Meeting the Roommates (first year girls' dorm). on Teppenpaw Commons

Julian Umland

January 13, 2013 8:28 PM

Meeting the Roommates (first year girls' dorm). by Julian Umland

During the feast, Julian had felt as much at her ease as she thought she could in a new and unfamiliar place while she’d talked to Charlie and eaten the food and felt, in a way, more secure in the anonymity of a large crowd than she would have in a strange place on her own. At something like a feast, a lot of people saw a person, but most of them didn’t really notice her, especially after the vivid yellow coloring faded away. It allowed more privacy than a smaller occasion would have, more time to adjust on her own terms as she just dealt with one person and no one else really paid them that much attention.

Her nerves, though, had returned when she had realized the meal was drawing to a conclusion and Medic Bailey had collected them all to show to them to the common room, and as they had made their way through the corridors, her hand had drifted into her pocket again, though it hadn’t clenched into a painful fist until she had to watch, with no small consternation, the jig she would have to learn to get in and out of the common room. No one had told her she would have to dance.

She had smiled, too, when they got into the common room and Medic Bailey had called it ‘home’, but she had still been thinking, too, about that jig as she listened to the rules. She was not a very physically coordinated person, so she expected to spend a few weeks, at least, spending a lot of time standing outside waiting for someone who could open the door for her if she couldn’t contrive to always walk back with a friend. Even that, though, was just a momentary distraction from what she was really worried about, which came back to make it an effort to keep smiling sooner than she would have liked.

Julian was used to sharing, because she had to do it all the time. She was the third of five children in a single-income household without a long line of wealthy ancestors to back her father’s income up. Because she was the only girl in that family, though, she was the only member of her family who had her own room all the time – Paul had his and Stephen’s to himself through the academic year, but had to share again when Stephen came home for holidays – and now that she had to share, she didn’t have the security of knowing that the girls she was sharing with were her siblings and loved her even if they did fight sometimes. For all she knew, they could all completely hate her, even though the point of the House system was to put together people with some similarities who might be able to get along together for so much time.

She had been worrying about that for weeks, thought of it once or twice during the feast even though she had dodged the issue by happening to sit beside a boy, and now it was heavy on her mind as she made her way to the girls’ corridor and then to the room marked ‘First Years’, which she thought it was pretty safe to take a bet was hers. Opening the door, she stepped in and looked around, delight for a moment crowding out her nerves again before they returned with the sight of other girls. This space was much bigger than her room at home, and more comfortably furnished; she had always dreamed about getting to have a bed with curtains and a canopy on it, and now she had one. Her trunk, unmistakable after her brothers had decided the whole family should chip in to paint on it as a farewell gift, was at the foot of one of them.

Approaching it, she dithered for a few seconds over whether to speak or open first, and settled on opening her trunk. Immediately, she regretted it, but reached for a carefully-wrapped picture of her family tucked between a few winter nightgowns and took the t-shirt which had kept it safe through the trip to school off of it and put it on her nightstand, marking it as her own, before turning to the other girls, clasping her hands at her waist to keep from fidgeting too much with them. These were going to be her friends, she told herself, but only if she didn’t offend them now by being unfriendly. Then it would be her own fault, and well-deserved, if they did all dislike her and go out of their way to make her life just a little more difficult than it had to be.

“This room is great, isn’t it?” she said, gesturing around at it, admiring the false window in one wall. “My name’s Julian, I’m so glad to meet you.”

16 Julian Umland Meeting the Roommates (first year girls' dorm). 254 Julian Umland 1 5

Willow Collins

January 24, 2013 7:48 PM

Nice to meet you by Willow Collins

For the most part, Willow was looking forward to meeting her other roommate, but she was just a tiny bit anxious. She doubted Gemma felt that way. She seemed so excited about everything and Willow doubted she could match her new roommate's enthusiasm, both because of what was going on with her sister which was unfortunately constantly lurking at the back of her mind and because Gemma was really enthusiastic. Still, the new Teppenpaw was hoping they'd become friends.

She wanted to be friends with the other roommate too. Oh, Willow knew she wouldn't be friends with everyone but she didn't want any enemies.She wanted to be well-liked or at least not hated. The first year did not want to be an outcast and have everyone making fun of her. Or a downer who made everyone around her depressed and annoyed them with her problems. Which Willow wasn't even supposed to talk about with anyone outside her family anyway.

