(no subject)
Title: Between Here and Now and Forever, Chapter 5
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: The Founders, various OCs
Rating: PG
Summary: Salazar takes steps to prevent another incident like the one with Julian de Malfoie's Muggle father. Meanwhile, Rowena's tyrannical mother comes to visit. 3685 words.
Author's Note: thinkatory is still my beta. Apologies for the especially long wait -- Murphy's Law kind of unloaded on me. It's really just best not to ask at this point.
Chapter 1
Master Founders post
Chapter 4
"One hundred and twelve Muggle soldiers," said the goblin, "complete with weapons. All of the weapons could have been dismantled with a simple well-placed charm. In my assessment, sir, they were no danger to the castle."
"Thank you, Peeves," said Lord Salazar to the goblin. "Where is the Muggle staying?"
"I'm working on it, sir," the goblin said. "We can add a room in the South Tower, and..." he looked at his sheet of parchment, "...there's a disappearing bedroom he can use on the ground floor, near the entrance to the storage facilities."
"The dungeons, you mean?" asked Rowena with a frown.
"They are not dungeons," explained Lord Salazar. "'Dungeons' implies torture devices and necromancy and shackles and chains. Dungeons," he continued with mild distaste, "are places for people to... to dunge in. I will tolerate no dungeing in my castle."
"The Muggle thinks they're dungeons," piped up Peeves.
Lord Salazar thought about this for a second. "Put him on the ground floor. Don't bother to correct him."
"Yes sir," said Peeves, bowing and hurrying away.
"Lady Ravenclaw, may I have a word with you?" asked Lord Salazar. Rowena winced inwardly; she had known she would be in trouble for this, but she'd hoped to avoid it for as long as possible. "It was you who was responsible for Master de Malfoie's attendance at the school, was it not?"
"Well, I saw that he had talent, yes, but when his father said he couldn't, I left it at that," she explained. "I didn't realize he would work out how to get here -- he really is a clever boy, my best student, in fact, and after five or ten years here learning magic, I wouldn't be surprised if he was at least as good as any of the Wizards' Council brats who --"
"Be that as it may," said Lord Salazar, "I do not want a Muggle army pitted against the castle. Lord de Malfoie is proof that the Muggles are clever enough -- or at least determined enough - to get through that forest and Mistress Hufflepuff's trees."
"But that goblin, didn't he say that all of the weapons were susceptible to spells?"
"And how would you go about disarming one hundred and twelve Muggles at a time?"
Rowena had to admit that she didn't really know how to answer that one -- not offhand, at any rate. "But Godric took care of it," she said, ignoring his question.
"Very well," said Lord Salazar, doubt present in his tone, "but next time, may I ask that you don't accept children from the Muggle nobility? The peasants have no real power -- I'm hardly worried about them -- but there are Muggles with more than just a hundred and twelve soldiers at their command. I know your family has collaborated with our, ah, present Muggle rulers in the past, but I'm not familiar enough with Muggle politics to trust them. Our situation here is too delicate to afford disruption from opportunistic forces we're unfamiliar with, and as the peace with the Muggles is sustained through mutual ignorance, it's uneasy enough as it is."
Rowena nodded glumly. There were some people she could afford to push around, but the landlord was not one of them.
* * *
Lord de Malfoie's small army had also made a difference in the day-to-day lives of the students. For one thing, there was now a password spell on each of the four common rooms and sets of dormitories, and students who had friends in other dormitories had to restrict their conversations to mealtimes. This was frankly irritating, as students were mainly assigned dormitories in accordance with which dormitory had had the most beds open at the time. For those in the Red Common Room, however, watching Professor Gryffindor try to remember his own passwords more than made up for the inconvenience.
Meanwhile, Lord Salazar was getting a case study on Muggle behavior from Peeves, who kept detailed notes on where de Malfoie went, whom he spoke with, what he said, and how he reacted to others. Rowena was the only one who had noticed the green-liveried goblin following the Muggle around, ink and quill in hand; she didn't think the other professors even knew much about Peeves at all, much less de Malfoie, but it was becoming evident that Lord Salazar was concerned about Muggle reactions to magic. She had given up scheming to keep her mother away from the school, and started instead on trying to discover a loophole in Lord Salazar's prohibition regarding students from the Muggle nobility. While her mother could be troublesome at times, Rowena could tolerate her if it meant she could get more students for the school.
She was gradually building up an argument against Salazar. Item One was the way Godric had handled the situation. If even an idiot like Godric could make a good impression on the Muggles, chances were anyone could do it. Item Two was Lord de Malfoie, who showed consistently good behavior, even with the Venomous Tentacula, which had managed to put him in the hospital wing for a good four hours while Helga and Salazar argued over whether Venomous Tentaculas had glands or not. The man might be overly curious, but Rowena could hardly blame him for that -- after all, she was experimenting with dangerous Transfiguration, which wasn't even her specialty. There were, of course, flaws in her argument, and she needed more evidence, but how would she get evidence without more Muggle-born students? She would just have to sneak them in under Lord Salazar's nose.
