Tumbling Like Alice

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
dybbukitsch-deactivated20160325
livesandliesofwizards: “ How odd Mnemosyne Edyth was! How very unlike her schoolfellows. For they, reciting charms most obediently and noting the patterns of stars as instructed, turning needle to matchstick with robotic duty and mixing...
livesandliesofwizards

How odd Mnemosyne Edyth was! How very unlike her schoolfellows. For they, reciting charms most obediently and noting the patterns of stars as instructed, turning needle to matchstick with robotic duty and mixing counterclockwise in their cauldrons when applicable, failed utterly to drive their professors mad.

Whereas she was a prodigy in these matters. Forever interjecting, her weird mind would fire off at random, forcing strange, intrusive questions from her lips: charm is also to entice, and what does that say about us, that we love best those airy beings with the power to make a common Scourgify look like the work of the graces? Why wind widdershins in the preparation of so many potions; what of this wily discipline demands that we counter the clock, that we turn in on ourselves and work in reverse? And why do we name our children after stars, as though we should like them to illuminate society, but stars burn and burn and burn and are in reality far-off and aloof, friendless and alone, and ultimately consumed and blocked off by the black steam of new Muggle contraptions. And are we not more like the Muggles, lately, desiring to take the industrious needle and make of it a combustible, a powder keg, something not quite as sharp and practical, but nonetheless wholly dangerous? 

For Mnemosyne could link every plain, honest instruction to some uncanny notion, could find the incorporeal story at the heart of each solid, well-rehearsed incantation. Though she was the schoolroom nuisance, doomed to fail nearly every subject, it was not because she did not understand. Rather, she over-understood. She leapt beyond the matchstick and desired to make of the needle a magically-powered sewing machine. She saw in the swish and flick a rhythm no one else could. She could cut through even magic most Dark, not in a Ministry-approved decisive and rational fashion, but with joy and light, and simple memory.

We do not mean to elevate one who graduated with barely a handful of N.E.W.T.s above those prized and calm, industrious and un-improvable little minds that dot most classroom desks. Far from it. They well deserve the praise and love of their professors and the easy acceptance of their mates.

While weird Mnemosyne was to content herself with an Order of Merlin, first class, for the invention of the Patronus Charm.

dybbukitsch-deactivated20160325
livesandliesofwizards: “ Mad Weasley believed that someday, perhaps not in his time, nor in his children’s, but certainly in his grandchildren’s, there would come to pass a revolution, an overturning of that dread Statute; and in great new societies...
livesandliesofwizards

Mad Weasley believed that someday, perhaps not in his time, nor in his children’s, but certainly in his grandchildren’s, there would come to pass a revolution, an overturning of that dread Statute; and in great new societies all peoples, Magical and Muggle, would strive up, up, ever-upwards, together.

He could see it in his mind’s eye. The dreaming Muggles would pursue this new skyscraper love of theirs, would use their metals and mortar and technologi-thimmies; and their brethren, the wizards, would help. Great plazas would form high above the dusty ground of the past, held together by charms and suspension cables. Millions upon millions would mingle in the elegant, grandiose hives of the future, sharing in both old things (potions and astronomy and summoning spells, how dull and common) and in the  gloriously new, like Muggle telegraphs, and neon lights, and pneumatic tubes. 

All would know these secrets. And so the world would progress into the future, secret upon secret, up towards the heavens in greater spires and climbing stories. And Mad Weasley’s grandchildren would be blessed to live in it, would wake and cordially wave hello to dimpled and industrious Muggle neighbors, would ride to work each day in cleverly-constructed trolleys, would hold their Quidditch matches near powerful Muggle office buildings and clock towers, their more mundane cousins peeking out of the windows to cheer them on.

And nothing — nothing, not even this silly lust for the past that consumed Nott’s group — could throw the world off course, thought Mad Weasley. The maddest of the Weasleys. Septimus, the silly seventh son.

Oh, what a beautiful dream. Absurd. But beautiful.