Challenge Staff
March 22, 2013 12:50 PM
The Obstacle Course Challenge by Challenge Staff
The day of the second challenge dawned bright and sunny. Though it was only late January, the weather was unseasonably warm in the high sixties. Certainly warm enough to spend the afternoon outdoors in relative comfort as long as one dressed appropriately. This was most fortunate as most of the higher numbered teams probably would spend a fair portion of the day just outside the Gardens, waiting for their turn into the challenge.Unlike the first one, this challenge would be completed all at one time, then the staff would have to go in and fix any damage that had been inflicted on the course, and only then could the next team begin. The slight advantage to going later, of course, was that those groups would have some idea how long most teams had taken to complete it previously, and would therefore be able to gauge how well they were doing in comparison.
As one o'clock approached, Coach Pierce arrived on the scene and stood on top of the bench that blocked the entrance into the Gardens. "Hello," she greeted the gathered students with the assistance of a sonorus charm so they could all hear her. "Your second challenge is an obstacle course through the Gardens. May I please have the overseers gather near Professor Meade, please." She indicated where the COMC professor was standing and waited for the students elected for that role to divide out of the main crowd.
"This challenge will be scored by how quickly your team gets all of its members, excluding the overseer, through the obstacle course. If you find you cannot get through an obstacle, there is an opt-out path. However, be advised, a significant time penalty, which varies depending upon on the difficulty of the obstacle being skipped, will be applied against your team's final time for every team member who opts out."
The Coach inclined her head toward the group of overseers. "You will not be going in completely blind. Your overseer will be able to communicate with you as you go through the course, telling you the safest path between obstacles." Rock throwing prairie elves, Devil's Snare traps, and other blockages and annoyances populated the paths that were not the 'safe' route through the maze. Between most obstacles, team overseers could choose to send their teams through to the next one by way of a longer but safer route, or through a shorter but booby-trapped route. The quickest shortcuts had the nastiest obstructions.
"Overseers, you have the choice of using a surveillance circle to track your team's progress and look ahead for your best route through the labyrinth, or you can scout ahead and offer advice from a broom. You cannot directly assist your team through a challenge or you will incur the obstacle's opt-out penalty, but you can offer advice if you see something they can't."
"All right, folks. Team One starts it off, once your overseer is ready. They will have a few minutes to get an idea of what lies ahead of you. We'll start the clock when the first team member enters the course, so I advise waiting until your overseer tells you to begin."
Coach Pierce got down off the bench then used her wand to push it aside, clearing the Garden entrance for the first team. Meanwhile, the first overseer was lead through another opening in the hedge, bringing them into a secluded clearing with a nice quality broom and a table with a model of the Obstacle Course upon it.
“Overseers, you have two options to do your job, one is flying above and assessing the best route for your team or, two, you can scry for them using the model placed in the table,” Adrian pointed to the model of the gardens with the obstacles that was near him. Professor Meade gave them the option to chose their preferred method of scouting. Broom riders would fly above the Course and talk directly to their teams. They could point out relevant points of interest, lead the way through the labyrinth, and even poke and prod at the actual obstacles to provide information about them, so long as they didn't actually do anything to physically or magically help their team.
Scryers would follow their team through the enchanted model. The Obstacles were clearly marked and labeled and glowed yellow for easy identification. Safe routes between them were colored a reassuring green. Hazardous routes were colored either in orange or red to mark the severity of the danger. Finally, blue indicators would help them easily find their team's location. A simple tap of their wand against any part of the model would allow the scryer to zoom in for a better look in real time. A second tap against the edge of the table would bring them back to the overview. Not being physically present would limit the overseer's ability to communicate with their teammates to only verbal instructions, but these would be relayed clearly to their location and the model, when zoomed in, would allow him or her to see and hear everything the team did.
OOC: Like in the last one, all teams can post simultaneously. Fuzzy time allows you to move on to the next obstacle before finishing the previous one, as long as you don't contradict anything that might still happen earlier. Please keep your characters' age, physical limitations and abilities in mind and have them progress realistically. Your four foot nine beginner student cannot reach the top of the Wall, or the short rope dangling down from it, even if they jump.
Subthreads: After Party (nm) by Challenge Staff
Obstacle Three: The Lake by Challenge Staff with Annabelle Pierce
Obstacle Two: The Wall by Challenge Staff with Reggie Parker, Henny B-F-R, James Owen, Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Marcus Williams, Malcolm Carey, Jude Butler, Annabelle Pierce
Obstacle One: Mud Pit by Challenge Staff with Regina Parker, Arthur Carey, Theresa Carey, Arnold Carey, Derry Pierce, James Owen, Topher Calhoun, Josephine Owen, Henny B-F-R, Eliza Bennett, David Wilkes, Alicia Bauer, Michael Grosvenor, Ryan O'Malley, James Carey, Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette), Kate Bauer
0
Challenge Staff
The Obstacle Course Challenge
0
Challenge Staff
1
5
Challenge Staff
March 22, 2013 12:52 PM
Obstacle One: Mud Pit by Challenge Staff
Overseers examining the beginning of the Course, either by broom or by the scrying model, would quickly find that one left followed by one right would bring their teammates directly and safely to the first obstacle. Broom riders and the main group on foot could easily identify it as such by the large sign declaring:Obstacle One: Mud Pit
Get to the other side. Opt-out path to the left. Penalty: Two Minutes
A similar marker identified the spot to scryers even from the labyrinth overview. More enterprising scryers could zoom in and poke their wand cleanly through the mud to trace out the contours of the solid ground beneath the surface. Some the mud was shallow or even non-existent in places while, in other areas, their wands plunged in deep enough to indicate the mud was thick enough to swallow the smallest first years to their chins. No part was so deep that the even the shortest student couldn't stand in it and be able to breathe ... but it would be a very near thing in some spots.
The pit was about six feet wide, lined on either edge with hedges, and twenty feet long. Just before the mud began, the left hedge had an opening in it with a banner hanging across its top that declared this was the opt-out path. It paralleled the pit and rejoined the main path about two feet beyond the far side of the mud obstacle.
0
Challenge Staff
Obstacle One: Mud Pit
0
Challenge Staff
0
5
Regina Parker
March 23, 2013 4:44 PM
Team 15, BATH TIME! by Regina Parker
Reggie was a little nervous the day of the second challenge. She had a team full of girls and only one of them seemed to be really athletic. On top of that, Nora and her had discussed the Overseer position. It seemed important and one needed to have knowledge in magic for the role but it also meant that they were out of the physical part of the challenge. Nora had suggested Reggie and Effie. Reggie thought of either Nora or Effie. In the end, she had chosen Effie. This was because Reggie was one of the more physical girls on the team (which wasn’t saying much) and the only advance member of the team. She felt it was best if she stayed with them. Nora was also smart and probably could think of other ways to get around obstacles that Reggie might overlook. Eris and Waverly had both played Quidditch, and seemed smart or at least skilled in things that would work alright with the challenge, but Isabel and Effie were small and too young to have practical skills. So, Reggie went with Effie. Of the two, Reggie thought Effie would be better under pressure and had a confidence in her that Reggie trusted she’d be fine in that position. That just left Isabel for Reggie to look after.After listening to the coach and seeing Effie off to where the other Overseers were located, Reggie turned to the rest of the girls, “Under no circumstances are we to take the opt out paths and give ourselves those penalty minutes, understand?” She told them with firmness. She refused to let them take the easy way simply because they thought they couldn’t do it or that they might get hurt or something. They could do this if they pushed themselves into doing it and then they would totally so self-satisfied when they were though that it made the hard work worth it.
