gingerbredshaus | "the visitor" by gingerbred

Crossposts: https://gingerbredshaus.livejournal.com/3196.html

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"the visitor" by gingerbred

Summer 1998. The summer before her eighth year, Hermione returns to Hogwarts to help rebuild the castle in the wake of the battle. They have a surprise visitor. Drabble! (for realz this time)

Originally Published: 2019-06-03 on LJ / DW
Words: 300 (yes, really), complete 😉
Prompt 1: From Toblass for the Hogwarts Last Drabble Writer Standing Challenge (Which I'm not actually taking part in... 😆 Now seriously, go follow them.) An unexpected guest shows up at Hogwarts. Exactly 300 words.

Characters: Severus, Hermione, Hagrid, Minerva

"Hagrid, who was that with Headmistress McGonagall?" Hermione asks, looking in the direction the women had disappeared and from which shouting can now be heard.

"The one who looked like a dour, brown version of Dolores," Severus rasps, his voice still recovering, as if there could be any question whom Miss Granger had meant.

"Said she were from 'istoric Environment Scotland..."

"A Muggle?" Hermione's disbelief is audible.

"That were odd, it were," Hagrid agrees. "Said the castle were 'listed', and Perfesser McGonagall hadn't got 'planning'?"

"How on earth could she even see Hogwarts?" Hermione wonders.

"Nothing stops the HES," Severus replies, never more grateful to no longer be in charge. Hermione gives him a baleful glance, and he answers more constructively, "Ordinarily it appears a mouldering ruin. It's conceivable the Perception Charms were damaged during battle."

They can now make out cries of 'Listed Building Consent!', 'Grade I!' and 'The works must be reversed!' as the shouts draw closer.

"Sounds dire," Severus smirks. "Miss Granger, how did you dispatch Professor Umbridge in her day?"

"Centaurs, Forbidden Forest. I'm not sure the situation is quite so dire as to warrant a repeat, however..."

A blur of tweed shoots past, a flurry of hexes hot on her heels. "Unauthorised works to protected structures are criminal offences!" The trio watches as Minerva chases after the official, who hurls threats over her shoulder as she legs it for the gates. "Owners can be prosecuted!"

"Perhaps a Memory Charm will suffice," Severus sighs. "Would either of you mind helping me catch up to them?" He's still a tad shaky on his feet.

Hermione fires an Impedimenta after the Planning Officer, who falls like an ancient building before the wrecking ball. "My pleasure," she grins.

"Not what I meant, but I shan't argue with the results."

"On balance," he remarks to Minerva once the deed is done, "it went better than the time Health and Safety decided ergotism was the only conceivable explanation for the house elves..."

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Laughing... that hurts at the moment, drat so does snickering. [ "My pleasure," she grins. ] *snerk* *ow ow ow ooowww*

Hermione has form, first Neville, now the lady from the HES. You can't tell me she doesn't enjoy herself... 😉

I can see Hermione's smirk so perfectly clear. Severus is thinking hehehe, she learned it from me. ever so proudly.

It's an "Oh sure, it's all well and good when *she* does that. *I* do something like that and everyone is up in arms..."

Totally!

*Cackles*
"Nothing stops the HES" TOO PERFECT!!!
Poor pompous, officious, pettifogger. Not only is she despised for her attitude, job, and dress sense; she also is cursed with the unfortunate physical appearance of a transfigured toad. XP

We enjoy watching Grand Designs. With some regularity, the people building take on listed properties, and hubs and I always groan, because only an idiot doesn't realise they turn out three time as expensive and take five times as long. You have to be bonkers (or masochistic) to take one on. (The stuff of nightmares... *nods*)

One, they ARE idiots. [Watching people be idiots on TV is fun.]
Two, they HAVE to be making more money from being on the TV show.
Three, the PTB's for the TV program are using them as "Perfectly good examples of a bad example"; A.K.A. don't do this at home!!!! [1/2 way between 'Jackass' & 'Tim the Toolman Taylor']

I think the problem with building, speaking as someone who has, is that most people don't go through it that often. You haven't the foggiest idea what you're doing or getting into, or you wouldn't do that sort of thing to yourself, which is a good part of the reason you don't end up with more experience. (One of the things I am proudest of is the fact I brought our home in on budget and on time as a lay person with no previous experience. (That said, we were walking into the house on euro-pallets for a few months until someone took a tumble and we were worried we'd be sued, and we *still* don't have a railing for the stairs... Eh. Overrated.)) And then people assume that all that stuff that happens to other people? Must be something wrong with them. *sure...* heh

One of the things I like about 'Grand Designs' is that they (by and large) don't make the people out to be idiots. (You can't always help it, because sometimes people just are, and it's impossible to cover up, but they don't throw too much of a spotlight on it.) The version of that sort of thing we had on television here was more vicious and spiteful. ('Pleiten, Pech und Pannen' - it literally translates to: 'Washouts, Bad Luck, and Disasters') I often think that's a sign of a more envious, less generous society.

