An Owl for Anthony Carey VIII on Aladren Commons

Stan

January 06, 2015 5:35 PM

An Owl for Anthony Carey VIII by Stan

While the students were enjoying their feast on the first night back at Sonora, Stan was making his way to the Aladren common room. He only had one letter from Coach Olivers to deliver this year and the scruffy little owl took the opportunity to spread its wings after a humid summer in Chicago with Florence. His beady eyes were alert when he got to Aladren and he faithfully dropped the letter off onto Anthony Carey's desk before making his way back out with a hoot.

Anthony had been the Assistant Captain the year before, so the promotion most likely wouldn't be a surprise. Florence was glad that the Aladren team had always been able to come up with a full team of Quidditch players, a team usually dominated by Careys. Though she was only the current stand-in coach, she enjoyed coaching the sport a little better each year.

Captain Anthony Carey,

Congratulations, you have been promoted to Quidditch Captain. This year, you will be responsible for putting up signup sheets, holding tryouts, reserving the pitch for your team, and hosting practices throughout the year. You will, of course, have the help of an assistant captain. I would recommend Francesca Wolseithcrafte.

Francesca had been a core member of the Quidditch team for a long time. It was only right that she be given the title of Assistant.

If you would rather another assist you or don’t feel you can perform these duties as Captain, please owl me so I can make sure the right people get their badges before the season officially begins. You may tell your assistant of her promotion yourself. Congratulations and good luck.

Coach Florence Olivers

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Anthony Carey

January 09, 2015 10:24 PM

Sharing with Francesca Wolseithcrafte by Anthony Carey

When he had watched the Sorting Ceremony, Anthony had hoped, selfishly, that the younger North Carolina boy would be Sorted into Aladren. He didn’t know Andrew at all, was so distantly related to him that he didn’t think they would have even thought of each other as family if they hadn’t shared the same last name, but Andrew was a Carey and, because of the way things had fallen out, had been Anthony’s last hope of a family member on the team in his captaincy. It was silly, but he had always thought of the Aladren team as a family affair - he was the fourth Carey captain in the last decade, and the third of his grandfather’s grandsons - and it was a little sad to see that coming to an end.

Sooner or later, though, everything did. That was just a fact of life. When the owl dropped the letter off on Anthony’s desk, he got up to open it but was not at all surprised by its contents or unsure of what to do about them. Jay had taken the time to go over how and when to book the Pitch and post the sheet and everything with him before he’d left the year before, so now, all Anthony really had to do was follow directions, the first of which was to confirm with Francesca that she wanted to be Assistant Captain. He’d never heard of anyone turning a badge down - Arnold often told the story of how his old captain, David, had been both a complete madman and promoted from the reserves without even trying to sign up to be a real team member first, so someone who was committed, or at least had always been so, refusing where the crazy person hadn’t didn’t seem likely at all - but it did need to be confirmed.

The next time he saw her, then, he approached. “Francesca,” he said, to get her attention. “Good evening - could you spare me a minute of your time?”

He took the letter out of his pocket. “Professor Olivers wrote today,” he said, offering it to her. “Congratulations. Let me know if there are any practice times that are better for you than others, or anything you need." Anthony expected the next few weeks would have been more than a little stressful for her even if she hadn't just gotten a new responsibility, just because not many people, even in their academically-inclined House, started Advanced classes without getting stressed. Captain and Assistant Captain worked together so both of them finished the year as sane as possible - or he and Jay had, anyway, and he saw no reason not to continue with something close to that way. It had been easier with Jay because he was family, but he and Francesca had worked together on the Pitch long enough that he thought they should be able to work it out. "Assuming you accept?"

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Francesca

January 10, 2015 5:04 AM

Lucky me by Francesca

She was a sixth year now. All big and grown up, about to start her advanced classes, which had been carefully selected for on the basis of her well-thought out future plans. That knowledge - the knowledge of how she should have felt - added nothing more than further frustration to the fact that she was feeling frustrated. She was frustrated in and of itself, and frustrated with herself for feeling it when she shouldn’t have been. Here she was, a mature and responsible sixth year, and she had never felt more like a pathetic little child. She had enjoyed going to the ball with Jay. Her feelings weren’t something she was willing to put a bigger label on than ‘friendship’ but… She wanted that continue growing and now he was gone. He was off into the big wide world, probably meeting girls with vocabularies, world-views and chests much more impressively large than her own and she hated the thought of it. Two years wasn’t a big difference between… friends, but right now it seemed like the world. She was stuck here and he probably thought of her as a silly little school girl, if he thought much about her at all.

