Potter Professions

Back at Beauxbatons, it took Sandra almost two days before she found an opportunity to talk with Frédéric alone. The second day after classes, Frédéric asked her whether she would like to join him on a shopping trip to the University bookstore. She said yes; neither of the other two people in their workgroup - Benoît and Héloise - had shown the indecency to invite themselves on that trip, and now Sandra was sitting opposite Frédéric in a street cafe.

A million more students crowded the streets, bars, and cafes here in the University quarter. Term had just started, so there was still money in the pockets, giving the waiters a lot to do.

Sandra had a café au lait in front of her, nothing else, as she didn't like the cake that was offered here. In a little while, she would develop a ravenous hunger, and by then, she should have made up her mind what to do with Frédéric. She could invite him to the Weasleys, she could invite him to Carron Lough, or she could invite him to something local, maybe one of these Arabian restaurants in the Latin Quarter. She didn't know yet; it would depend on how the conversation went.

Frédéric sipped at his own coffee, sent a quick glance to her, put his cup down, and finally looked up again. "So how was your vacation, really?"

For an instant, Sandra pondered the idea of asking what he meant; after all, she and Héloise had spent some time during the last two days telling about the past weeks, Gabriel's band playing a major role in these tales. But obviously, Frédéric's sharp mind had found some hints in these tales, despite their efforts to make them sound nice and smooth and slightly boring. Playing dumb now would have been a breach of style at the least - and besides, was there any reason not to answer honestly? If someone had something to hide, then only Héloise from Benoît. Still ...

"Close to a disaster," she replied with a wry smile. "The last part with the Dragonfly people was okay ... No, it was great actually. Those two girls and what they think and what they said, that was fun. While in Sav'-la-mar ..." She paused, looking for words neutral enough to be quoted by Frédéric to his friend Benoît, volunteer slave at Héloise's feet.

"You ran away from there, didn't you?"

His question told her which detail had given away the truth. Her arrival in Bulgaria, days before Héloise had followed, said "escape" loud and clear to a listener as attentive as Fréderic. In addition, as she became aware, it left little space for hiding the reason. Only her own situation prior to her travelling wasn't outlined yet.

And, no doubt, this particular outline was the most interesting part for the young man opposite her.

She grinned. "It wasn't Ma Benedict who put me to flight." The grin grew broader. "And no admirer either, although I can only blame myself for that - which I'm ready to do any time, considering the options. I hope you can follow my drift."

"Easily." Frédéric somehow forgot to grin in return. "So someone else had fun while not you, and before this unbalanced state could drive you nuts, you left." He produced the curious look of a ten-year-old. "Were the alternatives that awful? Or was there nothing left you'd call acceptable?"

Sandra sighed. "Imagine two girls, at the beach. And imagine two boys, friends as close as the girls. And imagine a disco there - "

"Pretty much what I imagined often enough, these weeks." The words came lightly and Frédéric's grin, there at last, looked effortless enough to fool most people.

"And one of them uses personal charm and the other thinks a doped drink's enough." Sandra snorted. "Except that Ma Benedict had taken pains to avoid just that, with a dope tester in the shape of a fruit picker."

"I hope you killed him right there." If these words were meant as a joke, Frédéric showed remarkably little amusement.

"Well, unfortunately not. Not a single bone was broken on that occasion. Don't ask me why ... Maybe because he was a Muggle."

"A Muggle!" You had to be French to express so much disgust and contempt in one word, and a you had to be Frédéric to do so into Sandra's face.

"Racist." She smiled, feeling better than a few minutes before.

"Well then," Frédéric replied, "let's move on to something totally different. What are your plans for this year?"

---

This year meant their last school year at Beauxbatons, and the question as well as the way how it was introduced presented multiple layers of meaning, expertly glued together. A light smile on Frédéric's lips, not reaching his eyes, confirmed that none of these implications came by accident.

The keyword Muggles, for instance, and the subsequent claim to have changed the subject completely were strong hints toward the true topic in Frédéric's question. Sandra was the designated successor of the High Priestess. The Muggles were approaching extinction, the care for them and the termination of the High Priestess' eon-old role were on top of the future agenda, and all these factors together had cast a shadow on the relationship between Sandra and Frédéric from day one, six years ago.

