Review Assignment: Mary that We Love (in paragraph form with prompt b, the story)

Mary Poppins was undoubtedly sorted into Hufflepuff.  She is hard-working.  She takes her job as nanny very seriously.  We see her with the children all the time rather than goofing off or going off somewhere to get away from them.  She is loyal.  She shows her loyalty to the children by being nice to them, as Jane and Michael insisted upon in the advertisement they wrote.  Her loyalty to Mr. Banks is of a different sort, the one descibed by Junius: "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures."  Mr. Banks' advertisement stated that his nanny must impose arbitrary measures upon the children, which is an arbitrary measure he tries to impose upon Mary Poppins, but she will have none of it.  She doesn't scold Mr. Banks for his rigidity; instead, she shows him by her example how much happier he could be if only he became more flexible and spent quality time with his children.  In the end she collaborates with Bert to save Mr. Banks from his Edwardian upbringing and make him a better and a happier person.  This is the best kind of loyalty.  Finally, she is kind and loving and has a sweet disposition, other traits that characterize Hufflepuffs.  The one Hufflepuff trait she does not possess is modesty: she thinks she is practically perfect in every way, but then again, she really is.  How did she interact with the other members of her House?  Read on!

Mary Poppins was easily the most gifted witch in Hufflepuff House.  Most of the other members of her House loved her because she was nice to everyone, but there were those who resented her for her lack of modesty.  One boy in particular said to her, "If you're so smart, you ought to be in Ravenclaw – or in Gryffindor, because you're always showing off!"

"Oh, don't be such a grouch, Max!" said Amanda.  "People used to think that our House was full of mediocrities, but thanks to her showing off, nobody thinks that any more."  Most of the other students said things like "You tell him, Mandy!", but Max remained unmoved.

"And anyway, I'm not all that smart," said Mary.  "I'm not very good at book learning; so I only got an E in most of my subjects, except for Charms and Astronomy.  I did manage to get an O in Charms but I only got an A in Astronomy."

"It must have been your personal charm that got you the O," said Amanda.  "I got an O in Astronomy; so I'll tutor you!"

"Thanks," said Mary. "Is there anything I can do for you in return?"

"You don't need to pay me back,"  said Amanda.  "I'm doing fine.  Pay it forward instead.  Max, here, barely passed Charms.  Why don't you..."

"Shut your face, Amanda!" yelled Max, eliciting disapproval from all the other children.

"Now, now, Max, she was only trying to be helpful," said Mary.  "I could teach you a few tricks if you'd like."

"Well, I guess that wouldn't hurt," said Max.

Mary waved her wand slowly, demonstrating the wand movement, while slowly and distinctly saying the incantation necessary to enable her to pull a large object out of her small bag, which she did.  She put it back into her bag, and then said to Max, "All right, now you try it."  Max tried and failed on the first attempt, but after several tries, with Mary's expert coaching, he finally succeeded.  "Keep practising and you'll do fine on your next Charms practical," she said.

"Thanks, Mary," said Max.  "I guess you're not so bad after all."

With that, Mary began to sing "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down," and was soon joined by all the other children including Max.

Review Assignment: This is How it Goes (in paragraph form with prompt c, the duet)

The nanny my dad hired must have read our advertisement rather than his, because she was really nice   Not only that, she could do magic!  As a child I thought she was doing real magic.  Later, as I grew up, I came to believe that there was no such thing as magic; so I concluded that she must have been a stage magician before deciding to become a nanny.  But fortunately I'm still alive now that the internet has been invented, and I learned from the internet that magic really does exist and that the magical people have been trying to hide from Muggles (non-magical people) because a couple of hundred years ago the religious leaders made Muggles fear magical people enough to persecute them.  If only they knew how much most Muggles would welcome them – as long as they stopped tampering with people's minds to make them forget the magic they see or hear about! But I digress.

Mary showed us some of her magic tricks the first day she arrived.  She sang a song called "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down."  While she was singing, she cast some spells non-verbally without even using a wand, but I now know at least some of the incantations she was thinking.  She must have thought "Accio" to get a robin to fly into herhand, although I have no idea what incantation she used to get it to sing in key.  She must have thought "Alohomora" to get a drawer to open and "Wingardium Leviosa" to get various objects to fly around and go where she wanted them to go, but I have no idea how she made her reflection in a mirror sing while she wasn't singing.  Whenever we were feeling blue, she cheered us up by thinking "Exhilaratus" while singing a silly song called "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

Jane and I are magical too.  Jane picked up the tricks right away.  It took me a little longer, and I wasn't able to control the magic I did, like most children; so Mary had to cancel the magic I did do, probably by thinking "Finite", to get the closet door to stop opening and closing so that I could get out of the closet.  I'm sure that Dad's a Muggle but I suspect that Mom's a witch.  She must have used the Imperius curse to persuade him to hire Mary rather than the martinet he would have liked to hire!

Now for a duet, I thought of one that Bert could sing with Mary Poppins.  First, Mary would sing the chorus of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to Mr. Banks, and then Bert would sing the chorus of an old pop song called "It's Later Than You Think," which expresses his philosophy of life.  Here are the words:

Enjoy yourself! It's later than you think.
Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink.
The years go by as quickly as a wink.
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself! It's later than you think.

And then they would sing their songs at the same time.  They harmonize (sort of).  I had Mary's part played by a synthesized oboe and Bert's part played by a synthesized bassoon and put it on my web site.  Here is the URL:

http://www.info2.uqam.ca/~walsh_t/music/Super.MID