Team 9 - Chinese New Year on Cascade Hall

Selina Skies

November 16, 2019 8:21 AM

Challenge 3 - Day 2 by Selina Skies

Day two of the challenge began at 9am. Selina had checked the contents of all the boxes had been returned unenchanted the previous evening. The teams had been advised in their rule sheets that they were allowed to gather resources from around the school but everything had to come into the hall unmade - craft supplies yes, premade decorations no. There was a ward around the door to the hall to check them all as they passed through more because this was the most effective way than because she really expected any cheaters.

The tables were as they had been the previous day, except that the hall was divided into small booths to ensure privacy and also give wall space should they need it. Those who were cooking had access to the kitchens but no prairie elves to help them.

Teams had been advised to hand in a description of their party and the magics used, seeing as there might be enchantments that weren’t automatically visible, or effects that might have been achieved by more than one means.

When the four hours of preparation time was up, wands had to go down - as did scissors, hands, everything. Again, there were sensors in the hall so that teams with higher numbers could not sneak in extra minutes whilst the staff went around judging each of the entries.

After the judging, as they had been promised, the walls came down, and the teams were free to enjoy their parties and admire the competition.

OOC - In order to make the most of the last weekend, we are offering you a ‘time hop’ - cutting to the day of the party so that you have something new to talk about, or can show how/what you would put together. Negotiate with your team in chatzy if you’re not sure about any potential god-modding, or keep it fuzzy. These posts have been given a new space to make things more organised, and so people can continue their original threads below if they prefer. However, these posts will be scored as a *continuation* of what is below - i.e. everyone will have their first or best post out of the whole of challenge three scored (1-5 points)and will pick up 1 additional point per post (and potential bonus points for subject uses).

You may also continue to use this space after posting for points closes in order to celebrate and socialise with your team. Posting for points will stop at midnight Sunday PST.

Subthreads:

Team 9 - Chinese New Year

Team 10 - Easter

Team 11 - Wedding Top Table

Team 12 - 17th Birthday

Team 13 - New Year's Eve

Team 1 - Engagement Party

Team 2 - Hallowe'en

Team 3 - Significant Anniversary (e.g. ruby/gold) with System, Ellie Alperton, Ruby Brockert, Jasmine Delachene

Team 4 - Thanksgiving with System, Lyssa Fitzgerald

Team 5 - Baby Shower with System, Kir McLeod, Nathaniel Mordue

Team 6 - Children's Birthday Party with System, Heinrich Hexenmeister , Dorian Montoir

Team 7 - Fourth of July

0 System Team 8 - Sporting Victory Party 0 System 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

November 16, 2019 5:44 PM

Birthday Party and Wreath, Coming Up! by Heinrich Hexenmeister

After they had finished planning the six year old's birthday party, and practiced making all the things they wanted to practice, Heinrich had gone straight to the library, where he read as many American children's books as he could find about birthday parties. He was disappointed to see that not a one of them had a wreath in it, but Dorian and Isaac had both seemed enthusiastic about including one, so Heinrich had every intention of providing a good one. As it was a birthday party and he was a guest, it also seemed culturally appropriate that he should bring a gift, if only for show. As there would be no actual six year old child present, a wrapped empty box seemed sufficient.

The more he thought on that, though, the more he thought that was being unkind, ungenerous, against the spirit of birthday parties, and letting his bad wolf feast. Instead, he decided he would make a small toy and wrap it up. Judging by how Professor Carter had looked two years ago, her little girl couldn't be far from a birthday. He could give it to either Professor Carter or Professor Xavier afterwards.

So the rest of Saturday, Heinrich split his time between collecting what he'd need for a birthday wreath and making a birthday present. He started by going out to the gardens to collect some materials. He carefully trimmed some hedges and tree branches and took cuttings of some flowers. He focused on oak twigs because the tree symbolizes strength and solidarity. He picked white carnations to show love for the birthday child and daisies for their innocence and good cheer. He clipped a strand of ivy for its endurance. Two pink tulips for good wishes and a yellow one for hope. Eventually he had to go to the greenhouses to request some bamboo, for their longevity symbolism. Once everything was collected, he cast a preservation charm on the cuttings that they'd learned in Herbology earlier that year so the flowers wouldn't die overnight and would still look nice for a couple days.

