20 December 2009
4pm

The castle was much quieter than Ylva could have imagined it.  Nearly all of the Hogwarts students had left school for the winter holidays, and many of the visiting students had taken the opportunity to travel back home again.  Many of them were in their final year of school, after all, and so would have important matters to attend to back home.  Some of her own students would have meetings about possible apprenticeships and the Tournament couldn't stand in the way.  As hectic as the term had been, Professor Maras was grateful for the quiet.

Even if there was yet a great deal of work to do.

She sat with Professor Aileen Reid in the Runes classroom.  They were surrounded by rolls of parchment and the fifth years' diaramas and runes wheels, the fourth years' projects, and the high level students' essays.  Maras had agreed without hesitation to assist Professor Reid with the mid-term evaluations. 

Professor Maras was looking over the difficult-to-read essay of one N.E.W.T. student called Figaro Sellaphix.  Her brow furrowed as she had to read the first few lines multiple times to decode his hand-writing.  Giving up, she handed it over to Aileen.

"Perhaps you can make heads or tails of this.  Though perhaps he'll be better off if his response remains a mystery to us." 

A bit cruel perhaps, but Maras expected more from the older students. 

With the students' departure, the castle stood silent, wrapped in a white, cold blanket of snow. It was getting dark outside, and the hour felt much later than it was. At least Maras' presence kept Aileen focused, and she did not need to down so much tea.

Aileen had not expected to get along well with the Durmstrang professor, because she was used to competing with most of the women she worked with directly. Like she had at the Ministry. Like she had with Snark. Between the two Runes professors, there was friendly rivalry, but mostly respect.

Taking the exam, she sighed. "Sellaphix."

Under the light of the lantern, she brought the exam close to her nose, then held it at arm's length, as if the issue were her sight and not the student's unique scrawl. But Aileen didn't need to read it to see that the essay answers could stand to be longer. If a student gave her concise work, it had better be a gem, and Mr. Sellaphix usually offered an owl dropping.

"I've told him time and time again that it would behoove him to invest in a Straight-Away Quill."[1]

Reading the answer about ownership as best she could, Aileen reflected that he was not as thorough or as critical as he should have been, but the responses he did offer were correct. No glaring errors. She smirked a bit at his mention of illegal curses.

His response about careers was much more simplistic, even writing that working at the Ministry was boring. That was not what she had meant by 'discuss pros and cons'! And while Aileen was intrigued by the mention of his family shop (a good attempt at filler if he was looking to add it), he neglected to explain how runes work factored into it, which was what she would have liked to know.

"This is an improvement from his midterm last year," Aileen commented. "He was in danger of trolling out, so I created a mandatory study schedule for him and corresponded with his mother to get him up to par. Unfortunately, he needs this class to run the family apothecary when he graduates."

She paused with her quill at the top of the page. "I could give this an 'A', but nothing more."

1.	First-year muggleborns sometimes used these quills to straighten their letters and smooth any errors as they wrote.

Ylva could see the fatigue in Professor Reid's voice over that essay, that student.  She seemed to be in conflict about whether to be merciful.

"At Durmstrang we wouldn't have been so attentive," she said, and unfurled another essay to read over.  This one looked far more like what she'd want to see in a N.E.W.T.-level student.  Neat writing, sufficient lenght.  Even glancing at it, she could see it was more than likely up-to-snuff. 

"I'm not meaning to be critical, it is just our way.  The students earn the marks they earn and we make every effort to show them the way.  But when it comes down to evaluation..."  she trailed in her Swedish accent (her English was already improved since August). 

"If it's Acceptable then it's Acceptable.  If not, it's not," Ylva said with casual matter-of-factness.  "It's only the mid-term, is it not?  It could be a wake-up call for him."

Wake-up calls were very much Durmstrang's way.

"Dimbleby."  She handed over the scroll, after having checked through the skills portion.  "Strong work with the Futhark.  Tripped up by the circular structures though." 

Aileen nodded, taking Maras' advice into account and the noncritical way it was given. Yes, at Durmstrang, Sellaphix would be hanging from the rafters by his robe with a fool’s cap on his head. A fine example of a Dreg!

At Hogwarts, things were different, or at least it varied more from professor to professor. Mr. Sellaphix was improving, and she did notice, but she could only be so lenient with him. Perhaps he would be happy enough to pass.

“An ‘A’ it is,” she marked the letter at the top of his exam, then took Dimbleby’s scroll with relief. Her answers were methodical, thoughtful, and legible, which the Runes professor appreciated.

