Dumbledore, Please Explain Your Twisted Logic!

Chapter Seven

Tampon Lady Starts a Rebellion

After Voldemort's downfall, the mothers and fathers (mostly the mothers, actually) had decided to take a leaf from the Muggles' book and form a Parent-Teacher Association for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. As such, the parents could now give their input in a way that was much more effective than bombarding Dumbledore with owls. Not that the headmaster didn't still get daily letters of complaints, that is...

The PTA meetings, like the mothers' periods, happened once a month, and woe betide the mum who had them at the same time! See, these meetings were more frustrating than they were useful. The fathers kept adjusting their office hours in order to purposefully miss them, the teachers cited conflicting schedules or sudden illnesses or some other such excuse that constituted their absence, and even the mothers began inventing flimsy stories that bailed them out of attending. Therefore, the PTA had degenerated into a monthly gripe-fest in which everything got complained about and nothing got done.

However, it seemed that this November's meeting just might be different. As usual, the mothers Apparated or drove to Narcissa Black's manor, because it was easily bigger than the homes of any other two parents combined. She had divorced Lucius Malfoy just before he went off to prison for life, and she had reaped big-time from the benefits (in other words, she got the house and all the money, and the parental rights, too). And, unlike her husband, her views were moderate enough that she didn't mind consorting with Muggles and Muggle-borns as long as it was for a magical purpose, so she gracefully played her part as hostess.

After some vapid pleasantries and some finger foods that nobody ate, the mothers (whose numbers had by now dwindled down to about forty) settled down in the comfortable armchairs that surrounded the cavernous, black-marble fireplace in Narcissa's golden ballroom.

"Our numbers seem fewer than before," Narcissa commented critically without even giving a preliminary introduction. "Where is everybody?"

"Well, Molly's Great-aunt Muriel just died," Martha Bones said, "so I suspect she's busy cleaning up the mess."

"Methinks that's merely her excuse," Xenophilius Lovegood said pensively. He was the exception to the father rule, but he could be so androgynous that he counted as a mother half the time anyway. "She harbors a burning hatred for the Malfoy family, and I'm afraid she still sees you, Narcissa, as a Malfoy."

"I am devastated," Narcissa said simply, without a single twitch in her countenance, "but I must survive such a crushing blow and continue my life without the redhead."

"And Bernice Finch-Fletchley has a subconscious psychological fear of magic," Emma Granger informed them. "She seemed fine during the last meeting, but when I was calling to inform everyone of the next meeting, she was a bit too quick in insisting that she couldn't make it."

"I don't know what she's afraid about," Kayla Creevey eagerly. "I find it fascinating." And indeed she did--she had spent the last few meetings goggling at the moving portraits, inspecting the magical household supplies, and summoning the house-elves with a snap of her fingers. The house-elves tickled her especially; she'd order them to get her various exotic dishes like escargot and engera, or perhaps a manicure set, or she'd even order them to braid her hair and give her soothing massages. She never ate any of the food or used the manicure, and she always took the braids out, but she cooed happily over the house-elves as she returned the unused items and ordered them to put everything away. By now, every woman in the PTA was sick of her.

"We noticed," Narcissa said dryly. "Now what's on our agenda for today?"

"I have an item of complaint!" Martha Bones inserted suddenly, her voice carrying an unpleasant whine. "It's about a letter I got from my daughter Susan."

"Would it happen to pertain to that play Dumbledore's decided to put on?" This question came from a weedy sort of woman with platinum blond hair that tapered at the neckline of her painfully crisp business robes. She squared her pointed shoulders and gazed fiercely at Martha, her stone-black eyes demanding an answer. Her whole posture, in fact, demanded not just an answer, but a total compliance to her unbending will.

"You've heard about it, Ivana?" Martha said.

"Dumbledore saw fit to send me a letter, informing me that my son Clifford has secured the role of some... battle hero." Her tone of voice suggested that she was still able to beat the stuffing out of her poor son, even if he became a battle hero in real life. "That old man writes me for the most asinine reasons."

"Undoubtedly because he knows it annoys you," Xenophilius put in helpfully.

Ivana turned around and glared at the crazy little man. "Please, Mr. Lovegood, if you cannot think of anything useful to say, just shut your mouth!"

"Ah, let's cease the Mr. Lovegood refuse," came the reply. "I insist you call me Xenophilius."