With the materials for the wreath ready for tomorrow, he turned his attention to the gift. So the other members of the team wouldn't look bad, just because they didn't think of it, he sent each of them an owl informing them that he was going to wrap up a present for Theodora Xavier to give to one of her parents after the party. Isaac was in Professor Carter's House and Dorian was in Professor Xavier's, so Heinrich figured it shouldn't be too hard to get it to one of them.

The bigger concern was what to make for her. He'd thought a toy would be a good idea but it quickly became apparent that he had no idea how to make a toy that was safe for an almost two year old who still chewed on Herbology essays (okay, yes, that gnawed on homework had been returned to him back in the fall, but he wasn't going to assume the toddler's inclination to chew on things had stopped just because Professor Xavier had done a better job protecting Heinrich's papers since then).

Well, he knew she liked chewing on paper.

So he wrote her a book. Well, kind of. It was all of six pages long - three pieces of parchment folded in half and held together by joining charms into a rough approximation of a book. Each page had a stick figure with yellow hair. This character was named . . . Rich. On the first page Rich was alone. The words emphasized this. It said "Rich was alone. He was sad." On the second page, he met another stick figure. This one had yellow hair too, but orange lips. The narration read, "One Day Rich met Lyn."

On the third page, he wrote, "Rich and Lyn had good Dogs." He had tried to draw dogs. They did not really look much like dogs. On the fourth page, he wrote "Rich and Lyn fed their good Dogs together." The dogs still didn't look very much like dogs but both Rich and Lyn had smiles on their faces now. On the previous pages they just had flat lines for mouths.

On the fifth page, Heinrich wrote, "Now, Rich and Lyn are Friends." On the last page, he wrote, "Rich is happy now. Friends are nice."

He cast an indestructible charm on the book. He wasn't very good at those yet, but it was probably better than not having one at all and giving a homemade paper book to a toddler to chew on. With luck, one of her parents would cast a better one before giving it to her.

Satisfied that a book about friendship was an appropriate gift for a small child, he put it in a box and wrapped it up in shiny paper and a bow that he had left over from when he'd wrapped Hilda's birthday present earlier in the spring.

He had rounded out the night with some studying, and then went to bed early so he'd be rested for the party tomorrow.

He arrived at the appointed time but was temporarily detained at the door when his present set off the wards and he had to argue that a birthday present was a thing a guest of a party was supposed to bring already-made, and it was a present for Theodora Xavier, so he didn't want her parents to see him making it. Nor did he want his teammates to see him making it, but he didn't mention that part. He had to agree that it wasn't going to count toward the challenge, which was fine, because he hadn't made it for the challenge. He had made it for Theodora.

Reaching his table, Heinrich laid the box of wreath supplies down on their table, and set his gift off to one side. He greeted the rest of the team in German because Hallo was so close to Hello it wasn't worth translating, and it just felt more natural to say it with the a sound than the e sound. Once greetings were finished being exchanged, he set to work making the wreath, as that was his primary responsibility.

He wove the oak twigs together. He cut the hollow bamboo shoot into candle holders and used sticking charms to fasten them to the oak wreath. Then he twined the flowers in amongst the oak twigs, careful not to get them too close to any of the candle holders. He added the six green candles to the bamboo holders in the wreath and a larger brown candle to the middle. Green because it was Sonora's color. Brown because it was supposed to be a tree for the forest theme. Next, he cast a charm to make the brown candle more pine-tree-shaped. Once that was done, he asked, "Do I light the candles now, or wait after we have ready all the decorations?" Doing something about a tablecloth in particular might involve moving the wreath and that would be easier if it wasn't on fire. Traditionally, the candles would be lit right away on the day of the child's birthday, but if the table wasn't ready yet, it would just be a fire hazard and since there wasn't actually a birthday child, nobody was losing luck by leaving them unlit.

