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+----- Thread: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan (/showthread.php?tid=1275)
toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Maevie Golding - 09-06-2026
Saturday, 29 September 1923
~ 11:55 am~
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~ 11:55 am~
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Despite the hour, the library was cast in gloom, sconces spread throughout the aisles and along tables the only things keeping the darkness from creeping through the windows. Heavy rain pelted the glass, thick clouds obscuring the sky as gusts of wind howled beyond the castle walls.
Maevie supposed it was as good a day as any to be scheduled for her shift in the library. She clearly wasn’t missing anything, nothing that was happening outside, anyway. Shelving books really was a boring task, though. Not that any of the library assistant duties were particularly exciting. Somehow, she still found herself signed up for the extracurricular again.
Not entirely of her own decision. Mum had insisted. It would look good on her résumé, she’d said. Made her stand out from other applicants. Prove industriousness and commitment. Important things, according to her mother, once Maevie finished school and had to decide what to do with her life.
Maevie didn’t have a single clue what she wanted to do after Hogwarts. It felt like a lifetime away.
Still, she had promised to sign up.
And so here she was, becoming an expert book-shelver.
Stopping her cart once more, Maevie picked the next tome and slid it into the gap between ‘The Witch’s Guide to Choosing a Hat’ and ‘The Witch’s Guide to Gardening Without Losing a Finger’, only to be met with a low, indignant croak.
“Oh, what the—”
Maevie slipped the book free again, peering into the shelf’s depth. Another croak greeted her.
“David?!” The book landed back on her cart as she reached between the books and pulled forth a toad dressed in a jacket. “What the hell were you doing in there?”
Another croak followed, one Maevie had absolutely no idea how to interpret. She chuckled, glancing around for her shift partner. After scouring the aisles for a minute, she saw her.
“Morgan!”
With David nestled in her cupped hands, Maevie bounded over to the older girl, smiling brightly. “Look who I found behind the Witch’s Guides.” She held up the toad for inspection. “Think he was reading? The jacket is new, isn’t it?”
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Morgan Barlowe - 09-07-2026
How many tables had Morgan done? She’d lost count around five. The ball of already chewed gum was growing as she completed each table, and was enough to make her never chew any of the vile concoction ever again. She tossed another glob into the bin she was taking from table to table before hearing Maevie as she stood up.
“Look who I found behind the Witch’s Guides. Think he was reading? The jacket is new, isn’t it?”
Green eyes narrowed at the amphibian, judgement all over Morgan’s face as she let her eyes wander to the prefect badge she had sewn onto his jacket lapel for him. It was tiny, but it was a golden P and it was unmistakable. And the damn toad was taking it entirely too seriously. Almost as if he was laughing in her face for not being made a prefect.
“Jacket is new. I thought it’d be funny to put a prefect badge on it but now I’m second-guessing that decision. He’s judging me. Always. Like he knows he’s better than me.”
Morgan glanced at Maevie. “You’d think he’d know reading Witch’s Guides would be pointless. He’s an amphibian, not a witch.”
Sometimes she took parenting her toad way too seriously, and she knew it, but even at sixteen, Morgan knew the toad was smarter than most of her classmates and had better people skills to boot.
Until now.
“David, stop being a menace. It’s annoying.”
He croaked. She didn’t reach for him; she had gum-covered gloves on still.
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Maevie Golding - 09-12-2026
Maevie held the toad closer to her face, eyes squinting as she searched for the Prefect badge on David’s jacket that Morgan had mentioned. She hadn’t noticed it at first, but now that she was actually looking, she could see the tiny golden P sewn onto his lapel.
A delighted giggle brightened her face, and she looked back at Morgan. “Maybe you gave him too much illusion of power,” she said. “He looks a little more aloof than usual.”
Could toads look aloof? Maevie wasn’t sure, but pretending was fun. She had always rather liked the creature, though she didn’t think she had it in her to keep a toad as a pet of her own. Not because she felt appalled by them as many others did, but mostly because she felt like she’d lose it too often and spent half her days searching. Not to mention her mother.
