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ONE SUGAR AND SPICE
(AND EVERYTHING NICE?)
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HOLLY LIPPINCOTT likes to think that she's a little metamorphic.
As the daughter of a man that slices people apart, stitching and tucking to make someone look younger, she had the feeling that it was something to do with being around him her entire childhood. And, even if it wasn't his profession's fault — because often, children tended to struggle with whatever their parents' jobs include — he must have something to do with it.
Even by fourteen, Holly has recognized that certain situations, certain people, call for different qualities of someone's personality. Sometimes you have to speak to someone who washes their food down with complaints about everything under the sun, and often the easy option is to nod and agree, even if you rather liked the way that the restaurant prepared their vegetables. Holly and her dad both had that quality, knowing how to assess a situation and figure out the best way to fit in.
That's how Holly managed to have a successful school career, back at her old school. Secrets were — and still are, she presumes — the fuel there. Even if she stumbled upon this, and her shyness was mistaken for mystery, it quickly transformed into something that she played into. If people wanted to befriend her, thinking there was some big, bad secret hidden under her skin, then you know what? Let them think that. Let them be nice to her, try to be her friend instead of the other way around, try and figure out what was behind her green eyes. If that made her friends, she wasn't going to complain.
She supposes that it was the school's infatuation for the lesser known that brought this whole catastrophe in the first place. Once upon a time, the school saw a shy girl in her first year and thought it was peculiar, interesting enough to have a story (secret) behind. By the end of the last school year, secrets weren't pursued, they were reported and those involved would get questioned by the new headteacher.
It's his fault. The headteacher that appeared a few years ago. Holly remembers the joy her dad possessed when the Berlin Wall was hacked down by Berliners, and she remembers his stories about how his high school in America had to go through nuclear war drills, just in case it happened during geometry.
She remembers the look on her dad's face when, last Christmas, Holly finally told him how dark the school had become. Durmstrang was always a cold, shadowy castle, but then again, the same could be said for a castle in the Scottish Highlands. There used to be laughter and friendship in spite of the need for extra woolly socks at bed-time. When she left, students spoke in whispers, makeshift first-aid kits were hidden in rooms in case someone got a detention, and the Unforgivable Curses were child's play.
