"I received your letter, Miss Hamier," Dumbledore said slowly after Lyla sat down. "You wish to advance your salary, correct?"
"Uh... uh!" Lyla squeaked.
'I never thought I'd have to literally beg Dumbledore for money... Forgive me, Lord Grindelwald,' Lyla thought, remembering her secret, grand plan to revive his supremacist cause.
Lyla lowered her head to hide her pointed Veela ears and whispered, "I promised... Mr. Lu... Lupin."
"Remus has already told me about this." Dumbledore nodded slightly and peeled open a Fizzing Whizbee from the table in front of him. He ate it as he spoke. "You wish to purchase the ingredients for the Wolfsbane Potion, correct?"
"Uh... uh." Lyla nodded slightly, her blue eyes fixed firmly on the wood of the desk, not daring to look up and make eye contact with a stranger.
'The number of people currently observing me from all these moving portraits might be a record... an absolute record for the maximum number of people observing Miss Hamilton at one time.'
"I understand." Dumbledore nodded and slowly took out a form from a drawer under the desk, glancing at it.
"Hmm..." He was silent for a few seconds before saying, "Miss Hamilton, according to the accounting report I have..."
"In the past month or so, you have advanced approximately three hundred and twenty-five Galleons."
"Th-that much?" Lyla looked up at Dumbledore in sheer surprise.
"Ah... I'm not doubting... your... meaning..." After accidentally meeting Dumbledore's twinkling gaze for a few seconds, Lyla panicked, quickly lowered her head, and mumbled defensively.
Actually, she was severely doubting him! Prone to catastrophic overthinking, Lyla heavily suspected Dumbledore was intentionally falsifying his accounts! How could she have possibly spent so much money?
She had merely bought her new custom ebony wand , a few robes, a cauldron, some potent magical materials for Magic Array Studies like Demiguise blood... Oh, she seemed to have bought some academic books too...
And she had stayed in a rented room on the second floor of the pub for over a month... She had never even paid for her own food...
Even with all these things, it surely couldn't add up to... more than two hundred and fifty Galleons, could it?
Or maybe two hundred and eighty Galleons... In any case, it absolutely couldn't be three hundred!
"Because Miss Hamilton, you are a newly appointed joint Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts, and according to the Board of Governors' regulations, a starting month's salary is... exactly fifty Galleons." Dumbledore paused, looking at the completely stunned Lyla. "So Hogwarts has already advanced you about half a year's salary."
"Therefore... to ensure you can survive after the start of term," Dumbledore paused and lowered his voice in a fatherly tone. "I cannot advance you any more salary."
Lyla bit her lip, desperately wanting to say something, but couldn't force the words out for a long time... like, lend me some personal money... or something like that.
Ah... whether it was asking a normal person for money or asking her sworn enemy Dumbledore for money... Lyla's severe social anxiety meant she could never bring herself to say such a humiliating thing.
Seeing Lyla nervously poking her fingers together, her head bowed, and remaining completely silent for a long time, Dumbledore chuckled softly.
"However, Miss Hamilton," he gently tapped the table. "I do have some good news to tell you."
"Because Miss Lola Hamier's consultant work at the Ministry of Magic was very well done..."
"Rufus sent me a fifty-Galleon stipend."
'Why did you never mention this before?!' Lyla thought, her blood boiling.
Lyla looked up at Dumbledore in surprise. Then she saw the old wizard blink, looking rather innocent and helpless.
"I can't help it, Miss Hamilton. Old people's memories are sometimes not so good..."
'You remember me perfectly from my Grindelwald days fifty years ago... and you can conveniently forget where an extra fifty Galleons in your pocket came from?'
"You..." Lyla gritted her teeth, glaring at Dumbledore from under her hood. She knew, of course, that Dumbledore was deliberately playing a trick on her!
'This old man... After I finally revive Grindelwald's cause and defeat him, I'll use a silent spell to burn his beard clean off...'
"Here are those fifty Galleons." Dumbledore shook his head with an amused smile, taking a small, heavy pouch from his robes and placing it on the table.
