Commentary on "Tea Leaves," scene 1
Feb. 13th, 2004 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
persephone_koreYes, finally.
Tea Leaves
by Andrea13 and Persephone
"What if Tom Riddle's mother had lived?" is one of the logical what-ifs of the Harry Potter series, so it gets asked quite a bit. Andrea and I were talking about this, and we decided that it would be interesting if she got together with Rubeus Hagrid's father after Fridwulfa left.
I think I actually ended up writing most of this one, and I will note the scene I didn't, but Andrea had plenty of input and she is mostly responsible for the development of the Stepbrothers series.
We came up with the title because... um... tea had played an important role.
There was a small shop lurking in Knockturn Alley where most of the merchandise could kill you.
I am fond of this line.
So, anyway, we figured she might not have been in the best financial situation at the time, more on that later, so I invented a place for her to work.
This was admittedly not an unusual state of affairs even on Diagon Alley, a street of far better repute within the wizarding market district.
Well, this is how it looks to me.
This particular shop, however, was the source of much confusion among the Muggle-born, some of whom were perplexed and rather alarmed by the initial impression that wizardly gardening was for some reason classed among the Dark Arts.
I was also amusing myself a bit over the fuss sometimes made over Hagrid's shopping for Flesh-Eating Slug Repellant in Knockturn Alley.
It wasn't, of course. One could in fact purchase plants quite readily on Diagon Alley. Gardening equipment was another matter, as were certain special items from the proprietor's own garden and his ancestors' that could rarely be found with ease at even the most varied apothecary.
Said proprietor, who never gave a name and never named his shop, harbored too varied a supply to make the shop palatable to Diagon Alley and too few scruples to brook what competition wasn't crushed by the actual merit of his stock in trade.
So I invented a monopolistic garden-shopkeeper. And wimped out on actually naming him or his shop. I nurse the possibly vain hope that it will come off as mysterious. I'm sure I could have come up with something if I tried.
Some of the items were certainly useful in the Dark Arts, and some had no known innocent purpose. Most had some possible use that was a bit shady -- but then, didn't everything? Gardening supplies were not, by and large, evil. Many were dangerous and alarming, but then, Muggle pruning shears weren't exactly the most reassuring-looking object in the world, now were they?
And now I'm descending gently into Mary's actual POV. We borrowed the name from Alan, with permission.
Mary Echidne Riddle rested her elbow on the counter and her chin on a slender hand. She missed living as a Muggle. Perhaps she should have found something she could do without returning to the wizard world entirely... something exotic and not too strenuous.
Here we have Introduction by Brooding about What the Author Wants to Say. I hope it was relatively graceful as such things go.
She could have been a snake charmer. Her Parseltongue was weak as the gift went, but good enough.... Or a fortune teller. Of course, there were fakes enough in that department even where magic was known to be real; wizards weren't that much better than Muggles about wanting to hear the truth of their futures.
I wanted her to be a Parselmouth, but not exceptional as one. I'm inclined to think different levels of the talent would relate to fluency and the ability to persuade or control serpents....
She turned her head to look at her small son Tom. He was the reason she had taken a quiet position as a clerk in a magical shop; she'd never quite recovered from his birth -- of course she had tried magical treatment, but as she'd been kindly told, medical magic could do only so much. None of the ways she was still suited to support herself in the Muggle world were safe and stable enough for a woman with a child. Not that it would have been easy to find a position there at the moment anyway.... Not that it had been terribly easy as things were.
Limits of medical magic: completely made up here, though there are obviously hints that they exist. I think she probably would have had difficulty getting a job in the Muggle world -- it may be she already knew the garden shopkeeper, too. As you'll see in a bit, I gave her a longstanding talent with plants. It seemed to go with the Hagrids' fondness for animals.
He had been playing on the floor with almost preternatural quiet for a two-year-old child until he curled up on a cushion for a nap, but then, she had made it quite clear that he was not to cause a commotion while there were customers present. He was very obedient once he understood that he would much prefer the consequences that way.
A canny child. He should certainly suit her own House when he was old enough for Hogwarts... despite the Muggle father.
Here I wanted something that seemed reasonable as a Slytherin way of thinking about childrearing.
