. Underneath, it read Professor McAllergen. The owl sent home to Colin Finnisten's did mention that it was a clever association for a second year, as her name was Professor McCallagan, and the movement of her flailing arms in the snot was equally impressive. If only he would focus that energy on his potions assignments.
She guessed it was normal for new professors to have some level of hazing from the students. Other than a few Ravenclaws who were quick to correct her in the absence of their last professor, the students of Hogwarts were sweet to her. Anyway, she was half way through her first year as the new Potions Professor and no one had been set on fire or covered in boils.
"A-choo!" This time the force of her sneeze knocked over a bowl of crushed Chizpurfle Carapace. This reminded her of another element she hated abut the dungeons. It was impossible to get anything out of the cracks in the stone floor. Celestina grimaced down at the viridescent powder that seeped into the damp floors. Like an unclean cauldron, each crack was a reaction waiting to happen.
While she dreaded the idea, it indeed seemed time to head to the hospital wing. Allergies in mid-winter were unlikely, even with the muggy character of her classroom. Unless Headmistress McGonegall agreed to move potions to different floor, Celestina would have to find a solution to her rioting nose.
It was just that Madam Longbottom really truly, and most definitely seemed to hate her. Celestina could not imagine a specific moment where this contempt would have sparked, as she had only interacted with Hannah Longbottom during the Teacher's Banquet and in the hallways. However, it was as if the Matron of Hogwarts neck grew longer in the throat whenever Celestina was in the room, giving Hannah Longbottom a tiny window of view from the bridge of her nose, all the way down to anyplace Celestina happened to be standing.
Truthfully, Celestina did have some small idea as to why Hannah could possibly hate her. As she passed underneath the stone trellises leading the way to the hospital wing, as the bright blue glow of snow reflected into the passage, Celestina moved her lips along to a practiced response, "Of course not. We just have to work together often. Our subjects naturally overlap."
A few students whipped around the corner, robes flicking behind them, then stopped just short of colliding with her.
"You better be careful! Peeves is known to cover the halls in ice this time of year." The students looked at her, angsty and miffed at being reprimanded, then sulked away. This new job had a way of reminding her daily what a monster she was in her fifth year, and her sixth. Well, then there was her seventh. She thought briefly to send an owl to her mother later.
As she entered the Hospital Wing, the smell inside cleared her nostrils almost completely. It was strong and barely hidden. Madam Longbottom was sitting at her large wooden desk, turned away from the door. She was flicking her wand to guide clean gauze into a jug of antidote that Celestina had brewed and sent up earlier in the year.
"Are ye bleedin'" Hannah's voice was without inflection and losing some of it's consonants.
"No, just a sneeze actually, but it doesn't seem to want to go, and I…" Celestina trailed off as Hannah slowly turned around, placing her wand in the desk drawer.
"Professor McCallagan." The coldness Celestina had expected was there, possibly harsher that usual.
"I believe I'm allergic to something in the dungeons." She figured being direct was best. Hannah wasn't sparing any courtesy.
"Inconvenient." Hannah stood up slowly, in no hurry for her patient, and walked to a giant wooden cupboard with hundreds of small square drawers. The labels were worn down to blank tawny slips of paper.
Hannah pulled at a few knobs, glanced inside, huffed, then slammed them closed. "Bloody Pompfrey." She murmured, then opened one over her head, pulling the drawer all the way out and cradling it to look inside. It was empty. "I'll need Puffapod nectar, which will do ya, but I'm plum out at the moment."
"I suppose I won't need it until after the winter break." Celestina wiped her nose with her lavender handkerchief. She realized she'd been holding it since her grand sneeze at her lab table, and shoved it back in the pocket of her teacher's robes.
"Fine, then." Hannah said. She returned to her desk and pulled out her wand. She held it still, as if to say she couldn't go on working until her untreated patient left. Which Celestina promptly did.
In the hallway, Celestina's heart was pounding and she didn't notice at first, but she realized must have been holding her breath as well. Hannah had behaved the same, if a little more gruff, but not out of the ordinary. Yet, the buzz of anxiety between them was stronger today.
Against her better judgement and the freezing cold outside, Celestina hurried out through the entrance hall and out on to the grounds. The path to the greenhouse was a bit icy, so she stepped lightly in the whipping wind that lifted the snow against her. Once the iron filagreed glass door to Greenhouse Four was shut, she shook off her robes, leaving little white hills at her feet.
"Professor McCallagan, you're a sun flare in this storm. Are you alright?" Arron's three hooves tapped on the wooden planked floor as he turned to look at her. The centaur's huge form didn't entirely fit in the crowded greenhouse, but he made due by crouching and pushing aside the low hanging vines as he walked towards her. Most of his kind was distant and mistrusting of wizards, but not Arron, half-raised on the grounds by Hagrid after being abandoned by the colony for having a malformed leg. His rearing granted him the habit of moving very close in conversation, glaring precisely with his large blue eyes.
Arron did exactly that, trotting to inches away from Celestina's face, sweet enough to accompany his stare with a grin.
"Ah, yes. The fear is mutual. And anyway not all that important to the stars." Arron looked behind him to the man standing in a semi circle of pots sprouting Fluxweed. Celestina did not follow his line of sight, not wanting to be read any further.