The Teppenpaw followed Medic Bailey-someone she'd heard about quite a bit-along with her new housemates to their house and watched as he demonstrated the Teppenpaw jig. Willow didn't think she'd really have issues with it but she wasn't entirely sure. She'd been trained in ballroom dancing of course, but this was really quite different. More energetic, requiring more coordination. Not that she was especially lacking in it as far as she knew but mostly she'd learned not to step on someone's feet. She was sure Hope could help her with it though.

Maybe there should be someone to help all first years with it. There never really had been as far as she knew. That didn't really seem fair, to make them just pick it up on their own. Teppenpaw was supposed to be a helpful friendly house, one where people cared about others. Not forced them to suffer alone. Not everyone was coordinated or trained in dancing at all and they could get stuck outside the Commons for hours.

Once the medic finished his speech, Willow decided to go on up to her room. There wasn't much point in staying downstairs when she was sure that her roommates wouldn't be-she thought she'd already seen the other girl go up-and she wanted to start with meeting them. Well, the one she didn't know yet, she'd already met Gemma and there was only one other girl. Still, Willow could meet the two boys, and others, later.

She looked around her room, walked over to her bed and started to unpack a little. It wasn't very long before the other girl spoke. Willow looked up and gave her a friendly smile. "Nice to meet you Julian." She noted that the other girl had not introduced herself in the proper way. That meant she probably wasn't from the same kind of family that Willow was. Gemma hadn't either. The blonde quickly decided not to be so formal. "I'm Willow."

11 Willow Collins Nice to meet you 253 Willow Collins 0 5

Gemma Bennett

January 24, 2013 10:27 PM

We're going to have the most wonderful time! by Gemma Bennett

Gemma had chatted with – and probably, she had to admit, sometimes at – Willow through the Feast, but had kept glancing toward the other girl every now and then, wondering who she was, and if they would like her, and how they would all get along as a group and as different pairs. Her curiosity, though, had gone unsatisfied all the way through the meal, and even along the walk to the common room. She forgot about it for a moment when they got to the stair and learned the little dance they would need to enter the Teppenpaw quarters – she had laughed the first time she saw the medic perform it, happy to see such an original way of getting into the House, and had then tried to follow along with him when he did it again, though she wasn’t sure if she could do it right on her own. She guessed she would just have to come in tomorrow night and see.

Inside the common room, they received some opening remarks, most of which went right over Gemma’s head in a wave of names, though she caught on that their Head of House was Medic Bailey and that she had a specific curfew time. Since it was later than her bedtime had been at home, though, she didn’t think that was really going to be a problem for her, and as for going into the boys’ dorms, why would she want to? She had three brothers, so she knew they usually didn’t have anything pretty in their rooms.

Afterward, Gemma went upstairs, remembering the Other Girl, the roommate she hadn’t met yet, when she saw her just ahead of her. For a moment, Gemma, too, looked around the room once she got into it, but didn’t see anything very impressive and went over to the bed with her trunk at the end of it, wondering what had happened to make the Other Girl’s so colorful.

“Oh!” she said when the other girl introduced herself suddenly, but Willow got to real words first, so Gemma let her introduce herself to – yes, she had heard the other girl say ‘Julian’ too, instead of Julianne or Juliana or Julia or any other variant she might have expected. That was enough to catch her interest all over again.

“And I’m Gemma,” she said when Willow had said her name. “It is nice to meet you, I wondered about you for the whole Feast! Did you really say that you're Julian, though? Isn't that a boy's name?”

0 Gemma Bennett We're going to have the most wonderful time! 251 Gemma Bennett 0 5

Julian U.

January 25, 2013 9:32 AM

I hope so. by Julian U.

The other two girls, Julian had just enough time to note before the darker-haired of them made her turn red by mentioning that she had been wondering about her for the whole Feast, were named Willow and Gemma. At least she wasn’t the only one with an unusual name, she thought; she’d seen both of those used in novels before, but never met people with them.

“Not always,” she said, shrugging a little, when Gemma asked about Julian being a boy’s name. “My – my mom picked it, after the first woman writer in English.”

