Shelves of tightly packed tomes towered over Aileen's office, reaching into the dark shadows of the ceiling, and circling around  to the window pouring light onto the desk, where the Runes professor silently worked over her desk. Dust wafted in the waning rays of the morning falling into the subdued room. Aside from the scratching of a quill, no other noises disturbed the musky old office--until the door opened.

A sizzling hum cracked against thick leather while water lightly tapped against the office, before bare feet carried the tall fourth year into the office with her long dark curls dampened and flattened against her neck and back, and the skirt of he dress acted as if it were glued to her crop leggings. She was dripping save for the boots she carried that were clearly singed and giving off a small thread of smoke. Only her scaley python bag and sleek black journal were dry, clean, and immaculate--save for the occasional grumbling  growl from her bag--but it had been like that since her first year at Hogwarts when she let her brother get ahold of it.

But Naomi strolled up to Aileen and put her shoes down on the desk. The witch's lips were puckered together with disappointment and doubt as she finally spoke, "So I was working on my Runes project," her lilting voice began before it casually began to race through her story, "Was messing with fireplaces--found a neat floo system--but it took me to weird parts of th' castle and I t'ink some of th' Runes in whichever fireplaces I landed were damaged--so--" Naomi finally paused to gesture at her boots, finally allowing air to flow through her lungs, "'Dese boots got ruined. Mother's boots."

Naomi huddled her shoulders together as her lovat eyes pleadingly looked at her professor, "I've tried to patch 'dem up, but I t'ink its got somet'ing to do with Runes--if I don't fix it she's going to kill me, Aileen," an entirely plausible conclusion considering her family, "Its made from tebo hide an she loves 'dem, I need help fixing 'dis."

Then, as a lingering afterthought, Naomi gently unlatched her notebook and turned it towards Aileen without a hint of concern, "And that's my project..." After a moment's pause Naomi rolled her lips as her eyes wandered over to a bookcase before landing back on Aileen with a feeble, "Er, professor."

Despite the quiet in the office, Aileen was anything but calm, distractedly scratching out phrases and symbols on parchment while eying the letter from her mother that had arrived early this morning. It perched on the corner of the desk, two breaths away from toppling over. With a flourish, she flipped over the parchment in her hands and watched with satisfaction as the movement caused the letter to flutter, then drift into the rubbish bin. Ha!

Despite her small victory, Aileen could not stop Naomi from making an entrance and setting her smoking shoes - her shoes! - on the desk. She half-stood and opened her mouth, pausing in stunned irritation when she saw the girl dripping water on the rug. This pause was the only thing that saved Naomi from the scolding of her life, because before Aileen knew it, the Slytherin had launched into a 'poor me' rant.

Aileen put her hands on the desk and leaned forward, listening with a pursed mouth and ever-arching eyebrows.

"Yes. Professor is the correct title."

She looked at the shoes on her desk, then looked at Naomi, and tilted her head as if to say 'really?'. Aileen let out a sigh, plucked the boots with her index finger and thumb, and set them on the floor in front of the student.

"Clearly, the shoes are our first priority," she said dryly, moving behind her desk to put away the parchment and twist the cap back on the ink. Aileen took her sweet time doing this, only to prove that Miss Foley was not the center of the universe (only one person in the office could hold that title).

“I have seen worse,” she glanced over the damage. “They aren't beyond repair.” Aileen offered her a hint of a smile, her first today. When the door had opened, she'd almost hoped someone she actually wanted to talk to had remembered her birthday, but sadly, it was a student in a crisis. Though at least Naomi was working on her project like she was supposed to be.

"So, tell me what happened again? What kind of runes did you see on the fireplaces? When did these get scorched?" She began flipping through the notebook Naomi had handed her in case she'd written down something that would help.

In response to Aileen's head tilt, Naomi helplessly shrugged her shoulders--if Naomi had set them on the floor then Aileen would either move them or want a better look at the shoes, and if she held them up for her then Aileen would want them out of her face--there was no use trying to please her, she was too much of a pureblood.

