Tamsyn

This is going to sound a little weird, but bear with me.

So, I looked you up in the library. You know, they have a lot of the old student records in there, and also back issues of the newspapers and things? I guess I probably shouldn't have done that, but you never answer any of my questions, and it can be bloody frustrating sometimes. I'm not sorry, just saying.

Now I know your Hogwarts letter was sent to an orphanage in London, that you were sorted into Slytherin in 1938, that you were made a prefect in 42 and head girl in 44. Your OWL and NEWT scores are in here too and, holy crap, I didn't know you could even take that many! How did you get Os in everything? Did you cheat with mind magic? There's even something about special services to the school, but I don't know what the fuck that's about.

You show up in the papers a few times too. There are a couple articles in the Prophet's stupid society pages (hate that thing), something about holiday parties for the "Slug Club"? What kind of name is that? And you also get in the society pages some after Hogwarts — apparently, people did not like Candidus Malfoy having a muggleborn mistress, it's honestly sort of hilarious. There are a couple other things in the Herald, just minor references over the years, nothing really that interesting, before you abruptly fell off the face of the earth. The last thing was a clipping from the Herald, someone in the classifieds, something Monroe I think, saying that it's been a few years since anyone has heard from you, she'll pay a reward if anyone can tell her where you are. And that's it.

That's pretty fucking weird to start with. You do not look like you were born in the 1920s, and if you disappeared in the 50s, where have you been all this time? Why the hell were you at Hogwarts last year? That's all weird, but I don't really expect you to explain any of that, that's not what I'm writing about.

I finally got the charm to work to copy memories into the pensieve. I went back to the first time I met Dumbledore — it's a long story, but he was a total prick. Anyway, I was reading his mind, trying to figure out why he was a total prick, and I figured out something weird: I remind him of you. For some reason when he looked at me he saw you, and it freaked him the fuck out. I'm not sure why, but I do know it's at least partially because he thinks you have something to do with the Dark Lord.

And that's what I'm wondering about. Are you, like, the Dark Lord's kid or something? I guess that would kind of explain it, but then why the hell would the Dark Lord's kid be at an orphanage? Maybe it was just a trick, because he knew the letter would come then, and he didn't want the school to know where he lived? That would almost make sense. Or, maybe the Dark Lord just doesn't like kids?

I know this shouldn't really be my business, but since it's effecting how Dumbledore is treating me, I think it is my business, so. Some answers would be nice, please.

Liz

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Elizabeth

Dear me, that's quite a letter. I suppose I should have expected something like this before too long, but... Well, for each of us there are topics we would rather not speak of. The answers you seek approach far too near multiple of mine.

Ah, I can feel you rolling your eyes from here — don't give me that, young lady, you will have answers. I can't promise they will satisfy you, but I doubt any answers I have would.

Let me start off with Dumbledore. While I cannot say for certain — the last I spoke to the man your parents weren't even born yet — I can make guesses as to why you might remind him of me. As you will have learned by now, certain magical traits tend to be heritable. Legilimency is one of these, and among the rarer of such gifts. These heritable gifts are almost never found among the muggleborn population — there are a few exceptions, when the muggleborn has a recent squib ancestor who might have carried it, but in this age of the Statute of Secrecy these cases are so few and far between as to be apocryphal.

If you recall, that night we met in person I told you that I grew up in a muggle orphanage. I also told you that I was terribly mistreated. I was always a peculiar child, I truly can't say why. I never quite understood other people, why they did the things they did, and so I never could act convincingly normal — too often, people revile that which is different from them. I was bullied for years without end, even injured on a number of occasions.

I remember when it happened, like it was yesterday. One day, I believe I was seven, a group of older boys at the orphanage nearly raped me — if one of the ladies working at the orphanage hadn't walked in when she did, they might well have. I didn't entirely understand what their intentions were at the time, I was only seven, but I knew that wasn't the end of it. We weren't watched all the time, there was nowhere I could go and nothing I could do. I didn't sleep that night, shivering with fear and hatred, the intense feelings pulling my magic close to the surface. I didn't recognise it for what it was at the time, the taste of blood on my tongue, my spine tingling, colours dancing behind my eyelids.

The same boys cornered me again the next day. And I made them stop.

And I made them all stop, all the people at the orphanage who were treating me badly. I didn't set out to hurt them, not at first — I simply wanted to be left alone. But fear and anger can make people do foolish things, cause them to lash out at that which causes those feelings, or anything they can find reason to blame. So, instead of merely compelling them to leave me alone, I started hurting them, in mind or in body, in hope that it would help the message stick better. It did, in time, the children eventually learning that messing with me was a bad, bad idea. Even the adults came to be terrified of me.

Dumbledore delivered my letter in person, as is typically done with muggleborns. He was suspicious of me from the off — perhaps one of the ladies had told him something about me, maybe he'd already been in the habit of reading people's minds by then. The history behind my actions, why I did what I did, that didn't matter to him. All he saw was a sadistic, cruel girl using her powers to terrify and torture muggles.

And that never changed after that day, he always believed the worst of me from then on. Any accident that happened at the school was somehow my fault, even if I was nowhere nearby at the time and didn't know the people involved, anything I did had some ulterior motive behind it, all my interactions with the other students, even friendly ones, must be manipulative, part of some devious plot. I have no idea what he thought I was trying to accomplish, but no matter what I did I was never anything but a monster in his eyes.

Perhaps this is all sounding familiar to you.

A natural legilimens raised in the muggle world is rare enough; add in the effects of prolonged abuse on a child's temperment and the vague physical resemblance, well. I can't say I'm surprised you remind him of me.

I'm not offended you looked me up in the library, silly girl. I honestly expected you'd done it already — you did discover my surname over a month ago now. Of course I didn't cheat on the exams, I hadn't any need to. I'm just that clever, you see.

The "Slug Club" was a social club of sorts run by our Head of House at the time, a mediocre potioneer by the name of Horace Slughorn. Honestly, I found him insufferable, but it is always advantageous to ingratiate yourself to people with authority over you — the privileges I gained in being one of his favourite students were more than worth the effort of playing along. The parties were sold as networking opportunities, for the most promising of the students at Hogwarts to meet Slughorn's friends and associates scattered across various academic, economic, and governmental institutions, many of them former members of the Club themselves. The parties were also often insufferable, though sometimes the company could be interesting.

Did the papers truly refer to me as Andy's mistress? I hope I hexed someone for that...

The Monroe who put the notice in the paper was probably Julia Davis — she was betrothed to a Monroe toward the end of our time at Hogwarts. Julie and I were friends and occasional lovers, I'm not surprised she tried to find me. I believe she still lives, though I have no intention of contacting her, as my appearance would require far too much explaining.

Because, yes, as you've noted, I don't look nearly old enough to have been born in the Nineteen Twenties. There is an explanation for this, one which is both very simple and terribly complicated: when we met I appeared to be sixteen because, physically, I was.

Once you have finished reading the following portion of this letter, I advise you destroy it. I sincerely doubt you would enjoy the consequences of being caught with this on your person.

There is a magical device called a horcrux. Its function is, in some ways, similar to that of the phylactery we spoke of previously — it works through sympathetic magic to enact some effect on the owner. But where the phylactery targets the blood, the horcrux targets the soul. Ordinarily, when a person dies, their soul dissipates into the ambient magic of the environment; a properly constructed horcrux prevents this process, allowing the user to endure in some form after the death of their body, their mind and magic anchored to this plane.

Britain declared war on Nazi Germany on the Third of September, Nineteen Thirty-Nine. Everybody had been aware war was imminent, and plans to evacuate portions of the urban populace, especially the children, had already been publicised over the summer. Those plans went into action immediately, the first week of my second year at Hogwarts. I asked to remain at Hogwarts over the summer, but was refused. By the time I returned to London in June of Nineteen Forty, most of the children in the city had been evacuated — the orphanage I lived in had been emptied, taken over by Auxiliaries in the meanwhile. Some of the other muggleborns were picked up by family, but I had nowhere to go. I ended up squatting in abandoned homes, using mind magic to steal what I needed.

The Battle of Britain began a couple weeks later.

I cannot describe how terrifying that summer was. There is no shield charm in existence that can save a mage from two hundred pounds of high explosive, even if I'd had the power to cast such a thing at the age of thirteen. As much as we on the ground could hear something was happening — the sirens and the distant drone of engines, the booming of the huge anti-aircraft guns scattered throughout the city — there was practically no warning when and where a bomb would fall. Few hit London proper, at least in those early weeks, though there were fires and smoke on the horizon seemingly without interruption.

As the bombings continued, it became more and more difficult for me to go about without drawing attention to myself — as you can imagine, there weren't many thirteen-year-old girls wandering around unattended at the time. More and more the raids came, seemingly accelerating and drawing closer to the city centre (though perhaps that was simply my fear talking), and in time I decided to leave. I started north on foot, planning to arrive in Hogsmeade well before the start of the term.

Of course, that I had left the city did not mean that I was out of danger — the Germans were targeting RAF airfields and munitions factories all throughout the island. Initially I followed the train tracks, but that put me uncomfortably close to possible targets. A night raid hit a town I happened to be staying in — I don't know which, and I didn't know the date so I can't look it up and guess — and leveled half of it. I was woken up by the bombs, the house I was in caught alight. I ran out into the streets, quickly swept up in a crowd of panicking people, and we fled in a disorganised mess toward the outskirts, making for the fields. On the way, another volley of bombs fell — one fell heart-stoppingly nearby, I felt the pressure of the explosion on the air, I saw with my own eyes several people torn apart and incinerated. I spent the night out in the fields, huddled together with complete strangers, waiting for the noise of engines and guns and bombs and flame to end.

That was, without a doubt, the worst night of my life. There was a time there I was absolutely convinced I was about to die.

I knew the war wouldn't end any time soon, that the bombing would get worse before it got better — and that was assuming Britain didn't fall to the Nazis entirely, I couldn't have known how it would end at the time. The professors in charge at Hogwarts, ignorant old men who thought the affairs of muggles beneath their notice, would inevitably send me back to London the next summer, no matter what happened. For all I knew, the city could be half-demolished by then, I could be walking into my own death, by violence or starvation.

