Post-Halloween

[we_bring_hell]

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.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

"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."

[riddleofthebelow]

"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.

[we_bring_hell]

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

[riddleofthebelow]

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."

[we_bring_hell]

"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."

[riddleofthebelow]

"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."

[we_bring_hell]

"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.

[riddleofthebelow]

The killing always starts at some point, it seems.

"What schooling did you receive? Private tutors?"

[we_bring_hell]

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."

[riddleofthebelow]

"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."

[we_bring_hell]

"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.

[riddleofthebelow]

"No pressure at all."

He nods again. "Yes, you'd have done well in Slytherin."

[we_bring_hell]

"I am a genius," she says, without pride; almost rueful, as one admitting an embarrassing fact.

"I can claim no credit for the talent I was born with, and if I did not make the most of it for my people... what would I be?"

Harrow judges her parents for so much, but never the pressure to succeed.