The scheming younger sisters' club (tag Diana Carey) on Cascade Hall

Jemima Wolseithcrafte

July 19, 2015 7:29 AM

The scheming younger sisters' club (tag Diana Carey) by Jemima Wolseithcrafte

Francesca liked Jay. She didn't admit it but it was so painfully obvious. Jemima had a sneaking suspicion that Jay liked Francesca back because (if you were also a clever Aladren who was into reading a lot and Quidditch and those sorts of things) who wouldn't? And he always came along whenever Francesca invited him anywhere. She didn't see why her sister didn't just do something about it. Even though she never said anything about liking Jay that way, she was always so excited when she knew he was coming, or so sad when he went away again. Jemima knew she couldn't do much to change the latter, because for next term at least, Francesca would have to come back to school. But she felt so bad for her, and thought that maybe if she and Jay got together over Christmas, that would cheer her up and make her feel better about it all.

It was still a good number of weeks until the holidays. She had allowed herself a suitable length of time because she really had no idea how long such conspiring might take, or how convoluted it might all get. Her solution to the problem would have just been to tell the other person how she felt but obviously that wasn't going to happen. She figured she needed some help, and had weighed up both Diana and Andrew Carey. Andrew was her age, year and house and she felt a little bad that she still hadn't got to know him very well – though of course, she gave him a cheery smile and asked how he was whenever she saw him – but it seemed like more of a thing she should ask Jay's sister about. Boys could be funny about romance and feelings. She would, she resolved, make a special effort to sit with Andrew in classes next week, in order to make up for it, and get to know him better. And it wouldn't be a bad thing to make friends with both Careys – one could never have too many friends, for starters, and, whilst mother didn't mind about Ginger and Lauren, her only society friend was Owen. It would be better to have a few more connections, and even better for that to include some proper female friends.

“Good morning, Miss Carey,” she smiled, when she saw Diana at breakfast one morning, giving a small curtsey, “May I sit with you?” she asked. Formal manners sat oddly on both the younger Wolseithcraftes – Ingrid because she was too bouncy and seemed impatient with them, and Jemima because there was something warm and sweet about her, that no amount of 'how to do you dos' and curtseying in just the right way could truly overcome. In spite of their rigid nature, manners, on her, somehow seemed still kind and friendly.

Subthreads:

Do you know the secret handshake? by Diana Carey

13 Jemima Wolseithcrafte The scheming younger sisters' club (tag Diana Carey) 304 Jemima Wolseithcrafte 1 5

Diana Carey

July 19, 2015 8:22 PM

Do you know the secret handshake? by Diana Carey

She had been out in the world long enough now to know that it was silly, but to Diana, the quintessential adult breakfast would always be French toast and black coffee. Both had been denied to her all her life before Sonora because Mother said they were both too much trouble to make for nine people at once and would get Brandon and Diana into too much trouble if they ate them and then went to their tutors with all that sugar and caffeine in their systems. When she had first started school, the opportunity to try them had been a major reason to get up once she stopped being too excited to want to eat in the morning and had started just having trouble getting up in the morning because she’d had trouble adjusting to sleeping in a new place.

It had been a bad day when she realized that she didn’t really like the tastes of either of them. She had made herself keep trying them every now and then, though, hoping to finally see what all the fuss was about, and they had slowly grown on her. Over the summer, Jay had asked if she wanted any coffee in her cup of milk when she drank coffee at home a few times, so she knew she still wasn’t really doing that one right, but she had finally mastered French toast and enjoyed it once a week at school as a treat.

She was just pouring maple syrup over a slice when the Teppenpaw Wolseithcrafte girl, the one who’d been in her classes last year, approached her. Diana smiled, a little surprised but more than happy for an opportunity to look for an opening to gather dirt on Jemima's sister, when the younger girl asked to join her.

“Of course,” she said, pointing to a chair. She put down the syrup and eyed her cup of light brown milk to see how much steam was still rising from it. “How are you this morning?” she asked politely, putting her attention back on Jemima. It felt like she was now Diana’s guest, which meant she was more important than Diana’s breakfast.

0 Diana Carey Do you know the secret handshake? 294 Diana Carey 0 5

Jemima Wolseithcrafte

July 20, 2015 4:58 AM

Absolutely. Do you? by Jemima Wolseithcrafte

“I’m very well, thank you” she smiled, taking the seat offered by Miss Carey. With someone she knew better, she might have offered a more detailed response, as she was naturally chatty and friendly. However, she wasn’t sure what elements of her life Miss Carey would be interested to know more of - had it been Ginger, she would have told her about her progress with her latest craft project, had it been Owen she might have talked to him about the Christmas party plans she was already hearing of or told him what she thought or was wondering about his latest story. Had it been anyone who knew her remotely, she would have happily told them that Monti had deigned to be petted for a whole ten minutes this morning (although she slightly suspected him of being willful, as she had been trying to get ready for breakfast at the time). However, she didn’t yet know which of these, if any, would be common ground for her to share with Diana.