And then Godric, Aileen was such a slowpoke--but she was also the woman helping her fix her shoes, and also her runes professor, so Naomi quietly rolled her lips together and stared at the ceiling, then the bookcases, contemplating what she could touch to set off any given security spell in the room (without getting injured).

Then finally, before the temptation to annoy Aileen overrode here patience, the professor began talking to her and Naomi
gave a smile of relief as Aileen said she'd seen worse. Naomi sat down in a chair across the desk and  pursed her lips into a contemplative pout, "Well, I was up a little early, so I went to work 'fore anyone could bug me," or up most of the night messing with her project, "And I was looking for runes of how th' fireplace work, but it uses patterns from cracks in 'di stone as a cover of some sort and the runes are beneath it, so I haven't figured 'dem out but," "I found an old fireplace 'dat revealed 'di runes underneath--"

Naomi opened her folder and revealed a rough schematic of what the runes looked like and where most of them could be found on the fireplace, "Kauna was at 'di top and raido was at the bottom--fire and traveler. Those two are just a design made up of a celtic weave of pictures, which are made up of, smaller versions Ingwaz and Thuriaz--in context it looks like harmony and chaos," Naomi rolled her shoulders up to her ears in a half-shrug as her lilting voice rambled on, "and d'en those made up of perth, ehwas, othila naudiz, and jera."

She finally took a subdued breath as she turned the folder towards Aileen, "A lot of it was old and faded, but I started fixing it in random places--but it'd activate some sort of internal floo network and I'd get put into an old fireplace in some old part of 'di castle." Her voice started to slow as she finally got to, what she thought, was the relevant part of the story, "On about the 4th time I got lost my boots started smokin', and I was in an old and crumbling rune and fell into some deep puddle 'dat went out to the lake--," the young with leaned back in her chair as she rolled her lips together and looked down at her shoes, still sizzling, "Guess my boots didn't catch fire, but can't swim wit' 'dem on, but they won't stop sizzling,"

She wiggled her toes and continued, "Instead of messing wit di' runes anymore I just swam out into the lake" she shrugged and her voice lightly hummed, "And now I'm here." Well that wasn't the whole story, but Naomi was sure if she brought up the other reason she was here to see the Runes professor Aileen wouldn't stay on the topic too long before wondering if Naomi was hiding some clever joke.

"It's a good thing you can swim, then," Aileen commented mildly, a bit amused by the whole story despite herself. And she wasn't saying that to be sarcastic. The last thing she needed was a student drowning in a puddle because of a project she'd assigned... she could just picture Myrtle and Foley conspiring against her in her own Runes classroom, one wailing and the other making smart-arse comments about her singed shoes.

She shook her head of that thought, set Naomi's notebook on her desk, and picked up the boots a second time. The majority of the smoke emanated from the soles of the shoes, so Aileen moved to open the door of her office a crack, and then she moved toward the window, still silent. If she could make the student roll her eyes up to the ceiling again, she was winning.

In the sunlight, she found what she was looking for.

"Do you see here?" She gestured at the girl to come take a look at the bottom of the shoes, where a thin line had lit up, attracted to the sun's rays[1]. "Kauna transferred to the bottom of your boots while you were exploring the floo system. Old runes can be finicky sometimes. Especially if they're used to being left alone for decades," she smirked. Possibly centuries.

"You can erase runes with another, temporary rune," Aileen reminded her. "In this case, a combination of runes would work best." She handed the shoes back to the student and raised an eyebrow. "What would you use?"

Now that Miss Foley knew what had happened to her boots, she'd likely be able to work it out with only a little help from Aileen, and after they stopped the source of the sizzling, they could more easily get rid of the scorch marks.

1.	Looks a bit like this: <

• "It's a good thing you can swim, then,"

The comment weighed on Naomi's mind for a moment, and her green stare suspiciously flitted over the professor's desk before returning to cast an arched eyebrow and tilted look of faint confusion at Aileen. If Naomi couldn't swim then she would have made her own abrupt comment about how she'd done everything over the summer except swim--but, of course, the Slytherin loved to swim and did so quite easily. So, for once (due to much effort put in from a certain Salem professor and occlumency lessons) Naomi refrained from commenting--but she did continue her suspicious stare as Aileen shook her head and continued her runic investigations.

