Preparations and new arrivals.

As the Prefect left him to his own devices, it almost felt to Lex like the hardest part was out of the way. He’d made a friend. Well, not a friend. She was his Prefect, she was in charge of him, a person of authority for him to obey and look up to. So friendly, at least. But not a friend. Still, it was someone who would smile at him, help him if he needed it, and in that moment, it was the kind of security he needed to calm down and warm himself against the chill of the night air. A chill, which promptly reminded him that human interaction would not actually be the hard part. Right. Hazing. Shit.

As a legacy admission he’d already heard generations of horror stories of the first night across the water. First years were expected to take a dip; details did change from story to story, sometimes people were made to go naked, sometimes they had to do a lap around the boat, sometimes they’d come back on board to find their bags hidden. Details changed, some better, some worse, but the one constant was that he’d be tasked with taking a late night swim in a truly frigid body of water.

Of course, he didn’t strictly speaking ‘have’ to go. They couldn’t just **** him overboard without it being considered attacking another student. But, the school had all but sanctioned the hazing, and electing to stay dry was cause for near infinite ridicule and harassment. Arguably, the penalty for avoiding the dare was worse than any case of pneumonia one might catch from a skinny dip in a cold lake. That wasn’t to say that he was looking forward to it, but on some level, he was slightly anticipatory. It was like a right of passage, a painful and freezing one, but a right, nevertheless. And while Alexander Halladay was by no means a brave boy, no one would be able to say that he was a coward either… at least, so long as one didn’t count preparation as cowardly.

He’d made up his mind before climbing onto that umbrella to go into the water, but without knowing what other details might be **** upon this particular hazing, he wasn’t about to go in unprepared. From what he’d heard, hiding the person’s towel, or making them go in naked were the two most common additional dares. Well, he couldn’t do much about the nudity; sure, he could use his family’s magic to make people ignore it… but he was confident in his appearance, even if it wasn’t very manly. Towels on the other hand, that he could solve easily.

With the Prefect either busy with work or simply trying to make a show of having something to do, Lex reached into his bag and withdrew a fluffy black and silver towel already in the house’s colors. If they ended up taking his bag, he’d still make sure that this treasure was within arm’s reach. Holding it under his arm, he made his way to the back of the ship along its length to the part with the lowest railing which could be put aside, the most likely place for any first years to exit and re-enter the ship on its voyage. Getting on his back, he scooted under a nearby bench meant to seat the students, and flattened out the towel, holding it up to the underside of the bench.

Lex began tracing his finger in the air, muttering a few words, and etching some glyphs as he magically glued the corners of the towel to the wood until it was flush with the surface, invisible to any not looking for it. And the best part, with a simple word it would unlatch from the bench and fly to his hands. Now, no matter what, at least he’d be able to get warm after coming out of the hellishly cold water. With a grunt of satisfaction, Lex crawled out from under the bench, fixing his clothes and brushing the dust from his robes before making his way away from his hiding place, trying to find some place to get comfortable as he waited for the other students to arrive.

"What, Fledermaus?" The Prefect's voice cut through the otherwise quiet night, prompting the boy to look over and see the woman in apparent conversation with her sternum. "Oh." As she looked up, Lex followed the Prefect's gaze to see a gaggle of robed first-years making their way down from a nearby hill and towards the boat led by a brown-robed young man carrying a staff. A gold pin glistened from his right shoulder, the reflective metal catching the last rays of the setting sun.

"Almost there, never fear," the leader called out, looking back over his shoulder at his charges, his resonant voice more than audible even from the boat. However, despite what could conservatively be called a 'boisterous' demeanor, the first-years did not look uniformly encouraged by his cheer. This might be attributed to his passing seniority, as from his sparse blond beard, Lex took him as a third- or fourth-year student like the Prefect who had greeted him.

