SHIP: FLIRTIAC and Florence -- Together at Last (WASRon's hip)

[cindysphynx]

No: HPFGUIDX 36386

I go away for a few hours, and all heck breaks out in the Bay:

**************

Tabouli assaulted:

> The Captain dumps Elkins on a stack of lifejackets in disgust.
> 

Wait, Elkins!  Don't let Tabouli knock you around like that!  Boy, 
that looked like it really hurt.  Listen, I can help.  The 
FLIRTIAC/Kittygro/Love Triangle is right on target.  It just needs a 
minor course correction and a little canon.  Gimme that spray paint 
and let's see what we can do. 

Consider this.  In GoF, someone is kissing Florence behind the 
greenhouse.  Oh, we've floated ideas.  Florence Lestrange is a 
popular theory.  Triangles, trapezoids and other geometric figures 
have been proposed.  But none of those theories has caught fire.  And 
there's a reason for that -- none is true.  They're way, way off, in 
fact.

The truth, my friends, is that Florence is *Florence Norris*.  (The 
name just rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?)  Florence Norris 
is a seventh-year Slytherin Hogwarts student, who happens to be 
Snape's girlfriend and happens to be rather fetching.  And a little 
loose, if you ask me.  But Snape doesn't know that.  Snape is 
thinking of proposing to the curvy Florence Norris, as he is oh-so-
sure that their love is true, and that he is the only greasy-haired, 
hooked-nose one for her.  Snape is *way* out of his league.

Let's just say that Snape should have kept the receipt for the ring, 
because Florence proves herself unworthy of his skimpy diamond.  
Bertha Jorkins catches Florence behind the greenhouse kissing . . . 
yeah, that's right, she's kissing *Filch*!  

Let's pause right here to check our bearings.  Yup, we're on course 
because it all makes sense.  Wouldn't Florence hide behind a large 
building if she were about to kiss Filch?  Who wouldn't?  She has 
standards, a reputation (so to speak) to protect, doesn't she?  That 
Florence.  She is just one of those girls who craves male attention, 
and just about any male will do.  She also likes the excitement, the 
risk, the giddy high of enticing a Hogwarts employee to yield to her 
advances.  It just makes her go weak in the knees.  For his part, 
Filch is hiding because he has no business kissing a student.  He 
could lose his job for that.  His knees are rather weak, too.

But then nosy Bertha turns up.  Filch hexes Bertha.  

What?  What's that, you say?  Filch is a Squib?  Filch can't hex 
anything or anyone?  Pah! as Tabouli would say.  Filch most certainly 
was *not* a Squib back then.  In fact, Filch was about as far from a 
Squib as you could be.  Filch was . . . the Hogwarts Potions Master.  
He was perfectly magical and capable of hexing anyone he wished to 
hex.  So he hexed Bertha when she threatened to rat him out.  

Now Filch is *really* in deep.  Making out with a student is bad 
enough.  Hexing a student is worse.  Bertha is ticked that a teacher 
hexed her, and Bertha-the-Big-Mouth tells the whole thing to MoM.  
MoM hands down the ultimate penalty for Filch's abuse of his magical 
power and authority -- MoM essentially busts him down in rank by 
removing his wizarding powers.  Dumbledore takes pity on Filch and 
keeps him on as caretaker -- Filch has lived his whole life as a 
wizard and has nowhere else to go.  The Pensieve scene with Bertha is 
foreshadowing for Filch's compelling and very Bangy backstory.

But what about Snape?  Oh, that Snape.  He has this unfortunate 
tendency to hold grudges.  When Snape learns that Florence Norris has 
been unfaithful with that hideous git Filch, he takes it rather 
personally.  He slips Florence the Kittygro cocktail he had been 
developing with Filch in Potions class.  Dumbledore is aghast when he 
finds out, but figures there's no point in retaliating against 
Snape.  After all, Snape is just a student; Filch never should have 
been developing such a dangerous potion in the first place.  Instead, 
he assigns Snape the job of reversing the Kittygro cocktail -- a task 
that Snape is still working on.

Thanks to Elkins and Tabouli, there's plenty of canon already lying 
about on deck, so I won't repeat it.  I will add a few bits, though.  
We know that someone will do magic late in life.  That person will be 
Filch, because he is a powerful wizard whose powers have been 
repressed.  Maybe Filch will be faced with an emergency sufficient to 
restore his powers (perhaps Mrs. Norris will choke on the Mother of 
All Hairballs).  Or MoM will decide to restore Filch's powers now 
that Voldemort has returned and they need every powerful Good wizard 
they can get.  

Ah, it just gets better and better.  Because everyone on Voldemort's 
side believes Filch is just a Squib, Filch will then be able to 
launch ::caresses FEATHERBOA:: an *Ambush* against the Dark Side!

Still not convinced?  Well, I'm not buying this "Filch is a poor 
little Squib" nonsense for one minute.  It doesn't add up.  If Filch 
has been a Squib all his life, why does he choose to live on the 
bottom rung of the wizarding social ladder -- a non-magical janitor 
at a school, scorned, tormented and ridiculed by the students?  
Wouldn't anyone choose to live life as a Muggle rather than endure 
that?  Not if they had always been a powerful wizard and still had 
hope that their powers would be restored.

But all of the FLIRTIAC theorists still have to answer one thorny 
question -- why does Florence Norris show up on the Marauder's Map as 
Mrs. Norris?  

This is quite simple for the FLIRTIAC Florence Kittygro Triangle 
Believers.  Animagi (Sirius, Peter) show up as their real names.  
Temporarily polyjuiced people (Crouch Jr.) show up as their real 
names.  Mrs. Norris is neither an animagus or polyjuiced.  Mrs. 
Norris is a cat because of a potion that actually turned her into a 
cat permanently.  She really *is* just a cat.  Where did the 
name "Mrs. Norris" come from?  See, Snape gave Florence the 
name "Mrs. Norris" as a sick, twisted, lazy, demented joke.  He was 
going to marry her and make her his Mrs., but she ruined 
*everything*.  He can hardly name her Mrs. Snape, so he calls her 
Mrs. Norris.

So I issue a challenge to those with competing Mrs. Norris theories:  
Explain exactly how it is that Mrs. Norris shows up that way on the 
Marauder's Map instead of showing up under her first and last name, 
like every other witch or wizard.

Cindy (hoping Elkins didn't get a painful rug burn from landing on 
those scratchy lifejackets)