Chapter Three – Head over Eels

Breakfast had only just started and Snape was already handing out detentions like Dumbledore usually handed out lemon drops. Some time around seven in the morning, Umbridge had apparently lost her composure and had thrown the cassette player into the Black Lake much to the dismay of its inhabitants, especially the Giant Squid that had thrown a downright fit. Or so Filch had breathlessly related to Minerva just before she had entered the Great Hall for breakfast. Snape was now circling the room, slice of toast in his right hand, listening in to conversations. Harry Potter was sitting next to Angelina Johnson, his hands raised in a gesture of defeat towards his Quidditch captain.

"Quidditch is important to me, Angelina. I swear! I am never gonna let you down!"

"DETENTION!" Snape cried and Potter winced so badly that he dribbled pumpkin juice all over the front of his robes. He regarded his teacher with a dark look that spoke volumes towards their mutual dislike of each other.

"Why would you give me detention? I didn't do anything wrong. You know the rules and so do I!" Minerva wasn't sure whether he was consciously quoting the dreaded song but Snape did not seem to distinguish between intent and negligence.

"As much as it pains me to force your company upon myself, this has just earned you another afternoon of DETENTION. Maybe you should look for another seeker, Miss Johnson. Yours seems quite determined to miss practice."

Snape sneered and wandered off, leaving behind a seething Harry. Minerva shook her head. Not only was Snape hurting her house's chance at the Quidditch cup, but his hatred of Harry generally went too far. He was a good boy. Courteous and kind-hearted just like his mother. There was absolutely no reason to even begin to detest him, let alone treat him as cruelly and unfairly as Snape did. Minerva wondered whether it was in any way related to Snape's less than friendly relations to Harry's late father. But surely, a 35 year old man had to be above such childish behaviour? Hatred was not supposed to span a whole generation and Minerva resolved to confront Severus about it as soon as she got the chance. She had been letting him down too easy on this subject for far too long.

The door opened and a belated attendee walked in on wobbly legs and with dark shadows under glassy eyes. Minerva gasped at the desolate sight of Aurora Sinistra who looked as if she was going to fall asleep any minute. The Astronomy professor climbed the steps to the slightly elevated faculty table and heavily sank into a chair, reaching for her cup of coffee with both hands. People in her line of work were not exactly morning persons but today seemed especially bad.

"Are you alright, Aurora, dear?" Minerva asked. Aurora raised her head from her second cup of coffee and shook it slightly. Her eyes were blood-shot and her dark brown locks framed her pale face in an unusually unkempt mess. Minerva placed her hand on the younger witch's arm.

"Are you sick?"

"Yes. Sick of that song," Aurora replied in a raspy voice that seemed to emit deeply from a sore throat. She ran her hand across her face and rubbed her eyes. "Have you ever noticed the acoustics in this place? For some reason, loud noise such as hideous eighties songs is terribly magnified in the Astronomy tower. I haven't slept for even a second last night. At least I made quite the discovery! I know no one is interested in Astronomy but I just realized last night that Pluto has five moons, not four. Wonder how long it is going to take those muggles to find out about that!"

Minerva had to admit that Aurora was right. Astronomy seemed like the dullest subject in the world to her although quite a bit of magic was involved in configuring the telescopes.

"Rick Astley! For Merlin's sake. Whose idea was that?" Aurora lamented on.

Minerva furrowed her brow. "You know that song?"

Snape took the seat next to Aurora and raised his brows. His face did look less ashen than usual and a very faint blush had crept into his cheeks. Minerva decided that he enjoyed giving out detentions a little too much.

"My, Aurora. You look dreadful. What has happened to you?" he snarled.

"Rick Astley. That is what happened to me," Aurora replied darkly and held out her cup for him to refill. Snape followed her silent order and Minerva waited until she had drained it. Usually, she would talk to her about her unhealthy caffeine intake that, some days, was bordering on the hazardous. Today, however, she was eager to find out a little more about Aurora's past.

"You were saying that you knew that song..." she began, sneakily. Aurora shrugged, rubbing her eyes again. "Summer of 1987. Nine years ago. Had that muggle boyfriend who kept playing it to me. All romantic until he dumped me for that blonde bimbo." Sinistra's eyes were narrowed which gave her pretty features a thoroughly morose look.

"I'm sorry," Minerva said awkwardly.

"Don't be. Men are all rubbish, anyway." Aurora nodded her gratitude at Snape who had just refilled her cup again without being asked.

"Why, thanks, Aurora. Ever so charming," he growled but apparently abstained from making one of his more scathing remarks.

"Not you, Severus. You're my friend! That's different."

