Grayson Wright

December 02, 2022 6:43 PM
The wizard who stood under the 1st Years Here banner off to the side of the wagon landing site could, to some eyes, have seemed assembled from an incompatible set of stereotypes. His unremarkable face, greying dark hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and none-too-boldly-colored tie could have belonged to any non-magical man in his mid-forties. Then, though, what could at first have been mistaken for a businessman's dark blue jacket just kept going, extending into a long, wide-sleeved wizard's robe, and he wore a matching pointed, round-brimmed wizard's hat, overshadowing the mundanity of his hair and glasses a bit.

"First year students...All first year students to me, please...."

Finally, all the older students seemed to have gotten off the wagons and dispersed, leaving only the new students. A quick head count came up to the expected number, and Grayson Wright smiled around at them all.

"Welcome to Sonora," he said pleasantly. "My name is Professor Wright. I look forward to getting to know you all this year. For now, though - leave all your luggage with the wagons – I assure you, they’ll be taken care of, and I’ve never heard of a case of anyone losing anything in all the years I’ve been here - and follow me, please."

He only led them a short distance into the Labyrinth Gardens, walking down a wide path which opened onto a hedge-walled courtyard with a central fountain, several stone benches, and three tables in it. On one of these tables, there were as many dark green folders as there were students present. On another, there was a buffet of light snack foods, with lightweight plates and paper napkins available so students could gather several refreshments in one trip if they wished. On the third table, 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 fronts 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 plenty of clear cups.

"Come in, everyone, and please take one folder each," he instructed them. "You'll get to the refreshments soon, but if you could give me your attention for a few minutes first..." Once they seemed relatively attentive, he cleared his throat and began delivering the speech he delivered, with minor variations, every September 1.

"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, so you'll see a lot of me for at least the next five years, though you may choose your own classes in your sixth and seventh years. For now, though, you have schedules in your folders which tell you when and where each class meets.”

He blinked affably at them all and tried to sound as matter-of-fact about what he’d come to think of as the important part of this speech as he could. “We know that you all may have had very different educations before today. You'll also each learn magic at your own pace, and you’ll find that some subjects are likely to suit your powers better than others, which will show up in how easy you find learning spells in those areas. If you find yourselves struggling in any of your classes, we - your teachers - will all understand, and so will many of your fellow students, so don’t be embarrassed if you need to ask for help. You'll each be Sorted into a House tonight, with a Head of House from the staff and several older student leaders we call 'prefects' who you can go to for support, along with all teachers having regular office hours and the option for scheduling special sessions if that's what's needed. Don't get discouraged, or let things get out of hand. It's best to address the problem as soon as you see there is one, so we can find a way around it sooner and easier.

"On more cheerful notes, we also can provide enrichment for any subject where you find you learn unusually quickly, and you'll have the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities here during your free time. Club leaders will post sign-up sheets in the next few weeks, and the school Quidditch sign-up sheet should appear in the Cascade Hall. You'll also most likely find people in your Houses who you can create activities you're interested in with, if we don't already have something - you're Sorted into different Houses based on personality traits, though you're welcome and encouraged to make friends from other Houses as well. The Sorting Ceremony will take place later, in the Cascade Hall, where you'll dip the blank badges attached to your folders into a potion. If it turns blue, you're in Aladren, and will get to see even more of me, since I'm Head of that House. If it turns red, that means you're in Crotalus with Professor Skies, our excellent deputy headmistress. Yellow badges go to Teppenpaw, and your Head of House is Professor Xavier, our very capable Herbology teacher, and brown ones will go to Pecari and Professor Carter-Xavier, who is the person who keeps classes running whenever one of the rest of us has to be away for some reason. Some people think of their Houses as a sort of extended family here, and I hope you'll all do your different Houses proud during your time here."

He resisted the temptation to add especially if you're Aladrens; he was not only Head of House, but had also been an Aladren student during his years in school, long, long before any of these kids had been born. Instead, he said, "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: 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!

Handy link to the class schedule, if your characters wish to discuss that: Schedule. The Class Overview page also has helpful information and can be found in the School Locations drop-down menu.