Aileen then left the desk and began silently and slowly wandering around the room--Naomi admired Aileen's meticulous nature, and appreciated it greatly, but the sizzling of the boots grated the young witch's nerves. Rather than express her own frustration the witch began to poke and pester her snake-skinned bag which gave a few grumpy and testy growls while Naomi casually turned her damp head of hair to casually see (and possibly learn from) what the professor was doing, until Aileen finally called her to attention.

Naomi slid herself up and out of the damp chair as she took a few long strides towards the window and next to Aileen to look at the soles of her boots, where a glowing arrow pointed out towards the horizon. As Aileen held the boots and continued to explain the problem to her, the younger witch played with the foot of the boots to watch the arrow move and change its angle, which always pointed towards the sun's rays of light.

"Decades," Naomi repeated from her curious trance. She hadn't even hit her second one--but she wondered if Aileen saying that on her birthday made the professor feel older, or, if all time spent with mummies and ancient artifacts made her immune to such thoughts--though the witch could hardly continue her own thoughts because she suddenly had an armful of boots again and was posed a question.

• "What would you use?"

Of course it wouldn't be so terribly simple as hoping Aileen would do it herself--but this was the demeanor and expectancies Naomi was raised on and so the Slytherin thoughtfully pursed her lips as she turned her boots to inspect their soles. As the ends of her damp hand finally began to dry with some fluffy locks, Naomi's eyes lazily looked at her bag and Aileen's desk.

"Well... Could use a centered design," Naomi stepped back towards the desk and flopped her shoes back on top of it as she swished back into her chair and poked her bag, which yawned open to let her begin rummaging through it. She was  busying herself with answering the question rather than looking to see if any of her mannerisms had bothered her professor, else she might crack an obvious smile,  "Draw some lines spiraling out from an outline of a Laguz rune," Naomi plucked out a small bottle of some spider silk ink and a soft-tipped scalpel, "--and 'den could connect 'di lines wit' a circle of Halgaz runes wit' a circle of Ingwaz runes outside of it, to make it controlled."

Naomi fingered the scalpel in one hand and unbottled the stick ink as she looked up to let her gaze rest on Aileen with an arching eyebrow, waiting for some signal to continue or looking for some signs of being annoyed at the boots again.

Aileen ignored Naomi's curious looks and the grumbling from the bag as she explained the issue, and was rewarded when the student deigned to stand and inspect the boots herself.

Then Miss Foley did the unthinkable. Aileen let out one of her long-suffering sighs, settling back in her chair and narrowing her eyes at the girl from over the boots that sizzled on her desk once again.

"Mmhmm," she nodded at her theory. From the look on Aileen's face, Miss Foley might as well have just babbled gobbledegook while sprinkling the soles with doxy drool.

"Before you begin," she flicked her wand, causing the boots to hover in the air a few inches.

"That's better." Aileen's expression became more pleasant. "Now, in this case, I would use Sowilo instead of Hagalaz when you create a circle of runes. As I'm sure you've noticed, Kauna is pointing toward the sun. If you surround it with Sowilo," the sun rune, "It won't know which direction to point, and it'll spin around, losing its power more quickly. Kauna, as a fire rune, needs to be depleted gradually," she advised her.

"Go ahead and start with a circle of Sowilo, wait a few minutes, and then create a circle of Ingwaz and transform Kauna into Laguz."

One could hope that, like the rune they were trying to dispel, waiting a few minutes would not cause Miss Foley to self-combust.

At the hum Naomi looked up to see a very odd look plaguing Aileen's face.

The witch's dark brows rose as her head slowly and curiously tilted towards her shoulder, but, as soon as her head fell to the side, realization glinted in the witch's eyes and she slowly turned her gaze towards one of the bookcases and quickly rolled her lips into each other before sealing them in place with a firm bite.

Once Aileen finally levitated the boots, Naomi had just summoned every ounce of will she had to prevent herself from laughing and was somewhat oblivious to the floating footwear. Now that the young Slytherin heard the professor's calm and composed voice begin again, Naomi churned her face back towards the professor with frizzy damp curls falling around a wide close-lipped smile.

