Diplomacy
The Durmstrang teachers had returned several days earlier than their pupils. Brecht was still with them. Ginny could see him huddled with the other Durmstrang staff, but to her annoyance his interest seemed mostly in the House of Assembly, and she could see him shaking his head at the building at all times of the day.
Ginny resolved to ignore them, and get on with all her other tasks. With the Hogwarts pupils no longer monopolising the Dining Chamber, the Beauxbatons house-elves could ready the school to welcome its usual pupils and the Durmstrang contingent as well, while Latty and her fellow house-elves flung themselves into feeding their Hogwarts charges.
Still, it was a worrying day when all the other pupils and the Beauxbatons teachers turned up after their Christmas break. Sendulla had initially promised a staged return, but both schools elected to be back on the same day, and the cable cars were full to bursting for hours.
To her surprise, the Beauxbatons made almost no objections to the unannounced addition of an entire new castle to their hitherto exclusive and select valley. They were startled, certainly, but they were French, and chilled, and greeted their new companions with their usual sang froid.
“It is very Freudian,” pronounced Mr Cotte, gazing at the castle from the Beauxbatons staff room.
“What’s that?” asked Samia Benamara. The Potions teacher looked puzzled.
He turned his head to look at her, with a raised eyebrow, then shrugged. “It has lots of pointy bits,” he said carefully.
“Not everything is about sex, Mr Cotte,” said Madame Desprez.
“I’m not sure,” murmured Cotte, continuing to examine the new castle.
It had been a record winter for snow, and the Barbegazi slopes were crowded with enthusiastic bare-foot skaters. Less expectedly, the lakeside paths and lawns were also thronging with pupils from all three schools. Predatory groups of either sex would stroll past others, giggling, smirking or merely gawking.
And despite the icy weather, the females in particular didn’t bother to dress for warmth – short skirts, heels and bare midriffs seemed to be the order of the day. Beauxbatons of both sexes could be seen on the snow slopes clad only in swimsuits - briefs for the boys, bikinis for the girls – showing off their skills and physiques, to whoops and cheers from their audience.
Then the more determined elements of the other two schools had to try, of course, which was even more of a draw for all the pupils - and staff – so that a lot of free time seemed to be spent on the slopes, as either crowd-pleaser or spectator.
Ginny and the other heads, convinced they would lose dozens to hypothermia, did all they could to discourage the more extreme examples of undress, without much success.
“Shall we be seeing you displaying your navel, Madame Desprez?” Mr Cotte asked, as he stood in the staffroom watching the floorshow. “Or more than that, perhaps?”
“I would not dream of competing with our Headmistress,” replied Madame Desprez, dryly.
“Feel free,” said Ginny. “Everyone already knows what my navel looks like.”
“I believe that is Jehanne Blavier on the slopes now,” said Mr Cotte. “I think perhaps you need to see her.”
“And I know what Jehanne looks like too,” Ginny said wearily.
“Perhaps, but possibly she needs persuading that just a hat and scarf are not enough on the slopes,” said Cotte. “At least, not in this weather.”
“I don’t need this,” Ginny muttered.
“Perhaps Madame Benamara is leading the students into bad habits,” suggested Stelios Artino. “Perhaps they cannot tell the difference between a boiler suit with holes in, and total nudity.”
Samia scowled mightily at Artino, but then stuck her tongue out at him, which made her look like a teenager.
The staff had even less control over the pairings that arose from all this. For one thing, they weren’t just pairings: There was a growing belief amongst the pupils that it was perfectly acceptable to have multiple partners, as long as they weren’t from the same school.
This rule didn’t prevent the ructions that frequently arose when someone poached someone else’s property, and, perhaps because Ginny was the youngest head, it always seemed to be her office that was occupied by tearful, angry or numb pupils of both sexes and all ages unable to handle the end of the world as they saw it.
Ginny didn’t feel qualified to give advice or even comfort. Her own past relationships, she realised, had mostly come to an end in shouting matches she’d started, and anger had usually substituted for grief, perhaps. And despite her Time Shifter working overtime, there weren’t enough rooms in the school to hold all the moping ex-lovers wanting her ear.
