Victoria walks into Karen's office in the Library and watches while she works for a while, an amused expression on her face. When she seems to have come to a pause, she coughs lightly.
"Victoria, how are you?"
Handing over a couple of documents, Victoria explains, "I'm doing ok, however pleasantries will need to wait as I'm here officially. I have here a warrant for the arrest of one Peter Pettigrew on the suspicion of murder of 12 people in 1981 and of being an accessory to murder on the 31st October 1981. I also have a request for extradition from Hogwarts, as they have reason to believe that he's here. According to the Extradition document, they are willing to retrieve him themselves. In order to avoid putting students in danger they would like to do this during the Halloween feast."
"That's all well and good, and I'll have to trust you on the legal documents as I don't know what I'm looking at. However, you haven't explained why they think he's at the school."
"Through interviews with Sirius, they have determined that he is a rat animagus. Both Sirius and Lily have independently identified him from a photo in the daily prophet, which they specifically bought a back issue of to ensure that the photo wasn't doctored. The rat in question belongs to one Ronald Weasley, who we believe is a second year student here. In short, you have an adult wizard pretending to be a child's pet."
"Very well, but they will need to work with Auror Tonks on the retrieval, as I'm not having them running around the school, and possibly not even being allowed into the dorms."
"Thank you, I'll let them know."
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Azaria stifled a scream of frustration as her magic again refused to quiet itself enough for her deal with Tonks. One of the first years she's supposed to be watching over comes over.
"Why are you so upset?", she asks.
"I'm trying to lower my magic, but it's not co-operating."
Grabbing her hand, the girl says, "Yeh, that can happen, it makes getting the low notes hard sometimes. Come and play Simon says with us, your magic will soon start behaving again."
Not having the heart to tell her that it wouldn't help, Azaria got up and followed the girl to her friends where they were playing the simple game.
"Do you know the spell Professor?"
Smiling, Azaria replies, "Sorry, I don't. Can you show me?"
"OK, sure, do you have your wand?"
"I don't use a wand, I have my sword though."
She pouts as she thinks, "I don't know how to cast it with a sword though. Would anyone mind letting the Professor use their wand?"
The whole group choruses "Yes" and a forest of wands is shoved into Azaria's face.
Laughing gently, Azaria takes one, and then has it snatched away when it does nothing. They end up getting all of the first years involved until one Stewart hands her a wand that shoots some sparks. Holding the wand is honestly the weirdest feeling she's ever felt. It's like this alien thing has connected to her magic and is pulling it down the wand.
"Oh, goody, there is one that works. Right, the spell is simple, just move your wand like this. Once you've got that, the incantation is [Musical Light]. You know when you've cast it properly as you'll get a little light like this that makes a noise. You can't change the sound or colour when you're using a wand, but once you know how to cast it you don't need the wand anymore."
It takes her several minutes to get the movement and wand movements right with an unfamiliar focus, and the disconcerting feeling of having her magic drawn on rather than directing it. As such she was inordinately pleased when she successfully cast it multiple times. With the wand, nothing she could do would change the sound it made. Happy that Azaria knew it, the students took the wand back and started playing the biggest game of simon says yet. Over the next three hours she was the first one out time after time after time. It didn't take her long to start to get the hang of changing the sound, it was just doing it quickly that she had trouble with. Well, that and the low sounds. It was just before the end of play time when the boy that could do the lowest notes that got most people out gave her the key to the whole thing.
"Professor."
"Call me Azaria while we're playing, as you're the one's doing the teaching at the moment."
"Um, ok? Erm, anyway, most of us see flowers or plants when we look at our magic. Well except Damian he see's a weird symbol. Anyway, I recognise my plant, and when I want to play the low notes I imagine it's winter. I don't know if you have winter where you are. But that's what I do, and so the fruit ripens and then the leaves start going red before falling off, and ice starts to form. That helped some of the others, so as you seem to be having the same problem I thought it might help you."
Sinking into her magic, she tried to imagine the triple dark flooding across her world and froze in fear at the first signs of Hoarfrost. Then she was 80 again, shivering in the cave they'd built under the compound. Not because it was cold! No, it was because she could hear her cousin calling to her father to let him in, as there were Slaugh out here. She could see the Grim expression on her fathers face as he barred the way to the barricade, stopping her aunt from getting close enough to release the enchantments. Then the pleading voice turned to maniacal laughter as spells started to be thrown at the ward from the other side.
She came out of the memory as someone shook her.
"I'm ok, I'm ok." She says urgently before realising that the first years were looking at her with concern.
"Really, I'm ok. I just tried to bring, what did you call it? Winter? Right, I just tried to bring winter, but I remembered something very bad that happened when I was a child. But in order to thank you for teaching me that spell and game. You taught me to cast spells with a wand, who wants to learn how to cast spells with a sword?"
The sound of cheers told her that she'd successfully diverted their attention from what happened to her. At least for the moment. She spent the next hour making bronze swords for all of the first years and then teaching them how to use it as a focus.
At the end of the hour she faced all of the first years, "I'm going to let you keep those, but if I hear of any of you playing around with them I will be taking it away and you will never be allowed to use a sword again while you're a student here. This is a weapon, and you should treat it with the care and dignity it deserves. If in third year you choose not to take combat, you will need to give your sword back to me. Until then, I expect you to wear it everywhere in school from when you get up to when you go to bed, do you understand?"
