opalescent tree shark (xanthippe!)

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@xanthippe

As much as Leslie loved seeing all of her children at once, she strived for one on one time with them as much as possible. She wanted them to know that she valued and respected them as individuals, which was a hard thing to get when you were a triplet. Leslie had tried to make sure that they never felt as if she only view them as a trio, and she felt like she had done a pretty good job.

Today, she had invited Xanthippe, her eldest, to join her for lunch in the Great Hall. She had set aside a little area at the end of the Ravenclaw table, her daughters house, in order to have lunch with her. She had sent Xan an owl that morning for the invitation.

She had grabbed a small blue table cloth to set on the end of the table to mark where she and Xan would be sitting. No doubt her daughter would be used to her crazy antics and her way with making things look pretty and would know exactly where to find her mother. Leslie would be watching the door and stand up to wave when Xan entered!

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There were several benefits to having a mother who worked at the school. One: if she ever needed extra change when she went to Hogsmeade, she could just pop by her mother's office. No owls required. Two: if she was having trouble in Charms, she would ask for extra help without being too embarrassed. Three: ...well, she was still working on the third one. Having lunch with her mother was also nice - Xan liked getting to spend time with her mom - but it also had the potential to be extremely awkward. Xanthippe supposed it was a good thing that she had very little concept of awkwardness. It had to be that way, to grow up with Leslie as her mother.

It wasn't difficult to spot her mother in a crowd. She was always the one frantically waving her arm, as if Xanthippe hadn't seen the bright blue tablecloth draped over the table. Xan couldn't help but smile; leave it to her mom to do something stupidly ridiculous but also ridiculously sweet when they were having lunch together. Xan strode across the hall in long, confident steps, trying her best not to let a blush creep into her cheeks as some of her housemates - the younger ones, mostly - stared at her. "Hi, mum." She finally managed, smiling at the woman in question.

@leslie

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When Xan arrived, Leslie wanted to stand up and give her a bone crushing bear hug, but she decided a nice little pat on the shoulder and a kiss on the cheek would do. "Hi, honey!" she said, taking her seat once more and gesturing to the bench across from her. "I hope your day as been going well?" she asked, starting to fill her plate with the food in front of her. Her other children were probably having lunch soon as well, but they would know that this little set up was just for her and her eldest. She hated sitting at the staff table, in all honesty. She was a professor because she wanted to help, inspire and teach the students and, in her opinion, a big part of that was trying to get to know their personal interests and getting to know them a bit. So, she often spent her mealtime away from the staff table, trying to get to know some of them. So it wasn't that weird that she was down there now. Plus, it wasn't news that she liked to spend time with her kids.

@xanthippe

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Xan sat across from her mother when beckoned, crossing her ankles and praying desperately her mother didn’t notice that there was still a little bit of paint in her hair from when she had been creating earlier. She wasn’t sure whether her mother would lecture her or congratulate her if she saw it, and Xan wasn’t sure which one would be worse. “It’s been going great!” She enthused. “I woke up earlier than I thought I would,” because really, who woke up before nine o’clock on Saturdays?, “so I got to paint longer than usual.” Xan’s time spent painting was often constricted by her amount of homework and social obligations, and since Saturday morning merited neither, she had been unbelievably productive. She considered going on a tangent about how she was working on a new way of testing peoples’ color perceptions (because how cool would it be to be the one who proved that not everyone saw colors in the same way?!) but instead settled on continuing to talk about her morning’s project. “I’m working on Dad’s birthday present.” Xan said with a smile. She was determined to give her father a present that he would never, ever, ever forget, and she was pretty sure that this portrait would meet that challenge.

@leslie

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Leslie nodded with happiness as her daughter said her day had been going great, and that didn't surprise Leslie. She had always tried to raise her kids with positive thoughts and self affirmations. It was hard not to have a good day with that kind of attitude. She hoped that her children had taken up hr advice and daily lessons. "Oh, excellent!" she responded as Xan said that she got to paint longer than usual. That was another amazing thing about her daughter, she was an incredible artist! Leslie had always been crafty, but never too amazing with paints unlike Xanthippe. As she explained that she was working on Ben's birthday present Leslie smiled wider, leaning forward. "Oh? A painting? Oh, Xan, he would just love that!" she said excitedly, clapping her hands together.

Leslie was ridiculously in love with her husband, to the point that it often resulted in the children covering their eyes and telling them to get a room. To this day she still complimented him with more of her strange words like you're thin an taut like a sexy elf king or your body is so compact like an Italian sports car. Oh, and yes, she definitely said this stuff about him in public. People needed to know how adorable he was!