[Credit to Nathan Xavier's author for the content of this OOC notice]
Subthreads:
16 Grayson Wright Orientation for First Years 113 1 5

Nicholas Pierce

December 06, 2022 6:09 PM
Nicholas had been places other than his own house before, of course. Admittedly, most of those expeditions had been to his grandparents' house or to another site on Mt. Pierce, with only a few, very rare trips off the mountain, but he had done it. Going to school was different from anything he'd ever done before in a lot of ways, but if he ignored ninety-nine percent of the details, he could think of this as something he'd done before, at least on a smaller scale. It was true that going from doing something on a small scale to doing it on a large one wasn't always easy, but it was far easier than just...doing something new from the bottom, with no precedents to guide him, and so it was obviously the better way to think of this. When he thought of coming to school as merely an expansion on something he already knew how to do, he created a situation where he had no reason to be nervous.

All of that was perfectly reasoned. This made it a disappointment to find that he was, in fact, really, really nervous.

In a small way, it made him feel a tiny bit better that Alexander was obviously (to him, at least - but they were twins) nervous, too. Under other circumstances, he might have found his brother's attempts to play 'big' brother annoying, as he often did, but he had to admit, it was sort of reassuring to have someone else say that everything was fine right now, on the threshold of one of the most important events of their lives. Nicholas was still confident that those six minutes Alexander liked to hold over his head didn't really matter - if all babies acted like little Isabelle had in the admittedly none-too-extensive amount of time Nicholas had spent around her, then Alexander had spent the minutes in question either screaming or asleep or some combination of the two, and how, exactly, were six extra minutes of sleep or screaming supposed to give someone a meaningful head start to life? Maybe six minutes could make a lot of difference when it came to doing a timed exercise, but six minutes of sleep really didn't - but Alexander did have good ideas sometimes. If he said it was fine and Nicholas could understand why it was supposed to be fine, it was probably fine.

"Of course it will," he said, putting as much confidence as he could into the words and into the accompanying smile. "It's all fine." And if it wasn't, well - it wasn't as if Mother and Father were dead or anything. They were still at home in New Hampshire. If something bad happened (which was possible - things happened in magical schools. Their parents had been Head Boy and Head Girl when a really bad one had happened at Sonora, as they'd both heard many times) then of course Mother and Father would come rescue them - and that was assuming that Mother didn't just get so bored without them that Father sent for them after a few weeks whether they wanted to leave or not. There were only so many flowers that could be grown, or charitable events organized, and at some point, one probably even ran out of ledgers. But really, that was all so much idle speculation, because it was all going to be fine. They were going to be very successful here, and nothing bad was going to happen, and that was all...fine.

Nevertheless, he allowed Alexander to drag him around without any qualms once they were on the ground, glad he at least got to keep his favorite person around in this strange new place with so many more people than he thought he'd ever seen at one time before. And none of them except Alexander were family - not really. There were other people called Pierce here, but not their Pierces. They and their family were the Correct kind of Pierces, unlike...those people they had just very carefully avoided getting caught looking at on the wagon from New England just now.

He made an effort not to look around at the other first years or the scenery while a professor talked, assuming this information they were being told was not in the packets they had been given but knowing he wasn't going to find out for a while if this assumption was true or not. His reading glasses were still safely wrapped up and stashed away in his trunk, which he didn't have access to right now, and while he could read without them, it was a lot harder and he wasn't supposed to do it, much less do it in public. When they were dismissed to their own devices, though, he decided he ought to at least make a show of pretending to flip through the information helpfully provided - and when he looked up, Alexander was a little further ahead, and there was a Stranger talking to him.

This, of course, was supposed to happen. Mother especially talked about how it was important that they make good friends at school - those would be the people they could count on for years to come. And it was more efficient this way - they could talk to more people and then debrief about their mutual (it never entered his head that someone could be Something to Alexander and Something Else to him) new friends or new enemies or new nothing-in-particulars, as the circumstances warranted, later. Still, though - he was pretty sure the world had looked less intimidating when they'd been confronting it as a unit instead of like this....

