#and chiara was presenting it and she told so many stories

[piovascosimo]

100 anni di Marcello ❤️ (26 settembre 1924 - 19 dicembre 1996)

[the-al-chemist]

The Smallest Victory

A/N: today was Artemis’ 50th birthday, and to celebrate I decided to publish the story of her 27th birthday, and someone else’s birth. It also fits the theme of @hp-12monthsofmagic: Victory! Hope you enjoy. Warnings: mentions of childbirth and war.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more bored in my life.”

Charlie looked up from the copy of Which Broomstick? that he was currently thumbing through and regarded Artemis from the corner of his eye.

“You could still go out,” he said. “Chiara or Penny might still be free.”

“Penny won’t be able to get a babysitter at this short notice, and Chiara’s working here tonight. She might even be with Fleur,” Artemis exhaled heavily, blowing a stray strand of hair away from her face. “No. I’ll stay here. I should stay here. I just didn’t think there’d be this much waiting, that’s all. Do you reckon it’ll be much longer?”

“I dunno, Artie. I’ve never had a baby before. I don’t know how long it takes.”

“Ages, apparently.”

Artemis let out another huff of air, and slumped against the back of her seat with her arms crossed, one foot tapping impatiently. Charlie closed his magazine.

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

“Why? You’re not the one having a baby.”

“I know, but this wasn’t how you wanted to spend your birthday.”

That was true. Artemis had intended to spend her birthday at Bill and Fleur Weasley’s cottage in Cornwall, with sand and sea and a crackling bonfire. Unfortunately, her best laid plans had been scuppered earlier that evening by the arrival of a lion-shape Patronus, which had spoken with Bill’s voice and informed her that his wife had gone into labour, and that the pair of them were about to go to the hospital. Both she and Charlie had also gone straight to St Mungo’s hospital, where they had taken seats in the waiting room and waited. And waited. And were still waiting, even now.

“It’s fine, Charlie,” she said. “I mean, I’ve had worse birthdays.”

Another truth, albeit an unpleasant one. The previous two years, her birthday had been overshadowed by the battle that had taken so many lives, including those of her friend Tonks and Bill and Charlie’s younger brother Fred. The battle had broken out in the evening of her twenty-fifth birthday, and her twenty-sixth then became the first anniversary of the event.

This year, though she would turn twenty-seven on the eve of the victory and memorial, the fact seemed to linger less heavily on her mind now that yet another year had passed. Still, at her words, Charlie’s jaw tensed slightly. Artemis shook her head and unfolded her arms, guilty that she had accidentally caused harm.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

Before Artemis could continue further, the doors of the waiting room swung open, revealing a middle-aged couple, a tall wizard with glasses and a plump witch in a knitted poncho, both with red hair; Bill and Charlie’s parents. Behind them trailed a much younger witch with a face almost as freckled as Charlie’s and her hair - also red - pulled up into a messy bun: their youngest child and Charlie’s only sister, Ginny.

“Oh, you’re here already,” said Charlie’s mother, her cheeks flushed pink with excitement. “Any news?”

“None yet.”

“Oh, well. These things can take time.”

“Don’t we know it,” Artemis muttered. Mrs Weasley turned to her, beaming.

“And happy birthday, Artemis, dear,” she said. She removed her bag from her shoulder and pulled out a box of small triangular sandwiches. “Your present is at home, but I thought there was no point in the party food going to waste. Unless you had dinner before you came here?”

Artemis took the box of sandwiches from Mrs Weasley’s hands and wrenched it open. “No, I’m starving. Thanks.”

“Neither of us had time to eat anything,” Charlie explained, also helping himself to a sandwich. “We both came straight here after Bill sent his Patronus.”

“Really? But that was almost three hours ago!” Mrs Weasley shook her head. “I don’t know why you rushed. The baby was unlikely to arrive before now.”

“But it should come soon now that you’re here, right?”

“Maybe. Could be in the next half an hour-”

“Thank Godric,” said Artemis.

“- or it might be another three hours.”

“What?”

“Or longer, who knows?” Apparently oblivious to the look on Artemis’ face, Mrs Weasley clapped her hands together. “Oh, it’s so exciting, isn’t it? Now, where did they take Bill and Fleur? We should make sure they have eaten something, the food here is terrible, after all.”

Once she had been told where to go, Mrs Weasley and her set off to deliver refeshments - presumably more sandwiches - to their eldest son and his wife. Ginny Weasley remained in the waiting room, flumping herself down in the chair on the other side of Charlie, who had returned his attention to his magazine. Ginny leaned forward to talk across him.

“Do you think she’s done it on purpose?” she asked Artemis, who frowned.

“What? Who?”

“Fleur, obviously,” Ginny shrugged and raised her eyebrows. “I mean the baby wasn’t meant to be here for another two weeks, and now it’s coming on your birthday, when she was supposed to be having everyone over.”

“So, you think she’s having a baby to get out of having people over for dinner?” Artemis asked. Beside her, Charlie gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, still looking determinedly at his open magazine.

“Maybe,” said Ginny. “And it’s just the sort of thing she’d do, isn’t it? Steal your thunder by having a baby on your birthday.”

“No, she wouldn’t… She… I mean, could she?”

Artemis directed her question at Charlie, who did not even lift his head to look at her as he answered:

“I really don’t think that’s how it works.”

Ginny clearly thought otherwise, for she mouthed ‘I bet she did’ at Artemis before leaning back in her seat so that she was out of sight. As Mr and Mrs Weasley returned from seeing Bill and Fleur, Artemis returned to her sandwiches. She was still bored, but now that she was being fed, she at least felt less annoyed.

But, as eight o’clock became nine, and nine became ten, then eleven, both the sandwiches and Artemis’ patience dwindled. Beside her, Charlie had managed to drift off into a slumber, but she was only growing increasingly restless. After her fidgeting reached the point that it had roused Charlie from his sleep, the two of them decided to find some sort of entertainment, and roamed the hospital corridors in search of somewhere where they might do just that.

When they returned to the waiting room, they found it completely and eerily empty, void of any people or noise. The flickering light of a candelabra on the wall was the only movement to be seen.

“Where did everyone go?”

Before Artemis’ question could be answered - or indeed, in answer to her question - Bill appeared from the direction of the wards. His face was pale and tired looking, but his eyes were bright and his smile was broad. He strode straight across the waiting room towards them and pulled each of them into a hug.

“There you are! Where did you go?” He did not even wait for them to reply before continuing, “Never mind, you’re here now. And so is she. The baby.”

“That’s great, mate,” said Charlie, hugging his brother again. “Is Fleur alright? Is she-”

“Fleur’s fine, so is the baby, she’s… She’s perfect. Come and see.”

Bill beckoned them through to the wards, where the entire Weasley family, Fleur’s parents and sister, and Artemis’ Healer friend Chiara were gathered around a hospital bed. Lying in the bed was an exhausted looking but still irritatingly beautiful Fleur, a small bundle of cloth in her arms. Bill sat on the bed and took the bundle from her, and everyone leaned in to see the pink, wrinkly, and slightly crusty baby inside.

“We haven’t decided on a name yet,” Bill said, his voice gentler than Artemis had ever heard it before. “We thought we still had a couple of weeks left to make up our minds, but this little one had other ideas.” He looked up at Artemis. “Sorry about your birthday.”

“If it’s any consolation, I enjoyed it less than you did,” muttered Fleur wryly, a comment that was met with a few quiet chuckles.

“And what better gift is there than the gift of life?”

“I dunno, Molly,” Artemis shrugged at Bill’s mother. “I asked for a new camera.”

There was another round of soft chuckles, but Bill merely shook his head.

“Well, you’ll have to make do with a goddaughter instead,” he told Artemis, whose jaw dropped open.

“Goddaughter? Really?”

“Yeah. Sure,” Bill shared a glance with his wife. “Why not?”

Artemis turned to Charlie. “You owe me a Sickle.”

“No, he doesn’t. You’re both godparents.”

“That’s fine, I don’t mind sharing,” said Artemis, as much to Charlie as to their goddaughter’s parents. “I’m going to have to get used to sharing my birthday anyway.”

“Actually,” Chiara looked up from the clipboard she held in her hands, “she was born just after midnight, so her birthday is the second of May, not the first.”

The clock on the wall confirmed Chiara’s words. It was past midnight. It was exactly two years after the battle that had ended the war. The entire family was still, silent, and solemn.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think it’s rather lovely,” Chiara said softly. “The idea that this day will be one of happiness in the future, rather than one filled with bad memories. It’s a small victory, but…”

“It is a victory, just the same.” Bill’s father nodded slowly. “Perhaps you should name her something to reflect that?”

“You could call her Joy!”

“That’s so old-fashioned, Mum,” said Ginny, with a noise of derision. “How about Hope?”

“Or Victoria?”

“Well,” Bill looked from his wife to his in-laws and back, “we were hoping for something French…”

“Victoire.”

“Sorry?”

“Victoire,” Fleur repeated. “It is the French for Victoria. It means victory.”

“It’s pretty,” her husband said. He looked down at the baby in his arms. “It suits her, don’t you think?”

“I do, yes.”

“Then that’s settled,” said Mr Weasley. He pointed his wand at a carton of pumpkin juice on the nightstand, which turned into a large bottle of champagne. Chiara frowned.

“Um, you can’t actually drink alcohol in here,” she said, but her voice tailed off as Mr Weasley continued to conjure fluted glasses from thin air. She sighed. “Oh, never mind.”

Once the glasses had been distributed, Mr Weasley raised his in a toast.

“To our own very small victory.”

“To the smallest of victories,” his son George chipped in, smiling at his tiny niece. Mr Weasley inclined his head.

“To Victoire.”

One by one, the others raised their glasses.

“To Victoire.”

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

Who is the Mole?

@dalekofchaos I’m not taking any chances, your Ask will be given the security it deserves, from the demons of Tumblr who have been eating my messages! 

So, who is R’s agent? Well, let’s look at what we know. They’re apparently someone within the walls of Hogwarts, that this dark witch has regular contact with. It’s never established when the mole arrived, but MC seems to think that it was after Rakepick left, and that would make sense. Let’s narrow down the suspects. 

It’s not Jacob. Make no mistake, he is shady and he always has been. But he comes and goes. They specifically talked about a mole being present at Hogwarts. Plus, why would the White-Robed wizard flee when Jacob showed up, if he was on their side? Jacob is clear. 

It’s not Alanza. She simply arrived too late in the story. Why would R wait this long to have another agent planted at Hogwarts? One who could not slip in undetected, but would inevitably have attention drawn to herself by transferring? What’s more, Alanza declined to join the Circle and she admitted to knowing Rakepick. I know a lot of people think that it’s her, but if she’s a spy, she’s a pretty lousy one. Alanza is clear. 

Of the younger characters, the only one who isn’t canon is Beatrice. With how much focus she’s gotten, it’s a possibility. But she’s almost always under the watchful eye of Penny, or hanging with Ismelda. The only time she wasn’t, she nearly drowned in the Black Lake. She can’t even go to Hogsmeade, no way she’s meeting up with R in secret. Not to mention, she would never be on board with having her mind probed if she was the mole. Beatrice is clear. 

Regarding the rest of the Year 6 characters, Talbott and Chiara are both secretive and keep their distance from the group. But we already know why they do this, they have well-established backstories and character-based reasons for why they would. Beyond that, the mole should want to join the Circle. They should want access to that intel. Just like Alanza, Chiara didn’t even want to join at first. No, I’m gonna say Talbott and Chiara are clear.

I could go through every member of the Circle, but I’m going to streamline the process and say that I don’t believe it’s anyone who was introduced from Years 2-5. The way HPHM is written, the only characters who get major plot importance are the Year 1 characters,and the people who are “guest-starring” in the current year, who were introduced in that Year. I consider The Year characters to be possible suspects, but I’ve gone through why it won’t be them. Many people suspect Tulip, but when was the last time she was relevant? Or Barnaby, or Jae, or Badeea? Sorry, no way it’s anyone who guest starred in a past year. Let’s go through the Year One folk, because I believe it is one of them. 

Penny has simply never had the relevance that Ben and Merula have had. She didn’t even have a connection the plot prior to Year 5, prior to Beatrice’s introduction. I’ve talked about this before, but assuming you chose not to bring her along on any adventures, she could, in theory, but cut from the first four years, without the story changing much. Which is not to say Penny isn’t important, just that I don’t think she’s the mole. Penny is (basically) clear. 

Merula’s loyalty has always been questionable, even as a major of hers, I don’t deny this. I can believe that even now, she would work against MC. The only question then, is when did this start? Did Rakepick give her this job before the Portrait Vault? Was Merula in on that? It might explain why Rakepick told MC to look out for her. But we’re forgetting one key detail about this character. She’s a terrible liar. This has been well-established. Merula’s emotions get the better of her. She would have given herself away by now. If this theory is true, she would need to pull a serious long-con, and I just don’t believe she’s capable of doing that. Merula is clear.

Ben has always been suspicious. From Year 2 on, Rowan them-self suspected him. It’s abundantly clear that he’s keeping secrets. Who did he write that letter to, prior to the Portrait Vault? Why did he insist on coming? Does he remember the time that he was kidnapped, or not? Why did he panic upon seeing Rakepick for what we can only assume was the first time? He’s hiding something, definitely. However...Year 5 seemed to settle the question of “who’s side is he on?” by using Rowan to prove that R can and will Imperius people, and exonerating Ben from his time as the Red Cloak. What’s more...Rakepick aimed that curse at him. She tried to kill him outright, and she couldn’t have known that Rowan would rush in. She wouldn’t do that if he were the mole. Maybe Ben can be trusted, maybe not, but regarding this...Ben is clear.

But hold on, I said that I believed one of the Year 1 characters in the mole, didn’t I? And I do. I’ve talked about this before, but I sincerely believe that the Mole...is MC. 

Now, I’m not saying that MC is pulling a long-con, that they’ve always been loyal to R, and that even the player didn’t know it. That would be one hell of a twist by itself, but people would probably hate it. No, I think that MC is the mole...without knowing it. I have on many occasions, expressed doubts about Moody. I know he’s canon, but like I said, R has proven that they can and will use the Imperius Curse. That would be a way to use Moody as a secret villain without breaking canon, and it’s not like we haven’t seen that done before. Seriously, the way he’s acting in this game, particularly his encouragement of MC’s revenge and blood-lust? This reminds me more of Barty Crouch Jr’s impersonation than anything else. We know from the Weird Sister TLSQ that the Cabal was planning to contact Moody and “see what he knows” about the Sunken Vault, and the Coral Key. (A quest that, curiously, has since been removed, and it seems like they’re not putting it back. I wonder why...) At the end of Year 5, not long after Rakepick abandoned her role as R’s agent at Hogwarts, Moody shows up and abducts MC. Swearing them to secrecy, almost always insisting that they not tell Jacob and their friends important information, or otherwise encouraging them not to. Think about it, what new information has Moody actually provided? Compared to the fountain of intel that MC has been providing him, for no real reason. MC told him about the Circle almost immediately. Now, Moody isn’t the dark witch, but suppose she was the one who Imperius’d him? If my theory about this is true, then MC has been passing information to R, without their friends knowing, for this entire year. That would make them a mole. 

Of course, they have no idea. Which means that in this context, to call them a “mole” or a spy isn’t really accurate. It’s twisting the facts. But I firmly believe that’s the interpretation that we’re going with here. Which is a good lead-in to another phase of this theory that I have. Not only do I think R has been using MC as a mole, the way they’ve been using them as a weapon to open the Vaults this entire time...I also believe that R wanted MC to find out this bit of information. I believe that entire Infiltration was a trap, that R knew MC was there, and that it went exactly as they wanted it to. Setting aside my theory about Moody, I have to confess that the “advertisement” MC and Merula found at the Whomping Willow never made any sense to me, and felt like bait for a trap. Seriously, even if we ignore that the tip-off about The Whomping Willow being a secret meeting place was almost certainly referring to the Shrieking Shack, and not this...why would R do something like that? Leave a note like that out in the open, for any student or teacher to find? It’s not like dark witches and wizards are going to be prowling around Hogwarts that often. Wouldn’t it make way more sense to post that around say, Knockturn Alley? No, they wanted MC to find th at. Not to mention the tone of the note, “Dark wizards, come one, come all!” Please, if I’m a dark wizard, and I read that? My first thought is, “Well, this is clearly a sting. I’m not getting involved.” Not to mention, this wouldn’t be the first time MC tried to crash an R meeting based on written information that they supposedly left laying around. The Forbidden Forest was a trap, and Rowan paid the price. So why wouldn’t this be a trap? Sure, it seemed to go well...but I can’t help remembering the White-Robed Wizard’s line about how R would never let MC learn something that they didn’t want MC to know...

And that’s just it. They wanted MC to know that there was a mole. They wanted MC to tell the Circle that there was a mole. Moody instructed MC not to say anything about R wanting them to join and someday lead, but he didn’t tell them not to bring up the mole. Really, it isn’t so much that they wanted MC to know, it’s that they want the Circle to know. They want The Circle of Khanna to know there’s a mole. They want MC to find out about R’s plan for them, and they want MC to keep this plan from the Circle, so that when the time comes, R can drop this bomb. That MC is the mole, and always has been. MC can deny it of course, but what will they do when it comes out that they’ve been reporting to R (Through Moody) all this time? There’s a reason no one else is ever in those scenes - not even Jacob. There’s a reason Moody has been trying to put distance between MC and their friends. Imagine if The Circle finds out that MC knew R wanted to recruit them, and they said nothing? People have been speculating that MC losing a friend in an “unexpected way” might be referring to the mole, and how one of their friends is a traitor. But it could work in the opposite direction as well. If people find out that MC is a “traitor” I mean...how are Ben and Merula going to handle that news? Sure, some people might not immediately turn on MC, some people might believe them, or be uncertain...but R has been building up “evidence” of this for months, and Ben and Merula are both in a place of being so traumatized and unstable that they’d probably just buy it hook line and sinker. And they’re the co-leaders of the Circle. They might, at that point, kick MC out. Or at least call for a vote. 

