Prof. Adrian Meade
August 20, 2013 4:15 AM
I spy with my little eye or something [1-2 years] by Prof. Adrian Meade
Christmas holidays had come and gone, and the COMC professor was back at Sonora resuming his duties as the shaper of the younglings minds. The dark-haired middle-aged man smirked at the memories of his winter holidays before grabbing his notes to start his beginners class. After the long days of family and community events it was nice to be back to the school routine where his sole responsibility was his students and nothing else. Adrian liked the fact that he didn’t have to cook or do his laundry since the praire-elves were nice enough to help him with those tasks that he never been particularly fond of. If he thought about it, it wasn’t that much of a hassle since magic did everything, but the idea of keeping a tight shop in his apartment was foreign to him. He swore that if the praire-elves didn’t help out he would be living in a mountain top of dirty socks.Adrian yawned as he made sure everything was set in his classroom for the children. While he put together his class he came across a small creature he had completely forgotten it existed. It wasn’t dangerous, but it was necessary for them to know every kind of creature the magical world had to offer.
After a few minutes of Adrian mulling over his class, the students began to pile in. The beginner´s were by far his largest class, so it was important for them to follow the rules of it. It was for their well being, of course, but some students tended to do things without thinking. It was part of their age range, he supposed, but safety was always first. He didn’t even want to think what could happen if one was injured during his class. The mountain top of paperwork involved was already giving him a headache, and Adrian hadn’t even begun to think how the Headmistress would react to such an accident.
“I hope you had a good winter holiday!” he greeted them with a smile on his face like it was customary. Adrian had never been a grumpy man and it showed on his facial expressions. He waited until the last student sat down. For the class he had arranged all the desks in a circle with an enlarged Aquarium filled with sand and some pieces of some old cauldrons and even broken wands. Adrian had provided each desk with a magical magnifying glass. The creature they were about to study was very small, a parasite.
“Now that everyone is here and willing to jump-start your brain again let’s start with today´s lesson!” he chirped with a laugh. “The creature that is entrapped on the Aquarium is called Chizpurfle.” He waited for the information to sink on their young minds.
“Now, for you to see them you will need the magnifying glass on top of the desk, but before you can observe them let me tell you something real quick about these pesky parasites.
“A Chizpurfle is a type of very small parasite. Crab-like in appearance, they are up to a twentieth of an inch with fangs. Magic attracts them and they are commonly found in the fur and feathers of Crups andAugureys
They attack magical objects like wands and cauldrons, gnawing through to the magical core or gorging on the last remnants of potions. In the absence of magic, Chizpurfles attack Muggle items powered byelectricity. This explains the sudden failure of various new electrical goods.
Chizpurfle infestations are usually easily handled by patented potionson the market, but more severe infestations need to be dealt with by the Pest Sub-Division of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures”
Adrian smiled as he finished his own lecture. “I want you to work in teams to create a realistic drawing of the Chizpurfle and show every part of their body along an essay on it. You know the drill by now, you can look at them make notes on it and work the rest of the class on your assignment. I am always here if you need it.”
Adrian knew that he might get bored of this, but they needed to understand the theory before going any further, besides the more advanced classes weren’t as tedious as this group…or so he hoped.
OOC: Posting rules apply. Have fun! If you need Adrian tag him. Also, PLEASE be super nice and add your house next to you name to make things easier for me when its time to count points!
