It never failed to surprise Felix, how fast news circulated around school as the corridors were abuzz for hours after the day's Potions class ended on the dialogue between him and Professor Marvey.
"Felix! Is it true? You reaped…" Alfred found him ascending the Grand Staircase.
"That's a Professor you are talking about, Al. Even if she is a bitch, you'll show her some respect in front of a Prefect", Felix cut him off with a no-nonsense look.
"You just didn't!" Alfred whined trying not to laugh.
"I am not talking to a Prefect, and yeah Professor Marvey and I had a rather lively conversation during class", Felix nodded mischievously.
"Lively conversation, right!" Alfred snorted.
"Yup, much more polite, than "reaped her new ones in place she didn't know possible"", Felix winked at him.
Alfred cracked a wide, ear-to-ear grin. "Dear Lords, you're grinning wider than if we were chatting about female anatomy…" Felix just had to eyeroll but the effect on his younger teenage cousin was instantaneous as his eyes bulged out and he choked on his own saliva.
"You're old enough, don't tell me you've not thought about that stuff", Alfred blushed a deep crimson.
"Ya…" he giggled nervously, blushing an even deeper crimson at the very admittance of it.
"Any girl…or boy you like specifically?"
"Samantha, she's a Gryffindor in m-my year", Alfred stuttered, feeling his cheek muscles hurt from the constant nervous giggling and smiling.
Felix restrained himself from laughing at him and instead passed a hand over Alfred's shoulders. "So, what do you like about her?" He asked him as he continued ascending the stairs.
"Uhm…her laugh, her green eyes and you know…all of her", Alfred made a shape with his hands in front of his torso to indicate female breasts.
"Oh boy…you won't get anywhere with drooling all over her. What do you like about her? Laugh and eyes are a good start, but do you like talking to her? Listening to her voice? About which subjects? What common interests do you two have?" Felix asked genuinely interested.
"I don't know…" Alfred went from grinning like a fool to depressed in a blink of an eye.
"Of course you don't, no one does, that's why you ask girls out, to talk to them, so that you get to know them and they you. So, talk to her, ask to sit with her during lunch or dinner or something and just talk to her."
"You really think so? I mean…what if I don't know what to talk about?"
"That may happen, and you may fuck up a time or two or more, but you'll learn from it. Twenty-five to Seventy-five. You'll talk twenty five percent and listen to her seventy five percent, not because girls talk more than guys, but because you are interested in her, and so you are going to ask questions and receive answers and she is going to ask you questions and you are going to give her answers and make her laugh. And you should be interested in her and you should crave to want to make her laugh and listen to her laughter. None of this should be done in light mind, and it doesn't matter if you and "she" end up an item or not, each and every time you should be interested in her before asking her out regardless of what will happen after. There'll be plenty of guys out there who will want nothing more than her anatomy, don't be one of them. Yeah?"
Alfred's full attention hung from Felix's lips, absorbing what he said like a sponge. "Ya…it's just…I'm scared…"
"You'll fail sometimes, get used to it, accept it and ask her out. She's not Azrail, you won't have to battle dragons and chimeras. You'll fail and out of your failures you'll find the knowledge and strength to succeed."
"You never fail…"
"Yes, yes I do. For every girl I asked out during my fourth and fifth year more than half said no and out of the rest who didn't I more than messed up a few dates along the way. You don't see the rejections, you see the ones holding my hand, or laughing at a joke or kissing me, but that doesn't mean there are no rejections, just…"
"…talk to her, I know. Thanks!" Alfred's mood swung again.
Felix saw Ethel just past the fourth-floor landing's entrance motioning him to follow her.
"Anytime, Al, anytime, listen I got to go, we'll chat later, okay?" Felix left after Ethel.
"Sure cuz!"
Ethel walked as inconspicuously as she could behind one of the statues of Godric Gryffindor.
"Tonight, midnight behind the witch statue in the third-floor corridor", she whispered to him, turned and left with quick strides.
Felix's lips curved in an evil grin. "No strategy? They don't know me well enough, not well enough at all", he thought to himself and went about his way, hands in his pockets in a self-confident posture.
The few hours to midnight went by with ease and studying as well as a Quidditch practice, and Felix stood leaning against the witch statue's back, waiting for Ethel's contact, which surprised him when he saw her appear out from the corridor's darkness.
