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Feb. 6th, 2013 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_poppyMolly, I know you are anxious about your youngest. She is much improved today, though I still have her here with me. She had quite an emotionally purging night of it; I am hopeful that the experience may at least have had a cathartic effect for her.
I'm afraid that she has been suffering a great many stresses. Like all of the young people here, Dolores Umbridge's coup has left her feeling quite unnerved. She says that she wrote that private message to her brothers in the midst of a long night of sleeplessness in which she felt utterly alone, as if she had no friends to whom she could turn, as if no one could ever understand or help her. I believe this is precisely the effect Madam Umbridge means to have: I feel certain she is taking satisfaction in how thoroughly successful her 'innovations' are proving here.
But Ginevra's condition is of more than Dolores Umbridge's making, as we all know. She is still deeply grieving Arthur's loss, and is, she confessed to me, feeling profound guilt for having 'been selfish'. She realises that her work for that fashion magazine consumed her time and attention, and it seems that her feelings about it are still deeply conflicted. Molly, she confessed to feeling very angry that she has had to give up that contract, and I believe the strength of that negative emotion frightens her. In any case, it is adding to her guilt: she feels she oughtn't to feel angry or oughtn't to have enjoyed the attention and praise and salary that she earned there, but she does feel both and also feels quite justified in both regards.
She also believes that none of her family understand her nor could ever possibly come to understand her. She feels like the odd swan in a family of mallards. (My apologies for the blunt metaphor, but it conveys what she also rather bluntly put to me.)
All of this is quite normal for an adolescent girl--particularly one from a large family and a family stocked full of brothers--but it is also shaped by circumstances that are unique to Ginevra herself.
She is quite anxious about her studies, concerned that she has again overextended herself by taking on Quidditch on top of the ever-expanding demands of the YPL and CCF programmes, which are, of course, also on top of her core and elective studies. I asked which subjects particularly concerned her. Like all the students here, she is dismayed by the unexpected interruptions in two of her core subjects due to the illness of one instructor and the removal of a second. She has joined revision groups to keep on track in those subjects, and quite naturally that has eaten into the time she has for attending to her other work. She then mentioned that both Potions and Transfiguration have been causing her to lose sleep, and I offered to help her arrange conversations with each of those teachers to discuss the concepts or assignments with which she's been struggling.
(Molly, I've spoken with both Albus and Horace today, and I believe that Ginevra will be seeing each of them tomorrow to discuss what is causing her transfigurations to fail and her potions to fizzle.)
Mostly, I believe she has been overtired, and, of course, yesterday she was subject to a rather too-vigorous Fleo charm. (And, no, Mssrs Weasley, I did not tell her so. You may thank me for my circumspection. We all appreciate that you meant well and that the circumstances were fraught; in any event, you did her no lasting harm.)
In the end, I administered a full dose of Mind's Ease, and have allowed her to sleep it off. I plan to keep Ginevra here through tonight, but if there are no further upsets, I will allow her to join her peers for breakfast and to return to her lessons thereafter.
I'm afraid that she has been suffering a great many stresses. Like all of the young people here, Dolores Umbridge's coup has left her feeling quite unnerved. She says that she wrote that private message to her brothers in the midst of a long night of sleeplessness in which she felt utterly alone, as if she had no friends to whom she could turn, as if no one could ever understand or help her. I believe this is precisely the effect Madam Umbridge means to have: I feel certain she is taking satisfaction in how thoroughly successful her 'innovations' are proving here.
But Ginevra's condition is of more than Dolores Umbridge's making, as we all know. She is still deeply grieving Arthur's loss, and is, she confessed to me, feeling profound guilt for having 'been selfish'. She realises that her work for that fashion magazine consumed her time and attention, and it seems that her feelings about it are still deeply conflicted. Molly, she confessed to feeling very angry that she has had to give up that contract, and I believe the strength of that negative emotion frightens her. In any case, it is adding to her guilt: she feels she oughtn't to feel angry or oughtn't to have enjoyed the attention and praise and salary that she earned there, but she does feel both and also feels quite justified in both regards.
She also believes that none of her family understand her nor could ever possibly come to understand her. She feels like the odd swan in a family of mallards. (My apologies for the blunt metaphor, but it conveys what she also rather bluntly put to me.)
All of this is quite normal for an adolescent girl--particularly one from a large family and a family stocked full of brothers--but it is also shaped by circumstances that are unique to Ginevra herself.
She is quite anxious about her studies, concerned that she has again overextended herself by taking on Quidditch on top of the ever-expanding demands of the YPL and CCF programmes, which are, of course, also on top of her core and elective studies. I asked which subjects particularly concerned her. Like all the students here, she is dismayed by the unexpected interruptions in two of her core subjects due to the illness of one instructor and the removal of a second. She has joined revision groups to keep on track in those subjects, and quite naturally that has eaten into the time she has for attending to her other work. She then mentioned that both Potions and Transfiguration have been causing her to lose sleep, and I offered to help her arrange conversations with each of those teachers to discuss the concepts or assignments with which she's been struggling.
(Molly, I've spoken with both Albus and Horace today, and I believe that Ginevra will be seeing each of them tomorrow to discuss what is causing her transfigurations to fail and her potions to fizzle.)
Mostly, I believe she has been overtired, and, of course, yesterday she was subject to a rather too-vigorous Fleo charm. (And, no, Mssrs Weasley, I did not tell her so. You may thank me for my circumspection. We all appreciate that you meant well and that the circumstances were fraught; in any event, you did her no lasting harm.)
In the end, I administered a full dose of Mind's Ease, and have allowed her to sleep it off. I plan to keep Ginevra here through tonight, but if there are no further upsets, I will allow her to join her peers for breakfast and to return to her lessons thereafter.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-06 11:28 pm (UTC)Glad she'll be all right. Thanks, Madam P.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-07 03:22 am (UTC)What must have possessed her?
no subject
Date: 2013-02-07 05:54 am (UTC)Yes, she is an odd duck, quite beyond the customary queerness and volatility of girls her age. And she seems perfectly unaware of how her behaviour might be taken amiss by others.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-07 02:03 pm (UTC)Understood, Poppy. My heart just hurts for her. Oh, how I wish I could be there to speak with her! I'll write to her, but of course, letters just aren't the same.
Thank you for caring for my girl.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-07 07:28 pm (UTC)I released her this morning after a good night's sleep, and I believe she went happily enough. Certainly, she's not a child who looks for excuses to avoid lessons. If anything, she errs on the side of too much diligence and worry.