Venturing onto previously unexplored territory... on Library

Catherine Raines

April 11, 2006 7:41 PM

Venturing onto previously unexplored territory... by Catherine Raines

The Pecari seventh year girls were having some kind of sorority get-together with the Aladrens in the Labyrinth.

As a rule, Catherine would have preceded with her walk-and-sulk routine without hesitation. The Gardens were big, after all, and there really wasn't much chance that a load of seventh years would be interested in the activities of a single second year girl. However, they'd chosen the worst possible spot for their meeting: her courtyard. They were square in the middle of it, and she had more sense than to walk into the middle of them and tell them to clear out. She liked her health just the way it was, which was a way it might not be after doing something like that.

She could have, of course, simply wandered to another part of the maze, but that was her courtyard, her thinking seat, her place to sulk, and her hideout when she wanted to avoid people. The thought of trying to find another didn't sit well, not to mention the possibility that one of the seventh years had noticed her before she noticed them and might later take it into his head to follow the direction she had taken. If she wanted to avoid people today, she would have to find some other place entirely. Thus her entrance, rarely preceded, into the library. It was certainly the last place she would ever think of looking for herself.

Her hands twitched slightly as the doors closed behind her and she looked around the huge room, feeling out of place and knowing instinctively that she would look it to anyone else. She didn't know how to find her bearings, here, with nothing around her but books. It somehow sounded a lot stranger in her head to sit surrounded by books and doing nothing than to sit on a bench outside doing nothing. How did people study in here without it driving them crazy? There was no air in this room, no spirit. She'd only been through the doors forty-five seconds and was already having trouble thinking.

It was a hideout, though. She was at no risk of discovery here. She could hide here until she felt ready to go back to the common room. Sitting down at a secluded table away from the windows, she grabbed the first book she saw and opened it to a random point, nervously smoothing down the pages and pretending to read. No one would find her, here. She was alone. She didn't have to read, didn't have to do anything but sit here for a while the same as she would have outside. Maybe it would help to pretend she was outside. After all, no one was going to see her. She could let down her guard, for the moment. Squeezing her eyes shut, she began trying to envision her courtyard when it was student-free except for herself, unaware that she was no longer alone. \n\n

0 Catherine Raines Venturing onto previously unexplored territory... 66 Catherine Raines 1 5

Lexi Stafford

April 12, 2006 5:30 PM

Beware just whom you meet by Lexi Stafford

Lexi Stafford wasn’t sure who she was angriest with right now. The first choice was Marlowe for giving them the stupid transfiguration assignment in the first place. Next on her list was her dear older brother, Ben, who had managed to somehow lose both his transfiguration textbook and, when desperately begging to borrow hers ‘for just a few hours,’ had “misplaced” her only source of transfiguration knowledge as well as his own. Then, naturally, if one brother had done something stupid, the other was at least partially at blame. She wasn’t sure just how Patrick had managed to help Ben lose her book from all the way across the country, but she had no doubts as to his skills. If anyone could do that, Patrick could.

She would decide all of that later, though. Right now, the only thing that mattered was finishing up all her homework from the last few weeks in that class in the next couple of hours, otherwise Marlowe truly would kill her. So she had ventured to the library, and found a few books that could potentially be helpful. When she chose to be responsible about schoolwork, she did it reasonably well. All of her stuff had been together on one of the more secluded tables, where she could, potentially, work in peace.

Realizing that she had no desire to try and carry a stack of books probably half her height from the stacks to her table, she had elected to make two trips. She was still seething about being stuck in here doing work when it was such a beautiful day outside (the fact that her procrastination had caused her problem was one that never entered her mind. It defeated the purpose of inward raging if one acknowledged that it was one’s own fault.). She figured she could probably scribble enough down to satisfy Marlowe, and then would head out to the gardens or something.

Her plan developed a hitch, though, when she saw the table she had claimed as she returned from her second trip. Another girl, another second year, but a Crotalus, if she wasn’t mistaken, had taken it. Now, Lexi didn’t really care enough about the transfiguration books to be upset that the girl was reading one of them, but Lexi had been there first. Her stuff was still sitting on the floor next to the chair, and that other girl would just have to move.

