Correspondence Course

Chapter Six: Expelled for Terminal Imbecility

As I cast about for what to say next, I saw that Lily’s eyes were bright with mischief. “Don’t tell me. You’re a were-stegosaurus and you club people with your tail every full moon, and you have a brain the size of a pea. Is that it?”

I had to laugh in spite of myself. “Well, no. Not exactly.”

“Well, just remember that you could be. Things can always get worse.”

“How long have you known?”

“I’d been wondering for a while, but I wasn’t positive until tonight. You should have seen the look on your face when I said that about the moon.”

“You’re – you’re not afraid to be out here with me?”

“Why? Do you turn into half a wolf at the half-moon or something, and they just forgot to mention it in the textbooks?”

“No, of course not. It’s just, well, there’s a lot of ignorance about, and –”

“You don’t need to talk to me about ignorance,” said Lily. “I’m Muggle-born. We’re so supremely ignorant we don’t even know how to be ignorant, and that’s why we rush in where angels fear to tread.”

There was a definite note of bitterness in this speech, and I wasn’t sure for a moment how to respond to it. “I – Lily, none of us feels that way, I assure you –”

“You’re sweet, but you needn’t bother denying it. It’s true. We don’t know any of the things witches and wizards are supposed to know. It’s been six years and I’m still putting my foot in it on a regular basis.”

“Lily, you aren’t. Not with me, anyway.”

“Well, maybe sometimes ignorance is bliss. Hmm? My sister’s boyfriend seems to think so, anyway.”

“I don’t think so,” I said positively. “Or at least, I’m glad you know everything now.”

“I’m glad you told me. With a little help from your friends, anyway.” She giggled again, softly. “Wash-and-wearwolf.”

I looked at her eyes shining in the light from the house and thought she was one of the nicest girls I knew.

“Oy, Moony,” called a voice from the doorway. “What are you doing out there? Trying to steal my girlfriend?”

“I AM NOT YOUR GIRLFRIEND, JAMES ETHELRED POTTER!”

James burst out of the house. “Ethelred? ETHELRED?! That is a low blow, madam!”

Lily squealed as he tackled her, and the two of them streaked down the hillside, shrieking and pummeling each other, and ran out into the vast summer night.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Dear Sister Mary Perpetua,

Please excuse my tardiness in writing to you. I have been unsure how to approach your case, because all of my other students are dunderheads and you, I think, are one of the most gifted natural magicians I have encountered. May I ask how old you are, by the way, and where your nunnery is located? I suppose you know that there is a long and venerable tradition of magical convent education which began with the great Morgan le Fay, and I am exceedingly pleased to meet one of her modern-day antecedents.

I suppressed a chortle. Snape’s reply may have been long in coming, but it promised already to be worth the wait.

It is evident from the samples you have sent me that you have the potential to be a great artist as well as a great witch. Are you familiar at all with the work of Master Julio Romano, the great magical painter and sculptor? I recommend that you study his work; you will find that it bears a certain resemblance to your own, though your spellwork is naturally, as yet, raw and untutored. I may, I hope, be able to provide you with some technical pointers, although I cannot presume to teach an understanding of the true essence and spirit of magic, which you already have in abundance.

Several pages of technical advice followed, which I have not reproduced due to their length and dryness. Snape was not sparing in his critiques of the two pieces Sirius and I had so hastily conjured up – indeed, he seemed to have noticed every minor flaw – but his tone was entirely different from that of his previous letters. In fact, it verged on friendly, and I began to feel faintly disquieted about the whole business. This was uncanny.

As a final note, I should add that the statuette of St. Mungo, in particular, seems to have sprung from the soul of a witch rather than that of a nun, but that (in my opinion) is no bad thing...

I couldn’t wait to tell Sirius he had the soul of a witch, until I realized that Snape had made no such comment about my angel and therefore, by implication, I probably had the soul of a nun. Perhaps I wouldn’t mention it after all.

... Are you certain the religious vocation is right for you, because there are many ways your talents might be put to use in the magical world? But no: I apologise for being both intrusive and crass. From your letters, it is plain that you are a good person and very spiritual.

You asked whether I was in any sort of trouble. I must tell you frankly that I am not a happy man. I do not get along with my father and I have consequentially been forced to take this position with the Kwikspell Correspondence Course, which is far beneath the sort of life I should have been born to. There are many people in the world who wish me ill and some who have even tried to kill me; I am, besides, embroiled in an entanglement that may prove extremely dangerous, although I cannot speak about its exact nature. Seldom has it been my good fortune to meet a truly understanding soul and, indeed, I doubted whether there were any such in the world. But in looking at your angel, I find my faith renewed...

