Now's the time for the real Team Nine on Labyrinth Gardens

Challenge Staff

March 22, 2013 12:50 PM

The Obstacle Course Challenge by Challenge Staff

The day of the second challenge dawned bright and sunny. Though it was only late January, the weather was unseasonably warm in the high sixties. Certainly warm enough to spend the afternoon outdoors in relative comfort as long as one dressed appropriately. This was most fortunate as most of the higher numbered teams probably would spend a fair portion of the day just outside the Gardens, waiting for their turn into the challenge.

Unlike the first one, this challenge would be completed all at one time, then the staff would have to go in and fix any damage that had been inflicted on the course, and only then could the next team begin. The slight advantage to going later, of course, was that those groups would have some idea how long most teams had taken to complete it previously, and would therefore be able to gauge how well they were doing in comparison.

As one o'clock approached, Coach Pierce arrived on the scene and stood on top of the bench that blocked the entrance into the Gardens. "Hello," she greeted the gathered students with the assistance of a sonorus charm so they could all hear her. "Your second challenge is an obstacle course through the Gardens. May I please have the overseers gather near Professor Meade, please." She indicated where the COMC professor was standing and waited for the students elected for that role to divide out of the main crowd.

"This challenge will be scored by how quickly your team gets all of its members, excluding the overseer, through the obstacle course. If you find you cannot get through an obstacle, there is an opt-out path. However, be advised, a significant time penalty, which varies depending upon on the difficulty of the obstacle being skipped, will be applied against your team's final time for every team member who opts out."

The Coach inclined her head toward the group of overseers. "You will not be going in completely blind. Your overseer will be able to communicate with you as you go through the course, telling you the safest path between obstacles." Rock throwing prairie elves, Devil's Snare traps, and other blockages and annoyances populated the paths that were not the 'safe' route through the maze. Between most obstacles, team overseers could choose to send their teams through to the next one by way of a longer but safer route, or through a shorter but booby-trapped route. The quickest shortcuts had the nastiest obstructions.

"Overseers, you have the choice of using a surveillance circle to track your team's progress and look ahead for your best route through the labyrinth, or you can scout ahead and offer advice from a broom. You cannot directly assist your team through a challenge or you will incur the obstacle's opt-out penalty, but you can offer advice if you see something they can't."

"All right, folks. Team One starts it off, once your overseer is ready. They will have a few minutes to get an idea of what lies ahead of you. We'll start the clock when the first team member enters the course, so I advise waiting until your overseer tells you to begin."

Coach Pierce got down off the bench then used her wand to push it aside, clearing the Garden entrance for the first team. Meanwhile, the first overseer was lead through another opening in the hedge, bringing them into a secluded clearing with a nice quality broom and a table with a model of the Obstacle Course upon it.

“Overseers, you have two options to do your job, one is flying above and assessing the best route for your team or, two, you can scry for them using the model placed in the table,” Adrian pointed to the model of the gardens with the obstacles that was near him. Professor Meade gave them the option to chose their preferred method of scouting. Broom riders would fly above the Course and talk directly to their teams. They could point out relevant points of interest, lead the way through the labyrinth, and even poke and prod at the actual obstacles to provide information about them, so long as they didn't actually do anything to physically or magically help their team.

Scryers would follow their team through the enchanted model. The Obstacles were clearly marked and labeled and glowed yellow for easy identification. Safe routes between them were colored a reassuring green. Hazardous routes were colored either in orange or red to mark the severity of the danger. Finally, blue indicators would help them easily find their team's location. A simple tap of their wand against any part of the model would allow the scryer to zoom in for a better look in real time. A second tap against the edge of the table would bring them back to the overview. Not being physically present would limit the overseer's ability to communicate with their teammates to only verbal instructions, but these would be relayed clearly to their location and the model, when zoomed in, would allow him or her to see and hear everything the team did.

OOC: Like in the last one, all teams can post simultaneously. Fuzzy time allows you to move on to the next obstacle before finishing the previous one, as long as you don't contradict anything that might still happen earlier. Please keep your characters' age, physical limitations and abilities in mind and have them progress realistically. Your four foot nine beginner student cannot reach the top of the Wall, or the short rope dangling down from it, even if they jump.

Subthreads:

After Party (nm) by Challenge Staff

Obstacle Three: The Lake by Challenge Staff with Annabelle Pierce

Obstacle Two: The Wall by Challenge Staff with Reggie Parker, Henny B-F-R, James Owen, Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Marcus Williams, Malcolm Carey, Jude Butler, Annabelle Pierce

Obstacle One: Mud Pit by Challenge Staff with Regina Parker, Arthur Carey, Theresa Carey, Arnold Carey, Derry Pierce, James Owen, Topher Calhoun, Josephine Owen, Henny B-F-R, Eliza Bennett, David Wilkes, Alicia Bauer, Michael Grosvenor, Ryan O'Malley, James Carey, Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette), Kate Bauer

0 Challenge Staff The Obstacle Course Challenge 0 Challenge Staff 1 5

Challenge Staff

March 22, 2013 12:51 PM

After Party (nm) by Challenge Staff

0 Challenge Staff After Party (nm) 0 Challenge Staff 0 5

Challenge Staff

March 22, 2013 12:52 PM

Obstacle Three: The Lake by Challenge Staff

There were again three hedge-lined paths branching out after the wall. The shortest route was a straight shot to the next obstacle, which could be clearly seen from the wall. Unfortunately, what could also be seen was that the hedges on either side were lined along the top with over a dozen prairie elves hefting elf-fist sized rocks and wearing packs full of more. For Scryers, this path was colored red and labeled Rock Ambush. One elf at the front had a broken ear that had never healed quite right. That one looked positively gleeful at the prospect of pelting the teams with rocks. The rest seemed much more hesitant about this particular job but determined to see it through anyway.

Scrappy, Sonora's most belligerent elf - and the one usually locked safely away from the student population for that reason - may have tampered with the spells on his rocks, but the others were using projectiles charmed only to sting, not cause real harm. But there was no easy way for even the Overseers to know that in advance.

The left path glowed orange on the Scryers' model. It was significantly more circuitous that the Rock Ambush, but much less so than the clear green path that went off to the right. Overseers could see that this moderately hazardous route had several Blast Ended Skrewts and a couple Jarvies wandering about through it.

Once the three paths rejoined, the team would find themselves facing the third and final obstacle: a narrow lake. The sign in front of this one read:

The Lake
Get to the other side by swinging. Opt-out path to the left. Penalty: ten minutes

The obstacle had been planned to make the students challenge their physical and magical attributes. Only the physical if they were strong enough to make it to the other side. Once they reached the lake they would be able to see ropes scattered above it to the other side. What the students needed to do was to swing from rope to rope until they reached the other side. It was simple, but there was a catch. The lake below them was filled with water dwelling creatures that would make their swim to shore a tad bit more difficult. Also, if one of the students happened to fall into the water they had to start once again. In order for the whole team to finish with the obstacle course everyone had to swing through the air. To encourage this, opting out had a prohibitively high penalty for opting out.

The creatures that the COMC professor had provided had been subdued to some degree, so every student would be able to battle them. They were in no danger. The lake wasn’t deep, the creatures would just cling to their feet to make them slower to swim around. The older students could help the younger ones get rid of their pursuers, but if they touched the water they had to start again.

This was the last obstacle the students would have to endure in order to finish. Time and physical endurance was of the utmost essence for the teams to win this time around.

Once they reached the other side of the lake, there was a single short hedge-lined path that led to a trellis arch; once the last team member passed through the arch, a bell would chime throughout the Gardens and their time would be noted. Beyond the arch was a large clearing with food, drink, and the other teams that had already completed the challenge. And, also, temporary bathrooms complete with individual shower stalls. Scryer overseers would join their teammates in the victory clearing shortly after, once they traversed a much easier, well marked, path through the labyrinth than the one their other team members had.

0 Challenge Staff Obstacle Three: The Lake 0 Challenge Staff 0 5

Challenge Staff

March 22, 2013 12:52 PM

Obstacle Two: The Wall by Challenge Staff

From the mud pit, there were three ways Overseers could direct their teams. The shortest path was completely overgrown and utterly impassable without some way to cut through the thick and prickly vegetation. To scryers, this path was colored red and some intermediate students who did their supplemental potions readings might recognize the plant as mildly poisonous if any of its prickers managed to break through skin. It wasn't truly dangerous to people, but it would make anyone so pricked clumsier than normal, which would make the rest of the challenge even more difficult.

The next shortest path after that one was also overgrown with vegetation, but this time the path was unnaturally dark. Students who paid attention in Beginners' DADA would realize why this route had been protected from the sun when they recognized the plant as a Devil's Snare. Scryers would see this route had been deemed merely an orange threat.

The last route was the longest, but no plant life inhibited anyone from moving through it unless they were careless enough to catch their sleeve on the labyrinth's usual hedges.

The three paths joined together again just before a large sign reading:

Obstacle Two: The Wall

Get to the other side. Opt-out path to the left. Penalty: Two Minutes

Surely enough, a dozen feet further along the path was a wall twelve feet tall with a tiny rope hanging down two feet from the top that even most seventh year guys would have difficulty catching hold of unless they were training to go into a career of professional basketball. The wall filled the width of the six foot wide path except for a narrow space about a foot wide along the left side. A banner tied between the wall and the top of the hedge declared this passageway was the opt-out path.

Overseers could see that the back side of the wall had a ladder secured to it, presumably so people could climb down without killing themselves once they reached the top. Scryer Overseers were advised as part of the obstacle description that cushioning charms were in effect if anyone did fall.

0 Challenge Staff Obstacle Two: The Wall 0 Challenge Staff 0 5

Challenge Staff

March 22, 2013 12:52 PM

Obstacle One: Mud Pit by Challenge Staff

Overseers examining the beginning of the Course, either by broom or by the scrying model, would quickly find that one left followed by one right would bring their teammates directly and safely to the first obstacle. Broom riders and the main group on foot could easily identify it as such by the large sign declaring:

Obstacle One: Mud Pit

Get to the other side. Opt-out path to the left. Penalty: Two Minutes

A similar marker identified the spot to scryers even from the labyrinth overview. More enterprising scryers could zoom in and poke their wand cleanly through the mud to trace out the contours of the solid ground beneath the surface. Some the mud was shallow or even non-existent in places while, in other areas, their wands plunged in deep enough to indicate the mud was thick enough to swallow the smallest first years to their chins. No part was so deep that the even the shortest student couldn't stand in it and be able to breathe ... but it would be a very near thing in some spots.

The pit was about six feet wide, lined on either edge with hedges, and twenty feet long. Just before the mud began, the left hedge had an opening in it with a banner hanging across its top that declared this was the opt-out path. It paralleled the pit and rejoined the main path about two feet beyond the far side of the mud obstacle.

0 Challenge Staff Obstacle One: Mud Pit 0 Challenge Staff 0 5

Regina Parker

March 23, 2013 4:44 PM

Team 15, BATH TIME! by Regina Parker

Reggie was a little nervous the day of the second challenge. She had a team full of girls and only one of them seemed to be really athletic. On top of that, Nora and her had discussed the Overseer position. It seemed important and one needed to have knowledge in magic for the role but it also meant that they were out of the physical part of the challenge. Nora had suggested Reggie and Effie. Reggie thought of either Nora or Effie. In the end, she had chosen Effie. This was because Reggie was one of the more physical girls on the team (which wasn’t saying much) and the only advance member of the team. She felt it was best if she stayed with them. Nora was also smart and probably could think of other ways to get around obstacles that Reggie might overlook. Eris and Waverly had both played Quidditch, and seemed smart or at least skilled in things that would work alright with the challenge, but Isabel and Effie were small and too young to have practical skills. So, Reggie went with Effie. Of the two, Reggie thought Effie would be better under pressure and had a confidence in her that Reggie trusted she’d be fine in that position. That just left Isabel for Reggie to look after.

After listening to the coach and seeing Effie off to where the other Overseers were located, Reggie turned to the rest of the girls, “Under no circumstances are we to take the opt out paths and give ourselves those penalty minutes, understand?” She told them with firmness. She refused to let them take the easy way simply because they thought they couldn’t do it or that they might get hurt or something. They could do this if they pushed themselves into doing it and then they would totally so self-satisfied when they were though that it made the hard work worth it.

It felt like hours before their team was finally called. She gathered them around the Entrance and waited for Effie to give the okay. Once they were inside, Reggie did the best she could to lead them, only to stop when she read the sign. “Looks like we’re getting dirty.” She called to them, entering the mud pit area, hesitantly and giving it a sweeping look over.

She didn’t see anything in the mud that would help their journey and there was no way to know how deep it was either. They could just take small steps and test out each area before moving, but that would take up time. An idea came to her and Reggie looked around the area to see if it could work. Finding what she needed, Reggie scooped up some stones and turned to her team mates. “I have an idea. We’re allowed to use our surrounding and magic, right? So, how about we put these stones in various spots throughout the mud, enlarge them, and use them as stepping stones?” She asked them. She didn’t want to make any decision without their approval. “Unless someone else has another idea or you all don’t mind plunging into the mud and wadding through to the other side?” She didn’t mind getting dirty. If they wanted to just save time and make a run through it, she was completely cool with that too.

6 Regina Parker Team 15, BATH TIME! 187 Regina Parker 0 5

Isabel Raines

March 23, 2013 9:35 PM

We might look forward to it after this by Isabel Raines

Isabel had been nervous since she read the part of the second challenge announcement which involved physical things. She had privately agreed with the decision that Effie should be the overseer instead of her, but she still wasn’t enthusiastic at all about the second challenge.

As the team waited for their turn, then, she smiled a lot, the way she imagined Sara had during her much shorter wait, and would have if she had been made to wait a long time, too. As usual, she thought she did the second-best job possible of the girls in her family: Sara would have done it better, Catherine probably would have done it worse, though she supposed it was harder to say now that her sister was up to her fourth child. Once over midterm, Isabel had heard Mamma remark that she didn’t know how Catherine managed it, and Catherine had shrugged and said that she’d had a girl first because the every man added to the house stayed the newest one just long enough for her to get patient enough to deal with the next one – “though I expect this is your last grandson from me, anyway,” she’d finished, fussing with the baby’s blanket.

For her sister, success had come easily. She had married a very handsome man straight out of school, had the connections to quickly become a hostess in her own right, and had had three sons without any trouble at all until this last time, and that had still worked out in the end. Sara, it seemed, was well on her way to doing the same thing, though Isabel guessed she would have to wait another year after school to get married. Alan was a boy, so of course he wouldn’t have any problems. Which left Isabel, up against an obstacle course. She just hoped she wasn’t the whole reason why if they came in embarrassingly far down the list.

The first leg wasn’t long, but that wasn’t comforting. Isabel looked less-than-happily at the sign annoucing that this was a mud pit. When Reggie came up with an idea, Isabel nodded enthusiastically. “I like the first idea better,” she said when just wading thorugh it was proposed as an alternative, not at all worried about seeming like a prissy little girl. For one thing, she didn’t think anyone wanted to get filthy, and for another, it would surely be faster. That was the whole point, wasn't it?

0 Isabel Raines We might look forward to it after this 241 Isabel Raines 0 5

Arthur Carey

March 24, 2013 6:50 PM

Time to go, Team Seventeen by Arthur Carey

The advance notice they had gotten for the second challenge had been initially welcome, but it had taken Arthur only about half an hour to realize that it was really almost as frustrating as not knowing anything before the first one had been. Normally, Arthur didn’t mind vauge directions, as they allowed him more freedom of action and you couldn’t win if you couldn’t gamble, but at the moment, some details would have been welcome. Some days, he just didn't feel like playing.

Since the Careys, to his immense frustration, did not have an inside man in the staff the way the Brockerts did, though, he had had to make a decision in the end with the same incomplete information everyone else had been given and he had decided to sit Malcolm out of the challenge. It was a gamble – for all he knew, the overseer was the only person allowed to choose what spells the players could use in the game, and while he had done his best with his first years, they were still, well, first years – but if he sat out, they wouldn’t be able to use the more advanced spells he might suggest to them anyway, and there was no one on the team he suspected would be more of a physical liability than Malcolm. On the ground, he could try to sneak in a nonverbal spell if he had to, he was getting better with those, and while he was no Edmond, Arthur did feel that if it came to that, he would be tall and strong enough to knock quite a lot of things out of the way, though he would prefer to toss them aside with his wand.

Besides, he wanted to see what Malcolm did when he had a bit of freedom of action of his own, and how he reacted to someone who gave it to him.

They had to wait a very long time for their turn, but Arthur didn’t mind that, at least at first; using his wristwatch, he was able to roughly time each group and do a few averages, which was one of way of killing time, and he also noted who some teams had left out as an overseer and how they seemed to feel today and if there was any communication between groups as well as within them. After a while, though, he began to feel impatient – he had not brought a book, since what would he do with it during the challenge, and he never felt right without a book on him somewhere anyway – and at last downright irritable before, finally, the staff went in to clean up after team sixteen and it was nearly time to go.

“Remember,” he said, remembering Coach Pierce’s long-ago instructions, “move together, side by side lines, let’s get as many in at once as we can.” Seconds could make a difference, and he did like the idea of winning. At the edge of the entrance, he glanced around, even though he knew there would be nothing to see. “Malcolm?” he asked the empty air.

“I’m here,” the overseer’s voice said from nowhere. That was going to take some getting used to. “In a – never mind. Start now and go left.” He sounded as though he were concentrating. Arthur decided to believe that boded well for them. So far, there was nothing to make him regret his choice of overseer except the possibility that Malcolm was secretly very bad at mazes. “Quickly, there’s nothing in the way.”

Nothing, anyway, until the expanse of mud. Arthur looked it over for a moment, wondering if trying to go around the edge opposite the opt-out path would still count against them, then chuckled to himself at the thought that in this, the teams which were a member or two short actually had an advantage. They could, if they chose, skip things and lose fewer minutes than it would take everyone else to complete the item skipped.

Still, it was worth a try before they wrote it off completely. If they started to lose time, he would change the rules. For now, he took his glasses off and tapped them with his wand, then did the same to his shoes and trousers, hoping the charm would keep the worst damage from being done. “Lovely way to begin,” he remarked. “Any advice?” he asked, looking up, testing to see just how much help the overseer could be. How much perspective did the scrying circle offer? That seemed like a useful thing to establish right off.

In the meantime, he used his wand to flick one of the buttons off the cuff of one of his shirtsleeves so he could pull the thread which had held it loose and then picked up a rock. If he adjusted their weights and sizes and the strength of the string, he could use it to get an idea how deep what they were about to step into was. He could see some patches of what looked like solid earth, which meant - if everything was real, and the ground wouldn't crumble beneath their feet in those places - that the depth of the mud wasn't even, and since the idea was for it to be a challenge to people other than a very specific breed of Crotalus girl, he didn't expect that much of it stopped at ankle-depth.

0 Arthur Carey Time to go, Team Seventeen 182 Arthur Carey 0 5

Malcolm Carey

March 24, 2013 9:24 PM

Directing from on high by Malcolm Carey

By the time he got to the team meeting, Mal was considering whether or not a jury would convict a cute first year who just happened to have murdered his mother if he made sure to cry while he told them about the mirror. The mirror was from Hell, and since he could not smash it without just getting another one sent to him along with an admonishment, clearly the only answer was to take out the supplier of mirrors. It was just how it was.

Normally, he and his mirror got along well enough, not least because they spent very little time together – in theory, she had just had it charmed to tell him whether or not he was allowed to go out of his room looking the way he did, but he was pretty sure Mother was somehow watching him through it, which was why he did all his homework in the common room or library – but he had evidently made the mistake of mentioning Arthur had told him to be the team overseer in the room when it was only pretending to be asleep, as it did sometimes, or maybe he had just been too excited to remember to check. Either way, it had bided its time, kept its mouth shut, and only this morning let him know it knew it was a “very important day, Malcolm!” He had had to get dressed five times before the mirror announced that he looked presentable enough to be the brain of the team, declining to tell him where, exactly, it had seen a brain in a sweater vest that brought out its eyes before – or, indeed, where it had seen a brain with eyes before.

On the bright side, the prospect of dealing with it instead gave him a little perspective as team seventeen waited to be called for the challenge and he tried not to tear up and shred more chunks of grass than the staff would let him get away with. It could have been worse; they could have given them all enchanted mirrors to talk to during the long wait. He hated enchanted mirrors.

At last, it was time. Feeling grubbier and less poised all around, after all this time, than he would have liked, Mal followed his guide to the space set aside for his use, where he had the options of a broom or a model. He guessed that Francesca would be disappointed in him, but the latter was much more his type of toy than the other, and he examined it almost as long as he thought he could before a voice surprised him: “Malcolm?”

He jumped, but recovered, turning red and being glad they could only hear him. He zoomed in on the team and said, “I’m here,” and started to follow it up with ‘in a way’ before he decided humor would not be appreciated. “Start now and go left.” He looked over the model again, checking himself even as he tried not to grin as he realized he knew all about what was to come and they did not. This was a feeling he could get used to. “Quickly, there’s nothing in the way.”

There was nothing in the way when he told them to go right, either, until…Mal did grin to himself then, wondering how well they were going to take to a mud pit. He was just thinking he would lay money that Amira would take it better than Arthur did when his cousin began very casually mutilating his clothing, so Mal amused himself instead with the image of them all gradually destroying their personal possessions as the course progressed until they emerged on the other side robeless, in the filthy rags of their other clothes, after going completely savage in the maze and becoming convinced Mal was a deity controlling their every move. He didn’t think it would end well for anyone in real life, but he made a note of the idea; maybe he could sell it to a novelist sometime. He decided Arthur’s wristwatch would be a key plot element, though he didn’t know how exactly, since that was what novelists were for.

“Transfigure it into water and swim?” Mal suggested when he was asked for advice. Nomally, he might have bitten his tongue, but the others all seemed far away, harmless, pawns he could direct to whatever squares he wanted and they’d have to go there before, at the end of the game, they went back in their box. They could talk back, but that was all. He zoomed in closer on the mud, looking for anything that looked promising….

“I think the closest dry space is the one on the far right,” he said. “It’s about…” Mal was not that great at estimating distance even when he was physically on site, and he wasn’t totally sure of what he was seeing here. “Maybe a foot from the edge? So maybe it’s not too hard to get to. It’s worth a try, anyway.”

At least since he was not the one wading out into the mud to get to it. The mirror would have come alive and murdered him if he’d ever done such a thing, he was sure. “Unless one of you can conjure a bridge,” he added, thinking of the old story. Mother was more of a Warlock's Hairy Heart type, and Lucille enjoyed the Fountain of Fair Fortune, with the handsome heir to the fountain garden revealing himself at the end and banishing the wicked Muggle about to kill the three ladies and revealing he had been guiding them all the time and then marrying Amata, but Mal liked the Three Brothers best.

OOC: Mal's mother may or may not have, um, edited the Fountain of Fair Fortune fairy tale in several ways when trying to teach her children about morals.

0 Malcolm Carey Directing from on high 256 Malcolm Carey 0 5

Theresa Carey

March 24, 2013 10:56 PM

Team Eight, please proceed to ruined clothes.... by Theresa Carey

Theresa had been surprised to hear that she was the overseer, since it was a position she never would have thought to volunteer for. She didn’t like the idea of bludgeoning her way through a physical challenge in public – it wasn’t likely to be ladylike, and would probably involve a great mess as well, which would ruin part of her already comparatively small school wardrobe – but she never would have considered herself the brain of the team. If anything, that would be Marcus, the one who had calmed everyone down and taken down the boggart in the first challenge. He was definitely a better candidate for the role of brain than she was.

He, however, was very tall, so she guessed it did make some sense for him to be the one doing physical things, and she was a Carey girl, so it made plenty of sense for her not to, in the generic sense. So here she was, looking at a model of the maze and the obstacles, trying in her few minutes of lead time to figure out as many routes as she could and – maybe even more importantly – exactly what the properties of the thing she was using to scry were, since she had never worked with anything like it before and wasn’t sure about perspective, scale, visibility….

At last, though, her time was up, and she took a deep breath, reaching up to adjust her hair, even though it was in a plait down her back and there was really nothing to do with it. Even though she wasn’t really participating, she had still felt the need to make that small concession to the fact she was in an event. Then she had made it all irrelevant by wearing her pretty new black high heeled shoes and a pretty dress and makeup and the emerald necklace Aunt Lorraine had given her for Christmas. There would be a celebration at the end, she wanted to look, if not her best, at least decent.

“Begin,” she called, a little hesitantly, to the rest of her team, hoping this thing was working and that they would hear a word she said. Wearing a dress on a broom would not be a good thing, especially since the dress she had on was not exactly the longest dress she owned.

"Um, turn left, then turn right when you get to - you know, the next turn," she directed them. The easy part of her job, she was pretty sure, ended as soon as she finished that sentence. She made a face as she added, "then the first obstacle will be right in front of you. It's a mud pit." Hopefully they could outthink it on the way there, or at least get through the preliminary feeling-blank stage of things.

0 Theresa Carey Team Eight, please proceed to ruined clothes.... 219 Theresa Carey 0 5

Arnold Carey

March 24, 2013 11:53 PM

Now's the time for the real Team Nine by Arnold Carey

Arnold would never admit it to anyone, even Arthur, but when he had first heard that the team was going to need a brain to run it through the second challenge, his first thought had been that they were doomed. He liked his teammates well enough, they seemed like nice people, but a dangerously intellectual group of people Team Nine was…not. The first challenge made it seem like Clara Abernathy had some fairly freakish skill with a wand, but there were still probably only so many facts she knew to go with that. He was a sixth year Aladren, but any attempt he made at unleashing a hailstorm of knowledge against other sixth and seventh years was unlikely to yield more than just enough ice for a decent glass of tea. In the academic tea time of the second challenge, he could just see himself and Fae being left with the hot green tea while everyone else got the good iced tea and laughed at them, and then everybody else’s kids laughed at their kids, and then one of their grandkids decided just not to take it anymore and killed them with poisoned tea for not being as smart as Great-Uncle Arthur and went on to become a Dark Lord type wherever it was they grew black tea so he never had to drink a tisane again….

…Or something like that. Anyway, he was relieved when he heard Amity Brockert had volunteered. A second year was almost certainly dumber about at least a few things than he was, but maybe it wouldn’t be patently obvious, and besides, in the physical part, he was sure he could do better than her. For one thing, sports were what he did, and for another thing, somehow she just…didn’t strike him as a very energetic person, somehow. There was nothing wrong with that, of course, however weird he might think it was, but it really wasn’t much use in a sporting match.

His team was about halfway through the list of those going, so he had plenty of time to wonder just what they were doing in there and whether or not they would be able to do it faster, and also to notice that more than a few overseers were beginners or at least in the lower ranks of intermediates. That, he had to admit, made him feel better. So did the impression he had gotten, from what had been said before team one began, of what the challenge was really about. Sure, navigating the maze to find the obstacles was going to be a tough task by itself, but at least it wasn’t a trivia contest. On anything other than this year’s Quidditch rankings, that was not a thing he thought he could do.

When team one went in, he traitorously crossed his fingers, wishing Fae luck. He did the same for team four, full of Quidditch teammates and his cousin. As team six walked in, he found himself thinking that he would really like a glass of tea, and team eight nearly made him laugh as he thought of what he’d noticed earlier that their overseer, Theresa, was wearing. Then, at long last, it was time for team nine.

“Here we go,” he muttered to himself, and exchanged a glance with Arthur, further down the line, as he stood up. Then he went forward more cheerfully, knowing his brother wished him luck, too.

Soon, they came to a mud pit. Arnold guessed he could think of worse ways to start the challenge. Except… “What’s the catch?” he asked aloud, looking around his teammates. "It can't be as easy as just walking across, can it?" That wasn't much of a challenge, in his estimation, so there had to be a catch: quicksand somewhere, or sudden drop-offs, or a boggart which would try to make them trip up and drown, or...something.

0 Arnold Carey Now's the time for the real Team Nine 181 Arnold Carey 0 5

Marcus Williams

March 25, 2013 10:59 AM

It's magic, they can be fixed. by Marcus Williams

Marcus was pretty excited for the second challenge. The first one really hadn’t been all that terrible. It was a little weird and probably scary for some of them, but overall, he felt the team had done a decent job of getting through it. They might not have been the fastest, but Marcus wasn’t too concerned about winning. He wasn’t really all that competitive despite enjoying playing basketball and football. He liked the sport of it and the team camaraderie. Everything else was just secondary. Then again, he lived in a city where friendship either lifted you up or tore you down. It was the biggest difference in someone’s life.

He had initially picked Theresa out of everyone on the team because he felt she was pretty intelligent. He might have been wrong though and this was something that he would find out by the end of this challenge, but out of everyone, she was who he picked. He might have thought of himself or Phoenix, but the notice said this was a very physical demanding challenge and since they were the Advance students as well as fit males, he didn’t want to have either of them sit out. It helped that Marcus was also hitting 6’3 now, so if they needed height, he had it for them.

He didn’t think the first years knew enough about spells or really, anything regarding magic (even if from a magical family) to really be of help as the ‘brain’ of the group, so he left them off of it as well. Between the girls, Marcus felt that Arabella might have been more physical and more willing to get dirty than Theresa. It wasn’t to say that Theresa couldn’t, but Marcus had a feeling she was one of those girls who would be upset at the end of the challenge instead of happy.

Of course, come the day of the challenge and Marcus saw Theresa wearing a dress and heels. Marcus couldn’t believe it and felt for sure that he had had a mini heard attack at the sight of her. He had gone over in his head what the notice said and although it said they were only indirectly connected to the physical challenge, there was no indication that they wouldn’t have to be doing something that she might not have been able to do in heels and a dress. He said nothing though, but only shook his head. He was pretty sure not even Sara Raines, who was by far the most proper girl he had ever met, wouldn’t have worn a dress during a challenge.

Not thinking about it, Marcus waiting with the rest of the teams until they were called. While waiting for Theresa to let them go, Marcus turned to everyone, “Just like the last challenge, stick together. Phoenix and Arabella, look out for Charlie and Julian as best you can.” Theresa told them to begin and Marcus led them into the Labyrinth. Theresa seemed uncertain when she started giving directions, but he followed what she said anyway and found she had been correct about the mud pit. It could have been worse.

“Alright, what’s the best course of action?” he asked everyone, including Theresa. “Should we plow through it? Charlie and Julian can piggy back on me and Phoenix. By the looks of it, it seems to be of various depths of mud. Or maybe try to transfigure it into something else? It’s a large area, so I’m not sure how well that will go.” Marcus added.

6 Marcus Williams It's magic, they can be fixed. 180 Marcus Williams 0 5

Derry Pierce

March 25, 2013 12:48 PM

Let's make a good start of this, Team Eighteen by Derry Pierce

As they were Team Eighteen, Derry's team had a fair amount of waiting in front of them before they would get to run the course. He watched in interest as each prior team disappered into the labyrinth, some accompanied by a broom riding overseer, some just instructed to go forth by a disembodied voice. He suspected his team would get the later since he didn't think Brianna was much for brooms.

"Obstacle Course, guys," he began his pep talk shortly after Team Seventeen vanished from sight. "This is going to be awesome." Linus, Alan, and Anthony might not entirely agree, as none of them struck him as particularly eager to climb over hedges or whatever, but Derry was going to enjoy this. Obstacle Courses just sounded awesome, and he had no idea how ~~Amel~~, er, Coach Pierce had kept this to herself all through midterm. Or, at least, the part of it where she was home instead of being the Crotalus HoH for the kids who stayed at school.

"As you all probably figured out by now, Brianna is our overseer," he continued, though that was kind of obvious by her joining the group around Professor Meade back at the beginning. There were only three overseers left in that group now that the first seventeen had already gone through the Overseer Entrance to the Labyrinth, so he thought she would have a good chance of seeing him as he waved at her, gave an encouraging grin, and made a thumbs up sign, before turning his attention back to the guys.

"We're going to push through this as quick as we can. We don't have any first years, so everyone should be able to do basic core spells by now, and we're all pretty healthy." He did not feel the need to point out this way why Brianna had been selected as overseer, but didn't think it would take an Aladren to figure out the reasoning or conclude it was the best division of their team's resources. She was getting pretty handy with her crutches now, but an obstacle course was no place for someone who could not walk unassisted. "We are in a great position to do really well in this challenge. Go Team Eighteen!"

He wondered if maybe he should have waited longer before the speech, because they still had to wait for Seventeen to finish, and for Coach Pierce to tell Meade to bring in Brianna, and for Brianna to take stock of the course, but eventually they were allowed to begin.

Derry led the way to the first obstacle a brisk walk that the second years may have had a little trouble keeping pace with, but it wasn't a long trek before they came to a stop in front of the mud pit. There were no obvious means for crossing it without wading into the pit itself.

Derry did not let this bother him. Mud was just wet dirt and people walked over dirt all the time. "Can anyone thing of a reason why a whole bunch of drying charms couldn't give us a path of normal dirt? And who knows how to cast drying chams?"

1 Derry Pierce Let's make a good start of this, Team Eighteen 189 Derry Pierce 0 5

Effie Arbon

March 25, 2013 1:14 PM

From the safety of my ivory tower... (wotw) by Effie Arbon

Effie felt a twinge of guilt as she left Isabel with the rest of the team and went off to enjoy the cosy safety of the overseer position. She had assumed that she or her friend would have been the logical choice, being disinclined to scrambling, scuffling and who knew what other vile activities were indicated by a physical challenge. Had the choice been presented, she would have nominated her friend, wishing to spare her the ordeal. Effie at least was accustomed to taking long walks and could keep her balance on a broom, although she suspected that the difference that made was so slight as to be negligible. However, Reggie had determined that she was the best fit for the job at hand. She had assured Isabel that she would have got her out of it if she could but she still felt that she had behaved utterly traitorously as she abandoned her at the start line with Those People and going to face That Challenge. She could only hope that Isabel did not feel the same way.

Having wished her team luck, Effie stood in front of the scrying model. Time did not seem to exist in this little corner of the gardens and thus it was hard to know how long she was looking at it for. She wanted to get a good overview and be able to help her team but she didn't feel like she could stare for hours. Or indeed, that she would be able to come up with a full plan without liaising with the team and finding out what they could do. She glanced over the whole model, trying to get an idea of what all the obstacles were before focussing in on the first couple of items. She might need to help them choose a path but could possibly work on that whilst they were getting through the first part. She zoomed in on this now, noting the different shading across areas of the mud pit – oh, poor Isabel! - suggesting contours. She poked experimentally, measuring the depths.

“Itineris,” she muttered. Little silver dots dropped from her wand to the model, marking out a route. It was hard to be sure it was the most direct, or the least engulfing. More than once she hit a dead end, or rather a pit fall she found unacceptably deep. But after some minutes, she had what she thought was a reasonable compromise of a quick route and safety for Isabel's footwear and legs.

“Hello? Team fifteen?” she called a little uncertainly. It was, even for a witch, a rather odd sensation to be talking to thin air. She directed her comments at the model in front of her. “Proceed if you can hear me – you will not have to go far before you encounter a... uh mud pit,” she added apologetically. She watched the little dots labelled with her team mates' names proceeding towards their first obstacle. It seemed to work then... She heard Reggie's voice coming from the direction of the model.

“It's quite deep in places,” she cautioned Reggie. Stones would not bear the girls' weight if there was nothing underneath them. “I have plotted what I think is a good balance between avoiding the deepest parts and getting across quickly,” although in Effie's world of compromise, the first factor was definitely far more important. If she was judging the scale correctly, it should not get to their knees. It needn't even do that with Reggie's plan to lay stones along their path. “Your best bet is to start on the far right hand side.”

13 Effie Arbon From the safety of my ivory tower... (wotw) 238 Effie Arbon 0 5

Waverly Canterbury

March 25, 2013 3:45 PM

Mud's good for the skin, right? by Waverly Canterbury

The moment Waverly caught heed of this challenge being more physical, she had been a little hesitant. She was not naturally athletic, at least in her mind, and she didn't enjoy sports as much as other people. If it was an obstacle course that meant running races or something like boot camp, she would let down her team for sure. She really hoped it wasn't like that, but still felt a little unsure when she went to the gardens at the set time.

