Chapter 10 – Dumbledore Gets Annoyed
"Explain to me how a second year can take down a classmate and a professor and not be 'causing any trouble'? As you put it I believe, Minerva?" Dumbledore asked his Deputy Headmistress from within the safe confines of his office.
Minerva glanced down haggardly, wishing she could grab a mouthful from her hidden bodice flask without the headmaster's knowledge before attempting to answer his question.
"Oh Albus, you know as well I do that Lockhart is a pompous fool!" She said angrily, striding across his office to peer directly into his currently non-twinkling eyes.
Or at least, he was a pompous fool, before Hermione got her hands on him, Minerva thought ruefully to herself.
"And is Draco Malfoy a pompous fool as well?" He asked her, his tone mocking her gently.
"If you really need to know the answer to that question, you need to get out of your tower more often," she answered angrily. She turned her back on him; fully aware of the danger she was potentially putting herself in.
"Oh for goodness sake Minerva," he said, raising his voice a bit, causing her to flinch in reaction.
"I'm not going to hex you!" He yelled, completely miffed at her reaction. "Would you please just take a seat and stop pacing my office like a snared dragon!"
She turned and looked at him until he sighed mightily, and sat down in the seat behind his desk. Only then did she sit down as well, foregoing her manners for once and flouncing nearly as heartily as he had, just with a titch more grace.
"You know," he said, steepling his fingers together in front of him, "normally the person I get these sorts of reactions from is Severus."
She opened her mouth to speak, but he shut her up with a look.
"Yes I am plenty aware that he is currently lying in the infirmary, being tended to by Poppy's most competent hands." He said, leaning back comfortably, non-verbally daring her to interrupt him again. She kept her mouth shut and looked at him with a steely eyed gaze.
"Should I be aware of anything else?" He asked her more calmly, opening his hands as if to physically receive her report of that past afternoon's lunacies.
"He saved Harry Potter's life this afternoon." She said curtly, leaning back and reveling in the look of amazement that the old man suddenly had plastered on his face before regaining control of his emotions.
"Did he now." The old man stated, the damnable twinkle reawaking in his eyes as he looked calmly at her.
"And we don't know exactly what set Ronald Weasley off," she finished, looking at him uncertainly once more.
"May I stand up?" He asked her, still mocking her previous unspoken request for them to both sit.
"Please," she gestured vaguely towards him, making allowances for his ridiculous need to pace aimlessly through his office.
Keeps him from getting constipated, the voice in the back of her mind quipped semi-hysterically at her. She stifled an urge to verbally tell it to hush, knowing that she got many of her cat mannerisms from that same portion of her mind.
"How is it that an entire class of students, Gryffindor students," he said, correcting himself, "all witnessed the events leading up to the outburst," he said, understating the situation completely in her mind, "yet not one has ventured forth with the truth?" He asked, quite pleased with the conundrum he had laid out before the all-too serious woman who was currently fighting to remain still under his unblinking gaze.
"It is a bit odd," she said demurely.
"Really," he said, probing her tight lipped face with his eyes, hoping she would make this easy on herself.
"Gilderoy has been stabilized, last I checked," she answered, throwing a challenge directly back at him. "Why not ask him yourself?"
"Ah, I would," he said, walking the distance over to his floo in just a few steps, his hands loosely linked behind his back.
"If not for this," he said, throwing in some floo powder and directing it to open to the Infirmary side.
At first it worked like normal to her unimpressed eyes, but only at first. He held up a hand to keep her from speaking as he stepped into the green flames that were standard in floo travel.
She sat by herself, momentarily flummoxed by his desertion of their conversation. She was about ready to reach for her flask when the floo belched a green-feathered miscreant onto the floor at directly at her feet.
"Albus?" She asked hesitantly.
"Squawk," the creature said in response.
She looked closer at the figure and was forced to bite her tongue to keep in what surely would have erupted as a loud guffaw on her part.
Most unladylike and therefore undignified, she felt sure.
It was Albus who was rolling around on the floor covered in ridiculous green feathers, complete with a bright purple beard that only emphasized the equally bright orange beak that sat in the place of where his lips ought to be.
She couldn't hold out, and so she lifted her handkerchief to her mouth, and sneezed out a few peals of laughter into it, taking care not to look at the ridiculous creature before her, lest she lose the fragile control that she had just barely gotten back in the past few moments.
"Squawk," he—it?—said, put its feathery wings on its hips in indignation at her watery eyes. The man-bird of a headmaster was once again standing, but when she looked down in an effort to verify that doubtable claim, she was forced to giggle delightfully at the sight of his clawed tootsies.
"You know Albus," she said, barely holding herself together by this point, now using her handkerchief to dab gently at the corners of her eyes.
"I have often confided in Poppy that your legs looked like chicken legs in your swimming trunks, but I do believe she has reached a completely new level of ridiculous truth!" She said, finding herself lost in peals of uncontrollable laughter at the absurd creation in front of her.
It only got worse when he started hopping huffily around her, squawking forcefully in her face.
"Albus, I don't know how long it will take for this to wear off, but I'm not sticking around to find out. I'm going to dinner. If you're not back to," she cleared her throat delicately, "normal by then, I'll come back and," she forced herself to swallow her laughter, "figure out a way to help you." She said, licking her lips in an effort to regain control long enough to get out of the padded cell that was Albus's office; preferably before losing herself in the [soon to be undeniable] peals of laughter that were fighting madly to get out of her throat.