I come bearing fic (twice over)
Apr. 1st, 2006 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_t_rainI've decided to participate in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
rt_challenge this month, although I don't know how active I'll have time to be; however, it was hard to resist when the first two prompts were Shakespeare and Anne Bradstreet. So here's my first effort: Present Mirth.
Also, the next installment of Correspondence Course, with links to parts One, Two, Three, and Four
Dear Mr Lupin,
I am, alas, the most unhappy of wizards once again, for my wife has taken a terrible revenge upon me after losing her hair. She slipped an Aging Potion into my morning tea (N.B. will you teach me how to brew potions?) and, when it failed to produce results dramatic enough for her tastes, compounded its effects by hitting me with a Hairy-Ears Hex, an Arthritis-Aggravating Spell, and – I blush to say it, but the truth must be owned – an Impotence Curse. Please, please send me that Silencing Spell so that I may use it in self-defense and prevent her from doing more damage. I beg of you.
From the very depths of desperation, I remain,
Warlock D. J. Prod
The envelope containing the Silencing Spell had been sitting sealed on my desk for some days as I debated whether I wanted to embroil myself any further in the Prods’ marital problems, but it was this letter that tipped the balance. An Impotence Curse, I thought, was hitting below the belt in more ways than one.
Dear Proffesor,
Thanks so much for teaching me the baking spell! I made some rock cakes with it, and I thought I’d send you some! Your’e the greatest!
Cheers,
Sue
The rock cakes were, unfortunately, indistinguishable from actual rocks, but I devoured them as if they were manna from heaven. Sirius received a chocolate cake from Mrs. Figg that seemed to be suffering from the same problem, although the note that came with it said that she had been forced to bake it without magic:
... I do not blame you, dear boy, but when I tried to use the cooking spell from your last letter, the oven blew up and I was unable to clear the smoke out of the house without hours of help from both the fire department and the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad. Perhaps it would be better if we tried something simpler and less hazardous, such as a spell to turn a matchstick into a needle.
Yours truly,
Arabella Figg
“We covered that in first year,” Sirius grumbled. “On the first day of first year.”
“Well, maybe she needs to start at the beginning,” I said.
Apparently she really needed to start before the beginning, because the flattened and twisted metal object she enclosed in her next letter was like neither a matchstick, nor a needle, nor anything else on earth. “I give up,” said Sirius crossly. “How come your students learn stuff and mine never do?”
“Maybe I’m a naturally good teacher.”
“Maybe mine are the biggest Squibs who ever lived.” Sirius looked in the envelope again and frowned. “There’s a letter, but it’s not from Mrs. Figg. Roger must have put it in the wrong envelope by mistake.”
Miss Jones:
It is my considered opinion that you are the most talentless excuse for a witch ever to wield a wand, and if you never attempt to inflict a Stimulating Solution on the world again, it will be too soon. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to critique your pathetic effort in the hope that you may learn something, although I strongly suspect your case is hopeless. Your first error was failing to clean your cauldron properly, which you then compounded by placing it over the flame before you added any of the liquid ingredients. It would be a happy day for the science of potion-making if you had blown up yourself and everything in the immediate vicinity, but I suppose I can hardly be so lucky.
Sirius whistled. “Man, and I thought my students were bad.”
Thirdly, it is a mystery to me how you managed to read “lettuce” for “lacewing” in the third line of the recipe, as most five-year-olds could have told you the difference...
“It isn’t a mystery to me,” I said. The handwriting was tiny and cramped. As I read over Sirius’ shoulder, I had to squint to be sure what it said.
... but for future reference, lettuce is a vegetable, not an insect. It is green and leafy. You may find that you have a great deal in common with it, as it is also tasteless, devoid of intellect, and utterly useless in potions.
After you add the dragonwort root, stir three times. As a reminder, the only numerals you should ever use when you count to three are one, two, and three, in that order. I have no idea how you managed to get out of primary school without knowing this, but your teacher ought to have been sent to prison for fraud.
“By that logic,” I said, “shouldn’t he be sent to prison for fraud if she doesn’t learn how to do potions?”
“I don’t think anything is ever his fault. He sounds like that sort of person.”
Finally, you asked me for my advice on removing the black sludge from the cauldron. After examining the residue, I can only suggest that you build a Time-Turner, go back to last Thursday, and take the potion off the flame fully an hour before you actually did so. While you’re at it, you may as well murder your grandfather and prevent your conception. The world would be infinitely better off without you.
“Did he really say what I think he just said?” said Sirius.
“I think so. Look at the signature.”
