Grail Markner
September 01, 2006 9:39 PM
*humming* by Grail Markner
She was crazy. That was the only explanation for it, she was crazy. Thankfully it was gone right now, but who knew when it would come back? When she was around people again, that's for sure. Whenever she was nervous. Whenever she felt stupid. Whenever that happened, she would feel crazy too. Crazy again, dang! Why did it happen?Why did the voices in her head come? She couldn't miss her sisters! She hated them. She loathed them. So why was she thinking about them? Whywhywhywhywhy? Was she really crazy? Did crazy people ever think that? Am I crazy? That was crazy to think. Or was it? Gah! She was so confused. Lightly she began to hum to herself. Don't worry, Grailie, you aren't crazy. You aren't.
She sat at the nearest table and pulled a book out of the bag she was carrying. It was a Muggle book, a little novel, maybe it would take her mind off things. Maybe.
Nope, didn't help. She still couldn't help but nervously chew the ends of her blonde hair. Couldn't help tugging at the black sweater or kicking her leg just to feel the long skirt swoosh. Nothing calmed her down.
"You're such a spaz, overreacting over nothing..."
No! Go away!
She sighed, dreading the feeling washing over her. Even though she didn't know what the feeling was. Fear? She needed a nap. She pushed the chair back voilently and hit something, then heard a small cry of pain. Oh no.
"Spaz."
Shut up. "Are you okay? I'm so sorry," she said, turning.\n\n
0
Grail Markner
*humming*
0
Grail Markner
1
5
Anne Wright
September 02, 2006 5:38 PM
*cursing* by Anne Wright
There were plenty of things to say for spending the holidays at school. With Bella gone, she had the entire dorm to herself, a novelty she found herself liking. It was much easier than usual to find hours where she could imagine the Quidditch Pitch and the library had been shut down for her personal use, since most of their other frequenters were gone. The only person she stood much of a chance of having to force awkward conversations at meals with was Gwen, who didn't seem to want company much more than Anne herself did this Christmas. This was the life.At the Farm - she be strung up beside John Brown before she'd call the place "home" - things would be even worse than they had been the previous year with the St. Martins, because she'd had nothing the St. Martins wanted. If she'd left this year, she would have been forced to put up with two weeks of strained smiles and reluctant making room for her in photos and probably sharing living space with Elizabeth, and that was even before the shrink entered the picture. There would, inevitably, be some kind of confrontation with Annie, maybe with Grayson, and everyone's Christmas would be wrecked. It was actually pretty darn nice of her to stay here and spare them the agony of pretending they liked having her with them.
They were all perfectly valid, legitimate points she'd gone over many times since the majority of the school's inhabitants went home to see their families. She had already broken the bathroom mirror twice, and the one in the dorm couldn't have much longer to go if things carried on as they were.
It hadn't taken long to convince herself the reason she was so angry was at least partially from frustration over, after two and a half years of magical instruction, her pathetic inability to control herself when upset. The problem could be fixed easily with the correct books, and there was really only one place she was going to find the correct books: the library. Once she'd fixed the mirror, Anne had made a show of making herself presentable and had walked out of the common room and into the shelves, heading in the first direction it occurred to her to head. She still didn't have the entire library committed to memory, and what she did know of it was mostly known from the front, not the back where the common room was.
Ten minutes later, the good news was that she'd found what she was after. The bad news was that someone else - a girl - had decided that she, too, wanted to take advantage of the Christmas slump to hang out in the library.
Anne watched her, a calculating look on her face. She couldn't be sure from what little she could see, but she thought she recognized the girl from the common room, some first year. Of people to meet, another Aladren wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, the other Aladren might see what she was reading about and might - just might - put two and two together, somehow. Little kids lost control of their powers in moments of emotion. By the time your first Christmas at school rolled around, you were supposed to have a hold on it unless provoked to an extremity. Anne liked to think she was prepared to put up with a lot, but she wasn't going to let some firstie make fun of her at all, never mind spread it around the House...
Except, was she a third year or not? She was, and she was pretty sure, based on past observations and the other girl's size, that the potential opponent was a first year. If push came to absolute shove, she could just terrify the kid into keeping her head down and her mouth shut by threatening to beat her up. Merlin knew she would have been scared witless by that when she was a firstie, anyway, and there hadn't been too much to suggest that this lot of Aladren firsties were that much different from hers. Geoff's year was, having only three people in it and all of them boys, but Geoff's being in it was enough to make that year weird, anyway.
