McGonagall didn't fully understand what was happening. She was sitting in one of the brothel's rooms, waiting... for whom? Why? Her mind told her she had to leave immediately, but her body remained motionless, as if there were a logical reason to stay. Something didn't fit, and yet she couldn't doubt it.
Every so often she would think: "This makes no sense. I'm leaving." But as soon as the thought occurred, a strange calm invaded her, and she reverted to her previous, resigned attitude. It was as if something invisible were molding her emotions, erasing any intention of escaping.
The air carried a sweet, almost cloying perfume. McGonagall didn't notice it, but with every breath, her willpower became more fragile.
A minute and a half passed. The door opened. A young man with a graceful face, no more than sixteen, entered, bearing an innocent expression and a beauty that would categorize him as "cute." His way of moving, his voice, seemed natural, but at the same time pre-rehearsed.
"Good evening," he said, bowing with exaggerated reverence. "I'm Tom. I hope to satisfy you today."
McGonagall was speechless, unable to decide if she was more confused or indignant at the sight of the young man in clothes that, though not revealing, were certainly "attractive".
The boy took a few steps toward her, looking at her with rehearsed shyness. Then, without warning, he began to unbutton his shirt, watching her reactions as if seeking approval.
"Stop!" McGonagall ordered, her voice sharp.
Tom froze mid-gesture, with an expression that seemed sincere... almost too sincere.
"Do you want me to do it slower? Or should we do it with clothes on?" he asked with clumsy innocence, as if he genuinely didn't understand what was happening.
Disgust mixed with icy fury.
"Absolutely not! I have no intention of sleeping with a boy! Please, retire immediately." She felt a growing repulsion for the place and its 'services', especially after seeing a young man who wasn't even an adult. "Leave now," she commanded in a cutting voice. "And tell whoever is in charge that no one is to enter this room until I have gone." She missed the irony in her last sentence: despite everything, she still wasn't contemplating leaving without fulfilling her part of the bargain.
The young man flinched, took a step back, and lowered his head.
"Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry... I'll fix it," he said in a trembling voice, before dropping to his knees in front of her. "Please, don't send me away. I need to work."
A chill ran through Minerva's heart upon seeing the young man kneeling and pleading. A kind of maternal instinct shook her, as the boy's aura evoked the same need for guidance she had felt for all the students she had taught at Hogwarts: those children who were just entering the magical world and needed her.
"Forgive me... I'll do whatever you want, even the weird things, just let me serve you... I'll do it well this time," he sobbed, on the verge of tears.
Although her initial annoyance persisted, McGonagall softened her voice, infusing it with unexpected compassion.
"This is not your fault," she said, helping him stand up. "It's the fault of this rotten place."
Tom, oblivious to the revulsion he caused, continued in a monotonous but professional tone:
"Do you want us to change venues? We have dungeons, pools, Hogwarts sets, Gringotts, the Ministry, and many other settings, though some take a while to prepare."
The mention of Hogwarts made McGonagall's fury unbearable.
"NO! I do not want to move, nor do I want any of the services this horrible place offers," she retorted with evident disgust. Realizing how diverse and prosperous the establishment was, especially with the profanation of the school's settings, she felt a wave of nausea.
The young man, visibly disheartened, insisted with a shaky voice: "But... I have an obligation to please you... Please, let me try. I'm very good at this... I'll make you feel good."
"By no means," McGonagall declared, not yielding an inch. "Please, retire."
"But I can't leave. I need to satisfy you somehow... please! I have to do this if I want the bonus," the young man insisted with a palpable urgency.
"I don't care about your bonus... Leave!" McGonagall's patience was quickly running out as she heard about the deplorable mechanisms of that place.
"Please... I'll do anything. I desperately need the money," he begged, falling to his knees once more and clutching the edge of her green robe with both hands.
McGonagall was about to become more aggressive to make it absolutely clear that she would not accept any sexual services; however, upon seeing him so completely desperate and humiliated, her heart softened again. She let out a long, resonant sigh.
"Fine, you can stay. But keep your distance," she conceded, completely giving up on expelling the obstinate and desperate young man.
Tom was allowed to stay. He rose slowly from the floor, bowing his head in respect, and backed up only a few steps, his movements so contained they seemed calculated not to irritate McGonagall. For some reason, this bothered her. It wasn't the kind of fear she inspired as a strict professor; it was more the servile fear of a beaten puppy. And that, coming from this young man, made her deeply uncomfortable.
A few minutes passed in a thick silence. Both were tense, though for different reasons. McGonagall wrestled between the urge to leave and the absurd feeling that she had to stay. Tom, on the other hand, seemed to debate between approaching or remaining silent, as if every word he didn't say weighed heavily on him.
Finally, he broke the silence.
"This..." Tom stammered.
"Yes?" Minerva asked, looking up.
"Are you absolutely sure you don't want me to do anything?" he asked with a mixture of shyness and nervousness. "I'm really good at what I do... I assure you, you would enjoy it."
