So boring it burns!
Who: Kite & Mandy
Where: Double Divinations
When: Tuesday Morning, before lunch
To say Mandy was bored was putting it mildly. Trelawny droned on and Mandy had stopped listening the second she had taken her seat. Sitting near the back, but not entirely in the back, she rested her head on her desk about the only thing keeping her from sleeping was her bowl of water.
As the idiot prof droned about omens and portents of destruction and doom (her favorite subject, Mandy was sure) Mandy spent her time watching something she found a lot more amusing. Over grown, possibly steroid using men in brightly colored spandex with wildly fake personalities beating each other with chairs.
There wasn't anything in the world quite like Pro-wrestling.
Divination was one of those classes where the first and last five minutes were the only ones that mattered. On days like today, when it was a double-period, that could really be irritating. Of course, Trelawney was blind as a bat and wrapped up in her own portents, so it was pretty easy to goof off as long as you did it quietly. Kite had brought a book, but just wasn't having any luck getting into it. Every three sentences or so he got distracted and stared blankly out the window for a while before jerking himself back to full consciousness. It wouldn't have been a bad thing if the sunlight outside the window hadn't totally ruined his vision and made painful spots dance in front of his eyes. After the third or fourth time it happened, he started forcing himself to look around INSIDE the classroom instead of outside of it. And as his gaze was wandering boredly, he noticed something pretty odd - Super Crazy and Tajiri in Brockelhurst's water bowl. He leaned over to look closer - she was only one cushion away from him - to see if he could get a better look.
Mandy, looking up occasionally if only so Trelawny wouldn't think she was sleeping - not that the old bat could fail her - chuckled as she continued to watch the match. Someone tossed a large wooden plank into the ring, and Tajiri took a very well faked blow to the back of the head.
One of the great things about this was how staged it was. It made it a riot to watch, even more so knowing that it was all fake. One day, she'd get to see it from the audience perspective, but until then this was amusing enough. "Take him down!" Mandy whispered excitedly at the bowl, getting in to it.
Kite hiked an eyebrow and smirked. Leaning in behind Mandy, he murmured, "Nah, he's gettin' too close. He'll get misted in the face in a minute," he said wisely just before, sure enough, Tajiri foiled one of Super Crazy's moves by spitting a liberal amount of green mist into his face. "Those Japanese wrestlers, you never know what's crammed down their throats." He was pretty sure he would have startled her, since she was pretty obviously wrapped up in the show, so he had a wry smile ready for her when she turned around.
Mandy actually laughed at that, though not too loudly. Even though the prof could hardly ever hear anything above the sound of her own voice, it was best not to take chances. "Guess not, the bloody cheat," Mandy said turning around and smiling slightly. It broke the spell on the water which went blank.
"At least I'm not idiotic enough to gamble on the bloody things like my brothers do," she said with a laugh, "Nice to meet someone else here who even knows what wrestling is." She kept her voice on the quiet side, no need to draw in undue attention.
"It's ECW," Kite said seriously. "There's no such thing as cheating. The only reason they've even got refs is to crank up the drama when one of'em decides to be a hardass." He glanced around the rest of the class, one eyebrow raised, then nodded at her assessment. "Reckon it's more of a muggleborn thing, watching folks in tights beat the hell out of each other. I always thought it was more of a boy thing, too, but look, here I am, wrong." He grinned at her affably.
“Well, I ain’t really an exception to that,” Mandy said quickly slipping a bit into her London accent as she did so. She smiled as Trelawny’s eyes moved over her, “All I have is brothers, so I guess you could say I was raised on the stuff,” she finished in reference to the wrestling.
“This, action flicks and comic books. Stuff most the people here wouldn’t get if I tried to explain it, so I learned pretty early on not to waste my breath on it.”
Kite shrugged. "Well, no need to explain it to me, we always watch it when we get the chance back home." Of course, a good bit of that watching was on cold sidewalks, peering through the warped and fogged windows of bars that got pay-per-views, but there was no reason to go into that. "Must be nice to be able to watch it free. If I could do something like that, I'd sell tickets."
