alt_linus

Scheduling the memorial during the second week of term is quite prudent, yes, thank you. It is best to let the excitement of Sorting Hat and Welcoming Feast ebb a bit before dealing with more somber and solemn matters, and yet deal promptly rather than having the event looming ahead in the distant weeks. In any case, it shall be a dignified memorial and most proper to the setting, and focussing on the future of Hogwarts will be quite appropriate and uplifting and suitable. And, of course, when the family finances and inheritances get sorted, there will be some manner of Moon memorial gift for the good of the school.

Thank you again for your work in planning this. I would have been -- I was! -- entirely at sea in trying to handle any of it myself.

Abbotts, Jugsons, Greengrasses -- have we more for the list that we ought include? Governors and students? Perhaps a reading of names would be fitting.

Quiet now the desk,
the quills that once scurried 'cross parchment
with alac
with precise alacrity

Quiet now the




Quiet has fallen,
a blanket deep upon the desk
where once the quills, with precise alacrity,
laid their tracks upon parchment,
as row on row, the numbers formed in orderly ranks.
No more.
Stilled is the hand that



Where is the hand that guided mine
when first I struggled with the quill




Your quills stand to attention still.
They, like I, struck dumb and motionless
Waiting for the guiding hand
They will forever mourn.

One of the Healers here has been so kind as to inquire for me about plans to release the bodies of my family, and I have been informed that Ptolemy Baddock has asked for and received them. I have heard nothing from Mr Baddock, nor indeed anything from my own sister Karo, his wife, and I am tormented with worry, foolish though it may be, that some evil has befallen her as well. I write to all of you, as all of you have in some capacity or other helped me get through these difficult days.

Is Karo being held incommunicado somewhere? I know she has been colder to her family ever since her marriage, but this seems beyond the pale even for her.

Have they decided upon a funeral and not informed me?

Have they already had a funeral and not informed me?

I cannot go off to the stronghold of the erstwhile Protectorate and confront my sister. I cannot go to the family home as I do not know whether it would be even safe for me to go. Or indeed what point there might be in going there or anywhere else. And in any case Hydra has already wreaked

Other than in the realm of Arithmancy, all is unclear to me and I know not where my duties toward my family, my honour, and toward Albion (if she will continue to have me) may lie.

I am frankly at a loss. My soul cries out in anguish, soothe it however I may with work. What ought I do??

The elf should have appeared with what I believe is the final iteration of Kantorowich's Least Worst. It looks oddly favourable, though perhaps that is only when it is compared with the disasters and anomalies in the earlier runs, before certain components were adjusted for accuracy.

I shall be speaking with Siz for a bit, and then if you'd care to meet and discuss a bit, I believe I have further thoughts on putting magical energy up in bottles, of all things. We can meet at your convenience, if it is, er, convenient.

Have you written to Padma by any chance since things happened?

I feel that she ought to be told, but I cannot manage to put quill to parchment or journal even to write a draft. Finding words is more difficult than... well. And then knowing that some security personage will be reading it over before it is permitted to be sent --

I'm sorry. I should not ask you to help with this.

I'm sorry. Never mind.

May I please come up to the Tower
Ron Weasley just

Please.

OH. OH, MERLIN.

Look at the colours!

Dearest. I have been putting this off and can do so no longer. We need to talk. About the future.

(I'm snatching a few moments here, and I will unfortunately be busy until certain work under way is completed, but I do hope we can talk tomorrow. Afternoon is more likely than morning, as I expect to be awake quite late tonight with the current project and therefore will be quite likely to sleep later than usual.)

Thank you for the loan of the American Witches books. They were a capital distraction, and the antics of Americans certainly supply fertile ground for drama, however much the books may overflow the cauldron of plausibility. Do they really punish pranks in American academies so severely? Bullying seems a strong term. My father gave me some words of wisdom before I entered Hogwarts, explaining that the Moon line of men were generally two things: high-performing Ravenclaws, and the butt of jokes. Responding to the latter would take time away from achieving the former, and he enjoined me therefore to endure the sneezing hexes and the boots charmed to kick their owner and the pratfall jinxes and the occasional expelliarmus and levicorpus and what-have-you as simply part of the price of being Moon and displaying excellence among the unimaginative, the uncouth, or the unkind.

(The tripping hexes were annoying, but it was really the destruction of parchments and the constant hiding of texts and quills that were quite wearing. And that satchel. I still miss that satchel.)

It is a great relief that things are a bit different here these days. I do not miss the presence of either Crabbe or Goyle, I will say — though not everyone has departed who gleefully hexed me or split their sides laughing when someone else did. The Order of the Phoenix has its own well-esteemed contingent of the uncouth or unkind. Fortunately most of them are kept sufficiently busy by the tasks of consolidating the gains of a successfully fomented revolution that they no longer have dull moments to fill with the apparently delectable pastime of watching a Moon turned upside down after laying bets on how many quills will fall out of his robes.

Father said that the ones who appreciated one’s skills and talents were the ones whose good opinion should carry any weight whatsoever, as all else was piffle and erumpent feathers.

Which brings me to Professor Dolohov, as indeed every third thought seems to, today. He valued my skills and talents, if use is a measure of value. I must confess to having welcomed the encouragement, and admittedly the projects he gave me were as enjoyable as the extra arithmancy puzzlers with which Professor Vector used to reward me, but it was hardly a one-sided exchange.

Did you know he put a geas on me? That’s why I ran out of my detention that time. Our conversation had strayed too close to the topic of a statistical analysis I had done on risk of mortality to Council members as correlated with proximity to specific other Council members, and that triggered the geas, because it was very much something I was not supposed to talk about to anyone but him. It quite worried him at the time. He very nearly obliviated me. He very nearly killed me, actually In the end, he went with a geas against discussing the topic with anyone other than himself, which was, he said, for my own protection, as the subject matter and conclusions were rather... sensitive.

(I no longer have the parchment, or I’d consider updating it with data from recent events. If I ever achieve my daydream of writing a history of the liberation of Albion, perhaps it might make a good appendix.)

Pardon, it is late and I am babbling and do not know what it is I really want to say in any case, and therefore will stop now. At least it was not poetry. Note the efficacy of your tutelage there, Professor.

You miss him too

Pardon this intrusion on a day of rest after such labours, but I have noticed something which I feel duty-bound to report.

When walking down the corridor past the Head’s suite of rooms, I noticed that the door thereunto was ajar.

It really seemed I ought to tell someone.