Jose Hernandez
December 02, 2010 3:31 PM
Practicing by Jose Hernandez
Having signed up for a solo act doing tightrope, an activity he was only in the beginning stages of learning, Jose decided he needed to practice. He'd written home for Dad to owl him back a proper rope, but in the meantime, he had a broom.It was an older model - ancient, really, the one Aunt Beth owned when she went to Salem nearly forty years ago. Normally, Jose just used a school broom and pretended he didn't even have this one, but this one had the advantage (or disadvantage under most normal circumstances) of not having any kind of cushioning charm on it.
This meant he could stand directly on the narrow length of wood and only on the narrow length of wood. It was still wider than the rope would be, but it was as good a thing to practice on as anything.
So, he kicked off like he would in any Quidditch game and brought the broom to a hover about seven feet over the ground (low enough that he wasn't in danger of serious injury when - when, not if - he fell, but high enough that he could hang off it without touching the ground under him) and carefully pulled himself up onto his feet. However, from seven feet plus the five feet between his head and his feet, it looked a long ways down, so he used his wand to make the path under him soft and squishy.
The length of the broomstick wasn't long enough to do any complicated tricks on it, but he could practice just standing, some jumping and a little walking. He was just about ready to work up the courage to try a jump, catch the broom with his hands, and hurl his body around the hovering wood like some kind of gymnast, when he realized someone would have gotten kicked in the head if he did it right then.
"Hey," he called out, waving, "Watch out below. I've got quicksand under me."
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Jose Hernandez
Practicing
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Jose Hernandez
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Valentina Bentancourt
December 15, 2010 9:29 PM
You are good! by Valentina Bentancourt
Valentina didn’t know if she would participate in the Variety contest, she had some talents, but she wasn’t sure if her father would allow such a thing. He was a rather strict man, and he hated when his daughter exposed herself like that in front of people. He didn’t care that she was one of the best ballet dancers in her class, and she could never be part of the recital, because it was unbecoming of a Pureblood girl to do so. The Spaniard had to admit that she hated that, Valentina had rejected some very good parts because of that, and it didn’t help to achieve her goal of becoming the Prima Ballerina of the Spanish Magical Ballet Company. It was not going to happen if things stayed the same.The frustration of knowing that her dreams would never become true, made the first-year shed a couple of tears, it was not fair that she couldn’t do what she loved just because she was a girl. Alex, on the other hand, could do whatever he wanted. It hadn’t mattered how much she had begged, he had said no every time.
The eleven-year old cleaned the offending tears with the sleeve of her shirt it was unbecoming of a lady to cry. Life was unfair, especially for her. Nothing was normal in her life, but she didn’t know why. The Spaniard decided to take a stroll down the Labyrinth Gardens, it was the perfect time to explore them, since she finally had the time. She entered warily into the place, one never knew what creatures lurked around. The sense of adventure began to flow through her veins, it was invigorating.
She walked aimlessly for a few minutes before seeing an older boy on a broom. Valentina silently gasped at what he was doing, he could fall down and get hurt! Though, the height was not that much, but one never knew. Walking slowly towards him, trying to not scare him, she just stood there and watched him stand on his broom. He was very good, if he could stand, Valentina was certain he would be able to do all kind of awesome tricks!
He talked to her, which got her out of her thoughts. “Oh, thanks.” She said as her blue eyes scanned the floor for the quicksand he mentioned. Her feet were close to it, so she took some steps backs. “Hi, are you practicing for the show?” the Spaniard tilted her head to the right, her blue eyes never leaving his face.
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Valentina Bentancourt
You are good!
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Valentina Bentancourt
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Jose Hernandez
December 15, 2010 11:38 PM
Not yet, but I will be. by Jose Hernandez
The girl - probably a first year, though Jose was the first to admit he couldn't recognize all the second years either since he'd gotten bumped into intermediate classes last year; but she definitely wasn't a Pecari because he did make a point of learning who all of those were - stepped back. She was still too close to risk trying the spin thing, so he just hopped down from standing to sitting, dropped back to hook his knees around the broom and did a little flippy dismount.He landed flat on his stomach, but until then it was going pretty good. Just a quarter of a rotation short. He grunted with the impact, but it was on the soft squishy ground so it didn't really hurt. He just started sinking into it. Fortunately, he got his wand out pretty quick and sorted that mess out before he embarrassed himself any further.
Wiping the dirt from his robes, he gave the girl a sheepish grin. "Obviously, more practice is still needed," he said in answer to her question. "And it's gonna be on a tightrope, not a broom."
