Closed It's Okay To Be Vindictive, Sometimes

[Aine Thompson]

Aine was hurting for inspiration for something to write about in the next issue of the paper. The way OWLs were being built up to literally deciding the entire trajectory of one's future was bad enough, if she wasn't also willingly subjecting herself to the torture of studying under Professor Styx. (And on the former, she had enough opinions that would get shouted down for not being part of the status quo. The latter was a whole other problem.) She looked back at a few of her old articles from when she was in her early years and tended to cringe, finding them as a whole utterly embarrassing and worthless. Which was how she would describe herself generally, but that was a different matter. But she felt like she'd matured a lot over the past couple of years, and so had her writing. (That was debatable).

Which didn't say a lot for the rest of the paper, opinion pieces aside, and Aine sighed somewhat melodramatically as she rustled through papers, trying to see what previous articles worked and what previous ones didn't. "Geez," Aine muttered, more to herself than anything. "You'd think nothing actually happened at the school sometimes, when we're submitting muggle poems that aren't even credited for the paper." Aine had no problem with Aaliyah as a person, she supposed, but she certainly despised her choice of poems and her general opinions about classes, so maybe she did have a problem after all. And totally wasn't vaguely jealous that not being named editor was yet another thing she was not good enough for. At least she wrote her totally cringeworthy and humiliating poems for the paper.

 

[Celia Vuong]

Sometimes Celia felt like she was writing into the void with her Hogwarts Monthly columns. She had no idea what people thought about them or if anyone was even reading them. For the most part, the only feedback she ever got was from other Monthly staff, who disliked her pieces because they disliked her. Nevertheless, Celia found it cathartic putting her complaints about the school down on paper and imagining them making their way to the administration. So even though her columns had never led to any meaningful change, Celia wanted to make sure her last one was a good one. She wanted to end on a statement.

Celia had plenty of ideas; it was just a matter of choosing the right one. Today she'd come to the newsroom in search of both inspiration and research. It seemed someone had beaten her to the archives, however, and Celia wrinkled her nose as she walked past Aine to the opposite end of the shelves. She had been planning on ignoring Aine when the Hufflepuff started muttering to herself. "Wait, is Aaliyah really plagiarizing another poem for the next issue?" Celia asked incredulously, lowering the paper she had been skimming so that she could turn her attention to Aine. "Whose work is she stealing this time?" It was absurd that the school even allowed this. Anywhere else, a student who tried to republish another person's work under their own name would get kicked off the paper.

 

[Aine Thompson]

Aine was once more reminded not to look gift horses in the mouth. (Did wizards even have horses? She'd dropped Care of Magical Creatures before she could really find out.) She knew she should have kept her mouth shut, but at least Celia wasn't obviously mad at her. It was both of them being mad about other people, but sometimes it was good to get a heap of b*tchy feelings out. Cathartic, even. "Dunno, yet. Wouldn't put it past her, though." She gave a somewhat distasteful look as she scanned over the poem from last year. Aine despised it, it came across as entirely too saccharine and like it was trying to say something without meaning anything. "Apparently that's all you need to be an editor. I thought that section of the paper was for people to write their own poems, but shows what I know." The older she got, the more she realized she had wasted time writing things that had nothing to do with anything in a desperate attempt at being entertaining.

 

[Celia Vuong]

During the four unfortunate years Celia had known Aine, she'd heard the Hufflepuff say plenty of b*tchy things. That wasn't the surprising part. What was surprising was that Aine wasn't being a b*tch to her. Yet. She snorted a little at the Hufflepuff's comment. "Who knows, maybe she'll surprise us with another stunning listicle," she said sarcastically. What kind of person made a top ten list from a set of twelve? At that point, you might as well just rank them all. Aine's next comment brought out an ironic smile from Celia. "See, your problem is assuming this school has any standards at all. No one here cares about anything." The apathy of not only the student body, but the majority of the faculty, had never failed to astound her. "No one cares about decent writing or editing. The only thing that matters is your ability to suck up to whoever's in charge." Celia had no doubt that's why she'd been passed over for the editorship despite being the most qualified candidate. She'd refused to support River in her campaign to turn the sh*tty newspaper into an even sh*ttier literary magazine. "That's how you end up with an editor who can't even write her own stuff," she concluded almost flippantly. Now that she was halfway out the door, Celia could almost find comedy in just how corrupt everything at Hogwarts was.

