#haven’t drawn anything owl house-related in a whole year

[atlasthecactus]

ah how i’ve missed the owl house

[random-imagines-blog]

Empty Walls {Sirius Back x Reader}

Requested by: Anonymous Wordcount: 2380 Summary: A lot of the order is pretty untrusting of any Slytherins joining their midst - but there is one person who accepts you. Warnings: Mentions of character death.

Molly Weasley shoved a plate of food in front of you, so harshly that little puddles of gravy spilt onto the table, making a small mess. You thanked her regardless of her hostility, and cleaned up the gravy with your own napkin, embroidered with your initials. She was a wonderfully sweet woman most of the time - but you just so happened to be a Malfoy. Despite your loyalty to the Order of the Phoenix, many of its members still didn’t trust you yet, because of your surname. It was more about that than the fact that you had been in Slytherin, while everyone else around here seemed either to be a Gryffindor or even a Hufflepuff. You tied your blonde hair out of your face and started to eat self-consciously, knowing that there were eyes on you no matter what. Sirius Black’s to be specific. He always seemed to be watching.

The room filled with the sound of eating as everyone dug into Molly’s delicious food. You were the first done, vacating your seat quickly and washed the dish - by hand - in the sink. You had grown up completely spoiled, with the house elves doing all of the cooking and cleaning, so earning your place here had been difficult at first. You didn’t mean to be spoiled. You just couldn’t help how you were raised.

Grimmauld Place. It was dark and it was dingy, but there was one place in this house in particular that you were drawn to. The wall with the family portraits - your own included. All of the little faces of your family, and then the burned out one of Mr. Sirius Black. Your eyes went to your brother and you smirked to yourself. He was painted in that little hat. He always hated that picture, which made you love it even more. You then saw your parents, Lucius and Narcissa. They both looked a little snooty, which was how they tended to appear to the world. But they were never like that when it was just the family together. Your fingers graced your mother’s face. You missed her, a lot. She still sent you owls, and your father would always add his own little notes. They loved you, despite the fact that most of their friends saw you as a traitor. That your actions nearly put a bounty on their own heads, like the rest of the order.

But you were going to help take him down before he could try to collect.

“Do you really like staring at your own face that much?” A deep voice came from behind you. You didn’t turn around. It was Mr. Black himself. He always seemed to be following you around. He was probably the most mistrustful of the lot. You just ignored him, and put your fingers over your father. You missed him as well. His opinion was the one that you had been most scared of - but you were doing what he was too cowardly to do. You were making the right choice.

You didn’t even pay attention to your little portrait. You knew what you looked like. You didn’t give into the vanity that the rest of the Malfoys seemed to have. You preferred knowledge over looks.

“It’s not that bad of a picture. Mine was awful. They made me cut my hair for it, so I looked like some dapper gentleman,” Sirius said. He had come and stood right behind you. You didn’t realize how close he was until then. If you took even one step backwards, you would have bumped into him.

“So it’s a good thing that your place is burnt out then?” You asked.

“I like to think of it more as an empty space,” Sirius said. “I’ll probably paint over the whole damn thing one of these days. Most of these people, I don’t feel like I’m that related to anyway. Like you.”

“We’re  hardly related. It’s like ... many branches away,” You said with a shrug. He may be some sort of cousin but it never felt that way to you either. When you looked at him, you saw ... well, a handsome man, even with all of that hair and those tattoos. You had seen photos of him when he was younger and you had some pretty obscene thoughts one should not be having over family members. He’d been, to put it roughly, a hunk. “Why haven’t you painted over it by now?”

“The room needed some sort of decor,” Sirius shrugged. “I don’t know what I’d do with an empty wall.”

“Well, knowing you, I’m sure you’d hang a very flattering portrait of yourself,” You mused, clicking your tongue. “Dorian Gray style.”

“What?” Sirius asked. You laughed then, remembering that someone like him probably hasn’t picked up a book since his time at Hogwarts, let alone one written by a muggle.

“Nothing,” You said, shaking your head. “So what can I help you with? Does Molly need help with something?”

“Why would Molly need help with anything?” Sirius asked, taking a seat in one of his favorite chairs in the bedroom.

“I don’t know - you all seem to think that housework is female only work-” You started but Sirius cut you off.

“Not at all,” He said, shaking his head, those unruly waves flying around him. “I actually wanted to talk to you myself. And it’s really not about housework.”

“Well, talk away,” You said, settling into a chair of your own, facing away from those painted walls.

“I’ve been keeping my eye on you for a while now. I knew your father back in school and-”

“Yes, I’ve heard some of the stories,” You interrupted, crossing your legs. “There’s no need to go into a lot of backstory. I know you don’t trust me and that’s what you want to talk about, isn’t it?”

“Do you always go around making up all of these assumptions?” Sirius asked, curiously. “I don’t distrust you, I actually wanted to tell you that I think you’re doing an amazing job. Especially for someone so young.”

Your mouth went dry at the unexpected praise that he was bestowing on you. “Well, thanks. That actually means a lot to me. It’s been hard, since I had to give up everything but saving the world seems pretty worth it. Wanna tell Molly what you think, because that woman has had it out for me since day one.”

“She’ll come around. She’s just mistrustful of Slytherins, that’s all.”

You were quiet for a couple of minutes there, thinking about all of the times that you had tried to proven yourself to the Order. You had gone out on dangerous missions without hesitation. You had fought people who had once been dear family friends. You were trying to protect the world, which seemed bigger than just one family.

“Guess I just have to give it time - and hope that we have enough of it,” You sighed, realizing there wasn’t much in this situation that you could do. “You’re not so bad yourself, Black. Even if you come from a family of, well, us. Snakes and all.”

“Thanks,” He chuckled. “I’ll take that to heart.”

-

Since you had already graduated from Hogwarts, you spent a lot of time among the rest of the adults. Molly was finally warming up to you just a little, if only because she had no children to keep her busy now that they were all back at school. You were one of the youngest in the Order, having just left school the year before, and so she doted on you. Or, at the very least, she didn’t make a mess of your food anymore.

“Fancy taking me for a walk?” Sirius asked you one day, leash in hand. You laughed, knowing exactly what he had meant. It was the only way that he could leave this house. Being disguised as Snuffles, the big black dog. And the only way not to get Animal Control called on him was to have someone walk him around.

You nodded, also feeling the need to get out of the stifling nature of the house. Get away from the screams of the portrait and the gloominess that clung around every corer despite you and Molly’s attempt to cheer the place up a bit. Sirius turned into his dog form, and you put the leash and collar on him - which always felt weird, no matter how many times you did it. His tongue lolled out as he grew excited for the fresh air and it was enough to make you laugh.

These walks became more and more frequent - especially because sometimes, when you were in a more isolated part of town, Sirius would turn back into his human self and you would have a coffee and sit in a park, enjoying the early fall nature. You ended up having some really long conversations. About everything. You told him some stories about his godson, Harry, and his friends at school - they were rather infamous and it seemed like you knew a lot about them despite not being in their house. And your brother’s complaints, of course.

It didn’t take long for you to realize that you were falling for this much older man, despite the age gap and the fact that he had been in Azkaban for years, and that this was hardly the time for love, given the fact that there was a war that was growing in importance more and more each day.

-

“To the ones that we have lost,” Arthur Weasley said, raising his glass in toast over his head.

It was  not a happy occasion that you were celebrating here tonight, back at Grimmauld Place. “To the ones that we have lost,” you toasted back in return. And then you drank deeply from your flask - Firewhiskey having become a solace these days.

Sirius was taking things particularly hard - the war may be over, but the cost of that victory was entirely too high. He was tearing himself apart about it, but you couldn’t blame him. He lost his only other best friend. And the Weasleys had lost two sons - one to death, and one to the attack of a werewolf, though Bill was pulling through swimmingly.

You stood up slowly, which garnered the attention of the rest of the people around you. “I can’t be here,” You admitted, finding it too hard to be around loved ones, when they weren’t exactly the ones that you wanted.

You went down the hallway into the room with the family portrait on it, your wand in your hand as you closed the door, but you did not lock it. “What have you done to be remembered for?” You asked the portrait of yourself, and of your parents.