Subthreads: Something beginning with A (tag Adam) by Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren with Adam Spencer, Pecari, Adam Spencer
Ew, ew, ew! by Julian Umland, Teppenpaw with Keme RunningBear, Aladren
Feeling very grown up (and a little grossed out) by Ji-Eun Park, Pecari
Something not cute! by Virginia Bellrose, Crotalus with Dimitri Porter. Teppenpaw, Ginny
"Or something" indeed by Malcolm Carey, Pecari
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Prof. Adrian Meade
I spy with my little eye or something [1-2 years]
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Prof. Adrian Meade
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Julian Umland, Teppenpaw
August 21, 2013 11:09 PM
Ew, ew, ew! by Julian Umland, Teppenpaw
Julian had indeed, aside from one squabble when John spilled orange juice on both a new white coat and a book and he’d insisted she’d overreacted since Mom had been able to sort it out in just a few minutes, had a pleasant Christmas break and smiled back enthusiastically at Professor Meade when he said he hoped the class had done so. Truth to be told, his class wasn’t her best – she spent outdoor lessons in the spring sneezing on and off, and wasn’t well-coordinated enough to really be good at handling creatures which moved faster than Flobberworms – but she did her best, and liked her professor of the past year and a half very much. Professor Meade’s enthusiasm couldn’t help but cast a better light on his chosen subject, no more than Julian could help being more enthusiastic in an attempt to keep up.Today, she couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy about the classroom décor – one too many issues with magical objects going out of use around the house when she was little, she guessed – but trusted the school not to throw them into anything more dangerous than they could really handle. Injuries were inevitable, there were waivers and all because they could hardly learn Defense Against the Dark Arts without getting jinxed a few times and other classes were going to have accidents and things, but nothing fatal. Killing too many of the students…sort of defeated the purpose of a school, really. Dead kids didn’t make very productive citizens.
When she heard what the thing they were going to look at was, though, she wrinkled her nose. Bugs in general didn’t bother her that much – one too many brothers for that one, she guessed – but anything which could be called a parasite did. It just made her skin crawl, as though just hearing about it or seeing it, or even a picture of it, could allow it to get on her somehow. She scratched her arm as the assignment was given, sliding her hand beneath the sleeves of her robe and her shirt to get to it.
Looking through the magnifying glass, she looked around for a bit before she saw what she was after, or thought she did, at the edge of a cauldron. “Ugh,” she said, sitting back very fast when it moved. “Ew, ew, ew, I don’t like it,” she complained to her neighbor.
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Julian Umland, Teppenpaw
Ew, ew, ew!
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Julian Umland, Teppenpaw
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Keme RunningBear, Aladren
August 24, 2013 6:13 PM
I see you like them! by Keme RunningBear, Aladren
Keme’s time at home had been well spent. Much of the holiday he had spent with his friends outside playing games in the snow. He also helped out his parents whenever they needed him and spent time with the Chief during the ceremonies. Keme was not to be the next Chief of the tribe or any future Chief of the tribe. That belonged to the eldest son of the eldest son, which was his much older cousin. This did not bother Keme. Sometimes, people would ask Keme if he was ever jealous of his cousin, but Keme would simply ask why would he be? If it was not his cousin, then it would be the first son of the second son, which Keme was not. That was his other cousin. Keme was the first son of the fourth son, so there were plenty of people before him to take the place, therefore, Keme never thought the seat was his to begin with. Besides, Keme did not like the idea of running the tribe. He saw how complicated it was and how weary his grandfather had become after taking the seat. Keme did not want that.Now back in school, Keme was back to his quiet self and just taking in the scenery. He was still trying to get used to the students at this school. They were all so very different than his friends back home. What they did for fun didn’t really fit in with what he did. What they were tutored in was not at all what he was tutored in. His tribe had ceremonies and traditions that were upheld, spiritual enlightenments, rites of passage that someday he would take. These were things that he could not share with the others here. They had their own ceremonies and weird rites of passage, but it did not hold the same validity as he felt his tribes did. Not that he tried to compare. They were simply, apples and oranges.
The Care of Magical Creatures professor was always excited about his job, which always made Keme interested in what he had to teach. Even something as trivial as a parasite. Keme knew these Chizpurfles could do terrible with magical items, but he also understood the need to learn about them. By being able to identify the parasite would be useful in case anything were to happen to his wand or cauldron or a number of other magical items.
After taking the appropriate notes, Keme put those aside and pulled out a new sheet of parchment for the assignment. Taking his magnifying glass up to the tank, Keme found a spot that was adequate enough for him to see the creatures and do his work. He studied them carefully through the glass and took detailed notes of what he saw in order to be able to accurately do the lesson. He was about to start the sketching when the girl beside him, Julian, sat back quickly and indicated her dislike for the things. This reaction amused him a little, but he tried not to let that show when he looked at her. “They are in a tank, they cannot hurt you.”
