The continuing twisted flight of Cupid's Snitch...

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 35329

Just had a thought I couldn't resist posting...

Elkins:
> (1)  Florence has a first name, but no last name.  Mrs. Lestrange has 
a last name, but no first name.  Coincidence?  Oh, I think not!

Ahh, yes, Elkins, but remember we have *two* female characters with no first name lurking mysteriously in our midst.  Mrs Lestrange... and Mrs Norris!

Ahaaaaa!

Maybe Bertha was spying on *Filch* snogging Florence *Norris* behind the greenhouses!

Let me see.  OK, how's this... Filch, a marginalised but still reasonably young Squib, finally finds employment at Hogwarts under Dumbledore (who, as we know, falls over himself to look after werewolves and rebellious house-elves, and would surely employed a suffering, oppressed Squib).  It is in Hogwarts that he first encounters the Norrises.  Perhaps Mr Norris is a chilly, brutal school governor, perhaps even an evil DADA teacher!  Let's say the second option.  With Dumbledore's blessing, he brings with him his nervous, brow-beaten Muggle wife Florence, and installs her in the teacher's wing, where she cowers, weeping and wringing, at her loneliness and alienation in wizard society, and the cruelty of her husband.

One day, Filch hears her sobs while scrubbing the windows outside the Norris' quarters, and peeps in to see a sweet but broken woman.  Some chord of empathy is struck within him.  Like her, he understands what it is to be marginalised and powerless in the Wizard world.  Like her, he secretly detests the loathesome Mr Norris and all the smug wizarding world.  They start talking, and a clandestine affair begins  (we seem to be having a lot of these lately, eh?).

Hogwarts is not an easy place to commit adultery.  Not only must they live in fear of Mr Norris, they must also conceal their perilous passion from the other staff, the ghosts, Peeves, and the students.  Finally, they come up with a regular meeting place - behind the greenhouses every evening, when all the staff and students are having dinner and all the ghosts are safely in the castle.  Ingenious, as neither of them usually attend dinner anyway - Filch is riled by the company of a Hall full of functional wizards, most of them children, and Mrs Norris, after being introduced deprecatingly to the school as "Florence" at the start of term, has long been a recluse, as her husband is ashamed of her.

For a few weeks, both of them are happier than they've ever been, so much so, in fact, that the radiant glow on Filch's usual sour face is noticed one evening by the Hogwarts gossipmonger... Bertha Jorkins, who is running late for dinner.  What *could* have happened to him?  Why is the formerly embittered Filch rushing inexplicably out into the grounds after dark, an unprecedented *smile* on his face??  Bubbling with excitement, Bertha decides to skip dinner, follow Filch, and find out what he's up to.  Once she sees the scandal of the century in the making, she giggles back to school and spreads the word.  Mr Norris finds out, and hexes his wife into cat form, a hex only Filch can undo.  Dumbledore dismisses Mr Norris and declares that from now on, the partners of staff must live off-campus, Filch is inconsolable, and sets to studying his 1970s Quikspell hex handbook with a vengeance, desperate to find some counter-hex to bring back his beloved.  In the meantime, he prowls the corridors for evidence of who gave him away, and traces the source to Bertha.  Insane with fury, he summons all the puny powers he possesses and succeeds in hitting her with the hex he remembers from Quikspell Page 1...

Tabouli.


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