You can't play the part if you don't have the script. on Library

Morgan Garrett

March 28, 2020 4:19 PM

You can't play the part if you don't have the script. by Morgan Garrett

When Morgan had first wandered into the Dungeons and Dragons game, she had thought the older kids would quickly push her out of the group. They were, after all, pretty much all the same age, and Morgan was in her first year. She strongly suspected this had something to do with her getting a dwarf character, especially since one of the other characters was well over six feet tall, though she didn't think Evelyn's character was very tall, either. She wasn't totally sure, though, because it was possible she was assuming because Evelyn was really small. Illogical, of course, since Heinrich was hardly a dragon-headed thing that was six foot tall (he was actually rather cute, in a very blond way), but so it went.

Evelyn was also, she had discovered, incredibly sweet. Ness was less overtly nice, but Morgan had a suspicion that Ness had deliberately made an effort to pull Morgan - or rather, Morgan's character - into the game more, giving her things to say and do in interaction with Ness' character. They had somehow almost become a bit of a sub-team, she thought, between the time it had fallen to Morgan's Kathra - a priestess of the goddess of gamblers and hedonists, which was a word Morgan had had to look up in the dictionary to be sure she understood properly after the characters were all designed - to convince Ness' 217 to follow the more...overtly noble members of the party further down a pit of ruins and the time they had both rolled really well in investigation and had deduced some stuff about dwarf corpses. Gary, the DM, was incredibly patient on the occasions when Morgan was blatantly incompetent or confused, and nobody else had done the stuff she would have expected when she accidentally held the game up for a few minutes while figuring out what to do - that was, outright laughing at her, telling her to go away, or at least rolling their eyes and muttering. They even didn't seem to mind if she joined in the banter around the table between actions, when she could think of anything to say.

However, there were still times when things went a bit...wrong. Mostly because of stuff Morgan didn't know. Having not seen the Princess Bride was one thing, but not knowing basic things about the rules of the world she was now living in was another.

One of her game-derailing moments had been the notion that skeletons could stop being dead. She had made a joke about how she hoped that was a joke and not one of the things Dad had forgotten to tell her about. It had turned out that yes, it actually was one of the things about the world which Dad had never thought to tell her. She must have looked about as thrilled to learn this as she really had been, because the others had taken a moment to assure her it was very rare and only done by Dark wizards and not something she needed to realistically worry about.

And then there had been the time Heinrich had mentioned his uncle ran a snake farm and she had instinctively said 'Dear Lord' under her breath in horror, but she didn't think anyone had really heard that. She was just glad she hadn't said it out loud, really. Logically, she knew that Grandma was being silly when she talked about how snakes were the Devil in physical form, and that time when five blacksnakes had fallen out of one tree had not been a case of their property being possessed. Emotionally, she still did not like it at all. At least, though, that was probably not a routine feature of the wizarding world - at least that was probably actually strange to everyone, like how skeletons coming alive again and attacking was also so uncommon that Dad - who had, after all, warned her about some things she might run into here, more common problems - had never told her about it.

She didn't actually know, though. She even wondered how much Dad actually knew about it, really; he had been born in Industry, Kentucky, the same as she had, and had lived there again after Sonora for a while, and obviously none of that stuff was inside the school. Or, obviously, in Industry. And as scary as some of the things out there seemed to be, Morgan kind of wanted to know, just to not have as many unpleasant surprises. She hated surprises more than anything, because while they could be pleasant, like the DnD group being fun even though she was much younger than the others, she knew well that there were lots and lots of surprises that were not so nice, and knowledge was comforting. You couldn't play a part correctly, after all, if you didn't learn your lines.

The trouble here, though, was figuring out where even to start. Should she go into the Defense Against the Dark Arts section? History of Magic? Muggle Studies - maybe there was something like a comparative social study? She didn't know, and so stood in a corridor where three sections diverged, fiddling with the pendant on her necklace, looking quite lost, as she was not paying attention to her expression while she tried to decide which way to go. Indeed, she wasn't paying attention to much else besides the reasons to go one way or another, because she jumped when she saw someone move in her peripheral vision, emerging into the same area she was in.

"Sorry," she said, with a short, breathy laugh. "You scared me."