"I'd sell tickets," Mandy said simply, "except only a handful of people here would know what I was sellin' tickets for, you know?" She could even use the old Divination classroom for it. She supposed she could do something similiar with high profile Quidditch matches that would pull in a pretty amount of Galleons. She'd have to consider that.
"Eh, advertise it as a novelty. 'Muggles can't use magic, so come see how THEY beat the shite out of each other," he said in announcer's tones. But softly - he didn't want to attract Trelawney. "Fraid to say I wouldn't show up, though. Ain't real long on galleons to throw around," he said easily. He was at school in the first place because of Hogwarts' special fund for disenfranchised students. He didn't actually have so much as a sickle or a pound to his name. But he wasn't very interested in material things, nor was he the sort of person who was easily shamed by circumstances beyond his control.
"Heh, wonder how many of the pure bloods would show up for that. I could start a trend," Mandy thought with a grin. "And since it's your idea I'd be morally obligated to get you some of the money. So, I'd at least let you watch one for free. 'Course there's always the chance that the little business could flop on me too."
Kite considered that. "If it did, what would you lose? it's not the sort of thing you have to invest money in - it's not as if you have to pay for the pay-per-view," he pointed out. Which was true, strictly speaking. "Just make it a BYOB sorta thing and don't sweat it." He eyed her sidelong. "Course, there's always the part where you gotta keep the vision up for an hour or two."
"And that's the part I'm worried about, last thing I need is to pass out right in the middle of the title match," Mandy said with a grimace. "I'd still need to make up flyers and such, word of mouth ain't always a reliable advertisement," she mused, slipping again into a more informal accent. It happened when she got excited about something, or in this case where the other person wasn't being achingly formal themselves.
It was all right, as Kite had his own strange manner of speaking. He contracted words as though he was using an accent, but he didn't use the tonal inflection that generally came with it. If Malcolm Reynolds had been invented yet, he would have talked like Malcolm Reynolds... unfortunately there were a few years until that particular gift was handed down from on high. "You'll have to pardon me, not bein' a seer myself, I get to wondering how that works exactly. Does it get easier, like flexing a muscle, or is it all the reverse? It comes too easy and the work is to stop it coming?"
"Here for the tea leafin' then?" Mandy asked over her shoulder. "For me, it was always more of the second, though the longer I hold a single image the harder it is to hold that image, ya know? When I 'dive in' it's nothin' but a jumble of images. Nothin' I can make much sense of, or anyone can. Like flippin' a thousand channels all at once."
Kite laughed. "Here for an easy E," he admitted shamelessly. "Learning the basics ain't so hard. It's just keeping straight what lines are what and memorizing some symbolism that makes sense anyway. Figure I'll be humped if they actually ask me to try something like what you're doing, but if you've gotta have The Sight to pass Div, that's a pretty unfair standard."
“Yeah, the symbolism is easy once you get the swing of things," Mandy with a grin, "The real trick to this class is telling the old bat exactly what she wants to 'ear. She 'as the biggest bloody ego of all the profs here," Mandy finished with a chuckle, "If I didn't actually 'ave the sight, she'd've turned me out on my bum for tellin' 'er off long ago."
"Y'know, that always gets me," he said thoughtfully, watching with interest as Tajiri splashed off the top ropes onto Super Crazy's prone body and took two knees in the chest for his trouble. "The restrictions on performing underage magic and all. What if you've GOT a talent, like The Sight? How do you learn what's needed to control it if you're not even allowed to have your own wand yet?"
"You have to, or you go crazy or end up killin' yourself accidentally drowning," Mandy explained simply. "As a kid I really 'ad to work on it, though for a long time I thought everyone could do it. In fact lookin' back I wonder if I ever met any one from the ministry comin' by to see who was doin' all the underage magic by my house," she said with a chuckle
"I think they only put alarms up if there's nobody supervising you," Kite said. "I know they're watching me," he said, and made a scoffing noise that made it clear just how competent he thought their watchers were. "Guess nobody told 'em they were outta their depth." After all, there were no parents or magical adults around to keep an eye on him, and at his age, he didn't need much of a keeping-eye-on. And he was more than slippery enough to escape anyone who tried.
