Chapter Text
‘Lumos.’
Patsy flicked her wand and illuminated the cramped little closet that was nothing but drawers from the floor to the ceiling, little bits of aged, curled parchment labeled each and every one. She was only checking to see which of her potions ingredients needed replenishing before the new term started for the autumn , and she was going to be damn sure she was prepared for the hoard of incoming students.
She had charmed a quill to make a checklist on parchment of the things she was low on; baneberry, horned slug, griffenclaw (she would need to send out a special order for that one) and knotgrass. Patsy knew she wouldn’t be using that in any of the potions made in class, but she liked to keep it handy for brewing her own batch of mead that she particularly liked to enjoy around the solstice. Other ingredients she was low on such as mushroom, pondslime, and dragonflies made her think she would be spending her afternoon by the Black L ake collecting many of these.
‘Knox,’ she said, and the light silently went out.
She locked the closet behind her and grasped a large satchel, filling it with thin, empty jars with cork tops she found around the dingy potions classroom. Slinging it over her shoulder, she slipped on a trusty pair of wellies and headed out from the dungeons and up the staircase to the main hall. Passing by Nearly Headless Nick and waving a quick ‘hello’ and ‘welcome back’, she left the great hall and trotted outside where she headed for the massive greenhouse that was on the grounds behind the castle.
Once there, all was eerily quiet, the only sound being the dripping water from a tap across the room. It was humid inside, great conditions for growing plants and herbs but the heat had Patsy wiping her brow with the sleeve of her robe.
‘Hello? Professor Beery?’ she called out, looking around. All she saw were rows of potted plants, dusty old flower pots, the odd butterfly fluttering by and caterpillars crawling up the wall.
‘Aah!’
A shout from the other room caught Patsy's attention, and she quickly rushed to the other side of the greenhouse where she was met with the sight of a woman dodging what looked to be the advances of an overgrown sunflower with teeth!
‘Redu-reduc-ahh!’ the woman shouted, ducking left and right with her wand held high as the thing snapped at her.
Quickly, Patsy drew her wand and pointed it at the thing.
‘Immobulous!’ she shouted, causing a bright light to flash from the tip of her wand.
The monster sunflower halted it’s motions mid attack, leaving the woman underneath it to blink several times, gulping down her nerves rather audibly.
‘Reducto,’ she finally eked out, flicking her wand.
The sunflower sunk to the size of a galleon, and the woman clasped it in her hand and placed it in its own pot.
‘Thanks for that,’ she said with a nervous laugh, ‘that’ll be the last time I leave the engorgement pellets near the water jugs.’
Patsy stood there simply looking at this woman, thinking she could have been a student, she looked so young. Patsy had thought she was one when she first laid eyes on her, if it hadn't been for her brightly colored robes.
‘Where is Professor Beery?’ Patsy asked.
‘Prof- why, he retired last term,' the woman replied, looking surprised that Patsy didn't know this bit of information.
‘What?’
‘Oh, sure. Decided to call it quits after his wife needed intensive care at St. Mungos after an incendio charm went awry. Packed it all up and took her to the Galapagos where he could work on his research and she could relax in the sun sipping intoxicating beverages from a coconut.'
The woman laughed and moved to wipe the sweat from her brow, only managing to smear her forehead with soil. Typically, Patsy would be put off with so much dirt, but the woman’s toothy smile with endearing dimples redeemed her .
‘So have you taken his place as herbology professor?’ she asked.
‘I have. Names Delia Busby,’ she said, holding out a thickly gloved hand covered in soil and ants.
‘Ahem,’ Patsy said, smiling awkwardly.
‘Oh, sorry,’ Delia smiled more, removing her glove and holding out a spotless hand for Patsy to shake.
'Pleasure.’
‘And you are?’ Delia asked, using her thumb to tip her hat and get a better look at Patsy.
‘Patience Mount. Potions.’
‘Ah,’ Delia said, wiggling her finger knowingly, ‘Potions professor, hmm? I had a feeling you’d be down here.’
‘Oh you did, did you?’
‘Need to stock up for your classes, don't you? I remember Professor Bartholomew coming down on several occasions to visit Professor Beery for such things.'
'Is that so?'
'Oh yes, well, I spent a lot of time here when studying for my NEWTS, you know, found the plants relaxing and a lot less distracting than studying with my mates.'
Delia kicked over a ceramic flower pot and used her wand to stun a pixie that has been hiding under there.
'Anyway, saw the two of them together all the time exchanging ingredients and the like. Always kind of thought Bartholomew and Beery had a more than friendly relationship with how much time they spent together,' Delia grinned, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. She plucked the pixie up by the wing and chucked him out the window.
'Well, I assure you I prefer to keep all my relationships here at school strictly professional,’ Patsy said, removing her bag from her shoulder and placing it with a resounding 'thump' on a nearby table.
