Date: 2012-09-18 04:53 pm (UTC)
alt_pomona: (close up)
From: [personal profile] alt_pomona
Antonin

Clearly, we should meet sooner than later, and I am most hesitant to put it off longer than today. Your office, six, yes, if that’s the best option.

Understand that relatively few in my House have ever taken your subject by choice. There are always some interested, to be sure, and I do hear your protestations that your Arts are not all harmful. Ravenclaws may pursue your Arts out of desire for intellectual mastery, Gryffindors to prove they are a match for anything, and Slytherins may find in it any number of attractions, but for a student in a House that values teamwork and consideration of others, the lure is considerably less.

When you speak to my Hufflepuffs, Antonin, please keep in mind that you are speaking to those who hold Hannah Abbott dear, and remembered, and still very much one of their own. Aurora may have mentioned our own term, sett, that is place but even more so people and connection. That sense is painfully difficult for those outside the House to understand, but an inability to acknowledge and account for it will handicap your ability to teach - or learn - from us.

On the Carrows, you must understand that there is not only the reality of their actions to consider (as painful as those are: Hannah’s murder, the deliberate placing of students at significant risk, the fits of temper, the matter between Lucius Malfoy and Alecto) but the fact that stories grow in the telling. And then that what most of my students have to go on are stories, comments from a few peers, the advice of their families, and an entirely unknown teacher (other than the whispers of gossip that do not help here at all). And frankly, that Aurora and her Raz clearly enjoy your company simply confuses some of the sett, for they are both well-liked and emulated teachers.

I gather from my own extended conversation with Aurora that you and she are talking further on Friday. Clearly you and I will not have time, in the hour or so we have tonight, to cover all the necessary details, but I must advise, in the strongest possible language, that getting a clear review of the major points of, say, the last five years, will be crucial to avoiding problems for our students. It is clearly overdue. And yes, I do think that meeting regularly with the four Heads - and Rabastan, if you like - will be most important for the foreseeable future.

I did speak briefly to both Mr Hopkins and Mr Stebbins this morning: they are both still shaken, but well enough, all things considered. Do please have extreme care in your conversations and class time with them this week. Of course we badgers look after our own, and most attentively.

Pomona
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