Chapter 3 - A Room of Planning
The headmaster's office was dimly lit as the last rays of sunshine for the day peaked over the forest, the room was filled with strange looking objects of various sizes and every piece of wall was filled with either a painting of some sort of hidden behind a shelf. No order was apparent in the chaos, in a bookshelf on the west wall stood a single book, slightly to the left of the center of the top shelf while the the rest of the bookshelf was filled with twenty seven statues of penguins, all slightly different than the other. All of the statues were aligned perfectly on their shelves except for a single on on the bottom shelf who was balanced on it's head. Next to the door hang a small painting of either rolling grassy hills or a wild river flowing through a dense forest, the painting itself also seemed unsure about it. The single window outside gave a view of the Hogwarts grounds which, if you were familiar with how the caste looked from the outside, didn't seem to correspond with any physical location in the caste.
On top of a small stand in the corner sat a large bird with crimson red and gold feathers. The creature was staring intensely at a device which stood on one of the shelves next to him, the device consisted of a set of six small metal balls suspended by wires in a small frame, the two outer balls took turns bouncing upwards and make a soft, rhythmic ticking sound. The bird was following the small balls with his eyes and his head bobbed with the rhythm of the balls bouncing up and down. The staring contest between the inanimate object and the bird looked like it had been going on for a while by now and no winner was in sight.
On the corner of the desk stood an antique looking clock which hands permanently pointed to a quarter to five, although it did make the rhythmic ticking noise that suggested it was still running.
The desk the clock stood on looked distinctly normal, completely out of place in the room that had a small toll spinning on the side of one of the paintings, constantly emitting a high buzzing noise. So normal in fact that anyone who saw it expected it to hold a great secret of some sort.
Behind the desk on, a large comfy chair sat the current resident of the office in deep thought.
The thing Albus was thinking about was the problem of his Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, not the current one mind you. Albus was pleasantly surprised about what he had heard from the first set of lessons the new teacher had given, however unusual his teaching methods had been. No, the teacher that Albus had been spending a great amount of time thinking about over the past months had been the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher of last year.
Quirrel had only the slightest competence in the field he was teaching and wholly unsuccessful in transferring any of that competence to his pupils, and despite all that he had still been one of the better DADA teacher in the last five years. Albus was once again glad that the quality of the standard DADA books seemed to be the complete opposite of the teacher using them, making it possible against all odds for students to get a decent grade in their OWLs and NEWTs.
But the reason the old headmaster was deep in thought about last year's DADA teacher was not his teaching skills, or lack thereof, but the reason why he wasn't still teaching the subject this year.
Now it was far from uncommon for a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher to leave for one reason or the other after a single year of teaching, in fact Albus couldn't remember a single case in over forty years where a teacher had lasted longer than a single year. The uncommon thing about it was the way the teacher had left, usually they quit due to significant mental damage of some sorts, had to stay in Saint Mungo's spell damage wards for an extended period of time or at least a body was found near the end of the year.
But last year none of those things had happened, one day the teacher was attempting, without much success, to explain the difference between the various types of manifolds to a class of fifth years and the next day the teacher had vanished from the castle without a trace. There was no message or anything left, nothing was seen by the elves, ghosts or paintings, there wasn't even any trace of him recorded by the wards. It was as if he had disappeared from the earth from one moment to the other, leaving behind only his belongings and a stack of half graded third year papers.
A single mysterious disappearance within the castle alone wouldn't be enough to keep Albus awake at night, something like that wasn't completely unheard of in the history of Hogwarts. The most notable occurrence being in the winter of 1674, where the entire male population of Hufflepuff disappeared without a trace. The main reason behind the headmaster's worry was that his disappearance coincided with the disappearance of a certain stone that was stored in the castle.
He had only noticed a few days later during his weekly check up on the stone and his defences that Albus had noticed that the stone was no longer in the mirror, and while there was no direct proof linking the two disappearances, Albus had learned years ago that putting the blame on the DADA teacher was a statistically safe bet.
