Duties and Distractions
Apr. 27th, 2009 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_poppyThings have been very quiet here in the hospital wing since the term began, though just today I’ve seen an uptick in queasy stomachs and hand cramps and headaches. This can mean only one thing: OWLs and NEWTs are looming on the horizon. It’s not only the fifth- and seventh-years who suffer, of course. Their stress spills over onto the younger ones.
I had a lovely holiday, at least. It took most of it to put this place fully to rights, but it’s such a pleasure to have everything tidy and in its proper place again.
I even had the leisure to spend a nice bit of time looking at the stars through the telescope Professor Sinistra has so kindly lent me. What a revelation to see clearly what’s out beyond our horizons! Of course, I began with the usual constellations and with Saturn, which has been easily visible this month at various times of the night from my little, southern-facing balcony. Aurora tells me that I should look again at it this week for a particularly good view of its moons -- or their shadows, at any rate. And we agreed I would come up to take a look through her larger telescopes one early evening because this week Mercury will be making a rare appearance in the eastern sky.
It’s really been fascinating to relearn so many things I've wholly forgotten (if I ever was taught them as a youngster). I think Aurora was amused at how carried away I got last week with the Lyrid meteor showers. I confess I stayed out for hours watching them shoot towards the southern horizon. I’m afraid it’s becoming a bit of an obsession, this star-gazing: I must be spending an hour every night after dark falls—which is later and later here as we race towards summer—and nearly an hour each morning before the sky grows too bright and things in the ward grow too busy.
Ah, and just on cue, I hear the buzzer calling me to the antechamber. Headache or stomach troubles this time? We shall see!
I had a lovely holiday, at least. It took most of it to put this place fully to rights, but it’s such a pleasure to have everything tidy and in its proper place again.
I even had the leisure to spend a nice bit of time looking at the stars through the telescope Professor Sinistra has so kindly lent me. What a revelation to see clearly what’s out beyond our horizons! Of course, I began with the usual constellations and with Saturn, which has been easily visible this month at various times of the night from my little, southern-facing balcony. Aurora tells me that I should look again at it this week for a particularly good view of its moons -- or their shadows, at any rate. And we agreed I would come up to take a look through her larger telescopes one early evening because this week Mercury will be making a rare appearance in the eastern sky.
It’s really been fascinating to relearn so many things I've wholly forgotten (if I ever was taught them as a youngster). I think Aurora was amused at how carried away I got last week with the Lyrid meteor showers. I confess I stayed out for hours watching them shoot towards the southern horizon. I’m afraid it’s becoming a bit of an obsession, this star-gazing: I must be spending an hour every night after dark falls—which is later and later here as we race towards summer—and nearly an hour each morning before the sky grows too bright and things in the ward grow too busy.
Ah, and just on cue, I hear the buzzer calling me to the antechamber. Headache or stomach troubles this time? We shall see!
Order Only
Date: 2009-04-27 11:35 pm (UTC)But that's not what I wished to say.
Reading Alice's description today of the education they are able to offer the children at Moddey Dhoo has made me feel my limitations quite acutely. Things are far different here for my charges. Miss Granger, Mr Boot and I are memorising charms and practicing their enunciation, and we're learning to recognise plants and to remember their properties. Next week, I'll need to be brewing again, so we will have a chance to put a bit of that theory in motion. And I've been trying to engage them with stories of my star-gazing, but, alas! it is light so early and so late that they've had no opportunity to view them with me.
(Mr Boot, however, took me aside this morning to suggest that I ask Professor Carrow if he--Boot--could help me with this month's inventory. His idea is that if we could finish the inventory quickly enough, there might be time enough for me to show him the morning stars. You may take this as a measure of my young pupil's changed attitude towards education! He has proved to be a veritable sponge, soaking up every bit of information as quickly as I can put it before him! I shall have a think about his proposal. I suppose I could claim that with all the new stores, it would be best to take stock overnight so as not to interfere with daytime operations here on the ward.)
These young folk are so eager for everything I can teach that it makes me very sorry there's so much I cannot. If I could send them both to you Alice, I would. In a heart beat. But their situations are impossible, I'm afraid. I had so hoped that Miss Granger would stay with us for the summer, but it's off to Buckingham for her... and I dread to think where Carrow will take the boy for the summer.
Re: Order Only
Date: 2009-04-28 02:30 am (UTC)It has been ages since I've been done any stargazing myself. I think we might even have a very small telescope in the house somewhere, although it's probably piled under mounds of debris in the attic. But I do have such fond memories of Astronomy class, primarily because Arthur was assigned as my partner there, fourth year. It was while sharing a telescope that we first really started to fancy one another. I remember . . . well, it's almost silly to think of it now. We were trying to get a good look at the Pleiades, and he actually got a little cross with me because I couldn't get the focus adjusted quite right--not realising that the reason that I couldn't was because my hands started shaking whenever he came to stand so close to me!
He used to draw the most absurd cartoons in the margins of his star charts, just to make me laugh.
Re: Order Only
Date: 2009-04-28 02:53 am (UTC)I met my Rafe in school, as well.
He was a year ahead of me and was a Gryffindor, but we met in dueling club, and later we were both Prefects--and, as it happened, there were a number of quite challenging disturbances in the school during our time here that required a firm hand from the Prefects. There are somethings that just bind people together, if you know what I mean.
Re: Order Only
Date: 2009-04-28 03:05 pm (UTC)(I do wish I could have met your Rafe. I've heard one or two stories over the years from Minerva. He sounds like he was quite a character.)
Re: Order Only
Date: 2009-04-28 02:55 am (UTC)I can't be there for them like you can be. I'm glad they have you watching out for them, and every little thing you are able to impart to them is something they didn't have before.
Re: Order Only
Date: 2009-04-29 03:31 am (UTC)Re: Order Only
Date: 2009-04-29 11:40 am (UTC)I would suggest that we busy ourselves this month, finding you the materials and putting new covers on your books the proper way. I believe Madam Pince must have taught you how this is done. It would allow you to divide some of the textbooks into smaller volumes that would resemble unremarkable little books of the type you suggest.
I shall also see about gathering a set of second year textbooks.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-28 11:11 am (UTC)I confess, I will sit out and watch meteor showers for hours myself. The Lyrids, the Leonids, the Perseids, they never grow old.