#Irma Update

[bellwood-qudditch]

Whose y’all’s faceclaim for some of the family members of the noble and most ancient house of black.

[yellowhollyhock]

plots in archie so far are drawn from 1987 but the comic format has drawn my attention to parallels I never noticed in the show.....

the incompetent co-workers

and the impossible to please boss

brings more attention to April and Shredder as each other's foils; the turtles' only friend and their greatest enemy

[deadlyfantasia]

exhausted yawn

[briochevegana]

A list of my kins

Vanilla (sugar sugar rune)

Usagi (sailor moon)

Irma (w.i.t.c.h)

Aimee (sex education)

Ty Lee (ATLA)

Violet Parr (the incredibles)

Emily (skins)

Raven (teen titans)

If Ichigo and Lettuce (tokyo mew mew) mixed into one person

[april-n-irma-my2favedudettes]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tesla's Dieselgate

Elon Musk lies a lot. He lies about being a “utopian socialist.” He lies about being a “free speech absolutist.” He lies about which companies he founded:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2 He lies about being the “chief engineer” of those companies:

https://www.quora.com/Was-Elon-Musk-the-actual-engineer-behind-SpaceX-and-Tesla

He lies about really stupid stuff, like claiming that comsats that share the same spectrum will deliver steady broadband speeds as they add more users who each get a narrower slice of that spectrum:

https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband

The fundamental laws of physics don’t care about this bullshit, but people do. The comsat lie convinced a bunch of people that pulling fiber to all our homes is literally impossible — as though the electrical and phone lines that come to our homes now were installed by an ancient, lost civilization. Pulling new cabling isn’t a mysterious art, like embalming pharaohs. We do it all the time. One of the poorest places in America installed universal fiber with a mule named “Ole Bub”:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Previous tech barons had “reality distortion fields,” but Musk just blithely contradicts himself and pretends he isn’t doing so, like a budget Steve Jobs. There’s an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk’s public lies:

https://elonmusk.today/

But while Musk lacks the charm of earlier Silicon Valley grifters, he’s much better than they ever were at running a long con. For years, he’s been promising “full self driving…next year.”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

He’s hasn’t delivered, but he keeps claiming he has, making Teslas some of the deadliest cars on the road:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn’t its cars, it’s Tesla’s business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

Once you start unpacking Tesla’s balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

But even with all those financial shenanigans, Tesla’s got an absurdly high valuation, soaring at times to 1600x its profitability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoover-calling/#intangibles

That valuation represents a bet on Tesla’s ability to extract ever-higher rents from its customers. Take Tesla’s batteries: you pay for the battery when you buy your car, but you don’t own that battery. You have to rent the right to use its full capacity, with Tesla reserving the right to reduce how far you go on a charge based on your willingness to pay:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/10/teslas-demon-haunted-cars-in-irmas-path-get-a-temporary-battery-life-boost/

That’s just one of the many rent-a-features that Tesla drivers have to shell out for. You don’t own your car at all: when you sell it as a used vehicle, Tesla strips out these features you paid for and makes the next driver pay again, reducing the value of your used car and transfering it to Tesla’s shareholders:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update

To maintain this rent-extraction racket, Tesla uses DRM that makes it a felony to alter your own car’s software without Tesla’s permission. This is the root of all autoenshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is technofeudalism. Whereas capitalists seek profits (income from selling things), feudalists seek rents (income from owning the things other people use). If Telsa were a capitalist enterprise, then entrepreneurs could enter the market and sell mods that let you unlock the functionality in your own car:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/11/1-in-3/#boost-50

But because Tesla is a feudal enterprise, capitalists must first secure permission from the fief, Elon Musk, who decides which companies are allowed to compete with him, and how.

Once a company owns the right to decide which software you can run, there’s no limit to the ways it can extract rent from you. Blocking you from changing your device’s software lets a company run overt scams on you. For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.

But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legitimate purposes. That means that your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how that surveillance works, the manufacturer can be incredibly sloppy with all the personal info they gather:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html

All kinds of hidden anti-features can lurk in your DRM-locked car, protected from discovery, analysis and criticism by the illegality of bypassing the DRM. For example, Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away if you have a dispute about a late payment:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

DRM is a gun on the mantlepiece in Act I, and by Act III, it goes off, revealing some kind of ugly and often dangerous scam. Remember Dieselgate? Volkswagen created a line of demon-haunted cars: if they thought they were being scrutinized (by regulators measuring their emissions), they switched into a mode that traded performance for low emissions. But when they believed themselves to be unobserved, they reversed this, emitting deadly levels of NOX but delivering superior mileage.

