Slip of Paper

"Nelson!" During Potions class, Alphard poked Nelson in the back from the desk behind him and tossed a crumpled Slip of Paper onto his desk. It bounced off Nelson's hand and into Tom's cauldron.

Tom unfolded the paper and glanced at it, then tossed it onto Nelson's desk with a look of disgust. Nelson opened it and found the words written plainly: I analyzed it all night and now seriously suspect that Professor Dumbledore and Professor Sakes once had a relationship.

"So you stayed up all night just to think about this?" Nelson turned his head and stared speechlessly at Alphard's heavy dark circles, lowering his voice as he asked.

It had to be said, gossip really was human nature. Alphard leaned forward excitedly. "Yeah, you know, Professor Dumbledore hasn't, ever since his student days—"

"Black!" Slughorn squeezed his beer belly between them and rapped Alphard on the forehead with the back of his hand. "It seems you think a crumpled Slip of Paper needs to be added to the Babbling Beverage to make it more effective, is that right?"

"Sorry, Professor Slughorn, I was just—" Alphard had more experience admitting fault and apologizing than anyone. He immediately stood up and lowered his head, smoothly going through the whole sequence of admitting fault, apologizing, arguing, explaining, and begging forgiveness.

"No, no, you don't need to apologize." Slughorn puffed out his belly, making the flesh on his face jiggle. He glanced at Alphard's heavy dark circles, then frowned and pulled a small glass bottle filled with golden potion from his robes. He unscrewed the cap and dripped a few drops onto Alphard's forehead before turning to Nelson and extending his hand, raising his voice. "Come, Williams, give it to me. Let everyone share in the fruits of Mr. Black's night of hard work."

Hearing this, Tom, who had been looking down beside them, could not stop his shoulders from shaking twice. His entire body trembled uncontrollably. Fighting the urge to burst out laughing, he collapsed onto the desk and silently snickered. A moment later, once he had calmed down, Tom met Nelson's eyes for a second, then turned and knocked his cauldron onto the floor with his elbow. The Live Frog he had just put inside leaped five feet into the air and shot onto the Ravenclaw table. In a flash, it stuck to Dwight's face, then bent its legs and sprang onto Myrtle's head before beginning to dart wildly around the classroom.

Seeing a brother so devoted to freedom, the frogs in the other cauldrons could no longer bear their loneliness and began hopping about as well.

"Put the lids on!" Slughorn spun around and roared angrily. He pulled out his Wand and pointed it at Tom's frog. In an instant, the Champion embracing freedom froze in midair, then slowly floated back into Tom's cauldron.

"Tom, why are you so clumsy? Next time, make sure to pick a gentler frog." Slughorn rubbed Tom's head with his free hand, gently reproaching his prized student in the tone of a kind father, as though he had just been beaten up by a frog. The moment he turned around, however, he saw Nelson stuffing his Wand into the drawer. He asked irritably, "What are you doing, Williams?"

"Oh, Professor, my Wand is too long." Nelson pulled his Wand from beneath the desk and showed it to Slughorn. "It's a full fourteen inches. It digs into me when I sit down, so I put it in the desk."

"Er, all right. It is rather long." Slughorn nodded in agreement. Such a long Wand was indeed rare. Then he held out his hand again. "You can give me the crumpled paper now. Let everyone broaden their horizons."

The classroom was soon filled with jeering and catcalls. Seeing Nelson hand over the paper without the slightest hesitation, Alphard collapsed against the back of his chair in despair and stared lifelessly at the ceiling.

"All right, all right, quiet down." Slughorn pressed his hands downward, and the classroom gradually fell silent. He glared at Alphard, then unfolded the paper in his hand and cleared his throat. "Let's see what discovery made Mr. Black unable to restrain himself for even a single class. Ahem, let me see: Nelson, I think—"

Though he had thoroughly whetted everyone's appetite, he suddenly stopped. He crumpled the note into a ball again and tossed it onto Alphard's desk, snorting. "While this is important too, class time is still for paying attention! Alphard, your mother asked me to take good care of you. I don't want to take such good care of you that you become an ignorant good-for-nothing."

"All right, continue making your Babbling Beverage. Tom, go give Alphard some guidance." Slughorn clasped his hands behind his back and returned to the podium, then began pacing through the classroom aisles, knocking this student on the head and inspecting that student's cauldron. The class soon ended as though nothing had happened, except Alphard remained sitting there half-dead, letting Tom manipulate him as he pleased.

"Your Babbling Beverages all turned out quite well, so there won't be any homework this class." When the bell rang, Slughorn gathered up his lecture notes, tossed the remaining ingredients into the cauldron he had brought, and stepped down from the podium toward the door. Just as he reached it, he stopped as though suddenly remembering something and looked back into the classroom. "Alphard."

