Armando Dippet - 1952

Disclaimer: I own nothing save this plot bunny which stubbornly insisted on burrowing into my head.

Rating: T just to be on the safe side.

Headmaster Armando Dippet of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was very, very worried. He was more worried than he had been when the Riddle boy had left school, cold fury practically pouring out of his ears, more worried than when the Basilisk had been running rampant, closure of the school an imminent threat, more worried than when he had found out that Albus Dumbledore, a first class student and now a prefect, was running an underground mafia of chocolates, sweets, Muggle movies and a few of the tamer illegal animals (that demiguise was still to be caught and there had been a suspicious flying shape around the castle recently). As you can perhaps see, Armando Dippet worried a lot but he had never been quite more worried in his life. Miss McGonagall had fainted.

Yes, you heard. Minerva McGonagall, whose middle names included Unstoppable, Iron-Spined and Shatterproof, had fainted dead away right in the middle of her favourite subject, Transfiguration. If it hadn't been for quick work on the part of Miss Hooch and Master Dumbledore, she might well have injured herself badly.

As it was, the school had watched in awe as the Honourable Miss Hardcore herself was levitated down to the Hospital Wing to have herself revived. Now Armando was fiddling back and forth with sheaves of paper, waiting for her to arrive. Usually even Armando would not have been fussed if it was another student. Some girls fainted a lot, almost every week: for attention, a chance to give their Prince Charming a chance to catch them or from dieting to the point of starvation. But Minerva did not need to play-act for attention, didn't care about or believe in Prince Charming and was in good physical condition and she knew it.

"There is one possible solution," Madam Foxglove, the school matron had said, her tone grim, "and that is not a pleasant one."

"Surely not!" Armando had exclaimed, shocked beyond belief. "Not Miss McGonagall."

He repeated that over and over to himself, Not Miss McGonagall, Not Miss McGonagall, Not Miss McGonagall.

A crisp, "Excuse me," that bellied her age and recent episode broke him from his trance. Minerva was standing in the doorway to his office looking at him with what appeared to be concern.

"Ah, yes. Come in!" said Armando, remembering himself finally and gesturing for her to pick one of the many chairs that were scattered towards the extremities of his room. He watched her as she dragged the nearest one (hard, polished oak) opposite him and sat down, crossing her legs elegantly and clasping her hands over her upper knee. She didn't look any different, her expression placid and concentrated, her long black hair in its usual black braid. A little pale, perhaps, but then she had always had a pale complexion. She appeared to be as slim as she had ever been, though the looseness of her robes might be hiding something.

"Headmaster Dippet, are you quite well?" Miss McGonagall asked. She was definitely looking at him with concern now.

"Wait, what?" Armando asked, startling himself out of his inner ponderings.

Minerva pursed her lips together the way she did when she was forced to explain an overly simple fact to a fellow student for the second time over. "You seem a little preoccupied, Headmaster. I was knocking at your door for a good five minutes before I let myself in and you've done nothing but stare at me for the past five. I don't have anything on my face do I?"

She said that last line with a trace of humour, smiling a little as she did so. And Armando, who had been studying her face carefully for any trace of ... anything ... saw it. Even to the well-trained eye it is nothing but the slightest shift in the skin. Like there is a haze of colour over it. He had seen it before. On boys trying to cover cuts and bruises on their faces after fighting each other (or something rather more feral). Girls trying to get rid of the red marks on their necks before teachers saw. Glamour charms.

So, smiling as pleasantly as he could, Armando paused, as though to rifle through his now thoroughly disarrayed papers (watched by the increasingly amused eyes of Minerva McGonagall) and softly whispered the anti-glamour charm. It would take a few minutes to take effect properly and during those few minutes he would have to keep up some semblance of a proper conversation.

"I was merely worried, Miss McGonagall. In all the six years that you have lived here, you have not fainted once that I know of, least of all in your favourite class. I was wondering if anything was wrong."

Minerva smiled charmingly and said, "I assure you, Headmaster, that I am perfectly healthy."

Armando nodded. "Of course. That's what perfectly healthy people do. Collapse in their favourite class." Then another thought occured to him as he looked at her face, the glamour now fading away. "Is the workload catching up on you, Miss McGonagall? I know that it is just the year before NEWTs but there is no reason to exhaust yourself." He was clutching at straws here and he knew it. Minerva could drum up an essay on just about any subject in the universe (aside from maybe Divination) in about twenty minutes flat.

