Magic is no match for my anger issues (WotW). on Library

Francesca Wolseithcrafte

April 08, 2013 2:52 PM

Spreading a little sense... by Francesca Wolseithcrafte

It was lucky, really, that being an Aladren was a good enough disguise for near-permanent library habitation, as all other forms of subterfuge were currently unavailable to her. She did not have advanced enough magic to set wards or warnings, especially as this was not her property. A Sneakoscope would have been no use, as she was the one sneaking. She had contemplated bringing her hawk owl but she wasn't entirely sure what the policy on pets in the library was, besides which any advantage he gave her by giving her warning of someone's approach would doubtless be cancelled out by having to explain to them why she had her owl with her in first place.

Today, her target was the Potions section, and the set text for fifth years. She had first hit the etiquette section, along with any others she thought might be especially popular with her target audience. However, she was sure all the little darlings were already so well polished as to not need to consult the school volumes. Thus she was targeting all the library copies of the set text for each subject and year, basing her deductions of what those were on a combination of the books she had most frequently seen students using, and those which the library had most copies of. It made sense to go for volumes which were likely to be read often, even if often by the wrong people.

She slipped the last of the pamphlets inside the front cover and straightened up. The back cover of the leaflet normally held details of who to contact for further information however this information had been removed. The fact that it was her family's endeavour was easy enough to find out, if not already known to the reader. Her hope, tenuous as she knew it was, was that those appalled by the ideas, keen to avoid seeming at all interested, would not venture to probe the matter further; that only those who wanted to know more would bother to find it out. She side-stepped quickly to the books appropriate for her year group, selecting a volume and preparing to take it to a nearby table – to be, to all intents and purposes, merely another user of the library.

Subthreads:

Magic is no match for my anger issues (WotW). by Alicia Bauer with Paul Bennett

Researching by Annabelle and Annette Pierce

13 Francesca Wolseithcrafte Spreading a little sense... 250 Francesca Wolseithcrafte 1 5

Alicia Bauer

April 10, 2013 12:20 PM

Magic is no match for my anger issues (WotW). by Alicia Bauer

The cheering charm she had put on herself before going to write her latest Potions paper had kicked all the way in by the time she got all the books she was planning to use for this session, but Alicia still swore under her breath when, halfway down her second foot, she turned the wrong way and sent several thick textbooks tumbling to the floor. Offering someone nearby a strained smile, she climbed out of her chair and began to pick them up willy-nilly, lifting them over her head to stack them untidily on the table until they were all back in more or less the right place again. Pulling herself back to her feet, she got back in her chair just in time for the one precariously balanced on top to fall, though this time just to land on the table instead of the floor again.

There’s a bright side! the charm pointed out. Dimly, past it, Alicia remembered why she hated spells and drugs meant to elevate her mood. Excessive cheeriness annoyed her, even the sarcastic kind. There were, she supposed, reasons why she had gotten Most Serious before. Pulling the book toward her, she opened it near the middle, knowing vaguely where what she needed was from reading this book, one of the fifth year texts, just before they went home for midterm to get further ahead for the second half of the year, and blinked when she found a pamphlet stuck in it which hadn’t been there when she returned it.

Okay, then. Political propaganda made as good a bookmark as anything else, she guessed.

She glanced over the front cover and felt her mouth twist a bit as she saw the part about reputable families. She knew and cared as much about their cultural traditions and values as anyone else, and she was a third- and fourth-generation social climber on every side of her family, including the one she wasn’t actually biologically related to. Her conclusions would, of course, be invalidated if she was defining a word incorrectly, but the implication of the cover wasn't valid if they were using any definition of the phrase 'reputable family' she had ever heard of. Even compared to their own social class, there were some impressively tacky people strewn throughout her family tree. Her grandfather was...well, her grandfather, complete with other grandkids fifteen years her junior, now, and yet he had probably still not figured out what marriage vows and pants were for. She had no idea why Gramma Nadia hadn't killed him already.

Flipping past the offensive front page, she began to read the inside until she got to a point where, initially, it seemed there was nothing she could do but shake her head with a snort of laughter and toss the pamphlet onto the book. A second later, though, another idea occurred to her.

- Objection: she wrote on a blank sheet of parchment nearby. ’Reputable families’ are generally against their daughters brewing. Girls are encouraged to be squeamish, and anyway, that’s what poor people are for.

She picked it up again out of idle curiosity, no doubt helped along by the charm she was really regretting using no matter how much she had felt like ripping someone’s head off earlier, and continued on. Practicality: point granted.

Traditional View of Society, Two Generations Old – Objection: Society is what we make of it. In fourteenth century Britain, it was acceptable for a witch to act as head of government; an American witch today who tried would probably be disowned, and only widows and witches of the lower classes are allowed much public autonomy. One day, leadership is about personal connections, family, charisma, and personal magical fighting ability; the next day, anatomical differences rule all! Beside this, she drew a smiley face. Not to mention all the social climbers. Argumentum ad antiquitatem is fallacious for everyone! Traditions change and everybody lies about it later.

