CHAPTER EIGHT:  LESSONS

8 July 1994

It is so good to be home!  You know, I think that I could be old and gray, with children and grandchildren of my own, and where I to walk into his house I would still conjur up the vision of Mum bustling around the kitchen, the warm scent of bacon frying and the sound of the bees droning in the flower boxes outside the kitchen window.  Everything exactly the way it is — right now — a perfect moment in time.

“Ginevra Weasley!  If you don’t close that book this instant I’m going to feed your breakfast to the Ghoul!”

It was an empty threat, seeing as that the Ghoul didn’t actually need to eat, but Ginny closed her journal with a muffled thump and went about making a dent in the pile of food her mother had heaped onto her plate.

“Why are you always scribbling in that thing?” asked Percy pompously as he reached across her for the marmalade.  “You could be using your time to learn something useful.”

“I’m on holiday,” said Ginny through a mouthful of eggs.

“I’m not talking about schoolwork,” sniffed Percy.  “I’m talking about the kinds of thing you’ll need to know — later.”

“Are you suggesting sex ed?” asked Fred interestedly.  “You old enough for that Ginny?”

Ginny choked on a mouthful of bacon, spraying pieces across the table.

“Watch it Ginny!” said George, picking a stray bit of bacon out of his porridge.

“I’m talking about practical household charms!” said Percy loftily.  “Since she was twelve years old Penny spent a part of each day during the summer holidays reading up on household charms.  You should see her!” he said, his eyes misting over.  “She can pack her trunk with just one flick of her wand — she even gets the socks to sort themselves into pairs!  And she can turn on all the lights in a room just by looking at them!”

“I’ll bet that’s not all she turns on,” muttered Ginny.

Percy, still lost in his raptures over Penelope didn’t hear her, but George, who was seated on the other side of Percy, snorted into his eggs.

“Right little homemaker, that one,” said George, dropping Ginny a broad wink behind Percy’s back.

“Yeah, well, I’m not Penny,” said Ginny coolly to Percy.  “So you can take your domestic charms and stick them-”

“Ginevra Weasley!” Ginny’s mother had turned from the stove and was pointing an oatmeal-covered wooden spoon at her. 

“In your pocket,” Ginny finished with only the slightest of hesitations.

“Nice save!” said Fred, grinning at her.

“Now Percy, it’s not your place to lecture your sister,” said their mother reprovingly.

“Yes mum.  Sorry mum.”

“Shouldn’t it be me you apologize to?” asked Ginny.  But Percy, who was making a great show of collecting his cloak and briefcase, didn’t deign to answer.

“He thinks he’s right is all,” said George consolingly.  “Don’t let him get to you.”

“I’ll bet he lets Penny get to him,” observed Fred.

“Fred!”

“Sorry mum.”

“I don’t want to hear any comments about Penelope.  She’s a lovely girl.”

“Well, well, sleeping beauty awakens!” cried Fred as Ron, still in his pajamas, shuffled sleepily into the kitchen.

“There you are, Ronald.  Eat quickly, you lot, I want the garden clear of gnomes by lunch.”

“Aw, mum!” howled Fred.  “We were going to play Quidditch!”

“You can play Quidditch once the garden is clear, not a moment before.”

“But mum!” chimed in George.

“No George.  Now out, all of you!”

“I just got down here!” protested Ron, eyeing the plates of eggs and bacon possessively.

“Five minutes and I want you outside.  You have only yourself to blame if you choose to sleep through breakfast!”

Muttering and groaning, Fred, George and Ginny pushed themselves back from the table.

“Not you, Ginny, I’ve got something else I want you to do.”

Ginny hung back, sticking her tongue out at Fred as he and George stumped out of the kitchen.

“Now Ginny dear . . .”  Her mother’s voice had a sugary quality to it that Ginny didn’t like.  “I know you’re used to coming and going as you please during the holidays like the boys, but I’ve talked to you’re father, and he agrees with me that it’s time you start scheduling your time to include something other than those ridiculous dance lessons.”

“My dance lessons aren’t ridiculous!” said Ginny, bristling.

