Slytherin Scores

Two more days, Marcus Flint mused grimly as he went down the stairs that would soon open into the Daily Prophet's main editorial office. Two more dreary, infuriating and, in all probability, utterly humiliating days, and it would all be over. Hell, it would probably be over the minute people started finding out what had just happened.

The thought didn't do much for his mood.

The hall was deserted. Good. Flint made his way across to the reception desk, staffed that afternoon by a young, overly made-up witch, who sat staring at him with barely disguised horror. Nothing new there, he thought. Most people – young females especially – tended to react similarly when he came into view. The thought that this particular response was probably due to the blood oozing between the fingers he held clasped to his mouth made for a nice change, though.

"Gods, whatever happened to you?"

Flint ignored her, and instead pointed his wand at a note pad on the desk in front of her, upon which the words "NEED MEDIMAGE!!!" began to form themselves in angry red capitals.

"Oh yes, of course, sorry..." The receptionist opened a small Remote Floo furnace on her right and reached below her desk for some powder.

"Hello? Magda? This is Shannon from reception... Listen, there's this bloke here from the owl room, needs treatment urgently."

"Got him there, do you?" a witch answered from amongst the flames. "Can I see him? How bad is it?"

Shannon looked doubtfully at Flint, who'd given up trying to stem the flow and was now dabbing at his chin with the hem of his standard-issue Prophet shirt.

"Well, frankly, he's a mess..." She gestured for him to lean across her desk and into Magda's line of vision. "Try not to drip on anything, will you?"

Magda nodded as she looked the young wizard over. "I'll come down at once. Send him into Dr Branford's office."

"You heard her," Shannon concluded as she shut the furnace door. "Down that hallway, third door on the left. She'll be with you in a mo.

"Good luck," she added after a moment's deliberation. Flint gave her a curt nod and made for the corridor.

The Mediwitch had already Flooed in, and was setting up her equipment as he entered the third office on his left. Before he sat down where she'd told him to, she stopped the bleeding with a quick Dishaemorrhagis spell and cast a cleaning charm on his gums to get a better look at his broken teeth. Silently, he handed her some fragments he'd salvaged off the floor, and she set to reconstructing the insides of his mouth, then moved on to his nose.

"I trust you have an Incident Report Form?" she finally asked as she pocketed her wand. Flint winced; he'd been dreading this. With a resigned sigh, he reached into his dustrobes and pulled out a crumpled sheet of parchment. Looking on as the Mediwitch ran her eyes down the form, Flint tried not to think of his father's reaction to finding his youngest son sacked from a job that'd been beneath him to begin with. As if failing his NEWTs earlier that year, never mind having his allowance cut in consequence, hadn't been more than enough already.

Not as if he was stupid – he might do well enough once he'd set his mind to it. It was all a matter of priorities. If full dedication to snatching the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup from under the Gryffindorks' noses meant having to repeat one's seventh year, then so be it. His parents, however, had seen things rather differently, and decided their son needed what his father was so fond of calling "an incentive". And so, young Marcus had spent the best part of what might've been a glorious summer in the Prophet's owl room, stacking stationery, sealing outgoing letters, and tending various postal birds under the indolent scrutiny of what must have been the two most annoying seventeen-year-olds ever to get prematurely kicked out of Slytherin House.

It wasn't hard to tell why they had dropped out. Daniel Reed and Samuel Rawlinson III – who, for some unfathomable reason, insisted upon being called "Spanner" – displayed the kind of irreverent, manic enthusiasm that just didn't fit the general secretive Slytherin diplomacy. Their welcome of Flint had been particularly memorable.

He'd been ushered up the stairs past the owlery and into the main stockroom by a rather spotty junior editor, who'd wasted no time getting back to tasks infinitely worthier – sorting paper clips by size, for instance, or fetching coffee for the editor-in-chief – leaving Marcus alone with a wireless perched precariously atop a rusty sink, and a couple former sixth-formers in dustrobes.

