Correspondence Course, Part Three
Mar. 16th, 2006 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_t_rainRoger "The Wiz" is sort of an amalgam of a number of bosses and interviewers I have met. (The "our students are people with problems" speech was taken from a real interview almost verbatim.)
Links to Part One and Part Two
“Lily’s all right,” I said as we boarded the Knight Bus on the day of our interview. “She’s very – very nice. One of the nicest people I know, actually.”
“Oh no!” said Sirius. “Not you too!”
“What?”
“First Prongs, and then – have you noticed the way Wormtail keeps drooling over her? It’s ridiculous.”
“I only said that I thought she was nice. I’m not in love with her or anything.”
“Well, good. Love is a bourgeois invention.”
“But, I mean, if James has to have a girl, he could do a lot worse. That’s all I’m saying.”
“That’s just it.” Sirius braced himself against the wall as the bus made the long jump to London. “I don’t see why he has to have a girl. What about the rest of us?”
“What about us?”
“It’s always just been the four of us, and we’ve got a lot of secrets together. Do you want some girl knowing all of them?”
That was a point, I realized.
“She could send us all to Azkaban if she knew. Well, not you so much, but...”
“It could be even worse for me.” An icy lump congealed in my stomach as I thought about Lily, long-haired and laughing, with her lap full of rabbits. I liked the way she smiled at me – it wasn’t anything like the way she looked at James, but it was friendly. And people didn’t, as a rule, care to be friends with man-eating monsters.
And yet there had been a few moments last year – when we were patrolling the halls late at night, or raiding the kitchens after prefect meetings – when I had been on the verge of confiding in her about why I was mysteriously absent one night a month, and often ill for days after that. And then – well, things had happened, and I had been forced to think about just how little chance at a normal life I would have if everyone knew. (Most of those things had been Sirius’ fault, but we weren’t talking about that just then.)
However you looked at it, things were changing. I supposed it couldn’t be helped – one couldn’t very well stay twelve or thirteen or fourteen forever – but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
“Cleric Alley!” called the driver, and we hurried to get off before the bus could jump again.
Number Seven was a tall building filled with offices. The headquarters of the Kwikspell Correspondence Course were on the very top floor, up a seemingly endless spiral staircase lit by the occasional guttering candle. The Kwikspell office, however, was brightly lit and garishly painted in yellow and orange. We were greeted by Roger “The Wiz” Harbottle himself, who turned out to be an energetic man in his forties. He wore electric blue robes and seemed to show about twice as many teeth as most people when he smiled, which was constantly.
“Welcome to the Kwikspell School of Magic, home of the All-New, Fail-Safe, Quick-Result, Easy-Learn “Conjuring by Correspondence” Method!” Roger said all in one breath. He bounced forward on the balls of his feet. “What can we do for you? We have a special on this week, eight lessons for the price of four, and we’ll even enter you in a drawing to win a free owl!” He gestured toward a row of cages that hung by the window, each containing a small bundle of tatty-looking feathers.
“Er, we’re here for an interview. I’m Sirius Black, and this is my friend Remus Lupin.”
“Oh, top stuff!” Roger “The Wiz” Harbottle beamed. “We’re always looking for the most talented instructors, so let’s start by seeing what you’re made of!” He pointed to Sirius. “You, young man, go in the other room, and you stay here.”
I watched as he took one of the owls out of the cages and handed me an envelope from the desk. “Now, we’re looking for people who are proficient and prepared. In our business, you have to be first-rate at long-distance magic, and you also have to be prepared for all kinds of letters.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All kinds of letters. So what I want you to do is send a curse in this envelope to your friend in the other room – any kind of curse – and we’ll see how he deals with it.”
I wondered what kind of correspondence school this was, if it kept getting curses from its students, but thought it best to do as he asked. I chose the Eyebrow-Scorching Curse, as it was relatively self-contained, though dramatic, and I thought it wouldn’t do too much damage to Sirius if it caught him off guard.
