Home, Sweet Home on Pecari Commons

Professor Aaron McKindy

August 20, 2010 12:21 AM

Home, Sweet Home by Professor Aaron McKindy

“These are the Labyrinth Gardens,” Aaron announced, walking backwards as he lead the group of first years along the correct path through the Gardens. “ Don’t worry, they’re not nearly as confusing as they look.” The professor stopped in front of an ordinary-looking hedge wall by a suit of armour. “To enter the Pecari Commons, you need to tell the password to this suit of armour. Please don’t share this password with any of your friends outside of your House. Only Pecari students should have access to the Pecari Commons. And before you get any ideas, you will be in very deep trouble if you try to break into another House’s Commons.”

“Stuffed truffles,” Aaron told the suit of armour. The hedge obligingly moved aside, revealing the entrance to the Pecari Commons. The man stood aside as the students filed into the room. Comfortable chairs and couches were scattered about, with handy tables in areas where students might like to do their homework. He motioned for the students to take a seat in the general area. “This will be your home for the next seven years; you will eat together, room together, and attend classes together. Over here,” Aaron motioned at the notice board “is the notice board. When the passwords change, they will be posted here. Sign-ups for Quidditch and flyers for other school events are usually posted here by involved students, as well as any other announcements.

“There,” Aaron continued, “are the staircases for the boys’ and girls’ dormitories. Boys are not allowed in the girls’ dorms, and vice versa, and don’t try—there’s a spell on both hallways that will drop you back down here if you do. You need to be back here by 10 each night to make curfew, and my office is just over there, so I’ll know if you come back later. Any questions?”

The Charms professor smiled at the gathered students invitingly, pink, bubble-made tophat perched cheerily atop his black hair and plum robes settled in the air around him.

|OOC| Respond here if you want, but you are otherwise free to roam the rest of the school! Enjoy, and don’t forget to tag me if you need to talk to Aaron.

0 Professor Aaron McKindy Home, Sweet Home 0 Professor Aaron McKindy 1 5

Marcus Williams

August 22, 2010 12:30 AM

I think I'm gonna like it here... by Marcus Williams

Marcus still couldn’t quite wrap his mind over the fact that he was a wizard. When he had first received his letter he had thought it was a joke. He had never believed in fairy tales. He mother had always taught him to believe in what was real and to never let his mind go to places of make believe. They couldn’t afford make believe. But they could afford what was real through hard work. Marcus believed in his mother. He didn’t need a princess or a unicorn to have a happy life. Sure it was tough and his mother worked all kinds of hours at the hospital, but knowing that they did it together was enough.

It was the representative of the magical world who came to visit a few days after the letter that had Marcus and his mother in complete disbelief. It took most of the summer for the two of them to come to terms with the idea of Marcus being a wizard and a trip to a magical community to buy his school supplies. It was overwhelming and actually really terrifying. But, both Marcus and his mother took it in stride. She told him never to be afraid of the unknown. She told him that he should embrace his gift. That God had given it to him for a reason.

The wagon ride had been a trip. Marcus had only been on haunted hayride. A flying wagon was so much better! The Cascade Hall had completely blown his mind! Walls of waterfalls! Incredible! Drinking the weird stuff wasn’t very pleasant and when Marcus didn’t change a color, he had gotten nervous to think that maybe they had been wrong about him being a Wizard. But then he realized that Pecari’s were brown and since Marcus was already brown, his skin wouldn’t change. He took that as a sign and had sat with the other Pecaris.

He had been so excited by this new life, that Marcus could hardly sit still. He didn’t even really listen to the Headmistress. What was a Prefect? And what did the Head Girl and Boy do? Were they Hall Monitors? That’s totally lame if that’s what they are. Oh well, he was sure he’d find out sooner or later.

And then the food was suddenly in front of him! He had hesitated to eat it because it just appeared, but watching the other people eat made him realize that it was okay. He didn’t talk much with the other students, but mainly because he was so hungry. It was a long trip and all of the new stimulation he had bombarded his body with was too much on him. Once he was done eating, he only wanted to find his bed.