“Excuse me?” she said a bit brusquely, after waiting a few seconds to see if the girl would look up and realize her mistake. She hadn’t. “Could you go find somewhere else to sit and do whatever it is that you’re doing? I was kinda there," she gestured towards the bag lying at the foot of the chair, "and I would really like my spot back.”

She knew she wasn’t being at all polite, and if Ben were here he’d make her feel perfectly awful about that, but he wasn’t, and so she didn’t. The other girl had invaded her space, and so deserved whatever she got. It might be another interesting distraction from the homework, if this was one of the prissy Crotali that Lexi had heard about, one who wouldn’t appreciate being addressed such by a “mere” halfblood. Lexi almost hoped that the other girl would say something else. Nobody was better for a way to work off your anger than someone you had never met.

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

0 Lexi Stafford Beware just whom you meet 0 Lexi Stafford 0 5

Catherine

April 12, 2006 10:25 PM

That a general comment, or am I supposed to fear you? by Catherine

Aladrens were insane. It was official. They had to be out of their minds to actually like this place -

"Excuse me?"

Catherine jumped as though she'd been scalded and fixed the intruder, a red-haired girl carrying a stack of books, with a wide-eyed, startled stare that didn't fit her image at all. Her mouth opened, but she didn't say anything as the other girl continued with her harangue. Her head wasn't quite clear yet - she'd been too deep into thinking about how Aladrens were insane to snap out of it quickly - and she was taking a bit to process what her fellow second year was saying. She probably looked like the posterchild for clueless stupidity just now...which, usually, was the point...

But now it wasn't. This might've been Aladren territory, but there were Aladrens on her territory. Besides, it was a public library. She could come into it whenever she pleased. She put up with whatever from Nicoletta and with Gwenhwyfar parading herself around like the manic-depressive Queen of France, the first because she had the power to turn Catherine into a social outcast and the second because Catherine didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity if she went crazy again. She put up with them, in short, because of internal House politics. She didn't have to put up with some random Aladren who, since all her books seemed to be about Transfiguration, was apparently demented enough to worship that old hag Marlowe. Catherine had never held a prejudice against the woman until she found out she'd failed her Transfiguration midterm spectacularly, but she was still an old hag and anyone who liked her out of his or her tree. She snapped her mouth shut indignantly.

“I’m Catherine Raines,” she said, mock-sweetly, when the other girl was done. If they hadn’t felt compelled to protect the House’s dignity last year, the whole school would have known her name, but she thought, perhaps a little vainly, that most of her year and the third years, at least, knew it anyway. Maybe the smarter and better-connected first years. “I’m not going anywhere, either. Since your Housemates are where I wanna be, I’m here where you wanna be. That’s called fair trade. Besides, so many of you Aladrens think this is your common room that I figured one of you had just decided to move right on in when I saw your precious stuff.” The truth was that she hadn’t noticed it at all. How had she overlooked it? She focused her attention on the girl to keep from staring at her things with a baffled look and noticed a bit of her badge that wasn’t covered by books. There was no blue there...

The girl wasn’t an Aladren. She was a Teppenpaw. Fabulous.

There was nothing she could really do but bluff it out. Pretend not to have noticed the badge and dismiss the girl as a nonentity if she was corrected. A thought flashed through her head - Merlin, I hate this - but she ignored it. You did what you had to do, and insulting people she didn’t know from Lorenzo’s Great-Auntie Rosalinda was just part of the game. Besides, she enjoyed her life. She did. Being perfect just got a little tiresome, sometimes, that was all. No reason why she should feel at all guilty about talking down to her classmate. She was the better one, here. \n\n

0 Catherine That a general comment, or am I supposed to fear you? 0 Catherine 0 5

Lexi

April 13, 2006 11:12 AM

Fear me? I think I should be fearing you by Lexi

Lexi put her books down at the edge of the disputed table and fixed Catherine with a speculative gaze. She knew the name, of course. While she might not have given a damn about Pureblood families and society, Ben always had, and so she had been forced to listen to him too much to not recognze the name. However, Catherine didn't look anywhere near as scary or evil as the stories made her out to be. In fact, she looked rather...lost.