Her outfit today was prepared for sweat and hard work. She went camping and hiking with her family a lot in the summers and winters in Arizona, so she was used to sweat and all. She didn't like getting dirty, but she didn't mind it when she was prepared for it.

Reggie had picked Effie to be the Overseer and Waverly was a little annoyed that she hadn't been consulted. She wasn't the kind of girl who held grudges, however, and she knew getting upset about it wasn't practical. Reggie was the team leader so it was obvious that she would have the power to pick the Overseer. Waverly wasn't sure if she had wanted to be the Overseer anyway, but it didn't matter what she thought now. When Reggie told them that opting out wasn't an option, she nodded. "Crystal clear," she replied. Opting out wouldn't be fun anyway.

It took forever for their team to finally get called, but at last it was their turn. She took a deep breath before following her team in. When she saw the sign leading them to their first obstacle, she was really glad she had put her hair in a ponytail and her gym clothes on. At least she didn't mind these getting dirty. She was almost pumped up to get into that mud by the time they reached it, but she hadn't expected there to be so much.

Effie was talking to them, trying to lead them through, and Waverly tried to listen carefully. Being lead by someone else meant a lot of trust was being placed on the Overseer. Waverly had to believe Effie when she said that the shallower end of the mud was on the far right side. She looked at her teammates. "I don't mind getting too dirty so I can go first. Maybe it'll be faster just getting across without the rocks unless you guys really want them."

Being the guinea pig was easier than putting her teammates through unnecessary dirt. Waverly was from the desert; she was used to lots of it. She went to the side Effie had told them and took off her shoes and socks and stepped in. It was surface level only and didn't even cover the top of her feet. "So far so good," she told them as she cautiously walked through. Five steps in she reached a sudden drop and she gasped, pulling her foot back to get back to the shallower area. "Are you guys okay back there?" she asked, looking back at the rest of her team. "Effie, where next?" she asked the air.

19 Waverly Canterbury Mud's good for the skin, right? 218 Waverly Canterbury 0 5

Brianna Japos

March 25, 2013 4:11 PM

Hopefully, I'll be of help to you. by Brianna Japos

Brianna wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be doing for the Overseer position or what exactly it entailed. When she had been home for holiday break, she had talked with her mother about proper attire for the challenges considering she had only the skort to where during the first one. Her mother had gone shopping and come back with somewhat loose jogging pants for her to wear. Brianna didn’t mind wearing pants, she just didn’t have any. For the longest time she had been pretending to be a girl from a rich proper Pureblood family and so, she only had dresses and skirts in her wardrobe. Her current problem was working herself into the jeans. Now that her legs were stronger, it actually wasn’t terrible, plus the fabric stretched and weren’t skin tight to make it difficult for her. So, she felt more prepared this time around in a fitted t-shirt, zip up jacket, pants, and sneakers than she had during the last challenge. Not that it seemed to matter since she was going to be Overseer, but just in case she needed to do something, she was ready.

Right from the start, Brianna was separated from her teammates. She really didn’t know what to do with herself as she waited for their team to come up. She really wished she could sit down, but sitting on the ground was too difficult for her to pull herself back up again on normal surfaces let alone the uneven surface of the gardens. So, she just stood there with the other overseers trying to not star too long as people since there was nothing else for her to focus on.

As the Overseers disappeared into the gardens while their teams were called forward, Brianna ended up just looking at the ground most of the time, only to look up again when the team ahead of them went in. She caught sight of Derry wave at her and give her the thumbs up sign. Brianna smiled back at him and threw her own thumbs up back to him. She supposed it was his way of possibly calming down any nerves that she might have had being on her own and she appreciated it. She probably should be nervous all things considered, but she wasn’t nearly as much as she would have been had she had to do the physical part of the challenge. She was thinking of this as a practice practical for the CATS exams.

Finally, it was her turn to go in and she followed the staff in and found herself with two options. Had Brianna been healthy, she probably would have chosen the broom. She knew how to fly just fine. She didn’t necessarily enjoy it, but she knew how to do it and it meant she could actually be there for her team. However, she didn’t know how sitting in that position without support would feel on her back and so, she opted for the weird map scrying option.

Sitting at the table, Brianna took a few minutes to look over the first part of the challenge. It was simple enough, just a mud pit. It was after the mud pit that Brianna was concerned with, but she thought they were a bunch of boys who probably climbed trees an swung on ropes growing up anyway… she hoped. “You may begin.” Brianna said at the map, hoping that was how it worked. “Take the first left and then a right and you’ll be at the first challenge. A mud pit.” She informed them. Although she didn’t want to admit it aloud, she thought it was sort of fun watching them from a map by small little dots. She almost jumped when she heard Derry’s voice ask about the drought charm. “Sitis is the charm.” Brianna offered, although she didn’t know how helpful it would be if they didn’t know the wand movement.

6 Brianna Japos Hopefully, I'll be of help to you. 203 Brianna Japos 0 5

James Owen

March 25, 2013 5:16 PM

Team SIX let's do better than last time by James Owen

In some ways, the ignorance of the contents of the first challenge had offered some form of bliss, in that the teams could not reasonably plan for the wholly unknown. However, the noticed that had recently appeared in the Cascade Hall had created a vague impression of what might be expected in the second challenge of the year, and it had presented James with a conundrum. The note had alluded to separation of brains and brawn, but amongst his team, the seventh year had already concluded that both these attributes were shared largely between just two of its members: himself and the irrepressible Mr McLachlan. They were joined by a team of tiny Teppenpaws, and Liam, about whom James had formed no real opinion in any direction.

Regardless of his personal feelings on the matter, James was the official leader of the group, and a decision lay before him. He could either sacrifice a large proportion of the muscle of the group to lead it successfully through assorted trials, or take a chance on one of the younger students demonstrating hitherto unforeseen intelligence. The first years girls in particular might not be able to contribute much in terms of physical strength, but the seventh year didn't feel comfortable in assigning them as guides, either. Besides, didn't younger children have more energy? The more he thought about it, the more James was certain that he would feel more comfortable with an Aladren at their head, despite the obvious drawbacks of removing one of the advanced students from the physical part of the challenge.

Inevitably, James had concluded that he was effectively in charge of the team, and should therefore be in charge of their endeavours. He nominated himself the oversser for the second challenge, and tasked Josh with looking after the rest of the group in a more direct manner. Therefore he departed from the rest of his group, having selected the scrying option of communication, and wished them luck.

Having directed the group to the first task, james was already feeling quite pleased that he didn't have to wade his way through a mud pit. After some examination of the model representation, he instructed his team, "Okay, it looks like the best route is down the right side," he began, "though there might be an alternative to having to wade at all." He was not in Aladren by mistake, after all; James was already considering the most viable options. "A strengthening charm might hold the mud so you can walk on top of it," he suggested, "or you could try transfiguring a portion of it to something more solid." He would have to leave the details up to Josh and the others, because he didn't know their particular strengths or weaknesses when it came to spell casting.

0 James Owen Team SIX let's do better than last time 168 James Owen 0 5

Effie Arbon

March 25, 2013 6:25 PM

In small doses, I believe by Effie Arbon

Muggleborns. If Effie had not read numerous pamphlets warning her of their stupidity, she would hardly have credited it. Apparently the girl was keen to go haring into the mud without any warning of how deep she would sink. Ordinarily, such naturally selective procedures would have seemed like a good thing but currently it would impede Isabel in getting out the other end of the challenge. Plus Effie was currently responsible for said idiot and she doubted the school would look kindly on it if she allowed one of her team mates to come to harm.

“I wouldn't recommend it...” she began, in relation to not using the rocks. “I liked the idea of – slow down!” she warned too late, as the little Waverly dot tore out along the right edge. Before she could finish her sentence, she heard a large squelch and Waverly asking for further directions. “I was suggesting combining Regina's idea with my directions. You need to bear a little towards the left – the raised bit curves back towards the centre. It's quite wide to start with, although it gets narrower after... uh, I guess about two feet?” it was a little hard to be sure what scale she was working with. “Your quickest route is along the right hand edge of it, but there's quite a severe drop on that side – not enough to go over your heads but maybe waist-high in some places.

“Does that make sense?” she asked. It was all so clear when laid out in front on her, the contours easily traceable with her wand, and her route marked out on the surface, of which she had a bird's eye view. Translating that purely into words, trying to recreate that picture for the people on ground was surprisingly difficult. What was the phrase? A picture was worth a thousand words. Those teams who had people on brooms would probably have an advantage for this part of the task. She could only hope that the balance would be redressed later on.

OOC – Obviously I will do my best to interject frequently with further directions, however I will not regard it as writing for Effie if you wish to make general decisions about where you are being instructed to go, e.g. bearing to the left or whatever, either as a whole group instruction or to you personally if you might not be walking quite straight. She will also do her best to keep you out of waist-high mud and would thus instruct you to stop before you toppled over an edge.

13 Effie Arbon In small doses, I believe 238 Effie Arbon 0 5

Topher Calhoun

March 25, 2013 7:24 PM

Think of the minerals, Team Twenty. by Topher Calhoun

As Topher (who had gradually gone from interested to enthusiastic to impatient to bored about the day’s events as nineteen other groups went into the maze ahead of his own) finally drew his wand and prepared to enter the maze, he looked over his team one more time and felt a vague sense of regret. From the beginning, it had been vividly obvious that Valerie Lennox had to be the overseer – he was not actually sure if she was even allowed to participate in anything physical, and even if she was, it was obviously not a good idea to allow her to do so – but he did so wish he could have had two overseers instead of just one, or an assistant to the overseer, or something. He didn’t know McKinley Andrews well, but from what he had seen since the challenges alerted him to her existence, this was going to be as much fun as a nightmare occurring during a migraine brought on by bashing his head repeatedly into the nearest hard object. Just the location promised that, and that was before they got to any obstacles.

Since there was nothing he could do about it, though, he focused on being the upbeat team leader, and not on wondering why in the name of all that was good they had chosen to give him a team made up almost entirely of socialites. Yes, he had a sort-of sister who was one, but the school didn’t know about Caroline. He had been Christopher Proctor before his dad came into the picture, there was no official connection between him and his biological father at all. They should have given this lot to Russell, who at least had the very distant cousin with the stare and the tuition-priced shoes and the rich girls falling all over him, and let Topher have Mellie and her friend. And Paul, he’d keep Paul, he guessed – the guy was the Quidditch alternate, that beat nothing.

“Everyone do your best and we should be okay,” he said, as optimistically as he could, to the team. “Remember, stay with the team, keep your eyes open, listen to Valerie, and no matter what – don’t panic.”

Getting to the mud pit, he nearly forgot to take his own advice. A mud pit. He was sure his aristocratic first and second years were just going to love that, though hope sprung eternal – he had seen pictures of women with mud and cucumbers on their faces, his mom had actually been in one of them when Dad had given her a gift certificate to the spa for one of her birthdays and the friend she took with her decided to immortalize the occasion, so maybe girls didn’t mind mud so much - it had minerals! - even if this wasn’t quite the same shade as the spa stuff, and maybe they had all secretly always yearned to play in the mud but had been restrained by their parents. Maybe.

He pointed his wand at the mud and tried a “Diffindo.” For a hopeful second, he thought it might have worked - the mud did seem to begin to part - but then it stopped and the sludge moved back together. Too thick, he guessed, or magic-resistant; hard to say without further experimenting, which would cost them valuable time. He looked around at his team. "What do you guys think?" he said. "Should we all try that at once and see if it works, or just try to wade through it? Or something completely different? I'm open to suggestions."

0 Topher Calhoun Think of the minerals, Team Twenty. 192 Topher Calhoun 0 5

Reggie

March 25, 2013 8:46 PM

It has fantastic minerals, or so I've heard. by Reggie

She wasn’t surprised that Isabel agreed with her to use the rocks. Isabel was such a small thing and one of those girls that Reggie would never be. Proper and Pure. Reggie was small herself, not quite 5’3, but she felt like she was strong. She spent most of her childhood and adolescence camping, hiking, swimming, and every day running around. Reggie wasn’t even sure if these proper girls knew what it was to sweat. So, instead of forcing them to break a nail, she’d help them out as best she could during this adventure. Besides, it wasn’t like she wanted to be a complete mess herself when she came out the other end of it.

She looked up toward the sky when she heard Effie’s voice. It was really weird to hear her disembodied voice. “Great, thank you, Effie!” Reggie said cheerfully. Because Isabel was still working on the team, Reggie knew Effie wouldn’t do anything to sabotage them if it meant sacrificing her best friend. That was a little bit of a mean thought to have, but she felt it was true. Under different circumstances, Reggie wasn’t sure if she would have believed anything the second year said.

Reggie went to discuss tactics and put the rocks down for her teammates when Waverly charged forward. Annoyed, which only worsened when the fourth year took her shoes off! The girl didn’t even care to wait for instructions. This was what was going to get their team into trouble. Reggie was so annoyed right now and she knew she probably looked that way too. Her jaw was tense, her hands clenched to the point where she could feel the rocks digging into her fist. Reggie took a deep breath and turned away from the younger girl when Effie started to tell Waverly where to go and towards the rest of her team. “Well, while Waverly wastes our time doing things her own way, I’m going to start dropping rocks where Effie has outlined for us. This way, the rest of you guys can just amble on over after me.” Reggie advised them.

“Please, keep your shoes on at all times. We don’t know what’s in this mud. You could step on something and really hurt yourself. Also, I don’t want you guys having to carry around your shoes. The only thing that should be in your hands is your wand. We can clean off your shoes when we get to the other side. Let me get at least three stones out and then Isabel, I want you to come next, then Eris, and then Nora. Everyone ready?”

With that, Reggie plopped a rock a step into the mud and used her wand to enlarge it. It didn’t need to be very big at this point because the mud was so shallow. It didn’t take her long to reach where Waverly had gotten stuck, but Effie had done a great job of guiding her that Reggie didn’t have trouble figuring out where to drop the stone and tested it out with her own weight to be sure it was securely at the bottom before continuing on.

It had taken several rocks and one slip into the mud when she lost her footing, but it was only as deep as her knee, but she had managed to do it. She really felt that this first hurtle was meant to be rather simple (although some teams may over think it) but she knew the next hurtle would be twice as hard. Effie proved herself nicely as the Overseer and Reggie really hoped that it kept up for the rest of the challenge. “Awesome job, Effie!” Reggie called out into the air, complimenting her teammate. “Alright team, keep it up! We can do this! Just a little further!” She called out to the others who were still crossing.

6 Reggie It has fantastic minerals, or so I've heard. 187 Reggie 0 5

Waverly

March 26, 2013 5:48 AM

Hopefully not dangerous chemicals by Waverly

Rocks were a good idea, but Waverly wanted to continue to plow forward through the mud. If Effie led them well enough, then it should be fine. Reggie was obviously upset with her taking charge, but Waverly only thought of saving time. Taking time to measure where to put the rocks and enlarge them and then test them out took time which Waverly didn't want to waste. Hadn't these girls ever been through mud before?

And then she remembered pureblood girls probably hadn't. Waverly going through was just another bad representation of muggle-borns, but Waverly couldn't care. She really didn't mind mud. It felt nice between the toes. Reggie also told them to keep their shoes on, too late for Waverly, but Waverly thought it was a lot easier to feel the edge of a drop in the mud with her toes than with shoes. Besides, shoes were liable to get stuck and then there would be more time spent trying to dig it out. It all made sense in her head, as she trusted the professors not to kill them, but of course no one thought the same way.

Reggie took charge of doing the rocks and Waverly waited idly by, trying not to be annoyed at herself. She would never be as awesome as Reggie or as smart as Nora. She was just going to stay in the back now and not get in anyone's way. She sighed as she followed right after Reggie, allowing the older girl to take charge of everything. Waverly wasn't used to being the follower so it would take a little practice. She got to the edge and, while everyone else was crossing, she turned to Reggie.

"Sorry for not waiting to listen to directions," she said, a little embarrassed. "I just thought going through would be faster. I won't do that next time." She cleaned her feet with magic and put on her socks and shoes again before smiling at the girl she admired apologetically.

0 Waverly Hopefully not dangerous chemicals 0 Waverly 0 5

Maximilian Joshua McLachlan

March 26, 2013 6:07 AM

Hear, hear. by Maximilian Joshua McLachlan

The moment Josh had seen the team roster, he hadn't been very pleased. He had enough confidence in his skills to take care of all the younger students, which might have been behind the professors' reasoning in putting all of the children with him and James, but it was still not the ideal group. Josh had no qualms with losing, but if it meant having to babysit instead of really work with the team, he wasn't looking forward to it.

James was the official leader of the group and for that Josh was glad. He didn't want the responsibility of looking after a group like this. Or any group. He was surprised, however, when James decided to put himself as the Overseer. Josh hadn't played a sport in years. It was only genetics that kept him thin, but the leader had decided. Josh could do a lot more of the physical work and he was very competent when it came to spellwork. He didn't doubt he and James could complete this obstacle course easily.

The team was directed to the mud pit and Josh stood in front of it, his mind already calculating. It was just like working with water, except it had different properties. All they needed was for it to become a solid and that would be easy to walk across. James told them the right side was shallower, but if Josh could have it his way, he wouldn't want any of his teammates to have to walk through that. James's advice was good and Josh thought for a moment, wondering how well his younger teammates could cast spells.

Josh turned to the rest of them, having made up his mind in a matter of seconds. "I, sorry, we need to turn this mud into a solid form which can be done easily. If anyone else knows the spell, feel free to cast it, but only if you are sure you won't mess it up. Otherwise, I'll let you know when it's solid enough to cross. Just follow after me." After a moment, he thought he ought to thank James for his advice. "Sound good, James?"

With that, Josh turned to the mud and began on a section of the mud. The magic wouldn't spread through the mud, which would have been convenient, so Josh would only be able to make a wide-enough path for them. If he had wanted to solidify the entire mud pit, he could have, but it would take time and drain him which wasn't ideal. "Duro," he said, casting the charm, and the mud visibly hardened in front of them. He cast the spell a couple more times around it, watching as the mud hardened more. He took a couple steps and found it hard enough to hold his weight. "Follow me carefully and don't veer off. It's only a path," he told his teammates behind him.

19 Maximilian Joshua McLachlan Hear, hear. 184 Maximilian Joshua McLachlan 0 5

Linus Macaulay

March 26, 2013 9:22 AM

The tables have turned by Linus Macaulay

At the start of the academic year, Linus could remember feeling particularly low-spirited. He had been passed over as prefect, Quidditch had been cancelled, it was the first year of serious exams, and one of his friends had been seriously injured with nobody thinking him sufficiently important to inform. All in all, he would gladly have returned to the bliss of his summer vacation. Conversely, making his way back to school after the midterm break had quite the opposite effect; Linus had a firmer friendship with Brianna, a date to the ball, he had been named assitant captain for the Crotalus team, and these school challenges were actually turning out to be a very welcome distraction from the ever-accumulating pile of homework assignments. Currently, the propspect of an afternoon of fresh air in the labyrinth was one that brought joy. Hence Linus was in an unusually good mood even as they waited for the majority of the other teams to enter the maze.

Finally it was their turn, and Linus joined the other boys in the team in entering the maze while Brianna's disembodied voice guided them. He wasn't even rattled when the first obstacle transpired to be a mud pit. Admittedly, Linus took pride in his smart appearance, but he had spent countless hours in his earlier youth getting sufficiently muddy to make his mother exclaim with vigor. The fifth year was good and ready to go wading in, but, perhaps fortunately, Derwent had hesitated before the pit and suggested a drying charm. With unexpected disappointment, Linus acknowledged the sense in avoiding a mud-coating for the reminader of the activity, and so offered his services. "I can do the charm," he said, raising his wand from his pocket. While he performed most admirably in DADA, his wandwork was relatively consistant in other subjects, and Linus worked well under pressure. With Brianna watching his every move, younger students to inspire, and an imposed time limit for the competition, he felt a reasonable level of expectation, and, thankfully, performed a successful drying charm across the first portion of the pit.

"Let me just... test it," he suggested, reluctant as he was for another member of the team to be disappointed by placing unfounded trust in his skills. He stepped out with where he'd cast the charm near the centre of the pit, and felt a solid but unstable surface beneath his feet. "The top is dry but there's still mositness underneath," he evaluated. Considering he was standing safely and only Derwent looked as though he was greater in mass overall, Linus was relatively certain the rest of the team could cross this way. "The charm will need to be cast again further along," he added.

0 Linus Macaulay The tables have turned 205 Linus Macaulay 0 5

Josephine Owen

March 26, 2013 9:45 AM

Time for Team Sweet Sixteen to Shine by Josephine Owen

One of the many qualities demonstrated by a good leader was the ability to delegate. Josephine would remind herself of this whenever she felt impending guilt over her simple dismissal of the decision to nominate an overseer for the second task. She had read and re-read the notice in the hall, and the list she had written of her teammates and their assorted attributes, and a simple solution had not presented itself. A physical challenge didn't sound like the sort of task at which team sixteen would naturally excel. The problem, Josephine had mused, wasn't that they were all female; the problem was that they were all such girls.

Eventually, Josephine had narrowed her options for overseer down to Lucille and Melanie, as they were neither the oldest nor youngest of the group (and the extremes might be best suited to the physical, rather than mental, aspects of the challenge), plus they seemed least easily persuadable into activities that could potentially be construed as unladylike. The means for the reaching the conclusion had also been left to the third year girls to decide. Retrospectively, Josephine considered that she might just have flipped a coin, or held a team vote, but what was done was done, and seeing as the two students in question were friends and in Teppenpaw, hopefully any damage that arose was minimal and short-lived.

So it was that team sixteen had gathered on the day of the challenge, and Josephine was not hugely enraptured to discover that she would be participating in an obstacle course in the gardens. However, before she jumped to any negative conlusions, she considered that maybe the obstacles would be easy, or pleasant, or fun, at the very least. Yet as it soon transpired, the second challenge, in a similar fashion to the first, would prove to be an experience the sixth year would happily forgo. "A mud pit?" she questioned with an attitude of resignation. She looked at her jeans and blouse, and while they were second-hand, she didn't relish the thought of coating them in sticky mud. She looking longingly towards the opt-out path, and wondered whether tackling the pit would take longer than two minutes.

Feeling as though her leadership credentials were dissipating by the second, Josephine looked to the other members of the team for their input. "Thoughts?"

0 Josephine Owen Time for Team Sweet Sixteen to Shine 196 Josephine Owen 0 5

Keme RunningBear

March 26, 2013 6:29 PM

Reacting from on low by Keme RunningBear

Keme had felt that he had done a fairly decent job of coping since coming to Sonora. The place was strange and the people stranger, but he had done what he could to fit in and did his best to show everyone that his people were just as important. The challenges were a bit of a rough patch for him. It forced him to get to know more people other than his roommate, Rajid, who was equally as quiet as he was. Malcolm and Adam were okay. Neither of them had offended him in any way at the very least. Arthur and Laurie were too old to make a difference to Keme and Amira was a girl who he didn’t find all that intelligent.

All things considered though, Keme didn’t mind working with them. They managed the first challenge alright, he was sure they would make it through the rest just fine too. Although, he wasn’t delusional to believe that they would be the winning team. With three first years, himself included, Keme was aware of their limitations. Even so, he knew that these challenges were making him better at his abilities and, in the end, he would have these memories and could share them with his friends and family back home.

When they finally entered the maze, Keme allowed his mind to briefly wonder what was ahead of them. It was a school and they already did the scary things in the last challenge, so he felt these ones would likely be more practical. They were outside after all. He wondered if it would be like the games he played back home. Like hide and seek, or track the animal. He could do those well. However, they were informed of the mud pit and Keme’s heart sank a little bit. What was so bad about a mud pit? This wasn’t a challenge at all.

“Why do we have to do anything to the mud?” Keme asked them. “We can trek across it easily enough and then use a cleaning spell to get rid of it all once we’re on the other side.” He suggested. Wouldn’t that be easier than trying to figure out the best way to transfigure a pond of mud? “Unless you all have a problem with getting a little dirty.” He thought, giving them all a look of boredom as he said it. They were from different worlds even if they were all the same status of blood.

6 Keme RunningBear Reacting from on low 249 Keme RunningBear 0 5

Henny B-F-R

March 26, 2013 6:56 PM

Overseeing team one by Henny B-F-R

Henny's feelings on being overseer depended on entirely on why her team had appointed her to that position. Judging by the other team's choices, there was a split between those who were the brain of the group and those who would struggle to complete the physical elements of the challenge. If it was the former, that was fine with her. If it was the latter... Well, at the start of the year she would have thought that was reasonable. She was a slim girl who spent all of her time in the library. However, with Alicia's training regime, she was fitter than she'd ever been before. She had honest to goodness muscle tone! Just. Not that she could exactly tell her team that... It would have been nice to put some of Alicia's training to use. To prove it had been worth it. Henny had avoided the subject of the first task wherever possible. She felt that she had let Alicia down. All of her additional work, and all Henny had done was to fall apart. Perhaps if she had got through the physical part of this challenge she could have felt emancipated. She could only hope that she could somehow prove herself in her role as overseer.

In deference to the nature of the challenge, she had dressed for something active, even though she didn't really expect to have a call for it. The items had been a recent addition to her wardrobe, since Alicia had announced her training plan. It had been a startling realisation that she didn't own anything appropriate. It had made her feel almost prissy, like one of those delicate, ornamental girls. However, the truth of the matter was she spent the majority of her time reading, and that didn't really require specific clothing. Her Dad bought most of her outfits and he usually chose skirts and dresses for her. However, in a bid not to flash her knickers at all the boys when doing the climbing wall, she had written home for sportswear. His desire to make her his sweet little girl seemed to have gone into overdrive and, denied skirts and dresses, there had been a startling increase in the amount of pink items and floral patterns. Her cotton shorts were pink, with darker pink roses. She wore a pink sleeveless tracksuit top which was firmly zipped up. The reason for this was another factor in why she was sad to not be competing directly. The t-shirt underneath had not been worn to any of Alicia's training sessions and had been reserved with the hope that it could be worn to a challenge and damaged beyond salvation. Henny was fine with a bit of pink. She would put up with flowers. But a photo of a kitten wearing a tiara, liberally sprinkled with glitter was too far. Clearly Dad's purchases had not been vetted too closely. Father must have thought he couldn't do too much damage with sportswear. Unless there had been items even more hideous than that but even her keen Aladren mind could not conceive of such a thing. The overall effect was that she had come either dressed as a marshmallow or still in her pyjamas.

“See you,” she nodded to her team mates, heading off to her scrying position. She glanced over the model, noting all the main obstacles and the fact that there were paths of varying difficulty between them, before focussing in on the current obstacle and first set of paths.

“Ok, let's go...” she instructed the little dots, “Broadly speaking, you get a mud pit, a high wall and a lake to swing across, so have your thinking caps on for those if you can,” it made sense for everyone to think how best they might tackle what was coming up, assuming they had any spare thoughts to give it. “There's different difficulties of paths between them. Focussing on the mud pit,” she said, tapping her wand to zoom in, “It's different depths. It's not over anyone's head, I don't think,” she hedged. She was fairly sure, but she didn't want to risk drowning anyone. “It doesn't indicate that there's anything else to it, but you never know...” The staff had already proven that they had the capacity to surprise on these challenges. “Obviously the most direct route is not the cleanest, and it'll get harder the deeper it goes. Do you want to be kept in the shallower bits or just... go for it?”

13 Henny B-F-R Overseeing team one 211 Henny B-F-R 0 5

Virginia Bellrose

March 26, 2013 8:39 PM

I'll think of winning instead. by Virginia Bellrose

Ginny was really excited for the next challenge despite the fact that the notice had said it would be a very physical challenging one. Ginny wasn’t very strong, she was aware of this, but she had a lot of energy and perseverance. She was determined to see all of this through. She might hate herself later for it or even hate everyone else during it, but she would get through it. She was very determined when she put her mind to it and although she knew that some of the people might think she was prissy and incapable of anything, she knew herself better. She would show them just what she was willing to do.

Wearing her yoga pants and matching zip up, Ginny waited patiently with the rest of her team as everyone else filed into the gardens team by team ahead of them. She wished she had worn a longer sleeve beneath her zip up because sitting around in this weather was making her cold. She knew she’d probably work up a sweat once she was moving, but sitting around for so long gave her a chill.

It was finally their time and Ginny jumped around excitedly in her spot. This was all so exciting! She nodded enthusiastically when Topher (she still felt this name was rather odd, but said nothing to anyone about it since she was sure there were much worse names out there) gave his little pep talk. Hair pulled back into a tight braid, shoes laced up, and wand out, Ginny was ready. She didn’t even blink when their first obstacle turned out to be a mud puddle. Ginny had played in mud as a small child much to her mother’s horror. Getting dirty didn’t bother her. Sometimes the staff would even play in the dirt with her when she was left alone with them. She missed them terribly, but her parents said they were taking care of their Ohio home and she would someday see them again. They had been her first friends and the only people who paid her any attention.

Ginny watched Topher with interested as he tried a spell out against the mud. “Wouldn’t that take up a lot of our concentration?” Ginny asked him. She didn’t know the spell, although she could probably learn it easily enough. “It would probably slow us down too, if we had to focus on that spell in hopes the mud doesn’t collapse on us. Should we try freezing parts of it and walk across? I’d be okay with just walking through it too if that’s easiest.” She didn’t know if any of that was helpful, but if Topher knew she’d be willing to get down and dirty, than she thought that was a plus too.

0 Virginia Bellrose I'll think of winning instead. 0 Virginia Bellrose 0 5

Eliza Bennett

March 26, 2013 10:24 PM

Team Two! by Eliza Bennett

After some conference with him and a lot of conference with herself, Eliza had decided it was for the best if Sullivan was the overseer, leaving her on the ground. Their team contained no physical wonders, but she was a seventh year and so taller, anyway, than most of the team by default, and also the most magically skilled, where she thought the next-eldest was one of the more stable people they had on the team. He could give the directions, and she could keep the others…well, as under control as they were going to get, anyway, and maybe they could avoid a complete train wreck of an event.

Of all the groups, hers had the second-smallest amount of time to get ready for the challenge, so as soon as Team One was in the maze and on the clock, she suggested that they practice spells for a bit, and had a list of suggestions folded up in her pocket. Most of them – given the general ages of the rest of the group – weren’t that difficult, but they could be useful, and she thought it would be good to have them right on the top of their minds once they went in, for those who would chip in. She was hoping she could think fast enough to come up with semi-convincing arguments why Carrie should do anything other than make Eliza want to jinx her, but was not optimistic.

As they got ready, Eliza decided she ought to make a speech, considering her possible problem children. She had considered using each of them as the overseer as well, but had finally decided they would do less damage if they weren’t giving the directions. “I could make a long speech here, but we don’t have time, and there’s not really much to say,” she said brightly. “We might have had some…issues…in the first challenge, but we have the best right here.”

Hopefully, Carrie would choose to interpret that as an attempt at mollifying her enormous ego and would be cooperative. Of course, it could just as easily blow up in her face if Carrie took it that way and decided it meant she should act however she wanted, but Eliza had to try. “There’s just two things I want you all to remember – aside from a bunch of spells,” she added. “One is that we’re all working together to get whatever perks they’re handing out for being the fastest. The other is to not leave the group unless I tell you to.” She could have killed Carter during the mirror maze of the first challenge, though she guessed it had had one upside in the end: now, she knew to be on guard, so that if anyone ran, she could hit them with a quick Impedimenta before they got too far, though by the sounds of it, this challenge might do some of the work of keeping everybody close for her. “This may not be the most fun some of us ever think we’ve had, but the quicker and more graciously we do it, the quicker it’s over, right? Keep that in mind, too, even if that makes it three things.”

She waited for Sully’s go-ahead, then went into the maze and felt the color not so much drain as flood from her face when she realized what it was. “Okay,” she said brightly, thinking as fast as she ever had in her life as she turned back to face the group. “It just says cross the pit, not how we do it,” she stalled. “Is anyone else good at Transfiguration? We can turn a path from mud into stone, though we should probably do it where the mud’s at its shallowest, it won’t be thick enough and it might sink further on. Or does anyone have a better idea?” Eliza thought she could do it herself, a bit at a time, but it would be draining to do that much long enough for everyone and there were more obstacles to come, so either assistance or a better idea of how to deal with it would be more than welcome from her. She had no problems with other people’s good ideas.

0 Eliza Bennett Team Two! 174 Eliza Bennett 0 5

Paul Bennett

March 26, 2013 10:29 PM

Good plan by Paul Bennett

Later, Paul expected he would find Eliza’s problems with the day more funny than anything, but he truly did feel sorry for Gemma as he watched all the other teams getting ready for the second challenge. His little sister hadn’t been here long enough to know how truly, nastily, nearly homicidally competitive Sonorans tended to be, and the thought of her finding out, as it were, at first hand was enough to stir a rare glimmer of something like older-brotherly protectiveness in him. Gem wouldn’t eat eggs because she couldn’t help thinking of them as baby chickens, how was she going to deal with all the profanity and short tempers and mildly antisocial behavior which might break out in an obstacle course?

If she had been on a team with any Quidditch players, he thought he might have crossed over into genuine concern, but she wasn’t, so he waved when she went out and didn’t think much about it after that. He and Gemma had never been close, which was why he could get sentimental about her at all but also why he didn’t stay that way for long. He was used to thinking that their mother would look after her and he and Lize would watch out for each other – well, when they weren’t playing for the same prize, anyway, and then they would still look out for each other, just under another interpretation of the phrase – and it would work out well enough in the end.

He was starting to get a little restless by the end of the day, but tried to look on the bright side of that when it was time for them to go: at least he would be able to attack the obstacles with more enthusiasm and energy than he might have otherwise had, and they might seem easier, too, after all this time spent thinking about what they were going to be. He nodded shortly to Calhoun’s directions, deeming them good ones, and then followed him into the maze, telling himself he was imagining it looking different and more malevolent than usual.

Malevolence, at least, went away when they got to the first obstacle, a mud pit. It was a good obstacle, but not a frightening one, really. "She's got a point," he said when Ginny pointed out a disadvantage to trying to part the mud. "I'm not sure I'd go with freezing, though - someone might slip and fall."

0 Paul Bennett Good plan 201 Paul Bennett 0 5

Gemma Bennett

March 26, 2013 10:32 PM

I can agree with that idea by Gemma Bennett

Five teams went in, and Gemma played with the curly end of her braided hair. Eliza had surprised her after breakfast by pulling her into an empty room to help her with it, and as she looked at it, fiddling with the short end beneath the tie, she thought about her sister, and to a lesser extent her brother and the rest of her family, and knew that if she did very badly today she would have let them all down somehow and that, therefore, she had to do at least an okay job, no matter what was in there that she was so very not equipped to deal with.

She had been nervous about the challenge ever since she heard it was a physical one, though she didn’t think she would have felt any better if she had been made the overseer instead of left as one of the main group. Either way, something she did could completely mess up the team’s time, but it somehow seemed less bad to do it as just an ordinary team member than as the overseer, the one with the intimidating phrase ‘brain of the team’ attached to her. Less like everyone would really blame her for everything going wrong if it did and they were somehow the twentieth team to come in or something. She didn’t think they would be – they did have three boys on their side, after all – but still, she didn’t want to be blamed for it if they were.

She moved her hair over her shoulder when they got up to go, smiling out of sheer nerves and wanting to hold hands with Willow but sure that wasn’t appropriate. What was in there? What kind of obstacles would she have to get past? How bad would it be?

At first, it wasn’t bad, but then James directed them to a big mud pit. She was relieved when he suggested an alternative to putting her feet in something she couldn’t see through. Getting dirty didn’t bother Gemma as much as the thought that the dirt might be full of things she couldn’t see, things that might touch her, grab onto her. She didn’t think she, personally, could be much of a help with the proposed plan, but she liked the idea that maybe, it could work that way.