"Fancy seeing you here", Reed had stated, grinning knowingly. "Decided to make a run for it, have you? Thought you'd come round..."

"For your information, I do intend to see Hogwarts through. Bloody bastard won't get rid of me this easily." Flint didn't have to name the bastard in question. Pretty-boy Oliver Wood, Gryffindor Quidditch Captain and soon to enter his final year at Hogwarts, represented the root of all evil to any Slytherin team member. Accordingly, he never failed to bring out the worst in their Captain.

"Aye aye, Cap'n," Danny conceded, utterly unimpressed. "But right now, we can but do our best to welcome you to the wondrous world of the Daily Prophet Owl Room, a world you're not likely to ever forget..."

"...though I've been told extensive therapy works wonders," Spanner had cut in.

"Indeed. Our job is to show you the ropes..."

Spanner gestured to an overhead crossbeam over which a coil of damp hemp cord hung limply.

"...in case you ever feel you really can't take it anymore. Now. On to the equipment. This" – he'd pointed at the sink – "is a sink. S-I-N-K. Got that?"

"Maybe you should take notes." Spanner had crossed over to Flint, and proceeded to hiss conspiratorially in his ear. "All these specialist terms..." Danny joined them.

"Now listen carefully, Flint. This..." He grabbed Spanner by the shoulders and wheeled him around to face Marcus. "...is what is commonly known on these premises as an Owl Boy."

"That's me." Spanner saluted. 

"Note the keen eye... The sharp tongue... The sticky fingers..." Danny held up Spanner's hands by the wrists. "Yes, Owl Boys are a special breed, trained to a hair before finally being trusted with that oh-so-runny sealing wax..."

"Hence the stickiness of finger", Spanner had added proudly, an inane grin plastered across his face.

Back then, Marcus would've given just about anything for a release from those two clowns, but things being as they were, he preferred just two more days of infuriating wisecracks to being disinherited by a fuming patriarch. He swallowed hard as Magda folded the parchment and fixed him with a stern look.

"Does this sort of thing happen to you often, Mr Flint?"

What, having piles of stationery collapse on top of him? Whilst attempting to hex a fellow worker into the middle of next week? "Excuse me?"

The Mediwitch leant forward slightly. "It says here you were clearing out a shelf when a banishing charm went off course and sent a stack of office supplies your way, knocking you to the floor. Happened before, has it?"

Marcus gave her a bemused look. "What do you mean?"

"I know a patch-up job when I see one, Mr Flint. I can only guess at what that nose of yours has had to go through before today. As for your teeth..." She shook her head, grimacing.

"Oh, right." Marcus let out the breath he'd been holding. "Quidditch practice, mostly. Bloody bludgers." He made an attempt at a winning smile.

"Ah, yes. Should've guessed. Quidditch."

She didn't seem entirely satisfied, but got up nevertheless, cast a quick Xeroxis spell on the parchment for her own administration, then handed the original back to Flint.

"I can only advise you to seek professional medical attention next time anything of the sort happens, no matter how capable you think yourself of dealing with it on your own. Pain isn't a challenge, Mr Flint. It's a signal that something is wrong." She gave him another stern look. "It might also be a good idea to go clean yourself up a bit before you go back to work. Oh, and you'll want to take one of these, I'm sure."

She handed him a handful of small, white, five-pointed stars. Flint stared at them. "What are they?"

Magda smiled. "Peppermints, dear. Blood tends to give one exceedingly bad breath."

* * * * *

Having carefully scrubbed his face over one of the washbasins in the men's room, still not quite believing his luck, Marcus took a long hard look in the accompanying mirror to find his teeth actually looking much better than before. My, my, Flint, who'd have thought a smack in the face would be such an improvement... Actually, those two simpletons might keep relatively quiet. Who'd want to risk provoking him? After what had happened earlier that afternoon? Harriet, however, was a completely different story.