And what happens if MC is expelled from the Circle? The very organization they formed to honor Rowan? They wouldn’t be able to investigate the Vaults anymore, because they’d be working against two secret organizations, one within the walls of Hogwarts. The Circle of Khanna, presuming MC to be a spy for R, would never let them within fifty feet of their investigation - hell, they could be the opponent that MC has to face, from the Centaur’s prophecy. (Or it could be R’s leader.) The Circle, at least initially, wouldn’t take MC back or trust them.  But the Cabal? Oh, you just know that they would open their arms to MC and welcome them to join, pointing out that they have nowhere else to go...not saying MC would agree to join them, but this could be R’s plan. This could be the big choice that MC has to make from the Centaur’s prophecy. Suppose Dumbledore was told by Circle members that MC is an R agent, and, oh I dunno...expels them as a result? We’ve all speculated than an expulsion arc is coming. If it is, that would be the perfect opportunity for R to try and get their claws into MC. 

Thank you for sending me the Ask! This has been a lot of fun, and I’ve enjoyed getting all these suspicions out in the open. 

[nonie-star]

The sad demise of Daphne Louise

A small short story about the demise of one of my OCs. I’m practising writing darker scenes and I’m actually kind of proud of this try, so I wanted to post it. 

It is about the final hours of my OC Daphne Louise. 

I feel that for context it is important to mention that she was born deaf, but acquired some hearing through illegal trials of a spell, that also came with some side effects of special healing powers that no one can truly explain.

Word count: 2.599 words

Contrary to popular believe, this was not Daphne’s first time on the battlefield. She did not like to fight, she really did not. Usually, she played more of a supporting role rather than an offensive one, but today she did not care.  

Today was different.  

She had only learnt about the huge fight at Hogwarts half an hour ago and had wasted no time to jump in and help. Try to help at least. She could not just stand by as all her friends were getting hurt.

With her anomaly, her gift, she could help. She could really make a difference in this fight...

But first she needed to find her friends that she knew to be somewhere in the middle of things. They had gotten here before her, so long before her... how much had she missed? Had something happened that she could have helped with had she been there?  

Could she have prevented someone’s death had she been around?

Daphne cursed herself for having shown up late, but she hadn’t known... it had been a day like any other, how could she have...?

Daphne kept running- she just wanted to find one of her friends, any of them. Almost all of them were here, what if they had all- no, she could not think like that. Not before she had actually found any of them... Then all of a sudden, she came to a halt. She just froze.   She could not believe what she was seeing, no it couldn’t be...

Lupin and Tonks were kneeling in front of a small body. A woman with white-silverish hair, a small frame and scars covering her face and arms... It was Chiara.

Daphne gasped.   “I- I don’t know what happened...” Lupin stammered. “She just... jumped in front of me, I... he was about to hit me with the killing curse, I-” he fell silent.   Daphne looked down at her best friends' lifeless body in horror.  

No-

She wasted no time and knelt in front of her friends’ body. She grabbed her hands and closed her eyes, preparing to start healing her.  

“Daph, it’s not... going to work...” Tonks murmured, tears forming in her eyes. “We both know it won’t, you’ve tried before, and it didn’t...”  

Daphne knew what she meant. She had previously tried to bring the dead back to life, but it had never worked. She had always passed out before making any kind of difference... But it had to work this time, she couldn’t just let Chiara die like this, she deserved so much better!

So, she took a deep breath, getting ready. “I know... what you feel for her, everyone does but that won’t change anything. You are just going to put yourself in danger.” Tonks said, wiping her tears.  

But Daphne wasn’t having it. “Let me do it!” she said. “Just cover me!”   Tonks got up, pulling Remus with her.   If Daphne talked instead of using sign language, she meant business. There would be nothing stopping her from trying to bring her friend back.   Usually, she used sign language. The only one that heard her talk semi-regularly was Chiara.

She closed her eyes, tightly holding her hands. But it didn’t work. This was not the time for her powers to fail, why...?   Tears welled up in her eyes. No! She couldn’t just let her die!

Chiara had been Daphne’s first ever friend, the one person that had always understood her, both literally and figuratively.... the one person she had ever truly loved, even if it was unrequited. She could not let her die; it just couldn’t happen.

“Please work!” she pleaded. “Please!”  

Sobs were shaking her entire body. She just couldn’t be dead, she couldn’t be... Tonks placed a hand on her shoulder. “Daph, she’s-” But Daphne couldn’t accept that, she wouldn’t! Not when she knew that she had it in her to help! One last time she focused all her energy, trying to bring her back.  

And suddenly, she felt the usual energy flood through her veins. Relived she squeezed Chiaras hands, as to quietly assure her that all would be okay.  

Soon, she felt the extreme tiredness taking over her body that she always felt when healing bigger wounds. Previously she had failed because of it, but this time she was not giving up so easily. With all her might, she fought back against the tiredness.  

And suddenly, it just... stopped. She felt... powerful. More powerful than she had ever before. Previously she had never managed to bypass the point of exhaustion, this was... new.  

In a snap, she opened her eyes. “Holy shit, Daph...” Tonks said, not believing what she was seeing.   Daphne’s usually blue eyes were glowing bright green instead.   Some sort of all holy Aura seemed to be surrounding her.  

For a moment it seemed like the world had stopped turning, to Daphne at least. All that mattered was this, nothing else did.  

It only took two minutes or so, but it felt like an eternity.   But all of a sudden, Chiara opened her eyes with a gasp. Daphne let go of her hands, just to immediately give her a hug.   She felt exhausted and faint but had never been prouder of herself.  

“Daphne, what... happened...?” Chiara asked, confused. The last thing she remembered was jumping in front of Lupin to take the hit for him, because she knew he has a family. Had the curse missed her, or had she mistaken another spell for the killing spell?  The next thing she knew was that Lupin was hugging her as well, thanking her.  

“Nothing happened.” Daphne signed after letting go of her again. ”You just fainted.”   Chiara looked at her, concerned. Her friend looked awfully pale, and she was trembling.   “We should go, we’re not safe here.” she then signed and tried to get up.   But she immediately fell back down, landing on her knees.  

Suddenly, Chiara started to suspect something. “Daphne, what did you do...? Did you-” With a sharp movement of her hands, Daphne cut her off, getting up again.   “Okay, okay, okay.” Chiara said, also getting up to support her. “I won’t ask again. Careful.”

She led her over the battlefield, trying to find a safe place for her friend to rest.  

If what she suspected was true, if Daphne had indeed brought her back from the dead, she must be absolutely exhausted. A safe place, a safe place... she could not think of anything. Until suddenly it hit er. The Hufflepuff common room.   It was safe, there were some nice fluffy couches to rest on, she should be fine.  

“I know where we’ll go.” she said, leading Daphne along.  

While they were walking along, using the Disillusionment charm to disguise themselves, they walked past the hospital wing. And even with all that was going on Chiara couldn’t help but stop in front of it. “Do you remember?”   With a coy smile Daphne responded that of course she did. How could she ever forget the day she met her very best friend?  

For a second, both marvelled in fond memories of their first meeting, but then quickly moved on to their destination.  

“You should be fine here for a little while.” Chiara said, helping Daphne to the couch.   With a groan Daphne sat down. She had never felt this exhausted before in her life. As she was about to close her eyes, Chiara sat down next to her.  

“I just... Daphne, why did you...?” she didn’t even know how to phrase her question. “Why did you save me?” she asked, rather straight forward.  

Daphne looked away, shrugging.  

“Lou.” Chiara said.  

That use of her nickname hit her right in the feelings. Chiara hadn’t called her that in years.  

“Be honest with me.”  

Daphne grew flustered and looked to the side. And then, in a single heartbeat she revealed a secret that had been weighing on her since her fifth year at Hogwarts.  

“Because I Love you.”

Chiara looked at her, not quite knowing what to say.  It wasn’t like she hadn’t known. Everybody had, she was no exception. But this was the first time that Daphne had ever admitted to it.  

“I.... Daphne we’ll... talk about this... later...”  

She knew she’d have to have this talk with her someday. After all, she was married to Jae and really had no other feelings towards Daphne than friendship... But today was not the day for it. She needed to get back out there, to go see if she could help anyone-  

And that was what she told Daphne, that she needed to go.

Her arms crossed and huddled against the armrest of the couch, she nodded.   Before Chiara left, Daphne reminded her not to die again.  

“I won’t...” Chiara responded.  

She had done it, now she had screwed everything up, Daphne thought. She should have just lied and said that it was because she was her best friend, no other reasons.   But she did love Chiara, more than anything else. She had for a long time.  

Daphne didn’t want to wait for Chiara to come back, she just wanted to get away. Even if that meant walking through a horde of death eaters in her condition.  

Carefully she got up holding on to the armrest to not immediately collapse again. Maybe pushing past her limits had been a bad idea. There must be a reason why she usually passed out before this point. Her legs kept giving out from under her, and she barely even made it to the exit before she fell again.  

This would pass, she told herself. All would go back to normal, she just needed to get out of here.   At the moment, she wasn’t prepared to face Chiara again.

Things had calmed down. The fight was over, you know who had been defeated...   Chiara looked over all the bodies. So many people had died, even though all the healers present had tried their best... But nobody could do anything against the killing curse... except for Daphne.

Now it was time to go get her, now that things were safe... even though Chiara dreaded facing her again. She wanted to tell her that it was okay, that nothing would change... but she wasn’t quite sure how. But her feelings could wait, for now she just needed to get her out of her... Daphne seemed very weak, Chiara worried that there was something seriously wrong with her. So, she quickly ran to the Hufflepuff common room.  

“What are you doing? I told you to stay put!”   Daphne sighed. Busted.   Chiara knelt next to her. “You need to save you strength.”  

Her voice even more unsteady than normally, Daphne asked if they had won. Yes they had, Chiara said as she helped her up.

Daphne showed her a small smile, yet still seemed nervous. She pretended to fix something on her hearing aid, to not have to look her in the eyes.  

“Listen...” Chiara said, while they slowly walked back to somewhere they could apparate from. “Things don’t need to change between us, if you’re okay with that...”

A little confused, Daphne asked how she could just take this so casually, especially after just finding out.

And even after all that happened, even after all this death and destruction, Chiara had to smirk. “Just finding out? Lou, I’ve known for years. You are not the most inconspicuous my friend. I was just shocked to see you admit it after so many years.”  

This made Daphne blush. She did not have the energy to hit her friend her right now, but she really wanted to.

They soon reached the place where all their friends were gathered.  

“It’s finally over...” Tonks sighed, a relived expression on her face. She turned to Remus. “We can go see Teddy, finally... I’m so glad...”  He just silently hugged her.  

Daphne had just managed to stand up straight without the help of Chiara, when she already had to watch Jae pick her up and spin her around, happy to have found her alive. She turned her face away. This was nothing new of course, but it still hurt every time.

“Are you okay?” Nonie inquired. They were somewhat friends- only really because their Dads were friends, so they sometimes had to play with each other as kids. Daphne shrugged. She didn’t feel okay, she felt like she was going to pass out- she had held on while waiting, while knowing that she was not safe, but now...

“We need to get you to St. Mungo.” Chiara said, grabbing hold of Daphne again. “You can be helped there, I’m sure of it!” But then Daphne suddenly just collapsed, right into her arms.

“Okay...” Chiara said, lowering herself down to the floor, resting Daphne’s head on her knees. “Let me see what I can do here...”   She decided to first of all check her vitals and checked her pulse.

It was much weaker than she would have liked it to be... this was new. Previously Daphne had just passed out and had been perfectly fine afterwards, this was...

“I’m worried, Daphne. You are not looking very good, I really think that this is not normal, I...”

But Daphne only looked up at her with her tired eyes and smiled. That kind smile, the same one she had when they had first met.

Then, her eyes fell closed.  

Chiara had to smile too, at first. Daphne had really tried to stay awake to make it easier but had still ended up passing out.  

That brief moment of happiness did not last. Only a second later Chiara realised that Daphne was not breathing.  

She had no pulse, she was just-

“Chiara what’s wrong?” Lupin asked, seeing his young friends shocked expression.  

Chiara couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe. All she could do was drop Daphne to the floor and start doing chest compressions.  

Now the others had caught on to what had happened. Nobody knew what to say, everybody was in a state of shock. They hadn’t expected this, they had thought it was over! There had been enough death today, why couldn’t it have ended there?

The only one taking action was Chiara. She couldn’t just let her best friend die like this, especially not because of her own mistakes! “Chiara, there is no point...” Tulip whispered, looking down at her old roommate's lifeless body. She had been trying her best, but her attempts of revival were doing nothing.  

Daphne was gone.

Chiaras best friend was gone, but she couldn’t accept it. “Shut up! I can help her!”   Desperate, she slammed a hand down on Daphnes heart. “Come on! Breathe!” But nothing happened. Daphne lied still, her long black hair obscuring the view of her pale face. She still had that smile on her face, she looked peaceful...

“I’m sorry...” Chiara sobbed, now hugging friends lifeless body. ”I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean for this to happen, I just... Daphne, why..? I'm sorry...” Jae knelt next to her, softly petting her back. He too didn’t know what to say. Daphne had been a dear friend to him too, even though he knew what she felt for his wife. She had promised him that she would never make a move on her, and all these years she hadn’t.

Everybody stood in silence, watching the scene. None of them could believe it. Daphne was really gone...

Unknowingly, Daphne had traded her life for Chiaras. Would she have regretted her actions? No. She had saved Chiara, her best friend, the person she cared about the most. She would not regret her action one single bit.  

[missjosie27]

Year 3 Part 10- Defending

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to another chapter. As we last left off, Barnaby officially joined David's side and we get to see some of the ramifications of that today. Wonder what poor Merula thinks of that XD

Elora Dunn I made a Hufflepuff in this version as opposed to Gryffindor. Seemed redundant with a character like Ben already in that house.

Also in this chapter I will feature a small cameo from Chester Davies. My character is a Gryffindor so of course we don't see him that much but I head cannoned him to show up at some point so I hope I did him justice. It is a small bit of filler in here today but as with everything in my story, it's all about the small details and development. Two more to go for Year 3! Enjoy!

If it were any other Slytherin, the new addition to the cursebreaking squad might have been quite awkward. With Barnaby the fit was so seamless, it was though he’d already known everyone for years. Despite his reputation as being one of the toughest kids in school with a penchant for dueling, winning him over revealed a key aspect of his character: that in reality he was just a big softie.

Barnaby loved to duel and learn new spells, his physical strength was immense (as evidenced by being able to lift Rowan off the ground using one hand with ease) and he was already quite tall for his age. But he also carried many other previously unknown attributes, the first of which was that he had a way with animals. He took particular interests in bowtruckles and nifflers, being the only person who knew how to tame them. Professor Kettleburn was so impressed, he made him a full time protege in handling more dangerous creatures such as hippogriffs and even the invisible thestrals.

He also loved to eat and would consume so much food in one sitting that one of the prefects at the Hufflepuff table actually had to ask him to save some for the first years. But above all else, Barnaby Lee at his core was a kind person and despite not being academically inclined, had a simple way of expressing things that put a problem into perspective. Perhaps most telling was that he never truly desired to hurt anyone and would defend those he cared about with vigor.

He explained all of this to Penny in Herbology, who giggled at some of the stories.

“Honestly, I’m actually really glad you introduced him to us the other night, even if he consumed half the food on the table,” she laughed. “I know most people think he’s slow, but he’s so sweet. Chiara went redder than a strawberry when he complimented her necklace.”

The aforementioned girl proceeded to flush the same color.

“I did not!” she protested.

David rolled his eyes as he tended to his dried nettles.

“That’s just because you girls think he’s handsome.”

Penny gave him a playful swat on the head.

“It is not...okay maybe a little.”

David clutched his hands together in a girly, romantic gesture and began speaking in a mock feminine tone.

“Oh Barnaby Lee, he’s ever so dreamy with his green eyes and enormous jaw!”

That earned him a triple swat, this time from Penny, Tonks, and Chiara.

“Focus on your dried nettles, dears!” Professor Sprout called out spotting the mischief from her place at the center of the table.

“Sorry, Professor!” David called out and he added some water to his pot.

“He’s handsome don’t get me wrong, but he’s not my type,” Tonks commented.

“What is your type?”

The pink haired witch shrugged.

“Don’t know really. Haven’t thought about it much.”

“I know Penny and Chiara have been thinking about Madam Puddifoot’s tea shop,” David joked as he falsely gagged, while ducking another swipe from a giggling Penny. “Anyway, the point is, Barnaby is a good bloke. And he’s dead useful to have around.”

“I’m surprised you of all people have accepted someone from Slytherin so readily,” Rowan teased him, coming up behind him to borrow some soil.

“Hey I’m a pretty easy going bloke, I can admit when I’m wrong.”

“Except when it comes to Slytherin apparently,” Tonks teased, which earned her a splat of dung on her robes.

Despite the jokes, the more David was able to get to know Barnaby the more he could feel his animosity slip away. In fact, he almost didn’t mind when the Slytherins became the favorites to win the Quidditch Cup after trouncing Hufflepuff 400-70, the key word being ‘almost’. But there was a practical side to it as well. Upon learning her former minion switched sides, Merula was beside herself with rage and began embarking on a campaign to make both of their lives as difficult as possible. Her taunting became subdued but she constantly attempted to blow up his cauldron in potions, put a flobberworm down the back of his pants, and tried hexing him on more than one occasion in the corridors. It was a mark of frustration; she was no closer to finding the vault but the constant attempts at sabotage began to wear thin.

“You need to learn how to properly defend yourself,” Barnaby told him one day after potions class, a session in which Merula caused the fire underneath his cauldron to flare, which singed off his eyebrows.

“I already know how to defend myself, I’ve beaten Merula in every proper duel we’ve had,” he argued keeping his head down, trying not to let passerbys witness his eyebrow less state.

“Most duels aren’t ‘proper’, Dave. Especially not if Merula is the one starting them. It’s better to be prepared for all kinds of ways people will try to attack you.”

“How come she leaves you alone?” he bemoaned.

“Oh, she doesn’t,” Barnaby admitted. “First she yelled at me and told me I was a traitor so I don’t sit with her anymore. Then she somehow snuck into my dorm and put bulbadox powder into my sheets. I was itching for days after that...”

“-that’s good to know-”

“But you still have a lot to learn. Especially defense.”

“Bill Weasley taught me a few things,” David offered.

“Did he?” Barnaby asked with wonder. “I’ve always heard the Weasley family loved the color orange. Don’t know much about their dueling, though.”

