Headmaster Brockert

December 06, 2014 1:34 PM

Headmaster Brockert

Staff
Subject: Headmaster
Written by: Allegra Brockert

Birthday: May 27

Midsummer Ball by Headmaster Brockert

As far as Mortimer was concerned, the Midsummer event was nothing more than a chore, much like the Opening and Returning Feasts. It involved his least favorite part of his job, getting up in front of the students and giving a speech. Not that the man was afraid of public speaking but he loathed having to pretend to be pleasant and festive and the slightest bit interested in the social occasion at hand. Mortimer hadn't been here nearly long enough to perfect such difficult acting skills. Being friendly and personable went against the core of his very being. Just the fact that he was able to manage to keep himself from scowling or sneering was an accomplishment.

The only positive thing that he could say about the ball was that it was the easiest event to plan for. It was always the same whereas with other events people always seemed to want something new and different from what he understood. Of course, the ball also had the most potential for drama and misery. Thankfully, he kept his distance from the emotional states of students-something he had no idea how to deal with in the first place- and really only interacted with them if he had to step in as a disciplinarian.

The hall had been transformed into a real dance hall with a stage for the band the school had hired, one that played popular tunes. Not necessarily Mortimer's taste, but he supposed he once again had to make concessions. There was a huge dance floor with groups of medium sized tables surrounding it. The Hall was decorated in the colors of the winning house and flowers were the center pieces at each table. There was also a table with buffet much like the one at the Bonfire last year. Not the classiest thing but it wasn't like they could hire waiters, and a set menu didn't work either when you had a wide range of tastes in food. Besides, for those less than enthused about the ball in general, they could at least enjoy their meals.

Once everyone had settled in, he stood. "Good evening and welcome to this year's Midsummer ball. I have a few announcements before the festivities start. First of all, we are saying goodbye to Miss Jera Valson who is leaving to pursue other opportunities. Next, we have decided to save announcing Head Students for next year's Opening Feast." It really didn't make sense to announce them at the Midsummer Event then have to repeat it all over again for the firsties at the Opening Feast next year. "That is all. Go on and enjoy yourselves."

With that, he settled in for what was most likely going to be a boring evening for him. Mortimer had never been one for parties in general and ones meant for younger people were even duller.

OOC-The specific winners of the House Cup will be announced next week. Also, the yearbook should be out tomorrow.
Subthreads:
No date, no drama by Clark Dill
Running just a little late. by Wendy Canterbury with Rupert Princeton, Wendy
Reflection and chaos by Neeka Campbell with Leo Princeton, Neeka, Neeka
A magical night with magical Melanie by Marcus Crosby with Melanie Lennox
Well, this is..... (tag Jay) by Francesca with Jay Carey
Hoping for amicability by Tobias Reinhardt II with Lena Westley
Friends and chocolate--nothing better (Chloe & Emery) by Ava Fletcher with Emery and Chloe Jareau, Ava
Figuring things out (tag:Willow) by Keme RunningBear with Willow Collins
The best kind of ship is a best friend ship. (Atlas) by Liliana Bannister with Atlas Primred
A great night for... friends. [Ji-Eun] by Arnold Manger with Ji-Eun
Looking forward to a good time with Emrys. by Charlotte Spencer with Emrys Lucan, Charlotte
I came in like a wrecking ball... [Tag: Chaslyn Brockert] by Liac Reinhardt with Chaslyn Brockert
On my own by Annabelle Pierce with Amity Brockert
Swing, sway, slide.... (FAO prefects, HSs, my sidekick) by Jamie Park with Uzume Shinohara
Waiting anxiously for Anthony by Effie Arbon with Anthony Carey VIII, Anthony
Watching and saying goodbye. by Aria Yale with Nathan Xavier
Trying to keep sane. by Olivier Westley with Araceli Arbon
Not what the names suggest... by Charlie and Julian with Julian Umland
Cool, calm, and collected [Diana] by Jake Manger with Diana Carey, Diana
On the sidelines. by John Umland with Theodore Wolseithcrafte
With Adam by Annette Pierce with Adam Spencer
Better late than never (tag Scarlett) by Joella Curtis with Scarlett Brockert
11 Headmaster Brockert Midsummer Ball 6 Headmaster Brockert 1 5

John Umland

December 22, 2014 1:36 PM

John Umland

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Grayson Wright

Age in Post: 11
Birthday: September 23rd

On the sidelines. by John Umland

As the student body gathered, boys and girls meeting inside and outside the Hall and entering it singly and in groups, there were many questions going around. Which couples were going to dance? Were there going to be any major break-ups or get-togethers before the end of the night? What music was going to play? What food was going to be served? Who was going to get which awards in the yearbook? Would all the finery survive the night, or would mishaps, malice, or some combination of both doom some of the girls (or even some of the boys) to ending the year on a note of shame and humiliation?