He unfolded the Report Form and ran his eyes over what she'd scrawled on it. Why, for Merlin's sake, hadn't she included what had really caused the stationery avalanche, or how he'd become involved in the first place? Knowing her, it probably meant she'd save it up, filing it all away for future reference, to be used in some scheme he wouldn't be aware of until he'd been sucked in knee-deep. Harriet Mills-Henry didn't believe in useless knowledge, and intended to find a use for everything she found out.

The Mills-Henrys were old friends of the Flints. Every few weeks, when a member of either family would have gone for tea with one or several of the other, Marcus had to sit through endless lectures on how their daughter, despite her access to considerable family funds, had never been averse to "getting her hands dirty – unlike some people...". And once he'd met her, he'd had to admit they were absolutely right. Harriet loved dirt, especially when it clung to others, and its exposure or continued concealment would be up to her.

"The best thing about working in an owl room," she'd told him on his first day, "is all those little chunks of potentially relevant, even useful, information passing through your hands each day. I've been with the Prophet for six months now, and I've got some dirt on every single person working here, plus a couple dozen of the reporters' outside sources. I'm sure I'll have something on you, too, by the time you leave," she'd added matter-of-factly.

How right she'd been.

At first he'd found himself gravitating towards her. The Measly Twins (her term) didn't seem quite as verbally incontinent around her. Intimidated, quite obviously so, if not downright terrified. Harriet was, if anything, direct, a trait extending about two inches beyond everyone's pain threshold. Apart from that, she was convinced. Fiercely convinced. Of everything she considered worth uttering. The woman could probably read out a Muggle public transport schedule and make it sound like she really, really meant it. Moreover, she was providing Rita Skeeter with a grapevine that would eventually get an antagonistic junior reporter out of both their ways, as she'd informed him the week before.

"Rita's saving me a seat down there."

It hadn't been so much a statement as a status report, the result of a painstaking cycle of research, analysis and evaluation. One didn't argue with Harriet. Not because she shared that predominantly Slytherin trait of unwavering, if not justified, confidence – the inevitable result of being part of the upper classes – but because whatever she had to say was without exception backed by fact, well-documented precedent or logical necessity. However, Slytherin that he was, Marcus hadn't wanted to give in without a fight.

"How do you know she won't screw you over?"

Harriet had given him an earnest look and said, "When I told you I had some dirt on every single person working here, Flint, which part did you not understand?"

And that from a Ravenclaw.

He rolled his shirt into a bloody ball for the house elves to deal with, and pulled his dustrobes back on over his bare chest. Popping another peppermint into his mouth, he made for the entrance hall and, from there, for the stairs leading back up to the owl room.

* * * * *

She hadn't been in the stockroom when he'd returned. Danny had stood by the sink, fiddling with the wireless, and Spanner had been tying rubber bands into bundles. Neither had spoken, which had only made what they hadn't said more intelligible, to all of them. Loudest of all, louder even than the smirks, had been that single word. It was a common enough word, an all-purpose term of abuse, and certainly one that would have suited the situation. It wouldn't have mattered as much had it been Danny or Spanner who'd been there, had they been the ones to catch him. They knew what it was like. It would have been no worse than it had been at Hogwarts.

Except it hadn't.

Why did he feel so horrible about it having been Harriet? The only possibility he could see was that she was female, and not even by much at that. The only time he'd ever really thought of her as a woman was when she'd confessed to "quite fancying a ride on Wood's broomstick", as she'd put it. For a moment, all common ground between them had started crumbling beneath his feet, and Harriet had merrily skipped over to the other side, the one that involved nail polish, curlers and perfume.

And shopping.

She'd seemed alien then, in that single moment before he'd realised he wasn't making sense and pulled himself together. Where had she met Wood, anyway? He couldn't have been more than a fourth year when she left Hogwarts, surely?