It felt like hours before their team was finally called. She gathered them around the Entrance and waited for Effie to give the okay. Once they were inside, Reggie did the best she could to lead them, only to stop when she read the sign. “Looks like we’re getting dirty.” She called to them, entering the mud pit area, hesitantly and giving it a sweeping look over.
She didn’t see anything in the mud that would help their journey and there was no way to know how deep it was either. They could just take small steps and test out each area before moving, but that would take up time. An idea came to her and Reggie looked around the area to see if it could work. Finding what she needed, Reggie scooped up some stones and turned to her team mates. “I have an idea. We’re allowed to use our surrounding and magic, right? So, how about we put these stones in various spots throughout the mud, enlarge them, and use them as stepping stones?” She asked them. She didn’t want to make any decision without their approval. “Unless someone else has another idea or you all don’t mind plunging into the mud and wadding through to the other side?” She didn’t mind getting dirty. If they wanted to just save time and make a run through it, she was completely cool with that too.
6
Regina Parker
Team 15, BATH TIME!
187
Regina Parker
0
5
Arthur Carey
March 24, 2013 6:50 PM
Time to go, Team Seventeen by Arthur Carey
The advance notice they had gotten for the second challenge had been initially welcome, but it had taken Arthur only about half an hour to realize that it was really almost as frustrating as not knowing anything before the first one had been. Normally, Arthur didn’t mind vauge directions, as they allowed him more freedom of action and you couldn’t win if you couldn’t gamble, but at the moment, some details would have been welcome. Some days, he just didn't feel like playing.Since the Careys, to his immense frustration, did not have an inside man in the staff the way the Brockerts did, though, he had had to make a decision in the end with the same incomplete information everyone else had been given and he had decided to sit Malcolm out of the challenge. It was a gamble – for all he knew, the overseer was the only person allowed to choose what spells the players could use in the game, and while he had done his best with his first years, they were still, well, first years – but if he sat out, they wouldn’t be able to use the more advanced spells he might suggest to them anyway, and there was no one on the team he suspected would be more of a physical liability than Malcolm. On the ground, he could try to sneak in a nonverbal spell if he had to, he was getting better with those, and while he was no Edmond, Arthur did feel that if it came to that, he would be tall and strong enough to knock quite a lot of things out of the way, though he would prefer to toss them aside with his wand.
Besides, he wanted to see what Malcolm did when he had a bit of freedom of action of his own, and how he reacted to someone who gave it to him.
They had to wait a very long time for their turn, but Arthur didn’t mind that, at least at first; using his wristwatch, he was able to roughly time each group and do a few averages, which was one of way of killing time, and he also noted who some teams had left out as an overseer and how they seemed to feel today and if there was any communication between groups as well as within them. After a while, though, he began to feel impatient – he had not brought a book, since what would he do with it during the challenge, and he never felt right without a book on him somewhere anyway – and at last downright irritable before, finally, the staff went in to clean up after team sixteen and it was nearly time to go.
“Remember,” he said, remembering Coach Pierce’s long-ago instructions, “move together, side by side lines, let’s get as many in at once as we can.” Seconds could make a difference, and he did like the idea of winning. At the edge of the entrance, he glanced around, even though he knew there would be nothing to see. “Malcolm?” he asked the empty air.
“I’m here,” the overseer’s voice said from nowhere. That was going to take some getting used to. “In a – never mind. Start now and go left.” He sounded as though he were concentrating. Arthur decided to believe that boded well for them. So far, there was nothing to make him regret his choice of overseer except the possibility that Malcolm was secretly very bad at mazes. “Quickly, there’s nothing in the way.”
Nothing, anyway, until the expanse of mud. Arthur looked it over for a moment, wondering if trying to go around the edge opposite the opt-out path would still count against them, then chuckled to himself at the thought that in this, the teams which were a member or two short actually had an advantage. They could, if they chose, skip things and lose fewer minutes than it would take everyone else to complete the item skipped.
Still, it was worth a try before they wrote it off completely. If they started to lose time, he would change the rules. For now, he took his glasses off and tapped them with his wand, then did the same to his shoes and trousers, hoping the charm would keep the worst damage from being done. “Lovely way to begin,” he remarked. “Any advice?” he asked, looking up, testing to see just how much help the overseer could be. How much perspective did the scrying circle offer? That seemed like a useful thing to establish right off.
In the meantime, he used his wand to flick one of the buttons off the cuff of one of his shirtsleeves so he could pull the thread which had held it loose and then picked up a rock. If he adjusted their weights and sizes and the strength of the string, he could use it to get an idea how deep what they were about to step into was. He could see some patches of what looked like solid earth, which meant - if everything was real, and the ground wouldn't crumble beneath their feet in those places - that the depth of the mud wasn't even, and since the idea was for it to be a challenge to people other than a very specific breed of Crotalus girl, he didn't expect that much of it stopped at ankle-depth.
0
Arthur Carey
Time to go, Team Seventeen
182
Arthur Carey
0
5
Theresa Carey
March 24, 2013 10:56 PM
Team Eight, please proceed to ruined clothes.... by Theresa Carey
Theresa had been surprised to hear that she was the overseer, since it was a position she never would have thought to volunteer for. She didn’t like the idea of bludgeoning her way through a physical challenge in public – it wasn’t likely to be ladylike, and would probably involve a great mess as well, which would ruin part of her already comparatively small school wardrobe – but she never would have considered herself the brain of the team. If anything, that would be Marcus, the one who had calmed everyone down and taken down the boggart in the first challenge. He was definitely a better candidate for the role of brain than she was.He, however, was very tall, so she guessed it did make some sense for him to be the one doing physical things, and she was a Carey girl, so it made plenty of sense for her not to, in the generic sense. So here she was, looking at a model of the maze and the obstacles, trying in her few minutes of lead time to figure out as many routes as she could and – maybe even more importantly – exactly what the properties of the thing she was using to scry were, since she had never worked with anything like it before and wasn’t sure about perspective, scale, visibility….
At last, though, her time was up, and she took a deep breath, reaching up to adjust her hair, even though it was in a plait down her back and there was really nothing to do with it. Even though she wasn’t really participating, she had still felt the need to make that small concession to the fact she was in an event. Then she had made it all irrelevant by wearing her pretty new black high heeled shoes and a pretty dress and makeup and the emerald necklace Aunt Lorraine had given her for Christmas. There would be a celebration at the end, she wanted to look, if not her best, at least decent.
“Begin,” she called, a little hesitantly, to the rest of her team, hoping this thing was working and that they would hear a word she said. Wearing a dress on a broom would not be a good thing, especially since the dress she had on was not exactly the longest dress she owned.
"Um, turn left, then turn right when you get to - you know, the next turn," she directed them. The easy part of her job, she was pretty sure, ended as soon as she finished that sentence. She made a face as she added, "then the first obstacle will be right in front of you. It's a mud pit." Hopefully they could outthink it on the way there, or at least get through the preliminary feeling-blank stage of things.
0
Theresa Carey
Team Eight, please proceed to ruined clothes....
219
Theresa Carey
0
5
Arnold Carey
March 24, 2013 11:53 PM
Now's the time for the real Team Nine by Arnold Carey
Arnold would never admit it to anyone, even Arthur, but when he had first heard that the team was going to need a brain to run it through the second challenge, his first thought had been that they were doomed. He liked his teammates well enough, they seemed like nice people, but a dangerously intellectual group of people Team Nine was…not. The first challenge made it seem like Clara Abernathy had some fairly freakish skill with a wand, but there were still probably only so many facts she knew to go with that. He was a sixth year Aladren, but any attempt he made at unleashing a hailstorm of knowledge against other sixth and seventh years was unlikely to yield more than just enough ice for a decent glass of tea. In the academic tea time of the second challenge, he could just see himself and Fae being left with the hot green tea while everyone else got the good iced tea and laughed at them, and then everybody else’s kids laughed at their kids, and then one of their grandkids decided just not to take it anymore and killed them with poisoned tea for not being as smart as Great-Uncle Arthur and went on to become a Dark Lord type wherever it was they grew black tea so he never had to drink a tisane again….…Or something like that. Anyway, he was relieved when he heard Amity Brockert had volunteered. A second year was almost certainly dumber about at least a few things than he was, but maybe it wouldn’t be patently obvious, and besides, in the physical part, he was sure he could do better than her. For one thing, sports were what he did, and for another thing, somehow she just…didn’t strike him as a very energetic person, somehow. There was nothing wrong with that, of course, however weird he might think it was, but it really wasn’t much use in a sporting match.
His team was about halfway through the list of those going, so he had plenty of time to wonder just what they were doing in there and whether or not they would be able to do it faster, and also to notice that more than a few overseers were beginners or at least in the lower ranks of intermediates. That, he had to admit, made him feel better. So did the impression he had gotten, from what had been said before team one began, of what the challenge was really about. Sure, navigating the maze to find the obstacles was going to be a tough task by itself, but at least it wasn’t a trivia contest. On anything other than this year’s Quidditch rankings, that was not a thing he thought he could do.
When team one went in, he traitorously crossed his fingers, wishing Fae luck. He did the same for team four, full of Quidditch teammates and his cousin. As team six walked in, he found himself thinking that he would really like a glass of tea, and team eight nearly made him laugh as he thought of what he’d noticed earlier that their overseer, Theresa, was wearing. Then, at long last, it was time for team nine.
“Here we go,” he muttered to himself, and exchanged a glance with Arthur, further down the line, as he stood up. Then he went forward more cheerfully, knowing his brother wished him luck, too.
Soon, they came to a mud pit. Arnold guessed he could think of worse ways to start the challenge. Except… “What’s the catch?” he asked aloud, looking around his teammates. "It can't be as easy as just walking across, can it?" That wasn't much of a challenge, in his estimation, so there had to be a catch: quicksand somewhere, or sudden drop-offs, or a boggart which would try to make them trip up and drown, or...something.
0
Arnold Carey
Now's the time for the real Team Nine
181
Arnold Carey
0
5
Derry Pierce
March 25, 2013 12:48 PM
Let's make a good start of this, Team Eighteen by Derry Pierce
As they were Team Eighteen, Derry's team had a fair amount of waiting in front of them before they would get to run the course. He watched in interest as each prior team disappered into the labyrinth, some accompanied by a broom riding overseer, some just instructed to go forth by a disembodied voice. He suspected his team would get the later since he didn't think Brianna was much for brooms."Obstacle Course, guys," he began his pep talk shortly after Team Seventeen vanished from sight. "This is going to be awesome." Linus, Alan, and Anthony might not entirely agree, as none of them struck him as particularly eager to climb over hedges or whatever, but Derry was going to enjoy this. Obstacle Courses just sounded awesome, and he had no idea how
"As you all probably figured out by now, Brianna is our overseer," he continued, though that was kind of obvious by her joining the group around Professor Meade back at the beginning. There were only three overseers left in that group now that the first seventeen had already gone through the Overseer Entrance to the Labyrinth, so he thought she would have a good chance of seeing him as he waved at her, gave an encouraging grin, and made a thumbs up sign, before turning his attention back to the guys.
"We're going to push through this as quick as we can. We don't have any first years, so everyone should be able to do basic core spells by now, and we're all pretty healthy." He did not feel the need to point out this way why Brianna had been selected as overseer, but didn't think it would take an Aladren to figure out the reasoning or conclude it was the best division of their team's resources. She was getting pretty handy with her crutches now, but an obstacle course was no place for someone who could not walk unassisted. "We are in a great position to do really well in this challenge. Go Team Eighteen!"
He wondered if maybe he should have waited longer before the speech, because they still had to wait for Seventeen to finish, and for Coach Pierce to tell Meade to bring in Brianna, and for Brianna to take stock of the course, but eventually they were allowed to begin.
Derry led the way to the first obstacle a brisk walk that the second years may have had a little trouble keeping pace with, but it wasn't a long trek before they came to a stop in front of the mud pit. There were no obvious means for crossing it without wading into the pit itself.
Derry did not let this bother him. Mud was just wet dirt and people walked over dirt all the time. "Can anyone thing of a reason why a whole bunch of drying charms couldn't give us a path of normal dirt? And who knows how to cast drying chams?"
1
Derry Pierce
Let's make a good start of this, Team Eighteen
189
Derry Pierce
0
5
James Owen
March 25, 2013 5:16 PM
Team SIX let's do better than last time by James Owen
In some ways, the ignorance of the contents of the first challenge had offered some form of bliss, in that the teams could not reasonably plan for the wholly unknown. However, the noticed that had recently appeared in the Cascade Hall had created a vague impression of what might be expected in the second challenge of the year, and it had presented James with a conundrum. The note had alluded to separation of brains and brawn, but amongst his team, the seventh year had already concluded that both these attributes were shared largely between just two of its members: himself and the irrepressible Mr McLachlan. They were joined by a team of tiny Teppenpaws, and Liam, about whom James had formed no real opinion in any direction.Regardless of his personal feelings on the matter, James was the official leader of the group, and a decision lay before him. He could either sacrifice a large proportion of the muscle of the group to lead it successfully through assorted trials, or take a chance on one of the younger students demonstrating hitherto unforeseen intelligence. The first years girls in particular might not be able to contribute much in terms of physical strength, but the seventh year didn't feel comfortable in assigning them as guides, either. Besides, didn't younger children have more energy? The more he thought about it, the more James was certain that he would feel more comfortable with an Aladren at their head, despite the obvious drawbacks of removing one of the advanced students from the physical part of the challenge.
