A sharp knock sounded on Albus office door. Albus looked up at the door, fairly certain of who it was standing behind it. The knock had possessed an authority that most did not.

"Come in," he called.

The door opened, and as Albus had presumed would be so, Minerva strode briskly and importantly into his office with a number of rolls of parchment tucked tightly beneath an arm.

"Albus, we need to go through you lesson notes," she said as she walked in, not even pausing to bother with a greeting. "I can make almost nothing of them and I just can't stand it anymore."

Albus stared at her in curious surprise. "The term started two weeks ago, Minerva. Why didn't you come to me sooner?"

Because it's embarrassing to be having such problems with a few notes. Moreover, because it's embarrassing to actually need such a crutch, she thought bitterly, pointedly ignoring his question.

"I brought them with me, if you're free now. If not, I'd like to find out the soonest it would be convenient for you to help me take care of this."

Help me. Now there were two words she hated to say. There was no real shame in them. That was something she knew, at least intellectually, but she always felt inadequate and weak saying them.

Albus was aware of this, and knew that it was the reason why she'd kept this from him until she simply could not stand it anymore. She'd changed quite a bit since she was a child—grown more mature and wiser—but some things simply never changed about a person. This was something about Minerva that would never change. In his opinion, that was too bad. After all, one person could not do or know all things—despite how Minerva seemed to try to disprove it.

"I've been going off of what I remember from your transfiguration classes when I was here," Minerva admitted reluctantly, to punctuate the situation. She hated telling him that, but at least she knew that he would never think any less of her for saying it. It made it easier to say. She did, after all, value his opinion highly.

"Are they really that indecipherable?" asked Albus, getting up from his desk and putting out his hand for one of the rolls of parchment notes.

She handed him one of the rolls and sat down next to him on one of the couches as he unrolled and began examining it. "Well, they're perfectly readable—the handwriting is neat and such—but that wouldn't help anyone. There's no organization to be found in any of this! You've got little notes scattered all over the roll, completely out of order with no marked connections to one another—and you must have some sort of shorthand in there because I checked and not all of those are even real words."

Minerva could hear the exasperation in her own voice. She'd been at these notes for nearly a month before finally giving up.

"Ah," said Albus with a light smile. "It had not occurred to me that you might have problems with these, though upon further thought I suppose it should have."

The corner of Minerva's mouth twitched a bit with a contained smile. "Well, I imagine that's because it's never been a problem for you. How, I'm not quite certain, despite the fact that you wrote them, but then you've never been very organized."

He chuckled a bit and Minerva could not stop herself from inwardly smiling in the most appallingly girlish way at how his eyes seemed to twinkle in time with soft fluctuations of his voice. "That's what I have you for, Minerva. Organization."

It had been a practical comment, one that was entirely true and completely without any hidden meanings to be had. Minerva knew that. It still had sounded different to her ears. Her heart had skipped a beat as soon as she'd heard him say it. Inwardly she wanted that to mean something different.

Here she went again, futilely longing for someone who was completely out of bounds. He might not be her teacher now, but he was still a good eighty years older than her and the fact that she worked for him made things no better. She'd recognized this risk when she'd taken the job, and firmly decided that she was in enough control of her emotions to handle it. She'd had her doubts then, however, and there were still some doubts now. She was beginning to react powerfully to his words and actions already wasn't she? She was, despite any thoughts of not doing so, and she'd only been here four a little over a month.

She needed a distraction.

Work, now that was an excellent distraction from everything—and it was what she was here for wasn't it? She simply needed to get into what it was she was doing and focus. That shouldn't be that hard, a strong work ethic came naturally to her.

"Thank you," she responded with a polite sort of briskness. She surprised herself by how unaffected she sounded. She would have convinced herself of that, at least. Her eyes flashed quickly to the parchment Albus had open in front of them, scanning it quickly as she looked for a place to start.

"Now about this mess here," she began, pointing at a particularly thick cluster of writing. "It says something about an idea having to do with O.W.L preparations—but your short hand disguises what."

Albus gazed at the indicated writing thoughtfully and absentmindedly stroked his long, greying auburn beard. "Hmm."

Minerva watched him as he thought over his notes. She would have thought he'd have known what they meant instantly. Memory was, after all, the only way she could see for him to make anything of the notes at all. It seemed that for the notes to be of any use to him, he would need to be able to recall what note referenced what, and so forth, fairly efficiently. Otherwise what was the point in them?