Pleiten, Pech und Pannen
OMG. Really??? Well, Germans did invent the word "Schadenfreude," so...

I kid you not. We watched one, maybe two episodes, before giving up in disgust. It was just so mean-spirited. I'd bet it was over a decade ago, and *still* I remember the name. (So the marketing people get points there.) But seriously, they may as well have named it 'Schadenfreude Hoch Drei'. (Cubed.)

Whoa.

Although when I think about the most common trope on a show like Britain's Got Talent (of any of the _______ Got Talent programs), it's also pretty vile: the Susan Boyle trope, if you will. It's the "Well, here's an ugly person, and as we all know, ugly people aren't talented." [Insert said ugly-by-conventional-standards person being phenomenally talented, cut to judges and audience being simply SHOCKED that the ugly woman/nerdy man/stammering teenager can sing/juggle/dance.]

But... but... Why did you post this here instead of playing with all the other kids on the playground? You could have PMed me with this, and I could have included it with everybody's all at the same time? Now that you know you can write 300 words, you wanna write another in two days?

Also, bwa ha ha ha ha!!!!! NEVER TRUST THE HES ON A MISSION!!!

Welp, firstly, I didn't know I could do until I *had*, and secondly, *after* I had, the deadline had already passed (obviously, or I wouldn't have had the prompt), and I didn't want to be a special case, because... no. (But if you're still accepting people, I'll try to get ahold of MadameSlytherin. I think she was interested, too.)

And thirdly, I just don't like competitive things. It's not an indictment of anyone else's source of fun (on the contrary, I'm happy for them, and I'll cheerlead until I turn blue), but it makes me uncomfortable when something that's a nice, quiet, do-for-fun-thing goes... Yeah, competitive. That's just not me. At least not yet.

(And you kind of nailed it, I'm the quiet one playing with her legos in the corner. (At least until I figure out how to bridge the alarm system, nick a sailboat, and break into the alumni pool... *Then* I'll come out to play. 😉) I'm fairly binary that way.)

I just sent out a message on the community page, so if you and MadameSlytherin still want to join, please do!

Totally understood on competitive things. We're all prompted to make things by different parameters. For some folks, the competition nature HELPS, and for others it HURTS. I thought about changing it after you mentioned this before, but I realized that I'd already advertised it with the competitive bit, and it didn't seem right to give people a bait-and-switch after they'd already signed up.

That's sweet, but you really shouldn't have changed it anyway. For one thing, I can't really offer a good suggestion for how else it could / should have been, and I think there is more than one way for people to have fun. (That particular one just isn't *mine*, but so what?) And I sort of doubt there's a universal definition on the 'fun' front. (I also agree completely, having advertised one thing, it's rude to swap another.)

Sticking with the Lego analogy, it's frequently a solitary thing, except for when you build with a few friends. (And even then, someone always disagrees with your design of the space station / number of parapets on the castle... lol)

I think for this year, I'll make an effort not to hide my mywitch25days entry in the comments, or wait until the fest is over to crosspost... (That felt too much like capitalising on someone else's reputation for me to be entirely comfortable with it last year. I'm trying to get over it.) Baby steps. 😉

As we all know, there should always be exactly seven parapets on each castle, and they should always be crenellated. There's no disagreement here; there's only right and wrong.

JUST KIDDING! 😉

Er... What's this about the mywitch25days? Given how it was set up, EVERYONE put their entries in the comments, remember? What do you mean about how you hid yours? What do you mean about crossposting? I'm trying to suss out what you mean here. Are you saying you think that having a place for all of us to give OurWitch random, strange, small gifts in thanks for how generous she is... was a way for us to capitalize on her reputation? (I'm sorry if that's how it came across. I didn't know any other way to set it up except the LJ community, and I wasn't trying to have everyone gifting OurWitch take advantage of her Big Name, but rather trying to give people a place to do something nice for our pal.)

Yeah, see, I like seven parapets because it's Arithmantically sound, and prime, which may or may not be synonymous. Certain people never addressed that. (*cough* JKR *cough*)

Taking more time to answer this correctly as the first attempt obviously went badly awry... You tried to do (and did) a good thing, and now you feel attacked for it, which I can't let stand. (Unfortunately the only available option is to say you got that about as wrong as possible...)