“Brilliant ... top spellwork ... now, we’ll just have Fido here fly in with the letter and see what he makes of it.” Roger followed the owl as it flapped down the hallway, and I was left alone in the room.
After a few minutes, Fido the owl returned with a second envelope tied to his leg. Roger followed and watched me from the doorway. Having been fairly warned, I untied the envelope warily and muttered a number of counterspells for the most common hexes – and several uncommon ones. Then, just to stay on the safe side, I cast a Dark-Arts Detecting spell on the envelope. It came up clean.
Carefully, I slit the envelope open.
Sirius’ voice filled the room. “RICTUSEMPRA VERMICRINIS TARANTALLEGRA LEVICORPUS AGUAMENTI –”
I made a desperate grab for my wand as it slipped from my belt, just before a jet of water hit me in the face.
“EXPELLIAR –”
“Silencio!” I managed to gasp between fits of laughter.
I un-hexed myself as best I could, turned a half-somersault, and landed with my feet on the ground.
“Top job!” shouted Roger. “What reflexes! I thought for sure he’d have you when he thought of sending a Howler!”
I shook myself dry and thought about killing Sirius, but of course the only reason why I’d been able to parry the succession of hexes at all was that I’d spent six years sharing a dorm with him and James. So it all evened out, sort of.
Sirius strode into the room. “You sure look good with worms for hair,” he said.
“Oh, right. Forgot to undo that one.” I waved my wand at my head and looked hopefully at his eyebrows, but they seemed to be completely intact.
“You boys are really at the top of your game! The job’s yours if you want it.” Roger shook hands with both of us. I was startled; somehow I had been expecting that the interview would touch on our teaching ability at some point, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Now, let me tell you about our students. Our students are not like the sort of students you might know at Hogwarts. Ours are people with problems. Not little problems. Big problems.”
Roger paused; I don’t know whether it was for emphasis or whether he was expecting us to say something. I tried to look suitably impressed with the magnitude of his students’ problems, and hoped that if any reply was required, Sirius would make it.
“I’m talking about Squibs, school leavers, people with spell damage, people who have never really got on in the wizarding world. And their difficulty with magic is affecting every aspect of their relationships – leading to marital problems, depression, and so on. Now, what do you imagine the solution to those problems might be?”
We shook our heads. Now that I had been offered the position, I was beginning to feel less and less confident that I wanted it.
“Why, my patented All-New, Fail-Safe, Quick-Result, Easy-Learn “Conjuring by Correspondence” Method, of course!” Roger looked disappointed that we had failed to divine this. “Let me tell you all about my method and how it works...”
Half an hour later, Sirius and I were no more enlightened about what the All-New, Fail-Safe, Quick-Result, Easy-Learn “Conjuring by Correspondence” Method entailed than we had been when Roger started talking, but I supposed we could work it out as we went along.
He concluded by explaining how students were matched to instructors. “The first time a new student writes to us, the letter comes to the central office, and I send it back out by owl – to a particular instructor if the student requests one, otherwise to one of the new people so they have a chance to build up a clientele. After that, it’s your responsibility to stay in touch with the student until they complete the course or request to be assigned to someone else. If they’re satisfied and recommend the course to other people, those new students will often ask to be assigned to you as well, and you can build up your own base of clients from there. If they’re not satisfied and people stop requesting your services, then we’ll have to let you go. Our motto at Kwikspell is ‘Survival of the Fittest Teachers’.” Roger showed his teeth again. It occurred to me that he looked a little like a shark when he did that.
“Capitalist pigs,” Sirius muttered under his breath. I kicked him in the ankle.
“Now, do you boys have any questions?” Roger asked.
I shook my head vigorously and thanked him for hiring us before Sirius could get a word in. We’d already spent quite a bit more time in the interview than either of us had planned, and I was anxious to get back to school before our absence could be noticed.