Nonetheless, they were boyfriend and girlfriend from an outside perspective and, to an uncertain degree, from their own as well. This degree, and its possible rise or decline in the months they had left together, was the nucleus of Frédéric's question, asked right after Sandra had described how a Jamaica tourist failed to reach a certain significance in his own degree, if only once.

Expressed in even simpler words, Frédéric wanted to know if there was a realistic chance that they'd make love to each other before the end of the term that had started a few days ago.

Was there? They were old enough. They were mature enough. They trusted each other for sure, and if the mutual affection ran at different levels, then at least both levels met the minimum quota for this particular purpose. So why not? Why not right now, or the same evening?

"I'm not sure yet," answered Sandra in response to both the spoken and unspoken question. "To some extent, I'm open for suggestions ..." She sent a glance to the other side of the table to tell Frédéric that yes, she had noticed the careful wrapping and was responding to it.

Before he had a chance to provide suggestions of any kind, she continued, "What I know for sure is that I want to do theatre, in our Theatre Group. That's long-term, within the scope of this year. Then I want to go with you to the Dragonfly concert day after tomorrow. That's short-term."

This concert, highly unusual so early after the start of term, was really a short-term affair. Announced only yesterday, with posters showing a girl with a microphone in hand, the concert was supposed to send the message that Dragonfly now had a singer. A less public reason was to let Caitlin become used to stage performance before she even found the time to become more nervous than was reasonable.

"And when this cup's empty I want to go with you to a place where they offer large chunks of food. That's now-term, so - "

"Now-term?"

"Yes. Or get-up-term. Also known as right away."

Frédéric lifted his cup in a gesture as if emptying it and getting ready to follow. Then he stopped and put the cup down again.

"Large chunks of food is okay. But you have to follow my guidance as well as my invitation."

Something in his tone made Sandra examine his expression more carefully than this not-so-unusual remark justified. "So you're suddenly an expert in food temples here around?"

"Yes I am."

"And you're suddenly so rich that you can invite me in this state of starvation?"

"Yes I am."

Neither Sandra nor Frédéric had ever lived with truly empty pockets for a week, not to mention a longer period. On the other hand, both of them had been raised by parents who believed in the educational value of limited budgets. So a state of being more afloat than usual was as attractive - and as rare - for them as for children of lesser wealth. Therefore, Sandra's question was predictable.

"How come?"

"Very simple. I jobbed during the holidays, as a tourist guide here in Paris."

"Oh." Now Frédéric had Sandra's full attention. "But you didn't bother to mention it in the past two days, did you?"

"Well - " He showed a sloped smile. "In a way, I had the same reasons as you not talking about this disco evening and how things developed afterwards."

"What?"

"I'm talking about Benoît."

Sandra relaxed in her seat, at once aware of what Frédéric explained in more words.

"He certainly had harder work to do than I, only he did it at home and for his parents or for their farm and of course without being paid. So I wasn't in a hurry to make things worse for him."

"I see." Sandra leaned back, eager to learn more about Frédéric as a working class hero. "So you led tourists through Paris. And that's a job where you can get rich?"

"Not from the salary alone," laughed Frédéric, "that's for sure. But there are the tips, and with the right clientele - "

"Only the high and mighty for our noble Frédéric, am I right?"

"Exactly." It was always a dangerous game to be sniffy toward Frédéric, and he didn't fail to prove it once more. "Even so, what you can get from regular business is limited. But there were the escort jobs."

Sandra stared in disbelief. "Escort, huh?"

"Yes." Frédéric's smile was a bit malicious.

"For middle-aged women, I suppose." The temperature in Sandra's voice had dropped considerably.

"Not quite. My typical customer was a girl of sixteen or so."

"Girls of sixteen don't spend a fortune in tips," replied the present member of this species with acid in her voice.

Frédéric watched Sandra's face for a moment. Then, as if she had agreed never to snap at him again, he explained, "Imagine there's a wealthy family with a daughter who's no longer a child but not yet old enough to have her own vacation. Or a lone father with such a daughter. Father and daughter follow the guide all day long. But in the evening, the father could do without the daughter on his heels, if you get my bearing."

"Loud and clear."

"So what to do with the girl? Parking her in the hotel doesn't work; she won't stay there. That's where TOSCA kicks in."