“Er right...well Bill’s definitely talented there’s no doubt about that. Perhaps we could work together on improving.”

Barnaby puffed up his chest with pride.

“If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s how to fight and teach others how to do it. Also I’ve always wanted to duel a fifth year!”

“We’ll get a spar going soon, mate,” David promised. “In the meantime, I need Madam Pomfrey to regrow my bloody eyebrows.”

It turned out to be solid advice. Though his offensive prowess was high, especially for his age, it turned out the third year Gryffindor did not know much about spells that would protect him from harm as well as cause it. This became apparent when both Bill and Barnaby bested him by simply using shield charms to block whatever he cast. In an effort to improve and become more versatile, he began learning defensive strategies and the application of the shield charm itself. The burly Slytherin also warned him that Merula and Ismelda were constantly studying in the library and by the fireside in an effort to gain an edge when the inevitable rematch occurred.

With Merula Snyde, it’s more like a never ending rematch

However, what he didn’t know was all of this was about to come in handy in a most unexpected way.

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

It all happened quite suddenly and quite by accident.

On an average Saturday morning in early April, David was walking back from his brother’s room after another planning session with Tulip when he noticed Argus Filch prowling along the usual route past the Transfiguration classroom. Though he technically wasn’t doing anything wrong, he still didn't want the caretaker to cast a suspicious eye towards him anywhere near the secret location. So he took a detour through the gardens instead.

Inside the viaduct architecture, he was idly wondering to himself how close Rowan was to breaking the final bit of code inside his brother’s notebook (as well as how pretty Penny looked in her new jumper dress and spring boots) when he noticed something peculiar and also a bit disturbing. Over by the large tree where some the older students liked to hang out, he noticed five of them were standing over a smaller, terrified looking girl who was practically trembling with fear.

Part of himself told him that it wasn’t his business and it was best not to get involved. But the sense of justice, always strong in his persona, prevailed and he made an abrupt perpendicular cut across the grass and towards the commotion. As he drew closer he could hear the dialogue, which only served to feed his temper.

“...didn’t mean to. Please, I don’t want to fight.”

“Shoulda thought of that before you nosed into an area that you don’t belong in,” one of the lead bullies said harshly.

“B-but it’s not your area,” the little girl argued. “It’s for everyone who goes to Hogwarts!”

By now, David had a better look. The girl in question was a first year Hufflepuff who definitely fit the part of someone traditionally ‘uncool’. Thick glasses, short, copper colored brown hair, an oversized sweater to couple with several books clutched in her small hands. There were five who were currently bullying the poor first year, three boys and two girls, at least half of which were from Slytherin and the other two appeared to be Ravenclaw. The leader was a sixth year he recognized as Hadrian Flint, a member of a prominent family of the same name, a brown haired, freckle faced boy with poor teeth and an upward nose that reeked of arrogance. Also present was Ismelda Murk for some reason, who looked as though she happened upon the scene and was along for whatever kicks she could find.

“Just beat it, kid,” one of the Ravenclaws said. “This is our spot. Don’t make us do this the hard way.”

“And besides, Hogwarts doesn’t belong to people like you,” Flint told her nastily while his Slytherin companion nodded in agreement.

“And who would that be exactly?”

His unannounced presence caused Hadrian to spin around and face his challenger. His face immediately became a pronounced sneer.

“Get lost, Gryffindor. This doesn’t concern you.”

“Don’t be shy, Flint. Let the whole world know what you were about to say. I’m sure it will be most enlightening.”

Flint took a step forward but was soon informed by his companion who exactly this Gryffindor was with a whisper to the ear.

“Ahh...the cursebreaker. Well how bout I cut you a deal since I’m feeling right generous today. You go back to your curses and I’ll go back to this curse. Sound fair?”

“She didn’t have any idea this spot is where the older students hang out. Let her go.”

Though Hadrian was taller, David was not about to back down. He knew the reason he was picking on this poor girl and despite being outnumbered was not about to let her become the victim of a borderline torture session like Diana Blishwick the previous year.

“Mudbloods like her don’t deserve anything except learning their place,” Ismelda spoke now, a vicious gleam forming in her cold, gray eyes.

“Shut your hole, Izzy. I’m not even sure what you’re doing here but I do know that Merula’s boots need polishing. Give them some extra shine, will ya?”

Ismelda pulled out her wand in retaliation for the remark but Flint told her off in equally harsh fashion.

“Stow it you greasy giraffe neck. Honestly you could be Snape’s daughter with that hair.”

David might have laughed had the older Slytherin not been as equally reprehensible. The Ravenclaw girl and boy (which were evidently a couple) didn’t seem as perturbed anymore, but the rest of the group was hellbent on doing something awful to the muggle born Hufflepuff.

“Last chance. Leave or you suffer just as she does,” Flint told him menacingly. Again, David did not back down, instead he crossed over and put the much smaller girl behind him.

“Don’t make any sudden movements,” he told her. “And stay behind me. What’s your name?”

“Elora...Elora Dunn,” came the frightened reply.

“Well, Elora...brace yourself.”

He turned his attention back to Flint, Ismelda, and the other three students that were there. The Ravenclaws did nothing but the other two Slytherins withdrew their wands and Ismelda’s evil smirk grew wider.

“Have it your way then,” the tall Slytherin shrugged. “Immobilus! ”

“Protego! ”

It was his first attempt at using the spell in an actual battle and the results were quite effective. An invisible, reflective shield formed in front of himself and Elora Dunn, causing the spell to ricochet and deflect right back at its owner, freezing his body in place. Within seconds, Hadrian Flint toppled over in a heap on the grass.

It was a victory but a short lived one as the other two Slytherins readied their wands while David still guarded the first year girl. Given his narrow position and the fact that he was protecting someone else he doubted he could fend off two more opponents at the same time. Thankfully, it was not required as suddenly a prefect arrived at the scene, recognizing him to be Chester Davies, who was also head boy.

“Enough! You will stop this now!”

The Ravenclaw couple hadn’t drawn their wands in the first place, but Ismelda did not comply, sending a common cold hex towards David which missed, though the other Slytherin did heed the order.

“I said that’s enough! Five points from Slytherin!” Chester shouted, pointing directly at the third year Slytherin, who reluctantly relented, her pale expression now extremely sour.

“What in Merlin’s name is happening here?” he continued to inquire. “Dueling is forbidden.”

His gaze settled on David and he knew the time to explain was now. He had never interacted with Chester before though there was a chance he knew of his cursebreaking exploits. Either way it was best to act quickly.

“I didn’t start whatever you witnessed,” he told him. “Flint and his goons were attempting to harm Elora here.”

The first year Hufflepuff peeked out from behind his back at long last.

“It’s true. He defended me when I thought I was about to be hexed. They called me a uh…”

The poor thing, David thought sadly. She clearly had not heard that word used against her yet. Anger flared within him knowing it wouldn’t be the last.

He mouthed the word ‘mudblood’ to the Head Boy, who’s face reeled in horror. Chester Davies, known for his mellow, taciturn demeanor then unleashed quiet fury, first on the Ravenclaw couple.

“But we didn’t do anything!” the fifth year boy protested.

“You still threatened her,” Chester said coldly. “And by standing by and allowing the other three to do harm you have disgraced yourself.”

“The little brat wouldn’t leave!” the girl shouted back.

But that only served to further their scolding

“You claim to be part of our house and yet have the wit and foresight of a damp rag. I will be reporting this to Professor Flitwick and I will recommend detention for a week. Five points from Ravenclaw.”

Chester then took the time to reluctantly unfreeze Hadrian Flint, who immediately leapt to his feet and tried to spin a tale.

“You all saw it! He attacked me!”

“Stuff it, Flint,” the Ravenclaw immediately shut down. “I saw you cast the first spell and I know the word this one used to describe Miss Dunn,” she said, indicating Ismelda, who looked as though she wanted nothing more than to kill everyone present. “Rest assured, McGonagall will be informed as will Professor Snape.”

Furious and belligerent, Flint spat on the ground, uttering, “Blood traitor.”

David thought Chester might blow a gasket (he knew he would have) but instead he coolly regarded him as though he were simply another stone inside the Hogwarts walls.

“Better a blood traitor than what you are, Flint. Now get out of here.”

The tall, lanky Slytherin heeded her this time and shuffled away with his companion. Ismelda had seemingly skulked off as well.

“I’ll handle these two,” Chester told him, as he too ordered his housemates away. “You see to it that the first year gets back to the Hufflepuff common room. You did a good thing today.”

Admiration increased for the Head Boy as David nodded and looked over to Elora, giving a kind look.

“Come on, let’s go.”

As they walked back towards kitchens, he noticed Elora fidgeting as though she wanted to say something. Eventually, she mustered up the courage.

“Um...what’s your name?”

“David,” he replied simply.

“Thank you, David for saving me back there. I wish I was brave like you.”

He stopped just before they reached the barrels leading to the Hufflepuff common room and knelt down to make proper eye level contact with her.

“Elora, you’re already brave. At no point in time did you move when those gits asked you too. There wasn’t a braver person today in all of Hogwarts.”

She beamed so much David thought she might shed tears over the books she was carrying. Then, her face became puzzled.

“What was that name that girl called me?” came the innocent but horrifying question.

David sighed, he’d hoped it wouldn’t come to him having to explain something like that. But he wasn’t going to pull punches either. Someone like Elora needed to know the intentions of people such as Flint, Ismelda, and others.

“You come from a family with no magical background. Therefore some that do think you aren’t as good as they are,” he said sadly.

“But why?”

Therein lay the crux of the issue: why . Truth was, he could give many reasons why but none of them could adequately explain prejudice. It was something you lived through, but nothing about it was logical.

“It’s complicated,” came his reply. “Just know this: you are just as worthy to study magic as anyone else here. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise….also learning a few jinxes wouldn’t hurt either.”

“Can you teach me?”

Though he was a bit surprised, the innocent eyed look of this first year softened the dubiousness of his answer.

“Sure thing. We can find the time.”

Elora nodded and suddenly gave him a big hug, unexpectedly throwing off his balance.

“Ack! He...thanks kid.”

The first year tapped second barrel from the bottom in a distinct rhythm and skipped her way inside, but David didn’t immediately leave leave the area. He paused, willing himself not to drive himself into a fury over what just occurred.

Not all Slytherins are bad

Not all Slytherins are bad

David thought of Barnaby and how he was able to persuade him to change sides and the difference it made in his character. Or the eccentric Liz Tuttle helping him with potions ingredients. Then he thought of people like Ammon Lucian, Hadrian Flint, Ayla Yaxley, and Ismelda Murk and the pit of black vengeance returned, bubbling like tar ready to consume all who became entrapped in it.

As if to punctuate the conflict, Merula Snyde popped into his mind as did Liz Tuttle’s words regarding her

“Merula’s not all bad…well she’s mostly bad. But I know for a fact she’s had a hard life and she’s not always what she seems.”

He shook his head. What did she mean by that? He knew Merula’s parents were locked up in Azkaban but by all accounts she lived like a queen in Hertfordshire in the Snyde Manor. At no point in time had she ever apologized or bothered to show there was anything lurking beneath except vicious arrogance and deceit.

So why was there pain in her lavender eyes every time he beat her in a duel? Why was she so obsessed? What was it about him and his brother that Merula couldn’t let go?

David pushed those thoughts aside for now, having little time or patience to figure out the psychological ramifications of the house of snakes. There was homework to finish and another vault to find and break its curse.

If it took a few Slytherins, whether enemies or friends, to get there he would do so.

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

David never expected much to come of his deeds the previous Saturday. As far as he was concerned, the act of aiding Elora suited him just fine. They’d even scheduled a time to meet where he could show her a few spells. Come Monday, however, that changed.

While at breakfast with Ben, Charlie, and Jae (the latter of whom was chugging multiple goblets of milk on a bet) he was called to the head table by Professor McGonagall.

“David Grant!” she called out. “Please step forward.”

By this time, he temporarily forgot about what had happened and assumed whatever his head of house wanted was nothing good. Usually when they talked outside of class it was due to some trouble he’d been up to or the cursed vaults...oftentimes both.

“Yes, Professor?” he asked as he reached her place at the faculty chair.

“It has come to my attention that you were involved in an altercation last weekend involving a first year student and five others.”

David felt his heart quicken. Was she really about to punish him for doing the right thing?

“Yes...I was.”

But he need not have worried, for in the next moment she gave him a rare smile.

“Do not worry yourself, Mr. Grant. I know you were attempting to protect Miss Dunn from those who sought to make her feel unwelcome and unwanted.”

Her nostrils flared showing a subtle moment of anger before it vanished and she continued.

“Your actions are to be commended. Twenty points to Gryffindor for your courage and defense of those younger than yourself.”

Fear instantly turned to immense happiness as he reciprocated the smile.

“Thank you, Professor.”

“You are welcome. And do tell Mr. Kim that he will likely vomit if he continues in his high consumption of milk. I do not want a mess in the Great Hall nor in my classroom when it occurs today.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I expect nothing less from one of my best Transfiguration students.”

He was sent on his way feeling considerably proud of himself for getting the normally strict and reserved Professor McGonagall to show not only a positive emotion but pride in him. And there was more yet to come. Before he could retake his seat, another familiar face confronted him, this time in the person of Angelica Cole.

“I heard what happened as well, David.”

“In case you were wondering, I earned twenty house points out of it so by your standards I should be showered with roses, am I right?”

Angelica rolled her eyes but her mouth twisted upwards in a smile all the same.

“Incorrigible as ever. But I want to echo McGonagall’s sentiments. Chester told me everything and what you did is precisely what our house is supposed to entail: courage, protecting those who cannot protect themselves.”

She paused before continuing.

“When we first met I thought you were going to be another troublemaker. But I was wrong. And I want to apologize.”

David was surprised, not necessarily by the apology (he and Angelica had gotten on fine this year) but the sentiment she was showing. There was a heavy amount of emotion in her eyes and an acute sense of something bigger at stake.

“Angelica, are you alright?”

“Do you know why I’m saying these things?” she asked him point blank.

“Because I’m just so naturally charming?”

“Because I’m leaving,” Angelica corrected, ignoring his joke. “I have less than two months left at Hogwarts before I graduate. And whether you realize it or not, you’re rising in seniority. David, I want you to take my place after I’m gone.”

He blinked a couple of times, hardly daring to believe his ears.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I know it isn’t coming for at least two more years. But before I leave Hogwarts I’m going to recommend to Professor McGonagall that you be made prefect when your time comes. Through everything there is a quality you have that stands out: leadership.”

David couldn’t help but remain shocked at the ringing endorsement but there it was. He had gone from pain in the arse to leadership material in the span of two years. Nevertheless, he thanked his prefect sincerely.

“Angelica...this means a great deal. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Thank yourself,” she said smiling. “I told you at the beginning of the year that you were worth more than wisecracks and being Jacob Grant’s younger brother. You’ve earned that distinction and much more.”

The conversation ended as the seventh year was forced to quell a potential food fight at the end of the Gryffindor table and David rejoined his group but with positive thoughts to enjoy for once.

“What happened with McGonagall and Angelica?” Charlie asked. “You certainly seem pleased.”

“I dunno mate, they’ve appeared to take a liking to me all of a sudden.”

“Everyone likes you, Dave,” Ben reminded him.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, Ben. But even my popularity has limitations. In particular with a brown haired, deriding, boot wearing, Slytherin girl.”

“Wouldn’t worry about her so much,” Jae replied, by now having stopped chugging milk though he still sported a white mustache as a result. “She ain’t exactly popular among her own house anymore. Most people find her insulting and cruel.”

“She can sit on a pin for all I care,” David shrugged. “Maybe I’m just becoming a little more mature.”

“That’s hilarious,” Charlie laughed.

“So is your bloody snoring even though it keeps me up at night.”

They continued to banter like this for the rest of breakfast when Rowan happened on the scene and right away everyone could tell he had stumbled upon something quite important just by the look in his eye.

“Rowan, you’re just in time to see whether or not Jae can light a fire from his wand with a fart."

But the joke either didn’t register or it paled in comparison to the news

“I need to speak to you,” he said directly to David. “Alone.”

Shrugging but also silently recognizing that something big was going on he played it off as though it were nothing to avoid arousing suspicion.

“Alright then. Lead the way.”

As careful and inconspicuously as they could, Rowan and David exited the Great Hall and into a private column within the corridor. Upon making sure no one was watching, the former of the two boys pulled out a familiar, leatherback, brown notebook.

“I did it,” he whispered. “I finally managed to match the half page to another message in the book and decipher it.”

This was indeed wonderful news and David could hardly wait to hear it. Excitement pulsed through his veins, barely being able to contain it.

“Rowan that’s amazing! Go on! What does it day?”

Proudly and pompously flipping to the correct page, Rowan read the information aloud but also in a hushed tone so no one would hear them.

“‘The entrance is the Restricted Section of the library. That is the source of the fear and the vault itself.’ ”

David ran a hand through his hair, ecstatic but also mentally kicking himself. Of all the places they looked, the one place they forgot was the restricted section?

“I know that look,” Rowan told him seriously. “Don’t beat yourself up. None of us here had any idea where the entrance was, even with your brother’s notes. But it doesn’t matter now.”

Drive and passion drove David to new levels of happiness and determination. They had managed to navigate through all manner of blockages, dead ends, and run arounds only to finally come through in the end. They knew where the vault was and now it was time.

“Time to break into this latest cursed vault,” he spoke aloud.

[hphm-etched-engraved-everlasting]

2. Em

Author’s Note/Table of Contents

If I had to be honest, I had no idea just what Hogwarts would be like.

All my life I have heard of my siblings facing trouble there, and it was a never-ending topic of conversation among my family. Amidst the hardcore studies, there was trouble brewing. After I received my letter, my parents almost stopped me from going, and I didn't have any trouble agreeing with them when they shook their heads. But Clara kept begging and pleading, telling them that she'd keep me safe. It was then when she told me what she was truly hiding, and I had to say, I've never felt more moved by the amount of care she had for me.

So they said yes. And that was when I began to wonder just what laid in store for me--just one month ago.

Walking into Hogwarts now still felt like walking into a dream, really. It was like stepping foot into a trance you knew you wouldn't want to wake from. Huge chambers filled with history and mystery made up this incredible fortress for us to study magic--and, in my family's case, solve a huge case that would potentially put the school at ease once more. Candles burned bright everywhere, flames in torches lit with a warm welcome glow. Everywhere I looked, there was something cool to see--even now, as I stood in the Great Hall, a small soul among many others my age gazing at a worn old hat atop a tall stool.

