A Bad Year for Slytherins, chapter 2
Sep. 27th, 2010 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minutia_rA Bad Year for Slytherins
Chapter 2: Silent Treatment
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairings: None
Rating: PG
Summary: A story that dares to answer the question, "What were the Slytherin first-years doing during the events of Chamber of Secrets?" Fallout in the Goyle household after the Ministry raid on their house. Beth helps Gregory with his Potions homework.
Disclaimer: Three Dreams on the Transmutations of Metals is a real book. I own the words and ideas contained in it (and so do you! That's what public domain means) but I didn't come up with them; Mr. Nazari did.
Dinner at the Goyles' that evening was a decidedly grim affair. Beth's father was still refusing to speak to Gregory, and confined his conversation to Beth and her mother to such civilities as "Please pass the salt." He was not a talkative man at the best of times; however, his extreme reticence, combined with the events of the morning, cast a pall over the entire table. Gregory only spoke in barely audible mumbles, and Beth was afraid to open her mouth at all. Beth's mother tried, once or twice, to introduce subjects of conversation, without notable success. The only good news they had had all day was Beth's Hogwarts letter, and this was an understandably sore subject with both Beth's father and Gregory. Beth's father got out a gruff "Well done," at the news, and Gregory mumbled something that might have been congratulations or might have been an observation that he didn't see what was so great about Hogwarts, or younger sisters who thought they were so clever, either. Beth replied "Thank you," to both of them, to be on the safe side, and the family once more applied themselves glumly to their roast beef, potatoes, and mashed leeks.
There was a lot to be glum about. The meal was the best that Beth's mother could contrive from the ruins of her kitchen, and without Bestet's help, who had been putting the rest of the house back together all day. The roast was overdone, the potatoes were watery, the leeks had congealed lumps of flour in, and the only one who seemed to be able to muster enthusiasm for any of it was Gregory, who could have mustered enthusiasm for an old shoe, had it appeared on his plate. That was only natural, Beth reflected: Gregory had been on a steady growth spurt since he was three years old. Beth's own capacities were less legendary, and she was reduced to pushing her food around her plate with a fork.
Great-Grandmother Chant, meanwhile, was taking advantage of the rest of the family's silence to make her opinions known. Her opinions were as follows: Young people today had no respect; when she had been alive she had never been treated in such a disgraceful manner; she would have thought that her own descendants would have had more gumption than to let a trio of jumped-up Ministry officials run roughshod over her, Great-Grandmother Chant's, house; but that was the way of the world these days; the old had to make way for the young, and then the young forgot the old; you'd think, however, that it wouldn't be too much trouble to have a restorer in to look at her once in a while; she was sure that the smoke from the candelabras wasn't doing her blues and yellows any good; but then, perhaps she ought to be grateful that she wasn't being stored in an attic somewhere and being eaten by mice; and she was grateful; she was. These opinions were delivered in a quiet, plaintive tone which suggested that she spoke more in sorrow than in anger. Occasionally Beth's mother made placating noises at her, which affected the flow of her diatribe not at all.
In the end, not even Gregory seemed disappointed that there wasn't pudding, although that was probably because he knew perfectly well that he wouldn't have been allowed any if there had been. Bestet was apparently finished with cleaning the house, because the dishes disappeared directly as Beth's father rose from the table. He went away to the library, and Beth's mother to sit at her desk in the parlor and do whatever it was she did that involved moving bits of paper around and ensured that the household continued to run smoothly. Gregory went up to his room.
Usually this was a sign that he wasn't entirely averse to company, although today it might just have been that he no more wanted to spend time in the east tower than Beth wanted to look at her broken diary. However, Beth, deciding to chance it, followed him up, knocked on the door, and said, "May I come in?"
"Yeah," said Gregory.
Gregory's room showed no signs of having been searched earlier in the day, except perhaps that it was a bit neater than usual. He himself was lying on his bed and staring dully up at the ceiling. "Do you want to play Exploding Snap?" said Beth.
"No," said Gregory.
"Wizard chess?" said Beth.
