The newest batch of Hogwarts students have entered this historic school and no one knows how their future will turn out - will you be a quidditch pro or maybe a prefect? The year is now 2021, and now it's time for the next generation to make their mark. The newest batch of Hogwarts students have entered this historic school and no one knows how their future will turn out - and that is where the fun begins.
The plot will be determined by the characters of the site as of now - future plots will change as these forces weigh in on the Wizarding World, and we see where these characters take us. So join in and let your character make their mark!
Minimum word count is 200.
Post by Joy Therese Sweeting on Jun 23, 2018 16:21:06 GMT
The dust from the Valentine’s Day dance was settling around the students who had attended, and even those who had not, but liked the endless game of gossip that surrounded the stories of mirth and woe that were born of the event. She’d gone for a little while herself, but without a date, she felt a little silly lingering near Cece and Charlotte and some others. And even though she loved to dance, there was a distinct mood to the room after the first hour- it seemed like a strange sexual tension was pulsating in the air. In the morning, it came out that someone had spiked the punch with love potion, and she was immediately glad she had decided to just have a glass of water.
Poor Cece had been ripped from her bed in the early hours of the morning, returning from a feverish altercation with James Potter almost wilting. It was most disappointing- while James was no match to the smooth graces of Francisco Krum, he’d always just been…around. Did that count for something when you show up drunk (and Merlin knows what else)? Charlotte had been conspicuously absent for the remainder of the evening, and based off of Cece’s stories, she must have stayed late at the party in the Slytherin Common Room, perhaps with Nate Nott. Whatever ended up happening, Joy certainly hadn’t heard about it, and the lack of conversation about it from the usually bubbling Charlotte indicated that perhaps she shouldn’t ask…despite really wanting to.
This odd tension, perhaps fabricated in Joy’s mind, led to her head for breakfast on Sunday mornings by herself, rather than wait for her dormmates to rise or return. Cece had been running in the mornings with her boyfriend, and Joy was typically up before Charlotte, and Sunday morning breakfasts in the Great Hall were so divine that it was never and inconvenience to ascend to the first floor by herself. It was early enough that all of the food was wonderfully fresh and the tables were mostly empty, save for a few people like herself who enjoyed early mornings without much difficulty. She’d gone to the Ravenclaw Common Room for a short time with her friends, but decided to turn in early, not very interested in a game of exploding snap that involved two bottles of firewhiskey.
She perched herself near the middle of the Hufflepuff table, reaching out for a slice of toast before anything else while she surveyed the options in front of her. Eggs, bacon, sausages, potatoes, fruits, coffee cakes, muffins, pancakes. She bit into the corner of the buttered triangle and chewed thoughtfully, not sure what particular piece to enjoy first.
Tag: @raphael Notes: Yay! Feel free to headcanon a little to set them up. Take liberties if you’d like, haha. This should be a fun first thread.
Raph did not do mornings. If he could sleep until noon and then attend lessons just in the afternoons, life would be perfect. By now he was used to dragging himself out of bed at the arse crack of dawn, but every morning he looked like an angry bear for the first hour of the day. He didn't like to think of himself looking anything less than god-like, but he had four guys that he shared a room with who would all confirm that he would pass for a drugged up scarecrow when he was trying to walk in a straight line to get to the bathroom, with one eye open and his hair like a bird's nest. He scooped his blonde locks back from his face and brushed his teeth quickly, his stomach growling as he went about getting dressed. Breakfast would make everything alright, and Merlin had been kind and plonked him in a common room that was only one floor away from the great hall. If that wasn't a huge blessing for a lazy soul, Raph didn't know what was.
He was feeling more alive and like his usual self by the time he left the common room and made his way through the basement and up into the entrance hall. It wasn't too busy yet, and he hummed to himself as he crossed the hall, blue eyes everywhere as he took in the large room and the people seated at the four long tables. Avoiding trouble or unsavoury people was something of a skill of his these days. He didn't have time for arseholes. Luckily, there weren't many people having breakfast yet, which made him feel like an idiot for not staying in bed longer, but he soon perked up when he saw who was sitting at the Hufflepuff table. Good food and good company would make getting out of bed so worth it. Chewing on his lip, he circled the Ravenclaw table and sauntered up to the back of the brunette sitting alone at the badger's table, placing his hand on her shoulder and reaching across her to pick up a blueberry muffin, pausing with his face next to hers to offer her a bright smile. "This one has my name on it," he told her, his Irish accent strong, even though he was sure it had faded since he'd been at the castle. It had been much stronger when he was a child, but he supposed that was what you got when you spent all your time away from home.
