| Details for Faults |
| Summary: | Andromena and Elise have a debate in the Ravenclaw Common Room. Invariably, Black is brought up. |
| Date: | 1938-12-07 |
| Location: | Ravenclaw Common Room |
| Related: | — |
| Characters |
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Andromena stands within the Ravenclaw Common Room, her body somewhat leaning over the Wizarding Wireless as she flips through the available stations. It's about midday, with many students no doubt enjoying their Saturday to the fullest over in Hogsmeade. This particular Ravenclaw, however, had opted to remain indoors for the time being, to get a little peace and quiet. Quiet being relative, of course, because the mix of stations blur together to make an odd, disjointed cacophony until Andromena at last settles on something she likes. It's a muggle song; they occasionally made their way into the wizarding world…as many muggle-related things had a habit of doing.
'I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees…'
The man's voice filled the room. Not blaring, but certainly loud enough to be heard and understood. Andromena, for her part, was smiling happily as she - with a big, happy sigh - flopped onto a nearby couch. Arms and legs spread wide, hair fanning about her, she looked…day-dreamy. A book lay close by.
Elise has been curled in a chair nearby, a book open on her lap but her eyes on the fireplace, instead. The sound of Andromena flipping through the stations made her look up, and when the other girl collapses she blinks. "Are you alright?" she asks.
"Hm?" Pulled from whatever reverie she had been entertaining, Andromena's eyes shift towards Elise. "Oh, yes." Cue more of a dreamy smile before the older girl seems to come to and she sits up, drawing her legs together and primly smoothing down her skirt. Ahem! The song continues on, American blues. The singer had only just died a few months ago, though Andromena knew that not. "What are you reading today?"
"Oh." Elise looks down at her book. "Nothing. I don't know. I can't pay attention." She rubs her eyes and yawns. "Why are you so happy?" she asks. "Did you make a good grade on something?"
"Still having trouble sleeping?" Asked just before Andromena found herself grinning stupidly again. "A good grade? Yeah, you could say that." It wasn't exactly a subject that would show up on her report card, but Elise didn't need to know that. Hrm. Actually, best if she did not know very much more about it at all. But it was hard, so hard, to stop feeling so…so in the clouds. Even if she was listening to a song introduced to her by someone whose very thought now made her mentally cringe.
"Hey, I was thinking about going and chatting up madam Spleen to see if she'd be interested in letting me volunteer my time in the infirmary. If she lets me, maybe I could try to find a way to help you?" The poor kid was in a right state, and being a person that loved sleep (as much as she could get), Andromena hated to see Elise this way.
"Yeah," Elise says. "The dreams just… don't stop." Elise's own grades have been flagging a little, it's true. She nods at the girl's suggestion. "Certainly, Mena. I would appreciate anything you can do." She leans forward a bit. "Why are you so happy?" Clearly, the side-stepping didn't fool her.
"Someone's bound to figure something out about it," she reassured Elise. Even if it, sadly, meant the girl would just collapse in class or in the hall and adults were forced to do so. Andromena was ignorant as to whether Elise was honest about her strange affliction, and as a matter of fact, that notion hardly registered in her mind.
"Still interested in that, are you?" Asked with a wry grin. Why was it people were always so keen to know why another was either very sad, or very happy. It was a random surface thought, easily set aside for another time's pondering. A sigh, then a nod. "I'm happy because I spent my whole day with Alphard yesterday, and it was great." A hand to forestall anything Elise might have to say about that. "I know he's like…not the most well-received guy here at the moment, but maybe some day you'll understand," or perhaps she did already? Who knew what little Elise harbored in her heart. "That the way every one else feels about a person has no bearing on you."
"All I know about Alphard is that he's perfectly sweet to you, and incredibly cruel to others. I've seen it, that day in the hall, with all the howling. I'm honestly just… flummoxed that you don't see it. Almost like you just don't want to." The thought looks like it's going to make her cry. "What if he's just acting around you, and once he's got you where he wants you, he hurts you? What if you marry him and he starts beating you? You're too nice for that!"
Says Elise.
Blink. Blink. Andromena just…just stares at Elise for a moment. Alphard? Beat her? Oh sweet little child. That was an awfully cruel notion to put in a young woman's head. Not the bit about being made into a battered wife, no. The mention of being fooled. It sent a knife twisting within her gut, and all that bubbly joy that had been making her limbs light and her heart sing fled from her. It wasn't that she really believed Alphard would do such a thing, no. It was that she feared it; a raw nerve suddenly making itself known.
