Lanna Michaels

In January, something strange happens, though. A Hufflepuff, Leontes thinks she's one of Dean's friends, asks him on a date. He does what he's practiced: he covers his heart with his hand and puts every bit of drama into his voice that he's learned from the drama club that he's still, somehow, involved in, and declaims, "I wish I could, dear lady! But I'm afraid my heart is sworn to the service of the cruel Lady NEWT. I can only begin to think of others once my torment is complete. I pray you forgive me for my unchivalrous conduct, but I cannot accompany you to Hogsmeade in the manner in which you request. I must toil instead, these seven years, until my work is done."

She laughs and there's no tension or awkwardness as she leaves him and Neville alone, but Neville's looking at him askance.

"Do you mean that?" he asks. "The whole bit about not dating until after the NEWTs?" Neville had dated a lot in fourth year but hasn't gone to Hogsmeade with anyone except as a friend this year. Leontes has kept his mouth shut about it, reminding himself that it's okay for Neville to go on dates and so it's not okay to congratulate him on putting his OWLs and his Prefect duties ahead of that, because that would make Neville think that Leontes did not, actually, think it was fine to go on dates. Which it is. Even though it does distract from the important things. People can have different priorities and that's okay. It's fine. It's acceptable behavior.

That said, Leontes thinks it's fantastic that Neville isn't dating this year. This is an important year! A vital year! Dating can wait.

"I suppose," Leontes says. "University is also going to be grueling so I may wait until after that, but I'm certainly not going to do it before the NEWTs. And who knows? I might end up with more free time in university for things like that."

Neville, an unreadable expression on his face, takes out his magical planner without a word and flips forward pretty far and then writes something down and then puts it away.

Leontes eyes him, mystified.

"How's Binns doing?" Neville asks, adroitly changing the subject, and Leontes relaxes. Everything's fine. Nothing to worry about. Priorities are definitely established and correct.

NEWTs come, inevitably.

The last NEWT of them all is Potions. Leontes waits outside after he finishes for Neville to finish up, then Neville suggests lunch and they wander down to Hogsmeade. Neville leads him into Josephine's, where there's a table waiting for them in the back. They talk lightly about the NEWT -- "awful", "extremely" -- until halfway through the soup course, when Leontes snaps out of the post-examination fugue, looks around, takes in the single candle flickering in the middle of the table and the overall atmosphere of the most romantic restaurant in Hogsmeade.

"Oh," he says. He looks around again, just to make sure. "Why didn't you say anything?"

Neville lowers his spoon. "You said not until we finished the NEWTs. We've finished the NEWTs. Well?"

"Ah," Leontes says eloquently. "Oh. Well. All right, then."

• -the book does not take place in a specific year but it takes place on specific days of the week corresponding to days of the month: November 15th is explicitly a Saturday.
  
  The book was published in 1978. November 15th was not a Saturday in 1978. In previous fics, I've just set it in 1978 anyway, because who cares. And I did that here but it's bothering me that, especially when I need to reference things on a specific date, the day/week doesn't match up.
  
  So I opened Excel to find what year(s) in the 1970s had a date/weekday correspondance. And it's only 1975.
  
  The moon phases don't match up to 1975 but the moon phases are not something that is going to bother me; me specifically having the start of the game happen in the middle of the week instead of Sunday, that bothers me.
  
  And still I dithered because I'd made myself a reference table with the heirs's birth years based on their ages in canon and then how old they'd be in 2007, when the fic is set, and I'd used that throughout the fic, and if I changed it to 1975, I'd have to change all of that. aldkfa;ldkfja;lkdjsfalks
  
  But I'm going to do it anyway, and not only because I was like "okay wait, when you change everything and actually save the excel file this time instead of just copying the table with | into scrivener, make sure you have Crow's birthyear right because her birthday is Nov 15, so her age given in her bio will not be the year she turns during canon" and it turns out I'd had it wrong in the reference table anyway.
  
  So now I need to change every single year that is mentioned at any point in the fic but at least it won't bother me anymore, the day of the week problems.



• THEY UPDATED THE BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK
  
  All right. So. Rosalie, Flora Baumbach's daughter. She is referred to as a "Mongoloid" child in the book. She is referred to as that in both physical copies of the book I have.
  