Inevitably, James had concluded that he was effectively in charge of the team, and should therefore be in charge of their endeavours. He nominated himself the oversser for the second challenge, and tasked Josh with looking after the rest of the group in a more direct manner. Therefore he departed from the rest of his group, having selected the scrying option of communication, and wished them luck.
Having directed the group to the first task, james was already feeling quite pleased that he didn't have to wade his way through a mud pit. After some examination of the model representation, he instructed his team, "Okay, it looks like the best route is down the right side," he began, "though there might be an alternative to having to wade at all." He was not in Aladren by mistake, after all; James was already considering the most viable options. "A strengthening charm might hold the mud so you can walk on top of it," he suggested, "or you could try transfiguring a portion of it to something more solid." He would have to leave the details up to Josh and the others, because he didn't know their particular strengths or weaknesses when it came to spell casting.
0
James Owen
Team SIX let's do better than last time
168
James Owen
0
5
Topher Calhoun
March 25, 2013 7:24 PM
Think of the minerals, Team Twenty. by Topher Calhoun
As Topher (who had gradually gone from interested to enthusiastic to impatient to bored about the day’s events as nineteen other groups went into the maze ahead of his own) finally drew his wand and prepared to enter the maze, he looked over his team one more time and felt a vague sense of regret. From the beginning, it had been vividly obvious that Valerie Lennox had to be the overseer – he was not actually sure if she was even allowed to participate in anything physical, and even if she was, it was obviously not a good idea to allow her to do so – but he did so wish he could have had two overseers instead of just one, or an assistant to the overseer, or something. He didn’t know McKinley Andrews well, but from what he had seen since the challenges alerted him to her existence, this was going to be as much fun as a nightmare occurring during a migraine brought on by bashing his head repeatedly into the nearest hard object. Just the location promised that, and that was before they got to any obstacles.Since there was nothing he could do about it, though, he focused on being the upbeat team leader, and not on wondering why in the name of all that was good they had chosen to give him a team made up almost entirely of socialites. Yes, he had a sort-of sister who was one, but the school didn’t know about Caroline. He had been Christopher Proctor before his dad came into the picture, there was no official connection between him and his biological father at all. They should have given this lot to Russell, who at least had the very distant cousin with the stare and the tuition-priced shoes and the rich girls falling all over him, and let Topher have Mellie and her friend. And Paul, he’d keep Paul, he guessed – the guy was the Quidditch alternate, that beat nothing.
“Everyone do your best and we should be okay,” he said, as optimistically as he could, to the team. “Remember, stay with the team, keep your eyes open, listen to Valerie, and no matter what – don’t panic.”
Getting to the mud pit, he nearly forgot to take his own advice. A mud pit. He was sure his aristocratic first and second years were just going to love that, though hope sprung eternal – he had seen pictures of women with mud and cucumbers on their faces, his mom had actually been in one of them when Dad had given her a gift certificate to the spa for one of her birthdays and the friend she took with her decided to immortalize the occasion, so maybe girls didn’t mind mud so much - it had minerals! - even if this wasn’t quite the same shade as the spa stuff, and maybe they had all secretly always yearned to play in the mud but had been restrained by their parents. Maybe.
He pointed his wand at the mud and tried a “Diffindo.” For a hopeful second, he thought it might have worked - the mud did seem to begin to part - but then it stopped and the sludge moved back together. Too thick, he guessed, or magic-resistant; hard to say without further experimenting, which would cost them valuable time. He looked around at his team. "What do you guys think?" he said. "Should we all try that at once and see if it works, or just try to wade through it? Or something completely different? I'm open to suggestions."
0
Topher Calhoun
Think of the minerals, Team Twenty.
192
Topher Calhoun
0
5
Josephine Owen
March 26, 2013 9:45 AM
Time for Team Sweet Sixteen to Shine by Josephine Owen
One of the many qualities demonstrated by a good leader was the ability to delegate. Josephine would remind herself of this whenever she felt impending guilt over her simple dismissal of the decision to nominate an overseer for the second task. She had read and re-read the notice in the hall, and the list she had written of her teammates and their assorted attributes, and a simple solution had not presented itself. A physical challenge didn't sound like the sort of task at which team sixteen would naturally excel. The problem, Josephine had mused, wasn't that they were all female; the problem was that they were all such girls.Eventually, Josephine had narrowed her options for overseer down to Lucille and Melanie, as they were neither the oldest nor youngest of the group (and the extremes might be best suited to the physical, rather than mental, aspects of the challenge), plus they seemed least easily persuadable into activities that could potentially be construed as unladylike. The means for the reaching the conclusion had also been left to the third year girls to decide. Retrospectively, Josephine considered that she might just have flipped a coin, or held a team vote, but what was done was done, and seeing as the two students in question were friends and in Teppenpaw, hopefully any damage that arose was minimal and short-lived.
So it was that team sixteen had gathered on the day of the challenge, and Josephine was not hugely enraptured to discover that she would be participating in an obstacle course in the gardens. However, before she jumped to any negative conlusions, she considered that maybe the obstacles would be easy, or pleasant, or fun, at the very least. Yet as it soon transpired, the second challenge, in a similar fashion to the first, would prove to be an experience the sixth year would happily forgo. "A mud pit?" she questioned with an attitude of resignation. She looked at her jeans and blouse, and while they were second-hand, she didn't relish the thought of coating them in sticky mud. She looking longingly towards the opt-out path, and wondered whether tackling the pit would take longer than two minutes.
Feeling as though her leadership credentials were dissipating by the second, Josephine looked to the other members of the team for their input. "Thoughts?"
0
Josephine Owen
Time for Team Sweet Sixteen to Shine
196
Josephine Owen
0
5
Henny B-F-R
March 26, 2013 6:56 PM
Overseeing team one by Henny B-F-R
Henny's feelings on being overseer depended on entirely on why her team had appointed her to that position. Judging by the other team's choices, there was a split between those who were the brain of the group and those who would struggle to complete the physical elements of the challenge. If it was the former, that was fine with her. If it was the latter... Well, at the start of the year she would have thought that was reasonable. She was a slim girl who spent all of her time in the library. However, with Alicia's training regime, she was fitter than she'd ever been before. She had honest to goodness muscle tone! Just. Not that she could exactly tell her team that... It would have been nice to put some of Alicia's training to use. To prove it had been worth it. Henny had avoided the subject of the first task wherever possible. She felt that she had let Alicia down. All of her additional work, and all Henny had done was to fall apart. Perhaps if she had got through the physical part of this challenge she could have felt emancipated. She could only hope that she could somehow prove herself in her role as overseer.In deference to the nature of the challenge, she had dressed for something active, even though she didn't really expect to have a call for it. The items had been a recent addition to her wardrobe, since Alicia had announced her training plan. It had been a startling realisation that she didn't own anything appropriate. It had made her feel almost prissy, like one of those delicate, ornamental girls. However, the truth of the matter was she spent the majority of her time reading, and that didn't really require specific clothing. Her Dad bought most of her outfits and he usually chose skirts and dresses for her. However, in a bid not to flash her knickers at all the boys when doing the climbing wall, she had written home for sportswear. His desire to make her his sweet little girl seemed to have gone into overdrive and, denied skirts and dresses, there had been a startling increase in the amount of pink items and floral patterns. Her cotton shorts were pink, with darker pink roses. She wore a pink sleeveless tracksuit top which was firmly zipped up. The reason for this was another factor in why she was sad to not be competing directly. The t-shirt underneath had not been worn to any of Alicia's training sessions and had been reserved with the hope that it could be worn to a challenge and damaged beyond salvation. Henny was fine with a bit of pink. She would put up with flowers. But a photo of a kitten wearing a tiara, liberally sprinkled with glitter was too far. Clearly Dad's purchases had not been vetted too closely. Father must have thought he couldn't do too much damage with sportswear. Unless there had been items even more hideous than that but even her keen Aladren mind could not conceive of such a thing. The overall effect was that she had come either dressed as a marshmallow or still in her pyjamas.
