The Midsummer's Festival!

[tartan_pussy]

Posters appear magically all over the school that say:

Midsummer's Festival

When: Tonight!
Where: By the lake
What: A party celebrating the summer solstice.

There will be food, drink and a bonfire! All students are invited.

((OOC: All RPing for the festival should take place in this post.))Down by the lake, there is a large, magical bonfire

Comments

[usethepoker]

Susan would have dressed nicer if she'd thought of it--as it was, she'd come down in a skirt that was scrupulously clean, but rather old, and a shirt with a mended tear caused by a stab-wound to the abdomen. She'd had a very interesting (if slightly painful) time as a child again; attacking the Whomping Willow (a second time, no less) had...really not been a good idea. (To say nothing of the croquet-mallet-to-the-head she'd taken, before ever they reached the tree.) Lily had patched her up nicely, though; so nicely, in fact, that Susan felt no guilt whatsoever about collecting a plate of food and a glass of firewhiskey.

[estebanmd]

Stephen wandered out to the party, feeling it incumbent upon all faculty members to make at least a token appearance. It seemed he did not find the occasion worthy of formal dress (the example set by The Cheat and Strong Bad notwithstanding): he was togged out in his typical grubby worn jeans, with grass stains on the knees from yesterday's excursion in the world of insect observation, and a T-shirt whose message he had modified somewhat by crossing out the word 'nimium' with a Sharpie. Where he had gotten a Sharpie, we may never know. One supposes he may have found Morfin's abandoned collection of markers after Mr. Gaunt-Jones joined the ranks of the popcorned.

With no compunction whatsoever he made his way over to his friend. "A lovely day for burning things, is it not?" he remarked, shielding his eyes with one hand in order to get a better look at the bonfire.

[usethepoker]

Susan grinned. “It’s always a lovely day for burning things,” she said, and peered at his shirt--she was reasonably sure it was Latin, but she had no idea what it meant. “Do I want to ask what your shirt says, or would I be better off not knowing?” Given Stephen’s sense of humor, it was either something very intellectual or very covertly rude--or possibly both; one never knew. “I’m not entirely sure it’s wise to serve things like cheese and cabbage around an open flame, though,” she added meditatively. “Flaming wood is one thing; flaming trousers are quite another.” Though the mental image was more entertaining than it probably ought to be.

[estebanmd]

"Before I took a marker to it, what it did say was 'If you can read this, you are excessively educated.' Now it says simply 'If you can read this, you are educated.'" Stephen grinned back. "I believe the foods being served, though sure they run the gamut of palatability, are in some wise traditional for the occasion. Last year's Midsummer party --" The grin faded at the memory. It had not been a good day for him, though neither he nor anyone he cared about had consumed the spiked punch. They had problems enough of their own without the punch. " -- had not quite such a multicultural emphasis," he finished.

[usethepoker]

Susan looked at him curiously, but did not press--whatever he was remembering, it was obviously not pleasant. "I must not be educated," she said ruefully. She'd heard and spoken other languages, during her stint as Death, but not through any conscious effort--when it came to the prosaic learning of them, she wasn't very good at all. She might be able to fake it, with Latin, but she had a feeling Stephen would consider that cheating. Possibly because it was. "The closest I came to mastering a second language was learning to say 'My aunt's camel has fallen into the mirage' in Klatchian. Not exactly useful." Well, there was the deciphering the speech of the Death of Rats, but again, that wasn't any conscious doing of her own. "I don't suppose you have any more of those shirts, do you?"

[estebanmd]

"It is never too late to learn," said Stephen gallantly. "I should not think it proper to wear a shirt bearing such a legend if one does not in fact know the language; I do, however, possess other shirts with such sayings, at least one of which I should not venture so far as to wear except perhaps in the mudpit." He referred, of course, to the shirt that proclaimed: Nemo me impune lacessit, bitch!, a sentiment he thought quite over-the-top even had the 'bitch' not been appended, regardless of the sentiment's actual truth.

