| Monday 14 September 1942 |
[Jun. 24th, 2008|10:30 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  grieving | ] |
Lovers, old and new:
I am not sure whether my fond memories of Davy Longbottom are wrong, overly kind, or just that he and I have both changed. Well, we were at school, and it wasn't for very long even then. Whatever he was then, he's certainly a strange one now; I think he's been here, deeper than I have. I was here for the books and Matthew, I wouldn't have stayed for either one alone, I know that now. He was here for the people themselves, and he's lost the ability to go back and I haven't.
And of all the people to reveal this to... Joscelin, who thinks of himself and those like him and his best students as one of the primary reasons the divide between the worlds exists. And historically that's in fact correct, the Muggles were not ready for the Dashwood boy (from what I hear of him) and they still aren't. But one day they will be, and what then? Won't we need each other, in the same way we need the Malfoys and their like now, and they need us?
I can't have that discussion with him. I could have had it with Matt. If Matt had known anything about any of this.
Note to self: stop trying to mix up lovers with confidantes.
Additional note to self: if only I could stop.
I met some of my future students up at the school, several are very very promising. It was a great shame to miss both the Kyteler and Goldstein boys. Adele seems very bright as well, enough to make a class by herself in most years, but from what she told me of Hadrian's projects he is the one whose heart is really in it.
My girls are going to be completely ripped apart for a while: Miss Jeannot and Miss de Rais were both Ravenclaws. Somehow the House has eaten itself alive: currently they think it's the Slytherins doing it, but although we're hardly meant to share a dorm with them it's not that. Something else happened, neglect I suppose.
Goodbye grandfather. |
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| Tuesday 8 September 1942 |
[Aug. 14th, 2007|02:43 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  shocked | ] |
Aside from everything else that's going on here, I'm unbelievably disappointed about what's happened to my House under its current leadership. This morning a Ravenclaw girl was found dead in the lake, an apparent suicide, and until she was found the main concern of most of the staff seems to have been to take points, despite what I'm told about the girl, which is that's she's both very vague in a way that sounds unstable (although to be fair, this is with hindsight) and her brother died in service only last month. Surely a search should have started much earlier than it apparently did. For that matter, there should have been staff intervention in the girl's state of mind much earlier, if only because of the death of the brother.
Goyle, in his very cryptic way, has not sounded very confident at all in the leadership of the school and after this it's impossible but to agree with him wholeheartedly. And when it comes to Ravenclaw in particular... well, it's not an easy House to guide, but at least one can usually make us see reason. Instead, it's become a mad house. It's probably best that I really can't talk about any of this with Joscelin, because goodness knows what or if (ye gods, I hope at least if) he thinks about it. I'd like to have faith in him but... well. The Joscelin I knew was a boy. The man I don't know, other than as a bedfellow. It's painful to think, but it's true.
I know of course that when I talk about the current leadership of Ravenclaw I'm talking about my grandfather, but even so, something needs to be done, for him as well as them. I think all the jokes about his never dropping dead anywhere but at his desk have addled people's minds. He's old, he's grieving, I'm not sure that his health is so good. He is not the perennial Professor Binns of everyone's youth. He's not fit to be Head of House, he's probably not fit to be teaching, and for his sake as well as the students something really ought to be done about it. If only I was going to be here beyond Friday. Dippet for one is hardly going to encourage timely retirement in anyone else! I will at least have a word to Goyle and any other of the staff he thinks can be trusted and see if there is anyone else who Grandfather might accept advice from, in addition to myself. |
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| Wednesday 2 September 1942 |
[Feb. 27th, 2007|12:10 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | sad | ] |
I finally got the work that the Dux Bellorum needed finished. It really oughtn't have taken so long; that curse is so feared that even legends of survival are few and far between. There's no excuse except the usual: everything is harder without Matthew. Even, or maybe especially, the things that he wasn't a part of, like my research. It's harder to care about doing anything, when there's no Matthew to come home to at the end of it. Not his cooking, not his stories, not his body. There's nothing left that smells of him. I still regret giving away all his clothes, but it had to be done, the war you know.
They say that time heals all pain, or at least they say that everyone else says it, but so far all it's done is to make it different. The first year was all raw sucking pain, pure loss. This second year, it seems, is more specifically about the loss of Matthew, the person. About evenings alone when they could have been with him. About jokes he would have made about that dreadful John Curtis at church making eyes at me now that I'm a widow. Wondering how his story of the blind slave girl ends. Imagining his delight at all the young girls in trousers, going off to work in the factories. But he is not here, there are no jokes, no stories, no delight. Just my work. Before I met him I would have thought that was enough, but it isn't.
I sometimes wonder if I should give it all up here. Join the ATS, learn to drive, track planes. Perhaps by the end of the war they might be desperate enough to allow the women to fight. But no. I am beginning to think that what I really want to do is go home. I don't know though; I really thought this was my place. And now it seems that it was only my place because it was where Matthew lived. |
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| 27 August 1942 |
[Jul. 14th, 2006|11:23 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  working | ] |
The Magister sent me another owl today. "Have you come across any unusual properties of magickal lightning relative to normal storms? Are there any accounts, even mediaeval ones, relating the story of someone who survived?"
I haven't found any yet, but it's a fascinating question.
He never asks the easy questions. My students sometimes fall back on asking them lately...the few students that haven't been drafted into this damned war. |
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[Oct. 12th, 2005|01:55 pm] |
All posts in this journal prior to this one were part of the old game, ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif) lightningwar v.1.0 and have been locked. No post prior to this one is part of lightning_war v. 2.0. |
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embarrassed