Broken Barriers

[Olive Layton]

After Leda had turned up in her office, jinxed by an older boy and refused by others for any assistance to fix her situation, Olive had been further astonished to discover that Professor Pendleton had collapsed outside the Great Hall the week before. She'd tried to continue as best as she could, giving the man time to recover and do what he needed to do, while holding the fort of Potions with the substitute Professor, but ultimately she knew she was going to pay Monty a visit if he were in there for more than a few days. She wasn't sure whether Monty wanted visitors, or whether the best thing to do would be to give him his own space. If he'd collapsed due to exhaustion then no doubt he had a few things he needed to sort out, but given that Olive had had her fair share of things to overcome in the previous years, she wanted him to know that should he need someone to talk to, she'd be there.

Once lunch was over, Olive headed up towards the Hospital Wing in the hopes that it would be quiet and most of the students would be in lessons. It was only as she walked towards the large doors that she considered perhaps she should have brought him something, but not wanting to intrude too heavily on him nor add to his daily pressures, Olive figured she may as well keep things light hearted and casual, and as a result she walked into the room quietly and with the confidence that she was doing the right thing. It wasn't difficult to find Monty, although it was a little strange to see someone she admired in such a vulnerable position. "Really Monty? A Greek God," she said as she reached his bed. "No wonder you're hiding out in here, leaving me to pick up the pieces of that conversation, thank you." Her tone was quiet serious, however there was a playful smile on her face that suggested that despite not having been at Hogwarts for too long, Monty was one of those at the school she felt comfortable enough to tease.
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[Monty Pendleton]

[adminapproval=30535149]Being one of the oldest professors at the school sounded as if it might come with advantages, but for Monty, it was more a curse than a blessing. With Arvo gone, there were very few people he felt comfortable to approach with his troubles and concerns - a factor which had largely contributed to his bottling everything up for so long. Among the colleagues he trusted, but with whom he was reluctant to discuss the more personal departments of his life, was Olive. They had befriended one another under less than ideal circumstances; Monty had been in the throes of a nervous breakdown - yet he found her company easy, pleasant, and was inclined to think she felt the same. Jon being their mutual friend certainly helped. Though Monty knew he would never quite feel as if he fitted in with the younger folk, he was glad at least to call them his friends.

But when he saw Olive swiftly approaching his bed that day, he immediately rethought his decision to allow professors to see him. He grinned wearily, bracing himself for the reprimanding he probably deserved. "But you don't disagree, do you?" he said. Then, as the humour of the moment passed, he sighed softly and shook his head. "I'm sorry. You have permission to exact your revenge as soon as..." Monty trailed off, his eyes darkening. Thinking about returning to teaching simultaneously filled him with excitement and dread. He had no idea what was going to happen when he left the hospital wing - whether his life would ever be normal again, if it ever had been. Though a week's rest had considerably improved his health, he knew it was going to take months, years, to fully heal from this. Quietly, he cleared his throat. "How have you been?"

 

[Olive Layton]

Olive was pleased to see that his initial response wasn't to shoo her away, and instead grin at her humour. "Of course I don't. It was very accurate although perhaps a little much for a first impression," Olive took a seat beside his bed. She hadn't really minded that Monty gave her the ability to sign a phrase, and while she had felt embarrassment for herself at the time, she knew it was just something to laugh about now. She listened as Monty apologised although it didn't seem as though he was able to finish his sentence. "You know, you look well." she said, noting that only now that he'd had almost a week's recovery, he was looking more refreshed and brighter in the face. She wouldn't have known him well enough to spot the gradual change, but as she spoke to Monty now he did look better, even if he didn't feel quite there yet. "I've been fine, although I can't lie, I'm getting more on edge about Leda." She said, mentioning her sister as she recalled that she was the source of most of Olive's current stress. It wasn't that she thought her sister was doing wrong, but that she was the one who had to pick up the pieces around her. It was usual for the elder sister to do so given that she'd been the one to raise the Slytherin, but eventually the time would come that she would have to request Leda pull herself out of her own mess. "She's always getting herself in trouble, although I suppose she'll learn," she said with a small smile. Olive considered whether to ask more from Monty, but she believed too that in the reverse situation she would have preferred the attention to be off her. "Oh, and I may have had some time off during the week, you know, between classes. The supply cupboard now may or may not be arranged alphabetically.." she trailed off, wondering whether Professor Pendleton would be pleased with her handiwork, but at least she was warning him that the contents had been moved around, and thus she hoped to avoid any classroom catastrophes.
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[Monty Pendleton]

Monty smiled, glad Olive had taken his joke in good humour. Then he nodded. He felt better, physically, though emotionally he wasn't convinced he was ready to face the school again. He never would be ready. That was the trouble with waiting for the opportune moment to face his fears: the moment never came, and he remained paralysed indefinitely, his fears strengthening for every day he avoided confrontation. Whether he felt ready or not, he would soon enough have to grit his teeth and get it over with; otherwise, his only alternative was to resign, and how would he ever forgive himself for that? He wasn't a quitter. He had been, once, but not any more.

