hidden_variable

My main Yuletide assignment was written for skygiants, who asked for post-canon Witch Week fic. As soon as I saw this prompt, I started having ideas about it, and I was quite excited when I ended up with it as an assignment.

Remember, Remember (13646 words) by hidden_variable
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Nan Pilgrim, Charles Morgan, Nirupam Singh, Estelle Green (Chrestomanci), Brian Wentworth (Chrestomanci), Mr. Wentworth (Chrestomanci), Cat Chant, Christopher Chant, Millie Chant, Klartch (Chrestomanci)
Additional Tags: Witch Week, sentient cleaning implements
Summary:

One year later, it’s Witch Week again. A great deal of magic is once more loose in the world. And a number of cleaning and gardening implements are not happy with the direction things have taken.

Putting the rest of this under a cut since it contains spoilers for Witch Week and for my fic, plus it’s really long:



I don’t always write stories linearly, but in this case I pretty much did. The opening scene was the first thing I thought of; it grew out of an actual lab that I have done in class, and that gave me the metaphor that tied the whole thing together. The pencil electrodes are a real component of the lab— which I got from a textbook, so I can’t really take credit for that, but I did like how they happened to fit with Nan’s writing talent. Then I needed a way to get the characters to regain their memories. (Note: I think canon is actually a little ambiguous on how much memory the kids retain in the end. It’s clear that peripheral characters like Mr. Crossley start forgetting right away, but, for example, Charles outlines his “hurts to be burned” blister in ink to help him remember. And Chrestomanci tells them they can leave him a message at the old gate house… he wouldn’t bother saying that if he thought they would just forget everything entirely, right? In my story I’ve assumed they have a few fragmentary memories, just enough to be vaguely suspicious.) And then I had the idea: they make a mess in lab, so they have to go get a BROOM from the SHED… that’s when I started to get really excited about this.

My early ideas were happening right around Halloween, which is very fitting for this book.
All of DWJ’s novels are focused on a specific season, but this one (obviously, from the title) has an even tighter focus. In canon, we learn that Witch Week refers to the time period between Halloween and Guy Fawkes day. (This is where I got the title: Remember, remember the fifth of November…)

Calendar note that is so incredibly into-the-weeds I’m going to add another cut within a cut:
We know from canon that Witch Week takes place in 1981, so my story starts one year later, on Halloween of 1982. I looked up a 1982 calendar and found out that October 31 was on a Sunday that year— highly inconvenient for my plot, since I wanted it to be a school day. At first I was going to make up a whole thing where the days of the week were shifted in their world, because of … something something, transition to the Gregorian calendar, handwave. Then I decided to just ignore it, because no one’s going to check. But now you all know, and you can leave me rude comments about it if you like! Side note: this means that Halloween was on a Saturday in 1981, which DWJ also seems to have ignored in canon… although maybe they had Saturday classes? Side note #2: the calendar also showed the phase of the moon, which I actually made accurate in the fic, so there!


There isn’t any suggestion that Halloween costumes are a thing in the world of the novel; obviously if witchcraft is both real and illegal, no one’s going to find it fun to dress up as witches or other magical figures. But there are costumes of a sort in the story: Nan’s ball gown and Estelle’s riding outfit, as well as Charles and Nirupam’s PE clothes. So I thought it would make sense to give them all Halloween costumes here.

It so happened that this past year was our first real Halloween in our current neighborhood. (We moved in on October 30 of the previous year and, in all the chaos of the move, neglected to buy any candy, so we had to pretend not to be home on Halloween night.) It turns out that this neighborhood gets super into Halloween, much more so than our old neighborhood. A lot of houses put up elaborate decorations, and giant herds of kids roam the streets trick-or-treating. My daughter’s friend’s older sister, part of the kid-herd that I accompanied, was dressed as Princess Leia, as was at least one other kid we saw, which gave me the idea for Nan’s costume. (Both of the current Leia’s I saw had lightsabers, in keeping with the sequel trilogy. It belatedly occurred to me that she didn’t have a lightsaber in the original trilogy, which would mean Nan would never have seen her with one. Too bad! Nan tells stories and they come true; that’s her superpower. Which of course is not to say Nan should be held responsible for the Star Wars sequel trilogy.)

Once I had Nan’s costume, it followed immediately that Charles should be Darth Vader. In canon the two of them have so many parallels and echoes of each other, and at the same time they absolutely can’t stand each other. (Chronological side note: at this point the kids have presumably seen Empire Strikes Back (1980), so they know Darth Vader is Luke’s father, but they can’t have seen Return of the Jedi (1983), so they don’t know that Luke and Leia are siblings, and therefore that Vader is Leia’s father too. ) The other costumes took a little more work to come up with, but I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. For Nirupam I was imagining the 1978 Superman movie, which is the one I saw multiple times as a kid. I liked that the double identity of Clark Kent/Superman fits with the double memories, and is also a parallel to Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. I didn’t plan this at all, but realizing Superman and Leia both fled blown-up planets was an extra bonus connection. Estelle’s was the hardest one to come up with; I kept wanting to reference Horse Girl stuff without just repeating her canonical riding outfit. I finally landed on Robin Hood when picturing her confrontation with Chrestomanci.

I had a lot of fun building in references to media that fit the time period. (I’m just under a decade younger than these characters would be, so there’s significant overlap with stuff I know from childhood.) In addition to Star Wars and Superman, the most obviously fitting reference was the end of The Dark is Rising series. There’s also Muppet Labs—I had to look up whether the Muppet Show aired in the UK, and in fact it did, even before it appeared in the US. Finally, there’s a quick stealth crossover that I’m not even sure anyone noticed: Sir Humphrey Appleby from the Ministry of Administrative Affairs is a character from the show Yes Minister. I couldn’t resist including this, because the time period fits perfectly, and it matches up with all the references to Chrestomanci’s civil service connections. I would happily write a whole Yes Chrestomanci crossover series, except that I don’t think my knowledge of the workings of British government is equal to the task.


I also had time to write one treat. I had seen lurking_latinist‘s request for the E-Z Math Textbook series and really wanted to write something for it; I especially was intrigued by the prompt for a crossover with the NIST Measurement League. How could I resist that?

This is without a doubt the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written. I don’t think any particular canon knowledge is needed to read it, although a high math/science pun tolerance probably helps.

Significant Figures (2504 words) by hidden_variable
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Barron's E-Z Math Textbook Series - Douglas Downing, Measurement League: Guardians of the SI (NIST)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Professor Second (Measurement League), The Mole (Measurement League), Candela (Measurement League), Monsieur Kilogram (Measurement League), Dr. Kelvin (Measurement League), Ms. Ampere (Measurement League), Professor Stanislavsky (Barron's E-Z Math Textbook Series), Marcus Recordis (Barron's E-Z Math Textbook Series), The King (Barron's E-Z Math Textbook Series), Major Uncertainty (Measurement League), The Gremlin (Barron's E-Z Math Textbook Series)
Additional Tags: Mathematics, Physics, Crossover, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

Professors Stanislavsky and Second are old friends; now each has become highly significant in her own field. Will their combined skills be sufficient to stave off the forces of chaos and uncertainty in Camorra?