the very secret diary

Thomas Peverell Forrester

8/3/09 19:57 - Thursday, 17 September 1942 (later)

Why is this all happening to me? Just when I've finally discovered my destiny, proof that I'm not just a charity case, that I've as much right to be here as anyone, that wanker Pettigrew has to go and ruin it. Nobody will listen to me now. I could tell them that the castle was talking to me, and they'd think I was just trying to make excuses.

I'll show them. I know something is going to happen - nobody will say anything, but it's obvious. The teachers are worried, and the Diviniation class all looks like someone walked over their graves. It all ties into the orrery and what happened last night somehow, which means I'm a part of it, if I could just figure out what it wants.

If it would just do something to let me know what it wants.

There's got to be something in the library about this, but everything interesting is restricted, and there's no way Chattox will give me permission now. Still, there's got to be a way past the wards, and it's better than sitting here waiting.
Current Mood: pissed off

23/12/08 00:52 - Thursday, 17 September 1942

Finally.

I've known. All along I've known. I'm special, and last night was proof. It called me - it needed me. It was only a drill - and I'm glad, I really am, because I wasn't ready. I need to go back. I need to learn what it wants from me before the next time. And then they'll all see it. I'm just as good as any of them. Better, even.

(And there's nothing else wrong with me either. Girls can be a lot of fun, if they're girls like Valeria.)
Current Mood: gloating

30/6/08 10:55 - Monday, 14 September 1942

I didn't think anything could make up for the way I miss Florian and Ximena, but I'm glad I was here when Abraxas Mablin and those two girl Constables came into the Charms classroom and arrested the Baddocks. It was brilliant.

Baddock Major's a horrible wanker and his brother is an awful bully but who could have guessed they were spies?

Of course I shouldn't be so sanguine about this. Laurie will be unbearable. I thought he was going to burst into tears. And Pettigrew is puffed up like one of those Japanese fish they told us about in Potions class, never mind that the first spies they caught were in Caerleon, and that he was so much of an idiot he thought it was Olive!

Florian will be so sorry he missed it. I should write and tell him about it, shouldn't I? I keep expecting him to write to me first, but at least he hasn't written to Loveday yet and not me. I hope he'll write. Or that Ximena will. Bella won't, because she never does, but I'd feel dreadful if none of them did. I'm being rather stupid about it, amn't I? My old self would laugh at me, mooning around about an eleven-year-old and a couple of foreign girls. But that's my old self, isn't it?

His older brother wrote to Loveday and Rosier. I know he's in love with Alessio Malaspina, but in women he must like redheads a very lot.

Current Mood: jealous

27/4/08 02:47 - Sunday, 13 September 1942

I'm glad we're going back to the Academy tonight. I don't think I could take another day of fun like this. I don't know what I thought it was going to be like here -- I suppose I thought it would be just like it was when I was here over the summer -- but this wasn't it.

Florian looks at his older brother the way I always wanted him to look at me. Maybe it's almost a sort of relief -- it means I'm not a pervert, after all. But at the same time, I could be the other thing when he's older. There's nothing in the world that could ever make us brothers.

She isn't sending Florian or Charis back with us. No matter what she says...she doesn't think of me as her son, and really, there's no reason why she should, is there? She's also keeping Ximena. I'll miss her.

I think maybe it's Kyteler I feel worst for. She's keeping Dashwood, too.

Current Mood: uncomfortable

9/3/08 13:45 - Saturday, 12 September 1942

( When Goyle announced that all the Leffoys were going home for Marco Malaspina's wedding, I didn't think that I would be allowed to go. )
Current Mood: jealous

17/9/07 00:21 - Tuesday, 8 September 1942; late evening

Magister Goyle is taking over the school. He can't run it any worse than either of the Mathers, and he's picked a group of us to run drills, so something is being done. It's more to do, but it's deadly important. Who needs sleep, after all...

After the meeting with Goyle I had to go and threaten the Pelbys, who are filthy little beasts in the most literal of senses. Eifion is stunningly incompetent with them, though I hope they'll be frightened enough of me to do as they're told, because I really will beat them, and at the moment I'm so frustrated with the waiting that I think I'd rather enjoy it. Greengrass blubs like a girl.

Who in God's name decided to call it an Inquisitor?

But best -- I asked Goyle about the orrery. He just looked at me oddly and warned me not to "go in there" by myself. If it's nothing but an old mechanism, why would he care? I'm going back tonight.
Current Mood: excited

21/8/07 15:06 - Tuesday, 8 September 1942; morning

( My eye's too quick, my heart o'erweens too much, / Unless my hand and strength could equal them. )
Current Mood: morose

21/7/07 20:22 - Monday, 7 September 1942; early morning

( But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? Oh, right. It's just the fucking sunrise. Why can't I manage to sleep in? )
Current Mood: discontent

14/7/07 16:38 - Sunday, 6 September 1942; early evening

I should be very grateful. And -- I am, I really am. I'm profoundly, unspeakably grateful that I've suddenly been drawn into the halls of power, where it's perfectly reasonable for the Ministry's Head of Internal Affairs to offer me...what did he offer me? Nothing tangible. Connections, I suppose. Support. Or where my impertinence (to Lady Leffoy, no less) is endearing, instead of wildly inappropriate. I'm very grateful that I find myself in this position.