John knew about these questions because he had heard his sister ask them, repeatedly, over the past few weeks. It would, he thought, have gotten really boring over that much time if the questions had even been answerable, which they were not, which was why he also didn’t see the point of them at all. He, for his part, was absorbed with another question as the evening began: were his classmates more than a little reminiscent of peafowl tonight, or did they remind of him more of mandarin ducks?

As he sat at the table he had chosen, in a chair which put his back as close as possible to a wall and would allow him see anyone who approached him coming from a distance (he didn't think it was likely that anyone would approach him, but he felt bad about reading things that weren’t useful and such tricks were about all the mystery and spy novels he couldn’t help enjoying had to offer), and watched the procession of gowns and dress robes, though, it occurred to him that there was a problem with either analogy. Both species had males and females which were very easy to distinguish from each other, but in both their cases, and even in less dramatic ones like cardinals, the males were usually the colorful, showy, conventionally attractive ones. Humans, or at least most American teenage humans, had it…backward, sort of. The guys – even John, in plain dark blue – were mostly turned out better than usual, but it was the females who, if everyone hadn’t been people and too young for that kind of thing, John would have said were making courtship displays, showing off the fact that they had the resources to waste on such elaborate plumage.

People were different, he knew there were reasons why, but his hobby still made the dresses amusing to him. Except, of course, when he saw Julian’s. Other people probably thought his sister looked pretty in her fancy dress and with her hair different and all, but to him, she just looked…wrong. Like a fake Julian, and he wanted her to go away and let the real one come back. It helped a little that she looked a lot more like herself than he thought she would have if she hadn’t come to the Ball with Charlie (a guy John had strongly associated with one of those tropical pigeons, the vivid surviving relatives of the dodo, even before he laid eyes on his formalwear and wanted very much to interview, even though he knew he would only ever get to do so over his sister's cold dead corpse and possibly not even then), but it did not help all that much.

Since he was sure the real one, who didn’t do her hair and actually said something interesting a lot more often than data collected just in the past month would have suggested she did, would be back after the event, though, he just made a point of looking somewhere else every time he noticed Julian’s situation. Better to find the others, in his comfortable distance from them, kind of funny than to find his own sister a little disturbing.

Headmaster Brockert gave him something else to look at for a minute, but only that long. Since John regarded dancing as a gift as remote from his skill set as brevity was, he ignored the beginning of the music to go look at the food offerings. He wasn't really in the mood to focus on a meal today, would have rather eaten finger foods and focused on taking notes on his schoolmates' behavior and then amusing himself by pretending they were serious if anyone noticed, but since this was kind of a feast and he knew at least one of his friends might have given an IQ point or two to get to attend something actually called a feast, he wandered the buffet with a plate in hand, looking for the gems…and the macaroni and cheese for a side, because there was a reason the classics were classics and that was one thing that was always available and tasted good year-round. Then he went back to his chair to eat and skim through the yearbook, a little curious to see who had gotten the awards despite the mini-essays he had written for his own entertainment in the answer blanks for several questions he hadn’t liked.

Through the first set of them, his main reaction (he was more preoccupied with an unexpectedly good turnip dish, which he was pretty sure had saffron – something his mom adored but which they usually only had on very special occasions because of the price – in it) was the occasional blink of surprise when he discovered that certain people were or weren’t in his year, since he was even worse at keeping track of who was a first or second year than he was at picking up on people’s names. Near the end, though, he paused and looked between the title of the page and his picture at the bottom of it a few times.

"Huh," he said, and winced a little as multiple lines of thought started jostling for attention at once: the question of why his classmates might think he was a future criminal (the best he could come up with was that a lot of them were anchored in the late seventeenth century in some ways, including ones that let them believe things like 'women are basically property' and 'wanting to know how things work makes you evil'), the problem of kind of already being one (sub-divided into thoughts on codes, force fields, privacy rights, money, international spies, and the end of the world as they knew it), and the multiple definitions of the word 'become' and whether or not he could use any of them to twist the title into something else, or at least into the punch line of a sarcastic remark.
16 John Umland On the sidelines. 285 John Umland 0 5