Minerva smiled once more. "I agree, Headmaster, the workload has increased this year. But I am perfectly capable of dealing with it and I can assure you that I am nowhere near overworked. Poppy and Albus wouldn't let me. And of course there's Quidditch, of course."

At that Armando could not help but smile. Ah, yes. Quidditch. The girl would play the game in a cyclone and when Gryffindor's main players had been out of action in her fourth year, Minerva's cry of, "You can't cancel Quidditch!" had inspired Gryffindor to rustle up some extras and, despite the odds enormously against them (in both weather and skill) they had triumphed. And yet she had insisted on maintaining her position as Chaser in the team instead of being elected as Captain, as the greater populace of her House would have wanted.

A half-imagined scuffling noise from behind his door shook Armando out of musings of his student's excellence and focused on the task at hand, ignoring the half-formed sounds behind the thick wood. "Then what, Miss McGonagall, is the cause of this sudden episode?" There were definite noises coming from the other side of his door and they were beginning to annoy him.

"You make it sound like I had a fit, Headmaster." Then, seeing that he was serious, she cleared her throat and said, "I must have eaten something that disagreed with me last night, sir."

Armando raised an eyebrow. "And I suppose this mystery parasite also sucked the sleep out of you, made you cry spontaneously," - there was a bang on his door, no doubt one of the more rambunctious House Elves playing a trick on him and he frowned slightly - "(I'm thinking onions personally), bit your nails and," - he glanced down at the sheet the matron had given him - "resulted in you being sick on Tuesday last week halfway through Quidditch practice and developing a craving for peaches and ... ginger newts?"

"They're biscuits," Minerva offered, speaking very softly now.

Armando, resisting the urge to ask more after these mystery biscuits, focused himself. Now that Minerva's face was devoid of glamour he could clearly see. Her eyes were slightly red and had black smudges underneath them. She was indeed paler than usual and her hands, the knuckles now going white as they gripped her knee more tightly, had the nails bitten right down to the beds. He'd seen that picture before, he thought with a sinking heart. Ignoring the rattling on his door, he pushed on.

"Is there anything you want to tell me, Miss McGonagall?"

For a few moments Minerva stared at the floor, looking utterly defeated. Then she raised her head, tossing her loose braid of black hair out of the way and straightened her back, staring him straight in the eye. "Headmaster, I'm pregnant. Congratulations on being the first to know."

Thud!

"Quiet, I'm having a meeting!" Armando yelled at the door before turning back to Minerva. "You realise what a problem this is. Your parents ... the other students ... it is hardly good for your reputation or the school's."

"I know," said Minerva, not even blinking. It was clear that she had thought this through in detail. No doubt the result of the red eyes and the gaunt, sleepless look.

"I have to ask," said Armando, Ravenclaw curiosity getting the better of him, "who is the father?"

For a moment Minerva seemed knocked off balance. But just for a moment. "I'll tell you, but only if you promise not to make him suffer for it." Armando nodded, ignoring the obvious scuffling sounds going on outside. "Very well, it's Septimus Weas -"

"Me!"

The door to Armando's office had finally burst open and a tall, lean boy with a shock of auburn hair had landed on his front on the floor. Slowly he raised his head to reveal a good-natured, slightly childish face with twinkling, piercing blue eyes that had often reminded Armando of a some mischievous little puck or forest fairy. "It was my fault," said Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore with the same tone of voice that he had used to proclaim his guilt for accidentally letting loose a hippogriff when he was in first year.

"Albus!" exclaimed Minerva, her voice an interesting blend of anger, concern and relief. She leapt to her feet and ran to his side to pull him up. Then, turning to the doorway. "Rolanda, you were supposed to hold him!"

"I tried!" exclaimed her best friend's voice, as the shorter witch came into the room, her face mottled with bruises and one tooth looking suspiciously crooked. But that wasn't nearly the worst problem. "He jinxed me!" she exclaimed, sounding like a six-year-old. And then, in her threatening, booming, Quidditch commentator voice, "I demand a duel!"

But everyone, Armando included, was too busy staring at her with open mouths. For Rolanda's usual, soap-blue eyes were gone, replaced, with sharp, hawk-like yellow ones.