"Tosca?"

"Yes. It stands for Tourist Scout Agency, the service that had hired me. They offer reliable escorts of comparable social level and education, and if these escorts deliver the girl alive and well and - erm, unchanged, so to speak, the father is awfully grateful."

"Yeah, I bet." Sandra watched Frédéric's face thoughtfully.

"That's how I learned to know a bunch of first-rate places in Paris for this and that, food for example. And thanks to all these grateful parents, I can offer you the full spectrum - financially, I mean. Can we go now?"

She stood up to follow her guide, a thousand more questions in her mind. For a moment, however, she felt unable to dismiss a disquieting thought. Rich parents' daughters came in all varieties, and the fact that a sixteen-year-old accompanied her parents on a trip to Paris didn't mean she'd never heard of hotel rooms booked by the hour.

Maybe just the opposite.

* * *

Gabriel took the flute from his lips. Despite the applause that roared behind the blinding spotlights, he didn't bow. Someone else bowed - a girl, somewhat shaky still, but ages past the nervousness of her first minutes, now that her first concert as a singer was almost over. Caitlin.

"Thank you. Thank you," her voice beamed into the microphone. Coming up from the next bow, she swallowed, then said, "Okay, folks, this is the time when I'm supposed to tell you the names of the other people behind me on stage. Only this is a bad joke somehow because I'm the youngest member in this marvellous band, and I'm pretty sure you know all the names by heart. But to keep the tradition," Caitlin's arm pointed at the figure on the four-legged stool, "Tomas with the guitar ..."

The applause grew again.

"... Héloise, the angel with the Goblin harp ..."

Deafening noise, whistles, shouts.

"... her brother Michel with his drums and percussion ..."

More applause, joyful shouts in response to Michel crossing two sledges above his head.

"... and the one who lured me into this band even without using his magical flute - Gabriel!"

Caitlin reached Gabriel with a few steps and took his hand. Together they marched to the stage front. There, they bowed hand in hand into a last wave of uncoordinated applause before the audience fell into a chanting rhythm, demanding the unavoidable encore.

The Dragonfly Five were prepared for it. They had rehearsed a song in a new arrangement, not playing it in the regular program, to the loudly exclaimed disapproval of some listeners. It was the piece Caitlin had selected when challenging Héloise. Caitlin raised her hand and held the microphone close to her mouth, waiting while the chanting died to make room for expectant silence.

"Okay, one more song. As you might have noticed, we're still short of lyrics for the original Dragonfly songs, that's why this evening you had the choice between Dragonfly pure and me singin' traditionals. But there's one song in which we already can do better. It's 'Seagulls in the Wind' ..."

A short storm of approval rose and calmed down to another silence.

"... and as we found out, there's an old Irish song which is a perfect match to provide the lyrics. Originally it's called 'The Wind Dried My Tears'. Next time we'll have lyrics of our own, but don't be surprised if this particular arrangement will be kept. You might call it 'Seagulls in the Wind That Dried My Tears'."

Despite her words, Caitlin kept silent at first while Gabriel started the intro on his flute. The audience responded with a mix of satisfaction, at recognizing the missed song, and disappointment, because it wasn't the version they knew.

Tomas took over the theme on his guitar, passing it further to a few drum beats from Michel before a moment of silence prepared the ground for Héloise and her harp. And into the rich flood of sounds as clear as a bell, into the swelling and ebbing rose Caitlin's voice, heartbreakingly sad.

She sang of love and sorrow, first to the harp and then, apparently not finding consolation from there, to the guitar. When this instrument couldn't give her comfort either, her mourning turned to the flute, which took it over, framed it, shaped it, phrased it before fading away to give room for harp and voice alone, finishing the song.

There was a moment of breathless silence, quickly followed by a final tumultous applause. It ebbed away only after the Dragonfly members had disappeared behind the stage.

---

The number of backstage people had grown. Rebecca went to Caitlin and hugged her, at first not getting response because Caitlin seemed shaken by some kind of after-shock. Rebecca's boyfriend Matthew and his friend Tobin started to dismount the gear, moments later joined by Desmond for the sound equipment. Gabriel watched idly and in a state of mental exhaustion. Then he saw Sandra arrive, closely followed by Frédéric and Benoît. The two boys in her trail seemed equally ready to help or to hang around.

