Headmistress Powell and Headmaster Guido

October 02, 2009 4:18 PM
It was a pleasantly warm morning; students at Sonora were unimpressed with having to wear their uniform robes on a Saturday, but this was a special occasion. The visiting staff and students from Rocky Mountain International had only just arrived by portkey to the edge of the Quidditch pitch, where the inhabitants of Sonora Academy had gathered to meet them. Headmistress Sadi Powell was the first to make contact; she walked up to the large group and shook hands with their Headmaster, Alessandro Guido. Then she took a couple of steps back again, and put her wand to her throat. Her voice, magically magnified, could fill the Quidditch pitch as she made her announcement. “Welcome to Sonora Academy. We hope you will enjoy your stay in the desert. Today there will be a series of activities for all students, which our prefects have been kind enough to arrange. There will be a buffet at lunchtime served in the gardens, and during the evening we will come together for a magnificent bonfire.” Sadi paused in her speech to allow for any response to this news to die down before she continued. “Tonight all staff and students will camp out here on the Quidditch pitch.” Tents would be erected later in the day; each tent would hold four students, and would be strictly single sex. The students would be free to choose their own camping comrades, although the Headmistress was hopeful there would be some inter-school sharing.

Before the students from RMI had embarked, Alessandro Guido had given them a brief speech about their expected behaviour as visitors at Sonora. As he stood with Sadi Powell, he sincerely hoped certain students would take his words to heart. The man was excited that his students would have this opportunity; it felt, at times, as though the student body became somewhat set in its ways. Sandro was a firm believer in encouraging diversity, and sincerely hoped all the students would take advantage of this opportunity to step out of their ‘boxes’ and meet other young witches and wizards. As the students hesitantly began to mill about, Alessandro smiled and took a few steps forward in order to speak with Sadi. After months of planning, it was exciting for the event to finally be occurring!

Returning her voice back to normal, Sadi started to encouraged visiting staff towards a small table of light refreshments the prairie elves had laid out on the pitch. For her, giving the speech had been easy: it was the rest of the weekend that held mild concern. Although Sadi was sure all students would do their best to represent their school, it would be foolish to imagine everyone would get along swimmingly. Hopefully any scruples that did occur would be minor, and easily resolved.
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0 Headmistress Powell and Headmaster Guido Sonora Academy Welcomes Rocky Mountain International! 0 Headmistress Powell and Headmaster Guido 1 5


Lia Harper, RMI 4th year

October 10, 2009 1:54 PM
When it was explained that they were all meant to share tents with other students, Ophelia Harper briefly entertained the notion of sharing with Ally, Ivy, and Katrina. Then she remembered that 1) she did want to wake up in the morning, and 2) she wasn’t allowed to do anything that made her laugh for more than ten seconds, as per her brother Norbert’s orders. So the fifteen-year-old mentally moved to Plan B, which was finding the hottest, most liberal chicks at Sonora and sharing with them. From what she had heard about the Arizonan school, Lia was going to have a tough time of this. But she was all about pushing the envelope.

Even though she was in her school robes, the gray—which she thought was an unfair color for the robes, since the Aquila House color was already gray—nicely accentuated the fourth year’s silver eyes, and she wore nice shoes with small heels that increased her height two inches, to five-foot-five. Lia didn’t normally wear much makeup (it took too long and she looked awesome without it, anyway), but for the Sonora visit she made a miniscule effort with smoky eyeshadow that she was pleased about. She was thin still, albeit looking healthier than she had before the show, and her black hair was French braided, courtesy of Alissa. Lia’s hair was long enough, she hoped, for two braids; come summertime, she’d need to pull her hair back in double braids for Spelling Bee. She would be playing Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, which was her dream role in the show. Lia and Schwartzy were so alike—both girls had gay dads, for instance. And she was totally going to play up the friendship between Schwartzy and Mitch, which was implied in the script but only she and Brett could perfect it. Funny, how the pair would be friends this show when they had wanted to kill each other two shows previous. But such was the life of actors.

Lia made her way through the crowd, hoping she wouldn’t see Katrina Embers and averting her eyes when she passed Allegra Ruisi. The girls still had not spoken since—what, October? November? Something like that… anyway, rumor had it that Ally was engaged to some pureblood. Lia wouldn’t deny being a little miffed at this—she had, after all, thought that Ally was different from the other pureblood girls, that she actually respected herself—but it wasn’t the black-haired Lyra’s business any more, was it? It was never my business.

So intent was she on not making eye contact with Ally that Lia nearly walked into one of the Sonorans. For a few seconds, she and the other student did an awkward shuffling step as they tried to maneuver around each other. Then Lia stood still and laughed. “Oh, hey,” she said, smiling slightly. “I’m Lia—I’m a Lyra at RMI.” The silver-eyed girl had meant to say her year, but that didn’t seem important now. Age could be discussed later.
0 Lia Harper, RMI 4th year Single attractive RMI female seeking attractive Sonoran! 0 Lia Harper, RMI 4th year 0 5


Annabelle Winslow (Sonora, 6th year)

October 11, 2009 5:32 PM
Annabelle was less paranoid than usual about RMI coming to visit. She had heard they were very liberal, even more so than Sonora, which was really not that conservative in terms of blood status. Yes, there were more purebloods and a few were of the type she tried to avoid. But, for the most part, even the ones from prominent families were not all about blood purity.

But RMI was supposed to have even fewer of the sort from what she understood. And Annabelle thought that was a good thing, both in general and for herself. There was more potential for her to actually not be rejected by these people due to being disowned the way she was by the proper purebloods that cared about such things.

