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

[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.