Having a mood. on Teppenpaw Commons

Joe Umland

May 12, 2018 7:37 PM

Having a mood. by Joe Umland

A key point in the ethics of using long-effect brain-altering potions, wrote Joe, and glanced at the stack of little leaves which contained his notes and sketches of a structure for the essay, all accumulated in preparation for sitting down to write smooth sentences. As he did this, his hand kept moving, and he was startled to look back at the paper and see he had just inscribed the words is nothing.

Well, that wasn’t right.

Even if it felt rather true at the moment.

Felt – but wasn’t. Of course.

He took out his wand and used it to clean the inappropriate words off his final draft, as he hated to hand in pages with words struck out or which were in any other way less than perfectly clean copies. This was the same reason he kept a ruled sheet behind his parchments, to ensure the lines of his text were almost perfectly straight, and why he kept a comb in his bag during the day, to ensure his hair was in place, that there was nothing untidy about him whatsoever. He cleaned off the inappropriate words, loaded his quill with ink, glanced at his notes again as he did, composed the rest of the sentence in his head…and then sat there, watching the ink drip onto the page and spread into a magnificent blot with focused interest, his sentence – and, indeed, the rest of his assignment, completely forgotten.

After a moment he blinked, saw the spot, and made a noise of disgust. Noticing too that he had not put his wand away yet, he cleaned away the blot and then closed his book over the partially written essay and notes for the rest of it. He didn’t feel as though he could stand to look at it any longer, and clearly there was no real point to doing so, so he might as well put it away. Even if he didn’t really have a clear plan for what to do next.

There were a million things he might have done – he could have done other homework, for instance, or read a book, or practiced Quidditch maneuvers, or written letters, or started a conversation with someone, or started teaching himself German, or whatever – but the problem was that he didn’t want to do any of them. He didn’t want to sit in this chair, looking at the ceiling. He didn’t want to go to sleep, either. He didn’t want to do a damn thing. His bones felt full of lead, and so he took the path of least resistance, which was to continue sitting, looking across the room at nothing in particular.

16 Joe Umland Having a mood. 329 Joe Umland 1 5

Georgia Kirkly

May 26, 2018 10:02 AM

Have it facing in a different direction by Georgia Kirkly

Zevalyn had a date for the ball. And apparently not just a convenience date or a friend date. Like, she seemed pretty convinced it was an actual date. With Kir. Who was, apparently, less gay than previously assumed. And was into Zev. Not that she could blame him, and not that she really wanted Kir to be into her. She wasn’t into him. Although who knew whether she would have been if she had thought he was available for being into. She had only known he was an option when he was being snapped up. And Zev had been totally nice about it, and had checked with her first, and of course she wasn’t going to say that Zev couldn’t ask him when they seemed to really like each other, and when she was pretty sure that she wouldn’t have liked Kir that way even if she had known he liked girls, but… But Zev had a real date, and she still hadn’t even asked anyone to get through the horror of the prefect dance with her. It would have just been nice…

She was mulling over this, instead of her Charms homework, when she felt the prickle on the back of her neck. It was probably just paranoia on her part, but she would swear it was because she could actually feel people when they stared at her, and this time was a win for confirmation bias, as she looked up and found Joe staring at her. A line in one of her teen magazines had said that if a guy was staring at you, it meant he liked you. This seemed sort of obvious. Although she was sure that she’d read in a different edition of the same magazine that a guy avoiding you completely meant he liked you. Not that she really thought Joe would like her like that. That… just didn’t seem likely. And anyway, Joe looked more like he’d been hit in the head with a brick a couple of times. He was just… kinda vacant. She tried to dismiss it and return to her work but she’d really been lacking focus to begin with, and she only managed a few minutes of pretending to concentrate before looking up again, to find him still staring. Telling herself that he wasn’t staring at her as such didn’t help, because if that was the case, he could just stare somewhere else - anywhere else. She kinda wanted to yell something across the room to snap him out of it, but she wasn’t a big fan of calling negative attention to herself or anyone else, so instead she just scribbled ‘Earth to Joe’ on a piece of paper and flicked it towards him with her wand. She had executed this before wondering whether he had enough Muggle background to understand this reference. Oh well, too late if he didn’t.

