Hogwarts, and Thoughts on Thanksgiving

[unforth]

I wouldn't have realized today was Thanksgiving at all if I hadn't checked a calender. In my brain, Thanksgiving is next week, the 22nd is far to early - I mean, it's a full five days until mistress_sin's birthday, and that's how I always remember when Thanksgiving is. :)

It's more than that, though. If I was in the States, I'd have learned it soon enough - Thanksgiving break, and sale prices on Turkey, and store displays of pumpkin, and all that sort of thing, would have clued me in.

Here, though, there's nothing. This shouldn't, and doesn't, surprise me. I remember realizing in October that if I was still here in July, the 4th of July would come and there would be NOTHING and I would be mystified; meanwhile, Golden Week would come and I wouldn't give a damn. :) I never really thought about how inculturated we are to our own holidays.

For once, though, I think I can say I'm genuinely thankful for that. I was worried that I would be really depressed today. I've never spent Thanksgiving without some sort of family - my own, growing up, and deadmanwade's for most of my time in college. And, it's quite true, that the thought of Thanksgiving with no turkey and - much more importantly! - no pumpkin pie, is sad to me. I'm making a pumpkin pie as soon as I get home, and eating a turkey sandwich. However, beyond that, I can't say that I'm all that upset. And I think it's in large part that there is nothing being thrust in my face to constantly remind me that today is Thanksgiving, oh, look at all the happy people on Thanksgiving, everyone's with their family on Thanksgiving, blah blah blah.

To further counteract the negative effects, though, I actually won't be spending Thanksgiving dinner alone! On Sunday, I spoke to caspiangray about potentially getting together, and she spoke to her husband, and the happy result is that she, her husband, another member of my gaming group and I are going to meet up in Yokohama and get the most American food available here: we're going to TGI Fridays (the same one, amusingly, that I went to with ireneadler and skygawker two weeks ago. ;) ). I don't imagine they'll have pumpkin pie, more's the pity, but they WILL have signature Jack Daniels sauce, ribs, hamburgers, mashed potatoes, and - be still my beating heart - they have smothered cheese fries with bacon. These I refrained from eating when last there due to the massive calories, but on Thanksgiving I'm allowed to have a calorie fest. :) So I'm pretty excited, over all, and will continue to be so, even if I decide not to get cheesy bacon fries.

I was also going to write a brief thing on what I have to be thankful for, but I'm not going to. Even just thinking about it started to bring tears to my eyes. I'm so lucky and thankful for so many things, but in particular for having great, caring friends and family. So I'm leave it at that, and wish you all...a very happy, very tasty Thanksgiving wherever and with whoever you are celebrating.



I wrote a lot today because I'm trying to avoid doing any ACTUAL work on Thanksgiving. I think I may have failed in that endeavor, but it can't be helped.


