Tomorrow was Winnie's day of tutoring with Zoe. Winifred liked to practice the things they had already gone over the day before their sessions. It was a good way to boost her confidence. And even though it wasn't an actual class, Winifred often worried that Zoe would give her a pop quiz or something. She wanted to be sure that Zoe felt like the time was worth it, and if Winnie didn't practice Zoe might feel like it was a waste of time. It would be awful for them to go back and review, and Winnie have forgotten the first and second year spells they had worked together on.

She had found that Charms were the spells which came easiest to her. Transifguration spells were third. And Winifred struggled the most with Defensive spells.

Professor Storm had taught them a few hexes and jinxes in the past. A couple of them would be good to practice on her own. Winifred had decided to try Quasso[1] first. It was easiest to do alone. She could just aim it at a desk and not have to worry much. The worst that would happen would be the desk would fall apart...

Slipping into the unused classroom of the ground floor, Winifred shut the door behind her. She moved the desks to the edge of the room, except for one. She placed it against the far wall. Dropping her bag in an empty chair, she pulled out her and wand and book, then moved to the middle of the room. The spell was supposed to produce a flash of blue light. Her book's directions on the wand movement were a little confusing, but Winnie figured it would be easy enough to figure it out through trial and error- right?

Winifred practiced pronouncing the spell a few times. "KAY-soh." She looked at her book. No, that wasn't right. Queso was crisp dip. She should know that. Winifred loved them. "KWAY-soh." That sounded a little better. Winifred pointed her wand at the desk she had put on the other side of the wall. "KWAY-soh!" she exclaimed, flicking her wand at the desk. Instead of shaking violently, it levitated, spun around, then slammed against the wall. The legs fell off of it, then the entire desk clattered to the ground. Winifred winced. "Oh nooooo!" she wailed.

1.	Causes the target (person or object) to shake violently. If used on a person, can be countered with Consisto. Lasts approximately ten minutes.

Hogwarts had too many corridors, too many staircases that changed. Auberon was too proud a man to admit to be being lost; why, Durmstrang was this way too, after all, and he had no trouble there! Kept a man on his toes, didn't it? But it was rather annoying, especially when the stairs changed seemingly out of spite. Bloody things. Had this been Durmstrang, they'd have been controlled by something he could have whipped for cheekiness.

He found himself in a hallway on the Ground Floor and he walked it with a dark mutter, glaring at any students that happened to pass him by (except Durmstrang students, who naturally got a gruff but respectful nod).

It was during this that he heard a loud crash from a side room. He paused, debating if he should have a look; but Auberon was the sort of man who'd 'have a look' at the roars of a rabid lion, and so one measly crash didn't deter him much - indeed, it ignited his curiosity. He strode to the doorway, opening the door.

He vaguely recognized the student within, though no name came to mind; she was a conglomerate of her House, the slightly pudgy and intellectually hopeless lot of them. Auberon wondered why they kept that house around. It residents were either stupid, far too concerned with what other people thought, or worse - werewolves. He'd had just classed them as the rejection bin and been done with it.

A desk lay in pieces against the classroom wall, and the girl was looking at it hopelessly. Poor Storm, to have to deal with such useless children -

He stopped, and the seed of an idea took root in his mind. He smiled, slightly, and stepped into the room.

"Practicing magic, are we?" He asked, looking at the desk. "Repairo, is it?"

Winifred let out a muted yelp when the Durmstrang headmaster spoke. He had startled her. And he was a very, very scary man. How could he not be? He was in charge of Durmstrang. What is Professor Storm had sent him here to kill her! Oh no!

But his voice was... not as intimidating as she had thought. "N-no. I was p-practicing a jinx. Qu-Quasso." Winifred mispronounced it again, even as she said it to Auberon. "I guess, though, that Repairo would be handy, too." Especially since she had shattered that desk... Which had been completely on accident.

Winifred gripped her wind a bit tighter and took a step back, gaze shifting from Auberon to the desk. There was no way she'd be able to repair it with him in here. Winifred had managed to do a few simple repairs on her own while practicing. But when people were watching her, Winnie's wandwork capability plummeted.

"It...it wasn't supposed to do that, though," she motioned at the shattered remnants on the floor. "The book says it's juts supposed to, uh, shake. Not...fly around and explode." Winifred blushed a little, somewhat embarrassed. "Please don't tell on me!" she added. "I don't want to get detention for blowing up the desk! I was just practicing! I have tutoring tomorrow and I wanted to make sure I didn't hurt Zoe because I hadn't practiced!"

