by Faith Accompli
Disclaimer: Characters mostly Rowling's. Some belong to other people.
It was a cool September morning, the very last they had before the students would once again invade Hogwarts, and Professor Dumbledore had called all teachers to the staffroom. The peripheral support staff, librarian and medi-witch, caretaker and miscellaneous others hadn't been invited, which was probably just as well. Hagrid, regarded by the Gryffindors as the best thing since the bread-slicing charm had been made public, and regarded by the Slytherins and most Ravenclaws as an absolute menace, took up an entire side of the table and had almost squashed Professor Flitwick when the half-giant sat.
Dumbledore sat at the top of the table to Hagrid's right, and to his own immediate right sat McGonagall, as prim and proper as she ever was, despite the little embroidered gold lions frolicing around the crimson ribbon on her hat-Gryffindor pride from Minerva, although he would never have expected anything less.
Beside McGonagall sat Professor Sprout, who looked and rather smelled as though despite the early hour she had been out gardening for some time before the summons came, and on her other side, Professor Snape. Good old Salvia, ever ready to act as a buffer-zone when Professor Flitwick was unavailable and hiding behind Hooch on the sofa-a woman whom Hagrid would never try to sit on, unless he wanted to contemplate the vulgarities of a broomstick shoved somewhere unpleasant.
Professor Snape looked none too thrilled to be in the staff room with every other teacher present, although Dumbledore knew it couldn't simply be the early hour, for half the time Severus didn't even bother to sleep, staying awake for days on end to perfect this potion formula or the other. No, what Severus objected to had to be the presence of everyone else, because many the time was when he'd found only Sinistra, or Sinistra and Vector in his company, and he'd actually been talking to them-animation in his features-until he had seen Albus arrive, at which point he had gone deadly silent, taken his cup of tea and left.
Speaking of one of Severus' few allies at the school-not like himself, who had been willing to give the man another chance even after his misspent youth as a Death Eater, not someone who was willing to push Severus to stay on the straight and narrow path but someone who simply liked him as a fellow Slytherin and a fellow wit-Sinistra was to the dour man's right, looking nowhere near conscious and far more likely to fall face-first into the cup of tea held loosely within her grasp than to contribute anything of value to the discussion.
Vector was at the end of the table closest to Sinistra, one hand on the taller woman's shoulder to prevent the dunking that Albus foresaw, and beside her Croft, the uppercrust English witch who he had been forced to take on staff when Debeo retired and Croft was found defacing historical and religious ruins in Sweden with intent to find a mythical treasure-trove-the alternative would have been a seventy-year in Hel, the country's top-security prison guarded by strange dragon hybrids. Croft, of course, showed absolutely no gratitude, being under the assumption that she could have escaped at any time she wished and gone back to find her treasure.
Squeezed in on another chair beside Croft despite Hagrid's well-meant invitation that she could take some of his side of the table sat an increasingly scared-looking Fleur Delacour, who had come to Hogwarts to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts and improve her English, but the girl looked as though she had no intent to do any such thing and would prefer to flee upstairs, pack her bag, and run down to the stables for her Granian mare and the fastest flight possible back to France.
Well back from the table were Hooch and Flitwick, the woman patting the diminutive old wizard on the shoulder reassuringly, whilst Trelawney sat on the sofa beside them with one hand to her head-not, he knew, a vision...more likely a withdrawal symptom in the form of a blinding headache.
They were his core group, his teachers, all present except for the Muggle Studies teacher who had fallen and broken her wrist not twenty minutes before the meeting in what Dumbledore thought a deliberate attempt to avoid a lecture. Of course, she always did have the knack for just 'falling' and breaking something.
They looked unfit to run an asylum, let alone the most prestigious school in Europe, but they were all he had. He should have taken the position offered at Beauxbatons seventy years ago...
"I took the liberty of scheduling this little meeting to talk to you about the inter-house discrimination that has been running rampant at this school for several years," Dumbledore began.
"I quite agree," Severus said, setting down his teacup and smiling slowly. "Although I think it's been happening for, oh... just under a thousand years."
This was support he hadn't expected! Severus must have had a revelation over the school holidays between being entombed in his potions laboratory at home and spying on Voldemort, and perhaps the entire talk he had planned was unnecessary. If Severus had realised his mistake, if the master of Potions had returned to teach free of the anti-Gryffindor sentiment he had previously hoarded...