But that's the wrong way to think. Think instead - pretend it's like any time when Mother or Father shows us to guests. Just...remember the part where they aren't really here to tell people who I am and where I'm just pretending that they are and that they did. Okay. So, they say - "our sons, Alexander and Nicholas," and I -

"Good afternoon. How do you do?" he said at someone whose eye he happened to meet.
16 Nicholas Pierce This is fine. Everything is fine. 1565 0 5

Ida Stanford

December 07, 2022 5:58 PM
This was going to be great! Ida had been excited all week to leave for school and now she had finally arrived! Her official auror training started now! Her parents didn't quite see it that way, they seemed to think auror training started later. But, that couldn't happen until she was done here, which made this the start of her training.

Ida hopped off the wagon and fixed herself up after the ride. She brushed off and smoothed out her new school robe, then pulled out a brush and ran it through her straight, blonde hair quickly. Thankfully it hadn't gotten too disheveled. Once that was done, she took in her surroundings. This place was going to be home and training grounds for the next seven years of her life, she would need to learn all about it. Everything looked nice from this point of view, but she didn't have much time before a wizard called her and the other first years together. She responded promptly to the summons and soon found herself with her new classmates.

She made a note of Professor Wright's name, and perked up especially when he mentioned cases of missing things. Unfortunately he said there hadn't been any such cases, which was a little sad but good. The walk through the garden was neat, she hadn't been in an official hedge maze before. This would need to be mapped, just in case. As she entered the courtyard Ida saw the folders, the snack tables and restrained herself as it suddenly occurred to her that she was hungry. She'd been far too excited to eat much before she had left, now that was catching up to her.

As directed, Ida selected one of the folders and ignored the food to the best of her ability. She found Professor Wright's speech practical even if it was quite a bit of the same information she already knew about the school. She had helped Mom and Dad research the available schools after all. It had been a fun project!

Once they were all released to mingle, she did her best to casually stroll over to the table with the food. I would not do to look to eager, but at the same time her stomach would not allow her to ignore it any longer. She quickly examined the selections on the table, picked up a plate and put a selection of crackers, cheeses, fruit and a cookie upon it. Then she turned back to the group of her new classmates to begin the next part of Professor Wright's instructions, mingle. While she appeased her stomach.

Her eyes scanned about at the potential candidates and they met with a boy. Her first instinct said that this boy was a bit nervous. She gave him a friendly smile. "Very well, thank-you." Ida did her best to answer appropriately. Mom and Dad had drilled into her that proper etiquette was important, however they hadn't exactly gone overboard with details as to what was and wasn't proper etiquette past being respectful and getting 'pleases' and 'thank-yous' into the right places. Was she supposed to introduce herself first, or was he? He hadn't yet, maybe she was supposed to? Well, he had opened with a question for her, so that must be appropriate and perhaps she was supposed to turn it back to him before introductions could get underway. "How do you do?" She asked in return in what she hoped was a friendly manner. Should she add more, or would that derail things? Playing it safe sounded best, she could add more later if needed.
2 Ida Stanford Absolutely, I think perhaps better than fine. 1571 0 5

Nicholas Pierce

December 07, 2022 10:28 PM
Ha! He'd done it! A whole social interaction, managed completely by himself, without causing a problem, and without anyone looking over his shoulder! It hadn't even been difficult! What had he been so worried about, anyway? The rules were a little different than talking to an old person, but there were rules, and he knew them - Merlin knew he knew them, despite how tedious he had found learning them to be. This was going to be fine, he thought, with a bit more sincerity than the past fifteen to twenty times he'd told himself that exact same thing.

"I'm also very well," he said. "Especially since we don't have to sit down again yet - we're a long, long way from where I live. I'm a New Hampshire Pierce - Nicholas Pierce, specifically."

...And he'd said that completely backward. Okay, so, maybe he shouldn't let a minor success go to his head like that first exchange of pleasantries had. His brain had frozen up a little and he'd been suddenly uncertain (after having doubtless had it bludgeoned into his head a thousand times) if he was supposed to say something slightly less general to move the conversation forward before or after he introduced himself, so he'd tried to do both at the same time, and....