There was a month and a half remaining before the holidays, with school to end only a few days before Christmas. The time passed quickly, for so very much was going on, but few specific events bear mentioning, so I will simply give an account of the way those days went.
From Hogsmeade, mere days after I had sent my message, I received a very polite return note and the assurance Mr. Torian now had the item in question in his store, would I like to come and view it? I returned that I couldn’t leave school, forwarded the promised payment – 2 galleons, a hefty price, and just over half of the money I had to my name – and soon had in my possession what I suppose must have been a very handsome revolver. It was large and heavy. The muzzle – please forgive me if I get some of the vocabulary incorrect, I’ve had little occasion to interact with guns in my life – was dark metal, steel I suppose, which I feared would make what I intended more difficult. The handle was a truly lovely ivory, engraved with simple patterns, and the entire piece showed all the signs of the very best workmanship, or so I believed with my limited knowledge of such things (I was, as it turns out, quite right). It came in a velvet lined wooden case, too, which could be locked and had a place to store ammunition. The ammunition itself was sent in a fine leather case that could be worn on the belt. All in all, I felt I had gotten my 2 galleons worth and then some. And, to top it off, the handle was engraved with the initials R.M., which I found to be a highly amusing and not necessarily inappropriate inversion.
So what was my purpose with this gun? From listening to Guillermo and the other WAP boys, I had learned of this thing called the “pain bolt,” and from Nox I had learned what produced it. It was effective, deadly, easily portable, and required little effort from the wielder. What if Marcus found himself unable to cast spells? What if he was unable to speak or didn’t have his wand? My mind had manufactured over and over again conditions which would leave him helpless where a gun might save his life. However, as I saw it, the gun had three flaws. First, it required ammunition. Second, it required skill to use with accuracy. Third, it made a great deal of noise. And so I started studying hard, and though it was technically forbidden by wizarding law, I had taught myself to the spells necessary and the skills required to, I hope, imbue the muggle weapon with the properties I sought.
For those who don’t know about enchanting – and few do, it’s a time consuming and labor intensive activity – there are generally two ways to go about doing so. The first is to construct the item in the first place with the magical properties one wants, using sympathetic materials and casting the spells as one works. This way works better. The second involves enchanting an existing objective, and though it is less effective, it is frequently necessary, and is done by either changing the nature of the parts, drawing on sympathies, or imbuing with runes. Since I couldn’t alter the nature of the parts, and the sympathies of the materials in the gun were not at all inclined to silence or accuracy, and I had resolved on the third method, hence why I now looked at the steel with chagrin, for I would have to find a way to etch very detailed, very specific runes in to it as accurately as possible. If I made even a single mistake, the results could be disastrous, no, even catastrophic.
I should note that, from my point of view, the real gift was not the gun no matter what changes I made to it. I knew Marcus would understand, too, when I gave it to him. I generally thought that spells were a silly waste of time, and preferred to stick to brewing, but I had taught myself no less than a half dozen advanced spells – and a number of less advanced ones that were the stepping stones – in order to bring this about. It was a good project for a girl in her owl years, and I had much more confidence now with a wand than I had ever had before, but I still wouldn’t have done if not for this.
So in time I had, I spent a great deal of effort on this weapon. I obtained some other steal, and practiced engraving it until I was confident that I could do so. I learned spells for silence, for accuracy, and to produce actual pain bolts, magical bullets – the gun would still be able to shoot true ammunition, I hoped, which would be more effective than anything I could make with jolts of energy, but in an emergency, it would still be useful as more than just a club. I perfected the spells, I perfected the runes, and I wished I had a second gun to test it all on first, but there simply wasn’t time – the runes would take almost a month to set, and I’d have to check them every day, casting the related spells again and again. It was exhausting, in truth, and took the majority of my free time.
My second letter didn’t receive so speedy and positive a reply, unfortunately. It was almost two weeks before my mother wrote me her reply, and when it came it was brief.
“Darling Daughter,” she wrote, “Your father and I are so proud of you! Being chosen as Head Girl truly sets you apart from your house, for there are prefects from every denomination but there is only one Head Girl. Will you retain the title in the coming years? That would be delightful. You’ll make all the other girls quite jealous. It really is a pity that the Durmstrangs were so able to score at Quidditch, but a tie still kept England from being completely embarrassed, and we’ll show the Germans yet. Perhaps this shows you the imprudence of a girl such as yourself engaging in such a plain sport. Your father and I have always felt, as we’ve told you, that you shouldn’t sully your hands on a broomstick for all the world. I must say, too, that affiliating yourself with this ‘GAB’ organization is very common, indeed, and you should reconsider, I think. We must do everything we can to avoid that sort of common thing, you know, and not deign to approach that which is beneath us.
“I’m afraid that it would be quite impossible for you to spend Christmas with Relius. We have heard what kind of family they are, and it would not do, not do at all, to have you associated with such. Your father and I have such high hopes for you, and though it might be kept a secret, if a suitor were to learn of it, imagine the damage to your reputation! It would never do. I’m sorry, Delia, but we cannot permit you to expose yourself to such, even though we know you would never do anything to justify such slander.
“Thank you for the kind offer of acquiring goods in Hogsmeade. If you could please obtain an ever-blooming rose, for myself, and one of those self-smoking pipes for your father, that would be delightful.
“Don’t forget your studies in the approaching holiday, and do be diligent and keep to your duties! We will not be able to meet you at the station, so we’ll see you on the evening of the 23rd of December. Love, your Mother.”
