Let's get real here. (Tag: Mr. Row) on Elective Hall

Mara Morales

March 20, 2020 9:23 PM

Let's get real here. (Tag: Mr. Row) by Mara Morales

Mara and Jessica had had many conversations over the past few months about what they missed most about home. As she walked toward Mr. Row's office, her subdued black backpack-on-wheels making a wince-inducing number of rattles as she pulled it in her wake, Mara made a mental note to add 'email' to her list the next time the subject came up. In the middle school she had been set to go to, making an appointment with a counselor was the kind of thing she could have done from her phone during the five-minute breaks between classes. At Sonora, the breaks were fifteen minutes long, and that was good, because making appointments involved dealing with large birds of prey and then stepping in flippin' bird dook and then having to hurry back to Aladren to change her shoes.

She had spent her entire midterm, more or less, planning for this occasion, only to have the ground shift under her feet again before she had quite gotten the last of Georgia's dust off her shoes. She was getting really tired of that happening, and hoped to address that issue, among others, with Mr. Row.

Her analog watch said she was on time and therefore expected, but she knocked on the door anyway, as was polite and professional, and waited to be invited in.

"Hi," she said. "Thanks for agreeing to meet me again. I've...got kind of a lot to go over with you."

She took a seat and unzipped one compartment in her bag, the better to withdraw a two-inch binder. She unzipped the case of the notebook, too, to access its contents, but folded her hands on top of them instead of getting straight to passing documents over the desk. "I spent midterm working on the project we talked about last time," she said. "My mom works for a rich guy, and he's cool, as far as rich guys go, so he got me hooked up with a private labeling thing - basically, I drew some new labels, and if I get the green light from you all here, I'll have those printed and put them on products that are already developed, so we have all the safety information - that's in here, too. A lot of it. What's in everything, where it's made, inspection records...I got that stuff. I also ended up with a lot of pens. It's a long story. I'll tell you in a minute if you really want to know," she cut herself off. "And about where the money's coming from and all that. It's all legit," she added, as that was important.

If she was Mr. Row, she thought, she would have read her file by now. If she read her file, it would disclose at least two interesting facts: that her mother was listed as a domestic worker, and that she had no father on record. It was possible, too, that it might include a third fact - that her mother had immigrated from Colombia. That, combined with a single mother who did not work in a traditionally very lucrative field...well, that could lead someone to Conclusions. Conclusions which her mother was always worried about people drawing, and which outraged Mara. Her parents were not involved in That Stuff. Her parents never had been involved in that stuff, and never would be, unless it was in some medical application that did not involve the kind of thing that gave Colombians in particular a bad reputation in some places. As far as she knew, even her mother's family in Colombia were not into that sort of thing. Her mother was certainly violently enough opposed to it; she said the people who were into it brought shame to their entire ethnicity, and Mara was not inclined to argue the point.

"Before we talk any more about that, though, I have to ask you a new question," she said. "It's...complicated, but I guess the basic version is...what kind of place is this? This...magic world, I mean." She grimaced and tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear. "I was talking to my friend about politics and it was like she was from another planet," she explained. "I thought - somebody else I know was too bent out of shape about there not being any social studies classes, but now I think the same thing. I'm still getting my head around the idea that people here are racist against me but not my friend I mentioned before when she's Mexican and I'm half-Colombian," she muttered. "I mean, I guess xenophobia is xenophobia, and it sucks, but...I read the books in the library and the newspapers in my common room, and it's all patriarchs and arranged marriages like we're in the Wars of the Roses, but my friend also looked at me like I had two heads when I tried to explain what sexism is. I don't know if I even want to do any business here at this rate. I can convert dollars to coins all day to figure out what would be a profit, but that's not going to help me when I don't understand anything about how all these people think." She paused. "Do...do you know what I'm talking about?" she asked hesitantly, realizing it was quite possible all his ancestors were wizards and that he was also about to look at her like she had two heads. Nothing about his attire or bearing suggested wealth or status to her in particular - and that was one of those subtle things that tended to carry across the border so far - but all that let her know was that he probably didn't have as many lumps of gold lying around as some other people.