“If I had my way, you wouldn’t be dancing at all, you know that.”

“Mum!”

“Dancing serves no purpose other than exercise and there’s other ways to get that, but seeing as that your father insists that I allow you to continue them-”

“He did?” said Ginny, her fears deflating before they could blow themselves into any semblance of panic.

“Yes, he did.  So we reached a compromise.  You get your lessons on Sunday afternoons and one hour of practice time and one hour of free time every day.”

“And the rest of my time?” asked Ginny warily.

“Will follow the schedule I’ve set up for you.”  Her mother had taken a role of parchment out of her apron pocket and was holding out to her.  Ginny took it.  From down the table, Ron was staring at her wide-eyed.

“My — what?”

“Your schedule.”

“But Mum . . .!”

“In my family, it was always traditional that at the age of thirteen the daughters began learning how to run a household properly.”

Ginny stared at her mother, opened her mouth to argue, and then closed it again at the look on her mother’s face.

“We will begin every morning at eight O’clock,” she said briskly.  “We’ll start with the cleaning and washing charms, and then move on to mending, sewing, and knitting . . .”

“But-”

“At ten you’ll have your one hour of dance time, then be down to help me with lunch.”

“But I-”

“After lunch you’ll have an hour of free time.”

“Mum!”

“And then we’ll work on teaching you how to cook.”

“But I hate cooking!” wailed Ginny.

“Remind me not to eat suppers from now on!” chortled Ron from down the table.

“Easy for you to say!” snapped Ginny, “Al you have to do is de-Gnome the bloody garden!”

“You’ll watch your language young lady!”

Ginny closed her eyes.  She could feel her anger at the injustice of it welling up inside of her.

Breath.

But it wasn’t fair!  Other than assigning them chores from time to time, none of her brothers had ever had to take household management lessons!

Breath.

Can’t loose it with mum.  I’d never hear the end of it.

Come to me!

Probably turn her into a hedgehog or something.

Be in me!

And they came, muted as she had called them, undetectable to either her mother or Ron, both of whom were standing only feet away.

Control!

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes to find both her mother and Ron staring at her.

“What?” she said, her voice sounding oddly distant to her own ears.

“Nothing,” muttered Ron and, picking up a pile of toast, he headed back upstairs, leaving her alone with her mother.

“I don’t know what sort of Glamour you were doing,” she said in a fierce voice.  “But if you get another warning about under-age magic, I’ll take away your dance lessons, don’t think I won’t!”

“I wasn’t doing magic!” said Ginny defensively.  “I was just trying to control my temper!”

“Then how do you explain the fact that you suddenly looked taller and — and-”

“Colder,” volunteered Ron who, now dressed, was standing in the kitchen doorway, eating his last bit of toast.

“Go help your brothers Ron.  Now please.”

Ron shrugged ans slouched out to the garden where Fred and George could be seen tossing handfuls of gnomes over the fence.

“Why me?”  asked Ginny sullenly as she watched Ron wade into a peony bush and pull out six gnomes by their ankles.

“What did you say?” asked her mother sharply.

“I bet youi never made Bill or Charlie or Percy or any of the others schedule their time!”

“Of course not, why would I?”

“Because they’re boys?” said Ginny coldly.  “Then why are you doing it to me? Just because I’m a girl?  It’s not fair!”

“It’s not fair,” said her mother in a brittle sort of voice.  “but it comes with being a woman, so get used to it.”

Ginny stared.

“I don’t know what century you’re living in, mum, but it certainly isn’t the twentieth!  Women are no longer expected to be only homemakers!  England has had women as Prime Minister — we’ve had Ministers of Magic who were women . . .”

“That doesn’t change the fact that it’s still the women who have the babies,” snapped her mother.  “And as equality-minded as so many men purport to be, trust me, once you start heaving children, everything changes.”

“Then maybe I won’t be having any children,” said Ginny mutinously.

Her mother dropped the dishpan she was holding, soapy water splashed out over the kitchen floor.

“Why would you say a thing like that?”

“Well, it’s true!  If getting married and having children means that I have to give up my individuality, then I don’t want any part of it!”

“Ginny!”