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Keme RunningBear, Aladren
I see you like them!
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Keme RunningBear, Aladren
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Julian U.
August 26, 2013 12:37 PM
I say "Eee! Pretty!" when I don't like things. by Julian U.
At the sound of reason and good sense from Keme, Julian made a face. “Yes, I know,” she said. “But I don’t like things with pincers. And since I can only see them through the magnifying glass, now I’m going to think they’re secretly everywhere and trying to eat my wand or something.”Reason and good sense, of course, suggested that this was not terribly likely, as the school was reasonably clean and she didn’t remember hearing the story of such a calamity befalling anyone here in the year and a half she’d been a student, but when they were right there, and some of them, undetected by normal eyes, might slip out somehow at any second…well, maybe some people could help thinking about it, but Julian didn’t think she could. She just wasn’t that reasonable.
“I hope I didn’t just make you start thinking of that if you weren’t already thinking of that,” she added, since he had seemed unbothered by the idea of them attacking his wand before that. Aladrens were supposed to be logical, but she wasn’t sure if that would involve thinking of this kind of thing or not doing so, given the circumstances and what it was chizpurfles did.
One thing was for sure, she was going to scour her cauldron as soon as she got back to it and had a chance. It was clean anyway (it was, she thought, impossible to live too long with her mom and not pick up a desire for things to be clean, or at least shame if they were not; her older brothers might make a mess when Mom was out, or socks on the bathroom floor overnight once in a while, but they could almost always be seen furtively picking it all up again soon, looking embarrassed as they did), but the thought of gigantic, potion-engorged chizpurfles made her want it to be so clean she could sell it as new and no one ever know the difference. Not that she’d ever do something so dishonest, of course, that was practically stealing in a way, but that wasn’t the point. That cauldron was going to sparkle in the light like a diamond one by the time she was through with it, and her wand was going to be polished to an equally brilliant gleam, as though it were made of gold instead of just birch wood.
She wondered if this squeamishness and inability to get the image of the chizpurfles out of her head would last until she went home for Easter. If so, she might briefly end up the most popular member of the whole family, or else the one who annoyed everyone else most. Better to see if it really lasted her all the way back to the dorm, though, before she started planning for any of those eventualities.
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Julian U.
I say "Eee! Pretty!" when I don't like things.
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Julian U.
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Keme
August 29, 2013 10:05 PM
That makes total sense. by Keme
Although it was not necessarily within his nature to do so, Keme found himself chuckling a little at Julian. He hadn’t meant to and he hoped that he didn’t offend her, but it found it amusing that it was only after coming face to face (per se) with one of the parasites that she feared they were everywhere. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that they were likely to be everywhere. Especially since this was a magical school. Magic was what drew them to places, a school would be an obvious place. Of course, he was sure their groundskeeper kept up with keeping them out as much as he could just as he would any other pest, but there were bound to get a few that bunkered down here.“We had an infestation in the tribe before. It’s not completely strange for places of large populations of magical beings to get them. They were easy enough to rid of as the Chief was able to figure out what the issue was and it was taken care of before it became too much.” Keme told her, seeming unimpressed by the story he told. “I wouldn’t worry too much at this point. They would have means to protect against the parasite and if there happened to be any around, the necessary equipment to get rid of them.”
Keme was probably talking too much and not being helpful at all to her woes of the situation, but he just didn’t see the reason to be so disturbed by the things. People slept on beds that had bugs on them that were naked to the eye. As long as they were washed regularly, which the school beddings were, then the bugs would be killed and the bed free until the next herd made their way in. He would not mention this to Julian though out of fear he would keep her from sleeping peacefully for the remainder of her life.
“Are you going to write about how disgusted you are with them as living creatures?” Keme asked in all seriousness. He didn’t really see what the purpose of these creatures were to the world any more than he could understand any other parasite’s purpose, so writing an essay on them would be a challenge for him. If he knew their reasons or helpfulness, he’d be able to easily write something. But, these things were just pests and so, he wasn’t sure if he could find enough about them to write a great paper on them.