“I think this is a long time coming,” Sirius said, staggering into the room. “Patat Pingere.”

“What are you doing?” You asked, as the paint started to peel off of the walls, and then dissolve into nothing, leaving only the bare baseboards that they must have been before the family tree. You watched as you, your parents and the rest of them just seemed to disappear, like you never existed.

“You deserve to be remembered,” Sirius said, leaning against the doorframe, taking in the sight of all of that white. “So we’ll repaint you now, as you are. And... and Remus. And Tonks. And Fred... the others...”

You nodded, looking at the potential of it now. All of the noble house of Black had disappeared, and most of them were better off being remembered - entirely unlike everyone that you had just lost, and whose death was still pulling at your heart.

“And yours,” You said, looking over at Sirius. You were surprised to see that his head was down, and a sob racked through his entire body, and he was barely keeping himself upright.

You rushed to his side and took his weight upon your shoulder, half-dragging and half-carrying him to his favorite chair and helped to lower him into it. He didn’t let you go, so you had no choice but to sit with him. You curled up in his lap like a kitten, and he held you while sobbing into the shoulder of your robes.

You were through with crying - you’ve made yourself dehydrated with it and nothing ever seemed to get better, but seeing Sirius like this was still draining nonetheless. “You’re not completely alone Sirius - you have me.”

That seemed to help somewhat, for his shoulders stopped shaking as much, but he did continue to hold onto you tightly, making sure that you could not leave, even if you had wanted to. You didn’t want to, you wanted to stay and make sure that he knew - that he knew that you would not leave him.

“I love you.”

You weren’t expecting that from him, especially not at this time, but you began to run your fingers through the dirty, straggly hair.

“I love you too.”

“Don’t just say that if you don’t mean it. I can’t take anything more, I just-”

You’ve never seen him so vulnerable before. Even when he was in the middle of a fight, with spells going around him, narrowly missing him, he usually had some excitement showing on his face. But this was a defeated man, who seemed ready to break at the slightest negativity.

“I mean it, with every bit of me. I really, truly do,” You told him, detangling a few knots with your fingers, your wand having dropped on the floor when it seemed like he was falling. “I love you, Sirius Black.”

“Can we fix this - these empty walls?” Sirius’s head rose just a little.

You nodded, looking into his dark eyes, which had the same expression as a dog that had just been kicked. “Yes, I think we can. I know we can. Let’s start tomorrow.”

[halothenthehorns]

All in the Family

Chapter 19: The Worst Birthday

While they had finally begun to accept, even anticipate, but still never quite get used to that soul wrenching feeling of being pulled through time and space because another chapter had finished, they'd taken that last one with a grain of happiness it would be their last!

Then they all groaned in misery to find themselves not back in their Potions class, not even back at Hogwarts, but back at Number Four, Privet Drive!

"What the bloody hell!" James howled in a temper at once, pulling his wand out and reducing the nearest bush to leaves and roots, then turning his wand on the next without thought.

"That should have worked, we should be back at school," Remus agreed, massaging his abused rib cage and genuinely not understanding why they'd still be trapped out here.

"Maybe, maybe we just got sent back to where we first teleported," Alice tried to offer, going to the back gate and trying it with actual hope again. It refused to swing open, Frank tried to hop it and found this impossible.

"Argh!" Lily snarled, running her hand so hard through her hair she came back with strands in her nails. "This is the last place I wanted to wind back up at, even if this bloody cycle had to continue!"

"I'm sure you're not the only one," Regulus muttered.

With a heavy sigh, though all feeling rather resounded to the fate they'd clearly be stuck like this longer, they began searching for the stupid bloody book, though honestly with no idea why. It shouldn't have anymore to say.

This was a spacious backyard, neatly mowed ruler straight and trimmed hedges all along the back fence, though now with the exception of a few smoldering and threatening to set the whole place alight. The sunlight above already made this a blistering heat of day, the grass dry despite it's clear care, even the garden shed was highly polished on the outside but seemed to gleam threateningly. James was distracted at once by stepping inside and losing track of what he'd been looking for in favor of studying all these odd tools, though this time refrained from touching anything with his fingers still sore.

Peter chose to scale the side of the houses decorative vines for a view, was unsurprised to find he couldn't get very far when on the slanted roof and couldn't even cross to the front of the property, but caught his eye on something he hadn't quite been looking for.

"I think I know what the problem is," he told them as he fished out of the gutters a book of pure green, only the little silver two on the spine distinguished it from the leaves. "We seem to be flashing through the rest of Harry's years."

"Please tell me that is a miserable attempt at a joke," Sirius groaned as he sagged onto the nearest bench, still rubbing at his bruised throat.

"Well, I've found his second year, so I'm guessing not," Peter sighed, making himself comfortable up here and reading out the chapter title to prove his point. Given where Harry was, he imagined all of the kids birthdays were the worst, but wasn't looking forward to finding out about this one in particular.

James hoisted himself up there with him for kicks, and the others just settled themselves resignedly in the grass. Evans went over to the concrete patio, but chose to ignore the chairs and instead crossed her legs on the warm ground and tied her hair up in the evening sun. Frank and Alice lounged against the wooden fences, holding hands and just hoping this one went by without anything closer to alive foliage beneath them. Remus sat himself beside Sirius on the bench and tipped his face back to the sun, closing his eyes and wishing he were back at the lakes edge rather than this place as his friend began.

Sirius couldn't help but notice how much he'd filled out this year, from the thin gangly teen. Not quite as much as the rest of them, Remus' health would always be rather stunted, but the warm light on his face actually highlighted the light brown of his hair rather than the few gray bangs he had, the scarring more shadowed than prominent for once. He grinned at just how relaxed Moony managed to appear during all of this, though his good mood wasn't destined to last.

It certainly didn't start much fun at all, no one wanted any further reminders of what those Dursleys constantly did to Harry, putting him down like this all the time. The argument was stupid, no way could they get rid of his owl, and the Marauders in particular were being restless for not even being able to wreck the Dursleys things in retaliation for it all this time. They suddenly weren't even sure if what they'd done to the inside of the house was still there, did the effect they have on the place they were in remain like it did to them?

"If they think magic is that bad a word, I've got some real headliner news for them," Sirius scoffed.

"You do need to keep in practice, you haven't had a chance to use them on your parents in ages," Remus agreed with a small smirk that dimmed the sun. Sirius couldn't help but lean in closer, grinning just the same, happily escalating this with details of what he would like to give them knowledge of.

Peter couldn't help shifting uneasily closer to James as Harry reflected back on all he'd learned of his previous year, as if they'd forgotten. It was as much news to them as learning of this boy's potential existence! He envied Padfoot and Moony down there, trying to chat their way through this bit!

Prongs, to his credit, tried to brush it off by plucking some leaves out of the gutter and enchanting them to float down on the others. He had the first few batches float down in the shape of a heart to land around Evans, who completely ignored him, which was just a tiny bit of improvement over shooting a hex back. He then spent the remainder of this recap trying to shoot them up unsuspecting noses, muttering all the while for Peter alone it was actually a shame Snivellus wasn't here, his was the largest target.

Peter managed an appreciative titter, James always had found every way to make things seem better, even helping along to ignore his own death sentence.

"Rotten, filthy Muggle, locking that kids things away," Regulus grumbled as he watched his brother and friend on the bench. The two had been quite chummy lately ever since they'd made up, leaning so close together they looked as likely to brush hands as Longbottom and Smith over there. Regulus had almost hoped for just a second Sirius would pull his head out of his arse and remember to agree with him back in this place what a waste the whole species was like he had last time.

It was clearly not going to happen, the two conspiring over there for possible further torment of them or anything else Regulus just hadn't a care to listen to. He burnt an incoming leaf to cinders and thought Potter should count himself lucky he didn't turn the spell on him next.

"I think at this point they don't even know Harry has a birthday," Alice scoffed in disgust of these people treating a kid like that. "I've heard of happier child hoods from-" she cut off when something went whizzing into her mouth, and she spat a leaf out in disgust.

"You arse Potter," she snapped, having already batted away three of them and quite done with his antics, ready to raise her wand in retaliation by now.

He merely hooted with pleasure and wound up for another one.

