Vector's Challenge

Chapter 15

Snape regarded the gargoyle with a wary eye. "Tootsie Rolls," he muttered, wondering what they were. Some sort of Muggle candy, no doubt. The gargoyle slid away and revealed the staircase. Snape proceeded up it.

"Ah, hello, Severus," the Headmaster said in greeting. "Would you like a Tootsie Roll?" He handed Snape a small object. Snape removed the white, brown and orange wrapper, and regarded the sticky brown sweet suspiciously. "It's perfectly safe, Severus, it's only a Muggle sweet after all, or I suppose I should say a candy, because it's from the United States," Dumbledore went on.

"An American sweet? Where did you get it from, Headmaster?" Snape asked. He bit into it. Their chocolate is almost as bad as their beer, he thought. He placed the remaining part of the sweet back into the wrapper, and tossed it into the dustbin.

Dumbledore smiled. "Emmy Vector got a package from an American colleague last week. It had all sorts of things we don't have here in Britain. She has promised to make me some 'chocolate chip cookies,' I believe she called them." He frowned and sighed.

"What's the matter, Headmaster?" Snape asked. What has That Woman done now? he thought.

"Lucius Malfoy had a meeting with Professor Vector last week, and it did not go well."

"What happened?" Snape asked tensely.

"He feels that she threatened him," Dumbledore replied.

"She threatened him?" Snape asked in a disbelieving tone. "How? With what?"

"I do not share confidences about my faculty without their permission, Severus," Dumbledore said.

"Like their lycanthropy," Snape muttered.

"Like their former allegiances," Dumbledore replied.

"Touché," Snape said. He thought, You'll just tell me enough so that I go find out for myself. Playing me like that brat Potter and his sidekicks. He sipped his tea, and regrouped. "Why not simply use some sort of Memory Charm on Malfoy, and stop the trouble that way?"

"He has already complained to the Board of Governors about Professor Vector," Dumbledore replied. "And I cannot go scattering episodes of amnesia about like Ophelia with her rose petals."

Snape chuckled at the mental image this presented. "Seriously. Headmaster, what sort of danger could Emmy Vector, of all people, possibly pose to Lucius Malfoy?"

"I believe that you will have to ask her that, Severus," Dumbledore said gently but firmly. "For now, the subject is closed."

Snape resolved to stop by Professor Vector's quarters after tea, and shake some answers out of the woman if he could. But he was frustrated in his attempts. The Designo me charm did not work. Apparently, she was nowhere in the castle. He decided to go to the Ravenclaw rooms to see if her House knew where she was. He found the Ravenclaw common room easily enough, but Flitwick was in classes, and the students were not much help, either. The second-years were all there, though.

The Quirke girl eventually volunteered the information that "Professor Vector is never here on Tuesdays or Thursdays past eight p.m., sir, and not back until early morning on Wednesdays or Fridays, and only here one weekend a month, sir."

"And where is she on the days that she's not here?" Snape asked.

Quirke and some of the other second-years giggled, "We think that she's got a boyfriend, sir." Some of the second-year boys sniggered at this idea.

"A boyfriend?" Snape spat. "Show some more respect for your professors. Thirty points from Ravenclaw." He thought for a moment. She must have some way for us to contact her in case of an emergency. "Where is the emergency contact for Professor Vector, children?" Quirke's eyes looked over to a soda bottle sitting on a shelf. Snape reached out and grabbed it, and was instantly transported to a strange room.

He turned around. This was apparently a Muggle dwelling place of some sort. It was small, quiet, and dark, as though its owner were gone. He went over to a window, and pulled the curtains aside enough so that he could see out. He was in a city of some sort. Then he was nearly startled out of his wits by a loud ringing sound. It reoccurred four times, and then he heard Emmy Vector's voice saying, "Good day. You have reached the phone of M.E. Donovan." He raced to the room that he had heard her voice coming from, but there was no one there. Her voice continued, "I'm sorry I can't come to the phone right now, but please leave your name and number, and I'll call you back. Thank you." He then heard a loud beep, and a light started to flash on a black box sitting on a table by a ... telephone, that was the Muggle word.

Donovan. Donovan. That must have been her husband's name. Snape tried to recall if there had been a Donovan in the years below him at Hogwarts.

A key rattled in the front door, and it opened onto Snape's back. "Ooof," he said.

"Petrificus Totalus!" he heard Emmy Vector's - Emmy Donovan's - voice say. He was frozen.

"Snape, what the devil are you doing here?" she said to him., after she looked around the door, came in, and closed the door behind her.

"I might ask the same of you, Mrs. Donovan," he snarled.

"What's happened at Hogwarts that they sent you to get me?" Emmy asked. "A fire in the Ravenclaw common room? Finite Incantatem."

"No," he replied. "Dumbledore told me to ask you about why Lucius Malfoy thinks that you threatened him."

Emmy's face took on a far-too-angelic look, and she asked, "I threatened Lucius Malfoy? Dearie, dearie me. The man must have misinterpreted me. I merely told him that I didn't use the Killing Curses on the Death Eaters that killed my husband, and how I actually did kill them."

"You killed a Death Eater?" Snape asked. "How?"

"It was three Death Eaters, actually," Emmy replied, with a little grin on her face. "I stabbed one in the chest, one in the carotid artery, and crushed the third one's larynx."

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Really," he said. "And you told Lucius Malfoy this?"

"Yes, I did," Emmy replied.

"What were you thinking, woman?"

"What do you mean?"

"If you had pretended to be scared of him and groveled a bit, he'd have lost interest."

"Oh really," she coldly replied. "Do go on, Severus."

"Now he thinks you're a challenge. He likes strong women and attempts to dominate them."

"I see. He's a bully and I should let him bully me and encourage him to keep on bullying me and other people as well. Thank you Severus, but no, I could not bring myself to do that."

"What alternative do you have, woman?"

"Take a look around you, Severus. This is a Muggle flat. We are out in the Muggle world. I have a second, Muggle, job."

"You'd give up magic forever?"

Emmy sighed. "I did it once before for love, I could certainly do it again for safety."

Snape looked sharply at her. "You gave it up before? When? And how?"

Emmy's mouth twisted. I'll do an info-dump so that you'll be bored and leave me alone, she thought. "When I left Hogwarts, I wanted nothing further to do with the wizarding world. My family knew some people who had connections at Oxford, and I read maths there. I met Brendon Donovan at Oxford. He was an American Muggle, a graduate of Notre Dame, and we got married before I finished at Oxford. I moved to the United States with him, he went to medical school, I went to graduate school in maths, and I got my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After Brendon was murdered, I came back to Britain, started teaching at a Muggle university, and then got a job at Hogwarts."

"I see. Which university do you teach at, and where are we?"

"None of your damn business. You have no need-to-know. Indeed, you have a need-to-not-know, or so Dumbledore tells me." She grabbed his wrist, and Apparated with him. They wound up at Hogsmeade, in the Three Broomsticks. She looked drained. Snape ordered her a hot chocolate, and then borrowed a broom from Madame Rosmerta to get back to the school. He kept on pelting her with questions all the way back, but she did not say anything further.