Chapter 29
Piper
I think Mrs Weasley was shocked how far we had come in designing and manufacturing our attire for Friday night, at least she seemed to be in awe. Of course while everyone one was trying their dresses on, Jennifer and myself got to start anew with Cho and Luna. Cho had a great sense of style, whereas Luna was a bit eclectic to say the least. Mrs Weasley liked the designs we had selected so far as being pretty, sexy even, but still age appropriate.
"I remember the formals we held when I went here, I don't think any of the girls put this much effort into it. Its like you're getting ready to walk the red carpet in Hollywood or something."
"Oh no, if this were a red carpet, I would have a make up artist, a stylist, a nail tech, and a hair tech attacking every flaw for four or five hours. Trust me, you don't want to go there, its horrible!" I said without thinking.
"You've been on a red carpet?" Cho asked, while every other Hogwarts girl and woman stopped what they were doing and stared.
"Yeah with my da..." I stopped, finally realizing I was giving too much information.
"You might as well tell them now, that horse isn't going to go back into the barn." Hazel said, while everyone else stared.
"Ugh. Okay, this doesn't leave the room because I don't want a bunch of bitches making a big deal out of it, understand?" I said as I used my wand to project 'the poster' as dad and I called it up onto a wall.
"That's Tristan Mclean! I love that movie, he's so... wait, you're Piper Mclean, are you related?" Hermione said.
I changed the picture to a relatively widely published one from the gossip magazines of dad and I on the red carpet at one of his premiers, a couple years ago, right before I had borrowed the BMW that got me sent to the Wilderness School, then said "You call him 'action hero,' I call him 'dad'."
"Tristan McLean is a wizard?"
"Nope, total muggle. I get my magic from my mom's side. Here's the thing though, in the last war American magicians were involved in, he was kidnaped and tortured by a titan because it got out who he was to me. The story the media got was that he was gone missing and when he came back he had been looking at possible sites for his next movie. We had to steal a helicopter to rescue him. I don't want to put him through anything like that again, so if this info leaves this room I swear by the gods I will find out who leaked it and tell Annabeth they were asking how far along she is."
"Not funny Piper" Annabeth grinned.
"I just wanted to emphasize how important it is, nuttin' but love AC" I giggled.
"I guess the two of us could make it look like a training accident." Annabeth replied with a wicked grin.
"So where were we? Oh yes, Hermione was about to model for us." I said as we continued and I hurried to change the subject. Hermione went to the next room to change while we returned to work on Cho and Luna. "Say Mrs Weasley, do you know what you'll be wearing?" I asked.
"Oh no! I have something, I'm too old for your fashions I think." She laughed then began asking questions about my father. Even in the world of magic Tristan McLean was a star.
Hermione returned and we all critiqued her dress, then with wands attacked it to change the color, hem, neckline, waist and anything else we could think of until it didn't look like the same dress, but it looked fabulous on her. Then we attacked again with accessories, shoes, hosiery, her survival purse (minus the sword of course), along the way redoing her hair and tan via wand as well. In the end, she looked amazing.
We did this one girl after another until the wee hours of the morning, Mrs Weasley having long before left us, then finally went off to bed. I was straightening up, even though the aerials took care of it I felt bad if I didn't, and noticed Ginny and Hermione taking their time about leaving.
"What's up?" I asked.
"Oh, uh...well" Ginny stammered.
"Its.. well we've been talking and, well, look, we appreciate all you and Jennifer and everyone else is doing for us, really, but..."
"But?" I asked.
"But, well, we don't really fit in. I don't mean that bad" Ginny said, "Its just that you are all so beautiful and, well, compared to you, especially you and Jennifer, well, we're from different worlds I guess is what I'm trying to say. I don't know if I, well we, can..."
"I see. Sit down." I asked, not even using the voice.
"You remember when we first met and we all told you about our godly parent?"
"Yes."
"Do you recall mine is Aphrodite the goddess of love and beauty?"
"Well yes, and that's what I mean, we, well I've always thought I was reasonably attractive, but well, its just well the standard is much higher being around someone like you and Jennifer. I don't mean to sound depressing really, I mean, well the very best I could be is... And, and,, well I never wanted to be judged on how I looked, but just being around you and doing all this work on the formal, well, it just feels competitive, not with you or the rest of the Americans, but with every other woman that will be there." Hermione said.
"So, you always thought you were reasonably attractive? Is that how you worded it?"
"Yes, and"
"Shhhh.." I silenced her, "and you Ginny, reasonably attractive?"
"Well yes, I mean, I never was really into the whole who is the prettiest or who has the nicest clothes thing as I knew it wasn't me, we're not rich people, but I really just care about looking pretty for one guy.."
"But you were proud of who you are?"
"Yes! Totally and completely proud!"
"Well, as I said, my mother is the goddess of beauty and love. The day I found that out I was marked as such. Now some days, just for old times sake I try to dress down and muss my hair, wear no makeup and such... it doesn't matter. What you see always shines through. That's part of the magic of being her child. The thing is though, at camp we had a whole cabin of her children, she, well she's also the goddess of procreation. While there were not really any ugly ones, there were some of us much prettier than others, and no, I'm not the prettiest by any means. What you see is a reflection of my inner self, its the beauty you have there that is important. So, you say you're reasonably attractive? You are wrong, you are both stunning, amazing, powerful, beautiful women, you just don't know it yet, and you don't have the confidence yet to see it. But you will, just as those "one guys" of yours already do."
"At our camp, each of the gods has a cabin for their children to live in. So Annabeth lives in the Athena cabin with her half siblings, Leo in Hephaestus with his, Percy in Poseidon with, well actually he's big three so he lives alone... anyway, I live in the Aphrodite cabin and last year ago I became head counselor. Before me there was this horrible little person... well I shouldn't speak ill, anyway, there was a policy that you couldn't be a full member of the house until you have been both the love of someone's life, and broken their heart so badly their life was hardly worth living."