McGonagall could no longer contain herself. Her voice was harsh, tinged with barely disguised contempt.
"Why are you so eager to please me? Is money so important that you would debase yourself to this?" She paused. Seeing the distress on the boy's face, her gaze softened slightly, and her tone changed as she asked: "Do they punish you if you don't do your job?"
Tom fell into absolute silence, nervously rubbing his hands together, avoiding eye contact as he struggled with his doubts before replying.
"It's not that... honestly. I'm a good worker, so they treat me very well... It's just that..." The young man looked up at Minerva, with a vulnerable shyness. "You are... like a very famous professor and all that, right?" he asked, with an unmistakable anticipation visible in his eyes.
McGonagall felt perplexed and slightly disarmed by the prostitute's question and attitude, but she noted that her growing frustration had completely given way to curiosity.
"That's right. I am the Transfiguration Professor at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall. Why are you interested?" she questioned, desperately seeking the reason behind his strange insistence.
"It's just that I've never had the opportunity to satisfy a..." Tom blushed slightly as he corrected himself: "Well, actually, many important women have come, but none like you... I mean, a professor! I was quite excited to do it."
"You're excited about... Having sex with a professor?" McGonagall asked, incredulity coloring her voice.
"You see, I never went to school. So, the subject of professors, classes, rules... they are unknown to me; just fantasies... I have a certain hope. I thought that sleeping with you would be like getting a taste of what it's like to be a student, feeling like one, and seeing if everything I heard was true," Tom narrated with a pure emotion, as if that banal desire were his most longed-for dream.
"You never went to school?" she asked, more intrigued than annoyed. She didn't realize that, as she spoke, Tom was approaching softly until he sat down on the edge of the bed, maintaining a careful distance between them.
"No. I was a disaster with magic. I only had talent for a few things... things that weren't very useful. So no one bothered to send me to a school." He paused, lowering his voice. "In fact, I haven't touched my wand in years. It's gathering dust in a trunk."
"But everyone must have the opportunity for education!" The professor was visibly indignant. "Hogwarts accepts everyone equally, good or bad. It is our duty to guide them."
Without thinking, McGonagall had slipped into 'dedicated professor' mode. Her anger was focused on educational injustice, not on Tom's presence. Meanwhile, the air in the room was beginning to be heavy with the sweet, thick smell of drugs. The effect was subtle, but enough to slightly confuse her mind and make her less attentive to Tom's physical proximity than she would have been under normal circumstances.
Without questioning it further, and as if it were the most natural thing, McGonagall ended up allowing Tom to massage her feet while they continued talking. The young man was persistently insistent on wanting to "please her," and she reasoned that, in exchange for getting more information about him, his life, and the true nature of that place, she could sacrifice a sliver of her professional dignity. Or, at least, those were the distorted thoughts beginning to erode her judgment, induced by the malign and charged atmosphere of the room.
Unknowingly, they had fallen into an intimate conversational rhythm, while Tom attended to her in a purely serviceable manner, for the moment.
"So you've lived here your whole life?" she asked, still with indignation in her tone, though she was no longer noticing how much she was enjoying the massage on her calves.
"Since I can remember, at least the nice part. Food, shelter... companions," Tom replied with a casual naturalness that chilled the professor's blood.
"This is not the right place for any child to grow up... You needed a home that was more..." McGonagall hesitated, searching for the right word. "Innocent. And the fact that you weren't allowed to attend any school or institution is simply unacceptable. Children need to grow up surrounded by other children... not... prostitutes."
"I don't know..." Tom shrugged with nonchalance. "I've never seen anything wrong with this."
"And since when have you been working as a...?" The question caught in McGonagall's throat, unable to articulate the term.
"For quite a while," Tom replied lightly. "Although, well, when my penis wasn't working yet, I just danced and did those things."
The more McGonagall listened, a terrible rage grew inside her. The horrible naturalness with which Tom recounted what happened and what he did in the brothel since childhood, as if there was absolutely nothing wrong with it, was maddening her.
Unable to endure the normalization of his depravity any longer, McGonagall acted purely on instinct. She rested both hands on Tom's shoulders and looked at him fixedly, with an expression of extreme and painful compassion.
"Listen to me," she said in a firm but gentle voice. "Many of these things you think are normal are fundamentally wrong. You have suffered greatly without even knowing it. This thing you think you obtain here is not love. Love is much purer, more innocent... it exists without anyone having to pay you for it." She tried to distill the essence of the feeling for a young man whose entire common sense was distorted.
Tom's gaze became lost and pleading. "Then... can you show me?" he asked, in a thin voice. "What real love is like?"
Before McGonagall could process the question or answer, Tom lunged forward, and his lips met hers in a quick, fleeting kiss. The contact left her completely paralyzed in a state of absolute shock.
"No! Tomás! This is wrong!" McGonagall quickly pushed away the young man who had taken advantage of her lapse in attention.
"Why? You told me everything here is fake... and I don't understand. Why can't you show me what sex and love are really like?" His voice was slow, tinged with a supplicating logic that made her shudder.