Pain snagged at her just under the breastbone. It wasn't just living as a Muggle she missed. It was living with a Muggle -- her husband -- her Tom. He'd left her, and she'd still named their son in his memory... and in that of her father Marvolo Echidne, who'd looked with amusement on her fascination with Muggles right up until she married one.
I figure she still cared about him or she wouldn't have named Tom after him. I also never got why people assumed "Marvolo" had to be a surname. Anyway, it isn't here.
I think that since she was able to pass as a Muggle, her family probably made a point of knowing how to do that. A useful study, and all that. Looks like Crouch Sr. did so too. This comes up later in Stepbrothers, actually.
She should have told Tom she was a witch before the wedding, better still before she fell in love enough for it to hurt that that bothered him. Before he fell in love enough to wonder if she'd enchanted him into it. Before they made promises to each other that shattered when he asked what else she'd been hiding all this time.
There is canon evidence of the Riddles being jerks, and I am... perhaps stricter about what I consider an acceptable reason to break up a marriage than many people. I don't, however, agree with the opinion I've seen expressed that the elder Tom Riddle left his wife over something "trivial." The magical world is not exactly a minor secret to keep... and I thought that before reading Alec's essay, though it's probably got the fact a bit heavier on my mind right now. For that matter, it wouldn't take religious objections to magic to find some things about the magical world alarming, especially if you don't find out until after the wedding.
Or perhaps she just should have kept quiet a little longer about certain family members' opinions on mixed blood. A little longer, and they wouldn't even have been around to share their opinions for themselves -- she had been a child of old age, even for wizards, and Salazar's line had been drawn very thin for some time now.
And that could be one of them. The pureblood issue, that is. Oh, and here we begin another small attack of explication.
Old blood, proud as princes but without the riches some assumed. Living amongst antiques was all very well, very luxurious and comfortable and so forth -- but it was not, in some cases, entirely a matter of choice. She supposed the Riddle wealth had been something of a point of attraction, but if that had been all she'd wanted she probably could have caught a Malfoy.
I had a bit of fun with this. Working out the Slytherin line as thinning out (apparently it's not the only one), as living among rich old furnishings but possibly too used to be worth selling even if they thought to do it. And she did, after all, get involved with a wealthy Muggle of high status in his own world, at least locally.
I suppose the line about a Malfoy might not work if the Malfoys are in fact new money. I suppose it depends on how new is "new."
There was a reason the garden shop was comfortable for her; it was the same reason she'd been far ahead in Herbology when she arrived at Hogwarts. She'd done most of the gardening since she was seven. (And a funny sight she'd looked with some of the larger plants at the time, she was sure.)
Plants. See?
Hostile plants were far more interesting than a moat, and generally less conspicuous.
I'm taking Hagrid's fascination with dangerous animals as derived, by inheritance or upbringing, from his father -- who did after all get involved with a giantess. Favoring dangerous plants is supposed to give the couple something more in common than unorthodox taste in first spouses. (Hm. Now I'm considering a story in which Mrs. Riddle was near the end of her childbearing years and that's why it went so badly....)
And the few plants that did inhabit the dimly-lit shop were indeed of the dangerous variety -- the more animated ones were of course merely mischievous toward legitimate customers, but heaven help a thief.
Meanwhile, they added to the decor and the air of belonging in Knockturn Alley -- long, tentacular leaves with toothy mouths on the end dangled lazily from pots set on the rafters and over the awning to caress unwary visitors as they came through the doorway or surveyed the merchandise, for instance. There were few things more calculated to unnerve than spotting sharp white teeth in a trailing dark leaf. Being nuzzled by one was, admittedly, among them.
Affectionate dangerou splants, no less.
The scent of the shop had surprised Mary when she first entered. It surprised everyone. She'd been expecting earth and compost -- pleasant to her, though compost wasn't exactly a popular odor. Most people seemed to expect manure and mildew, for some reason.... Cinnamon and mint hadn't occurred to her at all.
They smelled... restful. Healing. She wasn't certain if they were doing her any real good, but they were nice. She had time to rest here; the shop was rarely hectic and it was best to move gently around the plants. And it was Knockturn Alley... so no one expected her to smile.
There had been a time when she would have thought it impossible not to smile for an entire day.
