alt_sinistra: (intent)
[personal profile] alt_sinistra
2nd years: I’m seeing some persistent difficulties and confusions in the chartwork the Gryffindors and Slytherins turned in on Monday. Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws: please do the best you can with the assignment due Friday, but come to the midnight session Thursday night prepared to discuss your questions and turn your work in (since there’s no real time for you to any more work on it before our lecture Friday morning.)

I won’t count this assignment toward your end of term marks as long as you make a good faith effort at it. We’ll sort the confusion out and try again with the next one.

Meteors: The Orionids peak this Saturday for those who need to do observing. I’ll have the tower open Thursday evening until midnight class, Sunday evening until curfew and Monday evening until midnight class. If you’d like to be on the permission lists to be out after curfew, please let me know which day as soon as possible.

I have other commitments between supper and class on Friday night, and on Saturday, but several of my 7th years have kindly offered to open up the top of the tower until curfew if the weather’s clear. They’ll post a note in the usual places if it isn’t.

One schedule change: Due to the quarterly Astronomy guild meeting, I will not have office hours on Monday, the 29th. I will instead be available Tuesday afternoon (the 30th) from 1-3, and again from 7-9.

6th, and 7th years: Related to the above, this meeting is an excellent time for me to start talking to other astronomers about summer internships and upcoming positions. If you’re potentially interested, do talk to me by the 28th so I’m up to date on your likely availability and interests, and can remind myself of your other NEWT subjects.

Re: Private message to Poppy Pomfrey

Date: 2012-10-18 04:56 pm (UTC)
alt_poppy: (poppy)
From: [personal profile] alt_poppy
Friday afternoon would be fine. I look forward to the challenge of circumventing that form. Honestly. You hardly need bureaucratic intrusions on top of the general nosiness of extended families, friends, colleagues, and the vulture press masquerading as the 'the public interest'.

Irma popped in here last evening--which is only one of the reasons I'm writing you this morning instead of last night, but that's a wholly other tale--and we got to talking over the marital mysteries of the castle (as you do). She's been reading further in the early correspondence archives, attempting to follow up that line in GG's letter to SS agreeing something about their instructions to the stone cutters and the rune carver. She's surer than ever there was an explicit bias against marriage woven in at the foundations. One wonders whether they conferred with RR and HH on this point or whether this particular business was a gentlewizards' agreement worked without the women's input. Irma hasn't yet found anything in HH's archive to document her contributions to the warding, but she says she has no doubt that House tradition is correct on that point.

In any case, Irma's found another three or four references in SS's or GG's hand, none of them robustly explicit, however, and she's not turned up anything like a complete description of the foundational magic. I suspect she's quite right that it was never committed to parchment. And, of course, we know that the castle's magic has been modified over the years--sometimes deliberately rewoven or overwritten, and sometimes merely jiggered, bolloxed, or patched.

We hit on an hypothesis last night that married couples cohabiting here may produce something like an allergic reaction in the castle's blanket magic.

You'll understand how that metaphor occurred to us, of course, and it may or may not be a helpful way of framing an explanation (or for anticipating what you may experience once you and Rabastan have changed your status).

And, honestly, it may be that we're fussing for no reason and that there will be no particular difficulty with your settling in here after you marry. After all, we saw for ourselves that there were periods when whole families lived in for years, so I should like to think that this old pile of stones is spun round with magic flexible enough to accommodate such things.

Re: Private message to Poppy Pomfrey

Date: 2012-10-18 06:28 pm (UTC)
alt_poppy: (considering)
From: [personal profile] alt_poppy
I confess I'm still confounded that there are so few married couples who did live in for any length of time. Fewer than thirty, she thinks? In all this time?

And the founders are not among those. I suppose they were well in age by the time they set about this project. All had staked their claims professionally and established their reputations. Slytherin and Gryffindor, certainly, and Helga Hufflepuff, as well. But you're right, the stories are that Rowena Ravenclaw brought up her daughter here. And that, as you say, is quite the point: none of them had a spouse whose name comes trippingly to the tongue. Salazar and Sophonisba, it is not. Nor Godric and Griselle. Nor... Hm.

I've not read Deller's book. I suppose I ought, but to be frank, it's not something I've been yearning to do. When I finish this long study of Hypatia, perhaps. Though by then, I'll want nothing more challenging than the next of those Magdalena Wright mysteries.

Entertaining that this research of ours is turning up such a lot of titillating stories. Irma had another last evening--about a student, a young witch, who allowed herself to be seduced by a roguish older lad only to learn that her family had placed her under a surreptitious chastity charm that exceeded its brief by quite a severe degree.

The families involved and the Headmaster all concluded it was a matter of the charm's having been amplified by some aspect of the castle's magic, but the upshot was the unfortunate young people found themselves joined by a life bond so restrictive they could not ever be parted by so much as a foot of space. Of course, they were forced to leave school since there was no provision for students to live under such conditions, and no one wished to trip the charm by forcing them to attend their separate lessons or sleep in separate dormitories or... well, the requirements of the spell were rather more compromising than that and were quite beyond the scope of the school's accommodations.

I suppose someone probably has written a novel with that pretext, or I'd be tempted myself.

Oh. No, Irma didn't mention one way or the other about her research into your family's traditional rites. I feel certain she'd have said if her search had come to naught, so perhaps she's still tracking those questions. I'll ask if I see her later, but I shouldn't think it worth pestering your family yet. You will need to call on them for so many other favours in the months ahead.

Re: Private message to Cedric Diggory

Date: 2012-10-17 05:30 pm (UTC)
alt_cedric: Cedric in black and yellow (Default)
From: [personal profile] alt_cedric
I'm fine. Breakups are hard and you know that rumours about me these days can take a particularly unkind turn easily. However, I really am fine, I'll get over it.

Glad to hear about the money/supplies. I'll be talking with a couple partners soon, probably tonight.

I'll be using the tower for extra study time. I need to do some more work on my next Herbology essay and I think I've got all the books so I'll lug them up and just write when people don't need me.

Re: Private message to Cedric Diggory

Date: 2012-10-17 05:51 pm (UTC)
alt_cedric: Cedric in black and yellow (Default)
From: [personal profile] alt_cedric
I think that would be great if we could use one of those rooms. I'll be asking the potential partners later today. If they say yes I'll let you know tonight or tomorrow.

I don't think we'll be doing anything that would need protective containment wards. Unless we want to keep the cloth warded against outside influences before we finish it, but that's easy enough to do with temporary wards.

Thanks for the offer of space and the tea against the cold!

Re: Private message to Cedric Diggory

Date: 2012-10-18 12:18 pm (UTC)
alt_cedric: Cedric in black and yellow (Default)
From: [personal profile] alt_cedric
I invited Fred and George Weasley. Harry and I have been talking and we think it would be good for the two of us to be seen publicly working together in a friendly fashion. As we discussed plans, both Lee Jordan and Pansy Parkinson were added into the group. More than I had been planning on but it should be an interesting group to work with.

Harry didn't say but I guess his mudblood should also be included.

Thank you again for the room and bringing it to the staff.

Profile

alt_sinistra: black and white image of woman with short blond hair looking out of the image. (Default)
Aurora Sinistra

September 2015

S M T W T F S
   12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930   

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 8th, 2025 06:30 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios