Gilderoy checks his reflection one last time before he uses the last of his daily charms on his mouth. After all, he doesn't want to smell of onions or garlic, and his smile is his most attractive quality. Picking up one of his luckiest achievements, he pins his Order of Merlin 3rd class medal to his breast pocket before leaving his room in the three broomsticks. An idle wave of his wand, in a practiced manner, has his dress cane find its way under his left hand, while his wand disappears into a concealed holster on his wrist.
After a leisurely walk around the village of Hogsmeade to the Hogwarts gates he pauses before knocking politely on the Hogwarts emblem. He absolutely doesn't shriek when a voice, with a Scottish accent, behind him asks, "Can I help you?"
Turning around slowly, Gilderoy looks at the young woman before putting on his best smile, "Certainly, I was hoping to speak to the acting headmistress about the Defence post."
"An why would you be wanting to do that?"
Taking a step back, Gilderoy lowers himself into a bow, at the same time he pulls a couple of letters from a hidden clip underneath his jacket, "Why, because the headmaster requested me personally, though I was in Peru at the time and had to decline. However, my agent informed me that the last Professor left the position open."
The woman takes the letters with a huff, before walking around him and pushing the gates open, "Well come on then, we can deal with this in the great hall."
Blinking a couple of times, Gilderoy straightens up and trots to catch up with the young woman. A few paces past the gates he jumps as the gates close behind him with a loud clang. As he tries to slow down to walk beside the woman, who has opened one of the letters to read it, he finds out that she's walking too slow for a jog, but faster than his walking pace, "Excuse me Miss, huff, but those letters are for, the headmistress."
"Hmm, I suppose they are, do you have proof of your Mastery in Defence?"
"What? Um yes. It's in, my pouch."
"Good, good, how about a lesson plan?"
"Yes, I was going to focus on magical creatures this year."
"Interesting. Right, that makes things easier." Abruptly she changes direction and heads towards the Forbidden Forest.
Gilderoy can't help the surprise in his tone, "It does?"
The woman nods, "Indeed, part of the interview process now includes a practical test of your mastery. The first part of which will be to get 10 juvenile acromantula from the forest. Something you should have absolutely no trouble with Mr Lockhart."
Gilderoy stumbles over his next couple of steps, "I'm sorry, what?"
"Don't worry, all the adults have been ea… dealt with. Your test will serve three purposes, it will allow us to see how close we are to having another breeding pair, it will provide venom for our potions master to experiment with, and they'll be lunch. I mean we'll be able to test your competency."
Gilderoy catches up with the woman as she stops at the edge of the forest, "I'm sorry, I didn't, catch that, last bit."
"I said your test will serve multiple purposes. Well, what are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?"
"You know what? No! I demand to speak to the acting headmistress."
The young lady pulls herself up to her full height, "I'll have you know Mr Lockhart, I am the acting Head Master of the school, Master of Transfiguration Minerva McGonagall at your service."
"What? No, you can't be, she was old when I was at school."
"Yes, I was. That's when you got an A on your Defence OWL. Now Laddie, you claim to have a Mastery in Defence, and I'm calling you on it. You can either get 10 juvenile acromantula, or you can leave. Just in case it's not clear, by Juvenile I mean over two feet long."
"Now see here, acromantula are a 5x creature, you can't expect anyone to just hunt them."
"That only applies to acromantula over six foot long, and I know for a fact there are none in there. Course, I'll be informing the daily prophet either way, as we may be able to get some good publicity out of it."
Gilderoy tugs on his lapels as he mentally sets himself to do what needs to be done, "I see. Well, of course it would behove someone of my calibre to deal with such a problem for the school. Understand that I'd normally be charging a hefty fee for this, however I should have your acromantula within the next 30 minutes."
After a couple more fortifying breaths, Gilderoy nods and sets his face as he turns towards the forest. Taking a deep breath he steps forward and crouches down into a quick spin, his wand popping out into his hand in a practiced move and spitting out three confundus charms in quick succession. Once aimed at the woman's feet, chest, and where she's likely to dodge to based on experience. As he stands up smoothly, instead of a very confused woman, he instead has a split second to see a furry xenomorph leaping for his chest before he sees it jump away with the front of his ribcage in its hands. An instant later, the pain hits, and he collapses to the floor trying to scream in agony with shredded lungs. The pain dies away abruptly when the creature snaps his neck, as it drags him towards the school, his last thoughts are 'That's always worked before'.
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Minerva is almost back to the school by the time the only confundus that hit her wears off. As she idly crunches on a rib bone with one claw, she 'glances' down at the other claw before sending to the hive, "Oh bother. Well, waste not, want not. We have a deceased Gilderoy Lockhart for lunch."
A moment later all the Earth side hive members dive into her memories before focusing on her last few seconds of conscious thought before her instincts took over.
One by one they see her dodge two of the charms while shifting into her animagus form, before being hit just after the change starts, but before it completes. With a shrug they, even Everly and Vivian, deem it suicide before turning back to what they were doing. Only Maia, formally Bradley, has any negative reaction to this, but that's more to do with lacking any experience with violence of this sort, than anything else.
Somewhat later, after she has finished her ribs, Minerva makes her way down into to the heart of the school. As she leaves the freshwater well, that's barely wide enough to fit a full grown man standing upright, through a concealed entrance that only opens into the well, she enters the Heart Room for the school. There she finds both Bathsheba and Septima working on a large computer together while they refer to a desk full of paper and the runes around the room.
"Beth, Septima, how's things going?"
Septima groans, "Horribly, you can check our memories."
Minerva nods, "I could, but I want to keep in practice doing things the human… way… Damn, I don't consider myself human anymore. Ah well. We still need to work with humans, so here we are."