Mary leaned forward as she spied someone approaching. She carefully pushed several blades of a large Rapier-Leaf out of the way so she could see better -- with three flats and three razor-sharp edges to each blade, and as straggly and prolific as an untended spider plant, it sprouted from odd locations and occasionally slapped someone. With the flat of a leaf, if they were well behaved.
The rest of the plants there, of course, were carnivorous. Rapier-Leaf permitted her to push it gently aside by the flats; Aardvark's Tongue would have glued her hand to itself and begun digestion had she tried any such foolishness.
The door gave off a vaguely menacing rattle as it opened to admit Delilah Malfoy -- no, Rensington. She'd been Malfoy during school. Mary lifted a hand slightly in greeting but didn't move from her seat; Delilah was a regular customer and most likely knew what she wanted and where to find it. She also was an excellent source of gossip.
I can't remember whether I meant the "vaguely menacing rattle" to refer to the door just making noises or to something like those doors with bells on them....
Mary also rather suspected that Delilah and the Malfoys -- well, and her own parents, but she'd never thought about it with them -- were responsible for inuring her to the arrogance she'd seen but not minded, had even found attractive, in the Riddles. Arrogance had never bothered her. And if Tom's parents hadn't quite approved of her, well, her parents hadn't exactly been welcoming either.
More on her relationship with the Riddles. She has her own arrogance, but perhaps of a slightly different type. And maybe a little humbled by now, through necessity and loneliness and wear, but I don't know that she's fully aware of that.
As she'd been in two weeks ago, Delilah rapidly exhausted the available news on most of the old wizarding families. Her little brother was still negotiating with a potential bride; the elder was looking into a new and particularly fascinating protective charm for the family home, although naturally she couldn't give details.
Naturally. And this isn't a matter of an arranged marriage -- note it's the potential bride and groom doing the negotiating -- but it is one where they're explicitly considering mutual personal and familial advantage.
There was another Weasley child -- Mary was rapidly losing track of which ones belonged to whom and couldn't quite bring herself to care.
Well...
"And have you heard about Tavish Hagrid?"
Aha! The other main character!
Mary blinked. This was not one of Delilah's usual topics. "Not since leaving Hogwarts. I gather he's done something exceptional?"
You have no idea, Mary....
"Or had done to him. Everyone's talking about it -- not many customers in lately?"
Presumably that had been intended to be cutting. "None so talkative as you, Delilah. What was done to the Gryffindor to make him so newsworthy?"
Mary is supposed to be responding smoothly (and maybe with just a little malice) where Delilah throws in random hints of spite. She's used to it and all. Did it work?
"Hm. You hadn't heard about his baby? It's said the one child's large enough for several -- honestly, from the rumors it sounds as though the man must have made a mistake filling a bottle. The man married some foreign witch -- we assume he married her, at least, although no one seems to know a thing about the wedding -- and she's run off and left him with the infant." Delilah raised an eyebrow in Mary's direction. "I thought you might care to know."
"Mistake filling a bottle" is meant to refer to Draco's comment about Hagrid looking like he swallowed a bottle of Skele-Gro. If I'm remembering that right. Nobody assumes "giantess," at least not yet; I figure it can't be a natural guess if people really didn't realize for that long.
"I've no idea why. Unusual, but I hardly thought I was the only one to have a falling-out with my child's father." Not that she'd have dreamed of leaving little Tom behind even if she had given birth by that time.
Delilah shrugged white shoulders and came to pay for her purchases. "Simply a thought. Misery loves company, after all, and you've never had much care for propriety in your company."
Yes, miss cat.
"I'm hardly miserable." Mary ignored the rest with a fond glance toward her son.
"Mary," Delilah said patiently as she gathered her things to depart, "you almost never used to stop laughing."
Delilah really is concerned, and she really is observant, even if she's not the type to express herself without some snide comments involved. She's right, Mary is not quite herself lately, and while she's noticed the problem it doesn't seem to have registered.
*****
Tea Leaves
by Andrea13 and Persephone
"What if Tom Riddle's mother had lived?" is one of the logical what-ifs of the Harry Potter series, so it gets asked quite a bit. Andrea and I were talking about this, and we decided that it would be interesting if she got together with Rubeus Hagrid's father after Fridwulfa left.