The next second, Lyla snatched the pouch in her hand. She carefully glanced at Dumbledore, then stubbornly began counting the gold coins one by one right in front of him.
'Dumbledore might secretly take a few gold coins for himself... He entirely seems like the type of insidious person to do that.'
The Headmaster of Hogwarts, the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, was in Lyla's paranoid eyes an evil villain who deceived children, enjoyed playing cruel jokes, and was incredibly cunning.
After all, he had done the worst, most unforgivable thing imaginable: defeating her beloved boss, Lord Grindelwald!
After counting carefully twice, Lyla confirmed that the money inside was correct.
Then she let out a soft breath of relief. Good, the easiest part of getting the money was done. Next was the most difficult part... actually going out to Diagon Alley to interact with shopkeepers to buy things...
Just as she was dreading this, Dumbledore cleared his throat and said, "Also, Miss Hamilton... Remus is not just my employee. He is my friend."
"So, regarding the brewing of the Wolfsbane Potion... I can offer you some additional personal assistance."
"Personal... assistance?"
"Precisely." Dumbledore said, slowly rising from his desk. "Please follow me."
"Ah... okay..." Lyla, a bit bewildered, followed behind Dumbledore like a lost duckling. The two walked out of the Headmaster's office, went down the moving spiral staircase, and arrived in the stone corridor.
Walking on the floorboards, Dumbledore slowly said, "I can provide you with some of the rare ingredients for the Wolfsbane Potion."
"Or rather, a Professor can."
"A Pro... Professor?"
'Is it a colleague of mine? It couldn't be Hagrid, could it? If it's Hagrid, I'd rather brave the shops and buy them myself...' Lyla looked out at the Hogwarts grounds through the glass with a heavy hint of dread.
"Professor Severus Snape." The name Dumbledore uttered made Lyla let out a soft breath, and she subconsciously asked, "Is Professor Snape... human?"
"Ah..." Dumbledore was stunned for a moment at her bizarre question, then chuckled heartily. "Of course... Severus is Hogwarts' most outstanding Potions Master."
"Then... that's truly wonderful..." Lyla instinctively felt a little happy.
'This Professor Snape must be much easier to get along with than the giant Hagrid... at least he's much smaller in stature.'
'But is it really okay for us to just go ask him for expensive ingredients like this?'
Lyla knew exactly how expensive the potent magical materials for the Wolfsbane Potion were. The fifty Galleons Dumbledore gave her were barely enough to buy them all.
'You're not planning to use your position as Headmaster to oppress a poor, defenseless Potions Professor, are you? Just like you tricked me into working for the Ministry of Magic's Aurors!'
Even though the intense Head of the Auror Office, Rufus Scrimgeour, had ultimately given her fifty Galleons, that forced labor was still a massive stain on her Wizarding Supremacist Party career!
So she quietly asked, "Isn't this... a little... not quite... not quite right?"
"..."
Dumbledore seemed a little surprised that Lyla would have such a considerate thought for a colleague. He paused slightly and looked down at Lyla. "Don't worry, Miss Hamilton."
"I will compensate Severus in other ways." He said, his blue eyes twinkling behind his spectacles. "In ways you cannot possibly imagine."
'I'm not at all curious how you compensate him...'
However, after hearing that Dumbledore wasn't just blatantly abusing his power to rob a teacher, Lyla felt much more at ease.
But this gave her new doubts: "Then why... didn't Professor Snape just brew the Wolfsbane Potion for Mr. Lupin?"
"Mr. Lupin was so... before." Lyla wanted to say 'impoverished,' but after a few seconds of careful thought, she politely changed it to: "distressed."
"Ah... that question..." Dumbledore was silent for a few heavy seconds before saying, "Perhaps you can ask Severus."
"However... you'd best not expect to get a pleasant answer."
'What does that mean?'
Lyla suddenly felt a deep sense of catastrophic unease... 'Could it be that Professor Snape and Mr. Lupin had some kind of dark, violent history?'