Head of House Speech. on Aladren Commons

Professor Wright

July 06, 2019 11:52 PM

Head of House Speech. by Professor Wright

The Aladren Head of House's post-Feast duties were not things Gray was totally unfamiliar with. They were, however, not things he could really say he was properly familiar with either, as he had not had contact with them in about twenty years, and at that time, he had been a sleepy, over-fed eleven-year-old himself.

He tried to reason with himself. He had given another speech just today. He gave short speeches on a highly regular basis in order to get his paychecks. He had been, at one point, a writer, for goodness's sake - a speech was no different than reading lines aloud, in the final analysis. But he still felt just a hint of nerves as he gathered his small flock after the Feast.

"Good evening," he said pleasantly. "Nice to - meet again. I'm still Professor Wright, and your Head of House now. If you'll follow me, I'll show you where you'll live for the next few years."

Along the way, he pointed out landmarks which might help them navigate the way between important locations, along with offering a few hints about portraits which might be more likely than others to be helpful, and a warning about that one painting which would find it funny to give them bad advice. Soon enough, they were at the doors of the library. He resisted the temptation to fiddle with his glasses.

"You might remember me telling you earlier that this is the library," he said. "And that's true. You have to go through the library to get to our House - not much of a hardship for most Aladrens, admittedly," he admitted, and led them in. "There's the librarian's desk - if you need an adult and can't find me, then sometimes Mr. Fox-Reynolds is somewhere around there. Other times, you'll see other students there. Those are his library assistants. There should be a place here soon - " he waved toward a notice board - "for sign-ups, if you're interested in becoming one of those. Through these shelves here..."

He took a reasonably direct path through the stacks, pointing out sections of interest, and then reached the back wall. "See this book?" he asked, pointing to Birds of Prey. "You pull on this book to make the door open." He demonstrated, and a shelf slid away to reveal a door. "It's tradition not to tell people in other Houses about this book or where we live," he added, "so I'm afraid you can't bring your friends from other Houses over to visit."

The shelf slid back into place behind them as they entered a spacious room decorated primarily in blue and black. The room was dotted with sets of tables and chairs and a few sofas, and there were bookshelves on the walls. Gray didn't know if this was a feature mostly of Aladren or if the other Houses had them too, but he thought it would have been unnatural had Aladren not had them. He had looked over the common room library when he took over and made a few additions, so the shelves covered a reasonable variety of interests in capsule forms - magic, yes, but also other subjects, including history and literature and a largish amount of Muggle math and science, and he had decided this year to order a few periodicals for delivery to the common room, for the use of the students. The first issues of these, along with hodgepodges from his own larger, older collections of such things, were on a few stands around the room. He led the new kids to the rug in front of the hearth and waved for them to sit down on a small sofa near it. Since he was not exactly declaiming to a crowd here, he took an armchair himself so he was more or less on their level instead of looming over them from the rug.

"Welcome to Aladren," he said. "This is our common room - where you can sit, meet with others in the House from other years, do your homework if you want, play some chess - whatever you want, within reason. It's a decent place to look for people who might want to research the same unusual thing you do - the bulletin board's useful if you want to find a study partner or start a group. You'll also see the sign-ups for clubs and teams and announcements about school events there. If you want to start a club or otherwise post something for other Houses to see, just let me know and I'll work it out with the other Heads of Houses.

"My office is through that door over there," he said, pointing to a door set into one wall. "There's an outside entrance from the corridor around the bend, too, but you can always knock on this one too. If you have questions about the school or other concerns, you're welcome to come talk to me - as Head of House, I'm here to be the default adult and the middleman between you and the administration, when that's needed. Other professors would also be happy to listen if you have anything you would rather to talk to them about, of course - " which there were excellent reasons for them to do; he somehow doubted he exactly looked like someone any girl would want to confide in, for instance - "and prefects are also here to help you. You can recognize them by their badges. Our Aladren prefects are Emerald Brockert, Amelia Layne, and, as of tonight, Gary Harper. They're older students who help the staff keep everyone on track with school rules, and arranging school events, and that sort of thing.

"All right. I know that was a lot of information, but just a little more, and then you can go to bed - curfew is at ten every night. You're expected to be responsible for your own bedtime, and being awake in the morning, but you need to be in the common room or your dorm room by ten and to be reasonably quiet after that time. The dorms are through that door over there." He pointed. "When you get in, you'll see there's a hallway that goes two ways. Dorms for girls are down the hall to your right, and dorms for boys are down the hall to your left."

Now things got...tricky, at least for him, this one time. The staff had been given a lot of information about one incoming student, and Fate had proceeded to Sort her into Aladren. Luckily, in terms of logistics, the student herself had already been given the means to access the correct dorms even before being Sorted, but Gray was acutely aware that he could easily cause problems right now and had no desire to do that.

"You'll know your room because it has your year number on it," he informed them. "You'll be next to the second years, so being good neighbors will really help you while you're settling in. You can only walk down the hallway that your room is on, though. If you walk down the other one, you'll fall through the floor and end up back in the common room and get to know the floor here a lot better for your trouble," he stated matter-of-factly, then, still straight-faced, "So don't do that."