"No," said Gregory.
"Poltergeist?" said Beth.
"Can you be quiet for two minutes at a time!" said Gregory.
Beth could. She sat down with her back against the bed, took the latest Sylvia's Unicorns out of her pocket, and began to wait.
Her attention was not really fixed on the book. She had already read it twice, and besides, she was really burning to know the truth about the book that Lorelei Eusebius had found among Gregory's school things. It did no good to ask him questions, however. He would speak when he made up his mind to, otherwise, he would not. Remaining silent was a talent that ran in the Goyle family, although, as far as Beth could tell, only in the male line. She herself was restraining her curiosity only with the greatest difficulty. If Gregory didn't say something soon, she would, and then he'd never tell her.
"I wish I'd never laid eyes on that sodding book," said Gregory.
"I didn't know you were interested in potions," said Beth.
Gregory snorted. "I'm not," he said. "Who could be? Even Malfoy isn't, though he pretends to be, to keep Professor Snape happy. Dunno why he bothers. He's good at potions. But anyway, that's why he got Professor Snape to sign for that book out of the restricted section - to show an interest. But I wasn't going to pass my potions exam without help, and you saw that book, it's so small, I could hide it in my desk without any trouble. It had all the potions we'd done last year in it, too."
"So it wasn't Dad's book," said Beth.
"Course not," said Gregory. "He knows better than to keep something like that lying around the house."
"But what happened?" said Beth. "With your exam?"
"What do you think?" said Gregory. "It didn't work, did it? Professor Snape caught me before the exam even started. Snarked at me for last-minute studying. But he didn't get me for cheating - he's all right, I guess. Still, I failed the exam. Now I've got to get good marks in Potions this year, or I'll be tossed out of Hogwarts after all, and never mind Dad and his sodding sacrifices."
"Oh," said Beth.
After a reflective pause, Gregory went on, "After that, the book wasn't in my room; I figured I'd taken it back to the library after all, or Malfoy had. Never thought it was in my trunk until this morning. Now Dad's got to appear before the Wizengamot - that'd be brilliant, eh, me with my wand broken and him in Azkaban? I can guess what Great-Grandmother Chant'd say."
"She'd be sorry for you, Gregory, you know she would," said Beth. She rested her chin on her knees, thinking hard. "Dad's not going to Azkaban," she finally said. "He hasn't done anything wrong. And you're not getting tossed out of Hogwarts."
"How d'you figure that?" said Gregory.
"Because I'm going to Hogwarts this year," said Beth. "And I'm going to help you."
"Hah," said Gregory. "You don't know Professor Snape - or the rest of the professors, for that matter. Hogwarts isn't lessons from cousin Mabel. It's hard."
"I can help," said Beth. "I know I can. Just let me try."
Gregory didn't reply, and Beth was afraid that was all she was getting out of him that night. But before she could make up her mind to open her book again, or leave the room altogether, he spoke. "All right," he said, "I've got an essay to write for Potions. They give homework over the summer, that's another nasty fact about Hogwarts you might not have known. I've been putting it off, but I might as well get started. You can help. Get me my Magical Drafts and Potions, will you?" he added, nodding to the schoolbooks stacked up on the desk.
Magical Drafts and Potions turned out to be a thick book with a blue cover, some of whose pages were wrinkled and discolored with damp. It also smelled faintly of sulfur. Beth was not at all surprised that Gregory had not tried to hide it in his desk for the exam - it was heavy.
She handed the book to Gregory, and he took a slip of parchment from between its pages, scanned it, and handed it to Beth.
"When a potion is compounded," Beth read, "many of the elements undergo a process of transmutation. Discuss. Three feet, two inches. Gregory! That's taller than Bestet!"
"Yeah," said Gregory. "So? How would you go about it, genius?"
"Um . . ." said Beth, "write big?"
"Nothing in ten-inch tall letters is still nothing," Gregory pointed out.
"Yeah, okay," said Beth. "That book's got an index, hasn't it? Look up 'transmutation.' I'll go get a roll of parchment and a pen," she added quickly, so that Gregory wouldn't make her look it up.
