I found you (tag Philippe) on Library

Ellie Alperton

January 19, 2021 6:03 AM

I found you (tag Philippe) by Ellie Alperton

Ellie needed to find Philippe, verify her imagination theory, work out if he had a crush on Freddie, work out what to do about if he did, and find Professor Wright. It was quite the to-do list, and unfortunately item one was not particularly easy to achieve. As she left the Cascade Hall, she realised that she had no real idea where or how to find the Teppenpaw, and that there was every possibility she wouldn’t be able to both because school was big and because they were both possibly moving around it, and because there were parts of it he could go into that she couldn’t (and vice versa, but she wasn’t being looked for, to her knowledge).

She figured she would make her way towards, around, and through the library, doing her best to look as she went. If she didn’t find Philippe in that process, she would at least be close by Aladren and could check off going to see Professor Wright, to maybe get the mist put away before other people saw it, and to share her theory, even though it would be better with Philippe’s testimonial. If Professor Wright wanted it though, he could summon Philippe. He was a teacher and could do that, and that would achieve almost all her aims except talking to Philippe about his feelings. But she could always… lurk and pounce. It sounded ominous like that, but it would be with good intentions.

She began thinking through what she might say to Philippe and then wondered whether that was safe to do. What if she littered the corridors with variations of how to talk to him about his feelings? Although asking her brain to stop was completely counter intuitive, and she felt she needed some kind of game plan. It was hard to know how much she could or should say, given that she didn’t exactly want to out Freddie without his permission, nor did she know whether it was a good idea to interfere at all given that she didn’t know who her friend had a crush on. She figured it wasn’t Philippe because he was their friends’ kid brother and, as the memories had pointed out, he was very much just a little kid. She probably shouldn’t say anything about Freddie liking boys both because it would out him and give Philippe what was probably false hope, but she could maybe just find out where Philippe’s head was at and whether he wanted her to do any digging.

As she combed through the library, it seemed that luck was on her side. Probably. She wasn’t totally sure how this was going to go, and whether finding Philippe counted as a good thing, or whether not managing it would have been a blessing in disguise, but she had done it because there he was. She settled her thoughts into some kind of order and made her way over. She thought about the conversation she’d had with Heinrich about the mist, and her worries about whether she was going to upset him, and found herself in a similar position now. Except was she the scary older student now? She hoped Philippe knew her well enough that she couldn’t possibly count as scary. She also had nothing like Heinrich’s height (thank goodness).

“Hi. I need to talk to you about something,” she stated, sliding into the seat beside him with an almost apologetic look, mostly over the fact that he really wasn’t getting a choice here. “I saw the mist stuff pretending to be your family,” she stated, deciding to start with facts, then move onto theories, and possibly work their way to feelings from there. The mist was the easiest and most objective thing to discuss. “I’ve seen it once before, and it was acting out this strange, melodramatic fight. I’m wondering whether it’s somehow people’s imaginations coming to life?” she suggested. For all that she was older, Philippe was likely to know more about whether that was possible than she was. “Have you been thinking lately about talking with your family…” she hesitated, but decided that leaving it at that was far too vague because most of them probably spent a good deal of time thinking about that, “...like, having a practise conversation with them in your head? About someone you like?”

13 Ellie Alperton I found you (tag Philippe) 1456 1 5

Philippe Delachene

January 19, 2021 11:05 AM

Why me? by Philippe Delachene

Philippe sat at a table in the library doing his homework. A Potions text lay in front of him, open to the instructions for the brew he was writing an essay about, though he wasn't really looking at it. He pretty much remembered all the steps and ingredients involved. He was more often checking the reference book that talked about each individual ingredient and what their purpose in potions usually tended to be. He was sitting back, chewing on his pencil (he always wrote his first drafts in pencil on lined loose-leaf paper, then copied it onto parchment with quill and ink), and trying to figure out what purpose this particular ingredient had in this particular brew when there was no obvious reason for it to be there based on its usual uses, when he spotted Ellie coming toward him.

He guiltily took the pencil out of his mouth, and tried to hide the teeth marks on it. He knew Ellie as Jasmine's friend first, then as a mutual friend of both Anya and Freddie. Whenever she'd come to visit, she'd usually brought her little brother with her, and Philippe and Anya had tended to play with him more than the older two girls, even though Anya was the one who was Ellie's age. So while he knew who Ellie was, he was still kind of surprised when she said she needed to talk to him.

"Sure," he invited, waving to the other seat at his table as she slid into it.

She started talking about the mist stuff. He's seen the announcement about it in his common room, and of course the mom FaceTiming with her kid outside the COMC classroom was probably a part of that, but he'd already reported that one to Professor Xavier and he wasn't sure at first why she was coming to him, a second year, about one she'd seen. And then he understood why she was coming to him about it and he folded his arms on the table and dropped his head onto them and groaned.

"I don't have a crush," he denied into his elbow, the words coming out muffled, and not entirely convincingly. "Why does everyone think I have a crush? First it was Anya, and then it was my whole family, and now it's you."

