Inquiring Minds PV Farron Finished

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Interacting | @George Henry
Hex Color | #A13330

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Coded by Rafael D'Spacito

To say teens were awkward was probably an understatement, boarding school and their close interaction with peers didn't seem to always help. George Henry seemed to be having one of those moments where he couldn't remember what, or how, to communicate. She had been looking at the sign-in sheet when he walked up, laying it in front of him wordlessly thinking he wanted to sign in. A lot of kids didn't like to talk as they signed in, so she took to staying silent until they greeted her. She had turned to grab a stack of papers to start going through when he blurted out a greeting that startled her, just a little bit.

"G'day George!" She turned back to him with a bright smile, truly happy to engage with any student but something seemed... off with him. What she wasn't expecting- was him asking why she was here, as in Hogwarts, because she was... Australian. Well, half-Australian. Her eyebrows knitted together, knowing that she wasn't the only one not from Europe that was a Professor. She watched his face change as he too processed what just left his mouth.

When he followed up about Halley's comet, she couldn't help but poorly stifle a giggle. He was really trying, she had to give him that. "I'm not letting you get off that easy, and while it's certainly none of your business... I'm half-Australian and half-English. My mum was from Australia, and my dad is from London. I moved here at 18 and have been here since, if that helps satiate the somewhat... problematic inquiry. Next time just ask why someone is working at Hogwarts and you might get the answer you're looking for any way."

She looked from the sign-in sheet back up to him. "Did you come just to ask that? All the way up the tower steps, to ask why an Australian is at Hogwarts? Quite bold if you ask me. As for Halley's comet, it appeared last in..." She paused searching through the important dates of Astronomy in her head. "I believe in 1986. It comes around about every 75 years give or take, so stay alive until 2061 after asking your Professors where they come from and you just might see it, hm?" She winked at him before turning her head after hearing the skittering of her ferret. "Ah, Stinkbug is from England if that helps any?"

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"I mean, you'll be teaching me Astronomy... I'd say your background is more my business than most peoples'," George countered, with a shrug and a smile to sugarcoat his harmless passive-aggression. He nodded along, listening intently as she elaborated on her history. "Oh, so you went to school in Australia. I don't really know what school they go to down there," he murmured, the interrogation briefly interrupted by a more innocent curiosity.

He did actually listen to that bit about Halley's comet, his eyes wandering upward as he stared off into space and quietly counted on his fingers. He would be... like, fifty five. "I'll be fifty," he said. His nose wrinkled at the sour words... but he relaxed again, responding to her more flattering comment about him. "I am quite bold."

He leaned back on his heel and folded his arms, glancing down at the sign in sheet. His books were with him, visible poking out of the bag under his arm, but he would much prefer to make this uncomfortable interaction last as long as possible. His uncle - a police officer - had told him that discomfort was a useful interrogation tool. Normally, the subject would break under the pressure of the continued silence and volunteer some useful information that nobody had even asked for.

A beat passed before George poked his tongue out against the inside of his lower lip. The silence broke.

"I'm from Walkerburn," he volunteered, helpfully. "Central Borders, it's kind of by Edinburgh. It's an hour's bus out of Edinburgh. I'd never been to London until I got my letter from the headmaster... it's too noisy."

He glanced aside, then turned over his shoulder to scan the seats. Quiet astronomy kids were nobody he hoped to impress, but he didn't want anyone but the professor to hear his explanation. "I apologize for being impolite," he says. Of course, the apology was delivered in a whisper, as admitting fault was not in his character, publicly. "I don't think that's very funny. I'm only asking because there was a professor here from America a long time ago and he tried to hurt my friend. And nobody decent wants to work at Hogwarts anymore... this place has really fallen off. At least that's, uh, what I heard."

Someone reads too many of the mainstream wizard news-rags. He leaned back, recalling his cool, confident persona from wherever he had put it aside. He leaned down to take a quill and sign his name onto the sign-in sheet in front of her, pausing to watch Stinkbug. "He does have a London air about him."