“See you,” she nodded to her team mates, heading off to her scrying position. She glanced over the model, noting all the main obstacles and the fact that there were paths of varying difficulty between them, before focussing in on the current obstacle and first set of paths.
“Ok, let's go...” she instructed the little dots, “Broadly speaking, you get a mud pit, a high wall and a lake to swing across, so have your thinking caps on for those if you can,” it made sense for everyone to think how best they might tackle what was coming up, assuming they had any spare thoughts to give it. “There's different difficulties of paths between them. Focussing on the mud pit,” she said, tapping her wand to zoom in, “It's different depths. It's not over anyone's head, I don't think,” she hedged. She was fairly sure, but she didn't want to risk drowning anyone. “It doesn't indicate that there's anything else to it, but you never know...” The staff had already proven that they had the capacity to surprise on these challenges. “Obviously the most direct route is not the cleanest, and it'll get harder the deeper it goes. Do you want to be kept in the shallower bits or just... go for it?”
13
Henny B-F-R
Overseeing team one
211
Henny B-F-R
0
5
Eliza Bennett
March 26, 2013 10:24 PM
Team Two! by Eliza Bennett
After some conference with him and a lot of conference with herself, Eliza had decided it was for the best if Sullivan was the overseer, leaving her on the ground. Their team contained no physical wonders, but she was a seventh year and so taller, anyway, than most of the team by default, and also the most magically skilled, where she thought the next-eldest was one of the more stable people they had on the team. He could give the directions, and she could keep the others…well, as under control as they were going to get, anyway, and maybe they could avoid a complete train wreck of an event.Of all the groups, hers had the second-smallest amount of time to get ready for the challenge, so as soon as Team One was in the maze and on the clock, she suggested that they practice spells for a bit, and had a list of suggestions folded up in her pocket. Most of them – given the general ages of the rest of the group – weren’t that difficult, but they could be useful, and she thought it would be good to have them right on the top of their minds once they went in, for those who would chip in. She was hoping she could think fast enough to come up with semi-convincing arguments why Carrie should do anything other than make Eliza want to jinx her, but was not optimistic.
As they got ready, Eliza decided she ought to make a speech, considering her possible problem children. She had considered using each of them as the overseer as well, but had finally decided they would do less damage if they weren’t giving the directions. “I could make a long speech here, but we don’t have time, and there’s not really much to say,” she said brightly. “We might have had some…issues…in the first challenge, but we have the best right here.”
Hopefully, Carrie would choose to interpret that as an attempt at mollifying her enormous ego and would be cooperative. Of course, it could just as easily blow up in her face if Carrie took it that way and decided it meant she should act however she wanted, but Eliza had to try. “There’s just two things I want you all to remember – aside from a bunch of spells,” she added. “One is that we’re all working together to get whatever perks they’re handing out for being the fastest. The other is to not leave the group unless I tell you to.” She could have killed Carter during the mirror maze of the first challenge, though she guessed it had had one upside in the end: now, she knew to be on guard, so that if anyone ran, she could hit them with a quick Impedimenta before they got too far, though by the sounds of it, this challenge might do some of the work of keeping everybody close for her. “This may not be the most fun some of us ever think we’ve had, but the quicker and more graciously we do it, the quicker it’s over, right? Keep that in mind, too, even if that makes it three things.”
She waited for Sully’s go-ahead, then went into the maze and felt the color not so much drain as flood from her face when she realized what it was. “Okay,” she said brightly, thinking as fast as she ever had in her life as she turned back to face the group. “It just says cross the pit, not how we do it,” she stalled. “Is anyone else good at Transfiguration? We can turn a path from mud into stone, though we should probably do it where the mud’s at its shallowest, it won’t be thick enough and it might sink further on. Or does anyone have a better idea?” Eliza thought she could do it herself, a bit at a time, but it would be draining to do that much long enough for everyone and there were more obstacles to come, so either assistance or a better idea of how to deal with it would be more than welcome from her. She had no problems with other people’s good ideas.
0
Eliza Bennett
Team Two!
174
Eliza Bennett
0
5
David Wilkes
March 27, 2013 1:05 PM
'Team Four' or 'Behaviorist Vampire Slayer Fellowship Four?' by David Wilkes
As he waved goodbye and good luck to the team overseer before the challenge started, David couldn’t help but think again of the irony that a pureblood, of all people, had been the one to arrange an overseer-selection system with open nominations and secret-ballot voting, all very fair and democratic. After six years of plowing through the history of the wizarding world, he had ended up with the impression that the criminal organizations of his world would have killed (well, more than usual, anyway) for the level of control over politics that the Old Families had, but one of theirs had on his own come up with the idea and even come prepared with a box.This was one of the reasons why Thad Pierce scared David a little, if he thought of it that way. Kid came across sometimes like he had been found in a basket on the steps of a government building and was just itching for the day when he could get back into one. Even more scary was that James, who David had gathered came from a background about as popular and even less affluent than his own, was nearly the same way, and that Fran, who was eleven, showed definite signs of the condition as well. David had concluded it was A Wizarding Thing and that he’d never really understand. Which was itself a problem, but one for another day.
Right now, after all, he had another problem, which was wondering if Evan had the attention span for this. David had voted for him because that had seemed to be the way the wind was blowing in discussion, but he still had his doubts. Evan was not scary in the way that his friends were scary; in a Muggle school, David was prepared to bet that Evan would have ended up with boots in his ribcage even more than David himself had been accustomed to before Sonora. Evan wasn’t a government experiment gone mad, he was just a geek, and unfortunately, a government experiment seemed like a better person to have in the control room.
If, of course, one cared about winning, anyway. Not that David did. But still.