 

[Aine Thompson]

"Ah, yes," Aine responded, in surprisingly good humour for once. Maybe it was because she didn't necessarily feel like she was immediately on the defensive. She had written her own listicle, but it was when she was in second year and was fully aware it sucked. Ranking the classes felt like it was something designed to incite debate. "The importance of defending ourselves from dark wizards, since I guess that's all you need to know in the wizarding world." She didn't dislike Defence Against the Dark Arts - well, she'd really liked the ethics and debates in third and fourth year - but still struggled to see why that was a much greater focus than things like literature, or social sciences, or actual mathematics and science. Things like basic biology, which was not out of the understanding of magical society.

Aine somehow managed to be surprised by Celia's venom, even though she had read the opinion pieces and knew the older girl had a lot of things to say, few of them pleasant. Aine had been snotty and come to blows with her over it, and now the initial snottiness was replaced by a combination of self-loathing masking self-importance. "My mistake. I forgot that somehow they expect students to be completely independent from their eleventh birthday but won't let you go anywhere that's not a magic shopping strip until holidays." Even if Aine wasn't the closest to her family, the fact that she couldn't even just call her older siblings up when she needed to hear a familiar voice was a real drag. This semester, with Professor Styx's torment teaching of Occlumency more than ever. "Guessing they just kick you out the door when you graduate with maybe a 'good luck' if you've sucked up enough to the right people?"

 

[Celia Vuong]

There were few things Celia enjoyed more than complaining about other people (or other places or other things — she wasn't picky), and she figured she could tolerate Aine for the duration of this b*tch session. She snorted at the Hufflepuff's comment. "Didn't you know? It's a war zone out there," she said sarcastically. If you were going to rank classes on utility, Celia thought it pretty obvious that Charms would come first. She'd gladly read the opinion of someone who thought otherwise, but that was the problem. Aaliyah's listicle had included arguments for why each of the subjects were important but not why any were more important than the other. It had entirely failed at being a list, and Celia still couldn't believe that the editors had printed it before her op-ed.

Celia wasn't completely sure what about her comments had made Aine think of their lack of freedom, but hey, she was willing to complain about anything. "Don't forget, if you're over the age of thirteen, you get to go to two shopping strips." It was kind of ridiculous how she had an apparition license that she couldn't even use. "The teachers only give us freedom if it makes their jobs easier," Celia said dismissively. Why teach when you could just send everyone to the library for a study period? Why hire someone to provide Quidditch coaching when you could just get a teenager to do it? Why assign the newspaper a faculty adviser when you could allow a plagiarist and a girl who struggled with English to run it instead? "Something like that," she said with a snort. Celia wasn't naïve; she knew people used their connections to get things in the real world all the time. But shouldn't a school at least try and pretend it cared about merit? "Guess that's why so many people end up in retail," she said scathingly. It was kind of sad the number of former Hogwarts students (especially former Hogwarts head students) Celia had seen working at the mall or one of Brightstone's dinky little shops.

((sorry this took so long x.x))

 

[Aine Thompson]

((all good! i'm the last person who can judge, haha))

Aine knew that at muggle school she would've learned some basic self defence as part of PE class, where they'd have a lesson or two on what you do if you get grabbed or those sorts of things before moving straight back to forcing you to learn something pointless like synchronised swimming. That would have been maybe 70 minutes. Not 7 years. Sure, there were dangers on both sides. But magic seemed almost to do more harm than good, if the emphasis on classes was anything to go by. "Can't wait to graduate and know how to disarm an evil wizard but have no idea how to, I dunno, manage money." She fidgeted a little with her pen, trying not to stop and think about the fact that she was very nearly managing a civil conversation with Celia lest she say something incredibly stupid. Again.