"You kiddin'?" Mandy asked, "My parents didn't know what I was doin' and I did almost drown once. Scared them senseless," Mandy said simply. "They didn't know what to make of me. Until I got the owl they all thought I was nuts. 'What's in this puddle, Manders?' 'See anything in the bathtub tonight?'"
He smiled wryly. "Yeah, I guess it could be that way. Imagine if you were a muggle with a talent. Nobody'd be around to help you out, and nobody from the wizarding world would eventually come along and explain what's what. You'd be flying blind. Often wonder why folk up at the Ministry don't make more of an effort to locate those sorts. It'd be a kindness even if it wasn't useful."
"Yeah, who knows though, I think I would've wanted to stay with my family though. Just havin' them filled in as to what exactly was goin' on with me would've been nice, you know?" Mandy said. And it would've it would've made things a lot easier to know exactly what was going on to begin with.
Kite paused a moment to figure out what she was implying, then laughed. "I wasn't implying that they should be whisked off and put to work in magical sweat shops somewhere," he told her, snickering and fighting to keep the volume down. "I'm just saying, they got no chance to get any education or guidance where they are, and it'd be nice if somebody re-worked the statute of magical secrecy so they could be brought in on it."
“Ah,” Mandy said getting, “Sorry, didn’t quite get ya for a moment there,” she admitted, “It would’ve been better knowing what I was right from the start instead of just thinking I was a complete nutter so I agree with you there. That would’ve made life a lot easier,” she said simply.
“And then maybe I wouldn’t have felt like such an outsider when coming here, ya know?” Mandy added.
"I reckon that's all a matter of perception," Kite told her, a smirk hanging in the corners of his mouth. "There's far more half-bloods and muggleborns than true purebloods in the school, but the purebloods still manage to make everybody else feel like interlopers. Gotta admire their force o'personality," he observed absently, like someone on one of those nature shows talking about a wild animal's unique survival abilities, "and wonder how long it's looking to last."
"Until they either all die out or are so inbred that everyone of ‘em's a bleeding loony," Mandy stated with a snort, "I'm surprised there are still any 'pure' families left, when you consider how much they all must intermarry and the like," the whole thing made little sense to her. She personally thought the whole thing should be a lot more open.
Sure some people would freak out, but if you got rid of the whole blood status thing life would be a lot easier all around.
"Well, magic's useful like that," Kite said reasonably. "I figure if any of 'em were born with deformities or the like, there's spells could sort 'em out. Insanity, now, that's a tricky thing," he said, smiling like a wolf. "Tricky to define, tricky to fix, assuming anything's broken."
"Tricky in all sorts of ways," Mandy agreed, "It seems wrong to spend all their time though just marrying themselves off to their cousins and then talking down to the rest of us 'bout how bad we are. If you go by some stories even Merlin was a half-blood at the very least," Mandy said.
"I just don't think the lot of us should be treated like dirt because of some draconian ideals," she finished with a shrug.
"I think it's gonna be moot, come a decade or so," Kite told her. "They're already outnumbered. As inbreeding thins their magic, more children being born squibs, everybody else is gonna wind up holdin' all that power. They'll fall behind kicking and screaming, but I don't see as they'll have much choice in the matter. Evolution is evolution," he said with a shrug. "And it's their own fault."
Mandy smiled, "You know, I really can't wait to see that. I suppose that makes me a horrible person," she said with a quiet and short laugh. "As it is, the way they run things here needs a serious overhaul. I don't think the new minister is up to the job, you know?"
Kite hiked an eyebrow. "Scrimgeour? What makes you think so?" He'd seen the pictures of Scrimgeour and had immediately assessed him as a man who would do what was necessary, however distasteful, to get his way. Former head of the Auror college meant his education and experience were top-notch, and he had animal eyes. Much like Kite's, in fact - staring at a photograph of the minister made him feel like baring his teeth. A man to be careful of. A man to watch.
