Isla received a letter this morning from Johann, and had barely been able to eat her breakfast. She managed a couple of bites of scrambled egg and a gulp of orange juice. Usually she could eat enough to satisfy a small horse. Regardless of whether or not it was true, she felt Ignan's dark, evil, malevolent stare. He knew! And he was going to kill her!

So, she decided to take Johann's advice: GET HELP.

Professor Duerr seemed to be a nice, approachable woman. Isla wasn't in any of her classes, having chosen to take Muggle Studies and Care of Magical Creatures instead. She didn't have a head for numbers, but some of her peers really enjoyed the subject. The fact that Duerr was Johann's mother only made her more compelled to visit-- after all, she would be family soon, in a roundabout way.

"Professor?" Isla said, knocking on the door and peeking her head in. "I'm in trouble." She paused, "And my head hurts." That wasn't even a lie.

Thursday was perhaps the easiest day of the week for Professor Duerr. Her timetable had been well suited to part-timer, allowing her to come and go when she joined, going back to support her husband. But now she lived at Hogwarts, and filled her time helping students, studying her subject in a broader sense than her background in finance and improving her knowledge of teaching.

After breakfast she had retired upstairs to her rooms beside her classroom, with a quarterly arithmancy journal which had arrived for the Hogwarts library, and had poured another cup of tea and settled into an armchair. She had to teach the fourth years in an hour, so there was time.

When there was a knock at the door, and a voice, Professor Duerr looked over her glasses and lowered the periodical. She didn’t recognise the voice, but did recognise the face once it popped round her door, not waiting to be called.
“Isla?” Camille asked, getting to her feet. She was wearing a smart blue suit with a skirt, not out of place in the bank as she was in the classroom. She slipped her glasses off and approached the door, pulling it open to let the witch in. Her cloaks on the back of the door swished against it. Above the fireplace behind her, the stag in the Scottish landscape bellowed in the background.

“Come in, what’s the matter?” Professor Duerr asked, adopting concerned mother status in a split second.

Isla hardly knew where to start, tugging at the sleeve of her uniform. Professor Duerr was being so sweet. Like most of the staff here. Juli-- Professor Vaillancourt, Counselor Yukawa, Professors Donovan. Okay, maybe not Man Donovan. Man Donovan didn't seem to have an opinion on her either way, and he was patient with her slowness in regards to learning boring things. Sometimes, he looked like he was about to have a stroke when they were in the middle of a conversation. Isla suspected he had high blood pressure.

"Um." She looked up at Camille, eyes wide. "Well. Your son? He will be my cousin one day, probably." This she was confident on, "So he's family. And we write letters." She forgot to bring his letters!The evidence that she was indeed in trouble.

 "I called Professor Storm a greeze-gram. And Johann--" At least she could pronounce his name correctly, "He helped me with defenses." She paused, "He wrote my essay. And I edited it! But I turned it in and..." Her voice lowered into a fearful whisper, "I am going to die. Johann told me that we've been found out. And that I need to hide. "

“Your son?"
“Mm…?"

Conversations that began this way could go one of two ways. One, that Johann had done something intelligent and thoughtful, in which case Camille would be proud, or that he’d done something truly ridiculous, and she’d press a hand gently to her forehead and hope it wasn’t serious.
“Seems so.” Camille agreed with Isla’s observation on family, a fond smile on her face. Maybe this would be a good conversation - a happy one about family, and she might get to know Isla.

As Isla explained what she’d called Ignan, Camille’s eyebrows drew together, and she pressed one end of her folded glasses into the corner of her mouth in concern. Isla wouldn’t have learned that word independently, not unless she had been in the German dictionary in the library.
“‘Helped?’” Camille asked, verbally adding inverted commas around that word.
“He wrote my essay,”

Professor Duerr’s eyebrows now dropped away from each other in dismay. The corners of her mouth and her gaze dropped too. Johann! Misplaced wish to provide assistance no doubt. Always eager to impress. Tsk. Ignan must have recognised the style, she couldn’t doubt her older cousin’s experience there.
“Dear me.” She managed in response to the rest of Isla’s explanation. She reached out with her left hand and closed the door to her rooms properly, and then dropped it onto Isla’s right shoulder. “It sounds very serious indeed. Do you drink tea, Isla? I think tea is a very good drink for thinking around problems, come and sit down.”

She gestured for Isla to take one of the faded blue armchairs with embroidered runes which sat facing each other before the fire. The small round table between them held a pale china teapot, the Professor’s own cup of tea and the arithmancy periodical she had put down in surprise at Isla’s arrival. The stag in the landscape bellowed again, and dipped his head, displaying his impressive crown in vague greeting to Isla.