Ivana settled back into her armchair with a huff and didn't grace him with a reply, mostly because she didn't want to admit that she had a hard time pronouncing his first name.

Mrs. Bones cleared her throat loudly, and everyone stopped their side conversations and looked up at her (except for Kayla Creevey, who was ordering pomegranate juice from a beaming house-elf). "To return to the topic at hand," she said sternly, "my darling Susan is being forced to perform in the play against her will."

"Against her will?" Xenophilius questioned. "But did she not audition? I heard that just about everybody auditioned for the play, save for Luna's Heebripple and a few First-Years."

Mrs. Bones looked a bit flustered as she replied, "Well, yeah... Of course she auditioned. But she wants to quit, and... and now Dumbledore won't let her."

"So what's the dilemma?" Xenophilius said.

"The dilemma? Well, the dilemma is... is that she's stuck in the play," Mrs. Bones managed. She obviously hadn't put a lot of thought into this.

"Is that all?" Xenophilius said.

"Well... I don't know. She tried to tell me more, but apparently Dumbledore put some spell on... on something. Anyhow, she's forbidden to tell me what's going on, so naturally I smell something foul going on."

"I'll look into it," Ivana said shortly. "I was going up to Hogwarts today anyway."

"To visit Poppy-pop again, methinks," Xenophilius said with a sly grin. "How fares the ol' nurse these days?"

Ivana glared once more at Luna's irrepressible father and said, "If you still think I go up to Hogwarts a dozen times a year just to visit Madam Pomfrey, then you seriously need to feed yourself to one of those ridiculous Crumple-face Gackles that you write about in your ridiculous magazine!"

But Xenophilius was unfazed. As Ivana turned her gaze away from him, he half-coughed, half-whispered, "PER-ee-uhd!"

Ivana whirled around for a third time, very much incensed: She was in a particularly stern mood today, and Xenophilius triggered the tic in her forehead far more furiously than he normally did. But before she could get another word in, Narcissa broke through the argument with a loud: "Kayla!"

Mrs. Creevey jumped and looked up nervously from the house-elf she had just summoned. "Yes?"

"However many times you snap your fingers, that house-elf is still going to come," came the laden reply.

"Oh... yeah, I know," Kayla said happily. "It's really cool; I love seeing just how much these things can get me!"

"I concur, it is most fascinating," Xenophilius Lovegood cut it. "Here, allow me to demonstrate." He snapped his fingers, and a beautiful young house-elf in a black velvet pillowcase arrived in front of his chair. "Your name is now Barbarella, little beastie," he informed the creature severely, his hand stretched towards her like an impetuous monarch. "You will answer to nothing but Barbarella from now on, you got that? Now I have some orders for you."

The house-elf flourished a bow that scraped her nose to the floor. Xenophilius grinned indulgently and said, "Barbarella, Mrs. Creevey wants to play Dominatrix Muggle. Get her a one-third-meter vibrating dildo and some house-elf bestial pornography. Chain your naked body to her ankle and give her the longest, strongest whip you can find. Once she's done toying with you, she wants to rape your youngest child, so bring him along for the ride as well."

The mothers gaped at Mr. Lovegood, hardly daring to believe that he said what they just thought he said. To their immense sorrow, however, they had heard every word correctly. After another intricate bow, Barbarella the house-elf disappeared, and fifteen second later she reappeared with a pop, accompanied by a baby house-elf barely the size of Kayla's fist. Barbarella handed the pornography, the dildo, and the whip to the speechless Mrs. Creevey, and then proceeded to chain herself to the Muggle's ankle. She situated herself, spread-eagled and naked, against the ground, and thrust her child forward in a position that mirrored her own. Then she squeaked, "All set, oh mighty Muggle! Now whip me, please."

Mrs. Bones looked ready to be sick. Narcissa shook her head in embarrassment. Kayla goggled at the cat-of-nine-tails, the spiked dildo, and the pictures of house-elves being ravaged by Wizards thrice their size. Xenophilius looked immensely pleased with himself. And Mrs. Granger shook her head wonderingly and murmured, "So this is what S.P.E.W is all about..."

And from that day onward, Kayla Creevey never summoned a house-elf again.