Gabriel knew that Ireen was somewhere downstage as the only person behind a stand where the audience could buy the former two Dragonfly albums on CD. Considering their outdated state - only instruments, no singer - a reasonable fan would wait for the next album, but Gabriel had wised up enough to know that fan and reasonable were contradictory by definition. So he stepped forward and greeted the newcomers.

"Hi folks. Could you please join Ireen somewhere down there and help her selling albums? I guess she's nearly run over by now."

Sandra turned to the two young men in her trail. "That's your job. I'm going to make sure that we all get seats in the cafeteria in a little while. Something like a separate corner, but open enough so the autograph fans can come and ask."

"Oh - yes, right, that had slipped my mind," Gabriel confessed before the other three disappeared on different paths, with that of Benoît passing the corner where Héloise was busy storing her precious instrument in a protective box.

Ever so slowly, the numbness faded from Gabriel's mind. Some days ago, when discussing the next steps with their new and inexperienced singer, their first idea had been a concert at their own school, which was run by the Goblins. Then Ireen had suggested Beauxbatons, saying, "It's at such a short notice that we shouldn't expect too much. Maybe it's more like a public rehearsal. But Beauxbatons is so much bigger than the Goblins school, might be we gather enough audience to have a real concert atmosphere."

Well, thought Gabriel, that had been an understatement, if there ever was one. Maybe they would find out why - it couldn't be Caitlin for sure, it couldn't be Dragonfly alone, and the combination of both was something new even for themselves. Maybe there was a simple reason, something like a deep desire to join in a social event after the long summer break, an event as different from the school's official start-of-term meeting as possible.

Gabriel walked over to Caitlin, who seemed to have recovered. He had time for a grin and the thumbs-up sign, then she almost knocked him over with her hug in response. Even so, he saw no reason to send a soothing mind wave - these were moments to be kept undiluted.

Caitlin had already treated Tomas and Michel in a similar way and was approaching Héloise when Sandra returned, again escorted by two young men, considerably bulkier than Fréderic and Benoît.

"Dragonfly, listen!"

Having gained everyone's attention, Sandra continued, "You are all invited to the cafeteria. I guess the artists should follow the invitation instantly and let the other people do their job here."

Rebecca had as much experience with her backstage manager job as Caitlin on stage, therefore she didn't object at all to the undemanded support and nodded in vigorous agreement.

"... These two dwarfs here are César and André; they will escort you through the crowd and into the cafeteria. I'm told autograph hunters come with their own pens, so just follow them and write your share until the rest of the team can join you there."

César and André smiled and nodded.

Watching them, Gabriel had to suppress a childish giggle. They looked perfectly normal, and approaching Héloise and Caitlin to escort them to the cafeteria was the most natural behaviour for any team of males up and down their age. But his sister's words had reminded Gabriel of this old show-biz joke about "the largest dwarfs of the world." Following them together with Michel and Tomas, he could stay calm only with some effort.

---

For the three boys alone, it might have been possible to reach the cafeteria unnoticed. With Héloise, though, there was no way this would happen. The people crossing their path invariably showed the same reactions: the Veela was recognized first, by her hair. Then a closer examination of the group, inevitably resulting in the recognition of Caitlin. From there it took only a minor mental effort to map the three male faces to the players with the instruments they'd watched until a few minutes ago. The band members could practise their signatures on papers, CD cases, caps, and whatnot already before they got a chance to sit down.

The Beauxbatons cafeteria offered various drinks including bottled beers and wines, three kinds of baguette sandwiches, and a half dozen brands of sweets and cakes. The large room was split into smaller units by moveable walls with posters, by benches with plants, and by low platforms with the sole purpose of breaking the big-room monotony. The tables were of solid wood; the chairs had less sturdy metal legs and plastic seats and backrests. Of course, their seats were on one of the platforms, about one foot above the regular floor.

Gabriel sat down. When asked what drink he wanted, he replied, "A large coke," then he could watch how the number of autograph hunters was shrinking quickly. Somehow it put things back into proportion. Sure, they were an evening event, but they weren't celebrities, and a lot of those who had asked for autographs from Héloise or Caitlin might have done so only to find an excuse for a short exchange of words, and for fetching a personal smile from them.

