Of course I'm not challenging JK Rowling's copyright. She's rich. She can afford assassins.

Chapter Two

First Impressions and Gainful Employment

One eye didn't want to focus properly. The other eye felt like someone was shining a flashlight right into it. My head and kidneys were pounding in time to each other. Good God, how many drinks had I had last night?

It took a minute to remember where I was. A bed, in a room with stone walls. I was at Hogwarts Castle. A dungeon?

Bedroom. Not dungeon. It couldn't be a dungeon. Sunlight poured in through a huge window, making it far too bright for a dungeon. Even if it was cold enough. I wrapped the blankets closer to me.

Someone pounded on the door with a hammer. No, they were just knocking.

"Doctor Hunter, are you awake?" A man's voice.

"Shch."

The door creaked open. In came Professor Longbottom, carrying a tray. His black robes swished loudly as he walked. "That's close enough to yes," he said. "You're American, so I brought coffee."

"K'nuden." I cleared my throat. "Canadian. Not American. Subtle difference, on account of being totally different."

I was still half-dressed in t-shirt and jeans. I sat up in bed and let the blankets fall away. "Ooooh God."

Longbottom set the tray down on a small wooden table and handed me a cup of something oily and green. "Drink this. It will help with your hangover. It's herbal, among other things."

I sipped the liquid carefully. It tasted like boiled twigs, but it didn't upset my stomach. In fact... I downed the rest of it quickly. My headache vanished.

Now that the room was in focus it was actually quite nice. Big stone fireplace, old heavily-upholstered furniture, a big green and silver tapestry on one wall. Still cold though.

I cleared my throat. "Whatever that was, I love it and want to marry it."

"Yes, I've felt like that once or twice myself. Coffee?"

I stood up and went looking for my canvas rucksack. The rug was nice and thick, but my feet were still cold. I needed a shirt and sweater and socks. "Yes please. What time is it?"

"Half-past seven. We put you on the east side of the castle, unfortunately. Mornings can be a bit bright if you forget the shutters."

I pulled on a heavy flannel shirt and found a good pair of wool socks. I hadn't packed much past a day's clothes and toiletries for my trip to Hogsmeade.

I sat in one of the thickly upholstered chairs, across the table from Professor Longbottom. I gulped down the first mug of coffee and poured myself another. My headache had vanished and my stomach felt fine. Even my kidneys were settling down.

"Still feeling poorly?"

"No." The coffee was excellent. "That green stuff... Was that a magic potion?"

"Yes. A fairly simple hangover cure. Brewed it myself."

"So... " I sipped more of the excellent coffee. Full-bodied, not overly roasted, slight after-taste of wine. "Magic?"

Longbottom smiled. "Neville Longbottom, Professor of Herbology at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

After the previous night I had no trouble believing in magic. There is something very real about Morris dancers.

"Doctor Geoffrey Hunter, formerly Assistant Professor of History at the University of British Columbia." I cleared my throat. "Not actually on sabbatical. I quit five months ago. Personal reasons."

"No employment ties then. Excellent. May I ask about your family?"

"I don't have one. I prefer not to talk about it."

Professor Longbottom leaned back in his seat. "We do need more information than that before we formally offer you a position. But for now it will do."

He ran his hand through his fair hair. Judging from yesterday and this morning, Longbottom's hair lived in a state of perpetual mess.

"I ask because Hogwarts is in need of an instructor. Two months ago our Board of Governors gave us permission to hire a Mu- Someone from outside our community, to teach a specific course. Their conditions were that this new instructor not have any direct family ties to our community, yet still have the ability to perceive magical creatures and magically hidden locations. They were also not to have any strong family ties to the outside world, and not have any strong institutional ties. Oh, and they were to be a qualified and experienced teacher."

"That's not the strictest candidate description I've ever heard, but it is the oddest."

"Yes. We put Summoning Charms on every university and international airport in Britain. Um, the UK and Ireland, you would say. We sustained them for two months before you flew in, trying to find a suitable candidate. The term starts in five days."

"Sounds to me like the Board didn't want you hiring a Muddle."

Longbottom winced. "Muggle. It's not a terribly polite word, but it is the only word we have to describe non-magical people."

Bits and pieces of what I'd been told last night came back to me. God, these people were like the Amish. If the Amish were armed. And magic. I wasn't seriously considering taking a job in Nowhere Town, County Nowhere, was I?

Except this was Magic Town, County Magic.

I was two-thirds sold on the job.

"Professor, I need to know more before I say anything else. But I need breakfast even before that."

IOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIO

I gawked openly at the ceiling. I'd gawked at the paintings in the halls as well, and the paintings had preened under the attention. What was the point to being a Muggle in the magical world if you couldn't gawk?

