Hoping not to pull a Georgia on Sonora Lounges

Daniel Nash

March 28, 2018 11:49 AM

Staff Meeting: Accidental Magic Epidemic by Daniel Nash

During his lunch break, Daniel had owled both Headmaster Brockert and Deputy Headmistress Skies, informing them that he had come up with a new theory on the discipline problems that had been rampant this year, and that he would like to discuss it with them that evening.

The owl he got in return was an invitation to a full out staff meeting that evening, which gave him a mild panic attack at first, but the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. He felt confident enough in his conclusions that he didn’t feel like the additional audience offered anything but more opportunities to prove them right.

While he tended to be a stickler for exact punctuality as being early was a waste of his time and being late was a waste of everyone else’s time, he did arrive early tonight. This was in part because he was already staying past when he normally left the school grounds for the night and he therefore had nothing better to do, and in part because he was expecting to need to make as speech and it helped him to mentally prepare to run through it in the same space where he would make it.

Sure enough, once Selina started things off, she soon turned the floor over to Daniel to make his case and explain his theories. “Headmaster, Deputy Headmistress, fellow staff” he greeted, erring on the side of formality since he’d had the gall to request a meeting that hadn’t been on any of their schedules at the beginning of the day, and he hoped the extra measure of respect would ease any resentment they might have on the imposition on their time by a junior staff person who wasn’t even supposed to be permanent.

“I wanted to bring something to your attention as it seems relevant to some of the problems we have been experiencing this year. I think what we have been attributing to a small band of pranksters is something actually much more serious. I think we have an epidemic of accidental magic on our hands, and it’s not just affecting the students.” He gave a pointed look at the staff room wall that had temporarily been replaced with a hot spring. He wasn’t too surprised when Nathan Xavier shifted guiltily at that (he hadn’t known who exactly had done that bit of renovation, but he’d been pretty sure it wasn’t a student).

“This weekend, I turned my sister’s television into a bookcase by accident,” he finished, figuring this was pretty solid proof in and of itself that something unusual was happening to them. “Mr. Xavier, were you responsible for accidentally making the hot spring in here?”

“Erm, maybe?” the Herbology professor admitted uncomfortably, obviously hating the attention and the implication of his own lack of magical control.

“It’s not your fault,” Daniel told him. “I theorize we have something at Sonora that is affecting us and causing accidental magic outbursts. I spent some time in the library today, and found there is a flea like creature that can cause this kind of effect. It’s not native to Arizona but someone might have tracked one in somehow. Or there are several curses and potions that can cause a lack of magical control. I don’t think it’s the potion unless we are deliberately being poisoned, which seems unlikely, but some particularly advanced curses can be contagious under the right circumstances.”

Daniel (intentionally) conjured up a small blackboard and began writing names. “These are the people I am pretty sure have been affected.” He wrote ‘Jozua Sparks’ and underlined the name twice. “He’s the first one to display symptoms so far as I know. He flat out told me his magic was out of control. That was initially attributed to hormones and lack of focus, but in retrospect, I don’t think that was the case.”

He added Nathaniel Mordue’s name under Jozua’s and explained, “he accidentally sucker punched another student with magic during the dueling unit, without casting any kind of spell other than the nasal mucus curse he was supposed to be using, which should not have been harmful.” He continued with Nathan Xavier’s name, saying, “the hot spring,” and finally completed this list with his own Daniel Nash. “I transfigured a television, and my eggs cooked themselves for me today. There is nobody else I can blame that on. I was the only one in my apartment. I didn’t do it consciously, and I’m a fully trained adult wizard, not a untrained child or a hormonal teenager. I was running marginally late, but not enough to cause the kind of anxiety that might trigger an accidental magic event in children, nevermind an adult. There is something more going on here.”

He looked around the staff table, chalk at the ready, certain this wasn’t the end of it. “Does anyone know anybody else who has done something that is best explained by accidental magic? And do we know of anything linking these people together?”

