lydia montgomery. (brusquely) wrote in caged, @ 2013-09-11 23:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 97-09, [ log ], demelza robins, lydia montgomery |
WHO: Demelza Robins and Lydia Montgomery
WHAT: Chatting disapprovingly about the Muggle Studies assignment
WHERE: The library
WHEN: Wednesday 11th Sept, late afternoon
RATING: Low
STATUS: Completed log
Write a brief paragraph or two about mistakes Muggles make, she said. It should be easy, she said. Well Demelza had been in the library for two whole hours and all she had to show for her attempt was: by Demelza Robins And that was it. It should have been easy to regurgitate the crap that Professor Alecto Carrow had recited to them in her Muggles Studies lectures but for Demelza it was hard. And once she opened her journal to take a peek at what some of the others were writing for inspiration and saw some of the essays that her peers were sharing, it was simply impossible. She didn't agree with the things that people like Ernie Macmillan and Sully Burke were saying, and she didn't want to join in on the ignorant diatribes. But she also didn't want to fail Muggle Studies, or to make Professor Carrow angry. But she really didn't want to write the essay. So Demelza invited Lydia to the library for a bit. She shut her journal shortly after penning the invitation, lest she see any more horrible essays about how horrible Muggles were, and waited for Lydia to get there. She doodled a figure on a broom in the parchment's margins, and drew out her wand to animate the cartoon into flying around the corners. Lydia had survived Dark Arts fairly well and had assumed that Muggle Studies would go the same -- she’d told her mum she’d be careful and she’d meant it, but the assignment they’d been given was a whole lot of rubbish. It wasn’t difficult to do the spells required in Dark Arts, it wasn’t difficult to tell the Carrows that magical means of making toast were better because she genuinely believed that. There was a whole world of difference in this assignment, however, and it made her stomach twist with anger. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right to encourage a whole class to condemn muggles so totally for their mistakes, while failing to take account of the ways that they’d flourished and achieved great deeds. It wasn’t right to pretend that the wizarding world was somehow better and their mistakes weren’t as awful and, no matter what, Lydia knew that was the subtext. It was so blatant. She’d agreed to meet Demelza and, angry and frustrated as she was, Lydia tried not to let it show on her face as she approached the library. It wasn’t that successful: she knew her lips were pressed tightly together and her expression was one of irritation. Still, she tried to smooth it out as she slid into the seat across from Demelza, offering her a smile. She glanced at what Demelza had been doing and the smile broadened, her eyes lighting up more genuinely. “Who’s on the broom?” she asked, leaning forward. “Is it you?” Glancing up and seeing Lydia seated across from her, Demelza smiled. "Nah, just somebody," she said, ducking her head bashfully as she quickly scribbled over the doodle. It now resembled a blackened dust mote, or perhaps a tumbleweed, floating dizzily around the edges of the page. Demelza then tucked her quill behind her ear and looked to Lydia again. "So," she said, not really knowing what else to say now that they were together. Did she approach the topic of what had been going on that day? Did she acknowledge their frustrations? Ought she make a joke about it, to diffuse any lingering tensions? Yes, that seemed all right. "Fat load of rubbish today, innit?" She inquired with a tap of her finger at the heading on her paper. “Aww, you didn’t have to scribble it out!” Lydia said, lifting her eyebrows and widening her eyes slightly. She felt bad, like she’d embarrassed Demelza by drawing attention to the doodle, although it was still a bit of a sight, watching the black dot on the page tumble around. She glanced at it a few times as she settled into the chair, hooking her ankles around the legs and pulling it closer to the table. The chair squealed a little against the floor and she looked around apologetically. Chewing on her lip, Lydia’s gaze traced the title of the assignment several times before she let out a noise which started as a sigh and progressed into a snort. “This is so dumb,” she said, shaking her head. “I hate that we’re being asked to do this sort of thing. It’s like an exercise in proving how much better we are because we have a wand. I don’t want to do that.” She glanced up at Demelza then, smiling although it was more an upwards quirk of the mouth rather than any real expression of mirth. Demelza said nothing as Lydia cried out, but merely shrugged. The Carrows probably wouldn't like having doodles on her homework assignments, and it wasn't a very good doodle anyway. But all thoughts of the doodle went away as Lydia began talking about the homework at hand. Demelza nodded in agreement first and then added in hushed tones as befitted a library: "I don't want to do that either. It's nasty, and it's wrong, and I can't believe some of the things that people are saying!" Leaning forward on her elbows, Lydia nodded her head sharply a few times. She didn’t want people to be listening in to everything she said, so she kept her voice pitched low. Her words were just about audible to Demelza, a whisper which blended in with the murmuring coming from the rest of the library. “You mean you don’t think that muggles entire existence is a mistake?