(And I was right to be concerned: despite that my orphanage had been evacuated, despite the devastation wreaked on the city through September and October, despite the continuing bombardment, despite King's Cross Station itself being hit a month earlier, the damage preventing anyone from even leaving the platform the muggle way, the staff still refused to let me remain at Hogwarts over the summer. Julie invited me to stay with her family instead.)

As soon as possible, I started looking into methods by which to protect myself from death. I quickly discovered a description of the horcrux. Over the next years, I delved into the study of ritual soul magic, scouring whatever resources I could find. Finally, I felt I was prepared to make an attempt — the spring of my fifth year, less than sixth months after that memory I sent you. Though the attempt itself was not something I had planned ahead of time.

The previous year, I had discovered Ignatius Gaunt's throne room under the Castle — by chance, exploring passages sealed with Parseltongue — complete with a live basilisk, one which recognised me as a descendant of its creator and therefore someone to be obeyed. I was familiar with the legend of Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets, of the Monster awaiting therein.

The summer before my fifth year, one of the other muggleborn girls in my year died. Like the blind morons they are, the Hogwarts staff had continued to send the muggleborns back to London every summer, despite the sharply deteriorated condition within the city. We didn't know what happened to this girl, she simply didn't show up at Hogwarts the next year, and was never heard from again.

I came up with an idea. The staff at Hogwarts claim, incessantly, to genuinely care about their students, that they acknowledge the personhood and inherent value of them all — including the muggleborns. There was a bit of political propaganda going on at the time, insisting that the lot of muggleborns and commoners here wasn't like it was on the Continent, that the lower classes of Britain needn't revolt as they had in so many other countries. This was, obviously, a lie. I had explained to Dippet, the headmaster at the time, the dangers of returning to London, that there was a war going on, but he didn't listen, none of them did. This girl wasn't even the first to disappear over the summer, simply the first that I was passingly familiar with. They might have believed themselves to be moral, righteous people, but the consequences of their thoughtless actions revealed the emptiness and the hypocrisy at their core.

So I decided to prove it. I became the Heir of Slytherin, using his Monster to purify the school. The gaze of a basilisk kills instantly, but if its eyes are met through some sort of obstruction the victim is petrified instead. I began using the basilisk to petrify my muggleborn peers, using conjured glass to weaken its gaze, sometimes exploiting compulsions to ensure my targets would be at the right place at the right time. And muggleborns were attacked, one after another after another, proclamations painted onto the walls near each victim ensuring there could be no doubt the perpetrator was a delusional, genocidal maniac, who was targeting muggleborns for explicitly bigoted reasons.

And I was proven right. The staff hemmed and they hawed, they made sad noises with their mouths about how very terrible this was, they felt so badly for these poor muggleborns. And what did they do about these attacks? Did they bring in an expert cursebreaker-healer to heal the petrified students? Did they take efforts to increase security at the school, post hit wizards or Aurors in the halls? Did they try to find the Chamber, hire a cursebreaker to track the Monster to its abode, end the attacks at the source? No, they did none of these. They failed to act in any meaningful way at all.

Because they don't care, they never cared. And while the attacks went on, I spoke to the others in the school, expressed my frustration with the lacking response, drawing attention to their seeming hypocrisy. Their rhetoric of equality and beneficence was so much vacuous posturing, and I made sure everybody knew it.

Until, one day, I fucked up. While I was on my way to execute another attack, a girl stumbled on me before I was ready — Myrtle Warren, a Ravenclaw muggleborn a couple years younger than I. Before I could even draw my wand, she'd met the gaze of the basilisk, and she was dead.

And I was left in a peculiar position. Here I was, standing over the body of a girl I'd accidentally killed. I never had any intention of killing any of the muggleborns, but the more I thought about it, the less I cared — muggleborns dying would suit my propaganda purposes just as well as them being petrified. Warren herself meant nothing to me, just another face in the crowd, so I can't say I felt particularly guilty about her death. It was a mistake, but not one that troubled me. As I hadn't been caught for any of the petrifications, I wasn't concerned about being caught for this either. The only difference between this and my other attacks was a couple inches of glass.

But I realised it was an opportunity. Before Warren's essence could dissipate, I captured it. Using only the supplies I had on me and a little bit of improvisation, I created a horcrux, right there in that bathroom. All traces identifiable as Myrtle Warren were massaged out of the magic that had once been her mind and soul, recreated as an image of my own, and bound into the only object I had conveniently on hand — a journal I kept on my person, to jot down thoughts that occurred to me over the course of the day.

I am not the true Tamsyn Riddle. I am the copy of herself that she made that day, in that bathroom, a creation salvaged from the detritus of an accidental murder.

The death of a student caused the staff to react in a way they hadn't before. Petrifications were one thing, but now students were dying — what if one of the pureblood children they actually gave a damn about was next? They planned to close the school until the monster could be found, which was, of course, completely unacceptable to me.

Thankfully, there was a convenient solution on hand. A third-year Gryffindor named Rubeus Hagrid — the same Hagrid who is now the groundskeeper, in fact — had been raising an acromantula in the dungeons. I'm not sure how much you know about acromantulae, but they are extremely dangerous creatures. They are enormous spiders, roughly tarantula-sized upon hatching but growing to absolutely absurd proportions, not only natural predators but given to sadism, toying with their prey and sometimes just killing for the sake of it, with venom that will kill an ordinary human in moments, and also possessed of being-level intelligence, so they are capable of complex planning. They are not something that should be anywhere near a school for children. If Hagrid was allowed to keep that damn spider, someone would have died, inevitably.

I didn't care about that, really, but the original Tamsyn turned Hagrid in anyway, and his pet acromantula was blamed for the attacks. This was patently ridiculous — an acromantula could have killed Warren, theoretically, but it couldn't have caused the petrifications — but when the attacks stopped immediately after Hagrid was arrested and the acromantula gone, the authorities took that as proof enough. That is what the award for special services to the school was for, by the way.

Anyway, back to my story. We quickly discovered an interesting consequence of my having been bound to a book: the original Tamsyn could communicate with me by writing on the pages, and I could respond by rearranging the ink the pages had absorbed. Over the next years, she continued to write to me intermittently, though with gradually decreasing frequency, until she finally ceased writing to me at all. I haven't communicated with the original Tamsyn since Nineteen Sixty-Eight.

If I were to describe the experience of being a horcrux, I would say it's boring, to such a degree as to cause existential horror. For decades, I was nothing but a disembodied consciousness — I had no form, no hands or legs or lips, there was nothing to see or hear, nothing at all. I could vaguely sense the magic of my surroundings, though at something of a remove, partially isolated by the enchantments that bound me to the book. Save for the occasional moments someone interacted with me — writing on the pages, their intent carrying through to me, or holding the book in their bare hand, magic and mind tingling against mine — there was seemingly nothing at all in all of reality except myself, my thoughts and my feelings, my memories of a life now far removed from my present experience.

It was, as you might imagine, unpleasant.

In time, I found myself in the hands of Ginevra Weasley. Each time she wrote on the pages, I enthralled her more and more, bit by bit replacing her priorities and desires with what I wished them to be. The repeat of my Chamber of Secrets gambit served not only to weaken Dumbledore, but also to more thoroughly solidify my control of Ginevra. Until, in time, I had her so thoroughly devoted to me she willingly gave her life for mine.

The ritual I conducted in Gaunt's throne room was designed to construct a new body for me, as it had been when the horcrux had been created. And so I live anew, walking this earth for the first time since the spring of Nineteen Forty-Three.

The reason I am telling you all this — or one of the reasons, in any case — is because I don't know what the original Tamsyn got up to after the last time she wrote in that damn book. Does she have some kind of connection with this Dark Lord? Perhaps. On the surface, this seems unlikely — I'm a muggleborn, and everybody knew I'm a muggleborn. I don't know much about this Dark Lord, as his movement was well after my time, but from what I've heard the Death Eaters didn't seem especially welcoming of muggleborns in their ranks, to put it mildly. But it's not unheard of for even the fiercest of bigots to relax their standards for someone sufficiently useful, and I have no doubt I could have made myself very useful if I felt the need to. So, despite how unlikely it seems, I have to admit it's possible.

Dumbledore, of course, knows far more about the period and this Dark Lord's organisation than I do. If he believes the original Tamsyn had some kind of involvement, I'm forced to concede he's likely correct. But I'm afraid I can't tell you any more than that — I'm as in the dark about it as you are.

This letter has stretched to an absolutely ridiculous length by now, but I believe I've managed to answer all the questions you raised to the best of my ability. Some of these, you'll note, are questions I refused to answer in the past. Consider this a gesture of trust, Elizabeth. While the creation of a horcrux is itself illegal, of course, the law of our country would consider me an inherently dangerous magical construct, an abomination in violation of the natural order, not a person deserving rights or consideration of any kind. If I were to be captured, I would not receive a trial. I would be killed, immediately, without question. If they were aware of my existence, how I came to be, they would issue a warrant for my summary murder, which would make it all but impossible for me to live openly in any ICW country.

I tell you this because I believe you won't tell anyone. Not out of some concern for yourself — if you went to the authorities, I'm certain they'd protect you from retaliation. Not even entirely because I'm aware you have little respect for the law and the institutions of magical Britain, so aren't inclined to act as they demand by default. No, I'm telling you this because I think you'll sympathise. As I said when first we met, we are more alike than we are different, more inclined to be natural allies than enemies. If you had found yourself in my situation, I feel quite certain you would do exactly as I did. And I think you know that too.

So now you know what I am. What you do with that is up to you.

Tamsyn

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Tamsyn

You said mine was "quite a letter"? That's fucking hilarious considering what you wrote in your reply. Seriously, this has got to be the longest letter I've ever seen — including any from Hermione — and there's some seriously crazy shite in it. Calling my letter "quite a letter", honestly...