1 Daniel Nash Staff Meeting: Accidental Magic Epidemic 130 Daniel Nash 1 5

Nathan Xavier

March 28, 2018 12:27 PM

Hoping not to pull a Georgia by Nathan Xavier

Nathan sighed as he got another owl about an emergency staff meeting. The last one went so well. At least this one wasn’t so urgent that he had to immediately leave the students he was currently in charge of. That was probably a good sign.

Later, though, when Daniel Nash pointedly looked at where the hot spring had been, he shifted nervously and began to suspect he wasn’t going to like this one much either. Yep. Called out. “Erm, maybe?” he admitted, squirming under the eyes of his fellow staff members for basically claiming responsibility for the sabotage in the staff lounge. He wanted to insist he hadn’t done it on purpose but Daniel’s phrasing made that redundant. And the sooner they stopped talking about this, the happier he’d be.

Daniel did move on, and the fact that Nathan’s name was plastered third on the list of troublemakers was at least mildly mitigated by the fact the Daniel added his own to it as well.

He didn’t really want to implicate anybody else, especially if it meant drawing attention to himself again, but this was an important discussion and the staff needed to know what he did. Without anybody writing or saying anything, more information was added to Daniel’s chalkboard: Georgia Kirkly (went invisible), Zevalyn Ives (heated the classroom).

Well, there. Nathan slouched down further in his seat, feeling no further need to add anything. He supposed he could still bring up Joe’s rudely talking teacup, but as he had no clear indication of who was actually responsible for that, he decided it wasn’t very helpful.

1 Nathan Xavier Hoping not to pull a Georgia 28 Nathan Xavier 0 5

Grayson Wright

March 28, 2018 3:06 PM

Adding to the list. by Grayson Wright

When Gray had woken up, it had taken him a few moments to realize that he felt worse than he usually did in the morning, not least because of how terrible he generally felt in the morning. He was not built for mornings - he thought it was a characteristic intrinsic to being a degenerate writer - and he could never remember which bit of the dresser he’d put his glasses on and looking for his glasses was complicated by the fact that he wasn’t wearing them while he looked for them and therefore couldn’t see much, much less a pair of thin, not-shiny wires surrounding some small panes of glass. More than once, he had contemplated getting huge, shiny-framed glasses just to make mornings easier, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to look that stupid in public on purpose.

Once he found his glasses, though, things usually improved. Not so today. Breakfast had failed to appeal, and all day, the only thought on his mind had been going to bed. This was why he was not best pleased to hear that they were having a surprise staff meeting, and at Daniel’s behest at that. Gray liked the other wizard, they had history and all, but he couldn’t think of a reason for Daniel to call a meeting except to announce that he’d found a permanent job and was leaving and did that really call for a last-minute staff meeting?

The actual cause, however, quickly revealed itself as more serious, and Gray struggled to concentrate while huddling inside a sweater thicker than what the room strictly called for. He suppressed a grin at the idea of Daniel turning his sister’s - some-device into a bookcase - once an Aladren, always an Aladren, he supposed - but didn’t find doing so difficult for long as more and more evidence was added to the chart - some of it without anyone picking up chalk or saying anything.

“Parker Fitzgerald,” chimed in Gray after staring at that phenomenon for a moment. “I told Selina about this - Nathaniel made a wooden cube start screaming, and then Parker turned the same one into a fish with wings. And Tatiana Vorontsova - I don’t know about this one, but she threw a fit insisting she didn’t spell everything right on her last test paper at all.” He realized this probably made no sense out of context, but everyone here knew Tatiana and her - difficulties. “I mean, some of what she was saying was in Russian, so it might have involved her opinion on where I could shove the dictionary for all I know, but she swore she didn’t use a self-correcting quill and I don’t think any of us thinks she could have spelled every word on any class paper right by herself.” This felt a bit harsher than how he’d usually put it, but he was too tired to try to be nicer. “And one morning the table - our table - was suddenly covered in straws - “ a thought occurred to him. “That one could have been me?”