No point in making a spectacle of herself, though, even if she was the natural superior in the situation by virtue of birth year. Trying and mostly failing to carry off the unobtrusive-without-being-furtive way of entering the area she might have had if she hadn't thought about coming over so long before she did it, Anne passed behind the younger girl's chair just as it shot back and caught her full in the hip. An involuntary sound escaping from the back of her throat, she stumbled into a shelf and almost immediately began trying to put the books she'd knocked backwards back into their proper positions. She hadn't seen Reynolds lurking about, but he or his cursed cat could easily be somewhere, and getting on their bad side wasn't a move she thought she would enjoy the repercussions of.
"Fine," she said shortly, giving the first year a brief once-over and adding some extra weight to her idea that she was talking to one of the other Aladrens. "Watch what you're doing. We're in the library, not on the playground." Her memory for faces, especially when she was actively paying attention, was good, good enough that she thought she might have a more specific recollection of where she'd seen the first year before besides just in the common room. She thought, though she hoped not if the kid was always this inattentive, that she might have seen her signing up for Quidditch that first night. Which meant she might have done a nice job of ostracizing her Keeper.
Fabulous. \n\n
16
Anne Wright
*cursing*
59
Anne Wright
0
5
Grail
September 03, 2006 3:00 PM
Uh... *apologizing* by Grail
"Watch what you're doing. We're in the library, not on the playground."Grail nodded. The girl seemed older, at least older than her. And, Grail wasn't sure, was she Aladren too? "Right," she replied softly. "Uh. Sorry, I didn't mean it." Should she get up and go now? Would she have to explain why she was in a hurry? God, she hoped not. What would she say? I'm crazy, and I need to get out of here?
"Yes, that would go over so well."
No! Stupid people, always made her crazier. Go away, Chali!
Oh great, now she was arguing with herself. Could she be any crazier? Why did being around people make her like this?
"Because you're crazy." Alice.
No I'm not! She wasn't, she couldn't be. Oh, wait, the older girl. Gah, she'd been arguing with her self, half way out of her seat. This girl must think she was crazy.
"I-uh-I'm in a hurry. S-sorry." Was it rude not to introduce herself? She fumbled to get out of her chair and stuck out her hand. That was how they did it here, right? "Uh-G-Grail Markner, Aladren. Sorry again."
"You must have said that five times, I think she gets the point."
Go away! She was out of breath and tired. And this was all from fighting with herself? Geez. "I-uh-are you okay?" she asked. Maybe the more she talked, the less they'd come.\n\n
0
Grail
Uh... *apologizing*
0
Grail
0
5
Anne
September 04, 2006 9:28 PM
*muttering* by Anne
The first year opened her mouth, and Anne immediately felt a flash of guilt, quickly overriden by a strong sense of annoyance towards herself. It didn't get any more pureblood-ish than terrorizing random first years with the bad luck to get in her way when she was in a bad mood. "'Course you didn't," she mumbled, shoving a loose lock of hair behind her ear and beginning to pull on it. "Sorry, pal." Oh, great, she'd started borrowing from Geoff's vocabulary. He and Lena were probably being fussed over by Nadia as she spoke, or listening to the Sonora stories of their uncles -No. No way, and no how. She wasn't going there. She wasn't. Taking it out on them was worse than taking it out on the firstie. The firstie was a stranger, a random person she might never speak to again if she was wrong about her being signed up for Quidditch. Geoffrey and Helena were her friends, her best friends, despite the grief she'd given them over the past three years. Sociology and psychology and that lot had never been her thing, but it didn't take a genius to know that loyal folks rarely stayed loyal when their loyalty was rewarded with lash-outs.
The girl half-stood, stammered her way through an excuse and an introduction, then stuttered a bit more to what seemed to be a conclusion. "Anne Wright," she said, mentally reviewing the seven names on the sign-up sheet she'd taken down the day before and remembering Grail Markner because she was the kid who'd tried to sign up for Keeper and Beater. The recollection caused to have to suppress a grimace; Markner had gotten the Keeper position by default, and this little conversation already had Anne doubting the younger girl's competence and resigning herself to having to watch out for a Welsh-lead conspiracy involving Markner and the Duprees to supplant her. Well, maybe not anything quite that dramatic, but... "Aladren, too."
