What's in a Name?

It wasn't a vision that made her do it. Not that kind of vision, at least. It was something more prosaic; she had seen him sitting at a table in the library's understocked fiction section, and the expression on his face as he turned over a page took her breath away, and brought an unexpected blush to her cold cheek. He didn't know she was there, of course, or he wouldn't have let his guard down so. She stayed quite still, peering out between the stacks and watching him lose himself in the book until the sound of the library door closing made her jump, and she remembered what she was looking for in the first place. What she thought she was looking for.

She tried to dismiss it from her mind, because she'd known him for ever and although there had been a time when she'd thought perhaps he rather liked her, and when he had been more attentive than he was now, and she had wondered whether perhaps - well, nothing had come of it. The stars had been inauspicious, and the tea leaves had shown her nothing to make her try.

But the image kept returning to her mind, his face open and softer than she had ever seen it, and she'd wondered what on earth he could have been reading that captured him so completely.

With the children away, she had a lot of time on her hands, and she found herself spending more and more time in the library. She wasn't spying on him, exactly; she just ended up in the library at the same time as him more often than not, and if he was aware of her presence he didn't seem to worry about it, or realise that she was paying more attention to him than to the pile of books before her.

She looked at his library card, and found that he was reading Muggle novels. Romances by people with names like Austen and Bronte and Thackeray. Quite soon she was borrowing the books herself, and they were strange insights into the human heart and the unmagical world which left her wondering, and wondering.

It was 'Persuasion' that tipped the balance in the end.

* * *

She chewed her bottom lip uncertainly as she stood outside the door, listening for an answer to her tentative knock, and the weight of flowers in her hand struck her, too late, as something ridiculous and awkward. She was turning to go when the door swung open.

Her fingers tightened around the posy, and her smile faltered a little under the weight of Filch's glower. He blinked when he recognised her, and the glower faded.

"Oh - I thought - sorry," he said. "I wasn't expecting company." There was a small pause, whilst Filch waited for the Professor to explain her presence and the Professor waited for the ground to open up and swallow her. "Some kind of problem, Professor?" he asked, gruffly. His gaze dropped to the little bouquet, and she looked down at it with mounting embarrassment.

"No, Argus, nothing like that, I just thought - I wondered if -" she swallowed, and offered him a watery grin. "Well, I thought your room could do with cheering up."

"They're for me?" He looked stunned, and then flustered. Sybill nodded. "Is it - did you see something in the tea leaves? Are they protective plants?"

She reddened, and the thick lenses of her spectacles made her blinking eyes look bulbous. "They're just - pretty," she said, in a small voice. "I was never very good at Herbology."

"Me neither." He took the flowers from her outstretched hand, and they both stood there for a moment, radiating discomfort. "Er. Would you - I was just having a cup of tea, Professor."

"Sybil. I wish you'd call me Sybil."

"Sybil." He looked at her, and then looked away again, running his empty hand through his hair. "So - would you like some tea? Perhaps? There's plenty. Mrs Norris prefers milk." He glanced up again, and something in her expression made him smile. "And maybe - maybe you could tell me my fortune."

Mrs Norris, who had followed Filch to the door, surveyed Sybil with a disconcertingly knowing expression. Sybil laughed, a small, explosive sound that made her cringe at her own nervousness. "No, I think - I think perhaps we'll just wait and see how things turn out. If you don't mind."