Septima nods, "I can see that. Well, our biggest headache is that the founders used runes symbolically, rather than as anchors. Something that fell out of use around 700 years ago, as the magic involved tends to start going wild and developing a sort of sense of self. Not exactly ideal when you want your wards to keep doing exactly the same thing every day. Each of the rune clusters you see around us represents a ward stone somewhere in the castle."
Beth breaks in, "It's absolutely fascinating, and something I've never even heard of before. If I'm right, then even if the castle above was demolished, as long as this room still exists, any structure that is rebuilt above would have the same ward stones appear. What we're doing here is trying to isolate each of the rune clusters, as well as mapping each of the original enchantments. Something that's made far more difficult because Sepi needs to detect and analyse each one individually. Fortunately, we've been able to get the computer to do the actual calculations for us, as well as calculating the different interactions."
Septima nods and takes over again, "Once we've finished mapping the enchantments in here, we can calculate the overall arithmantic result of the enchantments and craft a spell to check a ward stone against that result. After that, we need to visit each ward stone and check its individual result. If it comes back different, then we'll need to analyse the enchantments on that stone to find out what they do. To complicate things, Beth is also checking to see if any of the rune clusters here are actually more modern anchors. Quite frankly, I think it would be easier to be a curse breaker than doing what we're doing. However, we have the advantage that this method is actually safe as oppose to the risks of attacking from the outside."
Minerva nods, and walks around the room, being careful not to step on the actual heart stone in the centre of the room. She really doesn't want to be directly connected to the leylines running under the school. After a moment she stops, staring at one of the rune clusters, "Beth."
"Yes Minerva?"
"Is there any reason why you couldn't have some of the other hive members going around the school, looking for these rune clusters?"
Beth looks up from the computer for a moment, "Why?"
"Well, the curse was put there by You-Know-Who, what are the chances he'd know how to do the warding work that you're untangling here?"
Beth looks over at Septima, who thinks for a moment, "It's unlikely, and even if he did, he'd have needed to perform a ritual to get the curse to stick. As cursing something abstract is very different from cursing a person, object, or location. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a ritual circle buried underneath this flooring."
Minerva nods thoughtfully, "So, it's likely that he anchored his curse with runes, yes?"
Beth shrugs, "Probably, or he found another way. That's why we're doing this, as it's guaranteed to find anything that's been added to the wards since the heart stone was created."
Minerva nods, "Then we've got something for the kids to do when they're bored. Even if we find the curse that way, I still want the two of you to finish mapping out the enchantments over the school. And if the school has a personality, please try to give it some way to communicate with us."
Beth sighs, "I'll ask Arry for some slates, and link them to this computer."
Minerva nods in agreement before leaving the Heart Room, and making her way to the Library.
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Pausing at the doors to the Library, Minerva turns around and walks a few yards down the corridor to poke her head into the room set aside for any books found in the room of hidden things. Her mouth drops open as she sees the piles of unsorted books dotted around the, now expanded, room, along with the two bookcases that are both almost full. Somewhat puzzled at the lack of progress on this room, she makes her way into the library. After the first couple of steps in, she stops sharply, the door closing behind her with a soft click.
In front of her are pockmarked bookcases as far as she can see. The librarians desk is so covered with books, as to be unrecognisable. The only indication that there hasn't been some sort of fight here are the neat piles of books around the library. Carefully, she wends her way around the piles of books, deeper into the library towards the sounds of voices. Eventually, she comes across Irma talking to 4 house elves.
After a light cough to announce her presence, Minerva looks pointedly at the bookshelves, "Irma, I was under the impression that you were going to be teaching these house elves how to manage the Library, not dismantle it."
Irma straightens up and turns around with an especially sour expression on her face, "Indeed I was. And Dipsy, Tinky-Winky, Laa-Laa, and Po here have been soaking up those lessons admirably. Though they should also be putting just as much effort into the lessons on reading and writing."
"So, what happened here?"
"Dipsy here found a book from the restricted section behind a row of books on comparative linguistics. Since then, we have found another four, one of which was restricted due to the defences on the book rather than the content. We've also found 200 books that are commonly required for different assignments that are handed out to 4th years and above, all either misfiled, or hidden behind other books. Laa-Laa found one restricted book with the cover of a non-restricted book. Finally the other books you see around are all mis-filed by era or subject. Not to mention the three shelves that were expanded to hold contraband at some point, and required Severus, Filch, and Pomona to remove safely."
Minerva looks confused, "Era?"
Irma nods, "Indeed, we have over a thousand years of books here. The language they're written in varies over time, and becomes more incomprehensible to modern witches and wizards the further back you go. That's not to mention the influx of muggle books that has been happening over the holiday. Some of which I am going to be placing into the restricted section."
Minerva raises an eyebrow, "Oh?"
"Oh is the right response. The house elves have been buying cookbooks from the muggle world." She looks down at Po, who looks sheepish, "One of them heard that one cookbook has been modified by the muggle governments, to ensure the recipes don't work. So they found three different first editions of the anarchists cookbook. They were given to the library after a new glycerine recipe killed the elf that was trying to make it. Fortunately, the elf was a member of one of the hives, so they're currently with the elflings."
Minerva blanches slightly, "Well, carry on, and have a good afternoon."
Heavy with sarcasm, Irma responds, "Oh, I'm sure I will. Nothing like reindexing the entire library by hand to help you relax."
Forgoing her attempt at appearing human, Minerva pops out of the library and into her own office. There, she continues looking through applications for the new jobs coming up next year, along with the capital expenses for much needed replacements and renovations, and the upcoming agenda for the school board meeting.