“And why do you think you are going to die, dear?”

Isla watched as Professor Duerr went from thinking they were going to have a wonderful talk to realizing just how badly she had messed up. Isla had completely ruined her academic career. Now she would be forced to live in the Forbidden Forest and send owls to Balfour, begging for food as she tried to live off of the land. And failed. Everybody knew that centaurs were hesitant about accepting humans, so she would be rejected from the only companions in the forest who could speak English.

She was working herself up, eyes watering though no tears were shed. Isla took a seat and accepted some tea, mumbling thanks before finally answering Camille's question.

"I'm going to die, because I'm stupid and he knows it. And he's mean. And he didn't like being called a greeze-gram and I SUSPECT that it's not a nice thing to call him." Her head was really hurting now, "He is not nice and he is not tolerant or forgiving. I will die. I told Johann to plan my funeral because I am a walking dead person now."

Professor Duerr listened carefully with a bit of a frown on her face. It wasn’t displeasure, it was simply because she struggled to keep up with English rapidly uttered by a distressed teenager. She had to concentrate. At least Isla did not indulge in too much slang.

“Ok, alright.” She spoke gently, “I will let you into a secret,” she gave Isla a reassuring, kind, smile. “Professor Storm is, what is the idiom, … bark is worse than his bite, my dear.” The Professor set aside her glasses on the table between them. “You have had a bit of help with your essay,” she shrugged dramatically, “you used a source not in your school library. You will not do it again. We all make a few silly decisions. Better an essay than in a duel!” She folded one leg over the other and smoothed her skirt, expression thoughtful.

“It means grumpy. The word.” She couldn’t help but grin. “And you have to admit, he is.” She could imagine her son’s terrible sense of humour, leading Isla astray. He would probably tell Isla he’d plan her a great funeral, as well. Rotten, but that terrible sense of humour that cousin Ignan also could indulge in (only with considerably less humour and more terror). “And as for dying, well, he has caught students doing far worse, and they still live.”

Isla gave Camille a look that was simultaneously skeptical and wary. Bite worse than his bark? She wasn't convinced.

With a shaky hand, she picked up her cup of tea and took a sip. Her dad always said that tea was the best thing to calm the nerves, but sometimes tea just made her feel bouncy and more shaky. Something about the caffeine. If warm drinks were a comfort, it'd be warm cider or cocoa.

The witch nearly choked when she heard what griesgram meant. Grumpy?!

"What?!" Isla sputtered, "I-- I didn't want to call him grumpy!" Not to his face! "Should I write a letter? Should I apologize? Oh no. No. Does he like chocolate?" Would a bribe work?!

“Well…” Professor Duerr began with a little shrug of her shoulders at Isla’s exclamation. “Chocolate?” Camille frowned a moment, “Not particularly, my dear...” Ignan didn’t have a sweet tooth, it wasn’t that he didn’t consume the puddings served up by the house elves, but he more often didn’t, as far as Camille observed. “He’ll survive. People call him worse things.” Camille assured Isla, and then reconsidered her phrasing, “I mean to say, you will survive.” She cringed a little. “He will have put two and two together and blamed Johann. Silly boy he is for putting you up to it. I don’t suppose he’s told you to call other people things has he?”

That sealed her doom. Ignan Storm was immune to bribery.

Maybe she would have to write him a letter. Or figure out what it is he really liked. Old men liked tobacco and whiskey.... Isla wondered if she could convince her dad to send her some to bribe gift him. The items were technically against the rules, but maybe there could be an exception here. After all, her life was at steak (which always seemed a weird phrase to Isla, because lives and steak had nothing much to do with each other. Perhaps it was a reference to a cow life lost for the enjoyment of humans?)

"I don't think he told me to call anyone else things..." The witch paused, "He's not going to get in trouble, is he? I think he was trying to be funny. I don't think he was being--" What was the fancy word for mean? She'd heard Alistair use it to describe the old Potions professor, "Nutritious." No, that wasn't it.  "Malicious?"

“Good.” Professor Duerr said quickly at Isla’s explanation that her son hadn’t told Isla to call anyone else anything.

“He’s not going to get in trouble, is he?” Isla asked, and quickly went to defend her near-enough cousin.

“Nutritious?” Camille echoed, trying the word, not one she’d used in English but “that’s food I think my dear.” She reached to a pile of nearby books, amongst it an English dictionary. “Yes. Malicious? Ooh, no, he is having a little joke at your expense. Terrible boy. He deserves the trouble he brings on himself for leading you on this merry dance.” Professor Duerr looked critically over her glasses at Isla. “I am his mother, I know my son. He should know better, my dear.”