  But also I got the ebook out from the library to have on my phone too while doing this because why the hell not, and! it turns out! that the line that was originally "She had a retarded daughter, Rosalie, a Mongoloid child", now it just says "She had a disabled child, Rosalie"! (I give them only half a point in cutting "retarded" since they keep "retarded" in the discussion between Theo and Mrs. Baumbach about Chris)
  
  Now, yes, I am fine with them removing both those terms BUT BUT BUT now since they just went with "disabled", now you have to rely on context clues and physical description of Rosalie to know that she had Down's!
  
  It's an incredibly minor characterization detail, but I think it's a VERY IMPORTANT minor characterization detail in how Mrs. Baumbach relates to 1) Chris, and 2) Turtle, that Rosalie had Down's. And now it's "idek, figure it out from the clues we'll pepper in". JUST SAY SHE HAD DOWN'S SYNDROME. IT'S IMPORTANT.



• And great, from a canon review/consistency stage, now I have to worry what else was changed in the book. (I haven't spotted any other changes but I did spot a typo: Sam Westing is called "Sara Westing" at one point. THAT WOULD BE A VERY DIFFERENT BOOK. DON'T GET ME WRONG, I WOULD READ THAT BOOK. BUT THAT IS NOT THIS BOOK.)



• It was not until this day (or, uh, yesterday? Two days ago? Some point in recent history) that I realized that... maybe Flora Baumbach is Jewish? Jake Wexler is textually. But... was I supposed to get the impression that Flora Baumbauch, nee Miller, is Jewish? Because the character never did that for me at any point at any time in the decades I have been rereading this book, but some of her various backstory details... uh, is she Jewish and I just never noticed?



• Also Denton Deere seems to have massively changed medical specialties during the book but you know what, that's unimportant.



• I appreciate that the book tells me that Turtle did not change her name upon marriage. I had to make an executive decision that Alice is just Deere, she is not hyphenated, even though she'd be in peak generational and peak socio-economical to be Wexler-Deere. But I made it just Deere for narrative reasons.
  
  Why do I keep stumbling into fandoms where I have to make decisions about the last name of canonical children of the characters. Why.
  
  Also I had to decide if Angela changed her name but at least that's not a load-bearing decision. She's an orthopedic surgeon. She's probably Dr. Wexler at work! But did she otherwise change it? Did she hyphenate? There's a good chance she hyphenated.
  
  Dr. Deere is her husband, Dr. Wexler is her father... Angela, what did you do. (I have it as Dr. Deere right now and will likely keep it that way, on the theory that Grace pushed her hard to change her name and Angela went along with it.)

• -Adventures of buying a serger: I have gone from "the bottom looper always comes out" to "the upper looper always comes out" with the occassional "the right needle always comes out" and yet somehow I did manage to sew a couple seams before this inability-to-keep-the-machine-threaded problem started, I have watched videos, I have called the company, I have not yet wept tears over it but I am so frustrated, so hopefully telling people will make the machine stop unthreading and then I figure out the tension issues and then I can serge.



• -Where is a good place to buy desk lamps? The one I had broke and then I spent a while trying to find one including going to a hardware store, and then I found out that home depot has two listings with what appears to be the exact same lamp, but a different company for each and slightly different cost, and this decision has now left me lampless for a month as I figure out which to buy and decide on neither. Lamp is used to be on a timer so it goes on at the time my alarm clock sounds, this is helpful for the time of year when the sun is not up yet at that time, which -- not to worry anyone -- is approaching. So I need a new lamp. Looking for 12-14 inches, not LED, no random bits at the bottom for pens and stuff that'll just collect dust. Not a sun lamp; I tried that and it gave me a headache immediately.



• What is keeping me from buying a new sewing machine is falling in love with one that's out of stock and then scrolling down today on my usual check of it's in stock to see multiple complains, 2 and 3 years old, that it's out of stock. Perhaps I should settle on my second choice, rather than falling in love with an out of stock sewing machine with features I do not need. (but! the one I have now is not great and I've wanted to replace it rather than keep fighting it, and all it really does is straight and zigzag, so I do not, in fact, need to replace it with a machine with 240 built-in stitches and two fonts, I just need a machine that has a speed I can set rather than try to be perfect on my foot pressure. But if I'm going to upgrade, I wanna upgrade.)



• I have no intention of writing a Tishrei fic. No ideas, nada. Happy to take a prompt if someone has one but this may just be the year where it stops happening, and I'm okay with that.