Later and Elsewhere (Alicia) on Magical Arts Room and Sports

Thaddeus Pierce II

July 13, 2014 3:00 PM

Later and Elsewhere (Alicia) by Thaddeus Pierce II

Sitting in at the special table in front of all and sundry in the Cascade Hall had clearly not been the right venue for Thaddeus and Alicia to go into detail regarding their future together. However, upon thinking about it, Thaddeus was not quite sure where would be a good place to do so.

The Aladren Common Room, though convenient, had a very high probability of people traversing across it during the course of a lengthy discussion. The Library, though a favorite place for both of them, required quiet and any conversation stood a moderate chance of being overheard. The Labyrinth Gardens was pretty and fairly isolated in parts, but it was still January, and Thaddeus had no desire to subject his future wife to hypothermia. The Cascade Hall was the school's central hub and would never serve as a quiet private place even during non-meal times.

This left, by default, one of the MARS rooms. He chose the water room, as it could be a quiet and private place, and didn't reek of athletic or creative purpose as the Sports, Dance, and Arts rooms did. Plus, he had good memories of himself and Alicia there, and he hoped that and a peaceful lake scene might earn him one or two romantic points, maybe. So he invited Alicia to meet him there and made sure to show up early to set up a nice picnic lunch for them on the shore. It was definitely reminiscent, he would admit, to Alicia's invitation to meet their group of friends there before the Challenges, but as that had the purpose of planning to meet future challenges in solidarity, he thought it might be appropriate.

"Hi," he said, when she arrived, "Welcome." It occurred to him that maybe he should have brought flowers, but it was too late for that now, so he just indicated the blanket beside him and invited, "Join me?"

He'd had a Quidditch practice that morning, so his neatly combed hair was still a bit damp from his post-Pitch shower, and his fresh clothes hadn't had time yet to get wrinkled or mussed, so he though he might look reasonably well dressed for the 'date' even if that hadn't really been on his mind when he prepared for it. Serendipity, he supposed now, glad he had that going for him since he didn't have the flowers.

1 Thaddeus Pierce II Later and Elsewhere (Alicia) 213 Thaddeus Pierce II 1 5

Alicia Bauer

July 14, 2014 2:41 PM

I come bearing lists. by Alicia Bauer

Alicia had always prided herself on being a very controlled, composed sort of person, a woman who never let anyone see her flinch. She did not always live up to that standard, but she thought she was usually closer to it than not, and certainly closer than most people were as a general rule. She knew what needed to be done, or else figured it out very quickly, did it, and then moved on to the next problem, all with a smile on her face.

It had, therefore, surprised her when she looked up from her attempts to address the problem of what to wear on a sort-of date and saw the wreck she had made of her dorm room as she’d gone through nearly every piece of clothing she owned, apparently with no regard for style and season, and every hairstyle she was capable of attempting without the assistance of a hairdresser. All her shoes had been in a heap against the far wall, where she must have either inadvertently Banished them or absent-mindedly thrown them, one after another, in frustration at some point she didn’t really remember. Henny was probably going to think something terrible had happened if she came in before Alicia had a chance to clean up the mess, which was likely enough that she guessed she’d have to break her own keeping-things-quiet policy practically before it even got off the ground.

Finally, she’d decided not to look as though she’d tried too hard: nice blue sweater, normal make-up, unobtrusive except a little more emphasis on her eyes, her hair loose with a bit of a curl to it from the two times she’d braided it. By the time she got to the water room, she was already regretting the monogrammed silver slide pendant around her neck, since it was extremely hard not to play with it from sheer nerves, but she left it on as she put on her smile and opened the door.

“Hi,” she said.

As far as places went, this room wasn’t a bad one. It was actually one of the ones she was going to miss most, as many of her best memories had happened inside it. The water room was a popular venue for parties, picnics, general hanging out ….

It occurred to her that ‘hi’ and ‘welcome’ were redundant, and she wondered for a moment if Thad - Thaddeus Pierce II, Head Boy, Quidditch captain, trained from birth to be master of his situation, and so forth - had the same problem she did: realizing that she knew absolutely nothing about how some things were done.

