Much Ado about Nothing

Much Ado about Nothing


By: Max

[Disclaimer: see chapter 1]

Epilogue

Professor Alexa von Melanchthon sat at her desk, sucking on an ice drop and grading papers. Every now and then she raised her head with its dark, short cut hair and looked through the window. It was a glorious May Day - one of the first that was warm enough to sit by the open window. Alexa enjoyed the warmth and the view very much. Her office was on the ground floor of Hogwarts' west wing and she’d always found, that this was the side with the nicest view. She looked out over the meadow to the lake and, on clear days, she could see even further to the blue mountains. And there was the cottage with the blue and yellow striped shutters, the walls made from Scottish granite covered in ivy and honey suckle, and the silvery shimmering roof. It looked like a part of the landscape, as if it could have grown out of the meadow to become a home for someone who loved the soil and the lake and the sky and the mountains.

Alexa had always liked to look at the cottage, even before it had become the place where her young children spent their time while she and her husband were teaching. She’d always found that the cottage radiated cheerfulness and warmth and love.

And now one of it’s French windows was opened and two boys - both around six, the first one a sturdy red head with beaming blue eyes, the second blonde and bony - tromped into the garden, both with small broomsticks in their hands. They were followed by an old man with long, white hair, neatly kept back in a ponytail. He wore a plain, blue robe and half moon spectacles which had slid down on his crooked nose until they sat on the tip. On his left arm, her head at his shoulder, sat a little girl, sleepily sucking at her dummy. In his right hand he held the hand of a boy around three years who obviously was sulking because he wasn’t allowed to fly with the older boys.

Alexa watched how the old man bent down to the boy at his hand and said something to him. Even at this dnce nce Alexa could see that the child was now smiling. The reason for it became immediately clear, the boy stretched out his arm and then a magnificent gold and red bird the size of a swan sailed out of the house. It settled on the boy’s arm and nibbled affectionately on his ear.

The young witch in the office smiled. The three year old was her son and she knew that he liked nothing better than to play with the phoenix. Turning her eyes back to the desk and the fourtar ear essays which waited to be graded, Alexa took her quill up again. But she before she began, there was a knock at her door.

“Come in!” she called.

The door opened and two third years - muggleborn Sophie Stewarts and her friend, the black haired Gryffindor Annica Zabini - entered. Both looked very awkward, Sophie was fumbling with the hem of her sleeve and her friend studied the tips of her shoes. Together they murmured, “Hello, Professor Melanchthon.”

“Hello, Miss Stewarts, Miss Zabini. What can I do for you?” Alexa asked kindly.

The both looked for a moment at each other. Then Annica Zabini spoke, “Professor Snape sent us. He caught us arguing with Lucia Malfoy in front of the potions classroom. We just told her that her friend Jason mustn’t be so arrogant about his parents since his father is a muggle who isn’t good for anything besides babyminding. Lucia said we were idiots and then Professor Snape came and said we should go to you because we were in dire need of history lesson.” She looked sulky at her friend.

Now Sophie Stewarts took over, “We know, Professor Snape is great friends with Professor Dumbledore and Lucia’s dad, but that Lucia didn’t get any punishment for naming us ‘idiots’ …”

“Stop!” Alexa raised her hand. “I don’t think Professor Snape sent you to whine at me.”

“But it’s rather unfair we get detention and Lucia comes away unscathed!” squeaked Annica Zabini. “She called us ‘idiots’.”

Alexa wrinkled her forehead. “First, my ladies: It’s not appropriate to criticise Professor Snape this way in front of me. Second: I wouldn’t call you ‘idiots’, but you certainly lack information concerning Jason’s father.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got one hour until my next class and I think that you two do need a lesson. So sit down!” She pointed to the two chairs in front of the fireplace near the window

The girls walked over and sat down, but did not look overly delighted to be spending their free hour with a lesson.

Alexa left her desk and followed the girls, seating herself on the window sill. Breathing deeply she asked, “Why do you think Professor Snape sent you both to me?R
&
“Hmm …” Annica Zabini obviously didn’t have an idea.

“Probably because your young son is one of the children Mr Dumbledore looks after and because your office looks out at the cottage,” offered Sophie Stewarts.

