Chapter Four – Triangle
A/N: A bit shorter than usual but at least I expect the updates to become a bit more frequent now that autumn is here. ;-) I hope you enjoy!
Professor Dumbledore was standing at the head of the large table that dominated the faculty lounge, his hands clasped tightly around the back of his chair. His gaze was stern and his blue eyes unreadable as he regarded his professors who were assembled around the table, avoiding his eyes like students that were about to be reprimanded. Even Snape, who usually made it a point to bow to no one, had developed a sudden interest in his cuticles. Trelawney looked downright frightened and was nervously chewing the tip of her wand which Minerva found both completely inappropriate and strangely endearing. Dusk had fallen outside and, one by one, the bewitched candles swished to life, dipping the room into a warm, cozy light. The headmaster, however, looked as non-cozy as a kind old bearded man who frequently evoked images of Santa Clause could ever manage to look. The silence he had been holding for the past ten minutes was slowly becoming impossible to bear and Sprout, cheeks reddened and eyes wide, began to move uneasily in her chair.
Finally, Dumbledore spoke: "I am sure that I do not need to explain to you how inappropriate and dangerous your actions were. And I am not only talking to you, Wilhelmina. This concerns all of you."
There was a moment of embarrassing silence before Aurora, who seemed on a quest to overcome her social awkwardness lately, addressed the headmaster quite heatedly: "What I don't understand is why you never do anything! That Umbridge woman is absurdly cruel! I saw Potter exit her office a few days ago and his hand was bleeding! The methods she uses make Severus look like a friendly kindergarten teacher who is handing out candy!"
Snape looked scandalized and was probably beginning to plot a way to impress Sinistra by wronging Potter horribly right away. Minerva made a mental note to finally have that talk with him concerning his animosities towards Potter.
Aurora ignored the openly sulking potions master. Apparently, she wasn't finished, yet. "I get that the Ministry is powerful, but she is terrorizing both the children and us. You are the headmaster but instead of protecting your own, you are constantly away on secret business. I am fed up with all of this! She slipped me a note today, announcing the fact that she will come and watch me teach tomorrow night. Right now, I feel very tempted to stick a telescope in her eye!"
Minerva had never seen the Astronomy professor this angry. Usually, she seemed pretty level-headed and calm but today she was more than a little out of line.
"As much as I hate to admit it, Aurora is right," Snape chimed in. "Granted, our methods might be a bit extreme, but we need to fight back somehow. If I have to see that little pink hat she has taken up wearing bob up in my classroom again, I might find myself forced to accidentally empty a cauldron of Pruritus Potion on to her."
Dumbledore raised both of his hands in a calming gesture. "First of all, it is nice to see that you two are, for once, in agreement," he said and smiled rather kindly at the duo to which Snape leaned back in his chair with a huff and folded his arms in front of his chest. "Second, I completely understand your predicament. However, Wilhelmina, you might have to see the error of completely prohibiting Professor Umbridge from sleeping, especially on a day that she spent nodding off during her own lessons due to your colleague's fondness of Crick Ristly."
"Rick Astley," Charity chirped.
"Whatever the name," Dumbledore soothed. "you cannot, and I repeat, you cannot stick twenty-four eels into your colleague's bed."
There was a moment of silence during which Wilhelmina ground her teeth nosiliy, taking a deep drag from her pipe. Minerva had been trying so hard to keep things together over the last days and had witnessed so many absurd events that suddenly she felt herself snapping. This was ridiculous! Eels in a bed, a talking head, muggle songs! Who knew what would be next! And truth be told, she had to admit to herself, she had not enjoyed herself that much in years. Few people knew that in her own time at Hogwarts Minerva had been not only a brilliant and popular student, but also an occasional prankster. Her jokes had always been good-natured and no one had ever been harmed, but she had loved the sense of excitement and freedom that came with – say – bewitching her teacher's chair and collaps and reassemble itself whenever he tried to sit on it.
"Yes, that was indeed very wrong, Wilhelmina!" she scolded the substitute teacher and found that Flitwick was rolling his eyes at her for the shortest of moments. That was when she decided that sometimes, one had to give up on one's usual values. "Those poor eels. I wouldn't want to end up in Umbridge's bed! I suggest you go and apologize to all twenty-four of them," she blurted out.
Minerva could hardly believe she had said it herself but the looks on her fellow professors' faces told her, that their disbelief must still exceed hers by far.