"Thank you for the mushrooms, Professor. Hagrid does love them in his game pies." Arron voiced behind him, then exited gracefully.
"Normally, I canna catch much he's sayin, but you do look flustered, Cellie. You alright?"
"Neville, I'm almost positive she knows."
"Wha?" Neville Longbottom put down the leather bound notebook he was noting the sprouts in.
"I went to see her about all the sneezing and, my goodness those dungeons are retched, you know," Neville nodded and moved closer, intent on listening to her, "I just thought she could help. But she… I mean she didn't say anything, but I just… I really think she knows."
Neville took her hands to calm her, then pulled them away, looking at the state of them, covered in soil and ink. "Sorry," he mumbled then walked to dip them in a basin.
Celestina laughed nervously, "It's alright. You know I don't mind. And I'm sorry to be thinking this way it's just…"
He looked up and flicked water from his long fingertips. As he walked back over, she noticed again as she had hundreds of times since meeting at that Fall, how tall he was. Like a giant to a house elf, she thought.
"I dinna want to say so, but I think you're right." He slumped at the admission, "I never thought this would've happened."
"Me neither. And I feel wrong not saying anything." She put a hand on the thick knitted sweater he wore, part for comfort and because she couldn't help it.
"I just feel like a fool. All my friends, they've all got marriages that work, ya know? Everyone of us, paired up and after what we'd been through you'd think that it was meant for. I just look at Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, and I'm-"
"Maybe you should stop comparing yourself to them. That was decades ago. You're not Harry Potter. She's short and a bit of a gripe, if you ask me."
Neville pinched up, not happy with her response, "'Arry is a hero and my best mate."
Celestina crossed her arms, "You are also a hero, Neville, who went through the same bout as the rest of them, so there's nothing to live up to. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about is it?" She sighed, turning to a vine that was reaching slowly to grab a lock from her bun and batting it away. "Not every marriage has to work out. We're English wizards, we invented divorce before that Muggle king got to it."
"Divorce?" This time Neville turned away from her completely.
"I only said it, because you won't." She reached out again for him, thinking about running her hands under his arms and across the front of him, but stopped. That could get them in more trouble than they needed right now. She felt the distance building between them because of what he refused to admit.
"That was why she applied for the Matron job, to avoid this. I thought that being closer would bring us back together." He was speaking to the greenery more than to her.
"Has it?" She said, truly wondering if they shared the moments she agonized over in her own quarters. Nights when she knew they had been getting along. Nights where it seemed like Neville would give it another go to be the good man he was. He always came back to her, though. Rescinding on his promises to be honorable in the face of what his marriage to Hannah actually was.
"No. All it's done is show how far away Hogwarts is from the Leaky Cauldron." He sat on a small wood stool, warped from age, his legs bent almost up to his ears. At least he was facing her now.
"Good thing she brought the Cauldron's fire whiskey with her." Celestina grumbled, remembering the pungent smell of it in the hospital wing.
Neville shot a look up at her, "No. She isn't."
Before Celestina could attest to his worries, the iron door slowly opened yet again. A small head popped in with a poof of unwashed curly hair.
"Professor Longbottom? Oh! Professor McCallagan, um um, I was supposed ta get sumthing for Madam Longbottom, she said ah… Puff Somthing. Oh no I forgot, I'm sorry, I can run back!"
"Come in. It's too cold out for you to be running around the grounds alone." Celestina turned to Neville, "It's for Puffapod nectar. For me, I'm guessing."
Neville jumped up and looped to the back of the greenhouse, behind a wall of moving grasping bushes.
Celestina looked down at the boy. First year, barely up to the Herbology Professor's hip. The thought of his tousled hair adjacent Professor Longbottom's pockets, reminded her of something.
"Collin, right?" The nervous boy nodded as she continued, "You've never been in Greenhouse Four, right? Too dangerous for first years?" He nodded again, putting his hands in his pocket, as if to seem smaller.
She crouched down, elbows on her knees to speak to him, "Sneak over to that small tree and see if you can get a branch of it." He looked at where she pointed, eyes wide and uncertain.
"It's a bowtruckle tree. They make loyal pets if you're sweet to them, and come in handy as well." Timidly, he walked over, glancing back. She kept an eye out for the wayward Herbology Professor to return. Sure enough, Colin had snapped off a new friend and shoved it into his robe in an instant and returned to her. "If anyone asks, you found it in your trunk in the dorms, ok? I'll cover for you." He nodded, a smile widened on his tiny face.
Celestina stood up quickly as the vine wall rustled with Neville's return. He was carrying a large pot with a spotted egg shaped plant in the center.
"I'm sure Colin could have easily carried that back through the snow, then." She raised an eyebrow to Neville. "It's fine I'll go with him." The pot floated out of Neville's hands towards her and she grabbed the boys hand.
"Cellie… uh, Professor McCallagan. When should we-"
"I just need a new jar of crushed Chizpurfle Carapace. Maybe send a 7th year with it." She finished for him.
"Right." He said, walking over to hold the door open for them. Had there been a way to read his thoughts, she would've tried. But she was never very good at Legilimency.