Comments | hogwarts_hocus: Ofelia, El Laberinto del Fauno

ofelia_moanna in hogwarts_hocus

Ofelia, El Laberinto del Fauno

Feb 19, 2007 12:42

There is the sound of stone grinding against stone, and then a small section of wall is pushed open as though it was a door, even though there is no door there. A young dark-haired girl richly dressed in red and gold crawls through the new doorway and stands up, grinning as she looks around at the Sorting Room. She has a small brown case slung over ( Read more... )

application, ofelia

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wh0_kill3d_m3 February 19 2007, 01:48:06 UTC

Fairy tales? I'd love a book of fairy tales!

Who is the Pale Man? Is he dangerous?

ofelia_moanna February 19 2007, 01:54:44 UTC

Ofelia reaches into the case and produces an old book of fairytales written in Spanish.

"Here you are. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did," she says. "The Pale Man is very dangerous. His eyes are in his hands, and he kills children -- the knife I took from him is the knife he used to kill them, but he didn't need it to kill them. I think he ate them as well. He has very sharp teeth -- he killed the other two fairies I knew by biting their heads off." She looks sad, and a bit guilty. "That was all my fault. I woke him up.

wh0_kill3d_m3 February 19 2007, 02:10:07 UTC

Thank you! I'm sure I will.

...I knew someone like that when I was growing up. Something like that. I'm pretty sure if it hadn't been you that woke the Pale Man up, it would've been something else. Those kinds of - things - always seem to come back.

ofelia_moanna February 19 2007, 02:18:33 UTC

"But if I hadn't woken him up then because I did something I'd been told not to do, then he wouldn't have come after me, the fairies woulsn't have tried to stop him, and he wouldn't have caught them and bitten their heads off. Then...." She stops and shakes her head, biting her lip. "It doesn't matter now, everything else doesn't matter because it all worked out in the end."

Vote: Gryffindor wh0_kill3d_m3 February 19 2007, 02:30:57 UTC

One of the hardest things for me to learn when I was your age was, sometimes bad things Just Happen. There's no keeping them from happening, and there's no point in blaming anybody. It just the way things are.

I'm glad everything worked out, though. And now you're here, and it's a strange and weird and wonderful kind of place. I think I'll vote you for Gryffindor, based on your answer to the Barney question.

Re: Vote: Gryffindor ofelia_moanna February 19 2007, 02:41:19 UTC

"I suppose so." Ofelia sighs. "What's Gryffindor?"

Re: Vote: Gryffindor wh0_kill3d_m3 February 19 2007, 02:58:24 UTC

It's one of the Houses here. As long as you're here, you have to be a member of one of the four Houses; it's part of how people know what you're about. We all talk to you and decide what House we think, and then a magic talking hat comes and sits on your head and looks inside you, and it makes the final decision.

Gryffindor is the House for those who are brave or heroic or very just, and anyone who's done some of the things you say you've done is certainly heroic, and I think probably just as well. So that's my vote.

Re: Vote: Gryffindor ofelia_moanna February 19 2007, 03:13:38 UTC

"Oh, alright. Gracias," Ofelia says.

Re: Vote: Gryffindor wh0_kill3d_m3 February 19 2007, 03:20:16 UTC

You're welcome. *grins* I love it that you don't even blink at the idea of a magic talking hat. You'd be amazed how much that Hat startles most people.

Re: Vote: Gryffindor ofelia_moanna February 19 2007, 03:31:15 UTC

Ofelia smiles. "I've used a magic root to make Madre feel better, talked to a faun, read a book that is blank until I open it and ask it to show me what I need to do next, followed fairies, used magic chalk to make doorways that I've gone through, run away from a monster that wanted to kill me... Why would a magic talking hat surprise me?"

Re: Vote: Gryffindor wh0_kill3d_m3 February 19 2007, 03:36:40 UTC

*nods* Exactly! I once stepped through the picture on my wall into a whole different place when I was asleep and dreaming, and I knew about a tree in the forest outside my hometown that had monsters living in it. For a while I lived with a giant and a dwarf who spoke words backwards, sort of - it's hard to describe - and most of my life, I had owls following me around watching me, which was really spooky.

The Hat was easy, after all that. Kind of fun, even. But a lot of people who come here, their lives were really ordinary. It takes them awhile to adjust to being someplace - different.

Re: Vote: Gryffindor ofelia_moanna February 19 2007, 03:43:51 UTC

"I'm sure it would. They would live ordinary grown-up lives like Madre and Mercedes, where magic doesn't exist because they think you have to grow up and stop believing in fairytales. Then they find out that they're wrong, and they must be very surprised."

Re: Vote: Gryffindor wh0_kill3d_m3 February 19 2007, 03:57:15 UTC

That's it exactly. My mother's a sensible grown-up type person too, and there were lots of things I could never tell her about. It's almost like the serious types that come here have to start all over figuring out how things work, once they know magic is real.

Re: Vote: Gryffindor ofelia_moanna February 19 2007, 04:00:59 UTC

"Are they able to do it? Do many people come here who don't believe in magic or anything like it at all?"

Re: Vote: Gryffindor wh0_kill3d_m3 February 19 2007, 04:19:42 UTC

Some do, some don't - so many people come and go here it's hard to keep track. But most of them come to believe all this is real, and once they turn that corner, they can learn to do magic. It's like they've got a mental block until that happens.

Re: Vote: Gryffindor ofelia_moanna February 19 2007, 04:37:18 UTC

Ofelia just nods, all of that makes sense. "It's good that more people learn to see the magic in the world. If everyone stops believing, the magic will die."

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