As we descended the spiral staircase, a figure like an overgrown bat flapped past us on its way up. Its nose was buried in an old copy of the Prophet, and it was muttering something under its breath. I thought, for a moment, that the figure and the voice seemed eerily familiar; but the light was dim, and I was entirely prepared to believe I was mistaken. I decided not to say anything to Sirius.
* * *
The summer holidays came, and with them our first students. Sirius was at this time living with James’ family in Godric’s Hollow, but it was a short Floo trip from my house, and James had lent me his magic mirror for the summer. We compared notes almost every day.
20 June 1976
Little Whinging, Surrey
Dear Mr Harbottle,
I understand that your course comes recommended very highly. I wish to take lessons in practical magic that I can use in my trade (I am a professional breeder of Kneazles). I do not presume to be able to learn anything at all fancy or flashy, but I should like to be able to perform some basic grooming and cleaning spells. It is a source of great distress to me that I have to clean the litter boxes by hand, and I hope that you can help me with this task in particular.
Yours most sincerely,
Arabella Figg (Mrs.)
“Easy-peasy,” said Sirius.
21 June
Dear Mrs. Figg,
Please allow me to introduce myself; I am Sirius Black, your designated instructor for the Kwikspell Correspondence Course. The first lesson will cover a simple cleaning spell. Simply pronounce the word “Scourgify” clearly and distinctly, with the accent on the first syllable and a soft g, and at the same time
“What’s the matter?” I asked. Sirius had been staring at the parchment for fully ten minutes. Every so often he took his wand out, made a few experimental motions, and muttered something at it.
“I can’t work out how to describe the wand motions for Scourgify in a letter. Can you?”
“Well, you make sort of a flicking motion with your wrist – Or maybe it’s more of a swoop –”
James looked up from the letter he was writing to Lily Evans. “Definitely a swoop,” he said. “You dip down and then come up again, and you have to put a bit of elbow into it...”
“To the left or to the right?” Sirius asked.
“Left,” I said.
“Right,” said James.
I considered this. “I think he might be right. Aargh, I know how to do it, but I get messed up when I think about it.”
“Go on and do it, then,” said Sirius, “and I’ll watch you. We can go upstairs so nobody disturbs us.”
I spent the next half hour Scourgify-ing while Sirius took furious notes. By the end of that time, he thought he might have worked out how to describe the motions to Mrs. Figg, and I had, at any rate, cleaned up both James’ and Sirius’ rooms for them.
“You owe me,” I said.
“I’ll help you out next time you’re having trouble with a student,” Sirius promised.
But my own first student gave every sign of being beyond help. At the very least, he seemed to need a marriage counselor, not a correspondence instructor.
23 June
Didsbury
Dear Mr Harbottle,
I am writing to you with the understanding that absolute confidentiality is assured. I wish to consult you about a sensitive problem that is causing me great personal difficulty. Some years ago, I married a young, beautiful, and extremely gifted witch who had just been appointed to a prestigious position at the Ministry of Magic. I was, as I thought, a lucky man. I had never been a great hand at spellwork, but she said that this was not a problem for her. We agreed that her career would come before mine. Well, time passed, and it appeared that she was ashamed of me and my abilities. She took to spending late nights at the Ministry with her colleagues, including one gentleman – and I use the term loosely – whom I can only describe as an absolute blackguard. Unfortunately he exerts an almost irresistible power over women – a phenomenon which I can only attribute to magic, for his personal charms are no more remarkable than my own, and his character utterly depraved. And yet my wife finds him an Adonis, and when she speaks to me at all it is only to mock and sneer at me. I beg you for help: please teach me how to cast whatever spell it is that my wife’s colleague uses, or failing that, at least keep me from being a laughingstock among men. I am almost at the end of my rope.
