More suggestions than corrections, for a change, from my excellent Beta readers.
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The first Charms class of the new year was taught by Professor Sam Zauberstabhersteller, and Albus could sense trouble right away. The Professor wanted everyone to introduce themselves, and then tell them something about their wand. He started at the back, pushing and prying to see what he could find out about how comfortable the students were using their wand.
When he came to Scorpius the young wizard explained, "This was originally my father's wand. Harry Potter used it at the Battle of Hogwarts, and then kept it. Albus Potter used it when we started at Hogwarts, but we eventually traded wands, and I have used this ever since. It is a good wand, and I feel comfortable using it."
"That is a very unusual way to acquire a wand, Mr. Malfoy," the professor noted.
Scorpius raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders, not wanting to get into a discussion about the history of his wand.
The professor turned to Albus, who put his hand on his wand, but did not show it. "I am not really supposed to talk about this wand, although everyone seems to know about it anyway." Albus sighed. The professor would see it often enough when he used it, but he did not want to have the professor stare at his wand. "This is The Elder Wand, one of the oldest wands in the world. It came to me when I summoned 'Albus's wand.' Even though it seemed to be fully my wand right away, my father had defeated its previous owner, and he did confirm that it is my wand by giving it to me.
"It is a good wand. I feel very comfortable using it.
"I have been ordered not to let anyone examine it."
The professor glared at Albus, obviously upset, and then then turned to Cleo.
Cleo reached down to the wand pocket on her skirt, pulled out her wand, and briefly showed it, holding it close to her body. She too did not want the professor to come too close, or to touch her wand.
"I think this wand came from India or China, although we purchased it at Ollivander's. The wand is mostly Bamboo, but the Bamboo is attached to a Sandalwood handle, and the tip is the tip of a dragon tooth. It has a woven core of Unicorn, Thestral and Centaur hair. I understand that most Magi have a hard time controlling it, but you just have to show her who is the boss. Albus and I don't have any problems controlling it, but that is because it is MY wand and I can control it, and Albus is ... well because we are ... well, we can. Just like I can control his masculine wand, he can control my feminine wand."
"There are very few wands with gender, Miss Smith," the professor noted.
"Very few," Cleo agreed with a shrug. "Albus and mine do. My wand is very good at gender and, you know, wandmaking is a creative process just like having a baby, and that is why it takes a couple, a married couple, to become wandmakers. Well, it is more complicated than that, most things are really, more complicated than you think they are at first.
"Do you want to marry and become a wandmaker? I know you trained to be one."
"You think I should marry and become a wandmaker, Miss Smith?" the professor grinned, amused at how forward this young lady was.
Cleo looked around the room, her plaits flying, noticing the couples in the room. "I can examine you, and make soap and shampoo, but I'm not the one to find you a wandmaking wife. My wand does seem to be tied into procreation, the creative process, those sorts of things, though."
"May I see your wand?" The professor asked, holding out his hand.
"NO!" Cleo shouted, pulling the wand to her chest. Then, in a small and rather embarrassed voice, "Mr. Head Auror Potter and the prophets and other people in Switzerland told both Albus and me that we should not let anyone examine our wands. So we don't."
By the time the professor had finished questioning everyone in the room the class period was almost over."
By the second week in January Professor Zauberstabhersteller had Cleo examine him for soap and shampoo, and the professor had talked Professor Ollivander into being examined and procuring new soap and shampoo for her as well. Cleo noticed both professors looking lustfully at her wand as she examined them.
*
"Do you think professors Ollivander and Zauberstabhersteller are going to marry?" Albus asked Cleo as they made soap and shampoo for the two professors.
"It is not like they are soulmates or anything," Cleo reflected. "Most couples are not, certainly when they first meet. Professor Ollivander is reluctant to allow her body to be taken over by another person, a baby, and is even a little reluctant to, well, you know, when you let a man into you it is rather intrusive. I mean, I want it more than anything, but all witches do not, and she has a hard time with it, I think. She probably has not met the right person. Rose had a horrible time thinking about sex when she was eleven, but she's changed her mind. Now she is just conflicted, really wanting it and really not at the same time. She will be fine with the right person.
"Professor Zauberstabhersteller likes witches, so he is willing, but he doesn't know professor Ollivander very well. They could end up liking each other, and if they do something may develop. If they get to that point I can change the scents to help it along, but I really ought to wait and see. I'm learning how different people are, and that I should not even encourage witches to marry and have babies, and I know it, but it is hard sometimes.