“And yourself?” she returned politely.

“Please, don’t interrupt your breakfast on my account,” she added, noticing that Diana had shifted her focus. “French toast is always nicest when it’s hot, don’t you think?” she added, helping herself to a slice, dusting it with powdered sugar and adding strawberries, glad to have found something she shared in common with her breakfast companion.

Once Diana had answered both her questions, she moved straight on to the more pressing matter at hand - being here with a mission in mind was another reason for not dawdling around in the land of small talk.

“I was wondering if you could help me with something,” she explained. “I think my sister likes your brother, and I wanted to know whether you think he likes her back,” she stated bluntly, “I think they both like each other, only neither of them seems to be willing to say or do anything about that. I thought maybe we could team up and come up with a plan to give them a nudge in the right direction,” she smiled. Jemima had always been one to be open about how she was feeling or what she was thinking. So far, it was a strategy that had met with very few of the typical perils of such honesty, although no doubt someone would give her cause to regret it sooner or later.

13 Jemima Wolseithcrafte Absolutely. Do you? 304 Jemima Wolseithcrafte 0 5

Diana

July 25, 2015 1:16 PM

Three shakes under the cloak, other hand holds the dagger? by Diana

Jemima’s response to her pleasantries was perfectly correct and just as perfectly devoid of any content that might have even begun to sate Diana’s curiosity about why she had come over. That, though, wasn’t entirely surprising. Exchanges of pleasantries were inevitable even with people who knew each other better than the two of them did; if they didn’t show manners, how would everyone know they were better than the people in the lower classes? Some people said good breeding was obvious in a glance, but Diana had eaten breakfast at home too many times to believe that. Brandon and Peter liked oatmeal dueling. Diana could say she had never participated, but only if Jemima hadn’t slipped any truth potions into her coffee.

“Wonderful, thank you,” she returned the pleasantry. Overuse of superlatives was something all the adults had criticized in her once or twice, but she liked them so much better than the usual lukewarm terms. She’d rather sound like she was trying too hard, or hiding something negative, than just sound…lukewarm. The only thing she wanted lukewarm was coffee, and even that needed to be a little above room temperature.

So did the toast, as Jemima pointed out. “Oh, yes,” she agreed, thinking it was nice of Jemima to also indulge in the figure-unfriendly food. She hoped Jemima didn’t think she ate like this every morning. The uncomfortable thing about dealing with other girls was always wondering what they noticed and judged and what they didn’t.

To her relief, though, Jemima didn’t want to talk any more about food. Instead she wanted to talk about Jay and Francesca. She glanced around quickly to make sure the half of the pair who was here wasn’t standing right behind them and pouted when Jemima announced that she didn’t think Jay and Francesca had done anything about the obvious yet. “Here I thought they already had,” she said, disappointed. They had all thought that; why else would Francesca keep asking Jay places and Jay refuse to talk about her at home? "No wonder he got so annoyed when Theresa and Arthur made fun of him." Diana had imagined them sneaking around in a way which would have made a wonderful story had Jay been anyone other than her boring, responsible older brother and now Jemima thought they weren’t doing anything improper at all.

“If they’re not, though…hm. We could just tell them, but I don’t know if Jay would listen to me.” Diana tapped her cheek with a finger, thinking. “Oh, I read a good one in a story once – are you any good at forgery? Someone lured someone else somewhere romantic with a faked note in the story and it worked.” Well, sort of – he had admitted he loved her, too, but she had gotten sick and accepted a betrothal to someone else after she got better because he was engaged to her friend she didn't even like, but Diana didn't think either of people she and Jemima were discussing were either delicate or engaged to somebody else, so those weren’t considerations. More important was how well Jay and Francesca had to know each other’s handwriting by now. A convincing fake might be hard even for someone who’d been taught to do it properly, which Diana hadn’t. She could fake Brandon’s handwriting well enough because she’d practiced a lot, but she’d never tried Jay’s. “Or we could talk to our – “ or, in her case, Uncle Anthony’s, but who was counting? – “house-elves and get them to include a lot of mistletoe at parties we know they’re both going to be at over midterm,” she suggested, thinking a little more realistically.