The first time in Diagon Alley’s pet store had nearly sent her screeching.
Maybe if she saved enough, Maevie could get a cat one day. She thought she would like that.
“You’d think he’d know reading Witch’s Guides would be pointless. He’s an amphibian, not a witch.”
Maevie giggled another time, shifting David into her left palm. “Who knows. He might have been transfigured into an amphibian by an evil wizard. Have you asked?”
She had definitely read about that before. It had been in a novel, sure, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t also possible in reality, right? This was a magical place after all.
Maevie set the toad on the table that Morgan had been working on. “How’s the gum-scratching coming along?” she asked. “Need a break? Or I can help you.”
Not that she was particularly keen on peeling rock-hard gum from beneath tables. But she didn't feel like spending her time alone and trapped with thoughts she couldn't voice to anyone—she'd even scrape gum if it meant an outlet for her incessant carousel of thoughts, and maybe Morgan knew a thing or two Maevie had been stuck thinking about. She was two years older, after all.
That had to mean something.
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Morgan Barlowe - 09-13-2026
“Who knows. He might have been transfigured into an amphibian by an evil wizard. Have you asked?”
Morgan tilted her head, narrowing her eyes while watching the toad momentarily. She had never had that thought before, but now… dammit, she did not need something like this to obsess over. It was very reminiscent of when she thought there were vampires at the school.
“No, he was not transfigured,” she decided, pushing the insane thought aside. “He’s just like that.”
“How’s the gum-scratching coming along? Need a break? Or I can help you.”
She looked at the table she’d been working on momentarily before crouching back down, resuming her gum removal with the expression of someone who had accepted their fate but was not happy about it.
It’s like she was being punished for something. Or Julia was just proving she didn’t pick favorites.
“Gum removal is going fine. If your definition of fine is discovering that some people are genuinely disgusting and should not be allowed near furniture.”
She worked momentarily in silence.
The younger girl had offered to help with the removal process. Maevie, who had every other library duty available to her, had offered to scrape hard, chewed gum from beneath the tables. Morgan glanced over at her.
“You can help if you want. Gloves are in there,” she nodded to the supply bin. “Or you could just tell me what’s going on. Either, or.”
Morgan didn’t look at her as she spoke, but it was clear in her mind that Maevie needed something. Or wanted something. She highly doubted the girl wanted to help with the job she was doing.
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Maevie Golding - 09-22-2026
With the David problem solved for now, Morgan returned to the gum-scraping.
“Gum removal is going fine. If your definition of fine is discovering that some people are genuinely disgusting and should not be allowed near furniture.”
Maevie grimaced slightly. The task really was the worst of all, considering it felt more like a punishment than a library duty. She had been a victim of it way too many times herself, but then again, hadn’t they all been? Professor Barlowe probably had her reasons for letting her assistants deal with this disgusting mess, but Maevie couldn’t deny she had trouble understanding why.
For a moment, Morgan didn’t reply.
A sinking feeling of disappointment crept in, and Maevie shifted her feet, her hands worrying together in front of her. Maybe the older girl didn’t feel like hanging out. That was fine. Quite a few of her classmates didn’t always seem keen on her company, but she never stopped trying anyway. She had learned when to give up, though.
She was about to say something and return to her own actual task when Morgan spoke after all.
“You can help if you want. Gloves are in there. Or you could just tell me what’s going on. Either, or.”
A nervous chuckle escaped her, but Maevie didn’t try to hide it. She nodded once, grabbed a pair of gloves and pulled them on. A moment later, she was already kneeling beside Morgan beneath the table, spatula in hand.
“Okay, so.”
Earlier worries forgotten, Maevie huddled in next to Morgan, a little excited, a little awkward, but eager nonetheless. “You…you got a boyfriend, right?” Her eyes searched Morgan’s, hoping she wasn’t crossing some invisible line she hadn’t known of. But she had seen them holding hands. Always sitting together. So, they had to be a couple, right?
