For Fanfic100, prompt: Choices
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Rowena
Summary: An excellent choice for Potions Professor has presented itself. Unfortunately, there’s one small problem…
Follow-up to
this.
Salazar Slytherin was very, very young.
It was important that Rowena keep reminding herself of this because he seemed to have literally no other flaws. He took her seriously despite the fact that she was a woman, he hadn’t been offended by her comments on how ridiculous his name was, and seemed generally knowledgeable about his area - but he was so young!
Even given the benefit of the doubt, he couldn’t have more than twenty-six years - and that was generous. Twenty-six! Rowena herself was almost thirty, and she was young for an academic. Practitioners - like Godric, whose area was Transfiguration - could be younger, but a potioneer, who had to be both a practitioner and an academic… She hadn’t expected to find an expert who was under forty.
If he was an expert. The people who knew him seemed convinced that he was, and he hadn’t claimed anything ridiculously outlandish - besides being an accomplished potioneer before he hit thirty.
He also had a kind of quiet confidence that made it difficult to doubt him. That would probably be helpful in facing down a roomful of students.
Rowena checked herself. She wasn’t planning on hiring him. He was too young.
But then, he was the only person she’d interviewed - for any position - who hadn’t been even slightly shocked by the fact that she was a woman. It wasn’t a deal breaker for all of them, fortunately, but still…
It would be better, she thought, to decide on him now, and be damned to the consequences, than to be forced to choose him because no one else would agree to take the position. The end result would be the same, and she’d still have her pride.
She drummed her fingers impatiently on her desktop. Tomorrow, she’d have Godric write up a formal offer. No. She’d do it. It needed to be done right.
Salazar Slytherin, she thought, if you are not the best damned potioneer this side of the Orient, I will rip out your guts and make you knit a hat out of them.