"Social event. Little do at the Clearwaters' this spring. Penny Clearwater's involved with Percy Weasley," – Flint had wrinkled his nose in distaste – "and he took the liberty of bringing Wood along. Turning out nicely, that one." She'd grinned broadly.

Flint mentally crossed out the image of Harriet skipping along Diagon Alley, laden with half a dozen pairs of shoes. She wasn't the type to adore. If anything, she'd hunger – though he couldn't be sure for what, exactly.

Danny set down the wireless and gave it a quick tap with his wand. An annoyingly jaunty male voice came blasting into the stockroom and sent a grumpy barn owl fluttering off through an open doorway. "...here in Hogsmeade, hope it's the same for all of you out there. It's four sixteen p.m. and you're listening to Radio Electric on 100.7 TRM, only the best Muggle music... And here's one for the older youngsters – it's Buzzcocks, oh yes..."

And then, all that had been left unsaid waltzed right out into the middle of the stock room, for all to hear. Danny knew the song, obviously, as his head had snapped up to face Flint at its opening bars. He was biting his lip in a most peculiar mixture of glee and horror by the beginning of the second verse.

"Sneaking in the back door with dirty magazines/ Your mother wants to know, what are those stains on your jeans?/ Cause you're an orgasm addict..."

Spanner wheeled about with a delighted squeal, eyes glittering. "Marcus, listen – they're playing your song!" 

It was probably the fastest draw he'd ever managed to perform. Spanner never had the chance to move. Which was probably just as well, because otherwise he might have inadvertently been hit by the curse that shattered the tattered wireless with a force that sent a nearby filing cabinet careening into Danny's shins. Spanner squealed again, this time in indignation. "Hey! That was..."

"Quite enough. Expelliarmus..."

Harriet Mills-Henry was standing in the doorway, wand in one hand, the other raised to catch Marcus' as it slipped from his fingers. She cocked her head.

"You two never really made it past thirteen, did you? And Flint, we need to talk. Before you do yourself another mischief." She turned back onto the landing, casually twirling his wand. "Come on."

As he followed her, it struck him how much larger than life she looked. Everything about her was exactly as he recalled, only more so. She seemed even taller and thinner than before, her nose longer, her mouth wider. Everything around her seemed somehow to fade into the background, the thump of his boots on the stairs as he followed her, the soft light of late summer streaming onto the landing, the click of a door as she locked it behind them, then wheeled about. She remained beside the door, listening intently. Flint looked around.

They were in one of the office supplies stockrooms. Like most of the owl tower, it was Flooless; no open fires were allowed near the waist-high stacks of parchment and quills. Here and there, Perma-Glo rods hung suspended from torch stands to make up for the lack of windows. All things considered, it was rather cramped. Flint leant against the far wall in what he hoped was a casual manner.

Harriet drew her wand. Flint started, but she motioned for him to be quiet, then pointed its tip at the keyhole and muttered a spell he didn't quite catch. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a yelp and the sound of swearing and hurried footsteps disappearing up the stairs. With a satisfied smirk, Harriet reached for a roll of Insulatex off one of the shelves, tore off a strip, and riveted it to the keyhole with a wave of her wand. This was followed by a double silencing spell around the door itself. Finally, she turned to face Flint.

"That should give us all the privacy we need. So." She crossed her arms. "Is there anything you want to tell me?"

Marcus took a deep breath. "I'm... I'm really sorry for what happened..."

She cut him off. "No, not that. Tell me why it happened at all."

Flint gave her a very puzzled look indeed. Harriet smiled faintly.

"Don't tell me no one's called you that before. And you'll have to admit it was pretty smegging accurate, too... Not as if you're the only one, either."

Flint looked at the floor. Harriet went over to one of the stacks and heaved herself onto it, dangling her feet as she sat facing him.

"Think of it this way... In Dutch, "old wanker" is actually a term of endearment between men." This obviously didn't have the desired effect. Once again, she changed tack.

"Things would be so much easier, the whole world over, if people just made an effort to say what was really on their minds. I mean, it's never done me any harm...