Please do not bother me again.
Severus Prince-Snape
Sirius snorted. “Prince-Snape? Putting on a few airs, isn’t he?”
The Princes were a well-known wizarding family that had made their fortune at the beginning of the last century, manufacturing Gobstones. Sirius’ parents rather looked down their noses at them, but nobody could deny that they had been wildly successful. Several members of the Wizengamot and the Hogwarts Board of Governors were Princes, or their in-laws or cousins.
“Maybe he really is related to the Princes,” I suggested.
“And he goes around in grey underwear and works for a correspondence course? Not a chance in hell.”
It occurred to me that perhaps Snape was in the same position as Sirius with regard to his family, but I had a feeling Sirius wouldn’t appreciate the comparison, so I stayed on safer ground. “I wouldn’t care to be one of his students, anyway.”
Sirius closed his eyes, and a perfectly bland and angelic expression stole over his face. I knew that expression only too well. It generally heralded the advent of some scheme that was liable to land us in detention for the rest of our natural lives.
“... Padfoot?”
Sirius’ eyes flew open, and he grinned. “Well, that’s too bad, because we are going to be his students. Lots and lots of his students. And we’re going to make his blood pressure shoot through the roof, because Mrs. Figg and that Prewett bloke are going to look like Professor Dumbledore compared to us.”
Considering that Mr. Prewett had ended up in St. Mungo’s with beads lodged up his nose and ears after Sirius had tried to teach him how to use a magical abacus, this was a rather alarming comparison. “Um,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s only – Well, I’ve sort of gone off baiting Snape. If you want to know the truth.”
He folded up the letter and sighed. “Moony, this isn’t anything like what happened last year.”
“I know,” I said because it seemed to be expected, and paced over to the window.
“For which I am honestly sorry, and if I could go back and undo it all, I would.” He looked up at me, grey eyes wide and unexpectedly earnest. “Or at least, I would if there was any way to – you know – ” His voice trailed off, and I knew without asking what was going through his head: by now, the events of last autumn had led to a complicated web of consequences that included Sirius walking away from his family, James being appointed Head Boy and starting to act the part, and Lily warming up to James considerably even though she knew nothing of what had passed between us. It was impossible to imagine unraveling all those threads now, and just as impossible to imagine things going back to the way they used to be. It hit me for the first time that Sirius had chosen us, over his family and his inheritance and his whole life, and it didn’t really matter what had happened before that.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s do it. For old times’ sake.”
He caught my eye and grinned again. “Knew you’d be up for it.”
***
Dear Wiz,
I’m in kind of a tight spot right now and I gotta keep one step ahead of the goblins, but I dunno how to cover my tracks and I could do with a refresher course in Disguise and Concealment, know what I mean? Prince-Snape is an old mate of mine and he owes me a few favours, so if you could slide me on over to him, that’d be good. Will pay double once a few of my business ventures sort themselves out.
Cheers,
Jake “Shifty” Smith
* * *
Dear Kwikspell,
It has always been my dream to become a fully qualified wizard, but I was expelled from thirteen different schools of magic in nine years, and I had to leave the last before sitting the N.E.W.T.s as a result of some unfortunate spell damage to a classroom. (The Headmaster said he regretted it greatly, but he dared not place me in a sealed room with the examiners for their own safety. He suggested I pursue distance education.) Can you help? I have heard that you employ a tutor named Prince-Snape who can work wonders.
Regards,
Bartimaeus Bugleblower
* * *
Dear Mr Harbottle,
I have been asked to conjure flowers for the church bazaar and was too embarrassed to say no, but it has become all too painfully clear that I need some help with Charms and Transfiguration. I am prepared to pay generously for the services of an instructor with tact, discretion, and excellent interior decorating skills. If I may, I would like to request Severus Prince-Snape. I hear he is one of your best.
Sincerely,
Temperance Flowerdew Yeardley
P.S. As a small token of appreciation, I have enclosed a copy of my latest children’s book, “Little Lucy the Lamb.” Please pass this on to Mr Prince-Snape.
Peter, who was good at drawing, did the illustrations for “Little Lucy the Lamb,” and I wrote the edifying and touching story of Lucy, who had the bad luck to be born with sparkling pink wool. The other little lambs were jealous because she was so much prettier and nicer than they were, and they bullied poor Lucy until her sensitive temperament drove her to throw herself off a cliff. Fortunately, a fairy with shimmering purple wings swooped in and rescued her, and she lived happily ever after.
