Work Text:
“Be quiet or get out!”
Irma Pince did not need to raise her voice, it carried effortlessly above the heads of the students. She had started working in the library a month ago and she had never felt so happy and at ease anywhere in her life. Returning here had been a gift, and she looked at the tidy shelves and the well-kept books and the quietly working students with pride before to returning to the task at hand: maintaining the school's own school books. Hogwarts, especially the library, its silent core, was home.
Irma Pince was not a fanciful person. She did not pride herself on her imagination, though she could picture everything she read with ease. She just did not let her mind to linger the way others did. It did not do. Still, there were two things she allowed her mind to indulge in occasionally. The second was private.
The first was that she had always liked to imagine the library was an ocean, the rustle of pages like the surf, the only other sound paper on paper and a quiet background hissing noise. The cold of this unheatable place chilling her skin. Light only sluggishly filtered in through the thick glass panes, and the specks of dust might have well been suspended in water. The shelves were coastal reefs full of colourful, leather-bound, mysterious treasures. High above, far higher than she could reach without the help of ladders, books quietly sorted themselves back, fluttering shamefully back into their spaces on the shelves.
From her chair, she presided over her not quite subaquatic world with watchful eyes to make sure that everything was in its place. And for minutes at a time, this would usually be the case.
“How dare you, no food in the library!” she snapped, vanishing a Slytherin’s smuggled sandwich with an angry flick of her wand. She watched her lower her head and return to her studies.
Of course, in this quiet, serene universe, the students represented sea urchins at best. Some of the Ravenclaw barnacles were already glued to their seats, working on her books. They did not represent much of a threat, however. Most of them. They were old enough, and they knew better than to disturb. And a practiced glare could easily stop a few of the first year krill in their tracks were about to shoot past her with annoying alacrity. They did slow down when faced with her glare, though, and the thudding of their steps became a mere patter on the cold marble floor, rising up high above the shelves, and subsiding only when they had plonked down at a table.
Satisfied, she settled back into her chair, the soft leather giving a warm creak; then, there was silence. For Irma, silence had a texture and a taste. It was the taste of the rare, far too sweet hot cocoa, warming both body and soul, hearkening back to days at her aunt’s, innocent and calming. When Irma was small, her aunt had taken her into her house for a few months, after the Ministry people had called and taken Irma's parents to have a talk. She had once even gone to the seaside with her. Irma had collected a large shell and listened to it at her aunt’s house, hot cocoa in her other hand, eyes wide. She had not wanted to leave, even after her aunt had explained that she would be safe at home now, with her grandfather looking after them.
Nowadays, the cocoa taste was laced with whiskey. It was a taste less innocent and yet welcome, burning her throat, numbing it slightly, and filled her with a warm glow where warmth was rare. It came from later experiences alone, evenings in her flat, when the street outside had calmed down and her noisy neighbours had finally gone to bed, too. She had always lived alone, keeping to herself.
Silence had the texture of a warm, comforting blanket, of the way it felt against her skin when the heaviness of sleep came after everybody in her room had become quiet, when she was alone in her bed, after it was over. Or behind the drapes of her bed in the dormitory. Hogwarts had always been more quiet than at her house, where pillows pulled over her ears would not blot out every noise.
Irma focused, irritably casting the memory aside. The cover in front of her had been badly scratched, and many of the pages were dog-eared and crinkled. She stroked it feelingly. Who did that to a defenseless book? Exasperated, she raised her wand to help, stroking across the smoothed-out page, watching it grow even smoother and become as new again. She set it aside and picked up the next one.
This day was going to be long, and she would have to meet… a colleague. The thought made her nervous. Professor McGonagall. She was so collected, impeccable, tight-lipped, clad in sensible clothes, hair well-kept, well-respected, confident.
Irma admired her. Wanted to be her.
*****
Attending to school books belonging to or donated to the school students had brought back at the beginning of the year was a thankless, Sisyphean task of patching them back together after creative students had employed them for tasks generally unsuited for books. They were impromptu quaffles, door stoppers, weapons, used for flower-pressing and concealing love letters.
It made her quite irritable, and the fact that she had to pick up the book in her colleague’s office did not make it better. The teacher was quietly working in front of her, leaving her alone, but the constant feeling she should say something and the inability to come up with a topic vexed her.
Why had she agreed to it? It made her seem too eager and was less practical than just having house-elves do the job! And something was obviously leaking air or imitating the sound of the seaside, it was maddening. She ignored it for fifteen minutes, then snapped.
“I say, what is that noise?”
The other witch, behind her desk, raised an eyebrow.
“Noise?”
She put down her quill and listened, frowning, for a long time, and then shook her head, the feather on top of her hat bouncing left and right as she did so. “I can’t hear anything, Irma, it’s absolutely quiet.”
The librarian felt foolish, and eager to make sure that the Professor did not believe she was off her mind.
“It’s... it’s like a soft hiss,” Irma said, sounding rather more certain than she felt.
Professor McGonagall – even now that they were colleagues never Minerva, Irma couldn’t bring herself to, looked at her, brows furrowed.
“That is odd, I can’t hear anything. Of course, there is one possibility. Wait, let me just – “ and she had gotten up, stepped around her desk with determined strides and put her cool hands on Irma’s ears. The librarian’s stomach jerked and she stiffened at the strange hands touching her skin, forcing herself not to flinch away or fight. It would be rude. After some time of listening and staring into the witches’ earnest, warm, and far too close eyes, her expression remained puzzled.
