A few upcoming reminders

[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.

Comments

Private message to Poppy Pomfrey

[alt_sinistra]

Poppy -

I’ve had another note from the Wizarding Repopulation Office, urging me to come in - do you think we’d have time to go through their intake form together before next Tuesday? (I can’t schedule them the week after, and I’m afraid if I put if off too much longer, they’ll take to bothering Raz too. No reason to give them the excuse. Plus, I start running into other necessary appointments and errands for the holidays.)

Raz and I are gone Saturday into Sunday, but I could come by and see you Friday between 3 and supper again. Or Monday, same time.

The form’s a rather ghastly 15 pages, and I’d love your help being as unhelpful with details as I can manage. Looking through, I think I've got everything I need to answer it.

On a mostly more cheerful note, I’d like to talk through more of what Irma found, too - still thinking about bits of it. Curious, really, the history of married couples in the castle. (And that long string of women leaving once they got married. Almost makes me understand why people assume I will.)

Also curious how few actually raised children here, though clearly it’s possible - and maybe even desireable, given that couple in the 18th century. Did she mention if she’d tracked down information on any of the odder rumours? I’ve not had a chance to catch up with her in private this week. I’ve a few questions for Tosha about the theory, but we didn’t get to that last week: it’s on my list for this Friday.

Won't be at lunch - I'm trying to sort through my mail and some other necessary things - but will be at supper.

Re: Private message to Poppy Pomfrey

[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

[alt_sinistra]

How very curious. (And pardon if I get distracted: I've just set the first years to creating scale models of the planets and moving things around. Far more for them to see some of the difficulties in how we lay these things out, but they do have questions.)

There's - let me break this down. We know Helga had at least one child: family tradition (and varied documents) are very clear on her passing things down to descendants. Slytherin, as well, yes? And there's something about Rowena's daughter attending school, though if I remember right, Dr Deller looked for details for his book a few years ago and didn't have much luck finding out more about her. But you're right, it's most curious, given that, that there's no mention of spouses I can think of, for any of them.

You're quite right, too, that we may be fussing for no particular reason. You know my - well, it's whimsical, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong - thing about the castle helping people it likes? I've certainly seen no reason to think it dislikes my being with Raz, and more than a couple of hints that it approves. If I am not attributing more to a partially sentient structure than I ought.

I admit, I'm almost more intrigued by some of the odder rumours Irma dug up. That one from the 15th century, about that Charms professor and the young woman whose father was so furious, and the professor claiming that some of the magics flat-out forbade bound couples to live there. It makes a lovely ballad, but what a miserable outcome, the poor woman.

Logically, the later examples seem to imply that isn't true, but I suppose we can't say that for sure without knowing what binding charms they used. I keep finding comments about the differences between the blood charms and the non-blood charms, much as I still think I really want the former. I suppose that's another line for future research (and I'll ask Tosha about it tomorrow, too, now I've got a slightly better grasp on the theory and correct terms.)

And all those stories about mistresses and lovers living outside the walls in Hogsmeade, and which of the cottages were traditionally used for the purpose, and so on. Again, makes an interesting story, but I'd not want to live it.

Did Irma say if she'd had any luck tracking down some of the notes our family documents refer to? If she can't lay hands on them, I can ask Chimera. Or see about getting Mum to call on family connections with the Smiths, though that might be a little tedious.

Re: Private message to Poppy Pomfrey

[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 Poppy Pomfrey

[alt_sinistra]

I'm rather puzzled, too. Rather an elite company, that, when you come down to it.

And you're quite right on the Founders. Now I think about it, there's very little comment on any of their personal lives. Their connections with the other Founders, of course (there's a shelf or more of titles on the various combinations of friendships). Their professional lives. Their magics.

As to Deller's book, I have a copy - from when he spoke to the YPL, a few years ago. It's not bad, though there are places, as with that, where one wishes he'd turned his focus a little more intently to parts of his research. He's quite good on the chronology, and spends near half the book on Salazar's growing disapproval and departure "holding tightly to his principles", which gives you an idea of the rest of his thesis.

(On your other reading: I've not started the Wright yet, but plan to bring it with me this weekend. And I'm near done with the Hypatia. I'd no idea you were reading it too, but I'm quite loving it, and the details on her teaching methods are, of course, a particular interest. I've dipped my nose into Who Rules Florence Must Be Strong, which looks fascinating, but I want something lighter before I dive into it. Wright first.)

That chastity charm bit sounds.. well. I'll have to ask Irma for the details on that one. I've heard, from time to time, of parents trying such things, and it might be nice to have evidence of why it's a poor idea. You're right it'd make a fascinating novel (and I don't think I've seen anything quite like it.)

I admit I'm still hoping that she'll dig out more details about the Bythseas, that couple who were here in the 1700s. (50 years teaching together!) Whatever they did seemed to work right, but it's not a family name I recognise at all, which - well, maybe that's something to put both my Auntie Gera and Chimera onto, since Gera does family history work, and Chimera does near any other topic.