Good Deeds

Chapter 1 - The Conglomerate

By Ehann

“All right, all right. Settle down,” XX said across her podium. She was the chair of the Fairy Godmother Conglomerate. The Conglomerate met once a year to discuss dispensation of Good Deeds. For some, Good Deeds translated to surviving a horrible accident. For others, a Good Deed was instituted to provide the Will To Live—usually, but not always, so that the recipient should Accomplish Great Things later in life.

But more often than not, the Good Deed dispensed was none other than True Love. XX thought that that was the most precious Good Deed of all. She was a firm believer in the axiom, “With Love All Things Are Possible.” There were exceptions of course, but she didn’t like to think about those.

XX glared down at the case files on her podium. Two stacks; one for females, one for males. There’s got to be a better way, she thought. Maybe I should throw them all up into the sir and choose the two that stay afloat. But no, she decided, that would never do. While she waited for the room to come to order she leafed through the stack of female candidates.

A young Muggle girl in France, living the life of a Pampered Princess. This one could go either way, XX thought. Either turn into a productive member of society or…well, not. Oh! Here was an interesting case. A Witch in her final year at Hogwarts—wait. Wait. Hogwarts…that sounded so familiar. Hadn’t there been a rather large number of Good Deeds to come out of that school? XX checked the Master Manifest of Good Deeds. Oh. Right. She saw the problem.

Mister Dumbledore down there on Earth, made it his business to perpetrate a suspicious amount of Good Deeds—without even being a member of the Conglomerate! Oh, XX realized, studying the printout further. Now she understood. A Good Deed had been done for Dumbledore long ago, over a century and a quarter. It had given him the ability to see the Hidden Good in all people. XX shook her head.

This Dumbledore fella had no idea what a pain in the neck he was. XX snapped her fingers and pulled his file from the ether. “Hmm.” Pure blood Wizard. Happy childhood. Head Boy at school. Discoverer of the Twelve Uses for Dragon’s Blood. Wait a second. This was his resume, not his dossier! XX sighed deeply. No use to try again. She suspected a Higher Power than even herself at work with this Dumbledore guy.

Irritated, XX snapped, “Once again, can we please come to order?” Her voice had bite this time, and the room settled down. “RR,” XX said. “Why don’t you start by discussing the merit of your applicant.”

RR stood up. “Fourteen year old American male. Blue hair. Pierced lip. He’s been giving his mother a hard time. Father left when he was born and the mother’s got no spine. My request for Good Deed is to show him the Error Of his Ways.”

XX said, “He’s fourteen. That’s not possible. How bout we put his case on hold and check back in six Earth years, when we have half a chance for the Deed to take. Next. MM.”

“This is an interesting case,” MM began. “A thirty-six year old male of British descent. He’s a teacher. Grumpy. Discontented. For a few years he was an Agent Of Darkness, but with the assistance of—what’s his name, Doublemint? Doubleday? No, that’s the baseball guy—”

“Dumbledore?” XX inquired wearily. “Go on. Tell us the rest.”

“Anyway, so this teacher was Brought Back to the White Hats. Thing is, he’s so Bitter and Angry inside he’s…Well, he’s kind of a mess.”

“Ha. I shouldn’t wonder,” XX said, shuffling her papers. “What’s your intention?”

MM hesitated. He took a deep breath. “True Love.”

XX sputtered, “I was thinking more like, Peace Of Mind. Frankly, we could do Good Deeds for this guy for the next millennia and still have work to do.”

But MM was persistent. “But True Love Conquers All! I mean,” MM looked down. “He’s so Lonely and Sad inside. I think that’s a lot of his problem.”

XX sniffed. “Or, his problem could be Crippling Guilt, Unresolved Bitterness, and Unalloyed Frustration. Any one of those is a big whopper, but this… What does he teach, anyway?”

After checking his material, MM answered, “Potions at Hogwarts.”

The Chair of the Conglomerate arched her brow. “Hogwarts. Hogwarts. That school positively gives me fits. Between Harry Potter and that Longbottom kid, we’re lucky it’s still standing. I suspect that Dumbledore guy has his hands in those cases, too.”

Harry Potter’s caseworker, LL became defensive and stood up. “Hey! It wasn’t my idea to call him The Boy Who Lived. I wanted to give him the Good Deed of Loving Parents, but no, we had to stick him with those one sided relatives of his, For His Own Good. Whatever.”

XX frowned. “I seem to recall that we had a Very Good Reason for doing that.”