The hat suddenly ripped open at the brim and began to sing its song.

As years passed in this hallowed school I aged to do my task To sort all younger magic folk In houses--which, you ask?

Brave Gryffindor, we are to start For sheerest courage and dare With loyalty and strength to heart They'd sacrifice and care

Sweet Hufflepuff, ah yes, that's one To see the hard work shine Among their brethren in the sun Always patient, just, and fine

Then Ravenclaw, intelligent With smarts and certainty Give credit to the ones who went To read, to know, to see

Shrewd Slytherin, the ones so sly They love to meet their match By any means, they dare to try Ambition, that's their catch

They started off as founders four To build this wondrous school They made me with their goal of core The custom, placement rule

So put me on, try me out And I will look to see The house where you belong, no doubt The house where you will be!

For a talking hat, it wasn't a bad verse at all. I glanced over at the Gryffindor table and caught my older sister's eye; she just gave me an encouraging nod as she clapped with everyone else.

"Now, when I call your name, you will come forward to be Sorted," Professor McGonagall told us then. She unfurled a long scroll in her hands then, and began reading it aloud.

"Ahn, Eunice!"

A tall girl with tan skin and a rebellious white streak in her black hair walked up and put the hat on her head. I counted approximately ten seconds as she sat on the stool before the hat shouted, "SLYTHERIN!"

I glanced over at the table where everyone was wearing black robes followed by green accents--the same table where Eunice Ahn was walking to. I shouldn't be surprised to see them grinning like maniacs at the new addition. Like the Sorting Hat said, they'd achieve their means by any means necessary.

"Amherst, Remy!"

Next, a burly boy with ash blond hair walked past me--almost pushing me to the side--and put on the hat.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

On and on, the list went, each person trying on the hat and getting their results shouted to the entire school a minute later. Some people barely had the hat on for a second before its decision was announced. Others took longer. I remembered this one boy, Cedric Diggory, sitting on the stool for almost two minutes before the Sorting Hat declared that he'd be put in Hufflepuff House. Each time someone was sorted, though, thunderous applause could be heard from the various house tables, all around the Great Hall--now that I looked at every house, I wondered where the Hat would put me. It didn't help that the lower Professor McGonagall went down the list, the closer the time for my Sorting got.

"Lester, Felicity!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

"Lian, Michael!"

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"Lin, Emily!"

That was it. The bomb had finally dropped, and the Hall had gotten so eerily quiet, one could hear a pin drop in the middle of the room. Then I heard the whispers.

"Another Lin?"

"No way. I thought Jacob only had one sibling!"

"Looks like we were fooled."

"Better not have another snob walking around the place."

Snob? I took it that another Emily must have left some muddy tracks somewhere in her Hogwarts reputation, but that wouldn't mean that I would be the same. I couldn't be. True, not many people knew about Jacob Lin's second little sister--mostly because my mother didn't want anyone to know that she had failed not just one other child, but two children who didn't deserve the pain that was losing their eldest brother. Still, who gave them the right to openly judge me when they've only just known about me for the first time?

The hat eventually dropped over my head, obscuring the vision before me--all the heads craning at me, trying to get a better glimpse of me. Then I heard a small little voice in my head.

"Another Lin. Yes, they were right. I wasn't expecting another sibling of the infamous curse-breaker," it seemed to say. "But here she is. My, what an intriguing personality. You seem to be different from your siblings."

"In a good way?" I whispered, my mouth barely moving.

"I see courage and loyalty, yes. Your greatness is strong, but there is something else. I see a thirst for justice. I see a will to work hard, and spread kindness among others. You will prove yourself, little Em, in a way you might not expect."

Silence ensued. Then--

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

Thunderous applause suddenly came from the Hufflepuff table on my left, and I saw Clara stand up at the Gryffindor table to give me applause, too. I got off the stool and looked at her; she nodded and jerked her head to the Hufflepuffs, and I saw another girl about Clara's age with blonde hair in plaits and bright blue eyes wave me over.

"Wotcher, Emily!" a girl with pink hair greeted me with a grin as I approached the table. "You're Clara's little sister? She's hardly mentioned you much."

"Tonks, that's not nice. I'm sure Clara was only doing it to protect her," the girl with blonde hair said with a frown. "I'm Penny, by the way. I hope you enjoy it here in Hufflepuff."

"Of course. I really look forward to some fun times here," I responded politely, though I knew that might not happen. At least, from the way things were going, it wouldn't be.

The rest of the Sorting continued without me paying much attention--all I could remember was loud roars from the Gryffindor table as a pair of redheaded twins got sorted there. The moment everyone was seated, the Headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, stepped forward.

"To our new students, welcome! To our old students, welcome back!" he commenced. "There will be a time for serious speech, but for now, we feast. Tuck in!"

Suddenly, the plates were filled with food I could never imagine having eaten at home. Heaps of golden mashed potatoes with the slightest sprinkle of parsley, juicy steak with savoury barbecue sauce, steamed vegetables of various kinds bringing colour to the meal. As everyone else grabbed their forks and knives and began to grab their servings of food, I too began to help myself to everything I could see.

"This looks incredible!" I exclaimed, shovelling a small spoonful of mashed potatoes in my mouth. "Mm. I can see why Clara loves the start-of-term feasts so much."

"Any feast is a great feast here at Hogwarts!" Tonks exclaimed with an eager nod. "Ooh, wait till you get to the Halloween feast. Always good spooky fun."

A girl with short silver hair nodded. "At least we'll be safe from the threat that is Greyback returning to Hogwarts." She then turned to me. "Your sister was really brave, stepping up to stop him."

"That's Chiara," a boy with dark brown hair introduced her. "And I'm Diego Caplan, the greatest dueller at Hogwarts."

Did I just imagine that, or did he just smirk at me? I laughed and took a quick swig of my pumpkin juice. "Ah, I remember you. Clara told me quite a bit about you, Diego."

"All good things, I hope." Diego smiled and produced a bouquet of roses out of nowhere, handing them to me.

"Ooh. They're beautiful, Diego," Penny approved with a nod as I took them--hey, it was a friendly gesture, after all. "Nice welcome gift."

"Wait till you get to the Hufflepuff common room! I've got a cool present for you too!" Tonks said excitedly, clapping her hands.

The rest of the time, we were eating and laughing together, just Clara's Hufflepuff friends and me, until dessert came around. Clara then came over to the Hufflepuff table just as I was grabbing a fruit tart, tapping me on the shoulder.

"Come on. I want to introduce you to the rest of my friends."

So I took the fruit tart and went with her to see some of her friends from other houses. It kind of saddened me to see that I wouldn't be able to meet Bill--from what I heard in Clara's stories, he was a crucial part in Clara's education and growth here--but the others were just lovely company all the same. There was Tulip, who was also quite the troublemaker at school. Andre, the fashionista and Quidditch fanatic who simply nodded at my choice of wardrobe and complimented me with the rose bouquet I held. Barnaby, a Slytherin who looked confused half the time, but was genuinely kind. Charlie, the redhead who loves dragons to no end. I found myself at ease with Clara's friends, but I knew that I would have to make some of my own, too. They wouldn't be around here forever. By the time I enter my third year, I would have to have some friends of my own age.

I just hope I could without the judgments going around.

"This is weird," Clara eventually commented to me. "I told you about Ben, Merula, and Beatrice, didn't I?"

"Ben, Merula, and Beatrice? Yeah, I remember." I nodded thoughtfully, glancing at the doors of the Great Hall. "But you told me you never really liked Merula."

"Doesn't mean that she'd be fully fine on her own. I know how bad she got it last year--almost as worse as me." She glanced around the Great Hall, a concerned look in her eyes. "They're not here. That's troubling."

"You think they didn't come? Or that they wanted to skip?"

All Clara could do was heave a long sigh before Professor Dumbledore reappeared on his grand podium, clapping his hands. I quickly returned to the Hufflepuff table, grabbing a custard cream and quietly munching on it as he talked.

"Students of Hogwarts, your attention, please."

The Great Hall fell silent once more--so quiet, you could hear the echo in Dumbledore's voice greatly magnified across the chamber.

"It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the start of a new year at Hogwarts," he said, sweeping his arms out in a grand gesture. "And with a new school year comes new opportunities, to further your studies...develop new friendships...grow as young wizards and witches...and apply difficult lessons learned to build a brighter future."

Or will learn, in my case. Still, I was enraptured by his speech. That was what Hogwarts was made to do--that was the purpose of the school. Raising young people with potential...I nodded quietly, sparing a glance at my sister, who was just looking at him with a serious glint in her eyes.

"In recent years, we've been through some trying times," Dumbledore continued. "But Hogwarts remains an institute dedicated to learning, and there is no place here for those who seek to threaten it. And so, Professor Rakepick will no longer be teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts. All are urged to let the proper authorities deal with her and the Cursed Vaults."

I could see Tonks looking like she was holding back tears. Penny turned as white as a sheet of paper. Diego's eyes narrowed at the announcement, and I wasn't sure if it was my imagination again or not, but he seemed to spare a glance at me--a concerned glance, as if silently asking if I was okay.

"Your priority should be your lessons, and preparing for your wizarding careers," Dumbledore encouraged with a solemn nod. "Our staff is here to support you in those efforts. Do not hesitate to ask for help. Now it is time to wrap up the feast--I imagine your cozy beds are awaiting you."

At these words, everyone got up and huddled towards the door in large masses. From afar, I could hear another girl's voice calling, "Hufflepuff first-years, come over here please!"

I quickly finished off the custard cream and was about to walk over to her, but was stopped by Diego again, who reached a hand out to me.

"If you need anything, little Em, just let me know," Diego said. "Anything that bothers you, you can tell me--and the other sixth years. They're good people. Clara trusts them, even me."

His eyes glinted with concern when he said this, and I nodded, taking his hand and shaking it. "Thanks, Diego. I'll keep it in mind," I responded lightly.

Then we parted ways while the Hufflepuff prefects lead us to the common room--a cozy little place below the castle, where everything glowed topaz and gold. It reminded me of a hobbit hole, with tunnels and circular doors branching off to the various dormitories. As I entered my dormitory, I barely noticed the other girls coming in--I suppose everyone was just as exhausted as I was.

I quickly got changed and climbed into bed, my head hitting the pillow before closing my eyes.

Would I really be safe here, or would I face potential betrayal too, the same way Clara did? And when it happened...what would it take for me to protect myself?

[brotheralyosha]

do you have any specific anti rupi kaur poetry opinions you wish to share? i just ask because I can't stand her poetry and it drives me crazy

Oh dear lord anon, I’ve kept quiet on my views of Rupi Kaur’s poetry for years because I wanted to avoid The Discourse - thank you for finally giving me an excuse!

Honestly, the best summation of my feelings on Rupi Kaur is in two very excellent articles. They’re both worth reading in their entirety, but I’ve included my favorite sections below.

No Filter, by Soraya Roberts

What is perhaps as consistent as the badness of Instapoetry—there are rare exceptions, Shire (who, it must be said, is more a Tumblr and Twitter poet, her Instagram being primarily made up of images and video) being one—is the general unwillingness to speak openly of its badness. Admirers focus on its genuine feeling, its emotional truth. Critics shrug it off, claiming it’s just not their thing. Which is basically how it was designed: Instagram was developed out of a project titled “Send the Sunshine” at Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab, not exactly a project intended to accommodate criticism. Though critical trepidation is a common consequence of the slippery definition of art—we once believed readymades sucked, too—part of this reluctance is also to do with the genre appealing predominantly to young women and haven’t young women been policed enough? Rupi Kaur herself wields this tack as a way to deflect excoriation, equating the criticism of her work to the criticism of marginalized demographics. Of the label “Instagram poet,” she told PBS, “A lot of the readers are young women who are experiencing really real things, and they’re not able to talk about it with maybe family or other friends, and so they go to this type of poetry to sort of feel understood and to have these conversations. And so, when you use that term, you invalidate this space that they use to heal and to feel closer to one another.” You also invalidate women of color as Kaur frames herself within a landscape of both female and immigrant oppression, a context in which judgment is tantamount to muting the disenfranchised. To the literary world, she has pronounced, “This is actually not for you. This is for that, like, seventeen-year-old brown woman in Brampton who is not even thinking about that space, who is just trying to live, survive, get through her day.” It is a savvy move, invalidating all manner of criticism before it has even been formulated.

But here it is: Her poetry, and much of Instapoetry, is poor. This poetry is not poor because it is genuine, it is poor because that is all it is. To do more than that, regardless of talent, requires time, and, by its very definition, Instapoetry has none. Ezra Pound’s epic collection of poems The Cantos took decades to complete. Maya Angelou has said she has found poetry the most challenging of all her professions: “When I come close to saying what I want to, I’m over the moon. Even if it’s just six lines, I pull out the champagne. But until then, my goodness, those lines worry me like a mosquito in the ear.” Even Rimbaud, who was already composing his best work in adolescence, conceded in his “Letter of the Seer,” “The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses.” Time is what is required to think, the kind of thinking that allows the poet to imbue each individual word with a world of meaning. Harold Bloom described canonical writing as that which demands rereading, William Empson that it needs to work for readers with divergent opinions, provoking a variety of responses and interpretations. All of this implies a richness, a complexity, a variety of strata. The majority of Instapoetry has none of this. It is almost exclusively a banal vessel of self-care, equivalent to an affirmation, designed for young women of a certain privileged position and disposition, one that is entirely self-absorbed. The genre’s batheticisms remove specificity, to avoid alienation, supplanting them with the sort of platitude you find on a department store tea towel. Because this is what Instapoetry is—it is not art, it is a good to be sold, or, less, regrammed. Its value is quantity not quality.

The Problem with Rupi Kaur’s Poetry, by Chiara Giovanni

While more female South Asian voices are indeed needed in mainstream culture and media, there is something deeply uncomfortable about the self-appointed spokesperson of South Asian womanhood being a privileged young woman from the West who unproblematically claims the experience of the colonized subject as her own, and profits from her invocation of generational trauma. There is no shame in acknowledging the many differences between Kaur’s experience of the world in 2017 and that of a woman living directly under colonial rule in the early 20th century. For example: neither is any more “authentically” South Asian. But it is disingenuous to collect a variety of traumatic narratives and present them to the West as a kind of feminist ethnography under the mantle of confession, while only vaguely acknowledging those whose stories inspired the poetry.

…

Kaur’s strategic appeals to two different markets also inform the composition of her collection and her social media presence. While milk and honey contains several poems that, through coded words like ��dishonor,” obliquely refer to Kaur’s cultural upbringing, that’s about as explicit as it gets: The poems are vague enough to provide identifiable prompts for readers from a variety of different cultural environments, including — in many cases — white Western readers. Thus the collection remains relatable — and, crucially, marketable — to a wider audience, while still retaining an element of culturally informed authenticity that forms much of Kaur’s brand. The few poems that specifically address race are positioned facing each other, a brief interlude in a collection that is otherwise devoid of racial politics, and once again addresses a white, Western audience in their appeal for recognition of South Asian beauty and resilience.

…

Thanks to this social media strategy of sharing pieces with little to no context, Kaur is able to target two demographics: white Westerners who might be disinclined to buy books by minority writers, and her loyal grassroots fan base that includes a large contingent of young people of color across the world. She is thus able to maintain her brand of authenticity and relatability, but in different ways for different groups; to her Western metropolitan audience, she is “the patron saint of millennial heartbreak,” while to her marginal readers she is a representation of their desire for diversity in the literary world, despite rarely touching upon race in her work. This is not to reinforce the often-damaging expectation that writers of color must write only about racism in order to be successful, only that Kaur claims to be documenting a specifically South Asian experience that never materializes.

[orbitinghetalia]

The young woman looked out of the window at the white haired devil, who had once again chosen to walk past the house owned by her family. Chiara could normally be found near the window at the time he walked down the street and then again when he was known to walk past the Vargas home back to wherever he had came from around the usual time. It seemed to keep to a strict time table.

Due to this fact, Chiara had known well in advance that this particular demon was coming their way soon and she had hurried to find her younger siblings in order to get them into the relative safety of their house, where she would have closed all the windows and doors that could grant access to the building.

What she couldn’t have known was that on this day, she could have only hoped to get them all home as she always did. For all her efforts, the she had not been able to find the last one of her siblings. Her younger sister Feliciana. She needed to find her. Who knew if Grandfather would ever be able to forgive his eldest grandchild for losing track of his most favoured and most loved granddaughter.

Trying to find Feliciana, neighbours had seen the older sister running through the street calling for Feli and some had eventually taken hold of her and pulled her into one of their homes. Hiding inside while the young man with hair as white as that of an old man walked passed. Hair like that had to be a mark of the devil.

Once the immediate threat was gone, the oldest of the siblings went back to her home and pulled her younger brothers from the spot she has hidden them. After giving them some food, she had pushed them back in. Telling the boys a few scary stories teaching them to stay together and to make sure they stayed inside the hidden space of the basement until she came back for them. They had soon fallen asleep.

---

Knowing that her little brothers where safe and that they would remain safe, the brunette began searching for her little sister again. After a while she came across an old neighbour, who told her that he had seen Feliciana at the market.

Thanking the former neighbor for his help, the oldest sibling began to make her way to that market as fast as she could.

There Chiara found her baby sister. She was speaking to and smiling at the man her big sister had come to fear. Frozen upon the sight of her darling sister so close to evil, Feliciana had seen her and waved at her.

At the same time she spoke to the devil beside her. Whatever she had said made him laugh. Laugh so much that the man was still doubled over as he tried to wave at her too. As he moved into an upright position the young woman’s heart skipped a beat.

What she witnessed next could not be of human nature. While the man moved and made eye contact with her at the same time, she was certain she saw his eyes turn a deep, bloody red. It might have been a moment or a trick of the light but she was certain that she had seen red eyes. Inhuman eyes.

Feli kept waving at her, so with knees that nearly buckled under her weight, she somehow managed to make her way over to her sister and that man so feared by anyone but Feliciana. Once she reached them, she quickly pulled her Feliciana behind her. Telling this demon to stay away from her little sister. Her poor, naïve little sister. What would the townspeople say when word spread of this meeting with someone so clearly marked by evil.