Undine’s new Quidditch pitch proved popular with all the pupils. Ginny was pleased to see the Hogwarts house teams in action, and then in serious training. This acted as a magnet to the pupils of the other two schools: Durmstrang, unsurprisingly, wanted to see how their rival school’s teams were performing, and a surprising number of Beauxbatons were also to be seen lining the hills around the pitch, wrapped in cloaks, hats and scarves, their eyes glued to the play.
Unsurprisingly, the Durmstrangs wanted to start practising as well, and there wasn’t enough daylight for both schools to play on the same pitch. Undine started to look harried once more, but then the schools woke up one morning to find a second Quidditch pitch, further down the valley. This one had stands, too, because the valley was too wide and flat at this point to use the hillsides for the spectators. Ginny wasn’t part of this, and it was a surprise to her too.
“Am I out of a job, Undine?” Ginny jokingly asked her when she came to inspect the new pitch. There were already Durmstrangs on their brooms joyously racing around their new toy, even though Ginny knew for a fact that this was lesson time for many of them.
Undine looked embarrassed and worried. “I’m sorry, Ginny, but… The ‘Ogwarts were not happy because they were having to share, and I decided one night’s sleep wasn’t as important as no peace during the day. And I didn’t need to keep you awake, because the stands are wood, and all I had to do was find some trees. Now I need to find a spell to season the wood, because of course yesterday this was all trees, and now they are stands, but I will worry about that when I have time.”
The Durmstrang contingent still had their own additional woes. Bypassing their own teachers for some reason, they came to complain to Ginny. How was it, they demanded, that the British newcomers were comfortably housed in an entirely new establishment, while they were still condemned to remain in sleeping bags on the floor of the Dining Chamber? And having to crowd into classrooms with the year above, or the year below, as the Durmstrang teachers struggled to teach them all? And having to put up with Transfiguration being taught in English or French, because Durmstrang no longer had a Transfiguration professor?
Ginny tried to remain calm, reminding them that most of this was because their own architect was still fussing endlessly about the damaged House of Assembly, which was still shrouded in warning spells keeping everyone away.
Yet many of the Durmstrangs, teachers included, mulishly continued to blame Ginny, for the damage to the House of Assembly, for not ignoring their wishes and building them an equal to the new Hogwarts castle anyway.
Undine, still immersed in New Hogwarts, began to look rather hunted as gangs of Durmstrangs pestered her, asking her for their school, on the other side of the valley to New Hogwarts, or at the other end of the valley, or in the valley next door.
Ginny and Ruby did their best to protect her from this, but short of Bat Bogeying every offender – tempting, but she resisted – there was little Ginny could do. She took to calling on Sendulla on a daily basis, for a progress report, as she termed it.
Sendulla was querulous beyond his years. “I don’t know exactly what you’re expecting here,” he would complain. “This all takes time, you know.”
Ginny would equally repeatedly point out that Undine had built an entire castle, classrooms, houses and everything else, in the time it had taken Durmstrang to do precisely nothing, but her lack of tact was not appreciated.
“Look,” she said eventually. “Cut a few corners. Make some compromises. But you can’t stay in the Dining Chamber for ever!”
Sendulla’s brows gathered. “Are you throwing us out?” he demanded. “Are we no longer welcome here?”
“Of course you are!” insisted Ginny. “We can manage! Our house-elves don’t mind! They love it! But it’s not much fun for your pupils, is it?”
Another scowl. “The pupils aren’t here to have fun,” pronounced Sendulla. “They are here to work. To learn! Nothing else!”
“Really?” she shot back. “Strange then that so many of them seem to have new boyfriends, or girlfriends, Beauxbatons ones or Hogwarts ones? And some of them both? They’re human, Henri! They need their own space, and I don’t mean somebody else’s bed!”
“I will talk to the staff,” Sendulla said at last, still grumpy. “But they have other matters that are concerning them.”
“What matters?”
“Their job is Durmstrang,” said Sendulla stiffly. “As yours is Beauxbatons.”
“Fine,” said Ginny. “But if they could stop picking the scabs off their other matters, they might have time for their pupils!”
A worried look from Sendulla. “Scabs? What do you mean?”
Ginny sighed, gustily. “Nothing! It’s nothing to do with me, OK? Sort yourselves out!”
She stormed away, back to her own office, which was only feet away. Sendulla had a cordoned-off area of the Senate room in place of an office of his own, and several of the portraits of previous Beauxbatons heads winked at her as she passed, including her own.
