hh_mirror

(( Taking a leaf from Mayday's book, it's an IC popcorning to avoid freaking out other chars with whom Stephen's associated! I haven't been up ons the 19th-century-ese in a while, and you probably saw this coming.))

When Stephen resigned his position as Potions Master, officially he forfeited the privileges therewith. He moved out of his faculty suite; he no longer had the run of the laboratory; he was no longer entitled to the services of a dedicated house elf. However, that house elf had been at his side for two years. Aloysius had seen him through some unbelievable, cracktastic times, both good and bad. (He had also wished he could smack his master upside the head from time to time. Fortunately, where Stephen could not see reason, Homsar could.)

So it was to Aloysius that Stephen could turn for a final service, one he could not entrust to owls. Owls, after all, could not have figured out when and if this particular set of messages should be delivered. Stephen instructed the house elf to distribute the small sheaf of letters only in the event that Stephen's name should appear on the castle's popcorn plaque.

There was a letter for everyone who'd been close to Stephen, everyone from little Rose Casson to the indomitable Perry Cox. ~~While his mun is sometimes forgetful, Stephen would not have forgotten anyone.~~

To my friends:

When Aloysius brings you this letter, it means I am gone from Hogwarts. I have had to return to my own time, for pressing reasons I am not at liberty to discuss.

I have a theory: that when we enter this world in which Hogwarts stands, there is a displacement of matter in our own world, which must be filled. Likewise, when we leave this world, there is a displacement of matter. Hogwarts redresses that balance by supplying a giant kernel of popcorn.

I once mourned someone dear who had turned to popcorn, I thinking it death. Since then I have seen the return of many popcorned, some the same as I knew them, others as though they had never been here at all. Popcorn is a phenomenon we do not yet understand, but I do believe there is one fact of which we can be sure: popcorn is not death.

Do not be alarmed, therefore, if my theory proves correct and my absence results in a popcorn kernel. I have gone home, not to Heaven but to my own time, my own world, where my daughter and my work are waiting for me. Please know I will remember you all as long as I live.

- S. Maturin.