Sent to the Deputy Headmaster's Office

Poppy yanked the hood of her robe as far over her head as it would go, while the divination teacher continued to lecture her about lying. She thrust a hall pass at Poppy and pointed to the door. The other students in the class were laughing at her, and she was feeling completely humiliated. She picked up her books and left in a hurry and scurried down the tower stairs and down the corridor, trying to be even smaller and less conspicuous if that were possible. The divination teacher had sent her to the Deputy Headmaster's office for lying.

But she hadn't lied. Yes, she was a metamorph. Fabulous, but she had also just turned eleven. She'd been only ten when she arrived at Hogwarts, by special permission. She had celebrated her eleventh birthday just a couple days ago. She was the youngest student currently in the school, and the smallest. She didn't have the control of her metamorphing to be able to give herself perfectly executed house elf ears--the ones she was trying to hide with the hood of her school robe. No, that had happened when some older students had apparently thought it would be a lovely prank to take advantage of her tiny size and turn her into a house elf by slipping some sort of potion into her pumpkin juice at lunch, causing her to now have the same large triangular ears that the house elves had. If she had given herself those ears, they surely would not have been as accurate as these big flapping elf ears were. She didn't know how to change back something like that. Not a clue.

In another day and time, she might have been really frightened of this Deputy Headmaster fellow, but as it was, she was humiliated and ashamed--and angry. She was angry at a lot these days. She was angry at Pavel Levski--the prat of a man that she had believed was her father, and a man she truly hated and for good reason. She was angry with her mother--for letting her believe that Pavel was her father and not telling her the truth until just mere days before she boarded the train for Hogwarts for the first time. She wasn't, in fact, a Levski at all. She was a Belby. She had just learned days ago that her real father was a tall blonde, rather heroic chap named Marcus Belby. And he was already a hero to her. He was tall and handsome and kind, and, even though he had not found out any earlier than she had, Marcus Belby had immediately stepped up to try to get to know her. And that made him a true hero, as far as she was concerned because he was rescuing her from Pavel, asserting his rights to get to be a proper father to her. Too bad he hadn't been here today to rescue her from the 7th years, or whoever they were, who had slipped her the potion for house elf ears.

She hesitated outside the office of the Deputy Headmaster. She needed a breath to get ahold of herself. She didn't dare go in and rant at him in the way she felt like doing. She was innocent, darn it. Perfect prank to hex oneself? Really? What sort of a ditz was the Divination professor anyway? Who really did that? She read the slip. "Incorrigible metamorphagus behavior." Incorrigible? That sounded like it ought to get her sent back home--to her mother and Pavel. If that was what he thought, she'd run away, she decided. She'd simply find her way out. Small people could slip in and out of any number of places. She knew that first hand. If whoever this Deputy Headmaster was going to send her back to Pavel, she'd run away from all of it.

Breathe, she told herself. Breathe. Don't look like a complete imbecile in front of him. Don't rant. Be calm. She yanked the hood down again and knocked, before she could overthink it one more time.

She looked up at the man in front of her. She wasn't sure what to make of him. He seemed different. She had expected him to start ranting at her just for showing up with a slip, but he hadn't. He was at least going to hear her out. She noticed he was a man that surrounded himself with books. Well, maybe he wasn't so bad. She loved books, almost all books. She was a bookworm by heart, and wasn't sure exactly why the hat had made her a Hufflepuff and not a Ravenclaw like her real father. Her best guess was that the stupid hat had simply gotten it wrong and put her in the wrong house. Her own books shifted in her hands, and the one in the middle--the one she'd been hiding, slipped out and dropped to the floor. She scrambled quickly to pick it up. It was by a muggle author, and it was one of her favorites--by a man named Tolkien. She tucked it on top of her stack and held it close to her, hoping the Deputy Headmaster wouldn't confiscate it because it was a muggle book. She took a breath before speaking so that she might try to say all of it right.

"The Divination professor," she said quietly, her own effort to pace herself and not simply ramble at him about how frustrated she was. "She sent me here. She thinks I lied to her in class. But I didn't." She paused, not wanting to draw the hood off her head, but she supposed there wasn't a choice.

"I...I've been having trouble because of my size.. The older kids make fun of me. They call me Elf and talk to me like I'm their house elf. They threatened to change my shirt into a pillowcase. But that's not the worst of it. It happened at lunch. Some of the other kids said they saw someone put something in my pumpkin juice. I tried to hide it, but..." She took a deep breath, partly to stop herself from continuing to toss out the facts to him in such a disorganized fashion. They were the facts, but certainly not in anything resembling the right order. They were, at best, endwise. She awkwardly drew off the hood of her robe, feeling the large flapping house elf ears spring out from side to side tauntingly.

