Sulking. on Cascade Hall

Rachel Bauer

December 11, 2009 3:39 PM

Sulking. by Rachel Bauer

On the morning of the first Quidditch game of the season, it never even occurred to Rachel to go sit with her House. She'd managed to go the entire year so far without doing so, and saw no reason to break with tradition just because some of the other Crotali, including the one who'd inspired her to adopt Aladren as her honorary House, might soon be injured seriously by the Pecari Beaters.

In fact, she thought it actually gave her more of a reason to avoid the Rattler's table, and not just because Helena might feel it was her last sure chance to get a swing in at her. She had to stay in good books with Veronica and Alessa, neither of whom were exactly sports-minded. Tobar was friendly, but that was why she'd already made way too many mistakes with him on top of his being a boy. A girl needed girlfriends, and a girl pretending to be something she wasn't needed girlfriends of a certain character. If she hung out with the right people, other people would be less likely to mutter about how she wasn't really a lady. They'd be too afraid to.

Add in her mother and all of her mother's neuroses, and defecting to the Crotali today of all days would send a very wrong message. Therefore, the only difference in Rachel's morning routine the day of the Crotalus-Pecari match was to take a seat at the Aladren table that faced toward the Crotalus table instead of one that put her back to it. She wasn't going over there, that wasn't even in question, but she wanted to have some idea of how the mood of the House was and what was going on.

That turned out to be a mistake.

It didn't take her long to go from studying the table to thinking about how it just wasn't fair. Even if Momma had never left Dad, had never married Jeremy and taken up his preoccupation with what the various idiot organizations of the world thought of them all, she couldn't have made that team in a million years. It wasn't because she was a girl, or a first year, or really bad on a broom, either; it was because the captain was a psycho who'd forfeit the match before she'd admit that Rachel could walk and chew gum at the same time. And not even because of anything Rachel, for her part, had done.

Well, okay, she had referred to Helena's house as a hovel. And pointed out that the room Helena shared with her sister was about the same size as the closet Rachel had all to herself. And a few other things. But only in the context of pointing out that Helena had no right to insult Rachel's mother when her parents hadn't done as much between them in their whole lives as Momma had done in three years. Anyway, she was eleven. Helena was supposed to be a grown woman and above caring what an eleven-year-old said about her.

She was engaged in a fantasy of catching the Snitch right under the Pecari captain's nose when she realized she was being spoken to. Putting down the spoon she'd been twirling in her oatmeal, Rachel shook her head slightly and focused in on the speaker. "Can you repeat that?" she asked, making a note of apology enter her voice. "I was woolgathering for a minute."

16 Rachel Bauer Sulking. 154 Rachel Bauer 1 5

Cynthia Smythe

December 18, 2009 9:02 AM

That's such a waste of time by Cynthia Smythe

Quidditch day meant absolutley nothing to Cynthia, aside from it was more crowded than usual at breakfast, and the library was emptier than usual during the match itself. Unfortunately, as Cynthia intended to spend most of the day in the library, it just made good sense to get her breakfast at the same time as the rest of the masses, to enable a greater stretch of studying time.

Forcefully ignoring everyone else at the Crotalus table (which was more difficult than usual, owing to their excitement at the prospect of beating Pecari in the game), Cynthia finished her bran cereal silently, only gazing up occasionally to see a first year staring at her - or, more accurately, the first year was staring through her. Cynthia tried scowling to make the other girl avert her eyes, but she obviously hadn't been noticed and her expression therefore made no difference.

Cynthia Smythe wasn't usually the sort of person to approach first years unless it was to tell them to get out of her way, but there was something painfully familiar about this girl that reminded Cynthia of one of the very few people in her life she respected: herself. Since Rosalind her graduated, Cynthia didn't have any friends at Sonora to spend time with, anyway, so the sixth year thought she may as well spend five minutes discovering why someone she was sure belonged in her own House spent so much time at the Aladren table.

"There's nothing shameful about being in Crotalus, you know," Cynthia said almost scathingly, standing behind the firstie in question. She got nothing for her remark other than a bid to repeat herself. Cynthia hated repeating herself. Raising a bitter eyebrow, she sat in the seat next to the younger girl this time and said, "Sounds like more of a waste of time than Quidditch." Then she glared a little, and added, "You're in Crotalus and you never sit with our House. I'm trying to find out why."

0 Cynthia Smythe That's such a waste of time 103 Cynthia Smythe 0 5

Rachel

December 18, 2009 2:26 PM

Yeah, but it makes me feel better. by Rachel

"You're in Crotalus and you never sit with our House. I'm trying to find out why."