She didn't know why she was so paranoid still. It was over and done with and Annabelle no longer had to worry about how she behaved around people but some things were ingrained in her. She had never formed what her former parents considered proper behavior (after all, if she had, she wouldn't have been disowned in the first place) but the worry about consequences to what Annabelle did was still with her. Even though there was nothing more that could really happen.

It was best just to be with people who didn't care either.

Annabelle listened carefully to the speech the Headmistress made. She had little interest in any of the activities. Annabelle wasn't the competitive sort. She had played Quidditch back at Salem, but that was because Annabelle enjoyed flying. It was such a freeing feeling. She had never been as into the competition aspect. Plus, there were so many good flyers at Sonora that Annabelle really felt she didn't have a chance in the broom race (though odds were, one could apply enough peer pressure for her to participate).

As Headmistress Powell mentioned the tents and finished up, Annabelle set out to find someone to share with. She was so focused on it that she didn't notice when someone nearly walked into her.

“Oh, hey,I’m Lia—I’m a Lyra at RMI.”

Annabelle smiled back. "I'm Annabelle. Crotalus, Sonora" She paused. "Nice to meet you."
11 Annabelle Winslow (Sonora, 6th year) I don't know about attractive but I am a Sonoran. 89 Annabelle Winslow (Sonora, 6th year) 0 5


Lia

October 12, 2009 10:52 PM
The girl who was now standing in front of her was not at all bad-looking, and she was older, too. Lia wished she was more surprised by this. The Lyra would bet anything that Annabelle was a sixth year. Something about sixth-year girls really drew Lia…she didn’t understand it. She hadn’t heard about the houses at Sonora yet, but she hoped that Crotalus was the house of cool liberal people. Lyra was essentially that, ignoring Andreia Cardozo and Cameron Rothechild—artists and performers were generally less inclined to be conservative in any way.

“The pleasure is mine,” she said with a grin, silver eyes dancing appealingly. The black-haired girl hadn’t known Annabelle long enough—even Lia didn’t think ten seconds was long enough—to gauge how awesome she was, but the Sonoran seemed alright so far. She was talking to the RMI student, which was a start. Lia’s intent for this visit was to have about as much fun as possible, so “finding cool tentmates” was on the list of activities to do.

Lia was also thinking about the challenges. The obstacle course sounded interesting, but Lia knew that her heart belonged to the flying relay. She could identify potions, yes, but who wanted to do an academic competition when anything physical was an option? Lia had dropped the chemistry-esque class for a reason, and she was going to be Quidditch Captain next term—what with Scott graduating a year early. The redhead and the black-haired girl hadn’t hooked up since midterm, which Lia was okay with. Every day, she wore the necklace and ring Jimmy Phippen had given her for Christmas; the ring deliberately put on the third finger of her right hand. She didn’t want the connotations of the fourth finger or the left hand. It was unfair that she kept thinking about him, because there was no way they could go out or anything like that…not with Jimmy being Muggle and Lia being who she was. The problem wasn’t that Jimmy was a Muggle, of course—she could care less about blood status—but Jimmy wasn’t at RMI, and with Lia’s track record of fidelity… no, she couldn’t do that to him. Chris’s brother would be better off without the witch in his life.

“Do you want to tent together?” Lia asked. She was nothing if not forward. “I have bad luck with girls at my school,” she admitted casually, solely for the purpose of seeing Annabelle’s reaction. It was true that she had kept the meaning of the statement ambiguous, but the message she hoped to convey was how unlucky in love RMI was leaving her. The fourth-year even dared to hope that there were some Sonorans who might help with this problem; bad odds meant nothing to Lia. If Annabelle’s response was polite, if not favorable, then Lia was eager to share with her. If not… well, there were other girls in the desert.
0 Lia Don’t underestimate yourself 0 Lia 0 5


Annabelle

October 17, 2009 5:41 PM
Annabelle smiled brightly back. "Of course, I'd like to tent with you." She could see no reason whatsoever not to and it wasn't like Annabelle had a ton of friends she could share with. That was the problem with being a relative newcomer to Sonora, everyone was in their little groups already. Helena was all right but she and Annabelle were still not really what she would call close.

And of course, there were the proper pureblood girls, which Crotalus had more than its fair share of, which Annabelle hated. It seemed like cruel fate that she who had been disowned for not being one was now stuck with them as housemates. Crotalus actually seemed to have a split within the house between people like her and people who were snobs (proper pureblood or otherwise.) It was just that Sonora had no real house exclusively for people like Steven Beckett or Lila St. Martin, the way Salem had had Aether. Therefore they were put into what Annabelle privately referred to as the "leftover house" where people went when they didn't fit in. Some people thought this was Pecari, but Annabelle saw a far wider range of personalities in Crotalus than in the other house.

Interestingly enough, she'd been in the "leftover house" at Salem too. Though, Sal Salis had been more commonly referred to as the "crazy house".

But it was appropriate for her, not fitting in. That had been Annabelle's problem pre-disownment. She hadn't fit neatly into the pureblood mold her parents had wanted. She loved flying and didn't have a problem with non-purebloods (if anything, now Annabelle had a problem with the proper ones). She supported women playing Quidditch and gay rights (she'd learned about that through DISCUSS, Salem's feminist pro-gay rights, pro-Quidditch, anti-WAIL group). Annabelle was in no way the proper pureblood girl.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Annabelle said in response to Lia mentioning poor luck with the other girls at her school. "Bunch of the proper sort there huh?" That was what she assumed was the issue, as Lia didn't seem to be one (which to Annabelle was all the better). In that case though, what the Crotalus had heard about RMI was radically wrong.
11 Annabelle I'd like not to 89 Annabelle 0 5