Grayson Wright
August 22, 2021 7:39 PM
Orientation for First Years by Grayson Wright
As the wagons landed and began to unload, all but the tallest students were slightly overshadowed by an adult figure, a tall, dark-haired wizard in glasses. To most, he was a familiar figure – it was, he had been startled to realize at breakfast, his tenth year as a teacher, longer than any of the students had been here. It was to those who did not know him, though, that he repeatedly called out."Hello everyone," he said in a well-trained ‘teacher’ voice, projected just so, as students began to disembark from the wagons. "First years! First years gather here, please! Everyone leave your luggage with the wagons, thank you…."
He had mastered the trick of making himself heard over chattering crowds without damaging anyone's eardrums or his own throat too badly, but he still had, as usual, backed himself up with a large banner over the entrance to the Labyrinth Gardens: ‘Welcome to Sonora. 1st Year students here.’ The use of the numeral ‘1’ instead of the word was hopefully a clue to anyone who had difficulties reading English, and the size hopefully enough to attract the attention of even the most distractable of eleven-year-olds. He couldn’t say for sure that either made the task of gathering the first years any faster, but he was relatively sure that, at the very least, they didn’t hurt anything.
"Hello, again, everyone," he said once the majority of the student body had moved away from the wagon landing site, leaving him with the first years. He made the effort to smile, but the effect did little to prevent him from looking slightly anxious; 'slightly anxious' was one of his three general facial expressions, along with 'faintly amused' and 'as if the salt cellar directly in his line of sight had done him a personal wrong.' The first one was the most common."And welcome to Sonora Academy. My name is Professor Wright. I will guide you through your Orientation today. Follow me, please, thank you..."
Beneath the banner was a gap between two dense hedges, taller than any first year who didn’t happen to have a giant among their recent ancestors. A neatly gravelled path lay between them, and a short way along, it opened onto a hedge-walled courtyard, in which there was a central fountain and several stone benches which were permanent fixtures of the area and several long tables which were not. On one of these tables, there were a number of dark green folders, equal in number to the students present. On another, there was a sort of finger-and-snack-food buffet, with lightweight plates and paper napkins available so the students could gather a few refreshments in one trip if they wished. On the third, there were several large apparatuses, each topped with a clear (and unbreakable) glass bulb which showed the color of the drink within, though they were also distinguished by written labels on their sides above the spigots which, when turned, would dispense the contents into glasses: pumpkin juice, apple juice, grape juice, iced tea, and plain water. There was also a box of ice (charmed not to melt) with a scoop in it and a number of clear cups.
"Come in, everyone, and please take one folder," he instructed them. "I'm sure many of you will want some refreshments after your journey, but if you can give me your attention for a few minutes first..."
Once everyone had a folder and was more or less still and quiet, he began near-reciting the same introductory remarks he had given to each new set of first years for several years running now.
"Welcome to Sonora," he repeated. "As I said before, I am Professor Wright. I'll be one of your teachers for the next few years. Sonora is a seven-year school where you’ll be introduced to most of the major sections of magical theory and practice. Tomorrow morning, you will all start taking seven classes - Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, Potions, Transfiguration, and flying lessons. I'll be your Charms teacher. You can drop flying lessons in your second year and begin taking elective classes in your third year. In your fifth year, you’ll take your first set of major exams, the Critical Assessment of Talents and Skills, or CATS, as we usually call them – at least if it’s not in a setting where we’re likely to mix them up with anyone’s pets.” He didn’t really expect even solid chuckles from the children for that one, though he'd thought it had been funny when he'd come up with it the previous year. “After you take your CATS, you will be allowed to drop some subjects if you want to, so you can better focus on your strengths and the requirements for careers you're interested in, though you’ll need at least two classes to graduate and three if you want to pursue your education in the magical arts further after you leave Sonora.
“We know that you all had different educations before you arrived here today,” he said, because this was true. Some might have gone to Muggle elementary schools while others might have had one tutor, a series of tutors, or been taught by a parent, while a few might have very little formal education at all. “Your professors all have office hours when we can give you extra help in our subjects if you need it, and Professor Skies, our Deputy Headmistress and your Transfiguration teacher, runs special sessions for anyone who needs help with reading and writing English, or who needs other general academic support. You can see times for those sessions in the schedules inside your green folders.
