I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

I’m in New London for two days of YPL meetings. It’s hard to be away from Hogwarts - and a long list of things that need attention - but a change in routine is also surprisingly pleasant.

I’ve never been a morning person, and apparating over distance first thing is worse, so I made sure to get here in plenty of time for a walk to clear my head before we started our meetings this morning. But that’s given me time to be delighted by the shop windows, particularly this year’s fashion for sparkling light charms - so delicate - and the wider color palette.

I saw a gorgeous window in silvers and blues and purples, as well as many with more classic greens, reds, and golds. And of course, the charmed displays are wonderful: my favorite was several windows of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade in winter with a cunningly done Quidditch match in progress. And there’s the smell of pine in the air, and the clusters of little stalls, and banners snapping in the breeze... And of course, a pleasant little pastry at one of the nearby cafes to put me in the best possible mood before we started this morning.

I’m looking forward to being able to make a great deal of progress with the YPL plans for this spring and summer, but also a few chances to relax. I’m eagerly anticipating a performance tonight and then there’s dinner with my parents tomorrow, and a few other errands and tasks to finish getting ready for the holidays.

Poppy, a few quick things.

First, I think we've actually got a more or less final schedule for December 3rd. I plan to drop a copy off for you when I get a chance. It looks like there will be some interesting discussions, and some particularly useful material for the CCF group. (I'm also hopeful Raz will take Healer Stint off for a friendly drink somewhere in the midst of the afternoon, and make your life easier. And mine.)

Also, quick question for you, if you have a minute - have you had any odd encounters with Milland? Nothing urgent, but if you have time on Monday, tea perhaps, and a chat? (I'm sure you're busy today with preparations we all hope you won't need for tomorrow...)

First YPL event
As you all know, our first YPL event of the year will be on October 22nd, and we will welcome both our foreign guests with an orienteering scavenger hunt of the Hogwarts buildings and grounds that will test your navigation skills, charms, puzzle solving abilities, and more. There will be small prizes for the winning team on each path (there are four), and small tokens for everyone who makes a sincere attempt to complete the course.

I want to first thank Mr Ronald Weasley and Miss Katrina Bundy for a proposal that has been most helpful in planning this event - well done, and good initiative!

Everyone else is welcome to sign up to participate, and should expect to form groups of 3-5 students, including our foreign guests in your groups. You might want to think now about how to arrange that.

For those who participate, all the puzzles and challenges of the course can be solved with magic no more complicated than our students learn at the end of 3rd year. However, in many cases, multiple solutions are possible, and any method that does not damage other students, property, or beings is permitted. CCF and YPL counsellors will be available if you have any concerns.

CCF members and YPL counsellors
You will be needed to help staff the various positions, and of course set up elements of the hunt in advance.

Please sign up on my office door for a prep shift (either Friday night, the 21st, or Saturday, the 22nd), and plan to be available from 2pm to 5pm for the actual event. (A special tea will follow for participants). I may also be adding one more addition to your Saturday morning (a pleasant one, if the scheduling works out) so plan your study time accordingly.

Other notes
Tuesday evening class: I will be in New London for last minute planning with the YPL committee on Tuesday afternoon, and it is likely the meeting will stretch into the evening. Therefore, I am cancelling Tuesday observing classes, but have asked a couple of my NEWT students to be available from full dark until curfew if you need to get caught up on any assignments.

I will also not be available for questions during that time, obviously, so if you have questions for assignments due Wednesday, ask them by Monday.

Poppy: I'd love a chance to consult with you about a few specific considerations. Are you free tomorrow afternoon, or perhaps Monday afternoon? If not, can we chat in private message here?

I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who's worked hard to make the CCF trials this week work as smoothly as they have.

Of course, my thanks must begin with our Headmistress and other staff (including Madam Pomfrey, who's been kept quite busy this week) for rearranging plans and space on short notice, and likewise to the various examiners and Ministry staff who have assisted in testing. My thanks also go to our students, who've met the challenges of this week with remarkably good grace.

This testing has also given the opportunity for various Ministry departments to give a trial run to new methods of guiding people towards the roles in which they can best serve the Protectorate, and I believe the results of these trials will benefit all of us in years to come.

