Post by Orla Quirke on Jul 16, 2008 21:57:21 GMT -5
It was 11:00PM , and Orla, concealed in the much ignored or misused study rooms found just off the common room, was entertaining dangerous thoughts.
It was late, she reasoned. She deserved a retreat from her studies. Her Transfiguration essay was done; the accompanying practice had yielded the usual excellent results, even if the pumpkin juice did have a slightly metallic taste at the end. Merlin knew a little off-taste was mild compared to what had already happened to the poor goblet.
Aside from some reading for Potions she really didn’t need to have done until Tuesday, she had no schoolwork left to distract her from her less rational thoughts. She fingered the navy ribbon in her robe pocket, and mused on the implications it and the cargo it had previously been attached to had on her relationship with a certain other student who was by now, she knew, dead asleep.
The ribbon had once been tied around a certain letter; The letter had been safely in the clutches of a rather large and unwieldy great horned owl; The owl had managed the better part of a few hundred kilometers through winds and rain when, only a few hundred meters from the end of his journey at the owlery, he was randomly and inexplicably hit full on with a stray quaffle from a game of pick-up quidditch. He had immediately dropped the letter he was carrying and careered off towards the Forbidden Forest for a moment in confusion. By the time he regained his senses, the letter was all but forgotten, and he flew off towards the owlery for some much needed food and rest for his tired wings.
Orla had been in somewhat of a cross mood. The overcast February Saturday should have been spent inside with a mug of spiced cider and some tricky Arithmancy puzzles, but fate did not seem to want her to get her way. It had started on Thursday, when she discovered that her Potions partner was suffering from one of the few ailments not so easily magicked away- the common cold. Not long after she made this discovery, the entire class found out as her partner sneezed into the cauldron at precisely the wrong moment, and the mixture went supernova. The entire classroom and it’s contents were coated in a rapidly hardening sludge that smelled eerily like a mixture between muggle cologne, cucumber and watercress sandwiches, and sulfur.
The cauldron gunk solidified in seconds. The entire class was rendered immobile for nearly half an hour until an exceedingly brave first year who had come to ask the professor a question popped his head in, saw all the brown-ish statues, and thought something might be amiss. By the time everyone was freed and the mess was cleared, lunch was halfway over and the class simply wanted to pretend as if Potions had never existed except in their particularly nasty nightmares. They all made arrangements to make up the class that Saturday, and since Orla was nominally involved in the accident, perhaps she would be able to trek out to the lake and scoop up some of the algae from the lake needed for the fourth step?
Thus, on a gloomy and frigid Saturday, it so happened that the only people about on the grounds were the zooming, oblivious, and no doubt slightly insane Quidditch players, the unfortunate owl and Orla. By some twist of fate, they converged very closely upon each other at precisely the right moment, when the quaffle whacked, the bird dropped, the wind carried, and the beribboned letter landed only a meter in front of Orla. She had blinked, read the name and address written in navy ink to match the satin tie around the envelope, and the corners of her mouth upturned the slightest bit.
Perhaps it would be an interesting day after all.
Orla managed to slog through the rest of Saturday and even took time that Sunday to socialize and sneak in a little mindless fiction reading that afternoon. Now with her studies finished, however, she had no excuse. She felt a mix of emotions as she pulled the letter from her inner breast pocket. Her mother’s handwriting on it was unmistakable, and the navy ink and ribbon were definitely her calling card. And addressed to a Gryffindor, especially a loud, bright, fluffy one? Something strange was clearly going on here. Very odd indeed.
The girl in question was not a total stranger to Orla. Their mothers had been best friends during their school years, taking in the fact that they were long-lost cousins with little surprise. The old pureblood families were all terribly interconnected, and it was quite a feat to avoid marrying a cousin closer than fourth, once or twice removed. Their mothers, blond and tall and lovely, certainly looked alike, while Orla and the Gryff each looked much more like their fathers. Orla had recognized her on the train to school her first year, remembered from far-off play dates while their mothers chatted over tea. While they were very close as five year-olds, the same bond had never taken hold at Hogwarts. For all Orla knew, the last time this girl and her mother had talked was ten years ago, before her hiatus to America to appease her paranoid mother’s fear of the growing wizarding conflict. So why on earth were they corresponding?
Wand out, Orla let curiosity win over the fear of the unknown contents, and began murmuring the spells her mother had taught her to check for hexes, jinxes, curses and other trip spells that could be applied to a letter, to make sure it wasn’t booby trapped should anyone other than its intended recipient open it. After disarming a few simple ones, she carefully transfigured the wax seal into a button and pulled the letter from the envelope.
On the creamy parchment, in the elegant navy script Orla was never patient enough to develop, the heading, and a few pleasantries were inscribed before anything really relevant and interesting was written. Orla skimmed until she hit something pause worthy.
