CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The next morning found us back in Galilea's office, where a fresh stack of administrative paperwork lurked on her desk.

I wandered over to study the Sorting Hat while Galilea leafed through the short stack of papers. Whatever it was in those forms... ''You're still stressed about the Board of Governors, aren't you?''

''How can you tell?''

''I have a sudden urge to tap my foot. Don't worry about the Board. We have them exactly where we want them.'' The chapeau maudit sat on its shelf like a fat wrinkled toad, its folds arranged in a smirk of smug satisfaction.

''Do we? And if the Board decides to let you go and exercise the Obliviation Clause?''

''I thought we had a plan for that?'' I left the leather beast and walked over to Galilea. ''Don't tell me you're getting cold feet?''

''No. Are you?''

''Are you kidding?'' I wrapped my arms around Galilea. ''After your manoeuvres last night? I've never had my tactical options so thoroughly exercised before. And your oral examination skills are mind-blowing.''

Galilea squeezed me and then stepped back. ''I knew that this plan was going to get me in trouble as soon as I finished forging the Summoning Charms.''

''You're in trouble? I'm the one who has insomnia attacks when his girlfriend gets PMS.''

''I thought I'd slept unusually well that night. Count yourself lucky I didn't project the cramping.''

Before I could think of anything witty to say to that, a dark figure stepped into the frame behind Galilea's desk. ''Good morning Headmistress, Professor Hunter.''

''Good morning, Headmaster Snape. Did you enjoy the flowers?'' I'd had the flowers sent on to Madam Bones' office, with a little note of explanation.

Dark eyes regarded me over a long hooked nose. ''The selection was... Garish.'' His voice was cool and ironic. ''And I think your message got a bit muddled in the sending.''

''Maybe. What did you get?''

''Viscaria, ragged-robin, and nasturtium.''

''The florist got my order right. Any muddled messages are probably because I only spent ten minutes with the flower-meanings book.''

The look he gave me was so dry you could have used it to drain a slough. ''You've hardly spent any time in this world. What do you think you're up?''

''Why Headmaster, are you asking me to dance?''

The dry look went ice-cold. ''I'm done with 'dancing', as you put it.'' He turned quickly, robes fluttering dramatically, and stalked out of the portrait.

I turned back to Galilea. She looked a bit exasperated. ''Geoffrey, please try not to irritate too many of my predecessors. I value their advice.''

A voice called out from the other wall. ''I wouldn't worry about Severus,'' said Albus Dumbledore. ''He's fascinated by this turn of events. He just needs to be... Wooed. As for Phineas, he enjoys a good shouting match.''

Galilea winced slightly. ''Thank you, Albus. I'll give your opinion all due consideration. And speaking of being wooed, Geoffrey, it's time for you to take me to breakfast.''

I offered her my arm. As we entered the spiral stairwell Dumbledore called out one last time. ''Oh, and Professor Hunter? Those trousers look absolutely fabulous on you.''

Galilea laughed all the way down the stairs.

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The Great Hall was about as quiet as you could expect in a room packed with over a thousand kids. Belladonna Black ignored me, Rebecca Lestrange wasn't hung over, and Rubeus Hagrid and Sybill Trelawney both showed up for a change. The newspapers were full of minor scandals and sports news. Idris told a funny story about his oldest daughter, due to start at Hogwarts next year, and a First Year Hufflepuff came to the head table to give Galilea a picture he'd painted.

Things got back to normal when a Ravenclaw girl with a bad stomach threw up on her friend.

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After a quick stop in my quarters for warmer clothes, I went about my rounds. I'd chosen my heavy wool shirt specifically to stand out from the crowd, and I found that as soon as the students saw the maple leaf tartan come into view they settled right down. Bright colours on a teacher send the same warning as yellow and black on a hornet: Don't make any sudden moves and you won't get hurt...

Sweating a bit in the wool shirt I made my way through the halls, keeping an eye out for trouble. I broke up a game of Exploding Snap in a second floor corridor, not because it was against the rules but because the boys were betting money on the hands. I penalized all their Houses nineteen points - one point per Sickle in the pot - and confiscated the coins for the staff party fund.

I found Shibley on my way out to the grounds. Over the previous night the thick mist around Hogwarts had transfigured itself to snow, and the grounds were covered with glittering whiteness that had yet to be trampled into mud. Shibley's transparent form was almost lost in the glare.

I pulled on my gloves, toque, and sunglasses and asked Shibley about her night.

''It waur guid. Ah spoke wi' Sister Regina an' she trysted tae gie Maggie aff mah back.'' With my sunglasses to cut the glare I could see Shibley smile. ''An' yer nicht, Master? Did ye sleep weel?''