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister Birthday Party and Wreath, Coming Up! 1414 0 5

Dorian Montoir

November 16, 2019 9:29 PM

With oh so many bunnies by Dorian Montoir

The rules had not given an end time for preparation on the first day. They had not stated anything about not over-thinking every little detail and then almost killing yourself working long into the night. Dorian knew that a good night’s sleep would be helpful in doing one’s best in the challenges. He thought it wasn’t therefore particularly fair of him to deprive Vlad of one by lying in their room tossing and turning as his mind constantly turned over ideas, and besides he really hadn’t been anywhere close to done with his preparations because he had something he very much wanted to make work which had occurred to him after Heinrich’s letter. Heinrich’s note about presents had been an important point but a confusing one. Theodora Xavier would turn two years old during the summer, not six. Whilst it was a nice thought to make the party for her, they had planned around six year olds. He had no wish to tell Heinrich not to make things for Theodora though, because that seemed deeply unkind, both trampling on Heinrich’s good intentions and denying Theodora the chance for a present. He had briefly considered whether they could just change the age of the child concerned, but he felt like that would involve replanning a lot of things that they did not have time to replan. He was worried that the staff would see it as a discontinuity, but his solution to that was to justify that, rather than be mean to Dora or Heinrich, and so he had drafted an additional document for their portfolio, which he would show Heinrich to check he had captured the sentiment of the idea correctly. It read:

A note on presents. We have chosen to prepare early birthday presents for Theodora Xavier even though she does not match the age of the child our party is for. Whilst other elements, such as the food and decorations, can be enjoyed by us all, presents cannot. It makes less sense to have presents for an imaginary child who cannot benefit from them, and so we have made presents instead for her.

He had pulled together some treats from one of his care packages from home, including sweets and dried fruits, and would transfigure a little basket and bow to put them in. That had taken a bit of thinking and working, but it was the other ideas that it had sparked that had been really time-consuming. He had decided he’d stay downstairs and work until he felt actually sleepy, and then slip into his and Vlad’s room as quietly as he could, and hope that the one minor disturbance was a lesser offence than several hours of being restless. He was going to have to either get sleeping potions for the CATS or ask to temporarily room with someone who didn’t have major exams. What had actually happened was that he’d eventually fallen asleep on a sofa in Teppenpaw surrounded by stuffed animals that he’d been trying to enchant. He had woken up at around five a.m. finding that he’d been covered over with a blanket (which he had folded neatly and left a note reading ‘thank you’ on) and had crept back to his room for a couple more hours before his alarm went off.

He looked tired. He was aware he looked tired. But his appearance wasn’t being marked. The party was. And it was going to be perfect. In fact, his tiredness had prompted a new idea, because he was going to be fine so long as he could just continually drink tea, but obviously small children and very hot beverages did not mix (though he was fairly sure he’d just… always drunk tea? But maybe his mother had let it cool before giving it to him when he was small). Anyway, he had grabbed a box which, if there was time, they could turn into a tall pedestal table and get Isaac to put an age line around (ten years old should do it) with caffeine for the adults. He was fairly sure that was actually essential for a children’s party. He already had a section in the party plan for ‘safety features,’ including factors such as the china having unbreakable charms cast on it, and the balloons being unpoppable so as not to cause alarm (which was more… comfort than safety but close enough), and this could easily be added to the well-organised document at the last minute. Isaac and his sous-chef had their kitchen duties to attend to first though, so Dorian was holding off bombarding anyone with new ideas for now.

He began by transfiguring some paper with their designs and writing out invitations in his best calligraphy. Transfiguring paper was technically a job he could have given to one of the younger students but this was going to be the first impression the staff got of their party, so he wanted it to be perfect. Ideally, he would have sent the invitations out the day before, but that had seemed against the rules. Perhaps invitations weren’t necessary, seeing as the staff knew exactly when and where to show up, but they were part of a party. By that logic, none of it was necessary because there was no real six year old. So, there were invitations.

