What Do You Buy the Wizard Who Has Everything?

Khaat had gone to Flourish & Blotts to look for a number of books for her father for his upcoming birthday. The man already had freaking everything he wanted--except for, perhaps, another large stack of books. He was a voracious reader. After all, how many other men did she know that had a four floor library in their house? Robert's great love of books had grown so much over the years that his study had expanded into the basement first, and then, several years later, up to the seconf floor and eventually even up into the attic.

It was a gorgeous oak panelled room with four floors of books, and Khaat loved that room. It was a wonderful place to go spend hours perusing the thousands of books, find a spot in one of the large overstuffed leather chairs, and sit with a cup of her beloved French Roast and spend a rainy or snowy afternoon. It was her favorite room of her parent's expansive farmhouse--with the exception of the suite of rooms she still kept there.

She was a bit sad to go into Flourish and Blotts and see the portrait of recently murdered former owner Phaedra Mariatos hanging inside. Phae's death was still painful for her. Phae had been murdered on a nightshift at St. Mungos, presumably when she had been unfortunate enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and the murderer was still at large.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly to refocus. Birthday. That was her task. She went to the sections of the store that held Robert's favorite subjects. She bought him a couple of novels for pure pleasure reading, and then she moved on to buy him a couple of the latest Entomology books. Her father loved bugs for some twisted reason. And he loved transfiguring people who irked him into bugs. It was, perhaps, one of his favorite defensive moves. Perhaps a new bug book would give him some additional transfiguration creativity. That made her smile a bit.

From there she picked up some of the latest books on Herbology and on healing methods. There were some new selections she knew Robert had not picked up. Then, she went to the potions section. That was something he was always interested in and frequently liked to "tinker" with--making new potions, or improving on the standard formulas of the old ones. She picked up several different selections of the newest books on potions and took them to one of the chairs that Phadra had seen fit to add to Flourish and Blotts before her untimely death. Khaat put the huge stack of books on the end table beside the chair, took a seat and conjured herself a mug of French Roast to sip on while she reviewed her potential gifts. This might take awhile, and she decided she might as well be confortable while she was at it. The heck with the No Food or Drink sign that had hung in the store for generations. Khaat badly needed a caffeine fix. To heck with the rules.

Khaat was amused by the man who had poked her. She didn't know why, but his sarcasm struck her as funny.

"You know, I haven't read one of those sappy adolescent books in years," she laughed, not rattled in the least by him. "The potions book you're after is a very poor excuse for any sort of a potions book, let alone a school text, actually. I'm hoping Hogwarts gets a potionsmaster with half a brain in his head this time. They haven't had a decent potionsmaster since Severus Snape was there. I'd like to see whoever this is choose a halfways decent textbook, for starters, and then perhaps actually teach something."

She went to the potions books shelf and picked up the outdated, erroneous, and oversimplified Potions text that Hogwarts had been using for decades and brought it back. As far as Khaat was concerned, she felt the book should have gone out of print before the ink dried on the paper well. She had never liked the book and had been appauled they were still using it. Half the time, the potions had never worked as they had been written,and she knew the potions instructors had, year by year, corrected it as they had gone along by having students scribble all over their texts, correct not only ingredient errors but the instructions as well. The book was a pure farce but she handed it to the man.

"You'd think that Hogwarts could find something far better than this," she sighed, "but here it is, I'm afraid. I'm having to retrain some of my staff on even the barest basics of Potions, no thanks to Hogwarts. Pitiful, really. Having students entering the wizarding world either completely unprepared or ill prepared--one or the other. Either one is dangerous enough. Do you have a child in Hogwarts?"

She seriously doubted if this man had willingly procreated. He looked far more the type to date but never commit. The chance that he actually was a parent of a student was slim to none. However, the fact that he was interested in what Hogwarts was using was hopeful. She was hoping perhaps he had an interest of some sort in trying to influence Vincent to make a sharp improvement in the Potions area. Heck, they hadn't even offered the course last year at all. Some of her healers didn't seem to know any difference from one potion to another, except perhaps if one was purple and one was green. And she truly did not want Miseria coming out of school being completely potions ignorant. That was unacceptable to Khaat.

