Book Club: What's your destiny? on Transfiguration

John Umland

July 29, 2016 2:54 PM

Book Club: What's your destiny? by John Umland

After a year as head of the book club and half a year as a prefect and library monitor, John had concluded that he was not actually completely and utterly incompetent with people. In no area of his life where he was in a position of authority had he been faced with a mutiny (though he feared the book club might be close; he had been…out of it since January and had taken a gloomy turn during Lent) and none of the other prefects had attempted violence against his person during their meetings. Either he was somewhat competent or they all thought he was a madman and were going along out of either pity or fear, and he didn’t think he behaved that oddly in public.

He had also, however, concluded that while he might not be completely and utterly incompetent at them, he also probably shouldn't go into politics as a career. Negotiating over who’d take which rounds and monitor which stands at a Quidditch game, asking other people to go do something in the library, walking around the school nodding and smiling, consciously remembering to smile when people addressed him and to pay attention to how he said things as well as what he actually said...He’d do it because it was his duty to do it, sometimes because there was nobody else available and there because the wrong people might do it for him otherwise, but he couldn’t imagine why some people practically queued up to do it, arranging their whole first four years of school around getting the chance. Being a prefect didn’t even seem to come with a rise in social status, as people still seemed to regard him pretty much exactly the way they had before he’d become One In Authority. It was just a lot of difficult, often thankless work, and before Easter, he knew he had been showing the strain of it, even at the book club. The club was his favorite of the things he did as an Important Person instead of just as a private student, was actually, once he got through the awkward getting-everything-started bits that came with being in charge, usually pretty fun, but he had been so stressed before Easter that he had had to remind himself that he had volunteered for that one and that he'd enjoyed it in the past and would enjoy it again someday, if he didn't completely screw it up in the meantime.

Since Easter, though, he wasn’t under as much stress, so his performances had improved. He no longer looked like his sleep schedule was comprised entirely of naps taken in his clothes or like he’d forgotten to comb his hair by ten o’clock in the morning every day, and while he had spent a week grinding his teeth rather painfully any time he found himself looking at one of his pureblood classmates too long, controlling his temper had returned to its pre-Lent level of difficulty. When he smiled at the gathering members of the book club, he didn’t have to force it. Much, anyway.

“Evening, everyone,” he said. “Have some snacks – “ between John and the laundry goblins was a long enmity, enough that he’d never ask them for snacks he just wanted for himself because he figured they’d spit in them, but he trusted them not to take out their distaste for him on the others far enough that he had procured a tray of cakes and finger fruits and vegetables and was partaking of apple slices and lemon cake – “and a seat.”

It wasn’t always so – sometimes John divided the club into smaller groups for one purpose or another, so things could be compared and contrasted or because the younger students were doing one thing and the older another or something like that – but today, the seats were all in a large circle for a larger group discussion of a single work. He had considered issuing tokens of some kind to make sure nobody was crowding others out of the discussion entirely, but then had decided that was entirely too primary schoolish and that he probably would have a mutiny on his hands if he presumed to assume that much authority over the group. Having one big group and minimal accountability also made it easier to avoid making eye contact or speaking too directly to anyone he’d been rejected by during his efforts to determine if he had Midsummer options that didn’t involve making himself violently ill. He had overlooked two tiny flaws in his brilliant strategy, which were that girls did not miraculously cease to exist as soon as the unpleasantness of interacting with them was done and that he had no way of knowing how many of them were secretly laughing at him behind his back now….

Once everyone looked settled, he leaned back on the desk he’d claimed for himself. “Welcome again, everyone,” he said. “I hope everyone who’s been with us for a while has finished the book we’ve been reading. For anyone who’s just joining us, we’ve been reading prose translations of the Iliad.” John tried not to inflict too much of just what he liked on the group, but lately, he had been seeking out old things, or at least versions of the same things, his mother had told him the (somewhat softened up – his mother didn’t take much interest in what was supposed to be Appropriate For Children, but she did have some limits) stories of when he was very small. “In honor of our new professor here at Sonora – has anyone here signed up for Divination? – I thought we might start today by talking about how Fate works in stories, and free will and stuff, and how the, uh, points made in literature compare to what we know factually as wizards." As usual, his premise had sounded better to him when it was in his head, but surely they could do something with that. "Feel free to use examples from anything you’ve read, Muggle or magical lit, not just stuff we’ve read in book club.” John was a firm believer that part of the purpose of a book club was to hear about things other people had read, books one might have never come across on one’s own.

OOC: For the 'magical literature on this topic' thing, feel free to make stuff up. Since it's a discussion, also feel free to observe 'Quidditch rules' without a strict posting order - if someone asks your character a question about what they just said, it doesn't make much sense to wait four or five turns to answer it. Also feel free to assume John goes along with it if the conversation goes completely away from the topic he threw out there; he likes that kind of thing. Have fun!

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