When it was their turn, after Sara and Eliza and Kate had all gone through the wringer and hopefully survived their fourth years, David tried not, remembering the boggart from the first challenge, to jump at every shadow along empty paths until they reached the mud pit, and then he tried to remind himself that Thad was not Frodo, which meant there was, therefore, probably no Watcher in the Water – or Mud, as it were – to contend with. As long as everyone had left their great destinies and artifacts of doom back in the dorms, everything, he guessed, would be fine. Evan was watching, but he was a good Watcher, like Giles or something, or at least no worse than someone watching rats in a Skinner box to see if they’d press the lever for food….
“And now I feel sympathy for lab rats,” he muttered under his breath, concluding his train of thought before he spoke up. “I know a spell to see if a person’s in a building from DADA – If anyone knows the Latin for ‘living thing in the mud,’ that would be great,” he added, adding that to the list of things he needed to learn someday. A whole language was daunting, but he already had learning a whole world to contend with, so what was a dead language? Plus, he was likely to live longer than a normal person anyway…. "I'd rather not stick my foot in that without at least trying to see if something's gonna grab it."
16
David Wilkes
'Team Four' or 'Behaviorist Vampire Slayer Fellowship Four?'
169
David Wilkes
0
5
Alicia Bauer
March 27, 2013 3:58 PM
We're fighting this clock together, Team Seven. by Alicia Bauer
As she waited for the second challenge to begin, Alicia felt she came to an important realization about friendship. She had thought, really thought, that she already thoroughly understood the importance of keeping in regular contact with the people she cared about, but one look at Henny’s outfit when the overseers were called together showed her that she really, really had not understood it well enough before that moment. If she had just caught her roommate a little earlier, she could have helped Henny Transfigure those things, or lent Henny some of her own clothes, or something, and then a horrific crime against good taste could have been averted.She only just managed to turn a wince into a smile as she slipped on her big dark sunglasses, partially blocking out the sight of roses on pink shorts. And here she had thought that pattern had been banned by law for all people under age ninety at least a decade ago.
Soon enough, though, Henny was gone, and Alicia was back to feeling a vague sense of regret about the whole thing. Under other circumstances, she could have been an overseer herself, and then she would have had the pleasure of both ordering everyone else around like so many chess pieces and of not attending the after-party quite possibly dirty and definitely wearing a close-fitting pale blue sweater with elbow-length sleeves and a dark gray pair of cotton sweatpants, her twisted-up hair the only, in her opinion, really good-looking part of the whole thing. The only people who’d mattered had seen her dressed like this before and not appeared to stop respecting her because of it, true, and it was one of those proofs that either she had been kidnapped at birth or that the family wasn’t really cursed that Hope really was, in addition to being one of the people Alicia needed split up, the best person for the job once all factors were looked at, but…it was hard to think of Theresa Carey going to a party looking pretty which Alicia would have to attend immediately after running an obstacle course. If there wasn’t a rock wall in there, Alicia thought she was going to be thoroughly irritated by the end of the day.
Her fingers traced restless patterns in the dirt, wanting this over with. She took her sunglasses off, then she put her sunglasses back on. Two more had to go, and then it would be over, at least for her. Then there would be all the running around and flattering she would have to be sure to do to make sure this challenge hadn’t broken up her happy home even after all she had done before it to prevent that, but that would be a new problem.
“Time to go,” she announced when, at last, it was that most welcome time. She checked that her hair clip was going to hold – her hair falling down into her face would be impressively unhelpful – and smiled at the rest of the team. “Move fast!” she said, disgustingly chipper, and then they were off to…a mud pit.
Well, this hadn’t been on her list of things she thought to prepare for.
“We’ll have to charm it. Wading’s too slow,” she said, adjusting her sunglasses as she raked her memory. She knew a Dehydration Charm, but she had spent too much of her midterm in the library of the university reading about some pretty unpleasant stuff after that disaster of a first challenge made her think of certain things and was now half-convinced, in her nerves, that she was getting the Dehydration Charm and the Blood-Draining Curse confused, and somehow, she thought the staff might raise some eyebrows if she used the incantation of the latter on a bunch of mud.
This was the first time in her life she thought being more informed than everybody else was actually working against her instead of in her favor. She did not appreciate the new experience.
She had to think. She had to think fast. There was a clock running and who knew what they would have to go through to get out of here even once they were through this. Who knew what the other obstacles would be?
“D’you think Duro would make a solid enough crust, or just stickier mud?” she asked, her eyes moving rapidly between the other older ones. She could feel the clock pressing down, the way it always did in the last moments of an exam, when her hand hurt like anything but she had to just keep writing, writing almost as fast as she could think, determined to cram in the last few words to an answer to get the best mark possible on something stupid she wouldn't even remember in a month anyway. “Or a drying charm? Whatever's faster.”
For once, she wasn't even trying to be bossy or overbearing, just talking rapidly, stating the obvious, in a sense of urgency. She didn't like working under a clock anyway, but liked it even less when she didn't feel safe, comfortable, with the people she was with. She had gotten soft, she realized with no small irritation with herself, too used to liking people, and now she might mar all with this starting.
16
Alicia Bauer
We're fighting this clock together, Team Seven.
210
Alicia Bauer
0
5
Michael Grosvenor
March 27, 2013 4:46 PM
Team 19 - let's get dirty! by Michael Grosvenor
Michael was his team's overseer. He wasn't really sure what to make of that. It did seem kind of like the sissy girly role they gave out to people who weren't going to be able to do sports. In some people's cases, like Valeire's and- In Valerie's case, it made sense. She had a... a health thing that meant she needed to stay away from stuff like that. But he couldn't help but feel that his team was tucking him safely out of the way cos they thought he was weak or useless. He didn't think Mellie would think about him that way, but he reckoned the rest of them might. What was worse, was that they were probably right. Sure, he hiked and he liked being outdoors but he wasn't exactly Mr. Quidditch. He guessed the plus point of being overseer was that he wouldn't have to humiliate himself by being outrun by a load of girls.To add insult to injury, he knew he wasn't a good enough flier to help from the air. He'd done beginners and joined in the occasional pick up game but he wasn't... well, once again, he wasn't Mr. Quidditch. He was starting to regret never having signed up to play, even though it would have probably turned him into a colossal joke, rather than making him jock-hero of the school. So, he was taking the prissy Pureblood or physically weak girl option of looking at a model. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with people who had those problems – he, of all people, would not hold what someone could not do against them. But he didn't want people to think that he was frail. Cos he wasn't. People had a tendency to do that - as soon as one thing was wrong with you, they wanted to treat you like you were made of glass. And boys got picked on for stuff like that.
“Hey guys?” he called out when it was, eventually, their turn to get going. If this had happened in his first year, he wouldn't have quite trusted that no one was going to leap out from a hedge laughing that he'd fallen for it and was talking to a model. By now, he trusted that it worked. He had no clue on God's green earth how. But he assumed it did.
“You've got to get through a mud pit and then there's some different paths to choose after it,” he called out. “Do you.. do you want help with the mud?” he asked uncertainly. Surely mud was fairly self explanatory. He wasn't really sure what he could add other than 'get dirty.'
13
Michael Grosvenor
Team 19 - let's get dirty!