Being Deputy Head, Monty had heard plenty of Leda's antics, though he was sure he'd missed some new misdemeanour while he'd been incapacitated. He'd been too preoccupied in his own head to realise the Slytherin had assaulted a Gryffindor prefect almost right in front of him, though he had heard James yelling in agony. Olive's last remark made Monty stare. "You did what?" he said, only half-kidding. He was never going to be able to find anything, now. Arranging things in alphabetical order ought to have made life easier, but Monty had already known exactly where to go for every ingredient he needed. He would be reaching for scurvy-grass when he wanted daisies for weeks. He chuckled. "I suppose it was in desperate need of organisation. Thank you." Once he got used to the change, he knew it would come in useful. "What trouble has Leda got herself into now?"

 

[Olive Layton]

Whether or not Monty was being sincere in his thanks for her organisation, Olive was going to take it as a positive sign. Now that he wouldn't need to waste so much time searching through each bottle and each dirtied label to find the right ingredients, the Potions professor was confident she had done the right thing and she was going to make Monty's life more manageable. Besides, they had to share that cupboard and she didn't feel like getting some yellow slime on her arm for a second time. She had taken the liberty of popping into his office too when she found she was out of powdered Asphodel, but the sight that she was met with when she was rummaging through the drawers wasn't an experience she wanted to repeat anytime soon. She much preferred her own office, where everything had a dedicated home, free of clutter.

"You say that like she ever got out of it," Olive began, wondering how much to reveal to the Professor. She hadn't been at the school long and as much as she wanted to get along with anyone, she didn't know his personal feelings towards some of his colleagues. Even if they were on the same page, she had no intention of being unprofessional, at least within the school grounds. "When you hit the floor, James Cade tried to rally the troops, move them away from the scene." At least, that was what she had heard from her sister. "Prefect or not, Leda didn't take kindly to him trying to get her to leave and well," Olive paused, wondering if she could get away with leaving the story where it was, although now she was at the climax it would be a shame to leave him hanging. "She ultimately took out the twins." She was glad that her sister had stood up for herself, although she had hoped she hadn't retaliated quite so hard, and even though she technically wasn't supposed to be biased towards students, she believe that James quite frankly had it coming given he'd jinxed her. What had made Olive's blood boil however was that the other Professors in the room had left Leda jinxed, unwilling to set her free. "I'm just not sure she knows when enough is enough, and I'm sure one day it's going to get her in more trouble than it's worth." She finished, quietly thinking that she'd spoken too much about herself. That wasn't what she was here for at all and with Monty in hospital, the red head was overcome with a sudden wave of guilt as she felt she shouldn't have been speaking about her own problems when her friend was clearly dealing with things himself. "Are you feeling any better?" she asked him, eyebrows raising slightly with her question. "I should have paid more attention when you felt ill that time," she said, referring to the moment she'd been called in to cover Monty's class. She'd not gotten a chance to speak to the man before now, but she knew that if she could have gone back in time she would have checked up on him sooner.
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[Monty Pendleton]

Monty smiled; that sounded a lot like James. He'd been vaguely aware of the Gryffindor prefect shouting, though he'd been too wrapped up in his own head to care much what was going on. He frowned, trying to figure out what Olive meant; then, as the realisation dawned on him, he pressed his lips together to stifle a laugh. "Ah," he said. It wasn't funny, of course - James must have been in a lot of pain - but the mental imagery and the way Olive had worded it were a little amusing. Sobering, he nodded. Neither Leda nor her friend Mervyn seemed to understand when they were taking something too far. "Out of curiosity, has she always behaved like this?" he asked, wondering whether perhaps the Gryffindor was a bad influence on her, but not wanting to ask directly.

The conversation turned to his health, and Monty shook his head dismissively. She wasn't the only friend to have felt guilty for something that wasn't their fault. "Don't worry about that," he said, looking down at his hands. "I'm all right. A little nervous about what the children are going to think. And Katherine, of course." He exhaled softly through his nose and looked up at Olive. "I've been thinking about stepping down, if she doesn't demote me, but... I don't want to let it win - you know? My anxiety, that is. Perhaps I'm really not cut out to be Deputy Head, but I don't want to make that decision while I've been stressed about so many unrelated things. I really love the job. I want to do it. I can do it. You don't think I'm being foolish, do you?"

