(OOC- This is on the first day of classes coming back from break...)
Genevieve entered the Cascade Hall and proceeded to the front staff table, red curls bouncing lightly about her shoulders as she walked. The new Muggle Studies professor took her seat at the head table, the daily breakfast offerings from the mansion's kitchens making themselves available as usual. She sighed, thinking about her first classes that were later on in the day. A complacent look settled on the 26-year-old's pale face as she ladled an adequate amount of grits onto her plate. To the general observer, the 5'6" young woman looked as if she could have been nothing more than an older student, but to one who really knew her, Viv always appeared youthful yet experienced. Her light hazel green eyes complimented her auburn locks quite well, adding another attribute to her pretty figure.
Looks ran in her family, however, as her older sister Kaitlin and younger brothers Travis, Rory, and Jeremiah all possessed the redheaded light-eyed Irish look. Their father's family was Irish, and he was the heir to the entire Williams Family Fortune. However, the fact that the Williams children's mother was a muggleborn never settled well with their father's family. After Genevieve's parents divorced, however, her father and their family inherited the wealth and status her father was entitled to. Needless to say, Viv was affluent, and her sharp looking cobalt-black silk robes lent that impression to any who saw her.
A flutter of wings interrupted her thoughts as a brown owl settled on the staff table infront of her. She sighed, paying The Daily Prophet newsowl as she began reading the front page. Despite being born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Viv still subscribed to the British paper just to keep in touch with international news. She flipped through the first few pages of newsprint, glancing casually at the headlines. Nothing seemed to be strikingly interesting that morning, and so Genevieve folded the paper back up, and continued to eat her breakfast. It was the first morning of real school, but she had been at Sonora for a good week beforehand just to get a feel for the rest of the faculty, the way the houses were divided, and the school grounds. Genevieve looked out across the Cascade Hall, observing the students talking, laughing, and catching up with one another from the break. With a smile, she turned to the nearest faculty member.
"Well, it seems like a pleasant morning," Viv's grin widened, "At least the Pecaris are calmer than expected." \n\n
Thank Merlin classes are starting again. That was the first thought to go through Selina's head as she tried to instill a certain measure of dignity into sitting down at the staff table in front of the newly refilled Cascade Hall. It was the same thought she'd had after every Christmas holiday she'd been affiliated with any school, and some habits were harder than others to break. She'd run out of papers to grade fairly quickly, leaving her with no further excuses for not answering the stack of letters from both her immediate and extended family minus Edwin. Answering mail had never been one of her strengths, but she'd gotten so bad in the past few years that Viva had taken to adding a postscript informing her that two sentences and a signature did not qualify as a letter to every missive she sent.
It would be good to have something more constructive to do than read through an endless pile of letters that all said basically the same thing. There had been a few high points, but things changed slowly when they changed at all in her family, and it never occurred to anyone that the gossip they thought to relay to another relative had very likely already been picked over and passed along by four other kinsmen. Selina was more than ready to get back to work, even if part of her job was putting out fires and putting rich brats in their places. That she was five minutes late for breakfast showed that she had been at the brink of vegetation.
She was munching absent-mindedly on French toast while going over her lesson plans for the day when the woman next to her received a paper. The other teacher - at least, Selina assumed she was a teacher - didn't look at it long, but Selina still felt her shoulders tense slightly. One of the more...interesting, for lack of a better word...bits in the letters had been that the son of some old political rival of her father's had been sent to prison for plotting to have Richard and Edwin Marlowe assassinated. She hadn't spoken to Edwin civilly for almost ten years, and relations with their father had been strained ever since the falling-out, but she certainly didn't like the thought of either of them being six feet under. At the end of the day, they were still her father and brother.
Someone would tell me if they were dead. Lionel or Genevieve would, even if the others were willing to let me find out from a newspaper or the like. Besides, the fellow's not going to be assassinating anyone for a while, if Eve and Lindy are right. The matter at hand was ensuring that there was less chance that anyone would blow anything up than there had been the last time she drew up a supposedly fail-safe lesson plan. She still thought she was fairly lucky not to have been fired, somewhere between that Pecari girl making such a scene and the St.Martin girl catching on fire. Of course, the number of times her job had changed hands in recent years could have had something to do with it...
She was jerked out of her plans when the smiling, red-haired professor next to her spoke. Selina blinked distractedly, dropping her toast and sending a shower of crumbs down the front of her dark blue robes. She brushed them aside distractedly as the comment registered. "Any time the Pecaris are calm is a blessing," she said. "Lovely day. Hopefully, the break did this lot - " she waved a hand in the general direction of the students - "some good. People get tired around midterm..." She blinked again, feeling every inch the antisocial Ravenclaw. The woman didn't look familiar... "Er - no offense, but who are you?" \n\n
Genevieve felt herself heat up to a shade of red as embarassment registered in her mind. She had thought that she had met all of the staff earlier during the midterm, but the idea that some of them might not have met her had never crossed her mind. Viv was a social person, and with four siblings, with whom she almost always got along, she was fairly comfortable in social situations. Yet her pale skin still radiated crimson to rival her hair color as she realized her mistake. She smiled faintly, however, and tried to rectify the situation.
"I'm terribly sorry, I'm Genevieve Williams, the new Muggle Studies professor. I can't believe we didn't meet earlier."
Smooth, she could just hear her mother saying, Your first day here and already you're making mistakes. Maybe you weren't cut out for teaching. And as a Muggles Studies professor! What is this Gen? You're not a teacher, and besides, you just took this job as a cop-out. I know you didn't want to be a healer, but did you have to pick teaching? Viv mentally shook off the thoughts and tried to continue normal conversation with the other professor, whose name she still didn't know.
"I'm new around here, I'm afraid. I just got settled in over midterm, and my first class is today, and," Genevieve laughed to herself, "I'm a little nervous." \n\n
Selina winced instinctively when the other professor blushed. Yep, she'd put her foot in it, all right. She could almost hear the comments Viva would make if she were privy to this little conversation...There were other reasons besides disliking the idea of losing her independence that Selina had declined her father's offer to arrange her a pureblooded marriage by passing her off as an orphaned cousin, and one of them was definitely her lack of social skills. Being the eldest of six had a way of making it easier to play boss than meeting someone on equal ground.
She was sufficiently caught off-guard when the other introduced herself that she didn't think to respond until the new professor had already moved on with the conversation. Viva would probably be amused, both at the coincidence and what must have been a very blank look on her half-sister's face. She gave her head an almost inperceptible shake and covered it by nodding agreeably. "It's always like that. Just started at the beginning of this year myself, and I thought I was going to faint right in front of them all. Matters weren't helped when one girl set her identical twin on fire. Selina Marlowe, Transfiguration." Obligatory introduction over. She'd never quite gotten to like introducing herself.
"The kids here aren't too bad," she said. "Most of the worst ones probably won't take your class. There's supposed to be a crowd of pureblood snots in the second year, but they seem to be keeping their heads down this year. At least, the only bit of that sort of trouble I've had was from a first year." Rambling was always fun. Looking around for a distraction, her eyes lighted on Genevieve's discarded paper. It was the Prophet.
"Has the Ministry done anything too out of line recently?" She knew more than she'd ever wanted to or had need for about International Magical Cooperation, but the other departments weren't something her father liked to chat at dinner about on the rare occasions he could convince Selina and Cordelia to sit at the same table. The last non-Continental, non-American gossip she'd really heard had been Melinda's claim that Edwin tried to run for the Wizengamot and was beaten spectacularly. Served the prat right. \n\n