“Uhm, so.” Maevie shifted slightly. “How…how did you know you liked each other?”
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Morgan Barlowe - 09-26-2026
Morgan’s hand stilled on the scraper at the word ‘boyfriend’.
She felt her face do something warm and involuntary that she was going to be annoyed about later. They hadn’t… well, it wasn’t like they’d sat down and decided anything. There was no conversation she could point to. No moment where either of them had said so what are we because neither of them was apparently that kind of person. They just… were.
Had been for a while now, if she was being honest with herself, which she was trying to get better at.
But hearing someone else say it out loud was apparently a different thing entirely.
“He’s –” she started, but stopped. “Yeah.”
Morgan resumed scraping, staring very hard at the underside of the table.
“We didn’t… it’s not like we talked about it,” she said, her voice slightly more honest than she intended. “We just sort of… ended up here. Which is very us, apparently.”
She smiled to herself at the reference of her and Brooks as ‘us’. Then she glanced sideways at the younger girl in the dim light under the table.
“I think I knew for a while before I admitted it,” she admitted. “Even to myself. He was just – easy. Easy to be around. And then one day he walked up and kissed me and I told him to do it again and… that was sort of that.”
She paused, narrowing her eyes slightly. “Don’t tell him I said that.”
It wasn’t missed on her that this – Maevie asking her questions about this – was similar to when she was asking Tilly about it.
Sometimes Morgan forgot she was a sixth year.
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Maevie Golding - 10-12-2026
Maevie listened to Morgan with the keenness of someone about to learn the castle’s greatest secret. Eyes trained on the older girl, she knelt there, spatula nowhere near one of those hardened globs of gum, soaking up everything Morgan said.
So basically, things simply happened, each other’s company felt easy, and then kissing. That sounded straightforward enough, didn’t it? At least in theory. Maevie had a couple of guy friends, but none of them felt easy, let alone had she wanted any of them to kiss her. What did easy even feel like?
This stuff was way too complicated.
Sometimes she wished she could have someone the way Morgan and Brooks had each other, but Maevie had no desire to force anything. What did kissing feel like? What did butterflies in her stomach feel like? Maevie had no clue, but maybe one day she would.
Until then, she would quench her curiosity by living vicariously through others' experiences.
Morgan’s eyes narrowed, and Maevie’s own widened with a grin. She gave her head a quick shake. “I would never.” Girl talk was for girls after all.
More excitement seemed to seep through her.
Maevie propped her head in her hands, elbows on her thighs, and that spatula still unused in her hand. Eyes sparkling, she grinned at Morgan with the incessant thirst for knowledge of a teenage girl.
“Is it fun? Kissing? Does it feel weird? A girl from my dorm told me one time a boy kissed her and used his tongue!”
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Morgan Barlowe - 10-18-2026
“Is it fun? Kissing? Does it feel weird? A girl from my dorm told me one time a boy kissed her and used his tongue!”
Morgan opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
Maevie had fired all of that off at once: fun, weird, and then the tongue comment had landed before Morgan had even processed the first two questions. That comment caused her brain to just sort of… stop working entirely. She was sixteen years old and had been kissing Brooks Garren on a fairly regular basis for only a fortnight. Yet somehow she was not prepared for this conversation.
She felt her face burn from the look Maevie was giving her.
She stared at the underside of the table for a long moment.
“It’s –” she said, paused, then continued. “Yes. It’s… It’s good.”
That was a sentence, right? Probably. Technically.
“It doesn’t feel weird,” she continued, finding her footing slightly. “It just feels – natural. When it’s the right person it just makes sense, like it was always going to happen eventually and you were just waiting.”
She hadn’t meant to say the last part. She moved on quickly.
“As for the – the tongue thing –” Her face was not returning to its usual shade. Her thoughts had drifted to kissing Brooks, his hands on her hips, her arms around him. “That’s just – that’s a thing that just happens sometimes. It’s not – it’s fine. You get used to it.”