"Albus, what did you do?" Minerva gasped, eyes wide with horror.

"I don't know!" exclaimed Albus, throwing his hands in the air in a display of theatrical despair. "I jabbed my wand in her face and said something!"

"Well what were you trying to do?" Minerva snapped.

"I ... I was trying to turn her into a bird I think. Something harmless ... Yes, a robin!"

"Robin's aren't harmless," Rolanda snapped. "Once one attacked my family dog when she was a puppy."

"I'm sure your puppy did something to deserve it," grumbled Albus.

Yellow eyes boiling with rage, Rolanda leapt forward and gave Albus a sharp crack on the nose that sent him reeling. "Hey!" shouted, Minerva, snatching her friend back. "You're making it worse!"

Albus's long nose, which had been knocked rather crooked by his rather harsh landing on the floor had now been set at an even more obscure angle after making contact with Rolanda's prolific boxing talent. Now he stood in the middle of the Headmaster's office with both hands over his thoroughly bloody nose and said, "Ow."

Suddenly remembering his position in the school, Armando leapt out of his trance and said, "Master Dumbledore, Miss Hooch and Miss McGonagall, please seat yourselves."

"Hey!" exclaimed Rolanda. "What d'you want me for? I've been very careful not to get pregnant!"

"Ro," Minerva groaned, helping Albus to his seat and handing him a handkerchief to deal with his bleeding nose.

"I'll sit," said Rolanda meekly, plonking herself with great obnoxiousness and little elegance into the biggest chair she could find.

"Show-off," Albus muttered into Minerva's handkerchief.

"Says the boy who tried to turn me into a robin!" shot back Rolanda.

"Children, please!"

All three turned to face Armando who sighed, rubbed his hand down his faced and looked at them again before saying, "Let me get this straight, Miss McGonagall. You're pregnant because of ... him?"

"Him has a name," said Minerva tartly.

"Sssh, Minnie," said Albus. "If the old man wants to be in denial let him be in denial. If he doesn't say my name then some part of his brain will still be able to think that it isn't true." Clearly the loss of blood to the nose was impairing the filter on Albus's mouth; Armando decided to make this as quick as possible so all three could get down to the Hospital Wing.

"Just answer the question, Miss McGonagall."

"Yes," said Minerva, the defiance still in her tone.

Armando sighed. "So then why did you try to pawn it off on poor old Weasley?"

"Yes!" exclaimed Albus, now sounding slightly affronted. "Why does he get credit for my good work?"

Rolanda snorted.

"Because," said Minerva, ignoring her boyfriend's outburst, "I made you, Headmaster, promise not to make trouble for the boy and even if it did get out, the Weasleys have done a great deal worse things throughout their family history and he wouldn't give me away."

"And," said Rolanda, with grim satisfaction, "since they both have red hair, what can go wrong?"

"Shut up!" Minerva snapped. Then, to Armando, "Are we done yet?"

"Note quite," said Armando, leaning closer. "What are you going to do now, Minerva?"

The fact that he had used her first name seemed to drive the question deeper. Minerva was silent, pondering. Then, once more, she raised her head and stared at him defiantly. "I'm going to tell my parents that I'm pregnant and they're going to have to deal with it. I'm going to finish my NEWTs and then I'm going to get a job. That sound good?"

"You're not going to leave school?" Armando asked. "Not even to take care of the baby?"

Minerva smiled, rising to signify that this conversation was over. "I'll manage, Headmaster. You'll see."

The question was not of her managing. It was a question of him managing. He knew from personal experience that pregnant woman can be very emotional and knowing Minerva she would probably lean towards anger on the emotional scale and he had quite enough troubles without having the Hospital Wing full.

"But, Miss McGonagall -"

"She's right," said Albus, rising, his nose still clutched in his girlfriend's handkerchief and putting an arm around her shoulder. "I'm going to help."

"The day I leave you alone with a baby you will know that Armageddon has come!" Minerva exclaimed.

"Fair point," said Albus. "And Fawkes mightn't like someone else getting affection."

"He already doesn't like me for that," said Minerva sourly.

"He'll get over it," said Albus, giving her a quick squeeze around the shoulders.

"Who or what is Fawkes?" Armando asked.

Albus opened his mouth to answer but was abruptly cut off by Minerva. "His ... owl, Headmaster."