A terrible suspicion dawned on him, and he looked up at her, dismay on his face. He certainly hadn't ever been imagining what it would be like to tell his family about someone he liked, but he had been thinking about that one dinner on Christmas Eve, wondering where it had all gone wrong. "It wasn't the one from over break where I asked my dad if I should learn German, was it?" It was important to call it 'The one where I asked my dad if I should learn German' instead of 'the one where Jasmine decided she needed to design wedding tuxedos'.

Just in case it wasn't that one.

1 Philippe Delachene Why me? 1489 0 5

Ellie Alperton

January 19, 2021 5:45 PM

Because you are The Chosen One by Ellie Alperton

Philippe appeared to be in denial about his crush, or at least didn't want to admit it. She also supposed that she could be wrong about what the mist things were so maybe she was barking up the wrong tree here, although Philippe's tone suggested even he didn't fully believe himself.

"Sorry, perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully," she stated, fairly sure she wasn't actually wrong but aware that she had upset or embarrassed him, which she ought to apologise for. "I suppose 'your family debating whether you have a crush' is more accurate," she admitted, "And I didn't know what you thought - your part of the conversation was missing," she explained.

"Yes!" she exclaimed when he described the conversation exactly. "Yes, it was - but did you say from Christmas?" Now she thought about it, she supposed the dresses had been rather Christmassy. She hsd noticed them, of course, because who didn't notice pretty dresses, especially the ones Jasmine and Holly were wearing, but the rest of the content had rather pushed that detail from her mind. "You mean that was a real conversation that happened?" she checked.

"I won't say anything to the person involved without your permission," she added, in case Philippe needed to hear that before admitting whether it was real or not. She hoped he knew that, but sometimes it helped to hear obvious things, especially when you were scared or worried.

13 Ellie Alperton Because you are The Chosen One 1456 0 5

Philippe Delachene

January 20, 2021 12:27 PM

I don't know if I like this prophesy by Philippe Delachene

Of course the mist had played out that one. What other one could it have been? He covered his face with his hands and wondered if wizards ever did manage to successfully have the floor swallow them up. Sadly, the library's did not oblige him, and he was still here and so was Ellie and so were her promises not to tell Freddie.

Which would have been more reassuring if (a) the mist wasn't repeating the conversation in front of witnesses (there was certainly no guarantee that Ellie was the only one who had seen it), and (b) Anya didn't also know. He wasn't sure that Anya was capable of keeping secrets, especially from one of her closest friends. He didn't think she would intentionally tell anyone, and certainly not maliciously, but she didn't always think through her words before she said them, and he gave her no better than even odds about whether or not she'd blurt it out by accident the next time she saw Freddie.

Still, none of that was Ellie's fault, so he dragged his hands down off his face with a sigh and made himself smile. "I appreciate that," he said, "but to entirely slander my sister, it's not you I'm worried about. And the mist thing clearly isn't sworn to secrecy either. And, yeah, I'm pretty sure you saw a real conversation that actually took place. Memory, not imagination, unless Jasmine suddenly interrupted everything to declare that she was in love with the new veterinarian and refocused the conversation on her love life instead of mine or something?" he suggested hopefully. "That was what I was thinking might have been a better way for it to have gone."

1 Philippe Delachene I don't know if I like this prophesy 1489 0 5

Ellie Alperton

January 21, 2021 7:01 AM

But it's about true love! by Ellie Alperton

"Memories?" she queried. "I don't know about that. If these are memories, some of our classmates have seen some really disturbing things..." she stated anxiously. Unless it hadn't been as bad as she had thought? Maybe firing a bunch of spells around was normal in magical homes, and it had only seemed scary and confusing because she didn't understand. Or maybe it was every bit as bad as it looked, because not wanting it to be true really wasn't a very good reason for assuming it wasn't.

"No, she didn't," she confirmed, when he added a different ending to the one she had seen. "They mostly just talked about and I guess to you and then vanished. At least they're supportive?" she tried. She could understand Philippe's embarrassment, and she certainly wouldn't want her private conversations broadcasting to the school (she wondered whether any had been without her knowing... If they had, it hadn't been recognisable or significant enough for anyone to approach her but the thought still bothered her). "I'm not saying it is a crush, and it is still horrible to have your private information out there, but at least your family is open-minded. Though I guess I knew that anyway," she added with a smile. "And we can ask Professor Wright or one of the prefects to go capture the mist so that it stops repeating. That's a thing they can do," she reminded him. There was, admittedly, not much she could do about Anya.