Was it hot in here? Morgan resumed scraping with great force and purpose, staring very hard at a particularly stubborn piece of gum. She was not looking at the younger girl who was looking at her as some sort of expert on the topic.
“Why? Who do you want to snog?” she asked, finally turning the question back on Maevie. Maybe that would help her face, and the temperature in the room, turn back to normal. Though she was still thinking about Rook.
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Brooks Garren - 10-18-2026
It was nice to finally have a Saturday open. He wasn’t on the schedule for Prefect duties, all his homework was done, or at least the homework he cared to work on. He wrote the weekly letter to his Ma and sister, and he spent a few minutes shoving food into his mouth so that he was able to find Morgan during her library shift.
He felt very accomplished to be done with everything so early in the day.
So much time for snogging.
Walking into the Library, he walked around looking for his girlfriend. Yes… girlfriend. Brooks hadn’t asked her, it just sort of WAS. They knew they were together. So did everyone else, because rumors spread like wild fire within the castle.
“Why? Who do you want to snog?”
Ah!
He heard her voice, but didn’t see her right away. Turning a corner, Brooks saw Maevie and then Morgan hiding under a table…
Why was she…
Oh. Gum. Gross.
”Maevie.” Brooks said, nodding at his friend while giving her a two finger salute. Then, placing one hand on the top of the table, he bent down to see his girl. ”Mysty, you trying to hide from me?” he said with a smile.
Stealing a quick kiss. Nothing much, no tongue or anything, Brooks stood back up and plopped himself down in a chair.
Leaning back, he put both feet up on the table, crossing his ankles while pushing the chair back to lean on two legs. "Hello ladies! Who we talking about? Who's snogging who?" Taking a big bite out of his green apple, he smiled at the girls.
Then he heard a loud ”Whack!” As his girl smashed her head into the underside of the table.
”Shit, babe! Are you ok!”
Letting the chair fall onto all four legs, he helped her up, then pulled her into his lap. Kissing her on the top of her head, he held her close. ”That must have hurt. You ok, you’re looking a little flushed.”
OOC: Power playing okayed by Morgan and her Human.
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Maevie Golding - 10-23-2026
Maevie soaked up everything Morgan said and silently mulled it over. Natural. Well, maybe it was. There were plenty of couples in the castle kissing, and her mum and dad had kissed too before…Well, anyway.
Would she ever wait for it to happen? Would she ever know a boy and long for his kiss? Maevie wanted to. Wanted to feel all those feelings her friends talked about nonstop: the giddiness, the excitement, the warmth. It just never happened. Perhaps looking forward to it had to be enough for now.
The tongue thing, on the other hand, still sounded strange, and Maevie burst into a fit of giggles as Morgan blushed, unfazed by her embarrassment. “That doesn’t sound very promising,” she pointed out. "Sounds more like something you don't want to happen at all."
Morgan resumed her gum scraping with renewed vigour. Maevie finally raised her own spatula, half-heartedly poking at a bright pink and stone-hard glob.
“Why? Who do you want to snog?”
Maevie shrugged. “I don’t know. No one, really. That’s the problem, actually. All the boys are just sort of boring and uninteresting.”
“Maevie.”
Her head whipped around, eyes landing on Brooks a half-second later. Oh, no, not now. They were in the middle of important girl discussions; she didn’t need a boy interrupting, least of all him. The very person they were talking about.
Maevie rolled her eyes with a good-natured groan. “Ugh, Brooks, timing!”
She shook her head slightly as he bent down and gave Morgan a kiss, a barely suppressed grin on her lips. She supposed they’d have to continue their conversation another time. Hardly possible now. Or maybe it was just the perfect opportunity to squeeze more information from Brooks as well.
He certainly was making himself comfortable enough to stay.
"Hello ladies! Who we talking about? Who's snogging who?"
Maevie couldn’t keep from snorting, clapping a hand over her mouth as Morgan banged her head straight into the underside of their table. Wide-eyed and on the verge of bursting into laughter, Maevie watched as Brooks gushed over his girlfriend and pulled her onto his lap.
