Congratulations, head boy on Magical Arts Room and Sports

Sylvia Mordue

November 25, 2020 6:41 AM

Congratulations, head boy by Sylvia Mordue

Sylvia slid in her earrings, fastened the clasp on her necklace and smoothed down her already perfectly smooth dress. She was dressed for a pleasant evening out, having requested that Nate meet her in the water room after class during one of their first few days back. She picked a pretty pink emerald and diamond demi-parure, the necklace having a large teardrop shaped stone of the former, outlined with small diamonds which swirled and crossed with the rose gold mount. The earrings recreated the motif with a smaller emerald and a larger diamond. Her pale jewellery was best offset with a dark background, so she was wearing a navy tea dress. She loved the evenings, where she could shed her school robes, and put on things that made her feel more like herself - devoid of any of the symbols that divided her from Nate. No house badges. No other badges.

She had congratulated him when she’d first seen him at breakfast the day after the feast, of course, but she still had to do it properly too. They would have to celebrate, and she would have to smile, and part of that was easy enough to do because after all, she had wanted him to get it, and now he had. It just hadn’t been the only thing she’d wanted, and Sylvia was very unused to only getting half of what she wanted. She was telling herself that it didn’t matter if certain people did not like her. It wasn’t like she had wanted them to, beyond getting their votes anyway. Everyone who mattered liked her, and the rest of them liked Caitlin. Well, who was the real winner there?

She had decided against their garden for the party. They saw rather a lot of it during the holidays anyway. She was half expecting the room to show her their swimming pool, complete with her glowing records on the wall of how she had beaten all the boys in the family except Jeremy. It was the room she went to most often, and as he hand was on the handle, she found herself wanting to conjure up some reminder that she too could be somebody. Was it pathetic that that was the first thing that came to mind? That wasn’t all she had though. She had her Gardenia Girls, and she was quite sure they had all voted for her – they were all supposed to have, anyway.

And she had Nate.

She trawled through her memories, her associations and her best feelings until she settled on an image. Opening the door, she found herself, quite impossibly, on a small floating pontoon out in the middle of a lake. It was the restaurant where they had celebrated their seventeeths, a little late for her but so they could do it jointly. Each floating table was only accessible by apparition, and it was a popular place for the wealthy elite to show off their newly qualified magical offspring. Although this was a scaled down version, built just for two. The pontoon for her and Nate sat alone, drifting around the lake. She thought she had shrunk that down a little too, so as not to make them seem too strangely isolated, although there was still plenty of shimmering blue-green surface between them and the mountains at the edge.

“Watch your step,” she smiled, as she heard the door open. She pulled a bottle of sparkling apple juice and two champagne flutes from her clutch purse. “And congratulations. Do you want to do the honours, head boy?” she asked, passing him the bottle.

OOC: Yes, I am abusing fuzzy time.

Pink emerald is Tatya's author's chosen name for Morganite, as the Purebloods would be unlikely to use a Muggle financier's name for something. Necklace based on this

13 Sylvia Mordue Congratulations, head boy 1413 1 5

Nathaniel Mordue

November 25, 2020 6:51 PM

Those are the congratulations I care most about. by Nathaniel Mordue

The water room was not an unusual place for Nathaniel to meet his cousin in – indeed, he thought that at this point, it might be one of the more common ones. They did not work together in classes very often, after all – ostensibly to avoid looking as clannish as they really were; Nathaniel hoped it was merely a fortunate accident that it also reduced the contrast between Sylvia’s casual brilliance and skill and his own slower, more deliberate, plodding progress to the same goals – and they were in different Houses, which meant the common rooms were not common spaces for them. The water room, though, could be shaped into whatever they wanted, for themselves alone, and one thing he thought they still had in common was enjoying the option to unite in at least a shadow of the best parts of the past.

It was a bit of a surprise, then, to open the door and find himself looking at something else; for a moment, he didn’t recognize where he was. Of course, he thought, he’d only been to the location currently mirrored twice, for Simon’s seventeenth and his own and Sylvia’s joint parties, and besides, Sylvia had modified it a bit, made it more appropriate for a (very) small gathering instead of a coming-of-age party – of course Sylvia would think of that.