That Most Unhappy of Wizards,
Warlock D. J. Prod
“Ouch,” said Sirius after perusing this missive for a moment. (I regret to say that D. J. Prod’s insistence on absolute confidentiality had made a shallower impression on me than it should have; but then, it didn’t seem to have made much of an impression on Roger either.) “She sounds like the bitch from hell. I bet she’d get along with my mum.”
“Well, we’ve only got his side of the story. And I don’t even know where to begin. What do you think he wants from us?”
“You could send him a recipe for a love potion. That’s pretty much what he asked for.”
I took the letter back and frowned at it. “But somehow I don’t really think it’s what he needs.”
“Well, you can always just give him some general tips on how to handle his wand. So to speak.”
I groaned. “You know, for my own peace of mind I’m going to pretend that wasn’t a massive double-entendre.”
“Whatever you want to believe, Moony.”
Links to Part One and Part Two
“Lily’s all right,” I said as we boarded the Knight Bus on the day of our interview. “She’s very – very nice. One of the nicest people I know, actually.”
“Oh no!” said Sirius. “Not you too!”
“What?”
“First Prongs, and then – have you noticed the way Wormtail keeps drooling over her? It’s ridiculous.”
“I only said that I thought she was nice. I’m not in love with her or anything.”
“Well, good. Love is a bourgeois invention.”
“But, I mean, if James has to have a girl, he could do a lot worse. That’s all I’m saying.”
“That’s just it.” Sirius braced himself against the wall as the bus made the long jump to London. “I don’t see why he has to have a girl. What about the rest of us?”
“What about us?”
“It’s always just been the four of us, and we’ve got a lot of secrets together. Do you want some girl knowing all of them?”
That was a point, I realized.
“She could send us all to Azkaban if she knew. Well, not you so much, but...”
“It could be even worse for me.” An icy lump congealed in my stomach as I thought about Lily, long-haired and laughing, with her lap full of rabbits. I liked the way she smiled at me – it wasn’t anything like the way she looked at James, but it was friendly. And people didn’t, as a rule, care to be friends with man-eating monsters.
And yet there had been a few moments last year – when we were patrolling the halls late at night, or raiding the kitchens after prefect meetings – when I had been on the verge of confiding in her about why I was mysteriously absent one night a month, and often ill for days after that. And then – well, things had happened, and I had been forced to think about just how little chance at a normal life I would have if everyone knew. (Most of those things had been Sirius’ fault, but we weren’t talking about that just then.)
However you looked at it, things were changing. I supposed it couldn’t be helped – one couldn’t very well stay twelve or thirteen or fourteen forever – but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
“Cleric Alley!” called the driver, and we hurried to get off before the bus could jump again.
Number Seven was a tall building filled with offices. The headquarters of the Kwikspell Correspondence Course were on the very top floor, up a seemingly endless spiral staircase lit by the occasional guttering candle. The Kwikspell office, however, was brightly lit and garishly painted in yellow and orange. We were greeted by Roger “The Wiz” Harbottle himself, who turned out to be an energetic man in his forties. He wore electric blue robes and seemed to show about twice as many teeth as most people when he smiled, which was constantly.
“Welcome to the Kwikspell School of Magic, home of the All-New, Fail-Safe, Quick-Result, Easy-Learn “Conjuring by Correspondence” Method!” Roger said all in one breath. He bounced forward on the balls of his feet. “What can we do for you? We have a special on this week, eight lessons for the price of four, and we’ll even enter you in a drawing to win a free owl!” He gestured toward a row of cages that hung by the window, each containing a small bundle of tatty-looking feathers.
“Er, we’re here for an interview. I’m Sirius Black, and this is my friend Remus Lupin.”
“Oh, top stuff!” Roger “The Wiz” Harbottle beamed. “We’re always looking for the most talented instructors, so let’s start by seeing what you’re made of!” He pointed to Sirius. “You, young man, go in the other room, and you stay here.”