Needless to say, I found this letter to be utterly unwelcome and unpleasant. I had accepted such missives calmly in the past, but now that I had friends who seemed to see my worth, I had an improved idea of that worth myself, and to see my mother feel the need to denigrate nearly everything I cared about was not something I could quietly accept any longer. She hadn’t even troubled to spell Marcus’ name correctly, and she had come as close to calling them blood traitors as she could have politely. Somehow, seeing him affronted made me much more angry than the reflections on my Quidditch playing, the disapproval of GAB, her insulting of Ravenclaw, and the requested purchases, which would take all the rest of the galleons I had so carefully earned that semester.
I kept the letter a secret, though, and only related to Marcus that my parents did not feel that they could spare me for the holiday season, I was, after all, their only daughter and thus in high demand. He was sad, but we both accepted it, and did not speak of it more.
This disappointment was the only bad news I had, though. The first month passed well, bringing me to mid-December so quickly I couldn’t help but wonder where the time had gone. The Quidditch team was shaping up, though I had them out two nights a week and for most of Saturday every week in order to bring about this improvement. I thought Celestine might never forgive me for the broom soars that she developed at first, but she in particular showed a vast improvement over the weeks to come. My duties as Head Girl seemed to expand exponentially as the time came to coordinate students returning home, decorating the castle, the disposition of the students who would be staying, preparing the parts of the school that would be out of use for closure, and so many other concerns that I was constantly afraid that I would forget something critical. Classwork was increasing apace, too, and the teachers seemed determined to cram as much as possible in to the weeks before Christmas; I had the bad feeling that this was entirely with the intention of being able to give us a frightening pile of homework.
Advanced potions continued to give me joy, thankfully, and the Headmaster was very impressed when I produced a large number of the freezing potions that I had learned off from the hidden library – had that truly only been two months before? He suggested to the others, who were all preparing for NEWTs while I was busy with my OWLs, that they undertake independent research projects, and I seized this as an opportunity to perhaps get advice on my own independent research project – the potion that Celestine had requested of me. She had been able to get me a sample of blood, and I had been delighted to discover that it did seem to react to reagents as I had hoped, so I would be able to test possible cures on it, and then tell with a simple identify spell if they had worked. However, despite all the research that I had done, all the research that Celestine had done, I had absolutely no positive results to relate. Lycia, meanwhile, had agreed with her usual reticence to look over the necklace, and we’d not heard a thing from her since.
She had, however, come to me mere days later with the oddest offer I had heard in recent days. Apparently, her awful cat had somehow found itself a female cat who thought it worth some time, and now Lycia found herself with a half dozen kittens and no time whatsoever to care for them. I shocked myself by agreeing readily to take one. It seemed to loath me on sight, as most animals do – Marcus’ Boogle being the only exception I could think of at the time – but I decided that if I was going to try to improve myself, one way I could do so was to convince myself that animals had use as something other than potion ingredients after all. Sure enough, some cream was all it took to cause the kitten to warm to me, and soon my little Kate happily snuggled with me each evening and found ways to get in to trouble while I wasn’t around (her name, I thought, was slightly clever; my initial instinct having been to name the animal Kitty, lazy, I know, which led me to laugh that it would be more dignified to name the animal Katherine…and thus I arrived at Kate).
One of the more unfortunate side effects of the above was that Marcus and I had virtually no time together at all. My other friends – Fred and Celestine in particular, but increasingly also the Lunari’s, Elena, and some of the other girls – could join me while I was on patrol, or help me hang Christmas decorations, and thus we could have time together, but Marcus’ position and mine, as before, meant that we were almost never in the same place. It was very distressing to me, and I wondered if it was equally distressing to him.
The Durmstrangs, contrary to all expectation, remained installed at the school, and Nox was liable to show up wherever he was least expected. I saw little of him, though, for I was too busy, and most of the accounts I heard were second or third hand. Celestine seemed in particular to know a great deal of his comings and goings. Over the course of the month, I noticed too that Fred knew more and more; when I asked, I learned it was because the two had gotten closer, and they had discussed my sentiments about Galatea, and had been keeping an eye on her, and had discovered that watching Galatea was an excellent way to learn about the comings and goings of Headmaster Nox, for Galatea was often near him. My worries on this score increased, but there was nothing I could do.
All of this led, quite naturally, to the last weekend before the holidays. There was a Hogsmeade visit on Saturday and, I found myself well able to spare the day to have some time. Marcus and I once again managed to send each other letters at virtually the same instant, and it was easily agreed to that we would spend the day together – our first substantial time since our date in November. There was little homework, and with Auror Weasley looking over all of our shoulders and patrolling the town the Head Girl and Head Boy had been relieved of the job of shepparding their fellow students.
On Friday, then, I took up the revolver that absorbed nearly all of my free time, went to a place where I could be quite alone, and tested it. I was determined that if somehow the whole thing had gone horribly wrong, no one would be hurt other than myself. Fortunately, though, my fears were utterly unfounded, and I was relieved and very gratified to discovered that I had successfully produced a gun that was completely silent. If bullets were shot from it, furthermore, they would – through some process that even I had not been able to fully understand – veer unerringly towards their intended target for a full 30 seconds before they simply fell uselessly to the ground – a safety feature I had thought would be necessary, or else a bullet that couldn’t reach its target might hover or pursue forever. The hit thus achieved would not necessarily be “on target” – if I aimed at a tree behind me, it might hit the tree at the root or go through a leaf or any place in between – but it would hit the tree, at least. The bolts, meanwhile, did not target very accurately at all, and were almost pathetically weak to boot, but they would fire. All of which is to say that though it was far from perfect, it did all the things that I had hoped it would, and I thought that a fine accomplishment for one such as myself.