Snape's face lit up for a split second before the full meaning of her words began to sink in. Minerva felt sympathy for him as he had just been friend-zoned for all it was worth. Aurora, completely unaware of Snape's predicament, stretched and yawned but looked a little less dead than she had just moments ago. The same could not be said about Professor Umbridge, who had just come in, wearing too much make-up and a prim pink coat and skirt which were as flouncy as they got.

"Good morning, Professor Umbridge!" Charity Burbage said in a sing-song voice. "I hear you got rid of that peculiar little object in your room. I am afraid, however, that the merpeople are more than just a little agitated because of it."

Umbridge seemed unable to even keep up the basics of her usual pesky attitude and just shot Charity a long, angry look.

"I do hope that we will be able to identify the culprit," Snape said with feigned sympathy, an emotion that was so out of place in him that even Aurora looked slightly taken aback.

"I already have a suspicion!" Umbridge blurted out, apparently still a bit deaf.

"Oh really? Do tell!" Charity said with forced cheerfulness.

Umbridge stabbed her scrambled eggs with her fork and directed her gaze at Harry Potter, who had apparently managed to soothe Angelina Johnson's anger and was now busy discussing tactics with her. When he caught Umbridge looking at him, he rolled his eyes and quickly turned his back at her.

"The Potter boy. That thing was a muggle artefact, I am sure. And he has been living in the muggle world for years." Umbridge ripped apart a slice of bread and slammed one half back on the table. "I will get that little brat."

"Ah, Potter," Snape said with pleasure. "Yes, he is a right trouble-maker."

"Won't you need proof, though?" Charity quickly interjected, looking a bit guilty for manoeuvring Harry Potter of all people into another dire situation.

"Proof!" Umbridge spat and Minerva sighed. The Ministry wasn't exactly known for always being in accordance with the rule of the law. If they were bothered by something as unimportant as basic human rights, they changed the law or simply ignored it. Punishing someone for something he was not responsible for without proof did not constitute a mistrial but was a perfectly normal occurrence.

Luckily, Snape did not comment further on Umbridge's indiscretion or Minerva might have had to strangle him.

When breakfast was over, Umbridge got up and hurried from the room, nose high up in the air. Apparently, she had consumed all the coffee Aurora had left over, because her steps were quick and hurried and her left hand seemed to twitch in irregular intervals.

Minerva rose from her own chair and quickly walked towards the exit when a heavy hand came to rest on her shoulder. Surprised, she turned around and was faced with Professor Grubbly-Plank, Hagrid's substitute until he was to return from his mission for the Order. She had close-cropped grey hair, a very prominent chin and piercing, light-grey eyes that she was currently glowering at Minerva with. Usually cheerful and friendly if in a slightly grumpy way, she seemed a little disgruntled today.

"Can I have word with you, Minerva?" she asked in a voice that was unusually deep for a woman's and spoke of years of smoking the pipe she was already holding in her hand again.

"Of course, Wilhelmina. What can I do for you?" Minerva asked, forcing a smile. She liked Grubbly-Plank but right now, her mind was on Potter and how to get him out of Umbridge's crosshairs. Grubbly-Plank took her by the arm and pulled her into of the alcoves that held suits of armour. This particular one was empty today, arousing suspicion that Peeves must somehow be involved. Before she could give the matter another thought, Grubbly-Plank had started upbraiding her.

"Is it because I am just a sub, Minerva?" she asked accusingly. "You could have bloody well told me about that bet! I really want to get involved. Why didn't you ask me?"

Minerva was shocked to discover that she had simply forgotten.

"Oh, I am sorry, Wilhelmina. It must have slipped my mind. You are very, very welcome to participate."

Grubbly-Plank still looked a bit displeased but also slightly mollified. "You got a lot on ya plate, Minni. Don't beat yourself up over it," she growled benignantly. "Anyway. I have got an idea how to get rid of the old bat more quickly than you can say 'buy me dinner'."

A definite sense of foreboding befell Minerva at the sight of two gleaming light-grey eyes that quickly vanished behind a large dose of pipe-smoke.

Minerva coughed.

"I'd say it is a little..." Snape inserted a pause that stretched out for so long that Minerva suspected that he was actually at a loss for words instead of doing it for effect. And she could not blame him. There was really no adjective that could accurately describe what Flitwick had come up with to torture Umbridge. Although she was sure that it would somehow prove effective, it was a little too-

"- infantile," Snape finally finished and Minerva, for once, whole-heartedly agreed with his assessment.

"Are you sure this is the right way to go about this?" she asked carefully.

Flitwick stared at her, a big red proverbial question mark hovering above his head. Was he really that naive?

