[TTD] the wait is over

"Professor Dickinson?" Wini called, as she knocked on the Professor's office door and it swung open a bit. "Oops," she murmured, peering around the door, wondering why it hadn't been latched all the way and the squeaky sounds coming from inside only made her more curious.

It was the weekend after lunch and Wini had spent most of the morning studying with Marin. Today was Charms and Transfiguration, both subjects she liked for the most part and was good at so she had chatted and gossiped through a lot of their 'study hours'. If it had been a Potions study day? She would have been absolutely miserable. But today, she also had a few other things on her to do list. One of them brought her here to the Divination Professor's quarters to ask a favor.

Wini was hoping to get into the mediwitch school in Edinburgh, and to do so, there was a lot list of requirements that extended beyond getting good marks. Since she had always been good but not great in classes and this was something she very much wanted, she had pored over the rest of the requirements and brainstormed with Marin more ways that she could help her application stand out. Plus she had owled other healers and mediwitches that she knew like Montse for their advice and one thing that she had decided that she would try to get were recommendation letters.

One might think it odd to ask the Divination professor considering she wasn't a NEWT Divination student and it was not a subject required to get into GGS, but Wini didn't think it could hurt. Perhaps if she had extra letters of recommendation, the application reviewers might look kindly on the areas where she needed improvement. So Wini had taken the task on of asking almost every professor for a recommendation letter.

Except.. she didn't quite except her professor to be doing... this. She watched for a few moments, a growing smile on her face as a younger student was in front of him. Professor Dickinson had quite a talent at making balloon animals it seemed.

@Samuel Dickinson

After a confusing and shaky start, Sam had settled relatively well into being father to an eleven year old. Her beginnings at Hogwarts had been somewhat difficult - after her early life and what she'd lived through being on the run during the war, he wasn't surprised she slept with a knife under he pillow, but explaining that she wouldn't be allowed to do that at Hogwarts hadn't gone down well - but she'd settled in well. Largely thanks to the prefects and older students in her house, he thought, though it certainly didn't hurt that both he and Louise worked and lived under the same roof.

Occasionally it could be frustrating though, because Enitan tended to want father-daughter time at the most inopportune moments. The fact that he was in the middle of office hours made no difference because, she argued (and Merlin could she argue) she was a student and technically it was absolutely fine for them to be spending time together. Sam had sighed and feebly protested that they could try making balloon animals another time, but the little girl had received them today and thus today was when they needed to be played with.

He had to admit it was fun. Enitan's fingers weren't quite strong enough to do the modelling, and she firmly refused to allow Sam to do it with his wand, so he ended up manipulating the long balloons into a variety of shapes, to her specifications. He had managed a crup, a tree and had been chastised for his attempt at a giraffe ("it's just like the dog, but with a long neck") when he had been hit with a flash of inspiration and was making a large and complex fish from several balloons. He was almost through when his small daughter cheerfully greeted someone and he realised they weren't alone.

"Oh! Er...come in Miss Gwartney, how can I help you..?" he asked vaguely, handing the almost-finished fish to his delighted daughter, who to his total relief realised something else was commanding his attention and wandered off to try the blowing-up balloons spell on her own. He felt faintly embarrassed to be discovered making balloon animals, but on the other hand, he remembered when this girl had been a shy first year herself and probably would have been just as delighted.

"Sorry," she said automatically as she realized that he was.. busy.

Wini couldn't help the smile that tilted up her lips as she saw her professor attempting to make a fish(?) balloon animal for who she recognized as his daughter as a first year Hufflepuff. While it was a bit odd seeing her professor out of the professor role, the sentimental feelings of seeing such a cute father-daughter moment was what really stood out to her. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that her relationships with both of her father figures were a bit out of the ordinary, one being particularly strained aka nonexistent. Nope, nothing to do with that at all.

But she was already two steps into his office and his daughter seemed to be trying the balloon spell herself so she refocused on the professor and gave him a smile. "Well, I was wondering if I could ask a favor?" she started with before a moment of doubt crept in. She nodded to herself and plowed on. She was here, might as well ask. "I was wondering if you wouldn't mind writing me a recommendation letter? For Gorsemoor's? I'm applying for mediwitch and I know I'm not a NEWT student or anything, but I always did enjoy your classes and well, it's not a problem if you don't want to--" Wini continued to babble. Inadvertent rambling was one of her go to moves when she was a little nervous. "--but I figured that'd be no harm in asking and..."

