Julian Umland
February 17, 2015 11:40 PM
Restarting the Book Club. by Julian Umland
At twenty minutes before eight (there was, after all, always the chance that people would arrive early, but she thought it was a rare bird who would show up more than ten minutes before he was late) Julian stopped fussing with cups, put on a thin coat of light-colored lipstick, and checked her hair in the little mirror she'd used to guide her hand before she swept all the personal care items back into her bag. The badge she wore fastened to her robes every day had, between the vote of confidence from the authorities that it represented and the knowledge of how the school worked a year of carrying out the duties associated with it had given her, provided the confidence she’d needed to make the arrangements for this evening, but now she was facing a possibly large number of her peers and for that, she thought she needed more than just the right jewelry.Accordingly, she’d taken enough time with her appearance to probably please all the other Teppenpaws, pureblood girls and Charlie alike, in her year. She had even dragged out the fancy, constricting undergarments from last year’s ball to make her polka-dotted blouse and knee-length skirt look a bit better on her. She didn't think she looked too pseudo-grown-up, like some of the really rich girls sometimes did on occasions that didn't seem formal enough for it, but nor did she think she looked like she had borrowed her clothes from one of her brothers and then promptly fallen out of a tree, which was also good. To younger students, just being a sixth year and a prefect might be enough to make her impressive, but to anyone she’d had classes with, she was pretty sure she was...not.
That was one reason she had left reforming the book club so long that she had briefly considered wearing the stupid, pointless fall dress she had bought at the end of the summer. For one thing, she had struggled a little in adjusting to her new Advanced classes, and for another, she’d just kept first assuming and then hoping that someone else would do it instead. September and part of October were gone now, though, and it looked like it was her or nobody, so she’d gone to Professor Skies.
After all, as John had put it - why not her? Except for her total lack of experience in public speaking, group leadership, notable academic accomplishments, and all other things like that, of course, but that was a minor consideration, not really a problem at all….
She smiled as people started coming in. It was dark outside, and so the room relied more on large numbers of various flammables for light than it did during her class, when a lot of light came in through the windows; she told herself this was why it seemed so very warm in the Transfiguration classroom, even though she was used to it and did not think she had been as hot just a few minutes before. “Hello, everyone,” she said cheerily. “I know a lot of us might have just come from dinner, but there’s snacks if anyone wants any….”
She gestured toward a table holding a smallish bowl of punch, a plate of cookies, a plate of cheese and crackers, and the tablewear necessary to eat them. Reading and snacking just went together in her head, and if no-one else went for them, she was sure she would absent-mindedly make her way through a lot of it while straightening up afterward anyway. Once everyone who wanted to seemed to have stocked up on munchables, Julian clasped her hands in front of her and started again.
“Thanks for coming, everyone. I’m Julian, for anyone who doesn’t know me -” her name belonging to a girl might come as a surprise to any first years in the group, and maybe any new second or third years - “and this, hopefully, is going to be Sonora’s book club. I’m glad to see you all.” She took an empty seat in the large circle of seats she’d made during dinner, estimating from the club’s previous numbers and being a touch optimistic. “To start with, why don’t we all introduce ourselves and our favorite kinds of things to read, maybe give an example or two.”
She had a pen and pad ready to take notes. It would be good to have a record of attendees and basic facts in case she needed to send out announcements or maybe plan future activities. Once they finished this round of introductions, she had also drawn up a game of literary bingo, carefully balancing magical and Muggle literary traditions. It was inevitably flawed, based as it was on stuff she and her brother knew or at least knew about when she and her brother were more or less half-blood by adoption and had gotten their literary education in another country and from their Muggleborn parent, but she’d tried her best to keep it and the mix of high-brow and casual reading items represented balanced. If they finished that, then anyone who didn't want to go to bed yet could just chat out the rest of the time, which she did not think would be very hard for any of them. Book people could always find something to talk about.
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Julian Umland
Restarting the Book Club.
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