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Keme
That makes total sense.
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Keme
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Julian U.
August 30, 2013 2:48 PM
So why does it always make people look at me funny? by Julian U.
Julian couldn’t help but laugh, too, when Keme clearly found her ridiculous. She even knew she was being ridiculous, it just didn’t bother her because, well, life was ridiculous. Everything about it. According to her dad, life only happened because God had a sense of humor.Admittedly, Dad had probably not meant that God intended for her only to think about things when they were shoved in her face, as with the chizpurfles – more likely, she thought, her parents would take the opportunity to point out the theological implications of only thinking about unpleasant things when it couldn’t be helped, and instruct her to do better in future, which she would…probably not do, but at least feel bad about when it did occur to her – but the point stood, she thought. It was just silly. Gross and unpleasant and the kind of thing that made it hard to sleep once in a while because it felt like her whole skin was crawling, but silly. Might as well laugh about it as do anything else.
“Of course,” she agreed. “I know it’s not, like, a whole nest of ashwinders in a wood house or anything.” Those had occurred in her home once, though thankfully they’d noticed quickly enough, and didn’t live in an overly-woody house. The basement wall had gotten a little scorched before Dad got to the last one, but it was stone anyway. Dad had gotten yelled at anyway, though, since he’d been the one who’d left the fire unattended after making potions in the first place. “It’s just sort of gross to look at.”
Julian wasn’t sure what his tone meant, exactly, about his stance on whether or not it was acceptable to write about being disgusted by things as living creatures, but shook her head. “No,” she said. “They’re not my favorites, but I’m sure there’s something good about them, why they exist. Everything has.” She noticed she’d said that a bit firmly and moved on before she blushed. “Besides, if my brothers found out about it – and I know they would – they’d never let me live it down about being such a girl,” she added with a laugh. “Do you have any siblings, Keme?”
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Julian U.
So why does it always make people look at me funny?
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Julian U.
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Keme
August 31, 2013 7:22 PM
They probably do not agree. by Keme
Keme agreed, Ashwinders would be far worse than a nest of Chizpurfle in a house. Thankfully, they had never had any sort of Ashwinder catastrophe happened in the lands. They were very careful about making sure the fires were out at night before anyone went to sleep. If they had an infestation, they could lose their entire livelihood and then what would his people do? At least magical items could be replaced if Chizpurfles were around. Their livelihood would take decades to rebuild again.“I agree, they are unpleasant to look at.” Keme said when he studied them again. He didn’t think they were the worst thing to look at, but they certainly weren’t unicorns. Girls went crazy over unicorns. He wondered if that lesson would ever come around and, if so, how these girls would react to them. He feared that it would be both amusing and annoying to witness. Something to look forward too, he guessed.
If she figured out their purpose, he would be surprised. The only thing he had ever heard about them was how they were attracted to magic and destroyed what they could when they found the magical core. They were exactly what they were labeled. Pests. Parasites. Nothing more. He could not fathom a purpose for them. But, Julian was right, everything had a purpose.
“I do.” Keme commented. “I have an older sister, KoKo. She goes to school back home.” He told her. KoKo had been fourteen when it had been decided that some of the children would leave the land to go to school, she had already passed the age of eleven and so was safe to stay on the land. She was dating a boy from the land too, so the adults were pleased with her. Keme and KoKo got along just fine. It was only every so often that they fought and less so now that they were both teenagers.
“Your brothers would make fun of you for writing an assignment on finding Chizpurfles disgusting?” Keme asked her while he worked. Keme couldn’t remember any time that he or his sister made fun of one another over something as simple as an assignment and an opinion. Especially an opinion that was held by the majority of the student body. “Do your brothers go to school here too?” He asked her. He didn’t know any of the older students save for those he had been on the challenge team with.
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Keme
They probably do not agree.
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Keme
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Julian U.
September 03, 2013 6:28 PM
Silly people. by Julian U.