She clapped her hands when Josh succeeded in making the mud not so bad to walk through, delighted that she wouldn’t have to worry about bugs or snakes or whatever else could hide in mud, which might not really hurt them since this was school but which would be really awful to have to deal with. It was with only a little caution that she put one foot on the harder mud first before following it with the other and beginning to follow Josh across, careful to stick to his footsteps to avoid falling off, into the softer mud to either side.

Once, she thought she felt it crack under her and gasped loudly, throwing out her arms as though trying to keep her balance on a beam. Then she blushed. "Sorry," she almost whispered, as though that would stop them from connecting it to her.

0 Gemma Bennett I can agree with that idea 251 Gemma Bennett 0 5

Anthony Carey VIII

March 26, 2013 11:06 PM

We're going to do great! by Anthony Carey VIII

It would have been inappropriate to actually voice objections to going into the Gardens obstacle course, since that was a properly masculine activity to engage into and he was, well, obviously not a girl, but Anthony was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to admit to anyone that he was really excited about the prospect, either. Excitement in general was frowned on, so being excited to go work with a bunch of people his grandfather had frowned severely when he heard Anthony was associated with at all and probably get filthy and lose all pretenses of dignity in the process would be even worse. It was not the kind of thing an Anthony should look forward to with pleasure, or indeed at all.

The only problem was, Anthony had started thinking of the challenges the way he did Quidditch: as an activity where he wasn’t an Anthony. He was just…Anthony, not more or less important than anyone else in the group, and it didn’t matter if he was very dignified or not, since no one else was, either. The challenge team, honestly, was even better for that than the Quidditch team, since while Linus did seem like a pretty dignified person in general and of course Alan could be an informant for his older sister, overall it wasn’t as tense a group as the Quidditch team, not as ambitious. Since in Aladren, even studying in the common room while other people were doing the same thing felt like being part of a team full of people who were ambitious, some of them together, even, Anthony found his dealings with this team to be kind of a relief.

Ambition didn’t suit him. He couldn’t fit in with a team which was ambitious. Ambitious people were what they were because there was some question of just where they would end up, an uncertainty Anthony had never felt. He couldn’t imagine a situation which wouldn’t end with him in exactly the role which had been planned out for him.

At the mud pit, Derry suggested drying it out, and Brianna mentioned the incantation from above. Anthony wondered whether he should suggest that the mud could be somehow enchanted to resist magic, but before he made up his mind, Linus had successfully charmed it, so that problem was gone. Anthony carefully stepped out behind him, making a bit of a face at the weird feeling beneath his shoes as he did.

He took a few steps, now debating with himself over whether or not he had seen the wand movement right and whether or not he should try it anyway. “Do you think we should try the spell as we go along, to make it drier?” he said. “Or that, er, the other we – me and Alan – “ he might as well include Alan, not least because it made him look less like an incompetent second year if he was part of a group of incompetent second years – “should try to cast it at all?”

0 Anthony Carey VIII We're going to do great! 234 Anthony Carey VIII 0 5

Theresa Carey

March 26, 2013 11:13 PM

True, but I'm still glad it's not me by Theresa Carey

As the team made its way to the mud pit, Theresa studied the model further, looking ahead. It seemed smart to her to figure out what came next even as what was happening now happened, since she was helpless to help in any way other than offering advice as a disembodied voice from the air and she would offer better advice if she advised with what they might have to deal with later in mind.

Unfortunately, what was in the future was not reassuring. She scanned the paths with the scrying model and scowled when what she saw didn’t change. Honestly, given what was on those paths, she thought they would be better off taking the long-but-clear path, because fighting through all that might take longer than running down the other way, if the two first years could keep up. She knew she didn’t want to direct them down the dark way, anyway; Charlie was liable to panic, she thought, and there was no possible way that could end well.

She ran her hand over her hair. “Do whatever takes the least energy,” she advised them. She shifted her feet, wondering if her voice would disconnect when she wasn’t looking at them up close so she could cast a quick charm on her shoes to make them more comfortable for her, because they were starting to get on her nerves already and they were not far into this thing. The things she would do to impress people. Maybe there were some advantages to being like Waverly, without connections or family or fortune, after all. Not nearly enough, but even a tornado might have some tiny glimmer of a silver lining, if you squinted hard. “There’s three ways out of the other side, and none of them are really straightforward.”

0 Theresa Carey True, but I'm still glad it's not me 219 Theresa Carey 0 5

Arthur Carey

March 26, 2013 11:29 PM

Being paranoid by Arthur Carey

“Ha,” Arthur said, half under his breath, at the idea of conjuring a bridge across the whole thing. By himself, he didn’t think he was quite up to the feat, at least not without better materials around to work with. If they could have cut down a portion of the hedge, he could have done it easily, but he suspected the hedges would be enchanted to be unusually durable.

As always, when he was facing a challenge, he thought of Jane. She could have done it easily, he was sure, but she wasn’t here now. Pity, that; together, he thought he and Jane could have been invincible. They could have taken out every other team that promised to be a contender without effort, Jane simply destroying or circumventing any obstacle that Arthur couldn’t. He was convinced that he had seen her holding back before, pretending to be less able than she was, which made him wonder – what could she do, if she had a mind to? He had never deluded himself that she told him everything, even if he did extend that courtesy to her; if she saw anyone as an equal, it was Edmond, and Edmond was not interested in knowing what they could. Edmond was, in Arthur’s mind, even worse than his sister: a person of remarkable gifts who seemed to have no interest in using them the way he could have, the way he should have. How strange that the same household had produced them both; he thought the fact that they didn’t share real parents made it even stranger.

He had gotten another letter yesterday, but it had mostly been a note wishing him luck, no cipher, no Latin, and just the title of a fairly innocuous book to look at when he had time. He had wanted to see her over midterm, but she had refused, claiming overcommitment with her father and Edmond, which was at least understandable, and Jethro, which Arthur found less sympathetic. Arthur liked to think he was smart, but what Jane saw in that guy was beyond him. If she married someone with a tithe of her brains and skill, perhaps a bit more status to start with, then they could…who knew, really, what they would be capable of? But she was content to be thrown away on some minor Smythe boy.

He was distracted by Mr. RunningBear’s question. “I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of anything here,” he said mildly, “but I am somewhat concerned that the mud could have something in it we can’t see from here.” He gestured to his enlarged rock and what was now effectively a cord tied to it. “We also don’t know how deep it is, unless someone is neglecting to share all of his – or her – information.”

A thought occurred to him. “Though it’s possible we could solve part of the problem by freezing the water in it,” he thought aloud. “The spell’s not difficult, Glacius…Might be a bit slippery, though.” He dropped his rock into the mud near the edge and found it was not deceptively deep right away. “Well, we’ll get to Malcolm’s dry patch, anyway, and if it is too slippery, we’ll try something else from there,” he decided to himself. He’d prefer something else, but freezing might kill anything which was lurking beneath the surface, and the charm would be simpler than transfiguration. “I’ll go first – Glacius.”

There was a crackling sound, and the ground before him appeared to freeze. Arthur tested it and it creaked again, louder this time, under his weight, but he was, he thought, heavier than the others. "Duro," he added, and then, to the others, "should hold, but step lightly, quickly, once - " he tossed his now-muddy rock toward the dry patch to test if it was solid before he performed a more exating test with his foot - "we see if it's going to crumble underneath us."

0 Arthur Carey Being paranoid 182 Arthur Carey 0 5

Sullivan Quincy, Overseer

March 27, 2013 11:19 AM

Poking the way by Sullivan Quincy, Overseer

Sullivan Quincy had only had a couple of days since Eliza told him he was the overseer to get used to the idea. It was not enough time for that. By the time the second challenge rolled around that Saturday afternoon, the best he had managed was confused acceptance, like when teachers told him strange theories like 'harvesting this ingredient under the full moon makes it more potent' which he couldn't understand but believed anyway because he'd get it wrong on the test if he thought otherwise.

Test time came in the form of Coach Pierce telling all the overseers to go stand with Professor Meade. He took one more look at Eliza to make sure he really was the overseer and this wasn't some kind of joke at his expense, but she seemed to expect him to go, so he went. He felt a little better when he got there, finding himself amonst mostly beginners and other intermediates. James Owen looked like the oldest, but after him it was Sully, Michael, Valerie, and Brianna as fifth years. Both of the girls consistently marked higher than him in classes and Michael never did worse, but he surely had the brains advantage over the younger kids, right? It was certainly better than his recent nightmares where he was going head to head against all of the Aladren Advanced students in the school in heated games of the Magic Edition of Trivial Pursuit to advance his team further along some kind vertical game board on cargo nets.

It had only gotten worse when Carrie broke a nail and blamed him for it at the same time Jhonice got tangled and stuck in the netting while Carter fell off entirely and Eliza looked annoyed at Sully for not knowing how many teeth a Welsh Dragon had.

So, really, the day was already going better than it could have.

Fortunately, he was on team two, so he didn't have too much time to fret about how badly things could still go before he was asked to followed Professor Meade into the Labyrinth and choose between a broom and a scrying model.

A year ago, given the choice between a broom and anything else, he'd have taken the anything else. A year ago, however, he had not taken a week long Get-To-Know-Your-New-Stepdad trip over the previous summer that involved a lot of broom riding. Now, the broom was a familiar enemy, with known faults and failings, while the model was completely foreign and filled with unknown pitfalls and maliciously unexpected methods of messing him up.

He chose the broom.

Flying up and over the Labyrinth, he understood why this role was called 'the overseer' - the whole course was laid out beneath him. He could see the group of waiting teams at the one end, Team One enjoying some kind of party spead, and between them, three large obstacles and the various routes between them.

He made a pass over all three, so he would know what was coming as well as what the group was currently facing, then flew to the beginning of the course. "Okay, let's start," he told his teammates. "It's not far to the first part. Just two turns. Follow me."

Feeling kind of like a tour guide for a school group that didn't really want to be touring his museum (well, Carter might like it, he seemed the type who might think obstacle courses were fun instead of a legal way for the staff to torture students they didn't like - the mud pit might be the Coach's way of getting a shot in at Carrie if the rumour he'd heard about the younger girl getting hexed during her first Flying Lesson had any truth to it), he turned around and led the way to the the first exhibit.

Eliza had already offered her first thoughts on how to deal with it before Sully thought to make some kind of tour guide remark about the place so he let the idea pass and instead focused on the pit itself, moving his broom to hover only a few inches over it as he tried to get a better idea of what the others were dealing with.

"Well, if you do get muddy, there's a lake later to wash off in," he offered while he kicked lighly at a spot that didn't seem as muddy as some others. "Hey!" he exclaimed in surprise as his toe connected solidly against hard ground and hurt. "There's already dry spots."

He flew over to the hedge, struggled briefly to extract a branch, and used some of his newly gained - Thank You, Professor Skies - Transfiguration skills to turn it into a wooden poker. This, he began jabbing at the ground near the edge of the pit. For most of it, the stick sank unresisted into mud, but at the far right side, it only sank in a couple of centimeters before he nearly hurt himself again against the equal and opposite force the ground beneath the mud suddenly returned. "Only a shallow bit of mud here," he told them.

Flying back from there, he continued jabbing his poker at the mud, not noticing or caring that he was getting some splatter on his pants legs or that his dangling toes occassionally dragged through the mud as well. "This way next," he suggested, finding a path diagonally out to the left that was only about three inches deep. "It's a little deeper, so you might want to use your spell if you don't want to get your ankles dirty."

0 Sullivan Quincy, Overseer Poking the way 0 Sullivan Quincy, Overseer 0 5

Derry Pierce

March 27, 2013 12:16 PM

Go Prairie-Hawk-Snakes! by Derry Pierce

If Derry remembered correctly - which he didn't always - the drying charm had been introduced pretty early in his intermediate Charms career, as the easier option to some more complex cleaning charms. Alan and Anthony both seemed like smart guys and were only half a year from being intermediates themselves. He saw no reason why they shouldn't be able to cast it.

"I don't see how it could hurt if we all cast the spell," Derry offered eyeing the ground that visibly sagged under Linus's weight. "At best, we reinforce each other and make a thickier, sturdier crust to walk across, and you guys learn a new spell. At worst, well," misformed magic at its worst could be pretty unpredictable so he wasn't quite sure what 'at worst' would entail precisely, but he was sure enough of his own and Linus's ability to dismiss the concern, "Linus and I should be able to handle it on our own."

He took out his wand and demonstrated the wand motion a couple of times until the second years were copying it correctly. "Sitis," he cast at the ground near Linus, drying another patch for them to proceed along.

Then he looked at the pit im front of him and cast it again at where he was about to step, just in case his weight was too much for the current crust to hold. He held his breath and stepped out onto their dry part. He might have imagined the perceived dip of the ground and the quiet squelching sound as mud oozed somewhere beneath him, but it held so far.

"Let's do this quickly, if we can," he suggested, more out of concern that their bridge might break under the continued stress of their combined weight if they stood on it for too long than because the challenge was being judged based on speed.

1 Derry Pierce Go Prairie-Hawk-Snakes! 189 Derry Pierce 0 5

David Wilkes

March 27, 2013 1:05 PM

'Team Four' or 'Behaviorist Vampire Slayer Fellowship Four?' by David Wilkes

As he waved goodbye and good luck to the team overseer before the challenge started, David couldn’t help but think again of the irony that a pureblood, of all people, had been the one to arrange an overseer-selection system with open nominations and secret-ballot voting, all very fair and democratic. After six years of plowing through the history of the wizarding world, he had ended up with the impression that the criminal organizations of his world would have killed (well, more than usual, anyway) for the level of control over politics that the Old Families had, but one of theirs had on his own come up with the idea and even come prepared with a box.

This was one of the reasons why Thad Pierce scared David a little, if he thought of it that way. Kid came across sometimes like he had been found in a basket on the steps of a government building and was just itching for the day when he could get back into one. Even more scary was that James, who David had gathered came from a background about as popular and even less affluent than his own, was nearly the same way, and that Fran, who was eleven, showed definite signs of the condition as well. David had concluded it was A Wizarding Thing and that he’d never really understand. Which was itself a problem, but one for another day.

Right now, after all, he had another problem, which was wondering if Evan had the attention span for this. David had voted for him because that had seemed to be the way the wind was blowing in discussion, but he still had his doubts. Evan was not scary in the way that his friends were scary; in a Muggle school, David was prepared to bet that Evan would have ended up with boots in his ribcage even more than David himself had been accustomed to before Sonora. Evan wasn’t a government experiment gone mad, he was just a geek, and unfortunately, a government experiment seemed like a better person to have in the control room.

If, of course, one cared about winning, anyway. Not that David did. But still.

When it was their turn, after Sara and Eliza and Kate had all gone through the wringer and hopefully survived their fourth years, David tried not, remembering the boggart from the first challenge, to jump at every shadow along empty paths until they reached the mud pit, and then he tried to remind himself that Thad was not Frodo, which meant there was, therefore, probably no Watcher in the Water – or Mud, as it were – to contend with. As long as everyone had left their great destinies and artifacts of doom back in the dorms, everything, he guessed, would be fine. Evan was watching, but he was a good Watcher, like Giles or something, or at least no worse than someone watching rats in a Skinner box to see if they’d press the lever for food….

“And now I feel sympathy for lab rats,” he muttered under his breath, concluding his train of thought before he spoke up. “I know a spell to see if a person’s in a building from DADA – If anyone knows the Latin for ‘living thing in the mud,’ that would be great,” he added, adding that to the list of things he needed to learn someday. A whole language was daunting, but he already had learning a whole world to contend with, so what was a dead language? Plus, he was likely to live longer than a normal person anyway…. "I'd rather not stick my foot in that without at least trying to see if something's gonna grab it."

16 David Wilkes 'Team Four' or 'Behaviorist Vampire Slayer Fellowship Four?' 169 David Wilkes 0 5

Julian Umland

March 27, 2013 1:50 PM

We'll dazzle the whole wide school. by Julian Umland

Julian Umland was, as a general rule, a careful, neat sort of girl. She took care of her belongings and tried not to appear in public looking sloppy or wrinkled or stained. This, her mother had always explained to her, was not a matter of impressing other people, though that helped; it was a matter of having self-respect.

Julian had self-respect, or at least thought she did, which she supposed counted as the same thing in the end. She also had four brothers. Without magic, she thought her ability to show off her self-respect would have been much more limited before Sonora, because with four brothers came most of the clothes budget going to their growth spurts and also a lot of things that ended in tears, dirt, and other such calamities. The prospect of a physical challenge didn’t really bother her that much, at least not from a dirt perspective. More worrying was that, without John and Joe to chase all the time for most of the year, now, Julian thought she was putting on too much weight.

That impression was helped along by how well, relatively speaking, the clothes she had on today fit her, since they had originally belonged to her second older brother Paul. Julian didn’t own a lot of pants, and for things like the challenges, it had seemed better to wear things which had nearly been washed to death already, such as some of Paul’s old clothes which John was still not big enough for. It had taken some experimenting to get the pants short enough to not trip her, and she looked very much, with her hair in a plait which reached a little past her shoulders, like a girl in a boy’s clothes, but she thought she had an outfit which would work for most things, especially since the tennis shoes really were hers and fit in all dimensions.

That, Mom always said, was important. Clothes which weren’t the most flattering fit in the world were one thing, but shoes were important. Shoes that didn’t fit right could cause all sorts of problems. The neck of Julian’s t-shirt kept slipping off-center and the jeans she had on felt weird to walk in, but her shoes were perfectly comfortable as team sixteen walked through the first two easy paths to the mud pit.

Josephine didn’t seem enthusiastic and asked for thoughts about it. Julian bit her lip, hating to call attention to some of her deficiencies but deciding it was a good idea. "Is there a good way to figure out how deep it is?" she asked, biting on the side of her thumbnail now. She wasn't that short, but, well, she wasn't that tall, either.

16 Julian Umland We'll dazzle the whole wide school. 254 Julian Umland 0 5

Thaddeus Pierce

March 27, 2013 2:30 PM

There are vampires to slay, too? by Thaddeus Pierce

When the votes were in and the ballots counted, Thad tried not to be disappointed that he had not won. He himself had been the one to nominate Evan and argue his qualifications, while half stepping down as he pointed out he was a good physical asset to the team. He'd even cast his own vote for Evan. So he had no one but himself to blame for this turn of events. He even felt reasonably certain that he could have convinced everyone to vote for him if that was what he'd thought was best. He'd had David on his side, after all, and discrediting a first year as a intellectual threat to a fourth year would have been easy.

But he wasn't overseer. Evan was, as Evan should be. Sure, he'd been part of Alicia's training program, too, but Thad was just naturally more gifted in physical activities than his roommate. Thad was one of the team's Quidditch players. He was needed more on the field of battle.

They did not have long to wait, going fourth. It was enough to get a rough idea of how quickly the other teams were doing, but not so long that they started getting bored, restless, and unfocused. It was almost an ideal placement, really, and he was hopeful their luck would hold out. They did not have a bad team for this, truthfully. Other teams were far less suited for an obstacle course than they were.

The first obstacle that Evan led them to, however, gave him a moment's pause. Thad didn't mind a little dust or even cobwebs. He would and had crawled through both for the sake of a misplaced book or private reading spot, but mud was ... muddy. He didn't like it. He wasn't exactly wearing his formal best out here, but that didn't mean he wanted to go wading through mud that was Merlin only knew how deep. He had a certain image here as a proper and distinguished young gentleman that he would rather like to keep. And if some people might occassionally think he could be a stick in the mud, he had no desire to make any part of that metaphor literal.

David's suggestion that there might be something living in there did absolutely nothing to change his mind on that point. Care of Magical Creatures was his least favorite subject, and the fact that Professor Meade was at least partially responsible for this challenge was not reassuring at all.

He had tried to come prepared, so he had a few scraps of food in his pocket, in case they needed to test for knarls or woo parrots or any number of other situations where snacks might prove useful, but randomly throwing crackers at a mud pit seemed a premature use of the limited resource. There was no guarantee that whatever might be in there would even be interested in crackers.

"It might be easiest to assume there is something lurking beneath the surface and proceed accordingly instead wasting time trying to create new spells on the fly," he suggested. "We're on the clock here."

He regarded the pit more critically than before. "So if we're not going through, the obvious choice seems to be going over. Any insight on your end, Evan?" he asked, uncertain how much extra information was given to overseers.

"Otherwise, our options seem to be conjuring some sort of bridge, or doing something to the mud itself to make it more easily traversable."

0 Thaddeus Pierce There are vampires to slay, too? 0 Thaddeus Pierce 0 5

Alicia Bauer

March 27, 2013 3:58 PM

We're fighting this clock together, Team Seven. by Alicia Bauer

As she waited for the second challenge to begin, Alicia felt she came to an important realization about friendship. She had thought, really thought, that she already thoroughly understood the importance of keeping in regular contact with the people she cared about, but one look at Henny’s outfit when the overseers were called together showed her that she really, really had not understood it well enough before that moment. If she had just caught her roommate a little earlier, she could have helped Henny Transfigure those things, or lent Henny some of her own clothes, or something, and then a horrific crime against good taste could have been averted.

She only just managed to turn a wince into a smile as she slipped on her big dark sunglasses, partially blocking out the sight of roses on pink shorts. And here she had thought that pattern had been banned by law for all people under age ninety at least a decade ago.

Soon enough, though, Henny was gone, and Alicia was back to feeling a vague sense of regret about the whole thing. Under other circumstances, she could have been an overseer herself, and then she would have had the pleasure of both ordering everyone else around like so many chess pieces and of not attending the after-party quite possibly dirty and definitely wearing a close-fitting pale blue sweater with elbow-length sleeves and a dark gray pair of cotton sweatpants, her twisted-up hair the only, in her opinion, really good-looking part of the whole thing. The only people who’d mattered had seen her dressed like this before and not appeared to stop respecting her because of it, true, and it was one of those proofs that either she had been kidnapped at birth or that the family wasn’t really cursed that Hope really was, in addition to being one of the people Alicia needed split up, the best person for the job once all factors were looked at, but…it was hard to think of Theresa Carey going to a party looking pretty which Alicia would have to attend immediately after running an obstacle course. If there wasn’t a rock wall in there, Alicia thought she was going to be thoroughly irritated by the end of the day.

Her fingers traced restless patterns in the dirt, wanting this over with. She took her sunglasses off, then she put her sunglasses back on. Two more had to go, and then it would be over, at least for her. Then there would be all the running around and flattering she would have to be sure to do to make sure this challenge hadn’t broken up her happy home even after all she had done before it to prevent that, but that would be a new problem.

“Time to go,” she announced when, at last, it was that most welcome time. She checked that her hair clip was going to hold – her hair falling down into her face would be impressively unhelpful – and smiled at the rest of the team. “Move fast!” she said, disgustingly chipper, and then they were off to…a mud pit.

Well, this hadn’t been on her list of things she thought to prepare for.

“We’ll have to charm it. Wading’s too slow,” she said, adjusting her sunglasses as she raked her memory. She knew a Dehydration Charm, but she had spent too much of her midterm in the library of the university reading about some pretty unpleasant stuff after that disaster of a first challenge made her think of certain things and was now half-convinced, in her nerves, that she was getting the Dehydration Charm and the Blood-Draining Curse confused, and somehow, she thought the staff might raise some eyebrows if she used the incantation of the latter on a bunch of mud.

This was the first time in her life she thought being more informed than everybody else was actually working against her instead of in her favor. She did not appreciate the new experience.

She had to think. She had to think fast. There was a clock running and who knew what they would have to go through to get out of here even once they were through this. Who knew what the other obstacles would be?

“D’you think Duro would make a solid enough crust, or just stickier mud?” she asked, her eyes moving rapidly between the other older ones. She could feel the clock pressing down, the way it always did in the last moments of an exam, when her hand hurt like anything but she had to just keep writing, writing almost as fast as she could think, determined to cram in the last few words to an answer to get the best mark possible on something stupid she wouldn't even remember in a month anyway. “Or a drying charm? Whatever's faster.”

For once, she wasn't even trying to be bossy or overbearing, just talking rapidly, stating the obvious, in a sense of urgency. She didn't like working under a clock anyway, but liked it even less when she didn't feel safe, comfortable, with the people she was with. She had gotten soft, she realized with no small irritation with herself, too used to liking people, and now she might mar all with this starting.

16 Alicia Bauer We're fighting this clock together, Team Seven. 210 Alicia Bauer 0 5

Michael Grosvenor

March 27, 2013 4:46 PM

Team 19 - let's get dirty! by Michael Grosvenor

Michael was his team's overseer. He wasn't really sure what to make of that. It did seem kind of like the sissy girly role they gave out to people who weren't going to be able to do sports. In some people's cases, like Valeire's and- In Valerie's case, it made sense. She had a... a health thing that meant she needed to stay away from stuff like that. But he couldn't help but feel that his team was tucking him safely out of the way cos they thought he was weak or useless. He didn't think Mellie would think about him that way, but he reckoned the rest of them might. What was worse, was that they were probably right. Sure, he hiked and he liked being outdoors but he wasn't exactly Mr. Quidditch. He guessed the plus point of being overseer was that he wouldn't have to humiliate himself by being outrun by a load of girls.

To add insult to injury, he knew he wasn't a good enough flier to help from the air. He'd done beginners and joined in the occasional pick up game but he wasn't... well, once again, he wasn't Mr. Quidditch. He was starting to regret never having signed up to play, even though it would have probably turned him into a colossal joke, rather than making him jock-hero of the school. So, he was taking the prissy Pureblood or physically weak girl option of looking at a model. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with people who had those problems – he, of all people, would not hold what someone could not do against them. But he didn't want people to think that he was frail. Cos he wasn't. People had a tendency to do that - as soon as one thing was wrong with you, they wanted to treat you like you were made of glass. And boys got picked on for stuff like that.

“Hey guys?” he called out when it was, eventually, their turn to get going. If this had happened in his first year, he wouldn't have quite trusted that no one was going to leap out from a hedge laughing that he'd fallen for it and was talking to a model. By now, he trusted that it worked. He had no clue on God's green earth how. But he assumed it did.

“You've got to get through a mud pit and then there's some different paths to choose after it,” he called out. “Do you.. do you want help with the mud?” he asked uncertainly. Surely mud was fairly self explanatory. He wasn't really sure what he could add other than 'get dirty.'

13 Michael Grosvenor Team 19 - let's get dirty! 199 Michael Grosvenor 0 5

Aria Yale

March 27, 2013 5:03 PM

I'll work equally as hard! by Aria Yale

Aria was not at all perturbed by the fact that James and Josh both felt that none of the younger years (and thus, disposable teammates) would be decent at the Overseer position. Aria was thirteen, a third year, a Teppenpaw, and completely aware of the fact that she still had a lot to learn while at Sonora. She was great at potions having spent much of her life working with her mother who was the Medicine woman of their community, and she was pretty good with the rest of her classes, Charms and Care of Magical Creatures being next in line after Potions, but she would never jump the fence and declare that she would lead the team as the brain. For all she knew, the brain was the one who told them all the spells to use and that wouldn’t help them very much if the situation was too complex for her to know.

However, she was also aware that the rest of the team wasn’t necessarily athletic and that losing James to the Overseer spot may cost them in the long run. Aria knew what she was capable of. She grew up helping with the farm, taking care of the animals, gather supplies for her mother, on top of doing kid things like climbing trees, swimming in the pond, and just running around in general. She was small and meek looking, but that didn’t mean that she was weak. With James out of the picture physically, Aria knew that she would have to step up her game and prove that she could be an asset in the physical challenge.

With this thought in mind, she had dressed appropriately. Wearing sweatpants, a long sleeved shirt, sneakers (this was a new purchase for her over midterm that she was still trying to get accustomed to), and her unruly hair pulled back into a pony tail, Aria waited somewhat impatiently for their team to be called. She was lucky to be put into team six instead of having to wait all day like team twenty had to.

Their first obstacle being that of a mud pit, Aria was quite pleased. Only to be put off by Josh seemingly not actually wanting to work as a team together. He said anyone who knew how could help, but Aria got the feeling that he was only saying that. Still, she knew the spell and knew how to do it, so, she stepped forward and started to use the spell and watched as the mud hardened along as she went. Really, she was probably just reinforcing what he had already done, but it couldn’t hurt to make sure the mud was extra hard for everyone.

Gemma’s gasp and arm waving caused Aria to pause and look over at her with amusement. “It’s only mud.” Aria commented. “Even if you do fall, there are spells to clean you off. Don’t worry though; I think Josh’s spell work is spot on. We’ll be fine.” Aria hoped the first years weren’t too squirmy about things. Who knew what else the staff had in store for them.

6 Aria Yale I'll work equally as hard! 228 Aria Yale 0 5

Fae Sinclair

March 27, 2013 7:26 PM

Following the Overseer by Fae Sinclair

Sara had offered Fae the spot for Overseer, but Fae had declined it and, instead, it had gone to Henny. It wasn’t as though Fae thought herself more athletic than Henny, she knew that wasn’t the case, but Fae wanted to really try hard at the obstacle course. She felt that everyone thought she was weak or that she couldn’t certainly handle something like this. She even felt for sure that Arnold thought she would need him to rescue her all the time. Maybe, at one point, that had been the case. She had relied heavily on Arnold or anyone really, to keep her safe and oblivious to the mean things in life. She knew her family certainly tried to block those things for her.

Besides wanting to prove herself to everyone in her life, but mostly for herself, Fae also didn’t think she was capable of really leading the team or smart enough for that matter. Henny was definitely the better choice, although Fae thought Sara would have done just as well in that position. She wasn’t sure how well they would do in the challenge. Sara wasn’t physically strong in Fae’s opinion and Omara and Analea were only first years. Alex and Fae weren’t any better. Fae had never done anything physical in her entire life. She didn’t know how she would fair in this, but she was going to do her best and give it a shot. If nothing else, she’ll feel a little better about herself and maybe Arnold would be impressed by her having completed it.

Fae listened carefully as Henny gave instruction. Okay, a mud pit, gross, but completely doable. The wall and lake were another issue entirely. She really hoped she could hold her own strength up, otherwise, there was no way she’d be able to do those tasks. But first, she needed to worry about the mud pit. Fae had no idea how Sara or any of the other girls would handle that. Fae did not enjoy getting dirty and knew that she would want to die a quick death if Arnold ever saw her covered in it, but she wasn’t actually offended or terrified about having to walk through it. Still, there may be another way around it.

“We could probably use a spell to make it less… mud-like.” Fae suggested. “If we stick to the shallow parts that Henny suggested, it will probably be easier to transfigure the mud that way.” She had no idea if she was making sense, but at least it was an alternative to running through the mud.

6 Fae Sinclair Following the Overseer 194 Fae Sinclair 0 5

Alexandra Devereux

March 27, 2013 8:37 PM

Offering my opinion by Alexandra Devereux

Seeing the word physical in the vague description of the second challenge had warned Alex not to anticipate a high level of success in her next major endeavor. The girls she was working with were smart, in certain ways at least, and she didn’t doubt that they would do their best, but they weren’t really the types who got physical. Alex didn’t think the worse of them for that, since she was the same way, it was just a fact. They were highly likely to land in the bottom ten this time, possibly in a major way, though there were at least a few other teams she thought might have similar problems.

She was a little uncomfortable as they listened to Coach Pierce giving the directions, but not because of what she was learning about the challenge. Instead, it was because of what she had on. She had had to borrow riding clothes from Lucille, and Lucille was about two inches shorter than her and wider across the shoulders. She had adjusted the clothes with her wand, but they still didn’t fit her perfectly, she wasn’t a robemaker, and she was used, when she hadn’t had an unexpected growth spurt lately, to having her clothes fit her well.

Since she was in Group One, though, it worked out well enough, since it was more comfortable to stand in them than to sit in and being Group One meant they didn’t have to sit on the ground very long and the rest of the school didn’t see her in ill-fitting clothes for very long. Vanity wasn’t one of Alex’s greater sins, she wasn’t pretty enough for it to be worth the effort required, but she didn’t like to look worse than she had to, anyway. She blamed her mother.

At the mud pit, Alex nodded as Henny and Fae talked. “Shallow’s definitely better,” she said, feeling compelled to raise her voice a little for Henny’s benefit, as though there were a distance problem just because she couldn’t see the overseer. “The deeper in we are, the slower going it will be,” she added, lest they think she was just being squeamish. Just because they couldn’t win wasn’t, in Alex’s mind, a good reason to just lie down and lose. They could still try to finish with the best time possible. She wasn’t the team leader or anything, but she felt entitled to that much of an opinion.

0 Alexandra Devereux Offering my opinion 0 Alexandra Devereux 0 5

Adam Spencer

March 27, 2013 8:58 PM

There's always room for paranoia. by Adam Spencer

The evening before the second challenge, Adam had received a letter from his younger sister wishing him luck. His youngest sibling was just starting to use a quill and she had scribbled something on the bottom. It looked a bit like a snitch, but he couldn't be perfectly sure. It had warmed his little heart and he had slept well though he missed his family terribly. Being the eldest, it was difficult being away from home. He was responsible for taking care of them and that wasn't easy to do when he was away.

His room-mate had been chosen by Arthur to be the Overseer and Adam was glad for him. He wouldn't want the responsibility of leading a group of his peers as well as his older team-mates. It was a huge responsibility Adam wasn't willing to take. Arthur and Malcolm, as far as Adam knew, were related, so perhaps Arthur would be less critical of his relative. Or more critical, depending on their relationship. The fact that their team was most likely not going to win helped Adam relax a bit. Arthur had to be aware that with three somewhat uneducated first years he wasn't going to get very far.

Nevertheless, Adam was determined to work hard so he wouldn't let his team down. Being a weak link was bad enough, but giving up was just unacceptable.

When he heard they were going in numerical order, Adam almost groaned. It took ages until they were called, and by then Adam had a good idea of how long a team should take. He followed the rest of his team-mates to the labyrinth and walked behind them until they reached the mud pit. It was absolutely filthy and Adam did not want to get anywhere near that thing. He was unused to so much greenery and dirt unless it was in a controlled area, like a park. He rarely ventured out of London and he hardly ever played in the mud like this. His parents had taught him to be clean and respectable and stepping into mud was not respectable. Unless he was playing Quidditch or something.

Arthur began doing something that Adam couldn't understand, and then Malcolm appalled him by suggesting they swim through this mud. Adam was by no means a prissy lad, but he certainly did not want to splash around in mud puddles any more than he had to. Conjuring a bridge was loads better, but Adam kept silent, listening to the comments going on already.

It was clear Arthur and Malcolm didn't have the strong familial ties Adam had previously assumed. Their comments and glances directed at one another had made it obvious, but it was clearer now that Arthur couldn't even trust Malcolm fully. It was understandable; Adam would have a difficult time trusting anyone he couldn't see completely. He stood on the brink of the mud pit, wondering how horrified his mum would be if she found out he'd dirtied his old loafers with mud. He had rain shoes, but they were ugly and he hadn't thought to bring them to a physical challenge.

As these thoughts ran through Adam's head, Arthur had tested his ice spell and had started walking across. Adam was hesitant, but he followed their leader cautiously. He was, or at least he assumed he was, much lighter than Arthur Carey, making it seem less likely to crumble under his feet. Still, Adam went slowly and carefully, hoping not to lose one of his shoes to a mud creature or something of the sort. "How long do you think it'll hold for?" he asked, watching his feet. His foot slipped once and he wobbled dangerously for a moment before regaining his balance. It was an uncomfortable walk, trying his hardest not to fall in. "I didn't know there was enough water in mud to freeze it."

