A/N: Professional stunt testicles were employed in the making of this fanfiction. Do not try this at home.


Department of Mysteries: Unlikely Weather Disturbances Division

No One Admitted Without Appointment. For Appointments, Apply Within. We Apologise for the Inconvenience.


"He wants to what?"

"Dance. Like them," Minerva waves an arm wildly about, which does not draw the slightest attention from anyone in the smoky basement, because they are all waving their arms wildly about. Legs, too, plus heads and bums and each other.

The jazz would be too loud for conversation, but Hooch has cast a bit of a buffer about them. Minerva is fascinated by the dancers. The more energetic the dance, the more it expands to fill the available space.

"Has he gone mad?" Hooch asks. She slurps her drink and grins her feral grin, "Barmy? Bonkers? Round the bend? Loony?"

"All of the above," Minerva nods, making a little toast with the alcohol left in her glass before draining it.

"And this is what has driven you to look me up after all these years?"

"Please remind yourself that I am the one who extended the invitation to you, Mara."

"Yes, well, busy professional athlete and all that," Hooch leans back in her chair and pulls a face, daring Minerva to burst her bravada.

The eyebrow goes up. Hooch laughs so hard that the chair goes over.

"In fact," Minerva tells her, successfully pretending that she has not noticed Hooch's acrobatic tumble, "It was my supervisor's idea."

"What? Urquart?"

"No," Minerva shakes her head. The music has gone so loud that she has to raise her voice to be heard. "She merely said I was working too hard and should go find friends my own age." And you are one of the few left alive.

"She?" Hooch straddles her chair backward and leans forward, elbows on the sticky wood table. "Who is She?"

"Excellent question," Minerva says.


"Dueling drills?"

"Yes. No witches welcome, of course."

"Now we're talking about Elphinstone Urquart."

"What gave it away?"

"And why are the wizard 'clerks' at the Department of Unlikely Weather Disturbances having dueling drills?"

"I can't tell you."

"You can't tell me why there are dueling drills involved in the job you can't tell me about?"

"I can't tell you that, either." Minerva shrugs, not quite apologetically. Hooch has a job anyone with a subscription to The Daily Prophet can read about. How horrible that would be, doing one's work in front of an audience. She shudders. "But they were faffing away at one another while the witches watched. We brought reading material."

"Let me guess. The Encyclopedia Magica."

"Hairstyle tips from the royal hairdresser, according to the cover."

"And between the covers?"

"I can't tell you."

"Imagine that."

"As I was saying, Ruddlesby could not overcome the Protego Horribilis. He kept finding himself with a mouth full of tooth powder. Jane says, 'Oi! Ruddles! You're saying it wrong. It's Pro-TAY-goh Hor-EE-bliss, not Pro-TAY-goh OR-rall-bliss."

"Hmm. I Protect Oral Bliss. Sounds right to me." Hooch says.

Thwack.

"Ow!" Her eyes flare yellow for an instant. Then she touches the back of her head and frowns when her fingers find the dent. "What was that?"

"An elbow."

"Really? Because it felt like a blow to the head to me." She stands up and eyes the dancers with predatory focus, "Where is it now? What is it doing?"

The dancers are packed in to the place. No patch of clear space is left on the dance floor. "I'm uncertain." Minerva muses.

Hooch rubs the growing lump on her head and scowls at the rhythmic melee, but Minerva's attention has turned inward, So Hooch kicks the chair aside and slips onto the wooden bench beside Minerva. A tall woman with rangy muscles, short cropped white hair, khaki trousers and a man's roll-neck jumper, Hooch easily passes for a beardless youth. No one looks twice when her arm goes around Minerva's shoulders. She brushes a quick kiss against Minerva's forehead and says, "And then what?"

"What what?"

"Oral Bliss."

"Right. And then the lot of them stop working and glare at her."

Hooch snorts.

