Private Message to Barty
Mar. 5th, 2013 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_antoninToday, solnyshko, has been one of those days. The only thing keeping me from renouncing it all and begging Our Lord to assign me to something more relaxing -- say, brokering a treaty with the goblins, or convincing the Americans to shuck off their government, renounce their independence, and join back up with us -- is the fact that giving up teaching would satisfy our dear Madam Umbridge far too much. The fourth-years cannot seem to grasp the basics of curse chaining to save their lives, half the third years are still terrified of casting half the magics I assign them, a not insignificant portion of the fifth-year theoretical class is incapable of writing a clear, coherent English sentence, and one of my ducklings showed up for a 'detention' I had planned to be a relaxing conversation and threw an explosive quaffle in my lap without any sign of realising what he had done.
This is the one I told you about -- the analyst-in-the-making, the one for whom numbers sit up and dance? Darling Dolores, knowing of his interest in history, assigned him the task of researching our company for her memorial garden project, and he took the initiative to gather as much numerical, quantifiable data on our past battles as he could glean from the historical record. And arrange it by individual. Cross-referenced. Wholly innocently, and with the end goal of making certain we all received our well-deserved historical glory for our accomplishments, but I near had a heart attack when I realised he had neatly-laid-out proof of, say, Alecto's incompetence, or Razzer's phases of not caring for his own well-being, or even -- if you look closely enough -- Augustus's experiments on the field.
We may all count ourselves fortunate that the boy looks up to me so fiercely; I was able to impress upon him the ... sensitive nature of his work, and he wound up turning over the data and asking me to geas him incapable of letting slip any of his conclusions. Which I would have done no matter what, after removing his memory of ever having brought the data to me, but at least this way he is aware that he owes me. If I can raise this child to adulthood without getting him killed by his curiosity, he will be one of the most useful resources we have ever encountered, but at the moment that is a very large if: I am tempted to kidnap him and lock him in a very tall tower somewhere. With no doors or windows.
It would not have been quite so volatile had he not also included Our Lord in his
About the only bright spot in all of the above is the fact I am actually recovering. Exhausted, mind you, and still sleeping entirely too many hours per day and far too quick to tire out in the middle of something, but the tremor has disappeared entirely from my hands, not simply when I concentrate on stopping it, for instance. Madam Pomfrey is quite pleased by my progress -- in her own grumpy way, of course.
Easter hols cannot come soon enough. Tell me you'll have time over them? We can immerse ourselves in the dankest portions of my library and ignore questions of the wider world.
Your,
T
This is the one I told you about -- the analyst-in-the-making, the one for whom numbers sit up and dance? Darling Dolores, knowing of his interest in history, assigned him the task of researching our company for her memorial garden project, and he took the initiative to gather as much numerical, quantifiable data on our past battles as he could glean from the historical record. And arrange it by individual. Cross-referenced. Wholly innocently, and with the end goal of making certain we all received our well-deserved historical glory for our accomplishments, but I near had a heart attack when I realised he had neatly-laid-out proof of, say, Alecto's incompetence, or Razzer's phases of not caring for his own well-being, or even -- if you look closely enough -- Augustus's experiments on the field.
We may all count ourselves fortunate that the boy looks up to me so fiercely; I was able to impress upon him the ... sensitive nature of his work, and he wound up turning over the data and asking me to geas him incapable of letting slip any of his conclusions. Which I would have done no matter what, after removing his memory of ever having brought the data to me, but at least this way he is aware that he owes me. If I can raise this child to adulthood without getting him killed by his curiosity, he will be one of the most useful resources we have ever encountered, but at the moment that is a very large if: I am tempted to kidnap him and lock him in a very tall tower somewhere. With no doors or windows.
About the only bright spot in all of the above is the fact I am actually recovering. Exhausted, mind you, and still sleeping entirely too many hours per day and far too quick to tire out in the middle of something, but the tremor has disappeared entirely from my hands, not simply when I concentrate on stopping it, for instance. Madam Pomfrey is quite pleased by my progress -- in her own grumpy way, of course.
Easter hols cannot come soon enough. Tell me you'll have time over them? We can immerse ourselves in the dankest portions of my library and ignore questions of the wider world.
Your,
T
no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 03:21 am (UTC)Of course. I've already set aside time when you are here.
How do you find patience?
No. I know it's analogous to the patience of the hunt, but I could never tolerate the coltish nonsense. How do you see past that to what might be?
no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 03:57 am (UTC)But no -- I take your meaning, and you deserve a better answer than flippancy, particularly given how often I bemoan the process to you. The answer, sadly, is something I find very difficult to put into words -- practice, I suppose, and the experience of having seen a bit of nurturing pay off in spades over and over again, has given me the sixth sense for which ones might be worth tending. I look for the ones who know the hunger -- whether the hunger for the Arts, or a different form of hunger entirely -- and see whether that hunger can be channelled into something that might be of use in the future; I look for the clever ones who are not given room to be clever, and promise them I might give their cleverness a home; I look for the ones who are an ill fit in the roles the trajectories of their lives have dictated thus far and show them ways in which they might stretch their wings in a different shape.
I know you often find people a mystery, my dearest of children, but it is my experience that the ones who will pay the greatest rewards are often shouting so, loudly, to anyone who has ears to listen -- and many of the children are at the age where they are casting about for their purpose, and in any group of children of that particular age, there are always at least a handful who are blades waiting for the right hand to temper them. The trick is spotting the ones who will respond well to me, and which are the ones best left for another. (But as we all know, I am greedy when it comes to casting my net widely.) They may not all repay my attentions properly, but I can have patience.
You, on the other hand, repaid my efforts nearly immediately -- and continue to do so, lapushka -- which is why I write you when I am in need of reminding that the teacher's art has its rewards as well as its trials.
Your,
T