He stuck out a hand, realized it was covered in dirt, wiped it on his robes, checked to make sure that had worked, found out it hadn't, and shrugged apologetically for being too dirty to shake her hand. "I'm Jose, by the way. Hernandez," he added, after a moment, because, even two years after José Santoro graduated, it still felt incomplete if he didn't specify which of the school's Josés he was.
(Santoro, obviously, had spelt his first name with the funny e, while Jose kept his name to straight-up English letters, but that minor difference didn't come across verbally very well [aside, of course, from the fact that Jose's accent was pure California American without so much as a hint of his father's Mexican accent - Jose had gotten his dad's looks but definitely his mom's way of talking], so it was just better to clarify, really. Even if Santoro wasn't at Sonora anymore. This was Arizona, after all; the chances of getting another José at the school in the next three years were pretty good.)
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Jose Hernandez
Not yet, but I will be.
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Jose Hernandez
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Valentina Bentancourt
December 19, 2010 5:38 PM
I can't wait to see it! by Valentina Bentancourt
Valentina silently watched the boy do something on the broom. She couldn´t help but be mesmerized by what he was doing. In her very humble opinion, he was good. He did a flip thing and suddenly he was on the ground. Her blue eyes grew wider, and she had to stifle a laugh. It was rude to laugh at his little mishap. Though, she was kind of worried about him, it hadn’t been a long fall, but he could still have injured himself. The Spaniard got up from her place to see if she could be of any assistance, which wouldn’t be much, since her magical instruction was not that extensive.“Are you alright?” the concern was evident in her tone. Valentina didn’t like to see people get hurt physically or emotionally, it was just exhausting. He seemed to be fine, that made the first-year Teppenpaw sigh in relief. If something had happened to him, she had no idea what to do to help him.
“It looks great from here!” she said returning his smile. “A tightrope?” her curiosity was growing with each passing second, she had never seen something like that before. Taking tentative steps towards the boy, she was in awe with him. After a few seconds of staring, she blushed, since it was rude to stare at people for so long. If her mother saw her right now, she would not be pleased by how her only daughter was acting.
Reacting to his introduction, Valentina curtsied before saying anything. “Valentina Bentancourt. Very nice to meet you Mr. Hernandez,” she introduced herself in her accented voice. The first-year had never been able to master the art of talking without an accent. Her mother was a professional when it came to that, but Valentina liked how her voice sounded. It made her look mysterious, in her opinion. The boy spoke flawless English, even when his name and appearance indicated Latin ancestry. Of course, it was rude to assume things on how he looked, but she was smart enough to not say a thing about it.
She decided she liked him. His act was an indication of his awesomeness, and Valentina was starving for friends, even older friends. There was nothing wrong with it, despite what her father said about a girl having male friends. He was just old and grumpy. “What else are you doing for your act? Or do you mind me asking?” she gave him a sheepish smile, because she was really curious about it.
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Valentina Bentancourt
I can't wait to see it!
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Valentina Bentancourt
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Jose Hernandez
December 22, 2010 6:26 PM
Neither can I! by Jose Hernandez
"I'm fine," he assured her immediately when she asked, offering not the slightest hesitation because it was the truth. That had been why he charmed the ground, after all. The only thing bruised was his pride, and even that didn't sting much this early in the practice season.What little ego bruising had occurred though, was quickly eased by her insistance that it looked great despite his faceplant to the ground.
He grinned and settled down to sit on the grass of the Garden path as she asked about what else the act would contain. Before he could begin talking about it though, his eye caught on the broom still hoving in the air. "Just a sec," he said, and held out a hand toward it. "Down!"
He wasn't sure if it was a standard broom command like 'up!' was, but it worked well enough. The length of wood and bristles came clattering down to the ground. Not quite as elegant as he would have liked it to go, but after his own messy dismount, it was probably the appropriate ending to its hover.
He used his toe to manipulate it back to his side, then gave Valentina his attention again. "Sorry. Didn't want that to fall on anybody if they walked under it. Anyway, I'm signed up for a part in Daniel's play, and for my individual act, I'm signed up to do 'tightrope and other balance tricks' but I'm still figuring out my routine, so I'm not quite sure what those'll be yet. I'm considering a unicycle, stilts, and some chair tricks I saw my uncle do a few times."
He grinned a little, half proud but equally embarrassed since he knew it wasn't exactly a standard background and his current act ventured toward the most esoteric of their skills, "My family's not quite circus performers, but we're the next closest thing. You ever been to a Rennaisance Faire?"
