This is just a little too close to home on Transfiguration

Selina and Anon

July 12, 2015 9:52 PM

A secret revealed by Selina and Anon

Selina was agitated. She had hoped the graffiti on the hall doors had been a one off. But, after Mr. Xavier reported the vandalism of one his trees, she wasn't so sure. The style had been very different... One a nasty piece of gossip, the other common teenage behaviour. The latter would not have bothered her so much had it not been for the former, and the worry that it meant that whatever was going on was not over. All the students whose names began with either of the offending initials had been called, one by one, to her office. However, she had got nowhere from those interviews – some had blushed or been awkward but when your teacher was, effectively, asking you about your crushes that seemed understandable. No one had admitted to it, and as there was nothing to prove that the person who had carved the initials was the same person as had committed the more serious offence earlier in the term, there was not much point in taking it further. All students had been reminded that vandalism of school property included the trees, and that they ought to show respect for nature at all times, and not just when it was a school rule.
All had been quiet for a couple of weeks. She thought that, if the week ended with no further incidents, she might to start to think about maybe considering stopping worrying about the whole thing. She didn't want to tempt fate though. However, fate – it seemed – was tempted by even these vaguest of considerations.
*
Why don't you... he began, whispering to the chalk. He had seen the Professor speak to it and observed it write on the board in response. The chalk, however remained inert. He tried raising his voice a little but was forced to conclude that it was charmed to listen only to her. No matter. He could do it the old fashioned way. The thing was tricky to grip and this method would do nothing to disguise the shaky and ill-formed letters that were becoming characteristic of the messages. Previously, perhaps, this had been attributed to scratching them into wood, which never brought out anyone's neatest work. Clumsily, but clearly, he wrote on the board....

Why don't you tell anyone who you real mother is,
And why don't you tell your real mother who you are any more?

Subthreads:

This is just a little too close to home by Clark Dill

Deny, deny, deny. by Julian Umland

13 Selina and Anon A secret revealed 26 Selina and Anon 1 5

Clark Dill

July 13, 2015 7:57 PM

This is just a little too close to home by Clark Dill

Clark froze as he stepped into the Transfiguration classroom, hoping this was where he had left his favorite quill. It was missing, and while he had other ones, they didn't work quite as well as his best one. When he saw the message on the board, though, he forgot why he'd come in here entirely.

Panic gripped him. He never spoke of his mother. Not to anybody. People might have noticed. And while his mother wasn't the problem in his family tree, she was the one for whom he didn't have a cover story. Most of the time, he figured people wouldn't notice an absence of a mother in his tales of home, or they'd just assume Dad was divorced or widowed or something, but not with this out there.

Looking pale, he backed out of the room. It wasn't about him. It couldn't be about him. He didn't tell anyone who his real mother was because he didn't know anything about his mother. He was pretty sure even Dad didn't know anything about her. He wasn't lying about Mom. He wasn't keeping secrets. He just didn't know. And consequently, he didn't tell her anything about him because he had no idea how to even begin to contact her, even if he wanted to.

But nobody would know any of that. The other students just knew he didn't talk about her, not ever. They might have extrapolated. Wrongly, of course, but . . . it was still too close for Clark's comfort. People weren't supposed to wonder about his parentage. People couldn't wonder about his parentage. It was too dangerous.

Trying not to look too panicked or freaked out, Clark retreated to his dorm, using corridors that were rarely used as much as possible to avoid anyone who might ask if there was something wrong. Dealing with Oliver was preferable because Oliver wouldn't care enough to ask what was bothering him, and hopefully the pureblood wizard wouldn't even be there and would stay away until Clark could pretend this had never happened. It occurred to him later that he should have erased the words while he was there, but he hadn't been thinking that clearly, and he wasn't going back there until his next Transfiguration class. With luck, Professor Skies would see it first and erase it before anybody else saw it.

And hopefully, she wouldn't see his quill lying forgotten and abandoned on the floor and think he'd been responsible for writing it either.

1 Clark Dill This is just a little too close to home 277 Clark Dill 0 5

Julian Umland

July 14, 2015 9:13 PM

Deny, deny, deny. by Julian Umland

She had enough to do that she was sometimes tempted to skip it, but Julian made a point of eating lunch every day. For one thing, going herself was the only way she could be sure John did so instead of retreating to one of his library hiding places to read the hour and a half he had away and she doubted any of the other Intermediates had ever done anything bad enough to deserve having an underfed and under-caffeinated John unleashed on them. For another, eating a nutritious (light, so she wouldn’t get sleepy during her afternoon classes and evening duties, but nutritious) lunch helped her refrain from sneaking sweets away from the supper table and munching on them for half the night. Most importantly of all, though, lunch for her was right before Transfiguration, and Advanced Transfiguration was nothing to face without some healthy food and a good cup of tea inside one. Most of the healthy eating programs Julian had read about mentioned something about reducing or eliminating caffeine, or at least sticking to green tea, but she was sure they would have seen why that was one of her sticking points if they had known anything about the rigors of Advanced Transfiguration. She sometimes sipped on a bit of jasmine tea if she really needed to relax, or was in a really frilly mood, but it just was not tough enough to get her through Advanced Transfiguration.

Luckily, Sonora as an institution seemed to hold no strong opinion on what the one caffeine source to rule them all should be and had included a few options to pair with a vegetable soup, its less appealing green bits rendered appetizing by the addition of tomatoes, basil, parmesan, and she thought just a little garlic. China black had been the winner, and between the break (she had, for once, been caught up completely on her homework before lunch), the pick-me-up, and the nourishment, she felt as good as she ever did as she walked to her daily appointment with a headache a little early, hoping to look over her notes in the peace of the empty room before class. Her good feelings, though, were not destined to last.