Guillaume de Fleury was looking very smug these days, she noticed.
Ginny was slow to realise that some Beauxbatons were now flaunting new scarves – in Hogwarts and Durmstrang house colours. Qudra Jatt came to one of her extra lessons wearing a Gryffindor scarf.
“So what’s wrong with Choc?” Ginny asked in puzzlement.
Qudra shook her head, embarrassed. “Nothing! It’s just that… Well, Choc is just your house, you know, so it’s just a handful of you… And… and… I like cheering for my house, but it’s better when there’s lots of you, all cheering for the same team. She pulled her scarf from around her neck, held it up and chanted. “Gryffindor!”
Concetta rolled her eyes, unimpressed.
“It’s very exciting!” Qudra was saying. “And I find new friends, so not just Concetta, because they support Gryffindor as well. And even if they support Slytherin, we become friends too, because we can all talk about Quidditch.”
“So do you follow the Durmstrang teams as well?” Ginny asked, not quite getting this.
“N-no,” admitted Qudra. “Some people do. Some people support both, I think.”
“I support Balder,” put in Concetta. “But I keep my Balder scarf for matches, thank you.”
“Balder?”
“They are the best,” said Concetta with conviction. “They can beat Gryffindor. They have Sandrin Krum!”
“But are there any matches between Hogwarts and Durmstrang?” Ginny asked.
“No…” admitted Concetta.
“But when there are, Gryffindor will flatten Balder!” overflowed Qudra. “Krum can eat dirt!”
“We are meant to be talking about Potions,” said Ginny, defensively.
“Did you used to play Quidditch, Headmistress?” Qudra asked.
“Well, yes…”
“Really? Did you play in a team?”
“Well, Gryffindor. Chaser, mostly,” she added.
Qudra’s eyes were wide in amazement. “Ah! Ah! Amazing!”
“You sound like you’re about to sneeze,” said Concetta, acidly.
“Can you introduce me to the team?” Qudra asked urgently, ignoring this. She seemed to be vibrating with excitement.
“Well…”
“You’d better,” advised Concetta. “When she meets them, and sees how dull they are, she’ll get over all this.”
Sendulla came to see Ginny a few days later. He seemed stiff and awkward.
“We would like to interview your architect,” he said.
“You’re kidding me,” Ginny said, tactlessly.
He frowned. “No.”
“Well, I will ask her. Do you have an idea what you want, or shall I ask her for ideas?”
Sendulla turned and gazed out of the window, in the direction of the Beauxbatons family houses, not New Hogwarts. “We would like to speak to her,” he said eventually.
“Look,” said Ginny, “What are you worried about here? You’re in charge now, aren’t you? Or are they going to pull somebody else above you? You’re doing pretty well, I thought.”
She could see Sendulla didn’t appreciate her prying into his affairs.
“I am Acting Head,” he said stiffly. “I am empowered to act as I see fit.”
“Good,” she said uncertainly. “I’ll talk to Undine.”
He swung to look at Ginny. “Is she still here?”
Ginny nodded. “For a day or so. Beatrix Holombec wants her back, though.”
Sendulla shrugged; The problems of a distant wandmaker didn’t seem to worry him.
Ginny found Undine in New Hogwarts, as expected. She was in the range of greenhouses, talking to Professor Sprout about irrigation, with Ruby translating. Undine brightened when she heard the news.
“I thought they hated my work,” Undine confessed. “Although Beatrix will hate me if I don’t go back to her soon.”
“I think Durmstrang have just painted themselves into a corner,” Ginny said. “Nobody likes looking like a fool.”
“So what should I say to them?” Undine asked. “Do you have any advice?”
Ginny shrugged. “If you have the energy for another miracle,” she said. “Go for it. I can help keep Hogwarts off your back if you need that. And I’ll try and deflect Beatrix too, if I can.”
Undine shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “Energy is not a problem. It will be difficult going back to working in a shop, I think,” she said.
“So are we done now?” enquired Ruby. “Gosse wants me for another painting.”
Ginny was burning with curiosity to know what would happen at Undine’s meeting with the Durmstrang teachers. Was there a new school in the offing? Would her - Ginny’s - help be needed? But she had her own school to run now, as well as liaison with the other two schools, and she had to quell her patience and wait until the evening after the meeting to ask Undine.