''The Headmistress and I enjoyed a night of exhausting negotiations.'' I looked around the grounds. There were a few tracks in the snow, but most turned back to the castle. I followed the most persistent track, two sets of footprints in the snow that didn't appear to double back. ''Where are all the kids?''

Shibley stuck an arm out and wiggled her fingers, testing the air. ''It's a bit braw fur yoongsters, dornt ye hink?''

''It's barely past minus twenty. This is why you Brits don't have an empire anymore. Because you all got soft.'' The trail ran along the wall of the North Wing.

''Nae. It's coz we shipped aw th' nutters aff tae th' colonies. We mauna hae an empire nae mair, but haem is sae much quieter noo.''

The tracks led to an alcove in the wall of the North Tower, a bricked off old entrance, where a couple of teenagers were blissfully unaware of my approach. Snogging, necking, getting off with, call it whatever you want, it's against the rules for under-seventeens. I walked up to the alcove, not being particularly quiet about it. I was less than a yard away from the black-robed couple when I cleared my throat.

They jumped, flapping like a pair of startled crows. The boy tripped over his own feet, almost fell backwards, over-corrected, and then stumbled forward onto his girlfriend. The girl hit her head on the bricks with an eye-watering clunk. I grabbed the boy's shoulder to hold him steady before he could make things worse.

I pulled the two apart to have a look at them. Generic white kids - Brown hair, brown eyes, pasty complexions, bumpy English foreheads, both about thirteen or fourteen with Gryffindor patches on their robes. The only memorable thing about them was the look of terror on the boy's face and obvious pain on the girl's. I didn't recognize either of them.

''How's your head?'' I asked the girl.

''Git!'' She punched the boy's shoulder, making him yelp in surprise. ''This is your fault!''

He gaped at her like a freshly caught fish. ''My - It was your idea!''

Before this could degenerate any further I stepped between the pair. ''Good news! You're both in equal amounts of trouble!''

I docked them each the regulation ten points for a first offence, then hauled the happy couple off to the hospital wing. Not only did the girl need to be checked for a head injury, the punishment for breaking the no-intimate-grappling rules would be administered by a school healer.

An hour long lecture on the reproductive system and Birth Control Charms, complete with clinical diagrams and hand gestures. In the open main hall of the Hospital Wing.

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Inside and away from the snowglare, I could see that Shibley was nervous.

''Weel, if ye see, it's loch thes...''

I waited. And waited.

''Ah waur wonderin' if yoo'd min', it's mah shows, ye see...''

''Your shows?''

''Aye weel, it's Elsie an' 'er son, ye ken. They're havin' a terrible raw abit his lack ay wark, an' he's bin mopin' abit th' hoose an' it seems he stole a bit o' coin - ''

''Oh! You've been sneaking off to watch soaps!'' I put my hands on my hips and glared at her. ''Didn't you tell me that you're not supposed to go out unsupervised?''

She wrung her hands together. ''Aye, but it's jist th' strath, isnae it? Th' village is in th' strath, sort ay?''

I couldn't hold the glare. ''I'm joking, Shibley. Go have fun.''

''Och, thenk ye! Ah'll gang fin' th' Baron, he's bin gonnae oan his ain these pest weeks an' that's nae fin!'' She dove away through the floor and down into whatever corridor was below us.

It was definitely against the rules, the Muggle villages along the Old Military Road were not in the same valley as Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. But I wasn't about to take away her -

Wait.

''The Bloody Baron watches soap operas?''

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Making my way back to the grounds, I saw a familiar blonde figure on the stairs to the walkway between the West Wing and main building. Selena Spinks sat next to a stack of books. She had my Muggle Studies OWLs guide open in her lap, but it looked less like she was trying to read it and more like she was trying to set it on fire with her glare.

I sat a couple of stairs down from her, so I wouldn't loom over her. ''You've got a few years to memorize all that,'' I said. ''I think you're better off spending your weekends having fun.''

She closed the OWLs booklet. ''It's too bright outside.''

That was entirely likely. She was very fair, and the glare would probably hurt her eyes. ''Okay. Just don't spend all your time studying. Hogwarts is about making friends too.''

Glaring at me she grabbed her books and stood. ''My parents scored all Outstandings on their OWLs. I'm not going to let you ruin my scores just because you don't want to teach the right material.''

I could have docked her a few points right there, but I was curious about something. Watching her retreat down the stairs I asked what Houses her parents had been in. She said 'Slytherin' without looking back.

I thought about high-achievers and brittle children for a time, until I was interrupted by a girl running past on the stairs. She slipped, saved herself by grabbing the railing, and instead of pitching herself down the stairs pivoted into the wall knee first. The crunch made me feel sick.

Thank God she was just a little First Year. I carried her to the Hospital Wing, where the nurse was putting on a puppet show for my Romeo and Juliet. With anatomically accurate puppets.