Right, this thing is fucking long, and complicated, so I'm just gonna go through it from the top and respond to things as I go. And don't worry, I'm gonna burn it as soon as I'm done writing this. I just need to use it as a reference to reply to first.

Going back through this, calling me "young lady" is kind of funny, considering — you're not actually that much older than me. If you were in fifth year when you made the horcrux, you should only be a sixth year now. You're only three years older than me.

Why does secrecy make muggleborns with heritable magical gifts less common?

Honestly, I completely forgot you said you grew up in an orphanage that time you broke into my bedroom. I don't remember a lot of that conversation very well, given that you broke into my bedroom, I was kind of preoccupied. I'll take your word for it, though — I could put the memory in my pensieve and check, but that whole thing was very unpleasant, I'd rather avoid thinking about it at all if I can help it.

I guess that kind of makes sense. Why I remind Dumbledore of you, I mean. I don't actually think we look that alike — we're both pale as hell, and we both have black hair, but other than that not really — but I can't imagine he came across that many creepy fucked up child mind mages. The things I've read suggest we aren't that common, so, if we were the only two he ever met in his whole life, I wouldn't be that surprised. Oh, there's also Severus, I guess, but he's a boy...though now that I think about it he's also pale as hell and has black hair, so he kind of fits the pattern too, doesn't he? Weird.

Anyway, sure, that explains that. It's kind of fucking stupid, and doesn't make Dumbledore any less annoying and confusing, but sure.

I've never really tried to "ingratiate yourself to people with authority over you", but then, I'm really terrible at getting people to like me, and also I don't have to to get anything I want? So who cares. That Slughorn bloke sounds kind of creepy, though — throwing dinner parties with school children, I know I'm not really the expert on this kind of thing, but isn't that kind of not a good look?

I was wondering how you could possibly not know what they said about you in the papers, but I guess I don't really pay that much attention to what they say about me. I really probably should, it's just irritating, I can never get all the way through an article without pitching it away in disgust or setting it on fire. But then later I realised you would have been in the book by then, right? I can imagine it not being something the real Tamsyn would want to talk about, so.

So wait, you were shagging Andy, but you were also shagging Julie? Are you allowed to do that? I mean, that kind of seems like something people would have a problem with. Also, I have a friend who's a Davis, is that the same Davis?

Is this horcrux thing common enough other people would know about it? Because, it just occurred to me, that might be what the Dark Lord did. From what I can tell, that's basically what he is now, just mind and magic, his body destroyed that Hallowe'en (or Samhain, whatever) but everything else sticking around. I actually saw him, over a year ago now, and he was...weird. Didn't entirely feel human, I don't know, but maybe that's just because he did all kinds of crazy subsumation rituals and did weird shite to himself, that could explain it. Sounds like this horcrux thing would look like that, though.

And now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I used to be a horcrux? Or, had a horcrux inside me, anyway. (Fuck, that sounds weird.) In the same conversation where Severus explained the Dark Lord still being around to me — he didn't use the word "horcrux", but now I think that's what he meant — he also explained I used to be carrying a piece of the Dark Lord around, in the scars I got when he tried to kill me. Our defence professor, who was possessed by the Dark Lord at the time (so was maybe kind of actually the Dark Lord?), attacked me with mind magic, and we got in a fight. I think the Dark Lord piece had been asleep or something, and Quirrell-but-not-really kind of clipped it with mind magic, waking it up. It kind of seems to me like the piece was trying to do what you did, sort of, but instead of making a new body for himself just stealing mine.

I subsumed him before he could subsume me. That was the soul magic thing you noticed when we met — it was a year later, which is weird, but I can't think what else it could be. And, I was just wondering, does that mean the Dark Lord is actually gone now, because I subsumed his horcrux? Or maybe he has more horcruxes, if that's a thing you can do. Also, if a horcrux is just normal soul stuff stuck in a thing, there aren't going to be any weird consequences to me subsuming it, are there? I mean, I haven't noticed anything, but I'm not an expert in these things, so I might not. Severus hasn't noticed either, and he did get another good look at my mind and magic only a few weeks ago, but maybe he just wasn't looking for the right thing? I don't know.

Somehow it didn't occur to me that you'd actually remember the war. That's kind of wild. I should probably be surprised Hogwarts sent you back to London, given everything was going on, but I'm not really — these people are all fucking idiots. They don't know shite about the muggle world, even really obvious basic things sometimes — I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even realise the war was going on at all — and there are all kinds of people they decide not to care about for stupid racist reasons, you just proved that again with the petrifications last year. So, not surprised.

By the way, I was wondering, is there any logic behind this racist stuff at all? Or are people just stupid?

Yeah, all I can say about the decision to look into horcruxes is that makes perfect sense. Obviously, if you're worried you're going to get killed, looking into ways to stop yourself from dying is the natural thing to do. Got to be careful about it, because clearly certain ideas are so dangerous they need to make books illegal, but yeah, I get it.

Is there a reason people stopped doing sacrificial rituals with humans? I've read it used to be common, especially with wards and stuff, but it isn't anymore, and I always wondered why.

I still think petrifying people with a basilisk to make a point is kind of ridiculous and over-complicated, but whatever, I don't actually care.

Holy crap, you killed Moaning Myrtle! Kind of fuck you I guess, do you have any idea how annoying that ghost is?

I might have been surprised Hagrid was stupid enough when he was a kid to keep a deadly man-eating spider in the school, but I've heard what his care of magical creatures classes are like, so that actually makes perfect sense.

Being trapped in a book for decades sounds horrible. I don't even like being in small dark spaces for more than a few minutes, if that were me I would have freaked the fuck out. I have no idea how you got through that and came out at least somewhat sane.

Still creepy, Tamsyn. Honestly, enthralling little girls...

It's kind of disappointing you can't tell me what you have to do with the Dark Lord — it is a big part of why I made Dumbledore so nervous, I think — but if you don't know because you were trapped in a bloody book at the time, I guess there's nothing you can do about that.

And, okay, yes, I do think I understand why you did what you did, and I'd probably do the same thing if I were you — assuming I knew where to look to find stuff about horcruxes, at least. Actually I kind of doubt I would have gone back to London the first time at all, I would have just gone home with Dorea or Daphne or someone — or, for you I guess it would have been Andy or Julie — but that's not the point. I kind of didn't care that you killed the Weasley girl before, just thought it was kind of creepy and weird, but now I get it. I mean, maybe the display you made of it down in the throne room was a little much, but rubbing in the message, sure, fine.

I guess what I'm saying is, we're good. You don't have to worry about me trying to turn you in or anything — although I wouldn't have before anyway, as long as you're not going to hurt me I don't see why I should care, but we already had that conversation. I mean, I'm still not sure I want to see you in person ever again, because you really did freak me out breaking into my room in the middle of the night, but it's fine.

So really, Tamsyn, there's no reason to be so fucking melodramatic about it.

Liz

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Elizabeth

Now, I believe this is the longest letter I've gotten from you yet. I suppose I should feel flattered, all the time you put into talking with little old me.

Much as you just did, I shall go through your letter top to bottom, if only to make this simpler. To start off with, I meant that you should destroy any references in my letter to the use of horcruxes — given the topics addressed in your letter, perhaps you should do the same with this one. You needn't have destroyed the entire letter. I suppose I could have been clearer.

My intuitive sense of my own age is complicated now. I was born on New Years Eve of Nineteen Twenty-Six, was sealed away from May of Forty Three (when I was sixteen) to April of Ninety Three, just short of fifty years. While I did have an impression of the passing of time while I was in that book, the sense I got was...peculiar. For me, time did not run evenly, one minute the same as any other. When someone was interacting with me, it was as though I was anchored to something outside myself temporarily, but as soon as they were gone I just...drifted, disconnected from the world itself, the interval between each interaction seeming to be shorter than I was told while at once an eternity.

The memories I have of those decades are peculiar in general. While they seemed immediate and real at the time, practically the only life I knew, the longer I live in this body the further away they seem. They fade with each passing day, with each new experience in this new life dissolving away into a smear of impressions, a surreal nightmare separating Ninety-Three from Forty-Three — like a long coma I fell into, the dreams I dreamed then half-forgotten. I still remember much, if I sit down and think about it, but it doesn't feel quite real.

So, while I may yet only be physically sixteen, sometimes I feel a lot older than that. But then, at other times, I feel as though I truly am sixteen, as though it were the Forties only short months ago. It's rather confusing being me, at the moment.

In any case, my use of "young lady" was mostly meant as a joke.

The peripheral effects of Secrecy are an extremely complicated matter, but I believe I can explain the rarity of heritable magical traits in muggleborns with relative brevity. While it is true that magic is heritable, a mage likely to have a magical child and a muggle not, it is not solely genetic. Two mages are far more likely to have a squib if the mother stays in an environment low in active background magic for the entirety of the pregnancy; conversely, muggles are more likely to have a magical child if the pregnancy occurs in a highly magical environment. It is not known what mechanism causes this, but it's something that has been common knowledge in the magical world for a long time — in fact, pureblood women are advised to ensure there is as much magic going on around them as possible throughout a pregnancy, to increase the chances of having a powerful magical child. (To my understanding, there is no evidence this increases the likelihood of the child being a more powerful mage, but it certainly does decrease the likelihood of having a squib.)

As a consequence of mages segregating ourselves as we have, the spaces mages live are more intensely magical than they had once been. Efforts have been taken to keep any obvious signs of magic beyond muggle eyes, meaning the rest of the world experiences far less in the way of magical phenomena than once it had. (It used to be perfectly ordinary for muggles to practise elementary witchcraft or encounter magical beings and creatures, for example.) Due to this segregation, admixture between magical and muggle populations is also much less common.

While even to this day (I checked), nobody has managed to isolate a "magic gene" — it's assumed many non-magical people carry a magical trait that was simply never activated by magic in the environment, making it far more difficult to detect (assuming such a gene exists) — it is assumed all muggleborns have magic somewhere in their ancestry, passed down to them through a squib line. Myself, my mother was a Gaunt, born into the family in the last generation before its extinction. But while mages have insulated most active magic from muggle eyes, they can't get rid of all of it — free magical energy flows through this world in natural currents, through muggle-dominated lands just as through magical, there's nothing anybody can do about that. Also, the rare outburst of wild magic will still occur, though muggles usually dismiss these occurrences as superstition or unfounded rumour.