**********

As she finished up a batch of paperwork for the comatose First-Year, Madame Pomfrey suddenly remembered something. With a frown she went to check the calendar that hung in office. It was Sunday, she knew, but was it the 1^st of November or the 2^nd? Please let it be the 1^st! she begged. Please, please, PLEASE let it be the 1^st!

It was the 2^nd. "Damn it!" She shrieked in an irrepressible outburst of fury. "Damn it, damn it, damn it! Argh, I hate my life!"

Every thirty days, like clockwork, one her old students dropped by to visit her: Ivana something-or-other. She couldn't even remember the bitch's last name. What did it matter, anyway? All that really mattered was that Ivana had been a brat when she was young and had grown up to be a bossy, irritating cunt, which Poppy Pomfrey found a thousand times more annoying. Oh, and Ivana was the biggest cheapskate alive. Although she had never been short on money growing up, she had limited herself, at tops, to two or three outfits; they were always washed, pressed, proper, and striking, but she spent half her time letting everyone know the great deal she got for them after searching through Gladrag's discount section for three hours. The same went for her school supplies and her dormitory furniture. She never spent more than seven galleons and 8 sickles on a book, she managed to buy all her potions products in bulk, and she never bought herself anything more expensive than that 18-galleon hard-backed chair from Rhonda's Magical Repository. This acute consciousness in money spending wasn't such a bad trait in itself, but she spent half her waking hours rhapsodizing about her acute cleverness and intuition to everyone that happened to pass her way. It was more than a little unbearable.

There was a tapping on the Infirmary door. Madame Pomfrey rapidly shut the door to her office and ducked under her desk, waiting as the second hand on the clock behind her edged slowly around the face, accompanied every twenty seconds by an increasingly weak knock. Just a bit longer, and she'll go away! Poppy told herself, foolishly indulging in a nonexistent hope. It wasn't until she heard the voice of a young boy crying out, "Madame Pomfrey?" that she left her office and let the visitor in.

"It's my friend," whimpered the tiny boy, who couldn't have been past his Second Year. "We, uh, were just sort of fooling around and, uh..." He straightened his glasses, which had begun to slip down the length of his perspiring nose, and gestured to the freckly girl who stood beside him. Her was face was screwed up in an excruciating amount of discomfort as her stomach hung from her gaping mouth. Her jaw was open just enough to keep the organ from choking her, but she had to close it enough so that it didn't fall out and take half her insides with it. Even so, she cupped her hands under her chin, as if expecting her precarious grip to fail her at any moment.

"Not to worry," Madame Pomfrey sighed. "It's just a normal case of Organ Regurgitation."

"There's a name for it?" the boy asked, horrified.

"Of course," Madame Pomfrey said crisply. "It happens all the time, normally when one combines a careless spell with an acid reflux antidote. I suppose Professor Snape set you the potion for homework?" The little boy nodded. The Hogwarts nurse ushered the girl into the room and said crisply, "Next time, listen when Professor Snape warns you about the side effects and possible accidents. I know he informs you, because this has happened before. Just because you hate the man doesn't give you an excuse to ignore everything he says."

And with that she cast a quick Finite Incantatem, and the girl's stomach squeezed its way down her throat, much to her consternation. Although the little thing went breathless for only ten seconds or so, she refused to be calmed down afterwards.

"Off with you, now," Madame Pomfrey said brusquely after ten minutes of tears. "Really, this commotion is too much over a mere Organ Regurgitation! My comatose patient needs peace and quiet!"

That, and she wanted to retreat to her office before Ivana showed up. Apparently the woman was just as much of a cheapskate as before. Despite her well-paying job in the Ministry, she only spent 10% of her earnings (a stricture she followed with obsession), bought only the cheapest health food for her and her son, and never made any room in the budget for vacations or Christmas presents. Merlin, she felt sorry for the boy... what was his name again...? Loser, or something like that. Ah, what did it matter what his name was? He was the wussiest person in all of Hufflepuff--no, in the whole school--and he lived in constant fear of what his mother was going to do to him.

There was another knock on the Infirmary door, clean and loud. Poppy's heart skipped a beat (certainly it was Ivana this time!), and she sprinted back towards her office, hissing over her shoulder, "Get out, you two! Shoo, shoo, my patient needs--" But before she could finish her sentence, she was in her office with the door closed. For a moment she heard jumbled voices--two belonging to the timid little children and a third belonging to an irrepressible older woman. And when Madame Pomfrey heard that third voice, her heart sunk--She had arrived.

