Always wanted to post on this board... [Fourth Year Girls] on Pecari Commons

Alison Sinclair

June 14, 2010 12:38 AM

Always wanted to post on this board... [Fourth Year Girls] by Alison Sinclair

Christmas had, in a word, sucked.

It wasn’t the whole living situation thing; the main difference had been that the agony there had gone on for two weeks instead of one. Her dad had been distant and seemed faintly hurt that she was jumping to fix the situation, her brothers had teased her until she threatened to turn them into squirrels and turn them loose in the yard with Hamlet, and her mom had awkwardly tried to make girl talk one minute and forgotten to add ‘Alison’ to the end of the dinner call the next. All Sinclair Family Holidays as usual. The lousy part had come when, despite her making several attempts to reach them, everyone she’d spent the past five years with around the clock had shown no interest in getting in touch with her.

It had been the last straw, one they would all need to do some serious groveling to get removed from the camel's back. Alison thought of herself as loyal, believed she was, but she had limits and she had pride. If that was how they wanted to be about it, she could play that game, too. By the end of the semester, she was determined to have friends here. No matter what she had to do to get them.

She had spent several days going over everything she knew about the different people in her year, deciding who was likely and who was not, but she was no Tessa when it came to the elaborate plans. She favored the simplest, most straightforward approach. In this case, that was trying to honey up to her roommates first. They were, after all, the people she had the most time around, and she thought she and they already got along pretty well. It was easier to go from ‘acquaintance’ to ‘friend’ with someone who those conditions existed with, and easy usually meant quick. She was sick of feeling alone.

So when she got off the wagon, instead of going into the Cascade Hall, Alison took off for her dorm and was pleased to find it still empty. Since there was no telling how much time she might have, though, she didn’t dawdle in setting up. Seeing a party space while it was being set up or taken down ruined the whole thing, and that wouldn’t be good, especially after the measures she’d taken to make sure the handful of candles and several varieties of Little Debbies didn’t get squashed during the ride from Philly to Arizona.

She was just loosening the cap on the second bottle of sparkling water when the door opened. Perfect timing. Alison looked up with a smile. “Hey!” she said, picking up a Fudge Round and pulling the wrapper open. Hopefully, her roommates were close enough to pureblood to not fully understand that Little Debbie wasn’t exactly haut cuisine, or else far enough away from it not to care. “I thought we should have a little night-before-classes-start-back party. Help yourself to the cakes.” Alison climbed onto her bed, drawing her bare feet under her. It wasn’t the right season for it, but she’d always felt weird wearing shoes in home-ish places. “How was your midterm?”

16 Alison Sinclair Always wanted to post on this board... [Fourth Year Girls] 140 Alison Sinclair 1 5

Dana Smythe

June 24, 2010 4:32 AM

This feels long overdue by Dana Smythe

This midterm had been pretty much the same as every other midterm in history, and Dana didn't expect a great deal of variation in the future. Essnetially, her father, Uncles or Aunt would have some sort of event that required a family gathering, usually with a huge party attached. Until recently Dana hadn't been able to attend the parties anyway, but she'd enjoyed (for the most part) catching up with her numerous cousins. This year the event had been her cousin Ivy's wedding. This stood out for two reasons among Dana's many memories of family events past, firstly because she had been a bridesmaid, and secondly because Ivy had been the first girl of Dana's generation to be married. Next it was uspposed to be Cynthia, but somehow Dana couldn't see anyone wanting to marry her, even if she was smart. Which meant that it would probably be Cecily next, and that was just weird - Dana remembered braiding her hair and dressing up in ridiculous children's party gowns with Cecily since they were small. Cecily had hardly changed since - she wasn't mature enough to be married for Merlin's sake.

Still musing the scenario, Dana entered her dormitory lost in her own thoughts and was surprised to find what seemed to be a party... a very small one. "Hey," Dana returned Alsion's greeting. She sat on her bed, slipping off her shoes and wrapping her pale yelow robe around her, as her roomate explained the reason for the candles and Muggle snacks. "Oh, okay," Dana replied, reaching for a chocolate-y looking brownie. It sounded like as good a reason for a party as any.

"How was your midterm?" Alison asked. It was a standard question, Dana presumed, and she was happy to give a standard answer.

"It was okay," she replied, tucking light brown hair behind her ear. It had been trimmed a couple of days ago to hang just above her shoulders again, not in any attempt at style other than 'straight.' "I was bridesmaid at my cousin's wedding," she elaborated as she took a nibble of the brownie. "How about you?"