"I thought…"
"You are here to meet the Hogwarts' Smugglers, but…"
A familiar boy's voice behind him startled him. "Are you here as Felix or as a Prefect?"
Felix spun around. "Emerick? Me, I'm here as me, no Prefect", Emerick waited a second, as if waiting for something then turned his head giving Ethel a nod.
"Then you have yourself Hogwarts's Smugglers, what do you need us to obtain for you?" Ethel told him as Emerick came up next to them behind the statue.
"Interesting, I did not see this coming."
"Emerick does logistics, I do acquisitions and the "smugglin' in" side of business." Ethel explained.
Felix gave her a folded piece of paper. "I need these two…items."
Ethel took it and unfolded it. "These are not banned; you can get these sent over by any normal shop owl in Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley."
"I don't want anyone including Professors, Hudson or the Headmistress…or Morgana finding out it was me behind this, I have my reasons."
"Okay then, when do you want them?"
"Tomorrow."
"Earliest I can do is day after tomorrow and for this kind of haste it'll cost you, I'm afraid."
"Okay", Felix threw her a leather pouch full of Gold Galleons.
"That's way more than what I'd have asked for!" Ethel cried louder than she had meant, surprised at the amount of coins in the pouch.
"I know", Felix left, walking slowly.
Ethel showed the piece of paper to Emerick who shrugged at her as they started splitting the gold as per their arrangement.
Three days later Professor Hudson entered his classroom, in an average winter morning. He had woken up, eaten breakfast and would now prepare for his first class of the day. Only the so far average day could not have prepared him for what would follow next.
Closing the door behind him he saw a cardboard box lying on top of his desk, the sparse sun's rays coming in from the windows making it seem more in focus than the rest of the classroom.
Professor Hudson walked up to it, wand drawn and ready to act, in the case of a prank. He expected it to be a prank, to explode when he touched it or produce some foul odour or scream really loud what a tyrant he was. "Haven't had a prank on me for a while now, what'll be this time? Fanged Frisbee? Nose-biting teacup? That swamp was a nightmare to remove…"
He tagged at the box with his wand ready to jump the other way, ready to cast any protecting spell he knew of, instead nothing happened. He cast a disillusion charm, nothing happened again.
After several more attempts to either make the prank happen in a way he could avoid it or prevent it from happening he held his wand in one hand and as apprehensively as he could opened the box's flaps.
When nothing nasty came out of the cardboard box he peaked inside. He made a mental note to loathe himself later at being so mortally afraid of students' pranks all over again.
The impossibility of what he saw inside the box making his brain reset than register what lay there before him.
He blinked several times, even near pinched himself to make sure this wasn't some elaborate dream, that he wasn't sleeping still in his comfortable bed under the duvet by the fireplace.
When he was as sure as he could be, he picked up the crup puppy sleeping as gently as he could with one hand, and a folded letter with the other.
The puppy was white with brown and black circle blotches as if someone had sprayed paint over it and it was no larger than twice his palm.
He used his fingers to handle and open the piece of paper. "A gift from a friend, do you really know who hired Professor Marvey and why?" He read and reread it several times before setting it down on his desk. He just had to sit feeling overwhelmed and emotionally charged.
Tentatively, afraid that even the slightest touch would somehow inadvertently harm the sleeping creature, he reached and caressed it behind its left ear. An involuntary laughter escaped his chest as the puppy's rear leg begun to scratch at the air.
"This is no prank, trap or enchanted to blow up in my face, but…a gift from a friend? I have no friends anymore nor have I received a gift since…before coming to Hogwarts as a student…" he whispered to himself as he continued to scratch and caress the crup puppy. A few moments later it shifted and wiggled on his palm waking up and wagging its two tails it started licking his fingers barking in pure bliss at the huge giant scratching its ears.
A knock on the door snapped him out of it.
"Sir, I was wondering if you have a moment?" Felix asked, standing there holding the door open.
Professor Hudson looked up with tearful eyes. "Y-yes, Mr. Burton?"
Felix took a few steps closer, hands in front of his lap, a sad face with a sad smile. "What happened sir, that made you hate kids as much as you do as an adult?"
The question surprised him almost as much as finding the crup puppy in the box not a few moments earlier. No one had ever bothered to ask him how he felt or what bothered him, not for a good long while.