16 Grayson Wright Adding to the list. 113 Grayson Wright 0 5

Aisha Kapoor

March 30, 2018 9:27 AM

Joining some dots by Aisha Kapoor

Aisha made her way to the staff meeting, wondering what it was this time. She had been relatively isolated from the weirdness of the school year, both by the fact that she spent a lot of time in the hospital wing (increasingly so, since the fever took hold) and the fact that she didn’t have any particular friends on staff yet. She got her meals in the hall, made small talk, but no one was coming to her about how badly their day had gone. She knew that there had been talk of a few odd things going on, but it was a magical school.

She listened, watching the names go up on the board. Even if Daniel hadn’t got her mind ticking by using the words ‘symptoms’ and ‘contagious’ she would have recognised something of a pattern… Perhaps. Three out of five of her patients. Three out eight names on the list… It was hardly conclusive. But she knew very few students here, and if it was totally unrelated, what were the odds of her knowing any of those names?

“I can link three of them. And with something that would explain their lack of control... Three of my five fever patients are up there. And it would make sense; the temperatures these kids have been coming in with, it’s a nasty virus they’re trying to fight off. Their systems are knocked, and they lose control. Can you put any kind of timing to it? Like, who of these was first, and who was more recent? I haven’t seen all of them, but maybe they’re just not so far along. Or maybe they manage to fight it off before getting to the fever stage. And does anyone have reason to add Lily Spencer or Joe Umland to the list?” She surveyed the three staff members who’d added their own names. One of whom looked somewhat glassy eyed and was wearing a rather thick sweater…

“Are you feeling alright?” she asked Professor Wright.

13 Aisha Kapoor Joining some dots 1482 Aisha Kapoor 0 5

Sophie O'Malley

March 30, 2018 10:39 AM

It's starting to look a bit like morse code. by Sophie O'Malley

There were certain annoying factors involved with being a teacher. One such annoyance was having to grade a slew of homework, but that could be what compensated for by assigning less than the average teacher, or making certain to give different classes different nights off to avoid a mountain turned in together. But Sophie found no way to avoid staff meetings. Especially surprise staff meetings, which seemed to be popular this year. And evening ones were the worst; at least if they feel during lunch, she wasn’t spending extra time dealing with something inevitably being wrong. This time of evening, she would otherwise have been home. Instead, she had to send home an owl saying to not wait on her for dinner because she didn’t know how long she’d be. And thanks to a schedule of teaching all three levels in one day, on evenings like this, she was particularly tired.

Arms folded across her chest, she listened to the argument the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had to present. Daniel was smart - he was enough older than her that, while they had shared the school as students, they had never been in a class together, but his intelligence had been obvious nonetheless even then - which lended credibility to his theories, at least in her mind. Sophie did feel a little bad when he sorta called out Nathan Xavier, though. It seemed like he was really having a Year.

“Lily did have some vials explode seemingly randomly in my class earlier in the year,” the small blonde contributed when the medic requested reports on either her or Joe Umland. “Hard to tell if that was something like this, though. I didn’t quite see it happen, kids break things, you know how it goes.” Sophie thought a moment before adding an approximate date for the event.

“Do you really think there’s something happening to people?” she questioned the general group, her surprise and curiosity foregoing her manners and causing her to jump over the question Aisha had directly posed to Grey. “I mean, maybe it’s the school magic going haywire.” That seemed to be something that happened every so often, which she personally accounted to the facts that 1) it took a lot of magic to do everything a giant school like this required, and 2) magic was hard. Sometimes, things happened, and maybe the rest was a coincidence.

12 Sophie O'Malley It's starting to look a bit like morse code. 34 Sophie O'Malley 0 5

Gray Wright

March 30, 2018 11:04 AM

Please don't start tapping on pipes. by Gray Wright

Everything linked by a fever - the nasty fever which was going around the school. Fabulous. Gray had already been worried about catching such a fever from all the students, and today he happened to feel like he’d been put through a clothes mangle. He was pretty sure that he was coming down with something, and now it was possibly something that could make him start having magical outbursts everywhere….

He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes as Sophie linked Lily Spencer to matters pretty concretely. He supposed Lily had been involved in Jozua’s incident in his class, but not directly - Jozua had been the one apparently losing control of his powers in the middle of class, and Lily had just been the one getting showered in sparks. He didn’t feel like saying anything else and so he did not.

