There's No Business Like Show Business (Juniper)

[Deleted]

August 11, 2027

With the difference between the start of the academic year at LIFE in relation to when MYSTIC and MAGIC would be beginning their first terms, Ayla and her husband, Aneurin, had run into the issue of childcare arrangements more than once that summer. It was incredibly inconvenient, but there were only so many times that she could be left with relatives. At eight, Imogen was too young to be left on her own but old enough to think that she really didn't need supervision. Trying to convince her that she really was still a child was another matter, though Ayla knew that she really only had herself and her husband to blame for that.

Once Imogen was engrossed in a coloring book in her office, Ayla stepped out for a moment to check something with another WADA instructor elsewhere in the building. She missed the old WADA building in London already. It was a perfectly good space. Wanting to add the visual arts was well and good, but they could have kept the old building in London plus whatever additions on the new and improved Hogwarts campus in Scotland. It would have made it so much easier.

As she rounded a corner, Ayla nearly collided with someone, a young woman with glasses. She was pretty sure that the young woman was a student, though she couldn't recall having seen her around WADA previously. There were so many students at LIFE as a whole that it was sort of amazing. Why anyone had thought to put all the students studying at NEWT level plus all the trainees for specialized careers into one place was beyond her, but she hadn't been on the council that had done it.

"So sorry!" she apologized to the young woman quickly, her red hair flashing an even brighter red momentarily.

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

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Getting turned around and lost on the new campus had happened frequently enough that Juniper was starting to think she had been cursed by one of her students to lose all concept of directions. She could make it from the front gate at Hogsmeade to the main building with no problem. Going from there to the staff room and her classroom within the LIFE building was also fairly easy. but once she left that fairly typical route, it was like every corridor shifted its walls on her and new buildings appeared out of nowhere. Which honestly may have been happening, with more areas seemingly sprouting up over night that she'd never heard of prior to taking her new teaching job, like the student run pub.

Having just completed her class on Human Transfiguration, Juniper had stayed later than normal to field questions pertaining to animagus form. See, she had sneakily concealed her ability for an entire month to surprise the entire class, which had gone over as successfully as she had hoped. Never being the type to want to show off her cat form, the instant gratification that came with being called adorable had activated neurons she often times forgot that she had. Talking about herself and what it took to become an animagus definitely validated all of her hard work, albeit a few years later than she had wanted it. Her parents thought it was sort of silly to try and mimic everything her great-aunt had done, but Juniper saw nothing wrong with it. She viewed it as the ultimate form of idolization.

By leaving her classroom later than usual, she didn't have to deal with the normal throng of students and campus employees heading every which way. That should have been a good thing for her, though she quickly realized as she walked through the near empty corridors of the LIFE building that she absolutely needed the crowds to help direct her the right way. Without them there, she had no clue where she was or how to get to the exit of the building. After several minutes of turning left and then right, and then a couple more lefts, Juniper found a door to the outside. Pushing it open with a sigh of relief, she found herself in a courtyard that she'd never seen before. Except it wasn't a courtyard, but an atrium that seemed to connect the LIFE building to another school building. She let out a loud groan and a few choice words that weren't appropriate for her day job at all, thankfully only to herself, and plodded on through the door on the opposite end and into the next area.

Whatever this building was, it definitely came across as different from the other schools. It seemed flashier, though she couldn't exactly put into words how she found it that way. The corridors were less confusing, therefore leading her to believe it was potentially for one of the special programs of LIFE. It made sense to her that it could be if it was connected to the larger one. Cutting sharp on a turn, Juniper nearly collided with a woman walking towards her. Lifting her class materials out of the way, she avoided making contact though was instantly ruffled at herself because of how stupid of a mistake that could've been. "No, no it's fine," she immediately began in, "I shouldn't be going as fast as I am right now." Quickly looking the woman over, it was clear she was either a professor or some sort of instructor here. But at which school was the real question. "I uhh...don't actually know where I am right now. You wouldn't happen to know, would you?" Of course the woman would. She wasn't an idiot that ran in one direction that clearly wasn't correct like Juniper was.

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[Deleted]

August 11, 2027

The young woman, who was carrying something with her, said that she shouldn't have been moving as quickly as she had been when they had avoided colliding. She added that she didn't know where she was at that moment, asking her if she wouldn't have happened to know where they were.

From what Ayla could tell, the young woman was too coherent to have been Confunded. She was definitely old enough to be a teacher at MYSTIC but young enough that it wasn't implausible that she was a student in further education. In other words, Ayla wasn't worried that the young woman was traipsing around the Hogwarts campus when she wasn't supposed to be there at all. (Security had been improved upon—at least in theory—since Hogwarts had reopened anyway, so she hoped that that wasn't the case.)

"This is WADA, the Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts," Ayla informed her, trying to be helpful but also wondering where it was the younger woman was supposed to be. "Are you… looking for something? Someone?"