16 Morgan Garrett You can't play the part if you don't have the script. 1470 1 5

Sapphire Brockert

March 31, 2020 9:35 AM

I don't think I could memorize a script by Sapphire Brockert

If there was one subject in school that Sapphire disliked immensely, it was Defense Against the Dark Arts. It was scary. She did not need to hear about all the awful things out there that wanted to hurt her. It was bad enough to have Topaz as a sister, the Crotalus did not need to know about other scary things. Plus, there was the fact that there was an athletic component with dueling and stuff. That was not the something that came easily to Sapphire, she was not quick on her feet.

Or quick in any sense of the word. Sapphire was pretty sure that in a situation where someone was attacking, she would be dead. Or at least injured. Because that was what happened. Topaz would do something awful to her and she was unable to avoid it. Running away just did not happen. Even if the Crotalus could have run fast enough, it would not have helped because eventually Topaz would get her. Besides, the fourth year-in the interest of giving Sapphire nightmares- often liked to tell her about all the horrible scary things they would learn about in DADA, so the second year already knew about them. Not that Topaz needed to tell her about these scary monsters to give her nightmares, Topaz did that quite well anyway.

However, until she took her CATS, Sapphire was going to have to keep taking DADA. So, she had another three plus years of it, which really sucked. And next year, she'd be in class with Topaz too, which she was so not looking forward to.

On the plus side, at least she didn't have to take flying lessons anymore.

Anyway, Defense was what had brought Sapphire to the library today. She needed some books for an essay she was writing. The second year really didn't like writing essays either. She wasn't very good at it and even when the finished product was satisfactory, she still really struggled the whole time she was working on it.

Sapphire walked toward the Defense section of the library where one of the first year girls was standing. She heard the girl speak to her and flushed. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to!" The Crotalus knew how it felt to have someone scare you and felt genuinely awful. She had not meant to make this girl feel the way Topaz made her feel. Though Sapphire did not quite know how she could have since all she did was walk by her. True, if Topaz just walked by her, she would be scared, but there was a history there.

"I'm Sapphire Brockert, of the Western Brockerts." She added, though it was possibly unnecessary to do. For one thing, Sapphire knew the other girl was not a pureblood as Esme had said the only pureblood first years were herself, their distant cousin Gabriel and Leonor De Matteo and while the second year wasn't bright, she could easily figure out that the person in front of her was not male or Hispanic, so she did not need to introduce herself that way, but it was habit. It also might not be necessary, however, because well, their class wasn't large, and so people should know each others' names and the Crotalus had a name that stood out anyway. It was a failing on Sapphire's part that she couldn't remember them. However, she figured that if she introduced herself, regardless of it the first year knew her name, the other girl would do likewise.

11 Sapphire Brockert I don't think I could memorize a script 1459 0 5

Morgan Garrett

April 02, 2020 2:36 PM

Depends on the length of the part I guess. by Morgan Garrett

"It's okay, it's okay," said Morgan, worried she had upset the other girl from her reaction. "It was my fault, I wasn't paying attention."

The other girl looked, Morgan thought, like someone who would be cast in a role which really was so fragile as to overreact to Morgan's overreaction. She looked like someone had taken the description of an ingenue and designed her according to it, like a statue brought somehow to life - like Pygmalion, that was it - wasn't it? There had been a statue, that was something to do with Greek myths, but there had also been Eliza Doolittle, who wasn't a statue, but had been taught to act like a proper lady...

That wasn't the point, though. Just because this girl, with her icy pale complexion and white-blonde hair, looked like a statue of an ingenue said nothing about her personality. Though her odd way of introducing herself did confirm she might very well be - by magical standards - a proper lady. This was one of the things Dad actually had thought to tell her about; anyone who introduced themselves like that was making a point of Being Someone, and should probably be handled with kid gloves as far as possible, because they could cause her more trouble than most things were worth going through for. Plus, well, it didn't take a very detailed knowledge of pureblood society to notice a certain similarity between this girl's last name and that of the headmaster of the school. It was possible, of course, that Headmaster Brockert abhorred nepotism and would never indulge in it, but Morgan had never once met anyone who actually lived up to that standard. Half the reason Grandma had assumed Dad was dead when he was Away was because she couldn't fathom how he could have ever gotten a job to feed himself without family connections to open the doors.

