entrancelogs | You might belong in Gryffindor

You might belong in Gryffindor

Who: Gryffindors! (+ Friends/Visitors/People sneaking in)
Where: Gryffindor Tower: Common Rooms + Dorms. Gryffindor Table in the Great Hall.
When: During the event
Rating: Label as you go
Summary: Gryffindor Mingle Log
The Story:

Common Room
The common room is a circular room where Gryffindor students can relax after a long day of studying. It is full of squashy armchairs, tables, and a bulletin board where school notices, ads, lost posters, etc. can be posted. The common room is decorated in several shades of red, which is associated with the house.

There are many windows that look out onto the grounds of the school, and a large fireplace dominates one wall. The mantle of the fireplace is adorned with a portrait of a lion. The walls are decorated with scarlet tapestries that depict witches and wizards, but also various animals. There are also bookcases located in the room.

Dorms
The Gryffindor dormitories are also located in the Tower, with two doors leading off from the common room that open to spiral staircases. One of them leads to the girls' dormitory, the other to the boys'. The stairs to the girls' dormitory are enchanted to become a slide if any boy attempts to climb them, but not vice versa, since it was deemed that girls were more trustworthy than boys... (Look don't blame me it's canon)

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I'm Coraline! [ Says the first year, not bothering to contain her excitement. She shakes the older girl's hand, very glad the snake seems to be passively minding its own business on Beckett's other arm.] And that's okay, if you're still new at it- I mean, it can't be any more off the mark than reading horoscopes in the Muggle newspaper, right?

[ beckett laughs. her father is a writer and sometimes consults the muggle printings for ideas. ]

Some of those are really ridiculous, aren't they?

Yeah! They're always trying to tell me about stupid things like "your weekend prospects for romance!"

[ Judging by the roll of her eyes and something very close to a dismissive poke of her tongue, Coraline Jones was still firmly entrenched in the prepubescent years of having absolutely no interest in boys. ]

But I want to know all about important fate and stuff! Things to beware of. What it's luckiest to do.

It's always romance. I don't know why they seem to focus so heavily on that. The stars aren't always aligning for love.

[ a shake of her head. some muggle customs she would just never understand. ]

That sounds smart. Not everyone would stop to look at it that way.

[ Coraline purses her mouth aand shrugs up her shoulders, as if to agree with a hearty 'beats me'!

Still standing beside the chair, she rocks a little from heel to toe- the nearest adjacent armchair seems just a little too far away to curl up in- she'd have to lean halfway over its arm to be able to see into any curious crystals or a cartomancy spread. ]

So what's been your favorite kind of Divination to do, since you've started taking classes?

I really like tarot, as tacky as that may sound. Crystal reading, too. [ hence the book. ] Though really, I'm still learning about all the different branches. It's a very broad field — broader than one might think — and there are lots of different areas to explore. I'm not sure which one I want to focus on just yet.

[ Coraline listened with dreamy-eyed curiousity, leaning a little to peer around at the title of Beckett's Divination text.]

How did you ever decide which third year classes you wanted to take? I want to try them all! (Except Muggle Studies....and I could probably pass on Arithmancy.)

I get enough Muggle Studies at home. [ a roll of her eyes, though it's more an affectionate gesture than an annoyed one. ] My dad's a writer and likes to set his novels in the Muggle world. He's always doing research and I hear about it all the time.

[ a shrug. ] A little unconventional, but I sort of just picked the ones that seemed the most interesting to me. Most students, I know, take courses based on what they see themselves doing in the future, but you're not really required to do that just yet.

Oh! My dad's a writer too! [ Coraline brightens fondly. ] Except he writes sort-of-boring stuff, like blurbs for trade catalogs, articles about gardening, stuff like that.

...muggle gardening's much more boring than Herbology, though.

How is anybody supposed to be sure what they wanna be when they're thirteen years old? [ She laughs, shaking her head ] (Gosh.)

So much more boring. Do you know that they consider their version of gardening a hobby? I don't see what joy can be found in watering something, pulling up weeds, and waiting weeks for something to grow.

[ a shrug. ] I really don't know. It's a lot of pressure to put on a young person, if you ask me.

"Their? [ Coraline doesn't knwow quite why hearing it that way suddenly makes her a little queasy- ill at ease, having lived a very muggley life for the first eleven years of her own. ] Um, well, not all the time, there is... hobby-gardening, sure, but loads of people take it seriously and use it for useful things, and there are still, um... backyard vegetable gardeners, people who cook with herb pots, plenty of stuff like that?

[ She's vaguely away that she's babbling on breathlessly, and to an older student too, and can feel her face beginning to warm, her stomach clench up. ]

I mean, my family likes... their version of gardening? (Maybe not tracking mud all over the house, but...)

[ She trailed off before she could come up with a smarter answer than that, gnawing at one of her blue-painted thumbnails. It was stupid, to get sensitive over muggle stuff every time it came up. Coraline sighed out, flustered, dropping her arms to her sides and shifting from foot to foot impatiently.]

