(Minor revisions to text of this chapter for better sense, August, 2015)

'…And admit that the waters Around you have grown…'

-Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin'

Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter. For the record, I am not Leslie Charteris either, nor do I own The Saint.

Note: The following is set in an alternate 'Harry Potter' universe, which was impacted by Simon Templar. Some 'Harry Potter' characters and events in this particular 'crossover' universe differ considerably from their canon equivalents. In this particular universe, James Potter married Selene Tilde Tombs, and Sophie Theresa Potter (their daughter) is 'The-Girl-Who-Lived'.

Further Note: This particular story is concerned with the doings of Horace Slughorn in the 'Saint Potter' universe. This chapter sees him about an errand during the summer of 1991, a couple of weeks before the start of the 1991-1992 school year. This is background/supporting material for the 'Saint Potter?' story. 'Slughorn' is rated 'M'.

Pronunciation: 'pi-doing' is a nonsense word, pronounced 'pi' as in 'pip' and 'doing' rhyming with 'boing'. The word is used as an approximation of the sound an alarm-clock spring breaking might make.

Saturday, 17th August, 1991

The end of the latest Hogwarts school year had left Horace Slughorn – senior potions teacher and head of Slytherin house of the aforementioned school – with something of a problem. Although the governors themselves had dealt with the three offenders of the 'boil in the bath' incident, taking disciplinary actions that they considered appropriate (and with which Horace himself was not inclined to disagree) an unfortunate side-issue had arisen as a consequence from the whole nasty business – which had proven quite a headache for Horace. He had agonised over the matter for weeks, in between his more regular summer holiday activities (such as compiling his usual mental dossier of the next school year's scheduled new pupil intake and checking that the school's stock and equipment levels corresponded with the planned brewing schedules within the constraints of the departmental budget). It was with something of a shock that he realised that it was now the middle of August (chasing down details of some of the overseas prospective pupils and negotiations necessitated by the unfortunate rise in cauldron costs had occupied more of his attention than he'd anticipated), and that he was going to have to decide to do something.

Horace Slughorn's dilemma centred upon this: William Troughton had been earmarked to take over the position of captain of the Slytherin duelling team from the outgoing Mr. Bingham, but Mr. Troughton's bloody stupid involvement in the incident at the end of last term (no point to mincing words about it) had resulted in his being one of those whom the governors decided to absent from Hogwarts for much of the coming school year, so clearly Horace had to find someone else to be captain; regrettably, though, Mr. Troughton had been the most mild-mannered option amongst the available competent duellists in Slytherin house best suited by age and experience to fill the role. If Horace were to refuse to appoint anyone more idiotic on certain matters than Mr. Troughton had been (and Horace had reached the point where he was fully determined to put his foot down on his house on certain things) then clearly the pupil who stepped into Mr. Bingham's shoes was not going to be a top-flight duellist. That would pose problems to Mr. Bingham's successor though; such a pupil would need to be capable of holding their own against and quelling the more boisterous elements of Slytherin, if and when the house decided to make any feelings felt over the absence of a dazzling duelling star from the role.

There was actually one possible candidate, whose name had occurred to Horace the moment he had first heard about the 'boil in the bath' incident and had known that it would be utterly impossible for Mr. Troughton to be the next Slytherin duelling captain. Someone who had been on Horace's mind even before the school governors had saved Horace a good deal of bother by reaching their decision to suspend Mr. Troughton for quite so long. Unfortunately, said pupil was already a prefect, and Horace had no idea if she would want the extra work of the duelling team in addition to her pre-existing duties – hence his hesitation over the matter, whilst he hoped divine inspiration for an equally good alternative might strike.

And which, given the length of time that he had spent pondering this issue, brought him here this morning on a personal call to the elegant Regency London townhouse of the Gaunt family. (Attired in suitably smart muggle fashion, naturally.)

Up until a couple of generations ago, the Gaunt family had been notorious in the wizarding world as a family of lunatic pureblood recluses, fallen into abject poverty, and possessed of little more than a tendency towards violence and a disproportionate sense of pride over their ancestry. Then, without warning, in the mid-1940's, Marvolo Gaunt (what passed for the senior member of the family at that time) had burned down a house full of muggles who lived in the vicinity of the hovel that was the then Gaunt family abode – being sent to Azkaban for what was left of his life for his trouble – and Marvolo's son, Morfin, had married a muggle. True she was a muggle woman from the upper tiers of muggle society, and from a wealthy family at that, but this was behaviour so uncharacteristic of a Gaunt that it became in very short order the talk of wizarding society. The general consensus was that Morfin must have completely lost his marbles – perhaps under the strain of being the last of his line.

The match had lasted a little over a year, before one morning Morfin had loaded a muggle shotgun and killed himself. (Why he had chosen such a muggle fashion to end his life in had provided yet another matter for intense speculation for wizarding Britain.) However, by that point, Morfin's marriage had already engendered one child – a son, Robert – and another was on the way. Morfin's wife had moved back in with her parents, apparently as bewildered over what had happened as everyone else, and soon the gossips had found other scandals to wag their tongues over.

