The Most Mortifying Time of Year

[Velda Aesalon]

@Annette Fontaine
@Ambrose Bell

15th December, 2014

They were a week from the end of term and soon to be safe but Velda had always been a pessimist, convinced the worst was just around the corner and not for the first time she had been proven entirely correct. For just around the corner from her library she had found herself first bumping into someone - not in and of itself a disaster, merely a nuisance - and upon looking up had found one of Peeves' entirely ridiculous pieces of mistletoe.

Words being her specialty, a choice few of them popped into her head immediately, none of them that she would repeat in front of students. She glanced up at who the other condemned soul was and almost immediately she debated whether this was a positive or negative thing. If it had been one of the women she could at least have been social about it, one of the much younger men she could have simply pretended were her sons, but no, obviously, because this was her life and fate was determined to fuck with her until her dying day, it was a man close to her age who happened to be widowed.

Not that she had given so much as a passing thought to him of course.

"Mr Bell, I think we're in something of a conundrum."

  

[Ambrose Bell]

He’d heard about the mistletoe, of course, but as Ambrose was so rarely in the castle he hadn’t really paid much notice.

When his feet became stuck, however, he wished he had. Especially when he saw who he was stuck with.

Ambrose gave a noise very much akin to a cat being strangled crossed with a puppy who has just had it’s tail trod on and a mouse who had just been crushed. Basically he squeaked. Oh god no not her. Anyone but the scary librarian who made Ambrose feel like a teenager who had just tracked mud into the Queen’s parlour.

Well, at least it wasn’t Professor Prewett?

“It appears we are.” He muttered. Oh god no no no not happening.

[Velda Aesalon]

His evident nervousness did him credit. It was something she appreciated in a man more and more as the years passed and she came into contact with less and less of them, other than the gentlemen who taught at Hogwarts and her remaining son, who was most certainly not a gentleman. Her son-in-law was slightly less objectionable but she was rather convinced he would be the death of her daughter which might take the shine off him, and he had never faced her with anything other than confidence and decorum being, as he was, some twenty years her senior.

“Are you…?” she coughed, uncharacteristically stumbling over her words and feeling a faint warmth in her cheeks when she heard students behind them pretending they weren’t looking. “Are you aware of what has been occurring with Peeves? I know you tend to keep to the outdoors.”

  

[Ambrose Bell]

Oh god, there were students too. Last time he’d tried memory charms in his sixth year he’d given his partner concussion, and stunning had had similar effects, but right now he was debating both. Maybe he could just blow up this corridor. Ok, that was actually a bit far, not to mention probably beyond Ambrose’s magical skill.

He gave a rather awkward cough and glanced around a bit as if a solution was going to miraculously appear. “Indeed-” Ambrose answered carefully. “A little too familiar now, I fear.”

[Velda Aesalon]

Velda was rather torn on an opinion for once. On the one hand Mr Bell was a man and intrinsically unwelcome in every setting due to his sex alone - it had not taken her many years of marriage to decide that her husband, like all other men, was so in the way in a home - but on the other he had the decency to approach the situation with the appropriate level of decorum. They were adults after all, this surely should not be too awkward.

Her opinion of him waned every second that he did not take the initiative however. Surely it was his role to do so, not hers. A long, silent moment passed in which Velda's unwavering gaze upon him did not cease.

"Well?"

  

[Ambrose Bell]

Please please please no. Anything but this. At least the students seemed to be leaving now- saved by the bell, quite literally. Well, not saved, because they were still stuck, but all the same. “I don’t suppose anyone’s found a way to counteract the mistletoe?” He asked half practically, half hopefully. “Other than- you know.” He coughed a little awkwardly.

[Velda Aesalon]

Velda narrowed her eyes at the man. Good grief, she knew she was getting on in years now but surely the prospect wasn’t that repulsive?!

Scowling she hissed her response.

“Not that I am aware of Mr Bell,” she folded her arms across her body irritably and wondered whether it might have been worth keeping Victor alive just so at least one person thought she was worth kissing. Even if she would opt for slitting her wrists over the thought of him touching her again… oh bother!

“Although if you object too greatly I’m sure we’ll enjoy spending time here together until we simply die.”

  

[Ambrose Bell]

Oh god and now he had quite possibly offended her. At least if she killed him he wouldn’t have to kiss her in front of students. Hang on, he was a teacher, he could deal with students. Like, he was meant to. Ambrose flashed a glare at the last remaining students with heavily implied a year’s worth of detentions for the last person out of there, before coughing rather awkwardly again. Jimmy and Sally would never let him hear the end of it.

“Ugh, no it’s not-” Ambrose tried to explain, feeling thoroughly like a school boy again, a thought which briefly made the situation rather creepy, before he reminded himself that he actually wasn’t one. With a non-verbal curse to the poltergeist, Ambrose leant in for a quick kiss.

[Velda Aesalon]

Glaring at nearby students was always guaranteed to raise someone in Velda's estimation and her lips almost twitched with amusement before she found his face next to hers and she dodged out of his way instinctively. It was a stupid move she knew, but after years of marriage to Victor it had become second nature to do her best to move out of the way every time the smell of man came near her.

Immediately she flushed at the stupidity and lost sight of the estimation she had formed for him in the split second he had been an arse to the students.

“You could have warned me!” She hissed with irritation, more at herself than at him, but he was an easier and much more satisfying target for her ire.

  

[Ambrose Bell]

Great so all his steeling his nerves had been for nothing. “We’re stuck,” Ambrose replied in a slightly exasperated tone and a small roll of his eyes because he was genuinely a fifteen year old stuck in the body of a man twice that age. “under mistletoe. What did you expect me to do?”

Realising getting annoyed probably wasn’t going to help, he gave a glare Medusa would have been proud of at a student who quite innocently came around the corner. Once the student had turned on their heel with lightning speed and the corridor was again empty, he turned back to the problem at hand. “Perhaps you ought to…” Ambrose suggested, trailing off in awkwardness.

[Velda Aesalon]

The glare did it for her. Normally she would have ignored such a man, someone pleasant enough but too fluttery for her tastes and rather more like a blancmange than a man, but before he could become too awkward and ruin a perfectly fine bit of glaring at students with more flapping Velda reached up and placed a hand either side of his face, standing up taller to press her lips purposefully against his.

It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant moment, she had to admit, and she opened one eye to look above them as the mistletoe seemed to retreat. Well, that solved the problem at least.

  

[Ambrose Bell]

It wasn’t unpleasant but Ambrose was rather petrified of the fact that at any second one of the hands either side of his face was going to give him a hearty slap.

At any rate, he was rather relieved when it was over.

The flight instructor pretty much hopped back lest the mistletoe got any more ideas.

“Well!” Ambrose said, with an attempt at cheerfulness. “There we go then.”

[Velda Aesalon]

And now of course he couldn’t get away quickly enough. Typical man. Even if the kiss had been a necessary evil brought on by the utterly unnecessary nuisance of that dratted poltergeist it still didn’t exactly fill one with glee.

“There we go indeed Mr Bell,” she muttered dryly, bracing her shoulders pursing her lips as she channelled the annoyance towards a new target. “I swear if I could stab that blasted Peeves I would do so happily.”

  

[Ambrose Bell]

Thank god she hadn’t killed him.

“And I will shed no tears over it.” He agreed. “Good day, Mrs Aesalon.” Ambrose pretty much turned tail and fled, waiting until he was fully out of sight before wiping his mouth.