Alexa looked for a moment out to the grounds. A woman with short brown hair, clothed in a plain blue teaching robe, had just crossed the meadow and, approaching the old man who’d sat down on a bench in front of the cottage, the little girl now sleeping in his lap, she bent down, stroked tenderly over the baby’s head and kissed the man then.

The girls gazes had followed their professor’s. “Professor Dumbledore loves her husband very much, doesn’t she?” asked Annica Zabini.

“But he’s so much older than her!” added Sophie Stewarts, sounding amazed.

Alexa sighed. “Yes, he’s much older than his wife, around 100 years older. But that doesn’t change the fact that they share a great love; they are a very happy couple and wonderful parents for t kid kids.”

“I don’t know if I’d like to be married to an old man,” Annica Zabini said. “I mean, Professor Dumbledore is still a young woman …”

“She’s in her forties. That’s young for a witch,” confirmed Alexa. “But I’m quite sure that she wouldn’t want to be married to any other man.” She looked at the couple on the bench again, now talking and laughing quietly with each other. “We’re going to talk about Mr Dumbledore, I think - though it feels odd for me to address him like that.”

“Why?” asked the black haired girl.

Alexa smiled. “To my husband and me, he is ‘Albus’. To our children he is just ‘Uncle Albus’. But when I came to Hogwarts 16 years ago he was called ‘Professor Dumbledore’ or - mostly because his wife is ‘Professor Dumbledore’ too - ‘Headmaster’.”

“So Mr Dumbledore is a wizard?” Sophie Stewarts asked curiously.

“Headmaster? He was headmaster of Hogwarts?” The young Gryffindor seemed flabbergasted.

“Sic transit gloria mundi*,” Alexa said a little sadly. “But yes, Albus Dumbledore is a wizard and certainly not just an average one. A lot of people think he’s the greatest wizard of our age.”

“The greatest wizard of our age?” Annica Zabini looked very sceptically. “And now he works as the Hogwarts kindergarten uncle?”

Alexa laughed. “Yes. But as an historian I tend to start a story at its beginning and with a biography it makes even more sense to do so.” Pulling one of her legs up to the window's sill and laying an arm around it, she began. “Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore - nice name, isn’t it? It shows he’s a wizard already because muggles rarely give their kids such names - was born as the son of the then Minister of Magic Artus Dumbledore and his wife Eleonara, a Venetian potions mistress. He attended Hogwarts, where he earned merits for his abilities, especially in potions and transfiguration, and a reputation as a prankster. After his time at Hogwarts, he studied potions and transfiguration at the Merlin College in Oxford and got a doctorate in both subjects. Afterwards, he apprenticed with the great alchemist, Nicholas Flamel, and later became his partner.”

“The same Flamel who created the Philosopher’s Stone?” Annica Zabini interrupted. “I’ve read about him, he must have been a genius!”

“He certainly was one,” Alexa confirmed.

“And Mr Dumbledore was his partner, does this mean he was a potions master too?” asked Sophie Stewarts.

“He still is,” Alexa nodded. “I’m not any good at potions, but Professor Snape confirms that Albus Dumbledore was a rather able potions master. He discovered the uses of dragon's blood in potions making and his book is still one of the standard works in potions making. But Mr Dumbledore ged ged his focus after writing the book. He became a transfiguration master and professor at the Cagliostro University in Venice.”

“Wow!” Annica was impressed. “An aunt of mine was there, and she says the Cagliostro University takes only the best for professors.”

Alexa smiled and looked over to the peaceful scenery in the cottage’s garden again. Albus had leaned back on the bench, stretching his long legs. His right arm lay on the back, the left hand was on the baby’s head, tenderly stroking it. Hermione looked at ease too. With her head on her husband’s shoulder, she’d raised her face to the spring sun.

Alexa directed her gaze back at the girls. “Does the name ‘Grindelwald’ ring a bell?”

Sophie Stewarts scratched behind her left ear. “I don't think I’ve heard of it.”

