The Menagerie – Chapter Three

Fifteen drops of Dittany… or sixteen?

Severus' quill hovered uncertainly over the parchment while a bead of ink threatened to spill upon it. His lips pursed in discontentment. Suzie Perkins looked up from her Swelling Solution, prepared to raise her hand and ask a question about armadillo bile, but after seeing his dark countenance she decided against chancing it. Instead, she flipped through her textbook to search out the answers from within.

Fifteen or sixteen? His mind spun with dizzying calculations, thermodynamics and discrete math. On a scratch sheet of parchment he sketched a quick alchemical calculation. 'Fuck,' he thought.

Fifteen point three, three, three, three… drops of Dittany were required.

Severus wrote the notation: Fifteen-ish and continued onto the next ingredient in his list. Lemons.

Halfway before he finished forming the word and the inky letters had taken shape, his nose detected the faintest whiff of burning sugar. His plume dropped to the parchment, splattering ink over the potion recipe. In an instant Professor Snape was out of his chair, wand at the ready. Which cauldron was it? Unable to peer into every cauldron at once, he scanned faces, looking for surprise, frustration, or buffoonery. There… Thomkins. Second row, third cauldron. Thomkins was peering into his cauldron as if utterly confounded by its existence.

Slapping his hands down hard on the Potions bench, Severus startled every child in the room with the sound. There was a satisfying gasp to his right as a phial dropped out of Jugson's fingers with a loud smash. Beetle eyes skittered across the ground.

"Mr. Thomkins," Severus' voice dropped in register as he slowly enunciated the boy's name. "Instead of brewing a Swelling Solution, it appears you've attempted to make caramel. Tell me exactly what you did to create this culinary abomination?"

Thomkins quailed under his gaze and looked to his notes. "Uh… I added Beet root…?"

"Instead of…?" Severus prompted the boy.

"Burdock?" he asked with an uncertain wince.

Severus towered imperiously over the boy and the potions bench, and vanished the sludgy mess with a flick of his wrist. As much as it might have been good for the boy to learn from his mistake by cleaning it by hand, he had neither the time nor inclination to supervise detention. That, and Minerva would have his head if he or the student missed the Leaving Feast.

"Zero points for the lesson and you are to start again, Mr. Thomkins," Severus said stalking off. He made his circuit, inspecting each cauldron. There was no inspiration to be had in the simple brew, but at least there was no chance of an explosion either. Satisfied that the dunderheads would be fine pushed firmly under his tyrannical thumb, he plastered on a well-worn sneer and returned to his desk. The children be damned, he had real work to do.

Eight lemon seeds, crushed…

Fourty-seven grams of Sands of Time…


Elsewhere in the castle, Irma Pince was doing her best to ignore the end of year crush of students cramming for finals.

It was an unpleasant agony waiting for the clock to strike. Knowing that the wasting of her precious time was pointless; the little shites weren't there to learn. They were there to copy off each other and espouse tired old ideas as if they were their own. For all this, she could forgive the spotty, imbecilic louts. What she could not tolerate was the boredom. If there was one damn good book in the whole library worth reading, she'd read it cover to cover at least five times.

Starry-eyed, she'd taken the position sixty years ago for the love of parchment and prose. The ink called to her soul like a Siren song, and she'd been thrashed upon the jagged rocks of reality. Irma barely read anymore. The last time a book stirred up her poet's soul, she'd wanted to stab Gilderoy Lockheart in the eye with a quill, actually. But then he'd done more to murder the English language, so she'd felt justified.

When she arrived at Hogwarts she wasn't precisely young and green with new ideas. Irma had never been one who anyone would describe in such terms, but she had an imagination. She envisioned for herself long beautiful days in the company of books, sun streaming through multicolored glass to warm her cheek. Curious students who politely asked questions and thirsted for knowledge, perhaps the occasional rapscallion or two. And she would not kid herself, no Irma was never one to do that, she knew the position was physical. There would be many hours on her feet and shelving books, but she would manage and had always had a deft wand hand.