Albus wasn't sure why Quirrell had taken the stone or how he had circumvented the protections it was behind but he suspected that it was done to assist in the return of Voldemort in some way. Ten years seemed like an appropriate length of time for the old dark lord to return after, especially with how it coincided with the arrival of young Harry at Hogwarts. This brought deep concern to the Headmaster, not in small part because there had been no suspicious activity of any sort after the stone had been takes. No mysterious vanishings, no unexplainable muggle deaths, no unusual activity by the dark lord's old followers, nothing. If Lord Voldemort had indeed returned he was being awfully quiet about it and Albus didn't like that one bit.
Being starved of information left the headmaster unable to adjust his plans, unable to ensure all the pieces on the board would act accordingly. Not being able to see any of your opponent's pieces certainly made a game of chess a lot more interesting.
Annoyed by the lack of information he had to do with the small bit he did have and had already created a list of all methods he could think of that old Tom could use the stone for his resurrection and taken precautions where he could. So had he asked the apothecaries in and around the Alley to keep a watch out for anyone looking to acquire a some of the more specific ingredients needed for the various rituals. But mainly he had started coming up with an increasingly large amount of plans for all the various situations that could arise once Voldemort would come out of the dark, he had preparations in place in case Tom decided to launch a sudden attack on the ministry, had safeties in place for if he had taken over control of the Prophet and was prepared for possible manipulations of the floo powder market. A low buzz coming from a small mirror next to the door brought Albus out of his concentration.
"Come in Severus."
The potions master entered the room, wearing his trademark start-of-year-scowl.
"How were the first days of classes Severus?" the headmaster asked joyfully. Although asking the question was mostly unnecessary, even if he couldn't have guessed the answer from the look on Snape's face, the answer never changed on the years. However Albus thought asking the question each time he was his teachers at the start of the year was an important part of the start of year ceremony.
Snape took a seat on the wide, soft chair in front of the desk and started his annual ritual of complaining about his students.
"As catastrophic as they usually are, the Longbottom boy has managed to achieve the impossible and has become an even bigger danger around a cauldron over the summer. It's a mystery to me why I even have to let disasters like that into my classroom after they've proven unable to complete the simplest task time and time again."
"Now, now, everybody needs to get a chance to study the wonders of magic in all it's forms." Snape responded with a scowl. "Now, has there been any news amongst your fellow colleagues?" Albus continued.
"No unusual activities, everyone has been keeping to themselves like they have been doing over the last years. The most notable thing I have come across is that Malfoy believes his one of the vaults in his home has been compromised over the summer. One of the wards around it was disabled while the family was visiting relatives on the continent. None of the wards around his house had been touched though, only a single ward on the vault was inactive, all the other countless protections around his home were functioning as well as always. I think the malfunctioning ward was simply poorly made, it was barely three years old and the rest have proved themselves countless times over the decades."
"Interesting," the headmaster replied, "interesting, I feel that your view on the situation has plenty of merit, I've heard other stories about how warding services have been sub-par ever since the war ended, it seems that some warders have become lazy in the lack of ever present danger."
"It's unfortunate that people are getting complacent in their apparent safety, especially now that the danger is closer as it has been in over a decade. It's in the times where we feel the safest that we need to be prepared for danger the most." The headmaster finished. Snape, who didn't seemed to impressed by the "wise words" of the headmaster, stood back of and started turning around towards the door "If that's all headmaster, I'll be leaving, the classroom still has burn marks on the ceiling from the Creevey boy's atrocious attempt at a simple boil curring salve."
"Just one more thing Severus, keep an eye out for any unusual activities in your house will you." The headmaster said.
"Really Albus, just because they are Slytherins doesn't mean they're all just waiting for the correct opportunity to start wearing black robes and skeleton masks. If Slytherins were even half as bad as you seem to keep thinking they are there would be weekly muggle offerings in the common room."
With that the potions master walked out of the room, his cloak billowing behind him.