Cepheus and Theresa, the only couple she spent much time around, seemed to regard almost every time they saw each other as an appropriate time for demonstrating their appreciation of the other’s physical attributes, but they had been together for years and…well, their relationship had never exactly been cerebrally-oriented. It was all about the fact that they were both pretty, young, and rich. They were not a good model for her to follow here. She had decided it was not unreasonable to assume, when all the evidence was considered, that her future husband was attracted to her, but he had only decided to marry her because he had been able to convince himself she was also a useful asset – that what he could win with her would be more valuable than what a girl with a less messy background could just hand him from the very beginning. Just taking the list she had made out right away would help prove that, but wasn’t very…well, it was from affection, by her standards, but most people wouldn’t recognize it as such….

“Of course,” she said and joined him. “This is very nice,” she complimented the picnic with a smile, then took out her list. “So. Um. I wrote down a few topics I think we need to consider and, um, plan for first…you know me and my lists,” she joked. “Whenever you have the time, it would be great if I could get some descriptions of your family - what they're like, who gets along with who, who doesn't, what your cousin's weaknesses are, that sort of thing." Cousin Wesley was going to get a nasty shock if he thought her...background issues meant she was going to be stupid, or even just so grateful to be included that she kept her head down forever. If they had decades at their disposal and still couldn't manage to push him out of the heir ranks, then he deserved his place, but she fully intended to push him out. "But RATS, next year, and university seem like the most…pressing issues. What do you think?”

She was proud of herself for getting through that speech and annoyed with herself for being proud. It was not...well, all right, the rest of her presumably very long life was a big deal, but...for Merlin's sake, it was not as if she was some idiot romantic. She was...well, she didn't even know at this point, but she was sure it wasn't an idiot romantic.

16 Alicia Bauer I come bearing lists. 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5

Thad Pierce

July 18, 2014 2:31 PM

Who doesn't like lists? by Thad Pierce

Thaddeus struggled with the best way to express his pleasure at seeing Alicia and compliment her appearance while simultaneously sounding genuine, not overdoing it, avoiding accidental insult by unintentionally implying looks mattered more than brains, and steering clear of trite phrases. Before he managed it (which probably would have taken far longer than was polite to formulate such a remark), Alicia was talking and getting right to the point. He breathed a silent sigh of relief at this deliverance, but mentally promised her he'd come up with a variety of such 'spontaneous' compliments for future use.

He should have anticipated that she'd want a study guide of his relatives and felt momentarily guilty for not having it already available for her. Then he decided that there hadn't really been time yet to do a proper write-up since the Returning Feast, so he forgave himself for the oversight. Plus, as she said, there were more immediate and pressing issues that could not be as safely put aside.

"Yes," he agreed, "I absolutely agree, but I will definitely get you a Pierce study guide well before you have to meet any of them. The short version is that my grandmother Druscella is our Matriarch - which in itself says something about us - and she is fairly unaligned to any factions among the rest of us. Her eldest son, Derwent Two, is her heir, and he has currently named his brother Marcus as his. This skips my father who is older than Marcus, but younger than Derwent. Wesley is Marcus's son and heir, though that skips his older brother, Duesius, who is not as stupid as he seems at first.

"Ideally," he concluded, "the best way to reclaim our spot in the heirship ranks is to convince Druscella to skip over Derwent who is the nominal leader - due to birth order rather than zeal; if he had any leadership ambition of his own, he'd be Patriarch already - of the Traditional Pierces and instead name my Dad, who is the ringleader of the Rational Pierces. Basically, the two groups boil down to those who want us to follow old fashioned pureblood ideals and ultimately want Wesley to inherit, and those who want the Pierces to be respectable but not societal dinosaurs harping on stupid things like blood superiority and gender inequality that are not backed by any evidence but ego."