Theodore Wolseithcrafte

December 27, 2014 3:22 AM

Theodore Wolseithcrafte

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Rhy

Age in Post: 13

Shhh! They'll know it's a conspiracy. by Theodore Wolseithcrafte

The ball had occupied more of Theodore’s thoughts than he would have liked. It was a silly school dance which didn’t matter and was bound to be exhausting and tedious unless he could find a way to avoid spending the entire evening engaged in irritating small talk. This was why it had occupied so much of his mental energy, as he tried to devise ways of putting off Sonora’s witch population that didn’t involve a loss of his dignity or decorum. When his mind was being unco-operative in strategising, it tended to lapse into worrying about how painful the whole experience was going to be. It wasn’t that he disliked people, or even social gatherings, per se, but he found they took up a lot of his energy. If he was going to have his reserves drained by being around other people, he would have rather used them on stimulating conversation and company, not discussing the details of everyone’s frocks.

He had been relieved to hear that Liliana was going with Atlas. As a Quidditch playing female, it would be rotten if she was left alone, given most people’s moronic inability to distinguish correlation from causation. He would have been obliged to dance with her at least once just to make a point. He believed one of the Anns was potentially in a similar position but he didn’t think he could help there. Even though they were so very small and he was rather tall, the age gap was significant enough to make them an amusing pairing even if their heights were not. There were bound to be plenty of other unattended females, of course, but he felt no moral duty to help them out. In fact, he was keen to avoid their attention as much as possible…

He slid into the ball, hoping he looked unobtrusive. He had never had much patience for choosing clothes and had opted for a classic cut in black. With all the riot of colour going on, he thought his very unobtrusiveness might make him more conspicuous, which was irritating but he had no idea what else he would have worn and he would rather be noticeable for being staid and drab than for looking ridiculous, which he felt some people did.

He watched the first dance dutifully, glad that Jay wasn’t a real date. If he was then it would have been Theodore’s moral duty to inform him that he would hex him to a bloody pulp if he hurt his sister and he thought that might seem a tad ridiculous coming from a third year Keeper to a seventh year Beater. He turned towards the buffet just before the first dance finished, determined to have his hands conveniently full as the dancefloor opened up to everyone else. He helped himself to a glass of punch whilst he perused the offerings, taking two salmon vol-au-vents because any more than two items of one kind of finger food looked improper, rather than because he only wanted two. He filled the rest of his plate with a range of other items, including a token amount of healthy things like cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes.

He topped up his punch glass, already feeling cheerier about the whole scenario, and scanned the room for somewhere to sit, and caught sight of John Umland alone at a table. Perfect. Although it perhaps wasn’t strictly kosher for him to seek out the boy’s company, their shared status of Quidditch players gave him enough of an excuse, especially in the slightly more relaxed social world of Sonora. However, John was still improper enough that he might act as a suitable woman repellent for the evening. Being deeply engaged in conversation was a good barrier in itself (and John, he thought, could probably do a decent job of holding up his end of an interesting chat) and if you added to that the fact that the person being spoken deeply with was someone that the ladies in question didn’t want to acknowledge… Yes, John was a good bet.

“That’s usually my reaction,” he offered, as he heard John’s ‘huh’ in response to the yearbook. He took a few sips of his punch, enjoying the warm, content feeling that… something was giving him. “Followed by eye rolling and closing the silly thing,” he explained, taking a seat next to John, and thumbing idly through his own book. “Tonight though, I feel I might find it endlessly fascinating,” he added, propping it open in front of him and slouching slightly in his chair. “I’m hiding you see,” he added, in a dramatic whisper. Normally, he was a man of few words and would have let his actions imply his motivations, however there was this little… feeling in his head, prompting him to go on. It seemed to be making him think that it might be funny if he did, and that being funny was good. “From the girls. And I might steal all the salmon vol-au-vents too.”
13 Theodore Wolseithcrafte Shhh! They'll know it's a conspiracy. 270 Theodore Wolseithcrafte 0 5

John Umland

December 28, 2014 12:45 PM

John Umland

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Grayson Wright

Age in Post: 11
Birthday: September 23rd

Act natural, but my cover might already be blown... by John Umland

There was noise. A person talking. John tuned into a few words and jumped when he realized the person was talking to him. Absorbed in his thoughts, he hadn’t even noticed Theodore Wolseithcrafte's approach. Some spy he was turning out to be.
 