Oh, well. At least, since he was the only Nicholas Pierce, there wasn't much of a chance of any mistakes he made embarrassing one of his relatives unless it was so bad that they were embarrassed just by association, and he wasn't even sure how to make a mistake that big. Since his family had a habit of repeating names, it could have very easily been a different story there - there had once been several Derwents, and Nicholas' father had been named after another Thaddeus Pierce, and then his cousin Caitlin had been named after her grandmother. There weren't any Derwents left, and only one Thaddeus was still alive, and context usually kept anyone from getting too confused about Caitlin and Great-Aunt Caitlin for a lot of reasons, but they still had the Two Anns (his father's identical twin first cousins, Annabelle and Annette) and the Two Alicias (one of whom - the Best Alicia, obviously - was Nicholas' mother, though the other one had also married into the family instead of being born in it).

In light of all that, Nicholas wondered sometimes if people had thought it was strange when he and Alexander had gotten names which weren't too similar to each other's and which hadn't been passed around in the family before. Based on the tendency of initials to echo even when names did not (Marcus and Malcolm, Wesley and Winston, and even his great-aunts' names, Caitlin and Bettina, both sounded a little like his grandmother's name, which was Katrina), he thought he and his brother might have been a real novelty, though Alexander at least came closer to fitting a pattern: his first name started with the same syllable as their mother's, and his middle name was also their grandfather's name. 'Nicholas Diomedes,' though - nope, no one else on Mt. Pierce was named anything even close to that. He wondered sometimes if this meant he, like his similarly patternless distant ancestor Hamlet, would have to become a ghost when he died, but that was the sort of speculation that made people tell him to stop being silly, so he kept it to himself.

"Did you have a very long ride?" he asked, guessing that was a reasonably safe topic of conversation with anyone out here. The wagons were probably better than flying on a broom all that way, but he thought anyone who rode any length in one of them would be glad that they were getting to stretch their legs now.
16 Nicholas Pierce You sound confident, I admire that. 1565 0 5

Ida Stanford

December 08, 2022 3:25 PM
Ida's mild level of uncertainty at how to proceed evaporated after her conversion partner completed what she assumed was the opening formula. She did praise just a moment at his introduction. He was one of the 'New Hampshire Pierces'. They, along with the Brockerts and other Pierce clans had come up in her research as well. She would need to etiquette properly. Ida was well aware of the fact there were a lot of rules now in play, and she didn't actually know what they were. She did not like that.

"It's a pleasure to meet you…" she stalled out a moment. Could she call him Nicholas? Nick? Was that allowed? Was she supposed to call him Mr. Pierce? But that just sounded weird for someone her own age. So instead she just moved on with the conversation. Maybe he wouldn't notice.

"I'm Ida Stanford," again she wasn't at all sure of high society protocol, and half extended her hand to him in case they were supposed to shake hands or something.

The rest of his topics were easy enough to talk about. "I rode down from Aladren up in Oregon. So it wasn't too bad of a ride." It was a lot shorter of a distance than from New Hampshire. "I haven't really lived there long though; Mom, Dad, my Aunt and I have traveled around the world a lot. Now my Aunt and I have 'settled down' since I need to go to school."

Now it was her turn to pose a topic, some somewhat related. "Have you traveled much?" That sounded like a good one.
2 Ida Stanford You sound like you are bravely trying new things. 1571 0 5

Nicholas Pierce

December 08, 2022 6:04 PM
Nicholas was surprised to hear the word Aladren in this context, and then remembered - oh, yes. The Houses had been named after towns, and Aladren was the only one left. An observer in his house could have been forgiven for thinking otherwise, but the word did mean more than just 'a quick shorthand for qualities our parents approve of.'

A slew of new questions rose into Nicholas' mind after that one sentence. Why, for example, had the House been named after that town? Was it a town known for strong-willed smart people, or had the four names just been stuck on certain sets of qualities at random? If it was the first one, then how had the town come to be that way? And where had they gotten the word from, anyway? Crotalus was a Latin word, he knew - it meant 'rattle' - but the other words weren't. 'Peccary' was an animal, but that was spelled so differently that it could mean something completely different, and 'Aladren' and 'Teppenpaw'...he knew what a paw was? He could only assume it all came from some of the many, many languages of the world that he didn't know.