40 Adam Spencer There's always room for paranoia. 257 Adam Spencer 0 5

Reggie Parker

March 27, 2013 9:02 PM

Don't let a wall stop you, Team 15 by Reggie Parker

Once the team had managed their way through the mud pit relatively unscathed, Reggie went ahead and looked onto their next task, which seemed to be choosing a pathway. Reggie sighed. There was one that was completely overgrown by a weed that she was fairly certain she recalled reading about as being mildly poisonous too, but she couldn’t say exactly what happened. The second path had Devil’s Snare in it. She only knew what one of those plants looked like because her father had been paranoid that she may come across it one day and not know what it was and then be strangled to death by it. Her father was a strange man sometimes. The final path looked completely clear, but Reggie wasn’t going to take that at face value.

“The second path is Devil’s Snare. I can’t trust that one at all. With all of us having to go through there, even with our wands making the brightest light possible, there’s still a chance that someone will get snagged and I don’t want to take that chance.” Reggie commented as she contemplated which path to take. This was probably a harder choice to make than any of the actual obstacles. Why did they have to make the paths complicated too? This was frustrating.

“This path is impassable unless we make it passable.” She stated as she looked over the overgrown one. “But I know that I’ve seen this plant somewhere and it wasn’t for any good reason. Dad will be so upset with me knowing I’ve forgotten a plant.” She muttered the last part more to herself. Her father said knowing plants was essential for all potioneers. If a potion master didn’t know how to identify his/her ingredients then he had no business making potions. Or so her dad always said. She’ll have to look it up later.

“The obvious choice would be the last path, but I feel like there is something in there that will cause us a problem.” Reggie commented finally turning to face everyone. “Effie, how does it look from your view point?” She asked the sky. “What about the rest of you? What do you guys want to try? If you guys don’t trust the first one, then I say we’ll just have to go with the obvious choice, but it might cost us some time.” Reggie said, trying to be diplomatic about it all but having a hard time.

6 Reggie Parker Don't let a wall stop you, Team 15 187 Reggie Parker 0 5

Reggie

March 27, 2013 9:36 PM

Doubtful for a school by Reggie

While waiting for the rest of the team to arrive, Waverly decided to address her actions during this obstacle course. Reggie didn’t look at her at first, still a little annoyed by what she had done, and instead kept a close watch on the rest of the team members still making their way through. “Any other day, I would have agreed with you.” Reggie commented. “A mud pit doesn’t bother me much. I grew up with just a dad, so playing in the dirt was normal. But I have to look out for everyone on this team and make sure they are all comfortable with the choices that we make.” Reggie explained.

“This is a team building game and if one of us strays, that will cost us more than anything else. You have to look at the whole picture. Just because you made it through the mud – after asking for Effie’s help, might I add – doesn’t mean someone like Isabel would have. She’s small and young. What if someone had become stuck in it? That would be additional time to dig them out. I chose the rock idea because it kept them happy and didn’t waste too much time getting them from one end to the other.” Reggie explained to Waverly.

“I get it if you don’t like me as the leader of our team, but I do ask that you at least try to work with everyone even if you don’t understand why or like it. We all have to work together and make the most of this time. I want to win, but I also want to have fun and make sure everyone else does their best too. Does that make sense?” She asked Waverly. “I’m not saying sit back and just follow along. If you have an idea or something, speak up, but just don’t charge ahead anymore.”

OOC: Feel free to keep posting here. I started the 2nd part for anyone who wants to move on there.

6 Reggie Doubtful for a school 187 Reggie 0 5

Henry Carey

March 27, 2013 9:39 PM

I wouldn't be surprised by Henry Carey

From what he had seen, just looking around the school over the past week, Henry thought he might be the one person in all of Sonora who had been happy to hear the second challenge was going to be physical in nature, at least for the most part. As for the other part, the overseer part, he had not worried about that from the moment Wilkes had mentioned communication skills in connection to it, because Henry had only one source of competition for the role of least verbal person on the whole team – he thought he might not say as much in a month as the Aladrens could in a day – and when he did speak, it usually wasn’t clearly. That had been improving a little as he grew more comfortable around the others, pretty sure they were okay, but not nearly enough to put him a role anyone thought might involve a lot of communication.

A physical challenge, however…that, Henry could do. He didn’t play Quidditch anymore because he couldn’t stand being up in the air, but he had spent even more time in the sport and water rooms to compensate for that, and he knew he was strong and fairly agile, even though his legs had betrayed him recently by suddenly getting longer, stretching him out further than he was used to going. He could still usually get where he wanted to go with less tripping than Jay was prone to, anyway, though part of that was because Jay spent only about three quarters of his time in contact with the rest of the world, spending the remaining fourth in his head, thinking about unauthorized subjects.

He waited, a little more impatiently than usual, for team four to be called, then followed Pierce and Wilkes into the Gardens. Henry liked the Gardens; there were all sorts of corners, some of which hardly anyone seemed to know about besides him. He could sit in a corner for hours and no one would bother him, when there wasn’t a challenge going on out here, anyway. Today, he couldn’t do that, but he felt comfortable enough in the Gardens, anyway.

“Plus I like my head where it is,” Henry offered when the subject of making up spells came up. From the stories he’d heard, he had had a great-great-uncle on his mother’s side who ended up with his on one side of the room and the rest of him on the other doing that. It had advantages, as far as ways to go went - it was quick, and maybe he would never even know it had happened - but still, Henry didn't feel much like dying today, anyway.

As for building a bridge, he decided he had used his word quota for this stage of the event. He knew he could not do the magic necessary for that, could not have done it if he had had the basic materials to work with, but if they could, then he would happily walk over it.

0 Henry Carey I wouldn't be surprised 239 Henry Carey 0 5

Lucille Carey

March 27, 2013 11:02 PM

I'll be content with a respectable showing by Lucille Carey

The idea, Lucille decided, of doing something physical didn’t frighten her that much on her own. She even thought she might not be the very worst person possible; she had been riding horses for almost as long as she could remember, and that was one of the things she was willing to admit to being good at. The chances that the challenge would involve normal or flying horses was slim, but still, between that and the dancing lessons, she wasn’t really that weak. Instead, it was the thought of her mother’s reaction to it that made her nervous. Her mother would not be pleased, and saying she had sacrificed herself for Melanie wasn’t likely to work, either, especially since it was really just that she hadn’t spoken quickly enough.

Still, she did at least have vaguely appropriate clothing, as she realized when Alex asked to borrow some, so she decided to try to make the best of it now and to worry about her mother later. There was nothing much that could happen while she was at school, anyway, and what could Mother really do even once she got home? That kind of thinking felt forbidden, dangerous, but it was true; this was something the school had assigned her to do, she hadn’t had a choice in it, so there was even less reason than usual to punish her for it.

She held firm to that resolution and to her wand as her team went into the Labyrinth, and only broke step when she saw the mud pit in front of her. That was…icky, though she knew how to do a Scouring Charm well enough to get most of the evidence off after the fact.

Julian – who Lucille still wanted to call ‘Julie’ in her head because Julian was a boy’s name, but she tried not to too much, because she usually preferred her full name and just let her cousins and Aria call her Lucy because she didn’t like to correct them – brought up another point, one Lucille wouldn’t have thought of. She guessed she had just been imagining the mud as up to their ankles, maybe capable of splashing higher but really just there to inconvenience them, but in retrospect, she guessed that didn’t really make a lot of sense. An inconvenience wasn’t really a challenge, not nearly the way the things they had faced the first time had been. The mud wouldn’t, if that was anything to go by, be deep enough to drown them or anything, but it would be hard to get through.

“Not that I know,” she admitted, since seeing how deep things were wasn’t something she usually did. It just wasn’t necessary. Either she knew how deep something was before she ever came to it, or else she didn’t need to know. “Maybe we could Transfigure it?” she suggested. Transfiguration was, in her opinion, a good contender with Charms for the most useful branch of magic; it could make what you needed from what you had. If you were good enough, anyway.

0 Lucille Carey I'll be content with a respectable showing 224 Lucille Carey 0 5

Mellie Goodwin

March 28, 2013 12:12 PM

Yay! Go team! by Mellie Goodwin

Objectively, Mellie knew her team probably didn’t have a shot at the top five, but she didn’t really care. As far as she was concerned, she could have hardly gotten a better team to work with, and since this challenge involved working with them on a day that wasn’t Halloween, she didn’t even expect any nightmares to jump out at them to keep it from being fun, the way they had during the first challenge. That really had not been great, at least in her mind. That guy Michael had come up with had been seriously disturbing, and that had been before they got to the creepy mirrors. Mellie kind of hated mirrors even when they just showed her herself as she really was.

Today, though, was a bright, comfortably-temperatured day in the Gardens, and she was worried about basically nothing as she waited (and waited…and waited; there were a few disadvantages to being Team Nineteen, she guessed) for her team’s turn to go into the maze and deal with whatever obstacles (other than, she was guessing, just it being a maze) were in there to keep them from reaching the other side, or wherever the finish line was, since she didn’t know for sure that they had to go through the whole maze. There were three obstacles, which seemed like a bit much to stretch out across the whole Gardens and it not take hours and hours for each team to get through, but she didn’t know, that was up to the staff members who had designed the event.

She was just about to run out of things that weren’t so stupid that even she could not countenance bringing them up to talk about when, at last, they were called. She waved good luck to Michael as he went away first to do…whatever it was the overseers were doing, then, when they got the signal – and wow, was it weird to hear Michael talking and not be able to see him; it was going to take getting used to – went into the maze with the others, looking around for things that seemed different from what she was used to. She was pretty sure they would keep away from the Pecari Common Room, but she knew other paths, so maybe she would notice if something was off before crazy people jumped out at them or anything.

No crazy people tried, though, as they went to the mud pit. Mellie wondered how some of the teams before theirs had gotten through it at all, given how some of the girls – and for that matter, maybe some of the guys – at this school were. Maybe they had opted out? Two minutes apiece off their final time, if she understood it right, but then, maybe it would have taken them each longer than twelve minutes to cross in the first place, what with all the screaming.

Michael’s offer surprised her. “What do you have in mind?” she asked, and wondered them if he could understand her. It was kind of hard to look at him so he could read her lips when he was a disembodied voice; she had looked in the direction she thought it was coming from, but wasn't sure if that even meant anything.

16 Mellie Goodwin Yay! Go team! 206 Mellie Goodwin 0 5

Ryan O'Malley

March 28, 2013 5:58 PM

Team Five by Ryan O'Malley

Ryan was not the most athletic person,though he thought he could handle it so long as he didn't have to fly. He did not have a very athletic team. However, he had chosen to make Angel the overseer, despite the fact that the Teppenpaw had issues communicating and with intellectual tasks. He clearly had some sort of illness, and Ryan felt it would be completely cruel to make someone chronically ill do physical tasks that they were probably incapable of and might hurt themselves doing. Ryan didn't want that to happen to anyone-well, not really anyway-and quite honestly, didn't want to be responsible for it happening either. He'd feel horrible.

Even if Ryan hadn't had to put Angel on it, he might not have put Sally, who was clearly the smartest person on their team, on it because he wanted her help on the actual course. He sort of thought they might listen to her better than him, though that had not been really an issue so far. On the other hand, Ryan wouldn't have known who to put on it instead. Lucrezia would have been the next best choice, but he kind of thought she might be the most athletic person on their team. At least, she was capable of flying which didn't seem to be a skill most of them really had. He rather wanted her in the course.

The Crotalus might not have been the most competitive person-he never thought he was any good and wasn't going to win anything, unless it involved Transfiguration, or the other person was really, really bad- but he felt he had something to prove, both to his team-after the boggart, not only was the way he couldn't deal with it embarrassing, but that others might figure out that it was his mother and know how she treated him-and to himself. Ryan just wanted to feel good for once. Like he wasn't what his mother and Carrie said he was. He needed his team to do well so he wouldn't be a failure.

Of course, obviously they were a team, so it wasn't all on Ryan. They all had to do their part. Still, if things went wrong, people would blame him. The team would blame him. It would likely be considered his fault, like everything always had been. He hadn't even had to do anything wrong to get in trouble. His mother would just...imagine things. If Ryan honestly screwed up, the consequences would be far worse. Maybe nobody would hate him as much as she did, but their hatred and disdain would be more justified, than hers .

Though, maybe her hatred of him was deserved. The seventh year didn't think himself at all impressive so he was probably a huge disappointment. He might have been pretty good at Transfiguration but so were all his relatives. It was a genetic thing, not him personally and certainly, Ryan didn't have anything else really going for him. They were going to fail, and it was going to be because of him. If they'd done all right in the first part, that was because of his teammates' skills.

As overseers left, Amity with a smug glance at someone, probably Carrie, Ryan turned to face the rest of the team. Okay, he had to give the usual inspirational pep talk now. He was neither inspirational nor peppy, but it had seemed to go all right the first time. The problem was not really having anything original to say this time. In fact, he didn't even remember what he'd said before. It was literally impossible to remember everything you'd ever said ever-and if Ryan did remember something he'd said awhile ago, it was probably something stupid that he felt embarrassed about. So since he didn't remember what he'd said before the first challenge, it couldn't have been that bad and nobody else probably remembered what he said either.

He took a deep breath. "Okay, we did great the first time around," Ryan was not entirely sure this was true, but he wanted to be positive and encouraging, keep the team in high spirits, besides, it was his fault anyway if they hadn't done well, "and we'll do just as great this time." Even though nobody had mentioned anything athletic as a strong point, minus Lucrezia being able to fly and Ryan wasn't even sure how good she was. Better than him anyway.

The seventh year waited as a the first four teams began, giving Eliza a sympathetic glance when it was her turn. He couldn't see this going well for her team. No matter how well her team actually did in the standings, it was going to be unpleasant for them all getting there. Carrie had this amazing talent of making any situation unbearable for everyone else involved. Which was unfortunately at least one more than Ryan felt he had. Two more actually, as the third year also had one for spotting and exploting someone's weaknesses.

Then it was their turn and Ryan's sympathy for Eliza and the other four members of Team Two only increased. It was a mud pit. He turned to the rest of his team and said "Okay, the best way to do this is to transfigure the mud into something else that's easier to walk across, like stone." He glanced up at them. "Unless someone has a better idea." The Crotalus had no faith in his own but to him, Transfiguration as usual seemed to be the best solution. However, he did want to give the others a chance to make their opinions heard, hopefully in a timely manner. "I mean, I can probably do the transfiguration if we go with that." Somehow Ryan, who thought most things would be difficult for himself, believed that turning mud into stone was no problem.

11 Ryan O'Malley Team Five 176 Ryan O'Malley 0 5

James Carey

March 28, 2013 8:36 PM

Flying ahead of Team Twelve by James Carey

Maybe, as an Aladren Quidditch player, or at least reserve, he should have been, but Jay had not been surprised to find himself as the overseer for Team Twelve. If he had been making the decision, he would have likely assigned the job to Addison – she had, if they needed magical knowledge from the overseer, taken some of the Advanced classes, and she also seemed to have bad nerves, so it would be better if she weren’t directly involved, in case the next time, she didn’t pull through as well in the end as she had in the first challenge – but Arista was the team leader, and she and her sisters seemed to like to be together a great deal. Jay didn’t really understand it, since his family generally, except for the twins and to a lesser extent Henry, didn’t spend more time than was necessary together so they didn’t put other people off, but that was how they were, and so he was the overseer.

He didn’t mind. He was on the Aladren Quidditch team and a Carey besides, so he was used to the idea of screaming lunatic assault on physical goals, but Jay didn’t count such activities as the highlight of his life or the area of his greatest skills. This was really more the kind of thing he liked anyway. Shown the options for viewing, he looked longingly at the model for a moment, but wanted to take it apart more than he wanted to use it, and he picked up the broom in the end, thinking he could be more use that way.

Mounting the broom and kicking off, he flew toward the entrance to wave the others into the maze, then flew ahead, looking for any hidden obstacles and not seeing anything or encountering anything he didn’t see as he led them to the first obstacle. He flew lower for a moment to give them warning – “Mud pit ahead!” – before they got there, to give anyone who needed it a moment to mentally prepare for the prospect of being dirty. He would have had no problem with it on the ground, but he was up here in the air.

He flew ahead to study the mud, to see if there was a best path through it, or any additional traps, or anything he could figure out from where he was which could be helpful once everyone was there. They arrived, and Jay flew lower again, so he could speak with him. “There are some parts without any mud at all,” he said. “I think some of them have pretty deep mud between them, though. What do you guys want to do?”

He hoped the team was in a decision-making mood today. He would really rather not be on the twentieth team to come in. His cousins would never let him live it down if he was, and while there were worse things in life, he still had no interest in dealing with that for the next few months, and then every now and then again after that if someone thought it would give them an edge in an argument.

0 James Carey Flying ahead of Team Twelve 222 James Carey 0 5

Sara Raines

March 28, 2013 11:06 PM

Making a suggestion. by Sara Raines

It had been a wrench to give up the game’s one possibly-comfortable position, and even more of one when it had turned out the person she was giving it up to wasn’t even her best friend, but Sara had remained determined to suffer through the physical rigors of the second challenge. For one thing, she was a seventh year, and so might be useful, at least from a magical perspective. For another, she was the leader, so it wasn’t right to ask others to do what she wouldn’t do herself. For yet another, she supposed it was good practice for when Preston dragged her to archaeological sites all over the world after they got married. There was, she was quite sure, going to be a difference between moving through the luxury sites of the world during a day and moving through one of those in the same way, though she planned to put her foot down if he had ideas about the end of the day not involving a proper estate or a decent hotel.

Hopefully, in time, there would be places where they owned their own vacation homes. They would have parties on two or three continents, have a wealth of international as well as national connections to present to future children and in-laws, and remain blissfully happy because they could move on if they ever began to get bored. True, she would enjoy the parties more while he preferred the digging for magical artifacts, but she had enough of an interest in the artifacts once they were dug up to smooth over most tensions, she thought. It could all be lovely, if they played their cards right.

First, though, they had to finish school, and even sooner, these challenges. As nervous as she was about proving unable to complete the task, Sara was still glad that her team went first, so she didn’t have to think about it any longer than necessary. If she had been on Twenty, with Fae’s old crush, she thought she might have gone a little silly with dread. Instead, she just got to go through to…a bunch of mud.

She took a deep breath. "It's practice for the archaeology," she said quietly to herself.

She agreed with the other girls that shallower was best, especially since she thought she was the shortest person on the team except the first years. Maybe. She would find deeper mud slower going than any of them, she was sure, especially if it was more than knee-deep on her. She was sure they wouldn’t put them in deep enough to have to worry about going under, but it could get awfully deep before it got that deep.

“We could dry it out or turn it to stone, maybe?” she suggested to Fae, glad her friend was with her. They, at least, were in this together, and she didn’t worry so much that she was doing something wrong. Alone in front of the fourth years, she would have felt the pressure to be absolutely perfect; having another Advanced student, especially a friend, gave her a greater sense of balance, at least a little.

0 Sara Raines Making a suggestion. 179 Sara Raines 0 5

McKinley Andrews

March 28, 2013 11:31 PM

Minerals... Minerals... Minerals... by McKinley Andrews

McKinley wasn’t really so interested in the Challenges. The first one wasn’t so good to her, and she was almost sure this second one wouldn’t be either. When the signs went up to say when the Challenge would be, Kinley looked at it and wished that she’d be sent home right then and there. She didn’t want anything to do with it.

But she didn’t have a choice in the matter.

The day of the Challenges was bright and sunny, which actually helped the Crotalus. It won’t be so bad. Its not raining or anything, so there’s no real way of getting dirty, right? she thought, hopeful that this Challenge may actually be better than the last. She’d put on her old Mary Janes, certainly not her new ones, and instead of wearing her new dresses or dress robes, was smart and put on an old skirt and button down. This skirt, in a dark shade of gray ran to just below her knees and the shirt was a black ¾ sleeve button down which she wore beneath a black sweater with pretty white buttons to close it. The weather was warm, so she needn’t put on any other layers, thankfully.

As 1 pm approached, so did McKinley to the Gardens. She had originally grabbed her plastic from the year before, but as a second thought she put it back down in her room before she’d left, hoping that she hadn’t made a serious mistake in leaving it behind. Coach Pierce asked for all of the overseers to meet by the Care of Magical Creatures professor, Professor Meade, and Valerie walked over to the other overseers. Kin understood why she’d been made the overseer for their team. She was sick and couldn’t do anything physical. Kin looked down at herself, and wondered who in the world would think she’d be able to do anything physical, but didn’t give it much thought after that. Coach spoke about an opt out path and Kinley hoped if she needed to do that, her team wouldn’t be mad at her.

The Coach spoke on about what the overseers would be doing and that they’d be the ones in charge of telling the rest of the team the best and safest way around the obstacles. Then she told the overseers their two choices and right away Kinley knew which one Valerie would pick. She didn’t blame her. There was no way they’d find her on a messy, icky broom either.

Team One started off and then the teams went on and on after them. Kin was on Team Twenty, so there were Nineteen teams ahead of her own to go before they got to. In that time, the number of waiting teams dwindled and Kinley (personally) was wearing out a spot in the grassy/dirt of the Gardens with her pacing.

Don’t panic? Topher had said and she repeated to herself. Her heart thudded inside her chest and she felt as if she may explode in terror. Especially as the team walked up to the first obstacle. “M-m-mud?” she said softly as all the color drained out of her face. Kin hadn’t even noticed that Topher had said something from all the thudding in her heart. Mud… Its mud… Mud is icky… she thought, over and over again, cheeks still pale.

Finally, when she heard Paul mention that freezing it would be a bad idea, that someone might slip and fall, she looked at the rest of her team and wanted to run in the direction of the opt out path. “S-slipping and f-falling is a bad idea…” she whispered. She wasn’t sure if anyone heard her, but if they did, they’d know for sure that she was in no way comfortable with the situation they were in.

“W-what if we brought something to us that we could go over it in?” she asked quietly, hoping they heard that at least.

0 McKinley Andrews Minerals... Minerals... Minerals... 0 McKinley Andrews 0 5

Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette)

March 29, 2013 11:41 AM

Failure to Launch - Team Fourteen by Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette)

The first time Preston suggested one of the Pierce twins be the overseer, they had taken it for a bad joke. They were merely second years; the overseer was supposed to be the brains of the second challenge. The second time he repeated it, they realized he was serious. Preston, Gareth, and Cepheus were all bigger and stronger and more suited to a physical challenge than they were. After half a year training to run through the Gardens - which, incidentally, was were this challenge was taking place - they had vastly improved both their endurance and speed, but they were still no match for the older and taller boys on the team. And since they were second years, they'd had more than twice as much schooling as Jade, if Jade was even still at Sonora.

The only problem was, of course, the minor fact that Annette and Annabelle could not do magic alone, and it sounded kind of like the overseer wasn't going to be physically with the rest of the group. Which meant neither of them would be able to perform any spells at all. Not keen to admit to this weakness, but not seeing any other choice in the matter, their final argument to be spared the overseer fate had been to explain their magical handcap.

It hadn't been enough. Preston was the advanced student and needed to be there in case the physical challenge required difficult spellwork. Gareth was, well, Gareth: big and physically imposing as the two small twelve year old girls could never be. And though Cepheus was slighter than the two beaters, he was still a fourteen or fifteen year old boy who had already hit at least one growth spurt.

The Anns still had almost half a foot to go before they broke five feet, if they ever did. Their fully grown older sister had managed to hit the sixty inch mark but she never passed it.

As much as it galled the Pecari in them, they were, indisputably, the weakest physical link on the team.

Ordinarily, they would have competed for the spot on the physical team, as they had for the honor to play in Quidditch matches last term, but this was a little different. The overseer role had been hailed an important position, an intellectual position. There could possibly be reading involved.

While Annette had gotten better at reading right-side-up over the last year and a half, what with all the teachers writing on boards, and having her own books (and, more importantly, classmates who looked at her funny if she turned them upside down to read), but Annabelle still did it better, faster, and more naturally, since that was how she had learned to read from the start. Annette had sat on the opposite side of the table and learned from that end. They dared not risk the team's success to confusion over whether a particular letter was a 'p' or a 'd'.

So when overseers were called, it was Annabelle who walked over to stand with Professor Meade. She needed most of the time from when Team One entered to when Team Thirteen did to work through the pros and cons of which overseeing method to use.

The obvious answer was, of course, the broom. That would put her in close enough proximity to Annette that their magic would work. There was no guarantee the scrying circle would even work for her, as squib-like as she was without her sister nearby.

The only concern there was her Family's strong WAIL connections. She was already on her last warning and she wasn't sure if opting to ride a broom when there were other choices hit too close to Quidditch and by mounting the broom, she'd be signing the disownment papers not only for herself, but for Annette at well. Mother had mad it perfectly clear over the summer that the sins of the one would be visited upon them both.

Was the challenge really worth that? No. No, it was not. If they had to muddle through with a magically crippled overseer and team member then so be it. Winning this one little contest was not important enough to risk the rest of their lives upon.

She had finally reached this difficult conclusion when she looked over to Annette and saw her sister mouthing the word 'broom' and making swooshing flying motions with her hands. This sent Annabelle back into the debate all over again.

She still wasn't a hundred percent sure what she was going to do when Professor Meade showed her into the labyrinth where the model and broom were awaiting her decision. She looked over the model, tried to do what Professor Meade said to make it work, but she could tell it wasn't reacting to her commands quite right.

This wasn't going to work at all. She took one final look at the overview, got up with a huff, and grabbed the broom. She mounted and kicked off, as she had done hundreds, if not thousands, of times before, and did not make it more than a foot off the ground before she was touching down again, the broom refusing to accept her commands as much as the model had.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," she grated in annoyance. There were still more people out in the waiting area than she cared to see this walk of shame (at this point, she wasn't sure if she was more mortified that she'd be seen with a broom by society people or that she'd be seen carrying a broom instead of riding it by everyone else) but there was nothing for it.

She marched out of the overseer area, back into the waiting area, and over to where her team waited at the start of the course, keeping her head held high. "Let's go," she instructed, and launched into the air on her broom as soon as she made eye contact with Annette. "Follow me."

She flew through the hedge opening, leading the way to the first obstacle. Once they were inside and out of easy hearing from the other teams she added, imparting the most immediate piece of intelligence she had picked up from her inspection of the model, "You've got a mud pit first. Sorry, Nettie. Then there are two more obstacles after that."

As she caught sight of the pit's size for the first time, Annabelle decided that she was glad she was the overseer after all. Even flying over it was too close for her taste. Pity about poor Annette's cute socks. They had both dressed in Ann's Quidditch practice clothes from last year, valuing practicality over fashion for the day, but they had thought it would be safe to wear some fun socks with adorable baby animals circling their ankles to the challenge.

Clearly, they had been wrong.

Annabelle looked down into the mudpit, wondering if she should suggest Gareth carry Annette on his shoulders when she spotted something she hadn't expected. "Oh! There are dry spots." Another survey of the pit was more disappointing. "Not enough to jump from one to the next, though."

1 Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette) Failure to Launch - Team Fourteen 246 Annabelle Pierce (with some Annette) 0 5

Jude Butler

March 29, 2013 1:18 PM

What about...? by Jude Butler

Jude wasn't so excited about the second Challenge right off the bat. The first scared her pretty badly. She barely spoke about it to anyone at home over the break. In fact, she barely spoke about much apart from the fact that school was cool, but she missed her family. Jude made it a point to spend some time with Dane, the ability her older brother had to be who he was was something she wanted pretty badly. Her little screw up in the first Challenge told her that. She had been trying to be what she wasn't and it turned out super badly.

Dane had noticed that something was bothering her and he asked her what the matter was. When she'd told him (in secret) what happened in the Challenge, he told her that he was proud of her for trying and that Angel had been right, they didn't hate her. She just was younger, not meant to be able to do those sorts of things (whatever it was) right away. Jude nodded to him and told him that she wouldn't do anything that she wasn't capable of doing anymore, especially if it could hurt her.

But now she was back at school, and it was the morning of the Second Challenge. She put on her Christmas Present from Dane, a nice blue hoodie with the words, 'Best Little Sister' on it and a pair of blue jeans with her blue and green sneakers, tightly tied. “I'm ready...” she said to Angel and Ryan, Rory too. “Let's do this...” she added, hoping that the tasks today wouldn't be nearly as scary or as hard as the ones for the first task. It was bright and sunny outside, and warm too. Jude liked warm weather, in fact warm was her favorite type of weather.

Coach Pierce got there and welcomed them, telling them that the second Challenge is an obstacle course. Ryan had told them all that Angel was going to be their team's overseer and Jude understood, but she also was unhappy that Angel was not there with her on the course. Angel left the group and Jude waved goodbye to him sadly and Coach kept on talking. Team One started off, then the teams continued on to her team. When Team Five was called, she looked at Ryan. He spoke to them, telling them that they did great the first time around. Jude put her head down and shook it. She knew she hadn't done a good job. She should have just done as Sally had said, stayed back and done nothing.

Jude had assumed that the Challenges were supposed to be teamwork, but what did she really have to give her team? Absolutely NOTHING...

Jude, head still down, followed the rest of her team and only looked up when they all stopped around her. “Mud?” she said softly. Betting nobody heard her.

“Isn't it going to take a lot of energy to do that though?” she asked, loud enough for Ryan to hear her this time. “What if we just found the shallowest spot and walked through it? It's probably just mud, right Angel?” she was a little louder at the question to Angel. She wasn't sure where exactly he was, and she knew that he'd know, as the overseer.

0 Jude Butler What about...? 0 Jude Butler 0 5

Brianna

March 31, 2013 8:08 PM

That is a long team name. by Brianna

Brianna listened to them as they worked out what they had wanted to do. She felt sort of useless being behind the scenes and only able to watch everything through a magical map and only offer advice if she felt that she had something worthy of saying. They had to do all the work. She knew that the reason she was really picked for this position was because of her condition. She would never blame them for it, but she was sure no one would ever say so directly to her face. Part of her wondered, if she had been physically fine, if they still would have put her in this spot because she was a girl. Would it even matter if she had been athletic when she was on a team full of guys? As much as she liked to think Derry was diplomatic and reasonable, she still felt that they would think her weak and not want to bother with her.

“It will probably be best if you stick to the right.” Brianna commented. “It’s shallow on that side at least half way through. After that, there is a drop off. Half way up, to avoid that drop, go left diagonally until about three fourths of the way through and then head right diagonally the rest of the way.” Brianna explained. “That will keep you in the shallowest part of the mud so that you won’t have to dry up too much and waste your energy. There are quite a few obstacles to go, so it’s best that you don’t get tired out so soon.” She had no idea if they were going to listen to her or not, but it was her job to help them through it as quickly as possible.

“Just to give you a heads up about what is next, you have three paths to choose from, the shortest one is the most dangerous, then you have a wall to climb over. There are another three paths, again the shortest being the most dangerous, and then the final obstacle which is a lake that you have to swing across to get to the other side.” Brianna told them, figuring they could listen and do their charm at the same time. “So, the less energy you use now, the better you’ll be when you get to the final one.” They probably already knew that, but she didn’t want them getting stuck on the whole mud pit when she felt there were worse obstacles to deal with ahead of them.

0 Brianna That is a long team name. 0 Brianna 0 5

Russell Layne

April 01, 2013 9:12 AM

Go <i>quickly</i>, team. by Russell Layne

Officially speaking, Russell guessed he was the captain of Team Nineteen, but he suspected he was going to end up taking a bit of a back seat in the second challenge. Michael was playing the overseer role, and since he and Mellie probably had the closest, most trusting relationship on the team, it seemed pretty likely to him that they would play well off each other and he would principally be around to get rid of things Mel lacked the magical prowess or physical size to deal with while the other two girls came along for the ride.

This, as far as Russell was concerned, was a good division of labor, at least under the circumstances they were looking at. His main objective was to get a good time in the obstacle course, and he didn’t really care how they went about that, or who did what to make it happen.

As the first eighteen teams went through, Russell tried to get some idea of how long a good time was, but numbers weren’t his specialty and he would have needed paper to work out averages, which he didn’t have. He considered asking Mellie, since she was better at math in her head than he was, but she was talking about…whatever came to mind at any given moment, from what he could tell, and he had never really thought of her as the strategic type anyway, so he let her talk and decided not to make everyone more tense by trying to figure up times. He, at least, had a watch on, so if they had a number, they would all feel the pressure to beat that number, and that kind of pressure could make people go to pieces, which wouldn’t be particularly useful. He thought Mellie, specifically, might do so, and Abigail was a Crotalus. That House didn’t have the greatest reputation for nerve.

Finally, it was their turn. Second from the bottom, but it beat another waiting period. “We’re gonna be great, guys,” he said as they got ready for Michael’s signal. “Just don’t panic, ask for help if you need it, and once again, don’t panic,” he joked.

When they reached the first obstacle, he wondered if that advice was going to be hugely useful or not. It could honestly go either way, depending on how his teammates reacted to the prospect of mud. He himself was not a huge fan of mud, but it didn’t really bother him, either. It was just mud; he’d go around it if he could, but he was pretty sure, unless that stuff was ten feet deep, that they could get across the pit in less than ten minutes.

Michael asked if they wanted help and Russell followed up Mellie’s question with a thought he had, looking at specifics. “How much can you see, Michael?” he asked, looking up. “Can you tell how deep it is or anything else we can’t see here?”

16 Russell Layne Go <i>quickly</i>, team. 183 Russell Layne 0 5

Kate Bauer

April 01, 2013 9:17 AM

Time to catch up to the rest, Team Three. by Kate Bauer

Kate was in good spirits as she waited with her team to be called for the obstacle course. Up until today, she had been worried about how they were going to do with their overseer, wondering all the time if they had made the right choice, but now that they had gotten more details, it seemed that it was going to work out okay. Add in that her team, unlike some of the others, did not have a very long wait to deal with, and she thought the second challenge was off to a pretty good start for Team Three.

Her sister, she thought, wasn’t as optimistic; Alicia was as smily as usual, but Kate thought she had sensed a little tension when, after breakfast, she wished her luck anyway. She hadn’t bothered to ask what was up, since she had long since learned that she’d never get an honest answer to that question, but she did, as she waved to her on her way past to the edge of the maze, hope that she either wasn’t really being bothered by something or that she’d forget about it by the time it was Seven’s turn. Then she needed to address her own team and forgot about Alicia for the moment as she did that.

“Okay, guys, here we are again,” she said brightly, smiling at them, feeling a little of the kind of excitement she sort of associated with the beginning of a Quidditch match, only without the draining pressure of being, in essence, the one who had to win it or lose it for them. This was really much more of a team effort than the usual Quidditch games were. “Challenge Two. We’re going to rule this thing. We’ve just got to keep our focus and work together. Go team!”

It wasn’t much, but she thought it would do. Besides, it was time to go.

Inside, they found the way to the first obstacle smooth, which made Kate worry there was going to be something really unpleasant at the end of the route, which made a mud pit almost a pleasant surprise. It almost made her secretly gladder they had left Bianca behind as the overseer, since she seemed like she might be the hardest to get through that kind of thing. It was against all the training rich girls got, whatever their basic dispositions were; she thought of her sister again as she wondered how Alicia would handle it.

“So, this looks simple enough,” she said. “Maybe we can cast drying charms as we go through the shallow parts, to make that faster to go over – see?” She cast a drying charm over some of the ground near the edge. “I doubt it’ll go all the way through, though, so walk fast,” she suggested, and began to demonstrate that herself, moving as fast as she could while testing the ground to make sure she wasn’t about to fall in up to her neck, casting the charm once more.

16 Kate Bauer Time to catch up to the rest, Team Three. 170 Kate Bauer 0 5

Amity Brockert

April 01, 2013 6:47 PM

What were we before? by Amity Brockert

There were three reasons Amity had wanted to be overseer. First of all, it sounded like less work and that was always a plus. Secondly, she was sure she was one of the smarter people on her team, which with a team including a Thornton and her cousin, wasn't hard. Rupert didn't seem to have much common sense either.She didn't think Arnold or Jordan was especially stupid but they knew more spells than she did, and in Arnold's-the only other Aladren on the team's-case, he was like the best athlete in school. Thirdly, the second year did not have to be around Clara and Aubrielle this way.