“It’s still there!” Irma said, conscious of the fact that the woman must feel her breath on her cheek. What was the last thing she’d eaten? Would the teacher be able to tell? Would she mind? Was it rude to speak, so close to a person’s face?
“Then it must be in your ear rather than outside of it,” Professor McGonagall stated, the sound of her voice muffled slightly by her hands. To Irma’s relief, a mild scent of tea was on her breath. “Has anything happened to your ears lately? Any loud noises?”
“No.”
Professor McGonagall removed her fingers. The warmth lingered on her cheek for a long time after that, and the soft hiss was still present, strangely comforting.
“Any encounters with Peeves, maybe? He has been making the rounds with Honking Daffodils.”
“No.”
“You should see Poppy,” the witch said earnestly. “She will be able to tell if there is anything to worry about.”
Poppy. Irma was certain she heard that Minerva’s voice had sounded softer when she said that name. Not “Madam Pomfrey”. Poppy. A nurse. A person who fussed and bustled and touched. Irma bristled.
“Oh, it is probably nothing,” she said hurriedly, but the Deputy Headmistress looked at her sternly.
Irma remembered her place and went to see the nurse.
*****
Poppy Pomfrey did bustle, and she did touch, but only her ears.
“There is no injury or illness causing this, as far as I can determine,” she said, staring at her critically. “How long have you been aware of this?”
“I have never been as aware of it as I was today, but I can remember hearing similar sounds when I was younger,” Irma said, deliberately vague.
“Can you remember when it started? Were you ever exposed to a very loud noise as a child?”
Irma went through her memories in search of loud noises. What was loud? Compared to Hogwarts, everything had been. Her parents in the room next door, engaging in discussions and more private past-times one did not think about. Her siblings and her fighting, playing and rampaging through their room. Stray spells, the sound of a belt on skin, a hand crashing into her ear, a jug smashing on the cobbles. Shrieks in the dark, the wailing of a newborn. What was the loudest? She filed through them one by one, then decided she was not willing to go into any of them. She shook her head.
“Not that I am aware of. As far as I know, it has always been there, just that it was usually not quiet enough,” Irma said. “To hear the sound.”
“Well, the walls of Professor McGonagall’s quarters are protected by a mild silencing charm,” Madam Pomfrey said. “It’s more quiet in them than elsewhere in the castle, I’d think.”
Irma nodded curtly, but there was a strange lightness inside her. Professor McGonagall, she noted. Not Minerva. And a silencing charm. It made perfect sense. What a delightful idea! She thanked Madam Pomfrey and left.
*****
That evening, she felt strangely tingly and at ease after placing the charm on the walls of her own quarters, the seaside hiss of silence flooding in, shaping the room. Silence now had a texture, a taste, a sound, and a feeling of safety. She liked to imagine she was deep in the ocean, quiet and alone. Irma had never learned how to swim, her aunt had never gotten round to teaching her, but she imagined that diving must feel glorious.
Thus submerged in the dark emptiness of her quarters, behind a locked bedroom door and tightly drawn double curtains and drapes around her bed, she allowed herself to relax. Relax enough to indulge in the second flight of fancy under the covers of her bed, darkness and her night-gown, self-consciously, shutting away every thought of where her hand had wandered. It was not done.
In her mind, the thought was like a treasure, and she only took it out to look at it at special occasions. And learning the quiet hissing existed and was what she had always heard was a special occasion. And Minerva McGonagall… Like today, standing erect and still, hands outstretched. The closeness was almost painful, and she knew that it was rather disrespectful of her to relive it in this fashion. The image of Minerva McGonagall in her mind’s eye brushed away the thought.
“Hush,” the Deputy Headmistress said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “Quiet now, don’t fret.”
The witch leaned closer, her eyes only inches away from hers, and she could feel her breath on her face. She caressed Irma’s cheeks lightly, fingertips wandering over her cheekbones and under her chin, as the seaside-sound engulfed them both.
Irma noticed that it got louder as blood started pumping through unfamiliar areas of her body and she self-consciously listened to her breath, heavier, her heartbeat chopping the quiet noise into pieces. The closer Professor McGonagall got to her, the louder the ocean in her ears became, almost like listening to the sea-shell, almost like her own blood, as her own hand---.
Her heartbeat chased her body over the edge and after her last panting breath had exploded into the quiet dark as a rough, whispering gasp, Irma sank back into the rustling cushions. She listened to the hammering pulse in her ears, the hissing sound having risen to a cacophony which only slowly ebbed back to its normal volume, taking the heat with it that had filled her body only moments before. She was left feeling hollow and uncomfortably sweaty. Irma quickly took her wand from the night stand with her other hand, casting a spell fastidiously, then turned to her side, curling. She caught herself briefly wondering what her other hand would have tasted like, but banished the thought instantly. These things were not thought about.
Irma Pince was a librarian and a knowledgeable woman. She was painfully aware of what it was she had been doing, but she knew that unlike the teenage girls she had shared the dormitory with or her parents in the room next to her sibling’s and hers or the rough hand groping in the dark, she did not indulge in this feeling because of some base instinct.
It was more pure, it was admiration, she told herself.
Soon, she found herself being lulled to sleep, her mind still occupied, unwilling to let it go of the image just yet. In her mind, the Deputy Headmistress, Minerva, was sitting on the bed next to her, watching over her until the comforting ocean living inside her ears finally pulled her into the dark.