16 Mara Morales Let's get real here. (Tag: Mr. Row) 1472 1 5

Killian Row

March 20, 2020 10:47 PM

My reality is hilarious right now. by Killian Row

Killian's office was neat for the first time in possibly ever. While he always had some semblance of organization going on, it was often the sort that an accio charm would be better suited for than searching for anything by hand. He was pretty good at the sorts of charms that suited office work and had plenty of reasons to use them. In this case though, Killian had cleaned his office by hand.

With the end of the year coming up, it was extra important that he knew everything he could about every student he could. He had internships and college applications and job applications and educational interviews and a hundred and one other things to schedule and follow up on. The last thing he needed was to lose That Piece of Paper Gary needed, or That Questionnaire Cleo filled out. And so he had organized.

However, this was something he did every year at this time. It was something he had established at his previous job and brought with him to Sonora, an old habit deeply engrained, and underscored by the successes of students in years past. His office on this particular occasion was clean because Killian was stressed for other reasons. He put those reasons aside as a knock sounded the beginning of his appointment with Mara Morales, first year, twelve years old, mother on file from Colombia, no listed father, from Atlanta, Georgia, incredibly astute in business terms. Killian knew he was jumping the spell, but he couldn't help looking forward to a few years from now and starting to get an idea of what opportunities may be available to a student like Mara Morales.

There were other things though. He had suspicions and questions. However, he also knew that coincidences seemed a little less like coincidences when he'd been reviewing people's files too much, and so what if a girl with no father on her file but an incredible business streak came from the same city as another student with a wealthy father in the business world and they both happened to be invested in cosmetics and one of them happened to have some stigmas attached to her in the Muggle world. Those could be coincidences. Or they could not be.

But now it was time for their appointment, so coincidences were pushed out and facts were pulled back in. He called for Mara to come in - assuming it was indeed Mara - and smiled at her when she confirmed his guess. There. At least there was one thing that wasn't a coincidence. Although a student like Mara showing up on time for her scheduled appointment wasn't exactly surprising either.

"Hello," he responded with a grin, noting her tone and the way she presented herself as professional and wanting to do his best to offer the same. "It's good to see you. Thank you for coming."

A lot to go over. That could either be quite good or quite bad. It was interesting phrasing. It was the sort of phrasing that Selina would use at a performance review with a staff member who had been making some sketchy decisions. It was also the sort of thing that a manager might open the meeting with before diving into the quarterly reports. Funny how such a small thing could mean so much. He supposed that was true of every little thing, though.

Mara retrieved her binder and answered a lot of the questions Killian had asked previously, as well as some he had not, both in terms of her project and otherwise. But those could be coincidences and he wasn't one to push a student to reveal anything they didn't want to. That was part of his effort to help students understand the difference between guidance counselor and everything-else counselor.

He nodded along, offering a wry smile. He couldn't help but be proud of this girl. She was going places. She was probably going to terrify a lot of people in her lifetime and she wouldn't have to be a terror to do it. As if she was reading his mind, she suddenly turned the conversation almost exactly to what he was thinking.

It was very polite of Mara to try so hard to not share names, but there was only one "she" from Mexico, and Killian knew enough about that file to know that she wasn't a cookie cutter case of Pureblood wizardry. Beyond that, the wizarding world was arguably . . . archaic. Not in all things, but there were certainly some remnants of times gone by. The world was changing, but that wasn't necessarily something a student from a muggle family would know.

"I do know what you're talking about," Killian agreed a little sadly. This was a heavy topic and he couldn't help admiring the bravery of a female, half-Colombian, muggleborn student bringing it up so directly with a male, white, wizardborn staff member. Whatever was true of Mara's family, they'd done something right. "Unfortunately, as diverse as Sonora tends to be in many ways, it is a narrow slice of the wider magical community. I assure you that most grown witches and wizards are well aware of the sexism, xenophobia, and blood-status superiority that run rampant."

