Um hey there, scary German prefect? on Aladren Commons

Ellie Alperton

November 24, 2020 5:20 AM

Um hey there, scary German prefect? by Ellie Alperton

The strange band of fighting German ghosts had not been ghosts at all. Ghosts were semi-corporeal Beings with the thoughts, memories and mannerisms of the person they represented, bound to a specific and significant location, though with some ability to manifest elsewhere. That definition might have sounded fairly accurate to what she had seen, given the vagueness of ‘some ability’ and ‘elsewhere’ but the capital B type of Being was not what that had been. Ghosts thought, noticed and reacted. What she had seen had been more like theatre than anything else. Given the fact that there was a play coming up at the end of the year, that seemed reasonably possible, as did the possibility that some kind of advanced class illusion session had gotten out of control. It seemed less likely that it had gotten out of control without Professor Wright noticing, but…well, to put bluntly, magic was just odd sometimes. It might have seemed perfectly fine at the time but then slipped out the door or got… unfine later.

Given that the illusion had been speaking German, and was definitely not intermediate or beginner material, that gave her a fairly solid guess as to whose work it was. The only question was whether to speak to him about it, or Professor Wright.

She had settled on trying Heinrich first. She knew very little about him. Mostly that he was tall and awfully brooding, although only one of those was a rational reason to find him intimidating. He had also got prefect rather by default, which didn’t exactly mean that he was guaranteed to be a good person, though she hoped the staff wouldn’t have given it to him if he was actively terrible. She had seen him hanging out with quite a mixed age group in the library, including Morgan, and had considered asking Morgan whether he was scary but then figured that if Morgan hung out with him she probably wouldn’t think so, so it wouldn’t be a very logical thing to ask. The fact he hung out with that group at all suggested he was a bit more approachable than the side of him she had seen. She also thought it fair to give him a chance to deal with the situation before going to Professor Wright. She trusted the teacher to be fair but it still felt a little bit like telling tales.

Having decided to talk to Heinrich, the only problem left was what words to use. ‘Your weird German ghost theatre scared Professor Duell’ was sort of the gist of her problem but she didn’t think it conveyed the point very well. It was hard to know what to say when she wasn’t really sure what exactly she had seen. She didn’t want to sound accusatory, especially as she was perfectly willing to believe this was an accident unless given reason to think otherwise. After all, if he did things like that on purpose, he surely wouldn’t have gotten prefect, even by default. He also probably wouldn’t have gotten into Aladren, because it would have been a pretty stupid thing to do when it was gong to be really, really obvious that it was him.

“Excuse me?” she stated, approaching when she saw him sitting alone in the Common Room. “I wanted to talk to you about something I saw. Except, I don’t always understand how magic works – I don’t always understand what it can and can’t do,” she explained. She figured she should get this out there from the start for two reasons – one, in case she said something offensive by mistake, and two, in case he wanted to say something offensive on purpose. In which case she would stop trying to give him a fair chance and would just go tell their Head of House about it. “Is it okay to talk to you about that?” she checked.

13 Ellie Alperton Um hey there, scary German prefect? 1456 1 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

November 27, 2020 9:14 PM

I do not wish to be scary by Heinrich Hexenmeister

Heinrich sat in the common room, partly to be prefectly available to his Housemates, and partly because that was a good a place as any to write a letter to Hans. He had just finished up the summary of the previous few days at school and was about to seek opinions about whether it would be too strange to watch Americans try to perform Hansel and Gretel or if it might be interesting when the younger student approached him.

Her sentence structure seemed a little halting, but that was probably nerves more than grammar. In either case, he followed it well enough: she was having trouble understanding some aspect of magic. "I can try to explain the theory," he offered, guessing that she was having trouble with her homework. He was reasonably certain she was an intermediate, as she wasn't tiny enough to be a Beginner, so he hoped he would be able to put it into English words that made sense to her. Intermediate concepts were definitely more convoluted than Beginner ones, but he'd had pretty good luck explaining things to Hilda so far. With Hilda, though, they weren't always using English for that. Though at this point, Heinrich was beginning to know more technical terms in English than in German, so a lot of the time, he and Hilda used a bastardized combination of both languages to talk in depth about magical theory. But the fact that this girl was an Aladren would probably help balance whatever language barriers might crop up. Ness had promised his accent wasn't too hard to understand, so he was hopeful that, at least, wouldn't be a problem. "What is it that you do not understand?"

