The three owls looked back at her, looking very stubborn indeed.
Item number one, a letter from the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, cordially inviting one Tom (not Toumas) Marvelo Riddle (Room No.12, Third bed from the left, Applefield School) to try out for one of their Schoolorships. Alright, so it was a bit disappointing that she had failed to convince Headmistress of that esteemed Academy, yet again, to give one of the Magical werewolf children at least a chance to get a higher education, but... Oh, well, she'll just have to try again next year, she supposed. If at first one does not succeed...
And it was a darn good thing that halfblood and Mudblood - she really didn't like that word, being pretty much Mudblood herself by some people's ways of thinking, but their wasn't really any nicer way to say it, really. Though...Hmmm, 'Muggleborn' or something like that might sound better, she supposed - children were becoming easier to place by the year. Why, it was quite possible that even Nadja herself could have entered one of the Schools, 'muddied' parentage or no 'muddied' parentage, if she'd been born just half a century later or so...
And anyway, this was Tommy - she would eat her own ceremonial hat if he didn't manage to ace whatever Test the Scholarship Committee came up with.
Alright, so that was letter No.1. The secound letter was pretty darn strange, though - the Durmstrang Institute? From when did Drumstang take Halfbloods, Mudbloods or mixbloods in general for that matter? ...Oh, she'd already figured out a long time ago that Helen wasn't really Tommy's cousin, and that they'd both been brought up in the orphanage that just happened to burn down in a 'freak fire' that burnt the orphanage and just the orphanage, leaving the surrounding buildings untouched. Oh, and there hadn't been any deaths at all from that fire, either, because everybody had just managed to wake up in time - strange dreams, one person had said. Quite a curious case, really.
But anyhow, all in all - she didn't feel too good about this one. Hmph.
And then there was the last letter - and this one was in some ways even more puzzling then the Drumstrang one.
Nadja looked at the emblem of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and sighed. Let's see, now - she herself hadn't talked about Tommy with any of the Hogwarts staff at all, and Tommy himself didn't have any Magical kin, as far as she knew - or at least, none that had bothered to contact him during all the time he had spent at her School, anyway. And though he was pretty darn good at Magic, it wasn't like he was particularly powerful - he was solidly above average and clearly Magical, but he wasn't the kind of Magical powerhouse that would have caught Hogwart's attention even without the 'connections', so...
Or maybe, just maybe - some of the Hogwarts people had, at long last, realized that shutting out a lot of the Halfbloods and most of the 'Muggleborns' (Oh, she liked that word she'd just coined, she did) just because they didn't have the 'right connections' was just plain stupid, in the long run.
Though Beauxbaton's 'Open Door' policy had cause quite a bit of trouble in some areas, nobody but nobody could ever deny that it helped them gather large amounts talented and motivated people to their bosom, any more... and a fair amount of those people were Halfbloods and 'Muggleborns' who were unable to get a proper Wizarding education at all in the land they were born in.
Which had, sadly enough, included England. Well...up to now, that is...
Hmmmm. Well, she was going to have to discuss things with Tommy Riddle, that was for sure...
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(Posted Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:11)
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