Headmaster Brockert

July 27, 2018 9:25 PM
So far the year was off to a decent start. No student altercations, no complaining parents and they even had a solution to their Quidditch "problem". (As far as Mortimer was concerned, there was no problem, as he didn't consider Quidditch all that important but others disagreed including his own son Eustace, but Eustace's opinion didn't matter one whit as far as Sonora went. He didn't even have a child here. Unfortunately, people whose opinion mattered more also cared but as long as he didn't have to do anything with it and nobody was forced into playing, it was okay with him.)

In other news, he had not one but two granddaughters attending Sonora this year and thus as the first years were brought in, he surveyed them with a bit more curiosity. They had better treat his granddaughters with the respect and decency that befitted them. Actually, Mortimer wasn't all that worried about Topaz, she could take care of herself but Allegra was an awfully jumpy child.

Once everyone seemed to be in attendance, Mortimer placed a Sonorus charm on himself and began to speak. "Welcome to Sonora for the new first years and welcome back for all older students. First years, you should have recieved a blank badge at the end of Orientation." At least they hadn't gotten it when they first got there, some were liable to lose it. "You will dunk the badge in the Sorting Potion and it will turn the color representing your house which are blue for Aladren, yellow for Teppenpaw, red for Crotalus, and brown for Pecari. Afterwards, you may join your house table." He noted where Topaz and Allegra were sorted with pleasure.

After the first years had been settled, Mortimer continued."Would Joseph Umland and Nevaeh Reed please come up and get your Head Student badges?" He couldn't help but be displeased with the former's new badge. Hopefully Mr. Umland had worked on his anger issues within the last few years " In addition I'd like to call up Emerald Brockert, Kir McLeod, Victor Callhan and Isaac Song to recieve their prefect badges. Congratulations." His face beamed with pride as Emerald took her spot on the stage along with her classmates and recieved her badge.

"We have two new staff members to announce tonight. Professor Brooding will be taking over Potions and Coach Reilly will be taking over for Quidditch. I trust you will all treat them with the respect they deserve." Blatant lie, he didn't expect teenagers to be respectful one little bit, but let that be a warning to them. " I am pleased," Another blatant lie, he couldn't care less, "to announce that this year instead of each house having it's own Quidditch team, as we've had trouble with that within the last few years, that we will instead be having an All Star Team, made up of the best Quidditch players in the school that will be playing against teams from other schools. More details will be posted in your common rooms.

"In addition, this year's Midsummer Event will be the Fair. Details on that will also be posted in later in the year. Now we will sing the school song." Yet another blatant lie. They would be singing the song, not him. Lyric sheets were passed around and the song began.

Every day we strive
Learning to survive
Life’s hardships and to solve its mystery.
Learning to defend
Our honour and our friends,
Flying high to meet our destiny
We will stand and face those who want to harm us.
We won’t let the world transfigure, jinx or charm us
I won’t fight alone, as long as you are with me.
Sonora be my home, my tutor and my spirit
Vasita quoque floeat; Even the desert blooms.
.

That done, he dug into his steak and bourbon.
Subthreads:
11 Headmaster Brockert Opening Feast 6 Headmaster Brockert 1 5

Julius Astley, Crotalus

July 28, 2018 1:03 PM
Julius was no more excited at being at Sonora than he had been at orientation. That is, he wasn't excited at all. He still resented the very fact that he'd been sent to the school in the first place and, in his eyes, he didn't feel that it was even a prestigious school worthy of his standing as a Pureblood descended from French royalty. Why was he being forced to mix with all these half-bloods and muggleborns? It was diabolical.

He reluctantly approached the Sorting Potion, a deep scowl on his face. He did not care, to a point, which house he was sorted into as long as no one tried to talk to him. At least, no one who wasn't worthy of his time like that wretched Katerina girl at orientation. He rolled his eyes, remembering that whole event. If those were the kinds of people that attended Sonora, Julius was not looking forward to the rest of the year. Or the next six that would follow.

With a resigned sigh, Julius dipped his blank badge into the potion and, upon pulling it out, revealed it to be red. Crotalus. Julius hoped, as he walked to the right table, that the Crotali already there were people he could at least bear to be seen associating with. He'd died of embarrassment if he was in a house of a load of nice people who were insistent on doing nothing but making friends and, well, being nice.