"What are you painting him? If you'd like to tell," she chuckled.

@xanthippe

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One thing that Xan loved about her other was that every bit of energy she put into the conversation, she received back three fold. It was impossible to leave a conversation with her mother in a bad mood. Even when Xan had her (rare) arguments with her mum, she still left feeling happy, which was the weirdest thing ever, but also pleasant in a way a lot of people couldn’t appreciate. She couldn’t help but grin and giggle just the slightest bit when her mother enthused about how great her gift was going to be. Xan had always flourished under her mother’s praise. She never had the typical teenage problems with not understanding her mother, and for that she was grateful.

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell him.” Xanthippe said, staring her mother down. She knew that her mother wouldn’t do anything of the sort on purpose, but when she got excited, that was a different story. Assuming that her mother would agree to the condition, Xan continued, speaking faster and faster as her sentence went on. “It’s a painting of all of us but our Patronuses are also in the background. It’s kind of hard because, you know, there’s not actually that much room on a canvas especially when you already have five people. I’m just glad that my Patronus is small, because I can put it on my shoulder.” She gestured in the vague direction of the body part in question, where she had placed the bird. “I kind of forgot what everyone else’s Patronus is, though, so I’ll probably send you an owl soon to ask.” Xan admitted sheepishly. She needed to finish painting the people anyways.

@leslie

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Leslie nodded, promising not to tell Ben about the painting. Then Xan explained it and she smiled brightly, "Awe, Xan! He'll love that. Yes, send an owl my way that way you can have them all written down," she chuckled. Her daughter was so creative and amazing, sometimes she couldn't believe that she had actually participated in the creation of such an incredible member of society! "So, what is your plan for the rest of your Saturday?" she asked, beginning to eat some of the lunch in front of them.

Leslie often wondered if Xan had a hard time being separated from her siblings House Wise. She had asked her when it first happened many years ago, but the eleven year old girl seemed to be all right with it. Leslie knew that if any of them could handle being apart, it was her. Xan always had a way of standing out a little differently than Isaac and Winnie. Not in a bad way, by any means!

@xanthippe

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Xan beamed at her mother. That was another thing she could add to her list of great things about having your mother as a professor: you could ask her for information all the time and not have any delay at all. She didn’t know why, exactly, she had forgotten her siblings’ Patronuses, but then again, she might not have even known them in the first place. When her mother asked her about what she would be doing the rest of the day, Xanthippe sighed dramatically. “I have this Charms teacher who is a total meanie,” Xan groaned, rolling her eyes. “And she’s making me write eighteen inches of parchment on the Silencing charm.” Looking at her mother with mournful eyes, Xan decided to go for broke. “It’s a travesty, mother, an absolute travesty!” That was as far as she could get before Xan burst out into laughter. She enjoyed needling her mother about her teaching more than was probably healthy. It was funny, though! Just in case she could actually get the trick to work (for once), Xanthippe looked at her mother with her best puppy eyes. “I don’t suppose you could talk to her and ask her to make the assignment due later?” It was worth a try, right?

@leslie

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Leslie had bonded well with other professors who had students attending the school due to the fact that many of those children did things like this. Even if they were partly joking, she knew there was some truth in the requests that they made. Sometimes Leslie was sure their friends put them up to trying to use their relation to her to get things due later and whatnot. As Xan burst into laughter after her dramatic charade of sorts, Leslie chuckled as well, waiting until she was finished with her bite of food before responding to the puppy eyed question that followed. "I will consider it if other students ask for an extension as well. That doesn't include your siblings," she chuckled.

"The Silencing Charm is an incredibly useful charm and I'd like you guys to take your time doing your research, but I feel as if I've given you plenty. Still, do you feel like you're not prepared to fill eighteen inches with your knowledge on it thus far?" her teacher mode was coming out, but just for a moment!

@xanthippe

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Okay, so her ploy hadn’t worked. She hadn’t expected it to in the first place. Still, Xan was going to continue in her valiant effort, if only for her fellow students. Maybe they didn’t know that they wanted the homework to be due later, but they’d definitely be grateful when they learned. “To be fair, mother, Zac and Winnie are both students at Hogwarts, too. Exempting them would be unequal treatment, and you’d never want that, now would you?” Xan asked, fluttering her eyelashes. This has started as a joke, yes, but she was intent upon seeing it through. Xanthippe decided to launch into her specific argument against the Silencing Charm.