"That's horrible!" Hermione said.
"I agree, that's why I changed it. Now you aren't a full member until you have been the love of someone's life and made their life complete and worth living. Now our cabin is about spreading love and spreading beauty, not using it for power and harm. Do that, have someone honestly love you so much that you complete their life, then you get to be a member. Then you carry the true mark of Aphrodite. So tell me Ginny, Hermione. Do you think you are worthy of someone else making you the love their life? Become so complete that they are happy just to be near you? Do you have that power within you? Because if you do, and I happen to know that you do, then I can help you show the world how truly beautiful and, well, powerful, you are, and its not just how you look. My dad can hire an army of people to make us look good, but neither he nor they can do anything to actually make us be good. That comes from within, that is where you find it."
They sat silently, but I think they got the point. Still, I wanted to nip this crisis of confidence in the bud.
"Now, one of the perks of being head of the Aphrodite house is a bit of magic I referred to before. The Mark of Aphrodite. All her children get it when they are first identified, and carry it for life, but as the head of the House I can give a shorter version of it to whoever I find worthy. It lasts about 48 hours and I was going to save it for Friday night, just before we went down stairs to meet the guys. That way each of you can have that experience of having a roomful of people look up to you in awe. It is an intoxicating experience, but if you are that worried perhaps now would be better..."
"No. I'll..." Hermione said, looking at Ginny who nodded, "We'll wait, thanks. I'm not sure... I'm not sure I want that."
"Good. Because I don't plan to ever give it to someone who does." I smiled, hoping they would understand that it wasn't a replacement for the beauty within.
"Thanks!" Ginny said as she hugged me, then Herminone hugged us both as well.
"Its nice being a girl sometimes isn't it?" I giggled.
Breakfast the next morning was a hurried affair through bleary eyes. No one had gotten enough sleep and the coffee was just barely strong enough to keep us going. All the Weasley children had bad forebodings of our first class and none could see any good to come from it. The rest of us were reasonably excited to have an instructor who was at least committed to teaching us something useful.
Our excitement was short lived. After we were seated Mrs Weasley stormed into the room and began spraying us with sparks that felt about like a bee sting for a moment but went away after a second or so. She especially hit Percy and Annabeth repeatedly all the while saying they had to be ready to defend themselves constantly and how disappointed she was that they were unable to do so. In truth they both began batting her jinxes away after being hit once, but neither took to the offensive, and the rest of us didn't either as, well, it was Mrs Weasley. We just couldn't see attacking her.
Finally Annabeth got tired of blocking her attacks and fired off an expelliamous spell to attempt to seize her wand, but she blocked it away, albeit with difficulty. While that was happening Percy shouted "Accio" and her wand flew from her hand to his.
"You would dare seize another wizard's wand?" She screamed.
"Yes, it was the only way I could get you to stop shooting at us without shooting back!" Percy shouted.
"And why weren't you shooting back? Isn't it true that the best defense is a strong offense?"
"Well yes, but..."
"But what boy?"
"I didn't want to shoot out of respect to you Mam."
"In the future, you are to defend yourself Mr Jackson. That is the name of this class. All of you, we will use non lethal spells to simulate real attacks. Now, if I had been shooting killing curses, seven of you, including four of the supposedly great America House, would be dead now. You will learn by doing in this class. Does everyone understand?"
We all nodded or said yes.
"Good, coming down the aisle are your new texts. These are the books I learned from, and I suspect the Headmaster learned from. You may use translation spells if need be as they are in the old English. Turn to page 17 and read. By tomorrow you will be able to demonstrate at least half of the twelve basic blocking spells and know when they are best used. You may begin when your book arrives. Mr Jackson, my wand please."
Percy handed it back to her just as the books finished floating themselves down the aisle.
"See what I mean?" Ron whispered.
"I see that she is absolutely right and we best be on our toes. If you think you are safe here or anywhere else, ultimately, you are wrong." Annabeth said.
"There will be no whispering in my class. Ten points from both America and Gryffindor." Mrs Weasley shouted.
The evening training was just as it had been, except now Mrs Weasley would shoot sparks at us at random, as well as at the instructors. We got to where we were ready to block whenever she was around. In addition to the spells we learned in class, Sirius and Lupin began teaching us offensive spells to go with the ones Hermione was teaching America House, and soon we had buried ourselves in homework. Harry had occlumency lessons with Snape and in addition both houses had quidditch teams to put together, so practice became a five to six hour ordeal every evening, although to say America was "practicing quidditch" rather than "just screwing around" was a bit of a stretch.
By the end of the week, we were exhausted, bruised and battered. But I felt like DA1 could kill just about anything, and DA2 could probably kill the rest. DA3 was to start on Sunday.
DA1 would be moving to close quarters combat the following week and this had kept Leo busy building a facade of a London street and the interiors of buildings to practice in. Percy had talked to the mermaids and the pond was now stocked with several generations of bass, perch and other fish needed to complete the ecosystem. They had supplied some plants while Neville had provided the rest. Most of Neville's were of magical stock and use so we soon had an excellent herbology garden available when we needed it. He had also planted a garden for Skippy, but we still relied on Hagrid, who became a regular visitor of Skippy's, to supple the single malt scotch she so favored. His parents were recovering nicely and on Wednesday we had a ceremony in which we gave them each one of the emergency back up wands Hecate had given us for the survival bags and they began to relearn spell casting with us.
By the Friday afternoon quidditch match, thanks to Frank and Reyna's planning, we felt well prepared in case Voldemort attacked Harry, which was good as it meant we were almost ready when Percy got attacked instead.