But for God's sake, I wish it was because of something I'd done!

I worked so hard -- at schoolwork, at magic, at being a charity case in the Snake Pit, through a thousand tiny humiliations, and I didn't get anything for it. Good marks. Prefect. Martius Starn's dead, so he and his friends won't come and thrash me any more. (And there's a horrible thought. My half-brother. Did he know?)

And now suddenly, serendipity! -- I've got everything I'd ever dreamed of and worked at. But not because I earned it, or deserve it; it just got given to me.

Christ. I wish I could just be thankful and humble and quiet, instead of angry. But if I didn't deserve it then and I still don't now, I wish it'd happened four years ago, before...fuck, everything. It would have been so much easier.

I half-way want to spurn the help and do it on my own. I could, I think -- I've come this far. I want to be too proud, but it's stupid pride, and what good would it do me? One can't eat pride. I don't know how I can wish, at the same time, that this had happened long ago and never happened at all. It doesn't make any sense. Maybe I'm going mad. (I did hear that voice this morning...)

This is stupid. I'm clever, it's one of the few things to like about me -- I can't waste my time sitting here and feeling sorry for myself. It doesn't matter whether I earned this chance, though I think I've earned it a hundred times over. It's here now. I'm not letting go. And one day, though not, I think, today, I'll have something because I did it, myself, instead of chance and luck and fuck-all to do with me.
Current Mood: resentful

5/7/07 19:24 - Sunday, 6 September 1942; late morning

The queerest thing -- I had the strangest feeling as if there was something I'd forgotten to do. It was like one of those dreams where you have to take a test in a class you'd forgotten to attend all year - you know you're hopelessly unprepared, and your entire future hinges on it, but you have no idea what to do. Of course I do have quite a lot of work this year -- being a prefect is harder than I expected, especially since we're sharing with Pelby now -- and it could just have been worries that. Odd.

I'm gladder than ever today to have a room of my own. Everyone else in my year is sitting around exhausted because Baddock Minor woke up screaming all night and no one could get any sleep. I don't know why they didn't think to put up a silencing charm, but of course none of them are really notable for their intelligence, even less so in the middle of the night.

I hope his dream was really rotten. He's been looking at me funny since I told him not to touch the first-years. I know he would. People like that make me sick.
Current Mood: worried

25/2/07 17:25 - Wednesday, 2 September 1942; hastily scribbled

( My schedule, for reference. )

18/2/07 15:19 - Wednesday, 2 September 1942; lunchtime

It is already shaping up to be quite a day.

I didn't get to bed until rather too late last night, partly because I was reading and partly because Florian Leffoy showed up at my door just before midnight and stayed and talked for a while.

I had the strangest dream. I can't remember most of it, but I woke up around six o'clock with the sensation that I had just been at a really good bit of the dream, and bits of me seemed to agree. I couldn't get back to sleep after.

I nearly nodded off in Alchemy, though luckily Arianwen was there to elbow me in the ribs when it looked likely. I managed to take a little nap afterwards, though, so it could be worse. Enochian this afternoon -- at least I don't have to see Bettony first thing in the morning until tomorrow.

The Pelby students are turning out to be absolutely insufferable, and I'm not that keen on half our first-years, either; I'm going to talk to Charis and the other prefects as soon as they show up.

I wonder if Florian is going to come by
Current Mood: tired

31/1/07 23:20 - Tuesday, 1 September 1942; late evening

Well, it's certainly the most eventful first day I remember.

That isn't really true -- second year we went to war, though that didn't have a great deal of effect here -- but the hyperbole is entirely warranted.

First of all, a boy is dead missing. Claudien de Kernoël, who is a cousin of the Leffoys, wasn't there in the sorting ceremony. Everyone assumes he drowned (or was eaten by the squid, never mind that squids don't eat people) when the boats overturned -- and more on that later -- but I worry. A missing French aristocrat would make anyone suspect foul play under normal circumstances; it's only because of the boats that everyone assumes it was (and I hesitate to use this term) natural.

A boy named Marvell managed to jump into Florian's boat and cut off his braid, which set off an enormous fight among the first-years so that they were all dripping wet at the sorting. This, of course, after the Pendry boy attacked him on the train -- I had to patch him up, and I'm not much good at healing charms.

So: a missing student who may have been kidnapped because of his important family, a blood feud between the families of two of the first-years (oh, yes, a Pendry in Avalon!), my (I don't even know what he is) -- Mercutio -- in my house, Starn's daughter in my house... What else do we need?

Oh, of course! To live with the Pelbys all year.

If I didn't have my own room, I would probably go mad.

It's not a terribly nice room, actually, it's tiny; but beggars, choosers, etc., and it isn't as though I have much to take up space.

I'll have to get the first-years together tomorrow; the common room is, alas, all to common now. It's full of Pelbys, who are not the audience we need for an explanation of Avalon mores.