Auberon watched the girl flail with, he'd have to admit, a rather morbid kind of interest. Oh, a student like this would have been out of Durmstrang on her ear within hours, but to think Hogwarts worked so hard to accommodate them! Tch. Perhaps he needed a few - he could assign them to professors who'd crossed him.

"It's pronounced Quasso, I think you'll find," he said, though his German accent didn't quite help. "I have no intention of reporting you, girl. Do be calm." Hogwarts students destroying Hogwarts property was, frankly, a Hogwarts problem. Should she explode a desk and break a window on the ancient and stately galleon that belonged to Durmstrang, however, he would see justice done!

"Storm is teaching you jinxes, is he?" He asked, with plain interest. He leaned on one of the nearby desks, walking stick in his opposite hand. "Have you had much luck with the others he expects you to do?"

"Quasso," Winifred repeated quietly- the worged tinged with the German accent that the headmaster spoke with. So that was it! She was saying it wrong.

She raised a brow at him when he told her to calm down. She was calm! This was Winifred Oliver calm. "Can you fix it?" Winnie asked. "The desk I mean. You said you thought I was practicing repairo, will it fix the desk?" She moved to gather up the pieces as Headmaster Eisenberg continued talking, asking whether or not Professor Storm was teaching jinxes.

"Oh, no. These are beginner level jinxes," she said. Winifred went back to her book, to double check. "Yes. These say beginner. That means a first or second year student should do them. I can't do fourth year spells, though," she freely admitted. Winifred had come to terms with her poor spellwork by now. "You should have seen me when we tried to practice shield spells. It was awful. Most professors make me practice by myself, so that I don't hurt anybody."

Winifred pushed the desk pieces into a tighter pile. "It's my hardest class," she said. "I'm getting a lot better at Charms! And some better at Transfiguration. But Professor Storm's class is just really hard! And he's mean. And did you know that he's been trying to kill the students?" she asked. "Splinching and poisoning and everything. Nobody believes me but I know the truth."

She looked at the Durmstrang headmaster curiously then, narrowing her eyes. "He used to work at Durmstrang. Did you let him kill students, there, too? Sounds like something that would happen at Durmstrang."

Auberon wasn't sure if the girl was making a request or asking a general question. The answer to either was yes - Repairo would indeed fix the desk. He wasn't particularly inclined to do it, but he shrugged and drew his wand. With a hissed incantation, the desk snapped back together, wooden desktop meeting the wooded seat once again with a crack.

Beginner level jinxes, were they? He supposed they were. Auberon wasn't quite sure what constituted beginner level at Hogwarts; at Durmstrang, he'd never taught students below their 5th year, and even then he'd refused to teach Dregs. The students in his courses had always known plenty of jinxes. He himself...well. Obertiel from beginning to end! He'd taught himself Quasso and its like in his first year. That was how one got ahead at Durmstrang - talent! Effort!

He stroked his chin a moment, trying to imagine what one could do with shields to hurt someone. Judging from the desk, she caused a lot of explosions. How entertaining! Why didn't he have students like this at Durmstrang? Aah, he could have shoved her into Elliot's classes whenever the woman gave him lip. Or hoisted her on Maras!

"I doubt he's been trying to actively kill students," he said, though he wouldn't put it past Storm. "However, Durmstrang provides a more rigorous learning environment. Perhaps he is simply...bringing some of that to bear. He was an excellent teacher." Then he smirked, slightly conspiratorially. "Until I had to fire him, of course."

Winifred watched in awe as Headmaster Eisenberg repaired the desk with a simple flick of a wand. "Brilliant!" Winnie tapped on the desk, then hit it with her fist, excited to see it holding together as though she had never destroyed it in the first place. "Thank you very much, sir!" Maybe this Durmstrang fellow wasn't quite as horrible as she had expected after all. He seemed much more personable than Professor Storm and might actually be- dare she think it- nice?

"Yes, well, you haven't been here! He poisoned the seventh years and he splinched a first year and he got mad at me when I passed out on him. We were practicing Apparation and I was supposed to resist and I had never ever apparated before and I was afraid I'd get splinched. And so he apparated me and I fainted and then he made me do it again and I almost threw up on him. And then he was apparating with a first year and he splinched her- ON PURPOSE. And he's trying to murder all the students. I just haven't figured out a way to prove it yet. But I will," Winifred nodded resolutely. "But now that he is the Deputy Headmaster I can't be as vocal about my suspicions because I don't want to get into any real trouble. But I know he's out to kill us all."

