Welcome to Gaia! ::

”Excuse me, how did you–” The door opened to Echo asking, quite skeptically, how some person had managed to get in and graffiti the whiteboard before Milan had even opened up the room– that is, before she realised that the boy with the jeans and frumpy sweater was her dear quadruplet. ”Milan! Oh you’re already here,... good.”

Theoretically, Echo knew Milan had a pair of jeans– multiple, in fact. She had occasionally seen him work it into some actually very stylish outfit, but she wasn’t sure she had ever seen him wear jeans at school. And such a frumpy sweater! As she set down the cookie bin, she realised that his socks didn’t even match the outfit.

She knew Milan was grieving– Echo personally resented the dorky, fast-talking musical hobgoblin that hung around so much for monopolizing Milan, then ditching him to snog Yari– she couldn’t even get away from him in death with everyone gossiping about it in the Common Room after hours. But Echo wasn’t so heartless as to not feel remorse that someone had gone out that way. Milan and Yari cared about Angier dearly. And she cared about them.

And right now, Milan just needed someone to get him through this meeting.

”General Photography,” she told Milan quietly. ”Daphne’s position. Syd Barrett, comics and art. Jane Egareva and Zack Knapp, writers. Today we mostly just need to talk about the first issue and match any newcomers to senior staff members for their assignments. You've got this.”

Echo pulled the forms for each position out of the file cabinet in the back and set them out before flipping through her sketchbook for the page she’d jotted some ideas for down. Her eye immediately jumped to Animagus process–possible missteps? History of accidents?. It had been her attempt to help her quadruplets cope, but the images she’d stumbled upon were…well, she couldn’t imagine they’d be helpful.

Milan’s uncertain voice gave her her orders: Start the club, get the working. She fished a comb and makeup palette out of her bag, tentatively– she knew Milan cared about his appearance, he just seemed too exhausted to do anything. She could do this much for him at least. ”May I?”

She got to work, neatening his appearance as he continued. Make sure he didn’t shut down in front of everyone. He was keeping his emotions down all night. Did he need to scream? Echo had felt terrible for screaming at her whole family over what wasn’t even their fault– her terrible grades were her own damn fault–and for throwing Paula across the room, but she had felt quite a bit better. Professor Kieran would have called it catharsis. Spiritual rubbish. …But if the spiritual rubbish helped….

”Look up for me?” She said instead when Milan rubbed his eyes. Echo rummaged in her bag again. ”Eyedrops for the redness. And I can cover up the bags.” She applied the makeup quickly, before anyone else could get there before nodding, satisfied with her work. She couldn’t completely erase all signs of sleeplessness and stress and grief, but that would be unnatural. Just a light dusting to throw people off how bad it was. Over the weekend she could shop around the apothecary for ingredients, check the library for potions…maybe get something for his skin and sleep? Damn all the beauty shops being in Diagon–wait no, she didn’t care about that anymore.

”Want to floo over to Diagon over the weekend? We can get you a proper, relaxing massage and skincare treatment, pick up some nice scents or a dreamlessness potion?” Echo offered. Of course she could brew the Potion of Dreamless Sleep-- she'd done it last year a few times--and look up the proper dilutions for extended use. But it made more sense to just have a professional-- and it might get Milan and Yari outside for some sun.

Echo had spent Thursday evening before classes started in a deliciously delirious state. She woke up at 15:30 on Friday afternoon, near her usual spot by the White Tomb, half-dressed and sore in all the right places. Under some undergarments were six half-completed star maps and what looked like an alchemical recipe to…synthesize some new kind of fabric? She’d scribbled Daily Dragon ideas into the margins of last week’s Witch Weekly–some in a weird poem style, some in Anglo-saxon futhorc runes. There was miserable, poorly constructed prose-poetry scrawled over the last 18 pages– or parts of the pages– of her notebook that made up a very graphic confession of…Resentment? Jealousy? Admiration? Lust? Surrender? Some long, rambling confession written out to…someone that definitely wasn’t Syd.

So, of course, the four and a half hours before the Daily Dragon’s first meeting of the year were spent recomposing and rehydrating herself before club, and deciphering the brilliant insanity of herself on drugs. Of the parts that made any kind of sense, half of it turned out to be reiterations of things she’d already jotted in her notebook before, but Echo felt an amused kind of satisfaction rereading her notes while high. She felt more creative on shrooms, and even if that creativity was just sober notes twisted into psychedelic colors, it was more interesting that way. Being high was pleasurable and if Echo was going to be the useless leg of the Wellbelove quadruplets, at least she’d have fun.

She went to collect the macarons and head to the club exactly on time– 5 minutes before the club officially started. She wondered if she ought to check on Syd or if he’d make his way to the room himself. Eh. Echo had a very productive four hours, even if some of that working through a headache; Syd would be more than fine.

Echo paused as a young child stopped her to ask for directions. Hmm, Ma’am, yes, that’ll do she thought, her polite smile widening with amusement and pride. ”You’re in luck, I’m going to the Daily Dragon myself. Come along then.”

Echo scrutinized the Daily Dragon hopeful, gathering details quickly: First year, of course, Gryffindor or Ravenclaw by her unfamiliarity with the lower levels. Smudges on her shirt and fingertips but high-count cotton on the shirt and well-constructed shoes– probably no interest or education in fashion, but from a family that was clearly well-off. She had a bag, but it wasn’t bulky enough for a camera or extensive sketchbook. ”Are you thinking of joining as a writer?”

”Writer and artist, maybe photopher? I’m not sure yet what I’ll like best. Daddy used to be a writer. But I draw a bit.”

”Quite a few roles. You’ll be busy,” Echo remarked. Ah yes, ambition. Echo vaguely remembered being a confident lass once. Even young, the girl did have classically beautiful features though. Yari or Harlynn might be able to mold her into something useful. ”Do you have any interest in fashion?”

The kid interpreted that as a question about her ridiculously silly mismatched socks. ”Ah…of course. Well, here we are.”

As they entered, the child introduced themself. Well hopefully their writing was better than their fashion sense. The Dragon needed new writers besides Zack and herself. Half the staff was going to graduate at the end of the year, and it would be pitiful if all their work on the Daily Dragon was lost with incompetent successors. Ah, but then again, all the young students needed to start somewhere. She and Milan had taken over as editors as early as their third years, and Echo’s own work as a back then was absolute rubbish compared to what it was now. She still found too many faults with her current work, but at least it was well-written rubbish.

As Juliette filled out the forms, Echo nodded a greeting at Milan and Daphne. She’d overheard the possible switch ups as she came in, but as usual, she and Milan had already discussed it. They had a pretty good idea what everyone was good at and what kind of work each of them might need to round out their portfolios, so that was that. Echo didn’t really think it needed further discussion. Instead, she busied herself with a few wand gestures, setting the macaron tin on the table with the forms, sorting her reference materials into the storage cabinet, and pulling a couple typewriters out.