He sat beside Joy at the table, his long legs swinging over the bench, knees digging into the underneath of the table, forcing him to stretch his legs out to the bench on the other side. He took a bite of the blueberry muffin and licked his lips. "Why're you on your own?" he asked her, using a fist to hide his mouthful of food, and then taking another bite as he waited for her to answer. Joy was a lovely girl, she had friends in every corner, or so it seemed, and if she didn't, she should. She was kind, and fun, and easy to be around, and Raph had always enjoyed her company. Besides that, she was a real looker, and he often wondered why she hadn't had a boyfriend for the past... forever. Sure, she was a tad bit shy, but that wasn't so off putting. Anyone would be lucky to have a good girl like her on their arm. Yet here she was eating breakfast alone.
Post by Joy Therese Sweeting on Jun 28, 2018 13:16:33 GMT
A plate was soon filled with a variety of the options present- a little rainbow of freshly sliced fruit, a sunny over-easy yolk, roasted potatoes with a sprinkling of special spices- and she nibbled away at ambitiously at first, the hall still relatively empty for the waning morning. The morning prophet that had been tucked under her elbow and shortly abandoned at her side, was now propped open against a jug of coffee, less one cup that was currently steaming between her hands, its sharp scent of dark hazelnuts and almonds slicing the air under her nose in an effort to perk her awake.
Since the release of the sensationalized article about sexual deviancy at Hogwarts had been released, it seemed that every media publication in Great Britain was taking a renewed interest in their younger subscribers. Joy was about halfway through perusing an article on the questionable ethics of apps like Howled (which sent digital howlers through hext messages, undetectable until open- was that invasive as well as disruptive if the quiv owner could not control the outburst?). The arrival of a pressure on her shoulders made her glad to have sipped through half her coffee, as she jumped slightly in place, turning around quickly in a swish of brunette hair to greet her surpriser, he who made her jump again, although internally this time.
The warm sensation that began in her fingertips, collected from the ceramic of her coffee mug, shot uncontrollably up her arms and to the base of her neck, Raph’s smile cut through her morning mood like a welcome diamond, each enunciation of Irish phonetic one more sparkle that shone off its surface. In moments of retrospection, she was embarrassed by the uncontrollable bubbles that bounced around her body whenever he, unassuming and suddenly, joined her personal space. He was just a friend, after all, with very little chance of change. At least, that’s what she’d convinced herself of.
Her smile broadened gratefully, shifting over slightly in an unnecessary motion to indicate he could sit beside her (why wouldn’t he have?). “It’s early! Cece is…well, who knows where she is these days…and I think that Charlotte is still asleep. If I’d thought you’d be up, I would have waited for you.” She reached out to the book, propped up in the same place that Raph would most likely want his plate to sit, and snapped it shut with one hand, lifting it over toward her lap for safe-keeping.
Raph's lip curled up on one side as she explained that she hadn't thought he'd be up. Did everyone think he was lazy? They were right, they were so right that he couldn't fault any of his friends for commenting on it, but it still made him cringe that they all knew it and thought it and said it. "You could have come into the dorm to check," he teased, knowing full well that barging into the guys dorm unannounced just to find a breakfast date wasn't something Joy would do. He smirked at the thought of her being horrified if any of them were half naked. Or fully naked. Raph had some pretty comfortable dorm mates. "Cece wasn't in your room?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows with a naughty expression. "That must have been what the extra lump in Cisco's bed was." He was teasing. There had been no extra person in Fransisco's bed this morning. Not that Rah had noticed anyway, he hadn't been taking much notice of anyone else while he got ready, but he was sure he'd have noticed an extra person in the room.