Desires – Opposition argument: Some girls are more ambitious than a Muggleborn parent allows them to be. Some girls are homosexuals. Some girls are ambitious Muggleborn homosexuals! She double-underlined the words ‘ambitious Muggleborn homosexuals’ and surrounded the line with little stars. You are explicitly against them exploring their interests. So what if a girl is athletic? She can practice her dancing more, or learn to sew really fast.

It was fun, taking an argument and taking it apart. Not that she agreed with W.A.I.L., either. Just because she didn’t say it aloud in deference to her friends didn’t mean the organization wasn’t composed almost entirely of some impressively fallacious idiots, or at best people using other people’s idiocy to further ideals she didn’t personally agree with. Normally, Alicia had no problem with smart people using stupid people for whatever nefarious purposes they pleased, but it was a little different when the purpose was keeping her from doing whatever she pleased, and that their reason for wanting to do that wasn’t even her blood, but rather, the fact that she wore dresses.

Feeling distantly annoyed, she put the list aside and resumed work on her Potions project, only glancing at it again when she was done with her work for the day. Then she thought why not?

Carefully, replicating the smiley face and stars in particular, she wrote her objections out with her left hand, to hide her handwriting, and then, before she could think the better of it, stuck it into the book behind the original pamphlet before returning it to the shelf. If nothing else, there might be some entertainment value for the next person to come along and read it, and she really doubted anyone would ever think she would use liberal rhetoric or far, far worse, excessive underlining, smiley faces, and stars anywhere on any document, ever, so she was safe enough from being the suspect.

Two days later, she found another, similar pamphlet in another book, and that was when she renounced cheering charms forever, or at least for anything short of utter despair. Calming, alertness, wit-sharpening, and sleeping draughts were the artificial enhancers for her.

16 Alicia Bauer Magic is no match for my anger issues (WotW). 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5

Paul Bennett

April 13, 2013 8:25 PM

Being entertained by Paul Bennett

“Hahahahaha – Oh, for the love of Merlin – “

Paul covered his mouth before he drew unwanted attention from the library monitors or more irascible Aladrens, but he couldn’t keep from grinning as he looked over the papers stuffed inside what he had assumed, coming in to do some work, was going to be a perfectly boring Potions book. He thought he might, on some level, live for moments like this, when things weren’t as predictably dull as usual and the way they weren’t boring wasn’t something which was going to really disturb the universe, just offer a few seconds of entertainment.

Objectively, he thought he should probably be worried that someone, presumably another fifth year, was clearly seriously mentally disturbed, given the decorations on the unsigned letter which seemed to be in response to the pamphlet stuck in the book, but he didn’t see anything he could do about it and there were some things which were just intrinsically funny. Like bedecking a declaration that ambitious Muggleborn lesbians were out of luck politically in celebratory stars. He couldn’t help but wonder who had done it. Normally, he would have agreed that smiley faces and stars sounded like Mellie Goodwin or Kitty McLevy, but the content didn’t, not really. Maybe it had been Kitty – Aladrens were sort of nuts, he could see them deciding to get all political before they even got out of intermediates. Most of them would have been bold enough to sign it, though. Maybe Linus had cracked like an eggshell recently without seeing fit to inform his roommate of the decision?

No, he decided finally. No, that wasn’t it. Not Linus’ style, even if he went crazy. Assuming he had been entirely sane to begin with, but that was a question far above Paul’s ability to answer, like the identities of the Writer and the Pamphleteer and, in the case of the former….

Whose side are you arguing for, anyway? he scrawled in red ink beneath the scary letter, then drew an arrow pointing up to it. Some of the point of graffiti was, he guessed, lost when nothing substantial was being vandalized, but then, so was the chance of getting in trouble for it. He made a mental note to tell Eliza about it all, thinking she might get a laugh out of it, and then went back to work.

0 Paul Bennett Being entertained 201 Paul Bennett 0 5

Annabelle and Annette Pierce

April 16, 2013 8:45 PM

Researching by Annabelle and Annette Pierce

Annette Pierce had not been pleased by her showing in the Obstacle Course. She'd been relegated to following like a duckling after Cepheus baked the mud dry, and then she'd run as best she could to the Wall (the running, at least, had gone well), then she couldn't do much at the Wall either because Annabelle ran off to look at the paths heading to the lake and climbing a sheer face was not a talent she had ever tried to develop and would have taken too long even if she had. So the older boys had to handle all the magic for that, too. The lake had gone a little better, simply because Annabelle had nothing better to do than stick around to make sure they got across alright, but Annette was still displeased that she'd been entirely helpless compared to the boys during the first two obstacles.

She needed to learn how to cast magic by herself, without depending on Annabelle always being there.

So here they were, in the library, doing something they didn't ordinarily do: research. Well, Annette was doing research. Annabelle was doing her homework.

She was frowning at a book that wasn't telling her anything like what she wanted to know when Annabelle got up from their table. "I need to get the potions book we're supposed to use for this."

