The staff recovered on Cascade Hall

Albert Banks

May 10, 2014 5:07 AM

The staff recovered by Albert Banks

“So... according to the notes, I stand between the north-westerly bookcase and the window, turn three times counter-clockwise, and state Intruderius revelio and – ah-ha!” a door handle had appeared on the previously blank stretch of wall, and Albert reached out tentatively to take it. He had temporarily ushered the students out, as who knew what could be waiting on the other side?

“Brace yourself,” he warned his partner, as they prepared to face the intruders. Taking a deep breath, he wrenched the door sharply open. On the other side was a room that appeared to have made itself quite comfortable. There was a table with a buffet laid out, and plenty of chairs. The food was not lavish and the chairs were functional rather than comfortable, but it seemed that the room had seen to the basic needs of its occupants during their long incarceration. Albert had been ready to boldly announce that they should state their business but the words died on his lips. Instead, he found himself saying, rather weakly

“I say... you're not intruders at all. You're...”

"The Headmaster." Mortimer replied in an icy tone. He was not a happy man. Which was normal for Mortimer, but he was even less so than usual. He'd spent Merlin knew how long trapped with his employees. Not being a particularly social man by nature, all he wanted was to get away from them for a bit. He was a big believer in the phrase "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" which in his case meant that if he didn't have to spend time with people constantly, they were tolerable. "Oh, and my staff." He added as an after thought.

“Where are the students?” queried Selina. “Are they alright?” As the ministry official blustered about failing to give her an adequately reassuring answer, she turned to the rest of the staff.

“Edda, get down to the hospital wing and check for patients or be ready to receive anyone in need. Heads of House, spread out and check, starting from the Commons, and report back here – Lydia, could you take responsibility for Crotalus for me?” she asked, “I think the headmaster and I need to stay here and get to the bottom of what's been going on.”

Mortimer raised an eyebrow. It wasn't so much Selina taking charge like that, he just was more afraid that the students had destroyed the school than he was about their well being. Even that of his own relatives.

13 Albert Banks The staff recovered 0 Albert Banks 1 5

Alicia Bauer, Head Girl

May 11, 2014 2:49 PM

I...am having trouble responding to that. by Alicia Bauer, Head Girl

After the ups and downs of the first day of the crisis, Alicia had made time around day three to search out and make special friends with one of the elves. They were, as Thad had proved in the beginning, ugly little bundles of information just waiting for the taking, and since she could not be everywhere at once, she needed to exploit the creatures which virtually could be. If anything changed, she, as the Head Girl, needed to be there, preferably with the Head Boy and Aladren seventh year prefect safely behind her, where they could watch her back against the other students and she could protect them from the external threat.

She received reports at ten, two, and four, but had emphasized to her new friend Blinky that anything really unusual should be reported at once, no matter what Alicia was doing, and a lot of effort had gone into explaining what did or did not count as ‘unusual’ under current circumstances. When the newspaper – a document which had nearly made Alicia faint when it arrived, a document she had kept under her pillow while she slept one night and been terrified of the next, a thing which had put her more on edge than anything since the beginning – had arrived, the criteria had been revised and Blinky extensively drilled on them again, just to be safe. So when the prairie elf came into the Defense lesson Alicia was giving the third years who showed a few minutes before it was supposed to end, Alicia pulled her aside immediately, knowing that either something was going very wrong in the school, that the world was ending, or – just possibly – that it was coming back.

“What is it?” she asked in a whisper.

“Miss Alicia,” whispered back Blinky, “strangers is being in Sonora.”

Her heart had hit her throat at once, and she had nearly jumped out of her skin when a memo appeared. Scanning it, though, did make her feel a little better. If the intruders were intent on causing too much damage, she doubted they would bother to send her a memo. It was a very practical way to initiate contact with the leaders of the thing they were trying to conquer, to negotiate a surrender or whatever, but somehow, it just didn’t seem like the kind of thing dark lords did. Neither did regarding her as a leader and asking her for a meeting instead of just swooping in and trying to assume power on the basis of being older. With that in mind, she thought she probably didn’t need to attack on sight, Stunning, disarming, and binding the invaders until she could brew a truth potion and get Thad and Henny and Alex to help her interrogate their visitors to make sure the newspaper hadn’t been a trick intended to lull them into accepting the person responsible for the clouds to begin with.

She still hurried, as much as she could without running and making it obvious to anyone who saw her that there was a situation, toward the Headmaster’s office with her wand in her hand, though, and only paused to glare briefly at Tony before proceeding. She liked the office she had set up for the Head students in the smallest of the empty classrooms very well, but the Headmaster’s office would have brought more respect, and her inability to access it had made her consider setting the Venus fly trap on fire more than once. She’d only refrained because she wasn’t even sure what Tony’s legal classification would be – was he a being, or just an enchantment, or what? Another thing to look up once she got outside, if she wasn’t dealing with Dark wizards, or at least didn’t lose to them….