"I have talked to your mother, and to Professor McGonagall, about why many witches do not marry, or marry again if their husbands die, or have many children, and I think I understand what they are telling me, and I am really trying not to ... I don't want witches that do not want to have babies but it is just hard thinking that way sometimes.
"Making wands is a little like giving birth. The process of wandmaking is described in Elfish as that fourth couple tense, not male or female or neuter. The words they use for the final act is the same one used for giving birth, having a baby, but it is in the couple tense, not the female. It is just like becoming pregnant or making a family is the couple tense, but actually giving birth to a baby is female. The witch does the work. But in making a wand, in the last step, giving birth to a wand is a couple thing.
"The professors are not ready for that."
"For giving birth to a baby, or a wand?" Albus wondered.
"Both, right now," Cleo thought.
*
It was the end of January, on a Tuesday, the first of two double Potions classes that week. "This is a most difficult potion," Professor Wong informed the class. He handed out written instructions with a large number of steps. The potion was supposed to have certain colours at each stage, and what looked like a computer printer had the colours on it, with instructions that the actual colours were more shimmery or otherwise a little different than the printed version.
"I doubt if any of you will get a good potion on your first try. We are trying to figure out what is so hard about making this, so I want you to take good notes."
Rose and Scorpius each looked at their instructions, and started to make the potion. Albus did as well, but Cleo watched all three, occasionally sniffing or holding her wand over the concoction. At several stages Professor Wong came over and made some comment on how the intermediate step looked.
No one had an acceptable potion at the end of the class, although Rose's was close. Cleo did say, "I think people are making it too fast. You need to let the magic work between steps."
*
Albus and Cleo were in the library the first Wednesday of February, working on instructions for making the most difficult Potion. Albus, Rose and Scorpius had made acceptable Potions, and after seeing what everyone else had done Cleo had made what the professor said was the best of that type of potion he had ever seen.
Albus and Cleo could hear Rose and Scorpius arguing, and the argument was getting more heated.
"We'd better get them out of the library before they are kicked out," Cleo whispered. So they went over to the table where Rose and Percy were sitting on one side, Scorpius and Cassie were on the other, with two printouts side by side, red written all over both of them.
"Let's argue outside before you all get kicked out and get points taken away from your house," Al suggested. Rose and Scorpius and their friends picked up their papers and books and stormed out of the room. Al led them to a modest sized room close to the library, with a table, and they all sat down.
"It's FIVE EQUAL STEPS with two sub-steps in each," Scorpius exclaimed. "Your way of making the potion is too complicated."
"That's a STUPID SIMPLISTIC boy's way of looking at it," Rose sneered. "It's three major tasks, with two at the beginning, then a second task that can be divided into two SUB-tasks with three steps in the first one and two in the second. YOU'VE EVEN GOT IT DIVIDED WRONG. Then the last section has a SUB-section with two tasks and one final ending task. SEE THE STEPS! IT'S OBVIOUS!
Rose flung the papers at Albus, who looked them over. Doing it that way should work, he thought. Scorpius pushed his papers into Al's hands as well. All the tasks were there; it was just the way they were presented on paper that was different.
Al was just going to list the ten steps, but both of these were a little more logical, maybe a little easier to remember.
"I think either is better than my just listing the steps," Albus admitted.
"What did you write?" Rose asked Cleo.
"I just copied what Al wrote," Cleo admitted. "Well, we worked on it together, because the timing of some of the steps is critical, and we, well, I don't want to say how I remember it, but you needed to add in the timing. I didn't want to get into how I remember things. Besides I made a few changes, and I cannot do the wand motion the way everyone else does them."
*
The next day in class everybody turned in their assignments.
After glancing at the papers, Professor Wong asked Rose and then Scorpius to project their organization of tasks on the screen, side by side. "Which is right?" he asked.
A few people took sides, but no one was very sure.
"The answer is both are right. They go about organizing the tasks differently, but they both have all the steps and they both are probably better than just listing ten steps. Cleo, you had the best potion. How do you remember a potion like this?"
Cleo arose, a little unsure of herself. "Remember?"
"I see you humming along, and making the best potion, and I just wonder how you remember the steps. You don't look at the instructions like most of my students."
"I always start out by seeing what Albus is doing, except what he is doing is so logical, and I can never do anything quite like anyone else does it, so I start out with the logical part.