By far the worst thing about Ivana during her school career was that she blatantly stole Madame Pomfrey's tampons every time she had her period. The first time, when she was twelve, she had stumbled into the Hospital Wing to ask Madame Pomfrey why blood was leaking down her legs. The nurse had to explain the process of menstruation, and she gave the little girl some tampons to help plug up the flow. However, if there's one mistake that one should never make, it's being generous to a cheapskate. After that first time, Ivana never bought a tampon of her own, but waltzed into the Hospital Wing every time she had her period and took some from Madame Pomfrey's stash. It didn't matter that they were a size too large for her; she said it was better for them to be too big than for them to leak blood and ruin her stockings, and that she'd manage to deal with it.

Maybe if she doesn't see me she'll go away, Madame Pomfrey thought desperately. She shrank against her desk and waited for a couple tense moments, hoping that her rustling apron wasn't making too much noise--in her super-sensitive state, it sounded to her like a kite being ripped apart by a heavy wind. Whether she was imagining the noise or not, the door to her office still burst open, and Ivana marched in, her stiletto heels going click-click most annoyingly against the tile floor beneath her. Not even acknowledging the nurse's presence, she began rooting through the file cabinet in the corner.

Yes, Ivana still stole herself some tampons, despite the fact that she was grown and had a house of her own. It had been irksome enough when she was in her school years, but Madame Pomfrey had been floored when the girl appeared again in the summer after her seventh year. From then on, the girl had ceased to be Ivana--she became Tampon Lady.

After this unofficial christening, Madame Pomfrey started hiding her tampons, each place more unlikely than the one before. She stashed them with the bedpans, but Tampon Lady found them in fourteen minutes. Pomfrey countered by stuffing them into her Every-Flavored Beans jar, but her nemesis discovered them after three-quarters-of-an-hour. It took Ivana only nine minutes and twenty-eight seconds to find them next month, hidden behind the clock. The month after that she marched into the office and brazenly thrust her hand into Madame Pomfrey's voluminous pockets, discovering the tampons in three-and-a-half seconds flat, eerily emulating Roderick Plumpton's infamous golden snitch capture of 1921. The nurse kept up the futile game, but it never fazed Tampon Lady, who willingly spent hours searching for those elusive tampons, refusing to use a Summoning Charm out of perverse stubbornness, even when Madame Pomfrey lied and said she lost them. This dragged out for thirteen months before Madame Pomfrey gave up and left them in the second drawer of her filing cabinet with the other feminine supplies. Now that Tampon Lady knew where the treasure was buried, Poppy had hoped she'd be in and out like a hot flash, but recently the nurse had been severely disappointed. If those tampons were easy to find, Tampon Lady made up for it by taking her own sweet time in transferring them to her pockets (she was too much a cheapskate to buy a purse)

"You know about the play Dumbledore's putting on," Tampon Lady said without so much as a hello. It wasn't a question, either: Madame Pomfrey felt like she was being interrogated.

"Yeah, the new version of the Founders Play," Madame Pomfrey said irritably.

"My son's in it--he's playing some... battle hero."

"Mmph," Madame Pomfrey grunted sourly, wishing that the lady would just steal her tampons and leave in peace.

"I don't know why Dumbledore gave him that role. Clifford's really a wimp."

"Uh-huh--wait, did you call your own son a wimp?" Madame Pomfrey looked up at Tampon Lady incredulously.

"You heard me," Tampon Lady said, turning around to give Madame Pomfrey the famous Tampon-Lady-stare. It involved a slight squint of the eyelids that would have looked lazy had it not been so reprimanding, a twisted pursing of her painted lips that stood out starkly on her face, and a slight wrinkling of the nose that gave her a sour look indeed.

"But... but he's your..."

"Whatever." Tampon Lady turned around again and began sorting through the tampons, trying to find the ones that best matched her vagina. "I picked my strongest, healthiest friend to be my sperm donor, but he must have had a defective gene in him somewhere, because Clifford is truly the most spineless kid I've ever seen."

Tampon Lady had conceived Loser through in vitro fertilization, and she let everyone know this as soon as possible, most likely to prove that she was an independent woman who could raise her own child without the interference of some worthless male party, thank you very much.

