FIC: "Fair Is Fair, and Life Is Not (Though Tea Helps an Awful Lot)" for shadowycat
Recipient: shadowycat
Author: anguis_1
Title: Fair Is Fair, and Life Is Not (Though Tea Helps an Awful Lot) Rating: R
Pairings: Filius Flitwick/Pomona Sprout
Word Count: 4,894 words
Warnings/Content Information (Highlight to View): *No warnings apply.*
Summary: Although their students might sometimes be oblivious to it, teachers have lives, too. Fertilized with dung and watered with tea, Filius Flitwick and Pomona Sprout cultivate a love slowly bubbling along behind the scenes.
Author's Notes: Particular thanks to bethbethbeth who runs the best fest in fandom and puts up with me. Filius uses a few quotes in this fic. I've marked them out in italics and single quotation marks. The first is by James Joyce, the second is by Marcel Proust, and the third is from Rudyard Kipling's poem, "Ode, Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance, 1934."
He smelled her before he saw her. Centaur dung was particularly pungent, leaving an oily residue resistant to both soap and common scouring charms, and for a moment Filius Flitwick was in his fifth year again, dutifully serving detention in the Forbidden Forest for hexing Wilfred Cummings, who'd thought it amusing to announce to the entire Ravenclaw-Slytherin Potions class (including the beautifully studious Imogen Wiggins) that Filius' bits compared unfavourably to a Shrivelfig. (In retrospect, perhaps the Carbunculus Curse had been a bit of an overreaction, but at fifteen he'd been ruled by intemperate impulses. He had gained control in the intervening years, though, and no longer let slip his dignity at the snap of another's fingers.)
The odour intensified, and the milling throng retracted slightly around a rather large pair of breasts headed in his direction. The breasts (neither bare nor disembodied as such an introduction might imply) bounced with enchanting lopsidedness beneath the grubby robes of a shorter-than-average witch who was striding towards him with her chin canted up in an apparently vain attempt to locate something or someone amidst the looming crowd. It was a distinct (and most welcome) change from the monotony of crotches and buttocks that usually filled his field of vision, and so he took advantage of the opportunity to admire the view advancing upon him until it was too late to withdraw without impinging upon the privates of the wizards behind him.
She trod squarely on his toes and staggered back without even looking down, muttering, "Buggering Bulbs, Albus, must you rearrange the furniture for every occasion?"
An indignant squeak escaped Filius' larynx before he could stifle it; then he cleared his throat and dropped his voice as much as the tiny resounding cavity of his chest would let it go. "Excuse me. I'm sorry for--"
The witch started, quickly scanning left, right, and centre before dropping her gaze. "Oh, dear! I do apologize. I'm afraid I was so intent on spotting the new Charms Professor that I wasn't minding where I was going." She confided conspiratorially, "I wouldn't have bothered with this beastly affair at all--I was in the middle of pruning my Babbling Bush--except I thought it would be rude not to welcome him. Have you met him? Albus has been insufferably smug over luring him away from Durmstrang. I hear he bested East Germany's top wizard in the Pan-European Duelling Tournament! I don't really follow league competition, but I hear enough from Poppy to know that's something of an accomplishment."
Filius protested reflexively, "Eisenberg was not on top form. He was suffering from dueller's wrist at the time."
She fixed him with a penetrating stare that identified her occupation as surely as an owl trainer was betrayed by his missing digits. It had been more than a few years since he had been on the receiving end of such a look, and he was still trying to work out how to achieve that same effect with his own countenance. He'd attempted to practice it in private prior to accepting the position at Durmstrang, but only managed to contort his genial face so terribly that it had amused his mirror into a shattering fit of hysterics.
Suddenly the stern, pursed lips burst into a display of crooked teeth as her whole face beamed. "Welcome to Hogwarts, professor! I'm Pomona Sprout, and I've been teaching Herbology here for two years." To her credit, she acted as though he were exactly what she had been hoping for.
***
The sun had long since set on the first full day of classes when Filius finally reached his chambers and collapsed onto the first piece of furniture he came across. His bones felt like slowly melting lead, and his head ached. He would have gone straight to bed, except that would have entailed making a decision about which nightrobes to wear and then actually putting them on, and that required more effort than he had left in him.
It was better than Durmstrang--that much could be said for it. At least the current Hogwarts headmaster did not seem to encourage his charges to improve their mastery of the Dark Arts by practicing on new professors in order to weed out incompetent staff. They were still children, however, the youngest not yet having learnt mastery over their gawking eyes, and the oldest knowing all too well how to display their disdain in blatantly calculated slips of the tongue.
His predecessor had been a tall, imposing man, and had obviously abandoned his furniture with the post (there were rumours murmured low and deep about that, of course, but the less he thought about it, the better). It was good, sturdy oak, hand-hewn and assembled with wooden pegs rather than carpentry charms, and it would have been a shame to discard it. At Durmstrang, Filius had shrunk his desk and chair to a suitably diminutive scale and had endured taunts about dollhouse furniture. A couple of the older boys had relished standing belligerently astride his desk until he worked up the nerve to demonstrate why he was the reigning European Duelling Champion. Ah, well. 'A man's errors are his portals of discovery.' The stack of books welded together with Sticking Charms and fused to the wood of his chair might not exactly project gravitas, but at least he could look his pupils in the eyes.
Filius had just about made up his mind to crawl into bed fully clothed when the wards on his door chimed twice for "Female Visitor, Friendly."
It was Pomona Sprout. She waved a tin with fancy script impressed into the metal and asked cheerily, "Tea?"
With exhaustion setting in and his preparations for the next day's lessons still waiting half-finished in his satchel, it was all he could do to bite back a sarcastic, "Yes, it appears to be." Instead, he replied, "That would be most welcome," and graciously ushered her into his front room. In the privacy of his own quarters, he had no need to protect his teaching authority, and nearly all of the furniture had been constructed to suit his proportions. There was a single large wing chair in the corner, his one concession to the possibility of guests, but Pomona avoided that, plopping down in a small rocking chair instead.