"Alphard's not like that," she insisted, voice pitched a little rougher than she would have preferred. It belied the calm expression she wore. "He wouldn't betray me. You don't see it, but he does have a sense of honor, of loyalty." Not like some. Alphard might hurt in a hundred different ways, but he would never, never do something like that. Not to her.
"How honorable can a person be, if he only applies said honor to certain people?" Elise posits logically. "What are his criteria for choosing whom to honor, and whom to dishonor? Is it right that he should be allowed to dishonor people because they don't meet that criteria?" She shakes her head. "There is a way to disagree with others, even to dislike them, without being dishonorable and cruel about it. He scares me."
"He scares you because you fit criteria he finds dishonorable," said Andromena. She used a word that was of lesser impact than say, repugnant or despicable. For all that Alphard would have no trouble mocking the girl, Andromena just can't force herself to emulate that kind of attitude. That was Alphard, this was her.
"It isn't just Alphard, either. A lot of pure-bloods find the idea of one of their own number joining something like the Mud Club as an act of treason." Families would disown relatives for that sort of behavior! "And in his defense, it's not as if he views every wizard or witch without pure line of ancestry as abhorrent. Take Eibhlin," whom he had a rather…we'll call it a mixed relationship. "He's really starting to see her in a more kindly light. They have their arguments, but I've yet to see him want to hurt her." A sigh, and Andromena added, "Have you ever heard the phrase: one bad apple spoils the rest?" She would wait for Elise's response before continuing.
"Standing up for people isn't betraying anyone," Elise counters. "Nor is being friends with them. But answer me this - for all of Alphard's tolerance of Eibhlin, do you honestly think he sees her as his equal? Or does he view her as some sort of lesser person? And how does he act to Muggle borns, hm? It's not their fault who their parents are. They don't ask to be born with magic. But they are, and they ought to learn to use it for the greater good of everyone, but some people treat them like they're horrid animals. That's just not right. They. Are. People." She nods at the last question about apples.
"Magic should be kept within the wizarding community," Andromena retorted. She was not afraid to debate. It was something Ravenclaws often indulged in, anyway. "I understand that muggleborn witches and wizards did not ask to be born as they are. I feel the fault lies further back, with people that knowingly have children with muggles. They know the sort of life they're foisting upon their offspring, and you cannot tell me that is fair." She'd argue this same point with anyone, at any time. There is no vehemence in her voice, however. There's hardly any emotion at all. A calm stating of the facts.
"Is she lesser?" Asked with an arched brow. "In skill? As a person? I hesitate to answer for another person, but I should think so, yes. But I cannot say for sure the true aptitude of half-bloods." It was a topic Andromena would dearly love to research over time. "To my point: people always like to say one bad person influences everyone around them. Why can't one good person do the reverse?"
"So if it's not a child's fault for being born magical, why are they treated like it is?" Elise counters. She shakes her head. "And anyway, that doesn't account for falling in love." And then she springs a surprising question. "Andromena, would you feel the same way about Alphard, if he was exactly the same as he is now - rich and handsome, and honorable and loyal as you see it… if he didn't have magic? If he was born a Squib? Or if he was born… a Muggle?" Then her stubborn lower lip pouts out. "She is not lesser," Elise insists. "She's a perfectly lovely person, and a good witch, too. She wouldn't have such smashing grades if she wasn't powerful. The only criteria you're using to say that she's lesser is that her mother's a Muggle, and you've already said that's not her fault. So it's not fair that you should think that way. It's not right."
A laugh. Andromena does not mean to laugh, because it's not exactly at Elise she is doing it. The thought of Alphard as a Squib was just preposterous. "Absolutely not," she answered without hesitation. "I know my duty. And you're right, Eibhlin is a lovely person and a good witch. But I hope the idea of falling in love with a muggle and forcing her child to grow up with the same difficulties is as horrid to her as it is to me." That was why Alphard was tolerant of her. She wanted to know more about her wizard heritage, and she was currently dating an actual pure-blood. It had to count for something. "Because even though it's not her fault she was born the way she is, it is her prerogative to scrub out her father's mistake."
Elise just stares at Andromena. "I'm so sorry," she says sadly — pityingly, even. "But it's people who think like that which have caused all of her horrors in the first place. Do you know what my father once told me? He said that love is the most powerful magic of all. And even Muggles are capable of that." She stands up, shaking her head, still sad, and turns to go.
Andromena shrugs. Unconvinced. That was the thing about words. They could be very powerful, certainly, but against one that either has no wish to hear them, or is firmly rooted in their own beliefs, they meant as little as the breath that delivered them. "I'll let you know if Spleen allows me to help out in the infirmary," she tells the girl as she departs. Bias aside, Andromena had no reason not to help her.