Mortimer Brockert
May 19, 2024 3:22 PM
Opening Feast by Mortimer Brockert
Another summer had passed, much like all the others. Although this year, there had been something that happened that while not affecting Mortimer personally, he still very much knew it was wrong and hated it. And this time, it wasn’t Eustace either though there was plenty of that too. However, that was almost mundane now since it happened all the time. That said, Mortimer could not wait for Honora to be at school and away from her father.As for what happened this summer though, well, that was something for Icky and Imogen or more likely Cory to deal with, and all of them were more feelings people than Mortimer was. Though to be fair, even he would admit that was an extremely low bar.
Now, however-thankfully so he didn’t have to think about things that happened last summer that might involve feelings including ones he himself was trying to deny that he had, after all this didn’t involve his grandchild, just a grand-niece he actually kind of liked - the new students were entering and the returning ones had assembled at their house tables. “Welcome to Sonora for the new first years and welcome back for all older students. First years, you should have received a blank badge at the end of Orientation. You will dunk the badge in the Sorting Potion and it will turn the color representing your house which are blue for Aladren, yellow for Teppenpaw, red for Crotalus, and brown for Pecari. Afterwards, you may join your house table.” Mortimer watched as his grandson, Uriah, was Sorted.
After the first years had been settled, Mortimer continued. “Would Christopher Brockert and Phillip Carson please come up and get your Head Student badges." He continued. "In addition, I'd like to call up Nausicaa Scapetello, Robyn Lundstrom, Lyla Holland and Xarryn Bavol to receive their prefect badges. Congratulations.” Mortimer could not have been happier and more proud that Christopher had won, despite the fact that the boy looked slightly confused about it. It made Mortimer want to shake Eustace all over again. (Not that he’d previously shaken him, though if some nanny or someone had at some point, it would explain an awful lot. However, Mortimer had certainly felt the desire at many points.) Admittedly, he had really hoped Liesl would win too, since truthfully, he’d always sort of had a soft spot for her-granted, Mortimer’s soft spots were less soft than the average person but still he’d always been sort of amused by her love of horror-and he felt bad for the events of the previous summer, despite it not being his fault at all but he guessed Mr. Carson was fairly inoffensive.
Although he hoped two boys winning wasn’t a bad sign that misogyny was a factor. This had been a humongous worry when they’d gone to gender neutral Head Student elections, something that not even a remotely significant portion of the student population had wanted. Of course, Mortimer was admittedly pretty biased against the student who formed that petition, given that she’d been his granddaughter’s mortal enemy. As it was though, his grandson was chosen and the other person was not terrible so he had to just hope that two boys winning was just a this year thing or that Mr. Carson was just that good an option. He knew Christopher was.
As for prefects, well Mortimer had a bit more to complain about there. Olaf was perfect for the position. Nothing against Miss Scapetello, he had no qualms about her in general and she even had on paper qualifications that Olaf didn't, like running the debate club. In fact, there was even something about her that reminded him of Topaz, though he couldn't figure out what. It was just that Olaf was ideal. More ideal even than his other grandchildren. However, since there was a social aspect to the job that he was pretty sure the Aladren would hate, at least Olaf was unlikely to be broken up about not getting it. And there were no other options in Teppenpaw or Pecari. He probably would not have voted for Mr. Bavol if there had been since the boy was practically illiterate, though Mortimer supposed there wasn’t a lot of reading or writing involved in the job. He’d also acknowledge that it was the fault of the parents and not the student, that Mr. Bavol’s pre-Sonora education had been neglected. However,he felt nothing but pity for whichever CATS examiner ended up grading the Pecari’s written exam.
And Miss Lundstrom stuck out very little on her own, Mortimer mostly knew her by what her relatives were like and their actions, the drama with her brother and the fact that her mom fell into the category of being a pain in the backside. Interestingly, she also seemed to be friends with Samara Crosby, whose mother also fell into the same category.
Which brought him to Crotalus. Now, Miss Holland was perfectly fine for the job in general.From what he gathered, Olaf seemed to hate her less than the rest of the human race in general and that spoke well of her. Had Tawny Crosby not been every bit as bad as Mrs. Lundstrom in a different way, Mortimer probably would have voted for her.Except Tawny was that bad and if Mortimer had to deal with her, someone was going to pay for it.
Once the prefects and Head Students were back in their seats, Mortimer continued. “Our midsummer event will be the Concert. Details to be announced at a later date.” After all, the Concert didn’t always mean what Jason thought it did, where it was exclusively music. Obviously there were some acts in the last one that most definitely didn’t not qualify as such and he didn’t mean Isla’s puppet show either.
And speaking of potentially being very much not musical “Now for the singing of the school song..” Lyric sheets were passed around and the song began.
