wit begeondan gemete is mannes maest hord
Взгляд на жизнь Школы чародейства с другой стороны баррикад. Избранные места из дневника преподавателя-ассистента (Raspillka, это фактически для тебя: ты ведь хотела еще про веселую парочку :)). Частично основано на реальных событиях по месту работы. :)

А, да - как вы уже, наверное, поняли, оно по-английски.

читать дальше

But really, it does feel so weird being a teacher at Hogwarts. For some reason, it feels much stranger than being a teacher at Durmstrang. I didn't think it would, actually, after five years there, but it just feels weird. I suppose it's because I still feel like a student at Hogwarts and it's somehow, well, mind-boggling to know that I don't have to sleep in the dorm, wear black robes and address everyone as Sir or Professor. (I still have this impulse to jump up whenever older teachers enter the room!) Instead, others are likely to address me this way (Mr Filch does, for example. He's still here! Now he has a cat, called Mrs Norris. I've chatted to her a little, she's misanthropic but has a rather amusing dry sense of humour).

I've been given a nice spacious panelled room at the top of a tower, with a large bay window, a huge oak desk, a comfy armchair and a big fireplace, and also my own private kettle and a few packs of shortbread should I come over peckish. The classroom is directly beneath it and there's a narrow staircase leading there so that I can get down directly, without thronging along the common stairways. The window gives onto the Forest. I've already made the room quite mine during the week that I've spent here after it was made ready for me. I'm actually writing this sitting in the armchair, the diary in my lap lit by the light of a tall elaborate candle-holder, with a cup of tea at my side on the tea-table and the fire crackling merrily in the grate. I do like it here. I got nearly all my things over from London and the room looks like I've lived here for years.

Today's been a bit hectic, though. The usual late-August fuss with the timetables and things. Prof. McGonagall has spent about two weeks trying to arrange things so that everyone has a more or less manageable schedule, and still today, after she'd given out the timetables to us, people would come up to her and point out that they had two classes scheduled for the same time or too many classes, or too few. The poor witch is rushed off her feet. I haven't caused her much trouble, since I only have two groups to teach this term, but Prof. Babbling spent quite a long time raging about the stupid schedule she'd been set. I get a feeling that there are just too many students at the school, so that the workloads tend to be quite large and at the same time the number of tutorials one can give seems barely adequate. Ah well, nothing I can do about it.

Oh dear, I've just remembered! I quite forgot the gold! There isn't a Gringotts branch in Hogsmeade, I should have taken out some cash in London. All right then, I'll take the Floo home tomorrow and go to the bank, then Floo back. No! A better idea! I'll go home tonight, then nip around to the bank early in the morning and then, then I'll begin the term in style by taking the Hogwarts express!!! Yes, good thinking.


September 9, Monday
This is unbelievable!!!