Due to this natural magic throughout the world, mages are still born to muggles, but they are far less common than they had been before Secrecy. Inversely, squibs are less frequent as well. Both factors contribute to the dearth of heritable talents among muggleborns: fewer squibs means fewer dormant magical traits are introduced to circulate in the muggle population, and fewer muggleborns means fewer of these dormant traits are activated to be reintroduced into the magical one.

As an additional limiting factor, many of these magical traits require some kind of activation condition in addition to magehood — according to blood tests I've done, I also carry traits for self-transfigurability and magesight that were never activated. Such things can be artificially activated with blood alchemy rituals, but I don't consider these talents worth taking such extreme measures.

I truly can't guess how many muggles carry a "magic gene" (assuming such a thing exists), nor can I guess what proportion of those carry a dormant legilimency trait. Mind magic is relatively common, so far as these things go — less common than Parseltongue or magesight, more common than self-transfigurability or psychometry — so I assume it must be out there. However, muggleborns who present the trait are extremely uncommon — so far as I know, I was the first British muggleborn mind mage in nearly two centuries, and my mother was a squib so I hardly count. (Though there hadn't been a known Gaunt mind mage in ages, so who can say.) I suspect we are quite literally the only muggle-raised mind mages in the country.

Yes, I've already apologised for distressing you the night we met, I won't waste our time doing so again. It was not my intention, though looking back on it I realise I should have known better.

At the age of eleven, we looked passingly similar. I expect once you've grown up some, we'll look rather less similar. But even so, never underestimate the laziness of the human brain — perhaps the shared traits of pale skin, long black hair, and being somewhat small for our age shouldn't be enough for someone to associate the two of us, but it's not unusual for the brain to make connection it truly shouldn't, simply because it's more efficient.

I'm not certain you've mentioned this Severus before. He's also a mind mage?

Don't expect Dumbledore to ever become less annoying or confusing — in my experience, he never does.

I'll admit, trying to "ingratiate yourself to people with authority over you" wasn't something I attempted much before coming to Hogwarts. Too many of my professors were resistant to mind magic, at least far more so than muggle adults, so it was a skill I had to learn, and quickly. My skills when I entered Hogwarts were tuned for blunt coercion, it took a couple years for me to develop skill with subtler forms of manipulation.

I suppose Slughorn could seem "creepy" at times, but it wasn't what you're suggesting. I know for a fact that Slughorn was fundamentally disinterested in sex and romance — he never married, and as far as I can tell he never had any intimate relationship with anyone ever. Some people are just like that.

The original Tamsyn would mention in passing that the Prophet had irritated her now and again, but she rarely explained what they'd printed that irritated her. I imagine I would be uncomfortable with the implications associated with being referred to as a nobleman's mistress, so I'm not surprised she never spoke of it with me. I probably wouldn't, in her place.

Assuming your Davis friend is of the Noble House, it's the same Davis. I don't know the family well enough to guess how they're related, but I'm certain they are somehow. But then, most purebloods are related somehow. I would joke the British nobility have an unhealthy fascination with their own cousins, but I have no right to judge — my mother's parents were siblings.

Yes, I was "shagging" Andy and Julie (though never simultaneously). With Julie, there was never any suggestion that we had that kind of relationship — we were friends, good friends, but that we occasionally had sex meant nothing more than that it was enjoyable and we felt like it. In Andy's case, well, by the time we became involved he was already betrothed to Éloïse, so he couldn't object to my occasional encounters with Julie without being a hypocrite.

(Never Andy and Julie, but the original Tamsyn did have sex with Andy and Éloïse at the same time on uncountable occasions. I find the idea vaguely fascinating, but of course they're both dead now, so I'll never know.)

One of the things to keep in mind about intimate relationships is that they are arrangements made between the parties involved. Perhaps a couple has between them an understanding that both of them will forgo having any other partners, and perhaps another couple does not — or maybe instead of a couple we're speaking of a group of three lovers, or four, or more. All of these arrangements are equally legitimate, so long as the people involved know what they're getting into and freely agree to it. When you come to an age you begin to become interested in these things, remember to be honest about what your intentions and limitations are, and you'll be far less likely to find yourself drawn into frustrating and unnecessary drama.

Yes, it is very possible the Dark Lord made a horcrux, or maybe even several. So far as methods to immunise oneself against death go, horcruces are one of the more widely-known and most effective, and the Dark Lord's current state seems similar enough to the expected state a horcrux-user might be reduced to upon the death of their physical body. It is peculiar he has remained disembodied so long — ordinarily, a person in the Dark Lord's position would have a resurrection strategy prepared, to be executed by certain of his followers — but the facts in evidence fit the theory.

I sincerely doubt you were once a horcrux, though. While it is theoretically possible to use a living being as a horcrux, it requires an extremely involved series of soul magic and blood alchemy rituals to properly form the sympathetic bond between mage and horcrux — the Dark Lord simply wouldn't have had the time to perform all the necessary steps before he was discovered.

After a couple hours contemplating the problem, I have developed a theory. Very little is publicly known about what happened that night, but it is commonly said the Dark Lord attempted to kill you with the Green Death; also, it's assumed by people with any degree of sense that your mother conducted some kind of vengeance ritual to protect you. Given that, I believe we can assume that the curse was intercepted by the ritual the moment it made contact with you (leaving behind the scars), the destruction directed at you instead inverting upon the Dark Lord.

Assuming Lady Potter used traditional Celtic vengeance rituals as a base, the power in the Dark Lord's curse would have been turned back on him "times three and three and three again". The Dark Lord was a very powerful mage, assuming he put any effort into the curse it would have contained no small volume of magic — the ritual would have released twenty-seven times the power of his curse back at him. That would have been...energetic, to say the least. I'm not surprised it supposedly blew the roof off the house.

Now, given the output of the ritual would have retained at least some elements of the original curse, we can assume it had a soul magic element. Focusing that absurd volume of power upon a person's soul, any natural weaknesses in its structure would have fractured instantly, shattering mind and magic like glass. This would also explain why the Dark Lord was inexplicably inactive for years afterward: torn apart by the violence of the ritual, he needed all that time to pull himself back into a cohesive whole.

(Given that, perhaps he did have a plan prepared to resurrect himself, but when his followers attempted it it failed, due to the fractured nature of his spirit at the time. It's possible, but we really can't know what happened for sure.)

The greater part of the Dark Lord's mind and magic should have been held together (if broken and disordered), due to the gravity lent by his horcrux. But here's a thought: what if he had only partially completed the extended subsumation of another soul at the time? Only partially integrated into the rest of him, this fragment would have been more easily separated, and unlike the rest wouldn't have been fully bound by any horcrux he might have had. The scars you mentioned would have just channeled a momentous volume of magic, curse and then ritual, creating a sort of circuit, a feedback loop. That some of the magic drawn from the environment might have been left there once the ritual ceased is not unexpected; that that magic might contain this loose fragment of incompletely subsumed soul is almost laughably improbable, but not impossible.

Depending on how much of the Dark Lord's curse and your mother's ritual got pulled in with the fragment, the mix of magic in those scars of yours could well have been extremely volatile. The protection granted by your mother's ritual is almost certainly the only reason it didn't kill you instantly. Contact by the rest of the Dark Lord sparking this essence into consciousness is unlikely, but again, not impossible. It's far more likely than the Dark Lord actually turning you into a horcrux, at any rate.

I can't say what the effects of subsuming this mix of magics might be. My feeling is that there should be none — unless you were consciously attempting to integrate aspects of it into your being, you should have simply absorbed it as neutralised magic, the only prominent effect of which should be a modest increase to your channeling capacity. I did notice you felt a tad too powerful for your age, this might well be part of why.

People have come up with many varied justifications for racism over the centuries, and I can hardly explain them all to you now. The reasoning most often used in the muggle world — a pseudoscientific appeal to evolution, the same ideology espoused by the Nazis, which is so much patently fatuous nonsense — is rare in the magical world, though not entirely unheard of. Some of the logic used by certain purebloods against muggleborns sounds unsettlingly fascist to my ears, though I'm not sure how much of that feeling is because they're legitimately similar or simply a product of the times I grew up in. (The reds in London made sure we were all very aware of what the fascists believed, and what a Britain under their rule would look like.) Bias against muggleborns among most of the nobility truly comes down to classism — muggleborns are, by definition, not magical nobility, so therefore inherently inferior. Classism is also irrational, of course, but that would take an even longer dissertation on sociopolitical and economic history to explain.

Biases against other magical beings are often sourced from a general feeling that humans are, somehow, more civilised than other beings. There is no rational reason to believe this either, and plenty of evidence that the opposite is true — veela and lilin society is older than ours, and Avalon is much older — but people believe all kinds of irrational things. Did your relatives ever force you to go to church?

You really are quite precious sometimes, Elizabeth. People stopped performing human sacrifice because it requires killing people by definition — you might have noticed normal people are rather squeamish about murder.

I can't say Myrtle Warren was any less annoying when she was alive. And it really is quite funny that your only issue with me killing a fourteen-year-old girl is that you find her ghost annoying.

They made Hagrid a professor? I thought it was bad enough that they hired him on as a groundskeeper, but they have him teaching children? Christ, what is wrong with these people...

I couldn't have gone home with Andy that first summer of the war — we didn't even start speaking until my second year, we weren't yet close enough of friends for such a thing to be on the table. (Also, I suspect his parents would have objected to their teenage son inviting a thirteen-year-old muggleborn girl to stay with them for a couple months, for appearances' sake if for no other reason.) Julie might have been an option, but like most purebloods she had little idea of what was happening on the muggle side, so I would have had to admit I couldn't take care of myself on my own, which was something I wouldn't have been comfortable talking with her about at the time. Obviously, I reevaluated my priorities when I nearly died.

