alchemical blurb

[mswoods]

The following day, Sadde has Transfiguration in the morning.

She is all over it at lunch.

"Okay, so, Transfig is just about the coolest thing," she says first thing to the Ravenclaws as soon as she sits at the table.

Comments

[chanuphis]

"Salazar did actually care about blood. It was a thing."

[mrwoods]

"Yeah but it wasn't what his House was about."

[pleating]

"Are you sure?"

[mrwoods]

"Well not sure sure, I guess I'd have to look at some history book or something, but it sounds... incongruous with the whole theme the Houses have going on: bravery and determination, wit and learning, hard work and loyalty, cunning and hating muggles."

[pleating]

"Traditionalism," suggests Karen.

[mrwoods]

"I don't think that's one of the things, I could totally see Slytherins defending that if it was and they don't. They go mostly the cunning and ambition way, those sound pretty neat already, I don't think Traditionalism makes a lot of sense there." He shrugs.

[chanuphis]

"It's a long held association and was one of the original considerations of admission even if it would not make a top two list. Your aesthetics for what the lists should look like are not necessarily Salazar's anyway."

[mrwoods]

"Fine, but they're what I'm gonna reform Slytherin into anyway, so there." He lizard-tongues at them.

[chanuphis]

"Well, good luck."

[mrwoods]

"I'm still gonna pick your brains about it!" he warns.

[chanuphis]

"I tremble in fear."

[mrwoods]

He grins. "Anyway, Winky visited yesterday."

[chanuphis]

"How'd that go?"

[mrwoods]

"It was... curious. Turns out the reason Turvy said she was talking so much about her feelings was because she was, erm, crying a lot all the time about her dead ex-masters."

[msmaxwell]

"Oh poor thing!"

[mrwoods]

"Wasn't pretty," he nods.

[pleating]

"They get really attached, especially if their families are nice to them."

[mrwoods]

"I don't know if they were so nice to her," he says. "I mean, one of them actually fired her."

[pleating]

"Oh no! The poor elf!"

[mrwoods]

"Yeah, fired and then they died, she was pretty inconsolable at first. Eventually I got her to talk about her feelings, though."

[chanuphis]

"Was she better at it than Turvy?"

[mrwoods]

"She was sufficiently good," he shrugs. "From what I gather, she has a very very strong instinct about what a 'good elf' is supposed to do, no two ways about it, no possibility that something else might also be a good way to be an elf. The actual skills related to it, her mum taught her, but she said that there wasn't ever a time when she didn't know what it meant to be a good elf. Or that she didn't love her Mr. Crouch."

[chanuphis]

"That doesn't mean it wasn't acquired. I can't remember not knowing how to read, but that just means I wasn't forming episodic memories that young."

[mrwoods]

He nods. "That's true, I suppose. She also said something to the effect of it just... being obvious, or something. The 'what a good elf is' thing. She said that it was obvious, but she didn't know how it was obvious, were her words, I think. Anyway, the least horrifying hypothesis here is that they're in fact artificial. If they're domesticated then it's likely that there are terrible side effects to their psyche because of it, and if they're just brain washed that's terrible all by itself. She mentioned one elf who was a terrible elf and who tricked his master into freeing him but he died last year. I wonder if I could find elves that dislike their masters and get their opinion on the matter..."

[chanuphis]

"They must be vanishingly rare."