She decided not to go into the debates over that or what Julian of Norwich had been writing about (not least because she had never been allowed to read it yet herself; Mom had read selections aloud to her, but not many, and that was all), much less into discussions of heritages that far back. Arguing about these things was all right at home, with her family, but as long as Gemma and Willow didn’t suddenly start saying bad things about Muggleborns and Squibs right in front of her, Julian wasn’t going to deliberately start an argument the first night they ever knew each other. First impressions were everything.

“It is, um, a boy’s more often, though,” she conceded. “And it probably wasn’t the Other Julian – the writer one’s – real name, because she lived at St. Julian’s Church, and he was a man, I think, I can’t remember a woman St. Julian, anyway. It might have been, sometimes it was a girl’s name just on its own, but I don’t know, she’s not really around to ask.” She smiled awkwardly, realizing she was saying too much and wondering why that had to kick in now after she had done a perfectly okay job of getting by at the Feast downstairs.

Her guess was that she was talking to other girls, something she wasn’t used to – and that, just looking at their robes, she thought they were both, well, maybe also girls from single-income homes in a way, but not exactly buying everything they owned secondhand the way she was. She decided to change the subject.

“So, um, do either of you have family here?” she asked, moving to sit on the bed she guessed was hers, now. “I was talking to Charlie – he’s in our House, too – during the Feast, and he has a sister here, but I’ve got four brothers and none of them here at all.” She sort of hoped John and Joe would come here, even though Joe could only do so the year after Julian left, so the three Js would all be in one school, but Stephen had never thought of coming this far south when he was eleven and Paul couldn’t do magic, so the whole family going to one school was never going to happen now. That wasn’t all bad either, though; it meant they would know people in more places, and have interesting things to talk about together during the holidays.

16 Julian U. I hope so. 254 Julian U. 0 5

Willow

January 30, 2013 3:41 AM

Me too! by Willow

"That's really neat." Willow replied. "I mean, about being named after someone like that. I wasn't really. " The closest thing she could come up with for that was her great-great-great grandfather, William Brockert, but she sincerely doubted she was named for him. "My middle name, Jessamyn, is after one of my aunts though." Though Aunt Jessamyn was the odd one, who seemed to have mental issues, Mother had decided to honor her sister anyway going down the line after giving Autumn Aunt Bernadette's name for her middle name. Lily's middle name was after Grandmother Amelia. The Teppenpaw personally didn't care if hers was after someone with mental problems, she liked her name. Besides her Aunt Jessamyn was nicer than Aunt Layla or Aunt Ariella. She also didn't think either of their names-or Aunt Britta 's or Aunt Oleta's- would have sounded as good with her first name.

Someday, when Willow had a daughter, she would either give her a seasonal name like Autumn's or have the child's middle name be Autumn. It was normal in her family to honor people that way, even though they didn't do numerals really with the boys, and she wanted to honor her sister. The Crotalus alumna deserved it, despite all her problems, just as Aunt Jessamyn had.

Julian's explanation for her name told her something about her roommate's family. Willow didn't know Julian's last name but by her introduction she probably wasn't from the same sort of society that she was, though Gemma hadn't introduced herself the proper way either and somehow, the first year thought she was. However, what it told her was that Julian's parents were very intelligent educated people. It was unlikely her own parents had any idea who Julian of Norwhich was. The culture Willow lived in wasn't very feminest and in fact, could be quite male dominated. She couldn't imagine a girl getting a name that was traditionally for boys in her world. Plus, Julian of Norwhich was probably a muggle and the Teppenpaw didn't really know much about famous muggles. Her family didn't think it was a necessary thing for her to know.

"My cousin Chelsea married a man named Julian." Willow added. Instantly, she wondered if it had been the right thing to say, but it was clear that the other Teppenpaw knew her name was usually used for boys. "I don't know him very well though. Just that Chelsea apparently really loves him and vice versa." So much that Chelsea had stolen him away when he'd been betrothed to her cousin. Willow could see where that was wrong, she'd hate to lose her betrothed to someone else, especially a relative, but she thought the true love behind it was great. "They live out of the country with their daughter."