MINISTRY SEEKS EDUCATIONAL REFORM
DOLORES UMBRIDGE APPOINTED FIRST EVER HIGH INQUISITOR
In a surprise move last night the Ministry of Magic passed new legislation giving itself an unprecedented level of control at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."The Minister has been growing uneasy about goings-on at Hogwarts for some time," said junior Assistant to the Minister, Percy Weasley. "He is now responding to concerns voiced by anxious parents, who feel the school may be moving in a direction they do not approve of. "This is not the first time in recent weeks that the Minister, Cornelius Fudge, has used new laws to effect improvements at the wizarding school. As recently as 30th August, Educational Decree Number Twenty-two was passed, to ensure that, in the event of the current Headmaster being unable to provide a candidate for a teaching post, the Ministry should select an appropriate person. "That’s how Dolores Umbridge came to be appointed to the teaching staff at Hogwarts," said Weasley last night. "Dumbledore couldn’t find anyone so the Minister put in Umbridge, and of course, she’s been an immediate success, totally revolutionising the teaching of Defence Against the Dark Arts and providing the Minister with on-the-ground feedback about what’s really happening at Hogwarts." It is this last function that the Ministry has now formalised with the passing of Educational Decree Number Twenty-three, which creates the new position of Hogwarts High Inquisitor. "This is an exciting new phase in the Minister’s plan to get to grips with what some are calling the falling standards at Hogwarts," said Weasley. "The Inquisitor will have powers to inspect her fellow educators and make sure that they are coming up to scratch. Professor Umbridge has been offered this position in addition to her own teaching post and we are delighted to say that she has accepted. "The Ministry’s new moves have received enthusiastic support from parents of students at Hogwarts. "I feel much easier in my mind now that I know Dumbledore is being subjected to fair and objective evaluation," said Mr Lucius Malfoy, 41, speaking from his Wiltshire mansion last night. "Many of us with our children’s best interests at heart have been concerned about some of Dumbledore’s eccentric decisions in the last few years and are glad to know that the Ministry is keeping an eye on the situation." Among those eccentric decisions are undoubtedly the controversial staff appointments previously described in this newspaper, which have included the employment of werewolf Remus Lupin, half-giant Rubeus Hagrid and delusional ex-Auror, "Mad-Eye" Moody. Rumours abound, of course, that Albus Dumbledore, once Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, is no longer up to the task of managing the prestigious school of Hogwarts."I think the appointment of the Inquisitor is a first step towards ensuring that Hogwarts has a headmaster in whom we can all repose our confidence," said a Ministry insider last night.Wizengamot elders Griselda Marchbanks and Tiberius Ogden have resigned in protest at the introduction of the post of Inquisitor to Hogwarts. "Hogwarts is a school, not an outpost of Cornelius Fudge’s office," said Madam Marchbanks. "This is a further, disgusting attempt to discredit Albus Dumbledore." (For a full account of Madam Marchbanks's alleged links to subversive goblin groups, turn to page seventeen.)

No comment. At all.

And she didn't even tell us beforehand!

Lunchtime: Ah. Now she has. Just had an extra staff meeting. Taking fifteen minutes off our lawful eating time, and simpering as ever, with everyone watching her incredulously, she informed us about what everyone's already read in the paper. And she didn't give any dates. "The inspection will begin forthwith, some of the colleagues have already received my notes." So you'll be telling me to expect you twenty minutes before the class, will you? Not as if I cared – it's just somehow unpleasant. I mean, we are certified and experienced teachers, while she's just a bloody Ministry bureaucrat who's never taught anything before!

How's she gonna inspect us? I mean OK, Divination's just a sham, Charms or Transfiguration are at least practical, so she can actually judge whether or not the teachers have managed to really teach the kids anything. But what about me and Bathsheba? Does she know Runes? Or does she know Arithmancy? Or, I don't know, Care of Magical Creatures? I mean I wouldn't know if someone was giving wrong instructions about how to take care of a sphinx or something. Is she such a great authority on everything?

Talked to S about it, and he thinks it's all just a pretext. He thinks she's not at all concerned with academic standards and all those wonderful words that she said, and that whatever we do, even we follow the Ministry guidelines to the last letter, she'll still find faults, which, when amassed in a large enough quantity, will constitute a reason for deposing Dumbledore, if not closing down the school. I wonder what the Board thinks about this, I mean they give the cash, they must have a say? Or has Lucius Malfoy blackmailed them all into silence? Come to think of it, if they are really so bent on closing the school, and of course it's a very welcome development for the enemy, then he might even be Imperiusing them. What a ghastly thought.


September 10, Tuesday
Noooooo! Not this! Bathsheba's just revealed that we are NOT following any Ministry-approved standard! The guidelines she gave me are all her own invention, and nobody's taken an OWL in Runes for the last three years! The exam papers I've been looking through were in fact some ten years old, since which time she's changed the contents of the course anyway. And the most tragic thing is that she's working on the basis of her own notes etc, and so when Umbridge comes to inspect Runes we don't even have a more or less decently complete-looking programme to show her! So what it amounts to is that I must sit down and produce an OWL-preparation programme AND a programme for beginners, preferably before the end of the week! She said thank heaven that at least nobody's taking NEWTs in Runes this year. Well, that's a relief!