13 Georgia Kirkly Have it facing in a different direction 346 Georgia Kirkly 0 5

Joe Umland

June 03, 2018 2:01 PM

I should really try to snap out of it altogether. by Joe Umland

Joe did not even realize precisely how out of touch with his surroundings he was until a piece of paper flew into his lap and bounced off his hand. He jumped, blinked repeatedly, and then realized it was a note, not a random piece of paper thrown at him for...no apparent reason.

Well. This was intriguing. The two Teppenpaws - well, frankly, with all his siblings out of school, people - Joe spent the most time with were Jozua and Raine, and he thought they would both just...come over and say what they wanted to say, if they had something they wished to communicate to him. Was he in the middle of attempts to pass love-notes between two people with no relation whatsoever to him? Was Jozua cooking up a conspiracy of some kind (for one thing it was difficult to imagine Raine conspiring, for another...well, writing wasn’t Raine’s favorite way to do anything)? Was someone trying to set him up for something? This was an unusually interesting turn of events - at least until he examined the contents.

Earth to Joe.

Well. This was slightly embarrassing. Joe felt himself color and rubbed his eyes before getting an idea and taking up his abandoned pen. He had to clean dried ink off it before he could use it, but once it was first clean and then inked again, he wrote, beneath the message.

Copy that, Earth.

This, with the aid of vague memories of the other boys’ talk and interests from his long-gone days as a Scout back home, done, he took his own wand and murmured a charm to return the paper to sender - who turned out to be Georgia Kirkly. Oh, drat - he must have been appearing to stare at her. Well, that was awkward enough….

He summoned the resolve to get out of his chair, however slow and uninviting the process still felt, and follow the path of the note back to its originator. “Hi,” he said, summoning up a smile. “Sorry - “ curse it, his accent had slipped - “about that - I was - woolgathering. Too much homework, you know? Sorry - “ this time he was more careful with his vowels, so as not to sound Dreadfully Canadian - “I bothered you.”

16 Joe Umland I should really try to snap out of it altogether. 329 Joe Umland 0 5

Georgia

June 05, 2018 8:11 AM

That works too by Georgia

Joe snapped out of it on getting her note and Georgia pretended to return to her Charms essay, because she didn’t want to get caught staring right back. And because, now that she wasn’t being stared at, there were no more distractions. Except for surreptitiously watching Joe to see how he reacted, which was definitely far more interesting than her work. He seemed to just be looking a bit awkward and then returning to his work though, and Georgia actually made an effort to read the sentence she had read about three times already, only with a vow to concentrate enough this time to actually notice what it said. She was trying to work on Professor Wright’s essay about mood charms vs mood potions, and which was more effective. These were to be argumentative essays with sources. The trouble was, the source material just seemed to waffle on without reaching any real conclusions, and the Potions textbooks only gave passing mention to the Charms, and vice versa. Did she need like… a medical textbook or something to find the answer to this? She wondered if it was cheating to ask the Healer. Did the healer even do this sort of thing, or were there like… Mind Wizards? She had never known much about the Muggle equivalents, only the stereotype of being stretched out on a couch, telling someone about your father and how he had caused all of your issues, and that they went around diagnosing ‘too many’ kids with ADHD and handing out Ritalin like it was candy. She wondered whether she had ADHD. She definitely couldn’t concentrate. What was the difference, she wondered, between ADHD and just… disliking homework?

She was pondering this when her piece of parchment returned, with the words ’Copy that, Earth, on it. She looked up, amused and relieved that Joe had got the reference, expecting to exchange a smile or something and then both go back to being tormented by their essays. Joe though, after a moment, made his way over to her instead.

She was a bit surprised by his apology, both because it sounded literally kinda odd the first time he said the word, but also because an apology didn’t really seem necessary to her. They all spaced out sometimes, and she knew he hadn’t meant anything by it. But she supposed that was part of being the house of friendly co-operation. And, she remembered, Joe was Canadian. Which explained both the odd pronunciation and the over apologising. Wow - Canadian and Teppenpaw. He was probably doomed to perpetual overpoliteness. Although, she wondered, did Canadians just always end up in Tepp? Was there any such thing as a non-Teppenpawish Canadian?