'Oh, I wasn't implying you wouldn't,' Delia began, the tips of her ears turning red, but was cut off by Patsy.
‘I’ll be needing the following ingredients, if you wouldn't mind,' Patsy began and cleared her throat as she unfurled her parchment.
Before she could eloquently prattle off the list of things, Delia snatched the paper from her hand and read it for herself.
‘Mmhmm, mhmm,’ Delia nodded along as she read, ‘I can certainly get you most of these but, mushrooms and dragonflies from the Black Lake?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well you can certainly find those things of much better quality in the Forbidden Forest.’
‘Well I certainly know that but I’m not about to risk my life to collect mushrooms for a gaggle of students only interested in making love potions.’
‘Nonsense,’ Delia said, taking a bottle from Patsy's satchel and filling it with Mandrake root, ‘you want to give your students the best experience possible, don’t you? Then you ought to use the very best ingredients.’
‘My students have used ingredients plucked from around the Black Lake before and have done just fine with their potions, thank you. I don’t fancy being chased out of the forest by a herd of centaurs simply because I might have snapped the wrong twig.’
‘They’re harmless,’ Delia shrugged indifferently and plucked another bottle from Patsy’s satchel, this time filling it with motherwort leaves.
'I beg to differ. May I have my list back please? I have a lot to do before nightfall.'
'Won't take but a moment, especially if we go together. I know just where to look, too. Come along now.'
Patsy huffed as Delia grasped her own empty jug and disappeared through the back door of the greenhouse towards the Forbidden Forest. She very much didn't take kindly to being ordered around by a junior professor, but she very well wasn't about to let the woman wander around by herself in the forest given all the dangerous creatures lurking. And with the sun beginning to set low in the sky the sooner they collected her ingredients and got out of there, the better.
Patsy snatched her satchel and scurried after the woman who had a rather quick pace despite her short stature.
Rabbits and other creatures scurried along in the shadows as they approached a path that led deep into the forest. Patsy nearly drew her wand when a long horned beetle buzzed by her head and made her hold her satchel over her head lestanything else decide to try and attack her.
Delia's quick pace had the two of them deep into the forest before Patsy realized how thick and dark the trees grew here.
'Ah, there we are,' Delia said, crouching at the base of a thick oak tree to scrape off a good helping of mushrooms and moss growing from the bark.
Another thing buzzed by Patsy's head, only this time she did draw her wand to cast a stunning spell on a lowly dragonfly that fell to the ground.
'Accio,' Patsy said with a flick of her wand, and she captured the dragonfly in her jar.
'There's bound to be more where that came from,' Delia said, rising from her spot, 'over there by the water.'
To emphasize her point, Delia drew her wand and stunned her own dragonfly buzzing by.
Patsy followed her gaze and saw a small brook that led to a pond, several other insects hovering around it, toads reaching out with their elongated sticky tongues to capture them and enjoy a snack.
Something else caught her eye that made Patsy's breath catch in her throat.
While Delia was busy collecting bugs, Patsy slowly crept toward a tree with a long silvery strand hanging from a bit of the bark peeling from the trunk.
' Unicorn hair ,' she whispered to herself.
Slowly, she removed a pair of tweezers from her satchel and gently plucked the wiry strand of silver hair, carefully tucking it into a glass tube and sealing it shut with a cork.
Alright so maybe this journey into the Forbidden Forest wasn't a waste of time after all.
No sooner did she think that did the ground begin to shake.
Patsy looked up to see a murder of crows scatter from the trees, leaves falling around her.
She and Delia locked eyes as they both drew their wands. Delia ran over to Patsy before turning her back to her, and Patsy did the same, wands out and looking around for any sign of danger.
'What do you think it is?' Patsy asked quietly.
'Troll?' Delia suggested.
'Centaur stampede?' offered Patsy.
The ground shook again with such force it rattled all the glass bottles and jars in Patsy's satchel and Delia almost fell to the ground.
'Oh Merlin, I don't want to stick around to find out,' Delia bemoaned.
Delia grasped hard onto Patsy's arms and suddenly Patsy felt her entire body contort and spin inward. In a flurry of grass and leaves fluttering about, the two women disappeared with a soft 'pop' and appeared again in an instant at the edge of the forest near where they had entered. The two both gave a shout and a strangled moan as they landed hard on the ground in a tangled mess of arms and legs.
'Sorry, always been much better at getting around on a broom,' Delia laughed awkwardly as she disentangled herself from Patsy.
Patsy coughed up a leaf and glared at Delia.
'Least we still have all our limbs! I've gotten loads better since I took my exam in 7th year,' Delia said happily as she got to her feet.
'When was that? Last spring?' Patsy said rather annoyed as she brushed the grass off her robes.
The jibe was gone ignored as the ground shook again, more violently, accompanied by a loud 'boom' that rattled both their heads.