"I didn't do this to myself," she said. "I hate them. And even if I had done it, I wouldn't have gotten them right. And now I don't know how to get rid of them. I didn't lie about it either. The professor said I did it to myself for attention. She's a nitwit....Sorry. I didn't mean to say that. Sorry." It was how she felt, though, that any professor who believed such an introverted first year would give herself elf ears just for the heck of it, or even had the capability of it, was a complete nitwit. She just hadn't had any intention of blurting out such a candid opinion to the Deputy Headmaster.

She paused. She hadn't even told him her name. She'd gotten it all backwards. She had intended to be more put together than this.

"Sorry, Sir. I'm Poppy--Poppy Levski," she said, trying to reel in all her frustration and embarrassment. "You can do what you like to me, I know but I swear I didn't do this."

She noticed the offered chair and since it was higher than normal, she had to give a little hop to sit in it, and she listened and watched as he spoke and got rid of the slip. He made magic look so easy--utterly effortless and yes even graceful, she noticed straight away, wondering if she'd ever be able to make it look so fluid. She wanted to ask him how he had made it look so smooth but that wasn't what she was here for. Professor Wilson--she locked the name in her head. When he said divination teachers were all nitwits, she couldn't help but but flash a glimpse of a smile at his words.

Testing to see if she told the truth? Now that did sound a little ominous. She was determined, though, to make him see what she was telling him, as scrambled as the facts had been, were the truth. She kept a straight face as he spoke of harsh punishments. Somehow she couldn't imagine professors at Hogwarts doing worse to her than Pavel did whenever he had more than his share of firewhiskey. Threats of severe punishment meant little to her. Professor Wilson surely could be intimidating, but his threats were not. She was sure he was a man not to mess with, and she had no intention of pushing his buttons.

When he opened the cabinet and started to brew something in a cauldron, he had her complete interest. She was focused in on watching what he was doing. She couldn't deny she was a a bit frightened, but on the other hand, she truly was curious about what he was making. Her parents didn't brew potions at home, and this was the first she'd seen it. The only thing she had to compare it to was her mother's cooking in the kitchen. She wasn't sure exactly what he was brewing. She watched as he poured it into a little glass, and then he handed it to her and told her to drink. She looked at him a little surprised he expected her to drink it. This was his test? She rethought his words. He was trying to determine if she were what her family called a metamorph. She realized she had left that bit out of her explanation.

She had been told she had gotten her metamorph business from her real father, not Pavel. So far as she could see, the only thing Pavel could do now was drink and talk about his glory days when he played quidditch. She understood the Belby's were the metamorphs. It was one of those things she had intended to ask her real father about as she got to know him. It occured to her now that perhaps that was why she had never gotten any advice or instruction about her skills. Maybe they just didn't know how to give her any help.

She sniffed the liquid in the glass. It didn't smell unpleasant, didn't really smell like anything. Professor Wilson said it tasted like lemon, and she liked that. She decided to just drink it and get it over with. She drank the potion and decided it tasted more specifically like the woodsy-lemony combination that was lemon verbena, much like lemon verbena teacakes in Italy one summer. At least Professor Wilson's concoction wasn't disgusting. In fact, it wasn't bad at all.

"More like lemon verbena," she told him.

[ooc: i am presuming this is just veritaserum. if not, let me know and i'll correct.]

Poppy had been reading some of her books a little ahead of schedule, enough to have read a bit of some of the basic definitions, and she had had just a thimbleful of Latin, enough to be able to put together the basic definition for Veritaserum. Veritas meant truth, so it made sense that veritaserum was a truth potion. She nodded when Professor Wilson had asked her if she knew what it was.

The hourglass floated and rotated, and she watched it, mesmerized by the control he had of the fragile timepiece in midair. She supposed she would have merely sent if crashing to the floor if she had tried it. She had a million questions racing in her head, but most of them revolved around a very basic "How-did-you-do-that." She knew it was levitation, but she was curious about the precise steps to make something like that happen. She had managed the feather in levitation class, but this was something more. This was amazing.