The first thing that struck me coming into the Great Hall was the size of it. The hall was a huge open space intended for hundreds of people, and seemed empty with only one table at the moment. The second thing to strike me was the ceiling, or lack thereof. It looked like a clear sunny morning, with only a few pale skiffs of cloud across a blue sky.

"Is that transparent?"

"No," said Longbottom. "It's an illusion that matches the sky. You seem to have been blessed with good weather for your trip to Scotland. Best enjoy it while it lasts."

"Wow." I pulled myself away from the view. Longbottom led me towards a table at the end of the hall. There were only two other people at the long table, Hagrid and a man with dark red hair. Longbottom nodded to both.

"Headmistress Grimward can't join us just yet. You've met Hagrid," said Longbottom. "This gentleman is Idris Isgar, Potions Instructor, Professor of Arithmancy and occasionally Defence Against the Dark Arts. Also Head of Slytherin House, but we'll go into that later. Isgar, this is Doctor Geoffrey Hunter, from Canada not the States."

Right. I'd been a little snarky about that.

I shook hands briefly with Professor Isgar, who seemed about my age. I'd noticed that these men still called each other by their last names, despite probably having worked together for years. Ah, the English. Such a warm people.

Longbottom and I sat next to Professor Isgar, with Hagrid on the opposite side. I looked around for plates and cutlery while the others talked about the Headmistress, who was too busy to join us at breakfast. The joys of administrative work.

"What is your doctorate in?" Professor Isgar asked me.

"History," I said. "I did a double Masters in Military Science and European History, and my PhD in modern state relations in the North Atlantic regions. Um, how do I go about getting breakfast? Is there a cart somewhere?"

"What would you like?" Asked Professor Longbottom.

"Toast and bacon would be fine, with a bowl of oatmeal. Do you - Yipe!" And there was bacon. And toast. And a bowl of oatmeal. From nowhere. On gleaming golden plates.

"House-Elves," said Professor Isgar. "You'll get used to it."

"Will I get used to that?" I pointed at the pale silver figure drifting down the hall, coming towards the table. A translucent silver-grey woman dressed in an old-fashioned nun's habit, almost fully transparent in the daylight. As she came closer I could see that she looked quite young.

Professor Isgar shrugged and turned his attention back to breakfast. "Ghosts? Yes."

"Oh thank God," I said. She stopped and glared at me. "I'm not crazy."

"Seen ghosts before, I take it?" Isgar asked me.

"Twice. Once when I was with a group of people who didn't see it." Given my age at the time and recent history, my psychiatrist had worried about a possible schizophrenic episode.

The nun smiled at me. "'At wisnae blasphemy 'en. Aa'm canty tae ken 'at."

I'd been to Scotland three times now, but that was the most backwoods accent I'd ever heard. "No, it wasn't blasphemy. But it was rude. I apologize, Sister."

She smiled again, then dived down through the floor and vanished.

I turned to Longbottom. "What? Just happened?"

"You've met a Grey Sister, one of the resident ghosts at Hogwarts. There are dozens, but for the most part they stay out of sight during summer. They find it boring with the students away."

Boring. House-Elves. Talking portraits. Wizards and witches. The ghosts found it all boring.

What were the students like?

IOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIO

My first impression of the Headmistress's office was of carefully organized chaos. There were dozens of magical portraits along the round walls, almost all of the canvases occupied at the moment. The subjects of those paintings watched me with interest ranging from friendly to hostile. Shelves took up the space not occupied by portraits, and on those shelves were devices. Moving, shining, many-geared things that spun or wobbled or rocked or walked back and forth on their shelf. Neat rows of paperwork covered a gleaming white oak desk. Behind that desk hung a large portrait of a glaring man with black hair and shabby black robes. In front of that desk stood a woman with platinum blonde hair, dressed in tailored ivory pants and an ivory corset held closed with a big green bow. The woman stepped forward to greet me, her high heels clicking on the floor. She was shorter than my first impression, and looking down at her gave me a hell of a view. I shook her hand automatically as she looked me in the eyes.

My first impression of Galilea Grimward, Headmistress of Hogwarts, was that she took the mistress part of her title very seriously. And that she had spectacular breasts.

She smiled, still meeting my gaze with her grey-green eyes, and said "Thank you Doctor. That's quite flattering."

Oh crap.

Professor Isgar snickered. "Be good, Galilea. Don't make me report you."

Headmistress Grimward released my hand and walked back to her desk. My God, did she ever know how to walk in heels. Where had she gotten those boots and why was she wearing them at a school? And what just happened? I watched as she sat down behind her broad desk.

I took a seat between Neville and Isgar and asked "What just happened?"