He looked down again at the puppy licking his fingers and jumping up and down on his palms. "My personal trauma…I am not sure it is something a Professor should discuss with his student, Mr. Burton", he replied yet his voice was bereft of its typical strictness.
Felix looked at the puppy stepping yet closer. "Under normal circumstances I'd agree, sir. But…whenever the last six years has it ever been "normal circumstances" in Hogwarts? I'm almost certain something happened during your third year and that Professor Marvey was somehow directly involved, but I've not found out what exactly. Besides sir, you already know most of everything concerning my childhood trauma, it would be only fair if I learned something of yours, no?"
Professor Hudson did not reply immediately, taking a moment to think and smile for no reason at the little creature playing the palm of his hands. "I was never a popular kid, but nor was I a pariah. I was a willing ghost, an introvert minding my own business. I had two friends and my best friend was a crup pet called Betchy. I…had a crush on Morgana since my second year and by the end of the third I mustered the courage to tell her and ask her out on a date. I had fully expected her to reject me, even laugh at my face at the seer audacity of a ghost asking out the most popular girl in our class, if not the school…" he gave the puppy a gentle squeeze making it squeal delighted. "She didn't reject me though, instead she said yes and offered the courtyard at midnight so we could talk…I got there and then she arrived and we began to chat a bit before she proposed she blindfold me…for the love of life or money I have no idea why I accepted, but accept I did and she placed a blindfold over my eyes. I thought she was going to kiss me, but instead she did nothing, she just sat back and laughed as a bunch of her Slytherin friends punched and pushed and jinxed me around, making fun of me. I was going to sit and take it…when…when…oh my god Betchy…she came and tried to defend me by biting one of the boys who in his pain and anger cast Diffindo at her…" Professor Hudson's voice trailed at the painful memory.
Everything was quiet, other than Professor Hudson's rugged, laboured breathing. Felix dared not talk, breathe or move, lest he stop Professor Hudson from recounting what had happened. "The spell caught her right at her neck, the blood came gushing out at the courtyard floor…I tried to save her, cast Episkey, removed my robes and tried to bind them around her neck, she died right there in my arms as the Slytherin gang run away terrified at their mistake. That's what their parents called it "a terrible mistake, which their kids were in no way responsible, these things happen between boys' fights…" I wanted to tear their jugulars out…I never told anyone what happened, but Headmistress Adams must have legilimensed Morgana and found out, thus calling the parents. The boy that cast Diffindo was expelled and Morgana and the others were all given year long detentions to start from their fourth year on, but none of that could undo what had happened and if I was a ghost before that incident…"
"You vanished after, melted into the very walls", Felix spoke for the first time, trying himself not to cry.
"Understatement of the century, Mr. Burton. Whoever got me Norman, has done me my life's greatest kindness and I sure have not done anything to anyone lately to deserve it…" Hudson whispered playing with the crup puppy.
"Norman, sir?" Felix tried not to laugh.
"Norman the angsty crup, a Wizarding children's' book and my favourite when I was a kid before Hogwarts, Betchy was his Kneazle friend", Hudson explained laughing at the memory, "I loved that book so much I'd have my parents read it to me again and again."
"Well, whoever it was, perhaps they wanted to you to remember your happy childhood memories and stop hating all kids even the ones that weren't even born back then", Felix reached out a hand, offering to caress Norman. Hudson was unwilling at first fearing perhaps the mere touch by anyone else would make Norman vanish and the dream to end, but relented. Now Norman had two pairs of hands tickling and scratching his belly and ears.
"Yes, perhaps. I wonder what this means", he read Felix the letter watching him for his reaction. "Did the Headmistress not hire Morgana?"
"Uhm, no sir. The Governors did, they hired the both of you. In fact Governor Joymother hired Professor Marvey at the suggestion of Governor Hunsley…" Felix replied not daring to make eye contact with his Professor.
"Robert Hunsley?"
"I believe so, sir. Why?"
"That's…he…he…he suggested to Joymother that he hire Morgana and me? How is he a Governor when he was expelled for…for…" Sorrow had been replaced with boiling cold rage.
"He was the one who cast Diffindo", Felix completed the sentence. "They hired the both of you to torture you and by doing so to have you wreak havoc and pain in Hogwarts, would you like an opportunity to sink your teeth in them, sir?" Felix's spine shivered at the malicious grin spreading over his Professor's lips.