Eating the return feast on Cascade Hall

Headmistress Kijewski

January 07, 2012 1:24 PM

Returning Feast by Headmistress Kijewski

Midterm had been completely different than what Kiva had anticipated. The two weeks home with her son and family was always nice and she had been able to get to know Walter a bit better. Her mother was acting like a teenager with her new love interest and Kiva was happy for her. Although she would always miss her father, she knew that her mother was still young and deserved a new happiness. Her mother wasn’t the only one in a new relationship. Kiva had begun dating a man whom she had been friends with since she had become a mother, seven years prior. As awkward as the moment had been for them, they were incredibly happy with each other and it seemed so natural and normal for them to be together. She had no idea why it had taken so long, but she knew that it had been mainly her. It took her a long time to let go of things and really take a chance with something new. But everything was good now. Very good. And that reflected in her as she stood to greet the students.

“Good Evening everyone! I hope your Holidays went well and everyone is now all refreshed and ready to get back to work.” Kiva waited for any murmurs that were bound to come around for that comment. “Before we begin the returning feast, I wanted to share with you the end of the year Midsummer Event. This year is the Fair and we were lucky enough to be able to secure a location that is new to all of you.” Kiva paused for dramatic affect, but also to make sure that everyone was listening to her.

“This year, the fair will take place in Tumbleweed.” Kiva was actually really excited by this prospect. It had been a long time since she had been in that town. It had always been so fun. “Tumbleweed will be docked here for a weekend and during their stay, they will host the fair. There will be the usual games and rides, but there will also be some additional games and activities that you all can get involved in. The main one that I wanted to talk to you about was the craft booth that will be there. The town is having a competition on their crafts that they would like for you all to be a part of. You have this half of term to create something. Examples would be knitting an article of something, or creating pottery, painting or drawing a picture. Anything crafty. The day of the Fair, we will have you submit these works to the booth and throughout the day the judges will review these works and at the end of the night and give out ribbons.

“There is also a Hipporiff raising competition that you are allowed to partake in. If you are interested in that, you will have to speak with Professor O’Shaunassey as he will be providing you with the creature as well as the housing.” Kiva nodded to the new Care of Magical Creatures before continuing, “And lastly, there is a chili cook off that you are more than welcome to join. If you are interested in any of these, please let your Head of Houses or myself know. We’d like to have a number to provide the heads of the festival for each contest.” She really hoped some of the students involved themselves in it because that would show how appreciative the students were for everything and that they were willing to put in the effort.

“There will also be animal shows, square dancing, and some entertainment for you all to enjoy. If you have any questions or concerns, please see any of the staff members.” Kiva announced to them. She hoped that the fair would be enjoyable for everyone, but she knew there would be those with whom she was never going to be able to please. “That is all the announcements I had. Please enjoy your meal.”

Subthreads:

Back for an exciting term! by Waverly Canterbury with Jade Owen, Waverly

Where things are normal . . . sort of by Derry Four with Reggie Parker

One last welcoming feast by Andrew Duell with Jose Hernandez, Jose

Eating the return feast by Thaddeus Pierce II with Alicia Bauer

Returning and feasting. by Rachel Bauer with Nic Sawyer

Intrigued by Evan Brockert with Cepheus Princeton, Cepheus

Returning to the feast by Jane Carey

0 Headmistress Kijewski Returning Feast 0 Headmistress Kijewski 1 5

Waverly Canterbury

January 07, 2012 1:48 PM

Back for an exciting term! by Waverly Canterbury

Waverly's winter break had been really nice. She had been so happy to see her parents and her sister again, she'd almost cried. She hadn't realized how much she had missed them till she saw them again. She had gone home where Mom had made her favorite foods, and Waverly was in heaven once more. The next couple weeks had been just like before, except she didn't have to wake up super early to go to school. Overall, it had been relaxing, and she'd been sad to go, but excited to go back to school. She didn't usually do well with mixed feelings, so she had thrown herself into the excited state. She couldn't deny her love for Sonora and the people she had met.

She entered the hall for the feast, hungry for food. She hadn't eaten much. Her excitement to come back had knotted her stomach earlier, but now she was ready to eat. She greeted a few people she knew before she sat down, and then listened to the headmistress speak. Her green eyes widened considerably when she mentioned a fair. A fair! Waverly loved those kinds of things. Fairs, carnivals, amusement parks! Those were the things on Waverly's list of favorite places, and she was suddenly excited to get involved.

Waverly thought of a craft she could do. She wasn't exactly the most talented with her hands, unless it was making bread and pastries (her mom had actually trusted her with the oven this time!), and she thought about working with the chili cook-off. If only she knew how to make chili...she wasn't even sure if her own mother knew how to make chili. This was going to be a hard decision.

But besides that, the sound of a fair was just added more excitement to the first-year. The first time she had gone to a fair, she had been nine. She still remembered petting the farm animals she probably wouldn't have seen anywhere else. Since her magical creature's class, she wondered what kind of magical creatures they would have at a wizard's fair. Intrigued and thoughtful, Waverly didn't see the food arrive until she smelled it. Mm, fried chicken. She put some onto her plate and turned to her neighbor.

"Are you excited for the fair?" she asked, smiling. "I sure am." Waverly couldn't think of anything she wanted to do more than participate in a baking contest, but she'd have to settle for crafts. "I'm going to think of a craft to make. I wish they had a baking contest! That would be fun to participate in. Do you think you're going to participate in the contests in any way?"

19 Waverly Canterbury Back for an exciting term! 218 Waverly Canterbury 0 5

Derry Four

January 07, 2012 2:49 PM

Where things are normal . . . sort of by Derry Four

Derry was still feeling a little stunned by the talk he'd had with his mother that morning. Thaddeus didn't know yet, so they'd sat together for the ride back to school, but Derry had been unusually quiet. Thad, of course, had noticed and tried to ask what was wrong, but Derry only shook his head. The longer Thad didn't know, the longer things would stay the same between them.

Around the time they passed over the Mississippi, Derry was chatting again, if not as animatedly as he normally did, but Thad had managed to pull him into a light debate about how likely it was that Teppenpaw would beat Pecari in the next Quidditch match. Derry, of course, was of the opinion that it was very likely, but Thad was arguing for Pecari - mostly, Derry suspected, to take Derry's mind off of whatever was actually bothering him. Thad could be kind like that, sometimes. It even worked for a while.

Likewise, unloading themselves off the wagon was also helpfully distracting, and he made it into the Cascade Hall and to the point of the Headmistress's speech where she hoped their holidays went well before he remembered that his holidays had been quite good right up until this morning.

That had been less well.

He tried to get excited about the fair she described, and he probably would later, when it wasn't so fresh, but right now nothing was exciting enough to block out the fact that his world was never going to be the same. Mom was leaving Father and while Derry might still be Derwent Pierce the Fourth, he wasn't Derwent Pierce the Fourth of the New Hampshire Pierces anymore. He was going to live with his mom in Boston from now on.

He'd had the option to stay; it wasn't a disownment. But to choose between Mom and Father was no choice at all. Mom had always been there for him. Father barely bothered to wish him good night in the evening. So he'd opted to leave the New Hampshire branch to stay with Mom. It didn't make him dead - like Three - exactly, but it did make him just a normal person instead of A Pierce. In truth, that had been part of the appeal rather than a detriment.

He just hoped he was still good enough for Thad to talk to.

It did make navigating the social waters of Sonora easier, though. He no longer had to worry that Father might find out Ben was a half-blood. And then there was the whole thing where some of the Teppenpaw muggleborn girls were starting to look very pretty these days, which he hadn't been allowed acknowledged before but now he could.

As the speech finished, he managed a smile that was perhaps not as full as it normally was, but was no less genuine for that. "Hi," he greeted those he was seated nearest to at the Teppenpaw table, "welcome back. Did you have a good midterm?"

1 Derry Four Where things are normal . . . sort of 189 Derry Four 0 5

Reggie Parker

January 07, 2012 6:15 PM

Has anyone really defined 'normal'? by Reggie Parker

Regina ‘s midterm had been rather boring. Or, at least, more boring than usual. Her father wasn’t around much like he used to be. For the last two midterms, her father had taken those two weeks off to be with her and to celebrate the holidays together. This time around, her father said the hospital was far too busy and that one of the other Potions makers had left on vacation. The hospital was relying on him to keep up the stock. Normally, this would be okay with Reggie because she would simply see him after work, but… he seemed to never come home until late at night.

Reggie ended up staying most of her midterm with her grandparents. Not to say that it hadn’t been fun. She loved her grandparents. Her Grandma had baked cookies with her and they made another scrapbook for her third year at Sonora while her Grandpa had rented all the most recent movies that she had missed while being away that were currently out on DVD. Together, they had long nights of catching up and eating popcorn. Although she had missed her Popsicle, her grandparents made it ok by ten folds. Had had even received a card from her mother. It was a rare thing for her mother to have the time for sending Reggie anything, but every now and then she’ll receive a letter and Reggie was grateful for that.

But now she was back at Sonora to finish off her Third year. She wasn’t fourteen yet, her birthday wasn’t until May, but she always felt a little bit older after every midterm. She had no idea why that was. Maybe it was the whole ‘new year’ thing. She couldn’t say for sure, but she was certain that she did feel older. Her resolution for this year was to get Jess out of her mopey self depression and back into the whole ‘we’re young and carefree and don’t care what people think’ moments. Reggie knew that her friend’s family went through something horrible. But, she still had them. They were still alive and that was what she needed to start focusing on. Heck, every letter Reggie received from her mother was for Reggie, a statement saying she was still alive. She could some day finally come home to her for good. She never understood why people constantly hunkered down on the negatives in life instead of celebrating the positives. Oh well, it was probably something she’ll never quite grasp.

Sitting at the Teppenpaw table close to her friends, Regina listened to the Headmistress discuss this year’s event. A fair would totally be fun. Reggie loved fairs! She loved carnivals, she loved amusement parks, she just loved anything with rides and games. She had, for a split second, thought about doing the Hippogriff contest, but then thought the better of it. She was not skilled with animals and a Hippogriff was likely to tear her head off for looking at it wrong. Besides, she didn’t want to work for the Fair, she just wanted to enjoy it.

Finally the food, Reggie was always starved by the time she arrived to school and the speeches were over. She grabbed some chicken and smiled at Derry when he greeted her as she piled some mashed potatoes onto her plate. “Eh…” Reggie twisted her hand in a so-so gesture. “It wasn’t as fun as it usually is because Popsicle had to work, but Pops and Grams were there and they kept me busy.” Reggie explained to him, tucking her hair behind an ear, she looked at him as through scrutinizes him. “And how was your time on that mountain of yours, Derry? Any chance of skiing?” Or, at least, she assumed his mountain had snow for him to ski on. Wasn't that what people who had money did anyhow?

6 Reggie Parker Has anyone really defined 'normal'? 187 Reggie Parker 0 5

Derry Four

January 07, 2012 8:40 PM

Not well enough to make sense by Derry Four

Derry smiled sympathetically as she related the problem of her midterm. If there was anything Derry could understand, it was a father who worked too much. Merlin knew Father never stopped. At least this was an abnormality for Reggie's father and she normally got to see a lot of him. Her mother, from what Derry understood of her family, was less so. He hoped that didn't break up her parents like it must have his own. Father's frequent absence had to have been at least part of Mom's decision. If they'd loved each other and spent time with each other, like spouses were supposed to, she wouldn't have just decided to leave after all this time no matter how much she missed Three.