"Because," Mandy said simply, "He has too much to fix and not enough time or resources to fix it." She played with the rim of the bowl she had been using, "Things are going to get worse before they get better, you know." Just because she generally didn't like the responsibility and the paradox that went along with watching the future didn't mean she didn't do so occasionally.
"Trust me, I know these things," she said with a roguish grin.
Darlin', you have no idea, Kite thought, though he kept the feral grin in his mind to himself. Instead, he settled a look of distant concern over his features. "I dunno if anybody could fix everything what's gone wrong in the last ten years," he told Mandy. "And I don't think that's Scrimgeour's first priority, not if he's half as smart as I've been led to believe. Most important thing is to make sure everybody lives through this business with You-Know-Who, make sure he gets taken down in as final a way as they can manage so folks can go back to their lives. When the dust clears, there'll be time for the rest of it."
"Or time to forget about the rest of it, somehow I think social reform is far from the top of the ministry's list of 'things to do after the Dark Lord,'" Mandy said dryly. "They're too comfortable with the Way Things Are. If I do anything after I get out of here I hope to shake up the Status Quo somehow."
Kite shrugged. "Social reform is kinda like a landslide," he told Mandy. "Everything's gotta be just right for it to take and hold, but once it does, it'll just keep rumbling until it stops. They can't actually prevent it either, whether they're like to or not." He smiled at her. "Patience, lil' grasshopper. It'll happen."
"I'd hope so, because the next time someone off and calls me a Mudblood I think I may just punch them," she said simply. She felt like she would too, "It will be almost as satisfying as waiting 'round a corner to beat the snot out of Trelawny's fan club."
Kite blinked at her. "So, why not punch them?" he wondered. He tilted his head at her. "Survival o'the fittest, really. If they don't pick up on the fact that they get punched every time the word leaves their mouths, they deserve to have their jaws broken."
"I would, but it'd be just me doing it... though it would be nice if I started a trend. Punch a pure-blood... chances are they had it coming," Mandy said with a laugh, "They're only what... a quarter of the population here anyway?" Mandy said, trying to remember.
Kite grinned, and there was something in the flash of his teeth that was vaguely unsettling. "If that. Maybe you COULD start a movement. Y'know, just tell all the muggleborns they should punch anyone who calls them mudblood in the teeth. The teachers wouldn't like it, but if EVERYBODY was doing it, they can't give 'em detentions forever. We could use some unity; say true, especially the way things are going. That's one thing purebloods have goin' for 'em that we don't - they stick together against outsiders."
Though the flash of teeth did bother Mandy a bit, she liked the message, "That's true, though we have a whole more bloody diversity than the lot of them. Like a ruddy rainbow," she said with a smile, "If we all could just work together on it, the kick to the groin we could deliver to that community would be well worth it," she said seriously.
Trelawny was started to wind down, "Looks like the windbag is almost outta air," Mandy said simply stretching, "Got a free period after this that they're kind enough to call study hall, what 'bout you?"
"Same here," he told her. "I'm mostly in the clear, though. Figured I'd work on a personal project or two..." That was Hufflepuff, after all, never idle, "... or maybe hang out in the courtyard, it bein' such a pleasant day and all."
"Yeah, it's a bit too nice to be stuck inside all day," Mandy agreed, "If you're interested we could keep up the conversation?" she asked simply. It was a good one, and anything that made her think she enjoyed. "If it's not intruding on your projects or anything."
Kite hiked an eyebrow and shook his head. "Not at all. I don't mind if you don't. I can meet you out there after I drop my stuff off in the dorms... figure you'd want to see to that too."
"'Course, not going to lug the books around everywhere," Mandy said simply, standing up while the rest of the class started to vacate the room. "I suppose I'll meet ya there then, won't I?" she said with a bright smile.
He nodded and smirked at her as he shoved his book into his enthusiastically duct-taped denim backpack and headed for the ladder with the rest of them.