"Legilimency," replied the Headmistress. She had what the English would call a posh accent. And a voice like whisky and honey. "Mind reading, in more colloquial language. Although there is nothing at all like 'reading' to it. And despite what Professor Isgar says, as Head Teacher I am authorized to perform simple examinations under certain circumstances."

"Such as hiring a new teacher?" Casual mind-reading in a job interview. How often did she do that? Could all witches and wizards do that?

"In this case I was searching for impulses that would make you unsuitable for work with minors."

I considered that for a minute. Mind-reading, Legilimency... I would need to know a lot more about it and what those certain circumstances were. But it seemed reasonable as a preliminary step in hiring someone to teach -

I sat up straighter in my chair. "Minors? You know I was a university professor, right? My youngest students were typically eighteen. I had one sixteen year old student. But she was an exception. Brilliant, and very mature for her age." Not so mature that I hadn't had to take her aside and explain why a twenty-one year old boy who was still interested in teen-age girls might be bad news. But that was a one-off. She'd graduated three years later with a very nice freshman boyfriend.

"Yes, I understand. You will have my complete support, as well as assistance from your colleagues as needed. These curriculum changes have been a project of mine since I became Headmistress. I am dedicated to success in this project."

"And to proving the Board wrong," said Longbottom, sitting at my left. On the other side Isgar laughed slightly.

I thought about what little I knew of this Wizarding Britain. It couldn't be very big. Hogsmeade had a High Street and a few side streets. It was isolated from the outside world, and happy that way. The Board of Governors obviously did not want to bring in a Muggle instructor, and had thrown as many roadblocks in the way as possible. And I'd be teaching minors, for God's sake. I'd worked as a tutor in my undergrad days but that had all been one-on-one rather than classroom experience. Under those circumstances, with less than a week to prepare any sort of curriculum...

"Doctor Hunter?" Yes, that voice would definitely get a man's attention. I crawled out of my thoughts.

"Sorry, I tend to zone out when I'm thinking." I looked around the office for a second, considering. "Explain the position to me."

IOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIO

When Galilea Grimward says "Let me start at the beginning", she means it.

The term 'mudgel' is of unknown but probably mixed Celtic-Danish etymology, and first appears in the Chronicles of the Veneficus Consilio for the year 894. It was not used in a flattering context, and is the root of both the modern term Muggle and a crude expression for people born of mixed Muggle and Wizarding parentage.

"I tell you this so you know just how deep the prejudice runs."

Wizarding Britain retreated into total Seclusion in the late Seventeenth Century, and within four generations found themselves in a severe demographic crisis. Their stagnant population had simply not been large enough to sustain an independent economy. Their solution, after decades of debate, was to open themselves slightly to the outside world. Beginning in the early Nineteenth Century Hogwarts began to actively seek Muggle-born students.

Grimward didn't say, but I wondered about another reason for opening Hogwarts to outsiders. The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries saw rapid population growth in the United Kingdom. If the isolated Wizarding population had stagnated while the Muggle population grew, that would have also meant an increase in the absolute number of Muggle-born wizards and witches. What good is Seclusion if the Muggle-borns rediscover magic on their own?

Shortly thereafter, Hogwarts added Muggle Studies to the curriculum. The Muggle population was exploding, Muggle technology undergoing a revolution, and the number of Muggle-born students seemed to swell every year. Wizarding Britain felt the need to understand the world around it, at least on a basic level. The Board of Governors approved a new class and prepared the study materials -

And then the Ministry of Magic stepped in.

"This is a Ministry-approved textbook for Fifth Year students." Grimward's wand was thin and ivory in colour, decorated with green filigree and a silver cap. She twitched it and a book floated off her desk over to me. I took the book from the air and opened it to a random page.

Muggles live behind a barrier of ignorance, one maintained by their own will to not know. Their distaste for all things Magical extends to members of their own family who display the slightest supernatural ability. The emergence of Magic in Muggle society threatens the investment of self-legitimation within Muggle thought.

"Hooo-kay." I closed the book with a snap. "That one's off the curriculum. What've you got that's not full of crazy?"

Longbottom and Isgar both laughed.

The Headmistress shook her head. "I assure you, Doctor Hunter, that The Philosophy of the Mundane is the least 'crazy' of our textbooks. Would you care to read When Muggles Attack?"

"Later. Headmistress, as a responsible educator I can't possibly turn this job down. Let's talk terms."

IOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIO

Five hundred Galleons per month for a ten-month school year, room and board available at Hogwarts, medical treatments provided by the Hogwarts' infirmary or St. Mungo's Hospital, basic Occlumency lessons provided by the Headmistress herself, an expense account for professorial robes - Including the specialized wards I would probably need to defend myself against a bunch of jinx-throwing children...

Excellent terms for a very junior assistant professor at a small institution. Except for the Obliviation clause.