 

[Olive Layton]

As Olive thought back to how Leda had been as a younger child, she partially felt to blame for some of her behaviour. Their parents had been too busy to raise the Slytherin and Olive had been Leda's full time guardian since she had graduated from Hogwarts. "Well, she's always had an active imagination." Olive considered how Leda would often query where she'd been, what she'd gotten up to, try to put a new spin on it as though her life was more interesting than the muggle version she was living at the time, before Leda knew she too was destined for magic. "I can't say I've known her to act on it particularly before though," she added, wondering where Leda got the idea that it was acceptable to attack other students came from. It certainly hadn't been Olive's influence. Leda had certainly emerged from her shell since starting at Hogwarts, but Olive had always just put that down to getting a fresh new start, and a chance to be herself.

As she listened to Monty continue on about his feelings about his new position, Olive frowned. She had her own personal experiences with anxiety and so it wasn't as though she didn't know what he meant, however when the Professor mentioned stepping down there wasn't a bone in her body that was about to agree with him. "Monty, with all due respect it would be a tragedy if you were to step down." Olive may not have been at the school long, but she'd seen the way he interacted with the students, both inside and out of lessons, and the students were lucky to have someone like him as their deputy. Olive paused, leaning forward a little as her eyes rested on a colleague she'd come to call a friend. "When you found out we were related, you seemed anxious about the implications." Considering how flustered he'd become when he thought it was possible they shared family blood, Olive couldn't help but wonder if it was a similar situation. "What does being a Deputy change?" She asked outright, "Regardless of title, you're there for both the students and the Professors. The addition of a title brought round from a social hierarchy doesn't change a personality. You're allowed to have days when things don't quite go to plan, but you're good at what you do and it would a shame to see that go to waste." Olive knew that with the promotion, Monty would have more responsibilities, but he seemed to be the type of person to help where he could, and even if he wasn't the Deputy Olive didn't think he'd turn down assistance where it was needed. "When I was at Hogwarts, during my first few years, what I wanted more than anything to be Head Girl." she recalled out loud, thinking about how much she'd changed in the early years of her education. "I worked really hard, I loved being at school. I wasn't particularly good academically but, you know, it was my dream so I went for it." She hoped Monty didn't think her recollection to be out of the blue, it wasn't as though she didn't have a point. "In my fifth year I was made a Gryffindor Prefect. That was at the same time that I was dealing with the most challenging aspects of my childhood, and with all the additional attention from the students, I very quickly realised that it wasn't what I wanted." She didn't feel as though it was necessary to go into depths about the specifics of that year, but it had been a turning point for her as a teenager. "I nearly dropped out in my sixth year." Olive added quietly, not wanting to admit too loudly just how close she'd really come, with her parents and the family business, not to mention Leda. "I'm glad I didn't. Now that I look back, I'm glad I wasn't Head Girl but if I wasn't a prefect, then other people would never have seen what it was like to get through something challenging. Things in life aren't meant to be easy, or clear cut. You just have to stay brave." Olive's voice was quieter still, although her eyes remained on her colleague, a flush in her cheeks as she realised how she may have come across patronising. She would be the first to admit if she thought she was best keeping quiet, but her experiences were all she had to offer.
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[Monty Pendleton]

Realising it wasn't the right time to pursue this conversation further, Monty simply nodded. He would certainly thinking about Leda later on, however - and keeping a close eye on her and Mervyn. For some reason, he didn't trust that boy. His feigned innocence when he misbehaved just didn't fool Monty.

Calling it a tragedy for him to resign was taking it a little too far. Indeed, Monty cared deeply for the students and his colleagues alike, but he'd never done anything spectacular. As far as he was concerned, it was all part of the job. He hardly stopped to consider that not everybody felt the same way - that some of the things he did were beyond the call of duty. So touched and startled by Olive's speech was he that once or twice he almost forgot to breathe, and even then took the most minute breaths, as if too deep a lungful would distract him from her lovely words. He'd had no idea she had struggled so much at school, and immediately felt he could sympathise. Their situations had been much different - for one thing, Monty had never been a prefect - but they had both overcome emotional challenges. Olive wasn't relating her experience at school to his, though; she was relating it to his job today, and on both a conscious and subconscious level, everything she said made sense. He smiled, clearly in awe of the wisdom leaving her mouth. "Olive, that's... Thank you," he said eventually. "You've just said all of the things I needed to hear." If she'd told him he was being ridiculous to think he could be Deputy, he was sure he'd have seriously considered jacking it all in. "I agree, completely, though I don't think that's the greatest good that came of you staying. I think it taught you that... you can get through something challenging. I suppose that's what experience does, isn't it?"