“It’s ok,” she assured him, “I guessed that, more or less. And trust me, Professor Wright’s demands for sources are bothering me a lot more than you did,” she smiled. “I’m not even going to ask what sixth year homework entails. Though it surely can’t be anything too important, because we’ve been roundly assured that the CATS are the absolute defining moment of our lives. They’re not lying to us, are they?” she asked in a tone of mock scandal.

13 Georgia That works too 346 Georgia 0 5

Joe

June 05, 2018 3:31 PM

Excellent. by Joe

Joe bit his lip and looked back and forth, as though checking for listeners. “Don’t quote me on this - and maybe they don’t even know it - “ he began in a lowered voice - “but I’ve seen a few cases where it really wasn’t.”

Julian, after all, could have as easily quit school for all the good it had done her, that Joe could see - most of the stuff she actually needed to know involved maths - but she was doing pretty well for herself. John, the sibling everyone had always clucked over about how he could do anything he wanted with his life, did use his education - one of his financial aid jobs involved the tutoring center, about which he wrote surprisingly hilarious letters which Joe was nevertheless sometimes wary about keeping, as he was afraid some of the more animated passages might look really bad if John ever ended up on trial for...anything - but it was impossible to claim that he was the best off of them at this point. Only their eldest brother, Stephen, followed the normal progression; Paul, as a Squib, hadn’t had a magical education and therefore was not very useful for purposes of comparison.

He straightened up from how he had leaned slightly forward to impart this bombshell to Georgia and relaxed into a more normal posture and tone of voice. “Sixth year’s not really that much worse, though,” he assured. “And you’re not the bottom of the prefect heap anymore, either, so you don’t have the rest of us passing off stuff we’d rather not to do to you all the time,” he joked. “What’s Wright got you working on?”

16 Joe Excellent. 329 Joe 0 5

Georgia

June 07, 2018 8:03 AM

Yeah. So do you wanna.... help with this assignment? by Georgia

“Darn…. That somehow doesn’t give me the liberating feeling I thought it might that I can screw up without it mattering too much. It just feels like I have to do well on this and then keep not screwing up for the next thing and the next… Maybe forever. Is that what being an adult is, d’you reckon?

“Haha. Fear me Kir or Gwen, for I shall rule you,” she grinned, when Joe joked about her not being the bottom of the prefect heap any more. Although if it was Kir, he could probably get Zev to abuse her power right back and get him out of whatever it was. Seeing as they were going to the ball together. Which was a good segue into that whole topic. Which she really should discuss with Joe. Who was now, conveniently, right here. “Or am I meant to like… pick on the fifth years from other houses as first choice?” she asked. “And how, exactly, does one get vicious and bossy as a Teppenpaw?” she continued. In truth, the other prefects hadn’t made her life miserable (as far as she knew, anyway). The only thing making her miserable about being prefect was the ball (and supervisory responsibility for Jozua, but that was, seemingly, over). The ball, which Joe also was needing to sort a partner for, also being a prefect – maybe, unless he was already going with his (girl)friend. He spent a lot of time with Raine, and she was the kind of girl guys liked. Skinny. Wore sexy stuff. He was probably going with her. Although Georgia wouldn’t know for sure unless she asked, of course…

“Mood charms vs mood potions. Which is better, and why. And someone more important than me has to think so. Any hints?”

13 Georgia Yeah. So do you wanna.... help with this assignment? 346 Georgia 0 5

Joe

June 07, 2018 1:55 PM

That, and possibly a bit more. by Joe

“Actually I think it can be either that or a lot of screwing things up and then hoping nobody notices, but your way is probably better if you can pull it off,” observed Joe after Georgia hypothesized about adulthood. His two oldest brothers seemed to have done what Georgia suggested; his last brother and his sister - well, Joe felt they were taking the other path, anyway. This was why the calls home at Christmas had been so destabilizing to him - it had been a shock to see that the family’s re-convention for the holidays seemed to have been going smoothly without him. Admittedly they would all put a brave face on it for those few minutes even if they were really at each other’s throats, but Julian could never resist backhanded remarks when she was in those moods and John was no better, just worse at hiding his feelings and concealing the point from people outside the quarrel….