His expression started to turn down as she asked about the mountain, but then it transformed into a look of complete confusion by the time she finished her question. "Skiing?" he repeated the unfamiliar word. "What's skiing?" Reggie had a habit of using funny words for normal things though, so he wasn't discounting the possibility that they'd done some of it.

Deciding he'd say what he did do, so she could figure out the answer to her own question, he continued, "I got to meet Three on Christmas," he put in cheerfully, because that had been totally awesome regardless of what had happened since. "That was um," he tried to remember one of the words Reggie liked to use, "totally a cat's meow. I even got to tour Boston a little. And we did other holiday stuff like eating cookies and opening gifts and making snowmen. And Hamlet helped me with my homework and tutored me some, which is normal for a break but not very holiday-y. Hung out with Thad and worked on beater stuff - he's the Aladren alternate so he has to know all the positions, so I was helping him figure out how beating works. I don't think Teppenpaw has to worry too much if Thad ever has to fill in for Edmond or Preston, though."

He paused for a moment, trying to think anything else he had done over the midterm, but that covered most of it. Except this morning. So he said, real quick so maybe Reggie would miss it, "And-Mom-said-she's-getting-a-divorce-Is any of that skiing?"

1 Derry Four Not well enough to make sense 189 Derry Four 0 5

Reggie

January 07, 2012 11:58 PM

Hardly anything ever does though. by Reggie

Reggie blinked at him for a moment. Did full on Wizards and Witches not ski? That seemed silly. Skiing didn’t seem to be a Muggle thing. Then again, how would she really know? Her father did everything the Muggle way except for his job. Her grandparents were Muggles, and her mother wasn’t around to tell her anything different. By the reaction that Derry had given her, either he was sheltered way too much or the Magical world did not ski. If that were the case, that was very sad. Reggie skied before, but she liked to snowboard and ice skate more. She was wondering, now, if Derry had ever been sledding…

Before she could really explain anything though, Derry jumped in and explained how his midterm went. Reggie’s hazel eyes went wide when he mentioned having met Three. Reggie thought his brother no longer existed. Either in the Magical world or in life. To hear that Derry actually had a holiday celebration with him threw her completely off. She wanted to know all of the details. How did Derry Three come into the picture? What was he like? Was it everything that Derry dreamed of? He finally had his older brother in his life! Reggie didn’t have siblings or cousins or anything like that in her life, so when people spoke about their own, she was always interested to know how that all worked. That was something she would never know, never really understand. Sometimes that realization hurt, but it was what it was.

She was amused by the rest of his midterm events. Other than her finishing her homework after the first two days of being home, Reggie never thought about school or work of any kind. She felt bad for the Purebloods because all they ever seemed to do was study. At least he knew what a snowman was… that was something. She grinned when Derry promised that any help he provided to Thad at Quidditch did not mean that he was suddenly going to take out the whole of Teppenpaws team.

Of course, what he said next wiped the smirk from her face and instead replaced it with shock and possibly horror. Her father might have worked a bit over the holiday, but it certainly didn’t beat the break of a marriage. “That is certainly not at all skiing!” Reggie exclaimed and than placed a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry for the divorce. Whether it was needed or not, that sucks.” She could sympathize with what he may be feeling. Although she was young at the time, Reggie remembered the confusion when they had sat her down and said that Mommy was going to live somewhere else. Which, in retrospect, didn’t actually make a difference since she was never around as it was.

“When my parents divorced, I remember crying a lot and my Grams feeding me ice cream. I didn’t believe them when they said it would get better, but it does. Well, for me anyway. I don’t know your situation. My parents ended their marriage mutually as far as I know.” She didn’t want to tell him anything in case it wasn’t true and he resented her for it. “By the way, skiing is something fun and involves snow and mountains. Maybe we can do it over midterm sometime together.” She gave him what she hoped to be an encouraging smile.

6 Reggie Hardly anything ever does though. 187 Reggie 0 5

Andrew Duell

January 08, 2012 2:39 PM

One last welcoming feast by Andrew Duell

Andrew climbed aboard the wagon to Sonora for what was probably going to be his last time. After this term he'd be moving on, assuming everything went okay with RATS and all. He wasn't terribly worried about that though, nor was he really concerned with the fact that this was his last wagon trip to Sonora. His mind was busy attempting to figure out how to begin processing the rather unexpected news he had gotten over break. As such, he spent the entirety of the trip keeping mainly to himself. Jose was on the wagon as well, and he couldn't completely ignore his friend, but he kept interactions to a minimum. He assumed Jose picked up on the fact that there was something going on, but he was just going to have to wait a bit. Andrew was going to have to figure out how to proceed before he could tell Jose or even Marissa.

He hoped Marissa had a good break, he hadn't been in contact with her over break due to... stuff. He looked around for her as he climbed off the wagon and entered the hall. Last term he had done this eager to find her and catch up, now he was just looking for reassurance that she was here, then he'd find his way to the Teppenpaw table. He wasn't sure if he wanted to talk to her first or Jose, or maybe both of them at the same time... and maybe he was making to big of a deal out of this. It was possible, but with the amount of ruckus it had caused over break he wasn't taking any chances.

The headmistress got up and did her traditional 'welcome back' speech. Not much of it registered. The bit about the fair at Tumbleweed did, the craft competition specifically. It evoked a brief image of him building a giant, mechanical, steam-powered spider to enter in the competition. It was crushed rather quickly by the reality of RATS studying sucking up all his allocated 'free-time'. As the food appeared before him, he mechanically dropped some on his plate and began eating it. The semi-vacant, information-processing look still dominated his face as it had since soon after he'd arrived home for break.

2 Andrew Duell One last welcoming feast 145 Andrew Duell 0 5

Derry Four

January 08, 2012 2:56 PM

It's been getting more confusing lately by Derry Four

Derry hadn't meant to imply that he thought the divorce was skiing. From context, he'd guessed that it had something to do with holidays and fun, and he'd done a lot of holiday fun stuff before this morning. He'd just meant to sneak in that last part so Reggie didn't think he was hiding things when it came up later, but her initial reaction to his last question made him regret the juxtaposition.

He nodded in agreement that it did indeed suck. Derry and his father had never been close. When he did bother to converse with Four, it was usually to lecture him about something he should or shouldn't be doing in the future, or to reprimand him for something he did or didn't do in the past. There were times Derry had even gotten the distinct impression that his father was intentionally avoiding him, though he usually dismissed those thoughts away as selfish delusions. Still, he was Derry's father, and as distant as he was, Derry didn't want to lose him.

He just didn't want to lose Mom way more.

Derry blinked a little in surprise as Reggie said her parents had already divorced years ago. He had not guessed that. Sure, her mom was always away, but he'd just assumed her family situation was the same as his, just with the moms and dads reversed.

He nodded a little at she said it got better and believed it. Three looked happy and he'd lost both of their parents when he was around Four's age now. Derry still had Mom, and she had always been the important one. Hamlet had even promised to visit every midterm and summer.

Thad was really the only person Derry was really worried about losing. The Anns, too, to a lesser extent, but they had always been a little . . . weird. They were girls, and they were younger by four years, and they were . . . inseparably together. It almost forced him and Thad closer just to even things out.

He guessed, over time, he'd gain Three and Little Ben (not to be confused with Roommate Ben) as his closest family and he'd get used to that eventually, but right now they were either a lot older or a lot younger and it didn't seem possible for them to ever replace Thad and the Anns. When he got to be an adult, too, he supposed it wouldn't be as strange to be Three's friend, but for now it was kind of weird. In all of the imaginings he'd had of meeting his brother, he'd never really considered that years had passed since Mom's stories took place and Three was old now. Still awesome, but kind of strange.

As Reggie described what skiing actually was, he realized she might mean sledding, which was fantastic and fun but Thad didn't like it for some inexplicable reason and it wasn't as fun by himself. At her offer of skiing together sometime, Derry sat up and grinned with a strength he hadn't previously managed today. "That would be great, and I'll even be allowed to go now that I'm not a New Hampshire Pierce anymore." That was the best part, the good part about this. Mom said if he wanted to see his friends next summer, he could, and she didn't care if they were halfblood or muggleborn.

He wasn't quite sure how she'd known he was friends with halfbloods and muggleborns - he'd been careful never to say that in anything Father might read - but it wasn't important anymore.

"I guess it was mutual for mine, too. I didn't really talk to Father about it at all. Mom said he wasn't going to fight for custody or anything, so I guess he agreed. We'll be moving to Boston, so we can get to know Three again, and Three's family. I have a nephew. How weird is that? I'm Uncle Derry now. And Coach Pierce was Three's new mom after they were disowned, so she'll be around for holidays and stuff, and that's kind of freaky, too." That he was suddenly more closely related to the school's deputy headmistress was strange enough on its own, but after everything he'd heard Kirstenna say about her . . . it was downright scary.

1 Derry Four It's been getting more confusing lately 189 Derry Four 0 5

Reggie

January 08, 2012 7:39 PM

I think it comes with being a Teen. by Reggie

Reggie had not expected her return meal to be full of discussion regarding divorce and long lost siblings. She had wanted to jump right into things and be happy to be around her friends again. She didn’t want to dwell on her father not being around like he used to be or how her mother had missed another holiday, but she didn’t want to think about the fact that one of her good friends was dealing with something so serious. She was pretty sure that he (or, any Pureblood), dealt with a lot more things than she could ever imagine, but divorce was something she knew all about and it certainly wasn’t something to glance over.

She was glad though, that Derry suddenly gave her the same smile he had given her the first day that they had met. She always looked forward to his smile. For some reason, it made her feel like everything was going to be okay. That they will get through this year like they would any other. She was glad it was back now, even if it may not last. She wasn’t sure what to say to his now departure from the New Hampshire Pierces, but she wasn’t going to lie and say she wasn’t somewhat happy for it. At least now he didn’t have to deny his life at Sonora to his family. “We have to make a trip out of it and see how many of our friends want to go. It’ll be fun.”

Reggie had to shake her head at the sudden information Derry was giving to her. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” She said, holding up her hands to single him to stop. “You can’t go slamming all this up on me and not let me ask questions.” Reggie advised him, looking somewhat stern. “You’re going to be hanging out with Coach Pierce now? Isn’t that like really weird? She’s, you know, Coach Pierce.” Reggie knew that they were related (she had no idea how because all these families were so big and interconnected it was hard to keep them apart), but she had always assumed it was all very distantly related. Now he was having holiday dinner with their Coach? "That’s crazy bananas! And you’re an Uncle? Shut the front door! What’s your brother like? And your nephew? What is Coach Pierce like outside of school?” Okay, so now she was probably overloading him with questions, but inquiring minds needed to know!

6 Reggie I think it comes with being a Teen. 187 Reggie 0 5

Jade Owen

January 09, 2012 6:02 AM

Extra exciting! by Jade Owen

Jade wasn't sure what she'd been expecting when she returned home over the midterm break, but what she found was that everything was the same. Her parents were the same, her house was the same, and even the animals were the same. Her own kitten, Bella, now looked bigger than she had done before, compared to the other animals, but because Jade had seen the little cat every day she hadn't noticed the change herself. Just as always, the Owen family argued, laughed, played together and ate too much on Christmas day. Just as usual, they didn't have many presents, and those they could manage were small or second-hand - possibly both. Jade had managed to recover a new-looking book for her older brother from a second-hand book store, and a striped hairband for her sister, bulking up both gifts with some cheap candy. In turn she'd received a set of colored pencils from James and a stuffed toy cat from Josephine, which looked just like her old cat, Pablo. Jade decided to name him as such, and Pablo and Bella were now both curled up on her lap as the Headmistress welcomed all the students back to school.