Morfin's son had turned out to be a wizard however (as had his subsequently born sister a witch). Both children had been sent at the insistence of their muggle mother and grandparents to muggle public schools, with a private tutor hired to give them sufficient lessons in magic that they knew enough not to embarrass themselves. And when Robert (becoming with age a successful businessman) had married and his children had turned out to have magic, he had insisted on his sons receiving the same public muggle school/private wizard tutor combination for education that he himself had had. His daughters, however, he had sent to Hogwarts, and the elder, Helen, was due to commence her sixth year (in Slytherin) this coming September.

And Helen was a Parselmouth – suggestive of some sort of descent from Salazar Slytherin himself – which gave her a good deal of cachet in Slytherin house, despite her half-blood status. And when Horace had made her a prefect last year (there would have been trouble, one way or another in the house, if he hadn't) it had turned out that she was actually quite good at handling people, too. And sensible.

Which latter, unfortunately, meant that if she considered it too much work, and potentially adverse to her studies, that Horace could probably expect her to turn down the post of duelling captain of Slytherin. Hence the reason for this personal visit, in case she should prove to be borderline over whether to accept it or not, and something which Horace could do or say in person, would achieve what an owl-sent letter would not.

She certainly wasn't the best with a wand in the house for her age, or at least not in a duel situation, but she undoubtedly had leadership qualities and near-universal respect in Slytherin.

Horace mounted the short flight of steps up to the front door and rang the doorbell, then stepped back to await admittance. He had sent a short note a couple of days ago, giving notice of this intended visit (though not of any reason for it other than 'school business').

Horace had no idea in what fashion Miss Gaunt's room at Hogwarts was decorated – he had never had need to intrude upon her at school in the girls' dormitories – but he suspected that there would be certain fundamental differences in how it was furnished, as compared to her room here at her family home. Here, amidst the chaos of books and dresses, and a bed covered with a duvet patterned with abstract triangles in odd colours, there was a mirror on a dressing table with an array of distinctly muggle makeup products lined up in front of it.

There were also several pictures clipped from muggle magazines and a couple of posters stuck to the wall of a man with a violin. The larger of the posters featured him posing in a damp shirt that was hanging partly open, with the violin tucked under his chin and one hand raised with a bow apparently about to play, and what excitable females (and conceivably a good many more generally level-headed ones, too) might well describe as a smouldering expression on his face. Alongside these images, there was also a framed page (slightly crumpled) which appeared to have been torn from a musical score with some sort of autograph and message scrawled upon it.

There was a distinctly derelict looking muggle television with a wonky 'coathanger' aerial, perched on a folding stool in a corner.

There was a stuffed snake of some description mounted on a couple of brackets (an example of the taxidermist's craft, Horace presumed) whose type did not appear to be any British one with which Horace was familiar.

There were several muggle photographs of various members of Miss Gaunt's family, and one magical one of her and a couple of her female friends from her year, which appeared to have been taken during a Hogsmeade visit the previous school year (the scene involved the trio in some piece of endlessly repeating girlish jostling activity outside of the Three Broomsticks).

And there was of course Miss Gaunt herself, resplendent, despite the distinctly respectable hour and the advance notice that Horace had supplied, in a pair of pastel pink pyjamas that featured some sort of cartoon dog lying on his back on top of a stylised kennel with an accompanying 'thought bubble' to the effect that weekends never lasted long enough. Apparently she had only just woken up.

Someone considerably less professional and experienced than Horace might well have had trouble keeping their gaze from wandering from Miss Gaunt's face and her hazel-coloured eyes, whilst addressing her in such an irregular state of attire.

"Ahem. Was my note giving advance warning of this call misplaced somehow?" Horace enquired, trying not to sound too gruff.

"No Professor." She glanced and scowled in the direction of a bedside table. "Yet another alarm-clock seems to have gone kaphutt."

She made a small 'exploding' motion with her hands.

"Oh? Battery operated?" (Electrical things were prone to breakdown occasionally in areas of magic, and this was at least a semi-magical household.)

"Clockwork, sir. Maybe I should go back to getting cheap ones off a market. These posh ones barely seem to last six months before the spring goes 'pi-doing', and I'm not even here for most of that time." She narrowed her eyes. "Unless James has started using them for his physics experiments again whilst I'm away at school. If he has, I'll make him wish he'd been sent to school in Timbuktu, come the Christmas holidays, instead of Harrow." She smiled, evilly. "After all, my dear-little-brother is a wizard by birth, and by Christmas I'll be of age, with no Ministry bother if I decide to hex him till he's blue in the face and screaming for mercy.

"Quite, quite." Horace said, considering it impolitic (and highly unwise) to get involved in the mechanics of a brother-sister feud about respect (or lack thereof) for one another's personal property. "Well, to come to the point of my call, as you may recollect, the last school year tragically ended with several pupils in very hot water – two Hufflepuffs nearly literally so, and the three students who attempted to put them there very much so with the staff and school governors, once what they'd intended came to light. I'm not sure what word regarding the final punishment of the perpetrators may have reached you here, but during the early part of the holiday the governors convened, and Mr. Brigstocke has taken an early and permanent leave of the school, and Mr. Troughton and Miss Fitzroy will only be permitted to attend Hogwarts during the latter stages of this coming academic year, being basically permitted to return just in time to sit their OWL exams a year late."