Killian shifted in his seat, giving himself and Mara both a moment to think before he continued. "I don't have a straight answer for you, although I can say that 'old blood' plays a role, as does the relative seclusion that most wizarding families live in. Neither of those things excuses bigotry, however. At the same time, this is a changing world." He looked at Mara a little more meaningfully. "Young witches and wizards like you are changing the world and broadening the definition of magic in very powerful ways."

His mind turned back to some of the reasons he'd been stressed before, and he wondered suddenly whether Bonabel was going to have to face some of the same problems that Mara was. Both of her parents were magical - at least as far as Lorcan knew - but that didn't mean she wouldn't be facing sexism, xenophobia, or issues related to family order and appearance. Again, he pushed thoughts of his niece aside, if for no other reason in this case than the fact that anything he thought might be helpful to share about Bonabel would undoubtedly be more than Bonabel knew about herself. Besides, that wouldn't be fair to her when she was a first year and Mara was a second year. Killian's stress was not the point of this conversation, and so it went back in his mental filing cabinet - under S for stress, cross-referenced to R for Row family - and locked it away tightly.

"I promise: most marriages aren't arranged," he said with a small smirk. It wasn't funny, but it was sort of. It was the way people say, 'I think it's funny how' right before they say thought was sort of horrible. "But really, the world is changing, whether magical or Muggle. I would encourage you to pursue your business pursuits. You obviously have the skills for it and getting started now means you have that many more years to equip yourself with the necessary tools to turn glass ceilings into windowed flooring. Does that help answer some of your questions?"

22 Killian Row My reality is hilarious right now. 1450 0 5

Mara Morales

March 21, 2020 7:02 PM

...Good for you, I guess? by Mara Morales

Broadening the definition. What the heck did that mean? Changing the world, that was all fine and good (the thing needed a lot of changing, in her opinion, and not just because the regressive nature of the surrounding society was pretty much the root cause of Mara's family constantly living under stress trying to keep its structure secret from the world without allowing said structure to actually fall apart), but how did one broaden a definition?

She thought about the materials she read in the common room sometimes. Most of them went straight over her head, full of jargon and assumptions about underlying concepts that she simply didn't have enough familiarity with, but one of the articles where she had at least been able to broadly grasp the point had been about how an increasing number of talented younger wizards were trying to apply principles of 'Muggle' science to studying the nature of magic. There had been a whole thing about some dude up north who wanted to study various cells from different magical and non-magical groups to try to understand better why some people had magic and others did not, and how heredity affected a person's degree of magical ability, but the proposal had been widely objected to by the establishment because most experiments involving collecting and using organic material from humans were seen as Dark magic in the wizarding community....

Mara tried not to shift uncomfortably. She was fine with leading a charge, but not just...being a figurehead. A model citizen or whatever. She remembered a day in school last year, and exactly how awkward it had been for her when she got ethnicity-specific leaflets about enrichment programs in addition to all the stuff her classmates had received. She wanted to be a high-achieving student, not a high-achieving Latina student. For one thing, as far as she could tell, the latter always seemed to be held to a slightly lower standard than the former. For another thing, it didn't even feel entirely...fair somehow, when her dad was both involved in her life and as white as Cool Whip in the snow. She was proud of her mother's culture, sure, but that didn't mean she felt she ought to be in a completely different group than the one which included her dad and Jessica. They were just as much as her family as her mom and Lola were. She didn't really feel like she belonged in either box, but she was put into one just the same. And now, it seemed, she was in a place where nobody cared about her ethnicity, but it was still possible that she was gonna be stuck dealing with a woke white guy who expected her to save the world, not just because it needed saving and she had what it took, but because of something as out of her control as what she was.