He felt a flash of annoyance with the injustices of the world. This was minor, compared to Simon’s laziness and (as Nathaniel had been increasingly appalled to notice over the summer) lack of good standards, or Jeremy’s moodiness and inability to bite his tongue, or Nathaniel’s own nervous condition, but it was just one more thing that pointed to why it should have been Sylvia, rather than her brother or one of her cousins, who was expected to take up the reins from Uncle. Sylvia had all the good ideas – like this, thinking of both when and how to make things more or less comfortable. She was wasted as a woman, really, and – well, he had never been keen on her idea to marry into the Pierces, that family was trouble, but he could see why they might have suited her, after a fashion. They were, after all, the next thing to in trade, which would have allowed her to use her talents, and probably to run over no more interesting a figure than his vague memory of Winston was, push him aside and imitate the old lady Pierce by taking over the whole operation for herself someday….

Luckily, the only Pierce candidates left were ones he wholly approved of – that was to say, tiny children who wouldn’t be able to even fathom taking her away from him for at least ten or so more years. Same with the O’Malleys and their boys, the second years, assuming Sylvia wouldn’t have found their business a touch unpalatable – alcohol led to bad conduct, which led to embarrassment, which they had both had more than enough of. The Douglases…they were rather too liberal these days, he thought, and anyway, the only unmarried male he could think of in that family was…old. Not just in terms of being an adult, but actually (from Nathaniel’s seventeen-year-old perspective) genuinely what would have been called ‘getting on,’ had he been a woman….But anyway, he didn’t like to think of Sylvia marrying anyone at all, and decided not to do so any further.

“Nice work,” he told her admiringly instead, gesturing to the setting. “You got the details and everything.”

He flushed, though, when she mentioned his title, though he accepted the bottle of juice – for one moment, he had thought she had actually somehow gotten her hands on champagne and wondered if it had been through her own efforts or if Simon had actually seen nothing wrong with sending it, but it was just apple juice. He opened it with due ceremony anyway and handed her the first glass.

“Your servant, Miss,” he said as lightly as he could manage. His expression turned serious again quickly, though. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “Are you – too disappointed? It’s absurd it’s not your party instead of mine,” he added with real feeling.

16 Nathaniel Mordue Those are the congratulations I care most about. 1412 0 5

Sylvia Mordue

December 02, 2020 6:17 AM

Regarding what they're for or who they're from? by Sylvia Mordue

"Thank you," Sylvia smiled, as Nate complimented her on the room. She was never totally sure how much credit an individual person could take for the room's appearance - after all, there was clearly some powerful magic here too. Would someone with a less detail-oriented memory have conjured up a worse version of the room? Or did it read mere suggestions and fill in the blanks? There was some evidence to suggest the latter, from the times when she had come with only a vague feeling about what she wanted, as she had never found a room here lacking in any way when she opened the door. Still, it wasn't polite to argue with a compliment, and it was nice to think she could take some credit, even if just for the idea.

Nate was ever the perfect gentleman as he served her juice. She wasn't quite sure why none of the girls here had tried to get their claws into him (well, there was one glaring contender for a reason why but Sylvia had got so used to politely pretending it didn't exist that she actually forgot to consider it sometimes) but she couldn't say she was too sorry. She had always longed to grow into the adult world, to the roles of wife and socialite. She knew she would not cease to be Nate's cousin when that happened, but it wasn't going to stay the same as this once they married, and it would be nice to hold onto it for just a little longer. Plus there were fairly limited prospects on her horizon, and she didn't want it to be another of the ways Nate had achieved what she had not. She did not want to separate, but it would be worse to see it happen by being left behind.

Speaking of which, Nate was addressing the erumpant in the room head on. The polite, society thing to do would have been to laugh and smile and utter 'Of course not.' However, being with Nate was the one place those rules didn't apply, unless they wanted to put them on like an act of dress up, conjure them up like the scenery of this room.