Winifred had not missed his last sentence. That Auberon had fired Professor Storm. "Why'd you have to fire him?" Winnie asked. And why would Hogwarts hire a professor that had gotten fired from Durmstrang. It had to be really hard to get fired from there! Cause that place didn't care if you went about murdering students! "Did he murder a fellow professor?" Winnie asked. "I'm sure he deserved it- whatever the reason. You seem like a perfectly reasonable person to me, Headmaster. And much nicer than I'd expected."

Ignan had been scaring students? Well, after the class with him before, that wasn't surprising. But oh, the ways she described! How interesting. He'd have to look at this more closely, wouldn't he?

But he did miss having Storm at Durmstrang. The man had been so fun to torture! But he could give him a taste of home right here at Hogwarts, couldn't he? And the girl in front of him as a wonderful opportunity to do that.  He looked at her in surprise, his eyebrows rising and his tone serious and worried. It wasn't a hard act to put on; all he had to do was imagine that Storm was breaking the Hogwarts castle, too, and think about the bill he'd gotten for the damages Storm had left on his.

"Has he, now? That is worrying," he said, stroking his beard. "There were quite a few very...suspicious injuries in his classes at Durmstrang, I admit." The girl didn't need to know that injury was perfectly normal in the courses Storm had taught - Auberon's own students had often wound up maimed. "I had merely thought he was a bit...over enthusiastic."

He looked up when she asked, and he sighed. "Oh, nothing quite so exciting as he's been up to here," he said. "He and a student were practicing experiential spells - a very dangerous practice. There was an explosion that severely damaged one of the towers - bent it, you see." There wasn't much harm in inflating the story just a bit, now was there? "There were quite a very injuries, though no deaths, thank Merlin. The damage cost us quite a bit to repair and we had to replace quite a few priceless items."

He smiled slightly at her words of praise. "From what you say, though, perhaps Hogwarts has brought about..something different in him. What you describe is certainly not out of Durmstrang practice, but we usually have safety measures in place." He'd had a hole box of bandages laying about in case someone got maimed, after all, and a freezer for severed limbs! "Perhaps he's found himself a wolf among sheep, hmm?"

Winifred's eyes grew wide. "Mysterious injuries?" she repeated quietly, hanging onto Auberon's every word. Over enthusiastic! Mysterious, even for Durmstrang? No wonder Professor Storm had gotten fired! How had he ever gotten hired by Hogwarts? And now he was Deputy Headmaster! And he could go around killing students without anybody asking too many questions!

He even bent a tower! Injuries on a mass scale! "Thank Merlin my dormitory is in a dungeon!" Winifred exclaimed. Imagine if she was a Gryffindor and Professor Storm bent her tower while she was in it!

Durmstrang had saftey measures? Maybe they weren't as tough as she'd thought! "Maybe he is! I've been telling everyone for ages that he's dangerous but nobody believes me! They just think he's a strict old man or something, I guess. Some students even like him!" She shivered at the possibility.

"You could help warn people, Headmaster Eisenberg! If you said stuff like that, then people might actually believe me! If enough ruckus was caused, maybe they'd fire him! And we could get a professor who isn't vicious and dangerous!"

Auberon decided not to say there were ways to easily ruin a dungeon, as at this point Winifred was clearly wound up enough - he wasn't going to have her trying to sleep outside or something. There'd be questions if she took it that far. But, that said...well, the dungeons were under the lake. Wouldn't be hard to destroy them, would it?

"Indeed," he said instead. "Unfortunately, it's not quite that easy." He shifted slightly, showing for a moment a mask of uncertainty. "Tournament politics, you see. I can't do much without incidents and witnesses - otherwise it'll look as though I'm acting purely in the interests of my own school. The man has already declared his loyalty to Hogwarts, and without incidents that the other Headmasters and schools oversee..."

He stroked his chin, looking thoughtful. "If there was someway to draw him out - some sort of routine incident that he overreacts to. That'd be cause enough to raise objections."

"Oh, yes, you're right. It would be realy awful if the other schools thought you were out to destroy Ignan or Hogwarts. That'd be pretty awful." Especially since Headmaster Eisenberg seemed to be so very kind and incredibly reasonable.

Winifred- never the brightest bulb in the box- didn't quite follow what he meant as he suggested there was a way to draw him out. Routine incident? She had no idea what he was on about.

"I don't know. I guess maybe it's not that easy," she shrugged. "I just can't wait until i don't have to take his class anymore. Because I'm so very bad at it and he can be so very mean. He fusses a lot. And he's got this mean death stare like he wants to drown you in lava." Winifred crossed her arms and mocked a shiver.