He sat himself down and did not make any move to greet anyone. He listened quietly to the Headmaster but did not care about the Head Students or the Prefects, nor did he care about Quidditch. He gave only a cursory glance over the lyric sheet that was handed out but refused to join in with the infernal singing. All Julius wanted to do was to help himself to some food, eat in peace and then find a quiet corner to read a book. Once the daft song had finished and the food was served, Julius helped himself to some roast potatoes, pork and various other things (that he reluctantly admitted looked and tasted delicious - he'd been hoping that the food would be as bad as everything else).

He'd been hoping to get through the entire meal without saying another word to anyone but then he felt someone looking at him and he let out an exasperated sigh and turned to look sharply at the person. "Can I help you?"
20 Julius Astley, Crotalus What's the point? 1425 Julius Astley, Crotalus 0 5

Cleo James

August 03, 2018 7:29 AM
Cleo’s summer had actually really been quite good. The quarantine last year had possibly helped with that in some ways. At Midterm, she had still been mixed up, confused and angry over the fact that her daddy had waited so long to tell her the truth. It would possibly have been a miserable Christmas. As it was, she ended up stuck at school, and by the time summer rolled around, she was just so desperate to see him again that none of it mattered any more. It also helped that she had worked through some of it with Parker. The whole ‘half veela’ thing still scared and confused her - she still didn’t want to be it, if given a choice - but, as having a choice in the matter seemed pretty unlikely, she supposed she could be said to be dealing with it. Summer had just involved her and daddy doing all their usual things - running the shop, gardening in the allotment, listening to the wireless - and it had been perfect.

Now she was back at school, ready to see what Sonora held for her in her fourth year. Hopefully a lot less drama and adventure than her third… There was still a lot to deal with though. She felt less upset about her situation but was still concerned about control, especially as she was now conscious of how she was growing up… Her daddy had shirked relatively few of the duties of raising a daughter single handed but over summer there had been a couple of conversations and shopping trips that he had decided it was better if her grandma dealt with.

She took a seat at the Crotalus table, grateful for the figure-hiding green sack that was the school uniform. The announcements weren’t of much interest, although she thought Parker would be happy about Quidditch, and she would look forward to cheering him on. Then the food appeared, and Cleo glanced around. A lot of the food at Sonora was kind of fancy, or a bit different than what she ate at home. She kind of liked things plain and simple. All around her, spicy smells drifted over, or otherwise perfectly nice looking dishes were ruined by little black bits suggesting yucky things like olives. Next to her was a first year boy, and next to him was a tasty, and safe looking, lasagne. He looked kind of annoyed, and Cleo hesitated. She wasn’t the biggest people person anyway, and had little desire to interact with anyone unfriendly. She searched around her a bit more but finding nothing that appealed, returned her attention to her neighbour. He noticed it this time, addressing her rather snappily.

Temper was one of Cleo’s worse traits, but one her daddy had taken great time and care to help her get the better of. She instinctively frowned at the boy’s manner, but knew that her daddy wouldn’t find it a reasonable excuse for being rude back, so she arranged her features into a nicer expression. Admittedly, there was a little selfish motivation in this - Cleo was the kind of person who generally felt best about being good to others when there was some kind of extrinsic reward to her in the process. Even if it was just the morally victory of knowing she was the better person - it was very much the victory half of that sentiment and not the moral that motivated her.

“Could you pass me the lasagne?” she asked, trying her hardest to be pleasant.

OOC - here are some guidelines I wrote last year on Cleo and her powers. I have left this post pretty ambiguous. If it’s something you’re interested in having happen to Julius we can either assume she is veela-ing, or we can build towards that happening later in the thread. Or, if you feel he’s too young/not likely to be affected and/or just don’t want to mess with this, that’s fine too. Choice is up to you, or hit me up in chatzy to work it out.
13 Cleo James Food? 389 Cleo James 0 5

Julius Astley, Crotalus

August 03, 2018 1:17 PM
Julius eyed the blonde girl who had felt it necessary to speak to him. For a moment, he thought he saw her frown and mentally prepared himself for another time-wasting argument. He was surprised when the frown seemed to fade, replaced by a nicer-looking expression. It didn't mean that he'd talk to her any more than he had to, simply because she had put a smile on her face. It did mean that he was more inclined to pass the lasagne that was sitting on his left side. She also hadn't been rude to him at all so he couldn't refuse to honour her request. That'd go against everything his mother had taught him about interacting with other people and, even though she wasn't there with him, he didn't want to feel like he'd disappointed her. He let out a quiet a sigh. The situation was rather unavoidable.