TBC
Where: Double Divinations
When: Tuesday Morning, before lunch
To say Mandy was bored was putting it mildly. Trelawny droned on and Mandy had stopped listening the second she had taken her seat. Sitting near the back, but not entirely in the back, she rested her head on her desk about the only thing keeping her from sleeping was her bowl of water.
As the idiot prof droned about omens and portents of destruction and doom (her favorite subject, Mandy was sure) Mandy spent her time watching something she found a lot more amusing. Over grown, possibly steroid using men in brightly colored spandex with wildly fake personalities beating each other with chairs.
There wasn't anything in the world quite like Pro-wrestling.
Divination was one of those classes where the first and last five minutes were the only ones that mattered. On days like today, when it was a double-period, that could really be irritating. Of course, Trelawney was blind as a bat and wrapped up in her own portents, so it was pretty easy to goof off as long as you did it quietly. Kite had brought a book, but just wasn't having any luck getting into it. Every three sentences or so he got distracted and stared blankly out the window for a while before jerking himself back to full consciousness. It wouldn't have been a bad thing if the sunlight outside the window hadn't totally ruined his vision and made painful spots dance in front of his eyes. After the third or fourth time it happened, he started forcing himself to look around INSIDE the classroom instead of outside of it. And as his gaze was wandering boredly, he noticed something pretty odd - Super Crazy and Tajiri in Brockelhurst's water bowl. He leaned over to look closer - she was only one cushion away from him - to see if he could get a better look.
Mandy, looking up occasionally if only so Trelawny wouldn't think she was sleeping - not that the old bat could fail her - chuckled as she continued to watch the match. Someone tossed a large wooden plank into the ring, and Tajiri took a very well faked blow to the back of the head.
One of the great things about this was how staged it was. It made it a riot to watch, even more so knowing that it was all fake. One day, she'd get to see it from the audience perspective, but until then this was amusing enough. "Take him down!" Mandy whispered excitedly at the bowl, getting in to it.
Kite hiked an eyebrow and smirked. Leaning in behind Mandy, he murmured, "Nah, he's gettin' too close. He'll get misted in the face in a minute," he said wisely just before, sure enough, Tajiri foiled one of Super Crazy's moves by spitting a liberal amount of green mist into his face. "Those Japanese wrestlers, you never know what's crammed down their throats." He was pretty sure he would have startled her, since she was pretty obviously wrapped up in the show, so he had a wry smile ready for her when she turned around.
Mandy actually laughed at that, though not too loudly. Even though the prof could hardly ever hear anything above the sound of her own voice, it was best not to take chances. "Guess not, the bloody cheat," Mandy said turning around and smiling slightly. It broke the spell on the water which went blank.
"At least I'm not idiotic enough to gamble on the bloody things like my brothers do," she said with a laugh, "Nice to meet someone else here who even knows what wrestling is." She kept her voice on the quiet side, no need to draw in undue attention.
"It's ECW," Kite said seriously. "There's no such thing as cheating. The only reason they've even got refs is to crank up the drama when one of'em decides to be a hardass." He glanced around the rest of the class, one eyebrow raised, then nodded at her assessment. "Reckon it's more of a muggleborn thing, watching folks in tights beat the hell out of each other. I always thought it was more of a boy thing, too, but look, here I am, wrong." He grinned at her affably.
“Well, I ain’t really an exception to that,” Mandy said quickly slipping a bit into her London accent as she did so. She smiled as Trelawny’s eyes moved over her, “All I have is brothers, so I guess you could say I was raised on the stuff,” she finished in reference to the wrestling.
“This, action flicks and comic books. Stuff most the people here wouldn’t get if I tried to explain it, so I learned pretty early on not to waste my breath on it.”
Kite shrugged. "Well, no need to explain it to me, we always watch it when we get the chance back home." Of course, a good bit of that watching was on cold sidewalks, peering through the warped and fogged windows of bars that got pay-per-views, but there was no reason to go into that. "Must be nice to be able to watch it free. If I could do something like that, I'd sell tickets."