Annette nodded, waved her off, and turned to a different book herself. She was frowning again at another chapter that wasn't offering up on its promising title, The Wizarding World and Twins, when Annabelle returned, resumed her seat, and opened the potions book.

"Huh," Annabelle said after a few minutes.

Annette looked up, frowning at her sister now, mostly because she forgot to change expressions. "What?"

Annabelle held up a pamphlet. "There was something in the book. It's . . . weird."

"Weird? Weird how?" Annette asked, curious despite herself. The front of the pamphlet looked pretty boring to her. Reputable, society, traditions, blah blah blah. They got enough of that at home.

"It says girls should fly," Annabelle reported, sounding confused. She opened it up and pointed out the second paragraph in the second column of text. "I mean, not just fly, but actually play Quidditch."

"Let me see," Annette demanded, taking the pamphlet from Annabelle. She scanned through it quickly, then read the interesting parts a little more thoroughly. "I can't imagine Druscella playing Quidditch," she pointed out, her eye falling on the one heading Your grandmother played Quidditch, "But I know Melinda did."

Annabelle nodded. "She didn't like it, but she did," she agreed. "Everyone did, back then. Thad said." And if Thad said it, it was true.

"Speaking of Thad, you think he knows about these people?" Annette asked. She looked at the pamphlet's front again. "The Heritage Society?"

Annabelle rolled her eyes. "He's Thad."

"Right," Annette admitted, feeling embarrassed. Of course he did. And if he didn't, he could find out more about them in twenty minutes than the twins could in a year. "Did you see him around when you were looking for the potion book?" Outside meal and class times, the surest place to look for their older cousin was right here in the library.

Annabelle shook her head. "He wasn't at the circulation desk."

Annette felt her spirits lift as she smirked. "Must have one of his dates today," she guessed, a teasing quality to her voice. Every so often, Thad simply could not be found. It was possible he was just in his commonroom, but Miss Alicia was never around the library at those times either. Even if it wasn't true, it was fun to speculate.

Annabelle smirked back. "I didn't see Miss Bauer there, either," she agreed in the same tone.

"Well, put that in your bag," Annette suggested, giving the pamphlet back to Annabelle. "We'll ask him about it after dinner."

(OOC: Regarding Thad and Alicia's absences, I'm presuming this takes place during one of the fourth year Training Sessions.)

1 Annabelle and Annette Pierce Researching 246 Annabelle and Annette Pierce 0 5

Alicia Bauer

May 10, 2013 1:55 PM

Panicking. by Alicia Bauer

Frustration and fury never really went away, but fear wasn’t something Alicia felt as often as she once had. She knew more of what she was doing, she generally knew what she could and could not get away with, and when she was afraid, she dealt with it, did what she needed to do anyway, and almost always got her way in the end, proving the fear to have been totally unjustified. The repetition of that pattern was why she was no longer afraid as much as she had been before Sonora, or even in her first two years here at least. Learning to smile when she was angry or in pain had been a lot easier than learning to smile when she was scared, but she had done it and reaped more rewards from that knowledge all the time.

Right now, she wasn’t afraid, but she was a little nervous as she slipped into the Potions section for the first time in a week, her smile firmly in place as she walked toward the treasonous letter she had written and left in one of the books while in an altered state of consciousness. Fifth year was small and mostly kind of dumb, so there was still a good chance that, in the days it had taken her to work up the nerve to come back here, no one had seen it, and she could remove it and destroy it and be done with it. She told herself that repeatedly as she made her way down the aisle and found the right section. No one had seen it, it was no harm, no foul, and she had learned an important lesson from the experience. That was all there was to it.

Still, her hands shook a little and it took her two tries to get the right volume out of the stack and begin leafing through it. There was absolutely nothing wrong about standing in here and looking at a book, but she felt the need to hurry, to get out of here without being seen. Finally, she found the pamphlet and breathed out in relief…just before she noticed that someone else had decided to chime into the debate as well.

Whose side are you arguing for, anyway?

She closed the book with an audible snap, blocking the words from sight.

It was a stupid question – she wasn’t arguing for anyone’s side. Alicia wasn’t on anyone’s side, not really. She was on whatever side was most likely to benefit her. At the moment, when her closest friends were pureblood males, that was probably not the side represented by either DISCUSS or the anonymous pamphleteer. In the future….

She opened the book again, reading her own writing, which she was glad to see at least really wasn’t immediately recognizable as hers. She had done that right, at least. It was just the content which was the problem.

Her analysis was not faulty. This was a problem.

Paranoia swept over her. She could not take that thing out of here. Anyone might see her with it, might come across her as she was burning it, might reconstruct it from the ashes. Fumbling, she tore at the paper, pushing her fingernails through it where she could, then stuffed it in the book again and left as quickly as she could without running, her smile not at all matching the look in her eyes. She did not want to think about this. She was never using a cheering charm again. She was going to forget all about this and never look back again, ever. This had not happened.

16 Alicia Bauer Panicking. 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5