unforth | Hogwarts Story: Part 29

Today was an amazingly good day in most respects. Things just kept going right in ways I didn't expect, but only after they seemed to be going wrong. It was a pattern, truly. First, I went hunting for a tea pot at the Japanese Traditional Crafts Center in Ikebukuro, only to find that they hardly had any - they'd had tons when I went there last. A little annoyed, I bopped in to Tobu, a department store nearby, and I was wandering around (thinking that they appeared to have NO tea pots) when I turned around, and poof, there was the perfect one, I fell in love. And it was (relatively) cheap, too. Minutes later, I found one that would make a great gift, too, which was also not expensive. Win! After that, I wandered over to Sunshine City to look for some gifts for people and just what I could find. I didn't have great luck with the gifts, unfortunately, but I had fun just looking. I started to get hungry, and so I looked for a restaurant that had something I wanted, but nothing clicked. Thinking about it, I realized all I really wanted were some noodles, a sake onigiri, and maybe some tempura. I searched the restaurants high and low, though, and was ready to give up and just go get what I wanted from a cobini when the very last restaurant I found was an udon place where you could get optional add ons - for 500 yen I got exactly what I wanted. Win 2! My last destination for the day was the awesome doujinshi stores and anime stores across the street from there. There, too, things just went mostly...right. Like, at Mandarake they had lots of Sirius x Remus doujin, and Animate had some nice pencil boards I hadn't gotten yet. I've not read all the doujinshi yet, but I've already completely fallen in love with one that I have read, it was REALLY good. Win 3! Finally, I made my way home, and decided I'd gotten enough exercise to get my current favorite drink from Starbucks, even though it meant missing Fushigi Yuugi on TV. I drank my drink, did some reading, headed home...and plopped in front of the TV just as the opening theme started.

It was a nice balance, really - for everything that went wrong, something went right. I wish more days were like that!

Tomorrow, I expect, I'll have what I need to get started on the grants. We've gotten the go-ahead from both clients, now, so if mom faxes me what I asked for, I'll probably work on one pretty seriously tomorrow. It's all for the better. I really am broke, now. I made a conscious choice, really, to go ahead and do this shopping and indulge a bunch and get the stuff I really wanted, because this is pretty much the last of the shopping - a couple more gifts (I'm still hunting for a few things I was asked for, and a tea pot for my mom), one more run to one of the other branches of Mandarake, and a sake bottle that says "Asakusa," and that's that. Oh, and a bag of mochicreams to bring home, because life's just not worth living with out the occasional mochicream. ;)

Time in the Great Hall seemed to pass with infinite slowness, and yet pass it did. Soon, I had made all the small talk that one person could possibly make in an evening, and was rapidly growing bored. Students – those who hadn’t gone to Azkaban or otherwise disappeared – were congregating around the food tables and on the dance floor. I had gotten a clearer picture of just who was missing. All of the members of WAP – James, Guillermo, Caius, and of course Marcus – seemed to be gone; Katrina was no where to be seen either. That, at least, was a small mercy. All of those who Celestine had taken with her to Azkaban were not present, of course, but I couldn’t as easily explain why only two of the students from Durmstrang appeared to remain. Whispers circulated throughout those who had remained, wondering where everyone had gone, but theories varied too widely that I couldn’t figure out what to believe. I heard everything from a muggle attack – clearly a lie – to zombies, to more of those horrible monsters, all the way to playing the Quidditch game this very minute. That one seemed to lose favor only because I was still there – though I appeared to be the only member of the team still present! It was exasperating, and I spent a great deal of time dispelling rumors and hoping no one would get in trouble – for it was too much to hope that the teachers would not notice, it was far too obvious that large numbers of students had been there and then left.

One group I avoided, though, was that which congregated around Palucid Nox. With all the arrogance he had shown earlier, he was entertaining a lively conversation, though I couldn’t bring myself to go over to see what the talk was about. Merethe, the doctor, and Candy – a girl from the United States about whom the nicest adjective I could think of was “gregarious” – and several other professors as well. A few other students seemed to join in from time to time, but they usually left quickly. The talk appeared intense, and I skirted around it as much as possible. As I was making my rounds through the crowd, though, I heard something that caught my hear. It was Candy, in her thick accent which I learned later was indicative of the South, speaking in a carrying voice. “Why’d you give the muggles magical weapons, anyway? That’s wrong! It violates wizard law!” I stifled a groan. Was she trying to start a fight? In the Great Hall? With the Headmaster of Durmstrang? Did the girl have no sense at all, no propriety? Worst, I agreed with her whole heartedly, but this was not the time, nor the place, nor was she the person.

If Nox was fazed by her accusation, though, he made no sign of it. “All’s fair, as they say,” he said mildly. “I have made alliances for the best, and I see no need to defend myself to you.”

“What about pain bolts?” asked Merethe, but unlike Candy, she simply sounded curious. Pain bolts were a weapon that the muggles were using that moved very quickly and bored through whatever they struck – and they were aimed at flesh more often than not. I remembered Guillermo speaking of them after the last muggle attack.

“Pain bolts?” Nox frowned. “I’m not familiar with that term, can you describe the effect? I’ve provided the muggles with a fair range of equipment, though I do not know of anything that I might describe as a pain bolt.”

Merithe gave a description – she even produced, from her pocket, a small nugget of metal that she believed was part of the spell but which was now inert, and Nox laughed. “That is a bullet, miss, they are shot from muggle guns – a curious device, but entirely non-magical.” He made it sound as if he was teaching an idiot, but Merithe didn’t notice that, either. She simply nodded and pocketed the bullet again.

Accusations would only anger him, but I for one was still curious about Candy’s question. Modulating my tone with the thought that perhaps he would respond better in a conversation than he did to accusations, I smiled as best I could at the man who I was rapidly growing to loathe. “Do you think it’s safe to give muggles such devices? What if they decide to turn them against wizards?” I refrained from pointing out that at his instigation – I had no proof of that, but how else could they have known about Hogwarts at all? It must have been him! – they had already done so.

He smiled at me as if I hadn’t a brain. I strained the muscles in my cheeks to continue smiling back. “Indeed, that’s entirely the point. The muggles do not need such tools to fight each other, they need such tools to fight wizards. And, as you may not be aware, it was the English who first sent wizard’s to the continent to fight in this war.” I frowned. It had indeed slipped my mind; it seemed like ages ago that I worried, over the summer, that my brother might be in danger in the war. The Ministry had sent small teams over to try to help.

“But those wizards weren’t fighting,” I replied calmly. “They were simply administering medical aid, and trying to evacuate wizard’s who had been trapped by the fighting.”

“Is that what they told you? Of course, you are only children, the Ministry wouldn’t bother to explain itself to you,” and neither should I, his tone clearly indicated. “Of course, it would never do for everyone to know that they were sending teams of wizards in to conduct assassinations to aid the English and their allies. I only did what my patriotism demanded of me, I gave my country and its allies the tools to fight back against this unwarranted assault, against this heedless violation on the laws that keep our world protected from muggles.” For just an instant, I wondered if he was telling the truth. But I couldn’t believe it. I had read a lot about Nox in Professor Tremens diary, and now I had met him, and I couldn’t bring myself to trust him. I couldn’t bring myself to believe a single word he said.