Merlin save me from neurotics. She couldn't turn around, it seemed, without running into one, except the others were her own dear relatives. Unless this girl was a cousin, too...Anne's nerves were steadier than might have been expected, what with the fabulous genetic makeup she'd been landed with, but there was only so much a girl could take. Finding out she had yet another set of nut-job kinfolks wasn't high on her list of things to try out to see if it was too much. "I'm fine," she repeated patiently, intending to wave Grail off to whatever she was in such a hurry to do. What she said didn't quite match up with what she'd been intending to say. "Are you okay? I promise I don't bite. Not hard, anyway." \n\n
16
Anne
*muttering*
59
Anne
0
5
Grail
September 05, 2006 8:34 PM
*flustered* by Grail
"Sorry, pal."Grail winced. Huh? Pal? First the older girl was acting like... well the only way to describe it was scarey. And now she was acting like they'd known each other for a while. Or at least like one of those people who tried to make friends with everyone, and were actually fake about it too. She hoped the girl wasn't that kind of person because... well... that was the kind of person Alice was. Except she tore people apart behind their backs.
"I don't make friends with everyone!" and insulted voice at the back of her head growled. No not again. Not still. Grail stood up fully after shaking the girl's-Anne Wright's-hand. Well, at least she was in Aladren as well, Grail was right about that.
Now that Anne wasn't snapping at her, Grail regained a cooler posture. Which wasn't actually half bad. "Oh, no, I'm okay," she said with a laugh at Anne's biting remark. "I was just a bit flustered. Haven't been feeling well... and uh... jumpy. Been jumpy lately."
Crap, she wasn't making any sense. Change the subject idiot!
"So, what are you in here for." A pause. A thought. A snide remark from Libby telling her to mind her own buisiness, then. "Uh... not that... If you would rather not say... I mean." A mental slap. A remark from Chali. And that sinking feeling that not only did she think she was crazy, but this older girl just might start thinking it as well.\n\n
0
Grail
*flustered*
0
Grail
0
5
Anne
September 05, 2006 10:20 PM
*awkward* by Anne
"Ah." Crap, she thought. That sounds exactly like something Gwen might say... There were days when Gwen was almost normal, days where she played the pureblood, and days when her cookies were clearly out of the jar, on which she rambled and stared off into space and made comments scarily like that one. The younger girl had blonde hair and blue eyes. The only comforting thought Anne could drudge up was that Uncle Al was almost as dark as Anne herself and not much to look at, implying that Gwen got her looks from her mama, which would make any kinfolks of hers who shared those looks Anne's very distant in-laws. "Got a cousin like that," she said vaguely, then let the matter drop. Markner's mental health wasn't her concern, so long as the younger girl suppressed her inner torment while on her broom.Then, of course, there had to be a question about why she was there. It was part of the standard-issue, run-into-someone-random conversation. One rule about dealing with such situations Anne had learned long before she heard the name 'Sarah St. Martin' was that, when confronted by the question, it was often best to lie. "Wandering," she said, not blinking. "Got boring in the dorm, with it emptied out, so I figured I'd wander a bit. I couldn't remember what was in this section, so I thought I'd check it out. You?" The best lies were the ones kept simple, as unprovable as possible, and short. She changed the topic as fast as she could without seeming jittery.
"Don't mean to keep you," she said, starting to swing her arms awkwardly but stopping herself short, "but I just finished the list a few hours ago, and since we're already here..." Maybe this situation wasn't unsalvageable. Maybe. "I'm Aladren's Quidditch Captain," she said, deciding to keep things as simple as possible. She'd never actually spoken to anyone but Geoff about the team before, in any sense more elaborate than making sure someone knew what time practice was, and it was bloody uncomfortable-feeling. "You're our new Keeper. Congratulations." She forced a smile.
If the kid was jumpy on any kind of regular basis, or if - Merlin forbid - she didn't get over her temporary jumpiness before practices started, she might well get herself scared out of her wits by the occasionally weird dynamics of the team. Couldn't hurt anything to warn her, could it? "One of your yearmates made it, too," she informed Grail, resting a hand on the back of a chair. "Tarwater, a Beater. Don't know much about him. Layne - that's the other Beater - is a second year, and just ignore him if he acts like a colossal prat. He doesn't mean anything by it. Me and Ben are Chasers and third years. Ben's an okay sort, but he can get a little formal, sometimes. The fourth years are Welsh, another Chaser, and Zack the Seeker. They're...okay." Welsh wasn't the enemy. She wasn't. Welsh was her friend.
Maybe in another lifetime, or on the day Zack convinced the higher-ups to change the House name to Alderaan... \n\n
16
Anne
*awkward*
59
Anne
0
5
Gray
September 06, 2006 9:11 PM
*very* by Gray
Bored. Wandering. Forgetting. Well, at least she wasn't on the verge of schizophrenia, if that was what it was called. You hear voices, see those not there, lose all sense of reality? Well, she wasn't that far, but she had a felling (but hoped it wasn't true) that she was going to be like that. She bit her lip, she may be on the verge of it, but she wasn't going to tell the girl she was crazy."That's what you get for keeping your nose in those books all day," sneered Libby.