"Not really," she said when he asked if he had answered some of her questions. "They're more like...do you have a 'welcome to the secret country' reading list? I've seen in the papers, and remember the...orientation person back home, saying stuff about you all having your own governments and stuff. It looks like you've got your own culture too. Are there basic books that explain all this?" Her reading level was high, but she was not sure it really worked the same way for her when diving into a completely new subject with its own terms she didn't know. Context could only do so much. "And - um - you kind of made me think of another one, too," she said with a half-smile which, unusually for her, bordered on apologetic. "What did you mean 'broadening the definition of magic'? I'm not sure I know what you meant." Pretending to know stuff she didn't was not helpful, and it was possible she was reading too much into a phrase she really did not have any reason to assume she knew the meaning of just because of past experiences. Those had all happened, after all, in another world.

16 Mara Morales ...Good for you, I guess? 1472 0 5

Killian Row

March 21, 2020 7:36 PM

Irrelevant, sorry. by Killian Row

Killian felt bad that he hadn't really helped answer Mara's questions, and worse that he seemed to have made her uncomfortable. He wasn't sure whether it was a matter of his own misunderstanding, or his own biases. There certainly were other thoughts on his mind just then, and maybe they unduly influenced his answer? Or perhaps, Mara was just in a different place than he had first thought. In any case, she made a good point; how did wizards and witches from non-magical families get to learn about this culture? Immersion was all well and good, but they were meeting the people that would make up the rest of their lives. It seemed like there should be a buffer of some sort. A class, or a summer program maybe. That being said, he was sure that Selina covered such topics in her additional courses, although Mara hadn't signed up for those as far as he could tell. He made a note on the corner of a piece of paper on his desk, wanting to make sure he thought more about that particular part of the problem more later. For now, he was needed here.

"Sorry, I may have been a bit longwinded there," he said, smiling softly and a little embarrassedly. "On the more pragmatic side of things, there are some books that may be helpful. There's nothing like a classic literature book the way non-magical schools often have, other than the books you've been assigned for your classes, but I can recommend some history and culture titles if you are interested in those."

On a blank piece of paper, Killian wrote down Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century, Important Modern Magical Discoveries, A Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry, and . . . and what? There wasn't a lot that came to mind. He knew of some places that may be able to provide information and made another note to himself on a different piece of paper to find out more about the foundations Zara Jackson's family and the McLeod family were involved with.

"However, I'm also happy to try to answer any specific questions you have about these things as well, or point you in the direction of more specific resources, too."

Mara asked a new question and Killian chastised himself internally again. Normally, he was pretty good with students. Today did not seem to be his day. He sort of wished that Gary could see this conversation; he certainly wouldn't think so highly of Killian after that. Well, maybe he was glad Gary wasn't here after all.

"Historically speaking, what you're noticing on a small scale here has happened elsewhere. For some family lines, 'magic' was a word reserved for the things that a witch or wizard of magical heritage could do. People with non-magical families were considered less-than, or 'dirty' because of that. People with non-magical families who could do magic were looked at like a parlor trickster outside Houdini's final show. But there are a lot of reasons we know that isn't true, and what it means to be 'magic' has changed a lot. It's grown and shifted and become a much more inclusive concept. Non-human beings who have magic are being recognized for that ability, Muggles describe events as 'magical' and they aren't necessarily wrong, and people who, historically, weren't accepted as part of that definition now are being recognized."

Killian folded his hands in his lap, aware that he was being wordy again. At the same time, this was something that Mara needed to know, especially if she was observant enough to ask about it. "In that way, the racism you see here is very much the same as what you have seen in the Muggle world, except that international travel and borders are a bit different, so some of the racism you've seen in the Muggle world doesn't apply here the same way. But in both cases, it is often ancient family lines that carry those ways forward. It isn't challenged as much maybe, I think, because once you're here, you're in. You are as magical as the next 'pureblood' student." He emphasized his dislike of the term with air quotes. "And so people aren't challenged to reconsider their views because they are not exposed to people who actively challenge them the same way. Again, that doesn't make it right. But I think that that might be a part of it."