"They would," she said, nodding. "Well, John and Joe, the younger ones, anyway. I'm the only girl in the family, so they would say it was because of that." Julian smiled, momentarily mischievous. "Of course, John would probably scream like a girl if one of the big ones got out and came anywhere near him, so I can always think of that."It no doubt helped that Julian herself wasn't much of a princess, since teasing the only sister had to lose a lot of its fun if she was normally turning over rocks or flooding sandbox cities right along with them, but she was glad she had been blessed with brothers who weren't too likely, on the whole, to drop bugs down her back or anything. They could be jealous over her having her own room and argue over silly little things, but they all basically got along, having enough of both the same tastes and dislikes and the abilities to not get too worked up over it when they did not, though Julian never would understand how on earth Stephen could really go a whole year and only read one book. She was too emotional for an Aladren, she guessed, but she didn't think her parents could have done a much more thorough job of passing on the love of reading if they had been her birth mother and father, and Stephen really was Dad's cousin somehow. She, as far as she knew, wasn't a blood relative of anybody's.
She and the other boys were, she thought, really very lucky. With bloodlines and families and inheritances being so important to a lot of people in the magical world, even her Dad's family thought he and Mom were sort of odd ducks for how they'd handled not being able to have children the usual way themselves (actually, Mom's family thought she was weird, too, but they were Muggles and it had more to do, Julian thought, with Mom getting a Master's degree in medieval literature and then marrying a sports journalist, though she had heard Aunt Jessica say a few times that she was sure it wasn't like really having kids and Nana was sure at least one of them was going to go wrong someday and break Mom's heart because bad blood would come out). Stephen, the logic went, was family anyway, it was one thing to take him in, but the rest of them?
"No, " she said, shaking her head about her brothers. "Stephen's finished now, and Paul goes to school at home." The same thing Keme had said about his sister; Julian wondered if KoKo was a Squib, too. There was nothing wrong with being a Squib, of course, but it wasn't what people always just talked about with people they barely knew. Julian would never say so to Paul, she was sure, but she didn't really like talking about it at all, even when she had to. "And Joe and John aren't eleven yet, so they're at home, but John might come here in a few years. Joey's just five, so there's no telling what he'll do." She kept talking as she looked at the chizpurfles again, finding a little distraction helped with being un-disgusted enough to notice the details she had to draw before the class was over. "We live in Canada, but Dad's mom is American, so we're sort of all over the place," she explained. Then, her tone not changing in the slightest as she failed to notice she was abruptly changing channels, "I wish I knew enough about bugs to write about how their thoraxes compared or something."
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Julian U.
Silly people.
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Julian U.
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Keme
September 09, 2013 7:45 PM
Tricks are for kids. by Keme
Keme listened to Julian with great confusion. She had a lot of siblings it seemed. He didn’t think there was a family on his land with more than four children and that was usually rare. Most just had two or three. It also noticed that most of them had ‘J’ names except for apparently the two oldest of the family. He wondered why that was. Second family perhaps? Him and his sister had similar names, but he didn’t think his parents did that with any purpose. He was named Keme as it meant Thunder and they wanted him to be strong. Giving him a name that was about power somehow offered him that strength. He really wasn’t sure why they named KoKo that. It meant night and he had no idea how that was to help her grow.“Oh, did your family decide that you should be the first to leave the lands?” He asked her, curiously. If her older brothers (assuming Stephen went to the school Paul was currently attending) were at another school closer to home, then they must have wanted a reason to have Julian come here instead. “The Chief wanted us to learn the ways of others. Spread our wings, so to speak, so myself and a couple of others who turned eleven that year were chosen to attend school off the lands.” Keme explained as though he and Julian now had something in common.
She shifted conversations quite suddenly back to their task at hand. Keme had forgotten his assignment momentarily while they were conversing and realized his error. Keme returned to his work while he figured out what she was saying. “Thoraxes are for animals and bugs, correct?” Keme asked for confirmation. “This is a parasite. Do parasites also have thoraxes?” Keme did not know much about parasites or bugs for that matter. Animals he was still studying and learning at home to help with his tracking, but he didn’t really learn their anatomy, he learned about their behaviors.