He was working primarily on the china, because he thought that was where delicacy within the design mattered most. He had accepted letting the younger student he’d been left with have at things like the tablecloth and provide paper leaves etc because that was definitely harder to screw up than making beautiful animated woodland characters dance over the plates. The first step was transfiguring the designs on, followed by charms to animate them. He was well on his way to completing it (assuming he accepted that it was good enough) when Heinrich approached him about the wreath

“This is so beautiful!” he praised with genuine enthusiasm, “And our child will be of good character, with loyalty and grace,” he added, nodding to the bamboo. “When normally do you light it?” he asked. He hoped the younger student had got reasonably fair with preparing the basics of the table by now. He would have assumed that the wreath was lit at the start of the party or… when it was time to blow it out again (cake candles really were only for a moment) which it was manifestly still quite far from being, but the fact that Heinrich was asking now suggested he might be wrong about that, and he felt it was better not to assume, and to let Heinrich lead, seeing as it was his tradition.

Once this was dealt with, and the china was finished, he would turn his attention to the stuffed animals which had kept him up the previous night. When thinking about gifts, he had remembered the peluches they’d practised colour changing charms on as first years. Of course, if they were actually giving them away to Dora, that would not work because they were not his to give, but it had put another idea into his head. He had borrowed several of the toys from Professor Wright, and hit the books, trying to work out what spells it was his mother used to use to animate Tùtù, his stuffed bunny, when he had been smaller. He knew that chessmen were technically transfigured, and he had looked into that first but it was… complicated. The chess spells were advanced transfigurations. Also, given the fixed nature of chess moves, the spells had been refined for those movements and that set of logic. He did not want his toys running in diagonal lines etc and beating each other up, so really it wasn’t very helpful. He had hit the charms books instead. There were a few basics that they had already covered. He could make the toys dance with a wave of his wand, and he supposed that would be quite entertaining, but he wanted more. He wanted them to interact, the way his rabbit had done with him when he was small. He had found some things by borrowing an advanced charms text from the library, about animating processes in objects - set routines, to be done over and over again - which sounded much closer to what he wanted. He had very nearly fallen down a very interesting rabbithole containing the philosophical discourse on what it meant for objects to ‘know’ or ‘learn’ or ‘live’ and whether brooms could ever rise up to overthrow society, or something. He had only skim read that part and it had got very abstract, but he was looking forward to taking advanced charms already (assuming that the answer to that question was the reassuring ‘no’ that he hoped it was). The trouble with advanced charms was that… well, they were advanced. But he tried to tell himself that it was only a few months down the line that he’d be in that class, and he’d always been good at charms. After a lot of practise the previous night, he’d got to the point where he could get the toys standing and moving about. They still required verbal prompting to get between different stages of the routine, and he suspected they would not get beyond that, unless Isaac was done early enough to help him out.

“Hey, I can try this with you?” he asked a nearby teammate. “Greet,” he instructed a stuffed bunny that he’d been working on. It took some shaky soft footed steps towards the nearest person and made a little bow. “What do you think?” he asked. “It looks silly with me telling it the directions, or it is okay?” He knew that, on paper, having got the stuffed toy to follow verbal commands rather than just manipulating it with his wand was an achievement, but he was also aware that it stopped just short of the magic of it really seeming to be alive.

13 Dorian Montoir With oh so many bunnies 1401 0 5

Kir McLeod

November 17, 2019 3:56 AM

Odd ideas of fun by Kir McLeod

The previous evening had been pretty productive. Kir had done a bit more party prep, mostly in terms of trying out charms they'd need for the games. He was accustomed to staying up a bit later at the weekends anyway, and had tacked some studying on to that, before starting a letter to Zevalyn which had gone on more than he had expected it to. It had been pretty late by the time he had finished. He had done a sweep of the common room to make sure no one else was burning the midnight oil, stressing unduly about the challenges, and was relatively unsurprised by who was. Or rather, had been. Dorian had been passed out with an advanced charms textbook on the floor beside him. Kir had debated waking him up and sending him to bed, but seeing as he was sleeping, and Kir knew from working with him in the concert that he could get kind of stressed and highly strung about things, Kir had decided that a better night's rest might come from leaving him to it, and had opted instead for conjuring a blanket over him. In the morning, both sleeper and blanket were gone, though he did find a note thanking him on the end of the sofa, which he had pocketed with a smile.

