"Thank you for agreeing to see me, professor Maras" she said as she entered the classroom, and bowed her head slightly. She looked to the window and noticed the dark sky of evening, she was rather happy with Autumn in general, but the fact the day was shorter during this time, gave Amara even more reasons for joy. "I'm very sorry for taking up your time, I'll try to make the interview as short as possible" she quickly added as she stepped in front of the desk.

When she found out about their History of Magic assignment, Professor Maras seemed like the obvious choice. After all, she really didn't have any sort of connection with the students from the other schools in the tournament. And she grew to tolerate the woman's presence, they seemed alike and more than one time Amara could see herself content with the idea of resembling the witch in her future.

She was rather reluctant to touch the subject she'd chosen, however. The regret of not going to Durmstrang was still raw, but she thought she'd at least enjoy the experience through the eyes of someone else. And Professor Maras seemed like the perfect person to help her with that, so she had approached her after class a few days ago to ask if the possibility of an interview for her assignment was something she'd agree with. Happily, she had.

The door opened and in came the strange Amara Bathory, her student and special project.  Miss Bathory had the head for Runes but not yet the spirit.  Ylva hoped to nurture in Amara a spark of feeling into the subject because rote and precision alone would never create a master inscriptionist.

Maras shut the grimoire and slid it to the side.  Professor Reid was elsewhere, and since the start of term, they'd very comfortably shared the classroom. 

"Come in," she beckoned and patiently heard Amara's overly polite apologies.  They tended to wax Professor Maras' nerves some, but she'd tolerate it much better than impudence and over-familiarity.  "Quite alright."

As Amara got settled, Professor Maras took up their topic.  "I understand that Professor Jowd has assigned you to interview us visitors?" she asked to confirm.  "For History of Magic?"   

Maras was not so much a Runes Professor, even though that was her specialty.  She was, in fact, an instructor of the Tangible magics at Durmstrang.  She could capably lead students in courses of pertaining to magical plants, the brewing of potions, and even the movements of the stars.  Topics such as history was the purview of those who studied the Intangible magics.

"Indeed, he did. We were asked to study an aspect of foreign magical culture. With my interest in Durmstrang, it being... the Alma Mater of my family for the past half millennium, it seemed like the rather obvious choice" she said as she dragged a chair in front of the desk and sat down with her back straight. Visual contact was important in any conversation, or so Elena told her repeatedly.

She quickly extracted a roll of parchment and her writing utensils and sat them neatly on the desk in front of her, before hanging her bag on the back of the chair. She uncorked the bottle of dark purple ink and set the lustrous self-writing raven quill on the parchment, where it remained magically suspended in the air.

"For a better understanding of the way Durmstrang Institute functions, in contrast to Hogwarts and to better emphasize the differences between the Norwegian setting of the wizarding society as opposed to the British or Romanian one -the only ones I have experience with- I would like to keep the interview open, make it a life story interview. I don't have a specific set of questions, but instead I have a few points I'd like to reach, that will be achieved by asking some basic questions and, in addition, questions such as 'why?' or 'could you please detail on that?' while you tell me about your experiences. Does this agree with you, Professor?" she asked in a less tense tone.

She had come prepared by studying various books related to journalism and taking interviews, and she had decided this would be the best approach to the matter in question. Now she could only hope that her interviewee would agree to the terms.

My, my, she was a peculiar one.  Ylva listened with a raised eyebrow as Amara launched into a very formal, almost scholarly description of her progress.  Ylva somehow doubted that's how the strange Hogwarts History of Magic professor would have delivered the assignment.  Professor Jowd was rumored to be quite...liberal, educationally speaking.  Not a favorable evaluation from Professor Maras.

Anyway.

"Yes, child, agreeable enough," she said, and sat back into her chair with a creak.  "I shall do my best."

And with an open sort of glance, Ylva Maras indicated she was ready.

"Yery well, Professor" she said as she straightened her back and crossed her legs. She felt rather awkward, some of the question implied a personal response, but it was the only way to get what she was assigned with but also try to get an indirect Durmstrang experience.

"Would you please tell me a bit about your childhood, prior to enrollment at the Institute?" she asked in a controlled voice, trying not to let her excitement show. "Perhaps a bit about your family, the society, the first contact with magic?" she added, making sure the witch understood she was not doing this out of simple curiosity, but staying on the course of her assignment.

Ylva nodded.  She could certainly oblige.

She folded her hands on her desk and tilted her head as she began to tell her story.

"We lived in the small village of Herrang in Sweden.  My parents were wealthy magical folk both of them, and lived remotely by choice.  My father worked in finance and my sisters and I were raised by our mother.  They were strict, but country life gave us a good deal of space.  I attended a small community magical school in the house of a local old sorceress."

Ylva paused, not sure if she'd used the correct English word to describe who this witch was.  "A witch who was quite old, the last of her coven, much respected," she clarified.

"I was a shy girl," she said with almost pity for herself.  "Easily in tears and I hung on the approval of my parents and teacher.  But like I said - my parents were strict and my older sisters were not always very loving.  Things were better, I remember, as soon as my magic came when I was eight.  I had fallen through the ice in the frozen lake trying to fetch my kitten.  But the both of us were spurted back out in a fountain of icy cold water."