"I'm Morgan Garrett," she said. "Mostly from Kentucky." It was kind of complicated past that, and she didn't even know what her home situation was going to look like now that she only saw either parent over the summer, but she had, indisputably, done most of her growing up in Kentucky. "Nice to meet you. I've seen you in class, haven't I? Second year?" she asked.

16 Morgan Garrett Depends on the length of the part I guess. 1470 0 5

Sapphire Brockert

April 07, 2020 12:46 PM

I could probably memorize two lines by Sapphire Brockert

"Oh, it's no problem." Sapphire assured the other girl. She didn't want her to blame herself and feel bad especially when it was something that was not all that big of a deal anyway. Merlin knew the Crotalus had been through far worse than anything the first year had done. Especially since the first year had not exactly done anything at all and neither had Sapphire. So it would be really silly to make an issue out of it.

Sapphire smiled. "It's nice to meet you too, Morgan." Hopefullly she would remember the other girl's name now. The second year felt so terrible about forgetting people's names, far worse than she did about forgetting stuff for classes. Remembering someone's name was a way of showing them respect, like they were important enough that you cared who they were. That you weren't dismissive of them, the way people-and not just Topaz, only mostly Topaz-were of her sometimes. Mother also had a tendency to infantilize her ever since the Crotalus had been diagnosed with epilepsy, more so than she even did Amethyst, in fact, since Sapphire had been diagnosed, she had switched from babying the younger girl to babying the second year. When Mother paid attention to them at all, that was.

And then Uncle Eustace was just plain dismissive of anyone female so at least Sapphire wasn't the only one. He was also dismissive of non-purebloods, house-elves, boys who didn't play Quidditch and were otherwise not very typically masculine such as Owen, or those who disagreed with him.

The thing was though that Sapphire wasn't trying to be disrepectful or think she was above them and that it wasn't worth it to even remember the most basic thing about someone. She just had memory problems.

Of course, it also didn't help that Topaz had a tendency to give people unflattering nicknames that she used exclusively to the point where the second year tended to think of them over the person's actual name. Fortunately, Sapphire didn't have to talk to these people and worry about blurting out the thing her sister called them instead. That would have been mean and she would not want to make people feel bad.

She nodded. "Yes. And you're a first year right?" She was pretty sure that Morgan had to be since she hadn't been with Sapphire's classes last year. "Are you working on DADA too?"

11 Sapphire Brockert I could probably memorize two lines 1459 0 5

Morgan Garrett

April 09, 2020 4:07 PM

That could work for a cameo role for sure. by Morgan Garrett

"Yep," said Morgan. "First year all year long."

She considered what to say about what she was working on - and then briefly got distracted having a mental debate with herself about whether or not what she had been doing really constituted work at all, since it hadn't been assigned to her by the teachers, or even by Gary. It was just something she had taken a notion to look up, after all, for her own edification - something that in her old school had been approved of, but still ranked slightly below doing prescribed enrichment or, well, the actual set task. Here, though, as long as she handed in everything on time, nobody seemed to care that much what she did, and there was no formal enrichment, so maybe her own edification was a perfectly respectable form or work, or...something.

Had this line of thought ever been going anywhere? Morgan wasn't sure it had. In any case, though, she was no longer sure where it had been going if it had been going somewhere, so it was probably best just to drop it.

"Kinda, I guess. Maybe," she said. "I'm not really sure. I'm in this club, and we were talking about stuff in the game, and I ended up - um - asking if skeletons really come to life here and attack you sometimes." Which sounded like such a baby-question in retrospect... "My dad's a wizard, but I lived mostly with...my mom, I guess, before here - " really, she had spent more time with her paternal grandparents than anywhere else, to the point that was the mailing address they had given to the school system when Morgan had registered for kindergarten, but that was all way too complicated to get into with a complete stranger - "so I don't...know stuff. So I was trying to decide where I should look to see if there's, like, a super-book of 'stuff you should really know your first year in the wizarding world' or something. But working on DADA is probably a good idea. Want to work together?"