He took a deep breath and offered another 'sorry' smile. "That was a lot. I can be more or less specific if you want." Terminology, particularly of the derogatory sort, came to mind as something that Mara may need to know about, but it wasn't exactly hard to figure out from context and he hoped that she wouldn't hear it. Also, it didn't seem like this would be the right platform to bring it up. "And I can look into some more modern books, as well. Fiction may be helpful for you as well."

22 Killian Row Irrelevant, sorry. 1450 0 5

Mara Morales

March 23, 2020 6:00 PM

You're forgiven. by Mara Morales

Mara scanned the list of titles, thinking that this was not exactly what she had been asking for at all. History was useful for understanding why things looked the way they did, but starting in modern history just seemed likely to confuse her more. Though the books sounded interesting, they didn't sound like they would explain what the system was, so she could study it for herself and decide whether she wanted to stay here someday or pursue other avenues.

One of the resources she had been encouraged to look at in fifth grade had been the PSAT 8/9 - Talent Search had recommended taking it just to see how good she was, so she had. Apparently, she read really well for a fifth grader and could reason her way through a certain amount of math even without knowing exactly what she was doing, though her math scores still would have been appalling had this been the real PSAT. That was fair, though, and had given her an idea of where she was going. It had also pointed her toward the testing authority's website, which had led her to a lot of other clicking around on her phone, just out of boredom as much as anything one afternoon when she had had a little time to kill between Student Council and soccer practice and had deemed it too little time to bother doing homework during. She had noticed things with her sister in mind, thinking it would make Jessica feel better to know there was a whole series of exams people could take, outside of the usual AP/IB range, that some colleges would accept for credit; since one could learn anything online these days, and there were whole free virtual academies to help with that which Mara herself had used when she was studying at home before, it was theoretically possible for Jessica - or, for that matter, Mara - to essentially homeschool herself, take a bunch of the CLEPs to impress a school (maybe of a substantially lower tier than either of them had ever dreamed of attending before All This, but a school), and work her way back into the game from there. It would be a lot of work, so Mara guessed she could understand why Jessica was less than enthused by the idea of trying to teach herself what she should have been learning for the past few years, but it was possible.

Mara had had it in the back of her mind as an option even before she had started having serious doubts about the wizarding world on its own merits. Now, it was looking like a better and better idea, though Mara also thought that Jessica could have a future as the author of elementary-level general studies books, once they figured out enough to put in them. It was not exactly the kind of writing Jezi preferred, but the market was clearly there, as they both would have been part of it, had the relevant goods been available. Add a solid marketing plan and she thought her sister could probably at least make herself a profitable little sideline there in a few years.

"Thank you," she said about the list for now. "I'll give these a shot and get back to you."

She endeavored to keep her face quite expressionless as her additional question was answered. Finally, she nodded slowly.

"Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss," she said. Her tone was one of slightly grumpy resignation. "That's what I hear you saying. At home, I get it because I look like this. Here, I'll get it because...people somehow just know what my parents are like? Cool." She frowned a little. "Though it doesn't really work the same way at all, because I don't think you can have a...Muggleborn culture or whatever. None of us know anything about this until after we've already got our culture and stuff taken care of. And you lost me a little with the...humans and not humans. I'm pretty sure I'm still human," she added dryly. "And all these other people, they look pretty normal too, so I'm definitely not changing their definition - unless they think I'm a shapeshifter or something. Which I'm not," she added, wondering if that was even possible. "So...yeah. Extra books would be good. Fiction too. Do you have anything like...political thrillers? Courtroom dramas?" she asked, figuring those had the best chance of showing her something like what she wanted to know. Novels often made serious errors when it came to things like that, but it was better than nothing.

16 Mara Morales You're forgiven. 1472 0 5