The stranger looked sad for a fleeting moment before his expression turned blank. Feliciana was quick to turn on her sister and tell her Gilbert was no demon, devil or any threat to her honour and swore to her sister he had done nothing to her in any way.

---

Feliciana then began telling Chiara the story about how see got to know Gilbert. One day she had gone to the market and met a stranger there. After running into each other, which had caused Feli to dropped some things she had bought. The man had tried to apologize and help her gather her belongings, but had been rather awkward about it and they kept bumping into one another trying to collect the items.

This had ended up making Feliciana laugh and the man shyly introduced himself as Ludwig. He was passing through on his way home, which was in the neighbouring town, when suddenly his name was called.

Feli hadn’t noticed how many of the villagers had started whispering or even tried to hide away, but when she looked up she had tried to run away as well. Only Ludwig had grabbed her wrist and told her not to be afraid. As the white haired man approached slowly, Ludwig told her they were used to people reacting this way, but that his older brother was certainly not cursed. Even if many of the people in their hometown believed him to be marked. One of the reasons they bought many of their supplies and often worked in towns other than the one they lived in.

It turned out that Ludwig had come to visit her again after that first meeting and Gilbert had been acting as a chaperon for her younger sister and his little brother. Which is how the town had ended up getting a lot more visits of the white haired man. It had been Gilbert who told them that meeting at the same time and in the same place would be the easiest for Feliciana and it had been. For a while.

People in town, like Chiara, had taken notice of Gilbert’s appearance and which times he would walk through their streets. That had kept the two from being together for the last few times they had tried to meet up. Feliciana had grown tired of not being able to talk to Ludwig and had avoided her sister on purpose.

Only Ludwig had been sick this time and, though well taken care of, been unable to travel that far. So Gilbert and Feliciana had ended up in the position in which Chiara had found them.

---

It was when her little sister began telling her more stories about Ludwig. The kind of stories that, if she had gotten a good impression of his personality, Chiara figured the younger man would have been embarrassed by.

It felt like her sister continued talking about the boy for many hours. In reality it had been half an hour at most, but the brother had managed to make his way into their conversation and save this, to chiara unknown man, sibling of his by asking for stories about a little Feli.

Chiara couldn’t resist telling him some stories about her baby sister, that had the other girl flustered and begging her sister to stop. Gilbert promised the older to tell the stories to ‘Lutz’ when his fever had passed and he would surely be able to remember them. This ‘devil’ was charming. Despite his nature to show off, Chiara could see the charming, kind, generous and welcoming side of him that existed  beside the organized, nearly militaristic man.

She wasn’t ready to admit it to anyone,, but she loved how this man could have that many sides to him.

---

She put all the bad omens together.

Pale blond hair.

Which seemed white from a distance.

Brown eyes.

Seemingly red in when the light hit them in the right, or wrong, angle.

He was intelligent and schooled, he could read and write.

He wrote with his left hand.

One time he rolled up his sleeved higher than usual.

She had not meant to notice the dark brown spot above his elbow. A birthmark.

---

Feliciana had not been present the first time Chiara met Ludwig. The blond man was tall, strong and far too serious for her sister. He was also acting as a chaperon for Chiara and his brother.

---

A demon.

Except he was not.

Just a man.

Simply a man, but one that loved her for who she was.

---

She was not going to give him up. No matter what any of the town people said about him or her. Or them.

After talking to her siblings, it became clear it didn’t even matter what anyone said about any of them. They were one family. They, Feliciana and Ludwig. Then Chiara and Gilbert had the blessing of both families.

---

And that is the story of how Chiara met Gilbert.

They didn’t live happily ever after, they went through live with all of its up and downs.

However, they did live happily.

Until.

The End.

_______________________________________________________

really late submission for @prumano-week‘s day 7 Medieval Fantasy AU // Omens

[chvrrybaby]

*itzy  vc*  hey  hey  hey   !   (  i  see  that  i’m  icy  )   what’s  up,  i’m  diana,  i’m  nineteen,  and  i’m  ur  resident  girl  group  stan.  i  reside  in  the  est  timezone  &  go  by  the  pronouns  she/her.  now,  finally  introducing  ...  loona    !!   jk,  her  name  is  blair  &  u  can  learn  abt  her  under  the  cut   !   my  discord  is  lana del rey is coming <3#5522   (  stream  her  new  album  august  30th  ),  so  feel  free  to  message  me  there  or  through  tumblr  im’s  if  u  prefer  that   !   otherwise,  i’ll  come  to  u <3

—  kim doyeon. she/her. cis female. | was that blair ryu i just saw in the hideaway lobby ? i hear the nineteen year old spends most of their time working as a sugar baby/studying classic literature and women’s studies, but i’ve always just seen them writing in her dream journal. they live in 5A and i often see them in the halls. they always give me a vibe of loosely curled hair, cherry lip gloss, the lingering scent of vanilla in the air.

(    𝑩𝑨𝑪𝑲𝑮𝑹𝑶𝑼𝑵𝑫.   )

born on october 5th, 1999  ( this is literally a day before my bday ooc but anyway ajkdhsjdh )  in rochester, new york, blair’s first impression of the world was a crisp autumn day

she was her parents first and only child. her mother was an elementary school teacher, while her father worked at a nearby power plant in ontario

the family never made too much money, but they were able to get by, at least at first

she had a fairly happy childhood, though it was a lonely one. her father was always working odd hours, and with her mother gone during the day, she spent most of her time with a babysitter and the family golden retriever

eventually, she herself started going to school. she immediately excelled in the english department and fell in love with reading. blair realized early on how much she enjoyed escaping reality with a novel, immersing herself in a story so exciting compared to her dull life

almost everything was fine until her high school years. aside from the fact that she never had a present father figure, she was closer to her mom and still loved by both of her parents. however, when her high school years came around, her father lost his job

her father was the families main provider, and her mothers salary alone would not be enough to take care of the entire family. while he searched for another job, they had to give away the family golden retriever to one of blair’s aunts because they couldn’t afford the extra cost :(

on top of losing her beloved pet, the loss of her father’s job prompting the family to pick up and move their entire life

already in the midst of high school, blair had to leave her life as she knew it behind. the family moved to statesboro, georgia, and her father found a job at the nearby power plant

the transition to life in georgia was not easy for blair. though she didn’t exactly have trouble making friends, she didn’t feel like she could truly connect with anyone

once again, blair turned to losing herself in a book to pass the time

shortly after the move to georgia, her parents experienced some difficulties within their marriage. they ended up separating, and blair spent the remainder of her high school years living with each of them for half of the time

she did not mind her parents separating, as she knew it was for the best. however, her father found a girlfriend fairly quickly, and blair would eventually find out her father had been having an affair

her father spent most of his free time with his new girlfriend and her family. blair was upset at how he prioritized his the new people in his life over her when he was barely ever around for her growing up

meanwhile, her mother was having trouble adjusting to being alone, so she moved back to new york to live with her sister

blair stayed behind in georgia to finish high school, but knew she wanted to go elsewhere for college. she wanted to get as far away from her father and his new life as possible

once blair turned eighteen, she began to sell pictures for money. she wanted to earn as much as possible so she could afford to go away for university. she created an alias and began to sell pictures and videos of her feet. eventually, she expanded her horizons once she realized how much money she could earn

she never went as far as sleeping with her clients, but she would go on dates with them and spend the days with them to earn more money ( kind of like ludovica/chiara in the italian show baby on netflix minus sleeping w them )

she dated a few people throughout her high school years, and began to more “seriously” date a guy during her senior year in high school, though she knew the relationship wouldn’t last. despite appearing as a more serious relationship, to her, it wasn’t really anything of the sort, and she mostly wanted a relationship for senior prom and other trivialities

after senior year ended and she had accepted admission into uni in seattle, she basically cut ties with everyone in georgia aksdjskdjh she said good bye forever ! rip poor unnamed boyfriend he didn’t see it coming ...

her father also did not see it coming because she didn’t even tell him where she applied. but at the same time, did he ask ? no :/

once she left for uni, her relationship with her father became very very estranged. she still speaks to her mom on a pretty regular basis, but even then, she has a whole secret life and doesn’t feel particular close to either of them sjkdfhskdjh

and that’s that for background !

(   𝑷𝑬𝑹𝑺𝑶𝑵𝑨𝑳𝑰𝑻𝒀.   )

blair is a libra sun leo moon ( rising sign & other placements tbd )

she is definitely a friendly/sociable person. she can be pretty outgoing and loves to be around people. idk her mbti yet but she is def an extrovert ! ( she does tend to keep her feelings to herself tho )

despite her friendly demeanor, she does have a fiery spirit. if u wrong her she will hold a grudge against u until it gets settled/sorted. she can be more on the mean side when she’s upset, but even then she does not have a bad heart at all

when it comes to relationships, blair is all over the place. she can be very flirty/charismatic and is constantly hopping from one relationship to the next. she hasn’t quite been able to settle down, but it is possible. she kind of thinks being in a real relationship means losing her freedom, because that’s kind of what she saw happen with her parents, so she doesn’t really want to be tied down to someone in fear of losing herself in a way. does this make sense ? maybe ? ok !

blair has a fairly strong sense of self, but she’s still very young so she’s still growing and changing. she is the type of person to know what she wants and go after it ( yes, even with ppl ! ). she will stop at nothinggg to get what she wants ( oop ). u could say she loves the chase, but kind of gets bored afterwards unless u have more to offer !

omg she literally loves 2 be the center of attention. i mean, who doesn’t love attention ? but blair takes it 2 another level. she gets all :( if she’s being ignored or isn’t receiving enough attention

kind of bouncing off the whole attention thing, blair loves a good party ! she’s young and here for a good time. she def loves to drink at parties and stuff even tho she isn’t legal here in the us, why should that stop her am i right ? when it comes to drugs, she’s a veryyy casual user and doesn’t do anything crazy. a social weed smoker n will do pills here and there

being a libra sun with a leo moon, i think it’s safe to say she can be a bit dramatic at times ( i mean, as a libra sun with a leo venus i am not one 2 judge xx ). she reads 2 much and watches 2 many movies like ajkdhsjkhd life rly isn’t that serious but she can b a lil overdramatic sometimes whew ! we told u this was melodrama ... lorde stans make some noise !

blair’s fav books are anything by jane austen and les liaisons dangereuses by pierre choderlos de laclos, aka the book cruel intentions was based on ( which happens 2 be one of her fav movies )

shows she loves: gossip girl ( she shares a name w blair so she probably used 2 call herself queen b in high school or something ), desperate housewives ( no wonder this binch is so dramatic ), big little lies, pretty little liars ( the early seasons only ), the netflix show baby, and buffy the vampire slayer

movies she loves: clueless, almost famous, thoroughbreds, moulin rouge, palo alto, marie antoinette, coyote ugly, american beauty, cruel intentions, and valley of the dolls ( to name a few )

her fav colors are pink, red, and white !

u can find her pinterest board here.

she is bisexual babey !!

(   𝑾𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑫 𝑪𝑶𝑵𝑵𝑬𝑪𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺.   )

party buddies - this is pretty basic and self explanatory, but someone blair can go out and have fun with. their friendship might be more surface level, or started that way at least, but it’s possible they’re closer friends ( maybe she opened up under the influence and it brought them closer aksdhsdjh drunk blair def would )

ex-fling/gf/bf - blair relationship hops, so she could have quite a few of these. we can plot it however, there can b feelings there, they can hate each other, of they can be just friends now, u name it !

unrequited crush -  ur character could have feelings for blair, but maybe she doesn’t feel them back or is unaware that they like her. this could develop into her eventually having feelings for ur muse or not, whatever we want ! OR blair could def have a crush on someone who does not like her back. maybe that person is super non-committal, or they simply do not like her back. we could plot this out however <3

current fling/friends w benefits - someone she is currently seeing/sleeping with. could be no strings attached, or there could b some feelings there. maybe they don’t want to make it anything serious, or maybe they’re ready to take it to the next level. maybe one person is ready to go further, and the other isn’t.

enemies w benefits - imagine the tension!!! they started out hating each other, but ended up hooking up. maybe it was a one time thing, or maybe they can’t stop going back to each other. i think it would b cool if they kept it a secret, they don’t want anyone else to know. this could develop in soooo many ways !

ex-friends - someone she used to consider a close friend, but they had a falling out for whatever reason n maybe they hate each other now. maybe they want to re-kindle their friendship but don’t know how

sibling-like friendship - someone she sees like a sibling. they’re there for each other and look out for one another, always have each other’s backs. being an only child and not really close to her parents, blair would love a friend that she could basically call family !

dynamic duo - basically like her current best friend. this person is prob one of the closest people to her and knows her very well ! they could b a power duo, always looking out for each other 

take care - someone who kind of looks after her ?? maybe when she parties a lil too hard and drinks a lil too much, someone who kind of takes care of her n makes sure shes ok ! they would be someone she trusts a lottttt

confidant - someone who confides in her or someone she confides in, or they confide in each other. they don’t necessarily have to be the closest friends ever, but they get along, trust each other, and maybe they talk more in private

rivals - they hate each other for whatever reason. maybe it’s jealousy or their personalities just clash, but for whatever reason they do not get along. i love a good enemies plot. they can just b nasty to each other !!! maybe they bring out a really bad side to blair that most ppl dont see. someone who makes her act like blair waldorf ( i’m def kidding abt the blair waldorf part )

bad influence - blair isn’t a goody-two-shoes by any means, but doesn’t really do anything crazy, so i’d luvv for someone to kind of influence her to do shit she normally wouldn’t on her own

these are all the plot ideas i can think of for now, but i’ll prob make a plots page later on and add more stuff !

so this is everything !! this has taken me longer than it should have but i’m finally done whew,,, cheers 2 me <3 anyway i would absolutely luv to plot, so feel free to hit me up on discord or tumblr im’s, or i can also come to u ! i’m so excited to get started <333 i’m gonna b logging off now most likely, since it’s 3 am my time, but i’ll be back in the morning

[toomanytentacles]

I’ve been thinking a lot about this film THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY lately, about how perfect and beautiful it is, and figure this piece of writing I did is worth a revisit. You ever do that, go back a year later and see if your opinion on something has changed any? Well, in this case, it hasn’t.

Text that follows was published at www.cinepunx.com

REKT: The Duke of Burgundy

by Elbee | May 29, 2018

Adrianna has been trying to get me to watch The Duke of Burgundy for what seems like decades; this is an absolute fact. When we first discussed the film all those years ago, I told her I had started watching it once and was intrigued, however (as I often do) I fell asleep moments after the opening title sequence. But I always wanted to come back to the film because what I (briefly) saw of it was striking, and lo and behold, she put it on her recommendation list this month, giving me the final push I needed to move the film from “need to watch” to “watched.” Boy howdy, am I glad she did.

There are so many artful elements to this film to sink into, but first I need to talk about the music. The Duke of Burgundy’s beautifully haunting soundtrack (available via Caroline Records) is performed by indie act Cat’s Eyes, a band I have been enamored with since their first album dropped in 2011. Once I recognized Rachel Zeffira’s voice singing over a familiar kind of hazily sullen melody as the opening credits started, I felt a definite sense of being at home with this movie. Couple that with a late ‘60s-slash-early ‘70s vaguely European aesthetic, and I was on board faster than you could say “Rosemary’s Baby” (That kind of look and feel is mysteriously special to me, and I’m not entirely certain why. You know how sometimes things aren’t exactly nostalgic, but they speak to your soul like they are anyway? The Duke of Burgundy is that.).

But let’s get to the meat of this story. We’re introduced to main characters Evelyn and Cynthia through what appears to be a scene taken from classical literature: Evelyn arrives at Cynthia’s petite countryside mansion via her bicycle on what seems to be her first day as Cynthia’s hired help. Cynthia is cold to the young woman (dressed like a wealthy businesswoman with designer heels and pencil skirt, her hair in a neat updo), and commands her sternly to begin her chores — which must be done correctly. The meek Evelyn begins work, and it is when we see that one of her duties is to hand wash and dry Cynthia’s delicate panties that we begin to think perhaps there is more to this relationship than a simple employer/employee dynamic. Indeed, shortly after, it is revealed the two women are a couple roleplaying, and the submissive Evelyn is more than eager to be punished by Cynthia when she neglects to do her chores properly. But, as we learn, their dynamic is even more complicated than that (I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s a reveal that blurs the lines of their dom/sub roles in a very subversive way.). So now, instead of a classic Miss Havisham-type scenario, we have a tender look into the relationship of two women who are trying to give enough of themselves over to each other in order to satisfy each individual’s needs while still maintaining their own personas.

This film is valiant in its attempt to show how we all struggle with the same types of relationship imbalances; the moral here is that relationships which go beyond the scope of so-called traditional values are really no different than those which are held in that tradition. I don’t exactly want to spoil anything because this film goes above and beyond what any other I’ve seen does as far as examining the dom/sub relationship in a realistic way, but this film thoughtfully introduces important ideas that need to be shared. I think that fetishes and kink often have one of two reputations to “normal” people: either kink is looked upon as disgusting, or it’s fetishized in itself as being “new” or “exciting” or “playful.” Normal society doesn’t really take kink seriously, but this film does its part to provide the example that kink can be absolutely serious and real, and it can constitute as much emotional turmoil as any regular type of sexual relationship. One element to that sameness is what I’m going to refer to as “the shackles of a relationship,” when one person feels tied down or has been sacrificing a part of his/her identity in order to maintain what is perceived as a happy couplehood. In the case of Evelyn and Cynthia, the struggle for control is what leads to their apparent downfall, and the film presents this imbalance in a way that is entirely relatable. Eventually their game becomes redundant to at least one participant, which shows that even in kink relationships, people grow tired of one other. Evelyn starts to blame Cynthia a bit, saying things like, “It would be nice if you would do it without being asked,” in reference to Cynthia degrading her, in quite the same way Jennifer Aniston tells Vince Vaughn “I want you to want to do the dishes” in the 2006 romantic comedy The Break-Up. The film goes on to show us more relationship tropes including infidelity, jealousy, and pettiness, all of which play out in an interesting way; we are once again compelled to ask ourselves how anyone could not be willing to understand how love plays into our similarities as human beings instead of focusing negatively on our differences in sexual identities.