“I understand the basic concept of the charm, yeah, but it seems almost too simple, you know?” Xan asked, rather rhetorically. “And there’s no finesse to it, either. Like, why is it always black or white? The only way for you to only dim noise is to perform the spell incorrectly.” She paused, collecting the rest of her thoughts. “I guess I just can’t find any information to go further. There’s enough for six inches if you tried really hard, but there’s no research on anything other than basic applications, or if there is, I can’t find it.” How had a joke gotten so serious?

@leslie

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Leslie rolled her eyes, all in good humor, of course. "I don't want that, no, but I also believe that you three would band together whether they agreed with you or not," she reached forward and patted Xan on the top of the head before chuckling and pulling her hand back.

Leslie nodded her head as Xan spoke of how the charm almost seemed toosimple. "It's not necessarily one simple step, though. You have to assess the volume of the are or person first in order to counter it with the charm. As for not having enough to write on," she tilted her head to the side in thought, "you could always write about in what situations it would be useful as well. Either way, I had to write twenty inches on it so I know there's stuff to write about. Perhaps I should look over some old papers to give you guys ideas?" she shrugged. She was rather apt at charms and therefore could digress about it for eighteen inches, even twenty. Still, these kids were fifth years and that seemed highly reasonable.

"Enough about class," she finally stated. "What do you think about a trip with the Granger-Weasleys this summer?" she asked.

@xanthippe

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Xan thought that her mother might be a little disillusioned if she thought her three children would band together on absolutely anything whether they agreed or not. Besides, when would her siblings ever turn their noses up at the opportunity to have less homework? Xan smiled at her mother when she was patted on the head – only her mother could make something so condescending feel so loving.

“I knew there was a reason I kept you around.” Xan said, winking at her mother despite her rather saucy comment. “If you could do that, it’d be wonderful.” She paused. “You know, it’s a really good thing you teach the class or I’d probably be failing. So much for natural talent, right?” Xan was book smart, sure, but that didn’t really translate well in Charms, nor in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Subjects that were more theoretical than practical – like Transfiguration or Divination – were easier for Xan to wrap her head around, so to speak.

As soon as her mother gave her a chance to stop talking about school, the teenager jumped on it. Summer was already heavy in the air, and she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about it. “Yes, yes, yes!” Xanthippe said, bouncing in her seat. She could spend some time with her godmother and Rose and Hugo and it would be wonderful!

@leslie

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Leslie smiled, nodding in agreement. She then shook her head at Xans words about natural talent, ”oh, I’m sure you’d still be doing great. Most professors are understanding of students concerns whether they be their children or not. Still, charms is a little more abstract, so a lot more people struggle with it then I originally thought,” she said, shrugging a little. ”But we all must do our best either way, of course,” she smiled.

Leslie was not surprised that Xan was excited about the summer trip idea. ”Good! We were hoping to go somewhere you kids have never been like New Zealand or Australia. I haven’t asked the others yet, it’s really just in the brainstorming stage between Hermione and I, but I figured I’d see what ideas you have?” she asked.

@xanthippe

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Xan loved her mother’s endless faith in her abilities. It wasn’t always easy being a Ravenclaw, since everyone in the other houses seemed to expect you to know every lesson by heart even before it had been taught. Her brain didn’t work that way. It was a garbage disposal for knowledge, sure, but only the things she wanted to know. She loved her mother, but Charms just wasn’t as interesting as art theory or history. If there was a charm to organize her paints for her, maybe she’d be on board. “I do try to try.” Xan agreed with her mother. She often found that when she sat down and actually set her mind to something, she could do it with a minimum level of difficulty, but actually getting to the sitting down part was hard.

“New Zealand would be amazing!” Xan exclaimed. “There’s so many pretty landscapes there. Won’t it be winter when we go, because of the hemisphere flippy thing?” She would love to see either of those places, of course, but the idea of New Zealand’s verdant hills rolling out before her, dusted in snow…That would be an amazing summer/winter/swinter vacation.

@leslie

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Leslie believed fully that all of her children tried to do their best in school. Winnie sometimes had more excuses than the others, but Leslie always knew how to work around it.

As Xan exclaimed her excitement about New Zealand, Leslies smile grew. Leslie nodded when she asked if it’d be winter, though. ”It will be, but we’ll only be there for maybe a week, so we can still come back and get some summer. Not that our summer here are that sunny anyway,” she chuckled, ”but yeah, it will be winter. I think it would still be very fun though and the views will still be gorgeous, maybe even moreso with the snow and all!”

@xanthippe