His blueberry muffin was all but gone, and he pulled a plate into the space that Joy had moved her newspaper from, glancing at her lap to try and see what she had been reading, but being far more interested in putting food on his plate to stop and ask about it. Scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, and a whole host of sizzling goods were piled onto his plate, and Raph tucked in, feeling instantly perkier as he ate. His cup was filled with pumpkin juice and he took a sip, brushing his hair out of his face so it wouldn't dip into his cup. He probably should have tied it up, but that would have added a whole extra minute onto his morning routine, and it just wasn't worth the effort. It hadn't always been so long. He'd grown it out last summer and quite liked the way it looked. He looked cute with shorter hair, too, and had been told so more than enough times to know he was right about that, but he liked the older look this longer style gave him. Even if it did dip into his drink sometimes. He put his cup down and went back to his eggs.
Post by Joy Therese Sweeting on Jul 6, 2018 20:53:15 GMT
She pursed her lips into a sheepish smile, tilting her head slightly downward as she surveyed him. He knew as well as she did that she would never just barge into the Hufflepuff Boys’ dorm, especially the seventh years’. The amount of noise that came from behind that door at any given moment of its occupation was inexplicable. Who knew what she would find if she attempted to open it. She’d visited, of course, but always invited. His smirk indicated that he was at least aware of her thinking. It’s not like the seventh year Hufflepuff gang wasn’t consistently the talk of the school.
“No,” she replied, setting her coffee down on the table so she could reach for the pot to refill it. Looking sideways at his response, she jabbed at his side with her elbow, laughing along with him slightly, although the reality of what he said was potentially all too true. “They go running in the morning…like, every morning. At least that’s what she tells me.” She made a decent attempt at wiggling her eyebrows like he did, but with no practice nor control over her facial expressions like the actor sitting next to her, she simply ended up furrowing her eyebrows into little scrunches. This attempt made her fully laugh. “I still don’t know how you manage to do…” she waved her hand in the air near her forehead, “…that.”
She watched him put a plate together, and saw his eyes trail from the table to the paper folded on her side. “Have you read this morning’s prophet? I mean, you just got here, so probably not,” she rolled her eyes to herself and picked up the paper to place it between them, freshly steaming coffee balance in her opposite hand. “Ever since that…that…sex article came out…or like...adolescent drive…whatever…that article came out, there have been so many good think pieces about people our age. They’re really fascinating.” Concerned she was talking too much, she lifted her cup to her mouth quickly and took a large sip of coffee, squeezing her eyes shut in an attempt to not succumb to the very real discomfort of too-hot coffee against her own tongue.
Tag: @raphael Notes: I screwed up and wrote book instead of newspaper in the first post…my bad!
"Running. Yep." Raph gave a slow nod of his head as he ate, thinking that this running story was a load of crap and Cece and Cisco were probably working up a sweat in an entirely different way. That's what he hoped, at least. It was about time Krum got the girl and was happy, and if they weren't banging already, well then Cisco must have been dropped on his head as a child, because damn, Cece was hot. There was getting the girl, and then there was tiptoeing around the girl and then having the girl lose interest completely because you were too scared to show her a good time. It was none of Raphael's business, though, so he continued eating his sausage, glancing sideways at Joy as she tried to copy his eyebrow wiggle with zero success. With a soft chuckle, he reached a hand out and gently smoothed his thumb across her eyebrow. "A few hours in front of a mirror and you'll get it," he told her, having spent far more than a few hours looking at is own reflection and learning how to pull all of the best expressions available to him. Vanity took dedication.
She placed the newspaper between them and began chattering again, and Raph nearly chocked on his sausage, gulping the last chunk of it down as a smirk forced its way onto his face, starting with a twinkling scrunch of his eyes, one side of his mouth curving upwards, then the other as he fully embraced it. "Joy Sweeting, did you just confess to me that you read the Prophet more because of a great sex article they printed?" he asked, full on grinning at her now as he enjoyed the moment. Out of all of his friends, Joy was the last person he would have expected to say such a thing. Innocence was her middle name, yet here she was uttering the word "sex" at the breakfast table. This was brilliant. Raph was beaming. He wasn't shy of the subject, himself, and he'd certainly read the article she was talking about, but he'd expect something like that from Cece or Charlotte. In fact, he'd expect Nate Nott to snog him before he'd expect Joy Sweeting to make such a confession.