The sight of adults significantly more used to being adults than she was unnerved her for a moment, in which all she could think to do was stare at them. “This is quite a mess,” she said, the first thing which came into her head. “Alicia Bauer, Head Girl,” she introduced herself. “Welcome to my school.”

She frowned when, after they failed to attack, she gathered there was something about Intruders concerning them. “There’s no one here but you and enrolled students,” she tried to explain, but when Banks figured out how to open a door, she backed up on request and pointed her wand at it instead of at the government men. All thought went straight out of her head, though, when the entrance opened and she saw strangely familiar faces beginning to spread out.

“Wha – “ she began, her eyes darting between them. “Wha – how – “

Alicia had started, once she really stopped believing things were going to end soon and smoothly, trying to dress her part as a leader, wearing shoes that made her even taller and her own robes – today, violet ones which hung more loosely than they’d been meant to when she bought them; stress and the need to Set A Good Example had made her lose weight since September – instead of the school uniform and often tying her dark hair into a large knot at the base of her head. For the most part, she thought it worked, but at the moment, with her eyes almost falling out of her head and her mouth hanging open and her wand feeling very much like just a thin strip of wood against giants in her hand as she couldn’t even decide where to point it, she felt like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. Like she must surely look ridiculous. She forced herself to close her mouth, to rectify at least part of the problem.

Professor Skies’ show of command brought her back to her senses. “Everyone’s all right,” she said, walking toward the person who at least appeared to be the Deputy Headmistress. “Thad and I took command after – er – you all disappeared, and we’ve kept the school as functional as we could with the prefects and other Advanced students.”

She bit down on the inside of her mouth before she could ask Skies for confirmation that she was real, or at least if she could raid the buffet in the holding room the staff had evidently been in all along or something similarly inane and not on point. "Everything is still under control," she added instead, in the firm, no-nonsense tone she usually used for making announcements now. "There's nothing to worry about there at all."

16 Alicia Bauer, Head Girl I...am having trouble responding to that. 210 Alicia Bauer, Head Girl 0 5

Professor Skies

May 17, 2014 11:03 PM

How about 'yay'? by Professor Skies

Another figure stepped up and Selina initially noted only the adult mode of dress and assumed them to be another Ministry official. She did a slight double take as she took the girl in and realised it was Alicia Bauer. It was funny... you saw students in their uniforms all the time and, of course, whilst each little crop of first years looked impossibly small every year, and whilst some of the seventh years towered over her, in spite of her height, the robes somehow stopped you seeing how grown up they actually looked.

“Gosh,” was all she could say to Alicia's explanation that the senior students had been keeping the school running. That could mean any number of things from merely having stopped panic and anarchy over-taking to ensuring the curriculum carried on being taught. Either way, she was impressed with Alicia's calm. She had to bite down a smile though as the girl firmly insisted that everything was under control. It wasn't fair to the head girl but it just seemed a little comical somehow.

“Well.... thank you. I think we have a lot to discuss with the ministry workers,” she began, preparing to mark Alicia back out as a child, to send her away whilst the grown ups talked, not because she deserved to be treated that way but because it was simply what happened. But then the absurdity of that struck her. “And it seems like you and Mr. Pierce had better join us. It sounds like you might have rather a lot to tell us...” Judging by the ministry workers' reaction, they knew about as little as the staff did as to what had been going on. At some point, it might become necessary to dismiss Alicia and Thaddeus, but for now it seemed they had a useful contribution to make.

13 Professor Skies How about 'yay'? 26 Professor Skies 0 5

Thad Pierce

May 18, 2014 11:02 PM

Yay? by Thad Pierce

Thaddeus had received the memo summoning him to the Headmaster's office with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. He recognized right away that it came from neither Alicia nor Henny, the two people he considered the most likely to summon him to the Headmaster's Office. By now, he could recognize both of their styles of writing as well as their handwriting, and this was clearly written by someone else. Someone who sounded fairly official, which was not really a word he associated with any of the other prefects, nevermind any of the other students.

The Headmaster's Office had remained stubbornly guarded by Tony throughout the last months despite numerous but unsuccessful logical reasonings, underhanded manipulations, sneaky attempts to bypass him, and eventually desperate pleas to let them pass and seek answers to the current situation there. That someone had finally gotten through suggested one of two things: either another student somehow got in and found something useful, or someone with real authority had arrived.

Whichever was the case, it meant his current reign was either over or nearing its conclusion.

He was a little surprised to find he didn't really want this to be the case and immediately reasoned with himself that it was for the best and how was he supposed to pass his RATS if the teachers did not return soon? With this piece of logic held firmly in place, he left the group of elves he had been conversing with on the matter of food. Elves were resourceful critters who had kept the entire population fed throughout the school's isolation despite being cut off from the normal supply lines (and they still weren't in any immediate danger of starving) but the variety had definitely been decreasing of late, and Grandmother Tuppy - the leader of the kitchen staff - and he had been going over ways they might expand their options.