(( Nemo me impune lacessit: 'No one challenges me with impunity.' ))

[usethepoker]

"You do have more?" Susan was, of course, thinking of her collection of T-shirts, most of them obscene, rude, blasphemous, or otherwise inappropriate=-she mostly used them as sleepwear, but at times she'd wander about in one during the day. "If you'll tell me what they mean, I'd like to borrow some, sometime." If she ever found out about the exact one to which he referred, she would not only wear it, she'd happily explain its meaning to anyone who asked.

[estebanmd]

"You must learn the language, first, and then you may wear them," Stephen temporised.

He would have been scandalised, and quite disgustedly amused, had he known about the modern trend of getting tattooed with words one could not oneself read.

"Until then you shall have to content yourself with your own irreverent wardrobe." And the bits of Stephen's wardrobe that didn't have Latin written on it, but that went without saying, obviously. He smiled at her, content.

[usethepoker]

"...I can't believe I'm considering learning a language simply so I can wear shirts with rude phrases on them," she said, shaking her head. "It's possibly the most ignoble reason ever." Her own irreverent wardrobe was not inconsiderable, though; she could afford to wait to steal specific shirts.

She scanned the crowd, inordinately content herself. "Here, why don't you grab some food and come sit with me?" she said, nodding to an empty space beside the fire. "Balancing all this is a bit much to deal with."

[estebanmd]

Stephen raised an eyebrow. "Do you think the food is quite safe?"

[usethepoker]

Susan looked at her plate, and at Stephen, and back at her plate. She sighed.

"I'd like to think so," she said. "You're probably right, though. Gods, sometimes I hate having to be so paranoid." She shrugged and set the plate aside, though she kept her glass of whiskey. "Especially when I'm hungry." Given some of the things that the food here had done, it was justifiable paranoia, but still.

[estebanmd]

Stephen shook his head, amused. "If you have already partaken, it is too late; you may as well finish. You will forgive me, I hope, if I do not follow suit."

[usethepoker]

Her mouth quirked in a somewhat wry smile, the amusement half at herself. "True. If it does wind up making me do something excessively foolish, I trust you to run damage control." Susan took up her plate again. "At the very least come sit with me--it's not as warm out as I'd been expecting."

[estebanmd]

"No, it is a very pleasant evening, and the bonfire has not heated the air unduly. Proximity to the lake may counter it." He would happily play nursemaid, he supposed, if the food or drink turned out to have suffered tampering. He did hope there would be no tree-fighting if so, however.

It seemed someone had been thoughtful enough to haul folding chairs out, or rather to direct house-elves to do so, or perhaps to transfigure clumps of grass into folding chairs, who knew? Stephen led Susan to a pair of vacant chairs. "I have not seen any blatant misbehavior or proof of enchantment in any of the partygoers yet, but then, I have only just arrived." And made a beeline for his quasi-girlfriend, the remark revealed. Oh, Stephen, so subtle.

[usethepoker]

No, Susan had already gotten her urge to tree-beat out of her system. Even if the food did turn out to be drugged or enchanted, it could at least be safely assumed she wouldn't go after the Whomping Willow again.

Carefully balancing her plate and glass, she managed to sit without losing anything. The lack of subtlety behind the remark was not lost on her, and she gave him a smile that was at once fond and amused. "Well, if anything goes wrong, I guess we'll be the first to know," she said. "Though if I look like I'm going to do anything too stupid, please promise you'll hit me over the head or something." Her confused memories of Valentine's Day told her that she'd already made a complete fool of herself in public at least once, and she had no desire to do so again.

[estebanmd]

Stephen sighed. At the Valentine's Day party he almost would have liked to hit her over the head, if there had been a way to do so without hurting her. Whatever she'd eaten or drunk or inhaled, it had set her to babbling and behaving in most unfortunate ways, and he'd taken pains to counteract this. It had only resulted in his incurring a head injury that had resulted in equally outlandish behavior on his own part.

"If you look as though you are going to do anything stupid, I think I shall run in the opposite direction." He was obviously joking, but he sort of wished he weren't joking.