"You do realize you're only helping the Dursleys, cleaning that out for them," Frank pleasantly called back, at least causing him to freeze in his actions before finally lowering his wand and muttering in disgust.

"Thank you," Alice sighed, leaning back and giving his hand a gentle squeeze. "Maybe we should spend the rest of the time reading around these places, there must be a way to continue to throw that logic at him."

"One can only go so far in tutoring before it ends with beating their head against a desk," Frank disagreed.

"Also sound advice for him, so there's really no down side," Alice concluded lightly.

Lily couldn't help but crack one eye open curiously as Vernon announced it an important day, not that she could ever delude herself by now thinking he'd actually grown such a thing as a heart, let alone a brain about what should have been important that day. It didn't stop her wondering what he could deem important and how she could make sure it never happened for that disgrace on the animal kingdom. A ruddy business deal? She closed her eye again and tried to pretend that Pettigrew's nasally voice was non-existent again, just trying to enjoy the sunshine and not relate to how miserable Harry was feeling. How alone he seemed to feel all the time at this place, and it was all his own family's fault- no! She couldn't think about that now, or she'd burst into tears in front of these people, most of whom she couldn't stand. Sev wasn't here, so she'd just have to tough it out on her own and refuse to let her mind revisit her own summers in a place disturbingly similar to this one.

Those leaves were actually helping, though she'd never admit it to Potter. If she concentrated very hard, she could just be back in her forest, surrounded by trees, waiting for the world to return back to normal at school, just like Harry, where her real friend was...at least while she could still hang around with him, when he wasn't also trying to chat up with so many other terrible people, and she just couldn't understand how he-

"They what!"

She sat up so fast she created a mini-whirlwind of the leaves around her and barely noticed, wand drawn on Lupin's outraged face. "Hermione and Ron forgot his birthday? That's ridiculous, they'd never, not after all they'd been through!"

She almost would have laughed at his personal offense to this if she didn't honestly agree, and had to backtrack a bit to really hear what she'd been trying to block out, and then couldn't even blame him for the outburst. Merlin, no mail all summer, what had gotten into Harry's friends?

"Surely we're missing something," the elder Black pacified, looking more confused than anything. "Hermione wouldn't have an owl most likely, and maybe Ron's parents have to use theirs too often to let him borrow it..." the excuses were flimsy at best and they all knew it. It truly made no sense, and the swell of pity around all of them for this poor kid having no one to acknowledge his birthday, even worse humming the tune to himself! Even her home had never gotten so bad!

"Oh good, I needed a distraction," Potter said from above in an all to familiar tone, but for once in her life Lily couldn't even blame him. She detested the little birks attitude of taking his problems out on others, like her friend, by hexing anyone he felt like. Yet in this instance, she got it. She wanted to curse Dudley to, for being the embodiment of all Harry's troubles! She'd restrain herself of course if the little ponce was put in front of her, drawers dropping or not, but it was almost as much a revelation to her to feel empathy for Potter as to still wonder what Harry had seen in that bush.

Then the real jaw dropping moment came in for everyone else, that poor kid nearly getting his head bashed in with a frying pan. Regulus couldn't give it a second thought but for a bit of empathy, maybe that kid would learn to keep his mouth shut like he had. Instead he remained focused on the inconspicuous, lone little bush behind his brother, the only one Potter hadn't destroyed upon first arriving. Regulus had well learned his lesson from the last book, and he wouldn't again let himself be so easily distracted as everyone else so clearly was, throwing all kinds of abuse around about all the chores Harry was to do. Regulus would have thought at least Sirius could blow the whole thing off as well, they may not be doing chores at their own place but the treatment wasn't unfamiliar to the two, but no, he was just in much of a temper as everyone else.

It was pathetic getting so worked up over something that wasn't even happening, leaving Regulus alone to wonder what had almost happened to the young Potter in that bush. Another attempt at return of the Dark Lord? If so, should he even say anything about it, but instead actually try to find a way to help it along. After all, if this future did happen, if he found a way to help someone so powerful in fact gain another strength in a sooner return to glory, maybe he could stop little boys from ever again feeling afraid in their own home, because there wouldn't be any fear left. The Dark Lord would make everyone an equal, and filthy Muggles like this would be a thing of the past.

Pettigrew finally warned that the first bit of this ending was nigh upon them, and Regulus did all he could to brace himself for whatever good that wouldn't do, admittedly as intrigued as anyone by the final line telling him he may not be far off. Who would be in Harry Potter's bedroom in a place like that?

[c-is-for-circinate]

The Untitled Prequel To A Harry Potter Fic I Am (Probably) Never Writing

By popular demand, this thing that starts a story I know more of but probably don’t have the words for!

In which Minerva McGonagall tries to figure out the present, and, relatedly, the future; including a great many names readers will not recognize, because there are many, many students at Hogwarts, and several more that readers will.

.

It takes nearly three weeks after the final battle to empty the tent city struck up on the Hogwarts grounds of the last of its inhabitants.  They leave in straggling, drawn-out waves, one by one or six or seven at a time, one day after the other.  Nobody takes the train.

First to go, of course, are the Aurors, the members of the Order, with the dead carried out on pallets and Death Eaters in chains--adults.  Very well and good riddance.  Minerva isn’t concerned with them.  She barely spared them a thought in the first place.  The few that stay are useful for wards and charms to light the campfires, and that’s all the mind she has time to pay to them right now.

The first children to go, then, are those injured too badly to be cared for with the Hogwarts facilities in the state they are now.  There aren’t many.  More left with the dead.

After that and within the first day or so, there’s a small handful of sixth- and seventh-years old enough to Apparate themselves away and tired or worried about family enough to leave without a second glance.  Minerva wishes them well and turns her attention to the next wave: students with parents or guardians who are still alive, and findable, and sane and well enough to Floo or Apparate in to Hogsmeade to collect them in person.  Parents who aren’t in some sort of custody or wanted by this or the last, not-quite-dismantled Ministry for capture the moment they arrive for their children.

“I am not,” Minerva says on the second day, knuckles very white around her wand and Kingsley Shacklebolt very much in her way, “going to hold children hostage to secure their parents’ arrest.”

“Minerva,” Kingsley says, voice calm and quiet and sad enough that she doesn’t hit him for it, “does it do them any better service to send them home with parents who will be hunted as traitors and murderers the moment they leave?”

Minerva takes a sharp breath to retort and thinks, very abruptly, how much of the last year she has spent spoiling on the very edge of a fight.  Kingsley Shacklebolt is her ally.  He is her friend.  He is not even incorrect.

Minerva’s been a Gryffindor for fifty years.  She has learned in that time that a great many problems cannot be solved via force, combat, or conflict, and found a great many alternate ways to solve them besides.  A year of occupation, a pitched battle, and the bodies of too many students won’t take that from her.

“Very well,” she says, and allows the Order’s Aurors to stand present at the Hogsmeade floos, the designated Apparition points for parental pick-up, and hover generally in the background of every parent-child reunion.

Four days after the battle when the rush quiets, a little fewer than half the students who attended Hogwarts this year are left.  It’s no more than a third of the number that should have been there, but never mind that.  Never mind the groaning, crumbling wreck of Hogwarts Castle, the broken walls and fallen staircases, the gaping holes and cursed booby-traps left in every hall that they ought to be living in now.  Minerva turns away deliberately, keeps the castle to her back, and faces the problem in front of her.

The next set of students, then.  Those whose adults are, for one reason or another, difficult to locate or otherwise...unavailable.

There are ways to find witches and wizards who don’t want to be found, but no adult witch or wizard had survived any amount of time on the run from Voldemort and his Ministry by being easy to track.  Half the parents who appear at Hogwarts over the next few days, Minerva hasn’t actually managed to contact at all--they show up on their own, eager or hopeful or desperate, and she turns their children over gladly.

It took three days after the battle, with all the wizarding world in a shambles as expected, for someone from their side to finally make it out to Azkaban.  It takes days more even to process the prisoners, to treat them for disease and injury, for madness.  Days just to get a list of names, the living and the Kissed and the dead.