"Urquart ahems and well-nows at us. Then he says that Ruddlesby is probably a bit parched and maybe Jane could bring some tea."


"Hermione Jean Granger, you have been showing off," Dumbledore intones. He has managed to get himself behind her desk so that she must sit in the "guest" chair. She's been watching him with her chin resting on her hand, her hand resting on the arm of the chair. The chair did not start its day with arms. She conjures them while he is demonstrating his all-powerfully telepathic discovery of her middle name.

She slides onto her own desk, and stretches out on one side, facing him like a chanteuse on a grand piano. "Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, you are right," she says.

"Not especially covert, then," Dumbledore replies, and manfully pretends he did not squeak while he was at it.

"Building my team," she shrugs, as if she were not way, way inside the British Personal Space Perimeter, which, not yet being metric, makes the air between them roil with currents of clashing will. "My team, which I lead for no good reason any one of them can see."

He blinks first and her rolling office chair, with its lovely padded arms, scuttles backward as far as it will go. His retreat ends only because the floor ends, somewhat sooner than he thought it was going to, and the smack of the chair against the wall jars him the rest of the way out of his calculating composure.

"Are you this much trouble as a student?" He asks.

"I can't tell you," she tells him.


Jane Puckle twists her unruly hair into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, does an intricate little move with her wand – no magic, she just uses her wand as a hairpin – and secures it in place. She sighs. "I've a bargain," she tells the room in general and Elphinstone Urquart in particular. "Name your best man. I'll duel him. Loser fetches tea."


"Humdinger!" Hooch crows. She's left off keeping time to the revivalist beat by thrumming her fingers against Minerva's inner thigh, probably because she needs her hand to drink. "I like this bird. Is she bent?"

"I'm sure I don't know."

"You fancy her," Hooch says. Her fingers trace circles over Minerva's belly.

"She's a colleague.'

"So you could introduce us?'

Minerva's response is to slap Hooch's hand away.

"You fancy her."


Elphinstone Urquart takes charge. "Young lady, that's quite enough. I've indulged your – oddities – because Dumbledore believes you might be helpful, but—"

A wizard steps out of the embarrassed bachelor herd and presents himself on the dueling mat. He waves Ruddlesby away with an impatient gesture. "Ignatius Tuft," he says. "Best man."

"Jane Puckle," she says, "Matron of honour." She holds her hands out at her sides, showing Tuft and everyone else that she conceals neither wand nor weapon.

"Arm yourself," demands the challenger.

"Go," She says and begins a slow, measured approach toward Ignatius Tuft.

"Tuft!" Urquart harrumphs, "Not sporting!"

"Incarcerous!"

Jane Puckle doesn't flinch as the spell dissipates around her. It doesn't slow her down. It doesn't speed her up.

Tuft's next curse is unvoiced. "Locomotor Mortis," Jane identifies it as it veers harmlessly astray. Closer.

Ignatius Tuft is sweating. He winds up and flings a stream of bright light from the tip of his wand. Everyone in the room recognizes the unvoiced stupefy.

Closer.

"Confringo!" Growls Tuft. Urquart pulls a wand to counter, but has to duck as the curse strikes sparks off Jane and explodes back out into the room.

Minerva throws an opened magazine over her head as if caught in a storm.

Jane covers the remaining distance through a buzzing barrage of curses cast hard and fast. With one decisive move, she snatches the wand from the young wizard's hand.

He looks at his empty fist in blank incomprehension.

She tosses the captured wand to Ruddlesby as she passes him on her way out of the dueling chamber. "Pro-TAY-go Hor-EE-bliss," she tells him. Then, loud enough for all to hear, "Minerva and I will be trading recipes in the Think Tank. I take my tea with milk."

It is almost certainly Urquart who says, "See here—"

She doesn't turn around. She doesn't slow down. She doesn't pull her wand. She flicks her fingers at the floor as if sprinkling it with water. A slight smell of burning hair wafts across the room. "Levitestis," she says.