"Dumbledore is going senile in his old age; there's no other explanation for it," Tampon Lady said decisively. "Casting my son as a battle hero... huh! I raised him to be obedient, not heroic! And of course I have succeeded--he's as pliant as any parent could wish for, and as accommodating a child as most parents only dream about.

"I named him after my grandfather." Madame Pomfrey already knew this, but she didn't bother telling Tampon Lady. If she talked too much, Tampon Lady would take it as an invitation to waste a couple few hours of her valuable time, in which she'd hog the conversation and generally annoy her to bloody hell. Not that she didn't already hog the conversation and annoy her to bloody hell... "Clifford: what a nice, strong name it is! His middle name--Oliver--belonged to my own father, may he rest in peace."

"And you were named Ivy, after your grandmother, but you changed it to Ivana because Ivy sounded too gentle," Madame Pomfrey said in a monotone, rolling her eyes. She couldn't help herself; but she couldn't bear listening to Tampon Lady reciting her banal family history again. "Go find your son or something. I'm sure he's anxious to see you."

"Stop fussing, I shall," Tampon Lady said peevishly as she slid the filing cabinet shut. "But first I'll head up to Dumbledore's office--I'm going to find out more about this new play."

Shortly afterward Tampon Lady left. Madame Pomfrey let out a long, loud groan and slammed the cabinet drawer shut. "Rrrgh, I hate that woman!" she grumbled angrily as she went out to check on her patient.

**********

At that moment, Dumbledore was entertaining a lady friend in his office. Snape sat in a hard-backed chair next to her, his arms crossed and his face drawn up in a pout. He was quite put out by the situation because he had been discussing a new potions rubric with the headmaster when the ancient woman burst in without so much as knocking, and she rudely butted into their conversation with one of her own. As far as he could gather, she and Dumbledore went way back (to the 1910s, if Snape's ears were still working correctly), and it had been half-a-century since they last met. Her name was Connie, perhaps short for Constance, but Snape had yet been unable to catch a surname. Oh, and she was a Muggle, which broke the International Code of Secrecy to pieces, but when had Dumbledore been worried about something as insignificant as rules?

"It's an awfully nice place you got here, Al," she remarked, her voice entirely too jolly for someone so blanketed in face wrinkles and frizzy white hair. "You, headmaster... I can hardly believe it! You were ever the mischief-maker in your youth."

"Ah, if there's two things that bear down upon us the greatest, it is age and responsibility," Dumbledore said, his eyes twinkling. Snape scoffed less-than-surreptitiously into his fist. He was unable to imagine a time when Dumbledore had ever let his age or his responsibility get in the way of creating erratic prankishness that he normally left for others to clean up.

"Well, if you must, Albus," Connie said, quirking her tangled eyebrows, "I'm sure you know where I'd like you to bear down."

"I know just the spot you're talking about it," Dumbledore returned slyly, "though I'd need a couple tries to get back in practice. What do you say, my old girl?"

Connie feigned offense and gave Dumbledore's arm a light slap. Their sagging skin reverberated from the contact and slid in seven different directions as once. "Old girl? Utterly preposterous; you must have at least twenty years on me!"

Dumbledore flicked his wet, pink tongue at her and replied, "Twenty years' experience, that is! I'll bet I could teach you a thing or two, if you get my drift."

By now Snape was beginning to feel sick. Either he had brewed too many mind-altering potions in the past, or else he was actually witnessing a pair of century-old people exchanging sexual innuendoes. Or maybe it was a bit of both. Whichever way, he still disapproved of this Connie character--she was too much like Dumbledore, and even one Dumbledore was a chore to get used to.

What's worse, they kept it up! When someone knocked on the door, and when Dumbledore called: "Come in!", Connie burst into a fit of giggles and said, "I'd like you to 'come in,' Allie boy!"

"Shut up, both of you!" Snape hissed. "She's coming over here!"

In this case, "she" happened to be Hermione. But Dumbledore, having not yet espied his smartest student, snorted forth another giggle and prolonged the tiresome joke with: "Who's coming over here? I dearly hope it's you, Connie!"

Unable to stamp on Dumbledore's foot in the presence of a student, Snape merely snarled at the headmaster and whipped his head around furiously to bark out: "What are you doing here, Miss Granger?"

"I..." Hermione looked suddenly taken aback in the presence of Snape and the strange old lady. "I... well, Headmaster, I wanted to talk to you about the Founders Play."

