Badgered ~ Chapter 4
Badgered by MsMoon
Chapter 4 ~ Infuriating Charm
Chapters: 4/?
Chapter Navigation: 1, 2, 3, 4,
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: N/A thus far
Relationships: Possibly a lot of OCs…and OCs with main characters.
Summary: It’s a new year at Hogwarts, and the Potions professor is having a hellish time. Not with the students, mind you. It’s the ridiculous new DADA professor that’s a badgering experience.
Notes: So, it appears that eons ago, when I wrote this... I just forgot to post the last two chapters that I wrote. And then there were finals. And here we are. So... this is officially caught up.
...now I just have to write more :| It's so easy. Why didn't I think of that...
Cygnus had always enjoyed the great hall. The buzz, the chatter, the food, the energy… everything. The first day of Hogwarts was over with… and she wasn’t even paying attention to the food before her.
Her first day as Potions Professor had gone quite smoothly. Now, her head was filled with lesson plans, students’ names, and different ways to engage her classes. There weren’t very many problems, but she was trying to foresee how circumstances could change, how students might give her trouble (and which), and what she may have to do in order to maintain her authority in her own classroom.
“You realize that you’ve taken about five minutes just cutting one piece of meat?”
Albus Bloody Potter.
Oh yes… there was that too. She hadn’t expected to be sitting anywhere special on the Professors’ table. But she was on the very end of the table, and Potter was seated right next to her. He made it a habit to be as insufferable as possible.
“Yes. I’m thinking.” She said, before placing the morsel she’d worked so hard to cut into her mouth.
“Your first day go well?” He asked conversationally.
“Quite. Almost a little too well, actually. Yourself?” she responded amiably.
“Very enjoyable, to tell the truth.” He said with a nod. “I half expected to flounder through it or perhaps find it dull and dread doing it, but… The students are engaging and eager to learn.” He paused and looked to her. “Do you find the first years a little googly-eyed?”
She snorted softly. “Googly-eyed?” she repeated, though without over-embellishing the term. She simply wanted clarification.
“Yes. They seem so… well, fascinated to be here.” he paused, as if to survey the ends of the tables where the first years sat. “Which is normal, but they also seem a bit slow.” he amended.
“It is their first year.” Cygnus defended soothingly.
“We weren’t like that in our first year.”
“Don’t speak for me.”
He chuckled, his bright smile and that damn sparkle in his eyes…it was ridiculously disarming and infuriating at the same time. Why was this infuriating man so easy to talk to?
“Very well then, I wasn’t like that. I had to be held back in most everything. I never sat back and stared like a moon-struck loon, I wanted to sink my teeth into everything.” He was looking at her again. “What about you? Everyone remembers first year; what was yours like?”
Her expression sobered considerably. The beginning of her first year had been horrid. She felt so shamed at being sorted into Hufflepuff that she wouldn’t look at her brothers. She even went so far as to actively avoid them.
She had gotten good at casting privacy and silencing charms out of necessity, because she didn’t want to wake up her roommates with her crying. She’d lost 5 pounds.. which didn’t seem like much, but she had been 11 at the time, and the pattern was to gain not lose weight.
Finally, the headmistress had flooed her parents… She had been terrified when she was summoned to the Headmistress’s office, wondering what horrible atrocity she could’ve committed. And then she saw her mother’s face, and she felt doubly worse. Her mother had hugged her, remarked that she’d lost weight and that they’d been worried over not hearing from her.
Then her father had requested that both the Headmistress and Mother leave the two of them alone to talk. She wished she had never been born. She wished the floor would swallow her up. She counted the long seconds while she waited for her father’s reproach… and it never came. When the door closed, he wrapped her up in his arms and scolded her over forgetting his words. He reminded her that he didn’t care what house she was in, because she was his daughter first and he loved her.
“Did I step on a proverbial land mind?” Cygnus blinked to find Potter almost fully facing her now, his expression worried. Honestly. What was he so concerned about?
“I…” she swallowed hard, still not sure what to tell him. “First year was not my easiest.” She said at last, shifting her focus onto her meal.
She decided that if she’d be better off cutting her meat up entirely and then eating the small pieces as opposed to cutting them up to eat them one at a time. Especially at the rate she was going.
“You had a hard time of it then? Being in Hufflepuff?” He asked and she sighed at the surprise in his tone. Was it really so hard to believe that life wasn’t all Honeydukes and Butterbeers for a Hufflepuff? “I mean… I’m not trying to say it as if I’m making fun, like, ‘oooh was it hard for you in Hufflepuff ?’ or anything like that, I’m actually... Curious.” He looked down at his plate awkwardly. “OK, you talk know, please.” He said giving his meal more attention.
She almost wanted to laugh at his self-consciousness. Almost. She did remind herself that he was a Slytherin…
“It was… trying.” Cygnus said at last. That was a word to use, and it wasn’t so volatile that it would betray her confidence. “We all had no idea what to expect for me, but no one expected Hufflepuff… including the other Hufflepuffs. They treated me like a pariah… Lilly, Cleo, and Lucy did their best to cheer me up when they could, and I did my best to put on a brave face and act like…” she stopped herself short, taking a deep breath to settle the swarm of wasps inside her ribcage.
“Act like?” He was looking askance at her again.
She sighed out that deep breath. “Act like I hadn’t lost my footing.” She admitted at last. In truth it had felt more like her world was slowly dissolving, but she couldn’t just say that. “My brothers were in Slytherin, my best friends were in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, and I was the oddball Hufflepuff.” She shrugged as if to make little of it.