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister I do not wish to be scary 1414 0 5

Ellie Alperton

November 28, 2020 5:50 AM

I'm sure it was an accident by Ellie Alperton

Ah. Ellie had wondered whether she would hit this snag. It had been an obvious potential misunderstanding, even without a language barrier. Still, she didn't regret her choice to tread in gently, and didn't even get flustered at the thought of having to re-explain. Partly, that was because she had been prepared for that possibility, and partly because, so far, Heinrich was being nice. He spoke gently and he was very willing to help.

"It's not homework," she shook her head, "I saw something in the corridor. Something strange and a little bit frightening. They looked like ghosts but they didn't behave like them. They didn't listen or react to people being there. And they were having a fight," she added to clarify why she had been scared.

"I was wondering if the advanced class had been making any illusions, and if any of them could have...escaped?" she asked, sounding doubtful as she said it. "But that's the part I don't know about... I don't know if that can happen, and I don't know if it's rude to say to someone that their magic might be doing that?" she questioned. After all, they were all supposed to get more control as they grew older. She knew Mr. Row had said it could happen, even to adults, but she remembered the horrible, squirmy feeling of embarrassment that she had felt after her holiday outburst. She didn't want to inflict that feeling on anyone. Maybe she should have just gone to Professor Wright instead. He would have known how to deal with it tactfully, and what things you could and couldn't say in this sort of situation.

"Sorry," she stated, feeling like trying to talk about something so far out of her depth had been a bad idea.

13 Ellie Alperton I'm sure it was an accident 1456 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

December 02, 2020 5:36 PM

It certainly was by Heinrich Hexenmeister

"Oh," Heinrich said as she corrected his misconception that this was about homework, and explained she was actually confused about something she had seen in the hall. What she described did not sound familiar to him. Dueling ghosts who did not pay any attention to the living around them?

He shook his head slowly. "We are doing theory work in Charms." Incantation formation, specifically, which could easily lead to some very unexpected results if anyone had tried to actually cast their newly invented spells, but Professor Wright had warned them very severely not to do that. "Our other classes do not have illusions on their curriculum." At least, the ones he was taking did not, though he hadn't looked too far ahead yet in DADA, which was the one next most likely to touch on that spell category, though in that case they would be more likely to be working from the perspective of identifying whether or not something was an illusion, rather than actually casting illusions, which seemed to be pretty firmly under the Charms umbrella.

"Do not be sorry. It is right to come to a prefect about frightening things. I can talk to Professor Wright about it," he offered. "It is possible someone attempted a spell they should not have tried casting. That often has unexpected and strange side-effects. Can you explain more about what you saw? Also, do you mind if I tell him it was you who saw it, in case he has questions?"

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister It certainly was 1414 0 5

Ellie Alperton

December 04, 2020 6:00 AM

Then let's say no more about it. Like... ever. by Ellie Alperton

He was being nice. He was being so, so nice and sweet and he had such a gentle, kind way of talking to people. Ellie was rapidly concluding that Heinrich wasn’t really scary, just very tall.

“Professor Duell saw- Professor Duell was there too, and she’s aware of what I saw,” she corrected herself. “She said she’d report it to Deputy Headmistress Skies.” So, there probably wasn’t any real need for either of them to tell Professor Wright. There was just the one very pressing reason why she was telling Heinrich, given that the staff were already well aware of it. A reason which she found she’d let get pushed further and further down in the order in which she was explaining things, because it had seemed important to establish what was going on first, but which now it felt like she had left far too late in the conversation to say… Like she had set a trap, somehow, by getting him to agree to be logical and reasonable about it before revealing the part he wasn’t going to like.

“I wanted to ask you,” she specified, with a slight emphasis, “Or to tell you,” she amended, because she wasn’t really sure she was asking any more. She fidgeted nervously with the edges of her cuffs. “They were speaking German,” she said softly, watching for his reaction out of the corner of her eye. “At least, I think so,” she added, aware that she was not exactly an expert at identifying different languages. She had mostly assumed this based off assuming Heinrich might be responsible, which he clearly wasn’t. Could it have been a different language? “Maybe,” she added, sounding less certain. She tried to recall if she had heard any specific words that she recognised, and felt that she possibly wasn’t a very good best friend if, even after all these years, she couldn’t recognise Freddie’s home language. But there had been mitigating factors. Ghost duels were somewhat alarming and consequently distracting. “I thought you might want to know in case it was your mistake- I mean, I believe you that it’s not. But I just- I mean- I don’t want you to be in trouble. If it was an accident, you could put it right- I mean, you could have, I’m not saying you did it,” she added desperately, aware that she was getting her words very tangled and was speaking very fast in a language that was not Heinrich’s first one. She could feel her cheeks glowing red, and stupidly she almost wanted to cry. She didn’t want him to be mad at her and she was sure she was doing a horrible job of explaining that she’d just been trying to help but actually he didn’t need her to because he hadn’t done anything, and even if he wasn’t really scary, just very tall that was actually quite scary enough. “I—I just didn’t want you to get in trouble. Even if- I mean… whatever was happening. I’m sorry,” she stated.

