(no subject)
Who: Lila and her mother, Clara Moon (NPC)
When: July 2nd, 1997, 6pm.
Where: The Moon home: Adbert Drive, East Farleigh, Maidstone, Kent, UK.
What: Lila receives her letter from Hogwarts.
"Lila, have you seen this?"
Lila had not been home more than two seconds when her mother approached her. She had entered through the sun room, mildly agitated from a day of useless work as an intern and still a little disoriented from apparating. It had been nearly four months since she earned her license and she wondered if that quesy feeling that came afterward would ever go away.
Lila straightened curiously and took in the sight that greeted her: Her mother, standing in a shockingly blue robe with her ginger hair up in a roll, holding up a creased sheet of parchment with a broken seal flopping heavily on the ends. Lila could see her name written on the back. She gritted her teeth against the scowl that wanted to form. Her mother had opened her mail again.
"Have you given it to me to see?" she asked tersely.
Her mother frowned. "No, but-"
"Then I haven't seen it." Lila took the parchment from her mother, adding with a narrow look, "Stop opening my mail." She walked farther into the house, tossing her pack onto the sofa as she passed it.
Her mother echoed her expression sourly and placed her hands on her hips in a good imitation of authority.
"It was from the school," she defended crossly. "You weren't home and anything from there is my business, and don't speak to me in that tone."
Lila wasn't listening; she had tuned her mother out after the word "school," instead stopping a few paces from the sofa to read the neat, uniform words on the parchment that had to have been written by a dictation quill. What she learned troubled her.
"Did Deirdre get a letter too?" she asked.
Her mother nodded. Lila wondered bitterly if she had opened hers too.
"Are we going?"
"I don't know," replied her mother with a look that suggested LIla's question was silly. She moved to stand beside her, looking down at the open parchment. "I'll need to talk to your father. It doesn't seem like a good idea, what with us having to go to work every day from that distance, then there's the matter of the house left empty for people to have a holiday breaking into, and it said nothing of taking pets."
Lila subtly scrunched her face into a look of thin-lipped annoyance and decided to not remark on her mother's reply. The woman hated aparition and flew to work each day under the disillusionment charm, a horribly impractical way to get around, and she was always nattering on about the security at home. Lila could stand being asked if she had put up the security wards only so many times in a night.
The point about the pets bothered her. Lila did not want to leave her little ones behind.
She fell back onto the sofa with a displeased huff and tossed the letter aside carelessly. This news was unacceptable. She had plans to use her Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts class to get into the Restricted Section, but with the school being changed into a sanctuary, she wasn't sure how she would manage to do that now. No class meant to access. She wouldn't have cared so much if Hogwarts didn't have the best collection of Dark Arts related books in her part of the world.
Also, her education would be left incomplete. On all of her future resumes, she would have to state that she only had six years of training. She was not counting on the compassion and understanding of her future employers; she wouldn't have cared if there was a war going on or not.
"There's the Care of Magical Creatures area," she mused aloud. "Maybe they can go there."
Her mother barked an incredulous laugh. "I don't think that would work at all. Can you imagine Binky being around hippogriffs and Merlin knows what else?"
Lila glanced through the sun room windows to look at the form of her twitching, drooling dog asleep on the grass. In fact, Lila could imagine. The 17 stones beast of a St Bernard would take one look at the hippogriffs and run, if he didn't wet himself first. Binky was only hostile when a family member was threatened. The only thing he would intentionally harm was perhaps a mouthy teacup poodle. He hated small dogs with a snarling passion.
School allowed small animals, like cats and owls. Maybe they wouldn't mind Binky. Or her cat, Melly. Or her crow, Caligo. Or Juji the guinea pig, or Fop the rabbit, or Wiggles the ferret...
While Lila was looking away, her mother had been carefully sleeking the finishing touches of holding potion onto her hair in the long mirror beside the floo. She'd always insisted upon having one there, just in case company flooed over and wanted to dust a speck of chimney soot off their clothing. Lila knew it was just so she could check herself in the mirror whenever the fancy struck her.
If the way Clara had eyed her daughter had words, they would have been "I know your secret thoughts." Well, that is what she would have wanted her daughter to think, anyway.
"All right, now, I'm going out with the girls from work. No funny business while I'm gone. Don't leave the house without making the security wards are on."
"Yes, mum," Lila intoned mechanically.
Lila slouched down into the sofa as her mother walked through the sun room and into the backyard with her broom for a day at Diagon Alley.
She already knew what her father's answers would be. Her parents didn't know it, but she had overheard their conversation about sending her and her sister to a school in America - Salem Institute for Girls, or something like that. She did not want to run litle a scared little girl to American when, as far as she was aware, everyone she knew was staying.
And laying there on her overly-cushioned sofa, staring at the ceiling, Lila had her first thoughts of running away to Hogwarts.