Kir had spent the first part of the challenge down in the kitchens, trusting his team upstairs to follow through on the plans they'd devised the previous day in terms of decor and games. Food-wise, he had considered his cupcake designs carefully. It was tempting to go for something like unicorns and mermaids with a sarcastic note about those being the two genders but he was trying really hard not to express himself through passive aggressive cake humour, because he thought that probably wasn't an attractive quality in a person. And he wasn't confident in his fondant icing modelling skills. And buttercream tasted better. Rainbows were nice, queer-friendly, and child-friendly. He had a batch of lemon cupcakes with stiff peaks of white icing, charmed with colourful swirls, and a batch of chocolate ones with chocolate icing, decorated with M&Ms. The had gone for general snacky foods like chips, sandwiches and some premade vol-au-vents which he was hoping they'd be able to transfigure just a teensy bit to look a bit like bassinets. He'd also quickly transfigured himself a duck shaped cookie cutter to make the sandwiches more thematic (it did a neater, faster and more consistent job than he would have done by transfiguring each individual sandwich).

With a bit of time, it hadn't been too hard to come up with ways of expressing their theme even if they were forced to skip over the usual main event of presents. There were at least two games they could play, one spurred on by his less than successful attempts to make a pair of knitting needles do anything other than tie themselves in knots. Seeing as he couldn't produce tiny booties, he had instead procured wool (in nice mint green and yellow) and would be setting it up as a competition, to see who could come the closest to making the needles knit something vaguely functional. At the moment, his personal best was a few wobbly rows of a very tiny scarf. It was lucky that babies were small. He had also directed the team to bring any clothes they were growing out of, with the explanation that they would be shrunk to be baby-sized. That didn't preclude unshrinking them afterwards and putting them back into use, but too much of that sort of thing could place wear and tear on garments, so it was best if they were things that could be sacrificed. He had dropped off a selection of jeans and t-shirts that morning for them to work on shrinking, and looked forward to the eclectic ensembles his and Nathaniel's combined cast offs would give. Not that anyone would be wearing them. They were all going to learn clothes folding charms if they didn't know them already and then have races through folding a little pile of untidy clothes.

"How's it going?" he asked his team, as he reappeared in the hall with his trays of cupcakes.

13 Kir McLeod Odd ideas of fun 366 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

November 17, 2019 10:19 AM

I have had fun before. by Nathaniel Mordue

Such stress as Nathaniel had felt about the challenge the night before had been about the instruction to sacrifice some of his clothes. He had felt no impulse to do a last-minute rush of Charms or Transfiguration practice, but did feel contradictory urges when it came to his personal property. He was torn between actively wanting all his clothes and everything else he owned destroyed, so he could start over from scratch, and just as passionately wanting to hold on to every scrap of his old life, for no reason other than not wanting to even briefly let go of anything that wasn’t being physically wrestled from his hands.

Recognizing how irrational he was being had forced him to force himself to get some things together and take them downstairs. He had several pairs of already neatly folded dark grey and dark blue trousers, white and light blue button-down shirts, light grey and navy blue sweater-vests (one with a lively red trim around the neck and hem) and sweaters. A uniform robe, because people seemed to find it funny to dress infants in miniature uniforms. A couple of pairs of shoes, because when they had had a party for him when he was born, there had been a lot of baby shoes, which had looked just like his regular shoes but tiny, and he remembered one photograph in particular where his mother had looked utterly delighted with them.

That memory had also prompted him to bring a couple more things. He had a stack of sturdy paper, an empty photo album, and one of his cameras - specifically, the new, flashy one his mother had given him for Christmas this year, a clear and repulsive bribe. He had tried to leave it at home, to reject it altogether, but his mother had sent it to him, pretending he had merely forgotten it. It would not disturb him if it got broken and would be a contribution.

“Fine,” he said to the question, not looking up from what he was doing - specifically, folding the sheets of strong paper into dragons. He and Jeremy had had endless fun with paper dragons, once upon a time. He had not yet decided if he was going to be nice or charm them pink and blue just to annoy Kir. “I brought a few things. People made an album of the day they gave my mother things after I was born,” he explained of the camera and album. “And I shrank some of my shoes.” He put one dragon aside and started another. “These are dragons,” he said.