Now that Theodore was here, though, there was a new question to consider, which was why he was here. And why was he talking so much? John was pretty sure he had never heard Theodore say this much together to anyone, much less speak so much to him, someone who was really only on the furthest fringes, like a lunatic kept around because he was their kind of weirdo and there were three other types of people around to dislike more, of Theodore’s tribe at Sonora and not part of his real one at all -
 
“I don’t think you have to steal the food,” he said, latching onto that part as the easiest to respond to when Theodore stopped talking, looking up to make sure Theodore wasn't about to dump a gravy boat on his head or something. That kind of thing didn't seem to happen much around here, but he didn't trust them anyway. “There's plenty. If you eat them all, they’ll probably just bring out some more.” Limits never seemed to be much of a problem for the kitchens here, after all. He was more or less used to it, now, but every now and then, it still struck him just how much money there was in this place. If he had just as much money as he guessed had gone into the food for tonight…John’s hands felt shaky and his mouth dry at the very thought of what he could do with that much money.
 
Looking down to the table again, he shoved his fork back into his turnip dish to try to distract himself from the visions of microscopes dancing in his head. He didn’t have the money and he never would have the money, so he might as well enjoy the gifts given to him by the people who did have the money. Sometimes he felt bad about it, but Mom said enjoying good things was only bad when it was done in the wrong way. In this case, he thought that meant he should enjoy his turnips, little seafood salad and lemon chicken things, handfuls of raisins and honeycrisp apple slices, and macaroni and cheese and then go back and have some of that blackberry-ginger trifle he’d spotted for dessert and then just be extra-strict with himself on Friday. Eating the food would prevent it from going to waste anyway, he reasoned, and that was a good thing. Especially since he actually was hungry and had nothing else to do right now that he could do without drawing attention to himself, which he kind of didn't really want to do at the moment.
 
“If you’re really trying to hide, though, looking at the book for too long might make them notice you more,” he added. “People always look at me funny when I want to read at parties, and my books are a lot better than that one.”
 
That was his least-favorite part of going to see Dad’s parents. He liked their house, even liked them most of the time, but he got overwhelmed by all the energy of so many people together after a while and needed to disconnect from it, which was hard to do when Grandpa always made jokes about John’s attempts to retreat into corners with books after a while. It was even worse when someone tried to take his books away from him first, both depriving him of the book and, by drawing attention to him, still subjecting him to teasing. It was better at home, but even there, Mom and Dad made him eat supper with the family and without anything else to focus on every night whether he felt like it or not, unless the reason he didn’t feel like it was a fever. He had surprised himself by almost missing that, sometimes, here this year, though he had been able to distract himself well enough with the work that no-one here (except Julian, and she only cared one day a week, when she insisted they eat together on Sundays) cared if he did at the table or not.
 
He hadn’t, despite his lack of attention to his food, gotten much work done this year, but he had taken a lot of notes. Filled multiple little books with ideas, questions, and speculations. Maybe next year, now that he had a firm grasp on the basics, would be better. If he didn't succumb to complete paranoia and start thinking  the teachers were watching him too closely or something. That might slow him down almost as much as the things he didn't know, he thought glumly, taking a swallow of his drink. He was glad Theodore thought the thing was as stupid as John had been prepared to. Theodore had reason to lie, since they thought his sister was a potential felon too, but maybe everyone felt that way.
16 John Umland Act natural, but my cover might already be blown... 285 John Umland 0 5


Theodore

December 29, 2014 2:49 AM

Theodore

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Rhy

Age in Post: 13

Your name is John and you are A Perfectly Ordinary Bloke by Theodore

“True,” Theodore mused, when John stated that there was probably a near infinite supply of salmon vol-au-vents (wondeful thought!), “True,” he repeated the word a couple more times as he mused. Whilst John’s observation was undeniably accurate he felt it didn’t address the crux of the matter - that the matter had a crux which was being unaddressed, “But!” he declared authoritatively, “Can I take them? There’s all these little rules and how-do-you-dos that must be followed and I’m fairly sure that puts me in violation of the code of how one does these things. It’s like…” he searched for a good analogy, taking a sip of his punch as he did so. “Chess!” he exclaimed. Everyone liked a good chess analogy. Or at least, anyone smart and worth using one on did, “And how a bishop can only move diagonally. It can take as many pieces as it wants or is able to but it can only do it in a certain way,” he nodded, pleased with how much sense that had made, as he definitely hadn’t had all of that in mind when he’d started the sentence, which was rather unlike him.

