hh_mirror | An Owl and a Professorly Meeting

Lily said that she didn't want to talk to Steph about anything ominous. Steph was assuming this ruled out any possibility of detention.

Still. She was being summoned to a teacher's office. No good ever came of such a thing!

She peeked her head into the doorway, a bit nervous. "Lily? You owled?"

Lily,

Sure! I'll meet you there.

-Harry

It only took me a few minutes to reach Lily's office--I'd learned most of the castle's sneaky secret passages by now. I gave the door a perfunctory rap and stuck my head in. "Hello?"

Both of them arrived within moments of each other and Lily greeted Steph and Harry with a smile. She stood hastily from her desk, tucking hair behind her ears and gesturing to the two chairs pulled up in front of it. "Hello," she said as she moved to give Harry a hug in greeting and then squeezed Steph's shoulder gently.

"Why don't you both sit down? Can I get you something? I've a fresh pot of tea and I think there's some Muggle soda knocking about in my fridge." Perching on the edge of the desk, Lily grinned. "And I don't know, actually, if you two know each other. Steph, this is my good friend Harry Dresden. He's a bloody amazing Wizard, though his primary brand of magic is different than what we teach here at Hogwarts. And Harry, this is Stephanie Brown. I've had the good fortune to be able to tutor her; she's one of my best students."

"Soda'd be great," Steph immediately responded. Being nervous had no bearing on her capacity for all things sugared. "Thanks,"

She shot a smile at Harry, blushing a bit at Lily's compliment. "She's only saying that because I haven't blown up the classroom for a few lessons. Nice to meet you, Mr. Dresden."

If Bob had heard that...thank God he was still sitting on his shelf. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had called me 'Mr. Dresden'--it was probably one of the police back in Chicago. The only people who ever called me 'Mister' were usually out to get me.

"Call me Harry," I said. "And don't believe everything Lily tells you--I'm really just a fraud. Ask Larry Fowler." One of the good things about Hogwarts was that I'd escaped that never-ending lawsuit. "Pleased to meet you."

Mister Dresden? Lily was doing her best to hide a laugh. And failing utterly. She was going to call him that from now on for sure.

Snorting quietly, Lily rolled her eyes and hopped off of her desk. "Right. I have a serious problem with spouting nothing but wretched lies. Ignore me."

Going into her suite through the door in her office, Lily grabbed two bottles of Coke from the refrigerator and a plate of cookies. Returning, she handed one soda to each and put the plate on her desk. Then, after pouring herself another mug of tea, she took her seat, clearing off a space from all the paperwork and books and studying both Harry and Steph as she took a sip.

"Right, well, I guess I should tell you why you're here, yeah?" Flashing a smile, Lily settled back, wand twirling absently through her fingers. "I've been wanting to expand the scope of the Defense training at Hogwarts. We have students here from all over, with all different experience levels. And just teaching the traditional ways...well, it's not going to cut it, not really. So I want to start teaching different branches of magic as well as physical defensive measures." Chuckling ruefully, she shook her head. "You could hold back a bloody Wizard army with a good left hook - it's simply not taught."

Pausing, she seemed to be thinking of the best way to approach the question. Finally, Lily decided to just ask. "So I was hoping you two would agree to be my assistants. I'd like you to help me put together a brand new curriculum, start from scratch, and then share the teaching duties." One shoulder raised in a shrug and she added, with a quick grin, "I can even pay you. Not much, admittedly, but you'll both be splitting my salary. If you accept that is."

Edited 2008-01-04 04:58 (UTC)

Steph was very, very glad she wasn't sipping her soda while Lily was speaking. Otherwise, she would have spit it out, and that would have been embarrassingly 90's sitcom of her.

She was still pretty surprised, though. Eyebrows were up to the vicinity of her hairline. "Erm. I think that's a really great idea, Pro-" she paused, looking apologetic. "Lily. A really good idea. Everyone should know at least a little self defense. And yeah, I can handle my own, but relativity speaking, I'm a complete novice. A little Akido just happens to go a long way for me." Plus the other styles she'd been briefed on from Batman, Robin, Oracle and Black Cannery. And basic hand-to-hand. Still...

"I'm flattered, but there have gotta be people here that are better at this kind of thing than me." She paused, looking at Harry. "Unless you're some kind of judo master? I mean, I'd be more than happy to assist..."

I was just as surprised as Steph. Sure, I'd trained some baby-Wardens, but there was a war going on--they needed any teacher they could get. That someone would want me to help instruct anyone when they didn't desperately need help was...weird. Molly was different--Apprentices weren't really the same thing as students, since they learned a lot more than just magic.

"I'm definitely not a judo master," I said. "You'd want Murphy for martial arts. About the only real hand-to-hand skill I've got is the ability to hit people with a stick." Granted, it was a seven-foot-tall staff, but it was still technically a stick. "I can probably help you with the magic end of it, though we'd have to order a lot more of these." I rapped my knuckles on the staff.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake." Huffing a little breath, Lily stood up - she hated sitting on the other side when she talked to people, it felt like they were half a continent away - and moved to the other side of her desk to sit on top, crossing her legs. "Look, teaching...it's not just knowing the subject and checking off a sodding list. So yeah, Steph, there probably are people here who are better. But I don't want them."