No, you've mapped a statement about *me* onto a group. It doesn't work that way. (Truth is frequently relative. Different things apply to different people, it's neither universal nor absolute. (And this isn't one of those 'war is peace' things, those statements are correct. lol))

First, let's agree as our [Ausgangspunkt] starting point that I am ~~frequently~~ almost always awkward, but my heart is generally in the right place. That'll make things easier; it helps that it's true...

No, the emphasis is on 'hide' and not 'comments'. I buried the link for the Baron's story very, very deeply in a conversational thread on Rosmerta's day, practically assuring no one but milotzi and MW would see it based on its mention there. (Issues. *shrug* But it 'failed' or 'succeeded' based only on its own merits (or mine).) That's what I meant. (For proof, I submit the fact it escaped even your notice (as the mod) in the index. (That's definitely *not* a call to action, btw, simply an observation. Technically, I made two attempts, and neither of them registered.) For my purposes, that fact encouraged me that I had selected the *correct* way to achieve what I was trying to: do something for someone - show them they'd been thought of, if only that, but possibly make them smile - without first and foremost having it about 'being seen to'. I had a parent who did that all the time, as a result *I* make every effort *not* to. (Rule of thumb, effort expended must exceed any potential, conceivable gain.)) (Zwanghaft? Ein Wenig. *shrug* But I like me better this way.) (But this is just about *me* and limits on *my* behaviour.)

And despite uploading it to AO3 on 26 Dec, I didn't post in the actual LJ thread or add the AO3 community tag until 04 Jan. *That's* how you bury things, and try not to pirate attention. You sneak in once the attention has shifted.

'Crossposting' in the sense of adding it to the community tags; it's snarfing vocabulary from LJ/DW for AO3, because I didn't have a good word for them. (I have no idea how they see that (nor do I greatly care as long as I'm understood). The issue is it's a technical thing, on LJ/DW it's directing a post to create a separate instance, whereas on AO3, it's a question of a database query. I don't think the technical 'how' matters; it's about the result and how that's utilised.)

And as to the rest, emphatically NOT. Not when you or the rest did it. And it definitely wasn't how *I* viewed it when you (plural) did. But it would have felt that way to me had *I* done so, or risked being seen that way, and so I very consciously avoided it. If that makes sense? I try very hard not to be a Trittbrettfahrer.

I think fundamentally it boils down to a question of proximity, which I'll happily define (as a subset of Felicific Calculus even) in terms of numbers, vs. being tangential. Lots of numbers... time known, number of works published, entries on platform, number of interactions, the nature and quality thereof... (This, for those purposes, for instance, is a 'quality interaction', in as much as it's bothersomely revealing. 😉) I knew MW well enough to wish to write the story, but not the rest of you to be comfortable posting there.

By next Christmas, I imagine I'll have integrated sufficiently to be the odd-but-largely-harmless-cousin-who-plays-quietly-with-legos-in-the-corner (not really, they make a great deal of noise), and make a concerted effort to be less shy about posting my awkward offering. *That* was the point. 😊

Oh! I did miss your story, but that's mainly because I stopped doing any modly things after December 25. It's EXHAUSTING to try to keep up with all of that, and the month of December is always insane for me. I didn't even organize the AO3 community tag this; that was Fawkesylady! My take on fandom things is often to start something and let it fly freely in the hands of whoever else wants to do something with it; I am not thorough here.

But it would have felt that way to me had *I* done so
Now this is interesting to me. We often feel like outsiders, don't we, even after others have begun seeing us as insiders? I can't imagine that OurWitch or anyone else would have seen your story as not belonging there, and I don't think anyone would have seen you as a Trittbrettfahrer. Plus the point of the community wasn't us gift-givers, but OurWitch, who... as you said already... you felt comfortable giving a gift to...

But social interactions are hard, and everyone is comfortable with different things! You do you, Ginger!

> You do you, Ginger!

Brilliantly, it's not like there is a surfeit of options... 😂

FWIW, It's not really a question of *feeling* like an outsider. I think the first comment I ever made on LJ was in this thread 23 Dec, so you can see how I might have felt I was a bit too much of a new kid on the block on the specific platform to feel comfortable. I think that makes a difference. (By and large, I'm not susceptible to impostor syndrome.) But I don't walk in and go: 'Hoppla! Hier bin ich!' (Well, I do, but... es hält sich im Rahmen) And at that point, I very objectively *wasn't* an insider. (You really *can't* be when it's your first comment and you have maybe two friends...) These days, I've stopped entertaining the question, and eventually I'll be certain when I irrefutably am, so that works out. (I don't really sweat it.)