Filius Summoned his kettle and tea set and busied himself with the preparations. They could manage it all on their own, but he wasn't keen on advertising it, particularly to an unfamiliar colleague (even if she did have a large bosom and smiling mud-brown eyes). After that spot of bother with the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office in his seventh year, he quickly learned to keep mum about his hobby of dabbling with items on the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects. He had no intention of making another visit to Azkaban, however brief.
Pomona inquired how he was settling in and what it felt like to return to the castle and how his first classes had gone, and before he could stop himself, Filius found an account of his day tumbling eagerly out of his mouth.
When his torrent of words slowed to a slightly embarrassed trickle, she smiled and proclaimed, "Not a single student sent to the hospital wing, and only four firsties in tears! A creditable first day, I'd call that."
He couldn't recall any of the Durmstrang students crying--ever. In fact, he'd learned to fortify his sensitive nature with Cheering Charms to preempt any displays of emotional weakness quashing their nascent confidence in his teaching abilities. Judicious application had slid into imprudent daily use and then dependency, and that had been a dark hole to crawl out of. Shaking his head free of that dangerous subject as his fingers itched for his wand, he demurred, "I didn't mean to make them cry. I--"
"Nonsense!" she interrupted. "They just . . . do that at that age. Thank goodness I'm not a Head of House; they actually have to comfort and counsel the little buggers. I wouldn't know what to do besides fill 'em up with tea and give 'em a good hug."
Filius looked down into the depths of his second cup of Darjeeling. "Is that what you're doing?"
"What?"
"Here. You're here to soak my sorrows in quite excellent tea, aren't you? Although--" He managed a weak grin. "--I haven't got my hug yet."
Pomona goggled at him briefly before setting her teacup and saucer down and standing up. "We'll have to rectify that, won't we? I'd best be taking my leave anyway, as I've kept you far too long already. Morning comes quick, and you'll need all the sleep you can get to deal with the snivellers."
He rose stiffly to his feet, and his nose was pressed deep into the cleft between her breasts as she squeezed him gently around the shoulders. She was soft and warm and earthy, and then she was gone.
***
She kissed him first.
Filius had stopped by the greenhouses after his last class to relate a particularly amusing anecdote from first year Gryffindor-Slytherin Charms that refused to lie patiently dormant in his voice box until their customary postprandial tea. Pomona had doubled over in paroxysms of mirth, her face deepening to brick red beneath the usual blotches of dried mud. When she finally was able to straighten up, her eyes still twinkling merrily, she shook her head.
"I don't know how you can keep a straight face with that lot. At least out here I can duck behind a shrub or pretend to have inhaled some pollen."
He shrugged and grinned. He still hadn't mastered his facial expressions, and it was unlikely that his face had been anywhere near as impassive as it ought to have been.
Her face at the moment was also less than impassive. She hunched her shoulders, enfolded him in her soft curves, and pressed her lips to his.
"Eurgh!" Filius wrenched free of her embrace, abandoning all attempts at decorum and spitting repeatedly on the ground. This did nothing to abate the vile taste in his mouth, and as it lingered malignantly, his stomach lurched and threatened to discharge the liquid remains of his digesting lunch.
Pomona staggered backwards with dismay blooming on her face, looking as though she would be sick herself. Her bottom lip wobbled, and she bit it to stave off tears. A moment later, she wrinkled her nose and then laughed in relief.
Pulling her wand from her belt, she pointed it at Filius' face. "Scourgify!" His roiling stomach settled as his mouth was scoured clean. She wiped a smear of silver off her lips with the sleeve of her robes, grimaced, and turned her wand on her own mouth. "I'm terribly sorry. Contrary to the dearest fantasies of teenage witches, unicorn dung doesn't taste like fairy floss and moonbeams."
***
Hugs and kisses and tea sufficed for a very long time. Filius and Pomona's teas lengthened to all evening rendezvous of marking interspersed with cuddling (and sometimes the other way round). Most of their weekends were spent in the greenhouses. Filius rose before first light to meet his sparring partner in Leningrad and returned after breakfast to claim an unobtrusive corner to fiddle with whichever charm he was currently trying to modify or draft articles on said experiments, while Pomona tended her plants.
The intervening years saw them appointed Heads of their respective Houses (to the astonishment of none but themselves). Pomona's tea and hugs as a remedy for broken hearts, slivers, and upsetments of all varieties--much to her surprise--earned her a heartwarmingly guileless devotion from her Hufflepuffs. The Ravenclaws were a bit more self-reliant, preferring to try to resolve their problems on their own. (This often resulted in less frequent but much more complicated issues to sort out. Filius didn't even bother to chide them for it, as he understood the impulse all too well, but merely put the kettle in the fire and settled in for a lengthy tête-à-tête.)
The need to be available to their students at all hours made their arrangement a bit awkward as they settled into their new roles, until Filius devised a system of charms to alert them of impending visitors. The warbling of a bird (a bullfinch for him and a blue tit for her) in whatever location they happened to be prompted an inelegant dive into the internal Floo network, often terminating in a jouncing landing and the occasional spitting of soot, but with their students none the wiser.
In the winter of the year that would be noted in the next year's textbooks for the defeat of the Dark Lord (later to be revised as his temporary downfall)--after the tumult of feasts and funerals and festivities had dampened down into dreary darkness punctuated by grateful toasts to James, Lily, and The Boy Who Lived--Pomona finally took matters into her own hands (or at least made an attempt in that direction). Filius was all but sitting in her lap, winding a tendril of her wispy grey hair meditatively around his forefinger, when her right hand wandered from the comfortable cushion of his belly to a spot a few inches lower.
Her fingers had nearly wormed their way through the Lacing Charm on his robes when he realised her intent, batted her hand away, and threw himself backwards with such force that he tumbled off the end of the settee and onto the floor, upending the (thankfully empty) teapot on the way.
Red-faced, Filius bounced to his feet and restored the teapot to its rightful place beside the creamer. He kept hold of the blue tea cozy, smoothing it out in his lap as he sat on the edge of the seat.
Even as he tried to bite his tongue, his voice squeaked up into the tin whistle range. "I'm proportionate!" There it was, the crux of the matter, and he probably should have thanked Wilfred Cummings for his brutal honesty rather than hexing him.