I let the letter fall from my hand. It was all too obvious that Snape had fallen into the same trap with Sister Mary Perpetua as I had with Sue Hurdabirg, and although the thought of Snivellus pining over a nun who was really a couple of not-at-all-saintly teenage boys was ridiculous, I couldn’t find it altogether funny. James and Sirius would have found it funny, but that was the whole problem. The thought of a couple of Slytherins sniggering over my own earnestly-penned letters to Sue made me shudder. No, I would have to keep this letter from my friends.

Keeping up the pretense, I thought, would also be cruel, but I wasn’t sure how best to end it. I could write back in the person of Sister Mary Perpetua and claim to be ninety years old and part dwarf, but what if he decided that was all to the good? Anybody who turned up his nose at Rosalind Antigone Bungs and decided to pursue a nun had got to have very unusual tastes. I could take offense at some of the things he’d written (and honestly, I thought a real nun would be more than justified in doing so), but that seemed scarcely less cruel than leading him on. Or I could write back as myself and confess everything, but that would be incredibly humiliating for both of us.

In the end, I chose the simple and curt option:

Dear Mr Prince-Snape,

Due to a variety of circumstances, I have revoked my decision to allow Sister Mary Perpetua to study magic. You will not be hearing from her again.

Sister Winnifrede

Mother Superior, Convent of St. Kilda

 

                                                            *          *          *

“You wanted to see us, Roger-the-Wiz?” Sirius asked cautiously.

It was nearly summer’s end, and we had been called into the Kwikspell office for the first time since our interview. The premises in Cleric Alley were still painted bright yellow and orange, but the walls were looking a little faded in the hazy heat of August, and even Roger’s teeth twinkled less brilliantly than before.

“Oh yes.” Roger ran a hand through his sleek, shiny hair with less enthusiasm than was his wont. “I’m not sure how to say this, boys, but it doesn’t look like Mrs. Figg and Mr. Prewett are making much progress, and I believe your two students quit weeks ago and you haven’t brought in any new ones, is that right?” Rather than giving me a chance to answer, he pressed onwards. “I’ve got to run a business here, as I’m sure you appreciate, and we pride ourselves on having only the top staff, people who can really help us build up a clientele, so – well, the long and the short of it is, we’re going to have to let both of you go. It’s nothing personal.”

Sirius and I exchanged a look. “We haven’t been working for you very long,” Sirius pointed out. “Can’t we have a few more weeks to learn the ropes?”

“Well, ordinarily I might think that was a pretty fair excuse,” said Roger, with a slight emphasis on the last word, “but there’s another lad who started at the same time you did, and he’s really at the top of his game. Brings in three times as many new students as anybody else, in half the time, and they all ask for him by name. If you want to know what you should have been doing all along, you should take a look at young Prince-Snape.”

“He’s a good teacher, then?” I asked Roger in what I hoped was a noncommittal voice, though it came out sounding rather strained. “You’ve read his letters and talked to his students?”

“Nah, can’t be bothered. But they wouldn’t be lining up to join his course if he weren’t that good – that’s my motto – follow the money if you want to know who can teach. The free market never lies.”

Sirius cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said loudly, “according to Marx and Engels, page three-hundred-and-seventy-one –”

Roger gave him a pitying look. “There, boy,” he said, “there’s your problem. The people who take our course don’t want to be lectured about Socialism and all that dry stuff, they want to be entertained. Give them a little song and dance to make the lessons go down, that’s what the All-New Fail-Safe Quick-Result Easy-Learn Conjuring by Correspondence method is all about. It’s plain to see that this Prince-Snape fellow knows all about that.”

I tried to imagine Severus Snape doing a little song and dance for the entertainment of his students, and failed miserably.

“He’s really a top instructor,” Roger enthused. “I’ve never seen anything like it – and at his age, too. I’m going to recommend him for a position at Hogwarts when he’s a bit older. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to send out the bills.”

“Bills?” I asked.

“To the students. They go out every month.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

Dear Madame Yeardley,

Please remit 3 Galleons for your first month of lessons.

Roger “The Wiz” Harbottle

 

                                                            *          *          *

Dear Mr Bugleblower,

Please remit 3 Galleons for your first month of lessons.

Roger “The Wiz” Harbottle

 

                                                            *          *          *

Dear Miss Mystii,

Please remit 1 Galleon 9 Sickles for your first two weeks of lessons.

Roger “The Wiz” Harbottle

 

                                                            *          *          *

Please remit ... please remit ... please remit...