"It must be about time that Gryffindor realised they were not the wonderous perfect beings they've assumed these past thousand years, don't you think?" Severus continued quite cheerfully, and he found himself starting to nod before the actual content of the Slytherin's words filtered through his brain.
"Oh, yes," Salvia nodded seriously, waving a hand to indicate to the school in general. "I know the Gryffindors aren't nearly so rude to us as they are to your people, but they still persist in thinking of us as slow and doddering fools with a collective house intellect in the single digits."
"And they think of us as being swotty fools who can't play Quidditch properly because our noses are too busy buried in books," Xiomara Hooch added, her hawkish eyes narrowed as she raked the assembled teachers with her gaze. "Not that I'm discounting our intellectual prowess, we are the most inclined towards learning all we can, but Slytherins acknowledge we're an actual threat on the pitch-and the Hufflepuffs too, although they sometimes give us a run for our money at exam-times."
"Hard work and loyalty does not instantly equal that we're morons, after all," Sprout complained, toying with a bit of leaf she had pulled out of her hair. "If anything you'd think that makes us more dangerous rather than less, we've put in the work for our knowledge and fierce loyalty is a brilliant reason to rip an enemy's face off."
"Now, Salvia, it's hardly necessary to exaggerate your ferocity. We know that your house's talents are best employed in homely occupations like gardening and cooking where your dedication will pay off-" he began in what was probably a vain attempt to soothe the witch who was looking angrier and angrier.
"How dare y-" Salvia's leap for him was only cut off by Lara's intervention, the young woman throwing herself over the table and incidentally knocking Fleur Delacour to the floor as she caught Sprout by the scruff of her robes, hauling the Hufflepuff back a mere moment before Salvia's claws-claws! ripped into his face.
"Look, you can't scrag him in front of witnesses, Salvia, you know that," Croft returned the Hufflepuff head of house to her seat and then slithered back to her own seat, Victoria putting down her own and Selene's cups now that the disturbance was temporarily over. "However, Dumbledore, I'd suggest you apologise. No one likes to be told that they're best barefoot and pregnant in the kitchens."
He faked a gasp of shocked surprise and claimed that he had meant nothing of the sort, that anti-Hufflepuff discrimination was the furtherest thing from his mind, which wasn't a complete lie-his thoughts at that moment were on the very best possible way to retire Croft, and musing on the thoughts of a fatality. If only she was DADA instead of Runes... "Hufflepuff's misfortunes are not the reasons why I called this meeting," he began again, trying to draw the meeting back on track. "I called you all here because of Slytherin's silly prejudice against Gryffindor, and most particularly your prejudice, Severus."
"My?" Severus looked outraged, and it became blatantly obvious to Albus that he shouldn't hope for instant reason from the Slytherin head of house.
"Yes, your. Your blatant favouritism toward your own house just isn't fair, Severus!"
Severus growled low under his breath, turning in his seat to gaze fully at the headmaster, his dark eyes full of bitterness as he spoke, "Oh, and you're one to talk, Headmaster. 'Well done, Slytherin, well done-but wait! Here, Gryffindor, have a hundred and sixty points, you can win this year because you have Potter!'"
"That's not fair," Dumbledore began to protest weakly, the fact that he hadn't anticipated the meeting to go this way at all when he had sent owls out to the professors, when an entirely too happy-or stoned-owl had dropped the memo off on Severus' head at the hour of five that morning. It had taken some of the professors the better part of an hour to wake up sufficiently for attending in any coherent state of mind, except for poor Selene who was desperately trying to reset herself to nocturnal hours after a summer in Argentina with Victoria.
As if Severus' thinking her name had pushed the blonde Arithmancy witch into action, she waved a hand and promptly interrupted Dumbledore before the old wizard could go on, bringing up a point of contention that had angered Severus when it happened and the memory hadn't faded yet thanks to many nights brooding on how mistreated his snakes were, "Oi, and you tried to send them all into the dungeons when you thought the troll was there!"
"Victoria, stay out of this-" McGonagall rushed to Dumbledore's defence now that Vector had the audacity to speak up, and tried to quell the woman with a glare, but Ravenclaws were not so easily cowed when they knew they had a point.
"Fuck no, McG. We were the ones that took them in, I think we're entitled to bitch about it!"
