"Professor Mills! Professor Mills!" The girl staggers to a halt at her desk, tattered robes gathered in her arms as she pants out Regina's name again.
Ordinarily, it's a bold student indeed- even one of her own- who would dare invade Regina's Transfiguration classroom during class time. She's unforgiving of tardiness and infuriated by interruptions, and Professor Mills has an icy temper that's legendary within the halls of Hogwarts. No one dares cross her, not even most of the other professors.
But, of course, this is no ordinary time. It's four o'clock on a Wednesday, and the Slytherin fifth-years have Defense Against the Dark Arts down the hall. "What has she done now, Dorothy?"
"A chimaera! She brought a fucking chimaera into the classroom!" There's a titter from one of the students present, and Regina sweeps around to fix the Hufflepuff in question with an icy glare. He falls silent, peering very determinedly at the candle in front of him instead.
"Very well." She addresses her class. "I want to see candlesticks on every desk when I return."
It will be, as always, far too long.
Professor Swan's class is in its ordinary state today- which is, naturally, a madhouse. There are three students huddled together on her desk, shrieking in high-pitched voices, and a girl using her wand to conjure up a rope that pulls her to the ceiling and out of the line of fire. The chimaera isn't a proper one (because nothing about Professor Swan or her class is ever proper)- it's half its natural size, thankfully, but it also appears to be breathing fire from its lion-shaped mouth and setting books and desks on fire.
And in the center of the pandemonium it's created is Emma Swan, her robes half-burned off (baring quite a bit of leg, actually, and Regina's eyes run over that work of magic swiftly before she turns back to the chimaera) and her wand out, bellowing curses at the creature at the top of her lungs. The bolder students have formed a ring around the chimaera and are doing the same, their faces flushed with the sort of adrenaline that only absolute terror can bring. "It's okay, Regina, we got this!" Professor Swan calls out, shooting a stunning spell at the chimaera. It snuffles a little, amused. "C'mon, kids, let's show your Head of House how it's done."
The worst part is, they're actually successful once Regina arrives, her quelling gaze enough to silence the boys on the desk and the other panicking students and return them to the task at hand. The chimaera is mostly immobilized within minutes and one of the brighter students uses a charm to transform its fire into water. "Very good. Wish I'd thought of that," Emma says, only half-joking from the sheepishness in her eyes. "Anyone else have any ideas?"
The chimaera chooses that moment to rear up and roar, sending a spray of hot water directly toward the doorway and soaking Regina from head to toe. Emma snorts in amusement.
Purely out of instinct, Regina whips out her wand and turns the beast into a rabbit. Purely out of spite, she shifts back a hair to turn Emma into its furry mate.
Professors White and Charming are both looking rather irritated at dinner, and Regina notes with some delight that the chair beside Charming's usually occupied by their supremely infuriating daughter remains unoccupied. A golden-furred rabbit is seated on White's lap, happily munching on celery and tossing Regina baleful glares between bites.
She smirks back. It's taken nearly three years of practice, but she's finally managed to perfectly match fur to Emma's hair color, and the result is quite fetching. Her eyes wander to the Gryffindor table, where Henry is giving her the exact same look as the bunny in White's arms. He'd prefer a fuzzy pet to his favorite professor, right? (Last time she'd transfigured Emma into a hippogriff, and he'd nearly been won over until he'd discovered that his mother would rather deal with Professor Swan than his broken neck.)
Please, he mouths, and with a sigh, she twitches her wand again and a full-sized Emma is suddenly sitting on her mother's lap, nearly overturning the table when she flails outward. "Professor Swan, do control yourself," Regina drawls, and that baleful glare is so much closer to smoldering on the human version.
It would be easier if Emma wasn't so damn popular. She'd only gotten the Defense job because of her parents- it hadn't been too long since she'd been slouching in the back seat of Regina's NEWT classes, performing subpar work out of pure laziness rather than any lack of potential, and teachers who've barely hit thirty yet are rare enough- Regina had been hired before her time, of course, but she'd also been extraordinarily talented.
No, Emma Swan is here out of sheer nepotism, while Regina had been hired in spite of her parents. And somehow, Emma is still the most beloved teacher in the school, is famous for upping the overall Hogwarts Defense scores by thirty percent, and still manages to find the time to insinuate herself into Regina's thoughts, every fucking day.
Fucking Emma Swan.