“Very thorough. Solid ‘O’.”

Aileen glanced at the weighty, tightly-rolled scroll Maras had started to unfurl, raising her eyebrows. “Let me guess. Mr. Schlagenweit.”

Likely another O, that one!

"It is," Ylva said quietly as her focus shifted from the conversation to the stiff Ravenclaw student's Runes translations and his lengthy essay.

It took a few minutes for her to read through it in the silence of the hibernating castle.  Sasha Schlagenweit, Ylva had come to know, was a model student.  No, he wasn't boisterous or effusive, but the boy did his work and did it with precision.  His mistakes, when he had them, were clever enough.  A credit to his house and her expectations carried as she checked over.

"Translations are flawless," she noted aloud to Professor Reid. "And he's gotten the Guard Runes all correct."

As she read his essay, she let out a couple of bemused little huffs.  He certainly had an opinion, didn't he.  "Subservient..." she muttered.  When she'd finished she passed the scroll to Aileen.

"It's an A.  At best," she said, looking disappointed. 

"I'll leave the judgement to you, but I think you'll find he's used the examination as a platform to echo bleeding-heart ideas about goblin rights." She said the phrase as if it was fanciful.   "I don't know where he heard all that, but he's done himself a disservice."

She crossed her arms and sat back, giving Professor Reid time to have her own look at it.   They'd been at it for awhile and she took the opportunity to rest her brain a little. 

Aileen had been grading Carys Whitman’s exam when she began to hear the little huffs of discontent from Maras’ desk. She paused, glanced at her. Paused, glanced at her again. Finally, when the Durmstrang professor revealed her poor opinion of his essay, surprise flitted across Aileen’s face. She took the scroll with a more stoic expression, then glanced down to see her quill had left several drops of ink on Whitman’s pristine exam.

“He wouldn’t have heard it from me.” She set everything else aside and focused on Schlagenweit’s response.

As she read it once, then twice, and then pored over his other answers, Aileen pursed her lips, her eyebrows arching in conflict. Without Maras present, she might have sighed at the essay’s tone and merely focused on the facts, but the professor had a point. It would not hurt him to be more objective. He had NEWTs next year.

However, he did not deserve the same grade as Sellaphix! Aileen did not even want to think about what that would do to him.

"To be fair, I never specified that the essays should be completely free of personal bias,” she glanced up, noticing the professor’s tired, somewhat defensive posture. “But yes, his tone, his reasoning could be improved. I know he’s capable of it.”

Aileen felt more bothered by the sentence where he’d called himself an outsider than the mention of ‘subservient’ which seemed to rankle Maras so much. He’d attended Hogwarts for six years. Even the greenest muggleborns learned not to mistake goblins for especially ugly house-elves.

“The exam in its entirety is certainly higher than an ‘A’." Aileen paused, respecting the other professor's opinion, yet not quite willing to bend that far.

"I’d give him an ‘E’, at worst.”

Her quill hovered once more over the parchment, then swept into a sharp ‘E’ that looked more decisive than she felt. A blot formed at the lower corner of the grade. As Aileen frowned at it, the blot spread into a tiny ‘O’ shape. Hope squashed![1]

1.	Mai/Sasha and I discussed options and decided on an 'E' because it's funny. And for the plotting!

Ylva gave a little shrug, but had no trouble at all allowing Professor Reid to make her own mark on Mr. Schlagenweit's paper.  Hogwarts was her milieu and this course entirely her prerogative.  She did perceive, however, that her opinion had mattered to Aileen.  She expected that had their roles been reversed and they been at Durmstrang that Reid would have shown her the same honesty and deference.

"I haven't had the chance to thank you for your accommodations," she said without hesitation and lacking her usual hardness.  When she wasn't instructing to students or tending to the tasks of her station, Ylva was a passionate witch, and occasionally lonely.

"I can say it's better than I expected, knowing the rivalry between our two schools, and the experiences of some of the others.  It's been a true pleasure."

Ylva offered the compliment to the blonde witch freely and without insecurity.  Aileen was younger and the standards at Hogwarts lower, but Ylva was happy, grateful even, to admit that she had learned from her English counterpart.  Ylva didn't like pride much, although it plagued her. 

"Thank you."

Aileen glanced up in surprise at the sudden and seemingly genuine thanks. She rested her quill on the bottle of ink in an effort to avoid marring Miss Whitman's exam.

