Late afternoon, post classes

"Not in his office, staff room, staff room..."

Sissel was moving down the hallway with such speed that he was using his flying doormat. Though 'Hovering Doormat' seemed all the more fitting a label when it quaked out at heights that even a broom with trainer's twigs could handle. The use was justified, Sissel was ready to defend. Just like his former work, time of the utmost importance.

Managing to not crash into the guarding gargoyles or damage the door, Sissel both stepped off the doormat and rushed inside in a speedy landing where he was lucky to find the Head of Hufflepuff House recuperating after a day of classes.

"Mr. Leopold, it's an emergency!" Sissel cried. "I'd see the Healer, or Hagrid actually that would be better, but I think your expertise is what's needed the most!"

Sissel set a silk top hat[1] done on the coffee table. A rather shabby, deflated, wilting top hat. That quivered slightly.

1.

HP wiki

The head of Hufflepuff was nursing a cup of tea, spiked as it often was with a shot of brandy and a dash of wit sharpening potion.   He had only taken one or two swallows before the door burst open and the new History of Magic professor burst in.  The young man was obviously looking for him and equally obviously in quite a state of excitement.

Leopold set down his tea.  "What can I do for you?" he asked.  "And call me Leopold.  I take it you are having issues with your hat?"  The old man pursed his lips, examining the hat. 

It was not, he noted, actually a hat but rather a transforming rabbit and it seemed to be in a certain amount of distress.  "Has it been eating?" Leopold asked.  "How old is it?  Is it anywhere in the range of a dozen years or so?"  Sissel was obviously attached to his transforming rabbit but if Leopold's first impression was correct, the poor thing was close to the end of its life.  Either that or it just needed a little hare restorer.

"That's the thing, Leopold," Sissel hovered about but did not sit. "I don't think Layton has been able to eat. There is a hatbox that doubles as his cage where his life can be postponed in hat form, though if I store him for long periods I still try and feed him once a month. He's not that old and given the moments of suspended animation he doesn't age quickly."

He fished spinich and some leafy greens from an inner pocket, waving them over the hat. "But I haven't been keeping him in the hatbox since the start of term and for the last few days he's only been a hat hooked on the hat rack in my office. It's like he's stuck in one form."

"Transforming animals aren't exactly a specialty of mine," Leopold confessed.  "I could try to induce a transfiguration but I have no idea what that would do to the poor thing.  Has the hat always looked like this or is this a more recent development?  You might be looking at an issue that isn't magical but rather mental.  If your rabbit is suffering from depression, that might explain his not eating.  When was the last time you took -what was it, Layton?- outside for some fresh air, sunshine and a romp in the grass?"

Leopold wasn't by any means certain that he would be able to solve Sissel's hat problems and was, at this point, just taking shots in the dark.  It was clear that the young professor was quite fond of the transforming rabbit and Leopold's heart went out to him.  He'd feel the same way if something happened to Howler.   "I think we may need to consult Hagrid on this.  It's as much his field as mine, moreso, since we're dealing with what is most decidedly a magical creature."

Sissel had to stop for a moment to appreciate the incongruity of that statement. A transfiguration professor admitting that transforming animals was not his speciality.

Wow.

Then Sissel was able to continue thinking. Oh, Leopold must be referring to the long term innate transfigurations bred into Transforming Animals, that intersection of transfiguration and creature care. "Yeah, Transforming Rabbits never had a fine 'How-To' guide after the novelty value wore off."

Although now that Sissel thought of it, what if it was bunny depression? Heck, next they'll be conferring with the foxy French/Asian counselor and then half of the whole damn castle would be in on a rabbit having performance anxiety.

"I knew it, the one time I have a job that leaves free time for a pet and I'm horrible at it. Happy four month anniversary, Sissel and Layton." He finally stopped pacing and sat. "Well, I don't teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays but then I haven't left time for...us, I admit. But would he be safe outside? There's the forest, the Whomping Willow, not to mention a bevy of predators." He didn't think the post owls hunted prey as large as rabbits. But there was that pure white Ravenclaw prefect, who even though she insisted she had gotten all she wanted from History of Magic, kept inquiring chats about old articles he had written on battle sites and historical hauntings. And she kept a freaking vulture outside!!

"I don't know if Hagrid has ever used the staff room," Sissel said, picturing the half giant filling a third of the room. He stepped up his appeal to Leopold. "But I know you can do something. Wouldn't it be better for Layton to have something to eat and that romp outside before seeing Hagrid, so he has an actual creature to examine? It's not as if you're changing him into something different. White, fluffy rabbit." Third year work, surely, once the students got rid of the whiskers. "You casting the spell should be enough to trigger his ability."

"I doubt he'd be in that much danger,"  Leopold insisted.  "Especially if you keep a close eye on him."  He didn't mention having heard about a former student, a young Hufflepuff, if memory served correctly, who had managed to accidentally take out someone's pet owl, while practicing his stupefy spells.  Granted he'd hit the bird while in flight, when he'd seen it out of the corner of his eye and cast thinking that it had been a pigeon and it had died on impact rather than from the spell but one couldn't be too careful.