* * *
Midwinter came and went, with Basil and Helga taking the Muggle-born students to a wizarding church in a small town nearby. They'd been doing this every Sunday, but the extra-long Christmas service was a special occasion, and when they returned, Rowena made sure the house-elves had prepared a large feast for the occasion. She didn't normally hold with the monotheists' holidays, and wouldn't have celebrated them even with a thousand rabid Muggles holding knives to her throat, but anyone who could stand around listening to Latin (which, she knew, most students didn't even understand) for that long in an unheated building deserved something special. Lord de Malfoie didn't seem to have noticed that some of the students were happily celebrating things like Sol Invictus instead. This was definitely good, as he hadn't commented on it. Hopefully it would make him look more accepting, and translate into a better report for Lord Salazar.
Meanwhile, she'd been making some progress on the Voluma Animaguum, which were more difficult than they looked. The original Animagi had seemed to enjoy making life difficult for those who sought to join them, so they explained things in terms of references to myths. Some, like the Greek myths Rowena had grown up with, were obvious, and the Roman myths were nearly as easy, because they had stolen everything from the Greeks. The Egyptian ones were, by far, the hardest, as Rowena had never been to Egypt before, and there was an alarming amount of references to Egyptian religion and culture in the Scrolls. She decided it was lucky they had been written in Latin and not hieroglyphics - the original group seemed to have originated in Egypt, from what she could tell.
Furthermore, her mother's visit was approaching quickly, and while Rowena knew that she had to be ready for it, she wasn't sure how she ought to prepare people. She knew there would be the inevitable conflict between her mother and Lord Salazar -- they would not, of course, say anything outright, but Lady Aeaeae was Chief of the Wizards' Council, a position Lord Salazar was widely known to desire. Rowena honestly wished he would get what he wanted, as she was never quite certain that her mother was an appropriate leader for the modern wizarding world, especially considering how awful her handwriting was. She was, however, undisputedly good at keeping her power, and those who wanted it tended to underestimate her gravely. Even Rowena did this at times. It had always been hard to separate the facade from the reality with her mother.
* * *
Lady Aeaeae arrived on a chilly spring day, Rowena's father in tow. Officially he was supposed to be Lord Aeaeae, but he'd always been treated more as a consort than as a noble in his own right. After all, Aeaeae was her name, not his. When Rowena opened the door to greet them, she had a large smile painted on her face. It would not do to wince in public.
"Rowena, dear, how are you?" asked her mother.
Rowena shrugged. "Good, I suppose."
"Where are your friends?" she asked. "Dear, you do always have the oddest friends, I'm glad you've met some nice people finally, even if they are all tied to that snake. Oh, and I've found another man you might be interested in."
In spite of herself, Rowena finally caved in to the pressure and winced. "No," she said, frowning.
"No?"
"No," she repeated. "I'm not going to do this again."
"Rowena, dear, this one won't die on you," said her mother. "What's not to like?"
"Plenty of things," said Rowena. "For one, I don't even know him!"
"You read too much," said her mother. "If I'd worried about silly things like that, your father and I would never have married. Isn't that right, Gualterus?"
Lord Aeaeae blinked. "Of course, dear," he nodded.
"His hearing's gotten worse," her mother said in a low voice. "He doesn't realize it yet."
"Are you two talking about me?" he asked, squinting with his watery eyes.
"Of course not, dear," said her mother, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. She turned to Rowena. "Please, at least think about it. It would keep --" she stopped and looked around, "-- you know who, --" she said significantly, gesturing around at the castle in general, "-- from being such an irritating pain in the -- Hello, Salazar! And has my Rowena been behaving?"
Lord Salazar greeted her mother cheerfully, as though she were a friend and not a bitter rival. Rowena hated their fake smiles and their fake emotions, and yet she couldn't help going along with it fake-cheerfully. Rowena preferred shouting matches to politicians' sugar-coated betrayals, and she wished, not for the first time, that she had been a second child and not an heir.
Helga and Basil entered, and her mother caught sight of them. "Helga! It's been so long since I've seen you!" She gave Helga a welcoming hug and smiled kindly at her. "And how have you been?"
"Very well, milady," said Helga politely, shooting a victorious glance at Rowena. See, she's not all that bad! it said.
Rowena's mother then glanced warily at Basil, without actually seeing him, and 'tsk'ed. "I heard about the accident," she said, looking sympathetically at Helga. "You poor thing - you really do deserve better, you know. There's no obligation to a betrothal when something like that happens." She patted a dumbstruck Helga on the shoulder and turned back to Rowena. Helga, grinding her teeth, reached for her wand, but Basil grabbed her and pulled her out of the room before she could do anything. Rowena hoped the Silencing Charms on the walls would hold.