The conversion of the VW diesel fleet into mobile gas-chambers wouldn’t have been possible without DRM. DRM adds a layer of serious criminal jeopardy to anyone attempting to reverse-engineer and study any device, from a phone to a car. DRM let Apple claim to be a champion of its users’ privacy even as it spied on them from asshole to appetite:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/

The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can’t attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded.

But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you’d immediately figure something was up. So your Telsa tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles.

But again, if the car continued to tell you it has 203 miles of range when it was about to run out of charge, you’d figure something was up pretty quick — like, the first time your car ran out of battery while the dashboard cheerily informed you that you had 203 miles of range left.

So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren’t getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue.

But there’s a new problem: drivers whose cars are rated for 353 miles but can’t go anything like that far on a full charge naturally assume that something is wrong with their cars, so they start calling Tesla service and asking to have the car checked over.

This creates a problem for Tesla: those service calls can cost the company $1,000, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s performing exactly as designed. So Tesla created its boldest fraud yet: a boiler-room full of anti-salespeople charged with convincing people that their cars weren’t broken.

This new unit — the “diversion team” — was headquartered in a Nevada satellite office, which was equipped with a metal xylophone that would be rung in triumph every time a Tesla owner was successfully conned into thinking that their car wasn’t defrauding them.

When a Tesla owner called this boiler room, the diverter would run remote diagnostics on their car, then pronounce it fine, and chide the driver for having energy-hungry driving habits (shades of Steve Jobs’s “You’re holding it wrong”):

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

The drivers who called the Diversion Team weren’t just lied to, they were also punished. The Tesla app was silently altered so that anyone who filed a complaint about their car’s range was no longer able to book a service appointment for any reason. If their car malfunctioned, they’d have to request a callback, which could take several days.

Meanwhile, the diverters on the diversion team were instructed not to inform drivers if the remote diagnostics they performed detected any other defects in the cars.

The diversion team had a 750 complaint/week quota: to juke this stat, diverters would close the case for any driver who failed to answer the phone when they were eventually called back. The center received 2,000+ calls every week. Diverters were ordered to keep calls to five minutes or less.

Eventually, diverters were ordered to cease performing any remote diagnostics on drivers’ cars: a source told Reuters that “Thousands of customers were told there is nothing wrong with their car” without any diagnostics being performed.

Predicting EV range is an inexact science as many factors can affect battery life, notably whether a journey is uphill or downhill. Every EV automaker has to come up with a figure that represents some kind of best guess under a mix of conditions. But while other manufacturers err on the side of caution, Tesla has the most inaccurate mileage estimates in the industry, double the industry average.

Other countries’ regulators have taken note. In Korea, Tesla was fined millions and Elon Musk was personally required to state that he had deceived Tesla buyers. The Korean regulator found that the true range of Teslas under normal winter conditions was less than half of the claimed range.

Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively — think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn’t merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being — but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren’t just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed — they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

Image ID [A scene out of an 11th century tome on demon-summoning called 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.' It depicts a demon tormenting two unlucky would-be demon-summoners who have dug up a grave in a graveyard. One summoner is held aloft by his hair, screaming; the other screams from inside the grave he is digging up. The scene has been altered to remove the demon's prominent, urinating penis, to add in a Tesla supercharger, and a red Tesla Model S nosing into the scene.]

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[sabyart]

[justaturtleindisguise]

It's been almost a year but-

THIS ARTIST IS WORKING ON HIS TMNT AU AGAIN AND HAS CONCEPTS TO SHOW !!

Hello people, I know it's been a century but sadly having a full time job as a high schooler makes one burn out asf !!! Happily for me, and for the like 2 people who still remember my sillies, my poor little beaten up brain started thinking about my silly turtles again !!

SOME MUTANT KIDS !!!

Raphael for size comparison <3

Slash's design was alread finished in my last post, and honestly he's my favorite. I love his colors n the general vibe he gives and I think I peaked. He's a aligator snapper turtle, and was previously an animal.

Mona and Wade were a little harder for me, the colors still looking a little wrong in my eyes, so I'll maybe try new ones when I can !! But they will be suficient for now-

Mona Lisa is a marine iguana, and was previously human.

Wade is a green sea-turtle and was previously an animal.

Also have an extra doodle of the world's biggest emotionally unavailable teenager asshole /aff

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOW SOME HUMANS !!! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THIS AU-

Our dearly April O'neil and one of the Caseys <3

Still clothe-less for anatomy reasons (and cuz i suck at designing clothes-)

April is 17 and Casey is 14 !!

