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Dear Mum and Dad,
We've arrived safely here in France, though neither of us are big fans of international portkeys. Gred swore his head spun for an hour, I'll agree it was easily thirty minutes.
But we're here safe and sound and Nicolas and Perenelle (sorry Mum, but we've been banned from using Mr and Mrs Flamel) have welcomed us and made us feel totally at home.
We spent our first afternoon here doing a bit of sightseeing. We're just outside of Beaune which is classified as part of the Muggle Burgundy region. Lots of half timbered buildings…and the roof tiles are pretty amazing. The Flamels have a Muggle camera called a Polaroid which creates its own image within a minute or two. You'd love it Dad and it's pretty cool hey…..anyway, here's the roofs!
Love Forge
~~~☆☆☆☆☆~~~
Dear Harry,
Thanks for bumping off the shade of old Voldie. If you hadn't, we'd never have gone exploring the third floor corridor and found the Flamel's stone.
(Forge interrupting here….of course you know we'd have explored anyway. But thanks for taking care of Junior Voldie to make it easier.)
Thanks Forge…now go away!
So Nicolas is teaching us a different way to use runes to what's taught at Hogwarts (not that we've actually taken the class). It'll let us set better time limits on how long our pranks last, just as a starting point for what we're learning.
But otherwise, we're having a great time here. This is the view outside our bedroom window.
Thanks again for helping to make this happen.
Gred
~~~☆☆☆☆☆~~~
Dear Bill,
Please tell us why we're not learning these sorts of Runes and Arithmancy at Hogwarts? From everything you've told us about Warding and Curse Breaking, we have to be leaving Hogwarts missing a lot!!!
Why isn't anyone going crazy about what's lacking in our education?
Our brains are exploding. For a diversion, enjoy a view of a (Muggle) building in one of the nearby towns, which leans almost as bad as The Burrow. How they keep it upright without magic, we have no clue!
OK rant over, enjoy.
Love Gred and Forge
~~~☆☆☆☆☆~~~
Dear Cedric,
We're having a magnificent time here in France and are learning loads!
The food is amazing and the scenery is wonderful as well. The Flamels are splitting our time up quite well to make sure we get to sightsee as well as study with them. Who knew the Weasley twins would ever get an opportunity like this, but it's going to make all the difference in the world for our future with the joke shop (and probably way more than just jokes, with what we're learning from Nicolas and Perenelle). But enough seriousness, it's summer hols, right?
It really is beautiful here and it's nice not to have to listen to Perfect Percy or whiny Ronniekins for a couple of weeks. But we're both looking forward to catching up with you and doing some flying when we get home. And you totally have to talk your mum and dad into bringing you to France next summer. We had a brilliant outdoor lunch at this restaurant in Dijon yesterday, then had a tour of the city. There's just so much to do!
Fred and George
~~~☆☆☆☆☆~~~
Dear Professor McGonagall,
We have spent the last couple of weeks with Mr and Mrs Flamel. It has been an intensive process of training in Runes and Arithmancy, along with some Warding and Alchemy. Nicolas believes we are at a level where we could join the fifth year classes for both Arithmancy and Ancient Runes subjects, and still be able to take our OWLS at the end of the year. Would it be possible to have Professors Babbling and Vector test us sometime over the summer, to see if we can join their OWL classes when school restarts?
As a little thank you, please enjoy a lovely view of the Burgundy region where we are staying.
This was taken with a type of Muggle camera that pops out a picture in a minute or so. Our homework assignment from the Flamels is to recreate the process magically. The idea is totally brilliant, right?
Many thanks,
Fred and George Weasley
~~~☆☆☆☆☆~~~
Two weeks later
Dear Albus,
You should be intensely grateful that I am writing over Nelle, because her letter would have come as a Howler!
What in the hell are you doing at that school? With the exception of Charms, Transfiguration and Herbology, the Weasley boys are almost entirely self taught. How they've never blown themselves or the Castle up with their Potions experiments is a complete and utter mystery to the both of us, lacking as they do the core training in Potions principles that they should have begun in first year.
Their knowledge of the history of magical traditions is appalling, and then they informed us you have a ghost obsessed with Goblin Wars teaching the subject!
Are you bloody insane, man? Have you never heard the Muggle saying "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it"? Aren't two dark lords in two generations enough to have you teaching History properly, or are you just looking for the seeds of a third one?
And let's not forget at all the more practical aspects of a Magical education, when runes and arithmancy are not core subjects? Forget the more advanced fields of Warding or Alchemy; most of your students must have no idea they're a potential career pathway.
You're turning out a generation of children who know little more about Magic than how to cast a Lumos to find their way to bed once the sun goes down.
You have two of the brightest minds we have ever encountered in the Weasley twins and they think their only career choices are the Ministry or a Joke Shop! Not that we're discounting their aspirations for their own business, but their capacity to become some of the greatest inventors our world has ever seen is just begging to be nurtured.
Nelle and I will do our best and will continue to mentor those wonderful lads, but buck up, man. Lose a couple of jobs you don't have time for anyway and return to being the educator we always thought you could be. Or I will let my darling wife send you our next missive.
Yours,
Nicolas