Story Writing | HM Meeting Y41/S1

Estella Fuentes

class of y42 📓 | 'essie' 🤍
 
Messages
794
OOC First Name
Kaye
Blood Status
Half Blood
Relationship Status
Interested in Somebody
Sexual Orientation
Heterosexual
Wand
Curly 10 Inch Flexible Laurel Wand with Unicorn Hair Core
Age
14/05/2040
Estella was a little nervous for her first meeting as the Hogwarts Monthly Editor. Assistant Editor had been so easy with Poppy by her side, but now she was completely on her own and she didn’t have anyone to turn to if she started doubting any of her ideas. The girl just had to stick with what she had planned in hopes that everyone would be okay with it. Estella arrived at the room early, setting it up with a pink table in the middle with some snacks and treats for people to choose from. She also placed some bean bags around the room for people to sit on so they were a little more comfortable. She knew from experience that meetings could tend to get a little boring and so wanted to make the room as comfortable as possible, especially for the new members.

When everyone arrived, Estella beamed at them all, just trying to put on her best brave face. “Welcome back to the Hogwarts Monthly!” she exclaimed. “With Poppy graduated, I am now the editor. I hope we can have lots of fun this year. Please let me know if you have any fun article ideas and please don’t be afraid to speak up!” Essie knew that a lot of the time she had been afraid to speak up, and hoped that she wasn’t too intimidating to any of the younger students. “Today I have a little activity planned for us. We are all going to chip in and write a story together. How does that sound?” Essie looked up for some reassurance before quickly continuing. “I’m going to start with a sentence then we are going to go around and add another sentence to it. And hopefully we either come up with something good, or something really silly to laugh at.” Essie just kept smiling, before clearing her throat and talking again. “My sentence is: All day I have been waiting for something to happen.”

---

OOCOut of Character:
Welcome to the first IC meeting for the year! I just used a random sentence generator to generate the first sentence, so feel free to do that as well or come up with something on your own.
 
River had to admit she was rather gutted that she had not made prefect. It was like her fear had come to life, that she could not live up to her mother's expectations of perfection. Thank goodness, her sister had been there to support her through all of the break, even if her mother had said some rather unkind and hurtful things about River just simply not trying hard enough. River tried her hardest. But so did everyone else. If only her mother could realize that. At least she was back at school now; able to be herself more so than she had been able to be all through break.

The young girl entered the Hogwarts Monthly meeting room. She smiled at the new editor before finding a comfortable bean bag chair to sit down in. She listened to Essie describe what they were going to be doing today. It certainly sounded like fun. After the editor did the first sentence, River stood up, with a little difficulty since bean bag chairs often sucked you into them. Finally standing up, the purple haired girl said her sentence, hoping she was playing this game right.
"I keep staring at the clock as time passes by so slowly."
 
It was rare that Celia looked forward to a Hogwarts Monthly meeting. Usually she just did her own thing, writing opinion pieces about everything that was wrong with the school. But with everything that had happened in the last few months, she was looking forward to hearing Estella's coverage plans. Celia was even considering writing a few news stories herself. While she much preferred writing pieces for her column, the prospect of tackling an investigative story or owl-ing ministry officials was incredibly enticing.

Celia arrived early to the meeting, taking a seat at the table, and pulled out some parchment on which she had written a list of pitches. The meeting started out normally enough, but then Estella mentioned "a little activity." Celia frowned. Was this seriously how they were going to spend their time? On a creative writing exercise? Was Estella aware that she was the editor of a newspaper and not a literary magazine? Celia glanced around the newsroom, and to her surprise, a lot of the other members seemed fine with this. Even River, who Celia had respected until now, was on board with the activity, hopping up to add a sentence.

