giant snakes? in my magical boarding school? it's more likely than you think
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Lean. "Yeah, we do."

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"And nothing can keep us down."

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Heee.

Back to the dorm, then?

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Yep. Back to the dorm.

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People are mostly going to bed by now, so they're able to get up to their room easily enough. The other three girls are sitting on their beds, talking quietly - Lisa's is empty with its curtains pulled closed, like it has been since she got petrified.

The girls quiet down a bit when they come in, turning to look at them both. Anathema squares her chin.

Mandy, the other muggleborn girl in their year, glances at Padma and Sue briefly, frowning, before turning back to Ellie. "You're not the Heir of Slytherin, right?" she asks, bluntly.

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"No. I am not the Heir of Slytherin."

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Anathema scowls. "Why would you even think that?"

Mandy shrugs. "I didn't, but that's the rumor going around, 'cause people are dumb I guess and haven't noticed two of the victims are people you like. And none of them are Parkinson, which, like, if you gave me the power to petrify people..." Padma kicks her, making Mandy grumble.

"They think Parseltongue's only a thing for Slytherin's descendants," Padma interjects. "Which, I know British wizards have their heads up their asses - " Sue giggles " - but there's Parselmouths all over the place! And all the British Parselmouths have been white, which makes thinking you're from Slytherin's line kind of extra dumb - no offense."

"Yeah, I know there's some in China, though a lot of the famous Parselmouths are actually from Vietnam - aren't the Potters from there, too?" Sue asks. Shrug. "Anyways, I really doubt you're any related to Slytherin."

Mandy flops back on her bed. "Or if you were it wouldn't matter. I don't agree with my mom about anything; why would anyone have the same politics as some random dude from a thousand years ago, just 'cause he's in their family tree? By that logic, Genghis Khan's in a lot of people's family trees, so we should all quit school and conquer Eurasia."

Sue perks up. "Sounds fun! I'm in."

The room dissolves into laughter, Anathema joining, the tension melting out of her shoulders.

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Heh.

All right, maybe this will help.

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Anathema goes to flop on her bed, quickly falling into joking with their roommates about the logistical difficulties of remaking the Mongol army in order to embrace their completely speculative ancestry. (They, for one, don't have any horses, though Anathema maintains brooms are an acceptable substitute...)

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Acquiring them in sufficient quantity would be difficult. Horses reproduce on their own but broom do not.

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There's broom-wood trees, though, which do reproduce on their own. The real question is if breeding and training quality horses or growing and making quality brooms is harder to do at scale.

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They'd have to do some testing...

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Hm... This also sounds like the type of thing that gets recorded, at least on its own - probably any historical army's kept records about horse logistics...

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Probably, though those records may not be at Hogwarts' library.

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Muggle libraries might have them... And Hogwarts might have stuff about brooms, or they can owl a broom-maker.

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So there's options, if this is actually a problem that needs solving.

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Possibly 'should we even go to war' is an important consideration, yeah.

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Not as long as interlibrary loans are a thing.

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Giggle.

Maybe they can build a shadowy conspiracy, controlling the world from the library...

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You mean the world doesn't already work that way?

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It seems to usually require a bit of standing in front of crowds making speeches.

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That's just what they want you to think. Who really writes the speeches??

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She giggles - increasingly in intensity as Padma suggests getting her twin to read their speeches for them ("She's good at crowds and also a Gryffindor, so people think she's all valiant.").

"Deal. I'll write the speeches. Shiny Gryffindors can read them."

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"That's efficient distribution of labor."

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She leans back, laughing and then yawning a bit.

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