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Interacting | @George Henry
Hex Color | #A13330

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Coded by Rafael D'Spacito

It was becoming more and more obvious that this conversation wasn't ending quite as soon as she thought it was. The work that she had pulled to her was just as soon pushed back away, folding her hands on top of her desk to entertain the quite... rude? Bold? Inquisitive? Perhaps all three. "Tell me George, do you believe I am teaching you adequately? If I wasn't, wouldn't the question be more of what I've done in my career than where I'm from? I don't believe being full English gives anyone more of a penchant for astronomical studies than any other background. If I was English with no background in astronomy would that be better than Australian with ten years of study under my belt?" Perhaps she was being more rude than necessary, but if there was anytime to set him straight on proper lines of credential questioning it was now.

It was about then when she regretted calling him bold, not realizing he would take it as a strong compliment. "Boldness does have a time and place, mind you." There was a moment of silence between them, Farron couldn't help but wondering what the next offensive thing to leave his mouth would be. In her mind palace she had created a sort of bingo card of possibilities. She considered him talking about his history to fill in the free space. "Scotland then? How is it getting to go to London just to come back up for school?" Everyone took the the train to Hogswarts, but Farron thought it was perhaps a bit silly for the people that lived nearest the school. But, tradition was tradition.

Once again something in George changed, but this time it wasn't an embarrassment about the thing he just said but something that wasn't on her bingo card either. An apology. She was really striking out here, she was hoping he would say something about her hair or slightly ecletic dress, but this was a better option. Her heart softened, he was a genuine kid. Here out of protection for his friends more than anything. Though something told her the friend would never know about this act of protection.

She watched him sign in, silent for the moment trying to figure out the correct thing to say. Her precursory google searches about teaching didn't tell her how to handle if a student questions your background because a student has been hurt by a professor before. Privacy was probably a good first step. "Why don't you set down your books somewhere and join me on the observation deck?" She wasn't too concerned about leaving the students unattended for a few moments. They were deep within their studying, and those who came to study hours weren't usually there for mischief purposes.

Once they were both outside in the, slightly chilly, air she leaned on the railing of the deck, gazing out at the stars and fantastic view a tower observation deck provided over the grounds. "I'm not here to hurt anyone, at least to the best of my ability. Sometimes students act as if I'm killing them with the homework but, damned if you do damned if you don't I suppose. I think it's very kind of you checking in on new Professors to make sure your friend will be ok. I would consider myself pretty decent, I've acted in the best of my ability to set this classroom and the students up for success." Part of her hated that she was justifying her place here to a child, but a little honesty never hurt.

"You could transfer schools you know, if you don't want to be at Hogwarts. If it's 'really fallen off'. So what's keeping you here?" While she glanced to wherever the boy was standing, her sight mostly stayed on the scenery. She wanted to give him the space for his emotions to take over his face and think about what she was asking without feeling like he was being watched.

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George pouted and averted his eyes, though he was careful not to roll them, as he was lectured on the inherent xenophobia of his question. Yes, yes - of course, it was wrong to judge someone as a foreign meddler simply because they were foreign. But he had yet to meet a domestic foreign meddler, because by definition, they could not exist! He finally met her eyes again at her last question, quietly admitting his mistake. "You're a good astronomy professor," he admitted in a grumble.

There was a narrow-eyed look from the young boy when she scolded him for boldness as well. If it were so bad for a young wizard to be bold, they wouldn't have made a whole house out of it. Maybe that was his problem. He couldn't get the timing right. He shoved when he should have nudged, and stayed silent when he should have shouted. It was so hard to tell the difference...

His introspective moment was broken by her question about the train ride - to which he did immediately roll his eyes. "Dreadful," he sighed, with a heave of his shoulders as he was finally freed from the burden of an unvoiced complaint. "I take trains all the way down, then all the way up. It's alright, though... London has lots of shops, and you've got to go down and get your books and all there, anyway. There's not a wizard book shop in Walkerburn. Not even a Muggle bookshop... the closest is in Peebles."