She looked carefully up and down Isla with motherly concern.
“Now, mijn dochter, you look onwel,” the Professor’s languages switched back and forth with the similarities between the two in that sense. She sat forward and lay the back of her fingers against Isla’s forehead as if to check her temperature, and then to one of her cheeks. “You have eaten this morning, no?”

Oh, Professor Duerr was so sweet. Johann was lucky to have a mum who was straight out of a play. Or a radio show. Either way, she was wonderful, and Isla was just a little bit jealous.

They were on the same page though-- Johann was not malicious and probably not nutritious either. She would have to ask around to see how nutritious people were... But Johann, if she remembered, was a skinny guy. Not much meat on him. Not that Isla would ever resort to cannibalism, except in a case of dire desperation or starvation. She and Alistair had in depth conversations about this sort of thing.

Speaking of eating. Isla's brows furrowed together as she tried to puzzle out what it was that Professor Duerr was saying. Her accent got so thick sometimes.

"I--" Her stomach protested, "I had a couple bites of egg. But I was so nervous that I couldn't eat." And now she was regretting it.

“Nee!” Professor Duerr exclaimed, “No, that will not sustain a girl. It is no surprise your head hurts. All anxious and hungry.” She shook her head. “I will ask Gert to bring something.”

When Camille and Wolfgang had been happily married and living in Germany, they had gained Gert as house help. He’d stuck with them despite the terrible time on arriving in England. Wolfgang had threatened to sell Gert on for income, but with the events of that summer they’d not got that far. He had stuck with Camille as far as possible, though she’d never considered him to have the most charming of personalities. She much preferred the tenacity of Gerda, Ignan and Miranda’s elf. Since moving to Hogwarts last September, Gert had moved into the service of the school and his English wasn’t always the best. He’d come if Camille called, but generally she left him be, feeling he would at least be amongst his own kind. More than once she had considered giving him clothing, but one never knew what lay ahead.

“Gert!” Camille called, turning her head away from Isla to address the room, “What would you like to eat, Isla, dear?”

There was a pop and a dour looking house-elf appeared with green-grey skin. He was wearing and outfit that appeared to be constructed with black and white checked tea towels, and there were soap bubbles on the tip of one of his droopy ears.
“Herrin[1].” Gert greeted and bowed, before fixing two slightly yellowed eyes on Isla. He didn’t know her name so eyed her uniform. “… Hufflepuff,” he settled for.

"Oh good, Isla hasn't eaten any breakfast. Feeling under the weather. Would you fetch her some...?" Camille looked to Isla to complete the request.

1.

Mistress

Isla couldn't help it, she clapped with absolute delight at the appearance of Gert. She loved house elves, with their cumbersome ears and giant, bulbous eyes. The only thing she wished was that they wore more clothing. Imagine how cute they would be in Malkin's finest!

She assumed that "herrin" meant 'hello,' so of course she greeted him. "Herrin! Thank you for coming, I hope we're not bothering you." Isla wasn't sure if he was annoyed or if that was just how his face looked. Kind of like how Virgil always looked like he wanted to strangle you, but really what he wanted was a gentler sort of strangulation. A hug.

"Um, if it's not too much work could you get me some eggs? Toast maybe?" The Hufflepuff wasn't sure if this next request was too much, "Sausage?"

Gert eyed the smaller witch with suspicion, his long nose lowered. His yellowy eyes rarely seemed to blink as he stared at Isla. His manners and servitude meant he didn’t correct Isla’s greeting but merely chalked her down as one at the back of the queue when collecting her brains. Still, Herrin appeared fond of the little witch, and she had always been kind to Gert.

“… I hope we’re not bothering you…”

Gert blinked in surprise, and the one ear that could prick up curled upright, flicking the soap bubbles off it and onto the carpet where they quickly melted. The Hufflepuff had manners. A rare thing in this castle. Students always raiding the kitchens, demanding food. Bottomless holes. Gert had not been in service when Meister Johann had been a teenager, so he had nothing to compare it to. Professor Duerr observed the exchange with interest, a smile growing on her lips.

“… how… eggs?” Gert ventured to Isla and uttered quick, urgent apologies to the older witch in the language he was accustomed to speaking in.
“Oh! He just wants to know how you want your eggs my dear. Would you like some more tea? Seems your appetite has returned!” Camille beamed, while the elf waited for the polite Hufflepuff of strange brain to decide.

Somehow, Professor Duerr thought to herself, she imagined Isla might be feeling oddly unwell again by the time her lesson with Ignan began...



End