Sarcastic Advisor PV Morfran Griffith

The door creaked open, as it usually did, to reveal the stoic, neutral face of a huge man, very much at peace with slamming the door in the face of students playing tricks, or little brats expecting him to let them play with a dragon. But this time the judgmental glare of his light blue eyes lightened remarkably fast, as a small smile cracked across his face. The little blue haired snot of a Slytherin was back to visit, after a few months of them not having the chance to talk, and he could honestly say that he had missed her smile.

"Hello, Elena. Can I help you?"

She seemed quite a bit healthier since the last time they had crossed paths, her cheeks distinctly rosier, and her smile less strained. The first time they had met, she had been a stupid little orphan trying to hide money that she was sending off to some fool or another. Now she was a full blown student of hogwarts, clearly eating enough, and it even looked like her circadian rythm had been more or less put in balance.

A rough hand that smelled quite a bit like soap reached for the door, opening it wide enough for the Slytherin to easily enter the room, if she felt like it. He could feel that it was going to be a good day.

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Elena smiled brightly back at the professor, “Hi Griff! I was going to send you another owl, but then I realised that it’s a sunny enough day that I could also just walk down here and talk to you in person! And I brought the new newspaper because they had me make a word search, so I made it magical creature themed, and also did an advice column but that’s a bit more boring.”

After realising that Griffith was in fact holding the door open for her, Elena slipped inside the room, proudly holding the newspaper like a trophy, clearly extremely proud of herself, although not mentioning the advice column was basically all the advice Griffith had given to her on sleeping condensed down into an easy to read few hundred words. Plagiarism thy name is Elena.

“I also wanted to know how you’ve been doing. I wasn’t sure if other students remembered to ask.” Elena was absolutely positive that if Alan had come to see Griffith, then he would’ve probably asked, and then asked again, and then maybe threw chocolate frogs at the poor professor until there were more sweets in his pantry than actual food. For a moment she wondered if that’d already happened.

Griff? The professor opened his mouth to correct the girl on her use of nicknames, but then closed it again. There wasn't any point, it would just be crushing her spirits right out of the gate, and he didn't have the heart to do it. He had called her Elena, after all. To little kids, that was practically an invitation to call you "Dude, Mate, Dawg" or something similar. Like "Griff". She was telling him about how she had helped with making the new newspaper, and the things she had contributed to.

He found it slightly ironic that, after all the advice he had given her over the year, she was now the one giving advice to her fellow students. It made him feel a little bit proud, if he was being honest with himself, which he wasn't, so instead he just internally remarked on the odd irony, and moved on to his response.

"That sounds wonderful, well done! Does the newspaper have a comments and review box for people to say what they think? Did they like it?"

He assumed they had loved the word search and advice columns, and was more prompting her to brag more than actually asking a question. It was good to have good self esteem, as long as you were careful to not cross the line into jerkwad territory.

"I have been doing rather well, thank you. How about yourself?"

That wasn't entirely true. The professor had been getting bad feelings, his creatures had been being more anxious than usual. It had been a bad couple weeks for the Welshman. But that was something for him to figure out. He wasn't going to drag down Elena's happiness over some nerves.

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“There is a feedback thing! I’m just waiting for something to come in now, so far we’ve just had a suggestion to cover Quidditch and a kid saying he likes all of the articles.” Elena smiled brightly, “Oh! And I got onto the quidditch team too! Chaser, because apparently none of the older years are as good as a tiny Slytherin powered by spite and a need to prove herself at every turn.”

Although, Elena wasn’t quite sure what to answer when it came to how she’s been, mostly because it’s been strangely up and down as people she knew kept disappearing, she was mostly happy, but then that weird kid tried to blow up the toilets and maybe tried to kill her, so that was... less good.

“I’ve been pretty good! Reading a lot, and I’m almost done the tiny fiction section they’ve got here, I sorta wish they had more.” Elena frowned, “Then there was also that time the weird Ravenclaw kid blew up the toilets, and I sorta got caught in the crossfire. Aurelia got hit with a diffindo, apparently Aurelia didn’t know that when you talk about crazy people, you do not say you’ll ‘Deal With Them’. Luckily I just dragged Rowan off to grab the Defence teacher, like a sane person would.”

Elena did, in fact, do air quotes for Deal With Them.

He thought it was a little bit funny the way she talked. It was almost as if she was a lot older than she actually was, or maybe she had read the lines in some book. It bespoke of a wider grasp of a scenario that eleven year olds seldom grasped the irony of, although he himself was well versed in the sarcastic hilarity.