Ylva's eye twinkled at the memory.  She seemed very proud of that moment.  "After that, things were better.  I believe now my parents had been worried I would be a squib because my aunt had been."

She listened carefully to the professor's speech, intrigued by the woman's history. She surely never expected her to have such a background, she would've never thought Professor Maras to have been such a fragile child.

"You possibly being a squib, how would've that been perceived by your family?" she asked carefully. Magic, or the lack of it in a fully magical family was always a delicate subject, but she asked more out of her own curiosity than the subject of the interview. The subjects of  'squibs' in the Báthory family was a very dark one indeed. In earlier times a squib born in the family would be made to simply disappear off the face of the planet, in ways one would not like to even think about. Right now, they would be cast away from the family, disowned and never to be talked about again.

"Jävlar!"  Ylva said back with a mild expletive in her native language and then returned shaking her head.  "That would not have been good," she told Amara.  "We were a magical family, well-connected.  In those days it was much harder to be in the community if you did not have a wand.  Really, squibs were treated like children back then, or worse.  People then believed it was some fault of the parents somehow..."

Ylva shook her head.  It was cruel the things done to squibs.   

She raised a hand and laid it on the desk with some finality.  "But no, I am certainly not a squib and there was no reason to worry.  And when turned eleven my parents took me to Durmstrang where I underwent The Test.  I was terrified of course, but I'd been practicing.  I passed and entered Durmstrang that next autumn as Zufreiden.

"Durmstrang was difficult for me, you know," she told Amara sternly.  "I was a soft child, I have told you this.  I was used to my life in Herrang and I was terribly homesick all the time.  I spent my entire second year in the Dreg!"

Maras said so as if it should have come as a great surprise, as if it should stand as a morality tale, a lesson to everyone.

She nodded to her explanation, she knew exactly what her professor meant. She had shown her magical abilities from a very young age, but she remembered the panic she felt for Emilia as for quite a few years she gave no reason to believe she had any magical abilities. It was a dreadful memory and she chose to wave it from her mind quickly.

She continued to listen to the professor, until she audibly gasped at hearing she had been a Dreg for an entire year. Professor Maras, in the Dreg?! That was truly shocking, but she tried to contain her surprise as best as she could. "How would you say your year in the Dreg has affected your education and your future, in general?" she asked in as professional a tone as she could muster, after the professor's little revelation.

"This is one of the most evident differences between the two shcools: the Durmstrang Strata and the Hogwarts Houses. How do you think these two systems are in comparison to each other, and which do you think more successful in the shaping of an individual?"

At a question about her time in the Dreg, Ylva scoffed like she was exhasperated with an insolent student, but she wasn't displeased with Amara at all - it was a reaction to recalling her thirteen-year-old self.

"I fell to Dreg because of nerves," she said, "I fell to Dreg because I was always nervous and I let the pressure get to me.  Every test, every moment to show what I could do, I choked!  It was a wake-up call, I tell you what.  It isn't so uncommon for the second or third years to find themself in the Dreg for a time, but I tell you, I spent far too much time there.  But when I realized there was no further down I could go, I started to climb back up."

She pointed her finger firmply on the tabletop.  "And that's what Durmstrang does for a witch.  It teaches you to struggle and to strive for what you were born for.  After all, it's only school! It isn't a war, is it? No one shall die, will they?  But all the same it takes effort and passion and focus.  The most valuable lessons are to be learned in Dreg."

But she waved her hand.  She'd gone on too long on that topic. 

"But yes.  The Strata.  We do find we like to sort students, don't we? We like to section them off and organize them, perhaps because they are so prone to change and chaos?  It's difficult to tell.  Here at Hogwarts, they sort them by their demeanor but their place is fixed.  At Durmstrang, we sort them by their prowess, but their position is fluid.

"I think, by far, the best way to arrange students is in such a way that allows them to change and to access the resources they most need.  To be stuck in the Ravenclaw when perhaps one grows to need the attentions that Slytherin can offer? I say this is cruel.  But to be a Dreg is to attend mandatory tutoring and is a warning that better performance is needed.  The Strata is compassionate."

She nodded visibly, as she listened to the Professor. She was of the same opinion, she knew so few of Hogwarts, before coming here, because she had always prepared for the Institute. She still did not understand the House system of Hogwarts, she never truly cared much for it, but it had come as a surprise, in her first year to hear all those labeles thrown around, because you were a Slytherin, or a Gryffindor. People should be judged according to their own merits, not because they had been sorted by a magical artefact into this house or that. Later on, after the sorting and after she made some research, she had been a bit surprised remembering that the Sorting Hat hadn't even settled well on her head and shouted "Slytherin!" almost triumphantly.

