H.G.'s Guide to Workplace Harassment
Prologue
The air surrounding the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is awash with sound, though not with the spirited voices of students, nor the serious utterances of its prestigious teaching staff—seeking to temper the enthusiasm of said students—that you, dear reader, might expect.
If you wander about outside the castle walls, you will see the origins of the buzzes and chirps that break the stillness: numerous flying insects and small birds flit here and there; grasshoppers bound above blades of brittle grasses.
No banners flutter in the gentle breeze moving through the Quidditch field. No brooms or owls travel to and fro along the invisible roads and highways surrounding the castle’s towers.
And it is in this framing, reader, that we find this most beloved school situated deeply inside the tail end of Summer.
Could only the dramatic drop-off of a steep cliff, flanked by rocks and cool, crashing waves disrupt this quaint scene’s picturesque idleness?
Nay.
Let us turn to the castle’s equally serene interior.
Here, announced by the confident rhythm of heeled pumps striking the stone floor of an otherwise gloomy corridor, approaches the revered school’s newest Professor...in the newly-minted position of Professor of Muggle Studies, to be exact.
She is to be the chosen disruptive force of our tale, carefully encased in unassumingly simple but well-tailored cotton and silk; fitted, pleated and flowing just so.
Watch the gentle sway of her hips as she eagerly makes her way to a nearby door, her elegant hand outstretched towards its knob. The beguiling creature disappears from our view within just a few steps and a turn of the wrist.
It is but one week before the start of the new school term.
Merlin, protect Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from Professor Hermione Granger.