Conversation switched then to family. "My sisters have both graduated, Autumn last year, Lily a long time ago, but I have lots of distant cousins. Evan and Hope are my father's first cousin's children and then Nora Dobson, the new Aladren prefect, is the granddaughter of Father's cousin Rosemary. There are some other more distant ones that I don't know as well though." Willow hoped it didn't come across like she was bragging about Nora. She would never mean it that way, it was just a way for them to identify who she was.

"What about you two?" She actually already knew Gemma had two siblings in Crotalus, but she didn't think it was her place to tell Julian about them. She didn't want to speak for her roommate when Gemma seemed more than capable of doing that for herself. Willow had honestly never met a more bubbly, enthusiastic person and she thought being around her roommate would probably be good for her. Also, she didn't want to leave Gemma out of this conversation, so she asked them both despite already knowing Gemma's answers.

11 Willow Me too! 253 Willow 0 5

Gemma

January 31, 2013 8:23 PM

Me three! by Gemma

Gemma listened as Julian explained her name, getting lost somewhere around the words ‘Other Julian’ since she wasn’t good at following things with a lot of names in them when they were said out loud, but keeping a polite smile on her face anyway. She nodded when Willow said all that was nice, agreeing. “I wasn’t, either,” she contributed about being named after someone. “Mother just thought Gemma was pretty. I don’t know where she got Louise.” Gemma had never liked her middle name, but since no one had ever used it for anything, she didn’t guess it mattered.

“I don’t think we have any Julians in my family,” she commented after Willow told the story about her cousin and her cousin’s husband. “It is a very nice name, though,” she offered, not wanting to insult either of their families’ taste in names. Even though she was pretty sure that people didn’t get married based on taste in names, so it wouldn’t really be insulting to Willow’s family, but maybe some families did. She didn’t think Chelsea and Julian were names that went together that well, but didn’t say anything about it for that reason, especially if they were as happy together as Willow described.

Julian moved the topic to families, and Willow had a lot of family here. “I’ve got three brothers and a sister,” she said when it was her turn, “but only Paul and Eliza are older than me, they’re both in Crotalus and Eliza’s a seventh year. Richard and Leo are both younger than me, so I don’t know where they’ll go yet.” She glanced back at Willow. “I don’t really have any distant family here, though. Uncle Roger and Uncle Matthias sent all their kids to school in Canada, and Aunt Katherine and Uncle Victor didn’t have any.” They were very sad cases, Aunt Katherine and Uncle Vic. Aunt Katherine had never gotten married and lived with another old maid somewhere in British Columbia, and Uncle Vic had never recovered from a broken heart after his fiancée died just before they were to have been married. It was all very sad, and now he looked even older than Father and was thinking about going back to live with Grandmother and Grandfather so they could look after him because the Healers said he shouldn’t be allowed to live on his own, she guessed he was just too sad to see to all the things Mother said went into running a house on his own. She didn't really know because it had all happened before she was old enough to really know about it then and no one liked to talk about it too much now.

0 Gemma Me three! 0 Gemma 0 5

Julian U.

February 01, 2013 11:30 AM

So we all agree. by Julian U.

Willow had a story behind her middle name, but Gemma didn’t think she had one behind either of her names. “My middle name’s Bridget,” Julian offered. “Mom supposedly thought about Hildegard, but Dad convinced her they ought to give me a kind of, um, normal second name in case I completely hated being named Julian. So I got Bridget instead.”

Privately, Julian was very glad about that. She liked her first name, and was proud of her mom for being someone educated enough to know half the stuff she did, and she even admired Hildegard of Bingen in an abstract sense, but she just thought being a girl named Julian Hildegard Umland would have been a little too much. If nothing else, she thought she might have crumpled under the academic expectations that came with that name. Julian had always done very well under her mother’s tutelage at home, and she thought she would do well in school now, too, but she had no delusions of genius. She would do well with learning things, but she didn’t think she was going to produce much which was new in her life. That took a particular kind of intelligence, and not just everyone had it. Julian knew it wasn’t her place to rule anything out absolutely, anything could happen, but she just didn’t expect to ever rank with Julian of Norwich or St. Hildegard in the ranks of women intellectuals.