"Talk away, my dear," Dumbledore said. "I did tell you about the play, Connie, didn't I?"

"Twice," Connie said, grinning. "Which part are you playing, Miss Granger?"

"The librarian's lover," Hermione said hesitantly, nervous about talking to a stranger. "But I didn't want to talk about that. I wanted to address... well, two things, actually."

"I am agog to learn, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said pleasantly as he leaned forward across his cluttered desk to listen to her.

"First, it's Xaxis's use of the word 'Mudblood,' " Hermione said. "He uses it eighty-six times throughout the play, mostly in a derogatory context." The last phrase was more of an afterthought.

"And that offends you?" Dumbledore sighed. Connie smirked wryly at the Muggle-born, as if she thought it petty to be offended over such a matter.

"Oh no, not at all!" Hermione said quickly. "No, no, no. It's just this: I was doing some research the other day, and I found out that it wasn't until two hundred years after the last Founder died that the world 'Mudblood' entered the English language. As for the word 'arse,' it didn't come to be a vulgarity pertaining to the backside until recently. And then there's time when you use the word 'ass' instead; I don't meant to be critical, Headmaster, but 'ass' is a bit too Americanized--you should stick to 'arse.' "

Snape barely managed to hold back an incredulous bark of laughter. How could anyone stand to be that obnoxiously smart? How many hours of her life had she wasted this time in order to find a few flaws in Dumbledore's script that didn't even matter in the first place?

"Well, Miss Granger," Dumbledore began calmly, "it's like this--"

Whatever it was like, none of them found out, because at that moment the door burst open and an irritable weed of a woman marched into the room, smoothing a few nonexistent wrinkles out of her business robes. "Dumbledore, tell me more about this Founders Play," she ordered him coolly. She gave no greeting, she didn't apologize for interrupting the conversation, and she didn't even acknowledge the other people in the room.

"Ah, Ivana," Dumbledore grinned, for indeed it was her. "Glad you could stop by."

"I don't care for your pleasantries," she said, dismissive, as she wrinkled her nose distastefully. "Just answer my question."

"We were just talking about the Founders Play," Dumbledore said happily. "Miss Hermione Granger here was exercising her deep insight in regards to some of the more colorful terminology found amongst the script's knowledgeable depths."

"I hear that the Bones girl wants out," Ivana continued, almost as if she hadn't heard Dumbledore speaking, "and yet you won't let her go. You must tell me why."

"Oh, half the cast wants to quit," Dumbledore replied cheerfully. "Don't they, Miss Granger?"

Hermione jumped and blushed at being put on the spot, especially with such an incriminating question. She hated the play--really, she did; nothing would be better than Dumbledore calling the entire thing off--but at the same time she didn't want to hurt the old man's feelings. After all, this was his play, and he had obtained their service, however sneakily, and, well... Hermione always wanted to take a stab at acting anyway, and she wasn't yet about to give it up because of a few (okay, a lot of) unfavorable conditions. Hence, she only managed to stammer out, "Uh... uh, well, it's not so--"

"Tell me why you find it necessary to do the play in the first place, then," Ivana said, her voice laden with superciliousness. "I certainly declare it to be a waste of everyone's time, including your own."

"Fear not, Ivy darling," Dumbledore said, "the students will come round. Give it a month or two, and they'll get used to the demands I ask of them. By opening night, you'll never see a better group!"

"I seriously doubt that," Ivana replied, as if her word was the be-all-end-all. "You should just disband the silly thing; after all, who wants to learn more about the Founders Four? Nobody."

"I thank you for your most constructive criticism," Dumbledore replied, ineffably cheerful in tone, "but I am afraid I must ask you to leave me now. See, I was in the middle of entertaining three charming guests, and they all want decidedly different things."

"Hoohoo, you know what I want, Albus!" Connie cackled gleefully. Snape and Hermione blushed at the indecency, but Ivana paid it no attention. In fact, she was halfway to the door by the time Dumbledore had finished talking.

When the door closed behind Ivana, Dumbledore turned back to Hermione and said, "So sorry for the interruption, Miss Granger. As I was saying, it is simply impossible for me to acquiesce to your demands. There is something called "poetic license," and I have taken it. 'Mudblood' and 'arse' certainly weren't used as profanities back in Gryffindor's day, but then again, if I wanted to be painfully accurate, I would have written the entire play in Old English, and then no one would understand it. Trust me, it's better the way it is."