Although - beaming was more like it, in Caitlin's case.

The three sales clerks - Ireen, Frédéric, and Benoît - were the next to arrive, accompanied by Sandra. They reported another hundred or so albums sold. Then came Matthew and Tobin, shortly afterwards followed by Desmond and Rebecca.

With their group complete, Gabriel was ready to go for his own share of baguette sandwiches. On his way to the counter, he passed a girl sitting alone at a table. The way she looked, and the way she felt in Gabriel's mind, made him think she was desperately craving for an autograph but too timid to ask. When his eyes met hers, she quickly looked away.

On his way back from the counter, she looked anywhere but in his direction. It could have been perfectly normal for any student sitting in the cafeteria, but it was paired with something only Gabriel's special senses could reveal: the girl's full attention was on him and his every step back to his seat.

Sitting at his table, munching a cheese baguette, he pondered over the girl, who sat in a position where she could watch him, seemingly unnoticed, while he had to turn his head to do the same. And watch she did, unwaveringly.

Such people weren't unknown to him. Normally it was nothing personal; they were drawn by roles they admired, or envied. But somehow this case felt different. From his careful mental investigation, Gabriel got the impression the girl was determined to do whatever it was she had on her mind, and that she meant him personally, rather than him being a Dragonfly stage artist.

Still not responding to the girl's stare, he sent a mental note to his sister. A moment later, Sandra walked over to his corner of the table, urged Michel to switch seats for a while, and sat down.

"All right, little brother, how do you like the welcome from Beauxbatons?"

"It's great. All these people, and they wanted even autographs." Lowering his voice, he continued, "Somewhere to my right, on the way to the food counter, there's a girl who's staring at me constantly."

---

Sandra made a show of inspecting Gabriel's plate of two more baguette sandwiches, then staring over at the counter, seemingly arguing with herself before shaking her head, as if her good intention to fight some non-existent fat had kept the upper hand. Then she smiled and said, "Got her. For all I can sense, she simply has a crush on you."

Gabriel suppressed an incredulous sneer. "Come on, Sandy - she must be fifteen at the very least, if not older. A crush on me, that's ridiculous. It must be something else."

Sandra's smile turned softer. "Soon you'll learn that the idea isn't ridiculous at all, but anyway, I can't detect any other reason. It's not simple curiosity, that's for sure - "

Gabriel nodded his agreement.

" - so maybe you should do something as old-fashioned and tradtional as asking her."

"Yeah, only she looks as if she'd flee the moment I talk to her."

Sandra laughed. "Yes, that's true, and that's why I can't help thinking I'm right."

"Nah. But maybe if I take her by surprise ..."

Gabriel started his own charade. He stared at Sandra, down at his plate, at Sandra again. Then he took one of the sandwiches from the plate and gave it to his sister.

After Sandra had accepted, in support of his role-playing as much as from simple longing for food, he stood up, plate in hand, and walked toward the counter. He kept his eyes fixed on the spot where he might get a refill.

The girl, feeling safe, watched him.

About to pass her table, he made a sidestep and put his plate down on the table top, then he put himself down on a seat.

"Hi, I'm Gabriel. You want to talk with me?"

For an endless moment, her flight reflexes kept her in red alert. Then, maybe because he had started to decimate the remaining baguette sandwich and therefore looked even less threatening than before, she relaxed a bit. "Er ... yes."

Rather than answering or expressing more encouragement, Gabriel took another large bite - after all, he was really hungry - and chewed expectantly.

The girl stared at the baguette in Gabriel's hands, apparently not registering any detail. "It's ... Erm. It's about, er, lyrics."

Gabriel stopped chewing, swallowed. "You have lyrics?"

A nod.

"And you think they can be matched with our own songs?"

"Er, no." A frown from her side. "They're written for your own songs."

"And you wrote them?"

"Yes."

"Cool. Come on, let's go to the others and - " About to rise from his seat, the rest of his baguette forgotten by this thrilling news, Gabriel stopped. Then he started to sink down again, ever so slowly, all the time murmuring, "Okay. Okay, okay, it's okay, we won't do that."

The girl, who an instant before had been at the verge of escaping and maybe never come back, relaxed. "I'm sorry," she said, "but - er, you know ..."