"I'd sell tickets," Mandy said simply, "except only a handful of people here would know what I was sellin' tickets for, you know?" She could even use the old Divination classroom for it. She supposed she could do something similiar with high profile Quidditch matches that would pull in a pretty amount of Galleons. She'd have to consider that.
"Eh, advertise it as a novelty. 'Muggles can't use magic, so come see how THEY beat the shite out of each other," he said in announcer's tones. But softly - he didn't want to attract Trelawney. "Fraid to say I wouldn't show up, though. Ain't real long on galleons to throw around," he said easily. He was at school in the first place because of Hogwarts' special fund for disenfranchised students. He didn't actually have so much as a sickle or a pound to his name. But he wasn't very interested in material things, nor was he the sort of person who was easily shamed by circumstances beyond his control.
"Heh, wonder how many of the pure bloods would show up for that. I could start a trend," Mandy thought with a grin. "And since it's your idea I'd be morally obligated to get you some of the money. So, I'd at least let you watch one for free. 'Course there's always the chance that the little business could flop on me too."
Kite considered that. "If it did, what would you lose? it's not the sort of thing you have to invest money in - it's not as if you have to pay for the pay-per-view," he pointed out. Which was true, strictly speaking. "Just make it a BYOB sorta thing and don't sweat it." He eyed her sidelong. "Course, there's always the part where you gotta keep the vision up for an hour or two."
"And that's the part I'm worried about, last thing I need is to pass out right in the middle of the title match," Mandy said with a grimace. "I'd still need to make up flyers and such, word of mouth ain't always a reliable advertisement," she mused, slipping again into a more informal accent. It happened when she got excited about something, or in this case where the other person wasn't being achingly formal themselves.
It was all right, as Kite had his own strange manner of speaking. He contracted words as though he was using an accent, but he didn't use the tonal inflection that generally came with it. If Malcolm Reynolds had been invented yet, he would have talked like Malcolm Reynolds... unfortunately there were a few years until that particular gift was handed down from on high. "You'll have to pardon me, not bein' a seer myself, I get to wondering how that works exactly. Does it get easier, like flexing a muscle, or is it all the reverse? It comes too easy and the work is to stop it coming?"
"Here for the tea leafin' then?" Mandy asked over her shoulder. "For me, it was always more of the second, though the longer I hold a single image the harder it is to hold that image, ya know? When I 'dive in' it's nothin' but a jumble of images. Nothin' I can make much sense of, or anyone can. Like flippin' a thousand channels all at once."
Kite laughed. "Here for an easy E," he admitted shamelessly. "Learning the basics ain't so hard. It's just keeping straight what lines are what and memorizing some symbolism that makes sense anyway. Figure I'll be humped if they actually ask me to try something like what you're doing, but if you've gotta have The Sight to pass Div, that's a pretty unfair standard."
“Yeah, the symbolism is easy once you get the swing of things," Mandy with a grin, "The real trick to this class is telling the old bat exactly what she wants to 'ear. She 'as the biggest bloody ego of all the profs here," Mandy finished with a chuckle, "If I didn't actually 'ave the sight, she'd've turned me out on my bum for tellin' 'er off long ago."
"Y'know, that always gets me," he said thoughtfully, watching with interest as Tajiri splashed off the top ropes onto Super Crazy's prone body and took two knees in the chest for his trouble. "The restrictions on performing underage magic and all. What if you've GOT a talent, like The Sight? How do you learn what's needed to control it if you're not even allowed to have your own wand yet?"
"You have to, or you go crazy or end up killin' yourself accidentally drowning," Mandy explained simply. "As a kid I really 'ad to work on it, though for a long time I thought everyone could do it. In fact lookin' back I wonder if I ever met any one from the ministry comin' by to see who was doin' all the underage magic by my house," she said with a chuckle
"I think they only put alarms up if there's nobody supervising you," Kite said. "I know they're watching me," he said, and made a scoffing noise that made it clear just how competent he thought their watchers were. "Guess nobody told 'em they were outta their depth." After all, there were no parents or magical adults around to keep an eye on him, and at his age, he didn't need much of a keeping-eye-on. And he was more than slippery enough to escape anyone who tried.