Performances in this film are strong, especially in the case of Sidse Babett Knudsen as the graceful-yet-fragile Cynthia. One of the things this film does beautifully is exhibit how complex women can be in their characters; Cynthia is an expert in lepidopterology (the study of butterflies), and her experience in the scientific academic field sets her up to be a possible authoritarian. And even though this is probably what appeals to Evelyn about her the most, Cynthia does show a softer and more nuanced side to the typical authoritative stereotype at home. Throughout the film, Cynthia seems as if she’s only going along with Evelyn as she indulges in her kinky fantasies (this is where the theme of sacrifice first comes in to play), and the reservation she secretly holds about their roleplay is expertly shown with restraint by a few forlorn looks in the mirror. Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna), like Cynthia, shows both strength and weakness: even though she is the submissive, she knows exactly what she wants from their relationship, and she’s determined to get it. However, when Cynthia shows timidness with delivering on her agreed role, in a moment of instability, Evelyn seeks out her desires elsewhere. The vulnerability the two show as they work out the impact of their mutual issues is phenomenally relatable; again, it all goes to show these themes are universal.

I’m not sure I can fully express how extraordinarily shot and thoughtfully crafted The Duke of Burgundy is. And what is fantastic about it is that it is a highly erotic film — these women are both incredibly sexy, and given the subject matter, almost every scene evokes a sort of amorous curiosity. But, it’s also a film treated with so much care that the eroticism doesn’t get in the way of the story; to put it plainly, you can watch this film and be intrigued — I would go so far as to say “stimulated” — but you can also watch it without the distraction of your metaphorical dick. Eroticism? Yes. Smut? No. Is this the highest compliment I can give a film of this sort? Yes, probably. So, thank you again, Adrianna, for pushing me to watch this film. And in turn, I’m probably going to start pushing it on everyone else.

[oosteven-universe]

Red Sonja #01

Red Sonja #01 Dynamite Entertainment 2021 Written by Mirka Andolfo & Luca Blengino Illustrated by Giuseppe Cafaro Coloured by Chiara Di Francia Lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou    MOTHER, PART ONE.     Industry icon MIRKA ANDOLFO presents an all-new vision for the She-Devil With A Sword, in a thrilling new ongoing series! Our story begins in a village on fire, set by members of the dreaded Three-Eyed Shezem. When Red Sonja arrives, the only survivor of the flame is a lively child with curious white tattoos. The child will become Sonja’s travel companion, on a journey from hardened ice to imposing forests, where dangerous secrets wait to be revealed…    One of the greatest things about the world Red Sonja lives in is that you never know what kind of story you are going to be getting.  Sword & Sorcery indeed for we all know she’s the she-devil with a sword and there’s magic in this world that usually comes with her swearing in a number of ways that would make grown pirates blush a few shades of pink.  So what we get here is a first issue mired in mystery that leaves us with one hell of a cliffhanger ending and if this run from Mirka is going to be anything like this issue then we are in for one hell of a grand ole time.    I am a fan of the way that this is being told.  The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well.  The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter brings their personalities to the forefront.  How they are so easily recognisable is fantastic stuff.  The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages introducing the story, the characters and this part of the world they are in is beyond exciting and it really does light up the imagination.    How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and grow are absolutely magnificent to see.  I love seeing how the layers open up the avenues that will be explored or those that won’t but regardless, they bring some great depth, dimension and complexity to the story.  How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved exceedingly well.      The interiors here are lovely.  There is almost something about this that almost blends traditional comic book style with manga to really create something sleek, new and different.  There’s some really beautiful linework happening here and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create the detail work that we see throughout the issue is amazingly well rendered.  Because of the way we see the composition within the panels and how backgrounds are being utilised they bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story extremely well.  I wouldn’t mind sharper backgrounds but I'm not going to quibble because how we see the pages is super strong.  The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling.  The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is expertly laid down.   ​    There are so many great and unexpected moments that we see throughout the book, including what brings Sonja to this part of the world.  This young girl with who and what she represents is going to make for one heck of an exciting debut arc for Mirka and company.  With strong intelligent writing and witty characterisation along with these beautifully illustrated interiors I’m looking forward to seeing where this is going to go next. 

[negahc]

The Journal August Newsletter

We have lots of great livestreams during August that largely focus on women’s history as this August marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment which granted women the right to vote nationally.

Each Wednesday at 2 PM ET, we present a livestream for the general public to enjoy via Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Each Friday we present special Member Livestreams for our local and digital Members. Become a Digital Member for as little as $3/month or $35/year to enjoy Member livestreams and more: Become a Digital Member

August Livestream Schedule:

Virtual Trivia: The American Civil War August 5th at 2 PM ET Join Glen Kyle and Marie Walker as they host an online trivia game about the American Civil War. Details on how to play at this link.

Reading & Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper (Members Only) August 7th at 2 PM ET Libba Beaucham reads The Yellow Wallpaper, a short story published in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman which has often been interpreted as a piece against the oppression of women with mental health issues. Libba will offer insight on the various interpretations of this work and the life of its author.

Ask a Historian August 12 at 2 PM ET Historian Glen Kyle answers your questions about all things history in our Ask a Historian series.

The Military Women of World War II (Members Only) August 14th at 2 PM ET Join historian Glen Kyle as he presents a Members Livestream on women who served in the military during World War II. The Women’s Suffrage Movement August 19th at 2 PM ET Libba Beaucham hosts a presentation on the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States and abroad including interviews with historians and a special look at the life of Suffragist and Abolitionist Lucy Stone.

Meet Suffragist Lucy Stone (Members Only) August 21st at 2 PM ET Libba Beaucham portrays Suffragist Lucy Stone and takes your questions from the chat in-character and out-of-character.

The History of the Girl Scouts August 26th at 2 PM ET Libba Beaucham presents a livestream program about the history of the Girl Scouts and its founder Juliette Gordon Low. Meet Juliette Gordon Low (Members Only) August 28th at 2 PM ET Libba Beaucham portrays Girl Scouts Founder Juliette Gordon Low and takes your questions in-character and out-of-character.

We have made an enormous amount of progress in re-organizing and cataloguing our archives thanks to Lesley Jones, Ava Wilkey, and our interns! This was an ambitious project that has taken hours and hours of hard work, but thanks to this incredible team, we can share even more of the fascinating items in our archives with the rest of the world. Here are a few pictures of the work and progress:

Lesley Jones (left) with intern Mary Abbott (left) view a glass negative

One of the hundreds of glass negatives that are being processed in our archives

Interns Ruth, Carmen, and Mary prepare and clean glass negatives for processing and storage

Ava Wilkey (left) with Lesley Jones (right) reviewing items for storage and cataloging. Ava has had extensive experience in archives management and offered so much great insight in this project! Thank you, Ava! Lesley led our team of interns and jump started this project last year with a LOT of hard work. Thank you, Lesley!

Here is the archive as it was before Lesley and the team began

Now items have been cataloged in boxes and on shelves!

This is an ongoing project, but the work that has been done has paved the way for our future interns to work in a professional, organized, and fascinating archive. 

This is also a project that requires funding so that we may continue to hire professionals and purchase necessary supplies. If you are interested in making a donation towards this project, you may donate at this link.

An article by our Director of Education, Marie Walker, about Mary Wollstonecraft who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women during the French Revolution.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women in the midst of the French Revolution, which she happily embraced, even traveling to France to experience it firsthand. The world was being turned upside down, kings were no longer regarded as having a “Divine Right” to rule, and the people were rising up to take charge. It was a time of revolution. Yet, while this social upheaval was happening, and “the common man” was getting more rights, women were not. Wollstonecraft wrote this to urge people to include women’s rights, as basic human rights, in the new government that was forming.

Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie source

In response to The Declaration of the Rights of Man, Mary Wollstonecraft took up her pen to write A Vindication of the Rights of Women in only six weeks, making the argument that women were just as rational as men and therefore worthy of all the same rights as men. She sarcastically implores that her own sex “will excuse me if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascination graces and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone” (Wollstonecraft pg. 1170). She completely rallies against the idea that women are creatures that need to be taken care of by men, because they only have the intellect of a child. Wollstonecraft was very well educated and greatly discusses the need to educate women, because she argues if women were given equality, the same education as men, and the same chances as men, women would not need men. Women, if given education and equality would be able to attain social and economic independence. 

Change was happening all around the world, and Wollstonecraft wanted to push that change as far as it would go. She believed that “the refusal of those who had espoused revolutionary principles of equality to extend right to women represented a betrayal of those supposedly universal principles.” (Historical Notes pg. 1168). Wollstonecraft was literally rebelling against everything society said about women. She wanted women to be recognized as intelligent and rational creatures. She writes, “how grossly do they insult us who thus advise us only to render ourselves gentle, domestic brutes!” (Wollstonecraft pg. 1172) Wollstonecraft wanted women to be valued for their knowledge and reasonable intellect, and not only appreciated as pretty things, wives, and mothers.

Wollstonecraft also tackled the juxtaposition between two largely held ideas of womanhood, the idea that women being morally superior, and that women were weak. Wollstonecraft states, “Women are, therefore, to be considered either as moral beings, or so weak that they must be entirely subject to the superior faculties of men.” (Wollstonecraft pg.1176) Wollstonecraft then urges women to reject these ideas saying, “I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body,” (pg. 1170). Wollstonecraft’s’ dream was to see a nation full of strong independent women. Women who were strong of body, who did not need a fainting couch. Women who were strong of mind, who took pride in their intellectual prowess, and did not simply defer to a mans’ opinion.

We are thrilled with the success of our first ever virtual summer camp series. From the beginnings of Colonial America, to the Western Frontier, to the complexities of the American Civil War, we journeyed through history with such great groups of students! Here are a few highlights from our most recent Civil War Virtual Camp:

Students met nurse Clara Barton, portrayed by Marie Walker, and learned about the life of a nurse during the Civil War.

Glen Kyle interpreted a Union Officer with lots of reproduction items to showcase.

Students met Harriet Tubman, portrayed by Chiara Richardson, and were able to ask Harriet questions directly.

Glen interpreted the life of a Confederate Civil War soldier and taught students what camp life was like.

Marie taught several crafts including this one, a yarn doll!

Frederick Douglass, portrayed by Mustapha Slack, met with students and told them what inspired him to fight for abolition.

A few of the many students that joined our camp. They were so inquisitive and great to work with!

Catch up on our latest podcast episodes with special guests and fascinating topics! In our latest episode, Medieval Historian Dr. Thomas Greene discusses what we misunderstand about Medieval life and the connections between our experiences and those of the past. Listen to all of our episodes at this link:

Then Again Podcast

Our educational programming is made possible by the Ada Mae Ivester Education Center and the Cottrell Digital Studio.

[spamzineglasgow]

(HOT TAKE) Quarantine Phenomenology: The Curious Case of Daddy Conte, by Denise Bonetti

‘Teenage by design’? SPAM founder and editor-in-chief Denise Bonetti, tapping into her Italian roots, takes us on a whirlwind journey around the lustful theme park that is meme space in the time of quarantine. For many, especially those who aren’t on the frontline as key workers, self-isolation is thrusting us back into a rude adolescence. Having exhausted our usual channels of recursive entertainment, where better to look than to the political (yes, wybi?!) heroes of meatspace to fantasise the intimacies and reassurances we’re otherwise deprived of. 

(CW: sexually explicit references)

> Comedian Dan Sebree tweeted that this whole quarantine situation is the closest any of us millennials will get to retirement. The joke is funny because it’s most likely true: the idea of people in my age bracket (mid-20s to mid-30s) ever retiring seems like a fairytale we tell ourselves to keep our boomer parents happy, something we play along to because frankly it’s easier than sharing the extent of our doubts in the future. (Find someone in their 20s who can say ‘when we all retire’ without a shred of irony).

> Sebree is right, most of us are playing retirees now. 80% of your salary to repot your plants, make sourdough, and fend off waves of existential dread here and there: not too shabby - if you used to have a stable job, that is. Things obviously aren’t so chill for quite literally everyone else: NHS workers, shopkeepers, supermarket employees, people on zero-hour contracts (which make up around 9% of all the UK workforce under 25), gig economy workers, freelancers by choice, people whose employers can’t be bothered putting them on payroll, and have therefore decided for them that they’ll have to be freelancers - the list goes on. 

> Yet beyond the retirement vibes, there is a stage of life that seems even more appropriate to represent the mood that this pandemic isolation has been creating. We are feeling manic and depressive, anxious and idyllic, bored and obsessive; we have been dying our hair and we’re allowing social media challenges and email chains to make a comeback ( 😩). We’re raging that we’re being told how & when we can go out, and we want to see our friends like our life depended on it. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we’ve all gone back to being teenagers. (For some of us, the transformation is even more literal: everyone who’s had to move back to their parents tag yourselves.)

> In ‘Glitching the Collective Mind’ a three-part essay published on SPAM a few months ago, Dan Power noted how ‘spending too long online (or rather, too long outside of the real world)’ can easily give way to ‘feelings of melancholic or manic absurdity’ by way of ‘saturating the mind’ with the infinite possibilities of content. In the same essay, Power reflects on the nature of the virtual space this content is localised in, what Grafton Tanner has called the ‘virtual plaza’: a non-place through which ‘we drift and consume, lulled by the saccharine tones of muzak’. Power argues that what the ‘non-local’, ‘homogenized’ structure of the virtual plaza takes away is precisely that something around which the occupants can build a sense of identity: ‘When the features which distinguish one place from another are removed, stable sense of belonging and understanding are removed with them’. 

> Although Power could not have predicted this current weirdness, I am interested in his linking the internet’s hypertrophic, endless-scroll format, eradicated from any sense of place as we know it, to its capacity both to strip us of our identity, and to reduce us to a melancholic, manic mess - a passive, wide-awake anonymous content-consumer, lying in bed between waves of anxiety. A teenager who is grappling with their identity because they’re not quite sure where their emotions are coming from - literally and metaphorically.

> Critic Amanda Hess has recently written in The New York Times about the comfort of playing childhood video games during the lockdown. ‘It’s not so much that I miss my childhood’, she writes as she becomes re-obsessed with her 11-year-old self’s favourite game, Myst, ‘as that I feel seized by it’. And I, currently taking a break from a 12-hour The Sims 2 Bon Voyage build-mode marathon to write this, can only confirm such claims. 

> I’m sure the fact that we gravitate towards this simple kind of pastime has a lot to do with the fact that no one can be arsed engaging with highbrow content during such traumatic times. (Let me take a break from following the dead count on BBC News by watching Battleship Potemkin, said no one ever.) However it’s not only that we’re drawn to accessible content, it’s that we are drawn exactly to the kind of activities that our teenage selves used to be into. (Otherwise, explain why The Sims 2 is having a resurgence - sixteen years after its release [!], and not either of its two successors.)

> If nostalgia is generally understood as originating more in the disappointments of reality than in the draw of the object of nostalgia itself, then the grimness of the pandemic is also to blame for the current millennial vintage trends. As Hess observed elsewhere, the quarantine has forced us into lockdown with the very devices designed to amplify our obsessions, cranking up that very fixative impulse that makes adolescence the curse and blessing that we all know.

> In Italy, where the full lockdown has been going on for over 5 weeks now, the signs of this 30-going-13 epidemic are in full swing. Everybody knows about Italians competing with each other on who can sing the cringiest medley of 00s songs from their balconies. But there’s something even more beautiful that the Italians are doing, and The Answer May Shock You. Platonic love has infiltrated every corner of Italian social media, and the object, I tell you, is no one other the prime minister Giuseppe Conte.

> Just like teenage love, the obsession is platonic socially-distant just as much as it is carnal. ‘Giuseppe Conte’ has reportedly been amongst the most searched terms on Pornhub over the last few weeks. Spurred by sheer investigative rigour I decided to carry out further research on the platform, and can confirm that the PM-themed content abounds. The material itself varies from adorably chaste, SFW picture montages of the prime minister (‘ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER GIUSEPPE CONTE MAKE YOU CUM HARD’, as uploaded by user TheMinisterOfLove), to the literal hour-long speeches that the PM has delivered to the senate, to more visually explicit heart-reacts to the government’s directives (‘HUGE CUMSHOT WHILE LISTENING DADDY GIUSEPPE CONTE’). 

> Pornography aside, the memes have taken over the Italian gram and Twitter. It all started when influencer and entrepreneur Chiara Ferragni regrammed to her 19.5m followers a post by the Instagram page @daddy.conte back in March, erroneously crediting it to @lebimbedigiuseppeconte (Giuseppe Conte’s Little Girls) - now two of the most popular hormone city pages dedicated to the PM. The content is genuinely too much and too good for me to present exhaustively, but I need to show you some favourites so you can get with the vibe (all from @daddy.conte):

[‘Italian daddy locks his girls home’]

[’From today, I declare your smile illegal’]

[’There’s a smile underneath that face mask’]

[’hey baby’ / ‘daddy come to me, my parents aren’t home’ / ‘WHAT’]

[’don’t you dare get close to my girls’]

[’who wants a goodnight story?’]

[’Hi gorgeous, if you’re reading this it’s because i’ve been trapped in a wormhole the only way for you to free me is to stay home until 4th April please do it there is no time i know you can save me baby’] [lol at how quickly this has aged]

>The spinoffs quickly proliferated, I’m talking dozens and dozens of pages devoted to the PM’s fatherly aura and classic good looks - most of them with not a huge amount of followers; a sort of decentralised, massively participatory network of adolescent erotic surplus. Some of these pages specialise in things like the PM’s smile or dimples (for the more faint of heart), inscribing the phenomenon in that Renaissance love lyric convention of praising the object of love’s beauty through a catalogue of their body parts. 

>A similar sexy/cute type veneration also seems to have developed radially around other Italian political figures such as President Sergio Mattarella, however predicated on a completely different set of desirable traits. Conte’s cult is all about a sort of sub/authoritarian kink power dynamic: ‘Dom daddy tell me what to do’. (Problematic? Potentially. However, wholesome? Absolutely). Mattarella’s cult is inevitably linked to the Italian President’s political function, that of protecting the Constitution, coordinating the three branches of government while heading none. A sort of hands-off grandaddy figure there to break up fights, if you will. Combined with his sweet mannerisms, the result is more of a GILF, sitting-together-on-the-porch kind of desirability, as hinted at by the following meme: (@lebimbedisergiomattarella)

> As a testament to this systematic linkage between quarantine and teenage emotional turmoil, the same dynamic of desire has also developed around political figures in the US. Foremost examples are New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (who we now think might have nipple piercings), and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear - a ‘clean-cut sex symbol for the coronavirus age’ according to this Salon article explaining how ‘his calm and empathetic leadership’ (read: wholesome daddy energy) have thousands of thirsty people in self-isolation lust after him (via memes, of course).