Finally Albus looked back at her, a sort of bemused look on his face. "Honestly, Minerva, I've no idea what it means. I haven't looked at these in years."

"I should have known," said Minerva, shaking her dark head. "It didn't seem possible that anyone could possibly make any use of these. There's no order to them. I just don't know how you managed to teach at all effectively for so long with your notes being in such a state."

"I simply don't use notes like that," Albus told her. "I write these things down to help commit them to memory. Then I never look at them again. I honestly have a hard time grasping what you use them for at all."

The dry look upon Minerva's face at that particular moment was priceless. Albus quickly committed it to memory. "Of course you don't. I use them to keep written records of my systems and for ease of revision."

"You must have far more notes on things than I am aware of."

"I've the feeling that if you were aware of exactly how many of them I have catalogued away in my living quarters you would fall into a useless stupor."

"I think you give me too little credit, Minerva," chided Albus, his eyes meeting her own. "I'm not at all adverse to organization—"

"You're simply incapable of it."

"Exactly," he responded with a large smile.

Minerva smiled too, then suddenly stopped. How had they shifted from working to this? Wasn't that supposed to be how she was distracting herself? She quickly began shifting her mind set back to what she had come here for. Work came first, relaxation later. She could not remember a point in her life when that had not been the self-enforced rule. That was not changing now. Especially not for something as silly as some crush she had on her employer.

"It's late and I have to teach in the morning, Albus," she said as her face returned to its normally calm expression, all traces of the smile erased. "We should get back to what we were doing."

The smile vanished from Albus' face as well. She was right, of course. "Indeed. The issue of the indecipherable notes."

"If you didn't use your notes, then what did you do about your lessons?"

"I simply pulled them from memory. I had a general idea of what should be expected and be taught when and simply went from there."

"So, I assume you remember everything of relevance then?" asked Minerva, and from the way the tone of her voice became ever so slightly sweeter, Albus knew he was about to have his brain picked over quite thoroughly.

That was fine by him. He considered suck things to be excellent mental exercise for both parties. It was something Minerva had often done as a student. She was the type of person who would know every secret the world had to offer if it was at all possible. It was one of the many things he loved about her. It took an exceptionally sharp woman to capture the attention of Albus Dumbledore. Doubly so, for one to capture his heart.

"Perhaps not everything," he admitted, "but I've no doubt you could put my knowledge to good use."

Smiles of victory were far more common occurrences for Minerva than absolutely any other kind of smile. It was that cat-like smile that Albus saw emerge right then. He knew all of her smiles by heart. He'd learned them without even realizing it, years ago.

"Excellent," she said and got up to get a quill and parchment. Albus began to get up as well, to assist her finding them. She waved him back down. "I can manage—just make yourself comfortable there. This will take a while."

Watching as Minerva bent over to rifle through on of his desk drawers, Albus did as he was told. He was quite fine with this. He liked watching and hearing Minerva think. He actually found it to be quite an attractive process. There was nothing quite as attractive as intelligence.

In other words, he could think of far worse ways to spend the evening.

/E/E/E/E/E/

"I expect those essays on the basics of invertebrate to be on my desk by the time class starts," Minerva reminded her exiting third year Hufflepuff class. They were her last class on Friday afternoons. The week was finally over and she could finally get to some of her neglected work as Deputy Headmistress.

She saw Albus edging into the room amidst her exiting students. His blue eyes followed the last student, a plump blonde girl by the name of Margaret Demple, as she hurried after her classmates.

"Ah, the Friday afternoon scurry for the door," he said, glancing over at Minerva and smiling. "I remember it well."

"Reminiscing about you teacher days?" asked Minerva as she began straightening her desk—which wasn't at all messy unless one counted a very neat pile of rolled up parchment which she'd not yet had time to put away. Her entire classroom, desk included, was meticulous. It was the first thing Minerva had heard her students remark about in their first classes.

"No," he said, still smiling and shaking his head. "About my days as a student, actually."

"I see," said Minerva, and she allowed herself a smile that was nearly undetectable to most people, though friends and family had learned to recognize it. "I thought it odd to reminisce about something so recent—but you were reminiscing about something that was a century ago."

She almost wished she hadn't said that. Reminders about why her annoyingly still present feelings for him were a good thing, as they discouraged them, but they were painful too. She didn't understand herself. What made Albus so much better than anyone else?

The problem was that there were what seemed to be a million answers to that question. She'd never met a greater wizard in her life. He was the greatest and there was no one she admired more. She'd hero-worshiped the man on some level since childhood.