Soon enough, they were being asked to follow some creepy guy in a pink hat that looked like bubbles. He’d have to write home to his mom to check on the Predators website to be sure this guy wasn’t listed on there. He looked like the sort of guy trying to lure young kids into the back of his van with that hat. Marcus wasn’t going to fall for it. He wouldn’t be alone with him until his mom confirmed he was an okay guy.

He followed the rest of the group though the maze (how awesome was it that he had to go through a maze everyday?!) and into their new living quarters. Looking around the place, it was way bigger than his house with his mom! He could get used to living in this place.

After listening to the Head of House tell them all the rules, Marcus turned to the nearest person next to him and whispered, “Seven years in this place ain’t too shabby, right?”

6 Marcus Williams I think I'm gonna like it here... 180 Marcus Williams 0 5

Sara Raines

August 22, 2010 8:02 PM

I hope we both do. by Sara Raines

When Sara got her first good look at her Head of House, she blinked, as though the action could somehow make that awful outfit go away. Plum robes she could accept, but the oddly-designed hat perched on his head was bright pink. It would have offended her eyes even if it hadn't gone so very badly with his clothes.

Since it wasn't polite to comment on what people had on to their faces, though, and she needed him on her side to get anywhere here, Sara forced her expression into one of her small, polite smiles when his eyes fell on her for a moment and then followed him out of the Cascade Hall, not talking much so that she could devote her mind to remembering each thing she passed. She was determined to make it to breakfast in the morning without making a single mistake, more to prove she could than for the sake of appearing perfect, though that did factor in a little too. It was always good to have things further two goals instead of just one, when it was reasonably possible.

She wasn't sure if it was now. Sara could navigate Uncle Charles' house, which was close enough to a maze, but it had taken a long time to learn how. Part of that, of course, was how difficult it had been to slip away from Catherine and Isabel's nanny to explore, but she still had some reservations about whether or not she was good enough at pattern recognition to learn the maze in one go in the dark. Still, it was worth a try.

She had allowed herself to eat dessert during the feast, at least a little to see how Sophia would react, but hearing the password to the Pecari common room made her mouth water just a little. She loved chocolate truffles, though she could only have them as a treat, on holidays. Sweets and meats were bad for her weight, and overindulging in them would only lead to having to go on an even more painful diet and exercise regimen to shed the extra pounds. Trying, therefore, to force the topic out of her mind, she followed her new classmates into the commons and was immediately distracted.

It wasn't Uncle Charles' house, or even her own, but the common room was still very nice. There was something...warm about it, she supposed the word would be, and inviting, though it was still aesthetically pleasing enough to not offend her the way the purple robes and pink hat did. She could see possibility in the room, and while she didn't ever see herself thinking of it as the home Professor McKindy was telling her it should be, she didn't expect to have as poor a time here as she had feared she would after Catherine's descriptions of the beds in Crotalus.

She took a seat when bidden, minding her skirt as she did and perching on the edge of what she sat on. Part of this was a lady not allowing her back to touch the back of a chair in a formal situation, and part of it was that Sara was so small she thought she might not be able to see clearly if she didn't sit up straight.

The rules sounded fairly basic, though some of them were strange. Catherine said there were no parties, here, so why would anyone - much less first years, who weren't really old enough for that sort of thing anyway - need to be out after ten o'clock? Well, there was the library, but unless the check-out limit was very low, then even that shouldn't be too much of a problem. And the secrecy surrounding the House commons was ridiculous, in her mind. Unless there was much more to being a Pecari than she was being told now, then it was making a secret society out of a dorm room, and that made no sense and encouraged peculiar thinking.

After the presentation, Sara didn't have any questions, and expected to listen to any that the others had. Instead, she realized the boy sitting beside her, who had a strange way of using the language, was addressing her instead of the room. "I don't think so," she replied, also in a whisper so as not to disturb anyone getting an answer to a question. "My name is Sara." Somehow, having begun without thinking out of habit, it didn't seem really prudent to add the full 'Raines, of the Illinois Raines'' when they weren't really supposed to be talking.