16 Nathaniel Mordue I have had fun before. 1412 0 5

Ellie Alperton

November 17, 2019 7:07 PM

Red and sparkly by Ellie Alperton

Ellie was on kitchen duty for her team, so bagged the workspace next to Kir and got started. She had noticed the McLeod Foundation posters in the library, and with him being head boy, it wasn't hard to learn his name, or notice the relevant t-shirts or rainbow accessories he often wore. She didn't feel any particular need to talk to or befriend him - it seemed relatively pointless - but it was nice to know there was someone safe around, just in case. She sometimes sat at his table in the library for much the same reasons.

She had been faintly worried, after claiming she knew how to make red velvet cakes, that she was going to struggle to do that without Google, because it wasn't like she knew the recipe off by heart. Luckily, the library had a few recipe books and household magazines, and she had been able to find them in there. Once you put your mind to it, there really were quite a lot of easy red foods. She had initially thought about a red fruit salad, but decided that chocolate dipped fruit was classier - there was even ruby chocolate on the shopping list, and even though she knew that was pale pink, it seemed too good to pass up. Whilst her cupcakes cooled, she set to work on that. There was probably a magical way to make all the things in front of her combine the way she wanted but she didn't know it, so she set up a bain-marie to melt the chocolate before dipping the strawberries and cherries in it. Each cupcake got a neat peak of cream cheese frosting and was dusted with edible red glitter. There was plenty of that left, so she dusted the fruits with it too, quite sure that her team would agree there was no such thing as too much sparkle. She hadn't been confident with any other dishes, and had left it to her team to decide whether any of them wanted to cook or to just get some ready made things like mini quiches and sausage rolls.

Pretty pleased with both her trays, she carried them carefully, with slightly shaking hands, up to the hall to lay before her teammates.

"Are there any easy decorating tasks you want me to do?" she checked, aware she had not yet contributed magically. "Or shall I go change?" She had not worn her party clothes for the cooking, after all. She had done a mental run through of her wardrobe the day before and realised there wasn't a lot of red or a lot of very fancy clothes in it (she had what she regarded as nice dresses but she wasn't sure if they were up to scratch), however she had been assured that her teammates could help her out with restyling things.

13 Ellie Alperton Red and sparkly 1456 0 5

Ruby Brockert

November 17, 2019 9:19 PM

And beautiful by Ruby Brockert

Ruby woke up bright and early for the second day of the final Challenge. She knew it wasn't an actual party, but she still was excited for it. It was so nice to have an event that wasn't...potentially humiliating or borderline torture. Plus, they were in third going into it, which was sort of surprising, and now had an event they were actually probably going to be good at.

She was even going to be able to use one of her own talents, which was flower arranging. There would be an abundance of red and maybe Ruby would make them sparkly so they'd look more ruby-like. She was using a lot of roses, and if it weren't for the things that spelled out Happy Fortieth Anniversary , their decor might be confused for a Valentine's Day party. Maybe Ruby should have suggested a different major anniversary instead of making a joke about liking rubies but nobody had objected.

The Teppenpaw sat at their table, putting roses into bouquets with baby's breath into vases with cute little hearts on them. She used an inflating charm to blow up heart shaped balloons with the number forty on them as well as balloons shaped like fours and zeros. Well, actually they were balloon shaped balloons that Ruby had transfigured into hearts, fours and zeros and then used the color changing charm on to make them red. And a glitter charm to make them sparkly.

Ellie came out with her cupcakes and chocolate covered fruit, which were lovely. The rest of the food was ready made stuff that they'd got from caterers. Simple things like deviled eggs, cocktail shrimp, baked bread and an antipasto platter. The first year asked if there was anything she could easily decorate. Ruby considered this. "You can do decorations on the plates if you want to. Otherwise, you've done well with the cupcakes and chocolate fruit. They look really nice. Absolutely delicious." Probably better than anything that she could have done.

She surveyed their area. "I think we've done absolutely wonderful. I'd be honored to have this as my fortieth anniversary party. Besides, if we could handle the previous challenges," Ruby suppressed a shudder. "this one should be no problem."

