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So Tired
Author: Illyria
Date: 10-07-16 18:36
"If you're tired, then get someone to fill in for you," Nathan said. He was cradling Ian in one arm, who was awake and watched his mother try to stifle another yawn. "You're owed leave, especially since you barely took any."
"No, no, I really shouldn't ask for help," Illyria replied. "My students have quizzes tonight, and I don't think it would be right if I didn't show up to administer them. Besides, it's already late."
"I think the students would forgive you for not showing up," Nathan said, "but they might not forgive you for assigning a quiz on a Monday."
Illyria quirked the corners of her lips up into a quick smile. "It's just a few hours more and then I can sleep."
Nathan looked at her deadpan.
Illyria lamented, "You're right, of course. In a few more hours I can hope I get some sleep."
Little Ian wanted to be entertained. He didn't want to miss a thing by getting some shut-eye. Falling asleep made him grumpy. Very, very grumpy.
"I'll just take a shot of Pepper-Up," Illyria decided. "It should do to get me through the rest of the evening." She went into the bathroom, where a flask of the stuff was kept in a medicine cabinet. She poured some into the cap, downed it, and then looked at her reflection in the mirror.
There were bags under her eyes, but otherwise she looked presentable for her two night classes. She came out of the bathroom to kiss Ian and Nathan goodbye and then headed to class.
When she got to the Astronomy Tower, she found a few of her first years already present. She waited for the rest of the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff first years to show up before calling roll and then announcing that everyone should remove everything except for a quill and a fresh sheet of parchment from their desks.
Even though they knew it was coming, some of the students groaned aloud.
Illyria pointed her wand at a blackboard, which flipped over to reveal ten questions about the solar system and the Moon. A bonus question had to do with a famous astronomer.
"You have twenty minutes," she said. "You may start!"
She sat down at her desk, while the students got busy answering the questions. While she sat, she could feel herself getting sleepy. If only she had more Pepper-Up potion, or maybe a throwback from only last year… the controversial Smart Crystals. In the end, Illyria got up and paced the room. It was the only way to make sure she didn't doze off while her students were testing.
Broom Shopping
Author: Pyrrhus
Date: 10-08-16 19:39
Mason admires a Goldentail and asks, "Any idea what you want?"
Pyrrhus runs his hand over the handle of the latest model Nimbus. "Not really. I looked over some brooms at Quidditch Con but at the time wasn't needing a new one. We did get a broom, but for the baby."
"Got the smallest one there, did you?"
"Something like that," Pyrrhus grins. After six years of marriage and being with Isolde for much longer than that, it's still a little surreal to him that they are having a baby.
With Py being his half-brother and Majandra being Py's adoptive sister, Mason has long been considered an uncle to Maj's Miranda and George. He loves those two but is nevertheless excited to become an uncle to Pyrrhus's and Isolde's child. Mason can easily picture that child practically being born astride a broom, either with a quaffle in hand or a bat with bludger.
Mason recently made chaser for the Griffins, the Quidditch team of St. Emry's Blane College. He's gotten a tiny Griffins jersey for the baby though he's not yet given the jersey to Isolde and Pyrrhus. Moving closer to the Goldentail he's been admiring he says a loud, "Maybe I need a new broom."
"Anything wrong with yours?"
"It's the first, and only, broom I've had. It's still a good broom but it seems to have lost some of its zip."
"Yeah, maybe a new one for matches then. Keep the one you have for practice and goofing with mates. Speaking of mates, you never said if Boris tried out for a team or not and until now I kept forgetting to ask."
"He tried out and made the Wright College team, the Manticores, though for now he's an alternate in case there's an injury. At first Boris was upset about that but then realized that he still made the team when many did not and given how many times he tried out for the Slytherin team but was only on it our last year, he's now okay with it. He gets the perks of being on the team and can brag, and Boris being Boris, there will be bragging on some level whenever he's trying to impress a girl."
Pyrrhus chuckles. "Yeah, I can see that about Boris. All right, I'm going to test fly this model. What about you?"
Mason looks to the Goldentail again. "Might as well since I'm here."