When she entered the room, she noticed there was something written on the board, but writing on chalkboards was a common enough occurrence in classrooms that she didn’t bother to look up to see what it said until she sat down. When she did, her first reaction was confusion – that wasn’t Professor Skies’ handwriting, plus if it was a Transfiguration riddle, it was a really weird one – and her second was surprise, both of which were quickly followed by the feeling that she was about to be sick.

Why don’t you tell your real mother who you are anymore?

How could I? she wanted to demand of whoever had written it. She had only just started to wonder who she was when Sallie had waltzed back into the picture. If she started doing things Mom didn’t do, that might make her even vaguely resemble Sallie, Mom might end up thinking Julian preferred Sallie to her, or wished things had been different, or – or she didn’t even know what. Just that she couldn’t do that to her mother, any more than she could admit that while she loved all her brothers, there were times when she just didn’t want to be one of the guys, or….

“Julian?”

She nearly jumped out of her chair, but it was just John. For one second, she was relieved by that, but then it occurred to her: it was John, the one person at Sonora most likely to figure out why the message was freaking her out. “You dropped this in the Hall,” he said, seemingly oblivious to her occupation with who had brought Banquo’s corpse to the banquet table as he held out a scroll she recognized as her Charms homework. As she took it, though, he must have caught something in her expression, because he frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” said Julian, because John realizing she was affected by what on the board was just exactly what she did not want to happen, but by now, John had already looked away from her and spotted the badly-written taunts. For a moment, he, too, looked puzzled, but then reacted in a way she had not expected. Instead of either turning on her, calling her out on why guilt was currently twisting her stomach into a knot and making her regret her lunch, or even exploding and reciting the Scottish King’s lines for her, he went so completely blank that it was a little unsettling.

“Nothing,” he repeated.

“Yeah, nothing,” said Julian, then bit her lip, then silently cursed as she remembered she was wearing lipstick. Hopefully it wasn’t on her front teeth now; those were over-large and gapped enough to draw too much attention to themselves even without the addition. “Remember what you said?” she asked, thinking back to when he’d told her about running into one of the Brockert twins in the Gardens. “Someone’s just messing with everyone.”

“Pretty weird that two adopted kids walk in here and see it.”

Julian had no idea if the accusatory note was real or if she was imagining it, projecting her own feelings onto John’s flat tone. She bit her lip again to keep from rising to the bait she heard being offered anyway. “Two among who knows how many in this school,” she argued. “Charlie’s in this class, too, and – and I don’t know exactly what the deal is with the Jareaus, but there’s clearly some kind of deal there, isn’t there? And that’s just in my class.”

John considered this. “True,” he said finally. “Could just be aimed at your class.”

He still had that strange lack of expression going on, though. “Well, it’s certainly not for me,” she said sharply, rising from her seat to face her brother on a more even footing. “Or if it is, someone’s way off base.” Or just trying to turn you against me. Because if you ever get it into your black-and-white head that I’d so much as acknowledge Sallie as a human being instead of some kind of inconveniently talkative incubator for Mom -

She squashed the thought before she could even finish it.

“Then we should just erase it,” argued John.

Julian actually thought that was a wonderful idea, but wanted to look unaffected by it even more than she wanted it gone. “Professor Skies should see it,” she said. “She should know that whoever is doing this is back.”

“So let’s go tell her,” said John.

Professor Skies probably knew their backgrounds, at least enough to know that the message could refer to one of them. She probably wouldn’t know many specific details about Sallie or the train wreck which had given birth to John, but she might well know their mother wasn’t a blood relative. Julian crossed her arms over her stomach at the thought of Professor Skies thinking it was either of them, that Julian was the kind of person who was ashamed of where she came from just because she liked having some glimmer of a life of her own at school but was more comfortable doing what was expected of her when she was at home. “I’ll do it,” she said. “It just makes things more complicated to drag you into it.”

Inexplicably, John drew back, glaring at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” said Julian, confused. “I’m the prefect, and two people talking over each other doesn’t accomplish anything.”

“Proves you weren’t in here alone with it.”

Julian laughed. “I really don’t think Professor Skies is going to think this one was me,” she said, omitting just how confident of that she was and how she was that confident because she had no intentions of telling Professor Skies anything. She was going to be as surprised as anyone to find this mess when class began if Professor Skies didn’t get rid of it first. “Go on. I don’t need an alibi and you won’t get the data you need to show everyone else in Care of Magical Creatures up – again – hanging out with me until it’s time for class.”

It had, she thought as she walked away from the room, to be about her, but how? She thought the number of students who even knew she was adopted could be counted on one hand. She and John looked enough alike that she didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone do a double take at hearing they were siblings: her complexion was lighter and her hair a bit darker than his, maybe just because she didn’t spend as much time outdoors, and their builds and heights had nothing in common, but their hair and eye colors fell into the same range and they had lived together long enough to share quirks of expression and there were other sibling pairs around the school who looked as little or less alike. His appearance didn’t give their family dynamics away. Plus, she knew there were only two people at Sonora she’d told that she was in touch with her biological mother, and they were Charlie and John.

Charlie was more the kind to gossip, but Charlie was also not the kind to do this to her, or to whoever the first message had been directed toward. John wasn’t, either, of course, if for different reasons, but…his reaction had been weird, even by his standards, and –

She shook that thought away as fast as possible, though, now feeling even worse. What was she doing? What kind of person even came anywhere remotely close to thinking that of her own brother, even for a second? And John couldn’t have written that second line, she was sure of that. There had to be another explanation. Maybe it was for one of the Jareaus, or someone else altogether. It might have nothing to do with her at all. Why would anyone bother calling her out? How could people possibly care as much about her family life as they did about other people’s love lives? It had to be about someone else.

16 Julian Umland Deny, deny, deny. 254 Julian Umland 0 5