“Outside of classes, you can choose between a few options for how you spend your time. We have several student-run clubs and a school-wide Quidditch team here, and you’ll see notices about meetings posted around the school when those groups are ready to start up for the year. Breakfast is from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m, lunch is from 11:00 to one, and supper is from five till seven, but you can find snacks and drinks in the Cascade Hall – our main dining area - between those times as well. Curfew is at ten p.m., and at that time, you’ll need to be inside your Houses – those are parts of the building where your dorms are. They're all attached to a common room you share with all the students from all seven years who were Sorted into the same group as you . Sonora has four Houses, and tonight, at the Welcoming Feast, you’ll be Sorted into one of them by dipping the blank badges you have now into a cauldron. If your badge turns blue, you’re an Aladren – the House that values learning and problem-solving.” He might have sounded a little proud there; he was a former Aladren as well as the current Head of the House. “If it turns red, you're in Crotalus, the House for people who like to be well-prepared for everything. Yellow means you’re a Teppenpaw, the House for our diplomats. And last but not least, if your badge turns brown, that means you’re a Pecari, the House for people who always land on their feet and are always willing to take a chance. All the Houses have other traits, though, so don’t worry if you don’t think any of those things sounds exactly like you – there’s a place for everyone here at Sonora.
“The four Houses each have a set of usually three prefects, a fifth year, a sixth year, and a seventh year, who can help you out in a lot of circumstances, and a Head of House, who is an adult and a staff member – I’m the Head of Aladren House, for instance. They’ll all look after you while you’re here – some people like to think of their Houses as an extended family. Your House can earn points based on things you do – excelling in class or in sports, or showing responsibility, or helping the school community in some way, or showing general leadership. The House with the most points at the end of the year earns the House Cup, and sometimes other privileges.
“If no-one has any questions about all of that, you can talk for a while and have some snacks until we begin our tour of the main building. If you do have any questions, feel free to come see me before we begin our tour – and welcome again to Sonora.”
OOC: OOC: Welcome first years to Sonora! You can post a reply here to ask staff questions or meet your new classmates. This thread is intended for first year students to have a chance to try out posting and get acclimated to the site before we throw you into the big Opening Feast, which is open to the entire school population and can be a bit overwhelming.
Now, go forth, new first years of Sonora! Post, enjoy, have fun! Everyone here is happy to help out, so if you've got a question, put it on the OOC board or try to catch somebody in the Chatzy and we'll try to get you an answer as quick as we can. Have fun and we’re glad you could join us!
[Credit to Nathan Xavier's author for the content of this OOC notice]
Subthreads: This is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, right? by Phil Carson with Eben Sosna
Here goes nothing. by Claire Osbrook with Tissena Randall
Ever so magical by Verdillia Scurlock with Liesl Brockert
Leaving home ain't always easy by Antonia Guter with Christopher Brockert
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Grayson Wright
Orientation for First Years
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Phil Carson
August 22, 2021 10:22 PM
This is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, right? by Phil Carson
Phil Carson pinched himself and it hurt. His arm was covered with tiny red pinchmarks, because he kept doing it, and it kept hurting, but he was still having trouble believing that this was really real, and he kept needing to check again that he wasn't dreaming. If he was dreaming, it was going on for a really long time now, and he was probably in a coma or something. His arm hurt though, and it was just enough different than what he thought his brain would come up with for fevered ravings, that he was pretty sure this was the actual reality.He had suspected for some years now that he might be a mutant, and had done a half-serious internet search to see if anyone really did have a school for gifted youngsters that Marvel had stolen the idea from, but being a magical wizard worked, too. (Maybe Sonora was even what Professor X's school was based on, they just changed it from magic users to mutants so they couldn't get sued.)
The flying wagon - flying wagon! - touched down at the edge of a huge hedge maze, and Phil hopped down, his grey eyes wide, trying to take in everything around him. He didn't miss the large sign and gathered with the other first years at the grown wizard's directions.