Pomona's initial distress dissolved into ingenuous confusion. "I should hope so. If you were hung like Hagrid, I'm afraid I'd have to cry off. I'm not exactly cavernous, myself."
Incredibly, that had been that. Two minutes later, Filius found himself sprawled on top of a bed swept (mostly) clean of marking quills and parchments debating the merits of Rigidity Charms for household applications. He'd lost his robes (flung just short of the banked fire) and was nestled against a similarly unclad Pomona, nuzzling her neck and luxuriating in the feel of skin against skin.
He tried, with a desperation born of the conflict between the desire in his heart and the desire between his legs, to remember the proper order of things: nipples--caressed, licked, and sucked; earlobes--nibbled gently; clitoris--located, thumbed, and tongued . . . . Something was out of order, though, and it jarred like an out-of-tune violin in an otherwise competent quartet.
Before he could puzzle it out, though, warm darkness enveloped his vision, and for the next few minutes he was unable to do much more than writhe and flail to the rhythm set up deep in his loins. He spent himself vigourously and flopped onto his back, still panting from the exertion.
When he could see again, Filius rolled onto his side and ventured a glance at Pomona. Her head was propped on her arms, hair curling every which way in a silver nimbus, and she was surveying his pale, naked body with such a look of open appreciation that his heart seemed to ricochet from his toes to his throat before settling back in his chest. She grinned like he had just given her a bag of hand-harvested quintaped dung and kissed him soundly. Eager to make up for his egregious lapse of attentiveness, he burrowed his fingers between her legs as she continued to suck at his bottom lip. His hand remembered her intimate geography even though his conscious memory was a bit hazy, and it set to work with a will.
After several moments, though, it clearly was eliciting no response. He pulled back and peered down at what he was doing.
At the loss of his mouth, Pomona opened her eyes and followed his gaze. A strange, sad expression came over her face. She clasped his wrist and extracted his fingers, then rested her jaw on top of his head and exhaled a slow, measured breath. He waited expectantly.
"You see this?" She indicated a curious pattern of faint pink whorls and elongated ovals that traced a delicate filigree across the arc of her stomach, disappearing into the dense curls between her dimpled thighs and continuing down her legs to end abruptly at her ankles.
Filius nodded, abashed that he hadn't noticed it in the haze of his arousal.
"I was caught in a patch of Beelzebub's Bracken during my apprenticeship. I have no sensation where it stung me."
"No-- But surely it's only external!"
Pomona fixed him with her teacher's stare for a moment and then sighed. "If you had sat your Herbology N.E.W.T.s, you'd know . . . . Well, I was lucky it was a less aggressive hybrid."
"So you--" All the saliva in his mouth dried up, and he had to swallow several times before being able to start again. "So you didn't feel anything?"
"What you were doing up here--" She cupped one sagging breast and nudged the nipple with her thumb. "--was quite nice. And you're a lovely kisser. But no, I didn't feel most of the rest."
"It's not fair that I should have all the pleasure and you just have to lie there and let me rut over you." A horrifying thought struck him. "It's, it's like prostitution!"
She pulled away from him, a chill immediately replacing the warmth of her skin down the length of his body.
"When you signed on for it, where did Life ever claim it was going to be fair? Lily and James and Harry--is any of that fair?
"You're beautiful when you come, y'know. Seeing you and touching you and being able to do . . . that with you--" Her voice quavered, recovered, and wobbled on. "--is more than enough pleasure for me." Without pausing, she slapped his cheek fiercely, wrapped her robes around her naked body, and stalked to the fireplace. As she reached for the Floo powder, she hissed, "I'm nobody's whore."
Filius lay there in silence for some time, his cheek stinging and a stray quill digging into his left buttock, and stared up at the ceiling. How had he managed to bollocks things up so badly?
His black robes were warm from the fire, although they went on much more slowly than they had come off. Pomona might have returned to her rooms, but the greenhouses were more likely. There was a depressed Snaptrap there that needed extra love and attention.
The oaken front door opened into a curtain of white. Snow drifted down from the sky in large, wet clumps that caught and lingered in his eyelashes and dampened his hair. Filius tramped through the drifts with grim determination. The silence magnified his thoughts to a near deafening intensity as he tried to rehearse an elusive apology that sounded increasingly pathetic the closer he came to the greenhouses. An enchanted flame flickered in Greenhouse Two, plant and woman casting a contiguous shadow.
The melancholy whistle of a bullfinch drew him up short. His fist wavered above the fogged glass door as he, for the briefest of instants, quite resented whichever student had chosen this particular inopportune moment to decide that his or her problem had spun out of control. Then fresh guilt stabbed through the unscabbed wound of his earlier blunder, and he returned to the castle and his duty without a backwards glance.
Filius skulked through the castle after classes the next day, eager to avoid gossiping colleagues, prattling students, and Peeves. His head throbbed, and his eyelids ached with the exertion of staying open. Tabitha Stuart's need had been genuine--begrudging her half the night hadn't occurred to him after finding her silently weeping outside his door. The adrenaline that had propelled him through disentangling her convoluted family strife had long been depleted, though. He skipped dinner and was dozing in his rocking chair when the double chime of his wards awoke him.
It was Pomona, a tin of oolong clutched tightly in her hands and an apprehensive look on her face.
She sat a respectable distance away from him and didn't even pat his hand when he recounted the tale of Tommy Titmouse's disastrous discovery that swishing and swooping were two entirely disparate wand gestures. She'd come, though, with forgiveness in her tea tin and reconciliation in her eyes, and it was more than he'd expected or deserved.
***
They continued their usual routines, except that a small space insinuated itself between them. No hugs or kisses were exchanged (although their tea consumption increased considerably). As the years wore on, Filius patiently tried to shrink the gap between them until one night he let his head loll onto Pomona's shoulder; he considered it a significant victory that she did nothing more than stiffen beneath the unexpected contact, but he would press no further.
The same year that Harry Potter arrived at Hogwarts, an article from the prestigious European Theoretical Charms Journal arrived by Floo on Pomona's hearth. It was entitled, "Aggregate charm to simulate coital sensation in witches injured by magical, mechanical, or botanical means" and attributed to Filialis Fenwick. The article was forty pages long, detailing complicated wand patterns and incantations far beyond her ken.