She trailed off and ended with a sheepish smile.

"Look out!"

Sam was actually delighted that the girl had come to ask for a recommendation letter. The fact that she wasn't studying his subject to NEWT level (this year he had just four in his class, but frankly that was delightful; they all loved the subject, took field trips out to watch the stars from mountaintops and he had even convinced the centaurs to speak with his seventh years) didn't bother him at all. He was going to say yes, that was absolutely fine, but out of the corner of his eye he could see his daughter's spell backfiring. Instead of inflating her balloons she seemed to be levitating them, and unless he was very much mistaken they were filled not with air but with...

He was right. There wasn't time for either of them to get out of the way as an impressively swollen balloon burst above their heads, showering both parties with copious quantities of cold - and, inexplicably, bright blue - water. Thankfully Sam was experienced enough with the kind of accidents that came with working in a magical school that he didn't swear, but instead summoned a couple of identical loose robes.

"Are you okay?" he asked the girl, holding out one of the robes for her "I don't think tergeo will work for this one...I'll summon an elf to take your clothes for cleaning, I'll go and change in the closet..." a sudden slam of the door told him that his daughter had decided to run off, and he shook his head wearily. As he closed the door and quickly changed robes, Sam realised he had been working at Hogwarts for too long, because the idea of accidentally wearing identical clothes as a female student amused rather than horrified him!

"What--oohh!" Wini asked at his warning which quickly turned into an exclamation as she was absolutely drenched in shockingly cold water. She gasped in a sharp breath as the shock of the chilly wetness left her standing there staring down at her shoes as water sluiced off her, soaking her through her many layers of her uniform. All she could do was blink. And then she brought her head up slowly as the professor asked after her and she laughed, small at first and then more with a growing smile. It was very unexpected and yet, she saw the humor in it. Even if the curls she had perfect this morning were all soggy and.. blue(?) now. Blue?

She glanced down at the white shirt under her grey vest. Yep, that was blue too. "Fine, I'm fine," she reassured him, worried about dripping water on his carpet and hoping he wouldn't mind too much. "Think this'll come out?" she asked, her brows knitting as she lifted her limp blonde hair, the color now tinged with blue.

Wini took the robe from him and hesitated, watching as he disappeared into the other room to presumably change. She was soaked, but it felt weird to change her clothes in a professor's office so she just put the robe on top of her wet clothing and shuffled closer to the door. "I'm going to go change, but sorry about all this!" Wini said, thinking it was her fault for disturbing him in the first place and feeling embarrassed enough that she wasn't going to ask again about the recommendation letter. At least not now, maybe ever. "See you at dinner, sir," she said before she scooted to the door and gave him an embarrassed smile before disappearing, blue-tinted hair and all.

/end

"Oh, yes. It won't last more than a few hours" Sam said confidently, hoping that was actually true. In reality he had no idea how a first year had managed to fill a balloon with water and explode it, much less turn it into some sort of blue dye, but if he couldn't figure it out, Filius or Minerva would be able to. He averted his gaze from the unfortunate Miss Gwartney as his lips twitched into a small grin, not because of how she now looked but because of the realisation that his own blond hair was now probably tinged with the same shade of blue as hers.

Now the poor girl was apologising, and unsurprisingly she didn't want to actually disrobe in his office, He couldn't say he blamed her, he thought from the dubious privacy of the closet in which he kept scrolls and books. Quickly he pulled his soaked robes over his head and replaced them with the dry ones, sensing that the prefect was so embarrassed she was about to scoot off without mentioning her request again. Sam felt sorry for her - none of this had been her fault, she'd just had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He stepped out of the closet just in time to see she'd pulled the robe over her wet clothes. At least she didn't look like she was impersonating a billywig in those bright blue clothes any more, though he imagined she felt pretty uncomfortable. "Please don't apologise, I'm glad you came to see me" he said, but before he could say any more she had already excused herslf, presumably to head straight back to the Hufflepuff dormitories. Sam shook his head, and flicked his wand, summoning a brightly grinning house elf that immediately made a complimentary comment on Master's new blue hair. He dispatched the creature to discreetly clean and return Winifred's robes once she had changed and then sat down at his desk, picking up a quill.

See you at dinner, she had said. Fair enough. The best way to make it up to her would be to write the recommendation and give it to her then.

[out]