M!A: Reconciliation
Alice hadn’t believed it when that grey face had said she would have her parents back from the dead for two days. Wasn’t possible- Of course, there had been that grey face which brought Victor’s dog Scraps back to life for two days…
Rushing to her apartment, Alice had unlocked the door to reveal..
To reveal Mr. and Mrs. Liddell, sitting in the main room. Mr. Liddell was seated in the arm chair, his wife on the couch. As the door opened, they both looked to their daughter, before giving wide grins and standing up to quickly go over and hug her.
As both of them wrapped her in an embrace, as she felt their warmth, smelt their familiar scent, heard their voices say how much they missed her, she closed her burring eyes and silently thanked the grey face as she hugged them back, telling them how much she missed them.
After the initial reunion, the three of them walked back to sit down, Arthur sitting again in the arm chair, and Lorina bringing her daughter to her side on the couch, running her fingers through Alice’s dark locks. It felt odd and strange, to have them back after so long. But it was wonderful none the less.
After a few moments of silence, Alice had quietly started in on her apologies. How she was sorry she got them killed. How she should have left her room to tell them when Bumby came in, and not been so scared as to not move.
Of course, this had caused both parents to come over to comfort her, Lorina taking her hand and Arthur rubbing her back. Over and over they kept repeating how it wasn’t her fault. She was 8, it was reasonable that she’d been paralyzed by fear. They didn’t blame her.
They didn’t blame her, and hearing those words lifted much of the burden that had plagued Alice for years. Now, that wasn’t to say it wouldn’t manifest itself into her dreams and thoughts again, but for now, for today…
For today, she felt completely fine.
Once all of the guilt mess was taken care of, they’d eagerly wanted Alice to tell them of her life. How she’d been. They’d been able to watch from above, of course- and they apologized for the Asylum. For the hardships that she endured. For what she had to go through, and how powerless they felt to stop it.
After all, what could they do from Heaven?
But, as they approached the subject of close people in Alice’s life, Alice gave a gasp. Oh, she could introduce people to her parents!
And so, that’s exactly what she proposed they do.
Hogwarts Schedules
Can’t sleep because hooray, insomnia rearing its head the night before a planned all-nighter! Ugh.
So I’ve now tentatively plotted out the first three years of scheduling at Hogwarts. First year is pretty straightforward, really (this almost entirely matches what’s mentioned in canon):
I’ve obviously made some assumptions along the way and a whole fuckton of arbitrary decisions, since we only see Slytherin and Hufflepuff’s timetables when they interact with Gryffindor (and therefore don’t see Ravenclaw’s at ALL).
And then second year, which nearly killed me because I could not fucking figure it out (there are some more deviations from noted canon here, in an effort to actually make it possible):
There’s an extra period there because a] I figured that upper-year students would probably need more periods to get enough education in everything they’re taking, and b] in the first book, when McGonagall catches Harry flying, she goes into a Charms classroom to fetch Oliver Wood. I’m thinking the periods are 9-10, 10:15-11:15, lunch 11:15-12:15, 12:15-1:15, 1:30-2:30, 2:45-3:45 — that gives them time to navigate the castle and means that when McGonagall went to fetch Oliver, he was probably just packing up, or Flitwick (I think it was a Charms class?) was keeping them late, which makes sense since he was in his fifth year and was preparing for OWLs.
BUT YEAH. All of the house schedules, taken from these charts are going to be going up on Pottermorphs, all prettified by jteeple (the first two years’ schedules are already up, in fact).
This is way more fun than it probably looks, I swear. It’s like a giant multi-faceted logic puzzle - every House has to have the same number of each class, some classes are together, some classes are double-length, and you can’t have the same class twice in one day unless it’s a double class and two houses can’t have the same class at the same time unless it’s together (obviously). As far as I can tell from canon, the only classes that houses had together were potions and herbology - everything else seems to just be single houses until their NEWT levels.
Third year I’m going to refrain from posting even though that’s what I did tonight. (Also while this is definitely not why I’m behind on my NaNo, it certainly hasn’t helped, whoops.)
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how the fuck the professors teach so many damned classes at the same time, since unless Harry’s cohort is extremely lucky and got the best professors including all four Heads, there isn’t a fleet of unknown staff members (and, I mean, they refer to “the Defence Against the Dark Arts” teacher a few times). So far I can think of three possibilities:
1) They just use a time-turner and seven different classrooms (one for each year, which is somehow Hogwarts’ best-kept secret). The classrooms are probably bewitched to appear empty to anyone not in that year.
2) The door to the Charms room, for example, is bewitched, and actually opens into seven identical classrooms, and opens into whichever one of those classrooms you currently need to be in. The teachers end up needing to be in multiple classrooms at once to teach different years, and so they end up being simultaneously in five or six (or whatever) classrooms. (Care of Magical Creatures and Astronomy, however? No fucking clue.)
3) Some combination of the two? Because at some point you’d run into someone going into the same door as you and that would be weird, as well.
Really it’s just “Rowling didn’t really think this through”, but. We’re ignoring that.
SO YEAH HERE HAVE MY LATE-NIGHT HARRY POTTER RAMBLE ABOUT SCHEDULING. If anyone has any suggestions/comments/questions, lemme know! I’ve obviously put a fair amount of thought + effort into this, but I’m also only one person, so.