The current situation was made all the more pleasant when she left with the other overseers and Carrie wasn't among them. Amity spotted the blonde, who looked rather angry upon noticing her, and threw her a smug look. As bad as it might be to delight in someone's misery, her cousin didn't count. Plus, well, when the Aladren disliked someone, she really disliked them. She had all sorts of nasty thoughts about those people she would never speak out loud to most because it would be considered rude. Of course, that often didn't apply to Carrie . If that brat thought rules didn't apply to her, well then those rules didn't have to either.

Her team was in the middle of the groups going just about, so Amity had a little while to wait before actually having to do something and the faster they finished the course, the less she would have to do. She'd have to get them through it quickly and would provided Arnold or Jordan made sure the rest didn't screw it up. Then her job would be over with and she could wait for the after party-and do nothing in between. That was the real treat for her, not the party. Parties she'd been to and while she enjoyed them, doing nothing was rare and Amity cherished every moment she got to spend doing it.

She relaxed as she waited for her turn. Obviously, she was using the scrying method. The second year did not have much experience on a broom, with it-thankfully-being considered improper and all. If it wasn't, her mother would surely be after her to do that too and play Quidditch, something Amity wouldn't have had any desire to do. While she probably would have refused, Mother would have wanted Chaslyn to as well. Her sister didn't really have it in her to say no, and didn't really like the game at all . She'd be stuck and the second year didn't want that.

When it was time for Team Nine to go, Amity turned to her scrying glass. The first obstacle turned out to be a mud pit which delighted her further. For one thing, she didn't have to go through it, though she felt bad that Isabel did. The real joy came from the fact, however, that so did Carrie. If she'd been Sullivan Quincy, she'd have been just thrilled to get to direct the third year through it. Of course, Amity got to direct Aubrielle and Clara through it but she doubted they'd mind the mud as much as her cousin did. McKinley probably would though but the Aladren had a bit more sympathy for her.

She heard Arnold's voice mentioning that it couldn't be as easy as just walking across."It's not." Amity replied. "It's really deep in some places, you might get stuck. Head to the far right. Or you could try a spell to get rid of the mud, like a drying charm or transfiguring it into something easier to walk across."

11 Amity Brockert What were we before? 233 Amity Brockert 0 5

Cepheus Princeton

April 01, 2013 8:56 PM

We're not doing too terribly. by Cepheus Princeton

The moment Cepheus heard the challenge was going to be more physical, he hadn’t known how to feel. He was physically capable of any challenge, certainly, and now his height proved to be an asset most of the time, but not all of his team-mates were the same. There was something called the Overseer as well who was supposed to be the brains behind their position and Cepheus immediately thought Preston should have the job. After all, the older lad was more experienced and intelligent. Cepheus hadn’t, however, thought of not having Mr Stratford’s magical skills on the battlefield. Only after Stratford had put one of the twins into the position did Cepheus see the reasoning behind it. Ceph still had some to learn.

The usually peaceful gardens seemed crowded with all of his classmates gathered in the space. Cepheus didn’t like it. It felt like the student body was invading his thinking space. Ceph tried not to think too much about it as he joined his team and listened to what was expected of them. Nothing much for awhile, it seemed. By the time Team Fourteen was called, Ceph had almost torn up a large circle of grass in front of him. He had been lucky enough to have dropped the pulled up blades in the same spot so the spot didn’t look too lacking. Nevertheless, he stamped his foot over it as he rose to pat it down, brushing his hands off as surreptitiously as possible.

Cepheus followed his team into the maze. It felt familiar; he had walked this path before. He didn’t know what to expect, however, and kept his wand out, on guard for anything. He stayed close to the youngest members of the team just in case. It turned out there wasn’t anything to fear when they arrived at a mud pit. Cepheus almost had to rub his eyes to make sure the giant pit of filthy mud was actually there. Did the professors really expect him to go through that? Cepheus wrinkled his nose. There had to be an alternative.

There was, in fact, but it had been made clear that the easy path was the ‘loser’s’ way out. Ceph sighed through his nose. Their Overseer was supposed to have all the answers, supposedly, and Cepheus really hoped she didn’t muck it up. “Is there an easy way to get out of here besides solidifying the entire thing?” he asked their invisible Overseer. Making a path through the dirt would be easy, but Cepheus didn’t even want to step in that mud. He was wearing boots that he would never want to risk getting filthy. “Maybe we could make some sort of bridge with stones,” he suggested, “after we solidify a path through the mud. If there are enough dry spots, maybe we won’t need to solidify anything.”

There had been a time in Cepheus’s life when he wouldn’t have minded trudging through the thick dirt. However, that had been beat out of him in a metaphorical sense and he couldn’t imagine going through anything like that. Besides, there was a difference between romping in the dirt and purposely sticking one’s foot into mud. Besides, there was no way of knowing whether or not something would try and suck them in or steal their shoes. Cepheus wrinkled his nose again, disliking this challenge already.

40 Cepheus Princeton We're not doing too terribly. 216 Cepheus Princeton 0 5

Jorge Garcia

April 01, 2013 8:58 PM

I'm working on it. by Jorge Garcia

Jorge had rather enjoyed the first challenge, although he never let that on to anyone. Watching the girls flail around and be terrified by the Haunted School had thoroughly amused him. He thought it was great fun. He was thinking positive for the second challenge too. With it being a physical one, he knew that the obstacles were going to be difficult. Jorge didn’t care about winning, but he wanted to be entertained and he thought for sure that this challenge would do that for him.

The only issue he had was when the Over Seer was determined. Kate had given her thoughts that it should be either him or Bianca. Why Bianca, he didn’t know. He didn’t think she had enough brains or confidence to really do much help for them. But that was neither here nor there. His issue had been the fact that Bianca hadn’t even consulted with him first before declaring herself the Over Seer. Jorge hadn’t wanted it, he actually thought the challenge would be fun, but he felt it was extremely rude that she didn’t take his thoughts into consideration, especially for someone younger than him. On top of her being from such a proper family. Jorge thought it was drilled into those people about manners. Clearly, not all of them grasped the concept.

He let the issue drop though because Jorge didn’t see the point in getting mad. Besides, if she failed in the position that was her own fault.

Jorge stood off a little from the team, twirling his wand much like he would a drum stick, waiting patiently for their turn to come along. He was starting to become bored when their team was finally announced and they were allowed to enter into the gardens. He followed along behind the girls and smirked at the sight of the mud. He was a little let down that there weren’t loads of Pureblood girls around him to see their reactions, but he was sure he’d hear about it all later. Jade was basically another guy, so he felt she would charge through it without issue. Kate was a Captain, so he didn’t think she minded getting dirty, and Wendy seemed to not mind things in general, so he doubted she’d put up a fuss. It should be an easy one to get through.

“Seems fair.” Jorge commented when Kate made her suggestion. “Or turn it to stone or something.” Jorge commented if she was worried about it being unstable. “Jade and I can reinforce the spell though when we get through just to make sure it stays dried. It shouldn’t really be an issue.” Jorge and Solomon were probably the heaviest out of them. Jorge was lanky, but he was starting to get some height on him. He was taller than Dulce now and she stood at 5’7.

6 Jorge Garcia I'm working on it. 220 Jorge Garcia 0 5

Annette Pierce (with some Annabelle)

April 02, 2013 10:51 AM

Just do it! by Annette Pierce (with some Annabelle)

Annette had been restless and out of sorts since Annabelle had been named Overseer. Her first and primary concern was, of course, the separation issue. She could count on three fingers the number of reasons why they had ever been out of sight of each other, and they usually still talked to each other through the stall door when one of them was using the toilet.

She kept telling herself it wasn't any different than their Quidditch subterfuge last year, but even then, whoever wasn't flying was right there in the very front row of the bleachers, offering reassurance and support just by being within sight. The only time then that they lost visual contact was in the locker room and climbing up to or out of the spectator stands. Time measured in mere minutes, while nothing important was happening.

And the third reason they left each other's sight was more an issue of losing consciousness than real separation. Besides, they usually saw each other in their dreams anyway, so sleep only barely counted, even if it lasted the longest.

Fortunately, this anxiety was cured as soon as Coach Pierce announced the overseer could run the course with the rest of the team on a broom. She shot a grin of relief over to her sister, but Annabelle didn't see it. She was too busy looking conflicted. Annette could not understand the cause of it. Annabelle was a great flier. Well, a good one, anyway. She had better agility on a broom than Annette did at any rate, even if she did hold back a little on speed. There was nothing the Gardens could offer that would challenge Annabelle's flying skills, and it let them be together, so what was the problem?

When she did catch her sister's eye, finally, she made gestures indicating that Annabelle should use the broom. For some incomprehensible reason, this only seemed to confuse her more. For one of the first times in her life, Annette had no idea what was going through Belle's head. She repeated the broom charades more insistently.

How was this even a choice? Annette needed Belle there if she was going to be at all magically useful during this challenge and she was already at a physical disadvantage compared to the older boys due to her size. She did not want to be the team's deadweight this challenge. She might not be advanced or strong, but she was a clever and capable young lady and she was not going to hold anyone back if she could help it, but she needed Annabelle here.

Her nerves increased as Annabelle disappeared into the overseer section and stayed strained until Annabelle marched out again, the broom in hand, looking ready to defy a dragon. Annette thought she had never looked more fierce. She grinned a little and met Belle's eyes, realizing as she did so that Belle wasn't tackling the challenge head on, but angrily frustrated already.

When Annabelle immediately launched into the air on her broom upon eye contact and some of it seemed to fade, Annette thought she understood: Belle hadn't been able to take off earlier because Annette hadn't been there. They really maybe ought to look into resolving this dependence they had on each other sometime. Clearly, just being together all the time wasn't always within their control, and next time something more than a challenge might be at stake.

She followed Annabelle into the labyrinth and tried not to get irritated at Cepheus's protective hovering. She was a witch, with a wand that worked perfectly well now that Annabelle was nearby, and tougher than she looked. She had played against Aladren and singlehandedly neutralized one of their beaters (okay, yes, she had shamelessly taken advantage of her cousin's scruples, but the effect was the same). She had played against Crotalus and survived a direct bludger hit from Topher Calhoun. Annette Pierce was no shrinking violet.

This perhaps became most clear when she caught sight of the mud pit and wondered what the big deal was. There was mud. How did that constitute a challenge? Belle even located a couple dry spots for them, either in response to Cepheus's request for ideas or just because she would have anyway.

She claimed they were too far to jump across, but Annette figured if there were dry spots, there were probably shallow spots around them. She only had to get close, really.

Annette backed up for a good running start, sprinted forward, and leaped for the first dry spot, a few feet out on the right side of the pit. She landed a few inches shy, splashing into the myd and falling to her hands and knees, but it was only a couple inches deep. She got up and waded the rest of the way to the dry spot.

Noticing the look of horror on Annabelle's face, Annette rolled her eyes and shook her head. "It's just mud," she pointed out reasonably, speaking ostensibly to her sister, but intending it just as much for the prissy boys who were thinking about this way too much. In theory, being shown up by a little girl should at least give their primitive masculinity a fighting chance against their society upbringing. "A cleaning charm will fix it once we're through."

She looked back at the rest of the team, wiping her hands uncaringly on her clothes to get the mud off them. This was why they had dressed in these old things in the first place, right? So they could get dirty? With some luck, maybe the cutsie socks she was wearing might even get completely ruined. "I may need a boost to get to the next one. There's not enough space for another running start. In the meantime, I'll try to steady the next person who jumps so they don't fall like I did."

True, she didn't exactly have the mass to be a really effective anchor, especially for Gareth, but if the next jumper was just a little overbalanced, surely she could steady them without risking them both taking a dunking. The boys all had longer legs than hers, so they could probably jump it easier than she could anyway.

1 Annette Pierce (with some Annabelle) Just do it! 247 Annette Pierce (with some Annabelle) 0 5

Cepheus Princeton

April 02, 2013 11:24 AM

I like teamwork. by Cepheus Princeton

OOC: Sorry, didn't catch that Annabelle was with them.

It was appalling how close the twins were to each other and Cepheus couldn't understand it. He had never met a pair of twins as close as they and frankly he was a little creeped out by it. Cepheus wondered if every Overseer was supposed to be there with them on a broom, but he supposed it didn't matter too much as long as that Ann got them through, whichever one she was.

When they were at the mud pit, Cepheus wanted a little teamwork to quicken their spellwork and get across this area without much trouble. But, of course, the Ann who wasn't an Overseer decided to take matters into her own hands straight off and leap into the mud. It was disgusting, seeing all that all over her, not to mention thoughtless. "It's not just about using a bloody cleaning charm," replied Cepheus dryly. "There could be creatures in there that could slow us down. And if your shoe gets stuck it there it'll be hell trying to pull it out again." He would know; he'd experienced that once back home on a very rainy day. Living in the country wasn't always beneficial in that sense.

He looked back at his team-mates. "Shall we pool our forces and harden the mud or make a bridge of sorts? I don't think all of us leaping from dry spot to dry spot is practical especially because we don't know what could be in there." Cepheus didn't think he was fit to be the Overseer, but he certainly did use his brain from time to time. He'd read about magical creatures and plants that flourished in swamps and muddy patches like these and he wasn't going to take any chances. Cepheus was highly competitive and he played to win. He believed they really had to come together as a team in order to win this, not go dawdling off on one's own without the rest of the team. If Ann knew anything about Quidditch, he expected her to know this and respect it.

Obviously, everyone was different and Cepheus didn't fancy himself an anthropologist of any sort. Maybe Ann was the sort of player who enjoyed doing things her own way. He could respect that, but not in a team setting. It was clear that she could carry her own weight at least on the Quidditch pitch, or at least her sister could carry it for her, but he looked out for her because that's what team-mates did. He wanted to get through this area and move on to the next without anyone falling behind. Once Ceph got into his competitive mindset, it was very difficult to get him out of it, not to mention he was a horror when he lost anything. He had expectations to live up to and his pride to pamper. It had been too long since he had won anything notable.

40 Cepheus Princeton I like teamwork. 216 Cepheus Princeton 0 5

Rupert Princeton

April 02, 2013 11:43 AM

Not so real, apparently by Rupert Princeton

Physically demanding work was right up in Rupert's alley. He enjoyed anything that included flying as well and, as much as he goofed off, he was smart when it came to saving his own skin and the skin of his mates. He would have been an excellent soldier in any battlefield if he didn't hate fighting so much.

One of his peers volunteered to be the Overseer and Rup was glad that position was done with. He didn't want his team-mates to waste time fighting over that position or anything, and it was good the more experienced students were going to be with them. He personally didn't know as many spells as they would, though he was quite competent in his spellwork, much more than even his parents knew. It was difficult to prove to his parents that he wasn't a complete idiot especially when he wasn't allowed to use magic at home. Just because he didn't show off that he knew the differences between plants and magical creatures didn't mean he didn't know anything. He knew practical things like spells and herbology and a few medicinal potions. It was things like dates and historical events that Rup really had no interest in. It was just unfortunate that was the subject everyone seemed to care intensely about.

The Overseer left them to join the other Overseers and Rupert waited patiently until their time to go in came around. He followed the rest of his team-mates through the maze and was struck dumb momentarily along with Arnold at the sight of the mud pit. Was this really all? It couldn't be. Rup was about to suggest they throw something into it to see how quickly it would sink through the mud, but Amity answered Arnold's question.

Brilliant. Rup was still a bit cautious about crossing an expanse of mud. Sure it was deep, but things could stick to their shoes, slowing them down. He went to expect the far right side. "Do you think we could form a rock path or something on the shallower areas?" asked Rup. "I could help levitate them in place or enlarge them." Those were two charms he was confident in. He had addressed his team generally, but he was waiting mostly for one of the older students to give their opinion on his idea. He wasn't thick, though he did enjoy playing the clown.

40 Rupert Princeton Not so real, apparently 248 Rupert Princeton 0 5

Charlie B-F-R

April 02, 2013 1:28 PM

The best solution is to tolerate being slightly off-trend by Charlie B-F-R

Charlie knew that he, personally, hadn't been spectacular at the first challenge but he thought his team was pretty good. Ok, actually, he thought that Marcus was amazing and that Phoenix was dreamy. In short, he wasn't surprised that they weren't top five but he was a little disappointed. He wished the whole list had been released so that they could know how they were doing. But he guessed the only solution was to work super hard in the next challenge so that they could zoom up the leader board. He thought that Marcus deserved that.

The challenge had said to come prepared for something active. Active often also meant dirty, or at the very least, sweaty, so that also implied something one did not wish to see ruined. Being a first year, Charlie had flying-friendly clothes with him and had thus opted for one of the outfits he would have worn under his uniform during that class. He did find it hard to balance things he didn't mind getting dirty with being happy about what he was wearing, as the things he tended to be ok about spoiling were a bit last season, and he hated being off trend. After much laying out of clothes, trying on of outfits and soul-searching, he had opted for some knee length camouflage shorts. It was not entirely clear what he was meant to be able to camouflage himself against, save possibly the ocean, as the pattern was in rather bright blues. He also wore a polo shirt of a similar shade. Military wasn't really on trend any more but the colour suited him, so he felt it came closest to the balance he desired.

He tried not too bounce too much as they waited to be ready but it was hard, as he was naturally inclined to Tiggerishness at the best of times, and this was all very exciting. However, he knew he might need all of his energy for the obstacle course. He couldn't imagine how it must be being one of the teams further down the list. It seemed to take forever for his team to get called. He supposed that was a good thing, if it meant all the other teams had taken a long time but then it might just have been time playing tricks on him because he really wanted to get going.

“Ok!” he beamed when Theresa gave them the go-ahead. She wouldn't be able to see his smile but she could probably hear it. He managed not to charge forward, just in case there was danger and because he felt he should let Marcus lead the way, but it was a near thing.

He listened carefully to Marcus' assessment of the mud pit, nodding along as he spoke.

“I don't mind wading through it,” he chipped in. He knew he probably gave the impression that he'd be precious about getting dirty but, so long as he wasn't wearing anything he cared about, he didn't really mind it. He was still a kid at heart and did his fair amount of running, jumping and climbing, all of which entailed various kinds of gunk. He just liked reading about clothes too. In fact, the latter made being good at the former rather a useful skill in the playground.... “So long as we don't go in over my head, obviously. But if you think just charging through the deepest bits an giving us piggybacks will be quicker or easier, then I'm happy with that.” He wasn't really sure about the Transfiguring idea. He rather agreed with Marcus' idea that it was a bit big for that but he didn't want to sound like he doubted his captain's ability, so he just left it out.

13 Charlie B-F-R The best solution is to tolerate being slightly off-trend 252 Charlie B-F-R 0 5

Francesca Wolseithcrafte

April 02, 2013 2:08 PM

Did I miss a team meeting about names? by Francesca Wolseithcrafte

Francesca was quietly pleased with the fact that her team was doing so well. She knew that she had managed to play an active part in the first challenge too, and that no one could say she had just been along for the ride. She wasn't foolish enough, however, to think that it would increase her standing in the school. Doing well at something like this usually just made other people jealous and resentful and so, from a social point of view, it was a little unfortunate. However, her competitive side (combined with her natural inclination to doubt anyone really liked her anyway) meant that she couldn't let that get her down.

Coming from a very traditional magical family, Francesca wore robes at all times, and thus the day of the challenge was only different in so far as there were different kinds of robes. Clearly one would not wear dress robes, for example, to such a thing. Francesca was donning the sorts of robes one might wear for athletic activities, such as Quidditch, with a t-shirt and culottes underneath. Most other people seemed to be wearing similar attire minus the robes.

She followed her team into the obstacle course, listening for Evan's disembodied voice. She had gathered the impression that Evan was a good lateral thinker. Whilst she could see this being useful, she hoped he didn't get too lateral... They wanted to go forwards, not sideways, after all.

She eyed the first obstacle, several possibilities coursing through her mind. There was the possibility that something horrible was lurking under the surface, which seemed also to have occurred to David. There was, however, also the possibility that the task setters were just being crude and mucky. The first challenge had ended with jars of slime and – whilst there had been several magical options (searching charms, levitating out the contents, levitating the jars to see through the bottoms) the fact remained that the quickest option was simply to plunge one's arm in and grope about. She therefore didn't put it past the staff to simply want to see them all up to their necks in mud. It was probably supposed to be character building in some way.

“The bridge sounds good,” she nodded to Thad. She presumed he knew how to do such a thing as he hadn't seemed keen on David's idea of inventing spells. Whilst there was every possibility that the mud was free of danger, it would be considerably quicker to all run over a bridge that to wade through claggy, sticky mud, and thus – unless Evan had any insights to offer from his higher vantage point – then that seemed to be the best way forward.

13 Francesca Wolseithcrafte Did I miss a team meeting about names? 250 Francesca Wolseithcrafte 0 5

Michael Grosvenor

April 02, 2013 6:20 PM

Go carefully, team... by Michael Grosvenor

Even though he'd expected it to do the trick, Michael still jumped slightly when – to all intents and purposes – the model started talking back to him, first in Mellie's voice and then in Russell's. He only really used speech reading as a back up when he was struggling to hear. As the spot occupied by the overseers was calm and tranquil, he could pick up the voices of his team mates well enough.

His insides squirmed a bit at Mellie's questions. He didn't really have a clue what to suggest. He'd rather been hoping that the people down on the ground would know how they wanted to deal with the mud but he guessed it was kind of his job. He was relieved when Russell followed up with some specific things for him to look for, although he felt a bit bad that he hadn't figured that out himself. It was pretty obvious that, as overseer, he should be having a good detailed look. And that wasn't something he was bad at. He was quite good at picking up on small, visual details, just not at figuring out what he should be looking for.

“Erm... I'm just having a closer look,” he confessed, feeling a little embarrassed that he hadn't found the answers for them without prompting. He peered in closely at the mud pit. It was shaded kind of different colours... He poked it with his finger. It was an odd sensation. His finger slipped in, and the model of the mud pit was cool and a little sticky, like real mud might be, but when he drew his finger out, it was still clean. “Yeah, there's deep bits and shallow bits,” he confirmed.

He wondered whether there was anything else horrible, like a nasty creature lurking in the mud. How was he supposed to find that out? He really didn't want to get his team mates grabbed and dragged under but he wasn't really sure what he could use to work that out. He had a good, thorough poke around and, not discovering anything more than uneven terrain, decided that was all he could really do.

“Ok, move a bit more to the right, then you should be able to step out without sinking too deeply,” he advised, glad that his team mates couldn't see him crossing his fingers.

13 Michael Grosvenor Go carefully, team... 199 Michael Grosvenor 0 5

Effie Arbon

April 02, 2013 6:50 PM

You have to get to it first... by Effie Arbon

It wasn't as if Effie needed the approval of people like Regina Parker. Really, anything the girl thought of her was beneath her notice. However, she had asked for feedback on her instructions, and... well, everyone liked to be complimented, didn't they? She was pleased to know that she was doing well enough to help her team. She was also rather gratified by the chiding she heard Waverly being given, and by the fact that Regina did seem keen to look out for Isabel. People of her background could be terribly crass and just because they did not see a problem with something, could not understand what it was like from the point of view of someone with proper breeding. That Reggie could step outside of her own perspective of the world and try to understand from Isabel's spoke well of her. Considering Isabel's concerns above her own and Waverly's point of view suggested that she knew her place.

“Well done!” she called out happily, when the final team member had stepped to safety. She was about to give a run down of what she could see of the paths when Regina began to do the version of it from ground level. She listened carefully, nodding along as it all tallied with what she could see.

“They are colour-coded according to hazard, with the most hazardous being balanced out by being by far the shortest. I believe you correctly identified the plant on the red path as poisonous. That is the shortest route but you would have to clear it. The Devil's snare is medium in both danger and length. The last path looks to be completely clear but is much longer. They increase in thirds – that is the shortest is one third the length of the longest, and the medium one is two thirds.” She assessed the distance, giving her best estimate of how long the distance would take to walk if it was clear, whilst stressing that this was incredibly approximate owing to her having to judge the scale. She had refined her idea of how distances appeared whilst steering the group through the mud pit but it was still hard to relate the map to real life, and to work out how long a distance would take them; after all, their progress through the mud had been cautious and they had not been travelling in a straight line.

“I don't want to overburden you with information but I shall tell you the next obstacle so you have time to think whilst you're getting through the path,” she added. “It's a rather high wall, with a rather short rope at the top, so you'll need to work out a way to the top of it. There's a ladder down the back, and there are cushioning charms in place to minimise injuries if you fall.” That was not to say she recommended abandoning all caution and hurtling themselves full force at the obstacle but it was definitely something that needed to be factored in to their assessment of the difficulty and of the danger of any possible solutions.

13 Effie Arbon You have to get to it first... 238 Effie Arbon 0 5

Thaddeus Pierce

April 03, 2013 12:41 PM

I didn't call one. by Thaddeus Pierce

The others seemed to like his bridge idea - or at least, Francesca did and nobody else voiced any objections, as both Thad and Henry had about making up new spells to discover if the mud was home to anything unpleasant - so he assumed this was the plan until it proved unsuccessful. He looked around, looking for raw materials for either a transfiguration or a more crude building project.

His gaze swept over the sign announcing the obstacle and its time penalty twice before he realized what it was. A tall wooden post was pretty much the ideal raw material for fashioning themselves a bridge. They didn't need anything fancy; a fairly simple elongation charm ought to do it.

After some unfruitful effort on his own, he decided he had a team with him for a reason and elicited some help. "I think we can enlarge this post to make ourselves a bridge over the mud. Can someone help me get it out? It's in here pretty good." And, well, he wasn't amazingly strong either. It was one of the reasons he'd never made a really good showing as a Beater. His build was far better suited to any other position than the one he'd been playing lately. He hoped he might snag Keeper next year, once David graduated, but that was mostly up to Arnold, he supposed. He'd rather play Beater than nothing at all.

"I figure we can enlarge it until it's wide enough to walk across comfortably, then elongate it the rest of the way," he further explained his plan. "It's simple," he admitted, almost embarrassed that he wasn't proposing something with proven architectural stability with arches and cross-braces and decorative flourishes, "but anything fancier than that isn't really neccessary and wastes time and energy. We just need to get across."

Addressing their overseer, so Evan could start looking into the next step while the rest of them got the post out and resized, he added, "Ev, can you figure out if there's any place to put it across so it might have some support in the middle? It won't make a very good bridge if it sags down into the mud too far. Otherwise, we'll have to figure out how to reinforce it."

0 Thaddeus Pierce I didn't call one. 0 Thaddeus Pierce 0 5

Abigail Thornton

April 03, 2013 12:53 PM

Lets just go already! by Abigail Thornton

Abigail Thornton wasn't afraid of a little challenge. As long as a bunny slipper was not a part of it, that was, anyway. There wasn't a thing outside that scared her. Not that she knew of, anyway. There was certainly nothing wrong with getting a little dirty either. Dirt had living things in it, and the way things live fascinated her.

When it came time for the second challenge, Abi hoped that this one would have more outside things, things with animals, things with life in it! Not death, not mirrors, or boggarts. Something fun. The day dawned bright and sunny and Abi smiled as she walked to the Gardens. She wore a pair of jeans, a long sleeve t-shirt and her favorite hoodie with the horse on the front and her red hair was in a pony tail at the top of her head to keep her hair out of her eyes. As she got to the gardens she looked up into the sky and smiled at the sunlight. “Great start to a great day.” she said softly as she breathed in the beautiful seemingly spring weather.

The other students gathered around her in groups and she walked over towards her team, Team 19. She waved to her teammates and was about to say hello to them as well, but Coach Pierce started talking. Abi smiled when the word obstacle course was mentioned and actually had to stifle a giggle. Sure, she wasn't the sporty one of her sisters, but she loved her obstacle courses! Michael walked away from them, towards the other overseers and she waved at him, as if she was wishing him luck.

Coach went on to tell them what was going to happen and Abi listened, like usual, nodding in all the right places. Team One started off and Abi looked at her teammates. She didn't say much, nor did the others, but it was more important for them to focus on what they could be about to face inside the labyrinth. Team Eighteen went inside and she looked at Mellie, Russell and Avalon. Russell spoke, telling them that they were going to be great and that they shouldn't panic. Then they heard Michael's voice talking to them. It sounded weird, almost like it was one of those disembodied things where there was no body.

They walked the path of shrubbery and got to a big mud pit. “Here's the mud pit Michael was talking about...” she said, looking at it, wondering how deep it was and also if there was anything in it. She wouldn't lie to herself, she couldn't wait to see what would happen when she set her feet right into the cool damp mud. Michael's voice asked if they wanted help with the mud and Abi wanted to tell him that she didn't need help, that it was just mud, but Mellie spoke up first, asking what he had in mind. Then Russell asked Michael's voice how much he could see and asked about the depth of the mud.

Michael said that he was having a closer look and Abi waited out of obligation to her team, but she really wanted to untie her shoes, put them around her neck, roll up her jeans and walk into the mud in her bare feet. When it was added to them by the voice of Michael that there were shallow parts and deep ones too.

Michael told them to move a bit to the right and then they should be able to step out without sinking. “Michael?” she started. “Is there any spots that are too deep for us to walk through?” she asked, merely for hers and Avalon's sake than the older student's. She and Avalon were shorter, therefore would have a harder time with it. As she waited for his answer, she untied her shoes, tied the shoestrings together, rolled up her pants legs and stuck her socks into her shoes. “I'm ready. Are you?” she asked the others, stepping her right foot gingerly into the mud to test how deep it was right there. “This spot isn't too bad...” she added, stepping her other foot next to her first as she waited for Michael's voice or the other's answers to her.

0 Abigail Thornton Lets just go already! 242 Abigail Thornton 0 5

Waverly Canterbury

April 03, 2013 1:35 PM

Planting an idea by Waverly Canterbury

Nobody liked being lectured, but Waverly took it from Reggie without complaining. She had been subdued and tried not to let herself get angry with disappointment in herself. Waverly was fourteen and still had a lot to learn before she was anywhere near earning a position like Head Girl. She hadn't given Head Girl much thought, but she had been looking forward to becoming a Prefect if the professors thought she was good enough. This was obviously not a good show of it and Waverly had to get over herself and be okay with the fact she made mistakes sometimes. It was just really hard to accept it.

She followed the rest of the team as they passed through the mud pit. She needed a little time to herself to recuperate and act normal again. When they were at the three different paths, it took her a moment to recognize the second plant as Devil's Snare. She had learned that one in DADA class. The first plant was familiar to her, but all she could remember was that it was used in potions, her least favorite class here.

Reggie noted the plants immediately and Waverly stood back and listened, having recuperated enough. Effie gave her opinion and the run-down of what she could see from her birds-eye view.

As Waverly thought of which path to take, she wondered if taking the easy way out would be too long. After all, if they could run through it, it would take less time than battling through the foliage in either alternative path. Depending, of course, on how fast they could run and how much longer the path was. Having someone like Isabel on their team would slow them down a little, but Waverly definitely didn't want to say that. She liked Isabel and was trying to make an effort to understand the way a girl like she would think during a challenge like this.

Knowing what was coming next was helpful and a little daunting, but Waverly thought they'd better focus on this obstacle first. "Unless we can completely clear out any chances of getting pricked by the plant in the first path, I don't know if it would be worth the risk," she piped up. "Depending on how fast we can get through, I think going down the third path would be best if it's completely clear. It might be faster to go down that way as opposed to spending too much time struggling to get through the obstacles in the first two paths and potentially getting injured or something." She wasn't sure what getting pricked by the poisonous plant would do, exactly, but it would probably hinder them throughout the challenge as a whole and that wouldn't be good.

Now that her two cents was out, she just had to wait and decide what their team leader wanted to do with that. It made sense in Waverly's head, but maybe Isabel wouldn't be that fast or wouldn't run. Waverly had been brought up in the outdoors despite her mother's baking background. She had grown up hiking, swimming, camping and dune buggying and sometimes had a hard time understanding people who were totally opposed to that. She had gotten better since going to a boarding school away from her family and friends who were like her, but it was still hard sometimes especially because she didn't have really close pureblood friends who were really concerned with their looks and such.

19 Waverly Canterbury Planting an idea 218 Waverly Canterbury 0 5

Ris and Addi Thornton

April 03, 2013 2:25 PM

Asking queries from below by Ris and Addi Thornton

Arista knew that she was in charge of Team Twelve. But she also knew that she would be of more use down on the ground in something that was a physical challenge. Of course, she knew that Addi wouldn't be of much use to her on the ground and had half a mind to put her in as their team's overseer, but then the thought of giving her a job that could be that intense and important gave her second thoughts. Jay and Marcus were the next two oldest, in the third year. Ris was worried that Addi would freak out at they'd be without a working overseer, so she looked at the two third years and decided that Jay, as an Aladren, would make the better choice for their team's overseer. Marcus was on her Quidditch Team, and though Jay was a reserve on Aladren, she knew that it could be better for their team if Marcus was on the ground with her, Addi and the two first years, Blair and Ravenna. Oh bother... she thought, thinking of what could possibly happen.

The day of the second challenge was bright and sunny. Please tell me this is a good thing... That we'll actually get passed this challenge... she thought as she looked at herself in the mirror. Dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a blue hoodie and her oldest sneakers that still fit, she went to Addi's room and got her. “Come on sis!” she called, as she knocked. “The team's going to meet, we can't be late, are you almost ready?”

Addi came out of the room, also in a pair of jeans and a hoodie, hers was black though. ”Ready as I'll ever be for something physical...” she said, almost hoping to not go at all. She'd barely slept the night before and was feeling weak and anxious. Her face was pale, her hands clammy, but she tried to hide both of those things from her sister. Day by day in ever way... she thought to herself, going through her whole positive affirmation card.

Arista looked at her sister curiously. She didn't look right, but Ris wouldn't press the issue. As one o’clock grew near, the sisters approached the Gardens. Coach Pierce spoke, greeting them and telling them that they would be going through an obstacle course as their second challenge. Jay went with the other overseers and that left Ravenna, Blair, Marcus, Addi and herself standing there, listening to the coach. Right... she thought, moaning without sound.

Team One started and as the teams slowly dwindled down, Arista looked at her team. “Okay everyone. We may not be in the top five teams, but that doesn't mean that I won't be proud of each of you at the end of this. The last challenge was rough, we faced fears, scary mirrors and more, but we did it. Perhaps not happily, but it was done and we finished. We can finish here too. Blair and Ravenna, you're first years, but that doesn't mean that you can't be helpful. We are a team, and we will do this all together. Marcus, you and me are on the Teppenpaw team, and we can help the others through it. Jay is an Aladren, he's smart and I'm sure he'll do us proud. And Addi, you're smart, we'll need your logic, so stay calm...” she said. “As a matter of fact, everyone just stay calm.” she added as an afterthought.

When Team Eleven walked into the maze, she looked at her team and spoke again. “Remember, stay calm and stay together. It's not Halloween anymore, so we shouldn't be scared out of our wits on this one,” she said, I hope...

Addi looked at Ris the whole time she was giving her speech, but she didn't hear a word her older sister said until she heard her name in the mottled words. Arista thinks I'm smart? she thought, actually smiling and telling herself that she could do this. Her sister believed in her and that was all she needed to know just then.

Jay flew over to the entrance and waved them into the maze. “Alright team. Lets do this!” Arista said, leading the others in behind Jay. When Jay called back to tell them that there was a mud pit ahead, she looked at Addi.

”Mud?” was Addi's short reply.

“It's alright. Its nothing we can't handle, right Marcus? Blair? Ravenna? Addi?” she said her sister's name last, knowing that she'd have to deal with the argument in her head of whether she'd be able to handle it or not.

”It'll be okay... It's just wet dirt...” Addi said as she came up to the mud pit herself. Jay flew back to them and told them that there are parts without mud and other parts that were really deep.

“Well...” Arista started. “Can we walk from one bit without so much mud to another Jay?” she asked, as she turned her head to look at the mud.

Addi looked up at Jay and added, “And is it really really deep? Like the first years would not be able to walk in it if we did find some deep mud in here?”

Ris turned to her sister and smiled. She knew it was a good idea to keep her down here with her. Maybe Addi wasn't the sporty one, but if she was calm, she sure was logical!

