Laurel watches each of the speeches from the back room, a notebook in her lap that she mostly ignores in favour of looking bored and slightly annoyed whenever the crowd starts jeering. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head whenever a candidate makes a particularly outlandish claim, and sometimes she nods thoughtfully when they say something reasonable for once, but for all her attentiveness she never once actually participates. She's more interested in watching for now, and when the angry witch beside her stands up to shout in protest she bows her head and hides her face in second-hand shame.

When there's a break, Laurel seems just as uninterested in initiating social interaction as she did participating in the question periods. She picks at the buffet without much restraint (she may never have activated her curse but man is she ravenous), people-watching a little, but generally finding the teeny sandwiches far more engaging than her fellow attendees.

[It's a stark difference at the Fire Festival, where Laurel has been dragged by a couple of her witch friends from school. She's not actually all that bad at socializing, in fact she's smiling and laughing and dancing even before the first drink hits her. She only gets a bit tipsy, but it's enough to make her clumsy as she bounces around the party like the social butterfly no one thinks she is.]

[She may even bump into you, but she'll laugh and touch your shoulder and apologize before asking you if you're a witch. It's a whole new world for her, alright?]

Just do it.