"It helps to hear you say that," she smiled, because it really did make a difference to know that Nate couldn't conceive of a world that did not revolve around her, in spite of his constant and dangerous exposure to one which, apparently, did not.

"Where there is only one proper candidate, clearly there's enough of us to get him into office," she stated, tilting her glass towards Nate. "Once that vote gets divided, it comes down to the will of the rest of the class. Clearly Caitlin’s more relatable to those outside our social class. I’m sure all the girls voted for me – so it was only her own and maybe Beau’s vote that needed counteracting. And yet she won. So, I can only guess that it’s entirely fitting to have our next party drink a toast to Caitlin Pierce, woman of the people,” she stated with a sly smile.

“It’s frustrating,” she admitted, because to Nate she could admit anything. It would have been nice to have, even if losing it rather proved that getting it wasn’t worth all that much, given the people she would have had to impress. But power was still power. And maybe the others weren’t smart enough to look into it the way she did. If she had got it, she obviously would have spun it completely differently. “I’m sure it would have only taken one vote to tip the scale. At least I know you tried hard for me on that front,” she smiled fondly, placing a hand on his arm. “You are good,” she stated, meaning it both in terms of how he was to her, and his ability to think smart and strategise. After all, he had seen what was necessary and started doing it long before she had tried, even though he hadn’t needed to for his own sake. “At least that sort of thing’s done with now though,” she added.

13 Sylvia Mordue Regarding what they're for or who they're from? 1413 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

December 06, 2020 4:42 PM

Who they're from. by Nathaniel Mordue

Nathaniel suspected it was a slightly morally questionable thing to do, but he made no effort to stop himself from smiling when Sylvia ‘reasoned out’ how the ballot results were actually flattering to her and unflattering for Caitlin Pierce. “You,” he said, with almost equal measures of amusement, affection, and approval, “are awful sometimes. Wonderful and awful and wonderfully awful.”

It was not untrue. He did not always like the things Sylvia said or that Sylvia did, when he thought about them objectively, but she was wonderful even when she was awful. That was just Sylvia. She was clever and self-serving and seemed incapable of coming to a complete stop. She knew what she wanted and she went out and at least tried to get it, if it was a thing, or to make it happen. She viewed the world as how she wanted it to be; if it was not to her liking, then she would just make it so. He doubted that Sylvia had ever for one moment felt that their family’s…scandals lowered her value at all, and he could almost believe her when she protested that she didn’t hold them against him, either, even though they had originated in his parents. He could not understand her fully, could not even always fully approve of her, but she was Sylvia and one of the great constants in his life and he could no more really disapprove of her than he could control the weather – or even less, really, as they knew a little about weather charms from classes now.

He was unsurprised, but still relieved, when she put off the act after he did and admitted that while she perhaps did not take it as a criticism of her character, she did find the situation frustrating. He was a little confused about her remarks about him having helped her – he could only think of it as the other way around; he had been startled by the very idea of her campaigns and posters, and had assumed he would not even make the ballot, considering…his past, and Dr. Greene, and all of that – but she closed the topic abruptly before he could express this. He nodded, but then thought of something and grinned.

“Does that mean you aren’t going to join MACUSA just to support the laws I’m going to introduce someday?” he asked jokingly, putting an arm around her shoulders and giving her a quick, hopefully comforting squeeze. “I was counting on you! At least, unless you were too busy putting forward your own bills and things. But I thought we’d coordinate it so we could back each other up.”

He was only half-teasing. He could imagine Sylvia doing that, and being far more effective than he was, despite him being the one who would be more emotionally invested, he thought, in his pet projects. He wanted to make rules to punish the people who had hurt him because they had hurt him. He knew it had hurt Sylvia to see it, too, but he had trouble imagining her wanting revenge quite the same way he did, though perhaps that was just having too high a regard for himself…he didn’t know. Just that he wished it was possible, even though he didn’t really think it was. He didn’t have the stamina anymore for the backstabbing and scheming of politics, if he ever really had, and he had never been smart enough for it. Sylvia had always been the smart one between the two of them, too.

16 Nathaniel Mordue Who they're from. 1412 0 5