“They do do that,” he nodded sympathetically, when John mentioned books being frowned upon at parties. John was making some good points, though he was still fairly sure that he - Theodore - had it right. But it was what he had hoped for, some challenge, some intellectual stimulation. John was a good egg for going along. Now, why was the book was a good defence…. “But if they can’t see who’s reading it,” he remembered, being sure to sink a little lower in his chair, “Then they won’t know it’s me. Especially as I’m talking to you. They won’t think I’d do that. You’re a disguise too,” he winked, and then wondered whether he should have let John in seeing as that was a secret. John was part of the secret though, so maybe that made it ok for him to know. Or maybe it made it worse because he might act all unsecretive now that he knew he was supposed to be being so. People were funny like that. “Shhh, forget I told you that,” he tried to wave it off, deciding it had been the subterfuge equivalent of saying ‘just look natural’ to someone as you pointed a camera at them. It was bound to result in an awkward stance with a goofy smile and rabbit in the headlights kind of a look.
13 Theodore Your name is John and you are A Perfectly Ordinary Bloke 270 Theodore 0 5

John Umland

December 29, 2014 9:53 PM

John Umland

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Grayson Wright

Age in Post: 11
Birthday: September 23rd

As are you. Definitely. Nothing interesting to see here.... by John Umland

John frowned suspiciously when Theodore repeated the word ‘true’ a few times, sure he was being mocked, but his eyebrows lifted a little in interest and surprise when the Keeper launched into a chess analogy. Strange that he would choose to talk about the exact chess piece John associated him, or at least his position on the Quidditch Pitch, with….

“Just move like this, then,” he said, using his finger to draw out moves on an imaginary chessboard between them. “From here – “ he pictured a white bishop’s starting position at c1 – “to here – “ he moved his finger along a short diagonal, toward where he imagined b2 was – “and then up to here – like you were capturing the rook,” he added, tapping the far-away imaginary corner of Theodore’s side of the imaginary board . “Go to the table for something else, then run – as soon as you get the other thing, whatever that is, then you run over to the other tray and capture the vol-au-vents while nobody’s looking and then get out of there before the queen sees you and captures you back,” he finished with a momentary smile, mixing his metaphors but hopefully conveying a reasonably clear message. It was weird, even half-joking with someone here other than Julian; not necessarily a bad weird, but weird enough that he felt vaguely, mildly nervous about doing it. Talking in multiple sentences usually didn’t work so well with new people, after all, even though he thought that one had actually all been pretty good, continuing from what the other person had said first and then almost, sort of, getting in a…something, since ‘queen’ was a female title and it was girls Theodore wanted to avoid.

“Though that's assuming all the right everything elses have already been moved or not moved, anyway,” he added. “And if it were a game, you might want to, uh, set up a distraction a few moves ahead of time…but it’s not a real game,” he concluded, remembering that other people got bored or irritated with extended metaphors. He liked them, usually, but he also liked puns and playing on literal definitions of words, both of which also seemed to irritate most people. “It’s vol-au-vents you have to grab like a bishop...for some reason.”

His expression lost some of its unaccustomed general pleasantness, though, when Theodore – ridiculously cheery; what was so funny? – explained John’s new ‘role’ to him. He took another swallow of his drink.

“Exactly what I always wanted to be when I grew up,” he said against the rim of his glass, not in his friendliest or more sincere tone. “But anyway - they’ll find out who you are if any of them decide to come see who you are just ‘cause you’re the only one still looking at the yearbook in an hour,” he argued back as he put the cup back down, very carefully. Argument for argument’s sake was a habit, and one he was not inclined to break. It was fun and he was, after all, usually right. Being right always made everything seem just a little bit better. “Or...sitting there hiding behind it or whatever. Why are you hiding, again? It must be pretty bad, to rather...talk to me.” He was pretty sure he had lost a word somewhere in there. It didn’t bother him much, as it also suddenly seemed very funny, the whole spectacle: Mr. Pureblood hiding out, hoping not to be seen but more willing to talk to - be seen talking to, even; the horror! - the likes of John than to deal with the females of his own tribe….He couldn’t help chuckling at his own remark, even though he remembered being a little offended not long before.
16 John Umland As are you. Definitely. Nothing interesting to see here.... 285 John Umland 0 5


Theodore

January 10, 2015 4:17 AM

Theodore

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Rhy

Age in Post: 13

I'm John Umland?!?! We can't both be John Umland. It's silly by Theodore

Could he take the vol-au-vents, all of them, if he just sidled up to them diagonally? It seemed like it shouldn’t work but he was almost convinced it would. And, if had trouble with any of the queens, if they asked him to explain himself he could do just that and that would stop them right in their tracks. They’d be still trying to figure it all out whilst he got away. It was all perfect, apart from one little detail. One mistake John had clearly made….