Keme returned to drawing the creature in front of him. “May I ask about your names?” Keme started. “Only the two oldest brothers had names that did not start with ‘J’, why is that? Did they decide they liked the letter after?” It could have been a simple coincidence that three of the five children had ‘J’ names, but he was curious all the same. Perhaps it was not appropriate to ask now that he thought about it. It might have been a personal decision her parents made and not his place to ask. It was too late now though to take it back. “I’m sorry if it was not my place to ask. I was curious and might be crossing personal lines that I should not.”
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Keme
Tricks are for kids.
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Keme
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Julian U.
September 12, 2013 2:17 PM
They're always after me lucky charms. by Julian U.
Julian contemplated his way of describing her border-hopping and translated it into her own idiom as best she could. “Mine was finally up to me,” she said. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t have sent me here if I hadn’t wanted to come – really, Mom would have just as soon homeschooled all of us instead of sending us to school at all – but my oldest brother was unhappy at his school, and he thought I would be if I went there, too.” She shrugged. “Dad’s sister was here, years and years ago, and she said it was a nice enough place and the snobs usually just ignored everyone else, so after we all discussed it, looked at all the options, we decided to give it a try, that’s all.”She blushed when she realized she had wandered back into chizpurfles. “I don’t really know,” she said. “I was assuming they are some kind of insect – they’ve got something called a carapace, because that’s in some potions, but I don’t really know about a thorax. I was just talking. I never paid enough attention when Mom taught us science.” She turned the end of her quill around and around on the edge of her page, then, still feeling embarrassed, tucked her hair back and looked up again. “I’m sorry for just jumping around subjects like that, I wasn’t really thinking.”
Her family was used to putting up with this tendency, which many of them shared, but others were not, and it had surely looked like she was just abruptly changing subjects out of a clear blue sky, which was very rude, even though that had not been her intention.
Julian hesitated for a moment when Keme asked about her siblings’ names and then had to wave it aside when he apologized for doing so. “No, it’s all right,” she said. “Well, Stephen was born on St. Stephen’s Day, and Julian of Norwich – who’s a girl, too – is Mom’s favorite author,” she said. “The others….” She shrugged, deciding to be matter-of-fact about it. “Well, their birth mother named them, and John and Paul don’t like it at all if anyone talks about her, so I don’t really know,” she said. “One time, Paul made a joke about me and Steve being named for saints – which isn't quite right, but that wasn’t the point – and him and John being named for Beatles, but I don’t know if that’s actually why,” she added, probably very unhelpfully. "Do you mind if I ask the same about you and your sister?"
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Julian U.
They're always after me lucky charms.
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Julian U.
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Keme
September 12, 2013 10:13 PM
They're Grrrrrrrrrreat! by Keme
Keme listened with great interest as Julian explained her reasonings for leaving Canada and coming to Sonora. He didn’t really spend much time talking to his classmates, but Julian was proving to be interesting and he did not regret initiating the discussion with her. He hadn’t even took much time to speak with his challenge team mates last term and he had spent the better part of a year with them. Keme really needed to try harder to fit in at this school if he was going to manage to live here for the full seven years.Keme’s mother was too busy handling most of the sales in their shops to bother with homeschooling, but he knew that she had a hard time with him being away. She was honored, of course, that he was one of the few chosen to leave, but she was still his mother and she worried about him. For that, he could understand Julian’s mother not wanting her children to leave home. At least she had a small connection here at the school instead of just falling blindly into it as he had. “What is considered a ‘snob’?” Keme asked her, unsure of what she considered as that. He knew what he did on some aspect, although it wasn’t something he necessarily called ‘bad’ as he was supposed to associate with them more, but he didn’t really like them either. He hoped no one really thought of him that way as it was not his intention.
“Oh, it’s alright.” Keme commented easily, still working on his assignment. “It reminded me to start working, so it wasn’t a terrible thing for you to do. If it helps, I do not know much about any of this either. I can name a bug if I needed to, but identifying its body parts is not something within my knowledge at this time.” Apparently, this would change based on the professor’s methods, but he’d rather prefer to learn about the animals more so than the bugs. Or, in this case, parasites.