"Are you really that naïve?" Snape inquired with his usual sarcastic undertone. Why were they thinking the same? It was annoying. Minerva prided herself in being completely different from Severus Snape and now this. Looking around, she wondered how the scene would have to unfold to a casual passer-by who just happened to stumble into the room. Since the faculty lounge was where staff meetings were conducted and lessons were planned, there were a couple of other rooms that were reserved to the staff, so that they did not have to spend all of their time alone in their quarters or in the workplace. The one they were currently in, was the most frequented because of its comfortable window seats and huge windows that presented a spectacular view of the grounds. It was late afternoon and the room was still flooded by warm sunlight, the sky a brilliant dark blue. While some of them had been sitting in the stuffed armchairs by the inner wall, others had been hovering by the opened windows, inhaling the spicy autumn air. All teachers present, however, had stopped paying attention to their books or the scenery when Flitwick had entered to present his "invention".

"I like it," Hooch said, predictably, which earned her a disgusted look from the painting that hung right above her head and depicted a fat monk with a sinister face and a half-eaten chicken leg in his chubby hand.

"What does it do?" asked Sinistra, who had abandoned her issue of Witch Weekly and now rose to stand next to Snape who immediately took a step aside to get some room between them. He was like a little school boy who hit the girl he liked over the head with a textbook. Minerva would have chuckled, had she not been so concerned as to Flitwick's antics. She remembered Dumbledore's request to keep her fellow professors out of trouble and cleared her throat.

"Filius, what you have done there is quite remarkable in terms of magical abilities," she said with calm appreciation of his work. "but I am afraid it will attract a little bit too much attention. I thought we had agreed on being subtle."

"Subtle?" Flitwick cried. "How is a muggle device blasting eighties songs at ear-shattering volume subtle?"

Minerva realized that she had chosen the wrong approach and shrugged helplessly, her head twitching slightly to the side in the way it did when she was severely annoyed. Flitwick looked at a loss with his rolled up sleeves, mussed-up hair and bright eyes. How on earth could she tell him the truth?

Snape took a swift step forward and came to stand next to her, his arms crossed in front of his black-clad chest, his gaze hard and unwavering.

"What Minerva is trying to tell you, Filius," he said in his usual cold but somehow rich tones. "is that a detached head that follows her around is not only entirely over the top, but will also not pass as a simple gadget Zonko's or – god forbid – the Weasley twins have devised. If you are intending to use it, you must consider that it will make the only people capable of such magical craftsmanship look suspicious. And I do not believe that I have to tell you that this is us."

The teachers were stunned into shocked silence into which the head that was floating in midair in front of Flitwick gave a jolt of laughter. "Oh my," it said. "You look like a toad."

The obviously pre-programmed response made Snape cock an eyebrow at Flitwick. "Really?" he asked, then turned on his heel and made a sinister exit, complete with the leisurely hair-flip. Minerva gave Flitwick a timid smile.

"As harsh as he can be sometimes, Filius. Severus is quite right."

She stepped forward to examine the head more closely. While it looked quite lifelike, it was clear that it was a puppet's. Its eyes were dull and bright blue, its head bald and its features looked almost cute.

"Is that supposed to be a baby?" Sinistra asked.

"You have all the charms of a dung bomb!" The head exclaimed in a deep, throaty voice that was at all kinds of odds with the infant-like looks.

"It is a doll's head," Flitwick explained, not entirely without pride.

"You go, girl," the head said jollily.

"So you're going to make that thing follow Umbridge around and randomly insult her?" Charity said, already sounding half-convinced.

"Precisely!" Flitwick cried and clapped his hands. "If we can confine it to – say – the faculty lounge and pretend it is not there, she will think she is going to lose it."

"That is cruel," said Hooch appreciatively. "Didn't think you had it in you."

"You will get yourself fired!" Minerva said heatedly. "She'll know it's you, Filius!"

"My, my. Calm down, old bat. Your ugly little bow will fall off your ugly little head," the head said and grinned, which was more unsettling than anything Minerva had seen in a while.

"Filius, please?" Flitwick looked crushed as the implications of what she was saying were sinking in. He looked at the head in a sad fashion, then hung his own head. With a wave of his wand, it came to rest on his shoulder like an absurd pet owl, cooing a little: "Your mother must have been a toad" into his ear. Minerva decided that this was far beyond the edge of reason. Apparently, everyone but her was already free falling.

"Maybe we should put this bet on hold," she said carefully. "I think it would be prudent to let things calm down and go about this again as soon as she feels safe again."

"I thought the whole point was to unsettle her!" Hooch protested.

"You were the one who wanted to do this!" Snape joined in. Apparently his exit had been for effect and he had somehow wound up returning. That was not at all an unusual occurrence.

"Please, I think Minerva might be right. We want to trip her, but we cannot risk her finding us out," Sprout said, her cheeks glowing reddish with her usual nervousness when addressing the faculty.

"I think we should go in for the kill!" Hooch disagreed.

