Staff Meeting

[kahnooloo]

Cheese and crackers, pumpkin pasties, cauldron cakes, and pies and tarts of at least a dozen varieties were laid out by house-elves along the sides of the Staff Room. And when all the staff had assembled in the chairs provided (a short chair was even provided for the Easter Bunny), Kahnooloo leapt up onto a desk at the front of the classroom and

Comments

[waste_lock]

The headmistress gave Nny the creeps.

The serious creeps.

Still, he hadn't had a 'real' job before, and he took it seriously. Staff meetings were a job thing, weren't they?

[lemondrop_party]

Staff meetings were indeed a job thing, and Albus was gratified by the turnout, if secretly a bit surprised given the laxity of the staff where the holding of classes was concerned. If anything, the caretaker was a bit too zealous at his job, from what Albus had heard; no need for reproaches on the work-ethic front here. Still carrying a half-eaten cauldron cake, he came over to introduce himself.

"I suppose you remember the old me," he said without preamble. "The shadow-self. I am not that man. Not all of us are what we're thought to be. I think you may be one who understands that well."

[waste_lock]

Nny, of course, remembered him clearly... or, at least who he'd been before. Remembered him with something like amused disgust.

"The old you," he mused softly. "People... reset, here. So many people. It's almost as confusing as when the universe resets around you."

[lemondrop_party]

It was a Muggle concept, reset. Albus thought fondly of the 8-bit Nintendo a friend in low places had shared with him once. Blowing on it fixes everything. That was a sentiment that would have meant something very different in the mind of former-Dumbledore, the shadow Albus.

"It has something akin to Transfiguration in it," Albus said. "The body transmutes into popcorn; the popcorn houses the dormant self; or does it? I taught Transfiguration here, once upon a time."

He studied the caretaker from behind his half-moon spectacles. "You'll have your own wand for certain, I think. May I ask what its components are?"

[waste_lock]

"Transfiguration," Nny repeats. "I took one of those classes. Matches into needles." He pulls out his chestnut wand and turns it over in his hands, trying to remember what he'd been told it was.

"I don't remember what kind of wood the guy said it was," he admits. "I remember he said there was unicorn hair in it. I thought that was weird."

[lemondrop_party]

Albus did not need to touch the wand. He could recognise the wood readily enough.

"A chestnut wand with unicorn hair at the core," he mused. "It's a pity your class did not take you beyond matches to needles. You could go much further, if you decided you wished it."

[waste_lock]

"You mean, like, sticks to forks?" The classes Nny had taken hadn't impressed him; they'd been as chaotic as his own less lucid moments. "That doesn't seem all that useful."

[lemondrop_party]

That got a chuckle from Albus. "That too, along the way, but that was not where my thoughts had tended, no. Strong talent in Transfiguration can be a rare thing, and when identified, it should be fostered, to my way of thinking. Perhaps you'd humor an old man some quiet day, and drop by my office."

[waste_lock]

That earned him a suspicious glance. "I'm married."

[lemondrop_party]

At first taken aback, Albus spluttered just a little when the meaning of the caretaker's remark hit him, or rather, the meaning the caretaker had gotten from what Albus himself had said.

"Goodness," he said, when he'd recovered. "I forget at times just how disreputable my former incarnation had been. My word, to use Transfiguration lessons as a prelude to -- well, but the school application, as well. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, me. Is this why people have been making odd remarks about something called 'naked time'?"

[waste_lock]

"Disreputable. Yeah." Nny was still wary. "You and that creepy guy. And maybe it's not a polite thing to say, but I don't want to see you naked."

[lemondrop_party]

Albus shook his head. "It is a very polite thing to say, considering the alternative. And, yes, I would say that Voldemort qualifies as creepy. Well, this has been a conversation of interest. I can see I clearly have my work cut out for me if I am to shake what appears to be an even more scurrilous reputation than I had feared."

[waste_lock]

"So what did you mean, then, when you asked me to 'stop by your office'?"

[lemondrop_party]

"What an instructor ought to mean when he asks someone to his office," Albus said. "I am a professor emeritus, which means, in short, I have time on my hands, and you have the makings of a talent in what has been my field of expertise."

[waste_lock]

"I..." Nny blinked. That wasn't really something he expected.

Why not?

"Um. Maybe? I don't think I know where your office is."

[lemondrop_party]

"It is on the third floor, very near the Trophy Room, small but hard to miss," he said. "I am usually in, and always welcome company. The sorts of company I would not like would likely have difficulty finding the room."