Go away! she begged the three voices in the back of her head. Please!
"I-I..." she began to answer. "Got bored too. I needed... someplace quiet to clear my head. Like I said... jumpy." It was the truth, at least partly. Not all of it, but she wasn't going to give the older girl her life story, and thanked god when she changed the subject... to Quidditch.
And thats when the first good news in... forever... hit her. She'd made Keeper. She hadn't really been keeping tabs on Quidditch, barely looked at the board, but she had been practicing everyday during midterm. She had to say, she was getting okay at staying on the broom while blocking goals. She knew she wasn't the best, but still, she was pretty good for just learning as well as not being very sporty.
She was also good at containing her excitment. As much as she hated team things (mainly because her sisters made sure everyone hated her) she was glad she was actually doing something. She nodded. "Oh, cool." She was grinning a bit, but hopefully not too much. She and some Tarwater kid made it from their year. She wondered if she knew him, then brushed it off. She probably didn't.
She made little mental notes about the other Beater, Anne and the other Chaser, Seeker, and what they were like. She felt like she heard her sisters laughing and making fun of her in the back of her head, but she learned it was easier to ignore her insanity when starting to get happier.
"Oh, okay. Don't worry, I'll be good." I hope.
"You wish." Alice.
"I've been practicing, and I'm getting better." I think.
"Why does she care?" Libby.
"Thanks," she smiled. "Uh... when are practices? Or... will you post that up?"
"She'll probably post up, idiot."
Grail didn't know who said that one. \n\n
16
Gray
*very*
113
Gray
0
5
Anne
September 08, 2006 11:21 PM
*singing off-key* by Anne
Anne blinked once, then grinned, thinking she might wind up liking this kid after all. Admittedly, they'd only had the bare seven, but prepping for the season before she even knew in an official capacity that she'd been selected was either hopelessly arrogant or encouraging, and the kid didn't strike her as the arrogant type. Anne still hoped Zack would keep up the fast-capture tricks, but she would have hoped that if she'd gotten every other position filled with a professional. Since first years were what she had to work with, this one didn't seem half-bad."'Course you'll be fine," she said stoutly. "If Zack keeps up his work from last year, the Quaffle might not ever get near you, but you'll be fine. We get firsties every year, and they always turn out first-rate. Aladren's cool like that." If it was true for other Houses or even, strictly speaking, for her own, Anne didn't know and didn't see how it was relevant. She was talking up the team, and good talking up almost always involved a certain amount of exaggeration. "Practices..." she sucked on her lower lip for a moment, thinking of how best to phrase it. "We're a little behind this year - Santoro started Teppenpaw up before the holiday - so pretty much any time I can get ahold of the Pitch for an hour or so. I'll keep y'all up to date."
What she didn't tell Grail was that there wasn't a good team for them to go up against this year. Teppenpaw would, no doubt, be out for revenge for their humiliation in the previous season's opener. Crotalus, outwardly a crew of soft rich kids with nothing better to do, was a hard nut to crack on the Pitch. Pecari...was Pecari. Their only hope against Pecari would consist of Zack either catching the Snitch in five seconds or Zack being so distracted by the hunt for the Snitch that he didn't notice how badly they were being killed and lose heart. Unfortunately, Anne suspected the enemy was going to be none other than Pecari. Given the choice, she would have taken Crotalus, but captains didn't really have a role in planning out the season schedule.
She realized she was in a marginally better mood, but it wasn't hard to work out the reason why. She loved talking about Quidditch, particularly about her team. That sense of having some control over what was happening was, while probably a little unhealthy, nice. Hell, just thinking about it was nice. Researching power-control theories could wait a few days. She'd been waiting for three years, so a week or two more wouldn't hurt. It wasn't like she was walking around smashing everything she came within a hundred yards of, after all. The smile she gave Grail crossed the line into friendly.
"Like I said, I don't mean to keep you," she said. "You rest, okay? I'll have the official list up when everyone gets back, and I'll check up to make sure you get the practice times. See you around." She paused, then added, quickly, "Merry Christmas," and began to make her way off again. She'd been wanting to look at that book on magic in the Renaissance for ages, but there hadn't been time... \n\n
16
Anne
*singing off-key*
59
Anne
0
5