16 Morgan Garrett That could work for a cameo role for sure. 1470 0 5

Sapphire Brockert

April 11, 2020 2:33 PM

Probably could handle that. by Sapphire Brockert

Sapphire nodded. At least she had gotten that right. But then, people's years were easier to figure out than their names. Morgan was a year younger than the Crotalus, she had not seen her around last year. Names on the other hand....well there were millions of names out there. That was why trying to guess Rumplestiltskin's name was a challenge for the miller's daughter. Whom Sapphire did not think had a name herself. And some people had names that would just not occur to someone most of the time, like Rumplestiltskin or Uriah.Or Sapphire.

"Oh" She replied. What Morgan had said was very puzzling. What kind of club was she in that discussed skeletons coming to life? That sounded scary . Was this was some dark arts group? It probably wasn't, because if that was the case, Topaz would be in it. In fact, her sister would be leading it. And Sapphire would know if she was, because she was the one Topaz would want to practice the Dark Arts on so obviously, that wasn't what was happening.

Maybe it was some sort of...intellectual type group? Where they discussed the limits of magic? Sapphire thought Morgan was an Aladren so she might be into such things and, unlike the second year, qualified for it. "What sort of club is this?" Not that she wanted to join or anything, it sounded a bit scary and the Crotalus was rather shy so joining clubs wasn't something she really wanted to do, but she was sort of curious about where and how this would come up in a place where Topaz wasn't involved.

Sapphire carefully considered what Morgan said about not knowing stuff. The second year knew all too well what that was like. She obviously had grown up with magic but she wasn't that smart. "I don't think there's a book like that. I mean, not that I know of." As she'd grown up in the magical world, it never would have occurred to her look for something like that.

She beamed when Morgan asked if she wanted to work on DADA together. "Sure!" Maybe they'd become friends and maybe she'd even get a good grade.

11 Sapphire Brockert Probably could handle that. 1459 Sapphire Brockert 0 5

Morgan Garrett

April 15, 2020 10:10 AM

Fantastic! by Morgan Garrett

"Um - it's a sort of game," said Morgan. "I think some of your - family - might be with us, actually! His last name's Brockert, too. Connor," she added - she was almost more used to thinking of him by his character's name than by his own, and would not have been surprised had he also been able to summon 'Kathra' to mind faster than any part of 'Morgan Grace Garrett,' but there had been exchanges of real names and these were even used around the table sometimes, in the sorts of asides that led to Morgan knowing it was theoretically, if you were a Dark wizard, possible to make skeletons attack. "We pretend to be people in this...pretend world, where's magic that isn't like our magic, and we go on adventures," she said. "In one game, there were some skeletons, and someone made a joke about them attacking - this was out of character - and I was like 'what'?" she explained with an awkward chuckle. "My dad's a wizard, like I said," she added - Dad had specifically mentioned that if she heard about more than three people with the same last name, she should probably not admit just how mundane the majority of her family was to those people - "but, um, not a Dark one, obviously, and Mom would throw a fit if he'd told me about anything like that, so I, I didn't know."

At least one part of that statement was unambiguously true - that Mom would have thrown a fit. Morgan never found her mother more interested in her than whenever Dad said...anything. The first fight they'd ever had in front of her had happened about three days after she'd met Dad, because he'd told her it was all right to talk about Anna after Mom had scolded her for doing so in front of him when he'd only just found out Anna was dead.

Even then, Morgan had thought it was weird that she'd been told she ought to think that he might have Feelings on this subject and be considerate - and then Mom had started a fight the same afternoon, going on about how he didn't get to just show up out of nowhere and contradict anything Mom said. She felt badly about it, but she thought that might have been the point at which she decided she liked Sage the best of her parents, even though at that time, Dad and Sage hadn't even been married yet, and had seemed less likely to ever get married by the moment. Sage was, after all, from a place much closer to Mayberry than to the apartment complex from Rear Window - she hadn't been used to people like them, and it had been quite obvious at first. Why, she had acted, that first day, like she thought there was a chance Grandma might actually hit Dad with that cast iron skillet she'd been waving around....

She could, at least, see Mom's point about not telling her about attack skeletons, though - kind of. In Mom's world, that was horror movie stuff. It would just make Morgan have nightmares and be even more inconvenient than usual. Here, though, it was different, so this was all going to be filed under the Things We Don't Tell Mom About.