Hermione shrunk slightly under the rebuttal, but she still had enough in her to counter with: "Well, at least change the 'ass' back to 'arse.' "

"Once again, my dear, not possible," Dumbledore said amiably. "I use it for the rhymes. Pairing 'fucking ass' and ''tarded spaz' is enough of a stretch already, but 'fucking arse' and ''tarded spaz' couldn't do at all. Certainly you must see that, Miss Granger?"

Now that her ideas had been pronounced worthless, Hermione wilted before the headmaster. She picked nervously at her skirt and said, "Okay then, Headmaster. Uh... well... Thank you for your time. Yes, well. Bye, sir."

And she beat a shameful retreat. Snape sighed in relief as the door closed behind her. "I can't stand her," he huffed. "It is sinful for an egotistical Gryffindor to know so much and yet be so useless. It is a wonder her head doesn't explode."

"If it did, I'm sure that tremendous bush of hers would catch it all before it splattered the walls," Connie said, giggling. "Does she do her hair like that on purpose?"

"No, it's like that naturally," Dumbledore said with an indulgent smile.

"Hmm, poor thing," Connie tutted. "I've never seen such hair in all my born days. If she shaved herself bald, she could cloth a whole third-world country."

~~~~~

When Hermione left Dumbledore's office, Ivana was waiting for her on the spiral staircase. "You, girl," she said, "tell me what Dumbledore meant by colorful terminology."

Hermione jumped at being addressed so brashly. "Oh! Well, it's, um, like... well, the language, I suppose."

"The language?" Ivana said, her eyes narrowing. "Don't tell me you mean bad language!"

Hermione shrugged. "I can't say any more, Mrs., uh..." she waited for Ivana to give her a last name, but none came, so she blustered onward. "Dumbledore put a spell on the parchment that keeps us from saying too much."

Ivana frowned at Hermione and took a couple steps closer, bringing them to an uncomfortably close proximity. "Tell me about this spell," she ordered. Hermione could feel her odorless breath on her face.

"The spell is, uh, designed to keep us from backing out of the play or revealing anything big about it," Hermione said. "If you're interested in the really bad parts of the play, you'll have to ask Dumbledore."

Ivana wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Not when his ghastly lady friend is up there with him. The two of them are way too old to be carrying on the way they do."

Hermione shrugged again and offered clinically, "No, not really. Sexual desire is a natural thing, even among the really old. I'll bet Dumbledore still copulates on occasion, perhaps even with that 'lady friend' of his."

Ivana took a sharp step backwards and huffed indignantly at the Gryffindor bookworm. "If you're going to crack crude jokes, I must insist on leaving your presence at once!" she barked furiously. "I have better ways to spend my time."

And she marched off, while Hermione stumbled down after her, eyes wide and hands flailing as she called, "No, it wasn't like that, you misunderstood...!"

But Tampon Lady didn't reply. Instead, she left the bushy-headed brunette's presence, fingering the quill she held in the pocket and figuring that she'd have to owl the PTA as soon as possible and tell them about the latest development. This play, it seemed, would have much too worldly an effect on their impressionable students, if what that know-it-all Gryffindor said was really true. This was the kind of risqué school activity that must come to an end--the sooner the better!

Yet before any of that, she needed to find a bathroom and plug up her vagina before it started bleeding. This time, however, she had to stay away from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom; the last tampon-changing in that musty lavatory was an experience that Tampon Lady hoped never to repeat.

A/N: By the way, I started planning this story before J. K. Rowling outed Dumbledore, so Dumbledore's still straight in this fic. Relatively straight, that is...

I've sneaked in an itty-bitty crossover into this story, by the way. It'll be properly disclaimed by the end of the story, no fear, but in the meantime I'd like to see if any of you can spot it. When you do figure it out, remember that I don't own it, and that nothing in this fic belongs to me, etc. Lol, if I've said this once, I've said it a thousand times.

Any Americans out there have probably been in the situation in which Hermione put Dumbledore. That scene was a special homage to those who have bravely borne such experiences. ;D

Next chapter: Any Draco/Trelawney fans out there? You'll enjoy yourselves, then. And thanks to Lisa725 for being a great beta!