(Professor Xavier's office) Post holiday catch up on Teppenpaw Commons

Cleo James

September 05, 2017 6:37 AM

(Professor Xavier's office) Post holiday catch up by Cleo James

Cleo made her way to Professor Xavier's office. He was easily her favourite person at Sonora. She imagined that this was what it was like to have a favourite, friendly uncle, although as her daddy was an only child and her mother a mystery, she didn't have any real uncles - friendly or otherwise - to base this assessment on. Still, he made Sonora feel a lot more like home, whilst obviously not coming anywhere close to replacing her real parent. Daddy had been very keen to meet Professor Xavier after the concert last year, as Cleo had told him so much about the man - something she had happily done. She judged the meeting to have gone well - daddy had said something like 'So, you're the famous Professor Xavier, who my Cleo spends such a lot of time with,' and had smiled and shaken Professor Xavier's hand. She hadn't noticed her daddy's smile not reaching his eyes, or picked up the slight note of jealousy - or was it suspicion, or both? - with which he'd regarded the teacher.

She knocked on the professor's door, and politely checked whether he wasn't too busy to talk before settling into the chair opposite him. Her hair, which grew rather rapidly during the term and had been reaching past her shoulders before the holidays, had been clipped back to what she regarded as its usual length, just brushing the middle of her ears, and only just long enough to tuck behind them, from where it made frequent escapes.

"How was your summer, Professor?" she asked brightly. Cleo spent a lot of time doing extra work around the gardens and the greenhouses, during which she always chatted happily to the Professor whenever he was also around. As such, it was probably rather difficult for him to determine whether this question was polite small talk or the main purpose of her visit.

OOC - assumptions approved by Professor Xavier's author

13 Cleo James (Professor Xavier's office) Post holiday catch up 389 Cleo James 1 5

Nathan Xavier

September 14, 2017 11:36 AM

Start of term madness break by Nathan Xavier

Nathan had just sat down. He closed his eyes and looked up at his ceiling. The beginning of term was always the hardest. Settling in, new names to learn, overcoming the inertia of a long summer break, start of term paperwork, graduated students to miss, organization to revive, elves to calm down . . . It was nice to just sit and do nothing for a little bit.

Unfortunately, he hadn't been at it long before a knock came at his door. "Come in!" he called, sitting up straighter. As the hallway door swung open, he registered that, yes, the knock had come from that direction, rather than the side leading down to the Teppenpaw common room.

"Oh, hi, Cleo," he greeted her warmly as she entered, and slouched back down a bit, not as far down as he had been when the knock came, but enough to be comfortable and relaxed. "Welcome back."

"No, no," he assured her, "I'm just taking a little break actually. Take a seat," he invited. She did, and asked after his summer before he could do the same to her.

He tried not to play favorites with the students, but if put under veritaserum, he was pretty sure he could be made to say that he was a bit more fond of Cleo than most of the other non-Teppenpaws in the school. With her voluntary assistance to him with the gardens, he considered her one of his own.

He hadn't missed the slightly suspicious look her her father's eyes when they met at the concert and mentioned the amount of time his daughter had reported spending with him. He'd tried to be reassuring, and had been sure to mention that there were always elves about as well, and reiterated how promising a gardener and herbologist Cleo was already. Parents always liked hearing their children were doing well in school, right? He'd also brought up his nephews and compared the student body as a whole to them, with the intent to show the worried father that while Nathan was quite fond of Cleo and the other students he worked with, it was a supportive and building care, genuine and familial. The kind children needed when they were apart from their parents for so much of the time.

"I had a good summer," he answered, cheerfully, because this was the beginning of term, and she was probably missing her father, and while Nathan could never replace a parent, would never want to, he did understand the need to mitigate that absence. "Got a place on a lakeside beach this year. It was very nice." He'd definitely consider lakefront property for his retirement someday. And now that he had a professor's salary, and the Head of House bonus, he may even be able to afford it before he was a hundred.

"Did you have a good summer with your dad?"

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Cleo

September 18, 2017 4:05 AM

Glad I fit into that by Cleo

“That sounds nice. I bet it was really pretty there,” Cleo smiled. She found she had a slightly hard time picturing Professor Xavier by the lake. Would he fish, or sit reading a book? The only thing she could imagine him doing was walking around examining or tending to the plants, but presumably he didn’t spend all of his holidays focussed on that, although she was sure he had noticed the plant life around him. It was funny to try to think of teachers having real lives outside of school. Although she was curious, she felt a little bit shy to ask him too much about his holidays, because it seemed a bit too personal.

“Yes, it was great. Mostly, we were running the shop, but we did days out on some Sundays. We went to the zoo, and the Colorado Magibotanic Gardens. He even let me get a dancing cactus, just so long as I keep it in my room when I’m home. And my grandma and grandpa took me away for a week up in the mountains. We drove up in a car - a Muggle vehicle. It took a really long time but I liked it. You can look out of the windows and see all the scenery. You miss out on that with aparation or Floo,” Cleo explained. It was nice to just chat with Professor Xavier about the break, and she thought she might have been here doing just that anyway, but today she did have an extra reason to seek him out.

“I’ve also been thinking about starting a gardening club this year. But I wasn’t sure how. I mean, if we helped you out with things that needed doing, that would be useful, but it would mean you keep having to find things for us to do, and it might be a bit too much like lessons for you and for everyone in the club. Daddy said maybe there’d be a part of the gardens that doesn’t have much going on, and we could use it to plant what we want, and it would just be our responsibility to look after it, but I wasn’t sure if there was anywhere like that.”

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