RP: a Window into the Past
Date: 9 June, 2005
Characters: Cedric Diggory, Bill Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood, Su Li, Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, Katie Bell, Caradoc Dearborn, Fleur Delacour, Ernie MacMillan, Horace Slughorn, Ollivander, Kenneth Towler .... [come one, come all]
Location: museum
Status: very public!
Summary: The museum is open!
Completion: Complete
For once, Cedric was up with the sun on a Saturday, even though the work on the museum had been finished the day before. He just couldn't sleep. Dressed in suit and tie, he was at the museum two hours before it was to open, going over everything one last time, even if he'd come back here last night after the town meeting to do the same thing.
His staff, minus Sanguini who couldn't come during the day of course, all arrived at a more reasonable time before opening, heading off to their places around the building. At exactly 10 a.m., Cedric formally opened the front door. It was a beautiful, sunny day and warm. He couldn't have asked for better weather. The newly landscaped flower beds outside, done by Hannah, practically glowed red and pink, yellow and white, blue and purple in the sunlight, the white pavement running between them up to the door.
Inside the main door was a shallow, two-story high antechamber whose walls were, still, blank white. When his mother arrived at the end of June, this was where her mural would go. For now, it held only one piece -- her Ragnarök. That would be moved upstairs later to join its fellows in the British art section.
The main ground floor beyond now held what had been the prize collections of the old museum: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern magical objects, some of it towering in the magically expanded ceiling space provided by Terry Boot's charms. Overhead a combination of Muggle spotlights and Wizarding Lumos balls illumined everything. Small bronze plaques beside each would describe the objects in soft voices when touched with a wand-tip.
Bill Weasley had done a splendid job of creating a display that was both designed to impress the visitor immediately, but still make thematic sense. To one side in the expanded area crouched a monumental black stone sphinx from Ammon's temple complex at Karnak in Egypt, and on the other, a marble Chaldean sphinx from Babylon's Esagil, temple to Markuk, that equaled it for size, if not age. The Egyptian sphinx was missing her left ear, her nose, the end of her tail and part of her back left paw so that she limped when she walked. Both watched visitors -- literally -- from glass eyes, but moved only occasionally, mostly to shift their weight. Bill had spelled them so they wouldn't rise from their plinths to wander around while visitors were present.
Between them stretched the collected beauty of several ancient civilizations: Egypt, Akkad and Babylon, Assyria, the Hittites, and towards the back, Persia. In the rear left wing, one could find smaller collections of Hebrew, Greek and Roman magical items. The original museum had never had that much of any of it, but given their substantial Oriental collection, Cedric thought the general geographic area well represented. The sphinx pair might have been impressive, certainly, but they had smaller, equally lovely artifacts ranging from Chaldean and Persian stone astrological charts for various kings, planets marked in semi-precious gems that rotated, to miniature gold flying scarabs, mummies, curse tablets, the Delphic Pythia's ancient tripod stool from which she prophesied, to Babylonian potion pharmacologies written in cuneiform on stone tablets. They even had the four-thousand-year-old gold and silver regalia of an Akkadian priest-magician of Sin the moon goddess.
On the first floor above the ground were collections with less sizable pieces or that were simply smaller in number. The British collection could be found here, front and center. It contained pieces from the various Celtic groups of the pre-invasion period, through Roman occupation, the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans, right down to recent centuries. Around and behind it could be found Gaulic-French, Goth and German, as well as a little Viking and Scandinavian, and a special display called "Treasures of Kiev and Leningrad," which included some magical Fabergé eggs that hatched into various magical creatures -- Fabergé had been a wizard, not just a Muggle goldsmith. The eastern wall held a collection of African Fang Bantu masks that talked. Beyond and behind was the Far Eastern collection, mostly Japanese and Chinese but with a bit of Malaysian. Here sat the Tang fire-breathing gold statue of a Chinese Fireball that always seemed to please the children. His emerald eyes had glittered when Cedric had passed him earlier. "Behave today," Cedric had told him.