Before her mother could chatter for long, Godric poked his head in, looking confused. "What's that?" hissed her mother, stepping behind Rowena.
"Rowena," said Godric, "do you know why Helga's yelling? None of what she's saying is at all suitable for students..."
"I don't know," she told him, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. "Perhaps she stubbed her toe? Mother, Father, this is Godric of Gryffindor, our Transfiguration professor."
"What?" asked her father loudly. Her mother, however, turned calculating eyes on Godric.
He shivered. "N-nice meeting you," he nodded with an oh-please-don't-hurt-me smile. "I'll go... set the table, shall I?" He practically ran away.
"Gualterus, would you take those things to the room, dear?" her mother asked.
"Yes, very nice place," said her father gruffly, shuffling away holding the luggage. When he'd gone, mother looked at daughter. "He's the one behind Thaddeus Fudge?" she asked in disbelief.
"I know," said Rowena. "Hard to believe, isn't it?"
"Why is he so skittish?"
Rowena shrugged. "I've no idea. He's always been terrified of everything."
"Really?" said her mother, a vampiric smile on her face. "That's convenient."
"What is?" asked Rowena; not sure that she wanted to know.
"Nearly everyone on the Council agrees that the Glendowers have had far too many charges of necromancy. We're going to throw them out."
"Do you have enough support?" asked Rowena. The Wizards' Council had several different factions, and some members had private rivalries that caused them to side against anything their rival wanted, mainly out of spite.
"I've got the support of Muhammed al-Aziz and Ari ben Shlomo!" Lady Aeaeae said enthusiastically, as though announcing that the world was now forever free of problems. "You know they've never agreed on anything practically since I took office."
Rowena looked impressed, but felt confused. "What's the point, though?"
"There have always been thirteen houses represented in the Council -- we'll have to appoint another one, and at the moment, the most likely man for it is Thaddeus Fudge. But if it were somehow discovered that he was, in fact, not the best Transfigurator in the world, the real Transfigurator would almost certainly be up for consideration."
"But -- Mother! Godric doesn't even look human!"
"Is he?"
"Yes, but that's not the point! He's -- and even if they knew -- well, his parents were Muggles, Mum!"
"They'd overlook that if he had a well-born wife. And you are the best-born, Rowena. You could control him easily -- the poor boy's obviously not the brightest candle on the chandelier."
"All right, Mother, putting aside the unpleasant aesthetics, let's look at this logically, shall we? I couldn't control him at all!" said Rowena. "Firstly, he's possibly the dullest candle on the chandelier. He's clumsy -- dangerously so -- and he'd probably forget his own name if someone didn't write it on the insides of his clothes or something."
"Use Imperius," said her mother with a shrug.
"He's a Transfigurator, Mum. He's stubborn and powerful!"
"And Enchanters are lazy and overconfident," said her mother, a small smile on her face. As a specialist in Charms, Rowena was an Enchantress. There were a lot of things written about the various personality types and humours and astrological signs associated with people skilled in certain sorts of magic, most of them at least mildly contradictory. "But you don't seem to be overconfident. And he's not stubborn."
"He may not be, but I am!" said Rowena. "I will not marry him. That's -- just -- no." She'd had quite enough of marriage. Once was enough.
"Well, all right, then. I only want you to be happy, dear," said her mother sweetly.
Come, now, Mother, surely you want more than that, thought Rowena. Aloud, she said "I'm happy! I'm very happy!"
"You don't sound happy," said her mother, her face a mask of concern.
"She has a point, there," said Godric.
Rowena nearly had a heart attack when she realized that he was standing behind them, regarding them placidly. He had a mildly annoyed expression on his face. "Godric! Aren't you supposed to be setting the table?"
"The house-elves have already done it," he said, shrugging.
"Gods, Godric, you're as silent as a cat! You could have said something."
"What am I, a leper?" he asked angrily. "Do I have to shout 'Unclean!' wherever I go? When I heard you talking about Fudge, I was going to explain about the whole set-up, until you started talking about me as though I wasn't here. And then I thought, why not stay and listen?" He shrugged. "But then you went on to whether or not Rowena was happy. Frankly, I don't think she really cares whether she is or not, as long as no one else is, but that's really none of my business, is it? So I said something." Rowena opened her mouth, but he went on. "I think you should make her marry Jasper. They deserve each other."
Her mother blinked. "That might work..." she said slowly.
"No," said Rowena stubbornly.
"If we played it right..." she mused.
"I think we should head to dinner, shouldn't we, Mum?" asked Rowena through clenched teeth. She was going to kill Godric.