Sadly, a book on the topic seemed unlikely to be the thing that led to Mom finding out about one of the Things Mom Wasn't To Be Told About, though at least Sapphire didn't rule it out altogether. She also seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the prospect of working together, so that was cool. Maybe, with a second year helping her, she could stay vaguely on task and not get caught up on tangents or not understand something that would look really simple to everyone else... "Great!" she said. "Guess we can go find a table - do you have your DADA book? I left mine in the dorms. It's classifications of spells for self-defense we're supposed to be doing, right?"

16 Morgan Garrett Fantastic! 1470 0 5

Sapphire Brockert

April 18, 2020 3:36 PM

Indeed by Sapphire Brockert

Oh. That's neat." Sapphire had never heard of a game like this though as children they often played that her brother Jasper was a brave knight protecting princesses-herself, Amethyst and Ruby and sometimes their cousins-from things like living skeletons and Topaz. Other than that, their games were things like gobstones and wizard's chess but Sapphire knew she wasn't smart enough for the latter so she didn't even try. She was pretty sure that even Olaf would beat her at it and he was five, but he was smart and she was dumb. "It sounds like a fun game." She had always loved playing pretend.

Sapphire nodded. Connor's last name was Priory not Brockert, but she knew who Morgan meant. Connor was Head Boy and the great-great-grandson of Uncle Clifford who was the Brockert family patriarch. Allegra had been on a Challenge team with him. "That's cool. I've heard Connor is really nice." Although Allegra was avoiding him because their team had done poorly and the fourth year blamed herself. Sapphire didn't think she should, the Challenges hadn't been fair with two events involving athletic components. Of course, Sapphire was pretty sure that nobody had actually climbed that wall.

"I'm glad that your father isn't a Dark wizard." Sapphire replied. My sister is getting there. She decided not to add that. Morgan didn't need to know that. Though the first year was in the same house as Topaz, she'd probably be beneath the fourth year's notice. Lucky Morgan. Besides, Sapphire didn't want the first year to think badly of her because of her sister. Which could still happen as Topaz probably had something of a reputation and their names were dead giveaways that they were sisters. "That would be awful." Dark wizards (and witches) were terrifying, she knew this from first hand experience and Topaz wasn't even a Dark witch yet....she was a Dark witch in training . Which meant she was only going to become worse .

"Yup. And I have my book right here. I was just looking for other sources." Sapphire added. She was excited to work with Morgan. Between Sapphire being a second year growing up in the magical world with an evil sister who made her have to think more about Defense in general and Morgan being an Aladren, they'd make a decent team.

Besides, she'd really like a friend too. She didn't really have anyone outside her cousins and sisters.

11 Sapphire Brockert Indeed 1459 0 5

Morgan Garrett

April 21, 2020 4:27 PM

The Show Must Go On. by Morgan Garrett

"It's really cool," said Morgan about the game. "I wasn't sure about it at first - and it was really weird when I showed up for the first meeting, you know, and absolutely ev-er-ree-body was way older than me - but I like it now. You should come sometime," she added impulsively. "People come and watch sometimes, and then maybe you can join up if you like it," she explained. "Gary's really nice about explaining things when you don't know what's going on. Everyone's really nice, to tell you the truth."

That had been, if she was honest, one of the things Morgan had been worried about at boarding school. You always heard about boarding schools being full of snobby rich folks who would stick your head in a barrel of horse dung just as a rite of passage to be allowed to stay in the building. Logically, the wizarding world couldn't quite be like that, since plenty of people who were not rich had magic too, but Morgan had grown up reading Muggle girls' series, thinking as bad as Industry is, it still beats some of these rich folks and their doing.

She nodded fervent agreement when Sapphire said it would have been awful had Dad been a Dark wizard. "I know," she said. "I mean - I don't know much, but looking at the textbook, I think bein' a Dark Wizard is the kind of thing where they'd throw you in the big pen, like state or federal, and you wouldn't even make bail." She said this in tones of hushed awe, because that was about the worst thing that could happen to someone at home. People made their livings doing bail bonds, so it was only a serious offense that could get someone stuck without bail. It was good for the economy to give people bail wherever possible.

"Great," she said when Sapphire said she had her textbook. "And we're right here with the Defense section, so it should be pretty easy to find some more, right?"

16 Morgan Garrett The Show Must Go On. 1470 0 5