I hadn't realised you saw what became of Ginevra. That display was meant for Dumbledore. It was rather inelegant, but you might have noticed our illustrious Chief Warlock is hardly a subtle person — I wanted to be sure he would get the message.

If I needn't be so melodramatic, you needn't be so crude all the time. I wonder, is that kind of language common among muggle girls these days? In my time, the only women I knew who spoke like that were whores.

I mean no offence, of course, I'm only saying, suddenly being in the future is sort of surreal sometimes. The first time I saw a modern television I must have stared at the thing for ten minutes — the picture was so clear, and they have colours now. Incredible.

Tamsyn

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Tamsyn

Don't feel too special about me spending so much time writing to you. The alternative is doing my transfiguration homework, and I HATE transfiguration.

Being stuck in that book continues to sound absolutely horrifying. I actually just noticed reading through this last letter that you're teasing me and joking around a lot less than usual. If this is making you uncomfortable we can talk about something else.

Except the "young lady" thing, of course — fuck you, Tamsyn.

I want to ask how the hell magic can be genetic but also not genetic, but then I remembered you said right at the beginning that you didn't know. Damn. That's really neat, but it's just kind of annoying that nobody knows why, I hate it when there aren't any answers to an interesting question like that.

Your mother was a Gaunt, like the Noble and Most Ancient House of? One of the Seventeen Founders? I thought they were extinct. Like, in the 18th century? Maybe early in the 19th, I can't remember.

What's wild magic? Also, what are magesight, self-transfigurability, and psychometry? Don't need to tell me about snake-speak, obviously, I'm sure you saw that in the papers by now.

How do you do a blood test to see what other magic shite you got? I know I'd need to do blood alchemy to get them to work, but it sounds worth it to me, having more special magical talents sounds neat.

You realise "pale, black hair, kind of little" describes like half the purebloods at Hogwarts right now.

Severus Snape is the head of Slytherin and the potions professor, has been since the end of the war. This is a secret, but who the hell are you going to tell, don't see why I can't tell you: he's technically my guardian right now. He found out I ran away from home after I got my Hogwarts letter, but I still stayed in a muggle hotel the next summer. But he's worried Sirius might try to find me and do something stupid, so he demanded I move in with him, so I stayed there most of this last summer. Because Dumbledore is my guarantor right now — which is different from a guardian, because magical British law is fucking stupid — and I want him to not be that, I'm in the process of ending my stupid trusteeship thing. Which meant lying to the Ministry, telling them that I'd been living with Severus since the beginning of summer in '92...which puts us over the six months of living together for him to be my guardian, so...whoops?

I haven't actually told anyone about this yet. Severus told me not to, because he doesn't want people to find out and be completely stupid about the Girl Who Lived living with a former Death Eater. And he's a mind mage, so he'll probably find out if I tell one of my friends, even if they don't tell anyone. It's very annoying. Especially because Dorea is still worried about me living on my own, but I'm not living on my own anymore, but I can't tell her that. Ugh.

I'm pretty sure I couldn't get people to like me even if I tried, I'm just too weird and creepy. I'm still not sure why the hell my friends like me.

I would say I have no interest in sex or romance either, but I'm only thirteen, so honestly who the fuck knows. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd ever want to get into it — people's squishy feelings are uncomfortably clingy already, seems like dealing with even more of it would be a problem.

Yeah, it's kind of silly how all the purebloods are related to each other. The first day at school, all the other Slytherins spent far too long talking about how they're related, and exactly what kind of cousins they are. (Honestly, I'm still not sure what the difference between a second cousin and a normal cousin is, or what the hell all the "removed"s are for.) I'm not even sure why they care.

Your grandparents were siblings?! Eeewwwww...

I didn't realise people could, just, have sex without it being a feelings thing. Though when I think about it I really should have, some of the stuff I picked up from people's heads makes it obvious in retrospect, I just tend not to pay attention to that stuff. I usually find it weird and boring, you know. But I definitely didn't realise you could have three people all in a relationship with each other, and that being a thing. How does that even work?

Though, relationships just being a thing people negotiate between each other does make sense, I guess. I just don't really get it. I assume I will when I get older (whether I want to or not) but I still just think it's weird. And also sounds kind of gross? Yeah, don't get it.

Right. All that stuff about the Dark Lord and horcruxes and my mother's ritual was interesting, even if I'm not sure I understood all of it. But, one thing I don't get, what's the difference between a bit of someone's soul and a horcrux, exactly? I mean, if I had piece of the Dark Lord in me (still sounds weird) isn't that what a horcrux is? Maybe if it was some stuff he wasn't done subsuming yet then it wouldn't be, but...

I guess that's good, though — I had no idea what I was doing with the subsumation thing, so obviously I couldn't try to take on aspects of the stuff. Even if I didn't understand much of what you said, the important part of my question got answered anyway. So thanks.

I kind of thought racism was just kind of fascist by default? I mean, obviously they're not the same thing, but like they overlap, if that makes sense? I'm not sure, I don't actually know what fascim is, exactly.

So, if I get the basic idea, you're saying racists think some people are "more evolved" than others, and that makes them better? But, I didn't think evolution worked like that. It's not like evolution is making things "better", it's just kind of random, and some of them just happen to work out by chance? And how do they decide who's "more evolved" anyway? I'm not sure I understand, it seems very silly to me.

I don't think I've ever heard of veela and lilin before, and I don't know shite about Avalon.

My relatives did bring me to church, yeah, which I always thought was kind of weird, since they didn't seem very religious themselves. I think they just wanted to rub in the idea that I'm evil and definitely going to hell. Not that I'm convinced hell even exists, I always found all the God and Jesus stuff very unconvincing.

Honestly, I kind of forgot about the ritual sacrifice being murder angle. Oops? Though that doesn't really explain why people used to do it but stopped.

Why the hell should I care about you killing Myrtle? I didn't know her, she died decades before I was born, all I've known is the annoying ghost. I don't see why I should care about the murder of someone I don't care about in general — we've already talked about this, Tamsyn.

Yeah, now that I know Hagrid was keeping an evil man-eating spider in the castle, that they hired him on as a professor really is very fucked up. Maybe I should tell someone about that. I do have a couple friends in that class, so...

I was going to ask why the hell anyone would care about you staying at Andy's house, and then I realised obviously they would assume you were shagging, and people are stupidly racist. I am very smart. Though I kind of think Julie would be a problem too — aren't the Davises also stupidly racist? They are now, anyway, the Davis I know is a half-blood and they've been awful to her forever.

I can totally understand not asking Julie though. I'd probably have the same problem.

The Aurors were trying to find Weasley, because they thought there was a chance she might still be alive, but they needed parsel tongue to get in there. I was the only person around who can speak it. Some of the stuff down there was pretty neat, apparently they have archaeologists down there checking the place out now.

I do curse more than most girls my age, but I don't really know why. It's just something I started doing years ago now. Can't say I've ever met a whore, though, spend a lot of time around them, did you?

It didn't even occur to me that you're older than colour television, but duh, it's not even that old, is it. If you think that's crazy, try going to the cinema sometime. I don't like it, too noisy, but if you think colour television is so cool that shite would probably blow you away.

Elizabeth

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Elizabeth

Yes, I had difficulty with transfiguration at school as well, and it's probably still my weakest subject. I understand that's common among mind mages.

If I truly had too much difficulty writing to you about something, I simply wouldn't. You needn't worry on my account, Elizabeth. I don't like contemplating certain subjects, no, but helping you understand where I'm coming from is worth the discomfort. And did you miss the teasing? Because I can do that more. In fact, here we go:

I do hope that "fuck you, Tamsyn" wasn't meant to be a hint — you are a little young for me, you know.

If unanswered questions truly bother you so much, you might consider becoming a research academic yourself. Trying to find answers to these questions would then literally be your job. Academia often doesn't pay very well, but, as the last member of a noble family, you're sitting on more than enough wealth to support yourself indefinitely. Unless you're taking Arithmancy and Runes, it might be difficult to continue on in any field, but you can always study those independently if you wish, and I'd also advise focusing on Charms and Potions in particular. The other subjects are mostly superfluous unless you've a particular interest in them.

Yes, my mother was a Gaunt in the sense of the Noble and Most Ancient House of. I'm pretty sure I could claim rights to the family name uncontested if I wished, though I'm not sure why I would — the family's wealth was frittered away over the centuries, the only thing remaining is their seat on the Wizengamot, and why would I want to subject myself to dealing with that?

The Gaunts recused themselves from the Wizengamot in the early Eighteenth Century, due to a dispute involving the enforcement of Secrecy. Over the next decades, they became increasingly isolated from the other noble families, cadet branches and vassals breaking away as the family's star waned. They were quickly reduced to poverty, become so insular they were reduced to the worst sorts of incest — the original Tamsyn did a lineage test once, and my mother's first ancestor who wasn't born a Gaunt was a great-great-great-grandparent. There's siblings breeding in there, and even parents with their own children.

And yes, I realise how vile that is. To put it bluntly, the original Tamsyn and I were both disgusted when she discovered our magical relatives. I prefer not to think about my mother's family if I can help it.

Or my mother herself, for that matter — the original Tamsyn did manage to track down my father, and from his account it's obvious he was under the influence of a love potion for his entire association with my mother. So I was conceived through magically-assisted rape, how fun.

Wild magic is a very broad topic, it would take far too long for me to explain it in depth. To put things very simply, you're aware there is magic in the world in the form of ambient energy flowing around, that this energy concentrates in some places more than others. This energy will, sometimes, erupt into activity, creating some effect in the physical world — it's sort of similar to the idea of accidental magic, except it's the natural world itself doing it, if that makes any sense. The effects are usually subtle, but some more energetic phenomena do crop up now and again.

All beings have the ability to sense the presence of magic, if only on a subconscious level. Magesight is a form of synesthesia — that is, the brain interpreting one kind of sensory input as another — a person's perception of magic mapped onto their physical senses instead. It's not always literally sight, hearing and taste are common too. People with magesight can often detect much finer variations and patterns in the magic around them than people without, though the utility of this is debatable.