Having two older siblings at the school, Jade already knew about the Midsummer activities, and that this year there would be a fair. however, as each event was only held once every four years, even james hadn't been at the school long enough yet for there to be a fair, so it would be as new to either of them as it was to her. It sounded like it could go either way in terms of enjoyment - the bit about hippogriff racing sounded awesome, but crafts competitions and square dancing were the epitome of lame. Waverly, on the other hand, seemed all excited. Jade decided to indulge her - she liked her Muggleborn roomate, despite (and sometimes because of) her naivety about magic - and shrugged as she replied, "Hippogriff racing sounds cool." Since the actual Pecari Seeker had some sort of medical problem or something, Jade had been asked to play Seeker in the first Pecari Quidditch game; she thought racing a hippogriff might be easy after that.

Surveying the banquet before her, Jade took up some chicken and pasta and cheese, dumping the lot of it on her plate before she sprinkled her meal with vinegar. "My sister will be making a craft," Jade assumed, because that's what Josephine tended to do in her spare time. She couldn't remember if she'd ever pointed out her sister to Waverly or not, but since they were in the same House there was a fair chance the other first year would know who she was talking about. "What sort of thing do you do?" She began to eat as she waited for Waverly to answer.

0 Jade Owen Extra exciting! 221 Jade Owen 0 5

Derry Four

January 09, 2012 12:03 PM

I guess so by Derry Four

"It will be hugely fun," he agreed absolutely at the idea of a skiing trip with the other Teppenpaws. Aside from the one visit to Ben's family just over a year ago, he couldn't remember ever doing anything outside of school with a group of friends. He hadn't even really ventured beyond the mountain with Thad.

Derry ducked his head sheepishly as Reggie chided him about too much information all at once. Even Thad, the ultimate information sponge, would have been equally demanding for a chance to ask questions. She then proceeded to launch a slew at them that didn't quite rival a Thad barrage, but it came close.

Having had practice with answering tons of questions all at once, Derry took a moment to organize his thoughts to cover most of them. "I don't know that 'hanging out with Coach Pierce' is really accurate. It's more like she'll be at holidays and I'll probably be eating stuff she cooks - which is still really weird. Yes."

He put that thought out of his mind though. He didn't need to talk to Kirstenna to know how dangerous that was. He'd just have to hope that now that he was from Boston, too, she wouldn't want to kill him anymore. He was, after all, her sort-of-grandson's uncle now.

"Yeah, Three has a little son named Ben - I know, weird right? My nephew and roommate having the same name? - he's around a year old, I guess. He sort of walks and talks, but he's not very good at them yet. Coach Pierce said he's not much better at flying, either, but she's working on it. He's cute, though. Derry gave him his first tricorner hat for Christmas and he loved it. Do you know who," Derry frowned a little, trying to remember the name, "Benjamin Franklin is? He's apparently some famous old muggle. That's who Three named him after."

"Three's pretty cool. Older than I was expecting, really, he's all grown up and married and stuff, but he's totally nice and he played with me almost as much as he did with Ben at the party, and he dresses just like me. He used to work for the Boston Historical Society, but he quit to take care of Ben for a couple years. His wife is a nice lady called Gabby and she's a healer."

1 Derry Four I guess so 189 Derry Four 0 5

Jose Hernandez

January 09, 2012 2:03 PM

There may be the End-of-Term one yet by Jose Hernandez

Jose's ride back to school had been a little subdued. Andrew hadn't exactly been ignoring him, but he hadn't been engaging fully into their conversation either, and after a while Jose just let it drop and gave him some space. Instead, he'd watched the country pass by beneath him and marveled that he would only see it do that one more time from Sonora's wagons, when he went home for the final time at the end of the year. That thought had subdued him far more than Andrew's lack of conversation had and he wondered briefly if a similar melancholy was why Andrew was being so quiet in the first place. With the California Pierces being as nomadic as they were, seven years of boarding at the same school made Sonora the single location Jose had ever identified as a home. Home, for him, was generally identified by people not location.

This location, though, he thought he would miss, tied as it was to his experiences and even the people he'd met there. A Quidditch Pitch, from now on, would always make him think of Mel and Sophie and all the other people he'd played with over his years on and leading the Pecari team. A room full of boiling cauldrons would make him think of Andrew and Fawcett. Thinking of Headmistresses Kejewski or Powell or Headmaster Regal would always make walls of waterfalls appear in the background. Any time he tried to draw up the image of Jude Normandy, he would also remember the room they'd shared.

So he spent most of the ride back to school looking over the wagon's sides and trying to memorize every cactus they passed along the way.

Arriving at the Gardens, he jumped off the wagon and headed inside, taking the time to say hello to most of the people he recognized by name. In the Hall, he initially moved toward the Pecari table, but then decided he'd play it wild for his one of his last Feasts, and headed to the Teppenpaw table instead. Andrew hadn't said much during the trip over and Jose had, upon seeing the cheerfully falling Cascades, decided that if they didn't do the trick of snapping his friend out of his funk, it became Jose's duty as Best Friend to do so.

First though, his duty as Head Boy and Prefect to behave and listen intently to the Headmistress's speech took precedence. The fair sounded awesome, and even though he'd dropped Care of Magical creatures, the hippogriff raising competition did sound really cool. He'd always liked hippogriffs, and this was probably the only chance he'd ever get to work with them closely. Crafts sounded cool, too, so if he had a chance to put something together for that, he might give it a try. Between Quidditch and Head Boy and looking after a hippogriff and everything else, though, that might prove difficult. Crafts might be out. Chili could work though. His family had a really good recipe for a six bean variety that didn't have any meat or cheese in it. Even Saul liked it and Saul hated most vegan dishes. That shouldn't take more than a couple hours just before the fair and Quidditch would be over by then.

RATS shouldn't be a problem either. Jose had a strict policy on studying for exams - if he didn't know it by the time the exam date came around, he had no business passing the test. He'd probably do some review stuff in the weeks leading up to them, but he had no intention of going RATS-crazy and spending every waking hour in the library until he starting speaking Transfiguration theory in his sleep. He didn't need straight Os. He just needed to do well enough to get into a college potions program, and if that didn't happen, he'd just apprentice under Elly. No pressure at all. Given his current level of class performances, though, he fully expected to pull Es in most of his subjects and an O in potions even without heavy-duty studying.

As the Headmistress finished up her speech and Jose finished mulling over his fair options, he turned to Andrew and found him still sporting that vacant look he'd had for most of the wagon ride. "Okay, dude," Jose said, snapping his fingers in front of Andrew's face. "We're back now for only a couple more months, so live it to its fullest. What's eating you?" He was pretty darn proud of himself that every single one of those words was in English after spending his whole midterm with the Hernandezes, even if 'dude' was a word that he had mostly expunged from his vocabulary a few years ago. Sometimes a guy just needed to be called a dude, and today Andrew fit that bill.

1 Jose Hernandez There may be the End-of-Term one yet 149 Jose Hernandez 0 5

Thaddeus Pierce II

January 09, 2012 6:23 PM

Eating the return feast by Thaddeus Pierce II

Thaddeus was more than a little concerned. Derry had not been his normal cheerful self when they got on the wagons today. Even after Thad had manipulated the conversation to force Derry to defend Teppenpaw's mastery over Pecari's - a topic Four had grown quite animated over during beater practices during the holiday - he had not fully returned to himself. Keeping an eye on his cousin during the Headmistress's speech, he was dismayed to see that Derry was not generating the kind of enthusiasm a fair ought to generate in him. By the way Headmistress Kijewski described it, Thad would have expected Derry to be all over it. He himself planned to stay well away from the hippogriffs and he didn't really care much for hot foods like chili, but some of the other parts sounded interesting. The square dancing in particular sounded promising though he wasn't familiar with that particular style. He was sure it couldn't be too difficult after all the ballroom lessons he'd suffered through until he managed to achieve something approaching grace.

He filled his plate after the food appeared then looked over to the Teppenpaw table again. Derry was at least chatting with one of his friends, and that made Thad feel a little better even though the girl in question wasn't one of the people on the approved list. When she even pulled a normal grin out of him, Thad formally and permanently pardoned her impure blood and turned back to the people at his own table, certain that the world was right again. He double checked that his plate had the right kinds of food on it - nothing too spicy because that was nasty, nothing too sugary because it was improper to skip directly to dessert, and something from each of the food groups so that he maintained a healthy diet for Quidditch practices and didn't stunt his growth - but it looked like he'd managed to fill it correctly even in his distracted state. He dug in as swiftly as decorum allowed because he was quite hungry after the long ride from New Hampshire. Observing all appropriate ettiquette for the occassion did slow him more than his stomach would have liked, but it did soon fill enough that he felt he could pause for light conversation.

"Good evening," he politely greeted his nearest neighbor at the Aladren table. "Did you have an enjoyable midterm?"

His own had been quite pleasant. Sonora's library was wonderful, of course, but there was a great deal to be said for the bookshelves he'd grown up perusing. It felt like home to be in a place where the books were organized by the esoteric whims of his mother rather than by any formalized system. She had, either by happy accident or design, somehow managed to put the easier-to-read books near the floor and the more complex and controversial ones near the ceiling, so that as Thaddeus grew, he could reach the next level of difficulty. That may have been her intent but he thought she did it that way at least in part because she didn't like bending down and she had little use for the simple books anymore. He was pretty sure, though, that she did put the books that would go in the restricted section here at the top of the shelves because she didn't want small children getting at them too early in life. He was only allowed to read those books with supervision even now, and there were charms on them to enforce the prohibition.

He had learned that the hard way.

It didn't matter most of the time. Their greatest appeal was the restriction and both of his parents were willing to read and discuss those books with him upon request, so he was willing to leave them alone for now. There were plenty of other books he could read and discuss that didn't give him nightmares.

As comfortable as his home library was, though, and as wonderful as it had been to see his parents again, it was also nice to return to school and the friends he was making here. Plus, there was the food. "Also, I recommend the potatoes. They are very good tonight," he added.

1 Thaddeus Pierce II Eating the return feast 213 Thaddeus Pierce II 0 5

Andrew

January 09, 2012 8:39 PM

A welcoming feast at the end of term? Interesting idea... by Andrew

Andrew jumped a bit, startled by his neighbor snapping their fingers in front of him. Had he really been that out of it? Who would do something like that...? Jose, Jose would do something like that. How out of it was he? Had he sat down at the Pecari table by mistake? It seemed a bit unlikely, seven years of walking to the same table does tend to ingrain something into you. He looked around at the rest of the people at the table, they looked like Teppenpaws. Good, he must be at the right table. But then... he turned back to look at his table neighbor. It looked and sounded like Jose, but he was Head-boy, Prefect and such, shouldn't he be setting a good example? But he was also Jose, Andrew's oldest friend here at the school... and apparently he had detected that something was amiss. If he couldn't tell Jose, who could he tell?

He shook his head and blinked a few times, attempting to mentally push the recent news to the backside of his brain to free up some processing power for normal stuff. Stuff like conversation, it was surprisingly difficult. Usually he was better at sorting out information and switching between tasks, he wasn't sure why this was consuming his mind the way it was. It really wasn't... he felt himself sliding back and shook his head once again to fight back. "Sorry, yeah... it's just been... an interesting break." How to even begin to explain? "How was yours? Get any interesting news?"