I watched as he took one of the owls out of the cages and handed me an envelope from the desk. “Now, we’re looking for people who are proficient and prepared. In our business, you have to be first-rate at long-distance magic, and you also have to be prepared for all kinds of letters.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All kinds of letters. So what I want you to do is send a curse in this envelope to your friend in the other room – any kind of curse – and we’ll see how he deals with it.”
I wondered what kind of correspondence school this was, if it kept getting curses from its students, but thought it best to do as he asked. I chose the Eyebrow-Scorching Curse, as it was relatively self-contained, though dramatic, and I thought it wouldn’t do too much damage to Sirius if it caught him off guard.
“Brilliant ... top spellwork ... now, we’ll just have Fido here fly in with the letter and see what he makes of it.” Roger followed the owl as it flapped down the hallway, and I was left alone in the room.
After a few minutes, Fido the owl returned with a second envelope tied to his leg. Roger followed and watched me from the doorway. Having been fairly warned, I untied the envelope warily and muttered a number of counterspells for the most common hexes – and several uncommon ones. Then, just to stay on the safe side, I cast a Dark-Arts Detecting spell on the envelope. It came up clean.
Carefully, I slit the envelope open.
Sirius’ voice filled the room. “RICTUSEMPRA VERMICRINIS TARANTALLEGRA LEVICORPUS AGUAMENTI –”
I made a desperate grab for my wand as it slipped from my belt, just before a jet of water hit me in the face.
“EXPELLIAR –”
“Silencio!” I managed to gasp between fits of laughter.
I un-hexed myself as best I could, turned a half-somersault, and landed with my feet on the ground.
“Top job!” shouted Roger. “What reflexes! I thought for sure he’d have you when he thought of sending a Howler!”
I shook myself dry and thought about killing Sirius, but of course the only reason why I’d been able to parry the succession of hexes at all was that I’d spent six years sharing a dorm with him and James. So it all evened out, sort of.
Sirius strode into the room. “You sure look good with worms for hair,” he said.
“Oh, right. Forgot to undo that one.” I waved my wand at my head and looked hopefully at his eyebrows, but they seemed to be completely intact.
“You boys are really at the top of your game! The job’s yours if you want it.” Roger shook hands with both of us. I was startled; somehow I had been expecting that the interview would touch on our teaching ability at some point, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Now, let me tell you about our students. Our students are not like the sort of students you might know at Hogwarts. Ours are people with problems. Not little problems. Big problems.”
Roger paused; I don’t know whether it was for emphasis or whether he was expecting us to say something. I tried to look suitably impressed with the magnitude of his students’ problems, and hoped that if any reply was required, Sirius would make it.
“I’m talking about Squibs, school leavers, people with spell damage, people who have never really got on in the wizarding world. And their difficulty with magic is affecting every aspect of their relationships – leading to marital problems, depression, and so on. Now, what do you imagine the solution to those problems might be?”
We shook our heads. Now that I had been offered the position, I was beginning to feel less and less confident that I wanted it.
“Why, my patented All-New, Fail-Safe, Quick-Result, Easy-Learn “Conjuring by Correspondence” Method, of course!” Roger looked disappointed that we had failed to divine this. “Let me tell you all about my method and how it works...”
Half an hour later, Sirius and I were no more enlightened about what the All-New, Fail-Safe, Quick-Result, Easy-Learn “Conjuring by Correspondence” Method entailed than we had been when Roger started talking, but I supposed we could work it out as we went along.
He concluded by explaining how students were matched to instructors. “The first time a new student writes to us, the letter comes to the central office, and I send it back out by owl – to a particular instructor if the student requests one, otherwise to one of the new people so they have a chance to build up a clientele. After that, it’s your responsibility to stay in touch with the student until they complete the course or request to be assigned to someone else. If they’re satisfied and recommend the course to other people, those new students will often ask to be assigned to you as well, and you can build up your own base of clients from there. If they’re not satisfied and people stop requesting your services, then we’ll have to let you go. Our motto at Kwikspell is ‘Survival of the Fittest Teachers’.” Roger showed his teeth again. It occurred to me that he looked a little like a shark when he did that.