It only took her a few seconds to snap out of the lost stage, and move into the false kindness that Lexi had been expecting. Lexi had unconciously started shifting her weight on the balls of her feet, both standard defensive position and a habit that her mother had tried for years to break her of, and had a retort on the tip of her tongue when she realized just what the other girl had said. Catherine thought she was an Aladren.

It was just too priceless to resist. All of her anger evaporated as she began to laugh. Her, an Aladren. Merlin, the skies would weep at the very thought. She was far too much of a procrastinater, if she did the work at all, in too many of her classes to be considered anything like one of those bookish geeks.

As soon as she had regained control over herself, she sat down on the other side of the table, and pulled her bag over to her new side with one of her feet. "Lexi Stafford," she said aimiably, still chuckling a little. "And I'm sorry about that. I just really hate transfiguration, or at least the homework part of it, and I've got a lot to catch up on. Marlowe just keeps assigning the most pointless things. Therefore, I was in a really bad mood."

She gave Catherine another glance, and then continued, "And the reason for the half-hysterical laughter was that I would just be a really, really bad Aladren, if you couldn't tell by the fact that I've waited more than two weeks to do the homework. And Aladrens do suck a lot of the time. My brother's one, and he's completely horrible when the mood hits him."

She looked around the room quickly, and saw that what Catherine had said had been correct in part. It did seem like they were for the most surrounded by Aladrens. It was a rather frightening realization. Nothing against Aladrens, but they were kinda weird. Of course, she was one of those outdoorsy, athletic people, so her ideas of fun were probably just as bizarre to them.

"So, where is it you want to be that the Aladrens are?" she asked. "There are so many in here that it seems difficult to believe that there are any left to be anywhere else in the school. Also, would you mind giving me that book back? I have no great affection for it, but my brother lost my textbook as well as his own, and that one seems to have the most useful information in it out of all these," she gestured towards the rest of the books.\n\n

0 Lexi Fear me? I think I should be fearing you 0 Lexi 0 5

Catherine

April 14, 2006 6:58 PM

My bark is worse than my bite. by Catherine

Oh. Crap. She was about to be beaten up. Her opponent took up a defensive position, and Catherine knew. The other girl was going to try to prove some kind of point by breaking Catherine's skull. She thought of trying to defend herself, but she'd always been pretty wretched at Defense Against the Dart Arts and hadn't bothered paying much attention to the class discussions that had replaced the spellwork they had done with Zephyrflame. Hitting back was flat-out suicidal; apart from most likely doing little but further angering the other, it might well get a letter sent to Daddy.

She considered tossing all dignity to the winds and running for it when the girl's posture changed and she started to laugh near-hysterically. If random Teppenpaws in the library were going to have mental breakdowns, she didn't want to be anywhere on hand. Safer, most likely, to be beaten up by a sane geek than a nutty one, because the sane would would be worrying about expulsion from the school. She had to work hard not to flinch back when the girl stopped laughing and sat down.

Lexi Stafford...'Lexi' didn't mean much, but she'd heard of the Staffords. Old pureblood family, pretty well based in London but with a son living in New York. He'd married a Muggle woman, if she wasn't mistaken...and it seemed she was facing the result of the marriage, because Lexi didn't sound altogether British to her. This would have been an excuse to toss a quick insult and make a bolt for it, but surnames usually counted most, she wasn't entirely sure she remembered what she thought she did, and Lexi sounded like she didn't like Marlowe very much either. Besides, if she left here, she didn't really have anywhere to go but the common room, and it was to get out of the common room that she was here.

"Yeah," she said cautiously, the thought occurring to her that the teachers might have spies among the students. Jeanette said the professors at Beauxbatons did. "I don't think I even did that." Which could be why I'm now failing... She'd been so pleased with herself when she went home for Christmas with passes in everything. Oh, well, there was still time to pull it up. Theoretically. Had she done her homework?

She smiled for lack of anything else to do when Lexi explained her amusement. Should she count that as laughing at her? Maybe not. No, she wouldn't. After all, someone could have thought the same thing about her. If Teppenpaws didn't belong here, then she definitely didn't. "Oh," she said. "Yeah. People tell me siblings are always a pain. I'm an only child, myself." And that was a bit of a pointless thing to say...it was because she already felt so stupid for getting Lexi's House wrong. She was famous - or infamous - for being an only child, for Merlin's sake.

