All Fifth and Sixth Years! on Cascade Hall

Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau

December 01, 2012 4:28 PM

All Fifth and Sixth Years! by Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau

It had been announced the night before during dinner that all Fifth and Sixth year students were excused for a short period of time during their first lesson the following morning and were requested to join the Headmistress in the Cascade Hall once breakfast had been completed. With the year coming closer to the end and the examinations forever looming on her students, Kiva wanted to get the voting completed so that the students could return to their scheduled lessons and she would be able to tally the ballots in time for the announcement at the Bonfire.

She stood quietly at the Staff table waiting for the younger year stragglers to leave the Hall to head to their lessons and to allow the Fifth and Sixth years to settle in and get over any worry they may have about what this was about. Kiva figured the Sixth years have caught on by now as they have had to do all of this the year previous, but the Fifth years might still have some anxiety over it.

On the table beside her were the voting cards and some quills. She had been on staff for so long that this process lost some of its glamour. She still enjoyed the idea that it was the students who chose who would represent them and their school the following year, but she knew most of the time is had to do with popularity. There was nothing to be done about it. Such things would continue on into their adulthood anyway. Perhaps that was a bit cynical of her to think, but she was forty now and saw no difference in how adults work than she did now with the students.

“Hello everyone.” Kiva greeted with a polite smile. Her ever growing stomach was now noticeable beneath her robes. She wasn’t due until the end of June (and she was hoping that the baby would hold out until the end of year events), but with the spring now hitting, there was no hiding the fact that she was indeed carrying a child. When she was pregnant with Emery, it took longer to show but when she did, it was a basketball in the front of her. Now, it was just a smaller version of that basketball. She was getting into her last trimester now and as exhausting as everything was, she had to say that so far, everything was going smoothly. “I asked you all here today because it is time for you to vote for next year’s Head Boy and Girl. I have the ballots here as well as some quills in case you need one.” Kiva held out the ballots and some quills. “Please take one and do not discuss your votes. These will remain anonymous.” She really didn’t care if they decided to chat about it after the fact, but she wanted the actually voting portion to remain fresh and untainted by other opinions.

“I will announce your new Head Boy and Girl at the Midsummer Event. Find a seat and when you are done, please return the ballot and quill to me. If you have any questions, please ask me.”

(OOC: Here is the form voting form. Voting is In Character (if you have more than one character in these years, you vote per character) and can remain anonymous IC if you want. You do not have to respond to this post, but you can if you feel the need. Please be sure to vote because your vote does matter.)

0 Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau All Fifth and Sixth Years! 0 Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau 1 5

Eliza Bennett

December 01, 2012 10:40 PM

What I've been waiting for by Eliza Bennett

For weeks, Eliza had been waiting for this very day, her stomach tying itself into a tight knot at the slightest movement from Headmistress Kijewski-Jareau during breakfast each morning and the wave of disappointment that followed it being nothing important gradually becoming weaker and weaker, until it didn’t even briefly distract her from the thing which had been making her anxious all year, the thing that was sure, one way or the other, to be resolved son unless the school had completely changed its policies altogether without telling anyone: the fact that soon, she would know, once and for all, whether or not she had made it onto the Head Girl ballot.

Of course I did, she tried to tell herself sometimes, when the thought of the humiliation she would feel if she were somehow not on that list hit her from out of nowhere and made her worry about becoming sick or just passing out in the middle of class, or a hallway, or on the stairs, or anywhere else she happened to be when the fear struck. There’s no reason in the world why I wouldn’t. She was, after all, a prefect already, she was not unpopular, she could, because of that, play both sides of the pureblood line, aided by her social status in the outside world, which was neither so high that she couldn’t relate to others nor so low that those who were high would not refuse to speak to her if they had to. Add in that she was a decent, if not brilliant, student, too, and there was no reason in the world why they shouldn’t give her a chance, and every reason why they should. There was, she told herself again and again, nothing at all to worry about.

And yet, she couldn’t stop worrying. Maybe Pierce had blocked her elevation completely. Maybe Sara Raines had, recognizing her greatest chance of competition, used all those connections she sat at the center of, like a diminutive little spider in her web, to buy off the school. Maybe she had looked at the headmistress funny one morning, not even meaning to, and it had been taken the wrong way. Maybe the woman was the one honest administrator of anything on the planet and Eliza’s parents and tried to bribe her and that had backfired. Anything could have happened, anything at all, and there was no way to know if something had until the ballot was released.

Which, finally, one morning it was.

The first time Eliza looked over it, her eyes got caught on the two candidates for Head Boy for so long that she began to feel her heartbeat quickening again, working its way toward panic as she tried and failed to make herself look down just half an inch to the Head Girl section. Finally, to stave that off, as some people around her were already finishing their ballots, Eliza squeezed her eyes shut, pulled herself together, and put her hand over the fatal section, finally looking at it first through half-shut eyes and then through the additional barrier of her narrowly-parted fingers.

The first name she saw was ‘Caitlin Bauer,’ which meant absolutely nothing to her, since she was pretty sure she had never met anyone named Caitlin in her life and it took her a minute to realize this was probably her Teppenpaw classmate. She had always assumed the other girl’s real name, if her parents hadn’t actually named her Kate, was Katherine or a variant of that, but whatever; Eliza knew there were most likely plenty of people who thought that she must really be an Elizabeth, so it was cool that Kate Bauer was really, probably, a Caitlin. Eliza hadn’t been planning to vote for her as Kate or Katherine or Caitlin or anyone else, so it didn’t really matter. Taking a deep breath, she moved her hand down a little, so she could see the second name through the same obscured view, and instantly felt her heart leap into her throat when she realized it was her own name.

For a moment, after she opened her eyes all the way just to be sure, she just sat there, exulting in her triumph and trying not to hyperventilate with relief as she realized that all the waiting, the anxiety and uncertainty and possibility that she would be the laughingstock of Sonora, was over. Then, beaming, she took up her pen and had the moment she had been dreaming about for years, the one in which she marked her own name down, nodding when this meant moving her hand far enough away from the paper to see that Sara had, indeed, made the list, too. She had never doubted that the other girl would; it was more of a question to her, though, which of them would win. That, she wasn’t even going to try to predict yet, though she hoped it would be her.

That most important business taken care of, she looked up to see who the Head Boy candidates were and which of them she should pick. She really did, even still feeling lighthearted from the sight of her name among the Head Girl candidates, think seriously about it, particularly when she imagined herself as Head Girl and having to put up with one of those guys a lot more. Making up her mind, she marked her answer and handed in her ballot, her face set in the most genuine smile she thought she had been able to come up with for weeks.

0 Eliza Bennett What I've been waiting for 174 Eliza Bennett 0 5