“But…things did even out?”
“Eventually, yes. Though loyal, most Hufflepuffs can’t hold an unfounded grudge. Eventually, they all began to feel sorry for me and stopped acting like I had the dark mark. Things truly turned during Christmas break, when I realized I hadn’t disappointed my family.” Cygnus continued to focus on her food in order to avoid glaring at Potter.
She hadn’t meant to tell him so much. Really. It wasn’t even his fault. What was it about him that was so disarming and charming?
“You know, it was sort of the same for me…” He admitted. “I did a lot better at not showing it, but I thought about it constantly… the oddball Slytherin in a Gryffindor home.” He shrugged, smirking at his own expense.
“I imagine Sirius Black must have felt the same at times.”
“Only when he was home.”
“Most likely.”
“But, it was the same for me with Christmas Break… I went home and life was as it always had been. My parents were still the same, James was still insufferable, Lilly was still eager to go to Hogwarts herself.”
“That’s right, I keep forgetting your two years older than I am.” Cygnus murmured absently.
He nodded. “Maybe you’re right after all…. Some of them may have a different way of managing, but first years are all just coping with everything.” She took a moment to stare at Potter’s profile. He had a strange pensive stare as he gazed out over the young children. She wondered what he was thinking… or she would’ve, if she hadn’t caught herself thinking about it and then cut that thought process short.
Some time passed as they ate in silence. But of course, Potter couldn’t just let things be. Near the end of the meal he spoke quietly to her again.
“Listen…” He said slowly, as though he were measuring the weight of his words. “I have this …idea …for a project with my seventh years that I’d appreciate your help on.” He said carefully.
“You have a captive audience until I finish this pudding, Potter.” Cygnus replied in lieu of a snappish ‘make it quick’ retort.
“I was wanting to teach them a bit more about Polyjuice.”
Cygnus blinked. “Polyjuice?”
“Yes.” He said nodding vigorously.
“You know that it takes a month to brew…” she responded.
“Of course. That’s why I’m conferring with you now .”
She nodded pensively, her eyebrows lifting slightly. “It would be an interesting way to incorporate it into my own lesson plan.” She reasoned carefully. “I can have it ready for you by next month.”
“That’s superb, but there’s more.”
“Of course.”
“You see, it doesn’t help much to have Polyjuice unless I have someone willing to help me by being a double.”
Cygnus blinked. “Who are you thinking of asking?” she asked.
“You.”
Cygnus’s fork clattered into her plate in a chaotic reflection of her own mental response.
“But… I… what?”
“Just hear me out, alright?” she nodded for him to continue. “You polyjuice yourself as me and walk into my class and start doing whatever you want.”
“Oh… really?”
“Yes.” He sounded so determined. As though he were trying to maintain his hold on his own train of thought. “Then I walk into the classroom….” He paused, as if for dramatic effect. “See?”
“See what?”
He sighed. “The fact that the students will realize the possibility that someone could be deceiving them by way of potions.” Potter stopped, and peered at her closely. “Are you alright? You’ve gone pale…”
“Um. I’m fine.” Cygnus said with a wooden nod. She wondered briefly how he could tell when she ‘went pale’ since she was already so fair skinned. She did not feel fine, but she was good at faking it. Relatively. “What twists and turns your mind makes.”
“There are gives-and-takes on all potions, and I’m hoping that some of them will be able to tell that something is up and be able to discern which of us is which.”
“I do see …the advantages of the lesson, but where does it go from there? Do we squabble or duel to make it more interesting, or just go back and forth asking the students who they think is the real Professor Potter?”
Potter seemed to be deep in thought as he considered her words. “I don’t like the idea of us dueling… it gives you a chance to actually inflict harm.”
Cygnus smirked. “Scared, Potter?”
“Terrified.” He replied with a dramatic wince. Cygnus chuckled softly, shaking her head at his antics. “I think that’s the first time I’ve gotten you to smile.” He had the gall to say, which brought her back down to reality.
“No fair changing the subject.”
“That appears to be what you are doing, my dear.”
“I am not your dear, Potter.” Cygnus growled.
He smiled rakishly. “The night is young…” his face changed entirely when she glared at him balefully. “Now that… that look should be on the list of Unforgivables.” He joked uneasily. “Really, Cygnus, I didn’t mean—”
“Never mind.”
Potter wilted visibly at her snappish tone.
Oh, this just had to be acting. Potter may have been an oddball Slytherin, but he was a Slytherin. And if there was one thing Slytherins never did, it was trust complete strangers with their moods.
“Being as the potion will not be ready until a month hence, I imagine we can hammer out the details of our performances in the following month.” Cygnus said, righting their conversation properly.
“And you’ll go along with the routine?” Potter asked carefully.
“Yes. Yes. I’ll be you… a decidedly more literate, though poncey version of you—”
“Hey…”
“But, I’ll go along with it.”
Potter nodded. “Good.. I think.” his tone was confident, but his face was skewed in confusion.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” She said, rising as she spoke. “I mean to retire for the evening.”
“Thanks… for everything.” Potter said.
But Cygnus pretended not to hear him. She didn’t look back… because she didn’t care, or because she just couldn’t make herself. Her stomach was tight, almost queasy, and her head ached. She felt flushed and her heart was hammering in her chest. All those things were not the symptoms of someone who didn’t care. She was just too tired to think about it.