Every day we strive
Learning to survive
Life’s hardships and to solve its mystery.
Learning to defend
Our honour and our friends,
Flying high to meet our destiny
We will stand and face those who want to harm us.
We won’t let the world transfigure, jinx or charm us
I won’t fight alone, as long as you are with me.
Sonora be my home, my tutor and my spirit
Vasita quoque floeat; Even the desert blooms.
That done, he dug into his steak and bourbon.
Subthreads:Aladren
Me? Me! by Phil Carson with Lazarus Jareau-Fletcher
Not surprised by Nausicaa Scapetello
So I'm a mage, huh? by Yale Adams with Violet Calhoun
We might just have a shot. Maybe. by Nicholas Pierce
Teppenpaw
I'm a second year! by Dora Xavier
I guess we've become advanced now, huh? [tag 6th year Tepps] by Cole Pierce with Lenny Pierce, Leviosa Scurlock
Hi (tag Ursula) by Leo Lyons with Ursula Arcadius
Crotalus
Congratulations! (tag Christopher) by Verdillia Scurlock
This will do by Grim Noir with Lyla Holland
Second verse, same as the first(?) by Petey Thompson with Cecily Welles
We have reached the beginning of the middle (tag Ida) by Alexander Pierce with Ida Stanford
One Feast (almost) down, one Feast to go. by Claire Osbrook
Pecari
Fifth year means prefect ... and CATS ... oh no! by Xarryn Bavol with Zeus Brooding-Hawthorne-Smith, Fortune Ardovini
Is it because I quit ballet? by Araminta Fairthorne with Lysandra (Lyra) Dreseller
Second time's the charm. by Ramona Thompson with Donovan Peters
Staff
11
Mortimer Brockert
Opening Feast
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Petey Thompson
May 26, 2024 9:34 PM
Second verse, same as the first(?) by Petey Thompson
There was something a little relieving about coming back for second year, Petey thought. Now he had the lay of the land and felt more at home in Sonora’s many halls. He hated that feeling of being the new kid, unsure and nervous. And usually, if they started at a new school, he was a grade above his sister so he could get things figured out for her before she got there, but because of the Sonora cutoff date, they were in the same grade here and had to figure it out together.But now they were second years: not “upperclassmen” by any sense of the word, but at least senior enough for their Beginners level classes to get the harder assignments, or able to feel experienced enough to be of help to their peers. That was always something Petey enjoyed. If he couldn’t help his sister necessarily - although he did still often help her with her homework - then he could at least now help some other younger kids maybe. If they would let him.
It was hard to leave Grandma alone, though. Last year had been hard too, but the time away made it even harder to leave the next time. There were long gaps between when the kids were home, and Petey could see now the way his grandmother continued to age while they were gone. The kids were aging too, which he realized when none of the pants he had left at home fit anymore. He felt bad asking Grandma to buy him new pants, but his old ones fit Ramona okay now, so it lessened the financial blow at least a bit not having to buy new clothes for both kids.
He tried to push all of those thoughts from his mind now, though. Grandma told him that when he was at school, his job was just to worry about school. Of course, he also still had to worry about Ramona, but that was implied. Grandma meant at least that he should try not to worry too much about her. Petey did his best to do so, although the speech Headmaster Brockert gave wasn’t especially stirring. With a few feasts under his belt now, he was beginning to suspect that was just how the man was: terse.
The food appeared immediately thereafter, and Petey began to help himself. “Excuse me,” he said to a neighbor while in the process of loading his plate. “Can you pass me that when you’re done with it?”
12
Petey Thompson
Second verse, same as the first(?)
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0
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Cecily Welles
May 29, 2024 2:55 PM
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of having two verses? by Cecily Welles
Summer had flown by in the now-usual fashion, days rushing past so that now, sitting back at the Crotalus table for the first Feast of the year, Cecily thought of it as a series of moments strung together by blurs, like beads on a station necklace separated by lengths of chain. For the most part, the blurs were made up of time with her siblings or at Mass (she didn’t have to go to Mass as much as some in the family did – Mom said that she and her brothers had gone every day in the summer when they were kids, and that Grandmother and John still usually did – but she thought she still spent more than her fair share of time in church over the summers: she did usually get dragged along at least twice a week, whereas her dad didn’t even show up for all the holy days of obligation) and the beads were parties, but she had also been extremely excited when her father had, unexpectedly, allowed her to come to work with him one day. Admittedly, he’d pawned her off on her uncle Joe by lunchtime, but she was fond of Uncle Joe, after all, and it was still the most interest Dad had shown in her in years. In her or her brothers, really - George had been almost pea green, or at least so she imagined, when he’d heard about it – but especially her, now that she spent so much time away from home. The only times she even heard from their father during the school year were in rare postscripts added onto one of Mom’s letters, whereas George and Kenneth did occasionally happen to be awake when he was in the house.He had made the effort to show up at breakfast today, too, even though it had been a full family breakfast with her grandparents and all of her uncles and she couldn’t remember the last time he’d come to one of those. She had been thrilled to get to see him again before she was packed back off to school, but she was also a little worried; she hoped that this didn’t mean things were going poorly somehow with his work. Him showing up for a few photo shoots at home was one thing, but actually joining in family activities...that wasn’t the kind of thing which would make him Minister for Magic, and that was the goal, of course – what else was there?