0 Sara Raines I hope we both do. 179 Sara Raines 0 5

Marcus

August 22, 2010 9:58 PM

This will be a blast! by Marcus

Marcus’s smile grew even wider when the girl agreed with him. This place was so awesome! He wish he had a camera to take pictures of everything so that he could send it to his mother. She would be so excited to see where he was living now. He knew that his mother would have a hard time without him home with her all the time, but she would also be envious over the fact that Marcus now lived in a world of magic. She had been weary of allowing Marcus to come to Sonora and being so far from home, but after learning all that they had from the magical representative and then going to the magical community to obtain the supplies, Marcus’s mother was shoving him out the door the day the wagon would be coming. She wanted him to live a full life, even if it was a life that she couldn’t really join in.

Maybe for Christmas he could ask for a camera and maybe then he could share in this life. Even if it was only on a picture. He could take a photo of the water falls, of the gardens, even of this room. There was just so much to this place that he knew he would forget something and then not be able to tell his mom about it. If he had pictures, then he could remember all the things that he wanted to tell her about. So, that was definitely what he was going to ask for for Christmas. Not the usual sneakers that he always asked for (he had a thing for sneakers and hats). The request might throw his mom off, but she would probably get it for him all the same.

“Hi Sara.” Marcus greeted, “I’m Marcus. Can you believe this place?” He asked her, his hushed voice growing a bit louder from all his excitement. “I never really believed any of this was real. Even after getting all my supplies. But now I’m here. You think stuff like this only existed on the Disney Channel, right?” Marcus replied. It never occurred to him that the other people in his year may have already been apart of the Magical World. He simply took all this in thinking that the others were just like him.

6 Marcus This will be a blast! 180 Marcus 0 5

Sara

August 22, 2010 11:59 PM

The best time ever? by Sara

There was something infectious about the boy - Marcus' - smile, though Sara's return smile, only slightly dimmed by concern over his slight increase in volume, faded into a puzzled expression as he continued past his introduction.

"Why shouldn't it be real?" she asked. "And what is the - Disney Channel? Is that on the wireless? What sort of programs do they play?"

Though she did manage to catch the occasional news program or episode of Magical Me, Sara knew that her parents didn't really approve of wireless programming. There wasn't much material censorship anymore, which allowed wirelesses to act - or so Mother explained it - as a tool of those who would corrupt young people's minds with excessively liberal thinking.

She couldn't tell her mother so, as it would be rude and stepping outside of her place, but Sara personally didn't feel that this theory held much water; reason was reason, and only very small children couldn't tell the difference between something that was well-supported by the facts and something that someone just made up. Hiding from what other people said just meant that it would be harder to make an argument against it, if such an argument was necessary, when confronted by it for the first time in a real-world situation.

The thought led her to a theory of why Marcus might have some difficulty believing that the school was real, but since it was that he could be Muggleborn or Muggle-raised, she hoped very much that it was wrong. She had never met a Muggleborn in the real world any more than she'd argued politics, but she did know people who would object to her doing the first even more than they would the second.

If he was, though, then she had a dilemma. Sara had never been intentionally rude to anyone in her life, and she couldn't see what the harm in continuing to speak civilly to Marcus could be when she'd already started without immediately professing a desire to divest herself of her fortune and work a man's job, but Sophia definitely seemed cold and proper enough to blackmail her with it - or even feel that writing her mother and ruining her life was the right thing to do.

There was nothing for it but to wait for a response.

0 Sara The best time ever? 0 Sara 0 5

Marcus

August 27, 2010 8:36 PM

That's what I'm hoping for! by Marcus

Marcus faltered ever so slightly when Sara replied to him. Okay, so by her first response, Marcus seemed to think that Sara had a little knowledge about magic before they came here. Or maybe she was one of those girls he had known back home who went around in costumes and believed themselves to be princesses, so for her, magic was just another step closer to that crown. Either way, she wasn’t as in awe of it as he was.