”Are you feeling alright?” asked the medic. Gray realized he was the person being asked that.

Sophie was talking again, so he looked at the medic and shook his head rather than interrupt her. He did not feel alright and she could presumably do something about that, so...well, they were in the middle of a meeting, so she couldn’t really do anything about it right now, he supposed, but he had been asked a question and had answered it honestly. That was the point.

16 Gray Wright Please don't start tapping on pipes. 113 Gray Wright 0 5

Isis Carter

March 30, 2018 11:06 AM

I think I'm reading "S.O.S." by Isis Carter

Isis didn’t mind staff meetings in previous years. After the rather eventful start of term they’d had this year, however, there was a solid possibility of a radical change of opinion. Fairly impromptu ones, especially, formed an immediate knot in her stomach nowadays. So to that end, she was hardly excited for whatever was ahead of them.

Maybe she was just in a mood after a difficult and long day, but Isis did not appreciate how once again, Nathan was put on the spot. His discomfort was obvious, and she reached to squeeze his hand, having no other way to offer any kind of comfort right now and, well, anyone on staff who didn’t know about them at this point had definitely missed the boat. Not that they weren’t particularly obvious, Isis thought, but they also didn’t make efforts to hide their relationship in non-student spaces.

It did help that Daniel also chalked his own name on to his list, but it didn’t completely mitigate her annoyance. Honestly, she found the whole thing a bit ridiculous, although even she was too tactful to say so. Isis had no evidence to contribute or to refute to the claims, however, so all she could do was stand there in her own irritation. Why Nathan? Why was it always him?

She didn’t notice, keeping what of her attention remained on the person currently speaking - in this case, Professor O’Malley - but on the chalkboard, Nathan’s name abruptly disappeared, leaving a gap in the list of names.

12 Isis Carter I think I'm reading "S.O.S." 31 Isis Carter 0 5

Aisha Kapoor

March 30, 2018 11:26 AM

Another one bites the dust by Aisha Kapoor

Aisha got up from her seat, moving around the outside of the semi-circle, to where Grayson was seated, rubbing his eyes.

“Hey, let’s have a look at you,” she said softly to get his attention, placing the back of her hand against his forehead when he looked up, confirming what was obvious from the way he was huddled over - he was not well.

“I take it he’s excused?” she asked the more senior staff, receiving a nod from the Deputy Headmistress.

“Could be unrelated,” she added in response to Sophie’s comment. “I should be back soon, but in case I’m not, I’d still appreciate an eye being kept on those-” she blinked at the gap on the board but it was not her main concern right now, “those kids, even if you decide something else is more likely. It’d be nice to catch them before they’re hitting the hundreds. And look after yourselves. If you start to feel at all ill, just come and see me.

“Come on then,” she instructed Grayson. Once they were out in the corridor, she checked with him, “You room here at school? If so, you can stay in your own bed instead of the hospital wing. Lead the way.”

13 Aisha Kapoor Another one bites the dust 1482 Aisha Kapoor 0 5

Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

March 31, 2018 7:01 AM

Adding further evidence by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

Tarquin wasn’t especially pleased by the idea of an after work staff meeting. Danny had looked mopey about it when he’d flood home to tell him he’d be late, which meant that they’d be at odds when Tarquin got home… They would probably both be grumpy, but unfortunately though united by that mood, they wanted opposite things when in it. The phrase ‘misery loves company’ definitely only applied to Danny. Tarquin would be tired and cranky (he suspected) and when he was in that kind of mood he preferred to be left alone.

As he listened to the meeting, he became increasingly glad of his limited contact with the students. He knew of some of the goings on, but he had personally been fairly far removed from it all. Nathaniel Mordue, in particular, sounded like an absolute charmer… Accident or not, he felt there weren’t many excuses for punching another student - other people had just made sparks, or heat, or remodelled the staff room (perhaps that last one was more extreme, but it wasn’t violent).

He didn’t have anything to add on the student front, but some of this was sounding rather familiar. Especially as the medic talked about the accidental magic going hand in hand with the fever.