Soon they were brought deeper into the maze and Phil took his folder and flipped through it eagerly, before turning his attention to the wizard who had led them there. They were given a lot of information but somehow not nearly enough. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure what it was that he wanted to know or even if it was something a teacher could tell him. Some things you just needed to learn for yourself.
He turned to another kid after the speech was over and said the two words that summed up about everything his brain could make of the entire situation, "Wizards, yeah?"
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Phil Carson
This is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, right?
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Eben Sosna
August 24, 2021 3:31 PM
Four out of five words check out, anyway. by Eben Sosna
If I was dreaming, I wouldn’t have a splinter in my thumb. Who ever heard of dreaming about having splinters? I have a splinter in my thumb, so therefore, I am not dreaming all this.Eben bit the inside of his cheek, trying to figure out if that line of thought made sense. One of the many books of interesting facts he’d read had mentioned some logic thing which went no men are angels – (X) is a man – therefore (X) is not an angel, but now that he thought about it, both that statement and his own thoughts about splinters were making a lot of assumptions. How, for instance, were you supposed to be sure no men were angels, especially considering how vague the word ‘angel’ was anyway? Even the people who made things that were supposed to look like angels couldn’t seem to agree if they were supposed to look more like grown men, grown women, or badly-dressed babies, and then sometimes on TV they were just made of Wrong Geometry. And how was he supposed to be sure that no-one had ever dreamed about having splinters, or at least heard of someone else who had dreamed about that? It wasn’t like he could sit everyone on earth down and ask them, was it, much less anything else. Even if he could design a translator watch that would deal with all the languages he didn’t speak, there would be someone who slipped through the cracks, or died before it was their turn to be asked. Even if he could work out time travel and cover that, there would always be someone who developed a resistance to the latest truth serum before another one could be developed. It was hard to say for sure that anything was impossible since he’d learned about wizards, but he was pretty sure that if anything was, it was asking everyone on earth one question and getting only true answers.
He was less sure what to make of Mr. Professor. On one hand, he was a middle aged guy who looked like he might be wearing the equivalent of a wizard suit, which meant he might be as frustratingly boring as the principal back at Eben’s old school, and he kept referring to Eben and the people he guessed were his classmates now as first graders, which was kind of annoying. On the other hand, though, his glasses were an acceptable shape and the fact he was here meant he was someone else who was Different, which meant he might be cool, at least compared to regular teachers. He’d have to gather more information to make a judgment, he decided.
One thing he did not think he needed any more information to determine, though, was that Mr. Professor was long-winded. Really, really long-winded. A lot of what he was saying also seemed like it wasn’t going to make much sense until after they had a chance to see the building and where and what things were, and that was before the bits that were about stuff five years in the future. Soon, inevitably, Eben found his attention wandering away from Mr. Professor and fixing instead on the task of studying the other kids around him.
So these are my people.
Immediately, he felt a flash of guilty discomfort. All wizards are my people – Euan is not a wizard – therefore, Euan isn’t my people. Except, of course, that that didn’t work at all, or make any sense. How, exactly, was his flipping twin supposed to suddenly stop being his people just because one of them had transferred to a different school? Obviously, that wasn’t what had happened. But…it was still hard not to be excited at the thought of meeting other people who weren’t just taking his word for it about things all the time. Euan was great, he had stopped acting like he thought Eben was lying or crazy years and years ago, but he was mostly just Another Weird Kid by association. These people had probably all spent their whole lives being The Weird Kid personally, like he had, because they could see what other people didn’t and knew that they weren’t crazy or dreaming it all….
With this thought in mind, he reminded himself he should probably try to be less suspicious about the intentions of anyone, like the nearest kid to him after the speech, who spoke to him here than he would be at school at home. “For real, dude,” he agreed with Kid’s assessment of the situation. “I’m E – eh, Ben.” He caught himself before he could say his real name, silently apologizing in his head to Euan for that. There was nothing he could do about his great-great-something grandparents not having the sense to pretend they had a family name Americans would find less funny than ‘Sosna’ when they’d immigrated from Czechoslovakia or wherever, but for the first time, he could shorten his name so that people didn’t pretend to think he was saying ‘Evan’ with a bad head cold, or a speech impediment or something, and so nobody would ever nickname him Scrooge again. Or at least, he could try it out, see if he could get used to it. “You’re…I guess kind of the second wizard I’ve ever met,” he added. “There were people in the stores and things when I went to buy stuff, but I didn’t really get to talk to them much. What about you?”