0 Diana Three shakes under the cloak, other hand holds the dagger? 0 Diana 0 5

Jemima

July 26, 2015 5:56 AM

That's the one by Jemima

“I might be wrong, what made you think they had?” she asked, when Diana said that the popular opinion in her house seemed to be that something was already going on. She wasn’t sure she liked the sound of teasing, if it involved her sister being the joint object of said fun, but there really wasn’t much she could do about that. “Ingrid and I went to go swimming and they were already out in the water. They looked like they were being friendly but they definitely weren’t doing anything like kissing, and they stopped when we showed up. I figured, if anything was going on, then she would seem so mopey all the time. And wouldn’t they say something? Dating someone is good news.” Wasn’t it? Was the issue that the rest of the Careys didn’t think the Wolseithcraftes were good enough? That would certainly explain why Francesca was so unhappy…. Diana seemed keen to plot with her though, to push the pair together, so Jemima tried to put that thought from her mind. Maybe it was just that their older siblings were stubborn people who were terrible about talking about their feelings. It wasn’t exactly an unlikely theory.

“I haven’t ever tried,” she said, when Diana asked if she was good at forgery, and wondering whether it was something the other had much experience of herself. She did suggest the idea came from a story, and Jemima had a general inclination to believe people. It seemed much more likely that Diana had read such a thing in a book rather than had much cause to use it herself, even if people did say a lot of things about her family.

“But we had the same penmanship tutor and I’m quite good at arty things in general. I’d probably have to make it messier to pass as Francesca’s…” she mused. “I’m not sure that would be the real trouble though. I mean, it might be tricky but even if I could do it, I’m not sure I could write a letter that’s both lovey-dovey and sounds like it was written by her. Those things just don’t go together, which is why we have this problem in the first place. Maybe I can offer to post her letters for her - just be on my way to the owlery anyway - and then open them and add some kisses at the bottom,” she suggested. She felt a little uneasy at the idea of interfering with her sister’s letters. It seemed like not a very right thing to do… But if, in the end, it led to Francesca getting together with Jay, then she’d be happy…. She had heard the phrase about ends justifying means being used in both a positive and a negative sense. But she wasn’t saying for sure she’d do that. They were just suggesting ideas at the moment.

“I’m always in charge of party decorations, so that would be easy to do at my house. It would have to be somewhere out of the way though, they’re not exactly going to kiss in front of a room full of people, and then we’d have to lure them there. Are you and Jay both coming to our coffee morning, or are you having any parties at your house that Francesca and I would both go to?” she asked.

13 Jemima That's the one 304 Jemima 0 5

Diana

August 03, 2015 5:10 PM

Whew, glad I got it right by Diana

Jemima and Ingrid’s interruption of nothing scandalous at all was, Diana had to admit, good evidence in favor of the younger girls’ interpretation of the relationship between their older siblings being the right one. “I’d think so,” she said when Jemima said dating someone was a good thing, more to be agreeable than because she believed it. It hadn’t been very good for her sister Theresa, but that was something which was never to be discussed unless one of the older members of the family brought it up first. That left her free to agree with whoever else she discussed the subject with, as Diana didn’t have any feelings toward the issue. “But Jay doesn’t really tell us – my brothers and sisters and me – much about anything except what to do. It’s exciting to think of him even having anything to tell, really. He’s usually one of the stuffiest, most boring people in the entire world,” she concluded airily. It never occurred to her that this could offend Jemima on Francesca’s behalf, since it might be taken as an insult to Francesca’s taste. Thinking much about what she said was not one of Diana’s greatest strengths. “No sense of humor. All he does besides work is talk to our cousin about work and write letters to your sister.” She shrugged. “And he took time off to go visit her, and took her real presents. I just assumed. Brandon – one of my other brothers – agreed with me, but he might have just done that so I’d let him change the subject.”

He probably had. He had wanted her to go outside with him, she thought she remembered, to look for some berries he needed for a sticky potion he wanted to pull a joke on Theresa with. She would have expected Brandon to be the most eager of all their siblings to find something they could use to deflate Jay’s head with when it got a little too large for his shoulders, but Brandon had disappointed her in that. He had not been interested in the gossip or the opportunities it presented at all.