Joe grinned back at the joke about ruling over Kir or Gwen, but shook his head when Georgia asked how one became vicious and bossy as a Teppenpaw. “No, no, no, that’s not how you do it,” he said, still grinning. “Leave that stuff to the Aladrens and Pecaris - we’re civilized. You can get a lot more done with a lot less angry people when you phrase it politely and they don’t realize you’re ordering them around, you see,” he added in a parody of a schoolteacher’s tone. “Or so I’ve read, anyway - “ he added. “It doesn’t really work for me that often.”

He nodded to the description of the assignment. “Ah, one of the classics. Charms act faster and you don’t have to worry so much about stuff like allergic reactions, so I’d go with them. One of the main counter-arguments there is that it’s easier to control the - dose, more or less, with a potion - you can answer that by pointing out that potions can be badly brewed or expire, too. Plus, if - I don’t know - you were in a situation where you were in healthcare and you had a patient who wasn’t cooperating, it’s easier to make them do what they need to do with charms than to pour something down their throats - though you’d - if you use that line, you have to address the counter-argument that it’s also easier to affect people unwillingly for no good reason - if you’re the sort who likes messing with people. I almost forgot to talk about that one when I did that paper. Sourcing - I remember I used the chart in the front of the book, you know, the one about guidelines for how long to keep commonly-stocked potions ingredients? Used that to support a counter-argument - it’s not so much finding someone who says what you want to say as finding facts and saying what you think they mean, then if you can throwing another quote that doesn’t disagree in to back it up.”

He realized he had just said all that in enough of a monotone to Sound Like John, at least a bit, and smiled again in hopes of distracting her more than anything. “And yes, I am sure I’m not an Aladren sneaking into the wrong common room - My mom really, really pushes essay-writing,” he admitted, by way of explanation. “She has a literature degree, so she pretty much has professional training in making facts dance until they get dizzy to impress professors.”

16 Joe That, and possibly a bit more. 329 Joe 0 5

Georgia

June 10, 2018 1:25 AM

You're really not helping much with the 'more' by Georgia

“Ooh, how about screwing up but then bluffing your way through it? I guess there’s also ‘trying to pass the blame’ but that doesn’t work so well when you’re an only child so I’ve never had much practice.

“Right. We ask nicely. And let me guess… Aladrens argue with us why we should, Crotali expect us to see why they shouldn’t have to and Pecaris are just… gone before you’ve had a chance to answer yes or no?” she joked.

“Thanks, that’s a huge help,” she smiled at Joe, as he gave her… basically what sounded like enough information to write her whole paper, so long as she got decently rambly about all the points involved. The medical example also opened up a chance to rehash some of last year’s points on ethics. If she could find her essay from last year. She knew it was amongst all her stuff somewhere, but she didn’t exactly have the best filing system for her notes. She was pretty sure forcing charms or potions on people against their will was deemed a bad thing, although she guessed if someone was a danger to themselves or others, it was justified, and in that situation, using wand magic was easier. If one took ‘homicidal rampage’ to be a mood and ‘knocking the person the heck out’ to be mood-altering, then that could kind of fly…

“That sounds useful,” she commented when he mentioned his mom’s ability to help with their essays. Her parents weren’t stupid but they definitely weren’t academic, and it wasn’t like her dad even understood the topics she was writing about most of the time, so she didn’t exactly write them about her studies. They’d helped her with all her homework when she was in elementary school but she couldn’t help but feel that learning her times tables and bringing in two objects that float and two that sink and writing about her perfect desert island and all that kind of stuff had exactly set her up for the kind of work she was doing right now.

“I guess I should let you get back to your homework,” she added, kicking herself even as she said it. She had had several perfect opportunities to bring up the prefect dance and she hadn’t done it. And now he was going to go and-

“Is your girlfriend looking forward to the ball?” she asked, “Raine. I mean - is she your- are you going together?”