Alphard sat blankly in his seat, seemingly already seeing his miserable future: Dumbledore and Professor Sakes making things difficult for him until he was expelled, after which his mother would burn his name off the family tree with a cigarette.

"Alphard!" Slughorn raised his voice. Allen Abbott, who sat beside him, hurriedly poked him in the ribs and whispered, "Alphard, the professor is calling you."

"Huh?" Alphard came back to his senses and looked toward the door.

"Nighttime is for sleeping. Whatever else it is, discuss it during the day, understand?" Slughorn smiled at him, then turned and left the classroom. The others also began packing up their books and cauldrons, leaving in twos and threes.

Once Slughorn's footsteps had faded away completely, everyone still in the classroom crowded around and asked curiously, "Alphard, what exactly did you write?"

Alphard came to his senses and lunged for the crumpled paper on the desk, but Allen Abbott was quicker. He snatched it up and threw it into the crowd, followed at once by someone reading aloud from within the group:

"Nelson, I think Professor Slughorn has been far too good to us. Since coming to Hogwarts, I have never met another teacher who treated us the way he does. He is practically like a father to me..."

"Huh? No, that's not—"

"How did you fit so many words onto such a tiny piece of paper?"

"Who would have thought it, Alphard? It's hard to imagine that deliberately passing a note and getting caught was your idea." Mocking jeers rose from the crowd.

"What did you end up doing with that note?" Tom asked curiously halfway to the dining hall.

"I Transfigured it while you were distracting Professor Slughorn."

"I know. In that situation, Transfiguration was about the only thing you could use." Tom nodded. "You couldn't exactly use a Vanishing Spell or burn it. Then it wouldn't have been Alphard's problem anymore. It would have been yours."

"I turned what was written on it into a long, cheesy confession. The kind that gives you goosebumps the moment you see it."

"A confession? Who are you confessing to?" A voice suddenly cut in from behind them.

"Professor Slughorn." Nelson had not reacted yet. He kept walking and answered absentmindedly, only realizing it after the words left his mouth. He turned around, looked the newcomer up and down, and asked, "Mr. Aberforth?"

"It's me, but you should call me Mr. Dumbledore." Aberforth stroked his beard and nodded. "Did I hear that right? You two want to confess to Horace? What is wrong with you?"

"No." Tom told him what had happened in class, then added at the end, "So did Dumbledore and Professor Sakes really have a relationship?"

"I'd like to know too." Aberforth spread his hands. "Honestly, I'm very curious as well."

"So nothing really happened last night?" At the dining table, Tom held a stack of pickles and was trying to sandwich them together with a pile of sliced tomatoes between two thin slices of bread.

"Seriously, add some meat. That doesn't look appetizing at all." Nelson speared a slice of sausage with his fork and tilted his head at the strange thing in Tom's hands. "I know nothing about what led up to it or what happened afterward. Aberforth probably doesn't know much more than I do. I still haven't even figured out why I was there last night. Maybe I was just there to ease Aberforth's awkwardness?"

"I bet they're plotting something." Tom squeezed the slices of bread in his hands so hard that several pickle slices slipped out. "Other than during class, I've never seen Professor Sakes anywhere in the school. It always feels like she's doing something big."

"I don't know about that. Anyway, in the end, her sister, senior Gioconda, left the school, but she can still come back next year to collect her diploma." Nelson picked up a slice of bread too and began stacking sausage on it. As he squeezed on sauce, he said, "Seriously, if I could, I'd like to do that too. Go do something I enjoy, then come back during graduation year to collect my diploma. I'm already considering finding a school to be an exchange student at or something. I can't stay in one place forever."

"I think so too," Tom said with a frown. "If old Merrythought doesn't retire soon, I suspect that by the time our class graduates, we might not even be able to beat an owl, let alone a hamster."

"That might be going a little far. Maybe his is a more solid teaching method that emphasizes theory and fundamentals... um... the kind that requires long-term accumulation before a breakthrough." Nelson argued weakly. Remembering Professor Merrythought's classes, he found himself unable to defend them any further and could only spread his hands and shrug. "We've been practicing on our own too, and it's been working pretty well, hasn't it?"

"I hope I can stay at Hogwarts and teach after graduation, teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts." Tom gripped his fork and waved it around. "Or work at the Ministry of Magic. If anyone teaches like that again, I'll lock him in Azkaban!"

When I saw yesterday's recommendation votes, I thought I was finished and felt sad for a long time. Then I thought about it again and realized that these were basically my numbers every day. How could I be finished when I had never been popular to begin with?

Thinking of that, I happily patted my belly.