A helpless shrug from the boy. He seemed to flit between confrontation and conversation with ease. At her invitation, he dropped his books back into his bag, and left his bag in a slump beside the professor's desk, leaving behind the pretense of study as he followed her along. He reached back with one hand, feeling his wand safely nestled at his waist. Arresto momentum... that's the one he needed if she was going to throw him off the balcony. Flipendo for everything else.

Instead, she did something far worse than try to throw him to his death or bite his head off. She brought him somewhere private and then initiated a moment of vulnerability. He knew he had to tread carefully now.

"I just don't want anything bad to happen again," he admitted. He knew he was correct to be afraid. He had every reason to be, after what had happened. But it still felt... bad, to tell someone like this. He ought not to be afraid after so long. But his boldness had been all used up, uselessly, at the start of the interrogation, and now he was tired. "But I know it will. And it's going to be worse this time..."

He told her why, before she could even ask. "Are you muggleborn?" If there was ever a taboo question, he'd just uttered it to her. But it wasn't asked maliciously. It was a distress signal - someone searching for someone like him, that he knew couldn't turn.

At her question of changing schools, his look of distaste turned to one of distress.

"Of course - I could just transfer schools. Except, my family lives in Scotland. And we don't have the money to move, not that we even would, and especially not just so I could go to some other wizard school. They wouldn't understand. I don't- I don't get it." He could hardly stop the words from pouring out of his mouth. He hadn't even mentioned the friend he cared so much for - another anchor, keeping him where he was, binding him to this doomed school. "I don't get how-... it's like... when I go home, I'm weird because I'm a wizard. When I'm here, I'm weird because I'm a muggle. It isn't fair. And I'm better than most other wizards my age!"

Well, at least grades-wise. He fell behind in manners and attendance. But it wasn't homework that would kill him here. "Sorry. This is stupid." He let out a sigh and took in a slow breath of the cool night air, looking up at the stars as he tried to calm himself. It wasn't working. He glanced to the professor again. "Don't you have papers to grade or something?"

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Interacting | @George Henry
Hex Color | #A13330

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Coded by Rafael D'Spacito

There was a sense of pride and a 'I know I am' when George admitted that she was a good professor. There was no need to double down on a... how old is a third year again? Possible a teenager. No need to double down on a teenager. It was a win she would take, and as much as she tried to repress the grin the smug look couldn't help but tug at the corners of her mouth, her eyes glistening with a sense of validation.

"I don't know much about Scotland, but I assume the trip from Walkerburn to Peebles is a decent one. Do you not even have a library in your town? Surely there is someplace to acquire books. Even if you don't, at least for most of the year you have our library. If there are ever any books from my bookshelf you'd like to take home, I'm sure we could work something out. But if you don't bring them back I'll hunt you down." She paused- feeling like maybe she shouldn't threaten a student, especially one that was already paranoid. "Joking! Mostly."

Part of the onboarding package for Farron was finding out what was happening within the school, including the bad stuff. It wasn't a good idea to leave a Professor ignorant of everything that's been happening. But she wondered if this had to do with the hags or something else. "How do you know its going to be worse? Does your friend's-" She didn't know what word to use. "Does the threat still come to the school?"

Farron was more open to the bloodline question than the 'Why are you a Professor even though you're Australian.' "I'm not, but I lived in muggle London with my father until I got this job. He's a muggleborn and my mother was a pureblood. So- I'm a wizard born and kind of have a perspective of both." She didn't expect this conversation to get so vulnerable, especially from George. It was obvious he was holding all of this in for awhile. It was at this point she let herself look over to him and keep her gaze, watching his facial expressions. "I can kind of relate, not in the wizard capacity. But, my father was home more often than my mom. He was the one that kind of spearheaded teaching me how to talk and read before school. So for a long time I had more of a posh English accent rather than an Australian one. It wasn't until I went to school that I realized my situation was unique. I sounded a lot different than the other kids. So for awhile I forced my accent, to fit in. Not the same. But it's an adjacent experience."