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Eben Sosna
Four out of five words check out, anyway.
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Phil Carson
August 24, 2021 11:03 PM
Which one didn’t make the cut? by Phil Carson
Phil’s fellow wizard kid called him a dude, and he chalked that up as another thing his subconscious would not come up with on its own, and he laughed a little in breaking tension. He was up to 91% sure this was not a coma induced by falling out of a tree and getting partially mauled by a mountain lion in Glacier National Park. “I’m Phil,” he returned Ben’s introduction easily.“Same,” he returned, confirming an equally sparse number of wizards he had met prior to this moment, deciding to count only the muggleborn liasion guy who had come out to Montana to explain everything to him and his family (twice, because Phil’s parents were divorced). “And you’re the first one my own age,” he added, in case that wasn’t obvious. “Other than the kids on the wagon, I guess,” he added, qualifying his statement as Ben had done his. “But I was too busy goggling about a flying wagon and pinching myself to make sure it was real to really talk to anybody. There’s still a nine percent chance I’m in a coma back in Whitefish, Montana,” he added very seriously. “It doesn’t seem possible that this can be reality, but I don’t think I could come up with all these details on my own, either. There’d be more villains to fight and superpowers on both sides if this was from my brain. I mean, magic is a superpower, I guess, but there’s be more variety, you know?”
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Phil Carson
Which one didn’t make the cut?
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Eben Sosna
August 25, 2021 9:14 PM
"Xavier's", kind of. Depends on if we mean "the school Xavier owns" or "the school Xavier attends" by the possessive I guess. by Eben Sosna
Phil. A nice, ordinary, kinda old person name - unless, of course, it was short for, like, Philemon or something (he'd only ever seen that one written down, and that not often, so he could only guess that Phil was a reasonable nickname for it. More than 'Lemon,' anyway, which was the other word he could guess might come out of it, which...actually, 'Lemon' was so out there that Eben thought he could have a sense of humor about that one, though he could also understand why someone else might not). On the whole, though, it was probably more likely that he was just named after a grandpa or someone."Nice to meet you," he said.
He nodded to Phil's explanation of his evidence for 91% certainty this was real. "Yeah, superpowers...usually they seem more specific than what it sounds like we can do? I tried to ask the wand guy a lot of questions when I met him, but the agent who told us about all this wanted to keep moving. I think the wand guy did, too, honestly," he admitted. "But what was I supposed to do after someone said all the stuff he said on his own?" he added with a touch of indignation. The guy had looked like Eben had asked him personal questions just for asking how something worked and how wood could possibly have preferences, much less roughly predict his lifespan using broad, vague categories that gave it a high likelihood of getting it more or less right just by random guess.
"But yeah. A minute ago I was trying to figure out if there's any way I could find out for sure if anyone ever gets a splinter in a dream. I'm pretty sure it's not a dream, though. If I start wondering if this is a dream, then I have to wonder if I really saw a ghost when I was six, and I know I didn't dream that." He said the last part with a firmness that betrayed the many efforts people had made to tell him he must have been dreaming or making up a story or misinterpreting a sheet on a washline or something. He could remember exactly what the thing had looked like and could also remember details like Mom getting mad at Euan for playing with the things that made the car windows go up and down, and how much he'd disliked the smell of asphalt in the air. It had happened. He looked curiously at Phil. "Did you ever see anything?" he asked. "I - eh, really I didn't think so much that I had ESP as that nobody else paid attention the right way, but even my brother was so sure I was joking about stuff sometimes that I wondered sometimes."
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Eben Sosna
"Xavier's", kind of. Depends on if we mean "the school Xavier owns" or "the school Xavier attends" by the possessive I guess.