“Well, that’s good,” Julian said when Willow said her cousin was married to a man named Julian who she loved a lot. Julian was used to thinking of that as normal for married couples, but knew purebloods sometimes married more for money or politics than because they liked each other. It was one of the several reasons she was all right with not being one, at least not as far as she knew, and not living that lifestyle. Her family didn’t really have a lot of money, but they were happy together. She smiled, a little uncertain, when Gemma said she didn’t have Julians in her family but did think they all had nice names. “Thank you,” she said, hoping that was the right way to respond.

She followed what the other two girls said about their families as best as she could, though she knew there was no way she was going to be able to say how Willow had said some of her cousins here were related to her. It was, she knew from listening to discussions at home, one thing to know one’s own family tree by heart and another to learn other people’s. The less personally relevant it was, the harder it was to remember the details of how everyone was connected. She hoped that was understood all around and no one was going to ask her questions about their families later; she knew she wouldn’t expect them to remember all of hers, but then, for her family, it was just interesting information, not anything really important the way it was to some people.

“We’re all third children, then,” she mused, thinking of what the other girls had said about their siblings. Willow had two older sisters, unless – Julian hoped this wasn’t the case after she’d just said that – she had other older siblings who’d gone to another school, and Gemma, like her, was the third of five children. That last was something she hadn’t expected; people had asked her parents in the grocery store before if ‘all those children’ were theirs, and they weren’t even the largest family of the families they were friends or family with. "And you have family in Canada, Gemma? That's where I grew up, mostly, I have family here but we don't live with them. This school is just full of coincidences."

16 Julian U. So we all agree. 254 Julian U. 0 5

Willow

February 07, 2013 10:47 AM

Then we should all get along great! by Willow

"It is a pretty name." Willow replied to Gemma. "Julian is a nice name too." Though neither was her favorite name, something she would name a child, and she'd usually thought of Julian as a nice name for a boy ,having never heard it used for a girl before. Most of the females she knew had distinctly feminine names. "I like Bridget too." Better than Hildegard. Though there were worse names, like Ethel and Hortense. Those were ugly names.

She nodded. "Last I heard, they're very happy together and have a daughter named Arianna. We haven't heard from them in awhile." Julian and Chelsea had left the country, after they eloped in order to hide from Fallon and her mother Dorothea, who were quite displeased with the situation to put it mildly. Willow wasn't entirely sure why Chelsea and Julian had to run away though, the Brockerts had much more power than the Crandalls did. If Fallon and her mother tried anything, surely Great Grandfather would squash them.

It turned out that Julian didn't have any family here and Gemma only had her siblings. Willow felt quite fortunate to have her distant cousins here given the age differences between her and her sisters. Otherwise she'd be on her own and she'd felt alone enough lately. That was probably part of the reason her parents had her go to the ranch with her cousins. She was especially glad for Hope, who she could go to if she had any sort of problem, the ones she couldn't share with any friends she made. Plus, the older Teppenpaw could help her learn the dance to get into the common room. She wouldn't mind if her roommates joined them for that though.

Willow smiled. "That's kind of cool, I mean, that we're all third children." Technically, she was just her father's third child, her mother's second. "I don't have younger siblings or any brothers though, so that's where I differ." She wasn't too worried that she'd end up left out over a little thing like family structure, the way Nina had about not joining the Quidditch team. People tended to take things like Quidditch very seriously, too much so in her opinion. Whether it was WAIL insisting it made girls like other girls, or the way Aladrens played, it was too much importance placed on something quite trivial, when there were so many other things that mattered so much more in life. And while your position in your family could impact things like betrothals, people tended not to think less of you just because your family didn't have the same number of children as theirs. Still, even the smallest bit of common ground was a jumping off point, even if it was something that people might think was silly.

Julian's next question was directed at Gemma, so Willow said nothing, instead awaiting the other Teppenpaw's answer. She didn't have any relatives in other countries, though her second cousins, Thomas and Olympia had gone to Hogwarts and both their mother and Thomas's wife were British. A lot of Grandfather Collins' relatives had gone to other schools, it was Grandmother's relatives who came to Sonora and thus, Lily, Autumn and Willow were the only ones who'd come here. "Are your other brothers expected to come here?" She asked, once Gemma had answered. Obviously she didn't have any, but she had a lot more cousins, though only Portia and Oliver were closely related. She supposed there were Connor and Arianna too, but that would be awhile yet.

11 Willow Then we should all get along great! 253 Willow 0 5