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''Sit! Down!''

The two boys on the floor didn't even hear me, too wrapped up in clumsily grappling and punching at one another. The rest of the Third and Fourth Years jumped at my voice. They'd all been too busy posing at one another or shoving to see me coming. Some of them looked ready to bolt. I grabbed shoulders and started pushing them down.

''I said sit! That means you, Selwyn! All of you!''

By the time I had the five spectators under control and sitting on the stone floor, the two who were at blows finally noticed my presence. They'd stopped punching, but neither was willing to be the first to let go. I glared at them until fear overcame anger and they both started to relax their grips. Then I yanked the two apart and manhandled them into sitting positions.

I kept my voice low and snarled at the kids. ''One. Thousand. Years. One thousand years of Wizarding history, and it all comes down to this. A pack of little children fighting like stray dogs over a scrap of meat! You disgrace yourselves, and you disgrace Hogwarts.''

One of the two who'd been on the floor opened his mouth. I levelled a finger at him a few inches from his face. ''Not. One. Word. You are both in enough trouble already. You will all be silent - '' I swept my glare across everyone there, forcing eye contact with every boy who wasn't already staring at the floor. '' - Until I order you to speak. Now you two, stand up and stand over there. I said, stand up! Don't make me repeat myself again.''

It took a couple of minutes but I finally got the bunch organized into something like a parade. I marched them through the halls at a good clip, growling orders at them when they started to slow down or try to mutter at one another. The two who had actually been at blows shared fat lips and bloody noses, which meant the little idiots had been punching one another in the head. When we got to the Hospital Wing I turned those two over to the healers and turned my own tender mercies on their friends.

One hundred and five House Points and seven detentions later I had the story, the standard adolescent tale of He Said But They Said And Then Someone Pushed And It's His Fault Not Mine. So far as I could tell the whole thing boiled down to someone not liking or maybe he did someone else's sister. I sent notes off to their Heads of Houses and told the kids they were all confined to quarters for rampant idiocy.

I'd like to claim that I hadn't been that stupid when I was their age, but I have the bone-fractures to prove otherwise.

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I ran into my lovebirds again in the walkway leading to the main building. She was obviously still angry over getting caught and having her head cracked against the wall. He just looked confused while she complained at him.

''Well,'' I jumped in to interrupt the brewing fight. ''I hope you two learned the most important lesson here.''

Looking back and forth between me and the girl, he asked me what that was.

I shrugged. ''Don't get caught snogging on school grounds.''

The boy looked at her. ''How about outside the grounds?''

I confined her to the Gryffindor's girls dorm for the day, gave her a twenty-point penalty for fighting, and told her she had an hour's detention on Monday. I sent him back to the Hospital Ward to get his black eye healed.

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I followed Scorpius Malfoy around the North Tower towards the Quidditch Pitch. The boy wore heavy wool clothes, a thick jumper, his school robes, a scarf, and a fuzzy wool toque, and he still shivered in the cold. He babbled cheerfully about the weather as we approached a group of about a dozen First Years. Half the kids stood in a rough patch they'd cleared of snow, the rest seemed to be spectators.

'' - Not like home. It never gets so cold there.'' Malfoy stopped and gestured proudly at the assembled students. ''Here we are. That's Gryffindor Harry, and Buttercup, and Taurus, and Ron, and Lantana and Noctua, and Slytherin Harry, and that's Harry Too...''

He rattled off each kid's name without having to stop to think about them. I recognized a third of them from my classes, but the rest were new to me. Harry Too held a baseball bat, and a few yards away from him stood Ron holding a ball.

Malfoy went on cheerfully. ''You're American, and Slytherin Harry said Americans like baseball, so we decided to try a game and you can tell us if we're doing it properly.''

''I'm Canadian, actually. But I have played baseball.'' Harry Too and Ron waved to the audience and took their positions. I took a look at the field, checking out the positions of the players and spectators. ''Before you get started there are a few things - ''

You couldn't call what Ron did a 'pitch'. It was a crazy throw that just happened to go in the right direction. Harry Too swung wildly, twisting his back in a way that just had to hurt. The bat somehow managed to connect with the ball, driving it into a fast grounder along the rough field. Harry Too let go of the bat at the end of his swing and started to run...

The bat flew out into the spectators, smacking Noctua in the shin. She shrieked as she fell, and Harry Too looked back over his shoulder to see what was wrong. Just as he went sprawling over his own feet the ball popped up to hit Taurus in the face.

Once again I made the trek to the Hospital Wing while lugging eighty pounds of pubescent girl, this time with two crying boys in tow. Madam Bones threatened to Hex me if she saw me again that day.

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And then it was lunch, so I had an espresso.