For now, though, there wasn’t much Cecily could do about...much of anything, really, but especially not her father’s career. She wished she could make one last occasion of the Opening Feast before she settled into the blur of days full of studying, but Headmaster Brockert had no idea how to make a speech and it was therefore just a fancy dinner, only not really because Cecily did not get to wear an especially pretty dress. At least, she thought, the food was good.
“Sure,” she agreed when her neighbor, a second year, asked if she could pass a dish along. “Here you go. Did you have a good summer?”
16
Cecily Welles
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of having two verses?
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0
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Petey Thompson
May 29, 2024 9:01 PM
Redundancy can have its value. by Petey Thompson
She handed him the dish as requested and then asked him about his summer. “She” being the girl at his table - Cecily something, from the class just above Petey’s - and not Ramona, who was the most common “she” involved in Petey’s life, especially when the pronoun was given without an antecedent. This particular “she” was quite pretty, which was also unlike Mona, who, by nature of being his sister, was intrinsically a butterface (a term which had some additional connotations beyond just an ugly face of which Petey was clearly unaware.)Petey hadn’t really noticed girls before, but he supposed he was of that age now, as he was days shy of thirteen years old. He probably would’ve started noticing them over the summer had there been any to notice, but he didn’t really get out much. Anytime he had spent outside the house over the summer was catching up with some neighborhood guys over basketball, and most of them were tragically lacking in hot sisters, with the exception of one whose sister was significantly older than them - probably nineteen or so by now - and so Petey hardly regarded her as the same species as himself.
So the fact that there was an actual girl his age who happened to be quite pretty talking to him now… well, this was uncharted territory. Petey swallowed. “Thanks,” he garbled. “Summer was good, thanks,” he answered after a slightly perceptible pause. “Not especially eventful. How about you?” He could only imagine the guys at home seeing him fumble and mocking him later. The second year made a mental note to begin recording all details from here on out. He liked his roommate Wesley well enough, and being Crotali, mockery seemed less likely, so he thought he could safely review this whole incident (which was sure to end in failure) later with him so they could come up with a structured plan of action to later redeem himself.
12
Petey Thompson
Redundancy can have its value.
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0
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Cecily Welles
June 02, 2024 12:50 PM
But it can also be taken too far. by Cecily Welles
Cecily was not exactly surprised to hear that her neighbor’s summer had been uneventful. She supposed most people’s entire lives were uneventful, as a rule, and she thought her House especially attracted people with uneventful lives. Which did make her worry a little about being in it sometimes, because she wasn’t supposed to have an uneventful life. Even if she’d had some other father, one who wasn’t going to be Minister someday, she would have, after all, still been an Umland on her mother’s side, and her mother’s family had style if it had nothing else. The most normal people in the whole family were Uncle Stephen and Aunt Aimee and Uncle Joe, and they were all still at least interesting.“It was very nice,” she said. “And mostly just like my first summer off from school, though this year, Mom let me help her plan a few of the dinner parties we had, and I got to go to more of them than before.” This was said with a hint of satisfaction; in her eyes, this was proof that she was finally being taken at least a tiny bit seriously as a person and not viewed so strictly as a baby, since George and Kenneth and her cousins were all still denied such privileges, as a rule. Of course, George and Kenneth were boys, so they would only have so much to do with planning parties even when they were bigger, but it was the principle of the thing, which hinged on not having to go to bed at eight o’clock anymore.
“And I read a lot, of course. I finished fifteen books this summer.” A little pride crept into her voice there. That wasn’t nearly as many books as Grandmother and John and Uncle Paul had finished in the same amount of time – Grandmother read about that many books a month, and her two uncles who read weren’t all that far behind – but it was still more than she had ever finished in such a short time before, and everyone had been pleased with her about it. “I didn’t exactly understand all the theory books one of my uncles gave me for my last birthday - “ she had managed, she suspected, to read so many books because her eyes had sailed over long sections of the books John had given her without taking in more than half the meaning, if that - “but I read them all. That was like six books. But other than that, it was all the usual things. I couldn’t remember why I’d missed my brothers so much after I got home, but I guess I will again this year. Your sister is in ou – was in our class last year, too, wasn’t she?” Cecily was an intermediate now, no longer in the class with the people she still thought of as ‘the first years’ even though they were now second years. “What’s it like, having one of your siblings at school?”