I think I actually ended up writing most of this one, and I will note the scene I didn't, but Andrea had plenty of input and she is mostly responsible for the development of the Stepbrothers series.
We came up with the title because... um... tea had played an important role.
There was a small shop lurking in Knockturn Alley where most of the merchandise could kill you.
I am fond of this line.
So, anyway, we figured she might not have been in the best financial situation at the time, more on that later, so I invented a place for her to work.
This was admittedly not an unusual state of affairs even on Diagon Alley, a street of far better repute within the wizarding market district.
Well, this is how it looks to me.
This particular shop, however, was the source of much confusion among the Muggle-born, some of whom were perplexed and rather alarmed by the initial impression that wizardly gardening was for some reason classed among the Dark Arts.
I was also amusing myself a bit over the fuss sometimes made over Hagrid's shopping for Flesh-Eating Slug Repellant in Knockturn Alley.
It wasn't, of course. One could in fact purchase plants quite readily on Diagon Alley. Gardening equipment was another matter, as were certain special items from the proprietor's own garden and his ancestors' that could rarely be found with ease at even the most varied apothecary.
Said proprietor, who never gave a name and never named his shop, harbored too varied a supply to make the shop palatable to Diagon Alley and too few scruples to brook what competition wasn't crushed by the actual merit of his stock in trade.
So I invented a monopolistic garden-shopkeeper. And wimped out on actually naming him or his shop. I nurse the possibly vain hope that it will come off as mysterious. I'm sure I could have come up with something if I tried.
Some of the items were certainly useful in the Dark Arts, and some had no known innocent purpose. Most had some possible use that was a bit shady -- but then, didn't everything? Gardening supplies were not, by and large, evil. Many were dangerous and alarming, but then, Muggle pruning shears weren't exactly the most reassuring-looking object in the world, now were they?
And now I'm descending gently into Mary's actual POV. We borrowed the name from Alan, with permission.
Mary Echidne Riddle rested her elbow on the counter and her chin on a slender hand. She missed living as a Muggle. Perhaps she should have found something she could do without returning to the wizard world entirely... something exotic and not too strenuous.
Here we have Introduction by Brooding about What the Author Wants to Say. I hope it was relatively graceful as such things go.
She could have been a snake charmer. Her Parseltongue was weak as the gift went, but good enough.... Or a fortune teller. Of course, there were fakes enough in that department even where magic was known to be real; wizards weren't that much better than Muggles about wanting to hear the truth of their futures.
I wanted her to be a Parselmouth, but not exceptional as one. I'm inclined to think different levels of the talent would relate to fluency and the ability to persuade or control serpents....
She turned her head to look at her small son Tom. He was the reason she had taken a quiet position as a clerk in a magical shop; she'd never quite recovered from his birth -- of course she had tried magical treatment, but as she'd been kindly told, medical magic could do only so much. None of the ways she was still suited to support herself in the Muggle world were safe and stable enough for a woman with a child. Not that it would have been easy to find a position there at the moment anyway.... Not that it had been terribly easy as things were.
Limits of medical magic: completely made up here, though there are obviously hints that they exist. I think she probably would have had difficulty getting a job in the Muggle world -- it may be she already knew the garden shopkeeper, too. As you'll see in a bit, I gave her a longstanding talent with plants. It seemed to go with the Hagrids' fondness for animals.
He had been playing on the floor with almost preternatural quiet for a two-year-old child until he curled up on a cushion for a nap, but then, she had made it quite clear that he was not to cause a commotion while there were customers present. He was very obedient once he understood that he would much prefer the consequences that way.
A canny child. He should certainly suit her own House when he was old enough for Hogwarts... despite the Muggle father.
Here I wanted something that seemed reasonable as a Slytherin way of thinking about childrearing.
Pain snagged at her just under the breastbone. It wasn't just living as a Muggle she missed. It was living with a Muggle -- her husband -- her Tom. He'd left her, and she'd still named their son in his memory... and in that of her father Marvolo Echidne, who'd looked with amusement on her fascination with Muggles right up until she married one.