"You kiddin'?" Mandy asked, "My parents didn't know what I was doin' and I did almost drown once. Scared them senseless," Mandy said simply. "They didn't know what to make of me. Until I got the owl they all thought I was nuts. 'What's in this puddle, Manders?' 'See anything in the bathtub tonight?'"
He smiled wryly. "Yeah, I guess it could be that way. Imagine if you were a muggle with a talent. Nobody'd be around to help you out, and nobody from the wizarding world would eventually come along and explain what's what. You'd be flying blind. Often wonder why folk up at the Ministry don't make more of an effort to locate those sorts. It'd be a kindness even if it wasn't useful."
"Yeah, who knows though, I think I would've wanted to stay with my family though. Just havin' them filled in as to what exactly was goin' on with me would've been nice, you know?" Mandy said. And it would've it would've made things a lot easier to know exactly what was going on to begin with.
Kite paused a moment to figure out what she was implying, then laughed. "I wasn't implying that they should be whisked off and put to work in magical sweat shops somewhere," he told her, snickering and fighting to keep the volume down. "I'm just saying, they got no chance to get any education or guidance where they are, and it'd be nice if somebody re-worked the statute of magical secrecy so they could be brought in on it."
“Ah,” Mandy said getting, “Sorry, didn’t quite get ya for a moment there,” she admitted, “It would’ve been better knowing what I was right from the start instead of just thinking I was a complete nutter so I agree with you there. That would’ve made life a lot easier,” she said simply.
“And then maybe I wouldn’t have felt like such an outsider when coming here, ya know?” Mandy added.
"I reckon that's all a matter of perception," Kite told her, a smirk hanging in the corners of his mouth. "There's far more half-bloods and muggleborns than true purebloods in the school, but the purebloods still manage to make everybody else feel like interlopers. Gotta admire their force o'personality," he observed absently, like someone on one of those nature shows talking about a wild animal's unique survival abilities, "and wonder how long it's looking to last."
"Until they either all die out or are so inbred that everyone of ‘em's a bleeding loony," Mandy stated with a snort, "I'm surprised there are still any 'pure' families left, when you consider how much they all must intermarry and the like," the whole thing made little sense to her. She personally thought the whole thing should be a lot more open.
Sure some people would freak out, but if you got rid of the whole blood status thing life would be a lot easier all around.
"Well, magic's useful like that," Kite said reasonably. "I figure if any of 'em were born with deformities or the like, there's spells could sort 'em out. Insanity, now, that's a tricky thing," he said, smiling like a wolf. "Tricky to define, tricky to fix, assuming anything's broken."
"Tricky in all sorts of ways," Mandy agreed, "It seems wrong to spend all their time though just marrying themselves off to their cousins and then talking down to the rest of us 'bout how bad we are. If you go by some stories even Merlin was a half-blood at the very least," Mandy said.
"I just don't think the lot of us should be treated like dirt because of some draconian ideals," she finished with a shrug.
"I think it's gonna be moot, come a decade or so," Kite told her. "They're already outnumbered. As inbreeding thins their magic, more children being born squibs, everybody else is gonna wind up holdin' all that power. They'll fall behind kicking and screaming, but I don't see as they'll have much choice in the matter. Evolution is evolution," he said with a shrug. "And it's their own fault."
Mandy smiled, "You know, I really can't wait to see that. I suppose that makes me a horrible person," she said with a quiet and short laugh. "As it is, the way they run things here needs a serious overhaul. I don't think the new minister is up to the job, you know?"
Kite hiked an eyebrow. "Scrimgeour? What makes you think so?" He'd seen the pictures of Scrimgeour and had immediately assessed him as a man who would do what was necessary, however distasteful, to get his way. Former head of the Auror college meant his education and experience were top-notch, and he had animal eyes. Much like Kite's, in fact - staring at a photograph of the minister made him feel like baring his teeth. A man to be careful of. A man to watch.