* * *
Dinner was an ordeal, but, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Rowena supposed that this one's had been filched and replaced with a cheap copper one, if indeed there was such a thing.
Her mother, for one, was going endlessly on about the latest architectural marvels, making snide comments about the construction of the castle to Lord Salazar. Lord de Malfoie, by some heartless madman's design, had been seated on her other side. He was looking increasingly frightened and kept trying to edge away. Helena was bragging loudly about how her grandmother was Chief of the Council and wasn't that nice?
About halfway through the feast, Basil tapped Rowena on the shoulder and hissed, "Help! She's gone mad!"
For a second, Rowena thought that he meant her mother, and was going to reply that, yes, in fact, she'd always been that way. Then she saw Helga sitting at the other side of the table, unmoving, unblinking, and glaring fiery hatred at a battle-axe someone had unwisely hung from the wall.
"What do you mean?" she asked Basil.
"Good Lord, I'd think even you'd be able to see it," he said.
She'd known that Basil could see magic, as a werewolf, but it was always a bit strange to be reminded of it. She shook her head, then fished her well-worn aura lens out of her pocket.
Upon further inspection through the lens, she found that Helga was aiming a jet of butter-colored magic at the axe with her wand concealed under the table. It was being blocked by an ungodly amount of red, scattered all over the place in a dreadfully inefficient way.
Rowena looked at Godric, who was sitting at the other end of the table. He didn't seem to be eating, but he didn't have a wand, either. She could see that he hadn't touched a bit of his food. He was staring at the axe as though hypnotized. The lens showed that he was radiating enough magic to burn the castle down. She itched to go and correct him for every little thing he'd been doing wrong, preferably in red ink. Instead she turned to Basil again. "Don't you have your wand?"
He shrugged. "Who brings their wand to dinner unless they're trying to kill people?"
"I do," she said. She brought her wand everywhere. "Distract her!" she told Basil. "I'll make sure it doesn't overbalance. And after that, we're quite finished with this Sword of Damocles business."
Basil thought for a moment, then poured a glass of wine over Helga's head. Rowena, meanwhile, concentrated on compensating for Godric's fierce hold on the axe. After several seconds, it was all over. Rowena quickly cast a rather strong Fixing Charm on the thing, so that Helga couldn't do anything to it, and for extra measure she reinforced it with some of the red magic. Godric wouldn't miss it.
"What are you doing?" Jasper hissed. Rowena handed him the aura-lens, and he gasped as he saw the aftermath of all the magic.
"When is she leaving?" asked Helga, voice shaking with anger. Her dress now had dark purple-red stains on it, as did the tablecloth, and there was a small handprint in the same color on the front of Basil's tunic.
"As soon as is humanly possible," sighed Rowena.
"What's going on?" asked Jasper.
"Do you know what they'd do to you if they found out you'd tried to assassinate the Chief of the Wizards' Council?" Basil whispered fiercely.
"What?" Jasper asked, voice inconveniently loud. "Who tried to -- mmph!" Rowena had just stuck a roll in Jasper's mouth -- she did not want 'them' to do anything to Helga, as she felt assassination attempts were fairly reasonable when dealing with her mother.
"They send you to the Isle of Drear! Or worse yet, Azkab Island!" Jasper had a coughing fit as Basil continued. "Do you want to spend your life dodging Hairy MacBoons and Dementors? Because I certainly don't, and my specialty is dealing with horrors like that."
Helga shook her head. "Basil, dear, you wouldn't have to deal with them. They'd only send me to Drear. Really, I think you're overreacting." She smiled sweetly, then shot an approximation of the Evil Eye at Lady Aeaeae.
"But --" started Basil. He was interrupted by Jasper, who had finally dealt with the roll.
"Really, you still call them Hairy MacBoons? There's no reason to believe the stories -- they should be called by their accurate name. They're Quintapeds."
"Excuse me," said Basil, "but I do believe I'm the expert on this particular subject. Besides, what kind of a name is 'Quintaped?'"
"It means 'five legs,' which you'd know if you had any knowledge of --"
"You can kill them," Rowena told Helga. "They've just proven themselves to be incapable of concentrating when there's a fight to be had."
"...slang which has never been accepted," Jasper was saying, "and furthermore --"
"This one's rather sweet, though," said Helga, pointing at Basil, who was arguing his case at the top of his lungs, with a ferocity equal to any Hairy MacBoon.
"The thing to remember is not to name them," said Rowena. "Otherwise you risk getting attached to them."
At Rowena's pronouncement, Basil and Jasper stopped arguing and looked horrified at the two women.
"N-name them?" asked Jasper. "Why would you want to name them?"
"What would you name one? Harry?" asked Basil
"Quirinus!" Jasper countered.
"Quirinus? That's the stupidest name I've ever heard!" Basil said.