"Why look, the lovely Prefect Clawson! Well met, Pip, well met!" he called up at them, his attention pulled away from the younger students and now aimed directly at the boat where he and the Minerval Prefect stood. His Prefect responded with a milder version of what he could only refer to as 'The Look'. The kind of expression he was used to from Pythia and his mother, the one which said that he should only continue his current course of action if he was unhappy with the number of unbroken fingers he currently processed. Granted, the one he was privy to now was nowhere near as severe, but it was abundantly clear that there wasn't much love lost between the two; at least not on Prefect Clawson's part.

"Sandevin, did you lose anyone this time?" The level of disdain in Pipistrelle's voice was palpable, and Lex was sure that he'd have winced had it been directed at him. Sandevin, however, seemed completely unaffected, hardly wilting an inch as he placed his hand over his gold House Beavertail Prefect's pin. "Never! Count off, scholars!"

"Bet Rudge, Draconis." The first to count off was a tall square-shouldered young woman with short, choppy brown hair. She had a sort of ruggedness to her, as if well acquainted with physical labor and the sun, and her voice carried with it a sort of presence and confidence that the boy feared he wouldn't be able to match.

"Would that be Barnabeth Rudge?" Pip asked.

"Yes'm. Prefect. This is Grip." The raven perched on her forearm squawked.

"Very good." Pip nodded to the next one.

"Oli Salt, Minerval." The next one was actually a surprisingly cute boy. Tall, slender, bronze skin, short black hair that reached halfway to their chin. Lex assumed Oli to be short for Oliver, and actually remarked to himself that it was a pretty cute abbreviation, much like the boy himself. While they actually did look rather fit and sporty, there was a hint of femininity to them, although not quite as much as there was to Alexander. Over all, he thought he might have a chance with them given that they were both Minerval and Oli seemed like a twi-... oh. And then the voice registered fully for him. Oli was short for Olivia. Ah, so a tomboy then, or someone with their own independent preference and perception of their own gender. Either way, it did nothing to change the fact that he found them cute.

"Goldie Jenks, Leontes!" Even before he turned his gaze to look at her, just from her voice Lex could tell what she looked like; and as soon as he did, his suspicions were confirmed. Goldie was the epitome of the word 'bouncy'. Her long golden-blonde curls bounced around as she spoke, mostly because she seemed unable to keep from bouncing on the balls of her feet. The smile she wore was bright, cheery, and a little infectious, and overall between that and her red and gold robes, it was like trying to look at the sun. That was, if the sun had ran off of sheer pep rather than the conversion of hydrogen to helium. Short, petite, and bubbly, her constant movement did draw attention to her chest as it moved with her, but also to the fact that she wore her robes a bit high, leaving her calves partially exposed, along with a pair of sandals with peculiar wings at the ankle.

"Laurence Ventimiglia, Beavertail." Tall, with a long, slender face, long auburn curls, and a very slender body, the boy looked very much like a taller, slightly less femininely Alexander. Actually, despite the fact that he knew that Ventimiglia was not the name of any Halladay branch family, there was almost an uncanny resemblance, and the boy wouldn't have batted an eye if he'd been told that Laurence was his long lost cousin. As he introduced himself, Laurence doffed his hat and bowed to Pip in a flowery display of pageantry, one done so flamboyantly that Lex couldn't help but smile just a little.

With a few more, Lex's boatload added up to himself, the two Prefects, and the rest of the first-years: one Minerval, one Draconis, two Leontes and two Beavertails. The second Leontes announced himself as Claude Marlin, with a pointy nose and exceedingly haughty air befitting his name; honestly, were it not for the way he seemed to sneer down the bridge of his very pointy nose, Lex would have been tempted to call him hot. The second Beavertail gave herself as Sephie Short (Persephone, Pip had ascertained), notable for her explosion of frizzy dark hair and her round-in-all-ways build.

"So what shall we do till ferry time?" Sandevin asked. "And who is this?"

"Alexander Halladay, Minerval," Pip deadpanned back. "As you would know, by process of elimination."

The effect of the primed towel: Take +2 on a BRAVERY check to resist the effects of a dip in the Chilly Tarn.