Gabriel didn't know. "Is it someone at our table?"

"Oh, no!" The girl smiled, for a short moment amused of her own shyness. "It's just - it's so public here, and if I'd follow you and sit down up there, with everybody watching ..."

"Oh, I see. So if we meet in a more private place, it's okay for you to meet the rest of the band? I mean, you didn't plan to channel your lyrics through me to Caitlin?"

"No." The girl nearly giggled at this prospect.

"In this case ..." Gabriel could swear that the two of them were watched from other tables, half a dozen at the very least. But these were young people, the hype of the first minutes after the concert gone, so they did it very discreetly, apparently curious in a nice way what this lone girl had to do with the flutist from Dragonfly. Actually, he would like to know that for himself, past the scarce promise of lyrics waiting to be sung.

He seized for his baguette. Before ripping the next bite off, he said, "Why don't you just tell me a bit more about you? Your name, for instance."

---

Her name was Moira, Moira Wootton, and she had to spell her family name for him. Scottish origin, student here at Beauxbatons mostly because her father, a diplomat, was stationed in Paris for a few years already. She was one class after Héloise and the others, which meant she was one class ahead of Gabriel. That made her sixteen, although Gabriel was afraid to ask such a direct question at such an early point in their acquaintance, or should he say, at such a public place?

"How did it start?" he asked instead.

Well, how did such things start? She had heard Dragonfly, pretty early in their young career, and the music touched a nerve in her, especially ... At this point, Moira blushed and looked down at the table and hastened to tell him how she found out that these people were so much younger than expected and how she could dream and imagine herself being one of them - at that point, she blushed again but this time with a smile and just a little embarrassment.

"... and the only role I could see for myself was that of a singer, but this needed lyrics, of course, and so ... And when I saw the poster that announced this concert today, it was - it was such a shock, like coming awake and being told you're not a princess, but of course I had to come, this wasn't a question ..."

Needless to say, Moira had both albums on CD and, as far as they both could check, she had been to every single Dragonfly concert.

"... yes, and then Caitlin said you're still short of lyrics, and - " Moira stopped as if just saying the name Caitlin aloud was a heresy that might jeopardize her chances.

"I'm dying to see them, or hear them," said Gabriel, raising another rosy shimmer on her cheeks. "Today I feel a bit wrung out, but if we can meet again tomorrow, right here ..."

Oh yes, that would be great, and tomorrow nobody would pay attention.

"Okay, then." Gabriel rose to return to the others. "A last question," he said, "did you ever test these lyrics yourself?"

"Test?"

"Yes - singing them to our music."

"Oh, sure," replied Moira more casually than Gabriel would have thought possible. "That's how I found out how to write them, and since then I did it often, almost regularly - of course only inside my own four walls," she added hastily.

Returning to his seat, Gabriel asked himself how to interpret this confession. One explanation was to blame her shyness as the only reason. A realist, on the other hand, would assume that her lyrics were a mirror of her normal behavior - and this could only be called eccentric.

* * *

Harry buckled the control panel around his wrist. This thing, a masterpiece of combined Magical and Muggle technology from Groucho Technomagic, looked like a particularly pretentious wristwratch, although not out of proportion for a sports teacher in need of stopwatches and other timers. It was black, with a mini display and mini buttons - not worth a second glance by any contemporary consumer in the Muggle world. It allowed him to control his set of magical loudspeakers.

He was five minutes before his first sports class. He also was five minutes before the moment when his nervousness would be gone, so much he knew for sure. Another question was how his own approach toward sports would be received.

In the past weeks, carefully checking around for tips and tricks how to teach sports, he'd learned something that wasn't new to him at all: sports of any kind started with warming-up and stretching exercises. He had a large repertoire of exercises from his aikido training but didn't expect much approval from kids and teenagers if he arrived with such boring movements. Thinking it through, it had been just a short step from boring movements to exciting movements, otherwise known as dancing.

And so he had prepared himself for that - with a program for which choreography was much too big a term, with music, and with this nice set of floating loudspeakers - similar to what Dragonfly used, only much smaller, what might be called the chamber music version. Plus two monitor spheres, plus this control panel, on which he now pressed the 'Rise' button to let the eight loudspeakers and two monitor spheres float into position. They did that pretty much by themselves, taking into account the dimensions of the gymnasium as well as the required height above human heads.