0 Ris and Addi Thornton Asking queries from below 0 Ris and Addi Thornton 0 5

Analea Thornton

April 03, 2013 3:32 PM

Quietly making another by Analea Thornton

Analea was worried that this challenge would involve talking too, just like the last one. Thankfully Alex had gotten rid of the boggart in the last challenge, but Ana had to use a word with the dreaded 's' in it and then clammed up. She was scared then and she was just as scared now. The weather was bright and sunny, but she felt gloomy and down. In a pair of jeans and a zip-up sweatshirt, both blue, and a pair of old shoes that were ratty a little bit (in fact, she was almost sure they were a pair of Abi's old shoes), she walked up to Sara, Fae, Alex, Henny and Omara. She didn't say anything, but then there wasn't much she should have said.

One o'clock ticked nearer and nearer as Coach welcomed them and started to explain that the second challenge would be an obstacle course. Ana moved closer to Fae and Henny, but then Henny was called to go to the other overseers. Ana looked longingly at her back as she told them that they'd see her later, and got closer to Fae. Ohmygosh... she thought, hoping that these obstacles wouldn't involve speech...

Coach Pierce went on to explain more of the rules of the course and then sent Team One to the entrance. Analea pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly as she heard Henny's voice tell them to go. Ana walked close to Fae, feeling at least a little safer with the older girl there nearby.

“Mud? A high wall? A lake?” Ana said, in an almost whispered tone. There were no 's' involved, so she spoke, but softly. The first year listened to Henny talk about the paths and the mud. Ana didn't care about mud, or walls or lakes, at least the lake could clean them off again... What she cared about was talking.

The others were talking about using spells and sticking to the shallow parts of it all. Ana didn't mind mud as long as it wasn't going to drown them. She pulled on the shirtsleeve of her nearest team member and whispered into her ear, ”Wouldn't it be better if we only walked in the not deep bit? It would mean more energy kept for the other parts of the challenge...”

0 Analea Thornton Quietly making another 0 Analea Thornton 0 5

Angel Jareau

April 03, 2013 4:59 PM

...um...rite? by Angel Jareau

At the mention of an obstacle course, Angel’s heart dropped. This was the sort of thing he’d been afraid of when he’d first learned of the challenges. He didn’t think that running an obstacle course would actually kill him, but he thought he might wish he was dead by the end of it. And odds were fair that his team might wish the same thing. Before he could get too worked up about what the course had in store for them, Ryan saved him from having to actually participate.

There was no way he’d be able to fly overhead and direct them that way, but Angel was comfortable with Scrying ahead. Conveying what he found out might be difficult, but hopefully they’d be able to decipher his speech enough to make use of what he saw. They had managed to get through the first contest together, so they would be more familiar with him now. Sally was talented, and usually didn’t have a hard time understanding him. In their own way, the two were similar, relying on the external to the near exclusion of internal emotion. That made dealing with her easy since he didn’t have to try and incorporate emotion, or understand what she felt.

Angel followed Coach Pierce to a clearing that held a broom and a table. He took a seat at the table, dismissing the broom completely. Flying gave him terrible vertigo if he got too high or went faster than a slow walking pace, so it would be useless to try. Shy crimson eyes flicked up to the Professor’s face as he explained the task. Angel didn’t voice his concern about the fact that he couldn’t differentiate the colors of the path, getting the gist of the idea as he spoke. Longer path equated to safety, shorter paths were dangerous.

His black wand began poking lightly at the model, exploring the pit as Ryan talked to the team and got them sorted out.

“It’s probably just mud, right Angel?”

“Yes. Mud. Places little mud, places much mud. Short path more mud, long path not many. Which path?” Angel’s quiet monotone murmured around the waiting team, waiting to see which path they wanted him to send them through.

0 Angel Jareau ...um...rite? 0 Angel Jareau 0 5

Gareth Whitebriar

April 03, 2013 5:36 PM

As do I by Gareth Whitebriar

An obstacle course? Well, that wouldn’t be too difficult, Gareth figured as the teams gathered to wait. Cepheus seemed a little anxious about the wait. The fact that they were the fourteenth team meant they’d have quite a wait ahead of them, but Gareth wasn’t terribly worried. The day was pleasant enough, so they wouldn’t have to worry about sweating themselves out before the challenge even began.

When the topic of overseer came up, Gareth dismissed the position out of hand. His size, and his experience outdoors lent itself better to the ground work. That, and he wasn’t the best at planning ahead, having the fate of the whole team in his hands was more responsibility than he wanted. The fact that Preston decided one of the twins should take the position was a bit worrisome. The post probably should have gone to someone with a little more experience, but Gareth kept his peace. He wasn’t the leader here.

The first challenge seemed simple enough on the surface, make it through a mud pit. The other twin (Gareth had given up trying to keep them separate) launched herself into the pit with a rather amazing disregard for her own safety. Cepheus was correct. The mud could hide any number of nasty surprises in the form of creatures or grasping plants. Because the mud was thick, it was impossible to see such pitfalls until they snared you.

Ann on the ground made it to the first dry spot, but not without getting a bit messy in the process. Thankfully, nothing reached out of the mud to drag her down. Gareth wasn’t bothered by the dirty aspect of the challenge. He came from a long line of hunters, and had gone through his fair share of mud patches during spring hunts. His height would be a benefit here, the odds that the pit would be deep enough to cover him were small. Not with first years participating.

Gareth crouched at the edge of the pit and gave the mud an experimental poke. It was fairly thick, a clinging sort of goop. That was a good sign. Mud that thick would be difficult to live in, had it been more swamp like, the risk of creatures would be greater.

“It’s fairly thick, perhaps we could bake pillar like stepping stones? Heating spells could work. Depends on how deep the mud goes. I figure if we concentrate it downward, we can create stable steps as long as we can reach the bottom. Then we can create steps between the dry spots,” Gareth said as he wiped the mud of his fingers and onto the grass. He stood up and studied the situation further.

0 Gareth Whitebriar As do I 0 Gareth Whitebriar 0 5

Josh McLachlan

April 03, 2013 6:51 PM

Your help is noticeable. In a good way. by Josh McLachlan

Getting his team across wasn't as bad as Josh had expected. It was pretty easy getting them all to follow along. It did help that Josh knew what he was doing and spoke with authority. That same tone would never work at his uncle's house and only came out when he was having to lead a group of his peers. When he was young and lived in Scotland with his grandmother, he had always been left to his own devices except for meals and his lessons. He had almost always been alone and had grown into his skill by reading extensively and finding what he was interested in early in life. His desire to study and develop his skills had grown when he had moved around in his adolescence and continued even now in his sixth year.

However, all this went unseen by his relatives who cared only about what they could gain from housing the orphan and the child support they would receive from the patriarch. Everything was about money even if the McLachlans were infamous for having a fortune of blood money. Over time he had grown to not care that they didn't know the extent of his skill and so he didn't care to prove himself here at Sonora either. He was smart and he knew it and that's all that mattered.

What he did look for, however, were others who were as intelligent or as talented as he was. He enjoyed conversing with academics and others whom he considered on par with his skill and passion. He didn't believe that the effort mattered more than the quality. He believed that those who were skillful should use that skill and those who were not shouldn't try, but develop their skills behind the scenes as he had.

Of course, this was all subjective and Josh understood that. It did make social interactions a bit awkward, however. For the longest time Josh had believed no one really spoke to him unless they wanted something from him. Things had changed since two years ago when he had first transferred to Sonora and he was much more, well, civil than he had been then. Time really did heal, though not as quickly as he would have liked.

Aria helped and Josh was impressed that she was confident in her skills enough to do so. There was no way he could estimate her skill level unless he went back and tested her work on top of what he had already done. He simply continued on, leading the way and testing the dried mud with his foot to make sure it was firm before moving on. A few feet in, one of the girls gasped and he turned his head immediately, his wand at the ready and a spell on his lips to catch her. But she had regained her balance and Aria sounded amused. Josh didn't bother commenting, but nodded at Gemma and turned back to his work.

Once he was on the other side, he turned back around and looked at the rest of his teammates. As he waited for them, he brushed back his recently trimmed brown hair and took a look at what was ahead of them. He'd be able to see better once he approached it, but he sighed. "What's next, James?" he asked, waiting to move once the rest of his team had crossed. Once they began moving, he turned to Aria. "Thanks for your help," he said. "Some reinforcement was needed." The sort of relationship he wished he had with any of his younger cousins was how he treated his younger classmates. He had tried to act like an older brother to Darcie before her mom had completely warped her brain and Darcie's father had spoiled her to the core.

If one dug completely through Josh's tough exterior and searched the bottom of his heart, all he really wanted was to care for someone. It didn't have to be in a romantic way at all, but he wanted to care for people the way he had never been cared for. It was just really, really hard for him to show it since it had never been shown to him. One day, maybe, that would change.

0 Josh McLachlan Your help is noticeable. In a good way. 0 Josh McLachlan 0 5

Fae

April 03, 2013 8:58 PM

Making a decision. by Fae

Fae felt better that Alex agreed to keep to the shallow points. Although Fae wanted to prove herself and was willing to get dirty, didn’t mean she wanted to go out of her way to do so if there was an easier way or a work around for her. If Alex or anyone else agreed to go in the shallow end, Fae could happily gloat about keeping most of the mud off of her. Well, hopefully. There was no way to tell if she may accidentally slip and fall right into it.

Sara offered her own suggestion and Fae thought those weren’t bad either. Really, anything of an idea would be good. Before Fae could say anything however, Analea tugged on her and whispered into her ear. She wasn’t sure why Analea was acting like a small child despite being eleven or twelve. Fae had to wonder if the Thornton family was just too big to really allow the proper development for each of the children. Either that, or Analea saw Fae as an older sister, which felt foreign to Fae since she was the baby of the family.

“You should speak up to everyone, Analea.” Fae said politely. “Normally, with a large area to work with, using magic would drain our energy.” Fae explained. “But since we are only using magic on a small portion of the mud and of that portion, the shallowest part, on top of there being really three of us doing it-“ Of those three, she meant Sara, Alex, and herself, “it won’t be all that draining. Besides, we don’t want to waddle through the mud in case we get stuck or fall deeper into it if we lose our footing with the slickness of it.” Fae advised. She wasn’t really sure why she was explaining all of this, but she felt the need to for Analea and Omara’s sake.

“I think our best bet is turning it into stone.” Fae stated. “It’ll be much faster than drying it and would definitely be a hard surface instead of a possible still mushy one.” She felt that it would also use less energy than anything else, but she figured Sara and Alex would already know that. “So, shall we?” Fae asked the rest of them. “This charm isn’t taught until you’re in your Intermediate lessons, so you girls just follow close behind.” Fae advised the first years. Taking a breath, Fae raised her wand and stated, “Duro” doing the wand motion as she said it. Testing the mud, she found it to be pretty solid. “As long as we stay in the shallow bits, we should be alright. We’ll need your help with that, Henny.”

0 Fae Making a decision. 0 Fae 0 5

Arnold Carey

April 03, 2013 9:54 PM

We were, but Theresa tried impersonating me by Arnold Carey

It wasn’t really a good thing, all things considered, since it meant it was going to be harder for them to get across the mud pit and harder meant slower and slower meant not doing as well in the challenge, but Arnold was almost relieved to hear that he was right about the mud pit not being that straightforward. It didn’t really matter, but he thought it made him look smarter, or at least not paranoid, that he had guessed right about it. Impressing the younger members of his team, or at least thinking he might have a shot at doing so, wasn’t the least enjoyable thing he could think of doing today. That would be finding Arthur’s idea of an enjoyable thing to do somewhere in here today.

“Thanks,” he called to Amity, looking around for as much as he could see of what she could see from above, hoping to confirm it, to get an idea of how far they might need to travel. “If nothing else, it should be shallower around those, that’ll be faster to move through,” he said, this directed toward the rest of the team as well.

He considered Rupert’s suggestion for a second, then shook his head. “Good idea, but I think that’d be a slower option. You’d have to make a rock, like, as big as a person in deep places, and that would take a while. I think you could help with a drying charm, though, in the drier areas.” He didn’t want Rupert to feel as though he couldn’t contribute, and at worst, he thought the spell would just have no effect. At best, it would help. “The spell’s sitis, you use your wand like this,” he added, demonstrating. “Let’s move across as fast as we can,” he added to the whole group. "We want to get the best time we can, right?"

0 Arnold Carey We were, but Theresa tried impersonating me 181 Arnold Carey 0 5

Henry Carey

April 03, 2013 10:51 PM

It's a conspiracy by Henry Carey

Henry, having said all he felt it was necessary to say for a while, didn’t verbally reply to Pierce’s request for help getting the pole out of the ground. Instead, he just went over and grabbed it, feeling embarrassed about not being able to just flick his wand and have it out. He could have suggested that approach to Pierce, but doing that would mean running the risk of being asked why he didn’t do it himself, and he had yet to work out a way to deal with that kind of situation when it involved people other than Brandon. Demonstrating that he did actually have a good vocabulary by insulting everything from Pierce's appearance to his intelligence in one long speech to put him back in his place did not seem like the best idea he had ever had. Pierce was older than him, could demonstrate magical proficiency instead of just having to try to hit him, and since Henry didn’t know of any specific weaknesses of his and Pierce was an Aladren, would most likely just be angry-angry, rather than shamed-angry, about the intelligence part.

Maybe he could have uprooted the pole with magic. He wasn’t a Squib. But he tried not to do magic in front of an audience if he could help it, because he wasn’t completely sure, not the way he was sure that he was strong. The way he saw it, he couldn’t do anything about his erratic powers, but his body did what he told it to, and so he enjoyed exercising it, and resisted the occasional temptation to eat whatever he wanted instead of what he needed because he was at school and filled his own plates. He knew Pierce exercised, too – he had noticed before midterm that Pierce and his friends, Princeton and Brockert and the girls, Reynolds who ran the book club and Bauer who, Henry had begun to notice, was pretty, seemed to gather in the same areas he went to in less formal garb than usual somewhat regularly, plus Pierce was on the Aladren Quidditch team – so between them, he thought they could get it loose, though Wilkes was welcome to help, too.

The plan to cross the mud seemed pretty good to him, so he nodded and took his wand out. He did know the size charms, though he had never done more with them than shrink things a little to make them fit in a bag and had not practiced as much with the engorgement charm. “If you split it down the middle, you get two flat surfaces, it might be easier to walk across,” he offered in light of that, since it wasn’t too important not to draw attention to himself at the moment. “Though I guess that would make it each piece a little weaker,” he added, trying to figure it out in his head.

One foot on each, their weight would be more spread out, but would it really work out that evenly? He had read a book in the library last year on weights and moving things - he had a habit of reading at least one book a week, and only one book, on his own anyway, from each section until he had gone through all the sections - but didn't remember all of it, and wasn't sure it had been enough to solve all of the problem with anyway. He also didn't know if the splitting charm actually would cut the enlarged pole right down the middle, or if the pieces would be uneven and one would give way under their feet, which would be bad. He was glad he wasn't the one deciding, anyway, especially with the clock ticking.

0 Henry Carey It's a conspiracy 239 Henry Carey 0 5

Ana

April 04, 2013 12:14 AM

And I'm making mine by Ana

Analea had told Fae her thought, that due to her lisp she didn't feel comfortable speaking it aloud for all to hear. As it was she was using words in slightly an off order just to avoid the use of the dreaded letter 's'.

When Fae told her that she should speak up to everyone before going on to explain to everyone what was accurate. Analea's face fell, but she screwed her mouth in a knot, thinking if she could do it. Fae went on making her feel stupider than she already felt in the process.

When Fae asked them if they were ready Ana knew that she wasn't asking Omara or herself. The heat and anger boiled up inside of her until the point that Fae told the first years to follow close behind the others and raised her wand, starting the spell to turn things to stone.

Fae asked for Henny's help in the way of staying in the shallow spots and Ana almost glared at Fae before opening her mouth and speaking as loud as she'd ever done before (that she could remember). "You wonder why I speak so softly? Well this is why." she said, lisp clearly evident. Every 's' sounded like a 'th'. "I'm not a big baby, I just don't like the way I sound, okay?! Kids have been making fun of me my whole life and I didn't want that to happen here! Is that so wrong?!" she asked, as tears fell down her cheeks and she ran right across the right side of the mud pit to the other side. Sure, she was muddy, but she didn't care. She'd thought of Fae as an older sister-type and now that was completely ruined. Now the first year just wanted to be left alone...

0 Ana And I'm making mine 0 Ana 0 5

Malcolm Carey

April 04, 2013 12:55 AM

I agree completely by Malcolm Carey

Mal’s mouth twisted into something close to a smile when Keme pointed out that it was just mud, though even alone, almost sure that the team couldn’t see his face, he didn’t let the expression develop completely. He reserved smirking for when he was completely alone, especially when it was at Arthur’s expense. It had taken him three days to be sure Arthur resented him, after all, which gave Mal a powerful incentive not to annoy him too much, at least not while he was a first year and Arthur was a month away from being able to do any magic he pleased at the Reunion this summer. Being Confunded right before he was presented to the Fourth and George and the rest would not be pleasant.

Maybe Arthur would resort to petty revenge, maybe he wouldn’t. Mal knew that, in the same position, he would. He could understand the resentment; one of the few things Mother had ever said to him which Mal believed was about how the others would always resent him because of his situation. It was why she made sure to whisper to him to always remember never to trust Andrew any time she saw him getting along with his brother.

It was, he thought, the strangest of the several strange things about the South Carolina boys. Arnold and Arthur were one thing, but shouldn’t Anthony have been thinking ahead to when Arnold was going to want to kill him? It was bad enough to have a brother at all, but at least Andrew was younger than him, born to be in second place. Anthony had taken Arnold’s place. He had thought about pointing it out, since he liked Anthony as well as he did anyone and actually better than most people, but since Anthony had looked at him funny one time when he was just a little confused by Anthony’s admiration for his older brother, he had never actually done it.

“Good luck, gentlemen,” he said as they started trying to cross frozen ground, glad he was safely here. Balance was not one of Mal’s outstanding characteristics.

Assuming the ground situation would take care of itself, he looked ahead to the barriers. The most hazardous one, he decided, simply looked like too much trouble; blasting a way through the thorns would take more time than just taking another route. That left him with two options to consider while they tried not to break their necks.

0 Malcolm Carey I agree completely 256 Malcolm Carey 0 5

Keme

April 04, 2013 9:51 PM

Paranoid because of mud? by Keme

Keme was not entirely sure if Arthur wanted to avoid the mud because he didn’t want to get dirty and was using a life form as an excuse or if he really was concerned that there may be a life form in the mud. After a moment of contemplation, Keme decided he didn’t care enough to question it further. It would have been interesting to know if there were life forms in the mud and thought that the Overseer probably could actually tell that, but it was also possible that the mud was too thick for anyone to see anything in.

He shrugged to himself as Arthur decided their best option was to freeze the mud. Keme was from Montana where their winters were cold and long. He was fine with snow and ice. He had even tracked in both. Although he was too young to hunt himself, he had done with the elders and adult men from his tribe with some of his peers to watch. They could spend days camped out in the cold snow. He felt walking across a frozen pit of mud would be just fine. He didn’t even have to do any work either.

Keme followed after Adam onto the frozen mud, easily balancing himself on it. He half wondered what all the other teams had done or would do when they came to this obstacle and any of the others that will come. Did they find easier solutions? Or did they take the simple way out and just manage their way through the mud without magical assistance? Keme wasn’t friends with anyone really to ask, but he might have that conversation later with Rajid simply out of curiosity.

Having managed to make the trek with only a couple of moments of near slip ups on the icy ground, Keme watched Arthur with interest for a moment. He was a Sixth year and the eldest. Aside from Preston, who was a Fifth year, Keme couldn’t imagine that Arthur was happy with the assignment of his team. Keme had watched the other groups with interest. Some of them had members that were built for challenges while others (and although he knew this would make him seem like he was thinking less of girls, but in reality, the girls in these groups were small and wearing normal attire instead of being prepared) were set up to fail. Keme thought their group, although mainly male, were likely to fail, or at least, not be top five. Possibly top ten, but definitely not top five. His reasoning for that was because Malcolm, Adam, and himself had no real skill level for magic at this stage and Amira and Preston were only intermediates.

He half wondered why some of these people ended up together. Not that he would ask. One never questioned authority with the purpose of defying them. “What should we do?” Keme asked, looking beyond the pit towards the paths. They had solved the pit in his mind and just had to get all of them across. His mind was now on the next obstacle.

0 Keme Paranoid because of mud? 0 Keme 0 5

Fae Sinclair

April 05, 2013 5:49 PM

Your's was childish. by Fae Sinclair

Fae had been trying to listen for Henny’s direction when Analea’s voice began to shout behind her. Startled and confused, Fae turned to look at the girl wondering why in the world she was throwing a tantrum. To make matters worse, the girl decided to dive straight into the mud and attempt to make it across.

Boils of hot anger bubbled through Fae in a way that she had never experienced before. In that moment, Fae realized that she had never been so irate at another living being before. She had been irritated, annoyed, upset, saddened, and a whole bunch of other crazy emotions, but never so angry at someone that she wanted to curse them. It took all of her strength to not scream at the girl from afar. That was not lady like and although the girl may behave like someone raised in a barn, Fae would not sink to her level.

Sighing deeply and giving Sara a look of displeasure, Fae looked up at the sky, “Just keep going Henny.” Fae said before continuing on with their journey across the mud. They made steady progress and Fae was rather pleased by how well Henny was directing them and how Sara and her were working together with the rest of them. Well, save for one bad egg. Fae blamed the genes.

Having made it across with the help of Henny’s directions to keep them in the shallowest bits, Fae turned to Analea and raised her wand at her. Face still red with anger, Fae calmly stated, “Scourgify.” And watched as the mud was wiped clean from the first year. “Are you finished with your outburst?” Fae asked rhetorically before continuing on. “You’re angry, why? Because I suggested that you speak to everyone instead of just me? This is a team challenge and anything that you ask or suggest regarding the team should be said to all parties involved as it may be beneficial to them too instead of just relayed through me. I’m sorry that you feel ashamed of the way you talk and that people in your former school were mean to you, but I’m offended that you think we would sink to such deplorable behavior.” Fae commented and meant it. She had never in her life bullied another human being and she wasn’t about to start now.

“But for that sort of tantrum, I can’t imagine that me having asked that would cause such a reaction. Are you upset that I answered your question with honesty? Or are you upset that I told you it was best if you simply followed us?” Fae asked her. “Because if it’s the latter, although the spell was fine for myself, Sara, and Alex, it’s a spell that’s above your skill level and would have drained your energy had you attempted it and not been able to do it or did it for a long period of time. With a wall and a lake to prepare for, it was better if you didn’t try it. If looking out for my teammates upsets you, than after we finish this, maybe you ought to advise that staff that you do not wish to participate and see what can be done.”

Fae lowered her wand and gave the girl a look over. Her anger had edged off a little bit, but she was nowhere near happy with the eleven year old. “If you’re angry that we didn’t just run through the mud as you so carelessly did, that was a safety precaution. This is a magical challenge. We have no idea what the staff might have done to that mud. Who was to say they hadn’t placed a curse on the pit so that when you got to a certain depth you weren’t stuck for an undisclosed amount of time or until someone could figure out what the spell was and how to end it? Who’s to say that the staff didn’t but a creature into the mud to grab at you as you go by? Or what if you had lost your wand?” Fae asked the girl, not caring if she answered as it was a moot point now.

“If you do not wish to talk to the rest of us, that’s your choice, but please do not be so reckless in the future regarding these obstacles. We want to come out of this without injury and with some satisfaction of our time.” Without having anything more to say to the girl, Fae turned to the rest of them. Somehow, she had managed to remain polite, although maybe shaky with anger, towards the girl. Not once did she raise her voice or lose her head. Her parents would be proud of her. “Let’s move onto the next step.”

6 Fae Sinclair Your's was childish. 194 Fae Sinclair 0 5

Sally Manger

April 06, 2013 2:22 AM

Right. by Sally Manger

While not typically an altogether competitive person, Sally felt inspired to see her team succeed in this competition. Perhaps it was due to the specific components of the team, the individual members. Aside from the obvious, Ryan, she had not interacted specifically with any of her teammates prior to their assignment, but it seemed clear to her that they were almost a band of misfits in a way. Lucrezia was friendly and polite, but she had an athletic quality about her that was unusual. Jude and Rory were first years, so little history existed, but neither seemed particularly average; the former of the two specifically puzzled her, evidently so charged and powered on emotions.

Ryan’s place was clear. He was her brother, but he was far from average. The crimes he suffered in his past had rendered his personality. Because of his so-called mother and her minion, Carrie, he was meek. This aspect did not disturb her in any way beyond its origin, of course. Ryan was extraordinarily kind, a gentle creature; it was no wonder their baby sister took to him in particular. Still, he was an underdog because of it. When it came to competition, no one expected the nice guy.

Rounding out the team was Angel Jareau. He was evidently the son—adopted, presumably, as she was fairly confident his surname had changed in his years here—of the Headmistress. He was, however, much more than that. Angel was a mystery she vowed to unravel, intricate in his simplicities. The brunette perpetually yearned for knowledge, and there was so much about Angel to be discovered. Thus far, the surface seemed simple enough, and she felt like she understood him the clearest of her teammates.

And then there was her. Sally was indisputably bright with a gift for comprehension when her mind was applied. Despite this, her emotions had always been compromised, hidden from her own recognition for too long to correctly process. She had studied them since, attempting to reconcile her emotional damage, and while she was beginning to feel results—her little “outburst” last summer a prime example—she was still so far behind the “normal” teenager. Perhaps this was why she felt she understood Angel, who also was not visibly driven by feelings.

Now was not the time for individuals. Now was the time for teamwork and cooperation. Ryan’s initial suggestion of transfiguring the mud into something less messy seemed sufficient to her. The Aladren was not particularly prissy about remaining clean like some other purebloods might have been, but she would still have preferred to avoid the mud if possible. Jude, it seemed, had other ideas, suggesting they simply cross the mud and calling to Angel for confirmation.

“So it is deep in some places and shallow in others,” Sally reiterated after Angel’s statement. “That would make just clambering through it exceptionally difficult.” After all, being that two of their members were first years, they specifically were not terribly tall. She could not imagine the school’s staff would provide a challenge with the possibility of actually drowning anyone, but a level of deepness that essentially prevented movement would have been beyond belief.

“We ought to use Ryan’s idea. Transfiguration is not too timely, and it is little effort when you have his talent and experience,” the fifth year added, her voice remaining utterly matter-of-fact. To her brother specifically, she added, “If you require assistance, I of course will aid you.”

12 Sally Manger Right. 198 Sally Manger 0 5

Henny B-F-R

April 06, 2013 1:12 PM

All together, team one? by Henny B-F-R

Henny kept her ears on the discussion, which broadly seemed to be going for clean and careful but quick, whilst she poked the model, picking out a route. She heard Fae addressing Ana, even though she couldn't recall the younger girl speaking – but then Fae seemed to be telling her to speak up, so that made sense. And then suddenly Ana seemed to be shouting.

“Ana!” she called out, although she was somewhat powerless to hold the girl back as she seemed to stride off straight forward through the mud pit. Had she been arguing that the direct route would be best and was now attempting to prove that? Henny had definitely missed something and she guessed that made it add up, although Ana's speech seemed to come into it too... Her insides scrunched up a little. She didn't like conflict at the best of times, and it was going to be very unhelpful and possibly dangerous here.

“Right...” she nodded, as Fae told her to stick to directing the team. She couldn't help but keep an eye on Ana's dot though. She was only semi-confident that the mud wouldn't go over the smallest girl's head and, even if it was her own decision to go off on her own, Henny didn't fancy explaining to her room mate why her sister had drowned in mud on Henny's watch....

“Ok, left then there's a bit that you might need to step over – there's a big dip. Ana, right!” she called out. She continued to give directions in this fashion, mostly steering her team but trying to stop Ana falling into any of the deepest parts (although she wasn't sure whether the girl was listening to her or not). Once everyone had reached the other side, she let out a breath that she hadn't realised she was holding.

“Some of the next paths are dangerous,” she cautioned, stepping in as quickly as she could once Fae had finished speaking to Analea, hoping that would convince the other girl to stay with her team-mates, even if Fae hadn't.

“Ok... choices....” she went on. “The shortest path, to your left, is coloured red... I can't make out what the plant is from here but it's presumably pretty dangerous,” she poked the miniature leaves with her wand but this elicited no real result. She repeated this on the orange path and found the model plant grappling with her wand, “Whoa, Devil's Snare on the middle path!” she warned, tugging her wand free. “It's considerably shorter than the first one but you'd need lights or fires on at all times,” however, even those charms should have been within the skill set of the first years, so she guessed that was do-able, “The last path seems to be clear but it is by far the longest. I'd guess a twenty minute walk?” she suggested, “The shortest one would be just over five if it was clear, I think,” she said, stressing the words that suggested she was estimating. “And bear in mind, the next task is the wall. Think about what you might do for that and what kind of energy you need – physical or magical or both.”

13 Henny B-F-R All together, team one? 211 Henny B-F-R 0 5

Henny B-F-R

April 06, 2013 1:13 PM

- To the wall with you! - (nm) by Henny B-F-R

0 Henny B-F-R - To the wall with you! - (nm) 0 Henny B-F-R 0 5

Michael Grosvenor

April 06, 2013 1:39 PM

Pass go, collect £200 by Michael Grosvenor

Ok. The first round of questions had been dealt with and at least one of the little people-dots was moving. He'd said stuff and they were doing stuff. That was the idea. Cool. Then another question... He poked all over the mud. There were bits where it was deepish.

“I dunno...” he had to admit. He didn't want to be unable to answer but he couldn't remember off the top of his head how short the shortest member of his team was. Other than 'really short' which is how the youngest students now struck him. It was weird. He'd never really noticed growing up, and the fifth years had seemed so old and so tall when he'd started. He didn't feel as grown up as they'd looked now he was one. The only thing that really brought it home was when he bumped into a first year and realised how frigging small they were. There was then the added complication of trying to work out how deep 'about here on my finger' meant in real life. “It gets deep,” he warned, “And I can't risk it and I'm not going to. I'm going to keep you where you're definitely safe, ok?” he asked. He didn't want his team mates to loose faith in him by being unable to answer their question.

“What does 'not too bad' mean?” he asked, as Abi made this assessment of the mud she was now standing in. “Like, how deep are you? If you keep walking straight ahead, it slopes down to start with, but it gets higher again. Let me know how deep it's going on you, and whether it's too much,” he informed them.

13 Michael Grosvenor Pass go, collect £200 199 Michael Grosvenor 0 5

James Owen

April 06, 2013 4:28 PM

Team Six; Obstacle Two by James Owen

"Well done, everyone. Great work," James congratulated team six as they successfully crossed the mud pit. "We're making great time, so we just need to keep up the pace," he added. A pedantic person could point out that he had no idea whether their current time lapse was greater or lesser than that of any other team which would pass through the first obstacle today, but he couldn't imagine any other group would be sensationally faster, and so he believed that his pleasure at their recent progress was founded. however, getting to the next task might present more of a problem.

"Up ahead you should see a fork in the maze," he said, hoping that nobody would be so stupid as to assume an item of cutlery was to be found lying in their path. "Getting to the next obstacle could be a challenge in itself, I'm afraid." He had taken a second or two to weigh up the relative merits of each of the routes. Considering that the challenge was to get through the maze in the shortest amount of time possible, he didn't think that taking the longest route made good logical sense. On the other hand, he didn't consider the potential of team members who might be incapable of completing the rest of the course a viable alternative. In essence, then, there was only one real option remaining open to him, and he liked the balance it offered of safety versus speed.

"Take the middle path," James instructed. He was relatively certain from his scrying position that they would encounter Devil's Snare, but as this plant looked so similar to some others, he would need his teammates to make this final assessment for him. "Keep your wands out. You might need them," he suggested as he watched the rest of team six begin to make their way onwards to the next obstacle. James had decided not to let on the nature of their next target yet, as he wanted their concentration to be on the task in hand, rather than to lose focus on the journey due to being too distracted by the destination. "I would advise moving as quickly as possible," he offered his final gem of advice.

0 James Owen Team Six; Obstacle Two 168 James Owen 0 5

James

April 06, 2013 4:29 PM

Onwards to the Wall! (nm) by James

0 James Onwards to the Wall! (nm) 0 James 0 5

Francesca Wolseithcrafte

April 07, 2013 7:20 AM

Onwards, behaviourist vampire slayer fellowship 4! by Francesca Wolseithcrafte

Once they had gained the far bank of the mud pit, three paths greeted them. Francesca weighed them up. The apparently empty path immediately raised her suspicions. Clearly the other two presented with problems but they were problems which could be seen and thus planned for in advance. Blindly throwing themselves down the mystery path and having to think on the fly did not seem sensible. That left the two overgrown paths and the question of whether they were merely difficult to navigate or additionally dangerous. She was a city girl and thus plant life was not her particular forte, a weakness added to by the lack of herbology on the Sonora curriculum.

“So what do we have here?” she asked. Whilst she did not labour under the delusion that everyone thought things through in the same way that she did (although she would credit most people on this team with similar reasoning skills) she wasn't in the habit of voicing her thought process out loud. She began speaking having reached a question in her own thoughts that she was unable to answer herself. “Plant and animal life is full of twins,” she commented. “The one that wants to harm you, and the one that wants to look like the one that does so you don't harm it.” she mused, adding as much of an answer as she could to the question.

“Evan?” she called out, turning her gaze upwards and addressing the sky in spite of her better judgement that such an action was ridiculous or redundant. She disliked this sensation immensely. Although she had grown up around magic, this mode of communication – shouting out into the aether – was not at all familiar. Communicating with Floo, that made sense! One could see the person to whom one was speaking! Speaking to the sky was somewhat akin to the behaviour of someone experiencing a profound delusion, perhaps of a religious nature – something she definitely did not see as in keeping with her usual behaviour. “Do you have any additional information?” she asked.

13 Francesca Wolseithcrafte Onwards, behaviourist vampire slayer fellowship 4! 250 Francesca Wolseithcrafte 0 5

Francesca

April 07, 2013 7:22 AM

OOC by Francesca

I was in a posting mood but didn't have much to add (not being the obvious choice to start heaving poles around or charming them) so I've started us off on the next part. However, I'm happy if people want to continue with this part - I just didn't feel like I could at present.

0 Francesca OOC 0 Francesca 0 5

Marcus Williams

April 07, 2013 9:50 AM

Let's keep going, Team 8 by Marcus Williams

Now that they were all done with the mud pit, Marcus had to seriously consider what to do next. There was a fork in the paths. Three separate ways of going on to the next obstacle. Or, this was the next obstacle, he couldn’t say for sure. He felt as though this ought to be a separate obstacle considering if they made the incorrect choice, they would have to pay for it one way or another. But he was pretty sure these were just the routes to get to the next obstacle and instead of letting them recoupe after digging through the mud pit, they were wearing them down.

The obvious choice would have been the third path because it was clear, but Marcus had a sinking feeling that they would pay for it in some other way if they decided to go down that path. The middle path was overgrown with some kind of plant. It seemed harmless, but then, in the magical world, a rose could seem harmless but kill you with a tiny prick. This brought him to the first path that was completely overgrown with a pricker bush. It made him seriously uneasy.

He didn’t however, want to spend too much time thinking the paths over and then over thinking them and having an issue. “The third path obviously looks the easiest, but there’s a chance that something is in it that we can’t see or will dock us points or something.” Marcus commented to them. “My guess would be to go through the second one, but I’m not sure what that plant is to determine how to protect ourselves from it.” He had no issue being upfront with them about his weaknesses. Plants were not something he knew and likely never would. “Hey Theresa, what can you see? Do you know what the plants are and a way to get through them?” He asked her. “Or anyone else for that matter?” He asked the team all around. “If no one knows, then I’d say we either blast through this or take the easiest path.” He didn’t want to take chances with the first path. Who know what those things did.