"The timing is important as well. I helped Albus, Rose and Scorpius put down on their instructions just how long to wait, but they do not have the rhythm quite right, except I do not know how to tell anyone else how to feel the rhythm. I make this to Pachelbel, because of the strong bass line in his Canon, but my overtones, the melody that works its way above the normal Pachelbel variations, it is mostly a woodwind, not a flute because that is too sharp, and not a recorder because that is too earthy, and I know at each step which measure of the song we are at.
"It is not EXACTLY ten steps, because there is a rhythm to it, you cannot just start and stop or you lose, and it doesn't flow, so you have to feel the ... the rhythm, but if the timing is right the spells blend better. Well, the first step is sort of different than," and she named two potions, "but the magic is sort of the same, except the rose color of the magic is a little more left of center. And then you have to wave your wand sort of like, but I have to do it differently, because my power is ... well, I cannot describe it but it is and I have to make a more feminine wave into the ... well, I have to remember it, but it is usually easy to figure out," and she waved her wand in two distinct motions, "but you have this little flourish in the middle," waving her wand. She did this wand waving three times, to growing bewilderment.
"Male motions are too regular, like a boy walking, or a machine, but a girl walks like this." Cleo walked with the sway of her hips exaggerated. "The stirring needs to be more like a girl walking."
The problem was that Cleo's wand motions were seldom the same as those of the rest of the class. "I remember it because the music of the wand waving is a little more fortissimo, with a rest in the middle, sort of. Which the Pachelbel doesn't usually have, the rest right there.
"The next step, I remember watching Rose but she was a little too vigorous, so I just did what she did, which was mostly what Al did but not quite, but ...
"It is like Potions are the same when witches and wizards do them, almost, but sometimes not quite, but this was really almost the same, but it helped to see Rose do it, because she is a witch, and Albus is SO MUCH a wizard, which is usually a good thing, but sometimes when I do magic it gets in the way, so watching Rose was better."
Professor Wong was getting very frustrated. "CLEO, Miss Smith, what did she DO?"
"OH, I can show you, professor, sir, please, it's just easier to remember," Cleo took a deep breath. "You didn't ask me how to DO it, just how I remember."
"Do you always remember things like that?" Professor Wong asked in bewilderment.
"Oh, usually it's not that organized, but this potion has a lot of steps," Cleo replied, scrunching up her face in her 'I'm puzzled and am trying to figure out something' look.'
Albus was laughing, in fact could hardly contain his laughter.
Professor Wong looked over at Albus.
"Cleo remembers just about everything," Albus got out through his laughter. "Just NEVER ask her how."
"Do you understand her?" the professor wondered.
"I've learned when to just enjoy her, and not try to understand," Albus laughed in reply.
Professor Wong threw up his hands in frustration. "Let's go back to how Miss Granger-Weasley and Mr. Malfoy organized the steps."
*
It took another week before everybody could make good potions. For all the frustration of trying to understand her strange way of describing and remembering things, Cleo really did have the timing down. You just had to put it in terms of seconds on a stopwatch instead of a musical melody. It also helped if the stirring was not machine like, and describing the stirring as "more like a woman walking than like a man" was actually a rather good way of putting it.
*
Dance classes were smaller, and you had choices when you could go, once Arthur and Kathryn Malfoy and their two children moved into quarters at Hogwarts. The only way the Malfoys' made a living teaching dance to Magi was to have classes in four different countries, and with the quarantines and other problems they lost most of their ability to travel, and customers, during the pandemic. Albus had talked to his father about the Malfoy situation, and had the impression that the family was in rather desperate straits until Professor McGonagall allowed them to move into a small three-bedroom apartment in the married professors wing.
Cleo pointed out Professors' Zauberstabhersteller and Ollivander dancing at some of these lessons. They were not rank beginners, but they were not good dancers when they started. Cleo did suggest that, "I may have to make new scents by the end of this year."
Albus gave Cleo a stern look, and she shyly answered back, "I will not do anything to force them, or give them any more ... look at them. Albus, they would not be dancing unless, except, all right. I will not suggest any new scents until we are more sure."
*
The end of February it was announced that everyone at Hogwarts, Hogsmeade and the surrounding area were going to be given their Covid-19 vaccines. It took a couple of days to jab everyone, but because of it, by the middle of March they were not going to have to worry about getting sick, and more importantly, not getting sick but passing this illness on to someone else.
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2021