My AU will have two Caseys for reasons of-

I love sapphic Capril to death, but I love Casey from 2012 and Junior too much to let them go, so why not have TWO CASEYS??? It's my silly au, I make the rules !!

For humans, besides April n the Two Caseys, I have Sunita, Timothy, Karai, Shinigami and Irma with designs swimming in my silly ol' mind.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: I do want to use my entire brain in the au now, but I have to be realistic.

The full time job and end of high school really do make me too mentaly and physically tired to work on it as much as i want.

I'll be working on everything at my own pace, will probably be able to do updates on my silly arts twice or so per month, if I manage to wrestle my want to sleep the whole weekend-

I think that's all !!!

I'll try my best to not abandon my turtles and their world for so long again,, <333333

Now I shall sleep, cuz it's almost 1 AM and i have school in the morning ooops-

[thedaisycrownwitch]

Tom Sturridge Movie Masterpost

Hey you guys!

So if something like this already exists, please let me know, but I am not aware of anything like this, so...this is a masterpost to share all the Tom Sturridge movies with you guys that I own.

If you have any of these movies to share, please let me know, I would love to include the links in here, in case any of the stuff gets taken down.

gif by tsintotwo

This is very much a group project , feel free to contribute and share, so new fans may have the opportunity to see some of these :3

Recent Updates:

added backups for "Sweetbitter" & "Irma Vepp" thanks to @wintersmitth ; added link to "Like Minds" thanks to @mysticalya ; added audible audio book version of "Sea Wall / A Life"

added "Hollow Crown" thanks to @peageetibbs

added "A Waste of Shame" thanks to the generosity of @thelastdayalive

added "Vanity Fair", "Being Julia", "3 Way Junction", "Skin" & "Irma Vep" thanks to the generosity of @peageetibbs

added MEGA back-up for "Far from the Maddening Crowd" and "Velvet Buzzsaw"

Vanity Fair (2004)

resolution unknown | online stream

link

Being Julia (2004)

resolution unknown | online stream

link

not me looking at these pics just going "look at the BB! bb bb bb bb bb bb" in tones only audible for dogs x.x

A Waste of Shame (2004)

720 x 576 | 1.3 GB

google drive

Like Minds (2007)

resolution unknown | online stream

stream over tubi with US VPN

The Boat That Rocked (Pirate Radio | 2009)

1940 x 814 | 2.48 GB

google drive

Waiting for Forever (2010)

1920 x 1024 | 1.51 GB

google drive

Junkhearts (2011)

640 x 346 | 383 MB movie is smol potat like me uwu

link | google drive

On the Road (2012)

1920 x 816 | 1.86 GB

google drive

Effie Gray (2013)

1920 x 800 | 1.64 GB

google drive

Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)

1920 x 800 | 1.65 GB

google drive ; MEGA

Remainder (2015)

1920 x 800 | 1.72 GB

google drive ; youtube

The Hollow Crown (2016)

resolution unknown | online stream

link 1 ; link 2

Song to Song (2017)

1920 x 800 | 1.96 GB

google drive

sidenote: idk how much he is this movie, so if not a lot, I am sorry x.x

Mary Shelly (2017)

1920 x 800 | 1.92 GB

google drive

Journey's End (2017)

1920 x 800 | 1.73 GB

google drive

3 Way Junction (2018)

resolution unknown | online stream

link

Velvet Buzzsaw (2018)

1920 x 1080 | 2.35 GB

google drive ; MEGA

Sweetbitter (2018-2019)

1920 x 1080 | 9.84 GB (S1); 15.8 GB (S2)

google drive | MEGA backup: season 1 ; season 2

Skin (2019)

resolution unknown | online stream

link

Irma Vep (2022)

resolution unknown (online stream) | 6,66 GB

link 1 ; link 2 | MEGA

Theater performances

Sea Wall / A Life (2019)

google drive

1h 22min | 75,5 MB; mp3

TW: child death & related trauma in "Sea Wall"

This is all for now, I know I'm missing a lot of stuff, if you have any links or movies you host, feel free to share!

[izzythehutt]

Really loved this chapter, so much going on!! Your characterisations of the sprawling Black Family are top tier, especially in dialogue-heavy chapters like this ... so many voices all in one room.

I think you've really struck the right balance of maintaining a similar enough style to the original books that it doesn't feel out of place when put up against them but also making BM feel like part Jane Austen novel and part thriller novel ... which makes the juxtaposition between certain scenes all the more enjoyable to read.