Intellectually she knew that was why she felt as she did, but another part of her was still confused by her amazingly inconvenient feelings for him. Some part of her that was separate from both her intellect and feelings but still influenced by both simply did not understand.

This entire thing was a mess. She understood it yet she didn't. She cared for Albus yet she fought it. She'd admired and looked up to him like no one else yet she still regarded him as her friend and equal. It didn't make sense and all it did was make her life irritatingly complicated.

Her smile had vanished now, and Albus was looking at her oddly. She felt as though she should say something.

"Is there something you needed, Albus?"

"Not in particular. I just came to see how your classes have been fairing since you picked through my brain this past Sunday."

"That's very thoughtful,"she said, and wished crossly that her heart wouldn't leap in her chest at such small courtesies from him. It was silly. This entire thing was silly.

"A simple courtesy," said Albus dismissing the compliment. "Although I must confess a certain curiosity about how this is turning out. I was, after all, somewhat involved in the process."

There, he'd even said it. It was a simple courtesy—and damn her, she was hurt by it. This wasn't right. He was her boss. He was too old for her. He had no interest in her. Shouldn't she just be able to forget this and let it be?

"Of course," she said, a calm nod hiding her true feelings. "So, far as I can tell, they seem to be going quite well, though I wish to reserve complete judgement until I know exactly how well the students are progressing."

"Logical," he agreed. "The students are, after all, the ones whom we are here for."

She bent down to get a number of forms from her desk drawer, turning her back to Albus in the process. "Try telling them that."

"Have you encountered some troublemakers, my dear?"

Minerva turned around, and looked at him. He wore a look of worry upon his face and his eyes seemed to have lost their twinkle. She laughed. "Of course I have, but I assure you that I quickly showed them that I will be tolerating nonsense from no one."

He seemed to take her laughter as a sign that she was not having any undue trouble and he gave a sort of embarrassed smile to her.

Good. He should know better than to think I couldn't handle a few teenagers.

"Forgive me. I should have known."

Damn right, she agreed silently.

"But what makes you say that?"

"This from the man who was just a few moments ago was reminiscing about his long gone days as a student?" she asked, and the small smile had reappeared on her face. "I simply remember what it was like, that's all. They don't want homework. They want an easier way to learn these things. It's a rare student who does not at least sometimes think that his or her teacher is the devil for assigning that reading at the end of class."

Amusement shined on Albus' face. "What about you, Minerva? Did you ever think I was the devil."

"I'd always have already finished the book by the time you got around to assigning me reading," she told him, pinning him with a rather dry matter-of-fact stare.

"But you always read it again after I assigned it, didn't you?"

The smile on Albus face as he spoke was huge. Minerva just shook her head and with a bit of difficulty repressed the urge to return a large grin of her own. She'd never quite managed to note how his good moods seemed to be infectious, especially to herself.

"Yes, I did," she responded, "and I enjoyed it too."

"I bet you did," he said. "Those who don't know you better must think you're a workaholic."

"Probably," she agreed, and she placed one of the forms on her desk along with a bottle of ink and a quill.

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"Not really," she said, sitting down at her desk and picking up her quill. "I enjoy relaxing far more if I've nothing hanging over my head. I find I can do nothing but think of what I should be doing."

"So I suppose that's why you are working now?"

"Correct. Now, if you don't mind, I would rather like you to leave. I can't concentrate with you standing there like that."

"Will you be working all evening?"

She quit writing and looked up at him. "No. Why?"

"I was hoping I could interest you in a game of chess," he told her. "We've not played since you were a student and I've learned more than a few new tricks which I would love to test on my favorite chess partner."

Minerva blushed slightly, then realizing that she was doing it, blushed more. He'd always been her favorite chess partner as well, though she'd played people who had more skill than he at other points in time. He had a very unique playing style, much as he had a very unique style in nearly everything.

"I should be done for the evening by about nine," she told him, concentrating on making the color disappear from her cheeks. "Would that be all right?"

"Very much so," said Albus with a smile. It was at least the fourth or fifth time he'd smiled in the past five minutes. Minerva idly wondered why it was she had never become so used to it that she became immune to its effects. "Why don't we meet in my office at nine then?"

"Sounds excellent," she told him from over her form. "Good-bye, Albus."

"I'll see you at dinner," he told her.

She heard him walk lightly out of the room, and the door close behind him. Finally, she could get some work done.