Helga put her face in her hands.
Chapter 6
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: The Founders, various OCs
Rating: PG
Summary: Salazar takes steps to prevent another incident like the one with Julian de Malfoie's Muggle father. Meanwhile, Rowena's tyrannical mother comes to visit. 3685 words.
Author's Note: thinkatory is still my beta. Apologies for the especially long wait -- Murphy's Law kind of unloaded on me. It's really just best not to ask at this point.
Chapter 1
Master Founders post
Chapter 4
"One hundred and twelve Muggle soldiers," said the goblin, "complete with weapons. All of the weapons could have been dismantled with a simple well-placed charm. In my assessment, sir, they were no danger to the castle."
"Thank you, Peeves," said Lord Salazar to the goblin. "Where is the Muggle staying?"
"I'm working on it, sir," the goblin said. "We can add a room in the South Tower, and..." he looked at his sheet of parchment, "...there's a disappearing bedroom he can use on the ground floor, near the entrance to the storage facilities."
"The dungeons, you mean?" asked Rowena with a frown.
"They are not dungeons," explained Lord Salazar. "'Dungeons' implies torture devices and necromancy and shackles and chains. Dungeons," he continued with mild distaste, "are places for people to... to dunge in. I will tolerate no dungeing in my castle."
"The Muggle thinks they're dungeons," piped up Peeves.
Lord Salazar thought about this for a second. "Put him on the ground floor. Don't bother to correct him."
"Yes sir," said Peeves, bowing and hurrying away.
"Lady Ravenclaw, may I have a word with you?" asked Lord Salazar. Rowena winced inwardly; she had known she would be in trouble for this, but she'd hoped to avoid it for as long as possible. "It was you who was responsible for Master de Malfoie's attendance at the school, was it not?"
"Well, I saw that he had talent, yes, but when his father said he couldn't, I left it at that," she explained. "I didn't realize he would work out how to get here -- he really is a clever boy, my best student, in fact, and after five or ten years here learning magic, I wouldn't be surprised if he was at least as good as any of the Wizards' Council brats who --"
"Be that as it may," said Lord Salazar, "I do not want a Muggle army pitted against the castle. Lord de Malfoie is proof that the Muggles are clever enough -- or at least determined enough - to get through that forest and Mistress Hufflepuff's trees."
"But that goblin, didn't he say that all of the weapons were susceptible to spells?"
"And how would you go about disarming one hundred and twelve Muggles at a time?"
Rowena had to admit that she didn't really know how to answer that one -- not offhand, at any rate. "But Godric took care of it," she said, ignoring his question.
"Very well," said Lord Salazar, doubt present in his tone, "but next time, may I ask that you don't accept children from the Muggle nobility? The peasants have no real power -- I'm hardly worried about them -- but there are Muggles with more than just a hundred and twelve soldiers at their command. I know your family has collaborated with our, ah, present Muggle rulers in the past, but I'm not familiar enough with Muggle politics to trust them. Our situation here is too delicate to afford disruption from opportunistic forces we're unfamiliar with, and as the peace with the Muggles is sustained through mutual ignorance, it's uneasy enough as it is."
Rowena nodded glumly. There were some people she could afford to push around, but the landlord was not one of them.
* * *
Lord de Malfoie's small army had also made a difference in the day-to-day lives of the students. For one thing, there was now a password spell on each of the four common rooms and sets of dormitories, and students who had friends in other dormitories had to restrict their conversations to mealtimes. This was frankly irritating, as students were mainly assigned dormitories in accordance with which dormitory had had the most beds open at the time. For those in the Red Common Room, however, watching Professor Gryffindor try to remember his own passwords more than made up for the inconvenience.
Meanwhile, Lord Salazar was getting a case study on Muggle behavior from Peeves, who kept detailed notes on where de Malfoie went, whom he spoke with, what he said, and how he reacted to others. Rowena was the only one who had noticed the green-liveried goblin following the Muggle around, ink and quill in hand; she didn't think the other professors even knew much about Peeves at all, much less de Malfoie, but it was becoming evident that Lord Salazar was concerned about Muggle reactions to magic. She had given up scheming to keep her mother away from the school, and started instead on trying to discover a loophole in Lord Salazar's prohibition regarding students from the Muggle nobility. While her mother could be troublesome at times, Rowena could tolerate her if it meant she could get more students for the school.
She was gradually building up an argument against Salazar. Item One was the way Godric had handled the situation. If even an idiot like Godric could make a good impression on the Muggles, chances were anyone could do it. Item Two was Lord de Malfoie, who showed consistently good behavior, even with the Venomous Tentacula, which had managed to put him in the hospital wing for a good four hours while Helga and Salazar argued over whether Venomous Tentaculas had glands or not. The man might be overly curious, but Rowena could hardly blame him for that -- after all, she was experimenting with dangerous Transfiguration, which wasn't even her specialty. There were, of course, flaws in her argument, and she needed more evidence, but how would she get evidence without more Muggle-born students? She would just have to sneak them in under Lord Salazar's nose.