Inscribed beneath the title was a handwritten note: "I would never presume to interfere with your personal life, but should you ever wish me to perform this charm for you I would oblige with no questions asked. I am truly, deeply sorry for what I said to you. My mouth sometimes outruns my thoughts, but never have I regretted it more. Ever Yours, Filius"
Pomona's eyes were wet as she smoothed her fingers over the parchments and tucked them beneath her knickers with the last two letters she'd received from her father, a fraying silk ribbon, and her brother's wedding photo.
That evening, Filius did not ask about the article, and Pomona did not bring it up.
***
"There's something the matter with Longbottom," Pomona mused. She was using Neville's essay on Bogberry mulch as the measuring stick for the rest of the fifth years' parchments.
"You mean besides our resident High Inquisitor?" Filius muttered. Determined not to give Umbridge the satisfaction of knowing she'd ruffled his feathers, he privately seethed over her unwelcome intrusion into the school and his classroom.
"That's what's the matter with everyone. No, Longbottom has been acting a bit peculiar lately. If he were one of my Hufflepuffs, I'd say he was mooning over some girl, but I'm never entirely sure about those Gryffindors."
"Mooning, yes; girl, no." Filius smirked as he stirred a strategically heaped spoonful of sugar into his tea.
"He's not after Potter, is he?"
She sighed. "That's a heartbreak just waiting to happen."
"Goodness, no! Not a girl or boy, but a woman."
"Rosmerta? I didn't think he was the sort to fall for a pretty face and a pert bum."
"It's you." Tea sprayed from Pomona's mouth, and Filius deftly siphoned up the droplets midair. "He adores your class. Why not you, as well?"
"Why not-- Why not--" she sputtered. "Why me?"
"I treat him with respect, with kindness, even, but he has no affinity for my subject. You make him feel competent."
"But he is competent!"
Filius contemplated for a moment. "My Herbology professor was a perfectly lovely witch. I never particularly cared for her, though, because I felt like a dunce as soon as I holstered my wand and stepped into the greenhouses." He paused, considering. "Besides, I think he appreciates your . . . physical attributes, as well."
Pomona snorted. "I'm no pretty young thing like Rosmerta. I never was, even in my youth."
"I think it was Proust who said, 'Let us leave pretty women to men without imagination.' Neville? He has imagination."
He could see the unasked question written on her face as plain as if in quill and ink. And you? Filius tried to speak, but the words huddled deeper into his throat; he tried to smile, but his lips couldn't even manage that. I have imagination enough for the both of us.
***
There was one more body to see to. They stole away from the hubbub in the castle without a word between them. Pomona greeted the Whomping Willow as an old friend before leading Filius in the arduous crawl to the Shrieking Shack, where the scene was still as Harry had described.
"How did we not see?" Her face twisted in anguish. "How could he do all that and not let on?"
Having no words of his own to offer, Filius murmured, "They, scoffing at all talk of sacrifice, gave themselves without idle words to death.'"
Pomona knelt beside Severus Snape, not heeding the congealing blood that soaked her robes. She closed his staring eyes and tucked his straggling hair back, smearing mud like healing balm in a broad, rich track across his forehead. The cold, smooth skin rumpled beneath her fingers across the already stiffening muscles that no longer animated his face. "It's not fair." She dug the heel of her other palm into her eyes and raised her voice in protest. "It's not bloody fair!"
Filius stepped to her side, reaching an arm around her shoulders and squeezing her tightly to him. "Life never claimed to be fair--" Pomona leaned into the embrace and sobbed wetly and noisily into his robes.
Their intense, secret mourning seemed fitting for the private man--more so than the public ceremony that would likely follow the revelation of his allegiance. When it ebbed to a snuffling trickle, they cleaned up as best they could and conveyed him to the Great Hall with solemn reverence, treating his body with a care that he had been unwilling or unable to give it in life.
Before anyone else could lay claim to their presence, the two twined hands and left in search of solitude and an intact teapot. The shattered castle, the neat rows of corpses, the stricken families--all would still be there in the morning. They retreated to Greenhouse Three, which had miraculously survived the battle with only a few broken panes of glass. Pomona and Neville had stripped it of the more dangerous plants in their search for makeshift weapons, and the rest of the vegetation lay jumbled in discarded heaps.
"I think . . ." Pomona's thought trailed off hesitantly.
"That can be a dangerous occupation," Filius prompted gravely after a few moments, his hair and face two nearly indistinguishable shades of white in the faint moonlight.
"I think that I could use the services of a talented Charmer--someone who's good with his wand."
He looked up into her sober face as she Summoned something in a soft voice. After a minute, a sheaf of parchment flew obediently into her hands. She gave it to him and began to unfasten her robes.
***
"Long-distance Erotic Charms, Vicarious Vibrators, Wicked Wood . . . . Blimey, George! When'd you find time to invent all this?" Ron looked suspiciously around Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes' small back room (age- and password-warded). "And who'd you test them on?"
"You think I've got the time to muck about with this stuff? I've got more than enough dirty ideas banging about in the old bean here, but with everything--" His hands flew up distractedly. "--I haven't the time to develop them. Nah, these are all designed by a new associate of mine. He assures me they hold up to rigourous testing."
Ron twisted his face. "So who is this mysterious new associate?"
George shrugged, re-charming a large poster of a plump, naked witch who was pleasuring herself with a small, purple device. Her gyrations jerked back into life, and she winked saucily down at him before returning her attention to the product she was so enthusiastically demonstrating. "You'd never believe me if I told you."
"Try me."
"You remember how Professor Flitwick used to have a soft spot for Fred and me? Modesty forbids me saying so, but we always were brilliant at Charms. Well, he's shagging Sprout, the sly bugger, and it seems he's putting this practical experience to good use--"
Ron threw up his hands in defeat. "All right, I get it. You don't want to tell me--that's your business. Never mind that I'm your own beloved flesh and blood who's been working my fingers to the bone trying to help you out. Lookit these blisters here!" He waggled his long digits in his brother's face for emphasis.
George muttered, "I said you wouldn't believe me," before boxing Ron's ears and earning himself a jab to his own nonexistent ear with the damp tip of an unnervingly realistic rubber cock. They rolled to the floor with a whoop and a holler, wrestling as they hadn't done in years.