It was possible that Ida Stanford (who had sort of half-extended her hand, which Nicholas had sort of half-bowed at; he knew some women shook hands because he'd seen his own mother do so, but an incomplete gesture was harder to figure out an answer to) knew the answers to at least a couple of those questions, but he didn't get a chance to ask them before she said more. Ida Stanford, it seemed, had led a life more interesting than his, at least so far. It sounded as though she had really done things before.

One of the things she had mentioned, he realized at once, was something he couldn't ask about - specifically, why her aunt had 'settled down' with her instead of her parents? Nicholas thought he would usually recognize his Aunt Rachel even if he wasn't expecting to see her, but he couldn't imagine why his parents would leave him and Alexander with her even for a little while. Unless her aunt was also her nanny for some reason, then the answer surely had to be something painful to discuss - and even if her aunt was her nanny, there was a good chance it would still be something painful to discuss. His and Alexander's nanny, May, had always looked after them while his parents were busy, but he couldn't imagine them both just...leaving him and Alexander with her so long that it was like they were settled into living with her but not with their actual mother and father.

Luckily, the other thing she had mentioned was more acceptable and even involved a direct question. "Not much, but I've always wanted to," he admitted. "It's always seemed like the rest of the world must be so much more interesting than Mt. Pierce - though there's nothing wrong with Mt. Pierce, of course," he added quickly. "It's very nice there. Our lessons about the rest of the world, though...it's hard to believe sometimes it's really all out there somewhere," he concluded wistfully. "Where have you traveled? Do you have any favorite places?"


OOC: OOC: I googled around a bit; apparently, 'Pecari' is one of the Portuguese words which can refer to peccaries, so that one makes more sense than Nicholas knows. Aladrén, with an accent, is a municipality in Spain and also apparently a surname. Teppenpaw...best I could come up with there was an extremely obscure (there's one family in the country that has had it since 1920; they're still in Tennessee and one of them is a dentist) and a suggestion that I may have misspelled ''Tepehuan," a language in the Uto-Aztecan language family.
16 Nicholas Pierce Courage is necessary for the exercise of the other virtues. 1565 0 5

Ida Stanford

December 09, 2022 8:29 AM
Ida quickly dropped her half-extended hand as he sort of half-bowed at it. Apparently she hadn't got that bit right and she mentally berated herself. She was really going to have to learn these new rules better. Now she was embarrassing herself and probably Nicholas Pierce as well as she fumbled about. That would just not do. Unfortunately that was the situation she found herself in, and was going to have to deal with it until she figured it out, because running away from him was completely out of the question.

The girl couldn't help but nod along with Nicholas' sentiment that 'the world must be so much more interesting'. It really was quite interesting, but since she'd never been to his Mt. Pierce, she really couldn't compare the two. He then asked two rather tricky questions; the first one because it was a rather long list and the second because of the answer to the first one. "Hmmm..." she hummed out to make sure he knew she was thinking about her response while she popped another cheese-topped cracker into her mouth to give herself some time to think.

That didn't entirely work out as she had planned. Instead of thinking about the places she'd been, she thought about the fact that she was now eating food and Nicholas wasn't. She had met him on the way back from the snack table, had he been going that way? Had he been just as hungry as she had been and now she was preventing him from getting something to eat? That wasn't right at all.

Ida quickly swallowed the cheese and cracker, "I'm sorry, were you on your way to get something to eat when I stopped you? We can go that way if you'd like, I wouldn't mind getting something to drink anyway." She sidestepped a bit so that she wasn't between him and the snack table anymore and was ready to follow him if he went in that direction while they continued to talk.

"As for where I have traveled, I honestly can't remember them all; Lots of places around the U.S. England, Germany, Brazil, France, Canada, Japan, Australia..." her voice trailed off and she gave a little shrug. "Mom and Dad are special investigative Aurors, so they get summoned all around the world to solve weird problems. Aunt Lucy is Mom's sister and she traveled with us as a nanny and a tutor." That was the simpler of his questions, now did she have any favorite places? Her mind flitted back through the years, but found it surprisingly difficult to latch onto any given place. They hadn't stayed anywhere very long. "I'm not really sure if I have any favorite places. There was this neat little cafe in..." she faltered as she couldn't remember the name of the city, "in Switzerland that had the best hot coca ever." That part she remembered with a grin.