2 Andrew A welcoming feast at the end of term? Interesting idea... 145 Andrew 0 5

Jose

January 10, 2012 12:09 PM

I meant great big feasts where Prof. K makes a speech by Jose

Andrew jumped and looked surprised to see him even though Jose had been sitting right there since shortly before the speech began. When he even looked around as if to check that he was in the right place, Jose felt even more certain he was doing the right thing here. Waiting patiently, Jose allowed Andrew a few seconds to re-oriented himself to the present.

"No problem," he waved off the apology. Andrew hadn't done anything to offend him, Jose was just a little concerned that his friend was so distracted. He really hoped Marissa hadn't broken up with the guy over midterm, but he felt he would have heard about that sooner if it had. Besides which 'interesting' - even by Andrew's sometimes unusual definition of the word - didn't really encompass horrible or devastating. Oh-God-Oh-God-We're-All-Going-To-Die, maybe, but not Marissa-Broke-Up-With-Me. It was an important distinction, Jose thought.

"My break was good. You can't call it boring because there were too many people to ever approach boring, but normal. For us." That, too, was an important distinction. "My cousin Simon brought a girlfriend, which is something he never did before, so everyone's making bets on when he's going to propose. Funny thing is that this lady is Sully's mom." He pointed out the blond second year at the Pecari table. "He's totally paranoid your cousin will find out. It's kind of funny. I caught him checking behind a couple of potted plants at my gramma's house, and asked him if he was looking for something, and he said 'Yeah, Jhonice's spies.'"

He didn't really understand what the kid's problem was with the girl. She was far from the best Quidditch player he'd ever had on his team, but she tried hard and he'd never had a problem with her that didn't have something to do with her rather impressive lack of skill. And Jose really was a California Pierce, albeit a not particularly interesting member of the clan, comparatively.

"And Saul and Elly went to a wedding together, but not their own, to the continued dismay of most of the family." There were bets about when that would happen, too, but those had been going on for so long, it wasn't news anymore.

"What about yours? How was it . . . 'interesting'?" He couldn't help a slight amount of dubiousness as he repeated the word that Andrew had used.

0 Jose I meant great big feasts where Prof. K makes a speech 0 Jose 0 5

Alicia Bauer

January 10, 2012 2:56 PM

Was there something else you might have done with it? by Alicia Bauer

Rachel and Kate had both mentioned the events that occurred at the end of each year at Sonora, but honestly, in the hustle and bustle of settling into school – getting used to roommates and new teachers, figuring out which dishes the Cascade Hall prepared which were theoretically the same as things she ate at home but which were in practice just too different for her to like, helping out in the library, doing homework, making friends – Alicia had all but forgotten about it. The end of the year had sounded like a lifetime away, and she’d had enough to do without worrying about some occasion she knew nothing about at a time which had seemed like it might not even bother to ever arrive.

Now, though, the end of the year seemed a lot closer, probably closer than it actually was, and the Fair was being pointed out to her by someone a bit more important than one of her sisters, or Kitty McLevy at the Opening Feast. This was enough to make Alicia listen and take a few mental notes.

Overall, she finally decided, it sounded much more like something that Kate and Dad would like than like something she would, but she would have to participate anyway. There was no way she could just sit out of a major school event; she’d even went to that awful Quidditch game, even though the only person she had anything to do with in the thing had spent the entire time on the bench, just because she had to be Involved. This was bigger than that; this was something she was going to have to be directly engaged in.

She gripped her temple for a moment. Asking to sit in on elective classes could wait until next year, when it would make more sense for her to have an interest anyway, and surely it wouldn’t be as bad, take as long, to get something ready as it felt like it would right now. Things always felt worse before she did them and they were over with. Everything was under control here. She might have to get up a little earlier for a while, and maybe not review her notes from every subject every night until the project, whatever she finally settled on, was well underway, but it was under control. She’d succeed. She was Alicia Bauer, she did not fail. Not ever. This would be no exception.

The meal appeared, and Alicia directed her attention to it, careful not to take too much of anything, and even more careful not to drop food on her dress. It was new, New Years’-y, she thought, black with bars of blue, green, and red down the front, and while she was good enough with her wand now to get anything off, she’d rather not have to do that. It was just…ugh. Messy, and it would make her look stupid. Her half-brother wasn’t quite seven yet, and he didn’t even make a total disaster of it anymore when he was allowed to sit at the table.

With that in mind, she put her fork down before she started to answer the polite question, then paused to take some of the recommended potatoes before saying, “Midterm was lovely,” with a smile. “Thank you for asking. How was yours?”

Better than hers, she expected. She hadn’t enjoyed much of it. At home, she could still use being the baby – Isaac’s numerical age aside – to her advantage, but she had gotten too used to being the Aladren during her first semester of school. She hadn’t liked going back to being surrounded by those people and situations, and having to act like a brainless five-year-old in order to give them what they expected so they didn’t get in her way. If she’d had to simper at Rachel one more time….

But now, she didn’t. Rachel was over at the Crotalus table, a sixth year; Alicia would probably barely see her for the rest of the year, even if her sister came to the Aladren table to eat with her girlfriends. Rachel was going to be spending all her time and energy politicking among the fifth and other sixth years, leaving no time beyond what was absolutely necessary over for the years who’d have nothing to do with making her Head Girl. So for now, things were all right.

She took a bite of the potatoes. “These are really good,” she remarked. She wasn’t very fond of potatoes, but they were tolerable, and school wasn’t completely an ideal paradise. She still had to go along with others’ tastes an awful lot. At least for now. As for the future…who could say? Anything could happen for them; anything could happen for her. Who could say what it was going to be?

16 Alicia Bauer Was there something else you might have done with it? 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5

Rachel Bauer

January 10, 2012 4:47 PM

Returning and feasting. by Rachel Bauer

By the time she slipped into a seat at the Crotalus table, Rachel was feeling tired. Since she had been back at the mansion for less time than it took to go through a full day of classes, she didn’t think this was a good omen for the rest of her year.

There was nothing to be done about it, though. Her other option had been to go sit down without first going to touch up her appearance and then making the rounds to greet people at each of the other Houses, thus making herself seen at those tables in a friendly way, and that hadn’t been an option at all. It was a new year, a time for new evaluations of life, the universe, and everything, which meant putting her best face on. As long as she could hold on to the part where she felt a little elated as well as a little tired, she thought she’d be all right.

She hoped, anyway. It was silly, but she had started to feel apprehensive about the future during midterm. She was so close to being the first, the very first, in her family to make it through Sonora with honors and acclaim and then not have her life abruptly fall apart around her. She thought it might break her heart for it all to come apart right at the end, the way it had for her mother.

Silly. Stupid, even. Her family was not cursed. They’d just all…had really bad luck, the kind that came when one’s grandfather had more ambition than skill and had made an ill-advised first marriage straight out of school, only to fall madly in love with someone else twenty years later and make some less than clever decisions – again, more ambition than skill – about the details of ridding himself of the unwanted first wife. It was entirely possible for her to remain prefect, become Head Girl, and not have some deep, dark secret immediately tear her immediate family into a million itsy-bitsy pieces. It was. It was just…next year, she would be a seventh year, one way or another, and that was when things had grown so unbearable for her mother, uncle, and aunt that they had seen no choice other than to leave everything they’d ever known. Her other aunt’s condition at seventeen didn’t even bear mentioning. She thought she had every right to be nervous about her birthday in May, even if it wasn’t logical.

The headmistress gave them a brief address, mostly about the fair at the end of the year. Rachel dismissed it as something to think about later, once she had time to write home to ask for ideas for art projects and stuff, and focused instead on dinner. It had been a long day, and she was hungry.

On dinner, and her company. “Welcome back,” she said to the first person who caught her eye. “Have a good midterm?”

That question was kind of fun, in its own way. She could get to hear about the fun adventures people had gone on, and she never knew if people were going to lie or not. Though she did worry, when asking a friend, about whether or not the answer would be something like ‘no, my life has gone completely wrong.’ Her family didn’t have a monopoly on things going completely wrong every now and then, and she didn’t want her friends to be utterly unhappy any more than she wanted to be utterly unhappy herself. She really hoped to hear about parties, or adventures, or just that kind of stuff in general instead of about bad things happening to everyone.

16 Rachel Bauer Returning and feasting. 154 Rachel Bauer 0 5

Nic Sawyer

January 10, 2012 10:32 PM

Re: Returning and feasting. by Nic Sawyer

Nic's holiday had been unremarkably dull. He'd gone home. He'd been wrangled into 'helping' his father make some of the potions his parents sold to the muggles who believed in psychics. The 'love potion #9' that was one of their best sellers was actually just a simple cheering solution (actual love potions being restricted substances even among wizard kind and an offense that would probably result in jail time if sold to muggles - they were already flirting with legality by selling mis-labelled cheering solutions). In truth, Nic had ended up doing most of the brewing since Dad hurried off to answer the phone after only the second ingredient of the first batch and never came back down. That was how Dad had blown up the basement on countless past occassions, so Nic considered it a public service to complete the rest of the holiday orders on his own.

After all the potions were bottled, labelled (complete with the actual ingredient list in case of allergies; the customers seemed to think it was some kind of joke though, which was just as well), boxed, gift-wrapped, and delivered, they shut down the shop for the holiday. Gran came to visit from the nursing home but she was the only houseguest. Gran's husband died before Nic was born, Mom was an only child, and the pureblooded Sawyers liked to pretend Dad was still a bachelor.

Though, really, if Dad was going to marry a muggle wife, he couldn't have found a more magical one. Mom was at least as good a Seer as he was. She could make potions; admittedly, not as potently as Dad or Nic could, but they worked. She could find and enter wizard locations that were supposed to be hidden and protected from muggles without help. And according to some of Gran's tales about her as a girl, Nic was pretty sure she was an untrained muggleborn. It was possible, he assumed, that she'd been overlooked by the magical schools, or that her father had thrown away the acceptance letter as junk.

And okay, muggleborns weren't the most popular marriage option among purebloods either, but he was pretty sure the Sawyers would at least acknowledge a muggleborn spouse's existence.

Nic didn't actually care about any of that in the least though. He didn't particularly care for his Sawyer cousins and the only reason he was contemplating it at all was because he was trying to figure out which explanation Rachel Bauer might find more palatable. He had no idea what she - or anyone else at Sonora - thought of his background. He had never really discussed it with anyone, in part because he didn't really discuss anything with anyone, but mostly because he had learned early in life that it was much easier to deal with people if they did not know both of his parents were Seers. He had found it highly beneficial to just avoid all mention of his parents entirely.

There were hints though. He had the same name as a family in Canada, which may have carried more weight if the Sawyers were more prominent than they were or if 'Sawyer' wasn't a fairly common muggle name as well. He could also be regularly found in the MARS athletic room doing tricks on a skateboard and he'd started school with a flying disability that had lessened with practice, so neither of those things exactly screamed pureblood. On the other hand, though, he'd taken most aspects of the magical world in stride, like it was no big deal. That was, at least in part, more to do with his personality than his experiences, but he thought it might help people correctly decide he was a half-blood.

Of course, most of Sonora only really distinguished between two groups of people, so he'd probably just been lumped in with the rest of the 'not wealthy purebloods'. He didn't, after all, go around introducing himself as Nicodemous Sawyer of the Florida Sawyers. If he ever did, that would be the time someone with mercy ought to shoot him because he'd finally fallen victim to the insanity most people assumed Seers inherently have.