In that split second, Celia made a decision. She had proven for two years that she was a reliable staff member. Speaking up might prevent her from becoming an editor in the future, but she doubted it would get her kicked out. And surely not everyone in the room was on board with this exercise? Decision made, Celia spoke up and added the next sentence to the "story": "I was waiting for my editor to take her job seriously." She gave Estella a pointed look. "Why are we doing this? Shouldn't we be talking about story ideas instead? There was major news last year, and the Monthly barely covered it. Shouldn't we be trying to figure out what actually happened in the forest? The headmistress still hasn't told us what the beast was that could have killed a bunch of students." She glanced around the room, trying to see if anyone was on her side. Even if the other staff didn't want to do actual work, she assumed they'd rather be gossiping about the forest incident than playing a silly game. Celia turned back to Estella. "The Minister for Magic election is also coming up, and the candidates are proposing major changes to Hogwarts, stuff like bringing back the Triwizard Tournament and starting internship programs. Shouldn't we be talking about how we'll cover that?"
 
Aine was pretty nervous about joining up to the paper. She liked writing well enough but she wasn't sure whether she was good enough to actually wrote for the paper, havong mostly only written terrible short stories as a kid that she would proceed to burn in winter. Still, she had to do something new and put herself out there a bit. And she was trying very hard to think of a sentence to add when one of the older girls interjected with a rant about what they should be covering. She did have a point - the election was a big deal and the incident was still a weird taboo where they hadn't really spoken about the facts.

"Which part of that was the sentence?" Aine said with a raised eyebrow, sinking behind her notebook as the quip spilled forward before she could stop it. "I just assumed the professors would stop any reporting on that and we would rather graduate than challenge." She didn't comment on the politics, not really wanting to get in to a debate when she'd already probably made a poor impression.
 
Estella smiled as River continued on with the story. She was glad that everyone had seemed to like what she had planned as she did have some doubts. It was hard to impress everyone however. As Celia interjected, it took everything in Essie not to talk back. She was the leader, so she had to have some sort of control, and it took a lot in her but she managed it. She just clenched her fists beside her, before then listening to the rest of what Celia had to say. The Slytherin did have a point, but Essie didn't think people would've wanted to hear more about the beast when the professors already seemed to have it under control.

As one of the newer members responded, Essie loosened a little, happy that someone was on her side. Not that Essie was on a side at all. "By all means, if you think talking about the beast from last year is important, please feel free to add it in this semester's issue, and those that are interested will read it." Essie told Celia, trying to keep her voice calm. "I just don't think it's worth talking about here because what's happened has happened and there's really nothing that any of us can do about it. I respect the Headmistress's decision to not tell us much more because living in the unknown is better than living in fear, that could very much be unnecessary, as I trust that the Headmistress has everything under control." Essie paused for a moment, looking around to see if anyone wanted to argue with what she was saying. She was definitely open to discussion at this point if that was what people wanted to talk about. Maybe her idea for a game really was stupid after all.

"As for the Ministry election, if you think discussing how we will cover that is important, how do you suppose we cover it then?" Estella asked conversationally, ready to hear more of what the Slytherin had to say. "And if anyone else wants to join, feel free, because frankly, I'm sorry that I put in the effort to try and have some fun, because clearly not everyone is on board with it." Essie just put on a fake smile again as she looked around the room. Something that she had been doing quite a lot of lately.
 
One of the new writers piped up, and Celia rolled her eyes. "Don't be absurd. You're not going to get expelled for trying to write something critical." She would know. She had pretty much only written critical stories, and the Monthly had published all of them. "Even if they kill the story in the end, we should at least try." Was no one on the staff the least bit curious about what had happened? To Estella's credit, she didn't try to kick her out, though Celia couldn't say she appreciated the dismissive attitude. If they wrote something about the forest incident, it would be the only story that people read. However, it was Estella's trust in the headmistress that really had Celia taken aback. "You'd rather live in the unknown? Isn't this a newspaper? Aren't we supposed to find and report the truth?" That was literally the entire point of journalism. How could you be the editor of a newspaper and not believe in doing literal journalism? "If the headmistress had everything under control, then the incident wouldn't have happened in the first place." There were so many questions. What was the beast? How had it appeared on campus? Was a copycat attack possible? Estella was wrong. Living in the unknown was the same thing as living in fear. How could you feel safe if you didn't know whether the threat was still out there?