The situation with Ginny wasn’t helping either. She seemed to have made a grudging peace with them but one for which they had both had to grovel and in which she seemed willing to take none of the blame, in spite of having ignored them until they’d called her out on it. The ‘I don’t want to be your friend anymore,’ and ‘I’m not speaking to you’ tactics made her feel like she was six again, not in sixth year. All in all, she had never wanted less to return to Sonora.

When Anthony called her over one evening, she felt a little skip of excitement so fleeting it was barely possible for her to register it before rationality caught up and she guessed what he might want to talk to her about.

“I guess I’ll be doing dance club,” she said, sounding less convincing than she had meant to, “Which is Saturdays, two til three. I’m not sure what’s happening with book club but that was only once a month and I’m not that fussed….” It had been fun but she didn’t think she’d miss it if it wasn’t there. “Quidditch comes first. And yes,” she grinned, “I accept.” Francesca was not a naturally effusive person, and so the fact that she was maybe only ninety to ninety five percent happy about getting the badge probably wasn’t noticeable. It wasn’t that she didn’t want it or wasn’t excited. She was thrilled by it as a token of her team’s acceptance. She just wished they didn’t have to have lost other people for it to be her turn.

(OOC in case you didn’t see, both Anthony and Jay received summer correspondence on wts. You don’t need to reply but would be useful to know whether they would have).

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Anthony

January 19, 2015 12:44 AM

I'm sure there are worse people to be by Anthony

Dance club, possibly book club. Anthony smiled back when Francesca formally accepted the position. He and Francesca weren’t close, but they had Chased together for a long time, survived John - and restrained themselves from doing anything that might end in John not surviving them - last year, and she was the next-eldest, so he was glad she had accepted. He spent more time with her, after all, than with any of the others now that Jay was gone, and he thought it would have been uncomfortable for everyone if one of the fourth years had taken the position when she was right there. It might make people outside the Quidditch team more comfortable since Francesca was a girl, but he just didn’t think it would go over well with the rest of the team at all.

Though, it occurred to him that he didn’t know if...people like Clark and John had opinions on girls playing Quidditch. He assumed they would all strongly disagree about other areas of politics, but he couldn’t even confirm that. Even if he went insane and wanted to talk about politics one day, he didn’t think they would exactly be the guys he went to talk to. It didn’t really matter, though, and he thought he and the fourth years, at least, would be more comfortable with her as Assistant Captain, so he just nodded.

“Excellent,” he said. “I expect we’ll just replay last year, though Teppenpaw might make a team again - I’ve got some kind of cousin in there this year, though I don’t know him or if he plays. Do you think your sister will?” She and her brother both did, but there were outliers in every family. Henry didn’t play Quidditch by choice, after all, and Crotali and Teppenpaws were more likely to be the kind of people who didn’t appreciate the aggression of the game than Aladrens and Pecaris were.

OOC: Jay has replied, and now followed up with a congratulations note on the same post! IC, Anthony definitely replied to Effie; I’ll get to that if I can get him to be more cooperative. Sorry for all the delays, RL has been a little crazy.

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Francesca Wolseithcrafte

January 24, 2015 3:51 AM

Beleaguered Teppenpaws, for instance by Francesca Wolseithcrafte

“No,” Francesca answered very promptly, when Anthony asked if she thought Jemima would play. “There is a strong possibility that she is a pixie changeling child, as she’s a very girly girl,” she explained, “Not that she’s vapid or anything,” she added, feeling that the phrase, whilst it did summarise Jemima well, conjured up certain images that didn’t fit with her. “She’s bright enough, and very artisic but just… not the same as the rest of us.” It wasn’t a bad thing, in her eyes, even if she couldn’t really understand a lot of the things that interested her sister. It was just a fact, especially when it came to Quidditch; Jemima would much rather be preparing the post-match tea than in the middle of the scrimmage.

“I guess if they manage to form most of a team she might get peer pressured into it. She’s a good target for pestering given her name, and Teppenpaws aren’t renowned for their ability to say no if it means disappointing other people,” she grimaced. She didn’t want Jemima to be bullied into playing and had no idea how she herself would handle her being on the pitch. She was sure she would have to come up against one of her siblings when Ingrid joined next year, as she was bound to be in Pecari and to sign up. But that was different because Ingrid wanted to play, and was willing to take what came with it. She wouldn’t be obliged to worry about her, like she might if Jemima got dragged into things.

OOC - Thanks. If I find they have anything particular to say in response, I will write out more of their letters but please assume that replies beget replies, and if you want to make reference them corresponding regularly/steadily then that's fine by me for either pair of characters

13 Francesca Wolseithcrafte Beleaguered Teppenpaws, for instance 250 Francesca Wolseithcrafte 0 5