Nic wasn't as gifted as his parents were - or if he was, it hadn't manifested yet - but he had noticed that most of the predictions he made in Divinations class did come true. Also, his bludger-bashed collarbone had a nearly 100% accuracy rate for predicting rain and snow. Hurricanes could put him down with agonizing pain for days before they hit. As soon as he graduated, he was moving far away from the Atlantic Ocean. Kansas, maybe. His collarbone would probably be an asset there, providing sufficient warning to get underground before tornados hit. If he couldn't figure out what else to do with his life, he could probably become famous as the most accurate meteorologist in the United States. Thanks Edmond.

Anyway, his holiday passed without much happening. Gran returned to the Seniors Home, and Nic returned to Sonora, both richer by a few new clothes. Nic also brought with him a new broom, which he had apparently earned by his good showing at the game against Aladren. Dad had apparently decided that Nic ought to have a broom of his own if he was going to be an intergal part of Crotalus's team for the remainder of his Sonora years.

Seating himself at the Crotalus table, he listened to the Headmistress's explanation of the fair and tried to decide if it would counter his attempts to create a reputation as a scary individual to submit a drawing of Rachel to the craft contest. Maybe he could do it anonymously.

But that was a thought for another time. The immediate future was for eating this wonderful spread of food laid out before him.

He didn't get much further than filling his plate though, when he found himself addressed by Rachel Bauer herself. He smiled at her a little, trying not to look nervous, and answered honestly, "It was uneventful, which is what a break should be. Relaxing. Unstressful. I got to see Gran again, too, which was nice." While it was a relatively short recitation of how his holiday had gone, in relation to what most teenagers might answer, for Nic it was downright verbose. He also didn't stutter once, which he counted as a major victory. "How was yours?"

1 Nic Sawyer Re: Returning and feasting. 165 Nic Sawyer 0 5

Waverly

January 11, 2012 7:53 PM

And there's so much to do now by Waverly

Waverly smiled at Jade. Though she hadn't warmed up to her roommate at first, Waverly forgave her for playing tricks on her only a week or so after her first day of school. Now that Waverly had been surrounded by magic for a term at school, she was getting used to it and the people. So far, she loved her peers, and she loved having a roommate. It wasn't different from rooming with her sister at home. Ah, poor Wendy must miss her.

Waverly hadn't exactly paid attention to the Hippogriff races. She hardly knew what a hippogriff was. She remembered skimming over a section on hippogriffs during her magical creatures hunt in the library previously, but it hadn't been interesting enough. Then, she had been much more interested in searching for unicorns and dragons and other creatures that she had only read about before in fairy tales.

"Hippogriff racing sounds dangerous," she said, pretending she knew what a hippogriff was. It could be the friendliest creature ever for all she knew. Anyway, horseback racing was dangerous, she knew that much, and if a hippogriff was anything like a horse, Jade could get thrown off! But maybe hippogriff racing was common enough for magical people to be used to it? Waverly made a note to look up hippogriffs later.

"I bake," she told Jade, "usually with my mom, but there isn't a baking contest or anything, so I'll probably make a craft too. I'm still thinking of what kind of craft to make." Waverly thought for a moment. She had made lots of crafts before with her mom during her mom's free time, and there had been a lot of cutting and pasting involved. She couldn't knit or sew or anything like that. Waverly's green eyes suddenly lit up. "I know! I could make a house." She smiled, now excited as the idea continued to form in her brain. "I guess I'd need cardboard, and I don't know where I could get that, and lots of tape and stuff, and paper..." Waverly wasn't sure where exactly she could get supplies, but maybe there was an art room or something.

"You could help me too, if you want, if you're not busy preparing to race with hippogriffs." Waverly almost beamed, her idea was exciting her so. "I want to get started on it right now," she laughed. "New ideas always excite me." She was pretty sure Jade was aware of that by now.

0 Waverly And there's so much to do now 0 Waverly 0 5

Andrew

January 11, 2012 8:04 PM

True, if you use those criteria by Andrew

Andrew listened to Jose's recount of his break, and laughed at Sully's take on Jhonice. Poor Sully, he'd feel sorry for the kid if he hadn't had to put up with Jhon since she was old enough to talk. Luckily she lived in another state, and now at least in a another section of the school. Sulivan didn't have that luxury. Jose seemed to be coping well enough though. He debated briefly about sharing the information with his cousin, would that make him and Jose 'Jhonice's spies'? It would be rather a rather cruel thing to do, he'd have to think about it.

Jose brought things back to focus on his break fairly quickly. There was no way to avoid it, heck maybe Jose would have some good advice. "Well..." he started slowly. "Do you remember how my summer ended up? I was at Mom's for a little bit, then went to Dad's, nothing seemed to out of the ordinary, but with the whole Marissa thing I guess I was a little preoccupied. Then they sprung the surprise vacation on me all the sudden, and that went downhill fast, we barely made it back in time for me to catch the wagons heading back to school. Well, the whole impromptu vacation was their idea to do a family thing and tell me the news." He paused for just a moment to collect the next stage of his explanation, "That plan fell apart as fast as the vacation itself did, so they didn't get the chance. A few months went by and then I was heading home again. They had no choice now, even I couldn't be that oblivious... Mom just smiled as I gawked and said 'Surprise, you're going to be a brother!'"

2 Andrew True, if you use those criteria 145 Andrew 0 5

Thad Pierce

January 11, 2012 8:09 PM

Just look at it, maybe? Stash it for later? by Thad Pierce

Thad nodded as Alicia gave a completely uninformative answer about her midterm. Well, it did tell him that she hadn't had a horrible one, which was good because he thought of her as a friend now and he didn't want his friends to have miserable midterms. It did not, however, provide him with any idea of what she did or who she saw.

She asked after his own midterm, then, and he decided he would show her how an answer that actually included some details ought to be formulated, so she would know for next time. "My break was enjoyable, for the most part. I was grounded for that detention at the beginning of the year for the first few days, but it gave me a good excuse to just stay inside and read. Grandmother hosted a family party at her house on Christmas Day and everyone from our mountain attended except Derwent the Fourth and his mother. They were visiting a sick aunt on Four's mother's side. I did get to see Four most of the following days, though. He gave me tips about beating so if I have to fill in for Edmond or Preston in the final, or if we don't have a better beater next year, I won't embarrass myself. Aside from a moment when it looked like Alicia was going to have her baby right there in the middle of Christmas Dinner, though, nothing terribly exciting happened."

That was enough information that she would feel she had a good idea of what it had been like, but not so much it would bore her or eliminate the opportunity to ask questions if there was anything she wanted to hear more about.

"Also Mother baked gingerbread cookies and they are my favorite. Did you get any special cookies?" he probed gently for more details on her own holiday.

1 Thad Pierce Just look at it, maybe? Stash it for later? 213 Thad Pierce 0 5

Jose

January 11, 2012 9:11 PM

I'll use those criteria by Jose

Jose blinked at him a couple times. Okay then. That explained the staring into space, the distractability, and the 'interesting'. "Wow," he said as an opener, while his brain rushed to catch up with the input he just got from his ears. "A brother?" he echoed Andrew's last two words then decided echoing was cool. "Wow."

He nodded a couple of times for good measure then got his head in gear. "That's cool. Surprising. But cool. We've got some little kids in the California lot, they're fun to play with. And Lacey's pregnant now, too. Maybe her kid and your brother can be friends if Lacey's has magic. She's an Anderson, though, so probably not. We thought Bea might for a while, since she can see Regina, but -" Jose stopped as he realized he was way off topic and Andrew probably didn't care.

"Anyway, a brother. We've practice One Couple One Kid for almost a whole generation now, to keep our numbers down, so I never got to have a brother. But our cousins are basically siblings anyway. What do you think about this?"

0 Jose I'll use those criteria 0 Jose 0 5

Reggie

January 11, 2012 9:24 PM

It'll get better, I'm sure. by Reggie

Reggie really hoped that they actually did do this trip together because she thought it would be really fun and, to be honest, probably something most of them really needed to do. At thirteen, Reggie felt that her friends were far too serious. They were supposed to be out rough housing, whispering in each other ears about who they liked, or giggling together about some inside joke. Instead, she sometimes felt she was holding their hands and patting their shoulders while dealing with things that were way beyond her true understanding. She just wanted to be thirteen. She could be an adult when she was an adult. She had to go home and be reminded of adult things, especially because of her mother. She didn’t want that with her friends. But, of course, life happened and bad things came with it. Mostly ones that she didn’t understand.

Divorce though, at least that was something she had an understanding of. Sure, she knew the circumstances were different (for one, she had only been four when the proceedings began), but she could at least understand the confusion about what was going on and why it was happening. She was glad though, that Derry didn’t seem to be dwelling on it any longer. If he did return to his earlier mood, Reggie would sit down and talk with him about it all. Maybe if she knew how he really felt about it, they could move forward from it.

“Well… seeing one another for holidays still sounds like hanging out to me.” Reggie commented, looking somewhat thoughtful. Holidays with people usually meant hours spent with them. How else would one person define ‘hanging out’? Still, the idea of hanging out with one of her professors outside of school was a really strange concept. Even hanging with them in school was strange. “Is she at least a good cook?” Reggie asked, curious to know something about the Coach.

Reggie wasn’t going to deny the fact that she was a little jealous over the fact that Derry had a nephew. She would never have a nephew. Or a niece. Unless whoever she married had siblings. This was something that she could at least share with Maddie. Her best friend didn’t have siblings either. Reggie’s eyes went wide again and she choked on a piece of bread. Slapping her chest until she stopped coughing, Reggie gave him a look, “The Coach already had a toddler on a broom? Isn’t that some form of child abuse? That’s so dangerous!” She had actually no idea if it was, but it sure sounded like it would be a dangerous thing.

She laughed when Derry admitted who his nephew was named after. Somehow, it didn’t surprise her. Although Benjamin Franklin was known for Muggle inventions (she had no idea how his brother even knew who he was), the idea of one of Derry’s relatives being named after him was so fitting. “Benjamin Franklin is most known for discovering electricity by tying a key to the end of a kite string and flying the kite during a lightening storm.” Reggie explained to him. “Or, at least, that’s what the story is. He’s also one of the Founding Fathers of America.” Reggie grinned. She was not a history buff, but there were just things she learned along the way.

“I’m glad that your brother seems so cool, but it’s really weird that you all dress similar. I mean, your hat should be one of a kind for sure.”

6 Reggie It'll get better, I'm sure. 187 Reggie 0 5

Andrew

January 11, 2012 9:54 PM

Then you would be 100% correct, if such a feast occurs by Andrew

Thank goodness. Jose's reaction wasn't the same as his very poorly chosen question. The first thing out of his mouth at his parents was 'How did that happen?' He shuddered as remembered their response. They were his parents, they were old, and they told him far.... far, far more than he ever... ever wanted to know. If only he could purge that chunk of his memory, his brain might have a fighting chance at dealing with the other information he had gotten. There was one thing he was rather quick to correct Jose about.

"Technically they're not sure yet if it's a boy or a girl. Mom just told me I was going to be a brother, not that I was necessarily getting one." He paused at Jose's question, "I really don't know yet. I've been trying to figure it out since I got home. A sibling will be, interesting, but with any luck I'm going away to CalTech next year so I don't know how much I'll be around. Still as older brother I've got some level of responsibilities towards them, if it's a brother I'm going to have to teach him how to get into trouble and all that sort of stuff, right? If it's a sister I'm going to have to work to keep her out of trouble. Mostly though I'll have to teach them how to live with our parents."