Celia did, in fact, have some ideas on how to cover the election. She pulled her list of pitches closer, but she didn't bother looking at them since she already knew most of them by heart. "There are a lot of angles we could take. We could do a series of profiles of the candidates with an emphasis on their plans for Hogwarts and interview students and staff to see what they think of those plans. Seventh years are able to vote, so we could see how many plan to do so and even run a straw poll. We could also do a story about what it's like to volunteer or intern for one of the campaigns and talk to recent alumni. A couple of the candidates are alumni themselves, and we could talk to the professors who have been here a while and find out what they were like as students. Oh, and we should obviously owl the candidates and see if any of them respond." It was a long shot, but Hogwarts was basically the only public school in New Zealand. Talking to a student newspaper would be fantastic PR for any candidate who wanted to show that they cared about education. "I'm volunteering with the Cade campaign, and I can try and see if I can leverage that into getting someone here an interview," she added, unable to resist the urge to brag. Having said her piece, Celia sat back in her chair. Hopefully this would actually turn into a newsroom-wide discussion and they wouldn't have to go back to that game.
 
Charlie was always interested in the Hogwarts monthly meetings. It was fun, and he was curious to see how Estella handled her new leadership. He was on board with the game, trying to think up a sentence, when suddenly Celia jumped it and threw a fit. He was taken aback for a bit, but when there was a lull he raised his hand. "Hey, um, I liked the game, could we continue that later? I did have a thought on what Celia is saying though," He looked around at everyone.

Looking to Celia, he spoke. "I'm not completely sure if it matters, but one of the seventh years is pregnant. Allison? I ran into her in the hall earlier and talked with her a bit. She's working as an intern for the Cullen campaign, and I'm not sure if its relevant but she was super talkative. The father is one of the prefects that graduated last year, he's the brother of that one girl, Jenna Jusentrea? The one that got her prefect badge taken away for hexing another student, Allison says the baby isn't allowed near Jenna because of it, apparently after the incident Jenna went to her brother and Allison and was all proud of it, saying the girl she jinxed deserved pain or something, freaked Allison out." He ran his hand through his hair. "I'm not sure if that helps with your political thing or not, but it was definitely interesting." He gave a bashful smile.
 
Rhys was quiet, as usual, as he settled in for the meeting for Hogwarts Monthly. He was curious to see how Estella was going to handle things as their new editor. However, first impressions were not really all that great as she started out with some mind-numbingly boring game. However, Rhys just sighed and folded his arms as he listened to others go first. And that was when Celia decided to kick up and complain. And while Rhys might agree that the game was dumb and they could be doing more interesting things, he didn't think that loudly complaining was the way to go about it.

Then Charlie seemed to join in and offered up a story about one of the seventh years and Rhys just frowned slightly as he turned his head. "I don't really think that's news. That's just prying into people's personal business. At least the ongoing election is news." And while he was not much of a political journalist, he supposed it was something that everyone was talking about. "Some of the candidates have kids at Hogwarts, so we could interview them and maybe see what they think about their parents running for Minister."
 
River had to admit she was rather surprised by Celia's outburst. The girl had seemed opinionated in the past, which surely was a characteristic that River admired. She tried to be that herself while at school, at least. Yet as all this talk about elections kicked off, River felt rather terrible. She had been out of the loop for so long it seemed, so worried about her own failures at Hogwarts and not thinking about the greater picture. How had she let that happen? Would her mother's hurtful words about not being good enough affect her so much that she lost clarity at what she enjoyed doing the most, writing?

