we_bring_hell | Post-Halloween

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Post-Halloween

Harrow is working. Very seriously. She is not mooning over her new relationship with Gideon even a little bit; she has too much work to do.

She is, however, wearing a skull with accents of deep, almost black purple, with a starburst or floral pattern just below her temple, that she has never been seen to wear before.

Other than that sentimental embellishment, however, she is entirely focused on Obaeg's Toward a Common Haemographology. She is making copious notes in the margins--courting future simian fury--and thinking that she should have found this for Moiraine before they started working on her weave notation.

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"None taken," she says. "The priests of the Eighth House are vile like that."

"The Eighth House drains their cavaliers like batteries and yet preach their righteous ways? Sounds about right."

"Precisely. They are the Keepers of the Tome, and entitled to mete out Church justice. I do not deny that perhaps someone should play that role, but in practice, it seems that nothing is illegal if the Eighth House decides it should be done."

"Sounds ghastly. When I have time to work more on your puzzle, I'll keep that in mind."

The Eighth House has risen in suspicion in his mind.

"I do not say their faith is false, mind, or that they are all hypocrites," she says. "Indeed, if our friend Lan Wangji reminds me of any House, it is certainly the Eighth."

"If all of the Eighth House had his propriety and attitude towards doing right, we would be better neighbors."

"That's the thing, though, isn't it? Individuals like him are far and few in between."

"Indeed. I believe the Eighth has many more Silas Octakiserons than Lan Wangjis."

"Perhaps it is a bad habit to try and connect everyone I meet to our Houses," she admits. "But it is a lens I have relied on all my life."

Edited 2020-11-09 03:58 (UTC)

"Oh, I know how that goes," he says, his lips twitching into something of a smile. "The Wizarding world tends to be divided by school houses, and that follows you through your life. Whether you like it or not."

"Interesting," she says. "I admit I am something of a Ninth House stereotype. Did you find the associations people had with you limiting?"

"Oh, yes. Very much so." He huffs a wry laugh. "At my school, there were four Houses. One was Ravenclaw, where the brightest children were sorted. One was Gryffindor where the bold and brave went."

He says bold and brave like they are not the finest superlatives.

"Hufflepuff House was made up of the loyal and hard-working, and Slytherin, the cunning and ambitious. Guess which House claimed me?"

"This feels almost like a trap," she muses.

"That's a good description for it, yes. Mind you, you're sorted into these houses at the age of eleven, when, of course, you're a fully formed person whose future should be clearly laid out."

"In fairness," she says, "I was cunning and ambitious at eleven, and have only grown moreso with time."

Edited 2020-11-09 04:50 (UTC)

"I didn't say the Sorting Hat made mistakes. I'm saying that once one is in their house, there is no escape, no matter if you change. You and I would have shared the same house, by the way."

"I shall take that as a compliment, then," she says.

"In that case, I suppose the Nine Houses are even worse. But truly, these are just stereotypes based on culture and genetic tendency. I am sure there are cowardly Fourths and Fifths who defy tradition, just as the Ninth produced Gideon Nav."

"In any case, it doesn't matter now. Unless one of the children gets a Hogwarts letter on their eleventh birthday. We're still not sure how that's going to work."

He'd prefer not to send Portico and Egress off to school like that.

"Is that how it works?" she says. "A boarding school?"

He nods. "Yes, it's a castle in Scotland where students attend for seven years. Actually,the outside here started off as a replication of Hogwart's grounds and lake. Much has been added over the years, but I still see echoes every now and again."

"Interesting," she says. "When we first arrived at Canaan House, I think many of us thought it would be something similar... a formal education in advanced necromancy, in an ancient castle of the First."

"I suppose. I can't say I didn't value my time there, even though I was, at times, bored beyond belief in class. But I loved the school itself - wandering forgotten corridors, seeking out dusty portraits that hadn't been viewed in years or hidden rooms."

Opening the Chamber of Secrets...

"I'm sorry you didn't receive the formal education you'd hoped for."

"It's alright," she says. "Canaan House was a trove of treasures in exactly the way you describe... We were just left to learn or fail on our own."

And then the killing started.

Edited 2020-11-10 03:32 (UTC)

The killing always starts at some point, it seems.

"What schooling did you receive? Private tutors?"

She shakes her head. "My parents, and the accumulated libraries of Drearburh."

"I learned to make constructs walk alongside teaching my own skeleton. It took me a little longer to start reading."

"Impressive," he says, nodding with approval. "I taught myself to read, too. Out of sheer determination and spite. This was before I received my summons for boarding school, although I can't say I didn't stop learning out of sheer determination and spite there, too."

"I was raised with an intense consciousness of what I owed to my people; what my responsibility to them was, and how gifted I would have to be to accomplish it," she says.

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