And of course, instead of taking any of the obvious points at which she could have brought it up, she was now blurting out crap instead. Sometimes she wondered how she’d wound up in the house of tact and diplomacy.

13 Georgia You're really not helping much with the 'more' 346 Georgia 0 5

Joe

June 11, 2018 5:54 PM

You can only expect so much of mere mortals. by Joe

“Siblings do help,” agreed Joe when Georgia explained why passing the blame didn’t often work for her. “Of course, with mine, it usually was John’s fault, or Paul’s, so I didn’t so much have to pass the blame as decide whether or not I would take one for the team.”

The approval and gratitude of one’s older siblings was a heady thing, after all, when one was seven or eight - and, besides, the youngest, able to charm his way out of most punishment. What would have been disrespect in one of the older ones was sometimes indulgently passed off as precociousness in him. Not much - his parents weren’t like that - but sometimes, just as John sometimes got away with things on the implicit understanding (somewhat incorrect - but even Joe and the others couldn’t say for sure when it was the case and when not, so how should Mom and Dad do so?) that he couldn’t help it - that the undesired behavior had been the result of some defect of nature, not deliberate willfulness.

“Yeah, something like that,” said Joe. “Though on the bright side, that makes it really easy to ignore the Pecaris.”

Joe tipped an imaginary hat to Georgia when she thanked him for outlining her essay for her. “Any time,” he said. He and John typically disagreed sharply on matters related to school, but Joe did agree with his brother on the subject of class essays - after someone mastered the basics of rhetorical writing, they were basically useless, their function equally well but more quickly filled by taking notes. Extra effort was needed for theory essays, but ethics just required a little flowery wording. He nodded to the comment about his mother. “She’s the best,” he agreed.

”I guess I should let you get back to your homework,” said Georgia, and Joe took that as a hint that he had overstayed his welcome. Rising, he was therefore surprised to hear her suddenly babbling about his (nonexistent) girlfriend.

“No,” he said when this rounded off in a question. “Raine - well, I thought of it, but she doesn’t like the whole prefect dance idea, so - “ Joe shrugged, realizing it had been a long time since he had even thought about the prefect dance, or the Ball at all. In all the hubbub of everyone being ill and keeping up with his studies and writing back and forth home and obsessing over his family’s ability to function without him at Christmas, the event had simply fallen off his internal radar. “How about you?” he asked.

16 Joe You can only expect so much of mere mortals. 329 Joe 0 5

Georgia

June 12, 2018 7:01 AM

Worst case scenario... by Georgia

He wasn’t going with Raine. She supposed that should technically count as good news. But clearly he had wanted to. This hadn’t exactly been a scenario Georgia had pictured herself dealing with. She had always imagined it to be a much more cut and dry kind of thing. Obviously Joe still had to do the prefect dance with someone. It wasn’t as if being rejected by the one person he wanted to go with meant he just wasn’t going to go on a date. Or, rather, not have a partner for the dance. Whoever she did the dance with, she was pretty sure it was going to be Not A Date. But anyway, it made the whole situation messy and awkward. Which made actually asking even worse than she had thought it would be. Ok, admittedly not as bad as some of her own worst case scenarios, but… She had pictured seriously romantic scenarios, with someone actually turning out to like her. Occasionally this was- a certain real boy from Sonora (she was not saying who!), but more often an imaginary transfer student who looked not unlike the hero of some teen dramas she’d watched over the summer who showed up and inexplicably liked her. She had known it was one hundred percent unrealistic but it had been fun to indulge. Her solid middle ground, where she had expected to find herself, had involved just… making a practical arrangement with someone who was as ambivalent towards the whole thing as she was. It looked like her best option was currently practical arrangement with someone who was going to be wishing they were there with someone else.