She listened to his tale about the Mensium and Godric Gryffindor. Whatever tale there was about that particular founder always made him sound so brave. She had yet to hear any tales about Helga Hufflepuff doing any great feats of bravery. Still, she had to have been good for something, right? Or else, she would not have been one of the founding witches and wizards that had made up Hogwarts.

Professor Wilson asked her about Professor Lupin. Yes, he was her head of house. Why hadn't she told him? It was an excellent question, but at the time, she hadn't thought of telling Lupin, really. Why hadn't she fought back? She had been too embarrassed. She had run from the Great Hall and hidden. Wilson asked her if she knew what Occlumency and Legilimency were. She shook her head because she didn't have a clue.

"I...I could have maybe told Professor Lupin," she said, feeling foolish for not telling him. "I didn't think of it. People were laughing at me, so I just ran. I ran and hid in the girl's bathroom until I realized I was going to be late for class, so..." As she was speaking, she felt a warmth to her ears, and she laid her hands on her ears to feel that the enormous elf ears were gone.

"They're gone!" she exclaimed. "Thank you! Thank you. I didn't know how to get them back. I'm not good at getting things back right again once I change them. My mum could sometimes put it right again, not always." She remembered being taken a couple of times to St. Mungos to be put right again, to a healer she only knew as Robert who had put her back to rights both times.

"If I can't learn to put it back, then I don't want to be a metamorph anymore. Is there any way to turn it off? Robert's a nice man, I suppose, but I don't want to have to go see him every time I buggar something up." Well, there she was again, talking to Professor Wilson endwise. She sighed. She really did need to learn to order her thoughts when she talked to the professors here.

She sighed with relief--relief at having her own ears back and relief that Wilson believed her with certainty now. She was starting to believe she would be spared whatever consequence the divination teacher might be envisioning for her.

Perhaps Wilson was right that Professor Lupin might have helped her. She hadn't had occasion yet to talk to him aside from Transfiguration class. He seemed nice enough, she supposed. Wilson mentioned learning things from Dumbledore. She did have a vague knowledge of Dumbledore.

"I know Dumbledore," she said. "Sort of. I've got 9 Dumbledore chocolate frog cards. My brother trades with me because I keep getting some foul tempered old woman named Black--Walburga Black--whoever she was. My brother thinks she's funny, so he likes getting lots of her cards."

When Wilson asked her if her mother was a healer, she shook her head. "My mum?" she asked dubiously. "Nah. She's no good at healing spells. She got out some old dusty book and looked up a spell and tried it. It worked a few times, but just as often as not, she made it worse. She works in the Ministry as a solicitor of some sort and she's absolutely no help in teaching me how to get anything about morphing right. Nobody at home is of any help. My real dad can morph, though. He said he'll help me, but I've only just met him. You might know him--I don't know. His name is Marcus Belby, and he works for Robert as a bodyguard for somebody in Robert's family. Robert's nice enough, but I see him far more than I like because sometimes I morph even when I don't intend to. I don't even need to go through the emergency ward anymore. They just let me go upstairs to his office up on the fifth floor whenever I need him. He's started keeping a jar of ice mice in his office for when I come--they're his favorites, but he shares them with me when I come. He even gave me a rainbow colored pygmy puff for my birthday. His wife got some rainbow ones by accident in this last batch she raised, and he gave me one. Mum won't let me bring it unless I get permission to have it here."

She listened as he told her about Occlumency and Legilimens. She frowned at hearing what they were used for. She wasn't sure she wanted to learn either of those spells.

"Those spells sound a lot like rooting around in someone else's knickers. Sounds cheeky to me," she said. "I don't know if I'd like it." And then he asked her about who had tainted her pumpkin juice. She sighed heavily. She hadn't considered she might be asked who did it, and it made her nervous. What if they came after her again, and worse, for telling? Did she really want to tell that to Professor Wilson?

"We've just started reading about the first spell, Expelliarmus," she told him, trying to avoid giving up the precise name of the girl who, she had been told, had spoiled her drink. "We haven't tried it yet. I know how to levitate feathers, but I think, if she tried it again, she's be too heavy for me to levitate. And then I'd still have to decide what to do with her if I could levitate her. I wish I could do magic like you. You make it all look so easy. Maybe I could brew a potion that would make her just go away, but they'd never get rid of a quidditch captain anyway, and she's the most popular of them all." She realized she'd all but spit out the name by telling him she was the favored quidditch captain. "Buggar," she said, frustrated with herself now and dreading what Jack Dyllan would do about it. "Now I've done it. I've really put my foot in it now."