"Uh, sure," she said lamely when Lexi asked for the book she still had in front of her. "Sorry. I wasn't really reading it..." she didn't know what to say to the first question. It was entirely possible and desirable to snap 'that's my business', but it would sound more suspicious and would antagonize the other girl besides. She normally didn't mind antagonizing people, but this one had looked ready to do her some damage, was related to important people, and had seemed sort of...maybe not nice, but not positively hostile. She stared at her neatly rounded nails for a moment, fumbling for a plausible answer. "There's a place I like to go sometimes," she said finally. "To think. Some of your brother's lot and the Pecaris are there, so I wandered in here..." Why was she telling her all this? She was tearing her carefully constructed identity into pieces. Why wouldn't Lexi go offensive and defensive and whatever and give her an excuse to be mean?

Perhaps more to the point, why wasn't she being mean anyway?\n\n

0 Catherine My bark is worse than my bite. 0 Catherine 0 5

Lexi

April 16, 2006 10:25 AM

That doesn't mean your bite still wouldn't hurt by Lexi

Lexi nodded as Catherine admitted that she probably hadn’t done the homework as well. “Excellent, someone who’s just as bad as I am about doing transfiguration assignments,” she replied with a grin. “I don’t understand the point of writing essays about the history of the spell that changes a cup into a bird, or the rest of that rubbish. I mean, is that really going to effect the way that we cast the spell?” Without waiting for a reply, since she assumed Catherine would have agreed with her, she went on.

“And whoever told you siblings are a pain was right. Particularly older brothers. I have two, and they always think I’m going to do something stupid and get myself killed. Of course, I’ve got it easier than some people I know with siblings. My oldest brother, Patrick, goes to school back in New York, and Ben can be easily intimidated to being nice to me.” She grinned, perhaps a bit wickedly. “I played Muggle sports for years before coming here, and so he knows I could beat him up if I really wanted to. But, you know, if you ever have any desire to know how it feels to have siblings, I’d be happy to switch for as long as you could last.”

She took the book from Catherine, and then started to skim through to find the answers to some of the questions, and then, a few seconds later, closed the book with a defiant snap. “Oh, bugger this,” she groaned, some of the few British phrases that her cousins had taught her coming forth. While it wasn’t exactly polite, her mother didn’t know what it meant, and thusly couldn’t scold her if she happened to say it within her mother’s presence. Not that, with her mother finally getting into a show, she ever saw her much when she was home. “I have absolutely no desire to do this right now. I’ll just steal my brother’s answers later. He owes me that much.”

She thought about the description Catherine had given. While it could be an empty classroom (Aladrens would certainly find that a marvelous meeting place), she doubted that the Pecaris would have put up with that. Therefore, it was probably somewhere in the gardens. “If you’re talking about the labyrinth gardens, I think they meet there once a month, generally,” she said, still pondering. “There were a few times last year I headed out to play wallball, and got chased away by them. However,” she leaned back in her chair, just enough on the edge that she wouldn’t fall over, and craned her neck to check out the windows. She managed to get a glimpse of the edge of the gardens, where a rather exuberant looking crowd of older girls was just heading out. “It looks like they’re done. If they are, I’m not staying in here. It’s far too stuffy for me. You wanna head out there with me, or would you prefer to be by yourself right now? I understand, if you do.”

She stood up, pulling her bag over one shoulder and leaving the scattered books lying on the table. Some bookworm would come along and seclude his or her self with them for about a month, she was sure. She hoped Catherine would come on out with her. She seemed nice, for someone with a reputation of snobby pureblood, and nowhere near as mean as Lexi would have thought. Of course, from what she had seen, it was rare that anyone was.
\n\n

0 Lexi That doesn't mean your bite still wouldn't hurt 0 Lexi 0 5

Catherine

April 19, 2006 9:11 PM

Good thing I'm sheathing my fangs today, then. by Catherine

Catherine flashed Lexi a rare real smile when the Teppenpaw announced she, too, rode on the essays-are-pointless bandwagon. She couldn't have put it better herself. She'd never really dared to bring up the topic of classes with the other Crotali for fear they'd laugh at her and reduce her to the idiot status held by Skyla Howard in the beginning of their first year, and so it was surprisingly nice to hear she wasn't the only lax worker in her class. It did not and had never occurred to her that her preoccupation with keeping her status inside her own House had caused her to miss the majority of what went on around her.