"If you insist, I will cast the transfiguration or rather in this case the counter transfiguration but I will warn you that the spell is meant for use on a normal rabbit.  There may be unforeseen side affects.  Layton may loose his ability to turn into a hat.  As I said, I'm not a specialist in magical creatures." 

He took out his wand but before he attempted the spell, he wanted to try one other thing.  He reached out and tickled the hatband.  "Come on Layton,"  he crooned.  "Turn back and you can have a nice belly rub and a fun run in the long grass."

Sissel almost couldn't watch but he did anyway. Almost in that childish cover your face and peer out through the fingers method but he was a Hogwarts Professor now. At first he wasn't sure Leopold's spell had worked...

"Layton!" Cue one miserable looking bundle of damp white fur. Sissel held out the greens gingerly so the rabbit could chew ravenously with feeble strength.

"Thank you, well done." Sissel cupped the rabbit in crossed arms as it chewed. "Though he does look peaky. Might want to see Hagrid after all. Care to join me down to help explain?"

"I could use a walk,"  Leopold agreed, standing.  "If I stay in one place too long, these old bones like to settle in place." He examined the rabbit curiously.  "He seems exhausted, like he's been trying to transform but just couldn't push through.  Odd.  Then again, magical maladies aren't exactly my field.  Hagrid would definitely know more."

He was pleased that he's been able to help the young professor, who clearly was quite fond of his rabbit.   He hadn't been entirely certain that the spell would work on the magical Layton.  Now it just remained to see whether forcing the change would allow the rabbit to change back at will.  Then again, he had seemingly lost his ability to change at will to begin with.  Perhaps he was stuck being an ordinary rabbit until they figured out why he hadn't been able to change from hat to rabbit.

"Great." Sissel led the way out, where they would pass a few inner courtyards before entering one that would exit out to the grounds. Layton, in his hands, was catching up on lost vegetation.

"So, you've taught at Hogwarts before, correct?" Sissel asked as they walked.

"More years ago than I care to remember,"  Leopold answered.  "It was during the early years of Albus Dumbledore's tenure as Headmaster, which should give you a clue as to how long ago that was."  He shook his head.  "So many years gone by.  It's frightening when you think about it.  Chances are I have seem more days that I have left to see.  I can't help but think on days gone past and wonder if I've made a difference."

"Early days with Dumbledore. The stories you could tell, eh?" Sissel was going to have to get more information from him when his rabbit wasn't having anxiety.

Though this may just be from Sissel being young (early thirties was young his his book) there was something antiquated like only wizards were about Leopold Sandusky. He sure seemed to have a nostalgia streak longer than Sissel's.

"You've probably made a difference, depends on how long you had to teach. Which, come to think of it..." Sissel couldn't help but notice that any Year he taught that had a Transfiguration class before had grumbles of 'Ol' Dusty.' "How have you updated your approach between then and now?"

"My lips are sealed,"  Leopold said with a chuckle.  "I've always been of the opinion that teachers learn from their students almost as much as the students learn from the teachers.  One has to change with the times.  There was a day when it was possible to string up misbehaving students in the dungeons for an evening, to correct their behaviour.  Just try to do that to the next first year that gets lippy.  You'd be sacked in a heartbeat."

There was something about the young professor that reminded Leopold of his own son, even if his son was almost old enough to be Sissel's father.  He enjoyed the younger man's company and he looked forward to seeing him develop as a person and as a professor.  "Having an interesting time with your students?"

Ol' Dusty had a bit more steel to his mind trap than what the rumor mill suggested, they way he deflected answering Sissel directly. Now that was just going to make him more interested in the future, the chance to interview about some of Hogwarts earlier days, even if a century timespan was still 'current history' for wizards. But it felt close, the events that had happened at the school before he ever existed, or even before his parents had their education.

"I think I've got it all sorted out. Led the first years over almost every inch of the castle and grounds. The permitted parts, anyways. Classes involve a lot of detailed conversations so I don't have to lecture that much. I give them more freedoms than I think any previous students ever expected. They think History of Magic needs to be taught strictly or substituted by a droning ghost."

"That is an opinion I gladly dispute,"  Leopold said.  "History shouldn't be boring.  It is alive, dynamic.  What we are living today will be the history of a hundred years from now.  People are history.  They lived and died and people mourned them, just a s we live and we die and people will mourn us.  History isn't just a dry dusty list of facts.  It's magic."  The old man chuckled.  "I suspect I'm lecturing the graduates on that one.  All young history professors are passionate about their subject.  It's only when you get to my age that things start to wither."

"Dispute?" Odd choice of syntax given that Sandusky agreed with Sissel's interpretation of history. Dispute suggested he was about to debate the merits of keeping the subject stuffy. Sissel joined in with the chuckle. "Yes, that does make it History of Magic. It's not a bug everyone catches. Heck, I didn't until I got close to my levels."

Sandusky's word choice was certainly revealing. Sissel didn't deal with translations all that much but replacing or misspelling the wrong word when translating an ancient text got. You the proverbial buffalo to the chest, as Professor Flickwick had put it. "So the passion goes out of teaching when you get older?" Understandable. "How did that happen to you? Taught somewhere besides Hogwarts until you came back?"