Discretely groaning and flexing her back, seeking to relieve the aching pressure, she wryly reflected if she had to do it all over again, she would have gone into bookkeeping. Spending long, interminable days in the company of books, she never saw the sun that shone through the multicolored glass and it never seemed to warm her cheek. Of course the Hogwarts library had to keep all hours: morning, noon, night and weekends. It needed to be open and available to every whim and need of the little buggers who had no concept of time management skills. The professors were the worst offenders. She always had to check the stacks for an errant professor before closing up.

Children were curious, but they never politely asked for anything, nor did they thirst for knowledge. They were all dangerous little creatures with wands in their hands who wanted to push boundaries. Only the Slytherins were identified by their house colors, the rest were just as devilish, they just feigned innocence. And the physical fatigue. Irma placed her hand on her lower back and felt the whalebone ridges just beneath her dark cotton robe.

A young pig-tailed Ravenclaw girl with an obsequious grin brought her a stack of books far too advanced for the assignment the class was working on. Whatever she hoped to find within the pages wouldn't be worth citing, or if she did manage to make the leap from Elementary Transpurmutations to Adaptive Polymorphifiguring, the girl would win the golden plume award for the best shit stew Professor Knack had seen since Halloween.

"I'll take very good care of these books," she said in a cooing voice. "I'll have them back before the leaving fest, I swear."

The Librarian peered over the girl extending her long neck to read the book titles again. The children called her a vulture. Irma slowly glanced up at the little Ravenclaw girl, like a scavenger considering whether or not to pick over dry bones. Children. Particularly females, though she wasn't certain why, thought that if they were subservient or toadying towards her, they would earn her favor. She didn't require their false sweetness or platitudes. In actuality, she preferred that they not be friends, or even try. Her requirements were fairly short: keep the Honeydukes and potions spills away from the pages, and return the books on time and as promised. Then I won't have to hunt down your hide and peck on your corpse.

Irma stamped the books into the magical record while glaring at her. 'Fly away little birdie.'

The Ravenclaw ran from her nest, pigtails and all.

The day dragged. Her bones ached. At eight in the evening she was finally able to take her leave. Instead of heading to her rooms, there was only one place Irma wanted to be. Like most of the staff, Irma avoided the Grand Staircase where the children congregated. She pushed through the portrait of Theobald Feurknocker and rushed down the great spiraling staircase that led to the ground floor Entrance Hall. When she reached the simple door of the Caretaker's office, Irma leaned against it to gather her breath. She knocked rapidly.

It opened a crack.

"Please," Irma whispered, feeling exposed in the hallway. It was undignified for anyone to see her slipping into the Caretaker's quarters. If word got out she would be ruined.

There was a soft grunt from within before the door gave allowing her enough room to slip into Filch's windowless workroom. The iron manacles on the walls were relics from another day and age. Hogwarts hadn't used them since the turn of the century, two centuries previously, but they added a nice dungeon flair the small oil-lit room. And Argus needed something to threaten the little ones with, since threats were the only thing they seemed to take seriously. The dusty shelf above his workbench was littered with early confiscated prototypes of Weasley Wizarding Wheezes before the twins had left the school. Argus kept them purely because they might be worth something someday, and not because he was nostalgic. Or because some of the thingamabobbers were damned helpful.

Filch's terrifying workshop of horrors was no different than any of the other Professor's offices. The door beyond led to his quarters. Irma gave a slight whimper as she adjusted her back. The whalebones were pushing in something fierce. He opened the door to his rooms which were simple, homely and smelled vaguely of fried fish.

"So, twas an awful day then?" he asked, his eyes held a knowing glint.

End of term brought final exams and papers. It was always her busiest season. And without fail a handful of students would accidentally take her books home for the holiday.

Irma smiled softly. "Absolutely horrid. I wish I could string them all up by their ears," she whispered conspiratorially.

"Drown the filthy lot in the Black Lake, I say." Argus grinned nastily.

Irma blushed.