"Flint, I can only guess at what got into you this afternoon. Men in general, however, seem to consider anger a legitimate substitute for an astoundingly wide range of feelings." She shrugged. "Now if you're insecure, which I know you are, or developing an inferiority complex, which you may well be, it may not profit the Prophet to have you realise this and try and do something about it, not with only two days left on the job. It might just benefit you, however. And me, for that matter. I really hate to see potential wasted.

"I don't feel I'm in any position to help academically. Not really interested, actually. Had I wanted to shape someone's life, I'd have adopted... Anyway. That stuff is up to you."

She waved her hand dismissively, then looked him straight in the eyes.

"Now, I suppose you'll have some physical hang-ups, too. Some unpleasant encounters with members of the opposite sex, I suppose? That would explain a lot. Because people are shallow, Flint, without exception. They go for looks, which, let's face it, you don't have."

Flint didn't feel like objecting. It wouldn't have got him anywhere. Besides, this was Harriet. Not only was she right, she was good at it. He sighed resignedly. She hadn't finished yet, though.

And she was smiling.

"Don't panic, Flint. There's more to a bloke than his face. You play Quidditch, right?"

He nodded. What was she flying at?

"Loads, even, I've heard. That should give you something to show for it. Am I right?"

He frowned. What?

"What I'm trying to say, Flint, is that I bet you'll have more than enough to feel just fine about, from the neck down. Do you?"

He shrugged. "Dunno, really."

She crossed her legs, grinning. "Well, then. Show me, and I'll tell you. Not as if anyone else is going to see."

Flint gave her a suspicious look. Was this some sort of joke? "You first."

Harriet threw her head back and let out a throaty guffaw that echoed around the stockroom's stone walls. Then she reached for the collar of her dustrobes and shrugged them off.

She hadn't been wearing anything underneath.

Incredulously, Flint stared at her bare chest. He'd never really seen Harriet as a person with breasts, but there they were. Not as big as, say, Tammy Wolf's, which made it to page three about once a week, but somehow that much realer. Their owner raised her eyebrows.

"Well? I've shown you mine. Now show me yours."

Suddenly, Flint remembered he was shirtless. Grinning smugly, he casually threw off his own robes. Harriet looked him over appreciatively.

"Nice." She leant forward slightly. "C'mere, you."

Flint hesitated, but only for a moment. He could handle this. No sweat. He stood in front of her. She placed a hand on his chest.

"Told you you had potential. Let me tell you, I'd absolutely hate to see this wasted." Her hands trailed along his shoulders and upper arms. She was wearing a most peculiar expression, one that he'd last seen on a group of students ogling the assortment at Honeyduke's. He found the experience rather unnerving. No one had ever looked at him like that. Gingerly, he raised a hand and cupped it around her left cheek. The cold, bluish Perma-Glo light was making her skin seem almost transparent. Ghostly. Unreal.

Then, for the first time, it hit him that he was in a sealed room with a half-naked young woman. His body reacted accordingly.

Harriet glanced down, then chuckled. "Teenage boys. Such enthusiasm." She uncrossed her legs, pushing the fabric aside.

She really hadn't been wearing anything underneath. All he could do was stare until Harriet gave another of her throaty chuckles, and he felt incredible silly. He looked at her questioningly, hesitantly reaching for her waist.

"Go on, then."

And he did, and it seemed he couldn't get his mouth and hands in enough places at once. Despite the peppermints, he didn't dare kiss her on the lips. Harriet, in turn, did something really interesting to his neck, scraping her cheek past the stubble on his chin. "Should've shaved... Sorry..." he mumbled.

"'s Long as it doesn't draw blood," she whispered. He giggled nervously. She straightened her back and looked him in the eyes again. "Marcus."

She'd never used his first name before.

"Remember Sex Ed at Hogwarts?"

What?

"Remember the doorbell analogy?"