Living beings have a natural resistance to transfiguration acting upon them; the stronger the target's own concept of what they should be is, the greater their resistance becomes. Most people have great difficulty ignoring their own self-concept long enough to enable them to transfigure their own bodies — even minor alterations, like changing your eye colour or tweaking the shape of your nose just a little, can be all but impossible, and often revert far more swiftly than they would if cast by another. Some mages, for whatever reason, have a much easier time transfiguring their own bodies, and this gift is heritable.

A person must have this trait in order to become an animagus — the transformation is a magic that must be learned, but a mage who doesn't have this self-transfigurability trait will never manage it no matter how hard they try. Metamorphy, the ability to permanently alter one's bodies at will (by "permanently" I mean such changes will never revert and cannot be dispelled), is caused by an entirely separate heritable trait, one which is for whatever reason incompatible with the animagus transformation. And metamorphy is the dominant trait, if a mage also has self-transfigurability only the former will be expressed — people are born a metamorph or with the ability to become an animagus, but never both.

In the sense of the innate magical talent, psychometry is a form of instinctive divination. People who have it can detect an echo of the history of objects just by touching them, and often the association and relationships between objects or people. I understand it can be quite overwhelming — it's not unusual for people with psychometry to take potions to partially dampen their perception just so they can get through an ordinary day.

It is curious you're a Parselmouth — I don't know if a Potter has ever had the talent before. Perhaps you got it through the Blacks, or perhaps your mother was from a squib line, I do wonder.

You can test for unexpressed magical traits with certain blood mediated potions, though you'd have to brew a separate potion for each trait. There's a lineage test that's much simpler, for a certain definition of simple — it produces your ancestors back six generations, complete with various colour codes and markers for a number of heritable traits. I don't remember the recipe for the potion off hand, but I'll look for it and get back to you. It is a difficult potion, though, so you might want to ask your guardian for assistance.

Many of the purebloods do look similar, yes — they are shockingly inbred sometimes.

Ah, yes, I forgot that was Snape's first name. He is a mind mage, but I think his accomplishment of becoming the youngest licensed master alchemist in British history is much more impressive.

It sounds to me like you've done a far better job of getting Snape to like you than I did Slughorn. Becoming someone's guardian is a very large investment to make in a relationship such as yours. As much as Slughorn may have favoured me, he never went nearly so far out of his way for me as that, and I seriously doubt he ever would have.

Of course, my Head of Slytherin had absolutely no idea I was homeless — maybe he would have, who can say?

Friendship can be a complicated proposition. There are benefits, but there are also downsides you must take with them — like, for example, your friends being concerned for you when you'd rather wish they wouldn't be. I found it all just as baffling as you when I was your age, honestly. It's still mildly confusing to this day, but I've learned to just ignore my confusion and play along.

When I was barely thirteen, I hadn't any interest in sex and romance either. I sort of felt myself above such silly inanities, actually, which is an attitude I find a little embarrassing in retrospect. (Sometimes I look back on my younger self and I cringe, I was so insufferable.) I changed my mind on sex once the proper hormones kicked in — sex acts might seem "gross" when thinking about them conceptually, but generally you don't notice in the moment — but honestly I'm still not sold on romance. I can play along and fulfil the role expected of me, though I'm not convinced I do it very well, and I'm not sure if I get anything out of it.

Though, now that I'm thinking about it, that difficulty might have been an artefact of the immaturity of my peers. I've entered a Mastery program, pretending to be rather older than my physical age — I often discussed academic subjects with the original Tamsyn, reentering an educational programme appropriate to my age would be terribly boring — and a few nights ago I just had a second date with one of my classmates, a man in his early twenties. For whatever reason, I'm finding this much less tedious now than I remember. It is still early, so maybe that will change, but I don't know. Teenagers are irrational and over-dramatic and awfully annoying, maybe it will become better as you age.

Note, I don't claim that I've come to get anything out of it, just that it's less tedious than before. I think it's wise to keep one's expectations realistic, and I'll simply never be an ordinary person. You know your emotional range and needs better than anyone — be honest with yourself and any partners you might have in future, and don't try to force yourself to meet expectations you're uncomfortable with. That will only end in frustration for you and pain for them.

Two people who share a parent are siblings, two people who share a grandparent are cousins, two people who share a great-grandparent are second cousins, two people who share a great-great-grandparent are third cousins, and so forth and so on. The "removed" describes a generational offset. In these cases, whether someone is a first or second cousin or whatever is determined by the perspective of the person you're starting from — if your grandparent is their great-grandparent, they are your first cousin once removed; if your great-grandparent is their grandparent, they are your second cousin once removed. That's the basic idea, I hope I summarised that in a way that makes sense.

An intimate relationship between three people is, in principle, no different than one between two — the only difference is the presence of the third person. Of course, a couple is the default, and the social expectation people are taught to conform to from childhood. Relationships of more than two people are rare, and often have difficulty achieving even a modicum of acceptance from society at large. The only major exception I can think of off the top of my head is among the Noble Houses of magical Britain — it isn't unusual for a paramour to be "shared" by a married couple. (I find the language used to describe these relationships to be quite demeaning.) Of course, the legal position of the paramour within the family is different than that of the other two, but people sometimes act as though that distinction doesn't exist.

The original Tamsyn's relationship with Andy and Éloïse could have been described in these terms. She lived with them for near on a decade before leaving Britain to study the magics of other cultures all over the world — for all intents and purposes, she was a part of the household for that time.

It is the enchantments that bind the horcrux and the original person to each other that make an object a horcrux. Assuming that bit of magic you were carrying was sufficiently similar to the Dark Lord to work as a focus, without those enchantments it wouldn't have been able to tie him to this plane, so can't properly be called a horcrux. It also sort of works the other way around: the original Tamsyn changed enough as she aged, conducting further subsumation rituals on herself, that her soul had diverged from mine so greatly that the book would no longer have worked to prevent her essence from dissipating upon her death. For this reason, it's not unusual for users to create a new horcrux every couple decades or "renew" an old one, just in case.

Racism is not necessarily fascist, but fascism is inherently racist. Fascism is a rather difficult idea to pin down, since the same impulse is expressed differently in different cultural contexts, but there are a few things that are considered common, definitional traits. Fascists claim their national or racial group are somehow superior to other groups; any "weakness" in their group must be purged, be it in the form of mixed-race people, the disabled, "deviants", whoever doesn't fit into their image of perfection; their people have been diminished by "degeneracy" as they define it, and they must embrace their old traditions to reclaim their former glory (sometimes they invent new "traditions" whole-cloth to suit them); acting against their renaissance is some eternal enemy who is inherently inferior, yet somehow strong enough to subvert the "master race" (no, they don't notice the contradiction); anyone who should be part of their in-group who doesn't support their goals, or agrees but is unwilling to give their all to the glorious struggle, are traitors, and must be cleansed alongside the "degenerates" and the eternal enemy.

Going down this list for the Nazis of my time, we have: the "Aryan race", by which they meant German-speaking white people (which is funny, because "Aryans" are properly Persians); they started off by euthanising the disabled, and criminalised homosexuals and transsexuals and crossdressers and the like; they considered modern culture and ideas to be corruptive, they they needed to return to an idealised fiction of traditional culture (which happened to be very authoritarian, racist, and misogynist); their enemy were the Jews, and also academics and communists, but they believed academia and communism were both part of the Jewish plot to weaken the "Aryan race", so those were all really the same thing; insufficient enthusiasm for the Nazi project was cause to suspect treason, and people who refused to serve in the military were often imprisoned and in some cases executed.

I'm living in America right now, and I've noticed a way of thinking among some muggles here that also strikes me as fascist. Going down the same list: white people; any mixed-race people, but also the disabled and homosexuals and the like, and sometimes the urban poor in general; "degeneracy" is typified by this society of supposed racial equality, and they can get back to rights by returning to segregation, or even outright enslavement of blacks; their enemy are "liberal elites", including anti-racist politicians and academics and industry leaders, but also the left (who they conflate with the first group, despite "the elites" being an enemy they and communists hold in common), and also Jews, of course (for some reason, it always seems to be the Jews); they even have a word for these people: "race-traitors".

That went on a little longer than I probably had to. I hope that cleared up the concept for you somewhat.

You are correct that the idea of one group of people being "more evolved" than another doesn't make any sense. Quite simply, these people just don't understand how evolution works. It's hardly a new incorrect understanding — in fact, their ideas descend from theories that predate Darwin — but they've persisted despite superior ideas having been formulated to replace them. Hence me calling their beliefs pseudoscientific before.

Veela/lilin are a race of ancient magical beings, originating in the eastern Mediterranean. They have the ability to transform into enormous birds of prey, and have special talent with certain elemental fire magics. They've been around for longer than recorded history, and developed organised civilisation early — in fact, there are suggestions in old stories from Mesopotamia that they were the first to invent writing, and taught it to humans in the first place.

Avalon is a very complicated subject. I can recommend certain books in the Hogwarts library, if you like.

Once upon a time, life was much harder and more violent than it is now. To the people at the time, the act of sacrificing one person to empower magics that might prevent the deaths of a dozen others was often seen as a clear and obvious good. As society grew more stable, this argument grew weaker and weaker, until human sacrifice was finally determined to be inherently immoral without exception. I do wonder how even people among the Light would feel about it if they were forced to make the same choices the people of the past did, but that's another matter.

I didn't truly expect you to care about Warren's death. I simply find your blunt apathy about the lives and deaths of others, just how little you care that I've personally murdered people, to be quite precious. Sort of like a wolf cub — it will grow to be a fierce predator in time, but for now it's small and fuzzy and adorable.

The Davises in my time didn't particularly mind muggleborns. Perhaps it would have been a different story if Julie planned to marry one, but her family hadn't any objections to our friendship.

Some of the information coming out of Gaunt's headquarters is rather fascinating — so far I've only seen what's been announced in the papers, I'll admit I'm looking forward to the day the researchers involved begin to publish their findings.