Birth mother? Her siblings were adopted? He gathered from her comment that they were of the same mother as well, so he wondered what that meant. “Beetles? They were named for bugs? I think being named after Saints is a much better deal.” Keme commented, looking confused by such a comment. “My parents wanted me to have a powerful name, Keme is the Blackfoot name for Thunder. Thunder is about power and strength. The Chief approved of it. I don’t really know why KoKo was named what she was. It means ‘night’ in Blackfoot. I do not know what my parents intended for that with her. I never thought to ask either, to be honest.” Keme admitted without shame.
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Keme
They're Grrrrrrrrrreat!
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Keme
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Julian U.
September 16, 2013 7:34 PM
Snap, crackle, pop - how bugs sound when stepped on. by Julian U.
“Well…” Julian said, embarrassed again as she realized she had used imprecise, uncharitable language. Not inaccurate, maybe, but probably not the word she should have used. “I guess I mean – people who think, or act like, I guess, since we don’t really know what people think, like they’re better than everyone else,” she said. “People who – well, they wouldn’t like people like my family, because we haven’t, um, got a lot of money, and because we’re not purebloods, as far as I know….”She shrugged slightly. “Stephen’s had an awful time with that sort,” she finished by way of explanation. “We’ve all dealt with them, it’s probably the hardest on Mom since she could be like that if she wanted to in the Muggle world but it’s all different on this side, but Steve had to live with them at school, and I know Mom and Dad were worried he was going to get in real trouble with one of them sooner or later. So we were really hoping that people at Sonora hadn’t stopped just ignoring people they don’t like in the past twenty years.”
So far, she hadn’t had any problems, though goodness knew she had been nervous enough when she’d first met Willow and Gemma. Julian, however, had a very different personality from her older brother – she was a lot better at not sticking out. So she didn’t really know, but was just glad she didn’t have that problem, at least not yet.
“My older younger brother probably could, if he was here,” she said of identifying bug parts. “John loves that kind of thing – in books, anyway. I never got the knack of it, though. It’s too much Greek for me.” John and Julian were almost the intellectual opposites of the family; they both liked Tales from the Odyssey, but beyond that, if she found something interesting, he was likely to find it dull, and vice-versa. Mom and Dad had had to remind them more than once that one way wasn’t necessarily better than the other – it was just different.
Sometimes, Julian wished her parents didn’t have quite as much of a knack for making theological or social points out of everyday incidents like John and Julian arguing (why they did so, Julian had no idea, considering that liking the same books would have been more of a problem, as they only had so many and, given that they also only had so much space, not many redundant copies of things) over books, but it was pretty funny when Stephen or John, who were clever in that way, then turned the tactic back on their parents when they argued or were lazy or anything.
“Still, we’ll find something to do without him,” she added cheerfully. “There has to be something to write about, um, about these things.”
Keme confirmed that the Beatles had not translated. “Well, yes, but the Beatles – B-e-a-t-les, it’s a pun – were a Muggle band,” she said. “Since John Lennon and St. Stephen were both killed, I think Paul and I might have done the best.” She was pretty sure Paul McCartney wasn’t dead, anyway, and while Julian of Norwich wasn’t officially a saint, she had recovered from the illness in which she had her visions. Ghastly things, at least some of them; Mom said she wasn’t old enough to read it yet, but she had sneaked the book, a modern English version, once, and had had nightmares. The text hadn’t been illustrated at all.
The idea of someone other than Keme’s parents having to approve of his name was strange to her. She knew there was a list of names for Muggles in France, or at least thought she had read it once, but even then…however, by the sounds of it, his community was far more, well, communal than any Julian was familiar with. The very idea of her parents’ families trying to tell them to do anything was ludicrous; if it hadn’t been, Mom never would have married Dad in the first place. “Well, there are good things about night,” she offered. “If you’re not afraid of the dark, anyway.” Joe still was, but he would probably outgrow it soon enough.
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Snap, crackle, pop - how bugs sound when stepped on.
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