Private/Closed Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

[Tailon]

5 years ago
An 11 year old girl shifted her weight back and forth nervously, standing among 80 or so children around her age, her future classmates.

A few children had been called ahead of her, but now the older man standing at the center of the room called out, "Andrés, Lena!"

The girl stepped forward, looking up and around at the entire student body, arranged beneath the sigils representing their houses, the vast spread wings of the Thunderbird, the lithe figure of the Wampus cat, the great horns of the Horned Serpent, and the imposing warrior, the Pukwudgie. Lena Andrés had heard the stories, and as she stepped onto what she had been told was called "The Gordian Knot", she was anxious.

A few moments passed, everyone in the room deathly silent, before a sound of cracking wood called their attention to the carving of the Thunderbird, which beat its wings three times, indicating it had chosen her. Lena looked up at the carving in awe, quiet for another moment before a cheer and applause went up among the Thunderbird students, as it had for the others, causing her to blush, but also to grin.

"Congratulations, Miss Andrés, come along, we'll get you your wand now," the man, Deputy Headmaster O'Shaugnessy, said to her, smiling gently.

"Okay," Lena nodded, following him across the room to the door which lead to the famed wand chamber. The Professor opened the door for her, holding it so she could step through, closing it behind her.

A young black woman in non school, green, robes stood at the center of the room, surrounded by tables which were covered in magic wands, arranged evenly. The woman spoke genially, with a Cajun accent. "Evenin' little one," she said, "you can call me Miss Beauvis, my family are wandmakers goin' back a ways, now are you if you already have a wand I'm just gonna take a look at it, otherwise you'll be gettin' one of your own."

"Erm, I don't have a wand, yet," Lena replied, looking around at the many wands surrounding her.

"Well then let's find you one, just go up to whichever table strikes your fancy," Miss Beauvis said. Lena nodded, looked around at the tables, and picked the nearest one to Miss Beauvis's right. A few minutes later, they had tested several wands. Miss Beauvis next chose a very long wand, made of reddish brown wood.

"Try that," Miss Beauvis said.

Lena waved the wand, and a burst of sparks flew forth. She smiled wide.

Present Day

Lena hopped from the bottom step of the enchanted school buses that had brought them from the train station to the gates of Ilvermorny Castle. following the stream of students, they only had an hour before the Sorting and dinner to get settled in.

Following the flow of the student body, Lena kept with the Thunderbirds as each house split off to find their way to their common rooms. The Thunderbird common room was the largest of the four, invoking the vast size of its symbol and the great bird's ranges over the mountains and valleys of the Pacific Northwest, with a ceiling enchanted in similar fashion to the famed Great Hall at Hogwarts, across the pond, showing its inhabitants a view of the open skies outside. Various plush armchairs surrounded tables, and a large fireplace was surrounded by beanbag chairs. Above the fireplace hung a replica of the great Thunderbird carving in the castle's Entrance Hall.

Lena crossed the common room to find the same door she had used since she was 11, which now read "Sixth Year Girls' Dormitories", and stepped through into a hallway, lined with six doors, three on either side. Lena waved to one of the girls who had arrived ahead of her, who was busily decorating, and entered the second door on the left, leading to her little home away from home.

The room was fairly spacious, containing two large, comfortable beds, two cabinets, two desks, and the two trunks of its planned occupants. Lena's trunk, as always was at the foot of the bed on the right; she opened it, retrieving a single book and her wand, plopping down on her bed, and waving the wand steadily like a conductor's baton as her possessions obediently hovered out and began to hang themselves on walls or settle themselves in their places.

 

[Aura]

A loud crash echoed through the Pukwudgie sixth year boy's dormitories, the result of a 16 year old boy flinging open the door to his room with a little too much enthusiasm. Niles winced as the sound echoed through the corridor, and stuck his head out of his room to check if anyone had heard. Most of the boys in his year wouldn't flinch at something like this - they were a rather rowdy bunch - but of course there had to be one guy who was a bit stuck up. Luckily, the sixteen year old boy didn't see any trace of Henry's scowling face, and retreated back into his room. Niles really didn't want to start the obligatory lecture on etiquette and the school rules so soon in the new school year.

