Grayson Wright
October 21, 2020 1:03 PM
Head of House Speech by Grayson Wright
By the end of the Feast, Professor Wright was quite ready to seek his own room, where he could ignore the already-growing piles of official work he needed to get through in favor of more interesting work in the growing piles of notebooks and scrap papers accumulating on the other side of his desk. Before he could get on with that, though, he had a speech to give. He gathered the new Aladrens together, smiling mildly at them, hoping this came across as welcoming and reassuring and not just odd. He always felt odd smiling too much, but nobody else had ever really said anything about it, so maybe it was all right."Hello again," he greeted them. "If you'll follow me, I'll take you to Aladren."
He led them back out of the Cascade Hall and along the corridor, pausing for a respectful nod to the portrait of Tavarius Mims, who already had his ledgers ready to record the new year's points for the four Houses. "The new Aladrens, Professor," he informed the portrait. "I hope they'll give you many more reasons to add points than they do to detract them from our ledger." He refrained from much other comment, aware that Mims was a staunch Crotalus supporter and not wanting to alarm anyone who would be too prone to wild speculation based on the personality of a portrait.
"Professor Mims," he told the students after bidding the portrait farewell. "He taught Arithmancy here a long time ago - that's the study of numbers in magic - and someone painted a portrait of him. When wizards do that, the portraits can be enchanted to keep something of the personality of the subject. Professor Mims keeps track of House points in his books; as far as I know he can't alter them of his own accord, but it's always best to be polite to him anyway.."
As they proceeded deeper into the school, he greeted other portraits as well, introducing the new students as a group - "this year's new Aladrens" - and telling the students who those portraits' occupants were, as the oil-and-canvas memories of witches and wizards of the past could be very helpful to new students learning the layout of the school. Finally, though, he stopped outside a pair of doors leading into a room he had pointed out on the main tour, a room he expected most of them would remember.
"As I told you earlier," he said, "these are the doors to Sonora's library. What I did not mention when we were with all the others is that the entrance to the Aladren dormitories is concealed inside the library. Be careful not to let members of other Houses see you coming and going," he advised, mainly as a formality. He doubted many people who wanted to know went more than a few weeks without figuring out where the other Houses were, but there was the form of things to be observed. Tradition, honor, excellence and all that. Besides, it was a good challenge for the nosy to try to find the other Houses without getting caught looking for them, or else a good way to break them from being so nosy. "Follow me a bit further now...."
Luckily, the way to the entrance did not take any particularly advanced knack for navigation: if the students kept going long enough in a straight line from the front, they would eventually reach the very back wall, which was where the door was hidden. He had made one specific trek through the stacks thousands of times, though - it was the same one he had favored when he was a student - and so reached the correct place on the wall with almost no effort, pointing to a very worn book which nevertheless was still clearly labelled Birds of Prey.
"Here is the doorknob, for lack of a better word," he told them. "To enter the common room, just take this book in your hand and pull, and - " he demonstrated, and a whole section of wall slid away, revealing an entranceway. "Then you can gain access to our common room."
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, a few sofas, and bookshelves on several walls. He had looked over the shelves when he took over as Head of House and had made a few additions, so the common room library covered a variety of interests students might have - subjects related to magic, yes, but also other subjects, including history and literature and Muggle math and science. 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 earlier 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 take seats in the immediate area. Since he was not exactly declaiming to a vast 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. "As your Head of House and an alumnus of this House, I hope you will all come to see Aladren as a second home. 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. If we continue thinking of this as a home, the common room is like your living room, with a few extra details since this is a school - that bulletin board, for instance." At least, his parents had never put up bulletin boards in their house; perhaps some did. "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 post anything else 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 everyone in the common room that you want a word with me; he assumed that would be obvious enough without an explicit statement even with first years. "If you have any questions about the school or any other concerns, you're welcome to come talk to me - as Head of House, I'm here to be your default adult to contact, and to act as the middleman between you and the administration, when that's needed," he explained. "However, any professor would be happy to help you if you prefer, or if I'm not available, and our House prefects are also here to help you. You can recognize them by their badges. Their names are Heinrich Hexenmeister and Ness McLeod and, since earlier at the Feast, Sophia Priory, be sure to congratulate her if you see her.
"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 a student in a previous year just in case. "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 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: 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!
Subthreads: Hello Roommates! by Rosalynn Tellerman with Lorena Abernathy, Isla Brockert
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Grayson Wright
Head of House Speech
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