I figure she still cared about him or she wouldn't have named Tom after him. I also never got why people assumed "Marvolo" had to be a surname. Anyway, it isn't here.
I think that since she was able to pass as a Muggle, her family probably made a point of knowing how to do that. A useful study, and all that. Looks like Crouch Sr. did so too. This comes up later in Stepbrothers, actually.
She should have told Tom she was a witch before the wedding, better still before she fell in love enough for it to hurt that that bothered him. Before he fell in love enough to wonder if she'd enchanted him into it. Before they made promises to each other that shattered when he asked what else she'd been hiding all this time.
There is canon evidence of the Riddles being jerks, and I am... perhaps stricter about what I consider an acceptable reason to break up a marriage than many people. I don't, however, agree with the opinion I've seen expressed that the elder Tom Riddle left his wife over something "trivial." The magical world is not exactly a minor secret to keep... and I thought that before reading Alec's essay, though it's probably got the fact a bit heavier on my mind right now. For that matter, it wouldn't take religious objections to magic to find some things about the magical world alarming, especially if you don't find out until after the wedding.
Or perhaps she just should have kept quiet a little longer about certain family members' opinions on mixed blood. A little longer, and they wouldn't even have been around to share their opinions for themselves -- she had been a child of old age, even for wizards, and Salazar's line had been drawn very thin for some time now.
And that could be one of them. The pureblood issue, that is. Oh, and here we begin another small attack of explication.
Old blood, proud as princes but without the riches some assumed. Living amongst antiques was all very well, very luxurious and comfortable and so forth -- but it was not, in some cases, entirely a matter of choice. She supposed the Riddle wealth had been something of a point of attraction, but if that had been all she'd wanted she probably could have caught a Malfoy.
I had a bit of fun with this. Working out the Slytherin line as thinning out (apparently it's not the only one), as living among rich old furnishings but possibly too used to be worth selling even if they thought to do it. And she did, after all, get involved with a wealthy Muggle of high status in his own world, at least locally.
I suppose the line about a Malfoy might not work if the Malfoys are in fact new money. I suppose it depends on how new is "new."
There was a reason the garden shop was comfortable for her; it was the same reason she'd been far ahead in Herbology when she arrived at Hogwarts. She'd done most of the gardening since she was seven. (And a funny sight she'd looked with some of the larger plants at the time, she was sure.)
Plants. See?
Hostile plants were far more interesting than a moat, and generally less conspicuous.
I'm taking Hagrid's fascination with dangerous animals as derived, by inheritance or upbringing, from his father -- who did after all get involved with a giantess. Favoring dangerous plants is supposed to give the couple something more in common than unorthodox taste in first spouses. (Hm. Now I'm considering a story in which Mrs. Riddle was near the end of her childbearing years and that's why it went so badly....)
And the few plants that did inhabit the dimly-lit shop were indeed of the dangerous variety -- the more animated ones were of course merely mischievous toward legitimate customers, but heaven help a thief.
Meanwhile, they added to the decor and the air of belonging in Knockturn Alley -- long, tentacular leaves with toothy mouths on the end dangled lazily from pots set on the rafters and over the awning to caress unwary visitors as they came through the doorway or surveyed the merchandise, for instance. There were few things more calculated to unnerve than spotting sharp white teeth in a trailing dark leaf. Being nuzzled by one was, admittedly, among them.
Affectionate dangerou splants, no less.
The scent of the shop had surprised Mary when she first entered. It surprised everyone. She'd been expecting earth and compost -- pleasant to her, though compost wasn't exactly a popular odor. Most people seemed to expect manure and mildew, for some reason.... Cinnamon and mint hadn't occurred to her at all.
They smelled... restful. Healing. She wasn't certain if they were doing her any real good, but they were nice. She had time to rest here; the shop was rarely hectic and it was best to move gently around the plants. And it was Knockturn Alley... so no one expected her to smile.
There had been a time when she would have thought it impossible not to smile for an entire day.
Mary leaned forward as she spied someone approaching. She carefully pushed several blades of a large Rapier-Leaf out of the way so she could see better -- with three flats and three razor-sharp edges to each blade, and as straggly and prolific as an untended spider plant, it sprouted from odd locations and occasionally slapped someone. With the flat of a leaf, if they were well behaved.