As Aileen's words finally registered Naomi's smile fell away as her lovat stare dropped onto the floating shoes and then contemplatively rose to look at the older witch again, "Kay..."

The dark-skinned witch sounded doubtful but she quickly pop the lid of the sticky ink and began artfully and quieting drawing on the soles of her shoes until she began finishing circles of Sowilo on each sole. "If I said..." her voice began to lilt through the air as she finished the last rune and sat up straight for a few minutes, "'Dat 'dis seems easy--" Naomi's eyes floated up to catch Aileen's gaze, "--relatively." An eyebrow arched above the witch's gaze--the word could be taking for its meaning or as a literal pun, either way the word was an apt and vague enough descriptor for the events that occurred over the past handful of months they'd known each other.

"Do you t'ink I would jinx it?"

Naomi's shoulder rose to meet her chin as she let her gaze wander around the room for the next few minutes. Finally, she finished off the soles of her shoes with a circle of Ingwaz and watched the burning Kauna calmly melt to Laguz. Then the sizzling finally stopped.

The young witch sighed a content smile as the shoes were saved from one perilous problem of the day.

Miss Foley's attempts to hide her amusement only made it more obvious to Aileen, but it wasn't as irritating as it normally was. They seemed to have reached a point this fall of mutual understanding, and dare she say it, respect. Though Aileen still remembered that day Naomi and Abby had foolishly tried to break into her office, and the misadventures Miss Foley had initiated in Egypt, she had forgiven those incidents and acknowledged, with a secret pride, that the girl sitting before her was a true Slytherin. Not a mean one, like Aileen had been. Merely a sneakily rebellious one, which would be better for her in the long run.

She quirked an eyebrow and shook her head slightly. That was her answer. It was easy enough once the student listened to the expert on these things.

Sure enough, the runes worked, the sizzling stopped, and the student actually smiled.

"See? It didn't take so long," she teased her. "Now, to clean these up so your mother would never know..."

She'd had more practice than she'd like getting nasty things off of good shoes. Camel spit. Sand. The crushed hearts of men.

Aileen stood to look over the scorch marks, then waved her wand in a few seemingly complicated gestures, combining Scourgify with other tricks she'd learned along the way. The gray hide soon looked new again, devoid of black marks and scuffs, soft and shiny and smelling slightly of Tebo.

Finished, she sat again, and let the boots fall gently to land on her desk. Aileen looked at the student and smirked. Was she a cool teacher or what? 

Rather than have Naomi find some rune combination to more effectively clean her boots, Aileen went ahead and took care of the scorch marks that so ominously decorated them--and even went so far as to make them look like new. She took the moment to look up at Aileen as she finished and gave her a small smile in return. Efficient and practical. She should give Aileen all her shoes to fix up. (Though asking to learn her trick might be more realistic.)

Naomi plucked the shoes off the table and inspected them further and she even considered putting them back on, but she was still a little damp and her socks weren't the least bit comfortable. So the Slytherin gently placed the shoes on the floor and by her feet and then sat up and opened her bag, which yawned out a thin black box.

"Here," the girl handed it to Aileen as if she were just turning in a homework assignment, but inside the box Aileen would find some clever and intentionally confusing words written on the black back of a birthday card that sat next to a device her father made (with a card of instructions included.) When Aileen turned the card over to the front to see a female video game heroine climbing and swimming from one fading picture to the next, Naomi was absolutely positive Aileen would be baffled. But since she lives in a muggle neighborhood she should know these things, so hah!

"Abby sent me letters saying she t'ought it'd be fun if I used her voice to sing birthday songs around the castle all day," Naomi's gaze wandered to the window as she added with a tone of a small sigh of sarcasm,"But 'dis seemed less annoying."

The witch then turned to look at her bag which then spat out the stack of letters (mostly songs) which Naomi had just described, "But if you want," Naomi's voice suddenly took on a much more chipper and higher tone which mimicked Abigail Reid's own voice, "I could still sing them for you."

