FOR HOUSE UNITY
…
"Is that-?"
"No, it can't be."
"Where on earth did she get the hair dye from?"
"Never mind that – who on earth told her it was a good idea?"
Professor McGonagall and Professor Dumbledore turn and share a conspiratorial glance, wry and knowing, before looking back at the student in question. It's currently dinnertime in the Great Hall, the two professors' favourite time as it allows them to catch up on the day's happenings while also updating each other on the school's very active gossip mill. As stern as the former is and as all-seeing as the latter is, they do enjoy a good natter – why, their very relationship has been forged from years, decades, of the stuff.
"Is that within school policy?" Minerva asks Albus, eyeing the third-year in question's bright yellow hair.
"I think so," he replies, shuffling around in the pocket of his star-spotted midnight robes. "I don't see why we would exclude a particular colour over others."
"It's just that…" She hesitates. "It's awfully glaring."
"The youths these days are rather bold I believe." He raises his brows behind his half-moon spectacles, still rummaging. Their empty plates lay discarded on the table in front of them, dinner having already been served and dessert yet to come, and after a few moments Albus exclaims, "Ah!" and pulls out a small tin that rattles a little as he sets it on the table next to his goblet of mead and works to get to the lid off with his arthritic hands.
"Sherbet lemon, Minerva?" he asks once the tin is open.
"Oh, go on then," she says, picking a sweet out with the tips of her fingers. "But only the one. I swear they're rotting my teeth."
Albus laughs. "Nonsense, they're sugar free."
"I doubt that knowing you." She holds the sweet in front of her for a moment, glancing between the lemon-coloured confectionary and that student's newly changed hair and finding the resemblance uncanny.
As if reading her thoughts, Albus comments, "Dreadfully similar, are they not? Perhaps she wishes to embody a sherbet lemon," before popping his own sweet into his mouth.
"Perhaps."
The two of them sit quietly for a few moments, chewing on their sweets and surveying the hall from their perch at the teacher's table up on the dais at the front of the room. While the students have certainly changed over the years, the happenings at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry have not. Teenagers, in their most hubristic of years, often think they are trailblazers – the first to come up with an idea or be in a particular situation known only to themselves – when the reality of it is thus: they're not. Generations of students have lived and experienced what they've been through, and the two professors have commented on more than one occasion of the similarity in behaviour when new faces have appeared and old faces have left. The likeness is sometimes even more disarming due to some of the children looking an awful lot like their parents or other family members.
"Would you look at that, Minerva?" Albus cuts into the quiet.
Minerva frowns. "What?"
"Over there."
Minerva turns her head to see a Hufflepuff seventh-year practically sat in some Slytherin seventh-year's lap, the former's arms strung around his neck and the latter's around her waist.
"Successful, was it not?" Albus dryly comments.
"What do you…" Minerva trails off, his words registering. "Oh, that's the couple we set up."
The headmaster tilts his head, gaze twinkling beneath the thousands of candles hovering above the four house tables. "I wouldn't say we set them up, as such, but we did encourage them to act as though they were dating – by proxy of Professor Sprout pairing them together in Herbology – in order to promote house unity."
Minerva purses her lips, eyes narrowing shrewdly as she sucks on her sherbet lemon. "We did, didn't we? Is this a part of the act?"
"I don't think so anymore."
"Neither do I."
"Alas," Albus plucks another sweet from the tin, "I haven't seen a dungbomb fired at a muggleborn in a while so it must be working."
"Indeed, it must be. Remind me how long ago we set this up? My memory is not what it used to be."
He chuckles. "Oh, not long. Perhaps a month ago? Pomona initially paired them together and then, when things started to die out a little, made sure the mandrake they were given during a lesson – you know, the one where they extract the sap from the roots – was a particularly foul little creature in order to land them in detention. Which allowed them to see… eye-to-eye."
"Yes, yes, a mutually beneficial agreement wasn't it?" Minerva nods once, sharply. "They each had something to offer the other through a fake relationship."
"They did. All it took was a couple of nudges here and there, and now, well," he gestures at the couple, "we're here."
"We certainly are." Silence descends over the two again as they eat their confectionary and survey the hall, glancing between the two seventh-years and the students staring at them, either out of disgust or excitement for a bit of gossip. "Somebody should tell them off for this," she adds.
Albus shrugs. "But it's for house unity."
"If we treat them any differently to what the normal school rules dictate, won't it seem like we condone it? People might even get suspicious that we set this up in the first place."
"This is why you're my right-hand-woman, Minerva." Albus nods at her before turning and calling down the length of the teacher's table, "Severus, would you do the honour of telling your student to refrain from sharing bodily fluids during dinner hour?"
Severus doesn't respond to the headmaster, merely shooting him a brief glare (one which makes Minerva believe he is wishing a portal would simply open up and consume his entirety as he yearns to be anywhere but the current moment) and sloping off to the Slytherin table to chastise the two seventh-years while Minerva and Albus once again share a look, this one amused at the Potion Master's constant apathy towards everything and everyone. They watch on as he approaches the two students, stiffly informing them to halt their public displays of affection, and as he turns his back on them, onyx cloak billowing behind him dramatically, the two break apart with a youthful flush on their cheeks, the students around them laughing at their embarrassment.
"Oh, to be young again," Albus laments, bones creaking as he shifts in his seat.
Minerva scoffs. "I think we all wish to be young again, Albus, but living vicariously through the students like this surely must violate some teaching standard somewhere."
"I'm almost certain it does. But I'm not 'living vicariously through the students,' as you so put it."
Minerva raises an unimpressed brow. "You're not?"
"No." Albus picks another sweet out of the tin. "It's for house unity."
"For house unity," she repeats.
"Yes. And onto more important matters," Albus says, picking up the tin and shaking it slightly, hardened sugar rattling against the metal, "Sherbet lemon, Minerva?"
She sighs, staring at the tin, before caving; "Oh, go on then."
…
A/N: This was written for the QLFC, team Tutshill Tornados.
Prompts used:
(Beater 2) Pairing: Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall
5. (colour) Lemon
7. (word) Portal
9. (trope) Fake Dating
Word Count: 1205
Thanks!
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