Yes, it was a… strange time back then. A different time, different circumstances, clearer now in hindsight, but even then, clearer than things are now. It feels like there is so little that’s right or wrong, that there’s no evil to really fear, nor no good to respect. There’s so little that isn’t suspect in some way, nothing that doesn’t help out some. But then, there was fear and little else. It was woven through life, obviously as a piece of twine in a cashmere sweater. Even if you stood very still, didn’t move a muscle, you could feel it anywhere it touched. The years your mother and I were at school, the number of engaged couples were record-setting. They couldn’t believe in a long, drawn out future; they could only hope to get a life started soon enough.
I think that must have been what drew us to the brothers… They were heroic, and so dashing. We knew it was the most dangerous thing we could do at the time, short of joining ourselves, but what was a little danger piled on a ski slope of fear? We lived. It was all we could do.
The rest was more current, questions of her mother, family, Hogwarts, even a prod to get her to talk to Orla. The Gryff had been smiling at her in the halls recently, and know Orla knew why.
The content puzzled and worried Orla. She knew that growing up during the dark times of Voldemort had influenced her worrying about her daughters. She could feel her mother’s worries about interception in the letter- Few names, no solid opinions of the present, a simile, a statistic and a description of the time that could have been found in any history of the period. No real information to chew over, just the mystery of the brothers. She had an idea of who the brothers might be, but refused to entertain it, regarding it as something utterly against her mother’s character and background.
No more insights could be gained that night. It was late, and Orla really ought to be getting to bed. She refolded the letter, turned the mother-of-pearl button back into the family seal, and debated whether to give the letter to its owner the next morning or not. She stashed it in her bag and decided that, tired as she was, she couldn’t form a proper objective opinion and would cross that bridge as she came to it. Pulling her bag’s strap onto her shoulder, she turned to begin the climb up the staircase to the bedrooms, her mind whirling with memories she knew her mother must have thought long dead.
***
Monday, the second of March, Orla had a lovely block of time after Transfiguration and before lunch that was perfect to spend at the library. A little over an hour for concentrated studying and working up an appetite, it was a time she always enjoyed by herself, and welcomed no distractions from her work. When she saw a particular girl walking a little aimlessly through the hall halfway to the Library, she grimaced inwardly, and smiled outwardly. Reconnaissance was never as convenient as she’d hoped it would be. When she smiled back, Orla added a greeting.
“Hey, how are you?” She queried with a smile., waiting for the customary “Fine and how are you?”
“I saw you at the Valentine dance with Connor Manning. You make quite the pair, huh?” Orla playfully dug.
It was late, she reasoned. She deserved a retreat from her studies. Her Transfiguration essay was done; the accompanying practice had yielded the usual excellent results, even if the pumpkin juice did have a slightly metallic taste at the end. Merlin knew a little off-taste was mild compared to what had already happened to the poor goblet.
Aside from some reading for Potions she really didn’t need to have done until Tuesday, she had no schoolwork left to distract her from her less rational thoughts. She fingered the navy ribbon in her robe pocket, and mused on the implications it and the cargo it had previously been attached to had on her relationship with a certain other student who was by now, she knew, dead asleep.
The ribbon had once been tied around a certain letter; The letter had been safely in the clutches of a rather large and unwieldy great horned owl; The owl had managed the better part of a few hundred kilometers through winds and rain when, only a few hundred meters from the end of his journey at the owlery, he was randomly and inexplicably hit full on with a stray quaffle from a game of pick-up quidditch. He had immediately dropped the letter he was carrying and careered off towards the Forbidden Forest for a moment in confusion. By the time he regained his senses, the letter was all but forgotten, and he flew off towards the owlery for some much needed food and rest for his tired wings.
Orla had been in somewhat of a cross mood. The overcast February Saturday should have been spent inside with a mug of spiced cider and some tricky Arithmancy puzzles, but fate did not seem to want her to get her way. It had started on Thursday, when she discovered that her Potions partner was suffering from one of the few ailments not so easily magicked away- the common cold. Not long after she made this discovery, the entire class found out as her partner sneezed into the cauldron at precisely the wrong moment, and the mixture went supernova. The entire classroom and it’s contents were coated in a rapidly hardening sludge that smelled eerily like a mixture between muggle cologne, cucumber and watercress sandwiches, and sulfur.
The cauldron gunk solidified in seconds. The entire class was rendered immobile for nearly half an hour until an exceedingly brave first year who had come to ask the professor a question popped his head in, saw all the brown-ish statues, and thought something might be amiss. By the time everyone was freed and the mess was cleared, lunch was halfway over and the class simply wanted to pretend as if Potions had never existed except in their particularly nasty nightmares. They all made arrangements to make up the class that Saturday, and since Orla was nominally involved in the accident, perhaps she would be able to trek out to the lake and scoop up some of the algae from the lake needed for the fourth step?