The dark haired boy refocused his attention upon his trunk, which was sitting at the foot of one of the beds within the dorm room. Despite being barren enough to allow the occupants of each room to decorate the place as they saw fit, each dorm room still maintained the same style as the Pukwudgie common room. It had a very homely feel to it, sporting the kind of humble architecture that one might associate with their grandmother's house. Everything was small and cluttered, but this gave it a more comfy, welcoming feeling rather than being claustrophobic. At least that's what Niles thought of it anyway. He flung open his trunk and started rummaging through his belongings, tossing some of his clothes carelessly on the ground, until he located his school robes and pulled them out with a triumphant flourish. Most year's he'd never really bothered coming to the dorm before the Sorting, as he preferred to spend that hour of time exploring the school grounds to see if anything had changed over the holidays, but this year was special. After all, his little sister Mira was getting sorted, so he couldn't show up late like he normally would.

As he threw on his clothes, Niles wondered how his sister would be feeling. She was a fairly timid individual, so the idea of getting up in front of the whole school to be Sorted would probably be freaking her out. Although he imagined that most kids who were Sorted felt at least a little nervous - hell he could remember how much his heart had been pounding in his chest as the old guy had called his name out. As soon as he'd realized he was up, everything around him had faded into the background. Niles hadn't been able to focus upon anything but the Gordian Knot as he moved through the room, the quiet murmur of the rest of the school body fading into the background. The seconds that ticked by as he waited in silence to be sorted stretched on for eternity, each moment accentuated by his heart throbbing painfully. All of the tension built up to one single motion - the carved Pukwudgie fluidly raised its bow straight up into the air. A round of applause broke out from from the Pukwudgie students watching from above, but he couldn't pay them much attention as he followed the instructions to proceed to the Wand Chamber, looking rather dazed. Niles snickered to himself at the memory of how concerned Miss Beauvis had looked when he'd showed her his Grandfather's wand. She'd tried to convince him that he really should take one of her wands instead, saying that the two of them weren't exactly compatible, but this was one of the few things Niles could be fairly stubborn about. After a few minutes of Miss Beauvis becoming increasingly more agitated with every refusal, she gave in, assuring the young boy that if he ever wanted to change his mind, he could come and pick another wand out. Despite how hard school could be with a rather temperamental wand, Niles was still sure that his eleven year old self had made the right decision that day - he didn't want any other wand in the world.

The sounds of people chatting outside his room as they moved through the hallway snapped Niles out of his daydream. He couldn't afford to stand around daydreaming all day - there was exploring to do! He'd been sitting down for far too long today and was itching to get moving. He hurried threw on the rest of his school uniform, and gave himself a quick glance over in the mirror. In his head, his mother went berserk at him for looking so undignified, but he shrugged away the mental image and left his room, only to bump straight into a lanky boy with chestnut brown curly hair.

"Hey watch it!" Henry snarled, before his eyes widened in shock. "Niles... you're actually prepared for the Sorting...? I thought you were a lost cause, but maybe you've finally got it into your tiny brain that people won't respect you if you keep behaving like a child. Still, its about time you showed show decorum and-" The tall boy yelped in shock as he was pushed to the side of the hallway.

"Sorry Henry, I'd love for us to stand around insulting each other, but I've got things to do. Some other time, yeah man?" Niles called back to the now irritated looking Henry as he hurried out for the dorms. He could deal with Henry and his lectures later - right now there was a school that he hadn't seen in a while, and he wanted as much time as possible to drink it all in.

 

[Dwayna DragonFire]

The first year the strange woman came to her door, it was to tell the young Charlotte that she was a witch, that she had been accepted into Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Her non magic parents had suspected as strange things happened around her sometimes, but it was still a shocking surprise. What was even more of a surprise was that she would need to be traveling so far away from home, from the lower west coast of British Columbia to Massachusetts. Affording a plane trip was out of the question, so she was taken via apparation and given an owl to keep in contact with her parents. When the term started and she stood upon the Gordian Knot, the bird had flapped its wings for her as well.

For the next five years, Charlotte was given inconspicuous items by the same wizard. She was told to touch them at specific times, and when she did, she was yanked by magic and teleported across the continent. She knew now that the items were called Portkeys and they had that sort of magic in them, a complex charm that brought her from one place to another - though strangely, she seemed to have an affinity for Charms. She had been told so long ago that the wand that had chosen her had the scale of the infamous Ogopogo, and that it would benefit her with protection and concealment. Still, she seemed to do all sorts of Charms with relative ease, but as a result, jinxes were less potent. She was fine with that - she would prefer to talk things over with a person rather than getting into a fight.

