“I have my reservations regarding the historical objectivity of the ancient historicists, Lyra”, Hermione took a sip of her tea.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t think they even had the concept of impartiality and differentiating between facts and opinions. Tacitus and Suetonius seem to have merely wanted to write their perspective down for posterity, so that when they outlived their enemies, they could adversely influence historical memory thereof”.
“I don’t necessarily disagree”, Lyra nodded and took another biscuit. “However, I also don’t necessarily see a problem there”.
“What do you mean?”
“You seem to think there’s such a thing as objective facts, and we should merely write those down, as divorced from opinion and interpretation as possible, in order to allow people to make up their own minds later”, Lyra postulated.
“That’s exactly what I mean”, Hermione nodded.
“Well, I’m not sure that’s either possible, useful or morally allowable”, Lyra looked her straight in the eyes. “Imagine writing history of the last three wizarding wars while trying to maintain a middle ground between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and later between the Order of Phoenix and the Death Eaters and Voldemort, where each side should have a power of veto over any statement of fact or interpretation thereof that they might disagree with. You would get a moral abomination of a history”, she concluded.
Hermione was silent for a while as she considered it. “You do have a strong point there. I’m assuming an impartial observer that would write things as they are, but such an observer would also be in a compromised moral position if they remained impartial in a war against abject evil, so their opinion would necessarily reflect their own cowardice or moral indifference, giving us an opinion of a psychopath as historic evidence. I’m trying to understand whether having some ‘neutral’ coward’s opinion preserved as historical fact could ever be preferable to, for instance, Dumbledore’s or Harry’s, and I am at a loss”, she was lost in thought. “Were yours and Harry’s arguments at school like this?”
“Pretty much”, Lyra smiled. “With more hand-holding, though. That made it incredibly hard to try to win the argument at the expense of hurting the other person”.
Viktor descended the stairs, stumbled and hit his ankle. “Пйздец! Ёб мать свою!”
“Виктор, в доме дети”, Lyra chided him gently.
He looked at her with shock overriding the pain in his foot. “Ёбать! Ты тоже по-русски говоришь!”
“Enough so to keep you honest”, she smiled. “But how come a Bulgarian going to a German school swears in Russian?”
“I was Igor’s favourite student, remember? And Russian is similar enough to Bulgarian that I picked it up easily”, he limped.
Hermione looked at her suspiciously. “Wait a minute. How many languages do you actually speak?”
“What do you mean by ‘speak’ exactly? Enough to write essays and poetry, enough to participate in a conversation or enough to do shopping?”, Lyra whispered sheepishly.
Hermione just looked at her.
“OK, OK, I speak French, German, Russian and some Italian”, she was now honest. “Maybe some Spanish and Portuguese in a pinch if I had to order in a restaurant”.
“No Greek or Sanskrit?”, Hermione was laughing now.
“Only the basic terms, to know if someone’s messing with me”, Lyra looked embarrassed.
“Viktor, I might need one of those t-shirts you and Harry are wearing for Quidditch to mess with us”, Hermione looked at him.
“You mean, ‘team dumbass’?”, he laughed.
“Yeah, that”, Hermione looked at Lyra. “How in the name of all that is holy did you manage to be that smart?”
“I had an international Death Eater headquarters in my home, remember?”, she grinned. “You kind of want to know what they are talking about in their own language, when they don’t want anyone to know”.
“I’m still not convinced you’re a mere human”, Hermione giggled.