Thus, on a gloomy and frigid Saturday, it so happened that the only people about on the grounds were the zooming, oblivious, and no doubt slightly insane Quidditch players, the unfortunate owl and Orla. By some twist of fate, they converged very closely upon each other at precisely the right moment, when the quaffle whacked, the bird dropped, the wind carried, and the beribboned letter landed only a meter in front of Orla. She had blinked, read the name and address written in navy ink to match the satin tie around the envelope, and the corners of her mouth upturned the slightest bit.
Perhaps it would be an interesting day after all.
Orla managed to slog through the rest of Saturday and even took time that Sunday to socialize and sneak in a little mindless fiction reading that afternoon. Now with her studies finished, however, she had no excuse. She felt a mix of emotions as she pulled the letter from her inner breast pocket. Her mother’s handwriting on it was unmistakable, and the navy ink and ribbon were definitely her calling card. And addressed to a Gryffindor, especially a loud, bright, fluffy one? Something strange was clearly going on here. Very odd indeed.
The girl in question was not a total stranger to Orla. Their mothers had been best friends during their school years, taking in the fact that they were long-lost cousins with little surprise. The old pureblood families were all terribly interconnected, and it was quite a feat to avoid marrying a cousin closer than fourth, once or twice removed. Their mothers, blond and tall and lovely, certainly looked alike, while Orla and the Gryff each looked much more like their fathers. Orla had recognized her on the train to school her first year, remembered from far-off play dates while their mothers chatted over tea. While they were very close as five year-olds, the same bond had never taken hold at Hogwarts. For all Orla knew, the last time this girl and her mother had talked was ten years ago, before her hiatus to America to appease her paranoid mother’s fear of the growing wizarding conflict. So why on earth were they corresponding?
Wand out, Orla let curiosity win over the fear of the unknown contents, and began murmuring the spells her mother had taught her to check for hexes, jinxes, curses and other trip spells that could be applied to a letter, to make sure it wasn’t booby trapped should anyone other than its intended recipient open it. After disarming a few simple ones, she carefully transfigured the wax seal into a button and pulled the letter from the envelope.
On the creamy parchment, in the elegant navy script Orla was never patient enough to develop, the heading, and a few pleasantries were inscribed before anything really relevant and interesting was written. Orla skimmed until she hit something pause worthy.
Yes, it was a… strange time back then. A different time, different circumstances, clearer now in hindsight, but even then, clearer than things are now. It feels like there is so little that’s right or wrong, that there’s no evil to really fear, nor no good to respect. There’s so little that isn’t suspect in some way, nothing that doesn’t help out some. But then, there was fear and little else. It was woven through life, obviously as a piece of twine in a cashmere sweater. Even if you stood very still, didn’t move a muscle, you could feel it anywhere it touched. The years your mother and I were at school, the number of engaged couples were record-setting. They couldn’t believe in a long, drawn out future; they could only hope to get a life started soon enough.
I think that must have been what drew us to the brothers… They were heroic, and so dashing. We knew it was the most dangerous thing we could do at the time, short of joining ourselves, but what was a little danger piled on a ski slope of fear? We lived. It was all we could do.
The rest was more current, questions of her mother, family, Hogwarts, even a prod to get her to talk to Orla. The Gryff had been smiling at her in the halls recently, and know Orla knew why.
The content puzzled and worried Orla. She knew that growing up during the dark times of Voldemort had influenced her worrying about her daughters. She could feel her mother’s worries about interception in the letter- Few names, no solid opinions of the present, a simile, a statistic and a description of the time that could have been found in any history of the period. No real information to chew over, just the mystery of the brothers. She had an idea of who the brothers might be, but refused to entertain it, regarding it as something utterly against her mother’s character and background.
No more insights could be gained that night. It was late, and Orla really ought to be getting to bed. She refolded the letter, turned the mother-of-pearl button back into the family seal, and debated whether to give the letter to its owner the next morning or not. She stashed it in her bag and decided that, tired as she was, she couldn’t form a proper objective opinion and would cross that bridge as she came to it. Pulling her bag’s strap onto her shoulder, she turned to begin the climb up the staircase to the bedrooms, her mind whirling with memories she knew her mother must have thought long dead.
***
Monday, the second of March, Orla had a lovely block of time after Transfiguration and before lunch that was perfect to spend at the library. A little over an hour for concentrated studying and working up an appetite, it was a time she always enjoyed by herself, and welcomed no distractions from her work. When she saw a particular girl walking a little aimlessly through the hall halfway to the Library, she grimaced inwardly, and smiled outwardly. Reconnaissance was never as convenient as she’d hoped it would be. When she smiled back, Orla added a greeting.
“Hey, how are you?” She queried with a smile., waiting for the customary “Fine and how are you?”
“I saw you at the Valentine dance with Connor Manning. You make quite the pair, huh?” Orla playfully dug.