"Oh, why not?" Khaat laughed, "I'd marry you, commit bigotry, and then finally divorce the sot I'm married to. We're separated, incidently. It would turn the wizarding gossip mongers on their ears and finally give Cy Skeeter something to write about. Especially since I'm always a potential walking scandal as it is. That should indeed be fun."

She liked his sense of humor. She tossed one of the potential potions books in her tall stack aside as unacceptable for her father. He would find it arrogant and full of errors. The arrogance would not offend her father if it were accurate. Robert Lupin had a bit of an arrogant streak at times, himself. However, when arrogance and stupidity collided, it just never proved to be worth her father's time. He always found that combination as insulting and frustrating.

"Stupid book," she sighed. "I'm looking to see if I can perhaps find a couple of new, worthwhile potions books for my father for his birthday. Some of these are beneath him, as I'm sure they would be beneath you."

Perhaps the next one on the stack would be more promising as a birthday gift. Hm..children at Hogwarts? Ah! He was a Head of House for some house or another. Clearly. Hm..Looking for potions books...perhaps she was, after all, looking at the new Potions professor. Well, he didn't agree with Vincent. That, maybe, would be a plus. She liked Vincent but she didn't always agree with him, and she was probably the only person that Vincent allowed to tell him off or call him insulting names to his face and live--although she had not seen him in awhile. And she had been finding herself, oddly, missing him a great deal.

"I know the Headmaster, but we do not see eye to eye on a great many things," she said, sipping on her coffee. "And the Ministry has had more than its share of problems for the last several generations, each Minister leaving a bigger mess for the next one than he himself inherited. You are brilliantly accurate, though, about so much of Hogwarts being political. I'm sorry to say that too few of the parents of the students are willing to look at that. Sometimes grassroots politics can be more effective than traditional bureacracy. Few things would please me more than for the parents to recognize how much power they really do have in numbers and finally demand some accountability of the lack of lifeskills that their children leave school with.

"Oh, and by the way, I'm not opposed to your motto, either. I can at least turn the poisonings around--generally speaking. However, massive potions labs explosions are a bit more dificult. The reassembling of limbs can be so tedious. I take it that you are, in fact, the new potions professor. Professor Doyle, is it not? I'm Khaat Lupin, Director of St. Mungos. I am pleased to see that you do in fact have more than half a brain. Too bad I can't be an invisible observer in your classroom. It really should be quite a lot of fun. You are a very interesting man, Professor."

Khaat laughed out loud at the mention of bugs. "Too bad that you don't like bugs," she laughed. "I know someone who likes to transfigure people into some sort of bug as one of his favorite defensive spells. It amuses him far more than just a plain killing curse. I probably never will find out which jars hold just a bug and which ones were once human. Its a character flaw of his, I suppose. He doesn't like to change them back.

"Personally, I prefer transfigurations into inanimate objects--teacups, snowdomes, cheeky looking hats, pocketwatches... that sort of business...and I don't know why. I think I enjoy the humiliation of seeing them spending time on some shelf as something as ridiculous as I can dream up at the moment."

She reached in her bag and took out a pocketwatch. It seemed to tick loudly in some sort of attempt at an angry protest. "Take this young arrogant pest, for example. I just haven't decided to change him back yet. " The watch got even louder and more illtempered with her. "Behave yourself or you'll be a sock!" she snapped at it. It immediately hushed itself and resumed a more reverent quiet ticking sound instead. "I'll probably change him back when he learns some manners."

"The first potions explosion I ever saw happened in the classroom one winter morning when I was a fifth year student," she told Doyle. "One of the Slytherins deliberately turned the page in that nasty potions book while a Hufflepuff was attempting an energy potion, and flipped the page to some sort of plant growth potion. The Hufflepuff didn't realize that the pages had been turned, and before any of us could intervene--Boom! We found three of his fingers across the room--in completely separate directions. It wasn't pretty. Snape was furious. Now my current job, at least during the summer, is to patch the young would-be potioneers who are attempting to forumulate things they were never taught to do or to repair them from their attempts to simply try to toss ingredients together in hopes that they perhaps will prove themselves to be some sort of Alchemic prodigy reminiscent of Nicolas Flamel--which brings me back to the fact that I am truly very glad to see someone competent at the helm of the Potions class again. It has been far, far too long. Perhaps you will at least allow me to reassemble any dislocatd students back into one piece if that should happen? Although, I do truly doubt that will be the case.

