The Alternity Re-Read: December, Year 1

[alt_moderator]

We're up to December already in our re-read!

Here's the link to the pdf file: December

As before, there is no need to avoid spoilers in the comments.

(Question for the group: We are coming up on several months where we logged a lower number of posts. Do you still want each month to be its own post or should we combine months (i.e., Feb-Mar instead of Feb, Mar) when the post count is about half the larger / longer months? I don't mind either way....)

Comments

[lapin_agile]

I have completely failed to keep pace with you.

Don't go too fast?

[alt_moderator]

There's no rush. I actually hadn't started December yet, either, but I didn't want there to not be a post once people are ready.

[gwendolyngrace]

Draco's psychosomatic allergies!

And I love how the chess tournament started to fall apart. Oh, the attention span of the average 11-year-old...

[reenie]

As a plot-point, chess is rather limited I think.

[reenie]

I think going from being a (mostly) only child, and a pampered one at that, to living in the school was hard on lil Draco. Plus the stress of shifting social-circles and stuff.

Milli appears to have fancied Teddy.

[elisem]

"I can eat bees whenever I want to now, so that's nice to know" just slew me.

[naomikritzer]

Lavender Brown: "Just so Everybody knows--my name is Lavender, or Lav if you are my
Very Good Friend. It is not Lavatory or Loo, Thank You Very Much! That means you, Linus Moon!!!!"

ROFL at annoying 11-year-old Linus, tormenting his future girlfriend.

[gwendolyngrace]

I am hugely amused that Y1 Lavender sounds only slightly younger than Y7 Lav. (And yes, all these pre-ship and proto-ship moments are hilarious.)

[queenbookwench]

Y1 or Y7--Lav's a brat! ;) She did grow out of the capital letter thing _eventually_. ;)

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

I was amused to recall that Pansy apparently had a crush on Ernie, which never went anywhere. Seems so random right now.

[gwendolyngrace]

Actually, I'm not sure whether that was lost in the player transfer or what - but I'm really, really glad that for realism's sake, not all these initial crushes (Draco on Lavender, Pansy on Ernie and/or Ron, etc.), wound up being the final pairings. Because who you fancy at 11 rarely the person you fancy when you're 17-18.

[reenie]

Most of these crushes seem girl-initiated, while the boys are clueless (which makes sense at that age). I know Draco did have a crush on Lav, but I don't know if it comes out to the surface of the game this year, or next.

[naomikritzer]

Something else that struck me was that Minerva approved the rule that Head Boys and Head Girls could use cruciatus with no complaints from the Order. (Presumably she was under pressure from the School Governors, and this may have essentially been a compromise to avoid giving that power to every Prefect.)

[naomikritzer]

Another subtle code that was used that month -- Sally-Anne did, in fact, bring a chess set to the Strettons with her, but she arranged with her friends to use the chess sets as a proxy for describing what was happening over hols, since PMs weren't an option.

Sally-Anne posted on the 23rd:

It started with the queen complaining that the queen's side knight wasn't doing a proper job of it. I think he'd taken an opposing piece but she thought he hadn't brandished his sword as much as he should. He called her an interfering old noserag, which is a pretty disrespectful way for a knight to talk to the queen, and the king must have agreed because he started shouting at the knight and that whole side of the board blew up, all the pieces shouting at each other. Meanwhile the white pieces just sat there and stared, they didn't know what to think.

This was about Mrs Stretton chewing out Jeremy for spending too much time on quidditch and not enough on his studies / the family business, Jeremy cursing her out, and Mr Stretton jumping in to shout at Jeremy for being insolent.

Neville, later in the month:

One of the white knights had been missing from the box for awhile, and now that it's back with the rest of the pieces, she seems to be quite intent on ordering it around. It's as if she doesn't trust it to make its moves properly.

And Pansy:

P.S. My Queen and one of the pawns in the chess set I took home keep getting into it, but what's so weird is the pawn is actually holding its own (the Queen is older than moss). The other pieces are just watching though I think the Bishop and the King are taking bets. Odds are pawn, right now.

I can't remember why I decided that some of the Hogwarts chess sets were mad. I think I just felt like the chess tournament needed something more interesting than actual chess.

[gwendolyngrace]

Speaking of Sally-Anne, this is the first instance of her playing an oculist:

And then on the potato farm there was a man who'd lost an eye, he
wanted me to re-grow it for him but I knew I couldn't do that. I don't
know if even grown-up wizards can do that but I don't think there's a
spell for it. The socket was all bare and horrible looking and he said
what really bothered him was how it looked and if I could possibly
make him an artificial eye that would be good enough. So I took a
glass marble, and I made it bigger, and then I tried the colourchanging
charm to make it look like an eye. And I don't know why it
won't work on my clothing I got from the Strettons, it's all still grey,
but it worked perfectly on the eye, I got it to match his other eye and
everything. He popped it in and looked in a mirror and said it was
perfect.

Did you remember that and use it to come up with her later internship opportunity, or was that something you went back and found and decided to use, or was it just a coincidence?

[naomikritzer]

I think Denise came up with that internship; I'm not sure if she was at all inspired by that bit, or if it was just an obvious intersection of Healing arts with magical crafting.

[lucky_guess]

Megan's crossed out comment on the 2nd totally rocked. (And November's explosion of hufflepuffs was awesome to behold!)

[lucky_guess]

And Seamus! (It's so painfully obvious how much Mr Rosier wants to be a good foster-parent right from the start, and remembering Seamus's fishing story just breaks my heart in pieces. As does Neville's early interactions with Seamus.)

[elisem]

Oh, my goodness, the potions adventure on the 11th/12th. I had forgotten that. Hee!