Ugh, was that what it was like? Being doted on like that, lovesick and sappy? Suddenly, Maevie couldn’t imagine wanting this at all anymore.
Trying hard not to be disrespectful, she swallowed her amusement, though the watering eyes as she snorted into her hand again barely hid it.
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Morgan Barlowe - 10-24-2026
“I don’t know. No one, really. That’s the problem, actually. All the boys are just sort of boring and uninteresting.”
The sixth year nodded. She agreed. If Brooks wasn’t at Hogwarts, well… she’d be snogging nobody. She was lucky he had moved here and she met him. She was going to respond, but then was interrupted –
“Maevie.”
Morgan’s eyes widened at the sound of her boyfriend’s voice. Not that she didn’t want to see him, but the conversation had her flustered enough that all she could think about was the next time they’d get to snog, but she wasn’t expecting him now.
”Mysty, you trying to hide from me?”
She looked over at him, her brain swirling in panic, as he stole a kiss before standing back up and sitting in a chair.
The kiss had completely caught her off guard.
That was embarrassing enough; she’d been kissing him for two weeks now, she should not be caught off guard by another one. But this one was witnessed by someone. That thought just instantly made it worse.
"Hello ladies! Who we talking about? Who's snogging who?"
It was the question. The who’s snogging who was what made her brain completely misfire at the wrong moment, so she sat up quick and –
Well, the table made a very convincing argument for her staying underneath it.
“Ow,” she said, with the best dignity she could muster up.
She could hear Maevie giggling, snorting even, which made things even worse. There’d be no getting control of her face now, especially when Rook helped her up. Morgan let him pull her onto his lap and kiss her head where she’d banged it.
She pressed her face briefly into his shoulder, just for a second. Just long enough to try to collect herself.
“I’m fine,” she said into his shoulder. Then she lifted her head, attempting to look like someone who had not just assaulted themselves on library furniture.
“You’re interrupting my shift,” she said, though she wasn’t disappointed. She was not going to answer his question, though. That had been girl talk.
It took her a moment, but she finally turned to Maevie. “Not a word,” she said, though the girl’s giggling was enough to make Morgan’s mouth turn up in a stifled smile.
RE: toad-ally chic ~ Morgan - Brooks Garren - 10-27-2026
“Ugh, Brooks, timing!”
Brooks smiled at Maevie, then looked down at Myst tucked safely against him, where she belonged.
”I don’t know what you’re talking about, I have impeccable timing.” He said, knowing that was entirely false.
“You’re interrupting my shift,” Mysty said, making him chuckle, She interrupted his patrols all the time. Neither we truly complaining. Then she turned to Maevie “Not a word." Making him laugh.
It was obvious by their reaction to his arrival, that they were having a conversation. The question was, did he want to know what they were discussing.
Taking another bite of his apple, he looked over at Maevie. "So." he chewed for a second. "What'd I interrupt?"
Before either of them could answer, he held up a finger. "Actually, don't tell me if it's girl business. I've got three rules." He said, counting them off one by one on his fingers.
"One. Never ask questions you don't actually want answered." It was a good policy to live by. And one he learned young hanging around his dad’s pub. Old drunk men would tell you WAY too much when sauced.
"Two. Never volunteer information that'll get you in trouble later." Again. Something he learned at a young age. His mother had a knack for pulling information out he really didn’t want to share. And usually ended in his ass being grounded for a week.
”Three. Be careful what you ask girls. Your species tend to like sharing things my species really would rather not know.” he looked pointedly at Maevie and then down at Morgan.
”Oh wait, and four." He looked down at Mysty with an innocent smile, "Always kiss your girlfriend hello." He leaned down and stole another quick peck before she could protest. "See? Following the rules."
Looking back at Maevie, he shrugged. "Honestly, I'm doing great so far."
Taking another bite, almost finishing the apple in his hand. He chewed for a minute before continuing. ”Now, all the rules go out the window for a good bit of gossip, so if that’s the case, tell me everything.”