( First Years )
Current Mood: frustrated

20/12/06 20:19 - Tuesday, 1 September 1942; early morning

Summer is over.

I've been packing up the last few things -- my toothbrush and the book I was reading last night and so on -- and humming the school song and I can't wait.

Talked to Mercutio a couple of minutes ago, which was exceptionally odd. I think I broke it off, whatever it was. It's just as well, because it was fun but he kept getting awfully...intense, which wasn't fun. The fucking was, sort of. He's perfectly nice, and I feel really bad even writing it down, but he's not really terribly clever. Or thoughtful, at least. He isn't stupid, I mean, but we haven't really got anything in common beyond the fact that we both like being in bed together, and I only like that while we're actually fucking.

But I've high hopes for this year anyway -- and I do rather hope Mercutio doesn't end up in Avalon.
Current Mood: excited

25/11/06 14:36 - Monday, 31 August 1942; later

( Don't look to me for a theodicy. )
Current Mood: contemplative

15/11/06 18:12 - Monday, 31 August 1942

I think the entire world has gone mad.

Pendry obviously has or he wouldn't be spewing that kind of idiotic stuff to the papers. Whether or not it's true (and I don't for a moment believe it is -- I haven't been here very long and even I can see how much the Leffoys hate Thorwald), putting it out there with his name on it is about the stupidest thing possible. Everyone here is going mad, too -- I suppose it's only to be expected, really, but I almost regret being bored earlier this summer.

Not really, though -- some of the excitement here might not be positive, but it's better than trying to get my work done with mundanes all 'round, even if it is busy here. Florian is very funny, though of course I couldn't tell him that. He showed me his dolls, and we played with the puppy and went out into the woods together. He's a lot smarter than any of the other kids his age I've met, and he has some very odd ideas, probably from growing up here. I hope school won't change it too much; it's hard to be different, and though of course I don't think he's so delicate he couldn't handle people being rude I wish he could at least pretend to be a little more normal. I wouldn't for a moment wish he were, but it's good to be able to.

Mercutio is confusing...odd. It's fun -- it's a lot more fun than I'd have thought -- and if it really doesn't mean there's something wrong with me it isn't something to worry about, I suppose, but when I stop and think about it it's just bodies and it's so strange.

Mercutio gets jealous whenever I talk to Florian, which is decidedly odd. Everyone keeps insisting that being inverted doesn't make me a pervert, and then he goes and acts as though he thinks I'd rather be in bed with an eleven-year-old than with him. I do like Florian better -- Mercutio is sulky sometimes, he's almost like a girl -- but Florian is a kid.

I've hardly spoken to Bella since I was here, even. It's rather awkward that I fancied her for years and now I'm fucking her brother. It probably won't last once we get to school.

God, I can't wait to get back to school.
Current Mood: cynical

23/7/06 12:23 - Late evening, Thursday, 27 August 1942

After it happened I wanted to die.

I tried, I didn't eat and there was no one to make me, but I wasn't brave enough to do it. Instead I said I'd kill him, as if that would fix it, because I hated him as much as I hated anything, and I never told anyone, never, and sometimes days and weeks go by and I don't even think about it.

And he knew who I was. He knew things I didn't know -- he knew my parents, he knew my name, he knew who I was all along. He took me there, he knew.

I want him dead.

I tried not to think about it, I…tried. But he did something and I'm wrong, and I know I shouldn't but I do, and it's as though…everything is broken.
Current Mood: numb

30/6/06 19:16 - Early morning, Thursday, 27 August 1942

I'm going to look a fool in my uniform, but it's the only robes I have.

Well, I'll meet interesting people, at any rate, and I shall see the Malaspinas again. If Mercutio has really been talking about me he's probably told them all everything anyway.

I'm going to be in such shite when I come back for skipping off like this again, but I could hardly give them the letter Mrs Scalara wrote -- her daughter's school friend? no address, no telephone? -- but I hope that it will be worthwhile.

So long as I don't humiliate myself.
Current Mood: nervous

17/6/06 01:43 - Tuesday, 25 August 1942

Apparently Don Malaspina is not mad, and the Malaspinas have gone to live with him in Cornwall.

I only found this out after I'd gone by Mrs Scalara's house and had a very stilted conversation with Hadrian Kyteler, who (along with his father) seems to be living there now.

And then they invited me to Leffoy Manor.

Things like that just don't happen. At least, they don't happen to me. In the past five years I've had a distinct dearth of invitations from wizarding aristocracy.

The invitation came from Mrs Scalara, not the Leffoys, but she seems sure they won't mind. Apparently Mercutio talks about me quite a lot. I may have to explain to him (again) that I'm not like that and I couldn't stand it if he touched me.

I'll go, of course. I'm not sure how to dress or act or what to say but this is such a chance.
Current Mood: surprised

1/12/05 21:53 - Monday, 3 August 1942

The day after is always worse. I forgot that. It's been a long time since I gave anyone an excuse to thrash me.

My arse hurts and I'm confined to the dormitory, which means no supper.

I'm still counting days. Less than a month now. I'm almost done my essay for van R., and then it's only my work for Transfiguration and Charms to finish up.
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