"Twenty-three," Wilhelmina drawled. "She killed one when she sat on it. That clumsy gobshite."
There was a split second of silence before everyone burst into fits of laughter, Minerva included. Even Dumbledore's mouth was twitching slightly and Snape unconvincingly faked a coughing-fit to mask his own amusement. It took them a moment to calm themselves and only Trelawney was still whinning sporadically when everyone else had already quieted down.
Dumbledore cleared his throat and her ill-timed laughter subsided.
"You will apologize to Professor Umbridge, Wilhelmina and you will nurse that eel back to health. Since, as you have wrongly been informed, it is not dead but seriously injured nonetheless. Also, you will have to find a way to make her believe that this has been an accident."
After Dumbledore had declared the meeting over, Minerva hurried away from the others, duely embarrassed by her uncharacteristic joke. She prided herself in being a strict and fair but very serious person and what she had said had been downright silly - despite the fact that it had sparked a lot of amusement among her colleagues. Slightly worried that any contact with anyone else would inevitably lead to good-natured allusions to her earlier indiscretion, she decided to call on the only completely humor-free person in the castle. So after hiding in her quarters for a while, she made her way towards the dungeons.
The torches on the walls flickered in the draught that always seemed to chill the castle's basement and, not for the first time, Minerva wondered whether Salazar Slytherin had purposefully installed it himself to make his part of the castle even more eery and univiting. Snape's quarters were located one corridor down from his classroom and office and only her own steps echoing from the walls kept her company until it was joined by the sound of a second pair of feet. Minerva, who was not very eager to have that long-dreaded conversation with Snape, turned around to find out who it was that paid Snape a visit so late in the day.
Professor Vector looked a little sheepish at the sight of Minerva, who, observant as she was, immediately noticed that the other professor's hairstyle was not as strict as usual and that she was wearing slightly more flattering robes. Could it be…? She thought back to the broken quill in the faculty lounge and her morose facial expression whenever she saw Snape and Sinistra together. How could she have not made the connection, Minerva scolded herself.
"Septima!" she called. "On your way to see Severus?"
The Arithmacy teacher did not look very happy to see Minerva, let alone willing to share her intentions with her.
"Yes, um, he lent me a book," she said, holding up a battered-looking volume. "I just thought I'd return it to him. And you?" she added a little too quickly.
"I have a bone to pick with him," Minerva stated grimly.
"A bone…?" Professor Vector began but was interrupted by a door that was opened with so much force that it slammed into the wall and gave off the direful noise of splintering wood against stone. Both women froze in their place and stared down the corridor towards the source of the commotion that turned out to be Aurora Sinistra. And a thoroughly furious one that was too caught-up in what had to be a horrible wrongdoing to realize that she was not alone.
"You are impossible! I have no idea why I still put up with you, you sorry excuse for a writer!" she shouted. "I wonder whether you can fathom how often I fell asleep why reading your manuscript! The only thing that kept me awake was your ridiculously faulty comma placement!"
She stood in the corridor, seething and clenching her fists at her sides.
"What do you know?" Snape's not-so-cold voice sounded from the inside of his quarters. "Your book is riddled with spelling errors!"
Aurora's face turned red. "It. Is. Not! I told you a thousand times that it is only one!"
When Minerva heard Snape's tone of voice, she could imagine the mean sneer on his face. "But misspelling constellation with a single l? That is poor, Aurora. Very poor."
Aurora put her hands on her hips. "I can tell you what's poor, Severus! Your picking a fight about pretty much everything ever! I really don't see why you always need to be so incredibly mean to everyone!"
She took a step backwards when Snape took an unexpected step out of his quarters and so did Minerva and Professor Vector, who weren't so keen on being detected. Minerva, at least, was unwilling to leave because she found the scene unfolding in front of her, far too interesting to walk out on it. Professor Vector looked sick.
"I am not mean. I am just being reasonable," Snape hissed which was probably the closest he ever got to shouting.
"Reasonable!" Aurora threw her hands in the air. "Reasonable!" she mocked him. "You are the least reasonable person that I know!"
"Oh, really? Because I was under the impression that you knew Professor Trelawney," Snape answered with impressive dignity, given the circumstances.
"At least she doesn't constantly pick on Harry Potter!"