“I have hopes, mum, dreams, plans, and they don’t involve playing housekeeper so that some chauvinistic male can further his career.”

To Ginny’s surprise, tears welled up in her mother’s eyes.

“Is that what you think of your father?” she asked dully.

“What?  Mum! No!”

“Is that what you think of me?”

“Of course not!” said Ginny, shocked that her mum had twisted her words to be so hurtful.  “I wasn’t talking about you, honest!”

“I heard what you said, Ginevra.”

“I was talking about me!”

“I understand completely.  You don’t want to end up like me.”

“No, mum, would you listen for a minute-”

“”Don’t you tell me what to do!”  Her mother’s voice was suddenly icy cold.  “There’s no need to explain.  You made your feelings perfectly clear.  Now why don’t you go play in your flower garden or something?”

Feeling sick, Ginny made her way out to the back garden and slipped out of the gate behind the gorse bush.

Damn! Damn! Damn!

What was happening?  Why did it seem that all she and her mother did any more was fight?  They used to be so close!  Ginny could remember curling up on her mother’s lap and playing with the buttons on her dress, tracing the laugh lines at the corners of her eyes and telling her everything . . .about the next of mice she’d found behind the shed, about how guilty she’d felt when Charlie had taken her fishing in the pond and she’d actually thrown the fish she caught back in. . .but now! 

Every time she opened her mouth she inadvertently said something hurful.  Weren’t the teen years when a girl was supposed to feel closer to her mother?  So what had gone wrong?  Why did she feel like her mother was a complete stranger?

“Shit!” 

Stripping down to her halter top and rolling up the cuffs of her pants, Ginny began digging up a new bed.  She hadn’t planned on creating a new one yet, but she had to have something to work off her anger.  What seemed like only a few minutes later, a voice startled her so badly, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Thought I might find you here.”

George was standing on the edge of the clearing, a flagon of what appeared to be lemonade in one had and a plate full of sandwiches in the other.

“Those for me?” said Ginny, eyeing the sandwiches and putting a hand on her stomach, which had begun to rumble.

“Yeah.  The gnomes didn’t want them.”

George placed the plate and flagon on a nearby stump, then sat down beside it, his legs crossed.

“I take it mum’s idea of scheduling your summer didn’t go over so well?” he said, eyeing the twenty some feet of freshly turned earth.

“Who told you!” said Ginny, wolfing down a ham and turkey sandwich in three bites.

“Ron.”

“Figures,” she said thickly before washing the sandwich down with some of the juice.

“Would have heard about it anyway,” said George, taking a sip from the flagon.  “She was huffing and puffing about it all through lunch.  She’s threaning to have dad talk to you.”

“And that is supposed to accomplish what, exactly?”

George sniggered, then sighed and added.  “She’s not going to give up on this domestic crap, you know that.  It means a lot to her.”

“Yeah, it’s a tradition, she told me.”

“Well, Fred and Ron and I were talking.”

“Mastered complete sentences yet?”

“Shut it, you!  Anyway, we thought we’d offer you a deal.”

“Come again?”

“If you agree to take mum’s lessons, hold on, don’t jump the gun!” he said, holding up a hand as Ginny opened her mouth to argue with him.  “If you take the lessons, Fred and I have agreed that we would keep you company during the household chore bit in the mornings and Ron said he’d actually like to learn how to cook.”

Ginny eyed him suspiciously.  “And what’s in it for you?”

“Well, we plan on going out on our own eventually.  We’ll need to know how to do some of it, and then there’s other bits that we could use . . .in our products see.”

“Products?”

“Yeah, just some stuff we’re looking into, joke stuff.  Point being, we could make it interesting for you.  Better than being alone with mum, anyway.”

“But why!” said Ginny earnestly, looking at George through narrowed eyes.  “You won’t learn that much, so why bother?”

“Because you’re our sister,” said George, a stubborn set to his chin.  “And it’s not fair to you that mum’s treating you different cause you’re the only girl.”  So, is it a deal?  You say yes to mum’s lessons, she stops bitching about it, and then we keep you company.”