“Sorry. Sucks you can’t go with the person you wanted,” she sympathised. “Uh… no,” she admitted, when he turned the question back on her. “No, I- I mean. Guys-” what was she going to blame it on? Not being Pureblood or being fat? Both were probably equal reasons why no one was asking her out, but Joe was probably well aware enough of them without her pointing them out. Why hadn’t she stopped at just ‘No’ which answered the question perfectly well? Why did she always have to keep opening her mouth to start sentences only to find she had no idea how to finish them and end up blathering like an idiot? “I don’t,” she finished, deciding to just cut herself off, although she was pretty sure she was bright red not only due to the fact that she was always rambling but also having to admit that no one wanted to go out with her, and also the fact that she probably looked completely obvious and desperate to Joe now, and even though she did want him to ask her, she really had hoped to get there without seeming as pathetic as she actually was. At least she could cling to the fact that she hadn’t actually asked, and he could just… leave if he wanted and hopefully not mention it to everyone. Because the fact that he hadn’t laughed in her face, or got the whole school to laugh at her, was about all that was currently separating this from her worst case scenario.

13 Georgia Worst case scenario... 346 Georgia 0 5

Joe

June 27, 2018 11:30 PM

...Is impossible - there are no aliens at this one. by Joe

Joe honestly didn’t know if he’d really wanted to go to the Ball with Raine – it was all complicated, as were most things involving non-familial female people these days, the one curious exception being Lenore Crowley – but this, he knew, was something that would be Inappropriate to discuss with Georgia Kirkly. In fact, by his own standards it was pretty darn inappropriate to discuss with anyone – but especially a girl. He’d be lucky if she didn’t hex him on the spot for broaching the tenth part of the subject. So instead he smiled.

“Thanks - I’m sure I’ll survive somehow.”

It occurred to him that it was possible other people took these matters rather more seriously than he did when Georgia began stammering about ‘guys’ and turning red. He flushed in reaction - partially out of sympathy and partially embarrassment for having fumbled conversing so badly - but not nearly as much as she did.

There was, he realized, really only one gentlemanly thing to do - and it was even a practical one, too, so he really had no excuse.

“Well,” said Joe, “in that case - since it turns out we both don’t have any prior commitments - would you do me the honor of accompanying me to the Midsummer Ball, Miss Kirkly?”

16 Joe ...Is impossible - there are no aliens at this one. 329 Joe 0 5

Georgia

June 29, 2018 8:11 AM

There is still a plague though by Georgia

She wasn’t sure whether he really meant his first remark. Well, ok, she was pretty sure he would survive. But he seemed to brush the thing off so casually, and she wasn’t sure if that was real. Hadn’t he wanted to go with Raine? He seemed kinda ambivalent. Or he was just putting on a brave face because discussing his tragic love life with a fat fifth year he barely knew was probably not high on his list of social goals for the year. It was surprisingly difficult to say which it was. Maybe it was the accent? Canadians did manage to make everything sound just slightly off.

Joe’s second comment amused her though. He sounded so serious and earnest. Almost like some fancy Pureblood boy. As he asked her to basically be his convenience date, because the girl he really liked (maybe) had turned him down. And the thing was, even though she knew she was a back up, even though she knew he was being deliberately silly because the whole situation was kinda ridiculous… it was still kinda nice. To hear someone talk about her doing the honour of accompanying them. Even if it was pretend fancy, it still felt fancy to her. Like when you put on a cheap ass tiara full of rhinestones - she’d never had, and probably never would have the real thing, and the cheap fake could still make you feel good because heck, you still looked more fabulous than when you had nothing at all.

“How flattering of your to ask, Mr. Umland,” she replied, a smile playing about her lips. A small part of her nagged, saying that he was using such a jokey style because it was her, not because of the situation, and that that made her the butt of his joke rather than a collaborator. But she tried to ignore it. And, even if it held a grain of truth, maybe playing along, being a good sport, was enough to get her through without being humiliated. “I would curtsey, but I appear to be wearing jeans. However, I would be most pleased to accompany you. I mean…” she shrugged, breaking character, “we do both have to do the prefect dance, after all,” she reasoned, wanting to… justify herself somehow.

13 Georgia There is still a plague though 346 Georgia 0 5

Joe

June 29, 2018 8:15 PM

I’ll take my chances. by Joe

Georgia was, it had to be said, not his type physically – at least to the extent he was aware of having one. If he was quite honest, the things that popped to mind when he thought of specifics were a) at school, at least, Raine’s ability to do things that hurt the laws of physics and b) the exact moment he had realized that Joanie Murphy knew what he was, and that he would always have to be a little unsure of her – of what she meant and what she wanted and whether or not anything she said was true at all – forever. Perhaps it was unkind of him, but somehow, he found it hard to imagine Georgia touching her heels to her own forehead or deliberately getting involved in something wildly illegal.