“I’m inclined to agree with Ms. Kapoor,” he volunteered, as the medic hustled Grayson Wright out of the staffroom. “Uh, our crockery started singing for no known reason, and the next day my other half had a raging temperature.” He was fairly open with most of the staff, but there was a difference between a friendly conversation with one person, and announcing his sexuality to the room at large, especially when the room included the strict and old-fashioned Pureblood headmaster. He tried to catch both Daniel and Sophie’s eyes and glanced towards Brockert in a pointed fashion, in case either of them felt the need to follow up on that comment, and as one of them was wielding the terrifying weapon of a piece of chalk, with which careless words could be written.

“So, it might be a more than just Sonora thing. I’m not sick, so I didn’t take it home. And this came after half of that,” he gestured to the board, before anyone blamed him for tracking it in. “Plus Professor Nash’s incident happened outside of Sonora. If it was the school magic going haywire, that wouldn’t make sense.

“Strange though… That it affects everyone so… predictably. I mean, I have heard of people - even adults - losing control when they get sick. But… surely that’s just a way it would manifest in a few people. The same way some teenagers lose control, but not all of them...” he frowned.

13 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds Adding further evidence 1464 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds 0 5

Gray Wright

April 05, 2018 8:53 PM

You’re a very busy woman and you haven’t got all day... by Gray Wright

Had Gray been in slightly different circumstances, a woman checking his temperature by putting an unsolicited hand on his head and generally acting as though inclined to take charge of him would have been expected and not something he would have even thought to object to. Said slightly different circumstances prominently featured his mother. A colleague, however, was a slightly different matter, and said colleague was doing all this before the whole staff in the middle of an important meeting. Mortification on top of illness. Lovely.

“Er - it’s - “ he muttered, but actually making a scene was alien to him. “The board - “ he tried to object when he saw Nathan’s name vanish as abruptly as it had appeared, but someone more authoritative than he was talking and giving directions.

“I do - er - you could just send an elf with - whatever,” he managed. He had not, after all, expected visitors to his bit of the building today - human company in his room was not a thing he often, if ever, had - so his room currently was, well, not precisely in the state he’d want visitors to see - there were books everywhere, papers and pens everywhere, his first-ever rejection letters and acceptance letters in their frames side-by-side on the wall, the three awards he’d won over the course of his first career on another wall...He didn’t think of it that way, but could see how to anyone else, it would probably look as though he was rather self-obsessed. “You should tell them the board - “ he pointed back toward the door they had just departed out of. “Things are appearing and disappearing on the board in there…”

16 Gray Wright You’re a very busy woman and you haven’t got all day... 113 Gray Wright 0 5

Aisha Kapoor

April 06, 2018 9:38 AM

This is literally my job by Aisha Kapoor

“I’m sure they’ll realise. I think they get the idea, anyway,” she assured him, when he started worrying about the board. She wasn’t going to stick her head back into the meeting to add that. “And if it wasn’t you, it looks like I might be seeing some of your colleagues soon,” she added.

“It’s better if I come in person,” she informed him, assuming that Gray was just trying to be helpful. She hadn’t really thought about the fact that he might be uncomfortable with having her in his private space because she had her professional hat on, and thus going into people’s rooms and putting people to bed were just things it was normal for her to be doing without any of the strange connotations there might have been if this was just a social interaction. “If you’re not spending the night in the hospital wing, I should set up a couple of wards and things so I can be sure you’re not getting worse rather than better. It doesn’t seem high risk with what’s going round, but better safe than sorry.” She also preferred to administer potions herself in order to be sure her patients actually drank them, although elves weren’t a bad option, given that they tended to struggle with disobeying orders or being untruthful - she expected she could at least make them report back honestly on a patient’s behaviour, even if they couldn’t persuade said patient to behave. Although they could be tricky for people whom they didn’t regard as having authority of them. She would have to check who their loyalty belonged to.

“This way?” she confirmed her guess of which way his quarters lay in order to get him moving, “Any allergies or previous bad reactions to medications?” she asked him.