"Yes, Professor Azaria!"
Later that night, Azaria was nervously waiting for Nym to finish her shift and come to their chambers. She'd used multiple different methods to check the time, and it seemed to be one of those rare times when it seemed to be moving at a glacial pace rather than skipping past like a stone on a lake.
Eventually she came in and immediately saw the agitated expression on Azaria, heading over Tonks pulls her into a hug.
"What's the matter Honey?"
She starts to cry, "I found out why I can't lower my magic, and I'm scared I'll never be able to do it."
"Shh. It's ok to be scared of stuff. I know you're a thousand times older than me, but that doesn't mean that you're any less fallible than I am. Why don't you see Healer Gosling while she's on duty tomorrow. You wouldn't be the first person I know that's needed to see a mind-healer. I can come with you if you'd like."
"I'd like that. It's just, I'm supposed to be a Clan Chief, yet I'm scared of a memory."
"Shh, come to bed and we'll go and see her first thing in the morning."
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Celia was sure that her husband had noticed the change in her mood, but she was equally sure that he had no idea why she was feeling so much happier. Every morning she'd go out 'to take Tea with some friends', and spend a miserable 3 hours being put through the grinder by Hogwarts. Then she'd spend the next 4 hours perusing the three libraries there, she knew it was 4 hours as she set an alarm on her wand. Unaccountably Penny, as she liked to be called, seemed to take sadistic glee in the fact that she wasn't the target of Hogwarts attentions while Celia was there in the mornings.
She also got to talk to her daughters every day, and as she expected, Astoria was racing to catch up with her sister. Scarily she'd also spoken to Karen a few times, only because she looked so young yet seemed so old.
Speak of the devil.
"Hey Celia, do you mind if I pick your brains for a bit?"
"Sure, but first, what does Speak of the devil mean?"
"It's a term from Christianity, where there was a superstition that if you spoke of the devil he would appear. It then became common to use the phrase when someone that you'd just been talking or thinking about turned up. Why?"
"I seem to have picked up the phrase from somewhere, as well as the annoying habit of referring to everyone by your first names."
"Oh, that's simple, you've been spending a lot of time with your daughter, and by association, Harry and Hermione. Who were both raised in the non-magical world. Anyway, in the non-magical world we have something called a parents evening, it's usually a series of evenings rather than a single event. At this time, parents are invited to the school to talk to the teachers about their child's progress, and where they're strong and weak. What I was wondering is if that is something that would go down well in the magical world."
"Oh that would go down fabulously, especially if you turned it into a social event, and used the main hall or somewhere like that. You could then have the teachers talk to the parents in both an official capacity as well as a personal one. Everyone loves an excuse to have a party as there's not much else to do unless you want to listen to the radio or go to the pub. So do you think they'd also like to see the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals of our competitive clubs?"
"Will there be a chance to socialise?"
"Hmm, I could talk to Rosmerta and see if she'd be willing to relocate to an under-seating bar at the stadium, quidditch pitch but we change it to suit our needs these days. Hmm, maybe I should see if any of my friends know an Architect that might like magic. What if we gave each of the participants a free box ticket to each event, and then sold tickets to the rest of the parents. I wonder why we don't do that with the quidditch matches now anyway?"
"Karen, I think you need to go away and jot those thoughts down."
"Ohh, I will. Oh, wait. Hogwarts, do you think you could provide a suitably atmospheric place to have a Halloween ball with the students and teachers? I know it's next week so we'd need to get the letters out today, but it could be an opportunity for them to meet their children and see how they're progressing."
Hogwarts appears laughing, "Yes I do have somewhere that would be suitable for the occasion. Though, it's really not an appropriate name for the day, as the time when the veil between worlds is at it's thinnest is actually on the equinoxes. Then again, as it's a Church holiday, there's every chance they moved it deliberately so that it no longer fell on the equinox. You go write the letters and I'll get planning the event with Celia, after all she's the one that's up to date with the magical customs for this time of year.
Now, Celia, do magicals still celebrate the death of the year and the start of the sleeping time?"
"Some of us do."
"Hmm, I doubt you still use the stone circles though, as they were starting to fall into disrepair when I was still just a Magi."
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The rest of the month went smoothly, they'd obviously set the ticket price for the Halloween feast about right at 1G3S as they had around a 40% attendance from the parents. The house elves had initially been happy to cater the event, but they'd taken one look at the place where they'd be serving food and promptly refused to go in again. They offered to place the food into a space expanded box, so that one of the magi could do the catering. But that was it.
After Karen went in she came out and made a large brass plaque for the side of the door warning that this year's theme was ghost stories. Younger years are advised to use the great hall rather than the special event.
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Corporal Stevens from the Special Air Service was excited, tomorrow he would get to put the skills he'd been practicing since he got magic into practice. Already subtle uses of magic were making a difference in his training. Nothing that the rest of the squad could point at as being odd, but still enough that he was seeing an edge. Not to mention the difference in speed levitation made on the range. Given the finesse that Karen had shown, he didn't think he'd even plumbed the depths of what was possible. Tomorrow would just be a snatch and grab, but as always Magic was likely to throw a massive spanner in the works. That and the fact he was working with unfamiliar people as there are so few people in the army that have magic. The one thing that they had worked out about having magic was that a couple of bits of iron made it almost impossible to use it wandlessly. It was because of that they were taking the parent of a magical with them to hold the cage.