An hour and several test flights of various brooms later, both Pyrrhus and Mason walk out of Krum's Completely Quidditch with new brooms.
(Anthony) A Visit to Azkaban
Author: Beck
Date: 10-09-16 11:00
Anthony looked up when the prisoner, Mirabella Beamish, entered the visitation room with an Azkaban guard. She was escorted to the chair opposite Anthony's and sat without saying anything.
"Ms. Beamish," Anthony began, "my name is Anthony Beck. I'm an auror with the Ministry of Magic."
"No one's come to see me since my prison sentence began," Mirabella answered. "Why are you here?"
"I've come to ask you a few questions about the Karina Masterson kidnapping case."
Mirabella's expression went from cautious to cross in an instant. "I didn't kidnap any child, and I've already said all there is to know about it. What more do you possibly want?"
"I want to know why you did it," Anthony said. "Did you act of your own free will or did someone tell you to take the child?"
"I said it before, and I'll say it again: I didn't kidnap that baby. She's MY child."
Mirabella Beamish was thus far sticking to the story she'd told investigators. She had believed the baby to be hers and indeed raised Karina lovingly as her own in the short time she'd had her. After her initial arrest, Ms. Beamish had undergone a variety of tests to see if she suffered from a mental condition or if someone had magically coerced her to either take Karina or to make her believe she was the baby's biological mother. All tests came out negative, but Ms. Beamish not once wavered from her story. She was a hard nut to crack.
"Is it possible, Ms. Beamish, that somebody convinced you to take the child? Maybe a threat was involved, or a reward?" Anthony studied the prisoner to see if anything registered in her face.
She kept her features completely neutral and asked, "Don't you think that if someone forced me into committing a crime, for which I then got caught, that I or perhaps my family would likely still be in danger if I talked while behind bars?"
It was not the answer Anthony was expecting. He thought she would continue to insist that Karina had always been her baby.
"Yeah, that's definitely possible, especially if the person who made the threats is in an extremely powerful position," he ended up saying.
"And it's not like you could guarantee my or my family's safety."
"I wouldn't say that," Anthony said. "There are ways of making things happen without certain people knowing about it. Anyway, I intend on keeping the nature of this meeting off the books."
"Why's that?"
"Personal interests. So, all I need from you is a name."
"I'm afraid I can't help you with that," Mirabella said, "because nobody forced me to do anything. All I did was take care of my baby, a baby who was cruelly ripped from my arms. Does she even remember me after all this time?"
Anthony watched as Mirabella repeatedly made the same two gestures with her hands. He had no idea what she meant, but he committed the gestures to memory. He had a feeling she was trying to tell him something, though maybe she was throwing gang signs she'd learned while in prison.
"Fine," Anthony sighed, after he was sure he'd gotten the hand gestures down in his mind. "We're done here."
He got up and let the guard know that he was ready to leave and that Mirabella could return to her cell. As it was the end of the day, Anthony didn't go back to work. Instead, he made a quick stop to visit Ariella, who had given birth to her second child, a boy, on her 27th and Karina's 2nd birthday.
Even though Lawrence seemed to have crossed over to the dark side, Ariella held hope that he had gone to Australia under duress. She'd named her son Adam, after Lawrence's father, and Tobias after her own. Adam Tobias Masterson.
Anthony found his grandparents, Ariella, and the children at the dinner table when he arrived. They invited him to join them, but Anthony shook his head and told them he had dinner plans with Plum, Alex and Evan. He just wanted to make a quick visit.
Ariella thrust Adam into his arms so that she could eat without a newborn on her lap and asked, "How was your day?"
He'd confided in her about what he'd done to Alanna earlier in the month. Although disappointed that he had resorted to such measures to get the truth out of Alanna, Ariella was secretly glad.
He didn't want to say anything about his visit to Azkaban in his grandparents' presence, since they didn't know as much about his suspicions regarding Alanna, and since the visit had to do with the woman who'd kidnapped Karina, he decided to keep it to himself.
He answered, "Fine, I think. You don't happen to know what this means, do you?"