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

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WADA? How in Merlin's routinely besmirched name had she managed to get all the way there from the LIFE building? Having recalled the tour that that the professors were given prior to the start of the term, it was quite a ways away from where her class was held. At least she thought it was. Getting turned around in the manner she had certainly helped in her sudden confusion, but she didn't think she had taken that many turns. To add to that, she could've sworn that the two buildings weren't connected in the slightest. The atrium she stepped through was fully enclosed as well, so unless the corridors she passed through were tunnels or something similar, she had no idea how she managed to get all the way over to the arts building.

Juniper stared at the woman, mostly dumbfounded that she ended up in WADA, but also sort of hoping that she was being pranked. It didn't seem like it, unfortunately. "My class just ended late in the LIFE building and I was trying to leave...but I guess I went the wrong way?" She knew she went the wrong way, but not to the complete opposite end of her building. Had she not almost run into this woman, she would have kept going until she was on the other side of the campus. Which, briefly thinking about it, would at least get her outside and to a place that she could use land markers better. "This is really the WADA building? Everything looks so similar to mine..." Minus the fact that it seemed happier. A little over a month into classes and she could already feel the doom and gloom that some of the students gave off. The change in the way the school was ran and the addition of the older students attending for work purposes really brought out a gambit of personalities and emotions. And confusion on where she was supposed to be, apparently.

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[Deleted]

August 11, 2027

What the young woman was saying wasn't helping Ayla in determining whether she was a teacher or a student. By her mentioning LIFE more specifically, Ayla was leaning towards the latter option, but she did look old enough that maybe she wasn't quite as young as Ayla had first assumed. It made it harder to know what to say, not that she was going to talk down to the young woman intentionally anyway. The young woman also asked if she was really in the WADA building, and Ayla nodded. She was. They were. As of the first of June, it was WADA—but it was technically part of LIFE, as though it hadn't been its own institution a few short months before.

"Are you trying to get to Hogsmeade?" Ayla wondered, trying to avoid being presumptuous. That seemed most likely, regardless of what the young woman was doing there in the first place. She could easily direct her to the nearest exit that led to the exterior of the building, where it wouldn't be too hard for her to find her way back out to the village.

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

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Juniper let out a loud exhale as the woman confirmed again that they were indeed inside the WADA building. Where had she gone wrong in her dozens of wrong turns? She would have been axed to death by Jack Torrance ages ago if this was the maze from The Shining. A mental note was made to never intentionally go into a maze going forward. If she couldn’t even manage the corridors of her own building, something like that would be impossible. Even worse was that she could have used a Point Me charm if she had thought about it in the moment. But once she managed to get herself completely turned around and apparently in a different building, it would sort of be useless.

The woman then asked her if she was trying to get to Hogsmeade and Juniper nodded. A glance at her watch told her that she’d wasted enough time getting lost (plus her class running late) that heading to Hogsmeade and then home was probably the smartest thing to do at this point. She had no intentions of spending her entire night at Hogwarts anymore. That time had passed a decade ago. “Honestly, I just want to get outside at this point,” she admitted. “But yes, Hogsmeade is where I need to go.” With preferably the easiest directions possible because she didn’t trust herself in the slightest at this point to go the right way.

Looking down, she realized she had forgotten that the books in her hands needed to go back to her office. There was no way she was lugging them all the way back to her flat where she’d end up leaving them when her next class came around. “Or back to the main building. Whichever is closer? I have to drop these off still,” Juniper explained, lifting her arms slightly.

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[Deleted]

August 11, 2027

Ayla was prepared to provide the young woman with directions out of WADA and back outside to Hogsmeade, and then the young woman mentioned that she needed to bring the books that she was carrying back to the Central Building. She could have just said that in the first place, thought Ayla, but she wasn't about to argue. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation for it all.

"In that case…" Ayla started to answer her, trying not to lose her patience. She hadn't even had an opportunity to speak with that WADA colleague of hers, but it luckily wasn't an urgent matter.

Realizing that it was going to be more difficult to explain the directions instead of showing the young woman how to get there, Ayla decided that she would just have to walk her over to the Central Building and then come back to WADA once she was done. It wouldn't be the end of the world, and it would keep her from running into any further issues if the young woman got turned around again.

"Actually," Ayla decided, "I'll walk to the Central Building with you." Hopefully, that time would also help her to determine if the young woman was a student or a teacher.

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

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Despite it only taking a few seconds for the woman to decide to show her the way, Juniper was worried that she was only going to get a string of 'turn left three times and then make an instant dog leg right at the forked hallway following the roundabout staircase' directions. That was typically how things worked at Hogwarts, and she remembered her time in school being exceptionally difficult the first few years as she failed over and over to memorize the floor layouts. Learning of potential shortcuts in her later years - while interesting - made her eye twitch. Years spent running her heavy bag from the basement all the way to the upper floors with her short legs, all of which could have been solved with a handful of convenient passageways to save time. It wasn't until her sixth year that she got to her current height, which wasn't much better than what she'd been working with for the first fifteen years of her sometimes miserable existence.

But that Hogwarts was done and gone with; burned to the ground. It's skeleton had been used well, though the LIFE and WADA buildings were new additions. They both seemed more practical than Hogwarts ever had been, despite having rather confusing layouts that made it easy to get lost in. Would it be embarrassing to ask for a map at the next faculty meeting? Just in case she did this again? One month into the term and she shouldn't have been having this issue anymore. But it happened nonetheless.