The door flew open. A shouting, giggling, squeaking horde of girls entered the hall, fifth-years in Hogwarts terms. Registering the new teacher, they froze for an instant, then walked slightly quieter to the benches and lockers.

"Hello!" called Harry. "Get dressed! I'll be back in a minute." With these words, he disappeared in his own small room.

Get dressed was a euphemism for more or less getting undressed first, and this was the main reason why Harry hid in the teacher's room for the next five minutes. It still felt wrong to him to have a male sports teacher for girls that age, although he seemed alone with such concerns. True, the worldwide developments for indoor and outdoor sports had established skin-tight sports dresses of any fashion as the norm, but this short period of transit from jeans into leggings just felt indecent.

His own dress was also part of his careful preparation. He wouldn't have known what to use, what to wear. Looking around whom to ask for help, he'd skipped Cho first, his own teenaged children then, and just when it seemed as if once more Fleur had to rescue him, the simplest answer crossed his mind. Ginny! His sister with her modeling agency should know what was proper for a sports teacher and a bit fashionable in the eyes of French students.

Ginny had done her bit, with much enthusiasm and still more joy - of course only after he'd told her what this was all about, a request Harry could satisfy easily because his sister's mouth wasn't exactly famous for spilling secrets.

First, she had made him swear holy oaths that he'd wear the underwear she came along with, rather than the Californian-Irish-British mix that filled his drawers and for which Ginny had a few terms that made him gasp. Micro fibre was the state-of-the-art fabric, also for his dress: a light tracksuit, almost as tight as leggings. Runner shorts and a thin sleeveless jacket on top. Thick, long socks covering the trousers at his legs, and shoes that reflected the results of modern research and development.

His tracksuit shimmered in a light grey. His sneakers were almost white, but the socks came as black as his hair. When he'd watched his image in the body-length mirror of Ginny's atelier, his sister had said, "They'll eat you alive," with an expression in her face that made Harry decide to swallow his reply. Some wounds healed slowly, if ever.

---

He left his room and walked into the hall with its panelled floor that looked better than he'd expected. Seeing him, the girls started to form a line with the largest on top and the smallest at the end - not too quickly but without hesitation.

"Bonjour, mesdemoiselles ..."

Harry bowed slightly, letting a moment pass so the small wave of giggles could fade.

"... my name is Terry Pritchard, but if you call me Thierry Pri'chard, like all of my colleagues here" - another wave - "I won't object either. When addressing me in classes, you can of course say, 'Monsieur le Professeur,' only there's a tiny problem."

Harry paused for an instant, feeling the attention grow. "This is sports, as you know, and by the time you've shouted, "Monsieur le Professor, watch out!' the malheur has happened long since. So ..."

There were first tentative chuckles and smiles in this collection of faces and freckles and breasts and bellies.

"... I suggest to call me Prof, like in 'Watch it, Prof!' I apologise for not having all your names ready yet, but that's something we'll settle in time. And now ..."

Harry paused again, his eyes wandering along the line from the skinny giantess on top to the pretty little thing at the end, meeting glances that were more open than a minute ago, that examined his face, his discolouration, his body, his appearance, his legs, his ... Eating alive might not be too far from the truth, some weeks from now. Well, he would throw spanners in that wheel.

"... let's do our warm-up, although not the way you're probably used to. Spread across the hall, so that all of you have equal space around themselves - and all facing the windows. The smallest in front. Quick!"

The girls started to take position in the hall, with more than one groan and low-voiced remarks what the hell might be different if it started exactly the way they knew, and what the fuck these funny balls meant that were floating in mid-air.

Harry took position in front of them, almost under his two monitor spheres. "I'll do the movements, and I'll announce changes. In order not to confuse you, I'll be facing the window front too. Oh yes, I almost forgot - in order to make it as rhythmic as a warm-up should be done, we're going to use music."

He turned, pressed the 'Start' button, and started to move - step to the right, step to the left, a slight bending in the knees at each step. "Aaand right - aand left - let the music guide you."

Ginny had recommended he use the music charts as an indicator when picking songs for this purpose. Harry had bought the top twenty albums, had spent hours listening, and had picked out the songs whose rhythms suited best.