“Deal!” said Ginny, grinning.  And, as it turned out, it was one of the best bargains she would ever make.

9 July 1994

Dad came out to the studio after supper tonight to have a ‘talk.’  He tried to gloss it over, but what it amounts to is pretty much how mum explained it.  She wants me to learn to, in her words “pull my weight,” when it comes to chores around the house.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just chores.  Chores I can deal with.  Chores ae something I’ve had to do all my life.  All Weasley’s have chores, that’s just the way life is.

Take Percy, Percy is responsible for the owls. Errol and Hermes (he refuses to take care of Pig).  He makes certain that they’re fed and watered and that their perches are cleaned and that the small owlry in the barn is mucked out every week.

During the summer, Percy, Fred, George, Ron and myself each take a night clearing off and setting up the supper table, and I’ve been tending the vegetable and herb garden since I was old enough to tell a weed from a plant.

This is different.  The chores mum has planned for me to learn are things like enchanting candles so they burn longer, turning ordinary items, like twigs and stuff into cutlery and other necessary items, packing charms, charms that allow the interior of a trunk or closet to be magically expanded, special spells for cleaning the talking mirrors, methods to keep the water in the water tank continually warm, water purification and filteration charms and how to enchant the furniture to be self polishing and any other number of ‘useful’ tips.

Of course I can’t actually do the charms, but I’m supposed to be watching and learning and taking notes.

I mentioned to dad how Fred and George and Ron have offered to take ‘classes’ with me.  You should have seen the look on his face!  He was tickled pink!  He thinks it’s a great idea.

“Your mother loves you, Ginny, but she’s from an old wizarding family with old-fashioned ideas about what women can and can’t do.  This bit with your brothers should be an eye-opener for her!”

Yeah, especially if Fred or George do anything drastic.    It will definitely be interesting!

12 July 1994.

Hey, I guess I have something else in common with Harry now.  I’m being forced to learn to do stuff I have absolutely no interest in.  God, but I particularly hate the cooking bit!  Bloody nuisance if you ask me.  The cleaning charms are rather useful, but I’m certain I could have figured them out myself, if I really needed them done.  I mean, most of them are derivatives of spells we’ve already learned in school, just applied on a more domestic scale.

I needn’t have worried.  It seems Fred and George really do have a reason to want to learn some of mum’s trickier household spells.  I heard them talking the other day, and they were discussing their plans to one day open up a joke shop.  I guess some of mum’s spells, if they reverse them, can un-do things (like a candle that rlights itself every time you blow it out or a ‘mayhem’ bomb that scatters dirty socks far and wide).  They are just talking though.  I suppose they’ll have to wait until they’re back at Hogwarts to actually start making any of the stuff they talk about.

Needless to say, mum was a bit wary of ‘the boys’ sitting in on our domestic ‘lessons.’  But dad said they could, so there it is.  Ron she’s not too worried about.  Ron loves food and he loves to eat, so learning how to cook, for him, isn’t a big stretch of the imagination.  In fact, between us we made eight loaves of practice bread today.  They’re all edible, but you can tell which ones are mine.  They’re so lopsided that they look like something out of a science fiction story.  I can almost imagine them sprouting legs and scuttling off across the floor.

Yesterday we made so many oatmeal cookies that mum had to put a bunch of them away with a preservation charm.  Again, you could spot mine straight away.  Mine are the lumpy looking ones with blackened edges.  I got the hang of it by the last batch, but it all seems so pointless somehow.  You spend all that time cooking or and gobble gobble,  it’s gone with barely a blink of the eye and you’ve wasted an entire afternoon, or perhaps even your entire life.

You know, maybe mum was right.  Maybe I really was talking about her.  I mean, what kind of a person voluntarily gives up the better part of their life to have baby after baby and then to slave away to bring them up?  Not that I don’t appreciate it mind you, but seven children?  What on earth possessed her?  It’s not like the contraceptive charm actually costs anything after all.  So either they got so involved in what they were doing (seven times in succession) that they couldn’t be bothered to think about it, or they wanted this.

I know that I’m not in a position to speak authoritatively, but I don’t see myself as a very motherly type.  Not that I wouldn’t love any children I had, but I’d still be me.  I wouldn’t be trying to live through them.