She was again reminded, oh how unfit she felt at Hogwarts, this entire interview was a jab to the face... She longed for her family's rich experiences, she longer for her homelands, for Europe, even if, technically she was British to the bone, born and bred, she never felt like she belonged here. The visits to Romania, away from Victor and into the cradle of the Báthorys were the few joys she knew, and considering that the entire time spent there meant hard work, training from dusk till dawn, continuous reminders of the omen her hair meant, the elders all disapproving and judgmental... that mean something. She sighed audibly and before she had time to remember her surroundings and the setting of this meeting she turned to look at the window once more, into the distance.

"I shouldn't be here. My legacy was Durmstrang, I am the Báthory heiress, and yet I've been hauled to this damned island, uprooted from my family's lands... This country -this land has desecrated everything about my family and stole everything from me" she said with anger and spite in her voice. But only seconds later she audibly gasped and turned to the Professor, pure horror on her face.

"I am so-..." she began, then stopped suddenly. "Please excuse my brash behavior and language, I don't know what came over me" she said, stony mask, again in place. She cleared her throat and shook her head as if admonishing herself.

"What about the teaching system -the rather distinct subjects taught at Hogwarts, with no particular common grouping as opposed to the three disciplines taught at Durmstrang? What are your thoughts on this, Professor?" she asked, all business-like again.

Ylva was visible put off when Amara shed her calm and began wailing like a petulant child.  The Durmstrang professor disapproved most intensely but the moment passed quickly for Amara and she apologized.

"You are excused, but I warn you - whining that that will get you no where.  Not at Durmstrang and not at Hogwarts.  Make the best of what you have.  There is nothing shameful about Hogwarts - it is a fine school." 

But Amara had moved on.  Composed herself and there was still yet to discuss.

On the subject of the three disciplines at Durmstrang, Ylva seemed ambivalent.  "The difference is nothing important, in my opinion.  We must organize things in some way - Durmstrang's foundations found use in grouping topics broadly and it suits us fine in my opinion.  Sometimes we are wanting for some specificity, sometimes the flexibility within a Discipline is of great help.  But it doesn't always sort out nicely, you know.  What about the magic of divining? It's placement in the Tangibles is arbitrary at best.  It could very well be Spellworks or Intangibles."

Ylva shrugged.  "From what Professor Hendurabi tells me, here at Hogwarts there is the same conflict from time to time between Transfigurations, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts."

In the pause after that question, Ylva rose from her seat to adjust the curtains by the window.  The changing position of the sun was casting a glare.

"How much more is there?"  Her question was not impatient, but matter-of-fact.

She listened to the professor intently, still calming herself after her outburst and held back a cringe as she heard about Divination. Amara thought it the most useless subject that could ever be taught in an academic environment, but she shrugged it off. She watched the woman rise and she was again struck by the awe in which she saw the Professor. She exuded power and confidence merely by her physical presence. Amara straightened her back and straightened her resolve to one day be the same sort of woman.

"Only two: a bit about the Institute's history, in your own words and how have you accommodated at Hogwarts so far. We could continue some other time, however, if I'm intruding?" she asked calmly.

A small smile momentarily lit up Professor Maras's face.  "No, not at all.  You are quite welcome."  She did find that she was enjoying Amara's questions, and despite the student being a bit odd, she had felt quite gratified that a Hogwarts student had sought her out for this assignment, especially one as talented as a Amara.  It was no imposition at all.

"Durmstrang is very old," she said, "But it wasn't always in the castle - for a time early on it existed in what was once a monastery.  It wasn't always the way it is now.  In those early days it wasn't founded to be a formal school, but a safe place for masters to teach their apprentices."

She walked slowly around Professor Reid's Runes classroom as she told the tale.  "Later, witches and wizards began to live there just to study and teach.  Some would come from very far away to learn there.

"It was two hundred later that a school was officially founded.  And some hundred years after that, they relocated to the castle under a new recktor - the same who created the Strata.  Since then it gained a reputation for being the most exclusive magic school known to Europe.  Some might say exclusivity does not make it the best, and to be sure Durmstrang has become more accepting, but we still have very strict standards."

"If you were at Durmstrang," Ylva asked, suddenly curious, "Which of the three disciplines would you pursue.  At your age, you would be beginning to specialize."

She listened to the professor with a curious attentiveness. She had made her research beforehand, to include the history of Durmstrang, but it was always more fascinating to hear it by means of story-telling. It was peaceful, only the voice of Professors Maras and the scratch of her self-writing quill could be heard, and Amara couldn't help but wonder once again how life would've been at the Institute. Would she have been a favorite of the Professor? She would've liked that very much....

She was surprised to hear the question come out of her mouth, and her eyebrows raised in a slight expression of it. "I would've opted for a double specialization: Intangibles for the benefit of my future position, but also for my fondness of intellectual magic and Spellworks, for the practicality of it" she answered, still a bit unsure.

She was preparing for ten OWLs next year, a double specialization was the only way for her. And she hadn't much to do during her school years, besides study and train. She cleared her throat and fixed her skirt as she changed the way she crossed her legs.

"This is the last question, Professor Maras. How do you find Hogwarts so far? Was it hard to accommodate? Has the staff been welcoming? Do you find our students much different from the Institute? Things of such nature" she said explaining her question.