Vector's Challenge

Chapter 26 - Mike and Emmy have a civilized talk

Millie Bulstrode smiled to herself as she sat and revised her Arithmancy in Professor Vector's study. Emmy Vector gave the girl a proprietary glance. She really seems to be enjoying herself. I'd better watch it that she doesn't try to earn detention with me more often. Someone knocked on the door; it sounded familiar somehow. If it's Snape, best that I have a witness, so that I won't break down completely before I start the argument.

"Come in," Emmy said. Michael Vector came into the room. "Hello, Emmy, Miss Bulstrode," he said. Millie beamed at him, and he smiled back at her. Emmy leaned back on the sofa to watch.

"How are you lovely ladies today?" Mike asked.

"Just fine, thank you," Emmy replied.

"Are you all recovered from the shock of the Dementor, Miss Bulstrode?" Mike asked.

She blushed and nodded. "Perfectly fine, thank you, Auror Vector. And yourself?'

Mike sighed, and said, "Well, I've been better. I'm on light duty for the next couple of weeks. Although I feel much better for the sight of you."

Millie cast her eyes down, and a triumphant grin stole across her face.

Mike heaved out a sigh. "My dear Miss Bulstrode, I do need to speak privately with my sister. Could I possibly see you again afterwards?"

Millie looked up to face him. Her smile broadened, and she replied, "Yes, Auror Vector. I'd like to find out more information on the requirements to become an Auror." Millie got up, and Mike did as well. He kissed her hand.

"Until later, Miss Bulstrode," he said.

"Professor Vector, is my detention complete?" Millie asked, as Mike continued to hold onto her hand.

Emmy looked at the clock. "Why don't we say that it's halfway done, and I'm giving you a break before I have you give Auror Vector more of a tour as completion of your detention? And you can tell that to Professor Snape if he has any questions."

Millie chuckled. "You're the best professor to serve detention with at this entire school, Professor Vector."

Emmy shrugged. "Tastes differ. Malfoy might have a different opinion."

Millie laughed outright as she nodded to the Vector siblings and made her leave. Mike Vector's glance followed Millicent Bulstrode as she walked out of his sister's study and shut the door behind her. He set a folder down on his sister's desk. Emmy nodded. It was probably more data for her computer simulations, and they didn't really need to talk about it.

"Malfoy might have a different opinion? What happened?" Mike asked.

Emmy grimaced. "Insolent little brat. He's still in a snit about his father making advances on me, and he took it out on me last Friday. I gave him detention and a mouth full of soap bubbles for showing disrespect to a teacher, and kicked him out of class until he apologizes."

Mike chuckled. "You used Da's soap-mouth hex on him?"

"A good old Vector family tradition," Emmy said.

"I guess that you're keeping up more Vector family traditions than I am. Sorry about the scene the other day with Snape and all," Mike Vector said to his sister.

"Mmm. The 'wildly inappropriate and scandalous spouse' tradition?" Emmy replied.

"Yes. I fear that I'm going to wind up an elderly Irish bachelor."

"Well, you've still got a few years yet. About five to seven years or so to find someone, if we go by Great-Grandfather Solomon Vector."

"But Emmy, that was back in eighteen-eighty!"

"So? Why ruin a perfectly good family tradition?"

Mike sighed. "I'll never find someone." He shook his head and sat down on Emmy's couch. He started mumbling, "All the women I know are too fluffy and dainty, too small for a man to take a good grip of. And all so damned independent."

"The problem with you, brother dear, is that you were born a few hundred years too late. You should have been around in the Founders' era." Emmy poured her brother a shot of whiskey and handed it to him. He downed it in one swig. She poured him another.

"Well, it's damned hard these days to find a pretty little thing who needs some dragons slain for her."

"Not all the dragons these days have wings, brother, nor did they ever even in the Founders' day." Emmy took a shot of whiskey herself. It was much easier to talk to Mike when she was partially anesthetized.

"True. And the dragons that walk on two legs are the best ones to hunt." His eyes brightened. Oh God, not another Auror brag-fest, Emmy thought. She quickly poured him another shot.

"Does your prodigy Bulstrode have an older sister?" Mike asked her after downing his third shot and accepting a fourth.

"I don't think so. I think that it's all brothers in that family. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no real reason, I suppose. I just thought that she was cute and I wondered if there were any more like her at home."

Emmy Vector pondered the thought of Millicent Bulstrode being considered "cute." Only my brother, she thought. Only my clueless brother could consider her cute.

"Which House is she in, Emmy? Ravenclaw? Hufflepuff?"

Emmy paused for a moment, nonplussed. Didn't he see her uniform tie? Or notice what colors it was? "Actually, she's in Slytherin, like the rest of her family." Emmy replied.

"Oh. Slytherin. Pity. Shame to see such a fine girl in such a pit of vipers. Does she have much problem with them, Emmy?"

"With her classmates... well, that's in my hands and Professor Snape's, not yours." Emmy took a sip of whiskey. "With her family...I think so, but there's not that much I can actively do about it unless she asks for help."

"Why doesn't her boyfriend do something?" Mike asked her.

"She doesn't have a boyfriend, Mike," Emmy replied.

"What do you mean she doesn't have a boyfriend? The male students here can't all be gay, can they?"

Emmy stared blankly at her brother, and shook her head. "No, they're not all gay, but none of them find her attractive."

"Humph. Stupid gits don't know what they're missing," Mike mumbled. He cleared his throat. "Well, if she ever asks for help and I can do anything about it, let me know. I'll go slay some two-legged dragons for her."

Emmy looked at her brother. "Mike, are you really serious about this, or is this just the whiskey talking?"