Some of them come for their children after that.  Some of them, Minerva scratches off her list of parents with a steady, even stroke of her quill, and adds their children’s names to her list of students whose aunts and uncles and further relatives need to be located and investigated instead.

A week after the last battle, Demelza Robins shows up at the flap of Minerva’s office tent, fists clenched and tear streaks dry on her cheeks, four younger students behind her.  “We’re going to St. Mungo’s,” she says.  “My dad’s the only family I’ve got left.  It’s the same for all of us.  You can’t keep us here.  We’re going.”

“My dear,” Minerva says, rising from her chair, one hand raised to placate.  She freezes quite suddenly when Malcom Baddock raises his wand in a shaky hand.

“You can’t stop us,” he says.  “You can’t.”

Malcom had shared a dormitory room for four years with Matthias Burke and Dominic Rosier, a bathroom with Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle and Draco Malfoy, a house with Flora and Hestia Carrow.  Decades ago, his father wore green and silver and sang in the school choir and was so fluid and graceful with his Transfigurations it was a joy to have his class of Slytherins every single year.  Nobody’s seen Sylvester Baddock in three months, for all the word Minerva’s been able to find of him, but if Betty was in Azkaban...Minerva doesn’t hold out much hope.

Malcom has one uncle to Minerva’s knowledge, besides Betty’s Muggle family, but he won’t be coming by to pick his nephew up.  He was already here last week.  He’ll be on the other Azkaban list, as far as she’s aware.  The incoming one.

“Mr. Baddock,” Minerva says gently.  “You cannot possibly stay at St. Mungo’s.  The entire hospital is packed.  I’d be surprised if there’s a spare chair that hasn’t been Transfigured into a cot in the whole place.  Where would you go?”

“Home,” says Demelza.  “Not some hospital without anything familiar or anyone who loves them to help them get better.”

“Children, your parents are in no fit state to take care of you,” Minerva says.  She’s seen the reports on Travis Robins, Betty Baddock, Paul and Angela Hurst.  Edric Fowley, whose family tree hadn’t seen a Muggle in ten generations until he married one.  Poor Emilia Dawlish.

“That’s fine,” Demelza says.  “That’s what we’re for.  We’ll take care of them.”

“We’ll take care of each other,” says Winifred Fowley, very very quietly.  “We don’t need magic for that.”

Minerva should put her foot down and stop this.  Lucas Hurst is only twelve.  What if something goes wrong?  What if their parents are even more broken in mind and spirit than in body?  What if that thrice-damned excuse for an Auror John Dawlish gets out of his own hospital bed before Emilia’s well enough to defend herself?  What if somebody gets hurt?

“We can all stay at Fowley’s place if we have to,” Demelza says.  “Even Baddock.  But we’re leaving now.”

Five fewer children to worry about here, feeling trapped and frightened and plotting ways to escape without doing her the courtesy of a farewell first.  Five more to worry about out in the great wide world without her, but what’s five more on top of that impossible pile?

“Professor Sprout will escort you to St. Mungo’s,” Minerva says, though, Merlin, she needs Pomona here so badly.  But Pomona will have the good sense to bring the children back if need be.  For one afternoon, she’ll make do.

The trickle of incoming parents has turned into a trickle of aunts and uncles and grandparents by the second week, as Minerva pours over lists and writes letters and sends owls and looks for any suitable relative capable of taking care of one or two or four or five children still shaken by the year they’ve survived.  Grace Hawthorne, just barely eighteen, shows up with her great-great-grandmother Jocosa, a hundred and eight, and together they collect Grace’s two younger sisters and every one of the Partridge and Hawthorne cousins.  Minerva lets them do it, even Edna and Toby Partridge who are cousins on the other side and not a drop of Hawthorne blood to them at all.  There are too many students left and too few parents to take them all, and Edna is responsible, and Grace is clever.  They’ll make do as well as anyone else these days.

Not a single child at Hogwarts this year is Muggleborn, but there are two dozen or more who haven’t any family left besides their Muggle relatives, and that’s another horror and a heartache all in itself.  Each child must be hand-delivered by Side-Along Apparition or Floo’ed to some nearby wizarding location and then taken by broomstick or Knight Bus or some Muggle transportation or walked.

James Tuckett’s aunt hadn’t even known her brother was dead until Xiomara Hooch showed up at her front door.  Minerva sits down at her desk and listens to Xiomara relate the story and closes her eyes, and tries not to think about a brick house with a perfectly tailored lawn in Surrey on a night in 1981, when everything had somehow felt so much clearer than this.

Somewhere around the second week, the Aurors--the new Aurors, whatever may be becoming of them under Kingsley’s leadership, after the days of arguing and politicking that Albus surely would have stuck his nose into and Minerva simply doesn’t have time to care about--release a whole flurry of suspects they’ve cleared of the Imperious curse or found reasonably innocent of most probable wrongdoing.  There are dozens of others still awaiting trials that might not be managed for weeks or even months, but in the meantime the new wave of parents is here and furious or desperate or relieved, every one of them overflowing with emotions and very few of those happy.

Minerva finds herself very nearly cursed by Isra Harper nee Shafiq, upon revealing that she’d sent Adam home with his Harper relatives several days prior.  At this point, she is tired enough to barely bat an eye.

That wave clears out a handful of students and two thirds of the Slytherins that are left.  Minerva walks past the color-coded row of House tents, shorter once again than it’s been in days as the remaining students cluster and condense some more, and doesn’t let herself think about school unity or what might even become of Slytherin in the fall.  Doesn’t let herself think about autumn at all, or the falling-down castle behind her, or Septima Vector’s still, cooling body or the tremor in Filius Flitwick’s hand these days.  There’s Fiendfyre in the school somewhere, Potter told her quietly before he left, eating its way through a pocket dimension of magical objects and who knows what other enchantments, and if it’s grown powerful enough feasting it might not stop burning for months.  There are still students here in front of her, and Minerva will see that they’re taken care of before she lets herself fall apart in terror of the future.

By the third week they’re down to just shy of forty students, and Minerva has racked her brain as thoroughly as possible to try and remember what they did at the end of the last war.  Had there been so many orphans, that time?  Hogwarts had been safe, had stayed safe, that entire war.  Surely there must have been students whose parents were murdered as they sat snug in their dormitories.  What had they done then?

It had all been case by case back then, was the trouble, never so many all at once.  But this is no place for children.  It’s no place for adults--Irma Pince is already gone, horror and nightmares behind her eyes, and she’d had to beg Poppy to stay on just until the last child was seen to and sent off.  Aurora Sinistra’s in St. Mungo’s still.  Horace Disapparated within the first day of the battle being over without a second look back.  There’s just Minerva herself, Pomona and Filius and Xiomara and Poppy, Rubeus in his hut and Sibyl holed up inside her tent too shaken to leave, a handful of house elves keeping them all fed over campfires and a handful of Aurors and Order members patrolling the perimeter every day.  It’s not enough.  She misses Severus more than she ever would have thought possible.

She thinks Albus would have done better.  She thinks Albus wouldn’t have done a thing at all, popping down to the new Ministry every single morning and only putting in an appearance here to keep his face in people’s minds, and she’d still be doing everything she is now and then some.  She thinks it would still be better, because then at least they’d have Albus to look to, to believe in, to reassure them that it would all turn out alright though of course he was much too cryptic to say how.  Albus wouldn’t ever explain his full reasoning and he might even be wrong, but at least he’d have an answer.

Well.  If the possession of any answer at all, abstruse or wrong as it might be, is the standard to which Minerva is aspiring, she can certainly provide that herself.  She can do several steps better than that.

She makes a new list from memory, and has to stop herself at the bottom, go back and cross out several names once again.  The Westinburghs are dead.  The Kaleys ran to France the moment George and Miranda left school.  Honorius Hanley was arrested last week, shocking everyone who had the time to care about it.

The Abbotts are in mourning.  The Smiths are in mourning.  The Weasleys are in mourning.  Everybody in the world is in mourning.

There’s a small fireplace in Minerva’s office tent, large enough to firecall from.  She starts at the top of her much-too-short list, and hopes.

Percy Weasley answers the fire at the Burrow, looking gaunt and tired, wrapped in a hand-knit sweater that ought to be much too warm for very nearly June.  “Professor McGonagall,” he says, polite in his surprise.  “What brings you by today?”

