Summer Programming When she finally got to the correct basement level, Alicia ducked into a women’s restroom to check her hair and make-up. She had already spent half her day on her feet, running errands mostly, but she was about to meet a whole new set of people, so she needed to look as put together as she had when she had shown up this morning, even though this set was not…quite as important as the first one, at least not yet.
After last summer’s successes (and, she wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover, others having more knowledge about the specifics of her CATS than she did right now, though she was entirely confident of the results she would get in a few weeks), Alicia had gotten into the next tier of the program she had begun after her fourth year. For the next eight weeks, she was going to spend the morning and early afternoon actually watching the Council do its thing while running errands for a councilor, a one-eyed former Auror called Crowley, and the later afternoon in a sort of simulation with the other students spending their summers here, where, as far as she could understand from the packets, they would pretend to be actual politicians, have issues presented to them, have to research them, and then play the big game amongst themselves to see who could advance the agenda they were assigned. That was where she was headed now, and she was curious to meet the others, and to find out exactly what she was going to be arguing for in front of them.
It almost, she thought as she repositioned one of the pins holding her hair into a bun to tighten the arrangement up again, was a bit of a letdown, knowing that her stepfather had almost certainly fixed it so she wouldn’t have to do anything too controversial. It took away all the suspense. Definitely safer, though. Once she was satisfied with her hair, and that, in severely-cut dark blue robes and the high heels and the make-up, she could probably pass for a good three or four years older than she was, she left the restroom and went down the hall to the correct door, putting her smile on before she went through it.
“Hello, everyone,” she said brightly to the other people already present, taking quick looks at them as she looked for the seat marked ‘Bauer.’ Spotting it, she went over and sat down, crossing her ankles and smiling warmly at the boy in the next seat, who looked to be about twelve. Probably just a weak, over-bred pureblood thing who might really be thirteen or fourteen, but still, an obvious case of nepotism on somebody’s part.
Most of the others, she knew, would be that way, and she couldn’t really say anything, since Jeremy had used his contacts in the organization to smooth the way for her, too. Still, she knew she was at a disadvantage. Most of the names in the room might well have been in it for generations, where even going by the lie, assuming none of them cared enough to dig up immigration records to check her story, she was at best the second generation of her family even born in this country, and there was only one other girl. This was going to be…an interesting challenge, and give her an excellent reason, besides her stacks of other lessons, to spend most of her time at home in the evenings and on weekends studying families and newspaper archives to figure out how best to work it. She thought she might really get to have some fun with this.
“Hi,” said the biggest guy of the lot, who looked very pleasant and dim. Alicia favored him with an extra smile. “I’m Grant.”
“Jasper,” said the twelve-year-old.
“Edward.”
“Jessica,” chimed in the other girl, and the boy next to her gave her a dirty look before saying his name in turn. Token Muggleborn, then, or at least something socially undesirable, since Alicia didn’t recognize the surname in front of her and he didn’t glare at Alicia when he spoke to her, indicating it probably wasn’t just a problem with girls in general. That was good, at least for her, provided he didn’t have an uncle in citizenship here and a cousin on the east coast who was going to check up on everyone else in the program. And she really couldn’t see why he would, unless he fell head over heels in love with her this summer and took it badly when she rejected him, but she really didn’t think that was very likely….
Sometimes, though, Alicia still wished she could be a little less paranoid. Just for a day or two. She didn’t want to have to think of these possibilities all the time.
“And I’m Alicia,” she said when the circle finally came back to her, smiling still at everyone, when a woman surely too old to be in their group by about thirty years walked in.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” the witch said. “It looks like we’re still missing two….”
Her tone was disapproving, and Alicia could practically see several of the others making mental notes: don’t be late. She didn’t, because she didn’t need to – she was never late. She smiled to herself, now, as they waited for the stragglers to present themselves. She had this in hand.