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I just about swallowed my own teeth yesterday when Professor Hooch came to find me during lunch yesterday and told me that Madam Pomfrey wanted to see me after my lessons.
The talk was...well, I didn't sleep much last night, thinking it over. Trying to figure it out.
She knew about the book. She knew, because she recognised the effect of what happened when that spell backfired like that. She said--get this--that particular colour that Pansy turned is called 'Junior Auror Blue,' because beginning aurors made that particular mistake all the time. (She also explained why it's so much worse if the person who gets caught in that spell is a bloke. She said it without turning a hair--guess Healers are like that--but I blushed enough for both of us.)
But what kept me up so late thinking over the conversation last night is this: she didn't come right out and ask whether I had it, or demand that I go get it and give it to her. She looked me in the eye and she said real stern, it would be a very bad thing for me to be known to be learning or using spells from a book like this. Not only is it not part of the Hogwarts' curriculum but it's been declared "Obsolete" by the Auror programme. It's not an illegal book, but it would be viewed with suspicion should anyone be found to own one let alone to be using it.
And right after she said THAT, she pulled her OWN copy off the shelf and showed it to me! She said this book is sort of full of all kinds of traps. Like that footnote I missed. It hides key points not only in footnotes, but in charts, tables, marginal annotations, small print warnings at the end of a long narrative discussion of stuff no one would bother to read, illustration labels, and in instruction lists that refer back to earlier instructions lists. But it's full of really useful spells, too, and she pointed out some of them.
She was worried enough about it to arrange to meet and talk with me. When Pansy wasn't there, I guess. But she didn't say anything to Professor Hooch about why she wanted to see me. I asked Professor Hooch why Madam Pomfrey wanted to talk to me, and the Professor didn't know. And I didn't get any detention or anything.
What do you make of it?
The talk was...well, I didn't sleep much last night, thinking it over. Trying to figure it out.
She knew about the book. She knew, because she recognised the effect of what happened when that spell backfired like that. She said--get this--that particular colour that Pansy turned is called 'Junior Auror Blue,' because beginning aurors made that particular mistake all the time. (She also explained why it's so much worse if the person who gets caught in that spell is a bloke. She said it without turning a hair--guess Healers are like that--but I blushed enough for both of us.)
But what kept me up so late thinking over the conversation last night is this: she didn't come right out and ask whether I had it, or demand that I go get it and give it to her. She looked me in the eye and she said real stern, it would be a very bad thing for me to be known to be learning or using spells from a book like this. Not only is it not part of the Hogwarts' curriculum but it's been declared "Obsolete" by the Auror programme. It's not an illegal book, but it would be viewed with suspicion should anyone be found to own one let alone to be using it.
And right after she said THAT, she pulled her OWN copy off the shelf and showed it to me! She said this book is sort of full of all kinds of traps. Like that footnote I missed. It hides key points not only in footnotes, but in charts, tables, marginal annotations, small print warnings at the end of a long narrative discussion of stuff no one would bother to read, illustration labels, and in instruction lists that refer back to earlier instructions lists. But it's full of really useful spells, too, and she pointed out some of them.
She was worried enough about it to arrange to meet and talk with me. When Pansy wasn't there, I guess. But she didn't say anything to Professor Hooch about why she wanted to see me. I asked Professor Hooch why Madam Pomfrey wanted to talk to me, and the Professor didn't know. And I didn't get any detention or anything.
What do you make of it?