“Capitalist pigs,” Sirius muttered under his breath. I kicked him in the ankle.
“Now, do you boys have any questions?” Roger asked.
I shook my head vigorously and thanked him for hiring us before Sirius could get a word in. We’d already spent quite a bit more time in the interview than either of us had planned, and I was anxious to get back to school before our absence could be noticed.
As we descended the spiral staircase, a figure like an overgrown bat flapped past us on its way up. Its nose was buried in an old copy of the Prophet, and it was muttering something under its breath. I thought, for a moment, that the figure and the voice seemed eerily familiar; but the light was dim, and I was entirely prepared to believe I was mistaken. I decided not to say anything to Sirius.
* * *
The summer holidays came, and with them our first students. Sirius was at this time living with James’ family in Godric’s Hollow, but it was a short Floo trip from my house, and James had lent me his magic mirror for the summer. We compared notes almost every day.
20 June 1976
Little Whinging, Surrey
Dear Mr Harbottle,
I understand that your course comes recommended very highly. I wish to take lessons in practical magic that I can use in my trade (I am a professional breeder of Kneazles). I do not presume to be able to learn anything at all fancy or flashy, but I should like to be able to perform some basic grooming and cleaning spells. It is a source of great distress to me that I have to clean the litter boxes by hand, and I hope that you can help me with this task in particular.
Yours most sincerely,
Arabella Figg (Mrs.)
“Easy-peasy,” said Sirius.
21 June
Dear Mrs. Figg,
Please allow me to introduce myself; I am Sirius Black, your designated instructor for the Kwikspell Correspondence Course. The first lesson will cover a simple cleaning spell. Simply pronounce the word “Scourgify” clearly and distinctly, with the accent on the first syllable and a soft g, and at the same time
“What’s the matter?” I asked. Sirius had been staring at the parchment for fully ten minutes. Every so often he took his wand out, made a few experimental motions, and muttered something at it.
“I can’t work out how to describe the wand motions for Scourgify in a letter. Can you?”
“Well, you make sort of a flicking motion with your wrist – Or maybe it’s more of a swoop –”
James looked up from the letter he was writing to Lily Evans. “Definitely a swoop,” he said. “You dip down and then come up again, and you have to put a bit of elbow into it...”
“To the left or to the right?” Sirius asked.
“Left,” I said.
“Right,” said James.
I considered this. “I think he might be right. Aargh, I know how to do it, but I get messed up when I think about it.”
“Go on and do it, then,” said Sirius, “and I’ll watch you. We can go upstairs so nobody disturbs us.”
I spent the next half hour Scourgify-ing while Sirius took furious notes. By the end of that time, he thought he might have worked out how to describe the motions to Mrs. Figg, and I had, at any rate, cleaned up both James’ and Sirius’ rooms for them.
“You owe me,” I said.
“I’ll help you out next time you’re having trouble with a student,” Sirius promised.
But my own first student gave every sign of being beyond help. At the very least, he seemed to need a marriage counselor, not a correspondence instructor.
23 June
Didsbury
Dear Mr Harbottle,
I am writing to you with the understanding that absolute confidentiality is assured. I wish to consult you about a sensitive problem that is causing me great personal difficulty. Some years ago, I married a young, beautiful, and extremely gifted witch who had just been appointed to a prestigious position at the Ministry of Magic. I was, as I thought, a lucky man. I had never been a great hand at spellwork, but she said that this was not a problem for her. We agreed that her career would come before mine. Well, time passed, and it appeared that she was ashamed of me and my abilities. She took to spending late nights at the Ministry with her colleagues, including one gentleman – and I use the term loosely – whom I can only describe as an absolute blackguard. Unfortunately he exerts an almost irresistible power over women – a phenomenon which I can only attribute to magic, for his personal charms are no more remarkable than my own, and his character utterly depraved. And yet my wife finds him an Adonis, and when she speaks to me at all it is only to mock and sneer at me. I beg you for help: please teach me how to cast whatever spell it is that my wife’s colleague uses, or failing that, at least keep me from being a laughingstock among men. I am almost at the end of my rope.