> The ethos of memes in general is already teenage by design (hypertrophic, impulsive, obsessive, thriving on a sort of possessed desire towards repetition that I refuse to compare to masturbation). But there’s something special about the dreamy, sublimated, Platonic, cute-aggressive nature of these memes in particular that makes them the epitome not only of #quarantinevibes, but also of the virtual plaza’s mood, more broadly.  Quarantine has exposed and legitimised, exacerbated and normalised, the internet’s power to make us regress into horny, anxious blobs. And memes like these are the very crystallisation of that ambivalent process. 

> Analysis aside, we love a meme (always already), and we love a femme fandom moment. We stan the birth of a wholesome masculinity mythology for 2020. I can think of worse Internet Utopias. Now back 2 The Sims.

-

Text: Denise Bonetti

Lead Image credit: @onlyconte (Instagram)

Published: 17/4/20

[fashiontrendin-blog]

From Cloth of Gold to Spider Silk: On the Strange Evolution of Fabrics

http://fashion-trendin.com/from-cloth-of-gold-to-spider-silk-on-the-strange-evolution-of-fabrics/

From Cloth of Gold to Spider Silk: On the Strange Evolution of Fabrics

From what I’ve gathered in my short life, never in history has a human being looked at a woolly animal, fibrous plant or cocooned insect and not thought about turning that sucker into fabric. And frankly, you have to admire the gall it must have taken to look at some of this stuff — like say, gold — and think, I like it as a lump of metal, but I’d like it more as a coat.

This isn’t a purely historical phenomenon; it has informed an evolving industry. Modern technology has granted us the ability to turn basically anything into anything (listen, I’m not a scientist), and a lot of that’s involved making fabric. Modern people still want to wear crazy stuff, but instead of cocoons and gold, we’re looking for the obscure and strange, like holograms, hagfish slime, mycelium (a fungal filament) and spider silk. Textiles of the future basically have to blow our minds or GTFO — we’re very emotionally invested. Perhaps this emotional investment has something (or everything) to do with textiles’ entwinement within modern forms of self-expression and individuality.

Fabrics may have originated as solutions for covering the body, but they have become priceless signifiers of the wearer’s or creator’s individual qualities, tastes and extraordinary abilities. On the runway, to use a rather explicit example, fabrics – their colors, weights and origins – retain special, nearly talismanic significance in the fashion world. During the Fall/Winters 2018 shows, they showed up in an exceptional way. I know it’s May, but the Paris showings specifically got me thinking about what makes certain ones so covetable and captivating. Here’s what I think: The things we choose to cover ourselves with are intimately linked with how we see our place on Earth. Our pursuit of fine fabric tells a story about our enterprising, curious sensibility and how far we’re willing to go to express ourselves. Spoiler: it is extremely far, occasionally gross, and involves a flexible but significant number of spiders.

Shining silver garments dominated collections by Paco Rabanne and Off-White; gold metallic fabric featured in collections by Chanel and Rochas; holographic pieces were on display at Maison Margiela and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. Balmain had it all: silver, chrome, giant paillettes, tiny paillettes and holographic everything. The delicacy of the holographic print looked precious and priceless, like something woven by David Bowie in heaven. The pearly sheers were more precious but just as otherworldly. Across shows, these shiny fabrics were chased with quieter but still formidable ones – botanical patterns (Giambattista Valli, Valentino); richly dyed wool, silk and lace (Chloe, Carven, Rick Owens, Isabel Marant); lots of shearling and furry fuzziness (Dries Van Noten, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Loewe).

Over the course of human history, we’ve imbued fabric with special and supernatural significance. In both Greek and Norse mythology, fate is measured out by a spun thread, and in Chinese mythology, a red thread binds together people fated to fall in love. Almost every goddess in the aforementioned mythologies is said, at some point, to have woven; Athena, Frigg and Holda did so prolifically. Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphoses accuses her attackers through her loom when she can no longer speak, and the crane wife’s one rule (one rule!) for her husband is that he not observe her weaving. A Tang Dynasty legend tells us that heavenly weavers were so good, they created seamless robes straight from the loom.

Although mythological textiles tend to have supernatural capabilities and origins, many of them feature fabrics we have here on real-life Earth. For instance, Little Red Riding Hood’s cloak is said to be samite (a heavy silk interwoven with gold or silver) in one story; the Golden Fleece might be byssus (also known as sea silk); Rumpelstiltskin’s thread is certainly the wrapped silk used to make cloth of gold; Hercules discovered Tyrian purple dye after he had to pry the snail that makes the dye out of his dog’s mouth on a beach.

In my view, the weirdest and most luxurious of old world textiles is byssus, a.k.a. sea silk. It is secreted (ew) by a very rare and specific type of clam called a pen shell, then cured, then spun and woven into a supernaturally lightweight, iridescent gold fabric. Since 1992, the clam has been protected by the European Union, and only one woman, Chiara Vigo, still makes the fabric. Everything about the process sounds like something you’d have to do in a fairytale to pay off a talking animal or because a witch told you to. According to this account of Vigo’s process, in the spring, in the moonlight, in a white tunic, Vigo swims in the shallows off of Sant’Antioco. She trims the fiber from the clams. When she weaves, she does so according to the tradition of 24 generations of her ancestors. About 60 artifacts of antique sea silk remain, and because byssus in Latin can also mean “fine linen,” historians cannot be totally sure if it is indeed clam fibers that feature in the Rosetta Stone, the Bible and Cleopatra’s wardrobe. But because sea silk has an extraordinarily light texture and is difficult to make in any quantity, I’m pretty certain it was always prized.

Cloth of gold (also probably worn by Cleopatra) is a uniquely straightforward term; there’s really no ambiguity or poetic license in the name. It’s cloth. Of gold. It is made by hammering gold into a very fine strip and wrapping it around a silk thread and then weaving away. The end product is stiff, heavy and ludicrously expensive. It was a special favorite of the Byzantine court and Henry VIII, whose Field of the Cloth of Gold summit featured so much cloth of gold it’s stupid. Edward Hall wrote that on one day, “Henry’s armour-skirt and horse-trapper were decorated with 2,000 ounces of gold.” Which sounds extra even for Henry. For regular folks, the best way to get near some cloth of gold was, simply, to die. “Individuals of the middling and lower sort could hire funerary textiles from their parish or borrow them from a livery company or guild,” explains Maria Hayward in Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England. “Many of these palls and hearse clothes … combined velvet and cloth of gold embroidery.” So hey! Chins up, fishmongers.

24 PHOTOS click for more

Tyrian purple silk also has its origins in special shellfish, and yes, it’s also a secretion. Tyrian purple is well documented in ancient law (it was the jealously-guarded color of Byzantine emperors), writing and existing artifacts. What’s unclear is if it was actually purple in the way we think of purple today. A 1922 edition of the New York Zoological Society Bulletin says that, “[W]ith a certain degree of regularity come to us the questions, ‘What shells did the Phoenicians use for the famous Tyrian dye?’ And ‘Was not true Tyrian purple more red than purple?’” (Clearly not everybody was having fun in the Roaring Twenties.) The zoological society wasn’t confident about the shade. From the vantage point of 2018, its answer is very telling about the ambiguity of purples: “The question as to whether Tyrian purple was more red than purple is a difficult one; for violet, of course, shades into red.” Contemporary sources that compare the most costly mix of the dye to “blackish clotted blood” seem to back this up. Like every other hyper-luxury textile, suffering was put into Tyrian purple production. According to an account by Pliny the Elder, it took more than ten days to boil the snails into dye, and it smelled really, really bad.

In 2018, the fashion industry is looking to sustainability and durability to guide new textile discoveries instead of looking at low supply and high demand. Even still, as with byssus, cloth of gold and Tyrian purple, today’s textile trends come from unexpected places and are mostly rooted in trying to wrestle non-fabric luxuries onto fabric. The top bananas of these trends are spider silk, holographic metallics and, more conceptually, pink.

In 2017, Stella McCartney started using synthetic spider silk in a few garments. Spider silk — the real stuff, I mean — is apparently awesome. It’s very, very tough and very, very light. So why not use spider silk? The obvious answer is that it will result in your neighbor starting a spider farm in his apartment. Fortunately for everyone, this is not how it works, but that fact has been history’s greatest barrier to spider silk production. The man who presented Louis XIV with a pair of spider silk stockings kept running into an issue where a roomful of spiders would not diligently make a roomful of spider silk because they just ate each other. Typical. Spider silk in any sufficient quantity is hell to collect and involves more spiders than anyone should have to think about.

In 2012, after eight years of work by two men and, allegedly, more than a million spiders, a cape made of deep gold spider silk was finally produced and taken on tour. All this is to say: The product is great, but the production is so ludicrously impractical that the only reasonable way to do it has been to genetically engineer it. The good news is synthetic spider silk has the same tensile strength, lightness and tactile appeal (!) of regular spider silk, but minus the bad part, which is spiders. And time. Synthetic spider silk is 98 percent water and 0 percent spiders, involves fermented yeast and has appeared in the aforementioned Stella McCartney collection as well as an Adidas sneaker. In a New Yorker piece titled “In the Future, We’ll All Wear Spider Silk,” Nicola Twilley claims that someday, we’ll all be wearing spider silk. See you there?!?

Holographic color –not really a color but a three-dimensional light field — is honestly so damn confusing it’s hard to even talk about without being arrested by the science police and carted off to science prison. But there is an incredible hubris behind the desire to turn an entire spectrum of light – not even one dimension of it, but three dimensions — into clothes that I find deeply compelling. Not unlike whatever ancient rich guy decided he wanted to wear gold as a coat, in recent years, we have decided we want to wear light. Just…light. Unfortunately for us, it’s super hard to do. If you Google search “holographic vs. iridescent,” you will get lots of results about makeup (and, indeed, Pat McGrath herself did holographic lips for the Maison Margiela show) and none at all about holograms. But holographic color is not iridescent or even prismatic. There’s actually an entire YouTube channel devoted to identifying holographic colors. Holographic prints have the most in common with the rainbow security holograms (which are not true holograms) printed onto credit cards and computer products and just about every outfit the kids wore in Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century. (In this respect, someone should alert the academy that the movie accurately predicted life in the 21st century.) “Holographic” in the fashion sense is not a hologram, or even technically holographic, but the implication of photoscience is enough to be aspirational. Like spider silk, we’re working on it.

While we’re on the topic of colors, it’s worth noting that pink, as concept more than color, has almost reached textile-levels of revelry. It also has a nearly scientific taxonomy: Barbie pink, millennial pink, Nantucket red, rose gold, etc.. Pink exists across a spectrum even wider than purple, and even though it is not the color of royalty, it comes with a lot of assumptions. In August of 2016, The Cut innocently wondered, “Is There Some Reason Millennial Women Love This Color?” If only they knew what was to come. The article theorized that millennial pink was “ironic pink,” but two years later millennial pink is dead serious. As for the reason, it might be nostalgic, it might be a rejection of notions about seriousness in dress, it might be a rebuke of the notion of gendered colors — it might be anything. A 2007 study identified a gender division along the red-green color axis and then goofily theorized that women prefer redder colors because, during human evolution when “men hunted, women gathered, and they had to be able to spot ripe berries and fruits.” Everybody…doing okay over in science?

Anyway, during Paris Fashion Week, pink was featured by Zuhair Murad, Mulberry and Alexander McQueen, among others. This certainly wasn’t the first time we’ve seen heavy pink on the runway; by now the trend has been going strong for about four years. Though millennial pink peaked in 2016 and trend forecasters in 2017 were sure that pink itself would give way to primary colors, it’s hung on in real life as well as on runways, becoming more and more serious, more and more acceptable, more and more mature. Every era has a color; maybe pink is ours.

So, fabric. It’s where we project our creative fantasies, the substance of fate, a vehicle of vanity, the stuff we wear to keep warm and be who we want to be. A lot of it comes from secretions. Textiles and their colors bestow meaning on the wearer — a silk shirt, a red dress, a camel hair coat. Like almost every way we communicate, the meanings are ephemeral, and textiles go extinct somewhat regularly. One day, for instance, we will lose sea silk entirely. Cloth of gold is now limited to the manufacturing of gaudy ties, and we can no longer remember what the exact shade of Tyrian purple was, but something tells me textiles will always have a future. Their ability to combine visual and tactile pleasure with cultural significance makes them uniquely suited to stick around, even if in the form of spider silk, three dimensional light, the color pink…oh, and hagfish slime.

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Photographed by Miriam Waldner. Styled, art directed and modeled by Stella von Senger; Makeup by Aennikin; Assisted by Sophia Steube.

[slugsforjustice-blog]

Week 9: Fake News

During the 2016 Presidential Election, a widespread of fake news have been propagating throughout the internet, with Facebook as being the most viable way of spreading this information. It has even been shown by data from Buzzfeed that such fake news have nearly two million engagements on Facebook, all within three months prior to the election.

One of these top fake news is addressed by the headline:

“Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement”

Written by Chiara

An archived version of the original article can be found here.

This story was published on WTOE 5 News, a website with vague origins and an unknown owner. Apparently “the owner has never been identified,” according to Buzzfeed. As depicted by the title, the article describes breaking news of the pope deciding to “take action” by announcing that he will side with Donald Trump. Evidently this roused the public audience; knowing that the pope is an extremely significant person as being head of the Catholic Church, as well as conservatives often associating with Catholicism, seeing such an influential individual in their community endorse their favored political figure would give them all the more reason to convince others to vote for Trump. As told in the words of the pope addressed in the article: “I have been hesitant to offer any kind of support for either candidate in the US presidential election but I now feel that to not voice my concern would be a dereliction of my duty as the Holy See...I ask, not as the Holy Father, but as a concerned citizen of the world that Americans vote for Donald Trump for President of the United States.”

Later on after much debate, it has been realized by various reliable news sources that this story is a complete hoax. Even WTOE 5 News came out to admit that they are but a fantasy website who are a source for satirical content. And despite this, the article has been copied throughout different websites such as another fake news publisher, Ending the Fed, and unsurprisingly enough has earned about 960,000 engagements on Facebook. This may be in part of the strategy utilized in garnering enough attention for the story to be spread all throughout the web: encouraging votes. The pope endorsing Donald Trump shows his support for him, or in other words, taking a side in the political war. By doing so with his power as head of the church, along with his fabricated words, he too encourages others to vote for Trump during the presidential election.

Already this would create suspicion for some, however. The pope often does not associate himself with political sides at all, making sure to stay as politically neutral or even out of any political agenda as possible. He has revoked this statement shortly after its release and makes it known that he does not endorse any political figures. In addition, he has even criticized Trump for his call to build a wall across the Mexican border, believing that causing separation instead of a sense of community is not truly Christian.

This article would at the very least rouse suspicion in me - because I know well enough about Catholicism, I wouldn’t think that the Pope would be politically aligned as well. I would have also done some research before quickly drawing any conclusions. Otherwise, I may be fooled for a second, but only because of the hooking headline. Reading the pope’s false words on WTOE 5 News would be the one to cause me to question the nature of the article though, as to me he would seem much less neutral and more aligned than usual.

“Obama Admitted His Experience With Democrats ‘Monkeying Around’ With Elections”

Written by Abby

Rick Wells’ Facebook page

I chose to research a fake news article claiming that Obama admitted to tampering with 2016 election machines. The author of this story is Rick Wells, who appears to be a conservative American journalist primarily concerned with returning America to the way it used to be. On his website, he writes, “The freedoms and the rights that we used to take for granted as our birthrights are under attack. The very enemies, foreign and domestic, which were foretold by the founding fathers are at work to subvert our Constitution and turn the United States into a socialist authoritarian Hellhole.” However, I can’t conclusively prove that he actually exists; the only posts on his Facebook page and Twitter account are his own articles, and does not appear personally in any of the videos in his Youtube Channel. The only photos of him are the five profile pictures he’s used on Facebook (two of which a just a repeat of the same picture), and he doesn’t list anything about himself, like a family or hobbies. He is not linked to any other groups. Doing a reverse Google Image search of the pictures led to a Wordpress blog, which definitely held many of the same conservative views as Rick Wells, and is much more angry and bigoted. This blog does talk about some personal things, like a family and a trip he took, but it does not link to any of his articles or the DC Gazette. Many of Wells’ stories feature ad-hominem attacks in the title, such as referring to people as “Libtards,” and use obviously manipulated photos of people he wants to demean. In the article I chose, which was published in October 2016, Wells grabs readers’ attention with the outrageous headline “Obama Admitted His Experience With Democrats ‘Monkeying Around’ With Elections.” In this article, he cherry picks lines from a video of a town hall meeting, emphasizing the parts where Obama jokes about Democrats being in control of the machines and admits that Democrats have tampered with machines in the past, and ignores the parts where Obama talks about needing a paper trail and accountability to ensure that everyone is being heard. This is clearly meant to paint Obama in a negative light by asserting that he tampered with election results, in an effort to drive conservative voters to get out to the polls. There are also two points in the article where he makes claims that appear to backed up with a source, but clicking on these links leads back to his website, with no search results found.

Rick Wells’ Wordpress blog. Directly underneath this is a slur-filled rant demeaning Obama and transgender people.

Rick Wells presents himself as an average, everyday American who wants to protect his country. He uses language that allies him with the reader, such “We, the regular, everyday Americans,” and drapes himself in patriotic imagery- his website’s color scheme is red, white, and blue with a heading of a painting of George Washington, and his profile picture shows him against a background of an American flag. He also uses a lot of buzzwords associated with American patriotism, such as freedoms, the founding fathers, and America’s “former greatness.”

One of the photoshopped images on Rick Wells’ Facebook page.

This story would definitely not have fooled me. I tend to not believe any outrageous headlines unless they’re backed up with sources, especially if they’re conservative.