Post by Joy Therese Sweeting on Jul 9, 2018 16:21:37 GMT
Honestly, the moment his thumb traced the line of her eyebrow, she thought she might seriously melt, explode, or something in between that involved an episode of cardiac arrest. Paired with the light laugh that accompanied it, it was difficult for her not to emit a girlish giggle, one that was such a cornerstone of her existence but one that she hated the timing of, because wouldn’t it be so much better to be nonchalant about the gesture, not dissolve into a simpering, uncontrollable mess? Indara Zabini got touched all the time by tons of boys, and Joy had never seen her move a muscle that wasn’t of her own choosing. She would never giggle. But she also had a reputation- Joy didn’t know which one of those things was better or worse.
She didn’t find anything she’d said particularly shocking until she saw him cough on a piece of half-chewed sausage, smiling at her in between bites of breakfast. Her mouth dropped open as he spoke, unsure if she should be offended or embarrassed, or something completely other than that. She hadn’t read more because the Prophet wrote one little article about teenage escapades. She read the paper every day! Although, on quick second thought, that probably wasn’t truly the point he was getting at. A sheepish smile spread onto her face, complacent with the realization that he was just shocked to see her say anything off color at all, something she was already incredibly self-conscious about. It wasn’t unfamiliar territory; all of her friends poked fun at how ‘innocent’ she was. Well, it was true, right?
She crossed her arms over her chest, almost defensively. “No more than I already do, thank you very much.” She lifted her coffee and took a hearty sip, peeking down at the article in question between them, which had nothing to do with sex, as she could have pointed out! “And it was a fascinating article! Did you read it?” She blinked at him expectantly, crossing her arms again, defiantly choosing to approach the subject with gusto, only after asking realizing that she might have to begin discussing the sexual climate of Hogwarts with the apple of her personal sexual eye.
Oops.
Tag:@raphael Notes: This is so cheeky, I love it. Lol.
She was asking him if he had read it? This was clearly some kind of attempt to take the attention from herself and onto him, but he wouldn't be allowing that any time soon. Joy was squirming. She might have still been smiling and putting on a confident front, but he could sense it, the desperate desire to blush and run tingling under her skin. It was delicious. He really wasn't the kind of person to enjoy winding people up, he found it cruel most of the time, but delving into a juicy topic that made someone uncomfortable wasn't exactly winding someone up, was it. It was just a bit of an open conversation. A very open one, and he was so intrigued to hear what she had to say while he had the rare opportunity. Eager as anything, he shifted in his seat, bending his knee up onto the bench so that he could face her properly and catch every single drop of what she thought and how she felt about sex. Sex. Sex. Sex.
"I read it," he admitted, then gave a nonchalant shrug. "Didn't think much of it, to be honest. Enlighten me. What did you find so fascinating about it?" If that didn't reel her in and make her spill her thoughts, nothing would. She was faking this confident air, and once he caught her out, or made her squirm he'd let it go and laugh it off with her. Unless she carried on playing along and revealed some juicy tidbits, then he'd be thrilled. He'd never exactly thought of Joy in a sexual way, but looking at her now he felt differently just from knowing that she'd enjoyed some daft article. How weird was that? Some of that innocence slipped away before his eyes as he realised that she thought about such things, and not in a horrified manner like people probably expected of her. She might even secretly be a kinky little minx, and Merlin's beard, why was he thinking about Joy Sweeting being kinky. The images that swarmed through his head made Raph look away, grabbing a piece of toast to distract him. 'Think of toast. Think of bacon. Sizzling bacon on Joy's burning hot stomach. No! Crap!' He bit into his toast with a little too much vigour.
________________________________________________________ tag:Joy Therese Sweeting | words: 413 | notes: So funnyyyyy! Raph is loving this. xD <33
Post by Joy Therese Sweeting on Jul 12, 2018 15:32:58 GMT
She’d really worked herself into a corner, and despite sitting there with her arms crossed over her chest, frowning over her coffee sideways at him stubbornly, she had no plan of action for how to exit the conversation with her dignity intact, because she was not only a complete and total virgin (as if anyone didn’t already know that), she wasn’t exactly equipped to discuss sex with her crush. Especially over eggs and toast! Her eyes narrowed slightly at his challenge, a little voice popping into her head that challenged her to keep her cool. It helped that as the year wore on, she was becoming more and more frustrated by the narrative that she was the epitome of all purity and innocence, highlighted as a paragon of prudishness for the entirety of the school to call upon as example.