"Because," Mandy said simply, "He has too much to fix and not enough time or resources to fix it." She played with the rim of the bowl she had been using, "Things are going to get worse before they get better, you know." Just because she generally didn't like the responsibility and the paradox that went along with watching the future didn't mean she didn't do so occasionally.
"Trust me, I know these things," she said with a roguish grin.
Darlin', you have no idea, Kite thought, though he kept the feral grin in his mind to himself. Instead, he settled a look of distant concern over his features. "I dunno if anybody could fix everything what's gone wrong in the last ten years," he told Mandy. "And I don't think that's Scrimgeour's first priority, not if he's half as smart as I've been led to believe. Most important thing is to make sure everybody lives through this business with You-Know-Who, make sure he gets taken down in as final a way as they can manage so folks can go back to their lives. When the dust clears, there'll be time for the rest of it."
"Or time to forget about the rest of it, somehow I think social reform is far from the top of the ministry's list of 'things to do after the Dark Lord,'" Mandy said dryly. "They're too comfortable with the Way Things Are. If I do anything after I get out of here I hope to shake up the Status Quo somehow."
Kite shrugged. "Social reform is kinda like a landslide," he told Mandy. "Everything's gotta be just right for it to take and hold, but once it does, it'll just keep rumbling until it stops. They can't actually prevent it either, whether they're like to or not." He smiled at her. "Patience, lil' grasshopper. It'll happen."
"I'd hope so, because the next time someone off and calls me a Mudblood I think I may just punch them," she said simply. She felt like she would too, "It will be almost as satisfying as waiting 'round a corner to beat the snot out of Trelawny's fan club."
Kite blinked at her. "So, why not punch them?" he wondered. He tilted his head at her. "Survival o'the fittest, really. If they don't pick up on the fact that they get punched every time the word leaves their mouths, they deserve to have their jaws broken."
"I would, but it'd be just me doing it... though it would be nice if I started a trend. Punch a pure-blood... chances are they had it coming," Mandy said with a laugh, "They're only what... a quarter of the population here anyway?" Mandy said, trying to remember.
Kite grinned, and there was something in the flash of his teeth that was vaguely unsettling. "If that. Maybe you COULD start a movement. Y'know, just tell all the muggleborns they should punch anyone who calls them mudblood in the teeth. The teachers wouldn't like it, but if EVERYBODY was doing it, they can't give 'em detentions forever. We could use some unity; say true, especially the way things are going. That's one thing purebloods have goin' for 'em that we don't - they stick together against outsiders."
Though the flash of teeth did bother Mandy a bit, she liked the message, "That's true, though we have a whole more bloody diversity than the lot of them. Like a ruddy rainbow," she said with a smile, "If we all could just work together on it, the kick to the groin we could deliver to that community would be well worth it," she said seriously.
Trelawny was started to wind down, "Looks like the windbag is almost outta air," Mandy said simply stretching, "Got a free period after this that they're kind enough to call study hall, what 'bout you?"
"Same here," he told her. "I'm mostly in the clear, though. Figured I'd work on a personal project or two..." That was Hufflepuff, after all, never idle, "... or maybe hang out in the courtyard, it bein' such a pleasant day and all."
"Yeah, it's a bit too nice to be stuck inside all day," Mandy agreed, "If you're interested we could keep up the conversation?" she asked simply. It was a good one, and anything that made her think she enjoyed. "If it's not intruding on your projects or anything."
Kite hiked an eyebrow and shook his head. "Not at all. I don't mind if you don't. I can meet you out there after I drop my stuff off in the dorms... figure you'd want to see to that too."
"'Course, not going to lug the books around everywhere," Mandy said simply, standing up while the rest of the class started to vacate the room. "I suppose I'll meet ya there then, won't I?" she said with a bright smile.
He nodded and smirked at her as he shoved his book into his enthusiastically duct-taped denim backpack and headed for the ladder with the rest of them.
TBC