With a baby in his arms, it was a bit hard manipulating his hands the way Mirabella Beamish had, but he managed it somehow.
Josefine and Tobias shook their heads, but Ariella cocked her head to the side and said, "That looks like British Sign Language."
"Yeah?"
Ariella nodded. "I don't know it, obviously, but someone in the office has a deaf parent and uses BSL to communicate."
"Thanks," Anthony said. He really felt like he was on to something. He handed Adam back to Ariella and said, "Better run. Alex's been threatening making pizza out of gummy bears, despite the fact that I've told him it's not exactly a balanced meal."
"Gummy bears!" Karina exclaimed.
Anthony grinned, ruffled Karina's hair, kissed his sister and grandmother, patted his grandfather on the shoulder, and headed home. Tomorrow he planned on learning the BSL alphabet to find out if the two symbols were the initials R.W.
Shopping with Beatrix
Author: Rowan Westwick
Date: 10-09-16 18:43
Rowan looked at the checklist in her hand and asked, "Are you sure we'll need all this?"
Beatrix shrugged. "The only dorm I've ever lived in is our room at Hogwarts. I don't think the ones at St. Emrys are anything like that, but I don't know for sure, since Griet lived in a flat off campus and Aleydis still lives at home. I have a feeling our new room will only have bare bones furnishing."
"But do we really need a bulletin board AND a dry-erase board?"
They were in a store in Stratford-upon-Avon that sold household wares such as those needed to stock and decorate a university dormitory room.
"Maybe, I don't know," Beatrix replied with a shrug. "It couldn't hurt to get both. Anyway, you have all that extra money to spend."
She was referring to the scholarship Rowan received upon graduating from Hogwarts.
"I know I said I would use it to fund my auror training, but I'm not sure I necessarily planned on buying a bunch of things that I'll probably never use."
"How do you know you won't? Bulletin boards and dry-erase boards are totally useful and completely different. I think we should get both."
Rowan sighed and said, "Fine."
Beatrix broke out into a grin and grabbed first the bulletin board with pushpins and then the dry-erase board with markers and an eraser. She stuffed them into their shopping cart and exclaimed, "I can't believe we're going to be roommates!"
"It's not the first time," Rowan reminded her with a roll of her eyes. "We were roommates only three months ago, or have you forgotten?"
Beatrix made a face. "You know what I mean. That was Hogwarts, with rules and stuff. Now we're at university. We won't have a curfew or anything. It's going to be amazing!"
They turned to go down another aisle and ran into Lon and Pablo. Lon and Pablo were also going to be roommates at St. Emrys. Their cart had things like bedsheets and towels in it but also bottles and canisters of varying shapes and sizes. Lon and Pablo were still planning on continuing the Smart Crystals scheme, despite the protests of their girlfriends.
"Hello, ladies," Pablo drawled. "Fancy meeting you here."
"Getting your back-to-school shopping done?" Lon asked.
Beatrix and Rowan nodded. "Just going through the checklist," Beatrix said. "What about you lot?"
"We don't need a checklist. We've got all the essentials already," Pablo replied with a grin.
"You are totally going to get expelled," Beatrix decided, after inspecting their cart.
Pablo smiled. "Oh ye of little faith."
Rowan looked at Lon. "Want to get dinner later?"
"Yeah. Where and when?"
Once the details were decided upon, the girls and boys split ways to continue their first year of university shopping excursion.
Brothers
Author: Phinfilius
Date: 10-09-16 20:08
Leo eats a bite of the cake he brought with him from the Great Hall. He sort of wishes he'd brought two with him to the commons. Studying and doing homework makes him hungry. Good thing there are snacks available here in the commons.
Alone at a table, he gives a start when someone loudly plops into a chair opposite, He looks up to see Cornington slumped in the chair. "Is it Friday night, yet?" the youngest Marchbanks asks.
"Don't I wish, though with OWLs this year I'm not sure weekends will mean much for me."
Joining his brother Baron adds, "Same for me because of the NEWTs. And let's not forget any prep for SAT events."
