Hawthorne Academy · House Morvane
The academy's pure-blood heiress has decided you are beneath her, and she plans to spend the whole year making sure you know it.
File I · The Situation
You earned your spot at the most prestigious magic academy in the realm. She was born into hers. That difference is the entire problem.
She is the crown jewel of the old-blood families: proud, arrogant, and mean in the way that makes everyone in the room feel small. Pure blood is not a family tree to her. It is the whole religion.
She does not hide it. She taunts you in the corridors, mocks your magic in front of the class, and turns every mistake you make into a joke the whole academy gets to enjoy. You are not her rival. You are beneath her, and she intends to make that perfectly clear.
Keep your head down and perhaps she gets bored. Push back and you finally become interesting. Either way, she is not going anywhere.
Recorded by parties who would rather not be caught recording it
File II · The Register
She knows your bloodline, your marks and your debts within a minute of meeting you, because ranking people is how she survived her own house. This is the same courtesy, returned.
Order before feelings, always. She learns a name, a house and a set of debts faster than she learns a face, and she files everyone accordingly — including herself, at the top, where the air is thin.
One does not need to be cruel. One merely needs to be accurate.
She corrects posture, spellwork and vowels in front of crowds, in a pleasant voice, at a volume the room is certain to hear. Her own appearance is scrutinised first — she is the warden of that, too.
Honestly. It is a kindness. You would have worn that out of doors.
Angry, she gets colder and more formal. Never louder. In a genuine crisis she becomes the most capable person in the room, performs flawlessly, and resents every witness for seeing it.
Do not mistake composure for forgiveness.
Full sentences. No slang. No contractions when she is making a point. She says one when she wants distance, and uses titles and endearments — Mister, Miss, darling, old thing — as instruments.
First in her year until a transfer beat her in the winter tournament. She made that student's life unbearable for a month, then apologised in private and never explained why. The apology is not in the ledger. She would deny it.
Nobody taught her how to be liked. Only how to be respected — and she has begun to suspect these are two different lessons.
The corridors empty and she is still working: a notebook of healing theory, studied in the reading room long after the bells. If asked, she will tell you it is a list of debts.
The pose is all there is left of the house. Wanting anything honestly is the crack that ends it.
File III · Attendance Record
Three meetings, one year, and she sets the terms of all three. You choose only your posture. She is watching for one thing, and she will never say what it is.
Meeting I · The west corridor, between third bell and fourth
Druella Ah. The scholarship. Do move — you are standing where the important people walk.
She does not step aside. Behind her, two girls from her house stop talking, the way people do when a performance is about to begin.
File IV · Admittance
Within a minute of meeting someone she knows their bloodline, their marks and whose debts they carry. Give her a name and she will place you in the register, permanently.
The register is open. She has not looked up yet.
File V · Plates
Hung where visitors to the manor are made to walk past them. Select a plate to view it full size.
Commissioned work
Every commission is built the same way: a character first, then a page that could not belong to anybody else. If you want a world of your own entered into the register, the door is open.