Albus looked at Minerva for a second and then said, "Back to babysitting duties." Then, turning to the final person in the room: "Hooch, what about it?"

Rolanda glared at him a moment before rising with a sigh and saying, "Fine! We'll help!"

"We?" Armando asked.

"We," said Rolanda, making a broad gesture that encompassed the whole room. "Me, Poppy, Pomona, Weasley, Lovegood, Augusta - Montigal not Malfoy - you know, the one with the horrible fashion sense, Black -"

"Black?" Minerva spluttered, wondering if letting Cassiopeia Black near a young child was a good idea. "She doesn't even like me."

"Oh, but you haven't seen her with her little cousins. So adorable."

Albus fixed Rolanda with a stern stare. "Hooch, I thought we agreed that spying was bad."

"But it's so fun!" complained Rolanda, bright yellow eyes twinkling mischievously.

"Alright, you lot, off you go!" said Armando, waving them away. But all the way down the stairs he could hear them talking.

"My parents are going to kill me."

"Mine too."

"Albus, in case you didn't notice, you're not having a baby. I am. You're not in trouble."

"But I will be. My parents don't take any more kindly to children out of wedlock than yours."

"Albus, you're not saying you're going to tell them!"

"Why not? You're always saying that I need to take more responsibility for my actions."

"Yes! And you've taken more than enough responsibility for one day!"

"It's mine too, Min. You didn't make it all by yourself."

"Fine, but don't blame me if both our mothers have fits. And my father is going to give you The Talk."

"Min, I know -"

"Not that Talk you daft dumpling, the Don't Touch My Daughter On Pain Of Death Talk."

"He's a bit late for that."

"Shut up, Ro, nobody loves you."

"What do you think we should call it?"

"How about Idiocy Accident McGonagall?"

"Rolanda!"

"What about if it's a girl? Ssh, Min, this is fun. Ow."

"I was thinking of that for a girl's name, Dumbles."

"It's worth considering. Could be for either gender. Though you'll have to change the last name to Dumbledore."

"Why?"

"That's usually what happens when people get married, Rolanda."

"Oh, cool! Can I be the bridesmaid? No, no, you can let Pomona and Poppy squabble over that. I'm going to fly around the church doing an embarrassing commentary. Yes!"

"You need to pick your friends more wisely, Min."

"Tell me something I don't know, Albus."

"You look terrible."

"Apply water to the burned area."

"Shut up, Ro! Thanks Albus, but I knew that."

"Seriously, Min, what are we going to call it?"

"I don't know, maybe we could name it after your mother ..."

"No, Min. Promise me one thing, you are not naming it after my mother. Never."

"Albus, let go of me. I like that arm. Fine, I'll promise. But we're not naming it after mine either."

"Who's to say it'll be a girl?"

"One gender at a time, Hooch."

"Fine. How about Idiocy Ariana Accident Dumbledore. Has a ring to it, don't you think?"

"I hope you never get to be a parent, Ro."

"Me too, Min. Seems an awfully stressful experience by the looks of things."

"Albus, why are you looking at me like that? What's funny?"

"I've go the perfect name!"

"Oh, help me."

"Foolish Ariana Accident?"

"Shut up, Ro. Go on, Albus."

"Amortia Ariana Dumbledore."

"Oh, like the love potion!"

"Help me."

"Wait, I'm not done. If it's a boy we can call him Fawkes."

"No. No. You listen to me Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, you will never, never ever name any child of mine after a bird!"

"He bursts into flame, Min!"

"Yes, and he's a fire hazard to this school!"

"After all the burns it's suffered since the moment you stepped inside the door Min, I don't think a phoenix would make much difference."

No wonder the Astronomy Tower caught fire last month, Armando Dippet thought with a sigh. There's a bloody phoenix in the school.

...

...

...

I need a drink.

Yes, I know I probably messed around with a load of people's ages without realising it, mainly Rolanda and Dumbledore. But this was too funny for my mischievous brain to resist and the idea of Albus as a student could not be bypassed.

I'm going to do one chapter for each other other Hogwarts Headmasters/mistresses from then to the present. Be prepared for much ridiculousness, messing around in time periods and probably more than a few made-up relationships.

Next time, let's see how Albus handles it from the other side of the Headmaster's desk. Want to guess who the next unlucky people to be asked the question will be? By all means let me know what you think in a review!