16
Cecily Welles
But it can also be taken too far.
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Petey Thompson
June 03, 2024 9:07 PM
Anything can, probably. by Petey Thompson
If it wasn’t already immediately apparent from the way Cecily spoke, dressed, carried herself, and just about everything else about her, it became very clear as she went on about her summer that she and Petey came from vastly different backgrounds. The fact that she talked about dinner parties with adults as a positive thing was a huge indicator, and only furthered the impression he got about the rich kids here. Somehow, they got brainwashed into having fun being little adults.In a way, Petey kind of resented that, actually. There were a lot of factors that made Petey seem like a small adult, especially if you asked his dreamy-eyed little sister. But none of them were fun. These rich kids had the luxury of stability, so they didn’t have to bear the responsibilities of growing up too early. They just got to have dinner parties and balls, dumb stuff like that, all the while somehow convinced that they actually enjoy it because it wasn’t actually difficult, just “mature”. He didn’t blame any of them for his circumstances, but for just a moment, it did make his beautiful Housemate look a little less pretty to him.
Cecily asked about Ramona, and instinctively, he glanced over at the Pecari table. His little sister was chatting away with some older guy. Yup, hate that, he thought to himself before resigning himself to dealing with that later and returning to his current focus of conversation. “I guess we haven’t really been apart, so it just seems normal to me,” Petey shrugged. “Although at our old school, we were in different grades because of when our birthdays fall, so that part has been kind of weird here. I guess not as weird as it could be, since we have grouped ‘Beginners’ classes and not just our own grade. Uh, I mean year,” he added, still adjusting to the more commonly used term. “But it’s still weird having all the same assignments and teachers and stuff at the same time. Usually at home, Mona would have a teacher the year after I did, and they’d be like, ‘oh, you’re Petey’s sister?’ but now they just… meet us at the same time.”
“Do you have siblings at home?” he asked, realizing he’d been rambling for entirely too long. Okay, so she was still really pretty. “Will they be joining you here anytime soon?”
12
Petey Thompson
Anything can, probably.
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Cecily Welles
June 06, 2024 5:03 PM
Anything, or only almost anything? by Cecily Welles
Cecily listened with interest as Petey talked about his sister, and this interest was born primarily out of a seeming discrepancy. She knew that Muggle school didn’t work quite like magic school, but she knew from scattered tidbits that Muggle school was similar to magic school at least in how they grouped people together by age. She might have forgotten that, or at least doubted her own memory, but then Petey confirmed it himself by pure accident when he mentioned how Ramona had been in the class behind him at their old school and was only with him now because beginners were combined.“I’ve got two little brothers,” she confirmed when she was asked about siblings of her own. “George and Kenneth. George isn’t too far away now. He’s four years younger than me. We’ve always had the same teachers, I guess, but not...real teachers?” She frowned, a small line forming between her blue-grey eyes. “My grandmother, my mom’s mom, she taught us how to read and write and everything. One of my uncles gives me stacks of books about whatever he thinks I should know for Christmas and my birthday and then grills me on them, like, out of nowhere whenever he thinks I ought to have finished them.” Her slightly prissy diction slipped into something a little more natural as she mentioned that – one of the several reasons why Mom despaired of the day she’d decided it would be convenient to allow John and Aunt Sammy to spend extended periods of time around Cecily. Dad only shook his head and said he was just glad Cecily wasn’t bright enough to follow along when John sometimes went into hour-long monologues about politics. “Nothing was ever...organized before I got here, at least after I learned to read. Once you do that, I mean…” Cecily shrugged. “Everybody in my family has books, and I was always with somebody, wasn’t I? I just sort of picked everything else up as I went along. I liked it better than doing homework.”
She made a little face at the admission, but perked up again quickly. “But at least we can use magic again now that we’re back here. Mom and Uncle Joe say that they’re trying to raise us to be law-abiding citizens and so we have to follow the rules at home even though we almost never see anyone except my aunts and uncles and Marylaud, and they’re all wizards. Mom says it’s the principle of the thing that matters, though, and that anyway, her family’s all wizards, too, but they lived in a Muggle neighborhood when she was growing up, so it would take too much paper to write a law that let some kids do magic at home and some not. And Dad agrees, and says there would be too many loopholes. He writes laws sometimes, so I guess he should know, but it is annoying. To me, anyway. Are you glad to be back?”
16
Cecily Welles
Anything, or only almost anything?
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5