"You know," Aine admitted, very nearly screwing up already. "I don't actually know what kind of jobs are actually out there in the wizarding world, except like, retail, teacher or government. And journalist, I guess." It was a non zero amount of employment opportunities, but it wasn't as though the school seemed to make much of an effort to explain what was out there for the students. Professor Carter had been helpful, but it had taken her actually going to see him on the verge of a nervous breakdown and having a vague idea about what she might potentially want to do. "I feel like if I ask the teachers would probably just say they're not paid enough for more than the bare minimum. Maybe that's why there's such a high turnover. That and the whole no training part." As nice as the new professors for Potions and Astronomy seemed, Aine found it difficult to believe that either of them could actually be ready for teaching. Hadn't Professor Hopkins-Vance just been head girl a couple of years ago? "Although if they do more it can be kinda weird." She still wasn't over Professor Maxwell delivering roses. That had been awkward.

 

[Celia Vuong]

Celia smirked. "I think you'll be fine. I don't think you can expect much complexity from an economy that runs on physical coins." It was just barely a step up from a bartering system, but she supposed that was a natural consequence of a society incapable of anything more than basic arithmetic. Celia would have been perfectly content just continuing to trade snarky remarks, but it seemed Aine had other ideas. She regarded Aine curiously as the Hufflepuff grew contemplative, and instead of volleying back another acerbic statement, she gave Aine's comment some thought. "Like I said, it's not the most complex society," she said with a small shrug. "It's probably why job opportunities are so limited." It wasn't a subject she'd thought much about since she'd known her career goals for a while now.

Aine's next comment made Celia wonder if the Hufflepuff had read her latest column. "Probably," she agreed. "A lot of professors here barely do anything. I've been dying to know what they get paid." That kind of information was usually easy to find in the muggle world, thanks to the internet. But Hogwarts was a black box. Celia wondered if there were any transparency laws for Ministry salaries as well. She wanted to know how much the minister and deputy made for doing absolutely nothing. Aine's last comment made Celia give her another curious look. "What do you mean?" She couldn't think of any teachers here who did more than the bare minimum aside from perhaps Professor Corrins, who incidentally was one of the few teachers Celia actually respected.

 

[Aine Thompson]

Aine was actually able to keep her mouth shut, sometimes. Sometimes the simplicity of the magical society felt like a reprieve from the complexities of the rest of the world. But often it felt limiting, too constrained, too set in its ways. For people who had incredible powers, the expectations of them often felt fairly low. As much as Aine wanted to try and change things, she knew that if she ever had the power to, resistance would be extremely high. A lot of people had their whole lives planned out and were satisfied with that, and Aine was a little envious. But at the same time, she had no idea if she'd even be the same person at 26, or 36, or 46, as she was at 16.

"Well," Aine said, unable to stop herself from smirking. "You're almost free. You can go raid the ministry and find out and send a howler back telling us all." She wasn't sure Celia would appreciate the joke, but despite her sometimes being able to keep her mouth shut, most of the time it worked without thought. Aine wouldn't have been surprised if Celia went somewhere else after graduation and never had anything to do with this part of the world again. She gave a wince at the question, though in part was glad to just be a bit gossipy. "Professor Maxwell got involved handing out roses, and I thought that was...weird. Overstepping? I dunno," she trailed off, shrugging. Maybe she was overracting - probably was - but there was a difference between doing your job better and trying to be 'just like one of the students'.

 

[Celia Vuong]

Celia bristled at the joke, her eyes narrowing. She had no doubt it was a dig about last year's howler. "As if I'd waste my time with anything related to the school once I've graduated," she said coolly. She didn't care if the comment went over Aine's head. She wasn't going to be as pathetic as Seraphina, sending howlers over high school grudges when she could be doing literally anything else in her free time. Celia was looking forward to the day when she forgot everything about Hogwarts, and the memories faded so much that she couldn't tell if they'd been real or just an incredibly realistic nightmare.

Celia picked up another old issue, ready to end the conversation right there, but there was nothing like a good opportunity to gossip-slash-complain to reel her back in. "God, that was so weird. He delivered one of my roses last year, and he just stood there and watched me read the note. And it was pink. I couldn't decide if it was creepy or just sad," Celia said, making a face. Professor Maxwell had been another very young hire, and she wondered if he'd applied for the job just because he wanted to relive his Hogwarts days. The rose incident certainly suggested that was the case.