Minerva raised her eyebrows. Apparently she was not the only one who had noticed Snape's ridiculous little vendetta. Now it was Snape's turn to throw his hands in the air, only that he did it with slightly less vigor and still managed to look quite intimidating.
"Another member of the Potter fan club, I see. Not only does he live in Dumbledore's pocket, he has also won the heart of the nutty professor."
"Don't call me that!" Aurora demanded.
"Then act accordingly. You lack self-control as well as poise. It is quite dreadful."
Aurora's eyes narrowed and she dropped her hands next to her body, her shoulders slightly raised in anger. "Then why don't you ask Professor Vector to help you with her book? She has so much poise that one has to wonder whether she swallowed a broomstick at some point!"
Minerva's eyes flickered towards Professor Vector who looked a bit flattered despite the fact that Sinistra had clearly meant it as an insult.
"Because," Snape said pointedly. "I do not want to do this to her."
At first, Minerva thought Snape was going to hurt Aurora when he took a swift step towards her and grabbed her around the waist, swung her around and half crashed, half swung her against the wall. He closed in on her and pressed his lips on to hers to engage her in what looked like a peculiar mix between a kiss and a struggle. Minerva knew that the line had to be drawn at witnessing her co-workers intimate moments and so she grabbed the unresponsive Professor Vector by the arm and forcefully escorted her back to ground-level where she stood, trembling.
"Are you alright, my dear?" Minerva tried, feeling a bit sorry for the usually collected woman. "Would you care for a cup of tea maybe?"
Vector raised her eyes to Minerva's and for a moment looked as if she was about to cry. Then her expression changed.
"Oh that little hussy! She has been pursuing him for months!"
"Ehm," Minerva replied, at a loss for words. Maybe it was the isolation that came with living in a castle far away from society. Yes. That had to be it. Because otherwise, why on earth would two women like Aurora Sinistra and Septima Vector be interested in someone like Snape? Someone who utterly lacked congeniality, prided himself in being the meanest and most unfair teacher of Hogwarts and seemed to not take basic hair care nearly seriously enough? A man who dressed as if he was going to attend a funeral and was as pale as if he hadn't seen daylight in a decade? How came that every single student in Hogwarts hated Snape one way or the other – even though the Slytherins would never admit to it – while the female teachers swooned over him? Did Sprout and Trelawney secretely have a thing for him, too? Had everyone gone mental?
Calm down, Minerva, she told herself when suddenly, an idea started to form in her mind. Personally, she did not get what they liked about Snape but maybe… maybe…
"Oh Minerva!" Vector threw her arms around the McGonagall and squeezed uncomfortably tightly. "Why am I always the one left out? Why can't a man ever choose me?"
Minerva decided that another "ehm" might not cut it, so she patted her younger colleague's back gently. "I am sorry, Septima, but you will meet someone, I am sure."
"Who? Hagrid?" Vector sobbed then hiccuped.
Minerva was a patient and sympathetic woman but she felt extremely unfortunate to be trapped with Septima right now that she had a plan to work out in her mind.
"Look, I think you should have a cup of tea and settle down. A kiss is just a kiss."
She knew that the line was as useless as it got, but it still seemed to work on Vector.
"Are you sure?"
"How can you ever be sure?" Minerva smiled and squeezed the other professor's hand. Septima seemed to regain her composure and nodded, looking slightly embarrassed.
"You are probably right, Minerva. Thank you. I'll see you in the morning then."
She walked off and left Minerva to her own devices. The deputy-headmistress hesitated for a moment and then decided to simply go for it. She had not yet decided what she would do to win that bet but the epiphany that had just hit her seemed to point her in the right direction. The only problem was to get Severus to participate. Quickly, she went the way she had come and was both relieved and slightly unsettled to find the corridor empty. Hopefully, Sinistra had hit Snape over the head with a blunt object and stormed off. Or maybe not, because Vector liking Snape, Snape liking Sinistra and Sinistra not liking Snape was not a scenario she wanted to imagine unfolding anywhere close to her.
She raised her hand and knocked at the door. There was a moment of silence before it was opened by Snape who fortunately, was completely dressed and equipped with his usual sneer. Behind him, Aurora was sitting at the table as if nothing had happened, feverishly crossing out entire lines on a piece of parchment while he had his back turned to her.
"Minerva, how lovely," Snape said sarcastically. "what can I do for you?"
"I am here to offer you a deal," she said.
- to be continued -