Disclaimer: I’m not JK Rowling.
Red by Rockinfaerie
The Final Festivities, Part One
A Brief Calm
If one had accompanied Minerva McGonagall from the Quidditch stadium to the school, one would currently find oneself in the Hogwarts staff room, which was accessible through a large oak door by the marble staircase in the entrance hall of the school.
It was a long room, panelled with polished mahogany. There was a single narrow window at one end, flanked on either side by heavy scarlet curtains, which framed the sloping lawns and broad lake of the grounds. In the wall opposite, beneath a broad, stained mirror, stood a reasonably sized fireplace, which adequetly accomodated the faculty's communication and transport needs.
Several ornate tapestries provided colour to the dark panels, and below them usually stood a row of mismatched wooden chairs. At meeting times these were brought to surround a conjured conference table, but this evening there was no call for one, as the faculty had met in the staff room not to discuss matters of education, but to celebrate the outcome of the Quidditch Cup Final.
The darkness and violence that revelled beyond the castle walls had silenced most calls for parties, and it was Albus Dumbledore’s reasoning therefore that the students’ sporting victories could be embraced as a reason to have one. The Final was, after all, only an annual occasion, and Albus had always enjoyed the sport immensely, as did most of his colleagues.
This was the main reason, Minerva believed, for Horace Slughorn’s current glum mood. On entering the room he sat, somewhat dejectedly, into his chair by the fireplace “ which he flickered to life in spite of the warm summer air. Minerva saw that he had yet to remove his green and silver scarf; it was still tied loosely around his thick neck like a lazing serpent, and beneath it was a green rosette, pinned firmly to his silk pinstriped robes. He barely glanced at her as he took an empty tumbler from the low table beside him, and nodded solemnly to Albus as he approached him with a stout bottle of brandy.
“My commiserations, Horace,” the headmaster chuckled, filling the small glass in Horace’s pink fist.
“I know you don’t mean it, old boy,” Horace said with a weak smile. “Though it’s quite all right; I have become very accustomed to defeat in this area of my work, much to my displeasure!”
Albus sat down on the spindly wooden chair beside him, stretching out his long, booted legs before him with a contented sigh. Horace settled himself back further into his armchair “ something he had summoned from his office at breakfast time that day, perhaps knowing that he would need the comfort later that evening. Minerva drew an ordinary chair from the wall to sit adjacent to Albus, her heart still pumping with adrenaline from the match an hour before.
“But I cannot fathom why, Albus,” continued Horace, his eyes full of frustration as they flickered from his glass as to address him, “we must proceed to make such a tremendous deal of the occasion. With Potter on the Gryffindor side,” he added, casting Minerva a resentful look, “I believe your only motive for holding the blasted event must be a covert desire to humiliate me - and my house - every June!”
Horace turned his head defiantly from the window, where the bright explosions of fireworks were visible in the dark night sky, undoubtedly being let off by victorious Gryffindor students, celebrating by the lakeside.
“You know perfectly well why, Horace,” said Albus lightly, his eyes twinkling as he looked out on the red and gold sparks raining down on the vast expanse of water. “These times give us very little reason for victory. Our students will leave shortly, and I consider it my responsibility to give them a chance to experience at least some of the light-hearted fun we both had while we were here. It is only fair that the students make the most of their victory.”
“Gryffindor students,” Horace said huffily, watching his drink swirl around in the glass while Albus laughed. “And that new Seeker “ that Stone “ it seems as if Potter has been moulding him into his own image “”
“Which includes the successful capture of the Snitch,” Minerva quipped, smiling broadly.
She had perhaps done enough gloating on the way up to the school from the stadium, but she could not help showing her immense pride for her team’s performance that day. As had been expected, James Potter had captained brilliantly “ he and his fellow team mates Sadhbh Coolidge, Chameli Lal, Barry Ryan, Theodore Gardiner and Malcolm MacClaggen, and of course the Seeker, Rory Stone, had played flawlessly, resulting in the Cup remaining in her office for at least another year. Minerva and Horace had, as the Heads of each house, commentated, and Horace, decked in his Slytherin garb, had not kept quiet his resentment for her side during the match.
Gryffindor chants and songs from the crowd resounded in her head as she took a handful of sweets from the gold dish Albus was offering her.
“What are these?” Horace asked curiously, his bitterness about the Gryffindor victory momentarily dissolved at the prospect of something sugary.
“Liquorice Allsorts,” Albus replied, handing the dish of coloured sweets to the Potions Professor. Frowning slightly, Horace took one, tentatively biting into it. After a moments thought, he passed the dish back to the Headmaster, who smiled, taking several for himself, before offering the dish to Filius Flitwick, who was deep in conversation with Rebekah Scotch, undoubtedly about the match.