"Oh, um, that's all right," she said, trying not to sound too hasty, when Lexi offered to "loan" her a set of brothers. "Only children don't have to worry about dividing the inheritance, right?" She laughed at her own weak joke. It was too close to the truth, really. Gemma was always full of stories about how her plethora of half-brothers constantly fought and schemed among themselves to become their father's favorite and so secure themselves more money. Even Gemma, the only daughter and the old man's late-in-life child, had to worry about it to an extent. She had a dowry instead of an inheritance, but even that could suffer if her father decided to favor one of her brothers too much.

No, Catherine was very glad to be an only child. The only thing better than being an only child would be being an only child whose father didn't, as even she still realized on a few small levels, more than half-believe that she was actually his.

Lexi's comment that her brother knew she could beat him up courtesy of Muggle sports brought in a conflict of interests. She'd found herself prepared to like Lexi, initial hostility aside, but two words made the situation uncomfortable: Muggle sports. Not very many pureblooded children played Muggle sports, and fewer would admit it. Therefore, Lexi was most likely not a pureblood. Her mother had always counceled her to think what she would about anyone, but to strive to charm and/or befriend everyone. Her father had told her point-blank to avoid anything that would cast any doubt upon her legitimacy or the reputation of the Raines family.

And, as always, that faint nagging voice that liked to pop up whenever she dealt with half-bloods and wasn't in a temper: You might not be any better than her. You could even be worse. She didn't want to listen to that voice. She wanted to abandon it and get on with her life as a useless little pureblooded heiress. The voice (some would have dubbed it a conscience, but Catherine had heard too many relatives claim they didn't exist to identify it as such) rarely disappeared when told to, though.

Lexi's voice broke in on her thoughts with an expression that, though Catherine wasn't entirely sure what it meant, was definitely British. Lexi was at least half-Stafford. Surnames were what counted. She laughed when the other girl announced she'd just steal her brother's answers, hiding her embarrassment that she hadn't taken her cue to leave when Lexi took the book. Merlin knew she couldn't work whenever she thought anyone might be watching her, on the occasions the thought of being blessed out by Lorenzo or, worse, Amelia or her father, spurred her into attempting the assignments.

A touch of wariness entered her eyes when Lexi mentioned being run off by the same mix of seventh years who had invaded Catherine's courtyard. There was a chance that the piece of information could translate into meaning that Lexi also considered that particular square her territory. She was, of course, familiar with the concept of sharing territory - it was hard not to be, when she'd been living in a dorm for most of two years - but it still wasn't one she particularly liked. She bit her lip at the offer to go outside. She wanted to, but...shared territory. Half-bloods. What Nicoletta would say if she found out. The field day Gwen Carey would have with it if she found out.

The last thought brought her into what was, for her, an almost rebellious frame of mind. She was actually worried about being blackmailed by the least popular girl in the year, a girl who, apart from her odd disappearances several evenings a week, did nothing but study and sleep, a girl whose social situation was such a shambles that she'd gone suicidal and joined the Quidditch team. The world was coming to a bad place if she let fear of Gwen Carey stop her from doing what she wanted. And Nicoletta's lot was pretty much cast with her, too. If she was dropped, Nicoletta would be as alone as she would, and the dorm would be completely cutthroat. That situation would be bad for all of them.

The conclusion, then, was that she could do what she wanted, even without factoring in wanting to stop being perfect Catherine Raines for a little while. Besides, it wasn't as if anyone would really believe Lexi if she went around telling them Catherine was really an all right sort with communication problems or whatever. It wouldn't hurt anything, and she still disliked the library as much as she had when she walked in. The air was too still.

"I don't like this place, either," she said finally, smiling. "Let's get out of here." \n\n

0 Catherine Good thing I'm sheathing my fangs today, then. 0 Catherine 0 5