September 11, Wednesday
Writing programmes.


September 12, Thursday
Writing programmes.


September 13, Friday
AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!


September 14, Saturday
Spent the whole day in the company of Madam Pince again. Nice to have the country's largest library on magic at one's disposal! Just like the old days. I go there when I don't have classes. Most of the time there I just waste, though, trying to piece together a presentable programme from all the various textbooks and anthologies. I wonder what the students think, they probably don't often see a teacher swotting in the library every day! Moreover, I nicked all the Rune-related books, and they can't do the homework I set them, ha ha. No, of course they can. I do admit I turn to other things when I get bored, getting on bit by bit with my research for the Rune dictionary. I mean programmes are all very well, but I have to report to Ruthwell every so often, and with all my running round Europe in summer and the injury and the Order I haven't done much of what was expected of me.


U hasn't been to any Runes classes yet, thank heaven.


September 15, Sunday
Just had the fright of my life. I completely forgot about the existence of Moaning Myrtle. I was having a bath like a decent person, closed my eyes for a minute and when I opened them again there was this transparent girl sitting on the tap and watching me with interest! I nearly drowned.


We chatted a little – after I'd scrambled out of the bath and wrapped myself securely in a towel, having asked her not to look, with which request I'm not at all certain that she complied – and she turned out to be a little better than I remembered. I had only actually collided with her once before, when she haunted the boys' loo on the seventh floor for some reason. Not altogether a pleasant memory.


September 16, Monday
I've finally located my sense of something lacking at Hogwarts. I understood what I'd been missing today during dinner. I was scanning the faces of my colleagues idly, remembering what they taught (I remember them all now!), and comparing their number to the number of teachers at Durmstrang, and then I realised what I'd been missing: a teacher of a foreign language! They don't teach any bloody foreign languages here! But that's dreadful! We didn't have any when I was a student, but that was in the bloody seventies, and now the times have changed and the level of international co-operation has grown about tenfold. And they don't have any language training at all! For some reason, they don't even have any formal Latin the way we did, apparently they just learn the spells by heart like nonsense words. How can they invent new ones then?.. That's bad, that is. Studying a language develops your mind, and I'm really happy I learned that before I was too old in Uppsala. (Well, and before that visiting Aunt Marrion in Black Forest also helped, of course.) Hmmm. Duty calls, like. Not that I'm too eager to take on extra work but I'm not really that badly loaded yet... I'm off to talk to the Headmaster.


I'm back! Well, predictably, Dumbledore didn't have anything against the idea. He thought Swedish was too exotic, so in two weeks' time, I'm starting an optional German conversation class for students of years three and upwards. What with the amount of things they have to do, he thinks two hour-long classes a week is quite enough. I can use my Runes classroom. I hope it works – I mean I haven't been teaching a foreign language for five years for nothing, I hope!

Is teaching English to German-speaking kids easier than teaching German to English-speaking kids?..

Oh, shut up, Rick, you're raving.


September 17, Tuesday
I've made up notices about German classes, asked the house-elves to pin them up in the common rooms. Wonder if this undertaking actually attracts much attention...


September 18, Wednesday
Curiously uneventful day. Just business as usual. Spent almost all day reading.


September 19, Thursday
Bathsheba's found some more work for me. She says it would be good to collect all the texts that we use in the course into a single portfolio. She says that it'll make a better impression on the, er, authorities, and, on the other hand, "we won't be around forever, will we," she said, and it would be considerably easier for anyone new and not too conversant with the intricacies of the filing system in the library to be able to consult this single collection. I see her point.


September 20, Friday
Just back from my beginners' class, and now that we've got going properly it looks like they are beginning to enjoy themselves and find the subject quite fascinating. That's very pleasing.

On the other hand, I do get this "oh, I don't want to do this" feeling every time I think about getting ready for their class or going there. I don't get it with the fifth-years. I suppose it's because (a) I'm not really into teaching beginners – although there are certain plus sides there, I still vastly prefer intermediate groups, and (b) there was at least one familiar face in the fifth-year class (Hermione Granger), which had the effect of making them seem less, well, scary.