Of course, that wasn’t to say that was a bad thing – particularly the last thing. He didn’t have to worry about near occasions of sin that involved imagining Georgia as an exotic dancer or that frankly disturbed him to realize he had also kind of like imagining if he thought too much about them, like continuing the imagining into the part where the dancer was also dangerous, or at least out to rob him. Overall, not being able to imagine Georgia doing anything he would not want to admit to imagining her doing might be a very good thing indeed, especially for purposes of the prefect dance. He was already at some risk of making a fool of himself there, so better not to have any distractions, just someone who seemed to have a sense of humor and not be bad company, when teacups weren’t yelling rude things about her at him.

Joe was surprised by the sudden shift in her demeanor, from playing along to being very…practical. Well, that probably wasn’t good. “That’s true,” he said, more normally, too. “I – er – I appreciate the favor – of course I understand if you’d rather spend the rest of the evening with someone else – I’ll owe you one, yeah?”

That wasn’t the right way to conclude the conversation – he suspected, in fact, that it was a rather bad one. It was, in fact, awkward as hell, talking as though he was borrowing her Potions notes, or working out some kind of business. Was this how purebloods felt when they got married? If so, he’d never been so glad to have a background probably rich in genetic diversity and definitely lean on wealth and power.

16 Joe I’ll take my chances. 329 Joe 0 5

Georgia

June 29, 2018 10:30 PM

Ooh, did you know.... by Georgia

(OOC - CW: Georgia’s views are deliberately a little bit blinkered and heteronormative, along with the language she uses, cos she’s a straight, sheltered teenage girl).

This definitely could be worse. She could be dateless or being laughed at - those had been two solid possibilities as of five minutes ago, and whilst she wasn’t ruling out the latter happening at any point in the scenario (her trying to look attractive in a ball dress, her trying to dance - both had serious potential for awfulness) things were surely moving in the right direction. She had a date. And Joe was really pretty cute. At home, he might have even been considered out of her league, but here there were lots of other things at play - he was on the bottom of the blood status heap, like she was. But still, he was a cute social outcast. And he was funny. And nice. Whenever they talked, she seemed to have an okay time with him…

“Yeah well- I mean, same to you,” she nodded, when he agreed to the very practical terms of their not-a-date. She hadn’t really expected much beyond the prefect dance, of course. She didn’t expect Joe to really want to hang out with her the rest of the evening, although she wasn’t exactly sure who she would hang out with, seeing as Zev would be there on an actual date (were she and Kir going to be making out in the corner? She was happy for her friend but she didn’t need to see that). Although was Joe going to find himself in a similar position? Who were the rest of his friends, and were they going to be on dates? “I guess we can see how it goes. How coupled up everyone else is,” she added. She didn’t really want Joe to ditch her straight after the prefect dance on the assumption that she had someone else she’d rather hang out with because she really, really didn’t. But nor did she want him to feel obliged to awkwardly stick with her the whole night just cos she didn’t have a lot of friends. That wasn’t exactly his problem.

“Did you know Kir’s not gay?” she asked, before she could help it, her mouth just tending to follow wherever her mind had gone most of the time, and especially when it involved talking about other people. Although after finding out about Kir, she had resolved to not gossip so much, seeing as she’d clearly spread false information the last time. But…. surely being not gay wasn’t gossip? It was like opposite. Someone being gay was news, whereas someone being straight was just… well… what everyone expected. She was righting the wrong she’d done in telling people he was, or in what other people were probably also assuming given how many Pride t-shirts and rainbows he wore (she still didn’t really get why he did that). And everyone was talking about who was going with who to the ball. It was… news. Or beneficial public information. “He’s going with Zevalyn.”