Undine, disappointingly, merely shrugged when she was asked as they ate dinner. “They wanted advice about their building. But I am not a structural expert. I told them that.”
“They’re still worried about the House of Assembly?” asked Ginny in exasperation. “What’s wrong with them? What about all the Durmstrangs kipping out in our Dining Chamber? And our lot are tired of sharing lessons.”
Every classroom in the new and old classroom blocks was crammed now, as Durmstrangs and Beauxbatons jostled for space.
Another shrug from Undine. “They never mentioned that. But I tell you, they are worried about the House of Assembly.”
Which didn’t make Ginny feel any better. Were they still blaming her for the damage she’d caused? But if she’d done nothing, the building would have been obliterated, with the children in it. What was wrong with these Durmstrangs?
She resolved to tackle Sendulla the following morning. She found him, unsurprisingly, outside the House of Assembly, in a huddle with his other teachers.
When he saw her approach, she saw him say something to the others and step towards her. Did he know what she was going to say?
“Henri,” she began. “You are very welcome here. You can stay as long as you like. But we can’t operate like this. We can’t damage our pupil’s progress, because we can’t teach them properly. And surely your pupils are in the same state.”
He didn’t argue, or try to placate. It was as if he was waiting for her to say her piece and leave.
“Our house-elves are at full stretch,” she said then. “They really don’t seem to mind, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect them to keep doing this.”
Sendulla looked grumpy. “We can fetch our own house-elves here, if you want,” he said shortly.
“Henri, there’s no room! You know that!”
He screwed up his eyes and gritted his teeth, then opened his eyes again. “What do you propose?” he asked, with a sigh.
“What do I propose?” echoed Ginny in surprise. “It’s up to you to decide. I will help you – Undine will help you – but that’s all we can do!”
Sendulla’s shoulders dropped. “I will ask one of my staff to meet with your architect,” he said, capitulating.
“What about Brecht?”
More thought. “He is an expert on old buildings,” Sendulla said eventually. “It is perhaps unfair to ask him when he is committed to our House of Assembly.”
“Fine,” said Ginny, but somehow having achieved what she wanted she was angrier than before.
Ginny told Undine the news, who looked surprised. Ginny decided that she was bored of no progress, so unilaterally invited herself to the meeting between Undine and the Durmstrang representative.
The teacher Sendulla sent was Danish, with a name Ginny couldn’t manage to remember. He was young-middle-aged, and energetic enough, Ginny felt, but he sat in the meeting with his arms crossed and his ankles crossed and contributed nothing, answering simple questions but venturing no opinions.
Ginny threw off her own observer status. “What do you want to achieve here?” she demanded.
The Dane didn’t even bother to shrug. “I am here as building projects liaison between Durmstrang and Beauxbatons,” he said.
“And do you have the authority to make decisions?”
“We work as a team,” he said. “Collectively.”
“Don’t you care that your pupils can’t be taught properly at the moment? That ours are in the same state?”
“Perhaps you should have planned accordingly,” he said, “When you built New Hogwarts. Instead you built in secret, without consulting us.”
Ginny was on her feet, her palm slamming onto the table before she realised. “Don’t go there!” she stormed. “Durmstrang is entirely in charge of its own building projects! Herr Brecht is your architect! Not mine! We assisted Hogwarts, and we have assisted Durmstrang, to the best of our ability! If you fling that help in our teeth, start counting your own! Now, do you want our help, or do you want my assistance kicking you out of that door?”
He stood, icily, and stalked out of the room.
Ginny shouted in wordless frustration. Even Undine looked disturbed now. “Why?” she asked. “Why do they not want our help? Don’t they care about their children? How can we help them like this?”
“What time is it?” demanded Ginny. “Never mind. I know where to find them… Are you coming, or are you going to sit there as well?”
Undine just looked philosophical, and stood. “Don’t let them annoy you,” she said. “I can see no evidence they are trying to. It’s just they have other worries, I think.”
“What worries?”
“I really don’t know.”
Ginny managed to calm down, and apologised to Undine for her rudeness. “But I’m not going to sit still for this!” she insisted.
“It is OK,” said Undine, looking concerned. “Where are we going?”
“Durmstrang may not want our help,” said Ginny, determinedly. “But they’re going to get it anyway.”