One Day at a Time
Weasley Trouble
I saw the matching heads of red hair—the Weasley twins--a couple days later, near the beginning of the class period for one of my 6th year classes. They hastily walked into my class room and towards Ron. I glanced at them with a mildly incredulous look that they would have the nerve to walk into my classroom right before class was about to start, but they both just grinned at me and said "G'day Professor."
"We have to say good-bye to Ron—"
"Little Ronikins—"
"'Cause we're about to leave, you see."
"Have to tell him to keep out of trouble." They grinned wider and one of them ruffled Ron's hair, to Ron's annoyance.
"That's all," one of them said, but the other was handing Ron something and saying something in a lower tone of voice. Then they both stood up straight and said "Bye!" in unison before striding out the door. I smiled in spite of myself and started teaching my lesson for the day.
Several hours later I found out what one of the twins had been handing Ron. I was walking through the halls at almost two in the morning, exhausted after coming back from a late meeting, when I saw a light on in an empty classroom and heard the quiet shuffling of what sounded like somebody trying to avoid being caught. I slinked to the door and put my ear against the wall to listen.
"George said they didn't have time to test it while they were here. It's supposed to stick to the wall and shrink the classroom you're in or something."
I opened the door just as Ron had finished throwing what looked like a white spider the size of a baseball against the wall. Harry and Ron turned around at the sound of the opening door, both obviously surprised at my appearance in the classroom.
"Well, well, what do we have here," I said with a flat voice, slightly frowning. My eyes flickered up to the formerly-baseball-sized spider. It was flattening as if an invisible hand was pushing down on its putty-textured body, and it was quickly covering more and more of the wall. "Uh," I said, losing my strict composure for a second. "Do you know how to stop its spread?" I was eyeing the shelves of books it was spreading towards.
Ron and Harry both turned around and their faces looked first surprised, then worried. They simultaneously ran towards the wall without a word and started casting spells at its expanding borders to slow its expansion. I joined them but it didn't seem to be doing much, and with horror I noticed that it had started to completely cover the shelves of books. I finally cast a disappearing charm to keep it from devouring more books but those which had already been covered disappeared with it. I didn't know which teacher used this classroom, if any, and I was horrified at the idea of having to attempt to replace books of which probably nobody knew the title. In retrospect, if nobody was using the books I supposed it didn't matter very much, but at the time I was livid at the two boys who, due to their foolishness, were responsible for the loss of potential valuable or useful books. More importantly, I was irrationally afraid that it might somehow be blamed on me since I was the one who had found them.
I turned towards them and I think they recognized the look of disbelieving anger on my face because the stuttering attempts at excuses, that they had started once I had disappeared Fred and George's gag gift, trailed off.
"Thirty points from Gryffindor," I said, daring them to make a complaint. They stayed silent and I continued, "You'll both have some form of detention. Separately. Go back to the Gryffindor Tower. No, I'll walk with you," I added, thinking that they might not go directly back otherwise. "One of you will probably have to re-paint that wall," I added on the walk back, remembering the poor condition of the paint after I had disappeared the gag toy. We walked in silence and not a soul moved in the stone hallways.
I ended up giving Ron the job of re-painting the wall (with no magic, of course), and since my classroom had been out of use before I joined the staff, I gave Harry the job of cleaning it (also with no magic.) I sat in the classroom while he did so, skimming the text books of the 2nd and 4th years. "So are all of Ron's siblings this troublesome?" I asked, my desire to take a break from the reading defeating my feeling that I shouldn't be friendly to students who were serving detention.
"No, not really." He paused. "It depends on your definition of troublesome."
I knew the Weasleys were a large family but I didn't know exactly how large so I vaguely asked, "Does he have a lot of older siblings?"
Harry nodded. "Five. Some are closer to the family than others, though." I nodded, and Harry looked thoughtful for a second. "So do you have any siblings?" he asked in a forced casual tone, and I remembered the conversation I had overheard in Hagrid's cabin.
"I have four older brothers," I spoke, trying to keep my tone light and conversational.
"Oh, were you the only girl?"
"Yes," I responded shortly. "I wasn't very close to my brothers," I decided to defend myself by further elaborating on my previous comment. "They would pick on me a lot." After all, I thought, when Mother and Father explicitly say that girls are weak and useless, that sort of opens the way for my brothers to pick on me.
"Oh that's too bad," Harry looked sympathetic. "My cousin that I used to live with used to pick on me a lot," he added after a pause.
"I'm sorry," I replied and it suddenly struck me with full force that, no, of course, he didn't live with his parents—they had both been killed by Death Eaters, by the Dark Lord. They weren't coming back, and so of course he had to live with other relatives, including his cousin.