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Author: anguis_1
Title: Fair Is Fair, and Life Is Not (Though Tea Helps an Awful Lot) Rating: R
Pairings: Filius Flitwick/Pomona Sprout
Word Count: 4,894 words
Warnings/Content Information (Highlight to View): *No warnings apply.*
Summary: Although their students might sometimes be oblivious to it, teachers have lives, too. Fertilized with dung and watered with tea, Filius Flitwick and Pomona Sprout cultivate a love slowly bubbling along behind the scenes.
Author's Notes: Particular thanks to bethbethbeth who runs the best fest in fandom and puts up with me. Filius uses a few quotes in this fic. I've marked them out in italics and single quotation marks. The first is by James Joyce, the second is by Marcel Proust, and the third is from Rudyard Kipling's poem, "Ode, Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance, 1934."
He smelled her before he saw her. Centaur dung was particularly pungent, leaving an oily residue resistant to both soap and common scouring charms, and for a moment Filius Flitwick was in his fifth year again, dutifully serving detention in the Forbidden Forest for hexing Wilfred Cummings, who'd thought it amusing to announce to the entire Ravenclaw-Slytherin Potions class (including the beautifully studious Imogen Wiggins) that Filius' bits compared unfavourably to a Shrivelfig. (In retrospect, perhaps the Carbunculus Curse had been a bit of an overreaction, but at fifteen he'd been ruled by intemperate impulses. He had gained control in the intervening years, though, and no longer let slip his dignity at the snap of another's fingers.)
The odour intensified, and the milling throng retracted slightly around a rather large pair of breasts headed in his direction. The breasts (neither bare nor disembodied as such an introduction might imply) bounced with enchanting lopsidedness beneath the grubby robes of a shorter-than-average witch who was striding towards him with her chin canted up in an apparently vain attempt to locate something or someone amidst the looming crowd. It was a distinct (and most welcome) change from the monotony of crotches and buttocks that usually filled his field of vision, and so he took advantage of the opportunity to admire the view advancing upon him until it was too late to withdraw without impinging upon the privates of the wizards behind him.
She trod squarely on his toes and staggered back without even looking down, muttering, "Buggering Bulbs, Albus, must you rearrange the furniture for every occasion?"
An indignant squeak escaped Filius' larynx before he could stifle it; then he cleared his throat and dropped his voice as much as the tiny resounding cavity of his chest would let it go. "Excuse me. I'm sorry for--"
The witch started, quickly scanning left, right, and centre before dropping her gaze. "Oh, dear! I do apologize. I'm afraid I was so intent on spotting the new Charms Professor that I wasn't minding where I was going." She confided conspiratorially, "I wouldn't have bothered with this beastly affair at all--I was in the middle of pruning my Babbling Bush--except I thought it would be rude not to welcome him. Have you met him? Albus has been insufferably smug over luring him away from Durmstrang. I hear he bested East Germany's top wizard in the Pan-European Duelling Tournament! I don't really follow league competition, but I hear enough from Poppy to know that's something of an accomplishment."
Filius protested reflexively, "Eisenberg was not on top form. He was suffering from dueller's wrist at the time."
She fixed him with a penetrating stare that identified her occupation as surely as an owl trainer was betrayed by his missing digits. It had been more than a few years since he had been on the receiving end of such a look, and he was still trying to work out how to achieve that same effect with his own countenance. He'd attempted to practice it in private prior to accepting the position at Durmstrang, but only managed to contort his genial face so terribly that it had amused his mirror into a shattering fit of hysterics.
Suddenly the stern, pursed lips burst into a display of crooked teeth as her whole face beamed. "Welcome to Hogwarts, professor! I'm Pomona Sprout, and I've been teaching Herbology here for two years." To her credit, she acted as though he were exactly what she had been hoping for.
***
The sun had long since set on the first full day of classes when Filius finally reached his chambers and collapsed onto the first piece of furniture he came across. His bones felt like slowly melting lead, and his head ached. He would have gone straight to bed, except that would have entailed making a decision about which nightrobes to wear and then actually putting them on, and that required more effort than he had left in him.
It was better than Durmstrang--that much could be said for it. At least the current Hogwarts headmaster did not seem to encourage his charges to improve their mastery of the Dark Arts by practicing on new professors in order to weed out incompetent staff. They were still children, however, the youngest not yet having learnt mastery over their gawking eyes, and the oldest knowing all too well how to display their disdain in blatantly calculated slips of the tongue.
His predecessor had been a tall, imposing man, and had obviously abandoned his furniture with the post (there were rumours murmured low and deep about that, of course, but the less he thought about it, the better). It was good, sturdy oak, hand-hewn and assembled with wooden pegs rather than carpentry charms, and it would have been a shame to discard it. At Durmstrang, Filius had shrunk his desk and chair to a suitably diminutive scale and had endured taunts about dollhouse furniture. A couple of the older boys had relished standing belligerently astride his desk until he worked up the nerve to demonstrate why he was the reigning European Duelling Champion. Ah, well. 'A man's errors are his portals of discovery.' The stack of books welded together with Sticking Charms and fused to the wood of his chair might not exactly project gravitas, but at least he could look his pupils in the eyes.
Filius had just about made up his mind to crawl into bed fully clothed when the wards on his door chimed twice for "Female Visitor, Friendly."
It was Pomona Sprout. She waved a tin with fancy script impressed into the metal and asked cheerily, "Tea?"
With exhaustion setting in and his preparations for the next day's lessons still waiting half-finished in his satchel, it was all he could do to bite back a sarcastic, "Yes, it appears to be." Instead, he replied, "That would be most welcome," and graciously ushered her into his front room. In the privacy of his own quarters, he had no need to protect his teaching authority, and nearly all of the furniture had been constructed to suit his proportions. There was a single large wing chair in the corner, his one concession to the possibility of guests, but Pomona avoided that, plopping down in a small rocking chair instead.
Filius Summoned his kettle and tea set and busied himself with the preparations. They could manage it all on their own, but he wasn't keen on advertising it, particularly to an unfamiliar colleague (even if she did have a large bosom and smiling mud-brown eyes). After that spot of bother with the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office in his seventh year, he quickly learned to keep mum about his hobby of dabbling with items on the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects. He had no intention of making another visit to Azkaban, however brief.