0 Dana Smythe This feels long overdue 142 Dana Smythe 0 5

Alison

July 08, 2010 12:04 AM

Well, better late than never. by Alison

“I spent way too much time reading,” Alison shrugged in response to the inquiry about her own holidays. “Hung out with my mom some, went to my grandparents’ for dinner, listened to the fallout from my brother’s big breakup with The One.” Michael’s ex-girlfriend really had a good sense of timing, brutally dumping the brother who had never been quite adept with girls for one of his basketball teammates at Christmas. Alison almost had to admire Christine for having the guts even as she felt annoyed that the girl had hurt her favorite brother. “And read. The usual stuff.”

Life in Philadelphia was almost always painfully dull. She thought her parents liked it that way, and did their best to make sure it stayed that way. It would explain a lot, including their reluctance to have regular contact with any of their extended families. They didn’t fit the picture. Aunt Lauren was in magical law enforcement, the rest of her mother’s family was what her mother politely referred to as “eccentric” (code for “liberal”), and as for her father…Even if one of his sisters hadn’t been a little too narrow-minded for an ambitious man to want associated with these days, she didn’t think her father would have kept in very good touch with his relatives. He showed too little relish at anything that reminded him of his small-town, small-time childhood. Easier to edit them out, except for the occasional holiday dinner or short phone call.

“Yours is more interesting,” she acknowledged. “A Christmas wedding, huh? I’m somehow guessing it wasn’t held outside.” She had never fancied the idea of an outdoor wedding anyway, but if Dana was from where Alison thought she was from, then trying one in the dead of winter seemed frankly dangerous.

She had a good memory, sometimes better than she would like, and one of the first ideas that she’d been introduced to as a witch was that, at least in magical Illinois if not almost all of the Wizarding World, all men were not considered to have been created equal. She’d gotten a very quick course in who the Illinois families were, and while she had neither ever especially cared for the alleged privileges of their ranks – especially not here – or ever met a member of one if she was wrong about the generally agreeable Dana, Alison still remembered those family names. Smythe didn’t have the worst reputation of the lot by far, but they had been mentioned, then and since.

OOC: Sorry for the delay! Got busy and got a nasty case of writer's block at the same time.

16 Alison Well, better late than never. 140 Alison 0 5

Dana

July 13, 2010 4:29 PM

Unless it's a bill by Dana

OOC: Not sure what I was on when I was writing the last post, as the wedding happened over summer.... eh, for the continuation of this thread I'm just going to pretend it was over midterm.

"No, not outside," Dana smiled at Alison's correct assumption. "They've got a huge place in Louisianna, and the wedding was there," she said. As all Smythes (and most of the branches stemming from that family), Ivy had grown up in Illinois. At times the thought of being so far from her parents forever made Dana feel uncomfortable, but Sonora was hardly on their front doorstep. besides, things like Floo, portkeys and Apparating made any distance perfectly surmountable. "She married someone from her Dad's family, I think," Dana embellished with as much detail as she could remember. "Alexandre Dubois?" she said, just in case Alison knew the name, which was possible, but Dana didn't know quite how far into the social names her roommate had researched. Dana herself was mostly clueless, but she knew some people (like her cousin Cynthia) liked to be in the know.

"So..." Dana said in the quiet, reaching for another snack that looked like it contained oats and syrup. "They say this is our last year of freedom," she joked, "you know, before exams and stuff." It was a lame conversation starter, but she didn't know Alison all that well, even after sharing a room for months.

0 Dana Unless it's a bill 0 Dana 0 5

Alison

July 14, 2010 8:46 PM

Yeah, you're pretty much done for either way then. by Alison

Louisiana. Huh. That was somewhere she'd never been. Hadn't seen much media centering on it, either; Alison had a vague impression that everyone was violent and spoke French, but had spent enough time over the summer laughing herself sick at the degree to which a show in her home city got all of the neighborhoods it referenced wrong to suspect that this impression was erroneous. Research was beyond most people's enthusiasm for their subject.

She had enough of that attitude toward purebloods to have a hard time completely keeping a mild shock off her face when Dana thought her cousin had married one of the cousin's father's other family members. There were always tales of inbreeding that floated around, but she had never heard anyone admit to it that casually.