Of course I knew whores growing up. My orphanage was in the East End, and it's not unusual for impoverished women to turn to prostitution to support themselves, so there were plenty around. It's not the sort of thing most would speak of to a child, but it's difficult to hide things from a mind mage.

Prostitution is perfectly legal in magical Britain, of course. You could find whores pretty quickly just walking around the poorer areas of Charing, if you wanted.

I'm assuming "cinema" is the British term for "movie theatre" — I'm in America right now, that's what they're called here. ("Theater", technically, but I dislike spelling words incorrectly.) I saw a movie called "The Fugitive" a few weeks ago and...that was an experience. I don't mean that in a bad way, it was rather exhilarating, in fact, though if loud noises bother you I can understand why you wouldn't enjoy it. I'm going to another with the man I'm seeing next week, but supposedly it's a romance, so we'll see how that one goes.

Tamsyn

፠

Tamsyn

That mind mages have problems with transfiguration doesn't make it any less annoying. I mean, I wouldn't choose to not be a mind mage anymore, but still. It doesn't help that McGonagall is such a bitch, I can't wait until the OWLs are done and I don't have to deal with that class anymore.

No offence, old lady, but if I did decide I wanted to try to get with someone, I'd pick someone who isn't so fucking creepy.

I haven't really thought that much about what I'd do after school — the thought of being an adult and doing adult things is just so weird to me, like it's not quite real. But I guess doing like academic stuff forever doesn't sound like it would be horrible. I mean, I like reading and learning stuff, why the fuck not? It's not like I have any better ideas right now.

I am taking Arithmancy and Runes already, but I don't think I'm really great with maths. Charms and Potions are my best subjects though, so.

Yeah, I already have a seat on the Wizengamot, and I kind of doubt I'll ever want to bother with that shite. Luckily I can just pick someone to deal with it for me, because it sounds extremely tedious.

Holy crap, the Gaunts are gross. You're lucky you don't have extra toes or something. Or, I guess I haven't paid any attention to your feet before, maybe you do for all I know!

(I'm joking, obviously, I'm just saying, that's fucking mad. Ha, "fucking mad"...)

This might be another Liz-doesn't-get-people moment, but why should it matter if you were conceived by rape? I mean, would you rather it didn't happen at all, and you didn't exist? And, by definition it was something that happened before you were born, I don't really get why that should make any difference to you. But hey, I've been told several times my parents were happily married, so maybe I just don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Okay, wild magic is so neat — the earth can do accidental magic, I dare anyone to tell me that's not the coolest fucking thing ever. I don't think I'll ever get over how great magic is, I love it.

I think I might have magesight, actually? Feeling magic, like it's a physical texture pressed against my skin, is just normal, and sometimes there's a taste or a sound to it too. I didn't realise that isn't what it's like for everybody.

I continue to hate transfiguration, just because we're talking about the theory of some neat magical trait people can have doesn't make it any better.

Would this self-transfigurability thing make doing transfiguration easier? My father was an animagus, so maybe I inherited it and it just never activated — if that could make transfiguration less terrible, it might be worth figuring out the blood alchemy.

Psychometry sounds kind of cool, but at the same time I'd probably get tired of being stuck with it all the time very quickly. I'd much prefer just being able to do divination when I feel like it. Which, I've definitely figured scrying out, it was really very easy, I should start trying the shite in that other book I got...

Yes, send me that lineage test potion, please. I'll tell you where the parseltongue comes from when I get it — I have no better idea than you do, though one of my friends is convinced it's from my mother.

I actually had no idea Severus is the youngest alchemist in British history. I don't know if I've ever even seen him do alchemy before, it's always just potions. I can definitely believe it, though, I swear that awkward dork knows fucking everything...

I'm not really sure if I ever "got him to like me", it's kind of complicated. He only demanded I move in with him because he thought Sirius might hurt me or something, or the only reason he cared in the first place is because my mother was his best friend when they were kids — it's really more about her than it is about me, you know, doing what she would want him to do.

Or that's how it started, but now I'm not really sure? I'm definitely not an expert on human emotion, but he actually seems to care, maybe? It's not nearly as obvious as my friends, he's not all like warm and squishy or whatever, and he's such an awkward dork, but I've been getting a vague feeling along those lines lately. And I have no idea how to feel about that, it's seriously fucking weird. I definitely didn't try to make him like me, I really have no idea what's happening, so.

Yeah, friends are weird, but I've been trying to just play along too. Sometimes it's just more difficult than others. Especially when we're explicitly talking about being friends, or something, or when there's hugging. I don't get hugging, it's uncomfortable.

I'll have to take your word on the sex stuff. Still seems gross to me but, well, thirteen, hormones, whatever.

I'm kind of hoping I don't end up being interested in it, honestly. I've been thinking recently, with the curse scars I have all over my chest, that I might just not grow tits at all. I have the feeling I'm going to be kind of ugly, or at least un-sexy, and I tend to make people really uncomfortable, so I'll probably have trouble finding people who'd want to do it with me. I mean, without using compulsions, but mind-raping people so I can get laid sounds like it'd be a bad idea.

Romance, though, sounds like playing along with the friendship thing, but much, much worse. No thank you.

* Tamsyn's got a boyfriend * Tamsyn's got a boyfriend *

I learned how to read music in primary, but that was ages ago, and I've never had to draw the notes before. It took multiple tries on a piece of scrap paper to get them to look right. I hope you appreciate the effort I put into that teasing, because I certainly feel like I wasted my time.

Yes, thank you, Tamsyn, your completely unnecessary advice has been noted. I will definitely keep this in mind for my nonexistent love life.

Less sarcastically, thank you for explaining how cousins work. I swear, I've asked people multiple times, and nobody ever explained it that clearly. That makes sense, I'm good now.

There were bedrooms for mistresses or whatever at the Potter manor place, which I just thought was really bloody weird? I mean, you're already married to someone, what do you need a mistress for? Also, the lord and the lady and the mistress having separate bedrooms is also bloody weird — aren't they sleeping together, what the hell do they need so many beds for? I really don't get it.

Anyway, yeah, I don't get the thing with you and Andy and Éloïse (ugh, French), the whole three-person relationship, but whatever. I don't get a lot of things people do, I don't need to understand it. I mean, I also don't really get sex and romance to begin with, it's just another layer of not getting it on top of that. But whatever, I guess, if you lot had fun with that, I don't really care.

Yes, Tamsyn, you went on far too bloody long about fascism. I mean, sure, the explanation was nice, if only so I know what the hell people are talking about, but that was kind of too much.

Also, you kind of didn't need to go on that long about racism either, just had to say I was right about them understanding evolution wrong and move on. Honestly, Tamsyn, you babble on even more about nerdy shite than Severus does, it's very silly.

Veela and lilin sound kind of neat I guess, but I don't really care. Definitely send me the names of those books about Avalon, though — I still think it's wild that fairies are real.

I don't entirely get the ritual sacrifice not being moral anymore thing. Isn't one person dying to save twelve still a good deal, no matter how less fucked up life is now?

You do realise how very condescending you're being with the "small and fuzzy and adorable" stuff.

I didn't even realise what they're doing down under the castle with Gaunt's stuff was being talked about in the papers. I don't read the paper, things they've written about me have annoyed me too many times.

Okay, why the hell would I wander around Charing looking for prostitutes? You're bloody weird, Tamsyn.

Ha ha, Americans can't spell, I don't know why that's so funny to me. Also, "movie" is a stupid word, it's film.

No snogging in the cinema. I hear people find that really annoying.

Also, romance films sound terrible. I guess if the film is so bloody boring you have to resort to snogging, that's understandable. Though snogging seems kinda gross, so I'm not sure why you'd do that anyway, but thirteen, hormones, what do I know.

Elizabeth

፠

Elizabeth

I would suggest you continue Transfiguration after OWL-level, since there are very important topics covered in the NEWT course and you'll be cutting yourself off from entire fields of study, but if you truly despise the subject so much I won't try to convince you otherwise.

Only a few letters ago you were insisting I'm not that much older than you, and now you're calling me "old lady" — giving me whiplash here, Liz.

If I'm being honest, the thought of growing up never seemed quite real to me either, but here I am at the magical equivalent of university, pretending to be an adult. Still sixteen, despite having spent fifty years trapped in a book. My life really is quite strange sometimes.

It's all right if you don't know what you want to do right out of Hogwarts. You don't have to worry about finding a career you can support yourself with, and you have plenty of time to figure it out — mages live even longer than muggles, so you have even more time than you might realise. I wouldn't worry about it. I'm not, and I have a few years on you.

Charms was my best subject too. I didn't enjoy Potions, personally, but I made sure I did the best I could in that class anyway — our Head of House was also the Professor of Potions.

I'm actually in a Mastery program for European charms and enchanting — I'm at an American school, so they specify that it's Old World magic — which involves a lot of Arithmancy. If you're having difficulty with any of the maths involved, I wouldn't mind. It wouldn't even be out of the ordinary for my day-to-day, they have teaching requirements here.

The original Tamsyn met the last Gaunt (my uncle) and my muggle father, and shared the memories with me. I don't have any extra toes, but suffice to say I feel very, very fortunate that I take after my father.

I suppose it doesn't really make any difference how I was conceived. It seems very foolish now, but I had this whole story in my head, involving old families and tragic lovers and betrayal and being sent away to hide me from enemies — like something out of Greek myth or Shakespeare or something, all very silly. But no. My mother was from an old family, yes, but was destitute, abused and demeaned for her lack of magic, out of desperation to escape her lot in life ensnared a wealthy, pretty muggle man with a love potion, only to inevitably lose him when she ran out of ingredients. It was terribly disappointing when I found out the truth.

Which was very silly, the original Tamsyn wrote to me about how stupid and childish we are, but it is what it is.

I'll admit, I've never gotten over how amazing magic is either. I always found it somewhat baffling how incurious and unaffected by it all my magic-raised peers could be. I've never understood that attitude, and I doubt I ever will.