I'm really going to miss waiting anxiously for updates when it's all over but I suppose my question is how do you feel that you're nearly at the end?

It was challenging to write that many characters in one room. I was happy to get rid of Irma and Pollux near the end.

I would definitely say the style earlier in the story matched the Harry Potter books more faithfully, by the end it's become more like a Georgette Heyer novel in tone (farcical romantic happenings with interfering dowagers and other upper class nonsense.) I wish I was comparable to Jane Austen in any way but like...let's be real here. Lol.

I honestly have pretty mixed feelings about it. I think there's always a bit of a flat feeling at the end of a creative project—and in this case it's been six years of my life that I've been working on it (and it was something I started writing when I was deeply depressed and lonely, it's hard not to associate it with that desire to escape those feelings.) If the messages and comments I've gotten over the years are anything to go by, it's obviously meant a lot to many.

But also--of course I'll miss writing the characters and the family. But it will be nice to close this chapter and move on to focusing on my personal writing projects and moving forward in life in other ways.

[romanceclub-confessionss]

Confession:

"Irma crossed so many lines this update, Lou is a bigger woman than I am for still wanting to help after what she said, personally I would've comforted Toma while pretending to cry at her execution 💀 We were never super close to Irma to begin with, so I have no desire to risk one of my favorite MCs for someone like that, all the more so if Lou really is pregnant as my game seems to be implying. Irma is majorly sus too and I expect some backstabbing from her."

[somin-yin]

Don't cancel me, but I see Irma's point:

At least so far. She's spilling the tea 🍵 and if the game allows me, I'll support/protect her. Psi was so exciting this update!! as always ❤️

Lou please 🙄

She spilled 🍵

And then people wonder why Psi is my favourite story 😂

[sokkas-first-fangirl]

What are Link’s sign names for his friends and family? So far I think only Purah, Fi, and his uncle have been mentioned.

Here's the list from my notes!

Purah: Explode Rock-On

Robbie: Goggles Dance

Zelda: Scholar (“Princess Brat,” by Aryll, until Zelda and Link become friends, then she switched to "Scholar" as well. Link always used to tell her off for using "Princess Brat," but Aryll seriously hated Zelda for a while. Link didn't giver Zelda a sign name at all until they became friends)

Impa: Magic Tag (because of her fighting style before the Calamity)

Mipha: Moonlight

Daruk: Rock Roast

Urbosa: Strike-Snap (mimicking her snap for Urbosa’s Fury)

Revali: Peacock at first, changes to Gale when they become friends

Bazz: Boss

Rivan: Rush

Sidon: Bright Smile

Aryll: Heart

Fi: Silverbells 

Irma: Mama (her sign name from Calla is "Little Singer")

Roland: Papa (his sign name from Calla is "Strong Boy")

Duncan: Uncle Laugh (his sign name from Calla is "Sweetheart")

Calla: Nana ("Mama" from Roland and Duncan, and later from Irma)

Gaddison: Better Boss (as requested by Gaddison herself, to mess with Bazz)

Kodah: Splash

Hestu: Dance King

Have yet to decide on sign names for Dorephan, Muzu, or Riju, Teba, Tulin and Yunobo. I'll update the list when I do 😊

[yellowhollyhock]

More O'Neil Technologies thoughts

Irma will of course still be boy/girl crazy. Maybe I will even think about some people for her to date.

Also more importantly she will randomly be like "I could do that" about the craziest things. Like I mean for a certain thing they're designing they're working with miners because they need this very specific mineral and it turns out it is usually mined unethically and so now they have a social justice side quest which they will approach by designing safer means but they are also in touch with the mining company's union and yeah anyway it's a whole side quest. And Irma is very involved because it's all very administrative, but the whole time she's very clueless because of all the technical language, following April around like 'what did he say? why are they upset? oh did we make the deal are we done? no? ah beans. well when's lunch'

But at the end of it when things start working out, what all she's been observing starts to sink in and she's like 'I could be a miner'

And other just random things like that. Leatherhead has her help him hold Timothy still to put a bandaid on him Once and she's like 'I am a medical assistant :)'

idk I'm thinking about Super Irma and Donatello's Degree and I just love an Irma who is a healthy daydreamer and a little bit full of herself.

April is used to this from their college years, deeply admires it actually, her general response is like 'cool keep me updated.' Casey takes everything anyone at O'Neil Tech says seriously except for Timothy anf the Neutrinos, so he's often scratching his head like 'is Irma quitting?? Oh no I get it she's just moving departments! Do we have a, uh, mining department?'

