fandom_lounge | Faculty lounge, Monday, February 13

Faculty lounge, Monday, February 13

Everything Josh knew about feeding a crowd he learned from working on campaigns.

Thus: pizza, sandwiches, coffee and soda.

It worked for college volunteers. Maybe it'll work on teachers, too.

He tacked up a sign on the bulletin board:

WANTED:

Faculty members to help chaperone the Valentine's Day dance this Friday night.

Please, oh, please, don't make me be there alone.

Sign up below.

Josh sat down with a copy of the Washington Post, flipped the television to C-SPAN and prepared for the day.

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Don't make him beg. It won't be pretty.

Rita signed up.

Come on. Kids being uncomfortable and schmoopy in public, where she could mock them? What more could she ask for?

The Tick signed up. He's chaperoned every dance up to this point. Why break the trend now?

Camulus signed up. Because he's in a really, really good mood.

MacGyver signs up.

Fraser signs up. He's never been to a dance before.

Susan signed up. After all, the students should have a nice party. And Josh will be there to ~~mock~~ oversee the festivities with.

...

Rita wandered into the lounge for the first time...ever.

"Huh. It's rather not as exciting as I'd anticipated," she noted.

Josh looked up from his paper. "I could find a water balloon to chuck at you or something, I guess."

"That's all right," Rita said genially, helping herself to some coffee and settling down with her own newspaper and sighing.

Josh glanced over. "Wilbur?" he asked. "Or is one of those charming children giving you a hard time?"

"Not Wilbur, no," Rita said, rolling her eyes as she looked up from the paper. "And nothing new with the adorable children since last week, though I have an interview for the paper lined up later. I was actually just reading about the idiots at home. The Prophet's gone downhill since I left."

"The Prophet?" Josh repeated, looking over at what she was reading and blinking a little rapidly to see the pictures moving.

Were Josh to look closer, he might notice that the paper's date reads as February 13, 1995.

"The paper where I used to work. The most widely-read publication in the wizarding world," Rita said proudly.

"And so interesting you're reading the archives?" Josh asked, pointing at the date. "Or just reliving glory days?"

"What? No, this is today's," Rita said, shaking her head. "Or at least, from when I left. We seem to be a bit ahead of my time here. But the owls still deliver newspapers from '95."

"Wow," Josh said. "I think something important in my brain just broke thinking about that."

He peered over her shoulder. "So what's going on in your world? With the guy with the bowler hat who still manages to be more competent that the guy running this version of the United States at the moment?"

"The headmaster of my alma mater's gone insane," Rita said lazily, gesturing to a picture of an elderly man with a long beard, who appeared to be delivering a speech of some sort. "One of the most powerful wizards in the world, and he's gone off the deep end. Always knew he was batty, even when I was at school there."

"Yeah, watching the president of your alma mater saying or doing something stupid is hard," Josh said. "The President of Harvard--you've heard of Harvard, right?--gave a speech saying that women aren't good at math and science because they're women. The alumni were about an inch away from getting out the tar and feathers."

"Harvard?" Rita asked dubiously. "I think I overheard that obnoxious Ms. Gilmore talking about it. But honestly, that's ridiculous. When I was at school I had a similar problem, with a teacher telling me I couldn't possibly have an aptitude for potions or transfiguration because they're complicated work."

She rolled her eyes and smiled a bit smugly. "I rather showed them."

"Oh, Rory's a good kid," he protested. He watched her expression. "Yeah, I can't imagine a way that telling you that you can't do something would lead to anything but tears and pain."

"Well, not so much tears and pain as...my becoming the best journalist in the magical world. And that teacher finding himself experiencing unpleasant side effects from drinking some slightly doctored pumpkin juice," Rita said sweetly. "Tell me I'm bad at potions, find yourself mysteriously babbling nonsense. Obviously unrelated events."

"Check. Note to self: don't make the roommate cranky."

"Probably wise," Rita said, poking her lukewarm coffee with her wand to heat it a little.

Susan wandered in at some point, looking like she'd like to tear out her hair. She brightened when she saw Josh. "Hello."

"Hey, Susan!" he said, smiling. "Need coffee?"

"I'd love some, the clinic's stock has been depleted, and I need to buy more." She smiled as she picked up a piece of pizza as well. "How have you been? I haven't seen you in a week or so, since I've been too busy to stop by here. I knew that slow first week was too good to be true."

"Busy," he said. "Grading papers, screaming at the television like the President could hear me, helping the Student Council put together a Valentine's Day dance." He shuddered. "Still don't know how I got roped into that one."

He waved to the empty space on the couch beside him. "So sessions have picked up for you, then?"

"Snow monster trauma, and vampire trauma, and enough of the new students finally comfortable enough to get help with existing trauma, all adds up to busy weeks for me," Susan said. "I'm hoping there won't be any new reasons for them to be upset any time soon."

"Valentine's Day dance? I haven't seen any posters for that so far. Will it be this weekend?"

~~As Parker goes to put up a poster somewhere.~~

"Here's hoping," Josh said, lifting his coffee mug and taking a sip. "And the kids should be putting up posters sometime soon about it, yeah. It's on Friday night." He gave her a small smile. "And exactly what I wanted to be doing on my weekend. Really."

"Oh, dear." Susan bit her lip. "It really isn't a very exciting island if you're an adult, is it? I know I'd find it more engaging if it were warm enough to swim, but..." She shook her head. "Valentine's Day dances. Lord, that takes me back." Her eyes got big in remembered horror. "I think there was a fight at ever single one I attended."

"Over you?" Josh smiled. "'Cause I can see that."

"Only one of them was over me," Susan said primly, then grinned. "The other one was because of me, although Meredith was completely mad. I was *not* flirting with her boyfriend. Just talking fot him." She smiled. "Are you still in need of chaperones? Because it might do to remind me why it was I hated being a teenager so very much."

"I believe there is so such thing as too many chaperones," Josh said. "You can keep me company, make sure the kids don't put too many different kinds of booze into the punch."

He coughed. "I mean. Stop them from spiking the punch. Because underage drinking is wrong. And also something I never did. Really."

"Or smoking. Or driving without a license. Or sneaking out after hours..." Susan shook her head. "Dear Lord. Do their parents expect us to keep a rein on them here? They can't, can they? I suddenly have an urge to tell them to read a book and eat an apple."

She smiled. "And we can be very mature at the dance, and hopefully the worst that will happen is some poor girl ends up in tears in the restroom. That, I can handle. Anything like a fight, and I'll toast you from the sidelines."

"These kids face off against snow monsters and vampires. I think we'd be lucky if we only had to worry about them driving without a license."

He raised an eyebrow. "And you're kidding about the toasting me thing, right? You don't have laser beam eyes or something?"

"And the very sad thing is, Mr. Lyman, that the first answer that springs to mind is 'not yet.'" Susan shook her head and took another bite of pizza. "And you're right. They *should* be having a party instead of fighting wars and demons." A determined look crossed her face. "And so I shall most definitely be there on Friday, so the dance goes well."

"See? Now I'm actually looking forward to this thing," Josh said with a smile. "I'll save you a seat--I'll even make sure it's a non-wobbly seat because I like you."

Susan returned the smile. "Lovely, Josh. Then I'll see you there."

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Faculty lounge, Monday, February 13

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