“I’m afraid I have a favor to ask of your parents,” Minerva says, and doesn’t miss the flash of stubbornness and rage that calms so quickly on Percy’s face.  She can’t blame him for an instant.

“Don’t you think my parents have done enough?” he asks, clipped and chilly.

“Be that as it may,” Minerva begins.

“Oh, shove over, Percy!”  A moment later he’s elbowed out of the way of the fire, his younger sister taking his place.  “Professor McGonagall.  MUM!  FIRE FOR YOU!”

Minerva controls a wince at the volume and spots Percy failing to quite do the same, though that may be related to the elbow-inflicted bruise he now appears to be rubbing on his side.  Ginny Weasley peers down into the fire with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her sharp, probing eyes.

“What’s going on, Professor?” Ginny asks.

“I’m afraid--” Minerva begins, to put her off, before Percy cuts in.

“That’s Mum and Dad’s business, Ginny,” he says, and Ginny scowls darkly.

“That’s enough from you, Percy,” she says.  “Go see if George needs help in the garden.”

Minerva doesn’t know quite what to expect from that, but it’s not for Percy Weasley to pause and then sink in on himself, becoming a small, quiet thing in the face of his sister’s ire.  He nods at her once, “Professor.”  Then he’s gone.

“Ginny, what on Earth--”  Molly Weasley bustles over with as little cheer and energy as Minerva’s ever seen, but she does smile when she sees whose head is in the fireplace, and Minerva takes it for the kindness it is.  “Minerva, how nice to see you.”

“You as well, Molly.  How is your family?”

Both Weasley women’s expressions darken a bit, though Molly’s brightens back into half-forced cheer after a moment.  “We’re getting by,” she says.  “Charlie’s been staying with Bill and Fleur, not that we don’t have the space, but they didn’t want Shell Cottage standing empty and anyway at least it’s closer than Romania.  They’ll be by for supper in a few hours.”

“I’m glad,” Minerva says with complete honesty, for reasons entirely separate from the impetus for her call.  She leaves it there--Molly wouldn’t thank her for useless platitudes, no matter how true, and she’s a whole list of firecalls to make after this one, too.

“How about Hogwarts, then?” Molly asks briskly.  “Rebuilding efforts beginning and all that?”

Minerva can’t quite contain her flinch this time.  “I’m afraid they haven’t begun.  We’re still...attempting to find appropriate homes for several of the students from last term.”

Molly’s face goes wide with understanding and grief.  Ginny’s sharpens.

“The orphans,” Ginny says, cutting straight to the point.  “How many?”

“Miss Weasley…” Minerva begins, and then finds she doesn’t quite know what to say.

“Hector and Ariadne’s parents died last November, but they’ve an aunt,” Ginny continues.  “I heard about Demelza and her father.  Kitty and Mara Westinburgh?  Who else?”

“There are approximately three dozen students with no relatives on record available to take them in,” Minerva concedes.  “We were hoping...I know this is a terrible time for your family, but Molly…”

Molly wrings her hands in her apron and blinks away a bit of wetness in her eyes.  “Is there anywhere else?” she asks, and then recoils a bit, biting into her bottom lip in shame.

“With three dozen children, and things the way they are, the options for placement…”  Minerva doesn’t think there are three dozen untouched wizarding families today in all of Britain.  And oh, there are plenty of families still standing, still pulling through, but how many can she trust to do right by a child not their own?  Who could she turn to, if not…

“Do you have a list, Professor?” Ginny asks.  “Of the students who are left.  I know most of them, maybe I can help.”

Minerva should protest, but Ginevra Weasley’s eyes are bright and very piercing.  She hasn’t yet turned seventeen.

Minerva hadn’t been able to make an ally out of her, last year.  She hadn’t been willing.  Better that Ginny, that Neville Longbottom, that their whole organization slip by unrecognized and unknown by as many adults as possible.  Minerva couldn’t reveal and didn’t have to be seen to punish what she didn’t know.  She’d set herself as a bulwark facing Severus and the Carrows and done her best never to look over her shoulder at the students behind her, placing all her hope and faith in those children’s ability to protect themselves where she couldn’t.

Perhaps she’d hoped for this, when she firecalled here first.  “Very well,” Minerva says, and reaches through the fire with the list.

Molly goes to take it, far too slow, but only makes the smallest noise of protest when Ginny snatches it away.  “Hmm,” she says.  “You should send Euan Abercrombie off with David Wu, if you can find where their family’s hidden,” she says.  “They’re all Muggles but Euan spent half the past two summers with them, they’ll take him in.  Leslie Bittern…”  She stops quite abruptly.  “Flora and Hestia are still there?”

Out of thirty-eight students on the list in Ginny’s hand, thirteen of them are Slytherins.  The only other House with nearly as many orphans left is Gryffindor.  Flora and Hestia Carrow have barely set foot outside the tent they share with five other girls of their House in weeks.

“Their family members are largely unavailable,” Minerva says, which is the word she’s been using for three weeks to mean arrested, or tortured to insanity, or dead.  In this case it means that she sent Alecto and Amycus to prison with her own wand and not a second thought, that she heard about Agamemnon's defiant last stand with grim satisfaction, that she didn’t think at all about the pair of fifteen-year-old girls in her own keeping until days after word of Calanthe Carrow nee Sauvageon’s suicide began to trickle down the grapevine in her direction.  The Sauvageons, secure in their own chateau somewhere in the wilds of France, have declined to answer her owls.

“I don’t think…” Molly begins hesitantly.

“They’re not evil,” Ginny says, surprising both of them.  “They barely spoke to anyone all year.  They only ever did Cruciatus on command.  Three quarters of the school’s done that.”  She says it bluntly, almost carelessly, like it’s nothing at all to her--like she knows exactly how dizzy, how ill that fact makes Minerva feel, and wants to punish her for it.  “Find them some Mudblood without any other children who won’t take nonsense and quite likes housekeeping and decorating charms.  They like pretty.  Maybe if they learn to bake they won’t turn out like the rest of their family.”

“Ginevra Weasley!” Molly exclaims while Minerva is still a bit boggled by the excellent suggestion.  “To think I’d see the day where I’d hear that word come out of your mouth--”

“What?  Mudblood?” Ginny asks scornfully, and Minerva realizes she hadn’t even noticed.  It hadn’t even made her flinch.  “Do you think I haven’t heard someone say Mudblood a hundred thousand times by now?  Do you think Hestia and Flora Carrow haven’t heard and said worse?  Do you think that’s the worst thing I’ve done?”

“I think your attitude has just about reached the limit of my patience, Ginevra Elaine Iseulte Anna Viviane--”

“We’ll take Samuella Grey and Mortimer Colt,” Ginny interrupts her mother.  “We have to, Mum.  They’ve nowhere else to stay.  They need someplace safe.”

Minerva hadn’t known that either child was particularly close with Ginny.  She’d chosen not to know a lot of things, last year.

“Well,” Molly says.  Then, very briskly after a pause that goes on just slightly too long, “Yes, of course we’ll take them in, and you’ll come right back if there’s more left that need homing after you’ve worked through your other options.  You, meanwhile, young lady--”

“Go to the Longbottoms next,” Ginny says to Minerva, interrupting yet again.  She hands the list back, careful through the fire.  “I know Neville’s got space for at least five or six, and they’ll all trust him, mostly, besides some of the older Slytherins.  Let him pick who to take.  He’ll have a good idea on the others, even the Slytherins, too.”

“Thank you, Miss Weasley,” Minerva says gravely, and means it.  “Molly, thank you.  Please give my regards to Arthur.  Miss Grey and Mr. Colt will be on their way within the next day or so, and I’ll be sure to send word first.”

She pulls back from the fire before the argument she can see brewing in the Weasley living room explodes.  It isn’t kind, to put this extra pressure on their family when they’re already awash with grief and all their own conflicting nightmares.  It isn’t kind to Samuella Grey or Mortimer Colt, to send them among it.  But it’s among the less wretched or cruel options Minerva has available to her.

The Ministry is every bit the shambling wreck that Hogwarts Castle is behind her.  Nobody will find homes for these children if she does not.