A silence fell over the classroom like a heavy blanket. Harry paused before turning back to his cleaning and I looked at my book again, without reading any of the words on the page. I wondered what was going through Harry's mind at that moment, but then the door suddenly opened and Snape stood in the doorway. His glance flickered towards Harry and instantly become filled with loathing.
"May I help you?" I said coolly, and his eyes immediately flashed in my direction.
"The Headmaster would like to see you," he replied with an equally cold tone. I immediately felt like a school girl again, as if I was about to be punished for something I had done wrong. Why did Dumbledore want to see me?
"I'll be back briefly, Harry," I said, standing up and attempting to hide my nerves.
"If you have anything precious or private to you, I wouldn't leave it within range of Potter," Snape's upper lip curled and his gaze landed on Harry, who seemed to be carefully and intentionally avoiding looking in his direction.
"Uh, alright," I stuttered, unsure of what to say. I walked out of the door without moving anything and Snape closed the door, leaving Harry inside. He waited a split second for me and I could tell that I was supposed to follow him, just before he started walking very slightly ahead of me, his robes billowing behind him with his quick steps. I felt rather childish trailing behind him so, annoyed, I ran a couple of steps to catch up. His eyes quickly flicked in my direction and I angrily spit out: "I don't need to be led to Dumbledore's office." I heard my voice and thought that it sounded like that of an impertinent child, which only made my aggravation increase.
"Suit yourself," he calmly said, the timbre of his voice containing its normal coolness. He turned sharply at the corner and started walking done a separate hallway. I paused and looked scornfully at his retreating figure before turning back towards the corridor I was currently standing in. It was at that moment that it hit me: I actually wasn't entirely sure where the Headmaster's office was. I could still see Snape out of the corner of my eye, but I knew even without turning my head that I would not go groveling to him asking where Dumbledore's office was. I was a Slytherin: I was cunning, I would find the office on my own. I visualized the office in my mind's eye, and remembered that it was in a tower, one on the south side of the castle. I started hurriedly walking, practically running, towards the south of the castle while picturing the different towers I had been in at Hogwarts.
When I reached the top of the staircase inside the first tower there was a large stone statue which looked familiar. After a second it sprung inside and I was soon inside the Headmaster's office, astounded at my good luck that it had been in the first tower that I had checked.
"Hello, Liseli," Dumbledore greeted me warmly.
"Oh, uh, hello, Professor," my words nervously tumbled out.
"No need to be nervous," Dumbledore's blue eyes were twinkling. "Please, take a seat. I just wanted to see how things were going."
"Oh, that's nice of you," I said taking one of the seats opposite him.
Dumbledore smiled and said, "I hear you've been quite the conflict-resolver recently."
"Well, I don't know about that," I gave a small, embarrassed smile.
"Now, now, no need to be modest," he said. I looked away and felt a slight blush rise in my cheeks. "I'm glad to see that you're treating all of the students equally, no matter what their background." I looked back up at him again, frowning slightly. What did he mean by that? What else would I be doing? He seemed to sense that I was offended for he quickly added, "I just mean since you've worked with some of the students and their families previously, when you were a tutor. Many people would unintentionally allow those small biases to spill over into their work, and I'm happy to see that you aren't one of those people. That's all."
I noticed his eyes were glued to mine, now, and the piercing effect produced by them unsettlingly reminded me of Snape's eyes, despite the many other differences between them. "I would never treat the students anything but equally," I said in a light-hearted tone, trying to shake the feeling that Dumbledore could see his way into my mind.
"That's good to hear," he said and his eyes suddenly regained their warm, sparkling atmosphere to such an extent that I doubted myself for even thinking that his eyes could have any similarities to Snape's. He then shifted to other topics of conversation, asking more about my classes and how I liked the students, the other professors, and living at Hogwarts again. On my long walk from his tower to the Slytherins' basements, I replayed the conversation in my head, amazed at his friendliness and warmth. It seemed as if he genuinely cared about everybody at Hogwarts. My first thought was to that it was a ploy to gain others' confidences, but such an idea couldn't stay in my head very long: it just seemed too genuine, not as if he was trying to profit from it. It amazed me that a wizard that great could care about so many people without becoming weak or finding himself ripped to shreds by being pulled in many directions at once.
…
Disclaimer: Still don't own Harry Potter.
A/N: Thank you very much to avalon for reviewing! I really hope you keep reading, and thanks for the heads up about the spelling mistakes; I should be more careful about that. Anybody else reading this, I hope you review, too!