“I’m sorry Albus,” Horace began, shaking his head. “But those are revolting. I honestly don’t know how you can put up with Muggle confectionary. These, on the other hand,” he said, reaching up onto the mantelpiece and bringing down a silver platter of crystallized pineapple, “hit the spot, in my opinion.”
“Well, our opinions differ in a number of areas,” said Albus pleasantly, declining his offer with a grin and a slight shake of his head. Horace placed the gleaming tray on his lap, and after a moment popped one into his mouth, before returning it to the mantlepiece.
Opposite him Professor Binns, who occupied the seat directly by the fire without fail every evening, grunted suddenly in his sleep. His misty face was tilted upwards, his large mouth wide open, and his long ghostly arms dangled limply from his old chair, almost brushing the carpeted floor with their fingertips. The History of Magic Professor's mind was more often than not steeped entirely in his subject, and it was rare that he could relate to any occurrence since the 1839 Goblin Rebellion of Tresterwick “ a subject he was passionate about. He remained deaf to the chatter around him and to the sounds of the aged gramophone in the corner, and it would have shocked the living daylights out of every one of his colleagues if it transpired that Binns knew which team had won the match, let alone which sport had been played.
"The end of another school year," Horace sighed, eyeing Binns, who had retreated into his rythmical pattern of snoring once more. "Merlin, I'm getting old."
Albus appeared not to have heard Horace's subtle request for attention. Horace liked to joke, at the end of every academic year, that he would retire. It was true that he often complained about the brutish behaviour of various students and the endless pressure of teaching, but she knew that there was nowhere he would rather be. Many of her colleagues felt similarly. Hogwarts was the safest place in the world at this time; You Know Who himself was said to fear Albus. Though currently the headmaster, reclining calmly on his chair with a bowl of Muggle sweets on his knees, cheerily exchanging jokes with Scotch and Flitwick, could hardly be described as a threat to the most ferocious Dark Wizard of all time, Minerva had witnessed his own cold fury, and knew that to trifle with Albus Dumbledore was to question one's sanity.
No member of the faculty had young children, and the few teachers who had spouses left the school every evening. Thus, for the majority of the staff, Hogwarts was home, and for Minerva it was populated not just by her colleagues, but by some very close friends.
She had known Albus for a very long time; he had been the Transfiguration Professor in her schooldays, and soon after her graduation, when he became headmaster, he offered her a place as his successor. Almost twenty years had passed since then, and much in their world had changed, but though Albus was regarded by the Ministry as liberal in his outlook, and had made several alterations as he saw fit, he had been reluctant to allow the unpleasant happenings outside the Hogwarts grounds to influence the activities at school.
In recent years enormous and often visible strain had been put on him as he fought the growing support of the Dark Wizard, and he had divulged little information about what his intentions were. He rarely told Minerva of his plans, which at times she found frustrating, but presumed there was good reason for it.
Right now, she could see he was content, and was happy for him. Horace too, she observed, in spite of his objections, appeared glad that Albus was relaxing, avoiding talk of war, and had lit his pipe, tapping the fingers of his empty hand against the side of his chair, in time to the chamber music that emitted from Filius Flitwick's gramophone.
"Yes. The end of another school year,” Horace repeated, though this time to himself rather than anyone else. Suddenly, his expression growing happier, and placing his empty brandy glass on the table with a light clink, he said brightly, “Do you remember, Albus, what we did that one year, on the day we got our summer holidays?”
The headmaster threw his head back and laughed jovially.
“Will I ever forget!”
“And it was your idea, remember?” continued Horace, taking up the bottle to refill the glass. “It was at the end of June, after… our sixth year,” he said to Filius, who was looking at him inquisitively. “Albus and I - what age were we, Albus?”
“Sixteen,” the headmaster said confidently, and then shook his head. “No, no. We were seventeen. You had just turned seventeen.”
“That’s right “ seventeen. We had arrived in Hogsmeade, ready to board the train to go home like all the other students, and Albus turned to me and said that he was bored of locomotives.” Satisfied that his glass was adequately full, he raised it to Dumbledore, who raised his own in return.
“So what did you do?” Rebekah Scotch asked, sitting into a chair beside Minerva.
Tilting the glass towards his mouth, Horace twitched his eyebrows to the small group looking at him.
“We went to Norway instead.”
“Norway?” Minerva asked incredulously, her eyes widening at the thought of Albus impulsively deciding to go northward at the age of seventeen.
“Norway,” Horace repeated as he stood up, his large rear facing them as he reached for more of his crystallized pineapple.
“Horace is correct,” Albus explained. “I had grown very tired of trains, and I was interested in Muggle boats in particular.”
“Hence, Norway,” Horace said, with a flourish of his silver tray.
“But I still don’t quite comprehend “”
“That's perfectly all right my dear Filius,” Horace told the Charms Professor, whose brow was furrowed. “Few people understand our Albus!”
“What he means, Filius,” said Dumbledore, glancing at Horace, “is that we flew to the nearest harbour and took a boat to Norway. It was a fascinating trip.”