“No no, these are the rooks. Look,” he explained, tapping the little crimped edges of the vol-au-vent. “I have be pretending to be after something else, like hummus - except not that cos it doesn’t have a shape - but really I want the rooks. Of course, in a real chess game, you don’t get twenty rooks on one space but I think we can overlook that, or just stack them all up so they count as one.” The main thing, as John said, was that he ran up diagonally and stole the vol-au-vents. On some level, he knew this was all very silly. It didn’t make sense and was…. silly. But there was a louder part of his brain that was giggling and shouting ‘shh, SHHHH!’ at that part because it was spoiling the fun.

“A distraction is a good idea though,” he nodded, wondering what role John should take. Most things had been handed out except pawn, king and knight… John was more than a pawn, he was a co-conspirator. The king tended to hang back, being all timid and woeful about the possibility of being captured - he was something of a prima donna, whilst being functionally useless. “You’re a knight,” he decided, “You do your little hippity-hoppity moves, then I’ll go get the rooks. If you get captured, I will do my best to avenge you,” he assured him.

Perhaps John wouldn’t want to be a distraction though, even if he got to be a knight. He didn’t seem very pleased about being a disguise, though he picked the conversation back up before Theodore could say… something. Like that he was a good disguise, though he didn’t think that necessarily hit the reassuring note he wanted it to.

“They’re just so…” he searched for some words as to what the girls of Sonora were. But he wouldn’t exactly put Portia Dobson in the same group as Liliana Bannister, little as he wanted to be drawn into a long conversation with either - that, in fact, was the feature they had most strongly in common. That and they were that age now where they were starting to have expectations. “They have this way of looking at you, I’m sure they get secret lessons, that makes you feel bad for not asking them to dance. But I don’t want to dance. And most of the ones around my age are overly talkative but never about anything interesting. That’s what makes you an even better disguise. I don’t just get to avoid them but talking to you is actually fun. But they’re…” the thought of an evening hearing all about everyone’s fashion choices floated through his mind, “their brains are all full of shoes. They’re not,” he noted, finding what it was that bothered him so, “smart like us. Now, shall we get those rooks? I think our plan is a good one.”
13 Theodore I'm John Umland?!?! We can't both be John Umland. It's silly 270 Theodore 0 5

John

January 12, 2015 11:38 PM

John

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Grayson Wright

Age in Post: 11
Birthday: September 23rd

And we're such very sensible fellows. by John

Twenty vol-au-vents? That had to be gluttony. And a sure sign of a diseased mind. John didn’t care that much for seafood anyway - it could be really good, but to him, its regular appearance meant it was probably Lent, so it wasn’t that often that he just wanted some - but why would anyone, even a fan, want that much of it? They were small, but….

“Just pretend they're bricks,” he said, dismissing the issue. “Each one can be like a brick in the tower.” He didn’t know the exact origins of the name and had seen several different stories when he’d read three or four books about chess while he first learned to play, but he was sure at least one had talked about towers. Since chess was supposed to be a battle, the ‘war chariots’ theory made more sense to John, but the actual pieces looked a lot more like towers. He’d seen one set once - fancy, Transfigured for wizard’s chess - where the rook looked like a castle tower with half a defender sticking out of the top of it, presumably planning to fight on top of the wall of the castle that didn’t exist.

A bigger problem than what the rook represented, though, since he thought he could sort of see chess as like an attempt to take a castle if he looked at it the right way, was that a rook was also a bird - a European corvid which did not look much like a tower or a war chariot, or even something that would pull a war chariot. Maybe the names had gotten mixed together because of castling and the old saying...something about ravens and the Tower of London? But rooks weren’t ravens, and anyway, chess terms were from all over the place - Persian, German -

He realized he’d started to hum ‘London Bridge is falling down’ and stopped.

He brightened a bit at his promotion to knight. In Quidditch, he was one of the pawns, and he had assumed people thought of him as one in general, too. Maybe he was too hard on his classmates sometimes, maybe they were basically all right. Theodore had even said he would avenge him if he were captured. Getting vengeance for things was, of course, Wrong - enemies could only be decapitated on the field in a fight, in self-defense, and only then when the enemy was the one who'd brought swords into the conflict in the first place - but it was the thought that counted....

He smiled again when Theodore said he was fun to talk to. Yes, he probably was basically a good fellow, and John had been wrong to assume he was a snobby bigot just 'cause he had a sister and dressed okay. John also had a sister, and since he was reasonably sure (his-book-hadn't-once-become-stuck-to-the-ceiling-by-itself sure, since he knew that one hadn't been his own work) Joe was a wizard, too, it didn't matter....

