Fic : Stalling (Folie a deux +/- 1 Prequel)
Yes, you may have seen the original draft of this here years ago, but now I'm trying to put up the whole series.
Stalling
Summary : Not all great partnerships appear auspicious from the beginning.
Prequel to Folie a deux (plus or minus one)
Chapter 1
Even before glancing at his pocket watch to check the time, Albus knew he was late. It wasn't that he had lost track of the time so much as he had lost track of the time zone. It was one of the perils of being a member of the International Confederation of Wizards.
Already confident in Headmaster Dippet's wrath, as he entered the Great Hall, Albus didn't spare as much as a glance to the Head Table. Instead, he headed directly to where The Sorting was taking place. Finding only half as many students lined up as there should be, Albus was just grateful he hadn't been so late as to have missed the ceremony entirely.
Horace already had the next student seated on the stool. He was about to place the hat on her head when Dumbledore took it out of the Head of Slytherin's hands.
“Thank you, Professor Slughorn. I will take it from here.”
Behind her glasses, the young lady's eyes narrowed unfavorably as she turned on the stool to look at him.
“Where are my manners?” Albus offered her his most disarming smile. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am -”
She allowed no such thing. “- I know who you are. I read the Daily Prophet on the train. You're Albus Dumbledore, Order of Merlin Second Class. You are the Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration Master here at Hogwarts. Highly accomplished in both the fields of Alchemy and Transfiguration, you're a junior member of the Wizengamot and as of today the most recent inductee into the International Confederation of Wizards.”
She did not appear to be impressed. Her face held a squinty look of disapproval - all the more as she got to the last of his accomplishments. “You are self trained in the wandless art of occlumency and legilmency and you are -”
Radiating disdain, the girl pointed out the obvious. “ - late.”
“Really? I hadn't noticed.” Albus quipped.
“You would think that the Deputy Headmaster would know what time the train arrives.”
“Ah, yes, you would think that, wouldn't you?” He smiled indulgently. “Rest assured, I did know what time the train would be arriving here. I just didn’t know what time it currently was here.”
Glancing up and seeing Headmaster Dippet's glare at the delay, rather than allow the girl time to puzzle that out, he stuck the hat on her head.
Then he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
As they all waited, Albus again looked at his pocket watch. They were passing the five minute mark. If this kept up they could be setting a new school record.
Alas, it was not to be.
“Enough with your dithering!” Berating the hat, the young lady in question reached up to start to remove the hat herself.
Her Scottish accent was becoming more pronounced as the exasperated eleven year old chided the hat that had once belonged to Godric Gryffindor. “Of all the utterly ridiculous attempts at being melodramatic!”
As she held out the Sorting Hat at arm's length to better allow her to hold her discussion with it face to ... not quite face, Albus observed her.
She didn't seem embarrassed or put out at having been made a spectacle. She just seemed genuinely put upon at being kept waiting.
“Would you just pick one already!”
Finding her clenching of the hat by it's peak to not be quite the handling beseeming of such a great and storied object of magic, Albus reached for it.
Before he could get hold of it, the Sorting Hat ... snorted. “Well then ... Gryffindor!”
Her tone now markedly less agitated, the girl stood and began smoothing out the creases left in her robes from her extended time on the stool. “There now. Was that really so difficult?!”
Taking the hat from her, Albus dismissed her. “Thank you, Miss ...?”
Again, there she was with the obvious. “Had you bothered to arrive on time you would know.”
More than somewhat amused at the entire evening's events, Albus accepted the rebuke with a smile.
Perhaps because his smile was after all as charming and disarming as he believed it to be or perhaps because she was a student and he was the teacher, she relented. “McGonagall. Minerva McGonagall.”
“Thank you, Miss McGonagall. You may be seated.”
Head held high, she approached the Gryffindor table and found a seat. Albus watched those nearest her eye her warily, leaving her a wide berth.
The remainder of the students were dispensed with in a much less spectacular fashion.
The Sorting at last completed, finally settling into his own seat at the Staff table, Albus chose to ignore Slughorn's chuckling.
“Better you than me, Albus. Better you than me.”
tbc