Grayson Wright
December 13, 2019 4:45 PM
Welcome to Aladren, First Years! by Grayson Wright
At the end of the Feast, Gray Wright sat back in his chair and focused for a moment. Then Professor Wright stood up from his place at the staff table, pushed his chair under properly, and went over to the Aladren table to collect his first years."Good evening, hello again," he said, looking around the group. Not bad, he thought. Bigger than last year, and they would use both of the rooms set aside for first years. Couldn't ask for much more than that, though he was congenitally inclined enough toward ingratitude to also push his luck by at least also asking if the new group of Aladrens could possibly also get along reasonably well with each other, especially the girls, who would have to share one of those two rooms. "Welcome to Aladren," he added with a slight smile. "I'm still Professor Wright, and also your Head of House, now. Follow me to the common room, please."
He led them out of the Cascade Hall, back into the corridors, and nodded politely to Professor Mims before doing a quick second head count to make sure they had all made it out of the Hall. "Everyone here? Very good. Here we go."
They went through corridors, pointing out landmarks that might help them navigate, until he came to the doors of the library. "I hope you all remember this from the tour earlier," he said. "But what I didn't tell the whole group - and which none of you should tell the whole group - is that the entrance to our common room is inside the library. Very convenient for many of us," he said, "but always remember this is a public location, and to treat it and visitors from other Houses with respect."
He led them inside and almost immediately stopped walking again to point at the librarians' desk. "That's the librarians' desk," he said, perhaps unnecessarily. "It's where you check out books, or ask for any assistance you might need in here. The librarian's name is Mr. Fox-Reynolds. If you can't find me or one of our prefects - which is unlikely, but if you can't - he's a good person to ask for assistance instead." And then Gray would owe Tarquin a fresh packet of tea, as the librarian would likely need it to recover from interacting with children at any length, but so it went. "It pains me to say it, but you also all need to be out of the library by closing time and back in our common room," he added. "Curfew is at ten. You're responsible for your own bedtime - in coordination with your roommates, of course - and for being ready to go to classes in the morning, but we do ask that you all be inside the common room or dorms and that you maintain a level of quiet after ten o'clock," he explained. "Right through here, please..."
He led them through the stacks to the back wall, then along it until he ended up in the section on animals. "Aladren's symbolic animal is the hawk," he told them, "which is why the key to our common room is this book." He put his hand on a book called Birds of Prey, a very well-worn book indeed, and pulled. Part of the shelf began to swing on a hidden hinge, revealing the entrance to the common room. "And here is our House," he said, ushering them through.
The shelf slid back into place behind them as they entered a spacious room decorated primarily in blue and black. The room was dotted with sets of tables and chairs and a few sofas and there were bookshelves on several walls. He had looked over the shelves when he took over as Head of House a year and a half ago and had made a few additions, so the common room library covered a reasonable variety of interests - subjects related to magic, yes, but also other subjects, including history and literature and a largish amount of Muggle math and science. For a second year, he had also decided to have several periodicals delivered to the common room for general use. The first issues of these, along with hodgepodges from last year's deliveries and his own, older collection of such things, were on a few stands around the room. He led the new kids to the rug in front of the hearth and waved for them to sit down in the immediate area. Since he was not exactly declaiming to a crowd here, he took an armchair himself so he was more or less on their level instead of looming over them from the rug.
"Once again, welcome to Aladren," he said. "This is our common room - where you can sit, meet with others in our House, do your homework, play some chess - whatever you want, within reason. It's a decent place to look for people who might want to research the same things you do - the bulletin board's useful if you want to find a study partner or start a group. You'll also see the sign-ups for clubs and teams and announcements about school events there. If you want to start a club or otherwise post something for other Houses to see, just let me know and I'll work it out with the other Heads of Houses so they can post it on their bulletin boards too.
"My office is through that door over there," he said, pointing to a door set into one wall. "There's an outside entrance from the corridor around the bend, too, if you're with someone from another House or just already passing that way." By which he really meant if you'd rather not advertise to anyone in the common room that you want a word with me; he assumed that would be obvious enough without an explicit statement. "If you have any questions about the school or other concerns, you're welcome to come talk to me - as Head of House, I'm here to be your default adult and to act as the middleman between you and the administration, when that's needed," he explained. "Other professors would also be happy to listen if you have anything you would rather to talk to them about, of course - " which there were excellent reasons for them to do; he somehow doubted he exactly looked like someone any girl would want to confide in, for instance - "and prefects are also here to help you. You can recognize them by their badges. Their names are Gary Harper and Heinrich Hexenmeister.
"The dorms are through that door over there." He pointed. "When you get in, you'll see there's a hallway that goes two ways. Dorms for girls are down the hall to your right, and dorms for boys are down the hall to your left." He didn't know of any special situations in this year's class, but he chose to use the form of words he had developed for the year before. "You can only walk down the hallway that your room is located on. If you walk down the other one, you'll fall through the floor and end up back in the common room. They tell me it's not a very soft landing, so I'd recommend you don't do that," he said matter-of-factly. "Your room has your year number - this year, that's a 1 - on it, so it should be easy to find." The room numbers were not always in order - indeed, were rarely in order, as each year's number changed with its occupants - but were always clearly labelled. "The second years will be in all your classes as well as being your neighbors, so I'd recommend being good neighbors," he added.
"That's a lot of information, I know, so you'll probably be glad to hear that's the end of this speech," he said. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them. If you don't have any questions, though, then meeting adjourned - you can look around the common room, or go check out the dorms. Your trunks will already be in the correct rooms."
OOC: Welcome to Aladren! You can now post your character on any of the boards, though they do not have access to other common rooms outside of HoH offices. You can also continue your conversations at the Feast and at Orientation thanks to the magic of what we call "fuzzy time" - as long as two threads are supposed to happen at different times in character, you can write them at the same time as an author. If you have any questions, just ask in Chatzy or on the OOC board. Have fun!
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Welcome to Aladren, First Years!
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