Oh, that. He smiled, mildly embarrassed.

"Feel like giving me a ring?"

Marcus bit his lip. "Not sure I can, actually." Not as if he'd had much practice, after all.

"I'll show you." She took his right hand. "Best to use your thumb... Now. Circular movements. That's it..."

It was an interesting experience. After a few minutes, though, his hand started smarting, and he felt quite relieved when Harriet opened her eyes and gently pushed it away, one hand reaching for her wand, the other into his slacks.

"What're you up to now?"

She pointed her wand at his groin. "Simple prophylactic charm. Snape must've told you about those."

Marcus grimaced. His Head of House wasn't someone he cared to think about just now.

"Careful, this may tickle a bit..."

It did. It felt like his erection was being wrapped loosely in a thin sheet of cotton wool. The feeling wasn't altogether unpleasant, once you knew what was going on. "Feels weird..."

"It going to get a lot weirder still. That is, if you're sure you want to do this now..." She was looking at him intently. "Tell me if you feel I'm pushing you."

Marcus tried to think of reasons why they shouldn't. He shrugged. "We'd only have two more days, wouldn't we? I don't mind going on now." He hesitated before continuing, "Because, I kind of think you should be the one..."

Harriet didn't say anything. She spread her legs a little, drew him closer, leant back slightly, and boldly led him where he'd never gone before.

She'd been right. It was the strangest feeling. Like he wasn't feeling with his skin, but with the flesh directly beneath it, a warm, slick pressure on all sides, enveloping him entirely. Not only that, but he would've sworn that, apart from their actual movements, something exciting was going on inside of her that brought him dangerously close to the edge a number of times. He took to imagining Snape in a snakeskin thong to bring himself off the boil.

Harriet wrapped her legs around his waist and hugged his chest tightly, ivy round a tree trunk, digging her nose into the hollow between his neck and his right collarbone. Her movements became more urgent.

"You smell so good..."

Suddenly, her body seized him, her insides drawing him in, pulling, and not even the thought of Dumbledore and McGonagall getting it on would've kept him from falling, falling further and further down, but it was alright, because he was falling with her, with Harriet, first falling, then floating, the world spinning around him, floating gently down, touching down. Touching solid ground.

He opened his eyes.

Harriet ran a hand through his hair and kissed his forehead. "Better put something on. Someone may actually start wondering where we've gone." She slipped her arms back into the sleeves of her robes and fastened them at the collar. "Has my hair gone all messy?"

Marcus shook his head. She looked flushed, but not too different from what he'd come to regard normal for her. In fact, she looked like she'd just been in a heated argument with someone.

Danny and Spanner seemed faintly disappointed but immensely relieved when the two of them made it back to the stockroom without having torn each other's throats out.

"Well?" Spanner inquired anxiously; Flint noticed his left eye was rather red and somewhat swollen.

"Don't worry, Sam – Marcus and I've got it all sussed now. Don't we, Marcus, dear?"

Flint grinned back at her. "Certainly, Harriet. Best buddies, now, us two."

"See?" Harriet put an arm around Marcus' shoulders, giving him a quick squeeze. "Now we've got that cleared up, I'd really like to hear why you two are still here. It's gone five, and you're always so anxious to leave; what's so special about today?"

Flint made for the back room to go change into his regular robes, leaving Harriet to deal with the two pranksters. He needed to get away, go someplace where he'd be able to think things over properly. It was like the world had shifted a little. Some aspects had been added; others had gone. The image of Harriet's body had been added, obviously, as had the feel of her touch and the smell of her hair, but it seemed to have pushed aside other things in the process. Oliver Wood, for a start. He seemed to have somehow moved further outward. Like Marcus had beat him already, before start of season.

He walked out onto the Prophet's broom park. Life was all about Quidditch, yes, but whatever Wood and that speccy brat Potter would be able to pull that coming year, Marcus Flint felt he'd already scored his most important goal ever.

 

--- FINIS ---