* * *
Midwinter came and went, with Basil and Helga taking the Muggle-born students to a wizarding church in a small town nearby. They'd been doing this every Sunday, but the extra-long Christmas service was a special occasion, and when they returned, Rowena made sure the house-elves had prepared a large feast for the occasion. She didn't normally hold with the monotheists' holidays, and wouldn't have celebrated them even with a thousand rabid Muggles holding knives to her throat, but anyone who could stand around listening to Latin (which, she knew, most students didn't even understand) for that long in an unheated building deserved something special. Lord de Malfoie didn't seem to have noticed that some of the students were happily celebrating things like Sol Invictus instead. This was definitely good, as he hadn't commented on it. Hopefully it would make him look more accepting, and translate into a better report for Lord Salazar.
Meanwhile, she'd been making some progress on the Voluma Animaguum, which were more difficult than they looked. The original Animagi had seemed to enjoy making life difficult for those who sought to join them, so they explained things in terms of references to myths. Some, like the Greek myths Rowena had grown up with, were obvious, and the Roman myths were nearly as easy, because they had stolen everything from the Greeks. The Egyptian ones were, by far, the hardest, as Rowena had never been to Egypt before, and there was an alarming amount of references to Egyptian religion and culture in the Scrolls. She decided it was lucky they had been written in Latin and not hieroglyphics - the original group seemed to have originated in Egypt, from what she could tell.
Furthermore, her mother's visit was approaching quickly, and while Rowena knew that she had to be ready for it, she wasn't sure how she ought to prepare people. She knew there would be the inevitable conflict between her mother and Lord Salazar -- they would not, of course, say anything outright, but Lady Aeaeae was Chief of the Wizards' Council, a position Lord Salazar was widely known to desire. Rowena honestly wished he would get what he wanted, as she was never quite certain that her mother was an appropriate leader for the modern wizarding world, especially considering how awful her handwriting was. She was, however, undisputedly good at keeping her power, and those who wanted it tended to underestimate her gravely. Even Rowena did this at times. It had always been hard to separate the facade from the reality with her mother.
* * *
Lady Aeaeae arrived on a chilly spring day, Rowena's father in tow. Officially he was supposed to be Lord Aeaeae, but he'd always been treated more as a consort than as a noble in his own right. After all, Aeaeae was her name, not his. When Rowena opened the door to greet them, she had a large smile painted on her face. It would not do to wince in public.
"Rowena, dear, how are you?" asked her mother.
Rowena shrugged. "Good, I suppose."
"Where are your friends?" she asked. "Dear, you do always have the oddest friends, I'm glad you've met some nice people finally, even if they are all tied to that snake. Oh, and I've found another man you might be interested in."
In spite of herself, Rowena finally caved in to the pressure and winced. "No," she said, frowning.
"No?"
"No," she repeated. "I'm not going to do this again."
"Rowena, dear, this one won't die on you," said her mother. "What's not to like?"
"Plenty of things," said Rowena. "For one, I don't even know him!"
"You read too much," said her mother. "If I'd worried about silly things like that, your father and I would never have married. Isn't that right, Gualterus?"
Lord Aeaeae blinked. "Of course, dear," he nodded.
"His hearing's gotten worse," her mother said in a low voice. "He doesn't realize it yet."
"Are you two talking about me?" he asked, squinting with his watery eyes.
"Of course not, dear," said her mother, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. She turned to Rowena. "Please, at least think about it. It would keep --" she stopped and looked around, "-- you know who, --" she said significantly, gesturing around at the castle in general, "-- from being such an irritating pain in the -- Hello, Salazar! And has my Rowena been behaving?"
Lord Salazar greeted her mother cheerfully, as though she were a friend and not a bitter rival. Rowena hated their fake smiles and their fake emotions, and yet she couldn't help going along with it fake-cheerfully. Rowena preferred shouting matches to politicians' sugar-coated betrayals, and she wished, not for the first time, that she had been a second child and not an heir.
Helga and Basil entered, and her mother caught sight of them. "Helga! It's been so long since I've seen you!" She gave Helga a welcoming hug and smiled kindly at her. "And how have you been?"
"Very well, milady," said Helga politely, shooting a victorious glance at Rowena. See, she's not all that bad! it said.
Rowena's mother then glanced warily at Basil, without actually seeing him, and 'tsk'ed. "I heard about the accident," she said, looking sympathetically at Helga. "You poor thing - you really do deserve better, you know. There's no obligation to a betrothal when something like that happens." She patted a dumbstruck Helga on the shoulder and turned back to Rowena. Helga, grinding her teeth, reached for her wand, but Basil grabbed her and pulled her out of the room before she could do anything. Rowena hoped the Silencing Charms on the walls would hold.