"That'd be grand," Juniper stated, relieved that she wasn't going to be subjected to her own misdirection any longer. Fresh air and freedom from the confines of the school walls would have been just as great, but getting to the Central building was something she ultimately needed to do. "Are you a professor for WADA?" she added as they began to walk.

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[Deleted]

August 11, 2027

There were times when Ayla was immensely grateful that she was an actress by training with one of the best educations in the subject in the magical world. Improvisation was a crucial element of acting, and she certainly found herself relying on that same skill set outside of her acting work, too. She didn't go to the extreme of totally changing her appearance and acting as though she were someone other than herself during everyday interactions with others, but it helped to be able to go with the flow of whatever was going on around her.

The young woman sounded grateful that she was willing to walk with her to the Central Building, and they began to set off in that direction. "Are you a professor for WADA?"

Ayla nodded her head, still trying to figure out if she was conversing with a student or a staff member or someone else entirely. "Yes, I am," she answered, continuing to walk as they conversed. "I suppose you aren't a WADA student?" She had pinned that much down, at least.

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

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While it was an excellent assumption that the woman was a WADA professor, there were so many more faculty members on the campus now that literally any adult could be an employee. Or not. She'd been mistaken a few times as a student, and with so many people coming back for secondary education it wasn't exactly a surprise. The woman confirmed that she was indeed a teacher, she in turn guessed correctly that Juniper wasn't part of WADA. "No, I don't have that kind of talent," she waved her hands out in front of her. Which was sort of funny because she kind of did have the right stuff for 'show business'. It just came in the form of writing educational shows for television. But getting in front of the camera was absolutely non-negotiable. She could have eyes on her from students, but not the camera. It was interesting how that worked and that the brain differentiated between them.

"I actually teach as well. Two of the upper-level Transfiguration classes for the LIFE students," Juniper explained as they walked. She figured if they were going to discuss work, she might as well just put it out there before any more confusion happened. "Which doesn't help me with directions in the slightest," she added with a laugh. "Have your classes been going well so far? I can't imagine moving everything here was the easiest." Juniper knew of the old location that WADA used, and it had surprised her when it was announced that they were joining the Hogwarts campus. As far as she knew, the two schools had never been associated before this. But having all higher education together did make sense to her.

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[Deleted]

August 11, 2027

Making conversation was easier once Ayla had confirmation that the young woman wasn't a student at all; she was another LIFE instructor—just not an instructor at WADA. She didn't have to keep wondering if she was a staff member or a student and dancing around the subject until she knew one way or the other. It was true that she could have come right out and asked, but she wasn't trying to add another dose of embarrassment to the situation. If she had jumped to conclusions when the younger woman nearly collided with her, she might have gone with the assumption that she'd been Confunded. And then they would have been in real trouble.

Interestingly, the woman who was now her colleague taught Transfiguration. Apart from having been born a Metamorphmagus, Ayla had done well in the subject when she was still at Hogwarts as a student. She hadn't pursued it any further after finishing her NEWTs, though she could have if she'd wanted to (or if she hadn't been accepted into WADA, perhaps). There wasn't anything wrong with Transfiguration. It was definitely necessary in her everyday life; she just didn't have to try quite as hard at it when it came to her appearance.

"Have your classes been going well so far? I can't imagine moving everything here was the easiest."

It hadn't been easy. Packing up her office hadn't been hard to do with a little bit of magic, but it wasn't the packing that had been the problem. "The teaching has been going well," Ayla replied. "The merger is a bit… different," she had to acknowledge, though she tried to be polite about it. Her younger colleague was no more responsible for it than she was. Having all the arts under one roof made Ayla question how long it would be until WADA was no longer "WADA" but "W-Arts" or something ridiculous like that. "I'm Ayla, by the way."

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

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Juniper knew very little on what the program for WADA actually was, aside from taking a guess that it probably fostered the improvement of performing, singing, and other associated arts. Plus there was no way that it didn't have an internal network to streamline the best of the best into their preferred line of work. Basically it did all the things that her last name often times did for her. She had never wanted the McGonagall name to carry the weight it did, yet here she was teaching the same subject her great aunt had for decades, albeit in a slightly different situation. Juniper always countered with the fact that Minerva had been a great role model to her. Enough to make her become an animagus as well. Not all of her family members were cookie-cutter clones though, and while her brother also achieved the same power, their sister was still lacking anything remotely similar. She often times wondered if that one even had a brain...

"Hopefully they didn't try to place their own curriculum over what you normally follow..." Juniper responded, though had a feeling that may have been a possibility. Everything was fine and dandy on her end. She just had to teach to NEWT-level, which was easy considering she used to write the exams. "Juniper McGonagall. Pleasure to meet you," she said in turn. "Unless I get lost again, I doubt you'll see me around the campus too much. I still have my day job to take care of." Her producers were incredibly lenient so far, mainly because she was productive. That and she'd established a couple running shows. They didn't need her to write more material currently for them, and it wasn't like she was completely gone from the office. She thrived on this kind of grind. A couple classes per week wasn't going to knock her down completely.

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