“Small wonder - you’re muggleborn,” Alexa commented. “But I don’t want to bore you with all the history about that. You’ll get that in ysixtsixth year in my class. For the moment only this part, Grindelwald was a very powerful, very evil wizard who was in league with the muggle tyrant Hitler. They tried to take over the whole of Europe. Albus Dumbledore became the leader of the resistance against Grindelwald and defeated him in 1945. Afterwards he went back to Venice for a few years before he became transfiguration teacher and head of Slytherin at Hogwarts. A few years later he took up the first of the two apprentices he would work with. It was a young witch named Minerva Stuart. She later married a Mr McGonagall.”

“Our headmistress?” Sophie Stewarts had got huge eyes. “She was Mr Dumbledore’s apprentice?”

“She wasn’t just his apprentice,” Alexa smiled. “As he became Headmaster of Hogwarts, he made her his deputy headmistress. Sas tas transfiguration mistress and head of Gryffindor, too.”

“She was there during the time Harry Potter was in Gryffindor, wasn’t she?” asked Annica Zabini.

Alexa nodded. “Yes. And then, around 1990, the next dark lord threatened our world; Tom Riddle, who’d named himself Lord Voldemort.”

“He was defeated by Harry Potter!” Annica Zabini seemed proud that she knew about that.

“Yes, but he couldn’t have done so without help,” Alexa said.

“I’ve read he had two friends with him, Ronald Weasley, the son of the minister, and his girlfriend,” Sophie Stewarts added.

“The girl was a friend of Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley, but she wasn’t the girlfriend of either one of them. And her name was Hermione Granger,” Alexa told.

“Hermione?” Sophie scraped against her head. “As in Professor Hermione Dumbledore?”

“Indeed. But she and Ronald Weasley were not the only ones to help Harry Potter. He couldn’t have succeeded without the help of the Order of Phoenix, a resistance group founded and lead by Albus Dumbledore. He was the brain behind all operations against Riddle/Voldemort. And while we’re on the subject, two important members of the Order were the Professor Snape and Professor Malfoy.”

Annica Zabini shuddered. She sunk her voice to a whisper, “My grandmother once said Professor Malfoy was a very dangerous man. He’d been into dark magic …”

Alexa nodded once again. “He was, but he reformed and without him the war would have been lost. You’ll learn about that later in my class. So back to Albus Dumbledore. a few years after the war against Riddle he took up his second apprentice, Hermione Granger. She’d studied transfiguration at Oxford. After her time as Dumbledore’s apprentice, she moved to Venice and became a professor there. And around this time she fell in love with her former master. 16 years ago they married and then had their first child, Perdita Eleonora Dumbledore. You probably know her, she’s the Ravenclaw prefect.”

Sophie Stewarts sighed. “And her boyfriend is the most handsome boy at Hogwarts. Albus Malfoy is so cute!”

Alexa laughed. “Yes, I think Perdita and Albus make a very cute couple.”

“Is it coincidence that he’s named Albus?” asked Annica.

Alexa shook her head. “No, it isn’t. He’s Perdita’s mother's godson and he was named after Albus Dumbledore.”

“Perdita’s little brother is cute too if he isn’t just boasting about his father,” Sophie said. “Even though he’s so young, he’s the perfect charmer.”

“He got that from his father,” Alexa laughed. “Albus Dumbledore is the most charming man I know. And Jason Leontes not only looks just like him, but also is just as charming and loveable. But he gave the Hogwarts staff quite a shock. He was the reason his father retired as Headmaster.”

“But why? Can’t a headmaster have two children?” asked Sophie.

Alexa laughed. “He can of course have as many children as he wants. But Albus, I mean Mr Dumbledore, had been headmaster for more than half a century. He was already a bit tired of it when Perdita was born and then, with Jason too, he decided that he didn’t want house elves raising his children because he and Professor Dumbledore were working all the time. He retired and Professor McGonagall became Headmistress. For the firso yeo years Professor Malfoy worked as her deputy, but obviously Mr Dumbledore’s example was infectious. Professor Malfoy decided that he would like to spend more time with his family too. Before his Albus and Lucia became students here, he taught only the seventh years. And now he’s still only teaching sixth and seventh years, the rest of his time he helps Mr Dumbledore with the younger children and the elementary schooling.”

Sophie Stewarts smiled dreamily. “I find men who care for children very cute. And Mr Dumbledore stepped aside to let his wife become head of Gryffindor and deputy headmistress, that's great. I want a man who lets me have my career too.”