He played with the food on his plate for a moment before continuing. "They are another issue. I think they know they can't raise a baby living like they do, they still lived together until I was six. Does that mean they're going to try living together again? If so, where? How? All of my experiments and projects I've been doing while we've been living here have been to somehow fuse the magical and the muggle in a form they can both accept so that they could live together again and be happy. None of that work seemed to pan out, will this do the trick? I doubt it, it didn't last time." At this point he was rambling on, spewing out verbally some of the mess that had been burning out his brain the past two weeks. "Maybe it'll give new opportunities though, and maybe I'll pick up something at CalTech that will let me finally bridge the gap for them. Or, it could...." he stopped, finally realizing what he was doing. "Heh, sorry again. On the plus side, it's distracted Mom from the fact that she hasn't met Marissa yet."

2 Andrew Then you would be 100% correct, if such a feast occurs 145 Andrew 0 5

Derry Four

January 12, 2012 12:09 PM

That's what I'm hoping. by Derry Four

Derry shrugged a little at Reggie's definition of hanging out. He guessed they had both been part of the same conversation while they ate, but the rest of the time Coach Pierce was generally talking or doing stuff with the older people in the room, leaving the Derries and Ben mostly on their own. Maybe at a later gathering she would sit down with them and talk to Derry more directly, and that would probably be 'hanging out' but for this time she'd seemed to realize that she made Derry Four nervous and left him mostly alone. Bel, too, had mostly avoided him, which was fine with him because she was almost more scary than Coach Pierce.

"She cooks all right," he answered the direct question. "Our house elf is - was - is?" he stopped, confused by verb tense when the elf in question was still alive but probably not theirs anymore. He opted to just start the sentence over, "The house elf at my father's house cooks better, but the food wasn't bad."

Derry looked shocked and confused at the accusation of child abuse. Coach Pierce was clearly a danger to most of the students at Sonora, but he'd never doubted that she placed Ben's health very high on her priorities. "With a toddler broom and supervision, it's totally safe," he promised. "Baby brooms can't go more than a foot off the ground, and Mom said Three learned to fly before he could walk."

He stared blankly at her as she talked about kites and keys and ellec-tris-ity, but nodded when she said the part about a founding father thing. He kind of remembered Three saying that, because he'd wondered then (and now) how many times a father had to lose track of his kids that he got famous in America for finding them.

"Oh," he said, realizing he must have missed mentioning an important point. "Mom was confused when Three started school and she thought he would fit in better with the muggleborns there if he dressed like them, but the last time her family encountered muggles, America was still a bunch of English colonies. So she made muggle clothes for him as she understood muggles to dress and sent him to school. Three told her that people at school loved his clothes, so she dressed me the same way when I came here."

"Three totally got into muggle history after he was disowned because of it, too, so that's why he's dressing Ben that way already."

1 Derry Four That's what I'm hoping. 189 Derry Four 0 5

Rachel

January 13, 2012 1:27 PM

So we are. Are you enjoying those things? by Rachel

If she had been predicting which guys in the upper years of Sonora might list seeing their grandmothers as a major upside of their holidays, Rachel didn’t think she would have put Nic Sawyer on the list, but it was true that she wasn’t the best in the whole school at Divination. She got by well enough, but had long since determined that she had no particular Gift for it. Which was a pity in some ways, since she might have been able to figure out if she was cursed if she had, but just as well in others, maybe including that one, and had nothing to do with the thing of the moment, which was unexpected but kind of sweet. It was nice, people keeping up with their extended families.

“Great,” she said about her midterm. “But not too uneventful. Some traveling back and forth between my parents’ families – “ okay, so that was splitting hairs in true Crotalus fashion, but she couldn’t help it; she had known there was no point whatsoever in pretending that her father was dead rather than just divorced from the first day, but the only people she was (relatively) open about that with were Samantha and Veronica, neither of whom had an ideal, happily married perfect pureblood family either – “and Momma decided we ought to attend practically every party for Christmas and New Year’s on the west coast.”

Rachel paused to take a bite of her meal. “It wasn’t that bad, but they all get to be kind of the same after the first three or so. Especially since you keep running into the same people. We usually get the most entertaining people at Momma’s things.” Admittedly, this was in part because Momma felt the need to invite some of Geoff’s friends, and his girlfriend was often most entertainingly airheaded, but some of her mother’s guests were genuinely interesting people in their own rights. And maybe it pleased her, a little, to imagine her mother had the best. Nothing wrong with that. At least, she didn’t think so.

“And everyone fussed over my sister a lot,” she added as an afterthought, tilting her head toward the Aladren table. “Alicia, not Kate. It’s her first year, so it was the first time she’d ever been away from home. Momma got kind of crazy about it, Alicia got to come shopping with us this year.” Which wasn’t the worst thing, since Alicia was a lot better to shop with than Kate, but it was still kind of weird. Half a year, during which they rarely crossed paths any more than they would have if Alicia had still been at home, had not gotten Rachel accustomed to seeing Alicia as older than about five, six or seven at a stretch. Definitely not old enough to be at school, and so, theoretically, one of Rachel’s and Kate’s peers.

“But we’re both back now,” she summarized. “Looking forward to those CATS, Nic?” She knew it would come back to pain her next year, but at the moment, she was thoroughly enjoying the feeling of being between exam years. While most of the people she associated with were going to be going crazy studying, she could sit back and relax a little at the end of the year. She thought she’d enjoy it.

16 Rachel So we are. Are you enjoying those things? 154 Rachel 0 5

Alicia

January 13, 2012 2:50 PM

Well, those are better than throwing it at anyone. by Alicia

For a moment, near the end of Thad’s spiel, Alicia felt a sudden jolt of confusion before the context arranged itself properly in her mind and she mentally confirmed, after a moment in which things felt odd, that he was talking about his family member Alicia. Or at least, she really hoped he was, because the last she’d checked, she had not been in any imminent danger of having a baby anywhere near Christmas, or any other time, for that matter. It had something to do with being twelve and, as was only appropriate under that circumstance, indisputably unmarried.

“Special cookies?” she asked, slightly amused by his delivery of the statement about gingerbread being his favorite. “Um, there were some very good ones in the kitchen during my mother’s New Year’s party. But my little brother tried to hog them all.”

Half-brother, anyway, but that was such an awkward term. It called attention to her family’s abnormality. Besides, it didn’t really matter what she called Isaac, because he didn’t matter much to her. He was no threat to her, and somehow felt more distant than her sisters did, hardly like family at all. Which, she supposed, made it odd that she often found it easier to get along with him than with the other two. Really, though, she didn’t think about it much in general. She had even kept him from getting all the cookies, getting as many as she wanted out of it. Isaac just didn’t bother her.

“One of my aunts – my mother’s sister – got married as well,” she said. “In England, though, and we’re not close – “ an understatement – “so we didn’t attend, but it was a good match for her, so everyone was happy about that.” If at least partially because it decreased the chances of ever seeing her aunt again. Their family was one which functioned best when the members were far, far away from each other, and spoke only on holidays, if then. Alicia could only remember ever seeing Helena about two or three times, and each of them had been unpleasant. She was safer far away.

She didn’t really want to linger on her family, though – it just wasn’t a topic she liked very much, it would be too easy to give away more than she meant to, especially with the people she had started to like and feel something increasingly close to comfortable with – so she looked interested and a little concerned and asked, “Did, ah, Alicia have her baby? And not at the table?”

16 Alicia Well, those are better than throwing it at anyone. 210 Alicia 0 5

Evan Brockert

January 16, 2012 11:29 AM

Intrigued by Evan Brockert

Evan's first midterm had not passed uneventfully, but not unusually either. Harmony had gotten sick-relapsed actually, as she'd been sick not long before hand-and wound up back in the hospital, Evan had turned twelve, and a cousin had gotten married. These were events but not unusual events, as they happened all the time.It seemed like they always had to go to weddings now with a lot of family members being of marrying age. His father and brother were third and fourth in line to be the family patriarch and thus his immediate family was obligated to go.

The first year didn't really mind that much. Evan had a lot of cousins around his age so it wasn't as if it were just adults. That might get kind of boring. Adult females talked about fashion and adult males talked about politics, neither of which interested Evan very much. Of course, boys his age talked a lot about Quidditch and that didn't interest the twelve year old either. The only male cousin close to his age was Ryan, who was three years older, who fortunately seemed even less interested in the sport than Evan did, but certainly sometimes other pureblood children came to these events as well.

Of course, they weren't always fun either, because they were often trained to be like little adults, especially by the time they were school age. Still, fortunately, most children didn't have the greatest understanding of adult topics. Evan wasn't quite ready to be a grown-up yet. He was the youngest of six and was, as such, the baby of the family. His mother seemed to be having a very difficult time letting him grow up and he didn't want to make her sad by doing so in a hurry.

Now he was back at Sonora though. The Aladren didn't really mind. He generally liked his classes for the most part and didn't have any objections to any of the students he'd met either. While home was nice, Evan liked school too.

When the Headmistress mentioned the fair, the first year's attention was drawn to two things. The first was that the fair was in Tumbleweed. None of his siblings had ever visited. That meant that there hadn't been a Sonora sponsored event there in fifteen years. That was intriguing and exciting.

The other thing was the craft fair. Evan often made sculptures of different things. Maybe he would enter one. He didn't care so much about competing. His grandfather had always taught them that doing so was unnecessary, a Brockert had nothing to prove, no need for ambition because they were at the top already. Still, Evan thought this might be fun.

He took some meatloaf and a twice-baked potato, topping the latter with salsa. "What do you think of this fair that's coming up?" Evan asked. "I think it sounds like fun. What did she mean by the usual rides and games though? I've never actually been to one before."

11 Evan Brockert Intrigued 212 Evan Brockert 0 5

Thad Pierce

January 16, 2012 12:04 PM

That honestly did not even occur to me by Thad Pierce

Thad nodded in sympathy as Alicia did admit she had access to some very good cookies over midterm but her brother attempted to prevent that access. That told him two things about her break. First, he now knew that there had been cookies, which was, in Thad's opinion, possibly the most important aspect of the entire holiday season. Second, he now knew that she had a brother who potentially liked cookies as much as Thad did. He could not really understand what it was like to have a brother who hogged cookies away from him - partly because he did not have a living brother and partly because he was generally the one who did the cookie hoarding - but he could imagine it was annoying.

She even offered further information beyond the directed questions about cookies, so he additionally now knew that she had a distant maternal aunt in England who was newly married. He could not really understand what that was like either, since all of his aunts and uncles were ancient and well past the marrying stage. Uncle Marcus in particular was within sight of becoming a grandfather, and he was the second youngest of Father's siblings. Mother's only sister was older than she was and she had grandchildren before Thad was born. But then, Thad was young enough to be his own parents' grandson as well.

He could imagine, though, that a relative marrying well was certainly something to be glad about though. Merlin knew that seemed to be the largest goal Druscella currently had for Thad's generation. Well, marrying well and having offspring. The second part was pretty important, too.

