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Tweak says, "Teeth and claws!"

Stephen Cornfoot (bp_stephen) wrote in breaking_point,
@ 2010-12-08 11:35:00

Entry tags:

*complete, 2025 12, character: alastor moody, character: astoria malfoy, character: audrey odgen, character: bill weasley, character: callum moody, character: caradoc dearborn, character: cassandra urquhart, character: charlie weasley, character: craig lawson, character: dominique weasley, character: dorcas meadowes, character: draco malfoy, character: dylan vaisey, character: edward chambers, character: hannah abbott, character: hermione granger, character: hestia jones, character: jacob selwynn, character: james sirius potter, character: julius rosier, character: józsef khuen von belasi, character: katherine yaxley, character: katie bell, character: lenora walker, character: leopold mayr von melnhof, character: louis weasley, character: lucy weasley, character: marcus flint, character: margot mckinnon, character: marlene mckinnon, character: pansy nott, character: patrick pucey, character: percy weasley, character: regulus black, character: remus lupin, character: ron weasley, character: scorpius malfoy, character: sirius black, character: stephen nott

RP: Lighting Ceremony
Who: Stephen, Pansy, any and all wizards and witches. (add your tags)
Where: Nott Manor
When: December 8 (Post starts around 4 pm, right after sunset) {Pre-dated by 4 days}
Summary: The Nott family is hosting the annual Lighting Ceremony

For centuries, the Nott family had held Lighting Ceremony. It was the one time of the year when bloodlines and money didn't matter; everyone was the same. Even the house elves took part to the celebration and were treated as equal (not that Stephen liked to treat them as slaves the rest of the year), and the ceremony was open to everyone with magical ability. It was one tradition Stephen was quite pleased to uphold, even if it felt strange to do it without his father there.

In the morning, he and his mother had had breakfast together before helping the house elves with the decorations. He probably should have asked Andromeda, but this was family and Andromeda wouldn't be family for much longer. In fact, they barely spoke anymore. If he was truthful, he would have rather invited Azriel, but he didn't think either Azriel or his mother were ready for that, and today it was the Immaculate Conception, a day to honour Mary and mothers. Stephen would not upset his mother unduly.

In the afternoon, they had gone to the chapel for the Mass, before heading off to where the party would be. They had set up, as usual, right in the middle of the park, the only flat land with a perfect view of all the trees. They had created special protections for the dragons to prevent idiots from sneaking into the reserve and getting eaten, although Stephen thought that if they were that stupid, they deserved what they got, but then it would spoil everyone else's Christmas and he couldn't allow that. There was Christmas music echoing through the land and tables set up with hot cider, tea, champagne and lots of food. Everything was self-services as even the house elves had a day off and their own private party from where they could see the lightening of the trees.

At dusk, father Luke said the blessing, and finally when the sun went down, the lights came alive. Every tree in the land lit up creating an amazing game of colours, creating a winter wonderland that would last until the Epiphany. For Stephen, this represented a day of hope, the beginning of a new liturgical year and hopeful of a solar year without so much pin and suffering. Today, the Christmas season began.

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Re: Edward and Hestia

erchambers
2010-12-08 04:36 am UTC (link)

"The Home Office, hm. So, that would make your boss one Hermione Granger?" Shaking his head, Edward laughed inwardly. It would seem they shared a similar time warp. Of course, the information also gave him an idea of when in time she was from, at least generally. If she was only missing twenty years and had known Granger when they were younger, she was likely not too far from them in time.

"I'm in the business of ancient people, actually. Lapsed archaeologist turned freelance antiquities expert. So, I suppose I'm truly in the artifacts left behind by ancient people business." He shrugged thoughtfully. "I never really thought much about the future before, not very far beyond looking at the past's influence on it, really. The future has nothing to teach the present until it's too late. The past has a wealth of information and lessons as yet uncovered. Probably why this future seems so strange. It's somewhat disconnected from the past by the very nature of how we've returned."

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Re: Edward and Hestia

bp_hestia
2010-12-08 04:53 am UTC (link)

"That's correct." Hestia nodded, that was the thing about working in the Ministry, people had a pretty good idea at least of who you were working for in most cases. Hestia was just glad her own job did not require her to spend time with the press, she much preferred to do her work behind a desk. She'd leave the talking about what they did at the Ministry to people like James Potter.

She laughed when he admitted to being in the business of people in a way, but nodded as he explained further. "Oh good, I do appreciate someone with a real profession." She shook her head, as much as Edward had joked about his ego she could respect it more knowing he did actually work, instead of just talked to people at these sort of functions for some kind of work.

"But that seems to be the problem people found themselves in now - no one is interested in the past - or very few are. It seems had they paid more attention they might not have repeated many of the same mistakes we did at one point or another."