As Aileen waited for a thank you that never came, she began to feel a bit offended. She watched the student set her newly cleaned shoes on the ground and then poke around in her bag. The Slytherin handed her something with a blunt ‘here’. Aileen took it with pursed lips.

“These can’t be another pair of shoes," Aileen noted dryly, making a show of turning the box in her hands. "Are these socks you’d like me to clean?” She wondered in an overly helpful, cloying voice. “Or do they have holes. Shall I find my needle and thread-"

Aileen swallowed her words when she opened the box to see a circular metal device, full of intricate swirls and gears. Her eyebrows drew together as she plucked out the object, shooting Naomi a look that was both suspicious and disbelieving. When would the doxies fly out of a secret compartment and attack her office? This had been going too well.

Then she found the card. A birthday card. Turning it over in her hands with, if possible, more suspicion, Aileen only glanced up when Miss Foley spoke.

"Such a gracious offer, but no, that won't be necessary." Her words sounded lightly sarcastic as she recovered from her surprise.

"I should have known Abby would put you up to this." Yet Aileen couldn't hide the touch of gratefulness in her tone.

Though she intended on looking at the gift more closely in a moment, she was still confused by the card. "Who is this?" She pointed at the buxom woman, not quite making the connection to the tomb-raider description on the back. Why there was a muggle pin-up model on her birthday card... Merlin, if Maiko had been talking about her to the students, they were going to have words. Words!

Aileen's sudden sarcasm made a throaty giggle tickle the Naomi's throat. She then held her hand over mouth, weakly hiding a smile while the professor let herself succumb to confusion and disbelief. Despite the continued teasing from Aileen, Naomi continued feeling rather smug, and her lips only pursed into a larger smile, showing off the white of her teeth.

"Welll she didn't put me up to burning my mom's boots, if your implying so," But even if Abby had only dropped a little hint and a date, Naomi would have still done something. But it was somewhat flattering and convenient for someone to think it took a pile of letters and nonsense to get the Slytherin to do anything in general. Her parents and siblings operated under a similar assumption, and it was also an amusing ordeal to go through---naturally, Naomi didn't mind if Aileen decided to do so as well.

• "Who is this?"

Naomi's green eyes landed on Aileen for a moment before the younger witch decided to speak again, "You live among muggles and you don't know who 'dat is?" Of course Aileen didn't. Naomi only knew as a product of watching so many muggle films her parents had to transfer the films onto a magical medium. Then she only knew more because Blake collected a silly amount of comic books and she'd look through before. But she was still mad at Blake, so she hadn't done so lately, "You both have 'di same luck when it comes to taking on some project," she hugged her shoulder to her cheek as she added with a devilish growl, "--it always gets ridiculous."

Naomi gave her professor another smile before she rolled her shoulders back and looked down at her feet, "Though she's just fiction," she stretched her toes apart before she turned to look back up at Aileen, "And she doesn't wear many clothes--muggles are liberal about... action-adventure heroes and clothes."

Aileen had never seen Miss Foley look so amused. She had to give the Slytherin credit for stating it outright – her projects did get a bit ridiculous, but so did Miss Foley’s. Perhaps sizzling shoes and rebellious shabtis weren’t quite on the same level as undead mummies and cursed daggers, but Aileen took solace in the fact that a certain fourth-year seemed to be following in her ridiculous footsteps.

“I see,” her mouth twitched up. “Real heroes needn’t bother with practicalities like clothing and sun potions, is that it? Here's to hoping she can defeat evil forces with the sheer force of her-” Aileen glanced at the photo. Cleavage. “Charm.”

The comparison was oddly sweet. This was one card that she would not be throwing into the rubbish bin alongside her mother’s dinner party invitations.

As she set down the card and lifted the device out of the box with care, she felt funny accepting something so nice from a student. Yet she’d feel even stranger giving it back.

Aileen turned the device over in her hands, too proud to look at the instructions right away. Luckily, the student knew her preferences well enough not to give her a muggle gift to match the card. Aileen tapped the front and the cover retracted, showing the lens and the dials, and after turning the outer dial, she nodded. Very clever. Holding it closer to her face, the professor pretended to inspect it, and then snapped an image of Miss Foley.