He paused for a moment, regaining his calm, which had slipped a little towards the end there. "That, of course, isn't widely known outside of the family, as the traditionalists still have the upper hand in public policy and we all agree on provided a united front to the rest of the world. I probably don't have to specify this, but the Pierces in the rationalist group are the ones pushing for me to ultimately inherit over Wesley. They include my parents, usually the Anns' father Malcolm but never their mother Bettina, sometimes Duesius, as well as, presumably, us and the Anns themselves once they reach adulthood."

"I'll write all that out in the overview for your study guide, too," he added, in case even the 'short version' was a little too much to digest all at once.

"As for the immediate future, I was leaning toward staying for the summer and taking the RATS closed book in August. I missed the early application deadlines for universities with the mess last term, so I figured I'd take next year off for personal study and travel. What were you thinking of doing? My plans are open to negotiation if you have other ideas."

1 Thad Pierce Who doesn't like lists? 213 Thad Pierce 0 5

Alicia

July 20, 2014 12:45 PM

Disorganized people? by Alicia

Alicia listened to the recitation about the Pierces more or less impassively, hiding her thoughts on what she was hearing as much as she could, nodding a few times as she took in information. With all these divisions in the middle generation and elder sons skipped over in both, she thought she might have something to work with.

If, of course, Thad’s father didn’t hate her for catalyzing the situation, no matter how determined she was to either get everything which had been lost and more back for them or else burn the mountain or the relevant parts of the country, as applicable, to the ground in the attempt. Thesius Pierce hating her…could be a problem. On so many different levels. A surmountable problem – any problem could be solved, though whether or not it would be depended entirely on how far the person who had it was ultimately willing to go – but a big one, one that could wreck pretty much everything. The advantage of Thad coming from a loving immediate family was that his parents liked him enough to tolerate her, but the downside was that he loved them, too, and not just her. Complications would ensure if they didn't, couldn't, come to care for her, too.

She had to quickly suppress a smile, though, when Thad declared most of the cherished traditions of his non-immediate forefathers idiotic. For a crazy moment, though, she wanted to ask what, then, he meant by being respectable (surely, logical as he was, it would take only a minute for him to realize that the word essentially meant nothing, as she already had; it was all about who had power and who had the spine to challenge them, not any demonstrable facts) or even how, exactly, he planned to handle maintaining the official family position on the inevitable day when it meant agreeing with someone that she was categorically inferior to the speaker even though that speaker had the functioning intelligence into a potato. She could handle it if he did have to do that, that was just life, but she would like to know.

The specific examples used to illustrate the stupidity of the Traditional Pierces were on point enough to make her want to attempt a spontaneous declaration of love, though, so she saved her arguments for a more appropriate time and just patted his shoulder, hopefully soothingly, instead before dropping her hand, simultaneously pleased and embarrassed by his outburst. What he'd said was, after all, exactly what she'd wanted to hear even if there were problems with it. If he believed it, then he might well agree with the position she had finally had to take – that ‘purity’ was a stupid term, that many of the ideas about intelligence and magical power associated with it were even stupider or, as he’d put it, driven by ego, and that the real issue was with whether or not Muggleborns were trustworthy, which was not the same thing at all – and, more importantly from her perspective, might not have searched for vats of boiling bleach to immerse his hands in after the very few occasions in the past seven years when she'd had little choice but to touch them instead of his sleeve, generally while dancing. She had been worried about that, since she was positive it was possible to value someone immensely in some ways and still be completely disgusted by them in others, or even disgusted by the valued traits, which would really be nice....

“More or less the same thing,” she said of her plans for the next year. “I thought I’d go to Rome – I have to see it sometime, I’ve been studying Latin since I was seven – maybe make Ceph show me around France….” She shrugged. “I’d like to take my RATS on time without notes, just to make a point, but they probably wouldn’t bother writing down that I had done it and everyone would think I needed notes to pass,” she added, annoyance clear in her voice.

Then she shrugged at the world and added, “I haven’t decided where to go afterward yet, exactly, or much about…from there.” She looked at him. “Thinking about the bigger picture could be useful in deciding what to study. It’s still all open-ended now, but…what do you think you’ll want to do with sixty or seventy years of your life?” she asked. “Once school’s over, and your family’s in order and all of that’s taken care of, and we can do…well, almost anything we feel like, what do you want?”