That Most Unhappy of Wizards,
Warlock D. J. Prod
“Ouch,” said Sirius after perusing this missive for a moment. (I regret to say that D. J. Prod’s insistence on absolute confidentiality had made a shallower impression on me than it should have; but then, it didn’t seem to have made much of an impression on Roger either.) “She sounds like the bitch from hell. I bet she’d get along with my mum.”
“Well, we’ve only got his side of the story. And I don’t even know where to begin. What do you think he wants from us?”
“You could send him a recipe for a love potion. That’s pretty much what he asked for.”
I took the letter back and frowned at it. “But somehow I don’t really think it’s what he needs.”
“Well, you can always just give him some general tips on how to handle his wand. So to speak.”
I groaned. “You know, for my own peace of mind I’m going to pretend that wasn’t a massive double-entendre.”
“Whatever you want to believe, Moony.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 08:43 pm (UTC)Nice reference! I love Warlock D.J. Prod. This is a hoot.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 08:53 pm (UTC)Also, was amused by their not remember how to flick their wands; it's like teaching someone how to start a car or to recite a phone number you dial by habit. Spot on!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 08:54 pm (UTC)As usual, wonderfully funny stuff. Sirius as a Communist/Socialist never fails to amuse me, and Roger just needs the pointy hair. (Actually, he needs the bald head and pot belly of my old group leader.)
Great chapter!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 01:53 am (UTC)Can't wait to see your lyrics. Doesn't Nanny Ogg sing that song?
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 12:41 am (UTC)Sirius strode into the room. “You sure look good with worms for hair,” he said.
Ah, that's so sweet. Obviously true love. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 01:58 am (UTC)including one gentleman – and I use the term loosely – whom I can only describe as an absolute blackguard.
Can't wait to see how this plays out.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 02:01 am (UTC)It's great to see a gen fic with Sirius and Remus too!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 02:34 am (UTC)Excellent, as usual :)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 09:35 am (UTC)Is this any connection to one of the interviews you had a while back? Nice way to start out a job, or what?
I also particularly valued the interviewing technique, emphasis on self-defence rather than teaching ability and poor Mrs Figg's problems with the litter tray.
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Date: 2006-03-17 04:41 pm (UTC)Oh yeah. Shameless parody. (I can get away with it, because I'm now reasonably certain I didn't get the job.)
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Date: 2006-03-17 11:11 am (UTC)Is it just me, or does Kwikspell sound a touch like a pyramid scheme? Hmm...
Another fantastic installment! I'm looking forward to more. Thank you!
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Date: 2006-03-17 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 11:25 am (UTC)well, actually, considering the amount of over-commercialised hype surrounding Valentine's Day...
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Date: 2006-03-17 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 01:24 pm (UTC)“Capitalist pigs,” Sirius muttered under his breath. I kicked him in the ankle.
The banter! They truly are like an old married couple, except for the old part. LOL.
I hope it's okay to friend you- I'd like to keep up with your updates.
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Date: 2006-03-17 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 01:44 pm (UTC)Gawd. I think I've worked for Kwikspell in one of its many Muggle incarnations. I really enjoyed your interview scene.
Hmm - is "Warlock D J Prod" a pseudonym, I wonder? Why do I keep thinking about Argus Filch?
Awaiting the next installment eagerly.
MM
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Date: 2006-03-17 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 06:06 pm (UTC)Also, such brilliant characterization!!!!♥
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Date: 2006-03-18 06:45 pm (UTC)Laughs all around.
Date: 2006-03-18 09:31 pm (UTC)The writing was great, as always.
Re: Laughs all around.
Date: 2006-03-18 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 10:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 10:51 pm (UTC)