Over the next hour, they found every time the book mentioned transmutation. Beth read the passages aloud, and Gregory wrote. "You can't just write down the words in the book," said Beth. "You've got to change them around. Otherwise it's just copying."
"I know that," said Gregory. And then proceeded to tear off the top of his roll of parchment and start again.
When he was finished, Beth got out a measuring tape and measured the essay. "One foot five inches," she said.
"And I was writing my biggest," Gregory said glumly.
"We'll just have to get more books," said Beth. "There's plenty in the library."
Gregory went stony. "I'm not going down there," he said.
"Why not?" said Beth.
"You know why," said Gregory. "Dad's there. He'll sit there and ignore me."
"You're being silly, Gregory," said Beth. But she went down to the library herself anyway. And it wasn't as though her father said anything to her, either. He barely looked up from his book, but when he did, it was with a half-smile. Beth had to admit Gregory had a point. When their father was ignoring you, you could tell from across the room; and when he wasn't, you knew that, too.
She returned with three books: two big fat ones, and one old thin one with a red leather cover that was called Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals. "I got this one because it has the word transmutation in the title," said Beth.
"We'll start with that," said Gregory. "It's shortest."
Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals did not have an index. Gregory began to page through it. "What does this even mean?" he said. "
Whoever bites me must bite himself first; otherwise, if I bite him, death shall bite him first, in the head; for first he must bite me - biting being the medicine of biting."
Beth looked over his shoulder. "Maybe that it's important to do all the steps in the right order?" she suggested doubtfully. "Like, if you add the ingredients in one order, you get medicine, but if you add them in a different order you get poison?"
"Whatever," said Gregory. "I'll write that down."
"Put in the quote, too," Beth suggested. "And make sure you write the author's name. Giovanni Battista di Nazari. That's good for half an inch at least."
"It's got a picture," said Gregory. "Is that supposed to be a dragon? It looks like a blowfish."
"More like a three-headed ostrich," Beth said. "I don't expect you could get away with putting a picture in your essay?"
"Nah," said Gregory. "I can't draw, anyway."
One of the big books, Precision Potion-making, turned out to be mainly concerned with the effects that the time of day, positions of the stars, phases of the moon, and so on had on potions, and did not mention transmutation at all. But On the Principles, etc. (what the etc. stood for was never made clear, and the only reason Beth didn't miss out the book altogether was the picture of a cauldron on the spine) had an entire chapter on transmutation in the making of potions. Neither Beth nor Gregory understood half of it, but that put it one step above Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals. The essay had grown to two feet, ten inches, when their mother stuck her head in the door.
"Gregory!" she said. "Are you working on your schoolwork? How nice!"
"Beth's helping," said Gregory.
"I wanted to see what the work at Hogwarts was like," Beth added by way of explanation. She didn't think that the time was right to get into a discussion of Gregory's academic troubles.
"She's doing a good job," Gregory said.
Their mother was nearly levitating with pride as she walked into the room. "I have the two best children in the entire wizarding world," she said, kissing them each on the forehead in turn. "But Beth, it's time for bed. Remember, tomorrow's the day we visit Aunt Eudoxia."
Gregory unsuccessfully stifled a groan. The prospect of ice cream afterwards was never enough to reconcile him to a visit to St. Mungo's Barmy Old Codgers Ward. Beth's mother's mouth flattened to a line. "Good night, Beth," she said with an air of finality. Beth took the hint and ran off to her own room, closely followed by the sounds of furious scolding from behind Gregory's closed door. Disrespect for Aunt Eudoxia merely served as a jumping-off point for a rehashing of the day's events, and it went on from there, although by that time, Beth could no longer make out actual words. Eventually, her mother's tones grew softer, and then fell silent entirely, but Beth lay awake for some time after that. The nap she'd had that afternoon had left her restless, and she spent some time worrying about her father, Gregory, and her own entrance to Hogwarts before she finally fell asleep. If she dreamt of the transmutation of metals, she didn't remember it in the morning.