I clutched my forehead and groaned. “How in Merlin’s name did we manage to forget about that?”

Sirius swore under his breath. “Why didn’t you say something? You’re meant to be the practical one.”

I glared at him. “You’re meant to be the clever one.”

“I don’t believe in pigeonholing people like that. It’s very bourgeois.”

“Then why did you just do it?”

“Consistency is the hobgoblin of petty minds. Marx said that.”

“Pope.”

“Marx. What would the Pope know about it?”

Our argument was interrupted by the appearance of yet another owl on the horizon, this one clutching a plump bundle of letters. I braced myself.

Sirius ripped open a letter, whistled softly, and opened another. “Moony, we’re saved!” he shouted. “I mean, we’re expelled, but it’s all good!”

“What?” I said weakly. “We’ve been expelled from Hogwarts?” The calamities seemed to be piling on too quickly for me to keep up.

“No, you twit. From the Kwikspell Correspondence Course.”

He handed me one of the letters. If Professor Prince-Snape had succumbed to a moment of uncharacteristic weakness in his letter to Sister Mary Perpetua, he was in rare form now that he had received the reply.

Mr Bugleblower:

In vain have I struggled. It will not do. I have slaved and toiled in the hopes of dispelling the fog around at least one of my students’ brains, only to receive nothing but scorn at the hands of those who are incapable of recognizing genuine talent when they see it. I have concluded that teaching is not a profession for adults; in fact, it is the worst career on earth, mostly because it involves dealing with people like you. The purgatory of being in constant association with the slow-witted and addle-pated is simply too much to be borne. My sole consolation is the hope that you find your own company as stupefying as I do. You are, in short, expelled for terminal imbecility. I shall ask Mr Harbottle to refund your money if you promise never to come anywhere near me again.

Sincerely yours,

S. Prince-Snape

P.S. No, your Flobberworm is not going to get any livelier if you feed it cabbage instead of lettuce. IT IS A RUBBER BAND!!! How many times do I have to tell you?

“I wonder what’s happened to make him so angry at the world,” said Sirius, contemplating another letter of much the same tenor.

“I can’t imagine,” I replied.

“Oh well. Lucky for us, though, isn’t it?”

“Indeed.”

Epilogue: Experimental Drama

Lily, to nobody’s great surprise, decided less than a week after we returned to school that she did want to be James Potter’s girlfriend, after all. By this time she and Sirius had worked out that although they were both in love with the same man, it was quite a different sort of love, and they became the greatest of friends.

Brownie slowly became a barred owl, and then a white one again, but he never forgave me for the dyeing incident. He spent much of the next year hacking up mouse fur pellets in my shoes and dive-bombing my head with the morning post.

Several months later, the first-ever production of the Hogwarts Drama Society, written by Sirius Black, opened to great applause. It was called Who is Rubeus ‘Big Red’? and it was about a dashing young working-class hero (played by Sirius, naturally) who took the corrupt bourgeois society in which he lived by storm. His name was on everyone’s lips; crowds rallied around to hear him speak; women, and a few men, fell madly in lust with him. (And so the line I had inadvertently contributed to the play’s script fell perfectly into place.) Big Red, however, was resolutely chaste and virtuous, caring only for Social Justice. In the end, he was nefariously assassinated by the play’s villain, a character who was known only as “The Boss-Man” but who shared certain quirks of speech and an unusually sharp and gleaming row of teeth with Roger the Wiz. Workers and students wept; young girls vowed revenge upon the System; and out of this orgy of grief emerged a Revolution. In the end, everybody joined hands and sang the Internationale.

I cannot truthfully say that Sirius missed his calling when he decided not to become a playwright; but I do think the sixth-year Slytherin who played the Boss-Man would have found a better use for his talents if he had stuck to the stage. He was really a rather good actor when he wasn’t sulking about not having the lead role, but he thought that the business of putting on a play involved too much collaboration and not enough glory. He took off for Wagga Wagga after leaving school and published a poorly researched and sensationalistic book called Wanderings with Werewolves a year later.

Hagrid was much better at performing spells with his pink umbrella when we returned to school, although I found it hard to look him in the eye for many months afterwards. Mrs. Figg never did improve, but she stayed on friendly terms with Sirius and sent him Christmas cards with many pictures of her cats. By far the most successful of our former students, however, was D. J. Prod, who ended up writing glowing testimonials for Kwikspell and selling yak’s-wool mittens on the side. The shaving spell, it seemed, came in handy in more ways than one.

I have lost many jobs since that summer, but seldom so deservingly.