Sirius tested the efficacy of this narrative by reading it to his cousin Nymphadora, who, being a sensible child, promptly threw up.
rt_challenge this month, although I don't know how active I'll have time to be; however, it was hard to resist when the first two prompts were Shakespeare and Anne Bradstreet. So here's my first effort: Present Mirth.Also, the next installment of Correspondence Course, with links to parts One, Two, Three, and Four
Dear Mr Lupin,
I am, alas, the most unhappy of wizards once again, for my wife has taken a terrible revenge upon me after losing her hair. She slipped an Aging Potion into my morning tea (N.B. will you teach me how to brew potions?) and, when it failed to produce results dramatic enough for her tastes, compounded its effects by hitting me with a Hairy-Ears Hex, an Arthritis-Aggravating Spell, and – I blush to say it, but the truth must be owned – an Impotence Curse. Please, please send me that Silencing Spell so that I may use it in self-defense and prevent her from doing more damage. I beg of you.
From the very depths of desperation, I remain,
Warlock D. J. Prod
The envelope containing the Silencing Spell had been sitting sealed on my desk for some days as I debated whether I wanted to embroil myself any further in the Prods’ marital problems, but it was this letter that tipped the balance. An Impotence Curse, I thought, was hitting below the belt in more ways than one.
Dear Proffesor,
Thanks so much for teaching me the baking spell! I made some rock cakes with it, and I thought I’d send you some! Your’e the greatest!
Cheers,
Sue
The rock cakes were, unfortunately, indistinguishable from actual rocks, but I devoured them as if they were manna from heaven. Sirius received a chocolate cake from Mrs. Figg that seemed to be suffering from the same problem, although the note that came with it said that she had been forced to bake it without magic:
... I do not blame you, dear boy, but when I tried to use the cooking spell from your last letter, the oven blew up and I was unable to clear the smoke out of the house without hours of help from both the fire department and the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad. Perhaps it would be better if we tried something simpler and less hazardous, such as a spell to turn a matchstick into a needle.
Yours truly,
Arabella Figg
“We covered that in first year,” Sirius grumbled. “On the first day of first year.”
“Well, maybe she needs to start at the beginning,” I said.
Apparently she really needed to start before the beginning, because the flattened and twisted metal object she enclosed in her next letter was like neither a matchstick, nor a needle, nor anything else on earth. “I give up,” said Sirius crossly. “How come your students learn stuff and mine never do?”
“Maybe I’m a naturally good teacher.”
“Maybe mine are the biggest Squibs who ever lived.” Sirius looked in the envelope again and frowned. “There’s a letter, but it’s not from Mrs. Figg. Roger must have put it in the wrong envelope by mistake.”
Miss Jones:
It is my considered opinion that you are the most talentless excuse for a witch ever to wield a wand, and if you never attempt to inflict a Stimulating Solution on the world again, it will be too soon. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to critique your pathetic effort in the hope that you may learn something, although I strongly suspect your case is hopeless. Your first error was failing to clean your cauldron properly, which you then compounded by placing it over the flame before you added any of the liquid ingredients. It would be a happy day for the science of potion-making if you had blown up yourself and everything in the immediate vicinity, but I suppose I can hardly be so lucky.
Sirius whistled. “Man, and I thought my students were bad.”
Thirdly, it is a mystery to me how you managed to read “lettuce” for “lacewing” in the third line of the recipe, as most five-year-olds could have told you the difference...
“It isn’t a mystery to me,” I said. The handwriting was tiny and cramped. As I read over Sirius’ shoulder, I had to squint to be sure what it said.
... but for future reference, lettuce is a vegetable, not an insect. It is green and leafy. You may find that you have a great deal in common with it, as it is also tasteless, devoid of intellect, and utterly useless in potions.
After you add the dragonwort root, stir three times. As a reminder, the only numerals you should ever use when you count to three are one, two, and three, in that order. I have no idea how you managed to get out of primary school without knowing this, but your teacher ought to have been sent to prison for fraud.
“By that logic,” I said, “shouldn’t he be sent to prison for fraud if she doesn’t learn how to do potions?”
“I don’t think anything is ever his fault. He sounds like that sort of person.”
Finally, you asked me for my advice on removing the black sludge from the cauldron. After examining the residue, I can only suggest that you build a Time-Turner, go back to last Thursday, and take the potion off the flame fully an hour before you actually did so. While you’re at it, you may as well murder your grandfather and prevent your conception. The world would be infinitely better off without you.
“Did he really say what I think he just said?” said Sirius.
“I think so. Look at the signature.”
Please do not bother me again.