It was the response regarding the Disney Channel that had him completely dumbfounded. The Disney Channel was the most popular channel for kids their age. Everyone he knew watched it. Even the guys in his class who said it was dumb and childish secretly watched it when they thought no one was paying any attention. But this girl acted like she had never ever heard of it. He didn’t understand. Even if she was from a magical family or whatever, didn’t they have television? Weren’t they allowed to watch things?

Of course, that got him thinking.

When his mom and him had gone supply shopping, there was nothing modern in any of the shops and they had to use weird money. None of the shops even had registers. Or, at least, not the sort that he saw at the mall or grocery store. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even seen a food mart. Where did the magical go to get their food? And why was this whole school lit by only candles and fireplaces? One small howl from the wind and this whole school would be darkness. He felt like he was taken out of the present and thrust backward in time before electricity was invented but still allowed to wear his modern day clothes.

He liked the idea of magic, but he didn’t like the fact that it secluded him from his other life. Why did it all have to be so secret?

“It’s a channel on the television…” Marcus started, unsure of how to go about talking about something he had been under the assumption everyone had seen and heard of. “I don’t know what wireless you’re talking about. Disney channel plays all different kind of shows. It’s where all the ‘tween’ things or whatever they call them.” He paused after a moment. If she didn’t know the Disney Channel, then she wouldn’t know any of the shows on it. And then it was just pointless to start to name them.

“Any of this making sense or am I sounding completely dumb to you?” Marcus asked, his smile returned though so that Sara was aware he wasn’t taking it into anything more than playful getting to know things sort of conversation.

6 Marcus That's what I'm hoping for! 180 Marcus 0 5

Sara

August 29, 2010 9:06 PM

Me, too! by Sara

As Marcus began trying to explain what he was talking about, the sensation in her chest was so unfamiliar that it took Sara a moment to realize that what she was feeling was a mix of shamed and stupid. Her brown eyes were wide and doll-blank as he only continued to get more confusing.

"No," she said. "To both. You - seem to know words that I don't." She frowned in thought, hoping it would clear the expression of bafflement she could feel on her face. "I - can work out the halves of tele-vision, but it doesn't make sense for programs, and I don't have any idea where 'tween' could come from. What do they mean?"

Having words that she didn't understand, at least when all concerned parties were speaking mostly English, come into play wasn't something Sara was used to. Languages were one of her skills, partially gained by spending so much time in her life traveling. Admittedly, she only dabbled in most of them, not really committing to learning them, but still. It was strange to be the one who didn't know exactly what was going on all the time.

She had always been perfectly confident and secure in being smarter than her cousins and brother. Catherine was good but under-educated, Raines ambitious but a bit poorer than she and disorganized, and Alan was just lazy. Only Isabel provided her with real competition for the intelligence title, and Isabel was five years old. Sara might not be much taller than her, but she was six years older, and so it would be years before comparing them was truly valid. Having someone clearly know things that she didn't - unless he was just making it up to mess with her, but really, why would he do that? She'd done nothing to make him want to be unpleasant to her - was disconcerting.

She decided to take pity on his confusion, to help her own a little. "But the wireless is a device you can hear many entertainment programs on. Some of them are for people our age, and some for adults. There's more news and political coverage and music than dramas, but some of the ones I've heard are quite good." She blushed. "Though I'm not supposed to listen to them. Mother doesn't approve."

0 Sara Me, too! 0 Sara 0 5

Marcus

August 31, 2010 7:20 PM

We should get along just fine. by Marcus

Marcus didn’t know how to read this girl. He felt completely out of his comfort zone while talking to her. The look on her face alone made him feel he had suddenly slipped from speaking English to speaking some alien language. He was already feeling completely out of his element just by being here and Sara wasn’t making him feel any better. Maybe he shouldn’t taken some time out of his summer to read up on the magical world. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t feel like a fish out of water.