Before her mother could chatter for long, Godric poked his head in, looking confused. "What's that?" hissed her mother, stepping behind Rowena.
"Rowena," said Godric, "do you know why Helga's yelling? None of what she's saying is at all suitable for students..."
"I don't know," she told him, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. "Perhaps she stubbed her toe? Mother, Father, this is Godric of Gryffindor, our Transfiguration professor."
"What?" asked her father loudly. Her mother, however, turned calculating eyes on Godric.
He shivered. "N-nice meeting you," he nodded with an oh-please-don't-hurt-me smile. "I'll go... set the table, shall I?" He practically ran away.
"Gualterus, would you take those things to the room, dear?" her mother asked.
"Yes, very nice place," said her father gruffly, shuffling away holding the luggage. When he'd gone, mother looked at daughter. "He's the one behind Thaddeus Fudge?" she asked in disbelief.
"I know," said Rowena. "Hard to believe, isn't it?"
"Why is he so skittish?"
Rowena shrugged. "I've no idea. He's always been terrified of everything."
"Really?" said her mother, a vampiric smile on her face. "That's convenient."
"What is?" asked Rowena; not sure that she wanted to know.
"Nearly everyone on the Council agrees that the Glendowers have had far too many charges of necromancy. We're going to throw them out."
"Do you have enough support?" asked Rowena. The Wizards' Council had several different factions, and some members had private rivalries that caused them to side against anything their rival wanted, mainly out of spite.
"I've got the support of Muhammed al-Aziz and Ari ben Shlomo!" Lady Aeaeae said enthusiastically, as though announcing that the world was now forever free of problems. "You know they've never agreed on anything practically since I took office."
Rowena looked impressed, but felt confused. "What's the point, though?"
"There have always been thirteen houses represented in the Council -- we'll have to appoint another one, and at the moment, the most likely man for it is Thaddeus Fudge. But if it were somehow discovered that he was, in fact, not the best Transfigurator in the world, the real Transfigurator would almost certainly be up for consideration."
"But -- Mother! Godric doesn't even look human!"
"Is he?"
"Yes, but that's not the point! He's -- and even if they knew -- well, his parents were Muggles, Mum!"
"They'd overlook that if he had a well-born wife. And you are the best-born, Rowena. You could control him easily -- the poor boy's obviously not the brightest candle on the chandelier."
"All right, Mother, putting aside the unpleasant aesthetics, let's look at this logically, shall we? I couldn't control him at all!" said Rowena. "Firstly, he's possibly the dullest candle on the chandelier. He's clumsy -- dangerously so -- and he'd probably forget his own name if someone didn't write it on the insides of his clothes or something."
"Use Imperius," said her mother with a shrug.
"He's a Transfigurator, Mum. He's stubborn and powerful!"
"And Enchanters are lazy and overconfident," said her mother, a small smile on her face. As a specialist in Charms, Rowena was an Enchantress. There were a lot of things written about the various personality types and humours and astrological signs associated with people skilled in certain sorts of magic, most of them at least mildly contradictory. "But you don't seem to be overconfident. And he's not stubborn."
"He may not be, but I am!" said Rowena. "I will not marry him. That's -- just -- no." She'd had quite enough of marriage. Once was enough.
"Well, all right, then. I only want you to be happy, dear," said her mother sweetly.
Come, now, Mother, surely you want more than that, thought Rowena. Aloud, she said "I'm happy! I'm very happy!"
"You don't sound happy," said her mother, her face a mask of concern.
"She has a point, there," said Godric.
Rowena nearly had a heart attack when she realized that he was standing behind them, regarding them placidly. He had a mildly annoyed expression on his face. "Godric! Aren't you supposed to be setting the table?"
"The house-elves have already done it," he said, shrugging.
"Gods, Godric, you're as silent as a cat! You could have said something."
"What am I, a leper?" he asked angrily. "Do I have to shout 'Unclean!' wherever I go? When I heard you talking about Fudge, I was going to explain about the whole set-up, until you started talking about me as though I wasn't here. And then I thought, why not stay and listen?" He shrugged. "But then you went on to whether or not Rowena was happy. Frankly, I don't think she really cares whether she is or not, as long as no one else is, but that's really none of my business, is it? So I said something." Rowena opened her mouth, but he went on. "I think you should make her marry Jasper. They deserve each other."
Her mother blinked. "That might work..." she said slowly.
"No," said Rowena stubbornly.
"If we played it right..." she mused.
"I think we should head to dinner, shouldn't we, Mum?" asked Rowena through clenched teeth. She was going to kill Godric.
