Raine Collindale
February 03, 2018 9:06 AM
Would you like some good news? (Tag Professor X) by Raine Collindale
As Professor Xavier disappeared into his office after introducing the new to Teppenpaws to their house (Raine could not, after all this time, really find it the substitute home it was promised to be), Raine followed. The door had barely shut behind him when she knocked, and came in. She had been wanting to see him all day. But of course, he had been busy with the orientation, and then at the feast she couldn’t talk to him.The Raine who came into his office was the complete opposite of the one who had sat there at the end of the previous year. She was absolutely shining with happiness, and perhaps even a smidgen of something approaching self-confidence.
“I passed!” she beamed, rushing over to her head of house and flinging her arms around him, quite unaware that after the day he’d had, this might be something he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. It was only a very brief hug, one full of happiness that just couldn’t be kept to oneself.
“Herbology and Defence,” she added. The precious piece of paper was clutched in her hand, and she held it out to show him, unaware that the school received their own copies and that he might already have seen it. “Our mom wants to put them on the wall, mine and Kyte’s - he got one in Defence too - but I said I had to show you first. I passed two! And look, not a single T!
“Thank you. For… for last year. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
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Raine Collindale
Would you like some good news? (Tag Professor X)
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Nathan
February 04, 2018 9:25 PM
This makes it all worth it by Nathan
Nathan hadn't even dropped in exhaustion into his chair, nevermind pulled out a piece of parchment to write to Isis to seek her company after this awful day when the knock sounded on the door. He sat down, rubbed his forehead, considered pretending he wasn't here, but whoever was on the other side surely had just followed him to the door and knew he was there. He schooled himself into a pleasant and accommodating frame of mind. "Come in!" he called.It was Raine Collindale, and he couldn't help smiling genuinely at her obvious joy. "I knew you could," he repeated what he had told her the last time they had met here, and was very glad it had worked out to be true.
She threw her arms around him, and he tensed, hyper-aware of any appearance of impropriety with the students after today's interview with Selina, but Raine backed off before he had to make things awkward, and letting his pride and happiness for her cover his discomfort. "I am so proud of you. You worked so hard for it." He looked at her grade paper, pretending he was seeing it for the first time, because it clearly meant a lot to her to show it to him.
I couldn't have done it without you.
Emotion welled up within him. This was a heck of a day. The worst moment a teacher could imagine, and the best, all within a few hours of each other. Knowing he'd made such a difference to Raine didn't cancel out the horror of Cleo's situation, but it did remind him he had a lot more students counting on him than one third year, and their trials and burdens and triumphs were no less important and valid, even if they were not quite so dramatic.
He cleared his throat. "You're welcome. And thank you. I'm really glad you came to me. I can't help anyone who doesn't want help, and you're the one who had to pass. And you did. You pulled it off when it mattered. I'm so proud of you, Raine."
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Nathan
This makes it all worth it
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Raine
February 06, 2018 7:27 AM
I'm glad by Raine
Raine’s smile grew, and she blushed furiously as Professor Xavier heaped her with the kind of praise she had never in her life expected to hear from a teacher. He was proud of her. She had worked hard. He had known she could… That last one… She wasn’t sure she would have bet on herself if she’d been asked, but he always seemed to really mean it when he said it, and it was his faith in her that had helped as much as any of the extra support work he’d given her.“I wasn’t sure sometimes that I could do it, but I knew you thought I could, and I just kept thinking about that when it got scary.”
This was a lot, from her. Raine had never been a big talker. There was usually a lot going on underneath, but only a fraction of it ever made it out of her mouth - the opposite of her twin, who rarely stopped talking regardless of whether his brain was still connected or had long since disengaged.
He was proud of her. He had said it twice. Raine wasn’t normally that good at accepting compliments. She had a tendency to downplay whatever it was that she had just done, or to decide it wasn’t that big a deal. And, in the objective role of student achievement at Sonora, scraping a pass in two CATS was probably not up there. But even her brain couldn’t twist this, and make it not big and important and wonderful, because it was all of those things.
“Thank you,” she smiled. She hesitated for a moment, and then allowed herself to say it, because she had been thinking it ever since her results came in, and she felt like Professor Xavier was someone she could admit this to - and it did almost feel like the confession of a secret because she would never, ever, normally say this kind of thing about herself, but just this once, she was going to, “I’m proud of me too.”
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Raine
I'm glad
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