"There's no such spell as Levitestis," sneers Ignatius Tuft.

Then, an odd look comes over his face. In fact, Minerva realizes, a similar expression is being worn by every male in the room. There is a faint whimpering of fabric. One by one, the wizards rise up on tiptoe and frantically circle their arms to maintain balance en pointe.

"There is now," says Jane.


Hooch pounds the table with the palm of both hands and laughs until the water comes to her eyes. Minerva's deadpan fails her. She laughs until she can no longer maintain the tensile strength to remain upright, so collapses in a happy heap with her oldest friend.


"You could tell me. You know. I see war, Miss Granger. It is there in your mind, beyond the barriers you put up to keep me out of certain chambers. What purpose is served by secrecy? Why send all of us into an uncertain future, untold lives at stake, armed with riddles? You have no idea—"

"Do not finish that sentence, old man."

The menace in her whisper stops him cold.

Hermione Jane Jean Puckle Granger Weasley McGonagall (whoever the hell she is) takes a deeply anachronistic yoga breath and swings her legs over the edge of her desk so that she looks down at him from her perch. "I love you, Albus. I genuinely do. And I forgive you. Know that, if nothing else, because there may come a time when it means something to you. But I am the only one in this room who knows the final toll. Knows the names. Knows who they dreamt of becoming."

Something sizzles. Ozone taints the air.

"You are quite lethal at desk duels," he says.

She forces herself to focus on something other than the hypnotizing red tip of his white beard.

"In war, people die," he says.

"Beings, Albus. Beings die. Any line you draw around us to keep out them will tighten around you like a noose."

She hops down and strides toward the office door. He follows her, if only to avoid being kicked out.

"Professor," she says, making his title a question, "If I went back in time, before you began research with Flamel, and told you the fourteen uses of Dragon's Blood—"

"Twelve," he corrects.

She rolls her eyes at him and he gives her a complicit smile. "If I gave you that list, how much would you now know about the properties and habits of the Philosopher's Stone? Or the alchemic use of tears?"

"Very little," he admits.

"Those things are crucial," she says. Then adds, as she opens the door to show him out, "Many things are crucial, and I have no idea what they might be."


"Mara," Minerva says.

"Mmmph," replies Xiomara Hooch.

"Mara," Minerva repeats, half whine, half moan.

Hooch raises her eyes to meet Minerva's seriously unfocused gaze, and she does it without losing the connection between her tongue and Minerva's clitoris.

"We have," Minerva pants, lays a hand on the familiar head and tries again, "We have never done this in a bed." Her shoulder blades dig into the wall next to Hooch's front door, because they got no farther than that when the last of the clothing was pried off.

Hooch halts her spirited charge on Minerva's goal. She wipes her mouth on the sleeve of the jumper, which she is somehow wearing as a pantleg, stands up, scoops Minerva into her arms and carries her across the flat, where a soft feather bed is heaped with warm blankets. "You're too bloody thin," Hooch tells her, and lowers her into the nest with the effortlessness that comes from strength.

Minerva reaches up for her. "Show me something I don't know about you yet," she purrs.

So Xiomara Hooch maps Minerva's skin with adoring, unhurried kisses, teases her, mounts her, makes her so desperate to come that Minerva forgets to worry about pleasing, or performing, or anything at all, really. And when Minerva does come, it lasts as long as she needs it to last and stops only when she wants it to stop, and then Mara tells her silly jokes until she giggles.


Wilhelmina Tuft has a cackle for the ages. It is a cackle any witch in history, or even any witch in Shakespeare, would be proud to call her own. Hermione is dazzled.

Ignatius Tuft is not.

Elphinstone Urquart is not.

Hermione is concerned that the Minister for Magic might pass out from oxygen deprivation at some point. But, given the relentless pressure of high office, Hermione is proud to have provided Madame Tuft with this little bright spot in her day.