Donny gives her heck about it. Of course at first he's a polite little sweetheart but as he gets to know her and starts to feel more comfortable in his role as technically-her-boss, these two are going to banter so much

Irma: I think I could be a scientist

Donny: Sure, I'll train you right after Timothy becomes a ninja.

Irma: Thanks! I--wait a minute

Donny: lol

~

Irma: I could be a truck driver.

Donny: You know you'd be driving your own truck, not in the passenger seat next to the hunky men, right?

Irma: Hey, leave me alone. It's easy for you, you already have a cool car and a hunky girlfriend.

Donny: I'll build you a truck if you stop daydreaming on the clock (he jests)

Irma: I'll call HR on you

Donny, deadpan: No, please, don't, I'm terrified of mutants.

Irma 😈: I'll tell him how many coffees you had today.

Donny, suddenly sincere: No wait please don't call Leatherhead--I was just kidding honest go back to daydreaming I'll leave you alone.

Irma, picking up the phone

Donny: I'm going I'm going!

~

Irma: You know, I could probably learn acupuncture. Do you think I could learn acupuncture?

Donny: I'm sitting on pins and needles

Irma: But do you think I could?

Donny: I'm glad I have a shell

~

Irma: I could probably be a politician.

Donny: A politician? Are we that miserable to work for? Do we need to negotiate a raise?

Irma:

Donny: Wait let me guess.. it was the men in suits 😑

Irma: You don't understand his teeth--

Donny: Aaahshd I don't wanna hear this!

Irma: They literally sparkled like a cartoon character~

Donny: You need to raise your standards.

Irma: I want a 15% raise.

Donny:

Irma: What? I'm raising my standards :3

Donny, squinting: Well-played, Langenstein. Well-played

('No but seriously,' he will say later, 'We need you in the role you're in. You could easily be a politician or even a miner probably, but we'd be losing an administrator with unmatched negotiation skills, the ability to pick things up quickly, stay level in any kind of situation--we can't afford to lose you.'

'Alright alright I'm not going anywhere. But do feel free to tell me anytime how invaluable I am to the company.'

Harold, watching the exchange: 'Well Donny certainly can't negotiate')

[xlownenbemy]

Updated designs for the gang!!!!

From left to right we have :Näcken, Irma (a Irrbloss), Markus (a Mara), And Ronja (a skogsrå).

[celestemagnoliathewriter]

I'm working extra hard on my dissertation, and that hard work is exhausting. However, it means I get to post more Supernova! (If I get more done tomorrow, you might even see an update for The Burdens of Time!). Snippet and links below for the latest Supernova update!

Dora frowned at her lovestruck older cousin and hoped she never looked that stupid if she fell in love one day.

“Not so fast, Mr. Black!”

Regulus’s head shot up at the sound of his name, but his expression changed immediately when the Mr. Black in question was his brother.

McGonagall held two boys by their ears. “Potter! Black! What do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re not doing anything—” started James. Older Gryffindors went around him and began giving their permission slips to any Head of House who would take them.

“I’ve got another here, Minerva!” Filch showed up with Peter Pettigrew trembling at his side.

“Where’s Lupin?” McGonagall demanded.

“I’m here, Professor.” Remus popped out from behind a statue. Though he hung his head, Dora could see that his cheeks were red.

McGonagall gathered all four offenders in front of her. While Sirius and James only looked mildly put out, Peter was cowering and Remus hung his head.

“20 points from Gryffindor— each —and detention two nights this week! How dare you try to sneak out of the castle!”

Sirius offered her his most indulgent smile, the kind that could let him get away with almost anything with Grandmother Irma. “But, Professor,” he said, his tone sweet as honey, “we were only trying to go outside to get you flowers!”

“Grow the flowers yourself in the greenhouses. Off with you!” McGonagall shook her head and beckoned for Filch to join her. “Escort these gentlemen to Professor Binns. They’ll be copying lines today and tomorrow.”

The four Gryffindors were ushered away from the Entrance Hall while Dora laughed into her elbow. Regulus sat up straight, grinning at his brother’s misfortune, and stuck out his tongue when Sirius glanced up at them. Sirius returned the innocent gesture with a far more vulgar one. Dora only wished she had a camera so she could take a picture of him and send it to her Auntie Burgie. The shrill Howler that Sirius would certainly get from his mother would be worth the deafening shouts at breakfast.

read the latest update here