... Could we just do my fortune, please?

[ she doesn't mean it that way, though she could certainly see why it might have come off that way. truth is, as much as beckett's heard about muggle life, she really doesn't understand their culture and has a difficult time wrapping her head around it. and having a father who writes stories based in a muggle world that is more or less accurate to fact doesn't paint the best of pictures. she really should look into taking muggle studies before she graduates so she has a more accurate, and hopefully less biased portrait of the muggle world in her head.

frowning, she realizes belatedly that was probably poor phrasing on her part. ] Sorry, I didn't mean—

It's not the same, but my father was in Slytherin. There's a lot of negative things people say about people who are or were in that house and I get really defensive when that comes up, because I know that he's not like that and it's not right to apply stereotypes to a group of people who don't all fit the expectations. It's the same for Muggles, and I'm really sorry if I offended you. That was not my intention and I could have said that a lot better.

[ that said, she moves meret to her shoulders, where the snake drapes itself across her collarbone like some sort of thin shawl, and opens the book. ]

Let's see what I can work out.

[ Given the way Coraline's shoulders stiffen slightly in reaction, she's had just enough time in school to hear plenty about the darker history of Slytherin House ]

Sorry, I just... wizards, the way they talk about muggles sometimes, like they're an extra-dumb species... they might be dull as beans most of the time, but they're still, um. I mean, we're people too, and- [ She very carefully holds her tongue ] Yeah, lets... just not talk about it, I guess.

[ But there's one more nagging itch of curiousity, which finds its way out as Beckett prepares to consult her texts for the best method.]

D'you have the snake, because of your father?

I didn't say you were. Not all wizards think that way. [ yes, best to just drop it for now.

another frown, a shake of her head. ]

No, I don't. I actually have her here because of my mother, a Gryffindor like myself. She got me Meret before she died and I like having her here with me.

Oh... [ Her voice softens and she hugs at her elbows. Now who's presumptuous, Coraline Jones? ]

There's a cat I know back home, but... he's not mine, exactly, he's wild, so I couldn't take him with me.

Do you feed him? We have a couple of feral cats that hang out and my grandparents' place.

Well... no, not really. [ Coraline admits a little guiltily- after all the help he's been, perhaps she should have. ] But there are rats around that he kills and eats, so-

So it's not like he's starving?

But the man upstairs is more of a mouse person, and the ladies downstairs are definitely into terrier dogs, so... if anyone does, it'd be up to me. Sort of hard to do that while you're far away from home at Wizard School though.

He's an awfully clever cat, so maybe he'll just show up randomly here, someday.

[ man upstairs? ladies downstairs? she wants to ask, but doesn't feel like it's her place to pry that much. ]

Maybe he will. You never know with Hogwarts. We've had some interesting things happen here that are strange, even by magic's tastes.

Aren't there supposed to be magic barriers and stuff around the grounds? [ She asked skeptically, wondering if the older students are just pulling her leg with half the random facts they know about the castle. ] (Even if cats can apparate...)

Anyway! [ Coraline's attention keeps wandering, then eventually zipping back to the deck on the table. ] ... So, my fortune?

[ It sort of feels a little like begging for one, by this point. ]

Please-and-carrots?

[ beckett sets the book aside and rummages through her bag for the deck of tarot cards she has with her. meret slithers off her wrist, coiling up inside the bag, making it easier for beckett to do a quick reading. she draws three cards from the deck, laying them out on the couch. ]

The Eight of Swords, Seven of Swords, and Two of Pentacles.

Yikes.

[ She grimaces, at the sight of the Eight of Swords. While she hasn't learned much about the cards' meanings, her instinctive interpretation doesn't seem pleasant. ]

That first one doesn't look too good.

It can be, but not in this case. See how it's reversed? That's an indication of an open mind, while the upright would be the negative isolation and imprisonment. The position of the cards has as much to do with the reading as what's on their face does.

[ she points to the next card, the seven of swords. ]

See, this one is reversed, too. So instead of betrayal and deception you have some sort of rewarding challenge.

Oh! [ Relief floods her face, emotions on her sleeve. ] Oh, right, I didn't realize that. So that's... better, definitely?

[ Well now she felt like a bit of a dummy for panicking. Any student of divination was probably taught about that kind of stuff very early on. Coraline only knew some of the Major Arcana, from a left-behind textbook she'd flipped through once. ]

A challenge.... like a test? Or making a new friend in one of the other houses?

It could be, [ she says with an encouraging smile. that's a step in the right direction. ] The cards are more... Look at them like hints. It's really up to you to interpret how you let their message guide you.

So... if it's all up to how whoever interprets it, then there's nothing actually very magical about it at all, huh?

[ She seems to deflate a little, mout firming into a disappointed skeptical line. ]

I wonder why they even teach this stuff in wizard school.

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lamiae - 2016-12-19 16:57 (UTC) - Expand

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doorkey - 2016-12-19 21:04 (UTC) - Expand

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