The Final Book Club (for me) on Transfiguration

Henny B-F-R

July 10, 2014 11:13 AM

The Final Book Club (for me) by Henny B-F-R

Henny arrived early, as usual, to ensure that everything was set up. Even though the prairie elves had never failed her yet, and even though she'd been passing more responsibility over to Melanie Lennox as the term went on, she wanted to be the first to arrive for her last book club. It would definitely not be the end of her passionately debating literature. For one thing, her and Father's relationship revolved around books – when she was home for the holidays they would spend long afternoons snuggled in the study or stretched out on the lawn, depending on the season (though always with a cup of tea) reading to each other. One was never to old to be read to, father said. Besides that, she planned to study literature next year. She still had work to catch up from her correspondence course, after the disruption of the first term, but she had her place secured already. As so few schools offered wizarding literature, it wasn't a prerequisite for even the top universities – the fact that she was doing the course had acted in her favour and had probably contributed to her getting interviews and offers but it wasn't mandatory that she get a certain grade to earn her place. It would be a nice step up from the book club to be debating with a group who were all her own age, and to not have to choose books based on what was suitable to recommend to eleven year olds. She was very fond of the club she had founded, and would miss it because it was of her own making, but in some ways she had rather out-grown it, and was looking forward to replacing it with seminars and set texts.

Today though, she was focussed on the final meeting. The pumpkin juice and cookies had been delivered. She had tentatively and shyly asked the elves whether they might be shaped and decorated like books. Admittedly, the shaping wasn't difficult, as they were essentially rectangles, but they had gone to town on the icing. It was intricate and, apart from the fact they were only a few inches high and you could see gingerbread margins, they really looked like book covers. The group had read a short story for the final book club, as everyone was busy studying for exams. Whilst people could make much of short stories, she wasn't sure it would fill the hour, and the thought had come to her that they could play some party games too. She supposed it was because it was her last book club, as she didn't ordinarily do games or get specially decorated cookies for the end of term, but she wasn't going to be so egotistical as to promote that fact.

In terms of games, she had written names of characters from books they had read that term on slips of paper and placed them in a hat. They had a sticking charm on them that would be activated by contact with skin, so people could stick them to their foreheads and play 'Who Am I?' She had slips of paper with titles on of famous books, both Muggle and Wizarding for Charades. They were also going to try their hand at writing their own stories, although she wasn't sure they'd win any prizes for literature; each person had to write a line of a story, then fold the paper down and put three words to begin the next line. The papers were then passed around the circle until they came back to their original writer, at which point they were unfolded and read out.

She smiled as people entered, and when they were all assembled, explained what they would be doing that day.

OOC – feel free to make up things about the story that was read, so long as it doesn't directly contradict what anyone else writes. Otherwise, party and have fun.

Subthreads:

Me, too. by Alicia Bauer

13 Henny B-F-R The Final Book Club (for me) 211 Henny B-F-R 1 5

Alicia Bauer

July 15, 2014 2:56 PM

Me, too. by Alicia Bauer

Time, Alicia had decided, was a crueler and more fickle god than Fortune had ever thought to be. Fortune was, she believed, an adherent of some standard or rule they didn't understand - there were, after all, ways to promote good and bring down bad fortune, certain actions anyone with an ounce of sense would refrain from even if those lacking said ounce occasionally dismissed the refraining as superstition, and there were prophecies, however much rubbish there was in a standard course of divination studies - but even the least elegant readings usually only held that fortune had the personality and attention span of a three-year-old turned loose with a tub of sugar and a tablespoon, fickle by nature, not through conscious malice. Time, however, was a sadist. Why else would time speed up and slow down at all the worst imaginable moments, such as the entire past year?

In the fall, it had seemed that some days (or, indeed, some individual minutes, when she was trying to sell her audience assurances she didn’t even believe herself and suspected they didn’t accept, either) would never end, and this spring, it was hard to make them slow down. She finally had everything she had ever wanted – she was Head Girl, had learned about as much of magic as Sonora Academy had to offer, was respected both within the school and outside it, and at long last, she had some assurances of both retaining her specific friends after school and of keeping a place within the society she had grown up in – and instead of getting to really enjoy it, she was just watching the days fly by, taking her close and closer to the day when she would have to leave here and start clawing her way back to the top in a new game, and doing so more alone than she had become accustomed to being. Not totally alone, thank Merlin, as at one time she had been afraid she would be, but it wouldn’t be like it was now even if Cepheus’ family didn’t make him take up full-time residence in England again right away. They wouldn’t all always be there when she needed them, she wouldn’t, given their strange habit of never telling her about problems that needed to be fixed ahead of time so she could resolve them before they had time to become real problems at all, always be there when they needed her….

It was going to be awful, even worse than the mental images of herself hanging around Henny’s until she completely wore out her welcome and running up huge bills at the post office sending owls to England every other day were. She would adjust, eventually, but she was afraid she was going to make a fool of herself until then and was trying to think about it as little as possible.

The final book club of the year – and their lives – made that hard to do today, though. She smiled brightly anyway. Being as normal as possible while she had the chance seemed like the best way to go, and so she was doing that.

“These look great,” she complimented Henny on the cookies when she arrived.

Henny, she decided, would be in charge of arranging the food for get-togethers for the four of them – well, the four of them and whoever Cepheus and Henny had in the picture at a given time, if they weren’t too bad, though the partners wouldn’t be allowed in the family pictures until Alicia was sure she liked them. They would have winter and summer get-togethers, birthday parties in the fall and spring, visits as often as they could be contrived….

She considered it her duty to make conversations interesting – and besides, if no one questioned even the most obvious-seeming of readings, how would anyone ever know if they knew what they were talking about? – so she argued with people through the discussion of the short story, trying to keep the aggressiveness out of her questioning with the younger ones while still getting the point across. Charades did not go well for her; she was supposed to be the Winter Lady, but hadn’t been able to think of much to do with that but look haughty, stand on her toes, and wave her wand around. She could have done more with a partner, as most of the Winter Lady’s thing had been making deals, but that wasn’t the game.

She drew a blank, too, when asked to write the opening to a story and finally just wrote a line about the first image which popped into her head: The carpet was obviously charmed. Then she folded it, added He did not, and passed it to the next person.

16 Alicia Bauer Me, too. 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5