Nicholas Pierce
January 28, 2023 11:24 AM
And now, to progress at speed, in mostly dialogue! (Alexander) by Nicholas Pierce
OOC: Continued from Cascade Hall thread. BIC:
"Huh? There is one?" Quidditch. That was a thing. Make Dad proud and all that, outdo cousin Winston and all.... "I didn't even look," he admitted. "I got up at four or so, couldn't escape from the common room, fell asleep again in a chair, and just got here." He yawned as he joined his brother in picking familiar, comforting things for breakfast, hoping they would be more or less Correctly prepared. "Friends - I met that guy you were talking to at Orientation yesterday, do we like him? He seemed nice. And Desmond Brockert's the other one in the room - I'm kind of afraid, from what he said last night, that Mom and Dad might exchange me for him if they could, but he seems okay so far."
He yawned again as he poured himself a glass of juice. "But yes. Today going more like we expect it will would be good," Nicholas agreed, almost amused by his own understatement there. "I almost feel like I should apologize for every time I ever suggested it might be nice to have more breaks from routine at home. I didn't mean ones big enough for you to be somewhere else for ten hours or so."
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Nicholas Pierce
And now, to progress at speed, in mostly dialogue! (Alexander)
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Alexander Pierce
January 28, 2023 2:00 PM
Advancement is good by Alexander Pierce
"Yes," Alexander confirmed, pointing over to the board in the Cascade Hall where he'd just come from. "Right over there. I was also up too early. Partly because of the time difference, partly because it's just so quiet in a room by yourself. It's a little creepy."He grimaced slightly, wondering if he maybe shouldn't have admitted that, but if he couldn't tell Nicholas, who could he tell?
"Yes," he confirmed when Nicholas asked if they like Quillan. "He plays chess. We like him." If Nicholas had seemed more dubious, he would have trusted Nicholas' opinion and cut the other boy out, but Nicholas also sounded like he liked the other boy, so Alexander was absolute in his declaration.
He nodded slightly at the description of Desmond. He hadn't met that student yet, but if he would get their parents' approval, he was probably fine. "I met Ida Stanford, who you were talking to," he shared. "She seemed nice. I think she'll be quite difficult competition for prefect though."
He half-smiled, half-grimaced as Nicholas regretted his youthful complaints against routine. "Luckily we're supposed to be unconscious for most of that time," he tried to reassure his younger brother. "We'll of course be together the rest of the time. Being in different Houses won't change anything important, right?"
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Alexander Pierce
Advancement is good
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Nicholas Pierce
January 28, 2023 5:32 PM
Toward what, we do not know by Nicholas Pierce
Nicholas felt the corners of his mouth turn down sadly at the mention of the problem that came with Alexander's living situation. "I was worried about you," he admitted. "I mean - I know nothing bad was going to happen, and you could have handled it anyway if it had," he added quickly, not wanting to seem to suggest his brother was a weakling or a coward or anything like that. "But we've never been alone, or with people who aren't us. It was..." He tried to figure out how to articulate the feeling he'd had that he'd been doing something bad by accepting the situation and failed. "I mean, the other two are okay I suppose, so far, but they're not you," he concluded, trusting Alexander to follow well enough to understand the gravity of this deficiency in the other Aladren boys.He nodded when Alexander agreed they liked Quillan. "He told me about that, too," he volunteered about chess. "And his family's a lot like ours, except he just has a sister instead of a brother, and she's younger than him. But his mom labelled all his things, too, like ours did. And he has to have reading glasses, too."
He nodded again when Alexander mentioned Ida Stanford. "She sounded sort of interesting at Orientation," he volunteered. "Did she tell you about traveling everywhere and now she's going to stay with an aunt when we're not here?"
Alexander, naturally, had the most sensible point. Supposed to be unconscious. They weren't doing such a great job at that so far, of course, but it...would probably happen. They'd get used to this...but not too used to it, right? Just not so much that Alexander would like being alone by Christmas. Just like Quillan wasn't going to be such a good chess player that Alexander would be annoyed about being stuck with Nicholas on during their school breaks instead. "Of course not," he agreed about nothing important changing. "We're still us, aren't we? Nothing changed about either of us since yesterday, really, it just...got a word put on some of it. Professor Wright definitely didn't do any strange personality-changing spells on me that I saw, anyway, so I'm going to guess Professor Skies didn't do them to you, either." He glanced at the staff table for the personages in question. "I keep thinking...'wow, we're going to have the same teacher for something that Mom and Dad did.' With Professor Skies, I mean. Did she seem okay to you?"
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Nicholas Pierce
Toward what, we do not know
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Alexander Pierce
January 28, 2023 7:14 PM
That is a little unnerving, to be honest by Alexander Pierce
Alexander nodded as Nicholas admitted his worries. He'd felt similar ones for Nicholas, and he did feel a little bit of relief that Nicholas' new roommates were 'not him.' Nicholas wasn't going to replace him, and maybe even the breathing hadn't sounded right during the night. It was a little selfish, he knew, and he didn't want Nicholas unable to sleep either, but it was reassuring to know they were both experiencing an adjustment to this situation."No," Alexander admitted, when he learned that Ida was a traveler, and living with an aunt. "That is interesting. I'll have to ask her about that some time. We talked mostly about family and our expectations for school. She doesn't have any siblings." He could barely comprehend that concept.
"Professor Skies seems fine," he answered his brother's query about his Head of House. "She has some strange notions about family though. She thinks they co-exist and co-operate without breaking out into feuds. She told us Crotalus was our new family," he made an odd face to express his complicated feelings in that regard. "Ida was keen on us being siblings, which is understandable, I suppose. I don't know how she made it this far without one. She isn't you, though," he added, to reassure Nicholas, the same way he had reassured Alexander a few moments ago, that there was no chance he could ever be replaced.
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Alexander Pierce
That is a little unnerving, to be honest
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Nicholas Pierce
January 29, 2023 8:13 PM
I'm not super-enthusiastic about that part, either. by Nicholas Pierce
Family and expectations for school. That sounded like a much more coherent conversation than Nicholas had managed, but then, that wasn’t altogether surprising. Alexander was, Nicholas thought, much better at focusing than he was.“I guess we all have lots of those,” he acknowledged. “I would hate to be the only person Mom and Dad had to expect things from, though.”
The idea of growing up alone was strange, but not utterly alien; Dad had done it, after all, at least in terms of who had been living with Grandmother and Grandfather at that time and who they had had exp********-+ectations of. When he heard what Professor Skies had to say about family, though, he started to raise an eyebrow (a gesture he had been trying to perfect lately, despite the off chance of being teased about getting his face stuck that way) at this sunny portrayal – only to stare indignantly instead when he heard that Professor Skies, aside from not understanding how things worked, had said that Crotalus was Alexander’s family now. It was reassuring to hear that Ida Stanford wasn’t him, but still…
“I suppose Ida Stanford can be our sister, if we decide we like her enough,” he conceded. “But you’ve already got a family. People can’t just say things like that.” He frowned at the head table and shook his head. “Can you imagine if she met our real parents and said she was going to be your mother now? Mom and Dad probably shouldn't hear about that unless we decide we really can't live here like this”
He glanced at his brother and added, “though…I guess we will have to tell them…something now? About the room situation, I mean.” His impulse was to just maintain silence on the subject until at least the holidays, if not for the entire next seven years, but he suspected that if they did either of those things and then their parents found out later, then they might be…annoyed. With both of them. “Do we wait until they ask or should we write a letter together later, or what do you think?”
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Nicholas Pierce
I'm not super-enthusiastic about that part, either.
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