"What sort of places would you like to travel to? Was there anyplace in particular that you learned about that sounded really interesting?"
2 Ida Stanford You are quite wise 1571 0 5

Nicholas Pierce

December 09, 2022 7:02 PM
Less than five minutes in, and he already needed his mother. She'd have known exactly what to say to smooth over the slight awkwardness of their hybrid half-measure greeting, to make it all seem like good fun so everyone went forward comfortably and happily. Nicholas wished he knew the trick, but he suspected it was like nail polish and the endless fascinating little crystal bottles which covered half a table and which she said were an important part of making sure that she still deserved her annual compliment from Dad (something he had gathered was an in-joke going back to when they’d been his age) - that was to say, women's mysteries, not a thing he was meant to know about in detail.

“I guess we covered all the goal hoops there, didn’t we?” he joked, hoping that would do, and smiling. That was one thing he had figured out: smiling was definitely part of the formula. As long as it wasn’t what he thought of as the No Smile, anyway, but he was fairly sure that he wouldn’t have known how to do that one even if he’d had a reason to want to do it. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He was surprised by the mention of food - he had honestly sort of forgotten about that part while he’d been occupied with being nervous, though it probably didn’t help that at home, eating food involved it being brought to him or him being escorted to it, not it simply being there and him being told to access it or not, as he pleased - and wondered if it was an attempt to politely indicate he’d be more welcome in his absence than in his presence. It made sense, he thought, especially considering that he was the one who had interrupted her. That…would be a bit of a low note to end his first school conversation on, though a polite dismissal was probably better than just being told to go away or having something thrown at him. Those options would definitely be worse, and he thought that even someone who’d never even heard of society would recognize that. Now just to decide if he could spin ‘it could have been worse’ into something Alexander - and, of course, their parents - would accept….

…Except the rest of the sentence indicated that he wasn’t being dismissed. He made note of this. Interesting.

“You know, I hadn’t even thought about it, but that’s probably a good idea,” he said, falling into step with her in that direction.

Snack food at school looked pretty similar to snack food at home. There were some things he was sure he’d never seen before, but also plenty that he might have eaten any day of his life, at least since he’d been old enough to have teeth and everything. He decided to stick to those items for now, not least because he’d have plenty of time to pay attention to sampling strange foods and didn’t want to be distracted while Ida Stanford kept listing places, and along the way explained - partially, anyway - what the story was about her parents.

“Wow,” he said, impressed. “My parents are just financiers.” His mother also had something to do with some of her old family’s business, but…well, for one thing, Nicholas knew almost nothing about that, and for another, his mother’s family was…one of those things. She didn’t like to talk about it. At all. So nobody talked about anyone from that family unless it was absolutely necessary, and then they only talked about that person or those people as briefly as possible. Well, except Uncle Isaac, who was around more than anyone else on that side of the family, but that was different - Nicholas was quite sure that Uncle Isaac didn’t like any of them and that his parents weren’t the biggest fans of Uncle Isaac, either, but they had Business Interests, whatever those were. Unless Ida Stanford became Business Interests, though, which didn’t seem likely if her parents were Aurors, it was best to just ignore the existence of his mother’s original family.

He thought about his lessons when the tricky questions were turned on him. “I have to go to Greece sometime,” he said slowly. “With our names - my brother’s and mine - and that year of Aesop and everything - my parents are really interested in ancient history, so I’ve always heard the most stories about everything around the Mediterranean and the Aegean Seas. I have seen a lot of pictures from there, though, so I kind of wonder about the rest of the, um, planet sometimes. I really barely know anything about Australia except where it is on the globe and that I think most people there speak English.” English being a common language in a place was a good starting point, he had to admit; somehow, he doubted modern people were going to understand Ancient Greek or Latin even in Greece and Italy, and that learning Ancient Runes once he got to third year wouldn’t do him much good in Scandinavia, either. “What was it like?”
16 Nicholas Pierce Well, I know lots of wise-sounding quotes, anyway. 1565 0 5

Ida Stanford

December 09, 2022 9:33 PM
A sudden realization struck Ida. Mr. Nicolas Pierce may not know all of the rules of this situation either. That made her feel a little better, but didn’t excuse her ignorance. She smiled along with him, hopefully that would do the trick to move the weird awkwardness out of the way and they could just move past the whole thing. She was definitely going to have to do some reading up on protocol and such.

