Private Message to Professor Siz
Aug. 3rd, 2015 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_linusThank 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
(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.
(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.
no subject
on 2015-08-04 01:21 pm (UTC)First. It can get better. I had one really good friend, once I got to third year. And we're still friends mostly because we're both very stubborn badgers. You've not met him, I've barely seen him the past few years, because it'd put him at risk. We owl a lot.
The rest of my yearmates, I just did not understand. They mostly left me out raher than being nasty, except for a bit fourth year with the Ravenclaw witches in my year that was - very bad. Alcor (my predecessor) after that, he taught me about how to see the patterns in how people interact, how to make sense of it, have it stop being so puzzling, and more something I had choices about.
And then once I left school, when I could find people who liked the things I did, and who weren't so pinned down by trying to do the right thing, the visible right thing, it got a lot easier. You've seen how Gilly and I are together, and you've seen me with other people. It's - it's always work for me, attention and effort, except with a very few people, but it's so much better than it was at school.
Even if I still get it very wrong a lot of the time, and I know people laugh at me, and assume things about me that are wrong and hurtful. And yes, even in the Order.
Including people, welcoming them, really doing it well, is the hardest thing in the world, I think.
I've been thinking a lot about bullying, here. About discipline in general. Because how do we go on, with students, when all of you spent years with people doing things that could be lethal? Were, sometimes. When Crucio was considered a perfectly reasonable punishment, or other, horribly abusive things. (And I'm not just thinking of Madam Pinkness, for all she was quite horrible that way.)
I don't have any answers. At all. Except that I know we have to do better, somehow. I keep feeling I failed so many people, so many times, and it'll take the rest of my life to begin to put any of it right.
And except to say that you still have time, to find the people who want to be around you, who find you interesting, are amused by your quirks and your poetry and your earnest adoration of statistics.
no subject
on 2015-08-04 03:57 pm (UTC)I wonder how Padma is.
As for finding people who find one interesting and appreciate one's abilities and interests and actually want to be around one, I am rather afraid of decreasing my store of such, once I broach a certain subject to Lavender, but there it is.
Speaking of, Madam Pince has found for me the run of Oxford Poetry issues from 1910-1921!
no subject
on 2015-08-04 05:08 pm (UTC)As to Padma, I don't know if you'd have heard, but she's being held somewhere safe. She doesn't have regular access to her journal, but she's safe. I haven't heard anything recently.
About Lavender, all I can say is that being honest generally works out best, even if it's also hardest. I never thought Raz would be interested in me, or that we'd enjoy each other's interests as much as we ended up doing.
People can sometimes surprise you, in the good ways, if you give them the chance. And if they don't, well, at least you know, and you aren't guessing.