Chaos, as Promised

What's this? The portraits aren't moving? The entrances to Houses are apparent for all to see? The Finer Diner is an ordinary room?

For those of you who have been around RMI in the past two days, I'm sure that you're wondering what exactly is going on. Well, I'm sure that you've figured out that it is, indeed, that elusive Plot (and many thanks to Juliet Audrey for helping me get it up). But here's the full story...it just requires a little ancient history.

Four years ago, the caretaker, Nic Clavell had to leave RMI. Struggling to find a replacement, the Board of Governors (BoG) ended up hiring Joseph Wagoner, a pop singer who was interested in doing the job for a short amount of time as a publicity stunt. He left at the end of the year, but without doing many crucial bits of maintanence that everyone assumed he had, indeed, done. One of these pieces of work was to renew the charms preventing RMI's magic from influencing the Muggle world above. Kim Kraft entered her new post assuming, as everyone else did, that the charms had been renewed as they have to be every five years.

Now eight years since the charms were supposed to be renewed, they have gone into overdrive, completely blanketing the school. No form of wand magic will work until they are fixed, save that done on the Quidditch Pitch. The Pitch is on a different schedule than the rest of the school as it was just finished being built. However, this is the only place that wand magic will work. Elf magic and naturally occurring magics (such as those found in plants, potions, and magical creatures) are still functioning, but this leaves the wizards and witches of the school at a great disadvantage.

On February 13th, the day before this magical outage occurred, Deputy Headmistress Mariette Lander-Guido went on maternity leave, expecting twins in April. Her replacement, Kathleen McFarlan, was hired by the BoG solely for the purpose of auditing the school and making sure that things are as they should be; complications in recent years have lead them to doubt Alessandro Guido's capacity to lead the school properly, and numerous parent complaints about malfunctions within the school only exacerbated this doubt.

The magical outage will remain in place until the specialist, an independent contractor that the BoG has specifically hired for this purpose, has set the school to rights. Until then, classes will occur on the Quidditch Pitch and RMI will cope as is necessary. The Quidditch programme will resume with the Draco vs. Aquila game as soon as a new coach is found.

...and that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I will leave you. Enjoy yourselves with the magical power outage! And in the next installment: the new ORMI.