Pomona inquired how he was settling in and what it felt like to return to the castle and how his first classes had gone, and before he could stop himself, Filius found an account of his day tumbling eagerly out of his mouth.
When his torrent of words slowed to a slightly embarrassed trickle, she smiled and proclaimed, "Not a single student sent to the hospital wing, and only four firsties in tears! A creditable first day, I'd call that."
He couldn't recall any of the Durmstrang students crying--ever. In fact, he'd learned to fortify his sensitive nature with Cheering Charms to preempt any displays of emotional weakness quashing their nascent confidence in his teaching abilities. Judicious application had slid into imprudent daily use and then dependency, and that had been a dark hole to crawl out of. Shaking his head free of that dangerous subject as his fingers itched for his wand, he demurred, "I didn't mean to make them cry. I--"
"Nonsense!" she interrupted. "They just . . . do that at that age. Thank goodness I'm not a Head of House; they actually have to comfort and counsel the little buggers. I wouldn't know what to do besides fill 'em up with tea and give 'em a good hug."
Filius looked down into the depths of his second cup of Darjeeling. "Is that what you're doing?"
"What?"
"Here. You're here to soak my sorrows in quite excellent tea, aren't you? Although--" He managed a weak grin. "--I haven't got my hug yet."
Pomona goggled at him briefly before setting her teacup and saucer down and standing up. "We'll have to rectify that, won't we? I'd best be taking my leave anyway, as I've kept you far too long already. Morning comes quick, and you'll need all the sleep you can get to deal with the snivellers."
He rose stiffly to his feet, and his nose was pressed deep into the cleft between her breasts as she squeezed him gently around the shoulders. She was soft and warm and earthy, and then she was gone.
***
She kissed him first.
Filius had stopped by the greenhouses after his last class to relate a particularly amusing anecdote from first year Gryffindor-Slytherin Charms that refused to lie patiently dormant in his voice box until their customary postprandial tea. Pomona had doubled over in paroxysms of mirth, her face deepening to brick red beneath the usual blotches of dried mud. When she finally was able to straighten up, her eyes still twinkling merrily, she shook her head.
"I don't know how you can keep a straight face with that lot. At least out here I can duck behind a shrub or pretend to have inhaled some pollen."
He shrugged and grinned. He still hadn't mastered his facial expressions, and it was unlikely that his face had been anywhere near as impassive as it ought to have been.
Her face at the moment was also less than impassive. She hunched her shoulders, enfolded him in her soft curves, and pressed her lips to his.
"Eurgh!" Filius wrenched free of her embrace, abandoning all attempts at decorum and spitting repeatedly on the ground. This did nothing to abate the vile taste in his mouth, and as it lingered malignantly, his stomach lurched and threatened to discharge the liquid remains of his digesting lunch.
Pomona staggered backwards with dismay blooming on her face, looking as though she would be sick herself. Her bottom lip wobbled, and she bit it to stave off tears. A moment later, she wrinkled her nose and then laughed in relief.
Pulling her wand from her belt, she pointed it at Filius' face. "Scourgify!" His roiling stomach settled as his mouth was scoured clean. She wiped a smear of silver off her lips with the sleeve of her robes, grimaced, and turned her wand on her own mouth. "I'm terribly sorry. Contrary to the dearest fantasies of teenage witches, unicorn dung doesn't taste like fairy floss and moonbeams."
***
Hugs and kisses and tea sufficed for a very long time. Filius and Pomona's teas lengthened to all evening rendezvous of marking interspersed with cuddling (and sometimes the other way round). Most of their weekends were spent in the greenhouses. Filius rose before first light to meet his sparring partner in Leningrad and returned after breakfast to claim an unobtrusive corner to fiddle with whichever charm he was currently trying to modify or draft articles on said experiments, while Pomona tended her plants.
The intervening years saw them appointed Heads of their respective Houses (to the astonishment of none but themselves). Pomona's tea and hugs as a remedy for broken hearts, slivers, and upsetments of all varieties--much to her surprise--earned her a heartwarmingly guileless devotion from her Hufflepuffs. The Ravenclaws were a bit more self-reliant, preferring to try to resolve their problems on their own. (This often resulted in less frequent but much more complicated issues to sort out. Filius didn't even bother to chide them for it, as he understood the impulse all too well, but merely put the kettle in the fire and settled in for a lengthy tête-à-tête.)
The need to be available to their students at all hours made their arrangement a bit awkward as they settled into their new roles, until Filius devised a system of charms to alert them of impending visitors. The warbling of a bird (a bullfinch for him and a blue tit for her) in whatever location they happened to be prompted an inelegant dive into the internal Floo network, often terminating in a jouncing landing and the occasional spitting of soot, but with their students none the wiser.
In the winter of the year that would be noted in the next year's textbooks for the defeat of the Dark Lord (later to be revised as his temporary downfall)--after the tumult of feasts and funerals and festivities had dampened down into dreary darkness punctuated by grateful toasts to James, Lily, and The Boy Who Lived--Pomona finally took matters into her own hands (or at least made an attempt in that direction). Filius was all but sitting in her lap, winding a tendril of her wispy grey hair meditatively around his forefinger, when her right hand wandered from the comfortable cushion of his belly to a spot a few inches lower.
Her fingers had nearly wormed their way through the Lacing Charm on his robes when he realised her intent, batted her hand away, and threw himself backwards with such force that he tumbled off the end of the settee and onto the floor, upending the (thankfully empty) teapot on the way.
Red-faced, Filius bounced to his feet and restored the teapot to its rightful place beside the creamer. He kept hold of the blue tea cozy, smoothing it out in his lap as he sat on the edge of the seat.
Even as he tried to bite his tongue, his voice squeaked up into the tin whistle range. "I'm proportionate!" There it was, the crux of the matter, and he probably should have thanked Wilfred Cummings for his brutal honesty rather than hexing him.
Pomona's initial distress dissolved into ingenuous confusion. "I should hope so. If you were hung like Hagrid, I'm afraid I'd have to cry off. I'm not exactly cavernous, myself."