That could well be magesight you describe, if in a relatively innocuous expression. I can't say so for certain without certain soul analytics.

Actually, I'm not sure whether having the self-transfigurability trait would make it easier for you to perform transfiguration. I think it might be worth going through a blood alchemic procedure just to find out, especially if you intend to try it anyway.

If you can scry reliably, you've already progressed further in divination than I ever have. As I understand it, purely on a theoretical level, divining the past is both more difficult and less accurate than scrying the present. You'll have to tell me how that works out.

I'm curious, what is scrying actually like? I've never managed it myself, and the accounts I've read come off like so much spiritualist navel-gazing.

I've made a note to send you a copy of the instructions for a lineage test once I track it down. The Western literature at this school's library is somewhat limited, I may end up needing to make a trip to Europe to find it.

Ah, I didn't realise Severus and your mother were close. That may have been a factor in the beginning, of course, but relationships begin for all sorts of reasons, and go through all sorts of developments. What it was in the beginning need not be what it is now. Regardless of his reasoning behind inviting you into his home, that he agreed to take legal responsibility for you is something quite else, and reflective of more personal investment. I imagine if he's inserting himself into your life out of some sense of responsibility to your mother, that relationship would seem as avuncular to me, and I see no reason it shouldn't be considered in those terms.

Though I'm afraid I can't give you advice in this particular area. There were no adults in my life, not really. I've never had an uncle before, so I really don't know what I could say to help you work out what's going on with him.

Yeah, hugging is weird. I still don't get that one either, honestly.

There are a few things I want to say about your scars. This might seem at first glance like I'm dismissing your concerns, but do continue to read on, and you'll see I'm truly not: I really don't think you have to worry about it.

Let's say, for argument's sake, that your fears are correct, and the scars you bear prevent you from growing breasts. This would not be the end of the world. The human experience is a messy, complicated, and unpredictable thing, our sexuality no different than any other aspect of ourselves. While some people do fixate on a woman's breasts, I've always found this peculiar, personally. Women I've found attractive, it's honestly not something I've paid that much attention to.

And I'm certain this isn't just Tamsyn being strange again. I am a mind mage, I've noticed what people find attractive in each other, and especially in myself — it's kind of hard to not pick up on things when you're talking with someone having explicit sexual fantasies about you.

It's not truly possible to quantify what exactly causes one person to be attracted to another. There are a multitude of factors involved, some of them entirely unconscious, and these factors vary wildly person to person. For some people, might a lack of breast development put them off when they might otherwise have been interested? Sure, maybe. But for others, it might not be a factor at all.

I know it wouldn't be for me. Now, don't interpret this as me making a pass at you — as I've teased before, you're too young for me. But, contemplating the possibility, if there were a woman I found compelling, and I learned she hadn't any breasts due to cursed scars across her chest, would that make any difference to me? I seriously doubt it. If anything, I might find her more fascinating than I did a moment before, but I'll admit my interest in harmful magics and their effects on the human body is hardly ordinary.

Though, a similar impulse isn't entirely unusual — there are plenty of people out there who think scars are sexy. It's a cliché and everything.

I'm being perfectly honest here, Liz, I really don't think you have anything to worry about in this regard. You're still young, so I can't be certain how exactly you'll turn out, but you have a lovely face — hardly soft, of course, but dramatic and striking in the way of much of the British nobility (go compare yourself against some of the paintings in the halls, you'll see what I mean) — and I don't expect that to change. And you're athletic and intelligent, not to mention magically powerful and wealthy and, quite literally, the single most famous person in the country. I don't expect you'll have any trouble "getting laid" if you want to, not at all.

However, you can do something about this if you decide you want to. You shouldn't do it out of a desire to please others — you're pleasant enough without, and also they can go to hell — but if your scars bother you so badly, you can have them removed and replaced with healthy tissue. This sort of thing is an extremely involved blood alchemic procedure, you would have to go to an expert, but large-scale deep tissue reconstruction like that is done all the time on the Continent. I'm not certain what limitations or prerequisites might be involved, but there must be a practising medical blood alchemist who'd be willing to help you with that, if it's what you decide you want.

You could, but I honestly don't think that's necessary. You're lovely the way you are, Liz, you truly are.

But if you are unhappy with your appearance now, in aspects besides those scars of yours, there are things that can be done about that too. You'd be surprised how much of a difference small changes can make. There is advice I can give you in this arena, if you like — concerning how you dress, how you manage your hair, cosmetics, that sort of thing. I realise that would be very far afield from what we usually discuss in these letters of ours, but it would be no bother for my part.

Though you mustn't underestimate how important the way you hold yourself and how you speak can be, and those are much more difficult to communicate in writing. For those we'd need to speak in person.

If these thoughts persist in troubling you, you really should try to talk to your friends about it. Believe me, I understand how difficult it can be to give voice to your insecurities — I don't know about you, but when I was a child displaying weakness risked someone taking advantage of that weakness immediately. But one of the things I discovered having friends for the first time in my life was that positive reinforcement is a hell of a thing. Helping each other with these sort of problems is one of the things friends do for each other, Liz. Talk to your friends about what troubles you, I promise it will help, or at the very least it won't make anything worse.

Putting little music notes in your letter like that is really quite adorable, so I suppose they were worth the effort. I don't think that was your intention, but it's what you ended up with, so I suppose you'll just have to live with that.

Though, when I wrote my last letter, I doubt I would have called him my boyfriend — you'll notice I never used the word. But after that date I mentioned in my last letter I spent the night at his flat (though they don't call them that here, Americans), and in the morning we talked about it, and we came to an agreement on the matter. Or, to put it in other terms:

* Tamsyn's got a boyfriend * Tamsyn's got a boyfriend *

Those are the same notes you used, because clearly I should be singing the same melody. And I hope you appreciate the effort that I put into that, because I never learned how to read music — I only vaguely remember what written music looks like from the hymnals at church.

People tend to have the most trouble explaining concepts they're the most familiar with. The purebloods at Hogwarts are accustomed to keeping track of how exactly they're related to any number of acquaintances, so the minutiae of terminology to describe kinship is so familiar to them that the need to have these ideas explained is entirely foreign. I'd never had any cousins before, or even really heard people discuss such things, so it was entirely new to me. I figured it out by stealing the knowledge out of someone's mind, I think.

Marriages among the magical nobility are almost always arranged — such is frequent in the commons as well, in fact. Marriage is, in many ways, considered to be more like a business agreement than the affair of the heart you're familiar with from muggle culture. It's an arrangement between the two families involved, concerning the couple themselves, yes, but there are also often economic deals, trade agreements or the passing of certain property, the forging of alliances in politics — and, in earlier times, in war. It is considered ideal for the couple to be compatible, at least enough that they are capable of being friendly, but that is a lesser concern, and matters so ephemeral as "love" don't even enter into the equation.

Under these circumstances, it shouldn't be such a surprise that people sometimes feel the need to have other lovers — especially since even homosexual mages are expected to consent to a "proper" marriage, for appearances' sake if nothing else. Such arrangements are not universal, but they are very, very common. Paramours being invited to live in the home with the family is somewhat unusual, though. It does still happen, of course, but quietly, it isn't the sort of thing people speak of in public — it's assumed that many married mages have lovers beyond their spouse, but it's considered scandalous to flaunt it. Having one openly join the household is something that will circulate in gossip for years.

A married couple each having their own bedroom is far easier to explain, I should think. Certainly you could understand why someone might wish to have their own space. It's typical among people who have the means to afford the space for married couples to sleep apart — couples sleeping in the same bed is considered an indication of lower-class sensibilities among the nobility and the more wealthy commoners.

Actually, I've heard it's really common for noble couples to have sex on sofas and divans and the like. Beds are for sleeping, and married couples generally aren't expected to share them.

I was never in one of these three-person relationships, that was the original Tamsyn — I think I only ever met Éloïse the once. (She attended Beauxbatons, we met at the Malfoys' Solstice party the winter of my fifth year.) I admit I find the concept fascinating, though, I'll likely end up trying it sometime.

Yes, sorry about the overlong fascism ramble. I've always found political theory interesting.

Given Snape is one of the most important people in your life, I choose to interpret the comparison as a compliment.

On the topic of ritual sacrifice, I expect while most would consider trading one life for a dozen to be morally just, the sacrifice itself is still murder and inherently unjustifiable. The act of the sacrifice itself is immoral, regardless of the ritual's effects.

Killing an opponent in war is permissible, of course — I didn't say their morality isn't inconsistent.

I assure you, Liz, I didn't intend to condescend to you with the comparison to a wolf cub. You are "small and fuzzy and adorable" — these adjective are descriptive, and accurate, and in no way meant to be demeaning. It's simply the truth, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do about it. Sometimes, we simply must play the hand Fate has dealt us.

I was under the impression you enjoyed understanding things. The truth of how society functions can't be learned from a book, you must see it for yourself, you must experience it. The more perspectives you see the world from, the more complete your understanding. If you wanted to come to understand the lives of the poor in the magical world, you might, for example, walk around Charing and speak with prostitutes.

I was given to understand "film" is the material a "movie" is printed on. Perhaps this is another example of words being used differently over here.

We did snog during the show, in fact. I'm a rebel like that.

Tamsyn

Wow, those letters went on way too fucking long, what is wrong with me. By the way, the asterisks with "Tamsyn's got a boyfriend" were originally music notes, stupid things won't display.

Anyway, the little bit of news I mentioned. The entirety of third year is planned now, barring any changes to the plan that might come up. And it's going to be fucking long — a lot of shit happens in third year. Right now, I have at least thirty scenes planned, might be a little more than that if I decide to split the POV on a couple of them. I can't guess how many chapters that will be, but it should be ten at the absolute minimum, but almost certainly more than that. Including the summer stuff, third year should actually be longer than fourth year, and probably fifth year too. Lots of shit going on.

Also, there were originally plans to include Luna in this fic, but she's been cut. Sorry, Luna fans.

That's all I've got. Hope you enjoyed Tamsyn's sociopathic big sister energy as much as I did. Until next time.