He flushed slightly as he belated realized the potential confusion in mentioning his cousin-in-law Alicia to a girl who was also named Alicia. Alicia his classmate stumbling over Alicia his cousin's name cued him into the awkwardness of it, and he felt a little disgusted with himself for not noticing sooner that they even had the same first name. They were just from so completely different parts of his life, and such completely different people with such completely different relationships to him, that he wouldn't have had any easier time differentiating the one Alicia from the other if one was actually named Melissa.

"Uh," he hesitated slightly, still thrown off by the realization that he did know two Alicias and it took him this long to realize he had a name duplication going on within his current conversation. He shook his head slightly to throw off the lapse and answered her question. "She did not have the baby at the table, no, thankfully. She still hadn't as of when Derry and I left for school today, but she is already several days past due so the baby could be born at any time now."

"Alicia, my cousin-in-law," he added by way of explanation, since he felt Alicia, his classmate, had earned this information by having the same first name, "is my father's younger brother's son's wife. Her husband, my cousin Wesley, has designs on the heir-ship, but he has to go through Derry Four and me first. If he has a son, he's going to become quite impossible to live with." Thad sighed heavily and hoped for a girl.

"Merlin, I hope the kid turns out better than its father. Wesley is the only person in my family who treats me like I'm some kind of idiot who can't understand even simple concepts just because I haven't reach puberty yet. Some people just shouldn't be allowed to have children. The poor creature will be condescended to death before he or she makes it to Sonora."

1 Thad Pierce That honestly did not even occur to me 213 Thad Pierce 0 5

Reggie

January 16, 2012 9:25 PM

We can hope together. by Reggie

Reggie had known in the back of her mind that Derry was related to the school’s Coach and Deputy Headmistress, but she had never really allowed herself to grasp that concept simply because Derry never really talked about her before. There was a disassociation there that Reggie had basically ignored until this very conversation. She sort of wondered what it was like to have a family member working at the same school one went to… The closest she had was the school medic and that wasn’t much. The medic happened to work in the same hospital that her father worked at. She had only seen him on occasion, but she didn’t think her father was likely to ask him to dinner any time in the near future.

“Elves usually do seem to be amazing cooks.” Reggie commented. School food was always so delicious so she assumed that House Elves’ food would be the same. She would still prefer her grandmother’s food over anything else, but that was because it meant she was home. It was familiar and safe and always so wonderful. For some reason, a elf meal never quite measured up to a home cooked meal.

Reggie didn’t have any idea how a toddler could handle a broom, whether it was their small brooms or a regular broom. They didn’t have the coordination to hold themselves for long periods of time. She didn’t see how it was possible one flew a broom before they even managed to learn the etiquette of balancing on two feet. Magical people were so foreign some times. It was like even the most common sense of things didn’t apply to them. Reggie was raised in both worlds, but she understood the Muggle world much better. “I’ll take your word for it, but if I ever have kids, no brooms until they can read, run, and ride a bike successfully.” She advised. At least bikes had training wheels.

The look on Derry’s face made her giggle. She knew that kites existed in the magical world because her mother spoke of them when she spoke of her childhood, but maybe keys weren’t so familiar because everyone just used spells? She waved it off though because she had no better way of explaining either. “He tied a metal object to a string. Metal and lightening do bad things together. Electricity is how Muggles power objects that they use. When lightening hits metal, it creates electricity.” Reggie hoped this was a better explanation, but she doubted that it was. “Anyway, his experiment was what discovered it in the first place and later people learned how to recreate and harness it.” Reggie shrugged. She didn’t know much about any of that, just the basics.

Reggie could understand why his mother was confused about Muggle clothing, but if he was going to a Magical school, why would they need to dress in Muggle clothing? Especially if the Pierces were so against mingling with people who were ‘beneath’ them? Reggie felt that everything she was learning about the Pureblood society contradicted one another. Can’t intertwine with those creatures, but you must dress like them… Didn’t really make sense to Reggie. Oh well, she didn’t think any of that will ever be explained just as she knew that she could never really express the Muggle world to any of them.

“You’re family is very weird, Der. Like, completely bananas sometimes.” She said, looking amused. “I’m sorry that you have to leave one family, but I am glad you are getting to know another.”

6 Reggie We can hope together. 187 Reggie 0 5

Jane Carey

January 23, 2012 6:03 PM

Returning to the feast by Jane Carey

The Cascade Hall was its usual loud self as Jane entered and found herself a seat, still patting her hair after the wagon ride and a hurried trip to the bathroom to be sure that she didn’t look too much like she’d been rolling on the floor all the way back from Virginia. She was a prefect, after all, and a Carey, whatever else was going on, and those things meant she was expected to live up to certain standards of conduct and appearance, even right after arriving back at school.

That was also why she was smiling as she did all this, despite privately feeling something she could only describe as dislocation, though that wasn’t quite it, really. It wasn’t, after all, as though anything about her environment had really changed, or her routines. It was just a sense of something having changed on some invisible level – of it being just possible that the walls might melt away and show what they really looked like now – despite the evidence of her actual senses. She had been restless and a little, rationally or not, dissatisfied with things before midterm because of her routines, and now, back from it after they had been upset to some degree by the reality of her and Edmond both being closer to adulthood than she'd really thought of before, she felt as though she were in an almost completely foreign place.

She had always known, sometimes comfortingly and sometimes uneasily, that eventually, things would change. As much as they all might like it, there was no turning back time so she and Edmond could be children forever. She was closer now to her sixteenth birthday than she was to her fifteenth, which was officially in the previous year now; when she went home for Easter next year, it would be the last time she was at home before she turned seventeen that May. If she had been just Jane Carey, just Robert Carey’s daughter, then that might not have mattered much and things might have stayed the same a little longer, but things hadn’t worked out that way. She was Edmond’s sister, with all that implied, right down to the occasional real and immediate threats to her life.

Well, occasional in the past. That part, she was happy to say, was all in the past. There wasn’t going to be any more of that. It was now more about how she was a more valuable tool for the family to use to its benefit than she would have been otherwise, while her brother….

She shut that whole line of thought down before it could even really begin. She couldn’t help that, she didn’t want to think of that, and it might be all right. No one could know how things were going to turn out, especially not with the way things kept changing around them. Some of the change was why she was having such a problem this year, she thought, but some of it could be very good; because of it, everything could still be all right.

She smiled around at the table as the Headmistress wrapped up her address to the students, closing off her thoughts entirely as she assumed her most common role. At Sonora, even more than at home, she had almost only one face, and she had no intentions of letting it waver. It worked very well in the areas it was intended for, and she had never been the type who thought too much about trying to fix things that weren’t broken. While it worked, she’d leave it alone. “The fair sounds like it’s going to be interesting,” she said, starting to select something to eat from the dishes on the table. It had been a long wagon ride back from Virginia and she was hungry.

0 Jane Carey Returning to the feast 160 Jane Carey 0 5

Jade

January 24, 2012 10:59 AM

And so many posts to write! by Jade

When waverly declared that she baked, Jade decided there were a lot more useless hobbies her roomate could have declared. As far as crafting pasttimes went, baking had to be near the top spot in terms of having some sort of function: its outcome was usually edible. In fact, Jade believed that was the general point of baking. So she nodded appreciatively of Waverly's craft - if her roomate was going to be making cake and pastries on a regular basis then Jade wouldn't mind being a part of that. The tasting part, naturally.

Of course, the logic didn't stick around long, which was a trend Jade had noticed with Waverly (admittedly some of it had less to do with logic than it did with familiarity of the magical world, but Jade had already decided that Waverly wasn't the sharpest quill in the box. Now she was talking about making a house out of cardboard and glue. Jade stopped eating just long enough to look at Waverly as though her brain had been replaced by a flobberworm (which, considering what was coming out of the other girls' mouth, might have been a real possibility).

At the offer that Jade could help if she wanted, the first year looked pointedly at her roomate, and asked, "Why would you need tape and stuff? Why don't you just use a sticking charm?" Honestly, she knew Waverly grew up with Muggles, but she had spent the past few months living with other young witches and wizards. She really ought to start picking up on these things by now. Then again, perhaps the winter vacation had sent her back to square one. Interested, Jade asked, "Did you just forget about being a witch when you were at home with your family?" If she sounded scathing, it was unintentional - she didn't really know a whole lot about this bizarre race called Muggles, and Waverly could maybe tell her a bit to help her understand.

0 Jade And so many posts to write! 0 Jade 0 5

Nic

January 24, 2012 9:26 PM

More so every moment by Nic

Nic did not for a moment wonder what Rachel thought of his mention of Gran. Gran was his only ally in the war against crazy parents who knew too much. This made Gran cool and nothing could make him doubt this assessment of the woman. It was, in fact, so anathema to him, that he just assumed people who did not even know Gran knew she was cool. Gran was just that good. So he took Rachel's lack of comment on the subject as Gran's due and did not suspect her in the least of thinking him sweet. Which was really for the best.

He nodded as she talked about travelling and attending parties, neither of which he had needed to deal with, thankfully. Once he reach Florida on the wagon, he had stayed there until the wagon brought him back to Arizona. He considered that a good thing, even if it had meant days on end with his parents. Except for Christmas itself, he could generally lock himself in his room or spending most of the day outside, which allowed him to get away with only limited direct contact with them.

Looking over at the Aladren table to follow where Rachel was nodding, he spotted the youngest Bauer sister. He had marked her as Rachel's sister earlier in the year so he would be sure not to accidentally trample over her in the hallways, but hadn't given her much thought beyond that.

He looked back sharply with a sour look as Rachel reminded him of the test he was due to take in just a few short months. "Immensely," he returned dryly. "I love taking tests that will determine my entire future." Then, because it seemed prudent now that the subject had come up, he asked, "Are they as bad as the professors make them out to be?"

1 Nic More so every moment 165 Nic 0 5

Rachel

January 25, 2012 7:55 PM

Exam talk is just that much fun, huh? by Rachel

Rachel laughed as Nic claimed to love massive tests which determined his whole future. “Of course you do,” she said. “Silly me, ever even doubting it.”

She was aware that testing was one of the things she did well, and she could even enjoy the challenge of it in fits and starts, but Rachel was not an Aladren, and so felt exempt from the necessity of actually being eager about it. She had gone through her fair share of anxiety about the CATS last year and was already, when she thought about it, feeling a little nervous about the RATS. Maybe it was a Crotalus thing; what he’d said reminded her of her uneasiness about the feeling of putting all her eggs in one basket with the tests. Multiple considerations had their own risks, since there were multiple opportunities to slip up and fail, but they also meant multiple chances to succeed, and she tended to be successful.

She nodded at the question about the professors’ estimation of the tests. “I didn’t think they were nearly that bad,” she said, taking a bite of her meal, “but then, I’m not sure the Cruciatus Curse would always be as bad as the professors made the CATS out to be. They weren’t fun, but it wasn’t the three days that completely shattered my soul or anything like that.” She smiled slightly, feeling that sense of balancing a single basket very carefully. “I guess they felt kind of bad for the RATS and decided to let them have the final honors next year.”

As she said it, she had one of the occasional strange moments she’d started having this year, where she realized that next year, she would be a seventh year and then she’d be an adult and have to figure out what to do with her life. She had gotten the trick down, though, of not letting them last for long. She needed to think about these things now, but she needed even more to get through with sixth year first.