While Nicholas looked over the food items, Ida filled a cup with pumpkin juice. Her stomach seemed satisfied with the snacks she had found and so she didn’t add anything more to her plate. Unfortunately now both of her hands were full and she couldn’t actually eat anything off of her plate. Hopefully she would soon learn how to make her plate float gently in front of her without her needing to actually hold it. The solution for now would be to find a place to set it down, a table… or maybe if they sat on a bench? She glanced about the area a bit while Nicolas talked about his travel plans. She tried to do it discreetly, she didn’t want him to think she was being rude and not paying attention.

“Greece?” She responded to make sure he knew she had been completely listening to what he had to say. “We were there when I was pretty little. I can’t say I remember much about it. We’ve stopped in once or twice since then, but only for a day or so. It seems like a nice place.” While they talked she started moving towards one of the benches. Once there she could sit and at least have her lap to set her plate upon.

Wait, no… he had just said he had to go to Greece sometime. He had asked about Australia. Oops, maybe she wasn’t as good at paying attention as she thought. Maybe she could salvage this yet, “Australia was interesting, we were just there last year. There had been something with the crazy wildlife down there. I got to see some of Canberra, the capital and then we moved out into the wilderness a bit to the Wizarding town nearby. I did get to see some kangaroos out in the wild, Aunt Lucy took me on a safari as part of lessons.”

Something else came to her mind, “Do you know a lot about this school? We did some research on the schools around and I picked this one.” She paused for a moment, “But everything I know about it is the things that you can find from asking around and reading their literature.” She gave Nicholas a bit of a sideways glance, “Is there anything else about the school that I should know about?”
2 Ida Stanford That's almost the same thing, right? 1571 0 5

Nicholas Pierce

December 10, 2022 9:43 AM
Nicholas noticed the problem Ida Stanford had run into at about the same moment she did, but he was not quite sure how to resolve it. When would they learn to enchant objects to levitate and follow them? And once they did, how long would it take them to stop being terrible at it? It all looked effortless when adults did it, but he knew just enough about how charms worked that he suspected it would be a long time before they could manage multiple objects at once, much less Summon a teacup without its contents ending up everywhere except where they were supposed to be, or never spill a drop of ink while dictating a letter to a quill on a lap desk which was in flight.

It also seemed like the kind of learning curve that would involve giving a lot of scrambled answers even once you appeared to have the trick down, so he forgave Ida Stanford for offering one now, when her actual hands were busy along with her brain. “That sounds amazing,” he said when she mentioned going on a safari for a lesson while Aurors fought…he assumed the wildlife in question would have to be involved in Dark magic for Aurors to get involved, so did that mean the wildlife was smart enough to use magic illegally? It was probably more likely that a Dark witch or wizard had been controlling it to create chaos, though.

And then it was her turn to ask a question again. Nicholas ate a couple of grapes while thinking over all he could remember from years and years of hearing about this place. Things that weren’t in the literature….

“Hm. Well, the only people I’ve really heard about it from are my parents, so some of this might be completely out of date,” he warned her. “But I know there at least used to be a portrait outside the Cascade Hall that keeps up with the House points - he likes Crotalus best, but it’s supposed to be a good idea to be polite to him no matter who you are. Of course, parents always say be polite, don’t they? But mine, um, had to try to run the school by themselves for a few months when they were seventh years, so I guess Mom does have a point when she says you never know when it might suddenly be really helpful for the prairie elves to like you, specifically.” Of course, she also seemed to think any and everyone, from elves to Muggleborns, might rise up and try to overthrow the status quo someday the way the goblins already did about once a century or so, but this was like her habit of telling them the tales of admirable (by her views) and…less admirable people who’d had the same names as them, as examples of what they should and should not aspire to be like: old-fashioned and something that made one a tiny bit embarrassed for her, because it was just all too…dramatic, too historically significant, just too...big…for real life in the modern world. “There’s supposed to be vegetable gardens somewhere out here, too, so there’s food even if something goes wrong for a while, even though that’s not likely…oh, and if you ever meet a talking plant named Tony guarding something, you should probably just give up on getting to it, if Tony’s still around. It’s not really sentient, but it’s really good at guarding things. Or was, anyway. Or so I’m told.”