He gently positioned his knife and fork on his plate, the ends pointing towards each other, looking rather like the point of a triangle indicating that he'd simply paused during his meal. He doubted that anybody actually followed the etiquette rules when it came to eating dinner but that was no excuse for him to start shirking everything he'd ever learned. Everything, including passing a dish of lasagne, required so much thought.

"Here, enjoy," he murmured quietly, picking it up and handing it to her, hoping that would be then end of any interaction with somebody else. He did take the opportunity to look at her properly, if only to recognise who to avoid in the future.

She hadn't been amongst the rest of Julius's year as he hadn't seen her around the gardens at orientation or approaching the cauldron of Sorting Potion. Looking at her closely now, he could see that she was older than him and the rest of the first-years and rather pretty, with her light blonde hair and grey-blue eyes. She seemed rather sophisticated and elegant. He frowned slightly. She seemed to carry herself well, in a similar way that he'd seen Pureblood girls do at various social engagements. Had he got lucky and found someone actually worth talking to? He supposed that he could at the very least ask her name. If she didn't turn out to be worthy of his time, he'd know her name and her face so he could definitely avoid her.

"You are older than me, correct?" he asked her, his tone formal and detached. "What's your name?"
20 Julius Astley, Crotalus Food is about the only thing worth thinking about here. 1425 Julius Astley, Crotalus 0 5

Cleo

August 04, 2018 2:28 PM
Well, her tablemate for the evening seemed quite the little ray of sunshine. What a fun dinner she seemed to be in for. In general, Cleo wasn’t the most outgoing person, she could kind of take or leave socialising, and spending the meal by herself wouldn’t have bothered her if he was equally quiet. But he was being rude to her, which she disliked. Of course, she knew she knew what it felt like to be miserable - she hadn’t exactly been in the most sociable mood for… well, basically all of last year. But she had kept it to herself rather than take it out on other people. Empathising was not Cleo’s strong suit. The boy was being snappy and rude with her and that hurt her, and she cared much less about why he might be feeling that way than she did about how he made her feel.

At least he had passed the lasagne, and she busied herself with serving a portion of it. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes, even though she had already felt him looking. Was she doing the veela thing? Or was he just… curious? He hadn’t seemed curious in the slightest about her before, he had seemed to want to be left alone.

“Yes, I’m a fourth year,” she replied when he asked about her being older than him. “My name is Cleo,” she answered, automatically leaning away a little. “What’s yours?”
13 Cleo Gee, thanks 389 Cleo 0 5

Julius Astley, Crotalus

August 08, 2018 2:48 PM
Before Julius answered Cleo's question, he reached for the jug of water that was sitting just to his right and filled his goblet. It also bought him some time as he chewed and swallowed his mouthful of food as it was always rude to speak to somebody in the middle of chewing food. He swallowed, had a drink of water and then finally replied to Cleo.

"My name is Julius Astley," he told her. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

That wasn't strictly true. He wasn't finding much pleasurable about meeting Cleo at all but it was a required formality in these situations, whether one meant the words or not. He didn't know why but she seemed to be a bit nervous and way as he'd noticed that she'd moved away from him. He wasn't particularly bothered by this as he hadn't really wanted to talk to anybody in the first place. If she found that she didn't want to be near him, then that was just better for him.

Then again, that could build a bad reputation for him and damage the reputation of the Astley name. As an Astley, he was supposed to be respectable with an honest and good reputation. His father would be disappointed if he didn't uphold the Astley name.

"So... do you like it here at... this place?"
20 Julius Astley, Crotalus You're welcome. 1425 Julius Astley, Crotalus 0 5