I know that parents may have some questions as students return home, about the decision-making process. While some material has been delivered by owl, I or the CCF programme coordinators (listed in the material sent home) are also available for additional questions.

(For myself: I'll be at Hogwarts for a day or two, and then am taking a quick few days to visit with family, before we dive into the summer YPL programme planning for the younger students. My journal is likely a better way to reach me than owl.)

I'm sure you're both terribly busy, so please ignore this until you've a moment to spare, but a few things that have come up.

I'm in the Hufflepuff common room - I relieved Pomona, so she could focus on poor Hannah and whatever else needs to be done - but the entire House is obviously extremely upset.

Whatever concrete information can be shared would be helpful - they've worked themselves up into quite a fit of fear and speculation (the ones who aren't just in tears). Pomona did tell me the horrible details of what happened, but until I know what's to be shared with students, I won't say anything, of course.

Poppy -

More than a few of them are likely to have trouble sleeping. I know you've opinions about the use of Dreamless Sleep potion, but is there something else that might, well, soften the edges a little? Some of them - especially the second and third years - are so worked up.

If an extra pair of hands would be helpful to you, I think I've also done as much here as I can directly, though of course I'm glad to stay here as long as it's useful. The prefects are helping wonderfully, as much as they can.

And... is there anything I can do for Raz? Or any news you can share?

- A.S.

The timing this year feels quite odd to me - it feels like it's been years since I've had this much time between classes ending and going off to my family for a few days for Christmas. I've made good use of it this year, though - wrapped up the last of my shopping in the last two days, along with a number of other tasks in New London.

(Mrs Malfoy - thank you again for making the time in what I know is an incredibly busy week for you. As always, please let me know if there's any additional information that would be helpful to you.)

I've distributed several of the presents for folks here, and wrapped most of the ones that are coming back for the family celebrations. (Pomona - I haven't managed to catch you anywhere today, it seems! If I don't find you tonight, I'll leave it by your door. It doesn't need tending.)

And for today and tomorrow, I've got evening plans with a telescope, no need to reset it for classes, and a number of things I'm looking forward to checking out. (One of my finds in New London was an older title comparing the varying ways to measure and predict various astronomical events. While I'm quite familiar with most of the methods, there are a couple of variations discussed (some Mesopotamian, some Greek) that I've not seen put that way before, and I'm looking forward to testing them out.

Mum -

Nashira's still busy with orders I need for materials before students arrive, so a note this way seems faster.

Sorry again for not managing to visit: I know I said I'd try, but the YPL debriefing took forever and a day. (Well, till yesterday). And now I'm up to my neck in plans for next year, plus that promise to help Rabastan Lestrange settle in. (I certainly don't mind, but it is one more thing on my list. Plus there's that wanting to be helpful part, and yet not wanting to be overeager or anything like that.)

Speaking of: did you get a chance to ask Orion about our new addition? Orion keeps saying he's too busy with that secretive Ministry project to write, and he's a lousy correspondent anyway. If you do get him to come for dinner, please ask for me if there's anything I should know about, since they were the same year. I'd hate to put my foot wrong with some old upset, especially given his (and his family's) current influence. Storm was no help whatsoever, but he was enough younger that it didn't surprise me. (And, well, Storm. Barely notices his own feet until he trips over them.)

Everyone seems pleased enough with the YPL work, and there's talk of adding another person to the planning staff next year - since after all, we'd be up to three separate years to plan for, and only so many weeks when events are really feasible. If you know anyone who's free in the summer for at least three or four weeks, and is interested, do pass on the name, and I'll send it along. (They are, of course, doing very careful screening: have I mentioned again how glad I am you invested all that time in tracing all the family lines back? Made it so much easier when they were interviewing me.)

Dai sent me a very brief owl earlier this week: he still hasn't found a new job, and he's still refusing to let me help him out. I keep telling him it's not like I've got much in the way of expenses - and the extra YPL salary as well - but he keeps refusing. If you do hear of anyone looking for someone with good detail skills, I'm sure he'd be grateful of a referral. It's not like he chose his parents, or to get so sick and have his miser of a boss fire him. The good news is that he really is mostly recovered: still some weakness, and he really shouldn't have a job that requires lifting or lots of walking, but other than that, he's almost back to where he was.