Damn.

That’s it, isn’t it?  Those were the best years of her life.  She would do it all again if she had the chance, but she can’t, so instead she’s projecting her interests onto me, making the assumption that I will automatically be interested in what she was interested in, that I will want the kind of life she wanted for herself. She simply hasn’t even considered the fact that in spite of me being her daughter I am not Molly Weasley.  I am my own person with my own life.  She’ll figure it out eventually.  I just hope that she doesn’t get her feelings too badly hurt in the process.

I guess I have Tom to thank for that little revelation.  Somewhere along the line he must have studied psychology because that last bit didn’t come from me, and Harry wouldn’t recognize Freud if he gave him a black eye. 

You know, I sometimes have to wonder what Tom Riddle would have been like if he hadn’t let his hatred consume him.  Honestly, at the age of sixteen he’d read more books than most people do in their lifetimes; everything from psychology, philosophy and sociology to Shakespeare, Yeats and Coleridge (Coleridge was one of his favorite poets, I don’t know why, I find Coleridge’s work rather off-putting myself).   He’d read most of the classics, which is why I can quote Captain Ahab’s final salutation to Moby Dick verbatim (when I’ve never read the book myself) and can explain why it is cold in hell (thank you Mr. Dante).

But Tom Riddle didn’t limit himself to Muggle literature.  He was also widely read in wizarding works.  On top of his school work he’d also read Hogwarts, A History, The Dark Arts Through History, Dark Creatures of the Northern Hemisphere, The Dark Arts Interpreted, Giant Wars of the Seventeenth Century, Goblin Rebellions of the Middle Agesand A Personal Guide to Transfiguration in the Twentieth Century, just to name a few. 

Besides being an avid reader, he was a model student; intelligent, responsible, easygoing and personable.  Hermione would have got along with him famously.  He could have done anything he wanted!  But instead he chose to dedicate his life to righting a wrong that was done to him — or his mother rather — before he was ever born.  That is the root of Tom’s hatred you know.  The fact that when his father found out that his mother was a witch, he left her to bear their child on her own, refusing even to acknowledge the fact that Tom was her son.   She died in childbirth and Tom was sent to a Muggle orphanage.  He was, to put it bluntly, abused in a variety of ways at that dreadful place.  It really is easy to see why he turned to the Dark side.  But what if . . .?

All of Tom’s knowledge was given to me when he took me over completely there at the end in the Chamber of Secrets.  Needless to say he didn’t expect that I would live to benefit from his ‘gift.’  It has come in extremely useful.  I find classes very easy.  I’m able to do the homework in a heartbeat and I always get excellent grades.  It comes from in effect having done it all before.

Unfortunately, having Tom possess me also had it’s down side, for it wasn’t just the good things that rubbed off.   I still have nightmares . . .and sometimes, when I’m just sitting quietly, thoughts and memories, glimpses of things, will bubble to the surface, and I thank God that I can say that they don’t belong to me!  Anyway, on top of being a model student, Tom was also devious and clever and could lie like a snake.  Sometimes I’ll find myself looking at problems or situations from an angle I really would never have thought of, and it’s not always a good angle.  Sometimes the conclusions I come to scare me, because there is no way that I should be able to think like that!  That scares me even more than the dreams or twisted glimpses.

18 July 1994

I had to climb down the trellis outside my window in order to sneak out to my garden tonight.  For some odd reason, mum’s been on edge the last few days, almost as if she’s expecting something to happen.  In fact, she was still up at eleven, which is why I opted for the climb.  It’s a full moon you see, and like Lupin, I can’t resist the pull.  I have to go be with them, the elements.

They came to me at once, which I expected, and then so did Mira, which I did not.  I honestly thought that she was probably bound by the stone circle or that at least her magic was, but she assured me that while this should be the case, that in this particular instance she is able to tune in to me.

I don’t know if I should be bothered by this or not.  Does that meant that she could just drop in any time she wants?  Or maybe she can watch me through whatever connection she feels for me. 