"The Fitzroy girl's the one who ought to be expelled." Miss Gaunt scowled. She was apparently sufficiently upset by the result that she was speaking with an unusual degree of informality to her head of house for once. "She's a manipulative witch and I'd stake my life that she was the brains behind it. Half the school knew she had a grudge against Davies and Leghorn."

"The governors took the view that they could go easier on Miss Fitzroy, since she was the youngest of the three and the non-Slytherin in the plot." Horace said in a carefully neutral tone. "Apparently they were all for letting her off altogether, until word came through from the Ministry that the Minister himself wanted to see her disciplined, so that no suspicion of her 'family connections' could be thought to have 'got her off'."

Phyllis Fitzroy was Cornelius Fudge's niece, by one of his wife's brothers, and it was rumoured in certain circles that the Minister's wife didn't get on too well with said brother. It would be hopelessly inappropriate though for Horace to pass on that little titbit of gossip, and suggest there may have been further possible influence on the Minister's coming out against Miss Fitzroy.

The news that Miss Fitzroy had been more severely treated by authority than she might otherwise have been, seemed to soothe Miss Gaunt, and she rapidly regained her usual composure.

"But at any rate:" Horace continued, "Mr. Troughton has effectively 'deselected' himself from participation in school life for most of the coming year, by his actions, but – as I have no doubt that you had heard – he was in line to take over the position of captain of the Slytherin duelling team this year. Consequently, I'm looking around for someone else to step into the role, instead – a calmer head is more important than ability to wipe the floor with most opponents in under thirty seconds flat, in these circumstances, I feel – and I was wondering if I could interest you in obliging?…"

"Really, sir? In addition to my prefect duties?"

She sounded surprised. Her tone was also polite, respectful, and inquisitive in just the right amounts – but the moment of hesitation that had preceded it and a faint emphasis about her words (to Horace's acutely trained social antennae) had more than a hint to them of 'well just what's going to be in this for me, to take on this extra work'?

That looked distinctly good for Horace – if she was already disposed to bargain at this stage, it meant that the bulk of the job of persuasion was already as good as done, and all that was left was the haggling – at which Horace was expert…

Author Notes: (minor revisions April 26th, 2014, due to previous fuzziness over the Troughton/Fitzroy suspensions)

As mentioned in the opening notes, some characters and events have diverged somewhat from those of their Harry Potter canon counterparts. This began in the period between the first and second world wars, when Simon Templar was particularly active, and building a name for himself, his fame especially spreading in Britain, and even when the deeds themselves did not directly impact, word of them influencing some people...

By the summer of 1991, Hogwarts in this universe has had an inter-house dueling competition for a number of years.

To clarify, regarding the 'boil in the bath' incident, the guiding spirit was an at the time fifth year Ravenclaw pupil, Phyllis Fitzroy, who carried a grudge against the two fifth year Hufflepuff 'targets', Samantha Davies and Romana Leghorn. Miss Fitzroy's stooges were (at the time) fifth year Slytherin pupil William Troughton and sixth year Slytherin pupil John Brigstocke. The latter two were caught in the act of setting a trap for Miss Davies and Miss Leghorn, and admitted under questioning that the plan (they called it a 'joke') had originated with Miss Fitzroy. Mr. Troughton, Mr. Brigstocke and Miss Fitzroy were immediately suspended, pending a meeting by the governors to decide upon the issue. The subsequent meeting of the school governors decided that Mr. Brigstocke would be expelled, and Mr. Troughton and Miss Fitzroy's suspension would be extended until some time after the following Easter - basically Mr. Troughton and Miss Fitzroy are out until it's time for the OWL exams (a year late).

Antony Bingham (the Slytherin dueling captain at the time) had no direct involvement in the actions of Mr. Troughton/Mr. Brigstocke/Miss Fitzroy. He was, however, in his last year of study at Hogwarts, which was why Horace Slughorn had (before the incident) provisionally nominated Mr. Troughton (on the team at the time) as the successor for the post of dueling captain.

To head off some possible lines of speculation, regarding Helen Gaunt, she is, as Horace Slughorn is correctly informed, a granddaughter of Morfin Gaunt. She is Tom Marvolo Riddle's first cousin once removed (if I understand the table on wikipedia correctly). Why Morfin married a muggle and subsequently killed himself involves one of those points of divergence of this universe from canon.

Update (13th March, 2014):

To try and clarify, since at least one reviewer seems to have been confused by all the Gaunts:

Marvolo Gaunt (as in canon) is the father of Merope and Morfin Gaunt.

Merope Gaunt (as in canon) is the mother of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Morfin Gaunt is the father of Robert Gaunt and of another (a girl), who was not yet born when Morfin died.

As of August, 1991, Robert Gaunt is the father of four children. Two of them are boys and attend 'normal' boarding schools. James is the younger of these boys and attends Harrow. The two girls attend Hogwarts. Helen is the older of the girls and was sorted into Slytherin.