So.  The Longbottoms it is, then.  Minerva doesn’t bother to waste any more time, and tosses another pinch of powder into the fire.

Augusta’s in her sitting room with a cup of tea when Minerva pokes her head through the fire, perched with perfect posture on a brocade sofa and arching both eyebrows in question.  “Good afternoon, Minerva.  What brings you calling here?”

“I’ve a matter of some importance to discuss with you and your grandson,” Minerva says, dismissing with any illusion that the children who protected Hogwarts last year might be left out of this conversation at any level.  Out of any conversation, if some of the distant rumors she’s been hearing about Miss Granger and the rebuilding of the Ministry prove true.

Besides, she’ll need Neville Longbottom’s help for this one.

Neville and Augusta both listen seriously, consideringly, to Minerva’s request.  The left side of Neville’s face is nearly entirely healed, aside from the last brown smudge of remaining bruise along his jaw.  The simplest healing charm could have dealt with it weeks ago, but Augusta never could work a decent charm, and Neville knows better than to try to work healing magic on himself.  Of course they wouldn’t have bothered anyone else.

“We’ve the room,” Neville says the moment Minerva’s finished.  “We can probably take six or seven, if we double up, right Gran?  And I can pop back to Hogwarts until everybody has a place to stay and help, I shouldn’t have just left right after the battle like that--”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Longbottom,” Minerva cuts in smoothly, before she ends up with Neville and Augusta both moving into the dormitory tent city this very afternoon.  “We’re far more interested in moving people out than back in.  In fact, Miss Weasley suggested that you might be very valuable in coming up with suggestions for which students we might be able to house where.”

“Let’s see the list, then,” Augusta beckons for it.  “Hmph.  You’ve a Smith on here--”

“Half-blood on her mother’s side, I’m afraid,” Minerva sighs.  “No relation.”

“Nonsense, as though that clan’s ever met a Muggleborn Smith they haven’t adopted or married instantly to keep their monopoly on the name,” Augusta says.  “You’ll owl Aspasia tonight.”

“It’s true, Zacharias did keep a bit of an eye out for her, as much as he did for anyone,” Neville says, more derision in his tone than she would have thought, a year ago, that Neville Longbottom could possess.  “We should take Vigi Thorston.  And Valdis, too, I suppose, I think if her brother’s here she won’t likely go after the other kids.” 

It isn’t a surprise that Vigi Thorston, tiny Gryffindor that he is, caught Longbottom’s eye last year, but his older sister is rather more of unexpected.  Valdis is Slytherin through and through, and quite a bit crueler with it than the Carrow twins ever managed.  “Are you sure?”

“She loves him,” Neville says confidently.  “They should stay together, and you can’t put Vigi in a house without other Gryffindors around, or people who can’t handle her, they’ll both go mad.”

“Alice’s second cousin Joshua married a Thorston,” Augusta agrees briskly.  “That’s enough to make us family, I should think.  Who else?”

There’s a curse and a blessing to teaching at Hogwarts for so many years, and it’s the ability to see an ever-lengthening string of parents and cousins and ancestors stretching out behind every new student to cross Minerva’s eye.  She’s known for years that Neville has Frank’s gentleness and patience, Alice’s sheer grit under pressure.  She’s never looked for Augusta in him except as a somewhat sharp-edged element of his upbringing, and that, Minerva reflects, was a mistake.  Neville and his grandmother dissect her list like so much mincemeat, easily comparing and confirming Augusta’s encyclopedic knowledge of wizarding lineages and current alliances with Neville’s apparently equally encyclopedic understanding of every first through seventh year student at Hogwarts last year.

“What’s this about Boot, anyway?” Neville asks, turning back to Minerva as though she’s been at all useful to the past fifteen minutes of conversation doing anything other than jotting very quick notes.  “He was a seventh-year.  He’s of age.”

“Of age, but still entirely without a place to go,” Minerva explains.  “There was a fire no more than a month before the final battle.  The Boot ancestral home was destroyed, and all living relatives perished.”  Little wonder the Longbottoms hadn’t heard.  Terence hadn’t known it himself until two days after the battle, when his fifth attempt to Floo home failed and he risked his wobbly Apparation skills to get there.  “He is still a Hogwarts student, adult or not.”

As though any seventh-year, any eighteen-year-old, ought to be considered an adult.  Boot is hardly the only would-be graduate to find himself floundering without a place in this post-war world.  No fresh new Ministry positions awaiting this year’s crop of students.  Nobody was prepared for this.

“Merlin,” Neville curses quietly.  “Why didn’t he owl?  He can stay here too, no question, or with Michael, maybe, if they don’t ask Mrs. Corner about it first.  Michael says his nightmares’ve come back as bad as they were last winter, and his mother’s been fretting, but he reckons half of it’s just not being able to hear the others snoring to know they’re alright.  He and Terry’re close, he should go there.  I’ll let Michael know about it soon as we’re done here.”

“I don’t believe Mr. Boot would wish to be a burden,” Minerva tempers cautiously, before poor Mr. and Mrs. Corner find themselves promised into taking on an additional traumatized teenager to accompany the one they’ve already got at home without a single word of warning.  It may well be the best place for Terence Boot, but not without a welcome from those that would host him.

“It’ll be better for both of them.  As soon as Michael knows about Terry’s family, I’m sure he’ll Apparate back up to Hogwarts and drag him back himself.”  Neville nods, as though he considers the matter closed, and Minerva suspects it very likely is.  “Who’s left on the list?”

“Alexander Okafor,” Augusta reports.  “As well as Delphine and Roland St. Croix, Surendra Tamboli, and Nikias Selwyn.”

“Send Alex to Hannah,” Neville suggests.  “It’s just her and her dad, but Alex is quiet, and he thinks Hannah’s brilliant.  Delphine and Roland should be fine anywhere, just keep them apart whatever you do or they’ll rip each other to pieces.  I’d say bring Surendra here, I don’t think he’d had the chance to make more than one or two friends in the whole country before he started Hogwarts last year, but can’t have him and the Thorstons in the same house--have you tried owling his great-uncle in Maharashtra?”

“The Tambolis have been a cornerstone of the magical plant trade in Great Britain for four centuries,” Augusta scoffs.  “If the Ketteridges don’t admit they owe that family far more than a few months of childcare, I should think Douglas Ketteridge will be hearing a few of my opinions about it.”

“So long as they speak Marathi,” Neville says, relieved, and Minerva makes a note.  “If you could just drop Selwyn over a cliff somewhere we’d all be better off, but barring that, better find him somewhere without small children or pets.”

“Travers,” says Augusta.  “Not the good-for-nothing side of the family, the ones with a sense of honor.  They’ll be sharp enough with him.”

Minerva shudders to think of the sort of parenting Augusta Longbottom might consider ‘sharp enough’ for the son of two Death Eaters.  She shudders to think what Nikias Selwyn might have gotten up to this past year that she’d never known about, considering the things she had.

“Thank you,” she says instead.  “This has been more valuable than you know.”

“Of course, Minnie,” Augusta says, as easily, dismissively generous as she’d been when she was sixteen and Minerva the twelve-year-old needing guidance.  “You’re free to come to us at your leisure.”

“I really shouldn’t have left,” Neville says, expression darkening once again.  “I’m sorry, Professor, I didn’t think.  Tell Terry I’m sorry, will you?  I’ll tell him myself when I see him.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Longbottom,” Minerva assures him.  “You have gone far above and beyond in your attempts to protect the students of Hogwarts this year.  That so many are safe and sound enough to go to any homes this year at all is very much thanks to you.  I’m so grateful that you’re willing to assist yet again.”

He blushes, which Minerva is somewhat comforted to see that Neville is still capable of, even after everything.  “It’s nothing anyone wouldn’t do,” he says to her chin and a bit of the hearthstones near the fireplace.

“Nonsense,” says Augusta, clapping one hand over her grandson’s shoulder rather harder than probably necessary.  “There’ll be another Order of Merlin on the mantle before long once they get the Ministry sorted out, I should think.  Is there anything else, Minerva?”