16 Alicia Disorganized people? 210 Alicia 0 5

Thad Pierce

July 20, 2014 8:04 PM

Do they dislike them, or just not use them? by Thad Pierce

Thaddeus nodded, pleased that the rough outlines of their immediate plans seemed compatible. He'd had no particular destination in mind for his travelling, so Rome was as good a place as any other. If they were over there for a good part of next year, it would be easy make it a general tour of Europe and drop in on Cepheus in France as well.

As for the RATS, he also wanted people to know he'd done it without notes, which was at least part of the reason he wanted to wait until August. He probably could take it that way at the normal time, but he did appreciate the extra months of preparation after last term and intended to make the most of them. He wanted to do as well as he possibly could, didn't want any mistakes blamed on the events of last fall.

"I would like to attend university, of course, but I haven't narrowed it down to which one. Potions is my favorite subject here, so I may want to major in that, though I should probably go somewhere that I can take business and/or politics courses as well, just so I have that kind of background when dealing with the Pierce assets. I haven't really thought much beyond that. My goals were always Go To Sonora, Go To College, Become Patriarch Eventually. But, frankly, the things Derwent and Wesley do on a daily basis look mind-numbing, dull and tedious. My parents do a variety of independent research projects together, mostly contract work, which sounds far more interesting. They'll probably retire soon, so I could take over that . . . Or maybe start up a potion laboratory in one of the spare rooms . . . I don't know." It was such a daunting prospect - planning the specifics of the rest of his life. He turned the question back to Alicia, "What do you want to do with the next seventy or so years of your life?" Their two answers would have to depend upon each other to some degree, at least, even if they weren't professional as well as personal partners like his parents were.

1 Thad Pierce Do they dislike them, or just not use them? 213 Thad Pierce 0 5

Alicia Bauer

July 21, 2014 6:08 PM

It probably varies from case to case. by Alicia Bauer

Thad had, by the sounds of it, the basics of a few workable plans. Nothing too dramatic, nothing they would be famous for, most likely, outside of very specific circles once they were dead, but solid stuff, stuff one could make a good life from.

Her question came back to her and she took a moment to shift the way she was sitting, turning her legs the other way behind her, to give herself a moment to stall. “I guess I haven’t decided yet,” she admitted finally. “I was considering some plans, but they, um, didn't account for having someone else in the picture with me. It's a good thing, it just changes things. I’d like to study transfiguration theory, carry on somehow with Classics, but I need to examine some angles a little more to decide that for sure. It’s better to not enjoy university quite as much as I might have than to not be able to take advantage of the opportunities that’ll be there after it.” As long as the traditional faction held sway, she would have to avoid drawing attention to herself – not really a problem, since she actually operated better from behind a plan than in front of it, but irritating just the same – and so there were advantages and disadvantages to everything. A strong background in Charms and Defense would open up the most doors, she thought, but Defense in particular might raise some eyebrows on paper…maybe a minor. It was worth more thought, now that she had someone to worry about besides herself.

“A few business classes wouldn't be a bad idea in any case, though," she said, steering the subject back to him. “Even if you concentrate on Potions, there's a business side to everything, it wouldn't be bad for us to understand how it all works. I might add some of that, too.” She twisted a lock of her hair around one of her fingers. "Maybe we can split the worst of the mind-numbing stuff so we can both stay involved in things we find more interesting." She didn't know if she found keeping books extremely dull or not, but even if she did, she'd put up with it if she had to because his uncles' faction having power over them for the rest of their lives did not sound like a situation which would end well for her. She would rather be powerful and bored than stuck under the power of someone who could mock her at will for the rest of her life, something she'd gotten quite enough of from her stepfather and step-grandmother already. Sometimes, sacrifices had to be made for the sake of the bigger picture.

16 Alicia Bauer It probably varies from case to case. 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5