Furtive Glancing 101, or Bad News Travels Fast

Furtive Glancing 101

Or:

Bad News Travels Fast

As Harry walked into the classroom the silence deafened him and he was nearly crushed under the weight of dozens of pairs of eyes. When he looked up, however, his students were scribbling away, intent on their notebooks. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind of unwarranted suspicions, but as he set his briefcase on the table at the front of the room he was again accosted by the feeling of being stared at. Keeping his face toward the contents of his case, Harry raised his eyes and met the gaze of nearly every student in the room. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he lowered the lid of the briefcase.

Harry walked to the front of the table and leaned back against it, folding his arms across his chest. He cleared his throat, causing several students to jump and not a few to drop their pencils. Not one moved to retrieve the fallen implements, though.

"Alright, then," Harry intoned. "I've a slight idea what's going on here, but would anyone care to explain why this class has suddenly become 'Furtive Glancing 101'?" He looked around, awaiting a reply. Usually it took a good while to get the class to stop talking, but now they didn't seem to want to start. Everyone suddenly became interested in his fingernails, or the spiral binding on her notebook, or something equally trivial. It seemed Harry was going to have to spoon-feed them when-

"Professor?" Ah. One of the bold ones, although she didn't look so bold now. Her expression resembled more of a deer in headlights than anything else.

"Yes?" Harry prompted. She bit her bottom lip and glanced at the floor before meeting the professor's eyes.

"Well, sir, someone said... that is to say that... well... ummm," she closed her eyes at this point and released a torrent of words nearly impossible to understand unless one already knew what she was talking about. "Some people have been saying that you were leaving at the end of term and that you'd been fired for doing something horrible and quite probably illegal, but you couldn't have been fired because you're one of the best professors in the whole school and everyone loves you, at least all the students do, but you're not going to be fired?" She paused for breath here and raised eyes shimmering with what could have been tears to meet her professor's concerned ones. Her next words were barely audible. "Are you, professor?"

Harry was consumed by a sudden urge to smack himself in the forehead, but he settled for letting out a deep sigh and running his fingers through his hair. From the panicked look on some of the students' faces they took this as an affirmative. He didn't know why he wasn't prepared for this. After all, it had been at least six hours since he'd turned in his official resignation that morning. He put his hands on the table, and took another breath in preparation for his news and the students' reactions.

"Contrary to popular belief, I have not been fired, or asked to turn in my resignation." The collective sigh that followed this statement sounded as if it had been uttered by every person in the room, which, Harry thought, it very well could have been. He continued. "However, I will be leaving at the end of term." Harry steeled himself for the protests he knew would follow, and follow they did.

"But Prof..."

"...can't want to leave..."

"...great here..."

"...being forced, are you?"

"...something better..."

Harry motioned for silence, and though some quieted immediately it took others a bit longer to settle down. When he had everyone's attention again he continued with his explanation.

"I understand your concerns," he began, "but this is a decision I made myself. I was not pressured to leave by anyone, my life was not threatened, nothing." This was accompanied by a glare directed at some of his more imaginative students. "I'm leaving because after term ends I'm getting married and moving to Brighton," he ended with a smirk. From the slack-jawed expressions Harry guessed that no one had pegged their favorite teacher as the marrying type, but that didn't really surprise him. After all, he was only a few years older than the majority of his students. The most interesting reactions were those of the rumormongers though.

They had looked a bit disappointed at his first announcement, but looked positively devastated when he had said he was engaged. He suppressed another smirk. Although the students didn't think the teachers kept up with the rumor mill, he found it amusing how often he himself was the subject of it. His favorite discovery was that he was the official/unofficial Most Eligible Bachelor on campus. While it amused him that the students were upset at having their idol taken away, it disturbed him how some of them had been so ready to believe the worst of him. He was spared a deliberation on the evils of human nature by a sudden catcall from the back of the room.

"Way to go, Professor!" It seemed this was the cue the rest of the class was waiting for, because within seconds the room was filled with applause and shouts of congratulations. Harry colored and waited for the applause to die down before retrieving a stack of papers from beside his forgotten briefcase.

"Alright, just because I won't be here next term doesn't mean I don't have to teach anymore this term." He grinned as the students let out a collective groan and began to hand back the papers. "Some of you seem to be grasping the fundamentals of this course nicely, while others," this was said with a pointed look towards a sheepish-looking girl in the second row, "seem to be less fortunate..."

He mused to himself as he continued handing out papers. That had been far less of an ordeal than he expected, but he didn't think the peace would last. Each of his four other classes had at least three times as many people as this one, and he really didn't think he was up to handling 150 curious and/or indignant college freshmen. He hoped the news of his engagement would spread as fast as that of his supposed termination, but he couldn't be sure. Getting married didn't have quite the same sinister implication as getting fired from the oldest university in England, but from the whispers and furtive glances the gossipmongers would do their job. It wasn't every day that Oxford's official/unofficial Most Eligible Bachelor announced his impending marriage.