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Demelza, but you can’t pass this assignment if you think muggles are people.” The other girl's lip quivered in face of the threat of laughter, and she pressed her lips together to stop them. Her deep dimpled cheeks revealed the truth of it, however, as they always did. "No, I know, but I don't," she answered, finally. There was a moment where Demelza looked as though she were about to speak, but she stopped herself. Demelza may have smothered her laughter, but Lydia could tell it had been there and, in response, she wrinkled her nose. Her smile was wide, eyes dancing with laughter. It was a comfort to be around someone who wasn’t spouting rubbish, who was obviously having problems with the assignment and it made her want to laugh more. She was quiet after Demelza spoke, waiting to see if she’d continue talking but it became clear that she’d decided not to continue talking. “We’re going to have to lie,” she said. Resting her elbow on the desk, she cupped her chin and looked at Demelza for a second, before sighing. “I mean, that’s what this whole class is for anyway. A rote recitation of lies.” Lydia trailed off again and glanced down at the parchment Demelza had written the essay title on again. She wanted to say how much she wished they didn’t have to take the class, that everything was back to the way it had been last year or even the year before, but that was obvious in her mind, and hardly needed repeating. “You’re going to do the assignment, right?” All that Lydia thought to herself, Demelza thought them too. And it was hard for her not to vocalize those thoughts, as she so often said whatever came to mind regardless of whatever company she kept at the time, and she found it so difficult now to keep them to herself in the face of being taught by possible Death Eaters. A shrug answered Lydia's question. Then, eyes wide, lip quivering slightly with a frown, she said, "I know I have to. I just don't know what to say." Lydia watched Demelza’s face change and tried to make her expression look reassuring. She smiled and said, “It’ll be fine. I’m sure if you pick literally anything that they’ve done, you can make it sound like what they want. They just,” she paused and her voice faltered, melting away as Lydia tried to decide what she’d been going to say. She still thought this assignment was ridiculous, but she knew herself, knew the tight band of worry that existed in her chest, knew that she couldn’t stand a failing grade. Even when the assignment was complete wankery. “They just want us to be hateful.” Lydia bit her lip and then flickered her gaze back to Demelza. “Or critical, because criticism of a group can be turned. I suppose it’s fairly easy to be critical of history. What about some big event? You can generally find something to criticise, and if you go back far enough you’ll probably be able to find something other people won’t talk about.” Lydia's words and her expressions were both reassuring and Demelza nodded. "That sounds all right," she said, her mind racing as she tried to pinpoint some historical events within the Muggle world that hadn't been talked about so far. The witch trials were right out, as was the Great World War 2 that had been mentioned with the Nazis, the Troubles with Ireland and… Those were the most prevalent awful historical events that Demelza could recall. She drummed her fingers on the table, accidentally dappling it with ink from her fingertips, but not seeming to notice. She pondered, and wondered, of what she could talk about, until finally the idea came to her. She gasped and oohed at herself and retrieved her quill from behind her ear to scrawl on the parchment: animal poaching! It was a genius idea, really, she thought to herself, since she loved animals so much. It would be all too easy for her to write really passionately about the horrible things that Muggles did to animals in the name of hunting them. She beamed at Lydia then. "I'm gonna write on animal poaching," Demelza declared. Lydia was more than happy to sit quietly while Demelza thought. The library had enough movement to make sure she could glance off to the side, idly watch someone browsing shelves studying the spines of books and flipping through them. She didn’t feel the need to intrude on Demelza’s thinking and only transferred her full attention back to her when she gasped. Her eyebrows raised in a question, Lydia leaned forward to read what Demelza had written: animal poaching. Returning the wide smile Demelza gave, Lydia laughed softly. She seemed interested, which was good, and animal poaching was certainly a topic that Lydia doubted a lot of people were going to write about. “You’re probably not going to get many people writing on that,” she said, grinning. “You’ll do brill, I’m sure. And it can be factual but not too horrible.” "Thanks, Lyds," Demelza said cheerily and with a smile on her face. The vote of confidence was nice, coming from Miss Smartypants Lydia Montgomery, so well appreciated. Demelza just hoped that she could manage an interesting essay and also not peeve off the Carrows any more than she worried she already had by not bringing her stupid book to class. "Hey," she added, "Did you finish yours?" “You’re welcome,” Lydia said, smiling, though she wasn’t quite sure why she was being thanked. It was easier to go with it, though. She licked her lips at Demelza’s question and sat back in her seat, shrugging. “I haven’t finished it. I haven’t decided what I’m going to write it on yet. We’ve a week to do it, though, and I’m not worried: I’ll tackle it when thinking about it doesn’t make me want to go into a broom cupboard somewhere and shout. Don’t worry about it.” Demelza observed her for a moment before nodding. "All right," she said, "but if you want help, I can try! Sometimes I'm good at things like that." She paused again for a moment. "D'you want to play a game, or something?" “I’ll shout you if I need any help,” Lydia said, smiling in appreciation. The smile changed when Demelza mentioned a game, morphing into something more genuinely happy and relaxed. Nodding, Lydia visibly perked up, some tension leaking from her shoulders now that the topic had wandered away from Muggle Studies. “I would love to play a game.” |