Something didn't matter. Something about siblings - having magic - magic in the blood, that was it. Nothing wrong with it as long as one knew it didn't matter. Theodore was possibly smart enough to use good data. Which indicated it didn’t matter. Right...

He nodded sympathetically at the description of the problem. "Yeah. Yeah, sure. Got to...capture the rooks and avoid the queens ‘cause their dresses match their shoes. Even my sister’s been on about shoes,” he complained, though his tone dissolved into bewilderment as he added, “I don’t understand why.” There had to be a reason, after all. Everything happened for a reason. Julian had a reason, and that was why he’d forgive her when she went back to normal. He bit his lip, suddenly sad. “She gave me her bear. Anyway. Yeah. I’m a knight now.” That cheered him up a little again. Knights got cool moves on the board; learning all the different ways to make an ‘L’ had been one of the things it had taken him the longest to do in chess. “I’ll cut off the view when I go ‘L’, cut in front of you, then I’ll distract people with chicken while you run for th’rooky vol-au-vents….” He frowned a little as he rose from his chair. “Too bad it’s not duck. I did a lot of research on those last year.”

Still, chicken was what he had to work with. He’d walk parallel to the buffet, then turn sharply and walk toward the chicken, just like a knight moving on a board. Then, if there was anyone nearby, he would recite all the facts he could remember about chickens - he had a feeling there was something wrong with his source on them, something that meant he should only use it for his tangent about dodo feet earlier in the year and not talk to people about it, but he couldn’t figure out what it was that was bothering him - until he determined Theodore had slipped past him and secured the vol-au-vents...or ran out of facts about chickens, he really did not know that much about them. Then he would very hastily jump any pieces which got between him and returning to his seat. Yeah. Good plan….

OOC: Permission granted, if desired, to assume John did as he planned to in the last paragraph in pursuit of Mission: Capture Vol-Au-Vents.
16 John And we're such very sensible fellows. 285 John 0 5


Theodore

January 17, 2015 4:51 AM

Theodore

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Rhy

Age in Post: 13

Eminently so by Theodore

“Just what I was saying,” he nodded, when John suggested each vol-au-vent could be a brick. He had said that one had to stack them, which you did to make it work and make them look like one complete rook, but he thought that their brick-like-ness had been implicit in his sentiment. John was not, it seemed, keeping up entirely. But then, he was very small. He also appeared to be humming but stopped before Theodore could identify the tune.

“And it’s not like you can even see them!” he exclaimed, regarding the pesky subject of female footwear, “They may as well go barefoot, as they’re all hidden under their flouncy dresses. Maybe that’s why they feel the need to talk about them so much!” he realised, understanding dawning with absolute clarity. But just because girls might have some reason to be talking a lot about shoes didn’t make him want to listen to it. “I bet half their shoes are just made up,” he muttered.

“That sounds rough,” he sympathised, as John bemoaned that even his sister had fallen victim to this disease. He didn’t really know anything about the girl but it was a bad sign, nonetheless. “Francesca wasn’t too bad about it,” he said, feeling the need to defend her reputation against being one those kinds of girls, “She was keen to dismiss the idea that she had a date date and then didn’t say much else about it,” he glanced around, looking for his sister. Now that the first dance was over, she was supposedly free. She seemed, however, to be sitting continuing her tete-a-tete with one Mr James Carey. “Hmph, ‘not a date’,” he mumbled, “I may be supposed to hit Jay later but I think that’s going to be complicated and we should work out a strategy after we’ve captured the rooks. The rook. The tower of bricks to make the rook.

“Let’s go,” he nodded, after John summarised the plan. He stood, doing his best to look nonchalant, and taking a few steps towards one end of the buffet table. He then pretended to have had his attention seized by something at the other end, and changed tack, repeating this process several times, for all the world seeming merely indecisive and not at all like a criminal mastermind with his target well within his sights.

“Cucumber sticks, that’s the thing,” he exclaimed decisively, making his last leg directly towards them, trying to keep pace so as John could block him from view as described, and be in position to distract the other pieces as Theodore made a run for it. It was a bit of a problem with their analogy, he supposed. Once you got your piece in chess, that was it. You punched it off the board and stayed where it had been but he didn’t want to overthrow the vol-au-vents and take their place. He wasn’t a snack. Still, metaphors were rarely perfect, and it had helped them come up with a good plan… As he got within a pace, he turned and seized the vol-au-vent platter that sat next to the cucumber, before briskly striding in a straight diagonal line back to his and John’s table, setting his yearbook back up and looking around to check for his partner’s whereabouts.