The young purple haired girl listened intently as the others spoke. They seemed to know so much about these topics even including students that may have a link to the candidates. River dug through her bag to take out a notebook that she had saved up to buy over break. Clicking her muggle pen open, one of the few times she was able to use such a useful writing item, she began to take notes on what everyone was saying. She may not know what was going on in the elections, but she certainly would have to do her research. If there was one thing the Slytherin was good at, even though her mother and sister now doubted that fact, was research.
 
Sloane didn't know what to expect from her very first Hogwarts Monthly meeting, but she took a seat with the other, mostly older students, and listened as the Editor explained what they were doing. The Editor mentioned she'd taken over from Poppy, although really that didn't help Sloane with who this new Editor was. She noted down some interesting topics though and prepared to play the game, but before they could fully get going, another student seemed to have a bit of an outburst.

What was this about a monster killing students in the school? Sloane's eyes widened, she'd never been told such a thing before coming to the school. Wouldn't the school be responsible for informing students of any dangers before they joined? Surely someone must have something to say about it, and rightfully so, if the Headmistresses had things under control, then would it have ever happened in the first place? It was alarming to say the least, and Sloane was writing down everything she could. Even if the Editor didn't want to post such a thing in the school newspaper, Sloane wasn't just going to let information like that go without an investigation of her own. She didn't have family that knew about her world anymore, she had to do her own research for herself. "Can we trust Professor Alicastell?" She asked eventually. The older students would know their Headmistress a million times better than Sloane ever did.

Apparently there was also an upcoming election, again this meant nothing to the Ravenclaw who had only been aware there was another world besides her own for the last couple of months, and she still had many things to learn. Being from a muggle family was even harder than Sloane had realised, and she knew she was going to have to reach out for help if she wanted to find out what was really going on.
 
Aine hadn't expected things to go so off the rails, but it was certainly interesting. She almost wished she had popcorn, but just for the visual gag as she didn't even like it. The Slytherin girl had a point that they needed to cover the election, it was important information and she herself wanted to know more about how the democracy process actually worked in the wizarding community. But then she commented she was interning and it was all Aine could do not to snort in derision. "Ah, so you'll totally be fair and balanced then," she muttered, sarcastically. Clearly she had an angle and that harmed the credibility of her point.

Then an older Hufflepuff gave a whole bunch of gossip and Aine whipped around, gaping. That was...a lot. And sudden. And not really anything to do with politics at all, actually. Rhys, the boy she remembered from the library last semester, pointed out it was prying and Aine agreed. Interesting, but bad faith gossip, the type her mum would talk about with other mums over coffee. It was important not to bog down the paper in politics though and talk about school goings on and more light hearted things too. Keep it cheerful. She looked over at the younger girl and gave an encoyraging smile. Aside from the sorting ceremony, it had been radio silence from the headmistress. What was going on?
 
As Celia continued to argue with her, Estella just kept her mouth shut. She knew everyone was listening intently and could see people even taking out their notebooks, and the last thing Essie wanted was to ruin her title as Editor. She didn't think doing intense research was necessary, especially on something the professor's didn't want the students knowing. After all, the monthly had to go through the professor's before it could even be published, and Essie didn't want to be wasting anyone's time. Celia's she could care less about though.

When Charlie spoke up, Essie nodded encouragingly, glad that he seemed to have been one of the few that enjoyed the game. She listened as he spoke about what had happened last year with a prefect in their house. She liked this gossip, even though Rhys then joined in saying it was barely news. She agreed that it wasn't worth writing about, but it was definitely interesting nonetheless, and Estella was always open to some gossip. That wasn't the discussion however, at least not now, and so the teen was happy for the change of topic with Rhys' suggestion. "A perfect idea!" Estella exclaimed, smiling over at the Slytherin. Interviewing people was a lot easier than trying to find facts that were pretty much unattainable as teenagers. "We would of course ask people before bombarding them with questions, and it would provide some entertainment for those that are actually interested in the election. Thank you for your suggestion, Rhys." Estella preferred this type of discussion over arguing and suddenly she had gained a lot of respect for the Slytherin boy.