11 Ruby Brockert And beautiful 1405 0 5

Jasmine Delachene

November 17, 2019 9:40 PM

And personal by Jasmine Delachene

Jasmine still thought it was weird to host an anniversary party without a couple celebrating their anniversary in attendance, but the others on her team seemed to think it was fine. She let herself be convinced that a portrait of a married couple would have to do. Even so, a renewal of their vows was right out as the focal point of the celebration. They’d just have to cake and some nicely elegant decorations for the ruby anniversary.

The rules of the challenge were badly crimping Jasmine’s idea of a fancy anniversary party because the whole point of having one was to bring together every person who ever knew the couple to show off their astounding feat of staying married to the same person for forty years. Her Delachene grandparents had managed it, just a couple years ago, but the Greers hadn’t yet and Mom and Dad were closer now than Grandma Burbridge probably ever would be.

The Delachene Ruby Anniversary had taken place in the French Embassy where they had worked for most of Dad’s teen and adult years. It had been a big todo, with French people and American people and neighboring Embassy people who weren’t French or American and Jasmine had known approximately none of them, outside of her own immediate family and the guests of honor. She’d been introduced to cousins she didn’t even know she had, and people who claimed to have known her as a baby, and well, it was a lot more than five people who were barely old enough to be a blip in the couple’s life together.

But none of that was something they could replicate today.

“Pictures,” she had said, after telling the others about her grandparents’ anniversary. “Instead of just one portrait of a couple, we can put up pictures of a couple throughout their whole life together, celebrating all forty of their years of marriage.”

She had written home almost immediately, to both Dad and grand-mère, explaining the challenge and what she needed. Both were prompt in sending her boxes of framed photographs as well as loose prints. As she went through the offerings, she was struck by a memory of watching Aunt Molly’s wedding video.

Going to the library was not a thing Jasmine did lightly, but she did it last night. She read Charms books until she found the one that could replicate Aunt Molly’s slide show.

Sunday morning dawned early and Jasmine rose with the sun. The photos had only been part if her responsibility. She hadn’t quite been able to get over her idea for a floral arch, and she’d volunteered to get that together. She had a little piece of white picket fence that she would use to transfigure the arch itself, and right after eating a light breakfast she went out to collect flowers from the gardens. She carefully dug out some ivy and some red flowering vines and replanted them two narrow rectangular planters.

She arrived in the Cascade Hall, right at nine, and dropped those off in their party room. Jasmine smiled at all of the wall space she had to work with for her photographs, but first she had to go fetch them.

She returned less than an hour later, which she felt was quite fast for taking a shower and getting ready for a party. She was now dressed in a red Elena of Avalor gown, with her hair done up nicely, wearing tasteful makeup, and carrying two boxes of photographs. She greeted Ruby who was doing the bouquets and table decorations, then started by hanging up the framed pictures on two of the walls opposite each other, setting aside the one of grand-mere and grand-pere at their actual ruby anniversary and all of the loose prints.

Then she did the arch. A relatively simple inanimate to inanimate transfiguration transformed the bit of fencing to a lovely trellis arch. A bit of charmwork got the ivy and red flowers attached to the trellis. She maneuvered the whole thing against center of one of the empty walls. She hung up the last framed picture of her grandparents inside the arch.

Just as she was about to get to work on the slide show, Ellie arrived with the cupcakes. Ruby suggested sprucing up the plates, and Jasmine added, smiling and pointing at the wall with the arch. “If you still need something to do after that, we have a lot of white space on either side of the arch,” she said. “You could do some charms to add hearts or something to make them prettier?”

Then she set to her own projection charms, setting up a whole progression of images that would play for them as they ate their catered food and red velvet cupcakes. It would show a young couple in the early stages of romance in Paris, then wedding pictures, pictures in front of their new home, proud parents with baby Dad, more pictures with them and Dad (he changed more rapidly than they did), a picture of them with their first house in America, more pictures of just them and fewer with Dad, Mom and Dad’s wedding, baby Jasmine as their first grandchild, baby Anya their second, baby Philippe their last, various embassy events mixed in between, a retirement party, and finally the last one, the same as the one under the arch.