A pleased, yet uncomfortable smile twitched on her mouth as she studied the parchment before her, then looked up again. "There is no need to thank me. You've made it look easy, adjusting to the castle and our way of doing things. I'm certain most of the Hogwarts professors would not do half as well if the tournament were at Durmstrang."

Trishna, Hagrid, Jowd, Longbottom, and Santucci stood out in her mind as those who would struggle the most.

"I do appreciate this," Aileen gestured around the room at the projects. "As well as your perspective in the classroom. The students really benefit from your direction and energy."

And so did she. Rarely did Aileen ever look up to someone (unless she was trying to gain something), but the only other person at Hogwarts that she had begun to respect to this extent was her uncle Herschel. Now that Headmaster Reid was gone, she felt steadied by Maras' influence.

Aileen paused to give Carys Whitman an 'O'. Miss Whitman had certainly made a smart choice by focusing on one essay question and explaining the pros and cons in such detail, even commenting on ethics. The student had left a slightly more personal analysis in the last paragraph, reminding Aileen of her job before becoming a professor.

"When I worked at the Ministry, I couldn't go a day without witnessing an argument or being involved in one myself," she admitted.

"Bickering, sabotage; it was all par for the pitch in the Department of Mysteries. Poor leadership," she shook her head. Snark's leadership.

"I'm sure that's changed now."

Ylva noted the younger Runesmaster's discomfort at being complimented, but she understood it.  She could tell that affection did not stream easily to or from Aileen Reid.  Regardless, Ylva intended her comments to be both friendly and informative.  It would be good for both of them to better understand where they stood with each other.  And it seemed as if they would be ending the semester on a strong note.  All the better for their students and the next generation of the study of Runes.

"I'm sure that's changed now."

"Are you?" Ylva asked with a sardonic smile.  Ylva had heard very little of the British Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries - perhaps that's how they liked it.  But if it was anything like any other beurocratic entity, it had many faces.

"In my view there are two kinds of arguments in our field.  Those that come from people divided on principle, and those that come from shared passion," Ylva said with a thoughtful shrug.  She was inspecting a fingernail.

"The former sort can cause irreparable cracks.  The latter fills them.  I wish I could say Durmstrang wasn't plagued by our leadership being of many different minds, but there are too many conflicting motives at times."

Aileen smirked at Maras’ question. It would be just her luck, she should have said, for the department to become pleasant after she had left and Snark had followed her to Hogwarts. She listened to her thoughts on the source of conflict in the study of Runes. Divided on principle, most certainly. Aileen understood wanting power and control over one's life, but Snark had taken it to extremes, and that was even before the blackmail and threats. No, Aileen did not have an ounce of pity for her.

As for shared passion, perhaps Aileen was perceived as being too cold, too solitary for it. But she understood that too. It was how she'd fallen in love in her early twenties, both with the subject and the subject's scholar. Though they were no longer together and it had been years since she'd seen him, they would always have Runes.

“I doubt that’s unique to Durmstrang,” she glanced at her curiously as she set Miss Whitman's exam aside. In the past few years, Hogwarts had changed Heads and staff so often that Peeves sometimes still shouted 'Greyfriar Glumbumbles!' while waggling fiercely bushy eyebrows.

“Eisenberg has been Headmaster since the second wizarding war, if I'm remembering correctly?” Aileen wondered exactly who she was talking about now that her Durmstrang colleague had mentioned it.

The conversation had turned to Durmstrang and for some reason Ylva felt defensive.  She rolled her hand into a fist and unrolled it again very consciously.   But she hid the feeling quickly - it was a reflex.  Durmstrang had little to hide in these times, and her own secrets she was so used to keeping that they barely ever bubbled up in her consciousness any more.  No, there was no threat here.  So why did any inquiry make her nervous?

"He replaced Karkaroff," she said.  Most British would know of Karkaroff - he'd been a Death Eater allied with Lord Voldemort.  "Eisenberg remained neutral.  That's how he got the post and that's how he holds it."   Ylva didn't seem to approve.

"I watched him.  And neutral as he may be, he's got no shortage of enemies.  That schoolmaster would have enemies..." she found herself smiling.  So dramatic things could seem...

"But yes.  That's one reason I'm here.  To get on his good side again.  I'd like to be director of Tangibles before I die..."  The old witch seemed a little miffed.  As she should!  She was nearly 70 and highly decorated in her speciality.  But not only that, she's been at Durmstrang just as long as Eisneberg had, and was accomplished in every aspect of Tangibles as she'd need to be and then some.  But politics always got in the way...