Surprise! A Pierce family reunion. on Magical Arts Room and Sports

Ginger Pierce & her Eastern Cousins

November 16, 2017 5:00 PM

Surprise! A Pierce family reunion. by Ginger Pierce & her Eastern Cousins

Ginger was there first. She was kind of the instigator here, so that was only fitting. Well, ‘kind of’ was misleading. She was absolutely the instigator. She was also an impersonator because, frankly, she didn’t think her guests would have answered her summons if they’d known who sent them. Well, that wasn’t true either. Ben would have, she thought. Ben had no quarrel with her or her family. So she could have probably just sent out an owl saying, ‘Hey, Ben, I’m graduating this year and I’m kind of bummed I never really got to meet my eastern cousins while we’re all together here at Sonora. Wanna meet me in the MARS water room to say hi? -Your California Cousin, Ginger’ and he would have shown up and it would have been fine. Maybe she’d try that later, if this blew up in her face as badly as she thought it was going to.

But she didn’t do that because she wanted to meet both of her Eastern cousins. Unfortunately, Winston was from the New Hampshire branch and from what she’d seen of the third year, he seemed the type to pretend she didn’t exist, and was likely to respond even worse to Ben being invited. So subterfuge had been necessary.

Instead the owls had read rather differently. “Greetings, you are cordially invited to a surprise birthday party for Ingrid Wolseithcrafte. Please arrive in the MARS water room before 3pm on Sunday.” Ingrid’s birthday would not actually occur for another month or so, but she doubted the other Pierces knew that. She was perfect for this, though, because Ingrid was a respected pureblood and currently a Quidditch teammate who Winston would not want to slight by declining to attend her birthday party. Ben was her Housemate and a contender to be her Assistant Captain next year if Pecari managed a full team again next year. So he wouldn’t miss it either. Even if he realized the date was wrong (she pegged Ben as moderately more likely to know than Winston given their Pecari Quidditch team association and relative closeness in age), she figured he’d just assume it would be a better surprise if it was further removed from her actual birthdate.

The bigger risk was either of them talking to other people about the ‘party’ but she hoped ‘surprise party’ would keep loose lips from flapping too much.

Finally the day arrived. They were expecting a party, so she didn’t disappoint. There was cake and streamers hanging off a park pavilion and a pretty woodland pond nearby. An artsy banner she’d made read “Happy Surprise Pierce Reunion!”

Ben was the first guest to arrive and he looked surprised at first, but then he laughed and gave her a high five and all was cool with him. “Oh, man, you really got me,” he grinned. “I totally probably weirded Ingrid out because I’m awful at secrets. Is it even her birthday?” he hefted a gift wrapped package. “I got her a present.”

“May, I think,” Ginger grinned back. “You can give it to her then.”

“Oh, man,” he whacked himself in the forehead. “I knew that. I’m an idiot.”

He put the present down next to the cake and they chatted a few minutes before the door opened again and Winston walked in, just two minutes before three.

Expectedly, his reaction was rather less easy going. He came to sudden and complete stop, staring at the banner. Ginger smiled encouragingly at him. “Hi,” she said, cautiously. “Surprise?”

OOC: Ingrid’s birthday roughly approximated by her author.

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Winston Pierce and his Disreputable Cousins

November 21, 2017 1:41 PM

Not my best light by Winston Pierce and his Disreputable Cousins

When Winston received the invitation to Ingrid’s surprise birthday party, he had considered declining it. He assumed he had rated an invitation solely because he was a reserve on the Crotalus-Pecari combined Quidditch team, and so had asked Simon if he was going.

Simon had not received an invitation.

Winston had not known what to make of that. He partly felt embarrassed for making Simon aware there was a party he wasn’t privy to. He partly felt elated that he somehow merited an invitation when Simon did not. He partly felt confused about that as well because while the Mordues had had a questionable disappearance of one of their family members more recently than the Pierces had, the Pierces had had bigger issues surrounding their vanished members and much louder rumblings of disownment, which he thought probably ought to put them on about even footing there.

But mostly he felt obligated to go, if he’d been exclusively selected over people actually playing first string on the team. So he found a small gift (just a simple charm necklace in the shape of an I for Ingrid, since he didn’t know her very well) and arrived shortly before three (but not much earlier because he was still a bit uncertain about how he came to be invited when Simon had not and he didn’t want to come across as overeager to prove himself or anything).