Incredibly, that had been that. Two minutes later, Filius found himself sprawled on top of a bed swept (mostly) clean of marking quills and parchments debating the merits of Rigidity Charms for household applications. He'd lost his robes (flung just short of the banked fire) and was nestled against a similarly unclad Pomona, nuzzling her neck and luxuriating in the feel of skin against skin.
He tried, with a desperation born of the conflict between the desire in his heart and the desire between his legs, to remember the proper order of things: nipples--caressed, licked, and sucked; earlobes--nibbled gently; clitoris--located, thumbed, and tongued . . . . Something was out of order, though, and it jarred like an out-of-tune violin in an otherwise competent quartet.
Before he could puzzle it out, though, warm darkness enveloped his vision, and for the next few minutes he was unable to do much more than writhe and flail to the rhythm set up deep in his loins. He spent himself vigourously and flopped onto his back, still panting from the exertion.
When he could see again, Filius rolled onto his side and ventured a glance at Pomona. Her head was propped on her arms, hair curling every which way in a silver nimbus, and she was surveying his pale, naked body with such a look of open appreciation that his heart seemed to ricochet from his toes to his throat before settling back in his chest. She grinned like he had just given her a bag of hand-harvested quintaped dung and kissed him soundly. Eager to make up for his egregious lapse of attentiveness, he burrowed his fingers between her legs as she continued to suck at his bottom lip. His hand remembered her intimate geography even though his conscious memory was a bit hazy, and it set to work with a will.
After several moments, though, it clearly was eliciting no response. He pulled back and peered down at what he was doing.
At the loss of his mouth, Pomona opened her eyes and followed his gaze. A strange, sad expression came over her face. She clasped his wrist and extracted his fingers, then rested her jaw on top of his head and exhaled a slow, measured breath. He waited expectantly.
"You see this?" She indicated a curious pattern of faint pink whorls and elongated ovals that traced a delicate filigree across the arc of her stomach, disappearing into the dense curls between her dimpled thighs and continuing down her legs to end abruptly at her ankles.
Filius nodded, abashed that he hadn't noticed it in the haze of his arousal.
"I was caught in a patch of Beelzebub's Bracken during my apprenticeship. I have no sensation where it stung me."
"No-- But surely it's only external!"
Pomona fixed him with her teacher's stare for a moment and then sighed. "If you had sat your Herbology N.E.W.T.s, you'd know . . . . Well, I was lucky it was a less aggressive hybrid."
"So you--" All the saliva in his mouth dried up, and he had to swallow several times before being able to start again. "So you didn't feel anything?"
"What you were doing up here--" She cupped one sagging breast and nudged the nipple with her thumb. "--was quite nice. And you're a lovely kisser. But no, I didn't feel most of the rest."
"It's not fair that I should have all the pleasure and you just have to lie there and let me rut over you." A horrifying thought struck him. "It's, it's like prostitution!"
She pulled away from him, a chill immediately replacing the warmth of her skin down the length of his body.
"When you signed on for it, where did Life ever claim it was going to be fair? Lily and James and Harry--is any of that fair?
"You're beautiful when you come, y'know. Seeing you and touching you and being able to do . . . that with you--" Her voice quavered, recovered, and wobbled on. "--is more than enough pleasure for me." Without pausing, she slapped his cheek fiercely, wrapped her robes around her naked body, and stalked to the fireplace. As she reached for the Floo powder, she hissed, "I'm nobody's whore."
Filius lay there in silence for some time, his cheek stinging and a stray quill digging into his left buttock, and stared up at the ceiling. How had he managed to bollocks things up so badly?
His black robes were warm from the fire, although they went on much more slowly than they had come off. Pomona might have returned to her rooms, but the greenhouses were more likely. There was a depressed Snaptrap there that needed extra love and attention.
The oaken front door opened into a curtain of white. Snow drifted down from the sky in large, wet clumps that caught and lingered in his eyelashes and dampened his hair. Filius tramped through the drifts with grim determination. The silence magnified his thoughts to a near deafening intensity as he tried to rehearse an elusive apology that sounded increasingly pathetic the closer he came to the greenhouses. An enchanted flame flickered in Greenhouse Two, plant and woman casting a contiguous shadow.
The melancholy whistle of a bullfinch drew him up short. His fist wavered above the fogged glass door as he, for the briefest of instants, quite resented whichever student had chosen this particular inopportune moment to decide that his or her problem had spun out of control. Then fresh guilt stabbed through the unscabbed wound of his earlier blunder, and he returned to the castle and his duty without a backwards glance.
Filius skulked through the castle after classes the next day, eager to avoid gossiping colleagues, prattling students, and Peeves. His head throbbed, and his eyelids ached with the exertion of staying open. Tabitha Stuart's need had been genuine--begrudging her half the night hadn't occurred to him after finding her silently weeping outside his door. The adrenaline that had propelled him through disentangling her convoluted family strife had long been depleted, though. He skipped dinner and was dozing in his rocking chair when the double chime of his wards awoke him.
It was Pomona, a tin of oolong clutched tightly in her hands and an apprehensive look on her face.
She sat a respectable distance away from him and didn't even pat his hand when he recounted the tale of Tommy Titmouse's disastrous discovery that swishing and swooping were two entirely disparate wand gestures. She'd come, though, with forgiveness in her tea tin and reconciliation in her eyes, and it was more than he'd expected or deserved.
***
They continued their usual routines, except that a small space insinuated itself between them. No hugs or kisses were exchanged (although their tea consumption increased considerably). As the years wore on, Filius patiently tried to shrink the gap between them until one night he let his head loll onto Pomona's shoulder; he considered it a significant victory that she did nothing more than stiffen beneath the unexpected contact, but he would press no further.
The same year that Harry Potter arrived at Hogwarts, an article from the prestigious European Theoretical Charms Journal arrived by Floo on Pomona's hearth. It was entitled, "Aggregate charm to simulate coital sensation in witches injured by magical, mechanical, or botanical means" and attributed to Filialis Fenwick. The article was forty pages long, detailing complicated wand patterns and incantations far beyond her ken.