You've just forgotten that because I am everywhere you turn... 😉

'Hoppla! Hier bin ich!'
I'm meeting up for pho with friends tonight... and I am STEALING THIS FOR MY ENTRANCE. They'll be so confused, since only one of them speaks any German! 😂

December 23? REALLY? Whoa. I really didn't know because YOU ARE EVERYWHERE. You're like glitter at a 4-year-old's craft table.

My grandfather 'hoppla'd everywhere he went. I have much affection for the word. It's also quite universal, fall flat on your face? 'Hoppla!' Works a treat, both for bystanders or the spectacle herself. (Bonus points if both apply it at once.)

I think it sort of telegraphs its meaning even if you don't speak the language. 😉 (I just looked it up, and disagree vehemently with the Oxford German Dictionary translation. I'm going with the Duden: 'Ausruf, mit dem man innehaltend auf etwas aufmerksam machen möchte'. (Although there is the English, 'Ooops, there it is'... Hmm.) ('Hoppla, hier bin ich' is also the name of a book on child development from ages ago, mostly I should think because it was a phrase to begin with.)

I know right. 😊 I assumed you had forgotten that. Also, I'm thieving that: 'I'm like glitter.' *sparkles* 😃🎉

There's a silly song my mother used to sing when we'd be on hikes... I'm trying to remember all the lyrics, but the chorus is... Sprach der Floh: Brüderchen, tanze! Hoppla! Frisch!

It has been FOREVER since I've thought about that word.

For us it was 'Fuchs, du hast den ganz gestohlen', 'Hoppe, Hoppe Reiter', 'Alle meine Entchen', 'Hänschen klein', and 'ein Vogel wollte Hochzeit machen'... from which comes the ever useful bridge, "fidi ra la la, fidi ra la la, fidi ra la la la la la!" (Give or take a 'la'... 😉) You really have to sing that one in a group while marching in wellies, mushroom collecting, through the woods. (That's also one of the ones you learn to play on your recorder.)

Wait... are all German kiddos forced to learn the recorder in school? We do it for the ages of 9 and 10, and at 11, most children are ushered into choosing an instrument for band or orchestra.

'Fuchs, du hast den Gans* gestohlen' lol autocorrect ftw...

I had it in the third (I had flute from the fourth on). Guitar started second or third...

No idea about all, but I know my bff had the recorder it in the Gymnasium, so fifth or later, but before his voice broke. Hubs says he didn't have it at all. (He did things like welding instead of music, one of the advantages of the Gesamtschule having a broader selection of things on offer. (I'd have preferred welding...))

So how did the 'Hoppla, hier bin ich' go over last night? 😉

Edited 2019-06-06 18:41 (UTC)

I guessed as much on the autocorrect! Geese are a logical thing for foxes to steal, and adverbs are not!

Almost every child in the US has recorders, but WELDING?! You have to be in a special technical class for that, and I don't think those happened until children were 14 or 15.

One of my favorites was the school retreat everyone went on when we were 12. For 3 days, we lived at a camp in a rural area, and we practiced all sorts of outdoors skills: reading topographical maps with a compass and making maps based on the terrain, identifying trees by their leaves and bark, finding traces of animal life (scat, footprints) and plaster casting the animal prints we'd find in the forest. Some of my fellow classmates grew up in hiking/hunting/camping families, and some had never done anything like it before.

(Ahh! I was thwarted on my big entrance. When I arrived, everyone there was outside the restaurant, talking to someone else I didn't know. It just didn't feel right to whip out my jazz hands and make a dramatic entrance, as I would have been interrupting that conversation. So... NEXT TIME.)

Edited 2019-06-06 19:02 (UTC)

> Geese are a logical thing for foxes to steal, and adverbs are not!

You would *not* believe what adverbs are going for on the black market. A pretty penny, I tell you.

Also, foxes are wily, so you never know. *nods*

Adverbs on the black market? Ah, yes... I should have known. Pangolin scales, elephant ivory... and adverbs. XD

Verily. *nods*

User

too_dle_oo referenced to your post from ...an additional "unexpected visitor" drabble! (https://hogwarts-ldws.livejournal.com/3119.html) saying: [...] read a 300-word drabble wrote following the prompt we all used last week: "The Visitor." [...]

Brilliant. 😂

My favorite bit: after the Planning Officer, who falls like an ancient building before the wrecking ball.

The only thing worse than improvement is demolition! She might have preferred the centaurs.

Nicely done.

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"the visitor" by gingerbred

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...an additional "unexpected visitor" drabble!

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