199
Michael Grosvenor
0
5
Ryan O'Malley
March 28, 2013 5:58 PM
Team Five by Ryan O'Malley
Ryan was not the most athletic person,though he thought he could handle it so long as he didn't have to fly. He did not have a very athletic team. However, he had chosen to make Angel the overseer, despite the fact that the Teppenpaw had issues communicating and with intellectual tasks. He clearly had some sort of illness, and Ryan felt it would be completely cruel to make someone chronically ill do physical tasks that they were probably incapable of and might hurt themselves doing. Ryan didn't want that to happen to anyone-well, not really anyway-and quite honestly, didn't want to be responsible for it happening either. He'd feel horrible.Even if Ryan hadn't had to put Angel on it, he might not have put Sally, who was clearly the smartest person on their team, on it because he wanted her help on the actual course. He sort of thought they might listen to her better than him, though that had not been really an issue so far. On the other hand, Ryan wouldn't have known who to put on it instead. Lucrezia would have been the next best choice, but he kind of thought she might be the most athletic person on their team. At least, she was capable of flying which didn't seem to be a skill most of them really had. He rather wanted her in the course.
The Crotalus might not have been the most competitive person-he never thought he was any good and wasn't going to win anything, unless it involved Transfiguration, or the other person was really, really bad- but he felt he had something to prove, both to his team-after the boggart, not only was the way he couldn't deal with it embarrassing, but that others might figure out that it was his mother and know how she treated him-and to himself. Ryan just wanted to feel good for once. Like he wasn't what his mother and Carrie said he was. He needed his team to do well so he wouldn't be a failure.
Of course, obviously they were a team, so it wasn't all on Ryan. They all had to do their part. Still, if things went wrong, people would blame him. The team would blame him. It would likely be considered his fault, like everything always had been. He hadn't even had to do anything wrong to get in trouble. His mother would just...imagine things. If Ryan honestly screwed up, the consequences would be far worse. Maybe nobody would hate him as much as she did, but their hatred and disdain would be more justified, than hers .
Though, maybe her hatred of him was deserved. The seventh year didn't think himself at all impressive so he was probably a huge disappointment. He might have been pretty good at Transfiguration but so were all his relatives. It was a genetic thing, not him personally and certainly, Ryan didn't have anything else really going for him. They were going to fail, and it was going to be because of him. If they'd done all right in the first part, that was because of his teammates' skills.
As overseers left, Amity with a smug glance at someone, probably Carrie, Ryan turned to face the rest of the team. Okay, he had to give the usual inspirational pep talk now. He was neither inspirational nor peppy, but it had seemed to go all right the first time. The problem was not really having anything original to say this time. In fact, he didn't even remember what he'd said before. It was literally impossible to remember everything you'd ever said ever-and if Ryan did remember something he'd said awhile ago, it was probably something stupid that he felt embarrassed about. So since he didn't remember what he'd said before the first challenge, it couldn't have been that bad and nobody else probably remembered what he said either.
He took a deep breath. "Okay, we did great the first time around," Ryan was not entirely sure this was true, but he wanted to be positive and encouraging, keep the team in high spirits, besides, it was his fault anyway if they hadn't done well, "and we'll do just as great this time." Even though nobody had mentioned anything athletic as a strong point, minus Lucrezia being able to fly and Ryan wasn't even sure how good she was. Better than him anyway.
The seventh year waited as a the first four teams began, giving Eliza a sympathetic glance when it was her turn. He couldn't see this going well for her team. No matter how well her team actually did in the standings, it was going to be unpleasant for them all getting there. Carrie had this amazing talent of making any situation unbearable for everyone else involved. Which was unfortunately at least one more than Ryan felt he had. Two more actually, as the third year also had one for spotting and exploting someone's weaknesses.
Then it was their turn and Ryan's sympathy for Eliza and the other four members of Team Two only increased. It was a mud pit. He turned to the rest of his team and said "Okay, the best way to do this is to transfigure the mud into something else that's easier to walk across, like stone." He glanced up at them. "Unless someone has a better idea." The Crotalus had no faith in his own but to him, Transfiguration as usual seemed to be the best solution. However, he did want to give the others a chance to make their opinions heard, hopefully in a timely manner. "I mean, I can probably do the transfiguration if we go with that." Somehow Ryan, who thought most things would be difficult for himself, believed that turning mud into stone was no problem.
11
Ryan O'Malley
Team Five
176
Ryan O'Malley
0
5
James Carey
March 28, 2013 8:36 PM
Flying ahead of Team Twelve by James Carey
Maybe, as an Aladren Quidditch player, or at least reserve, he should have been, but Jay had not been surprised to find himself as the overseer for Team Twelve. If he had been making the decision, he would have likely assigned the job to Addison – she had, if they needed magical knowledge from the overseer, taken some of the Advanced classes, and she also seemed to have bad nerves, so it would be better if she weren’t directly involved, in case the next time, she didn’t pull through as well in the end as she had in the first challenge – but Arista was the team leader, and she and her sisters seemed to like to be together a great deal. Jay didn’t really understand it, since his family generally, except for the twins and to a lesser extent Henry, didn’t spend more time than was necessary together so they didn’t put other people off, but that was how they were, and so he was the overseer.He didn’t mind. He was on the Aladren Quidditch team and a Carey besides, so he was used to the idea of screaming lunatic assault on physical goals, but Jay didn’t count such activities as the highlight of his life or the area of his greatest skills. This was really more the kind of thing he liked anyway. Shown the options for viewing, he looked longingly at the model for a moment, but wanted to take it apart more than he wanted to use it, and he picked up the broom in the end, thinking he could be more use that way.
Mounting the broom and kicking off, he flew toward the entrance to wave the others into the maze, then flew ahead, looking for any hidden obstacles and not seeing anything or encountering anything he didn’t see as he led them to the first obstacle. He flew lower for a moment to give them warning – “Mud pit ahead!” – before they got there, to give anyone who needed it a moment to mentally prepare for the prospect of being dirty. He would have had no problem with it on the ground, but he was up here in the air.
He flew ahead to study the mud, to see if there was a best path through it, or any additional traps, or anything he could figure out from where he was which could be helpful once everyone was there. They arrived, and Jay flew lower again, so he could speak with him. “There are some parts without any mud at all,” he said. “I think some of them have pretty deep mud between them, though. What do you guys want to do?”
He hoped the team was in a decision-making mood today. He would really rather not be on the twentieth team to come in. His cousins would never let him live it down if he was, and while there were worse things in life, he still had no interest in dealing with that for the next few months, and then every now and then again after that if someone thought it would give them an edge in an argument.