Both wands were out again, Patsy to her feet as she frantically looked around, though Delia spotted the source of the noise in an instant.
'G-g-g-giant!' she shouted, her wand shaking in her hand as she held onto her hat.
Delia flicked her wand, her aim rather terrible as she was shaking from nerves, and her charm made a nearby branch break from a tree, dropping with a thunk on the creature's head.
This did not seem to affect the giant whatsoever as they merely turned and scratched their head, looking down at the two of them curiously.
A look of recognition graced the giant's face as she laid eyes on Patsy.
'Oi, steady on love. It's only me here,' she said.
Patsy clutched her heart and lowered her wand, feeling all the adrenaline leave her body.
'Chummy, oh you gave me a fright,' Patsy breathed, looking up at the half giantess.
Chummy grinned and gave a hearty laugh, her eyes crinkling behind her half-moon spectacles.
'What on Earth are you doing to make such a racket?' Patsy asked, looking around to find several trees had been plucked out of the ground and tossed aside, leaving behind several large holes and a mess of dirt.
'Just clearing some land here for the little one,' Chummy said, nodding to her son sitting in the vegetable patch 'need a lot more room to run and play now, don't you Freddie?'
Patsy and Delia watched as the young boy, already over six feet tall, bit into a pumpkin like it was an apple.
'Precious little guy,' Chummy cooed proudly at her son.
Patsy felt the sensation of someone quivering in fear behind her, and she looked over her shoulder to see Delia looking up at Chummy skeptically.
'Oh, pull your socks up, woman, it's just Chummy. She's harmless,' Patsy chided, pulling Delia out from behind her into full view.
'Who's that you got there, Professor Mount?' Chummy asked curiously, pushing her glasses up her nose.
'This'll be Delia Busby, new herbology professor. Professor Busby, this is Chummy, she's in charge of Care of Magical Creatures for the school.'
Delia gulped down her nerves and tipped her hat politely, giving a meek 'Hello.'
'Did you two just come from the Forbidden Forest?' Chummy chided, looking to Patsy, 'you ought to know better than to go at this time of day, what with the sun setting. You wouldn't want to be caught dead in there after nightfall what with the spiders.'
'Oh, Chummy we're perfectly capable of making it out unscathed,' Patsy said, narrowing her eyes at Delia, 'for the most part.'
'Term hasn't even begun and you're already getting yourself into no good situations. No better than when you were a student yourself,' Chummy playfully wagged her finger.
'I did no such thing. I was a model student, if you remember. Made Head Girl after you left.'
'You were Head Girl?' Delia asked.
'Of course I was. Best Slytherin ever had if I do say so myself,' Patsy boasted, holding her shoulders back.
'You're both Slytherin?' Delia asked with wide eyes, looking to Chummy, 'I didn't think they let giants into Hogwarts.'
'Half-giant, thank you,' Chummy said, 'and I was in Ravenclaw house. This one here needed a lot of help with her OWLS if I remember correctly. Gave her a few tips and tricks for studying even though I was busy with my NEWTS.'
'Yes Chummy, your help has served me well, and I'm very grateful. No need to mention it every time we bump into one another,' Patsy said with a roll of her eyes.
'Sorry, I feel like I would have noticed a half giant when I was coming up in school,' Delia mumbled.
'Oh, I'm an old bird,' Chummy said with a wave of her hand, 'you probably came along long after I graduated.'
'Well, we’d best be off then, I'd imagine supper will be ready in no time and I need to stock up my supply closet,' Patsy said, placing a hand on her satchel.
The three women said their goodbyes and together Patsy and Delia walked back towards the castle, Delia trotting slightly behind Patsy.
'Don't you want to know what house I was in?' Delia asked.
'There's no need to tell me. You were very obviously Hufflepuff.'
Delia made a noise to indicate that Patsy was being absurd.
'Very obviously ,' she repeated, tutting, 'how do you know? I could have been Gryffindor.'
'Certainly not,' Patsy smirked, 'what with you cowering at the sight and sound of anything. You're a real scaredy cat and a Gryffindor is unabashedly courageous to a fault.'
'I'm courageous! I saved you earlier in the forest!'
'From the sounds of a harmless half giant that you couldn't even throw a hex at.'
'She caught me off guard!' Delia shouted, turning pink.
'Regardless, you were still so spooked you missed!' Patsy teased, rather enjoying getting a rise out of the woman.
The sound of someone screaming joyfully reached their ears, and it sounded as if it were getting closer and closer with each passing second. Both women turned their eyes to the sky to see a figure fast approaching on a broomstick that left a trail of white smoke coming out the end of it. The figure whirled past them so fast that leaves and grass were kicked up and swirled around the two women. Patsy's robes fluttered about her knees and Delia had to hold onto her hat with both hands as they turned in tandem to see the figure make a crash landing in a large pile of hay just outside the greenhouse. Several tufts of the dried grass vaulted into the air as the figure emerged on the other side and landed on the ground with a loud 'thud' .