"That sounds wonderful, they were probably just dumbstruck by the brilliance of your writing."

Griffith laughed, clearly joking, but also making an attempt to deliver a decent compliment her way. It was strange, seeing her this different. It had just been a year, right? Well, almost a year since she had last come to his door.

He was all set to have a happy afternoon when his brain processed exactly what she had said. A crazy ravenclaw did what exactly?

"Who was hurt? How bad was the prefect damaged by the spell, and who the hel...ping..hippo was the ravenclaw in question?"

The recovery from the near slip of the admittedly minor swear was less than graceful, but the man had somehow pulled it off regardless, struggling all the way. Kids, he had to get used to kids.

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Elena grinned happily at the joke, Griffith had a nice laugh although it sorta, short circuited when he realised the rest of it.

“Injured... the hufflepuff kids that later decided to physically launch themselves and scream at him, a Slytherin girl called Koko, and Aurelia the prefect.” Elena fidgeted, trying to sort through her information, “Aurelia didn’t wake up for a few days, and nobody was allowed to see her. I think it was pretty bad, glad I dragged Rowan out when the fighting started although her got a bit angry at me for it.”

Elena needed a stress ball, she decided, for when she needed to explain bad shit that happened in and around her, a stress ball would be ideal for this situation. So far she was just squeezing the end of her cloak, this did not have the squishy effect desired.

“The kid’s name was Kaegen, I met him once before out near the great lake. He gives himself titles, and he’s terrified of everyone. I think. Even me.” Elena’s weird solemn face and startling concentration broke and she lightened up again, “I got my owl too! A little owl, called him Valek Aragorn Jones. Because he is tiny and friendly that I had to name him after my favourite characters.”

Griffith's upper and lower jaw practically fused together as he contemplated what he had just learned. Or maybe fumed was the right word, because fume he did. In hogwarts, in a school full of teachers and staff and professors, something like this happened? No, this was not going to stand. He was going to do something about it, although he had no idea what that something could possibly entail. How was a professor of magical creatures supposed to make this place safer? By killing all the trouble makers? Detention did practically nothing, Griffith knew that all too well.

His eyes slowly closed, and stayed shut for about fifteen seconds as he tried to compose himself, shoulders heaving slightly. Someone was going to hang for this, and it sure as hell wasn't going to just be Kaegen. How had that kid managed to take down so many others, anyway. It seemed a bit ludicrous, unless the other kids were just really weak. But one was a prefect.

As his eyes opened, he he finished guarding his mind as best he could, and smiled at the little slitherin again, loosening up as best he possibly could.

"Your owl sounds adorable, are you feeding him enough?"

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Elena watched carefully, a little worried at the look on Griffith's face for a moment before he seemed to go back to being happy. She nodded seriously, "I read every book on owl nutrition in the library to make sure I was, which was two books, two. And both of them were in compendiums, what on earth does the school library have against non-magical creatures, and fantasy books, too many thriller books. I don't like thriller books, not enough magic."

This was a safe topic, the pitiful fiction section of the library, as well as what seemed like the shunning of nonmagical non-fiction books, it was very exasperating when you just wanted to read about owls god dammit. Or something else like swans, Elena liked swans they were adorable, and they didn't mind her, maybe it was the blue hair or the fact she used to bribe them heartily.

Elena made a face, "At least they had Good Omens, that's a good book. Then I went looking for more and I could find one Neil Gaiman and nothing else, so now I've read a quarter of American Gods and I'm a bit bored, it's not really as good. We get it Neil, he's Baldur, it's obvious."

"This is Hogwarts, after all. Not some muggle academy. It would make sense that they wouldn't have many fiction novels. We have two different societies, that only very rarely touch, and that's a good thing. Maybe if you look far enough back in the library you could find some old sagas, or legends. I always found those to be great fun."

Griffith had read most of american gods, and found it not to his liking, and he desperately wanted to comment on it, but decided that it was probably best to be a good role model. The wizarding world had plenty of internal problems as it was, it didn't need any help from the muggles.

"Maybe you were in the wrong section? Nonmagical creatures are still used in potions and the like, and taking care of owls is something every wizard should be familiar with. It seems unlikely that there are only two books covering the bird that makes up the entire wizarding postal service. Where did you look?"

It was nice that she was reading as much as she was. It meant that scars were fading, and some facsimile of normality was probably returning to the little girl's life. It made him about as happy as could be expected, given the fact that he was still fuming deep down about the attempted murders.