Confidence was exhausting.
Pursing her lips, she tried to recall the more intimate details of the article, finding it easier to discuss her points while looking down at the cooling coffee between her fingers. “Well, it made a few good points, the first being that any situation where teenagers are cooped up together in bulk will yield anomalies in sexual maturity. Lack of supervision and familial expectation paired with a stronger desire to appear average among your peers, at minimum of course, starts a snowball effect in the leaps teenagers decide to take. Once one person does it, another one thinks they could, or should, and it just keeps going and going. But,” She found herself looking up, lifting a finger to accentuate her point.
“Anyone could put that together, right? What’s really important is comparing the nature of sexual development and education to the muggle population. Back in, oh, say, the 1980s and 1990s, we were very much the same as muggles, using the standard statistical measurements of the subject as benchmarks, like in unplanned teenage pregnancies, sexually transmitted infection rates, the mean age of virginity loss, and the amount of sexual education available for teens, which was deceptively low across the board” she counted off on her fingers, barely taking a breath to assist her, blinking away at him while making her points.
“But we’re not in the nineties anymore, it’s 2021, and the wizarding population has fallen desperately behind in sexual education. The fact that it’s most promising school doesn’t offer any sexual health, or health classes of any kind to be honest, is abysmal, and it’s contributing to a culture of sexual hysteria that is detrimental to the mental, physical, and sexual health of its students. Granted, wizards don’t have to face the fear of health risks that most muggles do, since we have access to more robust medical practices, and there’s no risk in abortion besides its continued moral controversy, but there’s still a complete lack of cultivation taking place in a situation that so quickly breeds a culture of trying to be more mature, more quickly, for more social…approval….what have you.” She paused briefly, taking a breath, and appeared as though she’d finished her say.
Not quite. The coffee that she’d lifted towards her lips for a sip was smacked down on the wood of the table in manifested frustration. “What I didn’t appreciate was the absolute lack of solutions the author offered in place of the problems he presented! Like, what right does some middle-aged man have to judge the sexual choices of a sixteen year old girl? Or…whatever. Any student here.” She finally took her sip of coffee, perturbed by her last concept. “And I’d like to point out,” she said poignantly, looking at him over the rim of her mug, “…that I didn’t say I found this particular article fascinating, just the response to it in the media since it’s publication, about all sorts of other concerns of teenagers other than sex.”
Tag:@raphael Notes: Hahaha, when Joy gets her stride. Love it. Lol.
Raph's sapphire orbs held fast to Joy's face as she talked... and talked, and talked, and... Bloody hell, he'd opened a can of worms here, hadn't he. Half regretting asking her what she'd enjoyed about this article she was hung up on, Raph slowly brought a slice of toast to his lips and bit into it as he tried to keep up with what she was saying. It would help if she slowed down, but she seemed to be on such a roll that it would be a shame to stop her now, so he left her going, wondering if she would stop to breathe at any point. It did give him a good excuse to really look at her, if he were honest. The way her hair swished animatedly about her shoulders as she spoke. The way her eyes held that spark of fire in them, the determination in her to not back down from the uncomfortable topic he had pushed on her. Her hands, elegant and quick, moving about with her words as though they might help her to get her point across a little bit better. She was delightful, and Raphael found himself smiling, despite feeling slightly frustrated at the sheer amount she was ranting. She was lovely.
She finished, eventually, making the indignant point that she found the response to the article fascinating, not the article itself, but Raph's quick mind had already done it's work, and his rebuttal was already on the tip of his tongue. The thing about Raph was that everybody assumed he wasn't the sharpest tool in the box because he didn't bust a gut on school work, but that meant that his tendency to think on a level far deeper than most was overlooked. He wasn't one to ramble like Joy, or show intelligence in any over the top way like kissing professors arses and getting O's, but he could strip a person's words down to the basics and get right to the core of the matter with great ease. He supposed insight was his talent. Simplifying life in order to enjoy it was something he did without even thinking about it. "So what you're basically saying is that you want better sex education in school, so that you can have loads of sex without worrying about it. Gotcha." He winked and turned back to his toast, realising that his plate was nearly empty. When had he eaten all of that? Had Joy been talking for that long? "Huh," he blinked at his plate and went for his cup instead.