Once it reached that point, it would repeat again from the beginning. In fact, it did that as soon as Jasmine completed the casting. She had no idea how to make it pause, so it would just already be going wherever it was at when the party started formally. As she watched it go through its first iteration, she winced a little at the fact that some pictures went by too fast while others lingered just a little too long, and a few projected kind of fuzzy, but it wasn’t bad enough to go through all the effort of casting it again. Besides, they were running out of time.

“Did we add charms for the slide projection and herbolgy and transfiguration for the flower arch to our party description?” she checked.

1 Jasmine Delachene And personal 1397 0 5

Lyssa Fitzgerald

November 18, 2019 7:53 AM

Friends are the Family You Choose by Lyssa Fitzgerald

Lyssa had not fully realized how prepared she'd been to prepare yesterday when she sat down at the table. She was pleasantly surprised by how her team was doing. She liked to think it was partially her doing, but she knew that her whole team had done a lot, especially during the second challenge. When she saw that it was going to be party planning a part of her rolled her eyes. It seemed...trite. There was so much they had to prepare for in the world, why would they need to practice to prepare for a party. And then she saw Cleo's reaction.

It was hard for Lyssa to put into words, but she could tell something was off. She'd heard rumors swirling around about how Cleo had dumped someone. Parker had been anxious, or more anxious than normal, and though Lyssa tried to stay out of the way of her older brothers obvious crush on Cleo, she'd noticed Cleo hadn't really been to the Gardening club all semester. So when the question of cooking came up Lyssa had raised her hand.

"I can cook almost everything that's required," she'd said.

She wasn't lying either. Helping her father cook thanksgiving had been her go to chore since she was seven. She loved learning how to brine a turkey and stuff it. She loved making pies. Most of all she loved eating and seeing her family smile as they drifted off into some sort of food coma. But she assumed it might be different using magic, maybe there was a brining spell. She was sure she could ask some of the prairie elves who were always happy to talk to her and she hadn't been wrong. They were quite nice about it all, though the turkey had been more than a bit tricky, and it's slightly misshaped appearance was a testament to the fact that Lyssa was no transfiguration expert yet. Still, there was a bird that resembled a turkey, that was cooked.

The smiles of friends were what she was thinking of as she walked in carrying a few pies, some mashed potatoes and having a turkey trail lead the way in front of her. She had them all come down on the table. She slumped her backpack off on the bench next to her.

"Hi friends," she said with a smile, "I may have gone a bit overboard, but I couldn't help it. And I'm sorry Cleo, I didn't ask you to run the numbers and kind of just did it. I found a way..." she didn't quite know how to explain how she'd ended up with a Turkey, because the animal she'd started with hadn't been a turkey, but lo and behold it was now... kind of.

"There is something else I want us to do since it's our last challenge," Lyssa said looking around the table. "Instead of each of us saying what we are thankful for, I want us to write down two things from today that was great or that we were thankful for. Then find somewhere to keep it. Each day, until the real thanksgiving in November, write down one or two things that were great or that you were thankful for. Then, before you eat your Thanksgiving meal, take it out and read through them. Be it privately or public."

She took out her own note book and ripped out a page and ripped it in half with a flurish.

I'm not in this alone she wrote, thinking of both her team right now and that her brother was also at this magical, scary and confusing school.

I can eat this "turkey" she wrote, looking at the turkey in front of her. She was impressed and yet couldn't stifle a little laugh.

Out of her backpack she pulled out a glass jar and put the two pieces of paper inside it.

She'd heard her mother talk about doing this one year, and then had never seen it done. Lyssa figured it would be a good thing for each of them to do. At this point Lyssa felt each of them had reasons they needed to remember something good each day. Life was hard, in this strange place. For Lyssa it was all a different culture, with people being angry at you for being you. This seemed like a small way for Lyssa to remind herself that she was worth every bit of the joy that she received.

"While we eat, what else we got?" she asked looking around.

41 Lyssa Fitzgerald Friends are the Family You Choose 1421 0 5