Jemima was less disappointing. She seemed pretty confident she could fake her sister’s handwriting if she had to and even had another plan. Maybe not the best plan, but then, neither was borrowing from a fake story set over a hundred years ago, so Diana couldn’t complain. If they went through enough bad ideas, they had to find a good one eventually. “That is an idea,” she said. “But do you know what they even write to each other about? I tried to find out once, but it turns out his correspondence box bites.” She rubbed the back of her hand at the memory of the lid slamming down on it. She had been stupid not to take more precautions – Jay had taken to being one of the secretive members of the family like ducks usually took to water; her baby brother Peter had somehow gotten hold of Jay’s briefcase over the summer, and when they’d found him coloring on a ledger, most of it had been blank because some of the pages were enchanted so the ink would disappear if anyone but Jay touched them. Diana had learned some new oaths as Jay tried to figure out how to recreate the lost figures – but it was still easy to feel a little irritated with Jay for being important enough to be allowed so much privacy. "If all they’re talking about is Charms and Quidditch, that might look a little strange...still, we can keep it in mind."

Jemima impressed her further when she said she was in charge of decorating for her family parties, and Diana, who was not even allowed to pick out her own dresses for her family parties, wondered for a moment if the younger girl was lying to make herself sound more important. “I…can’t say for sure,” she admitted, then smiled brightly to cover embarrassment over her unimportance. "I think there’s a good chance for our family’s party, though, and I can ask Aunt Lorraine. Yours…well, I’m sure Jay will, and I can ask him if he’d let me come with him.” She wondered if pretending she thought Theodore Wolseithcrafte was handsome and the most respectable option in the intermediate class would work or not. It could backfire horribly if Jay decided he could live with giving Francesca up in exchange for only having two sisters to support and she actually ended up married to Theodore, who was not that good-looking and did not seem very interesting to her. Maybe she could pretend she was after his roommate instead. Or maybe she should drop that angle altogether before she was denied permission to go out at all this winter for fear that she would end up like Theresa.

She kept her hands and feet still, not wanting to give away her self-consciousness. She had always heard about how most other girls were weak, not like Carey girls at all, but here sat Jemima, an outsider and a Teppenpaw girl, of all things, acting as though it was normal to know what you were going to do before someone else told you to do it, like her older siblings might talk to her instead of just at her, and saying she had real things to do at home. That…wasn’t how it was supposed to be. At all. So what was wrong with the picture that that was how it seemed it was?

"I have heard ours is supposed to be big this year, if that makes a difference," she added. Anthony had been taking a girl on dates, so they wanted to impress any relatives or associates of hers who might see it with the wealth and power of the Careys. Mother had said Jay was in a horrible mood about the expense even though only a tiny part of it, buying some formalwear, was his. He was much too uptight about money. "Large parties are easier to slip away from sometimes, but Jay might get tied up by boring business people. Still, with two chances, surely one of them can work."

0 Diana Whew, glad I got it right 0 Diana 0 5

Jemima

August 04, 2015 4:00 AM

...I was actually just waiting to copy off you by Jemima

“So is Francesca. Well, second most cos in our house she competes with Teddy. But all three of the older ones love talking about boring grown up stuff. Maybe that's why she and Jay like each other so much. It's nice that they found someone as boring and stuffy as themselves to fall in love with. It's almost romantic,” she suggested, pulling a slight face that said she didn't fully agree with that sentiment, “Except it's not exactly the sort of thing you'd get a story about.

“Ingrid won't really talk to me about it. She said she hoped they weren't kissing cos that was gross and then wouldn't join in with me about it any more,” Jemima said, when Diana explained about Brandon. She gave the other girl a sympathetic smile. It was starting to seem like they might be the only ones in each of their entire families that weren't a bit useless.

“I don't know,” she admitted, when Diana asked about the letters, “It probably is mostly Quidditch but for them that's like... practically love poetry. But I bet if Jay made his box bite, then they're doing things to their letters too. I bet she'd know if opened one,” Jemima said, sounding a little scared. She had wanted to do something which, overall, she saw as a nice thing for her rather hopeless sister. The thought of upsetting said sister or getting to trouble with her in the process was not something she really wanted. Nor was being attacked by a letter that was charmed to do something like give her hundreds of tiny paper cuts for not being Jay Carey.

“Maybe we should stick to parties. Everyone's always... happy and romantic. And you're right about making sure we get more than one chance – don't put all your dragon eggs in the same fire, my father always says – and with them being so stubborn and so useless they'll probably mess it up even if we tie them together and lock them in a cupboard full of mistletoe!” she sighed. Pausing to think for a little, she offered “The drawing room's a good place at my house – it's where the guests Floo in and out and leave their coats, so it gets decorated and there's plenty of reasons for them to be in there but it's not likely to be so busy or public.”

OOC - continued on wts

13 Jemima ...I was actually just waiting to copy off you 304 Jemima 0 5