"If he could get away with it, I'm sure that I would probably end up having an accident of some sort. But at Hogwarts you can't get away with stuff like that! And  my uncle Archer is an auror, so he'd definitely do a big investigation. He knows how many teachers here don't like me. He bought me a foe glass last year. It doesn't really work though. Cause nothing ever shows up in it. I really need to buy a new one!"

He watched her again, silent as the girl spoke. A foe glass? He hadn't heard of a new one breaking or being inaccurate. Perhaps the girl had gotten a very rare foe glass that was, indeed, broken...or she had no true enemies.

Auberon looked at Winifred and came to the conclusion it had to be the first of those scenarios. Surely a student like this one must have a teacher who hated her just that much? But perhaps Hogwarts, in its softness, embraced all sorts. Ah well.

"Perhaps I could offer you a deal?" he asked, speaking carefully - as if the idea had just come to him as he spoke. In reality, he'd been pondering it since he saw her skills - or lack there of - but there was no reason for the girl to know that. It'd certainly make all his setup for naught, wouldn't it?

"If we're to catch him, Storm needs to slip up - reveal himself for the violent man he is. To do incite his wrath  purposefully would be a dangerous task," he said, gravely, clearly outlining a mission of the utmost importance. "If you'll forgive me - you seem the best choice. Your issues with magic -" he waved a hand at the desk, "Are clearly not the fault of a lax or lazy student, but of genuine struggle with your talent. What true professor could fault you for such? Storm would reveal himself as the non-suitable teacher he is if he cannot handle such a student, yes?"

Leaning against the desk, he drummed his fingers. "But it would be dangerous. Perhaps I can offer you an incentive?" He raised an eyebrow. "5 galleons every time you disrupt his classes, hm? Accidentally, of course."

She hung on Auberon's every word as he hatched and outlined his plan to her. Incite Professor Storm's wrath on purpose! Winifred looked at him, mouth agape. Dangerous wasn't even the word for it! Winifred didn't want to die as a fourth year! She had so much living to do! Handsome, older boys to properly snog!

Her misgivings were quickly assuaged when he offered monetary compensation for her troubles. Five whole galleons? For every time she disrupted his classes? Wow! That was... tons of galleons!

Winifred's family wasn't very wealthy. Her father was an unemployed sqiub. Her mother worked with muggle affairs, but didn't make a particularly hefty salary from it. And with three children to take care of, money didn't go far. She'd never seen five galleons at once, much less had the possibility to earn them on her own.

She had Defense class a few times a week! She could make... gosh... Fifteen or more galleons a week from this plan. That was more money that she knew what to do with! And if she disrupted class just twice a period... Well, death seemed less scary at the prospect of becoming rich while ferreting a murderer out of Hogwarts.

"So what exactly counts as a disruption?" she asked- the greedy part of her mind wondering exactly how specific the terms of this arrangement would be.

That was, admittedly, a good question. Auberon, who was glad the offer of money had clearly addressed any worries the girl hand, tilted his head in thought.

"Finding ways to do your assignments badly, but still staying within the bounds of the project," he said. "If he asks you to Banish something, banish it and accidentally have it break something; if he asks you to practice jinxes..."

He paused and waved a hand at the now non-exploded desk. "Have your jinxes and hexes misfire. Anything that would come across as completely accidental, but will frustrate him. Things that he, as a proper teacher, cannot punish you for, since you can defend yourself as either misunderstanding his criteria, or simply making a mistake."

He rubbed his beard. "I am sorry if that is nonsensical - English is not my best language."

"I think you speak english quite well, Headmaster," Winifred said with a bright smile. "And I can manage to do all of things! Without even trying most of the time!" She wasn't quite sure, though, how her being bad at class was going to help them get Storm out of Hogwarts. But Winifred trusted most adults, and since the headmaster of Durmstrang had shown her so much kindness and seemed to be a gentle, good hearted fellow she was going to lump him among the trusted authority figures in her life.

Winifred twirled her wand thoughtfully. That was a lot of money she could make, just by being herself. And doing a good deed in the process. "You really are like a knight in shining armor! And to think- everyone thought you were going to be just absolutely dreadful and evil and all that stuff because you come from Durmstrang!" His students still were all of those things. "It's a shame your good nature hasn't rubbed off on your students," she told him.

"Right. So. How do I report to you?" Winnie asked. "Once a week? Like getting a paycheck?" She could probably bathe in galleons before this was over with. "We should probably be very secretive about all this. If it got out, I would get into lots of trouble, I think. Especially since Storm is the deputy head here at Hogwarts. He could probably expell me! I don't want that. Especially since I am finally getting better at most of my classes!"