Thad Pierce
September 10, 2012 9:52 AM
Can I unlearn this? by Thad Pierce
After the concert was over and Thaddeus had apperated back to the mountain with his father, uncle, and mother, he had found himself in Grandmother's house. She had soon joined them, and so did Hamlet. That had been what tipped Thad off to the fact that this wasn't just a welcome home meeting or merely a convenient central location for arrival. Hamlet liked to be present for momentous events in the family but kept mostly to the Heir's House otherwise. Thad was not so important in the family yet that coming home from Sonora marked a momentous occassion.He had tried not to look nervous as Father directed him to the formal table in Grandmother's dining room and they all sat down around it. He was thirteen and easily the youngest in the room by about six decades. It was a little terrifying, even knowing he had done nothing wrong and that both of his parents loved him. There, at Grandmother's table, even Mother and Father had looked solemn.
"You will be coming of age soon, Thaddeus," Father had begun. "We must begin to think of your future. Have you met any proper young ladies at your school that you would prefer as your first choice to open bretrothal negotiations with her family?"
Thaddeus had, of course, known this conversation was coming. He honestly hadn't expected it right then, but he was prepared for the question.
"Miss Alicia Bauer," he had answered without hesitation. "She is the finest example if good breeding of the Aladren girls in my year." In truth, this was not saying a lot, but Alicia's manners had always been impeccable. "She is clever and can intelligently converse on a variety of topics. I enjoy spending time with her, and if I don't get prefect, I think she will." Whereas some people might have thought this might make them rivals, Thaddeus merely saw it as proof that the two of them would make a formidable pair if their families approved of the match.
"Alicia Bauer," Uncle Derwent repeated quietly, writing onto a scroll.
"Yes," Thaddeus agreed, "Her sister, Rachel, was Head Girl this past year, and her cousin, Samuel, will be Head Boy next year. The Bauers seem quite prominent."
Uncle Derwent had made a humming sound and made more markings on his scroll. "We will look into this," he promised and that had been that. Thad hadn't heard anything more about it all summer. By the time he had Feasted with Alicia, Kitty, and the first year, he had almost forgotten about it and he had only once had to bite back a question asking Alicia if she knew whether or not their families were in communication.
Now a week into term, he was seated in the Aladren Commonroom, working on the Charms essay, when an owl flew in through the open window. Thad's heart clenched momentaily in excitement and terror as he recognized Derwent the Second's owl that had taken over most of old Jezzie's deliveries now that Grandmother's owl had moved beyond old age for her species and entered into Too Evil To Die territory. (Mother assured him Jezzie was suffering terrible aches and pains due to her advanced age and that was why she snapped at people but Thad still couldn't shake the feeling that she just liked to eat human fingers.)
Taking a moment to be grateful Jezzie wasn't strong enough to make the trip out to Sonora anymore, Thad gave Derwent's owl a generously sized treat and detatched the letter addressed to him. He recongized Two's handwriting and nervously opened the letter. His hands shook a little, so he ripped the envelope more than he meant to, but he got the letter out in one piece.
He read it once and then he read it again, slower. Then he sat back in his chair, not really sure what to think or how to react. His eye fell on the owl again and he said, perhaps a little to curtly since it was hardly the owl's fault it had not delivered the news Thad hoped for, "No reply, go."
He tried to figure out what he was feeling, but all he could really pin down was that he really would have been much happier if he had not read the letter and did not know that Alicia's grandfather was a muggleborn and that Derwent and Druscella thought he could find a better match.
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Thad Pierce
Can I unlearn this?
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Thad Pierce
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Alicia Bauer
September 12, 2012 1:23 AM
'Where there's a will, there's a way' is my motto. by Alicia Bauer
Alicia had, in the end, agreed to join Henny’s book club for three reasons. The first was that though she neither liked nor disliked her roommate – a strange feeling, but she had it toward all of her roommates; they barely registered in her mind when she wasn’t right in front of them, and it wasn’t even like Kate, since she could bother to find her sister distasteful when something reminded her that her second sibling did, in fact, exist – it was only prudent, in her opinion, to remain cordial, in case she ever needed a small favor, or to project a certain image to outsiders. The second was that Thad had wanted to. The third, and least important of the lot, was that some tiny part of her thought that maybe, just maybe, the club meetings could actually be stimulating, enjoyable social occaions, at least every once in a while. It wasn’t likely, not when the general population had been invited as well and Henny had her politics, Merlin knew that and he was dead, but she supposed hope really was the last thing to die, even for her.It was close enough to done for, though, at least where this particular matter was concerned, for her not to consider the club an answer to the literary needs of herself and her friends. For that, Alicia was still going to rely first and foremost on herself. It was a challenge, but she didn’t mind it much, especially since it was early enough in the term that she still had books in reserve from the summer and since she always gained something from it. Some of the things she read for Thad, either to keep up with him or in an attempt to find something he hadn’t read so she could recommend it, were dry as dust, but they were informative, and she had always believed that knowledge was power.
The book she had just decided on, she had decided, fell somewhere between the two. A lengthy analysis of samples of fluxweed from different regions and how the subtle differences between them affected some potions wasn’t the most enthralling thing she had ever read, but it wasn’t the worst, either – whoever had written it could actually write, in her opinion, and the font wasn’t so wonky that it made the book impossible, either – and she thought it was the kind of thing her friend might like. Finding it in her trunk at last, she read the title and author information and re-memorized it before she checked her appearance in the mirror and then went downstairs to start looking for him.
Alicia had expected to have to comb the library for him, but instead found him already in the common room, which made her smile. She loved it when things just worked out without any effort. The harder something was, the easier it usually was, at the end, to wonder if it had been worth it; that wouldn’t have applied here, she was sure, but it was still nice not to have to wander.