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Phil Carson
August 28, 2021 10:26 AM
Or 'the school Xavier teaches at' would work, too by Phil Carson
Phil nodded in agreement that superheros tend to have a more focused ability than they had. "There are magic users in comic books though. Wanda's a witch. Zatanna's a sorceress. Loki's a mage. Dr. Stephen Strange is a sorcerer. Any of them could be as versatile as us."He nodded along as Ben talked about trying to get more information out of the wandmaker he'd met, and Phil grimace in commiseration at the person's unwillingness to answer detailed questions. Almost absently, Phil pulled his own wand out of his pocket to look it over again (he'd been doing this about every 20 minutes since he got it, still amazed that he was a person who owned a magic wand, so he was pretty sure he already had every bit of it memorized and he could easily pick it out of a pile of similarly shaped wands). "My wand maker said mine is made of Cedar, which he said meant I had strength of character and loyalty, but that sounds more like the results of some random internet quiz, than something that can be so easily determined by what kind of wand you get. But apparently there's a part of a dragon inside it, so that's pretty cool."
When Ben talked about seeing a ghost when he was six, Phil raised his eyebrows in surprise but not disbelief. He had heard far too many seemingly impossible things this summer to think that ghosts were impossible. He shook his head when asked if he'd had any similar experiences. "Not ghosts, but I thought I might be a mutant, like in the X-Men," he admitted. "Not, like, superstrength or superspeed or anything really impressive, but just . . . there were little things that happened around me that didn't make sense. I thought I had a summoning power, maybe? Things tended to be where I needed them to be instead of where I left them. Like, one time I went hiking, and I was sure I didn't think to bring bandaids, but when I needed one, and looked in my backpack just in case, I had bandaids."
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Phil Carson
Or 'the school Xavier teaches at' would work, too
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Eben Sosna
August 28, 2021 6:55 PM
Fair. It's a surprisingly flexible term, huh? by Eben Sosna
"That's fair," Eben agreed upon hearing a list of specific comic people with broad abilities. "Though now I'm gonna wonder if there's people who really can only do one thing, or if that part's the made up one," he observed. "I don't...think it would be? I didn't have time to finish all the books, but it...seems kind of like the part where we say something and wave the wand around in a pattern, that's like closing the circuit was when we made potato batteries in science class. I just can't figure out if we're one of the nails or one of the wires or if we're the potatoes, but I think we're the potatoes, and that probably doesn't make a lot of room for only being able to do one thing? I don't know. I guess we'll find out sooner or later, huh. One more question for my very long list." At this point, he was becoming concerned that he could do nothing but ask questions for the rest of his apparently destined-to-be-long life and still not ever quite finish off the list..."Heh, heh," he couldn't help but giggle at the comment about wand descriptions sounding more like internet quizzes than science. "That is cool, though." He took out his own magic wand to show off in turn. It did, he had to admit, seem to fit his hand very well for something that had been bought off a shelf which it had sat on for so long that there had been dust on the box... "Mine's pine, with unicorn hair in it." He frowned slightly, and not just because unicorns were a little less epic than dragons. "Which...seems kind of like it's missing the point of using a unicorn instead of just a regular horse, but whatever, I don't know. Maybe all of it's magic and that's why it's not a wrong horse instead. The guy said the wood part means I'm probably going to live a really long time, which is something it makes total sense to guess is going to happen because I own a piece of wood from a tree that rots really easily and gets chipped if you look at it too hard," he joked. "Plus it's supposed to 'enjoy' learning to do new things, which...I'm still trying to get used to the idea that a shiny stick has feelings, but I guess that's better than a wand that hates school, huh?"
He raised his eyebrows in turn, impressed, when Phil said he could either summon or materialize useful items sometimes. "Wow, that's neat. I...sometimes I thought it seemed like something I wanted ought to just jump off the shelf to me, but it never did, so that might not have had anything to do with all this." He shrugged. "I guess you were kinda right about being a mutant, though, when you think about it, since your family's like mine? My family's, like, completely normal - as far as not doing magic goes, anyway," he amended. Probably not best to say they were exactly normal in a so-broad-as-to-not-mean-anything sense. "My parents definitely don't believe in the supernatural - or, well, they didn't, anyway." He couldn't help but sound a little bit satisfied about that. "It's going to be so weird when I go home and they have to believe me about things for once."
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Eben Sosna
Fair. It's a surprisingly flexible term, huh?
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