Chapter 2: Silent Treatment
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairings: None
Rating: PG
Summary: A story that dares to answer the question, "What were the Slytherin first-years doing during the events of Chamber of Secrets?" Fallout in the Goyle household after the Ministry raid on their house. Beth helps Gregory with his Potions homework.
Disclaimer: Three Dreams on the Transmutations of Metals is a real book. I own the words and ideas contained in it (and so do you! That's what public domain means) but I didn't come up with them; Mr. Nazari did.
Dinner at the Goyles' that evening was a decidedly grim affair. Beth's father was still refusing to speak to Gregory, and confined his conversation to Beth and her mother to such civilities as "Please pass the salt." He was not a talkative man at the best of times; however, his extreme reticence, combined with the events of the morning, cast a pall over the entire table. Gregory only spoke in barely audible mumbles, and Beth was afraid to open her mouth at all. Beth's mother tried, once or twice, to introduce subjects of conversation, without notable success. The only good news they had had all day was Beth's Hogwarts letter, and this was an understandably sore subject with both Beth's father and Gregory. Beth's father got out a gruff "Well done," at the news, and Gregory mumbled something that might have been congratulations or might have been an observation that he didn't see what was so great about Hogwarts, or younger sisters who thought they were so clever, either. Beth replied "Thank you," to both of them, to be on the safe side, and the family once more applied themselves glumly to their roast beef, potatoes, and mashed leeks.
There was a lot to be glum about. The meal was the best that Beth's mother could contrive from the ruins of her kitchen, and without Bestet's help, who had been putting the rest of the house back together all day. The roast was overdone, the potatoes were watery, the leeks had congealed lumps of flour in, and the only one who seemed to be able to muster enthusiasm for any of it was Gregory, who could have mustered enthusiasm for an old shoe, had it appeared on his plate. That was only natural, Beth reflected: Gregory had been on a steady growth spurt since he was three years old. Beth's own capacities were less legendary, and she was reduced to pushing her food around her plate with a fork.
Great-Grandmother Chant, meanwhile, was taking advantage of the rest of the family's silence to make her opinions known. Her opinions were as follows: Young people today had no respect; when she had been alive she had never been treated in such a disgraceful manner; she would have thought that her own descendants would have had more gumption than to let a trio of jumped-up Ministry officials run roughshod over her, Great-Grandmother Chant's, house; but that was the way of the world these days; the old had to make way for the young, and then the young forgot the old; you'd think, however, that it wouldn't be too much trouble to have a restorer in to look at her once in a while; she was sure that the smoke from the candelabras wasn't doing her blues and yellows any good; but then, perhaps she ought to be grateful that she wasn't being stored in an attic somewhere and being eaten by mice; and she was grateful; she was. These opinions were delivered in a quiet, plaintive tone which suggested that she spoke more in sorrow than in anger. Occasionally Beth's mother made placating noises at her, which affected the flow of her diatribe not at all.
In the end, not even Gregory seemed disappointed that there wasn't pudding, although that was probably because he knew perfectly well that he wouldn't have been allowed any if there had been. Bestet was apparently finished with cleaning the house, because the dishes disappeared directly as Beth's father rose from the table. He went away to the library, and Beth's mother to sit at her desk in the parlor and do whatever it was she did that involved moving bits of paper around and ensured that the household continued to run smoothly. Gregory went up to his room.
Usually this was a sign that he wasn't entirely averse to company, although today it might just have been that he no more wanted to spend time in the east tower than Beth wanted to look at her broken diary. However, Beth, deciding to chance it, followed him up, knocked on the door, and said, "May I come in?"
"Yeah," said Gregory.
Gregory's room showed no signs of having been searched earlier in the day, except perhaps that it was a bit neater than usual. He himself was lying on his bed and staring dully up at the ceiling. "Do you want to play Exploding Snap?" said Beth.
"No," said Gregory.
"Wizard chess?" said Beth.
"No," said Gregory.
"Poltergeist?" said Beth.