"She hoisted you by your own petards!" Exults Madame Tuft. "Splendid! You must teach me, Puckle."

"At your service, Minister."

"You'd treat your own son this way?" Ignatius rumbles.

"We will speak of this later, sir," Madame Tuft tells the young man.

Elphinstone Urquart can no longer contain his indignation and bobs his head like a dyspeptic rooster. "Madame," he croaks, rising from his seat. "I cannot stand by—"

"Stand idly by," deadpans Madame Tuft.

"Stand idly by and, aah, allow you to let this insult pass. This witch is unnatural. She's an invert, I'll be bound. She is a sapphist spoiler of innocent girls. By her behavior and manner, she attacks the very essence of English womanhood, self-absorbed, mannish in manners and dress, aping those who would protect-"

"Allow me, Elphinstone?"

"She wields an unhealthy influence over Miss McGonagall, a young lady from an old family, who serves under my protection. I wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't already forced her attentions—"

With a gentle wave of her fingers, Madame Tuft shuts off Elphinstone Urquarts's voice. She is a comfortably upholstered, matronly witch in traditional robes. There is a bit of lace at her collar, and bits of lace at her cuffs. The lace at her left cuff hides a wand sheath. Aha, Hermione thinks, the lady has something up her sleeve.

Hermione, Urquart, and the younger Tuft sit in overstuffed chairs arrayed in a semi-circle about a French Provincial desk. Hermione is a bit giddy. This is Wilhelmina Tuft. The Wilhelmina Tuft.

"Please pardon the intrusion into private matters," says the Minister, "But the medi-witch who gave you the physical examination after your unorthodox arrival wrote in her report that you appear to be the mother of between one and three children?

"Two," Hermione admits.

Elphinstone Urquart is forced to express his consternation without the usual fusillade of non-lexical vocables.

"And they are?"

"Nearly grown, reasonably safe, and quite capable of sharing their mother with the nation."

"Just so," Madame Tuft nods thoughtfully. "I do understand that. And, forgive me again, but I cannot help but notice that you wear a ring on the finger that normally signifies marriage."

Hermione can't deny it. The ring is there on her finger.

Wilhelmina Tuft leans forward at her desk and softens her voice.

Oh, the eye contact. The concerned crinkle at the corners of her eyes. This is as canny a politician as Hermione has ever met.

"Is your husband living, My Dear?"

"No, he isn't," she answers.

Another gentle wave of the fingers, and Elphinstone Urquart's voice returns in a sputter.

Hermione bites back the bile of her subterfuge. Tactics, old girl. One step at a time.

"And can you describe the nature of your interest in Miss McGonagall?"

"Minerva McGonagall is, without doubt, the brightest witch of her age. No other Unspeakable has her potential for magical power. Can we afford to waste it? Dumbledore thinks not. He has charged me with nurturing that talent."

"He has said as much. He agitates daily for her entry into the advanced transfiguration programme."

"Rightly so," Hermione says.

Madame Tuft drums her fingers lightly upon the polished wood of her desk. The gesture is so like the gentle wave she uses to cast spells that it serves as mild threat and, therefore, effective distraction. "Very well, then. Elphinstone, you have a new apprentice," she rules. The fingers straighten and tap the desk once. It is barely audible and as final as the bang of a gavel.

Hermione is so impressed by the finesse of this encounter that she almost forgets to be wildly irritated at the outcome.

The wizards are graciously invited to hie themselves hence. "But you stay, Puckle," the Minister requests.

"Of course." Hermione stands while the others retreat. She waits, respectfully, with her hands clasped in front of her.

"Thank you, Jane. May I call you Jane?"

"Please do."

"Jane, did something about the conversation we just had seem odd to you?" Asks Wilhelmina Tuft.

"Since you mention it, yes, something did."

The wave is reversed, which turns it into an invitation.

"Does your son often refer to himself in the third person, Minister?"