Confident green eyes met Steph's and Lily shrugged. "I want you. You have an ability to connect, to understand people. That's what I need. You'll be able to work with someone and see the best way to reach them. Not to mention the fact you're a fast learner."

Looking over at Harry, Lily added, "And you'd be strictly magic, love. I, ah, doubt the wisdom of having an entire class of people wacking each other with sticks. But your branch of magic is something far more..." She frowned slightly, waving her hand around as she tried to find the right way to explain it. "Natural than what we teach here. Blood and circles and the elements... I don't know. I think it's important we don't close ourselves off. We make magic too intellectual sometimes, and if you take out the soul of it, then why not turn to the Dark Arts? When you don't see where it's coming from, when you don't feel the toll, then it's so much easier to lose your way." Realizing she was rambling a bit, Lily flushed slightly and took another drink of tea. "Anyway. Yes."

Steph looked like she wanted to protest a bit more, but she knew well enough that Lily was ridiculously stubborn. Like a mule. A tiny, human mule. With a British accent.

In Steph's head, mules had a default Jamaican accent, so the British accent was necessary to point out.

"It would probably be best to concentrate on reality based self defense. That's RBSD, for short," she said, finally. "It's, um, it leaves out the meditative aspects of most martial arts. It's the quickest way to teach beginners how to defend themselves in a practical environment. Punches, boxer's knees, that kinda thing. It also teaches weak points to aim for on an assailant's body, depending on how they come at you."

Steph fidgeted from side to side, digging the toe of her sneaker into the carpet. "That's how I'd go about it, anyway. Maybe then move on to how to get out of holds."

I looked at Steph. "You need to meet Murphy," I said. "I think you two would get along." Scarily well, maybe.

I turned Lily's words over. She was right--the magic here seemed far too dry, sometimes. Most of the spells I'd read didn't require much of the caster as a person, whereas my magic depended on it. If you weren't willing to pour yourself into it, it wasn't going to work, and if you weren't willing to deal with how much it would drain you, you didn't deserve to do it. It was damn hard work, almost all of it--a lot of wizards hit a ceiling at some point, which is why so many could never make the White Council. You had to push yourself to your limits.

"You've got a point," I said. "You've got to be a lot more aware of the world, with my magic. You definitely know where it comes from--you have to, to make sure it doesn't run out." I eyed my staff. "But we'd still have to get a classfull of these. My magic just doesn't channel properly, with a wand."

Eyes lighting up as Stephanie starting talking, Lily reached around behind her to grab some parchment and a quill, starting to take quick notes. "That sounds brilliant, Steph," she said with a smile, nodding slightly, adding her own notations to the suggestions the girl had mentioned. "I...will admit to having no idea what boxers knees are, but that's why you're here. What sort of environment would you need to teach this? A classroom? Or something more open? And do you need a demonstration model?" She could probably coerce someone into getting the shite beat out of them for fun. Or, barring that, she'd just do it herself.

Glancing up at Harry, Lily smirked faintly and rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine," she teasingly grumbled. "You and your giant stick. You know, it's not the size that matters. But if you insist, I'll see what I can find." She paused in her writing. "Do you, er, know where you can get staffs? Wizards generally don't use them. I suppose I could ask some of my contacts, but if you know of a source..."

Then she grinned, quickly, "And of course I've a point. Think I just woke up one morning and decided this? If I'm going to take on teaching students how to defend themselves, practically, I've got to think outside the box. There are a lot of good people who've died, who I've seen die, that might still be around if they'd had a rabbit to pull out of the hat." Lily shrugged. "You two are my rabbits."

Steph blushed, passing her glass from hand to hand. "Well, it's technically just called a knee strike," she explained. "It's borrowed from Thai boxing. You just kind of jump and kick with your knee." Naturally, Steph got up to display what she was talking about, leaping up into the air and expertly kicking at an invisible opponent's torso with her knee. She then sat back down, not breaking even a hint of a sweat. "Although..."

Hm.

"That actually might be too complicated for the first lesson." It was a day one thing for Bat Kids, but not every student here was of the spandex set. "We honestly might just want to work on how to make a proper fist. You'd be amazed how many people don't know what to do with their thumb when they're punching."

Just a suggestion. From a...rabbit, apparently. "I think I resent that comparison. My teeth are normal sized. And I hate carrots." Pause. "We can probably get Fraser to be my living test dummy. He knows how to take a punch."

"Hey," I said, "don't mock the staff. Even using it as a blunt instrument has saved my life more than once." I fished some paper out of my pocket, snagged a pen from her desk, and wrote out the names of several staffmakers, most of whom lived in America--it was my stomping grounds, so it was where most of the manufacturers I knew of lived.

Watching Steph do...whatever the hell she'd just done...convinced me even further that the kid needed to meet Murphy. I kind of assumed all martial-arts people are into the same thing, and even if they weren't, at least they could swap stories about kicking someone's spleen out through their ear.

An Owl and a Professorly Meeting

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