She fully turned towards him, still leaning her right arm on the banister keeping students from hurtling off the tower when they were captivated by stars. "Its not stupid. A lot of muggle borns have those issues, my father talked about it a lot. It was really hard for him to reconcile those two words. While he works in magic- stuff." Farron waved her hands in a circle not wanting to explain her dad's career and her writer definitely doesn't know what her dad does. "He lives in muggle London, close to his family so he can experience both worlds without having to abandon one. I do have papers to grade, but I'm quite good at managing my time. Your guys' wellbeing comes well before papers." She gave him a small smile, turning back to face the direction of the classroom and peering down the staircase to make sure nothing was on fire and no one was dying, everything seemed to be fine. "How long have you been keeping all of this bottled up? You're a third year, correct?"

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George shrugged and considered the distance between Peebles and Walkerburn. "You need a car to get there, so I don't usually go," he said, pausing for a moment as he considered the other logistical obstacles between him and a book store. His head wandered on a bit of a tangent as he spoke his thoughts aloud, no longer keeping anything bottled up. Even the inane stuff. "My brother's old enough to drive soon, but we only have one car so I don't really know when he's going to be doing any driving, realistically..."

When she mentioned the library, a cheeky smirk lit up his face. "I'll give you two guesses on where the library is. The first hint? You've got to go down Peebles Road to get there..." he said, waiting for her to understand before he laughed again, more sharply. "It's actually in Innerleithen. Got you." Not his best joke ever - but it was the best he could really do on the subject of obscure Scottish geography.

But of course, these tangential routes of thoughts eventually had to reunite with the main thread of the conversation. The serious, actual danger on his mind, underneath all the silliness and joking that he could muster in this situation. If she would laugh, maybe it wouldn't be as much of a big deal. But instead, she asked about his friend's threat - a line which seemed to strike a sensitive nerve within mister Henry. "No!" he said firmly. "No. He's all better, now, and no one has been after him... as far as I know. It's not that. Is it not obvious to you, or something?"

He stared at Farron in disbelief. Adult wizards were truly the dumbest creatures on earth. Could she not see how clearly everything was liked together? A grand design engineered to ensure the poor education of every no-good half-bred mud-blooded child at the school. "The tournament," he sighed out at her, exasperated with her foolishness all of a sudden. He reached down at his side, but came up empty handed. He looked back over his shoulder, remembering his bag, left behind at her desk. "I'd show you if- well, basically... Howard White is our champion in the Hexwizard. So, basically, Hogwarts is doomed."

The boy caught himself and blurted out a correction.

"No - I mean, I think he'll win. But he's a half breed- he's a dhampir," he said softly, speaking in hushed tones so as to not be overheard by any of the studying students back in the classroom. "Do you know what that means? If he loses, he lost because half-breeds aren't worth the wood their wands are made of. If he wins, it means he won because he probably drains innocent little Hufflepuffs like juice-boxes or something."

George paused, biting his lip as he tried to sort out his now-racing thoughts. He couldn't filter the anger out when he wasn't writing. There was no time to pick out the pieces of intelligent thought from all the indignity and frustration. So he looked up toward the stars and opened his mouth wide to take deep, slow breaths of the fresh air. Maybe it was the altitude making him feel dizzy.

He pulled his mouth shut and turned his head to look at her, lifting his hand up and using his robe's sleeve to wipe away his eyes. He needed to put those fears away for now. Beat them out of a punching bag later. "That's nice. I think I want to live in Hogsmeade when I'm older. Or maybe there's something like it. Close to Peebles." He covered his nose to hide the sound of his sniffling. "I'm third year. Yeah. Sorry. Bit old to be doing this..."

Yes - the wisdom and emotional control of 14 year olds was legendary. He was probably the only one who did this. "It's not bottled up. I complain about it all the time," he assures the professor. Another moment passed as a cool breeze picked up past the balcony. "I do a voice too. Otherwise I would be... incomprehensibly Scottish. Do I sound posh?"