Severus Prince-Snape
Sirius snorted. “Prince-Snape? Putting on a few airs, isn’t he?”
The Princes were a well-known wizarding family that had made their fortune at the beginning of the last century, manufacturing Gobstones. Sirius’ parents rather looked down their noses at them, but nobody could deny that they had been wildly successful. Several members of the Wizengamot and the Hogwarts Board of Governors were Princes, or their in-laws or cousins.
“Maybe he really is related to the Princes,” I suggested.
“And he goes around in grey underwear and works for a correspondence course? Not a chance in hell.”
It occurred to me that perhaps Snape was in the same position as Sirius with regard to his family, but I had a feeling Sirius wouldn’t appreciate the comparison, so I stayed on safer ground. “I wouldn’t care to be one of his students, anyway.”
Sirius closed his eyes, and a perfectly bland and angelic expression stole over his face. I knew that expression only too well. It generally heralded the advent of some scheme that was liable to land us in detention for the rest of our natural lives.
“... Padfoot?”
Sirius’ eyes flew open, and he grinned. “Well, that’s too bad, because we are going to be his students. Lots and lots of his students. And we’re going to make his blood pressure shoot through the roof, because Mrs. Figg and that Prewett bloke are going to look like Professor Dumbledore compared to us.”
Considering that Mr. Prewett had ended up in St. Mungo’s with beads lodged up his nose and ears after Sirius had tried to teach him how to use a magical abacus, this was a rather alarming comparison. “Um,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s only – Well, I’ve sort of gone off baiting Snape. If you want to know the truth.”
He folded up the letter and sighed. “Moony, this isn’t anything like what happened last year.”
“I know,” I said because it seemed to be expected, and paced over to the window.
“For which I am honestly sorry, and if I could go back and undo it all, I would.” He looked up at me, grey eyes wide and unexpectedly earnest. “Or at least, I would if there was any way to – you know – ” His voice trailed off, and I knew without asking what was going through his head: by now, the events of last autumn had led to a complicated web of consequences that included Sirius walking away from his family, James being appointed Head Boy and starting to act the part, and Lily warming up to James considerably even though she knew nothing of what had passed between us. It was impossible to imagine unraveling all those threads now, and just as impossible to imagine things going back to the way they used to be. It hit me for the first time that Sirius had chosen us, over his family and his inheritance and his whole life, and it didn’t really matter what had happened before that.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s do it. For old times’ sake.”
He caught my eye and grinned again. “Knew you’d be up for it.”
***
Dear Wiz,
I’m in kind of a tight spot right now and I gotta keep one step ahead of the goblins, but I dunno how to cover my tracks and I could do with a refresher course in Disguise and Concealment, know what I mean? Prince-Snape is an old mate of mine and he owes me a few favours, so if you could slide me on over to him, that’d be good. Will pay double once a few of my business ventures sort themselves out.
Cheers,
Jake “Shifty” Smith
* * *
Dear Kwikspell,
It has always been my dream to become a fully qualified wizard, but I was expelled from thirteen different schools of magic in nine years, and I had to leave the last before sitting the N.E.W.T.s as a result of some unfortunate spell damage to a classroom. (The Headmaster said he regretted it greatly, but he dared not place me in a sealed room with the examiners for their own safety. He suggested I pursue distance education.) Can you help? I have heard that you employ a tutor named Prince-Snape who can work wonders.
Regards,
Bartimaeus Bugleblower
* * *
Dear Mr Harbottle,
I have been asked to conjure flowers for the church bazaar and was too embarrassed to say no, but it has become all too painfully clear that I need some help with Charms and Transfiguration. I am prepared to pay generously for the services of an instructor with tact, discretion, and excellent interior decorating skills. If I may, I would like to request Severus Prince-Snape. I hear he is one of your best.
Sincerely,
Temperance Flowerdew Yeardley
P.S. As a small token of appreciation, I have enclosed a copy of my latest children’s book, “Little Lucy the Lamb.” Please pass this on to Mr Prince-Snape.
Peter, who was good at drawing, did the illustrations for “Little Lucy the Lamb,” and I wrote the edifying and touching story of Lucy, who had the bad luck to be born with sparkling pink wool. The other little lambs were jealous because she was so much prettier and nicer than they were, and they bullied poor Lucy until her sensitive temperament drove her to throw herself off a cliff. Fortunately, a fairy with shimmering purple wings swooped in and rescued her, and she lived happily ever after.
Sirius tested the efficacy of this narrative by reading it to his cousin Nymphadora, who, being a sensible child, promptly threw up.
