"...And now, she's started a club for something called 'kem-dew.' I went in, and the lot of them were just flailing around at each other with sticks, screaming like lunatics!"
Minerva McGonagall looked up. Had she been asleep? She looked around. Professor Copersmith was speaking, looking somewhat irritated, and several of the other masters were nodding agreement. Hatcher had given her the seat closest the fire, had taken the next; was now looking thoughtful.
"Kendo," McGonagall corrected. "The o is long. And they were yelling because that's part of the rules... you have to say where you hit before you do."
Coppersmith turned towards her with a look of surprise. "You know about this... sport?"
"Oh, aye," McGonagall nodded. She hadn't thought about Japan in a long time, though. She'd gone to Africa with some of the witches from Balcoin College, part of a project they'd jokingly called "Witches for Peace." She'd met a man there, a Japanese wizard named Mishima Ryoko, who would tune his crystal ball to follow Kendo competitions at home.
"Who is teaching it, now?" McGonagall asked, though she had a good idea.
"Aia Doe," Coppersmith replied. "The bane of my existence." There were sympathetic chuckles from around the room, and Minerva looked around. Half of the Masters in the room were people she'd brought in; the rest had come under Hatcher. Coppersmith saw her look, and explained, "A first-year Gryffindor, Headmaster. The girl is entirely too smart for her own good. She can do any spell after it's shown her once, and she has very... odd... ideas."
McGonagall chuckled. "I have," she said dryly, "known a few girls who were entirely too smart for their own good, Professor Coppersmith. I was a girl who was entirely too smart for my own good. I have, however, found that most often when someone says that of a girl, what they really mean is that the girl is entirely too smart for their comfort, which is not the same thing, at all."
A chuckle ran around the room, and several of the witches nodded. "Kendo is a good sport," Minerva said. "It hones the reflexes, sharpens the mind. Not everyone can play Quidditch, you know, though I find it to be the best of sports."
"Well," Coppersmith said, at a loss for a moment, then, "but it's about swords, and fighting. That's not really the sort of thing we ought to be encouraging here at Hogwarts."
Minerva looked at the slight, dapper man disappointedly for a long moment. "What is it you teach, Professor?" she asked.
Coppersmith looked flummoxed; McGonagall had hired him herself. Headmaster Hatcher said, as if suspecting that the old woman's memory was going, "Professor Coppersmith teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts, Minerva."
McGonagall's memory was not slipping. She looked at Coppersmith with her cool blue eyes, waiting for him to make the connection. As if reading her mind, the professor coloured. "Yes," he said, "but that's different, isn't it? I mean, really... mixing it up with a sword, that's not the sort of thing a wizard ought to do!"
McGonagall felt around for her staff, used it to lever herself to her feet. "In Gryffindor tower, Professor Coppersmith, there is a portrait of Goderic Gryffindor. May I suggest that you go and ask him what a wizard should know of the sword? In Ravenclaw's tower, you might ask Professor Keaton. As for fighting, I find that fighting is fighting, sir, whether the weapons used are picks and hoes, or wands. If Miss Doe believes that she needs to know how to fight... well... who am I to tell her differently?"
There was silence in the room as McGonagall made her way to the door, leaning on her staff. "Good night, Headmaster," she said, turning at the door to look back. "Masters. Thank you for a very pleasant Christmas Feast."
Murmured responses came from around the small room, and McGonagall looked at Coppersmith again. "Perhaps," she said, remembering Alistor Moody, "if more of us practiced constant vigilance, and prepared for coming fights, we would not have such troubles with the Grindlewalds and the Voldemorts."