13 Georgia Ooh, did you know.... 346 Georgia 0 5

Joe

June 29, 2018 11:15 PM

I did not, thanks for saying by Joe

People coupling up. People did that, didn’t they? Joe had never really thought about it, but of course people would do that – the fact that the Ball was seared into his memory as a source of fraternal humiliation did not change the fact that other people, it wasn’t just an evening of sitting around trying not to mess up one’s best clothes while wishing to commit fratricide….

“Right,” he said, still feeling horribly awkward. “That’s the plan, then – I guess we’ll meet up here? Seems logical.” He thought about making a joke about picking her up at seven, but since this was physically impossible because of the stairs charms and she was being practical, he thought he had probably better just continue being practical.

His efforts to remain practical did not matter for very long, though. Wait, what were they talking about? What did Kir McLeod have to do with anything at all, much less whether or not Kir was gay? Why would Joe care about –

Oh. Oh, God. She thought – oh, no. She couldn’t think that.

“Good for him, I guess?” said Joe, not sure what to say to that. “Er – definitely for going with Zevalyn, if that’s what they want to do – I meant, good for him he knows he isn’t gay, if he isn’t gay?” This was so not something he knew how to talk about. It had never occurred to him to note another dude as particularly attractive – that girls sometimes did find guys attractive was one of the many things that made women weird in his book. “I’m also not gay,” he volunteered, in case she was fishing for information somehow.

16 Joe I did not, thanks for saying 329 Joe 0 5

Georgia

June 30, 2018 12:02 AM

Is this information.... useful to you? by Georgia

“Right, sounds good,” she nodded. \r\n

\r\nShe really should not have said anything about Kir, because Joe was rambling and she’d clearly made him uncomfortable, although she wasn’t sure why. Maybe he wasn’t really comfortable talking about gay people - not that Kir was gay. She supposed guys could be kind of weird about the possibility of guys being attracted to them. And then he was telling her that he was also not gay. \r\n

\r\n“Uh. Right. Okay,” she nodded, clearly a bit bemused by the unnecessary info dump. It was just a weird thing to come out with, and really not relevant unless-\r\n

\r\nOh. \r\n

\r\nWas he…? But he’d talked about wanting to go to the ball with Raine. Had that just been a cover? Why else would he make a point of telling her he wasn’t gay when she really hadn’t been asking that? \r\n

\r\n“I have nothing against gay people,” she added hastily, wondering if that was what Joe had thought and why it’d made him uncomfortable. She could see why it would, even if he wasn’t gay, because homophobia was just nasty in general and this was Teppenpaw where people were just meant to… not be buttholes to each other. So maybe it was just that. And she didn’t want him to think that she was homophobic, even if he wasn’t gay. But especially not if he actually was. \r\n

13 Georgia Is this information.... useful to you? 346 Georgia 0 5

Joe

June 30, 2018 7:21 PM

No, thanking and apologizing are just a cultural thing. by Joe

“That’s good of you,” said Joe when Georgia defended herself against an accusation of homophobia which he hadn’t actually made. “It’s usually best just to leave people’s private lives to them.” God knew that no-one but him, God, and Joanie were ever going to know that he’d tried to kiss her in a moment of temporary insanity, and even if he’d been attracted to some nice Catholic girl in a nice normal Catholic way and they had had a very proper, polite Catholic relationship, he didn’t think he’d have cared to get into the details with - well, anyone, really.

Though, now that he thought of it…

“Though I guess that can lead to misunderstandings,” he said, back to speaking smoothly and focusing all his attention on the person he was speaking to, specifically Georgia. “Did you want to go to the Ball with Kir, but think he wouldn’t be interested?” he asked sympathetically.

Which was code, of course, for whether or not she had wanted to go with Zevalyn and had been surprised by Zevalyn going with a boy - or at least horribly disappointed. All of John’s furious rants about how difficult politeness made figuring out what the hell was going on were totally valid, as this conversation demonstrated, but Joe didn’t think he’d ever just be able to ask someone are you trying to tell me you’re a lesbian? At least not in this context, anyway, of a polite conversation in the Common Room where he was absolutely certain - well, pretty certain, anyway - that there was no chance she was trying to seduce him. He was just sort of...here, as she was, and they had a mutual problem.

16 Joe No, thanking and apologizing are just a cultural thing. 329 Joe 0 5