"You ready, then?" he asked kindly. She nodded and Argus gestured towards his bedroom. Irma gratefully ducked inside, shutting and locking door for modesty. In his sitting room, the besotted old fool sat down heavily on his broken armchair and waited patiently.

The locking spell was necessary even though she trusted the Caretaker. Irma pretended not to notice how Argus' eyes fell softly upon her. She hadn't been courted since she was a slip of a girl. And she had no intention of courting; she was far too old for such a thing – what a scandal they would cause! Pausing neither to spare a glance for the Caretaker's budding assortment of books nor the framed the holiday card she'd given him. She sailed past his bedroom and yanked open the door to his heavenly bathroom.

The moment the opened his door fragrant steam hit her face. Irma sighed, relaxing into the bones of her corset. Whispering spells, she began disrobing, removing offending pieces of garments that pinched and corrected posture. The Healthy Witch Corset was cast to the ground as Irma set foot inside Argus' bathroom.

Simple in stone and lacking the sumptuous adornments found throughout the castle, the Caretaker's bathroom held one prize that made it the most luxurious: it was home to the thermal basin. The Founders had channeled a naturally occurring spout of hot mineral water from deep within the Black Lake into the castle for a plumbing reserve. Resembling nothing as grand as a steaming lake, it was actually the most divine and relaxing bathtub experience. The fried fish smell was only a bit off putting, at first, but once in the water… Oh, the water.

Irma sank her toes in first, and then slipped beneath the surface feeling like a pat of melting butter.

How could the children liken her to a bird of the air when surely she was meant to be a creature of the sea?


As the castle finally settled down for the night it seemed to physically sigh. An unnatural gust of wind blew through corridors and along battlements as the castle shifted and relaxed. A low groan was heard in the darkest parts of the dungeons. The castle cried, in tones too low for human ears to hear, a longsuffering wail.

A bittersweet lovesong, for those yet tender

The trellising moonseed feed on thy ruby blood

My broken teeth, rotted stone surrender

Your death always lingers; set fresh in mud

Such empty aching loss cannot be born

In hollow archways doth the northwind cry

I feel thy own poor fate, with thee I mourn

And stand sentry for thee beneath blue sky

Here, in the cold pockets of reconstructed stone, the fresh mortar hadn't yet settled. In ten years since the great and horrific battle, the aches had slipped into crevices. The castle felt unwhole. Scorch marks were made to disappear with a simple spell, but unseen they burned. The lingering traces of hex smoke in the corridors had found its way deep into the rock, burying into the psyche of Hogwarts, mixing with the blood of innocence taken.

Professor Sinistra set a groaning homework assignment for every class, killing all good cheer before the leaving feast. Restless students nibbled at quills fretting over newly introduced exam standards. Three days of miserable, soaking rain had kept children indoors. The castle prickled with tension.

As time drifts, new children arrive once more

Days pass like warm treacle and lacewing flies

New wands fumble in hands untouched by war

Their youth cannot scratch out sorrows and sighs

True! All will fall to carpets of chalk dust

It was upon my parapets they put their trust

A fight broke out in the Third Floor corridor, another in the dungeons. There was a hexing in the greenhouses. Petty rivalries spilled over in the houses as rumors swirled about next year's Prefects announcements. A vulgar drawing was left in the girl's lav featuring Portia LaRue and an Ogre. Portia was the last to see it. Anthony Lau could not find his quills, or his books, or the cookies his mother sent him. Just an empty box full of crumbs.

Anxiety swelled.

So many broken hearts.

In the dark of night, a first year missed home. Behind the curtains of her bed, she cried wishing that someone had said 'Happy Birthday' to her.

The castle shuddered and contracted.

Thirty-eight beds on the fourth floor shrank. Thirty-eight beds refit themselves to a child's bed, sized appropriately for a first year. Tumbling out unto cold stone, adults and teenagers jarred awake, wondering what happened. Unconscious of the disruption, a small first year felt as if she was being hugged in a snuggly bed.