It only makes Neville blush harder, for all Minerva suspects it’s quite true--she’ll certainly put her voice behind it, should the question come to her--and Minerva reconsiders even asking the question tickling at her curiosity.  It’s not as though she needs to know, but...they’re her students.

“Mr. Longbottom,” she says, not quite as casually as she’d hoped, though she doesn’t think the embarrassed boy on the sofa notices.  “It did catch my attention that, while you suggested several of your fellow sixth and seventh-years from Dumbledore’s Army to host younger students of their acquaintance, Miss Lovegood’s name was not among them.  Is she quite alright?”

“Oh, no--I mean yes, Professor, as far as I know she’s fine.”  Neville trips over his own words like he’s thirteen again, finally looking up from his knees with wide eyes and the look of having been caught out at something.  “She’s had a hard year, that’s all--I mean…”  He catches himself short, lost in the obviousness of the difficult year every single member of the wizarding world has had together.  “I just don’t know that it would be a good idea,” he says.  “There’s enough space elsewhere.  Luna’s fine, though.  She’s planning on heading back to Hogwarts in fall.”

It’s Minerva’s turn to try to control her facial expression, her flinch.  The more people she speaks to, the more questions there are about the coming autumn.  She’ll need to be able to answer them sooner rather than later.

“It’s good to hear that she’s well,” Minerva says.  “Good day, Augusta, Mr. Longbottom.  Thank you once again.”

She pulls back from the fireplace, sheet of notes in hand.  It’s a plan.  It’s a good one.  She ought to be able to arrange this lot in less than a week.

Less than a week left of having students on Hogwarts grounds.  She’d best get to work.

[redbeardace]

Quarantine 4: Stay Home

[This is a post for the May Carnival of Aces.]

So much is different now.

So much is the same.

I have been very fortunate so far.  The disease hasn’t touched me or anyone close to me yet.  I still have a job and am working full time.  The biggest practical impact on my life is that I no longer have a daily commute.

I see other people talking about their experiences and they’re so...  strange?

Someone remarked on my “8 days without human contact” sign, shocked that I hadn’t needed to go shopping in 8 days, that I must have really stocked up.  But I routinely go two weeks without shopping, 8 days is nothing.  I’m going on my 23rd day on this cycle and the only reason I’ll have to go shopping now is that I’m out of milk.  I still have plenty of everything else.

It’s weird to me that people seem to think that having more than three days of groceries is prepper level stockpiling.  And watching everyone make a run on the stores and seeing what they were grabbing was just baffling.  When Cascadia puts on its big show, what are these people planning to do?

People talk about how little gas they’ve been buying lately.  Welcome to my life. I have a mostly electric car and go months between fill ups.

I am truly concerned about the number of people posting “My kids are making me drink haha” jokes.  Sure, maybe it’s funny for the first few days, but if you’re still saying that on day 57, I think you seriously need to step back and look at yourself and consider if maybe you have a drinking problem.  Because you’ve spent two months talking about how you routinely drink in order to cope with the stress of your children, and that seems like you might have a problem.

Anyone know how to tell a bunch of my coworkers that they may be alcoholics in a tactful way...?

I’ve been telling a daily WFH joke on the company chat system.  I can’t keep it up anymore.  It’s gone on too long.

I’ve been making masks.

I’ve been putting hats on scarecrow owls.

I’ve been making subtle changes to the backdrop of the daily video calls for work.  Yesterday it was an vintage photo of an old man, a middle aged woman, and a teenage girl who might be a timelord, standing in a field.  Tomorrow it will be a jazzy picture of a roll of toilet paper with a face drawn on it.

It is named Sir Roland of Charmaine.

I ordered pizza delivery for the first time ever today.  I like pizza and hate people, so how come I’ve never done this before.

I haven’t had a nasty headache in weeks.

I haven’t put on any weight.

I live alone.  If I get sick, I’m going to have to take care of myself somehow.  I don’t know if I’d be able to do that.  There won’t be anyone to leave dinner at the top of the stairs.  There won’t be anyone to take me to the hospital if things get bad.  

Stuff is piling up.  Like literal stuff in literal piles.  My stairs are on the verge of becoming hazardous.  I’m not sure where all this stuff has come from.

I’m now treating my mail as hazardous material.

If I ever had to deal with actual hazardous material, I probably wouldn’t survive.

I see all these people talking about how much time they have now.  I have no extra time.  I’m feeling like I’m being an unproductive loser because I’m not going to come out of this knowing how to play the mandolin in Romanian or whatever, but I don’t have newfound free time.  Even the time gained back from the commute has vanished somewhere.

I have to have a timer at my desk so that I’ll stop working after 8-ish hours.

They’ve been giving me plastic bags at the grocery store because they refuse to use the reusable ones.  Reminds me just how much I hate plastic bags.

I have to get my house painted.  I’m kinda digging this no contact thing.  I need to take advantage of it more while it lasts.

The president is still a fascist, there’s gun-toting nutjobs on the loose who aim to kill us all one way or another, and the MURDER HORNETS ARE HERE.

Seriously.  The Murder Hornets are here.  WTF.

I’ve mostly been in good shape.  Two incidents threw me off balance.  

I lost a notecard of WFH jokes.  That was kind of a last straw situation, where I had to shuffle and strain to try to make a usable workspace and nothing was going right and even after a best attempt, the chair didn’t fit and I didn’t fit because I never fit and now there’s all sorts of stuff in my hallway that doesn’t belong there and what am I going to do with it all and I didn’t want to do any of this and NOW WHERE IN THE HELL IS MY NOTE CARD BECAUSE IT WAS RIGHT HERE AND I WAS CAREFUL WITH IT AND WHERE DID IT GO AND HOW DID I LOSE IT IT LITERALLY WENT SEVEN FEET AT MOST AND I’VE SEARCHED THE WHOLE AREA A DOZEN TIMES AND HOW COULD IT JUST DISAPPEAR LIKE THAT.

The latest Stay At Home order extension.  I knew it was coming, but just running the calendar out based on the dates they were saying and extrapolating for the dates they weren’t saying, and coming up with the middle of July at the earliest and just...

Somehow, the loss of the Pride Parade didn’t hit me that hard.  It should have.

Quarantine beards.  I don’t get it.  I mean, I’m lazy about shaving, but this I don’t understand.  Also, I’m pretty much incapable of growing a proper quarantine beard.  I grow in a month what others do in a few days.

I cut my own hair.  I’ve got electric clippers.  It’s really not that hard and it doesn’t involve potentially giving the plague to any barbers or pretending that democracy is threatened by my bangs getting a bit too long.  Of course, I only do it about once a year.  This is around the time of year that I do it, though.

I’ve worn pants every day.  Regular pants.  Not PJs or sweat pants.  But pants pants.  You all really not wearing pants?  Maybe I’ll wear a skirt one day to mix things up.

I have been routinely testing my sense of smell.  Haven’t lost it yet.

There’s stuff I want to do, but I don’t feel like doing any of it.  There are time-sensitive projects I want to do, but I don’t really want to sit in front of the computer for the time it would take to make it happen.  Because I sit in front a computer in my house all day for work now and there’s no energy left for anything more.  Not that there was energy for that stuff before.

Am I supposed to support the economy by ordering from local businesses online or save the lives of delivery workers by only ordering essential things?  And how come when I ordered a bunch of stuff from a place that claims they’re prioritizing essential items, the one thing that I ordered that could be considered essential was the last thing they shipped?

I had a Nigerian organized crime ring file for unemployment in my name.  The state’s apparently lost millions in this scheme.  I don’t understand how that can be.  It seems like “Don’t Send Money To Nigeria” would be a pretty straightforward check in the system.

Oh.  Wait.  I’m a software engineer who’s spent my time on the quality and reliability side of the house.  I can totally see something like that getting deprioritized and won’t-do’d.

Also had my credit card number stolen and used on a wild shopping spree.  Not sure if that’s ‘rona-related.  It’s the credit card I use for all my online shopping.  So that’s all on hold at the moment.

My car battery died.  I had to use a battery pack to jump it.  Fun fact:  I drive a plug-in hybrid, which had been plugged in this whole time.  Apparently the 12v battery doesn’t get charged by the wall plug.  Which seems really weird to me.