"Can you be quiet for two minutes at a time!" said Gregory.
Beth could. She sat down with her back against the bed, took the latest Sylvia's Unicorns out of her pocket, and began to wait.
Her attention was not really fixed on the book. She had already read it twice, and besides, she was really burning to know the truth about the book that Lorelei Eusebius had found among Gregory's school things. It did no good to ask him questions, however. He would speak when he made up his mind to, otherwise, he would not. Remaining silent was a talent that ran in the Goyle family, although, as far as Beth could tell, only in the male line. She herself was restraining her curiosity only with the greatest difficulty. If Gregory didn't say something soon, she would, and then he'd never tell her.
"I wish I'd never laid eyes on that sodding book," said Gregory.
"I didn't know you were interested in potions," said Beth.
Gregory snorted. "I'm not," he said. "Who could be? Even Malfoy isn't, though he pretends to be, to keep Professor Snape happy. Dunno why he bothers. He's good at potions. But anyway, that's why he got Professor Snape to sign for that book out of the restricted section - to show an interest. But I wasn't going to pass my potions exam without help, and you saw that book, it's so small, I could hide it in my desk without any trouble. It had all the potions we'd done last year in it, too."
"So it wasn't Dad's book," said Beth.
"Course not," said Gregory. "He knows better than to keep something like that lying around the house."
"But what happened?" said Beth. "With your exam?"
"What do you think?" said Gregory. "It didn't work, did it? Professor Snape caught me before the exam even started. Snarked at me for last-minute studying. But he didn't get me for cheating - he's all right, I guess. Still, I failed the exam. Now I've got to get good marks in Potions this year, or I'll be tossed out of Hogwarts after all, and never mind Dad and his sodding sacrifices."
"Oh," said Beth.
After a reflective pause, Gregory went on, "After that, the book wasn't in my room; I figured I'd taken it back to the library after all, or Malfoy had. Never thought it was in my trunk until this morning. Now Dad's got to appear before the Wizengamot - that'd be brilliant, eh, me with my wand broken and him in Azkaban? I can guess what Great-Grandmother Chant'd say."
"She'd be sorry for you, Gregory, you know she would," said Beth. She rested her chin on her knees, thinking hard. "Dad's not going to Azkaban," she finally said. "He hasn't done anything wrong. And you're not getting tossed out of Hogwarts."
"How d'you figure that?" said Gregory.
"Because I'm going to Hogwarts this year," said Beth. "And I'm going to help you."
"Hah," said Gregory. "You don't know Professor Snape - or the rest of the professors, for that matter. Hogwarts isn't lessons from cousin Mabel. It's hard."
"I can help," said Beth. "I know I can. Just let me try."
Gregory didn't reply, and Beth was afraid that was all she was getting out of him that night. But before she could make up her mind to open her book again, or leave the room altogether, he spoke. "All right," he said, "I've got an essay to write for Potions. They give homework over the summer, that's another nasty fact about Hogwarts you might not have known. I've been putting it off, but I might as well get started. You can help. Get me my Magical Drafts and Potions, will you?" he added, nodding to the schoolbooks stacked up on the desk.
Magical Drafts and Potions turned out to be a thick book with a blue cover, some of whose pages were wrinkled and discolored with damp. It also smelled faintly of sulfur. Beth was not at all surprised that Gregory had not tried to hide it in his desk for the exam - it was heavy.
She handed the book to Gregory, and he took a slip of parchment from between its pages, scanned it, and handed it to Beth.
"When a potion is compounded," Beth read, "many of the elements undergo a process of transmutation. Discuss. Three feet, two inches. Gregory! That's taller than Bestet!"
"Yeah," said Gregory. "So? How would you go about it, genius?"
"Um . . ." said Beth, "write big?"
"Nothing in ten-inch tall letters is still nothing," Gregory pointed out.
"Yeah, okay," said Beth. "That book's got an index, hasn't it? Look up 'transmutation.' I'll go get a roll of parchment and a pen," she added quickly, so that Gregory wouldn't make her look it up.