“I don’t want to waste too much time and energy with these paths. I’m sure the next obstacles are even more tiring then walking through a mud pit.” Marcus commented. The mud pit didn’t tire him out because the pace had been good, but he was sure the smaller ones might not have the same feeling. “What’re your thoughts?”

6 Marcus Williams Let's keep going, Team 8 180 Marcus Williams 0 5

Marcus Williams

April 07, 2013 9:51 AM

Well, that settles that. by Marcus Williams

Marcus didn’t stand long to debate all of this. He wasn’t sure how Arabella felt about getting muddy all things considered. She was from one of those families who cared about things like that, but she seemed less prissy than Theresa (really, Marcus felt he had made the best choice to keep Theresa from doing the physical challenge, he really felt she would have held them back with her… ways.). It could be true that Arabella also had an issue with the physical challenge but was less inclined to act upon it. Either way, there was no going back now.

“Ok, we are just going to plow through it. Keep your wands up so that they do not get into the mud.” Marcus advised. “We should probably take our shoes off too and hang them around our necks.” In his home city, whenever he would go into the countryside with his friends during spring when the grounds were still mud pits, they always got a little stuck in the mud in their shoes. He wasn’t really sure why they were like suction cups to mud, but it always happened without fail. “Shoes tend to stick.” Marcus pulled off his shoes and tied the laces together. Marcus had an obsession with Jordans'. He had so many pairs of them he had lost count. He was the same with hats. He took really good care of his sneakers, they always looked brand new. But when he heard about the challenges at the start of the year, he had written to his mother to buy him a super cheap pair of shoes so that if they were ruined, he wouldn’t feel upset about it. His mother so wonderfully obliged. Now looking at the cheap things and the challenge ahead of him, he was happy to have done so.

Now ready, Marcus swung the pair around his shoulders and walked into the mud. This felt really weird, but not gross. Maybe this was why rich people enjoyed mud baths so much. People did strange things with their money. Marcus tried to stick to the shallow parts of it, but it was difficult to navigate. There were a couple of times when he slipped down an embankment, not far, of course, but enough to where the mud almost hit his waist. Minute wise, he wasn’t sure how well they were doing and he was half tempted to just run the rest of the way through it, but he stopped himself. His legs were long and he was Eighteen years old. He could handle this fine, but he had to think about the rest of them. Not so much Phoenix as he was a guy who looked like he could take care of himself.

Whenever necessary, Marcus would piggyback another teammate during the deepest parts of the pit or hold a hand out to Arabella if she wanted it to help her across. When the team managed their entire way through, Marcus helped the first years by cleaning them off with magic before turning the wand on himself and doing the same. “Alright guys, put your shoes back on and let’s keep going.”

OOC: Posted in part two!

6 Marcus Williams Well, that settles that. 180 Marcus Williams 0 5

Ginny Bellrose

April 07, 2013 10:24 AM

MUD MUD MUD by Ginny Bellrose

Ginny gave Paul’s response some thought. It was true that freezing it would make it slick, but everyone except McKinley seemed to be dressed appropriately and likely to be fine shuffling along the way. When the day had begun at one for everyone to meet, Ginny had scowled in McKinley’s direction. She was what was wrong with the image of proper girls. Ginny was raised well. She had refined etiquette. She was tutored amongst the brightest and the best. She was raised with class. Her parents made sure she understood how to be a proper lady. That said, her parents were also aware that the school would probably force them all into doing things that were not lady-like. Such as the challenges.

When Ginny had owled her parents regarding the news of the challenges back at the start of the year, her parents had immediately sent her appropriate attire. Pants were never in her wardrobe until this year any more than sneakers were, but they were necessary for these events. Her parents would rather her remain proper and poised in correct attire than running around in a skirt that may potentially cause a scandal if something were to happen like her panties being shown to all around. On top of that, she oozed weakness. Looking at her now, pale face and stuttering, it made Ginny angry. She hoped no one ever saw her as gross as that. Ginny understood the concept that girls were meant to appear weak in front of men, but that wasn’t to say they actually gave into that train of thought. They were really the backbones to the men.

“What, like a broom?” Ginny asked her. “I don’t know how to fly well on a broom and would probably fall off.” It was a real miracle she had managed to stay on a broom at all during flying lessons. Side-saddle was extremely difficult. She had hope that she’d be able to complete the full run of the pitch at the end of the year, but right now, she knew her limitations. Turning back to the others, Ginny thought about other things they could do with the mud. “So… parting takes too long and freezing would make it slick… Is there a way to make it hard?” She asked them. If not hard, bouncy even. Ginny pictured all of them bouncing along the mud and nearly giggled out loud. She didn’t think anyone else would find it as amusing as her.

0 Ginny Bellrose MUD MUD MUD 0 Ginny Bellrose 0 5

Charlie B-F-R

April 07, 2013 11:19 AM

An accidental discovery by Charlie B-F-R

Charlie had pulled his socks and shoes off on command, almost judging the other team-members by their footwear before remembering that today's examples were probably not truly representative. After all, he was wearing a cheap pair of trainers that had been bought precisely for occasions where they might get dirty. He was sure anyone else with more common sense than galleons had done the same. At first the mud pit had been fun. After all, adults never really let you get up to your calves in mud. There was all the tutting about how many charms it would take to get it out of your clothes and that it was dirty. There was something sort of satisfying about squelching along, listing to the mud glug and gurgle back into place as he pulled his feet off the bottom and created a vacuum. And then it was a case of being into mud up to his knees... And a case of listening to the mud glug and gurgle as he pulled his feet off the bottom with effort. He didn't moan, and he didn't squeal but the initial satisfying squerch of mud through toes was wearing thin..

“Thanks,” he smiled, every time Marcus pulled him up or hoisted him into a piggy back, offering to hold the older boy's shoes or whatever other small concession he could make to being useful. When they gained the other side he was... if not exactly tired then definitely aware that he had done something physical. He still managed to give a little jump and a cheer for the team getting through the first obstacle though.

Pulling his socks and shoes back on to his magically clean feet, he followed Marcus to the branch in the path, eyeing up the plants. He was no expert. All he knew was that there were many dangerous plants out there. If you don't know what it is, leave it alone, was the only advice he'd ever been given on the subject. Along with 'If you need to get through it – like if your ball's gone into it or something – go and get a grown up. He was fairly sure that wasn't a viable option. The closest thing to a grown up was deferring to what Marcus told them to do, and he didn't seem sure. Charlie's absolute faith in the older boy had to be temporarily complimented by the knowledge that their professors would not kill or permanently injure them.

He stared more intently at the plants, trying to look for any clues... The overgrown vegetation made it so hard to see though – especially down the middle path, where he could just make out some kind of vine lurking.

“Lumos!” he cast, being pleased at least that there was one useful spell he could do, even if it was only for allowing his team a better look. He shone it down the middle path and started in surprise as the plant moved. “It moves!” he exclaimed unnecessarily, “Hey.... wait... I don't think it likes it...” he commented, testing his theory a little more by swinging his wand from side to side. Wherever the beam hit, the plant reacted, retracting from the light.

13 Charlie B-F-R An accidental discovery 252 Charlie B-F-R 0 5

Aria Yale

April 07, 2013 11:39 AM

Let there be LIGHT! by Aria Yale

Aria was rather pleased by the appreciation that Josh was showing to her. “You’re welcome.” She hadn’t really done much other than repeat the spell. She was sure that his spell work would have held them just fine, so she doubted she had done really all that much, but at least it showed both Josh and James that she was willing to try and that she trusted herself in her capabilities. Sometimes, Aria felt, that adults, more specifically, older males, looked down on girls like her. She was pretty sure that feeling started after the incident with the outsiders back home. They were all older males and they really didn’t seem to like the members of her community, but even more so, they had talked down to the women and ignored her completely. A part of her felt that James and Josh were those types of boys.

She was different, she knew this. Her blonde hair was wild and curly, she tended to wear flowy skirts, and graphic tees, she was small and thin, and she didn’t always understand social situations or meaning behind words. But she was not dumb. Situations where she didn’t grasp what was happening right off the bat, she asked questions about without feeling remotely stupid for having done so. She would rather ask and learn than say nothing and remain ignorant. The faster she proved these points to them, the faster they may see her as a person.

Having moved on past the mud pit, Aria looked at the path that James had indicated. Aria raised her wand and gave it a hard look over. This plant was familiar. Aria closed her eyes and racked her brain for a clue as to the plant. One of the many ways of training with her mother was to learn the various plant lives. The ones that would be helpful and the ones that would be an issue. The first path, she knew that plant was poisonous. If she remembered correctly, it would make you sluggish or something like that, but not fatal. Not that the professors would put something fatal in the way of them. A thought dawned on her. She created a small bluebell flames fire and shot it towards the middle path. Immediately the branches retreated.

“Ha!” Aria said pleased by this. “It’s Devil’s Snare.” She exclaimed, happy that her mother had taught her so well. “This one shouldn’t be difficult as long as we have light or fire.” She said, although she figured Josh would already know that and hoped he wasn’t irritated that she had tested out her theory without asking first.

6 Aria Yale Let there be LIGHT! 228 Aria Yale 0 5

Reggie

April 07, 2013 2:53 PM

Allowing the idea to grow by Reggie

Reggie listened carefully as Effie explained what she saw from her point of view. So the first path that was the most overgrown and with some poisonous plant within it was the shortest. The second path that had the Devil’s Snare was the second shortest. The third that was clear was the longest. Okay, so the easiest one was the longest one, but it was also the safest. Made sense really. The most dangerous would be the shortest one. She also listened to the next obstacle that was in their way and nearly hung her head. Reggie liked who was on her team in general, but they were not body builders. Climbing a wall was going to be difficult.

After Effie’s assessment, Waverly put in her thoughts. They were similar to Reggie’s. Reggie did not like being stern with people. She preferred to be light hearted and joke around. If she wasn’t like that, there was no way she could be best friends let alone date Derry since he was hardly ever serious. But, she took the challenges seriously and wanted to do well and make sure everyone did too, which meant, putting her foot down. At least Waverly took it well.

If the team hadn’t been so many people, she would have said for them to take the path with the Devil’s Snare. As long as they had their wands lit, they would have been fine. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on each of them as they went through. She had to agree with Waverly and go through the last one that was free of anything. “Ok, we’ll take the third path. We’ll hustle through, so be sure to keep up as best you can. If you come across anything that will give you trouble, let us know.” With that, Reggie went into the third path at a light trot.

She wasn’t sure how long they were running before they finally reached the end and the wall came into sight. It seemed so big! At least she knew what to do with the rope. Pointing her wand, Reggie lengthened the rope until it was long enough for everyone to reach. “So, here’s my thought. Everyone will use the rope to hoist themselves up. Those who are not on the rope will help them by levitating them up.” Reggie explained. The levitation charm was one of the very first learned in their first year, she had no problem believing they all could do it. “Waverly, I’d like for you to go first so that you can help Isabel at the top. Isabel, once you are on top, please climb the latter down and wait for the rest of us. Everyone else should stay at the top because Nora and I may need help getting up.” She looked at Waverly and Eris as she spoke since they were the only ones who would have to remain up there. Hopefully, they could find a good position to be in.

Reggie hated climbing the rope in gym class, but she always managed to get to the top. She really hoped this would be the same. “Okay, let’s go!” She cheered them on.

OOC: If anyone has any issues during the path, I’ll write it into my next post.

6 Reggie Allowing the idea to grow 187 Reggie 0 5

Theresa Carey

April 07, 2013 5:56 PM

Some of the greatest ones have been accidental by Theresa Carey

It was better to be able to dress well than not when she was going to spend at least part of the day around people who were not family, of course, but as the others crossed the mud pit and she watched, Theresa felt sort of useless and almost wished she was down there with them. It would feel good to be doing something, rather than just offering any advice she could think up as she looked at the model and hoping it was right and feeling useless. She would have looked awful at the after party, sure, but then, so would everyone else….

None of that, she told herself firmly, and tried to get her mind back to the task at hand. This was the place she had been given, so she would do the best she could with it, and then remember that Cepheus would be at that after party and that, after his family’s ball, she thought there was a chance he might ask her to it. That was why she was putting up with these damned uncomfortable shoes, and that was why she would put up with feeling sort of useless. Like her cousin Arnold, she tended to focus on what was going on at the moment, but she was always aware, these days, that there were more important things than these challenges to consider.

Still, it was a relief when everyone came out and her input was asked for. “It looks like Devil's Snare," she said when Charlie began shining a light down the second path and said what was down it didn't like it, something she thought most likely confirmed what she had been able to make out about it. "The third way is safe, according to my model, but it's really long. I'd go with it or the Devil's Snare instead of the prickly one unless you're sure you can take out all the prickly stuff, because that's marked as the most dangerous one."

Setting it on fire might work, unless it released poisonous smoke as it burned, and setting things on fire when it could be avoided was a bad idea anyway. Her siblings had long since taught her that fire was bad, and she and they hadn’t even been encased in narrow corridors made mostly of wood when those things had happened. Hopefully, someone had been bright enough to enchant the hedges against fire when they decided to move a bunch of moody adolescents, some of whom Theresa knew for a fact were not above a little clandestine brewing or spell practice out here, in around the Gardens, but Theresa really didn’t want to bet anyone’s life on them being up to resisting a fire big enough to deal with all the prickly stuff.

0 Theresa Carey Some of the greatest ones have been accidental 219 Theresa Carey 0 5

Alex Devereux

April 07, 2013 6:35 PM

All for one, and one for all by Alex Devereux

When Analea began her diatribe, Alex stopped for a moment and just stared, not sure at all how to begin to respond to that. She was half-Carey, and as such, guessed she should have been used to emotional outbursts, but while her mother’s branch had an unfortunate tendency toward talking as though they were a lot tougher than they really were, she had never seen them do so to someone’s face. After all, if this was the time when you finally decided to not only come up with a byzantine scheme to curse a rival and all of his or her descendants for fun, but actually to go through with it after thinking it over for a while, you didn’t want the victim to immediately think back to you when their life started to unravel.

Of course, Uncle Jack would actually get into a duel with whichever of Old Joe’s grandsons it was he thought had insulted him last Reunion before this girl would get away with doing anything to Fae, but still. Alex decided to be grateful, for a moment, to have nothing worse wrong with her than dull hair and a nose too big for her face, because it didn’t look fun to have something to be embarrassed about.

When Analea just ran off, though, Alex started to take a step forward before crossing her arms and muttering half a word her mother would not have approved of her knowing. She was definitely glad she didn’t experience embarrassment much if it led to things like that, because there was really not much just ignoring that once the rest of them finished crossing the pit. This day just kept getting more and more fun.

Sure enough, when they got to the other side, Analea got an earful, though not from the source Alex would have expected. She had thought Sara would be the one who reacted, but Fae did the honors herself. Not bad, especially the turning the problem back on the opposition; she just didn’t know how Analea was going to respond to it, and since she was starting to think that, as probably the closest thing to a neutral party here except Henny, she might have some kind of moral obligation to try to intervene if the younger girl decided to start yelling again, she was relieved when the Overseer immediately started talking about what was in front of them.

“No fun options, then,” she said, turning her wand in her hand to get a more comfortable grip on it, since she was pretty sure that, one way or another, she was about to have to use it. She highly doubted Sara and Fae were any more the types for foot races than Alex herself was, and short legs would work against the first years even if they were faster, more muscular sorts. “Personally, I’d rather not go with the most dangerous one, but I’ll go along with everyone else.” By which she meant Sara and Fae, just phrased more diplomatically.

0 Alex Devereux All for one, and one for all 0 Alex Devereux 0 5

Malcolm Carey

April 07, 2013 11:49 PM

Let's move on, Team Seventeen by Malcolm Carey

As the team slipped and slid and on at least one occasion cursed its way across the mud pit, Mal allowed himself to spend more time on his new toy. His directions to the team became a little vague at one point, which led to the cursing when Arthur stepped the wrong way and ended up knee-deep, but by the time they were on the other side, he thought he had a much better understanding of how the model worked and what he could do with it. The fact had put a genuine smile on his face; he was already working up arguments and pouts, in the back of his head, for after the challenge to see if he could convince Professor Meade and Coach Pierce to let him have the device. It wouldn’t, after all, be technically all that useful after this, if it only showed close-ups to the obstacles which would disappear and routes between them that might, too, and he wanted it.

In Mal’s mind, that was enough reason for them to give it to him. He was used to getting what he wanted, when it came to toys, anyway. As far as he knew, the only object Mother had ever refused to give him once he asked for it had been Lu’s doll, and as he had been a little vague on the difference between boys and girls at the time and wouldn’t have asked for it in the first place if he had known better, he didn’t think that really counted.

“Good job, everyone,” Mal said when the others had all crossed the pit, feeling that it was necessary to say something before just plunging into the next set of directions. “Now you’ve got three ways – the first one’s really short but really dangerous, it’s full of a thorny plant, so I’m going to assume it will either try to kill you or that it’s poisonous. The second way…I think it’s Devil’s Snare. Which will also try to kill you.” He smiled to himself. “Then the third one’s safe, but it’s really long. If I were you, I’d run really fast down that one, but I’m not.”

As boring as it would be, he sort of hoped they would do what he would do in their position. Trying to watch them all and everything else and keep them alive through the others sounded tedious and stressful, not a good combination. "After that, you have to scale a wall," he informed them, in case that helped them make a decision.

0 Malcolm Carey Let's move on, Team Seventeen 256 Malcolm Carey 0 5

Ryan

April 08, 2013 11:39 PM

It's settled then. by Ryan

Although Ryan had asked his teammates for ideas, he couldn't help but feel kind of hurt when Jude provided one. Yes, he wanted them to contribute, but at the same time, well, he wanted to prove that he was capable of doing something. To regain their respect after screwing up and embarrassing himself on the last challenge. He kind of thought he might have lost Jude's. What if the others thought his idea was stupid too?

To him it made perfect sense, much more so than walking through the mud. A lot of things that could be solved, could be with Transfiguration, Charms, Potions and, though he wasn't all that good at it, Defense Against the Dark Arts. The core magical subjects. Ryan had been raised with magic and he couldn't honestly imagine life without it. Of course, with Defense he'd just have to stay out of danger, and he didn't really think he'd go out looking for trouble. It was something to be avoided. His cautious nature was probably why he was a Crotalus.

And honestly, Ryan seriously doubted it was as simple as walking across the mud. That would not be much of a challenge. Well, maybe for Carrie. And her team since they had to put up with her during it. Come to think of it, that might be more challenging than whatever the catch to the mud was. He'd never say to Jude though that he had doubts about her idea. He didn't want to hurt her feelings and make her cry again. Besides, he was also having doubts about his own idea anyway.

Jude, however, decided to ask Angel which way they should go. That was the overseer's job, but due to the fourth year's difficulty expressing himself, Ryan had wanted to come up with other strategies and not really put pressure on him. Not that he found the boy useless, he had done a really good job of comforting Jude when she was crying, despite his lack of communication skills, which was probably why she apparently respected him more than Ryan. Angel's ability to do any spell he'd seen once perfectly, though not having come up yet, was also really impressive. However, the Crotalus wanted to put as little stress on his teammates and people in general as possible.

Angel's voice came back to them, telling them that, yes, it was indeed mud. Which Ryan supposed was a bit of relief that there weren't creatures or dangerous plants or substances that were not mud in there. However, he also mentioned that the mud was very deep in some places and quite frankly, the seventh year didn't really want to try and figure out where those places were. At least not by trial and error. That really would take a lot of time and energy, not to mention they might get stuck. He was beginning to think maybe his idea of transfiguring the mud had a bit more merit than Jude's

He felt even more sure about it when Sally backed him up and he especially appreciated it when she mentioned his talent for transfiguring. Sometimes, Ryan wasn't sure that it was that special given the tendencies of his relatives towards the subject in general but he knew that it was considered a difficult subject by many, which was something he'd honestly never felt but he knew some people weren't as good at it, Sophie for example. But that was okay, she was brilliant in Potions, possibly the best in their year.

Ryan gave Sally a grateful smile. "I might need your help." He told her, "But let me try it first. We probably don't need to do the whole puddle, just enough room to walk across." He faced the mud, said the incantation and did the wand motion. Part of the puddle turned into stone, he didn't know if it went all the way to the bottom, it just needed to be firm enough to hold their weight. Ryan started out on the path, walking across without any trouble, and waited for the rest of the team on the other side.

11 Ryan It's settled then. 176 Ryan 0 5

Melanie Lennox

April 09, 2013 8:32 PM

We'll do the best we can. by Melanie Lennox

As she joined the other overseers, Melanie felt a little guilty. She hadn't really needed to do it like Valerie did. She would have been fine on the course. It was just that, well, she'd never done anything athletic other than ballroom dancing. Her mother wasn't the sort that would ever encourage such a thing. Dancing was a necessary skill but for optional lessons, the Teppenpaw had had piano lessons instead.

Still, she felt bad about not letting Lucille do it. She really didn't want her roommate to be mad at her. All Melanie really wanted was for them to be friends. She seemed like a very nice girl and hoped that she wouldn't dislike Melanie because of this. It might not be a big deal, and if the roles were reversed, she wouldn't have been the least bit mad at Lucille-in fact, she would have been more angry with Topher Calhoun if her sister hadn't been made overseer then she would have been at Lucille had she taken the position-but one never knew. Fortunately, the other Teppenpaw did not seem the grudge holding sort.

When Melanie saw the first obstacle, she winced, feeling even more guilty. She was here, clean and dry while Lucille and the others would be traipsing through the mud. Josephine didn't even seem all that thrilled about it and she hadn't grown up the way the two Teppenpaws had. Of course, being a proper lady wasn't necessarily a prequisite for not wanting to get dirty but their sort seemed to be completely adverse to it. Unless maybe it was a mud bath. She'd gone to the spa with her mother and Valerie last summer. Mother was always trying to get Melanie to do that kind of stuff but she only wanted to go if her sister could, even though it was something she'd rather enjoy. She remembered how excited the older girl had been to go, though they'd ended up having milk baths rather than mud ones. Mother didn't want Valerie going in mud of any kind and Melanie really didn't either.

" Yes. It's very deep in some places, like possibly up to the chins of shorter people and barely there in others." She replied to Julian's question. "I can guide you through them." That was what the overseer was supposed to do and she would hate for anyone to drown in the mud, getting it in their mouths. That would be unpleasant. Plus, they could get stuck and that would slow the team down. Melanie assumed that nobody wanted that. However, if walking through the mud was the route they chose, though she couldn't see why they would if they could come up with another alternative, she'd do her best to keep them out of the deepest parts.

"However, transfiguration is a wonderful idea." She complimented her roommate. It was honestly what she herself would have thought of. When it came to walking through unpleasant substances, that was the most practical way of dealing with them, if they couldn't be avoided. Of course, though Melanie was good at the subject, she didn't know if she had quite the skill level to transfigure mud. She didn't have to though, and she just hope Josephine and Attoria were decent at the subject.

11 Melanie Lennox We'll do the best we can. 226 Melanie Lennox 0 5

Carter Browning

April 10, 2013 1:56 PM

following your lead by Carter Browning

Carter scratched his head lazily as he awoke from sleep the day of the next challenge. He groaned a bit as he thought back to the first one, parts of it still a little blurry to the 12 year old. His team had finally managed to make it through the first challenge although for the life of him he couldn't recall how. He shrugged. It didn't matter anymore now anyway so it was best left to mystery. He pushed back the covers and placed both of his socked feet upon the floor. As he got dressed he thought about the break and how he had spent most all of it with his new little sister, Payton. She was learning to walk now and he found that she somehow managed to find her way into everything that belonged to him. As frustrating as it was, it was also kind of neat. He got to show her all kinds of cool stuff as he removed each item from her curious mouth. Getting the slobber off said items was somewhat of a pain, but it was sort-of worth it seeing the look of sheer curiousity on her chubby little face.

He and Kinley hadn't spent much time together over the break and while he was kinda bummed about that, he didn't let it bum him out too much. It was good for cousins to spend some time apart. He had been hoping that like himself kinley had found at least one person at school to be friends with and broaden her horizons. He wasn't quite sure that had happened yet, but he remained hopeful. He grabbed his clothes for the challenge and as he dressed his thoughts switched a bit from his family to Wendy. He had been both delighted and surprised when she asked him to essentially be her date for the ball at the end of term. While he normally didn't like balls much he found himself looking forward to going to this one with Wendy. He just hoped he didn't end up embarrassing her.

Carter tied his shoes and headed out towards the gardens for the next challenge. This set was supposed to be an obstacle course of sorts and Carter couldn't wait. He loved obstacle courses! It was probably the adrenaline rush he got from them that he loved the most. He arrived at the gardens and really wasn't surprised to see Eliza and Sully there already. He also wasn't surprised when Eliza had chosen Sully to be the "Overseer" or whatever it was. He was just glad she hadn't asked him to do it. Although he found that to be highly unlikely given her possible irritation with him on the last challenge. Carter shrugged the thought away and vowed that he would do way better this time. He watched Sully choose the broom and then take off into the air with it. He waited patiently for Sully to return before moving forward with the rest of his team. This time he would NOT get lost no matter what.

He watched Sully poke around at the mud pit before them and couldn't help being slightly amused. Mud Pit huh? he thought to himself. Kinley is just gonna love this challenge! he grinned to himself as he thought of his poor prissy cousin coming towards the mud. "i can't wait to find out what Kinley does with this challenge," he said lightly to himself. He heard Sully's instructions and nodded. He followed carefully the way Sully suggested, only getting a little stuck here and there. He had mis-stepped slightly only once and found himself going into mud up to one ankle. After a bit of light tugging he managed to pull his foot out without losing his shoe. His foot and ankle were now covered with mud, but it was a small price to pay and he didn't really mind it. He actually sort of liked mud. Once they were across the mud pit with hopefully minimal hick-ups he turned to Sully and said, "Well that wasn't so bad. So what's next oh mighty Overseer?" He asked jovially, hoping that Sully took it as the small jest it was intended to be and not in any way a stab at his expense.

0 Carter Browning following your lead 236 Carter Browning 0 5

Clara Abernathy

April 10, 2013 6:20 PM

I'm ready for this by Clara Abernathy

Clara scratched her head of unruly red curly hair as she got up out of bed the morning of the next challenge. She was glad the first part was over with, but she had hoped her team would have done just a tad better with it than they had. Oh well she thought to herself as she pushed back the blankets. There’s always this next challenge She thought briefly about the last challenge and shook it off. Her team would do better this time, she just knew they would. She glanced around for the clothes she had set out to wear for the day and found them draped across the back of her vanity chair where she had put them. She had decided to wear one of her vintage t-shirts that her dad gave her for a punk band called the Ramones. It was a faded powder blue that had the picture of the Ramones on the front with their band’s name across the back in purple. It was one of her favorite t-shirts. She paired it with a pair of faded blue jeans that had little tears across the thighs in the front. She practically lived in those pants back home. She finished off the outfit with her most durable pair of purple converse sneakers that tied up around her ankles. She didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t be as comfortable as possible while doing the challenges. After all what good would it have done her to wear something fancy when they might have been wading through muck or something for the next challenge? That would just be uncomfortable and ruin her fancy clothes. Nope, better to be comfy and happy than fancy and unhappy she figured.

She got a quick shower, got dressed and then after tying up her shoes she tried to braid back her hair. She wasn’t quite as successful at it as she had hoped to be so she settled for a bushy ponytail. It was the best she could get her hair to do under the circumstances. She headed out of the dorms and down towards the gardens. It was time to see just what the obstacle courses challenge would be. She made it outside to the gardens and made her way towards her team. She smiled warmly at all of them and waved hello to everyone. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she was almost certain that while Rupert and her cousin might be happy to see her Amity may not share their excitement. It wasn’t as though Amity had been unkind to Clara exactly, she just hadn’t really gone out of her way to be friendly. Clara wasn’t quite sure what it was she may or may not have done to upset the girl, but she wouldn’t worry about it at the present time. Right now they had a challenge to win. She watched Amity walk over with the other Overseers and grab a scrying bowl instead of the broom. Up until last summer Clara would have made that same choice herself, her flying skills being pretty non-existent. She’s actually doing much better with it now thanks to Lucian’s help and would have picked the broom for more practice. But she wasn’t the overseer.

She heard Amity’s suggestions on how they should proceed and nodded slightly. She heard Arnold’s instructions and found that they made a lot of sense especially when she got to the edge of the huge mud pit. “Wow…” she mused as she looked it over. “That’s a big mud pit,” she commented as she followed her team towards it. She heard Rupert make his suggestion on how they could go about crossing it and while she thought the idea had merit she found that she had to agree with Arnold when he said that it was a good idea, but it would take too long. They were working against a clock. She patted Rupert on the shoulder and told him “It was a really good idea.” She smiled at him as she began to follow Arnold through the mud. She found that if she stuck to the pathway he suggested that the mud was easier to wade through, not that she really would have minded getting any of it on her in the first place. That was the whole point of her comfy outfit. She got slightly stuck in the mud only once when she partially missed a dry patch. She got the toe of one of her sneakers stuck for a couple of seconds, but managed to get it out fairly quickly. Once she was on the other side of the pit with the rest of her team, she turned to Amity and said “Well that was pretty easy.” “What’s next?” the plucky Pecari asked the girl, trying to wait patiently for her answer.

0 Clara Abernathy I'm ready for this 232 Clara Abernathy 0 5

Analea Thornton

April 11, 2013 12:17 PM

Except for me by Analea Thornton

Analea was not only upset, but she was angry. It was perfectly normal, to her, for an eleven year old girl with her experiences to run if someone made her feel the way she had. She didn't even care if she got all muddy. It got her away from everyone, and that was what mattered to her! She wanted Rory, and she wanted her now! Other than her sisters, Rory was her only friend to be sure, especially now...

She ran through the mud, hitting shallow patches and a deep one, but hearing Henny call to her, she stopped somewhere in the middle of the pit. Henny told her there was a deep bit and she followed Henny's directions. Surely she wouldn't steer me wrong... would she? she thought as she listened to Henny's every direction and got across unharmed with the exception of being muddy. She stood on the other side of the pit, wishing that she'd drowned in it though. When Fae and the others reached her again, Fae raised her wand and wiped the mud clean from Ana's clothes and such. Ana just stared at her. Silent and sure to stay that way.

Fae asked if she was finished, then why she was angry. Still staying quiet, she glanced from Sara to Alex to Omara before looking back at Fae again. She wanted to say that she'd never said that the students at Sonora were like those from her old school, in fact, she'd hoped they weren't anything like them. But not only were there too many 's' sounds, but she wasn't going to say anything. She couldn't handle the laughter sure to come from it.

"I only wanted to help..." she said quietly, directly to the others in her group, avoiding Fae entirely. She looked towards Omara, and almost begged her to say something as another first year then did the same towards Sara and Alex, hoping that they'd heard her as she wasn't going to be able to speak any louder. She wasn't trying to be wreckless. She just needed to get away from what was going on, badly.

Henny spoke again, telling them about the paths they needed to choose from. Ana stayed quiet, wishing Henny was down below with her instead of Fae.

Alex mentioned the fact that from what Henny had described there weren't any fun options but that she'd go along with everyone else. Ana kept her mouth shut, not saying a word to anyone, knowing that anything she'd suggest would be stupid, she was only a first year after all...

0 Analea Thornton Except for me 0 Analea Thornton 0 5

Jude Butler

April 11, 2013 2:05 PM

Team 5, Alive. by Jude Butler

Jude knew she'd done it again. The way Sally and Ryan responded to her, told her that. She sighed and wished she'd just kept her mouth shut. She'd only been trying to help, that was all it was. Jude felt bad that she may have just screwed up Ryan's chances of winning again, and her respect for him was too high for the allowance of that.

Ryan said he'd tell Sally if he needed help, but he wanted to try first. Jude followed behind the others, sighing as Ryan turned the mud into stone. The older kids started across the now harder pit and Jude followed quietly behind them.

They got to the other side and saw three ways they could go from there. Jude wanted to say something, ask Angel what he saw, but she kept her mouth shut... She didn't want him to stop liking her, if he liked her at all. Jude knew that she should just stay quiet, this wasn't anything she knew anything about either...

I want to go home... she thought, I want Dane... He'd know what to do... Jude sighed and looked up at the others since they'd all crossed by then.

0 Jude Butler Team 5, Alive. 0 Jude Butler 0 5

Jade Owen

April 12, 2013 9:21 AM

I feel we're lagging behind. by Jade Owen

The challenges were so much cooler than classes. If Jade could have all her skills and knowledge tested in this way, too, rather than by dull homework assignments and regimented practical tests, then she'd probably have a better chance of matching her elder siblings' academic records. She had liked the haunted house scenario - even if the boggart had taken her a little off-guard right at the start, she'd picked it back up again and had cheerfully ploughed right into the rest of the challenges - and today's challenge turned out to be an obstacle course through the gardens. Jade grinned. She spent so much of her time out in the labyrinth anyway that she felt as though she had the home advantage.

Yet another advtange Jade considered was being in team three. Poor Josephine had to wait for the majority of the teams to go in first. Jade knew for a fact that waiting so long would make her either bored or fractious with anticipation. Being in Team Three, or Thestrals, as she preferred to call them, however, was acceptable, as they barely had to wait around at all. This was good for several reasons, including that they didn't have much time to plan or worry about what could be found ahead, and, as an instinctive individual, Jade found that to be another positive aspect. All in all, as they entered the maze and were guided untrialled to the first obstacle, Jade couldn't see how their team could go wrong.

At the mud pit (awesome), Kate didn't falter too long, and simply made sensible suggestions about maybe drying the mud into dirt as they moved (probably a good idea, as they didn't want the extra weigh of mud slowing them down during the rest of the course), and moving quickly. Kate had already set off into the mud as Jorge gave his input. "Oh yeah, we can help out," Jade back him up as she, too, withdrew her wand and copied Kate in casting the requisite charm. She didn't give much notice to Jorge's other comments about transfiguring the mud, seeing as their team leader had already begun to make her way across the pit.

"Come on, Litte W," Jade said, well aware that her nickname for Wendy took twice as long to say as just calling the girl by her name. She gestured for the youngest among them to stick by her as they made their way through the obstacle. Being maternal was definitely not one of Jade's natural instincts, but Little W was cool, and the other Thestrals could definitely take care of themselves for the time being.

0 Jade Owen I feel we're lagging behind. 221 Jade Owen 0 5

Annabelle Pierce

April 12, 2013 2:36 PM

I have no relation to the mud thing. by Annabelle Pierce

Annabelle could not quite believe it when her sister - after being told it was too far! - jumped for the first dry spot. As Annabelle had told her, she did not make it and ended up covered in mud. Annabelle's horror seemed mirrored by Cepheus, which notched her opinion of the older boy another step, though sibling loyalty alone (well, that and his swearing) made her frown at him as he chewed out Annette for her impulsiveness. Still, he made good points and she gave Annette a frown of her own for being a muddy idiot.

Gareth then chimed in with some good ideas, albeit ones she could not have helped with even if she weren't forbidden as an overseer from direct assistance. Instead, she took out a couple odds and ends she kept in her robe pockets and charmed them to an unmistakable hot pink color.

"Annette is at the first dry spot," she reiterated, feeling she did not need to mark that one, "but I'll flag the others so you know where to aim for." She then proceeded to drop her vibrantly colored markers onto the dry dirt patches strew about the mud pit.

Once that was done, she felt she had little more to offer to the mud pit challenge. She had identified the best route through the mud, and the spell Gareth was proposing for navigating through it was above Annette's grade level, so neither of them would be casting anything. Also, she did not like seeing Annette looking like that. "I'm going to scout ahead," she offered. "If you need me, give a shout."

Before she left though, she gave her sister a hard look. "And no more jumping in the mud. What would Mother say?"

She pretended not to see the eyes rolled at her she turned her broom around and gained some altitude for her scouting mission.