The western side of first floor held another small display, but a very special one that hadn't been found in the old museum. All the Mayan artifacts, including select leafs from the books (parts already translated by their scholar), were on display. The beautiful Mayan calligraphy had three magical luminaries above it, spotlighting it. Cedric still couldn't believe they had the few Mayan books (not on the calendar) to have survived the Spanish Purge. It made them unique.
The rear left-hand side hall of this floor housed arts and crafts with everything from magical jeweled snuff boxes to early time-turners and magical clocks, to silver and crystal items, magical mirrors, the embroidered robes of velvet, silk, or taffeta of several Ministers of Magic, Rowena Ravenclaw's silver-and-moonstone tiara and the magical girdle of Cliodna, eldest daughter of the last Irish druid. There was also a stained-glass window created by a wizard who'd been employed by the Tiffany Company in New York City in the mid-1800s. Like much Tiffany, it showed nature themes rather than religious ones, all in jewel tones and backlit by special spells. Here, however, the great blue heron and egrets moved, and the reeds and cattails around the pond swayed in a light wind.
The top floor housed the paintings, drawings, and some sculpture, both portraits and the more complicated magical art that told stories in unfolding panels when a wand was passed over them. Cedric had asked the portraits if, for the day, they could please stay in their own frames, reserving visiting for after-hours.
It as also on this floor that he'd made his political statement. They didn't have room to show all the pieces the museum had, so he'd drawn on a selection of British and French art that had been in the forward galleries and had survived. Yet he'd also hung damaged paintings -- those whose shielding wards had failed in the backlash of multiple hexes cast too near. They showed varying degrees of destruction from smoke damage to completely blackened frames and canvases. Beside them, he'd also hung the pictures he'd taken himself of the London Gallery after the fall of Diagon Alley. People had suffered in the war. So had their heritage.
So after months of preparation, all of it was open now to the public. Cedric had positioned himself near the front desk, but couldn't stay still. He had to pace about. Peggy eyed him over the top of her spectacles. "You're wiggling worse than my grandson, Cedric, and he's four."
Blushing and shrugging, Cedric stopped for a bit, but was soon back at it again. He'd be fine once people arrived, but for now, he was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
Characters: Cedric Diggory, Bill Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood, Su Li, Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, Katie Bell, Caradoc Dearborn, Fleur Delacour, Ernie MacMillan, Horace Slughorn, Ollivander, Kenneth Towler .... [come one, come all]
Location: museum
Status: very public!
Summary: The museum is open!
Completion: Complete
For once, Cedric was up with the sun on a Saturday, even though the work on the museum had been finished the day before. He just couldn't sleep. Dressed in suit and tie, he was at the museum two hours before it was to open, going over everything one last time, even if he'd come back here last night after the town meeting to do the same thing.
His staff, minus Sanguini who couldn't come during the day of course, all arrived at a more reasonable time before opening, heading off to their places around the building. At exactly 10 a.m., Cedric formally opened the front door. It was a beautiful, sunny day and warm. He couldn't have asked for better weather. The newly landscaped flower beds outside, done by Hannah, practically glowed red and pink, yellow and white, blue and purple in the sunlight, the white pavement running between them up to the door.
Inside the main door was a shallow, two-story high antechamber whose walls were, still, blank white. When his mother arrived at the end of June, this was where her mural would go. For now, it held only one piece -- her Ragnarök. That would be moved upstairs later to join its fellows in the British art section.
The main ground floor beyond now held what had been the prize collections of the old museum: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern magical objects, some of it towering in the magically expanded ceiling space provided by Terry Boot's charms. Overhead a combination of Muggle spotlights and Wizarding Lumos balls illumined everything. Small bronze plaques beside each would describe the objects in soft voices when touched with a wand-tip.
Bill Weasley had done a splendid job of creating a display that was both designed to impress the visitor immediately, but still make thematic sense. To one side in the expanded area crouched a monumental black stone sphinx from Ammon's temple complex at Karnak in Egypt, and on the other, a marble Chaldean sphinx from Babylon's Esagil, temple to Markuk, that equaled it for size, if not age. The Egyptian sphinx was missing her left ear, her nose, the end of her tail and part of her back left paw so that she limped when she walked. Both watched visitors -- literally -- from glass eyes, but moved only occasionally, mostly to shift their weight. Bill had spelled them so they wouldn't rise from their plinths to wander around while visitors were present.