“Dumbledore, remember?” AA piped up from the back of the room.

“Argh!” XX groaned. “I swear, I want to go down there and cut off half his beard! That Old Man is so Annoying.” She wiped her forehead. “Tell me more about the Potions teacher. Is he cute?”

“Um—not exactly.” MM shifted.

“Is he charming?”

“Uh…”

“Friendly?”

“Well…”

“Telepathic?”

“Hardly.”

“Is he good in bed?”

“Wait, let me see…Oh yes! No problems there.”

“Thank the deities for small favors,” XX muttered. “Well, what else? Does he have any other redeeming qualities? What about honor?”

“Yes! That he has. Sort of.” MM appeared uncomfortable.

“What do you mean, Sort of?” XX demanded.

“He’s a Slytherin.”

XX shouted, “A little help here! Is he a Good Teacher at least?”

MM trembled. “He’s the premier Potions teacher in all of Europe.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” XX grumbled. “So he loves teaching—”

“I didn’t say that exactly, XX.”

“I give up.” The Conglomerate leader threw her hands up.  She laid her head down on the podium. From the corner of her eyes she peeked up. “Fine. I grant him True Love in the near future.

A silver ripple spread out from XX, flowing through the ether to the four corners of the Earth and Sky.

“It shall be so.” The Conglomerate answered as one.

XX picked up her head. “So now that we’ve given him this Gift, precisely who is going to fall in love with the ugly, grumpy, noncharming, nonfriendly, nontelepathic, fantastic in bed, but sort of honorable Potions Professor at Hogwarts. I gotta tell you, I know that school. And Dumbledore may be a pain in the butt, but I’m thinking he’s not going to fall in love with this teacher of his.”

MM offered hesitantly, “Um, Snape? He’s into women, actually.”

XX considered. “Well, unfortunately, I’m all too familiar with the Staff down there. Somehow I can’t see any of them falling for—what is his name again?”

“Snape.”

“Yes. For Snape.” XX paused a beat. “How bout a former student? Someone not too old, though. Probably be best if she didn’t have too much knowledge of his years on the Dark Side. Let’s see.”  She snapped her fingers and a yellow legal pad appeared. As she listed them, the attributes materialized on paper. “Someone with more than half a brain. She’ll need to be able to see past that crusty exterior. Someone who shows the same interest in—what was it? Brewing Potions? Fine.” XX drummed her fingers restlessly on the podium. “But it has to be someone without that much experience. I’m thinking that a man like Snape would be far too suspicious of an overly experienced woman no matter How Good she is.”

“Um, I have an idea,” a Very Young Member of the Conglomerate announced.

XX raised a brow. “Yes, CC, what is it?”

“Well,” CC shifted her papers. “My prospective client is currently in her final year at Hogwarts.”

XX rolled her eyes. “Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hogwarts.” She composed herself. “Go on, CC.”

“Granger, H. Extremely smart. Studious, loyal and brave.”

“Sounds like a Gryffindor,” XX commented.

“Um—”

“You’re out of your mind! You think Snape, the Slytherin, will fall in love with a Gryffindor girl? We have so many clients from Hogwarts and you don’t know the first thing about their House Rivalries?”

“Nevertheless,” CC continued gamely, “She likes Potions making, she’s not very experienced, just the one lover, and frankly, according to this,” She shook the printout. “It Wasn’t That Good. Now Granger thinks sex is No Big Deal.”

“How wrong she is,” AA piped up, earning a glare from XX.

XX appeared to be considering everything. Finally she said, “Well, she can’t fall in love with him while she’s a student. I’d have Dumbledore on my doorstep by nightfall, if we let that happen.”

Well, what about after school,” CC suggested. “Maybe they could do something together next Earth Summer.”

But XX shook her head. “No. She’s what? Eighteen? Let’s give her four more years to grow up before we attempt any machinations. I’ll check with Clotho, but I’m fairly certain she has no immanent Great Love on the horizon.”

“So we’re tabling Snape?”

XX straightened her papers. “I don’t see any other choice. Granger is too young right now, and we don’t want to mess with the little honor Snape has left. Tell you what, we’ll check back in three years and see if they’re ready. If they are…then somehow we’ll get Snape to show Granger how good he is in bed, and they’ll live Happily Ever After.”

MM spoke up. “Isn’t that a little simplistic? Falling into bed is not the same as Falling In Love.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Next.”

Chapter 2 >>