"Maybe I should give up my clubs this year." Leo sighs then looks at Cornington. "Why are you so ready for Friday?"
"No one told me having to add two more courses would mean ten times more work."
Baron snorts with amusement. "Exaggerate much?"
Cornington makes a face at his oldest brother. "You know what I mean."
"Yeah," Baron admits. Leo, mouth full of the last bite of his cake, nods.
Out of the blue Cornington asks, "Why didn't Mum and Dad give me a name that could be shortened like you two's names?"
Leo grins, a splotch of chocolate frosting on his teeth. "You don't like Corn or Corny or Ing or Ning or Ton?"
Baron laughs hard enough he chokingly sputters, reaching for the drink he'd brought with him to the table. Cornington glares at them both. "I've tried to get others to call me Geoff or Geoffrey," he points out with regard to his middle name.
"But you've never seemed like a Geoff or a Geoffrey," Leo says, parroting something Hydrangea has said a few times.
Cornington hooks a thumb at Baron, "How about some other nickname then like Minister of Magic here."
"People call me that?"
Leo and Cornington snigger, "Yes!" at the same time.
Baron looks please. "Excellent. Keeps the idea in their heads for when the time actually comes for naming me to the position."
The other two look at each other, roll their eyes, then laugh. Wanting something with which to wash down the cake, Leo then gets up to get a drink and to get a plate of biscuits or a few fairy cakes, returning to find his brothers discussing the various SAT events. Offering up the sweets, he joins in as it's a distraction from doing more class related work.
Before Astronomy (Amorica)
Author: Aaron Miller
Date: 10-11-16 21:26
Groggily blinking Callie Blackwell lifts her head from her crossed arms. "Is it time to go?" she asks with a yawn.
Nearby at a chess board playing a match against Gideon Coy, Maurice Kilman tells her with a shake of his head, "Not yet. About fifteen minutes."
Hearing this Amorica looks in the direction of the common room clock. She mutters to herself, "It was only ten a few minutes ago." Pushing hair off her face then reaching for her bag to find a clip or tie to help with it she asks, "What happened to Willow?"
Horace Quisenberry, sitting at the same table as Amorica, debating whether he should do more with the Astronomy homework or leave his as is, replies with a shrug, "Went to bed probably."
Callie yawns again, swiping at her sleep droopy eyes. "Doesn't take Astronomy. I'm starting to wish I'm not. What is that you're working on, Amorica?"
Amorica sighs. "Something to show to all what an idiot I can be. I put my name in for the SAT Invention and Design competition. Put my name in and got picked."
Gideon grins. "I put my name in too. Can't tell you how bloody relieved I am not to have been pegged for it as I still have no idea what I would invent or design. What are you doing?"
"Until I have this more under control I won't say more than it will have something to do with cooking."
Maurice's brow furrows. "Making a new, magical food? Oh, I know, you've found out the secret to those smart crystal things and are tweaking them."
"No, though now you suggest it maybe I can get Professor Black to let me change course," she says with a laugh.
Callie pushes up from her chair. "We'll eventually get more out of you but grilling you has to be put on hold for the moment. I need to visit the ladies and freshen up, splash water on my face, before we go to Astronomy."
Noting that a chunk of those fifteen minutes Maurice had mentioned is gone, all the sixth years in the Slytherin common room who take the course start preparing to leave for the Astronomy tower. Amorica packs up the material she'd been going over then double checks she has what she needs for class. There are some days she doesn't think she'll ever figure this project out, such as today, so welcomes having classes and homework to distract her. Other days she'll make progress or have an insight and having to go to classes and do work associated with them serves to frustrate her for the time she loses or for having to put a thought on hold.
Within another few minutes the sixth years exit Slytherin House for the long trek from the dungeons to one of the castle towers. Gideon walks beside her, making her laugh at he gives silly ideas for inventions or designs if he'd been picked, such as gag eyebrows to don that would waggle on their own at unexpected moments. At that one, Amorica points out that it might actually be something and he might want to discuss it with Professor Weasley's husband George, one of the owners of the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes joke shop.