#27 – Madam Herringbone
Madam Herringbone was a somewhat tall and very guant woman in her early sixties, with thinning black hair and thin wrinkled lips that seemed to always be held in a relaxed but sullen expression. Due to some magical impairment no one has been fully able to explain, her eyes have slowly deteriorated over her lifetime despite Maria Toella’s best efforts. She is the only Wizard known to be forced to wear glasses, and has a tendancy to squint at people sideways when they are causing her trouble (the people, not the glasses).
She considers many people in life to be ‘a great deal of trouble’ and has spent many afternoon tea hours kibitzing with Maria over the laziness of this generation, the unruliness of teenagers and the immorality and generally weak stock of the current generation of adult Wizards.
What she is not, though, is a fake. She is a very astute Wizard, with a keen sense of pronunciation, and a vast vocabulary of Words. What she lacks in arcane strength she makes up for in fluidity in constructing incantations and the variety of spells at her disposal. Her particular interest is in investigation. Words and phrases to find who a person’s lover is, or to see if it will rain in a month, or whether a new plant is poisonous without having to feed it to the cook’s pet cat. She passes some of this rational examination of life on to Leandra while she was at school, and wishes more of her students were as quiet and respectful as her (though even she admitted that the girl’s attentiveness bordered on neurotic nervousness at times)