* * *
Dinner was an ordeal, but, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Rowena supposed that this one's had been filched and replaced with a cheap copper one, if indeed there was such a thing.
Her mother, for one, was going endlessly on about the latest architectural marvels, making snide comments about the construction of the castle to Lord Salazar. Lord de Malfoie, by some heartless madman's design, had been seated on her other side. He was looking increasingly frightened and kept trying to edge away. Helena was bragging loudly about how her grandmother was Chief of the Council and wasn't that nice?
About halfway through the feast, Basil tapped Rowena on the shoulder and hissed, "Help! She's gone mad!"
For a second, Rowena thought that he meant her mother, and was going to reply that, yes, in fact, she'd always been that way. Then she saw Helga sitting at the other side of the table, unmoving, unblinking, and glaring fiery hatred at a battle-axe someone had unwisely hung from the wall.
"What do you mean?" she asked Basil.
"Good Lord, I'd think even you'd be able to see it," he said.
She'd known that Basil could see magic, as a werewolf, but it was always a bit strange to be reminded of it. She shook her head, then fished her well-worn aura lens out of her pocket.
Upon further inspection through the lens, she found that Helga was aiming a jet of butter-colored magic at the axe with her wand concealed under the table. It was being blocked by an ungodly amount of red, scattered all over the place in a dreadfully inefficient way.
Rowena looked at Godric, who was sitting at the other end of the table. He didn't seem to be eating, but he didn't have a wand, either. She could see that he hadn't touched a bit of his food. He was staring at the axe as though hypnotized. The lens showed that he was radiating enough magic to burn the castle down. She itched to go and correct him for every little thing he'd been doing wrong, preferably in red ink. Instead she turned to Basil again. "Don't you have your wand?"
He shrugged. "Who brings their wand to dinner unless they're trying to kill people?"
"I do," she said. She brought her wand everywhere. "Distract her!" she told Basil. "I'll make sure it doesn't overbalance. And after that, we're quite finished with this Sword of Damocles business."
Basil thought for a moment, then poured a glass of wine over Helga's head. Rowena, meanwhile, concentrated on compensating for Godric's fierce hold on the axe. After several seconds, it was all over. Rowena quickly cast a rather strong Fixing Charm on the thing, so that Helga couldn't do anything to it, and for extra measure she reinforced it with some of the red magic. Godric wouldn't miss it.
"What are you doing?" Jasper hissed. Rowena handed him the aura-lens, and he gasped as he saw the aftermath of all the magic.
"When is she leaving?" asked Helga, voice shaking with anger. Her dress now had dark purple-red stains on it, as did the tablecloth, and there was a small handprint in the same color on the front of Basil's tunic.
"As soon as is humanly possible," sighed Rowena.
"What's going on?" asked Jasper.
"Do you know what they'd do to you if they found out you'd tried to assassinate the Chief of the Wizards' Council?" Basil whispered fiercely.
"What?" Jasper asked, voice inconveniently loud. "Who tried to -- mmph!" Rowena had just stuck a roll in Jasper's mouth -- she did not want 'them' to do anything to Helga, as she felt assassination attempts were fairly reasonable when dealing with her mother.
"They send you to the Isle of Drear! Or worse yet, Azkab Island!" Jasper had a coughing fit as Basil continued. "Do you want to spend your life dodging Hairy MacBoons and Dementors? Because I certainly don't, and my specialty is dealing with horrors like that."
Helga shook her head. "Basil, dear, you wouldn't have to deal with them. They'd only send me to Drear. Really, I think you're overreacting." She smiled sweetly, then shot an approximation of the Evil Eye at Lady Aeaeae.
"But --" started Basil. He was interrupted by Jasper, who had finally dealt with the roll.
"Really, you still call them Hairy MacBoons? There's no reason to believe the stories -- they should be called by their accurate name. They're Quintapeds."
"Excuse me," said Basil, "but I do believe I'm the expert on this particular subject. Besides, what kind of a name is 'Quintaped?'"
"It means 'five legs,' which you'd know if you had any knowledge of --"
"You can kill them," Rowena told Helga. "They've just proven themselves to be incapable of concentrating when there's a fight to be had."
"...slang which has never been accepted," Jasper was saying, "and furthermore --"
"This one's rather sweet, though," said Helga, pointing at Basil, who was arguing his case at the top of his lungs, with a ferocity equal to any Hairy MacBoon.
"The thing to remember is not to name them," said Rowena. "Otherwise you risk getting attached to them."
At Rowena's pronouncement, Basil and Jasper stopped arguing and looked horrified at the two women.
"N-name them?" asked Jasper. "Why would you want to name them?"
"What would you name one? Harry?" asked Basil
"Quirinus!" Jasper countered.
"Quirinus? That's the stupidest name I've ever heard!" Basil said.
Helga put her face in her hands.
Chapter 6