He had never actually thought about it possibly being confusing to say that boys couldn't go in the girls' dorms and girls couldn't go in the boys' dorms before. It wasn't that he minded doing so now, it was just that he had...never thought of it. He didn't think about being male, or even assign any particular significance to the fact he was, that he was aware of - probably something to do with his lack of interest in Certain Other, Related Matters - it was just a box he ticked on paperwork from time to time. This whole situation was something he wanted to understand better, both so he could do his job as Head of House properly if needed and because he was an Aladren too and liked to understand things, but for now, 'only use the hallway your room is on' seemed like the safest path to trod to him.

"That should be everything you need to know tonight," he told them with a small smile. "If you don't have any questions, then you can look around the common room, or go check out the dorms."

OOC: Welcome to Aladren! You can now post your character on any of the boards, though they do not have access to other common rooms outside of HoH offices. You can also continue your conversations at the Feast and at Orientation thanks to the magic of what we call "fuzzy time" - as long as two threads are supposed to happen at different times in character, you can write them at the same time as an author. If you have any questions, just ask in Chatzy or on the OOC board. Have fun!

Subthreads:

Meeting my roommate (Tag Emily) by Ellie Alperton

16 Professor Wright Head of House Speech. 113 Professor Wright 1 5

Ellie Alperton

July 07, 2019 9:23 AM

Meeting my roommate (Tag Emily) by Ellie Alperton

At the end of the feast, Ellie stood and went over to Professor Wright, glad that her Head of House was someone she’d met already. So far, things had been fine, people were being nice, and she was still excited about being here, but she was feeling like she was reaching her capacity for new experiences. She was well aware that she had a couple more to get through before bed, and she still felt stressed about the whole living here element, so it was nice to have one fewer thing to deal with by having already met their head of house earlier in the day.

She followed him along the corridors, trying to keep track of everything he was saying. She felt happy at finding herself back in the library. She had noticed the rainbow heart on its noticeboard earlier. She had not stopped to inspect it too closely, but it was any form of visibility, and that was enough to let her know that there was a life raft to cling to if she needed it. The school supported and accepted who she was, but that was different to openly campaigning on the point. It was super convenient that their Common Room was located in the library, both because she could see herself spending a lot of time here reading, but also because it meant they could ask for help without arousing suspicion – they weren’t meant to reveal the location of the common room, but they could easily and logically as the ‘bookish house’ want directions to the library, which meant they would be able to ask for help from pretty much anyone.

As they entered the Common Room, she took a deep breath. Objectively, it was a very nice room. It had sofas and plenty of books, and if she continued to pretend that she had been swept up in a magical version of ‘The Princess Diaries’ this was about right. She could picture herself doing the things Professor Wright described – reading, doing her homework, playing chess (she would have to learn how to play chess, but in mental montage land that was easily achieved) and being… generally magical, and generally Ellie.

As Professor Wright began speaking about dorms, Ellie’s hand went to her neck, tugging on the chain on a necklace, until she had pulled it free from her robes and could finger the attached charm, in the form of a little key, and reassure herself that it was still firmly round her neck. She was fairly sure that nervous fiddling was a normal enough habit that the girl next to her wouldn’t read anything beyond first night nerves into the gesture, although the Professor easily might. They’d all been told about her, after all. She had known about the rooms ejecting people, and that was still one of the things she was most scared about, even if they’d assured her that the little necklace that she was now pinching so firmly that she’d have a key shaped mark on her fingers would allow her into the right rooms, even if her gender didn’t. That had been one point they had been uncertain about – was the magic on the rooms based on biological sex or on gender? No one had been able to answer, it having apparently not having come up prior to now.

Professor Wright’s speech worried her, not because he thought he would out her but because she wasn’t sure what he was going to say, and whether he was about to say precisely the wrong thing. So many people tried to say ‘gender’ because they thought saying ‘sex’ sounded too rude, even when it turned out they very much meant the latter. Bathrooms, for example, were often referred to as being divided by ‘gender’ and yet that very often turned out not to be what people meant at all. Professor Wright didn’t use the wrong words though. In fact, he didn’t use either word. He simply talked about rooms that didn’t belong to them, and Ellie found an appreciative smile spreading across her face. That was a much better way of thinking about it than whether it was sex or gender. Why did it have to be either? It was their room, or not their room, simple as. And she would be entitled to be in hers.

When he dismissed them, she turned to face the corridor, trying not to look worried. She kept her hand on her key charm, and walked steadily and determinedly up her set of stairs. She wanted to cheer when she reached the top, but was aware that might be rather odd, so simply let herself into her room instead.

“Ariel!” she grinned happily, finding her tortoiseshell kitten waiting on her bed. Ellie rushed over and scooped her up, “You found our room then,” she grinned.

“All of ours,” she added, as she turned and found her roommate was also there. “Are you okay with cats? You’re not allergic or anything? They said we could have them in the letters,” she added.

13 Ellie Alperton Meeting my roommate (Tag Emily) 1456 Ellie Alperton 0 5