That discussion could be moot already.

He tried to walk at a normal pace to the Hall of Plants, alternately forcing himself to not run in his anticipation of finding out what was beyond Tony, forcing himself to keep going in dread that it was bad news (or worse, no news at all), and preventing himself from dragging his feet in case it meant he wasn't the co-Head leader of Sonora anymore and these were his final minutes in that position.

When he did arrive (giving Tony a dirty look as the fly trap just let him right on by), he found two strangers, Alicia, Leo Princeton - whose presence gave him a moment of doubt that this may all be some kind of farce after Henny's accusation but no, he was inside the Headmaster's office and so was . . . the Headmaster and the rest of the staff.

After all his reluctance on the way over here, he surprised himself by saying, without meaning to say anything at all, "Oh, thank Merlin." He was relieved, not only by their safe return, but also by his own gut reaction to it. He wasn't yet so power-mad that he couldn't relinquish control back to the proper authorities then. Good. He would have hated to end up a dark wizard someday because that would have surely ended poorly.

Like Alicia, he had begun wearing more adult like clothing, especially when teaching or doing administrative work like ordering around the elves. He'd even gotten one of the elves to give him a haircut in Headmaster Brockert's style, hoping it might make him look older and more authoritative. Now, with the teachers and Headmaster himself there, he felt like he was wearing the wrong thing - like those dreams where he wore his Quidditch uniform to class or his school uniform to a game. He suppressed the urge to tug on a sleeve self-consciously.

"Welcome back, I am very glad to see you," he said, addressing the roomful of adults, much more deliberately, but no less truthfully, this time.

1 Thad Pierce Yay? 213 Thad Pierce 0 5

Alicia Bauer

May 19, 2014 4:54 PM

Now what? by Alicia Bauer

Skies’ response was, to say the least, disappointing. Alicia supposed the teachers had the right to be disoriented – she was disoriented, too, feeling pulled between being who she’d been for four months and reverting to Miss Bauer the student at the sight of Real Authority Figures who could inconvenience her, and she hadn’t even been stuck in a room with limited company for the whole semester – but ’gosh’ really did not work for her. That word didn’t indicate, to her, that Skies was impressed with the job they’d done, it indicated that she was surprised Alicia could make that statement with a straight face.

Her eyes narrowed at the beginnings of a dismissal, and she was just about to argue – if nothing else, she had information, and if knowledge was power, the looks of things suggested she was still the most important person in the room – when Skies corrected herself. Alicia nodded once, more to herself than to the professor.

“Of course. If you’d like to use our office, we've been keeping records – “ she started ticking things off on her fingers. “Our supplies, Thad’s looking at that today, classes taught, that sort of thing. Some of the other teaching students might still have some of theirs, though, so I’ll send a note to them to bring all that to us later, once things...settle down more."

She felt ridiculous, maintaining this manner with an actual, state-endorsed administrator, but she clung to it anyway. Having begun that way, she couldn’t see a way to back out of it now. Jeremy had taught her, once, that looking like she both knew what she was doing and had a perfect right to do it would deflect questions more often than she would think, and while this was all a little more serious than most of the situations she’d tested the idea out in before, she couldn’t really think of anything better at the moment.

Thad seemed to step into the role pretty well, too, and Alicia smiled. “Yes,” she seconded. “And we’re very grateful to you,” she added to the officials.

She started to open her mouth again, to say they would make an announcement honoring them at supper tonight, once everything settled down, and that they would have as much of a feast as they could muster if the officials were sure they could get out of the school and to more supplies again, but she closed it before she started talking, realizing she likely wouldn’t be in much of a position to do so. The teachers would reclaim their table, and Alicia would, at best, be pushed to the far end, well away from the center of power, where announcements and decisions about the use of supplies came from. She glanced at Thad, wondering if this side of things had occurred to him yet.

They were done, really, however firmly she spoke. More would come of it – there were these interviews to complete, it was likely that attention would come to both of them outside Sonora, and then there was what Brockert and Skies would think of them now and how it might make the second half of the year go – but it wasn’t all on them anymore. If something blew up, it was no longer their problem to fix, or not all theirs, anyway. She had wanted that....

Well, no, she hadn't. She had just wanted a resolution. Equally satisfying would have been the confirmation that they were really on their own; that one was more frightening than this, but also intriguing, and it would have been an end to the ambiguity - to always wondering when someone would decide the old authorities meant nothing and try to curse her or Thad in the back when they weren't expecting it.

This was an end to the ambiguity, too, and it put her right back where she had started - with maybe a little more to work with going forward than she had possessed the last time she was here, but basically just back where she had been in September. For a few days, they would still be useful to the administration - they knew things, people no doubt trusted them more than they did the staff at this point - but soon, she would be back to taking orders, to wearing green, to worrying about what older people thought of her reading material if they saw her with it. And she found she had not really figured out, before, how she was going to deal with that.

16 Alicia Bauer Now what? 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5