16 Rachel Exam talk is just that much fun, huh? 154 Rachel 0 5

Waverly

January 28, 2012 2:32 PM

I'll try to imagine that by Waverly

Waverly hadn't thought of using a sticking charm. Actually, she hadn't really thought of using magic. She had been so wrapped up in the idea of the crafts her family had done during rainy days, that she had completely forgotten about it. "No," she said adamantly to Jade's accusation. "I just...didn't think about it. My family and I made crafts during rainy days when my mom's bakery wasn't open. They can't do magic, obviously, and it was before I knew I was a witch." Calling herself a witch still made her smile a little, and she tried not to let her childish delight show. She was almost twelve for goodness sake. She had to be more mature. Or pretend to be, anyway.

"I like doing things the Muggle way a lot of the time just because I'm used to it. It's still kind of weird for me because I grew up most of my life without magic. Doing some things without magic just reminds me of home." She paused. "Though I guess building a cardboard house would be easier with magic." She smiled at her roommate. She could understand why some people wouldn't understand, but she was sure that if they were thrown into a place where they couldn't use magic, they would be helpless. Waverly still felt like she had the best of both worlds, and she ate some more of her food.

"I wanted to tell you, my mom's going to send me some banana nut bread later this week if you want to have some! It's really good, and it's one of my favorites." She looked at Jade. "You're not allergic to nuts or anything, are you?" She hoped not. Waverly really had to get back to baking if she wanted to start a baking club someday, though she still had to think more on it.

0 Waverly I'll try to imagine that 0 Waverly 0 5

Cepheus Princeton

January 28, 2012 2:52 PM

Equally intrigued. by Cepheus Princeton

It had been hard to leave home this time around. Cepheus had been pampered like no other since he was home for only a short time. His mother was especially frivolous with him, and he had been allowed extra time to play, and had no lessons or tutors to worry about like his younger brothers. He had enjoyed teasing them about it. His friends had been home from school as well, and he had played and romped and made mischief that no one really minded. It had been loads of fun, but now he was back in America, back in school, and he sighed heavily as he sat down at a table.

His great-grandfather had also passed away, though that was to be expected. He was a hundred and something years old. Cepheus hadn't been very close to his great-grandfather, and so had escaped the funeral with his second-cousin Dorian to play around. Cepheus didn't enjoy sombre affairs, much less funerals for people he hardly had any relationship with. Father wasn't quite torn up about it either, so Cepheus assumed it wasn't a terribly big deal. His grandfather had been the patriarch of the family for years now, so nothing changed much. Besides the fact that one less person lived in the Princeton Manor now. More room for him.

Not while he was at school though. Cepheus felt frustrated, but said nothing. His Crotalus mates were easy to get along with, and he didn't mind their company too much. And now there was a fair of some sort. Cepheus couldn't remember going to a fair of any kind in his life. Conventions, perhaps. But not fairs. That was a low-life kind of ordeal.

However, there was going to be a hippogriff racing event. That just sounded stupid and dangerous. And pointless. And what in Merlin's name was a hippogriff? Cepheus prided himself on knowing loads about magical creatures since his family had a small menagerie back home on the estate, but he had never heard of a hippogriff before.

Cepheus was loading his plate with food, intent on ignoring the fair altogether, when someone spoke to him. Cepheus had consequently chosen a table with an unfamiliar face, not that he minded. He had been sent here to befriend American purebloods after all.

"It would sound fun if you're into that sort of thing," the British first-year replied. "I've never been to one myself, but my cousin told me about one he had gone to." Dorian had enjoyed it, but Father had told him specifically that he could not go because it was a filthy place. "There are games where you throw things and win prizes like stuffed animals or trading cards." He thought for a moment. "I don't know much about the rides, but they're supposed to be fun. I've also heard it's a dirty place though. I don't fancy going to one myself. And I don't know what a hippogriff is either." He was only twelve and hadn't paid much attention in his magical creatures class.

He realised his hadn't introduced himself yet, which felt odd, so he said, "I'm Cepheus Princeton, pureblood of London, England." He wished his family was larger and more prestigious. Then he could say things like, "Cepheus Princeton, of the English Princetons," or something. Instead, here he was establishing himself in America so he could say that someday and the Americans would know his family like the Europeans did. He put some a forkful of meatloaf into his mouth, wary of the taste.

40 Cepheus Princeton Equally intrigued. 216 Cepheus Princeton 0 5

Evan

February 09, 2012 5:19 PM

You don't seem like it. by Evan

The boy who Evan recognized from classes as a Crotalus named Cepheus Princeton, didn't sound too enthusiastic about the fair. The Aladren frowned over his classmate's distaste for fairs because they were "filthy". Evan had never met a boy his own age who absolutely disliked getting filthy, even if they did have to be presentable around society. Merlin forbid that the first year should look anything less than perfect around Great-Grandfather.

Then again, maybe Cepheus had gotten to the point where he'd grown up enough not to like to play in dirt. Evan personally didn't play in it now either. Actually it had never been the dirt that had been the draw for the Aladren, it was more what he could do with the things he found in the dirt. Evan was incredibly fond of nature. He liked catching bugs and butterflies. He liked pulling apart plants and collecting rocks to make his artwork. Anything that he could find was usable for art,whether he had to take it apart or otherwise destroy to be used or he could use it as is.

That wasn't what bothered Evan about the way Cepheus replied anyway. It seemed like the Crotalus didn't seem to think much of the fair and was sort of judging him for being so enthusiastic. That's what Adam said, most people were terribly judgmental and nasty, and not just purebloods or about blood status. In fact, that was one thing Evan's older brother said they didn't have to worry about but Adam had never had thought that was enough.

On the other hand, Evan's brother also tended to be very cynical and sort of bitter and a tad bit misanthropic. The Aladren knew he'd been hurt, though he didn't know what had happened, just that Adam had not been treated very well while he was at Sonora. That was sad, but Evan still basically wanted to give Cepheus the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he'd had a traumatic experience with dirt or his mother was a serious neat freak or germaphobe, like how Evan's mom tended to be obsessed with her children's safety.

Or perhaps this was Cepheus's public formal face. Like how Thad was formal but allowed Evan to call him by a shortened form of his name. Because of how high their status was on this side of the country, to a certain extent the first year knew he couldn't cause too much damage to his family by not acting perfect so long as he didn't do anything too out there like marry a non-pureblood. Great-Grandfather would have a simultaneous stoke and heart attack if that happened. The Aladren was likely to be betrothed, even though his three eldest siblings hadn't been.

Evan smiled. "I'm Evan Brockert of the Colorado Brockerts." That was always weird to say when he actually lived in Portland, Oregon but that was what they were supposed to say. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Princeton. You may call me Evan though." He continued. "A hippogriff is a flying creature with the head, wings, and forelegs of a giant eagle and the body (including hind legs and tail) of a horse." His grandfather had a ranch with all different magical creatures so Evan had been exposed to many of them, though of course his mother didn't let him get to close to some.

11 Evan You don't seem like it. 212 Evan 0 5

Jade

February 10, 2012 9:48 AM

It'll happen to you one day... by Jade

Jade had to admit that just being used to the Muggle way of doing things was probably a good excuse for a first year to neglect to contemplate the magical option. It took her a while sometimes to remember she'd gotten shoes with fewer holes in, and she'd get wet feet because she was just used to her old pair, so she figured she could understand where Waverly was coming from.

Either way, Jade was easily distracted by the mention of food. Homemade banana bread, now that could be awesome. Her own mom was a pretty good cook, and she knew how to make a meal last all week by changing this and that about it. Food never got thrown out in the Owen household. On the off-chance that one of the children hadn't eaten it before it started to look past its best, Mrs Owen always knew someway to salvage the spoling food and make it taste phenomenal. Banana bread was one of her favorites, too.

"I'm not allergic to anything," Jade eagerly replied. Well, she'd come out in a funny red rash that one time she'd reluctantly allowed Josephine to put make-up on her, but the less said about that nightmarish episode, the better. "I'll gladly eat anything your mom has to send," she added with a genuine grin. She knew she had one of those constitutions that enabled her to eat whatever she liked and simply grow upwards rather than out... a trait her sister envied, as Josephine tended to do the opposite.

Finishing up the savoury portion of her meal, Jade reached for some cupcakes and ice cream, forgoing the fresh fruit for more sugary alternatives. "Does you mom send stuff often? she resumed the conversation with Waverly. They shared a room, true enough, but that didn't mean Jade ever actually paid attention to what was going on.

0 Jade It'll happen to you one day... 0 Jade 0 5

Waverly

February 12, 2012 4:02 PM

Alright, I can feel it happening already by Waverly

Waverly was glad that her roommate was interested now in the prospect of homemade food. As much as Waverly liked to hoard her food now that it wasn't as available as before, she liked sharing too. Especially sharing food that was just so good. Partially why she wanted a bakery and a baking club.

It was funny that Jade hadn't really paid attention to Waverly's packages that usually came at least once every three weeks. It was never a huge package, but Waverly made such a big deal out of it she didn't know who didn't know. Well, usually it was at the owlery where she let loose her excitement. Waverly never was good at keeping her excitement at bay.

"She sends stuff every three weeks," she said happily. "Sometimes the owls might get in and peck at the bread or whatever she sends, but it's usually in good condition. My mom's learned to wrap up the packages tighter." Ideas popped into Waverly's head for her craft project, but she brushed them aside for later contemplation. "Do you ever get packages from home?" she asked, wondering if she was the only one. It was funny how little they really knew of each others' lives, being roommates and all. Waverly definitely wanted to change that.

0 Waverly Alright, I can feel it happening already 0 Waverly 0 5

Cepheus

February 15, 2012 12:22 PM

Things are not always as they seem. by Cepheus

Cepheus did not like knowing what he felt like he should know as a pureblood, especially when others seemed to know it. But he considered them even since Evan didn't seem to know what a fair held. "You can call me Cepheus, of course," he said with a slight smile. He didn't want to come off as completely unfriendly. His family didn't exactly have a history of being friendly wizards, however. Cepheus's mum had tried to change that, but it was hard being under the thumb of her over-powering husband. Cepheus wanted to be like his father someday, certainly. His father had power and was respected, two things that Cepheus wanted and would eventually receive.

"Winged creatures? Wouldn't you be afraid of them taking off with you? I'm sure there's a way to control them, if they're going to be raced." Cepheus looked around as if he was going to tell Evan a secret. "To be quite honest," he said softly, "I wouldn't mind going to a fair or signing up to race hippogriffs. My father would murder me if he found out I went, though." Sometimes Cepheus felt like he tried too hard to fit in, and though he wasn't exactly keen on really going, the lie came out smoothly before he could stop it. Lying compulsively was becoming a bad habit.

Though his lie wasn't far from the truth. Evan's enthusiasm for the fair sparked his interest. If other purebloods were interested in going, especially one from a seemingly prestigious family in the States, then could it be all that bad? Father's firm voice, calling fairgrounds "filthy places that a respectable wizard would never find himself," brought Cepheus back to the present. He had been so ingrained with his father's opinions that he hardly knew what his were any more.

But never mind. It hadn't bothered Cepheus before because Father was always right. Ceph liked being clean and looking nice and wearing nice clothes. He was self-conscious of his appearance and his status, but that was how every respectable pureblood was. He did what he was told or suffered the consequences of his mischief, which he seemed to cause quite a lot with his mates. Cepheus almost cracked a smile at everything he had done this past holiday, but quickly put the memory away. He couldn't be dwelling on the past in front of a new acquaintance.

He put some more food into his mouth to have an excuse not to say anything. After he had finished swallowing, he asked, "Are you going to sign up?"

0 Cepheus Things are not always as they seem. 0 Cepheus 0 5