So when he entered the MARS water room and discovered he had been tricked by his disreputable cousins who he’d prefer didn’t exist at all and certainly not attend the same institution of learning as he did himself (nevermind that they were both older and had therefore been attending Sonora first), he found himself reacting . . . poorly . . . to the situation.

Firstly, his mouth was hanging open in shock. (‘Never show weakness to inferiors,’ his father’s voice reprimanded him in his head.) Secondly, his wand was in his hand and pointing at the mixed-blood-traitors who had the gall to share his name, and in one of their cases, a large number of physical features. (‘Never point your wand at another person unless you are prepared to duel them.’ The basic law of wand safety came to him in the former Professor Pye’s voice.)

Thirdly, a wild rage was building up inside of him. He was maintaining his control over that at least. Or he was, until The Californian spoke.

“Surprise?” he repeated, incensed. “Surprise? This is an ambush, and you, you are a, a lying liar!” he spat out, too angry to be eloquent or clever in his insults. He assumed her to be the force behind this. She’d spoken first. The banner looked too polished to have been made by the Boston neanderthal. And she was descended from a family of crooks and criminals; this kind of underhanded machination could only come from The Californian. Boston wasn’t bright enough for that.

“Oh, calm down, it was all in good fun,” Boston chimed in and Winston’s wavering control snapped.

His wand homed in on the new target and he cast, “Immobulus!”

Faster than he expected, Boston had his own wand out and was casting, “Protego!” Winston’s freezing charm bounced off the fifth year’s shield charm. The Californian had her wand out by now, too, but she was a Teppenpaw and was just yelling at them both to put their wands away.

“He started it!” Boston protested. “I just defended myself!”

“Well put it away now! You, too, Winston! See, I’m putting mine away. This is a friendly family party.”

“I am not your family,” Winston bit out harshly, pointedly not putting away his wand. “You are descended from the by blows of whores and criminals. You are nothing to me. And you,” he turned and glowered at Boston. “You’re born of the dead. You shouldn’t exist.”

With that he turned on his heel and left.

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Ben Pierce and his nicer cousin

December 05, 2017 4:56 PM

Salvaging the cake by Ben Pierce and his nicer cousin

Ben spent the week between the invitation and Ingrid’s surprise party trying not to give it away to Ingrid that she had a party coming up. He was pretty sure she caught him grinning at her like a fool a couple times, and he stumbled over his words to her a few other tomes as he realized just-in-time that something he’d been about to say might give away something, but he’d made it through the week without giving anything away.

As it turned out though, the surprise wasn’t on Ingrid. (She would probably think he’d gone briefly mad after his odd behavior this past week and then nothing coming of it.) Still it was pretty cool. There was cake, and Ben was always down for a party, and Gramelia did ask after Ginger and Winston sometimes, so it would be great to finally have something to tell her about them besides what positions they played in Quidditch.

He totally should have thought of doing this himself.

Unfortunately, he remembered why he hadn’t when Winston showed up. The Pierce branches had bad blood between them. For California, it was over a century passed, so he guessed he could see how Ginger thought she could mend fences, but it was still less than two decades fresh between his own branch and Winston’s. The Boston Pierces had nothing against California, so there was no animosity between Ben and Ginger, but . . . Winston was clearly another story.

Ben winced as the younger boy defamed her whole family and deemed them all as worth less than dirt. Then the Crotalus turned on him. The words were short but cutting. Ben redrew the wand he had put away at Ginger’s insistence. He made sure the door was already mostly closed before he loosed a stinging hex at his departing ‘cousin’ - he didn’t want to get in trouble by letting it actually connect, but it felt satisfying to loose it after the kid.

After another moment, Ben realized Ginger was crying.

“Oh crap,” he muttered, wishing one of her friends was their to handle the job of comforting the girl but there was just him. Feeling very awkward because they were two years apart in age and in different Houses, so despite sharing the same last name and perhaps some genes, they were virtually strangers. Still, he wrapped an arm around her and said, “He’s not worth your tears, cuz. You did a super nice thing and if he doesn’t appreciate it, that’s his problem not yours. Come. Let’s eat cake!”

And she smiled at him, a bit tearfully, admittedly, but she was smiling and nodding, and she agreed, “Let’s eat cake, cousin.”

Ben grinned back. “Great! I love cake! You’re the best cousin ever! ‘Course, the only competition you got still eats crayons, so . . .”

“Oh?” she asked, genuinely interested, and fully distracted, success! “You have another cousin in Boston?”

“Yeah, his name’s Cole and he’s almost two.”

“I have a little cousin, too. His name’s Lennon. . .”

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