“The vessel was, in fact, only comparable to a floating tub,” said Horace with a dark look. “Most unpleasant, as you can imagine. And the deck was slippery with the blood of gutted fish, and the sea air was tremendously, painfully cold “ but Albus wanted to pretend that we were Muggle, and magic was strictly forbidden, our circumstances considered. Not that I wanted the Azkaban guards to swoop down on me from their nearby headquarters, but it was “”
“A truly fascinating trip.” the headmaster concluded once more.
“What in Hades did you do once you got there?” Minerva asked. In all of her time at Hogwarts, she had never once heard them discuss this particular voyage.
“I don't remember,” said Horace sorrowfully. “And I cannot be certain whether that is fortunate or unfortunate for us!”
“I recall seeing a marvellous play in Oslo once,” said Albus, “but that may have been years after. I really should have written these things down. All I know is that Horace simply refused to return by boat, so we flew back instead.”
“Are you not terrified of flying, Horace?” Filius asked, raising a knowing eyebrow.
“Of course I am, dear fellow! I derive absolutely no pleasure from it, and even in my youth was rather wobbly “ a physical trait I doubt even the finest broom could withstand for too long “ but neither can I admit to being comfortable in the company of two toothless Muggles and hundreds of fish heads. It was a difficult decision, but I dare say it was the right one to make!”
Rebekah pushed the grey hair away from her face in a bewildered fashion as the group fell silent. It was obvious to the teachers that the Gryffindor revelries had gotten into full swing, for the room “ which had darkened as the candles had shortened “ was from time to time illuminated by flashes of red light which issued through the window panes. Minerva could see Horace’s fingers twitch, as if he wished to close the curtains fully, thereby blocking out any visual reminders of his defeat. He did not rise, however, but his irritation was apparent once more.
“Did the Gryffindor team have to go so far as to wear red war paint?” he asked, clasping his fingers together over his large stomach in an irritated manner. “Now really Minerva, I do think that was a bit too much.”
“Ah yes. Quite a creative touch, that,” Rebekah mused, her finger on her chin. “Who thought of it?”
“Guess,” said Horace, his mouth twisted into a deep frown.
“James Potter!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “He’s a right high flier. Wherever did we get him?!”
“I don’t know, Rebekah,” Minerva said cheerfully. “But I think we can be assured that he is doing his best to leave his mark on Hogwarts.”
“In more ways than one,” Horace said angrily. “I'll never forget the graffiti he left behind on the desks in my Potions Room. It took Argus Filch days to clean them “ good riddance I say!”
“Now Horace,” Rebekah said in a friendly manner, “I don’t have time for sore losers. Either play the game or get off the pitch.”
“Get off the pitch?” Horace asked, draining the last of his second brandy. “I’ll stay right where I am, thank you very much! And I’ll take another one of those liquorice things, Albus “ I feel I should learn to enjoy nasty food.”
“I won’t contest to that,” said Albus, winking at Minerva as he passed Horace the golden dish. Horace took one out and popped it into his mouth, this time displaying no sign of disgust.
Minerva sat back. She rarely was in the mood to relax, but now, with Horace dozing drunkenly in his armchair, and Albus serenely smoking his pipe beside him, there was an air of peace in the long staff room that was usually absent. Binns slept silently now “ only the bustle of their leaving would wake him, and tonight there had been no interruption from the fireplace to tell them of some catastrophic event. For the first time in what felt like years, she found herself at ease, simply by watching Pomona Sprout dancing awkwardly with small Filius by the scratchy gramophone in the corner, or listening to young Poppy Pomfrey’s conversation with Rebekah about the Quidditch injuries of the match.
Franz Gudgeon, the reserved Defence Against the Arts teacher, sat quietly by the scarlet curtain, looking out at the display Potter and his friends were painting in the night sky. She too gazed at it, and as each flash of red brightened the dark oak panelling, she was told of their glorious Gryffindor victory. Albus had said that the students should have some light-hearted fun, a chance to escape the thoughts of violence and dread which they experienced each day. She realised then, as she watched the sparks shimmer through the darkness, that during that brief period of blissful tranquillity, he had succeeded in freeing the staff from the war too.
Well, that was Chapter Eighteen! It took way longer than expected, and I'm sorry if readers were expecting actual Quidditch to be played, but Quidditch matches are really difficult to write, so I opted out!
I went with this staff room thing because I realised I liked writing Slughorn - I hope you like him too. But as you probably know, that's just Part One of the "Final Festivites." Part Two will take us to the lakeside, where James et al are celebrating, but are rudely interrupted...
Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter, and I hope the next one doesn't take too long to write. Thanks for all the reviews I've received, and please leave a review now, or else I won't know what you think. So long!
Oh, and if anyone was wondering, the name Sadhbh is pronounced like the number five, but with an "s" instead of an "f".