"Kill?" Trelawney shrieked and Minerva just acknowledged her presence for the first time today. (Where had she come from?)

Minerva, quite unlike herself, decided to stall them. "Maybe we should wait for the headmaster to return before we make a decision," she said evasively.

While Sprout and Flitwick looked actually mollified and Snape had adopted an arrogant half-smirk – which was as good as it got, considering it came from him -, Hooch looked positively indignant. Surprisingly, it was Aurora Sinistra who spoke up first. She seemed to have recovered from her lack of night's sleep and the slightly flattened left part of her hair made Minerva suspect that she had been napping on corridor duty again in order to recuperate.

"It surprises me to hear that you actually bow to the headmaster's authority instead of handling things yourself, Minerva. Meaning: You cannot fool me. I know you think we are a bunch of misfits and I am also aware of the fact that you are trying to protect us, which is just fine. Anyway, we are here not only because Dumbledore took pity in our unfortunate existences, but also because we are talented witches and wizards. So allow us to handle things ourselves and step back." She had spoken calmly and without the slightest hint of anger in her voice. In fact, she was smiling kindly.

Snape looked as if the corners of his mouth were in spasms, which probably meant that he was about to laugh.

There was a bout of silence before Flitwick spoke again. "You often treat us like children, Minerva, but you are also usually right. I might have to put a little bit of work into Rupert. Make him a little more subtle." He shrugged self-consciously.

"You must live in a pond," the head on his shoulder purred comfortingly.

"Rupert?" Trelawney shrieked, apparently able to speak no more than one horrified word at a time.

"He already feels like a good friend. I thought I ought to give him a name." Flitwick admitted, blushing slightly.

While Sinistra returned to Witch Weekly with Snape unsubtly gazing over her shoulder to read about The Weird Sisters' latest drunken antics despite the fact that he regularly claimed that gossip was for the "feeble-minded", Hooch was sulking in a corner and Trelawney was picking her tea-leaves, sighing dramatically from time to time. Minerva relaxed slightly. She dipped a biscuit into her cup of tea and leaned back in her armchair. She was a little bit embarrassed that everyone had apparently noticed that she felt like a big sister to a group of small siblings that were up to mischief for of the time. On the other hand, she was glad that Flitwick had been stopped. The thought alone of him being sacked and thrown out of Hogwarts made her heart ache.

The rest of the afternoon was peaceful. While the sun gradually faded away and a nice, crackling fire was lit in the fireplace to replace the warmth of its beams, Hooch fell asleep in her seat, snoring lightly, Flitwick was engrossed in a novel and even Trelawney had quieted down to the point of occasional muttering. Sinistra seemed to have finally noticed that Snape was reading over her shoulder and grinned slightly to herself.

"It is dreadful really, isn't it, Severus? Heathcote Barbary! Flying around stark naked on a broom and then vomiting into someone's begonias. It is beyond disgusting."

"I was more startled by Myron Wagtail driving a muggle car into the Thames," Snape growled. "He was in my potions class. I remember him being very-" he trailed off at the sight of Aurora's sinister grin.

"I thought gossip was for the feeble-minded," she gloated.

Snape huffed. "I was just trying to lower myself to your level of intellect in order to be able to strike up a conversation with you that would not exceed your capacities."

He looked a little pleased with himself until Aurora retaliated.

"Oh, so you are now sacrificing yourself just to be able to have a chat. Do you actually like me, Severus?"

Minerva took another sip of her tea. This was going to be interesting.

"You cannot actually believe that," he said disgustedly. "I could never take an actual interest in someone as quaint as you are."

Sinistra did not look hurt which probably stemmed from the fact that she knew that he was trying to insult her in order to hide the fact that she was right.

"You know, if you are so smart, Severus, I am sure you know the opposites to the following words. I have been struggling with that riddle."

Snape lifted his eyebrows and took a swift step towards her.

"Go ahead," he said in a bored voice, eager as always to display his magnificent intellect.

"So," Sinistra pretended to look pensive and actually placed her fingertip against her bottom lip, which distracted Snape for the shortest of moments.

"Always. Staying. From. Take. Me. Down."

Snape snorted, apparently bored. "Never going to give you up," he said without hesitation, then his eyes widened.

Aurora instantly exploded with laughter.

"Detention!" A newly awakened Hooch mocked his earlier reaction to any quotes from Rick Astley's song's lyrics.

Snape turned grey, then green and opened his mouth, probably about to hurl the meanest insult imaginable at the Astronomy professor, when he was interrupted by an ear-shattering scream. The cup fell from Minerva's hand and amber liquid began to seep into the rug beneath her feet. She ignored it and made for the door, wand drawn, followed by every one of the room's inhabitants except for Trelawney, who had gone into hiding beneath a table.

What on earth had happened now?

- to be continued -