The device whirred softly, and then the girl’s face appeared in the lens, obscured by wavy lines. Aileen glanced at her and let out a chuckle.

Not at all what the device was meant to be used for, but Merlin, she had to get her kicks in somehow.

Aileen's assessment of the lack of clothes made a smirk twist at the corner of Naomi's lips, though the professor's need to glance at the photo right before the word 'charm,' made the Slytherin purse her lips with curiosity. For some reason the curly-haired witch felt much more comfortable not knowing what thought came before 'charm.'

A soft smirk loosened Naomi's lips into a soft smile as she watched Aileen play with the device--doing a much better job than Naomi had with her father's various test runs on the device. Though, the young witch supposed Aileen had dealt with much more complicated things in her adventures. On the back of the chair, Naomi folded her arms together and then lowered her chin down to rest on them as her idle sea-green gaze watched Aileen inspect the device and...

"Hey..." Naomi's head rose from rest as some delayed suspicion decorated her features, "Don't use it on my face," the logic here was that it was made for other, more useful things, but Aileen probably was already aware of that, so Naomi used a much more immature level of reasoning as she rose from her seat to peer at the device, "I look awful."

Naomi twisted a dark slender finger into one of her heavy frizzy curls before pulling at it, in what she was sure was a futile effort at this point, "Now you're going to have a mark on 'dere for a bunch of random awful pictures of people," Naomi couldn't help the smile twitching at the corner of her lip, "Better not let Abby get ahold of  it now--she'll flood it."

Aileen rolled her eyes up in a fair imitation of the student to show her what she thought of her ‘I look awful’ statement. Was Miss Woolfolk suddenly in front of her? No, just another teenager concerned about her looks.

Of course, she’d been the exact same way at her age. Still was!

“I doubt that will be a problem. As soon as I mention it’s for boring old runes, she won’t come near it.”

Aileen smirked back, then hesitated, hoping she wouldn’t embarrass them both.

“Thank you, Miss Foley. This is lovely,” she told her sincerely, setting the device down next to a glass pyramid paperweight and a quill stand. A place of honor on her usually uncluttered desk.

“Just don’t make a habit out of surprising me like this,” she returned to teasing her. “It’s not as if you need it to boost your grades.”

Yes, luckily for Miss Foley, any misbehavior in Egypt or with Abby was unrelated to the actual mark she received for Runes. That was Aileen's way of saying well done. It was also her way of letting her know that she appreciated the gift, but wouldn’t expect (or even want) anything for the holidays or next October.

Besides, next October she’d be thirty-five, and it’d be better if that one flew under the radar.

At the imitation, Naomi crossed her arms together and raised an eyebrow at Aileen, clearly not amused by this. But, at the witch's smirk, Naomi huffed an airy chuckle through closed teeth as she looked away for a moment--sometimes Aileen made her feel like they were always in school... which was currently the case.

The Slytherin let her hands fall to her hips as she looked back and Aileen, and then  he moved over to he desk and shuffled her things back into her journal and folders before she slid them over to her bag, which promptly devoured the items. The Slytherin then bent over to pick up the shoes just as Aileen thanked her.

Sea green eyes slowly lifted to look up at Aileen, half-shaded in awe at the compliment. The following jest made Naomi twist her lips around another smirk as she lifted her shoes from the floor, "No..." Naomi then shrugged the pair of boots over to one arm before a humble grin carved a wicked place on her lips, "just makes it more amusing for next time." Naomi slid her bag onto her shoulder before she spun on her heel and walked towards the door. Whether or not 'next time' would involve a simple present or more sizzling shoes Naomi left up in the air... Maybe she could get more shoes.

She then opened the door and casually leaned back to pass Aileen a final wish, "Happy Birthday, Ail..." the Slytherin quickly rolled her lips together, she had no time-turner for that one, "een--" Naomi finished her sentence with caution but a devilish tone had crept into her tone before she merrily added, "See you later professor!" And then Naomi swiftly closed the door and left the Runes professor to her silly card.