That aside, I’ve been really curious for some time as to who Mira really is.  I’ve been reading up on the First People you see, the Hogwarts library has four entire shelves about them.  There are things that fit, she sparkles as she appears, she only comes at certain times, she’s helpful and makes no demands, she’s graceful and poised and her voice has a hypnotic quality.  But she’s also vivacious and quick to laugh.  From what I’ve read, the First People are always reported to be really serious, focused, intent even, and powerful.

Well then, Mira is powerful, no matter how you look at it.

Regardless of who she really is and where (or when) she comes from, or even what her motives are, it remains a fact that she is my friend.  I can talk to her about anything, which is good, seeing as that mum won’t.

Mum’s stopped talking to me.  Well no, that’s not quite right.  She still talks, she just doesn’t say anything important.  It’s almost like she’s become uncomfortable around me all of a sudden.  Did what happened to me my first year make that much of a change in me? 

22 July 1994

It is the weirdest thing.  All this last year I’ve been using Gran’s journal (her Book of Shadows) as a reference for my Elemental training.  I thumb through it to whatever section I think might be helpful, but I haven’t read the entire thing through — cover to cover — since Christmas. 

Two days ago I finished reading it through again, and you know what?  There’s more here than there was before!  Last time I read it there were references to using the elemtns to do things, but no specifics (as there was on how to call them).  Now there are lots of references to specific uses for them.  There are also more detailed accounts of Gran’s emerging powers, issues she ran into, bits added to entries that I thought I knew by heart.

It’s almost as if the book is growing.  Not lieerally, I mean, it’s still the same size it was before, but as if its contents are expanding, expanding to match my own development.  It is totally bizarre, but way cool too!

I suppose that I should be concerned at its showing powers like this, I mean, after what happened with Tom’s diary . . .but Dumbledore is the one who gave this to me and as Hermione says, if we can’t trust Dumbledore, who can we trust!

31 July 1994

Happy Birthday Harry!

I wish there was a way to send him a gift, or even a card, without him thinking that I’m still head over heels about him.  (Well, I am, but he doesn’t need to know that now, does he?)

Ron sent him a cake — he baked it himself too if you can imagine.  The one I made we ate for supper.  Well, sort of.  We ate parts of it.  The rest was stuck tight to the pan because I hadn’t bothered to adjust the temperature of the oven when I put it in, and it burned to a crisp.  The center was okay though.  A little dry, but hey, let’s not expect miracles, shall we?  At least nobody died of food poisoning!

Mum grudgingly gives me my hour in the morning to work on my dance, but its not enough.  I’m not exactly a morning person, but if I get up at five I find that I’m able to get in another hour’s exercise before breakfast.  I have got to get this routine down!  Miss Bletchley wants me to dance this number as a solo in two weeks time for her recital!

I have to admit that I breathed a sigh of relief when she gave the date of the recital as being the Saturday before the Quidditch World Cup.  If she’s daid Monday, I’d have had to refuse.  I can’t miss the Quidditch World Cup!  Dad says that Ludo Bagman (he’s the Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports) has promised to get him tickets as a thank-you for smoothing over that incident with his broth and the lawn mower.  Thank goodness Muggles are so big into cartoons, eh?  I mean, the machine running around the yard all by itself was bad enough, but could be explained as a remote control for all of that, but when it started chewing up squirrels and birds and spitting out eggs and acorns . . .I can see why he drew the Ministry’s attention!

Fred says that seeing as that it’s Bagman, we’ll probably end up in Squater’s Field, that’s the seats way down at the bottom, and usually at the ends of the pitch, where the goal posts block your view, but I don’t give a damn if I have to sit on the wall, I can’t miss the Quidditch World Cup!  It could be another thirty years before I get another chance to go to one!  It’s been that long, after all, since England last hosted the Cup.

9 August 1994

Well, now we have fruit pies coming out of our ears, two each apple, blueberry, strawberry, strawberry-rhubarb and lemon-meringue.  I can’t stand fruit pies, if you can believe it.  I’m more of a pecan or pumpkin or chocolate pudding pie sort of person.