Mike Vector's brown eyes were hard and cold as he stared back at his sister. "This is serious, Mary Elizabeth Fatima," he told her. "She's pretty and she's a genius and I'm damned if I see another innocent lost to those stinking Death Eater terrorists. I will do anything to keep her out of their clutches. Anything."

Emmy flinched, fell silent and started to think. Mike's use of her baptismal name showed just how seriously riled he was. And it also shows that he's serious about his opinion of Bulstrode's physical charms. My God. Who would ever have thought it on Lady Day in Harvest? Me knowing that Bulstrode is a mathematical genius, and my brother thinking that she's pretty? I wonder if the Vector family tradition will kick in for Mike after all? Twenty-year age difference, that's about right for a Vector eldest son. And what could be more inappropriate in this time than a Death Eater pureblood sixteen-year-old Slytherin girl, and a thirty-six-year-old part-Muggle Auror Ravenclaw Irishman?

"I'll keep that in mind, Michael. And thank you."

"You're welcome, " he replied.

After a long silence, Emmy cleared her throat. "You weren't really interested in her older sister, were you? You were interested in her."

Mike sighed. "Yes, but I'm too damn old for her. Old enough to be her father if I had started early enough. She can't possibly want a broken-down bloke like me. A pretty girl like her should be with someone her own age."

Emmy decided that she had to be brutal to break through her brother's stupidity field. "The boys her own age call her the Troll."

Mike choked on his whiskey. "You can't possibly be serious. A fine girl like her? What the hell do they put in the water here at Hogwarts?"

Emmy shook her head. "Mike. She has been taller and stronger than practically everyone else, male and female, in her year for the past four years. That's starting to change now that her male classmates are hitting their growth spurts, but it still doesn't erase the past." Her voice grew very cold. "And these stupid Slytherins think that just because she's got some non-human ancestry and the height and size from it, that she's as dumb as a Troll or a Giant. Which is patently not true to anyone who bothers to find out, but her classmates couldn't even be bothered. They all think that she's big, dumb, mean and destined to be a Death Eater."

"You can't possibly be serious," Mike whispered.

Emmy slammed her shot glass down on the end table. "Jaysus Christ, Mike, I didn't even frigging bother to figure it out, and I'm her frigging teacher! Dammitall, I'm not supposed to fall into those frigging traps!" She looked at the shot glass, then knocked it onto the floor, where it shattered. Emmy started to cry, and clenched her teeth. "I didn't catch it, Mike. Two years the girl has been in my classes, and I didn't figure her out. She could have been lost entirely."

Mike held his sister as she cried, and made soothing, reassuring noises. "It's all right, Emmykins. It's all right, mavoureen. She's not lost yet, and won't be if I have anything to say about it." Emmy continued crying. "I'm here for the both of you now, and we won't let her settle for anything less." He rocked her as he talked. "We'll bring her home to Ma and the clan Vector, and charm her over to the side of the light. And I'll be her knight in shining armor and live with her happily ever after."

Emmy snorted. "What do you think Ma's going to say when we bring her home?"

Mike replied, "Well, she seemed to be cordial enough to your Snape, after all."

Emmy shook her head. "Seemed is the operative word, brother dear. She was giving him the standard welcome, but I don't doubt that she'd be quite upset to find out that he was a Death Eater."

"Well, neither of us is getting any younger. Ma will be happy that we're finding someone at all."

Emmy sighed. "If we ever do settle down."

Mike looked at his sister. "Is that bastard Snape giving you any problems?"

Emmy sighed. "He's not exactly in agreement with the standard Catholic teaching on having children."

"Oh, so then you can get out of this. Excellent," Mike replied. "I'll drink to that!"

"Mike!" Emmy said.

Mike shrugged. "Can't blame me, after all. The idea of you getting married to that greasy git of a Death Eater turns my stomach."

Emmy shook her head. "Honestly, Michael. I've never taken your advice before in my life; what makes you think I'm going to start now?"

Mike smiled faintly. "Because you're getting older and wiser and finally able to admit that I'm right at least some of the time?"

"Bugger that for a game of soldiers, Mike," Emmy replied, as she threw a pillow at him. He threw it back at her, and she scooped it back up and threw it back at him. He caught it and aimed it back at her. It missed, and she grabbed another pillow and threw it at him. He summoned the other pillow to him, and threw both of them at his sister at once. Emmy dodged one, but not the other, which burst and sent feathers flying everywhere. Mike started laughing, and Emmy transferred all the feathers to her brother with a flick of her wand and a word. Then she started laughing, as he looked rather like a molting six-foot, seven-inch tall post owl. Mike moved his wand, and the feathers went flying back at his sister, but she blocked them with a spell of her own.

When Millie Bulstrode and Severus Snape entered the room, they saw Mike and Emmy Vector trying to hit each other with a cloud of feathers, and four strange ghosts darting around, in and out of the cloud. Then the ghosts looked back at the two Slytherins, and vanished.

"Who were the ghosts who were playing with you?" Millie Bulstrode asked.

Emmy frowned. "Ghosts? We didn't see any ghosts, did you, Mike?"

Michael Vector shook his head. "I didn't see any either. What did they look like, Miss Bulstrode?"

Snape frowned. "I saw four ghosts dressed in the uniforms of about ten or so years ago, but we didn't have anyone die in those years. And there was one ghost from each House."

Millie let out a gasp. "I didn't see that at all! They looked just like these children in the picture!"

Snape and the Vector siblings turned white when they saw Millie Bulstrode looking at the Vector family picture from Christmas 1974.