Between them stretched the collected beauty of several ancient civilizations: Egypt, Akkad and Babylon, Assyria, the Hittites, and towards the back, Persia. In the rear left wing, one could find smaller collections of Hebrew, Greek and Roman magical items. The original museum had never had that much of any of it, but given their substantial Oriental collection, Cedric thought the general geographic area well represented. The sphinx pair might have been impressive, certainly, but they had smaller, equally lovely artifacts ranging from Chaldean and Persian stone astrological charts for various kings, planets marked in semi-precious gems that rotated, to miniature gold flying scarabs, mummies, curse tablets, the Delphic Pythia's ancient tripod stool from which she prophesied, to Babylonian potion pharmacologies written in cuneiform on stone tablets. They even had the four-thousand-year-old gold and silver regalia of an Akkadian priest-magician of Sin the moon goddess.
On the first floor above the ground were collections with less sizable pieces or that were simply smaller in number. The British collection could be found here, front and center. It contained pieces from the various Celtic groups of the pre-invasion period, through Roman occupation, the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans, right down to recent centuries. Around and behind it could be found Gaulic-French, Goth and German, as well as a little Viking and Scandinavian, and a special display called "Treasures of Kiev and Leningrad," which included some magical Fabergé eggs that hatched into various magical creatures -- Fabergé had been a wizard, not just a Muggle goldsmith. The eastern wall held a collection of African Fang Bantu masks that talked. Beyond and behind was the Far Eastern collection, mostly Japanese and Chinese but with a bit of Malaysian. Here sat the Tang fire-breathing gold statue of a Chinese Fireball that always seemed to please the children. His emerald eyes had glittered when Cedric had passed him earlier. "Behave today," Cedric had told him.
The western side of first floor held another small display, but a very special one that hadn't been found in the old museum. All the Mayan artifacts, including select leafs from the books (parts already translated by their scholar), were on display. The beautiful Mayan calligraphy had three magical luminaries above it, spotlighting it. Cedric still couldn't believe they had the few Mayan books (not on the calendar) to have survived the Spanish Purge. It made them unique.
The rear left-hand side hall of this floor housed arts and crafts with everything from magical jeweled snuff boxes to early time-turners and magical clocks, to silver and crystal items, magical mirrors, the embroidered robes of velvet, silk, or taffeta of several Ministers of Magic, Rowena Ravenclaw's silver-and-moonstone tiara and the magical girdle of Cliodna, eldest daughter of the last Irish druid. There was also a stained-glass window created by a wizard who'd been employed by the Tiffany Company in New York City in the mid-1800s. Like much Tiffany, it showed nature themes rather than religious ones, all in jewel tones and backlit by special spells. Here, however, the great blue heron and egrets moved, and the reeds and cattails around the pond swayed in a light wind.
The top floor housed the paintings, drawings, and some sculpture, both portraits and the more complicated magical art that told stories in unfolding panels when a wand was passed over them. Cedric had asked the portraits if, for the day, they could please stay in their own frames, reserving visiting for after-hours.
It as also on this floor that he'd made his political statement. They didn't have room to show all the pieces the museum had, so he'd drawn on a selection of British and French art that had been in the forward galleries and had survived. Yet he'd also hung damaged paintings -- those whose shielding wards had failed in the backlash of multiple hexes cast too near. They showed varying degrees of destruction from smoke damage to completely blackened frames and canvases. Beside them, he'd also hung the pictures he'd taken himself of the London Gallery after the fall of Diagon Alley. People had suffered in the war. So had their heritage.
So after months of preparation, all of it was open now to the public. Cedric had positioned himself near the front desk, but couldn't stay still. He had to pace about. Peggy eyed him over the top of her spectacles. "You're wiggling worse than my grandson, Cedric, and he's four."
Blushing and shrugging, Cedric stopped for a bit, but was soon back at it again. He'd be fine once people arrived, but for now, he was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.