Well. That was blunt enough. The more of her Housemates Rachel met (not that she’d met very many as of yet), the more she became convinced that everything her mother had ever said about the House was either hopelessly out of date or a load of bull. None of them had yet to come anywhere near being a proper lady, at least not the way Alma had defined the term to her, and this girl wasn’t proving an exception to the rule.

“Because I don’t like the other Crotali,” she said, just as bluntly. It wasn’t even just Helena; Rachel had never had a conversation with Raines Bradley and he still irritated her so much that one of her dearest ambitions for the year was to hex him. If he ever tried bossing her around the way he did some of the other firstie girls, she’d do it, too. “The Aladrens don’t annoy me as much, so I hang out with them.”

Simplified, but effective, and it didn’t involve letting someone who looked about her aunt’s age and thus could potentially be Helena’s friend know that she thought their fearless Quidditch captain might actually have more issues than her wardrobe indicated. Nor did it go into how she’d have been slightly happier if her year’s Aladrens had been more the ‘well-read and interested in discussing their reading’ type than the ‘ambitious realist’ type. The one problem could be if the older girl couldn’t take what she dished, at least not from a first year.

That could potentially be quite a problem, now that she thought about it…

16 Rachel Yeah, but it makes me feel better. 154 Rachel 0 5

Cynthia

January 04, 2010 3:33 PM

Then go with what works by Cynthia

"Because I don't like the other Crotali," vacant first year said. Cynthia couldn't argue with this reasoning; she wasn't a huge fan of her Housemates, either. She could tolerate her cousins only through years of practise, and the reluctant realisation that they were - for the most part - respectable human beings, if not utterly stupid in terms of academia. Cynthia's roomates on the other hand were just stupid, each in their own way. Lutece was distant, ignorant and vain. Talitha was flighty, indecisive and abrupt. Thyme was petty, over emotional and foolish. As for the rest of the House, they were either too inbred to realise the benfit of conducting relationships outside one's own sphere, or too lazy to bother trying. It was boring beyond all readily available measures, and that was without mentioning the regular bitch fights that permeated the occasional and precious quiet evenings.

"The Aladrens don’t annoy me as much, so I hang out with them."

Again, sound reasoning. Cynthia couldn't argue. She hesitated a moment before saying, "Fair enough. My friend Rosalind was in Aladren. She graduated last year." Stating a specific name gave the illusion that Rosalind had been one of a group of several friends Cynthia possessed, rather than the singular friend she in fact was. "I think I envied her," Cynthia mused out loud. She turned to study the first year more closely. Her robes were neat and well cut, which encouraged Cynthia's belief that she was someone worth talking to.

"I'm Cynthia Smythe," she finally introduced herself. "I'm in sixth year."

0 Cynthia Then go with what works 0 Cynthia 0 5

Rachel

January 05, 2010 9:23 PM

I plan to. by Rachel

To her surprise, flat-out saying she didn’t like her Housemates didn’t inspire the one who had just joined her to hex her. Instead, she started sharing personal anecdotes. Rachel noted the name Rosalind; it was probably irrelevant, but if her neighbor was telling the truth, her friend had been in the same House and year as Rachel’s uncle.

What, really, were the odds that she would somehow end up chatting with a friend of such a person?

She was starting to understand what Dad had meant when he talked about this school being more than a little sick. Everyone was connected somehow. It was why she doubted she’d make it more than three years in without the Great Masquerade falling to bits. All it would take was one person who really was a pureblood from Arizona, or one wrong person who knew the wrong people, or one person who got too curious and checked the genealogy books…

Ugh. She was not going to think like this. It wasn’t like she even cared, personally; it was just how her mother would react if she was openly known to have a half-blood kid. Her mother could be scary sometimes. It was irritating, though, having to live her entire life paranoid because Momma had gotten a little too enthusiastic about making Granddad miserable eighteen years ago…

“It’s a pleasure,” she said. Cynthia Smythe, sixth year. She committed it to memory and hoped it stuck despite her lifelong tendency to be better with faces than names. Given the close proximity of sixth year to seventh year, though, she figured this one could be reasonably important, at least for the rest of the year. “I’m Rachel Bauer. First year.” She glanced over Cynthia’s wardrobe quickly, with a moment’s extra attention going to her shoes. Shoes said a lot, especially for a girl. It was why Rachel had stopped wearing sneakers when she was six. “So, planning to go support Crotalus at the Quidditch game today?”

16 Rachel I plan to. 154 Rachel 0 5