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Jose Hernandez
Neither can I!
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Jose Hernandez
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Valentina Bentancourt
December 27, 2010 5:39 PM
*cheers for Jose* by Valentina Bentancourt
Valentina looked at Jose in amazement. He was awesome, unlike her brother Alex. Her brother could hardly do anything that was that cool. The Spaniard wished she had another sibling, preferably a boy, because she liked being the only girl at home. Well, besides her mother, of course. Emiliana Bentancourt spoiled her rotten, and she absolutely loved it. Denying it would have been a big fat lie, she had the impression that Alex was kind of jealous of the bond she had with their mother. Especially, since they hardly had any relationship with their father, he was rarely home. Something she had gotten used to, but it was hard when he suddenly appeared three to four times a year, but never on Christmas. She spent that time in Madrid with her mother’s family.The first-year decided to stop thinking about her family, right now she was with Jose and his awesomeness. Balance acts sounded dangerous, and if what she had just seen was an indication, it would be amazing and dangerous. “Isn’t it risky?” she asked about the balance acts, a play was hardly something to be fearful of. No, Valentina was more interested in the probably deathly act. “I am assuming you will take precautions, just like you did now.” Her expression was serious, life was something valuable. Though, he probably would do so. It would be stupid if he hadn’t, and Jose didn’t look like a stupid kind of person.
Grinning back at him, she began to analyze the information he had given her. Uncle, tricks. Was his family a performing sort of family? Her questions were answered by him. The blue-eyed first year didn’t know what a Renaissance Faire was, and most importantly, she had never been with someone that knew. This made her wonder if Jose was from the right background. Though, she couldn’t care-less. Being a Pureblood made her unhappy, and she definitely didn’t want anyone feeling like she did.
“No, what is a Renaissance Faire? Is it fun?” at that point, she decided Jose would be her friend. He knew so much more things than she didn't. In her opinion, Jose was surrounded by mystery, and she loved it. Of course, her curiosity was playing a very important part in her interest.
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Valentina Bentancourt
*cheers for Jose*
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Valentina Bentancourt
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Jose Hernandez
January 03, 2011 3:01 PM
*bows for Valentina* by Jose Hernandez
"Oh, yeah," he agreed nodding, "I'll totally have some kind of safety net. I'm not nearly good enough to go without one yet. Maybe I'll ask an elf to be on hand to catch me if I fall. They all loved my cousin when he was Groundskeeper here, so they wouldn't let anything happen to me."When she asked what a Renfaire was, he grinned brightly, happy to be able to tell her about them. Maybe she'd come see one sometime, now that she was about to find out what they were. "They're really fun," he confirmed. "I work at one, and I still think so." Child labor laws being what they were, he didn't have as full of a schedule as the adults in the family, but he'd been earning a real paycheck for a few years already.
"It's sort of like what you would get if a historical re-enactment had a child with an amusement park, and that had a child with the offspring of a live performance hall and a circus." He gave her a few seconds to process that.
"So, basically, what you've got is this big park area filled with people pretending to be from around the time of the Renaissance - Elizabethan England, usually - and everyone's dress old-fashioned and talking with thees, thous, and for-as-muches. All the employees are, and a good number of the guests, too. There's all kinds of shows - knife throwing, juggling, music acts, maybe some tightrope depending on the faire, Shakespearean plays - the sort of things people would have gone to back then."
"It's supposed to be all muggle friendly, since that's who attends these things, but the faires all have an area set aside for fortune telling which is done as seriously as that sort of thing can be taken, and my cousin Saul is getting really good at faking fake magic - that is, he does real magic, but pretends it's all sleight of hand - so he usually plays a wizard or warlock now and has a lot of fun with that. Him and my other cousin, Simon, who's got a Vegas Show doing the same thing, are gonna be the first ones brought before the inquisitors if the witch hunts start again."
Jose didn't sound too concerned about that, though. He didn't believe that sort of thing could happen in the modern muggle world. Modern governments allowed people to run around calling themselves 'psychics' on their business cards, after all. Four of his aunts were listed in official government databases with that given as their profession. Two of them were additionally married to men who were listed in the same databases as 'professional gamblers' and nobody seemed to see that as a problem.
Seers' gifts were clearly as undervalued in the muggle world as they were in the magic world.