Emma Swan, who gives the rabbit chimaera to her mother and tells her it's a gift from Regina. And now she's left with the nauseating image of White bringing her new bunny familiar to meals and cooing lullabies to it as Emma smirks at her over her mother's shoulder.
"Shame rabbits are so stringy when roasted," she mutters to her one evening as they leave the Great Hall, Emma bumping her shoulder companionably and ignoring her icy glares in response.
Emma furrows her brow, squinting at her face. "You wouldn't dare."
Regina hums to herself. "I wonder if Granny has any recipes."
"Oh, like hell."
She makes it halfway to the groundskeeper's cottage, Emma hot on her heels, before the other woman tugs her toward the Whomping Willow instead and she forgets her plans for rabbit stew.
Emma Swan, who's still enough of a child that Regina finds her soaring around the Quidditch field on Henry's broomstick one afternoon during classes, darting from goal to goal as she searches for the Snitch she'd undoubtedly misplaced. "Get up here!" she shouts, and Regina rolls her eyes and snatches up the broom she'd bought for Henry the year before the new model had come out.
"You didn't play Quidditch in school, right?" Emma asks breathlessly, grabbing her hand to keep them at the same speed and height.
"No," Regina says sourly. "Mother thought it would distract from my studies." Her mother had also been too busy attempting to train her and some of her other favorite students into dark wizards to ever pay much attention to her daughter's longing gazes at the Quidditch field. Daniel had been a Ravenclaw Chaser, and she'd sneak in rides after sunset until her mother had discovered…well. That's over and done with now.
"I thought so." Emma grins. "I was a Beater."
Emma Swan, hitting balls with blunt objects for fun for five years. "Of course you were."
Emma Swan, who manages to intrude on every single trip to Hogsmeade with her son. To her son's delight. "Professor Swan, I have precious little time with Henry since your house stole him away-"
"We didn't steal him, the Sorting Hat thought he belonged in Gryffindor." Emma musses Henry's hair, their pale cheeks flushed into a matching set by the frigid wind; and Regina tries not to think of that day thirteen years ago during her first year teaching, when she'd found a seventeen-year-old Emma Swan curled up in the back of her classroom one night, without support and in desperate need of an adult's intervention.
Henry snickers. "Mom says I'm going to grow up to be a judgmental, bullheaded fool if I'm not careful about the other Gryffindors' influence."
"Listen to your mother," Emma says, tugging at the edge of Regina's scarf and earning a cold glower in response. "She spends much too much time with Gryffindors, and look at her now."
Regina doesn't deign her with a response to that until Henry's run off to find his friends and they're left alone.
Emma Swan, who bursts into her office late one night to demand, "You deducted thirty points from Gryffindor for no reason at all!"
She dips her quill into the inkpot, resigned to an end to her correspondence for the night. "Tardiness is never tolerated, Professor Swan."
"From your son! For being late to a family dinner!"
"And if I made exceptions for him, that would be unacceptable," she says coolly, watching with (hungry) eyes as Emma rocks back and forth on her heels, her own eyes flashing with what will undoubtedly lead to a rash decision.
"Fine! Fifty points from Slytherin! For…tardiness! Lots of tardiness. No one ever shows up on time to my class!"
Regina's eyes narrow. "You don't show up on time for your class."
Emma stalks forward, challenging, her fingers curling around Regina's robe where it rests on her shoulders. "Prove it."
Headmaster Gold pauses after breakfast at the hourglasses marking the house points and frowns. This can't be right. The Gryffindor and Slytherin hourglasses are both completely devoid of the jewels that had filled them the day before while the other houses' remain intact, untouched by whatever magical interference had affected the points.
Very peculiar.
Or perhaps not peculiar at all, when he turns and glances down the hall to see two very unpunctual teachers walking on shaky legs down toward their classrooms, their fingers brushing against each other's as they stumble forward. The usually immaculate Professor Mills is running her free fingers through her rumpled hair, muttering charms under her breath to settle it down, and Professor Swan has made no similar effort but is grinning all the same, twining her hand with Professor Mills's with every step they take.
"Hey, Rumple," she offers brightly, and is that a smile creeping across his Transfiguration teacher's lips at the other woman's careless greeting?
He nods cordially to both, remarkably unsurprised, and restores the hourglasses back to the state they'd been in the night before with a wave of his wand.