Over the next hour, they found every time the book mentioned transmutation. Beth read the passages aloud, and Gregory wrote. "You can't just write down the words in the book," said Beth. "You've got to change them around. Otherwise it's just copying."
"I know that," said Gregory. And then proceeded to tear off the top of his roll of parchment and start again.
When he was finished, Beth got out a measuring tape and measured the essay. "One foot five inches," she said.
"And I was writing my biggest," Gregory said glumly.
"We'll just have to get more books," said Beth. "There's plenty in the library."
Gregory went stony. "I'm not going down there," he said.
"Why not?" said Beth.
"You know why," said Gregory. "Dad's there. He'll sit there and ignore me."
"You're being silly, Gregory," said Beth. But she went down to the library herself anyway. And it wasn't as though her father said anything to her, either. He barely looked up from his book, but when he did, it was with a half-smile. Beth had to admit Gregory had a point. When their father was ignoring you, you could tell from across the room; and when he wasn't, you knew that, too.
She returned with three books: two big fat ones, and one old thin one with a red leather cover that was called Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals. "I got this one because it has the word transmutation in the title," said Beth.
"We'll start with that," said Gregory. "It's shortest."
Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals did not have an index. Gregory began to page through it. "What does this even mean?" he said. "
Whoever bites me must bite himself first; otherwise, if I bite him, death shall bite him first, in the head; for first he must bite me - biting being the medicine of biting."
Beth looked over his shoulder. "Maybe that it's important to do all the steps in the right order?" she suggested doubtfully. "Like, if you add the ingredients in one order, you get medicine, but if you add them in a different order you get poison?"
"Whatever," said Gregory. "I'll write that down."
"Put in the quote, too," Beth suggested. "And make sure you write the author's name. Giovanni Battista di Nazari. That's good for half an inch at least."
"It's got a picture," said Gregory. "Is that supposed to be a dragon? It looks like a blowfish."
"More like a three-headed ostrich," Beth said. "I don't expect you could get away with putting a picture in your essay?"
"Nah," said Gregory. "I can't draw, anyway."
One of the big books, Precision Potion-making, turned out to be mainly concerned with the effects that the time of day, positions of the stars, phases of the moon, and so on had on potions, and did not mention transmutation at all. But On the Principles, etc. (what the etc. stood for was never made clear, and the only reason Beth didn't miss out the book altogether was the picture of a cauldron on the spine) had an entire chapter on transmutation in the making of potions. Neither Beth nor Gregory understood half of it, but that put it one step above Three Dreams on the Transmutation of Metals. The essay had grown to two feet, ten inches, when their mother stuck her head in the door.
"Gregory!" she said. "Are you working on your schoolwork? How nice!"
"Beth's helping," said Gregory.
"I wanted to see what the work at Hogwarts was like," Beth added by way of explanation. She didn't think that the time was right to get into a discussion of Gregory's academic troubles.
"She's doing a good job," Gregory said.
Their mother was nearly levitating with pride as she walked into the room. "I have the two best children in the entire wizarding world," she said, kissing them each on the forehead in turn. "But Beth, it's time for bed. Remember, tomorrow's the day we visit Aunt Eudoxia."
Gregory unsuccessfully stifled a groan. The prospect of ice cream afterwards was never enough to reconcile him to a visit to St. Mungo's Barmy Old Codgers Ward. Beth's mother's mouth flattened to a line. "Good night, Beth," she said with an air of finality. Beth took the hint and ran off to her own room, closely followed by the sounds of furious scolding from behind Gregory's closed door. Disrespect for Aunt Eudoxia merely served as a jumping-off point for a rehashing of the day's events, and it went on from there, although by that time, Beth could no longer make out actual words. Eventually, her mother's tones grew softer, and then fell silent entirely, but Beth lay awake for some time after that. The nap she'd had that afternoon had left her restless, and she spent some time worrying about her father, Gregory, and her own entrance to Hogwarts before she finally fell asleep. If she dreamt of the transmutation of metals, she didn't remember it in the morning.