Annica was just counting something on her fingers, wrinkling her forehead by it. Looking up at Alexa, she said, “Our teachers are having a huge lot of children!”

Alexa laughed again. “No, I don’t think so. But let’s count. Professor Sprout has four, but they’re all adult now. Professor Sinistra has two - Cassopeia who’s in Ravenclaw, second year and Castor, Ravenclaw, first year. The Snapes have three children: Persephone, she was Slytherin head girl until two years ago and now studies at the Merlin College where Mr Dumbledore attended. Marcus Curtius, her younger brother, is a Ravenclaw sixth year. And isn’t he quidditch captain? I should actually know with my husband being the Ravenclaw housemaster and having a daughter there, but quidditch was never my cup of tea …”

Annica Zabini laughed. “Professor Dumbledore always mixes the quidditch players up too. But you’re right, Marcus Snape is the Ravenclaw captain. And his younger sister is Slytherin seeker.”

“Ah, and there we have the three Snapes,” Alexa said. “The next trio would be the Malfoys: Albus Arthur, our handsome Gryffindor head boy. He’s 16 now. And his sister Lucia Hermione is 12 and a Slytherin.” She pointed with her chin to the blonde boy on the broomstick outside. “And there you have Percival Galahad, the youngest Malfoy.”

“And how many children do you have, Professor Melanchthon?” asked Sophie Stewarts.

“Only two. Our Allegra is a Ravenclaw sixth year and little Leander is three and the one who is playing with Mr Dumbledore’s phoenix.” Alexa indicated the child in the cottage's garden.

“And Professor Dumbledore has three, hasn’t she?” Annica wanted to know.

“No. The Dumbledores have four children. Perdita Eleonora is the first; then comes Jason Artus, our charming Gryffindor. He’s got a younger brother, Leontes Simon, that’s the redhead on the broom. And the baby sleeping next to Mr Dumbledore is our headmistress’ darling, Minerva Dorothy Dumbledore. She was born last year during the summer and you should have seen Professor McGonagall. She was even more excited and nervous than Mr Dumbledore. And now she’s completely over the moon with little Minerva. Mr Dumbledore always says the Headmistress will probably eat the sorting hat one day if it doesn’t put little Minerva in Gryffindor.”


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


Outside on the bench Hermione Dumbledore was just sighing contently. Taking her husband’s hand in hers, she said, “Isn’t it a glorious day? And I’m through with teaching for today and much too lazy to start grading.”

“It would be a shame to stay inside when the weather is so wonderful,” Albus answered and pulled her hand to his lips. “You know how Ginny names weather like this?”
mionmione laughed. “Of course I do. She would say ‘That’s a day to beget heroes!'”

“Doesn’t that sound like a lovely idea?” Albus twinkled at her. By looking in her eyes he felt her familiar, warm presence in his mind and so he thought at her, “Leontes wants to sleep over at Percy's tonight. And big Minerva is rather keen on having little Minerva for the evening. That means we’re alone …”

Hermione kissed his cheek. “Do you want to tell me you haven’t got enough children after fathering four heroes?”

He sighed. “Considering our youngest needs still nappies and loves to sleep during the day so she can keep her old father on his feet all night, no, I don’t think I need another baby at the moment. But perhaps in two or three years? And at my age, a man needs some practise.”

“As if you would lack it!” Hermione laughed. Stretching, she snuggled a bit closer to him. “Nevertheless, I certainly won’t mind having you all to myself tonight,” she thought in his direction. “Even if our oldest daughter thinks it is time we stop acting like smitten teenagers. But I can’t help myself. Perdita will have to live with her parents ‘snogging whenever we childrern orn our backs on them’. I’m still terribly in love with her father, you know?”

“Really? That’s a happy coincidence because Perdita’s father thinks you’re the most enchanting, most fascinating, and most sexy woman alive. To marry you was the best idea I’ve ever had, Hermione,” Albus answered.

“Apart from the fact that it was my idea to marry you, Albus, you’re right.”

“Hermione, must you always have the last word?” he asked.

“Actually no. But I like it. And so do you.” Hermione turned to him and closed his mouth with a tender kiss.


The end - and yes, this time I really mean it.


* So worldly fame fades