I see lots of people complaining about how they can’t have sex right now or how dating is weird.  So not a problem for me.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Somebody Has to Save the World

by Gina Dhawa

Sunday, 01 March 2009

Gina read Watchmen and not just as pre-movie prep.~

I am First Lieutenant of H.M.S Late to the Party. I didn't read any Harry Potter until long after Goblet of Fire showed up in paperback, I didn't watch Firefly until I decided Serenity was worth a look, and I didn't read The Lord of the Rings until the weekend before I saw The Fellowship of the Ring. So, despite the fact that Watchmen has been lauded as a classic of its genre and a masterpiece of literature, I only got around to reading it last summer. And, since the film is coming out in a week, I thought perhaps an article was in order.

Watchmen is set in an alternate universe, where costumed crime-fighting heroes have been on the scene since the late 1930s. The general plot more or less runs thus: By 1985, the year the novel is set, vigilantism is outlawed, so all the "costumed heroes" of old have been forced into retirement. The Comedian, a government-sponsored vigilante, is murdered. Rorschach, an ex-associate and definitely not government-sponsored, investigates and begins to uncover a greater conspiracy. Meanwhile, the godlike Dr Manhattan is hounded into exile and the other retired vigilantes are forced into action.

The

Watchmen

world is undoubtedly bleak. There is boatloads (quite literally, in the comic-within-comic

Tales of the Black Freighter

) of violence and gore, brought forth just as often by the Watchmen themselves as by anyone else. This is particularly true of Rorschach, arguably the character with the strictest moral code in the novel. He is so firm in his beliefs that he refuses to retire when vigilantism is made illegal. He condemns an ex-villain, now suffering from cancer, for trying out banned medication and is happy to use torture to get what he wants. Yet, in these brutal actions, he is still determined to seek justice. He's searching for the truth about the Comedian's murder.

It's the characters which make

Watchmen

such a success. Even the most overtly villainous characters - and I am thinking here particularly of the Comedian, heroic vigilante, murderer and rapist - are drawn with complexity and whilst it is easy to abhor their particular moral codes, they are nonetheless

human

. It's a stroke of genius to use this particular type of character to explore this idea. These are people who have set out to protect the world from evil, in the black and white world of Heroes and Villains, and come to discover that the world around them is much more complicated. "Who are we protecting [society] from?" asks one character, having quashed an anti-vigilante ("we want reg'lar police!") riot, "From themselves," replies the Comedian.

Watchmen

is not an easy read. The panels are densely packed with references back and forth to characters, people and events that take place before and during the novel and there are so many side stories and minor plotlines that it's very difficult to take in on one reading. It's also complicated by the fact that not every chapter is in panel form, the story is added to by fictional excerpts from one of the character's autobiography and later, magazine clippings. It's a fantastic exercise in worldbuilding and one that I think many fiction writers, including quite a few of those populating bestseller lists, ought to take a lesson from.

I imagine

Watchmen

is a very different beast if you've already got a grounding in comics. I've maybe read one or two in my life, so I might not be able to appreciate any layers of meaning as related to genre tropes, but I don't think it's necessary. The overwhelming sense of the novel is

the world is a messed up, complicated place, but that's humanity

; I think it's just as powerful without outside understanding of the genre.Themes:

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Comics

,

Watchmen

~

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~Comments (

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)

Wardog

at 09:18 on 2009-03-03Gosh, can I be Second Lieutenant of H.M.S Late To The Party? The thing is, I think I might have read Watchmen, years ago, but I can remember barely anything about it except that it has a naked blue man in it, which makes me think that I maybe didn't read it at all, or just flicked through it at a friend's house or something. Maybe I am, in fact, First Lieutenant of Good Ship Amnesiac. Watchman seems to be such a definitive comic that I've been too embarrassed to admit ignorance but this intriguing review has spurred me to action. I will get off my ass and read it before the film comes out.

Or ... maybe I shouldn't. Despite some serious misjudgements (Evie/V for example), I did actually quite like the V for Vendetta film, which I probably wouldn't have been if I'd been at all precious about the comic...

Perhaps ignorance is truly an advantage after all =P

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Rami

at 18:23 on 2009-03-03I have been seeing the Watchmen comic in a lot of the shops around here, and toying with the idea of getting it. Because, as you say, from everything I've read / heard it is all definitive and stuff. But then, I haven't even read Harry Potter, and that hasn't stopped me enjoying the vitriol on here, so perhaps it's not worth it...

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Arthur B

at 19:46 on 2009-03-03But if the consensus is that

Watchmen

the comic is good, where's the vitriol going to come from?

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Rami

at 23:45 on 2009-03-03Well, replace "vitriol" with "excitement"...

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Arthur B

at 01:35 on 2009-03-04Seriously, though, read

Watchmen

, it's good enough that experiencing it vicariously is not an option.

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Gina Dhawa

at 13:36 on 2009-03-04@ Kyra - I haven't actually read the V for Vendetta comic, but I've never been the kind of person to cling to original canon for its own sake. Which, you know, is a good place to be for an avid reader ;).

@ Rami - I do rec it. I don't know if it's all definitive, but it's certainly one of the best things I've ever read.

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 00:11 on 2009-03-06As a fan of the comic I've been excited about the movie for the past few months, but I think now I'm more interested in the cartoon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT6KpsJs1Io

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 00:36 on 2009-03-06Looks like it was taken off Youtube. :( Here's the Newgrounds original: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/485797

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Sonia Mitchell

at 23:54 on 2009-03-06You prompted me to dig my copy out and have another look through. On my first read I was somewhat put off by the bio extracts and the like, but I read somewhere that they weren't part of the original comic so I felt justified skipping them this time. Though I did love the line 'I dressed up as an owl and fought crime' (possibly misquoted there).

I think you're spot on about the characters, Gina. The world-building is interesting (though possibly less easy for us to identify with than readers in the 80s) but the plot doesn't rely on world alone, which is nice. I like that so much of the enjoyment springs from interaction between people, rather than stock characters reacting to the world situation.

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Arthur B

at 01:54 on 2009-03-08@fintinobrien: sorry about reposting your link in the Playpen, I completely failed to notice you'd posted it before I made my post.

I just saw the movie and I can confirm that it's excellent. Zack Snyder has actually learned how to adapt things to the medium rather than slavishly transcribing the source material (as in

300

), and he makes some changes to the overarching plot to make it easier to adapt to the big screen, but at the same time he understands that the whole plot is really a framing device and the core of

Watchmen

is in the character studies, which by and large he doesn't fuck with.

My only complaint is that - aside from the German version of 99 Red Balloons - there's basically no music from the 1980s from the soundtrack. (In fact, there's a weird fixation on music from the 60s - presumably because the 1960s were when superhero comics were at their most innocent - and unrealistic - thanks to the Comics Code.)

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Sonia Mitchell

at 12:05 on 2009-03-08Me too, and I agree that it was brilliant. Really great balance of loyalty to the source and film watchability.

(I enjoyed the soundtrack, but I'm not all that knowledgable about music so wouldn't have been able to identify it as 60s, just that it was very atmospheric)

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Gina Dhawa

at 12:58 on 2009-03-08@fintinobrien - I have now watched that video about half a dozen times and it isn't getting old yet.

@Arthur - I hadn't thought about the soundtrack like that, but that's an interesting point. I actually think 99 Luftballoons was the best part of the soundtrack, aside from the opening sequence. I can't imagine that being done any better, on any count.

I loved the film too, I thought the changes were well thought out and it all looked stunning. There are people complaining its

too much

like the comic, particularly with regard to pacing, which is a complaint I don't understand. I went with a friend who hadn't read it and she loved it as well.

The casting was perfect as well, particularly Jackie Earle Haley. I was not expecting Rorschach to be quite so... well,

Rorschach

. He's astounding. Loved Ozymandias too, I know a lot of people had their doubts.

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Wardog

at 15:31 on 2009-03-08I have finally finished reading the comic, in time to go and see the film next week - I'm afraid I'm not going to think much of it. To be honest, I think I've just come too late to Alan Moore. I felt exactly the same about Watchmen as I did after I read V for Vendetta - something like "gosh, that's a product of it's time, how terribly quaint."