"... aand right - and if you catch the rhythm and let your body swing and your hips move, that's just fine ... And those three girls at the right in the rear line, if they don't start to move in a hurry, they'll be sorry!"

The two control spheres, at both sides and slightly above his head, actually were spectors that presented an exact image of what happened in the hall and in his back. After his words, several arms were pointing at them, and the lazy trio quickly fell into step with the others, flush-faced and giggling.

"And now two-step! Right and right and left and left and right again and left again and that's the way and there you go ..."

Meanwhile, the class was moving as one. It wasn't discipline, it wasn't the new teacher - something as simple as a popular song of limited musical quality had done the trick.

Harry let them run through various step combinations for five minutes. Then he made them swing their arms, crane their necks, bend their torsos, rotate their arms once more, and finally shake out in another sequence of steps. When he stopped, they had completed two songs.

---

He turned to face the class again, and to show a broad grin. "All right, did I promise too much?"

"No, you didn't." The answer was given by a mix of voices from beaming faces, some of them sweaty.

"Okay, then let's come to - "

"Monsieur le Professeur! Prof! Why can't we do that the whole class?"

"What do you mean?" Harry's voice resonated with his suspicion - after all, the question had come from the same group of three girls who'd found it beneath their dignity to join the others in the beginning.

"This - er, this is almost like dancing, and pretty close to what they do in these music clips on Channel Five and MTV, know what I mean? It's called hip-hop, you know ..."

Seeing the teacher's ironic glance, the girl faltered for an instant, then resumed, "Erm, sorry, Prof, but you know, most teachers have never heard of something like hip-hop. Anyway, it's much more fun than running or jumping or apparatus gymnastics - "

"Is it more fun than volleyball too?"

"Yes! ... No!" Voices where shouting, and Harry became aware that it wasn't the cleverest move to ask a controversial question toward an entire class.

"Hold it! ... OY!"

Into the silence after his yell, quite unfairly spiced with a dash of his mental power, he said, "It's an interesting idea. I'm new here anyway, and the athletic challenge is at least as high as with another exercise. So - hands up who wants to give it a try."

Half of the class raised an arm at once. Half of the rest followed suit after an instant, and a moment later, nearly every girl had an arm in the air, some of them even two.

"In this case," said Harry, "we need a choreography to study, one of those that are offered for sale. I don't object buying it - " he grinned toward the three girls to indicate that he wasn't a complete ignorant regarding modern trends, " - but this will take a day or two. In the meantime - "

"I have one! Prof, I know one by heart, almost completely."

Harry turned to the girl who had shouted the offer. "Which music?"

"World In My Order."

Whatever that was. "Do you have it with you, by any chance?"

"Er ..."

The girl's embarrassed silence was answer enough. About to end the discussion and resume an ordinary sports course with mats and somersaults and other boring exercises, Harry felt an idea crossing his mind. Didn't he know enough exercises from aikido that looked like step sequences in hip-hop, simply because these hip-hoppers had stolen their ideas? And didn't he have some songs with him for which it wouldn't be a problem at all to map the steps to the music?

"Okay. Let's do a test. I'll show you a step sequence, and then we'll start to practise the first steps, and the next, as much as we can manage in an hour. And at the end, I'm going to ask you the question again - might be you'll be surprised at how strenuous these exercises can be."

Harry stepped in the middle and asked the girls to give him some room. He dialed a number in his wrist control panel, hoping he'd remembered the order of the songs correctly. When the first tunes came from the loudspeakers overhead, he nodded and took the start position for the sequence he had in mind.

For the next fifteen seconds, he was far away, maybe in his own aikido training hall down in the rocks underneath Carron Lough. Stretching, a gliding step forward, another, one arm bent in the elbow, the other straight like an arrow. He'd practised this manoeuver a million times before, more often than not with his friend Tony. A thrusting step and his free leg swung around like a blade, failing its non-existent target so he was forced to duck and retreat from the non-existent counter attack. But Tony was dead, and since then ... A jump high into the air, a few running steps at coming down, a sudden stop. He'd started again to get in shape for his new role ...

That brought him out of his reverie. He stopped the music, looked around. What he saw told him - throwing spanners was something else.

"You'll stop beaming quickly," he called. "Take position - we're going to practise the first four bars in that song."