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Re: Edward and Hestia

erchambers
2010-12-08 05:50 am UTC (link)

"She would be one of those peers I mentioned. She and Potter and Weasley were a couple years behind me in school." Not that he'd known any of them at all well. But, from his third year on it was impossible not to at least know who they were. Besides, Weasley had been the reason they lost the final match against Gryffindor Edward's last year at school. Pants at Keeper all year and the boy finally figures out what he's doing when Edward was going for his shot.

"Well, now I am flattered. Most non-academics wouldn't consider mucking about in dusty holes looking for shards of broken pots a real job." Oh, Edward was as arrogant and self-important as they came. But, he'd worked hard to get to that point and he wasn't blind enough to think new money meant much of anything to the rest of them. It was part of why he snubbed the snobs as much as those he considered less than his equal.

He shook his head. "I don't think most people of any era are overly interested in the past. If they were, we wouldn't have such clichéd sayings as 'he who ignores the past is doomed to repeat it'. Even those who count their worth by their ancestry tend not to look much farther into the past than their pedigree. It's sad they didn't pay attention, but unsurprising in the long run."

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Re: Edward and Hestia

bp_hestia
2010-12-08 06:39 am UTC (link)

"Oh well now that's just strange." She said laughing, before she pressed her hand to her mouth. She remembered Hermione when she was just a girl, and now apparently Edward had gone to school with her. Yes a few years older, but still it was a bit odd to think that this man who looked near to her age now was someone who could have gone to school with Hermione and her friends - no she would never get used to these sorts of things.

"I'm not sure what else you would call it - 'mucking about in dusty holes' is a bit cumbersome, it's better than what some would consider to be real professions." She assured him. In any case it was entirely surprising that Edward, for all his outward arrogance ever spent time in a hole, dusty or otherwise.

She nodded. "Yes well - I think we demonstrated quite well our inability to learn from the past with the second war, and it seems despite that no one was interested in paying any particular attention. I suppose we'll be doomed to repeat this again at some point. Though I'd like to miss it again if at all possible, I've lived through two wars now I'd prefer not to try and add to that number."

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Re: Edward and Hestia

erchambers
2010-12-08 08:37 pm UTC (link)

"Welcome to the Time Warp. It's a bit of a mind flip." Edward joined in her laughter because, truly, there was little else to be done. They could hardly ask the school to put things back the way they should be. Despite it all, he wasn't sure he'd want to, anyway.

"Personally, I call it fascinating and humbling." He smirked, teasing but semi-serious. "It's more of a quest than a profession. Appraisals, consultations, authentication, that's a profession. Mucking about in dusty holes is something else entirely." The rest gave him money to live well and maintain his own collection of memoires from ancient cultures. But, being on site, brushing aside a bit of earth to reveal a find, that was intoxicating, almost better than a lover's touch on most days.

There wasn't much Edward could say to that. He'd missed all the wars. He had been a toddler when Potter became a legend at age one. He'd been on a dig out of the country when Voldemort took over the country. And, this time, he'd been dead. "Perhaps yet another cliché will prove true and this third time will indeed be the charm," he proposed.

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Re: Edward and Hestia

bp_hestia
2010-12-08 11:23 pm UTC (link)

"It definitely is that." Hestia agreed shaking her head. Just when you felt like you were getting a handle on all of this, something changed, and really there wasn't much else you could do but laugh - well Hestia supposed she could completely close herself off from everything, but she'd never been the type to do that and she wasn't going to let a few missing decades turn her into a shut in.

"Well profession or not, it's far better than somethings you could spend your time doing." Hestia assured him. She found it interesting the way he spoke about it, the two aspects of what Edward did were put into contrast the way he spoke about them. "Do you mind if I ask how you got into something like that?" She wondered.

She laughed and nodded. "One can only hope, we have clichés for a reason after all - they must hold some bit of truth to them." She couldn't rightfully say how much people would change after dealing with yet another war, if they would finally see the ways they had gone wrong or not.

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Re: Edward and Hestia

erchambers
2010-12-09 04:24 pm UTC (link)

"My father, actually. He teaches Anthropology at Oxford Brookes. While my friends were getting 'Hansel and Gretel', I was getting Henry Balfour and Claude Levi-Strauss. Well, and Indiana Jones, of course. Muggle cinema," he clarified, knowing most wizards and witches wouldn't have a clue who the character was. "An adventuring archaeologist, absolutely unrealistic, but fun."

How often had he heard his father rant about Edward's love of those films? Not real archaeology, he'd bellow, which of course they weren't. But, they sparked the imagination of a young boy eager for adventure. "Finding out I was a wizard and learning about how the two worlds used to intersect only capped the early interest, particularly when it seemed so many simply forget pre-Statute of Secrecy history exists. As my interest lied more with finding out the mysteries of the past than how the people of the present worked, I opted to specialise in Archaeology instead of the Cultural Anthropology my father favoured.

"And what about you? What drew you into working at the Ministry?"

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