Filling the damn things isn’t so very difficult, it’s just fruit and sugar and syrup after all, but the crusts!  The crusts are the worst.  First you have to measure out all the ingredients, cut in shortening, knead the sticky stuff into some semblance of dough, roll it, chill it, roll it again, divide it into sections, and then roll it out once more, this time into crusts.

You would think, with my aptitude for Potions that I would take to cooking like a duck to water and maybe, if I were able to use magic, cooking wouldn’t be so very bad.  But I can’t deal with it!  I just don’t have the patience!  You can tell which pies are mine.  Mine are the sloppy ones with lopsided crusts and burn edges.  Ron’s are absolutely perfect, down to the precisely positioned latticework of his apple pie crust.

Mum doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself.  On the one hand she has the daughter she’s wanted for years — but who doesn’t have the patience or the desire to learn to cook.  On the other hand she has her youngest son, who is sloppy and careless in everything except his chess strategies — but who can make a perfect loaf of bread and brownies that are to die for!  It’s confusing the dickens out of her.  It would be funny if she didn’t take it as a personal insult that I’m just not interested!

Morning lessons, you know, the cleaning and other household spells and stuff, would be a lot more interesting if I could actually try the charms we’re supposed to be learning, but mum insists that I (and whichever twin is with me at the time — they take it in shifts to live up to their end of the bargain) practice the incantations and wand movements with wooden spoons. 

So far she’s showed us how to enchant candles so that they burn more slowly, how to get dishes to wash and dry themselves, a preservation charm that will keep fresh things from spoiling, basic locomotion charms (and variations of them) that she uses for chopping vegetables and stirring pots and stuff.

What makes it really bad for me is that Harry’s Aunt Petunia insists that Harry get his chores done before lunch, so I’ll be trying to practice the arm movement that goes with the dusting spell, and I end up ducking as a swarm of hornets (which Harry disturbed while pruning the hedge) comes straight at my (his) head.  Or I’ll step sideways to avoid the box of garden tools he left lying on the path and walk into the kitchen table instead.

Mum keeps scolding me for being clumsy and I can’t help but laugh (which makes her furious).  If she only knew, eh?

In a way I guess, I’ve got it easy.  The family Harry lives with, the Dursley’s, are horrid people.  It’s not just because they set Harry to doing all the menial tasks around the house (cleaning toilets and manuering the gardens and scrubbing out the trash cans), they are horrible because they treat Harry like dirt, as if he’s less than human.  And don’t get me started on that great bullying git of a cousin!

16 August 1994

Pig came back with another letter from Lisa today.  That’s the third I’ve received from her this summer.  She seems really nice, and writes me all about life with Muggles (normal Muggles — the Dursleys definitely aren’t normal anything!).  It must be really weird to have to go home and not see any magic done again until the next school year.  How do Muggles do it?  I mean, we have charms and spells for everything from heating water instantly and keeping food fresh to sweeping, dusting and getting rid of rats.  How do Muggles have time to do anything else if they can’t use magic?  I suppose I’ll be learning that — I’m taking Muggle Studies this year, along with Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures and Divination. 

I lost a lot of sleep over whether or not I should take Divination.  I know that (at least the way Telawney teaches it) it is practically worthless, but without it I’ll only be taking nine classes.  I’ve always hated the number nine.  At least ten is a nice even number.

Lisa says that her parents like her to talk about what she’s been doing at Hogwarts, the stuff she’s learning, but no matter how hard she tries, they never quite seem to understand.  Hey, at least she can talk to her parents!  Harry can’t even do that.  The Dursley’s allow absolutely no mention of magic under their roof and treat his being a wizard as if it’s some sort of disease.

Who knows, maybe it is!  Maybe having magical blood is, like, some sort of genetic mutation or something.  Mind you it’s a really cool mutation, but perhaps being magical isn’t what’s really normal.  Maybe being a Muggle is really the way things are supposed to be.  Or maybe it’s Muggle’s who have lost touch with the magical sides, or bred it out of their bloodlines (sort of the reverse of pureblood wizards) because they consider it some sort of curse or — mutation!

I think I’ll go to bed now before I philosophize myself into a full blown headache.