13 Ellie Alperton Then let's say no more about it. Like... ever. 1456 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

December 04, 2020 4:51 PM

I will say nothing ever. by Heinrich Hexenmeister

He did not entirely understand what Ellie was saying. His English was good most of the time now, and he did not think the fault was entirely on his end this time. The important parts were that (a) Professor Duell had witnessed the dueling ghosts and would report it to Professor Skies, (b) the ghosts had spoken German, and (c) Ellie did not want him to get into trouble.

As he had not attempted casting his new Charms incantation, he did not see how he could get into trouble for something he could in no way be responsible for, so the only reason to think she thought he might was because either (a) something weird happened and the German language was involved, or (b) it was about his parents.

As there were more German speakers in the school than just him, and of the native speakers of that tongue, he was the one most comfortable existing in the English language, he didn't see how the circumstantial evidence of the strange ghosts speaking German meant he in particular might get in trouble. Therefore, the logical conclusion was that they were the ghosts of people his parents had killed. Perhaps the fact that they were killed by dark magic meant their ghosts acted differently than they should?

He shifted nervously. "Did they look like they died badly?" he worried. "Did they say my name?" Not 'Heinrich' of course. There was no reason any of his parents' victims would know him specifically. But if they knew they'd been killed by Hexenmeisters and were somehow drawn to Hexenmeisters . . . was that even a thing ghosts could do? And if they could, why had they come after Ellie and Professor Duell and not him or Hilda? And why did it take this long? It had been years since Mutter and Vater killed anyone. It just didn't make sense. But why would she connect them with him unless they said "Hexenmeister"? Other than the German.

Or was it just the German? She was closer to Freddie and Hilda's age though, so why come to him and not them? Aladren solidarity?

Or Aladren guilt, because Intermediates from Teppenpaw or Pecari couldn't achieve the same kinds of impressive magical effects as a seventh year Aladren, and she thought this was unexplained magical happenings not actual ghosts, and also this had been big and terrifying. The knut dropped and he got it.

"Oh. You think I did it." He shook his head in denial. He wasn't sure how he felt about the accusation. He thought he'd feel worse about it if she'd known who his parents were, but she didn't. He was pretty sure that was a secret that hadn't gone past the four German-born students, Evelyn, and the Professors Brooding, though it was certainly possible more of the staff knew. But most of the students did not, he was reasonably certain. And her conclusions were sound. If it was the fault of a student, it couldn't have been anyone but him. Hilda, Johana Leonie, and Freddie weren't advanced enough and none of the other sixth or seventh years knew German well enough. "I do not believe I could have done this, even by accident."

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister I will say nothing ever. 1414 0 5

Ellie Alperton

December 06, 2020 8:43 PM

I am revising my standpoint on ever having any kind of human interaction again by Ellie Alperton

"No one died," Ellie shook her head. They had not been ghosts, and they had not acted out any deaths. Heinrich's questions did not strike her as overly odd or morbid, or rather any of those senses she got from them, she chalked up to this being a very weird situation rather than suggestions that he was hiding a deep, dark secret.

"No! Nonono," she assured him vehemently, shaking her head to emphasise the point when he seemed to think she was accusing him. "I did think that," she admitted, trying to stress the word that marked the tense, "Before I talked to you," she added for emphasis. "But I believe that you didn't.

"I'm really, really sorry," she apologised, tears springing to her eyes, which was stupid and unfair because she was the one who had said something horrible to him but she hadn't meant to, and she felt so bad about it. "I did say that I didn't understand and I might say the wrong thing," she reminded him. "I just thought that if it was yours then it was an accident, and that you should have a chance to fix it, not get in trouble. But I made a mistake. I believe you didn't do it," she emphasised. "I was just..." she mumbled, but the words 'trying to help' dissolved into nothingness because clearly she had not been helpful. "Sorry," she said again, in a smaller voice, realising she was just repeating all the things that hadn't made sense to him the first time.

"I'll leave you alone," she promised, standing and grabbing her bag, fumbling as several items fell out of it.

13 Ellie Alperton I am revising my standpoint on ever having any kind of human interaction again 1456 0 5