"She's quite right, you know," Xiomara said loudly enough for them all to hear from her place by Filius and Sibyll. "Ravenclaw's prefects saw the problem immediately when little Slytherin first-years were screaming, being not terribly slow, and invited them to hide in the Eyrie while the teachers were not-dealing to the troll."
Severus hid an inward smile as the Ravenclaws fought his battle for him, his fellow Slytherin momentarily lucid enough to smack one fist on the table and mutter that it was 'damn straight' before she was lost again to the seductive siren-calls of sleep. He would have to rejoin the argument in a moment, after Filius was done agreeing with his juniors.
"-and Severus doesn't show particular favouritism to his house, to the exclusion of all others," Flitwick was standing on the arm of the sofa to be seen, waving his arms. "He's unbiased toward Ravenclaws because most of them have the basic intellect that doesn't make them walking disasters in the Potions classrooms-and we've always got on better with Slytherins for the most part than Gryffindors have..."
"He's not that bad to Hufflepuffs either, provided they work hard in his class-as they're wont to do," Salvia murmured, her hands clasped tight in her lap to prevent herself from flying up in attack again. "He's short of patience with the stupid and those who simply don't try, but if one puts in sufficient effort he refrains from being nasty."
"I find that very difficult to believe," McGonagall snapped with a glare at Salvia, and past her to Severus.
"Oh really? Severus, how many points did you take away from Hufflepuff last year?"
"Seventeen," he responded innocently, well aware that Gryffindor had lost almost two hundred and fifty points.
"And how many did you award to my house?"
"Fifty-three." Gryffindor had recieved none.
"Ravenclaw?"
"Twenty, sixty."
"And you'll notice a similar pattern on a smaller scale in my own classes, in Victoria's, in Lara's, in Selene's and in Sibyll's. Of course, not including Brown and Patil, the Gryffindors taking Divination are-what was your delightful term, Sib?"
Trelawney looked up from her headache long enough to say "Psychic as a bloody house-brick," before she sprawled sideways onto Xiomara's lap.
"That's it."
"Are you saying you-you deliberately take points from Gryffindor to balance some strange scale that exists only in your heads?" Albus stared at Salvia in shock, the twinkle in his eyes now from anger instead of good humour.
"Not exactly, we just don't let them get away with what you do."
"I beg your pardon?" Minerva spoke before Albus had a chance to, rising from her chair indignantly. "I'm scrupulously fair, sometimes to the point when I punish an offending Gryffindor far more than I'd punish one from another house for the same misdemeanor!"
"Not you, Minerva," Severus said quietly, taking the reins of the argument once more. "We know you hold them to the same standard you hold yourself-we're talking about the headmaster's...lack of judgement and discretion."
"You question my judgement, Severus? After I saved you from Ministry trial and Azkaban?"
"Professor Dumbledore, I'm a Slytherin. Unless I owed me something or wanted me to owe myself something, I sincerely doubt I would have done it in your place."
"And which of us is the better man, Severus?" Dumbledore prompted him.
He took a slow, malicious pleasure in his response that time, savouring it, delighting in it as he said, "No comment."
"I hardly think that-"
This time Xiomara interrupted Dumbledore, her eyes fixing on the old man's as she stroked Sibyll's hair. "Oh, headmaster? Professor McGonagall? I was just wondering-where exactly did the money for Potter's broom come from?"
"His godfather-"
"Not that broom."
Around the table eyebrows were slowly raising, curious expressions sliding smoothly over the faces of Slytherins, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs all-all except Selene, who didn't stir-and Salvia wondered aloud "Yes, where did the financing come for it? I'm aware that Nimbus 2000s were fearfully expensive that year, given that they had just been released for sale."
"Professor Dumbledore and I pooled our resources for it," Minerva said, placing her hands on the table. "Despite broomsticks for first years being-unprecedented these last seventy years, he was put on the Quidditch team and as such, he needed a broom."
"You put in your own money, Minerva?" Victoria questioned innocently enough-but he knew what was coming. One hundred and eighty galleons had gone missing from petty cash, as the Arithmancy witch and as the one in charge of it, she knew, and had complained over vodka one night to him and Selene...