13 Aisha Kapoor This is literally my job 1482 Aisha Kapoor 0 5

Gray

April 10, 2018 7:57 AM

Re: This is literally my job by Gray

“I don’t think that was me,” said Gray when Aisha confirmed he had, in fact, seen what he’d thought he’d seen in there. He managed a half smile. “I guess you don’t have to worry about job security for a while,” he said, attempting humor and suspecting it fell rather flat. They were not only in a building full of children, who were a rather illness-prone bunch in any case if Gray’s admittedly limited observations were any good, they were, well...witches and wizards. Witches and wizards of all ages had a habit of falling into the hands of healers sooner or later. Medical professionals were unlikely to lack for work for very long at a time if they wanted it.

He tried to remind himself of this and that medical professionals therefore, it followed, had to see worse messes than his books and probably things more pathetic than the relics of his former career on a regular basis. He also reminded himself that it was apparently either worrying about one person’s opinion of him or worrying about whether who knew how many students would ever take him seriously again if he were sequestered in the same sick ward as them….

“Not that I know of,” he said about allergies.

He paused awkwardly outside his door, presenting it with a slight flourish of one hand. “My door, for you to - er - ward however you like,” he said. “As long as you give me something that either makes this clear up or at least knocks me out, I don’t really care what you do to it,” he admitted frankly.

OOC: Permission granted to godmod Gray through the door/take temperatures if you so choose.

16 Gray Re: This is literally my job 113 Gray 0 5

Aisha

April 10, 2018 10:15 AM

Sleep well by Aisha

“Indeed. And here was me worrying I might be bored,” she agreed, when Grayson made a remark about job security. Ok, in truth she was getting slightly bored. It wasn’t like there was a huge variation in the cases she was seeing here… Although if he was right, and some of the other staff were coming down sick, it might be more interesting. Not that she expected their symptoms to vary at all, but it hadn’t escaped her notice that both Daniel Nash and Rory Taransay were rather fine looking. Mopping either of their fevered brows didn’t exactly seem like a chore… Although at that point, of course, they would be patients, and it would be wrong to lust after them. But they weren't yet...

For now though, Grayson was her patient. He seemed… polite. And perfectly nice.

“It’s you that needs wards, not the door,” she informed him. She could understand the confusion - most of the time, people warded their stuff against things. But she put wards on her patients, ones that would track their symptoms and alert her if anything was wrong. It wasn’t much use taking vital signs from a door. She nodded as he showed her into his quarters, taking in as much as she could without looking like she was looking. One of the perks of house visits was being nosy. Not with any malicious intent. Not to judge, not to gossip. Just to see, out of plain old curiosity. Gray’s room was a little on the messy side, in one sense at odds with his own neat and particular appearance, but given that the mess was books, books, more books and writing materials, not a total surprise. There were various framed things on the walls that she couldn’t decipher without a much closer and more obvious look, which she obviously couldn’t take - from what she could see, it looked like a couple of letters, and some pages with shiny bits on, possibly some kind of graduation certificates, although there seemed to be too many…

She focussed, twirling her wand, and drawing her medical bag into the room, before casting the spell again to bring a bottle of the fever be gone, relieved to find it worked in spite of the various enchantments that only let her and the two senior staff members access the medical potions cabinet.
“Not that I doubt you’ve got a fever, but it’s good to know exactly how much of one,” she explained, as the thermometre floated out of her bag and over to Grayson.
“Now, let’s get you checked in as it were,” she added, once it had finished. “I’m just going to cast a monitoring charm on you. It will add you to the salutometre in my office - like a clock, you’ve probably seen them around in hospitals, or other places. It’ll tell me whether you’re stable, warn me if you get worse, and let me know when you wake up in the morning so I can come check up on you,” she explained. “May I?” she added, because although it was really in his best interests, she still needed his consent before using her wand on him. Once this was done, she held out the small vial of cornflower blue potion.
“Fever be gone, drowsy version. Sleep well,” she wished him, picking up her bag and leaving him to his medicine and his rest.

13 Aisha Sleep well 1482 Aisha 0 5