OOC - I more assumed than described, but thank you. Feel free to wibbly what I wrote about a bit to make it fit with what John was doing if necessary.
13 Theodore Eminently so 270 Theodore 0 5

John

January 19, 2015 6:53 PM

John

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Grayson Wright

Age in Post: 11
Birthday: September 23rd

Responsible, courteous, considerate... by John

“Eh, technically you said stacking a lot of rooks together would make them count as one,” said John. “Whole different idea, that. At least, I think you did….” He shrugged. “Anyway. We agree.”

John laughed, covering his mouth with his wrist when it became harder than usual to stop, at the idea of the girls having imaginary shoes. Julian’s weren’t, he knew - her dress was short enough to show them, and they made her taller besides. He thought they looked really uncomfortable and that her dress and hairdo made her look stupid at best - like one of those round-faced china dolls Grandmother Russell kept - but those things were not relevant to the point. Nor was his confusion about why wearing things that looked painful and things that just looked stupid was supposed to appeal to breeding males. He guessed he might get it when he was older, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Theodore was already older and also seemed clueless about what was supposed to be so attractive, so maybe there was hope.

“Maybe some of the girls,” he agreed. Agreeing was fun. He wondered why he didn’t do it more often. “Not Julian. You can see all her shoes. She’s just gone crazy.”

He nodded to Francesca’s claims that she wasn’t on a real date, since his sister wasn’t, either. Charlie was just her friend - kind of like him and Joanie, except that instead of becoming international criminals in the name of science, they...apparently played dress-up. Which was, he guessed, no more likely to lead them to do bad things than his interests and goals were - John didn’t feel bad about the laws he’d...chosen to regard as guidelines, they had little to nothing to do with Right and Wrong and he would have had to do something Wrong to follow them, but he was worried about now having to lie to even more people than he had before; he tried to pick words carefully to technically avoid lying to anyone about anything, but sometimes, he really couldn't do what was Right and just had to try to figure out which option was Least Wrong, and he did not like it - but it felt like it was. At least he was trying to accomplish something. What Julian and Charlie did, it didn’t accomplish anything; they enjoyed looking at themselves and that was it. Of course, all he did when he read a mystery novel or watched his birds was enjoy himself, so...but…

”I may be supposed to hit Jay later but I think that’s going to be complicated and we should work out a strategy after we’ve captured the rooks. The rook. The tower of bricks to make the rook,” said Theodore, pulling John back out of the tangle of his thoughts.

“Right,” he said, not sure why they wanted to hit Jay, who appeared to be doing nothing more alarming than talking to Francesca, but writing it off as something to deal with later.

He racked his brains for everything he could remember about chickens while helping himself to a more-than-healthy portion of the blackberry-ginger trifle and, when he saw Theodore moving toward what he thought were the vol-au-vents, he hurried away from the table to make his walk-along and his sharp ‘L’ turn and looked at the lemon-pepper chicken pieces as though they were amazing, though an outside observer might have been forgiven for thinking his expression was just deranged.

“It’s amazing,” he said, grinning like a maniac at no particular person. “Chickens are the most common bird in the world, but practically everybody eats them! You’d think they’d die out, especially since we eat most of their eggs, too.” He assumed this wasn’t true, chickens being around meant a lot of eggs didn’t turn into delicious foods, they’d have to use a larger number of eggs to make chickens than the number of chickens they even needed to keep up the population just to account for the baby chicken mortality rate and all, but he was just talking to distract now. “Their - uh - group noun is a ‘run of chickens,’ and their technical name is gallus gallus domesticus! I think. I don’t know if ‘gallus’ has anything to do ‘Gallia’, though. I don’t think chickens are French. French people do cook them, though, my mom has a cookbook…..” Now he knew he was scraping the bottom of the barrel and glanced over his shoulder to assess Theodore’s position. He was deeply pleased to see the back of him.

“Goodbye,” he said brightly, and left quickly.

“I really need to read up on chickens this summer,” he muttered as he rejoined Theodore at their table. “I can barely remember anything about them. I’ll do that as soon as I finish with the cryptography.” He noticed the platter now at the table and his eyebrows raised at the sight. “You really do like those,” he observed, but then shrugged. “That’s cool. More trifle for me.” He took a bite of his trifle. “Or are you planning to throw some of those at Jay?"
16 John Responsible, courteous, considerate... 285 John 0 5