“Post-Election Violence All Traces To One Source, And It Is NOT Donald Trump” By Cultural Limits

Written by Sebastian

[ link to the article ]

The first hint that this maybe false or distorted news comes from the supposed author. Scrolling down the page I found a bio for ‘Cultural Limits’ linking this article to Patricia Holden’s facebook. She is an author, her books are for sale via the online platform Smashwords. The bio also refers to her work with the Bohemian Crochet Fair. But looking at Patricia Holden’s facebook she never mentions her interest in crocheting and makes no connections back to the DC Gazette or the article. This could be a symptom of bad marketing/social networking skills but it still raises a red flag for me.

Within the terms and conditions for the website I found that the DC Gazette links itself to USA Liberal Media. But looking through google USA Liberal Media doesn’t seem to claim ownership of the DC Gazette. Nothing about this makes me think that these articles are coming in from outside the US, but there is also no firm evidence that they are not. The DC Gazette lists its headquarters as inside the white house (which it clearly isn’t). Easily one could conclude from the facts above that this is not a trustworthy news site.

The article itself claims to be about violence during the post election period and disavowing the idea that this violence is because of Trump. It uses inflammatory language calling young liberals “special snowflakes ”. The article makes the claim that George Soros (who they cite as the founder of the Ferguson protests) has a secret agenda but doesn’t make it clear what that agenda is. It highlights that “the mob” (anyone who didn’t vote for Trump) is attacking Americans (as if democrats aren’t Americans). The article does not fulfill its promise of showing that all the violence comes back to one source, the way its written uses keywords but does not string them together in sentences that make sense.

Within the article the key piece of evidence provided is a supposed video of someone being beaten up because they voted for Trump. The video does not play, but you can see a blurry thumbnail of what looks like a beating in progress but nothing is clear enough to support the claims the article makes.

The article would not have fooled me mainly because of the video, that would have given me pause and cause to look for this news elsewhere/find out where it came from and look up if the DC Gazette is a reliable news source.

10 Ways to Fact Check Your News

Below is an infographic concerned with ways to tell if news is fake or not. This would be distributed by a non-partisan organization trying to educate people on what constitutes fake news.

[ Enlarged Image ]

Two additional ways to find the truth is through websites that fact-check like Politifact and Snopes.

[brownducks]

P. Fitz – a centenary essay

First published at Minor Literatures

“I have been reading steadily for seventeen years; when I go down I want to start writing”.

What Penelope Fitzgerald, quoted in the pages of Oxford University’s Isis magazine in 1938, meant here, was that when she left with her degree – as she would that summer – she was going to become a novelist. Part of the second generation of women allowed to go to Oxford, she was at Somerville, which is mostly (and unjustly) famous for being the college Margaret Thatcher went to. Penelope graduated in English Literature with a First and something called a ‘congratulatory viva’, which is apparently when your tutors sit and tell you how brilliant you are rather than make you argue your case. If she wanted to be a writer, her future was looking bright.

Maybe the reason why Penelope Fitzgerald might be considered a minor writer is because she’s hardly remembered. She’s neither feted nor fashionable. But there’s more to it than that – I think she’s also a minor writer because of what happened in her life. She clawed things back anyway, proving herself, of course, to be ultimately brilliant, but getting your first novel published at sixty-one and writing your masterpiece at eighty might seem a terrible fate – and a terrible wait – to some people.

December 16th 2016 was Fitzgerald’s centenary. I think she’s one of the most extraordinary novelists I’ve ever read, and want to try to explain why. I’m not trying to rescue her from the margins, though. That’s the perfect place for her – she thrives on that sidelong, quiet, outsider’s look at life. Instead, as is the point of shining a spotlight on minor writers, I’m just hoping that a few more people will read her books.

How many of us, these days, expect a short, direct line from anonymity to success? Write well, and hard, make friends with the right people, and things shouldn’t take too long. Maybe this was what Fitzgerald felt when she graduated in 1938, Oxford’s golden girl with her First in English who was going to be a great writer. What fascinates me is that it took her forty years – or life took forty years of denying her – before she got that chance, and yet it doesn’t matter a bit. It should perhaps be a salutary lesson to us, but maybe things were just different then.

As soon as Fitzgerald graduated, the Second World War threw ordered lives and steady trajectories into chaos. She had all the intellectual advantages it might have been possible to have – she’d followed her mother’s footsteps to Oxford, her father edited Punch magazine, her uncles were respected clergy (one of whom, Ronnie Knox, Evelyn Waugh wrote a biography of), and she lived in infamously literary Hampstead. Her mother, to whom she was very close, had died of cancer not long before. Then, some of her best friends died in the war, and her brother disappeared for three years – they eventually found out he’d been a POW in Japan. Desmond Fitzgerald, the man she married in 1942, was a promising barrister, but he was sent off to be a major in the First Battalion of the Irish Guards, which saw only 326 men out of 926 return – one of the worst casualty rates in all the fighting.

Desmond was one of the many post-war sufferers of shellshock. So was her brother, who had a nervous breakdown but never spoke of his experiences as a POW. In Fitzgerald’s biography, Hermione Lee says, “Desmond had been profoundly changed by the war, and came back a different person from the dashing young officer Penelope had married in 1942. He had seen appalling things and lost many men; he had killed a large number of people. He would wake up in the night, screaming.” Even so, like so many men in his position, on returning home from the war he was expected to slip back into normality. Instead, normality slid away from him. He drank too much, was humiliatingly dismissed from the Bar for stealing money from his Chambers, and the family, with three children, tumbled from middle-class Hampstead towards near-destitution. They first moved to Southwold, on the Sussex coast, and then, because they couldn’t afford anywhere else, onto a leaky barge on the Thames. When that sank, they were homeless. They were put into a shelter – Desmond was absent at this point – and eventually moved into a council estate in South London. Fitzgerald worked as a schoolteacher in order to support her family, whilst Desmond held down a low-level clerical job at Lunn Polly. This is not a squalid fate, and to suggest so would be problematic, but Penelope felt it to be drudgery, and far from the life she had envisioned for herself.

She remained a teacher for twenty-six years, until she was seventy years old.

In a notebook from the late ‘60s, she writes: “I’ve come to see art as the most important thing but not to regret I haven’t spent my life on it.” It’s a lament for what could have been, and what she wanted so dearly – but she wasn’t going to pity herself.

However, a change was on the horizon – shortly after this, she began to research a book on the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. She presented it to her family as a hobby, or therapy – to ‘stop her going mad’. It took five years, and was a sign: the dam had burst. Immediately after, she wrote another biography, this time of her father and three uncles (called The Knox Brothers), and submitted a story to a Times ghost story competition, which was shortlisted and published – her first piece of published fiction for over twenty years. Finally, she began work on a novel. Then Desmond died. The novel, The Golden Child, came out the following year. At sixty-one, she was a debut novelist.

After this, Fitzgerald just got on with it. The following year, she published The Bookshop, a short, sad and thoughtful novel about a woman who opens a bookshop in Hardingham, a fictional stand-in for Southwold. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Upon hearing this, Fitzgerald said it must be a mistake. The year after that, in 1979, she published Offshore, based on her life aboard her sinking Thames barge. There’s an estranged husband, two young daughters running wild around London, and a self-effacing heroine who is not to be underestimated. It won the Booker. I have to admit that, like Frank Kermode (one of her favourite critics), I prefer The Bookshop – he wrote: “Offshore, though admirable, strikes me as decidedly inferior to The Bookshop. The earlier book was defter, more resonant and more complete” – but it’s still a wonderful novel. The media, for the most part, treated Fitzgerald’s Booker win like an abherration, as though she were a dotty grandmother who had somehow found herself in entirely the wrong place. But it suited Fitzgerald to be seen like this. She told reporters that with the £10,000 prize money, she was going to buy a typewriter and an iron. In fact, she went to New York.

After her Booker win, not wanting to be alone and with nowhere permanent to live, she moved around the country to be close to her daughters and their families. During this time, she decided it was time to stop writing fiction based on her own experiences. The four novels that followed, published from 1986 to 1995, are four of the best in the modern English canon.

The first, Innocence (1986), was also the first Fitzgerald novel I read (thanks, Jack). It’s about a sixteenth-century Italian noble family, the Ridolfis, and their cash-strapped twentieth-century heirs, one of whom, the well-meaning Ciara – surely the story’s innocent – falls in love with Salvatore, a difficult, emotional doctor, who amazes himself by reciprocating entirely. The novel is about love and hope, innocence and (of course) experience. It’s also about vigorous pursuit of life versus stubborn decaying passivity; and how in either case it might just slip through your fingers, or surprise you. It’s a brilliant evocation of post-war Italy – decrepit Florentine villas, olive groves and lemon trees, crops of hay, Fiat cars and English cigarettes.

Innocence shows Fitzgerald’s growing mastery of narrative. I imagine her in a cutting room, with reels of footage about her characters, sizing up what’s necessary. She has so much information, but knows that only a bit of it needs to be shown. She pinpoints what matters, knowing each word (or, to keep that cinematic metaphor, each detail in each shot) must count. It must add texture, depth, and context. If not, forget it. What emerges from this is an elliptical text with a profound intelligence; proof that in order to tell everything, not everything needs to be said.

Near the start of the novel there is a flashback to Salvatore’s 1930s childhood. His communist father takes him to visit Gramsci, who is dying in prison, wanting him to ‘come into the presence of a great man’. As it goes –

“Salvatore had seen deformed animals, and dead bodies of both people and animals, but never anything as ugly as Comrade Gramsci. Ugliness is a hard thing to forgive at the age of ten. The thick mouth of the prisoner, his father’s friend, opened darkly, like a toad’s, without a single tooth in sight. The tiny crippled body could no longer make any pretence of fitting into his ordinary clothes, which hung on him, as they would have done on a circus animal. He was not sitting down, but propped standing up against the wall. The smell of illness, stronger than disinfectant, filled the room, and there was no other air to breathe. While his father unwillingly took the only chair, Salvatore, after standing up for a while, perched on the corner of the clean, hostile cover of the bed…”

Salvatore rejects politics then and there and resolves to become a doctor. He trains himself to be rational and passionless, though this is impossible for him. He is thirty when he meets Chiara, and she finally tips the balance between his rigid discipline and inherently volcanic nature: “She was pale and shining…totally inappropriate to his state of mind, to the time of the evening, to everything imaginable.” His turmoil over being madly in love is played for laughs, as most of Innocence is, but Fitzgerald’s comedy is never just for kicks. As her earlier novels made clear, she sees humour as necessary for survival in a disappointing world. She writes, she says, of “the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?”

This is a serious and compassionate belief about the point of comedy. I was re-reading The Beginning of Spring recently (which she wrote just after Innocence), and it was so funny – yet every awkward, stupid or embarrassing moment in it is there to highlight either the characters’ compassion towards each other, or Fitzgerald’s own generosity towards them. The Beginning of Spring is even better than Innocence – wait, let’s be precise here, it’s extraordinarily better than Innocence, and Innocence is astonishing. It is also very different. The Beginning of Spring, set in Moscow in 1913, is about an English family who have long owned a printing press there. As it starts, its self-effacing hero, Frank Reid (my favourite Fitzgerald character) who runs the press and has lived most of his life in Moscow, learns that his English wife, Nellie, has left him. The ice that has sealed up the city is about to crack, winter is soon to give way to spring, and Frank must pick his three children up at the train station – Nellie had taken them with her, but changed her mind and sent them back home. This slight novel is patterned around familiar Fitzgeraldian tropes – the comedy of bewilderment at one’s circumstances, love at first sight, a spooky ending – but packed into a rich, strange context:

“He was heading towards the river, and the air was full of the vast reverberations of the bells from the five golden domes of the church of the Redeemer, not at anything like their full power, but like the first barrage of artillery before the main attack. The attack did not come – it was Lent, and they chimed only once, but they were answered from across the river by a hundred others, always with one chime only. He stood listening to the bells in the open starlight. From the cathedral square a ramp went down to the water. The river ran darkly, still choked with the winter’s majestic breaking ice and the debris carried along with it, an inconceivable amount of rubbish – baskets, crates, way-posts, wash-tubs, wheels, cradles, the last traces of the traffic the ice had carried while, for four months, it was a high road. Watching the breaking ice from the bridges was one of Moscow’s favourite occupations. The Gazeta-Kopeika said that a pair of dead lovers, clutched together, had floated by, frozen into the ice. The Gazeta repeated this story every spring.”

The Beginning of Spring is also a novel about coping. When Frank’s life falls apart – as it surely would if your wife leaves without telling you why, or where she’s gone – he is stoical. As Fitzgerald says, she is interested in “a sort of noble absurdity in carrying on in unlikely circumstances”. Frank does his best for his children, keeps his business going, immediately falls in love with someone else, too, but life is complicated and unpredictable – even a man who loves his absent wife might be stirred in other directions. Indeed, maybe falling in love with someone else is a form of coping. It’s how you might cope with the pain of loss – you might sublimate it, at least for a while.

The surprise of a new love when you love someone else, and the consequent inner conflict, forms part of the melancholy that runs through The Beginning of Spring. It’s a dark thread up against all its scatty joy. Frank tries so hard to cope yet is bereft, wrongfooted, unmoored. At the end of the novel, though, in the dense forest outside the family’s dacha, life is stirring again. Hope is renewed:

“As the young birches grew taller the skin at the base of their trunks fragmented and shivered into dark and light patches. The branches showed white against black, black against white. The young twigs were fine and whip-like, dark brown with a purple gloss. As soon as the shining leafbuds split open the young leaves breathed out an aromatic scent, not so thick as the poplar but wilder and more memorable, the true scent of wild and lonely places. The male catkins appeared in pairs, the pale female catkins followed. The leaves, turning from bright olive to a darker green were agitated and astir even when the wind dropped. They were never strong enough to block out the light completely. The birch forest, unlike the pine forest, always gives a chance of life to whatever grows beneath it.”

Both The Beginning of Spring and Fitzgerald’s next novel, The Gate of Angels, are set just before World War I and the Russian Revolution – she was drawn to moments just before a great change. I wonder if this has anything at all to do with her own experience of emerging from the prelapsarian brilliance of Oxford into World War II. The rupture of continuity is always interesting, though. The Beginning of Spring was Fitzgerald’s favourite of her novels, and it’s mine, too.

The Gate of Angels (1990), set in Cambridge around 1910, came next, when Fitzgerald was 74 years old. Her uncle Dillwyn (a Bletchley codebreaker) was at Cambridge then and she knew that its atmosphere, as he had conveyed it to her, would be juicy enough for a novel. It explores both a breakthrough in physics – the discovery of the atomic nucleus – and the history of medicine. As ever, there’s a love story running through it – and as ever, the falling in love happens quickly, between very likeable characters. For all Fitzgerald’s clear-eyed unsentimentality, falling in love was, to her, endlessly fertile ground. She is wonderful on its maddening irrationality, the pain of its frustrations and the purity of its joys.

After The Gate of Angels was Booker-nominated (it lost to A.S. Byatt’s incredible Possession, so fair enough), Fitzgerald was in her mid-seventies and her health was deteriorating. She had arthritis, high blood pressure and arrhythmia, and would go to the Whittington Hospital in Archway (just down the road from where I live now) to get prescribed treatments she hated. As her health worsened, she wrote The Blue Flower. How can I describe this novel without hyperbole? I’ve already used ‘masterpiece’ and ‘astonishing’. Perhaps there’s just an immense sweetness in seeing someone who had waited so long reach their peak – at long last, their genius is there for the world to see, and after all, the world finally seemed to agree, it was the brightest of anyone’s. Against DeLillo’s Underworld and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, The Blue Flower won the National Book Critic’s Circle Award – so she made it big in America just before her 80th birthday. On beating DeLillo and Roth, she said, with her customary self-deprecation: “I was so unprepared to win that I hadn’t even planned a celebration. I certainly shan’t do any ironing today.”

The Blue Flower, set in eighteenth-century Germany, is about the Romantic philosopher Novalis, in whom Fitzgerald had long been interested. The ‘blue flower’ comes from Novalis’ novel fragment Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1800), which is a poetic, mystical search for this flower – an unattainable object – and a symbol therefore of yearning, passion and transcendence. Novalis, or Fritz, as he’s mostly called in Fitzgerald’s novel, is a generous, garrulous, wide-eyed genius. At twenty-two he falls in love, as Novalis did in real life, with twelve-year-old Sophie, who is a bit dim (though he calls her ‘My Philosophy! My Wisdom!’). Despite her age, and the slightly less pressing problem of her being unable to remember his last name, Sophie accepts the integrity of Fritz’ affection. Fritz waits for her to come of age, develops his ideas, manages the salt mines of Saxony (the family business) and obliviously, and very sadly, breaks somebody else’s heart. All of this is told in fragments that move through time with the minimum of explanation or context. It’s like following a dream – and as you keep up, you’re swept away. As ever, almost all the characters are sympathetic – a hard thing for a writer to do well, never mind brilliantly. The Blue Flower is a culmination of the forms of craft Fitzgerald was practicing in previous novels; the fragmented perfection of Innocence, the comedy and sadness of The Beginning of Spring, the balance of density and light of The Gate of Angels.

She died in 2000, aged 83, one of the great writers of the twentieth century. I don’t want the lesson to be taken away from her life that you can triumph in the end. Her writing tells so many better stories. She is interested in – and she wants us to care about – the vulnerable, the defeated, the forgotten and the quiet. She explores lives of frustrated passion, stubborn idealism, idiotic love, hopeful love, hope in general (there is so much hope in her novels), failure, quiet courage, kindness, and moments when the tragic and the comic overlap. Her imagination might have been especially fired up by Italy, Russia and Germany, but she declared herself a typically English novelist because “most English people think life is not important enough to be tragic and too serious to be comic”.

What she looked for in other writers was “the quality of pity and kindness. I don’t see how this world is to be managed if we don’t pity each other.” This wasn’t a patronising kind of pity. In line with her Christian faith, it was – as she said – a form of kindness. It is a plea for sympathy, for courage and for understanding. In The Bookshop, she famously divides the world into ‘exterminators’ and ‘exterminatees’ – and her characters, the ones we root for, are always the latter. They are courageous and good and hopeful, but they are outsiders, too: marginalised, defeated by circumstance, failing through no fault of their own. But they are written, always, with tenderness. Perhaps, then, that’s Fitzgerald’s real legacy: her empathy for these exterminatees, her kindness.