“Hey,” she said, approaching him. “Is it too early in the year to start book recommendations?” She noticed then that he had a letter with him. “Oh, sorry,” she said, her smile turning slightly embarrassed as she realized she might have interrupted super-secret Pierce goings-on….or possibly just an embarrassingly mushy letter from his mother, if mothers who had an ounce better taste and more sincerity than hers had ever did actually write those. ”I guess you’ve already got something right now.”
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Alicia Bauer
'Where there's a will, there's a way' is my motto.
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Alicia Bauer
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Thad Pierce
September 15, 2012 1:33 PM
My will is conflicted by Thad Pierce
Thad wasn't sure he was entirely ready to see Alicia right now in the wake of the letter's contents, but his opinion on the matter was not consulted before she came down the stairs from the girls' dorms and joined him. She immediately began talking about book recommendations, which was a welcome distraction until she noticed the letter still in his hand and cut herself off in favor drawing attention back to it.He grimaced a little, lifting the parchment a few inches before letting it fall back into his lap. "I would rather read whatever you were about to recommend," he responded honestly. "My uncle has delivered some bad news." He folded the paper along its creases so she could not read the given bad news if she drew near enough to do so. There was little sense in telling her he had tried to start betrothal negotiations between them if it wasn't to be.
Unacceptable grandfather or not, he still thought they would have made a very good pair and it wasn't at all fair.
For just one terrible moment, he was struck by the destructive urge to ask if she had known - surely, she must have known; grandfathers were people most people knew - and why she had lied and deceived him, let him think they had a future together, but he quelled it. He certainly did not go about telling people that the Quidditch Coach was his biological sister, so he couldn't even blame her for it. He felt he was on good authority to assume that if their places had been switched, he would have done the same thing she had.
Unfortunately, though Alicia was not to blame, it did not change the fact that she would not be accepted into the family short of a serious catastrophe or scandal that resulted in New Hampshire Pierces truly not being able to do better than a muggleborn's granddaughter.
Which, in truth, might not be an entirely impossible thing to arrange, but he was less than certain that Alicia herself would be interested in them any longer if that did come to pass. It was best not to consider it.
"What book do you have?"
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Thad Pierce
My will is conflicted
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Thad Pierce
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Alicia
September 19, 2012 3:40 PM
That's why you should always follow my lead. by Alicia
Alicia’s smile vanished when Thad said his uncle had just written with bad news, to be replaced with a look of genuine concern. “Oh, no,” she said, sitting down beside him as he folded the letter up, blocking any view she might have gotten of it. A different sort of concern flared up beneath the surface – she didn’t like the feeling of not knowing, no matter what the circumstances were, even if it was his private family business, though it was a much easier feeling to cope with in circumstances like this – but she ignored it in favor of worrying about her friend. His parents were sort of…old, but she really doubted he’d be this composed about it if one of them had died. “I’m sorry.”Privately, of course, she would be pleased for him if his grandmother was dead – she had long since decided that his uncle, the man who’d had so little control over his own household that his wife and both their sons had eventually been cast out and whose mother, who wasn’t even really a Pierce, had managed to become matriarch of his family, must be a broken, stupid old weakling, someone it would be easy for Thad to walk over someday so he didn’t have to wait until he was too old to enjoy it to have a bit of power – but Alicia knew better than to say that, at least now, before he had time to think about it. It was politically incorrect. She had been…six or seven, she thought, when she first realized that she was uncomfortable saying I love you, too to placate her parents when they claimed to love her; she guessed she had been nine when she realized why, and in the same incident realized that she must never, ever let them know how she really felt again, because it was incorrect.
As far as she could tell, people just assumed the family members would love each other by default, regardless of whether or not they actually had a single concrete reason to do so. They had told her she loved her half-brother when he was born; when she had asked why, Emily Douglas had looked confused and just said he was her brother, as though that should be explanation enough. Only Alicia disagreed. Why should she love Isaac? Or, for that matter, her parents? Her mother was an idiot, and her father was the reason she had to lie all the time. She didn’t love them; at best, she tolerated them, and at worst, she had to bite the inside of her mouth until she drew blood to keep from telling them how she despised them. But she wasn’t supposed to feel that way, and she suspected her mother would throw her in the loony bin if she knew about it, so she lied about that along with everything else, even here, with other Aladrens, other people who looked at the world logically instead of emotionally….
Not that she was all logic herself, of course. If Thad died, Alicia was very sure she would cry because she couldn’t stop herself, not because crying was expected from her, the way she thought she and her family all would over each other’s bones, or just because he’d been a good ally she was sorry to lose. She felt happy around him, something she couldn’t say she had ever felt around more than three other people, or as much around even them, and like the feeling was at least partially reciprocated sometimes. She couldn't even think too much about losing that.
“Fluxweed: An Analysis of Geographical Influences on Potion-Making,” Alicia said when he asked about the book. “Wilhelm Meander…It’s all about how he thinks which part of the country a potion ingredient comes from has an impact on how well it works in some potions. I took about five pages of notes over it, so there should be plenty we can discuss if you read it and that should take your mind right off things, if it doesn’t just work itself out before then.”
Having the feeling that he really was upset, she put her hand over his – well, really more his wrist, since she started to chicken out at the last second – just long enough to give it a hopefully comforting squeeze. She wasn’t normally a very touchy-feely kind of girl, but that was more by necessity than choice, and when she thought of him as being much cleaner than the likes of Sam and the trash that had fathered her, it wasn’t only blood she was thinking of. He was sure to wash his hands sometime reasonably soon.
“And if not, my birthday is next weekend, so I’ll talk about any hair care products I get until your brain goes numb,” she added teasingly. "Nothing will seem too bad after that."
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Alicia
That's why you should always follow my lead.
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Alicia
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