He knew words that she didn’t? His vocabulary was decent, but it wasn’t marvelous and certainly not any better than the next person. Sara was a very proper girl and from how she spoke, Marcus could only assume that she had gone to a boarding school with fancy talking nuns with rulers to smack their hands with. His mother always threatened to enroll him in one if she ever caught him following in his father’s footsteps. The father with whom Marcus had no memory of. He had walked out on them when Marcus was three. Hadn’t seen or heard from him since and Marcus and his mother were quite fine with that. His father had made a lot of bad decisions in which Marcus’s mother was still paying for. They were better off without him.

Marcus had to think a moment to figure out how exactly he would explain what a television was. Either this girl was extremely sheltered or he really needed to understand how the people in the magical world worked. “A television, also called T.V., is a screen that transmits moving images and sound. Like a play, but something that is pre-recorded. It’s for entertainment and has a lot of different channels for people with different tastes. Each channel has various programs for us to watch.” Marcus paused to let this information sink in. “It’s how much of the world with resources spend their time.” Marcus shrugged before going forward to answer her second question.

“I’m not really sure where ‘tween’ came from. All I know is that people use it for adolescents who aren’t quite kids anymore but aren’t yet teenagers. So, basically people like us.” Marcus shrugged again. He felt really strange having to explain these terms that were just so everyday for him. Wait until he told his mom he had to explain what a television was! She knock herself right off her feet with such a thing.

He listened to Sara explain what she meant by a wireless. “So, a radio?” Marcus asked, looking a bit confused. Did the magical world just have a different name for things? “Your wireless is like a TV, just without picture.” Marcus commented, incase a wireless wasn’t actually a radio.

6 Marcus We should get along just fine. 180 Marcus 0 5

Sara

August 31, 2010 11:48 PM

Once we learn to communicate effectively. by Sara

Sara bit her tongue against a comment about how she and her circle of acquaintances all had resources and did not spend their time watching tee-vees, deciding instead to think out the information she had just been given. She was dealing - for the first time ever - with someone with a frame of reference radically different from her own, which meant she could learn a great deal if she didn't lose her temper over tiny things and ruin it.

Her temper was, she knew, a great trial to her parents for all that they preferred to call it high spirits and, as such, a potential virtue. A certain level of that was seen as increasingly necessary to be charming, which was, of course, the main point of a young woman's life. Perhaps it was just that wizards were finally becoming intelligent enough to realize that just because a lady did not express independent thoughts or opinions prior to marriage did not mean that she lacked them, making most of the masquerade a little pointless.

"It sounds like...portraits," she said. "Like portraits interacting - or having a play, though I'm not sure if most of them are sentient enough to learn full scripts." Her family was still too new to wealth and privilege to have a great many portraits, so all she really knew was that most gained intelligence and ability to interact with the outside world and remember things they hadn't known while alive as the aged. Whether they could learn a play their original selves hadn't known, though, would have to remain a mystery until she had time - now that she was interested - to look it up, and possibly until she had the academic accomplishments to understand what she read about it. "Only...projected more broadly, like a wireless." She couldn't help a faint smile. "That's fascinating!"

His explanation of 'tween' came together even better. "Oh," she said, pleased, "it's a contraction of 'between.' We're in double digits, now, but we're not yet teenagers." She grimaced faintly. "I never did like that word. 'Teenager.' It just sounds odd."

The sounds of words were one of Sara's irritants, and one that her parents and tutors couldn't completely understand. Things that didn't seem natural were just as bad; she had a fascination with Raines' hair that even she was beginning to suspect was unhealthy. Her own hair was kept neat with charms at almost all times, but it still looked like hair; his looked like a model of hair, or perhaps a very well-carved statue's. She was continually tempted to prod it to see if it would move.

She nodded slowly when he called a wireless something else. Radio. "I think I've heard that word before," she said. "It isn't as common, but..." She spread her hands a little. "Where are you from?"

