Claire Osbrook
September 01, 2023 10:12 PM
Right back to just the same again (fifth year girls' dorm) by Claire Osbrook
Midterm had been...fine. As usual. There had been the same whirl of family events as always, the same efforts to pretend she liked them less than she really did. A pleasant novelty for this year had been how happy she'd been to see her brother; if it hadn't been for the stupid Ball, she thought she would have accounted it as a very good holiday.Unfortunately, however...there was the Ball. Which had meant dress shopping, and Graham teasing about how unfair it was that he wasn't going to get a chance to collect blackmail material of her with some guy the way she'd done with him and Lavender. Which had led to thinking about stuff she had hoped to avoid thinking about altogether over the holidays.
Once - and only once - it had crossed her mind to just...drop the subject into conversation - perhaps saying something about why would he think she'd even want to dance with a guy - without warning. Just to see how he'd react, maybe. Fortunately (well...it made her just feel frustrated, but logic said it had been good luck, and so that was how she would think of it), though, she'd had enough sense to ignore the urge until it passed - though not, of course, because she thought Graham would have...what? Tried to poison her before she could demolish what passed for the family honor? Tell Mom and Dad? No - none of that would have happened. That was still different, though, from having any reason to think that her brother would react especially well to such a disclosure. Graham had the rare enough honor of being someone Claire actually liked, but the fact remained that he just...was not a very mentally adventurous sort of person. Plus, it was just...weird, wasn't it? Or rather, wouldn't it be? She had the vague idea that two brothers could have scoped out girls together or whatever guys did in social situations between themselves, but she also suspected it was a totally different thing for a brother and sister to do so, even if they had, as far as she could tell, pretty similar types.
And so now she was back to school, right back exactly where she'd started, except this time she had a fancy dress and a present in her bags. This year, she'd gotten Verdillia a little quill-sharpening knife that was enchanted to sharpen quills automatically when an activating word was used, and which came in a case which also had a slot for transporting a quill and inkwell inside and a little carving on the lid that allowed it to double as a pen rest. When she'd seen her roommate talking to Christopher at the Feast, it had suddenly seemed more important, somehow, to make sure it had survived its travels back to school intact than it had to eat breakfast, and so she had come back to the room early, and so she ended up with half the contents of her trunk - including the stupid dress - all over her bed by the the time Verdillia arrived.
"Hi!" she said, trying to pretend she wasn't standing next to a mess and promptly failing badly. "I have no idea why I took this much stuff home just for two weeks," she said, feeling, as usual, self-conscious of how inelegant she was by comparison with the other girl. "I probably didn't take this many things out the whole time I was at home. Did you have a good Christmas?"
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Claire Osbrook
Right back to just the same again (fifth year girls' dorm)
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Verdillia Scurlock
September 04, 2023 9:01 AM
Not quite by Verdillia Scurlock
Verdillia practically floated up the stairs to the Crotalus Common Room. Everything was falling into place. Not only did she have a date for the ball, but she had an infinitely respectable date and the exact person she had hoped would ask her. She wondered if they ought to practise dancing together ahead of the big night, which would mean more time together…
She made her way back to the dorm, excited to see Claire and exchange Christmas gifts, but more excited to tell her friend her wonderful news. Claire would be so happy for her! Perhaps Claire could go with Phillip? Verdillia didn’t think he was that great—Claire was definitely prettier and deserved a better calibre of date, but he was a prefect, and that meant Claire would get to join her and Christopher for the opening dance. Perhaps they could even make a double date of it! Though Verdillia thought she’d rather not bring Phillip along for her date with Christopher…
She opened the door to her and Claire’s room, a huge smile on her face, and bounced over to give her roommate a welcome-back hug.
“It’s always good to have choices. You never know what the weather or your social calendar or your mood will demand,” she answered Claire’s self-concsiousness about her over-packing with a warm smile. “I think it’s good that you’re always prepared.
“Christmas? Oh it was fine,” she said, waving it off as if it was a dim and distant memory. “But guess what happened at the feast? Christopher asked me to go to the ball with him!” she said, following up her own question before her roommate even had a chance to draw breath. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
OOC: I'm assuming occasional hugs have been okayed at a roommate thing, or at least not rebuffed even if very unwelcome (because even if Claire doesn't seem like she'd be super touchy she also doesn't seem like she'd say anything...). If hugs have been firmly 'noped' at any point, assume hug did not happen.
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Verdillia Scurlock
Not quite
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Claire Osbrook
October 08, 2023 4:11 PM
Especially not if I turned someone into a sea urchin...not that I'd ever think of doing that, of course. by Claire Osbrook
Claire had had a Feeling, back at the Feast, but she had forgotten about it for a moment as Verdilia came in. This was not the first annoyance she’d ever experienced directly because of how distractingly pretty Verdilia was (if she made a lower grade than she should on one of her CATS because of the necessity of studying so often around someone so pretty, she was...going to be really upset with herself, because that was just...stupid), and she doubted it would be the last. She also really hoped that whatever the last was, it didn’t land quite as much as the ones which had happened so far, when the thing that reminded her of what was really going on was always a nasty little jolt, right to the chest....“Oh, wow,” she said, her brown eyes widening a little. She tried not to think about whether she thought she could pull off a potion that would turn Christopher into a sea urchin. She knew that her spellwork wasn’t up to that level yet, but...well, she’d never attempted a potion anywhere near that complex or dangerous, either, but Potions was one of the two subjects where she honestly couldn’t even pretend to worry about the CATS. Pulling off something like that might not be completely out of the question, technically speaking…. “At the Feast?” She sat down cross-legged on one of the beds, reasoning that it made sense to regard this as a good opening for a gossip session and that she wouldn’t look like a jealous shrew who had to make an active effort not to think about turning people into sea urchins. “What happened? Were you guys talking about it, or did he just ask? And do you think you guys are...like, a thing now or something?”
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Claire Osbrook
Especially not if I turned someone into a sea urchin...not that I'd ever think of doing that, of course.
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