"Feelings can be confusing," she offered. "If you ever want someone to talk to who who can offer the more Jasmine side of being sisterly, I'm happy to try," she stated. "And clearly I'm okay with people feeling they are what they are, whatever that means for them," she added. And then abruptly wondered... Was it 'clear' for Philippe? Was the fact she already knew his family was accepting 'obvious?' Was Anya actually better at keeping things private than he was giving her credit for? That last one was almost definite, because even if she had told Philippe, she hadn't gone around telling everyone in their year, to the best of Ellie's knowledge. She was so used to thinking of 'The Delachenes' as knowing about her that she had, once again, skipped over Philippe. Jasmine knew, and Anya knew, and Mom had talked to Holly and Raoul because Ellie had gone to visit, and a condition of that was Mom knowing the adults responsible for her were safe and Ellie-friendly. She had never bothered to keep it a secret in front of Philippe, but it wasn't like it was something she talked about openly and explicitly in every single interaction. It was more likely to come up in small ways, like her use of 'obviously' or phrases like 'that's different for me.'

"Do you know I'm trans?" she asked. It came out as a neutral question, one she was only bringing up because she wanted to make sure he understood that she absolutely was on team No Judgement Here. He might at least have had that last one confirmed by seeing her working the McLeod booth last year, even if he didn't know about her personally.

"On which note, Anya may be better at guarding private information than you think. I mean, even if she did tell you, she hasn't ever gone blurting it out to other people," she pointed out.

13 Ellie Alperton But it's about true love! 1456 0 5

Philippe Delachene

January 29, 2021 5:08 PM

It is the most noble cause. by Philippe Delachene

Philippe shrugged, unsure of what most of the other visions had been about. He'd just seen the lady on the phone, and Anya had mentioned seeing a muggle magician who did a card trick, either of which could have easily been memories, too, but he wasn't going to argue with a fourth year.

He grimaced slightly as Ellie summarized the conversation in thankfully non-specific terms. "Almost too supportive," he remarked glumly. "I'm not even sure if I like Freddie like that yet, and Jasmine's designing wedding tuxedos already. Mom's alternately worried about 'older boys' and squealing that, finally, one of her kids has a proper 'Sonora True Love' - Trademark - relationship. Her and Dad started dating at their first Ball, you see, and it was thereafter 'Fate'." He gave the appropriate words the necessary weight and air quotes to indicate the capital letters verbally. "Can't a guy admire another guy's hair without it becoming a Whole Big Thing? But yeah, we should probably get Professor Wright on capturing it before someone a lot less supportive sees it." He'd grown up with the knowledge that Great-Uncle Dan and Great-Uncle Barry were married. Uncle Daniel had talked variously about boyfriends and girlfriends with about equal frequency. He'd always known hetero-relationships were a lot more common, but it hadn't been until he'd started reading tween books and watching tween television shows that had all sorts of unnecessary drama around non-hetero-relationships that it had even occurred to him that anyone might not consider them completely normal.

With the Professors Brooding-Hawthorne teaching here, though, he still considered the idea more theoretical than a real problem.

Then Ellie offered her own assurances of support and open-mindedness and then dropped her own shared confidence like she thought he might know already. Because Anya knew. He blinked a couple of times, surprised. Not so much about Ellie. That he was fine with. It was news to him, but it didn't matter as far as he was concerned. It didn't change his opinion about her in the least.

Rather . . . "I did not. I think I owe Anya an apology."

1 Philippe Delachene It is the most noble cause. 1489 0 5

Ellie Alperton

January 30, 2021 3:46 AM

But never does run smooth by Ellie Alperton

“Yes, he can,” Ellie confirmed when Philippe asked whether a guy could admire another guy’s hair without it being a ‘whole big thing.’ She was pretty sure he was speaking rhetorically but that perhaps it would still help to hear it. “Or at least, theoretically he should be able to.” Not knowing what you wanted was a concept she had read about, but not directly experienced. She had been adamant about who she was practically as soon as she’d learnt to speak, and - whilst she’d always had the support of her family - her biggest difficulty had always been knowing how to make other people listen and understand, or the fact that it was even necessary for her to have those arguments. “It’s okay if it takes time to figure things out,” she continued with her tactic of stating things that Philippe probably already knew but figured it didn’t hurt to let him hear. “Hopefully you get that,” she smiled sympathetically, knowing that right now that was up in the air, and potentially being emperilled by the scene in the Cascade Hall.

Philippe didn’t seem to have any particular reaction to her identity, beyond surprise at Anya keeping a secret, and Ellie smiled, wishing it could be that easy every time.

“Well, I’m sure the dynamic can be different when it’s siblings,” she acknowledged, wondering whether Anya was more likely to interfere in Philippe’s life ‘for his own good’ than she had been in Ellie’s, or just because his news was more exciting and that there was actually something to potentially do with it - it involved another person much more than Ellie’s did. Seth had sometimes accused her of interfering, but she really only did when she knew better and that it was absolutely for his own good… “But caring about someone can be a pretty powerful motivator for over-riding natural instincts.” Or exacerbating them, but that probably wasn’t what he needed to hear right now.

She waited, letting Philippe say anything else he wanted to about the matter, but she was rather sensing he needed everything to just go down a notch rather than to have a big emotional heart-to-heart about it.

“I or we should go and tell Professor Wright?” she said, half turning it into a question, not sure if he wanted to come along or just trusted her to report it.

13 Ellie Alperton But never does run smooth 1456 0 5