Nervousness was at least partially displaced by a tingle of excitement at the thought: soon, it wouldn’t only be ‘told.’ Soon, he would know things for himself. Soon, he would find out if they really had as much freedom as it sounded like they would - if one didn’t even really have to sneak to do things without a protective adult right there. Soon, he and Alexander would know this place as well as their own home on Mt. Pierce, and would know exactly what scenes they had heard about all their lives must have looked like. They might even have friends, just as their parents had, which had always sounded as though it was a pleasant experience.

He’d seen pictures, too. It seemed, if he looked at the average arrangements and who was where most often, there had usually been about five of them: a little core group of three Aladrens, his parents and his mother’s roommate Henny, and then his parents had each brought on an extra friend, his father’s roommate Evan and Mom’s Crotalus friend Cepheus, who anyone could have been forgiven for thinking was his mother’s brother instead of Uncle Isaac, if all the person knew was that his dark-haired, dark-eyed mother somehow had only fair-haired siblings. Nicholas thought it would have made sense as a number even if he hadn’t already known it had apparently worked in practice, though he did wonder, sometimes, why Henny hadn’t brought an extra friend, and why the other two guys’ future wives hadn’t been there…but that was beside the point. The point was, not only did it make sense as a number, and not only had it worked out pretty well (or very well if you were him or Alexander, considering their parents had decided to marry each other) - it was also obvious, just in pictures or in listening to his parents talk, that they all really liked each other.

Nicholas was sheltered, but he was not (usually) an idiot. He knew that the whole world wasn’t as happy as his family was - indeed, that most of it was not. That most of Mt. Pierce wasn’t as happy as his closest family, even. He saw how his mother’s smiles changed when they were for outsiders, and how icy the politeness between her and the Other Alicia could get, sometimes. As much as it shocked him when he thought about how they were each other’s brothers, he also thought that his grandfather and his great-uncles didn’t always get along very well - definitely he got the impression that Great-Uncle Marcus’ whole side of the family thought more highly of itself than it did of Grandfather’s family (which was stupid, since Grandfather's family was demonstrably the best), or of Great-Uncle Malcolm’s. He knew, too, that a lot of ‘friends’ in the world were just people with Business Interests - they didn’t really like each other. But his parents and their friends weren’t like that, and, well…he’d always have Alexander, of course, just as his parents had always had each other, and they’d always have their parents just as their parents would always have them. They four were all very fortunate that way, and that was before he added Grandmother and Grandfather into the equation. He just thought it would also be nice if they could also have other people they liked and who liked them. More people getting along would always be better than fewer, wouldn't it?

He smiled a little more easily than before as he added, “I grew up hearing so much about this place that I don’t know if I can remember it all at one time. That’s one of the good things about having a twin, though, we can remember for each other sometimes.” He looked for the twin in question and spotted him. “See that sort of blond boy over there? The person he’s talking to is my brother, Alexander.” It was probably clear enough which of them was his twin even without the clarification; he and Alexander weren’t identical, but they looked a lot alike. Nicholas supposed he might look slightly more like their father and Alexander a little more like their mother, but coming to that conclusion involved thinking about it more than was strictly necessary for most people. “I think Alexander went a little ahead while I was, um…pretending to read the orientation papers.” That was not a good thing to admit…. “My reading glasses are with my other things,” he explained. “And I’d rather not have a headache at the Feast. I’ll read them for real later, of course.”
16 Nicholas Pierce It's not a bad place to start, I suppose. 1565 0 5