0
James Carey
Flying ahead of Team Twelve
222
James Carey
0
5
Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette)
March 29, 2013 11:41 AM
Failure to Launch - Team Fourteen by Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette)
The first time Preston suggested one of the Pierce twins be the overseer, they had taken it for a bad joke. They were merely second years; the overseer was supposed to be the brains of the second challenge. The second time he repeated it, they realized he was serious. Preston, Gareth, and Cepheus were all bigger and stronger and more suited to a physical challenge than they were. After half a year training to run through the Gardens - which, incidentally, was were this challenge was taking place - they had vastly improved both their endurance and speed, but they were still no match for the older and taller boys on the team. And since they were second years, they'd had more than twice as much schooling as Jade, if Jade was even still at Sonora.The only problem was, of course, the minor fact that Annette and Annabelle could not do magic alone, and it sounded kind of like the overseer wasn't going to be physically with the rest of the group. Which meant neither of them would be able to perform any spells at all. Not keen to admit to this weakness, but not seeing any other choice in the matter, their final argument to be spared the overseer fate had been to explain their magical handcap.
It hadn't been enough. Preston was the advanced student and needed to be there in case the physical challenge required difficult spellwork. Gareth was, well, Gareth: big and physically imposing as the two small twelve year old girls could never be. And though Cepheus was slighter than the two beaters, he was still a fourteen or fifteen year old boy who had already hit at least one growth spurt.
The Anns still had almost half a foot to go before they broke five feet, if they ever did. Their fully grown older sister had managed to hit the sixty inch mark but she never passed it.
As much as it galled the Pecari in them, they were, indisputably, the weakest physical link on the team.
Ordinarily, they would have competed for the spot on the physical team, as they had for the honor to play in Quidditch matches last term, but this was a little different. The overseer role had been hailed an important position, an intellectual position. There could possibly be reading involved.
While Annette had gotten better at reading right-side-up over the last year and a half, what with all the teachers writing on boards, and having her own books (and, more importantly, classmates who looked at her funny if she turned them upside down to read), but Annabelle still did it better, faster, and more naturally, since that was how she had learned to read from the start. Annette had sat on the opposite side of the table and learned from that end. They dared not risk the team's success to confusion over whether a particular letter was a 'p' or a 'd'.
So when overseers were called, it was Annabelle who walked over to stand with Professor Meade. She needed most of the time from when Team One entered to when Team Thirteen did to work through the pros and cons of which overseeing method to use.
The obvious answer was, of course, the broom. That would put her in close enough proximity to Annette that their magic would work. There was no guarantee the scrying circle would even work for her, as squib-like as she was without her sister nearby.
The only concern there was her Family's strong WAIL connections. She was already on her last warning and she wasn't sure if opting to ride a broom when there were other choices hit too close to Quidditch and by mounting the broom, she'd be signing the disownment papers not only for herself, but for Annette at well. Mother had mad it perfectly clear over the summer that the sins of the one would be visited upon them both.
Was the challenge really worth that? No. No, it was not. If they had to muddle through with a magically crippled overseer and team member then so be it. Winning this one little contest was not important enough to risk the rest of their lives upon.
She had finally reached this difficult conclusion when she looked over to Annette and saw her sister mouthing the word 'broom' and making swooshing flying motions with her hands. This sent Annabelle back into the debate all over again.
She still wasn't a hundred percent sure what she was going to do when Professor Meade showed her into the labyrinth where the model and broom were awaiting her decision. She looked over the model, tried to do what Professor Meade said to make it work, but she could tell it wasn't reacting to her commands quite right.
This wasn't going to work at all. She took one final look at the overview, got up with a huff, and grabbed the broom. She mounted and kicked off, as she had done hundreds, if not thousands, of times before, and did not make it more than a foot off the ground before she was touching down again, the broom refusing to accept her commands as much as the model had.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake," she grated in annoyance. There were still more people out in the waiting area than she cared to see this walk of shame (at this point, she wasn't sure if she was more mortified that she'd be seen with a broom by society people or that she'd be seen carrying a broom instead of riding it by everyone else) but there was nothing for it.
She marched out of the overseer area, back into the waiting area, and over to where her team waited at the start of the course, keeping her head held high. "Let's go," she instructed, and launched into the air on her broom as soon as she made eye contact with Annette. "Follow me."
She flew through the hedge opening, leading the way to the first obstacle. Once they were inside and out of easy hearing from the other teams she added, imparting the most immediate piece of intelligence she had picked up from her inspection of the model, "You've got a mud pit first. Sorry, Nettie. Then there are two more obstacles after that."
As she caught sight of the pit's size for the first time, Annabelle decided that she was glad she was the overseer after all. Even flying over it was too close for her taste. Pity about poor Annette's cute socks. They had both dressed in Ann's Quidditch practice clothes from last year, valuing practicality over fashion for the day, but they had thought it would be safe to wear some fun socks with adorable baby animals circling their ankles to the challenge.
Clearly, they had been wrong.
Annabelle looked down into the mudpit, wondering if she should suggest Gareth carry Annette on his shoulders when she spotted something she hadn't expected. "Oh! There are dry spots." Another survey of the pit was more disappointing. "Not enough to jump from one to the next, though."
1
Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette)
Failure to Launch - Team Fourteen
246
Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette)
0
5
Kate Bauer
April 01, 2013 9:17 AM
Time to catch up to the rest, Team Three. by Kate Bauer
Kate was in good spirits as she waited with her team to be called for the obstacle course. Up until today, she had been worried about how they were going to do with their overseer, wondering all the time if they had made the right choice, but now that they had gotten more details, it seemed that it was going to work out okay. Add in that her team, unlike some of the others, did not have a very long wait to deal with, and she thought the second challenge was off to a pretty good start for Team Three.Her sister, she thought, wasn’t as optimistic; Alicia was as smily as usual, but Kate thought she had sensed a little tension when, after breakfast, she wished her luck anyway. She hadn’t bothered to ask what was up, since she had long since learned that she’d never get an honest answer to that question, but she did, as she waved to her on her way past to the edge of the maze, hope that she either wasn’t really being bothered by something or that she’d forget about it by the time it was Seven’s turn. Then she needed to address her own team and forgot about Alicia for the moment as she did that.
“Okay, guys, here we are again,” she said brightly, smiling at them, feeling a little of the kind of excitement she sort of associated with the beginning of a Quidditch match, only without the draining pressure of being, in essence, the one who had to win it or lose it for them. This was really much more of a team effort than the usual Quidditch games were. “Challenge Two. We’re going to rule this thing. We’ve just got to keep our focus and work together. Go team!”
It wasn’t much, but she thought it would do. Besides, it was time to go.
Inside, they found the way to the first obstacle smooth, which made Kate worry there was going to be something really unpleasant at the end of the route, which made a mud pit almost a pleasant surprise. It almost made her secretly gladder they had left Bianca behind as the overseer, since she seemed like she might be the hardest to get through that kind of thing. It was against all the training rich girls got, whatever their basic dispositions were; she thought of her sister again as she wondered how Alicia would handle it.
“So, this looks simple enough,” she said. “Maybe we can cast drying charms as we go through the shallow parts, to make that faster to go over – see?” She cast a drying charm over some of the ground near the edge. “I doubt it’ll go all the way through, though, so walk fast,” she suggested, and began to demonstrate that herself, moving as fast as she could while testing the ground to make sure she wasn’t about to fall in up to her neck, casting the charm once more.
16
Kate Bauer
Time to catch up to the rest, Team Three.
170
Kate Bauer
0
5