She moved into her dormatory, finding that her roommate was already there. It wasn't always strictly the same person, but she had at least gotten to know Lena in some regard. Charlotte gave a shy smile and started to unpack some of her things as well, the No-Maj way. She took a picture of her parents out of her suitcase and put it on her bedside table, and hung a small maple leaf flag above her bed on the wall. Traveling over five thousand kilometers and staying away for most of the year definitely made her homesick a lot.

"How was your summer break, Lena?" she asked, as she took out a piece of parchment to begin writing a letter. She always liked to let her parents know that she had gotten to the school okay, after all.

 

[Mr.RMA]

Dartmouth seemed like the place to go, maybe even Yale if the right people paid attention. Childish ambitions perhaps, but compared to how Forrest's future was actually turning out, well... suddenly enrollment in an Ivy-League university seemed like the most ordinary thing in the world. He remembered thinking that all through the train-ride headed to Ilvermorny, or at least, right up to the point when he actually saw the school itself, briefly due to the magnificent nature of its design, but more so the fact that he recognized this location... His family had taken a number of summer trips to Adams to hike through Mount Greylock, just that previous winter he'd tried snowshoeing for the first time up a path the train had passed just seconds prior, and yet there was never a sign that something like this could've existed... though maybe that explained his father's sullen look throughout that last expedition...

The bewilderment that he'd been so close to this place before remained throughout a large portion of the orientation, and once his name was called he rather absentmindedly stumbled his way over to the center of the large circular room. He could remember some sort of lecture about these large surrounding carvings deciding which house he'd be placed in... not that he could remember their names. Something on the snake-like carving started to glow after a few moments, and then a bunch of the older students started cheering amidst the chuckles over his clueless expression. Guess that settled what his house was... though that was a bit of an embarrassing way to go about it. He was going to have to be a lot more attentive from here on in, he wasn't going to be caught with his pants down like that again if he could help it... Being guided into another room, judging by the look of the place this was where he was getting a wand. A young woman introduced herself to him as a Miss Beauvais and had him try out a number of the wands to little effect, but throughout the mismatches she seemed to give him a knowing look, as if she knew which wand would be most suitable but was merely having him try the others just to be certain. She eventually presented a wand she claimed was a signature design from her family line, consisting of a sort of wood that looked like it came directly from a swamp down south. Peculiar as it may have appeared, he felt a strange... warmth as he picked it up, and it appeared to light up like a sparkler for a brief moment as well... It didn't take a genius to deduce this was the proper wand for him, and he seemed to stare at it with a sudden look of conviction. He seemed to finally, fully accept there was no turning back from this life set before him, and it was up to him to make something of it.

---

"Beauvais wands take to dark magic like vampires to blood..." The excerpt Forrest had read about the wand in his possession played over in his head every time he held it in his grasp. Even now as a sixth year student, he couldn't help but feel troubled by the notion as he made his way back to the now-familiar sight of the sophisticated Horned Serpent common room. He very much enjoyed the layout of the place, giving off both a homey and scholarly vibe at the same time, and often the sight of it would assuage whatever concerns were plaguing him, such as that very moment. It really was good to be back, back to practicing magic after toilsome months of restriction from even the slightest use. It was almost drug-like, an addiction, to be in that magical world closed off from the rest of reality, and the thought of mastering particular spells would set Forrest's mind racing over the possibilities of such experience. Still, such matters were for the future, and presently, he had to get his room set up. In a matter of moments he had sheets tucked, books organized by category in his cabinet, other materials properly sorted in his trunk in similar categorical fashion, an aquarium with his toad companion nestled beside the trunk, parchment on his desk with ink and quill at the ready, and lastly, a pennant flag adorning the logo of the New England Patriots hanging on the wall above his bed. He'd mastered this method of room preparation by now, and he could take a moment to relax before he needed to make his way over to witness the sorting of the first years. His roommate was due to arrive, and he hoped this year they'd be of the clean and tidy variety... Horned Serpents may have often been scholars, but they weren't always so systematized.