The rest of the plants there, of course, were carnivorous. Rapier-Leaf permitted her to push it gently aside by the flats; Aardvark's Tongue would have glued her hand to itself and begun digestion had she tried any such foolishness.
The door gave off a vaguely menacing rattle as it opened to admit Delilah Malfoy -- no, Rensington. She'd been Malfoy during school. Mary lifted a hand slightly in greeting but didn't move from her seat; Delilah was a regular customer and most likely knew what she wanted and where to find it. She also was an excellent source of gossip.
I can't remember whether I meant the "vaguely menacing rattle" to refer to the door just making noises or to something like those doors with bells on them....
Mary also rather suspected that Delilah and the Malfoys -- well, and her own parents, but she'd never thought about it with them -- were responsible for inuring her to the arrogance she'd seen but not minded, had even found attractive, in the Riddles. Arrogance had never bothered her. And if Tom's parents hadn't quite approved of her, well, her parents hadn't exactly been welcoming either.
More on her relationship with the Riddles. She has her own arrogance, but perhaps of a slightly different type. And maybe a little humbled by now, through necessity and loneliness and wear, but I don't know that she's fully aware of that.
As she'd been in two weeks ago, Delilah rapidly exhausted the available news on most of the old wizarding families. Her little brother was still negotiating with a potential bride; the elder was looking into a new and particularly fascinating protective charm for the family home, although naturally she couldn't give details.
Naturally. And this isn't a matter of an arranged marriage -- note it's the potential bride and groom doing the negotiating -- but it is one where they're explicitly considering mutual personal and familial advantage.
There was another Weasley child -- Mary was rapidly losing track of which ones belonged to whom and couldn't quite bring herself to care.
Well...
"And have you heard about Tavish Hagrid?"
Aha! The other main character!
Mary blinked. This was not one of Delilah's usual topics. "Not since leaving Hogwarts. I gather he's done something exceptional?"
You have no idea, Mary....
"Or had done to him. Everyone's talking about it -- not many customers in lately?"
Presumably that had been intended to be cutting. "None so talkative as you, Delilah. What was done to the Gryffindor to make him so newsworthy?"
Mary is supposed to be responding smoothly (and maybe with just a little malice) where Delilah throws in random hints of spite. She's used to it and all. Did it work?
"Hm. You hadn't heard about his baby? It's said the one child's large enough for several -- honestly, from the rumors it sounds as though the man must have made a mistake filling a bottle. The man married some foreign witch -- we assume he married her, at least, although no one seems to know a thing about the wedding -- and she's run off and left him with the infant." Delilah raised an eyebrow in Mary's direction. "I thought you might care to know."
"Mistake filling a bottle" is meant to refer to Draco's comment about Hagrid looking like he swallowed a bottle of Skele-Gro. If I'm remembering that right. Nobody assumes "giantess," at least not yet; I figure it can't be a natural guess if people really didn't realize for that long.
"I've no idea why. Unusual, but I hardly thought I was the only one to have a falling-out with my child's father." Not that she'd have dreamed of leaving little Tom behind even if she had given birth by that time.
Delilah shrugged white shoulders and came to pay for her purchases. "Simply a thought. Misery loves company, after all, and you've never had much care for propriety in your company."
Yes, miss cat.
"I'm hardly miserable." Mary ignored the rest with a fond glance toward her son.
"Mary," Delilah said patiently as she gathered her things to depart, "you almost never used to stop laughing."
Delilah really is concerned, and she really is observant, even if she's not the type to express herself without some snide comments involved. She's right, Mary is not quite herself lately, and while she's noticed the problem it doesn't seem to have registered.
*****
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-13 06:29 pm (UTC)I am fond of this line.
This is actually one of my favorite opening lines in a fic. :) *hugs tightly* Thank you soooo much for this! I love seeing your perspective on a fic I sort of helped write and that we've analyzed so much of it already. *g* Can't wait for the next installment! (And incidentally, where have you been all day? *sniff* I am in the mood to have a werewolf make a Hat, you know. ;))
Re:
Date: 2004-02-13 07:19 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-13 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-13 08:38 pm (UTC)Which reminds me...is it okay with you both if I burn the stories to CD?