Inscribed beneath the title was a handwritten note: "I would never presume to interfere with your personal life, but should you ever wish me to perform this charm for you I would oblige with no questions asked. I am truly, deeply sorry for what I said to you. My mouth sometimes outruns my thoughts, but never have I regretted it more. Ever Yours, Filius"
Pomona's eyes were wet as she smoothed her fingers over the parchments and tucked them beneath her knickers with the last two letters she'd received from her father, a fraying silk ribbon, and her brother's wedding photo.
That evening, Filius did not ask about the article, and Pomona did not bring it up.
***
"There's something the matter with Longbottom," Pomona mused. She was using Neville's essay on Bogberry mulch as the measuring stick for the rest of the fifth years' parchments.
"You mean besides our resident High Inquisitor?" Filius muttered. Determined not to give Umbridge the satisfaction of knowing she'd ruffled his feathers, he privately seethed over her unwelcome intrusion into the school and his classroom.
"That's what's the matter with everyone. No, Longbottom has been acting a bit peculiar lately. If he were one of my Hufflepuffs, I'd say he was mooning over some girl, but I'm never entirely sure about those Gryffindors."
"Mooning, yes; girl, no." Filius smirked as he stirred a strategically heaped spoonful of sugar into his tea.
"He's not after Potter, is he?"
She sighed. "That's a heartbreak just waiting to happen."
"Goodness, no! Not a girl or boy, but a woman."
"Rosmerta? I didn't think he was the sort to fall for a pretty face and a pert bum."
"It's you." Tea sprayed from Pomona's mouth, and Filius deftly siphoned up the droplets midair. "He adores your class. Why not you, as well?"
"Why not-- Why not--" she sputtered. "Why me?"
"I treat him with respect, with kindness, even, but he has no affinity for my subject. You make him feel competent."
"But he is competent!"
Filius contemplated for a moment. "My Herbology professor was a perfectly lovely witch. I never particularly cared for her, though, because I felt like a dunce as soon as I holstered my wand and stepped into the greenhouses." He paused, considering. "Besides, I think he appreciates your . . . physical attributes, as well."
Pomona snorted. "I'm no pretty young thing like Rosmerta. I never was, even in my youth."
"I think it was Proust who said, 'Let us leave pretty women to men without imagination.' Neville? He has imagination."
He could see the unasked question written on her face as plain as if in quill and ink. And you? Filius tried to speak, but the words huddled deeper into his throat; he tried to smile, but his lips couldn't even manage that. I have imagination enough for the both of us.
***
There was one more body to see to. They stole away from the hubbub in the castle without a word between them. Pomona greeted the Whomping Willow as an old friend before leading Filius in the arduous crawl to the Shrieking Shack, where the scene was still as Harry had described.
"How did we not see?" Her face twisted in anguish. "How could he do all that and not let on?"
Having no words of his own to offer, Filius murmured, "They, scoffing at all talk of sacrifice, gave themselves without idle words to death.'"
Pomona knelt beside Severus Snape, not heeding the congealing blood that soaked her robes. She closed his staring eyes and tucked his straggling hair back, smearing mud like healing balm in a broad, rich track across his forehead. The cold, smooth skin rumpled beneath her fingers across the already stiffening muscles that no longer animated his face. "It's not fair." She dug the heel of her other palm into her eyes and raised her voice in protest. "It's not bloody fair!"
Filius stepped to her side, reaching an arm around her shoulders and squeezing her tightly to him. "Life never claimed to be fair--" Pomona leaned into the embrace and sobbed wetly and noisily into his robes.
Their intense, secret mourning seemed fitting for the private man--more so than the public ceremony that would likely follow the revelation of his allegiance. When it ebbed to a snuffling trickle, they cleaned up as best they could and conveyed him to the Great Hall with solemn reverence, treating his body with a care that he had been unwilling or unable to give it in life.
Before anyone else could lay claim to their presence, the two twined hands and left in search of solitude and an intact teapot. The shattered castle, the neat rows of corpses, the stricken families--all would still be there in the morning. They retreated to Greenhouse Three, which had miraculously survived the battle with only a few broken panes of glass. Pomona and Neville had stripped it of the more dangerous plants in their search for makeshift weapons, and the rest of the vegetation lay jumbled in discarded heaps.
"I think . . ." Pomona's thought trailed off hesitantly.
"That can be a dangerous occupation," Filius prompted gravely after a few moments, his hair and face two nearly indistinguishable shades of white in the faint moonlight.
"I think that I could use the services of a talented Charmer--someone who's good with his wand."
He looked up into her sober face as she Summoned something in a soft voice. After a minute, a sheaf of parchment flew obediently into her hands. She gave it to him and began to unfasten her robes.
***
"Long-distance Erotic Charms, Vicarious Vibrators, Wicked Wood . . . . Blimey, George! When'd you find time to invent all this?" Ron looked suspiciously around Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes' small back room (age- and password-warded). "And who'd you test them on?"
"You think I've got the time to muck about with this stuff? I've got more than enough dirty ideas banging about in the old bean here, but with everything--" His hands flew up distractedly. "--I haven't the time to develop them. Nah, these are all designed by a new associate of mine. He assures me they hold up to rigourous testing."
Ron twisted his face. "So who is this mysterious new associate?"
George shrugged, re-charming a large poster of a plump, naked witch who was pleasuring herself with a small, purple device. Her gyrations jerked back into life, and she winked saucily down at him before returning her attention to the product she was so enthusiastically demonstrating. "You'd never believe me if I told you."
"Try me."
"You remember how Professor Flitwick used to have a soft spot for Fred and me? Modesty forbids me saying so, but we always were brilliant at Charms. Well, he's shagging Sprout, the sly bugger, and it seems he's putting this practical experience to good use--"
Ron threw up his hands in defeat. "All right, I get it. You don't want to tell me--that's your business. Never mind that I'm your own beloved flesh and blood who's been working my fingers to the bone trying to help you out. Lookit these blisters here!" He waggled his long digits in his brother's face for emphasis.
George muttered, "I said you wouldn't believe me," before boxing Ron's ears and earning himself a jab to his own nonexistent ear with the damp tip of an unnervingly realistic rubber cock. They rolled to the floor with a whoop and a holler, wrestling as they hadn't done in years.
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