Peter Wimsey And The Poisoner Of Azkaban

[sonetka]

This came about as the result of a late night gchat session with rhysiana in which we touched on the evergreen subject of just how terrible Peter's proposal is in Strong Poison and how if he just happened to live in another fictional universe he'd probably have wanted a Time Turner or three to go back and fix it. The resulting fic mutated a bit along the

Comments

[a_t_rain]

Will there be more, I hope? Because this is kind of weirdly awesome.

[sonetka]

I don't know if I could sustain it for very long, especially since the solution is pretty much the real one -- she was framed by Urquhart, who had found out about the wizarding world and made sure to procure a poison which they would assume a Muggle couldn't get. With so many Muggle-born wizards running around I simply can't believe the Statute of Secrecy is as effective as all that, and Philip was probably doing everything but wearing a sandwich board announcing it.

[castiron]

Now I have the mental image of Miss Climpson turning out to be a real medium -- her father's opinions on education of girls and magic's place in a Christian life didn't allow for sending her to Hogwarts, and she's never had a wand, but the seances turn out to produce information she didn't expect to be able to get....

[sonetka]

Definitely! Maybe she's even another descendant of Cassandra Trelawney and has a wild talent that pops up occasionally. (Maybe that really was George Washington butting in after all :)). I think Annie Wilson would be a good candidate as well -- her family keeps her at home and she buys into the whole "good girls should support their men and nothing else" ideology, but when she gets angry enough, things happen. She can't completely control it but she can do it. When Harriet arrives at Shrewsbury to investigate the Poltergeist, she realizes instantly that this is a magical problem and her chief challenge is to investigate it as such and somehow suss out who the secret witch is without alerting anyone else to exactly what it is she's looking for.

[castiron]

Yes! That makes perfect sense. And now I want to read a scene where Harriet's trying to explain a mysterious happening to the Senior Common Room without saying "well, it was just magic", and Miss Hillyard starts getting suspicious of what Harriet's up to.