Looking for Marissa on Library

Quentin Melcher

March 22, 2010 4:40 PM

Looking for Marissa by Quentin Melcher

Ever since the conversation with his roommates, Quentin had been thinking more about asking Marissa to the ball. It had not honestly occurred to him before that to ask her or anyone else. Quentin thought about a lot of things, but somehow, that had not been one of them. However, since he had first thought of it at that moment he mentioned it to the rest of the third year Aladren boys, Quentin had been thinking about it more. Not that he was thinking about asking Marissa to the ball every waking moment but more than he previously had which had been not at all.

The more he thought about it, the more Quentin realized it would possibly be a good idea. Girls, it seemed, liked to be asked to balls. His experience with them was rather limited, as prior to Sonora all the females he knew were older like his mom and grandma or children like Kirstenna. (Well, now Kirstenna was eleven and not so young but during Quentin's somewhat limited experience with his first cousin she had been a child.) However, he could see that Pippa was happy to be asked by Juri and that even Tawny seemed less hostile since someone had asked her.

He spotted the girl in question and approached. "Hi Marissa," Quentin started, beginning to feel a little odd. (Well, everyone seemed to think he was odd, but he was feeling a way he was not used to, a rather un-Quentinlike feeling. Maybe that meant he felt normal as he was usually odd.) "Will you please go to the ball with me?" His face felt a little hot and his stomach felt a little queasy, but maybe he was simply nervous about doing something that was new to him. Quentin had never asked a girl to do anything beyond be his partner in class before.

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Marissa Stephenson

March 25, 2010 9:00 PM

Being found by Quentin. by Marissa Stephenson

Marissa had thought about the ball, but it had, as almost everything did, taken second place to preserving her good standing in the school. Exams were just before the dance, and she was as sure she would fail Charms without a great deal of extra study as she was of her own name. It was already to the point where she felt vaguely sick any time she wasn't studying, which meant it couldn't be too long before that feeling was combined with an inability to focus each time she tried to work. The best she could hope to do was hold that off longer than she had last year. She still winced, just a little, thinking about the teapot.

So she worked. She had felt comfortable in libraries for as long as she could remember, and while she did sometimes get a little worried about potential magic in the books in this one, she still found it relaxing once she'd picked her seat out and gotten comfortable in it. It helped that she was in close proximity to the history section, which she could not help but think of as the safest subject the wizarding world knew. History involved a lot of people attacking each other for stupid reasons, but not a lot of history books deciding to attack Marissa Stephenson.

Since taking the occasional break was inevitable, though, if she wanted to keep her sanity relatively intact, she was also looking into which subjects she wanted to start independent study on in the next year. History was a given, but she needed a few more writing-based classes to balance out the number of magic-based ones she was almost certainly going to be forced out of after fifth year.

Adding those courses while she was still taking her basics meant the next two years were going to be exceedingly painful, but she tried not to think about that. No one had ever done well in her world by worrying about their health.

She was taking some books on Arithmancy back to their proper shelf when she heard her name and, a moment later, connected it with Quentin. “Hi, Quentin,” she said, putting the first one back. Memorizing shelves was one of the tricks she’d learned back in the Muggle world, and while not one of the most useful, it did make for a minor talking point. She almost said “what’s up?” but her brain caught up with her before she could. Quentin could be a little literal.

His question caught her off-guard. Somehow, of all the people she might have thought of asking her to the ball, Quentin would…Well, he wouldn’t have been the last, that was Jethro, but he would have come in low on the list. She just found it hard to think of Quentin even being interested in things like that even before she remembered that he was a pureblood, which just made the idea that much weirder.

Of course, part of the reason she didn’t think of Quentin going to dances was because his social skills were...irregular. She couldn’t imagine he’d ask a second year if he had any better options. It wasn’t really a date – just doing a favor for a sorta-friend. Besides, it wasn't like anyone else had expressed any interest. So she smiled.

“I’d be honored to,” she said. The phrase felt clunky and a little awkward in her mouth, but that was the way witches and wizards seemed to talk a lot. She was the one who had come into their world, which meant it was only polite for her to at least attempt to fit in with their culture. “Have you already picked someone to dress up as?”

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Quentin

March 27, 2010 4:07 PM

Glad I found you by Quentin

She'd said yes. Well, actually she'd said she'd be honored to, but that meant yes. Quentin felt...happy. He supposed that was the logical way to feel. Usually, when someone got what they wanted, they felt happy.

And he honestly did want to go to the ball with Marissa. Quentin never cared that she was muggleborn at all . She was kind and intelligent and in Quentin's view, those were the two most important qualities. He could even overlook stupidity in some people, so long as they weren't vapid. There was a difference. Some people honestly had a below average level of intelligence and couldn't help it while others with an average level of intellect were incredibly frivolous, while still thinking themselves superior to others.

Or they had an above average level of intelligence, and were still cold and intolerant towards those that were different. Quentin's parents and grandparents were like that and he didn't want to be so he tried to be nice to people who were less intellectually inclined. The way his grandparents treated Uncle Jethro and Kirstenna, their own son and granddaughter, really bothered him. Just because Uncle Jethro wasn't an intellectual, his grandparents were ashamed of him. Quentin didn't want to be the kind of person his grandparents were.

However, Quentin still thought it was more interesting to have conversation about history or potions than one about the latest magical boy bands or hair products and would prefer to spend time with a girl who had some level of intellectual interest.

"Honestly," he began, "I haven't thought about who I'd go as at all. I just started thinking about even going to the ball and decided to ask you." Quentin smiled shyly at her.

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