The 'Master-Apprentice'-Type Relationship

[alt_moderator]

Alternity dealt with themes of education - formal, informal, and via one-to-one tutelage. Which makes terrific sense when you're writing a story that encompasses the span of schooling for its young protagonists. But in Alternity, the scholarship relationships outside of the classroom offered opportunities for characters to work side by side - and often, secretly at cross-purposes.

Through the magic of my phenomenal alt-moderator powers, I have the pleasure of being able to introduce to this thread some very special guests. These individuals forged deep, close connections with each other in either actual or virtual master-apprentice relationships.

We invite you to ask any questions you may have - about their training, about their relationship, about their suspicions, about how their training prepared them for the fights they eventually fought, or lessons they learned that they would pass on - whatever you want to know! Time and space are immaterial here; the individuals who are participating are free to answer in whatever way they see fit, depending on what's called for in your questions.

Please welcome:

Antonin Dolohov
Justin Finch-Fletchley (Noble Arts)

Severus Snape
Hermione Granger (Potions)
and
Draco Malfoy (Occlumency)

Aurora Sinistra
Evelyn Longbottom (Astronomy)

Barty Crouch, Jr.
Hydra Lestrange (Death Eaterdom)

Savitha Desai
Ron Weasley (Auror training)

Poppy Pomfrey
Sally-Anne Perks (Healing Arts)

Comments

[alt_arthur]

I am delighted, simply delighted, that Severus did such a tremendous job of finding and awakening the potential I'd sensed in Hermione (I remember so vividly the day I found her in the camps: an engaging little urchin with out-of-control hair and a preternaturally advanced vocabulary). I do feel a great deal of proprietary pride, especially since your collaboration is what allowed the Sleepers to awaken. Severus, this may seem like a peculiar question, but here goes: what do you think your and Hermione's unorthodox paths to your meeting brought to your Master/apprentice relationship? In other words, you both had gone through dreadful ordeals before you ever met--you in Azkaban, and Hermione due to her Muggleborn status. Was that an entirely a disadvantage, or did it unexpectedly mean advantages, too, in any way?


Professor Desai: had I been alive when you began as Ron's mentor, I am sure my heart would have been permanently affixed itself to my throat, given my worries for him, considering both your true loyalties. (And how relieved I would have been--I am!--that he has turned out such a fine Auror, and such a fine young man.) I hadn't thought he would pick a career like that, although it seems obvious in hindsight. Tell me, What made you choose him? What did you discover about his unique traits and potential? What did you want to develop in him the most? What did you spot in him that you thought would be his greatest strength as an Auror, and did you turn out to be correct? What did you think would be his chief weaknesses, and did he overcome them as you hoped?

[alt_ron]

Dad!


You know, it wasn't Professor Desai or any of the others that taught me the bits that really matter. That was all down to you.

[alt_arthur]

My dear boy...

(Bless me, now I'm rather choked up.)

[alt_savitha]

Ron came to my attention through CCF, during some of the exercises I came to assist with. There are students who are natural leaders, able through the power of their natural charisma to persuade other students to follow their instructions. Those students rarely lack for would-be mentors, and are seldom terribly impressed with the adults who choose them.

What I looked for, and found in Ron, was a student who was able to persuade others to follow his lead because of his ideas, because of his strategy and nerve, because of his ability to think a few steps ahead of anyone else.

'Ambition' is a trait strongly identified with Slytherin House, but of course it's found everywhere, and Ron exemplified the sort of ambition we often see in Gryffindors, where they wish to excel in certain skills for their own sake. That is a type of ambition I'd long since come to value.

Ron was also a youngest son whose brothers had been, hmm, let's call them 'shining stars within the walls of Hogwarts,' does that describe it? Two Head Boys, some impressive number of star Quidditch players, and of course the Twins got endless attention with their various shenanigans. When one takes a flower that has only ever grown in a crowded bed, places it in a pot and moves it to a sunny windowsill, it will reward that sort of cultivation with blooms you'll rarely see from a flower that has spent its whole life in a hothouse pot.

[alt_savitha]

I believed his greatest strength as an Auror would be exactly what I saw in him in the first place -- the ability to think a few steps ahead of everyone around him. I thought his greatest weakness would be impulsivity, his willingness to leap out into the void without think through those steps -- again, a Gryffindor trait, and certainly one I saw in Ron, although sometimes that's its own sort of strength.

Of course, his greatest weakness, in the end, was the hidden loyalties I never saw -- the disease at the root of the plant, and his willingness to turn on Our Lord and bring about his doom.

[alt_kingsley]

Strategy, nerve, and the ability to think a few steps ahead of everyone around him. Yes, I saw that in him, too.

All your chess lessons certain paid off, Arthur.

[alt_arthur]

So they did.

[alt_arthur]

And funny...what you regard as his 'greatest weakness,' I would consider part of his greatest strength.

And the source of my greatest pride.

[alt_severus]

Advantages — perhaps. Miss Granger's diffidence and lack of confidence was a barrier to our work, in that I could not openly share with her, for those first few years, my plans for her education. (And indeed, I had those plans from the moment I realised her talent, and they only became more urgent once McGivern was killed: I knew that if Alice found a place to spend my death for advantage before we finished the Sleeper antidote, someone would need to take up my laboratory rôle, and quickly.) It took a great deal of time to ease her into matters, for all that she was eager to learn when she did not realise the extent of the hopes I was pinning upon her shoulders.

But at the same time, her background lent her a fierceness of cause — one matched by certain of her fellows, but never surpassed — and I was fortunate in that she chose to bend her intellect in the direction of my subject in no small part because it was a discipline she could practice with minimal wand-work. (Not only was the danger of someone discovering that she had a wand perpetually hanging over our heads, but neither she nor I had been fortunate enough to find a wand that was a true fit for us. I very nearly came to regret that fact when Draco and I went to burn out the Ministry's archives after Draco's 'death'; we are all, I suppose, fortunate that control of Fiendfyre depends more on the caster's will and less on his relationship with his wand.) Had she grown to adulthood in a Hogwarts where she had been able to study the full range of disciplines, I do wonder if she would have taken to Potions so fiercely; I have been most pleased to watch her expand her range of talents and expertise over the last decade and a half. (I often wonder what Filius would have made of her, or Minerva if she had not been forced to keep herself so apart, or Albus if he had been able to narrow his grand vision so far.)

Azkaban — it is odd, really, to think that had the Dark Lord not chosen to imprision me for so long, I might have continued at Hogwarts, spending every last bit of my forbearance upon the need to drill into the heads of idiotic and slothful firsties why one always reads the full receipt before beginning brewing, with none of you lot the least bit wiser as to where my true loyalties rested until such time as it became necessary to share. Azkaban taught me many things: patience, and fortitude, and the depths of what truly does and does not matter. I doubt I would have had the patience to see Miss Granger through to her Mastery without breaking her spirit without having had those lessons drilled into me. I came out of Azkaban having been melted down in its crucible, with the dross of all but the vital pieces burned away. It was a small enough price to pay for the advantage it afforded us all, I suppose.