"Of course I did. Two hundred galleons out of my own personal savings-I'd originally thought to purchase a Nimbus 1700 for Harry, but Albus' generous contribution-"
"Yes," Dumbledore interrupted, ignoring Minerva's shocked sideways glance. "Harry is a special case, and I feel I act in loco parentis for him, but I do not allow him special liberties-"
"Act de haut en bas," Fleur murmured at the end of the table, her words automatically translating in his head-from above to below, Dumbledore was condescending to them and even the nineteen-year-old could spot it-she actually liked Potter, too, for his saving her sister the year before. So her problem was more with Dumbledore? Something to remember. When French aristocracy thought unfairness was occuring...
"You chipped in for his broom from petty cash!" Victoria protested. "Tell me, was his broom of vital import to the school as a whole? You lot, that's why we had cheap tea the better part of that year-"
"Gryffindor couldn't play without a seeker-"
"And yet you kicked up such a stink when Lucius donated brooms to the Slytherin Quidditch team," Selene pointed out in a moment of lucidity.
"I eventually had to accept it under the alumni charter your house and Ravenclaw house drew up in fifteen-forty," Dumbledore said with slow dignity.
"Not too gracefully," Xiomara murmured in an aside to the Ravenclaws at the end of the table.
"This meeting was not called to discuss how you think I favour Harry and his fellow Gryffindors!" Dumbledore finally snapped, standing up and smacking his fist on the table-with far less strength and impact than Selene had managed in a state of semi-consciousness. "We are here to discuss how best to support Severus as he releases his anger and prejudice toward Gryffindors and becomes a better, more well-rounded person!"
Severus barely held back his own laughter at Dumbledore's statement, and the others at the table didn't even try-Salvia, Selene, Victoria, Lara-Delacour was giggling, and she didn't even know half the background story although Lara had been filling her in as they went along-Xiomara was laughing unrepentantly, Filius was covering his face with both hands, even Sibyll in her opiate-lacking state was chuckling weakly. Minerva, Hagrid and Dumbledore were the only ones wearing the displeased look that he usually sported himself.
"Professor Dumbledore," he finally said when he could be heard-when his amusement had been wrestled back under firm control, "I think you're flogging a dead horse...sir."
"You won't accept our help, Severus?"
"You're the only one that believes I need help. Everyone else doesn't think too poorly of me, which I find something of a surprise...but then not, because I might be a miserable bastard...but I'm a miserable bastard that they seem to like."
"Peer acceptance does not mean you don't need psychiatric evaluation and perhaps a time away from your duties. I'm sure Selene would be happy to fill in for you for half a year."
At Dumbledore's words Selene woke up completely, the process aided in part by Victoria's fingernails in her ribs, and protested "Like fucking hell I would!"
Perhaps her raised voice had started it, perhaps it was natural progression and would have happened anyway, but at that moment Sibyll whimpered in the silence-he turned to look, he knew that sound and he knew what it meant-
The Divination teacher began to shudder helplessly, drawing every scrap of the Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff attention away from where Dumbledore was trying to gather it like an old man and his few wits, and then the convulsions started.
"Grand mal!" Fleur exclaimed as she jumped to her feet before being knocked out of her chair again, hovering in the background as Xiomara lifted Sibyll easily, as Selene regained lucidity enough to flit to the teacher twitching madly, shaking her by the shoulder and asking where 'it' was-
"All out," Sibyll managed to gasp as her eyelashes fluttered back, and Victoria shook her head at the new Defence Against Dark Arts teacher.
"She's not an epileptic, you git, she's an addict!"
"Opium?" Salvia asked with one glance, turning to leave the room without waiting for an answer. "Bring her. Greenhouse four. Now."
"Sorry, Professor Dumbledore," Severus sketched a hasty and insincere bow as Xiomara with Sibyll followed Sprout, Victoria and Selene not far behind. "Better luck next time."
He followed Lara out, who had paused only to grab Fleur by the wrist and tug her out of the way with a muttered explanation that she didn't want to stick around for this one, the door slamming behind them.
"...oh, dear," Filius murmured, ducking his head as McGonagall's, Dumbledore's and Hagrid's gaze settled on him. Shaking his head, because this was not his problem, he took the honourable route-out the window, with a tinkle of shattering glass.
There's no real method to this madness, I started writing it on a whim and finished it for Petal, so...um, yes. And Albus has bitch tits, everyone's just too polite to mention it.