"And as for how I know you, the local grapevine is quite informative and usually accurate to a given degree. It told me you really are a potionsmaster with quite superior skills. That is a good thing. There are far too few potionsmasters around here. The only other person that I know that has knows his stuff in regards to potions is my father. " She took the book from him and looked at it, thumbing through it. "Oh, you're right. This is just the sort of reading my father would like. He has a very strategic and analytical mind. I think he would enjoy this one immensely. Thank you.

"I do have a male husband--well, I technically still have him. We're separated. He's a prat. Believe me, my daughters and I are far better without him. He hasn't been around since early May when our daughter was born. I would introduce you to my friends, but you probably would not like them so much," she laughed, "For some reason, my closest friends right now are almost all men, mostly aurors, and they all seem to think they're my big brothers. Not exciting, but there it is. Right now, they're warding Skeeter off my back.

"Skeeter has been chasing me almost continuously for months now. Rita was Cy's grandmother. And he's out of the same mold she came from, only more obnoxious. Actually, I was considering turning him into a key fob the next time I saw him, but he'd end up just being a really snarky key fob with an attitude. I wouldn't be able to give him away. He'd end up on someone's desk drawer or in their sock drawer, one or the other. That actually might be somewhat fitting, since he's always looking for dirty laundry anyway."

"I'd rather you kill my husband, truth be told," she said dryly, tossing the snarky little pocketwatch back in her bag. "Cy is harmless--he's merely an annoying little pest. But think about it--it would all work out quite nicely if I were single again. Then I could marry you after all. At least life would not be dull with you, I'm quite certain. You know, if you like threesomes, I'm sure he could loan you a couple of his Knockturn tarts that he's always hanging with, but they might lower your standards far too much. And you might not like their serious lack of brain cells. They're sort of pretty, if you like that trashy-floosy look, that is. They're just seriously dense, but he seems to be quite taken with them--the whole lot of them. The man just has no class whatsoever. He only pretends he does. I'm sure you'll get to meet him. The idiot is apparently teaching back at Hogwarts again this year. Feel free to attack and mame at will.

"And yes, Roosevelt is my father," she laughed. "Remus was my uncle, but he was far more like a father to me. As it turned out, I took far more after Remus's personality than I took after my father's. Remus and I were like peas out of the same pod, and I think that frustrated my father to no end at the time." She frowned slightly at Doyle. " I'm surprised I never met you. I thought I knew most of Remus's friends. Well, then, I didn't know Wilson either at that time. At least I don't recall ever meeting him when Remus was alive. Actually, I spent more time with Remus when I was a kid than I did with Roosevelt--until Remus was murdered. That changed everything. You might actually like my father--except, no, he's not lesbian either. He and you do have a few things in common, though, it appears. You both obviously understand potions better than probably anyone else in the area. You both have superior minds, and you both have a good sense of humor. Although, it might be a bit scary for the two of you to be in the same meeting together. I think you'd both probably have most of the problems of wizarding England settled in a few moments while the others were still catching up with what you both were saying.

"And you can only keep your students' missing bodyparts if the students cannot locate them in your classroom," she laughed. "I'll give you all a sporting chance--like an Easter egg hunt. Otherwise, I get first dibs. Well, I suppose you can have them if I cannot reattach them. But, really, if you're going to hang a mobile of various pieces of student bodyparts on your door, you need to do either 2 or 4 pieces on your door Three just will make you look like a bodysnatcher-turned- pawn-shop advertisement. I couldn't talk you into making that mobile out of parts of my husband, now, could I?" She decided she better not tempt Doyle too far. He just might do it if he were sufficiently provoked. Doyle was, obviously an expert at passive aggression, and Khaat was enjoying the banter with him. She didn't know why, but she rather liked him--contrary to what she had heard about how dislikeable he could be.