"I just started to learn the tightrope stuff over midterm. My uncle Dean is thinking of starting a new act next summer, and he asked me to be his junior partner since I have way better balance than most of my other cousins who don't have permanent acts yet." Not that there had been much competition. Jason and Sam were like 'No way am I getting on that death trap!' and even Karen was like 'Dad's crazy and you're even crazier, Hose!' Yoko would've done it, Jose was sure, but she was something like seven years old and, as he'd told Valentina, his balance was way better.
(He was not taking undue pride in that. Showing up Yoko was not something to feel triumphant about. She was a kid, and a sweet girl, and he liked her. Still, it did feel nice to be so much better at something than her, especially over Midterm when the family was stationed at the Hernandez home, where she could speak fluent Spanish. Her genes were Chinese everywhere his were Mexican, so he didn't think it was entirely fair that she could easily talk at length to his father's side of the family while he struggled to make himself barely understood.)
"Anyway, if you don't know what a Rennfaire is," maybe he was biased, but he thought most muggleborns would have, "have you heard of the California Pierces? That's us." Most wizarding families who kept track of politics and/or influential (if not respectable) American wizarding families west of the Mississippi would have at least heard of them.
The California Pierces were, after all, among the richest semi-magical families in the American West (and most of the money they did spend was used to advocate far left liberal politics in both magical and muggle arenas) and looked down upon for being magical-muggle half-blood mongrels living on the border of both worlds, as well as a dumping ground for squib offspring looking to marry into a mostly magical family willing to take them. Not to mention, Jose's uncle, Harvey Tellerman of the California Pierces (a squib himself), had run during every magical presidential election of the last decade as the third party candidate for both the Integration With Muggles party and the Squibs Rights party.
In short, the California Pierces were not a family well liked by more proper pureblood families, but they were definitely well known. It was a status the family was both happy and proud to hold.
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Jose Hernandez
*bows for Valentina*
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Valentina Bentancourt
January 05, 2011 7:31 PM
*throws a rose* by Valentina Bentancourt
She smiled when he confirmed about the safety precautions, it was a good thing. The Spaniard was hardly a reckless girl, and the thought of someone else taking the risks she didn’t thrilled her. Though, Jose didn’t seem like the kind of person that would disregard his safety for an act, safety was a priority, you couldn’t do anything if you were dead, or injured.Every piece of information that Jose was giving her, was being stored in her brain. Everything about Jose was foreign to her, and she was curious to know more about him and his way of life. Her life was boring in comparison to his, he lived a life full of adventures whereas she lived a dull life filled with routines and hardly anything exciting. So, it was obvious that the little girl saw him as a kind of super wizard.
His explanation of what a Renaissance Fair confused her for a minute, the child of what? She pondered it for a few minutes before actually catching the meaning of it, which she wasn’t sure she had it, until Jose continued with her explanation. Now she was sure. It sounded like a lot of fun! Valentina liked fun things, since she wasn’t used to them. Her life was made-up of routines, and it sometimes got boring. Though, her mother tried to spicy it up from time to time by taking her to the Magical Zoo, or plays, or to the Ballet, but never an exciting thing like a fair.
One time, she had run away from her mother, and stumbled upon a group of Romani people in Madrid, their camp sounded like what Jose was describing. They had magic tricks, plays, and dances, and food. It had been awesome as long as it had lasted, because her mother had been angry at her for escaping. The aftermath of her adventure had resulted in a rather severe punishment once her father knew about it. It had totally been worth it, she still remembered the colorful people she had met.
Every word that was said by Jose was having an effect on the first-year, all she wanted to do was to go and see what a Renassaince Fair was all about with her own eyes, she knew her father or mother would never approve of it. Especially since it was Muggle friendly, well maybe her mother would say yes, but they would have to do it behind his back. Her father was very anti-Muggle.
The blue-eyed girl smiled at Jose, “I really want to go! It does sound fun.” Her eyes were twinkling with excitement at the prospect of being able to see such amazing things. She made a mental note to owl her mother and ask her about going during the summer, they could even invite Alex’s betrothed.
At the question of whether Valentina knew about the ´California Pierces´, she shook her head as an answer. She had been born and raised in Madrid, and she didn’t know about American Pureblood families, she hardly knew about the Spanish ones, her family wasn’t important. So, there was no need for her to know such things. “Sorry, I don’t know your family,” she grinned sheepishly at him. it would be a miracle if he knew about hers, almost nobody remembered the Bentancourts, they had been important, but that had been ages ago.
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Valentina Bentancourt
*throws a rose*
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Valentina Bentancourt
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