 

[Olive Layton]

There was a pause as Monty was taking in what she had said, and for a few minutes Olive wondered if she'd said the wrong things. She hadn't meant to turn the conversation too serious, although it had seemed like a natural path to go down at the time. Perhaps it was wrong of her to suggest that had someone else been in her position, they wouldn't have had struggles of their own. Of course that hadn't been what she'd intended to say and she hoped her colleague wouldn't pick up on it. When Monty did speak, she was surprised that it had been taken well, and that she was able to give him some encouragement on his situation. It wasn't that she'd been through the same things he had, only that she had experience in managing her own. She let out a sigh of relief she hadn't even been aware she was holding in, although at his next comment, it wasn't even something she'd actively considered for herself. "Maybe you're right. Although I never believed in myself until other people did first." It wasn't something Olive was over keen on sharing, that she had a dependency on others for her opinions, but it was an aspect of her personality she was continuously working on, even if it were better than it had been as a teenager. She had needed to hear it from others, that she had more capabilities than she had ever given herself credit, and it remained a fact to this day that what others spoke about her, she tended to believe. Olive nodded, wondering if Monty was going to take his own advice. It really would be sad to see him step down from a position he was so suited to. She paused for a moment as she considered his initial statement about the opinions of the students and Professors, "Perhaps it would be an idea to recount the event yourself to your classes. That way they'll see it from your perspective and how you handled it, and if they have an questions they can ask you themselves." Olive wasn't a stranger to a school rumour either, and it was much better to quench that issue before it became one.
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[Monty Pendleton]

The first person who had ever expressed belief in Monty was Ermolai, and the professor recalled warmly how much more time he'd spent inventing when somebody had been cheering him on. He'd continued to invent long after they lost contact, but if it hadn't been for Ermolai, he might never have pursued it past youth. Not that it made much difference, now; after the fire, every hour invested had become complete waste of time, or would have done, had Monty not gleaned personal satisfaction from the knowledge he'd acquired. He wasn't sure whether he regretted never patenting any of his inventions. In time, he might replicate the potions he had made, but the devices would only have reminded him of those lonely years spent confined to his house, alone, and afraid.

He had come a long way. Further than he liked to admit, for the truth dragged him from his indulgent pit of self-pity and despondence and forced him to acknowledge the facts. But he did not want to wallow any more. He wanted to move on, and to prove to himself that he was capable, and strong. He didn't need Ermolai, or Arvo, or Olive to believe in him to do that - though he appreciated the latter's support. At her suggestion, he nodded. "You read my mind; I've been thinking of doing exactly that," he said. He'd even written it down in his diary. "I can't deny the rumours, so I might as well be candid with them. It's funny you should mention all this, actually, because I thought I might try to use this experience to teach the children to speak up about their concerns. It just seems... I don't know, dismissive. But maybe I want to dismiss it. I don't want to think of this as a setback. I'm going to get help, now, after all. I just want to move on." Perhaps he was also afraid that if he dwelt too long on it, he would have to open up to the counsellor, but mostly he just wanted his life to return to normal.

 

[Olive Layton]

It didn't take too much for Olive to get where Monty was coming from in regards to considering this not as a setback. It was hard enough to go through the experiences themselves, let alone keep the attachments that came with it. She smiled as Monty seemed to share a similar wavelength in approaching the children before it could get out of hand, and hearing that he was going to get help only made her more pleased for him. The woman sat quietly, allowing Monty to continue to express himself if he felt the need, only wanting to be available should he want someone to talk to. She was aware that Jon had already been to see him, and for that she was grateful. The Dungeons had been strange without the familiar hum of the man lying beside her to lift the presence, and she was looking forward to him being reinstated into the castle, but only once he was ready to return to his usual self. "I think giving them that opportunity would help, and it's a better alternative than trying to bury it under the stones as though it never happened," she said. The redhead was going to be keeping a close eye on her colleague when he did return to his role, and while she believed that he would do what he thought was best for both himself and the students, it did worry her slightly that he would relapse, and fall into another pattern of covering up the undesired feelings until it was too late. Olive knew she was hardly someone of importance around the castle, but if she could help then she would. "The door to my office is always open Monty." she added, and it wasn't just because it had been built as an open archway. One day she'd have to install a full wooden panel she could close, but for the time being if anyone needed her all they had to do was descend the stairs from her classroom.
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