1 Annabelle Pierce I have no relation to the mud thing. 246 Annabelle Pierce 0 5

Ryan O'Malley

April 12, 2013 4:23 PM

Fortunately by Ryan O'Malley

After transfiguring the mud, Ryan felt a bit better. He'd shown he was capable of doing something successfully and hopefully, the rest of the team would now respect him a bit more. After the last challenge, he hadn't felt especially competent. He truly hated boggarts, they just reminded him of all that happened in the past and it was especially embarrassing in front of others.The rest of it hadn't been all that horrible though. The maze of mirrors had been challenging but no more so than it had been for anyone else. Nothing about it had made him anxious or sick to his stomach and they'd even pulled off second place so far which had a major surprise. Things never went that well for him.

Ryan just hoped they would stay there. Unless they moved up to first of course. Then maybe he'd have something to be proud of for once, though he would be satisified with second, especially if it meant beating Carrie's team. She would not be happy to lose to him, Sally and Lucretia. Not to mention to first years not in her social class and Angel who was...different. The Crotalus knew that she found the fourth year to be a freak, which only spoke as a testament to his character.

And, given the involvement of a huge mud puddle, somehow, Ryan had a feeling they'd definitely have an advantage over Carrie's team on this one. He could only imagine what her team had gone through and hoped Eliza didn't take the sympathetic glances he'd been giving her the wrong way. He felt bad for the others too, but Eliza was the one he knew best. She was in his year and house and his cousin was betrothed to her brother. He didn't really know the rest of her team, though Sullivan Quincy was someone Valerie spoke well of, Carter Browning was someone that Carrie didn't-which Ryan was sure meant he was a wonderful human being as well-and Clarissa Clark was one of Amity's roommates.

All in all, he was pretty pleased that they'd made it through the first part of the second part of the challenge. Apparently, their physical limitations, his included, were not an issue when they could use transfiguration, something that Ryan was pretty good at. The only good thing about having the mother that he did was her family's genetic talent for transfiguration. Of course, he'd have much rather have belonged to one of the other Brockerts, still had the same talent and not be treated like dung. He'd have been plenty happy being Arabella's older brother or Valerie's. Not that he'd trade his father, Jamie ,Sally, Arnold, Jake, or especially Peyton for anything but being relatively talented in transfiguaration was pretty much the only thing that made Ryan worth anything.

They came to the three paths. He had a feeling that it was not as simple as picking one and traveling down it. There had to be a catch. Plus, well, how were they supposed to know which one would be the best choice? "Angel, tell us about the paths." The Teppenpaw wouldn't have to choose for them, they could discuss that as a group.

11 Ryan O'Malley Fortunately 176 Ryan O'Malley 0 5

Arabella Brockert

April 12, 2013 5:23 PM

Weighing our options by Arabella Brockert

When Arabella had seen what her roommate decided to wear to the challenges this morning she had blinked and though she'd not let on, been mildly amused. Of course, Theresa was going to be the overseer, so needing practical clothes was far less important for her. Besides, Arabella probably looked even sillier given that her practical clothing was limited to her fencing clothes. At least Theresa's outfit would have been appropriate in most situations. Her own was, well, basically appropriate for fencing.

The first part of the course turned out to be a mud pit. Playing in mud was nothing she'd ever had a burning desire to do but Arabella didn't particularly have an issue with going through it if she had to. She liked to make the best of most situations. Besides, there was the satisfaction of knowing Carrie would have to go through it too and few thoughts would make her happier than that . It would be more than enough to get her through the mud and she hoped Carter Browning, who from what she understood especially didn't get on with Carrie, would take it upon himself to lob mud at her.

Especially when Charlie said he wouldn't mind-which surprised Arabella slightly since he seemed every bit as clothing oriented as Theresa from what she'd seen of him around school, but then he was a boy and not from a proper family-and Marcus decided that would be their course of action. Personally, the Pecari would have gone with the traditional Brockert solution to most problems, transfiguration but she didn't know how good Marcus or Phoenix was at it. Arabella could have helped but she was a fourth year and not Ryan, so mud it was. Besides it was good for the skin and she could always scourgify her clothing. Also, she had other fencing uniforms and even if she didn't, they would not be hard for her to replace. As for the after party, well, most people would be muddy.

Once they finished the mud, they came to three paths. Without knowledge about them, Arabella wouldn't know which one to take. Charlie figured out that the middle path was Devil's snare and Theresa confirmed that. She also mentioned that the shortest path was full of prickly things and the path with nothing on it was the longest and that they definitely shouldn't take the short prickly one and the fourth year agreed.

Arabella considered their options and offered her opinion. "Depending on how fast we can all run, the long path might be the best choice." She very much doubted that the boys would mind a little sweat after plowing through the mud. "We could get stuck in the Devil's Snare and that could take even longer than the long path, especially if we can't relax. It's hard to do so when you're caught in something."

11 Arabella Brockert Weighing our options 217 Arabella Brockert 0 5

Josh McLachlan

April 12, 2013 6:02 PM

Let me get my sunglasses. by Josh McLachlan

The kind of people who didn't seem to fit into society's expectations were just the sorts of people Josh seemed to flock to. He had never really been accepted into the "popular crowd" himself because the purebloods shunned or cringed away from his family name. Muggle-borns and half-bloods usually didn't have any idea, but Josh's family members would have a riot if they ever caught heed of his friends. Most of what Josh did at his old school had been kept a secret till things had gotten out of control, resulting in his transfer to Sonora. Being a transfer had been difficult, but he had found his niche. It was in the library.

Once they were passed the mudpit, Josh looked at the three edges. He knew the first plant from working with potions. It was poisonous, that was for sure, but good for weak antidotes. The exact name of the plant escaped him, but that fact was all he needed to know that they should avoid that one. The second path was the one James told them to take and Josh agreed.

Aria took a shot at it, correctly categorizing it and Josh nodded. "Right," he said, and took a step forward. "I'm hoping you all know how to light your wands, yes?" he asked, looking back at his teammates. "I'm going to send a stronger light through the tunnel and when all of these branches retreat, I want you guys to run through. I'll follow behind and, depending on how long this tunnel is, I'll shoot a light through it again. Before that, I'll tell you all to duck. But light your wands to be safe."

Once everyone had their wand lit, Josh went to the mouth of the tunnel. The branches had gotten over the light Aria had sent through earlier, and Josh lit his wand. "Lumos Maximus." The light was almost blindingly bright and he shot it through the path, watching as the branches retreated so quickly it almost sounded like a hiss. As soon as that happened, Josh rushed the youngest in first and sent the others to run after. "Go, go," he said, waiting till they had all gone through to light his wand once more with "Lumos Maximus" and following them closely.

0 Josh McLachlan Let me get my sunglasses. 0 Josh McLachlan 0 5

Wendy Canterbury

April 12, 2013 6:21 PM

Trying my best to keep up by Wendy Canterbury

The challenges had been pretty fun so far. If school was like this all the time, she could totally get used to going to a magical school for good. Her friends at home were missing out. It was nice being on a team with people she kind of knew, and all of her other teammates were really nice. She liked her team a lot and even if they didn't win, she hoped they would hang out outside of the challenges.

She met her teammates at the gardens and wished she had explored this place earlier. It would get confusing, going through this maze. She didn't usually make a habit of going through mazes though, so this would be fun and different and Wendy was all for trying new things.

The only downfall was that she didn't know as many spells as her older teammates, but she could help out where she could. It just sucked when they had to do all the work. The first place they had to get through was a mud pit and Wendy didn't know how she felt about going through a thing of mud. She wasn't opposed, of course, but she didn't think she could take her time wading through it. And it wasn't the same as when it was raining and she was barefoot and could feel the mud squishing in between her toes.

She watched Kate, Jorge, and Jade take charge and followed Jade when the older girl called her. She had gotten used to the nickname and liked having one for once even if this one came about because she had an older sister. There usually weren't really creative nicknames for "Wendy." She really liked Jade and Jorge, but didn't really know how to say she wanted to hang out with them because they were so much older and also friends with her older sister.

19 Wendy Canterbury Trying my best to keep up 245 Wendy Canterbury 0 5

Francesca Wolseithcrafte

April 12, 2013 6:45 PM

Can't go round it, can't go over it, can't go under it... by Francesca Wolseithcrafte

Balance. Speed. Stamina. Accuracy. These were the elements of athleticism in which Francesca performed well. Pure upper body strength was not. She eyed the wall, feeling angry and a little anxious that one of her weaknesses might be about to be dragged out into the open for all her team to see. Unless, of course, she could suggest a good solution before someone suggested the obvious one, and the one she did not wish to hear, of lengthening that tantalising tail-end of a rope and hauling themselves up and over.

She scanned all around the gardens, looking for inspiration. Not being prone to quitting, her eyes travelled over the opt out path at least twice before they took the information, or at least the relevance of it. Two minutes. Two minutes per person was not a long time to get up and over a wall.

“We need to take fewer than ten minutes,” she said, as much to herself as to any of her team-mates, a smile playing around the corners of her mouth as she considered herself saved. Even for the seriously strong, two minutes was pushing it... Essentially, she thought, the challenge was really to remove the wall from their path, rather than get over it. That meant making it so that they could step over it or through it. She knew of Shrinking Solutions, but she doubted anyone was toting one around in their pocket. There was the 'reducio' charm but that was to return enlarged objects to their normal size. Thus, unless, the wall had been enlarged when it was put there.... It was a possibility but frankly, although it lacked subtlety, the quickest and best way would be to simply blast the wall, or part of it out of the way.

“Can you see how thick the wall is, Evan?” she asked nothingness, still uneasy at the loosening of her grip upon reality that she felt this action implied, “Who knows a charm or a curse to smash a hole in a wall?” she asked the rest of the team.

OOC – I know there's still missing bits on the plant paths to fill in - I would have waited until Sunday to do this part but I'm away over the weekend, so figured I'd chuck my last two knuts in whilst I could. Plus Francesca realised this would be her solution a while ago and has been waiting to have the chance to think it...

13 Francesca Wolseithcrafte Can't go round it, can't go over it, can't go under it... 250 Francesca Wolseithcrafte 0 5

Sally Manger

April 13, 2013 12:16 AM

I second that "Fortunately" by Sally Manger

Despite Ryan advising her to let him try transfiguring the mud on his own, Sally produced her wand. Her fingers tightened contently around the familiar wood, an extension of herself. She murmured an incantation—the same as he did—but surprisingly achieved little result. For a moment, she paused, analyzing the small section of mud transformed into a pebble, slowly sinking out of view. It perplexed her, though it was not entirely unexpected.

The Aladren had noticed a decline in her magical performance the entirety of this year, though she generally ignored it, pretending it was not so. The strongest example thus far had been her mistake on the prior challenge, confusing the spell for dealing with boggarts with that for dementors. Her mind felt a bit foggier than she could ever recall, and something other than logic was clouding her vision.

Was it emotion? If so, she did not enjoy this newfound humanity. Sally missed her cold days of indifference. Her grades had slipped slightly; while she was fairly certain she maintained almost all Os, percentages were lower. It was easier nowdays, she noted, to comprehend her own sentiments, but evidently, the price of their attention was her academic intelligence and magical control.

Control truly seemed like an issue, too. While spells and incantations failed her, she still felt the magic coursing within her, as potent as ever. Sometimes it sprang in small bursts, and more than she intended was attained. Other times, like this, she performed far below par. The brunette did not like this fact, but fact it was. Without her clarity and objectivity of mind, what was she? The idea frightened her.

Fortunately enough, her brother was competent beyond her own evident abilities, for his spell was successful, creating a path across which they could safely travel. Sally was utterly grateful that they were together in this challenge, and she was even more grateful that Carrie was not with them. It seemed odd how completely opposite the two were, and though she was used to their respective behaviors by now, she found herself providing a specific sort of distain usually spared only for her father, perhaps shared with Ryan’s mother.

None of that mattered currently, she had to remind herself. Their present task revolved around direction, it appeared. Ryan asked Angel for information, and just like the others, Sally could only wait. In a way, she hated the idea of the Overseer because it inspired a sense of dependency to which she was unaccustomed. Generally, she more or less cared for herself, not out of need but out of nature. She could see things clearly on her own and did not need guidance, but now, with her fogged mind and unforeseeable challenges, assistance was a requirement. It was inevitable, she supposed, but still unfavorable. Either way, it was reality, as unwavering as ever.

12 Sally Manger I second that "Fortunately" 198 Sally Manger 0 5

Cepheus Princeton

April 13, 2013 3:52 PM

I never would have guessed. by Cepheus Princeton

Cepheus was glad his team-mates agreed that the twin shouldn't have gone leaping into the thick of the mud. She was stuck there till they made a decision on what to do next. Gareth made a good point, but he didn't know if it would be fast enough. "That may take some time we don't have to spare," he replied thoughtfully. They had wasted some time deliberating already. "We've got to move faster than this."

There wasn't much that Cepheus could think of unless they could utilise their Overseer's broom. However, she went ahead to see what was coming next. He looked back at the mud and finally said, "We've got to do something. Let's see if baking it works. It doesn't have to go too deep, does it?" He turned to Gareth, hoping his room-mate knew what he was talking about. Otherwise they weren't going to get very far. Cepheus thought it was a good idea, if they had time to spare.

The other dry spots had been indicated by the Overseer Ann's hot pink knick-knacks and he created a hot, solid path to it. Once it cooled, the mud visibly hardened and cracked even to show how baked it was. Cepheus took a tentative step, pressing it down firmly with his foot, before treading on. The mud cracked more under his feet, but it was solid and safe enough. He indicated for his team-mates to follow before moving on to the next dry spot and baking the mud underneath once more.

Cepheus could feel the time ticking in his head and he tried not to focus on it too much while he did his work getting across. "All right back there?" he asked, turning his head only slightly as he made his way across. He had been working on his reflex skills for Seeking, but he wasn't sure if he would be quick enough to catch someone with a spell if they fell. He hoped the mud wouldn't have any horrible creatures in it despite the thickness of the mud.

It took a bit, but Ceph made it across safely. He turned back at his team-mates, encouraging them along until they were all across. He hoped they hadn't taken too much time. Cepheus had no sense of time whatsoever here and he hadn't brought his watch along. It would have been nice to know how long they were taking. He had some idea of how quickly other teams had taken in this challenge from waiting for so long, but he still didn't have any idea of how they were doing.

Once everyone was over, Cepheus looked down the path leading them away from the mud pit. "Anything notable to report back, Ann?" he asked as he walked to the next obstacle.

40 Cepheus Princeton I never would have guessed. 216 Cepheus Princeton 0 5

Henry Carey

April 13, 2013 7:51 PM

Are you sure? by Henry Carey

A little mud had gotten on his shoe when he made the last bit of the pit crossing, but Henry didn’t bother trying to remove it. For one thing, it was far less than he’d seen some people walking around with on their shoes on a daily basis, so it wasn’t a big deal. For another thing, it was really kind of pointless anyway when he didn’t know what kind of muck they might have to progress through for the rest of the challenge. For a third thing, he was always afraid he’d set his shoes on fire instead of cleaning them properly, and they definitely didn’t have time for that, either. He’d deal with tidiness and presentation later.

He didn’t contribute much to the discussion of how to get through the paths to the next challenge, though frankly, he was in favor of just trying to sprint down the empty one because, while he could light his wand as well as anyone else in second year, he still did not like the thought of walking up to a plant in darkness he couldn’t really see through which wanted to strangle him. The first plant didn’t look much more appealing, either, but the empty one was so long. The staff had clearly taken a sick sort of pleasure in this; idly, he wondered if Coach Pierce’s family was somehow related to Grandmother. They were from the same part of the country, crazy homicidal northern women….

Illinois was sort of its own thing, but his opinion of women from places further north than Virginia was not improved when, after they had picked a path and everyone had gotten out alive, Wolseithcrafte asked if anyone knew how to blow up the wall. Henry stared at her for a moment, the light hitting his glasses in a way which hid his eyes, though the rest of his face was similarly blank as he wondered whether she was joking. He decided he was not.

“I think that’s probably cheating,” he suggested. “Besides, pieces of wall flying around to squash us? Not good.”

He pointedly did not look at Wilkes. At the beginning of the challenges, he might have just point blank said ‘I don’t trust David with stuff blowing up as far as I can throw him,’ but he was trying to be diplomatic right now. Not to offend. Starting a fight was not in his best interests, as he would lose both physically and magically if he was wrong in his estimation of Wilkes' character and it would only slow the team more, and besides, he would feel bad about giving offense.

He was not sure if the challenges ending soon enough was going to be a disappointment or a relief from a verbal standpoint; he still sort of expected them to push him down a flight of stairs five minutes before a challenge, but he thought he mumbled less per interaction with them than he did with any other non-family people in the school. He thought there was a chance he might miss having another group he was more or less comfortable talking to.

0 Henry Carey Are you sure? 239 Henry Carey 0 5

Sara Raines

April 13, 2013 8:11 PM

Right, then by Sara Raines

Sara looked on in surprise as Analea began whispering to Fae, wondering what that was about until her friend gave an answer, from which Sara deduced what the question had been. It was smart, she thought, for her to think of that, though she thought Fae was right, too. By the time someone got to CATS, Sara thought they usually had developed a good bit of magical stamina, and Alexandra was close enough to them to manage this, she thought.

“I think you’re right,” she said to Fae, and took out her own wand. She looked around for Henny’s voice to direct them, but jumped a little when instead, she heard Analea, who was louder than Sara had ever heard her, getting very angry with them.

“Oh, come back – “ she exclaimed, her hands waving helplessly and inadvertently sending sparks falling from the end of her wand, as Analea ran off through the mud. They didn’t know how deep it was, they didn’t know if there were, maybe, some other traps within it. Besides, going through mud was usually slow work, the younger ones would get across faster, as would the three older girls, too, and Analea was the one who was worried about tiring out, so she really didn’t need –

Sara felt flustered, unsure, flushing with embarrassment for the younger girl. This was not the right way to do things, people weren’t supposed to just go from one way to the other like that; a temper tantrum was always wrong, always unladylike, always not something to be done in public, but if it happened, it ought to only happen when a girl had been pushed to an extreme. Just to lose her head like that was something Sara couldn’t imagine, going from calm to yelling; she thought that even under most levels of stress, she would be too repressed to yell, though she might cry instead if it was bad enough.

Being flustered, though, wasn’t helping, and they had to go through with this. She had to finish the task. When things were bad, a lady just had to force herself through them and then make them better as soon as she could, at the first chance she had after she thought of a way. Taking a breath, she started to squeeze her eyes shut, stopped herself, and Transfigured as quickly as she could, trying to move fast, half-afraid Analea would run off into the Labyrinth without the rest of them and then they would lose time trying to find them and lose their place in the top five, which she had been very proud of, even if they had only been number four. She had dared, secretly, to hope that they might move up even further this time, but that wasn’t going to happen if they had to spend a long time searching for one of their group members around the Gardens.

Finally, they were all together again, and Sara almost flinched herself when Fae raised her wand, but all she did was clean the mud off the younger girl. And then told her off. By the end, Sara was frankly impressed with her friend.

There was still more to do, though. She looked at the first path. “I think those thorns are poisonous,” she said. “Professor Fawcett’s supplemental books are useful sometimes, I suppose,” she added, a nervous half-joke. “If they prick us, we’ll lose our coordination for a while – at least through the next part. We might do better with Devil’s Snare if we can make enough light, heat, but we’ll have to stay close together.”

0 Sara Raines Right, then 179 Sara Raines 0 5

Carrie O'Malley

April 14, 2013 3:55 AM

Refusal by Carrie O'Malley

So far, Carrie was not enjoying the challenges. The only decent part was when they did the mirror room. She hadn't liked most of the mirrors, but there had been one showing her in a beautiful ball gown. Not that she didn't have several already but she had spent time memorizing every detail of this one so she could have it recreated and wear it to the ball. Carrie was sure that she'd be fighting suitors off. Who wouldn't want to go with someone as special and perfect as her? Of course, very few of them were good enough. She would only accept the very best, as only the very best was worthy of her.

And her teammates certainly didn't fit the definition of the very best. Sullivan and Clarissa were mudbloods, Carter was an idiot who fraternized with mudbloods and didn't get how to be a pureblood, and Jhonice was basically a nobody. Eliza was the only one from a remotely resepctable family and the Bennetts were just not on par with the O'Malleys and Brockerts. No wonder that Arabella couldn't do better than one.Carrie, on the other hand, would have the very best. With Cepheus Princeton spoken for-and she wished Meggie Brownbriar nothing but misery, and hoped Cepheus continued to flaunt his interest in Theresa Carey in her face-she now had her sights set on Thad Pierce. Alicia Bauer seemed interested in him, but clearly it never happen. She was nobody despite her step-father. She still didn't have the bloodlines, especially not for an heir.

Today's method of torture was to be an obstacle course. Yuck, she was bound to get all sweaty and ruin her clothes and shoes. Her expensive custom made clothes and shoes. Not that she'd have ever worn them again anyway. Carrie never wore the same thing twice and usually threw away an outfit when she was done with it. Besides, she was sure to ruin her manicure and she could even break a nail!

The overseers left and Carrie scowled. It was bad enough when Sullivan had been selected over her, given she was about a million times smarter than he was. He was a mudblood and from her impression of him from class was that he was an especially stupid one. To make matters worse, Amity had been selected for her team, the lazy little twit. She thought she was above any sort of work, which was ridiculous, because only Carrie was that special and above work. The smug little smirk her cousin threw her way only infuriated her further.

Eliza gave her pep talk claiming they had the best. Of course they did, they had her . It went without saying. However, the rest of the team wasn't even close. Why couldn't the third year have gotten a team full of decent people. The rest of them were bound to mess everything up. They weren't even in the top five when they should be number one-and Ryan's team was in second place! How did that even happen! The people on his team were awful too-just what he deserved-and they didn't even have her greatness. Instead they were led by the most worthless person there was. A team of freaks led by the biggest freak of all.They must have cheated to get as far as they did. Uncle Seth must have helped them out somehow.

Her face took on a look of utter horror when she realized the first obstacle was a mud pit . Sullivan poked his wand through to the shallowest places and Carter skipped right across. It would figure that he would do something like that. He was going the ball with Wendy Canterbury so it was quite clear that he preferred filth. Carrie, however, crossed her arms. "I am not walking through that."

11 Carrie O'Malley Refusal 230 Carrie O'Malley 0 5

Francesca Wolseithcrafte

April 14, 2013 3:12 PM

Positive - we'll have to go through it. by Francesca Wolseithcrafte

Cheating? A frown of confusion creased Francesca's brow.

“How is it cheating?” she asked, “All they told us was to get through as quickly as possible. I don't recall them putting any limitations on how we were allowed to do that. Look at the opt out time. Two minutes per person. Therefore the solution they're expecting us to find has to take less than two minutes per person, or less than a total of ten minutes, otherwise any team who opted out would get ahead of any team who tackled the task,” she explained. Francesca was not an unfriendly person but she did have a tendency to cut straight to the point, especially when dealing with academic matters. Besides it not being in her general nature, she really didn't think now was the time to be mincing her word's for the benefit of Henry's feelings - every second they stood around deliberating was a second they were losing off their tight time limit for the obstacle – and on their overall time for the task.

Had she had time to spare a thought for it, she would have erred on hoping that he was not offended. Besides generally not wishing that upon anyone, her team were the people she had become closest to thus far at school. She was not sure that that was particularly useful. These were the bonds born by teamwork. Once the team no longer existed, she suspected they would not endure. It might have been more profitable to channel her energy into networking than in winding through mirrored labyrinthes and flinging herself over mud pits in the company of people from whom, when it was all over, she would undoubtedly drift apart. But for now, with a clock ticking, her brain whirring at many miles an hour and those around her striving to achieve a common purpose, she felt happy. And, if not actively liked, at least connected to those around her. At least somewhat welcome and wanted. She would have been upset had her words caused a fracture in her relationship with a member of the team (although she probably would have been more annoyed that they had not lived up to her expectations than at anything else - people who got into a huff just because someone disagreed with them were ever so tiresome).

“If it's blasted, presumably the debris would fly away from us,” she added. She was less certain about this and was relying on common sense rather than any detailed knowledge of ballistics. “But if you, or anyone else, has a less explosive but quick way of tackling the problem, then I'm fine with that,” she added. She turned to David and Thad, looking between them as the higher powers who would have to authorise any decision, and upon whom she would have to rely to see her plan through. She fully expected them to vindicate her – at least to the extent that what she was suggesting was not against the rules. If they could think of anything quicker than an explosion she would be impressed, and would willingly acquiesce.

13 Francesca Wolseithcrafte Positive - we'll have to go through it. 250 Francesca Wolseithcrafte 0 5

Thad Pierce

April 14, 2013 5:27 PM

Re: Positive - we'll have to go through it. by Thad Pierce

"I think Francesca is right," Thad remarked, frowning at wall before them. Not necessarily about the blasting - that might be a bit overkill, especially a blast strong enough to create a lot of wildly flying debris - but about the approach. To support his claim, he added, "My sis- er, Coach Pierce is involved in this. If I know anything about her, it's that she was raised to believe there is always more than one way to solve a problem." He, after all, had the same parents. "I don't think we can cheat. The sign just says to get to the other side, not to go over the wall."

He frowned at the tall obstruction again. It was far too tall to deal with quickly the physical way, especially with none of them being amazingly athletic in a climb-the-wall sort of way. He kind of wished he could see Alicia's face when she actually did get a wall to climb, what with all their practice at that activity during the Challenge Training Sessions she set up, but it just wasn't time-efficient with most of the team not having that training. He could probably make it up and over in under two minutes now, but doubted all of the others could. "We either need a way to go through it, or to bring it down so we can just walk across it."

Turning to the older two team-members, Ayita and David, because he wasn't quite sure of the feasibility of his idea, he asked, "Would it be possible to use cutting charms to just carve out a hole we could duck through? Or would it be better try to destabilize the base and push or pull it over? Maybe get that rope long enough to have all of us tug it down?" They'd already proven during the first obstacle that elongation was a skill they had mastered well, so that shouldn't be a problem if toppling the wall entirely was the better option than going through.

1 Thad Pierce Re: Positive - we'll have to go through it. 213 Thad Pierce 0 5

Annabelle Pierce

April 14, 2013 5:45 PM

Overseeing team 14 by Annabelle Pierce

Taking her scouting job seriously, Annabelle traversed all three of the paths leading to the second challenge well enough to feel she had a good handle on each of them. She wasn't entirely sure what kinds of plants were impeding the way of two of the routes, but she had a strong suspicion that the darkness there marked that it was a genuine Devil's Snare right out of her DADA textbook rather than something more harmless. And if that plant was from DADA, the other one blocking the shortest path was almost certainly worse, even if she had no idea what it was specifically.

She then took a few minutes to check out the wall, but that seemed simple and straightforward enough, so she returned to the rest of the team in time to see them following Cepheus onto the dry land of the victorious side. "Good job," she cheered, glad to see that Annette didn't look any muddier than she had before.

"We've got three paths out of here, but two of them are blocked by dangerous plants out of DADA. I think you'd do better to just run down the clear path." She pointed out the safest route. "It's longer than the others, but we've all had practice running in the Gardens, so we can probably actually make up time that way while the other teams try to reason through the short-cuts."

"The next obstacle is a really tall wall. You're supposed to get to the other side. There's a ladder on the back side, but that won't do you any good on the front, and there's a rope too, but it's too small to be useful."

1 Annabelle Pierce Overseeing team 14 246 Annabelle Pierce 0 5

Annabelle Pierce

April 14, 2013 6:18 PM

Fuzzy-Timing Team 14 ahead by Annabelle Pierce

While her team dealt with the challenge of the Wall, Annabelle turned her attention to what came next. She didn't have to go far to see the lake, even from the Wall itself. As she flew over the three potential routes, one of the elves took a pot-shot at her with a rock and she scowled at him in deep irritation. The others seemed a bit cowed by her look but the offending one did not.

"I'm an overseer!" she snapped, feeling this ought to have provided her protection from the stone projectile. That seemed not to be the case, at least from that one elf. The same ugly creature hurled another rock at her and this time it hit. In truth, she was a bit surprised it didn't hurt as much as a rock thrown squarely into her arm ought to hurt. "Overseer!" she yelled at the nasty little beast again, but prudently flew higher and farther away before he could launch another one at her. The other two paths were significantly less hazardous, one being merely long and the other only having some creatures wandering about it. Some of the latter hurled filthy-mouthed insults up at her, but thankfully no rocks.

Returning to the group as they finished the Wall Challenge, she pointed out the direct route they could all see. "Quickest route is to just duck and run through the elves hurling rocks at you. It actually doesn't hurt as bad as you'd think. Or you could run the safe route." She pointed out the long path, then finished off her report by pointing down the middle length route. "And that one has some creatures down it with filthy vocabularies and smelly secretions."

As for the lake, she felt they could see that for themselves well enough from where they stood without her pointing it out. Only the gamut of rock wielding elves stood between them and it, after all.

1 Annabelle Pierce Fuzzy-Timing Team 14 ahead 246 Annabelle Pierce 0 5

Carte

April 14, 2013 7:16 PM

Why am I not surprised? by Carte

Carter stood on the other side of the mud pit with the rest of the team who he hoped had made it across and stared at Carrie. He almost groaned aloud when he heard her refusal to come across the mud. Of-course she would refuse. Why wouldn’t she? Up until this point Carrie had given everyone what seemed like a reprieve when she had decided to remain blissfully silent during most all of the challenges. She would choose now to speak. He fought down the urge to get angry at her for being uncooperative (as usual) and simply shook his head. She had taken it upon herself to try and chastise him once before for his conduct and while he found her attempt amusing to say the least, he found that he was really unimpressed with her as a person. He had attended quite a few of his parents parties for their pureblood friends and while he knew a lot of them to be slightly snobby, he had never in his young life encountered anyone as insufferable as Miss Carrie O’Malley.

He knew that if he tried to say anything nice to her she would probably snub him again like she had the first time they had spoken. So Carter decided that if Carrie was going to snub him he was going to give her a really good reason to do so. It was only right after all. No point in getting snubbed for being nice. So he stuck his hands around his mouth and shouted as loud as he could so that everybody could hear. “I realize you would hate to get a mud bath twice in one week princess, but if you don’t pick up those two appendages attached to the bottom of your scrawny legs and haul them over to this side of the mud pit, I’m going to help you do it,” he shouted politely. He even smiled big at her as he finished. Just to make sure she knew he was dead serious about it, he felt he would give her a little incentive. He pushed back the sleeves of his sweater, exposing his forearms, dipped his hands into the mud where it was slightly drier than other spots but still squishy and balled up the wad of mud. He threw back his hand like he was getting ready to pitch a no-hitter, and flung the mud ball right at her. Just so he wasn’t being completely mean to her, he gave her a friendly warning. “Hey Princess,” he yelled. “Catch!”

Carter rubbed the excess mud off on his pants as he watched the mud ball make its way towards Carrie. He knew if it hit her she would probably kill him for it, (when she could speak again of-course) he was pretty sure if it hit she would lose all ability for speech and if it didn’t hit her he still would never hear the end of it. Either way it was an outcome he told himself he could live with.

0 Carte Why am I not surprised? 0 Carte 0 5

Valerie Lennox

April 14, 2013 9:27 PM

Suggestions by Valerie Lennox

Valerie had been very relieved to have been made overseer. There had been no way she could have handled running the course. Despite the new potion, which was keeping her out of bed less often, her doctor at home still didn't really want her to do physical stuff. Or get stressed out. She was having better luck with the former. Aside from not being sick as much and becoming closer friends with Brianna, things weren't really going that well for her. There were the challenges and she was still worried about screwing up and her team not liking her, though Ginny was awfully nice. She had attempted to comfort Valerie when the boggart upset her.

Of course there were also CATS of course-which of all the things she was worried about was the least so-, and the ball. The Crotalus couldn't have a date, she was betrothed and it would be improper. However, her friends had dates, and while she was extremely happy for Brianna in particular, she would feel like the odd one out. Valerie didn't know that Linus or Eris would want her hanging around. Plus, she seriously didn't know where she stood with Michael right now. She didn't want to give him up as a friend but she didn't want to be disloyal to Brianna either. This was not helping her stress level either and she was terrified it was going to all make her sick again.

She waited with the rest of the overseers. Her team was the last one to go which only gave Valerie time to worry about whether or not she would do a good job on this. She couldn't fail them, couldn't sit out the course only to mess this up. She had to prove her worth, make it so they didn't have a problem getting stuck with her on their team.

And speaking of messing things up, the first obstacle turned out to be a mud pit. It was a really good thing she was the overseer. Wallowing in mud was not a good idea for the Crotalus, though she knew there were definitely other options to get through it besides just walking across, especially considering that a glance at her scrying device showed that it was very deep in some places.

Topher suggested parting the mud and Ginny suggested freezing it. Paul thought that might make it slippery and McKinley wanted to summon something to go over it. Ginny thought she meant a broom and mentioned that she wasn't so good on them. Valerie didn't think that was such a good idea and would be surprised that the second year would want to if that was what she meant. Brooms were not proper and McKinley seemed very much so. She wasn't even wearing very good clothing for what she had to do. Not that Valerie had a lot of them herself but she was the overseer so she didn't have to move around so much. "Whatever you guys do, do not walk through the mud. It is very deep in some places and you could all get stuck. I'd suggest turning it into something but not ice. You could also do a spell to harden the mud." She hoped they didn't think her suggestions were stupid.

11 Valerie Lennox Suggestions 204 Valerie Lennox 0 5

Angel

April 15, 2013 3:47 PM

... by Angel

“Good job,” Angel said, pleased that he remembered the words that were often said to him when he completed a task properly. His tone was rather bland, compared to those who cheered him on, but he was still happy he remembered to say it. Giving a low hum of satisfaction under his breath, Angel began scouting ahead to see where his team needed to go now.

Exploring the paths, Angel felt a small flare of gratitude towards Ryan. He knew that if he’d been part of the team running the challenge, he would already be having a difficult time of it. Angel didn’t have the energy to spare to run all over the Labyrinth. Even though he wasn’t the greatest at verbal sharing, he thought that he wasn’t doing too badly as overseer. The model was quite responsive to his wand, and he actually enjoyed poking at it and exploring the paths ahead.

“Angel, tell us about the paths.” Ryan’s voice brought his attention back to the team.

“Path by Sally shortest, but plants big with many sharp. Hard path, that one. One by Ryan is long, but good, danger not there. Path by Jude is not short, not long. Plants big here too, and dark. Good?” He asked, waiting to see if they wanted him to attempt to further clarify. Which path would they take? Angel didn’t like the look of the shortest path, getting through that one unharmed would be difficult. Maybe they could run faster down the longest path.

0 Angel ... 0 Angel 0 5

Gareth Whitebriar

April 15, 2013 4:09 PM

Where to now? by Gareth Whitebriar

The baking plan worked well, though a few spots tried to crumple under his weight. Gareth managed to make it over the path without falling head first into the mud. Anna’s little pink baubles clearly marked the trail through the mud pit, making the task easier. Perhaps giving the overseeing job to her hadn’t been such a bad idea. She was doing well so far, better than Gareth would have. He didn’t carry random stuff in his pockets, and trying to verbally direct people to the dry patches would have been an interesting task.

Gareth followed Cepheus off the first obstacle, waiting for their overseer to return with news on the next task. The whole thing was rather interesting, not as good as Quidditch, but it was a new experience. He wondered how much work the Professors went through to create it all. This task alone must have been quite a hassle. Each team would deal with the challenges in their own way, and then the Professors would have to go back and set everything to rights again before the next team could enter the challenge.

The flying Anna returned, and reported the state of the trails. Fighting through magical plants sounded like it would be more time consuming than simply running down the longer path and not bothering with trying to cut their way through one of the shorter ones. “I agree, I think the longer path would save the most time in this case.” Gareth replied, glancing at the rest of the team to see what they thought about the situation.

0 Gareth Whitebriar Where to now? 0 Gareth Whitebriar 0 5