In his natural habitat on Library

James Anthony

June 12, 2010 10:17 AM

In his natural habitat by James Anthony

James Anthony pushed his glasses seriously up his nose, and returned to the calculus problem he was currently contemplating. On the grounds that going home would be nothing more than a mere inconvenience and a potential disturbance to his intense academic concentration, James had eschewed the more traditional family celebration of the season for a Midterm spent in deep communion with Newton’s brainchild. On a rather practical level, James could accurately project how little he had missed of actual celebration. His sister had sent him several owls detailing precisely how nothing was going on at the apartment by the Inner Harbour. His twin had not contacted him for several years now, and although that did elicit a twinge of sorrow, James understood that it was for the best. Grace had never quite understood the extent of his intellect even when they had been mere children attending a Muggle school; she would be quite out of her depth now.

Yet, there had been something a tad off in Lutece’s letters, and it was only now, contemplating the significance of a certain derivative on his Calculus problem set that James began to understand it. His light brown eyebrows furrowed, his blue-green eyes examining the paper but not. Lutece had not been nearly as whiny as she ought to have been, trapped in the apartment with nobody there and nothing to do. Now, to be fair, in the past Lutece had entertained herself with several shady characters of the skateboarding persuasion and James had been forced to intercede more than once to encourage the seed of caution in his older-but-not-wiser sibling, but she had always spoken of that sort of thing.

Idly, the boy mused for a moment on the situation with Lutece. The most probable cause was that she had found someone to entertain her, which invariably meant a male of their species. However, the last James had observed, she had been quite literally all over Charlotte Abbott’s older brother, much to the distaste of no few Teppenpaws. From what James had gathered, there had been some sort of meaningless scandal with Oliver and Hannah Laurent and Lutece, but he had lacked the interest in the conversation that was really required to make sense of it. If sense could even be made of it. In James’s personal experience, such dramas rarely possessed any degree of rhyme or reason to them.

The sudden appearance of a person in front of his designated table caused James to depart from his musings and push his glasses up his nose once more, examining the person who had just appeared in front of him. “May I help you?” he enquired politely, closing his Calculus book but saving his position with the soft-tipped pencil he had been using.

0 James Anthony In his natural habitat 126 James Anthony 1 5

Marissa Stephenson

June 13, 2010 11:46 PM

More like my second home. by Marissa Stephenson

After two weeks at home, during which her primary goal in life had been to try to get along with Sage for Addison's sake, Marissa knew her only chance of surviving until the end of the week lay in the library.

She hadn't, of course, let herself completely go during the break. She had looked through her notes and textbooks some. She just hadn't done that enough. It was too easy to let herself pretend that she had found a way to stay home - and so never take a Charms class again - when she was there and surrounded by people who had never really seen her fail at anything. After so long, lying about what 'A' meant came even more easily than lying about what Sonora's purpose was to her friends. She still had trouble lying to herself, but there were enough other distractions - family thinking that she should start contemplating SATs and CLEPs "to keep open certain options," tensions among her friends, normal things like that - for her to ignore the guilt and the issue a lot of the time. Finding herself back at the academy and having trouble drying her hair again was like being woken up by an extra-large bucket of cold water to the face.

She was lucky enough to have a dorm room all to herself, so staying in to study was an option, but she found it was too easy to get distracted in there. There were always too many intriguing sounds from the commons and the other rooms, and too many novels and needlepoint projects and other forms of entertainment lying around, to break her concentration. The library put her in the proper frame of mind for a nice, all-day, attempt to cram the information she needed to not blow up the Charms room again back into her head.

With that goal on her mind and almost all of her textbooks slung over her back, the combined weight of them enough to disrupt her posture, Marissa walked into the stacks to see if she could find a table. This early in the semester, she didn't think she really had to worry about too many people hitting the books, but she had never thought she'd be in a position to think she was going to need to ask her Head of House for extra help - or perhaps just a place to vent the coach had said they could talk to her - just to get through tenth grade. Things happened, and magic school was hard. Before she saw an empty table, though, Marissa saw a table already occupied by James Anthony and paused.

He had, she knew, offered tutoring for a while, but she had never gotten quite desperate enough to make any real inquiries into the matter. She also had yet to learn if the offer was still on the table. She didn't like to do it, but if he could keep her from at least regressing from the hair of progress she'd made during the fall...Well, the absolute worst that could happen would him agreeing to help her, the news getting out, and people who thought she was at least a book-smart person losing that opinion, which she could then restore by putting a little extra time, derived from...some-currently-indefinable-where, into preparing for the Potions debate classes. Putting her shoulders back, she walked over before her pride could wriggle out from under the new boots she'd used to stomp on it.

Marissa smiled automatically when addressed and shifted the weight of the bag on her shoulder. "Maybe," she said. "I - um - remembered that you used to have a tutoring sign on your table last year, and that you seem really smart in general - " so that might seem weird, but she really had no idea how not to notice who did well in a classroom, and a little flattery seldom hurt - "and I could really use some help reviewing for Charms if you aren't too busy." Which he appeared to be; that looked like a very big textbook. "I can go away if you are," she added quickly.

16 Marissa Stephenson More like my second home. 147 Marissa Stephenson 0 5