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Interacting | @George Henry
Hex Color | #A13330

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Coded by Rafael D'Spacito

What George was talking about was not on any of the muggle teaching sites that she had perused before coming here. No talk of how to deal with mysterious figures haunting the boarding school, students interrogating teachers to make sure they wouldn't harm their friends, or the battles muggles faced in the wizarding world. All she was armed with were her own life experiences and a shoddy mental book of advice her parents had given her throughout the years. "You'll have to forgive me I've been here for just over two months. So I might not be up to date on all the goings-on." Was it supposed to be obvious? Did she miss something in her briefing that would have prepped her for this conversation?

Ah, the Hexiwizard tournament. The one that was announced the week after she got there, therefore it wasn't exactly high on the list of her own priorities to pay attention to. While she did attend the ball where they were announced she was half there, making a list internally of all of the things she would have to get done before Professor Read departed. She followed his eyes back towards the atrium, mostly to get a sense of if the whole thing had erupted in fire yet. Which it hadn't. "Ah, the age-old battle. I feel like no matter how far wizards progress, we always come back to that debate. It seems the students are always used as the guinea pigs for it too. I'm not surprised that the champion comes from Hufflepuff, Cedric Diggory had as well. You're a good house. One that protects each other." She leaned her back against the cold metal railing, crossing her arms and knitting her eyebrows together.

"You should note that a lot of those articles are sensationalist, nothing but a handful of people trying to get people worked up about the same things they are. Often it just leads to people being hurt. I'll have to make sure to start reading the Daily Prophet again. As well as the little newspaper Hogwarts has. Seems I'm out of the loop." She looked down at him wiping his tears away, her heart couldn't help but ache for the students that must be so full of fear. "You and Howard, any student really, will always be as safe as I can keep you in my classroom. I know it's not much, but it's what I can offer." Her classroom couldn't shield them from blood purism or the toils of the upcoming tournament but it could at least be a sanctuary. A place where they knew at least one person was on their side.

"You're not too old to have feelings, whoever has told you that can bug off. I'm glad you seem to have people to talk about it with at the very least." She paused, evaluating his accent and deciding maybe he needed words of affirmation more than anything. "I think with some more practice you could pass in the highest of afternoon teas." She nodded back towards the classroom. "Why don't we head back in, I don't want to be the reason you end up with a cold. Or homework uncompleted." She also didn't want to leave the classroom alone for too too long.

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George was surprised when Farron brought up Cedric and complimented his house. He knew what had happened with Cedric - he was an idol for the house, and there was a dorm named after him, as well. While his first instinct was to deny that Hufflepuff had any redeeming qualities at all, she was right. They weren't the bravest, or the smartest, but they took care of their own. Even he did, sometimes. George wondered if they would name a dorm after Howard if anything happened.

"It will probably be that way forever," George lamented, regarding the cycles of wizarding political debate. He stiffened up with his arms at his sides, petrified as the woman wiped away his tears, though the show of care for him just made him produce more. He politely wiped them off with his sleeve. He nodded to acknowledge her assurance of safety, but he had no words for it. "The Headliner is a good newspaper. I used to write for them."

The boy took a moment to compose himself and nodded. He sniffled, leaned over, and took a deep breath, wiping his face with his sleeves. It was as if he had put on a mask under there. He exhaled, returning to neutral, tears cleared. There was still some trace redness and running of the nose to give him away. Rather surprisingly, the young boy pulled out a compact mirror and checked himself in it, a tiny enchanted round rising from within the compact to apply some makeup around his eyes before retreating to be tucked away again.

"Alright," he murmured, walking back inside and returning to the desk to grab his bag before he snuck off to one of the desks in the classroom. His brave face on, he took out his homework and his quill, sitting down and getting right to work on his Astronomy homework. He did not look like it, but he felt better.