Closed! Tiptoe across the yard to the main laundry

Roll +CUNNING(+2) to HAVE SEX with Fay and Golondrina in House Minerval's baths in the dark hour before dawn.

⚁⚃ + 2 = 8.

"Closed and Warded," you say, your mouth twisting to one side. There's a big seal affixed to the door to House Minerval's baths at the center of a crisscrossing pattern of ribbons. The forbidding aura of strong binding magic emanates from the seal.

"Tell me something I don't know," Fay says. "Life isn't all strawberries and cream."

You frown. "It's usually open, Fay. I don't know, maybe they're doing some kind of deep clean?"

"Or someone drowned," Fay says. "Stabbed. Foul play."

"No?" Golondrina says.

"I've never seen the baths closed with this sort of grand ceremony," Fay says, waving her hand back and forth at the warding ribbons. "Let's not stand around or Wardress will come turn us all to pillars of salt. How about the baths behind the main laundry? Those should be open."

"Wouldn't we need permission?" Golondrina says.

Fay sniffs. "Lead on, Morgan," she says.

Golondrina looks back over her shoulder as you walk quietly through the halls. A sleepy Pipistrelle Clawson is the prefect at the door. She gives you a smirk as you head for the exit.

"Don't you wish," Fay says to Pip.

Pip blows a kiss. "Naughty girls," she says. "Don't let anyone catch you. Remember the Door Sign?"

"Golondrina, did they teach you the House signs for passing the entry?" you ask.

"No, Hawk didn't say anything about it, and Prefect Clawson got hold of me late," she says. Lolo, new to her black and white Minerval robes, is still a little tentative.

You look back to the duty station. "Pip, any reason to wait in teaching Miss Redmoor the Door Sign?"

"Haha, she's going to snatch it right out of your mind whether you teach her or not," Pip says. "Please yourselves."

You're glad Pip's no longer actively out to cause you trouble, but you always get a creepy feeling when a person who keeps getting mistaken for you -- or vice versa -- mocks you with a look on her face that's much like a perfected version of your own, framed by silk-shiny black hair instead of your unruly sooty tresses. Mirror, mirror.

"Alright Pip," you say. "Golondrina, lift your wand and let me guide your hand. Hold an image of the House banner in your mind, the Aegis."

With your fingertips, you take hold of Lolo's hand -- always warm, even in the chill before a winter dawn -- and trace it through a looping gesture, claiming your right to pass in and out of the House. A shiver goes through you as your bona fides are considered by the regard of an intelligence vast and cool and unsympathetic. Accepted. You let out a tensely held breath.

"Oh!" Golondrina exclaims. She was holding her breath too.

Fay chuckles. "Haha, always hits that way the first time. Part of the fright's for show, so you take it seriously."

"That's not what Wardress says," Pip says. "The 'for show' part is a side effect of the door guardian being completely serious."

"You'd know better than me, Prefect," Fay says. "Ta!"

On a 7-9, when you HAVE SEX, apply your House Sex Move, MIND MELD, and choose one:

• You have a pretty good time.
• Your sex has magical or psychic ripple effects. Describe a conspicuous effect over the area. Gain +1 XP. Next: GET OUT OF TROUBLE.
• Your sex triggers magical backfire. Gain +1 XP and describe how tou and your partner(s) suffer the effects of accidentally triggered spells.
• Your sex attracts hostile forces, monsters, or enemies of Boarbristle. Gain +1 XP and describe the lurking threat. Next: GET OUT OF DANGER.
• You have a rocking good time to mutual exhaustion. Gain +1 XP. Take a CONSEQUENCE.
• Naughty fun and caught misbehaving. Gain +1 XP. CONFRONT YOUR ENEMY.