When: July 2nd, 1997, 6pm.
Where: The Moon home: Adbert Drive, East Farleigh, Maidstone, Kent, UK.
What: Lila receives her letter from Hogwarts.
"Lila, have you seen this?"
Lila had not been home more than two seconds when her mother approached her. She had entered through the sun room, mildly agitated from a day of useless work as an intern and still a little disoriented from apparating. It had been nearly four months since she earned her license and she wondered if that quesy feeling that came afterward would ever go away.
Lila straightened curiously and took in the sight that greeted her: Her mother, standing in a shockingly blue robe with her ginger hair up in a roll, holding up a creased sheet of parchment with a broken seal flopping heavily on the ends. Lila could see her name written on the back. She gritted her teeth against the scowl that wanted to form. Her mother had opened her mail again.
"Have you given it to me to see?" she asked tersely.
Her mother frowned. "No, but-"
"Then I haven't seen it." Lila took the parchment from her mother, adding with a narrow look, "Stop opening my mail." She walked farther into the house, tossing her pack onto the sofa as she passed it.
Her mother echoed her expression sourly and placed her hands on her hips in a good imitation of authority.
"It was from the school," she defended crossly. "You weren't home and anything from there is my business, and don't speak to me in that tone."
Lila wasn't listening; she had tuned her mother out after the word "school," instead stopping a few paces from the sofa to read the neat, uniform words on the parchment that had to have been written by a dictation quill. What she learned troubled her.
"Did Deirdre get a letter too?" she asked.
Her mother nodded. Lila wondered bitterly if she had opened hers too.
"Are we going?"
"I don't know," replied her mother with a look that suggested LIla's question was silly. She moved to stand beside her, looking down at the open parchment. "I'll need to talk to your father. It doesn't seem like a good idea, what with us having to go to work every day from that distance, then there's the matter of the house left empty for people to have a holiday breaking into, and it said nothing of taking pets."
Lila subtly scrunched her face into a look of thin-lipped annoyance and decided to not remark on her mother's reply. The woman hated aparition and flew to work each day under the disillusionment charm, a horribly impractical way to get around, and she was always nattering on about the security at home. Lila could stand being asked if she had put up the security wards only so many times in a night.
The point about the pets bothered her. Lila did not want to leave her little ones behind.
She fell back onto the sofa with a displeased huff and tossed the letter aside carelessly. This news was unacceptable. She had plans to use her Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts class to get into the Restricted Section, but with the school being changed into a sanctuary, she wasn't sure how she would manage to do that now. No class meant to access. She wouldn't have cared so much if Hogwarts didn't have the best collection of Dark Arts related books in her part of the world.
Also, her education would be left incomplete. On all of her future resumes, she would have to state that she only had six years of training. She was not counting on the compassion and understanding of her future employers; she wouldn't have cared if there was a war going on or not.
"There's the Care of Magical Creatures area," she mused aloud. "Maybe they can go there."
Her mother barked an incredulous laugh. "I don't think that would work at all. Can you imagine Binky being around hippogriffs and Merlin knows what else?"
Lila glanced through the sun room windows to look at the form of her twitching, drooling dog asleep on the grass. In fact, Lila could imagine. The 17 stones beast of a St Bernard would take one look at the hippogriffs and run, if he didn't wet himself first. Binky was only hostile when a family member was threatened. The only thing he would intentionally harm was perhaps a mouthy teacup poodle. He hated small dogs with a snarling passion.
School allowed small animals, like cats and owls. Maybe they wouldn't mind Binky. Or her cat, Melly. Or her crow, Caligo. Or Juji the guinea pig, or Fop the rabbit, or Wiggles the ferret...
While Lila was looking away, her mother had been carefully sleeking the finishing touches of holding potion onto her hair in the long mirror beside the floo. She'd always insisted upon having one there, just in case company flooed over and wanted to dust a speck of chimney soot off their clothing. Lila knew it was just so she could check herself in the mirror whenever the fancy struck her.
If the way Clara had eyed her daughter had words, they would have been "I know your secret thoughts." Well, that is what she would have wanted her daughter to think, anyway.
"All right, now, I'm going out with the girls from work. No funny business while I'm gone. Don't leave the house without making the security wards are on."
"Yes, mum," Lila intoned mechanically.
Lila slouched down into the sofa as her mother walked through the sun room and into the backyard with her broom for a day at Diagon Alley.
She already knew what her father's answers would be. Her parents didn't know it, but she had overheard their conversation about sending her and her sister to a school in America - Salem Institute for Girls, or something like that. She did not want to run litle a scared little girl to American when, as far as she was aware, everyone she knew was staying.
And laying there on her overly-cushioned sofa, staring at the ceiling, Lila had her first thoughts of running away to Hogwarts.