'Speaking of idiot Gryffindors,' Patsy mumbled, tucking her hair back into her bun.
'Oh, be nice,' Delia quipped, 'they could be really hurt!'
The maniacal laughter coming from the woman laying flat on her back said otherwise.
Patsy and Delia ran over and looked down at the woman who seemed to be smiling like a lunatic. Her hair was a mess and the goggles she had been wearing for protection were half on her cheek and forehead.
'Merlin's beard,' she said, elated, 'I think I broke the sound barrier.'
'Think you might have broken your neck is what,' Patsy quipped.
Together, Patsy and Delia leaned down and grabbed an arm to help the woman stand to her feet.
'Oh, hello Patsy. Patsy's friend,' she said rather deliriously as Patsy dusted her off and plucked bits of hay out of her windswept hair.
'Valerie, this is Professor Delia Busby,' Patsy began.
'Professor?' Valerie asked, giving Delia a once over.
'Herbology. This'll be my first term teaching,' Delia said, picking Valerie's broom from out of the haystack and giving it an admiring once over before handing it back to Valerie.
'Ah, right, Professor Beery’s retirement,' Valerie said conversationally, 'was wondering who they were going to bring on. I put forward Professor Monica Joan but I guess she wants to stay on with Divination.'
Valerie gave Delia an enthusiastic pat on the back that had the smaller woman lunging forward.
'Well, welcome aboard, Busby, good to have you on. Don't let those students give you the run around. They're mostly sweet but you get a few who you'll have to keep an eye on, clever little-,'
'Yes, thanks. I'm sure I'll manage,' Delia offered meekly,' already have half a mind to save cleaning out the slug cages for detentions.'
'That's the spirit!'
'Professor Busby and I were collecting ingredients for our lessons,' Patsy chimed in, hands on her hips, 'and you almost crashed into her classroom!'
'Sorry about that! Just testing out my new Nimbus Aquinas,' she said proudly with a wiggle of her eyebrow, 'masterful in the air and underwater. As the quidditch coach and flying instructor I can't just let the students have a better broom than me, you know. Wouldn't be right.'
'Giving it a test drive out on the grounds then?' Patsy grimaced disapprovingly.
'It's wicked fast mate, wanna give it a go?' Valerie grinned, holding her broom out to Patsy.
'Absolutely not. I've had enough excitement for one afternoon.'
'Professor Busby?' Valerie asked, looking to Delia hopefully.
'Better not,' Delia said hesitantly, holding up her hands, 'I've got a few things to tidy up in there before I head in for supper.'
'As do I,' Patsy said, giving her satchel a pat.
'Oh well I can help with that, gimme this,' Valerie quipped.
Before she could react, Valerie reached out and snatched Patsy’s satchel away from her, and she threw it over her own shoulder as she mounted her new broom.
'Wait, Val,' Patsy pleaded.
'Don't worry Pats, I'll keep it nice and safe for ya!' Valerie said, fixing her goggles before kicking off the ground. She was gone and up in the air in a flash, her robes fluttering behind her.
'Valerie!' Patsy shouted to no avail. Valerie was hooting and hollering from the thrill of the ride too loud to hear Patsy's call of protest.
Patsy cupped her face with both hands and watched as Valerie disappeared behind the astronomy tower.
'No, my unicorn hair!' she groaned, 'Those are so difficult to find out in the wild!'
Patsy could hear Delia give a resounding sign next to her.
'I'll go after her,' she said, taking off her hat and handing it to Patsy.
'Oh,' Patsy blinked.
As someone who was very much used to looking out for herself she was struck by Delia's willingness to help her in this instance.
'You've already done so much for me today I couldn't possibly ask-,'
Delia faltered, her ears turning a slight shade of pink as she removed her robes next, hanging them on a hook by the door that was meant for a gardening tool.
Patsy raised an eyebrow at the sudden transformation, the robes she had been wearing doing nothing for Delia's figure, no matter how colorful they were. She was wearing muggle clothing too, a simple hooded jumper, a pair of blue jeans, and boots muddy from having been wandering around all afternoon. She was a bit more trim than those robes made her out to be.
'Its nothing, really, Professor Mount,' she stuttered slightly, giving a small smile, 'Besides, she's being dreadfully unsafe and I wouldn't want to see her get hurt.'
She reached for an old broom leaning against the wall of the greenhouse and mounted it.
'I'll make sure that unicorn hair gets back to you unscathed.'
With that she kicked off and whizzed up along the astronomy tower, following the trail of smoke Valerie had left behind.
Patsy was rather touched that Delia would go through the trouble, but at the same time, thought those Hufflepuffs were too nice for their own good.