As one of their newer members spoke up, Essie couldn't help but purse her lips a little at the question. It was a subjective question, there was no doubt about it, but the Hufflepuff was happy to give her opinion to help ease the Ravenclaw's mind, even though she was sure Celia had a very different one. "She is our Headmistress, and has been so for a while, and nothing bad has happened under her eye until this incident. We are all only human and we make mistakes, and I'm sure if any of you were leader of this school, you would make mistakes too." she said, pausing a little before continuing. "If any of you feel any danger while you are here, I'm sure there will be no trouble for you to transfer." She glanced a little at Celia, wondering if she thought the need to interject yet again.
 
Thankfully, the other staff seemed interested in continuing this discussion, though Celia couldn't understand what the new writer's deal was. "That's why I said I'd get someone else on staff the interview," she said snidely. Besides, she wrote an opinion column; she wasn't supposed to be objective. Charlie then offered a truly juicy piece of gossip, and Celia made a note to ask him about it later just to get more details. While she agreed that the pregnancy itself wasn't newsworthy, she wasn't about to throw one of her few supporters under the bus. "We should still see if she'll talk to us. It's not election related, but maybe there's a larger story there about what kind of support Hogwarts offers pregnant students and staff." It was frankly astounding how few substantive stories the Monthly did, instead opting for recipes or unimaginative listicles.

Celia jotted down Rhys's pitch. As much as she hated to admit it, the idea was a good one. However, it annoyed her that Estella decided to heap praise on Rhys's one idea instead of commenting on her many ideas. Celia couldn't say she was surprised, however. People who looked like Rhys always got praised for mediocrity. Another new writer — the Ravenclaw she had met outside the club fair — asked what Celia thought was a very valid question, and she scoffed at Estella's answer. "Right, because it's totally normal to make a mistake that puts so many people in danger that the Ministry has to get involved." The suggestion to transfer was completely ridiculous considering Hogwarts was basically the only English-speaking magical school this side of the globe. If transferring were that easy, Celia would have been gone ages ago. The Ravenclaw deserved a real answer. "Alicastell's strict, but she can be pretty arbitrary in how she enforces the rules," Celia said, thinking of how the headmistress had once unfairly disqualified her from the dueling tournament. And apparently, she'd done the same to Sydney a few years earlier. "She's not at all transparent about her decision-making and seems to be the only one with real power at the school. There's also been a lot of staff turnover recently, including a few professors who had been here for years. No one really knows why they've left, but they could've been unhappy with her leadership." That was pure speculation, but it would certainly explain a lot.
 
Branson had been running a little late for the Hogwarts monthly meeting, but he got to the room just as the first question arose about covering the election. he was quick to take a spot in the room and listened as the discussion continued. He thought it would be good to cover the election, he did his little book corner and not much else. The conversation continued to the incident, and he thought about it. there was something to say about the points that Celia was making. He wasn't sure that a school monthly was the place for that kind of questioning. "I don't believe a head person would ever be transparent... but I don't believe an article about school safety would be bad..." he said. He knew that wasn't really what the girl had really last said, but if they tried to write an article, they didn't need to be published.
 
Charlie was a little annoyed at the way he was just brushed off. He considered how to word what he wanted to say, not wanting to start any fights. "I'm not going to argue that a seventh year being pregnant is really more than gossip, but we could do an article on school resources to help with things like that. But why is it we can discuss the headmistress expelling a few kids, but we aren't going to touch on the fact that one of the hand picked school role models openly attacked another student and lost their badge?" He asked the group. "If we're talking about school safety, shouldn't we at least address that?" He looked around. "And as far as the election, we have an intern for Cade here, and an intern for Cullen, we could maybe look around to see if there are other interns for other candidates?"
 

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