My friend Poppy's gotten some new interesting possible options transfigured foods in her travels - do take a look at her recent journal about it. I know you think that the real foods are best, but honestly, you'd lose it if you had to eat just what we could grow in Scotland in the winter, even with the greenhouses. And feeding students is hard enough as it is. (Though she was grateful for your recipes: if someone's recovering from something, obviously, it's a bit different than feeding the whole horde.)

If things get sorted a bit sooner than I think they will, I'll see about coming for a day or two before term starts, but no promises. Now, I really should go off and poke around the DADA room to make that list.

A.

Goodness - I suddenly realised it had been an age since I'd written here, though not because I've been idle.

Of course, students all know about the upcoming schedule for YPL meetings. (And I must say, I'm quite looking forward to today's meeting myself: our presenters are quite enthusiastic and promise a number of fascinating stories and examples for us.)

The weather, however, is what has been taking much of my time. Every winter I've been here, there's been a certain amount of frustration dealing with observation time, but this fall's weather has been worse, and worse earlier, than other years. Obviously, this puts a huge crimp in my teaching plans, so I've been devoting most of my time to seeing if I can arrange an alternative.

In specific, I've been experimenting with what it would take to project a map of the sky onto an appropriate surface (ideally, a light-colored curved roof, based on my experiments so far). There's quite a lot of incentive, as besides solving the weather issue, it might allow us to examine views of the stars that we cannot see here - either due to the time, or due to our location.

Regrettably, the solutions I've found so far require quite a lot of attention to maintain, as well as requiring the person creating the image to have an extremely detailed knowledge of what should be present, which makes them incompatible with teaching. (Though, if I can work out a few details, it's possible that one of the seventh years might, for example, hold a projection for our first or second years while I discuss it.)

Madam Pince has been most helpful, and I've been asking a few questions of others working in similar areas - but until then, I'm afraid we're left with our wall maps and the occasional patch of starlight when it falls on a class observation day.

Poppy - sorry to neglect our tea recently. Are you free on Monday? If so, I think I'm at an impasse with the current round of research, and won't get new sources to explore for at least a week.

I'm still at Hogwarts for the moment, wrapping up some loose ends. I'm partway through grading the last assignments my OWLs and NEWTs students did before break began (and will be sending a few off to students who wanted to study over break, to boot.)

I'm alternating that with reviewing some information about a project I've been recommended to participate in. No details I can share yet, but the more I read it, the more I think it's a very interesting idea - and that I have a fair bit to offer, perhaps. I took a good chunk of time this morning to go through the notes available to me point by point, and to note down some questions (scale, timeframe, practical things, mostly) to send off by Owl. I'm most of the way done, but paused for a late dinner first.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'm off for the weekend. A pleasant enough walk to Hogsmeade (at least if the rain doesn't reappear...) and then apparating back to Mum and Dad's for the weekend. They want to see me, and I did promise my eldest niece I'd take her on a trip to Diagon Alley to buy a birthday present sometime around now.

I expect to be back at Hogwarts by Tuesday at the latest, as I still have quite a lot of preparation to work through to wrap things up before exams. There are still some changes in the OWL and NEWT standards I want to make sure I'm covering in enough detail, and I'm not sure my current star charts and preparation questions emphasise it enough.

Poppy - any chance of scheduling our Monday afternoon chat for later in the week? And since we've no students, if you'd be free after dark and up for a climb, I'd gladly show you things through the larger telescope.

Hogwarts does rather seem to be a font of newsworthy commentary today.

As those reading other journals might have figured out, we spent the afternoon out in the Forbidden Forest. I'd never seen a unicorn hunt before - well, so few have, as they're so rarely done - and did have a decent enough view from one of the rows of seats.

More later, I suspect - but right now, I promised to go help herd the Hufflepuffs and keep them in good order, as several of my colleagues have other preparations for the feast tonight on their hands right now. There's a lot of buzzing around and all sorts of excitement among the students, but I'm sure they'll all be on their best behaviour with such distinguished guests.