0 Sara Once we learn to communicate effectively. 0 Sara 0 5

Marcus

September 02, 2010 8:47 PM

If that ever happens. by Marcus

To say that it was a little unnerving that someone would compare a television to a portrait in all seriousness was an understatement. And yet, Marcus couldn’t really blame her. When they had left the waterfall hall and into the corridors, the paintings and portraits were the first things that had caught Marcus’s attention. Mainly because they were moving and the more he watched them, the more he realized that they were interacting. They were like real beings that couldn’t leave the parchment that they were on.

He wondered if they were alive. Like, if the parchment burned, would the figures in the painting feel it? Or is it just some weird spell or enchantment that is on the painting that allowed the figures to move and speak? He wasn’t sure how he felt about all of that. They had art on their walls back at home, but if for some reason they were destroyed, it would mean nothing substantial. They were just canvases. But if these paintings were destroyed, would Marcus hear the occupants scream? Would the burning parchment be the same as burning skin?

It was a little frightening to think about. How many objects that he had previously thought inanimate were really animate in this world and had the same feelings as human beings? His whole would was becoming more and more complicated. He wasn’t sure if he could handle all of this if everyone else just accepted things as they were and never questioned a single moment. A single thing.

Marcus’s head tilted ever so slightly when Sara said she hated the word ‘teenager’. What an odd word to hate. But at least she explained were ‘tween’ came from. He had always thought it was an odd term to pick for describing the age and mentality of a person, but now that she explained it, he guess it did make some sense after all.

He decided not to comment though because he wasn’t really sure how to respond to a person who disliked a common word. But, he took her cue in changing the subject from things they both didn’t know regarding their backgrounds into something more simple. “Western New York. Just outside of Rochester.” Marcus explained. “It’s cold in the winter and hot in the summer, so I’m hoping that the weather here in Arizona is less severe. How about you? Where are you from, Sara?”

6 Marcus If that ever happens. 180 Marcus 0 5

Sara

September 04, 2010 1:55 PM

We seem to be making progress by Sara

Sara had spent some time in New York - everyone did, sooner or later; her own Illinois boasted a more than respectable wizarding population, and some of the California families had been there for over a century, but the East Coast was still the oldest, most developed area - but not enough for Marcus' description to call much to mind even if she had known anything about the Muggle population of anywhere. She nodded nevertheless.

"My family is from Illinois," she said when asked about her own home. "But I don't think we have to worry about the weather. Everything here is maintained by charms." She laughed a little. "The founders were Irish, so while they could see how it was safer to put a place for people who can't defend themselves in the desert, they didn't like it very much. So they made this place more like the one they came from. I think there are seasons, still, but we should usually be comfortable."

Physically, anyway. For the past month, all anyone had done around her was talk of Sonora, and she had gathered that she was in a House for the unruly. Sophia and Marcus both seemed like beings with a reasonable degree of self-control and awareness of acceptable social behavior, but there was still an entire rest of the House to interact with or even be indirectly affected by. Who knew what all those people would be like.

She felt a new wave of gratitude toward Aunt Margaret at the very thought. If her second cousin hadn't initially exposed her to a wider world than that of her nursery at home, she didn't think she would have been able to handle school at all. At home, there were no differences of opinion voiced, no diverse personalities to contend with, no question of what was and wasn't correct. She might think dissentive things, and Mother might, too, but they did not voice them. Spending time in other places, though, had shown her that such uniformity did not extend outside the close-knit circles of her family - or at least, the cynical part of her said, the parts that an eleven-year-old was allowed to see - and their acquaintances.

Sonora was, as she understood it from her family, one of the more traditional schools remaining in the country, and it was largely kept running despite small student groups by donations from purebloods who saw it was an acceptable environment for the socialization of their children, but even it wasn't uniform. Apart from a token international presence, Muggleborns and half-bloods were accepted, and even purebloods from different parts of the country and family groups displayed differences. Sara didn't think it was necessarily a bad thing. She had a feeling that the adult world was much more complicated than her parents willingly let her see, and having to deal with complication here would force them all to learn to adapt and accommodate such things before it really mattered.

0 Sara We seem to be making progress 0 Sara 0 5