September 21, Saturday
Spent almost the whole day in the library again, copying out the texts from anthologies, atlases and scrolls. It's ten o'clock at night now, and I hate Runes. I see staves and branches in every criss-crossing shadow on the floor.


September 29, Sunday
Weekends are really funny here. All the teachers wander about, sit in the staff room idly, talk, have endless tea etc. Some head for Hogsmeade's pubs. It feels a bit like being a part of a group of tourists lounging about the boarding house when a mildly boring trip to the local castle has been rained off.


Am off to the village for more books.

October 3, Thursday
Full moon
Spending the sleepless night compiling the list of my scholarly achievements for Umbridge: education, academic work, that sort of thing. I already did one for Dumbledore (for the Board, actually) when I first came, but she said she needed her own copy. Well, that's not too much work, and I must admit my full title looks impressive: Roderick Heald, MaD, Society of Ancient Tongues (Fellow), Department of International Magical Co-operation (Central European Desk), Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Assistant Professor). Not bad for someone my age!

Suddenly remembered my birthday celebration in August. I was at Gr.P., having breakfast with all the others, enjoying this secret that I had, and imagining with horror the fuss Molly would make if she knew. Then Sev. came in, all jerky and superior as usual, and I watched him and thought: "Will he remember this year?" I expected a nod, a knowing smile in passing, something of this sort. He bossed about for a while, virtually ignoring me, then turned to leave. "Well, what did you expect," I thought, and then he turned at the very door, looked at me hard and said pointedly: "Oh, and Roderick – I haven't forgotten. Happy thirty-fourth." I could have killed the bastard. I could see he was doing it to annoy me, he knew as well as I did what sort of person Molly was and how I hated this day to be made a fuss about, but (a) formally, he remembered my birthday for the first time in three years and (b) I didn't want to appear a complete madman to Molly and Tonks and Lupin and all the other people, so the only thing I could do was to say Thank you through clenched teeth. And of course Molly nearly dropped off her chair in excitement: "Oh, we'll have a party! Oh, I'll make a cake!" It took some persuading to restrain her, I can tell you. She did make a cake in the evening. And then, when I returned home, I found a small stack of gramophone records on my coffee table, five of them and all great, neatly held together with a ribbon, a card tucked under it written in his distinctive spidery hand: "After all is said and done, I'm kind of glad you were born, on this day or any other. Stick around. I hope you like the music."

October 7, Monday
Oh dear, oh dear. U has been inspecting Severus. I don't think the words he used in the evening, pacing round and round my room and blasting my books off the shelves, are necessary to record here!


November 28, Thursday
Just suffered a mild humiliation at the hands of my esteemed colleague Professor Snape. The thing is, my everlasting quill leaked during the German class, so by the time we finished my fingers were all spattered with purple ink. Nobody seemed to mind that, but then, en route to the staff room, I ran into S who, before I even said hello, took hold of my right hand, looked at it in obvious disbelief, then looked at me and said exasperatedly: "Inkfingers, you're a teacher now, for Merlin's sake! Try to look like one, too!" Then, before I could answer, he took out his wand, pointed it at my hand and said, "Scourgify!" The hand went clean. He authoritatively took my other hand and repeated the process. He didn't bother to keep his voice down, or to walk the three feet that were between us and the staff room; he did all that in the full view and hearing of all the students the corridor was full of. I called him a few names when we finally reached the staff room, but the deed had been done! I don't think I'm wrong in saying that my reputation among the students, if I had any, is now completely ruined.

I wish I could retaliate but I also know that I'm too conscientious for that. (Naah... make that weak-willed.) It would give me more discomfort than pleasure to see him put down publicly. Well, screw him, why do I have to keep thinking about him? I'm going for a late evening walk.


...продолжение в следующей записи...



@темы: ГП, RH, творчески наследил