"Never heard of him," she said lightly. "But I'm...er, I'm just going to say 'from Chicago and living in Philly.'" It was probably not technically accurate, but she'd been away from her parents so much that spending time at that house had felt like going on a vacation long before she'd ever thought of coming to Sonora.

Sometimes, she resented them for that, but not really. They were at the pinnacle of normality, and finding out that she wasn't like them, could never be like them, had just been a little overwhelming. They hadn't known how to handle it at all, and why should they have? She could imagine, now, what it would be like if she had kids and one of them was a Squib or something. It just wasn't something that was supposed to happen. Plus, she really did believe they'd felt, and been right to feel, that letting her grow up around magic had been in her best interests anyway. This was the world she was going to have to make her way in, and staying in that one so much until she turned seventeen would just have caused unnecessary trouble.

There was a moment of quiet, which was broken by Dana bringing up exams. "C.A.T.S., right?" she asked, swinging her long, dark hair over her shoulder. Bad nervous habit; she'd been accused before of doing it to draw attention to her looks when a topic came up that she didn't like. "I've got to ask somebody about the stuff I studied before that we don't have here." She finished off her Fudge Round. "What classes are you planning to concentrate on?"

16 Alison Yeah, you're pretty much done for either way then. 140 Alison 0 5

Dana

July 26, 2010 4:04 PM

Curse those bills. by Dana

"I've got to ask somebody about the stuff I studied before that we don't have here."Alison said.

"Oh, like what?" Dana asked. She hadn't given much thought to other subjects that could be studied - she knew Cynthia was doing some sort of independent study, but she'd never cared enough to ask what topic.

Now they were on the subject of exams and studying, Dana found herself in a position to actually have to think about decision she would make next year. She'd been putting that off for so long. "I've been trying not to think about it," she replied to Alison's question with a smile. "I sort of like Divination, but I don't know if my parents would really be happy with me studying it post-Cats," she added. "I also quite like Chams and Magic Creatures," she said. Or, as Lucas liked to call then, the girly subjects. Dana didn't mind; she was a girl. Why shouldn't she like girly subjects? Not that she thought they were especially feminine, but they did have a reputation for being easier than, say, potions or transfiguration.

"How about you?" Dana returned the question. Maybe she would end up in some of the same classes as Alison, and they could establish they had something in common. Right now they were both in Pecari and seemed to like sweet snacks.

0 Dana Curse those bills. 0 Dana 0 5

Alison

July 29, 2010 1:39 PM

And use an especially unpleasant curse at that. by Alison

“History, Runes, some political science,” Alison replied to the questions about her old subjects, absently touching her necklace at the second one. “Some other bits of this and that, but those’re the ones I know enough about to maybe take exams over.”

Of course, she thought, it didn’t help that she had a problem with context-free learning. If she couldn’t see how to use it, she had trouble with it; the only reason she’d been able to work out history was because Greta had convinced her it was essential to understand that to understand the socio-political system. That wasn’t exactly a burning interest of Alison’s, either, but she understood why it was important to know. Knowing the rules was the only real way, long-term, to either get around or exploit them.

Or, hey, get a reasonably well-paying and secure job with people who, thanks to her connection to existing employees, wouldn’t be thinking of ways around anti-discrimination laws as they applied to Muggleborns because anyone not dedicated enough to look it up – which was pretty much everyone – would naturally assume a witch raised by a witch and half-blood wizard was at least half-blood herself. Hell, for all she knew, the rules on that were bendy enough for two witches in as many generations of the same apparently Muggle family to automatically qualify them for distant magical descent. Alison had never fancied herself a master politician.

“I’m probably dropping Creatures,” she admitted when asked about her own prospective classes for her last two years. “Keeping Charms and Divs, though.” The former was too much of a practical, day-to-day kind of thing to give up, and she just liked Divination. That, and – though she wouldn’t admit to it – she was, deep down, a bit of a mystic. Her success rates in the class were variable, but she believed anyway. “Defense, too. The rest – “ she shrugged, holding her hands out in a scale. “No idea. Depends on how much I still like the professors after finals. Thank God my parents won’t have a clue what the grades mean.”

The words were automatic; she knew, even as she said them, that her grades would be acceptable and that there was a good chance her parents wouldn’t really notice anyway. More disturbingly, she realized she didn’t really care that much what they thought.

16 Alison And use an especially unpleasant curse at that. 140 Alison 0 5